Epilogue
Burn to Shine

“We say that the hour of death cannot be forecast, but when we say this we imagine that hour as placed in an obscure and distant future.
It never occurs to us that it has any connection with the day already begun or that death could arrive this same afternoon…
this afternoon which is so certain, and which has every hour filled in advance.”

- Marcel Proust

“Lala! ¡Abre la puerta, por favor!”

Leiana Lopez looked up from her notepad inquisitively when she heard the voice calling her from the veranda, quirking a dark eyebrow and laying her pencil to one side with some reluctance. She had been too absorbed in the rough sketch she had been drafting of herself and her older brother to notice the doorbell going at all; then again, she had also got some pretty loud music in the background…

It wasn’t as if she had done it deliberately to annoy her stressed, highly-strung mother – she had only pumped up Fright Ranger to block out the near-constant sounds coming from the television that Catalina had had on all day, looking for more news about the so-called ‘alien remains’, or for any information regarding the whereabouts of Carlos and her beloved padre. The former she would rather have ignored, for the sake of her sanity; the latter, on the other hand, was something she didn’t want to think about, lest she start to ache for them again.

Sighing, she stood up and left her bedroom.

“Vale, Mom…”

Who the heck was calling at this time of the day, anyway? Everyone tended to take a nap at around midday, when the heat became truly unbearable in the summer months. She tended to just stay inside and relax, but neither her nor her mother had been able to sleep, when they were both awaiting the return of the missing men of the family with such anticipation.

She hadn’t really been listening to the President’s broadcast about aliens when it had happened, but she had got the general gist of it. That huge thing in the sky had been an alien, and Carlos and Fig had gone to Mission City again – with aliens – to fight more aliens. There had been a time when she would have laughed in the face of such absolute garbage, but given the fact that it had been the President telling them… and from what she had gathered from her mother’s screaming down the phone… she had been slightly more inclined to believe it.

If she was honest with herself, she didn’t really care about frigging aliens. All she wanted was to have her father and brother safely back home, to calm her mother’s nerves… and to make them a real family again.

The cool, tiled surface of the floor was soothing against her bare feet as she crossed the room, trying to quell the hopeful feeling that was welling up in her chest. Hope that it might be them… hope that she might see Carlos standing there, grinning like an idiot and all set to mess up her hair and give her a hug… swallowing, she opened the door.

And stared.

… Who the fuck are they?

There were five people standing on her doorstep; one of them was so freaking big that Leiana actually had to crane her neck to see his face, while the others, too, looked so out of place in Morelia that it wasn’t even funny.

One of them – the shortest of the group by quite a long way – was someone that Leiana thought she vaguely recognised. She had long, dark brown hair with blonde streaks at the front, and a lilac kerchief held the majority of it back from her softly pretty, doe-eyed face. Ah, wait… she remembered… her name was… Jane? No, wait, it was Jade… she was one of Carlos’s friends from America that had come to stay a few years back.

“Hi, Leiana.”

Leiana’s dark eyes flicked from Jade – who, she noticed with a puckered brow, looked as if she might have been crying recently – to the guy who had just spoken. She recognised him almost immediately – he was Carlos’s best friend, Rad White. He had come to stay quite a few times, and she had beaten his ass at soccer on numerous occasions. She’d always been surprised by his patience and good sportsmanship – most guys would cry like babies if they lost to her – but Rad had always been really nice.

Frowning deeply, she raised her eyebrow a little higher in what she hoped was an evidently enquiring manner. “Hey, Rad…” she greeted him slowly, wiggling her fingers in a slightly confused wave. “Nice to see you… I guess…”

“You too,” the young man nodded, smiling.

That smile is so fake.

The uncomfortable hush that followed allowed Leiana to take a relatively good look at the other three people, who were standing a little behind Rad and Jade. They were all ridiculously tall in varying measures, the tallest being a guy who must have been in his late thirties or forties – and at least six-seven or eight feet in height – with bright blue eyes, a weary expression, and hair that was greying slightly at the temples. He had pretty impressive muscles beneath his cut-off shirt, which was predominantly blue and emblazoned with red flames towards the bottom.

There were two other girls standing on either side of him – one of them was dark-skinned, which made her equally bright blue eyes look strange in comparison, and had spiky, ink-black hair with extensive bangs, streaked with the same blue as her irises and tank top were. The other young woman was her polar opposite but for height – she had a very fair complexion, which Leiana was surprised wasn’t already burning in the fierce heat of the Mexican sunshine, as well as wavy, reddish-brown hair and the longest pair of legs that she’d seen for a long time.

Mr. Incredibly Tall was the first to break the awkward silence. “Miss Lopez,” he greeted her politely, “My name is Mr. Prime. I would like to speak with your mother, if you would be so kind as to show me to her.”

It was a good thing that the woman in question interrupted at that point, or she knew she would have just gaped at him.

“Leiana? Leiana!” her mother’s shouted called insistently from the other side of the house. “¿Quien es?”

Eyeing the man distrustfully and making no immediate reply – he hadn’t actually asked her a question, after all – Leiana glanced over her shoulder and cleared her throat. “Someone here to see you, Mom!” she called out across the front room, prompting a string of irritable curses from her mother from behind the beaded screen that hung over the doorway to the terrace.

“Oh, maldito sea… send them though, then!”

Leiana nodded and jerked a thumb over her shoulder. “She’s on the veranda.”

Mr. Prime inclined his head to her courteously and murmured a few words of thanks before he crossed the threshold into her home, striding across the room with a sense of purpose before he disappeared through the curtain that would lead him to the veranda and her pissed-off madre. Though amazed that he hadn’t cracked his head on the low doorway, she almost, out of pure indignation, wished that she had – what had he got to say to her mom that was so important that he couldn’t tell them both?

Muttering a few choice insults under her breath, she returned her sullen gaze to the four individuals on her front doorstep – all of whom were gawking at her as if she had just sprouted wings, or something.

Cristo, these people were so rude…

“Did you want to say something to me?” she asked shortly, and they all looked at each other tentatively.

Another silence threatened to overtake them, and Leiana felt her short fuse beginning to catch fire. The last thing she wanted was to get mad at Carlos’s friends, but this was just frigging ridiculous… if they were just waiting for Mr. Prime to come out again, then they could damn well wait in the massive, gleaming, totally ostentatious semi that she had just noticed was parked in her front yard, along with a small, electric-blue Vespa. They didn’t have to stand around staring at her…

It was the leggy redhead that finally broke the ice. Stepping around her companions, she took a deep breath before she looked Leiana right in the eyes, chewing on her lip uneasily for a moment before she spoke.

“Leiana…” she began softly, and Leiana noticed that her eyes, like Jade’s, were rimmed with red. “My name’s Rose – Rose Connelly – and this is Sara.” She indicated the girl with the funky hair on her right, whose full bottom lip was trembling non-stop. “I think you already know Rad and Jade… we were all friends of Carlos’s.”

She nodded. “Yeah… we’ve met.”

Wait.

There had been something odd about that sentence…

Her frown deepening considerably as she made the connection in her head, Leiana crossed her arms and narrowed her eyes infinitesimally. “What do you mean, you were friends of Carlos’s?” she asked sharply. “Have you guys had a fight, or something?”

“No, no, Lala,” Rad cut in swiftly, shaking his head. “It’s not that.”

People always used that nickname when they were trying to butter her up, and Rad really did sound as if he was trying to mollify her… she didn’t doubt that he remembered her bad temper from his last visit, when she and one of the asshole boys from her class had gotten into a fistfight in the middle of the street, but he obviously didn’t remember that she despised being patronised – especially by older kids. She could feel herself colouring indignantly, and tried her utmost to keep her cool, taking a deep breath through her nose.

“Okay,” she said slowly, her brown eyes scorching his paler, ice-blue ones intently, daring him to keep her waiting for an answer. “So you’ve just said that you were friends of Carlos’s, but you haven’t had a fight with him. So technically, you’re still friends of Carlos’s.” She paused, her arms tightening over her chest as she gave him a hard look. “I don’t like being messed around, Rad.”

“We’re not trying to mess you around, Leiana,” Jade interrupted pleadingly, her voice wavering, and Leiana started when she saw the shimmering glitter of tears in the dark eyes of the older girl. “I – we – we just – we don’t know how to tell you –”

Leiana clenched her jaw, trying to ignore the slight stagger of her heartbeat at Jade’s words.

Dio, what did they want to tell her?! What had happened – and if it was something so important that the five of them had had to come all the way from California to tell her, then why weren’t Carlos and her father with them? She had barely said twenty words to Rad in her life; even less than that to Jade; she had never even seen Sara or Rose before. Of that, she was absolutely certain. Who were they to come and tell her whatever it was – and more importantly, what the freaking hell was it?

“What’s happened?” she enquired as calmly as she could, wishing her heart would stop thumping so hard against her ribcage, and that she wasn’t struggling to breathe in her sudden, crushing dread of what news they had brought. Asking, after all, would be the only way to get it out of them.

Unless she wanted to involve her fists in the debate.

At this point, the girl called Sara simply broke down; she put both hands, covered by fingerless gloves, over her dark face, and let out a sob of misery that was edged with something… almost… echoing?

“Oh, Primus… she looks even y-y-younger than he said!” she despaired agitatedly, her heavily accented voice muffled by her palms as Jade turned to put an arm around her, tears sliding down her face as her friend’s hysterics increased. “How are we goin’ t’ say this – how can we say this?”

“Say what?” Leiana demanded feverishly, suddenly terrified; her question, however, only prompted Sara to let out a shockingly loud wail of desolation, slumping against the silently weeping Jade as if she no longer had the strength to support herself. “What the fuck is this?!”

What was going on? She didn’t really give a damn what ‘Primus’ had meant – all she was concerned about was the fact that they obviously had some seriously bad news, or this wouldn’t be happening. Even as a hundred horrifying thoughts started running through her head, she heard her mother give a cry of what sounded like anguish from the other side of the house, so shrill that she could hear it even from the front doorway. Her heart pounding and her hands shaking, she spun around again, and Rad met her gaze wordlessly.

Putting her bare foot down on the ground outside, she marched right up to the young man, stabbing a finger into his chest. “Tell me what’s going on – right fucking now, Rad!” she snarled, and he took a step away from her, lifting his hands slightly in a futile attempt to ward her off. “You’d better tell me, or I swear to God, I will do something I’m really going to r –”

“Carlos is dead.”

Silence.

Leiana blinked, staring at Rad. “W-what?”

Had… had she just heard that right? She couldn’t have done… there was no way that… no.

Rad sighed heavily, and she thought she might have caught the faintest glistening in his eyes before he bowed his head, closing his eyes and pinching the bridge of his nose with between a finger and thumb. “Lala,” he murmured, “Carlos… he’s… he’s dead. He was killed at Mission City… three days ago.”

Shock was the only thing keeping the stunned fourteen-year-old standing as her finger fell from its stiff place against Rad’s chest, her eyes wide and her lips slightly parted as she took a step away from him, shaking her head. Rose choked out a sudden, muted sob in the background, covering her pale face with one hand and leaning over at the waist as if someone had punched her in the stomach, but Leiana barely noticed the three other people in the vicinity. All she could see was Rad’s face… Rad’s grave, ashen countenance… the look of solemn finality…

“Liar,” she whispered.

Sara interjected again at this point, staring at the teenager as her face contorted into a look of utter, heartbreaking desperation that would have softened anyone but Leiana immediately. “Why w-would we lie ‘bout summit like that, Leiana?” she cried, shaking her head. “C-Carlos meant everythin’ to us – he was everything t-to me – h-how can you think –”

But Leiana ignored her. Rad’s face was blurring before her eyes; her vision flared up in sudden, violent crimson as she clenched her fists and changed her direction, flying at him before she could stop herself. “You LIAR!” she screamed at him at the top of her lungs, slamming straight into his torso and struggling violently when he grabbed both of her wrists in his hands, grunting with the effort of keeping her from punching him. “YOU FUCKING LIAR! My brother is NOT FUCKING DEAD!”

“Leiana, p-please – stop –” Jade begged, but she barely heard her over the sound of her own frantic screams of denial as she writhed in Rad’s arms, kicking and shrieking.

“¡Sueltame!” she screeched. “You – you liar –!”

Carlos was not dead. He couldn’t be dead, God damn it – he had been there all her life for her! He had supported her and cared for her during their parents’ divorce; he had always been there to cheer her up when she was down, with a joke; a smile; a hug – and Rad was trying to tell her that he was dead? What kind of sick, twisted person would say something like that?!

“LET GO OF MY CHILD!” another voice suddenly screeched, sounding beyond any consolation. “GET OUT, ALL OF YOU! ¡Fuera de aquí!”

She felt herself being yanked away from Rad and into her mother’s protective embrace before she could grab onto something, crushed in the hysterical woman’s arms like a doll in the arms of a possessive child – she fought back furiously, trying her utmost to get back to the bastard that had told her such a spiteful untruth and beat the living crap out of him, but Catalina was holding her too tightly for her to complete her task. She was dragging her away from the kids – back towards the house – and Leiana screamed with frustration, thrashing back against her mother angrily.

Mr. Prime suddenly appeared in front of them, looking extremely concerned for the both of them, but Catalina lashed out at him with a scream of anger as soon as he came near her. “¡Vaya al infierno!” she swore blindly in Spanish. “¡Jodete, pringao!”

Maddeningly, he didn’t look offended by the insults her mother was hurling at him.

Just… sad.

Leiana could hear her mother’s sobs through the shrieking now, and she shook her head, her thoughts swimming and blurring in her confused and aching head… memories of Carlos… laughing, smiling, and full of life… was there any way whatsoever that these people could be telling the truth? Could it be possible that her brother was… just… gone?

“Goodbye, Mrs. Lopez… Miss Lopez,” Mr. Prime said softly. “And I am sorry.”

“Just get out,” Catalina choked out, and Leiana made a grab for her waist when she felt her mother’s knees threatening to give way beneath her.

The tall, strapping man looked at them long and hard for a moment, and Leiana glared back at him through the sudden, hot waves of tears that were threatening to push themselves out of her eyes, but she wasn’t about to cry in front of him. Catalina, on the other hand, simply kept her eyes on the ground… that, more than anything, worried Leiana. Her strong, proud mother… struck dumb, for what must have been the first time in her life?

Then he inclined his head, turned to the young people behind him, and beckoned them away.

Leiana watched through a sheen of warm saline as Jade gently led Sara after him, turning to meet Leiana’s eyes fleetingly before she returned her attention to her weeping friend; Rose and Rad followed a moment later, with the latter murmuring to the forlorn redhead in what sounded like a comforting undertone. Sara and Jade climbed onto the Vespa together, with Sara taking the controls with palpable reluctance; Rose, Rad and Prime all climbed into the massive semi, and Leiana lowered her eyes with a disconsolate huff of mingled shock and waning anger as the two vehicles drove away.

She glanced down at her mother, who was wheezing heavily as tears rolled down her dark cheeks. “Mom?” she whimpered, her voice betraying her dread before she could check it. “It’s… it’s not true…”

“But it is,” Catalina whispered.

A brown, weathered hand was suddenly held up before Leiana’s wide eyes, and Catalina looked up at her with a look of hollowness that frightened Leiana more than anything ever had in all of the fourteen years of her young life. She took Leiana’s other hand in her own before she pressed something small, hard, and warm into her palm, clasping her daughter’s fingers around the item before releasing her hand and turning away, wandering back towards the house as if she was a lost traveller trying to find their way back to her home.

Leiana shook her head. “Mom…?”

The only reply she received was a muffled sob before her mother disappeared back into the house, and the soft, rattling hiss of the beaded curtain parting as Catalina returned to the terrace.

Blinking back the tears that were building up in her eyes and quivering perilously on the edge of her eyelids, she looked down at her right hand, slowly uncurling her fingers to see what it was that her mother had provided as proof of the authenticity of the account they had just been given. She almost dropped it when she saw it.

Carlos’s cross.

Her eyes widened in horror; tears spilled down her freckled cheeks unchecked, and her lips parted in a cry of jarring shock that hit her with the force of an avalanche as she saw the solid gold necklace sitting in the palm of her hand. “No… no… Carlos…” she gasped raggedly, staring at it. It was his… she could see the tiny C, J and L initials engraved on the left arm, centre and right arm of the cross, and his face reappeared freshly in her mind as he held it just out of the reach of her pleading nine-year-old hands…

I’ll give it to you when I’m dead, kiddo! her brother chuckled from the back of her mind. Dio, you’re so impatient…

It was true.

God in heaven, it was all true.

Her face crumpled as she took a deep, trembling breath, her youthful face awash with burning tears. Shaking her head and coughing out a grief-stricken sob, she stumbled towards the house, almost tripping herself up in her haste as she ran back to her room, her chocolate curls falling free of their loose braid and tumbling about her face as she came to a halt in front of her desk, slamming the cross onto the surface with a hoarse cry of torment.

The sketch lay on her desk, uncompleted, in her Nightmare Before Christmas notepad; an innocent, idyllic image of herself hugging Carlos around the middle due to their comical height difference, and him messing with her hair, as usual. She had been looking forward to colouring it and showing him when he got back… he had always kept every single one of her drawings, and ranted on about how great they were, even if they were just rough sketches. If she had dared, now, to enter his room, she knew she would have found them all stashed in his drawer… a collection built up since the first time she had put pencil to paper as a toddler.

A tear splashed down onto the page, blurring the smile that had been playing across Carlos’s pencilled features. The graphite smudged instantly, washing out his amused expression… almost as if he had become… a ghost.

Her free hand suddenly snatched out to rip the page free of the pad, and before she knew what she was doing, she was tearing it to shreds.

She clenched her fists at either end, tearing it down to halves, then quarters, then shredding every tiny part she could see, screaming and sobbing fitfully as she did so. She seized a pair of scissors once she could tear no more with her hands and hacked each shred into tiny squares before she threw them all over the room, letting them float back down to the terracotta flooring like winter’s bitterest snow.

There would be no more pictures… not when the only one who appreciated them was gone.

Gone… forever.

I hate rain.

Rose kept her head down as she stood in the downpour with the enormous group of people: a lone English girl in a throng of Americans, Mexicans, and aliens. True, the Cybertronians were in holoform so as not to alarm the unsuspecting family and friends of the deceased, but they were still getting curious looks – if not outright stares – for their sheer size and intimidating, impossibly beautiful appearances.

It had been two weeks since she had gone to Mexico with Jade, Seraphim, Optimus and Rad to break the news of Carlos’s death to the Lopez family. Carlos’s father had gone a day after they had – she knew that something very bad had happened during his visit, but she didn’t know the exact details of the argument that he had had with his ex-wife. All she knew was that Leiana – the short-tempered, snappy teenager that had been so devastated when Rad had told her that her brother was dead – was no longer Leiana Figueroa Lopez, as she had been.

An angry, bitter Mrs. Lopez had cut the poor man’s name from their daughter’s… she was now Jimenez, after a family friend, with no trace of the devastated warrant officer to remind any of them of the death of her only son, and what she believed to be the cause of it.

Poor Fig, Rose thought to herself blackly. It wasn’t his fault.

At least Carlos had received some recognition for what he had done, she supposed lackadaisically, keeping her eyes on her boots.

After the battle, the President had called an award ceremony for the people involved in the battle against Unicron – those in the sky, on the ground and in space had all been duly rewarded for their efforts. And the very highest of those awards had been given to them… the eight young adults that had fought beyond the call of duty, whether they were living or dead.

As members of the American military, Rad and Carlos had both been eligible for the Army’s Congressional Medal of Honor – the highest military decoration awarded by the States. Rad had gone to collect his, and Catalina Lopez had gone to take Carlos’s.

Rose remembered with painful clarity how Rad had held his head high, smiling slightly at the applauding crowd, and how Catalina had had tears in her dark eyes, but had not let them fall as she took the pentacle pendant from the President and nodded to his soft murmur of consolation for her dead son, looking blankly into the media’s many cameras as if she felt as dead inside as the child that she had lost.

Jade, too, had been classed as suitable for a Medal of Honor; she had, essentially, been a member of the Air Force during the strike, and had asked to enrol, with Skyfire, soon afterwards. She had been crying openly when she had received the slightly differently shaped medallion, but had still faced the crowds with courage and determination far beyond her eighteen years.

Rose – along with Alexis, Mikaela, Sam and Miles – had had the honour of the Presidential Medal of Freedom bestowed upon her. She remembered the look of quiet admiration in the President’s eyes when he had hung the blue ribbon around her neck… the thunderous ovation for her from the crowd, who had been informed that she alone among the group – aside from Carlos – had made the ultimate sacrifice, and had been restored to life by a miracle that none of them truly understood.

It was Alexis, of course, that had received the largest round of applause. And… much to Rose’s relief, as well as the relief of every other person… she had finally been strong enough to stand up tall, and smile for the cameras that worshipped her as the heroine she was.

Rose fiddled with the heavy disk against her neckline now, her fingertips tracing the gold-and-white enamel star delicately.

Although Catalina Lopez had requested that all of them wore their medals to Carlos’s funeral… it only Rose that wore two valuable marks of valour.

A few days after the award ceremony for the humans and Autobots – who had received their Medals of Honor in holoform – she had received a letter, informing her that she had been classed as qualified for a Victoria Cross award from her own country. Although the valuable decoration was usually awarded only to military personnel, the person writing had explained that she had fulfilled the requirement of showing ‘the most conspicuous bravery, or some daring or pre-eminent act of valour or self-sacrifice, or extreme devotion to duty in the presence of the enemy’.

She had flown back to England for the award ceremony, accompanied by Sam and Jade, who had been keen to visit the country. Her mother had been in hysterics when she had met them at the airport, having been informed by Rose’s father all the details of what had happened at Mission City, but had been in tears of pure pride, along with her new partner, Sam and Jade, when Rose had received the beautiful cross pattée from the Queen herself.

Her family – made up of her maternal grandparents and an aunt – all of whom had flocked to see her in the West London apartment that her mother owned after seeing the ceremony on television, had begged her to stay. And, she admitted, she had been tempted… a little.

But… not tempted enough to leave the life she had been offered in America.

Life with giant alien robots beat Big Ben and the Thames any bloody day of the week.

“You should not be so exposed to these conditions, Rose,” a familiar voice suddenly murmured, interrupting her reminiscing. She glanced up from beneath the soaking side fringe that was plastered to her forehead to see Ratchet’s hologram a metre or so away, looking at her with quiet concern.

All of the Autobots had altered their holoforms for the grave occasion, and their medical officer was no exception. The neon-yellow, short-sleeved shirt that he had been wearing the one and only other time that she had seen his human image was gone, replaced by a sombre black tie getup, which was partially covered by an equally dark trench coat. She noticed, however, that he hadn’t exactly brought an umbrella – his holographic – or holomatter – hair, somehow, was positively dripping with rainwater.

Rose sighed, shifting her gaze back down to the ground. “I’m fine, Ratchet… but thank you.”

She could tell without looking at him that he didn’t approve of her brushing him off, but he said nothing. Which was a good thing, she supposed… seeing as she had just caught sight of the hearse.

The gleaming, ink-black funeral car drew up before the throng of mourners at an agonisingly slow pace, and Rose heard a muffled sob from the place where she knew that Jade was huddled up under Skyfire’s arm a little way behind her. Starscream and Alexis stood close to her on her left, both with sombre expressions – Starscream without his personal smirk, for a change.

At least, she thought, Starscream had sweetened up a bit since getting Alexis back. In fact – since the Unicron incident - he had been quite nice to her, really. He hadn’t sneered at her once.

She doubted it would last, but it was refreshing nonetheless.

Sam, wearing a suit, stepped forward with a set expression, along with Miles. They helped the driver and his assistants to lift the polished mahogany coffin from its place in the back of the vehicle, grasping its golden handles tightly. An enormous wreath of white carnations lay atop the wooden box, intertwined with strong-smelling lilies and other such flowers to signify death.

Strange that death should be represented so… beautifully.

Alexis nudged her suddenly – an action less painful than it had been in the past, given the fact that the girl had finally started to put some weight back on – and she glanced at her stepsister. “We’ve got to go in,” she whispered.

“I don’t want to,” Rose murmured. “I can’t stand it…”

“Yes, you can,” Starscream muttered darkly, looking down at her from his full six feet and six inches; his crimson optics, however, were softer than they usually were. More the colour of a fine red wine than of human blood, as they usually were. “You must.”

His tone of voice snapped her out of her trance a little, as did Alexis’s hand on her back. She gave them both a small, but grateful smile before she slipped her hands into the pockets of her long, fitted black coat – which she had recovered, miraculously, from the foliage that she had abandoned it in when she had first discovered Alexis’s secret – and took a step towards the door of the church.

It was a huge, imposing building. Carlos had been Catholic; as such, his funeral was held in a Catholic church. Religious statues held forth flickering candles, their empty eyes filled with the gentle glow; the same white carnations decked the surroundings as they decorated the coffin.

Rose seated herself between Ratchet and Starscream, perching on the edge of her seat somewhat nervously before shifting up to allow Alexis, Mikaela, Sam, Skyfire and the twins to fill the rest of the pew. It was strange to see both Sunstreaker and Sideswipe with such pokerfaced expressions; she might have laughed, had it been a less sombre occasion, but she found it utterly heartbreaking. Sideswipe had even tucked his hologram’s shirt in, for a change, which was a rarity indeed.

As the rest of the mourners filed in, Rose dared herself to look up at the front of the church.

All had been prepared for the funeral; the priest was an aged Mexican man wearing richly purple vestments, emblazoned with a cross. His hands were in those of Catalina Lopez, and he was speaking to her in Spanish in an undertone as she wept silently, nodding at his words.

What confused her, however, was the fact that there two microphones and a music stand set up to the right of the sanctuary.

The remaining Autobots and teenagers moved into the pew in front of theirs, for which Rose was grateful – she knew she was going to cry, as she always did as funerals, and their presence meant that she could hide her weakness behind the towering forms of Ironhide, Arcee, Bumblebee, Optimus and Seraphim. The Lopez family, including Leiana, were on the other side of the church.

Silence fell for a moment before Catalina went to sit beside her daughter. Then the priest greeted them, extended his blessings to the congregation in general, and said an opening prayer of some sort in Latin. Rose understood a passable amount of religious Latin, being a keen linguist, but she didn’t have the courage to listen, or to mentally translate.

She had to stay strong…

… if she could.

Once the priest had finished his quiet entreaty to God, he switched back to Spanish – the native language of most of those present, and one that the Autobots could understand with Internet-aided ease. She really thanked her lucky stars that languages had always fascinated her, or she would have been completely lost; she pitied those who were absolutely monolingual, like Miles – she was pretty sure that Sam and Mikaela had mentioned taking Spanish, but she was also certain that Sam had mentioned how much he sucked at it, too.

“Now,” the elderly clergyman was saying to them, “We will have a song from Miss Rivers and Mr. White, for Carlos, as our lost son is brought before the altar. Please listen respectfully.”

So that was the explanation for the microphones.

She felt a gentle tap on her shoulder suddenly, and turned to see Alexis, Mikaela and Sam leaning around the hulking, muscular Autobot holoforms to look at her. “You speak Spanish, right?” Alexis whispered, and Rose nodded, although she pointed out that she wasn’t wholly fluent. “What did he say? And was that first thing Latin?”

“I think so. And he said that Jade and Rad are going to sing something; the coffin’s coming.”

Starscream looked a little chagrined. “Why do you ask her?” he hissed at the three of them, turning his nose up haughtily and arching a white-blonde eyebrow. “I know the language fluently.”

So much for being nice, Rose thought with a sigh as Alexis gave him a light, reprimanding slap on the arm.

The red-eyed, humanised Autobot didn’t look as if he was having any of that sort of behaviour from her – he slid a tightly muscled, black-clad arm around Alexis’s shoulders, drawing her against him tightly. She smiled up at him from where she nestled closely under his arm, and he clasped his huge, sheet-white hand around the back of her head, his touch screaming possession. Rose wondered how she could ever have denied how perfect a pair they were, and she smiled softly to see them.

If only she could have someone who loved her as much as Starscream loved his Alexis.

By the time this small exchange was over and done with, and Starscream had had his daily dose of the spotlight – a spotlight that he had positively shone under when Optimus had promoted him to First Lieutenant and second-in-command of the Autobot militia, much to Ironhide’s horror – Rad and Jade had both appeared on the stage. Rad cleared his throat, leaning forward a little to speak into the low-set microphone.

“Hey,” he greeted the congregation, managing to drag up a tiny smile that looked as if it might crack his entire countenance. “This one’s called Closer… originally by Joshua Radin. It was Carlos’s favourite song, so Jade and I thought we’d sing it… just, y’know, to see him out.”

Rose’s lip trembled before she could stop it, tears blurring her vision as they welled, hot and stinging, in her eyes. Her fingers flexed into a fist, squeezing so tightly that her fingernails dug into her palm, but she ignored the sharp pain that the action caused.

God, how could he be so… brave, damn it?! How could he stand there in front of everyone in the church and pretend that his smile represented anything like what he was truly feeling on the inside? How was it that Rad, as Carlos’s best friend since childhood, could stand up and smile at his funeral – smile, and offer something back to those people in the room who were suffering so terribly in Carlos’s absence – and yet she couldn’t hold herself together, even before the coffin had come in?

How could he… sing?

She closed her smarting eyes when Rad began to strum on his acoustic guitar very lightly with a plectrum, clenching her fists at her sides again in an attempt to hold back the tears that were choking her silently, fighting to push their mutinous way out of her tear ducts. If Rad could be strong then she could, too… damn it, she could be strong…

… she would be strong…

But when Rad began to croon out Closer… she could not retain her composure for a moment longer.

The tears poured down her cheeks the instant she released them, one after another; there would be no stopping them now, and she knew that very well. She had been so certain that she could remain steadfast against her guilt that she hadn’t brought tissues – thinking, stupidly, that they would only encourage her to give way to her tears, and that their absence might make her think twice about crying.

She dabbed at her eyes with the cuff of her sleeve, sniffing thickly as Jade’s voice joined Rad’s in a sweet, mournful duet for their closest friend among the group. The petite brunette looked so different to how she usually did that it was quite disconcerting to behold her: her long, silky hair was free of its kerchief for once, and the blonde strands were braided and clipped neatly at the back of her head. Seeing her all in black, too, was so out of the ordinary that it was almost disturbing, and Rose had to lower her eyes when further tears rolled down her face.

How she hated herself for being alive… when Carlos wasn’t.

She had already seen Ratchet about the depression that had been dragging her down, and he had informed her that she was, most likely, suffering from ‘survivor’s guilt’. He had hardly met her eyes during the post-battle diagnostic, and she supposed that he himself must have had guilt, of a sort, when she had died in his place.

Was Ratchet glad that she was alive, she wondered? Did he care about her… at all? Or perhaps the question she should have been asking herself was of a slightly different nature; a more personal question that frightened her more than she had expected it to.

… did she care about him?

More tears came flooding down her face as she considered the question that had haunted her since Mission City; not only that, but the coffin had now been brought before the altar, with the head facing the sanctuary. Jade and Rad finished their song – no applause was necessary, but they had done what they had set out to do. Their combined voices had guided Carlos to the hands of the priest, and now he could be laid to rest. The two of them scooped up their music papers and departed the stage, coming to sit in the pews with the others.

Now was not the time to think of Ratchet, and whatever she might feel for him. But it was hard… when he was right beside her.

“Thank you,” the priest murmured into the microphone, his accented voice resonating around the room. “Now, Carlos’s sister would like to say a few words before we commit this child of God to the grave. Leiana, please come forward.”

Alexis glanced at Rose again when Starscream muttered a translation to her. “How did she take the news?” she whispered, very quietly.

“Badly.”

The short, curly-haired Mexican teenager stood up swiftly when the priest called her. Her jaw was clenched forcefully, as it had been when Rose had last scene her – an instantly recognisable Lopez girl – but she looked very different in a short-sleeved black blouse and pressed, low-rise slacks of the same colour. The well-worn Converse were gone, replaced by pretty, patent leather loafers, and her thick curls were braided tightly, hanging in a plait a little way down her back and bound with a black elastic.

Carlos’s cross hung around her neck, poised between her collarbones and glinting softly in the candlelight.

Rose felt so sorry for her that she almost started crying again, but something about the younger girl’s proud expression held her back. God, the girl was fourteen – Carlos’s sister, for crying out loud– and there wasn’t even a single tear in her eye.

She carried no notes to the stage – no written speech, or any kind of guide as to what she was going to say. Instead, she stood before the hushed congregation with her fists clenched at her sides, her shoulders pulled back and her head held high. If she did suffer from stage fright, Rose thought with silent admiration, you would never have known it.

“Well, um…” Leiana started, clearly a little uncomfortable and uncertain of how to begin. “Yeah. Carlos.”

For a moment, she faltered, and her eyes were certainly glistening with tears – but one could easily have mistaken the glint for one of some other emotion or characteristic. Her lip trembled slightly, but she started her speech again with commendable fortitude.

“Carlos was a great brother,” she said simply in English, and her words were clear and unwavering. “I know people say that kind of thing all the time at funerals – no matter how mean the person that died was – but Carlos was a greatbrother. Whatever the hell happened, he was always there for me. He would always tell me how great stuff I did was… stuff like my art, that other people didn’t really get. And he always seemed to understand me… like no one else ever seems to have been able to do.”

Rose could empathise with that.

She didn’t even understand her own feelings… she doubted that anyone else ever could.

Leiana clenched her fist tightly for a moment, taking a deep breath before she continued. “He was always there for me. And then one day… he just… he just left. He didn’t say much… just that he was going away for a bit.”

“When he came to stay with the Autobots…” Alexis whispered, to uneasy nods from Sam and Mikaela. “Oh, God…”

“I was pissed about that,” Leiana informed the assembly bitterly, and her voice was beginning to betray her feelings – anger, and grief. “It was like he was suddenly a different friggin’ person… not the brother I knew. And then n-next thing I know… he’s gone to war in Los Angeles. Gone to war… and he never came back for me.”

Catalina Lopez let out a weak moan of despair, followed by some grief-stricken entreaty to God in her native tongue. Her mother quickly hushed her – she was a small, wrinkled old woman with a white plait, and had apparently taught Sam, Jade and Mikaela what Spanish they knew at Tranquillity High – but Leiana paid her family no heed, her voice rising a little with her growing confidence. Rose prayed that she wouldn’t cry; that was all she would need to break, at this rate.

A single, glossy brown curl had fallen free of the youngest Lopez’s thick braid, but she ignored it. “But even though I’m mad at him still,” she said in a slightly softer tone, though her voice still carried heavy resentment, “I… I’m proud of him. ‘Cause he died a hero. And… I wish I could’ve been there… fighting with my brother.”

Jade burst into tears at this.

Brave, brave girl… Rose thought of Leiana, her face crumpling as she fought to hold her own, indisputably imminent tears back, which were only pushing harder at her eyes to see Jade in such agony.

Leiana shook her head, clamping her mouth shut as if she planned to stop herself from weeping; but a single teardrop still rolled down her freckled cheek as she looked down at the long, flower-laden coffin, leaving a glistening line across her mocha-coloured skin. “So… goodbye, Carlos,” she coughed dejectedly. “Descanse en paz…”

With that, she fled.

Rose tried to swallow her tears as she watched the brunette tear past the coffin and out of the doors of the cathedral, leaving the air heavy with grief in her wake, but it was too much for her to cope with. The poor thing had been so determined not to cry in front of them that she had left the area entirely to hide her tears – it was heartbreaking, and Rose’s heart, for one, had taken enough for a lifetime. A stifled whimper escaped her first, and she pressed her hand over her mouth, her sobs already making her ribcage ache.

“Rose?” Ratchet murmured from her left, and she felt his hand against her back. “Rose… come, you mustn’t cry…”

“Have to,” she choked out wretchedly, her shoulders beginning to shudder as she leant over to weep, as if she had been stabbed. “He could have been here… the All Spark should have chosen him…”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Starscream interrupted harshly, looking up from the trembling Alexis. “He was meant to die; you were not.”

But her strength was failing her, even in spite of Starscream’s statement – her body was rebelling, telling her that she was dead, and that she shouldn’t be here at all – she felt her knees give way before she could try and stop them, and she would have collapsed onto the cathedral’s floor, had Ratchet’s holomatter hands not taken her waist swiftly to support her before she could fall.

If she had been in her right mind – without her anguish – she would have thanked him quietly and stepped away, before any more tension could have risen between them. But not today. Instead, she simply leant back into his arms, and he turned her around gently by the shoulders to face him – probably to scold her for allowing herself to be so badly affected by what was happening, when she had barely known Carlos at all.

He surprised her.

Instead of moving her away… the medical officer moved her closer, into a tight, consoling embrace.

She buried her face in his black coat without demur, stifling her sudden outburst of sobbing against the soft, if holomatter, fabric. She was dimly aware of a pair of strong, reassuring arms tightening around her much smaller form, holding her close to him as she burst into tears; no longer caring about what people would think of her, or who was watching, she threaded her arms around Ratchet’s powerfully built torso in return, clutching him as if he was the last thing left in the world that was dear to her.

“Hush, little one…” Ratchet murmured.

But there could be no comfort for this… for what she had done… what she had done by being alive, when Carlos was not. It should have been her in that Goddamn coffin… there should have been red roses on the altar, not white carnations…

Oh, God… why had the All Spark let her live, when this boy – this handsome, spirited, easy-going young man, who must have been destined for a life full to the brim with laughter and love – could have had the life breathed back into him, as she had? Why had it chosen her… cynical, irritable Rose… when Carlos had so many loved ones… all of whom would live on in utter torment now that he was gone forever?

She began to tremble uncontrollably, her silent tears threatening to rise up into a sorrowful crescendo to be screamed out to the world in her gut-wrenching grief and misery. Ratchet’s arms tightened around her wordlessly when she started to shudder, cradling her against his chest and rocking her gently as she choked out a disconsolate cry of anguish into his shirt, finding herself too desperate for comfort to stop him from bothering himself over her welfare.

She needed… she needed something…

Ratchet’s large, strong hands stroked her back carefully as he held her close, pressing her up against his chest and shushing her very quietly whenever she was forced to let another sob slip past her lips. She could hear a very soft, calming hum coming from something inside of him, resonating through the fabric; it was soothing enough to make her lean further into his embrace, finding that she drew a little comfort from the sound. It was almost akin to a lullaby… hushed, and beautiful.

“In paradisum deducant te Angeli; in tuo adventu suscipiant te martyres, et perducant te in civitatem sanctam Ierusalem. Chorus angelorum te suscipiat, et cum Lazaro quondam paupere æternam habeas requiem.”

The priest’s Latin was soothing… but the song of Ratchet’s spark was far more so...

“Réquiem, ætérnam dona eis, Dómine; ex lux perpétua lúceat eis.”

“Yes,” Rose whispered, so quietly that only she could hear herself speak, and she faced the weak sunbeam shining through the stained glass window with a hope that she had never felt before – hope that, at some time, in some place, she might be in his arms once again… on a day without rain. “Let eternal light shine upon us all.”

Fire.

Raging, agonising fire.

It was everywhere – a raw, untamed inferno, leaping from every angle, scorching his deeply scratched and filthy armour. Dark, military-style navy blue had long since given way to the blackened hue of the smoke that billowed from all around him, and the tongues of flame still licked at him unmercifully as two crimson optics came back online, one cracked and rendering the fallen Decepticon half-blind as he returned, with agonising effort, to the realm of awareness.

A muted scream escaped vocal processors that strained to release the tormented sound, grinding and shrieking to liberate the howl of anguish and rage from its confinement. Every part of his previously powerful body screamed its displeasure to his central processor, and his already overheated body seemed to sizzle inside as a clawed hand lashed out, sharpened fingertips ripping at the ground with a hideous melody of screeching.

“F-f-f-f-frag-git… s-s-s-system d-diagn-nostic-c-c…”

Even speaking those three words made his jaw flare up like wildfire and his metallic teeth clatter together, almost tearing his speech-articulating glossa with their sharpened points as they clashed against each other painfully. Thinking; speaking; even remaining conscious was using up vast amounts precious energon… energon that was gushing out of severed fuel lines, pooling around him in fluorescent abundance and forming an iridescent pool around his sorely beaten frame.

The fall from the sky had obviously sent him into one of the pathetic human domiciles that the little insects inhabited like swarming cockroaches, hiding in their holes and then spilling out to consume everything in their path. Curse them all – curse them for their impudence, and their weak buildings – half of the dwelling had simply collapsed on top of him, and he gritted his shivering teeth to stop himself from screaming again as he shifted a little, making the twisted debris fall from his body.

The pain… it was unbearable…

Critical system breakdown, his CPU informed him. Spark failure probable. Chance of endurance: forty-point-two percent.

Forty-point-two fragging percent stood between him and an unfilled spark casing, and he could feel it. His chest was turning cold – dangerously cold, dropping well below its optimum temperature – and he knew that the light would soon be extinguished altogether.

Blind in one eye, the Decepticon clenched his trembling fists, dragging himself forward with a tormented groan. Looking down at his hands, he saw that they were soaked with his own energon… as well as a strange, scarlet liquid that was mingling with the incandescent fuel coating his armour and the ground around him.

Blood… human blood.

A sense of grim satisfaction broke through Thundercracker’s agony for the briefest instant, and a perverse smirk twisted his hideously scarred faceplates. He may have been about to go offline, but at least he had taken one of the fleshlings with him…

Ignoring the throbbing pain in his cranium, he studied the human life fluid, memorising its type and makeup perfectly and looking into the helixes of deoxyribonucleic acid that were swirled within the tiny blood cells. So different from energon… it was impossible for him to use it to fuel himself, no matter how dire the consequences. Haemoglobin and plasma could not save his failing spark, and yet he felt relieved by it… having an organic compound pulsing within him would be sickening.

He knew that the humans must be coming soon. How they hadn’t already found his form or extinguished the blaze was beyond him, but he could see helicopters passing overhead now… they must have started the mass cleanup at the other end of the conurbation.

So Unicron had failed.

… or he had failed Unicron.

In the instant that he came to the realisation that his master was gone, Thundercracker collapsed on the ground, all rebellion seeming to pour out of him with his rapidly declining energon supplies. Unicron was dead, and His plan had come to nothing; Earth was still inhabited by Autobots, no doubt, as well as the humans; the other Decepticons must have fallen in battle, and he was not strong enough to repair himself, nor leave the planet. He would die here… every inch of him cried out for the peace of death, and he was losing the will to deny it to himself.

Until he heard his name.

“Hallo, Thundercracker.”

His head snapped to where the sound had come from, making the oozing energon line in his neck spurt the vital fluid out at an even more accelerated rate. He automatically tried his weapons, out of natural instinct, but found - predictably – that nothing would come online. He looked downward, his brutally damaged body on as full alert as it could be, only to see…

Blitzwing’s head.

Just… his head. A disembodied head.

“B-B-Blitzwing, y-y-you slagger… w-what happened t-to y-your b-body, y-you idiot?” he demanded hoarsely of the other, ludicrously bodiless flyer, who simply raised his red optics to the heavens and took on a look of utmost boredom. His face, mercifully, was currently resting on that which came with his calm, icy personality –a blessing that Thundercracker would have been insanely grateful for, had he not been facing pending demise. “And h-how the slag d-d-d-did you end up h-headless?”

Blitzwing’s head grimaced. “Zat Jade Rivers, who vas flying vith Skyfire… she flattered me, you know, and I made a razer… unintelligent mistake. Zat is all you need to know.”

Peering around clumsily and cursing his ruined optic for hindering him, Thundercracker scanned the surroundings maladroitly with his functional one, looking past the fire and smoke that was flooding from the now-demolished apartment building that he had fallen upon. “W-w-where is it-t… w-where’s y-your b-b-body?”

“Oh, in many teeny, tiny pieces around ze place.”

“What the s-s-slag happened?” the injured Seeker demanded feebly, his voice lacking its usual edge of rage. “F-f-rag-h-head…”

Wrong move.

Blitzwing’s face spun around as soon as he Thundercracker had finished voicing the unimaginative insult, and an explosion of hysterical laughter came from his grinning, jack-o’-lantern mouth as his red eyes positively shone with gleeful amusement. “Haha – good one! Not ‘fraghead’, Thundercracker, oh no – just head! All by itzelf, on its little lonesome!”

He proceeded to launch into a German-accented chorus of ‘I’ve Got a Lovely Bunch of Coconuts’.

Oh, Primus… he was not going to die like this…

“Shut-t-t the slag up-p-p, you fraggin’ lunatic!” he snarled through chattering mouthplates, every syllable sending absolute agony throughout his central processor and making his horrifyingly damaged audio receptors sting as if they had been burnt. His previously powerful arms trembled as he hauled himself a few metres off the ground, his visualisation swimming as if he had been on the high-grade for longer than he should have done. “F-fraggin’ Pit-spawned s-s-slagger… Star-s-s-scream…”

Blitzwing’s face revolved with a feeble va-voom, taking a few nanoclicks longer than it usually did. “Vell, what shall ve do now?” his unharmed, composed countenance enquired resignedly, its optics fixed on the sky. “Zere is nobody to serve… perhaps we should consider joining ze Autobots?”

Thundercracker snorted, clenching his long fingers into fists. “Y-you idiot… y-y-you think P-Prime and his soldiers will accept s-servants of Unic-c-cron’s?”

“Zis is Prime we are talking about here, meine freund … he vill take anyone in if zey beg hard enough for it.”

“I do not – nngh – b-b-beg for anything!” the damaged Decepticon shouted in indignation, although his vocals seemed to crack painfully as he raised his voice. “We are n-not joining those Auto-b-bots… curse it all to the P-Pit… w-we are m-m-more than this! We have our D-Decepticon p-pride, and you would j-just… give it up…”

Blitzwing rolled his optics. “Zen I avait your revolutionary idea vith great expectation, Herr Genius.”

“F-frag you…”

Oh, he was in agony… he didn’t know what the slag Starscream had done to him with that weapon, but by Primus, it had done some severe damage to his sense receptors. Not only was were his auditory functions pretty much fragged, but his visualisation, olfactory sensors and stabilisers were all virtually irreparable for the time being – at least until he could get his hands on some kind of tools, or a qualified Cybertronian medic. And he highly doubted that Ratchet would be in the mood to repair Decepticons.

/Oh, Thundercracker…?/

His head snapped up when he heard the voice in his head, and he looked around confusedly. “What did you say?” he demanded of Blitzwing, who looked at him as if he had lost his mind. “That w-was y-you… on the radio… w-wasn’t it?”

“Oh, ja, sure. Zere is every reason, of course, vhy I vould speak to you on ze radio, when you are right next to me, Schwachkopf.”

For a split second, Thundercracker wondered whether he had imagined it – but then it came again, clear as a bell. /It is not Blitzwing, my faithful flyer/ said the voice, and it was evidently true – this voice was deep, cold and chilling, with no trace of Blitzwing’s strange accent. /Perhaps you do not recognise the sound of a voice so altered…/

“Who are you?” Thundercracker shouted angrily at nothing, ignoring the lacing pain through his cranium. “What d-do you want?”

That must have been a very powerful weapon that Starscream had used, if it had fragged his central processor and auditory receptors this badly… and yet the voice had sounded so clear, and so compelling, as if whoever it belonged to was standing mere metres away from him. Blitzwing obviously couldn’t hear it – a piece of evidence that was surely against his sanity in such a situation – but the voice had only been addressing him. He was certain that he hadn’t imagined it…

Blitzwing’s head stared at him, one scratched optic ridge cocked slightly. “Okay, Thundercracker… I zink you may need to lie down. Ze name is Blitzving, if you remember correctly – you know, your flying freund? And what I vant –”

“Shut up!” he snapped. “I’m t-t-trying t-to c-concentrate!”

“On vhat?”

/He cannot hear me, Thundercracker/ said the voice again, sounding coldly amused. /But he will… he will./

/Who are you?/ Thundercracker demanded again using the link, if only to stop Blitzwing from snickering at the fact that he appeared to be talking to himself. The last thing he needed was for the lunatic to pick up on the fact that he had a voice in his head, and provoke the excitable personality into making further, irresistible head gags for the next Primus-only-knew-how-long. /How did you access this channel?/

There was a pause.

/Who am I?/ was the response at last. /I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning, and the End. I am that which is, which was, and is yet to come. And they will know my name… now that I return… they will remember. Oh yes… they will remember./

And Thundercracker knew.

“My Lord… m-my glorious Lord… it is you.”

Author’s Note: Oh my goodness – it’s the end! “The Day We Hailed the Heavens” is complete! (grabs tissue and sobs into it)

Once again, I would like to thank all of you so much for your support throughout this story – every favourite, every review and word of encouragement means so much to me, and I can’t thank you enough for it. You guys have left such incredibly detailed and kind feedback, and some of you have even taken the time to do fanart for this story – thank you so, so much. You all rock! (hugs every reader) :D

Yes, I have left you on the worst cliffhanger in history, and with many unanswered questions. What will happen next between Starscream and Alexis, as well as Skyfire and Jade? Is anyone else going to find love? Is Ratchet ever going to work up the courage to tell Rose how he feels about her… or will his obstinacy leave his spark partner open to Barricade’s will? (gulp) And… of course… however has Megatron managed to contact Thundercracker, when he should be well and truly offline at the bottom of the Laurentian Abyss? All will be revealed in the third and final story of Transformers: Deux Claret…”When We Dared the Dawn”, coming next week!

See you then!
Blackwing

Translations:

- Descanse en paz (Spanish): meaning ‘Rest in peace’

- In paradisum deducant te Angeli; in tuo adventu suscipiant te martyres, et perducant te in civitatem sanctam Ierusalem. Chorus angelorum te suscipiat, et cum Lazaro quondam paupere æternam habeas requiem (Latin): meaning May angels lead you into paradise; may the martyrs receive you at your coming and lead you to the holy city of Jerusalem. May a choir of angels receive you, and with Lazarus, who once was poor, may you have eternal rest’

- Réquiem, ætérnam dona eis, Dómine; ex lux perpétua lúceat eis (Latin): meaning ‘Eternal rest give to them, O Lord; and let perpetual light shine upon them’