PART FOUR

Epilogue

***

I walked forward in the cool, dim darkness, unafraid and, most of all, safe.

Safe from…everything. Everything I had once feared, meant absolutely nothing to me now.

Everything I had loved…I could never see again. I had given it all up, to save it.

But, in a way, that was okay.

Because…it was just better this way.

Better that they didn't see this, and better that they were all happy, up there.

While I stayed safe, down here, in this beautiful hell.

I apologized every night to them for it, but I would not change it now.

I was, to put it strangely enough, very, very happy.

Walking towards me for the first time was the one named Priamos, the name I had chosen…the name we had chosen.

It meant 'leader'.

He had died along with me, and come to this place with me, to meet him.

He was small, with silver and black armour, and wings tucked neatly against his back.

He reached me and looked at me with his optics.

One blood red, the other metallic green.

He opened his mouth, his small, half-vampire fangs glintered in the non-existent light, and said simply: "Mamma."

Of course I picked him up, and held him to me, to my spark, which beat still, albeit it was now a slower, more steady spark-beat than before.

I carried Priamos over to where he was.

"Pappa." Priamos said, tilting his head to the side in a way that I still sometimes do.

Wordlessly, his Father took him, and held him close in the same way I had.

We looked at each other, but said nothing, both sharing in the silent moment of our son's first steps and words.

Here we were, surrounded by the dim darkness, and more Decepticons then I could count, but words could not even begin to describe how I felt right now, in this strange, underworld of ours.

At last, I looked deep into his red optics, the optics of the one keeping me tied down to the centre of existence, and said: "Alive?"

Megatron nodded. "Alive." He agreed. He held our sparkling in one arm and placed the other around my waist.

I sat down next to him, and leant my head on his shoulder, thinking:

I am Emma, the Butterfly of this world.

I was once a part of another world, and a part of me still remains there, in the sparks and hearts and heart-sparks of every life I touched.

I came, I loved, I lost.

Now I am here.

And I am alive