Work Text:
It was two and a half weeks of nonstop work before Leo was able to make the time to visit Elliot’s grave.
After Elliot’s death, Leo had been held in custody over the Headhunter incident; after Vincent broke him out, he’d been too distracted with his new role. And after the Abyss was restored to its proper state, everyone had been busy covering up the events and reinstating the Baskervilles, and Leo had barely had a minute to himself to sleep, let alone go to Elliot’s grave.
But when he finally did have that minute—and he was tired to the bone, but he wasn’t passed out wherever he’d been working or meeting with people, so he counted it as a free minute—he hired a carriage and went directly to the graveyard on the former Nightray lands, picking up a bouquet of lilies on the way. Devotion, purity, rebirth…of course he’d had to go with lilies. He and Elliot had been devoted to each other, and, once Elliot was reborn, he would be pure of Leo’s influence. The flowers were perfect.
And Leo knew that Elliot wouldn’t know his grave had been visited, and once he was alive again there would be no need for him to care, but he had once read that funerals were not for the dead, but rather the living, and Elliot, who had no surviving family members other than his father who had merely used him and his adoptive brothers, one of whom was cut off and the other of whom was busy clearing Elliot’s name posthumously, had not gotten a funeral but had rather simply been buried alongside his mother and siblings in the family plot. An injustice, but one that Leo could not publicly rectify. All he could do was bring flowers.
When he arrived at the graves, he saw that Elliot’s was the only one in anything resembling good condition. The grass was neat and trimmed, where on the other graves it was overgrown, and fresh flowers rested atop it.
Carefully, Leo knelt down and placed his own bouquet next to them.
“Hey, Elliot,” he said quietly. “I guess your brothers have been taking good care of you, huh?”
There was, of course, no response.
“Can’t believe you went off and died like that, you jackass…didn’t you always hate Edgar and lecture Oz for that exact thing? He followed your example, you know. That kid always did look up to you a little too much.” He sighed. “You were too noble for this world, I guess. We…we really didn’t deserve you. None of us did. You’d have kicked all our asses for the shit that went down after your death…you…”
Leo squeezed his eyes shut and leaned his head against the tombstone, trying and failing to hold back his tears.
“I miss you,” he said. “I never wanted to live without you…but I’ll try to live a life that you would be proud of.”
And finally, finally, he let himself cry.