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Leowook wasn’t sure exactly what he thought death would be like, but it sure wasn’t this.
When the world drops out from beneath him because of that manipulative fucking bastard Spoke who ruined everything and took away his home and his friends and killed his spies and turned Jumper—loyal, lovely Jumper—against him, he spares a moment to consider that this is going to hurt.
And then it does.
It hurts more than anything ever has, more than any mortal injury; the void crawls into and under his skin and makes him deaf and dumb with senseless agony until it all fades into dimness. Leo, in an instant, is gone, and as he goes he thinks that maybe in the blackness he can see spots of light very very far away.
Like two stars holding hands in the night sky.
It makes his heart lurch.
If Leowook is owed anything—anything at all for this shit card he’s been dealt—for this awful hand in life—if karma is real—
Maybe there’ll be an old friend on the other side.
That would be okay. That would be okay. That would make this all okay.
Leowook closes his eyes.
And he keeps them closed.
And then he comes to the strange realization that he hasn’t actually stopped falling. And that the pain has passed into a strange and lonely kind of coldness. And that he can hear something like wind in his ears.
He chances a peek—just in time to get a flash of the ground and instinctively windcharge to break the fall. To break death in its path.
Leowook wasn’t sure exactly what he thought death would be like, but apparently it’s just as cruel as life, because this is an empty-ass desert.
Soul-sand, which is weird. And the redness of the sky is strange. Maybe he was wrong, actually, and now he’s been sent straight to hell. That would suck because everyone he’s loved and lost were too good for hell.
Leowook spends about ten minutes sitting around before he gives up and starts walking. He very quickly discovers that mining and placing and all the fun parts of life are impossible.
Then he gets jumped by a bunch of silent dudes in netherite. Of course. Why wouldn’t he? That’s the way of life, right now.
The netherite gang breaks the rest of his armor (assholes) and drags him off to this big awful castle full of people in cages and then they put him in a cage in a room full of cages and at this point Leowook is fully convinced that this is all punishment for some grievous sin. Maybe Spoke didn’t do all that shit that he definitely did.
He spends the first few hours wondering if they’ll give him food and also yelling insults at every netherite-clad guard that sidles in and out of this fuckass room full of empty cages. Judging by the sound of footsteps, there’s another one approaching now, actually, who will be excellent entertainment for the next however long it takes to get him to leave.
“Get a job, man,” he shouts. He’s face-down on the floor of the cage. “How is this what you choose to do with your afterlife?”
The footsteps stop abruptly, and Leo peeks through the bars to peer at the newest opp, and instead his heart drops as he catches sight of a ghost.
“Leo?” his best friend asks.
“Nufuli,” he says. It’s brutal, it’s hellish, it’s straight from the gut. Every second he’s here and not there is another second the blood freezes in his veins.
Nufuli looks just the same as the day Leo lost him, iridescent scales glittering in the blue-green soulfire light, goggles perched on top of his ruffled brown hair, wide grey-green eyes like the sea in a storm.
He’s wearing the armor of the guards. The second he catches sight of Leo, though, he stumbles over to the bars, threading his long-dead hands through the cold metal to cup Leo’s face in his hands. “Leo, Leo, Leo. Did you die? Shit, Leo.”
“Nuf,” Leowook chokes. “Man. Oh man, Nuf, you’re…”
“Yo, what’s good, man?” Nufuli asks, shakily, a trembling grin growing. “Let’s, uh, get you out of there, yeah?”
It’s so good to hear his voice. So so so good. And to see him. Good god, it’s good to see him. Everything about this is good and suddenly Leowook thinks that maybe karma is real and this is his reward for a life well-lived.
Nufuli tears down the bars in between—he can break blocks?---and gathers Leowook in his arms, which takes some doing, because around this point is when Leo finally breaks. His hug is so dizzyingly familiar he can hardly stand.
It’s alright, now. It was hard, but now it’s okay, because there are two stars in the sky and Nufuli still smells like the sea.
“I missed you, man,” he muffles into Nufuli’s warm, steady shoulder. Nuf can’t make fun of him for crying too much. He hadn’t seen what the railgun left. “I missed you. It was so—it was so hard. I wanted—you were gonna find yourself. You were gonna be free. Fuck, Nuf—”
“I know,” his best friend murmurs, rubbing his back gently. “I know, dude. I—I shouldn’t have taken off my armor, anyway. It was dumb. But you’re, y’know. Well.”
“I made you a grave,” Leo hiccups. Somehow, it’s the most important part of it all. Nufuli doesn’t need to know about the dissolution of BAT, or the things Leowook’s done, or how Spoke’s lost the plot—none of that matters, anymore. He just needs Nufuli to know that he was and is and will be remembered.
“Was it cool?” Nufuli asks, with a smile.
“So cool, bro.” Leo paws uselessly at his eyes, trying to get it together. “Cool as I could make it. And I went back and I kept it up, so nobody stole the resources. I—I don’t think anybody’s gonna make me a grave. But that’s okay. That’s—man, Nuf, I really, really missed you.”
His long-dead bullet-through-the-head best friend hitches a breath and hugs him so tightly it’s like he’s afraid Leo might disappear. “Me too,” he mumbles. “Me too, me too, me too. Fuck, it’s so unfair.”
“What’s unfair?”
“I’m so sad you’re dead and so glad you’re here.”
“It’s all unfair,” Leo sniffs, sagely. “The entire damn thing.”
“And we’re the losers of this game,” Nufuli sighs.
“Losers?” he scoffs. “I know you didn’t see it, but I dominated up there.”
“Oh yeah?” His best friend laughs. It’s been so long since he’s heard that laugh and it’s still as ringing and joyful as the first time he heard it. “How’d you die, then, dude?”
“Um. Unimportant,” Leo says, disentangling himself. “Hey, can you see the stars from down here?”
“No, bro,” Nufuli starts. He’s got a suspiciously pumped look on his face, like he’s been waiting for somebody to ask that. “All the stars? Are down here.” He gestures in between the two of them, victoriously.
“Oh my god, dude,” Leo snickers. “That’s so corny, bro.”
“I thought it was aura,” Nufuli whines. “Cause you and me, we’re like, you know, the stars, and shit.”
“Whatever,” Leo drawls, lingering on the r. “I can’t believe you got so lame while I was gone.”
“I did not,” Nufuli hisses, in that lovely long-lost deathly familiar way, and it makes Leo’s heart ache and bleed and heal again, because Nufuli’s not wrong at all—there’s a star right across from him and it’s so brilliant and beautiful it’s hard to look straight at him. A star in blue-and-black; a guiding spot of light in the North to lead him back to the start.
“What are you looking at, bro?” His best friend teases, reaching out a hand. “You got a problem? You coming?”
It takes everything he has in him not to start sobbing again, but Leo keeps it together, and he laughs, and he takes Nufuli’s hand, and there he is again, slotted into place. Not the cruel and callous man who destroyed everything he had ever built; not the inglorious leader who sent spies to their deaths; not the man who failed to bring justice.
Just Leowook the friend, with his friend. A good man, home at last.