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The Void wasn't as cold as he had imagined.
People always described it as a freezing place, a barren wasteland where anything that got in rarely managed to get out. Leo had thought it would be like a black hole, slowly sucking the life out of you and yet, it felt oddly like a blanket cushioning his fall.
The last thing he saw were Spoke's white eyes slowly getting further and further away, the sound of his manic laughter blending with the ringing in his ears and fading because of the Void's vastness.
And then there was darkness, pure darkness.
There was darkness, there was darkness until there just wasn't.
He wasn't sure when the sky had changed colour. First it was pitch black and then a pearly, innocent white.
He blinked several times, trying to adjust his vision. The sky's shade reminded him of snow. He was laying on a hard surface yet he couldn't catch glimpse of a floor. The ringing slowly disappeared, leaving the only sound he could hear be his own frantic heartbeat, uselessly acting as if any type of attempt had any kind of chance of success of bringing him back from the dead.
The first sign that he wasn't alone was heavy breathing coming from behind him, the second was soft hands running through his hair, trying to get them to stay in place. He only then realised that his head was on a more comfortable surface than the rest of his body, which Leo recognised as someone's lap.
He realised his vision was blurry only when something appeared in front of his eyes. The face of the person Leo was laying on was familiar, too familiar. He knew that face, didn't he? He used to always look for those light blue tipped horns in crowds and he lost count of the amount of times the owner of those goggles forget them in the weirdest places.
"Nuf?" Leo tried to say, his voice hoarse. The person on top of him let out a wet laugh, nodding as his hands never left his hair.
"It's me." His vision cleared, now being able to see Nufuli clearly. He looked exactly the same as the day he died; Leo had been worried that time had warped his perception of Nufuli, yet remembering his face after seeing him again and hearing his voice was as reading in a language he used to be fluent in. He looked at him with a soft, friendly expression that felt foreign as for the past year, Leo was either met with pure hatred or cold indifference by those whom he called allies.
The only difference he could recognise in Nufuli were the arrow scars on the right side of his face and neck.
"I'm dead."
"Hmm," Nufuli hummed, "You and I both."
"You're here."
"I'm here."
"Are you real?"
"As real as you are." Leo felt something be fixed into place as Nufuli kept talking. When he had died, Leo was sure his soul went with him. It felt like half of his heart had been ripped out of his chest and it had kept slowly yet steadily bleeding until that moment. Living without Nufuli had been something incomprehensible, even when he hadn't been dead. Everything he had wanted since that damned day was for them to reunite and now that Nufuli was actually with him, it felt surreal. It wasn't that Leo wanted to die, he just often prayed he would drain resources too fast in a fight or that some freak natural event hit the new BAT headquarters while he was sleeping and defenseless or even that he would die a warrior's death on that battlefield.
He was still bitter about falling for a Void trap, yet some twisted gratefulness made its way into his newly healed heart. Spoke had killed him, plain and simple. He stole his life because of his own greedy purposes. But Nufuli was there now, and his heart came back, and everything was going to be fine because his best friend was there.
"I'm—" Leo tried to say yet was immediately cut off.
"No, absolutely not. Don't even start." Nufuli said, and Leo just couldn't hold back a smile. Nufuli had always somehow always known what his words were going to be before he managed to utter them, reading his mind in a way nobody else did. And when Leo's own brain turned against him, Nufuli had always known how he felt with just a glance. "You couldn't have saved me, you couldn't have known."
"I missed you." Leo said, his throat tightening.
"I know."
"So much."
"I know."
"I visited your grave almost every day." Leo chocked out, he felt Nufuli's hands brush away his tears as his own fell onto Leo's face. He had missed him so much he felt like throwing up.
"I was there. You couldn't see me but I swear I was there." He replied, trying to hold back his tears. It was a different kind of pain being able to see his best friend kneeling at his grave, seeing him degrade and blame himself for his death while not being able to comfort him. Most of the times he would sit next to him, silently praying that Leo would somehow sense his presence but he never did and somehow that had killed Nufuli more than those arrows ever did.
"You saw me?" Leo asked, surprised.
"There wasn't much to do around here anyway, might as well follow you around." He shrugged, trying to maintain his tone even because at least one of them had to keep it together.
The thought of death hadn't even really crossed Leo's mind until that moment. The paradoxical nature of their existence in that weird paradise like place settled in his gut, his mind rejecting any logical explanation. The place was oddly comfortable, his skin felt cold yet warmth filled his mind. The ground was solid but transparent, making it seem like the two of them were floating in the immensity of it. Questions overwhelmed him until they were brushed away as the tears from his face.
Fuck that, Leo didn't need answers as long as he had Nufuli.
"Where are we exactly?" He asked, his voice sounding lighter than before.
"I, uh—" Nufuli hesitated, "I don't really know."
Leo accepted that, for the first time in his life not really caring about knowing everything. Knowledge was a flexible, fleeting thing that was minuscule compared to his want to rest. Rest there, for eternity even, in the safety and certainty of his best friend's arms.
"Did you—" He asked, because if there was one thing worth knowing was this, "Did you see? Everything I have done?"
Nufuli's expression shifted to a sadder one. Sadder wasn't the right term, it was more pitying. Quietly mourning the people he thought they were. Because Nufuli had seen, he had seen Leo do things he never thought he had the cruelty of doing and be the tyrant leader he swore would never become.
Nufuli couldn't understand how despite everything he had seen his affection for Leo hadn't vanished and if anything, it multiplied every time he would pathetically wound up in front of his grave muttering apologies both of them knew were useless.
"I'm sorry." He finally said.
"No you're not, Leo." Nufuli gently replied, "And even if you were, I'm not the one you should be apologising to."
Of course, of course Spoke would find a way to haunt him even after the sweet relief of death swallowed him. Spoke, dear Spoke whom he wanted to strangle the vast majority of the time. There had been a time when the kid had been his friend, a time that somehow felt further than the golden days of BAT.
"It was him, wasn't it?" Nufuli didn't reply, looking to the side. Leo knew Spoke had killed those spies as he knew his own name, with absolute certainty and not a shred of proof. "I knew it."
"You still took it too far."
"And to think Jumper too his side—" He scoffed, the image of her betrayal still too fresh in his mind.
He remembered how the pain was the second worst heartbreak he had ever felt, how she had looked away seemingly ashamed as she took Spoke's side. Jumper, whom he had at some point considered a sister, replaced him with Spoke out of all people despite everything that they had been through together. She was the only one who knew the pain of the loss of their old team, she was one of the few people who had seen his grief in the rawest form and yet she had decided to trade all of what they shared for a liar.
And without Jumper, his last ally left in the world, was there any true reason to keep existing other than pure spite?
The only reason he had fought in that war in the first place was because he silently begged to either die in it or kill Spoke. He wouldn't have minded being killed by Jumper, yet destiny had other plans for him. He was always paranoid after the Mafia about meticulously hiding his statis chambers in either the most remote places or the most dangerous to avoid people messing with it.
"Leo." Nufuli forcefully interrupted him and Leo listened, because how could he not? Jumper used to say that if only Nufuli asked, Leo would do anything and he never had the courage to contradict her. "No matter what Spoke did, you still took things too far."
"I know. I know I did but—" His tone cracked, the realisation of everything that had happened dawning on him at once, "When I realised, I was already on the brink of a war I knew I wasn't going to win. I was going to die on that hill— hell, I literally did."
He laughed bitterly. Useless, utterly useless, that was what he and his efforts had been. What was the reason of justice, if all that it got him was defeat? His best friend had been dead, the other people whom he had loved either left or turned on him and it was all because of selfish individuals who would never face the repercussions of their actions. The irony made his stomach turn.
Leo missed his home, missed being a family with his friends, missed hanging out with Nufuli and training with Jumper and just existing without the shadow of loss hovering on his shoulders.
"I wish I had been there." Nufuli said weakly.
"It was hell. It was hell living without you. Every morning I would wake up expecting you to be right around the corner scolding me for my terrible sleep schedule or– or in battle I would yell for you every time I was hurt and I just—" He started rambling, his fists closing due to anger and head weighing heavily in Nufuli's lap due to his lack of energy. "I'm so tired, Nuf."
Nufuli smiled at him sadly, his hands never leaving his hair and face in reassurance. He had waited there, in that white hell for months, just so he could wait for Leo.
He didn't want to discover what was behind the mystery they called life without the person who gave it meaning in the first place.
So he waited, waited patiently for Leo's time and even though he had wished it would come some long happy, years from there, he was grateful nonetheless.
"You can rest now, we both can."
"You're real, right?" Leo asked once again, slowly letting himself believe it.
"Yea, I'm real."
Nobody would ever make a grave for Leo, many would forget his existence. Spoke would move on and his memory would be nothing more than a nightmare. Jumper would continue to lead her team of spies, relieved that their main threat had been neutralised. He doubted the Law would even notice he was dead.
But Leo would be there, in that white infinity, with the only person who had ever really been worth it to him.
Meanwhile in the Overworld, the touching stars shone a little brighter.