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Everything hurt. And nothing hurt.
Because he was nothing. He was the abyss. Death wasn't even the correct term - he didn't exist.
So why could he still think? Why could he still feel?
The darkness, clawing, stabbing and scraping, turning him inside out and pulling him to shreds of skin and shards of bone until there was no semblance of living flesh left. Yet he remained, bound together in a shambling mess of pieces and color that could still feel pain-
He didn't know where he was. Somewhere black, and cold.
He wandered, past others made of blended parts, incomprehensible strips and blocks, some disgustingly unperturbed, as if they had been this their entire existence. Non-existence? Whatever. After the first to congratulate him on “fitting in so well”, he stopped speaking to them all together.
He didn't know why he kept moving. It gave him something to do. Some proof of existence, pathetic as it was. Because even if he had been useless in the end, unable to understand, let alone stop the abyss and its encroach, at least he could move, unlike-
“Leaf?”
Her name left his mouth- No, came out the moment he laid eyes- Ugh, the moment he saw her.
Her back alone mocked him. She still looked like herself. She was still human, unconsumed, sitting on the floor- Ground? Sitting. She was sitting.
Almost as motionless as when she refused to face-
“Leaf!?”
She did not get up. She did not turn. She did not respond.
“Leaf, what did you DO?!”
Her head moved. Ever so slightly. But she wouldn't face him, the COWARD-
“Don't you IGNORE ME!”
Limbless, and yet he rushed forward, slamming into her and knocking her prone.
A twisted echo of when they were younger, and he didn't know his own strength, and he would get so frustrated by how quiet and aloof and smug and cutesy she was that he'd bowl her over and they'd go tumbling into the grass and she'd squeal and-
She winced. But still she refused to look at him, her focus immediately turning to-
Her mother.
He righted himself in shock. Her mother lay still, human, eyes shut tight with a slight frown. Before he could react, Leaf crawled back and lifted her mother's head from the nothingness, tenderly laying it back onto that familiar yellow bag, empty and neatly folded into a makeshift pillow. Leaf stroked her hair, a peaceful smile returning to her mother's face.
“...You dragged your mom into this too?”
Confusion blended with fury in his mind.
“...The King said I could ask for someone to be spared.”
Leaf's voice was tiny. Gravelly.
Just like when she had said she had come to save him, before-
“I asked him if there was any way to keep her from knowing what I did. So he put her to sleep.”
Her eyes remained locked on her mother's slumbering form, but now that he could see Leaf’s face… He couldn't unsee it. Her eyes were heavy and dark, tear stains tracing down her pale cheeks, her mouth set in a stiff, tense line, hair a tangled mess.
She was human, sure, but she looked like garbage. Like death warmed over.
Even worse than in Lavender Tower. And that was saying something.
The words tumbled out before he could think of anything better to say.
“What happened to you?”
“...I'm not sure.”
Her words were measured. Slow and deliberate. Her gaze, her body didn't budge.
But there was a tremble in her voice that he recognized.
“I woke up so excited. Though I can't remember going to bed.”
Didn't hear it very often, she wasn't much of a crier.
“I was so happy we were going to be starting together. I would finally get to prove myself to you.”
But when she had lost that game cartridge, he had laughed at first. That was all? Just a couple of pixels, accidentally dropped in the sea?
“But as soon as I started battling… making choices… handling items…”
Her voice cracked. Still, she stared at nothing, away from him, anywhere but him it seemed, but she paused for a moment to grimace and suck in a shaky breath.
Wait, when had they even gone to the sea, actually? What game was it? He couldn't remember the details, but he could still see the tears slowly filling the corners of her eyes as she refused to meet his. Still feel the way his heart dropped as her normally confident voice came out broken. He had crossed a line, she had lost something she really cared about, he hadn't meant to-
“The Pokedex doesn't tell you what a stone will do before you give it to a Pokemon, you know?”
Her words were backed by a joyless, dry chuckle.
He knew what her laugh sounded like. This wasn't funny. She didn't think it was either.
“And once it's evolved… It's too late to go back, isn't it? You can try to keep going forward, to work around it…”
She smiled, but…
But it was somehow more upsetting than if she had just kept her face blank like before.
“But you can never take it back.”
He had bought her some other game as an apology.
Hadn't he? His head- his mind ached like it was going to split open the harder he thought about it. So he stopped.
“You can knock my block off now, if you want.”
The old threat startled him out of his clumsy stroll down memory lane. She had finally turned to him, sitting up straight.
“I don't think it will work, but I never thought I'd get to hear your voice again either, so you're welcome to try. If that's something you want to do.”
There wasn't an ounce of malice in her eyes. Not a sliver of the evil you'd think someone who had begun the end of all things would possess. Not a shred of the numbness that piloted her through battle.
“I don't have Squirtle anymore. The King couldn't fix him, but he let me release him and put him to sleep.”
It was just her. Just Leaf, the girl next door who drove him crazy in ways he'd never admit.
A sudden, grossly polite smile took over her face. A sickly, exhausted acceptance that would have made his stomach churn if he still had one. (And the nausea didn't do a bad job of acting like he still did.)
“It's my turn, isn't it? To be removed? Like poison?”
He took a “step” forward. Lowered himself down. And “sat” next to her, “leaning his head” on her shoulder. Like she used to when they sat together on her couch to watch tournaments on TV.
Because he'd complain that she was being gross and getting cooties on him, and she'd snicker and lean on him harder and fake-snore-
“Nah. No point now, is there? Don't be stupid…”
Her posture remained rigid.
So he pressed in a little closer, as flush with her side as he could get. Something he never would have done with a body, mind you! But… her shoulder unstiffened and her head slowly fell and she buried her face into him and he decided he was too tired to care.
Eventually, she murmured against him, whimper as broken as his body.
“...’M so sorry.”
Yeah, he kinda guessed.
“I’m sorry, too.”
“You didn't do anything.”
“Hmph…”
He shifted in the vague approximation of a shrug.
“...Neither did you. Did you?”
Her sob was all the answer he needed.