Fandom jump!

Disclaimer: the Petshop and assorted characters don't belong to me. And I'm using them without permission but make no money from this. And the owner would probably throw things at me, because I just hijacked a nice tragic ending.

..

It hurts far more than he'd thought it ever would.

It is a knife that splits him. It is cold that rises from his core, freezing him and darkening his vision. It is giant hands pulling him apart.

But it is over suddenly, so fast that his body still thinks itself in agony for a moment.

He rises, flight without effort. Warmth surrounds him. And the light is more wonderful than he had ever dreamed.

It is a garden, light and life unimaginable wrapping him, the sense of rest almost overwhelming. Spirits light with joy sing in the air that is not even air. Everything is too light, too real, to be quite touchable. The leaves of the trees are almost crystalline in their perfection, and they watch from their heights, murmuring to each other.

He can see infinity stretching around him. The light surrounds him, pouring down through an opening (a chasm, but it seemed small compared to what was all around him) to dimness below. Just looking down hurts him deeply; few could bear going back, souls that wish to ascend by going through mortal struggles once more.

Vastly more important is the dimness giving way to brilliant light, so bright he thinks his eyes should hurt. Around the chasm cluster old friends, almost forgotten. And there, waiting almost at the edge of the light, almost where the light fails and falls--

He knows him, and the memory would take away his breath. It makes him forget the posture of pain and he moves, almost not believing it.

"I waited." The man's face is not old, not young, touched and almost made whole with the light. "I nearly blew past this place. Then the skunk over there told me I'd find you faster if I stuck around."

D cannot speak.

"I've just been hanging out here, catching up on you when the pets that knew you die." And the man's gesture shows that he sees them too, and he loves them. "I so wanted to explore. Figured your ass would show up eventually."

He hears the word of his arrival spreading from the garden in limpid notes from the trees, which sound as though even their eternal patience has been strained. Leon will always be Leon.

"But. . . Why did you wait?" D spreads his hands, exactly as he remembered them. After all, he has always been a spirit.

"Same reason I put the cubs in your suitcase." Leon isn't very different, which would astonish him if it were any other human. And he seems hopeful, as though he finally has a chance to become more than whole, grow in keeping with this garden and these spirits.

"I never forgot," D says. "Never."

"I hoped," Leon answers. "I didn't know. I waited, anyway. I thought I would wait alone. Sure." He takes the garden in with an eternal awe. "So, think we could chill here a bit longer? I've kinda gotten the hang of--"

A shape, nebulous and pathetic, drifts into being beside D. He cups it, getting a sense for a moment of nakedness and hunger and cold and overwhelming misery. Leon's hands are there with his as the sensations fall away like a bad dream.

They know the realization as it comes to the chick's brain. It spreads song- feathered wings and effortlessly rises from the space of their hands.

D looks at the garden, the shape at the far edge of death, the final dream. Hope had made the light. . . gentle. The rest of the afterlife was bigger and the light so powerful as to be almost overwhelming. (And in some places, the loneliness was terrible.)

But here there was a memory of a place, made complete by love and faith. Here there was quiet, shade, and shelter.

If Leon had never met him, he wondered if this would have formed.

Yes, something like this, but smaller, and more slowly growing, and most importantly. . .

It would not have been waiting for him.

It would have been far away, in the more distant reaches of eternity. He would not have thought--known--to look.

He can't help it. He reaches up, touches Leon's face--and there is something there for his fingers to find. He has never loved the imperfections of the human soul before.

The kiss is more wonderful than life.