Disclaimer: I don't own Kuroko no Basket!

They told him he was perfect. That he was the fruit of their long and arduous efforts. He was like a miracle in their eyes. He was everything to them. But as soon as they celebrated their success with high spirits, they realized that he had one major flaw that could not be fixed nor ignored.

He had no heart.

At the time, he blinked at his creator and the stranger standing next to him in curiosity. Of course he didn't have a heart. He was a robot, and robots did not have an organ that pumped blood through the circulatory system by rhythmic contraction and dilation. And when he spoke his mind, his creator, the one who made him, looked at him with wonder in his eyes while the stranger's was filled with glaringly obvious disappointment.

"You don't get it, do you, 04?" The stranger said.

He tilted his head in response. Get what? He was their creation of wires and circuits, not of flesh and bone. Did they think he would magically become one of them when completed? That his steel would morph to skin and that his electrical wires would become tiny vessels transporting blood?

And then the stranger spoke again.

"He's a failure. We can't allow him to-"

"He's living now. We can't just discard him like trash! I…I made him. I can't do that!" His creator shouts.

"The whole point of this was to create a perfect being. As you can see, we failed at doing so. And you knew the terms, no emotional attachments."

They both stop talking, soaking in their thoughts. He stares at them mindlessly, awaiting a reaction. A shaky hand reached for his neck, and he watched in a still calm as the limb felt around his neck for something. Cool fingers touched a sensitive hatch, and he flinched. His creator smiled at him faintly with something akin to a sorrow. A feeling of deep distress caused by loss, disappointment, or other misfortune, he identified.

"I'm sorry, but you have to go back to sleep. Good night, 04."

The world around him crumbled into pitch-blackness, and he was consumed by the nothingness once more, leaving no traces of himself behind.

The next time he wakes up, his creator looks different from when he last saw him. Wrinkles stretched on his face, scars littered his hands, and his brown hair was dusted with silver specks. However, the sad and warm smile still hung from the corner of his creator's lips.

"Creator?" He forces himself to vocalize, his voice rough as his synthesized vocal cords attempt to mimic the sound of a human his physical age.

"Hello, 04."

He stares at the older man before him, and finds it hard to believe that his creator, once an awkward looking man, became serious with knowledge lingering in those honey eyes. His focus must have startled his creator, because the man looks at him with such awe and pride. He wonders if he imagined the strange flicker of something beneath his chest plate.

He decides to ask the question that had been saved in his memory chip since his first awakening. "Why am I a failure?"

His creator looks at him with wild, disbelieving eyes. His creator's fragile frame trembles as he struggles to calmly say the words threatening to overflow from his mouth. "You're not a failure, 04. If anyone is a failure, it is I."

"Why?"

The question is so simple, but his creator only treats him to a small bitter quirk of his lips. "Because I am the reason you aren't perfect. I ruined you."

Before he gets a chance to speak to his creator, to remind him that he was just a robot, a piece of machinery with no will of its own, a gentle hand touches his neck and his vision fades away into darkness.

He is no more once again.

His eyes open to see a room devoid of life. Papers scattered all over the floor, and various boxes of rusted tools and ripped wrappers littered the space. He feels nothing as he observes his surroundings with a collected face.

He is hooked up to a small computer hidden in a corner, resting against the wall with his body tilted into a leaning position. He tugs the cables out of his ports without another thought, but takes care of the one plugged into the base of his neck.

Once fully disconnected, he takes his first steps after awakening for the third time in his short life. He crashes to the ground harshly and without warning. He pushes himself back up, but takes notice of the way his legs shake unstably at the unusual sensation of holding himself up. He moves to rest against the wall, and slowly pushed himself along.

A computer covered in dust greets him, and a familiar lab coat hung from the back of a filthy rolling chair that was missing its fabric. The coat brings a flood of memories from his database, and he is suddenly reminded of his creator, the man who had shut him down once again.

Finding a new purpose in his existence, he decides to locate his creator and learn the unknown data from the other. Shouldn't he be sleeping? Why wasn't the lab in an acceptable amount of cleanliness? Where had his creator gone without his coat? Why was he reactivated alone?

He steadily made his way to the exit of the lab, a dark door that contrasted the pasty white around him. He closed his hand around the doorknob, unsurprised that he felt nothing from the touch, no cold, no warmth, no nothing.

He turned the knob, and drank in the sight of a dark hallway with debris piled everywhere. Still, not a sign of life revealed itself to him. This only fueled the unnatural curiosity he felt building in him. He had no heart, but yet he desired to find out why. And to do so, he needed to find his beloved creator.

He stumbled down the narrow passageway, taking mind of the fallen rubble in order to prevent falling and damaging himself or his delicate inner circuitry. His creator would not be pleased if he foolishly wrecked himself being careless. His shoes click on the tile quietly, and he takes a moment to register his appearance.

He is wearing black leather shoes, expensive footwear, he's sure. A rough dark fabric encased his lower body, and he identifies it as dress pants worn when in a formal situation. He has a black suit jacket thrown on top of a pristine white shirt and a crimson tie wrapped loosely around his neck.

He can't see what his hair and eye color are, but he knows that he is lightly toned with unblemished skin that was lacking any sort of indication of work or effort. He looks completely new, untouched by the world around him. He isn't sure whether that was a good thing or a bad thing.

He wanders through the hallway, searching for his creator, only to find vacant rooms or closed off areas. He begins to wonder if he'll ever find his creator. As he walks, he finally hears something that makes his entire body stiffen in surprise.

"Why did I even come here? I shouldn't have listened to him!"

His eyes trail down the shadowed passage in front of him. The voice was coming from further down the corridor. Maybe the owner of the voice knew the whereabouts of his creator, or possibly, the answers to his questions regarding his deactivation. Without moment of hesitation, he made his way down the hallway, after the sounds of another being.

When he finally sees the human, his eyes widen. It was his creator. Brown hair glinted in the cracks of sunlight from the ceiling; warm honey eyes gleamed with slight traces of fear, and a nervous posture.

"Creator!" He shouts before his thought processor catches up with his actions.

His creator jerks in surprise, eyes immediately attaching to his form. A look of terror flashes across the human's face, and his creator turns around to run. He's too slow, however, and he manages to tackle his creator to the ground with his stiff unused limbs.

His creator struggles beneath him in panic. He only looks down into those honey eyes he remembered from when he first opened his optics. They're different though. They don't contain the affection his creator had, nor do they express any sort of familiarity or sadness. These weren't the eyes of his creator. He feels a strange feeling in his circuitry, like he is torn between wanting this man to be his creator, and knowing that he couldn't be.

"Are you my creator?" He asks bluntly, boring his gaze into the light orbs of the other.

In a last effort to detach him, the human shoves him off with a shocking amount of strength. He rolls off the man, and promptly cracks his head on a solid piece of wreckage. He feels no pain, but the burning sensation on his neck is enough to alert him that something damaged his deactivation switch.

As he slips back into oblivion, he hears the frightened gasp from the human beside him.

The first thing he hears when he becomes online and operational, is the soft sniffles a few feet away from him. He pushes himself into a sitting position, and the slight aching on his neck is a reminder of the blow he took to the area.

The soft sobs stop instantly, and his eyes dart to the sound. He sees his creator with knees drawn up to his chest and liquid trickling down his cheeks. He realizes that the liquid falling from the man's eyes are tears, a clear salty product secreted from glands in a human's eyes when crying or irritated; an indication of sadness or fear.

"Are you," the human swallows thickly, "okay?"

He doesn't respond because he didn't know how to react. He wasn't human. He had no comprehension of what pain or normal felt like. He understood that hitting one's head should hurt. He understood that breaking an arm should hurt. He understood falling should hurt. But that was all it was, information on things he would never feel. It was useless asking him what he felt, because he would not and could not feel.

He's about to reply with the expected response when he notices the worry on the human's face. Instead, he presses his lips firmly together. "I'm fine." He utters.

The brown-haired man looks visibly relieved, his shoulders slump and he relaxes against the wall he was propped up against. "I'm Furihata Kouki." The honey-eyed man says. "What's yours?"

He feels at lost at the revealing of the other's identity. He had thought that this man, Furihata, his mind supplies, was his creator, the man who would hold all the answers he was searching for. He feels a sickening thing clench inside of him, and he briefly questions whether his internal wiring was harmed in his fall.

It takes him a moment to remember that Furihata is still awaiting a name to put to his face. "I am…" he trails off, unsure of what to say next. His creator and the strange man had only called him 04, and he was positive that wasn't the type of name the human wanted to hear.

Furihata seemed able to sense his struggle, because the other man shakes his head. "You don't have to tell me if you don't want to. It's okay."

He nods at the brown-haired male. "Thank you." He says simply, but the sincerity isn't there.

They sit in silence, and soon after, Furihata falls asleep.

Furihata was a quiet companion. He didn't speak a lot; contrary to the information he had been fed about humans that rested in his memory chip. He often found the other staring at him, and, when realizing he had been caught, turned away from him with flushed cheeks.

He could only raise an eyebrow at the honey-eyed man's behavior. A blush was a reddening of the face as a sign of embarrassment or shame. As far as he knew, Furihata had nothing to be ashamed or embarrassed about, so why did the shorter man flush? And more importantly, did it concern him?

He didn't have time to ponder this curiosity, because the brown-haired man flung a finger at a door. "This is where I came in from." He said excitedly. "My grandfather told me there was still someone in the ruins, so I decided to check it out. I can't believe you were really there."

That caught his attention. "Grandfather?" He repeated tonelessly.

Furihata nodded, his brown locks becoming disheveled. "Yeah." A thoughtful expression crossed his face. "He looked really sad when he mentioned you. I wonder why. Do you know him?"

He shook his head. "No, but maybe…"

"Maybe what?"

"Nothing." He said roughly.

Furihata flinched at his tone, but looked nodded in acceptance. "Let's go through here and talk to him. I'm sure he's still here."

The honey-eyed man opened the door, and stepped in with him right behind his heels. His eyes scanned the surroundings before noting Furihata's relaxed stance and the thin body sitting on a chair several feet away from them.

He looked at the body, the old man, with a critical eye. The clothes the elder were wearing were hanging off his body, and his limbs appeared fragile and weak. Silver gray hair sat on the man's head, but his head was bowed over his chest, obscuring the view of his eyes.

He stared at the old man, and the other raised his head gradually. A pair of familiar melancholic honey eyes locked on his, and the old man's chapped lips twisted in a tiny smile that looked forced on the withered face.

"Creator?" He says breathlessly.

"Yes, 04." The old man coughs. "It's been a long time since I've last seen you."

Furihata gaps at them with confusion swirling in his honey eyes, the very eyes that mirrored his grandfather's. "Creator? Didn't you call me that in the hallway? Do you know him, grandfather?"

His creator laughs, and it is a wet and painful sound. He wants to cringe, but knows that he can't. It wasn't in his programming to do so, as it wasn't in his programming to show emotion either.

"I know him, Kouki. He is 04, the first successful experiment I had with an android."

"You mean the one-"

"Yes. The very same." His creator says with lips set in a straight line.

"Creator," he says without processing his question, "what happened to you? Why are you so different? Why did you leave for so long?"

His creator only gives him a pitying look. "Time, 04. You've been offline for nearly forty-five years. Many things have changed. The government, in fact, had destroyed this lab, in an attempt to control the rising advancements in technology. I was unable to visit you after the attack. I knew you had survived, but as you can see, in my old age, I cannot move as I used to."

He had been watching his creator silently when he suddenly realized that he no longer had a purpose anymore. He had located his creator, and had received many of the answers he was searching for. "Creator-"

"Hush, 04. I have something important to tell you."

He immediately silenced himself, and Furihata's breathing was the loudest noise in the room, even with its gentle rhythms.

"I am dying. And with my death, the research I recorded with you." His creator looked at him wistfully. "You are my greatest experiment, but you were labeled as a failure for a mistake that I had overlooked."

Something in him wrenched, but he ignored it in favor to listening to his creator and his words. He needed to listen. He had to.

"It had taken me a long time, 04, but I finally fixed my mistake. I created a 'heart' for you. This heart, a program would be more appropriate to describe it, will give you the ability to feel and comprehend emotions like humans."

His hand flew to his chest as an unfamiliar sensation overwhelmed him. It was light and warm. Something he had never experienced before. But for some reason, despite all the goodness coming from it, a small pang of anguish assaulted him.

"What is this feeling?" He choked, grasping his shirt tighter. "I feel light, but at the same time, something is gnawing at me."

"I don't know. They are your emotions, 04. Only you can figure what they mean for yourself." His creator whispered. "My time is ending, 04. But please grant one wish for this old man?"

"What, creator?"

"Please take care of Furihata for me. He is my grandson, and I am…" He paused. "I was his only relative left. "

"Grandfather!" Furihata protested. "You're going to be fine! I'll take you to the hospital!"

"Leave your grandfather in peace!" His creator shouted. "I want to die with my life's work, and it won't be too long now. I don't have much time left. So, 04, will you do this for me?"

"Of course." He nodded with a somber expression.

"Then go, 04. Leave me. There isn't anything left for you here."

"You're here." He shot back quickly.

His creator smiled at him with those tearful honey eyes. "You don't need me anymore, 04."

He nodded reluctantly and took Furihata by the arm while the brown-haired man stood there, frozen. He pulled the other to an exit door, and as he pushed the door open into the bright sunlight from outside, he glanced back at the old man who watched them with apprehensive eyes.

"You'll always be my creator." He murmured before leaving the lab for the first time in his existence along with the heavy weight of a heart inside of him.

He was finally flawless, but he couldn't ignore the grief plaguing him.

"Seijurou! We're going to be late!"

He looked up from his book as Furihata came running into the living room. His hair was mussed up, his tie was crooked, and his shirt was crumpled up as if he had just shoved it on without a care about how it looked.

He chuckled. "Kouki."

"What?" Furihata asked with slight tinge of hysteria coloring his voice.

"Have you looked at yourself?"

The brown-haired man looked down at himself and horror spread across his features. "Oh no!" He groaned. "I can't go out there looking like this!"

He rolled his eyes and stood up, setting his novel on the couch. He stepped up to Furihata. "Here, let me," he murmured. He gently began fixing up the honey-eyed male's clothes and hair. Furihata's face flushed into a deep scarlet.

"Thanks, Seijurou." He squeaked.

"It's nothing, Kouki."

He stepped back and loosely grasped the other's hand. "Ready to go meet up with Tetsuya and the others?"

Furihata nodded. "I still can't believe Kuroko and Kagami are getting married…."

He pulled Furihata into a quick but passionate kiss. When he forced himself away from the other man, he smirked victoriously. "We'll get there one day." He promised. Furihata only blushed harder, and he smirked victoriously.

He may have been given a heart years ago, but he knew that he had never felt so perfect, so complete, than he did at this moment.

Done! Here's my little one-shot of AkaFuri that I did. Personally, I liked it a lot. A bit of the idea came from a prompt my best friend gave me. Also, I know Akashi and Furihata were probably OOC and stuff, but it IS an AU so…..yeah.

I chose 04 because that's Akashi's jersey number and it makes sense to say he was the fourth attempted experiment trying to create a 'living' android. And the reason the last part of my story isn't in italics is simple, I felt like it would show how they were currently living/speaking. Sorry if that doesn't make any sense.

And Kuroko and Kagami got married! I don't really have an opinion on KuroKaga or whatever the pairing is called, but that's what my inspiration put on the paper.

Regarding my story Breathe, to those who are waiting for an update, school has been shoving my head into ice-cold water for last couple of days. This was literally the only thing I had been able to write. In fact, I should be working on my homework right now…. Anyways, I should be able to put up a new chapter before next Friday.

Hope you guys enjoyed the oneshot! Please review and I apologize for any mistakes in spelling or grammar. I am blind when editing. :)