A/N: Written for the Ultimate Fanfic Challenge 200 Prompts, prompt #62 – highschool.

Angel's Feather again (when will FFN read my email and add the category? :(). Shou is one of the main characters, who lost his parents at a young age and his adopted parents right before the first OVA. This is set in between that, so his adopted parents are still alive…though to my knowledge they were never named, so I've named the mother Hisako for now.

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Memories in the Rain
Prologue

Shou was the antithesis of rain in most senses of the word. He excelled at outdoor sports: soccer, basketball, baseball…things that often got in the way when it poured outside. He was almost always grinning: smiling, laughing, offering a hand – more like the sun in that aspect, that burning sun that managed to catch corner shadows. Even his name spelt a clear sky…and yet, those closest friends knew the first place to look for him in a murky day was by a window, looking out.

That day was a typical winter storm: droplets glittering and almost ice, banging on the window and the tin roof. Beyond them, the road was washed out, the grey looking even drearier with an almost invisible sheet of white covering it. But that was the sight he sought: an echo of the memories slowly rotting away within his brain.

He'd made the choice to remember and continue smiling on regardless, but it was on days where the sun stopped pretending that he threw down his mask as well. Because, just as the icy rain washed out the world, it washed him out as well…like the dreams he clung to stubbornly but couldn't keep: little wisps of smoke slowly sliding through his fingers and fading away.

On rainy days, he couldn't keep running about outside until he was too exhausted, mentally and physically, to think anything. On those days he couldn't push everything else aside and say he was happy. There were no distractions on those days: no ball coming his way for him to hit, or hand for him to grab and pull up to walk beside him. There was rarely even company on those days: the rain saw everybody bundled together and yet dispersed. At school, it would be a few students playing cards in the centre, a few more at their individual desks and everybody else loitering in the halls. Some might be in pairs, or little groups, but there was rarely any connection, any conversation. A chair or a book on one's lap made just as good company.

He didn't bother with the book; it was a façade that looked too strange on him. He wasn't much of a reader…though he usually wasn't much of a thinker either. He didn't give himself that time: he rushed everywhere, ran everywhere, hurried through everything even if it meant things that required more attention (like his schoolwork) would up a little sloppier. It was his way of coping: his way of getting along with the world.

He'd hated the rain before his parents died; it was something that shut all the doors on him. Now it opened them. Now it was the freedom he couldn't give to himself otherwise. If he didn't run, he'd be trapped in those fading memories, trapped in that sadness.

It is the only time he allowed himself to regret.

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I told you to forget. I told you I'd remember for both of us. I do.

I hope you did forget. After all…you always liked the rain, didn't you Kai?

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Hisako found her adopted sun by the living room window, sitting forward in the chair so his chin rested on the windowsill and his forehead on the glass. It hid his expression that way; it made it easy to pretend that sweet smile was still on his face, that the rain hadn't washed it away. But she knew it wasn't, even if she wasn't related to him by blood and could never take the place of his real mother.

It rarely ever mattered. He was their child, her child, in everything but blood and young age – he was old enough to remember his family. But he never spoke of them. The only memento he kept was the pendant he wore around his neck, the one that sunk into the inner cloth of his shirt and hid itself from view.

Like the sadness that would be coated by smiles but never fade, it hid itself from everyone's sight, even hers. As a human she was relieved: a person's innate path was towards the future, and mementos of a dead past that wasn't hers made her a tad uncomfortable. But as a mother, his mother even if not by blood, she wished he would share the pain he buried inside, instead of hiding it.

And he did, in a sense, on rainy days like that one where he'd let his well-crafted façade fall: a façade so carefully made that it was only because she lived with him, saw him so often, that she knew it to be a mask. It wasn't false: she couldn't call it a lie. It was simply his way of moving on…just like the silent vigil with old dregs of memories by the windowsill was his way of letting loose.

And because he didn't cry, simply stared with an expression she never saw at the rain and how it washed out the world, she couldn't embrace him and chase the demons in dreams away. She wasn't supposed to, not when those dreams were what he clung to, he remembered at times when there was nothing else to distract. Because they, those things he didn't share with anyone, were as important as the happier times to him, and she respected that. Instead, she watched him from afar until he turned to her with a smile. And then she'd pretend not to have seen, instead tousling his hair and smiling herself as she sends him on his way.

If she knew beforehand it would rain, she would bake something as well. Particularly when it rained on the way home from school, so the warm smell would waft through to the door as soon as it opened to the washed-out image of the world. A nice sweet cake, or brownies fresh from the oven and dripping chocolate, so she could watch Shou get it all over his fingers and laugh truly, like he always did, and she could add another happy memory to her scrapbook, just like a real mother would.

It was only when he stared at the rain did she remember that he wasn't hers, that she could never replace his real family…even if he did call her "Mum", even if he did come home to her every day, and kiss her on the cheek when he left for school or sports and returned. Those times it was easy to call herself a mother, his mother, and she couldn't be happier…but when he was remembering his family,

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I called you "Mum" because I think of you as my mother.

I have another mother too, in my memories. Is that okay?

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He felt her standing there before he saw her: the woman he called his mother, who was his mother now, even if she could never replace the one he'd lost. And she was a wonderful woman; he couldn't have asked for better. She knew when to leave him be and when to reel him close. She knew when he wanted to be alone, and when he wanted company.

She also knew about the rain, and his vigil thereof. And if he was at home when it started, she would be watching from afar, careful not to step into his space and disturb the spell but near enough still for comfort – the comfort that she was still there: real, alive, and not a memory washed out by time like the rain. And it was comforting for her as well, to be near as though she could sweep a child into her arms and her warmth would drive all demons away.

But they weren't demons he chased after, but irreplaceable memories. Memories he'd sworn heedlessly to protect…and now struggled to do so. Struggled because it hurt to remember: hurt to think about parents now gone, about a brother living his life out elsewhere in the world, forgetting him…

He'd been the one to tell his brother to forget; that he didn't regret. Sometimes he did wish he hadn't promised to be the one to remember: to remember meant to carry that weight, and by running until he wore himself out he could flee from it…for a time. But the storms that kept the world indoors and made the outer scene fade into grey was the time he remembered: where he couldn't run away anymore and instead surrendered. Where he fulfilled the promise made years ago, on a rickety bed in an orphanage, the last night he'd slept beside his brother.

Sometimes, he wished he hadn't made such a promise, so he could be free of that burden as well. But that was only on those days where it filled his mind and soul, where the pendent he wore dragged his head down with its weight. After that, when the sun peaked out from behind clouds and the sky became clear and his mother tousled his hair and brought an unconscious grin to his face, he decided it was worth that moment of sadness and regret and mourning, because he could turn away from the windowsill and see his mother there with a smile on her face, and one day he might see the brother still out there behind the rain too.

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I said I'd remember. Sometimes, I wished I hadn't; it hurts to remember.

But I knew that; that's why I said I'd do it. So I could protect you from that, little brother.

And, one day, we'll meet again and I'll remind you, so we'll both suffer a little less.