OMG It has nearly been a year I am so so so so so so sorry! Like really this was totally not fair on anyone! But—I managed to type this up. I figured I couldn't put it off anymore. I had no clue how to continue with this story and my final year of high school forced me to actually study rather than write fanfics. Anyway—I graduated at the end of October (I'm from Australia so you Northern-Hemisphere reader's school years make absolutely NO SENSE to me). Anyway… sorry again. Please enjoy.

Akashi P.O.V.

…Shot like an angel through the clouds…

The slap of the wind was cold against my cheeks, stinging my retinas and making my wide, frozen eyes water. I couldn't hear anything over the shrieking wind and the sound of my own breath hissing through the gaps of my teeth.

…Falling from grace…

The bars beneath my clenched hands were bone-chillingly cold and whatever feeling had been in my fingers a moment before was now almost completely gone. I didn't like that feeling. How could someone go more than a minute with even just a fraction of their body numb to the world?

…Sinking into darkness…

The water below swirled eerily, the running currents deceitfully appearing so calm that it was hard to believe there was a monster dwelling within it. It was hungry, ravenous for a spec of purity that it could devour and claim as its own.

…Never to be seen again.

It was as if the heavens that he had come from had fallen silent- the crowds of the sky bearing witness to the descent of one of their own. It had been like watching the feathers of an angel begin to unwind and fall away, losing the one gift that their God had given to them.

Their life.

How he had lost his ability to feel, I had yet to figure out. Tetsuya was the definition of purity—blank as the falling snow, as delicate as a budding flower and as easy to taint as a fresh canvas. In his transparency, his 'darkness', he had truly fallen hard into that role. For so long, the desire to possess him, control him, surround him, had driven me almost insane with need that this opportunity to protect my shadow had blinded me to the damage he was sustaining at all points.

"Tetsuya!"

The yell emerged from somewhere but, it was not until I broke the surface of the water a few seconds later that I realised it had been I who had released the bellow. The water was freezing cold and was almost as black as the abyss that sometimes haunted my worst nightmares. It was like being consumed—sucked into some void that's very idea could drain a man of any hope of salvation he might form in his heart.

Was this how Tetsuya felt every day?

Pushing through the initial discomfort of the frigid water, I forced my body to push through the water, seeking some sign of the shadow whose disappearance had caused my chest to constrict in panic. Each move on my part felt sluggish and inelegant and my skin was near stark white in contrast with the crushing blackness surrounding me.

My lungs burned and soon it became hard to recognise how long I had been under the water for. The silence as well as the crushing blackness caused a strange cocoon of sensations in my skull as I searched and it was only when a pale white form materialised further in the gloom that I realised what was going on.

The shadows that possessed Kuroko had me too.

Tetsuya was surrounding me.

Just as light-headedness began to take over, I forced my heavy body to push even further into the water and reach out for the body. He was as white as a spectre and I prayed to whatever was listening that he wasn't some mirage—that against the odds, I had found the shadow-boy within the crushing darkness of what he had intended to be his final resting place.

My hand closed around one white-as-the-driven-snow wrist and yanked him against my chest, one arm curling around his waist while the other attempted to drag us closer to the surface. In that darkness, it was hard to tell what was up and what was down and, with a horrible sense of dread I realised something.

I didn't know where the surface even was.

My throat constricted and bubbles burst from my mouth in one quick shudder. They drifted away in the dark and my head became fuzzy—the lack of oxygen finally setting in. As I began to be sucked into the black of my own subconscious, I felt two bodies brush against my back. One grabbed me and the other grabbed Tetsuya.

The next time I became aware, it was to someone dragging me up onto the shore of the river.

"-ashi?! Akashi?!" a voice yelled and my eyes snapped open, staring straight into Daiki's hard, navy-blue eyes. Water poured down his face as he stared in panic down at me.

"What-" I spluttered, coughing violently a second later as I twisted onto my stomach. Salty water surged from my lips and I gasped for air as a hand urgently smacked against my back. "What—Tetsuya—!"

A large hand rested against the back of my skull as it turned my head. Beside me, barely a metre away, was Taiga and Tetsuya, both cloaked in sodden clothes and hair plastered to their skulls. Taiga was pale in fear but not quite as milky-white as his unconscious companion who remained motionless on the muddy bank. Shintarou landed on his knees beside the two, leaning over the prone boy to try and catch any sign of him breathing.

I didn't need to see his reaction to know it wasn't good.

"Pump his chest, Kagami!" he snapped, tilting the boy's head back and pressing open his mouth. As the red-head scrambled to comply, he sucked in a lungful of air and sealed his lips over the bluenette's—forcing the air into his own body.

"Tetsuya—!" I gasped, unable to form much else as I struggled to get my own breathing under control. There was a tremble running through my limbs and I stared at my hands, surprised that I was shaking not because of the deep cold that had seeped into my bones.

But because I was afraid.

Tetsuya was a shadow.

A shadow who needed a light.

A shadow who thought he was incapable of being needed anymore.

When the blue-haired boy let out a strangled, gurgling wretch that quickly turned into him barfing salt water, it was both terrifyingly wonderful and painfully scary. His teal eyes snapped open, rimmed in red and aggravated by both the water and his retching, they locked straight on mine. It was instant recognition and I immediately tore myself sluggishly from whoever it was that had tried to still my actions. I didn't know what they thought I was going to do to the distraught boy.

My distraught angel.

"Tetsuya!"

Kuroko P.O.V.

"Tetsuya!"

It was the howling, hurt way in which he yelled out my name that snapped me back to attention. I blinked, eyes burning hotly, and suddenly I was pressed against something, fingers scrabbling through my hair and fussily pushing my blue bangs out of my face. A hand cupped my cheek and a fingers pressed deeply into my skin, the slightest tremble running through the body of the person holding me.

"Tetsuya!" Akashi gasped again, voice pained and hitched as his heterochromatic orbs darted from one of my eyes to the other. "Tetsuya, are—are you okay?! Why the hell did you do that?!"

I was pressed hard against his chest, one of his arms curling around my hip possessively as his other hand held my temple to his chest. A face was pushed into my hair and, for the first time in a long time, I felt as if I were being held in a solid hold—a hold that refused to allow me to fall again.

My name was uttered over and over again into my hair and I swallowed hard, my roughened throat protesting the action. My dazed eyes could barely make out the forms of my team mates behind us—the Miracles of our Generation all looking pale and frightened.

I'd… scared them.

In that moment, I felt the last dam inside of me crack. Water leaked from my eyes, not caused by the stinging salt water but from the pain of the situation. My actions finally began to catch up to me and I shook hard in Akashi's embrace, true fear at being so close to being absorbed by the darkness overcoming my mind. My vision went dark at the edges and in my last moments of consciousness, I reached up with shaking hands and gripped onto Akashi with all of my might.

His embrace tightened and five words hissed out from between my chattering teeth.

"I'm scared of your light."

And then I fell into the darkness.

Okay so yay! Kuroko is alive! I'm wrapping this story up soon so dw not a huge wait left guys. I'm so sorry again about the wait but a huge thank you to everyone who reviewed and/or sent me a private messaging begging me to update cause it actually MADE ME update. Thank you again and I promise it won't be such a long wait next time!

Love,

V. Daybreak