(FEEL FREE TO SKIP THIS PART IF YOU JUST WANT TO READ THE STORY, BUT I WOULD REALLY APRECIATE IF YOU WOULD READ THIS)

Hello! My name is Totenwelt, And this is my fanfiction of Toradora, based off of alternate reality i made where Taiga recognizes Ryuuji during the arc where the class is on a trip to the mountains, It's basically me retelling the last few episodes of the anime, i really love Toradora and i wanted to show my appreciation to the anime/manga, and because i can't draw i decided i would go with a fanfiction. Anyways i plan to make like 4-5 chapters of this fanfiction to really wrap up the story to where it ended in the anime/manga. BUT if you folks like it enough i'll do a follow up to this story in a form of an after story once i'm done with this story, though i might take a break or i might write something different for a change since there are quite a few animes i want to cover fanfiction wise, though no telling yet what it will be or if it will happen in the first place. Also i' m gonna be uploading a new chapter every 2-3 days (hopefully i'm nor extremly busy), so be ready to get like 2-3 chapters per week. Also reviews and constructive criticism are always welcomed, i'm far from a good writer, but i do want to get better to deliver a better experience to you folks, anyways enough of my rambling for now, if you want to hear more of me rambling check the last chapter, i'll keep it as a Note to write updates on the story. Anyhow i hope you'll enjoy this story - Totenwelt

(STORY BEGINS HERE)

It was a dark, dreadful snowy night on the mountains somewhere in Japan, the air whistled and snowed fell violently, the night was full of tension and drama seeping from everyone and everything. Every living conscious person in the arena was either in a lodge trying to hide away from the cold and darkness or seeking it's refuge, or perhaps even trying to get help from said lodge. All but a one boy, he was a tall and dangerous looking boy, but with a kind heart at that, though his heart was full of regret, sadness and anger at himself for failing.

He stood at the edge of the hill where a red barricade was torn down, it lead down the hill into the dark and unwelcoming snow covered forest, there was trail that was barely visible because it was snowing so hard, normally he wouldn't be sure if the thing or a person he was looking for was there, but a shiny hair pin was glancing down the hill, it shone harder than the beautiful whiteness of the snow, He knew he was at the right place, he was determined to find the person he was looking for, was it a friend to him? Or perhaps something more? He wasn't sure anymore, but he cared about that person so much he kept on pushing down the hill.

He began climbing down slowly but surely as not to fall down the steep hill that was covered in snow and rocks as well as he supported himself by grabbing onto the cold trees "I did it again..." The boy said to himself, images of how he left that person alone again filled his mind, it made his heart even more heavier with regret and pain, it pushed him down the hill to redeem himself for all the things he did, and didn't do.

"...i left her all alone, she was right next to me and i didn't even notice she was gone" another memory popped up of his friends fighting about something, they slapped each other, but his another friend and him were able to hold both of them down, or so he thought as a blue haired tall girl slipped from under his hold and slapped the red haired female friend so hard her hair pin flew out that was in her hair. The person he was looking suddenly vanished from his sight in flurry of the fight to collect the hair in that flew out of one of the friend's hair he deducted, That hairpin was important to both him and the red haired female friend, but it wasn't worth getting lost for he thought. The thought of him being so blind to not see the person he was looking for made him feel stupid and worthless, causing him further regret and pain at heart.

He very slowly walked over to the tree where the hair pin was lying at, he picked it up gently, it shone even more beautifully up close than it did from the distance, but he had no thoughts for that, instead he only focused on getting to the person who went out and almost died because of him and her friend.

"dammit...she's such a klutz, if i find her, i swear i'll never let go of her again" he thought as he gritted his teeth and looked everywhere around him to find her, but due to her size that was quite hard, but in the matter of a few seconds he recognized the color of her ski outfit lying in the snow, he was so relieved, he screamed "Taiga!" very loudly, relief quickly rushed over him that he found her, he started running towards to check if she's okay, he made it to her side at last as he plowed the snow away from her body, her goggles now covered in a blood stood next to the boy as he shook the little girl's body "Taiga?" he asked, but got no response, "Taiga! Wake up!" he shouted as he shook her lifeless body more violently with tears welling up his eyes that he wasn't fast enough to save her.

"eh, what happened?" she groaned softly, relief once again striked him that she was okay, so much so he smiled and hugged her tightly, he realized she was very cold so he had to act fast also not to mention battle was only half way won, he still needed to get up the hill, it was hard to get down there alone, it would be even harder for him to carry Taiga's dead weight all the way up to the hill, but he needed to do it, for her.

So he wasted no time, he picked he cold body gently on his back and he began walking up the hill he came from, halfway to the top Taiga's eyes opened again as she became conscious again

"Ryuuji?" She asked softly as she wrapped her hands around him to a reverse hug

"Yeah" Ryuuji whispered back to her as he nodded to let her know.

The snow and the air died down drastically, it all seemed like a straight path to the top.

"You're always the one who comes to my rescue" she whispered in Ryuuji's ear as he came to a stop to listen to her because he wouldn't able to hear her with all the rustling him he makes when he walked

"Hey, Ryuuji this is a dream right?" she asked him softly as he closed her eyes again, Ryuuji stood there silent, he didn't knew what to do, He wanted to tell her that it was real, but he didn't wanted to cause her anymore pain than she already was in, so he decided he would lie, of course he didn't thought anything of it

"Yeah it is" he replied with a whisper to her, she smiled after hearing that

"Oh, i see well i have something i want to tell you then Ryuuji" she believed that it was all just a dream in her head, so she wasn't afraid to say how she really felt. On the other hand, Ryuuji started sweating heavily, because he felt like he might have started something bad, so he stayed silent to hear what she had to say

"I really want these feelings to go away, to make me stronger, because i'm hopeless. I just can't... stop loving you Ryuuji" she whispered in his ear with slight hesitation as she closed her eyes again, Ryuuji's world just stopped for a long while, so many questions and thoughts ran across his mind, like why? When did she started having feelings for him? How will it affect their friendship?

But instead of all these questions the words that escaped his mouth was "I can't stop loving you too Taiga" it was the truth, he just didn't see it, but his heart felt it for a while, he wanted to be around her because how much she meant to him, how well she balanced him out, how she cared about him, all that and more slowly but surely built up the love for her, he still had feelings for Minorin but he felt way more connected, way deeper love to Taiga than he ever did to Minorin, it was as if he felt just attraction to Minorin, but he felt true love towards Taiga, and as it seemed it was same for her.

Then in the midst of his mind wondering to a different dimension with all the thinking he was doing Taiga interrupted him by simply smiling and saying "Oh, what a beautiful dream, too bad it's only that" she closed her eyes and her hands slided off Ryuuji's body, when he noticed that he screamed "Wait Taiga!" but it was too late, she passed out, he put her from his back to his hand princess style because at the end of the day she was his princess.

He finally made it to the top of the hill where all the teachers were standing alongside most of the students, namely Minorin, Kushieda and Ami. Everyone was relief that they were both okay, they rushed over to both of them, teachers asked what happened, and if she's okay, same went with the students, except for Minorin who gave a thumbs up with tears in her eyes and then she uncharacteristically ran away crying, Ryuuji wanted to ask what's wrong, but he couldn't as he was swarmed by atleast 20 people.

Fast forward about an hour later.

Everyone was about to go to sleep as it was getting close to midnight and teachers told students to be in bed in a few minutes. Kushieda and Ami stood by the guest room in the lodge which now acted as a makeshift sickbed for Taiga.

"Hey, i wonder if they're okay, I'm still worried about both of them." Kitamura said as he cleaned his glasses with a hankerchief

Ami nodded to that, "Well, i believe they'll be okay, whenever they are together they always make it through" she said with a painful smile, as if she was hiding a lot of pain underneath the happy facade she always does

"Yeah that's true, though i wonder where Kushieda went, noone seen her after we went looking for Takasu and Aisaka to the hill" Kitamura noted Minorin's disappearance, just hearing that made Ami turn her nose away in disgust and hatred towards Kushieda

"Well, i don't. It was her mistake that Aisaka got hurt badly, on top of hurting Takasu, you know she deserved to be in Aisaka's spot" Ami said with anger in her voice, it all made her hate Minorin even more than she already did.

Kitamura turned to her with a disapproving look on his face

"Well, it wasn't her fault that Aisaka went looking for her hair pin, besides who slapped the hair pin out if her hair in the first place?" He scolded Ami, she looked down in embarrassment and regret that she caused it as much if not more than Minorin, though she had a good reason to fight her, but noone other than her and Minorin would get it.

"Look, let's just stop blaming each other okay? It won't do any good, anyways we should get to our rooms, the teachers are about to check soon if everyone is there" Kitamura said as he pointed towards the two rooms that were on the other side of the hall they were standing at

"Yeah you're right i suppose, it's pretty late" Ami sighed and nodded in defeat as they started to walk towards the two rooms that they were going to sleep at.

The hall was a long with windows covering the left wall, It was even darker than ever before outside of the windows, and snow was so thick outside that if someone would go outside they would be buried in snow up their ankles.

Ami stared outside the window as she and Kitamura walked in the hall.

"Say, Ami i'm kinda interested about something you said just a minute ago" Kitamura broke the silence, Kawashima turned towards him and her eyebrow got raised after hearing that sentence

"Sure Yusaku, what is it?" Ami asked him back, not thinking much of it.

Kitamura stopped about halfway down the hall, shortly there after she stopped as well to turn to him.

"Say, when you were talking about what Kushieda did, you mentioned her hurting Aisaka, you feel sorry for her? I thought you two hated each other's guts, did you two finally made up?" Kitamura asked Kawashima whilst adjusting his glasses, Ami looked down away from his gaze

"No, not really, I envy her is all" Ami said as he out on quite the sad face, but immediately she turned away from Kitamura.

"But oh what am i saying, i wouldn't want to be in poor Aisaka's state she's in" Ami put her fake happy facade on again and put her hand in the air to gesture to add on the 'happy go lucky' facade she made.

Kitamura raised his eyebrow at what she meant

"Why would you envy Aisaka, Ami?" Kitamura once again asked not moving from his spot

Kawashima put her gesturing hand down and went silent for a little while

"... You wouldn't get it" she said with in her serious tone, more silence filled the hallway

"I think i do though..." He said as he slowly walked up to Kawashima and put a hand on her shoulder, she did not expected that and thus she flinched a little

"...but if you're going down that path i would do it fast, i bet you aren't the only one who's after him" Kitamura whispered to Ami, upon hearing that she blushed a bit and put on a sad grin

"I wish, but i might already too late" she whispered as she started walking towards the rooms again causing Kitamura's hand to slide off her shoulder.

Then she turned towards him again

"Well, anyways i'm calling it a night. Goodnight Yusaku" she waved as he turned out once again and started walking to the room where the female students slept

"Goodnight Ami" Kitamura said to Kawashima who disappeared to the room where she and the rest of the female students were sleeping, he stayed a bit to look out the window wondering where did Kushieda go, but then he let it go since he knew she was somewhere near, and not in a danger, but still he worried for his friend. But he had no choice but to call it a day as well, so he did just that and walked off to the male bedroom to go to sleep.

On the other end of the corridor, inside the dark guest room Taiga was lying (unconscious) Takasu and a teacher who overlooked the trip were arguing silently, so that they wouldn't wake up Taiga.

"Please teacher let me be here for her until tomorrow, I won't do anything to her i swear, I just want to look over her for the night, Please let me stay here" Ryuuji pleaded with the teacher badly. it wasn't that the teacher was extremely against it, actually she was glad he wanted to stay here so that no teacher would have to check on every once in a while, but she felt really bad for him, because there was no other bed besides the one Aisaka was sleeping at, only thing close to it was a chair near the bed, but as everyone knows sleeping on a wooden chair is pretty hard.

The teacher put a palm to her face and nodded disapprovingly

"Are you sure you wanna be here Takasu? After all you won't be able to sleep anywhere during the night if you spend it here with Aisaka" She reminded Ryuuji about the obvious problem

He looked at her, stood up which kinda scared the teacher because he had quite the scary determined face

"I know, but i still want to be here for her, i need to after leaving her all alone again" he said as he turned to the sleeping tiger with a sad expression on his face.

The teacher wanted to reach out to him, but decided not to.

"You know Takasu, You can stay here, I won't try to make you leave anymore because i know it would pointless because you're very determined to stay here aren't you? Well, if you do change your mind you can go back to the boys bedroom, but i'll shut the lights off so if you do change your mind take a flashlight on your phone, and please don't wake anyone up" The teacher gave in, Ryuuji simply nodded to what the teacher said and kept on watching Taiga.

She turned around and walked out of the pitch black room, she turned once again the other way to close the door to the guest room both of Taiga and Ryuuji were in, she took one long look at Ryuuji sitting in the chair stressed out about his lover, or maybe she wasn't his lover, the teacher did not know, but she felt sorry for the boy, the sight of him sitting and watching over taiga was wierdky enough a bit sad, "The boy sure has it tough" she though as she closed the door, walked to the middle of the hall to the switches that controlled the power to the lights across the lodge, turned it off and went to look if everyone is sleeping.

Ryuuji still sat at the chair looking at Taiga with so many thoughts in his mind, Are they a couple now? Did she said it just because she was out of it? Since when did she started love me? And many, many, many more. But no answer to any of those question, all he could do was patiently wait for her to wake up and to ask her herself, which made him restless and impatient, he just wanted answers to his question. He dropped to his knees besides the bed, he rested his upper body on the bit of a bed that Taiga wasn't on. He saw Taiga's little hand peaking from underneath, he really wanted to hold it, he couldn't help himself, he took her tiny and held it with wis own, the warmth of her hand reassured him that everything will be okay, he relaxed because of it, it He wasn't stressed anymore, it made him genuienly happy. he smilled as he rested his head on the mat Taiga was sleeping on, he was so happy he started to tear up a bit. He finally found the love of his life he was looking for, and it made him so happy that it was Taiga. His mind became more and moze hazy, but in a good way. Only happy thought were in his mind instead the stressfull thoughts he had for the most of today, his mind begun to fade to the magical skies of dreams, and with that he passed out.

End of Chapter 1 - Dream