Hello! My pen name is CorpseShell. To whoever is reading this, it's a pleasure to make your acquaintance! This is the first fanfiction I have ever posted anywhere. Therefore, if you would like to leave a review for it, I would be very grateful to you. By posting my stories on this website, I'm hoping to receive constructive criticism about them and improve my writing ability. However, if you flame me, I won't hesitate to take action. Expressing hate or dislike for something for no logical reason really irks me.

So that you may fully enjoy the story, "he" is used to refer to Luke (before and after he cut his hair) and "she" is used to refer to Tear. Also, this story is about the growth the members of the Abyss gang go through after fighting with each other for so long. Anyone who's fully played the game (or watched the anime, to a lesser extent) has realized exactly how much the gang grew together. They went from being unsure around and suspicious of each other to fully trusting and caring for each other. In other words, to me, the Abyss gang became a sort of family. This story reflects the journey that they took to arrive at that point. Also, "They would try to end things quickly..." refers to the fact that it was painful for the Abyss gang to fight people who were just as human as they were. In a lot of games, the conflict between the good guys and the bad guys is very black and white; the bad guys are totally evil, and the good guys are totally good. Tales of the Abyss is one of my favorite games because it shows how many shades of gray people can be. Legretta, Van, Sync, Arietta, Largo, and Asch weren't bad people. They could actually justify their actions, and they were actually trying to better the world in their own way (save Sync and Dist, who still had good intentions). Therefore, the Abyss gang tried to convince them several times to join them, but to no avail.

In addition, snarkiness is a word according to the Urban Dictionary, so I'm using it! Finally, the Abyss gang in its entirety belongs to Kosuke Fujishima, who was in charge of designing the characters for Tales of the Abyss.


At first, it had been a routine that they'd had to constantly rehearse, and never always the same way. Sometimes, he would trip; sometimes, she would have to help him up. Sometimes, he would get hurt; sometimes she would, too. If anything, after each rehearsal they could rest, and they were comforted by the sound of tomorrow.

Later on, there came many more dancers, so they had to rehearse things again. They were all clumsy and awkward with each other, but eventually there came a rhythm from that. It was sloppy, but it was theirs, and tomorrow they could try again.

Then things changed. The dance was almost fractured in two. For a while, only two wanted to try to dance with him again. It was clumsy and awkward again, but it was a start. Tomorrow would be a better day.

Eventually - finally, he rejoiced alone - the old rhythm faded away into a new dance, one as complicated as a grand jete and yet as simple as a plie. They all had each others' backs always; they could finally trust their backs to each other. They would try to end things quickly so as not to get hurt anymore, but if they couldn't, they would protect each other. That was just the way they did things, even with their snarkiness and exasperation and laughter and sadness and fucked-up-ness.

Tomorrow was scary and exciting. Now, they knew not where the dance would lead. But they didn't care anymore.

They had each other.