Author's Note: Written by my friend Angeal and I, and written for a school assignment, actually.
Hope blinked open against the blizzard, threaded water curling across the ends of his eyelashes. He scooted himself as far off the other man as he could, squirming around in the arms that held him bound against his pride.
"It's not that hard to walk," he mumbled, his wrists laced over each other, pressing his elbow against the shred in his shirt. "It didn't even get me that bad."
He gave up on trying to pull his way out of Snow's grip, his body tired from the cold, anyways. Wisps of silver malted hair pressed to his ear at the wind's touch, icing the sides of his face in a mask of Snow. Around him, that was the only thing he had - snow and Snow. And he didn't know which one he was more upset about.
"Yeah, it isn't that hard for me," Snow briskly replied, his fawn-colored boots crunching over the frozen soil. "You're already hurt." He gritted his teeth and trekked ever onwards, the snow melting and eventually soaking through his clothes and down to his knees. "I'm not letting you."
Hope was an impressionable child, Snow knew; he had lost his mother - not even too long ago then - and Snow's hand had been the one holding his mother's to this life as she teetered on the edge of the bridge. Hope always held it against Snow that he had let his mother's hand go, as he had been one of the onlookers, not even considering the fact that his mother had accepted her fate in the end, and had even made Snow promise to take care of her child. At the time, Snow hadn't known just who the woman's child had been, but he had finally come to know the truth, and he continued to strive to protect the boy. Still, the boy was full of anguish and hateful feelings towards the older male, bent on seeking some sort of revenge on him for his mother's death.
Snow couldn't blame him; he felt guilty, even to that day. Hope's father had been distant his whole life, so Hope's mother had, really, been his only source of hope, and, when she was gone...
Snow had come to understand the woman's final wishes possibly merely a few hours before when the boy had finally chosen to approach the man on the subject - in a disturbing, deceitful manner, even - and the two had ended up falling off of a ledge to whatever they had happened to end up in, trudging there in the snow as they were, fighting against the wind and freezing elements as Snow cradled the boy somewhat lovingly in his arms. He found the boy's wriggling amusing in a way, but it still sent a strong feeling of guilt as to how much the boy truly resented him.
He was going to take that boy to safety and comfort and some sort of home, no matter what it took.
Hope pulled his face down as he twisted upward, trying to trap his emotions inward, as seeing the other man didn't deserve to be let in on them. It was a private joke between himself that he thought, if the other man had a sense as to what he was thinking, that'd be like trusting him. And he couldn't do that. Not after he'd already hurt him so much.
"Where are we even going?" he asked, pressing his fingers against Snow's arms and trying to look through the cloudy air. Disappointedly, he sank back into the other man's arms; all that had reflected in his eyes being zigzagged patterned snow prints, glowing on the tips of their hair. From here, he only saw the bottom of Snow's chin, the rest rocking him in a sedative, numbing lull that made him want to rest his head down. But if he did that, it would be melting all of his power right into the man's hands.
Even Snow didn't want to be too open with the boy.
"I don't know," he admitted, although never one too far from sarcasm, he added, "but, hey, if we're out here for too much longer, then I'll have to build us an igloo to keep warm. Who knows, maybe you'll even be able to help a little, patting stuff here and there... Isn't that what you want to do? To feel useful? Independent?"
The man relished the boy's seemingly tiny - small, fragile - freezing pokes at his skin; it somehow relieved him. He looked into the sky for some sort of guidance, but only for a moment after seeing that, indeed, there was none yet again.
Eyes squinted, Hope tilted his head up, green in the corner of his eyelids flashing a quick opening of wonder. He clamped back down on it, chewing against the corner of his lip softly.
"Don't try to read me," he dejectedly hummed, losing his voice among the sound of the snow. "You don't seem to let me try to feel useful or independent, for somebody who thinks that's what I want. I don't want anything."
His head hung back down, lost against Snow's chest, his abdomen burning out with the slight sting of the wound that cut across his skin.
"Thinking about it," he laughed softly, the white solid and hollow when the other wasn't talking. "It does kinda hurt. Wouldn't it be funny to lose me, too?"
"Hmm?" Snow was sure he heard something, and he looked down at the boy in his arms, but his whispers seemed to be lost on the wind. He blinked, looking back up. Hope's voice had either risen, or the wind had died down just a bit, and Snow heard the boy's second remark, almost as if Hope had wanted to know the answer, despite the bitter, sarcastic tone.
"No," Snow said coldly, in a somewhat rare serious moment, clutching the boy to him in a genuinely concerned manner. "It wouldn't be funny if I lost you, too."
He left it at that, his lungs aching from the strain against the elements, and his body then basically soaked to the bone, or at least that's how it felt.
In the midst of fighting against the storm, the light-blonde man - although, that wasn't really obvious in the blizzard-like weather - was nearly knocked backwards by a heavy squall of wind, stumbling, his feet slipping in confusion as they attempted to find purchase on the powdery, freezing ground. His first thought was a confused one of slight fear, but his immediate second thought was Hope. Snow automatically dropped down to his knees, turning his body so that the wind pounded against his back rather than the young boy in his arms. He shifted the boy in his arms to an embracing position, pressing him closer to his body as the harsh wind burnt his back.
Hope pressed his head against the older man's collar, trying to force his head up to the other. His eyes, stinging with the crystals of ice that dotted their rims, spaced off into a wave of cold fear that shook his body. His head felt shaken from the movements, already sedated by the severe temperature.
He opened his mouth, the words coming out shrill in their fight to overpower the hurried snow and the body he was being buried into out of caution.
"Why don't you let me go?" his voice clawed at Snow, though his arms drew tighter around the other man's torso to keep him from losing his grasp. "That's what you did to my mother!"
His eyes squeezed around the hostile anger, gritting his teeth down to try to run some form of warmth through him. Still, he didn't know if he should break away and hope Snow would let him be, or if there was solace in the way he was sheltering him. But, God, why did it have to be him?
"No," Snow began, his voice pressing into the boy's slowly less-cold hair, gradually rising to a yell; a scream, even. "I'm never letting you go; I promised her that I'd protect you! Why can't you understand that?"
The two were silent - or, at least quiet - as the wind gradually began to die down around them, Snow's body shaking intensely with apprehension and cold. Still, he held onto the boy, never letting go; he had promised, after all, hadn't he?
Hope grew still and hushed, the area around him suddenly flooding his senses with a calmed nothing. Snow's words rang against his eardrums, filling through him with thoughts and memories of heaviness, but even when his arms loosened from the cling, he wasn't let go.
Through the emptiness, his chest built up, tears swelling to the corners of his eyes. Justifications meaningless, he began to quiver, snapping downward on his lip for letting the tears swivel down. They streaked his cheeks with lines of warmth, drawing up his shoulders with the bearing of shame, passing on the spectrum that had both consumed him and kept him bound to coldness.
"It's alright," Snow said, releasing one arm to awkwardly pet the boy's silverish hair before returning it to the tight embrace. "There's no shame...in keeping promises, nor in honoring. In caring." He smiled into the boy's hair, adding somewhat gently, "Hey, Hope? When our journey's over, and we're back home, wanna come stay with me and my family? Until you're of age to take care of yourself, or you find a better place. We gotta think of your future, right?"
Drawing out a small smile, Hope blinked hard to clear his vision of the tears, sprinkled over his bottom eyelashes.
"Y- yeah," he agreed, cracking through and finding his voice again, now opened with room for compromise. "That would be… nice," he accepted, tightening his hold and pulling himself into Snow, restoring any of the motion that had slipped.
Hope lied his head down gently, breathing out calmly with his young voice. He sighed evenly, using Snow's body as a sanctuary, tightening against him and his understanding.
"Thank you, Snow."