AN: So I should really be updating my stories instead of writing a random AoKaga one shot, but yet that's what happened. I was in school and this popped into my head and then I literally started writing it in one of my school notebooks. And then it became this... Anyways, enjoy, and if love to hear feedback and see what you guys think.
Disclaimer: I do not own Kuroko no Basuke right now and most likely never will, but you never know...
Echoes from the past can leak into the future. Impossible to forget, they create rifts. You might take a look at his beautiful smile, laugh at his cocky joke, and then be shocked back into reality by one of these echoes.
When you met in First Year, he flashed that same mesmerizing smirk. Immaturely, you challenged the ace of Touou to a one on one. You were crushed immediately and absolutely. No, you didn't give up, you never really were the type to give up after losing once. Again, you were annihilated, this time while carrying the dreams of your friends. It's a low point. When everyone else had gone, only your frustrated cries echoed on the court.
But this and that happens, you eventually beat him and your odd interactions became something of a friendship. Then comes the smile, and your heart beats a little faster. You know why, of course you do, but still you try to fight it off. You don't allow him power over your feelings, for when you go to sleep your frustrated cries are still echoing across the world. And yet when it's time for a game, you lace up his shoes. When the others have gone, he stumbles back into your mind as he always does.
So you give it a chance. It's practically impossible not to. It goes faster and faster until you both can feel you're tied together for life with a rope made of the strongest titanium love can buy. The echoes are not gone. They never are. When he's not around and the apartment is taking a bath in unsureness, someone whispers the echoes into your ear. They tell the tale of all the times he hurt you and all the times you felt inadequate. He saunters back into the apartment and scares the monsters away with the smile. But look, he's gone again! They're back and this time they put scratches in your skin. They mark a notch for each time they come, each time you doubt. And soon, there are hundreds of notches.
But still you trust, still you keep going blindly forward. You're in love with the quiet moments, where you're reading and he's watching tv and you're simply together. But when the darkness comes and he still hasn't returned and it's notch after notch after notch after notch, it is all you can do to keep the quiet moments friend in your mind. Each night he returns and yet he doesn't. Each day he smiles, but it slowly grows less bright. Each hour you try for another quiet moment but the silence is ripped apart by another argument that you won't even remember the details of later.
Even after you find out he was cheating on you for most of the time and your last tears on the matter have been shed, the echoes return for a ghostly embrace. You grow old with another man, but he Never. Goes. Away. Funnily enough, all that remains when your memory decreases as your age increases is the smile of a man who you may have once known but is now long gone.