Disclaimer: KHR belongs to Amano Akira, not me.
Wrong
It's been a week. A week since the fatal gunshot. A week since the screams, the futile cries, the blood. A week since you saw that lifeless body fall to the ground.
You have no energy to mourn, no time. You're the right-hand man; you have to stay strong and carry on in a manner befitting the boss, no matter how much you wanted to just break down and sob.
It's been two weeks. The baseball idiot's smiles have dimmed; Ryohei's exclamations are noticeably less enthusiastic; Hibari's movements lack killing intent. Slowly but surely, all six of you seem to grow more distant; seem to drift apart. You wonder when you'd be able to live without the sky there to hold you together, without the sky there to smile and pick up the pieces. You wonder if you can.
It's been a month. You finally snap, collapsing to the ground, screaming your lungs out; regrets, blame, countless whys falling to the floor, clear and salty and too many to count. Yamamoto just looks on, in understanding, in pity, but he cannot help. What can he do, when he himself is only able to hide behind a smiling mask?
You will come to realise in the coming days that all of you, every single one of you, crave redemption, but the only person who can give it is already long gone.
It's been two months. You try to recall, try to remember every single day. The smiles, the laughs, the frowns. Some days you wake up and panic for a moment, because for that short, frightening, heart-stopping second, you are unable to remember his face.
It's been six months. Millefiore is growing stronger. You're not surprised; no one, not even you, has had any motivation to do anything whole-heartedlysince that day.
You are reminded of bygone days, childhood memories of visits to the beach. You remember building sand castles; how the tide would inevitably wash them away. You recall how, together with your sister, you would simply pick up the shovel and start rebuilding it again. But this time there is no chance to rebuild anything, because you yourself are made of sand, of dust, form blurry at the edges, prone to blowing away at any given moment.
You try to pick up the shovel, but it slips from your grasp, falls through your ghostly fingers, and buries itself in the sand.
It's been eight months. Every day before going to sleep, you force yourself to recall his smile, force yourself to replay his voice in your head, replay the last conversation both of you shared. As the days pass, it gets harder and harder to remember anything, anything at all. And yet you cling on, to those last snatches of conversation, to that out-of-focus picture of his carefree grin.
It's been a year. The big eyes filled with innocence, the blameless expression, the worried crease of the brow, the unsure laughter. You recall it all, see it all, right in front of you. Disbelief, joy, and relief, so much relief that it causes you to fall to your knees. But most of all, you remember.
You remember your loyalty. You remember the grief, the fear, all of which you had tried to forget. You remember why you had clung on for so long, why all of you had clung on for so long, wishing, hoping, regretting.
You'd like to think that, at the very least, you hadn't gone wrong there yet.
...
It's been a week. A week since the joyous cries, the embraces, the happy tears. A week since you saw a miracle happen before your eyes.
He turns to smile at you again, a soft smile, a carefree smile, a happy smile.
It's a smile that assures you, yes, you were never wrong.
fin.
I wrote this with keeping in my mind the fact that Gokudera, for all his unbelievable loyalty, is human. Human, and flawed, and severely lacking in self-confidence. So I hope that, though I lack the writing skills to convey all of it properly, and I might have screwed it up by a long shot, I managed to bring across his feelings at least a little.
Not quite a drabble, not quite a one-shot, but I hope all of you enjoyed reading it anyway.
R&R! :)