A/N: I have this story posted on Archive of Our own, but since I got into writing on this website I´d thought I would upload my story here too.
A few things to this story:
It is Canon divergence, which means the story will turn out quite differently later on. The first few chapters will be centered around Red/Allen´s life with Mana and then there will a few chapters with Cross. After that, the plot will only distantly follow canon.
I will try to write the Characters as original as possible, though there is not much to be known about certain people who will apppear in the story.
Critism is appreciated, but mindless hate will be ignored.
Chapter 1 (Silent Ice)
"Damn it! That stupid Clown, I hate them, all of them."
His ribs were throbbing, perhaps a few of them were even cracked. His cheek was pink and swelled and he tasted the metallic bitterness known as blood on his tongue. How he hated that familiar taste almost as much as that abusive Jackass.
Cosimov. The good-for nothing tosser who he would love to see dead in a ditch somewhere. Always bearing down on him for not working fast enough, for not being good enough, for daring to bare his teeth and snarl back.
Red hated him with a burning passion he usually reversed for the world. But no matter how hard the man beat him up, how many times he punched him in the stomach and pulled his hair or made fun of his hand, hell would freeze over before he let someone like that break him.
He wasn´t broken, just bitter and angry at the unfairness of the cruel world he was living in. People were selfish, cruel and egoistical. All they cared about was their own gain, nothing else mattered.
He hated it—he hated everything.
"I know it was stupid, bugger off if ya aren´t gonna talk ta meh."
"…"
Red narrowed his steely eyes at his reflection in the water. It was winter, but some delinquents had broken the ice on the nearby river and it had made the task of getting fresh water that much easier. He frowned at the smile set his way and crossed his arms.
"The mutt didn´t deserve it and ya know it, don´t look at meh like that."
"…"
Darkly shining eyes stared back up at him. An unperturbed smile stretched across a pale young face with unruly and even darker hair a deep brown that reminded Red of the stark contrast of fresh coal on dark wood when they would light a bonfire. The eyes seemed to flicker like the flames never leaving his own and the damned Shadow was always watching him. Never looking away or blinking.
Red wondered if he was truly that interesting to look at and the corner of pale, white lips twitched upwards as if the Shadow knew what he was thinking.
"Fuck off."
It had no right to stare at him like that, as if Red was the strange and weird one between them when itself wore clothing with ribbons and long coats that seemed sizes too big. He´d never seen clothing looking like that while traveling in the circus troop. The face in the water rippled when he touched the icy water with his right hand, his left securely hidden in his left pocket, before it smoothed out into the monochrome nightmare it was.
"Why can´t ya just go away? You´re annoying."
One afternoon, when he dragged himself to a lake after bleeding into the snow to wash the dried blood off his face, he saw the phantom outline of a faceless figure with black holes as eyes staring back at him. He´d screamed, head pounding when a hand reached out for him and scrambled backwards, tripping over himself.
It was then that he realized the trees were white and there was a dark, creepy-grinning moon in the sky.
"…l—en?"
In a blink, he´d woken up with a harsh gasp, still lying exactly where that Bastard Clown had left him after the beating and hurried to stand up. Terror had gripped his heart when he crawled over to the river and looked into the water.
A looming figure standing right behind him, empty smile sewed shut with black lines against swirls of white. Red tried to ignore it´s existence for a full month, avoiding surfaces where his reflection would show up and it wasn´t too hard to forget it existed.
Until it turned into the smiling picture of a young man whose lips would occasionally move but Red couldn´t hear a thing.
It got annoying soon and Red wanted it to go away, he told it as much. The Shadow hadn´t answered, not that Red had expected it to nor did it vanish. He tried to get it to speak again anyway, but it never did answer and chalking it up as a hallucination didn't work.
"I ain´t nuts. No matter what anyone else says, I ain't crazy."
Red mumbles, clenching his fist, spitting a mouthful of blood into the snow. His clothes were damp from sitting so long in the coldness, but he couldn´t bother to move, not with his body feeling so sore.
The nameless Shadow merely tilted his head.
People could call him what they want, monster, freak, abnormality, weirdo, cripple. He would admit that they held some truth, but if there was one thing he wasn´t, it was crazy.
Another glance at the silent face observing him from a frame of frozen ice and Red scowled harshly.
"I liked that mutt better than yer."
As far as insults go, it was tame for someone with a temper like him. Shadow-man´s smile only widened and as much as the sight was creepy, it was also…kind of nice. To know he wasn´t all alone.
"Brat stop talkin' ta yer imaginary friend and get yer useless arse movin'!"
"He ain´t mah friend, Bastard!" Red snapped back as he whirled around, standing up and brushing the snow of his clothes, before storming back towards the large tent. "Useless, hah! A slave I am, yer the lazy fatarse around here."
Just another few years, then he could leave this hellhole of a nightmare. Silver flecked with purple misses the slight frown in the forgotten surface of frozen liquid.
A single crack appears in the remaining ice.