3rd Person P.O.V.

"Hey… you okay?"

The game's ending, despite being an almost certain win for the Generation of Miracles, didn't quite end in the way that they had all originally believed. Halfway through the third quarter, just after Midorima had shot the basket that had made the score board read 100-0, one of the referees had blown his whistle and declared that the game was finished. Perplexed, the Miracles had stared in silence at the coach of Seirin who looked on the edge of tears as she whispered something to one of the players beside her. That player then proceeded to step in front of her slowly shaking form and called for the rest of Seirin to return to their side of the court.

The game had ended with a forfeit.

Kuroko could only stare mutely at the shambles that had once been his team, not an ounce of emotion evening being able to be glimpsed from the outside of his unsympathetic shell. The other Miracles noticed a slight change in their blue-haired shadow but none chose to comment on it, simply assuming it was due to the grief of hurting his beloved ex-team.

Only Akashi knew better.

Containing his tony smirk, the redhead lead his newly reformed team out of Seirin's gym back towards their own personal training grounds located on the Akashi Estate. None of them spoke, each of them all caught up in their own strange thought processes. Kise, Midorima, Murasakibara and Aomine each had very similar things racing through their minds however.

Guilt.

Back in Teiko's glory days, such a thing would have never been in their skulls, especially straight after such a crushing victory. However, their former selves had already ceased to exist after a certain blue-haired shadow had come in and knocked them all down a peg. They had all come to respect the players of Seirin in their own twisted ways, even if they wouldn't admit it, and so seeing their rivals in such a state was truly distressing for them.

They couldn't begin to imagine how Kuroko was handling it.

"I'm fine," Kuroko murmured, not even pausing to think after Kise had posed the question.

"Tetsu, you don't look fine," Aomine hummed, eyeing off his Shadow with concern etched in his dark irises.

"And what does fine look like, Aomine?" Kuroko snipped back, his tone low and his eyes looking oddly dangerous. The way he looked, the way he held himself and the way he stared down at Aomine oddly reminded the Generation of Miracles of an entirely different person.

Akashi Seijuro.

The thought was both terrifying and horrific, startling the others into inactivity whilst the teal irises ran over them in warning. Once Kuroko had realised that his point had been made, he nodded his head and turned away once more, allowing the other four to suck in shaky breaths.

It was just like Akashi in middle school.

The person looking at them through those eyes wasn't Kuroko.

Kuroko P.O.V.

So this is what it feels like to be dead…

The thought was oddly calming as I lay on the floor in my living room. The house was empty, it always was, and now every day the rooms remained pitch black. At one point in my life it would have frightened me but I was so numb to it that fear didn't even form in my skull. I was a Shadow; it was foolish to say that I was afraid of something that I myself was.

The clouds of delusion no longer rested upon me.

I was no longer a fool.

The world that I was in was full of unfairness and hatred and I had struggled against it all for too long. The pain of those long battles had drawn out the suffering within me and increased it more and more until my insides could no longer recognise my emotions. I was dead on the inside and my nerves could no longer pick up on the feelings and sensations that came with human interactions.

I didn't want to be touched.

A phantom could not be touched, nor did he want to ever be touched by something that might otherwise bring false affection. The longer the thoughts raged around in my head, the worse the numbness became until I could barely get any feeling to travel up my nerves to my brain.

I sat up.

A rather odd idea came to my mind and I drunkenly got to my feet, my whole body swaying as I stumbled into my small kitchen. My fingers fumbled tiredly against the handle of one of my draws as I opened it, my other hand enclosing around the handle of the sharpest knife I possessed. At any other point in time, I would have acted with more reason. I would have had more than enough intelligence to know that this was a stupid endeavour and that Kagami or one of the other players in Seirin would beat the shit out of me if they found out.

But they weren't with me anymore.

I went over to the sink, stripping off the jacket I had arrived home in. I held my pale arm over the rim of the sink and leaned heavily against the bench, the sensation of the cold seeping through the clothes to my stomach no longer being able to register in my body. I held the blade against the skin of my arm, head tilting slightly to the side when I realised that I couldn't even feel the metal.

I lightly dragged it across the skin.

And then I could feel.

A long gasp tore from my throat as pain registered in my mind followed by warmth and then blissful agony. Heat raced up my veins and flooded my heart and then completely ensued me, making a groan slip from my lips. The feeling continued for a few seconds before it faded, making full-blown panic flash through my head. Wanting to regain that warmth, I slashed my wrist a few more times, registering nothing besides the glorious ability to feel something.

By the time I regained my senses, the sink was drenched in blood.

My knife hand spasmed drastically against my will and I dropped the bloody blade, watching as it splashed in the sink and became completely drenched in my life-blood. My pale, damaged wrist was covered in marred X's that wept blood and made my skin even more pale. My vision swam and I panicked for a moment, backing away from the crimson sink.

My back hit the wall and, before I even realised I was trailing blood everywhere, I stumbled towards the bathroom. The light inside of it drenched everything in white and the red stood out even more so under its harsh scrutiny. I ran to the basin, staring into the mirror as I numbly switched on the basin and prepared to wash my injury.

But paused when I saw myself.

My skin was milky white, my blue hair messed up and my eyes wild. I stared at the reflection but could hardly recognise myself, realising that I no longer identified with the creature that had called himself 'Kuroko Tetsuya'. I suddenly stared at the red in the mirror, another idea coming to me seconds before a mad grin sprung to my face.

"I can cry again!" I laughed, grabbing my numb hand with my unmarked one and raising it to my face. I dragged the bloody fingers down my cheeks and felt my grin widen even more, seeing the new tear tracks that rested there. "There! All better! Everything's okay!"

My vision was hazy and I dully dropped my dead hand under the faucet, watching as the blood diluted and disappeared down the drain. All that remained was the half a dozen or so cuts that criss-crossed my skin and stuck out like a sore thumb. Dully, I reached under the sink for a bandage, wrapping up the weeping wounds rather ineffectively. Red soaked through but I paid it no heed, wobbling back to the kitchen to clean up the sink in there too.

A faint glow in the darkness drew my eyes towards the kitchen table where my glowing phone sat vibrating. A childishly happy ringtone sang throughout the room and I angrily picked it up, enraged that someone had dared to interrupt my solace of darkness and pain. Akashi's name flashed across the screen and I jabbed the answer button, staring down at the screen as a voice filtered out through the speaker.

"Tetsuya," was all he said, his cool voice filtering out into my silent darkness.

"Akashi…" I murmured back, my knees shaking beneath me. I flopped onto one of the chairs heavily, my breath coming a lot harder than I had originally thought.

"Tetsuya, you sound strange, what's going on?"

I stared down at the red soaking through the bandages, some foreign thought in my head pointing out that it shouldn't be bleeding that heavily. "Nothing," I mumbled, feeling that horrible numbness begin to settle in once more.

"Tetsuya, you are lying."

"Hm… sorry…" I mumbled, feeling my eyes begin to grow heavier. "But… can't talk, Akashi… have to sleep now…"

"You are not going anywhere until you tell me-"

I ended the call, staring down at the empty screen for a few seconds before it began ringing again. A goofy smile spread across my face moments before my sense of balance disappeared and I fell from my chair. I crashed harshly into the floor but I didn't even feel it, my mind too far gone into sleep to notice anything other than the fact that the world was much darker than I last remembered.

A/N- Kuroko isn't dead btw. He's just woozy from blood loss and shock. Thanks for reading!