Chasm

They met on a winter's day, the two children with too-old souls and too-deep pain.

Yuu will never forget that moment, standing in the bitter cold of winter and staring, through the glass door, at the warmth and light and joy of the children in that orphanage. He'll never forget the first time his eyes locked on that brilliant, curious bright blue; he'll always remember how that few meters and that glass door felt like an abyss and a brick wall.

(Mika will never forget the burning, emerald eyes that locked on his that day. He'll never forget how there was an expression in them he'd never seen before - lost and angry and lonely and hurt all at once. Defiance coupled with uncertainty, fury mixed with fear - Mika will always think about how he suddenly wanted to bridge that gap; the boy had looked so cold, so lost.)

He still remembers thinking that the orphanage looked like a fortress, built specifically to keep monsters like him out.

(Mika remembers that he looked exactly like that once, when he was still with his parents.)

And - later, in the custody of the vampires, with the children smiling and warm around him - Yuu realises, though he knows it's stupid and selfish, that he wants a family.

(He can offer Yuu warmth, now, though, the joy and a family the two of them never got.)

They met for the first time that winter's day.

(And that final day - far from the sun and snow, in the shadows of the vampire city, Mika knows that he's finally bridged that gap.)

But when he's found it - when he's found his family - Yuu watches them die.

(Only it's too late. He sends Yuu running, and the bridge crumbles to ashes with the bodies of their siblings.)

Yuu vows with ragged breath and a pounding heart that he'll never have another family again, even as salty tears drip into his screaming mouth.

(Oh, Mika wishes they'd had the chance to be kids - to have joy and warmth and family, proper and safe and unmarred by burden or fear, just once in their short lives. He wishes he could have told Yuu to make friends, to live for them instead of carrying their family as a burden.)

But it's too late for regrets, too late for broken tears or hopes or dreams.

In the yawning darkness between them, the abyss gapes wider than ever.