Disclaimer: Kuroko no Basket belongs to Tadatoshi Fujimaki
Title: We, the Fallen – Epilogue
Word count: 739
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Epilogue
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The loud buzzer announced the end of the game. The court was drenched in sweat and youth. The ten players on the grounds stood motionless and silent. It was the end. An actual end. It was the term of a path, a beginning of another one... but only one team had that honor to continue down that way.
Aomine glanced at the score board. 110 to 98. The blue haired snorted. It was to be expected. Touo would never lose. He would never lose. Not to Kise. Not to anybody.
He heard the shoes squeaking under the broken teenager, as the blond tried to stand. All efforts were in vain. Kise could no longer get up. His legs hurt him. He could barely feel them, but they hurt. They hurt him so badly. Aomine watched as his ex teammate gritted his teeth in anger and pain. The smaller body was trembling slightly.
Kise punched the ground. A final sign of total defeat, of total loss. Aomine just stood there, unable to say anything, unable to do anything. What was there to say to a loser? Nothing really. Nothing can be said to calm a broken heart. Nothing can be done to put back those broken pieces.
Kise stopped trying. He just sat there, on the cold floor, cursing his inability. His inability to fight the tanned man. His inability to go above that admiration. His inability to stop loving that egocentric bastard.
Aomine just stared at the broken golden piece of a player. What was he to do?
A hand was given. Both Aomine and Kise looked at the person stretching his hand towards the blond. It was Kasamatsu.
"Can you stand?" He asked with his stoic face. "Hang in there a little longer..."
Those words pierced Kise as much as Aomine.
For Kise, they were the painful words of comfort. Words that were telling him to face the truth. He lost. He lost his battle.
For Aomine, they were the words he could not utter. And so, those words, left inside, manifested by cutting his heart.
Aomine walked away. He refused to see Kise hold that hand – though, if he had turned around, he would have seen that that was not the case –. He refused to see Kise supporting his crumbled body on another man's shoulders. He could hear the sobs from behind him. A faint and shaking call of a name that was not his. And those simple noises tore him.
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Aomine left the stadium before anybody else could. The last thing he wanted was to be with his teammates. Plus, he could not shake the thought of Kise still being with that upper class man away.
He was the one who sent Kise to the ground.
He should be the one to pick Kise up.
And what was this unsettling feeling? Like something is going wrong. As if he was supposed to do something else. He felt as if the blond would only drift away from him.
Like every time...
Like every time?
His own thoughts were getting confusing. What did he mean 'like every time'? Why was that feeling of loss so familiar? Aomine looked at his hand. He could see blood on it. His hand, stained in blood. Where did it come from? Why isn't he freaking out? It seemed so normal... too normal, for his hand to have this aspect. He could feel the blazes of a war. He could hear the battle shouts and the dying.
He could feel his heart stop from the loss of a loved one.
Something was missing in his hand. A soft touch. A warm tickling. A loving weave.
The blood in his hand... It was not from the enemy.
It was...
The long sound of a honk pulled him back to the actual world. He glared at the car that just passed by. Aomine looked at his hand once again. It was back as normal, clean, no traces of blood. It was the hand he used to play basketball. It was the hand he used to hurt Kise an hour ago.
Aomine clenched that hand. He did not know what those random visions were. He did not know what happened to him.
But he knew one thing.
The next time he sees the blond, he will grab onto that person's hand.
And never let go.
He will never let go of that hand again.
There, all done. The finale of this fanfic.
As for now, this is all there will be. But as I've said, there may be some other extra chapters. I really want to develop Kagami and Kuroko's story, and also some Midorima and Takao would be nice...
I'm also thinking of a number of series inspired from this fanfic where in each universe, Aomine loses Kise, until finally, he decided to do something about it. But yeah... I don't even know if that fanfic will ever see the light...
Hope you enjoyed it and I'll see you next time!
-Aurakann.