Ryuga

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Of all the trees that are in the wood, the holly bears the crown

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When he opened his eyes, the world was grey and cold.

He had no idea where he was, how he had got there, or what had happened after the –

dazzling flash of black midnight bright screaming emptiness

- after that.

It wouldn't quite be accurate to say that everything hurt. He was too numb for that. Too cold. Too empty.

What was he missing?

Very slowly, he became aware that he wasn't just cold. He was soaked through, trousers and shirt and boots and the tattered remains of his coat all drenched in -

It was snowing.

He sat up, disturbing what had become a considerable blanket of snow coating almost all of him. How long had he been here for that to form? And the snow wasn't quite white. He held out a hand, letting a snowflake land on it, and in the dim light he just about managed to make out the strange colour it had. The snow was mixed with ash, turning it grey and slushy in his hand.

So the fall out from – it – was still going on. Not as much as he might have expected, all things considered, but enough that it couldn't have been more than a few days before.

It was useless looking for the stars to give him the time or the place or even a hint a the date; they were covered by snowclouds. In this flat, featureless plain of grey snow and bitter wind, he was alone.

L-Drago? he asked, only to meet aching silence in his heart. He flinched back mentally as much as physically, the shock clearing the last of the fog from his brain. Yes. L-Drago was gone now. His dragon-fire core was shattered, and there was no internal flame to shelter him from winter's bitter cold. No wonder he was freezing.

For a brief moment, he entertained the idea of forgetting everything and collapsing in on himself like melting snow. Without L-Drago, without heat and shelter, he was defenceless out in the cold. Hypothermia would get him if exhaustion didn't – even he couldn't overpower the force of nature.

If he stayed still long enough, maybe the blanket of snow would get thick enough to be warm.

He was almost on the brink of lying down again and just letting go when something snagged in the corner of his eye. In the world of grey, there was something different. Through the whirling snow, he could make out something low to the ground, a deep green shot through with dots of red. It wasn't far from him.

He didn't really want to sleep in the grey. But the green was nice, a peaceful sort of colour. He could sleep there, forever if he had to.

With not inconsiderable effort, he pushed himself to his feet. The wind was bitter, howling across the wasteland, and what was left of his clothes offered no protection from it. It was all he could do to summon enough strength to make it to the strange lump.

It was a holly bush, covered in spiky green leaves and with red berries poking between their thorny protectors. He collapsed at its roots, willing the thick, prickly leaves to shield him from the wind, even if it was just for a few minutes.

He was terrifyingly weak. There was no power left in his body or his will or his spirit. He'd never felt anything like this, not even after the horrendous transformation on the top of -

He blinked, partly in surprise at himself and partly to get a stray snowflake out of his eyes. He couldn't remember. Oh, he knew what had happened, but the images weren't there. How very odd.

At least he seemed to be sheltered a little from the wind, hidden underneath the holly. But it wasn't enough. Warmth was rising up his body, from his toes to his knees to his chest. As much as he wanted to relax into the feeling, something was warning him. Vaguely, he recognised that the warmth wasn't really there, that he was drifting on the perilous cliff-edge of unconsciousness, dreamlike, snowflake-light. Normally by this point, L-Drago would have noticed something wrong and would have sorted it out, but the silence from his dragon was more than just the aching hole in his heart.

Could he even remember the dragon? He tried to recall the last time he had seen L-Drago, but all the memories he could conjure were grey and flat and dull, or horrifying. Where was his dragon?

He put one freezing hand on his left forearm, only to discover that the gauntlet was gone. How long ago had that happened? Had someone stolen it while he lay unconscious, or had it vanished when the white darkness had raged over him?

What could he do now, without his dragon and without his blade? He was helpless in a way he had never been before, alone and terribly injured in an unknown, freezing space that was already seeking to cover him in snow again.

He tried to think back, to see if he had ever been in a similar situation, but every memory he had was dimming, clouded with some kind of dark film, as if the Darkness itself had got inside his head and bled the colour from every thought.

No.

Not every thought. Here and there, there were flashes of colour – green and red, mostly, like the holly that sheltered him.

Green hair, a fierce flag against the dark, as – Kenta, that was his name – Kenta stood in front of him with his arms outstretched, eyes alight with determination on that last night.

Red hair, more familiar and more easily connected to a name – Gingka, the master of Pegasus, the Great Rival and the only real challenge left in the world.

A flicker of green light, giving a glow to an older memory that had almost faded except for the brilliant-blazing smile on a young boy's face when three dragons bit into a pillar of green light-sound, on the day he had fought – Yuu – as an equal.

A green bey, calling a whirlwind from nothing as its owner demanded he fight with only his own spirit, and he had answered to fight one of the best battles he had ever fought, no matter what the end had been.

He knew these places. He knew these people. He had fought them and honoured them all in their own way. But why was it that these memories alone had not lost their colour to the all-encroaching grey? He sank deeper into his thoughts, ignoring the fading numbness of his body as he tried to recall even one more memory of colour in the grey.

Slowly, it rose out of the depths, as red as holly berries. A fire, deep inside a mountain. Not a man-made fire this, but something deeper, more primordial. He remembered heat, real heat against his face, and the cherry-red glow of his blade when he summoned it back to him.

L-Drago, his soul sighed.

- the snow had stopped.

Or, rather, the snow had stopped landing on him.

The memory of fire flared brighter in his heart, fuelled by the memory of colours that split even the grey of the Darkness apart, and the memory of battles that had called to the blader's spirit within him.

And as his spirit flickered back to life, in the grey-dark night, a pale shadow of a dragon wrapped around him.

Warmth – true warmth – exploded through his veins, and Ryuga suddenly remembered his own name. One full breath later and the snow began melting from his skin as the dragon, weary, injured, but here and with him, bled heat into every cell.

I am here now. I will not leave you, my Emperor.

L-Drago.

The relief wasn't quite enough to counter the sudden and unwelcome realisation that he hurt. Not in the skin-deep way that had marked every step he had taken away from the Battle Bladers Tower, but far more serious. Ryuga let his head fall back against the branches of the holly, not caring when the prickly leaves dug into his skin.

"How are you here?" he asked, only aware that he'd said it aloud when the words became puffs of white on the freezing air. "What happened?"

Nemesis is gone. The Legendary Bladers defeated him. And I carried you away from there with the last of my strength, to save you from what I knew would come. But I have nothing left to give now.

Where are we? It was easier to ask questions in his mind.

I do not know. I took you as far as I could. But it was not far. And then your spirit went out, and I could not find you. I thought I had lost you.

Never, Ryuga promised, with all the ferocity he could summon. But…

But you awoke your spirit again. And now I am with you, and I will never leave you, never, ever, though the world crumble and all the years of our lives lie in ash and dust.

The warmer he got, the more he hurt, body and spirit wrenched apart by the Armageddon attack. There was no question of him moving much more than one limb at a time now. All he wanted to do was sleep.

It is time to rest now, my Ryuga, L-Drago whispered, and Ryuga exhaled, the breath forming clouds of dragonsmoke on the air. I will take us where none will find us until we are needed again. The world will spin without us for a while. Sleep. Heal. Regain your strength. I will watch over you.

There was the faintest sensation of L-Drago's mane against his cheek. Ryuga raised a hand to his dragon, not really certain and not really caring whether L-Drago had really taken physical form or whether it was a trick of his exhausted mind. Not here, he said. It's far too cold.

I will take you to where the fires never die, L-Drago promised, his voice humming with love. They do not need us now. As the snowflakes melt into the earth, so too will our time fade. But as the holly is evergreen, so are we eternal. Now sleep. I am with you. I will not leave you.

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A patch of colour in the grey was all he got for Christmas, but when the colour was L-Drago's burning scales, that was the only colour he needed to see.