A/N: So this is a little something I whipped up in like, an hour (because it was bugging me until I grudgingly agreed to get it down), and is basically some musings on what could have been Momoi Satsuki's thoughts (and sometimes, actions) after the winter cup (if what I had in my mind was cannon). Blame Haikyuu! for the volleyball reference.
When people looked to her and Daiki – they only ever really saw Daiki (tall, and bright, so wild and happy). She was almost an accessory – the girl who was good with data, good with predictions (good with her Dai-chan, too). At Teikou, she was more of a Phantom than Kuroko – scouting alone, permanently behind the scenes because she wasn't talented, wasn't a boy, wasn't part of their team.
When she was young, she was content with their smiles, their laughter (with watching on, as she was so used to), because she loved basketball, and it kept her sane. Their team walked ahead, and she fell into step with the darkest of their shadows (even Kuroko's) because in the end people only really saw her as a pretty face, chasing after their light, always stuck in the dark.
Even Kuroko – who noticed her when she was lonely, who gave her a free ticket to ice cream and understood that she felt left out – was looking at Daiki through her. She was Daiki's friend, so he was kind to her. She was Daiki's friend, so he tolerated her affection. She was Daiki's friend, so he wouldn't tell her that the team didn't need her so much as they used her for her convenience.
And even Daiki turned his back – became closer with his team, began walking further ahead than she could comprehend.
When they were children, she stood on the sidelines, feeling a little left out – but was placated because her friend would turn to her and smile every time he scored, shout out her name excitedly when he'd win a match.
When he morphed into the monster that was the ace of the Generation of Miracles, he smiled and turned to his team, shouting out their names (and sometimes it felt to her as though the faraway days of her childhood were a distant dream) instead.
She could have left the team – but so many girls already hated her for being 'one of the boys' (even though she really, really wasn't), and the boys only ever wanted to befriend her because they could mooch homework off her and ogle her breasts.
So she stayed with Daiki, and watched his laughter echo and morph into a ghost of her own.
The team began to crumble, and the shift came slowly. The team stopped having fun – stopped working together and laughing like the stupid schoolboys they were. They changed – Daiki was selfish, Kise, too. Midorima and Akashi were as well. Murasakibara was bored, and lazy.
The only one who shifted (perhaps) for the better, was Kuroko (and it was because he saw the way his team crumbled, even though he'd watched so many others crumble before). She saw, too – but there wasn't much she could do (after all, women's intuition was no help to her when it came to the enigma that was their team dynamics).
But when Daiki crumbled, so did she – because basketball had been her rock, and it betrayed her, too. Satsuki didn't give up, though, because she knew that maybe the game she so loved could bring back the boys she so loved to watch.
Kuroko promised her at their graduation that he'd bring them back, make them better, because he had seen what the crumbling was doing to Daiki – her friend Daiki – and he knew she'd struggle to watch, which was true – but not quite (because it was easier for her to watch the light crumble from her place in the dark, and impossible for Kuroko to look out from the light and see anything in the murky shades behind them).
The sentiment rang true, and she followed her friend to Touou. She tried hard – so hard – to help him. She bought him new shoes, pestered him to go to practice. She talked about basketball (though their conversations were mostly one sided), and even prompted him to get a girlfriend. When all else failed she sought out Kuroko, and hoped he'd be able to guide her in the right direction (but of course, her data never lied, and she knew Seirin didn't stand a chance against them).
Touou won, and Daiki only got worse – but she stayed, because the memory of his smile, of his laughter and the harmony it made with the dribbling of a ball on the court anchored her into place. He talked to her more – a slow, but steady improvement from his usual method of brushing her off – and she made sure to keep him occupied however she could.
But in the end, it was Kagami and Kuroko that brought him back – and it made her happy and horridly sad at the same time, because she tried (so goddamn hard) for so long to rebuild him, and they had done it in the span of a single match.
It was testament to their lopsided relationship when he was healing and she was still fractured in the shadows, her years of trying leaving her wasted and tired.
After Seirin won the winter cup, she decided to give it a rest (and by it, she meant Daiki and basketball, and the array of multi-hair-coloured boys), because she wasn't really needed, and had wasted so much time already.
It was ironic, really – that in basketball she was in the slums, and in almost everything else (sans cooking) she was a little above okay. She stopped nagging Daiki and started avoiding basketball all together. She took cooking lessons with Riko, and was less horrid than she used to be (but still not very good). She tried her hand at playing sports herself (and was pleasantly surprised to realise she wasn't half bad at volleyball and tennis). She even dabbled in weird clubs, like karuta and classic literature – and found that the acquaintances (and sometimes friends) that she made genuinely made her laugh and feel happy.
When the basketball season began again in her second year of high school, she didn't hand in her forms to be the manager, instead choosing to sign up for the female volleyball team. She was accepted, and she was having fun – well, at least until Daiki realised his life had become awfully silent without her nagging him and doting on him after practice. She supposed he realised that they hadn't seen each other since the winter cup when he looked back after a particularly good shot at practice and realised she wasn't there to cheer him on.
But she didn't care – not really – because it was her turn to be healed by something (this time, she vowed that something wouldn't be basketball). She wasn't the most talented at Volleyball, but it didn't matter because it gave her something to work towards, and to keep her mind off the strange void that had opened up in her life. When she devoted the spare time she had after school and on weekends (which was mainly the time when the basketball team practiced, and when she took the time to scout other teams) to her own practice, she wondered if it was all the exercise was making her feel tired and sometimes gloomy.
One day at practice, she smashed the ball over the net in a brilliant spike – and a flash of blue at the corner of her eye caught her vision. Daiki was there, eyeing the game wearily as though it were a foreign concept (which she supposed it was – to him, at least). Afterwards he approached her, asked her how she'd been and why he hadn't seen her around.
She shrugged, crossed her arms and told him that she got tired of being an accessory. He didn't understand, but she told herself that she didn't care (it didn't hurt – shouldn't hurt – that Daiki never realised that she'd been there all along, just to look pretty and act as a convenience).
She left him at the courts, and supposed he asked Kuroko what she meant, because not a week later she received a letter in the mail.
Momoi-san,
I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. I'm not going to lie and say I saw you, because I didn't. I only saw them, and I only saw myself, and I'm sorry that I couldn't help you, too.
She stopped reading after the first few lines and left the letter unread on her desk. She wasn't angry at Kuroko, after all – she was angry at herself for dragging herself along for a ride where she certainly wasn't permitted.
The week after that, another letter.
Momoicchi, it's me – Kise.
I heard you quit basketball? Mou, why did you do that – it's not the same without you!
She stopped after only the first line of his – she didn't want to hear about how she'd been important because she knew for a fact that she hadn't.
Another letter, only days after Kise's.
Momoi,
It was to my utmost displeasure to hear that you no longer babysit Aomine. You were the only one who could keep him in line. Touou will not win the championship this year without your aid, either.
She scrunched up Midorima's letter, but left it on her desk, nevertheless (she wondered why she even read them anymore – she was busy training for the volleyball tournament coming up, anyway) along with the others.
Satsuki supposed a part of her thought that she'd been responsible for their downfall in the first place (because, sure – the guys were miracles, but would they have climbed high enough to fall if she hadn't been their unneeded accessory?). No amount of guilt could thwart her plans and make her return to Daiki (if anything, it pushed her further away - because she didn't want to see him – or any of the others – like that again).
And the volleyball helped, too. She finally understood the thrill of having friends, of being on a team and working towards a common goal. Every time the setter would launch a ball into the air precisely for her, Satsuki would channel her excitement, her love for her team – all into her legs – and she'd jump (sometimes she felt as though she were flying). Her animosity to the thought of the Teikou team began to fade as she realised that they were just doing what was natural (the flow of energy within her team came in bursts of joy and laughter, and a little too much fun – but she supposed that teenage boys would've had even more fun).
Their manager was a third year ex-volleyball player – a handsome boy who'd suffered and injury and no longer played (but loved the sport all the same). She understood the longing in his eyes as they went over their drills and played practice matches (sometimes she'd sit with him and go over data – because he was quite the data nut, too). On good days Satsuki was even able to get him standing with them, playing as setter (because he couldn't jump), and being part of the team (even if it was only for a little while).
She wouldn't let him think he was an accessory – wouldn't let him be left in the shadows (even if the light of her team wasn't the brightest… yet).
Finally the championships rolled around, and Satsuki was nervous as their small team made their way to the massive gymnasium (it was the grounds for the winter cup and Interhigh – the courts were rearranged to have nets and markings that matched volleyball instead). Her teammates looked just as nauseous as she felt, but their manager patted them all on the back, wished them luck and barked an order to warm up before their first match.
They had worked hard for a whole year – worked together and apart, improving themselves and each other (Satsuki had even been levelled with the ace of their team), and the results showed.
The squeaking of shoes was all too familiar for Satsuki (but not as traumatising when it was her own shoes doing the squeaking), and the familiar presence of her team helped soothe her nerves as they faced their last opponents for the day. She made the mistake of glancing into the crowd, spotting them almost immediately (how could she miss the splash of colour in the sea of brown and black, anyway?). They were watching the line-up of her opposition, muttering furiously amongst themselves and much too serious for something that wasn't basketball. The match began and she vowed to herself that she'd do her best (because it didn't matter what the outcome was, not really – Teikou had taught her that victory wasn't everything, at least).
When she spiked the final point for the game, her team went wild (the stadium, too – Touou's female team had a lot of supporters, despite their small size). She cried because for the first time in her life she felt as though she'd accomplished something – not helped others accomplish something (because that's what her definition used to be) – but accomplished something for herself, and her team only.
"Go, go, Sa-chan, go, go, Sa-chan!" she heard the old Teikou team cheering together, clapping and cheering and yelling along with everyone else (Daiki was roaring at the top of his lungs, but he'd always been a strange one) – and for a moment Satsuki wondered if they realised they'd won the prefectural match and not the grand final (before realising that it didn't matter anyway). When they invited her after her match to go for dinner, she waved goodbye to her team and followed them – and they told her she'd played well and went on and on about how they never knew she was good at sport.
She laughed with them for what felt like the first time as they sat around a hot pot, and told them that she wasn't going to be an accessory anymore, and that she was sorry that she'd helped them destroy everything (what felt like) so long ago. As she was leaving the restaurant with them, she was stopped by her own manager – and he blurted a confession as his face steamed redder than a tomato. She laughed again, and thanked him, accepting his offer for a date before introducing him to her old friends (because that's what she realised they were, even if it hadn't felt like it in the longest time).
They all stared him down, glaring at him like protective brothers and threatening him with naught but their eyes and a few firm handshakes.
She walked home with Dai-chan, and they talked about everything that had happened in each other's absence. He told her he missed her, and she whacked him over the head, telling him to stop being stupid (because she never really went anywhere), but she understood the sentiment all the same.
In bed she finally closed her eyes, content at the outcome of her hard work. Tetsu had used his team to fix himself, and then went ahead to fix the others (they relied on him, a team still – despite being contorted beyond belief). Satsuki, however, fixed herself, and finally rid herself of the nagging void in her mind (by filling it once more with the multi-hair-coloured friends once again).