Title: Sunlight and Rainfall.
Author: Zazlx
Rating: T
Spoilers: Set just after the end of the series, but no real spoilers.
Summary: Eiji returns home: a sister's perspective. (One shot.)
Disclaimer: 'Banana Fish' belongs to the wonderful Akimi Yoshida. This is but a brief offering to show my adoration and appreciation. No harm is meant, no profits incurred and no claim asserted so please forgive and don't sue (or, better yet, read and review).
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She sat on the bench, hands neatly clasped in her lap and her eyes as excited as her demeanour was calm. Weak sunlight slanted in through the high airport windows and fell across her knees. It lay at a discordant diagonal to the hem of her uniform's skirt and sent deep shadows into the pleats. Attempting to look cool and efficient, she smoothed her hands over the folds, chasing away wrinkles that had never truly formed and telling herself that it wasn't to quell the nervous anticipation tingling in her palms.
"Father? When will the plane land?"
Calm eyes turned to her. "Soon, Sweetie. Soon." The smile on his lips didn't quite touch the serenity in his eyes. When she's been a little girl and her mother still used to sit by her bedside reading tales she'd wondered at the apparent redundancy in the phrase 'a serene, happy girl', but now she felt that she had begun to understand.
Her father's eyes had never lost their inner tranquillity, but the merriment had faded over the past year. It felt like watching the blossoms falling from a cherry tree; the branches and leaves' graceful form remained, but the softness and glow of those few weeks… had gone.
She could only hope that her brother's return would turn-back that premature emptiness and issue in a new spring-time.
Besides her, her mother reached across to briefly squeeze her hands before relaxing back. "It will be nice to see Eiji again, won't it? You can talk to him about next term's classes and look through all of the pictures Ibe-san took. He's been to so many interesting places." Her mother's smile wavered slightly on the last.
She might have been the family's youngest, but even she could understand that 'interesting' and 'dangerous' lay rather too closely for comfort. Not entirely certain whether or not to be offended at the treatment, she glanced across to the arrivals board. The sunlight caught in her eyes as she did so, making her squint a little.
No. Her parents were too highly strung. Now was not the time for teenage fits.
She laced, unlaced and laced again her fingers. Her parents had bigger concerns right now if even half of the conversations she'd caught were true. But for the moment she couldn't allow her mind to dwell on such things. It would be fun to have Eiji back, even if only until the new university year began and he left again. Yet how would that work? Would the university not mind his prolonged absence? Would they still provide him with somewhere to stay? Did he mean to go back to his pole-vaulting? Would he even be able to?
The neat pleats in her skirt had been crushed to disarray during her musings, but that no longer mattered. The flight was being announced and her father had turned to them, that mock-genuine smile at his lips and a gentle fear in his eyes as he extended a strong hand to his wife. The woman rose, and she could see a sudden pallor to her mother's rounded cheeks.
As the three walked slowly towards the arrivals gate, she looked up, towards the windows. Clouds were passing before the sun outside, swept by a brisk wind, and she couldn't decide whether they would be drawn out to sea to let the sun shine through, of if rain would follow. A shiver ran down her spine. Please let there be sunlight to welcome Eiji back, she thought. There would be time enough for rain tomorrow when they were all safely back at home.
The wait was long and she could sense the rising alarm in her parents as unknown face after unknown face washed past. They'd stood at this particular cross-roads before and returned defeated. She thought that day was possibly the first in which she saw the laughter dim in her father's eyes. Would today be the day it disappeared entirely? Would her mother wake her for breakfast tomorrow with an optimistic smile and red-tinted eyes? Was Eiji really, truly, coming home safe at last?
When he was finally wheeled out - literally - by Ibe-san her knees felt weak and she was filled with emotions she couldn't name. The sunlight seemed too bright as her mother broke from her father to wrap perfumed arms about her first-born. Fluorescent lights from the ceiling reflected off the chair and stabbed at her eyes. Why hadn't she noticed how strong they were earlier? Or how loud the surging crowds were? Or that her mother's dress was the pretty floral-print one that she wore to father's promotion years ago and which had never fitted since?
She was swept along with the greetings; smiling and chattering and all in a daze from the swirl in her mind that she could barely see past. It was only after her mother had arranged for Ibe-san to come for dinner the next night, and her father has decided that the wheelchair would fold down into their car, and Eiji has assured everyone that, yes, he was quite awake and didn't need to be swept off to bed, it was only then the mists began to clear.
It should have been the fact that Eiji was there, physically, actually in front of her, but instead the set to her father's shoulder's let her know. What they would do that night; Eiji's wheelchair and whether he would ever pole-vault again; parking charges and American snap shots - none of it really mattered. As her father took the chair's handles from Ibe-san, she saw that spring-time had returned to his eyes - everything would work out.
And before she stepped out of the main doors, she knew that it would be sunny that day.
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Early the next morning there was a phone call for Eiji. It was raining outside and she thought nothing of it - everyone wanted to know how he was doing; invite him to dinner; hear his tales. Finally though she entered the study to bring him down for breakfast.
He was sat at the desk, but looked up as she entered the room.
Now she knew what her father's eyes might have looked like that last night. Not haunted or shocked or saddened or dead. Just empty. He was filling in the application for the next year's college accommodation with a hand that didn't shake.
She didn't see the laughter return to his eyes for five long years.
-fin-