Blood Tennis
Summery: Back in America Ryoma gets caught up in a dangerous type of street tennis called "Blood Tennis". When his parents find out they decide to move the family to Japan to split Ryoma from that scene entirely and give him a "fresh start". Will the Seigaku tennis regulars be able to save him? Does he even need saving? And how can they when they don't even know Echizen Ryoma exists?
Disclaimer: I do not own Prince of Tennis
Prolog:
Notes filled the air around me as I slid the bow over the strings of his violin once more...
Wrong
All wrong...
It should be Kevin playing as I sat on (more like laid across) a bench in headquarters.
But Kevin wasn't here. He wasn't in this stupid room in this stupid temple in a stupid foreign country whose language he had never quite gotten his tongue around. No, while I was stuck here playing his prized violin for him in front of an audience of none...
... He was still in a coma back in an American hospital...
Or at least he might be, he had been for the better half of the past month, but I had no way to know if he had woken up since he was there and I was here.
I feel tears sliding down my cheeks but refuse to acknowledge such a weakness. I hadn't cried when the blond was laying motionless on the court beside my feet and I wouldn't cry now. The bow drops from my numb fingers and I stare at it. Annoyed with myself for being so careless and remembering the first time the "Puppy" of our team had placed this same instrument in my hands.
- One year, six months, and some odd days ago -
"Come here Kitten." Eleven-year-old Kevin Smith sudden says after abruptly stopping awkwardly in the middle of his piece, causing his ten-year-old (Only for a few more weeks!) doubles partner to open his eyes and lazily look at the blond questioningly. He was rather comfortable where he was thank you very much and had almost been lulled to sleep by the sound of Kevin's violin.
"What do you want Kev?" He drawls in Japanese just to slightly irritate the other boy. His attempts, for once, however seem to have little effect on the happy-go-lucky violinist. He soon finds himself with a violin in his hands, back pressed up against Kevin's chest as his fingers are placed on the neck of the violin.
"This is an E chord" The blond says and Ryoma rolls his eyes in exasperation.
"What ever gave you the idea I wanted to learn how to play this?" He demanded and his doubles partner laughs,
"This way I know that no matter what happens to me my violin will never stop playing."
I bend down and pick the slim wooden bow up off the ground. At first learning had been simply for Kevin's benefit but before long I had found that, while not as enjoyable as tennis, I had fun all the same...
... Now it was the only thing left of my other half that THEY hadn't deemed "dangerous" and taken away from me. They weren't my parents. My parents were too caught up in their lives to notice mine. My Ka-san was always too busy with her job as a lawyer to notice much of went on at home and as long as I played at least one match a day with him Oyoji was just fine in his world of trashy magazines. They never questioned why their eight-year-old son was suddenly saying out so late, why he seemed dead on his feet for a while, why he was coming home injured...
...IF they even noticed that is...
They didn't notice he was sneaky out of the house at night. They didn't notice when he started smoking at nine and a half years old. They didn't notice that he was worried sick about Kevin when ever the blond actually went home.
They didn't know that he had friends. They didn't know that he found singles tennis not only "lonely" but scary to an apparently impressive extant (According to Chip anyway... He couldn't deny that his fear wasn't completely the most rational thing in the world...). They didn't know that not only was he a doubles player but that he was the team's "Double's specialist". They didn't know he had opened the third door at eight and a few months. Nor did they know that he was a level six tennis player. They didn't know that given the choice between being Echizen Ryoma or being Kitten "Rye" Samurai...
... He would choose being Kitten in a heart beat every single time.
And if they didn't know that...
... Then what DID they know?
-POV Nanjiro -
The sound of a violin playing rings through the air and though it's not the steady beat of tennis Nanjiro Echizen couldn't be happier.
At least it wasn't silence.
At least it wasn't fighting.
At least it wasn't blood tennis.
A shiver runs down his spine at the thought. Blood tennis. HOW Ryoma had gotten himself mixed in with THAT crowd he would never know...actually, wasn't that why?
Because Ryoma had felt that he was nothing to this family if he wasn't holding a racket... But to them, to that street team of his, he as important as breathing without anything tennis involved. Despite what Rinko thought though Nanjio KNEW.
They would fail...
It was written in everything about their youngest son. The board looks, the heavy silence that was only broken when it absolutely had to be, the way Ryoma straight out refused to pick up a racket, the accusing eyes that met his each attempt to get the twelve year old on a court, the violin.
Not for the first time Nanjiro wondered if what they were doing was right.
His wife was completely for it. She vowed to do everything she could to stop her little boy from going down that path. Convinced that it would kill him and so what if he refused to pick up a tennis racket? He was playing the violin now with the time he would have used on those horrible courts in the past. And, as an added bonus, it meant the boy couldn't get injured in a match at all!
Nanjiro knew how dangerous it could be, had memorized the statistics that favored her claim. But the betrayal that brat had in his eyes when they had told him they were moving to Japan and he wasn't to keep in contact with his "friends" was hard to take. The way the kid now flinched when ever Rinko or he talked to or went to touch him made Nanjiro feel like a monster. The sound of Ryoma sobbing, his strong put together little rival who never NEVER cried, sobbing himself to sleep these past few nights told him he was a failure as a father. And every match offer he made that the brat turned down with little more than a glare before walking away was like a punch in his gut.
Rinko simply brushed it off saying Ryoma would get over all of it and thank them one day. But she had never seen...
... She didn't know the look of pure blissful happiness on Ryoma's bloodstained face, the passion that he had put into that game before it was interrupted and he'd been dragged off the court, the skill level he had shown while still on that court.. Rinko hadn't been the one to witness a Prince of tennis that actually enjoyed what he was doing. Nanjiro sure knew that he had NEVER seen ANY of it before that day and doubted that he would see it again.
Hopefully Seigaku would help his little prodigy because he was completely at a loss...