Disclaimer: Don't own this, or the poem. Konomi-sensei's and Yeats'.
A/N: Me? Procrastinating from ten zillion other things? Nah. (Written a few months ago after a lack of sleep and swim practice; please review!)
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
-The Second Coming, William Butler Yeats
Most team captains are at the top. They lead their team with an iron fist and extreme prowess – the skills that earned them their right as captain. They clear the battle field and shout "charge!", sending the troops in - though not without strategic plans and mapped-out courses.
Yukimura Seiichi was not one of those captains.
The simple reasoning behind this was that Yukimura Seiichi was not at the top; he was not the lone person on the pyramid, he was not the commanding general: he was the center. He was surrounded by different people, networking a system of skills and building a group – something stronger than a team, in their case – of people who formed a circle; everybody was equal, no matter how much better somebody else was. (Because, in truth, they were all fairly equal players, though Yukimura was definitely the best with Sanada close behind.)
And the center must hold.
No matter what happens, the center must hold, because if the center breaks, then everything around it cracks off, shatters, flies out of orbit, and leaves forever more.
It almost did. Though none of them wanted Yukimura to see it, he knew: he knew exactly how tense things were with his illness, could feel how high the stress levels were. Akaya had become more uncontrollable, more violent, and had resorted to injuring other players, not to win – because, really, he could easily have won without doing those things – but because he knew no other way to channel his emotions; Niou and Yagyuu began switching positions outside of tennis, Yagyuu setting a building on fire now instead of Niou, and both of them playing mind games simply to try and get themselves out of their minds; Sanada had become irritated, frustrated at the smallest things, and had started assigning dozens of laps, smacking anyone who did even a small thing out of place.
Rikkai was cracking. Fast. Because the center could not hold, did not hold, was not holding, and might not be able to hold on to anything any longer. The center was shrinking, withering, dying away. Though the center was hanging on, trying its best to keep the pressure from cracking it, the imminent probability (73 percent, Renji had said) that the center would not hold could not be denied – could not be ignored.
Which was why he had to. He had to undergo the surgery, no matter the risks, and he had to work hard – harder than they allowed him, afraid he would injure himself, because he knew himself better than doctors and he knew it wouldn't matter – to recover, rehabilitate, in order to play in Nationals. In order to come back onto the courts, racket in hand, smash the small yellow ball down on the court and play.
In order to keep everything from falling apart.
Because Yukimura is the center, and the center must hold.