PROLOGUE:
Trigger
"The past is never where you think you left it." ― Katherine Anne Porter
Tanaka couldn't stand the face Noya was making right now, the hollowness in his expression, the way the usual brightness seemed to vanish in his friend's eyes, leaving behind nothing but cold, disgusted apathy.
He wasn't quite sure what to do with this.
So, like always, he grew angry.
"Well, what exactly do you expect me to do, Noya? I'm no angel. I ain't a priest, you know? I need time. I need to do stuff. I need space to breathe, to get a handle on things. I need—"
"Well I need my best friend back! Not some... waste of a human being, some coward too fearful of his own dumb past to look forward, to move on!" the libero snapped, taking a step forward and somehow making himself appear a foot taller than he actually was. Tanaka swallowed, eyes narrowing, and his fingers in his left fist began to do... that trembling thing.
The same thing that always happened before his arm would take a swing.
Deep breath, Ryuu. Take a deep freakin' breath. This is Noya. He's not an enemy.
Releasing a slow exhale, Tanaka blinked. "You make it sound so easy," he whispered, throat rough like a rubber tire dragging over a bed of nails. "As if ignoring the past is that simple. I mean—seriously, Noya! The past makes you, like it or not! You can't... you can't just bury something that makes you tick!"
Nishinoya snarled, now on his tiptoes with a finger jabbing Tanaka in his chest. "But you can't let it rule you, bonehead—"
"Well, maybe I don't have a choice. We ain't all as strong as 'perfect Noya-senpai.'" Tanaka hissed jeeringly, leaning forward on the balls of his own feet, towering over his smaller friend.
Cast in the wing spiker's shadow from the late afternoon sun, Noya's gaped for a second. They both knew how the libero hated the p-word. 'Perfect.' An insult to years and years of relentless effort and self-improvement.
As the saying went, them's fightin' words.
Two seconds.
And then Noya threw the first punch, slugging Tanaka in his solar plexus, making him double over in a desperate gasp for air. And then he followed up with a sock to the taller boy's jaw, sending him staggering backwards on his heels.
Through the blindsiding shock of pain, Tanaka instantly saw red, hot fury bathing his view of his best friend, and the fingers in his left hand involuntarily curled into a tight, rock-hard fist. He went in for the tackle, bringing Noya down to the ground hard.
THUD.
Noya growled and kneed him in the side, rolling over and springing to his feet like he had just pulled a dive-receive. A trickle of blood ran down his cheek from where the side of his face had collided with the sidewalk, but the libero had always had a high pain tolerance outgrowing his small stature. Eyebrows angling farther up, face delving into a stare of pure rage, he grit his teeth. Tanaka vaguely registered the slow, methodical motions of Noya rolling up his sleeves, clearly ready to start something big.
But Tanaka had likewise pushed himself up to his feet again, heart still racing with roaring, heated blood that sent waves of anger-fueled adrenaline flooding his veins. His left fist was still trembling, like a chained dog desperate to meet flesh and draw blood.
It had been a long time since Tanaka had allowed himself to fight. Actually, scratch that.
It'd been awhile since he'd had to fight. For survival's sake.
This fight wasn't something that needed to happen, he tried to tell himself, even as Noya charged him, low and swift, and Tanaka's body was already lowering in response. The practiced preparation of a seasoned street fighter.
Stance widened, lowering his center of gravity, feet bracing for the impact, eyes wide for maximum awareness, elbows ready for blocking the inevitable flailing of his combatant, ears primed for telltale indicators, waist bent and strong in anticipation of the nimble opponent's agile movements, mind picturing the path the conflict would lead to—
No.
What the heck was he doing?
In that split second where Tanaka's attention lapsed, Noya leaped up in a shouting tackle, and they tumbled to the ground once again, this time with the wing spiker's head smacking painfully against the asphalt. Inside his mind, the old familiarity of that very sensation made something snap, and Tanaka felt his body go cold.
Oh boy. Here we go.
Seeing stars for a moment (and other things that set all the warning flags flying), Tanaka grunted, hand instinctively outstretched to grasp Noya's swinging fist in his own larger grasp. "N-Noya, stop!" he gasped to his riled-up assailant, eyes squeezed shut as he rolled over on his side.
Shhhhhhhhing... seemed to echo in his ears, remnants of old, faded memories. The swipe of a razor-sharp blade against vulnerable skin.
For another few seconds, the libero didn't listen, raining a few well-placed strikes to Tanaka's side and back before freezing at the lack of retaliation. "What Ryuu?" he asked shortly, mouth still contorted into a pissed-off frown. When Tanaka didn't reply, he climbed off him, expression relaxing to something more akin to concern. "R-Ryuu?"
Tanaka was heaving for air, turned away from Noya, both hands clawing at the pavement, with his head down, eyes screwed shut against the flash of images in his mind.
Black tanks. White hats. Silver ankle chains. Ruger pistol and cartridge, metal gleaming in the glow of a streetlight. Shouts of challenges. Sore legs from running. White eyes staring hatefully. Shadows. Reflections in rainwater puddles filling potholes in the asphalt. Crosshairs. Pocketknives and switchblades. Bared teeth. Sneakered feet flying in a side kick. The explosive bang of a fired round. The responsive fires of more gunshots. The deceptively quiet tinkle of a tossed grenade against a slick pavement. Silence.
Blood.
Blood.
Blood.
Darkness.
... Death.
"Ryuu! Ryuu, Ryuu, Ry—come on, dude! Snap out of it! Aw—" Noya's noisy utterances quickly devolved into a steady stream of passionate curses as he violently shook Tanaka's shoulders, pressing all of his meager weight in an attempt to unbalance the larger of the two teens from his far-too-stiff position over the street.
In the back of his mind, Tanaka knew he was having some sort of mental breakdown, an episode, a flashback. A moment, and not a pleasant one in the least. Rationally, he knew his fingertips shouldn't be pressing so hard against the unforgiving roughness of the pavement, nor should his hunched shoulders be so tightly coiled that his triceps groaned from the pressure. His chin shouldn't be bowed all the way down against his chest for so long.
And his lungs definitely shouldn't be devoid of oxygen for this long.
Release! Ryuu, release! Whether the voice commanding him to let go of the agony gripping him was Noya or his own more sensible self was a mystery to Tanaka, but either way it was suggesting the impossible, it seemed.
Right now, he was about three years in the past, five hundred miles away, and one hundred percent fearing for his life.
In the midst of one of a major city's most infamous—and violent—gang fights.
For a solid four hours, memory and thought were equally hazy, the exciting rush of adrenaline tempered only by the gut-wrenching terror of imminent death.
It was here, right now, that Tanaka Ryuunosuke had killed a man. Shot him. Point blank, with a stolen Ruger pistol and a borrowed replacement cartridge after his first few shots went awry in the chaos.
He'd dropped a guy with one shot, right between the eyes, an inch below the eyebrow line.
The impact of the bullet hadn't been quite like the movies, Tanaka remembered. It had numbly surprised him, how the high speed of the tiny, pointed metal bead collided with the hard bone of the skull, breaking through to the brain and releasing a somewhat awe-inspiring outburst of blood.
Blood that splattered against his own face.
Dripped down the end of his nose.
Trickled down over his cheek.
Plopped slowly on his white-knuckled grip on the pistol, still in his hand.
The smell, metallic, sharp and soft simultaneously, wafting into his nostrils and making his head dizzy.
The slow collapse of a lifeless corpse, blown head thudding loudly against the pavement right before thirteen-year-old Tanaka's eyes.
Times like these weren't simply ignored.
For Noya to say anything otherwise was... an insult. And kinda stupid too, to be honest.
Because times like these claimed you. Remade you. Morphed you, twisted you, stacked and painted and straightened and collapsed you, like poker cards on a hardwood desk. Times like these added protection, too. Each night jolting awake in a cold, trembling sweat added layer after raw layer of hard carapace that wrapped around you and your world like netting on a spider's web. Nothing could really get in, and nothing could really get out.
A wall, an iron wall greater and mightier than even Aoba Johsai's long-armed blocking.
It'd carried Tanaka this far, and it would carry him further, he figured. Why mess with what worked?
The alternative was insanity. Agony. Pain. Fear. An open wound free for stabbing shards of self-loathing to tear him apart from the inside. Nobody wanted that, least of all the very perpetrator of the issues rising to the surface.
While present Tanaka worked to get a grip that afternoon on the pavement beside his best friend, the Tanaka of three years past slowly lowered the gun in hand, intentionally returning the safety to its resting position, and placed it on the ground. Unblinking and unthinking, he'd backed up, turned away, and began to walk, miraculously surviving a two-sided frenzy of bullets piercing the very air he'd breathed. He'd managed to leave the site of the battleground, ventured up a quiet alley, and walked all the way home to wash up.
After all, he had school the very next day.
Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD): a mental health condition that's triggered by a terrifying event — either experiencing it or witnessing it. Symptoms may include flashbacks, nightmares and severe anxiety, as well as uncontrollable thoughts about the event.
A.N. This is a story exploring Tanaka's past and how it affects him in the present! I'll admit, I haven't read the manga much, just watched the anime mostly, so this might be seen as an AU - I don't know what we know about Tanaka. But seeing his character in the show had me thinking what life must have been like to forge such an iron-willed "tough guy"... And this is the result!
I'm curious about what you think ~ please review!