Fandom: Prince of Tennis / Tennis no Oujisama
Title: The only way is up.
Pairing: Tezuka + Ryouma
Rating: PG
Description: (AU) Ryouma is now a little older and a little wiser, but Tezuka is asking him to play one more match with him. What has Tezuka got to teach him this time 'round? (Tezuka and Ryouma pairing)

Disclaimer: Yui doesn't own Prince of Tennis.

I looked into those eyes with a frustration that I could never express to anyone. They couldn't possibly have understood what it meant to truly lose inside.

When I looked at those eyes, I became stronger and weaker at the same time.

It was the same as the first time we had a match years ago.
I was kneeling on the ground looking at him as the sun was setting behind him. His purple eyes never gave off any air of arrogance and his form was never intimidating.

At the same time I learned something about him, I always learned something about myself.

The only way is up.
by miyamoto yui

"Going out on a date?" my old man said as I walked down the stairs with my tennis rackets in hand. I looked at him and tried to hide the confusion I held inside of me.

When he asked me years ago where I'd been one particular afternoon, he said, "Did you go on a date?"
The answer, then or now, came out the same: "Kind of."

"Ah," he answered as he lifted up his chin with a wink. "Good luck."
"Ittekimasu," I replied with an indifferent smile while putting on my shoes.
I pulled the rim of my hat and left without another word.

The sun wasn't even pushing through the clouds yet, but I was already walking out my front gate with my hand firmly grasping onto the strap as if it could melt into my skin.
Was it like this the last few times? No, everything was always different. The circumstances and situations were always changing and our characters were growing at the same time.

I was far from the person you first met in middle school.

So someone please tell me, why is it that after all this time, my insides feel so twisted? After so many victories and losses, why do I still feel the same as when I first faced you on that afternoon at 3pm?
Tell me why I feel like I'm going to gain and lose myself while you're watching me with those eyes of yours?

And all over again, I'm going to get one step closer and you're going to be one step farther than me.
I'll lose...in every area I know...

And I'll lose you all over again.

I shook my head as I walked into the fog with my footsteps echoing wherever there were walls. I felt like I was the only one on this road and was all alone because that was the path I'd chosen to live.

I looked up at the steps before me and the fog appeared to be carrying me off somewhere out of this world and out of this place that I've come to. What the hell happened to me and where was I?

"This is your fault, Kunimitsu," I whispered to myself out of spite as I felt a pinch on my heart.

The fog cleared a bit as I walked up to find him standing at the top as calm as ever. With his arms crossed, he looked down at me with an intensity that never let me breathe.
"What is my fault, Ryouma?" he asked me.

I turned my head away out of embarrassment as the tapping of my shoes on the pavement seemed to become louder and louder to me. My face was becoming a little warm and I didn't want to show him the effect he still had on me whenever he looked at me.

It was pathetic, wasn't it? What did you do to me whenever you played against me?

You wanted to show me something, but in the process, you were grounding my heart into the dirt with your white racket.

I didn't turn my head as I stood next to him while looking forward. "I'm here."
"Ah," he said as he turned around while we walked side-by-side.
"Mada mada da ne, ka?" I remembered him saying before his match with Atobe from Hyoutei.
I hated the way Kunimitsu would never talk whenever it was important. He felt that it was enough to just show whatever he needed to, but it drove me crazy.

If he never reacted to anything, how was I supposed to know what happened in the first place?

I unzipped my bag as I took out my black racket. I bought it after he left because if his was white, then I was going to be black. He made me his equal, but I still felt insufficient inside.
He took out his white racket and we decided who was going to serve. This time, it was his turn.

As we played, I looked at him and I could still feel the tension. The distance was still too great for me.
There was still something I had to learn from him and that was why he'd disrupted my life and placed himself inside of it once more.

Why am I here? Why are you playing me?

Thwack. Thwack. Thwack...
So many emotions, so many memories, so many things were running through my head as I played against him. My body remembered the sweetness of the pain of playing this powerful opponent. My mind was psyched and fatigued simultaneously by his mental exercises.

But I was holding everything in. My frustration and my passion for both tennis and the person in front of me were blinding me.
I wanted to shout, but my silent screaming could only be heard with a 'thwack' of the neon green balls that went over the net.

I wanted him to know what it felt like to be watched by someone like him...
That things never made sense and they made perfect sense at the same time...
That being pulled into the Tezuka Zone didn't only mean sacrificing your game...

You were being torn away from your own soul.
That's what you did to me, Kunimitsu.

By the end of the match, I hit one ball into his court and the ball made a mark on his right cheek. It was a thin line of red shining at me as I fell to the ground.
Yes, I had to admit it was petty, but it was my own mark on him. A 1/10th of the infliction he made on me within the recesses of my being.
I wanted you to know what I suffered through you. Even this much...

This time, I was breathing heavily as the sweat poured to the ground. I'd dropped my racket and put my palms out onto the green tennis court while not looking at him.
Either way I looked, the sky, the ground, or Kunimitsu's eyes, I wouldn't be able to breathe because they were all pushing into me and inside of my heart.

"Good work," he told me as I heard the smile of satisfaction in his tone.
"Why..." I told him as I kept my hands on the ground and my eyes closed, "Why are you always interrupting my life? You think you're helping me out and it does, but..."
I opened my eyes as I stood up and watched him carefully, returning the intensity that was burning through me and eating me alive. "...you're selfish too, Tezuka-buchou."

When we were on the tennis court, I couldn't refer to him in any other way.

"Why do you always go out of your way to help me?" I stepped forward and then pulled on his collar. "And then you leave me all over again!"
"Echizen..." he started to say with that monotonous voice of his, but I interrupted him. "THIS is what I always wanted to say to you. And now that I've said it, it still doesn't get a reaction out of you."
I let go of his collar with a shaky hand. Quietly, I took up my racket and walked over to my bag while feeling his eyes look through me.

"I have grown with you, and I've grown without you." I had my back to him as I stood at the fenced door. "Thank you for everything."
I looked back and gave him a bittersweet smile. "I now understand that it was all for Seigaku and for me to grow as a tennis player."
Blinking, I tried my best not to give into the tears. "But you never really thought about me. As for me, I came back to you each time you called me out because I wanted to learn and I hoped you noticed me by then."

Then, I walked out with the strap tightly in my hand as I hurtfully said, "I never needed you, Tezuka-buchou. You just kept on pushing through me."

"And that's the way it should be," Tezuka-buchou answered behind me while I walked on.

I was drawn to you each time I played with you. And the more and more you asked me, the more and more I was aware that I was in this tangled web of two Ryouma's fighting at the same time.
The player who was confident on the court and the person who buried his feelings deep inside were residing in the same body until it tore him apart. They only came together when you played him, Tezuka-buchou, and only you understood this.

You and you alone.

The more you pushed someone away, the more they took a hold of you. That's what you taught me today.
You're a cruel person.

Whenever I play someone, I always see you going further and further, no matter what I try...

"What can you do with an opponent who's evolving?" you asked on the Seigaku courts.
At the same courts, you also told me, "I'm sorry." All my questions were answered the more I watched you and Fuji-sempai together.

And yet, the stubborn person in me never wanted to give up. Wasn't this a curse too?

For every win, there was a loss somewhere else.
You couldn't have everything.

"I will make it without you," I told myself. "I'm not a little kid anymore."

I was already eighteen after all. I'll show you!

The fog disappeared and I blinked my eyes to find you were at the bottom of the stairs, staring up at me with those purple eyes of yours. Indifferently, I shrugged my shoulders and walked down the walkway with my head up.
When I was almost at the bottom, you bothered to take something out of your bag and threw it to my feet. It was your Seigaku jacket with your name etched on it.

I looked at you and I became annoyed.

You weren't going to make this easy on me?

You're always like that to me...
Why do you always make things harder for me?

I snapped, "Well, what the hell do you want me to do with this?"

Your face expression didn't change, but the more I looked at you, I realized I'd never looked at you eye-to-eye before. Certainly, I'd never looked at you for this long either.

I thought I was going to be swallowed alive whenever you looked at me, that's why.

Also, those eyes that stared back at me never lied to me...
…so why did I see something there? As if you were holding something back?

The confident captain I had seen years ago was evolving in this very spot, even as we stood there motionless.

"I want you to have it." He told me. His eyes didn't blink at all.
I took up the jacket and shook my head. "You always have to make life hard for me, don't you, Tezuka-buchou? Is this your parting gift?"
Laughing mockingly, I smiled at him with even more bitterness. "I don't need your pity."

As I was about to throw it back to him, he took my hand and pushed the jacket towards my chest. His warm hand didn't let go though. Still pressing on my hand and the jacket, he looked at me and said, "Please forgive me."
"What?" My anger left me as I looked at him in shock.

"I am a selfish person. I played each game with you because I wanted to discover aspects of myself. People kept on looking at me for answers, but where were the answers to my questions? They were with you. But in the process of trying to impose my passion for tennis on you, I wanted to embed myself within you, so that you wouldn't ever forget me. No matter how far you went."

So...you did understand me all along?

And you were suffering for both of our sakes?
Why do you always do this to me? Why do you do it for me?

At that moment, his eyes began to fill with tears. "Even at the cost of you hating me as much as you do now."
"I don't," I simply replied, looking at him with worried eyes as he pulled away from me.
"I waited for this moment for a long time," he said to me. "No matter what the costs were, I wanted to come to this point with you. I wanted to tell you on this day..."
I looked at him in astonishment.

What were you saying? Why do you always confuse me before I see things so clearly?

He then smiled at me with those serious eyes that never looked away from me. "I wanted to tell you that you can have everything, Echizen. Even if the world tells you it's impossible, don't believe it! The world is at your fingertips now. Crush it and rebuild it yourself. And then, make your own."
At that moment, we walked side-by-side.

After a few steps, he finally told me, "I'm sorry that you had to wait a long time for me, Echizen."

Then, he pulled my head with his hand and closed his eyes for a moment while we stood at the sidewalk. His cheek was resting on the side of my head. I was turning a little red at his open display of affection, but I didn't care at the moment.

I realized that after all this time, he both watched and understood.
Painfully...

But in the process, he discovered something that I had yet to realize deep within him.

At the same time, something within me was finally silenced. One part of me was complete while the other part would keep on growing...

The two Ryoumas that were having a war within me were finally coming together and melting into one.

+/+/+/+/+/

Days later, there was Tezuka-buchou at the bleachers looking down at me as I proudly wore his Seigaku jacket onto the court.

I smiled widely as I looked at him. Then, I pointed to the sky.

Still pointing to the sky, I glanced at my opponent with my determined cat eyes. Confidently, I said to him with a determined smile,

"The only way is up."

Owari.
-
Author's note: For the past month, I've been on a Prince of Tennis kick and I'm loving it. I hope that I will be able to grow within the fandom as well as its fanfiction realm.
Today my friend asked me, "Why do you watch Prince of Tennis?" I told him, "Because of the captain. I always learn something from him."
The girl who was wrapping my PoT calendar turned to me and asked, "Do you watch this raw?" I nodded and said, "Yes."

I made this story because it's been at the back of my mind. I didn't know if I could execute it correctly, but I was going to give this a try, even if it was an AU.
Even though I felt that I should've done this in the third person omniscient, I wanted to bring out more of Ryouma's mind because we already see what he does and how he speaks. We rarely get a chance to see what he thinks.
And so, I made this fic to show his maturity along with mixed feelings towards Tezuka. I felt that Ryouma grew the most whenever he was with Tezuka.

(I am a dead TxF fan, so you can imagine how difficult it was to break myself of that with this fic.)

Translations:
Ittekimasu – A greeting said when someone is leaving their home. "I'm going".

December 28th, 2003