Apologies ahead of time to any Suga fans out there. This chapter will get a little rough, emotionally speaking.

Lunar Eclipse

Chapter Three

Sugawara turned to the man he had been awaiting for the last twenty minutes and immediately collapsed into a sense of relief that morphed into an almost eerie exultation. Finally, the supervisor, the adult, had arrived. The relief was almost enough for the concrete sitting in the center of his chest to crumble. He felt his hands shake once again and recognized it as the unique sensation of his blood running cold. His tortured mind assaulted him with an image of Tsukishima, stained deep red, lying in a heap on a white tile floor. His blood was still. His blood was cold. Tears began to form at the corner of Sugawara's eyes a fraction of a second before he blinked them away, locking up the gruesome image of his teammate with them.

He turned back toward the woman he had been sitting with, this kind stranger who had opened her heart to him, and he smiled faintly.

"Thank-you, ma'am. For what you've done for me today."

"I'm glad to have done it. Everyone needs a shoulder during trying times like these." Sugawara bowed meekly as he stood and walked to Ukai, pausing to finish his lukewarm coffee and dump the cup in a garbage bin on his way through the cafeteria door.

"Who was that?" Ukai asked after the door creaked closed behind them.

"Someone very kind." Sugawara murmured sadly as he kept moving. Ukai could almost swear to a hint of guilt in the young man's face as he passed by the coach. Ukai quickly followed him.

They had spent the last several minutes traversing hallways and riding elevators in heavy silence. Sugawara wore a permanent look of unbridled anguish through the whole trek. It was unbearable for Ukai, watching one of his students torture himself like he so clearly was. But he knew his pain. He could read it on the young man's face.

"Sugawara," he said, his voice gentle, but with a strength underneath, "You need to talk about this." The young setter avoided his gaze, refusing to speak. Ukai sighed, and muttered under his breath.

"I hear you, kid. I hear you."

Minutes later, the pair made their way to Ukai's car, parked haphazardly in the third level parking garage. The wheels sat crooked in the space, as half the car rested across the neatly painted line. Sugawara could feel the breeze from the nearly empty lot force its way through his hair, violating his carefully formed veneer of emotional control. As his brain processed the quick beeping of Ukai unlocking the car, Sugawara felt the wind cut him down to his core. He heard the soft click of the door unlocking; he opened it and pulled himself onto the passenger's seat.

"Where are we going?" he asked his coach, though he knew the answer.

"We're going to talk to Tsukishima's parents. I understand that this is going to be the most difficult thing you've probably ever done, but his family needs to know, and you saw the incident." Sugawara buckled his seat belt and turned to look out the window.

"I'll be there the whole time. I can break the news, but you have to tell the story."

Silence.

"They're his family. They deserve to know what happened to their son."

More silence. Until finally...

"They know."

"They know?"

"I talked to the police. The police probably talked to the family. They know." Ukai paused slightly.

"Well, I'm still taking you to see them. You need to talk about it." Sugawara was silent once more.

Ukai had never seen the poor kid in this kind of pain. He wasn't just quiet, he was lost. He could see it in his eyes, Sugawara was staring out into the street, his eyes reflected in the car window. They were wide. And miles away.

A minute or two later they were on the road. It had started raining, and Sugawara leaned his head against the window, letting the chill of the glass cool the heat of his face. He wished his body would stop tormenting him. His skin was hot to the touch, but his blood was frozen. His mind drifted back to those old Greek stories he'd learned in his western mythology class, the ones about gods and heroes. He remembered that there was once a man named Atlas, whose job it was to hold the sky above the earth, literally carrying the weight of the world. Before he could stop himself, Sugawara felt white hot tears burn the sides of his cheeks. This wasn't a weight he'd wanted, a guilt he'd never asked to bear. Eighteen was too young to be carrying the weight of human life.

Ukai saw the tears. Just as the car came to a stop light, the coach took the opportunity to sneak a quick, sideways glance at the boy, to make sure he was alright, and saw the salt-tinged drops trickle down Sugawara's face. He knew he needed to do something to help, but he didn't know what. He wasn't a parent and had no intention of ever being one. He had no idea how to comfort someone so much younger than he was, how to be the mature adult. Sure babies were easy enough, but teenagers? Who the hell knew how to have a meaningful conversation with a teenager?

Suddenly, Ukai heard a soft sound, a barely audible sniffle, from his passenger. He sighed and pulled off to the side of the road, flipped on his emergency flashers, and unlocked his seat belt so he could move around more freely. However you were supposed to comfort a teenager, he was about to figure it out. Maybe Sugawara needed a more direct approach to snap him out of his funk. He shifted himself to face his student.

"Okay, Sugawara. Right now, you're trying to handle this alone, and I get it. You're a third year, the senpai. You teach them. You're the vice-captain and you feel like you need to lead them, especially Hinata, Kageyama, Yamaguchi, and... Tsukishima because they're first years, right?" Sugawara said nothing, and continued to cry, silent tears rolling harder and faster down his face.

"You're the comfort to Daichi's authority, is that it? So you need to be just as strong as he is. Well, take this from me, Sugawara, this...this silent treatment you're giving me? This isn't being strong. Being strong isn't hiding your emotion, it's dealing with it. The problem won't go away if you ignore it, and you need to stop, or it's gonna tear you to pieces, I guarantee it. So look me in the eye like a man, and tell me what happened."

Outside the window the rain beat harder on the little car, Sugawara listened carefully to its rhythmic tap on the vehicle's exterior. He thought that maybe, somehow, some way, the heartbeat of the rain would calm the heart beating inside his chest. He wondered what the car's exterior felt like, being constantly and consistently assaulted by falling water, by this force over which it had no control.

"I'm sorry, but could I step outside for a minute?" Sugawara asked without looking in Ukai's direction, "I can't breathe very well. I think I need some fresh air." Ukai nodded, surprised that the boy didn't fall apart right there at the harsh-sounding words, turned off the engine, and unlocked the car. Almost immediately, Sugawara released his seat belt and pushed open the door.

Once outside, Sugawara could feel the heat of the pavement, released by the rain, assault his legs. It was like the whole world was too hot, and the rain was the sky's last chance to cool it, to save it, before the heat blew everything on the surface of the earth to tiny pieces. He felt the earth's heat invade his body, take it over, but he was still shivering. He stood, arms and legs outstretched, and tossed his head back to face the sky and everything in it. He opened his mouth and tried to scream, but his chest was tight, like his heart was being squeezed by an invisible snake, slithering around his organs, draining his vitality like a vapor from a smashed pot. He felt like his throat had twisted itself closed.

Sugawara screwed his eyes shut and let the rain pour over his shivering form. The drops of water felt like ice on his burning skin, and if he listened hard enough, he could trick himself into hearing a soft sizzling sound with the contact of each drop. Somewhere in the back of his mind he knew he was soaked to the skin, but he couldn't find it in him to care. As the rain beat faster onto the pavement, Sugawara suddenly felt every ounce of energy he had drain into a puddle with the rain. His knees buckled, and Sugawara fell to the ground, unleashing a mighty outcry that pierced the drum of rainfall.

Ukai knew that Sugawara needed this... whatever it was - the rain, the chill, the open air. There was something devastating inside of him, and whatever happened from here on out, he knew the young man would be better for taking this moment, somehow, with his own two hands, to put the pieces together and set it right inside himself. He wasn't preparing for Sugawara to produce the most agonizing cry of emotion he'd ever heard pass over a person's lips. Quick as a whip, Ukai had flung open the driver's side door and ran around to the other side of the car. In three seconds flat he came upon Sugawara's shuddering form lying on the pavement.

"Sugawara!" he shouted, "Sugawara, are you okay?"

But instead of receiving anything close to an intelligible answer, the coach's ears were greeted with another sound - smaller, almost a whimper.

He took a few steps closer to Sugawara and sat back on his haunches, his mind reeling. What could he do to comfort the poor kid? It wasn't like he'd ever been through anything this soul-crushing. He watched the tears stream down the young man's face, mixing with the rain on the pavement. He could see the flecks of black asphalt dotting his cheeks, watched his tears plaster them to his face. He watched Sugawara pull his knees up to his chest and hold them close, a useless life saver in an ocean of pain. He was soaking wet and still shivering.

"Sugawara, you're going to catch a cold. We don't need you in the hospital, too." He reached out to comfort him when everything released.

Sugawara let go of everything, all the pain he had built up, the concrete crushing his chest, the serpent squeezing his heart. He rolled onto his knees and sobbed horribly into the ground, pounding his fists into the pavement until his knuckles cracked and bled. Ukai rushed forward to stop him from hurting himself any further, but was quickly stopped by Sugawara's yelling.

"Coach, you don't understand! It's my fault! Everything is my fault!"

"How is it your fault?"

"Because I didn't stop it! Because it was my stupid idea that put him in danger in the first place! Because if I hadn't been the worst person alive, Tsukishima wouldn't be fighting for his life! How can I ever face the team again? How can I face Yamaguchi, knowing I killed his best friend? How can I face his family? Akiteru, his brother? How the hell can I hold my head high ever again with the weight of his death on my shoulders? It's all my fault!" The young man screeched and pounded his fists into the ground once more, prompting another, more physically painful yell as blood flowed freely from his hands.

Ukai got on his knees and took Sugawara roughly by the shoulder pulling him up so he was kneeling in front of him. He gave the young man a hard look.

"Listen to me. I don't know what happened. I don't know how Tsukishima got hurt, or where, or why. But I do know that whatever the fuck it was, it was not your goddamn fault. Did you point the gun at him? Did you pull the trigger?" When Sugawara was silent he pressed on.

"I want you to answer me!"

"No." he whispered.

"No you didn't. He isn't dead, and you didn't kill him. You did what you could, and life happened anyway. Whatever the fuck it was that got you two trapped in that hell, you could never have known it was going to happen. This. Is not. Your. Fault. And you need to stop telling yourself that it is."

At that Sugawara collapsed again into the ground, hunched over himself, tears freely flowing.

Ukai reached out, putting what he hoped was a comforting hand on the setter's shoulder. Much to his surprise, Sugawara reached out to him. Taking a hand from the pavement he raised it to his shoulder and held his coach's hand in place. Ukai could feel the young man's firm grip, strengthened by emotion and years of playing volleyball. He watched the blood from his split knuckles mix with the rain and slide off his skin. It was like he could feel Sugawara's pain, every muscle in his shoulder was tightly wired.

"Please. Stay like this for a while," he begged, "I'm not okay. I.. I need this right now." Not quite understanding, but agreeing anyway, Ukai nodded.

"Sure." After several seconds that seemed to drag on like hours, Ukai spoke again.

"You know, I wasn't kidding when I said you were gonna catch a cold. Now that the rain's stopped, let me get a few blankets from my trunk, and you can warm up a bit." Sugawara silently released Ukai's hand. The coach stood, and walked around to the back of the car, unlocking it and lifting the hatch. He returned a few seconds later with several folded yellow blankets. With the blankets tucked under one arm, he offered the other one to Sugawara.

"Here, let me help you up." Sugawara took his hand and stood, shaking.

Several minutes later they were back in the car. Ukai had turned on the car's heating despite the summer warmth to dry off his young passenger. Sugawara was wrapped in blankets, his silver hair plastered to his face, his knuckles bound with some napkins and old pre-wrap. They were off to see Tsukishima's family, where Sugawara would finally confront his demons.

That was a really difficult chapter for me to get out, and it was a bit longer, too. Hope you enjoyed! Any and all constructive criticism is greatly appreciated.