I apologize for how long this chapter took to post. I rewrote most of it several times, and then life got busy, and then I rewrote it several more times. XD

I hope this version is to your liking :)

Lunar Eclipse

Chapter Five

Amaya opened the kitchen door to find Sugawara and Ukai standing at the threshold. She noticed that Sugawara looked like a drowned rat, and there was blood seeping from what appeared to be napkins of some sort wrapped around his hands. Ukai, she noticed, wore the face of a man who had not had nearly enough sleep, alcohol, tobacco, or any combination of the three.

"Sugawara, honey, what happened?" He looked at her, opened his mouth to speak, and then fell strangely silent. What would he tell her? That he lost his temper, or more accurately, his mind? That he screamed furiously into the rain and wind? That he punched a road? Was there a way to tell her what happened without sounding like he'd taken a nosedive off the deep end of the swimming pool of insanity?

Sugawara looked at this woman, wondering what he would say to her, when he suddenly realized that this was the woman who raised Tsukishima. His teammate's attitude was uncaring, often crossing the line into rude and hurtful. He didn't know why, but he'd always imagined a person like that would have parents who were just as harsh and critical. An attitude like that had to come from somewhere, right? But this woman was none of those things. He could tell from her words, the tonal quality of her voice... this woman was gentle, and she cared about Sugawara's well-being and seemed to genuinely worry about whether or not he was okay. He felt her gaze dig into him, her chocolate brown eyes push through his mental defenses. It was persistent, but it wasn't in any way negative. Questioning and comforting, it was a gaze that could never judge him - a mother's gaze.

"You don't have to tell me now. I have a first aid kit and some towels in the bathroom. Let's get you patched up and dried off." She took his wrists in a brief moment of motherly attentiveness, careful not to disturb his injured knuckles, and led the way toward the bathroom. Sugawara followed. When he'd looked into her eyes, he'd noticed how red and puffy they were, bloodshot, the surrounding skin raw, and he once again felt indescribably guilty. She'd been crying, bitterly - probably just before he and Ukai had knocked on the door. How in the world could he tell this woman that, no more than an hour and a half ago, he'd cleaned her son's blood off his hands?

It was at that point Akiteru entered the kitchen, accompanied by Officer Hashimoto. The officer gave Akiteru a quick glance of dismissal and crossed the room to Ukai on his way out through the kitchen door. He paused, leaning into Ukai's ear, and spoke softly.

"I'm going to let them have their time to compose themselves, but whenever you all are ready to go to the hospital, I'll be waiting in the car to give you an escort."

"Thank-you, sir." Officer Hashimoto nodded and left.

"Sorry about her." Ukai turned to Akiteru. He noticed the young man's face looked tired and worn, bags hung under his eyes, the eyes themselves faintly bloodshot. He was leaning on the edge of the counter next to the archway between the kitchen and the hallway, as if he simply didn't have the energy to stand upright, yet every muscle in his body was still tense, as if he was pushing through the night on willpower - or anxiety - alone.

"She's just found out about Kei, so she's trying to compensate for her fear by mothering everyone she comes in contact with."

"He needs it, though. He's been through hell." Akiteru's face took a grim turn.

"Did he see it? What happened to my brother?" Ukai paused for a moment.

"You know what? Let's go outside and talk for a bit. I need a smoke." The two men went out to the backyard.

Moonlight illuminated the Tsukishimas' backyard. An old basketball hoop stood off to one side, dirt caked in its base and small patches of rust decorating the hoop and backboard. If Ukai bothered to look closely enough, he could see tiny drops of water from the night's rainfall covering the backboard and pole. An old oak tree stood off to the other side of the yard, rain dripping from its numerous rich green leaves. The area was soaked, but it wasn't still. He'd expected the fresh clean scent of nature after the storm, but that wasn't what he'd found in the Tsukishima's yard. It was rustling, gently rustling. The air was energized ever so faintly with the delicate destruction of electricity. It was the eye of a storm.

Ukai sat on the the stoop as he took his lighter and cigarettes from his pocket. He could feel the standing water from the rain soak through his sweats, but after all the shit he'd been through tonight, he simply couldn't bring himself to care. He shook a cigarette out of the pack and put it in his mouth, letting the bulk of it hang lightly from his lips. With one quick flick of his thumb, he turned on the lighter, letting the flame dance in front of his face before putting it to the cigarette. With a sigh of relief, Ukai exhaled and freed the smoke from his lungs, stuffing the box and lighter back into his pocket.

Akiteru paced around the backyard, arms folded in front of him as Ukai smoked.

"Sit down. You're making me nervous just watching you." Akiteru crossed back to the stoop and sat down beside the coach. Ukai spent several seconds sitting in silence, letting the nicotine calm his nerves.

"So, Sugawara saw the incident? He saw my brother get shot?" Ukai responded without meeting the younger man's gaze.

"He won't tell me what he saw. Yamaguchi got some bad news from his family and had to leave practice early. Sugawara felt bad that Tsukishima was going to walk home alone and offered to walk with him instead. I left at that point because the third years had almost finished cleaning up, but a couple hours later, I got a frantic call from Sugawara telling me that your brother had been shot and was in the hospital. Sugawara was a mess, so I drove to the hospital to get him. He hasn't told me what happened in between, but he had a breakdown on the way here. I wish I knew what was going on inside his head."

Akiteru hung his head for a few seconds, letting himself soak in the weight of the situation. He stood without meeting Ukai's eye, picked up a volleyball sitting in the grass by the basketball hoop, and began to bounce the ball off the backboard. He caught it each time, feeling the weight of the ball in his hands. There was a familiar comfort in its soft, yet firm exterior, in the water from the recent rain dampening the material, in the creases that formed the sturdy seams that held everything together. It was a weight he'd felt many times, for many years. He tried to focus on volleyball, on the good memories. The sting in his hand when he hit the ball as hard as he could, the satisfying thump as it hit the floor on his opponents' side of the net. The boisterous cheers of the crowd. He tried to focus on all the things that made him happy, and none of the ones that threatened to tear down his entire world. He desperately defended the barriers of his conscious thought from the invading idea that his little brother, the one who may never forgive him, could die tonight. He wondered how his mother was holding up. He caught the ball one final time, holding it so firmly between his hands that for a split second, he had the ridiculous thought that it might pop. He snapped back into reality, letting the ball fall from his hands and roll into the wet grass.

"Listen...I have to know...and I don't know if you'd know this, but I need to ask...How gruesome was it? I mean...Did Kei know what was happening? Was he in any pain? Because I...I just need to know that my baby brother isn't suffering... that he lost consciousness before he was in any pain."

Ukai finally looked up at the younger man to see a face on the brink of emotional collapse. He's trying so hard to be strong. I wonder where their father is? Akiteru was teetering on the edge of losing his mind, or at the very least his control, and Ukai knew that any minute the tears that had begun to play at the corners of his eyes would burst through the barriers of their prison. He chose his words carefully.

"I wish I could answer that. I guess it would depend on where he was shot. There are a lot of gunshot wounds that I would imagine would leave the victim conscious, sometimes for...extensive periods of time. I'm sorry. But that's a question for Sugawara."

Ukai gave Akiteru a sideways look as the young man completely turned his back on the coach. Ukai removed the cigarette from his mouth, routinely tapping the end, and watched the burnt side disintegrate from the cigarette and disappear into the ground. He let it sit between his fingers, allowing the familiar sensation to block the general unease that threatened his borrowed peace. The next time Akiteru opened his mouth, his voice was thready and strained.

"No problem, that's fine. All in due time, I guess. Speaking of Sugawara, I'll go see if my mother has smothered him yet." Akiteru re-entered the house, leaving Ukai with nothing but the electricity of the air to keep him company.

Sugawara let out a pained squeal as he flinched away from Amaya's reach.

"I'm sorry, honey. This'll sting a bit." Amaya dabbed Sugawara's knuckles again with the rubbing alcohol-soaked cotton ball.

Sugawara sat on the toilet lid, a towel wrapped around his head, drying his hair, and a blanket around his shoulders. A small bathroom heater sat in the far corner of the tiny room, glowing orange and releasing so much heat that it had begun to steam the mirror above the sink to Sugawara's left. Amaya sat on the edge of the bathtub directly on Sugawara's right. Various bathroom-typical medical supplies littered the carpet at her feet, ace bandages, regular band-aids, a bottle of rubbing alcohol, and tape, among other things. Amaya was holding Sugawara's right hand in hers, bloody knuckles exposed, barely oozing, a scab only just beginning to form over the open skin. As Sugawara hissed through his teeth, Amaya dabbed the injured hand clean, picked up the necessary supplies from the floor, and began to bandage the hand.

"I can't thank you enough, Mrs. Tsukishima." He managed once Amaya had finished pouring alcohol over the open wound and began to wrap it in gauze.

"Oh, don't worry about it, Koushi. I have two sons who've both played sports all their lives. How often do you think I've sat here and done this?"

Sugawara thought back to his own childhood, playing volleyball in his driveway with the neighborhood kids. He remembered all the times he'd scraped his knees going for a receive, all the times he sat in his bathroom with his own mother as she cleaned him up. He almost longed for that childhood, to reclaim that kind of innocence. He'd give anything to have it back after tonight. It was hard to imagine Tsukishima as a little kid in this exact spot, taking his place. He wondered if he'd just been born with the unending scowl that seemed to be permanently plastered on his face, ingrained in every expression, or if there was ever a time when Tsukishima knew how to be happy. Even the thought of his teammate's childhood sent an overwhelming wave of guilt cascading through Sugawara's body.

Amaya quickly finished patching up both hands.

"There you go, dear. Try not to hit them off anything, or they'll start bleeding again." Amaya stood, gathering the leftover supplies in her arms and took them to the sink, setting them on the ledge. She opened the medicine cabinet behind the mirror and, one by one, she put them away.

"Mrs. Tsukishima, I...I need to tell you something." Amaya put the last item in the medicine cabinet and turned to look at Sugawara.

"What is it, dear?"

Sugawara was shivering. The room was beyond humid now, the little heater having all but filled the room with steam. The bathroom felt like a boiling summer day in Tokyo, but the young setter's arms were still covered in goosebumps.

"I...I thought a lot tonight about what happened to Tsukishima, about what I saw, about what I went through tonight, and I keep trying to figure out why I feel so guilty about the whole thing. It wasn't my fault. I didn't decide to hold up the store, I didn't bring in the gun, I didn't pull the trigger, but I still feel it was my fault. I know that somewhere, I shouldn't feel guilty, but I don't believe it. So I've been trying to figure out why, and...and I think I have."

As Sugawara reached the end of his speech, his voice became increasingly shaky, his face contorting into more and more pain. He could feel the emotion rising in the back of his throat. His breathing sped up, and his heart raced. His tongue felt heavy with the the added weight of all the words he was dying to say. Amaya responded with earth-shattering calm.

"Why do you feel it's your fault, Koushi?" As Sugawara prepared himself for the answer he was about to give, he began to cry, his voice broken up between sniffles and gasps for breath.

"Because... Because it should have been me! It was my idea to go into the store! I put him there. I said I'd walk him home, that I'd get him home safely. That responsibility was mine! If anyone should have taken that bullet it should have been me!"

At those words, Amaya got very quiet, giving Sugawara time to calm himself down. As the young man's breathing finally began to return to normal, she spoke again in a tense voice.

"Less than five minutes before you entered this house I asked a police officer if my son was dead. Could you imagine your own mother doing the same? Could you picture her frantically pacing around your hospital room, wondering if she'll ever get to see you open your eyes, or smile again? Or worse, could you picture her crying at your funeral? A parent should never have to bury their own child, Koushi. Kei may die tonight. If he does, I will have to live with that for the rest of my life. But I would never wish that grief on another parent, and you shouldn't either. Especially not your own."

"But I'm so guilty! I hate myself for not being able to stop it!"

"Koushi, honey, look at me." Amaya knelt beside the young man, taking his face in her hands, "Nothing you did could have stopped this from happening. The gunman made the decision to rob the store tonight. He made the decision to pull the trigger. There was nothing you could have done to stop him."

"But how do you know? You weren't there. You didn't see it." Amaya took Sugawara's hands in hers and began to rub large, soothing circles into his palms in an attempt to calm his nerves.

"Because you are a sweet, gentle young man, and you would never do anything to hurt Kei, or anyone else. What you need to remember right now, is that just because you got away from the situation unhurt does not make your life worth any less than my son's. Right now, I'm taking solace in the fact that you weren't hurt, too, and you should do the same. How would your team react if you both had been injured?"

"My team...I still need to tell them..."

"Don't think about that. Think only about what you're going to do right now. You are going to the hospital with us to see Kei, right?"

"Yes. ma'am."

"Then let's go."

"Oh, Mrs. Tsukishima?"

"Yes, dear?"

"When we get to the hospital...I need to tell you what happened."

The pair heard a small creak as the bathroom door swung open to reveal Akiteru standing sheepishly in the hallway.

Goodness, that was a hard chapter to get out of my system. Any constructive criticism is greatly appreciated.