A/N: Prompt for this chapter is lame. Because these two idiots took years to actually talk to each other lol. And a special Tatsuya chapter!

Dripping Water
Chapter 16 - wall of regrets (Tatsuya)

Taiki suddenly felt exposed, especially when Akari's wave attracted the crowd of adults. They pointed at him, then at the pair at the track, and Taiki didn't doubt at all their attention had been grabbed.

Probably on purpose, because that attention was like a tether that would keep him there.

.

Tatsuya saw instantly that something had changed. The track tended to be quite quiet when they used it, but there were occasionally others there doing their own thing. That was fine and it was pretty easy to ignore them and be ignored in return. The harder thing was the spectators that sometimes showed up, but they thought whatever they thought and watched whatever they watched and at some point wandered off and never really spoke to him and that was okay as well. And then there the few who would hang around. Old classmates who wanted to catch up and that was always the most awkward, because there was a mix of awe and pity and neither of those belonged on the face or in the voice of an old classmate. And then there were complete strangers who were sometimes well meaning, sometimes nice and sometimes satisfying their own curiosity.

But Tatsuya wanted to run again and that all came with it.

And then there was Kiriha Aunoma who'd been interesting. He'd reminded him a bit of Taiki, and he'd known Taiki as well: he'd asked about him. And maybe Tatsuya had been a little harsh but he'd been reminded, again, that he hadn't seen or heard from Taiki since their elementary school days and even though he knew the reason behind that, even though Taiki's little gestures reached him, the distance had still hurt as much as his legs unable to move had hurt. But he'd had an inkling that Taiki would sometimes show up on the track with the other spectators, nameless and faceless and vanishing with the crowd and Tatsuya had never looked, never wanted to look, for his own reasons, and so he'd never looked.

He wondered what it was that made Kiriha disappointed in Taiki? He wondered what sort of relationship they shared together. Not friends, he thought. Not enemies either. Rivals, maybe? Or maybe he looked up to Taiki as well, except for this one flaw.

And he wondered what Kiriha had been thinking about, asking those questions. A corporate takeover from step-siblings. A wistful look behind hardened eyes. He wondered if that was as specific an example as it sounded like: had his parents' company been taken over by step-siblings and he'd been left unjustly with nothing? Or maybe it was just hypothetical… but Tatsuya didn't think so. He'd spent a lot of time around other patients: in hospital, in rehab, in programmes like this… He'd gotten good at reading people.

And maybe he could have taken the initiative himself and gone to Taiki, but he looked up to him and that made it harder. That meant shattering that image with his own hands instead of waiting and hoping that, one day, Taiki would come himself and he'd be able to patch it all together.

Well, Taiki was here now. Standing at the edge of the pitch, looking at the stands but oh so very tense, like he knew whose eyes were boring into his shoulder blades.

Then he took a deep, shuddering breath and turned around.

And Tatsuya could only stare at him, because Taiki looked so different than the last time he'd gotten a good look at him, and it wasn't just the mask and the scarf.

'Shall I leave you two alone for a bit?' his physiotherapist asked.

'Please,' Tatsuya replied. But that only made things more awkward when he and Taiki stared at each other with no-one on either side to buffer them.

Then Taiki took another deep breath and waved awkwardly.

Tatsuya wanted to face-palm but his own heart was pattering away now. It was easy to think things while alone, to say things to other people… and a totally different matter when Taiki was right there. He raised his arm and gave a little floppy wave as well.

Taiki's shoulders relaxed a bit and he made his way over. And stopped a little short of Tatsuya's wheelchair. 'I-' His voice was croaky, as though he had a cold.

He waited for years and couldn't wait through a cold?

Then Taiki bowed suddenly, almost hitting his head on the wheelchair. 'I'm sorry,' he burst out… and just like that, the words came out like a flood. 'I shouldn't have avoided you like that! I was so sure it was my fault, that you blamed me, that I wound up undermining your own dream and determination for it.'

And Tatsuya was surprised, because after all this time, he was so sure Taiki didn't get it, wouldn't get it…

Tatsuya stood up. He could do that for short periods of time now but even if he couldn't, it was worth the look on Taiki's face. 'I'm fine, see?' he said. 'I can walk a bit. One day, I'll run as well. And medicine's advancing. They might find a cure before I turn twenty. And even if they don't, they might find something to make us live longer, and then find a cure down the road. Look at the cystic fibrosis kids, after all. Used to be a death sentence. Now a good many of them can live as long as us.'

Taiki blinked at him, then he shook his head and smiled. 'I don't get it,' he said honestly. 'I know sports and apparently war strategies, but not so much about medicine.'

Tatsuya sat back down again. He still had walking to do, after all. 'You pick it up,' he replied. Just as Taiki had picked up the sports knowledge from his father. 'Taiki… if you knew, why didn't you come sooner?'

'I didn't know.' Taiki's cheeks flushed behind the mask. 'It took… a lot happening before I figured it out, and then it was a matter of facing something I'd been avoiding all these years… which I haven't really faced.'

'Your own dream?' Tatsuya asked.

Taiki blinked in surprise.

'It's not hard to guess.' Tatsuya shrugged. 'Sure, we never went and saw each other, but you're pretty popular. People talk about you. Including this guy I'd never met before called Kiriha…'

'You've talked with Kiriha?' Taiki sounded surprised at that.

'A bit.' Tatsuya shrugged. 'Something about a corporate takeover… and about you.'

'Of course. Kiriha and I are… rivals, I suppose.'

Rivals. So he had guessed right.

'He sounded like he didn't want to be impressed with you,' Tatsuya explained. 'Like how you think of your idols with a single glaring flaw.' His own cheeks grew pink at that. 'I was all ready to yell at you, you know. All those years ago. Because I was sure you'd blame yourself because that was the kind of person you were, but you're also brave and strong so I was sure you'd have come and visited me, or found me after I got out. But you didn't. Instead you actively avoided me and I wondered for a while if it was out of malice because you quit the track team too… but you didn't want to run like I did. You just happened to be good at it, good at most sports. And then I heard about you, how you'd help out all the sports teams but never stay with anyone, and I wondered if I'd destroyed something for you.'

'I was the one who destroyed something,' said Taiki, looking into his scarf. 'I thought that if I hadn't told you that when we tried out for the track team, you wouldn't have fallen in love with running and you wouldn't have wound up in a wheelchair. But now I know. You come back here, even now. You want to run, even now. It was a dream worth falling for, and if you can say it was worth the price, then who is anyone else to say otherwise?'

'Taiki…' Tatsuya closed his eyes, because that painted him in too selfless a picture.

'And yet…' Taiki continued. 'No dream is really by itself. There's still your parents. The doctors. Your classmates at the time…'

'You,' Tatsuya continued. 'Right. It's not a dream that only affects me and it's not a price I paid that only affects me, but I still don't regret it because, as you said, it was worth falling in love with.' He opened his eyes again and smiled. 'You'll find a dream like that too, one day. Or many dreams. Who said we got one dream only?'

'Who said?' Taiki repeated, with a smile of his own crinkling through his mask. He made a move as though to sit on the grass, but caught himself. 'I thought all sorts of things. That you hated me. That you blamed me. That you were going to yell at me and say you never wanted to see me again and then that'd be that. That seeing me would only hurt because it'd remind you that you couldn't run with us on the track anymore. That seeing you would make me feel guilty and powerless and that's why I started helping out all the sports teams but really, that only meant I was the one pushing myself instead. I was lucky, though. I've been lucky. I get dizzy a lot. Anaemic sometimes. Sometimes my electrolytes go out of whack but 'kaa-san watches out for that and Akari's always carrying drinks and a pillow and because I had them watching over me, I was careless. And then it was suddenly more than just helping the sports teams. Suddenly lives were at stake and everyone was depending on me and I could only fight the way I knew how, saving everyone without sacrificing anyone along the way. And Kiriha's the total opposite. Or was. Seemed like he was. He'd sacrifice all his pieces on the board so long as his king won… but that's not quite true, and if I need to sacrifice a piece I can, depending on the piece, even though it hurts and I don't want to at all…'

'But some pieces are more important than others. Some things are non-negotiable.' Tatsuya nodded. 'I wondered, you know, what sort of dream you'd wind up having. You were and still are a jack of all trades but something will click one day and you won't want to leave, but even in the meantime there's a hierarchy of things and you still follow it. Like Akari-san, right?'

'What about Akari?' Taiki asked, thrown by the sudden change in conversation.

Tatsuya waved towards the stands. 'You're walking around with her wrapped in a scarf and face mask,' he said. 'And it's well after school on a school day.'

'It is,' Taiki admitted. 'She's… my moral support. And a close friend. She looks out for me. Says she does it so I can look out for the rest of the world. And Zenjirou covers me and Kiriha pushes me forward. I'm really lucky to have all of them.'

'You are,' Tatsuya agreed. 'But I think I stopped being jealous of you when I realised you haven't found a dream to bodily throw yourself into yet. You'll shine brightly when you do.'

And in the far more comfortable silence that followed, Tatsuya added. 'I was going to yell at you, you know, but you managed to hit the nail right on the head.'

'With a lot of help,' Taiki protested. 'I tried to get you magically healed, you know.'

That made no sense to Tatsuya at all, but some things were just like that.

'I guess that just makes the cure more valuable, when they find it. I wonder how much less things would weigh, if they were gone with the wave of a wand.'

'Magic isn't omnipresent anyway,' Taiki sighed. 'Sometimes you can see overwhelming power and forget that, but it's not. We've lost enemies and friends. We've lost places: homes, sometimes entire zones, and the zone's Code Crown can't return them. I wonder what limits whole Code Crown will have as well…' He shook his head. 'I must sound like I'm talking nonsense.'

'A little.' Tatsuya smiled. 'It sounds important to you, though.'

'It is. It's the dream of another close friend.' Taiki sounded like he wanted to say more, but he didn't. There was probably a lot more to the story, Tatsuya mused. Things that he didn't want to say. Things maybe he couldn't say. Or maybe there was a barrier that time still needed to fix… but it didn't really feel like that. More like something he needed to experience for himself to grasp.

'I was waiting,' Tatsuya admitted. 'I could have visited you too, because I knew for the most part you'd be blaming yourself, but I didn't, even when I was okay facing the track again. I didn't want to be the one to take that step, because that meant taking you down from that pedestal I'd set you on.'

'We're friends,' Taiki protested. 'Nobody should be on a pedestal.' He paused, then added, 'and neither of should have let so much time pass by, either. But we did.'

'We are friends,' Tatsuya smiled. 'Friends have rough spots sometimes too. And they grow from it. We've both grown, right?'

'…yeah, that's right. We have grown. And that's another thing that doesn't come free.'

'It doesn't.'