Down the River Styx [Prince of Tennis; Yukimura-centric, drabble_rikkai prompt]
For drabble_rikkai's Free-For-All #1. Prompt; Yukimura-centric; on a trip down the river styx (suggested by vacivity). It's metaphorical! Yukimura in hospital introspection; I'm warning for angst this time ;) 254 Words.
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Sometimes it is hard to tell if the darkness surrounds him because his eyes are closed, or because of the extreme self-loathing.
The hospital is never silent, not even in the dead of night. There are squeaking trolleys pushed down halls, the shuffling feet of overweight nurses, delivery men with packages and medical supplies. He is too far from Accident and Emergency to hear the sirens, the screams, the pleading to know what is happening, what is wrong, just what is going on.
He has echoes enough of that in his own memory to last a lifetime.
Yukimura tosses and turns through his nights in hospital. At least, he would if he could. If he wasn't almost too scared to try and lift an arm or a leg only to discover it wasn't responding to his will. Really, he simply does not sleep. Doing a whole lot of nothing does not leave him feeling at all exhausted at the end of each day.
When the time is late enough for silence to creep as close as it ever will in this place, Yukimura hears worse things than crying and whimpering from pain. He hears the reassuring thud of a tennis ball, he hears a racket whipped confidently through the air, he hears the repetitions, the grunts and groans of effort. He hears feet running in all directions to return a ball.
The only explanation he has for something like this, something so unexplainable to happen, is that his pride was too high.
Past tense.
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Sometimes it is hard to tell if the darkness surrounds him because his eyes are closed, or because of the extreme self-loathing.
The hospital is never silent, not even in the dead of night. There are squeaking trolleys pushed down halls, the shuffling feet of overweight nurses, delivery men with packages and medical supplies. He is too far from Accident and Emergency to hear the sirens, the screams, the pleading to know what is happening, what is wrong, just what is going on.
He has echoes enough of that in his own memory to last a lifetime.
Yukimura tosses and turns through his nights in hospital. At least, he would if he could. If he wasn't almost too scared to try and lift an arm or a leg only to discover it wasn't responding to his will. Really, he simply does not sleep. Doing a whole lot of nothing does not leave him feeling at all exhausted at the end of each day.
When the time is late enough for silence to creep as close as it ever will in this place, Yukimura hears worse things than crying and whimpering from pain. He hears the reassuring thud of a tennis ball, he hears a racket whipped confidently through the air, he hears the repetitions, the grunts and groans of effort. He hears feet running in all directions to return a ball.
The only explanation he has for something like this, something so unexplainable to happen, is that his pride was too high.
Past tense.
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