We Were Phoenixes || Kuroo Tetsurou

[8]

I blinked and it's been a year since I updated this story.

Actually, that's not true. This last chapter is a monster — both in that it's incredibly long and that it took so much to conquer and write. Please forgive me for the delay. 

But here it is: the final chapter

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There were plenty of moments when Chiyome thought Tetsurou would magically appear — moments where her sentimental, suffering mind would pretend he had. That first month in Nagoya she saw his face everywhere. In the supermarket, she'd see him turning down the snack aisle from the corner of her eye. She'd see him crossing the street as she stood motionless on the sidewalk or think she saw his signature hair bobbing among the crowd she slowly walked behind. He was the man in the apartment three doors away or the subway platform manager, hiding himself in that navy blue peaked hat. All these brief glimpses she could never quite grasp onto. Apparitions.

The dust settled eventually. It took months before she stopped seeing him everywhere, but he never quite let go of her heart. She wanted him there for all those moments when the sun peeked through the clouds and she allowed herself to smile. She remembers closing her eyes on that stiff examination table during that first ultrasound without him and dreaming he was holding her hand — that when that cool gel hit her stomach and she opened her eyes to watch her child wiggle on that black and white screen, he would be leaning over the table to rest his forehead on hers, a lopsided smile splitting his face. She remembers hoping the technicians didn't think she was crying because they had congratulated Chiyome on expecting a girl.

But there were also the instants when it was fear that brought him to her. The day her water broke at work while she was washing dishes in the back kitchen, at that rundown family restaurant with the kind grannie who gave her a second crack at life, was one she'd never forget. (She thought she'd peed herself at first, but when the fluid kept coming in bursts she figured she was wrong.) Chiyome's first instinct had been to find a mop to keep the kitchen sanitary, but when grannie had slapped the handle out of her hand and pushed her into a cab, her second instinct had been to call him.

Between labored breaths she visualized him running through the corridors of the headquarters, out the doors, and through the throngs of people, determination in his eyes despite the anxiety nipping at his heels. She could see him bursting through the hospital doors and fumbling through his words to reception, begging them to send him in her direction. He'd scrub up faster than any record he'd set in the academy and be beside her, holding her hand through every contraction.

But when she opened her eyes to the labor nurse telling her it was time to push, she was completely alone.

Those first months with Mari were a blur of sleepless nights, second-guessing, and delusions. Forget cold basements and scare tactics, if an enemy ever wanted to break Chiyome they should have just placed her in a room with a colicky baby and the crushing reality that she really was in this alone. Somewhere in Mari's third month, after more nights than Chiyome could count of less than two hours of sleep, she saw him leaning against the door with his arms crossed and that teasing smirk on his lips. He was fondly watching her dance around with their infant. When she'd finally returned a sleeping baby to the crib, she turned to him with tears trailing down her cheeks and whispered to him the aches of her heart.

"I wasn't supposed to do this without you," she cried, reaching out to his already disappearing arm.

Weeks later he came to her again as she lay on the couch with a sleeping Mari, blinking against the deafened television screen. The news anchor was announcing the success of a government mission — a top-tier assignment they'd been working on in tandem with two other teams in the months before the fire. That victory would have been a huge triumph for their teams and Chiyome could imagine Tetsurou, beer in hand, leaning against an equally inebriated Bokuto as the energetic kohais cheered around them. They celebrated together in her dreams that night.