Chapter Text
Kageyama
10:17pm
Kageyama couldn't make sense of the world. There were flashes, wailing sirens and voices, bright lights, pricks of needles and the feel of cold metals pressed up against his skin. There was the smell of smoke filling his nose and the taste of iron on his tongue. There was a steady beeping coming from somewhere nearby, and the vibrations of an engine. There was a hand on his shoulder, or maybe it was holding his hand, but either way it was wrong, wrong, wrong, it wasn't the hand he knew.
"W-re's Hin-ta?" He croaked out, or at least he tried to. He didn't recognize his voice, all raspy He tried to pull open his eyes, but they were too dry, and the light stung, so he let them snap shut again.
"He's in the other ambulance." Kageyama heard after a moment of silence. Or maybe he had fallen asleep again. Everything kept cutting in and out.
"-e's ok-?" Kageyama more stated than asked, because he couldn't think of Hinata being anything but okay. Because it was Hinata. Hinata was always okay.
Another moment of silence, but this time Kageyama knew that it was fully intentional. He wouldn't have fallen back asleep without knowing that Hinata was okay.
"Yes, your friend is going to be okay." The voice told him, and Kageyama let out a sigh of relief.
"Good," Kageyama muttered, letting himself relax. He knew Hinata would be okay. He knew that Hinata would make it out of this this day. Deathcast be damned.
He let the darkness overtake him again, and he didn't hear the beeping return to a single pitch.
Nobody
11:12pm
A woman raced with her daughter down the familiar street, praying they weren't too late. But deep down, she already knew. They had already said their goodbyes that morning, and they knew then that it was already too late. But that hadn't stopped her from hoping. It hadn't stopped her from booking plan tickets right then and there right back to Japan from America. It hadn't stopped her from flying across the ocean for the second time in twenty-four hours if it gave her even a chance to give her son one last hug.
She knew it was too late the moment that she called her son the second they touched down and he didn't pick up. She knew it was too late when he didn't answer her the second, or the third, or the sixth, or the twelfth time that she called. She knew it was too late when she was racing down the street with her daughter's hand gripped in hers and she could smell the way that the air reeked of smoke and see the flashing lights still outside her home. She always knew that it was too late.
Still, she didn't accept that. She didn't accept that it was too late when she went up to the fireman and demanded to know where her son was. She didn't accept it when she saw the pitying look he gave her. She didn't accept it as he sat her down and told her gently that they hadn't been able to resuscitate her son, and his friend passed in the ambulance to the hospital. She didn't accept it as she hugged her daughter to her chest when she started to cry. She didn't accept it until a young woman came up to her and introduced herself as Miwa Kageyama, and it was only then that she allowed herself to breakdown and cry.
He was gone. She was too late. She felt arms wrap around her and Natsu, and she returned the embrace. She lost track of whose limbs were whose, and which tears fell from which eyes, but it didn't matter. Their grief was the same. They were mourning a son, mourning a brother. Mourning boys who were gone too soon.