Chapter Text
Suga doesn't really like the darkness.
That's a fact that even he himself knows very well and admits. The darkness keeps him at his toes, it makes him unnecessarily anxious. For a person who's all about observing everything and anything to make his next move, this darkness isn't only a nest for all sorts of danger, but also his bane of existence. He hates and fears the darkness at the same time.
"Calm down, Sugawara Koushi," the gray-haired astronaut clad in white mutters to himself. He takes a few deep breaths, before opening the map in the administration room.
In such a dire situation, Suga chooses to remain calm and collected. There's no point in getting emotional now, he thinks to himself. He recalls the discussion he had with the most recent addition to the of Karasuno expedition unit who also happens to be very sharp, Tsukishima Kei.
"So... we will trap the Impostor while the lights are out?" Suga asked while whispering.
"Yes." concise answer came from Tsukishima, "It is when they're at their most powerful and weakest. We have to lure them into a false sense of security within the darkness."
"But how?"
A smirk is plastered on Tsukishima's face. "Listen up, Sugawara-san…”
Suga gulps. His efforts to remain calm start to crumble, but he tries anyway, making sure that his hands and fingers aren't trembling while he navigates the map, the special map that gives live information about the amount of people in a room, different from the map he and the others have in their company-issued tablet. It's his greatest weapon, but remembering Tsukishima's plan almost renders this weapon useless at his hands. Suga shakes his head violently. He has to remain calm. He has to.
"For Asahi, I have to... remain calm," Suga whispers once again to himself. A memory flashes in his mind ever so briefly about Asahi. His smile, his laugh, his shyness, and his decapitated corpse in the electrical room along with the pool of blood in it. The flower on his pink helmet was torn to shreds and his head was nowhere to be found. There's only one possibility of where the head was, but Suga shivers at it. The vice-captain of the Karasuno unit shakes his head even more violently than before, "Calm down, Sugawara Koushi... calm down... calm down..."
And yet, it seems useless. He's unable to calm his nerves and anxiety starts coursing through his veins. Damn it, I shouldn't have thought of Asahi just now! More memories of his slain friend are surfacing. Suga's terror when he found it, the blood that kept flowing from his neck when they tried to bring his dead body to the med-bay for preservation, the silent breaking of the trust they had with each other when they realize one of them had to be the killer, the awkward end to the meeting. All of them are crawling up his spine and he starts to feel lightheaded. Will Karasuno end here? Will they die one by one? Or will they lose their minds and kill each other out of fear? Does all the time they've spent together meaningless? Questions and assumptions sow the seeds of doubt in Suga's mind and he starts to lose the rhythm of his breath. It all ends here, he laments silently, Everything will end here with me like this.
"Suga!"
"Don't move!"
Suga shouts as he jumps to the side while he mimics a finger gun with his trembling hands. It's all nothing, really, other than his natural reflex that grows on him after spending most of his free time watching action movies with Karasuno's captain.
Oh, speaking of the captain...
"Suga?" a figure in black emerges from the darkness. The light from the map that Suga opened shines upon him and the face behind the helmet, "It's me, Daichi."
"Dai... chi...?" Suga whispers before his trembling legs could no longer support his weight. He immediately falls onto the ground.
"Suga!" Daichi hurriedly crouches down next to Suga and holds his small figure, "Suga, are you okay?!"
"Daichi...," Suga starts to sob before hugging Daichi tight. His emotions are breaking out, "Daichi... I'm... I'm scared... Daichi..."
Looking at Suga crying like this makes him uneasy, but he hugs him back nonetheless, making sure his hug is as tight as possible while not crushing him. "I'm here, Suga. Don't worry."
Suga sobs more and more in Daichi's embrace that his shoulders are spiking up and down while his whole body is shaking. Daichi can only hug him back and utter phrases like "Don't worry!" or "I'm here!" while slightly rocking Suga's body back and forth. He wishes he could take his helmet off and stroke his hair to calm him down, but unfortunately that's not part of the standard protocol and keeping the helmet on is necessary in times of sabotage like this, so there he is, trying his best to comfort Suga while cracking light jokes about the cheese Suga puts on top of his helmet. There's nothing more that he could do, anyway.
"Daichi... stay by my side, won't you?" Suga asks with sniffles in-between words. “Stay with me… don’t go, please…”
"I will, don't worry," assures Daichi once again, tightening his hug on Suga, but strangely it makes Suga cries even harder.
"Did I hug you too tight?" Clear concern could be heard in Daichi's voice and Suga answers with a weak shake of his head, but his crying remains strong to Daichi's confusion.
However, all of this chaos suddenly becomes a bit more bearable when the lights are slowly coming back on. He can see the colors in the administration room once again. The green carpet, the gray metal lining on the table, Suga's yellow cheese and white suit. He takes a deep breath, glad that it's all over. "Suga, the lights are on again."
Once again, Suga cries even louder and Daichi gets even more confused. Nonetheless, Daichi takes off both his and Suga's helmets and sets them aside. He hugs Suga even closer and starts to stroke his gray hair, just like he wanted to. He wishes he could take off his gloves too, but the helmet is as far as he could go and he'll take whatever to calm Suga down.
Beyond the administration room, he could hear footsteps, many of them echoing in the hallways and getting closer. He exhales in relief when he sees everyone in front of him and no one is absent. "Oh, thank god you're all–"
"He's the Impostor!"
Daichi's sentence gets abruptly cut by a man in a yellow suit pointing directly at him. Enshrouded in that suit is Tsukishima with laboured breaths. Everyone behind him is looking at Daichi with disbelief, wariness, anger, fear, and many other emotions he couldn't describe. To say that Daichi is shocked is an understatement.
"Tsukishima, what are you–"
Once again, Daichi's sentence gets abruptly cut off when Tanaka and Hinata jumps from behind Tsukishima to tackle him and Suga down. Kageyama comes in and pulls Suga away from Daichi's arms. The captain could only scream out, "Hey, what is the meaning of this?!"
"Shut up, you damned alieeeen!" Tanaka screams out from beyond his red suit, "You won't get Suga-san next!"
"Tanaka, what are you–"
"Shut up!" Hinata screams out with tears bursting out of his eyes, "Please... don't talk again, Daichi-san! I beg of you! Make it easier for us!”
"What in the world... Tsukishima! What is this?!" Daichi shouts while the two men holding him down are trying their best to hold their sobs.
"You are the Impostor, Daichi-san," answers Tsukishima, precisely and calmly to the point that anyone not sharp enough wouldn't notice the slight tone of spite in his voice, "And you've fallen into our trap."
"This is bullshit!" denies Daichi outright. He tries to stand but Hinata and Tanaka's grips are too strong.
"I'm afraid it's not, Daichi-san," argues Tsukishima as he approaches the map that Suga opened earlier, "Sugawara-san, if you don't mind?"
From behind Tsukishima, comes Suga being propped up by Kageyama and Nishinoya. Daichi's eyes widen as Suga seems unable to use his legs entirely due to his emotional burden. Nishinoya leaves Suga to lean entirely on Kageyama while he runs to drag a chair for Suga to sit. Both of the younger men leave Suga on the chair near the open map.
"This map... lets us know the amount of people in a room all the time. In other words... it can be used to detect our movement," explains Suga, still crying and sniffling, "Tsukishima and I devised a plan... to catch the Impostor based on it."
"What?!" Daichi is brimming with disbelief.
"The Impostor is a highly-intelligent alien lifeform that can see through the dark," interrupts Tsukishima as Suga covers his face and cries again, "That's why their... or should I say, his forte is moving in the dark when everyone couldn't move as freely."
"Tsukishima, you...," Daichi grits his teeth.
"From that fact, one way to identify an impostor... is to observe their movement during lights out," Suga continues weakly, he looks away to the side, "And... Daichi... you..."
Suga bites his lower lip so hard a drop of blood flows from the wound he makes. Alongside another drop of tear, the blood drops down to the ground, "I think, though, that–"
"It's definitely Daichi-san," Tsukishima once again cuts Suga in the middle of his sentence, "I'm sorry to cut you off, Sugawara-san, but it's the truth."
Suga doesn't respond to Tsukishima's interruption, instead he just tightly grips his pants in silence.
Looking at Suga, Tsukishima continues, "Your movement, Daichi-san, is peculiar. Who in the world would run from the lower engine room to the administration room and take the longer route of going through the cafeteria, to boot?"
"That's–"
"That's because the electrical is where Asahi-san died," Tsukishima says abruptly, "It only makes sense that the killer would avoid the most suspicious place for a while even if it costs him precious time. You won't trick us, though, not with me reading you like an open book. Your jig is up, alien."
"That doesn't make any sense!" argues Daichi, "If I was the Impostor, why would I specifically go to the administration room in the first place when Hinata was in security–"
Daichi stops himself, eyes wide open.
Tsukishima smirks, "Bingo."
In that instant, Daichi feels like his soul leaves his body while all eyes are locked on him. From Tanaka and Hinata gripping him even tighter, to Kageyama and Nishinoya putting on a stance just in case if they need to run as fast as possible, and finally to the most painful shocked and torn gaze Suga gives to him. He feels fear erupting in him, "Suga, I–"
"How... how did you know I was in security, Daichi-san?" asks Hinata with the most hesitation Daichi has ever heard, "I've never told you... I–"
"It's obvious, isn't it?" Tsukishima approaches Daichi and steps on his shin purposefully to gain a pained grin from Daichi, "He possesses night vision... something that us normal humans don't have."
The blond leans down to look at Daichi with immense hatred. "Throw this disgusting vermin out of our ship."
Suga doesn't really like the darkness.
That applies even when he's gazing out at the stars. The endless galaxy unnerves him despite his job as an astronaut. To him, there's only darkness extending forevermore, never ending until it swallows everything. There is only the void and billions of possibilities. He hates and fears the darkness at the same time.
Even more so now that Daichi is strapped down, being prepared to be thrown out.
There are no words exchanged between the members of the Karasuno unit. Suga holds tight the pink helmet that Asahi wore. He feels empty, as if his emotions have malfunctioned. All the pain that he let out earlier, the sudden realization that dawned on him when Daichi came into the administration room, suddenly they all feel like a distant past, an entirely different Sugawara Koushi as this Suga watches the shutters slowly opening with Daichi in front of it without moving. Perhaps it’s his brain shutting himself down as a defense mechanism, perhaps it’s the dread manifesting in an unexpected way, whatever it is, he can only watch and feel like there’s knife after knife stabbing his heart again and again.
Daichi tilts his head to look at Suga one last time before his body got sucked out of the ship. In his eyes were the guilty and scared eyes of a former captain. A large text appears in the screen before them.
Sawamura Daichi was an Impostor.
Suga doesn't really like the darkness.
But when his eyes have lost the light and he's breaking down again, he couldn't escape it now, could he? With his scream tearing out the sky, who is he anymore? Where even is he anymore, when he's just running in one spot like now, being held by his other crewmates?
Without Daichi, he's shrouded in darkness, and he hates it.