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Sakura had promised to win against Endo, in fact, everyone was relying on him to do so. He had never fought for others before, to protect something so precious to him. It was heavy. So heavy that it was almost suffocating- crushing his lungs
But with that pressure came a power that had been trapped deep down, that made his fist swing with more force and his injuries sting less with the adrenaline. It wasn’t enough for him to be stronger than his opponent- but equal. Just enough to protect the town.
Sakura’s chest was heaving and blood kept pouring in front of his eyes, forcing him to wipe it away and blink rapidly to maintain his vision. His entire body ached- and he was sure he had a few broken bones and cracked ribs- but now the pain rolled off of him like sleet.
He didn’t have time to focus on his broken body- he needed to win.
He needed to take Endo down, and he would do it the only way he knew for certain, even if he was taken down himself in the process.
Sakura lunged forward with the rejuvenated spirit of an alley cat and Endo defended as always, staring at him with that crazed smile on his face, bidding Sakura to give up and leave with him.
Like hell Sakura would do that- not with his… friends watching. Not with Umemiya fighting on the roof, relying on him to do good and protect the town.
Sakura managed to get a hit in with his elbow, sending Endo reeling back. Unfortunately, he was older and more experienced in fighting, with corded muscle along his body. He was able to maintain standing, but that was exactly what Sakura had expected.
He just needed to stay standing a little longer than him…
Sakura grabbed Endo by his ragged tank top, reeling his own head back before forcing Endo forward. Sakura bit his tongue to avoid biting it, but kept his eyes open and staring straight into his opponents eyes as he delivered a final headbutt.
Endo’s eyes rolled to the back of his head almost immediately as he collapsed like a deck of cards.
The world around Sakura grew dim as he absentmindedly let go of Endo’s shirt, but quickly blinked the darkness filling his vision- just to make sure his opponent was truly knocked out and wouldn’t get back up.
And when he realized that he was, in fact, out, the pressure seemed to dissipate from Sakura’s shoulder, like an evil spirit had been sitting upon it. It felt… nice.
And then Sakura could no longer control his own body. He felt sickeningly hot and frigid at the same time as his legs buckled from underneath him, sending him crashing right down onto his opponent.
His ears rang, and distantly he could hear shouts of his name that sounded like they were from underwater, but Sakura couldn’t distinguish just who was calling for him as he slipped away into unconsciousness.
“He’s down!” Hiragi shouted the moment Endo’s slack body hit the earth below, and the declaration seemed to make the others utter their own war cries in victory. But Suo did not have time to celebrate such victories with the way Sakura’s body was swaying unevenly until finally he too, stumbled and collapsed.
“Bring him here!” Hiragi ordered from where he had formed somewhat of a medical section with Tsubaki and the other two’s unconscious bodies. “And Togame- tie that fucker up!”
Suo could hardly hear the orders, as he had already been running the moment Sakura started to list to the side. Nirei was only a few feet behind him, hot on his trail as he slid down to his knees to quickly gather Sakura into his arms and drag his limp body off of Endo.
In the distance, Sugishita was already departing from their group to head to the rooftop. Suo would be sure to chide him for that later.
“We need to make sure he is stable enough to be moved,” Suo muttered to Nirei as he lowered him down onto grass next to Endo. Suo pointedly did not look at him, because if he did, the endless pool of anger inside of him would only reach a boiling point.
“Sakura-kun, can you hear me?” He snapped in front of his face, and when he didn’t flinch, he lifted up an eyelid to see eyes rolled all the way back. He was well and truly unconscious.
“Is he- is he okay?” Nirei fretted as Suo held a hand over Sakura’s mouth, then nodded.
“He’s breathing, but it’s rather bad that he’s unconscious with a head injury. We won’t be able to wake him unless we manage to find some smelling salts.”
Taking Suo’s suggestion as a challenge, Nirei nodded and quickly sprung to his feet. The school had a makeshift nurses office that they sometimes used, even if there was no school nurse. “I’ll be back!” He took off for the office- it was their best bet for medical supplies.
Suo turned his attention back to Sakura, and from next to him Togame was hooking his arms underneath Endo’s armpits, hefting him up and dragging him to the entrance of the school to tie him to the pillar, directly underneath the graffitied Bofiurin symbol.
He was mocking him, Suo realized with a slight smirk. He wished he had been the one to finish him off, there were multiple pressure points he could have hit to make him unresponsive, paralyzed on the floor.
Perhaps he would get the chance to, someday.
Now, Suo looked down and pressed his fingers along Sakura’s neck, feeling for any instability along his spine, then pressed down upon his ribs. A few gruesomely gave way underneath his fingers- but none that would puncture his lungs.
The largest issue currently would be the head wound.
Suo scooped his hands under Sakura’s legs and back, then lifted him up from the ground. Sakura was typically a lighter, agile person, but with his complete dead weight, he sagged in Suo’s arms. Suo quickly adjusted him to where his head wasn’t completely dangling backwards over his elbow, but pressed against his chest on their journey across the courtyard to Hiragi's medical triage.
“Set him down here,” Higari ordered, pointing to the place next to Tsubaki. Apparently they had woken up sometime during the fight, but still lay down under Higari’s order. Their eyes blearily shifted to Sakura as Suo crouched down and gently laid him down, keeping a hand under his head while he quickly stripped off his own uniform blazer to slip under his head instead.
A giant bruise was already forming on Sakura’s forehead, not that it was much different then the rest of the mottled colors on his face. Suo grimaced as he rubbed flakes of blood from the white portion of his hair, that looked almost black now.
Tsubaki twitched, then lifted their own fingers to try and reach Sakura, but Hiragi was quick to calm them down with a “Shush you, worry about yourself.”
Tsubaki went back to staring at the roof where the captain still fought.
But Suo wasn’t focused on that, no, he had his eyes glued on Sakura. On the minuscule twitch of his eyebrow and the way drool mixed with saliva slowly trickled from the corner of his half open mouth.
“We won’t be able to tell if there’s any internal damage until we get him to an actually doctor,” Hiragi sounded remorseful, and Suo did not need a reminder of how much danger Sakura could potentially be in, so he barley spared him a response.
The air hung thick around them, but was disrupted when Nirei came dashing back with a medical kit, Togame on his heels.
“End won’t be waking up anytime soon, that crazy bastard,” Togame told Hiragi as Nirei quickly slid down next to Suo to open the medical kit. His hands were shaking, so Suo unlatched it for him.
“Let me,” he offered. Mostly because the only one he wanted touching Sakura at the moment was himself, as greedy as it seemed.
Suo methodically worked on healing Sakura the best he could, though he needed to wake him up as soon as possible and keep him awake, sleeping with a concussion was never recommended.
“Sakura-Kun has a thick head, i’m- i’m sure he’ll be fine,” Nirei tried to reason, sounding like he was reassuring himself rather than anyone else as Suo attempted to gently tap his bruised cheek. When he hardly moved, Suo sighed and dug through the large kit for the smelling salt vile.
“Nirei-kun, hold his shoulders down for me,” Suo instructed, voice a careful devoid of emotion as Nirei scrambled to do what he asked. He unscrewed the small lid and carefully scootched Sakura’s head into his lap in a slightly upwards position before holding it under his nose.
They waited in anticipation until finally, he inhaled and consequently let out a broken cough. Then another. Suo quickly retracted the vile and passed it off to Nirei to put back in as he patted Sakura's cheek once more. This time, he actually cracked open his one good eye- the golden one- to blearily look up at Suo.
“Welcome back, Sakura-kun.”
He looked like a fish out of water, opening and closing his mouth a few times, but he must have been in too much pain to move a single muscle. “I-”
“Yes, you won,” Suo answered, and Sakura’s eye almost sank shut until Suo snapped in front of it.
“You have a concussion, you must stay awake.”
Sakura furrowed his eyebrows and hissed in pain, like he was waking up with a hangover. “No, ‘m not-”
“Can you tell me how many fingers I am holding up, then?”
“F-...five.”
“That was a trick question, Sakura-kun. I’m not holding up any fingers at all.”
Then there was a hand on his shoulder, and Hiragi was bending low to check Sakura out. Whatever he saw must have made him uneasy as he shifted, but when a chair fell from the roof and all the way down to the courtyard, he seemed to still.
“You can go up,” Suo nodded towards the rooftop, “me and Nirei-kun will protect the injured down here.”
Hiragi put a hand on his stomach as if it was hurting, then nodded. “Togame, you’re comin’ with me.”
“Ah, okay.” Togame looked down to Sakura as they departed, “Good work, buddy~”
Sakura didn’t hear it at all because he was too busy distantly staring at Suo with wheezing breaths. Nirei was busy helping Tsubaki, so Suo held Sakura slightly tighter, carding his hands carefully through his tangled hair.
Sakura grunted in pain, “Wanna…sleep.”
Suo ghosted a hand over his cheekbone, “I know, Sakura-kun. I know. Can I clean you up? You look a lot better than Endo, I assure you.”
Sakura didn’t say yes, but he didn’t deny him either, too busy staring up at the stars. “Do you think you can count the stars for me while I patch you up?” Suo asked, and Sakura painstakingly dragged his vision back to Suo and away from the celestial bodies in the sky. He looked confused.
“Those- those…’rnt stars.. Stars…”
Suo tilted his head in question, “Oh? Then what are they?”
“Little…eyes. Lookin’ at me.”
“Are they nice eyes?”
“I…dunno.”
Suo heaved a slightly amused sigh as he leaned over to unbutton Sakura’s shirt, revealing the bruised and fractured ribs that lay underneath. “Well, even if they are, my eye is looking down on you, and it’s a nice one.”
Sakura didn’t reply, and Suo snapped in his face once more to keep him awake. “Sakura-Kun, can you tell me a funny story? Please?”
To be frank, Suo didn’t understand any of what Sakura was saying, but he continued to babble uselessly as he used a rag to wipe away specks of drying blood from his torso and face, and even kept going as he applied ointment and oh so carefully bandaged his entire chest down to the ribs in a sorry attempt to keep the ribs in place.
“I…protected… ev’ryone?”
“Yes, Sakura-kun. You saved the town, there is no need to worry.” Suo assured, and Sakura’s entire body seemed to slump with relief. Suo reached out to gently brush the drool that fell past his bottom lip.
“Nirei-kun, do we have any water?” Suo asked over his shoulder, then heard Nirei fumble momentarily before a bottle was placed in his hand. The water was lukewarm at best, since they didn’t have any cold places to store them, but it would do.
“Sakura-kun, water?” Suo slightly shifted Sakura’s head upwards once more, and Sakura winced. Suo bit back back an apology, and instead uncapped the lid and brought the bottle to his chapped lips.
“Slowly,” he reminded Sakura when he gulped and water accidentally spilled down his chin. Suo let him drink half before he placed him back down. Then, Sakura was looking up at him again with that confused golden eye of his. It almost reflected under the starlight in a dark way.
“I…protected…ev’ryone?” He repeated, and Suo once again nodded.
“Yes, Sakura-kun. You saved the town, there is no need to worry.” He reminded him, because mentioning the memory loss wouldn’t do any good in the situation.
Sakura went limp in relief, then looked past Suo’s head at the sky above. “Th’ eyes…’re blinkin’”
“Oh? Did you count any of them like I asked?”
“Thr’s at least…four.” Sakura slurred, and Suo, not for the first time that night and certainly not for the last, sighed. Distantly, a potted plant plunged from the roof and shattered down onto the courtyard, nearly missing Endo’s tied up body.
If only it were a few inches over…
From under him, Sakura grunted in warning. Suo quickly looked down to see the telltale signs of green tinging Sakura’s face as he rolled him over, carefully to keep his ribs from worsening. Just in time, Sakura dry heaved onto the courtyard floor.
Nirei made a frightened noise and quickly moved the half full water bottle out of the way. Suo ignored everything else and rubbed circles around his back, because the one time Sakura had gotten sick- he despised it.
This time must have hurt tenfold with the fractured ribs.
Sakura let out a low keening sound as he retched once more, though only the water came out. He must have drank it too fast. “Sakura-kun, remain here with me. Listen to my voice and try to take even breaths, staccato and not too deep.”
It took a while for Sakura to finally get over the pain of throwing up mixed with his injuries, but once he finally did, Suo rolled him back into their previous position. “That’s right Sakura-kun, good job.” He lifted a hand to brush his hair away from his forehead, but upon coming in contact with his face, it was slightly too warm.
He was already running a fever. Suo snatched a cooling rag from the medical box and placed it on his face, and Sakura let out a small sigh, eye falling closed. Suo let him have a moment of peace before he was snapping again to get Sakura to stay awake.
Sakura whispered something under his breath that Suo couldn’t hear. “What was that?” He asked as he bent down, placing an ear slightly above his lips.
“Umem-miya… he’s…”
“Not to worry Sakura-kun, he won,” Suo smiled down at him and Sakura blinked slowly. Another desk fell from the roof. Things were getting heated up there, but even so, Sakura nodded, because he was gullible, afterall.
“Knew…he’d… do- do it.”
“And I’m sure he knew that you could do it too, Sakura-Kun. Your part is already completed, so leave the rest to us.”
Sakura hazily attempted to lift a hand up, but Suo kept it down, only jumping slightly when Sakura curled his hand to place in his. To hold his. “Thnk’s…Suo.”
“Of course, Sakura-kun. You are my grade captain, after all.”
The fights raged on distantly, but the only thing Suo could focus on was the one happening below him.