Level Horizon (Haikyuu!! WingedAU)

Year Three.80 3/4; Solicitude & Dire Break

Your absence has not taught me to be alone, it has merely shown me that when we are together, we cast a single shadow on the wall. ~Doug Fetherling

Yuu Nishinoya's wings burn, but he barely notices. Instead, he pushes them a little harder.

The skin on his face is going numb from windburn with the blistering pace he'd set, and the muscles in his back have been threatening to cramp every few strokes, but he ignores them. He can't hear anything over the roar of wind in his ears, and he can feel the line of sweat sliding between his shoulders.

He couldn't care less, because none of it matters.

The others were all in Sheru Bay today. Tanaka and Natsu, Suga and Daichi, Bokuto and Akaashi, the other two cats. He's seen so much destruction on the way home from the earthquake that he dreads what he will find.

Asahi. As the small crow crests the last ridge before Sheru Bay, his soul fractures and the air leaves his lungs.

He recognizes nothing.

Debris fills the water in the small inlet, it's usually pristinely crystal clarity muddied and murky with floating bits of splintered wood and netting and broken furniture. The wharf and all the boats normally tied there are missing. He can't find where Ukai's shop is supposed to be or Sugawara's relatives'. He can barely tell where the main road ran through town.

Noya's heart plummets, because there is no Sheru Bay.

The roof of the local butcher shop is caught between two uprooted trees, another house crushed up against the hillside, cages from the aviary mangled between bits and pieces of buildings scattered about like leaves in fall. A fishing boats lies on its side near where the path that leads to the beach house should be. Trees are uprooted, the earth weathered and exposed, and seawater gathers in low areas. A wash of jumbled slats and shredded boards runs along the hill that backs the land side of Sheru Bay, a perfect line showing how high the wave reached. The twisted wood guts of buildings is interspersed with torn netting, broken roof tiles, and personal belongings like whispers of the lives that have been overturned.

He can see several avians flying around a patch of earth stripped bare like hornets buzzing around the place their nest used to be. He desperately hopes the rest of the beach crew is among them. He desperately wants one of them to be Asahi.

His shoulder spasms and his wings falter; he mentally snaps at them in annoyance. This is no time for fatigue. He needs to find the others.

Asahi and Tanaka and Daichi were supposed to be helping renovate Sheru Bay's single inn near the path that led up into the hills behind the town; the building isn't where he last saw it. He searches and searches, but there's nothing.

A familiar shape flashes across the sky and for a moment, Noya is at a loss beneath the sight of something— someone— familiar. And then he's scrambling.

"Daichi!" He screeches and the crow's wings jar mid flap. He turns toward him, his eyes wide.

"Noya!" The small crow nearly collides with him as he crosses the distance to him.

"Where is everyone? Tanaka? Asahi?" Their former sentry leader's brow creases.

"Come on." He says and turns over a wing. Noya's chest constricts.

Why hadn't he answered?

The command he'd given instead was more cryptic than helpful, and as the short crow speeds after him, he can feel how off balance the destruction around him is making him. It's surreal, he thinks, that the town they've called home for nearly four years... is gone.