Theme: Meaning

Characters: Sena

Warnings: None

Sena had been running for almost as long as he could remember. Otherwise small, nervous and entirely unremarkable, running was his way of bringing himself into eloquence. It was how he spoke to people, how he communicated his sincerity and determination when words were clumsy and inefficient and lacking in blood-hot immediacy. It was how Eyeshield 21 bared himself to the world.

There was a time before Riku, there must have been, but Sena remembered that as just a long blur of bruises and empty swings in the playground. Sena didn't consider himself as having fundamentally become Sena until he had begun to run.

Boy with the golden legs, they called him.

Eyeshield 21.

They screamed it.

They screamed it in Japan, where 'amefuto' was all but unheard of; they screamed it in America, when he speaks in their voice. Those anonymous thousands off buses and trains roared his name – most said Eyeshield 21 but some said Sena, and they were pretty much interchangeable by then so Sena didn't mind either way, just so long as he could claim the vindicating throbbing behind the syllables for himself and know that this means me. They think, therefore I am.

It was not often that he had these thoughts though. It was only very rarely that his football career required any justification, whether to himself or others, beyond 'It's what I'm good at' or 'It feels great'. It was only sometimes, lying on a clean hotel bed, running a damp cloth over his aching legs, that he occasionally began to reflect on what being a football player actually meant.

He was at heart a simple person though, and had long ago concluded that 'amefuto' didn't mean anything except for everything, and that was enough for him to fall asleep happy.