Chapter Text
"I just miss Javi," Yuzu says, like butterflies do, because those tiny winged things have not lived long enough to speak of forever.
The world stops for a moment. The countries fly apart.
His coach smiles, seven rainbow years in the making, three Olympic golds and one bronze shining in his cheeks, his forehead creased in a three-step terrace leading to silver medal stained hair.
"He'll be back. Don't worry." The older man lays a hand on his shoulder and it is not big enough to cover five feet and a half of empty space.
Yuzu's eyes let go of the flag. There's not much time left before Rostelecom; he's got an axel combo to work on and the last thing he needs is a distraction in the form of bands of sunshine and red carnations and the lonely strand of frayed thread that he longs to wind around his finger. He drags himself back to rejoin the others, hoping choctaws and mohawks and three-turns will be enough to drive away the uneasy thickness in his chest. But the black hole at his side remains unoccupied, and the chorus of scrip-scrapes under his feet sound eerily similar to falling glass.
He sets three world records and wins gold at his first Grand Prix competition.
The next assignment secures him another win, another record, and another useless ticket to the finals.
On the night of the ruined free program, he hears a song in his dreams.
Je suis malade, the voice cries, parfaitement malade. He's sick of it, sick of himself, sick of his ankle.
Je suis malade, the chorus repeats, again and again, again and again. The music plays on like shipwrecks and car crashes. It's immortal now.
He laughs, because years are crippled beings and he cannot patch up memories with metal needles. He's tried it before – superglue, duct tape, staples, epoxy; he ripped the ribbons of all his medals to threads and dyed and sewed them into a canvas he could not write upon.
"It should have been magnificent," he tells the press when they inquire about his condition. "I wanted to skate a proper tribute today."
They point out that he is mortal after all.
He chokes back tears and reminds himself that birds can't fly when they're shedding feathers. He'll be back, and he will soar.
Hopefully in time for Worlds.
The days march on with the giddiness of oysters. He rewatches Romeo and Juliet in all its versions. The Hunchback of Notre Dame. The Phantom of the Opera. He even finishes the sequel.
Come to Spain, Javi invites him, at the exact moment he can no longer move his right foot. We're having jamón serrano y queso manchego for dinner.
It's one of those moments Yuzu wishes he could just unzip the air and reel in someone from the other side of the planet. After all, men have walked on the moon and little girls do somersaults and land on four millimeter blades on one of the slipperiest surfaces on earth; who says he can't make this simple wish come true?
Like who says quints are impossible?
And who says a full recovery after one week can't be done?
(His ankle does. Maybe his ankle is mad at him.)
Come to Japan, he types. Which they both know is equally futile. Olympics has changed things, for better or for worse, and a last minute flight adjustment is not on either's list of things to do.
Wanna meet halfway? Javi proposes, as if he doesn't have a show scheduled in a few hours. We could always take a little vacation in the Antarctic. Heard they've got unlimited rink time there.
For a brief, sputtering moment, Yuzu doesn't think about getting back on the ice. His mind drifts to leopard seals and killer whales and how they could erase everything and schedule a rendezvous in the Sahara Desert and he would still be overjoyed to see Javi again. And he wonders, not for the first time, how something as big as loneliness could squeeze itself into the infinitesimal lump of a human heart.
He's deliberating whether or not to google world's top ten fastest airplanes when another text bubble appears on the screen.
So? Are you coming?
Only if you dress up as a penguin next.
Sounds great!
Except I'd have to waddle on skates
and Brian's gonna worry about my
vanishing skating skills,
so I think I'll pass for now.
Ehhh … but Javi, it would have been perfect for Europeans. You still don't have a new program, right?
(Come back to Canada, he doesn't say.)
(We're still waiting for you.)
(What's taking you so long?)
(Javi…)
Backspace. Backspace. Delete.
How's your cat?
You mean Effie?
Oh, Plushenko adopted her.
Javi. You wouldn't.
A pause.
You wish you were here, don't you?
I wish I were anywhere else.
The next message takes a few minutes. Maybe Javi is a mind reader now. Maybe he can sense how many unspoken I-miss-yous linger behind those words.
Or maybe, maybe, in the rush of things he's forgotten all about practice and training and is actually planning to do a mini comedy show instead when he shows up in Minsk.
He sighs.
Javi will be Javi and poor Brian will never not shake his head.
Hey, I forgot to ask but
which of my new costumes
do you like best?
The one with pincers, of course. It suits Javi. I want to see you do a Salchow in that.
The reply he gets is a picture of a very unamused cat with the caption, "Seafoods don't spin in the air; they're too busy lurking in my stomach."
Javi signs off afterward. Yuzu exits the app, sets his playlist on shuffle, and burrows into his pillow.
His birthday comes and goes. He skips the Grand Prix Finals. He skips Nationals. He falls in love with the ice all over again.
For the first few weeks, he goes slow. Recovery is a bridge nailed together with a million baby steps and painted with frustration. He could have been training quad axels by now, if not for this. He could have made the ultimate tribute and Plushenko would have been so proud.
But pain lingers like missing people, like the second hand of a broken clock, and sometimes he just wants to freeze himself into a snowman and run away with the first screams of summer. And as the Cricket Club and the JSF and the names of all those ISU judges fade away from his consciousness, he'll dance among the cherry fields until there's nothing left but memories of the sun and the ice and the wilderness of sky he shares with Europe and Canada and everywhere between.
Will you miss me too, when I'm gone?
The walls remain silent, acknowledging his inquiry by the twinkle of gold plaques bearing his name.
TCC will not forget.
He glides towards the edge of the rink and finds a green stuffed toy cricket watching him with sad button eyes and string bean legs, curled up where one of the kids abandoned it on the bench. Putting on his blade protectors, he steps away from the ice, tissue box in tow, and gives Blade a fond pat on the head.
You miss Javi too, don't you?
The cricket plushie stares on, unmoved by the cracks in his voice.
It wasn't supposed to be this hard.
And it's not just Javi. He misses everyone, so many, many people from Japan to Russia to the ends of the earth. He misses home. He misses his rink. He misses how he could hang out during competitions without needing bodyguards to save him from the mobs. He misses his old life, his classmates, the places he would visit, the days untainted by disaster.
He bends down to touch the ice again, letting his fingers trace lazy patterns on the crosshair scratches.
I hope you know how much I gave up for you.
Thanks for everything you gave me, too.
He gets up and starts taking off the blade covers, readying himself for another round of practice. He reaches for his tissue box when it dawns on him that Pooh-san is lonely too.
He gently picks up the green cricket and sets it next to Pooh.
There. Much better.
His blades flow into the step sequence, cautious yet sure, trusting his ankles to take him around the ice like they took him around the world. From the distance, he can almost hear Blade-san and Pooh-san cheering him on.
Soon he'll get his quads back. He'll skate Origin so well and make the TCC bell ring. And then he'll master that axel.
Springtime is coming, he knows, and rushes toward it.
Like butterflies do.