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Kaz feels as if he should be drawn to the ice. It’s cold, hard, frozen - and it shatters, melts with the slightest touch of heat. Coldblooded. It does not forgive a single misstep. But for some reason, he never saw the point. It’s just frozen water. What’s so special about it?
Maybe that’s why he pays no mind when he hears the whispers, of a girl from their town competing - and winning - in competitive figure skating on an international level. He does not care. Why would he care?
Kaz hates that suddenly, he sees her, and then he does care.
Jesper’s the one who put the figure skating Grand Prix on the Crow Club TV. It was not Kaz’s choice, he would like to make that clear. He pays no mind. At least, not until cheers seem to erupt, when he hears Jesper whoop over all the rest.
Kaz sighs, and casts the TV one glance. He freezes.
Inej Ghafa’s name has become a staple among the streets of Ketterdam - mostly because it seems as if nothing exciting ever happens here, and because never has their city had any form of a relatively successful sports team. Kaz does not care about sports. But Jesper does, so it’s no wonder that they’ll all back the one hometown hero they can find - even if it’s in figure skating, of all things.
Even if it’s the one person who Kaz had told to leave Ketterdam behind.
But Kaz didn’t expect to see her move like that. Kaz didn’t expect to see her again. Kaz did not expect to see her, at the peak of the summit. He wishes he wasn’t proud of her.
He is.
He’s careful not to let any interest or surprise show. The program seems to have just started, based on the way the camera zooms and pans, and the way she starts from a standstill. Inej twirls, glides across the ice, on these tiny silver blades. They’re so thin that Kaz does not understand how she does not fall. Years ago, when she first mentioned that she skated - he didn’t get it then, either. But less than ten seconds later, Kaz turns away. There is no point. Sports are sports - sports are not his thing. They do not matter, in the grand scheme of things. Inej does not matter to him, either. She shouldn’t. She never should have - in the first place.
He has more important things to take care of.
(He does, right?)
Kaz casts one more glance at the TV.
And on screen, Inej jumps. Her arms twirl over her head, and she spins so fast that Kaz barely has time to understand what is happening before she’s landing on the ice again, one leg outstretched behind her. The announcers say something about a Triple Axel. Whatever that is, it sure gets the people in the Crow Club excited.
He knows next to nothing about skating - he never bothered to learn, even when he’d find her on the edge of his office, nearly every day. In the three months they knew each other, she never asked him to try.
Kaz is not sure what it is. He is not sure, why he still feels a pull. He let her go. And he doesn’t know why he has such a hard time climbing the stairs to his office, either. He wishes he hadn’t left. That she hadn’t left.
But what does it get him? What does it get him, exactly, to let himself fall under the same sort of spell he used to? What’s the point in placing even a shred of hope in somebody else, when all anyone’s ever done has let you down?
What do you want, Kaz?
Kaz wants to feel a little less empty. Kaz wants to feel a little less broken. It seems like only he can fix that for himself.
And ice does not meld back together - not when its been broken. The ice is not the place to go.
Kaz needs to look someplace else, right?
But for a moment, he considers asking Inej Ghafa if she needs a sponsor.
[--]
Inej flies through the air. She lands her Rippon Triple Axel, clean. Textbook. Then she leaps, spins, twirls through her transitions, stepping into another set of crossovers. For now, she thinks just about the skate. Just about her program. Just about her facial expressions, her artistry, and the Triple Lutz-Triple Toe combination that’s soon to come.
She knows this is the only chance she has to forget everything she’s had to do to climb this high.
For a moment, Inej feels weightless. She feels like she’s flying. She feels like she’s never coming down. Then she lands the Triple Lutz, springs back into a Triple Toe. She lands that one, too. But the scrape of the ice under her blades does nothing to comfort her - not when she wishes she was soaring, instead.
It’s okay. The sky will have to wait.
Though, perhaps the weightlessness is what Heleen wants from her.
It’ll make your jumps easier, she’d always snap. Now try again.
Inej tries. She’s so afraid she’s going to break, one day. What happens if she does?
Check the scale on the way out, Ghafa.
Inej nods, everytime. She clenches her jaw, bites her lip. She’ll pretend it’s okay when it’s not.
You can’t lose your Triple Axel.
And Inej knows that. She knows that. She also knows that she can’t leave, or else she stops winning and the money stops coming-
This is what happens when you fall into a sport that costs too much. This is what happens when you don’t know where your parents are anymore, but you aren’t sure what will happen to you if you dare to ask. This is what happens when Heleen’s the only one willing to train you. But Inej has to keep winning, and she has to keep using these stupid methods that’ll break her down by the time she hits 18. She has to win as much as she can, as fast as she can. She can’t be second place.
So Inej will keep pushing herself, and she will keep trying. She’ll let the joy of her sport slip slowly, out of her hands and onto the cold, hard ice below. She’ll let herself break a little more, day by day - for the chance to fly one more time. And she’ll smile when it’s the last thing she wants to do. It’s worth it, in the end, she hopes.
Inej places her faith in the fact that it will be.
Quad Toe.
Inej lets the rush of the crowd lift her off the ground. She jumps.
And of course she lands it clean. Perhaps a little bit wobbly, from the slightest under-rotation - but barely noticeable to anybody. The judges may very well ignore it. To be fair, Heleen’s worked any room for failure of Inej’s system entirely. Inej knows that Heleen knows what she’s doing, that she’s winning and even if Inej hates her, Heleen’s a good coach, at least for girls as young as Inej is.
Spiral. Step sequence.
Inej also knows what will happen to her if she leaves. She saw a girl do that, once - she had a quad by the time she was fourteen. Then she left, then she switched and then she lost it. Then she stopped winning. Now, she’s a year younger than Inej is - and she didn’t get a single Grand Prix assignment. Inej got three.
And they started, at the same time. They got their Quad Toes, side by side. There’s a difference. There’s only one thing that set them apart.
Inej feels lucky that she’s on the winning side.
She jumps her last jumping pass, twirls into her last combo spin. She smiles one more smile, for that one last note. She holds her ending pose for one breath longer, for the people at home. For the people back in Ketterdam, in the closest place she has to home. For the one person she knows she left behind. She hopes they know that she fights for them.
In a way, does she fight for Kaz, too? Even if he doesn’t care anymore?
Then she lowers her arms, lets her breath come in frantic bursts. Then she looks at Heleen, sees her sickly, sweet smile. Inej wants to scream.
She smiles, instead. She hugs Heleen back. Inej flinches.
“Fix your Quad Toe,” Heleen whispers. That’s a threat.
And Inej wishes that there was some way - any way - she could break out.
[--]
Kaz does nothing normally. He does not find out the normal way, that Inej Ghafa is back in Ketterdam for a week. He does not visit the rink the normal way, hoping for a glimpse of her like all the others.
Instead, he breaks in after hours. That’s easier. He knows she’ll be there. Perhaps it’s a mistake, he knows - he may scare the shit out of her, his words may fail him and he may break down in the worst possible way. He may discover that he needs her back.
But he knows that the longer he watches her skate, the longer he spends seeing the light in her eyes - the more the last one becomes true.
The front door requires some sort of keycard. Kaz uses the backdoor instead, and picks the lock easily. He slips inside, the only noise the sound of his footsteps and cane on the floor. He leaves all the lights flicked off.
There’s one on, that dimly lights the ice.
His breath catches in his throat, and he clenches his cane tighter. He wouldn’t have been surprised if he’d accidentally let it clatter, all the way down to the floor.
Inej spins, tighter and tighter. Faster and faster, until she’s nothing but a blur of black and bronze. Her blades kick up the ice, slicing through the top layer and leaving dozens of scratch marks behind. Then she slows, spin coming to a gradual stop.
Kaz knows nothing about figure skating, but he knows that she’s beautiful.
So why doesn’t she smile?
Inej mutters something under her breath, skates a tiny figure eight in the middle of the rink. She looks up at the roof, blinking rapidly, and then pushes off again. She doesn’t notice him.
She picks up speed, the sound of her blades on the ice the only one in the room, aside from Kaz’s sharp inhale when Inej launches herself into the air. She lands with a slight wobble, and skids to a stop. She kicks up the ice with her toepick.
Then she sets off again.
Another jump. Sometimes her landings are clean, sometimes she wobbles. Sometimes they look fine to Kaz, but she’ll mutter to herself and do the same path all over again. She doesn’t fall. Kaz has never seen her fall.
What happens, he wants to ask, when she does?
One misstep - and the ice below does not forgive.
Kaz wishes he could catch her.
Inej skates along the wall one more time. She picks up speed as she edges closer and closer to where Kaz stands. He shuffles backwards, slightly. Inej pays no mind, if she hears.
Then she’s turning, spinning, and suddenly she sees him right as she slams her toepick into the ice-
Inej jumps. She spins. Then the landing gives out, and she crumbles to the ground.
Kaz’s breath stops.
But then she’s looking, she’s looking up at him and what does he do when they fall-
Kaz swallows. He straightens his back and grips his cane tighter. He takes one step forwards. Then he holds out one gloved hand, over the rail of the rink.
“I can help you,” he says.
And Inej smiles.