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There's so much blood. It's everywhere. Jason can't stop staring at it as it gushes through Slade's fingers and pools on the ice. Slade's usually imposing figure seems so small kneeling among the sea of paramedics trying to get him to let go of his face.
It happened so fast. Jason didn't even see it. One moment Kane was hitting the puck towards the crease, a slapshot from hell, and the next moment Slade was falling to his knees, screaming, clutching at his face, blood spilling across the ice.
It's gonna be a bad one. Even sitting on the bench, too far away to be any good, Jason knows it. The paramedics rushing Slade out of the arena, holding a gauze pack to his face to staunch the bleeding, only confirm it.
Jason's right knee twitches with phantom pain from a long-healed injury. In his mind's eye, Slade isn’t the one being rushed out, but Jason. He remembers the smiling face of the Jokers’ coach hovering over him, seconds before he grasped Jason's already wrecked leg and wrenched it, making an already bad knee injury ten times worse.
The memory sparks alive behind his eyes and for a moment he’s not in the arena, not in front of thousands of Wildstorm fans. He’s back there, reeling with the past. He sees it play out all over again. The injury, the Jokers’ coach, the medics arriving with Napier still holding Jason’s knee, caressing Jason's face, making comforting, soothing noises. No one had believed Jason's version of the story. Not even Bruce.
Napier had just been trying to help, Bruce insisted, telling Jason that he'd been in too much pain to understand. Bruce didn't care anyway: not when Jason's hockey career died before it even started. He'd come to the hospital once only to tell Jason not to worry about the costs, that insurance would cover most of it and the team would cover the rest.
"An injury that bad at fifteen, even if you recover, will never heal enough for you to play competitively," Bruce told him, his words a hundred times more brutal than the doctors’ had ever been. "No NHL team will pay for that liability. You're clever, Jason. I'm sure you'll find a different path. Concentrate on healing and don't worry about the hospital bills."
It wasn't just the hospital bills, though. Hockey was expensive. The equipment, the constant trips to training, the gas and time his parents invested driving for hours to be there during Jason's games, the countless hotel rooms. Everything. They had to borrow money to finance Jason's talent—an investment, his dad had called it, grinning proudly at Jason—thinking that one day, Jason would be able to pay it all back.
The next time Jason saw Bruce was on TV, a couple of months later, touting his new hockey prospect to the local Gotham press. Jason had felt hallowed out, bereft. Just a broken, discarded toy.
That was Bruce, though. That's what he did. He found kids with potential and trained them up. Some, like Grayson, became stars in the NHL; others never made it past the Juniors. Bruce had told Jason he'd be the next Grayson and Jason had believed him. Worse yet, Jason's parents had believed him, too.
That dream would have died in that hospital bed, and Bruce would have buried it without ever looking back, if it wasn't for Talia. Jason owed her everything and he intended to deliver on the promise he made her.
Someone jostles Jason, startling him back into the present. The now. The blood on the ice is Slade's, not Jason’s. The one injured is Slade, not Jason. The one to worry about right now is Slade, not Jason.
A sea of black and gold rushes past him like a wave crashing over the ice. Midnighter is at the center of it, gloves and blocker discarded behind him, launching himself at Kane. Mid shouldn't be fighting at all, not when he's their goalie. The penalties are too steep, the risk too great. That's what they have enforcers for, but he doesn't seem to care. This isn't a run-of-the-mill hockey fight; it's a bench-clearing brawl. Everyone’s on the ice, shouting, cursing, throwing punches. Everywhere Jason looks there’s another fight and the referee and linesmen are only two men to forty and all of their efforts are useless.
Jason stands up. It's like watching himself from afar, springing over the boards, skating across the ice to join his team. He sheds his gloves as he goes, and leaps right in, fists raised. One hit. A second. Dodging. Trying to hit again. It doesn’t even matter who he’s fighting with, just that they’re wearing the wrong colors tonight. He connects with his opponent's jaw. A flash of pain sparks up his arm as a fist glances across bone. They swing back and connect and there’s the bright taste of copper in his mouth. Another hit. There are shouts and insults. He's shouting, too. He doesn't know what he’s saying; it doesn't matter. It isn't about this one player. It's about the team. It's about teaching the Arrows that no one touches the Wildstorm's goalie and walks away unscathed.
Deeper still, where none of them want to admit it, it is about Slade. About their fear. Their powerlessness. Their rage.
It lasts forever, and yet not nearly long enough. Jason's blood is pumping with adrenaline and the desire to keep fighting when Apollo’s voice cuts through it all, ordering them to stop, his barked words a hundred times more effective than the useless attempts of the referee and linesmen to end the brawl.
The referee is livid at having lost control of the game, and it shows. He's throwing penalties around like they're party favors. By the time he's done, Wildstorm has to play three on four, and the Arrows hold the advantage of the powerplay.
"Red," the coach barks, "sit for Midnighter. I'm putting you in with Apollo after."
"Yes, Sir," Jason says, heart hammering in his chest at the implications. He's being moved to the first line as a substitute for Slade.
It makes sense. The coach isn't going to break up his second and third lines when the first is already in shambles after Slade's injury. Jason is the only one among the fourth liners who has trained with Apollo. Not much and certainly not often. But the fact that Jason did manage to score on Midnighter three out of the five times he said he would has earned him enough attention for the Captain to want to test Jason's skills himself. Midnighter's fascination with Jason probably helped, too.
The box is the worst kind of torture. Time has no meaning inside of it. The seconds stretch like an eternity—a purgatory of wait that doesn't want to end. Two minutes is one thing, five is a whole other. It drives Jason mad, watching his team out-manned, fighting to kill the Arrow's powerplay. Hawkey is next to him, waiting, skates tapping impatiently on the mats, gloves clutching his stick, willing the seconds to pass faster. They don't.
Jason sees it before the others do. Mid isn't as attuned as he ought to be. Too much anger. Too much worry. It’s throwing his focus.
'When you're on the ice, boy, you have to be the ice. All of you, down to your very soul,' Ducra had told him. 'Fire and ice don't mix. Be ice. Become ice. Own it until your very soul is ice, too. Nothing else will do.' Jason had learned more in his one year with the All-Caste—a forgotten tribe hidden away on an eternally frozen lake inside the crater of a Tibetan mountain—than all his ice hockey trainers put together had ever taught him.
There's fire on Mid's heart now, Jason sees it, even if the others can't. His soul burns with it. The puck shoots across the ice, too fast for Spica to stop it, and then the klaxon is blaring and Mid's sprawled on the ice, one mili-second too late. The wrong side of the arena explodes with cheers as the scoreboard flips to 1:0 for the Arrows.
Hawkey leaves the penalty box to join the team, but so does the Arrow player. Four on five. Three and half more unbearable minutes of a power play for the Arrows. 210 small eternities others have the luxury to call seconds.
Inside, Jason is burning, too, roaring with the need to be with his team, to help them, to prove himself.
Become ice.
He closes his eyes, breathes, lets the cold of the rink travel through him. He doesn't watch. There's no point. The klaxon blares again, and Jason doesn't need to open his eyes to know it's the Arrows scoring. The noise in the arena tells it all. He breathes in slowly, long inhales, and even longer exhales.
Become ice.
Jason feels the fragile edges of it. The sense of peace where everything aligns and slots into place. Where nothing else matters. Complete attunement.
Become ice.
Eternity stretches. Almost over now. Almost. Jason rises to his feet anyway and waits by the door as the clock counts down his last seconds of purgatory. When the penalty is over and the attendant opens the door, time rushes forward. His skates hit the ice. This is his moment. The thing he's worked toward his whole life. Everything Jason's wanted since he came back to the United States after years of training abroad.
His chance. His opportunity to prove himself. It's here. Now.
Become ice.
For Talia. For Slade. For himself. But mostly, to show Bruce Fucking Wayne what a fool he was to have written Jason off like yesterday's garbage.
Become ice.
Jason skates forward, falls into place as they claim the puck and head toward the opponent’s net, towards victory. His soul is an iceberg of certainty, deeper and bigger and wider than any of the Arrows can see. They're concentrating on Apollo, on Hawkey. They underestimate Jason. Everyone always does.
A mistake they’ll pay for.
Apollo passes the puck, and Jason’s there, waiting for it, knowing exactly where he needs to be. The Arrow's goalie isn't Midnighter. He doesn't even come close. Jason takes his shot, knows it’ll go in before it ever does. He’s already turning, already slipping into the celly he’s practiced a hundred times as the goal horn blares.
Apollo, Hawkey, Spica and Jenners fall all over him. The fan's shouts are deafening.
It’s 1:2 now, and Jason knows they’ll tie it up. He knows that they’ll win.
This is where he belongs. Here. Now. The world is his.