Archive of Our Own

July 2018

Every Wednesday and Friday night, Dagur drives Heather to gymnastics. He sees the back of her raven plait (courtesy of himself- he learned how to do them recently, and he couldn’t have been more pleased with himself!) swinging behind her as she leaves the car and walks inside. Once he’s seen her walk safely inside, he turns around and drives away.Two hours later, when practice is over, he sees her panting, wispy bits of hair falling out, her face flushed. She’d flop into the car seat with a final sigh, and Dagur would ask:

“How was gym?”

“Alright,” she’d reply.

“You learn anything new?”

And she’d tell him about a skill she’d got, or a new move she’d started learning, and-

Dagur never once paid deeper thought to what went on inside of that gym.

It’s not like he has good reason to- it’s just gymnastics. He’s met her coaches - two women called Tess and Carly - and they were nice and polite and - most importantly - fully certified. And he’s met Astrid on her gymnastics team. If the other girls are anything like her, why should he worry?

Because Heather never talks about her feelings, that’s why. Now the thought’s there, irrevocably stuck in his brain, he can’t help but replay it, over and over. Sometimes she walks out with a smile bright as the sun, proudly telling him how she got to do a difficult tumble or vault. Sometimes she talks so in depth about the in’s and out’s of different types of leaps it’s easy to overlook the strangeness of how she moves: steady, cautious, like she’s trying to minimise hurt.

One day, she sits in the car far slower than usual, lowering herself onto her seat like it was made of hot coals.

He frowns. “You okay, sis?”

“I’m fine. Just a hard fall, that’s all.” She goes on to tell him about what she did in the bar circuit, something about a backaway dismount, but Dagur only halfway pays attention. He trained to work with pain and injuries for a living; he knows how to tell when people are hiding something. And it’s very obvious there's something Heather's not telling him.

From that day, he starts to pay closer attention: the days she walks tenderly, the way she holds her arms, the droop in her shoulders, it all adds up to something bad going on in the two hours he leaves her in that building. Could it be...

Could she be injuring herself and not telling him? The thought horrifies him, but he pushes it down. It’s not about you right now, Dagur, he reminds himself. I’ll come in to collect her, instead of parking out front. Maybe I can talk to Tess and Carly.

That’s his plan, one he executes with a calm demeanour one Friday night. He spots Heather by the bars, Tess and Carly on either side of her, holding her up in a handstand. Her body forms a straight line, every muscle tense and precise, down to her neatly pointed toes.

Woah. His mouth is half-open. He’s dumbfounded. It’s one of the most impressive things he’s seen her do. She looks like the gymnasts he sometimes sees on TV in international - international - competitions. The thought of his little sis being remotely close to that level is astounding.

Finally, she swings down, casting off the bar, and dusts her hands off. He watches her walk towards the main floor where everyone else is stretching. The coach’s - Tess, he thinks - mouth is moving, and she’s nodding along, but from her expression, it doesn’t sound like praise.

Carly barks an instruction he can’t make out, and the gymnasts line up in a line: their shoulders pinned back, their fingers gracefully pointed, feet curved in a ballet third position (and how Dagur even knows that he’s not sure). He hears the coach call “present”<a href="#presentdefinition" name="ripdefinitionback">¹</a> and everyone does as such, smiling with the brightness of spotlights.

Then, out they come. They’re in leotards that glitter with diamantes and cling to their skin, accentuating figures toned with muscle definition he’s sure is borderline unhealthy on young children. Dagur scoots to the side; he’d knock them over otherwise. He’s not the tallest person by any means, but he’s at least a head taller than all the others. They aren’t more than nine or ten years old - for Heather and Astrid are among the oldest in the squad.

He notices that their hair is slicked back into pristine ponytails, some ornamented with crisscrossing plaits. He thinks about how it was a struggle to put Heather’s thick tumble of hair in one ordinary braid. The fancy French and Dutch braiding of the other girls is far beyond his ability to do.

A few give him strange, questioning looks, trying to work out why he’s here when they’ve never seen him here before. He gives them his friendly ‘patient wave’ and - satisfied - they move back to their conversation. He tunes out most of it; it’s none of his business, and it doesn’t sound interesting anyway.

But then, he catches the words “check out my rips from bars today” and he can’t help but look from the corner of his eye.

The girl’s palms are nearly bleeding, the skin ripped open in long, thin patches. The flesh underneath is pink and raw.

“They were from our kip preps. It hurts, but they’ll be fine in time for our next bar rotation.”

Bile rises in his throat. Dagur hurriedly looks away, but he can’t get the image of them out of his mind: her young, tender flesh marred with chalk stains and blood. Gymnastics wasn’t his strong suit, but hands were definitely not meant to do that.

He's barely recovered from the horror when her friend says:

“ Wow. Coach must be amazed. I wish my hands would rip like that. ”

That does it. What other kinds of bullshit ideals are the coaches forcing onto little girls? It was horrific enough that they seem to be glorifying pain themselves (especially cloaked with the ‘hard work’ disguise), but to brainwash their young minds into seeking that pain? It was atrocious.

A new thought hits him like a ton of bricks. What if it’s all happening to Heather too? She’s a smart, brilliant girl, and her mind is fiercely strong, but was the constant, pounding social pressure enough to break her?

Now he thinks about it, there have been times she flinches away from his hugs, shoves her hands in her pockets and sneaks off to the bathroom right after they get home. The car is awfully dark at night.

Dark enough that a bruise, or a rip, would go unnoticed.

Dagur feels sick. He barely hears Heather waving hello to him, her tone surprised as she asks “what are you doing here?”

He fumbles for a reply. “Oh, you know... Just wanted to see my awesome sister in action.”

She frowns quizzically at him. “You see me at competitions.”

“I’ve only watched one. And I like to watch you.”

“A heads up would be nice for next time,” she says. Wordlessly, she walks to the door, holding it open but not stepping through, as if it is a portal to her worst nightmares.

Dagur follows her, talking about what he’s learning in his first year of nursing school (because that’s guaranteed to interest her, even on her worst days). She collapses into the car seat like usual, clipping herself in with slow movements. Dagur starts the car, sneaking a side glance at her. Her wrists lie limply across her thighs, delicately placed like they are broken. There’s no obvious misalignment, or even swelling, but Dagur keeps a close eye.

He has a bad feeling about Heather Ushijima and gymnastics, and now it’s there - her squad mate's words still ringing in the back of his mind - he wonders if it would ever go away.

.o0o.

Two weeks later, she practically sprints out of the gym, clutching her water bottle and bar hand guards to her chest. She flings the door open, and straps herself in. “Let’s go.”

“Okay, okay, ease up buttercup,” he says, chuckling. “Why the rush?”

Her reflection on the glass window stares sadly at the sky. “I’m just tired. And I need a shower.”

“Alright.” He pauses. “Are you feeling okay?”

She shrugs. “Fine, I guess. Why?”

“Just wondering. You’re looking a bit pale, that's all.”

Something in her seems to bristle like a frightened cat, and her lips twist into a scowl.

“I’m fine.”

He doesn't believe her, not one bit. Of course she isn't well. Her skin isn't normally that pale, nor are her eyes usually that tired.

All he can do is look after her, he decides. Just keep her safe and healthy. And maybe keep her off Friday’s training.

.o0o.

“Right... right, yep. Okay, okay. Alright. Thank you.”

Dagur hung up the phone, and strode into the living room. Heather looked up from her book - 1984, by George Orwell - and put her index finger in the pages to mark her place. “What’s up?”

He decided to say it straight. “Why didn’t you tell me you fainted last session?”

Her eyebrows shot up for a moment. “It wasn’t important.”

“Your coach said he wanted to speak to me after Wednesday’s session, but you left too fast. Is that why?”

“So what if it was?” Her voice raised to a loud-ish speaking volume. “It doesn’t matter.”

“Sis, you fainted. That’s what we nurses call a problem .”

“I didn’t even faint, I just tripped and lost consciousness for a few seconds.”

“That’s literally what a faint is-”

“Okay, Mr Know-It-All, how about you medically prescribe me some pills or something?”

“Your only prescription is some rest, young lady.”

For a foolish moment, Dagur thinks he’s won, but Heather ‘harumph’s and says “fine. I’ll rest. After tonight’s session.”

“Are you crazy , I’m not taking you when you’re sick -”

“I’ll make you,” she insists.

“No you won’t.”

“It’s not even conditioning night-”

“Don’t care. You’re not g-”

“I am going to gymnastics tonight, and you are driving me,” Heather repeats.

“Like hell I am. There's only one place you're going right now and that's to your room to get some rest,” Dagur says.

“And what if I climbed out of my window and walked there myself?” Heather's hands go on her hips. “Do you really want me out there all by myself in the dark?”

“I said. You're not going,” Dagur repeats, but even he can see how futile it is. For maybe the first time since they met, he's beginning to see just how alike they are. She has the Dérangé stubbornness, any fool could see it. They're both stubborn as a mule, and it's all fun and games until - goodness forbid - they disagree.

Dagur prides himself on his stubbornness, usually because he ends up right anyway, but sometimes he knows when to call it quits. This, however, is not one of those times. His sister, the most important person in his life, is injured and not well. If something were to happen to her… he'd never forgive himself.

But he takes one look at her, green eyes fiery, and her words ring in his head.

“Do you really want me out there all by myself in the dark?”

Even the thought of her out in the dark, possibly getting abducted -or worse- horrifies him. And he knows she'll do it. At least, at gym, she'll be safe and he knows where she'll be.

He sighs. “Get your leotard on. I'll drive you.”

.o0o.

After he drops Heather off, he paces his room for ten minutes worrying, and puts his mind off it by spending a very productive thirty minutes on Wikipedia hyperfixating on learning about how a body decomposes. The usual.

He's snapped from his fascinated spiral of wonder by his phone buzzing with a text. He picks up immediately, wondering- wishing- hoping it's Heather.

The name on his phone is not Heather. It's Astrid Hofferson.

Astrid: why the hell is heather here? she looks awful. anyway pls come. it's stretching day.

WHAT?! Dagur swears roughly seventy per cent of the swear words he knows, kicks his desk chair, and pulls his jacket on, already making a break for the door.

“What in the name of hell is she thinking?” Dagur mutters to himself as he gets into his car. “I- I mean, how could she be so stupid, going on stretching day of all days...”

He’s heard of stretching day, spoken of like a horror story. The first and last half hour of the session dedicated to bending their bodies further than is comfortable, always pushing higher and higher, bending lower and lower until they’re flat down in all three splits, their back bending far enough for their head to touch their bum, feet on platforms as they go into pike folds, more technical lingo he’s sure he could remember if he wasn’t so freaking panicked .

It seems like no time at all that he gets to the gym. He entertains the possibility he’ll get a speeding fine, but decides he’ll worry about that later. Heather comes first.

He walks - inconspicuously but rapidly - into the gym, and takes a seat in the viewing area. The girls are on the floor, bending themselves into positions he’s certain will give them back problems when they’re older. One girl balances on her chin, shoulders and chest with her legs bent over her head. Another sits in splits, bends her back leg up and takes hold of it, and actually bends back, taking her arms with her.

Then, he finds Heather. Her raven hair would be hard to miss. She presses her upper body up with her hands, her legs beside her. A seal stretch, she once told him it was called. A coach - one he doesn’t recognise - grabs her hands, and pulls her back by the arms.

He fears he might actually be sick watching her bend so far. All of him wants to scream stop it, stop it, you’re hurting her! and drag her as far from this forsaken place as he can. He’s beginning to think that’s what would be best for them both.

Inches from giving in to the urge, Astrid catches his eye. She scoots closer to him, still midway down in a straddle fold, and hisses “about time. Today we were all tired, so we got extra conditioning. And then Tess was on our case about our figures, telling us we need less fat and sugar and-”

“Hang on, she what?! ” Dagur is suddenly hit with an urge to burn the place down, keeping Tess and Carly inside.

“Does Heather not tell you?” Astrid frowns, and it takes a minute for him to realise she is genuine . She is truthfully asking him why Heather doesn’t talk about how her coaches speak to her.

And he knows why, he knows exactly why. He’s a bad caretaker, a bad brother, a bad parent, if he could even call himself that. He doesn’t deserve any of those titles. No wonder Heather treats him as such.

Astrid may as well have slapped him in the face.

“Hang on, we’ll talk about this later,” he says, and by hell does he mean it. “What’s been going on?”

“After that little lecture, she made Lucy and Darcy take off their shorts for practice in our competition, even though they wanted to keep them on.”

“Why?”

“Because apparently it doesn’t look as good.” Astrid scoffs.

“Aren’t they, like, seven years old?”

Astrid shrugs. “Doesn’t make any difference. They’re even threatening to deduct points if we do wear them.”

If Dagur was a pan of boiling water, he thinks this would be the moment he bubbles over the top, scalding everyone in his path and splashing white-hot pinpricks of pain onto their coaches' skin. He’s ready to start a riot, rob a bank, storm a government building, maybe even murder someone.

And it’s all the coaches’ fault.

He looks back to Heather just in time to hear a sickening crack.

Heather cries out, and the coach drops her hands immediately. Dagur sprints onto the floor, dropping onto his knees to be beside her.

“Oh my God, sis... what happened?”

Heather emits a groan, her teeth clenched so much it looks painful on her jaw.

“Come on, you’re alright,” the coach - he doesn’t know her name - encourages. “Rest for five and get back to it, okay”

“ Rest for five, are you crazy? She needs weeks off for a fracture like this.”

Spondylolysis: a fracture in a vertebra of the spine, often derived from repetitive stress or injuries to the spine. He’s so thankful he was listening when they covered it in nursing school in Sarasota.

He carefully rolls her onto her back, and props her legs up so they’re bent. From there, he uses his hands to carefully adjust her head in case she’s hurt badly. Spondylolysis is almost always curable without surgery, but he doesn’t want to worsen that risk.

“Don’t... know,” she finally says. “Hurts.”

In an instant, the worry inside his gut turns into anger. He turns to face the coach, his eyes practically flaming.

“What did you do,” he speaks softly, “to my sister?”

“It’s a routine stretch, we always do it with them.”

“You do, huh? Do you make a habit of telling them what they can and can’t eat?”

“It’s to make sure their gymnasts are in peak condition, especially for competing.”

“That’s all fun and games until they starv-” he breaks off. Young girls don’t need those ideas in their heads. “That’s abuse. They shouldn’t be restricting their foods this early on. Just encourage them to eat healthily, and have plenty of protein and vegetables, no need to stop them from having chocolate.”

“It’s what any good coach would do,” she insists.

“Then maybe you’re all awful!” Dagur yells, and the whole gym turns to look at him.

Tess walks towards him, Carly at her heels. “Mr Dérangé, you do not speak to my coaches that way.”

“And you do not treat my sister like this.”

“You should go!” Astrid says, stepping pointedly between Heather and Dagur and the coaches. “It sounds like a break.”

Dagur nods tersely to Astrid, before looking directly into Tess’s cold, blue eyes. “I was already on my way out.”

He’s incredibly careful to lift her, holding her up by his side, and she leans on him like a crutch. Her feet drag behind her, and he’s all but carrying her. Astrid waves goodbye in his peripheral vision. Everyone else stares.

She makes it all the way out the front door before her knees buckle. Without hesitation, Dagur bends down, and she climbs onto him like a backpack. Her arms hesitantly wrap around his neck.

“It's okay. There's no one around,” he assures her. “C'mon. I’m taking you home.”

“It hurts,” she whispers, her voice no more than a wisp of smoke in the evening air.

“I know sweetheart, I know. I’m here. Dagur's here. You’ll be okay.”

The journey across the car park seems so much longer than usual, probably because he had a fourteen year old’s entire body weight in his arms. Or maybe he’s just terrified of what is happening. In spite of his calm demeanour, he's never been in a situation like this, and it scares him. 

Dagur Dérangé doesn't get scared, he tells himself. It’s against everything he stands for. He was brave for himself, and then he met Heather and found a better reason to be brave. But he’s never, ever, scared.

He stops short when he notices someone's head peering at them in the window. His heart rate skyrocketing, he prepares to throw hands at whoever dares invade his sister's privacy-

But he takes another look, and recognised the warm, brown skin, the neatly plaited blonde hair, and matches a name to the familiar face:

Astrid Herrera-Sosa. Friend and squad mate of Heather's from Berk Middle School.

As he lifts Heather into the front seat, Astrid's eyes stay on him. She mouths something he can't make out, so he shrugs his shoulders. Face palming, she draws a heart on the window in the condensation. Then, she rapidly turns her head, waves, and leaves.

Dagur waves back, though she can't see it, and gets in to drive. He got the message alright.

Turning on the car engine, Heather mumbles something he can’t quite hear. “Sorry, what was that?”

“ ‘M sorry about this.” Her head slowly rolls to the side, resting against the window, and she looks so defeated and tired , Dagur feels his heart break.

“Please don’t be. You’re hurt. You deserve a rest.” Dagur looks - almost glares - at the dimly-lit streets flashing past him, faint outlines of bushes and lampposts and a faint glow of Berserker city nightlife.

Heather hums softly. “You're a good brother.”

Dagur isn't sure how to respond, so he thanks her and keeps on driving.

He pulls up outside his house (because he owns a house, and this injured fourteen year old is in his care, and he’s twenty one but he may as well be a weather-worn adult in their forties). Carefully, he lifts Heather out, keeping her securely in his arms as he reaches the house. Thankfully, he was rushed enough to leave it unlocked, and he’s glad because he forgot to bring a key, and kicking doors open is far easier when his hands are out of use.

Dagur lays her down on the sofa, and runs around fetching things - a hot water bottle, a drink of water, a cushion to support her back, other things he’s sure he doesn’t need but gets anyway because the nagging just in case tempts him and he lets it.

He finally brings himself to stop, sitting on the armchair adjacent to Heather’s sofa.

“Are you okay?”

“What do you think?” Heather deadpans - retaining her sarcastic streak even in pain Dagur can’t even imagine - and he pats her on the shoulder.

“Right. Sorry. That was a dumb question.”

She huffs (it couldn’t quite be called a laugh). “Yeah. It was.”

“I guess I should ask how much it hurts.”

“Are you gonna make me use that damn pain scale?”

Dagur grimaces to himself. “Yeah. One to ten, ten being the worst.”

“Fine. Seven. Maybe eight.”

Dagur shudders to himself. Obviously, it’s different for everyone, but he’s never put his own pain above a six. Maybe he’s saving the pain levels for something really bad to happen. It’s one of the weird things about him his therapist says is from anxiety.

“Can I get you anything?”

“I don’t know, can you?” When Dagur chuckles, she presses on. “Really. I’d like to see you try to find anything that could be of use to me that you haven’t already got.”

He laughs properly, his shoulders shaking. It might be the best he’s felt all week, messing around with his sister (because they are siblings, after all, and that’s what siblings do together - they mess around).

The rest of the evening crawls by: he fashions Heather a proper bed on the sofa, and they watch Pitch Perfect . Heather explains for at least ten minutes why Becca and Chloe were wasted potential as a sapphic couple, Dagur makes popcorn, and - munching on it, in the comfort of the lounge - it’s peaceful. They’re midway through the second one, and the Bellas are going to Audrey’s camp, when Dagur realises Heather’s fallen asleep.

Leaving him with the heart wrenching job of waking her.

“Hey, sis?” He gently jostles her shoulder. “Heather?”

“Wha-” she mumbles, trying to sit up. Dagur pushes her back down with one gentle motion of his hand.

“Just stay there. I’m going to get you to your bed, okay?”

“Can I f’nish th’movie?” She mumbles, adorably sleepy. It’s cute in the way one finds a younger sister cute. The thought takes Dagur by surprise; he would attribute many wonderful things to Heather, but cute was definitely not one of them.

“Sorry, but no. You, young lady, need your rest.”

Heather glares at him, but lets him carry her - still wrapped in the blanket - up to her bedroom. He bridal carries this time: it’s a lot easier, and she begins to drift off against his shoulder in the few moments she’s in his arms. It’s adorably, terrifyingly, domestic, because domesticity implies family , and he’s not sure if Heather is ready to openly call him his family yet.

He leaves the room while she gets out of her gymnastics clothes, pretending to need to comb his hair. When he’s given her enough time, he re enters, and finds her lying in bed with the covers pulled up to her chin.

“That good?”

She hums contentedly. “Yeah.”

“We’ll deal with this in the morning,” Dagur says. “For now, get a good night’s rest.”

“Okay.”

He can tell she’s close to sleep already, so he stands up to leave. Then, he remembers something else he wants- no, needs to ask her.

“Oh, and one more thing?” 

“Yeah?”

“Can you promise me that, next time you’re hurt, you tell me? And all the times after that.”

Heather’s silent for a while, but she softly says “okay,” and Dagur kisses her forehead and goes back downstairs, where Becca falls out of a tree. He’ll finish the movie tomorrow.

.o0o.

Dagur Dérangé still does not like Heather's gymnastics club: it’s always too bright, and he hates her coaches for what they did. But after he had a few… words with them, they became significantly better behaved, in Dagur's opinion. They let Heather rest when she needs to, and let her call him on the rare occasion she’s too injured to carry on.

The other girls (except Astrid) grow envious over time, resenting privileges they seem to not have. But they settle down after Dagur -with the help of a few other parents- make a big enough fuss for the coaches to start treating their gymnasts like people.

The injuries themselves don't go away; Dagur doubts they ever will. But on the days Heather collapses onto Dagur's car seat -limping or cradling an injured limb- he draws her a bath with salts he ordered online to help ease the pains, or ice the limb elevated on a cushion until she feels better. It isn't much, but it was better than “walking it off,” as Heather and Astrid laugh between them.

Dagur still worries about her - of course he does. It’s all but printed in the older brother job description, scrawled between every hypothetical line.

And he lets himself worry - he’s getting better at letting himself feel unashamed, after all - but he knows Heather won’t make another mistake like she did.

After all, their family is stubborn. They don’t break promises.