Work Text:
He walks alone for hours.
It’s four in the morning. He doesn’t know where he is. Doesn’t care to know where he is. Doesn’t want to be anything, or anyone.
He walks, and he walks, until life delivers him here: at the foot of a little hill, in the dead of night at the end of June. At the top of the hill is a park with a playground. The day’s sticky heat has given way to a breeze that chills his body to the bone. He shivers, and he does not care.
Hockey’s like that. Life’s like that.
He climbs up the hill to the playground. There’s a set of swings. When he was very little- before hockey, even- his mother would push him on the swings because he couldn’t do it himself. When he got older, and there were expectations, he’d start by standing on his tiptoes to kick off the ground, then pump his legs to build momentum. Higher and higher and higher, until he was gripping the chains so, so tight because he thought he’d fly off into the sky. He’d come away with the chain marks embedded in the skin of his soft palms, transformed by having something to prove.
He sits his body down on the swings. Grips the chains, starts to pump his legs. He’s bigger now- doesn’t need to kick off, anymore. He’s backlit by two sets of lights, casting twin shadows on either side of him. As he swings forward, the shadows meet at the foot, mirrored ghosts of past and present, what was and could have been. He swings higher, and higher, until he starts to get dizzy with it. The shadows beneath him become unintelligible, inhuman. He can hear each of his breaths over the squeak of the chains as they swing, thunderous to his ears against the rest of the silent world.
The moon is bright, and there are dozens of stars overhead. At the apex of his last swing, he launches himself into the dark, hits the ground running. He’s running against the wind, his own breath forced back down his throat. He’s fast. He’s all alone. And if anyone could see him, they’d think: where the hell is that man going so fast? Where the hell is that man going?