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It was the weight of it that really got her. The anger was expected, the sadness, the disappointment, the pain, even the guilt. But the heaviness was something else.
Marie thought about Joce eight years ago, taking the medal off as soon as it was around her neck because she couldn’t bear the burden of it. She forced herself to stand still as second-best was draped over her head.
She’d meant what she said to her team. She was incredibly proud of them. That would make it easier, eventually, but it didn’t yet.
She spoke to reporters, teammates, and competitors alike with tears in her eyes. She didn’t want or need to hide them.
The locker room was a quiet affair. They shuffled in slowly, not defeated, but certainly beaten.
Laura moved closer to her once they were out of view of the cameras, and Marie took solace in the brush of their arms. In so many ways, this was not 2018.
Her girls, her followers, her friends sat in front of their stalls, and began to glance towards her. She stayed standing, the pain in her leg barely noticeable compared to the weight in her heart.
She made eye contact with Laura, who tilted her head. It was an offer. Marie shook her head. She could do this.
Troy, Kori, and Caro filed in behind her. They would let her speak.
She knew that every woman in the room felt like they could’ve done better. She also knew that all of them believed every other woman in the room had done their best, and that their best had been great. Marie was team-oriented to a degree that had been called pathological, but she knew when to step back, when to single people out.
There was no chatter to quiet, so she simply started talking.
“KO, that was incredible,” she said. “We were in that game from the beginning to the end, and what a way to play in your first go around.”
A smattering of applause followed. Fillier nudged Kristen, and she managed a watery smile.
She looked at Ambrose, whose head was down. Despite her veteran status, this was her first silver, and that was never easy. “Erin, you are one of the strongest people I’ve ever met. To come back like that, to keep us hopeful, keep us going.”
Laroque draped her arm over Erin’s shoulders, and Erin managed a smile. “I learned from the best.”
Marie turned to her goalie. “Debbie,” she said. “That was one of the best games you’ve ever played. You stood on your head for us.”
Ann did not smile, but she nodded.
“All of you,” Marie said, then paused to get herself under control. Her throat was constricting, the heaviness had migrated to her mouth. It was a struggle to open it, but open it she would.
“I love all of you,” she said, voice cracking slightly. “I am proud to be your captain, and to be your friend.”
She took a breath, thinking of what else to say. She knew these girls, and with a few exceptions she would have to talk to separately, they liked direction. She was the one here with the most Olympic experience, bar none. She was their captain. She would direct.
“This was the fight we knew it would be, and you all battled to the last buzzer. We have nothing to be ashamed of.” She pulled her lips in, blinking back tears. “But that doesn’t make this easier. Not tonight. Here is what I want from all of you. Tonight, be angry. Be upset. Be frustrated. Tomorrow, be all of those things, but be proud too. Look around you. You know this team has everything to be proud of.”
She took a deep breath. “Tomorrow, we start using this. We let it go, we let it fuel us. We do whatever we need to do in order to be our best. Tonight, be down. Tomorrow, start picking each other back up.”
Brianne started clapping, and everyone followed. Within seconds, the room was raucous, everyone cheering and applauding through tears. Marie smiled. Her team. Her girls. Her everything.
It died down just as quickly. They did not have celebration in them yet, not tonight.
“Anyone needs me, you know where to find me,” Brianne said, standing. “You want to talk, you want to get some air, you want to cry, my door is open.”
“So is mine,” Masch said. “Gen and Beckham will be happy to see any of you.”
“You want retail therapy, you find me,” Nursey said, half-smiling.
“You want real therapy, you find Lisa, Alexis, or Susan,” Kori added.
“Alright,” Blayre said, standing as well. “Let’s hit the showers, then hit the town, the tv, ice and elevate, find your families, whatever you need to do. You all have my number. My phone will be on.”
Everyone dispersed slowly, filing out largely in groups.
Caro stepped up, and wrapped an arm around Marie. Marie went willingly, shrinking into her mentor. It was always strange to hug Caro when only Marie was in equipment. She towered over her in skates, and she always felt like an overgrown child around Caro anyway.
“Il était parfait,” Caro said quietly.
“Don’t say that,” Marie muttered, pulling back. If it had been perfect, the medal around her neck would be a different colour, and they both knew it.
Caro held her in place. “Not the game,” she said. “Son discours.”
Marie swallowed. “J’essaie,” she said. “To be like you. To make them feel what you and Wick always made us feel.”
Caro smiled at her, eyes shining. “Don’t tell her I said this, mais tu es la meilleure d’entre nous. Better than both of us. Parfait, Pou, je le pense vraiment.”
She let the tears fall, and Caro squeezed her shoulder as she left.
Marie wiped her eyes and looked around. The only people left were Laura, hovering at the door, and Daryl, still sitting, staring straight ahead with empty eyes.
Marie left last, almost always, ice and locker room alike. The captain went down with the ship, after all.
She smiled sideways at her wife. “I’ll catch up,” she said, and Laura nodded and left.
Marie took another deep breath, and made her way over to Daryl.
Miles to go before I sleep.
~
Daryl Watts was one of the people on the team Marie knew the least, but she didn’t feel like it. Daryl was painfully comprehensible, almost too familiar. The 26 year old with dead eyes after winning her first Olympic silver.
Daryl couldn’t blow her life up as effectively as Marie had eight years ago. She had a professional contract to keep, and her love life- well. Perhaps that wasn’t a good thing.
Marie watched Daryl’s dead expression. She may not be able to lock herself in a room and refuse to let the sun in as Marie had, but there was plenty she still could do. It wouldn’t be the work of one conversation to get her back to stable ground, but it would be a safety net.
Marie put her hand on Daryl’s shoulder, and she did not startle. She blinked twice before she slowly turned her head to look up at Marie.
“What,” she said.
Marie raised an eyebrow, and Daryl glanced around, noticing that they were the only two left. “Oh.”
“How does it feel?” Marie asked, and Daryl looked at her like she was stupid. Marie smiled ruefully. “Olympic medallist Daryl Watts.”
“Silver. Medallist.”
“Is that all that matters?”
Daryl scoffed. “With all due respect. Easy for you to fucking say.”
Marie sat next to her, and looked down at the shine of silver on her chest. “With all due respect. No it fucking is not.”
That startled a joyless laugh out of Daryl, and Marie grimaced. She knew hopelessness when she heard it, bouncing back at her like an echo.
“It kind of is, though,” Daryl said. “Easier, anyway. You’ve got a lot of gold.”
She looked pointedly at Marie’s medal, then her left hand, where her wedding ring glinted. Marie shrugged, acquiescence, then waited.
“I should’ve had that,” Daryl said after a minute of silence. “I could feel it. On the breakaway especially. I should’ve had it.”
Marie hummed. It had been a good defensive play from Murphy, but she’d seen Daryl outplay better defenders.
“What about Filly?” She asked.
Daryl shook her head. “Not her fault. Her positioning was good, I just couldn’t get the pass off.”
Marie nodded. Not lashing out at everyone then, that was good. Blaming herself, that could go either way.
“What about Claire?”
Daryl grimaced. “It was a hell of a dangle, but Claire doesn’t fall for that shit. On a different day, she might have had her. Troy shouldn’t have put her out, injured, in three-on-three.”
Marie nodded again. Still thinking clearly, then, and holding on to her typical feelings about Troy. That was very good indeed.
“I should’ve had the lane before the breakaway,” she said, testing the waters.
Daryl looked at her. “Yes.”
It was one of Marie’s favourite things about Watts, her fearlessness. She criticized wherever she felt she needed to, and she took the consequences where they came. She should’ve been on the team years ago, but Marie would be lying if she said she didn’t understand why she hadn’t been.
“Good,” she said. “You can take this and wallow in it forever, or you can let it motivate you. Go back to Toronto, learn from it, play your best games, and do better next time.”
Daryl huffed. “Next time.”
For the first time since the weight had hit her, Marie felt a burst of genuine anger. She stood abruptly, and glared down at Daryl.
“Get up,” she said, and Daryl did, because it was very clearly an order.
Marie grabbed her by the shoulder. She only had about an inch on Daryl, but she took full advantage of it, bearing down on her.
“Yes, next time,” Marie said. “There will be a next time. You’re not quitting.”
“Why, because you didn’t? Because I’m young, and talented, and have my whole life ahead of me? Because I’m- the future, or whatever?”
The bitterness in her tone could kill, and it was achingly familiar.
“No,” Marie snapped. “Because I’m selfish. Because I won’t play forever, but Canada will. Because this team is everything. This is everything. You will come back, and you will do better, because it isn’t about you. This team, this program, this game. It needs everyone it can get. I didn’t quit, you’re right. It needed me, and it needs you. You’d let it down because you feel sorry for yourself?”
Daryl blinked rapidly, eyes alive for the first time.
“No,” she said.
“No,” Marie agreed, and stepped back. “Be upset. Be angry. But don’t be an idiot.”
Daryl’s lips twitched, and Marie smiled. That was all she needed.
Daryl sat down and began taking her equipment off, and Marie did the same.
“Daryl,” she said before Watts could reach the door. Daryl turned and looked at her. “I was your age when I won my first silver. Laura was 23.”
Daryl caught the implication, and shook her head. “We aren’t- weren’t. Like you and Laura.”
“Of course not, you’re young,” Marie said.
“There are more differences than that,” Daryl said.
“Alright,” Marie said. “You weren’t like us. But we were like you.”
“Except your jersey was the same.”
“True,” Marie said, thinking of Kacey, “but I could give you a list of girls on this team who have had bad break-ups with Americans, and my name would be first. I’m only saying, you want to talk to someone about Harvey, I’m here.”
Daryl looked slightly horrified at the prospect of discussing her love life with her captain, as if they hadn’t been doing just that.
“I’ll think about it,” she said, in a tone that meant she definitely would not be doing that, and left.
Marie grinned at her skates for a second, then looked around the empty locker room. The pile of dirty jerseys in the bin was just to her left.
She delicately lifted the medal off of her head, and then lobbed it into the bin as hard as she could, an aggressive downward arc. It clinked gently against the side, cushioned just enough. Marie tilted her head back until it thunked against the wall behind her, and wished the heaviness was so easy to cast away.
She fished the medal out before she left. She doubted it was washing machine safe.
~
She found Emma Maltais in the dressing room after she showered. She looked much like Daryl had, but less empty, and more shellshocked.
Of all of them, Emma had the most belief. Marie thought she might be the only one who had to deal with this loss genuinely surprised.
Still, Emma would be easier to help. She was constantly hopeful, never ran out of fight. Marie had known her forever, and for such different people, they were very close. Marie knew how to handle her.
She sat next to her, and pushed their knees together. Emma looked at her.
“You did good,” Marie said.
“Not good enough,” Emma replied.
“None of us did. Not this time.”
Emma’s mouth twisted. “My mom wasn’t there last time.”
Marie’s heart broke a little. With age came perspective, and most of that perspective was realizing how young she’d been, and how young everyone else was.
“No,” she admitted, “but she will be next time.”
Marie watched a tiny bit of Emma’s usual light return to her eyes. She remembered this feeling, as if silver was the permanent end, destination and deadline in one. It wasn’t. Not for Emma, at least. It was good for her to be reminded of that.
“I really thought we could do it,” Emma said.
“We could have,” Marie replied. “We proved that, at least. You were right all along.”
“But we didn’t,” Emma said.
Marie shrugged. “You want to let one goal shake your belief, allez-y. It will make Toronto much easier to beat.”
Emma pursed her lips, and Marie smiled. Remembering all the hockey yet to come was the most effective remedy for a bad loss. She wished she’d known that so well eight years ago, that the game and the Games might be over, but her life certainly wasn’t.
“In your dreams,” Emma said.
“La voilà,” Marie replied. “What are you doing now?”
“Getting really drunk, probably,” Emma said. “KO, Nursey, and Filly are already out.”
“Good,” Marie said. “Make sure KO isn’t buying any of her own drinks.”
Emma grinned. “Too bad she plays in New York, or she wouldn’t be for the rest of the year.” She stood, gathering her stuff. “What’s your plan?”
Marie grimaced. “Press.”
Emma wrinkled her nose. “Wanna ditch and get drunk with us?”
“I would if I could.”
“What are they gonna do, fire you?” Emma asked.
Marie sighed. It wasn’t a bad point, but she was long past the days when she would do something like that. If she was being honest, she wasn’t sure she’d ever had any days where she would do something like that.
“I can’t. Have fun, if you can. And be safe!”
Emma rolled her eyes, but she was smiling as she left, and that was all Marie had wanted to achieve. She glanced at the medal glittering in her stall, and her expression soured. Not all she’d wanted to achieve, of course, but all she could.
Captaincy was much like marriage, in some ways. Through the good and the bad, in sickness and in health.
Marie’s leg twinged, and she sighed. At least she could sit while being asked questions about how it felt to fail.
~
The press conference was awful, but then, they always were. Marie was incredibly grateful for her position in life, for the love she received, for the acclaim. She needed to be the best, needed others to know she was.
Others knowing she was the best, though, was a double-edged sword. She could certainly do without some of what came with it.
When Marie got outside, Claire was waiting for her.
“Hello,” she said.
“I’m sorry,” Claire burst out, like it had been sitting at the very front of her mouth, and she’d been holding it in. “I should’ve had her.”
“Keller’s a hard one to beat at full health, let alone-” Marie gestured vaguely to Claire’s injured shoulder.
“Says the woman who scored two semifinal goals on one leg,” Claire said ruefully. “And who has never used injury as an excuse. Besides, if I wasn’t playing well, I shouldn’t have gone out.”
“You did play well,” Marie said.
“Exactly, so it’s not the injury,” Claire said glumly.
It was very difficult to argue with Claire, because she always won, and hardly ever even took any joy in it. She was older than Marie had been when she’d lost her first gold, only a few years younger than Laura, but Marie couldn’t help but see her as a kid.
She suddenly remembered Claire talking to Kori on the flight over, her explanation of the Socratic method. Marie hadn’t completely grasped it, but she understood the basis was asking questions. Claire loved logic. It would work on her.
“Did you win in 2022 by yourself?” Marie asked.
Claire blinked at her. “No.”
“Were you on the ice by yourself when Keller scored?”
“No.”
“Is an Olympic gold medal run made of one game? Or one person?”
“Of course not.”
Marie spread her arms, and Claire managed a smile.
“Alright,” she said, “I get it.”
“Good,” Marie said, and stepped forward to hug her. Claire squeezed her back.
“For what it’s worth,” she added, “you were fantastic this whole tournament. Head high, ouais?”
Claire sniffed, and pulled back. “Aye aye captain.”
Marie patted her on the back. “Ok. Now what?”
“I’m going to go back to the building and check on Sophie.”
“And?”
“Probably study,” Claire said, sheepishly. “It’ll help.”
“Whatever works, you weirdo,” Marie said, but in a strange way she thought she understood. Claire had, by their standards, failed. School was the other thing she was good at, the best at. It was too soon for her to lick her wounds by skating, but she could prove that she was still successful, still smart, still excellent at something.
Marie envied her, just a bit.
Claire smiled at her. “Take care of yourself tonight,” she said earnestly. “And thank you. Really.”
Marie waved her off, watched her go, then pulled out her phone. She had a few texts from her parents, saying they were proud of her, but she knew they knew not to expect a response today. She also had six texts from Laura, an unusually high number.
Mon couer: Do you want to head back with me?
Mon couer: Oh, the press thing.
Mon couer: Sorry
Mon couer: Good luck
Mon couer: I’ll see you back at the building!
Mon couer: If you want
Marie squinted at her phone. Right. Well that was a thing. She’d deal with it when she got back.
She considered looking for Troy, but he was still inside, and the building was swarming with American girls she couldn’t face yet. She had to text Barnes and Scamurra, congratulate them. She wanted to text Knight too, though she had to figure out what to say that hadn’t already been said in the handshake line.
Her phone dinged, and she looked down to see a message from Ann.
Tresbiens: vous etes encore la
MP: Oui, êtes-vous?
Tresbiens: ouais getting uber veux faire un ride
MP: Please
Tresbiens: ill come to you
Marie pocketed her phone, and looked around for a bench. She needed, more than anything, to get back out there and win a game. She wasn’t about to worsen her injury and have to take more time off.
She found somewhere to sit, and tried to think about nothing at all while she waited for her goalie, staring into the dark sky above Milano.
~
After 2018, Ann-Renée had done the same thing as Marie, but in a much more logical way. She took the year off, took time to focus on herself and figure out what she wanted, and then came back.
When Marie wasn’t talking to anyone, Ann had been one of the only people who kept reaching out, a funny tweet here, a kind message there. She’d never taken Marie’s withdrawal personally, didn’t need an explanation when she came back.
Ann was, frankly, obscenely chill. For a goalie, she was downright apathetic. Marie loved it. Ann kept them all grounded. She got tired, angry, and sad like anyone else, she was still human, but Marie knew Ann wouldn’t need any reassurance from her.
“Hiya,” she said, walking up.
“Hi,” Marie said, moving to stand up.
“Reposer ta jambe, ça prendre une minute.”
“Toujours là?” Marie asked.
Ann shrugged. “Je t’attendais.”
Marie blinked rapidly, and honestly, she was getting tired of crying.
“You didn’t have to do that.”
“What, just leave you here alone? Laura allait rester, mais- I don’t know, elle était bizarre.”
“Ouais,” Marie agreed.
Ann sat down next to her. “Je suis fière de toi,” she said. “You told us all you were proud, mais nous n’avons pas eu la chance to tell you. And we all are, Marie. Toujours.”
Marie tucked her face into her goalie’s shoulder, and Ann’s arms came up. Gardien. Guardian. It fit. She felt like she could breathe again, like the indescribable weight on her chest had become just a touch lighter. It wasn’t enough, but it was something.
Time did heal, but only if you let it, if you let other people help it, and help you. Marie would never again sit alone and unmoving, waiting for the world to forget her. She had dragged herself out of that, with the help of her family and a few very good friends, and she would do it again if she had to, over and over, to end up here.
Even with silver, even with everything. Here was with her team, her wife, and her friends. Here was at her fifth Olympics with twenty goals, finding the strength to continue to play, the only purpose she’d ever had.
“Stop thinking so hard,” Ann said above her. “It’s like I can hear it. Ce qui se passe?”
Marie smiled, and extricated herself from her friend’s grasp.
“Nothing. Just- c’est fini.”
Ann winced. “Yeesh, don’t say that. Si quelqu’un t’entend ‘Marie-Philip Poulin sa Retraite’ will be the headline on CBC tomorrow.”
“God,” Marie said, shaking her head. “One of them asked me, you know? If this was my last. And when I didn’t answer, they asked me again.”
Ann clicked her tongue disapprovingly. “Vultures, eh? Je ne sais pas comment tu fais, I’d bite their heads off.”
“You ever think about it?” Marie asked.
Ann blinked. “Quoi, biting journalists’ heads off? À l’occaison.”
Marie grinned. “No, retiring.”
Ann hummed. “Non.”
“Never?”
She shrugged. “I will stay for as long as I can. I will play as many minutes as they give me. Tu le sais.”
“En 2018-”
“C’était différent,” Ann said immediately. “I was trying to find a way to keep going, not a way to stop. I just- had to stop, ou cela aurait été impossible.”
“Ouais.”
“You were the one trying to stop.”
“Thank god I couldn’t,” Marie said.
Ann smiled. “Et la voilà. Come on, the car is here.”
The ride back to the village was long, the exhaustion was starting to hit, and Marie knew Laura would probably be awake, so she napped in the car.
Ann woke her up when they got close, and helped her out of the car while she reoriented herself to the waking world.
The heaviness returned as she remembered it, but she finally felt as if it wouldn’t be there forever.
Ann headed to her room, and Marie slipped into her own quietly. Clarky and Blayre seemed to be asleep, and she carefully closed the door to her adjoining room so as not to wake them.
She showered again, washing the day from her skin, and got ready for bed. As she did, she pulled out her phone and texted Laura, who would usually be here by now, or at least have given her a plan.
MP: Are Joce and Fast there?
Laura responded almost instantaneously.
Mon couer: No, both out.
Marie nodded to herself. Joce was a night owl at the best of times, and this certainly wasn’t. She would likely be out all night, and sleep during the next day. Marie made a mental note to make sure she wouldn’t be called for any of the press stuff.
Renata had enough family here to fill a house, and would likely be spending some time with them. Marie found that defenders tended to find stepping away helpful, but it was very variable.
She walked down the hallway to Laura’s room, and knocked gently. Laura opened the door, still in her day clothes.
“Hi,” Marie said, stepping in, and then into Laura’s adjoining room. She sat on the bed, and looked up at her wife, who had begun circling the space. “What’s going on?”
“With me? Nothing. How are you feeling?”
“Like we could’ve won. Like something is sitting on my chest.”
Laura nodded, chewing the inside of her cheek, and twisting her hands together. This was incredibly out of character. She was energetic, certainly, always moving, always restless, but never on edge like this. Not around Marie, anyway.
“Seriously, Laura, what is this?”
“What is what?”
“You’re acting weird,” Marie said, unable to think of a better word for it.
“Well, we lost a pretty important game today,” Laura said, but there was no bite to it.
“Yes, but you don’t seem frustrated, or depressed. You seem-” Marie stood, and Laura leaned back, away from her, like a reflex. Marie frowned. “Jumpy. Did someone do something? Say something?”
“No,” Laura said quickly. “No. I just- um, do you remember what you said to me? Last time?”
“Last time?”
Laura blinked quickly. “Yeah. 2018. After- well, after.”
“Oh,” Marie said. “I don’t.”
She really didn’t. In her mind, everything from Rooney’s last save was a blur, and the haze didn’t clear until many months later when she’d finally hit the ice with her team again. It was after that first game back that she’d started meticulously planning what to say to Laura when they saw each other.
“Yeah. I thought so.”
Marie swallowed hard, a sinking feeling in her stomach. “What did I say?”
“That you shouldn’t have let yourself get distracted,” Laura said, words tumbling out of her. “That you needed space, to get back to where you were supposed to be.”
Like she was just a distraction, like it was her fault. Like where I was supposed to be was somewhere without her. The unspoken subtext of her own words were clear as day. Marie hated herself a little bit just then.
“I’m sorry,” she said quietly. “Laura, I’m so sorry.”
“I forgave you years ago,” Laura said, smiling sideways. “Probably the night we got back together. I just- wanted to give you space. If you needed it. Didn’t mean to let my own stuff get all mixed up in it.”
Marie stepped forward, grabbed Laura’s waist with one hand and the back of her neck with the other, and kissed her hard.
“Where I am supposed to be,” she said when she pulled back, “is where you are. Toujours. Forever. And I am your captain, as well as your wife. Your own stuff should be mixed up in this. We’re a team.”
“I know,” Laura said. “I know. I just- god, I look at it, and it’s like I’m 23 again.”
Marie nodded. She could sympathize. They had grown so much over the years, all of them, and she had devoted so much time to that growth, to knowing that it was good to want to do well but she couldn’t always win. Yet she saw the shine of silver and it threw her back in time eight years.
She wasn’t 26 anymore, though. She’d proved that she could still win. She had Olympic gold and Worlds gold to prove it. She had the golden wedding ring on her left hand to prove it.
“It is,” Marie said. “But you’re not.”
She took Laura’s hand, twisted it so their rings lay together. “Daryl pointed out how much gold I have in my life.”
“Poor kid,” Laura said. “How’s she doing?”
Marie winced, and tilted her hand back and forth.
“Aren’t we all,” Laura said.
“How are you?” Marie asked.
Laura shrugged. “We played well. But this one- this one hurts. This group…” she took a shaky breath. “Well. None of us wanted it to end like this.”
Marie knew what she was thinking. People kept asking her if it was her last Olympics, but they weren’t asking much of her team. They just assumed it was.
Laura had thought her last was four years ago, and she’d only been 27. Things were different now, the PWHL looming large over them in all its life-changing glory, but still.
“You played especially well,” Marie said, because she could not let that ‘we’ go uncontested. “That feed to KO. Beautiful. You’re only getting better.”
Laura looked down, like she didn’t want to make eye contact when she asked. “You think I have another one in me?”
“Yes,” Marie said simply. She did, entirely. “As your wife, of course, but as your captain too. Yes, Laura. You want to go again, you will. But you don’t have to think about it right now.”
“Hard not to,” Laura said. “After that, kind of hard to think about anything but a do-over.”
Marie was very glad that she knew her as well as she did. Laura was a hard one to reassure, but she’d learned how to do it. Laura needed goals, checkpoints, a guarantee that her desperate drive to get better would not leave her stranded at the side of the road.
“You don’t need a do-over,” Marie said firmly. “Build on this. Take it as part of the run that will lead you to 2030. The very first faceoff, not the score at the end.”
Laura mimed taking a faceoff, and Marie smiled.
“Exactement. This is our puck drop. There’s a lot of game left.”
“Our puck drop?” Laura asked, the slightest emphasis on the first word. Even she didn’t know the answer to the question no one would ask, the question no one would stop asking.
Is this Marie-Philip Poulin’s last Olympics?
“I don’t know,” Marie said. Laura exhaled, amused, and Marie glared at her. “Je n’ai vraiment pas.”
“You do,” Laura said. “You’re scared, and you’re sad, and you’re angry, and you won’t let yourself think about it because you’ve convinced yourself it would be a distraction.”
“I didn’t know you were sports psych now,” Marie said, slightly horrified at Laura’s astute analysis.
“I’ve just been in this with you before,” Laura said, more gently. “Come on, Marie. You’re allowed to think about how you feel. It would’ve saved us a lot of trouble, I think. It’s not a distraction, it’s part of the game, part of your mental game.”
“I really don’t know.”
“You know when things are over,” Laura said. “You knew the last Olympics weren’t my last. You knew we weren’t done when I was ready to move on. You knew every league would fold before it happened, when it knocked the wind out of everyone else. You knew you’d be back by the time we reached medal rounds, that we could come back and give the Americans a close game. It’s not just belief, with you. It’s certainty. You’ve loved the game too long not to know it. You know.”
Marie swallowed, and looked down. The heaviness was seeping into her head. It was too hard to hold up.
“The Americans are very good,” she said. “They’ll be very good until after I retire. I don’t know what this group will look like in four years. I don’t know what I will look like. This program needs me, but it also needs me gone so someone else can step up. I just- Laura, I don’t know.”
“That’s a lot of outside noise,” Laura said. “Do this the way you should have back then, the way you’d tell someone to do it now. Put Captain Canada aside, and ask a different question. Not should you stay, not is this your last, not even can you get gold next time.”
“Then what?”
Laura squeezed her hand. “What do you, Marie-Philip, actually want?”
Marie looked at her. She wanted the weight to dissipate, to be able to take a deep breath without feeling her lungs constrict. She wanted to go back and stop Keller before she got her breakaway. She wanted to go back and find the back of the net before the game went to overtime, go back much farther and find it before it went to the shootout. She wanted to go to just after that, tell herself not to be an idiot, to finish the season, to tell her girlfriend how much she loved her.
She wanted Laura to fuck her until she forgot about all of it, wanted to touch something that wasn’t smooth metal disappointment, wanted to replace this heaviness with physicality.
She wanted gold, and she wanted Laura. She wanted a league, and to be seen, and to be paid, and to be loved. She wanted that Olympic scoring record, to hold it herself, alone and above. Always, she wanted to be the best. Always, Marie wanted to win, and win she did, eventually, every time.
She thought about the preliminary game, the helplessness of watching from the stands. She thought about going to the locker room after, Troy giving her the space to say what needed to be said. She thought about going to her physio team after that, and saying that they better make her ready for the quarters, whatever it took, because she’d be on the ice regardless.
Hockey was her first love, and would be her last. She thought about being a kid, forced into figure skates, watching her brother and the other boys on the rink. What she wanted was what she’d always wanted, for as long as she could remember.
“I want to play,” Marie said.
Laura grinned. “Alright then,” she said, and went over to her bag. She took her medal out, and held it between them, face down.
Marie got low instinctively, and Laura dropped the medal. Marie felt some of the weight fall as it did, as it hit the floor with a thud. Just a piece of metal, gravity dragging it down. Not the end, but a fresh start.
“There’s our puck drop,” Laura said. “Let’s do this.”