Chapter Text
Prologue
It was mayhem at Nova Iceplex. Employees spent the day hanging banners from the rafters, planting balloons at every open space, throwing Olympic rings patterned cloths over tables topped with cookies and cakes and an assortment of beverages, handing out bags of kazoos and party poppers, and arranging “Quad God” paraphernalia for guests to select and wear.
Because the Ilia Malinin was coming home from the Milano Cortina 2026 Winter Olympics. One month before the ISU World Championships.
Camera crews from local to national news and sponsors checked in to prepare for his arrival. They set up their equipment to capture and broadcast the moment friends and family welcomed the Quad God home, proud of his Olympic Gold Medal and perhaps even prouder of the way he moved audiences and fans around the world when he congratulated Mikhail Shaidorov soon after his 8th place finish.
After his long awaited return clad in his Team USA gear with the medal hanging from his neck, after photo ops and interviews and content making filming for social media, after the smiles and grateful thank-yous and hugs, the event passed without further fanfare.
That was one week ago.
Chapter 1: The Fear
“Great practice.” Maxim raised a fist to Ilia.
Ilia bumped his knuckles against his friend’s with one hand while taking a swig of water with the other, but offered no other response. His mind was elsewhere.
Max’s expression turned sympathetic. “You know you don’t need the quad axel? You can win Worlds without it.”
“It’s not just about winning it.”
Max put a firm on hand on his shoulder. “Whatever you need to do Malinin.” Ilia gave him a nod and drifted to the edge of the rink. “Oh before I forget,” Maxim called back as he was putting his skate guards on, “Gogolev’s party tonight, you’ll be there?”
Ilia, walking away with his back to the ice, raised his arm above his head and gave a wave. “You got it.”
He was lucky to have his closest skating friends, and often competitors, at his home rink. Last week during his less than triumphant return, while the others had their fair share of the limelight, because this was his home rink, he had shouldered most of the buzz. He was lucky, again, that he grew up in the second most prestigious ice complex in the US. The Olympic Training Center in Colorado was of course number one, but he and his friends always prioritized fun and life over rigor (and if Alysa Liu’s gold medal skate proved anything it was that they were right to) and that was why they all decided to train at Nova Iceplex together.
He thought about how grateful he was to have it all; this rink, these friends, these opportunities. Actually, he thought about gratefulness a lot the past few weeks, after that fateful Friday the 13th skate. If he focused on what he had, it would get him through the torment of what he did not have. No, what he should have had.
I can’t think like that. He pulled his laces loose with a bit more force than necessary. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. He wouldn’t let the obtrusive flashbacks get to him. Not here.
Like angels of mercy come to save him, Amber and Alysa entered Nova Iceplex with verve. It was as if their very presence brought life to the ice rink; spirits were lifted, laces were tied tighter, postures were straighter, edges were cut harder into the ice, jumps were springier as if to exude let’s go!
And Ilia’s oncoming headache squirreled away.
“We heard that you have a late night class before Gogolev’s party.” Amber sat next to Ilia flicked his hair with a flippant hand, “And yet you’re still hosting the pre-game?”
Ilia swatted at it. “Professor B made it very clear that this lesson would be on our final exams. I would be stupid not to go. I can do both, trust me.” Amber shot him a skeptical look.
“Well Gogolev’s thing is at a bar anyways and it doesn’t start until later. You could just meet us there.” Alysa added.
“Us? Are you even old enough to drink?” He lightly poked at Alysa’s twenty-year old arm.
“That’s why they put an X on my hand, but I beat them to it.” She lifted her fist and there was a giant X drawn in thick black permanent marker on it. Because of course there was.
Amber rolled her eyes and leaned her shoulder on Ilia’s side while he packed his skates into his black bag. “So did you find the pin I wanted?”
“It’s in my other bag, hang on.” Sneakers on, he strode to a row of lockers propped against the walls of the locker room hallway. Despite their name, the locker rooms only held hockey player lockers and the figure skating ones were stationed outside. Safe to say, the latter did not particularly mind not having to enter those odored chambers.
He opened the door and grabbed another black bag out from it and brought it back to the bench. Only Amber remained as Alysa had gone off to start her practice.
“Here.” He handed Amber the bag. “I found all my lanyards but I’m not sure which one the pin is on.”
Amber had managed to snag a highly coveted pin at the Milano Cortina Olympics, but Ilia had the one she really wanted. In exchange for hers, he offered up his own pin, but he couldn’t be bothered to locate the specific lanyard he’d randomly placed it on.
She of course, found it with ease, and returned the black bag to him. After a jubilant thanks! she ran off to get to her own practice.
Ilia picked up one of the black bags, placed it back in his locker, and walked out of the ice arena.
Class had gone by, uneventful as usual. Then dinner had gone by, entertaining as usual. Then a couple hours before midnight, he and his housemates had invited everyone over for a pre-game. Ilia and his friends rented a four-bedroom house just off-campus, situated on the same street as other figure skaters’ houses and apartments. They affectionately named it Skaters Row. Adam and Mikhail’s rooms were on the second floor, while Jun and Ilia’s rooms were on the third floor.
It would have sent the world in a media frenzy if word got out that Ilia and the surprise Gold Medalist were, in fact, roommates, but they managed to keep it mostly out of public knowledge for the time being. It wasn’t difficult for social media sleuths to piece their posts together, but without confirmation it was only hearsay to the broader world.
It wasn’t without its difficulties or discomfort. None of it was directed at Misha, of course. It was just Ilia versus himself, as it always was. His mind had a habit of intermittently reminding him that the gold medal that was all but assured to be his was just one room below. It was a poetic metaphor — so close, but just out of reach.
But any thoughts of that were lost to the chatter and spirits on the first floor. A faction of Skaters Row residents gathered for a round of drinking and singing and dancing before heading to the bar for more drinking and singing and dancing. Despite his earlier poke at Alysa, Ilia did not drink himself. It didn’t make these social events any less fun, he was more than happy watching his friends, being with them, laughing with them, and occasionally, letting them rope him into whatever shenanigans they cooked up (and let’s be honest, most of them were his idea anyways and no roping is ever needed to get him involved).
He spotted Adam and Kimmy politely chatting by the kitchen island. He joined Loena, Kaori, and Yuma for a karaoke session at the TV. He assisted Lukas, Jun, and Misha who were trying to mastermind opening a bottle of wine without a corkscrew. Alysa claimed she didn’t lose it but Amber had vocally inquired as to who gave Alysa the corkscrew in the first place. Kevin, Boyang, and Donovan had found themselves in an off-ice jump-off with dubious results—it was Adam’s suggestion to keep space open in their living room specifically for this reason (“sporadic acrobatic tendencies” as Ilia liked to call them).
The time neared ten-thirty, and always-the-mother Kaori circulated through the room, rounding the troops to depart for the bar to rendezvous with the remainder of Skaters Row, including party host Stephen.
“Don’t forget your IDs!” She shouted as she held the door open and motioned the shuffling bodies out.
Following Her Majesty Kaori’s instruction, Ilia patted the back pocket of his jeans on his way out for good measure.
Nothing.
That’s odd. “Hold on,” he asked Adam to wait before running up the two flights of stairs to his room.
“Malinin!” Kaori shouted.
He made his way into his room, eyes scanning the disarray at lightning speed— he wasn’t messy, per se, he just had a knack of keeping things out where they’d be easier to grab. His bed was unmade, his book bag was opened upside down, his soccer ball sat precariously in the center of the room, and a pile of clothes strewn between his bed and his desk chair while he was trying on what to wear before settling on the long-sleeve jumper he currently had on. His trophies were relatively organized on his shelves, but his medals were either loosely hanging from said trophies or placed in a disorderly pile on the shelf itself. Except for one, which he kept conscientiously out of sight and safe in the drawer right next to his bed.
He finally spotted the black bag from practice earlier lying beneath a mound of shirts. He hastily unzipped it and dug his hand in every pocket. In one, his fingers grasped something familiar, but it wasn’t what he was looking for. He brought his hand out of the bag and opened his palm upwards.
Lanyards.
“Shit.” He put the wrong bag back into his locker, and that bag had his wallet and ID.
He sped back down the stairs to see Kaori and Adam still holding the front door open for him. Adam raised a quizzical brow when Ilia reached for the small silver bowl on the entrance table and grabbed a set of car keys.
“I left my wallet at Iceplex,” Ilia informed while walking the two of them out of the house.
Kaori gasped much more theatrically than the situation called for; being drunk only made her more caring. “Let us come with you!”
Ilia hugged her side. “That’s sweet Kaori, but you guys go on ahead. I’ll try meet you guys at the bar if I can get it back.” It briefly crossed his mind that he’d have to make sure not to get pulled over without his driver’s license, but it wasn’t as though anyone else was sober enough to drive for him. He walked away before his friends convinced him otherwise.
“Where’s he going?” Lukas asked, watching Ilia jog towards his car. Adam put a hand on each of Lukas’ shoulders to redirect him towards the direction of the bar, and their walking troupe of friends, while filling him in.
The sudden hush and stillness when Ilia closed the driver side door was jarring. Despite his rush, he sat with the disconcertment for a moment. He was reminded then of his Olympics gala skate to NF’s “Fear”. How many times had he told interviewers that all the noise can be too much? Was silence what he wanted then? In his heart, he knew that wasn’t the right answer either.
Quietness quickly remedied with a turn of his key; his car roared to life. With the press of a ‘play’ button, his personal playlist rang through the speakers. The drive to Nova Iceplex was easy at this hour. There weren’t many cars on the road, and a night cruise was therapeutic. He rolled his windows down to enjoy the crisp air of late February—Spring was just around the corner.
When he arrived to Nova Iceplex’s parking lot, there was only one other car left, which he took as a good sign that he would be able to get in and retrieve his wallet after all. Whoever this person was, likely an employee, surely could let him in. With the other car in mind, he tried to give the front desk office a ring. No answer. He rang one more time but was sent to voicemail again. He pivoted to the skate rental counter, but there was no answer either.
Defeated, he dropped his forehead to the steering wheel. He lightly and repeatedly pounded his temple against it while he debated his options. With a final sigh, he rolled his windows up, turned the car keys towards him and out of the ignition, and stepped out, running a frustrated hand through his hair, ready to face his adversary: the entrance doors.
Ilia stalked up the wide cement stairs that led up to the main entrance. As far as ice rinks went, the Iceplex was comparatively a large and magnificent structure. Naturally, the price tag that came with training at a place like this was not inexpensive.
He reached the glass doors and pulled on the handle. He was sure it would be locked at eleven pm, but it tugged open without resistance.
He thought again about the mystery other car in the parking lot. If they were in here, he did not want to spook them (or less admittedly, be spooked by them). He stepped cautiously towards the locker hallway; it was easy to sneak when the floor was made of rubber mats. The Iceplex certainly appeared closed; most of the lights were turned off, but not enough that he couldn’t see clearly in the dim glow of an unoccupied ice rink.
He heard the intimately familiar scratch of a blade plow into ice.
Or maybe not unoccupied.
He listened to the unmistakable sound of crossovers, pause, landing. He waited, as though petrified, until again the sound of crossovers, pause, landing. Now he was sure of it: these were axels. No discernible toe pick for any of the toe pick jumps, no plowing or scraping for a loop or salchow, it had to be an axel. And it most certainly was not a single.
Who would be practicing this late at night?
Curious as he was, he needed to attend to the matter at hand first; disturbing a fellow skater would have to come second. He made it the rest of the way to his locker without issue, and reached for the combination lock.
Without warning, music filled the Iceplex, and from the very first note Ilia recognized it.
‘Hello darkness my old friend. Knocking at my door again.’
Ilia froze. The opening lines of the song he debuted at the Winter Olympics Gala resounded throughout the arena. Now, he could not ignore it. Abandoning his wallet, he headed towards the rink, careful not to alert the skater to his presence. As soon as he rounded the corner, he caught sight of the mystery occupant.
It was a girl, likely around his age, with long hair pulled up to a ponytail. She certainly looked like a figure skater in her white boots paired with warmup leggings, a cropped t-shirt, and gloves.
Except that he didn’t recognize her. And he knew every skater at the Iceplex.
She was skating to “Fear”, just as Ilia did for his final skate and redemption performance on Olympic ice. It was an odd feeling he had yet to understand, hearing it but seeing someone else skate to it. He’d listened and skated to it numerous times since the gala of course, but it was something else entirely to catch someone else doing the same.
It was eerie, watching her move across the ice with the same sorrow he bore in Milan. To his further surprise, and utter confusion, she sprinkled in bits of his choreography as well. So definitively, she had seen his performance before. Was this real emotion then, or was she just mimicking him?
‘So go ahead and come on in. So go ahead and come on in.’ The song continued.
Her footwork was rather impressive, and her edge control was nothing to sneeze at. He considered that she might be an ice dancer, but as soon as that thought entered, as if she had heard him, she started skating backwards with increasing speed and power. His heart lurched. She was setting up for a jump.
‘So go ahead and come on…in.’
She set her left foot on its outside edge, reached back with her right foot, and jumped. A lutz.
He watched with bated breath as she completed four rotations in the air, and landed comfortably.
Okay, who was she?
She continued the program and now his gaze was transfixed. In the dusky light, he could discern her dissatisfaction as she sailed across the frozen stage. This was definitely real. She was visibly grappling with her own inner demons, and from the outside looking in he wondered if that was what he looked like out there, in Milan. Releasing all his inner turmoil in front of an audience to show the world, to make a point. Here, this girl did it quietly and to no one but herself. At least, she thought she was alone. He was completely entranced.
He put himself at the very edge of the rink, no plexiglass above the boards to separate him from his view. She was so absorbed in her art it didn’t surprise him she hadn’t noticed him yet. And he didn’t want her to, he wanted to watch her see it through.
‘Lost a friend, lost my home, lost my faith, lost my voice.’
Her skating slowed to a still, just as Ilia’s had. As the music picked back up, so did her speed once again. She went into a spin, and as she exited Ilia watched with increasing intensity as the skater began to unfold into a similar pattern. She was backwards again, each crossover edge carved deeper and stronger and faster than the one before it. She was setting up for another jump. The song was about to reach its pivotal question. What would she do?
He lost all sense of the world around him when she lifted her left leg up, riding the edge of her right foot, and looked over her left shoulder.
This was an axel entrance.
It would be a double, naturally. Or even a triple, since she was clearly capable of quads. Time seemed to slow for him. He couldn’t breath or blink as she set her left foot down forward, and launched herself upwards.
To the untrained eye, a skater spins so quickly in the air that it can be difficult to count revolutions if you’re not paying attention. Sometimes you can tell simply by the time they hang in the air. But Ilia didn’t need either of those tricks because this jump, of all the jumps, was the one he knew best. Best because, he was the only one in the world who could do it.
The quad axel.
‘Is this what you wanted?’ Hauntingly reverberated throughout the rink as she landed cleanly. Ilia’s eyebrows raised, mouth slackened, a hand raked through his hair, the heel of it resting firmly on his forehead, holding his locks out of his face as if that would clear his vision and clarify what he just witnessed.
His heart hammered with anticipation as the song built towards its climactic ending. To his absolute bewilderment, she also landed a jump combination: quadruple toe loop to euler to triple salchow. He couldn’t believe what he was seeing. He could faintly feel his phone vibrating in his pocket, the others checking in on him, but even that wasn’t enough to pull his attention away from this mystery girl.
As she worked through a serpentined string of unprescribed steps across the ice, he noticed that she was holding back tears. It was a sentiment he understood, hearing the song and the lyrics again, bringing him back to the vicissitude of his Olympic Games.
There was no way she could understand how he felt, could she? She seemed to as she accentuated every bit of choreography, as she threw her arms out from her chest in line with the lyrics, as she gracefully swept them over her head with immense feeling, as she turned and changed edges and glided across the surface to the melody; and she seemed to as she executed the same Ina Bauer he did at the gala and then concluded the performance with a final spin.
Time stood still for those few seconds she remained in her final pose, and Ilia was suspended with her. He feared if he moved, the surreality would end.
Then, as though a dream had ended, she collapsed onto her hands and knees, heaving and wheezing and coughing, rather, violently.
Ilia’s first inclination was to go to her and help, but he was in his street shoes, and she didn’t know he was there. He weighed the consequences of announcing himself; this was clearly meant to be a private performance, and he wanted to respect that. He decided to wait it out, she probably knew what she was doing. Probably.
Her shortness of breath gradually died down as she took control of her respiration. Willing her body to still, she slowly brought her head up.
Their gazes locked.
He thought she would scream. She was shocked that she didn’t, even if her expression betrayed her composure. Her eyes were blown wide, apprehending the sight of him, and she was filled with a sense of dread of the very many implications of his being there. She promptly forgot how to breathe.
Contrary to the well earned nickname he coined for himself, his presence was less divine when he wasn’t flanked by coaches, skaters, fans, or media reporters alike. Alone, and donning black jeans, a black jumper, and car keys hanging absentmindedly from his index finger, the only ethereal feature about him was the golden mop of hair that framed his sharp jawline, which seemed to shine even against his bedimmed silhouette.
It was uncharacteristic of him to not occupy the room he stood in. He thrived on a charisma that commanded the attention of everyone around him. He was ubiquitously magnetic, but here, he was just there.
Releasing the air pent up in her lungs sent her into another coughing fit. It took out the strength in her limbs and she flopped onto her back, splayed out aside from one hand clutching at her tightening chest as she focused on the panelling above her. This was an optimal position to stare at the ceiling and mercifully not into the blue eyes of the most famous skater in the world.
What is Ilia Malinin doing here? Her nervousness escalated when she remembered that she was also not supposed to be there.
“Are you okay?” He finally called out to her from the boards.
“Yeah!” She shout back. “Just…It’s just the asthma,” she said between breaths. “Give me a second.”
He considered her reply as she stood up and brushed the snow off her leggings. Yuzuru Hanyu flashed in his mind; one of the most accomplished figure skaters whom he looked up to, and who had well-knowingly battled with asthma his entire career.
Having collected herself, she skated over to the board, ice side of where Ilia was standing. She parked herself a polite arm’s length away, staggering their positions. He tucked his car keys into his pocket, and she leaned an elbow on top of the board.
“So, ahem, can I help you with something?” She offered awkwardly, avoiding his stare.
He pointed a thumb behind him. “I left my wallet here and came back to see if the rink was still open. I tried calling the front desk first but…” He let the obviousness finish the sentence.
“Oh! I’m sorry, that’s my fault. I turned the phones off earlier but I can help you look for it now.” She did not point out that the rink had actually closed an hour ago.
He angled his head. Attentively tuned in to anything she had to say, searching for answers, her admission between the lines did not escape him. “Do you work here?”
She looked down at her gloved hands, fingers mutedly rapping against the plastic, lips pursed hesitantly. It should not have bothered her that he had to ask, but the sting of his ignorance was not shy about it. Logically, the question was inevitable. She only worked at the rink in the evenings when there was public skate or hockey games, and because figure skaters came in the early mornings or afternoons when she had school commitments, she did not often cross them.
“I do.” Was her succinct reply.
He let out an incredulous laugh. “How have I never seen you before?”
“I work nights.”
“You work nights.” He echoed and pressed his tongue to the inside of his cheek, nodding his head to acknowledge the information, but doing it slow enough that the gears turning in his thoughts were glaringly obvious.
She did not have the heart or the energy to correct him. That he had in fact, seen her many times before. Most recently, she was there at his homecoming last week, setting up the decorations and giving out free swag and directing the camera crews to where they should set up. She was also there earlier that day, coming in right behind Amber and Alysa who beelined for Ilia while she ducked into the back room for employees to prepare for her evening shift.
It was her tendency to unwittingly blend in with the dozens of people who visited the Iceplex at any given time, especially as Iceplex employees did not have a uniform by definition. They could wear whatever gear they wanted so long as it had a Nova Iceplex patch sewn or ironed onto it.
Ilia seemed to finally come to terms with the revelation. “Then when do you practice your skating?”
“Also nights."
“Of course.”
Without response, she let the silence hang for a moment longer. There didn’t seem to be anything more to say. “Well if that’s all—”
“That program you just did—” Ilia said at the same time.
Her head snapped up. “You saw that?” Heat rose to her cheeks. She could feel her mind clouding, her vision unfocusing. “I’m so sorry, I know it’s yours. I swear no one was supposed to see that. Ever.”
“But you can do a quad axel.”
Each word of his declaration was emphatic. He did not miss a beat.
It was that look, the look he was giving her right then, that she had been avoiding. He watched as her countenance shifted. Her eyes softened, her shoulders fell back, and she was biting her lip as if to prevent herself from saying what would come next. This was not the reaction he’d expect. Her reticence did not come from humility, or shyness, he observed. It was almost, like she was ashamed?
“Yes,” She confirmed apologetically.
He knew what she had to be thinking. Despite the current status quo, the quad axel was not his. And she wasn’t his direct competition anyhow, not that that mattered to him.
He was at a loss for words. A compliment didn’t seem appropriate for her mood, and neither did any other form of exultation. Approval was not something he had to give, nor did she ask that of him. She didn’t need confirmation of what she could do, she only appeared to regret that she’d been found out. What could he say to the only other person who could do what he does, and want nothing for it?
“Do you compete?” He settled for.
She simply shook her head without expanding further.
“Why not?”
That was the million-dollar question wasn’t it? Why would someone with her skills not chase medals and titles and glory? Why hide away in a dark rink where no one was watching? The girl turned to face the ice. His question was easier answered looking out at the cold bed of ice, in that it was less embarrassing.
“You know the feeling,” she began, “that you know you have the ability to make history, to do something great — to be something great — but there’s this nagging sense of fear. Fear of failure, fear of putting yourself out there, fear of all of the pressure that would come with it, and it keeps you from doing just that?”
This time she met his eyes. The corner of his lips quirked up. “Yeah, I might know a thing or two about that.”
She returned a gracious smile, and turned her full body towards him.
“When you were at the Olympics, and you skated to Fear after everything that happened, I guess it really struck a chord with me. Watching you express yourself and overcome it in the face of all that pressure, and getting to let out all of your grief like that, it looked…” she paused to find the right word, “liberating.”
It was a cathartic performance, that was undeniable. He was able to close out an almost disappointing Olympics with a final, message-sending skate. And it was received well. He’d been able to accept the outcome of the singles competition, and left his all at that gala. He had a new purpose, and that was more than he could’ve asked for.
“It was.”
Her smile turned gentle. “To answer your question, Ilia Malinin,” she stressed the name of the one person who could empathize with her position. He playfully bowed his head. “The reason I don’t compete is because, I can’t perform in front of people. It’s terrified me, always has and always will. As soon as someone is watching, I just throw away the elements. If I competed, I would not land those jumps. I would let everyone down.”
“If you practiced—”
“No.” She retorted. “I have tried to train it for years, and nothing’s worked. Trust me, this is just how it is for me, and I’ve made my peace with that.”
Making peace with despair, was that not the point of his Fear program? The picture of her was becoming clearer and clearer. “Is that true?” He asked her. Is that really what you want? She heard.
She sighed defeatedly. He hit the nail on the head, and it vexed her. “Out there, skating to Fear, there’s this moment when the lyrics are asking ‘is this what you wanted’, and as you already know, or perhaps intended, the beauty of it is it’s open to interpretation.” He did not respond. His arms were crossed, earnestly listening. She looked back out at the ice. “I read it as a question to myself. Is this really what I want? To skate in secret? I like to think it is, but, is it that really true, or do I just have no other choice?
‘Is this what you wanted’ the song asks. But I can only think of what I do not want. I do not want to disappoint anyone. I do not want the burden of expectation.” She defiantly squared her shoulders. “It is frustrating, but I think the answer is yes, it is true. This is what I want.”
It was internal conflict unlike anything he had faced. That was not to downplay the heartbreak of his Olympics free skate. The burden of expectation as she called it was unavoidable for him, and it inextricably came with all those medals and trophies back in his room. He could count on one hand the number of athletes who fully understood what that felt like. And even fewer who felt the anguish of failing to meet those expectations on the world’s biggest stage.
Even so, it never occurred to him to not answer the call to greatness. He had all the potential, and he wanted it all. The opposite of her, as she wanted none of it. It reminded him a bit of Alysa, who danced in the face of pressure and came out on top. He wanted to laugh just thinking about it again.
“I’m glad my program resonated so much with you.”
“It resonated with a lot of people. You really made an impact.”
This. This was what he wanted most. To make an impact. To change the sport. To change the world. He wanted to touch people’s hearts, to move them with his skating, that was his ultimate purpose.
His smile turned tight-lipped. But there was one more hurdle to conquer. One final call to heed. “We’ll see if they still feel that way after Worlds.”
The girl cocked her head. “And what will happen at Worlds?”
Ilia gestured broadly, but she remained unconvinced. “My redemption skate.” He admitted.
“You don’t need to redeem yourself.”
He’s heard this a hundred times over, that he did not need to be redeemed. But he did. Everyone knew it. It was a given that his absolution rested in landing those seven quads in his free skate and capturing gold, maybe even breaking the world record again. He was supposed to do those things at the Winter Olympics, but in the aftermath of the free skate, he now bore the responsibility to be a good inspiration, to be a good story. To show them that he could get back up again stronger than ever and show them what he was capable of.
Perhaps they did not understand each other after all. His tone sharpened, despite his effort to hold back. “As much as I appreciate your sympathy, I don’t have the luxury of hiding away. Even with all their support they are still expecting a comeback, they still want the Quad God, and I have to give him to them.”
Unaffected by the change of his disposition, she pushed off her toe pick, firmly placing herself right in front of him, separated only by the inches of board between them. Though it startled him, he did not yield.
“You misunderstood me. I didn’t say that you didn’t need to go out there and land the quad axel and all your other quads. What I’m saying is you don’t need to prove them all wrong, you need to prove yourself wrong.”
“What am I wrong about?” He challenged. His blue eyes were brighter this up close, and they were fixated on her. She was losing her grit, but she pushed on.
“You think you need to land seven quads and win in order to redeem yourself, but the idea of redeeming yourself suggests that you’ve made a mistake, but you didn’t. And you need to prove to yourself that you didn’t. That you love performing and throwing quads and showing people you can push the boundaries of our sport. Even if you don’t skate a clean program, even if you go out there and you fall or you under-rotate or you pop or whatever it may be, that you try irregardless of the outcome, because it’s what you do and it’s who you are, and that is not an error that needs to be forgiven. You do not need redemption from all of them, you need a reminder from yourself.”
It was as if he had been struck by lightning. He was stupefied, unable to string together a sentence cohesive enough to reply. It wasn’t as if he was so obtuse he didn’t realize that his hardest critic was himself, and that the bulk of the pressure came from his own mind. But perhaps, he had lost sight of why he pushed himself in the first place.
A lot of it was from his vengeance-like drive for being passed over for Beijing 2022, naturally. But that level of motivation only endured because above all that, his skating came from his heart and soul. He didn’t attempt skills to prove the world he could do it, he did it to prove to himself that his potential could make figure skating history, and he thrived off of doing it over and over again for as long as he could.
And before him was a girl who deliberately chose not to. She knew what she could do, that she possessed the same capability with her quad axel, and she did not want nor ask for an audience to affirm it. She didn’t want to make history, she just wanted to reach her potential.
They stood there, letting the seconds pass between them. She was likely the last person whose opinion he’d ever ask for, and he hadn’t asked for it in fact. The girl was beginning to regret her insistency; perhaps she had spoken out of turn. Her eyes darted behind him, looking for escape.
“What was your name again?” Ilia suddenly asked, though she had not given it.
The dimmed lights fully went out with a deep bang, replaced by the emergency lighting flickering on, blanketing the Iceplex in a somber ambience. The rink went quiet, the soft buzz of a building-sized refrigerator stilled. The girl muttered something under her breath and skated off the rink. Ilia followed behind, helping her close the board door. But the girl put her blade guards on too quickly, and dashed off to what he could only assume was an employees only section.
While she was preoccupied, he strode to the wall of lockers and retrieved his backpack (wallet inside). With another deep bang, the lights were reset to their original dimmed state, and the low hum of a quiet ice rink returned. He faintly heard one of the doors open and shut, immediately aware of what that meant. He threw his locker closed and ran back out to the main lobby, then out the front doors, duly noting the click of the automatic lock she must have just set. But he was too late. Ilia stopped at the top of the flights of stairs that stood between the front entrance and the parking lot, and watched as his mystery girl drove off in the mystery second car.