A/N: This chapter is slightly later than the others, due to me travelling and then almost immediately getting a cold. Sorry folks! Hope you enjoy it anyway!
Disclaimer: I don't own Yuri on Ice!
It was Friday morning.
Friday meant that that Hana would be gearing up to skate her short program, which would be later that evening. And it meant that Yura had a free day, because the men's free skate wouldn't be until later Saturday night. Yura had a day to rest and recover, to collect himself before skating his second program.
Sonia, however, wasn't that lucky. Thanks to a quirk of scheduling, the junior ladies' free skate would be later that afternoon. A small part of her hated that. She would have liked the day to recover from her night, to pull her mind back together. The rest of her was almost relieved. By the end of the day, her story would be done. One way or another.
They met for breakfast at a café not far from the hotel. Viktor and Clara were already there when Sonia and Yuuri walked in, picking at coffee and pastries. Sonia could feel their eyes on her as she slid into a chair and started adding cream and sugar to her own cup of coffee, and she knew they were watching her face carefully, trying to gauge her mood. She felt a hot flush of shame and wondered if they thought she was going to break again.
"Feeling better, Sonechka?" Viktor asked, passing her the plate of pastries.
Sonia took one, setting it down on her plate. "Yes," she said.
"That's good," Viktor said, and the smile he gave her seemed a little too forced, a little too cheery, a little too at odds with the circles underneath his eyes. "We have a little bit of time on the ice this morning, if you'd like to work on your free skate."
Sonia nodded. "I'd like that," she said.
She wasn't made of glass, but she knew that no amount of saying so would convince her parents of that fact, not after her display last night. She would just have to prove it to them.
She was so focused on Viktor and Yuuri, on the free skate ahead, that it was only when they got up from the table that she noticed that her parents weren't the only ones acting odd. Clara had spent the entire breakfast picking at her food, not looking Sonia in the eye. It was enough to make Sonia start to worry, but before she had the chance to ask Clara about it, they were at the rink and Sonia was forced to focus entirely on her routine.
When Sonia got off the ice after their allotted practice time, Clara stayed just long enough to hand her her jacket and her things, before running off somewhere under the pretense of grabbing a hot drink. Sonia was just starting to be truly concerned, but when Clara came back to the ice with a cocoa for herself and a cup of hot tea for Sonia—("No more coffee for you—the last thing you want to be later is jittery,")—she was back to her normal self, and Sonia was too relieved at the removal of any need for a confrontation to worry about it too much.
They had lunch and went back to the hotel for a bit. When they entered their hotel room, Clara took up her usual place on the bed that Yuuri had slept in the night before, sprawling out over the covers like nothing had happened and chatting with Sonia animatedly about something she had seen on social media. Sonia smiled, humored her for a little bit longer, then lay down and took a quick nap. This time, she didn't dream, and when she woke up, she felt more rested than she had after the night before.
She had a good feeling about the competition. It was something fragile, personal, something that she didn't want to admit out loud, in case she turned out to be wrong. But she held it close to herself anyway, holding onto that as she reached for her phone and started responding to the good luck messages that were pouring in—from other American skaters, from Lyssa, from her parents' friends, and even from a surprising amount of people that Sonia had never met.
It was a reminder, she thought, staring down at her phone and watching the messages come in one after another.
She wasn't alone. She had people behind her, beside her. As long as she had them, she would never be alone.
They made it back to the rink sometime in the middle of the junior ice dancers' free skate. Preston, Lexi and Xander, were waiting for Sonia backstage. The boys, Sonia noticed, looked slightly embarrassed to see her, and Sonia felt herself flush as she remembered what Lexi's excuse for her absence last night had been. But at least she wasn't having to explain herself to them. She smiled, told them that she was feeling much better when they asked, and left them to talk to Clara and each other while Lexi jerked her head over to a quiet backstage corner, indicating that she wanted to talk to Sonia alone.
"You sure you're okay?" the other girl asked, once Sonia reached her. She gave Sonia a quick once-over to be sure, as if checking for a physical injury. Maybe she was. Sonia didn't know how she appeared to the others. Maybe her moment of weakness yesterday was more obvious than she thought it had been. "Feeling up to this?"
"I'm alright," Sonia said. "Really."
Lexi frowned, eyes searching hers as if trying to find any hint of deceit. After a moment, she nodded, then inclined her head back out towards the ice, where the ice dancers were beginning to wrap up. "Alright," she said, offering Sonia a quick grin. "Go make history."
Sonia nodded, smiling back.
Over the years, preparing for competitions had become nearly a ritual. The short program costume and whatever clothes she had brought to the rink to change into came out of the bag, the free skate costume went in. Cellphones were checked to make sure that the right music was loaded into them—never mind that Zoya had been listening to her free skate music on her phone since the beginning of the season. A bottle of water went into the bag, a protein bar. Her team jacket, for when the cold eventually got to her. Her skates—sharpened and checked. Hair was pinned up and done as quickly as possible—an annoying, but necessary task that left her free to focus on other things.
It was a ritual, and that ritual held a peculiar sort of comfort. Gathering up her gear had a nearly meditative quality to it. The act of making sure that everything was ready, of double and triple-checking until things were perfect, brought the competition into clearer focus. It trimmed away all the extra, the excess, until all that was left was the ice. There was no mother, no stakes, no secret fears and secret loves.
There was only herself and the upcoming competition.
A traitorous part of her mind wondered, as she laid everything neatly in her bag and tugged on the zipper, if Sonia Katsuki-Nikiforova had the same sort of ritual.
"Zosya." The voice, coming from somewhere to her left, pierced Zoya's meditative state, grasping her gently around the shoulders and drawing her out into the real world again. From anyone else, it would have been annoying. From Nadya, and only Nadya, it was tolerable. She looked over at the girl, whose bag was already slung over her shoulder. "Irina says we need to leave for the rink in ten minutes."
Zoya didn't respond immediately, keeping her eyes on Nadya. Her mother's words were still ringing through her mind, her mother's parting threat promising to rub her nerves raw and tear her composure to pieces if she dwelled on it for too long. The world was a terrifying tableau of black and white where Nadya was concerned, a confusing jumble of childhood memories and fierce protectiveness and a host of other feelings that Zoya couldn't name, but all of it coalesced into one single desperate thought.
I have to win. I have to win so I can keep you. Even if it means beating you, even if it means you have to lose, I have to win.
"Zosya?"
There was an edge to Nadya's tone, something that might have been worry or compassion or any of the nameless things in between. Nadya stepped closer to her and Zoya's hand moved unbidden. As if magnetized, it rose, her fingertips brushing against the side of Nadya's face. Her skin was warm to the touch, a fact that always surprised her. Even as a child, Nadya always looked like she had been carved out of stone, or marble. Like she had come to life out of a painting from history.
She could feel Nadya go tense under her touch, but it wasn't an uncomfortable sort of tension, merely a sense that something had changed.
"Zosya…?" Nadya asked again, tilting her head to the side. "Are you alright?"
The words shattered the illusion again, and this time, Zoya would admit to being irritated by it. She scowled, dropping her hand to her side.
"Yes," she said, grabbing at the straps of her bag. "Fine. Come on, let's not keep Irina waiting."
Warm-up ended entirely too soon.
Sonia still didn't feel ready when the announcer gave the signal to clear the ice, but she was beginning to recognize that she probably never would. She made one final pass around the outer edge of the rink, merging into the line of girls near the exit, and stepped off the ice just ahead of Zoya.
Sonia could feel the other girl's eyes on her back, her stare a point of sharp discomfort at the base of her skull, but she was too busy fiddling with her guards and taking her jacket from one of her parents to notice. Clara came up to her with a bottle of water, and Sonia accepted it gratefully, juggling holding the bottle with one hand and pulling her jacket closed with the other. Behind her, Zoya cleared the ice. The Japanese girl that had taken sixth place remained on it, drifting over to the wall to talk to her coach, and the air took on a hum of anticipation and excitement. Sonia scanned the crowd, noticing the gaps in the seats that would be filled for the senior competitions tonight, and felt her heart start pounding again. If she wasn't careful, she would start to get nervous, but she almost welcomed this fear, this thrill. Pre-competition nervousness was an old enemy, and it was vastly preferable to everything she had felt yesterday.
She noticed Clara watching her with concern and smiled at her sister to show that she was okay as she drank, tipping the bottle back and taking a cool sip of water. The free skate was starting, but Sonia would be the last to perform, so she had a little bit of time to try and calm her nerves. It was cold and noisy out by the ice, so they made their way into the relative warmth and quiet of backstage, where Yuuri was waiting. He was on the phone, and before Sonia could even stop to wonder who he was talking to, he was handing the phone to her.
"Here," he said, with a smile. "It's your aunt. She wants to talk to you."
Sonia frowned down at the phone in puzzlement, but raised it to her ear anyway. "Aunt Mari?" she asked, in Japanese.
"How are you holding up, kiddo?" a voice asked from the other end of the line.
Sonia glanced over her shoulder, but they were far enough away from any of the other skaters and their coaching staff that she wasn't likely to be overheard. She turned away from the others, leaning closer to the phone. "I'm alright," she said, wondering if Yuuri had said anything about yesterday. "I'm getting ready to skate."
"I know," Mari said, sounding amused. "We're watching. Everyone says hello."
"You're watching?" Sonia asked, surprised. "But it has to be past midnight there!"
"Like that would stop us," said Mari. "We stayed up late to watch Yuuri's performances too."
"Oh, well—um—who's there?" she asked.
"Mom and Dad," Mari said, "Minako-san. Yuuko and Nishigori. The triplets. The usual."
"Yuuko-san and Nishigori-san and the triplets too?" Sonia asked. She was fairly sure that it wasn't winter break yet in Japan. "Um…wow."
"It's the Grand Prix Final," Mari said. "Try telling those three skating otaku that they can't stay up to watch it. We're all cheering for you, Sonia-chan."
The thought of her grandparents staying up late to watch her perform made her feel slightly uncomfortable. Sonia drew in a deep breath, her eyes moving over the backstage area, over the television screens that showed the current skater. Sonia shifted her weight slowly, moving her weight to the balls of her feet and back down again.
"Nervous?" Mari asked.
"A little bit," Sonia admitted.
"Your dad used to get nervous before competitions too. Did he tell you that?"
Sonia glanced back at where her parents were standing, talking to each other. She smiled. "He didn't, but Papa mentioned it."
"Viktor would know," said Mari. "Hang in there. You're doing fine."
"Alright," Sonia said. She could sense that Mari was about to hang up. At the last moment, the impulse struck her, and she added. "Aunt Mari?"
"Yeah?" Mari asked.
Sonia breathed in, slow and deep. "Tell everyone to keep watching," she said. "I think I can win."
There was a pause on the other end of the line. When Mari spoke again, she sounded like she was smiling. "That's my girl…" she said. "I'll tell them. Good luck."
"Thank you," Sonia said.
The line went dead, leaving Sonia standing with a phone in her hand, in the relative quiet of backstage. She looked over her shoulder and caught Zoya staring at her, an odd expression on her face, but that look didn't bother Sonia as much as it might have. She thought back to what she had seen of Zoya and her mother and wondered if those looks Zoya gave her stemmed from that. They always seemed to come up when Sonia's family was showing her that they loved her.
Because they did love her. No matter what her mind might tell her, in the dark when she was asleep, or when the hurtful thoughts broke through, she was loved. And knowing that, and knowing what she knew about Zoya, she found that she couldn't really hate the girl anymore.
She moved forward, walking past Zoya and heading towards her family.
"Sonechka," Viktor said, gesturing her over as she approached. "It's time to put on your skates."
Sonia nodded, settling herself on the bench beside Clara. She laced up her skates, and waited, eyes on the screen. Nadya, who had come in third in the short program, finished up her free skate. Zoya shot her one final glance before moving through the curtain, stepping out into the cold air of the rink.
A few moments later, she was on the ice.
Her free skate opened crisp and clean, an electric energy in her movements that hadn't been there during her short program yesterday. It was an erratic sort of energy, pulsing through her in fits and starts, driving her to move faster, sharper. It was like there was an extra amount of force behind each jump, a little more pressure with each landing. To Sonia's eye, Zoya looked like a caged bird, desperately moving, trying to break free, but at the same time clawing at anyone who might want to help her. It was almost sad.
From beside her, Yura grunted thoughtfully, his arms folded and his eyes on the screen. Clara followed Zoya's movement with her eyes, occasionally letting out a little gasp when Zoya came out of a spin or down from a jump. The technical score in the corner of the screen ticked higher and higher.
Yuuri and Viktor were silent. They stayed silent until Viktor nudged Sonia in the arm and mentioned that they needed to go. Sonia stood up, towards the end of Zoya's free skate, and started walking out towards the rink.
So she was rinkside when she saw Zoya fall.
The fall came suddenly, but it wasn't, Sonia thought, unexpected. It was like Zoya's free skate had been leading up to this, all of her sharpness and all of that charge culminating in one devastating crash. Zoya slid across the ice and quickly pushed herself back to her feet, but from then on she was done. Her movements lost that edge, that sharpness. All that was left was the desperation, and like a spinning top that had been knocked over, that desperation drew her down, down, and down.
Her free skate score was 120.68. Her final score was 187.91. Lower than her score in Saransk, and only slightly higher than Sonia's gold medal winning score in Bratislava.
And for the second time that day, Sonia felt her heart pounding with certainty. She looked at the score, looked at her own short program score, and thought, I wasn't lying.
I can win.
Sonia handed her jacket and guards to her parents and glided off to the center of the ice.
(Suggested Song: Arietty's Song, Instrumental Version)
The music of her free skate started. Unlike her short program piece, which was softer, her free skate piece started off strong. It was supposed to make the audience think of adventure, of magic, of growth and a journey. Sonia skated through the movements, picturing her own personal journey as she did.
She'd come a long way, she thought, as she circled the rink. Even just being here, skating on this ice, was an achievement. She'd come so far, and from so little. From so much darkness, and pain. And maybe that darkness wouldn't go away. Maybe it was something that had marked her, that would stay with her forever. But she was okay with that, because she wasn't that same child anymore.
She'd grown and changed. Her family had changed her. And maybe it was true what they said, that Viktor had adopted her on a whim. That didn't matter. What mattered was that she had a family that loved her, a family that would stay up past midnight to watch her skate, or who would stay in her room and hold her because she was afraid of being alone. She had a family that loved her, but more importantly, she had a family that she loved.
And while that was true, she thought she could keep the darkness at bay.
Because it was like a fire. That love, those feelings, were a fire inside of her, a warmth that moved through her veins and carried her into the second half of her program.
She had fathers who meant the world to her. She had grandparents and an aunt that cared about her from halfway around the world. She had a sister that she loved, that she would do anything for. And somewhere, beyond some distant horizon, she had a mother. A mother that smiled sweetly, and sang softly, and had a smile that Sonia could see sometimes, out of the corner of her eye, when she looked in the mirror.
And they were all watching her. She knew, as she moved, that they were all watching her now.
The music trailed to a stop and Sonia took her final position, raising her face to the lights.
133.58.
Her free skate score was over thirteen points higher than Zoya's, and combined with her short program score, was enough to give her a decisive victory. On top of that, her final score, 202.88, was only about five points shy of the current world record. Sonia mounted the podium in a daze, too surprised by her win to notice much of anything else as someone handed her the gold medal, Nadya the bronze, and Zoya the silver.
But she did notice something as she stepped down from the podium, as she headed back to her parents who were watching her with pride.
She thought Zoya might be crying.
Sonia hadn't quite mastered the art of talking to reporters, and it was an art, she was sure of it. She could see it in the way her father—Viktor, not Yuuri—changed his expression completely whenever a reporter came within earshot, how he could go from happy, or disappointed, or even a little angry, to a neutral, genial smile that left every interviewer charmed and slightly frustrated when they realized that beneath all the charm and politeness, Viktor hadn't really said very much at all.
She wasn't there yet. Her conversations with the press, when they happened, ended up being either awkward and hesitant, or entirely too honest. She was sure there was a middle ground between being a stammering, blushing mess and spilling all her deepest secrets to people who were paid to publish whatever she said, but she hadn't found it yet. So she was relieved—dazed, and relieved—when the media circus that surrounded her Junior Grand Prix Final win ended and she was allowed to stagger backstage, put some real clothes on instead of her costume, and contemplate the weight of the gold medal that rested on her chest, unfamiliar and, while she was admitting things to herself, wholly unexpected. Words from her conversation with the press were still making their way through her head, words like 'upset', and 'rising star' and 'history'.
It still didn't feel real. She wasn't sure it ever would.
"There's our champion," Lexi said a few minutes later, when Sonia emerged from the locker room with her bag slung over her shoulder and her attention focused on responding to a text from Lyssa that seemed to have made her heart migrate to somewhere in the vicinity of her stomach, judging from the fluttering she felt there. Sonia jumped at the sound of Lexi's voice, and her heart made the long leap from her stomach to her throat. The other American girl was grinning, hands tucked into the pocket of her uniform jacket. Xander, Sonia noticed, was nowhere in sight.
Lexi seemed to have noticed Sonia eyeing the empty space just over her shoulder, because she shrugged, gesturing down the corridor as if her skating partner was going to materialize at any moment. "He says he's heading up to find good seats for the senior events. But what he really means is that he wants to moon over his crush from the bleachers without any of us laughing at him."
She winked at Sonia, and Sonia found herself smiling. Yura would be rinkside, come to think of it. He'd probably stay around to watch Hana skate.
"That's silly," she said. "He should have come with you. So that the two of you can sit with me."
Lexi shrugged. "I think Xan's content to admire from afar," she said. "Adds to the mystery of it. He likes Yuri Plisetsky the skater, not Yuri Plisetsky the guy who can't be bothered to do his own laundry."
Sonia hummed in response, tightening her hold on the strap of her bag. She didn't get it, but Lexi knew Xander best, so she was willing to bow to the other girl's judgment.
"What about you?" Sonia asked. "Is your crush one of those 'admire from a distance' sort of things?"
"Not really," Lexi said, shrugging. Her embarrassment about the whole thing appeared to have vanished, at least where Sonia was concerned. "But you don't know any Italian skaters you can invite to sit with us, do you? Guys only, sorry—I don't go the other way."
"I know Michele Crispino," Sonia said. "But he's retired."
Lexi made a face. "No thanks. He's either dating that Czech guy or way too into his sister, and either way, he's too old."
Sonia laughed. "He might be over the sister thing by now," she said, although she could never really be sure, because it was Phichit and Christophe that kept up with the lives of all of the retired skaters, and second-hand gossip from Yuuri or Viktor wasn't really much information at all.
Clara might know, but that edge of tension between the two of them hadn't fully disappeared, and Sonia was a little reluctant to ask her about it.
She turned towards Lexi, about to suggest that they head out and find seats, when the phone in her hand buzzed. Sonia paused and glanced down at it, the heat rising to her face as she typed out her reply. There were other message threads begging for her attention, but she ignored them for now, responding to Lyssa before glancing up at Lexi.
The other girl was watching her closely, a quizzical frown on her face, her head tilted to the side. Sonia was about to forge ahead and tell Lexi that they needed to leave anyway when something in the girl's expression stopped her, stealing the words right out of her mouth.
"What?" she asked.
"Nothing," Lexi said, cryptically. "Just thinking."
Sonia nodded, inclining her head towards the exit. "Then—," she began, but Lexi cut her off.
"Actually, Sonia, can I ask you a serious question?" Lexi asked. "As your friend?"
Sonia froze, staring at her, but there was no trace of levity in Lexi's face. She nodded.
"Do you have a crush?"
The word 'No' was on the tip of her tongue, but Lexi's expression was so serious, and Sonia's face was still flushed, and there was a weird sort of heat somewhere in her chest that wasn't going away. Her mouth opened on the word and closed, her eyes widening as her heart rate picked up.
'No' became 'I don't know', which became 'Yes', which very quickly became 'Oh crap'.
Viktor Nikiforov vnikiforov √
katsukiyuri and I are both so proud of our little star. Congratulations, Sonechka. Ты наш свет. (soniakatnik)
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