Chapter 2: Cinderfellas

Dear Yuuri,

I got to try the food for dinner last night and it really wasn't too bad. It made me think back to when I was a kid and lived in the ice center dormitory. It's probably good I had that experience so I know important little details, like if it's called casserole or stew, then it's whatever was left over from the day before, thrown into a pot and covered with spices and gravy. Yes, it's better to stick to things that you can identify by looking at them. Those things tend to be more plain, but they are also safer.

It was hard to fall asleep last night, because I'm used to having you there. It was a comfort to have Maccachin, but I really miss the way it feels to touch your smooth skin, to breathe in your sweet scent, to feel you lace your fingers together with mine. I was lucky to be given a room that is facing where the moon is, at least for right now. I can look out at it, while I'm not sleeping and enjoy the way it looks so misted with the clouds all around it.

It's a good thing I'm usually up early, because I'm assigned to clean the bathrooms in the morning, and the work time is during breakfast hours. I have to be sure to eat early because I have a meeting with my behavioral psychologist just after my work time, and I understand they're pretty strict about being on time. If you aren't to the cafeteria on time, you don't eat. If you are late to group, you are scolded. If you miss your laundry time, you go without clean clothes until the next week. Yes, it's very much like being back in the dormitory.

Did I tell you that I was a troublemaker back then?

I did, didn't I?

Ah, it's time to get up, so I'll write more later.

Be well.

Love,

Vitya

XXXXXXXXXX

I first notice something is off next morning when it seems too light for the time on my clock. I'm not able to sleep well anyway, so even though it's an hour early, I get up and dress, and I take Maccachin outside to relieve himself. It's then that I notice all of the other clocks are one hour ahead of mine.

I know damned well that they weren't when I went to sleep. I checked them carefully and set an alarm to be sure that I was up on time.

So, someone slipped into my room during one of the times when I dropped off for awhile, and they reset the clock. I suppose I don't have to wonder who.

The end result is that there is literally no time for me to eat. I have to go immediately to work on cleaning the bathrooms, then to my behavioral psychologist, and I will not have a meal until lunchtime.

Now I wish I had eaten more last night.

It's annoying, and it's an obvious attempt to make me feel unwelcome, but I found at the dormitory there were bullies too, and that they thrive on seeing their victim struggle. So, I give Macca a little pat on the head and a determined look.

"Let's go show this bully what we're made of, eh?"

I get up and dress, then slip on the work apron we're given to protect our clothing while doing any dusty or dirty chores. I head to the mop and broom closet and use the key I was given to open the door to get the cleaning supplies. As I do, the mop and broom that someone left braced on the edge of the door just miss me as they fall out onto the floor. Somehow, water has leaked all over the floor in the closet, so I am going to have to clean that up too. There is filthy water in the mop bucket, and someone crammed toilet paper into that to make a lovely muck soup.

"Wow," I snicker, "that's a lot of effort to go to, just to upset me, isn't it, Maccachin. I wonder if I should be insulted or if I should feel happy that I'm that much of a threat to someone. Well, what is that Mary Poppins says? Once begun is half done? Oh yes, and don't they also say to Whistle while you work. Let's do that, da?"

I'm not a great singer, but I do like to whistle, so I do that as I empty and refill the mop bucket, then clean up the mess in the little closet. I head to the bathrooms, then. I start with the men's room, in which I meet a few more residents as they prepare for their day.

There is Tolya, a twenty-one year old man with black hair that has blue streaks in it. He's a college boy who got in trouble for a hazing ritual that hurt a younger man. He said he only did what he did because he was drunk and wasn't thinking, so he's here for a month as part of his punishment for that. He's known to openly look down on the LGBT folks, so he glares at me when I walk into the bathroom, and he doesn't say a word.

The other man I meet is older, maybe in his forties. His name is Tomas, and he's a salesman whose well-being was being impacted by his off hours drinking and drunken gambling. It caused him to rack up a bunch of debt. He's lucky not to be in jail. He's not an unfriendly person, but when he introduces himself and shakes my hand, I just feel something strange.

The men's room isn't fun to have to clean. And in a place where people are recovering from addiction and are prone to puking and diarrhea, it's even a bit nastier, but it's nothing that a long handled cleaning brush, some industrial strength, lemon scented cleaner and a bit of scrubbing can't cure, so I get to that, being careful not to slosh the toilet water on my clothes. The bathroom empties out except for Macca and me, so I start whistling again. I finish the cleaning quickly and move on to the ladies room.

It's there that I find a smelly mess truly worthy of my determined adversary.

I knock on the door to make sure no one is inside, then prop the door open. The stench as I enter is ridiculous, and there's no missing that someone has used feces to write Victor Nikiforov, Drunken Ice Princess on the wall.

"A masterpiece," I comment to Maccachin.

He goes to lie down outside the door.

"Maccachin, how could you abandon me like that? Come back here!"

He doesn't budge.

Paper towels have been stuffed into the toilets and clog the drains in the sinks, which are running full steam, and water is spilling over the edges, onto the floor.

"That's a lot of hatred."

But I've already decided that I'm not going to react.

"Holy shit!" Vasily's voice says from behind me, "Geez, she must really have it in for you."

I give a little shrug.

"I think she worked harder making this mess than I will cleaning it up."

"But you'll miss breakfast," he notes.

"I think that's the point," I say leaning towards him and lowering my voice as well as using a conspiratorial tone, "And between you and me, it doesn't matter, really. After this, who could eat anyway?"

Vasily laughs at that, and he grabs the mop.

"What are you doing?" I ask him, "You'll miss breakfast too."

"Eh, I already caught a whiff of this crap. Who can eat?" he laughs.

We exchange a look of camaraderie and give each other a little nod, then we start to clean up the horrid mess together, while singing Cinderella's work song. We get through the first part of the song, then Vasily puts a hand on my arm to stop me.

"No, no, no," he laughs, "You're doing it all wrong."

"What?" I ask, looking at the piece of wall I'm cleaning.

"Not that. You're singing wrong."

"Oh," I say ruefully, "I know. I suck at it."

"You're not that bad," he encourages me, "Just listen."

He sings a line from the song, and it sounds perfect. It echoes slightly in the bathroom, giving it a lovely feel.

"You're able to sing in tune," he tells me, "but you need to tighten up here."

He rests a hand on my midsection.

"Sing that line," he instructs me.

As I begin, he pushes on my abdomen, and I tighten it reflexively, amplifying what comes out and giving it that full, echoing sound his had.

"Wow!" I laugh, "What a difference."

"See. Easy. Now, I should teach you to harmonize," he offers.

"Oh, I don't know. I have to get done with this and get to my psychologist."

"It'll just take a second."

He sings the line again with a slightly altered sound, then has me repeat it. We do that several times, then he sings the line as it was originally, while I sing the slightly altered line. It's hard at first, because I naturally want to switch to the normal way, but he works with me as we continue cleaning. By the time the bathroom is done, the two of us are singing loudly, and in harmony. As we finish the cleaning, we hear slow clapping behind us, and turn to see Masha standing in the doorway, watching.

"Nice work, Cinderfellas," she snorts, heading into one of the stalls, "Now, get out so that I can pee in peace."

I shake my head and start to leave without saying anything, but Vasily grabs my arm and whispers into my ear.

"You know the pee pee song?"

"Oh!" I laugh softly, "You mean that one for children being potty trained?"

"You know it?"

I give him a meaningful look.

"I'm a guy who grew up in a dorm. Of course I know it. We sang it in the bathroom after getting drunk all of the time."

"Okay, let's do it!"

We stand in the doorway, facing respectfully outward and singing The Pee Pee Song, taking turns with the lyrics. It's a beautiful rendition, but Masha's less than impressed. She does her business, then pushes past us on her way out.

"Morons," she huffs as she stomps down the hallway.

"What are you two doing there?" snaps a staff nurse, who steps out of one of the nearby rooms.

Vasily and I stiffen.

She's scary!

"N-nothing, just cleaning Nurse Diesel! Erm…Derdova!" I answer, pointing to my cleaning staff apron.

"Are you done?"

"Yes, ma'am!" we shout together.

"Then get out of here."

"Getting out, ma'am!"

We escape to my room and close the door behind us, hugging each other and laughing hard. I give Vasily a look of gratitude.

"Thanks for helping me."

"Eh, it's nothing," he answers, brushing it off, "I didn't want you thinking everyone here is a jerk like that, you know? Besides, we got to sing together."

"It was fun," I tell him, "We should do it again, but I'll teach you to dance so that we can perform it like a Broadway production."

"Who says I can't dance?" he asks, looking more amused than offended.

"You fell off the stage," I remind him.

"I was drunk."

"I've skated drunk and never been that clumsy," I scold him, "You taught me to sing. I'll teach you to dance."

He smiles and gives a little shrug.

"What the hell? I've got nothing better to do, right?"

"Right!"

"Then, it's a date. I'll meet you after dinner in our free time tonight in the exercise room, okay?"

"Okay," I agree.

After he leaves, I hastily shower and dress again, then I hurry to my psychologist's office. I find Stefan in the room with an older man with greying black hair and solemn brown eyes. He wears rimless spectacles and a white lab coat.

"Good morning, Victor," Stefan greets me, standing slightly in front of the elder man, "This is Doctor Bershov, who is going to be assessing your emotional needs and working on addressing them."

"It's good to meet you, Victor," Doctor Bershov adds, extending a hand.

"Nice to meet you," I respond, taking his hand firmly and looking into his eyes.

"Please, sit down," he says, indicating a chair on one side of his desk.

He sits down on the opposite side with Stefan in a chair on the side of the desk. His eyes scan a page in the open file in front of him, then look back at me.

"Stefan tells me that there have been some changes in the information since the day of your intake…some very striking changes, if I recall correctly."

"Yes," I affirm, "It was after the first meeting with Stefan that I began to remember things from my childhood that I hadn't remembered at the time of the interview and exam."

"And what was it you remembered?"

He writes onto the page in front of him as I answer.

"I remembered having bruises on my body, then I remembered Modya Nikiforov, the man I knew as my father, had beaten me numerous times as a child. One time, he beat me so badly that I was hospitalized."

He sifts through the records in my medical file.

"When was that?"

"When I was seven years old."

He finds the doctor's report and frowns.

"This says that at seven years old, you were attacked by other children."

"My mother was forced by Modya to lie about it. Modya attacked me when I interfered while he was drunk and beating my mother."

"I see."

He scans the information in front of him again.

"After your hospitalization, you were given into the custody of…?"

"Yakov Feltsman," I answer, "He had noticed me at a skating exhibition and recognized my talent. He also saw signs that I was being abused, and he took me into the in house training program, both because of my skating ability and to protect me from Modya."

"You keep referring to the fact that you thought Modya Nikiforov was your father. But he was not?"

"No," I answer, "Yakov Feltsman is my biological father."

"Oh?" he muses, looking at me curiously.

"Years before he became my guardian, my father threw my mother out of the car onto the side of a snowy road. Yakov rescued her from the cold and from being annoyed by some men who were trying to assault her. He took her to his home because there was a storm…and well, one thing, as they say, led to another. So, here I am."

"Modya knew about this?" the doctor asks.

"I believe he did. It would explain why he liked to beat me, and why he tied me down a few weeks ago and tried to murder me."

"He tried to kill you how?"

"He slashed my arm," I say, showing him the healing mark, "He was trying to drain out my blood and put his into me through an IV. Our blood types don't match, so if I didn't die from blood loss, I would have had problems because of the mixing of our blood."

"Did you receive any kind of counseling after this?" he asks.

"Well," I answer, "Stefan has been with me most of the time, and we've done a lot of talking about that and other things."

"Have you had nightmares? Night terrors? Losses of your connection with reality?"

"Just nightmares."

"Any urges or impulses to do things to harm yourself or others?

"No, never."

"Blackouts?"

"No."

"Have you been prescribed any medications to alter your emotional intensity, or to keep you calm?"

"Hmm, I was given a sedative to help me cope while I was withdrawing from alcohol recently."

"So, you have already gone through detoxification?"

"I started to before coming here, but I had a relapse and have been limiting the amount I've been drinking, rather than tackling full detoxification."

He continues with the battery of questions, then looks over the center's offerings with me.

"I think that you could benefit from counseling sessions with me, as well as classes in Mindfulness Training and also Management of PTSD."

"PTSD? From what?"

He gives me a look like Are you seriously asking me that? Then, he shakes his head.

"I would say that recovering memories of childhood abuse and being attacked and nearly murdered by your father, then seeing your father killed would put you at high risk for PTSD."

"But I don't have PTSD," I object, "Isn't that when you keep having flashbacks and lose touch with reality and have a nervous breakdown or something?"

"Well…"

"I'm here because I'm a drunk. I've been drinking since I was fourteen, and I never needed a reason."

"I think drinking is a crutch for you," Bershov insists.

"It's an outlet, nothing more."

"Let me see if I can make this clear for you," he goes on.

I stop short of rolling my eyes, but not by much.

"Think about the time noted more recently in your records, when you became drunk and were hospitalized. There was a reason that time, wasn't there?"

I let out an impatient breath.

"Yuuri, my fia…my student, was going to have me resign as his coach, and I took it badly."

"Abandonment," he says stiffly, "Name another time you got drunk."

"With friends in the ice center dormitories, starting when I was fourteen."

"Why were you in the dormitories?"

"I was training…"

"No, that's not why you were living there."

I have to stop at that.

He's right there was more to it…

"Your father beat you and you had to live away from your family. Did they visit you?"

"S-sometimes…ah…not really," I stammer.

What's with this guy?

"Abandonment," he says again, "Victor, there isn't a time you've gotten drunk that wasn't somehow connected to feelings of abandonment, loneliness, isolation or detachment, primarily because of abuse. You are only fooling yourself if you say different."

"You make it seem like there's something wrong with me!" I shout at him, "Sure, things have been hard, but I'm not like that. I'm not depressed or lonely, except for being here, instead of at home with people who actually want me there!"

Oops…I don't think I meant to say that.

Stefan gives me a concerned look.

"Victor, do you think that someone doesn't want you here? Did someone do something to make you feel unwelcome?"

I think of Masha's angry face and the way she set me up to not eat, and to have to clean the bathroom she destroyed.

Then, I think again that there's a story there, and saying something to these men might not be the best thing if I want her to ever trust me.

Why do I want her to trust me?

"I don't know why I said that," I sigh, lowering my eyes, "Sorry, I was just…angry. I just don't like that this person who doesn't know me at all is trying to say things I don't feel about myself. I don't feel abandoned and I don't feel like I'm in an emotional crisis over the shitty things Modya did, or even that he tried to kill me. Things happen to me! They happen to everyone. Life goes on. You just…have to be grateful for the fact you survived, and you have to move on."

"Victor," Stefan says softly, "that's what Doctor Bershov and I are trying to help you do."

"I'm not that upset over anything," I insist, even though I suspect that's not true, "I just want to stop drinking, so that I can go home. I don't mean to be rude, but I don't like it here. I just want to go home."

"And you will," Stefan promises, taking my hand, "But when you do, we want you to have the knowledge and the strategies you need to stay sober. You're not going to do that if you don't deal with the emotions that go along with everything that happened to you."

"But I don't feel them!" I argue, "I feel fine. Not upset. Not angry. Not distressed. I don't feel anything bad right now. I just don't."

"Just because you've become numb to the emotions, doesn't mean that they're not there," Stefan says solemnly, "Doctor Bershov is only recommending the things he has because he wants you to face what's happened and deal with the emotions instead of sidestepping them entirely."

"I do not…!"

But I do.

Because it was so much a part of becoming successful as a figure skater.

Smile, even if it hurts.

Be kind to everyone.

Never turn down a fan's request for an autograph or picture.

Never let emotion break your concentration.

Push everything else away and just become the program.

Do I really not have strong feelings about the things he mentioned? The abuse? The abandonment? The lies? The loneliness? Being nearly murdered? Having Yuuri leave me? No, I felt those things while they happened, but after, I just…pushed all of that away. I really don't feel upset or bad right now, but is it that I'm not upset or is it that I'm not letting myself feel anything?

It doesn't matter.

I'm not letting anyone tell me what I feel.

I'll do what it takes to get out of here, but that's all.

"Fine," I say, nodding, "I will join whatever groups you recommend. I'm not going to claim I know what I need to stop drinking. I'll just do whatever you tell me to."

I don't like the way that Doctor Bershov looks at me when I say that. He looks down at my file, then back at me again.

"That, too, seems to be a pattern for you," he comments.

"What?" I ask, frowning.

He looks at me more closely.

"You seem quite skilled at learning what people want from you, and giving them that to either avoid unpleasant outcomes, or to get something you want. Victor, I wonder how well you really know yourself."

"How well I know myself?" I repeat, looking into his curious eyes, "I am Victor Nikiforov, professional figure skater and alcohol addict. I will do whatever I have to, so that I can stop being an alcoholic and go home!"

I pick up the schedule they gave me and walk out, leaving them staring after me. As I leave the office and start back to my room, I feel surprised that they don't come after me. I sigh and walk more slowly, anger burning my insides as Bershov's words ring in my head. I'm so focused on that, it takes me a moment to realize as I pass one of the exercise rooms that Masha is inside, and that's she's dancing.

I know that routine.

Lilia, Yakov's first wife, taught me ballet, and those moves are from one of the Bolshoi Ballet's classics.

She still doesn't see me standing by the door. I slip inside as she pirouettes, then performs several graceful leaps that carry her in my direction. As she lands the last, I take a ready position and extend a hand in her direction, just as Lilia, herself, taught me, when she instructed me in ballet. Masha's eyes find me as she lands, and her hand touches mine unintentionally. I lightly take it, but she pulls it free and glares at me.

I stay perfectly still with my hand extended and look directly into her furious eyes.

"I'm familiar with the classics of the Bolshoi Ballet," I tell her, taking her off her guard, "as I was trained in ballet by Lilia Baranovskaya. If you want to dance this properly, then you are going to need a partner."