The plane flight to Boston was as dull as possible, leaving Clarke mired in the web of doubt that had begun to inundate her every thought. Her last practice had left Ivan groaning and Finn desperately trying to catch her eye. She'd popped nearly every jump in the long and her short had been back to its previous automaton glory. She felt spent and now, watching the clouds soar past, she wished she could be back home.
Her mother shifted beside her, glasses on over narrowed eyes as she perused one of her endless medical journals. "Everything all right, honey?"
Clarke managed a mechanical nod and her mother's attention returned to her reading material. Clarke let out a long breath and closed her eyes. Regardless of what she wanted, in less than 36 hours she was going to be center ice. She could either take it lying down or man up.
You can do this. His voice, once foreign, was a constant now. Whenever the doubt became too much, she would remember his warm brown eyes and sincerity of his voice. She might not trust herself, but somewhere along she had started trusting Bellamy Blake.
Clarke could hardly see Ivan's face through the torrent of tears that ran down her cheeks. She groped blindly for her guards, following instinct alone as she slipped them over her blades. The applause was still echoing through the arena and even though it was only sectionals, the stands had been filled to the brim. Perhaps it was because an Olympic year brought a renewed interest in figure skating or maybe skating was really a much bigger audience pull in Boston than the Hudson Valley. Whatever it was, it kept her trailing Ivan toward the designated waiting area.
She tried to wipe at her tears, but more instantly followed. Ivan's grip around her shoulders was steady as he lowered them both to the bench. "I'm so proud of you, Clarke. I haven't seen you skate that well in so long!"
She stared blearily at him. "I didn't think I could do it."
"I knew you could," he replied, "It was just a matter of convincing you. How does it feel to be going to nationals?"
"Nationals?"
He laughed, his eyes filled with more mirth than Clarke could remember seeing. "Yes, Nationals. You just had the best free skate of the entire afternoon, Clarke. There's no way you're lower than fourth here."
The beat of her heart was slowly returning to a steady pace. She nodded, not prepared to think beyond the moment yet. She'd had an average short program, her jumps solid, but artistic flare notably absent. Going in to the long program all she'd been able to think about were the stakes. What if she didn't make it? What if she did? How could she justify everything to her parents if she couldn't even make it to nationals this year? Did she even want to keep competing?
Clarke had been an absolute head case just three hours before the freeskate and not even Ivan's stern pep talk had pulled her out of it. She'd been in a downward spiral that looked like it was gaining momentum when she'd gotten the text. It hadn't been a special moment and she couldn't remember everything she'd been doing, but one moment she'd been buried beneath miles of dirt and the next she was free, soaring across the ice.
Just be you. And you are the most beautiful thing on the ice. He hadn't added any banal phrases about good luck. Instead he'd said the one thing she could believe. She knew herself on the ice; she knew those moments of perfection in the fog before even the staff arrived at the rink. He'd merely reminded her of why she skated. It wasn't to make it to Nationals, or to be better than anyone else, it was to be free. So she'd skated with her heart on her sleeve and freedom in her veins.
The whole skate had been a blur, her jumps mere afterthoughts to the joy she'd felt. She hadn't tried this time; she'd just let it flow over her. For once she hadn't worried about where her hand was during the footwork or what expression was on her face as her spiral soared past the judges. In that freedom she'd found a joy that she still couldn't comprehend.
Ivan was shaking her shoulders, a broad grin on his face as the event announcer read off her score. "… giving her a total score of 165.45, putting her in 3rd place. This concludes the junior ladies free skate event."
"I told you!" His tone merrier than Clarke could ever remember it being in the decade he'd worked with her. "On to Nationals now."
Clarke licked her lips, the salt of her tears stinging her tongue. "I made it?"
"You made it." He motioned toward the arena lobby. "I'm sure your mother would love to celebrate with you!"
She nodded, slipping on her club jacket and following blindly behind him. She still couldn't quite breathe normally and her fingers were tingling in the strangest of ways.
"Clarke!" Her mother descended on her like a vulture upon its prey. "Oh, Clarke." Her mother's grip was bruising on her biceps and her voice held an edge of hysteria that Clarke had never heard before.
"Mom?"
"I'm so sorry, Clarke." Now her mother was crying in earnest, her small frame clinging to Clarke for support. She glanced over at Ivan, but he looked as bewildered as she felt.
"Mom, let's go sit down over here," Clarke suggested, indicating an empty bench before a set of hockey lockers. Her mother followed limply along, her eyes haunted as they skittered across Clarke's features. "Mom, you're scaring me."
Her mother only shook her head, tears falling harder than before. Clarke glanced around, searching for her father. Her mother had flown out with her on Monday, but her dad had joined them in Boston the night before. A feeling of dread swept down her spine. "Mom, where is dad?
Her mother's lips worked silently for a long moment before a rasping whisper pierced the air between them. "He was running late from a meeting he'd scheduled before the long. You know how bad the roads have gotten. They told me he skidded across the intersection, that his breaks had no hope of stopping him. The other car, an SUV skidded too. It hit your dad's rental car and it flipped into a ravine."
There as only silence. No sound of breath or tears or voices. Only silence. The trembling in her fingers had changed tenor and she could hardly remember how to breathe. "Is he?" She didn't even know what she was asking, didn't want to know the answer.
"He was pronounced dead after he got to the hospital." Her mother's voice was tattered in ways Clarke had never imagined possible.
"When?"
"Oh, honey." Her mother looked away, the pain flashing through her eyes all Clarke needed to see.
"Dad died while I was on the ice?" She already knew the answer and yet she couldn't make it fit. It couldn't be real. The joy of her skate and jarring pain of his loss had no business sharing the same space.
The tears drowned out her mother's quiet whispers, but Clarke could make out the shape of her lips repeating "I'm so sorry" over and over again. She was dazed, lost in a sea of sensation that she wanted no part of.
Ivan moved closed to them now that he understood what had happened. His eyes were so full of pity they made Clarke's skin crawl. She didn't want pity or sympathy or anything. She wanted the world to stop and rewind and fix this disaster. She would easily give up her freeskate if it meant seeing her father even one last time. But she was stuck with the ghost of her joy amid the devastation of her soul. She could still feel the warmth of his last embrace, see the proud twist of his lips as he kissed her good luck only hours ago. Her eyes drifted toward the stairs, some small parting of her still firmly believing he would be walking down at any moment. She couldn't accept this, and yet the pain was searing through, telling her the truth in ways she could not deny.
"Let's get your skates off," Ivan murmured as he began to work on her laces. "I'll make some calls and help you both as best I can."
Clarke nodded, grateful that he was there, pity or no. One boot at a time. One step at a time. That was all she had left.
Bellamy was working the afternoon shift, which included about a million kids and their parents attempting to find Christmas cheer by crashing into boards and accidently skating over each other's hands. While the injuries were rarely bad, they were common enough that Kane had taken to having the skate guards, the lucky high school kids earning an extra buck by telling other kids not to be stupid, carry a full arsenal of bandaids on them at all times.
The latest injury was a toddler who had opted to display his frustration by kicking his mother's shin, while fully equipped with toepicks. The whole thing was a bit comedic, but Bellamy knew better than to laugh. Instead he'd helped get the skates off the kicking machine and set the mother up with a nice pile of bandages. He exchanged an eye roll with Murphy as he headed back to the front office to update Kane on the situation.
Kane's door was open, so Bellamy strode through, ready to regale him with the latest dumb injury story, but Kane's expression stopped him in his tracks. The man's face was the picture of shock, his eyes blown wide with disbelief and something more wretched. Bellamy's pulse instantly spiked as he strained to hear the voice on the other end of the line. He could make out Ivan's heavy accent, but not the individual words.
Kane made no move to acknowledge Bellamy's entrance, but his clear distress held Bellamy in place. "How are they doing?"
Ivan's accented English rattled again as Kane sharply inhaled. "He died while she was on the ice?"
Kane's question had Bellamy's mind going into overdrive. The only person that could have been on the ice was Clarke Griffin. He knew her long program had happened about an hour ago. Murphy had been obsessively checking IceNetwork on his phone until her score had finally gone up, giving her a solid third place finish and a pass to Nationals. Bellamy had texted her a congratulations, but hadn't heard anything back. He'd assumed she was busy celebrating.
Kane exchanged a few more quiet words with Ivan before putting the phone back in its cradle. He glanced up at Bellamy, anguish in his eyes. "Jake Griffin is dead. He was in a car accident on the way to the arena in Boston when he skidded through an intersection. They think the weather probably caused the skid. Anyway, he died at the hospital at the same time Clarke was on the ice. Abby didn't want to tell her until afterward."
Bellamy was out of the office, fingers navigating across the screen of his phone before Kane was even done speaking. The dull ring of the phone repeated five times before he heard her voice.
"Bellamy?"
"It's me. I just heard from Kane. I'm so sorry."
"I don't even know what to think right now." She sounded small, barely a murmur above the static of the line.
He wanted to tell her everything would be okay, but he knew that was a lie and he couldn't lie, not to her, not now. "That's okay. When are you coming back?"
He could hear her speaking with Ivan in the background before she came back on the line. "Tonight. We'd had a flight schedule tomorrow, but Ivan's dealing with the mortuary arrangements, so mom and I can fly back tonight."
"I'll come pick you up," he promised, helpless to buffer her against the storm.
"Thanks, but Kane will be there and I think my mom needs him more than anything right now. I'll call you when I'm back though."
He took a controlled breath. Of course Kane was picking them up. She didn't need him, they weren't even that good of friends and yet his heart was breaking for her. He swallowed thickly. "Uh, yeah, please do that."
"I'll be okay, Bellamy."
And then she was gone. He wanted to defy the laws of physics and teleport to her side, so he could shield her from as much of the pain as possible. He knew it was a stupid urge, one borne of want more than logic, but she'd crept under his skin and now he was powerless as she suffered.
Kane was leaning against his office door, defeated. Bellamy realized he'd probably heard the entire conversation, but didn't have the energy to care. Kane put a firm arm on Bellamy's shoulder as he stepped closer.
"I'll take care of them, don't worry."
With nothing else to do, Bellamy nodded back, feeling as hollow as he had in the moments after he'd found his mother's body.