Author's Note: I don't think I'll write an author's note without thanking you all. Seriously, you guys are amazing. Just. Mind blowing. And I'm so sorry for not updating in forever, I've just had a lot of work with school, and it's really taken up the time I usually spend for writing. So if you thought I was dead, I'm terribly sorry, and if you hoped I was dead, then I'm not sorry for you at all.
And thank you Day, Silent Killing and Momonchan77 for the reviews! (I really appreciated the constructive criticism you gave me, Silent Killing, because with that information, I can hopefully better the story, which I'm always striving for. So thank you!)
Disclaimer: I do not own Yuri on Ice, or any of the characters in the story, or any of the music mentioned. Just the OCs.
Irina sat on her bed in the hotel. Well, not so much as sitting as she was laying upside down with her feet on the headboard. But at least she wasn't wearing her shoes.
It was a bit hard to scroll through the news on her phone in the position, but she managed.
"Did you know that Cilla Engberg's boyfriend is also competing in St. Gervais?"
"No, I did not," came Miss Krupina's slightly (okay, mostly) bored response.
She and Miss Krupina didn't share a room, not technically, but they were linked by a doorway and Miss Krupina came over often. She was her "guardian" on the trip, and she took it seriously. She was standing at the dresser table, across from the bed, sifting through her purse.
"Me neither." Irina scrolled down the various articles, picking out the ones that mentioned any of her competitors or rink mates.
"Do you know how Viktor's doing?" Miss Krupina fished out a handful of business cards and scowled at them.
"Eh…" It didn't take long to find an article about Viktor's leave from skating to coach a guy that, to everybody's prior knowledge, had pretty much quit skating after the last GPF. Finding a reliable one, though, seemed near impossible. She scrolled pass many that said Viktor was eloping with Yuuri's sister, or wasn't eloping with her at all, but had gotten her pregnant and was promptly blackmailed by Yuuri into coaching him. Others insisted that Yakov had sent him as a spy. Irina found all of these unlikely, for various reasons. In the end, she managed to find a reliable source. "He's doing well."
Miss Krupina pulled out a pair of pearl earrings, which fell apart almost immediately after she gave them a twist, causing two twin pearls to bounce on the dresser. "Exactly how well?"
"'Sure to be one of the greatest achievements of my life' well," she answered.
"Hmm." Irina couldn't tell if Miss Krupina was personally pleased or displeased by the news, mostly since she was upside-down and that made it hard to read expressions. "I'm glad he's happy."
Irina agreed. Viktor had sulked around the rink for months, mourning his lost inspiration. Yakov had also yelled at him for months, telling him that, "Champions do not go all Georgi over failing Japanese skaters!" So Irina felt this was the best decision for Viktor. And herself. Her ears couldn't have taken the abuse anymore. Now Yakov was mostly silent in his fury.
Miss Krupina pulled out another small piece of paper from her purse. "You like fro-yo, right?"
Before Irina could answer, a distinct chirping sound interrupted her, and Irina sprung up. "Oh, Miss Krupina, I'm sorry, I've got a video call-"
Miss Krupina dismissed her apologies with a wave of her hand. "It was expired anyway." She heaved her purse over her shoulder and started grappling for papers. "Just remember-"
"Go to bed, wake up early, and have a big breakfast. Got it." Miss Krupina smiled and walked out the door, leaving Irina and her dinging laptop.
Irina pulled the laptop off a nightstand and answered the video call. With a push of a button, the faces of Alina and Anastasia filled the screen.
"We didn't interrupt anything, did we?" Anastasia grinned.
"Nothing much, I was just talking with Miss Krupina, but she said she needed to go to bed," Irina answered.
"I told you waiting five more minutes was a good idea," Alina said to Anastasia.
"Eh." Anastasia shrugged. "It would have turned out all right."
"If you say so," Alina said before blocking her face from Anastasia's view and mouthing: 'It would not have.'
Irina grinned and replied out loud, "Oh, you know Miss Krupina. She wouldn't make a big deal out of something so minor."
"You guys don't even try to hide when you're talking about me behind my back anymore." Anastasia gave a fake pout. "Some friends."
"Yeah, we're terrible," Alina said.
"Absolutely horrible," Irina reaffirmed. "I don't know you even put up with us."
Anastasia gave an over-exaggerated sigh. "I try. However," Anastasia stole one last impish look at the camera. "We did not call just to dilly-dally. We called to discuss the competition."
Irina shifted. "Of course." One of the prices to pay, or, conversely, benefits of having friends that she shared the rink with was that they always could and most likely would have opinions on routines and performances.
"Don't take offense to this-" Alina started.
"You're my friends, I couldn't," Irina dismissed with a smile.
Alina gave a soft smile as well. "I know. Here's the thing-"
"You haven't receded into the shell during competitions, have you?" Anastasia questioned, all business. "Because you seemed sort of serious, but not in a good way. Like you were trying to blow something up with your mind or somethin'."
"Wonderful analogy." Alina rolled her eyes. "Tolstoy couldn't have phrased it better himself."
Anastsia responded by elbowing her in side and Alina exclaimed, "Hey!", before they started to playfully bicker.
Irina was inwardly relieved when she realized they weren't talking about her actual performance, rather, her…behavior. On second thought, that wasn't very reliving. However, it was much easier to discuss. She knew the shell well.
The shell was what her friends referred to as her right before competition phase. When she, allegedly, shut down and lost all cheeriness.
It was first noticed when she performed her first ballet recital, where, to everyone's surprise, Ms. Baranovskaya, had told her to "chin up". That was probably the closest thing to motivation they had heard from Ms. Baranovskaya by that point.
Alina had walked up to her after, tripping over her feet as she squinted. Ms. Baranovskaya had taken away her glasses for the recital, a move she would soon regret when Alina tripped over her jeté and took out a whole line of ballerinas. The bruise on Irina's knee had lasted for weeks. Alina had asked, "Why do you have a shell all of a sudden. Did something happen?" The term was born then, and Irina had explained that it had only been nerves. And the had nerves continued. She felt it particularly strong this year, which did not predict well for future competitions.
She was broken out of her thoughts when she realized that Alina and Anastasia were still arguing, and she cleared her throat in an overly-snobby manner. "Ahem? I thought we were talking abut me?"
"Oh, yeah," Alina said, her voice raised a pitch in embarrassment. "Just remember to keep calm and-"
"Skate on!" Anastasia interrupted. Irina gave a little clap for that joke.
"-remember happy things," finished Alina, unperturbed. "We like it when you smile," she noted warmly.
Irina nodded. "I will." She gave a brief glance to her phone, before looking up again. "Hey, Anastasia, what did you use to do to relax before competitions again?"
"Oh, I remember that!" Irina giggled.
"Yeah! Hey, Alina, did you ever get that out of your headset?" Anastasia asked.
"No," Alina sighed. "No, I did not."
Irina squinted and spotted the small digital clock in the background. "Shouldn't you guys be getting to bed around now?"
"Nah, it's fine-" Anastasia started to say.
"Anastasia Orlova!" a shrill voice from offscreen started to shriek. "I have been waiting in this parlor room for over half-an-hour and I am not going to drive home in pitch black!"
"Yeah, you're mom's not going to wait any longer," Alina noted to Anastasia.
Anastasia grumbled and called back down to her mother, before getting up and sighing. "Guess I've to go now."
"Tell Mrs. Orlova I said hi!" Irina said.
Anastasia mumbled something and waved bye, before leaving the room.
"I should probably log off too, before my dad comes up here," Alina said.
"Bye." The screen went black, but Irina barely got any time to rest before her laptop started dinging again.
With another click, new faces filled the screen. Irina smiled. "Hi, mother. Hi, father."
"Anyway, so that's how the competition has been so far," Irina finished off.
"Well!" her mother clapped her hands together. "Seems like fun!"
"Did you see the mountains yet?" her father asked excitedly, his face now taking up most of the screen. "Your Uncle Boris says they're some of the best for skiing he's ever seen-"
Her mother leaned back in her chair and groaned as her father started into one of his signature ski rants. Her father had a love for the sport, and, as her mother claimed, her Uncle Boris didn't help by going on a tour of the slopes since his divorce and giving her father a minute-by-minute account. Though Irina knew her mother didn't hate her father's enthusiasm for the sport as much as she claimed, since a smile was evident on her face when she covered her eyes in supposed embarrassment.
Irina waited for her father to finish before chiming in. "Actually, it hasn't snowed here yet. See." She got up and carried the laptop to a window, propping it up on the windowsill. "They have a lot of leaves, though."
"Simply beautiful," her mother cooed, while her father snapped his fingers in disappointment.
Irina smiled. "Miss Krupina and I saw practically the whole landscape during the train ride. It was actually quite nice." She started to turn herself and the laptop around, before she was stopped by her father's exclamation.
"Wait! Wait! Turn back around, it is! It's snowing!" Irina blinked and turned back around. A light snowfall had indeed started outside, already peppering the grass below. It seemed unreal, somehow, like it was the trick of the moon's light. But when she forced the window open with a creak and pushed her hand outside, the flakes that soon melted on her palm convinced her.
"Wow," Irina awed as her mother and father started to chat.
"I believe that's good luck!" her mother declared. "Isn't it good luck, snowfall before a competition?"
Irina shrugged, before remembering the laptop screen was facing the window and her parents couldn't see her. "I don't know. Maybe?"
"Well, it was in skiing," her father stated.
"That's because you ski on snow," her mother pointed out. "It's a winter sport."
"Ice skating is a winter sport."
"I like ice skating," Irina said lamely, still semi-distracted by the falling snowflakes.
"Well, I hope so," her mother joked. "Or the competitions might become a little awkward."
Irina giggled and her mother continued. "Anyway, I'm really sure snowing is good luck. I mean, you're ice skating-" Her father gave a little whoop as her mother took in his idea. "-and your program's on winter!"
"And even if it isn't," her father said. "We can make it good luck. Few know this, but I have the power to declare good luck signs for this family, and I think snowfall will be one."
"Really? Do I get a say on this?" her mother asked.
"Of course," her father answered. "Do you agree, miss?"
"Why, yes I do." Her mother paused for a moment. "Official on one?"
"Two," her father continued.
"Three!" Irina finished. They all laughed.
"It's getting late, so we'll have to say goodnight, sweetie," her mother said as Irina marched off back to her bed.
"Goodnight, see you when I get back." Irina gave the screen a symbolic peck. "Love you."
"Love you," Her parents repeated. And the call ended.
The next morning, Irina once again found herself walking down the skinny hallway that led to the skaters' lounge for the St. Gervais ice rink. And, once again, a similar pit of nervousness jumped around in her stomach. Though she did her best to ignore it.
She was relieved to find that the tension in the skaters' lounge had relaxed quite a bit. Maybe it was because they had already competed once against each other, so what was one more? Or maybe because they knew a bit more about each other? Whatever the reason, Irina was glad for it.
Cilla was preoccupied with her phone, and, from the flurry of movement her fingers were engaged in, was probably texting. Yvonne was being addressed by her coach, but considering her blank face, she was most likely just staring at the wall. Evita and Aimi were playing…chess? Irina glanced their way again to confirm her suspicions. They had indeed set up some sort of portable chess board, and seemed deeply immersed in it already. Klara was sitting cross-legged next to her coach, staring at the floor.
"Miss Krupina, I'm going to-" She jerked her head in Klara's direction, not really knowing how to finish her sentence.
Miss Krupina nodded, and went over to one of the couches.
Irina tried to casually walk over to Klara, which meant she did not do it casually at all. However, she made it over there.
"Hi, Klara!" Klara jolted slightly, looking surprised at her presence.
"Oh, hello." Klara gave her a pleasant wave and a nervous smile.
"Anyway…" Irina really hadn't thought about how she was supposed to introduce the subject without making it painfully awkward. So she decided to take a swing in the dark. "Do you want to know a great way to relieve stress?"
Klara tilted her head quizzically, then nodded.
"Paddleball!" Irina exclaimed, pulling said object out of her bag. Klara, however, just looked confused. So she tried to explain further. "My friend, Anastasia Orlova-"
"Isn't she another junior skater from Russia?" Klara interrupted.
Irina nodded enthusiastically. "Yeah! She used to use this for her first few major competitions. She said it's a great way to relieve stress." Irina started to bounce the rubber ball against the board. "I actually use a stress ball, but I only have one of those. But this fun as well!"
Klara squinted, as though if she were trying to decide if Irina was insane or not.
"Do you want to try?"
Klara stared for a while longer, before nodding and stretching her hand out. Irina placed the paddleball in her hand and Klara gave it a few experimental bounces.
"You know," Klara's coach spoke up. "I used to be pretty good at paddleball, back in the day."
"Really, Mr. Pražák?" Klara asked.
"Yeah, in fact, I guess you could call me a champion!" The old man puffed out his chest and gave a wink. Irina giggled. "Come on, give it here."
Klara relinquished the paddleball, and Mr. Pražák brandished it like a weapon. "Now, watch a real master at work."
He had only gotten less than a dozen bounces in before it lost control, and with an "Oops," the paddleball flew through the air and hit the ceiling.
"Wow," Irina murmured watched as the paddleball took a few flakes of plaster down with it.
"Yeah, wow." Klara looked up with an equally awestruck expression. Once the paddleball fell, she raised an eyebrow and a half-smile tugged at the corner of her lip.
Mr. Pražák chuckled and picked the paddleball up again. "Well, it's been a while."
"May I try again?" Klara asked, and Mr. Pražák nodded.
Irina stood for a few seconds longer, a smile on her face, before heading back to Miss Krupina.
She heard Aimi declare, "Checkmate!" and saw Evita's friendly scowl. Yvonne was now pacing, and Cilla had upgraded to cooing into her phone. Passing by, she gave them all a grin.
Irina sat down and started to drum her fingers on the arm of the couch. "So, what's the lineup?"
Miss Krupina sent her an odd look. "It goes from the lowest scoring skater to the highest, like always."
Irina stopped her drumming. "…Oh no." And the distinct sound of Dmitri Shostakovich's "Waltz No. 2" started to play from the TV.
Slow. That's all Irina could think to describe it. It was much slower than the high jumps of the other day, but not in the bad way. It was actually quite nice. She could also tell Klara was more relaxed than before by the somewhat languid way she slid around the rink, which helped bring the audience to cheers whenever there was a jump, as though they expected her to just glide around the entire routine.
But, despite the fact the most major accident of the routine was a point where Irina was afraid that Klara's skates would clash and get caught together (which they did not) and another time where she tripped and dipped but never hit the ice, it didn't do much. The routine wasn't enough to make up for the precious seconds spent shell-shocked on the ice, and they all knew it. But, did it really matter all that badly when the score got the sadness to disappear from Klara's eyes for a moment and have her cheer like a kid receiving a much-awaited toy? No, it did not. And that was the thing that actually mattered.
When Irina waved Klara a "hello again" and Cilla a "goodbye for now", Irina realized she really didn't know what to expect for Cilla's routine, whether it would be fast and high-paced or slow and melodic. It ended up being the latter.
Irina felt that the piece Cilla skated to, a piece of Lizst's, suited her well. She seemed happy while performing the routine, a smile on her face as she executed the piece with her usual fluidity. Her score reflected that, something that jumped her ahead of the pack. However, considering the majority of skaters hadn't performed their free skate yet, it was hard to tell what would happen to her place in the end. Though maybe she would know sooner than later, Irina thought, as she watched Yvonne take a deep breath and rise out of her chair.
Yvonne's piece created a soft atmosphere in the rink, like they were watching the ending credits of some heart-wrenching movie. Even though it wasn't the end, not even close.
Still, the piano continued to trill with such gentleness that to breathe during the piece seemed like a crime. She looped around the rink, sometimes backwards, sometimes accompanied by spins and low jumps.
It was delicate, too delicate, Irina realized. The technical aspect lagged. She wondered if the expression of the piece would make up for it. She turned to Miss Krupina for an answer, who only shrugged, saying, "Possibly, but it's not likely."
Ultimately, she did fall behind. Technically, she was in second to Cilla's current first, but it wouldn't last long. Not with Aimi and Evita's current scores predicting what their next would be.
And then Irina was up.
She stood at the edge of the rink. The outfit she was wearing was a mix of white and a toned down shade of reddish-pink, with some rhinestones thrown in the mix. So she felt sparkly. Which was good, she liked feeling sparkly.
Miss Krupina's words had apparently trickled out the other day (which was rare for her. If she had not been a figure skating coach, Irina would've figured her as a motivational speaker) and she just gave her a standard, "Good luck, you'll do great."
The clink of blades hitting ice made it all so much more real somehow, and she glided to the center of the rink, the music starting to thrum behind her. A piece of Vivaldi's "Winter", arranged to fit the time slot. Vivaldi's "Winter" had always been one of the most famous pieces associated with the season, for obvious reasons.
She started with the simple hum of violins, the anticipation it created hanging heavy in the air like syrup. As she performed her step routine, she remembered the first time she had heard the music. It had been in ballet class, when Ms. Baranovskaya had made them listen to classical music for an hour. Ms. Baranovskaya said it was so they would learn to appreciate classical music, but Irina had always secretly thought it was to get them out of her hair for an hour. She imagined the audience feeling her first reaction, the anxious tapping of her fingers and the impatient flexing of her toes, waiting for the payoff. Once the piece had finished, it soon became one of her favorites. She had longed for Ms. Baranovskaya to present them a routine for it, but she never did. And here she was, performing it in the hopes of reaching the finals.
Then, the tension in the air began to release while the music started to build. Here she was supposed to have a combination. A Double Lutz followed by a Double Loop. Simple.
She felt her muscles tense slightly and she forced them to relax as the cues in the music started to line up. One. Two. Three.
The ice scraped her leg and the coldness of a memory tightened around her throat.
The chill barely had any time to register in her hip before her nails raked against the white-blue and she pushed up. The gasps died down. She continued as though she had never fallen on her loop.
After that, the music blended with the ice and wrapped around her like wind on a winter's evening and the tightness in her throat relaxed. She breathed. And when the music ended, she longed for it to start again.
Because when she left the ice, the feel on snowflakes on her face and frost in her hands died down. And she stopped. Because of the loop.
The last time she had failed that loop, she had been ten, and her feet had shook when met with a request she found difficult. And now she had fallen on it, at a competition no less. Had she really regressed so far?
Miss Krupina's hand on her arm worked as an anchor, and she was guided to where they would wait for scores. They sat. Evita went on the ice. It was announced. They left.
She stumbled before landing on the couch in the skaters' lounge. She kept remembering. What was next? Would she fall backwards on her toe loop? Do a split on her salchow?
The smile Cilla gave her when she glanced her way made her feel silly for such thoughts. Evita's score did not.
But when Aimi left the ice with a grin on her face that matched the ruffle of white feathers around her collar and Irina was announced for third place, she forgot she was supposed to have thoughts on subjects at all.
The walk to the rink from the skaters' lounge was not at all difficult, but the silence that enclosed it was.
Oddly, it was easy to walk onto the rink for a second time, though.
She took her medal. She smiled for the cameras. She gave a slight nod to Evita and Aimi. She congratulated them on a wonderful performance (and she was genuine). She walked off the ice. She joined Miss Krupina. They headed to the streets outside the rink, Miss Krupina rushing off to hail a cab.
"You did well today." Irina blinked, and the stupor she was in broke, just a little.
She turned around to Klara grinning at her.
"You too," Irina said.
Klara shook her head sadly. "No, not really."
Irina shrugged, not knowing what to say. "It was your first one, and you're the youngest one here-"
"Barely," Klara interrupted.
"-It happens," she finished, nevertheless.
"Yeah, I guess so." Klara looked sideways, before exclaiming, "Oh!" and digging through her bag. "Here's your paddleball back."
"Thanks! I hope we manage to run into each other again," Irina said sincerely, taking back the paddleball. "Maybe at Junior Worlds?"
Klara gave a half-smile, "Maybe," before her coach called her over and she ran off.
She and Miss Krupina sat in the old-fashioned train once again as they started their journey back to Russia, and paperback in her lap was surprisingly heavy.
Miss Krupina could always tell when something was wrong, and her solution this time was to let her borrow a book of hers. (The only book Irina had brought was about figure skating, and Miss Krupina had stated that she should take a small break for skating, just for the remainder of their journey).
The book was called, "The Maiden of the Western Estates", and was about Svetlana Tolmachyova, a "fair maiden" working as, well, a maid on the named estates. All in all, it seemed quite boring, though she knew it wasn't the only reason she couldn't focus on Svetlana's soliloquies about her milk pitcher.
(Why couldn't she get the loop out of her head? She had fallen on jumps in competition before, so why did this one weigh so much? Had she somehow grown smug in her abilities without knowing it? She really, really doubted it. So what was the deal here?)
Either way, she broke fifteen minutes after Miss Krupina started snoring.
First, she took out her phone and opened up SNS, sending out a follow request for Klara. At least that was taken care of. With a moment's thought, she sent out one for Cilla as well. She really had been nice. But what now? Her fingers itched to do something, but what? She had no answer for that. She had already called her parents on the ride to the hotel, and she'd decided to put off talking with her friends until tomorrow. She stared at the screen for a moment, before opening up the news.
The cold eyes of Ms. Baranovskaya jumped out at her, a fierce scowl etched on her face. It took a while to calm down from her almost-heart attack, but, nonetheless, Irina was intrigued. It was a picture of Ms. Baranovskaya sauntering down the outside steps of the rink, and, if Irina squinted, she could spot a blurry blond head lurking behind the door. And another head lacking hair. She clicked on the article and her own solution began to formulate.
Author's Note: I sort of let the purple prose butterfly of the box in this chapter, didn't I? In other news, I've already got the next chapter lined out, so it should hopefully be ready in early May. Until then, goodbye!
