Chapter Text
─────────
Ho una sorella e un fratello / I have a sister and a brother
Dall’altra parte del mondo / On the other side of the world
Forse di me / Maybe they don’t know about me
Forse di te non lo sanno / maybe the don’t know about you
Ho tanti amici / I have plenty of friends
Lo ammetto è una ricerca di affetto/ I’m just looking for affection
Forse di me / maybe they’ll forget about me
Forse di te si scorderanno / maybe they’ll forget about you
[Mai figlio unico, Mahmood]
─────────
March 2017, Moscow
Papa had been really angry recently, after dedushka had gone to heaven.
He kept yelling a lot, which was normal, but also crying a lot, which Liza hadn’t even known he could do.
He kept roaming around the house, running his hands in his hair, kicking stuff he found around or poor furniture that was in his way, drinking straight of a bottle and then suddenly, he would burst into sobs and then yell, throwing whatever he had in his hands as hard as he could.
Mama would mostly watch him from afar, not intervening, with a worried expression Liza wasn’t used to see constantly plastered over her face.
Papa was being very weird, of course, but it was even weirder that mama didn’t yell at him back and only looked preoccupied and lost in her own thoughts.
Maybe their brains were doing funny things like dedushka’s one had.
But now dedushka was dead and Liza really didn’t want her mama and papa to leave forever too.
And she also hoped they wouldn’t forget about her, because that would have been very sad too; who would dress her and bring her to school or to practice, if mama and papa suddenly begun forgetting everything too.
She had tried to ask her mama about it and she had just shushed her, telling her to stop being silly and not to bother them, not when there were already so many things they had to deal with.
The only positive thing about it all, was that dyadya had returned home from America a few months earlier than usual.
Liza knew that because the blue star she had used to mark the day he had promised to be back by, was still a few pages ahead on the calendar.
Dyadya was sad too, but he didn’t yell like dada did; he had been really silent, spent a lot of time talking on the phone, coming and going out of the house, returning home tired carrying stacks of papers he’d then read until he was even more exhausted.
Last night at dinner with the rest of the family, he had left the table with her papa and then hadn’t returned until the meal was already over, with his eyes red-rimmed as if he had cried and Liza, just by glancing at her papa, knew he had been the one to make dyadya cry.
She knew because papa made her cry too, when he yelled and was mean, and she really didn’t like it.
It really wasn’t nice, that he had been angry at uncle Ilya too.
That evening, her parents had left her at dedushka’s place with dyadya, carrying her over after she had already fallen asleep; she had only been pretending to be asleep, though, letting mama tuck her under the quilt on the sofa in the living room, not quite making out the clipped words the woman had then exchanged with dyadya before leaving.
“…yourself useful…last time” Liza had overheard, not quite sure of what mama had meant “…the only one you say you give a shit about…”
Dyadya had then come over and tucked her a little better, fixing a couple of cushions behind her head and turning off the lights, before retrieving into the kitchen, probably still reading the many papers he had accumulated in the last days.
After too long pretending to be asleep on the uncomfortable sofa, Liza had kicked away the blanket and padded towards the kitchen, holding her plushie close to her chest.
The door had been left ajar, but her uncle was so engrossed in his reading he didn’t even notice Liza entering and, as she rounded the table and delicately pulled the hem of his sweater, he flinched harshly, almost jumping on the chair.
Liza’s eyes widened, and she felt immediately guilty “Sorry I scared you; I didn’t mean to”
Recovering from the surprise very quickly, dyadya smiled tiredly down at her, caressing the top of her head gently “Don’t worry, I was just distracted” he reassured her, pushing the chair back so she could have the space to climb onto his lap “You couldn’t sleep, Liza-Lisichka?” he asked, bopping the tip of her nose and then her fox plushie’s one, making her giggle as she burrowed into his chest.
Liza teared the wrapping apart, a grin opening on her face as she pulled out a beautiful and soft fox plushie, immediately hugging it tight.
“Do you like it?” dyadya asked, laughing when she nodded eagerly “A fox for my Lisichka, the most brilliant girl in the entire world”.
Liza shrugged “I don’t know” she admitted.
Uncle Ilya nodded, understandingly “That’s okay, sometimes I cannot sleep either” he shifted slightly, moving back closer to the table and readjusting Liza more safely in his hold.
“And what do you do?”
Liza felt her uncle shrug, as she started playing with the strings of his sweater “I think, I read, I do some exercise” he said, his voice rumbling through his chest.
She wrinkled her nose, her voice coming out whiny “I don’t want to do exercise”
Her dyadya huffed a little laugh as a smile opened on his face “You don’t have to, solnyshko” he promised, leaving a kiss on the top of her head “You can stay here with me as long as you want; if you fall asleep, I will bring you over to the bed in my old room, so you can be more comfortable”.
Liza hummed, happy: the bed sounded a lot nice than the hard sofa in the living room.
“What are you reading?”
Ilya tapped with his fingers on the stack of papers a few times “These are incredibly boring documents, not nice fairytale books, unfortunately”.
“And why are you reading them if they are boring?” Liza asked, frowning; they looked boring indeed, she though, craning her neck to glance at them, written from the bottom to the top in black ink, without a single trace of colour or even a small picture.
“They are sort of my homework to do, you know? I have to finish reading through them all”.
Even grown-ups had to do homework?! What a tragedy, one could never free themselves from that burden, apparently “I don’t like homework” Liza declared.
She giggled as her uncle ruffled her hair playfully “Yeah, they are not fun, aren’t they? But they are important; you are so smart already and by always doing all your homework, you will become the smartest person in the world when you grow up”.
Oh! Well, that did sound like a fair deal “I want to be a vet” Liza felt necessary to specify; unless the smartest person in the whole world could also be vet, she wasn’t very interested in that title.
“Vets are very smart; you will be perfect for that job”
“Okay” she acquiesced, pacified “But only a vet for cats, foxes, dogs and hamsters” someone else could deal with bugs, pigeons and snakes, but she really didn’t want to.
“They are nice animals, it’s a good choice”.
“Maybe wolves and seals too”
“Not bears?” her uncle asked and, as she looked up to his face, Liza saw he was grinning, which made her laugh too; the team dyadya played for in America was named after the bears, she knew that because she had one of their jerseys.
Liza shook her head, grinning too “They are too big, dyadya; I cannot hug a bear and if a bear is sick and goes to the vet, he must be hugged”.
“Good thinking; see, as I said, you are very smart, my Lisichka”.
They remained in silence for a long time, Liza curled up on her dyadya’s lap and Ilya going through the documents, rhythmically turning the pages and sometimes scribbling notes on a sheet he had kept on the side; the faint rustle was making Liza sleepy, as she felt her eyelids getting heavier and heavier.
“Are you sad dedushka has gone to heaven?” she muttered after a while, words coming out a little slurred.
Her uncle’s face became distant, a little darker and more pensive than usual; he then sighed heavily, closing his eyes and nodded “Yes, I am” he whispered, pained, as if that admission physically costed him.
Liza wasn’t sure what that could mean and she was too tired anyway to try to understand it, so she snuggled a little more against him “I love you, dyadya”.
“I love you too”
─────────
January 2026, Moscow
The atmosphere at the rink was tenser than usual.
Yuliana was standing just behind the board with her constantly disappointed frown painted on her face, perfectly dressed and hair-styled, as if she was about to walk the runway of some high fashion show and not spend the day yelling at teenagers about how lazy and talentless they were; her glaring marten-like eyes were laser focused on the only skater who didn’t seem to annoy her just by breathing, darting from time to time towards someone else.
In a contorted and counter-intuitive way, Liza was certain every single one of her training mates was somewhat glad the Olympic training process had been a done deal and that they were mostly not involved in any of it anymore, and all the focus was put on a single person, who was currently repeating her free program for the fifth time.
The places for Russian skaters to represent the Individual Neutral Athletes team at the Olympics in a couple of weeks had been assigned based on the results of the national championships held there in Moscow two days prior and probably were going to be officialised and filed to the Olympic committee in a matter of hours.
When the coaches and choreographers would stop behaving like whiny children and finally decide who among them should go with the official delegation as chaperons and who shouldn’t.
There had been a single spot available for each category -well, two for the women’s tournament, but one had been unofficially reserved for a Belarussian skater- and, while the men, ice dance and pairs had been a bloodbath of a battle to get the ticket, the women’s one had been virtually assigned before the Russian nationals had even started.
Which, fair enough, Liza thought, watching as Arina she flew on the ice with commendable determination and a focused expression, making her look like she could skate through the apocalypse without getting distracted.
She deserved to go to Milan, she really did.
It would have been easy to hate Arina Yefimova, always the best at every single jump and spin they tried, beloved by coaches and choreographers and appreciated by the judges as she was always able to perform the most impeccable, most sagely studied to comply to the booklet of rules programs, and by the crowd too, with her kind, humble and timid smile and her careful and polite answers during interview. She was the essence of a perfect skater.
And was also one of the nicest people in the business. Which was probably the most surprising part, and the reason Liza almost felt bad about the amount of pressure she was under.
Not that any of them wasn’t constantly under constant scrutiny, pressure and quite an unfair number of threats, if they didn’t perform perfectly every single time the set foot on the ice, but being branded the best of the best at barely twelve and having that repeated into your ears ad nauseam for half a decade was a lot to handle.
The fact that Arina had never snapped, kept at the top of her game and always managed to remain a decent human being throughout, was a testament of how great she was.
And of why Liza really shouldn’t hate her, even though it was hard to swallow the bitterness at the thought of being excluded from the Olympics.
Not that, had Russia not have been governed by such country-invading monsters, she would have made the cut anyway; there wasn’t a single possible scenario in which Yuliana Lvovna Samalkha, even with one hundred spots available for her skaters, would have sent Liza to the Olympic games willingly.
Her coach would have sent Margarita Matveyevna, the sweet canteen lady, before sending her.
Until a month ago, Liza had actually been fine with the knowledge she wasn’t going to be an olympian any time soon, then she had seen, after a constant intense stalking of English Wikipedia page, that Canada’s men’s ice hockey team had been announced and she had recognised a name in the roster and had dared for a moment to hope she might go to Milan too and finally meet him again.
Pointless, childish dreams anyway.
As she leaned down to fix her laces, Valeriya approached, blond hair in disarray “The witch is about to blow” she muttered, undoing the bird nest her bun had turned into, sending an annoyed look towards their coach.
Liza snorted “What’s new about that?”
Valeriya pursed her lips, glancing back once again at their coach to check she wasn’t looking in their direction, before turning around and whispering “There’s that Arina is injured”.
Stilling for a moment, Liza looked up towards her friend, surprised “What are you talking about?”
“Right foot…ankle or whole leg perhaps, whatever. Look carefully when she prepares to jump and how she lands; she can’t turn her ankle inward properly”.
Curious, Liza rose and, setting her leg on the board, pretending to be stretching so she wouldn’t look like she was either slacking off or snooping in, she craned her neck, focusing on Arina’s footing; now that Lera had pointed it out, it did look a little stiffer than usual.
But it could mean nothing; maybe Arina was human after all and she was starting to feel the pressure of her first major international competition, the Olympics more so, approaching.
“Maybe she just tied her skate wrongly and can’t be bothered to undo it until she finishes the session” they had all done that, because for some weird and absurd mental process, it often felt more of a waste of time to stop and fix their skates rather than do it later, once they had finished a certain exercise, even if that meant completing said exercise badly.
No one had ever accused professional athletes of being rational, after all.
“No, Lera’s right, she’s definitely not okay” Diana declared approaching them, having heard with her bat-like ears the conversation “She has been bathing herself in arnica at night when she thinks I’m already asleep and uses ice packs all the time; I see the wet spots in her bed where they had melted in the morning”.
Somehow, speculating about Arina’s possible injuries, albeit they weren’t doing it with any malice, felt wrong “I could be just a sprain” Liza tried to reason, leaning over her stretched leg, eyes looking back at her two friends
“I don’t think so; the witch does actually look a little concerned”
Liza grimaced “I usually try not to look at her for too long…you know, in case I meet her eyes and end up petrified” Lera and Diana giggled at that, earning immediately a glacial glare from their coach, which spurred the three of them to return to their exercises before she’d start yelling.
Liza moved away, crossing the rink in three deep steps, faster than the rest of her teammates, quickly gaining speed; she remained on the sides, away from the centre where Arina was still training her free, specifically the step sequence leading to the showstopper quadruple-triple-triple combination at the end of her program.
She met Savely Mikhailovich eyes for a second and the man nodded at her, lips curling up just barely, n what was probably his equivalent of a bright smile; he was a good man, Bakunov, and a good coach, who sadly focused on pairs instead of individual skaters.
Liza wished he was her coach and not the witch at least seven times a week.
Ah, to be coached by someone who was calm and actually gave a shit…
What a concept, what a dream
Arina started to prepare herself for the quadruple flip Yuliana had made her train for over a year now, wanting for her protégé to make the headlines even internationally and be hailed beyond Russia as the quad Goddess or something; her program was already strong, incredibly so, and only a couple of skaters, if even, could technically compare in the world.
Liza didn’t know what the point of doing something so bold and potentially backfiring was, especially for her first serious international competition, when it was clear, behind her mask of firmness, that Arina didn’t like that jump at all.
Just another ridiculous way to show the world that Russia was the mightiest and most fearless, probably…
With a sigh, she turned around, preparing herself for her own jump, but a couple of strangled cries made her stop abruptly.
Liza she spun around, light hazel eyes widening in shock, as she watched Arina crumpled on the ice, lying on her side, sobbing as she held her right leg.
“Oh my God” a few people whispered in the background.
Arina didn’t cry. As in, never.
They had all done it, out of frustration or pain or tiredness at least once, but not sweet and focused Arina, who never complained and never folded under pressure.
If she was in so much pain she couldn’t mask it, brushed it off or conceal in any way, it had to be bad.
With a display of athleticism that was impressive for a man in his late fifties, Bakunov jumped the boards and quickly approached Arina, as the rest of them remained frozen, in shock; the man crouched by her side, talking lowly and gently to her, before cautiously picking her up bridal style, careful not to poke her injured leg too much and quickly carried her out of the ice.
Yuliana had for once shed her usual impassible mask and waiting for them just over the opening, an astounded and concerned look on her face as she fell into step with the older coach, fretting around Arina, who was still crying with her face pressed against Bakunov’s shoulder.
Crossing herself almost guiltily, Diana skated closer to Liza, dark eyes widened in fear “That’s fucked” she whispered and Liza could only nod “Will she be okay, though, right?”
There wasn’t any conviction in Diana’s words and Liza was almost certain she was seeking out a confirmation, even a fake one, for her own comfort “I don’t know” she whispered back, shaking her head.
Ruslan Shabasov seemed to remember he was the head-choreographer and the main adult in charge at the moment and he finally snapped out of his dazed and shocked state “Alright, training is suspended for today” he barked, slamming his hand a couple of times on the board to get everybody’s attention “Come back tomorrow at 7:30 sharp. And do not be loud while you get changed; I want everybody out of the locker rooms in fifteen”
As the man stomped away, the skaters started to slowly leave the ice, all looking somewhat shell-shocked.
Diana and Liza joined Valeriya, who was already putting on her yellow blade covers and whose blue eyes were red rimmed “Can I bunk with you two?” Diana asked timidly, looking at her friends “I don’t want to stay alone tonight”.
The three of them, Arina and a few other skaters, were among the athletes that stayed over at the dorms on other side of the street, and Lera and Liza had been sharing their room for three years at that point.
Most of the boarders were people coming from thousands of miles away, from cities where the facilities weren’t as good as the those there in Moscow.
And then there was Liza, dumped there most of the year by her parents out of convenience, even before either of them had even moved out of Moscow, her mother in Tver with her poor accountant new husband and baby daughter, and her father relocated to Ryazan with his wife and stepsons, where he was running a precinct, forced out of active duty by cardiac problems, which definitely hadn’t been caused by coke.
Trying to put on her best smile, Liza nodded, nudging her friend with her shoulder “Sure, grab your stuff and come over whenever you want”.
─────────
“You’ll be going to Milan now, Liza” Diana said, fluffing her pillow and readjusting herself in the middle of the two joined beds -Liza was half worried the binds they had used to tie the beds together with would snap and her tiny friend would get swallowed in between the two frames at some point during the night-, before raising her deep dark eyes, looking at her teammate with a smile “It’s going to be so cool: I’ve always wanted to go, it seems such a fashionable and elegant place”.
“They will probably keep the athletes stuck in some sad suburb and only bring them into the city to compete” Valeriya pointed out, rolling onto her side so she could look at her friends, before poking Diana with her finger “Also, the games are in two cities, are you sure she will be actually going to Milan at all?”
The black-haired skater shrugged “From what I gathered, ice events are in Milan and skying ones in that other mountain town…Cortina something”.
Yelizaveta looked at both of them stunned by their confidence “It’s not a done deal that they will bring me” she pointed out, letting her mind wonder just a little about that possibility for the very first time.
Going to the Olympics…
It felt too incredible to be true.
Diana and Lera looked at her as if she had been crazy “Who else are they going send?” Diana commented “Every competition Arina hadn’t taken part into this season, you’ve won; of course they will send you”.
“Your personal bests are better than mine” Liza pointed out, trying to be rational and not allowing herself to dream too hard, with the risk of only being sorely disappointed later on “And maybe Arina’s injury is not as bad as it looked and she will be fine in a week or so”.
“Our personal bests are from last season” Valeriya reminded her, picking at her fingernails, where the red nail polish was starting to get chapped “And I can assure you, Arina is not getting back on the ice any time soon” at her teammates questioning gazes, she pursed her lips, looking a little uneasy “I was talking to Kolya after dinner…”
Two identical sly grins appeared on Liza and Diana’s faces “Of course you were talking to Kolya” Liza repeated.
“Talking, though?” Diana added, waggling her brows towards Lera before both her and Liza started laughing at their friends’ beet-red and annoyed expression.
“Shut it, you are both horrible!”
Diana snickered at Lera’s whine and Liza smiled too, feeling though the usual pang of sadness, knowing she couldn’t talk about her own crushes so freely, not even with her closest friends. Lera and Diana probably wouldn’t have been horrible, but she was too afraid they might start looking at her differently, distancing themselves and not be comfortable doing their little gossip-sleepovers like that one with her anymore, had they learnt she kept looking over at the Privius-Rakhimov pair while they were training, not because she was crushing on Marat, but because she though Nastya was incredibly fit.
“Anyway, I was talking” Lera marked that word emphatically, elbowing Diana in her side “To Kolya, and he was in the corridor when Bakunov and the witch carried over Arina and settled her on one of the couches as they waited for the doctor to arrive…he said that when they took off her skate, her ankle was flexed at a wrong angle” she explained, mimicking with her hand and wrist and creepy-looking position no ankle should ever assumed, which made both Diana and Yelizaveta shudder.
Shaking away the shiver and eager to change the topic quickly, Liza sighed “I’m sure Yuliana will find some creative excuse to keep me out anyway”.
Diana shrugged “Well, the only skater Yuliana truly liked is not available, so she’ll have to resign herself to pick someone else anyway”.
Sure, Liza considered, but between disliking and straight up hating, there was a massive difference.
Yuliana didn’t like most of them of a myriad of stupid reason, mostly because no one other than Arina had managed to become a quad-landing machine ever since the last Olympic, tainting her legacy.
Which, had she had even a speck of humility, Yulian might have blamed herself for it, or at least understood that it was harder to stay competitive for newcomers on an international scale, after having been excluded from competing internationally because of how their government was behaving.
But Yuliana was a firm supporter of their current politics and beamed with pride when her former or current pupils joined the rallies, so she would never admit that Russia had done it to itself.
But as much as she didn’t like most of her pupil, she hated Yelizaveta.
She hadn’t liked Liza from the moment she had read her name when her mother had signed her up at nine for skating classes, after the paediatrician had suggested the switch from rhythmic gymnastics, stating that, with her dust mite allergy, she’d probably benefit to train on the ice instead than in a dust-riddled gym.
And, as the years went by, she had kept hating the fact that Liza had managed to remain a solid and elegant skater always in the top five, mainly top three for her category, even through the growth-spurt, which had made her stand out, to quote, like a giraffe among fairies.
“Carolina Kostner is about my height” she had tried to argue as Yuliana had kept fretting around her, flashing murderous looks in her direction, as if Yelizaveta had offended her personally, daring to have grown up quite a few centimetres during the summer “And she was incredibly successful for years”.
“Does she have an Olympic gold medal, has she set world records and had quadruple jumps in her programs?”
No, just a long and impressive career, a legacy and global admiration that will probably go on for decades, but who cares about that, right?
Liza wasn’t the kind of skater Yuliana wanted to train, but she had no real reason to just drop her.
Also, she was some sort of relative of Liza’s step-grandmother, so there was a messy family tie linking them, whether she liked it or not.
But both Yuliana’s and her husband’s family were heavily involved in ice hockey, so simply reading Liza's surname was enough to make her seethe through her teeth and make her hate her pupil more than all of the rest of her students combined just for existing.
Legacy was something almost impossible to outrun, even for someone as fast as her.
Hugging her old and battered lucky fox plushie, Liza sighed, shaking her head as she readjusted herself on the mattress “We’ll see”.
─────────
The following morning, when Liza, Diana and Valeriya arrived at the rink a little early, Yuliana was nowhere to be see and, even as the place started to fill up with other skaters and their coaches and choreographers, the woman was remained missing.
Shabasov had arrived, his usual uncaring and mellow demeanour completely transformed into an expression of severe concern; he hadn’t said hello nor had even seemed to notice there were other people present at the training facility and had immediately locked himself in one of the offices.
The chattering and gossip had been shut down, not harshly, but firmly anyway, by Bakunov, as the man had patiently herded the young and buzzing skaters and assigned them work to do to keep them busy, starting with a longer and more thorough than usual stretching session, possibly to avoid somebody else getting injured or to ease the skaters into the new day, after they had witnessed a friend getting hurt just hours prior.
They had been working for a couple of hours when suddenly silence fell onto the rink, announcing the arrival of the resident wicked witch.
The most ironic part, was that Yuliana was genuinely wearing an elegant dark green coat, which perfectly matched her deep auburn curls and also the evil witch general demeanour, as she marched closer to the ice, thick heels clicking menacingly on the ground.
Diana hissed, trying to make herself smaller “Green clothes; that’s bad luck” she whispered.
“Doesn’t that just work for the theatre?” Liza whispered back, furrowing her brows.
“Isn’t the entire world just her stage?” Lera murmured, making her friends snort, only to freeze as they noticed the woman was marching in their direction with a fiery, angry and completely terrifying look on her face.
That was the kind of look that had sent plenty of skaters crying in the bathroom after practice, the disappointed and vaguely disgusted frown that had helped forged some of the most victorious, anxiety-ridden and disposable skaters of the past decade, sprinkled with a genuine boiling annoyance and disappointment.
"Yelizaveta, come with me" the woman ordered as silence fell onto the ice, everyone turning to look at the poor victim who had just been singled out. She then immediately turned on her heels and marched away from the rink.
Liza heard both Diana and Lera hold their breaths and gulp nervously but, not wanting to give her coach the satisfaction to know just how much she was shitting herself, she quickly scrambled to follow the woman, not even bothering to take her skates off.
She cannot like murder me, right?
Half of the people bring their phones on the ice anyway, there might have been someone filming me waddle after her, there’s too much proof; even someone with her kind of influence would find it hard to justify herself, had she lured her student into a dark corner of her own training facility.
Blood, also, would show too much on her coat…not on her on her black pants and boots, but would definitely pop on the green..
When they arrived onto the first floor and turned, leading to the corridor where her coach’s office overlooking the rink was, Liza almost made her coach’s possibly murderous intents a lot easier, coming really close to brain herself on the floor upon seeing Osipov, the president of the National Ice Figure Skating Federation, waiting for them.
She had never been bestowed with the honour of meeting him in person or so up close at least, and she still wished she hadn’t, as he was every inch as intimidating as she had expected him to be, perhaps even worse.
Osipov was an imposing man, so tall and broad it was hardly believable he had once been a talented, graceful and accomplished ice dancer, with thick silver hair and a pair of impossibly bright and elongated light blue eyes, which seemed to be able to read right through a person.
He reminded her of Steele, the mean dog from Balto, who used to scare her to death as a kid, which definitely didn’t help calm her nerves.
The smile he sent her, as he approached with his hand stretched over, was possibly even more unsettling; studied, too bright, probably fake, but mostly unreadable "Yelizaveta, we meet at last" even his voice sounded like it belonged to some Disney villain.
Under Yuliana’s watchful eyes, feeling incredibly underdressed in her sweaty tracksuit and t-shirt, with her hair in a messy ponytail and her skates still on, Liza forced herself to smile "It's an honour, Vladimir Sergeyevich, sir" she replied politely, earning another grin that made her shiver.
She then walked into the room he had opened the door to for her, and looked around for possible emergency exits, in case whatever meeting she had just been dragged into became concerning and perceivably dangerous.
None, if one excluded the storey-tall drop that overlooked on the ice.
Dammit.
Maybe, though, if I start yelling and pounding on the glass, someone would come to my aid.
And to worsen any possible escape scenario, Yuliana closed the door behind her, as she entered the office last and then leaned against it, her frown even deeper and not concealed at all.
"I knew your grandfather, Grigori Mikhalovich" she jolted a little, looking back at Osipov, who was conversing amiably, lowering his large frame on the massive chair behind the desk, making it squeak comically; hadn’t she been so nervous, Liza would have probably laughed at that "He trained with my father at the Academy, they served together for decades. An honourable man, your grandfather".
Meaning Osipov’s father and her grandfather had been pals, tag-teaming to ruin lives on behalf of the KGB before the dissolution of the Soviet Union, and had then probably both joined the police forces, so they could collect a few more medals and terrorise quite a few more citizens.
Charming.
Not that she could ever express those thoughts out loud.
"We miss him greatly to this day" she ended up saying, hoping to sound as sincere as she actually wasn’t; she barely had memories of her grandfather at all and, by the way her father loved to remember him, singing his praises in their line of work only when he had an audience he needed to impress, she probably wouldn’t have liked the man at all. But that certainly wasn’t the appropriate answer "His premature departure left a void in our family".
As premature as the death of someone in his eighties and who had had dementia for a while could be, but Osipov probably wouldn’t call her out on that.
The man in fact smiled at her almost paternally, definitely condescendingly, inviting her to sit down in front of him.
"You have been having quite the season this year, my dear".
It was kind of depressing that Vladimir Sergeyevich Osipov was the first person, aside from her friends, the first adult that had congratulated her on her most recent achievements, without a trace of sarcasm in his voice.
"I have been training hard and trying my best to represent my team appropriately".
Yuliana behind her snorted and Liza clenched her jaw, forcing herself not to turn around and send a bewildered look at the woman.
Seriously? She could understand not liking her, but openly snorting in front of the president of the federation like that, especially after he had just praised her recent performances, was exaggerated even for Yuliana’s standards.
Osipov didn’t seem to be touched in any way by Yuliana’s interjection, as he kept staring intently at Liza, light eyes peering into her soul in an uncomfortable way, before he let out a long sigh, leaning back, making the chair squeal once again "With darling Arina out of the picture for the foreseeable future, we are left with quite the impasse, as you can imagine".
Liza gulped, clasping her hands together on her lap “Out of the picture, sir?" she whispered carefully, the memory of Lera’s flexing her wrist to mimic an horrific injury coming back to her mind.
“Arina has already had X-rays and an MRI at the hospital and her ankle has suffered a double spiral fracture to her fibula and tibia, a comminute fracture to her talus and torn ligaments…the full report still needs to be filed” Liza felt all the blood drain from her face; she wasn’t a doctor, far from it, but in her sport she had heard enough talks of fractures and injuries in general to know that couldn’t be any good.
Arina must have been skating with at least some serious microfractures and sprains already in place for God only know how long, because there was no way a single jump could cause that much damage, even in someone as thin and minute as her.
"Which, as you can imagine, will force her out of elite competitions for a very long time, if not compromise irreparably her career” dread washed away from Liza in a second, being immediately replaced by a wave of rage she struggled to conceal from her expression; how could this man talk so casually and in such a disinterested way about an eighteen-year-old who had just suffered an awful injury and was probably terrified, for her own health and her future.
We matter nothing, we never had.
We are all just expendable dolls they put on the ice for a couple of seasons and then throw away when a new more malleable model comes out.
“Arina was of course the natural choice to skate in Milan" Osipov scrunched his nose, an almost disgusted expression on his face "At the Olympics, if we can even call this farce the noble games have become that, without disrespecting an honourable and millenary tradition".
Liza gulped "The Olympics?" she repeated, her voice barely a whisper.
Holy shit, Diana and Lera had been right!
"Of course there's barely any pride in competing under a ridiculous politically correct banner, instead of our flag and be an Individual Neutral Athlete" those last words came out of his mouth as an insult "Yet, not sending anyone to cover the few spots we have been assigned by the international committee, would show weakness and we must not fold to the pressure of the corrupt West and still send our best to show we will not bend and continue to strive, and you are the natural alternative to dear Arina".
Liza could barely breathe, feeling her heart pounding wildly, about to explode into her chest; holy shit, was she really going to the Olympic Games?
Travel and compete together with the very best skaters in the world, skaters she admired from afar, of whom she watched at night videos on social media, admiring their grace, their beautiful programs, their jumps? Her first international competition, where she would be thrown together with people from everywhere around the world, and not just the bunch of ‘friendly countries’ they had been having meetings with.
Every athlete’s wildest dream.
She finally raised his head and flinch, noticing Osipov had been staring at her the whole time "It would be my honour to represent Russia, Vladimir Sergeyevich, sir".
Her answer, albeit it had come out in a trembling tone, seemed to satisfy the man enough as he smiled back, in that shark-like way of his "Most of your teammates have been outstandingly disappointing this year, but you have skated at your best recently; I am sure you will make as proud".
"She is as inconsistent as they come, it's a gamble to send her" Yuliana spit out from behind Liza’s back, making the girl straighten unconsciously, trying not to show on her face her irritation and disappointment for her coach’s words.
Osipov, though, seemed to be unfazed by Yuliana’s comment "Perhaps this is her lucky season; surely she has momentum, it’s worth taking advantage of it"
Stomping with on heels unnecessarily loudly, Yuliana moved closer, stopping right next to her student, looking her from up above with a stern expression "She will crumble under pressure in an international setting" hers wasn’t even a concern: she expressed it as an irrefutable truth "She has never taken part in anything quite of this calibre"
"If so, then we will rejoice she didn't embarrass herself under the Russian flag, but simply during a mockery of a competition, and she will learn some important life lessons anyway".
There it was.
Of course there had to be the downside to all that hyping speech Osipov had blabbered out before.
Silly of Liza to think otherwise.
Osipov sent her another long look, before adding “After all, dear Yelizaveta here could set an important example if she performs at her best”
Example?
“Sport wise, her family has a tainted legacy that is not even worth mentioning, as disgraceful as it has been for our country” she felt a shiver running down her spine, knowing exactly what the man was implying “A sort of embarrassment that is not even worth speaking of out loud, and that would be honourable on your part to fix and turn around, to restore the good athletic name of your family, wouldn’t it, Yelizaveta?”
Liza gulped, feeling her ears ringing "I will work hard and will do my all to be perfect, I promise" she replied, hoping for her voice to sound as self-assured as she really wasn’t feeling at all “I will make my family and my country proud”.
The president of the federation smiled, nodding approvingly, before turning towards her coach "We will send the girl, Yuliana" it wasn’t a question, not really; in spite of everything else going on, Liza almost smiled, vindicated, noticing the way her coach’s jaw had clenched, not used to be the one taking orders "She is a fresh face, a pleasant enough skater with no expectations behind her and she will show how important it is to stick to tradition in the face of those who defy it" he looked back at Liza “I am sure she will not disappoint us”.
That did surely sound as a threat.
Tainted legacy, Osipov had defined it.
Ilya Grigoryevich Rozanov.
The Russian prodigy that had made the entire world of hockey, even beyond the ocean talk ever since he was a teenager.
The teen from Moscow who had taken North America by storm, earning millions of dollars and countless accolades.
The player that had tried with all his might to keep afloat the disastrous team at the home Olympics in Sochi and had then shouldered all the blame, he who had left the motherland to be a show pony in America, after the Russian team catastrophic debacle.
The disgraced traitor, who had been erased from the sport annals of his country, after daring to commit the unforgivable sin of loving with another man.
The whisper, the cautionary tale, the name that was implied but never spoken aloud, with his jerseys disappearing from fans’ homes and shops, articles about him being scrapped from the depth of the web.
One of the many reasons why Yuliana, who had all the male members of the family involved in some way in ice hockey, despised her so much.
Damnatio memoriae, Liza had learnt in school.
What the Romans used to do to their own emperor that had fallen from grace needed to be erased forever from the collective memory, not to disrupt the government.
Uncle Ilya had been such a famous and accomplished figure starting from a very young age, Liza thought the comparison to an emperor was acceptable and more than justified.
Uncle Ilya, her dyadya
The one she had seen just a handful of times, whenever he would come home from America in the summer.
With his curls that he let her pull and put ridiculous bows and clips into, his playful smile and kind eyes as he indulged in whatever game she wanted to play.
The one person that somehow, in spite of having spent just six summers -during most of which she was a barely cognisant infant or toddler- and a few other sporadic visits, had probably been the adult that had played and paid the most attention to her ever.
The one who called her Lisichka, bopping her nose playfully, declaring she was the smartest and most astute girl in the world, whenever she beat him at something. He let her win most of the time, but that she had realised only a long time after.
After her grandfather had died, uncle Ilya hadn’t returned back to Russia; even after he had stopped coming, he had still kept sending presents for her, two in the winter, one for Christmas and one for her birthday, and one in the summer, through a friend of his, a beautiful woman named Svetlana that would come by to visit her own family in Moscow and stop at the Rozanov’s.
But the visits had ceased abruptly after the winter holidays between 2020 and 2021.
Liza still didn’t know the details, but she had assumed him and her father had probably had a final blown up argument.
A fair assumption, she thought, given the only instances her uncle’s name had been spoken since then, had been accompanied by the most awful and vile insults Liza could think of, from both her father and her mother, one of the few things they seemed to be in agreement about, even after their divorce.
Her father had yelled at her and her mother had hissed to shut her mouth, whenever she had tried to ask after her uncle; she had then been told in a definitive way, a few years prior, to never dare to speak his name and to forget about him, since what he had done could disgrace upon them all.
It had then taken her a little more time, up until she had finally had been old enough to properly understand the meaning of the slurs her parents had used on uncle Ilya, to figure out the reason everyone had been so adamant to scrape his name from existence.
Liza never blamed him for leaving, even before knowing the truth.
She had missed him, which was probably stupid, since she barely remembered him, but she had never blamed him.
She too wished she could escape the mess her family was.
The mess her whole country had become.
She had tried to research him a little, especially after she had started to understand certain things about herself, but she had been too scared of her parents finding out she had a lot more in common with her uncle than just physical appearance, to properly deep-dive into it.
Sending him a DM on Instagram felt too risky, given her mother had access to her social media profile and creating a finsta could have gotten into massive troubles at home.
The only research she allowed herself to do was through accessing the English version of Wikipedia on a protected browser and start with a very broad search about the Olympics or sport in North America, diving into the research engine rabbit hole in a very intentional and controlled manner until she managed to narrow it down to her uncle’s page.
She was probably being paranoid, to go through all that trouble just to read the same very simple and impeersonal page all over again, but she had valid reasons for it.
She had read the full article thoroughly many times, absorbing greedily all the information she could, even though she didn’t understand everything perfectly. It was mostly about his professional career of course, personal information being scarce and superficial.
She had never clicked on the link redirecting to his husband’s page; she was incredibly curious about this Shane Hollander, but it felt wrong to get the first impression of someone through an internet window, as stupid as that might sound.
She had thought it was cool, that uncle Ilya was still playing, even at thirty-four and still winning a lot too apparently; he was the captain of his team, the Ottawa Centaurs, and his husband was a member of the same team which, in her opinion was really damn romantic.
And they were going to the Olympics together too! They could actually end up winning a medal together, wasn’t that something? Had that happened, it must have been a first, right? Husbands getting an Olympic medal after playing together…they’d make history.
But at home, Liza, even though she was the second Rozanov to represent Russia or an adjacent denomination at the Olympics, was the only one who could still be mentioned out loud; she hoped no one outside of Russia would make the connection between the two of them and reach out to ask her about it.
She was a terrible liar and her truth wouldn’t be welcomed.
It wasn’t though like she was bound to get much attention during the competition, thankfully: she was a newcomer, with realistically no chance of getting a medal; she was a strong skater, with good jumps and a solid technique, but the Americans, the Japanese, the Canadians, Park from Korea, Ozten from Germany, Seri from France, Rosset from Italy, Hu from China, were all skaters she could only dream of beating.
Perhaps everyone would leave her alone, letting her go on her little trip to Milan, do her thing and return home only to fade in the background once again, retiring before she was twenty and be forgotten forever.
As bleak as it sounded, she really didn’t mind it much; she loved being on the ice, more than anything else, but the way she kept being forced into programs she loathed and pushed painfully beyond her limits, was starting to burden her.
With the current situation withstanding, she couldn’t see a future for herself in the sport, not a long term one anyway.
She would likely continue for a couple of seasons, then put the skates away and go to university and forget about her dreams of glory; neither her nor any of her teammates were trained to last many seasons anyway, so what was even the point of dreaming of a long career?
But at least she could enjoy this moment of personal glory in Milan.
She was after all an Olympian, she had reasons to be proud of herself, even if hardly anyone else seemed to share her same excitement.
She wondered if somehow, her uncle Ilya might find out about her and what would he do in case he did.
Even had he cared about her -which she had no positive reassurances about-, considering she had started skating after he had stopped coming over, it was still incredibly unlikely he would hear about her; it was pretty unrealistic that an ice hockey champion gunning for the gold would be aware of a little miss nobody in the women’s ice figure skating competition.
But Liza liked the idea to be in the same city as he was nonetheless; it was still the closest they had been in almost a decade.
Once upon a time, he had been the kindest adult in her life.
In her dreams, she liked to imagine he would still be, half a lifetime later, the same sweet and considerate dyadya.