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chapter twenty-one: the challenge

a/n:

i hate wolf stansson pt 1

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They beat Russia with a one-point lead.

Rory stands in the locker room with her team after the game, a smile on her face as people excitedly welcome Russ, whose trick shot won them the game, to the team. She's very happy that they're being nice to him after all that went down in the beginning, and that he could make a contribution to the game, and that he looks so damn happy. Charlie claps her on the back and says something about what a good job they did, but she doesn't hear him over the sound of her heart beating, content, in her ears.

Their chatter is interrupted by Bombay, who enters the room grinning like a madman.

"I told him no visitors, but he wanted to congratulate you anyway."

A shocked hush fills the room as Wayne Gretzky steps through the door. There's a second where time seems to stand still for Team USA before they erupt. They shake his hands and they pat him on the back and they swoon over how he's the most fantastic man to ever be fantastic, and he takes it all like it's second nature (which it is, most likely) and he smiles at them as if they're not struggling to soak in the fact that a hockey legend is standing there in all of his glory.

Rory stays seated by her locker and shakes her head fondly at her teammates as she unties her skates.

The room grows quiet around her as people start to notice her reaction-- or lack thereof.

"Uh, Ror..."

Wayne Gretzky is smiling at her, a knowing look in his eyes, when she looks up from her laces. She waves at him.

"Hi, Mr. Gretzky."

"Hello, Rory."

Charlie slowly swivels in Rory's direction, his jaw dropped and his brow pinched. The rest of the team, including a perplexed Bombay, also turn to her with similar expressions.

"How's your daughter?" She asks, sliding her shoe off.

"She's doing well." He smiles and puts his hands in his pockets. "She's about to start senior kindergarten."

"Oh, cool. Tell her I said hi."

"I will."

"I'm sorry." Connie bursts the bubble, her voice incredulous as she gestures between them with a finger. "Do you two... know each other?"

Rory shrugs and slips her other skate off. "I mean I wouldn't say we know each other."

"Her father and I used to play together." Gretzky explains, a soft smile on his face. "We've spent a good deal of time in the same social circles."

Her captain and coach each blink in shock.

The legendary player calls in a photographer so he can take a picture with the kids and, after he asks her to pass on a well wish to her father for him, leaves. After a moment of silence, the team descends upon Rory like vultures, poking and prodding her like they're paparazzi.

"I think you guys are severely underestimating just how rich my dad is." She says weakly. "I've got an entire book of autographs and all kinds of merchandise-- he's talking to Paul McCartney's agent about booking him for my sweet sixteen."

Fulton's voice goes up a pitch as he asks her what the hell she means by that. (Metalhead or not, he can appreciate how insanely famous the Beatles were.)

"How many hockey legends do you know?" Adam asks, looking at her like she's just betrayed him.

"I don't know." She shrugs. Adam and Charlie both scoff. "I mean, I think my dad played a few games with Bobby Orr?"

Bombay looks like he's going to faint, and the boy's mouths press into lines synchronously.

"Hey, back off, back off." Averman jokes, wrapping an arm around her and pulling her close. "She's my meal ticket. Already claimed. Find another one."

He's met with a few rolled eyes and an indignant 'she was ours first' from Luis and Kenny. Rory rolls her head to the side so she can look at her curly-haired lover, a smile coming to her lips.

"Yeah. I think that makes you my bitch."

And he gasps dramatically, placing a hand over his heart as people start to guffaw around them.

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They have their second to last class early the next morning.

Wedged between Averman and Dean, she lets her boy lean on her shoulder as the enforcer doesn't even try to hide the fact that he's copying off her. ('This is reparations' he joked when she asked him about it. 'You get to be rich and I get to steal your answers.') Her attention is too centered on MacKay for it to bother her much, anyway. She's, keeping on theme, talking about Rome and the murder of Julius Caesar as they gear up to face against Iceland, and Rory soaks it in like a greedy sponge.

(Dean scribbles too-detailed little things in the corners of her notebook when she's not looking.)

"Though a great deal of information has been lost to time, there's a very famous phrase, one you've probably heard, that they believe can be traced to Marcus Junius Brutus, one of the many men who turned on Julius Caesar. Does anyone know what that phrase might be?"

Before her mind can catch up with her mouth and stop her, Rory answers the question without raising her hand.

"Sic semper tyrannis."

The 'classroom' falls eerily silent in the wake of her indiscretion and her face slackens with this vague sort of horror as MacKay's eyebrows hit her hairline.

"I'm so sorry."

Averman, who's very awake now, yawns. "Yeah, she's usually a pleasure to have in class. History just makes her a little excited."

To her surprise, the older woman simply smiles as she elbows the redhead in the ribs.

"No, no, it's alright, Rory. You're right. Can you tell us what that means?"

Her face gets hot despite the kind words and she shrinks slightly in her seat. "It, uh, means 'thus always to tyrants.' It's this kind of promise that bad but justified things will happen to tyrants... y'know, like being stabbed twenty-seven times by senators, some of whom may or may not be your friends."

In her corner of the world, schools tend to offer Latin or Greek instead of French or Spanish.

Rory, on top of a fondness for history, has always been ridiculously good at learning language, dead or not. She's written et lux in tenebris lucet in the margins of nearly every notebook she's had since starting high school-- a promise to herself that, no matter what happens, she'll always make it in the end.

(Most kids just think she's lame for it.)

"Very good, Rory." MacKay's still smiling.

Rory's face burns bright as she fidgets under the praise.

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Their final practice is right after class. Bombay takes them onto the ice as soon as they arrive, not letting them go to the locker rooms first.

Rory's dressed for the LA weather, not for being on the ice. Even if she spent a great deal of her time growing up hopping from rink to rink (and team to team), she finds herself getting cold very quickly as they stand on the ice and stare at their coach like he's lost his mind.

As she starts to shiver, Les takes off one of his outer layers to drape it over her shoulders.

"Coach, shouldn't we have our hockey gear on?" Luis finally voices everyone's thoughts, his nose scrunched and his eyebrows pinched.

Bombay smiles. "Guys, this is our last team practice, which means--"

"The return of coach blood." Averman interjects.

The joke earns scattered laughter, including a snort from his girl.

"No." Their coach says, his voice light with amusement. "It means... let's have some fun!"

He pulls a blown-up beach ball from the bench and hits it right to Rory, who catches it and cocks a brow at him.

The only response she gets is a grin.

With shouts, the team all start to skate around, playing catch and hitting each other with the ball. At one point, Dean straight up gets it in the face, which turns into an all-out scramble away from him because he wants blood and wants it now; Les hides behind her like she's a human shield, and the laugh dies in her throat when the enforcer stands over her with narrowed eyes.

He leaves them be, though, because Fulton throws it at the back of his head again. (And because everyone knows that, if he's got a soft spot, she and Kenny take up residence inside of it.)

It's fun.

More fun than they've had in a while.

More fun than Rory's had ever, really, in association with hockey.

And then Averman drops it, the rest of them watching as it slides across the ice. It stops against someone's skates.

Wolf Stansson's skates.

The Icelandic coach picks up the ball and pops it with his hands, watching with malicious glee as their smiles all fall from their faces.

"Playtime is over. We have the ice now." He rasps as they skate up to stand around Averman. "You and your little rink rats must leave."

Rory grabs Les' wrist. He gives her a sideways, worried look.

Bombay squeezes her shoulder as he puts himself in front of them and faces the other coach head-on. He momentarily glances back at them over his shoulder and, from somewhere behind her, Dean speaks up.

"We're right here, coach."

They wouldn't be able to do anything. She knows his type too well.

Bombay turns back to Wolf. "The only little thing here is your career in the pros."

The team laughs around her but there's this hot, sinking feeling in Rory's gut.

She can barely manage a weak smile.

"Gordon, no. Let's go."

She nods in agreement with MacKay's words and swallows thickly. "Yeah, coach, we should go."

A few of her teammates, too ready to fight and too naive to realize how bad an idea it is, scoff and snort from behind her as both pleas get ignored. The twisting in her abdomen only gets worse as Gunnar Stahl pins her under his gaze.

"Well, at least I had a shot. I was there."

"You were a disgrace." Rory tears her eyes off the boy who wants to see her downfall as she says it.

(Apparently, her thing today is to speak without thinking.)

(She's spent too much time with these kids.)

Every set of eyes in the room turns to her, even Bombay's, and Wolf sneers.

"What do you know, little girl?"

She keeps her chin high, squeezing Les' wrist. "I know enough."

"Your father was barely in it as long as I was," He sounds amused, "and I almost took him out of it."

"He had pride in his game. That's more than I can say for you."

"Right." Bombay says, turning back to face the opposing team. "Pride."

She exhales with relief when everyone's attention comes off her and releases Averman's wrist. (He hides the fact that she hurt him well, massaging the affected parts before slipping his hand into hers.)

The two coaches have a staredown and the air in the room grows even thicker with tension.

"All right, team, we're outta here. Let's go, I said! C'mon!"

Happy to get away from them, she turns around and starts to leave, the rest begrudgingly coming with her.

"Can you still move on the ice?"

They all turn around, again, varying looks of disgust and shock marring their features.

How dare he?

"Well, please, play a little with me. Show me the famous triple deke your daddy taught you-- or, was it that old geezer over there?"

Everybody turns to look at Jan, whose face stays stoic despite it all. Rory frowns, though, because the kind old man didn't even do anything.

Wolf barks something at the blonde woman with him, and she gives him a stick that he throws at Bombay.

"Three bar. First one to hit both posts and the crossbar. Have to take it out past the blue line."

"I know the game."

Her frown deepens as the kids all start to stand out of the way on opposite sides of the rink. She goes up to her coach before she joins them.

"Be careful."

"I will."

But Rory knows that his promise means nothing. His ego will always outweigh his injury's status.

They're all the same.

That churning in her belly impossibly worse, she skates over to join her teammates, chewing on the skin around her thumbnail as the two men grab a puck and meet in the middle.

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a/n:

"and light shines in the darkness." is what that latin means btw. it's my favorite latin phrase outside of cogito, ergo sum (i think, therefore i am) and esse quam videri (to be, rather than to seem)(it's my sorority's motto!)

idk about y'all but I'm really excited for her to give gunnar his.

comments and votes are super appreciated! they let me know that you guys like my writing and I cannot stress how much they motivate me to continue! thank you