Sometimes Yui wished time would stop. Stop or rewind.

Fame was exhausting. If she could go back and change anything, she would've chosen not to become the person she is today. Maybe she would've even chosen to set her parents free by getting angry at them when they encouraged her to pursue her passion.

Her youth before fame seemed like a blur in the black and white and the vibrant shades of her life now. She remembers the days acing high school in Canada with the best friends whose names she no longer remembers, the days she used to complain at getting up before seven-o'clock and when her mother used to make dinner for her and her father admonish her for not sleeping before ten-thirty.

"Chicara does not accept those who do not fight for their victory."

Her sensei's words echo. They were harsh, but somewhere in the half-drunken state Yui was always in. She knew he was right.

The sins of Gods were that they were arrogant. Arrogance became their downfall.

"It doesn't have to be yours," were the words that her teacher didn't say.

Did she want it to be?

Yui closes her eyes and asks herself the endless questions.

* * *

She goes to Russia for the Rostelecom Cup. Viktor is there, he greets her with a smile and nothing more, she didn't find herself missing him, either.

Yui takes her selfies with Viktor, still the same smile, still the same smirk and glint. But after that skate: they seem to mean less. Their last dance seemed to have broken off any pretences that they used to hold.

And Yui just finds herself unfeeling of it all — an unfeeling, calm state that was akin to drowning. The initial fire Viktor set has gone out and Yui does not attempt to fuel it further or reset it. And when Ivana Serbryakov asks her why she showed up on the ex-Olympic gold medalist's footsteps of all places, Yui just says—

"Because this sort of collateral damage isn't fun anymore."

So Ivana lets her in with her usual scowl, so different from the triumphant, feminist aura of her in her days of past glory.

Yui doesn't think she recognizes herself, either.

You've met a terrible fate, haven't you?

* * *

That night, she curls in the linen blankets and remembers the foreign nickname her mother used to call her, the loneliness in her chest grows, and the heat behind her eyes burn.

* * *

When she walks into the skating rink the next day, her chin is still held high and her visage unreadable. But Yui feels the gentle waves of exhaustion behind her eyelids and the weariness in her bones. The nips she fires at Yuuri are habitual and things she no longer needed thinking to do. Her life is no longer hers, and all she sees are through the looking glass.

She is like a mixtape that day: hot and cold and again. There is no in between: one moment she's sulking with Minako, the next she's in a corner.

Yui doesn't feel the stares and whispers her former friends and rivals whisper behind her back. She was still one of them, despite everything. Mind full of brilliance, path glorious and still every inch ignorant of the world around her.

Her hand shakes when she grips the handle of the bathroom door as she exits.

She keeps walking.

She has to keep walking.

* * *

"How long are you going to keep standing there?"

Those are the first words Yuri Plisetsky roars at her face in two years, the volume of his voice shocks her enough for her brain to temporarily function again.

Her lips curve into an amused smile, "Ara, am I blocking the path of the Oh Glorious I-Will-Be-Number-One Yuri Plisetsky?"

He blows a fuse and stalks off, bumping into her shoulders roughly, and unbidden, Yui feels the tiniest spark of fondness in her chest before it is gone.

* * *

That night when she goes back to Ivana's apartment, is surrounded by cardboard boxes with her skates alongside her costumes are stuffed inside it. The box is marked as 'Trash'.

"Busy?" Yui asked as she settled down on the couch.

"No, I'm just about done." Ivana said with a sense of finality.

"Why throw them away? Those are the only remnants of your dreams alongside those medals you so adore."

"Dream?" Ivana laughs bitterly. "What dream?"

"I suppose," Yui said, "there really never was a dream to begin with."

Ivana was the same in that way, too. They never had to climb the ladder all nail and tooth like the others did. Their parents had been the world to them: the choice was there to join their parents' legacies. But once they started down the path, there was no going back. Like rocks, they allowed the world to mould them into someone else's ideals. Like rocks, they became gems. Yet like rocks, too, they became abandoned on the shoreline, eventually. Left to be washed out by the tide.

Perhaps, that had always been their destiny.

Yet Ivana was different from Yui in that way, too.

While Yui had never loved skating enough, Ivana had loved it too much.

That it had destroyed her.

Ivana stacks the boxes atop each another. "You know, maybe it's time that you moved on, too, Yui."

Yui curls up with one of the pillows, an amused smile forming on her face. "Oho? Are you saying I haven't?"

Out of everyone in her generation, Yui was still the only one who was still an international sensation. A world-class pianist, an international bestselling author, a skater still regarded highly in the international skating community and athletes of both genders for her masterful choreography, her tasteful music, and for her skating: the first woman to ever land the quads in competition.

"Are you sure?" Ivana's voice when she replied was ice cold. She stares at Yui with the ice like green eyes. "You left the ice without looking back. Ever. Plenty of our younger ex-rink mates stalked and crept around your social media accounts as well as your websites for years looking through all of the posts for anything, anything as in double meanings behind words, references, picture codes to get a wind if you were ever coming back. They never found anything. Yet one post from Viktor Nikiforov, your ex and the cause of the hottest scandal on ice back in the days has you composing music and coaching some no-name flunk from a rural town in an island nation."

"That's not true. The reason I coached Yuuri and wrote him his free program music wasn't because my ex asked me. I would've helped him either way!"

"Really? Because the Yui I knew would've never helped anyone, no matter how important they were or could've been."

Yui knows they were words meant to imply something more. Her eyes narrow. "What if I'm not the Yui you used to know?"

Ivana smiles coldly. One that feels like ruin.

"Then you would've never been in the same country as Viktor Nikiforov in the first place."

Yui inhales sharply.

Ivana sighs, bronze locks swishing. "Look, I'm not questioning your life choices. But understand. Every single one of us knew how lonely this path was going to be. But none us were prepared for what it really was. And I'm just saying, Yui, that maybe it's time to come in terms with your own feelings instead of what the world and maybe even yourself want and expects you to do."

"And what gives you the right to say that?"

"Because, Yui, you're the one most unwilling to let go out of all of us."

* * *

LETS GO OUT WITH A BAAAANNGGG!!!

who's surprise i updated

*hands raise across the globe*

welp

i guess it's summer winds next.

sophie xx