Archive of Our Own ^beta

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Life had been good for Eret since ze'd left the figure skating world and settled down with zer two siblings. Life had been good.

Long flowing skirts, more fitting pronouns and name. Tons of bracelets on their arms, Ranboo had made zer and weekly baking sessions with Niki. Life was truly good.

It didn't matter that ze barely ate, restricting as much as ze could because ze wasn't active and practicing every day anymore. Neither did the small white lines littering zer arms or the ungodly hours ze went to sleep at. It didn't matter because ze got out. Ze survived and ze deserved a litte self sabotaging for that.

If Eret had to name one thing about moving halfway across the country changing zer name and blocking all zer contacts, it would be Wilbur. Undoubtedly Wilbur. Not even a word had ze said to him before ze packed her bags and vanished in the middle of the night.

Niki had been right, ze really should have left him a note. But what do you even write someone the last time you'll ever communicate with them. 'Thanks for not letting me kill myself, but I'll get the fuck out of your life now. Never contact me again, love Alistair.' That would be properly ridiculous. It was a shit excuse, ze knew that, but it was all they had.

Life was good, mostly. Not counting the self destruction, the guilt and nightmares. And the gnawing loneliness at the back of their throat. Life was good, mostly.

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Eret wakes up to the ringing of the house telephone at 5 in the morning. Either someone has never heard of time zones or is purposely being an asshole, ze suspects the latter. Niki, who usually is on ohone duty has a night shift, so with a groan ze heaves zerself out of bed.

Padding barefoot down the hall way and taking a short moment to collect zerself before answering the phone with a simple "What?" "Hi" the vvoice on the other side sounds slightly put off and nervous. "I was told this number would reach Alistair King, do you know him by any chance?"

"Who are you?" ze asks back, depending on the answer revealing zerself might bring more trouble than luck. "Oh, of course. My name is Wilbur Soot, Al and I are uuh old work friends."

Eret emediedly feels the urge to throw up. Zer second instinct is to hang up and crawl back into bed, fall asleep and forget he ever called. Neither would be helpful so ze stays.

"Wil?" zer voice sounds more timid than intended. "What do you want from me?"

"Al?" ze flinshes at the old nickname. 4 years, ze hadn't heard Wilbur's voice in 4 years. "My god, you're alive. You're alive! I thought you might have..." Wilbur doesn't finish his sentence, they both know what he means anyways.

Eret swallows hard. "Where did you get this number?" Silence. "You know what, doesn't matter. Why did you call me at all?"

Wil takes a depp breath before speaking. "I started coaching last year and Tommy, my kiddo, he's having his first big skate and he's like obsessed with your old performance tapes and he's recreating one and I just thought it would be lovely for you to see him. He'd be thrilled to by the way."

That takes a moment to register in Eret's brain. "We could also meet up before and chat, if you want." Wilbur tries to convince zer further.

"I-" zer voice breaks "I'll think about it. When is your kids performance?" Wil laughs awkwardly "In two weeks. I know it's soon but it would mean the world to me"

"I'll think about it. Bye." Eret hangs up quickly and promtly empties zer stomach on the hallway carpet.

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When Niki gets home two hours later, Eret is still sitting on the hallway carpet trying to calm down zer breathing. "Oh dear, what happened?" Niki asks, overwhelmed with the sudden responsibility to calm zer down.

"What's wrong? What happened?"
"He called." Eret manages to say through gasps. "He called just like that, like nothing happened."

Niki carefully sits down next to zer and gives Eret an awkward side hug. "Who? You're old coach? I'll kill him if he ever touches you again, you know that right?"

"No, no" Eret starts shaking zer head violently. "Wil..." Niki gasps "Wilbur?" A nod.

"How did he get our number, Niki?" Eret asks, tone already accusatory. "He wasn't supposed to call just yet... I wanted to prepare you, I did. You have to understand." Niki desperately tries to explain.

Eret rips zerself from her arms and stares at Niki, like a challenge. "You did this!" a shaky breath "You did this to me! You told him!"

"Please just try to understand..."
"No, no! Shut up!" zer yells. "Get away from me!" and Niki obliges, scooting to the other side of the hallway. It's still close, but far enough anyways.

Eret takes a shaky breath to calm down and says in a quiet, but emotionally charged voice "I hate you. I really do."

"No you don't." Niki says calmly, not showing how much it had hurt to hear her dear sibling say that.

Eret looks over at her, zer eyes watering again and suddenly a flood of tears is streaming down zer face.

"I don't, I don't hate you. I'm so sorry." zer voice is barely more than a whisper, broken up by hickups.

Ze crawls over to Niki and burries zer head in her shoulder. Niki lays a soft arm around zer as ze starts to whisper "sorry, sorry, sorry. I'm sorry" over and over again through tears.

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Eventually Niki manages to get Eret to fall asleep and fixes the mess on the carpet, before she also falls asleep deeply exhausted.

They talk about what happened, well only the phone call not Eret's break down, in the Evening. Ranboo eventually joins them, he's easily excitable for the idea to go.

"I mean we should, we really should go. It would be great, like Tommy's my age and tho I know nothing about figure skating we'd probably still be good friends and..."

'Thank god you know nothing about figure skating.' Eret thinks quietly ,but says nothing.

Niki smiles," I think he'd love too meet you too." This time ze speaks zer mind "Unless he's a prick and thinks he's better than everyone."

Niki almost hisses when she speaks again "Eret stop, don't say that. He's a nice kid, Wilbur likes him so he can't be that bad."
She thinks for a second before continuing "It's not like every figure skating kid is like you were,so stop projecting."

It cuts like a knife through skin and the air seems to stand still for that terrible moment. Eret jekes zerself out of that frozen state and pushes down the urge to puch zer sister.

"Fine" ze snaps "insult me all you want, it's not like I'm not used to it or anything."
"Just give Tommy a chance." Niki demands, ignoring zer very pointed comparison.

Ze sighs "I will, it's not like I said anything else. Just wanted Ran to be aware of the possibility of the kid being a prick."

"Well he won't be, so let's leave it" Niki snaps. "Sure, what ever you say." Eret gives in reluctantly.

"I have to go now anyways, therapy stuff" Eret gets up from the kitchen table, grabs zer keys and slams the front door shut behind zer.

Niki shakes her head sadly "Tommy won't be like that, he's a good kid for sure." Ranboo nods, not really in the moment anymore.

"It's not your fault, zer like that sometimes." he says.

"It's not zers either, so we just have to live with it." Niki shrugs "I'm sorry you have to see Eret like that, things will get better soon. I promise."

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Ze doesn't have therapy in the evening at all, instead ze walks to an abandoned field and lets the last rays of the sinking sun graze zer skin.

It's warm and the soft breeze makes it feel like a dream. Ze knows ze won't go home tonight.

Therapy isn't until morning and it goes as horrible as any other session.

"Eret darling, how have you been?" the therapists voice drips with empathy and her pity stabs deep into Eret's skin.

"Ok, I guess, i don't know." ze sits down on one of the overly comfortable chairs in the therapists office. She sits down across from zer.

"Tell me about that" "Well, uh" ze stutters for a moment "I've been getting nightmares again, I guess."

"About what?" Ze takes a deep breath "Him". The therapist face fills with even more pity, if that's even possible

"Are you ready to talk about, whoever 'he' is and what he did to you?" Noticing zer uncomfortableness she continues speaking "If not that's fine, this sort of thing takes time and we have lots of that, right?"

"Yeah, I don't think today's the day, but soon I hope." "Alright that's fine. Do you notice your meds doing anything?"

"No, nothing really, I guess" The therapist humms deep in thought "I'll call your doctor, about upping the dosage again."

Cold sweat ruuns down zer spine at the mention of calling the doctor. "Please don't"

The therapists face becomes very serious "You don't want me to call him?" Eret shakes zer head. "You haven't been going to him to get weight, have you?" Shame fills Eret's voice as ze speaks "No."

"Have you been keeping to your meal plan!?" "No" ze answers again, truthfully.

"Eret listen, I can't gelp you if you don't want to be helped. Healing is hard and exhausting, but you have to try. Because no one else is going to do it for you. If you want to get better, you have to put in the work."

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Eret just gets up and leaves, promising zerself never to go back to that therapist,even though ze knows ze will have to.

Nobodys at home when ze gets there so ze uses the solitude to order three train tickets to London and rooms in a hotel, near where Tommys performance will be.

And because Niki, when she hears about it, is lees than thrilled. She'd never let zer go anywhere by train anyways, too dangerous she'd say, the three are now stuck in the car.

It vaguely smells horrible and worst of all Eret's not allowed in the passenger seat anymore, not like ze would actually try to crash the car, ze could never do that to zer siblings.

Niki apparently isn't too sure about that

Worst of all both back doors have child locks. Wich first of is very annoying and most of all incredibly embarrassing.

Ranboo is happily chatting away about something irrelevant he's interested in from the passenger seat.

Niki, the only one allowed to drive, seems vaguely annoyed with that fact, but listents ever patiently to Ranboo anyways.

"And it's wierd, cuz it's actually not supposed to work that way at all, but somehow it does and that just won't leave my head and in how long are we going to be there anyways?" Ranboo asks, putting a stop to his own rambling.

"It's still an hour or so, to the hotel. And then it's three days until we can meet them." she glares at Eret at those words, because it is really zer fault for booking the hotel so early before Tommy's performance.

The hotel is nice and clean, breakfast is disgusting, but the windows have locks which Niki is happy about.

" Stop pretending I'm going to off myself the second you let me anywhere near dangerous things!" Eret snaps at her.

"Then start acting like you won't!" she yells back, quieting her voice immediately after "I won't let you get hurt. You can do whatever you want even if I'm not happy about it, but I won't let you die. Got it?"

"Yes" ze says feeling bad for starting a stupid argument again.

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The familiar cold air of the ice rink hits zer right in the face as ze enters. Eret has to fight to keep the unwanted memories at bay.

Niki takes zer hand in a comforting notion and it actually helps a little to keepbzer grounded.

They make their way to the stands, Ranboo following in tow.

Eret catches a glimpse of Wilbur on the other side of the rink, talking to a blond kid, probably Tommy.

Wilbur meets zer gaze and ze raises an unsure hand to greet him. Before Wilbur can rract or reciprocate the light in the stands goes out and a single spot light illuminates the ice.

Someone announces Tommy's single free skate and he glides into the light. He takes a deep bow as his starting position.

Eret can't help but smile at the familiarity of it all as the music starts to play.

Wilbur said there would be some changes they made to Eret's program. One sticks out immediately, Tommy's smiling like nothing bad exists in the world.

His teeth are white and his eyes shine with excitement, like he's so incredibly overwhelmingly happy to be there.

The second changes Eret notices is that the jumps are made a little easier. It's double instead of triple and more space between each one.

It's still breathtaking and clear how much work Tommy's put into this.

It's obvious spins are his specialty the moment he does the first one. Tommy's like a whirlwind, spinning across the ice, while still keeping poise and concentration.

It is truly beautiful. His passion and love for the sport get clearer with every step on the program.

Eventually he come to stop at the middle of the ice and bows again.

The applause lasts longer than Eret expected.

Tommy leaves the ice and immediately gets trapped in one of Wilburs big cozy hugs.

That part stings a bit in Eret's opinion. When ze did zer program Choas never showed any affection towards zer unless cameras were around.

The next skater gets announced and slides onto the ice, but Eret doesn't pay attention.

Ze gives Niki a small nudge "I'll go talk to them now." Ze says.

"Sure, have fun. Don't be rude." She wispers back and turns her attention to the skater on the ice.

Eret rolls zer eyes and weaves through the crowd to get over to the area separated for Skaters and their team.

"Hi" ze starts unsure what to say when ze stands near enough to Wilbur and Tommy.

They both turn around and Eret sees the exact second Tommy recognizes zer and his eyes light up.

Wilburs face displays an array of conflicting emotions, that Eret can't all exactly pinpoint.