Login

***Gyro_Hero*** · 07-30-2024, 03:26 AM

It was a cool, windy day in Edmonton, and the clocks were ringing out the seventh hour of the evening - a small corner in the parking lot of the Blizzard arena is loaded with cars of all types - from little hybrids to massive lifted trucks, all parked together amid the emptiness around them. Scratching and running and panting all lift up into the chill evening air, as a small cookout flickers away in a nearby fire pit, and a ball rushes back and forth as a few of the teammates play ball hockey with each other - showing off tricks, juggling the ball, and laughing - another draft was over, and the new arrivals would be coming shortly. There sure had been rather a lot this year, and one team member, Alexa, laid back in her lawn chair and blew a puff of steamy air up into the stars - it had been an interesting day, and proved likely to be a most interesting night, too.

Alexa was particularly bundled up as she stood, watching another car pull into the lot. She headed out, stealing the ball with her foot, kicking it up into the air, then catching it with her foot. “How about something new? A little soccer. Too cold, anyways, I need to run around some,” she said, watching the car stop, parked.

Out of the car stepped a veritable bear of a man - one she recognized quite well - if it wasn’t the face or his huge, sloping shoulders, it would be for his denim shorts - that most ridiculous uniform that he’d worn on the ice on the day they’d first met for training. And yet it seemed that this time, he had come alone - his face isn’t the most jolly, either, almost worried about the prospect of introducing himself to an entire, unfamiliar team all at once. He steps out of the car, a tiny little Fiat 500, and streeeeeetches out, his heels coming off the ground in the way one does after a long car trip, and he breathes in the cool evening air

“Now then - where exactly are th-”

“Think fast,” she shouted to the man, one she recognized quite well indeed, dropping the ball to the ground, and then giving it a kick. It wasn't super hard, but enough to at least reach him with a little bit of pace on it, especially when it skidded across a chunk of ice.

He squints in the evening light, the headlights from his car winking out as the ball skids towards him - he reaches out with his foot to catch the pass, before his eyes meet his captain, and the ball skids straight past him. He smiles, and bounds towards her with a spring in his step - his arms coming around her waist in a great bear of a hug!

“Captain! They hadn’t told me you were on this team, too!”

He says cheerfully, his nervousness gone, and the rather stoic figure he’d cut all but gone, looking so much more like the J rookie she’d started training just a few months before.

“Ozzy went to Winnipeg, eh?”

He says, a little sad that he wasn’t able to share this team with his draft brother as well.

“Matthias,” Alexa patted his back. “Please let go. You're hugging very hard.”

“Ah - sorry, captain,” He says, his arms raising back up, as he adjusts himself to the new surroundings - Alexa had seemed so impossibly fast just a season ago, and yet now their agility seemed to be almost at parity, and it threw him off for the moment, before he really took in this new tertiary home of his. The temperature was especially pleasing to him, down in St. Louis, he’d barely left the arena; there were rumours he would even sleep on the ice on particularly hot nights.

“Wow - this is it, eh? The real deal. Who - who are all these people? They look pretty hardened, like Booth after a hard night’s loss - are you sure I can keep up with them?”

He asks, only half serious. He’d wrestle a bear to train with these people - they looked so simple and friendly, as they executed high-level tricks and puck handling that he knew he’d never have a prayer of catching up with - not as he was, at any rate.

“Right now? Eh, on a good day. After they've been drinking,” Alexa smirked a little bit. “Give you a couple of years and you'll be skating circles around some of these old men. Don't get it twisted… we're the second worst team in the SHL right now. You're going to grow fast, training with these guys, but we're both yet to see what we're really in for. Good thing you see losing as a reason to get better, right?”

He straightens up, and reaches into the back of the car to grab his bag of equipment, hauling it out in one hand, while closing the hatch with the other.

“There’s no other way to see it, is there - not one that’ll get us anywhere worth going, anyways- VanHousen might have disagreed, but I’m not about to.”

He says, his voice less easy going than its usual cadence; he’d hardened since his rookie year - he’d grown practical, and a little less naive. Not much, mind, but - a little.

“David was a hero, and a jerk,” Alexa laughed. “Alright, come on. Tomorrow is the hard day. Not today. Relax a little.”

He looks back with a pause - and he breathes out a heavy sigh, his shoulders rolling down a bit as he leans forward. He looks up at Alexa, and leans against his car,

“I’m not… entirely sure how to do that, captain.”

He says, a little nervously, his eyes resting on the fire - did someone bring out a guitar?

“Every time I see any of you, I just associate it with… well, I have to improve, don’t I? I only have so long to get better, and I have to make sure I can step in for the Scarecrows after… well - you know…”

He looks down, and the ball rolls back into view, bouncing over first her foot, then his.

“Once you and the others are gone.”

He adds, quieter this time, not quite able to look his captain in the eye.

“You have plenty of time to work on that. And you will,” Alexa said. “... fine. We'll get all sappy and emotional. Come on,” she led Matthias to a couple of empty chairs by the fire, one of which was her own from earlier. “Sit. Go on, sit. Not in mine, though.”

He smiles, and grabs another free seat; there was a strange temperament about him, and you wonder just how much of it was really down to the long journey he’d taken.

“Captain, we might’ve pulled out a surprise win against Nevada last season, but I don’t think any of us were too proud of our performance during the regular season - not compared to what we might’ve been, anyways.”

He sits down, stares at the fire, and reaches into his pack, removing a thermos with steaming, chocolatey contents inside. He pours a bit into the twist-off cup, and offers it to Alexa.

“Care for some? It’s been in the car all day, but these new coolers the team got us are pretty incredible for warm foods and drinks, too.”

“Sure,” Alexa nodded, sitting herself. She was quiet for a while, before speaking softly, only to him. “But, listen. During my own rookie season, I was in the same situation as you now. Hell, I was worse than you are. Taking the whole world on my shoulders, blaming myself for every failure of the team, crushing myself under the weight of second overall, but now that I've been at this a few years, I have some perspective. The question is if you'll listen to me, or not.”

He sits in silence for a minute, certain that he should be listening, but also a little wary - would she just tell him what she thought he needed to hear? Alexa was prudent, yes, but she’d helped mould him into the player he had become. He would do well to listen to what she has to say, even if it made him feel worse, and not better.

“Please, captain - go ahead.”

He invites her, and leans back in his chair, closing his eyes, ready to listen.

“Good. The truth is, you're not hot shit. I'm not hot shit, either,” Alexa told him. “We're bad. And that's fine. Because we're not going to stay bad, not at all, and every single training camp I'm that little bit closer to being good. And so will you be, if you work hard. But… the real truth is, if you don't learn to relax and have fun? You'll stay bad. In fact, you'll get worse. And then you'll be David, version two, retiring in the Js. It's not what you want, is it?”

“No.”

He says, quietly, as he looks up at the sky. A little dark cloud moves to the side, and he stares at the moon and stars so far behind it. He takes a sip of his drink, and leans back up, his eyes meeting hers, and his tone is more confident - if no more cheerful.

“I know I can’t let the burnout win - but I also can’t stand to let the Scarecrows down - or any of these people here, either. Even if I try my best, even if it isn’t my fault when things go sour - even if you’ve made all the same mistakes - can you really say that you regret making them?”

He asks, his face periodically being lit up by the fire’s glow

“And can you say that making them has made you a worse asset to your team? To yourself?”

“I've made more mistakes than you,” Alexa said, looking over the game most of the rest of the team was playing. “... you don't want to be me, honestly. Don't get me wrong, I'm a good player, I know it, and so are you, you know it. But you don't want to be me off the ice, Matthias. That's my advice. Have fun, make friends. Fall in love.”

He leans forward, and the stature of this bear of a man seems so very small in the firelight - like the shadows behind the pair were eating him up, and only the little illuminated pieces remained.

“The question is - can someone live life any differently off the ice, if they ever want to be like you on the ice?”

He muses, as he tosses a spare bit of wood onto the fire, the water in it crackling and popping, sending up a little trail of smoke high into the chill evening air.

“I love this, though. The league, the games, the fights, the uncertainty, that need to improve, the want to be more than I am today - I have friends here, I have fun here - isn’t loving this… enough?”

He asks her, moving his chair to look across at her, and considering - he’d contradicted his captain more times tonight than he’d ever done before - would she be mad?

“Hah,” Alexa snorted, then laughed. “I've seen you and Ozzy, yes. That's good. But I meant people who aren't part of the team. Though, you're really doing better than me on that count already, it's true. HEY, OLAFUR, I SEE THAT! Sorry, can't let a future linemate think I won't call them out. Living this is good, yeah. That's the real secret, I think. That's what my dad would say… you would love him. He's full of all kinds of silly wisdom like that. ‘You have to love what you do’ and ‘just make sure you remember that you work to live, not live to work’...”

“He sounds like quite the man,” Matthias says, quietly. “Tell me - what did he do? How did he raise you - what did you do before all of…”

He pauses, wondering just what he could call it - professional hockey seemed far, far too little a thing to refer to it as - he did professional hockey, his captain, she did… somehow more.

“This?”

“He was a bioengineer, and that's as much as I understand about his job,” Alexa said. “Me? I did school. I've been doing hockey related things since… as long as I can remember. My dad is Norwegian, actually, and even in San Diego, he had me roller skating, or playing street hockey, getting into ice travel teams, the few that existed there. A lot of second generation athletes will tell you hockey is in their blood, but really, I think it's even more in mine. My dad wasn't even a professional player, and he loves it so much he gave every bit of that to me.”

He smiles at that - imagining a little Alexa babbling out Norwegian words, bumping into other kids while roller skating or playing street hockey - so, she really had always been this way.

“It’s a real gift he gave you, you know - not everyone has even half the dedication I’ve seen from you. Most of us just go out and play, and that’ll do it for us, but you aspire higher than that.”

It wasn’t a question. Alexa did a huge amount of heavy lifting on his team - anyone who’d spent time with her knew that well enough - but…

He pauses.

He looks at his captain carefully, his gaze moving towards her with trepidation, trying to understand, and before he knows it, the words just slip out -

“Do you feel like he put you here?”

He asks - almost ashamed at himself for even suggesting it, or having the brazenness to ask the question aloud.

“That this - all this, even if it’s good, even if you love it - that you weren’t given a fair shake at this whole ‘being an adult’ thing?”

“... nah,” Alexa pulled a little bottle out of a pocket of the coat slung over her chair. “... that would be my mom.”

He lifts his hot chocolate, and places it on the ground between them, silently asking for a pour. Was he going to go in on that? Was he really going to make the same, brazen, brash decision again? Immediately after making the last one?

…

“Tell me about her.”

God dammit.

Alexa gave him just a little bit out of the bottle, then downed some of it herself. “She's dead.”

Fuck.

“I’m sorry - I… I didn’t know”

He says, placing his cup on his chair, leaning against the far side of his seat, and looking back towards the fire - simultaneously putting distance between himself and his captain, while also feeling enormously guilty for doing so.

“... How long, Captain?”

He asks, half to her, and half to the fire. Still surprising himself, not exactly sure how he’d kept things going when his car, and sleep, were right there. He could run away from this conversation and pretend it had never happened, but -

He didn’t want to. That’s not what his captain had taught him to do.

“You said that she pushed you into this. What did she do?”

“She died when I was sixteen. That's what she did,” Alexa said. “Wasn't her fault or choice, of course. It was cancer. She…” Alexa stopped, drinking a little more. “Did I ever tell you why my number is sixteen? On my jersey, I mean.”

He pauses, and takes another sip. A much larger one.

“No - you never did. I know Ozzy took his number for veteran’s mental health, I know I took mine for my own reasons; I never learned why you took yours.”

He looks down towards the ground, before closing his eyes, and letting the question out into the night air.

“Why, captain? - I’d assumed you had a reason, of course, but -”

He struggles a bit to get his words to behave themselves - but he just can’t quite say what he needs to say. How nervous he was that his captain was telling him this, how worried he was that he may well be retraumatizing her, or that he wasn’t sure how much of this he really ought to be hearing - but he assents nonetheless.

“No - it, um…”
“It never came up.”

“Relax, man,” Alexa reached across and slugged Matthias in the shoulder. “Don't get all… emotional on me. It's because it was our shared number. Sixteen was her favorite, because my birthday is the sixteenth of January. So she called it our lucky number. Until she died… Hah. If you want to throw me a pity party, do it for that one. I laugh about it, though, and… anyways, she died on my sixteenth birthday. January sixteenth, five years ago now.”

That punch seemed to shake him out of it, and he looks back with that familiar, easy confidence - well, with a bit more of it, anyways.

“That’s so sweet of her - and - wait, on your birthday?”

His expression softens, and he has to bite his tongue - the tragedy is so horrible, and the coincidence is so nasty, it’s almost comical.

“That’s… that’s one hell of a birthday present, captain”

“Yeah, one of the all time hits,” she joked. “A Playstation, a car, and your mom dying of cancer. Who wouldn't want one of those three things when turning sixteen?”

He takes a sip, and feels a familiar burning pass down his throat. Alberta Prime. He coughs, before looking back towards Alexa, and the bottle in her hand.

“And apparently, it came with an overwhelming need to do hockey, and nothing else, as a chaser.”

He takes another sip, well aware that what he was drinking might lead him to say something stupid.

“Or was that more of a seventeenth birthday gift sort of thing?”

“Nah, the hockey… she liked to watch me play. I'm hoping that she still does, up there. Better, I've been busting my ass. God damned lati- eh. I shouldn't finish that thought. Dios Mio..”

He smirks, and leans back in his chair again, this time, keeping his eyes open. You really could see so many more stars up here than down in St. Louis. Almost a quarter as many as home.

“What was that like, Captain? Having both parents for sixteen years?”

He wonders aloud, his gaze firmly locked onto the night sky. If she didn’t want to pursue that line of questions any further, well - he wouldn’t force her to.

“Dunno… normal. Mom liked to bemoan us, and sometimes cuss us out in Spanish. And the chancla…” Alexa shuddered. “And she cheered for LA. Los Angeles!” She muttered several obscenities in a weird mix of Spanish and Norwegian. “But she loved me. And dad still does. He's gruff, though, blunt, and he makes me earn anything he gives me when it's related to hockey. Did you know he was the GM for the USA Blue WJC team for two seasons?”

He hadn’t - but he also felt something in his gut, and when he thought about it again, he could see it, clear as day - his captain, feinting off her line, and trying to misdirect him. Just like she had in training, all the way back when they’d all but first met. It may have been with words instead of a hockey stick this time - but her timbre was the same.

“Tell me more about her. Your father pushed and taught and trained and earned, and led firmly by example. You don’t credit him with your becoming what you are, though - even the parts that make you unhappy.”

He straightens back up, and his eyes - icy blue in the flickering light below, almost seem to stare through her - she’d seen it a few times before, like when he was staring down Gwen, or Cristoforo, or the Lavoie twins - a focus on a singular thing, and he would not be shaken off of it.

“You place the credit, and the blame, on her. Don’t you?”

“Jesus, man, who told you to start reading people beyond what they're showing you openly?” Alexa sipped her bottle.

“I blame you for it, really - you like to show a little, let someone else carry it to their own conclusions, and then skate past them when they think they already know where you’re headed.”

He smiles, and takes another long sip, the warmth filling his chest, as he tilts his head to the side, his eyes still locked on her face.

“And - that’s still not an answer, captain.”

“Maybe it will be when you get better reading underneath the underneath,” Alexa told him, smirking a little bit once again. “Think a little harder about it.”

He went quiet for a time. She was sixteen, and her father pushed as hard as he could to bring her into the fold - she had to struggle and fight for it, certainly, and while she hoped her mother saw her play from the afterlife, she wasn’t blaming her for her obsessiveness - no, she treated it as something she could control, something she should warn others against - something that she wasn’t altogether powerless to prevent.

“...I’ve run out of family members to pin the blame on, captain.”

He says, his voice not much louder than a whisper over the crackling fire
“There’s only one Johansen left. And you didn’t seem the type to let anyone else take some fault for how things went - even if they deserve it.”

He takes another sip, and places the empty cup down on the ground.

“You tell me not to carry the weight of the team on my back, not to consider it my personal responsibility to obsess over how best I can make things turn out, to try to let things go, and relax instead of always trying to push forward - to not blame myself.”

…

“And maybe I could, if I thought you believed that enough to follow your own advice.”

“We've all got our own demons, Matthias. I recognize mine in yours, so I know what can happen. Which parent was it?” She asked. “No one asks about growing up with both parents who hasn't lost one of their own.”

He laughs, and tosses the empty cup at her.

“You’re right, captain, but I’m not like you - I never knew mine. I was with them, sure, but - not for long. There’s no one living that far north, you know - just scientists, the occasional band that comes through, and the wildlife - why they figured to bring me north with them, I’ll never understand - I was only 4 - I wonder if they knew, somehow, or if it was something as dumb as not being able to find a babysitter. I’m still not sure what happened, but he disappeared first, she left next, and by the time I toddled out into the snow, the rest of them had called in search and rescue. I learned later - much later - that they found my parents. They didn’t find me - and besides, who would look for a kid in a blizzard for more than a few hours, anyways.”

He winks, and takes a sip directly from his thermos.

“But, I made it back to the facility - it’s pretty easy to find, it’s the only building in a few hundred kilometers’ radius. The next research team was pretty mad to find I’d eaten most of their rations - and all of their chocolate, but - there wasn’t very much they could do - I ran and hid whenever they’d try to send me home.”

He looks over, and she can see it for just a moment - that scared boy alone in the snow, wondering where his parents were, wondering what would happen to him, his little voice unable to reach above the sound of the wind and ice.

“I’m not envious of you, you know. I never had what you did, but I don’t remember enough to know what I’ve missed.”

“That's…” Alexa frowned. “That's still awful. I don't really know what else to say…”

He considers her, and then asks, very suddenly and very bluntly.

“Do you miss your brother?”

“I never had one to miss,” Alexa replied. “But that's not the same. You were still alone, in the frozen north, for who knows how long. That alone can't…” the ball bounced to her foot. “... you know what? This isn't supposed to be a depressing night. Let's play some games and make happy.”

He points at her bottle, and laughs.

“You’ve had quite a lot of that - playing games aside, it’s gonna hit you pretty hard when you stand up.”

He stretches out of his chair, his body still a bit sore from the trip north. He looks over at the team, all happily playing together, all sharing the evening together, as trustful teammates do. He lowers his hand down to her, offering to help her to her feet.

“Here, captain - I’ll give you a hand.”

“I’m not that old, or that drunk,” she rolled her eyes, taking the hand and hauling herself up. “And call me Alexa. Now, come on. Game time.”

[4179 words]

Please split 50/50 with Cake307