To Yuri, caught up in the whirl of the moment, this short program is starting off on an even worse foot than he'd experienced at the Onsen on Ice competition. There, he'd been so lacking in anything but his knowledge of the basic steps and movements that he'd had to pour all of his concentration into the technical aspects to have any hope of finishing without collapsing. Here, now, he has months of dedicated coaching and countless hours of on- and off-ice conditioning under his belt, and a much stronger sense of how he knows it should be...and yet he still feels like he's clinging to the piece by the very tips of his fingers, digging in his nails just to keep from losing control entirely.
Shit! I'm not feeling agape at all. The sweet, clear voice of the boy soprano, singing of faithfulness and love and devotion, seems to be mocking him from on high, taunting him with the exact thing that he can't find in himself. I'm so pissed off I could puke!
(And whose fault is it? Even his anger is a flailing, grasping thing, mindlessly lashing out yet somehow knowing exactly where to strike to deal glancing blows to all of his weaknesses. Moscow. His grandfather. Viktor Nikiforov. And -- )
The triple axel is the first jump of his short program, and he's learned that it works best to think of it as something like a springboard, a vault that launches him straight into the heart of the piece. The takeoff here is clean and well-timed, but too much of his rage seeps into the rotations to keep the necessary equilibrium, and instead of the solid landing he's done a hundred times before his blade slips out from under him, sending him crashing to the ice.
The burst of pain on impact zings up the nerves in Yuri's hips and back, blotting out everything else for a nauseating fraction of a second. Yet no figure skater is a stranger to the aftermath of a missed jump, and he knows how to break the fall, how to stop it from completely knocking him cold. Even as he uses the momentum of the crash to roll onto his side, he's taking stock of muscles, bones, ligaments -- nothing broken, nothing sprained, get up, don't stop, keep going -- and shoving himself back to his feet.
Fuck! I haven't missed that triple axel once all year, and now --
Yet somehow, it's the pain from the fall that helps to save him, pulling him out of his mind and back into his body. There's no room for extraneous thoughts when your hip and leg feel like one big exposed nerve. Yet at the same time, it's familiar. It makes him concentrate. For months, he's been running through pain, dancing through pain, skating through pain...and he has been learning how to let his strength and beauty shine through regardless. This time won't be any different.
For the first time since he'd stepped out onto the ice, he can see the path opening up before him.
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Shit! I'm not feeling agape at all. The sweet, clear voice of the boy soprano, singing of faithfulness and love and devotion, seems to be mocking him from on high, taunting him with the exact thing that he can't find in himself. I'm so pissed off I could puke!
(And whose fault is it? Even his anger is a flailing, grasping thing, mindlessly lashing out yet somehow knowing exactly where to strike to deal glancing blows to all of his weaknesses. Moscow. His grandfather. Viktor Nikiforov. And -- )
The triple axel is the first jump of his short program, and he's learned that it works best to think of it as something like a springboard, a vault that launches him straight into the heart of the piece. The takeoff here is clean and well-timed, but too much of his rage seeps into the rotations to keep the necessary equilibrium, and instead of the solid landing he's done a hundred times before his blade slips out from under him, sending him crashing to the ice.
The burst of pain on impact zings up the nerves in Yuri's hips and back, blotting out everything else for a nauseating fraction of a second. Yet no figure skater is a stranger to the aftermath of a missed jump, and he knows how to break the fall, how to stop it from completely knocking him cold. Even as he uses the momentum of the crash to roll onto his side, he's taking stock of muscles, bones, ligaments -- nothing broken, nothing sprained, get up, don't stop, keep going -- and shoving himself back to his feet.
Fuck! I haven't missed that triple axel once all year, and now --
Yet somehow, it's the pain from the fall that helps to save him, pulling him out of his mind and back into his body. There's no room for extraneous thoughts when your hip and leg feel like one big exposed nerve. Yet at the same time, it's familiar. It makes him concentrate. For months, he's been running through pain, dancing through pain, skating through pain...and he has been learning how to let his strength and beauty shine through regardless. This time won't be any different.
For the first time since he'd stepped out onto the ice, he can see the path opening up before him.