Chapter 9
As Regulus steps into the hallway, he’s quick to recognize the voice that is echoing throughout the household. And already, he’s holding back the urge to sigh.
His mother’s rewatched this footage so many times that he doesn’t even need to see it to recall everything—he can visualize it all unfolding in front of him, as though he was there.
He wasn’t there, of course. He wasn’t even born yet when it had happened. Yet it’s the entire reason he exists, the sole reason that he skates. In a way, he supposes he owes his life to it. But he doesn’t know whether or not he should be thankful.
“And here is Walburga Dupont of France, currently in fourth place. She fell out of her triple lutz in the short program, but if she skates clean here, she’ll still have a chance at medaling,” announces the voice of Scott Hamilton.
That sounds familiar, he thinks, grimacing to himself. He still has yet to land a triple lutz in practice, and regionals are just a month away now.
Regulus steps into the living room, and immediately spots his mother standing right in front of the television, transfixed on the recording in front of her. He thinks about greeting her, but he doesn’t think she’d hear. Instead, he leans against the doorway and watches too.
Across the room from him is a younger version of his mother, in a dazzling black and gray dress. The two colors together are simple, yet the rhinestone pattern that cuts across them makes her mesmerizing to look at. Her makeup is smoky, her eyes shimmering a dark purple and her lips a dramatic shade of burgundy. As the crowd breaks out into applause, she seems to pay them no mind. She’s still skating in a circle around the rink, practicing the entry for her lutz. When she digs her right toe pick into the ice, she brings her arms in and crosses her left foot in front, the air position as tight as it can get. Once she does this a couple of times, she proceeds to take in the deepest breath she can, closing her eyes as she lets it out. Then, she makes her way to her starting position, just a few feet to the right of center ice. Even though Regulus has seen this probably hundreds of times by now, he still can feel every single bit of pressure that must’ve been placed on his mother all of those years ago. He can’t even imagine..
She pops her left leg out in front, placing her right arm out to the side at an angle. Her other hand goes behind her back, and with her eyes she stares towards the ground to her right intently, conveying one message and one message only to the judges: I came here to medal. For a moment, it is completely silent in the city of Salt Lake, and no one dares to move a muscle.
Suddenly, the strings to "Night on Bald Mountain" start, and Walburga reaches her right arm out in front of her, her focus now on the judges.
And then she takes off like a shot, darting across the ice with a glare that could kill anyone who stares too long.
”Walburga is known for her incredible artistry, but her planned technical content in this program is quite difficult as well. First up, a triple loop,” Sandra Bezic says, then cuts herself off as she watches along with everybody else.
Walburga sets up for the jump, letting her left foot fall in front of her right foot as she bends her knees deep into the ice. She uses the bend in her knees to get up into the air, her right foot swiveling around and her arms pulling in tightly…
And then she’s flying, her left leg crossing over her right as she rotates once, then twice, then three times—
Her right blade touches down onto the ice, her left leg opening into a gorgeous extension as both of her arms come out, presenting to the crowd.
”And she nails this landing!” exclaims Scott Hamilton, though it’s barely audible over the tremendous applause that breaks out. If Walburga hears it, she doesn’t seem to care; she still has six more jumping passes to complete before the program is over. “Next up, a double axel…”
This has always been his mother’s best jump. As she steps with her left foot into the only jump with a forward takeoff, she seems fearless. Her right knee hitches up into the air first, and she begins to spin as her left leg meets her right, getting a half rotation, one and a half—
And then she gets around a full 900 degrees, completing the two and a half rotations as she lands yet again and makes the most terrifying element in figure skating look easy.
“Ugh, just beautiful,” says Sandra, the crowd yet again breaking out into hoots and hollers as she continues to cover the surface of the ice with her skating. And as Walburga completes four more jumping passes, the praise for her only seems to grow—both from the crowd and from the commentators alike. She is about to bring the entire arena down with her performance, yet the expression on her face remains dire as ever as she continues to nail every element.
“And with only a minute left to go in the program, she lands her triple salchow, double loop combination!” Sandra exclaims, and Regulus can practically hear the amazement in her voice.
”You know, I think this is the best I’ve ever seen her skate!” remarks Hamilton from beside her. Regulus’s heart sinks. “Only one more jump to go, here’s her triple lutz.”
As her left foot glides onto an outside edge and her right toe pick digs into the ice, she springs up into the air like she is light as a feather, like she was born to fly. She begins to rotate—
And suddenly she tilts too far in the air, her axis completely diagonal instead of straight like it should be. As her right blade touches onto the ground, a new expression at last comes onto her face—fear. She knows that if she can’t save this jump, she will lose out on a medal, and all of it will have been for nothing.
She tries hard to save herself, at first hopping onto her right foot again to see if she can stabilize herself. When that doesn’t work and still she stumbles, she plants her left foot on the ice… but it’s too late. She’s landed too forward, and her feet slip from underneath her, causing her to take the brunt of the force on her left hip.
“And she can’t hang onto the landing of this one,” Hamilton says, sounding regretful. The crowd seems to freeze as Walburga looks up at them, absolutely mortified.
But the sorrow on her face only lasts half a second as she springs up to her feet again, determined to finish her program. Applause still comes, but it is much more subdued, more pitiful than anything else. She still skates through her choreography, yet her moves lack the power they had just moments beforehand.
“Such a shame,” Sandra says as Walburga steps into an Ina Bauer, leaning back as far as she can as her right foot takes her across the ice. “She was having such a perfect skate.”
”And here’s her final move,” says Scott, “a layback spin.”
She comes right out of the Ina Bauer into a forward three turn, stepping with her left foot as she begins to spin around and around. As she gains speed she lets her hands come to her chest, her back arching as her upper body becomes parallel with the ceiling. Her arms separate and trail down to her feet, her right hand taking ahold of her blade and bringing it to her head as she performs a hair cutter.
She exits out of the spin seconds before the music ends, and slowly brings her left arm up to the sky as the strings quiet down and eventually come to a stop. She holds her final pose for a second, thunderous applause breaking out throughout the crowd…
And then she drops her arm, bringing it to her face instead as tears begin to pour down her face. She attempts to wipe them away, so that she can take her final bow with composure and grace, but they don’t seem to stop.
When she heads to center ice, she does so with a quivering lip and a red face. She has to take a deep breath before curtsying for the judges, then turns around and repeats the process for the audience. As she leaves the ice, looking small and defeated, Regulus is hit with the reminder that she was only sixteen here. Only a year older than him now when she’d faced the biggest heartbreak of her life.
It hadn’t been enough. She’d skated as best she could, and yet she’d known that it hadn’t been enough.
Before Regulus can book it out of the living room, about to act like he hadn’t lingered and watched the entire program for the past four and a half minutes, his mother turns around to look at him. “Just gonna stand there, then?”
He thinks about running up to his room, but his feet won’t move. He stammers as he attempts to answer. “I—“
She sighs, her hands falling onto her hips. “It’s fine. Not like you haven’t seen this before.”
The footage is still going in the background, where his mother is now in the kiss and cry waiting on her score with her coach. Her coach seems to be attempting to comfort her, patting her on the shoulder and whispering something to her in French that Regulus can’t quite pick up—God, he wishes he was better at speaking his mother’s native tongue—yet he’s failing miserably. She’s still crying, long before the scores are shown.
His mom rotates back around to look at the TV again, having to use her entire body to do so. To this day, the left side of her body is almost completely immobile. She can’t turn to look over that shoulder, and she can’t take any kind of sudden force on her hip. It’s the same hip that she landed on when falling out of the triple lutz, and though he’s never asked, he suspects this free skate is where her problems began.
When at last he thinks he’s free to leave again, really not in the mood to watch his mother reminisce any longer over what went wrong or what she could’ve done better, she speaks. “You know,” she says, “I didn’t realize it back then, but this was probably the best part of my life.”
Regulus has no clue where she’s going with this, but he knows better than to walk out on her. He’s seen what’s happened when Sirius does it.
”Sarah Hughes of the United States currently in first place, but she skated a clean, technically perfect program. With the fall on Walburga’s triple lutz both in the short and long, it’s unlikely that her free skate marks would surpass Hughes’s, and with three more skaters following her up it’s very possible she might not end up on the podium. We are just waiting on the final confirmation of that now—“
”I mean,” Walburga says, interrupting Scott Hamilton’s spiel about why she clearly wasn’t going to medal, “Look at me. I was an Olympian, I came in fourth place. The fourth best women’s skater in the entire world.”
”You were, maman,” Regulus nods, though it’s not like she can look and see that he’s doing so. He rarely uses that word for his mother anymore, seeing as his proficiency in the language ended when he got to first grade, but he knows she’ll appreciate the effort.
”And then I got injured,” she continues, “and everything went to shit.”
Regulus isn’t sure how he’s supposed to respond.
He doesn’t need to—already she’s talking again, and he still doesn’t know the point she’s trying to make. “I moved down to the States just to train for Torino, and then I found out I could never skate again. Now my husband doesn’t care about me, and my firstborn son hates me.”
He doesn’t deny that statement. “I’m sorry,” he responds instead, taking a step towards her.
She faces him now, and he thinks he might throw up as he sees the look on her face. He’s just realized where she was going with this the entire time, and it takes everything within him not to run. “It’s okay. I have you.”
His heart racing, he forces a smile onto his face, offering her a nod of affirmation.
It isn’t enough. For her, nothing ever is. She will always be chasing more—just like she did at the Olympics. “You don’t hate me, do you?”
He’s quick to shake his head, eyes wide. “No. Of course not!” he says it as truthfully as he can, but she’s still not satisfied.
”You’re the last person I have,” she says, pleading more and more with every word. “The only good thing I’ve ever done. I need to know that you mean it.”
This was coming from the second he walked through the door—he should’ve known the second he saw that stupid footage on, he should’ve known that it would somehow trace back to him. Everything always does, if his mother has a say in it. Because she isn’t doing any of this for him; no, all of it is for her. And he cannot dare to let her down, cannot dare to think for himself. If he did, she would loathe him the same way she loathes his brother, and would not think twice.
Maybe his brother can stand to be loathed. But he cannot.
This time when he speaks, he puts a hand on her shoulder, confronting her gaze. And he does what he does best when it comes to her—he lies.
”Yes, Maman, I love this costume.”
”Yes, Maman, Dolohov is a great coach.”
“Of course, Maman, I’m running my programs every single day.”
”I agree, Maman, Sirius is out of his mind.”
”Don’t worry, Maman. I could never hate you,” he affirms, just another lie to add to his list.
She smiles now, reaching a hand out just as he pulls his arm away. “Thank God,” she says, ruffling his hair. “Mon caneton.” My duckling, she’s just called him. He tries not to flinch. Luckily, her hand only lingers for a second before she steps away.
And just like that, a switch has been flipped on. “You ready for regionals next month?” she asks, any ounce of expression on her face now gone as she grabs the remote and shuts the television off.
“As ready as I can be,” he replies. If you forget about the triple lutz.
“I’m counting on you,” she says, with a stern expression that’s almost worse than the one she donned at Salt Lake. Maybe it’s only worse because it’s directed solely at him now. “It’s about time the Blacks won a national title again.” He wants to point out that first he has to place in the top 4 at regionals, then he has to do the same again at sectionals. Then, he has to beat out the best junior men in the country to even dream about a national title.
He doesn’t point it out. “I know, Mom. I’ll do everything I can.”
“Good,” she nods, before stepping past him. “I’m going to get started on dinner. You should do your schoolwork.”
As if he needed to be reminded of the pile building up on his desk. Online classes means that he gets to spend all day at the rink—but it also means that he can’t stop putting his work off. Even though he does well in school without trying, he never learns his lesson, always waiting until 11:59 PM to get everything turned in. He doubts this week will be the exception.
Yet again, he deceives her. “I’ll start it right now,” he lies, just another that he can add to his ever increasing catalog. He ‘s probably a terrible person, he thinks as he goes up the stairs. Lying shouldn’t come so easily to him, especially not to his mother. But somehow, he keeps doing it, no matter how terrible he feels afterwards. It terrifies him that he can’t stop.
I’ll do everything I can, he’s just told her. He will try his best to bring honor to the Black family, to carry on their legacy to the next generation and to be the first one in over a decade to someday wear an Olympic medal. And he is trying hard, every single day. He gets up at 5 in the morning, and sometimes doesn’t leave the rink until 6 in the evening. It should be the honest truth.
But now, he can’t shake the feeling that what he’s promised her might be nothing more than another lie.
❅ ❅ ❅
Sirius has been staring at his phone for the past twenty minutes, and yet the screen remains blank as ever. The keyboard in front of him should be inviting, with the millions of options it gives him for what he could say without ever opening his mouth.
Instead, it is daunting. Because right over the keyboard lies their last set of messages, exchanged almost a month ago. And they only remind Sirius that this is the last thing he should be doing.
Sirius: plane just landed
Reg: 👍🏻
Stupid, he thinks to himself, his thumbs still frozen over the keys. This is so, so stupid.
He doesn’t know what he intended to do. How could he even begin to make up for everything that has happened, for half a decade of altercations and superficial apologies? He couldn’t. It’s too late.
Still, he hopes that maybe…
His fingers act faster than his mind, the text box suddenly beginning to fill up with words he doesn’t know he’s writing. When finally his brain catches up, he reads back the message he’s just typed.
Sirius: hey, i miss you. we’re playing our first regular season game tomorrow, you don’t have to watch but if you want to i can send the info on how to watch it? just let me know.
He reads it again. And again. Then, he reads it another time. Yet his thumb hovers over the “send” button, and refuses to move. What the hell am I doing?
He tries to send it. All it would take is one tap on his screen, and maybe something good would come out of this. Maybe this is it, maybe this is the exchange they have that doesn’t end with screaming and tears. Maybe things can be different, now that Sirius is away from their parents. Maybe Regulus can understand why he did it, and they can forgive each other. Maybe…
No, he shouldn’t kid himself. What will doing this change?
Before he knows it he’s pressing and holding the delete button, watching as the words disappear from his screen. Soon the text box is blank again—he does not intend to fill it with words this time.
There is no point in regretting what cannot be, what will never be.
He shuts his phone off, and watches as the screen turns black.
❅ ❅ ❅
Regulus’s homework is interrupted by the sound of his phone buzzing from beside him.
He doesn’t hesitate to grab it from where it lies face-down on the desk, desperate for any kind of distraction. He’s almost thankful it’s gone off—his brain doesn’t seem to be working tonight, anyways.
When he turns it over, he’s greeted with a singular notification from his calendar. And he freezes as he reads it, the reminder of something he’d totally forgotten about.
Shit.
—Tomorrow, 9 PM: Sirius game