Until my dying day

      ‘We won’t leave as losers’ Scott tells her, his smile almost feverish and so bright that it could blind her. Brighter then the sun. At the sun she squints, raising her face to it, leaning back. It’s warm in London, it’s August, and his knee almost touches her knee, and his hand almost touches her hand on the painted wood of the bench they’re sitting on.       It’s only an ‘almost’ off the ice.       ‘I don’t care, T, first, or second, or tenth, there’s not going to be a fourth Olympics’ he says in the evening after the shorts, a beer bottle in his hand raised in a salute, and his smile seems mocking to her. It just seems so, she tells herself. He knows she won't go out on the ice to compete without him. She wouldn't anyway, the pain is too strong — she already came back for him. She'll do it again if they lose tomorrow, if he asks her to. He won't. She wouldn't come even now, if it wasn't for him. It wasn't her who needed it as much as he did.       How can he not care about the thing that he started himself? She doesn't know. She isn't sure she wants to.       Their eyes meet during the warmup and he smiles so brightly, so sincerely, that her heart sinks. There's tours they'll have, and thousands of dances, and fans, and smiles, and photos, and ice, ice, ice again, but this is their last time in competition. Last time they're here for a medal. His smile reminds her of that novice boy who held her in every dance all these years ago. It's the smile she fell in love with in one of those days, the one she's been looking for on other people's faces when he once again chose another woman's arms. Not hers. She can't help but smile back.       There's pity and contempt in Gabi's eyes, and it burns her for a second. No, she has a smile for her too, she has it for everyone who dares to think she's broken, and her shoulders are straight. They're first for now, and she'll do everything to make it stay this way. The smiles won't fool her, she knows, Gabi and Guillaume were never happy to see them around. She couldn't care less. Ice is their battlefield, and it will all become clear there.       Nothing is clear there for her, nothing makes it easier for her. ‘Good luck, honey’ chirps Jackie from Scott's phone, her smile wider than the screen, her eyes full of love. ‘Watch how I'll win for you, love’, he promises her, his smile even wider, and he blows her a kiss before hanging up.       ‘I will win’ echoes his voice in her head, pulsating with her blood, every word a stone that hits her from inside. ‘I don't care’ comes back to her from yesterday. She knows, he wants to win. It's just not for her. She knows this too, she knows it for a longer time already, but it's only now that something breaks inside her, shatters, pieces of this broken glass cutting her open, and when Madi and Zach get off the ice, pretending not to see them, she's ready to fall in the middle of the rink. She won't. They won't see her falling. She's Roxanne, the one who can make everyone crazy, who can make everyone want her — everyone, except the one that she wants. She doesn't smile, so they crave it even more.       She smiles for him, singing along, promising her to love her until his dying day. Does he see her now? Does he think about her? Has he ever though? ‘Come what may’ sing the voices, echoing, filling everything around. She doesn't sing with them, with him. Come what may — tears fill her eyes, but it's not the right time for them. Not now.       Tessa doesn't know, who dies there, on the ice, in the arms of the man she loves, Satine or herself.