Entry tags:

austen, figure skating, writing post

Second New Year's Resolution Done!
Title: A New Kind of Mid-Life Crisis
Part: 4: Back to Work
(Prologue, 1, 2, 3)
Fandom: The Cutting Edge/Jane Austen(sort of)
Characters: characters channeling Edmund, Edward, Elinor, Darcy, and Marianne
Musical Accompaniment: Sheila and Diamond's short program music: Dario Marianelli-Arrival at Netherfield/Liz on Top of the World
Disclaimer: Kate belongs to Fox, Austen is out of copyright
Warning: Early 19th-century Views
Note: This started out as a simple straightforward sequel to The Cutting Edge, but I waited too long to start it and it went a little...awry.



By about 6 AM or so Monday morning, much of the tension between Rudy Klukov and his partner had dissolved. The tension within him, however, was another matter. He had never before thought of his thoughts when he touched her as sinful. Though at least physically she had already stopped reminding him of Fanny; despite her blond hair and blue eyes she was completely unlike her in body.

Even more than that, he’d dreaded this part of the morning. Now they were off the ice and off to school, but first he had to get through the locker room, and Sergei Rubinstein, who came in to practice with his partner right after them.

He knew he’d have to deal with this. He’d known yesterday, sitting in that church, taking all that warmth and happiness, that he’d have to pay a price for it, that with this man’s piety came also his prejudices.

Ironically, he wasn’t even 100% certain that Rubinstein was even Jewish. He was 99% certain of it though.

Thankfully when he got into the locker room Rubinstein was already lacing up his skates and getting ready to go. He gave a quick “Hi” and turned away, hoping the Russian would not feel any need to talk to him.

“Is that all you have to say to me?”

“Look,” said Rudy, trying to see anything threatening in the question(surely there couldn’t be!), “I really need to practice.”

“Have you started reading Mansfield Park yet?”

“What?” Well, that was a simple enough question to answer. Even Edmund wouldn’t have had any difficulty there. “I’ve read the first three chapters.”

“Only the first three? Have you not had the entire weekend off?”

“What business is it of yours?” Rudy snapped. He regretted it a moment later.

“I merely thought that you and especially Camille would find my own story interesting. It is not unlike Fanny Price’s.”

At the mention of Camille Rudy’s protective instincts rose, but he avoided showing any outward sign of this. “I will mention that to her. Thank you.”

He then nearly made as if to flee, but was arrested by Rubinstein suddenly saying, “You know, Mr. Klukov, to some extent I understand your hostility. Remember, I, too, have the memories of a parson.”

“Of course,” he continued, “Edward was not as, shall we say, zealous as Edmund, I believe.” There was a sneer to his words that caused the thought to form before Rudy could stop it: How very like a Jew.

He kept his mouth shut, but that only caused Rubinstein to sneer further, “You do not deny that, do you?”

“I haven’t read Sense and Sensibility yet,” Rudy managed to argue.

“From what I understand,” replied Rubinstein, “you won’t learn much about Edward there. Your coach warned me yesterday that the novel gives him surprisingly little definition. The 1995 film gives him more, however, and my memories correspond to it. But some matters, I believe, have become common knowledge by now.”

“You will not even mention this conversation to Camille, will you?” he added. “Your own shame will prevent you.”

“If you really want to talk to her you can speak to her yourself,” Rudy pointed out.

“Will you allow me to? I hardly see either of you when you aren’t here at the rink, and you’re always here together.”

“Find the time to pay her a visit, then.” Granted, Rudy acknowledged to himself, with their schedules being what they were that might be difficult, but it was hardly impossible.

“What do you think her grandparents would make of it? They might object to an older Russian man paying their daughter such a visit, especially if he feels the need to talk to her in private.”

This Rudy could hardly deny. But if Rubinstein wanted to talk to Camille here at the rink, Rudy wasn’t sure he could sit there and watch without interfering, and he knew he wouldn’t be able to bring himself to walk away and let them talk in private.

Why not? An angry voice asked inside him. Surely you will not let this man’s bigoted views direct you?

Thinking that way about Edmund hurt. Rudy tried to tell himself that he wasn’t really that bad, he was just a product of his time, but that only brought home to him that there was no excuse for his own behavior.

“Sir,” he said, taking a deep breath and looking back at Rubinstein, “allow me to apologize...” He was gone. He’d finished and left and Rudy could hear his voice talking in Russian, presumably to his partner, out towards the rink.

Camille was waiting for him out in the lobby. “Rudy? Are you well?” she asked when she saw him, and she resembled Fanny far, far too much then, from the way in which she looked up at him to the softness of her voice. Edmund had loved those things about her, but for some reason they made Rudy feel uncomfortable.

Rudy had been on the verge of getting his driver’s license back in America, but here in Britain they couldn’t afford the insurance rates he’d have had to pay. So until he turned twenty-one, his parents and her grandparents would have to drive them around. Her grandfather greeted them, he and Camille hugged and kissed. He was a proper Englishman, and had been very reluctant to move up to Scotland; apparently Pamchenko and Mrs. MacAddie had gotten together and talked him and his wife into it. Pamchenko was certainly an expert at managing British parents, who he claimed were far less generous than the American ones.

At least Mr. Monroe, as his name happened to be, was friendly enough to Rudy, smiling at him and saying hello and asking him how things were going with him. “Fine,” Rudy said hastily, and knew then that he hated lying. Which was a very great difficulty with the number of lies he would now have to tell, when noone would believe the truth behind them. How much of that was Edmund, his redeeming qualities?

Are both this man’s bad and good qualities going to cause me trouble? Either way, Rudy already knew he would just as soon have never known whom he might have been in that previous lifetime.

About two hours later

When, after practice, he thought about the incident in the locker room, Sergei Rubinstein was not able to be at all pleased with his own conduct. He had been very unkind to the boy, who could not help who he’d been in his previous life; he’d been shaped by the world around him then. It was easy for him to reject Edward’s prejudices when they were against Sergei himself, both as a Jew and as a Russian; had they merely been against someone else, he knew it would have been harder.

Yet the truth of the matter was that he didn’t really like Edward Ferrars. He didn’t dislike him; he couldn’t find sufficient reason to, but he couldn’t help but see him as a narrow-minded man unable to look outside his own genteel Christian privilege, and he found his so-called compassion unimpressive when the majority of the world’s suffering he had in fact been completely blind to; Sergei knew more than enough history to know that.

It was him he’d been lashing out against, he thought, not Rudy. Edward in the form of a man who, from all Sergei understood, had been far worse; much more religion and a little less compassion, and far more blind.

He found himself dwelling on all this considerably on his way back to the locker rooms, as Natalia fretted about her own new memories.

“I dreamed about the North Atlantic last night,” she was saying. “I was only there once-she was, Anne, I mean. She mainly remembers how cold it was, and how dark the water was.”

“Do those opinions bother you?” he asked.

She looked at him, surprised. “No, not particularly, why?”

But just then a voice from down the corridor stopped Sergei’s heart. “...a catch somewhere.”

“I think it’s empty next syndrome, to be honest with you. She’s always been very attached to me. And she’s invested in both of us for these past few years, so I think she might want to replace me with you.”

“But you’re hardly ever home now, anyway.”

“Then at least she won’t expect you to be, right?” The British couple came in sight, dressed in their practice clothes and skates. Sheila Russo did not much resemble Elinor Ferrars, but either she had adopted her matter-of-fact manner of saying things or she had simply bourne it all along without Sergei noticing.

“True. Well, nothing can be done one way or another until we find a day to move you, and tomorrow is already out...” They had all walked too fast. Sergei was now staring into a pair of soft brown eyes, which lowered into a placid, painfully nonchalant expression.

Natalia was the first to realize the situation. “So,” she said a little too loudly, “how are you two this morning?”

“George has asked Diamond to move in with him,” Sheila announced. “So we’ll be moving his things, probably on a Tuesday.”

“That’s good,” said Sergei nervously. “Allow us both to congratulate you two.”

“Thank you,” said Diamond. “Now, um, we really have to...” He gestured towards the ice, then pulled Sheila away.

But several minutes later, Sergei was just getting his skates off when there was a knock on the door and Sheila’s voice calling, “Are you decent?”

“Yes,” Sergei called, then mentally slapped himself a moment later. The last thing he needed was to be alone with Sheila.

When she came in, he saw her eyes fall on the dirty floor, and she stood very near the door, which was probably for the best all together.

She got straight to the point. “This is too much of a distraction, for both of us, I think.”

“What do we do?” he asked, before realizing that she probably didn’t have an answer. Elinor had always seemed to have an answer, no matter what the question. But had Elinor ever faced a question quite like this?

But then Sergei saw her furrow her brow and breathe in, and he relaxed. Then he had to quell the stirring of his heart.

“Suppressing these memories won’t work,” she said. “I’m nineteen, you’re...what, twenty-two?”

“Last month, yes.”

“And they had decades together. We just don’t have enough memories in our own lives to override that. And to avoid each other is very risky. When we’re at competitions together, we may not be able to avoid proximity. At Grand Prix events, we would almost certainly be in the same warm-up for both programs, the same practice group, probably likewise for Europeans, and at Worlds, though this year and a couple of years after that we would be in different warm-up groups for the free skate, the short program is still a risk, and when you, I believe, can afford it the least. And that does not account for what happens when Diamond and I reach your level, because believe me, we have every intention of doing just that. If you and Natalia were to win gold next year and retire, that would not be a problem at least, but you see the ones I have already outlined.”

“I do.”

“And...well...we can’t...that would just be impossible.”

“It would,” Sergei agreed fervently, though something in his heart cried out in protest. That is not mine, he reminded himself. That man has died, and must move on now to my life, where I can not feel that way about my competition. “So what must we do?”

“The only solution I can see is simple use, that is to say, that we grow used to each other. If we can learn to see each other as who we are, not who we were...” She paused with a sudden, very un-Elinor like uncertainty.

“Stay like that for a moment,” Sergei urged, then hastily repeated himself in English. This increased her confusion for a moment, and he made good use of that moment, imprinting the image into his mind. He didn’t know how effective it might be, though, especially when her confusion gave way to understanding.

Just then they heard Diamond call Sheila’s name, and Sheila whispered an, “Excuse me,” dipped slightly in the kind of curtsy people didn’t bother do in their modern age, and slipped out of the room.

As soon as she was gone, Sergei felt the tension in and around him drain, but he also felt too strong a sense of emptiness for her no longer being there.

Some time later

“One...two...three...four...five...six...switch...one...two...three...switch...one...two...three...too early on that last one again, Diamond, we’ll try it again.”

Sheila and Diamond headed back to the spot on the ice where they’d been starting their spiral sequence while Kate reset her stopwatch yet again, since it was less frustrating if it didn’t remind her just how many times they’d done this. Pamchenko had mentioned to her, once, that Diamond had used to have problems holding the final spiral position in a sequence for the required three seconds, but had added that he was now long past that. But ever since this Awakening business he seemed to have regressed. Before it they’d been talking about having two six-second spirals, so they could have an edge change on one of them, but it looked like that was some time away. Maybe next year, when they would be in the long program instead of the short, and thus more suited anyway.

Kate watched Sheila whisper something reassuring to Diamond as they got into position, her in front of him with them holding hands. “And...go.” She started the stopwatch.

Spirals were positions with one leg raised above the head, and Sheila and Diamond took their first one by leaning forward and raising their legs up behind them, skating alongside each other with Diamond’s arm around Sheila, his hand on her far hip. This was their favorite spiral, and so the one they would hold six seconds without interruption, in order to increase the difficulty level and thus the element’s point value.

From the moment the position was secure Kate followed her stopwatch. “One...two...three...four...five...six...switch...”

Sheila and Diamond brought their torsos up and their legs down gracefully, separated, and then raised their other legs, reaching out to grab their skate blades with one hand as they clasped the other two together, into their second position, which was coordinated to affect their balance and make the element more difficult. They also changed direction and started skating backwards.

“One...two...three...switch...”

They brought their legs back down, and lifted their first legs back up, leaning back now, and now their legs were again unsupported; Diamond curled an arm around Sheila and drew her back against him.

“One...two...three...” The stopwatch showed three seconds had passed and Diamond was still in position. “Good, let’s try it again.”

The next minute was a very long one. Kate tensely counted off the seconds and Sheila and Diamond took the first, second, third position, checking each spiral, too, for the finer details of edge and position that could make all the difference in how many points they got for it. “One...two...three....” Diamond was still in position. “Good. Let’s try another run-through of the short without the jump elements.

Looking considerably relieved, Sheila and Diamond skated to the middle of the rink as Kate set the CD. She also thought this music ought to not be a distraction to her any longer. It was from a movie adaptation of Pride and Prejudice made in the previous decade, which Kate had on good authority was in fact nothing like the book, but somehow her mind had connected the music to the events of her previous life nonetheless.

The first track was called Arrival at Netherfield, though the music instead made Kate think of Elizabeth. She brushed those thoughts aside and Sheila and Diamond performed the transitions of the early part of the program, while Kate called out the location of the three jump elements, then the side-by-side spins and the death spiral, both of which they did. They got a little out of sync on the side-by-sides, but then got back in, and the death spiral was perfectly done, Sheila’s body gliding parallel to the ice as a pivoted Diamond held her by the arm and they rotated, complete with their fancy entrance, Sheila holding another difficult position variation through the first revolution, and Diamond changing arms after exactly one revolution.

Now came the spiral sequence, during which the music would change, but Kate was past thinking about that at the moment. She had started her stopwatch along with the music and she counted out loud now, “One...two...three...four...five...six...switch...”

Legs down, torsos up, other legs up, going backwards. “One...two...three...switch...”
Legs switched, hands removed, leaning back, Kate mentally trying to decide if it was enough to qualify as a difficult variation in position. “One...two...three...” Then Diamond moved early again.

Kate repressed a sigh. At this rate they weren’t going to get to the long that day, and it hadn’t even been run-through capable before Joshua had arrived and thrown them off-schedule. The short program had been, but she wasn’t sure they were going to be running through it much this week. She let them do the rest of it though-no more errors after that, at least, before saying, “Early again, Diamond; let’s try doing just the spiral sequences with the music.”

Some time after that

One of the most important things Pamchenko had taught Diamond was how to control his feelings. It was a problem he’d had even before he’d started skating, when it had led to his being a primary target for bullying at school, which he had remained all through his adolescence-and being gay hadn’t helped there, either. But in skating, it threatened his very ability to function. So he’d instilled in himself a strict sense of discipline, and before this recent Awakening he’d possessed the ability to all but turn off his emotions whenever he was anywhere near the ice. And now having Marianne Brandon in his head was threatening to undo all the work he’d done.

Thankfully Sheila could already see the difficulty. Pamchenko had warned them before handing them over to Mrs. Mosley, “Never let her see him cry.” They narrowly escaped that day; she might have seen Diamond’s shoulders shake, but Sheila steered him safely away towards the locker rooms. It wasn’t that bad; the tears stung his face, but they were over by the time they reached the door of the men’s locker room.

“Are you going to be all right?” Sheila asked him gently as they distangled from each other.

“I’ll be fine,” he insisted. She nodded, kissed his cheek, and hurried off to the other locker room.

About two hours from now, Diamond reminded himself, he would be required to present himself as the unmovable adult, for Monday afternoon was when his own two students would come in. He’d been working with Faye Atwood and Ken Davis for about a year, they’d been skating together for about two, and at the respective ages of 11 and 14 they already knew their chances of even his level of success were pretty low, yet they worked hard and dreamed of being amoung their nation’s best. They would share the ice with the Russians, Markova and Rubinstein, and their session would keep him centered in anticipation of his and Sheila’s session with Camille and Rudy immediately afterwards. After that came a session at the gym before he crashed, probably at George and Nessa’s apartment. Mondays were hard; though George was coming in right now he usually hurried in and out while Diamond was in the shower; he didn’t like to be distracted before practice, and by the time he finished in the evening Diamond was usually asleep. Monday was everybody’s workday; the ice was never available on Tuesday, and for the rest of the week they all had to share sessions with the public and/or with each other.

Diamond considered lingering in the locker room, but then he thought about how on edge George had been this morning due to spending the entire weekend off the ice, and retreated to the showers. He took his time, and afterwards to blow his hair dry; Sheila might just take even longer. By the time he came out George was long gone; Diamond could hear Betsy’s voice addressing them from the rink; it carried.

Outside it was colder than it had been the past week; Diamond was glad for his jacket. While he waited for Sheila, he took out a notebook he’d purchased that morning and reviewed the entry his hand had written there, one that was in a handwriting style far different, much more elegant than his own.

She’d been nearly at the boiling point by then for being crammed in the back of his head, and when he’d placed his pen on the paper and let her take over not all of what she’d written was comprehensible. If he hadn’t done this, though, he would not have gotten through that practice session. He noted she’d written the phrase so cold a number of times.

He made no objection when Sheila arrived and peered over his shoulder; she was allowed to do that. “Is writing such things truly of aid to you?” she asked.

“Considerably,” he answered. “You ought to try it yourself.”

He put the book away and they climbed into his car. He’d gotten his license a few months earlier, after he’d turned twenty-one, which had made everyone’s lives considerably easier, but the younger Sheila still needed to be driven to the two jobs she worked in what spare time she had.

The heat from the summer was on its way out, and as they turned the corner rain started to fall; it had already been windy. Rain was much less romantic, Diamond contemplated, when it was falling on a car windshield.

“I’m not worried about the spirals,” she commented. “We’ve dealt with that problem before.”

“We have,” replied Diamond. “They haven’t. Of course I’m not worried about Elinor.”

He saw Sheila grow very thoughtful, and was silent, giving her time to let her think. They were halfway to their destination when she said, “I think there is something different in the way we have reacted to this. You speak of Marianne as if she were a different person from you. I don’t feel that at all with Elinor. I feel almost as if my life has been extended a bit, into hers.”

“Do you think you are more like her than I am like Marianne?” asked Diamond, surprised, for he had not thought that at all.

“No,” she said, “and I don’t know why she doesn’t separate herself from me. All the same, she doesn’t.”

“Either way,” she added, as they turned another corner and Diamond pulled up to the curb, “I’m not worried. You have never failed to come through for me when I have truly needed you to, and I don’t see you as starting now.” She kissed him on the cheek before stepping out of the car, and headed down the block towards where she worked her first job.

Diamond waited until she had gone into her building before pulling out. This was the oddest time of the week, when he had nothing in particular to do and not enough time in which to do anything else. Usually he tried to get in a short extra workout at the gym, but he didn’t think he’d be able to get much out of that at the moment. Instead he set off for the apartment George shared with Nessa.

He had a key in his coat pocket. He’d just been getting used to that, and now it reinforced that this apartment was about to become his own home, that he was finally leaving his parents’ home and moving in with another man. He’d never even been in the kind of relationship where that was a possibility before. He hadn’t even had a proper boyfriend at all since about the time he’d first teamed up with Sheila; they’d always been too jealous of her.

The apartment was small, perhaps a bit snug for even two people, really, let alone three, but George and Nessa had a tight budget, so it had to do. Besides, Diamond reminded himself, in Marianne’s time more people lived in less space as a matter of course, even if Marianne herself had not. They did, at least, have enough room for some exercise apparatus, which Diamond eyed for a second, but it was his mind that needed conditioning the most at the moment. He sat down, opened the journal, picked up a pen, cleared his mind, and wrote:

If it were not for Sheila, I should be very deeply angry. Mrs. Mosley I do not understand at all; you ought not to live in fear of her.

Here Diamond felt the need to counter Marianne, and wrote in his own handwriting:

She is not very different from Pamchenko, whom I will not hear a word against.

Pamchenko understood you; she does not. Has she ever even coached a pair at your level, let alone the level you and Sheila aspire to? She can not hope to understand how you function. She might understand Sheila because they have some similarities, but they may not even have enough. Why did Pamchenko have to retire?

His health has not been good; you should know that. And I believe that she may do better with Sheila even than Pamchenko did. Their histories match; even the type of person they are match. Sheila may be much gentler, but I sometimes think she could easily not be, particularly with the wrong coach. Malcolm and she never got along well.

How can she be compatible with a coach that you are not?

That thought was almost as much Diamond’s as Marianne’s, and he had to think a bit to answer it. But then he wrote:

She will not be, if it comes to that. But until such time as it does, I must comply with whatever demands Mrs. Mosley makes. That is what I have done ever since I started skating, with both Diana and then Sheila my superiors, and even if we are equals now in skill I must strive to match her in control, especially because the time may come again when she may need me too.

The thoughts behind this writing gave such a feeling of foreboding that neither Diamond nor Marianne felt able to write any longer, and Diamond replaced the journal in his bag. He then went to the closet to get George’s yoga mat, hoping a little yoga would calm him further.