To Dream or Not to Dream

The Past

Regional Championship.  

Gold.

District Championship.  

Gold.

These were figure-skating medals and trophies. He wasn't sure if they were Isabella's or her sister's, but by sheer amount crammed on the shelf, he was guessing both.

Yuzuru turned around quickly, hearing footsteps.

His eyes met Isabella's as she came into the living room, holding a pile of blankets in her arms. 

She noticed where he was standing.

"Those are really old," she spoke softly.

Yuzuru nodded, eyes studying the features of the pensive girl as she came closer to him.

"I thought you might need these. It can get really cold at night," she continued.

Silently, he took the blankets.

When Isabella turned back around to return to her bedroom, she thought the interaction was over.

It wasn't.

"When did you stop competing?" He spoke to her back.

She had hoped no one would look too closely at those trophies and medals.

It did surprise her that out of everyone that was in her house, he was the one to do it though.  By the way he treated her since they first met, she would have thought he would care less about her life and her past.  

She sighed.

Perhaps because she had returned home after a prolonged absence her nostalgia was stirred, or maybe the weariness of the day was finally getting to her- whatever the reason, Isabella turned around and found herself closer to the medals she usually tried to overlook.

She gazed at them, each one carrying a story. Even to this day, she could recall those moments vividly.

Her hand reached up to the dusty mantel, picking up the last medal in the corner. 

2008 Regional Champion.

Isabella held the small item in her hand, its cord draping off her palm. 

When she had won this medal, it was the last day she saw her sister alive.

She had remembered her excitement upon receiving that medal. In that moment, Isabella had felt that she knew exactly how her life would play out. With the lofty dreams of a naive child, she had been certain that she would grow up to be a World Champion, her sister Julia and her best friend Jacob at her side.

But that night was much like tonight. The snow had piled up outside making it difficult to travel, and underneath that snow was thick ice.

After the competition, she and Jacob had been doing celebratory laps at Jacob's family's arena, when his grandfather called them over.  The solemn look on his face when he broke the news to Isabella still lingered as a haunting imprint on her heart.

Yuzuru watched as Isabella's hand began to shake, before her fingers closed over her palm, enclosing the medal in her grasp.

"Are you okay?" He spoke in his native tongue out of instinct.

His words pulled Isabella out of her thoughts. She nodded putting the medal back on the mantel gently, as if it was more fragile than glass.

She looked even more fragile.  

It didn't take a genius to figure out that something terrible had happened in her past.  For the first time, Yuzuru considered that maybe there was more behind Isabella's blank facade than what met the eye.  After all, he should have been the first to realize that people respond to trauma in different ways.