Chapter 13: The Aftermath Flight
The cold of the railing seeped through the sleeves of Amber’s team jacket. Below, the Olympic Village was a grid of lit windows and shifting shadows, a murmur of languages and laughter climbing up the concrete walls. The celebration after her medals had been a blur of flashing cameras, official hugs, and the weight of gold around her neck. It had felt like a performance. So she’d slipped out, taken the service stairs, found the roof.
The door creaked open behind her. Boots on gravel. She didn’t turn.
Y/n dropped her snowboard bag with a thud that sounded final. She didn’t speak, just hoisted herself up to sit on the broad concrete ledge, her long legs dangling over the multi-story drop. She patted the space beside her.
Amber joined her. The city lights in the distance were a fuzzy amber halo. For a long time, the only sounds were the hum of a generator and the far-off shriek of a tram.
“I didn’t know it could feel like that,” Amber said finally. The words left her mouth and hung in the frozen air. “Winning. Like it was mine. Not the federation’s. Not my dad’s. Not just… a line on a resume.”
Y/n was quiet for a moment, rolling a pebble between her fingers before flicking it out into the darkness. They didn’t hear it land. “It’s always been yours,” she said, her voice rougher than usual, stripped of its usual easy humor. “You just let yourself take it tonight, champ.” She leaned her shoulder into Amber’s. A solid, warm pressure against the cold. “You got two gold medals.”
The statement was so simple. It wasn’t about the metrics. It wasn’t about the half-inch on the flip landing. It was just a fact. You did it.
“He smiled,” Amber whispered. “My dad. He gave me a thumbs-up.”
“Yeah, I saw.” Y/n chuckled softly. “Almost fell out of my chair. Think I broke him.”
“What did you say to him? Before my run.”
Y/n shrugged, the movement lifting and dropping Amber’s own shoulder with it. “Not much. He asked me about my training. I told him it mostly consisted of not thinking about it too hard. He looked like I’d told him I trained by sacrificing goats.” She paused. “Then he asked what I saw when I watched you skate. I said I saw you holding your breath. Even when you were jumping. Especially when you were jumping. That the whole thing looked like one long, beautiful inhale with no release. He didn’t like that.”
Amber felt a chill that had nothing to do with the rooftop. It was the fear of being seen so completely, by a stranger, in front of her father. “And then?”
“And then I said, ‘But today, I think she’s gonna swing.’” Y/n turned her head, her green eyes catching a sliver of light. “You remember. From the bar. The swing.”
“I remember.”
“He didn’t get it. Not until you did it.” Y/n looked back out at the lights. “Then he got it.”
They lapsed back into silence. It was different now. The quiet between them felt charged, like the moment before the starting gun. Amber’s mind, usually a frantic checklist, was still. She was aware of the precise point where Y/n’s arm pressed against hers, the faint smell of snow and machine oil from her jacket, the quiet rhythm of her breathing.
“Your final is tomorrow,” Amber said.
“Yep.”
“Are you holding your breath?”
Y/n laughed, a real, full sound that echoed off the vent stacks. “Nah. I’m probably gonna forget to breathe entirely, do some dumb shit, and hope the style points carry me.” She knocked her knee against Amber’s. “That’s the difference. You’re a surgeon. I’m… I don’t know. A vandal with a passport.”
“It’s not vandalism. What you do. It’s… it’s freedom.” The word felt foreign in Amber’s mouth. A concept she studied but never embodied.
Y/n was quiet for a long time. When she spoke, her voice was lower, stripped bare. “My parents didn’t get it either. The snowboarding. Or the other stuff. The doctors, when I was a kid, they had all these plans. Surgeries. Therapies. To ‘fix’ me. Make me fit a box.” She said it without bitterness, a flat recitation of fact. “I looked at those boxes and thought, ‘Nah. They look fucking cramped.’” She tilted her head back, looking at the few stars brave enough to shine through the light pollution. “This?” She gestured at her own body, a vague motion in the dark. “This is just the chassis. The engine’s the same. The want is the same. To go higher. Go faster. Feel the air. That’s the freedom. The rest is just… plumbing.”
Amber had no response. Her own world was so carefully managed, every detail controlled from her diet to the arch of her eyebrow in photos. The idea of carrying that kind of history, that defiance, in your very bones, and just calling it ‘plumbing’… It made the pressure she felt seem like a choice. A cage she’d helped design.
“You must think my life is ridiculous,” Amber murmured. “My biggest crisis was a wobbly landing and my dad’s frown.”
“I think,” Y/n said slowly, choosing her words, “that pain isn’t a contest. Your cage is just as real. Polished bars are still bars.” She shifted, pulling a flask from her inside jacket pocket. She unscrewed it, took a sip, and offered it to Amber. “The trick isn’t comparing the locks. It’s finding the people who make you feel like you’ve already got the key.”
Amber took the flask. The liquid inside was surprisingly smooth, warm as it traced a path down her throat. It wasn’t the sanctioned victory champagne. It was better.
“What now?” Amber asked, handing it back.
“Now?” Y/n jumped down from the ledge, landing with a soft impact on the gravel. She stretched, her jacket riding up to reveal a slash of tattooed skin above her waistband. She held out a hand. “Now we get off this freezing roof. I’ve got a final to not think about tomorrow. And you’ve got to figure out what to do with all that air you’re finally breathing.”
Amber looked at the offered hand. Then she took it, letting Y/n pull her down. Her landing was less graceful, stumbling forward a step, right into Y/n’s space. Y/n steadied her, hands on her shoulders, and for a second they were frozen there, close enough that Amber could see the finer details of the ink on her neck, could feel the heat coming off her.
Y/n let go, slinging her board bag over her shoulder. “Come on. I’ll walk you back.”
They didn’t talk on the way down. The noise of the village grew louder with each landing—music, shouting, the clatter of skateboards on pavement. At the intersection where her dorm building stood, Amber stopped.
“Good luck tomorrow,” she said. It felt insufficient.
“You too,” Y/n said, though Amber’s competition was over.
“With what?”
“With the breathing.” Y/n gave her that grin again, the one that felt like a shared secret. Then she turned, lifting a hand in a lazy wave without looking back, her figure dissolving into the flow of other athletes in the night.
Amber stood there for a minute, the metal of her gold medals cold against her chest, the taste of shared whiskey still on her tongue, and the unfamiliar, expansive feeling that for the first time in a very long time, she had absolutely no idea what would happen next. And it didn’t terrify her. It felt, impossibly, like a beginning.