Chapter Text
Prologue: Do Not Adjust Your Television
Sid is in Prague when he sees her in the street, tall and ghostly pale in a white nightgown. It takes him several long seconds to figure out what’s wrong with that, he’s seen a lot of strange shit in Europe thanks, and it’s not until he realizes she’s in the middle of the street and cars aren’t stopping, aren’t reacting, that he stops.
“Sidney.”
He hears her voice in his head clear as a bell, but he’s looking right at her now and he’d swear her lips never move. The hair on the back of his neck rises.
“I’m sorry Sidney, it’s time.”
Nate bumps Sid’s shoulder and the moment is broken, the woman is gone and suddenly everything seems louder and sharper somehow.
“Come on Croz, I wanna see St. Vitus today.”
His skin feels several sizes too small all of a sudden, but Sid lets Nate drag him along, his eyes drawn back again and again to the now empty patch of asphalt.
~~~~~
Jamie is at home in Victoria, taking his daily after dinner shuffle around the neighbourhood to stretch his legs and ease the tightness in his hips, when he steps off the woodchip path and finds himself tripping over broken concrete in the dark chill of an abandoned church. He knows he should be alarmed, should be afraid, but there’s a woman sprawled out on a filthy mattress and all Jamie can think is no, don’t please like his entire being is straining against what’s about to happen.
“It’s okay Jamie, it’ll be alright.”
He knows that it’s her voice as surely as he knows she’s lying to him.
“Please.” He calls out, his voice echoing in the cavernous space.
For an instant there’s a man crouched behind the woman, holding her tightly, his face devastated, but then she lifts a gun in shaking hands and blows the back of her skull out.
Jamie is screaming when suddenly he’s back on the path, back in the late evening sun, and thank god there’s no one around because he’s puking into a bush with the phantom taste of gunpowder still in his mouth.
~~~~~
Eddie is home in Sweden, tucked into his old bed at his mother’s house trying to adjust to the time change and he’s sure he’s not dreaming when he sees her standing next to his bed.
She’s filthy and beautiful, albeit in a tragic kind of way, and he’s not sure how but he knows she is terrified.
“Eddie, älskling, it’s time to wake up.”
“I am awake.” He says, sitting up in bed.
“It’s time to wake up.” She says again and suddenly there’s pain exploding into his head like nothing he’s ever felt before in his life.
~~~~~
There are expectations to being the younger son, the Prodigal Son, of a hockey family; the perpetual desire to play for his country warring with his love of the Capitals. The NHL gave him a home, gave him a family, and Nicklas has never found the words in any language to accurately explain that without breaking his Mama’s heart.
He’s sitting at his parent’s kitchen table when the homey sounds of his mama making breakfast fade out to a quiet whisper and Nicklas realizes he’s not sitting alone.
She’s like something out of an art house movie, and he can feel the sadness, the fear coming off her in waves.
“It’s time Nicklas.”
“Time for what?” He asks, startled.
“It won’t be easy,” she continues like she hasn’t heard him speak, “but you’ll never be alone again.”
“Time for what?” He asks again, louder, but the woman is gone.
“What was that dear?” His mother asks, concerned.
“Nothing,” he says, “I don’t know what I was thinking.”
Nicklas wonders for a moment if the long season made him a little touched in the head and, if it did, what Alex would say about talking to phantom women.
~~~~~
Tyler is walking back from the bar, following the river Seine back to the hotel, when he gets the feeling he’s being watched. It’s been nice in Paris, being almost invisible in the crowd, with only a few random tourists recognizing him.
He keeps walking, looking around for the eyes he swears he can feel boring into him, and then he sees her. It’s not that odd to see a woman out in what looks more like a nightgown than a dress, but he’s got his collar turned up against the wind and her skirt isn’t moving at all.
Later, Tyler won’t be able to say what makes him stop, what makes him so sure she’s the one, that it’s him she’s here for, but he feels it down to his bones.
There’s a flickering behind her, shadow shapes that seem to be one man, but then another, and then her mouth opens wide like she’s screaming, the deafening sound of a gunshot that has Tyler throwing himself down, and when he looks up she’s gone.
The rest of the way back to the hotel, rushing as fast as he safely can, Tyler can taste gunmetal and cordite on the back of his tongue.
~~~~~
He misses Sid, is the thing. He misses Penguins hockey, misses being with a team where everything makes sense. World’s was a semi-disaster, not ready for the season to be over, not ready to hang up his skates, but no one can say he didn’t give his country everything he had left and then some.
Ten points in nine games is nothing to sneer at, pundits be damned.
Alex mutters something – Swedish? – under his breath at the TV and honestly, Geno isn’t sure why Alex hasn’t just gone home if all he’s going to do is sit on Geno’s couch and drink Geno’s beer and mutter Swedish obscenities at the TV.
Alex claims to be hanging around to keep Geno from devolving into a ‘sad muppet’, but Geno wonders if it’s not the other way around entirely.
He shoulder’s Alex over, putting plates of sandwiches and vegetables on the coffee table before stealing the remote.
“Your taste’s terrible.” He chirps lightly. “No wonder you swear so much.”
“Fuck you.” Alex says in English, because he loves how the word fuck sounds. “At least I’m not learning French to seduce my Captain.”
“No, you’re the Captain learning Swedish to seduce his centre.”
Alex has nothing to say to that without lying outright and in terribly obvious fashion, so he just grabs a sandwich and stuffs too much of it in his mouth. Geno gestures with his beer as if this proves his point.
It says something about where they were raised that neither of them chokes when there’s suddenly a ghostly looking woman in the middle of Geno’s living room.
“The past cannot help you now.” She says, and her voice seems to tremble with fear. “The past is done, only the future remains.”
“Are you alright?” Alex asks softly, sandwich forgotten in his hand.
“You must take the future and make it yours.”
“I don’t think she can hear us.” Geno says
“I am sorry,” The woman continues, proving Geno’s theory. “But all births are painful.”
She’s gone just as suddenly as she appeared, and it’s like someone cranked the brightness up on the world, everything is suddenly too much.
Alex makes a pained noise, high and panicked, and Geno throws out his hand, managing to catch the other man’s arm. The pain is less if they’re touching, they learn quickly, though nothing seems to make it go away.
“I’m never going to be rid of you am I?” Geno asks rhetorically.
Alex makes a complicated face. “Not soon I don’t think.”
“I hate you.”
~~~~~
Though he would deny it to his dying day, Claude usually sleeps better at the house in Haddonfield than he ever manages in his Cherry Hill condo. Tonight though, tonight the sheets are scratchy and there’s a draft coming from somewhere making him feel damp and cold even in the late May heat.
He throws off the blankets, thinking maybe he’ll check the windows and throw on some sweats, but when Claude swings his legs over the side of the bed he steps onto cold, damp concrete instead of the ridiculously plush carpet Danny had laid in all the bedrooms.
“The fuck?” He says, and his breath mists faintly.
Fuck it’s cold. It’s also filthy, but Claude’s trying very hard not to think too hard about that.
There’s a woman in white kneeling on a filthy mattress in the middle of the room. She’s, well he’d say she’s talking to herself, but between one breath and the next he can’t say for certain she’s alone.
Her eyes go wide and for a moment Claude thinks she’s looking right at him, right through him, and then she gives a bitter, twisted smile and puts a gun in her mouth.
Claude sits bolt upright in bed with the sound of a gunshot echoing in his ears, and it’s warm in the room but he’s freezing down to his bones, shaking, it’s all he can do to stumble to the en-suite bath and turn the shower on full blast. He’s pruned and the water is starting to go tepid before he feels warmed through again.
It’s already the kind of late that almost counts as early so he decides fuck it, and goes downstairs to put on a pot of coffee.
No fucking way he’s going to get any sleep now.