Rating:

Mature

Archive Warning:

Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings

Categories:

F/F, M/M

Fandom:

Heated Rivalry (TV)

Relationships:

Hayden Pike/Jackie Pike, Shane Hollander/Ilya Rozanov, Shane Hollander & Hayden Pike & Jackie Pike & Ilya Rozanov

Characters:

Hayden Pike, Jackie Pike, Hayden Pike's Children, Shane Hollander, Ilya Rozanov, Original Characters

Additional Tags:

Trans Female Character, Trans Hayden Pike, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gender Transition, Career Ending Injuries, Disability, Mental Health Issues, Queer Themes, Recovery, Healing, sled hockey

Language:

English

Series:

Part 3 of The recognition so richly deserved

Stats:

Published: 2026-10-26 Words: 8,489 Chapters: 1/?

Crystalline (Shimmering)

Summary

The thing is, Morgan muses as she zips up the adaptable sports bra over her mosquito bites that definitely don’t need the support, is that she still can’t shake the belief that a part of her died that day.

Notes

WE'RE BACK EVERYBODY CHEER

updates are going to be much more sporadic with this one, sorry! i (vivit) started a new job that i actually like and don't have as much time to build up a backlog. but here, have 8.4k words to make up for it.

CW for: fairly detailed description of needles/administering a shot and a LOT of internalized ableism. Morgan is very frustrated and trying to cope with trauma and recovery and frequently compares herself to a child in terms of independence and ability. This is not an accurate view of her situation, but she feels it very keenly.

Chapter 1: Terrifying, definitely.

[June 2020]

“No.” 

Patrick just looks at her mildly, his neutral expression never failing to make her feel like a whiny child. “Morgan, as your OT, I can just make you go.” 

“You kidnap me?” she says mulishly. “Easy.” She gestures to her supine body and her chair. 

“I can call Jackie.”

Goddammit.

“Fuck you,” Morgan groans. Patrick doesn’t blink—it’s probably far from the worst a patient’s said to him. If she’s being honest, it’s not even the worst Morgan’s said to him. “Up.”

Help me up, please, is what she means, and her mouth refusing to cooperate is not helping how much she feels like a toddler. 

Thankfully, Patrick always knows what she means. He’s also a bastard motherfucker, though, so it just gets her one raised gray eyebrow and Patrick stepping away from where she’s making grabby hands. “Do one more rep of the whole thing and I’ll drop it about the exercise group for now,” he counters. 

Morgan groans again, long and dramatic, and drops her hands against the low padded table she’s been practicing transfers on. She lets herself have one more moment of self-pity to stall.

Okay. Roll. Sit. Transfer. No sweat.

She rocks halfway in the opposite direction to gain momentum, grateful every day that she’s graduated from having to rock back and forth with her arms in the air to build up enough momentum. The undignified, embarrassed frustration that had come with the early stages had left her in tears more than once. 

She rolls onto her left side, remembering just in time to throw her left arm out as a stabilizer. There had been several tries where she’d missed that step and had rolled right back, cursing up at the ceiling. 

Patrick nods as she pauses to catch her breath, exhausted from an hour of practicing activities she’d never even had to think about before. “Good, that looked pretty smooth. How did it feel?”

“Better,” Morgan grunts. She’s focused now, determined to make this one the best one yet. You can take the athlete out of competition, but you can’t take the competition out of the athlete.

Morgan shakes that thought from her head. She’s not thinking about what she’s lost. Instead, she rocks some more until she’s twisted her upper body to be propped up on her elbows parallel to the table. It’s like she’s doing a low plank, except for how her legs are motionless next to her. She shuffles on her elbows until she’s bent 90 degrees at the waist and hooks her right hand behind her knees, steeling herself for the next part. 

It takes every bit of strength Morgan has left to slowly push herself upright with her left hand, her right serving as a counterbalance pushing her lower body into place. Her left hand inches in in small increments, the most she can manage without feeling like she’s going to fall back over. Finally, she tips over the fulcrum of her body and gets the gravity-assist for the rest. Her arms shake as she uses them to move her legs into a more comfortable and stable position. 

Patrick looks as pleased as she ever sees him, giving Morgan a small smile that’s mostly in the eyes. “Good. If we keep working on building muscle, you won’t need the counterbalance as much, so you’ll be able to use both hands to push yourself up. Should be easier to walk your hands up than having to do it in bursts. But muscle is gonna be key, there.”

It’s a couple complex concepts in a row, and Morgan takes a second to parse them. She shoots him a glare. “Exercise group? You…you said—uh, you...” She sighs, short and sharp. Tries something simpler. “Stop.”

“I’m dropping it, promise,” Patrick says easily. “Only meant that we’re in the pool with Anna on Tuesday.” 

Likely story. But Anna is her favorite PT and she’s come to really enjoy the pool, so she just huffs. 

Patrick nudges her chair closer. “Last push, here we go.”

Morgan makes a game face, rolling her shoulders back. She picks up her legs one at a time with her hands and drops them over the side of the table, then adjusts them until they’re in the right spot to stabilize her as she transfers. She puts her right hand on the seat of her chair and rocks back and forth a bit, psyching herself up. Patrick steadies the chair from behind.

In one big push she gets up from the table and drops into her chair, grinning when she realizes that her aim is finally getting more consistent—she’s centered in the chair without having to adjust. She grabs her legs and drops them on the footplate, looking triumphantly at Patrick. 

Patrick nods, face neutral but eyes twinkling with pride behind his wire-rimmed glasses. Morgan beams. 

Her phone chimes from her bag with Jackie’s text tone. 

“Perfect timing,” Patrick says, recognizing it as well. He stands up to let Jackie in, who kisses Morgan on the forehead before sitting down. Morgan sighs, already feeling calmer with her wife next to her. 

Patrick settles across from them and props his ankle on his other knee, opening his tablet. As always, Morgan can’t help the small smile that steals across her face at the pink, blue, and white flag sticker affixed prominently to the back. Jackie squeezes her hand. 

“Okay, last week we talked about some adaptations to kitchen skills,” Patrick reads from his notes. He looks up. “How have those been going?”

-------

“So, what else did you and Patrick talk about?” Jackie’s tone is suspiciously light. Morgan groans and leans her head back against the headrest. 

“Tattles.”

“No, I just know you,” Jackie rebuts. “Patrick didn’t have to tell me anything. I can tell there’s something on your mind.” 

She sighs. It’d probably help to talk this out with Jackie, anyways.

“Patrick’s wife…” Morgan gestures vaguely. “Like me.”

“Wheelchair user?” Jackie guesses.

“Yes.” She pauses. “Yes-no.” Ugh, that doesn’t make sense at all. Her mouth has given up on her, though, leaving her stuck until it recharges.

Jackie gamely perseveres. “Yes-no, so kind of? Or yes she uses a wheelchair but that’s not what you meant?”

Morgan makes a rolling gesture with her hand, trying to convey that Jackie’s on the right track. Her mouth still refuses to spit anything out. 

“Hm,” Jackie muses. “She’s a wheelchair user, like you, and there’s also another way she’s like you?”

She points at her wife, relieved. “Athlete. Wheelchair gym class.”

“Oh that sounds great!” Jackie frowns, looking over at Morgan when they stop at a light. “You don’t sound very excited.”

Morgan grumbles. She looks out her window, trying to organize her thoughts. Her mind drifts a bit, as it’s prone to now, even months later.

She’d never had the same complex as other guys about getting driven around. Jackie liked driving, and Morgan didn’t really care, so why would she drive just because she was the man? And she’s especially liked feeling like a passenger princess the last couple of years. Now, she sits in the passenger seat stewing about another loss of independence. She didn’t even like driving all that much, but the more she thinks about how it’s another thing she has to work at, another thing that involves effort and time where it never did before, the more frustrated she gets, resenting Jackie and feeling awful for it.

She has plenty of memories of getting driven to sports as a kid—every one stinks of hockey and the intense burning desire to be good and to work hard and to be best. This is the first time she can remember feeling dread. 

“Don’t want go,” she says simply. The embarrassment that continuously burns in her chest these days flares—fed both by the thought of going and the fact that she’s scared of going. Her struggle to communicate all of this doesn’t help. 

Jackie sighs as she pulls into their driveway. “You know I don’t love pushing you out of your comfort zone, but Patrick said I gotta get better at it, so.” She parks and looks at Morgan. “I think you should try it. I think it might help a lot.”

Morgan swallows, looking away. “Traitor,” she says softly. Her eyes sting. Jackie sighs again, and they don’t speak while Jackie brings Morgan’s chair around. As soon as she’s settled, Morgan wheels around and pushes herself up the ramp, heading to their bedroom for her now-customary post-OT nap. She hadn’t liked needing it at first, but it really had helped keep her energy up, and now especially, she wants nothing so much as to be oblivious to the world.

-------

Morgan’s thinking about this adaptive workout class but she’s a little nervous, do you think you could talk to her? 

Delete.

Hey Shane, I could use some advice on

Delete. 

Hi Shane! I know it’s been a while, but I think Morgan would love to hear from

Delete. 

Jackie puts her phone down on the table and drops her head in her hands. 

This shouldn’t be this hard. 

Shane is one of their best friends. Had been? Probably still is, if just because of how little she and Morgan currently talk to anyone who isn’t Morgan’s parents, Morgan’s doctors, or under the age of thirteen. Fuck, she really hopes she can get Morgan to join that class. Shane’s help would be a lifesaver right now.

The worst part is—Jackie has no idea who’s fault it is. The fact that they don’t talk to Shane and Ilya anymore. Had she and Morgan drifted away first, overwhelmed by recovery and retirement and having to restructure their whole life? Or had Shane and Ilya pulled back, out of guilt or fear or discomfort or whatever—Jackie doesn’t think she’d really care as long as she could just know. 

It could also just be the distance. The four of them, maybe their friendship doesn’t have what it takes to cross it. Whatever spark Shane and Ilya have between them that helped them cling to each other despite the distance, despite the years. They’d overcome Montreal to Boston; hell, they’d overcome having games in cities on opposite coasts, moving around in inconvenient patterns for most of the calendar year. She and Morgan only live two hours from Ottawa, and it’s not like they’re on a travel schedule anymore. They could absolutely drive up, bring the kids, stay for dinner.

They just haven’t. They haven’t been invited, either. 

-------

[June 2020]

The thing is, Morgan muses as she zips up the adaptable sports bra over her mosquito bites that definitely don’t need the support, is that she still can’t shake the belief that a part of her died that day.

Her entire lower body, is what the edgelord poet living in her brain will sometimes pipe up with. Which, like—come on, be original. She positions the open-front briefs, pulling the gusset into place and closing it. These ones are nice; Jackie found them and the high-cut legs—while also fulfilling their purpose of being easy to put on sitting down—give the impression of a women’s hipster cut, which Morgan quite likes when she looks in the mirror. 

But, even disregarding her little mental emo poet, doing exactly what Morgan’s doing now had seemed so bewildering only—how many?—five months ago. Outlandish. Just completely unimaginable.

Terrifying, definitely, which had been what she registered at the time, but more than that it really had just seemed so big. Like she’d taken all the little steps that she could and the only ones left were huge overhauls of her life that she literally could not comprehend, let alone implement. Like she had to climb over a fifty-foot wall before she could even see the rest of the journey.

Some sort of ego death, maybe, then. She pulls the box that has taken up residence on their dresser towards her and lays out alcohol wipes, a disposable syringe and needles, her sharps container, and a little vial.

Jackie’d tried to insist on helping Morgan with this, or at least being there for moral support, towards the beginning. Apparently a lot of transgender people have their partners do this for them, or something. And, to be fair, when she’d still been regaining muscle control in her upper body, it probably wouldn’t have been the smartest to hand Morgan a needle.

So, Morgan had opted to give her wife the benefit of the doubt and assume she’d already accounted for who in this relationship hated needles—the first time. She smiles as she runs through the steps. Hands are clean, vial is clean. After about three tries of Jackie going pale and closing her eyes as the needle in her hand neared Morgan’s thigh, Morgan had gently suggested that maybe Helena or someone could help her until Morgan could do it alone. 

Air into the syringe, needle into the vial, air out, liquid in. Jackie had nodded very quickly and had taken several deep breaths before going to tag in Morgan’s mom.

Check for air bubbles, double-check dose, switch needles. God, she loves her wife. Clean injection site, double-check dose again, remove the needle cap. The two of them—they’re just a good team, y’know? Pull the skin taut, position the needle at a ninety-degree angle. Complementary in all the ways. 

Anyways, ego death. Because, as it turns out? All those incomprehensible insurmountable overhauls—actually made up of the same little, day-by-day steps she’s been doing since 2017. She didn’t need to climb over the wall. She’d just needed whatever part of herself that built it to crumble.

Morgan pushes the needle in and presses the plunger. 

Syringe into the sharps container. Cotton ball to the injection site. Routine. 

The human ability to adapt to a situation is a funny thing.

-------

[April 2020]

When Morgan wakes up she knows something is wrong.

She’s in the hospital. That’s neither surprising nor hard to figure out. She can’t remember why, but that’s also not too concerning, given that the why, statistically, probably involves a head injury.

She’s alone, which is a little strange.

And she can’t shake the feeling that she’s been here for too long.

Morgan pats around for a call button with one hand, and it isn’t until she switches to the other that she realizes she can’t find it because her hands aren’t moving when she tells them to. A dull panic trudges through her. She takes a couple of deep breaths and then takes an inventory.

Head feels fine, but cottony in a way that usually means concussion, painkillers, or both. Nose twinges a bit when she scrunches her face to check for injuries there. Breathing is easy, truly easy and not fragile-but-painless from drugs, so she must’ve gotten away without bruised or broken ribs. Her arms feel like pins and needles, and it takes all her effort to make them twitch. She can’t feel anything below her waist. Can’t even wiggle her toes. 

It’s a puzzle on how to get a nurse in the room with no working limbs, especially with the panic rising again. There’s still a sense of something else is wrong nipping at her consciousness, and Morgan almost wants to go back to sleep in the hopes that waking up will make everything make sense again. 

Of course, it’s then that a nurse appears, looking unsurprised to see Morgan awake as she smiles.

“Hello, Mr. Pike, good to see you awake.”

Oh, yeah. That’s what’s wrong. God, she’d managed to forget, for a moment.

Morgan wants her wife. Really badly. She opens her mouth to say something like, please can I see Jackie and can someone explain what happened to me and is startled when what comes out instead is a broken, “J—Jackieeee?”

What the fuuuuuck.

“Jackie? Your wife?” The nurse seems unperturbed. “She left to get some sleep a couple hours ago, sir. Your parents were here a minute ago—I think they just stepped out to get some food.”

“Hey, M—Ha—hey! You’re awake!” As if summoned, her mom appears in the doorway, followed by her dad. They both look terrible.

Morgan probably doesn’t look great herself, to be fair. The nurse leaves, and her parents sit on either side of her bed, in chairs that they’ve clearly spent a lot of time in recently. Her dad pats her ankle. She still can’t feel it. 

Her mom must be able to read minds because she immediately starts explaining everything Morgan’s missing. It’s a lot, which Morgan had been prepared for, but—fuck. It’s a lot. 

The good news is that the injury to her upper spine is less serious, and with PT and consistency, she’d regain full use of her arms. 

The bad news is Dallas Kent drove the full force of his body into her lower back, which, combined with her own frantic movements, gave her a complete, permanent injury to her T10 vertebra. Morgan will never walk again. 

She turns her head away, trying to control her breathing. She watches her dad pat her ankle again, squeezing it in a way that’s probably supposed to be comforting. Morgan bursts into tears.

-------

[July 2020]

Amélie Picard-Ross is entirely unlike her husband—except for how she enjoys pushing Morgan to her absolute fucking limit.

Which is a lot lower than it used to be.

She does appreciate Amélie’s approach to leadership, though, because it’s very reminiscent of a hockey coach, and Morgan finds this paradoxically comforting. Something something strict authority figures and coveted praise at formative ages—whatever. If Amélie were peppy and encouraging, the thing would’ve felt even more like a retiree’s Pilates class than it already does, and Morgan would’ve quit on the spot.

As it is, she’s got her little baby weights and little baby resistance bands, and she’s being barked at like a private at boot camp on how to use them. Life could be a lot worse.

This is her fourth time coming to the group. So far, she’s stuck to coming to one of the two weekly sessions. She’s kind of maybe thinking about coming to both.

God, Patrick’s going to have a fucking field day with that. 

It just feels so goddamn good to be sweating and clearing her mind and working towards a goal. It’s familiar, and it makes Morgan’s body feel like hers again in a way she didn’t think she could have. It’s giddy feeling, not unlike the one she gets from doing her hormone shot—her other recent initiative to make her body feel like it belongs to her. Morgan almost doesn’t dare let the two combine, for fear of looking directly into the sun. Or flying to close to it, or something. She’s not a metaphor kinda gal. 

Amélie catches her after class. “Morgan, good job today. Do you have a moment?”

Keep telling me ‘good job’ and you can have as many moments as you want, Morgan doesn’t say—but definitely thinks. Out loud, she says, “Yeah. Um, thank you. Class, um—class hard—” she takes a deep breath and resets, trying to visualize and speak in short but complete sentences like her speech therapist has pushed her to.

“Class is intense,” Morgan starts. She makes a small cradling motion with her hands. “Not for babies. I like it.”

Amélie smiles. “Yes. I do run lower-intensity groups as well, for people who want more of a weekly Zumba class, but Pat thought you would prefer to come straight to this one. Most of the group are athletes as well.”

Morgan nods. Ted keeps inviting her to a pickup basketball game. She’d been shit at basketball before her—before, too, so she hasn’t been keen on seeing how she does now.

Amélie continues, “That’s what I wanted to talk to you about, actually. You play hockey, right?”

A frisson of tension runs down Morgan’s spine. 

“Played.”

“Could be present-tense,” Amélie says casually. She hands Morgan a piece of paper. “I captain a sled hockey team here in the city. The details are on the paper. It’s a good mix of low stakes but high intensity.”

Morgan stares at her.

“No pressure either way,” Amélie says, and now Morgan can see the ways she and Patrick are compatible—they’ve got the same infuriatingly mild tone on lock in a way that makes Morgan want to bite someone. “But we’ve got some extra equipment if you want to try before you buy.”

-------

[July 2020]

Morgan heaves herself awake, one hand still clawing at the ropes around her legs. She shakes her arms, trying to relieve the phantom pins and needles still prickling under her skin and wishing she could do the same to her legs. 

She checks. Double checks. No ropes—still paralyzed. 

Ruby’s worried face pops into view, directly over Morgan. “You okay, Mom?”

Right. She’d transferred to the couch—ostensibly to practice, but more realistically to fall asleep without getting a crick in her neck. Explains why it’s so bright—no blackout curtains. 

She makes an okay symbol, still catching her breath and not quite up to the effort of speaking yet. Then she remembers she’s supposed to be practicing voice-only communication today, and curses yesterday’s Morgan for suggesting it to her speech therapist. Yesterday’s Morgan had been restless and looking for a challenge, something to energize a mind and body accustomed to thirteen years of a pro athlete’s career. Today’s Morgan remembers how that career ended. Vividly and with weird nightmares to supplement.

Nonetheless, she gets out, “Mom’s…okay, Rubes.” She focuses. “How are…Grandma Helena and Grandpa Rod?”

And Ruby’s off, chattering about the movie they’d watched and the waterpark they’d gone to and the game Jade had invented that they’d managed to rope both Grandma and Grandpa into, apparently. She needs little input from Morgan beyond little I’m listening and go-on noises, which Morgan is choosing to count as verbal communication. 

Until Jasper wanders in and asks, “Mom, why are Gramma and Grampa living in Uncle Shane’s house?”

Ah, fuck.

Honestly, Morgan’s a little surprised it took them this long to ask. Or maybe the twins had already, and Morgan and Jasper just both missed it—Jasper because he’s five and Morgan because she currently has the range and independence of a five-year-old.

She’d like to stall, start with well, buddy and work her way carefully through an answer that satisfies a child’s curiosity without hinting at any of the pain tangled up in the answer. That’s not on the table anymore, though, so Morgan just does the best she can to make the blow quick.

“Uncle Shane lives—lives Ottawa,” she says. Jasper nods, though Morgan’s not entirely sure he remembered that. “Grandma and Grandpa help take care…” she almost gestures around at the house and the people in it before catching herself, huffing internally at her own rules. “Take care us. You. Uncle Shane’s house, um, is better. Not hotel.”

“But why is Uncle Shane in Ottawa?” Jasper presses, chewing on his shirt collar a bit and making it come out more like Odd-wa. “How’s’ee gonna get to practice? Or games?”

“Uncle Shane plays for the Centaurs now,” Ruby jumps in to explain. “With Uncle Ilya. So they do practice and games together now, just like he used to with Mom.”

Morgan sinks back into the cushions a bit, trying to tamp down the mix of relief and frustration that swirls up in her throat. The kids aren’t supposed to try and talk for her, which they know, but the twins—Ruby especially—struggle with it sometimes, because they’re trying to be helpful and it’s tough for twelve-year-olds to remember that what they think is helping might not actually be helping. And Morgan has to try and balance that as a parenting perspective with the fact that it does very much personally rankle to have her twelve-year-old daughter speak for her, and she has to balance both of those with the knowledge that it really does feel nice to not go through the effort it would’ve taken her to say the same three sentences.

Shit, it’s a lot of work. 

She’s not even touching the ShaneandIlya of it all.

Jasper does seem to accept this explanation, wandering off with Ruby in tow without so much as a backwards glance, let alone a bye or thank you or even I’m leaving now. A helpless smile spreads across Morgan’s face, even amidst her angst. She loves them, these rude little devils who are still learning how to be people. She really, really does.

-------

[August 2020]

Morgan will admit to being more than a little suspicious when Patrick doesn’t bring up the hockey thing.

She’d made Jackie wheel her right back out of the first OT clinic they’d tried after catching sight of a Metros pendant in the guy’s office before their appointment. The second she’d been able to wheel herself out of—after straight-up recognizing a picture of one of the PTs hanging in the lobby as a woman who used to work for the team.

Patrick has access to her legal identity and has a wife who plays hockey in Montreal. Morgan’s never kidded herself that he doesn’t know exactly who she is and exactly what happened to her. 

But he doesn’t bring it up, even now. 

Morgan’s the one who breaks, eventually. 

“You told me…your wife was, um, athlete,” she says. “Not…hockey player.”

“I didn’t want to bring up uncomfortable memories,” Patrick replies. “Why, did she mention it?”

Morgan nods. “Asked me…asked me to join…team.”

Patrick presses his lips together. “She did?”

Morgan just nods again. Patrick looks down at his tablet, then looks back at her, eyes serious behind his glasses.

“If that crossed a line, Morgan, I deeply apologize for putting you in that position.”

Morgan blinks. Then she interlaces her fingers in her lap and actually thinks about how Amélie’s words had made her feel. 

She’s not going to do it, obviously. The risk associated with repeated head trauma is probably enough on its own to make it a perma-bad idea. 

And it’s probably, like, a whole different set of skills. Amélie clearly thinks Morgan will have something to bring to the team. Morgan does not have her confidence.

That being said.

That being said—it had made something in Morgan light the fuck up, just to hear the offer. So, something she’s going to pursue? Absolutely not. But crossing a line?

She looks back up at Patrick, who’s turned away slightly to give her space to think. “No sorries.” She shakes her head. “No sorries. No lines.”

Patrick nods, looking relieved. “Do you still feel that this program is a good fit for your goals? We talked about…” he checks something on his tablet. “Socializing more, and building strength and stamina.”

Morgan can’t help the grin that spreads across her face. “Good. Really, really fun.” She pauses, wanting to get the next sentence out clearly. “I missed the challenge. And people.”

Morgan missed having a team, if she’s being honest. Misses having a team. It’s good, the camaraderie of the group. She hadn’t quite realized how much better she would feel, having people to talk to—people who get it. She likes seeing all the different lives people lead. She likes getting advice and tips that non-disabled people would never even think of.

But it’s not the same. Not exactly.

Morgan has tried and failed to put her finger on why. She just misses.

“Why don’t…” she swallows. “We don’t—talk, um, about hockey. Why?”

Patrick’s brows lift just slightly behind his glasses. “I didn’t think you wanted to. Do you?”

She shrugs. Runs her fingers up and down an armrest.

Patrick shrugs back. “I’m not a psychotherapist or a physical therapist. My role is to help you shape your present and your future.” He leans back in his chair and props his ankle on his opposite knee. “I like to let my clients guide the pace on things like this, so that I don’t dig into potentially traumatic experiences for no good reason. Your past is only as relevant as you decide it is to help me understand you and your goals, okay?”

“Oh.” 

Morgan feels a weird pang in her stomach at the thought of hockey being something about her past. She shakes it off, rolling her shoulders back against it.

“Do you want to talk about hockey?” Patrick asks. Placid. Unassuming. 

“No.” Morgan shakes her head. Once. Short.

And that’s that.

-------

 [September 2020]

Shane probably would’ve been really good at coordinating Morgan’s gender-transition-plus-injury-recovery mashup. 

Every journalist who’d ever heard Shane talk about his pregame routines or his diet or the lucky jock that he’s had for his entire MLH career has spun a narrative about Shane Hollander, Always In Control, which by power of the internet frequently turns into Shane Hollander, Hockey Robot—or Shane Hollander, Precious Neurotic Baby, depending on where on the internet one has found themselves.

(Blame JJ.)

(She tries not to let the thought of her former teammate sting.)

Tries not to wonder if the jock made it to Ottawa or if Shane threw that away, too. Probably weird to be thinking about Shane’s jock at all, actually. So. 

Anyways.

Morgan, who once upon a time knew Shane better than anyone bar maybe three people in the entire world, knows that Shane is not the organizational genius people think he is. She’d been pretty smug about this knowledge, too. Like she got to see the real Shane Hollander, the guy behind the picture-perfect finish. She knows then, that a lot of the actual expertise of his routines are outsourced to—well, experts. Nutritionists, athletic trainers, massage therapists, Sean the equipment manager. Shane’s only involved as far as setting high-level goals and milestones. Otherwise, he mostly just hopped to when someone said mush.

What Shane’s really good at, though, something that Morgan’s taken advantage of on many a boring plane or bus, is playing what if. What if the zombie apocalypse started today? What if the Puffins split up Colby and Malkov? What would it take for Canada to get an NFL team and start winning the Super Bowl a bunch to get revenge for the Canadian Cup Drought?

That one had gotten them a lot of mileage in the offseason after the Raiders won the Cup. She remembers screaming about it with Shane after they’d won their own Cup the very next year, the entire world glittering and Shane sporting the biggest smile she’d ever seen. 

Anyways.

Point is, Shane turns something over and over in his head, bounces it back and forth with her until every branch on the decision tree has been explored, like a walking, talking choose-your-own-adventure book. A habit that probably kept Morgan from parental-anxiety-induced spirals as often as it sparked silly discussions about which superpower is objectively the best. 

(Morgan had said flight. Shane had said telepathy, but only if he could turn it off and no one else could read his mind. Then they’d watched The Incredibles with the kids and had all—Jackie included—agreed that nothing would ever top having Frozone’s powers and being able to skate everywhere.)

Anyways. She’s trying to focus, here, so her brain regurgitating random memories is really not necessary. She doesn’t even know why she would be—

God. Fuck it. Yes she does. Morgan fucking misses her best goddamn friend, and she’s playing what if with herself to fucking cope.

What if Shane was still here? What would his real estate brain have had to say while they were renovating? How would he optimize Morgan’s various treatment plans? What insights would he have if they bounced things like hormones and social transition and—and surgery between them?

Morgan doesn’t know. Morgan doesn’t know because in all the goofy premises they’ve followed to truly absurd conclusions, they’ve never come close to this. Why would they? The trans part was always too painful and swollen to prod at, and the disability part was simply never on anyone’s radar. Maybe it should’ve been, with the whole pro athletes in a high-risk sport thing, but…

Well, they were pro athletes in a high-risk sport. They all feel invincible until it happens to them.

Morgan doesn’t know what Shane would say if she asked him these things, because her imagination is not nearly good enough to simply conjure Shane’s voice in her head. She’ll not be admitting if she’s tried. Nor how many times, if, hypothetically, she had tried more than once.

There’s a baseball game playing on low volume in the darkened living room, ostensibly to get her mind off the Montreal-Ottawa preseason game that’s also happening tonight. Clearly, it hadn’t worked. Morgan fumbles for the remote and turns it off, only halfway through the fourth inning. 

If she’s asleep, she can’t think about anything. 

-------

[October 2020]

Morgan doesn’t really let herself think about what she’s doing until Laila’s parking in an accessible spot at the top of the rink parking lot. It’s not a rink she’s ever been to, which is…good? She’s pretty sure? She thinks she’d feel more trepidation if she were staring up at the Bellsplex or Centre Bell itself, but the amount of trepidation she is feeling is not zero. It might be that a rink is a rink wherever she goes.

She’s not sure if that’s a comforting thought. Maybe ask her again after…this. Tonight. Whatever she may or may not end up doing here, in this ice rink, with a bunch of people who play hockey.

Sled hockey. Morgan had looked up videos, and had felt an unexpected zip of excitement through her chest. Lately, catching a glimpse of a game or a score only makes her hurry to look away, eyes burning and something tight around her chest. But watching the 2018 gold medal game had been fun. She’d actually lost herself in it, tracking the plays with anticipation and lightness that she hasn’t felt in—probably years, actually.

So. One practice, and she’s just watching. Baby steps.

Laila grabs her forearm crutches from where Morgan’s got custody of them in the passenger seat, having foregone her prosthetic today since she doesn’t use it on the ice. She lets out a cheerful be right back! as she swings around to grab Morgan’s chair from the back.

Morgan twiddles her thumbs, still not used to the awkwardness of this dance. One day, she hopes, it’ll no longer feel this embarrassing every time she leaves the house.

“Alright if I sit in your chair to wheel it up?” Laila calls from the open trunk. Morgan half-twists to give her a thumbs up. She’s envious, too, of the confidence that Laila moves around with, the familiarity and lack of hesitation that Amélie exhibits with her chair. 

Laila rolls up as Morgan opens the door, crutches balanced across Morgan’s armrests. She engages the brakes and moves behind the chair, giving it a little extra stability as Morgan executes the still-daunting car-to-chair transfer.

Laila, one hand still on the handle of Morgan’s chair for balance, reaches the other over Morgan’s shoulder for a high five. She gives it, chuckling, and Laila whoops in response, practically bounding for the doors and making Morgan push hard to keep up with her. 

She keeps a cheerful chatter as they make their way through the building. It’s nice, because Morgan can mhm her way through it and use her mental energy towards focusing on memorizing the layout, and also towards not focusing on why she might have reason to come back.

“—and so I actually work for Amélie’s nonprofit now, even though I was just excited to find a sled rec league! But I graduated with a degree in communications and marketing right around when they got big enough to want more dedicated social media focus, so it was kinda perfect. Oh, here’s the stands!”

She hits the door opener—which, Morgan now notices, every internal door they’d passed had had. She makes an impressed face as the door whirs open.

Laila peers in the open door. “Patrick’s usually here, that’s Amélie’s husband. He’s usually a good choice to sit with if you don’t want to sit alone. Uhhhh…”

“I know Patrick,” Morgan says. “I find.”

“Oh, great!” Laila grins. “Okay, locker rooms are back that way. I’ll come find you after, ‘kay?”

Morgan gives a thumbs up, finding herself matching Laila’s smile easily. “Thanks, Laila. For—” she gestures, trying to convey for everything.

Laila beams. “No problem! See you later!” She spins, curls bouncing, and walks back down the hall.

The door had timed out while they were talking, so Morgan hits it again and wheels through. She surveys the scene in front of her.

Unsurprisingly, most of the stands are still accessed by stairs, but she can see large flat areas by nearly every door, each with a mix of chairs and open space. In the one closest to her, she can see Patrick’s bald head in the front row, right where she and Laila hadn’t been able to see from the door.

She makes her way to him. He looks up at her approach, marking the book he’d had in his lap and setting it at his feet. 

“Hello, Morgan,” he says.

“Hi,” she replies. “Weird to talk here?”

Patrick hums. “Nah. As long as you’re comfortable talking to me outside of my office.”

She shrugs. Not like there’d ever been an abundance of privacy, being a pro athlete. She’s long been desensitized to essentially sharing a workspace with people who’d seen her cry like a baby during a sports massage. Sitting next to her OT at a rec league open practice is nothing. 

“Did Jackie drop you off?” Patrick asks conversationally.

She stiffens. “Got a ride,” she says, trying to match his tone. “Laila.”

She leaves out the part where Jackie doesn’t technically know where she is. 

It’s just—

Morgan only—

Look.

If it turns out that this is too close to the hockey she’d left behind and she freaks out, she’d rather just do that and tell Jackie about it after. She’s not gonna hide it, doesn’t think she’d be able to, but she wants to do one thing. Just one. Lately, her every move has been supervised, assisted, or assessed, and that’s in no way Jackie’s fault, but god is it starting to get to her. So. Even if all she does is make a fool of herself, at least it’ll be all her own.

The players start to come out in mismatched practice jerseys, and Morgan finds herself immediately entranced. 

The first thing that strikes her is that the team is co-ed, with no real observable difference in skill or power between the men and the women. It comforts something in Morgan, the idea that her theoretical presence on this team would not be as big of a deal as she feared.

Not that it matters.

In terms of technical differences, she notices they spent much more time with the puck, keeping it close and executing shorter, more frequent passes. They almost never ice it during a scrimmage. The thing that has her jaw dropped is just how fast they are. Maybe it had been too long since Morgan had last seen a hockey game, but it seemed as if there wasn’t much of a difference between a sled and legs going full tilt toward the goal. 

They seem graceful in a way that surprises Morgan almost to the point of guilt, as if people in wheelchairs can’t also be graceful and powerful in the way they move across the ice. Also, she has more sympathy for goalies than she’s ever had as she watches one of them in a purple jersey—she thinks it must belong to a different sport, given the fact that it has short sleeves—splat across the ice to stop the puck with their stomach and get the business end of a sled right to their goalie mask.

The thing Morgan notices the most, though, is how close the players get. Hockey is a contact sport—obviously—but it almost seemed as if these players spent most of their time touching each other in camaraderie instead of violence. Well, no, there’s plenty of violence. It’s just also that for every (practice) check, there’s at least three back slaps, side hugs, head bonks, high fives, fist bumps, etc to match it. For way more than just goals, too. Every pass, whether it connects or not, every cool-looking play, every even moderately successful drill. And they’re good, too, is the thing. They don’t look like a beer league or a Timbits team goofing around at the expense of their skills, they look dizzyingly sharp in their plays even at practice speed.

But more than anything about the differences, the second she closes her eyes, she can’t tell a difference in the rasp of the skates or the slamming of pads against pads and boards. It's what she had. What they’re doing out there is what she had and lost. It's the game. 

She bites her tongue to stop from yelling as one of the players misses a shot from looking around for too long for a teammate, thinking about how she wouldn’t have second-guessed if she had been down there. Patrick clearly thinks he’s being subtle about looking over as she gets more and more worked up about practice; for gods sake, Morgan, not even a game. But holy shit, could you imagine a game? Full speed, the tug in your gut of pulling effort out of the only muscles you had that weren’t bone-tired, from holding your breath to just go that little bit faster, the crush of bodies against you. The game she had.

Morgan almost signs up right then and there. Patrick would never let it go. 

She couldn’t do that to Jackie. Make her worry again. Morgan will worry over it herself and process it and let it live in the back of her mind, but she won’t feed it—eventually it should dissipate. Maybe this time she can take a desire that’s bad for her and actually do the right thing.

Fuck. Morgan’s going back to hockey. 

Fuck.

Morgan isn’t ready to leave when Laila comes bouncing back, wet from her shower, grinning like a madman. 

“So did you like it? Kinda lame stuff today. We usually like to have a bit more fun at practice, but we have a game soon, and Amelie is desperate to keep us out of the bin this game, so she’s working us to the bone.”

Morgan’s heart twitches at the thought of that being considered lame. And then again when she thinks about Laila coming out of the locker room smiling while she admitted the captain was running them hard. The Metros…

“When’s the next game?” Morgan inquired, making conversation, really. It’s the nice thing to ask. Not worth it to examine how easily the sentence came, how often it had trailed off her tongue in her old life. 

“This Friday, I think, cuz it was supposed to be on Saturday, but the other team forgot about the coach's birthday and then said they could commit but couldn’t. Or maybe it was one of their kids' birthdays? I don’t remember. Anyway, I shouldn’t bore you with our stupid drama. Point is. Yes. Friday. Do you need a ride?”

Morgan really wants to be bored with the stupid team drama, actually. She can’t think of anything better than dying on a molehill and not having to be the adult about it. 

And obviously, Morgan did not have plans on Friday. She didn’t have plans most days. She was free—except for the fact that she didn’t have an excuse this time. This practice had been in the middle of the day, and so was the workout group, so it had been easy for Morgan to blend them together in where she’d told Jackie she’d be. 

What did normal trans adult disabled women with no job do on a Friday night? If she obfuscates or lies to Jackie, Jackie will be worried; if she tells Jackie the truth, Jackie will freak out. If she disappears, Jackie will freak out and also kill her. 

Morgan ruminates the whole drive home.

My friends invited me out for drinks? Amazing, can I come?

I’m going to a party? Since fucking when?

I’ve decided to make up with— 

No. 

Laila waves enthusiastically as Morgan turns to enter her house and mouths, “See you Friday.” Morgan nods stiffly and heads inside. 

She settles on telling Jackie a half-truth, that she’s going out to dinner with some of the girls from her work out class to talk about disability stuff. Luckily, though not without a helping of guilt on top, the specific mention of disability seems to keep Jackie from asking to come along. It’s  just still too stressful of a topic to easily chat about.

[Friday]

For the first time since—well. For the first time since regularly needing a ride, she’s almost thankful she needed a ride. Since the players have to be there early, Morgan also has an excuse to be stupid early and just…soak in the rink environment. 

Having little else to do, she sits on her phone googling sled hockey tips for beginners. To follow the game better, she reasons. Can’t be caught looking like a newbie watching her first game. 

She learns about the penalties that don’t exist in stand-up hockey. T-bone is her favorite; it highlights the difference in a way that just strikes her. It shows the attention to safety and the longevity of players, all of the healthy fear and understanding of what disability is. They don’t get emasculated by being safe, they know how to be themselves in this fucking sport and they don’t let that get stripped from them.

It makes Morgan’s body tingle. 

How unfair it seems, at the end of the day, that she had let that get stripped from her, had grit her teeth and bore it for so long for absolutely nothing. What was the reason she endured any of it? There are leagues all over the province accepting queer players, and ones that care about how long the players managed to stay in hockey. Looking back now, it’s almost fucking comical. 

What was all of it for? Fuck, she almost died—did die, if she looks at it in a philosophical ego death sense—for being ridiculed in the locker room, for being terrified and hypervigilant, for putting her heart into the team and not receiving the same. For Shane.

The players are starting warm-ups now. One of them practices getting up in a roll, using his core and sticks to get up smoothly without needing to pause.

It strikes Morgan. That they know they’ll fall—that they think about it enough to rehearse it in the limited time before the game starts. It’s an inevitability, which makes it something to work around and drill. And fuck, it’s not like Morgan doesn’t—didn’t—know how to fall, of course she’d also learned it, drilled it, made it muscle memory. When she was a kid. It hadn’t been something her pro or even her Juniors coaches had spent a lot of time on, even though she knows for a fact that safety research has improved since the fucking nineties. The unspoken message had been, with the benefit of hindsight, that this small preventative measure was not a skill worth the time to teach.

Here, there’s no need to shove any fear in a box and find a work-around. Here, they face it head on and work the problem.

And then they t-bone it, Morgan jokes to herself.

The game is high-octane, and absolutely thrilling. All the players seem to know each other—they’re chirping at top volume the entire time. Even Amélie’s intensity gives way to levity at times, though her single-minded focus on the game definitely reminds Morgan of Sh—

She—

Fuck this. She can’t flinch every time she thinks about him. It’s Shane, Amélie reminds her of Shane. Morgan misses him desperately, and Amélie’s brand of captaincy is so like his that it has Morgan’s heart perking up like an abandoned dog. There’s a rush of joy every time she recognizes a similarity to the person she wants, and a humiliating wave of disappointment when she remembers.

Still, above that and thankfully taking precedence in her mind, Morgan is having a good goddamn time. She’s shouting, booing, calling the refs names (mostly) goodnaturedly. She whistles when Laila scores a shorthanded goal and frees her teammate from the box—jailbreak goal, another difference from the league she’s used to. 

Again, a bit of embarrassment comes right on the heels of impressed surprise as she watches the level of skill and dedication being exhibited by both teams. Morgan had assumed with ease that when games could be moved for a birthday and all the opponents treated each other like friends, then clearly nobody took this very seriously. It had made sense, in her head—it’s a rec league, no one here is playing for their livelihood. 

It’s only watching the Dragons battle doggedly but cleanly to an electric 3-2 win that it sinks in just how easily these teams seem to assume the opposite. They take it very seriously—player safety and enjoyment included by default, instead of secondary or even incompatible with—

Glory, Morgan decides, is the best way to put it. She’d grown up prioritizing it, in the wins, the grind, the drive to earn respect, and it still shows in how she instinctively balks at reducing her career to playing a game for entertainment.

The Dragons aren’t reducing anything. Morgan watches as the opposing team’s captain beelines for Amélie as the final buzzer sounds, sucking a breath in through her teeth as she tenses for him to…wrap Amélie in a hug. An enthusiastic one, received by Amélie laughing and tugging his helmet off so she can ruffle his sweaty hair. Her face—also sweaty and red, with flyaway hairs sticking to it—looks more open and relaxed than Morgan’s ever seen. They talk for a second before slapping each other on the back and parting. 

Morgan wants.

She catches Amélie and Laila on their way out of the locker room, captain and assistant last ones out. It makes her heart ache for a beat. They stop chatting and smile when they see her.

Morgan takes a deep breath. “Offer open…still?”

Laila lets out a tiny whoop. Amélie grins, eyes still bright with exhilaration. “I will give your email to Coach. Welcome to the team, Morgan.”