just tryin to survive

trinity’s got a hard head and an even harder set of kit. she can take almost anything.

almost.

the game they lose to the flyers, trinity takes a puck to the face.

the mesh of her helmet takes most of the impact, but the speed and momentum of the shot breaks the plastic and gives her a bonafide shiner, as parker affectionately calls it.

normally, trinity would shrug it off and wince about it in private. she’d taken worse, and dished even worse out herself. a puck to the face was no biggie.

but not this time.

this time, baran’s watching her in the stands with omid by her side, grimacing dramatically into the giant foam finger trinity had bought for him. he hadn’t so much as batted an eye when she’d body slammed a flyer up against the barrier but this had him looking positively peaky.

baran looked even worse.

this time, trinity is practically dragged off the ice by her jersey and down to a medic behind the bleachers. she’s got a bruise under her eye socket with a bloody cut straight through the middle. her teeth are stained red with blood, but she’s still protected by her mouth guard, likely that the impact had just made her bite her tongue.

the adrenaline has her smiling through the pain, like it always does. it’s the thing that keeps her alive, keeps her loving the rink, keeps her body slams brutal and her dribbling nimble, even when she doesn’t want to be there.

it’s the look on baran’s face as she rushes down from the stands that is a sobering slap to the system.

she looks so horrified at the blood and mess on trinity’s face that it’s nearly enough to cry.

she’s never seen trinity skate like that before.

their shared experience of skating is of quiet hours at the rink when nobody else is there, music playing over the speakers as trinity watches baran glide in effortless circles around her, smiling like it’s the easiest thing in the world.

this is not easy.

seeing trinity hurt is not easy.

the way she crouches down and takes off trinity’s gloves to hold her hand and watch the medic try and fix her face is downright earnest. it makes her feel awful. alive in a way she doesn’t want to be.

the guilt only gets worse when omid rounds the corner too and sees the blood on her face. at first, he looks staggered that she’s sat there, helmet off, having her hand held and her face dabbed.

she knows he shouldn’t have to see this, shouldn’t have to see blood and injury so up close. but he doesn’t freak out, doesn’t cry or run away. instead, he merely approaches with a curious look on his face.

“does it hurt?” he winces, gently touching her cheek when she lets him.

she tried to look apologetic for scaring him. “a bit. what do you think I should do?”

he grins and recites the words she’d taught him after she’d taught him how to skate. “give ‘em hell.”

it’s not as bad as it used to be.

really, it only sort of comes up when she’s stressed or tired and even then, it’s just annoying rather than outwardly frustrating.

she clicks her tongue and tips her head whenever she can’t quite find the word for something and for that, she would credit speech therapy until the end of her days.

this way it looked more like a brief interruption of thought, rather than forcing her tongue to trip over itself all the time. that shit she found embarrassing, even when people tried to be accommodating and waited for her to get there. she hated it.

still, even with all her methods of disguise, people still noticed.

parker’s name was shortened simply to ellis, vowels being easier to slip around rather than the clunkiness of consonants, the eh sound rather than the constant stop and starts of par and ker.

she herself was santos, rather than trinity. the letter s was a pain, but tri was even worse.

which is why it’s so fucking annoying that baran’s name begins with a goddamn B.

B’s are such a pain. they made her sound slow and dumb, like she couldn’t even pronounce one single letter. her shoulders would shake and struggle as she tried to force one simple consonant past her teeth, and tears eventually would slip down her cheeks when she couldn’t.

baran stops her with one of those kind smiles she always wore, and trinity’s too upset to be mad about it.

she simply swallowed the bob in her throat.

“would it help if we found a nickname? something shorter for when that letter’s getting the better of you?”

trinity hated that phrase. got the better of her. it was a fucking letter, one she would decimate and destroy on a good day.

“maybe.” she said. the words would clot in her mouth like cream, bloat and be unmovable past her tongue. “the vowels are e-easier to do. if it s-s-starts with a vowel, the rest of the word is easier.”

“okay. how about…eshgham? that starts with an eh sound, that would be easier right?”

trinity had frowned. “b- hm…but you call me that.”

baran had smiled and this time it wasn’t so sweet that trinity felt stupid under it. instead, it was adoring and logical.

“I do, yes. but you can call me that too, right? it goes both ways.”

that was true, obviously. it might’ve been baran’s own special word for trinity (and occasionally omar) but like most of baran’s love, it was soft and sacred and always to spare.

trinity tried it, managing the word with ease first time.

“eshgham.”

baran had smiled again, happy and touched beyond comprehension.