Anger Management [Meloghia]

Chapter 12: Dance of Ice and Fire

Picture is Marianna Bianchi, Ghiaccio's mother.

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The ice sliced beneath his blades as Ghiaccio glided across the ice rink. He built up speed as he came around the corner and raced towards the center. He jumped and spun twice in the air before coming back down easily and skating out of it. He was beginning to sweat now. He didn't know how long he'd been on the ice and he refused to check. He'd lost all concept of time and reality while he danced along the frozen surface, and he preferred it that way.

Ghiaccio came here at least once a week if he could manage it. Sometimes work didn't allow for him to go, but he made it a point to drive out here as often as he could. He wanted to keep his body strong and stay focused. He didn't use White Album when he was here, just his natural body and talent. He wanted to maintain that special relationship he had with his frozen element. It was all he really had. For years, he'd suffered abuse in silence, and even after all these years, his rage still burned silently behind his cold, scarred eyes.

He thought it would be good to get a free skate in before his session later today. It was the only proven thing guaranteed to cool the fire in his soul. There was nothing better to clear the mind than the exercise of the body over the unrelenting ice. Sometimes he came here to think and he would skate much more carefully, meandering around the ice. Those were deep contemplative days about his future, an upcoming mission, or his confusion about Melone. Today was not one of those days. Today was a day of shredding the ice in a fury as uncontrollable as a blizzard. To tear himself apart so thoroughly that the physical pain was all he could think about because today he wanted to forget.

He'd dreamt of her again. She reached out her warm hand to him and called his name in a voice as soft as snow. With snowflakes in her eyes, she smiled at him. Her smile was as sweet as sugar cubes in hot chocolate on a cold winter day. Both of which made Ghiaccio's stomach warm. He tried to reach her but the ice began to crack beneath him and he fell underneath the polar sea. The cold crept into him. He'd learned over time to find comfort in the ice in his soul, but this cold was as fresh as the day his mother left him. It chilled him to his core and left him empty. She was gone once again, and there was nothing he could do to find her.

She blew away into the icy winds above the surface.

When he awoke, he knew it was a skating day. There were no jobs for him and all he had on the agenda was Anger Management. He barely spoke to anyone that morning, just grabbed his keys and left. He needed the ice at that moment more than anything.

That was the one thing that never changed over the years, his love of ice skating. It was the only thing that ever took his mind off the shitshow that was his life. He had hated school and never had friends, and those he had hung around back then he wouldn't even call "friends." Acquaintances would be a better term. They were friends only in the sense that they had had solidarity in suffering. Outcasts, abuse victims, druggies: the dregs of school society. Ghiaccio didn't care much either way. He preferred being alone, especially on the ice. The ice was the only place he could let go. Where he could be himself. He was strong and confident on the ice.

Ghiaccio had control.

Ice skating was all he had left of his mother, whom he still missed desperately despite how much he hated himself for it. She used to bring him to the rink often as a child. She had been a figure skater in another life and wanted to instill that love in her only son. He'd been captivated by her grace as she flew across the ice like the Snow Queen herself. Blue curls flowing around her face as she twirled; she was beautiful and she still haunted his dreams. He wondered what she might have been if she hadn't fallen in love with an abusive hockey player.