It's always a routine of repetition. It's always a rush of what music, what costumes, what jumps, what spins, what sequence, what mistakes, what this, what that. It's always about the ice. It's always about skating, always about his career, and to be honest? He's fine with it.

The feel of blades crunching into slick, newly-filled ice under his feet has always been a relief to his emotions - something he can't quite grasp. A fight with his parents, a beating from obscure strangers who once called themselves his fans, or a few articles from the tabloids has always sent him to the ice to rid himself of the acid clinging to him.

Even when he falls to the ice and feels the sharp sting of cold shooting up his body, it's comparably better than feeling inches of his heart turn to frigid stone. Putting up an impregnable barrier to every emotion he could possibly feel. It hurts, he knows, to block out everything around him so that he would be completely unaffected, but soon the pain goes away and much too soon, he's used to it.

When the new student, Yuri Plisetsky, vows to crush him once and for all at the upcoming senior division of the Grand Prix, he laughs and pats the child's back, telling him that he'll make it, he'll beat him one day, perhaps.

When Yakov divorces and comes to the rink wearing a much sour look than usual, he soaks in the growls and criticism snapping from the older coach's mouth and smiles, nodding, turning around and skating his routine from the top.

When the press interrogates him and the cameras snap, snap and snap, he tilts his chin to the air and gives them the piercing stare he's trained himself to deliver. Then, he pulls the corners of his lips up and answers each and every single question they have for him.

Self doubt, sure, he's gone through that phase, but now, he doesn't care anymore. What's there to expect of yourself when you've got the whole of Russia's - no, the whole of the world's expectations to live up to?

The ice is a beautiful thing, really. It's always a go-to when he wants to wash away the exhaustion of bearing that heart of stone in his chest - because, really, his ribcage is but a barrier of mere flesh and mineral. It's always a way to skate his memories out, tracing the ice with careful glides and jumps reminiscent of the words, sighs and groans he's pressed back into his throat.

It's clockwork. Tick, tick. Tick. One, two. Three. Smile. Shake away your reluctance, smile for the audience, show them that you mean it. Show them that your dance is for the world, that you have deserved their praise and applause and screams of joy and laughter in the stands. Skate, skate, skate. Don't love yourself. Love the ice.

And when you've finished, smile. It's the only way.

This is the path you chose.

(But he cannot go on for so long, and when he cuts his hair off in a sudden outburst when his heart's finally, finally been cracked, he stares at the mirror, stares at the new him, and he knows that the great Viktor Nikiforov has finally failed.)