The sight of green eyes behind the slit in the door was strangely reassuring to Mia. She might be in California instead of New York, but the guardian of the door to the greatest sports sanctuary in all the land still glared out with emerald eyes. The only problem she had was that the door wasn't opening. "Uh, Jase, are you okay?"

"Lo siento mucho, Señora Garciaparra, no puedes entrar."

Mia blinked. "What?"

Jason's voice deepened. "You shall not pass!" he shrieked in an eldritch manner.

"Jase, it's cold out here. Or at least not pleasantly warm. Please open the door."

"I can't. You betrayed her, Mia Garciaparra. You didn't just take his name, you *wore* his name for all the world to see. She came to us in tears a few days later. We hauled the triplets away from negotiations and Sue from New York, and we had a pow-wow. You've committed a sin against the family. You're no longer welcome in the Hotel California. Temora and the Octagon in New York can decide for themselves whether you can reenter the Clubhouse, but that's not our concern. Take your business elsewhere. I'm sure plenty of places will welcome such a wholesome, perfect sports hero."

"You can't think I don't- that's crazy, I still need her, still want her. Come on, you can't do this to me! Please, Jase, think about it..."

"I already have. I don't care that you got married. More than one of us has had to and I can't begrudge them that. But you *took* his name. Rebecca married, but even though she said she'd take his name when she retired, she still hasn't, over a year later. Stacey at least hyphenated, and half the time people call her Stacey Dales anyway. But you gave up your name for his. You became part of him. You gave up everything that makes you part of the family. Why should I welcome you now, you shortstop-lover?"

"It's not like that!" Mia exclaimed. "I like him, and maybe in time I could love him as a friend, but she's the one I belong to and we both know it. She's the best part of me, and I'm still hers, I swear it. Please let me in, this is where I need to be. I need to talk to people who understand."

"You won't find them here. You might think you want her or need her, but I know that you don't love her. I don't know if you ever did or not, but you don't now. You've got other things on your mind, and they don't belong here, and now neither do you. Now get you gone, before I reveal that I'm actually a highly trained commando who can really kick your ass." Jason's voice was nastier than she had ever heard it before, and there was something about his glare that was really unnerving. She realized that he was furious at her, and she knew better than to cross the young goalie/catcher.

"Will you ever reconsider?" she asked quietly, trying to get the edge off his anger.

"When you do," he replied. With that, Mia had to be satisfied. She walked away with her hands stuffed in her pockets and a downcast gaze, her thoughts full of the woman whose love she feared she had lost forever.

Oblivious to the goings-on at the door, two goalies looked at each other's reflections in the polished tabletop. "It's gonna be so weird," Saskia said.

Briana nodded absently and made a small noise that Saskia interpreted as assent. "I'd say it'll be quiet, but the kids will keep the noise level up. I don't know who's going to come up with the witty comebacks now that Rowdy's gone. Where are we gonna be without Joy to mother us? And Mia-"

"I don't want to talk about Mia," Briana grumbled. "I'll miss Jules and Joy, but not her."

Saskia reacted as if Briana had slapped her, and no wonder; Mia had made a point of being nice to her teammates, doing everything she could to make herself likeable. Even if she sometimes seemed lost in her own world, she was one of their sisters, and as such they protected her as fiercely as if they had been born to the same family. While it had been clear that Mia and Briana weren't the best of friends, and Saskia knew this better than anyone, she hadn't been prepared for such a bitter, angry remark. "What happened that I missed?" she asked, lowering her voice so they could at least pretend to having some privacy. They didn't really have to worry about that, because Diana was practicing her stand-up act, but it made them both feel better.

"I don't want to talk about it. It doesn't matter. She's gone, and I'm glad. She won't be pulling any more strings." Briana scowled at her dim image in the highly polished tabletop, thinking about times that she would rather forget. Saskia's hands on hers were warm and welcome, but not comforting, even as Saskia slowly twined her fingers into Briana's and massaged her hands.

"You've been keeping secrets from me?" Saskia asked gently but insistently. "Soccer secrets? Even if we weren't together, we've been teammates since-"

"'Kia, it's nothing. It's not important now. Let it go. It's too cold to think about soccer." Briana offered a quick flash of a smile, but it didn't look right and so she let it go, and Saskia let her let it go.

"It's never too cold to think about soccer."

"Is too. Have you been running with the forwards again? Did you forget how little we get to do in the box? It's too cold for soccer. It's finally the offseason, and we have time."

Saskia didn't always get the message, but she would have had to have been blind, deaf, and retarded not to get this message. "I've missed being safe," she admitted, leaning across the table as Briana came towards her.

"Make me forget," Briana whispered before they came together in a passionate, almost painful kiss.

Saskia tried her hardest to make the memories go away, even though she had no idea what they were, but Briana couldn't lose herself the way she wanted too. She could still remember all too clearly the taunts and the subtle digs and how she had had to fight for the position she had already more than earned. She'd lost the fight in the end, come in second to the golden girl's anointed one even though no player should have had say over the roster, and even if there was such input a high-scoring forward shouldn't have been involved in selecting the goalie. She'd had to work her way back up, and while she was used to having to fight for everything she got, she didn't think it was fair. She knew life wasn't fair, but she didn't need to have it rubbed in her face like this.

Then again, she'd gotten Saskia more or less through the same mess. Maybe life was fair and just didn't want to admit it. She smiled, and Saskia smiled against her, and though they smiled for different reasons, they were just glad that it was happening.

Todd drummed his fingers anxiously against the bar as Kevin drew him another beer. "Terry'll make me cut you off if you're not careful, mate," the tall Aussie warned him. "I'd not do it were it up to me, but my bucko's a picky one about that sort of thing."

"He said he'd be here," Todd fretted, sliding a five across the counter.

"Oh, is that all, then? No worries, mate, she'll be right." Kevin leaned back to the kitchen door and shouted, "Oi, Robbo! Haul yer arse out here, you've left someone waiting! Nobody's asked for a bit of tucker in an hour, you can rest up!"

After a moment's cacophony, Robin stuck his head through the doorway, his hair a hopeless mess. "Sorry. I'll just be a couple of minutes cleaning up."

"Rob, I can see things sparkling from out here. Come on. I've been waiting months for this. You can always start off the New Year with a cleaning spree."

Robin thought about this, then emerged from the kitchen and joined Todd on his side of the bar. "We're free," he said slowly, as if he didn't believe it. "After all these years of hiding it from everyone-"

"Or not," Todd interrupted, thinking of some of the other couples they'd found and socialized with over their many years in the major leagues.

"Or not. But mostly hiding, yeah? Because most of the guys didn't want to think about sharing their locker room or the showers with a no-good faggot." Robin snapped out the slur with unaccustomed but unsurprising anger. "We were just best friends to them."

"Once, we were just best friends. And then, wham! I like guys and I liked you, and surprise, you liked guys and you liked me. Ta-da."

"I don't remember there being so many sound effects," Robin said.

"There were other noises covering them up," Todd answered sagely.

"Oh, yeah."

"It's good to be home," Todd said.

"Very good." As if to prove the statement, Robin gave Todd a quick kiss, or at least something that was meant to be a quick kiss. Todd was having none of that quick nonsense, and the kiss dragged out for a good while. Kevin, watching the whole thing with a wry smile, took notes on how to breathe while common sense was suspended and one's mouth was occupied. His boyfriend Terry, who was currently waiting tables on the far side of the room, looked over briefly for reference purposes.

When Robin and Todd finally got bored with the whole thing, or at least got to a point where they really couldn't go further without having to find some privacy, Todd said, "You kiss as good as I remember."

"So do you."

Todd rested his head on Robin's shoulder, looking up at the ceiling fan and a television with ESPN silently reporting the news. "This is going to be the best thing ever."

"It wasn't already?" Robin teased.

"It gets better every day," Todd said, and they kissed again.

Steve stared into his drink as if he expected it to give him the answers he was looking for. This was the first time he'd been alone on New Year's Eve- hell, the first time he'd been alone on any Friday night- since he was twelve. Dirk hadn't been able to bring himself to come to California, and Steve honestly wasn't sure if he regretted the choice or not, because it all came back to the choice *he* had made during the offseason to leave Dallas.

Not that it had entirely been his plan... the gaze he sent to the bottom of his glass hardened as memories overtook him. They'd been seen one too many times, he and Dirk, and Cuban had decided to take the matter up with him. Not with both of them, because as ballsy as Mark Cuban was, he didn't have enough cojones to talk to them both about it. Dallas or Dirk, that had been his choice; either he could stay with the team he had come to love running or he could stay with the man he'd fallen stupidly in love with. That wasn't a choice at all, merely words that gave him a moment to get his thoughts together and tell Cuban to do several anatomically impossible things to himself before walking out.

Dirk hadn't known about the power play behind the scenes, and he still thought that Steve had left Dallas to leave him. Things had gotten strained over the last few months, because Steve didn't want to admit that Cuban knew, and he definitely didn't want to explain anything to the kid. No matter how long either of them spent in this league, Dirk would always be a kid to him; there was a quality of innocence that all his cussing and all his growing up couldn't hide, the innocence that tied right into the love of the game, the pure way it was played out there in Europe.

"Ya look like hell," a young woman with long brown hair said, sitting down calmly at his table.

"You look lost. Are you sure you're in the right place?" The words came out with more bite than he really meant, but he wanted company like he wanted a hole in the head.

"I own this joint, so I'd say yeah. I'm a point guard for Phoenix too, an' I saw you were miserable, so I came by to try an' make you feel better."

He blinked at her. "Who are you?"

She shook her head in bewilderment. "You gotta be one hell of a bang, 'cause he can't've picked ya for yer brains."

"What the fuck are you talking about? What the fuck do you know anyway?"

"I know plenty 'bout fuck, I can tell ya that much." She looked up and grinned at a rather pretty brunette across the way, who grinned back in a way that suggested that the couple would probably be heading upstairs in five minutes or less. "Seriously, though, we got that one thing in common, and I think it might help for ya to talk to someone. So I'm here."

"I don't want to talk. It won't help."

"And this is why I stay a lesbian." She looked up at the heavens. "Okay, I've tried, I've failed. Dios, ¿qué más me quieres de mí? Ya know what, Steve? Ya can sit here and stew all ya want. Sue 'n' I have plans." She swept away and left Steve contemplating the table.

That didn't last long, though, because someone else sat down. Steve found himself wishing that the Hotel California had the same system of marking off tables as the Clubhouse, because he desperately wanted to be alone. That thought only lasted until he noticed who had sat down with him. "How did you-"

"I needed to be here," Dirk said calmly. "Fin made Cuban tell him, and then he told me. Why the fuck did you let me think it was me?"

"Stupid Americans and their fucking moralistic shit. I didn't want you to think we were wrong, 'cause, you know, we're not."

The woman who had pestered Steve before passed by with her girlfriend. The girlfriend leaned over the table and said, "Point guards and shooters. We need them and they need us. That's why it works. That's why it's so damn good." With that, the two women left.

"Even for this place, that was weird," Steve remarked, shaking his head. Dirk reached over and returned a few stray strands to their original positions; granted, those original positions were almost indistinguishable from where they had ended up, but Dirk could always tell.

"She was right. We need each other. It was only so good because everything was connected, pass to shot to fuck." Dirk shifted so that he could meet Steve's eyes, intense green boring into intense blue. "I want that connection again. Somehow."

Their hands met. Their mouths met. Sometime later, everything else came together in an upstairs room.

Back at the bar, another Steve looked despondently into another glass. Kevin slid over, leaving Robin and Todd to their own interesting devices, and asked the veteran hockey player, "So how was Russia?"

"Cold. So fucking cold. Too fucking cold. Fucking colder than Bettman's shriveled heart."

"Negotiations not going well, I guess?" the tall blond hazarded, drawing a beer and sliding it in Steve's direction. The question was rhetorical; Kevin was inexperienced at tending bar, but he could read the glum expression on Steve's face just as easily as he read the sports section of every paper he could lay his hands on. He knew the NHL season was almost dead, that chances were slim and hope was dim that the 2004-5 NHL season would even have a chance to be just the 2005 season.

"None of them understand," Steve sighed. "To them it's just a business. They don't love the game. It's just something for them to fight about and not care about."

"And it's killing all of us," Jason added, abandoning his post at the door long enough to find something to drink. "It hurts me like hell, and I'm in the minors. There's something not right about a year without a hockey season. It's like skipping Christmas, or the sun not coming up for a week."

Steve nodded agreement. "Hockey is life. Life is hockey."

"That's what my dad says," Jason laughed. "And my mom. And everyone I've ever known. Everyone in my family is into hockey, even if they don't play."

"In California?"

"My parents are immigrants, and I grew up in their community. I've been dreaming about the Show as long as I can remember." Jason paused sheepishly. "Okay, so I didn't call it the Show back then, because that's a sign baseball has corrupted me, but I've wanted to suit up at the Pond since the first time I saw the place. And not having the NHL in town feels like someone burned a little hole in my heart, and this coming from someone who still has the game, still has another sport to fall back on, and if worst comes to worst, has an entire neighborhood of hockey players to play against. I can't even imagine what this lockout is doing to you."

"You said it before. It's killing me. I don't want to have to go overseas to play the game-" Here a couple of the older women in the bar saluted Steve, though he had his back to them and didn't realize that he had gotten their approval. "And if I sign with one of the independent leagues here, or a minor league... I don't know, it'd just feel like I was giving up on the NHL, betraying my Wings, and I just can't do that. I won't- oh, hell, I can't- play for anyone else, even if that means not playing for anyone at all. I don't want it to end this way."

"And it oughtn't," Kevin said. "You Americans, and I'll even include Canadians in there, take sport too seriously in all the wrong ways and don't take it seriously enough in the important ways. I'm the first to admit that I've no clue why you love chasing such little objects about, but I get that you do love it. Seems to me that the lot of you are too worried about who controls the game and not enough concerned with the game itself. What's the point in fighting if you don't remember why you're fighting in the first place? Too many of you- I won't say you two particularly, because I know you well enough- don't love the game so much as you love what the game can do for you. If you can describe your salary with the word million, you shouldn't be allowed to whinge about the salary structure. Same goes for the men in charge. Why must it always be about the money?"

"A lot of the guys say they're doing this for future players, or to make it clear that we're not going to be the owners' bitches. Don't look at me, I don't understand them either."

Jason looked long and hard at Steve. "Uh, future player speaking, and if you can get this message across to your colleagues, please do. Hey, guys? Make sure there's a league to *have* future players before you start getting all righteous for us. Some of us still care more about the game than anything else."

Teresa sat down on the bed and patted the space next to her. Vickie refused, staring out the one-way glass of the Hotel California's windows. "Hon, if you ain't in the mood, why'd you have us come back here? Let's go join the party, it's right near midnight and you know Kevin's got the drink specials going. Nothin' out there worth lookin' at, and the only thing worth lookin' at in here is you."

"2004 never happened," Vickie whispered.

"Come 'gain?"

Vickie turned from her scrutiny of San Francisco. "The separation and the things that went wrong and the things that didn't go right and all the things that could've happened but didn't 'cause you weren't there- none of it happened." A few long strides brought Vickie alongside the bed, where she slapped Teresa hard across the face.

Teresa reached up and touched her smarting right cheek. "But why?"

"For everythin' that never happened," Vickie replied, sitting on the bed.

Teresa looked at Vickie as if she'd just seen Vickie's last two marbles come rolling out of her ears to land with a crash on the floor. She was about to say as much when the clock struck midnight. They could both faintly hear the cry of "Happy New Year!" through the wall.

Vickie's gentle, understated smile appeared. She leaned into Teresa, putting a hand to the back of Teresa's neck and brushing Teresa's reddened cheek with her thumb, then kissed her. Teresa was ready to deepen the kiss, but she realized what Vickie was doing and pulled away instead. "It's all well and good that you feel like forgivin' me for goin' somewhere else to play 'stead of playin' desk jockey to Blaze, but you got some work to do too. Since I left, you haven't been much of a team captain at all. You're supposed to be a team leader, not Blaze or one of her ass-kissin' puppets. You sure as hell aren't supposed to *be* one of her ass-kissin' puppets."

"What do you mean?" Vickie asked. This wasn't going the way she had planned.

"Tari. She's been good to you and the team, so you sit back and let Blaze plan on chasin' her out the way she chased me out? You ought to be ashamed of yourself, but you're not, are you?"

"I- it's not my decision. It's not my job. Why are you pickin' on me? We got two other captains."

"'Cause Kym and Crystal are probably havin' a heart-to-heart on a dance floor somewhere and Sue's most likely takin' Becky back behind the woodshed at the Clubhouse. I thought I had the best chance to make you see sense. I taught you to be loyal to your team, and that means your teammates, not the folks in the front office. They don't know. Doesn't matter if they played or not. They don't know. The only people who ever know are the ones you play with, who set you up for the shot, get you the ball, make sure if someone messes with you they get messed up, laugh with you, cry with you, tell jokes with you, wake up at eight for practice and go to bed at dawn after partyin' the night away with you. Blaze hasn't done that for you. Tari has. So why are you sidin' with Blaze?"

Vickie didn't answer for a long time, and when she did there was defeat in her tone. "2004 never happened, okay? Everything that's got us so riled up at each other- let's just let it go, start off this new year fresh and clean. You know we can't stay mad at each other, we've been together too long for that."

Teresa thought about disagreeing, because it couldn't be that easy to lay aside problems that had been festering for months, but there came a point when the relationship she had cherished for so long had to be more important than whatever else was going on in their lives. This time when Vickie leaned into her, she did deepen the kiss, wrapping her arm around Vickie's waist to draw her closer, allowing herself to enjoy the feel of Vickie's body against hers, the contrast of strength and femininity, of soft curves and hard muscle. If Vickie wanted to believe that this would solve everything, Teresa was willing to let her believe it; it wasn't as if she wouldn't learn otherwise later in the year. 2004 might be forgiven and forgotten, but its issues would leak into 2005. It wasn't Teresa's problem if Vickie hadn't figured that out yet.

With the bright new hope of a new year ahead, the patrons of the Hotel California looked to bring their dreams to fruition while closing the door on the events of the last year. They knew it would be hard to lay aside grudges and problems whose effects reached into 2005, but they were determined to do their best. There was much to be done, and they looked forward to it.