Archive of Our Own

“Ilyusha?” is the name Svetlana greets him with on the phone, and her voice is strange. She has not sounded like this in a long time, he thinks, which does not bode well. Hesitant and delicate. Sveta is not delicate.

It’s her Russian number. She’s been in Russia for a month; her father has been missing her. Ilya suddenly feels a stab of dread.

“Is your father alright?” he asks. He hasn’t spoken to the man in a long time, but he thinks now that maybe he ought to. He’d been kind to him, when he and Sveta were young. Kinder than his own father, at least, and not getting any younger.

“Papa is just fine, don’t worry,” Sveta says quickly. “Are you alone?”

“Define alone.” Ilya is rarely alone these days. It’s good. He’s good. He has his team, and his friends, and his dog, and his family. He has a therapist. He has Shane, who rarely leaves him for longer than a couple of days at most, only when he is forced.

“Are you…you know, in public, or in front of a lot of people, or something,” Svetlana sounds distracted. “I need you to be somewhere private.”

Ilya frowns at this. Playoff season is about to start; he and Shane are out having dinner at David’s favorite restaurant. It’s his father-in-law’s birthday, or it had been, two days ago, but they’d had to celebrate today because they’d been in Philadelphia then.

He supposes he’s reasonably alone. He’s on a bench outside of the restaurant, having gone out of the noise and clinking cutlery inside to somewhere he can clearly hear Sveta’s voice. Another time, he might not have answered, but for some reason, he’d just had a feeling he needed to pick up.

“What is going on?” he asks.

“I’m so sorry,” Sveta says again, her voice sad. “It’s Alexei.”

His first thought, funnily enough, is not the obvious. It’s actually that Alexei might be harassing her for money, might have tried to hurt her, might have somehow managed to shame him in some new, creative way he somehow hasn’t tried before.

“What did he do?” he says, already feeling the irritating tide of anger begin to creep up on him. This upsets him. He hasn’t had to feel that in such a long time, and it sits awkwardly on his body, like a shirt that is too small.

“Oh, no, it’s nothing like that,” Sveta says quietly. “I just – I just thought it would be best if you heard it from me first. Ilyusha…Alexei died. Last night.”

Alexei died.

Wow. Two words. Just like that. Ilya processes them like a car engine that won’t start. He doesn’t really know what to say. “Oh.”

“I’m so sorry,” Sveta says again, sounding distressed.

“Why are you sorry?” he says, harsher than he should. “You have nothing to be sorry for. He was nothing to me.”

Now it’s Sveta’s turn not to know what to say, if the silence on the other line is any indication. She knows, of course, the details of Ilya and Alexei’s fraught relationship. She knows about the blackmail, the bullying. She’d been there when he’d called Ilya a faggot and Sveta a whore.  But brothers do not typically say this about each other, he supposes. There is a script he is supposed to follow, here.

“How did it happen?” Ilya asks.

Sveta sighs on the other end. “I’m not sure. I can’t really find anything concrete, no one he’s close to is close to me. Papa heard it was a heart attack.”

A heart attack.  Ilya blinks, resists the urge to scoff. Just like that. Just like that, Alexei is gone forever. A heart attack.

“Okay,” he says, and then he and Sveta spend two minutes on an expensive international call listening to each other breathe.

“Are you okay?” she finally says.

“I told you he means nothing to me,” Ilya says. “Meant nothing to me. Now.” He can feel a headache coming. “Fuck. What the fuck.”

“It’s crazy, isn’t it,” she says.

“A heart attack. Fuck.”

He should probably ask about the funeral, or what to do with his remains or something. Anything. He should bring out the list of Things To Do he’d had when his father had died. He just can’t scoop it out of himself. He feels strangely disembodied, but that tight-shirt feeling is still there, and it irritates him.

“I-” Again, Sveta seems to be at a loss for words. It’s so unlike her, but Ilya can empathize. It’s a unique situation. “If there’s anything here you want me to take care of , I will do it for you, okay? Don’t hesitate to ask.”

“Thank you,” he says, then coughs. “Thank you for calling me, Sveta. You’re right. I would have wanted to hear it from you.”

Sveta, at least, would not judge him for his broken, ugly past, for his broken, ugly family. He needs to call Galina; he allows himself a small pulse of muted pride that he has thought to do this.

“Ilya, I don’t want you to be alone right now,” she says. “Where is Shane?”

“Inside.” With his lovely, perfect family, he thinks, then berates himself for. They are his family now. Alexei isn’t. This has been the way of things for years. He needs to keep track of this. “Don’t worry about me. I am fine.”

A long pause, again. “Okay. Okay.” She hesitates again. “I will call again to check in, okay?”

Wow. She’s really worried about him. He doesn’t know why. Maybe it’s just one of those things you do, when your friend’s brother dies. He’s not crying or screaming or wailing. He’s handling this quite well. Alexei meant nothing to him. Alexei meant nothing to him.

“Okay.”

“Papa is giving you his condolences. He hopes you are doing well in Canada.”

“Thank him for me, then. I will call him soon.”

“That would be nice. He would like that,” Sveta says, so gently she sounds like another person. He hears a doorbell ring, on her end. “I have to go now. Goodbye, Ilyusha. Take good care of yourself.”

“You too. Goodbye.” And with that, Sveta leaves Ilya alone to his thoughts.

Alexei is dead.

Good riddance, he thinks. Or maybe feels obligated to think. He’s not sure.  It feels like a natural thing to think about a brother who hit you and insulted you and extorted you for most of your short, miserable time together. He’s thought about it before, Alexei dying. The life he lived had not been conductive to longevity.

Heart attack, he thinks next. Wow.

I am the last Rozanov, he thinks last, and that is an emotion he can parse, finally: closure. Like setting the last piece down in a puzzle. He has long decided that any children he may have, in the future, will be Hollanders. If they’re in the cards at all.

He needs a cigarette, and he needs it badly. Shane would not mind, just this once. He stands there under the restaurant awning, smoking. Even though he hasn’t smoked in a year, he finds the box in his coat pocket, with two cigarettes left.

Unbidden, a memory arises. His first cigarette. That had been with Alexei. He’d been fourteen, Alexei nineteen. Ilya had asked Alexei for one and Alexei had acquiesced in a moment of rare generosity. They’d stood in their balcony, watching to make sure their father did not see. Afterwards, when they weren’t at each other’s throats, they bummed cigs off of each other and smoked silently, side by side, in that same balcony. Alexei, predictably, did most of the bumming.

It is a very specific sort of memory, and Ilya does not want it. He does not want to remember those days. He dedicates the cigarette to Alexei in hopes that it will carry the memory away, just like the smoke that dissipates now in the chilly night air.

It’s only after the first puff escapes his lips that Ilya remembers Alexei’s daughter.

He had last seen her when she was a toddler, at his father’s funeral. It had been fleeting. She’d been fussing a lot, and he remembers Alexei hissing at his wife to take her away. Alexei had never been keen to get her to meet him, saying this and that about Ilya’s reputation. Bold talk, from him. Ilya had refrained from expressing a desire to know her more; that was a rookie mistake with Alexei. He tended to take advantage of these things. Better for both of them to be unattached.

How old would she be, by now? Ilya wracks his mind to remember. Eight or nine, he thinks. Old enough to be a person, with a personality. Very young, to lose a parent, although Alexei was hardly the paternal type.

Well. She has her mother. That’s more than he had, at any rate. She will hurt for a while and then she will be fine.

Ilya knows even less about Alexei’s wife, although his opinion of anyone who would willingly marry Alexei Rozanov is unapologetically low. The number of times he has met her can be counted on one hand, all of them with Alexei present. She didn’t talk much. Shy, maybe. More likely, she just didn’t like him. Her name is…Mariya. Mariya, yes. And the child’s name? Ilya feels some level of guilt at the struggle, for a few moments, to remember that, too.

Natalya? No. Daria. Daria, that was it. 

Once upon a time he used to send a suitcase full of gifts for her with Svetlana every summer. He’d stopped, that year in Ottawa when his depression had gotten very bad. Nobody had seemed perturbed by this, and it just slipped from his mind. No doubt Daria has no idea who he is. Or if she does, then Alexei has made sure she wants nothing to do with him.

She is taken care of. There is the trust. He has trouble imagining Alexei as much of a breadwinner, so he assumes the mother has been making things work and will continue to make things work in his absence. Probably better off now, actually. He will ask Sveta about her later. When he feels less like a burning cigarette.

His phone buzzes as he is halfway through his first cigarette and considering the second.

Moya Lyubov: Your food is getting cold

Moya Lyubov: Are you okay? You’ve been out there for a while.

Ilya abruptly remembers that he is supposed to be celebrating someone’s birthday today. It feels like a thousand years ago. He opens his mouth, closes it, opens it again. He should move on. He should say oh, just Sveta and move on, and then later, at home, he’ll tell Shane in the safety of their bedroom. In passing, casually. He does not need to mourn this. Alexei is not a person that needs to be mourned.

Ilya: Alexei died.

The reply is instant.

Moya Lyubov: Alexei? Your brother Alexei?

Ilya: Yes

Moya Lyubov: Where are you? I’m coming

Ilya: I will be back soon. Don’t fuss. I just needed a cigarette

He really doesn’t want to be in a restaurant right now, actually, or to talk to anyone. He doesn’t know why he feels it so imperative to instruct Shane not to fuss over this. The tight-shirt feeling intensifies. But he does not want this to be a thing. He does not want to make things big.

He does not want comfort because he does not need it, not over this. Not over Alexei.

Moya Lyubov: Don’t be ridiculous. Tell me where you are

Moya Lyubov: Ilya where are you

Now Ilya’s ruined David’s birthday.  He sighs, tells Shane where he is. Ten minutes later, Shane is driving them home.

To his credit, he keeps his promise not to fuss. As much as he’s capable of anyway. He hugs him tight, kisses him lightly even though his mouth tastes like cigarettes, but does nothing more. He doesn’t push Ilya to say anything, answers normally when Ilya asks a question or makes a comment. Every once in a while, Ilya will catch him giving him concerned looks out of the corner of his eye, but nothing else. He’d learned very well, from that bad year, about how Ilya reacted to prodding. They’d both learned a lot.

Ilya is frustrated with himself when they get home, because he cannot really bring himself to talk, to eat, to treat this complete non-event with the indifference it deserves. The numbness that had initially filled him when he’d gotten the news has now melted into something bruising and exhausting, deep in his chest – similar to that unpleasant feeling when an ice pack finally heats up, and the sprain begins to throb. He refuses to engage with memories. He knows that slippery slope well. He silently goes upstairs, takes a shower. Shane has a simple plate of something ready for him to eat when he emerges, since he didn’t get to eat what he’d ordered at the restaurant. He’s not hungry, but eats quickly, wanting to complete the task for the sake of completing it.

He keeps waiting for Shane to bring it up, to want to talk about it. No matter how committed he is to the promise of not hovering, he always cracks in the end. But it does not come. Shane moves around him quietly and efficiently. They get into bed. Ilya pretends to scroll on his phone, and Shane does the same. Ilya can see him typing. He knows it must be Svetlana. 

“I’ll let Coach know you need a day off tomorrow,” Shane says quietly. His voice can get so soft sometimes.

“I don’t.” They can’t afford this. Playoffs are around the corner, and he is the captain, and Alexei meant nothing to him. Alexei meant nothing to him.

“Ilya...”

He has no energy to argue. It’s been a long day. He checks his messages; nothing from Yuna or David, whom they’d abandoned at the restaurant, which means Shane told them to leave Ilya alone, which means Shane knows him very well, which means he is probably right and tomorrow will be a bad day, a day where he’ll be tired, very tired, and he will think of his mother a lot. The idea of Alexei being the cause of this is infuriating. He shuts the phone off and turns over on his side, away from Shane. “Okay.”

“I-” then nothing. “Alright.” He, too, understands concessions now. They’ve come a long way from the bad year. Ilya feels the bed shift next to him, feels the warmth as Shane leans across his body to kiss him, right below his ear. “I love you.” Ilya knows he means it.

“I love you too,” Ilya says, and he means it, he means it every time, even if he can’t hold him until they fall asleep like they do every night, not tonight. Shane turns the lights off, lies down next to him. For a while, Ilya is sure he will fall asleep, and then tomorrow this news will weigh less; but the night goes by and his mind is still turning over, and over, and over. It is like his body has forgotten how to fall asleep. He was like this when his father died, too. But it’s different, right now. It’s different.

He doesn’t know if he was like this when his mother died. Those days blur into one indistinct gray water stain of misery in his mind, and he has no desire to recall them.

He can’t sleep. And he doesn’t feel good.

I am the only one left, he thinks, another version of an earlier thought. He shifts uncomfortably, screws his eyes shut. He turns over. He turns over again. He can’t get comfortable.

“Ilya?” Shane’s voice is more alert than he expects. It is as gentle as it always has been, since that night he’d held Ilya as he cried, all those years ago. Maybe Ilya is not the only one with sleeping problems. Maybe he should have expected this. Shane can’t help but care, no matter how much Ilya tells him not to.

Suddenly, he wants Shane to fuss over him. He knows he has not always been clear about this. He used to be so militant about refusing it, before – so violent in refusing him, so stubborn about a resource he’d been led all his life to believe was finite. Always so violent, when it came to his childhood, when it came to talking about Russia, about his depression. He is difficult when he is sick, too, difficult when he is injured. A bad patient. Since the bad year, Shane has learned his moods well, though, and they’ve improved. These days, when he is sick, he lets Shane bundle him up and feed him a thousand things and wash his hair and kiss his face. He lets Shane coddle him when he wakes up sad and heavy.

Ilya has learned to allow himself this indulgence.  This weakness, his father would call it, but his father is not here. And he and Shane are alone here, in their bedroom, and nobody else is there to see, and it is dark, and they are under the covers, and only Shane will know if Ilya is small, if Ilya is weak, and Shane would never tell, ever.

Wordlessly, Ilya turns over one more time. In the wan moonlight from the window, he can see that Shane has opened his arms for him already. Ilya lies down with his head above his heart, thum-thump, thum-thump, thum-thump. Shane’s arm goes around him, his hand curled protectively over his shoulder. His other hand cards through Ilya’s hair, a steady rhythm against his scalp. One, two, three. He smells clean, like he always does, like eucalyptus soap and laundry detergent. Ilya feels the ghost of lips on the top of his head, then the repeating rhythm of his fingers in his hair. Nothing more, not even when Ilya is sure Shane can feel his tears wetting the fabric of his shirt, can feel him shake with the effort of keeping it quiet, keeping it to himself, even in the dark, even under the covers, even with only Shane to see.

Shane runs his hands through Ilya’s hair for a long time. Ilya feels it in his dreams, when he finally manages to drift off.

Shane works fast and smart, which is a statement that can be applied to most areas of Shane’s life. When Ilya returns to the team two days later, no one brings Alexei up, which is exactly what Ilya wants. Alexei meant nothing to him. He can see the pity in his teammates’ eyes when they look at him, though, even when he tries to act normal.

Not act normal. He is normal. Alexei meant nothing to him.

How fucked-up they must think him, not to mourn his own brother. Poor, fucked-up Ilya. He can’t go to Russia for his funeral for obvious reasons, but he could have at least pretended to give a shit, like decent people with decent families. But they don’t know, do they? They don’t know anything and they shouldn’t know anything. 

He wants to focus on things that actually matter, here.

The Centaurs make it to the playoffs. They are promptly knocked out in the first round. Everyone goes easy on him for it, even the fucking press. Ilya wishes someone would just call him pathetic to his face already.

Alexei would have done it. Ilya will give him that.

Ilya turns 32 somewhere around this time.

The very first time Alexei asked - not asked, Alexei did not ask, he demanded, he always demanded - Ilya to keep a secret, he'd been fifteen and Ilya had been ten.

Even at fifteen years old, with their mother alive - barely - Alexei had begun to show the signs of curdling like milk. Even at ten years old, Ilya was proving exceptional in every way Alexei wasn't.Their father had begun to funnel their family's already-dwindling money into Ilya's talent on the ice, a fact he reminded Ilya and Irina and even Alexei of near-constantly. In those days, hockey practice, which took place right after school, always ended well after the sun went down. During the winter, Ilya could sometimes go an entire week without seeing the sun once. In one of her few true instances of standing up to Grigori, Irina had insisted that Ilya was never to go home alone in the dark after hockey practice, even though Ilya had been perfectly capable of going home by himself.

She'd always been protective of him, had always been partial to coddling him. She'd hated anything that upset him, anything that annoyed him. She couldn't bear to see him cry, even when he deserved it. She cut his hair herself because she couldn't fathom a stranger touching her Ilyusha's curls.

(After she died, Ilya's hair had grown long and wild for a month or so before Grigori dragged him to his barber and chopped it all off, like a butcher trimming excess fat. Be a man, he had barked with extreme disdain, when Ilya had protested his ugly new buzzcut.)

Anyway, Irina had an ironclad rule that Ilya never went home alone, but she also had a house to run and a demanding husband to appease and a debilitating mental condition on top of that, so she couldn't always take him home herself. Alexei's main and only chore, throughout his life, became this: to take Ilya home from practice every day. He bitched and moaned about it constantly, but Irina asked, so he did it, as was the way of things. To his credit - and maybe as a testament to some form of loyalty to their mother - Alexei never once failed his task. Every day, he was there, ready to drag Ilya onto the Metro. It was the most trustworthy he had ever been about anything, a behavior he never replicated again.

(After she died, he stopped showing up. But no matter - Ilya was old enough to ride the Metro alone by then.)

One day, practice had ended early because the coach had received news that his wife had gone into early labor. As the man had hurried away from the rink, Ilya and the other boys roughhoused on the ice for a bit before scampering outside to go home. Sure enough, Alexei had been waiting outside of the building, but he hadn't expected to see Ilya so soon, clearly. In his fingers was a lit cigarette. 

Ilya had stared, astounded and impressed by Alexei's daring. The stakes were high no matter which parent caught him: it warranted a beating by Grigori, which was bad, or it warranted Irina's disappointment, which was worse. Alexei had frozen, faced with the reality of being caught by his ten year old brother, who competed for their parents' approval the same way he competed for medals and trophies and pucks. 

"Don't tell," was all Alexei said, a warning in his tone. Ilya had nodded, awed. In those days, Alexei had still been capable of awing him. He and Alexei had never been close before, and only grew more distant as Alexei became a progressively angrier teenager. Ilya, being a hockey prodigy and a showoff and a generally aggravating child, did not exactly make things easier. But Ilya was also desperate to be a good younger brother, to be admitted into the realm of cool that only older brothers are capable of admitting one to. So he'd kept his word. Over time, the secret grew to mean that Alexei would meet his friends to smoke, sometimes, on the way home, and Ilya would be permitted to be within a few feet of them. Sometimes Alexei's friends voiced concerns; Alexei assured them that Ilya could keep a secret, and Ilya had put that achievement up with all of the medals and trophies that he knew made his brother hate him. Ilya was a generational prodigy, Ilya was good enough to go pro when he's older, Ilya was going to go to the Olympics one day, and Ilya could keep his brother's secret.

Svetlana extends her stay in Russia. She says it’s for her father, but Ilya is not sure about that. She asks Ilya to complete a few tasks for her work in Boston, since she can’t be there. Shane tags along, and Ilya shows him all of his favorite places. Ilya successfully convinces Shane to have cannolis with him on the North End, and Shane pretends he doesn’t love them. They eat on a bench on the wharf and people-watch. The afternoon smells like vanilla and fried dough, and it sounds like Shane’s laughter, because Ilya pretends he is even more afraid of seagulls than he is of loons. Ilya spends the afternoon battling birds and kissing powdered sugar off of Shane's lips.

They go out for drinks with Marleau and Connors, who shows them the photos of his newborn son, his second. There is a photo where Connors’ elder son shakily holds the younger son – clearly only a few days old - in his lap. A hand, belonging to Connors’ wife, is visible, supporting the baby’s neck from outside of the frame. It’s an adorable picture. Ilya says so. Connors is pleased and proud. Under the table, Shane squeezes his hand.

Svetlana delays her return by another month. She’s secretive about it. Shane and Ilya speculate on whether she’s met someone. By now, Ilya feels back to normal, inside and out. He’s been over it with Galina. It feels good.

It’s another month before Svetlana arrives. Not in Boston. In Ottawa. She declines Ilya’s offer to pick her up from the airport.

“Hey,” she calls him from her American number, now. “How are you?”

“Doing well,” he says. “Sveta, why don’t you want us to pick you up?”

“I already had something arranged,” she says dismissively. Her voice is uncharacteristically tense. “Is, ah, is Shane there?”

They’re in the car, between errands. Shane shoots him a confused look from his spot in the passenger’s seat.

“Yes, you are on speaker,” Ilya says in English now.

“Good. Good, he should hear this,” she says hurriedly. From how it sounds, she’s talking a walk outside. “Um. Shit, this is so strange. I don’t know how to begin this.”

“Are you alright, Svetlana?” Shane asks, sounding genuinely concerned. “You sound a little wound up.”

Svetlana laughs shakily at that. “Ah, yes. Yes, I ‘m okay. I’m okay.” She sighs, big and deep. “I did something crazy. I…I need you not to be angry. I wouldn’t have done it this way unless I had to.”

“What is going on?” Ilya gets a bad feeling in his chest.

“You know Mari. Mariya. Alexei’s wife. Or, um, widow.”

Again, later, Ilya would not be proud of his first thought, which is:

Alexei’s wife is more of the same. She has managed, somehow, to scam Svetlana into giving her everything she owns, and Svetlana has now lost everything she has in Boston, and she’s come to lick her wounds in Ottawa.

“What happened?”

“She’s here. In Ottawa. She and Dushka.” Svetlana coughs. “Daria, I mean. Your niece.”

“What.” Ilya doesn’t even recognize the sound of his own voice. “What the fuck are they doing in Ottawa, Svetlana?”

“I brought them here.” She inhales, exhales, quickly, before Ilya can even begin to respond to that. “Yes. That is why I stayed later in Russia. I’m sorry, Ilyusha, it had to happen this way. It was a whole thing with the visa and I promise I would have said but—”

Ilya is speaking now, disbelieving that Svetlana would do this, just completely taken aback, angry and loud. “I don’t understand why you would do this, I can’t believe you would go behind my back like this, what are you even doing, why are they—” Their voices climb louder and louder as they start shouting over each other.

“Okay, okay, pause!” Shane’s voice rings out in the car, over both of them. He lays a warning hand on Ilya’s forearm. “Pause. Let’s take this one step at a time. Svetlana, why did you bring them to Ottawa?”

“They need to see Ilya very urgently.”

“This could not have been a phone call?” Ilya can’t stop himself from demanding harshly.

“It had to be in person.”

Here we fucking go, Ilya thinks. “What is it she wants. I will give it to her. I do not understand why she has to come to fucking Canada for it. And to involve you, and to bring Daria-”

“Listen for one—”

“You have no idea what you just did, I thought you understood, we’ve been here before you know this—” Ilya’s voice is getting higher again and Shane is opening his mouth to interrupt again.

“This is a conversation Mariya needs to have with you!” Svetlana says sharply, silencing them both. “What, you think I’m an idiot, Ilya? You think I’m just doing these types of things for no fucking reason? You think I’m enjoying this, that I wanted this? Slow down for one fucking second!” She takes a long, shaky breath. “I would not randomly go play some cruel prank on you. There are reasons. Who do you think I am?”

There is palpable hurt in her voice, and Ilya backs down, but inside, he is simmering. Shane’s hand has moved to Ilya’s shoulder, squeezing. Ilya takes a deep breath, then another.

“What is it, then,” he grits out.

“Mari and Daria are not doing well,” Svetlana says. “In Moscow, it was getting dire. She found me, I don’t even know how, she said she needed to meet you. Her situation was so desperate, Ilya. I couldn’t turn her away.”

“What do you mean, the situation was desperate?”

“Alexei fucked everything up for them.” She doesn’t seem to plan on elaborating.

“Sveta, it would be great if you explained with a bit more detail,” Shane says patiently, clearly noting the shade of red Ilya’s face has become.

“I…” Svetlana sighs. “Ilya, you really need to just talk to them. This isn’t something I should be doing on the phone.”

“Oh, so she wants to meet me now?” Ilya can’t keep the resentment out of his voice. More of Alexei’s shit, even after he’s fucking gone.

“Yes. That would be best. And she wants Daria to meet you.”

Low. So low, to use her daughter like this. It’s what Alexei would have done to get Ilya’s attention, if Ilya hadn’t completely cut him off after their father’s funeral. My daughter, what am I supposed to feed my daughter while you fuck whores in America, he used to spit at him over the phone. The memory drenches Ilya like hot oil.

“Make sure she knows about Shane and me.” Ilya will not set himself up for that shit all over again. He would rather die than set Shane up for it too.

“Yes, of course. It’s not a…thing, for her.” Doubtful. Whatever.

And Ilya is furious at himself, at his answer, because he knows it, even as he tells Svetlana he needs to think about it, even after he hangs up. He pulls over into a random parking lot, and stares ahead, and breathes, long and slow. He’s fuming at himself, at Svetlana, at everyone. Ilya just doesn’t fucking learn.

“Talk to me,” Shane says.

“I shouldn’t fucking entertain this. We’re being set up. I know it.” Ilya drags the words out of himself for no other reason than that he and Shane made promises before and Ilya is keeping them, trying so hard to keep them, trying so hard to prove he is different from that same stupid idiot he was not so long ago. He knows he’s failing.

“I don’t think that’s necessarily true,” Shane says carefully. His hand is a steady, grounding pressure on his back now, rubbing back and forth in a rhythmic circle.

“She called her Dushka. She knows her well.” Ilya is still reeling at the fact that they are here, in Ottawa, not in Moscow, that far-off bubble of misery, where he’s always been used to them belonging. “She was hiding this for months.”

“She had to have a reason, Ilya,” Shane insists. “Come on. Svetlana loves you so much. She’d never hurt you, not on purpose.”

Ilya knows. He knows, that’s the worst part. Sveta knows him so well, knows how much this must be killing him. And so, Ilya knows what he will do. Regrets it, but he already knows, and he hates himself for it. But he turns to Shane anyway. “What do you think I should do?”

Shane looks vaguely uncomfortable. “Listen. The ball is in your court either way, I’m here for whatever you–”

“No. I need your honest opinion,” Ilya says, turning back to staring ahead. “What would you do in my place?”

“I…” Shane’s voice trails off. Ilya can hear the cogs turning in his head. “I’d hear them out, at least once. They’ve come all this way, and…” he meets Ilya’s eyes in the rearview mirror. “…you obviously know better what to expect, but, I mean…my point is, the difference is whatever happens this time, you won’t be alone. That’s not happening, ever again.” The hand that had been rubbing Ilya’s back goes to gently pry Ilya’s fingers from their grip on the gear shift. Shane interlaces their fingers instead. “We’d just listen. That’s all we need to do, and then you can decide on your own terms.” He brings the hand up so he can kiss it, light, like butterfly wings. “What are you thinking?”

“I’m thinking…” Ilya begins, then sighs. “You know what I’m thinking, don’t you.”

Shane’s smile is small and fond. “I think I do, yeah.” The smile fades. “I’m so sorry about this, Ilya. All of this. I wish I could make it better.”

“You already are,” Ilya says quietly.

He does not say he couldn’t do this without Shane, because he could, he knows. He’s done worse, before – he knows, theoretically, that he is capable of it, even if the thought of doing it now, after everything, makes him feel like he is being asked to carry every weight in the world. But life would feel so much colder and crueler without him.

His eyes are on their hands, interlaced on the console. Wedding rings touching.

A thousand years ago, the last time Ilya had been in Russia, he'd found himself thinking of Shane all the time. Often in sexual ways, yes, in the dead of night - his sighs, his moans, the arch of his back, the taste of his skin. Ilya was only human, after all. Thinking of Shane in this way was safe, and permitted, and kept him warm and distracted in the long, cold hours he spent alone in a bed he hated. Scarily, however, and more frequently, he couldn't stop craving him in other ways. As he'd sat there across from Alexei at the funeral dinner, feeling like his shirt collar was going to choke him, he'd imagined that Shane was sitting next to him, that Shane was holding his hand, that his shoulder was pressed against Ilya's. After he'd spoken - fought - Alexei for the last time, he'd imagined Shane running his fingers over the bruise his brother had left on his collarbone, had wished he could feel his lips on his forehead. Alone in his dusty, moth-eaten childhood bedroom, he'd paced back and forth, pretended he was telling Shane stupid jokes, winning silly arguments, answering his questions about Russian culture and Ilya's childhood. He'd imagined his quiet laughter and his sweet smiles and the molten quality his eyes took on when he was concerned or curious. Shane would just keep asking one question after the other, in that insistent, blunt way of his, but in the dream-land, Ilya would not fear the answers. He would take him by the hand and show him: this is where I learned to skate, this is my elementary school, this is where I ate pryaniki, this is where I hid after my father hit me, this is where my mama died. Dream-Ilya would murmur more variations of that speech that Real-Ilya had mumbled over the phone, about how he loved him and he missed him and couldn't stop thinking about him and how he wished he was here. In Real-Ilya's troubled, exhausted mind, Dream-Shane understood his Russian, understood the depth of how much Ilya's heart was weak for him, did not shy away from how malformed and revolting Ilya's roots were. He would wrap himself around Dream-Ilya, right there in the cold, mildewy bedroom, and lay his head on Dream-Ilya's chest and kiss him, kiss him, kiss him. It was the only time Ilya had ever fantasized about Shane in the home he'd lived in as a child. It was addicting, back then, this recurring fantasy of having someone, anyone, in his miserable, lonely corner. During one of these desperate, needy daydreams, he'd been startled and embarrassed to discover a stupid smile on his own face. And then he'd felt furious at himself, colder and more alone than ever before. 

But Shane is right. He is not the same person he was when his father had been deteriorating and dying, when Ilya had been backed into a corner, when he’d had to bury him practically alone. He is no longer the person that goes back to a cold, empty bed every night; his dreams of Shane, sought for desperate comfort, do not have to stay dreams any longer. Shane will be there with him, even if it’s just to hold his hand.

“This must seem so messy to you,” he voices out loud, just in case. “My family. It must be so ugly and messy to you.”

“Our family,” Shane corrects him firmly. There’s a gentle scolding there. Ilya reads it right, for once.

Usually, when she visits, Svetlana stays at Ilya and Shane’s. For this trip, however, she is staying with Mari and Daria, and so, they are in a hotel in the city center.  Ilya calls Sveta back, and, in a tense few minutes, they work out the details of the meeting. They will come by the next day, for lunch. The meeting will be at Shane and Ilya’s house, to make sure their privacy is not invaded by the press or insensitive fans. Svetlana and Shane will be there. Daria will be there.

Shane, as he always does when he is nervous and plans are suddenly changed, is possessed by the spirit of a mad house cleaner. Ilya mostly follows him around and heeds his various instructions. He’s aware that Shane is giving Ilya all of the easiest tasks. Either he’s babying him because he feels bad for him, or he doesn’t trust Ilya not to half-ass the important stuff. Probably both.

“You do not need to go hundred percent,” Ilya says moodily, wiping down countertops. “We do not need to impress anyone.”

Shane shrugs. “You’re meeting your niece. You need to make a good impression on her.”

“I don’t think Daria will care about grout.”

“You can laugh at me later, how about that?” Shane says testily. It occurs to Ilya then that this is the first time Shane has met any of Ilya’s side of the family – however loose the term may be. How funny. Perhaps the closest he’s gotten to it is Svetlana, and that was entirely different. 

But Ilya remembers how nervous the first few months of getting to know Yuna and David had been for himself, so he doesn’t say more.  Yuna and David had been perfectly decent and kind, and Ilya had still been terrified of fucking it up. This, meanwhile, is an entirely different ballpark, especially considering Shane’s pathological obsession with the opinions of others.

He does not tell Shane that first impressions do not matter because this will probably be the only time they ever get to see Mari and Daria. He does not tell Shane that Mari will probably just set up some kind of systematic income situation with him and fuck back off to Russia, that she is probably only barely tolerating his being married to a man because she needs something from him, that they will probably talk for a total of twenty minutes and probably not even end up having lunch. He has always been reluctant to pop Shane’s bubble in this way. It’s one of the things he loves about him, how earnest he is in everything he does.

Let them play family reunion. It is only an afternoon, Ilya thinks.

Shane is nervous but Ilya is restless. He cannot stop bouncing his knee. He cannot stop pacing, then sitting down and brooding, then pacing. He hates that he is always reduced to this, in the end.

Shane has cleaned and arranged everything that is possible to clean. Their house is unnaturally spotless, like the ones in Shane’s interior design magazines. There is nothing to do, so they sit together on the couch. Shane pretends to read. Ilya stares ahead and does nothing at all.

Svetlana texts Shane their ETA, not him. Ilya and Svetlana have not spoken since the awkward, tense phone call in which they arranged this meeting. Being angry at Svetlana and having her be angry at him are two foreign feelings that Ilya decides he hates a lot. But he has other fish to fry right now, so…

“They should be getting here now,” Shane announces.

Before long, Ilya hears the sound of a car pulling into their driveway, distantly hears Svetlana’s voice. Then the doorbell is ringing. Shane and Ilya both go, but it is Shane that steps forward to open the door. Before he does, he squeezes Ilya’s hand.

Svetlana first. She looks immaculate as always, of course, but there is a tension in her posture. Still, she puts on a good show – for whom, Ilya is not sure.  She smiles widely and steps forward, greets Shane with an affectionate hug and a kiss on the cheek. She hugs Ilya, too, and to the outward observer it would be just as warm, but Ilya knows her – it is perfunctory, at best.

Behind her is the woman Ilya recalls from smudges of his memory. Mariya, Alexei’s widow. When Ilya had met her before, she’d always been dressed to the nines, the picture of a perfect Russian wife, stiff and polished like a doll. She looks smaller than he remembers, somehow; he realizes it’s because she has no makeup on.

The second thing he realizes is that she looks exhausted. Bone-tired, in the most essential way – the kind of tired that seeps into your bones and your tissue and makes you look smudgy and indistinct. Ilya is familiar with that kind of tired. Her hair, mouse brown, is pulled away from her face in a neat ponytail; her clothes are decent and clean but not ostentatious like what he’d expect. There is a slight slouch to her posture, and she looks thin and ill. The bags under her eyes are like thumbprint-shaped bruises. She has a tight smile on her face.

And behind her-

“Dushka,” Svetlana says cheerfully in Russian, “this is your dyadya, Ilya. Your papa’s younger brother. And this is his husband, Shane.”

Daria is tall, Ilya realizes. Taller than he expects. Maybe older than he expects; there’s a canniness to her expression. But she is also skinny and awkward, like a newborn foal. A pair of cheap pink headphones with cat ears on the headpiece sit around her neck; there is tape around one section, like it has been broken before. Like her mother’s, her clothes are clean but clearly neither new nor expensive. Her colorful sneakers are scuffed.

The girl resembles Alexei. Maybe it’s the hair, curly and blonde and a little frizzy, or the eyes, light blue, or most likely, the mistrustful expression on her face.

“Hello, Ilya,” Mari says, and the discomfort is painfully clear in her voice. “It’s nice to see you again. You look well.”

“Hello,” Ilya says warily. He can sympathize with her – he supposes the past few months could not have been easy – but he will not let his guard down. Not yet. Alexei had also been good at looking pitiable, until he wasn’t.

Mariya turns to Shane, then, speaking in slow, heavily accented English. “Hello. Thank you to invite us. I am Mariya, and this is my daughter Daria.”

Shane has his press face on; Ilya doesn’t know if it’s a conscious choice. “Hello, Mariya,” he says in his cute, only slightly-less-accented Russian, extending his hand for a handshake. Oh, Shane. “I am glad to meet you.”

 Mari hides her surprise well. Ilya spots it because he knows where to look. She shakes his hand, then gives Daria an unsubtle nudge.

“Hello,” Daria says sullenly, in Russian. Her hands are buried in the front pocket of her hoodie; the material is thin enough for Ilya to see that she has made them into fists. Ilya is grateful that the child, at least, is willing to acknowledge this meeting for what it actually is. If only the grownups would follow suit.

“It is nice to meet you, Daria,” Shane says in the same kind voice he uses for Hayden’s children. Daria does not shake his hand, and Shane gracefully returns it to his side after only a second of it hanging in the air.

“Hello, Daria,” Ilya says. “I met you when you were small, but I am sure you do not remember me.”

“I don’t,” Daria says coldly.

“Daria is not used to…ah, to different…to different time?” Mariya supplies, still in English, looking embarrassed and nervous. Ilya admires her effort, but he has received this exact look of repulsion from the child’s father enough times over his life to recognize exactly what it’s about.

“She means jet lag,” Svetlana says heroically.

“Jet lag, yes, thank you,” Mariya accepts.

“Please come in!” Shane says, full of nervous energy. He is trying so very hard, like he tries at everything. It’s moments like these when he really reminds Ilya of Yuna. “Here, uh, let me take your coats –”

It is an awkward sort of procession to the living room. Shane is achieving levels of small talk that Ilya never even thought he was capable of, asking Svetlana and Mariya about their flight, about what they think of the weather, about what they think of Canada so far. On their way, as Svetlana and Mariya discuss something in hushed voices, Shane momentarily presses his side into Ilya’s.

“Fix your face.” It’s in English.

“What?”

“Your face, Ilya. You’re doing that thing where you’re looking all…scary and Slavic.”

She’s trying to hide it, but it’s obvious that Mariya can’t stop staring at the entryway, at the framed pictures on the walls, at Shane and Ilya’s wedding picture in particular. Ilya is smiling brightly in it, dipping a deliriously happy Shane, clearly about to kiss him. He feels territorial and defensive over it, even though Svetlana said before that Mari isn't that kind of person. But Ilya has been burned before.

He knows that, right this moment, he looks absolutely nothing like he does in the picture. Mari sees that Ilya has caught her looking and her eyes skittishly dart away.

Ilya’s shutting down; Shane can see it in the hardness of his expression. He’s doing that thing he does, closing the shutters, protecting himself from whatever comes next, and Shane gets it, he really does – but Ilya has never exactly grasped how intimidating he can be when he gets like this.

Svetlana looks different, too, impatient with Ilya in a way she never has been before. And Mariya looks plain overwhelmed. Daria is looking around at their house, their things, with the same closed-off expression that Ilya has. She has his hair, too, those unruly gold curls, a few shades lighter than her uncle’s. Maybe Shane is jumping to conclusions, but it endears her to him immediately.

They sit down in the living room; Shane is glad to play the part of host. When he isn’t speaking, however, the silence is awkward, beyond the obligatory, robotic pleasantries. Shane isn’t used to being the one to keep the conversation going, and his voice sounds gratingly chipper to his own ears. He feels like a caricature of Canadian-ness in this room full of unhappy Russians.

Ilya sits in stony, expectant silence. Mariya seems like she is gathering the courage for something. Svetlana sighs, catches Shane’s eye, and nods in Daria’s direction.

Not a topic suitable for kids, then. Okay. Shane can be helpful here.

“Daria,” he says carefully. “Would you like to meet our dog?”

For a second, Daria seems like she wants to refuse. She doesn’t trust him at all, it’s clear. She burrows closer to her mother’s side.

“I think that would be a good idea,” Mariya says gratefully.

“Their dog is very cute, Dushka,” Svetlana adds. “You will love her.”

That does the trick. Reluctantly, Daria gets up, eyes darting anxiously between Ilya and her mother.

Shane leads her away from the dining room, to the kitchen, where he has set Anya up with food and water and toys so she won’t disturb anyone outside. Anya is effusively happy to see him again, and curious about Daria, running up to her and jumping up to put her paws on her legs. Shane’s ready to pull Anya away if she’s being too much, but Daria visibly relaxes, crouching down on the floor and petting her.

“What is her name?” Daria asks in Russian.

“Anya,” Shane supplies. “Cute, isn’t she?”

“Yes, she is,” Daria concedes. The suspicious look in her eyes has faded a lot. They carry on a conversation about Anya for a few minutes, mostly on Shane’s part, as Daria becomes progressively more enamored with her. Shane, in his clumsy Russian, tells her a few funny stories. The last one, about Anya swallowing Shane’s Airpod case, even teases a smile out of her.

“I always wanted a dog,” Daria admits, as Anya crawls into her lap. “My friend Lilia has a dog and I play with him sometimes.” She pauses. “Played with him.” Her expression shutters again. Shane does not know how to interpret this.

“Why don’t you have a dog, then?” he tries.

“My papa said no.” Her expression shutters even more.

“Oh, okay,” Shane said, awkwardly. Shit. Shit shit shit. “Well, you’re welcome to play with Anya whenever you want.”

Daria shrugs. “Okay.” She says it “okey”, the same way Ilya does.

“Do you have any other pets?” he asks.

“No,” Daria says.

“Oh, um…” Shane shuffles his feet. “Well, would you want to take Anya out to the backyard? She’s got more space to play there.”

Daria nods. “Okay.”

She stares unashamedly at their house as they pass through, out to the yard. Anya runs around, totally oblivious to everything going on, darting between the two of them.

“You have a nice house,” Daria says, unprompted.

“Thank you,” Shane says.

“It’s very big. How many people live here?”

“Oh, just me and Ilya. And Anya, of course. But we have guests, sometimes. Like Svetlana.”

“Hmm. Miss Sveta is very beautiful.”

Shane bites back a smile. “Yeah, she is.”

“She is like a princess. And she has a nice house that smells like perfume, and nice things. And she lives all by herself, did you know? I want to be just like her when I am grown up,” Daria announces.

“That’s very reasonable,” Shane agrees.

“You don’t have to stay with me. I’m like Miss Sveta, I can be alone,” Daria says, throwing a toy for Anya to catch. “I bet you would rather go to the grownups. I know you only took me here because they don't want me there.”

“I don’t mind staying here with you,” Shane says, suddenly feeling very sorry for her. “I probably won’t be able to follow the conversation. About difficult things, in Russian. I’m not quite good enough yet to understand.”

“Your Russian is not great, yes,” Daria agrees obliviously. “Miss Sveta says you are Canadian. Canadians speak French, do you speak French?”

“Yes, I took it in school.”

 “Why do you speak Russian, then?”

Shane smiles at her logic. “Well, my husband is Russian. I like to speak to him in his language, like he speaks to me in mine.”

“I see,” she says. “Why did you marry him?”

Shane laughs a little at these nonstop questions. Years of the Pike kids have conditioned him to them, but it’s an entire other sport in Russian. “I married him because I love him, and he loves me. That’s why people get married, no?”

 “Okay.” She doesn’t look at him, crouching down to accept kisses from Anya. “Grownups don’t always get married when they love each other. My friend Lilia’s parents are married and they do not love each other. My parents did not love each other too.”

Christ, okay, Shane says, coughing awkwardly. Daria is around the same age as the Pike twins, but is…decidedly different. “I’m sorry about that.”

Daria smiles at this. “Miss Sveta is right.”

“Right about what?”

“Canadians apologize a lot,” she says, a little mischievously. Shane likes this kid.

“Ilya says that about us too,” he laughs.

Daria stops laughing abruptly. “I never saw two men who married each other before,” she admits, after a bout of silence.

“Uh…” Shane coughs, sort of panicking. So they’re having this conversation now. Um. Okay. “Well, they can, here in Canada. Or two women. If they want.”

“Hm,” Daria says. “So, my dyadya is the man you liked over everyone else?” Her tone is very skeptical of this. “Or did your papa arrange for you to marry him?”

“Definitely not,” Shane says, a little amused, a little concerned at the implications of that. “Ilya and I met because of hockey. We’re both hockey players. We play on the same team, now.”

“Yes,” Daria says. “Miss Sveta says you are very good, that you win lots of trophies and things.”

“I suppose we are good, yes. Do you like hockey?” Shane ventures.

“Not really,” Daria says. “I think it’s boring.” Even though he should probably be horrified at this, Shane smiles then, and laughs to himself. “What?” Daria asks suspiciously.

“Nothing. Ilya calls me boring, too.”

She frowns. “That’s mean.” She seems very set on disliking him.

“He doesn’t mean it in a mean way,” Shane explains, wishing he hadn’t said that. The last thing he wants is to give Ilya’s only niece a bad impression of him. “It’s a joke, between us. He’s actually very kind to me.”

Daria gives him a judgmental, sort of disbelieving look. “Okay, if you say so.”  What a funny little kid. She puts her hands in her pockets again. “Well, I don’t think you’re boring, I think you are nice.”

“Thank you,” Shane says, touched. “I think you’re nice, too.”

She is very earnest, now. “I like watching figure skaters on YouTube. Do you know Evgenia Medvedeva?”

“I’ve heard of her,” Shane says.

“She has very pretty costumes. Do you know Anna Scherbackova?” Daria talks about Evgenia Medvedeva for a while, and Anna Scherbackova, and Adeliia Petrosian.

Shane tells her about his figure skating friends, dredges up what little he knows about the sport. “Do you figure skate, Daria?”

“No. Papa said no,” Daria says simply. “I draw a lot, though. I can show you.”

So they sit together, and Daria brings out her phone – the screen is cracked – where she shows Shane a bunch of blurry pictures of drawings, ballpoint pen on notebook paper, of figure skaters, and animals, and cartoon characters.

“Mama says I am very good,” she says proudly. “And my art teacher at school.”

“They’re right,” Shane says honestly. He injects more enthusiasm into his voice. “Wow, that’s crazy good. You drew that?” He points at an attempt at drawing a celebrity.

Daria preens, just like Ilya does. “I copied it. From the Internet.”

“It’s really good,” Shane says.

Daria scrolls through more drawings, more attempts at sketching buildings and cats, and then she’s just showing him random things on her phone. She shows him blurry selfies she took with her friend Lilia, and she shows him videos of Russian-dubbed cartoons. Shane lets her. He gets the impression that she doesn’t get to do this a lot.

He gets the impression that she is very lonely.

When Shane takes Daria out of the room to see Anya, Ilya feels a childish sort of panic. It’s silly, he knows – pathetic, really, how emotionally reliant he has become on Shane holding his hand through these things. He used to be more self-reliant than this, but getting used to Shane was like a caffeine addiction, and now he can’t go without.

He turns to Mariya, who is anxiously playing with the frayed edge of her sweater. “Thank you for receiving us, Ilya,” she says. “And…for the gifts. For Dushka. Before.”

“It is no trouble,” he says back.

“And…and the apartment, I know it was yours before it was Alexei’s.”

“You really don’t have to keep thanking me for things,” Ilya says uncomfortably. “Is it alright? Enough space for you?” It’s a good apartment, wide and spacious, but Ilya didn’t know if it had been suitable for a family of three. Or two, now. The neighborhood hadn’t been kid-friendly.

Mariya closes her eyes. “Alexei sold it last year.”

Ilya raises his eyebrows. “I see. Why?”

She takes a deep breath. “I know you know he had bad habits.”

“Drugs, yes.” Ilya will not allow Alexei the grace of beating around the bush.

“Gambling too, more recently. It just kept getting worse, his salary did not cover it. The sale of the apartment was enough, for a time.” When Ilya dares to look at her face, it’s red, and so ashamed, and she is staring at the ground, on the verge of tears, and Ilya feels horrible.

He closes his eyes, breathes out his nose, and tries to sand off the edges to his voice. “Alright. You don’t need to say more. How much is the debt?”

 “I – I have documents,” she stammers, rifling in her bag. “To prove it. I- I promise I would not have come to you if I could pay it, but --”

Ilya realizes, now, that she is not like Alexei at all, that asking Ilya for money is deeply humiliating for her. And that he was unfair. She rattles off a number that impresses even him. There’s also a monstrous amount of Mariya’s own credit card debt, from making ends meet, with no help from her husband, no doubt. Her credit score is completely ruined. It is an impossible number for a single mother to ever pay off, but Ilya can easily cover it.

“Consider it done,” he says, declining to look at the documents. “Where have you been staying in Moscow?”

“Sveta has been very kind, after the landlord evicted us. We stayed with her for a bit. I know…I know there is a trust, for Daria, I would have used that, but it is closed. You can open it maybe. I don’t want to ask more of you--”

“No, keep it for her. I can set you up in Moscow. I cannot go there myself, but I know people who can help,” Ilya says. “I can take care of Daria’s expenses. Does she have school fees?” Mariya’s face crumples. Ilya is genuinely distressed now, looking helplessly to Svetlana for assistance. “It is okay, I swear—"

“Thank you very much,” Mariya is genuinely crying now, and Ilya feels like fucking shit. “You are very generous, I am so sorry—”

Svetlana puts an arm around her, and she and Ilya spend a good while trying to convince her that it is okay, that it’s not a problem. Ilya passes her a box of tissues and wonders how long she’s known about these debts, how long she’s been worrying about them. He doesn’t even know if she’s graduated university. He doesn’t know if she’s ever had a job. And he recalls, startled, that she’s younger than he himself is, by a year or something. 

“It’s over, the money problems, they’re done,” he tries to be nice. He tries to smile. “It’s over, you will be okay, Daria will be okay. Fresh start, now.”

“Ah…Ilya, that is not the only thing,” Svetlana takes over, grimacing. “There is a bigger problem. Apparently, Alexei…was not always borrowing from the bank.”

It takes Ilya a moment to understand Svetlana’s meaning, and when he does, he feels genuine fucking disgust.  “You cannot be serious. How bad is it?”

“It’s a scary crowd. They've been insistent.” Ilya can imagine. He had inklings, a long time ago, but he didn’t know Alexei was stupid enough to actually go into serious debt with them.

“Whatever the debt is, I will pay it. They will leave you alone then.”

“I don’t think Alexei’s debt was only financial,” Svetlana says, clearing her throat. “I think…he upset certain people. You know how reckless he was. There were threats…they started interfering too, you know, Mari was getting rejected from every sort of job there was. One of them showed up to the funeral. We don’t have to go over the details. I, ah, I had Papa pull some strings with some friends at the embassy to get visas. It all had to happen very quickly and secretly, it’s why I didn’t tell you.” She gives him a very, very serious look, the most serious she has ever been with him. “I don’t think they should go back to Russia, Ilya.”

It occurs to him, then, that his brother might not have actually died of a heart attack. It becomes clear why they have come all this way, now. Jesus Christ, Alexei.

“I don’t want to be a burden,” Mariya says shakily. “I will support myself, I will support Daria. I just want her to be safe. That is it. I will start over anywhere, really, if you don’t want me here, it’s just that I have highest chance of getting residency in, you know, in a country where there’s a relative—”

“No, of course you will stay here,” Ilya says, waving her away. “It’s fine. It will be good for Daria. Ottawa is good for Daria. The residency situation, I have some experience with it. We’ll figure it out.” He tries to meet her eyes. She won’t.

She is so ashamed. Ilya is so ashamed.

Mariya thanks him profusely, for upwards of twenty minutes. The poor woman is trembling. Ilya doesn’t know what she expected him to do, or how she expected him to react. Ilya doesn’t know, exactly, how Alexei treated her. He feels like a fucking idiot.

He leaves her to be soothed by Svetlana and then disappears into the kitchen to help Shane with lunch. The food is already prepared in advance, so it’s more of a one-man job, but he needs to speak with Shane alone or else he thinks he might explode.

To his surprise, Daria is there, perched at the kitchen island, watching Shane toss the salad and saying something about how she didn’t know fruits could be in salads. The minute Ilya enters, though, she clambers down and runs off, back out to the backyard.

Shane scans him. “Tell me.”

Ilya tells him. At some point they abandon lunch entirely and Ilya just leans against the counter and explains it all. There are a thousand emotions circling in his brain and he doesn’t know where to put them. Shane listens, nodding, the entire time. Ilya can tell he’s a little freaked out about the implications of Alexei’s debt, of the “threats” from Moscow, but he remains patient throughout. Ilya shouldn’t be surprised; Shane, of all people, knows how to prioritize family.

Sometimes, Ilya feels like Shane is this beautiful, pure creature, unsullied by the world, like a bolt of pristine white fabric, and that Ilya is an ugly, dirty…thing, sullying it, ruining it. Not at all in a sexy way. He knows it’s an unhealthy way to think; it’s a disservice to Shane, beyond being a cruel way to think about himself. It will negatively impact their relationship; he and Galina have been over this. But it’s times like these, seeing Shane’s guileless trust in him, and his earnest willingness to help, and his general kind Shane-ness, that makes those thoughts rear their heads.

He is glad, sometimes, that Shane has never met Alexei. He is very glad, now, that he never will.

“Are you okay if I invite them to stay here,” Ilya has to ask. “Until they have their own place.”

Shane shouldn’t have to deal with this. Shane shouldn’t have to host strangers in his home because Ilya’s brother is a piece of shit. Their house has always been a safe space for Shane to be himself, to unwind after socializing all day, doing their incredibly demanding job, and now Ilya is pushing two people he himself barely knows into their space, and –

“Of course,” Shane says, not missing a beat. “We’ll get the guest room ready.”

“You do not mind?”

Shane shrugs. “Well, it’s not my comfort zone, but I’ll manage, I’m not heartless.” He arranges plates and cutlery. “I guess we’re going to have to ditch the cottage this summer, then. Since we’ll be settling them with the residency, and everything.”

Ilya hadn’t even thought about that, and it makes him feel worse. He knows how Shane feels about plans, and changing them. “I—”

“Ilya,” Shane cuts him off, not unkindly. “This is not your fault. I want to help.” He taps him on the shoulder. “Our family, remember?”

“Okay,” Ilya says, and something about that lights a spark of amusement in Shane’s eyes. “What?”

“Nothing,” Shane says mysteriously. Everything is so different now. His brother is dead, his sister-in-law is on the run from Russian loan sharks, his best friend hates him, and Shane, of all people, is being mysterious.

“Hey,” Ilya says, catching him by the elbow as he turns to leave the kitchen with the plates. “I love you.”

Shane smiles, blinking slowly back at him. He leans forward and kisses him, a small one on his nose, a bigger one on his lips, and Ilya can do it, now. He can get through it, if Shane looks at him like that. “I love you too.”

Shane shines brightest when he has a large, messy problem he can sort into neat lines, and charts, and graphs, and shape into a Plan. Shane loves a Plan. It is how he approaches hockey, and how he approaches life. By the next morning, Shane has constructed an elaborate six-month capital-P Plan to get Mariya situated and independent before the start of the next season. Ilya thinks it is good that he takes charge here; he makes everything sound so manageable and neat when he gets like this. Ilya has married a man that makes major, life-changing decisions as efficient and simple as going to the grocery store.

Mariya and Daria move in. It’s not a complicated process; they have four hastily packed suitcases between them and not much else. Svetlana brings them over. Daria insists on sitting next to Shane – she did this yesterday at lunch, too, which is bemusing – but otherwise is quiet as the adults go through The Plan. She doesn’t even protest when it becomes clear that she will spend her entire summer holiday taking English classes.

In fact, the only sign of discord she shows is when she looks at Ilya. She is very attached to her mother, of course. She clearly idolizes Svetlana, whom, endearingly, she insists on calling “Miss Sveta” like she is in a Tolstoy novel. She blatantly adores Shane and makes no effort to hide this; Ilya fully understands the impulse.

But she firmly does not like Ilya. She has made him the scapegoat of her eight-and-a-half year old problems, which, admittedly, are not small. Yesterday, at lunch, Mari had collected herself, but it had been clear that she’d recently cried. Daria had taken one look at her and glared murderously at Ilya for the rest of the meal.

(Great. Ilya is the one who makes mothers cry now.)

After that, Shane takes Mari and Daria to show them the house, their room. This leaves Ilya and Svetlana alone in the living room. The silence is loud; they have not had an argument like this since the eighth grade.

Svetlana looks at her phone for a bit. Ilya studies the pictures on the wall. Anya comes running in, demanding attention from Svetlana, which she obliges a bit more half-heartedly than usual.

Ilya opens his mouth to speak. “Sveta—”

She holds up a hand. “I will say this once and only once. You can never, ever yell at me like that again, Ilya.”

Ilya accepts this. “Yes.”

Svetlana looks very gravely at him. “I am serious. You can be upset with me, but you cannot yell. That is not something I will ever accept. Not then, not now, not ever.”

“Of course. I’m very sorry, Sveta. I should have trusted you more.”

Svetlana holds his gaze for another moment, then looks away. “And I shouldn’t have blindsided you. This whole situation was so shocking to me; I can’t imagine how shocking it was to you. It was not fair to expect you to have a perfect reaction. I should have found a better way to let you know, and I’m sorry.”

“You don’t have to –”

“No. I owe you this. I have always had a loving family; I don’t know how it feels to be involved in the problems in yours. I’m sorry, Ilya.”

“I appreciate it,” Ilya says, leaning forward. “What you’ve done is not little. You had no obligation and you went to great lengths, and… I will remember this, always.”

Svetlana shakes her head, her hair swishing back and forth. “Of course I had an obligation. Don’t be silly. And I’m glad I could help, even a little bit.”

“You helped a lot,” Ilya said. “I could never have pulled off what you did, getting them out of Russia so quickly and discreetly. You were very brave.”

Svetlana leans forward, and places her hand over his. “And so are you.”

Ilya turns away, smiling bitterly. “If you think so.”

“I’m serious. Ilya, what is this?”

Ilya shook his head. “Nothing. Don’t concern yourself.”

“There was nothing you could have done, Ilya. Don’t you dare—”

“Sveta, please. Let’s just let this go, now.” He can’t get into this, not now. He offers her a weak smile. “So I am forgiven?”

“Only if I am forgiven,” she says quietly, smiling back.

“Lucky me,” he says, and they hug.

She laughs. “Who would have known that talking to that weird little hockey boy in my class in the sixth grade would lead to me smuggling people out of the country?”

Ilya smiles, remembering. “Your hair was a damn mess, I remember I was thinking it even then.”

“Oh, shut the fuck up,” Svetlana says. “Like yours wasn’t even uglier. God, someone needed to intervene and take the hair gel away.” She snorts a laugh. “Remember when we went and saw Ice Age?”

They’d been…hm. Eleven? Twelve? No, eleven. Ilya’s mother had been alive. The memory twinges at something in his chest. “Mama made Alexei drive us there. And sit in the back of the theater to supervise us.”

Svetlana leans her head against his shoulder. “Mm. And he bought us a popcorn to share.”

“Stingy bastard.” They laugh again, but it’s muted.

Ilya remembers, then, that the only reason it had been Alexei to drive them and not Irina was because they’d been keeping it a secret from their father. Because Ilya had to skip practice to go, Irina couldn’t give them extra money to get snacks, because that would have meant asking Grigori, and then he would have found them out and the house would have become unbearable. Alexei had gotten them the popcorn from his own allowance. He’d taken a paltry handful for himself and let Ilya and Sveta have the rest.

By then, Alexei and Ilya's secret had grown. Ilya knew, by now, that tobacco was not the only substance Alexei met his friends for. Sometimes it was alcohol, and Ilya would help Alexei stumble home, up the stairs so no one would see. Sometimes it was other things. They would say Ilya's practice ran late, to make up for the long hours wasted away waiting for Alexei to become presentable. Their father was rarely home long enough to give a shit. Their mother had been getting worse, then - neither of them had imagined how much - and so it had been easy to fool her, too. 

Was the popcorn a bribe? Or was it simple kindness? (What would he need a bribe for? Ilya had never faltered in keeping the secret, not once.)

Ilya had wondered it at eleven, at twelve, at thirteen fourteen fifteen sixteen. He'd wondered it the day he'd been drafted for Boston and Alexei hadn't even bothered to text him a congratulations. He'd wondered it the first time he'd paid for the coke, and the second, and the third. It was never called "paying for the coke". It was called "Otets' medication" or "The car broke down again" or just "Send the fucking money, asshole, it's not like you need it". He'd wondered it the day their father died. He wondered it still.

The memory gets caught in his throat. No, no, no, he doesn’t want to remember this. Why did Alexei have to do those things, why did those things have to remain stuck in Ilya’s mind?

He abused his wife financially, Ilya reminds himself. Probably in other ways too. He landed every relative he had in depths of shit so deep it actually endangered their safety. He extorted you for drug money and barely took care of your ailing father and made you feel like a shitbag for it. He called you slurs and degraded you and beat you and manipulated you. Do not remember him fondly. A popcorn does not pay for a lifetime of misery.

You are so fucking pathetic, Ilya.

Svetlana reads the silence and squeezes his hand. She’d said she doesn’t understand everything. But she does understand some things.

Life begins to take on a new, progressively smoother rhythm, because of Shane’s Plan. Svetlana stays for a couple more days to get them situated, then she goes back to Boston. Shane and Ilya are unused to having people in their space for so long, but Mari and Daria are agreeable housemates. It’s not perfect, still. There’s been some awkward moments, some growing pains. But it works.

Mari is monstrously busy, constantly. It is exhausting just to watch her. She, too, takes English classes; she is also constantly completing one errand or other for the residency, or to get job qualifications, or to get a driver’s license, or to sort out Alexei’s debt. There is a notable week when she and Ilya drive around scoping out schools for Daria. Between that and the Irina Foundation camps, which start up around this time, it’s very busy in their house indeed.

Every day, one of them must take Daria to her English lessons. Daria comes and goes without complaint; this is impressive, really, for an eight-year-old. Ironically enough, despite the number of Russians in his personal life increasing exponentially, Ilya has never spoken less Russian in his life. Mariya has implemented a strict “no Russian” rule to make sure Daria learns English as quickly as possible before next fall. This comes after she asks Ilya how he learned English, and he tells her he learned because he had no choice but to speak to everyone in English all the time. This role in the creation of Mariya’s rule does not gain him any points in Daria’s favor.

Most of the time, his niece can be found at the dining room table, doing English homework. If not that, then drawing with a new sketchbook and art supplies procured for her in this new era of financial stability. If not that, then playing with Anya. She follows Shane around most of all, always delighted in his company, asking him five billion trillion questions about every damn thing like he knows everything there is to know in the world. She is not like other children Ilya knows. She does not want to run around and play hide-and-seek and make plastic food. Most of the time, she is content to sit and draw and talk while she does it. It’s good for her English – Ilya’s fluent, but he still gets things wrong sometimes – and it’s cute, really, how much she likes Shane, chattering to him and constantly showing him things on her phone. Shane is patient about it, even though Ilya knows it must wear on him sometimes.

(Not to worry. If Shane ever needs a break from Daria, all Ilya needs to do is show up. Like magic, she instantly makes herself scarce every time.)

In a rare moment of levity, Mariya once comments at dinnertime that Daria takes after her dyadya, liking Shane so much. Everyone finds this funny but Daria.

“I do not,” she says firmly, scowling first at Ilya, then at her plate.

“Daria Rozanova!” Mari scolds. “You are being rude!”

Daria obstinately refuses to respond. The way she’s gripping her fork makes it look like she intends to stab Ilya with it. Nobody really knows what to say. Shane shoots Ilya the increasingly common apologetic look he gives him whenever Daria makes her loathing particularly apparent.

Mari is mortified. Ilya, as usual, gives no reaction, and deftly changes the subject. He is fine. A little girl’s vendetta is not the end of the world.

Ilya is not sure what he did to inspire such hatred in her. Maybe she is jealous; maybe she wants Shane all to herself. She’s gonna have to get in line, then. Either way, Ilya is not about to compete over his husband with a child; that’s ridiculous. He gives them plenty of space to hang out, and he is glad for it. It's sweet, and Daria needs a friend.

What is more likely is that she heard Alexei badmouthing him one too many times before he died. He can imagine it; Alexei blaming their poverty, their situation, all on his selfish, cocky hockey player brother with his sports cars and his homosexual husband and his deviant Western ways. The damage to her mental image of Ilya has long been done, no doubt. Nothing to be done about that.

What is Ilya supposed to say? Sorry, kid, you were destitute and you had to leave your home and your friends and everything you knew because your dad was a fucking good-for-nothing bum? Absolutely not. If Ilya somehow being the villain in Daria’s mental narrative is how she gets by these days, then so be it, he supposes.

Mari intervenes often, anyway. She drags Daria away, whispering about how Shane misses Ilya now, and they want to be by themselves now, and, and, and. It’s a kind gesture. Ilya does not envy Mari's position. In fact, his respect for her has grown a lot over the past few months. It is ridiculously brave of her, to leave the only country she has ever known, to potentially debase herself by asking her estranged brother-in-law for money, to put herself in such a massively exhausting and humiliating position for her daughter's sake. She is a simple woman, really – as Ilya had long suspected, she’d barely finished her three-year degree before the wedding. She had married Alexei shortly after her twenty-first birthday.

Or been married to Alexei, really. Like many cases in their social circle in Moscow, Mari’s father and Alexei’s father had been old colleagues that had decided that their children were suitable partners for each other, and that had been that. It was how Ilya’s own parents had been matched. No doubt Mari’s family had thought they were doing her a favor, marrying her to a young man instead of someone more than fifteen years her senior like Ilya’s poor mother had had to endure. More likely, really, is that they hadn’t given a shit.

Between the lines, Ilya understands that his father had done this in hopes of putting a leash on Alexei’s expensive and embarrassing habits. By then, the cat had been out of the bag, through no fault of Ilya's - he'd always kept the secret, even when he fucking hated him. Ilya’s never understood his father, including the idea that inflicting Alexei on some unsuspecting girl was going to yield productive results. Mari hadn’t exactly refused, but then again, she’d been raised to expect such a match for her entire life. She’d been told she was going to marry a young police officer from a respectable and presumably wealthy (ha!) family. Nobody had informed her of what she was getting into.

Divorce, of course, had been out of the question. Who gave a fuck about Mari? There were reputations at stake here.

Ilya had not been present for all of this. In fact, Ilya had not even been at the wedding. Ilya had been getting drafted, terrorizing nightclubs across North America, and fooling around – well, a bit more than fooling around -- with a freckled Canadian hockey prodigy in various hotel rooms. Unbeknownst to everyone, including himself, he had been meeting his future life partner, too.

Unsettlingly, Mari’s story aligns with that of Ilya’s mother. He tries not to see the parallels, but they’re there. Mari is very different from Irina. She is short where she had been tall, her features round and girlish when Irina’s had been angular and sharp. Mariya has a sort of practical frugality when it comes to her appearance, a result of having to scrape for pennies, whereas Irina had loved luxury, never a hair out of place, always smelling like expensive perfume. But they are alike enough in the ways that matter, and that scares him.

He doesn’t really know what to do about it. He and Mari get along well, on a practical level; they have a common goal and they are very earnest in working together towards achieving it. But they don’t sit around reminiscing about old times in Russia. Ilya wouldn’t call her his friend, and he doubts she would do so for him. But she has been through a lot, and he can’t just…stand by. Not again. She is busy now, but once the dust settles, the darkness will creep in. Ilya knows this all too well. The idea of it is unbearable. His family has already ruined this poor woman's life. He has already failed her in so many ways.

He gets his chance eventually, when David and Yuna had invite them all to dinner. They’d been very kind throughout all of this; David had even gotten a friend of his to help with Mari’s residency permit. Predictably, Daria had wasted no time at all in liking and befriending them, while remaining steadfast in her enduring hatred of Ilya. It’s like she’s doing it to spite him. She is now learning the rules of Yahtzee, with great seriousness. Overall, it’s going well.

Ilya excuses himself to smoke. Shane gives him a disapproving look, but does not comment. He’s been very gracious, not once commenting on Ilya’s recent return to cigarettes. Ilya will find it in himself to quit again eventually, to put him at ease, until another traumatic life-changing event sends him running back to them once more.

He’s been out on the porch for a few minutes when Mari joins him. She is on the phone, speaking in broken English, writing things down in the little notebook she carries around everywhere now. P – p for pen? Da- yes. Yes, Thursday at 8, thank you.

She hangs up. Ilya doesn’t ask, but she tells him anyway.

“Job interview,” she says. “Nursery school teacher position. At the Russian Cultural Center.”

“The one near Carleton Square?”

“Yes.”

Ilya nods. “That should be nice.”

“Yes. Hopefully. If I get it, then I can look for places nearby. To live. It’s near a good school, too, for Dushka.”

“There is no rush, you know. You can make sure you are settled first. Shane and I do not mind having you.”

“No, no. You are so busy, there is the hockey season coming up, you are a young couple besides. We should not impose—”

“You’re younger than us both,” Ilya laughs. Never mind that he has loved Shane, in some capacity, since he was seventeen years old. “Young couple”. Mari is funny sometimes.

“Still,” she insists. “It’s not proper.”

Whatever. If he wants to convince Mari she is not a burden, they will be here all day. “I am just saying, you can slow down.” He steals a sideways look at her. “You are…” he swallows, tries to be subtle. “You are doing okay, Mari?”

“Of course! This is good, this is a good step.”

“No, I mean…” Ilya is struggling. Mari seems happy now, riding the high of a potential job interview. He hates to burst her bubble, but Daria is inside and busy, and Ilya is not sure when he will get this opportunity again. “I mean, your thoughts, they are not…”

“My thoughts?”

Ilya is fully fed up with himself. “What I mean to say is, I can connect you with a Russian-speaking therapist. If you need one. You might need one.” It’s only after he says it that he realizes how that must sound. “What I meant to say is that you have been through a lot, and nobody would blame you if—”

“Ilya, Ilya. Stop,” Mari says, not unkindly. Ilya does not want to look at her. “You’re right. I should seek a therapist. And Daria too, probably. And I will, eventually, after everything becomes stable. One thing at a time, da?”

“Okay. Of course, I shouldn’t have assumed.”

“No, that is considerate. Thank you.”

A long silence stretches between them.

Mari speaks in a very quiet voice. “Alexei told me once, what happened to his mother.” A pause. “Your mother.”

It’s been years and years, and Ilya has built an entire foundation in her name, and talking about her is still so difficult.

“Nice of him to remember,” he scoffs bitterly. “Let me guess, it was an accident.”

“No,” Mari says gently. “He told me she killed herself because she had a hard life.”

Ilya says nothing. He feels both oddly territorial and oddly guilty now. 

Alexei has been a repeated topic with Galina. In some ways, Ilya has come to understand that he may have monopolized the grief over Irina, over the years, the same way he may have monopolized their parents’ attention. That is what happens when you are a prodigy hockey player and a younger brother to someone who isn’t. That is why Alexei has probably internalized the notion that Ilya will owe him, forever, for some kind of unfathomable, insurmountable debt, just for being luckier.

It’s not Ilya’s fault, of course. It doesn’t justify anything Alexei did to him, of course. He’s worked very hard on believing these two things.

“I mean to say,” Mari says, coughing. “Your mother, rest her soul, she was so sad and alone. She had no way out...or she felt like she didn't. Alexei told me. Me…I am sad, often, I won’t deny this. But I am not alone, and I got my way out, thanks to you and your lovely family. So please, don’t worry about this.”

It’s hard to get past the lump in his throat.

“I did not know you two spoke about these things,” he finally says. It’s all he can muster.

“I was his wife,” she reminds him. “We tried, sometimes. Never successfully, but we tried. He was mostly awful. Sometimes…sometimes, though, he was good, or tried to be. Never in a way I could predict. I almost wish he never bothered. It made it harder to let go. You know?”

Ilya remembers the popcorn. He remembers his first cigarette. He remembers even further back…a thousand smaller, kinder memories. Playing games. Chasing each other around the house. Staying up watching old Soviet cartoons, each of them nestled into one of their mother's arms. The snow princess looks like you, Mama, Ilya remembers Alexei saying drowsily. It's the nicest thing he's ever told anyone, in Ilya's memory. Ilya had agreed enthusiastically, not wanting to be outdone in adoring their mother, and then Alexei had complained that Ilya was always copying him. During Ilya’s first time skating, ever, he’d been clutching Alexei’s hands, under their mother’s watchful eye.

No, I will catch you if you fall, don’t be a sissy, it’s just ice.

Otets is coming, put that shit away.

Mind your own fucking business, I know what I'm doing.

He’ll stop hitting once you get big enough to hit back, so go to fucking practice, idiot.

It’s okay, Ilya, do not cry for her, she is in heaven now. Be a man for her now, you know she hates it when you cry.

“I know,” he says a bit hoarsely. Alexei meant nothing to him.

“I am sorry, Ilya. That he died before you could…meet again.”

“I’m not.” She’s a better person than him. Lots of people are better people than him. “Sorry.” He turns around, looks through the sliding glass. The Hollanders and Daria are playing Yahtzee. They look like what they are: a family that does not have to count on one hand the number of happy memories they have together. They don’t have to count at all.

Mari mimics him. She tracks his gaze to where he is looking. “They are very nice people. It is easy to see how Shane turned out so kind.”

“Yes, they are lovely,” Ilya says. David nudges Daria and offers her advice on how to win; Ilya knows this because he can see Yuna fondly rolling her eyes. “Nothing like us Rozanovs.”

Mari gives him a dry look. “God, stop pitying yourself. They’re doing it enough for the both of us.”

Ilya laughs, really laughs at that. He wonders what Mari would have been if Alexei Rozanov hadn’t parasitically chipped away at her life force for a decade.

“They adore you,” Mari observes. “I’ve seen so many pictures of you on the walls here. You look very happy in them.”

“Shane tends to have that effect on me. I become more Canadian every day.”

“Hm, that’s very sweet.” She looks amused, like being mutually terrorized by his brother was some kind of bonding experience for them. “David says you do puzzles together. I would not have guessed you were such a family man when I met you.”

Ilya gives her a skeptical look out of the corner of his eye. “That’s stretching it.”

“Ha! You look like Dushka when you do that.”

“Do what?”

She copies the side-eye he gave her. “Just like her.”

“Well, don’t tell her, then. She might just throw me off a building if she finds out.”

Mari cackles. Maybe they can be friends, Ilya thinks. “I’m sorry about her,” she says. “Dushka has always struggled with where to put her big feelings. It’s nothing to do with you.”

Ilya is smart enough not to believe her. If he was Daria, he would hate him too. “I don’t take it personally.”

“She will come around eventually, when she understands more.” 

“I don’t need her to. It’s fine. She doesn’t owe me anything.”

“That’s not—” Mari tuts, reroutes. “You are very patient. Make sure you are not too patient. That will help you when you have children of your own.” Ilya flinches at that, and Mari visibly regrets what she said. “I’m so sorry– I shouldn’t have assumed, I don’t even know if you—”

Ilya recovers, waving away her apologies. “It is fine.” He leans back against the porch railing. “It wasn’t a wrong assumption. We might. Someday.”

“Really?” Mari says, eyes wide.

“Yes, when we retire.”

By the politely strained look on Mari’s face, she is envisioning him and Shane adopting a child when they are sixty, so Ilya bites back his laughter. “For professional athletes, that means only in a couple of years from now, Mari.”

“Oh! Oh, right, of course, I forgot,” Mari says. “What a lucky child that will be.”

“Eh, I don’t know about that.”

Shane as a father – yes, Ilya can see that. He would be so good at it. Charts and healthy food and wholesome bedtime yoga or something. And five million Plans for every tiny thing. And his limitless, all-consuming, devoted love. Any child of Shane's will grow up happy, and safe, and adored beyond belief.

But Ilya? The more he fucks it all up with his niece, the more ridiculous and far-fetched the idea seems.

“I know it. Trust my motherly instincts, or whatever.”  She sees right through him. A year younger than him, a thousand years wiser. Maybe it’s motherhood, like she says. Maybe it’s that she was less lucky than him. “I’m glad that you got out, Ilya. I’m glad that you can have this, one day.”

He does not say anything to that. He says they should go back inside.

Between keeping up with their workouts and the foundation and Mari and Daria and brand deals and every other little thing, the summer has felt both very short and very long. Ilya feels like he’s barely touched Shane all summer; at least, not the way he wants to.

It’s a rare night where they’re not completely exhausted, or overwhelmed, or busy with something else; where they don’t have to be up early tomorrow for something or other, and can stay up as long as they want. They pounce on each other as soon as their bedroom door is closed and locked behind them. Ilya emerges after feeling refreshed, feeling contented, and feeling more peaceful than he has in months.

He’s also clingier than he has been in months. He follows Shane into the shower, inside which Shane makes a valiant but ultimately unsuccessful effort of keeping things non-depraved. After, Ilya stands there in the spray, arms around Shane’s torso, pleasantly tired out. His husband massages shampoo into both of their hair with a smirk on his face. He closes his eyes, feels the water running down his skin, feels Shane’s fingers against his scalp.

They change the sheets and get into bed, and Ilya wastes no time in pulling Shane close. Shane’s head rests on Ilya’s clavicle; their legs tangle under the covers. Shane hums, pleased, and draws circles on Ilya’s shoulder.

And maybe it is because he and Shane are alone here, in their bedroom, and nobody else is there to see, and it is dark, and they are under the covers, and only Shane will know if Ilya is small, if Ilya is weak, and Shane would never tell, ever; maybe because of that, Ilya says it.

“I don’t think I would be a very good father.”

It takes Shane’s addled, exhausted brain a moment; Ilya’s probably unfair in springing this conversation on him now. “What?” he says. “Why would you say that? That’s so not true.”

“No, true. Hard truth, but true.”

“Just because you call it a ‘hard truth’ with that tone doesn’t mean it’s fucking true, Ilya.” Shane's fervency here, as usual, is cute. Ilya calls him kotenok for a reason. “You’re a hit with the kids at camp.”

“Those kids are hockey fans. I could commit war crimes on live camera and they would cheer.”

“Hayden’s kids adore you.”

“I am not parental figure to them, I am fun guy that lets them eat pancakes for dinner. They really know me, they would not like me.”

“Now you’re just saying nonsense.” A contemplative pause. “Ilya, is this about Daria?”

“No.” At this point in their marriage, Ilya doesn’t need to look to know Shane is glaring. “Maybe a little bit.”

“Come on. She’s, like, eight, she’s been through a lot, she just moved countries. I don’t think it’s about, like…you.”

“I would believe you if she wasn’t perfectly fine with everyone else.”

“Yeah, grand total of like…six people, and one of them’s her own mom. Real big sample size, Ilya, good job.”

“Well okay, smart guy, what’s your reason then? I try to give her space, no. I try to talk, no. I try to smile, no. I speak to her mother, I speak to you, I speak to my own fucking dog, she want to kill me in my sleep. What, am I wearing wrong type of shirt or something? Did I make diplomatic mistake in Little Girl Land?” Ilya hates the whininess in his own voice, but the question has been circling in his mind for days, and days, and days. There is some nagging voice inside him that keeps feeding the notion that there is something about him – him, as Ilya – that raises this child’s hackles.

“Well…” Shane is hesitating.

“Well, what?”

“I think…maybe you’re looking at it the wrong way,” Shane says. “I, um. You know she talks to me a lot.”

“Yes.”

“Sorry, by the way. I didn’t mean to, like, steal your niece or something.”

Ilya huffs out a laugh. “Only you would find way to apologize for being too nice to a sad little girl. Go on, tell me.”

“I think. Maybe. The reasons she likes me so much, and, um, is so uncomfortable with you, are related,” Shane says. “Like I told you, she talks to me sometimes, and…it’s never direct, I never ask her to like, tell me, but she can’t help it, she lets things slip, you know, about her life in Moscow. She was a lonely kid even before her dad died, Ilya. She only had one friend at school. She didn’t have as much money as other kids. And…Alexei wasn’t a good dad to her. He didn’t make her feel safe in her own home. He was always making her mom’s life hell. I don’t know the exact details, but, like, Jesus, you know? Those kinds of things stick with you.”

“Like…like what things.” Ilya’s heart starts beating rapidly.

He can hear the wince in Shane’s voice. “Like, one time, she asked me if you yell at me. So I said, well, no, we don’t yell at each other, that's not how things work around here.”

“I do yell at you sometimes.”

“Never seriously, you know that.”

“No, like when—”

“That time I yelled right back, Ilya. Don’t make this into something it’s not.”

“Sure.” Ilya feels unmoored. He feels the dread of a large, dark wave, looming above him, about to crash down over his head.

“Yeah, so…so basically, I’m saying that she’s trying to process the life she knew in Moscow, by copy and pasting it here, and seeing if it fits. So, imagine you’re her. She comes here, and I get this huge advantage over you by being the first one that takes her to play with Anya. You’re the one she immediately associates with all the scary grown-up stuff,” Shane lists, like he has it written down on that note-taking app on his iPad. “She’s probably got this mental image of her mom, like, begging you for help or something. And then…we come back, and her mom’s emotional. And oh, look, there’s this huge Russian guy that I’m assuming looks like her dad, the last guy who also made her mom cry. And you weren’t having a great time, I know that, but to her, you just look angry. And I always tell you, Ilya, how scary you look when you make that face at people who don’t know you. It’s not your fault. It’s just how your face is.”

“You are saying she thinks I am like Alexei.” It's like being punched in the face.

“I’m saying that she’s little, and her life’s totally out of her control,” Shane says, a little panicked. “She's looking for someone to blame, because having a villain will make it less scary. If you’re the big problem in her life, then she can, like, protect herself and her mom by doing the things she does. It’s not your fault, it’s just bad luck. She doesn’t know you.”

Ilya tries to hear and accept this very rational explanation – it’s impressive, coming from Shane, who usually has the emotional intelligence of a rock -- but it does nothing to ease the seeping, aching horror, all over him. “She thinks I will…yell, and hurt her, and do all of these things. She is scared of me.”

Of course. It all makes sense now. Of course she gravitates towards Shane, the polar opposite of Alexei – soft-spoken and mild-mannered as he is. Never drinks, never smokes. Dark-haired, and honest, and totally foreign in every way. His voice is like the clean, quiet, crisp line of a Sharpie. He does everything the same way every day. Completely predictable. What a breath of fresh air Shane must be to her, after living in such instability for the first eight years of her life. 

Ilya is even bigger, and stronger, and scarier than Alexei was. Ilya has even more power over her now, can send her and her mother out in the street on a whim. For a second, he imagines himself in the mind’s eye of this scared little girl and is shocked at how terrifying the image must be.

“Ilya?” Shane’s voice is alarmed. “Nonono, Ilya – no, please. Don’t take it that way.”

“How else am I supposed to take it,” he grits out. There are tears running down his face; he can’t help them. He has become the monster under the bed. He has made a mouse out of her. He has become what he and Alexei used to warn each other about. He’ll stop hitting once you get big enough to hit back. Self-fulfilling fucking prophecies, both of them. “She is traumatized and I am making it so much worse. Fuck.”

He can’t fucking stand himself.

“Ilya, I told you,” Shane says desperately, wiping Ilya’s tears away, but they don’t stop coming. “She doesn’t know you, that’s all!”

“No, she does know me. Do you understand, Shane? Do you understand why I said, I am not good to be a parent?”

“Not fucking true—”

“No! It is. Because what is the first, most important thing a parent has to be, Shane?” his voice has risen. He lowers it immediately. Fuck.

Shane just buffers for a moment. “I—I guess, I don’t know, like—”

“Selfless, Shane. A parent has to be selfless. And I am so fucking selfish.”

Shane actually sits up, then, staring at him in disbelief. “Ilya Rozanov, you are the least selfish person I have ever met. What are you saying?”

“I am– I’m so caught up in how I feel about Alexei, about Russia, I scare this child to death, I make her feel like she has left something horrible for something even worse, and that she has no choice,” he lists, sitting up too. “I yelled at Svetlana like crazy person. I didn’t bother checking in when Alexei died, I just went on with my life, meanwhile they are running for their lives in Moscow. Fuck. And – ” his breath comes in gasps, shorter and shorter. “And, I –”

He’s not proud of what happens next, which is: he cries. He cries a lot. The horror and revulsion at himself, slowly building this entire time, erupts, and he just can’t stand himself anymore. He’s so fucking disgusted at himself. Shane looks scared to death, but he holds Ilya through it as he sobs like a little child. He thinks if anyone other than him ever saw him like this, he might actually die. Even now, when they are alone and under the covers and in the dark, it is borderline unbearable.

“Ilya, Ilya,” Shane says, rocking back and forth with him. “Shh. It’s okay. Let it out. It’s okay.”

He fights through the tears, to say his piece, to put it all out in the open, once and for all. “I am selfish. I just abandon my father to Alexei, even though I know Alexei doesn’t do shit for him, I just abandon him to Alexei and tell myself I am helping by sending money for him to spend on drugs,” Ilya says, his breaths shallow. “I put hockey first. I put myself first. And – and, I leave after that, I leave Russia and I cut Alexei off, and I know he has a family, I don’t do shit for them. Deep down, I had to know he was treating them badly, but here I am, living my best life here, fuck them, right? And –” it’s like his brain is progressively insisting he unearth more and more fucked-up things Ilya has done in his life, every damn fucking thing. “And, my mother, she struggled for so long, it was obvious, signs were all there, but I was so selfish, so wrapped up in my own life that I didn’t notice or I didn’t care and then she died. She died because nobody cared, not even me, not even her own son. I’m so fucking selfish.”

His life is so good now and it’s so, so fucking unfair. Because he is so selfish. He gets to have money, fame, Shane, and he doesn’t deserve any of it. And here he is, being the same fucking monster all over again. It is Daria's turn to be the mouse and it's all Ilya's fault.

Shane stares at him, horrified and stricken. He pulls him closer, arms tight and secure, and for a while Ilya just sobs into his chest. He is a phenomenally ugly crier. Ilya hates it, because he does not deserve Shane’s comfort either, but he takes it greedily anyway, as greedy as he’s always been for him. Only when the sobs subside does Shane speak again.

“Ilya,” he says shakily. “Please never think about yourself that way again.”

“Is tr—”

“Is not fucking true. Oh my God. I wish you’d see yourself like I do.” Shane squeezes him tighter, like he can fold him into himself, like he can make Ilya absorb his words, his love, by osmosis. “You were a child when your mother died. There was absolutely nothing you could have done for her. Jesus.” He takes another shaky breath. “And you were doing your best. You were always doing your best. You were a victim of abuse and you found a way out and you took it. Yes, it’s fucking awful that Mari and Daria went through all that, it sucks that your dad was sick and you couldn’t be there, it’s all really fucking unfortunate, but that doesn’t make you selfish, fuck. You couldn’t just magically fix everything just by, like, being in pain.”

“It feels like I bought it,” Ilya says numbly. He is so, so tired, and so, so sad. “I bought… the way out. I traded my suffering for theirs.”

“That isn't how it works. You didn’t have to sacrifice every single thing that makes you happy to be a good person,” Shane says firmly, stroking through his hair. “You didn’t have to stay behind just to absolve yourself. You never had to. If you’d stayed, they wouldn’t have stopped suffering, you know that. You just would have kept suffering with them.” He is so warm, so clean and pure. “You only had to show up for people when you can, when they need you. And you did. Ilya, you always did. You were never selfish, ever.  Everyone knows you as the person who always shows up. Mari and Daria turned to you because they know you always show up.” He pauses, catches his breath. His voice becomes coaxing. “Remember me? Remember all the things you did for me?”

“That doesn’t count,” Ilya admits. “Picking you always felt like picking myself. Picking you…feels like most selfish I’ve ever been. I know it was selfish because…because it made me so happy, when I did it.”

He feels Shane’s lips press over the crown of his head, over and over. “Oh, Ilya." For a while, he simply holds him, pressing kisses to the top of his head, to his eyelids, to his forehead and his cheeks, proving that Ilya is right, that choosing Shane's love is the most selfish choice he ever could have made. Why else does it make him feel so peaceful, like he has nothing to atone for?

He cannot say the next part, then, because he knows that even Shane will not be able to find a way to absolve him. Alexei's secret, then not-so-secret. Substances had been to Alexei what America was to Ilya - a means to an end, a way out of the house. And Ilya had watched, over the years, as he'd graduated from cigarettes to alcohol to coke to pills to whatever the fuck else, and he had not said a word. He'd been the first to know. Eventually, he'd paid for Alexei's addiction, nurtured it and helped it grow, with his own money. And he'd done so for years, without minimal complaint. Why? He'd needed Alexei to look after their father, but no - that's a coward's way out. The reality was that keeping Alexei's secret, paying for Alexei's escapes... it was Ilya's selfishness at work. If Alexei could never leave like Ilya selfishly had, then Ilya could at least make the pain a little bit better. He could at least try repaying that eternal debt. It was the only thing that tied the two of them together. That, and their fear of their father, and the sharp, eternal, devastating shame of losing their mother. He'd wanted something, he'd wanted anything. He'd been so fucking pathetic.

And now Alexei was dead. Alexei was dead, after spending what was basically a decade systematically ruining his wife's and his child's lives. What if Ilya had cut him off sooner? What if Ilya had spoken up? And to what end would that have led? Ilya's no fool. Alexei had been beyond saving - and a piece of shit besides, addiction is not a free pass to abuse your family - but - but -

It's not about keeping it secret anymore; everybody knows, but it's about the principle of breaking this one promise. He opens his mouth to say it but he can't. Not even to Shane, who knew, knows, and will know him more than anyone else, who would never tell, ever. It is my fault my mother died, it is my fault my brother died, it is my fault Mariya's life was ruined, it is my fault Daria fears me. If only Ilya hadn't been so good at hockey, if only he'd been less absorbed in himself, if only he'd done more, been more, been enough for them to stay, for anyone to stay. The shame is thick, suffocating. Even years later, even after Alexei is fucking dead, Ilya cannot share the secret out loud. It is the one thing they had. The only fucking thing.

Sometimes, Ilya thinks about if Alexei would have kept Ilya's secret. If maybe he knew about Sasha, if maybe he suspected about Shane, near the end. When he is being kind to himself, he pictures it, both of them, mice in the dark, dusty corners of their house, each knowing and never saying a word, because that is what they share. When he is being honest, he knows that Alexei fnever would have kept that secret for a second. 

He curls deeper into Shane's arms, shuddering. 

"Everyone’s a little selfish," Shane murmurs, a beam of sunlight breaking through the clouds. Because Ilya is selfish, and Ilya is a coward - he latches onto the sound of his voice like a life raft in the angry, storming waves of his mind. "You, least of all. Please. Stop being so hard on yourself. Please, Ilya. It's not fair that you're in so much pain.”

"I deserve it." He is pathetic, and selfish, and it is all his fault. 

"I don't care," Shane says, almost angrily. His fingers curl possessively into Ilya's hair, like he can physically drag him away from the ugly truths they've spoken of tonight. "I don't care what you think you deserve. I never want you to think those things about yourself again. Not you. Anyone but you." Ilya closes his eyes, takes a deep, shuddering breath. Shane releases his hair, and Ilya feels a light tap on his temples. “And, hey. I married a man that's sweet and brave and kind. You’re not allowed to go around calling Ilya Rozanov selfish, you hear me? That’s my husband you’re talking about. I’ll fight you about it. You know I can.”

Ilya smiles, despite himself. “Yes, I know. Scary Hollander, I know him, he fights all the time.”

"For you, I would," Shane says, and Ilya can hear the adoration in his voice, can feel Shane's watery laugh somewhere in his chest. Shane pushes him back down, and they settle again into each other’s arms, under the covers. Ilya never wants to let go of him again, never wants to unbury his face in Shane’s soft, feathery hair, where Ilya is loved, despite all of his ugliness and his defects and his failures. He is not okay, not completely, but some of the raw pain inside has dulled, soothed back to sleep by Shane’s unwavering faith in him. Sometimes, Shane’s greatest power is convincing Ilya that he is worthy of any of those precious things: peace, safety, love. The prices of his unfathomable debt to everyone he has ever let down.

Shane’s finger trails up and down the column of Ilya’s neck, down to his shoulder, circling it then heading back up to his jaw again, over and over, an endless circuit. They’re quiet for a long time before Shane speaks again, long after Ilya's muffled sniffs have faded to silence. “I was going to say Daria reminds me of you. All the time. Did you know that?”

Ilya recognizes that Shane is throwing him a chance to compose himself, that he acknowledges that Ilya will accept this emotional position, but not for long. He loves him for it. “Now you’re just, ah, how you say. Pulling off my foot?”

“Pulling your leg,” Shane says, with so much fondness it hurts.

“Da.”

“I’m being serious, though. She does.”

“Not you too. Mari tells me the same.”

“Really?” Shane sounds delighted. “That’s great. I thought I was just being biased.”

“She says I give that look out of the corner of my eye like her. What’s it called? Side eye.”

Shane laughs brightly. “Ha! She’s right!” He props his chin up on Ilya’s pec, staring up at him like he can pick other things out. “All sorts of other stuff, too.”

“Like what.”

“Don’t laugh, I know it’s weird. But you say ‘okay’ the same way.”

“Yes, Hollander, it’s called having an accent,” Ilya snorts.

“I know what an accent is, asshole. I meant, like, the cadence, or whatever.”

“That is whole lot of nothing you just said.”

“It’s real. You say it, like, ‘okey’ and then you go all quiet and judgmental. With that same side eye you do, too. It’s cute.”

“That whole description was very judgmental.” He punctuates this by tugging Shane’s earlobe. Shane slaps his hand away.

“And even more importantly,” Shane says pointedly, “you have the same way of, like, reacting. To when you’re not in control. You puff yourself up and act angry and aggressive. Like a cornered cat. Even when there's very little to be afraid of.”

Ilya hums. Telling Shane has calmed the hurt, but it still lingers, like a bruise. The technical truth does not matter; the fact that he has scared his niece, has been scaring her since the beginning, still burns deeply, even if he never meant it. It does not matter that Ilya never meant to scare her. It only matters that Daria is scared. That truth hangs around his neck like a damning, sickening brand, and nothing Shane says could ever make that something he can swallow. “Hm.”

Shane’s hand is feather-light on his jaw. “Just give her a chance to know you, Ilya. She's only so little. All she needs is time.”

With a combination of Ilya Rozanov’s name, David Hollander’s old friends in the Canadian government, Yuna Hollander’s general competence, Shane Hollander’s Plans ™, and extenuating circumstances, Mari gets her residency permit in what must be record time.  She ends up getting the job at the Russian cultural center that same week. She’s due to start in September, two weeks shy of the start of the new season, and one week after Daria should start school. Things are looking up.

The chaos of the months before begins to wind down, and everything gets much more systematic. When Mari and Shane (who is elated, as usual, to flex his real estate obsession) begin to look around for apartments near Carleton Square, Ilya realizes that as much as he misses being alone with Shane, he’ll actually really miss having Mari and Daria around.

He’s been thinking about it a lot, ever since that conversation with Shane. Maybe he never meant to scare Daria; it doesn’t change the fact that she’s frightened. He can’t exactly walk up to her and tell her hey, don’t be scared of me, I’m really such an idiot in real life. That would probably freak her out even more.

So he…adjusts. He tries to be as smiley and silly as he can. He tries to be extra nice to Mari and Shane within Daria’s earshot. He never, ever yells, or swears. He cuts the smoking completely. But every time he tries to do something to signal to Daria that he’s good, she seems to take it as further reason to despise him. Every time, Shane gives him the same pained A-for-Effort-I’m-Proud-of-You-For-Trying grimace. Ilya receives this specific grimace so often he contemplates taking a picture of it and using it as a sticker on the Cens groupchat.

There’s nothing to be done about it. Ilya resigns himself to being a tolerable but misliked familial figure in the mind of his last remaining blood relative. He’s just come back from walking Anya when he finds Shane waiting by the front door, with his Planner of Doom and Despair in one hand.

“Where are you going?” he asks, already having an inkling.

“Apartment viewing,” Shane says, grinning. “I’ve got a good feeling about this one. And then there’s an appointment at a school ten minutes away, a tour. Want to come?”

“Sure, why not.” He’s in that dead spot of time in the summer where there’s no Foundation camps, no preseason, no training. They’d usually be in the cottage now, but, well.

“Alright, great. Mari’s just getting Daria ready, then we’ll—”

It is then that the shouting reaches them, from the top of the staircase – blazing, rapid-fire Russian.

“I don’t want to go to a stupid apartment or a stupid school! All of them are horrible and ugly anyway!”

“Young lady, mind your tone! You are being extremely rude! All this because I ask you to come see a school with us?”

Ilya and Shane share a mutual oh yikes look. Shane opens the Planner of Doom and Despair like he can somehow pretend he isn’t hearing this. Ilya doesn’t know who he’s fooling; he’s pretty sure Hayden Pike can hear them from Montreal.

“NO!” Daria’s voice is shrill and slightly earsplitting. The girl has a set of lungs on her. “I hate it here! I don’t want to learn English! It’s a stupid language!  I hate this stupid country and I hate the new school and I want to go back to Russia and I hate everyone and I hate YOU and I want to go HOME!”

“DARIA ROZANOVA!” There is a sound like the thundering of small feet on the floor, and then an impressive slam of the guest room door.

“FUCK SHIT DAMN!” Daria screams defiantly from behind the door. Ilya looks anywhere but Shane; he knows if he catches his eye, they will both fucking lose it. “MOTHERFUCKER! FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK—"

Mari makes a sound of extreme frustration, then yells something through the door; it is drowned out by Daria repeatedly screaming “blyat” over her, which is more hilarious than it has any right to be. Shane’s face is bright red from the effort it is taking him to maintain a straight face.

A few minutes later, Mari storms down the stairs and meets them at the entryway. She looks flustered and thoroughly fed up.

“I am so sorry about that,” she says, a little out of breath. The “no Russian” rule has gone out the window. “She is getting so stubborn these days, just- just to spite me, really, I don’t know what’s gotten into her.”

“That’s okay,” Shane says obligingly. “She’s just having a bad day.”

“We all have bad days. She is rude,” Mari says, obviously frustrated. “Sometimes I just -- ugh, that girl. What am I going to do with her?”

“Your best,” Ilya supplies.

Mari drags a hand down her face. “I guess so. I guess so. Sorry. I can’t drag her there, I suppose, but—” they all come to the simultaneous realization that they can’t exactly leave Daria alone in the house. There is an awkward pause.

“I can stay behind to watch her,” Ilya offers half-heartedly.

Mari looks guilty. “Ilya—”

“No, no, is okay,” he insists, grinning crookedly. “I was only coming to protect the realtors from Shane, anyway. He gets so crazy about real estate, you should have seen him when I first moved here. They have a photo of him in the real estate office, they say he is the monster that eats them alive if they cross his path.”

“I was finding a good house for you, asshole!” Shane huffs, but his eyes are sparkling. “Like the very nice house we live in right now!”

“Really, Mari, it is important you go. Protect the innocent realtors of Ottawa from him, I am not strong enough,” Ilya continues. Mari is silently shaking her head, laughing despite herself. “Do not let him spend too much time talking about parquet. It is a lethal Shane Hollander attack, kills victims of boredom within twenty minutes.”

“Fuck you!” Shane flings at him, but his heart isn’t in it. Ilya can see him fighting a smile as leaves to start the car. His little weirdo.  He is the only person who finds Ilya’s obnoxious sense of humor attractive. Perfectly designed for him, always.

Mari’s still laughing. “Okay. Thank you anyway, Ilya, for staying,” she says. She looks to him a bit more seriously, and reaches into her purse. “Daria…she will mostly keep to herself, I guess. She is grounded today. No YouTube, and no Roblox.” She drops Daria’s phone, wrapped in a bright plastic case, in his hand. “She is allowed to go on Pinterest for drawing, but only after she shows you that she finished her English homework. Okay?”

“Yes, sure.” Ilya doesn’t know what the fuck a Roblox is supposed to be, but whatever, he’ll figure it out.

“If she gives you any trouble, you call me right away,” Mari says, with the sort of anticipatory vengeance only aggrieved parents are capable of. “She is trying me today.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Ilya says, amused.

Mari and Shane leave. Ilya lounges around the house with nothing much to do. He finds that Shane has left him a smoothie in the fridge and drinks that. Then Troy calls him and they spend a bit catching up; he hasn’t seen him all summer, between everything else going on. By the time he hangs up with him, Daria has emerged from her den of rage and has mutinously begun doing her homework on the dining room table. She looks like a prisoner off the set of Les Misérables. Ilya takes pity on her and decides to make her life easier by leaving her line of sight. He changes into workout clothes and makes the executive decision to retreat to the home gym.

Before he goes, he speaks. “Daria, I am going to be exercising. If you need me, I am down in the gym.”

“Okay.” (Plus side-eye.) (Damn it, Shane is right.)

“There are snacks in the fridge. Fruits and things.”

“Okay.” (Second, lethal side-eye of the afternoon.)

Well. That is the equivalent of a hug and a kiss from her. Ilya basks in the new, temporary position of being Not-Daria’s-Least-Favorite-Person-Today. He goes down to the gym, puts his Airpods in, turns the volume up, and begins his workout. Daria comes down sometime during this and silently presents a completed English worksheet.

“May I have my phone for Pinterest,” she says in a monotone, looking very put-upon. 

“No YouTube, no Roboxes,” Ilya warns, handing it over.

“It’s Roblox,” Daria says, like he just insulted her entire lineage. “And I know that.”

She takes the phone and stomps back upstairs, as Ilya realizes he has no real way of enforcing the rule. Okay, sure, whatever. Ilya turns up his music again.

There is a long, uninterrupted stretch of time. Ilya loses himself in the workout. The music is loud; he thinks he hears a thud, but it’s probably the beat of the music. Russian trap music can have that effect. Ilya is doing dumbbell curls when something taps him on the shoulder, and he nearly drops the dumbbell on his foot.

“Jesus!” He kills the music.

It is Daria; she looks paler than usual. There is a strain around her eyes. “I, um. I need your help.”

“Sorry?”

“I broke something.” Her voice is very small, her posture very stiff. Her hands are held tightly behind her back. She resembles a little soldier.

Ilya sighs, stands up, puts the dumbbell back in its place. It’s on him for basically leaving her unattended. Was he really supposed to just watch her draw all day? “Okay. Show me, then.”

She doesn’t say anything as she leads him away from the gym and up to the office, where the floor is covered in what looks like hundreds of shards of sharp ceramic. Ilya tuts as he surveys the damage. He knows what it used to be; this weird ceramic sculpture thing that had been a wedding gift from…someone, he doesn’t remember who. It was supposed to be a symbol of eternal love that survives life’s turmoil or some shit like that, which is ironic. He is not overly attached to it. He and Shane hadn’t known what to do with it, really – it didn’t match the décor of their house - so they’d stuck it in the office as an oversized paperweight. It was heavier than it looked, apparently.

“What did you do, roundhouse kick it?” Ilya grouses, shuffling in, careful not to step on anything. Anya appears and curiously sniffs at the damage; he picks her up so she doesn’t hurt herself.

“Shane says if I need more paper to draw I can take it from here,” Daria says, wilting. “I knocked it over by mistake. I’m really sorry.”

“It’s okay, you didn’t mean to,” Ilya says distractedly, crouching down, picking up a particularly large piece. Why is the edge tinged in red? He doesn’t remember the paperweight-thing being red…

He whirls to Daria, who takes a cautious step back. One of the knees of her trousers is dark and wet, and steadily getting wetter. “Shit, Daria!” He drops the shard with a clatter, moves suddenly forward; Daria flinches and scrambles back, pale as milk.

Right. Right, no yelling, no loud voices, no sudden movements: he must not forget. “You hurt yourself. Let me see.”

“I’m f-fine.” Her lower lip is wobbling. Ilya wants to kick himself.

“Daria, you show me right now.”

Trembling, Daria allows Ilya to roll up the knee of her trousers to see the cut on her knee; she must have crouched down in the wreckage to try cleaning it up. He can imagine her, frantically getting down on her hands and knees and picking up as many of the shards as she can at once, desperate to clean the mess before anyone sees. He can spot a few discarded pieces in the office wastebasket.

“And your hands,” he says, with no room for debate. Obediently, she takes her hands from behind her back and shows him; both palms are crisscrossed with angry red cuts, practically dripping blood. The sight sends jolts of nausea through his gut.

“Come with me,” he says, fighting to stay calm. Daria is left alone with him one time, and she gets maimed! What if she needs stitches? What if she needs to go to the emergency room? What if her hands are horrifically scarred for the rest of her life, all because Ilya needed to listen to trap music in the gym?

He takes her to the bathroom, sits her down on the edge of the bathtub. Blood runs freely down her tiny hands and her skinny little leg. Ilya uses the showerhead to rinse them off with warm water. From what he can see, the cuts are deep, but they won’t need stitches. The bleeding begins to slow, then it stops altogether. Working silently, he brings out the first aid kit from under the sink.

“This will sting,” he warns her. She nods, but doesn’t even wince as he cleans the cuts with antiseptic wipes and dresses them tightly. Tough little kid. A trooper, David would call her.

He takes one last look at his handiwork. Her knee is padded and bandaged; her palms covered, her fingers wrapped in Band-Aids. All he has is the plain standard kind. He wishes they had the bright colorful ones with cartoon characters, like the ones Hayden and Jackie have at their house. Maybe that would have made her feel better.

Who the fuck is he kidding? This is the mark of Ilya Rozanov’s stellar adult supervision: planning for the inevitability of her injuries in his care. Fuck.

“You can never do that again,” he says gravely. “You can never get hurt like that and just keep it to yourself, never. Do you understand?”

Daria nods, shrinking into herself.

“You could have gotten very sick. You could have needed to go to the hospital. Would you have wanted that?”

She shakes her head.

“I know you don’t like me,” Ilya says, resigned, because she is the most miserable, pitiful creature he has ever seen, and she has scared him and frustrated him, but he also feels terrible for her, hurt and stuck alone in a house with someone she hates. Someone she fears. “I know you wish I was Shane or your mother. I know you think I am mean and scary. But I would never hurt you. I want to help you. If you get hurt, you must say you are hurt, no matter who is there.”

Daria nods, and then she bursts into tears, right there in the bathroom. Good fucking job, Rozanov.

“Stop. Stop,” Ilya holds up a hand, hoping he doesn’t look as panicked as he feels. “Stop, Daria. Does it still hurt? Are you in pain? Be honest.”

She shudders. “N-no. It doesn’t hurt anymore.”

“Why are you crying then?”

“I b-broke your statue.” That is clearly all she is capable of getting out, because it’s just sobbing from then on. Any attempts he makes to calm her down just make her sob more. She is an ugly crier, just like Ilya. Maybe, he realizes, it is finally catching up to her – all of it. Alexei, and what came after him.

I’m saying that she’s little, and her life’s totally out of her control, Shane had said.

“Okay. No more crying, da? Take my hand, come on,” he says. He leads her to the cleaning supply closet, brings out the broom and the dustpan, then he goes back to the office. “It is okay to cry when you are sad, but this is not worth being sad about. You made a mess, it’s alright, it was an accident. Maybe it will happen again, who knows. I’ll show you how to fix it. Okay?”

Sniff. “Okay.” Her crying drags it out into a long “Okaaa-eeeiiyyy”.

“Rule: you don’t pick up the broken pieces with your hands.” He points down to his feet, in house slides. “You make sure you are wearing something on your feet, and then you sweep everything up with the broom and the dustpan. Like what I am doing here.” He does this for a minute or two, getting the tougher parts, then holds out the broom to her. “Now you try.”

In silence, they sweep up the remains of the statue. Ilya shows her how to properly dispose of what’s been swept up. He then brings out the vacuum cleaner, shows her how to use it to suck up anything that remains. By the time this process is done, the office is clean, there is no ugly statue anymore, and Daria has completely calmed down.

“All done,” he announces, after he’s stowed away the vacuum, and returns. The office is clean as can be, and honestly, better without the stupid thing.

Daria looks around dejectedly. “I’m sorry about your statue. I hope Shane will not be sad when he comes back. Please tell him sorry. From me.” Ilya does not miss how she seems to dread the idea of confronting him with it herself.

“Shane hated that thing, do not worry.”

“Really?” she says hopefully.

“Yes, really, you did him a favor. He might even thank you, he will say, thank you my good friend Daria, you saved me from ugly statue I hated, I was too nice and Canadian to kill it myself, I needed angry little Russian girl to do it for me,” he says. He’s laying it on a little thick, but he wants, desperately, to make her feel better, to maybe even make her laugh. She’s about the saddest thing he’s ever seen.

Daria swallows, nods, looks down to the ground in shame.

He reaches forward, to the desk, grabbing a few sheets from the stack of paper Shane had undoubtedly set out for Daria to use. “Here, there you go. Can you hold a pen?”

Daria flexes her right hand, winces, then looks, somehow, even more miserable. “No, I don’t think so.”

Jesus, she’s having such a shitty day. Ilya has an idea. “Why don’t you go change your clothes, then, and meet me in the garage?”

Daria doesn’t look…fearful, per se. Just suspicious. “Why?”

“Do you like ice cream?”

She’s a stubborn one, he knows, but she is also related to him, and he has always been weak for ice cream. He can see the prospect light a spark in her eyes and knows that he has already won.

“My mama said I am grounded today,” she says slowly, carefully, and…conspiratorially. This is a girl clearly experienced in the art of fishing for loopholes. Definitely his flesh and blood, that’s for certain.

“She didn’t say no ice cream, specifically,” Ilya says, simply, with a nonchalant look to the ceiling. “I’m not grounded, you see, and I want ice cream, and I want to go get it, but I can’t leave you alone in the house…”

Daria nods, understanding him perfectly. “I guess I can go and change, then. If you want ice cream so much.”

Ilya smiles. “Now you understand me.”

He washes off the sweat from the gym and changes into an inconspicuous shirt and jeans, with the customary hat and sunglasses he uses so he is not recognized outside. It would do Daria no favors for tabloids to begin reporting he was spotted bribing his alleged long-lost illegitimate child with ice cream, or some stupid shit like that. He is very pleased with his own cleverness.

He goes down to the garage, takes Anya with him for good measure. Daria, changed into fresh and not-bloodstained clothes, is near the back, next to his one remaining sports car, his beloved orange Ferrari. She is tentatively, furtively lifting the cover, peering curiously at the shiny, spotless hood underneath. He doesn’t blame her; it’s a beauty.

He makes a bunch of loud stomping noises with his feet so he doesn’t startle her, then walks in. She quickly puts the cover down, whirling around like she’s been caught red-handed. (Literally). She stares at him guiltily as he comes in.

“You want to look?” he offers.

She hesitates, then nods. He sets Anya down, then uncovers the car; Daria peers at it curiously, from every angle, committing it to memory.

“It’s yours?” she asks.

“Yes, my pride and joy,” he says proudly, gesturing to it.

“It looks very fast,” she says. “It is very pretty.”

“It is, thank you,” Ilya agrees.

“I never saw you drive it before,” she says, with suspicion, like it’s a fake prop he bought specifically to prank her.

Ilya fakes a beleaguered expression. “Yes, Shane does not like it. He made me get a sensible car because he is afraid of accidents.” He gestures to the black SUV parked further ahead.

“He is probably right,” Daria says loyally, but her heart isn’t in it. She then gives him a furtive look. “Will we take it to get ice cream?”

“No, Anya might pee inside,” Ilya lies. Anya would never pee in his Ferrari; he raised her better than that. Really, it’s because he doesn’t want to be recognized or followed. And as charitable as he’s feeling towards her right now, the idea of Daria dripping ice cream all over it makes him shudder. “But I can take you for a drive in it some other time, if you want.”

Daria nods wisely and follows him to the SUV. “Okay.”

It is a short, silent drive down to Ilya’s favorite ice cream shop, right outside a little park where parents take their toddlers to play in the mornings. Daria does not become more talkative on the way there. When he checks on her in the rearview mirror, strapped into the backseat, she is staring out of the window, looking small, pale, and lonely.

They arrive, and Daria follows him into the ice cream shop. Two college kids are working the counters; they whoop when they see Ilya. “Rozy!” they cheer.

He is, unashamedly, a regular here. “I return! How are you two? Becca, and Kai?” He knows all of the people who work at this shop by name; in fact, he is about two steps away from being their shift manager. 

Becca and Kai chatter to him a bit about their own lives, delighted to see him. Then they spot Daria, lurking near Ilya’s elbow, and they melt completely.

“And what’s your name, sweetie?” Becca says cheerfully.

Daria shrinks back under the sudden attention. “I am Daria.”

“My niece,” Ilya explains. It’s a funny feeling, getting to say those words. “All the way from Moscow.”

“She’s cute as a button,” Kai gushes. “Hi there, Daria! Welcome to Ottawa!”

“I love your headphones,” Becca says, winking.

Daria seems to be overwhelmed, so Ilya tries to cut the interaction as short as he can without being rude. He gets his regular order, a sort of Frankensteinian chocolate monstrosity that he cooked up with one of Becca and Kai's predecessors years ago. (The turnover rate is high here.) Daria waffles for a while, but eventually she picks the “unicorn” flavor, a mixture of multicolored artificial ice creams. Becca mixes in marshmallows and gummy bears; it’s an abomination of sugar.

It would give Shane nightmares, which makes Ilya proud. Whenever he brings Shane here, he always gets this depressing low-fat dairy-free lemon sherbet flavor they have. If he’s feeling adventurous, he adds cherries. Ilya always ends up feeling bad, picking the Snickers pieces off of his own ice cream and feeding them to him. Shane always accepts them if they come from Ilya.

Ilya gets a little cup of whipped cream for Anya, too. He pays and says goodbye to his ice cream shop friends, and then he and Daria take their ice creams and sit outside, on the benches overlooking the playground, under the shade of a tree. Anya settles down at his feet to have her treat, then walks a perimeter around them when she’s done, snuffling in the grass. They people-watch for a bit, observing dog-walkers and young parents pushing fussy babies around in strollers. Distantly, the playground is awash with the bright sounds of young children playing together.

Daria is still quiet, but when Ilya checks he finds that she looks better. It’s not sadness now. She’s just focused on getting her ice cream under control before it melts. It’s already painting her face pink and purple and blue.

Good. This is what a girl her age should be doing, making a mess of herself with ice cream on a hot summer day, not crying her heart out because she broke an ugly statue. Ilya feels glad that he brought her here, even if it took a rough start.

“You want a napkin?” he offers.

Daria smiles a bit sheepishly, and nods. He helps her clean up a little, and she lets him dab at her face. A bit more silence, as they both eat. Daria gets her ice cream to a manageable level.

“Thank you for the ice cream,” she says quietly.

“No problem,” Ilya says. “I’m the one who wanted ice cream, remember?”

“The people there know you,” Daria says. “Do you come here a lot?”

Ilya nods. “Yes. I used to come even more, before. Since I first moved here. I was new here, I didn’t know anything about this city, and Shane was in another city then, and I was missing him, and I had no friends…I came here to feel better.”

“Was it very scary? Moving here?” Daria asked.

“Very? No. But it was a little bit scary, yes,” Ilya admits. “Mostly, it was just lonely.” He hopes he doesn’t bungle this next bit. He hopes. “Was it very scary to you? To move here?”

She stares at her ice cream. “It was scary right before we came. And I didn’t like the plane, and I didn’t like not understanding anything.” She is not saying the most important part, the part that hurts the most.

“Are you scared now?” It is all he can dare to ask.

“No, not really,” she says. She gives him a guilty look. “I didn’t mean it, what I said this morning. When I said I hate it here. It’s not bad, I don’t hate it. I like it better than Russia.”

“It’s okay to miss Russia,” he says, as softly as he can.

She goes quiet for a long time. “But it was bad.”

“It’s still okay to miss it,” Ilya insists. “I’m so happy here, but I miss Russia too, you know.”

“Really?”

“Yes. Why don’t we say what we miss about Russia? I’ll start.” Ilya hates talking about Russia, usually. It’s just bad memories and shame and grief, to him, usually, even when Shane pries bits and pieces out. But it does not feel as terrible when he speaks with Daria. “I miss good pryaniki. They have similar things here, but it’s not the same.”

Daria nods. “I miss my friend Lilia. She was my best friend and she braided my hair. I didn’t say goodbye to her because Miss Sveta said we have to keep it a secret.” Daria’s eyes seem a bit glassy. “I probably won’t see her for a while, won’t I.”

Ilya wishes he could make it better. “No, probably not.”

“I miss the little cat that lived at the bottom of our apartment building too,” Daria continues, like she can’t stop it. “I miss my classroom and I miss my art teacher. And I miss Theater Square. Mama used to take me there sometimes, and we would get a hot chocolate to share, and sit in front of the Bolshoi Theatre. Sometimes we would see the ballerinas coming and going. I went up to one once and she let me take a picture with her. She was so pretty.”

“My mama took me to the Bolshoi once,” Ilya says, smiling at the mental image. “Me and Alexei. Your…your papa. She said we needed to learn about art.”

Daria gives him a long, skeptical look, like she doesn’t believe that Ilya and Alexei had once been children, with a mama of their own. Ilya doesn't blame her; some days, he can scarcely believe it either. “Did you like it?”

“I was a silly hockey boy. I got very bored.” He has faint memories of going to the ballet, trailing behind Alexei and his mother. His mother, he thinks, had mainly taken her sons along to convince Grigori that it was an expense worth paying for, for herself. Surely he would not accuse her of meeting a secret lover if both her sons were there. The whole time, he remembers, through Ilya’s fidgeting and Alexei’s complaining, she had been besotted, watching the dancers float across the stage with abject longing in her eyes. Three mice, hiding in the darkness of the wings, watching the swans at their dance.

“Mama promised me she would ask Papa to take me to the ballet for my birthday next year,” Daria says forlornly. “It won’t happen now, I guess.”

“I’m sorry about that. You must have really looked forward to it.”

Daria shrugs, then is silent for a long time. She chews a gummy bear with a contemplative look on her face, like she is turning an idea over and over in her head. Finally, when she speaks, her voice is hesitant and small. Daria the Girl, turned Daria the Mouse. She is looking at her hands. She is looking at him, at his ice cream, at hers. “Can I ask you a question?”

“You can ask me anything you want.”

"And you will not tell my mama?" 

Ilya wrestles with this for a moment, every old demon rearing its head at once. Smoke, rising in the air of a dark Moscow night. "I will not tell her."

“Am I a bad girl, if I don’t miss my papa?”

And Ilya’s heart clenches, violently. He wants to hug her, but he knows she isn’t ready for that. But urge is there, startling in its intensity. “No, Daria. Of course not.”

“Because he was mean, a lot,” she says, ashamed, like she wants to explain herself. “He was mean, and he made my mama cry. His voice was so loud all the time.”

Ilya realizes, with startling clarity, that Daria might just be the one person in the world who knows exactly how he has felt throughout all of this. It is palpable, in the depths of shame he can hear in her squeaky voice. One mouse, speaking to another. 

“You don’t have to miss him at all, Daria,” he says. 

“Do you miss your papa?” she seems desperate now, to know. For some reason, she seeks absolution from him.

Not for some reason. Ilya knows exactly the reason.

Ilya swallows, hard. He looks away from her, out to the park. On a bench, on the opposite side of the playground from them, a father is gently moving a stroller back and forth, speaking in soft tones to the baby inside.

“I…” he doesn’t really know what to say. “I cared about him. I cared what he thought of me.”

In the end, when his father had been at his most helpless, Ilya had found himself letting go of his grudges, his anger about his mother, against his will. It is hard to feel angry at a weak, frightened, elderly man that is entirely dependent on you.  He remembers yelling at Alexei once, on one of his sparse visits. Alexei had snapped angrily at their father, more than a little cruelly, after Grigori had asked what time it was for the seventh time that hour.

“What do you know, you fucking layabout,” Alexei had spat in Ilya’s face when he’d yelled at him to leave their father alone. “Now you’re the caring son? Huh? What do you know about what I do for him while you suck your own dick in America? What the fuck do you know?”

He hadn’t been able to say anything back. He’d gone silent. Alexei had gone silent. The weight of their father sat between them like a tangible person, then.

Because really, why had Ilya spoken up? Grigori had been the monster under both their beds for so long. Beating Alexei for a failed exam, beating Ilya for not doing well at practice, beating their mother just for being in reach. And worse than that, were the words, because those didn’t stop when Ilya got big and strong: lazy, stupid, worthless, shameful, embarrassing, good-for-nothing. At some point, Ilya had outgrown both his father and his brother, towering over them, used to fights with men twice his own size. Yet one word from his father had had the ability to turn Ilya the Man right back into Ilya the Mouse.

Worse than all of it was their mother, and the pills, and the shame, and the hiding. Ilya remembers it then, that fight. It was a few days after that horrible afternoon that Ilya had found her in. He had been crying so much in those days that even Grigori had given up on yelling at him for it. Maybe that’s why this memory is so buried in his subconscious. But Alexei, seventeen, hadn’t been crying. He had been spitting mad.

“I’m not telling anyone it was a fucking accident,” he remembers his brother yelling in their father’s face. “It's all your fucking fault. She killed herself because she couldn’t fucking stand you, you’re a bitter fucking nobody, nobody can fucking stand you—”

Grigori had slapped Alexei so hard across the face that his head had snapped backwards. He had slapped him so hard that Ilya just straight up stopped crying from the shock. Grigori had then given Alexei what was perhaps the worst beating Ilya remembers either of them ever getting. Ilya could not stop watching, from beginning to end. It had gone on so endlessly. Alexei had attempted fighting back at first, but Grigori had overpowered him easily, and by the end of it, Alexei had been black and blue all over, crawling back to his bedroom in stunned, dazed tears. He'll stop hitting once you get big enough to hit back. Alexei had been quiet for a very long time afterwards, and he couldn't meet Ilya’s eyes for days. 

Another secret between them, to join the rest. 

Grigori had turned to Ilya, then, and gave him a cold, potent look of rage. The monster under the bed, at the height of his power. “And you? Do you have anything to say to me too? Or is crying like a girl all you know how to do?”

Ilya had squeaked out a no and scurried back to his bedroom like a mouse to its hole in the wall. He remembers feeling the pure fear, the pure relief of it not being him. He doesn’t remember if he talked to Alexei after. He probably didn’t. They never spoke about these things. Don't tell. 

He doesn’t know how he’s only remembering this now. He knows it must have lurked in his subconscious for years, the lingering fear of that terrible, terrible beating. But there were other memories, too, happier ones. Somehow, they existed, despite the terror and the shame. Those final few months, his father had called him Ilyusha instead of Ilya, and Ilya had called him Papa instead of Otets. Before, they watched hockey games. They visited Irina’s grave. Best of all were those moments when Ilya had finally won his praise, his pride, if only briefly. Those moments had made him feel like he was capable of anything. Ilya had always striven towards the impossible. 

“I don’t miss him,” Ilya decides. A handful of moments of feeling like something do not pay for a lifetime of feeling like nothing. “He was mean, too, I guess. And he made my mama cry.”

Daria nods. “Do you miss my papa?”

And, wow, what a question. Popcorn, and cigarettes, and debts, and keeping scores. And secrets, so many secrets. Poisonous words, spat in his face, smelling like alcohol. Watching beatings from across the room, never meeting each other’s eyes when they’re over. Push it away, don’t cry, be a man. Be a fucking man.

Alexei had meant… Alexei had meant…

Alexei had meant something to him. It just hadn't been enough.

“I am sad sometimes, that he passed away. I wish it could have been different. But I do not miss him, no.”

“Me too.” She takes a bite from her cone. He is glad to hear relief in her voice. “So we are not bad, then.”

“No,” Ilya agrees. This is one of the most painful conversations he’s ever had, and yet he feels lighter than he has in years. “No, we are not bad, you and me.”

Ilya finds himself wishing, for once, for a brother he might have shared more with than shame and secrets and the fear of a common enemy. If they had had to be mice, he wishes that they at least could have been mice together. He looks at Daria, with her curly blond hair and her serious little eyes, and decides that he wants more than that with her, too. He does not want their sadness to be the only thing that ties them together.

But it is not enough to be mice together with Daria. He does not want her to be a mouse at all.

“I felt like I was bad, this morning,” Daria admits, sneaking a furtive look in his direction. “When I yelled at Mama.”

“Yes, that wasn’t nice,” Ilya says, somehow finding it in himself to smile. “And saying all those bad words was not nice either. You must have been frustrated, but you need to apologize to your mama, when we go back.”

“I will,” she promises earnestly. “And I felt I was bad, I felt I was bad when I was mean to you, before. I just couldn’t help it, I’m sorry.”

Ilya actually laughs. He knows what she means, but the way she phrases it is darkly hilarious. “No, that is okay.” He puts the napkin under her ice cream cone, so it doesn’t drip onto her knees. She lets him.

“I used to think you were mean,” she confesses, like it hadn’t practically been spelled out across her forehead. “Sorry. Shane kept telling me you weren’t, but I didn’t believe him.”

“Maybe I was a bit mean.” Ilya gives her a side-eye. “But I am not mean now, hm? All I had to do to win you over was get us ice cream?” He only means it as a joke, but Daria takes it literally, and smiles, like the sun, solemn and bright.

“No, you are not mean.” Quieter, now. “You are not like my papa at all.”

For the rest of his life, Ilya will struggle to find the words to describe how he feels, when she says that. Neither Russian nor English can encompass it.

“I will not yell. I will not hurt you,” Ilya says, feeling fragile at what she has just shared with him. So much trust, and so little he has done to earn it. He will make sure, for the rest of his life, that he earns it. “I am not your papa. I promise.”

“I know that, I know you are my dyadya.”

“No, no. I mean that before any of that, I am your friend. Okay?” He pokes her shoulder gently. “We can be friends, now? And I can call you Dushka?”

“Yes," she says, nodding shyly. "And I promise I won’t be mean to you anymore.”

“You can be a little mean, if you like,” He pokes her again, and he finally gets that laugh he wanted. "For you, I could handle that."

A few days later, he finds a sheet of office paper, folded neatly, placed on the bench in the gym. For Ilya, it says, in a child’s Cyrillic. He unfolds it, and he smiles so widely his cheeks begin to sting.

It is a drawing of an orange Ferrari.