Chapter Text
Ilya knows he's made a mistake the second the plane takes off. With 10 hours on the clock until he arrives in Russia - and no option to turn back - it hits him that this is reality. America disappears behind him.
He knows what to expect in Moscow and that makes it worse. Ilya will have to take a taxi from the airport to the family estate. He will be let in by the butler. If his father is in his right mind Ilya will be ordered to attend dinner where he will be reprimanded and insulted all while staying fearfully, painfully silent. If his father is not well he may be softer but he may not even remember that Ilya is there. Ilya cannot decide which option is more painful. Either way he will spend the night alone in the big house where his mother died.
Ilya hears the echoes of his friends' warnings - that this is not normal. Is not okay.
Ilya isn't stupid. He knows, intellectually, how fucked up it all is. His family uses him for fame and money and prestige and Ilya lets them because it is easier that way. Because he hates to be accused of laziness and selfishness. Because he wants someone to be proud of him.
A small voice whispers, Shane is proud of you.
Or, he was. Before Ilya ruined everything and yelled at Shane. Ilya doesn't remember how to care about someone without showing his teeth.
Don't go to Russia, Shane said.
And Ilya thinks, What if I don't?
It's a good thing Ilya has a private seat in first class because he goes totally catatonic at the thought. Don't go to Russia. Ilya has spent years drinking and fucking and partying - all to keep that thought quiet. Years of isolation and heaviness and dreading every summer. Years spent wondering if this would be the time his father figured out exactly how much of a disappointment Ilya is - and put an end to it all. Don't go to Russia. Ilya has never been brave enough to think these words. Now Shane Hollander has spoken them into existence, and it changes everything.
His body stops working. Just freezes. Total overdrive. System failure. For the next ten hours Ilya thinks many, many forbidden thoughts.
*
A flight attendant has to shake his shoulder to get Ilya's attention. He looks around in a daze and sees that the plane is empty. It's like moving through mud, climbing the jet bridge. An announcement in Russian comes over the speakers but it's like he no longer speaks the language.
He is back in his home country and it feels wrong.
Twice while making his way through the airport his feet just stop. Like his body is rejecting it.
Waiting at the baggage carousel, Ilya turns his phone on for the first time since leaving the hotel in Vegas. It blows up with messages from Shane and Sveta. There might even be a message from Scott Hunter. There are no messages from his brother or father.
Why is he doing this? For what - for blood? For family? This is not family; this is fear. Fear and shame. But Ilya is no longer a child. He does not have to cower. He does not have to present himself for punishment and apologize for existing. That doesn't make it any less true that leaving Russia behind would be leaving a part of himself behind. Except now Ilya thinks that maybe that's a good thing.
He has so few happy memories here. Here, he is only a hockey player needing discipline. Here, he is the too-soft, too-emotional second son. Here, he is a little boy crying for his mama.
He thinks he might feel better if he can leave these versions of himself behind.
Ilya collects his suitcase. He calls a cab and gives the address of the apartment he keeps in downtown Moscow. He will not go to the family estate tonight. As the city lights flicker past, Ilya rolls down the window and lights a cigarette. He takes a long puff, and finally exhales.
*
Another lit cigarette trembles in his hand. Ilya presses the call button and waits for Svetlana to pick up.
"Ilyusha, you're giving me gray hair," she says in Russian.
It settles him to hear her voice. He smiles despite himself. "Yes, I know. I would apologize but you won't accept it since I don't plan to stop."
"As if I didn't know. You're a very stubborn man. Almost as stubborn as Shane Hollander."
Ilya takes a drag of his cigarette. He dislikes the idea of Shane and Sveta talking about him. "Ah, so he told you what happened?"
"He told me he tried to talk you out of returning to Russia for the summer. Seems to think we can tag-team to convince you."
Ilya swallows thickly. "Can you?"
"You didn't read my texts, did you?"
No. Ilya did not.
He makes himself say, "Shane thinks it would be better for me not to come back here. Is that what you think?"
"It's not my life, Ilyusha. Who cares what I think?"
He tries to say several things. You're the only one who understands what this is like. You've been the only witness to my life for so long. You never told me not to come back here. Can you give a reason to stay? Can you give me a reason to go? Is there someone waiting for me in Canada or have I fucked that up, too?
What comes out is, "Sveta, please."
"Okay, Ilyusha." There's a change in her voice then. A newfound resolve. "Listen now because there's something I need to tell you." There's the sound of movement from the other end of the phone. A door sliding closed. "My mother told me something before she died. I kept it from you because I thought it would only break your heart. But I think you'll break your own heart anyway if I don't tell you now."
Ilya's heart kicks in his chest. Their mothers had been friends once. He remembers seeing Liliana Vetrova often as a young child, then less and less as time went on. As his father become stricter. More controlling of where and with whom mama went.
"Ilya, I think you should know that Irina was planning to leave him. She was planning to leave Russia. With you."
He's sent reeling. Ilya clutches the phone like a lifeline. "Why didn't she?"
"Your father found out and put a stop to it. Froze all her bank accounts. Confined her to the house. To make sure she couldn't leave with you. My mother doesn't know exactly how he found out but she thinks it could have been Alexei. Maybe Irina tried to take him too but he was scared, or already old enough to be corrupted by your father. I don't know."
The thick summer air presses in around him. Mama tried to leave. Mama didn't want to come back, either.
"When?" Ilya's voice comes out like gravel.
"About six months before she died."
It's like being kicked in the ribs.
For so long Ilya wondered if he had been the cause of his mother's suffering. In indirect ways, he thinks he probably was. Every time his mama had to see him punished. Every time he cried in her arms. But he wasn't the problem. She planned to take him with her. The dream of freedom included him.
It was Grigori who killed that dream. Grigori who stifled her and snuffed her out.
"I hate him," Ilya says, so angry that tears pool in his eyes. "I hate him for taking her from me."
"He has never deserved you, Ilyusha. If you want to punish him for it, punish him by living the way she would have wanted."
Ilya stubs out his third - fourth? - cigarette beneath his heel. He lights another. The scent of nicotine and the sound of Svetlana's voice are the only things keeping him from driving out to the family estate right now to beat up a sad, sick old man.
"She wanted to leave," Ilya says.
"That's right."
"She never planned to come back."
"Never."
The city lights of Moscow go blurry in Ilya's gaze.
Svetlana continues, "I didn't want to push you, Ilyusha. I didn't think you were ready and I was afraid you would be so lost without Russia. I hope you can forgive me for keeping this from you."
"I understand," he says, and he does, "There's nothing to forgive."
Even just a year ago, this news would have sent him into an uncontrollable spiral (and likely a multi-day bender). Because, before, he would be adrift. Running from Russia instead of running toward something.
Someone.
She stays on the phone in silence for a very long time.
"Sveta?"
"I'm here."
"What do I do now - if this is the last time I am ever here?"
*
Alexei calls 27 times over the next two days. Ilya ignores each and every one. He fantasizes a bit about confronting his brother. It would be so satisfying to punch his stupid face. But Ilya knows this is a bad idea with only two possible outcomes. The first, that Ilya will revert to the cowering child he always seems to become in Alexei or Grigori's presence. The second, that Ilya will actually kill his brother and have to flee the country as a criminal.
It's better to ignore.
The one person Ilya will miss here is little Katya, his niece. She is a sweet girl with a smile like his mama's. She likes horses. Ilya sets up a trust for her to collect when she turns 18. He writes her a letter, too, and the bank promises to deliver it when she receives the trust.
Following Svetlana's extremely pragmatic check-list, Ilya spends his last days in Moscow settling his affairs. He sells the apartment and donates anything that won't fit in a suitcase. There are some childhood books left behind at the family house but Ilya resigns himself to losing them. He will not set foot there again unless he has to. He goes to the American consulate but he still has 5 years left on his American work visa so he can't renew anything for now. He takes a pamphlet about applying for permanent residency. Goes to the civil registrar for copies of his birth certificate and other legal documents. Svetlana fires his hockey agent, and his financial manager - both of whom were chosen by his father and both of whom had a habit of skimming off the top.
He doesn't text Shane. Everything he wants to say is too big for a text. Instead, he lets Svetlana pass on the message that Ilya is safe and only staying in Moscow for a week or so. He doesn't let himself read Shane's messages.
On the last day, he visits his mother's grave.
It's a tiny plot separated from the rest of the church. In their sect of Orthodoxy, suicide is a sin, and those who commit it cannot be buried on the official church grounds. That's fine by Ilya. His mama never liked the stuffy old nuns and judge-y congregationalists. She has her own space. It's more peaceful that way.
Ilya is surprised that he doesn't cry. He just sits there with the sun on his face and her cross necklace in his fingers.
"My beautiful mama," he promises, "I will do it for both of us now."
He leaves the graveyard with more hope in his heart than he's felt in a long, long time.