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It all started with a simple phone call with Shane the week leading up to the anniversary of his father’s death.
“I understand.” Shane reassures softly.
“No, Shane. I don’t think you do.” Ilya says without malice.
“Okay, you’re right, I don’t. But I’ll always be here for you, no matter what. And I love you, and I don’t think it’s a good idea for you to be alone right now.” Shane repeats for the hundredth time that week.
“Shane, I need space.”
“From me?” Shane asks, his tone souring.
“Is not personal, believe me. You just do not understand.” Ilya placates carefully.
“Grief?”
“No, why I love him. You do not understand this, you think my father is a monster.”
“After everything he did, I just can’t imagine why you’d want to–” Shane’s voice rises and bleeds with the kind of bone-deep anger that comes from being burdened by things of the past you can’t possibly change but desperately wish to.
“And that is why I want to be alone. For one day, I want to love him without guilt.” Ilya says, a little more firmly, but no less kindly.
“Okay, you’re right. I’m sorry.” Shane says after a pause. He then quiets for a while. “You could go to my parents' house. They’d love that.” He offers.
“Shane…”
“Please, Ilya. I don’t want you to be alone right now.”
And because Ilya is a weak, weak man, he now sits at the Hollander’s dinner table solving a puzzle with David, while Yuna is out shopping for groceries. He feels a little like the luckiest man alive and a little like he’s on suicide watch. Shane is probably interrogating Yuna on how Ilya’s doing right this second. The thought warms his heart somewhat.
He knows they all think he’ll have a mental breakdown or something of the sort any second, even though he keeps reassuring them that he is, in fact, fine, and doesn’t need another tea or blanket or snack or whatever other polite Canadian bullshit they keep offering him.
Because Ilya does feel fine. Better than he felt a year ago, or two, or even ten. If anything, all he’s feeling is a little nostalgic, as he always is at this time of year. It does feel nice, though, the coddling he never experienced as a child. At least if he can convince himself that he deserves it.
They’ve been working on the puzzle since morning, and the progress they’ve made is immeasurable. It’s nice, having something to focus his mind on. They continue working in silence for a while before David clears his throat.
“What was your father like? I don’t mean to pry, and you don’t have to answer if you don’t want to, but maybe talking will help.” David asks, voice soft and cautious, like he’s walking on a minefield.
Ilya stares at David’s open expression, then he looks at the puzzle pieces strewn across the table, then his gaze skims over the house, warm, soft, so awfully domestic, and finally lands on the snow falling outside the window.
It reminds him of Russia, of Moscow. For the first time all day, he allows himself to think of his father.
=====
The cold Russian winter was at its peak in January, when Ilya's father thought to do a training exercise. At least that’s what he called it, something to keep him in shape and from growing lazy.
In truth, it was a punishment for something Ilya had done that he now doesn’t remember. It’s funny how it’s always the pain that sticks, never what you did to deserve it. And Ilya was so sure he deserved it back then, young and angry and so very small. Now, he isn’t so sure.
But what difference does it make? It’s over now. Russia, father, Alexei, they’re all memories of a past he can never return to. So why should he bother himself with what he did or didn’t deserve, with the pain and agony and sadness? It all passes eventually.
Early in the morning, his father drove them to the edge of Moscow, where the city ended, and the forest roads began. The track was uneven and covered in a thick layer of snow that had been falling continuously for the past few days. There, his father tells him to get out of the car.
“Run after me and don’t stop. We’ll see how far you’ll make it.” His father said and started driving. Illya ran after him.
He ran through the cold as it overtook his limbs, which slowly turned into pain, and then numbness with the beginnings of frostbite. He ran through the stinging air, burning in his lungs, making it impossible to breathe. He ran because quitting was never an option. Not in the face of his father’s disappointment.
Every once in a while, his father would pick up the pace, and Ilya would grow so scared of being left behind, here in some freezing forest outside of Moscow with no way back except the car in front of him, that he would instinctively start sprinting. The snow falling around him would blur his vision so he could barely make out the shape of the vehicle in front of him. His legs burned, his face could barely move, but he ran.
And then, eventually, his father grew bored and drove away faster, so in only a minute, there was no sign of him left. And as the car disappeared before Ilya into the never-ending white, he was suddenly hit with the thought that no matter how far he ran, to the end of this road, to the other end of the country, or to the end of the world, he would never catch up to the car. Never.
He would always be left here running, cold and in pain and scared and watching that car drive further and further out of reach. But he’ll run anyway, because in the cold Russian winter around him, there was no other way but forward.
=====
Ilya is crying in the showers of the changing room. He’s no older than 13, but the way his body is curled into itself against the wall could fool you into thinking he’s even younger. Tears stream down his pale cheeks, and his tiny frame shakes with every sob.
Heavy footsteps echo through the corridor and into the small room. Ilya hugs his legs to himself even tighter, as if he makes himself small enough, perhaps his father won’t see him. The steps get louder until his father’s shadow falls over Ilya.
“Stop crying.” He says, voice too loud in the small room. It only causes Ilya to cry more. “Ilya, stop crying and stand up.” His father tries again, authority in his tone, like he can force the sadness out of Ilya.
“Ilya, I swear to–” His father’s voice rises, and he takes a step closer towards Ilya, who flinches instinctively. His father pauses, and Ilya watches him carefully with big, round eyes.
“It’s okay, yes? It’s okay. Just stop crying.” Father says, much more softly. Like Ilya is a wounded animal. “I do not want to hurt you. Okay?”
His father crouches down before him and raises both hands as if to signal surrender. Ilya’s sobs slowly quiet, until there’s only a hitch in his breath now and then. His father waits patiently, his eyes never leaving Ilya’s.
“I didn’t mean to be so rough, but you need to be better than this. You are better than this. If I let you be lazy like this, you can kiss your career goodbye. I only want the best for you.” His father says. He slowly extends a hand and rests it on Ilya’s shoulder, the grip tight.
“I could be your coach, or I could be your father. If I were your father and you messed up, I’d kiss you and tell you it was okay, and that you are the best skater to ever exist, but this would be a lie, and we would get nowhere. I can not spoil you.” He continues.
His father raises a hand to cup Ilya’s cheek in a way he hadn’t since he was a toddler. As gently as he can, he runs his thumb over Ilya’s cheekbone where his face hit the ice. Ilya’s face stings at the touch, and he winces. His father doesn’t stop.
“So I must be your coach. And I need to yell and be hard sometimes because only then will you learn, only then can you be the best, and I do this because I want you to be the best. Ilya, son, you know how you are. Lazy, stubborn, hard to teach, that's why I must punish you like this. You understand?” His father’s finger stills, and he presses harder into the wound. Ilya bites his lip to stifle the pain and nods.
“Yes, I understand.” He mutters. When his father pulls his hand away, there’s blood staining the tip of a finger. He wipes it away on his jeans, then gives Ilya an appraising look.
“Good. Now pick yourself up from the dirty floor, pull yourself together, and stop crying like a little bitch. You are a man. Men do not do this, yes?”
“Yes, father.”
And that’s how it’s always been. Alexei was a fuck up, and Ilya was lazy. Ilya could move a mountain, run a marathon, and win five Stanley Cups in the same day, and he’d still be lazy in his father’s eyes. His eternal state of being.
The statement logically doesn't make sense, and it's irrational, and still, Ilya believes it with his entire heart, the word buried deeper than blood can reach.
His mother’s death was an accident, Alexei is a fuck up, and Ilya will always be lazy, no matter what. Three simple truths.
=====
Only once in his entire life has Ilya seen his father cry. It was the day of his mother’s funeral.
Ilya had been sitting on the living room couch motionless since it ended. Time ticked on, the sun rose and fell again, the wind outside howled on, but Ilya stayed still through it all. He didn’t quite know what to do with himself. It was like his entire world had been turned upside down, and he was left to figure out how to flip it back around all by himself.
Alexei had disappeared shortly after the funeral finished, and his father left home what was probably a couple of hours ago. On one hand, it was nice that Ilya didn’t have to navigate the stifling, tense atmosphere that all three of them in one room would bring. On the other hand, he felt so goddamn lonely.
Suddendly Ilya hears a sound coming from outside, heavy footsteps follow, and then the front door opens with a bang. Ilya’s violently broken out of his trance. In the hallway stands his father, his cheeks slightly red, his eyes unfocused, and swaying from one foot to another. He was clearly drunk.
“Ilya?” He asked.
“Hello.” Ilya answered timidly, unsure of how his father was feeling and what would follow.
Seemingly satisfied with the exchange, his father went to hang up his coat and scarf, then took off his shoes, which he did on unsteady feet, while leaning against the wall for support. He turned around and sat beside Ilya on the couch. For a while, they both stared at the wall in front of them in silence.
Then Ilya heard a quiet sound beside him that sounded awfully similar to a sniffle. Ilya looked towards his father to see him bent over, his hands covering his face, and his shoulders shaking. He was cursing under his breath.
“Father?” Ilya whispered, growing worried. He had never seen his father like this before.
His father lifted his gaze to meet Ilya’s. Tears were welling up in his eyes. Ilya froze in place, lost for how to help but feeling he absolutely had to. Then his father reached out and embraced him, tucking Ilya’s head into his shoulder and placing a steady hand on his back.
He reeked overwhelmingly of alcohol and cigarette smoke, and Ilya’s hair was growing uncomfortably wet with each sob that racked his father’s body. A man who was normally so loud wept silently. Someone with a presence larger than life sat there curled into himself like a child.
Ilya realized then that his father probably did love his mother, not loudly, not enough, too late, and probably not very much. But he did love her. Maybe he loved Ilya in the same way. Maybe he loved like he cried, wordlessly, painfully, and rarely. But he cried anyway, despite the way he always tried to convince Ilya that it was wrong.
The embrace turned painful over time, his father's grip on his small arm unbearable. Yet Ilya never wanted him to let go. He wanted to stay there forever, nestled in his father’s arm. He’d take agony any day if it meant he could have the rare softness in between. After all, his father’s love always did hurt a little bit.
Ilya isn’t sure if his father remembered what happened in the morning. They never mentioned that night again.
=====
Right before his father's funeral, Ilya stood in his apartment in Moscow. The space was empty, lifeless. He hadn’t been here for months, and the place that’s supposed to be home only brings back painful reminders and an odd feeling of foreignness.
His dress shirt suddenly feels too tight around his neck, and he goes to unbutton it. He can’t stand the feeling of his suit, expensive and suffocating and black like the coffin his father’s body is about to be laid in. It’s all nauseating.
He wants to get out of this awful suit, and out of this empty apartment, and out of this city stained with awful memories, and out of the country that hates everything he is and away from his father’s cold, dead body and his mother’s grave and every other ghost that haunts the earth he stands on.
Two shaky hands extend to steady him against the table before him. Ilya takes deep breaths to centre himself. After a while, he opens his eyes to a painful sight. On the table sits a picture of his father, old, probably from his military days. He had placed it there before to bring to the funeral.
Suddenly, he is hit with an overwhelming and inexplicable feeling of hatred. He has mildly hated his dad all his life, but it was always paired and subsequently overpowered by his childish admiration and guilt to really take root. But in that moment, alone and scared and so very angry, for the first time, Ilya truly hated his father.
Because he wasn’t there. At games and ceremonies, and after Ilya won the fucking Stanley Cup. After all his losses with Boston, after the Olympics, and after his mother's death. In all the lowest and highest points of his life. He was never there when it mattered, and Ilya hated him for it.
But Ilya wasn’t there when his father was dying and helpless and scared, either, was he? When dementia took him, he was left with Alexei, who was taking care of him because Ilya paid him, not out of any real familial obligation. Alexei never really cared, and Ilya wasn’t much of a good son anyway, so what right does he have for his hate?
Then, in a wave, guilt washes over him, and the hate is gone just as soon as it came. A familiar numbness overtakes him, and he goes back to button his shirt. When he leaves his apartment moments after, picture in hand, he’s sure that there are some ghosts you can never truly run away from.
=====
It’s the start of the summer break when Ilya finds himself in Moscow again. He can barely see the city past the overwhelming guilt clouding his vision. The pain of it is worse than any hit or punch he’s received in his life. With a shaky hand, he opens the door to the hospital room, which he hasn’t visited in months.
There’s a slight sliver of sunshine streaming through the window, casting the room in a somewhat otherworldly glow. Ilya steps further into the room, taking a look at his father. He lies there looking so awfully frail that it just about brings Ilya to his knees. His complexion is as white as the walls around them, and his lips are tinted a sick sort of blue. His eyes are closed, and for one long moment, Ilya is sure he’s dead.
“Father?” He whispers with a trembling voice.
When his father opens his eyes, they’re unfocused, blurry, and awfully scared, like a child. A pit opens up in Ilya’s stomach big enough to swallow the hotel room in its entirety. He rushes to his father’s bedside.
“Ilya, son. Where were you?” His father asks, and the guilt triples, growing so large that Ilya is sure it’ll squish his entire body under the weight of it, leaving nothing in its wake.
“America.”
“Why?” His father asks, sounding genuinely confused. Ilya extends a shaky hand to cover his father’s, which is nauseatingly small and weak in his grip. Ilya is scared that if he squeezes too hard, it’ll turn to dust.
“I'm an NHL player, remember? I play for Boston.” He explains. “I won a cup, just like you wanted.”
He watches as his father’s eyes widen in childlike wonder. “You did?”
Ilya nods and wills the tears growing behind his eyes to stay put. He wouldn’t want to ruin the moment with something his father beat out of him long ago.
“I’m so proud of you. Do you know that?” His father says simply, like he’s making small talk, speaking a simple truth accepted by the entire world, like ‘the sky is blue’, and not the kindest thing he’s ever said to Ilya. Not the only words Ilya’s wanted to hear his entire life.
Then Ilya needs to remind himself that his father doesn’t know what he’s saying. His mind is stuck in a world of its own creation, a mix of memories, make-believe, and people from a different time. He doesn’t know reality. His words should be meaningless, but they aren’t. Not to Ilya.
“Of course.” He whispers, agreeing easily. “That means a lot. It means everything.” And Ilya’s voice cracks as he’s saying it.
He turns away to keep his poor father from having to watch Ilya do the one thing he hated seeing him do his entire childhood, cry. He keeps holding his father’s hand, which is as cold as the Russian winter in January. Still, he holds on like that could somehow make up for all the months Ilya wasn’t there for him.
“Tell your mother we ran out of that coffee I like, will you? She needs to go buy more at the store tomorrow.” His father then says, breaking the heavy silence between them. When Ilya glances over, he’s staring out the window, his eyes glazed over like he’s somewhere else entirely. Ilya’s heart clenches.
“I will dad, I’ll tell her.” He whispers, continuing to rub comforting circles on the back of his hand until it grew slack in his grip as his father fell asleep.
Ilya then runs to the hospital bathroom, where he cries like he hasn’t since he was 13. He can still feel a phantom touch running over his cheek, a finger pressing into a wound, pain that’s that much bigger because it’s purposeful. He sees himself running and running and running after a car that will never stop. The biting cold, the numbness of his limbs, the childish fear.
‘I’m proud of you,’ the words echo through his mind, and Ilya thinks that everything he went through, every yell and hit and trial, it all just might have been worth it for those four loving words.
=====
When Ilya looks away from the snow still falling outside, David is back to trying to solve the puzzle. His demeanor is relaxed, like whatever Ilya might say, it will be accepted. It gives him courage that he might not have had otherwise.
“He was a tough man. He was hard on me.” Ilya finally says. “On my mother, too. I think it’s part of why she…” Ilya swallows down the rest of his sentence.
“He expected a lot from me. He wanted me to succeed. Sometimes he was not very kind, but he loved me, I’m sure of this. In his own way, he did.” Ilya pauses. “I think, maybe he hurt me sometimes because he loved me, because he wanted me to be the best, and that's what it took.”
Ilya stares at the puzzle pieces on the table as if he gazes for long enough, they’ll somehow spell out an answer, some grand truth about his father. What he felt, what he thought, what explanation he’d give for his actions and inactions, and if some kind of cure existed to absolve Ilya of all his guilt. But the puzzle pieces stayed put on the table, waiting to be solved.
“Maybe he was a bad person, but he was my father, too. Shane does not understand this.” Ilya then speaks again, feeling David’s expectant gaze on him. “Russia, it’s not like Canada. My home was not like his. My father was not like you.”
“In Russia, you do not call police for every little bruise and cut you give your child. Discipline is different. My father took care of me in the only way he knew how. And I know now that it was wrong, but it’s different.” He continues.
“I get it, Ilya. Believe me.” David says, and Ilya nods.
“Shane calls him a monster.”
“Well, you know Shane, he loves you and–”
“I know. And maybe he was sometimes.” Ilya concedes, his hands shaking slightly, but his tone firm. “But I love him, and I hate him, and I miss him. And maybe I always will.” He then says, the words are freeing to say, as they are daunting to think about.
“And that’s okay.” Says David so very softly.
“Despite everything?” Ilya asks, voice small.
“Despite everything.”
Ilya nods as if in understanding. Then he looks up at David, who is staring at him with an awfully loving expression. It makes Ilya’s heartbeat stutter in his chest with a feeling equal parts pain and happiness. What in the world has he done to deserve this? To deserve Shane and his parents?
David suddenly stands up and walks over to Ilya before promptly pulling him into a hug. His hold is soft but firm, like a promise. Ilya clings on like, without David’s arms, he might fall back into the past with all its ugly memories.
“It’ll be okay. One day, it’ll all be okay. But until then, you have us. You will always have us.”