Archive of Our Own ^beta

“Mom, we’re here!” Shane’s voice called into the house, followed by the soft squeaking of the door hinges swinging closed behind him.

“We’re in the living room,” Yuna said, getting up from the couch to go and greet him.

“There were a few more packages than we’d been expecting,” he warned her, rounding the corner with three big brown boxes all taped up from international shipping stacked in his arms.

“Probably filled with mostly garbage,” Ilya complained, following behind with four boxes of his own in hand and piled up over his head. “Sorry for this, Yuna.”

“No problem, boys,” she promised. “Just set them by the fireplace for now, and we can start looking through things after lunch.”

The two of them trailed in, one after the other, through the living room before dropping the boxes down in a neat stack just as she’d instructed. They made clunky, clattering sounds as they landed, and Yuna couldn’t help but cringe, wondering what all was inside and what all was now broken beyond repair.

“You sure none of those were fragile?”

Ilya shrugged. “Not valuable, I am sure of that at least. My brother would never part with something that he could sell.”

“We figure a lot of it is going to be old junk,” Shane admitted. “But, apparently, this is the last of Ilya’s dad’s things from the old house. So, at least there won’t be more coming after this.”

Yuna pressed an open palm to her chest sweetly. “Aww. That must be very emotional for you, Ilya.”

Her Russian son’s face flattened, and he sucked his teeth. “Not really. Just one more chore my brother is pawning off on me, really.”

“Oh come on,” she tisked. “There could be all kinds of old memories and family keepsakes in there you might want!”

“Doubt it.”

“Not a lot of happy family memories from that house,” Shane explained in a low whisper as he passed by her to start heading into the kitchen.

Ilya never talked about his childhood or his life in Russia much at all. What Shane was telling her seemed to explain that, but Yuna still found it a little hard to believe there wasn’t something of at least sentimental value in all of those many packages.

She knew Ilya’s father had been a difficult man. She’d run into him once back at the MLH draft all those years ago, and his harsh and critical demeanor had certainly been intimidating. But it still seemed to her that happy memories could be made anywhere, and perhaps Ilya was not considering that as he worked through his still complicated feelings about his father's last years and passing. It was something she worried he might come to regret.

They ate a light lunch in the kitchen after unloading everything from the cars and drank iced tea to cool themselves in the late summer heat.

“Did your brother give any hints at all about what he was sending over?” David asked Ilya between bites of his pasta salad.

A headshake. “We try not to speak to eachother much. I received an email a few weeks ago that he was boxing up the last few things left over so he could sell the house, but that was it. He probably just did not want to pay for junk removal or something like that. As Shane said, we doubt there is anything good inside.”

“Thanks for letting us drop them off here until we get a chance to be sure, though,” Shane inserted. “Obviously, we would have found space for them at our place, but with the new post-wedding renovations, there just wasn’t really room right now.”

Yuna smiled at this. She liked the reminder that the two of them were finally starting to build their new lift together. More than this, she liked that they were doing it in Ottawa near her and David, best of all. Both of her boys would be home at last.

“Happy to help,” David grinned, and Yuna agreed.

After they finished eating, Yuna went searching for and found a box cutter to start opening the packages. Right as she was about to dig in, however, Ilya’s phone made a sound, and he cursed dramatically in Russian.

“Gah!” He whined. “There is trouble with the training camp. New draft pick is being difficult and causing problems for Weibe.”

“They’re putting him on the ice already?” Shane asked.

“We don’t have the luxury of wasting time like Montreal could,” Ilya teased, well aware that he was currently amongst company where this dig would not be greatly appreciated. “You will see soon enough. Once the contract is formalized and you join us for real.”

Her son smiled, and Yuna smiled along with him.

“Do you need to go deal with it?” Yuna asked. “We could wait to start sorting through things here.”

“I do, but please don’t hold off on my account,” Ilya told her, already texting back a response and starting to look for his shoes. “The sooner things are looked over, the sooner we can be done thinking about my brother and father. It will be for the best. Feel free to throw away anything you want to. They will not be things I want to hold onto.”

He swiped up his keys from the table, thanked her for the meal, and was backing down the driveway before she could argue any further.

“Anyone else get the feeling he is just trying to ditch us with a chore?” Shane asked.

“Maybe,” David chuckled, finding as much amusement in Ilya as he always did. “But, he was pretty clear about not wanting much to do with this whole thing. It could just be difficult for him to think about.”

“Don’t make excuses for him,” Shane shook his head disapprovingly.

“Well, I’m not letting these stinky boxes sit in my house a minute longer than they need to,” Yuna announced, digging her blade into the tape on the box closest to her and tearing it open with surgical precision.

Shane and David began opening other boxes of their own.

For the most part, Ilya had been pretty spot on about most of the things packed away being worthless garbage. One box contained nothing but old pseudo-Soviet-era newspapers and opened envelopes, as if Alexei had just swiped an old drawer into a box and called it a day. None of them could read a word on anything, but they were wrinkled and dusty, so no one tried particularly hard either. Another box contained a few small trinkets that Yuna wondered about the significance of, but a few Google searches later, she had learned they were old carnival prizes, most likely bought for cents on the dollar. Or would it technically be Rubles?

“Anything good in yours?” David asked, dejectedly sorting through a box of increasingly old and shabby knitted sweaters.

“Nope,” Shane sighed. “Ilya was right. Alexei pretty much just sucks.”

Yuna hated to admit it, but it was looking like the most likely explanation at this point.

Her opinion started to change, however, when she got to her last box and found a short stack of thick, black VHS tapes in one dark corner of the box. She pulled one out, blew off a bit of dust, and saw a handwritten label etched onto the side of one. It was all in an unreadable Cyrillic script, but the penmanship was beautiful, and something about it looked intensely personal.

“Check these out,” she mused aloud, pulling a few more out and seeing that each of their labels was just a little bit different, but all had Russian language scrawled onto them with the same precision and care.

“Whoa,” Shane breathed, crawling over to her from his spot on the floor a few lengths away. “Those look ancient.”

“Not quite,” Yuna told him, laughing. “We used to have quite a collection of these when you were younger.”

“What for?”

“You could record movies and TV shows on them if you were going to be out of the house when they were airing,” David told him before winking and adding, “like Netflix before Netflix.”

“Or you could record home movies onto them too,” Yuna nudged him lightly. “If you had the right kind of camera. We have some of your old tapes somewhere stored just like this.”

“Really? Like what?”

“Your first steps for one thing!”

“Well, almost your first steps,” David corrected, earning him a still-bitter glare from his wife. “I forgot to hit record for your real ones, but, thankfully, you got back up and going again pretty soon after.”

Shane picked one up and looked it over. He had been learning a bit of Russian over the last few months, but still wasn’t very good at reading it.

“You don’t suppose these could be like old movies of Ilya, then. Do you?”

Yuna’s heart fluttered at the thought. “Maybe!”

They had been stored in thin cardboard sleeves and packed with care, after all. Maybe that meant they were worth preserving.

“Too bad we don’t still have the machine we’d need to play them,” she sighed. “We threw ours out ages ago.”

A pause.

“Well…” David admitted, rubbing at the back of his neck. “I know I was supposed to throw it out, but…”

“David!” Yuna gasped. “I asked you to do that eight years ago!”

“Aren’t you glad now that I forgot?”

She frowned. “Go get the machine.”

It took some fiddling and some hunting to find the right adapters and connectors, but less than an hour later, the Hollander family had managed to MacGyver the hulking and dusty VCH player into their big TV and turn it on.

“Which one would we start with?” Shane wondered, sorting through what he found but unsure of what any of it was.

Yuna found one with a few characters on it that she could make out, numbers. More precisely, a year–1995.

“This one,” she decided, handing it over.

She remembered that year well. Shane had started pre-school that year, and David had taken him out on the ice for his first time.

They slid the clunky cartridge into the machine and waited a minute for the blank blue screen to switch to picture. When it did, the film quality was poor and coarse, but it obviously showed some kind of tall meadow in bloom.

“That’s soviet technology for you,” David critiqued.

“This is the mid-90s,” Shane reminded him playfully. “No more soviet union.”

The camera filming was clearly being held in someone’s hand, as the image was slightly unsteady. A woman’s voice could be heard speaking softly in Russian somewhere offscreen, and then, some of the tall flowering grasses started to shake, and something burst out.

At first, all three of them jumped a bit but quickly relaxed and smiled when it became clear that the little surprise was just a young boy. His gait was still unsteady as he came bounding out, but a full head of platinum blond curls adorned his head, and there was a familiar dopey grin on his face.

He mumbled something unintelligible in the early makings of Russian, and the woman behind the camera laughed lovingly.

It was supposed to be, “Ya lyublyu tebya, mama!” Shane soon realized: I love you, mama.

“Ya tozhe tebya lyublyu, Ilyushenka,” the woman said sweetly, rustling the boy’s hair with a pale, manicured hand.

Shane didn’t need to have completed his Russian lessons to be sure that this woman was calling the young boy Ilya with the fondest and most familiar diminutive of the name.

His eyes fell softly on the screen, and his heart almost melted. He’d never even seen a picture of young Ilya before, much less a video. He was adorable beyond words.

“Is that…?” Yuna wondered.

“Yeah, it is.”

His mother’s compliment made the young Ilya giggle and run back off into the grass with a mischievous glint in his eye that Shane knew all too well.

“Oh my god.”

“I told you there would be something in here worth keeping,” Yuna smiled.

The video cut, and a new recording began.

It was winter now, and the same woman seemed to be holding the camera, but this time, it was pointed out at a frozen lake where a slightly taller, more grown-up boy with blonde hair was bundled up in winter gear and unsteadily sliding across the patch of ice. He still couldn't be much older than 5 years old, but it was obvious that this video came a while after the first. His little skates were just a bit too big for his feet, and his balance was still imperfect enough that his knees shook and he had to hold his arms out like a trapeze artist on a rope.

“Oh my god! Is this him learning to skate?” Yuna gushed. “Shane, you looked just like this the first time David set you down out there. This is bringing back so many memories!”

She couldn’t believe Ilya had almost let her throw all of this away.

“Bud' ostorozhen!” The woman warned in a maternal tone.

The young Ilya just laughed manically before attempting to push a skate too quickly and faceplanting into the ice with a thud, before cries rang out.

The video dropped to the ground as the woman–presumably his mother, Irina, at this point–tossed the camera aside in favor of her fallen son and rushed to his aid. He was crying pretty hard now, and the tilted and toppled video captured her sliding out to his rescue and picking him up, blurily kissing his head and wiping away the scared, snotty tears.

Yuna thought her heart might burst.

“Ya zhe govorila, chto on ne gotov!” A male voice snapped from inside the video.

The young boy startled and began crying harder, and his mother visibly tensed as well.

Shane frowned.

“Girgori–” She tried before getting cut off by the man’s authoritative yell.

“Glupaya zhenshchina! Ty oslabish' moyego syna.”

Shane didn’t know enough of the words to be sure what was being said, but, by reaction alone, it wasn't good. He was quite sure that he recognized Ilya’s father’s name being addressed at this man, and that confirmed everything Shane was already beginning to angrily suspect.

“What was that?” Yuna asked, turning to Shane for context.

“I’m not totally sure,” he admitted before reluctantly explaining his prevailing theory.

“Scary dude,” David said, having also met him in passing just that once so many years ago, but very much walking away with a strong and unpleasant first impression of the man.

Grigori Rozanov was not someone easily forgotten, so it was no surprise he stuck around in the minds of everyone unfortunate enough to cross his path.

The tape ended there.

Shane looked nervously up at his mom.

“Ilya did say there wouldn’t be much good inside.”

He, of all people, knew that Ilya didn’t like to think of his childhood and had not exactly had a happy one by any standards. Even so, seeing this recorded so intimately put Shane in the middle of it and unnerved him more than he cared to admit. It made him glad for the parents he had instead of the ones he could have.

“Should we wait for Ilya to come back to watch any of the others?” Yuna suggested.

Shane checked his phone. “He could still be gone for a while. Do you think we should stop?”

It did feel a little wrong being such intimate home movies without the subject’s presence after all.

“He said he didn’t care what we did with this stuff,” Yuna supposed, but, really, she was just feeling a bit uneasy after that last tape, and her maternal instincts wanted to watch another and make sure things turned around for the better. She hated to think of Ilya growing up ina house with a man who would shout like that at a mother and child. Part of her knew that he had, but that did not mean she had to accept it without a fight.

“What if we just try this one next and see how it goes?” David offered, pulling the chronologically next one out, labeled with the year 1997.

Shane struggled to see the real harm since it was true that Ilya had given permission in a way and slid it into the machine.

A new video started, the picture slightly clearer now, of the inside of an old car driving down a big gray, brutalist street. It was a wide car with upholstered bench seats that all had funny white lacy doilies draped over the backs, as if that made things classier.

“Gde ty, moya lyubov'?” Iringa’s voice sang out just before a young Ilya popped up from behind the back row of seats, arms outstretched, like it was meant to scare his mother, who offered a playful but more so amused than anything else sort of shriek.

Laughing to himself, the young Ilya made a face for the camera, ever the performer he was, and squeezed his tongue disgustingly through a gap in his teeth where the adult set had not yet grown in.

He and his mother laughed together at this, and Shane began to relax. As long as more of the movies were like this than the one before, he felt less awful about watching them without Ilya around.

“Vy oba ochen' glupy,” another voice said with a self-superior tone that made Shane instantly take a strong dislike.

The camera panned to a slightly older boy with darker hair and a stockier build sitting, arms crossed, in the seat beside Ilya. He looked less than amused at the antics before him to the point of actual disdain. It was a miserable kind of expression for a boy who must have only been ten or so years old.

“Alexei,” Shane said aloud with absolute certainty.

“A ty sovsem ne vesolyy!” The young Ilya argued back, sliding back on the seat into a full pout.

That stuck-out lip and twisted mouth looked the same on Ilya then as they still did now when he received penalties he felt he did not deserve.

“Vedite sebya prilichno, vy oba,” Irina chided.

Both brothers looked at her with mopey eyes, clearly not a fan of whatever instruction she’d given them.

“Alyosha, ne mog by ty segodnya podderzhat' brata na yego vazhnom matche?” Their mother asked.

Ilya turned to look expectantly at his brother, but Alexei just scowled and snarled in return.

“Vso zavisit ot togo, pobedit on ili net,” he decided bitterly before the camera cut to black.

“What was all that about, do you think?” David asked uncertainly. “Can’t say I’m picking up much of the text here, considering the language gap and all.”

Shane had grasped a few words and noted the very specific way the two brothers had been on edge enough to hazard an interpretation.

“I think it had something to do with a hockey game.”

“Well, that brother of his sure did seem just the way Ilya has described,” Yuna pointed out unpleasantly.

“I’ve never really met him,” Shane said, “but yeah, all the stories are pretty consistent. The two of them very much do not get along.”

“I can see that,” David agreed. “Aren’t any of these a little bit happier? Seems a bit depressing to leave off on one like that.”

Given what little he’d gleaned about Ilya’s childhood from the snide comments and offhanded remarks, Shane was actually starting to get nervous that things would only get worse from here. Would Ilya be mad that they were watching all of these while he was away from home?

“What about this one?” Yuna suggested, raising another tape at random from the box for all to see. “Third time’s the charm.”

Her desperation to find some evidence that things had not been as bad as they seemed was worsening by the moment.

The next video began with an image of a proper indoor ice rink. It was being filed from up in the stands, but crowds of young boys skated around down below, and Irina’s voice cheered them on proudly.

“Ah, the pee-wee league days,” David smiled, relaxing a bit. “You remember those?”

“You were all so cute back then,” Yuna recalled fondly.

Shane did actually remember those days fondly. It was back when hockey was just for fun–long before the scouts and pressure had made everything feel so serious.

“Ilya!” Irina’s voice called out.

The camera zoomed in on a boy down on the ice, covered up with hulking pads and a big helmet that swallowed his entire head. Shane could make out a smile as he looked up and waved before a coach shouted something, and he had to snap his attention back to the game.

“I don’t think I missed a single one of your games back then,” Yuna told Shane. “Your father missed a few for work.”

“But only a few,” David chuckled. “They were always the highlight of my week, though.”

Shane knew just what they meant. This game on the TV wasn’t his, but in many ways it felt like it could have been. It struck a nostalgic chord in him that made him glad they’d taken the risk of putting another one of the tapes on.

The young Ilya bolted to the other end of the rink, slicing in next to a boy who was wearing the opponent's colors. He swiped away the puck from the other player in one fell swoop and flicked it prodigiously into the net. Still filming, Irina shouted in celebration and seemed to jump for joy as the goal alarm sounded and the bright red scoreboard changed.

“That’s some pretty fancy puck-handling for that age,” David said, impressed. “He had good hands even back then.”

“Shane was doing things like that at the same age, David,” Yuna reminded him.

“It’s not a competition,” Shane laughed. “Well, not anymore at least.”

The video cut to a new scene taking place inside a large library or study somewhere. Ilya was there, dressed in a little tuxedo with a bowtie and a competition medal around his neck. He was looking down at the medal, frowning, and Shane knew instantly that this was because it was silver.

“Already wracking up awards!” Yuna beamed happily.

“I’ve seen Shane make that same face,” David teased. “Two overachieving peas in a pod.”

Shane wanted to joke back, but Ilya’s uneasy expression made this less than ideal outcome seem like the end of his world. He genuinely looked sick to his stomach just looking at the hunk of miscolored metal in his hand.

Irina said something supportive to him, but it didn’t seem to lessen his worries.

She said something that Shane thought might have been, “Show it to me,” or “let me see,” but it was hard to be sure. Either way, Ilya displayed the medal to the camera against his hand with a slanted expression and then pursed his lips.

A door in the room opened, and both Ilya and Irina jumped.

“Chto eto?” Grigori’s voice demanded. “Vy gordites' svoyey medal'yu? Ne stoit tak dumat'. To, chto ya segodnya uvidel, bylo zhalko. Mne stalo stydno byt' tvoim ottsom.”

His words were sharp, and the young Ilya looked like he might cry, but forced a stiff upper lip and just said something apologetic-sounding instead.

Irina tried to tell Ilya’s father something to the tune of, “Please, he is just a boy,” but Grigori did not want to hear it and marched over to his son.

He plucked up the medal from around Ilya’s neck and taunted him with it for a moment before ripping it away, snapping the ribbon from around Ilya's throat as he did. Ilya stumbled from the force of this. He was perhaps only nine or ten years old here, and noticeably much smaller than his large and intimidating policeman father.

Grigori growled something about winning, and Ilya just nodded obediently while his mother stayed silent, her fast and unsteady breathing barely audible in the background.

Then, before anyone could speak, a harsh slap rang out as the back of his father’s open hand smacked the side of Ilya’s face.

Shane’s breath hitched in his chest, and he had to remind himself to exhale.

Once again, the camera clattered to the ground, and a pair of long, elegant legs could be seen on the lopsided video, rushing in to stand between the father and son.

Irina said something firmly to Grigori, perhaps trying to get him to go easy on their son, but the next thing Shane knew, she was also being hit aside and fell to the ground in a crumpled mess. Only her back was visible, but she could be seen raising a flinching hand to her beaten face and then sobbing.

A young and shell-shocked Ilya saw this with wide eyes and began shouting at his father furiously. He charged at him a moment later, but was no match. Grigori picked him up by the lapels of his suit as if he weighed nothing at all and hit him again once, twice, three times, before finally throwing him to the floor with a violent crash. A swift kick came his way as a finishing move, followed by a painful groan before everything in the room went silent.

Grigori’s deep, gravely voice cursed something at both Ilya and his mother before marching away and slamming the door. Irina continued to sob softly, incapable of climbing to her feet. Ilya crawled over to her weakly and tried to hug her, but there was no comfort in the world enough to make her stop.

The last thing on the tape was this adolescent Ilya, heaving himself up, limping over, and picking up the camera himself. He seemed to be searching for the control buttons on the side, but flashed a glimpse of his face, red and bloodied, with a wounded nose and split lip in the process. He had been trembling and sniffing stubbornly but refusing to let tears fall before he finally managed to finish this chapter with the most haunting ending yet.

 

Yuna’s hand was pressed against her mouth once the screen turned black. She had no words to give at first, but eventually managed to whisper, “That man was a monster.”

Shane had never agreed more. His fist was clenched ferociously at his side, and he felt positively murderous in a way he never had before.

This was the man that Ilya had devoted so much of his time, money, and attention to caring for after he developed dementia in his later years? It was inconceivable. This man wasn’t worth a second thought to Shane, much less everything Ilya had given him, despite the way he’d been treated.

“I think we had better give these tapes a rest,” David said aloud, sounding a bit haunted himself. “That’s more than enough for today.”

Yuna was at a complete loss here. She felt stunned and numb at what she’d just seen. Russian parenting had a reputation for being strict and unforgiving, but others may have once said similar things about her own father’s traditional and disciplined approach. Still, this was so much more than culture alone. This was the clearest case of abuse she’d ever seen.

There was no reason a man, especially one as large as that, should have been beating up his own wife and child. It was unthinkable and unforgivable in equal measure.

She’d picked this tape out, hoping it might finally show the lighter side of things. Clearly, she couldn't have been more wrong. Were all of these videos really just as bad or even worse than each other?

She ejected the video from the player and slid the video back into its sleeve. Silently, she had to look away just to keep herself from crying.

They tried working on sorting through some of the old papers for the rest of the afternoon, but none of their hearts were really in it. It was numb and mindless work, but even that felt like too much to ask of Shane, who couldn’t get that image of Ilya’s young bloodied face out of his head.

Eventually, though, enough time passed by, and the sound of a car pulling into the driveway outside could be heard. There was a pause, and the front door opened next. The Hollanders all met each other's eyes apprehensively.

“I am back!” Ilya called into the house. “Took longer than expected, but we managed to sort things out. And…” he paused dramatically, rounding the corner. “I come with gifts!” He appeared in the kitchen with a white baker’s box in his hands with the lid lifted, displaying a half-dozen or so golden brown baked goods lined up inside. “Troy Barrett’s boyfriend, Harris, brought these in from his family’s apple orchard. They are called Apple Fritters, and they are amazing. Have you ever tried them? I’ve already eaten three but saved the rest for you.”

His face was full of a goofy sort of joy and wonder that Shane struggled to reconcile it with the videos he had just been watching. Clearly, his childhood had been a nightmare, and Shane knew with certainty his early adulthood had not exactly been a walk in the park either, and yet here he was cracking jokes and trying to share deep-fried doughnuts like none of those things had even touched his life at all.

“Geez, who died?” He joked, looking around the room at the sullen faces looking back at him. His own smile started to fall, though when no one lightened up at this, and he quickly followed up by asking more seriously, “Oh my god, who died?!”

Yuna stifled a little sniff and climbed to her feet before walking over to him and wrapping him in a big hug. His eyes were big and concerned and zeroed in on Shane with an expression that screamed, “Please explain what the fuck is going on!”

“We’ve been going through the boxes,” Shane told him. “There was one full of old movie tapes and we kind of… watched some of them.”

“Okay…?”

“They were home movies,” David expanded. “Old ones that… um, we think your mother had made.”

Ilya’s worried expression changed into one of surprise with a hint of tense contemplation.

“I did not know my father had kept those,” he said, chewing the inside of his cheek. “After my mother killed herself and he remarried, they got rid of most of her things. I had always thought those videos were included.”

“They weren’t all bad or anything,” Shane assured him, recalling some of the sweet moments caught on film and immortalized. “But, some of them were kind of… intense.”

“The Rozanovs at our best and worst,” Ilya smirked humorlessly. “I am sorry you had to see those.”

Yuna almost gasped and pulled away from her hug just enough to look Ilya in the eyes and place a comforting hand on his face.

“No, sweetheart, no!” She insisted. “We are just sorry for…” She struggled to find her next words, which was a rarity for someone like her. “Intruding. These were private memories, and we should have at least talked to you first.”

She desperately wanted to apologize even more for the actual content of the tapes, too, and what they revealed about the bleak reality of living under Grigori Rozanov’s roof for all those years, but held her tongue. There was time for all of that later. The last thing she wanted right now was for Ilya to worry that the family pitied him now, on top of everything else. Even if part of it was true, she doubted he would thank her for it in the long run. Ilya Rozanov had never once asked for anyone's pity.

Ilya shook his head. “They are family videos, and you are my family now, too. There is no need to apologize. It cannot have been a particularly fun afternoon for you all, though. Perhaps an Apple Fritter will cheer you up?”

He lifted the box back up with his one free hand and forced a playful smile. Shane loved his smile but was beginning to hate that it was the same one he had had as a child in all those tapes.

“Fine, David, will you split one with me?” Yuna asked, relenting and turning her face just enough to obscure that she was wiping away a tear.

“Don’t have to ask me twice,” David agreed comfortingly.

“Guys, you’ll spoil your dinner,” Shane warned.

“Yuna, tell your son not to be so much of a killyjoy,” Ilya begged.

“Leave him alone,” she smiled. “But I am making chicken parmesan for dinner, so save some room.”

Ilya’s favorite.

“Okay. I forgive you then.”

They did manage to bring the energy back up a bit over dinner. None of them was able to completely put the things theyd seen behind them, but they were able to laugh together again, and that was something worth appreciating.

After eating, they congregated in the living room and watched Boston absolutely destroy New York on the Hollander’s enormous hockey-watching TV before beginning to yawn and heading off to bed. It was late enough now that Shane and Ilya decided to just spend the night at the house instead of returning to their own home. Ilya loved that this was the kind of family where staying over was not only allowed but encouraged. They actually wanted him here, and that meant the world.

Hearing that they had all been watching all those old movies without him did stir up some old memories and feelings he’d buried and forgotten about years ago. He’d tried to be casual and reassuring when they’d asked him about it, but, in truth, he knew some of the things caught on camera were more than unfortunate. They must all have been shocked.

It was special to him that people in Canada didn’t know too much about his life before North America. That way, they couldn’t hold any of it against him or use it to make assumptions. But, at the same time, it felt freeing to share the load, too. He’d carried a lot of those days on his own for so long that having them move out into the light of day felt like a burden lifting.

Not lifted, mind you, but lifting to be sure.

Still, his mind raced most of the night, and after some hours of struggling and failing to sleep next to Shane, Ilya peeled himself from the sheets and trod down the stairs to get a drink from the kitchen.

Once he was down there, he poured himself a glass of chocolate milk from the fridge and took a long, sweet drink over the sink. Only once he did this, and his anxious nerves began to settle, did he realize that there was a light on in the living room around the corner, and he could just barely hear the low sound of voices playing on the TV.

He peered around to look and saw Yuna up and on the couch with another one of those old tapes playing. All the other lights were off, and the volume was so quiet that she clearly meant not to be seen or heard, but Ilya could not help himself from making his presence known once he realized which of his worst memories was not on display.

He cleared his throat.

Yuna jumped a bit and spun around tensely, her eyes widening as soon as she saw him there, nearly spilling the hefty pour of white wine in her hand.

“Oh! Ilya, dear, I’m so sorry, did I wake you up?”

He shook his head. “You are as quiet as a rat,” he promised her.

“Mouse.”

“Are those quieter?”

She smiled softly. “Must be.”

“Am I just far too interesting for you to sleep as well?” He asked, nodding towards the screen with his chin. “I run into this problem often myself.”

Yuna’s face reddened. “I wanted to find one that was nice,” she said a little sadly. “I couldn’t get to bed without knowing you were okay.”

“These were all taken many years ago,” he reminded her, coming around and sitting at the other end of the couch. “I am okay now, and that is all that matters.”

Her face hardened. “I know I’m not your real mother, Ilya, but that doesn’t stop me from feeling like I am. And as someone who loves you as my own son, it kills me to think of anyone treating a child, much less my child, the way your father treated you.”

Ilya paused mid-sip and watched his hands slowly lower the cup onto his lap.

“He was not always bad,” he heard himself tell her. “There were days when his memory was gone, and he’d forgotten who I was entirely, where he almost seemed to care for me. It was strange, but it was nice. Sometimes, I think the thing he hated most about me was that I was his son. If I had been anyone else at all, maybe we would have been okay.”

Yuna turned and saw Ilya’s face all clenched up in the glow of the TV.

“Honey…”

“Is okay,” he insisted. “I was always more like my mother anyway. In more ways than one. Perhaps that was why he hated me, too. I know it was why my brother did.”

“What was she like?” Yuna had seen her in the movies, but wondered what she’d looked like through Ilya’s eyes instead.

“So funny and kind and beautiful,” he said softly. “So sad.”

“She loved you a lot. That much was clear.”

Ilya nodded. “Yes, I think so too. Was not enough, but this does not mean was untrue. She was young when she married my father. Had to drop out of school because her family was in trouble. He was older and had money. It made sense.” He paused. “It was hard in Russia back in those days. My brother was born just before the union collapsed. They nearly lost everything when it did. They had to rebuild, and so he did not grow up with as much as I did. It made him angry. He still does not forgive me. Says I have life that belongs to him. I think sometimes he is right, maybe.”

“You’ve earned everything you have,” Yuna insisted. “You’ve worked so hard.”

He sucked his cheek, unconvinced, and looked up at the paused screen in front of them.

“Which one are you watching?”

Yuna blinked. “Oh, um, I’m not always sure since it's all in Russian, but I think it's some kind of graduation day or special occasion?”

She hit play.

Ilya recognized the scene immediately. It was from when he was 16 and had just been recruited for the national youth league. He was standing rigidly with a serious expression on his face, attempting to pose for what was meant to be a formal family portrait to commemorate the occasion. His stupid brother had dug out their mother’s old camera, though, and was skirting around, encroaching on Ilya’s space and trying to make him lose his cool in revenge for all the attention and prestige he was receiving.

Alexei’s obnoxious voice kept asking, “Won’t you say something, Ilya? Won’t you look in the camera and say something to Mama?”

The very same white-hot rage he’d felt back then began to bubble within him now.

When Yuna looked at the video, she saw things a little differently. To her, it was clear Ilya’s brother was antagonizing him, but she was more fascinated by the young but severe-looking boy being taunted. It was a big time jump from the earlier videos she’d seen, and it was troubling to see that the once-happy little boy had grown into such a solemn-looking teen.

There was no joy in those eyes anymore. No smile on those lips. Just red, raw skin across his knuckles from a fight that his face said he started.

He looked angry. More like the Ilya she had first met at the Prospect Cup back in 2008. Not quite as sturdy yet, admittedly, and clearly fresh out of his latest growth spurt, so that he was all height and no weight, but had clenched fists and hard eyes that were just begging to start another fight, on or off the ice.

“This was four years after my mother,” Ilya explained. “My father had just remarried his new wife, Polina, the summer before.”

A different woman than before, still blonde but even younger yet less carefree, walked across the shot and tried to fix Ilya’s hair for the picture. He swatted her hand away and hissed something to her that made her skitter away.

“I was probably unfair to her,” he admitted, seeing this play back with the benefit of all these years in between. “But she only cared about money and appearances. Never my brother nor I. There was not a maternal bone in her body, even now, I am sure of this.”

“That must have been hard.”

Ilya didn’t answer and, instead, just confessed, “This was the day I decided I would go to the NHL instead of staying to play in the Russian league like my father wanted. I’d had enough. Knew I would end up just like Mama if I stayed.”

“And we are so lucky you did,” Yuna told him, reaching over and resting a hand over one of Ilya’s, helping his grip on his glass to lessen and relax.

He was so grateful she did.

“Are you sure?” He wondered. “All of your lives would have been much simpler if I had not come, I think. Shane’s most of all.”

“Are you trying to suggest you personally turned my son gay and ruined his life?” She nudged him playfully. “'Cause if you are, I feel like I have to remind you that, while you are good, you are not quite that good, Ilya Rozanov. And I am saying that as one of the few people around who has known my son longer than you.”

He smiled.

“You’ve made all of our lives so much richer,” she continued. “And I’m so glad you're here.”

“You flatter me,” he deflected with a chuckle. “Luckily, I am very vain and susceptible to this. Keep going. Don’t stop.”

He was one tough nut to crack, that was for sure.

“How’s your drink?” She asked him, gesturing with her eyes to the frosty half-empty glass of chocolate milk in his hands.

“Very good, of course. Always good. Every time.”

“Tell me, Ilya, have you ever wondered why there is always a carton of chocolate milk in my fridge despite Shane, David, and me all being lactose intolerant?”

He stopped, and a devilish gleam of realization flashed through his eyes. “For me?”

“Of course, for you,” she rubbed her thumb against the top of his hand.

“I should have known,” he mused. “Not very macrobiotic.”

Yuna chuckled and took a drink of wine at this reminder of her son’s interesting dietary preferences.

Grigori Rozanov came into view on the screen and was fixing Ilya’s tie with a roughness that Yuna feared might choke the boy. Having apparently learned a lifetime of hard lessons about fighting his father by now, the scrappy blond teen just let him do his work and accepted some harsh, scolding criticism hissed at him in Russian with cold, dead eyes.

Beside her, Ilya sighed and leaned back into the couch and finished the rest of his milk in one long weary gulp.

“What did he say?”

“Said my tie was uneven and called me a…” he searched for the right translation. “Lazy disappointment like my mother.”

Yuna’s mouth fell open. “But that’s a horrible thing to say!”

“You are still surprised?” Ilya laughed darkly. “It is true, it is bad, but he said these things so much that they lost their meaning. Look at me, do I look bothered still?”

His teenage self didn’t react obviously to the jabs, but Yuna could see his eyelids lower by degrees, and his teeth clench. Ilya might want to pretend those words didn’t bother him, and he was good enough at hiding it that someone who didn’t know him could believe it, but, unfortunately for him, she did know him pretty well at this point and could tell the bravado was bullshit.

All teen boys were the same.

“‘Lazy’ was his favorite insult,” Ilya explained. “He used to call Mama that a lot. But, then she killed herself, and he started calling me it instead.” He paused, pulling his long legs up into his chest and somehow squeezing his entire large frame into the space of a single couch cushion. “She was not lazy,” he told Yuna quickly, as though she’d ever believe a word out of his father’s mouth over his. “She was just sad, and it was hard for her to live.”

This was the second time he’d specifically described his mother as ‘sad.’ It seemed like too small a word for a woman who was cornered into ending her own life. What was it about that word that he clung to so much? Perhaps it was the diminishing effect itself. Maybe it made it easier to compartmentalize something too big to understand.

“Sad like you are, sometimes?”

Yuna didn’t know all the details, but Ilya had never been quiet or secretive about the fact that he saw a therapist for depression and even took medication. Still, as soon as she asked this, she wanted to clap a hand over her mouth for asking something so thoughtless and direct. It was none of her business.

If Ilya was caught off guard by the question at all, however, his reaction gave no indication. Instead, he just nodded. “Yes. Just like that.”

Yuna’s grip on her wine glass tightened.

“But, you’re not…?” She didn’t know how to finish her sentence, but she still needed to make sure.

“No,” Ilya shook his head, again taking this startling question seemlessly in his stride. “I am not going to kill myself.” He didn’t think he would, anyway. He was almost sure. “I have many things to help me that Mama did not, like you and David and…” he smiled. “Shane.”

“Well, good,” she told him, biting her lip and blinking away a tear. “Because we’re always here for you, no matter what. If you need something, don’t hesitate. We love you and mean it.”

He was quiet in a tired way, but Yuna could see him nod from the corner of her eye.

“Well, should we turn these off and go get some sleep?” She asked, setting her glass down and reaching for the remote over a pile of black tapes on the coffee table.

His eyes tracked down to the stack and widened when he saw one in particular.

Without a word, he unfolded his body, reached for the video to read the label closer, and then crawled forward to insert it into the player before Yuna could switch it off, like a man possessed.

He shuffled back to the couch, eyes fixed on the screen as a grainy and damaged video of his mother played. Based on film quality alone, Yuna would have probably guessed it was the oldest tape she’d seen in the collection yet, but the fact that Irina was sitting next to a bassinet with a sleeping baby in it seemed to confirm this.

Her hair was curled into a fashionable style for the early 90s, and she had one hand reaching into the crib, her finger gently stroking an infant's cheek.

“Is that you?”

“I think so,” Ilya whispered in a tight, choked breath.

His mother gazed at him lovingly and then looked at whoever was behind the camera with love in her eyes. She asked him if the camera was recording, and his father’s voice answered back that it was.

There was an audible fondness between them in this moment that existed in no other time in Ilya’s recollection. He wondered where it had gone and why it had gone away.

“Ilyushenka…” She cooed before starting to hum lovingly in a smooth and tranquil tone.

What came next was a famous Russian lullaby that Ilya only recognized from memories. Its soft, dulcet song made his heart ache, and his eyes begin to sting.

Before tears could fall, he let his eyes close slowly and leaned back into the upholstery, letting the dreamy, nostalgic melody wrap around him.

Yuna was watching with unblinking eyes and thinking about the songs she’d sung to Shane when he was that age and fussing too much to sleep. She stopped caring about crying and let a few tears do what they were meant to down the side of her face.

When the song was over, and the short tape jumped to a blue television screen, she sniffled and turned to say something to Ilya when she noticed his head had fallen and was resting heavily on the couch cushion next to him.

His lips were parted, and his face looked more relaxed than she’d ever seen.

Her heart soared. Even after all these years, his mother’s voice was still able to put him to sleep.

She scooted over and gently guided his head and torso down into her lap.

He stirred slightly, opening his groggy eyes just enough to see what was happening, but closed them again gladly once he did, melting into her like the child in the video.

She rubbed a few soft circles into his scalp while he slept and felt the comfort and peace of the moment begin to fall over her as well until sleep finally took them both away.

The sleep was peaceful for both of them. Long and happy in a way neither had had in far too long. The end only came when Shane’s voice cut through the dreams with a clearing of his throat and a sideways, “Geez mom, are you trying to steal my husband?”

Her eyes snapped back open and found Shane and David both standing in front of her, still dressed in pajamas but now bathed in morning sun. Her son had a crooked grin on his face, and David looked like he needed a cup of coffee.

“Mmm, do not blame her,” Ilya mumbled sleepily. “She is a beautiful woman, and I am very irresistible. Is my fault, completely.”

Shane started laughing, and David went to start a large pot of dark roast.

“I can’t believe we fell asleep,” she yawned, more than a little embarrassed.

“Up too late watching movies,” Shane assessed, beginning to organize the mess of tapes. “Find anything interesting?”

“Mhm,” Ilya nodded, raising himself up and squeezing his eyes shut happily at Yuna in thanks. “It was like I said, not all bad. Despite everything, it was good to see my mother’s face again. I am grateful. Perhaps we should keep the tapes after all.”

Shane’s shoulders relaxed. “That’s great! Which ones would you want to keep?”

“We are not going to keep them all?” Ilya asked, a teasing edge to his words. “I thought the big stack of garbage would add a lot to the decor of our home. Was thinking maybe we should take it all back with us and make a big shrine.”

Shane’s smile fell, and he looked a bit as if he might short-circuit.

“Well, I mean, I don’t know if there’s room. And, um, didn’t we agree to-”

“I am kidding, Shane, obviously,” Ilya stopped his spiral in its tracks.

“Oh! Haha. Yeah totally. Right.”

“We can obviously throw away the boxes. Who needs those? It is everything in them that we need to keep! I changed my mind.”

A brown eye twitched.

“Ilya, please try not to give my son an aneurysm this early in the morning,” Yuna scolded lightly.

“Boo,” her newer son pouted playfully. “You always take his side, no fair! I cannot win when you all gang up against me.”

“What does everyone want for breakfast?” David shouted from the kitchen, already beginning to scuffle with the clattering pots and pans.

“Apple fritter!” Ilya yelled without hesitation.

“No!” Shane argued. “Something with a vegetable.”

“Why do you hate me?”

“I love you and want you to live a long and healthy life.”

He sighed dramatically. “Yuna, I have tried everything,” he complained. “Can you change his mind?”

“Sorry, I’m with Shane on this one. Vegetables and living, please!”

“Ugh! This is what I meant about never getting to win.” He smiled and flopped down onto the floor happily. “We will save them for dessert, maybe?”

“If you’re good.”

“I am always good.”

“Not true.”

“Again with the ‘ganging up against me’ thing!”

“Oh, stop it, you love it.”

He paused and thought. “Yeah, okay. Maybe I do.”