Work Text:
Twice a year, every year, Ilya pulls down a box of blank cards from the front closet and writes out a letter in careful ink, the Cryillic script painstakingly neat.
Shane watches him do it from the kitchen table, watches him settle into his usual chair and fiddle with the pen for a moment before he starts, the cap tugging at Ilya’s bottom lip, his teeth toying with the plastic. He usually chooses not to comment; bringing attention to the task seems to spook Ilya, sending him off to the office or the living room to write his notes, isolated and alone.
After, if Shane has pretended that he hasn’t noticed well enough, if he’s read the same paragraph of his book twenty times and only been called out for not turning the page once, Ilya will translate what he’s written out loud.
It always starts the same.
Dear malýshka,
I hope you are well and that you still remember your Uncle Ilyusha — but I understand if you’ve forgotten. It has been a long time since I’ve been home.
After that, Ilya tends to change it up. He wishes his niece a happy birthday or a happy new year, whichever is closer to the card writing ritual, and he tells her a little about what is new in his life. He talks about Anya’s antics often, or about how the team is doing. Sometimes, he mentions the Irina Foundation, the camps, the kids who remind him of her. He asks her questions about her life, her interests, her friends, even though he knows they’ll likely go unanswered.
Mostly, though, he tells her how much she is missed.
Shane is mentioned rarely, if ever.
“You don’t mind?” Ilya had asked once as he carefully addressed the envelope and placed a stamp in the corner. “That I do not tell her about you?”
Shane had shook his head. If there’s any hope that Ilya’s brother is passing on his letters — any hope that his niece gets to read them — it’s better to smooth over the parts of life that are difficult to navigate. Shane knows, in this particular case as well as so many others, that he is one of those parts.
He thinks it hurts Ilya more than it stings him.
Just as Ilya begins with a script, he ends with one, too.
Remember, pchelka, he writes. I am always here for you. I will enclose my email and address if you ever want to talk. You are so very loved.
With love,
Your dyadyushka
Ilya never encloses a gift or money, though Shane knows he would love to. The fact of the matter is that, even if Andrei didn’t take or sell it, Ilya has no idea what his niece would like. It is better, they both agree, to set aside some money for her in a trust that she’ll receive at eighteen.
(There’s a second account, too, for any other children Andrei might have had that Ilya’s never had the privilege of knowing. Sometimes, Ilya writes a second card, just in case, terrified that there is a child somewhere who does not know their uncle loves them, too).
When Ilya is done, Shane takes the envelope to the post office. There’s not much he can do for her, for this niece that he’s never met and probably never will, but he can make sure that she gets her uncle’s letters.
She’s never written back.
Shane knows that doesn’t matter.
Ilya will write Irina Rozanova letters until the day he dies.