Chapter Text
Now I am quietly waiting for
the catastrophe of my personality
to seem beautiful again,
and interesting, and modern.
The country is grey and
brown and white in trees,
snows and skies of laughter
always diminishing, less funny
not just darker, not just grey.
mayakovsky, frank o'hara
The thing about being thirteen is that you have been costing your father money for fourteen years too many. You know your father's name, and you know he hates his brother because he is a bad man, so you hate him too because it's hard to be crueler than the man who raised you. You only call your father Papa, and you don't call your uncle anything at all because that's not allowed.
Still, you are thirteen going on fourteen, and rebellion is within your nature just as much as the interminable and, crucially (ruinously), bright kind of longing you carry in your blood. Your father tells you in no uncertain terms, with the cold glare of a man who might have loved you before he knew you, that you are just like your uncle, and it might have been the worst insult to date. So when you get your teeth smashed in, it does not surprise you. It does make you hate the hazy, unimaginable figure of your uncle even more.
You are surprised when Papa drops papers written in blocky, unflinching Latin-script in front of you as soon as the blood has dried. You are not surprised when he insults you, but you are when you're informed you'll be going to Canada next summer and hopefully— he uses the word hopefully, like there is any place for hope in this conversation— never coming back.
You probably should be hurt, but you are mostly scared of being sent away and boarded with the man who carries all of the darkness in your family (there is a lot of it). It’s, perhaps, more terrifying because no amount of good can make up for the fact that you are your father's daughter and your uncle's niece.
You are not surprised Papa has reached his breaking point, but you are a little surprised that your mother managed to negotiate being sent to Canada instead of into the ground. You are not particularly grateful because you're a teenager and your mouth tastes like blood for months.
Admittedly, you are a little vain and don't like the way your chipped teeth match the scar on your upper lip, but that’s neither here nor there.
You are a little horrible, too, because the crook of your lip makes you look more like Mama than Babushka Irina, and you resent this greatly. You only have one memory of your grandfather's coarse hand on your cheek: you are beautiful just like her.
You are not supposed to prefer a dead woman who's never done anything for you to your mother, who got you shipped to Canada, far away from the man who’s beaten you.
Whatever little guilt you forced onto yourself, however, is not enough for you to not be glad when the next time Papa's knuckles meet your face, it's the other half, hard enough to straighten your jaw into something almost similar to what it was before. He is stressed about the money it takes to send you away, but this time, you don't feel guilty because the symmetry goes back to matching that of a cadaver you never saw.
At the Moscow airport, you are told you'll be living with a family that knows your Uncle Ilya— you think you might have forgotten his name, before all of this— and you are a little shocked for the mercy until your father says that uncle's too much of a faggot to be trusted with a child. Somehow, an idiotic Western family got close enough to him to actually take you, burdensome, hateful thing that you are.
You do not ask why your father went out of his way to find a family to pass you along like cattle because you know the answer.
Your father's hate is bigger than the inconvenience. Your mother won't look you in the eye. It is, presumably, your last time in Moscow, Russia, and you don't start crying until the plane takes off because, very suddenly, you remember it's home.
╱|、
(˚ˎ 。7
|、˜〵
じしˍ,)ノ
Yuliya Alexeyevna Rozanova arrived in Ottawa in the middle of July at three PM Canadian time.
It was hot in the way it only is in places that are usually cold— thick and disgusting, like the location itself resents the change of pace. The air stuck to people's skin like plastic wrap, and the sun turned excruciatingly bright, pure soulless white.
Her new parents— because surely, they'd have all kinds of rules about what to be called, what people would think of their charity case using their first names— hadn't picked her up from the airport because she'd insisted she wouldn't get in their car. They were either very strange or very negligent because they'd believed her and sent a taxi, instead.
She had a single carry-on with some clothes from Russia, one of two surviving pictures of her grandmother, and a stuffed cat that had been with her since infancy. Mama was kind enough to let her take that much, though the picture of Irina had always been a secret.
She had a picture of the Pikes, too, shoved into her hand at the airport before she boarded because she'd lost phone privileges a while ago.
Those were the people taking her in on a technicality. Hayden and Jackie Pike: picture-perfect, smiling Canadians with a small army of gorgeous, innocent children.
Begrudgingly, Jackie had struck her as very beautiful. Silky, golden-blonde hair down to her navel, sharp blue eyes that made Yuliya squirm even on printed paper, and the easy smile worn by women on ads who were trying to sell you something expensive. Even her posture came off as awfully intimidating in the way only people who could brag of beauty and self-assurance did— tall, slender, with her shoulders pushed back, and her chin tilted up.
Her husband was tall too, broad for an average man but slim for a hockey player, which Yuliya knew he did for a profession. He had brown hair and a boyish kind of charm to him, even if she'd been told both of them were in their early thirties. To Yuliya, he looked like every man in the magazines.
The two of them, standing together, were awfully picture-perfect; aspirational.
She'd only talked to them once, over the phone. She remembered Jackie's voice as sweet even over the static and Hayden's as gentle, which was the kind of quality you couldn't trust in a man.
They didn't talk much, just enough for her to ask, specifically, for her Uncle not to be there because she was stalling the inevitable. Russian cruelty cut deeper than English ignorance, and Yuliya might have rotten judgement overall, but she'd to pick her poisons early in life.
They promised, tripping over themselves ludicrously, like they were looking for her approval, that the first day would be uneventful; that her uncle wouldn’t step foot in their house before she gave the okay. Yuliya hummed because it was easy to make promises but she didn't know how to say that in English.
She expected, based on the way they talked, that they'd at least respect her desire not to be ambushed by her uncle on the first day.
What she did not expect was to walk into a quiet house.
What she really didn't expect was for Jackie Pike to open the door for her like she was a cherished guest, someone to impress.
“Privet,” she stumbled out in impressively discernible Russian. Her eyes were kind and her movements slow overall. She gestured for Yuliya's bags and when she pulled them closer to herself she made no comment and didn't try again.
Yuliya was suddenly struck with a horrible urge to cry all over again.
“Hello,” she mumbled, keeping her eyes down. She did not want to give anything away.
She must have, anyway, in some unrecognizable way, because Jackie Pike softened immeasurably and addressed her the way she'd heard other mothers speak to their small children.
“I’m Jackie. The boys— Hayden, Shane, and Ilya— call me Jacks sometimes, but you can use whatever you want.” For a second, hearing her uncle's name in such a casual, endeared tone made her tense, but then, Jackie continued talking, and she reminded herself to focus. “What do you want us to call you?”
Instinctually, she wanted to say her name was just fine; explain that no one had ever given her a nickname. Or, well, she'd had one when she was a baby— Lyulya embroidered onto her childhood plushie. It was an overly sweet, affectionate endearment she never remembered hearing, but one that she clung to anyway. It was comforting, the idea that she had at one time been precious enough for soft, rounded sounds meant for small, lovely things.
But that was all too personal to share. It wasn't what Jackie was asking, and that kind of affection on someone else's tongue would probably be enough to send her spiraling.
She had, however, always held the silly fantasy of being called anything other than her name. Some of her classmates had those, names from home or friends or good-natured teasing.
She had always thought it was the kind of thing you earned.
Now, she found she didn't have to care about deserving or love or anything but the fact that her name had always struck her as something ugly that stuck to the roof of people's mouths and tangled over their tongues; a guest that overstayed its welcome. Something constructed with the purpose of being spoken about in anger.
It was too long and too clunky to get through, chosen with no joy or affection. She was sure Alexei could've thrown a dart to a board and still come up with something he liked more.
None of this felt like the kind of thing she should share with Jackie either. In the face of the question, she found herself freezing with the realization she couldn't even imagine what someone would call her out of fondness.
“Yuliya is okay,” she settled.
“Okay,” Jackie agreed easily, “your room is upstairs.”
Yuliya nodded, steeling herself as Jackie turned her back, and followed her up. She did not ask about Hayden Pike because that would be rude and because giving away fear was always the first mistake.
The house itself was nice, modern but still colorful, with high ceilings and light floors. It was the kind of interior someone else would've complimented the owner for; her mother, surely— you have a good eye.
Her room was at the end of the hallway, Jackie explained, right across from Ruby's, diagonal to Jade's, and smack-down between Arthur and Amber's. Yuliya tried to commit the names to memory.
“We didn't decorate a lot,” Jackie continued, speaking deliberately slowly, which Yuliya tried very hard not to appreciate, “so you can change it.”
She knew, theoretically, that her file had some basic information about her past just her age and name. They'd asked her all kinds of stupid questions, all at the request of her new parents: favorite color, favorite food, hobbies, interests, preferences.
She'd dutifully answered every last one because she had to and didn’t think too hard about the inherent vulnerability it carried.
But now— now she had an entire room, a big room, all to herself with, it seemed, nothing to worry about. The idea of a space of her own already made her stomach twist. The thought that it had been constructed for her and with her in mind made her a bit dizzy.
The room itself was shockingly nice, even beyond the idea that it was all hers to do what she pleased with.
The walls were warm; light pink with a wide window pane occupying most of the wall opposite the door, showing a minuscule balcony. It was just big enough for a chair to read on and a bird feeder, if that was allowed. It faced the back garden; right below, the top of a tree for little things to perch themselves on. Barely a meter away, a nest, clearly untouched.
Back in Russia, Papa had shot any animal too close to the house.
The interior was, if possible, even better. Mahogany furniture, carefully crafted and fancy like things out of her wildest dreams. A dresser, a shelf, and a closet, all matching the bed. A corkboard above a big desk with star-shaped thumbtacks and a shelf with Russian books of all genres. The lamp by her bedside looked like a flower, and the lamp on the wall was made of glass.
The whole thing made her feel so grown up, so much like her that all at once, English left her.
She couldn't swallow down the lump in her throat.
“I—” Her voice broke. She stopped, swallowed, and tried again. “Spasibo. Thank you.”
As if the day could get any more ridiculous, Jackie rocked lightly on her heels and smiled somewhat nervously. “You like it?”
Yuliya didn't have the words for how much she liked it. She wasn't even sure if, at that moment, she'd find them in Russian.
She frowned, trying to come up with anything but a blank but found herself silent. It was all too much.
Finally, she settled on, “Love.”
Apparently, this was enough because Jackie relaxed and beamed like she'd just been told the best news of her life. “Good. That's good.”
And somehow, she looked like she really, deeply meant it— as if it mattered if Yuliya liked her space. Out of nowhere, she found herself lurching forward and clinging to Jackie Pike like a small child to its mother. She couldn't remember the last time she'd hugged someone in earnest.
The whole scene was pathetic.
Yet Jackie held her close and drew small circles against her shoulder blades and didn't say anything at all when Yuliya pulled away with tear stains across her cheeks. There was a lot to think about. She didn't want to consider any of it. Her bones weighed too heavily and the view out her window was too pretty to be home. Jackie looked happier than her Mama and she smelled different too— it was far too much.
Again, she found herself bursting into tears, shaking away any concern before it came and crawling into her new bed, burying herself as deep under the covers as she could manage without choking herself even if, maybe, she wouldn't mind that either.
She’d expected Jackie to be overwhelming— to try to hug her or shush her or act like Yuliya was some broken toy she could fix.
Or maybe, mostly, she'd expected her to be cold— to walk away and deem her unnecessary trouble until she was needed again.
Instead, Jackie hummed softly to herself, always announcing her presence as she moved, never catching Yuliya by surprise. Then, after rummaging through something, she felt something soft land beside her.
“I thought it might help,” Jackie offered quietly. “I'll be downstairs if you want.”
With that, Yuliya found herself in bed, hugging the small cat she'd had since she was a baby, and pretending it didn't feel completely pathetic to wipe her eyes against its worn fur. Still, she softened at the care. For a fleeting moment, her new house didn’t seem so bad.
Meeting Hayden Pike was, comparatively, uneventful. He didn't look like a violent man, but he was friends with her uncle Ilya and, after all, she supposed they never did.
He was soft-spoken and overly-affectionate with his wife in a way she’d only seen when overcompensating for error; like a warning, like the calm before the storm. Violence was not worn obviously by the kind of men that knew how to wield it but affection was.
It happened a few hours later, while eating dinner. They ate blinchikis with a simple salad at the center of the table, and all three of them pretended the familiar food didn't make her tear up because she was sick of crying. The kids, she was told, were down the street with their uncles, and they all pretended she didn't make a face at that too.
She dutifully ate with them because it was what good daughters did, and was nice to the Pike kids the morning after because she imagined it was what good siblings did too.
She did not get attached to their loud laughter or the easy banter her academic English missed half of. She did not stare for even a second too long at the casual affection the Pikes gave freely, to their children, to each other. She especially did not look away when Hayden kissed his wife despite never having anything to be sorry for or when Amber delightedly screeched Daddy even if it was the off-season and he was always home.
She did wonder, briefly, if her Mama and Papa had ever loved each other; if it was something Rozanovs could even do. She decided, very quickly, that it was not her problem anymore, and tried not to feel guilty for being heartless.
The Pikes, shockingly, didn't push her to see her uncle when she said she didn't want to, and it was mostly reassuring instead of terrifying. She still didn't talk to them much, but she showed up to every meal and they were always kind, which she supposed meant something.
╱|、
(˚ˎ 。7
|、˜〵
じしˍ,)ノ
Three weeks into her stay— or, well, new living arrangement, new adoption— she started to think she'd forget everyone's actual names. The Pikes were reckless and unashamed with their love, speaking in cooed nicknames always followed by ribbing and laughter.
It was always Mommy and Daddy; Jacks and Hayds. The twins were Ruby-roo and Jadebug, even if they lied and complained they were too old for the nicknames, smiling so wide their faces must have hurt from the stretch. Arthur was Ari and Amber was Bambi, but sometimes, Hayden pretended to forget and they'd get to announce it all over again with the shrieking delight of self-identity.
Yuliya tried not to think too hard about how she'd been brat when Mama and Papa were avoiding her name.
Even now, still avoiding Ilya, he heard him too. His voice haunted the house, and for a terrible man, he spoke far too kindly. My brother is a traitor, Yuliya— he only cares about outsiders.
He called every day and she declined the offer to speak with him every time. Sometimes, though, sometimes she stuck around and listened, saying it was English practice and pretending the Pikes didn't know it was a lie.
He, too, turned everything into an endearing nickname. He never cared for the people who raised him. Jackie was Jacks or Kratoska in a flirty tone that always made her laugh while Hayden rolled his eyes— he himself was just Pike, but whoever was in the background was solnyshko, dorogoy, moy lyubimyy.
He was, perhaps, the most sickeningly soft with the kids. He called Ruby and Jade the mischief twins— Lisochka and Sorochka — with such fondness that Yuliya was, for a second, horribly jealous. They were little animals, all of them. Zaychik for Arthur and Moya olenyonok for Amber.
He stopped coming to Russia after Father died; preferred his cockslut to us.
She hated him more than ever right then, hearing him be so carelessly gentle with the girls, so thoughtlessly loving. He met you when you were an infant, but he never cared that much for you.
Her stomach rolled.
Still, she sat and listened because her father was a Rozanov and her mother was Rozanov’s girl. Yuliya had been born hot-blooded and sick down to the very marrow of her spine, and, in her family, self-flagellation was the kind of delicate art you perfected before your first growth spurt.
After the calls, though, one of the kids would rush over to her, asking if she was free, if she could play, if she'd practice their Russian with them. Amber was the best at it, mixing the words in with English every time she spoke to her, and the twins swore up and down they just had to beat their kid sister until, finally, she caved. This happened every time.
It was an evening in late July, the heat melting off the sidewalks that the sun no longer warmed and got carried away with the night-cold wind, when she finally sat down and accepted that, maybe, this was her life now.
She sat on the porch, knees hanging off, when Hayden walked out and very slowly, deceivingly so, and asked, “May I sit?”
She nodded, feeling the wood creak beneath them, and relishing in the way her hair whipped at her cheeks with a particularly strong gust of wind. She was wearing a white cotton dress, thick and airy like girls did in fairy tales. It was ironic— it meant purity.
She had only accepted it because Jackie said it had been here when she was young.
Between them, because he was always careful about that space, Hayden put a bowl full of watermelon and two forks. He smiled when she looked over at him, wondering about dinner and snacks and how much she was allowed to eat and when.
“Ari said it was your favorite,” he smiled. Then, unceremoniously, like he was demonstrating proof of safety, he stuck his fork in and shoved a piece entirely too big for him in his mouth.
The juice, red, dripped down his chin, and he leaned forward, sputtering, making it worse like it wasn't the obvious result of his actions. Despite herself, Yuliya laughed, not even realizing who she was with, what her place was, until Hayden looked up and blinked, startled.
For a second, she worried she'd messed up and nibbled her own piece of watermelon, looking down at her knees, feeling her shoulders hike up to her ears.
Then, Hayden started laughing.
“You were laughing at me!” He accused with the same tone someone else would've said we're getting a puppy! Yuliya was starting to realize that, by nature, he just talked like that. It was, against her better judgment, charming.
“You acted like child!” She retorted, immediately losing her grip on the watermelon in her mouth and dripping it all over herself, sending him into rumbunctious laughter even if, really, she knew it hadn't been that funny.
“You are so mean,” he huffed, again saying it with glowing red cheeks like it was somehow a compliment. She preened like it was.
“Russians are not this,” she sniffed, turning up her nose, forcing her accent to thicken, “but Americans are very soft.”
Hayden shook his head, laughing like it was an inside joke between the two of them. Yuliya didn’t get it, but she didn’t feel like she was getting laughed at either, and it was enough to force out a giggle.
Soon after, Jade, attracted by the ruckus, bounced over. She was, overall, the shier, calmer twin, with a penchant for catching insects— “look, Daddy, a Goldsmith beetle!” “That’s cool, Jadebug”— and the tendency to cling to whoever was nearest.
Usually, she was, according to what Yuliya had picked up from the teen American TV with over-enunciated vowels she’d used to learn English, a daddy’s girl. She hung off her father’s every word, grinning when he told them the MLH gossip the other kids didn't seem to care about and taking up space on his lap when they lounged around the living room whenever she could.
Now, though, she ducked against Yuliya's side and pressed their shoulders together. She didn't talk much but it was the first time she'd curled up against her instead of her family.
“Are we talking about how Dad's a wimp?” She teased, bumping their knees together and smirking like Yuliya had been around all along. “Because you'd think he'd be tougher when he's a pro hockey player and all.”
For a second, Yuliya held her breath, watching Hayden watch them until, finally, her shoulders dropped just a fraction when she realized both of them were still eating fruit and laughing with ease.
“Da, yes,” she nodded, rather clunkily, chewing on the words. Hayden and Jade waited patiently, taking in the nighttime air like it was natural. “He is… crybaby.”
“Okay,” Hayden gasped, “what the fuck, kid?!”
“Language,” Jade snapped immediately, looking around like something would jump on her. “You know Arthur and Amber's teachers are complaining about them swearing.”
“God,” Hayden groaned, “you're such a snitch.”
“How am I a snitch if I haven't threatened to use the swear jar before I tell Mom yet?”
“My own flesh and fucking blood,” Hayden muttered, playing up his annoyance and fishing an extra couple of dollars out of his pocket with a pointed glare. “For the next few times.”
Jade smiled angelically, saluting at her Dad and leaning over Yuliya's shoulder to whisper, he's paying for this year's Christmas trip at this rate.
She was only two years younger than her and probably smarter, but she still always struck Yuliya as painfully innocent. Sometimes, she thought most American children wouldn't survive a day in Russia, but the more she watched them, the more she wondered if it was just Alexei’s house. She reminded herself it didn't matter, either way.
Ruby rushed out to sit by her sister, and the both of them dragged her attention back to the present, asking about the book she'd been reading, if it would be any good as an English translation, if she'd be willing to discuss it with them. They didn't seem bothered by her broken English or half-formed Russian thoughts, just nodded along, making small notes or quick translations for their Dad; like what Yuliya had to say actually mattered.
╱|、
(˚ˎ 。7
|、˜〵
じしˍ,)ノ
The first time Yuliya saw her uncle alone, without helpful Canadian buffers and outside of her foggy toddler-sized memories or loud digital headlines, Hayden had already started training camp, and the kids asked if that meant they were having their uncles over with such excitement that she couldn't bring herself to tell them no.
“Will Papa Ilya and Uncle Shane come over after the first day?” Arthur had asked, staring up at his parents with a determined kind of hope only small children that didn't understand their own circumstances could muster. “It's what we do every year.”
Instantly, Amber perked up, looking up at them with big, brown eyes, the perfect split between her parents. “Can they bring Anya too? And Papa can make his pelmeni?”
For a second, all Yuliya could think about was how Ruby and Jade had ribbed their father repeatedly on his inability to cook anything even slightly edible, and how Hayden had never once been anything other than Dad or Daddy. How Arthur's Russian was, at least, good enough for him to hold a long conversation without anyone thinking he was much other than a first-generation immigrant; Amber’s even better. How the name he'd tacked on after Papa was unmistakable.
Then, Jackie smiled and shook her head, and Yuliya's entire world came to a crashing halt: “I’ll ask Ilya if he can make them for you next time you sleep over, hm?”
Yuliya sat up straighter, pulling her shoulders back and trying very hard to hide the way her eyes stung.
It was, clearly, not very effective because Ruby's sharp eyes were on hers instantly, the same icy blue as Jackie's and almost as unnerving. She was a hockey player, Yuliya remembered being told, and judging by her instincts, a good one, too. She picked up on the shift in her posture like a shark smelling blood and for once, even growing up learning exactly how to be quiet wasn't enough to hide from her.
She had tilted her head and turned to her parents. “Maybe we can go to Dyadya’s house instead. Jade and I haven't been over in like a week.”
She said weeks in the same disgusted tone someone else would've said months, like he was such a vital part of their routine that his absence was felt like that of a parent.
“But they always come over here,” Arthur frowned, pouting at his sister like the request was entirely unreasonable. As the outsider, Yuliya supposed that maybe it was. “It's tradition.”
“I know, Ari,” Jackie smiled tiredly, “but we're not sure if they'll be able to make this year and—”
Arthur's eyes had already been watering by the time Yuliya caved.
“They can come.”
And so, that weekend, in the Pikes’ (her? their?) house, Yuliya found herself face to face with a man who was, to her, as good as dead, and the first thing that she noticed was that he was wearing Irina’s cross around his neck.
A gold glint right under the space where his collarbones met, small and delicate and precious. She only recognized the piece from photographs; Papa had always said it had been lost after the accident. Even then, she had only seen two pictures of Irina enough to commit them to memory: one holding onto Alexei's hand when he was a toddler, smiling tiredly at the camera with her blonde waves hitting the wind behind her, and the other of her when she was quite young, maybe a few years older than Yuliya, grinning at the camera with her hands holding back her hair and her head tilted to the side mid-laugh. She was wearing a short dress for Soviet Russia's standards and the cross was on full display, front and center against her chest.
And yet, here it was: entirely whole and twinkling golden the way it did in the photographs, sitting against a stranger's skin. Something in her body locked up, tight and immediate.
There were three things every Rozanov(a), present and apparently past, too, had to learn in their youth in order to survive under their father’s inevitably bracing thumb:
The first was that there would always, necessarily, be more than three important rules, but only two would be so carefully stepped around that they must be known by heart— those spoke through grating sentences with jutting, cut-off clauses; loud for the very fact of their silence.
The second, of course, was that Irina Rozanova, regardless of her death, was not a ghost. The shame of her did not permit it. She was not present in any sense, except for those places where she was— the singular photograph of her and Alexei was tucked behind two dusty books on the radiator, even in the winter time when the heating had been long switched on, as if Papa was begging for it to catch fire; and the secret photograph Yuliya had kept hidden for so long under her own bedclothes. She was babushka or simply Irina if she had to be spoken about, never mama or babulya, but generally she was not permitted to linger. Yuliya’s childhood home was not haunted because spirits were not welcome within its walls.
The third rule was the loudest and most spoken-about of the three but was no less cutting for it: Ilya Rozanov was, for all intents and purposes, buried deeper than his mother, and for crimes that put hers almost to shame. The nature of these crimes in specific had never been directly disclosed to Yuliya but she, for better or worse, spent her first years out of that initial naive period of childhood learning to anticipate the specific kind of cruel gleam that formed in her classmates’ eyes when they connected the reports of her uncle’s weakness, his vulgarity, to the cadence of her surname. It was, after all, either cruelty or a deep and twinging kind of shame that led to refusals to meet her eyes in the hallways, and at least cruelty had honest intentions.
And her Papa, for all he resolutely ignored any headlines that caused people to glance, sidelong and lingering, was equally quick to inform Yuliya that his brother was a bad man, a selfish man, a weak Westernized bastard who was only alive because he had too much money attached to his wide and disgraceful mouth, uncaring of the shame and hardship he brought his family in favor of his little—
And Yuliya, as hard as she had jostled herself and the very structure of her life, had not shaken loose from her sentencing as a Rozanova.
So she saw her uncle— the disgusting and vile man who had somehow convinced his close friends to take in his potentially disgusting and vile niece— wearing her babulya’s cross as though he had no concept of the triad of quiet rules she learned before her own name, which was impossible because he was and had always been a Rozanov, and her knees locked straight. Her kneecaps pushed back, forcing her torso to twitch forwards in sharp, disjointed motions because there was never any other way she would have responded. She was, too, down to the sharp flint of her eyes, a Rozanova.
Rozanov or Rozanova, it did not matter, because the crucial root remained, a rotted thing that could not be pressed too hard without collapsing in on itself. And so, stomach churning and body lilting forward slightly, Yuliya, with all the grace of a cornered animal, dug her nails in and allowed the name that connected her to this man, who was less convincingly evil with every new fact she learned about him, to sag under the pressure.
She was a Rozanova: she screamed at him, turned his vulgarity and weakness and Western-ness back upon him in a hoarse voice that echoed throughout the Pikes’ large, beautiful house, which had, probably, never borne witness to such drawn-out decomposition.
It was easy, in that moment, in front of his stone set face that reminded her all too much of her every awful thing they had in common, to switch to Russian and forget that, even through closed doors and closed languages, most everyone in the house knew, at the very least, the shape of her insults.
“What the hell is that?” She spat, glaring at him with all the hatred she could muster, an unsurprisingly large amount considering her blood was probably more black than it was red, a familiar anger bubbling up in her; a decade of being flinched away from, spat at, avoided. “Why the fuck are you wearing that cross— you’re a fucking traitor, a pig and a bastard, I can’t fucking believe—”
As soon as the words were out of her mouth, his hands flew to the chain, holding onto it like the puny, one-hundred-sixty-five centimeters of her could physically rip it away from him if she tried.
“That’s Irina's cross,” she hissed, “it's babulya’s cross, why do you have it? She doesn't even know you're a degenerate, she'd be so ashamed, you abandoned us! You left me alone in Russia; do you know what it's like to be there? To not be able to run away into the waiting arms of a fucking rich slut—”
She was feeling for the nerve that would finally get him to lose his composure. Everyone in their family, and probably in their country, in their world, had one. The practice felt, a little bit, like running her tongue along the backs of her teeth when she was a smaller girl, trying to feel for any that were beginning to crack away from her jaw; the sick, swooping feeling that shot low through her stomach when she hit upon one was the same.
“Do not speak about Shanya like that,” he snapped, instantly cold and biting. There it was, finally, a tone she could recognize, something familiar to cling to even if her Papa had never defended her Mama like that, because Yuliya was, once again, the common enemy. It made it easier to hold onto her anger and ignore how raw her throat was.
“Shanya?” She spluttered, equal parts incredulous and horribly fucking jealous. Shanya. Thrown around like it was normal, like he fit right into this perfect, beautiful life Yuliya had been pushed out of and thrown back into just as she'd learned not to miss it. “Shanya?!”
“My husband,” Ilya taunted, cold and every bit as cruel as she'd expected, flaunting his happiness, the words she could never say and never have.
It made her burn. “Your fucking wife, you mean? Your piece of shit pussy that you chose over me? Over family? Just for what, to play house with some Westernized little fairy while we fucking suffered at home?”
“You cannot understand—” he gritted out, “You are just a child, you know nothing of hardship or love or—”
“Hardship?!” She spat back, finally bordering on hysteria, feeling like if she gave it another second, she'd lunge forward and scratch his eyes out like the feral, scrappy strays their family had always been and most likely would always be. “What could you possibly know about hardship?! In your fucking beautiful house with your beautiful wife and the big bank account you use on everyone but the family you left that is fucking starving—”
At that, Ilya laughed, stepping forward, low and on the way to threatening, except Yuliya had grown up in her house and she was tiny enough to dodge, unintimidated by degenerate men the likes of her uncle.
“Starving? Is that what he told you? Not that he could not give less of a fuck about his worthless little girl, hm? Not that he married your mother even if he always called her a fucking whore so he could ask me for more pity money to spend on coke while you, his precious little girl, I'm sure, got off on reading fucked up propaganda about her faggot uncle?”
She faltered, “Don't—”
But everyone in the room was, at the end of the day, a Rozanov. And Rozanovs saw pauses as opportunities to strike.
“What? You think I don't know what they say about me at home?” He spat out the word home like it was a disgusting, shameful thing. Like being from her precious, beautiful country was something that she should be ashamed of. Like he was proud of being a softened, beaten-down Westerner—
“You don't get to use that word—” She whined, feeling tears start to sting in her eyes, throat closing up. “Don't—”
“Oh, so you're better than me now, hm? You were kicked out as much as I was— in the eyes of Russia, we're both as guilty as each other. Looking up your faggot uncle is almost as bad as being him.”
Yuliya shook her head, finally crying in earnest, backing off and crossing her arms over her chest and feeling the physical, horrible ache of never seeing home again; of there being nothing left for her.
“You,” he hissed, “are as much a Rozanov as I am.”
Immediately, she shook her head, latched onto the denial like a starving animal, losing herself in seeing that she was right, that her uncle was a hateful, cruel man that could be dragged down to her level just like anyone else. That the curse of being a Rozanov was not so easily broken, not outside her grasp.
“No. No, no, no, you're a fucking disgrace, a shame to the family. Irina would be ashamed of you— You have no right to bear that cross, to taint her memory—”
Deathly cold, with a dead expression she mirrored all too well, he looked right at her and said, “She was my mother. She did not even know of your existence.”
Unfortunately, it landed exactly as he wanted it to.
“Pidaras,” she spat, scrambling to grasp at every cruel word she knew the weight of, screaming at the top of her lungs as she saw Jackie and Shane usher everyone of the house while Hayden kept his post firmly by the front door. Like a cornered animal, she thought, good, let them see, let them hear how truly awful I am to their disgusting little— she reached for her English. “You fucking faggot, cocksucker, dickdrunk, homo piece of shit slut—!”
Finally, deciding Yuliya was not worth the trouble, or maybe fearing for their neighbors and precious, prissy HOAs, or remembering that they loved Ilya more than they even knew Irina, Hayden stepped into the room with a heavy sigh.
“Okay,” he boomed, suddenly every bit the hockey player she knew him to be. “Enough.”
Instinctively, she snapped her mouth shut, stared at her feet and braced for impact. In her head, already, she rehearsed what she had done, how she'd apologize, how she'd say she'd goaded her uncle and she understood whatever punishment they gave, begging not to be sent back when there was nowhere for her to go. Legally, she was no one's claim, in the grey area of yet-unprocessed paperwork, more Canadian than Russian but nobody's daughter whether or not the Pikes decided to rescind the adoption.
“Roz,” he snapped, every bit the cold authoritarian that fathers were supposed to be, “get out of my house. Go home.”
For half a second, the warmth of being defended hit her before the guilt and the fear. But there it was again, that word: home.
“Yuliya,” he sighed, sounding tired and disappointed in a way she'd never heard before, but that reminded her of kneeling on rice and begging for forgiveness, “please go to your room.”
And Yuliya, because she was mean but not stupid, obeyed without protest, thinking of how badly she'd fucked up already and what she'd have to do for an orphanage to take her in. Behind her, the only sound left behind was Hayden's muttering, probably reassessing every decision he had made in his life to end up with some fucking Russian child living in his nice, happy house.