Work Text:
Ilya: my brother just called
Svetlana: hasn’t he been calling a lot
Ilya: I answered this time
Svetlana: Ilyusha should I be worried
Ilya: my father is dead
Svetlana: I’m on my way to your place
Ilya: you don’t have to do that. I’m trying to leave in the morning anyway.
Svetlana: shut up
Svetlana: I’m coming over, I’m buying the tickets and I’m flying with you. Don’t argue with me.
Ilya: thank you Svetik
Ilya never arrives early for flights. He hates airports, so when he isn’t flying with the team, he usually times things to arrive at the gate as boarding starts. He’s pretty confident he could skip a line if he ever really needed to; there’s always a hockey fan somewhere nearby, plus he can be very charming. So far, though, he hadn’t needed to; the timing had always worked out.
Svetlana, just as stubborn as Ilya and far more practical, refuses to risk it, especially for international flights. So whenever they fly together, they usually make their way to the airport separately.
Ilya knows this time is different, though. Svetlana had insisted on spending the night before at his place, so she could help him pack, make sure he ate something, let him rest his head on her lap while they sat in front of a hockey game and did not talk about his father’s death. He does not have words to express the depths of his gratitude. So it is an easy decision to go to the airport together, on Svetlana’s timeline, let her pull him along and handle the logistics while he goes through the motions.
When her alarm goes off, she rises right away and quietly dresses. She tosses some clothes on top of his head and he drags himself off the bed. He dons the plain shirt, hoodie, and joggers she’d given him, and adds a Raiders beanie and a pair of dark sunglasses, in the hope that no fans try to talk to him.
Svetlana looks him over. “You sure about the hat?” she asks.
He shrugs. “I need a hat. It’s the hat I have.” She does not argue.
The cab ride is silent except for Svetlana’s quiet thank yous to the driver. They do not talk as they go through security. Svetlana steers them toward their gate and deposits Ilya with their bags in a quiet corner of the empty gate across the hall from theirs. “I’ll be back,” she whispers.
Ilya doesn’t know how much time passes but she eventually returns, shoving a large hot coffee into his hands and setting a breakfast sandwich down on his leg. “You should eat something,” she says quietly, but doesn’t press the issue.
Ilya stares at the ugly carpet until boarding starts and Svetlana shepherds him over to the gate. She takes Ilya’s phone from his pocket and scans the boarding pass for him, then for herself. She had gotten them seats next to each other and he wonders in the back of his mind how she managed that on such short notice. Svetlana gets things done. She takes care of him. He should say thank you.
He puts a hand on her elbow and opens his mouth, but nothing comes out and his vision blurs and it takes him a few moments to realize it’s tears and then he feels angry. His father does not deserve his tears. He is not sad he’s dead. He does not want to cry about his abusive father. Why would he be sad about this? But he doesn’t know why else he would be crying right now. Disappointed in himself, he gives up and closes his mouth.
Svetlana puts a finger over his lips, and then brushes her knuckles across his cheeks. “Shh,” she says patiently. “Ilyushenka, don’t worry. There will be time to talk later.”
He nods. She offers him the sandwich again; he shakes his head. She produces a sleep mask, which he takes. He puts on noise cancelling earbuds, covers his eyes, and pulls up his hoodie. He sleeps, or pretends to, for the entire flight.
It’s a direct flight, thank fuck. When the seatbelt sign goes off, Ilya is still wearing the sleep mask, though he was awake well before the thud of the plane landing. He hears everyone around him unbuckling and standing to jostle for their positions in the aisle. Foolish behavior. It always annoyed him. He finds Svetlana’s hand and squeezes it. “You want to wait until the end, get off last?” she asks. He nods. And she spends the next thirty minutes assuring people they can move past her.
He lets the familiar sounds of Russian wash over him as people chat around him; it’s comforting, but slightly unnerving. He’s hearing regional accents that he’d forgotten about. He hears children speaking. He realizes he hasn’t spoken Russian with anyone outside his father, his brother, and Svetlana in a long time. It’s nice to be immersed in his native tongue but it doesn’t feel the way it used to. He’s home but it doesn’t feel like home anymore.
Eventually they deplane, Svetlana pausing to thank the cleaning crew and flight attendants, Ilya moving like a zombie with the eye mask dangling around his neck. He thinks he might need to put it back on at some point. It felt good to block out the world, shutter his senses, dull the too-bright world. His father is dead. Grigori cannot hurt him anymore yet somehow he feels more vulnerable than he has in a long time.
He goes where Svetlana leads him through the airport, into and out of a cab, into a building, and eventually she pushes him down into a soft chair. He looks around. She’s brought him to her father’s home, but it seems nobody is around. “Sveta,” he says, voice cracking from disuse. “I need to go to–” He falters. Where did he need to be? Was he supposed to go to Alexei’s apartment or Grigori’s house? Grigori’s old house. Whose house would it be now? Did Polina want it?
“I will take you to Grigori’s, when the time comes,” Svetlana assures him. “First, you are going to rest. Actually rest. I know you did not sleep on the plane. We will leave here in three hours. Would you like the couch or my bed?”
He looks up at her, completely helpless. He does not know what he wants. He does not want any of this.
She crouches down next to him. “You’re allowed to fall apart, Ilusha. Though it would be better to do with me than your brother.”
Tears well up in his eyes. He does not want to see his brother. Ever again. He does not want to make financial decisions. He does not want to look at the things Grigori has left behind. Alexei can have them all; he does not care. He doesn’t want anything to do with it. He does not want to make funeral arrangements; but he knows he will end up doing it, because Alexei would just go for the cheapest options. But why does he even care about that? Their father does not deserve anything more. He does not deserve anything better than the bare minimum he gave Irina.
Fuck.
The tears are falling down to his chin and he can’t breathe through his nose; in fact, he can’t catch his breath at all. Svetlana settles on the floor beside him, rubbing a hand on his knee, whispering soothing words he does not catch. “I miss her,” he croaks. The hand on his knee pauses for a split second before continuing to comfort him.
“Of course you do,” she whispers. “I am thinking about her too.” As if she could read his mind, she bitterly adds, “I wish you’d been able to make her arrangements. You would have given her the beautiful service she deserved.”
He leans over, openly crying. It’s loud and snotty and unrestrained. He has so seldom allowed himself to cry for his mother. It felt weak to do so. He has to be strong for her, even now, especially now. He has to atone for not being stronger when she most needed him. He has to live on for her. He has to preserve his memories of her. No one else will honor her memory. Well, except Svetlana. God bless her for coming with him and giving him space to fall apart before he has to endure the next few days.
He’s going to make sure all the arrangements are perfect. Not because he cares about his father, but to spite him. There will be no whispers about inadequate services for this inadequate father. If Ilya lets himself show disrespect to Grigori in this way, he would lose their very last battle. Everything will be perfect, and Grigori will not be here to tell him his shortcomings. Everything will be perfect and then Ilya can be done. Forever. He will never have to prove anything to his father ever again. He will win.
His mind returns to his mother. Is this why she had to leave? So she could defeat Grigori? Did she sacrifice herself to the war he has waged on his family for over twenty years? Did she think her children would be safer if she was not there to spark Grigori’s ire? Did she realize it would turn to Ilya instead? He scolds himself for the thought; it is not her fault. He understands why she wanted to leave because he wanted to leave too. But he wanted to leave with her.
When he found her, he cried. He cried for hours, inconsolably. It did not matter how many times Grigori berated him or beat him or shut him in his room or dragged him back downstairs; these did not make his crying better or worse. He was barely aware they were happening. He cried for his mother and he cried for himself. And he knew, even while it was happening, that he could only do this once. He knew he had to keep living for her and that he could not do so with these emotions running wild; so he gathered his desire to follow her, his anguish at living without her, his staggering rage at the injustice of her death, his hatred for his father and brother, his loneliness… he took all of it and compressed it into a furiously tight ball and shoved it deep inside his chest. He felt it thrumming there, nearly constantly, but he never let it loosen.
Today it is bursting out and Svetlana is indulging him. He remembers, when they were still teenagers, she told him she wanted him to live and be happy and that his mother wanted this too. It had made him defensive. He thought he’d been hiding those thoughts better, but of course Svetlana could tell. It had made him envious. Why did he have to keep living when his mother didn’t? It had made him remember that he had not lost all the love in his life: he still had one remaining anchor in Svetlana — which made him scared, because what would he do if something ever happened to Svetlana. It had made him tired.
Today all these feelings are back tenfold. And he hasn’t even started dealing with Alexei yet. There is grief there too. Grief for the brother he never had in Alexei. Grief for the ways Alexei has been harmed and cornered in ways that Ilya hasn’t. Frustration that Ilya has more empathy for his brother than his brother ever had for him, even though they were both abused. Anger that Alexei would never recognize those nuances. Anxiety around what he would say when he faced Alexei. How he would even form words when the time came.
He would survive by throwing himself into the logistics. He will make the services perfect. He will handle it, like he handles everything for his ungrateful family. He will finish this unappreciated work well and be done with it. And then, he will figure out who he is without having this role to serve.
And now he thinks of Shane for the first time in hours. He’d been so wrapped up in his past, in the things he keeps in the dark; he’d forgotten this warm, safe spot in his present. He should probably let Shane know what was going on. He makes a mental note to call him at the end of the day.
He feels a sudden pang in his chest, so intense he clutches at his shirt. A new wave of tears is wrenched from his body. His mother will never meet Shane.
At this thought, memories float to the surface: his mother telling him about heaven when he was quite young, explaining that family members watch over you and still love you when they’re gone. He hadn’t really believed it, until she was gone too. He’ll scarcely admit it to himself, but he frequently thinks of her watching over him. He talks to her like she can hear him, though only in his most private moments.
But even if she can see Shane, see how much Ilya loves him, see how seriously he takes hockey, and how funny he is, and how cute he is when he’s embarrassed… Even if this is true, there is no comfort for the fact that Shane will never meet his mother. He will never feel how warm and safe her hugs were. He will never hear her laugh or see the crinkles around her eyes when she smiled. She will never cook for him.
He rubs the back of his hand across his face. Svetlana produces a tissue from nowhere. He half-heartedly wipes his face but with the tears still flowing it’s a losing battle. He blows his nose, giving up on his last shed of dignity. He knows he’s safe with Svetlana.
He shakes his head. He’s being absurd. He doesn't even know if Shane would want those things. They would probably never happen, even if his mother were still alive. Not with Shane. Not the way he wanted it to.
And he had much more pressing matters to figure out. Like how the hell to talk to Alexei. Like all the details of the funeral and dinner. Like all the paperwork that he’s going to have to manage. He wonders about what his mother’s paperwork says. Does it say her real cause of death or did Grigori falsify it. Maybe it’s better not to know.
He thinks of the night before her death. He had helped her cook. Dinner had been tense but nobody shouted, nobody got hit, so Ilya had counted it as a good day. He helped her clean up the kitchen. Grigori yelled at him for doing so and then left the house. Alexei had a meltdown about wanting to go with their father, so Ilya had disappeared into his room while his mother dealt with that. He’d entertained himself for a while, then got ready for bed. He was nearly asleep when his mother came to see him. She snuggled into the bed with him and told him a story. He fell asleep as she sang to him. He doesn’t think about this often. It’s too sad.
He tries to remember his last interaction with Grigori. He isn’t sure exactly what it was. He feels a perverse comfort in this.
He thinks of the few happy memories he has of his father. They make him feel even more heartbroken than the bad memories.
He thinks of the docile, compliant man Grigori became in his illness. It was always a mind fuck. Ilya never shook the feeling that he would suddenly stand, his face darkening and his hand raising, upbraiding Ilya for giving him the wrong meds, or letting him get too cold, or - and this was always most insidious fear of the whole ordeal - incorrectly thinking he was sick in the first place. Even now, with Grigori gone, Ilya finds himself going through his mental rolodex of all the things he had done well to get his father the correct diagnoses and treatment and care, despite being on another continent and despite the roadblocks that Alexei often put up. He knows he did a good job and he knows nobody in his family would ever say so.
But Svetlana would. And Shane would, if Ilya ever told him about it in detail. And it was true whether or not anybody acknowledged it. He’d been a good son to a terrible father. He’d resigned himself to this when he was very young, and thinking about it now only produces a dull ache.
He doesn’t know how much time has passed when his sobs start to subside. Svetlana is still beside him, cross-legged on the floor. She looks up at him, and her eyes are a little red but her gaze and her breathing are steady. “Ilyusha,” she whispers. She runs a hand across his cheek. “I’m proud of you.”
This was the last thing Ilya would have ever expected to hear in this moment. “Bullshit,” he says. “I am acting ridiculous. Like a child.”
“Ilyushka,” she chides, gently tapping his leg with the back of her hand. “You were a child when we lost her. And you were not allowed to grieve. I mean it: I am proud of you. You have bottled this up for well over a decade and I know why, I’m not judging you. You needed to bottle it up then, just as much as you needed to let it out now. So believe that I am proud of you. Ah ah–,” she cut him off when he started to protest. “Say thank you.”
“Thank you, Svetik,” he mutters. He doesn’t have the energy to argue anyway. “Did you say I can use the couch?”
“Yes, good boy,” she says, getting to her feet. “I will wake you up in time for you to get changed.” She takes his hand and he follows her. The best he can do to express his gratitude is squeeze her hand, but he knows that she is already aware. She kisses his cheek before leaving him alone in the family room. He looks around, seeing the ghosts of their childhood selves chasing each other around the couch, or hiding behind the curtains, or staying up late talking by the fireplace…
Finally he lays down, pulling his knees up toward his chest, resting his head on a pillow. He is surprised to notice that he is much more calm internally than he has been since Alexei’s call (maybe even longer than that). He is still sad. He is still dreading the next few days. He is still aching for his mother. But the ball of compressed emotion that he has carried in his chest for almost fifteen years is not threatening to explode anymore. Instead the feelings float loosely throughout his body without trying to escape. Maybe Svetlana was right. He sighs. She always is.
He can’t keep his eyes open. He whispers, “Ya lyublyu tebya, mama.” And he lets the bone-deep fatigue that’s haunted him for years wash over him.
His fingers are on his necklace as he drifts to sleep.