Adult Content Warning
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Summary
"You're disappointed in me," Ilya says when the silence drags on too long.
It snaps Irina out of her thoughts. No, she wants to say, you're my perfect boy, though she knows she shouldn't. She can't bring herself to say yes either. "You're my son," Irina says. "I love you."
"I'm sorry, Mama," he says, voice small, smaller than Irina has heard in years. He sounds like a child again, five and besieged by nightmares of a snowstorm, begging for reassurances than their house won't be buried under an insurmountable blanket of white, that she would find him and hold him even if it was.
"It's not my apology to accept, Ilyusha," she says instead.
(Irina Rozanova lives! It doesn't fix Ilya.)