Archive of Our Own

Nikolai did not think of Moscow anymore. He told his colleagues and the friends that he made that he was from New York, which is vague enough to be plausible now that the accent of his mother tongue has loosened its grip on him to be little more than a undertone to his voice. He told them that he had a Russian family, and left it there. In a way, this is all true. Nikolai Medvedev did have a Russian family, once, though he no longer considered himself to have one, and, in a way, he thought that he had been born again in New York - born as himself. None of what he told people was, therefore, a lie. It just wasn’t honest either.

But Nikolai Medvedev did not think of Moscow - and if he did, he did not think of the Moscow that would shun him now. He thought of the street corner just far enough away from his front door that the constant strangle hold of panic had released him for long enough to kiss his husband for the very first time, and the way that the streetlight had cut a dramatic shadow across them, half exposing them and half concealing them. He thought of the university lecture hall where he had sat beside a young man from Saint Petersburg, and the way that their hands had brushed and lingered when he had lent him a pen, the way that brief moment of recognition had flared to life between them - oh, you are like me. He thought of the moments that they stole together, in coffeeshops and bars and always with another friend between them or a woman near at hand, and the exhilaration that he had tried to keep burning brighter than the fear.

This side of Moscow was an unrealistic one, dredged in the nostalgia of romance. Nikolai was old enough to know better now, and to know that that version of Moscow had never really existed except for in his head. There was no version of Moscow that would welcome him the way the Moscow he sometimes thought of would - and even that acceptance was an imperfect, secretive one. Nikolai was old enough that it didn’t really hurt anymore. He was old enough to know that there was nothing that he could do except move on.

It helped that there was Fedya.

Fedya who had kissed him first under the streetlight, hands fisted in the lapels of his jacket. Fedya who had filled the pages of a notebook in his pretty, looping handwriting with the pen that he had borrowed from Nikolai. Fedya who had smiled at him across a bar, hooked their feet together under the table of a café, brushed their shoulders together when they walked. Fedya who had held out his hand and his heart and his love and said “I am moving to America. I want you to come with me.”

Of course, it was different for Fedya, with his American mother and his dead Russian father, and his sister who knew and loved him still, and the brother who never said anything except with his fists against the faces of the men who looked sideways at Fedya in the street, with muttered comments and dark eyes. Fedya was not open about this thing of theirs of course - but he was hopeful about it in a way that Nikolai was not. He attended covert queer discos, and clandestine meetings with people who wanted to call themselves activists - who did call themselves activists, despite how unfairly Nikolai thought of them.

It was not easier for him… but he did not have the same things to lose as Nikolai did, nor that same fear about it.

What he did fear, sometimes, was the way that America was not much better, in its own ways, especially to people who looked like Fedya did and sounded like they both did.

But in America, Nikolai could hold Fedya’s hand on the street and fear only the comments and the bruises of men who, like men anywhere, hated what they did not understand, and not the isolation of a jail cell where there would both be too many eyes on him and not enough. And in America, Nikolai and Fedya could keep an apartment together, and drink coffee in the morning together from the high up perch of their fire escape, and could kiss lazily over the heads of passerbys. And in America, in 2011, Nikolai could call Fedya his husband - wear a wedding band on whichever finger he chose (he wore it on his right hand, and did not examin how he felt about this), introduce people to his spouse and not have it feel like a lie the way he had imagined it could have, be with Fedya in hospital rooms and all the official places a marriage license allowed him to be.

In America, they grew older together, with laugh lines and grey hairs and new aches and pains that they discovered daily if they slept awkwardly. They made new friends - people like them, and people from all walks of life, and people they could be themselves with, even if Nikolai still felt a little like he was peeling the skin from his bones, like he was exposed and dying a little under the weight of it all. They had jobs that they liked - Fedya owned a little book shop, hidden up a flight of stairs, with teetering shelves that looked a disorganised and tilting disaster waiting to happen, and Nikolai lectured.

In America, Nikolai was not a brother anymore. Sometimes, he felt that this was a good thing. Other times, he thought about being a brother in the way that he thought about Moscow. Mostly, he missed his sisters. He had been the oldest - he had always been the first one supposed to leave, but it was never supposed to be a choice. And he had chose to leave. And he had not heard from them. He could only hope that they were happy, and that they were healthy, and that they hated him. It would be easier, for them, if they hated him.

Inessa would be happy, he thought, and probably she would not think of him. Maybe she would be married - to the man from the other street who had brought her flowers every week before church, and wrote her love sonnets, and had kind hands, even if Nikolai could never be certain how honest his eyes were. But Inessa would be, and Inessa would not let him be dishonest. She was brash and loud spoken, even under the thumb of their father, and he did not think that this would be something that ever changed. Inessa’s independence was willful; she did not need a brother.

But Irina -

Sometimes, Nikolai thought about Irina, and - often - he let himself miss her. Inessa had been independent and aloof, even though he knew that she did love him, but Irina had been his. She had been the littlest of all three of them, and from the moment she could walk, she was following him around, tugging on his pants legs or his top or his hand.

“Look here, Kolya!” she would say, and there would be a bird or a flower or something else she thought was interesting. “Look at me, Kolya!” she would say, and she would be on the ice, spinning and spinning and spinning until he thought she might float away. “Kolya!” she would say, and she would be there, with a smile or a joke or a story.

Irina had been so much younger than him. He had been nearly a teenager when she had been a newborn. But his parents were distracted and they were cold, and Inessa did not have much interest in baby sisters, and so it was Nikolai who was up with her in the middle of the night when she cried and Nikolai who made her breakfast the way that she liked and Nikolai who knew her favourite colour and the way she like her things organised. Nikolai had taken her to school and he had picked her up from school. He’d taken her out on excursions to museums or art galleries or parks. When Irina had wanted to skate, he had skated with her, and sometimes Inessa would joining them and they would be happy, and young again, and siblings.

It changed, of course, when Irina grew up. She was a happy child, except for when she wasn’t, and when she wasn’t, Nikolai feared that she would wither away into nothing except the vague impression of memory that he would carry with him the rest of his life.

He growing up as well. He was falling in love with a man from Saint Petersburg, and his sister could never know. They were growing up, and they were growing apart, and sometimes, Irina was so very sad that it took away the breath in his lungs and all the words that he might have said with it. She did not want to talk to him when she was like that, of course, but he had wondered sometimes if he made it worse, if there might have been something that he could have said to make it better, or make her better.

In America, they would have told Irina that she was depressed. They did not tell her this when she was in Russia - or at least they had not when Nikolai was there.

When Nikolai left for America, he thought about asking Irina come with him. She’d been engaged then, freshly eighteen, to a policeman - Grigori Rozanov, who smiled in the right places but never looked kind, and certainly was never kind to Nikolai’s sister. She did not love him - this much Nikolai knew. She was not happy, and she seemed less so everyday, with the walls of her life closing in around her. Rozanov asked her to give up skating; he wanted children. Irina wanted children too, but not then - not when she had so many years on the ice left to her.

Nikolai had wanted her to come to New York with him. He thought, if he had asked, that she would have said yes, and that she would have been happy. He had not gotten the chance to ask. She had heard, first, that he was leaving.

Irina Medvedeva was a sweet girl, was what people said. She was serene and calm and godly. She spoke quietly and carefully, and also chose her words to suit the situation. Irina Medvedeva was a model woman - demure and graceful and modest. She would make a wonderful mother, a brilliant wife. Irina Medvedeva was funny, and bright, and clever, and happy.

Irina Medvedeva also had a temper.

He wondered, sometimes, if it was the sadness in her that turned so quickly into rage - because she had nowhere to put it, because it was bitter, because it was hateful, mostly to herself, and because it was painful. But their father had a short temper, and Inessa had inherited it too, and probably Nikolai had as well. They were all of them biting and caustic, lashing out with sharp words and sharp tongues. They had not been raised with gentle hands. They did not know how to imitate them.

And Irina had been so very angry with him.

He did not like to think much about this part of Moscow - it was not the Moscow that he let himself sometimes think of. It was a crueller Moscow. It was a Moscow that he had been terrified to die in, buried in a grave that belonged to a stranger but was spat on in his name.

He’d wanted to leave. He’d wanted to go with Fedya, and he’d wanted Irina to go with them both. Irina had not known this. All Irina had known, when their father had told her, was that he was going.

She’d said terrible things to him, face flushed red and eyes glittering and voice raised and hands slashing through the air like she was envisaging what it might be like to reach out and strike him. Nikolai had said terrible things back. He wished that he hadn’t said them, but even in the dreams where he could change things, he could not erase the impact of what he had said. He saw the way that her eyes had widened to let the hurt slip past the anger, and the way that she had stepped away from him as if the distance between her and his words would make them any less true. She’d clutched at the gold pendant hung around her throat - the crucifix, as if that would give her grace and protection, from him.

“If you’re so fucking miserable all the time,” he had yelled, “why don’t you fucking do something about it?”

He hadn’t meant it anymore than Irina had meant it when she had told him that she hoped his plane “fell out of the fucking sky,” and he would “drown knowing that he was nothing, meant nothing, felt nothing,” but his hit different. He saw that immediately. And he couldn’t take it back.

Irina had levelled a shaky finger at the door. She’d been so very pale, with splotches of colour high on her cheekbones, and she had told him, “leave. I never want to see you again.” Nikolai had stepped forward - thought maybe if he was close enough that he could explain something, say something, make it all better and fix it, have her with him and safe and happy in America - and then she had spat that word at his feet.

He did not know if she said it because she knew and was disgusted and knew what would hurt the most, or if she said it because the word in itself was the dirty thing, the bad thing, regardless of who it was said about. But she’d said it, and the world around Nikolai had whited out into a terrified blur, and he’d left. Couldn’t remember saying goodbye, if he had said goodbye at all, and couldn’t remember the last thing he had said to her that was not that, and couldn’t remember if she had said anything else to him after she had said what she had said.

He would never know, probably, how she had meant it.

Was that a good thing? He wasn’t sure. Maybe it was. Probably, it was, because not knowing meant he could think about an Irina who had not meant it like that - who might have seen the pictures that he and Fedya had hung up in the home that they shared and loved him still, who might have come to America and been happy, found people who were hers in the way that Nikolai had found his people, fallen in love with a man who was kind, and had children after years of figure skating and being the best at what she loved.

He thought of her in Moscow, with Grigori Rozanov as her husband. How many children would they have by now? Two? Three? And how old would those children be? Grown, definitely, and grown without ever knowing their uncle. He would have loved them, even if they had been Rozanov’s children. Would they make her happy, these imaginary children of hers? He hoped so. He hoped that they were all happy, living in Moscow.

He thought of her that way the most, in the kinder version of his childhood home that existed in his mind, and there she was happy and loved and alive and herself. It was a nice thought. Yeah, he thought of her a lot that way. It made it easier, sometimes.

The joys of keeping his own business meant that Fedya could also keep his own hours, and he did so gleefully, especially now that they were getting older and more appreciative of the time that they could spend together. This meant, now that Nikolai’s tenure at the university was becoming more and more a remote, research position, with grants for his work and a desire to read what he wrote, that they spent more time at home. Nikolai would be there already, writing and typing and catching up on his correspondence, and Fedya would appear in the doorway - maybe carrying coffee, or lunch, or dinner, or some other thing that he fought would entice Nikolai away from his work long enough to eat - and they would spend however long Nikolai could spare in each other's company. Fedya said that he was able to spare this time because he was training up his replacement - a grad student from Brooklyn who wad far too clever to wile away his hours in Fedya’s little bookshop, but loved it and so was amenable - and Nikolai refused to complain about more time with his husband.

But the bookshop had been Fedya’s passion and his joy, and he was hands on with it still - and probably would remain so until he was retired, and even after. All this said, it was not unusual for Fedya to stay late, often beyond closing to keep his poor grad student apprentice hostage to conversations about literature and the arts, and so Nikolai was in the habit of making dinner for them these nights. It was, he thought, terribly domestic, and - for him, at least - domesticity was the height of romance. Fedya was always famished when he came in; this was something little that Nikolai could do.

All this said -

All this said, it was not unusual. He did not think anything of it. He made dinner, and debated lighting some candles for the middle of the table and lowering the lights. No special occasion, except for the fact that his husband would be across the table from him and Nikolai liked the way he looked bathed in candlelight, like an old classical statue except more beloved.

And then he heard Fedya returning - the clatter of his keys as he hung them up on the peg by the door, the rustle of his coat as he removed it, the clump of his shoes as they hit the floor. It was a small apartment, cosy and intimate - and it meant that Nikolai, in the kitchen, was close enough to the front door to hear the strange hitch in his husband's breathing, and the way that he lingered at the door, as if he could not bear to venture any further in. In his chest, Nikolai felt his heart stall.

Fedya walked in with a face like death - Nikolai did not think he had seen this expression on his husband's face before. Maybe when they had left for America. Maybe when they had attended the funerals of several of their friends in New York, at the height of the epidemic, and known that the government did not jail them but certainly did not like them either. Maybe when Fedya’s mother had fallen ill for the first time, and Fedya had had to contemplate for the first time what it would be like to live without parents. But this expression was that not quite that expression. Grief, when stripped to its bones and bare of all its accompaniments, was a simple thing. The expression on Fedya’s face was not simple.

“I think you should sit down,” said Fedya, and reached out with a hand to lead to Nikolai to their couch. In his other hand, he clutched his phone, knuckles white. “I… I don't know how to say this.”

“Are you hurt?” Nikolai asked. “Your siblings? The shop? Christopher?”

“They are all fine,” Fedya assured him, perhaps tracing the spiralling pathways of Nikolai’s anxieties. “I am not hurt. I sent Christopher home with the keys to open up shop tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow's supposed to be his day off?”

“I know, but he understands.”

“That makes one of us,” said Nikolai. Panic, not yet gone even with Fedya’s assurances, sharpened his voice to be almost a snap. He took a breath, steadying himself, and squeezed Fedya’s knee in wordless apology.

Fedya scrubbed a hand over his face. He looked vaguely ill; Nikolai fought past the urge to press a hand to his forehead and check his temperature, as if Fedya was ill and trying to hide it from him.

“Christopher was showing me a press conference today - two hockey players, lifelong rivals apparently, but they've come together to found a mental health charity. It's all good work, but… I think you should watch it. You'll understand, I think.”

Nikolai had never had any interest in hockey. He did not watch it. He could not really stand the sight of the ice these days, but even before then he had not been interested in hockey. Fedya did not have interest in it either, because he did not much enjoy any sports (Nikolai liked the Indy and he liked the soccer), but Christopher was a fan, apparently, even if he did not strike Nikolai as the sort of person who would be into sports, and so it made sense for Christopher to show Fedya some press conference, because he was always trying to improve Fedya’s opinions of hockey. He had spare tickets, always, he said, and would like to use them.

What did not make sense was the fact that Fedya was showing Nikolai the clip, or mentioning it to him at all beyond a general “Christopher is at it again.”

But Fedya was insistent, and pressed the phone into Nikolai’s hand, video already queued up on screen. Nikolai shot his husband a slightly bemused frown but pressed play anyway, leaning in close to see better. Fedya handed him his glasses.

The first thing that Nikolai noticed was that the room looked like every post event interview room ever - which made sense, he supposed, for a press conference. The video was taking from a few rows away from the front, undoubtedly in a central aisle, and Nikolai was able to see the backs of what looked like every sports reporter to ever work in the field crammed into seats and standing around the edges of the room. The camera was not focused on them, but on two young men at the front of the room, sat in front of a bank of microphones. One of them, in a smart and clearly expensive suit, was a young Asian man with intense dark eyes that seemed to stare Nikolai down even through the camera lens. He was nervous, though he did a good job of hiding it, and kept secreting little at the man beside him, as though he was mostly concerned for him.

Nikolai saw her, then.

Irina.

Or - not Irina, but the other man wore her face, and wore it so well and so accurately that Nikolai felt as though he had stepped back in time entirely. There were her eyes, steady and calm, tumultuous under the surface, a raging war of emotion, if a little purpled by a mottled bruise that took up most of one side of his face. There was her hair, golden and shining, curls loose and almost saintly. There was the slant of her nose, a little crooked, like it had been broken once or twice. There was a mile, and she had had one two - not quite the same place but close enough. There was the dimple of her chin. There was the bow of her lips. And - when the other man leaned over to murmur something - there was her smile.

Nikolai had forgotten what her smile looked like. And there it was, now, on the face of a stranger. Irina, his Irina.

The man leaned forward, elbows resting on the table in front of him, and Nikolai could not help but be aware of how massive he was - all muscle and height and broad shoulders. He would be so much taller than Irina was. And, as he leaned forward, a glitter of gold slipped from around his neck - a cross, Eastern Orthodox, and so familiar to Nikolai. She had clung to it when she was sad. She had clung to it when she was happy. She had clung to it when she was mad, or scared, or tired. She had clung to it when she had yelled for Nikolai to leave. He would recognise it anywhere. He saw it in his dreams. And it was there - it was there around the neck of a man that Nikolai didn't know, who was wearing her cross and wearing her face.

“Shane Hollander and Ilya Rozanov,” someone said, just offscreen, and Nikolai sat back - fell back, really, though he was still clinging to the phone with numb, nerves essentially fingers.

Ilya Rozanov.

For a moment, Nikolai thought that he was mistaken. That this stranger was a stranger, and he had invented the similarities in his head and that Fedya showed him the video for a different reason altogether. In his head, his sister's name was Medvedeva, and so - in his head - her children had that name also. But of course they wouldn't - because Irina would be married, and her children would have her husband’s last name.

Ilya Rozanov. Grigori Rozanov. Irina Rozanova.

“Irina,” said Nikolai, his voice gutted and hollow. “Irina.”

And it wasn’t a question, not really, but Fedya nodded anyway, and reached over to place his hand on Nikolai’s wrist.

“Keep watching,” he murmured - as if it would be possible for Nikolai to ever tear his gaze away. But Fedya said it reluctantly as well, voice soft and full of dread, in the sort of way that suggested he would rather Nikolai never listen to it all, like he could keep him shielded from his, hide him away from the truth of it.

The audio of the press conference was not the best - the microphones crackled in and out of life, sometimes with the volume dropping so low that Nikolai had to strain to hear it. It was the other man - Shane Hollander - who spoke the most, in a mixture of French and English; he delivered the English first, and then translated it, and it his side, Ilya Rozanov (Nikolai’s nephew, Irina’s son) was silent, pale, blanched of all colour. Shane Hollander explained that they were putting aside their rival for a charitable initiative - that it was a cause that they both believed in. It was, he said, for all the people who struggled with their mental health. The funding would go towards organising hockey camps for children, to bing inclusivity and support to an otherwise lonely sport. They wanted to encourage people to talk, to feel no shame in struggling, to raise awareness. They named the foundation after his sister - the Irina Foundation, and Shane Hollander said it with the same cadence that Nikolai had said it, when Irina had been something that was still his to talk about.

And then, Ilya said, “My mother died when I was twelve years old. She lost her battle. This foundation is for her. It is to help people like her, so they do not have to fight alone.”

It took a moment for the meaning of his words to sink in. Fedya’s comforting hand on his wrist tightened to an almost painful degree. And still, for a moment, Nikolai did not understand. For a moment, he could tell himself that the English made no sense to him - that it was a failure of translation in his brain, that the audio had been terrible and he had simply misheard. For a moment, Irina was still alive in his head, and she was happy and she was loved, and she had a son who loved her and looked like her and might have inherited all the best parts of her - and they would continue to live parallel lives, him in New York and her in Moscow, and it would hurt him but she would be untouched by this pain. She would not think of him. She would have a family of her own to replace the one of her childhood - cold and absent parents, a sister who could not dare to dream of anyone’s escape except her own, a traitorous brother who abandoned her.

But that wasn’t what Ilya said.

Ilya said died - and when he said died, he meant dead, and when he meant dead, he implied depressed, and when he implied depressed and said died and meant dead, he meant suicide. He meant that Irina had killed herself. He meant that she had been depressed and alone in Moscow. He meant that, when Nikolai had said why don’t you do something about it, Irina had heard him and done something about it. He meant that Nikolai had not had a little sister for longer than he had thought. He meant gone. He meant that -

The video played on loop and Nikolai was powerless to stop it. He watched, and tried to commit the words to memory, and thought that maybe this time Ilya would not speak, as he had not seemed to be intending to, or he would say something different, or he would say “this is named for my mother, who is happy except for when she is not, but she is alive and she will live, and this is why we name it for her - because she is alive, and it will stay this way, and it must stay this way, and we will make it stay this way.”

What he said did not change. Irina had been dead since he was twelve. How long ago was that? How long had Nikolai been playing puppeteer with the long dead memory of his sister? How long had she been alive in his head, and happy, when she had actually been dead and miserable?

Ilya was certainly older than twelve.

As if he could read the bend of his thoughts, Fedya said, “Ilya was born in 1991 - June. Wikipedia lists his father as dying in 2017. No one knew anything about Irina before this. They’re suggesting that she died in 2003.”

“2003,” Nikolai repeated.

Fifteen years, his sister had been dead. Fifteen years, and he had not known.

The sob that escaped him was an ugly, animal thing, with teeth and claws that shredded at the lining of his throat. He pressed a knuckle against his mouth, as if he could stem the flow of them, and bit down. He could not feel the pain of his teeth. His shoulders shuddered, wracked the force and weight of the sudden upswell of emotion that felt like it would rip open all the seams that held him together, that constructed him into who he was. He had not been religious since he had been a child at Sunday mass, head bowed under the weight of prayer and the observances of his parents and his own shame and self-loathing, but he wished now nothing more than to have attended at least one service in the life he had led in America, to have lit a candle for Irina’s soul as if she might have received his prayers across an ocean and as if they might have fixed her in some way.

Fedya pulled him against his chest. Nikolai resisted a moment - what right did he have to receive comfort when Irina had received none? - but the hands of his husband were steady and sure and familiar. Nikolai collapsed sideways into him, head ducking down to hide his face into softness of Fedya’s stomach, arms wrapping around his waist like Fedya would serve as some sort of life raft, keeping him afloat above the swirling maelstrom of his grief. Fedya’s hands settled in his hair, stroking through the curls that he had shared with his sister and now shared with a nephew. He was getting older now - much older than he had been, and though his hair had clung on as best it could, it was grey and beginning to thin. Irina’s would have fallen out first, he thought, when she rotted beneath the earth. She had not gotten old.

Fedya cooed softly, and pressed a kiss to the crown of his head. His hands fluttered about where they settled on Nikolai - stroking through his hair then, and squeezing his shoulders next, rubbing circles on his back. It was as if he did not know what to do with them - and probably he didn’t.

“Baby,” he whispered, “tell me how to help you.”

“I didn’t know,” Nikolai cried, and even to his own ears, he sounded wretched and hollow, like he had been gutted from the inside out. “I should have known. She - My - My baby sister, and she is dead, and I did not know.”

“How could you have known?” Fedya asked. “Kolya, Kolya, how could you have known? You don’t talk to anyone in Moscow and they don’t talk to you. They don’t have your phone number or your address, and you don’t have theirs. You couldn’t have known.”

“But I should have. She was my sister and I let her down. Fedya, I did this - I did this to her.”

“Nonsense,” Fedya scolded. “You did not do this to her. You didn’t know and you couldn’t have known - that she was dead, that she was struggling, none of it. I know you want to take the rest of the world onto your shoulders, but this isn’t your thing to carry.”

“But I did know,” Nikolai said - and Fedya paused, going quiet, because Nikolai had not told him what he had said to Irina or what she had said to him the last time that they had spoken. He only knew that they had quarrelled. “I told her - I told her that if she was so fucking miserable that she should do something about it. I knew she was struggling and I told her… I told her she might as well kill herself. I was so hurt and I was so angry, and we were yelling, and I said to her. I knew… I knew that she was struggling. I knew that she was hurting, and I didn’t help. I didn’t get to ask to come home with us.”

At the back of his throat, Fedya made an odd, punched off noise. “All these years,” he whispered, “have you thought this about yourself? Carried this by yourself?”

“I wanted to think of her happy,” Nikolai replied. “I wanted to think that she was alive, despite everything that I said.”

Fedya inhaled raggedly. “You should have told me.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t - don’t apologise. I don’t… Kolya, I mean that you should have told me because I’m your husband and I love you and I want to be there for you, to help you. I don’t like the idea that you’ve felt this way all the years of our marriage - all the years of our life together. That you’ve carried this alone when… Baby, I want to help you - in everything. Not just the good things or the easy things. Don’t know this? We haven’t ever been easy. I wouldn’t turn away from you now.”

“I said such terrible things to her though,” said Nikolai.

“Yeah, they were terrible, and you were wrong to say what you said to her. But you both young, and scared, and alone. You were both living in terrible situations. But this isn’t my thing to forgive you for - it was hers, and I know she that loved you even if I didn’t know her very well. I think she would have forgiven you. My thing is to be there for you, to help you. So, Kolya, tell me what you need - please, tell me, what do you want to next?”

The Centaurs trained in the same place as they played - the Canadian Tire Centre, which was in the middle of Kanata and about fourteen miles from downtown Ottawa. It was an impressive place, in line with the other hockey arenas that Nikolai had googled pictures of, but there was something a little drab about it that he couldn’t quite put his finger on - a lapse of care, maybe, in the maintenance of the Centaurs banners that drifted in the wind, or the kind of feeling that suggested this place was somewhere that Ottawa tried to ignore.

Nikolai had done a lot of research about this (he’d asked Christopher) and it seemed that the Ottawa Centaurs were widely considered to be the worst team in their conference. He doubted that this stadium was ever filled to capacity; on the few highlight reels he had watched, glasses pushed firmly up to the bridge of his nose, the stands had looked glaring empty and the vibes had been hollow and miserable, like the dead carcass of something that had been completely gutted. Nikolai never understood how people took sports so seriously, but he imagined that it would be hard to remain even the slightest bit cheerful in the midst of such an oppressive pall.

Other teams were not like this. Their stadiums filled. They won games. Bigger teams (like Boston) had a separate facility for training, because they could afford this.

Ottawa was a running joke, basically, and Nikolai’s nephew played for them.

He did not understand this. He’d been under the impression that Ilya Rozanov was the sort of player who would go down in history as one in a kind, one of the best in his generation; Christopher had said that he had been first draft pick in his rookie season (this was, apparently, indicative of being a good player) and that he won the Stanley Cup (which was important) and that he was often neck-to-neck with Shane Hollander (who was hockey Jesus or some other quasi-divine figure) for top point scorer. The term MVP had been thrown around.

And Nikolai had watched clips of Ilya play, which had been difficult -

(He had seen Irina in his face at the press conference, when he had been quiet and calm and thoughtful, when Nikolai could remember his sister as some other worldly paragon of calm, like a martyr or an example or an inspiration. But the videos too of Ilya fighting, Ilya yelling, Ilya with blood on his teeth and his knuckles and the ice, and Nikolai did not like to think this… but he saw Irina in this Ilya as well, the sparking of her eyes and the foulness of her words and the way that she had this particular look of rage that could make you feel like dirt on the bottom of her shoe.)

- but was a strange sort of catharsis in itself. At some point, between videos, Ilya stopped existing as some abstract thought of the future happiness that Niolai had envisaged for Irina and hoped to be true, but became something real and tangible.

Fedya, too, had been watching videos and showed Nikolai many of them - the more palatable ones. Five minute compilation of every time Ilya Rozanov tells his team he loves them. Ilya Rozanov Feminist King. Press conferences where Ilya forgets the English words for things. A very old series called Roz on Tour (Ilya had been set loose in a bunch of North American cities with a camera and the brief to film a very judgemental travelogue, it seemed) which was clearly from when Ilya had first moved from Russia. Ilya Rozanov and dogs. Ilya Rozanov and young fans, who he seemed to soften for and was adored by in turn. Ilya’s funniest chirps - and these were biting but not vicious, and even Nikolai managed to muster a chuckle for a few of them.

This was Nikolai’s nephew and Irina’s son. He was a person - a real person with feelings and a history and a personality. There was still the veneer of the screen between them… but, God, Nikolai had never felt more like he was living in the thick of things than when he was watching Ilya. He forgot, sometimes, how funny Irina had been, but Ilya had her same sense of humour - a little dry, very sarcastic, unexpectedly hilarious. Nikolai never missed her more than he did now.

And here was a part of her, closer than he could have ever imagined - on the same continent as Nikolai, and close enough to almost touch.

This was how Nikolai found himself outside of the Canadian Tyre Centre, bundled up against the cold of a Canadian winter. He had thought, having experienced winters in Moscow, no heating, that he would be equipped to handle this cold - but it was a different sort of cold, and he fastened up his coat against it, and shuddered nonetheless. He could not seem to get his hands to stop shaking, but he found that it was easier to tell himself that it was just the cold.

He didn’t think that it was just the cold.

It would have been easier, he thought, if he had Ilya’s address. Better, too - maybe there would be more privacy, and maybe Ilya would be more comfortable… or maybe he would hate to have Nikolai in his home, invading his space. Nikolai did not know what kind of a man Ilya was, or why he was in Canada instead of Russia (Nikolai was certain that there was hockey in Russia), or even if he knew of Nikolai and hated him already, because of what Nikolai had chosen or what Ilya’s father might have thought of him or (and Nikolai hated this thought, even as he acknowledged it) what Irina might have said about him.

There was one openly gay hockey player. Nikolai had hoped that there would be more, but there wasn’t - and that one hockey player had spoken openly about how difficult it had been, the culture of the locker rooms, the opposition of the fans. Others had come out to join him, but they were no longer in the NHL - ostensibly for other reasons, but Christopher (who had become their guide to the NHL) had been incensed. It was, he said, an open secret why they had been dropped. It was just that no one wanted to call anyone out on it. Scott Hunter, he amended, was trying.

But this did not mean anything to Nikolai, whose concern was Ilya - and the mutual disdain between Scott Hunter and Ilya was a very long running joke online. It was just that the joke had taken on a sharper edge since Scott Hunter came out, and no one, it seemed, knew if it was a sharper edge that was warranted. There was nothing there that was any comfort to Nikolai at all.

He knew that Ilya was his nephew. He knew that Ilya was twenty-seven. He knew that Ilya played hockey, and lived in Ottawa. He knew that Ilya had a charity. He knew that Ilya was an orphan. Wikipedia told him that Ilya had an older brother. He knew that he was like marmite for fans online  you either hated his antics or found his brazen confidence to be hilarious.

He didn’t know if Ilya knew who he was. He didn’t know how Ilya had felt about his father, or his mother, or Moscow. He didn’t know if Ilya hated Scott Hunter because of who he lived, or if Ilya would hate Nikolai for this.

It was entirely possible that Ilya would send him away without hearing him out, and Nikolai would have to live in a world where his sister was not some ambiguous, uncertain possibility in the back of his mind, but dead and gone and sad. It was also entirely possible, Nikolai reflected, that Ilya wasn’t at the Canadian Tyre Centre at all; without an address, it had seemed that the best thing to do would be to try and find Ilya at work. Christopher had assured Nikolai that the Centaurs would be Ottawa based for a few games, and that there would be public games on an evening but also training on a morning - optional skates, but Roz was captain and so it was entirely likely that he would be in attendance.

Nikolai supposed that he could have attended a game - but it would be late and busy, and it didn’t feel a fitting way to start a conversation like this. So, he’d staked himself outside the stadium instead, and hoped that the presence of cars (slightly more costly and high end than most, which he took to mean that the owners were high earners - maybe athlete level) meant that there would be players in the building, and that Roz was one of them.

Could he ask at the desk in the front reception? Would they tell him, not knowing who he was or that he had any connection to Ilya?

He shifted, wondering if it was worth trying, when the doors opened and a stream of people, bundled in hoodies and winter jackets, tumbled out. Most of them were tall and muscular, exercise bags slung over their shoulders, and all of them were chattering amongst themselves, swapping easy laughter and smiles.

Bingo, Nikolai thought. Hockey players.

He stood, taking a step forward, and saw the moment that he was spotted. One of the players (dark curly hair, brown skin, and a two thick sleeves of tattoos poking out from where he had pushed his jacket sleeves up his forearm) spotted him and frowned.

“Closed practice!” he called. A few others paused, glancing over. “No media.”

“I am not media,” Nikolai replied, stepping closer. He stuffed his hands deep in his pockets; they were still shaking. “My name is Nikolai Medvedev. I am looking for Ilya Rozanov.”

The hockey players parted - muttering between themselves, shooting him tiny, somewhat speculative looks - and there he was. Ilya. He looked so much more like Nikolai’s sister in person. There was only a few feet between them now. Nikolai had forgotten how to breathe.

“Nikolai Medvedev,” Ilya said, drawing out the name. There was no recognition in his face - just a polite, empty detachment. “You are from Moscow, da?”

Nikolai nodded. “I have not ben there in many years, but I was born there. Grew up there. Irina was my sister.”

Ilya listed back a little on his heels - a barely noticeable movement, except for the fact that Nikolai had been drinking in every detail of him, and caught it, and caught the slight look of shock on his face as his eyes widened and his brows lifted and his trembled, just for a moment, before he pursed them tight again.

“You look like her,” Nikolai added. It was a desperate attempt to keep in the rest of what he wanted to say. Ilya received the words like a blow.

“Nikolai Medvedev,” he repeated. One of his teammates, perhaps hearing the dazedness of shock entrenched in his speech, went to rest a hand on his elbow, but Ilya shook him off, stepping forward. “How can I trust you are who you say you are?”

From the folder that he was carrying under his arm, Nikolai withdrew two things: his birth certificate, and a photo of himself and Irina that he had kept with him always. In the picture, they were both happy - smiling, captured mid laugh. Nikolai’s eyes were closed and crinkled, and the face that he had pulled had been almost embarrassingly photogenic. Irina had been laughing too, but the photo had been taken just before - her eyes were open, and her amusement was visible there, and her smile was bright and wide and white, as she exposed her teeth in an open-mouthed grin. They were pressed together - sat on a train, he thought, though he couldn’t remember where they might have been going.

Ilya took both items, and his teammates peered over his shoulder. One of them, in a quickly stifled exclamation, told ‘Roz’ that his mom was really fucking pretty. Ilya handed the birth certificate back, but his hands lingered on the photo, one finger brushing over the veneer of Irina’s face. The look on his face was starved and covetous, and Nikolai recognised it deep in the very bones of himself.

“Keep it,” he offered. “I have a scan at home.”

He did not really want to give it away. A scan was not the same. He thought that Ilya could see this as well, but his desire for the picture was stronger than his desire to be polite, and he folded it away, tucked into his pocket.

“You look like her,” said Ilya, in Russian, after a very long pause. His eyes were dark and inscrutable, but honest - and Nikolai was glad of that, because no one had ever said that he looked like his sister before, and this, now, was a little piece of her that he was going to get to keep and carry around with him. “You are older?”

“Thirteen years older,” Nikolai replied.

“I have never heard of you before. Why?”

“It’s been a while, since I spoke to anyone in my family. We, um, lost touch when I moved to America. Irina was eighteen then - it was before you were born. There were talks of an engagement to a police officer - Grigori Rozanov, your father - but I didn’t hear anything after I left. I hoped that she would be happy.”

“Not happy enough.”

Nikolai swallowed convulsively. “She wanted to be a mother,” he said, at last, which did not really refute what Ilya had said and was not really an answer, but was the only reply that he could muster. “I was glad to see that came true for her.”

Ilya nodded, slow. “What do we do now?”

Nikolai couldn’t help but laugh. “I just wanted to talk to you really,” he admitted. “I didn’t think much beyond that. I saw you on television and… you looked so much like your mother. I can never forgive myself for leaving her behind in Moscow - not even when I thought that she might have been happy. I - It is not the same, but I will accept anything that you are willing to give.”

Ilya nodded, once, and then again, more decisively. Reverting to English again, he said, “did you bring car? Follow, and we will go to my home, talk there. You like McDonalds? Yes? I will get you something anyway.”

“It will be fine,” he added, as he turned away, but he did not say this to Nikolai but to one of his teammates, who had reached out to nudge him as he went by. “Family, yes? Is crazy. You know how it is.”

“No one does it like you, Rozy,” a Centaur remarked wryly.

Nikolai could not help but feel that Ilya’s house was a lonely one. On the outskirts of Ottawa, seemingly in the opposite direction of most of his teammates, and with a drive that looked far too long for only Ilya’s car. It did not feel like a home at all - and maybe this was him overstepping already, but it did not seem to him that Ilya saw it as home either. Nikolai wondered if this was because Moscow was still home for Ilya, with its glittering streets and familiar alleyways, or if it was precisely because Moscow wasn’t home anymore that this place rang so hollow.

Inside was worse. Ilya invited him in somewhat reluctantly, holding open the door so that Nikolai could manoeuvre through with the paper takeaway bags that he was cradling, and let him through the house into the kitchen so that he could begin to unpack the contents of them onto his kitchen island. Nikolai began to help him, swallowing past the lump in his throat. There had not been many photographs at all on his nephew’s walls. The house was like a show home, unpurchased and unoccupied. He didn’t know where that left Ilya.

Haunting Ottawa, apparently. Like a ghost - lonely and sad and silent.

Maybe it was simply because of who Nikolai was and what he now meant to Ilya and his understanding of family, but it did not seem as though there was much conversation incoming. Several times Ilya opened his mouth as if he was on the verge of saying something before letting it snap closed; several times Nikolai wondered if he should throw Ilya a bone and start the conversation himself, before remembering the advice that Fedya had given him before sending im off through customs - that Nikolai could extend the hand but it would have to be Ilya who took it.

So, they sat in silence at Ilya’s island, in the nightmarishly modern kitchen that felt mostly devoid of life, and ate salty, slightly cold fries.

At last, when he swallowed the last of the burger that he had ordered, Ilya said, “so you are my mother’s brother?”

Nikolai did not eat as quickly as Ilya, by virtue of being many years older and not a bottomless pit of an athlete clearly in calorie deficit. He set his burger down. “Yes,” he said, quietly, watching the multitude of emotions that played out across Ilya’s face.

“I have not heard anything about you,” said Ilya, almost accusingly.

Here, Nikolai huffed a dry laugh. “I am not surprised,” he replies, smiling slightly at the frown that deformed Ilya’s mouth at the sound of Nikolai’s wry amusement “I left Moscow a very long time ago - in 1987, when Irina was eighteen.”

“My brother was born in 1989,” replied Ilya. “His name is Andrei.”

So young.

Logically, of course, Nikolai had known that Irina was destined to be a young wife and a young mother the very moment that Grigori Rozanov began inserting into her life with all his grand illusions of the exemplary Russian family that he had wanted her to gift him. But hearing it stated so plainly like this - hearing that only two years on from the last time he had ever known his little sister, she had become a mother - was different. Worse.

Sometimes, Nikolai had comforted himself with the idea of God - which he had never believed in as fervently as his sister but had carried with him to New York all the same - and told himself that God would never let such a thing happen to Irina. God would know that Irina had so much life ahead of her, so many things that she wanted to do, and so he would spare her from marriage and motherhood. Children would be the gift that He gave her, many years in the future, when Irina was ready for them. Clearly, he and God had different ideas of what ready meant.

“I never got to know Irina as a mother,” he mused, because this too was a strange thought.

Irina had been too young for children - yes, he was certain of this - but she had known that she wanted them one day. Nikolai had simply expected to know her children. He would have doted on them and loved them, been the best uncle that they could have ever wanted to the best of all his abilities. In the world that he sometimes dreamed about, Fedya was there too - and Irina’s children called him uncle, and they loved like he loved him.

“You did not miss much,” Ilya assured him. Almost bitterly, an unpleasant twist to his words as an expression of grief so profound settled in a pall across his face. “We made her miserable.”

“Sorry?”

Ilya blinked. “You have heard nothing about her all these years? Do you know how she died?”

“I saw the foundation that you have started in her name. It’s how I knew about you - how I started trying to find you.”

“She killed herself many years ago.” Ilya swallowed, throat bobbing. “My father was a difficult man - he was very hard on her. I think, many times, she thought about leaving him. She stayed for us, though. We kept her there, made her miserable.”

“You know, I might not have known Irina as a mother but I do know it would pain her to hear you talk this way. I know that she would have loved you more than anything - and she would have wanted you to know, or for me to tell you, that none of this was ever your fault. Irina was always a little bit said - funny and sharp and beautiful, yes, but also sad, even when she was little. I worried sometimes that it would carry her away - and it has, but not because of you.”

The look in Ilya’s eyes was a trembling, startled, wild thing. “No one remembers my mother like this except for me. They think her - weak. They do not know how funny she was.”

Nikolai snorted, rubbing a hand over his face. “God, no one could make me laugh like Irina. Still, I think about her jokes and they make me laugh, even now.”

“She put fake spider in my lunchbox once,” Ilya confided, a smile twitching at the corner of his mouth. “I kept it with me for many years. I used to hide it around house for her to find and she would shriek every time, like I had actually managed to scare her.” Ilya’s smile faded slightly. “My papa found it one time. He did not think that she was as funny as I did.”

“What about Inessa - our sister? Did she not tell you these things as well?”

“I did not meet any of my mama’s family. I - your parents are dead, if that means anything.”

It was not a surprise. Nikolai did not know how older his parents would be if they were still alive - old. He did, however, wonder about Inessa. Where she had gone, to leave Irina so alone in the world; why she had not been there, so that her nephews could know her.

Nikolai was an orphan - just as much as he had been walking into Ilya’s house and this conversation. He wondered what words he would put to this later for Fedya’s benefit, and found that - for now - nothing would come to him except the faded scent of roses, which had followed his mother around, seeped into every outfit that she wore and soft skin beneath her ears and where the pulses thundered in her wrists.

“It’ll probably mean something later,” Nikolai acknowledged, but he could not muster anything but the cursory feeling of sadness that had been worn away by all the time that had passed.

Ilya held his cup of coke up. “A toast to fucked up families.”

“I will drink to that,” said Nikolai, tapping the paper rim of his against Ilya’s.

Ilya studied him over them. “Why did you leave?” he asked. “Why haven’t I ever heard of you?”

Nikolai shifted in his seat, lips pursing. Be honest, Fedya had told him, which was the sort of advice that Nikolai needed to hear, because being honest about Fedya had been the one thing that had gotten Nikolai pretty much everything that he ever wanted. But being honest about Fedya was also the reason that Nikolai could never go back to Russia, the reason why he had missed the end of his sister’s life, and the reason that he was a stranger to his own nephew.

And it would be so easy for Nikolai to wash his hands of the whole mess and die on the hill that anyone who could not accept his honesty regarding Fedya was not worth knowing… but then that was almost all of the people that Nikolai had known and liked and loved throughout his childhood. At one point, it would have been Nikolai himself, a little bruised and very scared at the thought of what he was feeling towards the boys in his class could mean if he let it. They were people with dreams and fears, people who had shared inside jokes with, who had invited him into their homes and to their tables. They would spit on him now, because of who he loved, but that would not change the fact that he knew their favourite colours or that they stopped to help out women carry their groceries or volunteered for charities.

There was no guarantee that Ilya would not be like them - that he would look at the love that Nikolai had for Fedya and turn him away. Worse, that he would pity him as others did for being led so evilly astray.

But Nikolai also knew that this was not the sort of thing that Nikolai could keep from Ilya - not if this conversation was going to go anywhere meaningful. Not, if he wanted this conversation to even touch the sides of the wound that missing Irina had dealt him.

“I fell in love,” said Nikolai softly, watching Ilya’s face carefully for any hint of things turning sour. Ilya was so much taller and broader than him, young and athletic. From his pocket, he withdrew his wallet and slid it across the island, opened to the picture of Fedya that he kept in a clear plastic slot. “That is Fedya, my husband.”

Ilya picked the wallet up, tilting it just slightly. The expression on his face was inscrutable as he looked at Fedya, but his hands were careful as he held the wallet.

Nikolai continued, “Fyodor Solovyov and I - we met in university. He was from Saint Petersburg but we met in a history lecture. He was… different, to anything I had ever known. I loved him from the start - even when I would not let myself love him, I knew that it would only ever be him. And he loved me too. I did not hope for it, or look for it, but he loved me.

“Our love was not… it was dangerous, of course, but it was worth it to us. We spent nearly a decade loving each other in secret - at university, first, and then split between Moscow and Saint Petersburg, and then in a flat in Moscow that my family could never visit. His mother was America and his father was dead - she had stayed in Russia for her children, who knew about Fedya and loved him still. They spoke a lot about moving back to America, now that they were grown. Fedya wanted me to move with him. And I wanted to go. God help me, I wanted to go.

“But I could not bear to leave Irina… if I went to America, I thought that I would take her with me. She was eighteen but already engaged to a police officer - your father - and I thought that she would be happy in America. We did not have the word depression for her, but yes, she was. I thought I could fix it, by taking her to America, but -”

Here, Nikolai had to pause to draw in a sharp breath, struggling to rein himself back in. He dropped his head into his hands. He found that he could not bear to look at Ilya and whatever look was one his face as he absorbed what it was that Nikolai was telling him.

“My father found out I was going to America. I knew that he would never approve and so I kept it from him. I think, maybe, he suspected the reason that I had been keeping him at arm’s length all my life, and why many of my stories involved Fedya. If he told anyone, I don’t know. I think he told my mother. I don’t know what he told Irina. He was not kind man - you must know this. He was cruel and he was nasty and he saw people as things that could be manipulated.

“Maybe he told Irina that I was leaving, that I was disloyal, that I was selfish… what Irina heard was that I was abandoning her when she needed me the most. We had been drifting apart for many years, because I could not bear to make her keep a secret from our parents and so she had slowly been written out of the life that I was making with Fedya. We said many terrible things to each other. I did not get the chance to ask her come with me to America. I never saw her again, and I had no way of getting in touch with her. My father - he disavowed me the moment I set foot out of his life for the last time. I could never get in touch with anyone - and I promise that I tried. But my name was worse than dirt. No one would speak to me. An old friend from university told me that this was because Fedya and I were common knowledge at last, though no one would acknowledge it.”

Nikolai heaved out another shuddery breath. He waited for Ilya to say something, anything, but the silence endured and stretched and became a living thing all on its own. When he looked up, peering between the gaps of his fingers, he saw only that Ilya was very, very pale and looked stricken, as though Nikolai had taken his fist and driven it into the softest, most vulnerable parts of him. Here was the part where he said something, to accuse or to curse or to question or -

The shrill ringing of a telephone broke the silence. They both flinched in tandem

Ilya’s phone, face up on the island, lit up. JANE read the caller ID; the background was of the placid surface of a lake tinted orange by the vibrant colours of a sunset, a wooden jetty burnished with golden sunlight as it protruded out into the water. At the sight of it, Ilya’s face flushed, red mottled across his cheeks, as if he had been caught doing something that he hadn’t want to be caught doing, and then drained off all colour again.

“Excuse me,” he muttered. “I need to -”

He wafted the phone in the air, and left not even a moment later. If Nikolai was being kind, he would call it a retreat. From around the corner, he heard the sound of Ilya’s muffled voice as he picked up, fading as he moved further into the house.

Nikolai exhaled shakily. He wanted, more than anything, for Fedya to be with him. He wanted his husband. He did not want to be doing this alone, but he was. He was - just as Irina had done it alone, for all the years that he had left her and maybe many of the years before. He was selfish, maybe, but the yearning for his husband was deep-rooted and instinctive. He checked his phone and saw, as if summoned, that he had an unread text from Fedya.

Is everything okay?

I have told him. He’s taking a call in the other room now. It rang before he could say anything. I cannot tell what he is thinking.

But you are still there?

Yes.

That means something. Trust it. He would not let you stay in his house if he was so uncertain of you. Give him a moment to sort through what he is feeling. This is all a lot, I imagine, for a boy who has lost both his parents.

I wish you were here. You always know what to say.

You should give yourself more credit. You’re pretty smart when you try as well, Mister Professor.

It took Ilya ten minutes to return. Nikolai spent all of them in an agony of anticipation, unable to settle. He tore the remnants of the burger in front of him into shreds, his meagre appetite now nonexistent. He read and reread his messages from Fedya, wishing that they would transform into his husband so that he could hear the familiar cadence of his voice and feel the warmth of his skin.

But then he heard a shuffling in the doorway and looked up, and he saw Ilya there, lingering on the threshold as if it was not his kitchen and as if he was the one uncertain of his welcome. He clutched his phone in his hand. He looked very, very young and very much like his mother.

“Would you like me to leave?” asked Nikolai, as clearly and steadily as he could manage.

This was not about him - not really - and it had never been. It had been about Irina, and what Nikolai had thought he should have done for Irina and what he would do if he had been given the chance. Making Ilya as comfortable as he could was the sort of thing that he should be doing - even if Nikolai was pretty sure that it would break his heart already to have to leave this piece of family behind.

“I know how our country feels about people like me,” he added - and hated how much it sounded as though he was excusing it. “I know that I make them uncomfortable. I will not blame you, if you feel the same. I am not expecting anything from you. I was maybe selfish in coming here - i just missed my sister and I wanted to know you, even if only for a bit.”

Ilya did not say anything for a long moment. And then, when Nikolai began to gather himself as if he was preparing to go - 

“I do not want you to leave,” Ilya said, voice raised and all the words expelled in one rushed, almost garbled sentence. He took a breath, like he could not believe that he had just said that. With a heavy, significant look, he added, “I mean… I mean that I understand. Please do not go. I -” His face crumpled.  “You look so much like my mama.”

Oh, Nikolai thought. Oh.

I understand, Ilya had said - and Nikolai did not want to presume but… but he knew what Ilya meant. Understood. And he understood now why it was that Ilya was so alone, why there was no home to be found for him in Ottawa. Ilya, like Nikolai, was seeking refuge from all the things that he had ever loved. Ilya, like Nikolai, was cut adrift and apart, amongst people who might come to know him but would never understand him in quite the same way as the Moskva river might.

Ilya was not Irina.

Nikolai was not disappointed about this - mostly, he was not disappointed about this, and he hated the part of him that was - but he did not know if Ilya was disappointed that Nikolai was not Irina. Her blood was a bridge between them but neither of them were her, could never hope to be her. Irina was lost somewhere far, far away from anywhere that they could ever tangibly meet her - and, maybe, if Irina’s God was not real, they would never meet her again, would never know her, and there would come a day when they fell to nothingness, and the rot of the worms and the earth, when she would be forgotten entirely.

Ilya was right there, in front of him. He was real, flesh and blood and tangible to the touch. Nikolai crossed the island to reach him, stretching out his hands, and -

- hesitated.

He wondered if he was welcome, or if he was reading things that were not there. Ilya answered that question for him, only a moment later and before he had the chance to spiral. He launched himself forward and into Nikolai’s arms, hands clutching desperately at Nikolai’s back as if he was a drowning man cast out to sea and Nikolai the last shard of wreckage left floating on the surface. He buried his face against Nikolai’s chest, and Nikolai felt the cold dampness of his tears as they soaked through the fabric. He brought up his hands to comb them through Ilya’s hair, the way that he had Irina’s when she had been little, and the last of the tension that limned Ilya’s body melted away into nothing. He slumped against Nikolai entirely, boneless and trusting.

Nikolai held him back. Buried his face in Ilya’s curls. Inhaled the crisp smell of his aftershave. In his mind, he saw his sister, and he saw that she was smiling.