Chapter Text
Part I: Snap
Ilya knows it won’t last. He knows that tonight he needs to call it off with Shane, that they can’t keep doing this. There’s no way they can be together, not in any real, meaningful way. Not how Ilya wants, or how Shane deserves. That's really the crux: Shane deserves better. Way better. Easier. Not Ilya.
But Ilya is weak, he knows this about himself. So he positions himself at center ice, where Shane can easily skate up to say hello during warm-ups. Which of course, Shane does.
“We still on for tonight? After?”
Ilya gives him a nod. He can’t help himself: he flirts, or at least the version of flirting that Shane will respond to.
“Raiders win, we’re watching Fast and Furious.”
Shane chuckles, trying to act annoyed, but failing. “No chance.”
“Oh, so you do not want a prize if you win?” Ilya says, smothering a smirk.
“Fuck you,” Shane says, no heat in it, pretending to pay close attention to the tape on his stick.
“Later,” Ilya promises, and Shane skates back to the bench to where Pike is watching them, looking confused.
Tonight Ilya would end things with Shane. It would hurt, a lot, but it had to be done. Shane deserves more than what Ilya can offer.
Ilya taps his stick against the ice to playfully antagonize Shane. It’s not very intimidating, though. Shane looks into Ilya’s eyes and Ilya can’t help the giddy smile that creeps onto his lips. Shane, smirking, wins the face off.
Shane starts down the ice with the puck, taking a quick second to glance back at Ilya over his shoulder, a satisfied smile on his face. He’s distracted, and he doesn’t see.
Ilya sees, just a moment before, helpless to prevent it. His alternate captain, Cliff Marlow, clean contact, right into Shane. Ilya’s world narrows; Shane crumples onto the ice. Not moving, he’s not moving.
The medics are rushing out, lifting Shane onto the spinal board. Words, questions, spill out of Ilya, but no one seems to hear him, no one replies. And then, somewhere in the stadium, someone screams.
It breaks Ilya from his trance, and he looks around to see his teammate, St-Simon, evaporate before his eyes.
What the fuck?
Another scream, and Ilya blinks hard as he realizes all around him, people are just silently disintegrating, disappearing into thin air.
Pike, gloves off as he tried to fight Marlow for the hit, is staring at his left hand as it starts to fizz away into nothing. Ilya watches as Pike’s eyes widen, the realization setting in. And then, he’s gone.
“Dude,” Marlow says, making eye contact with Ilya in the aftermath. But then, he too, is fading away.
What the actual fuck is going on?
The stadium has fallen into a terrifying quiet, people holding their breath in shock and fear and anticipation.
Shane, what about Shane.
Ilya turns his attention back to Shane’s body on the ice, skates over quickly. There's only two of the three EMTs still there, the remaining duo disorientated and distracted by the scene unfolding around them.
“Shane,” Ilya falls to his knees over the love of his life. Shane is blinking back into consciousness.
“Ilya?” his voice is thick and heavy on his tongue. He's so agonizingly beautiful, his face tender and red from the impact of his helmet hitting the ice moments before. “I’m okay,” he insists, blinking slowly.
And then, starting at his fingertips, Shane starts to fade away, just like St-Simon and Marlow and Pike moments before. Eyes soft, Shane gazes at Ilya, not seeming to realize what’s happening at all. And Ilya, overcome with terror, can only watch as Shane’s whole being simply disintegrates into thin air.
“нет,” Ilya stares at the empty place where Shane had been. It doesn’t make any sense. It happened so fast. “нет.” His hands are shaking, and he fumbles around the space where Shane had been, feeling across the ice as if Shane has just turned invisible, is maybe still there. But he’s not. He’s fucking gone. He’s dust. He's nothing. Shane is gone.
It’s too much. It’s not comprehensible, any of it.
Ilya doesn’t really know how everything happens next. When he comes back into his body, he’s bundled in one of those shock-blankets, the tin-foil-looking ones, his skates are off, and he’s sitting on the bench. The Bell Center, despite its size and still substantial population of surviving people, is strangely quiet, more subdued than Ilya’s ever heard it.
Someone’s standing in front of him, and he blinks more into his body to register that it’s the Haitian-Canadian defenseman, the one that’s friends with Shane.
“Hey,” J.J. says awkwardly. He looks stricken, which is about how Ilya feels. “Rozanov, you okay?”
Ilya realizes he can’t speak, not yet, so he just shakes his head, letting it fall into his hands. J.J. lands on the bench next to him.
“Did you… did you see if Hollander…”
“He is gone.” The words come from Ilya, but it feels far away, like it’s not actually him speaking. He closes his eyes; his head is ringing. The lights are too bright, the stadium is too quiet. It’s all wrong.
“Putain,” J.J. curses next to him. “What the fuck, dude.”
“Mm, yes,” Ilya agrees, swallowing in attempt to keep it together. Now is probably not a good time for him to openly weep about the loss of his greatest rival. “What the fuck.”
Time makes no sense. He and J.J. sit there, wordlessly devastated, for what must be an hour but feels like a handful of minutes. Or maybe it’s the other way around? Ilya’s not sure what he’s supposed to do next. Go to his hotel? That would be fucking crazy, right? Nothing makes sense.
And to think, he had been planning on ending things with Hollander. Fuck, the irony almost makes him want to laugh.
One of the Raiders’ rookies appears before them, face twisted into something determined to keep it together. “There’s a lady – she said she’s Pike’s wife, and there was no one from the Metros staff–” J.J. stands up immediately.
“Where?” he asks, his voice strained. The rookie points to the tunnel, where a heavily pregnant woman stands just within their line of sight, a little girl clinging to her side.
“Fuck.” J.J. scrubs a hand over his face, looking pained. “He– I haven’t seen Hayden, I don’t know–”
“I saw,” Ilya contributes, his voice hollow. “Gone.”
“Fuck,” J.J. breathes again. The three players stare at the ground in front of them, no one sure what to do. “We have to tell her, right?” J.J. says, sounding horrified at the thought.
“I will,” Ilya volunteers. J.J. would be the ideal choice for this task, but he is absolutely wrecked, clearly. Ilya is a stranger to Pike’s wife – but this is Shane’s best friend’s family. Except no one knows about Ilya and Shane. No one, except Ilya. Now alone in this knowledge, and grief. He feels desperate, suddenly, to connect with Pike’s wife.
He doesn’t wait for J.J. to agree, he just tugs his skates back on and hops the boards, skating the distance of the rink to the other side. As he gets closer, he sees the little girl is crying, her face red and puffy. The woman, Pike’s wife, is frazzled, like she’s just barely keeping it together.
“Rozanov?” she sounds confused at the sight of him approaching her, but at least she knows his name.
“Ilya,” he corrects gently, and he’s not sure why he wants to make this distinction.
“Ilya,” she says, and then pauses, the next question hanging between them. The moment when her hopes will be shattered.
“Um,” Ilya presses his lips together. He realizes he’s towering over her in his skates, probably scaring the girl. He crouches, wrangling them off his feet somewhat awkwardly.
“I’m Jackie,” Pike’s wife offers, her voice delicately even, like it’s taking everything for her to keep it steady. “This is Ruby.”
“Hi Ruby, I am Ilya. I need to talk to your mom, okay?”
Ilya doesn’t exactly have a plan for what’s next, he just knows that Ruby shouldn’t have to witness her mother’s reaction to this next bit, and likewise Jackie should be able to process things a little bit more freely.
“J.J.,” Jackie says, and her eyes are starting to fill with tears, and Ilya turns to see J.J. has followed Ilya across the ice, his skates scraping as he stops, steps out of the rink. The Raiders rookie is not far behind, seeming lost and disoriented. Jackie continues, “Where’s–”
J.J. shakes his head. So much for telling her in private. Ilya feels a little dizzy himself, the weight of it all…
Jackie huffs out a breath, holding her crying daughter closer to her body. She’s keeping it all together surprisingly well.
“And Shane?” Jackie asks next, and Ilya feels the world crash down on him all over again. J.J. is answering, saying “No,” and Ilya can’t stand anymore, he bends forward, curling up, and sits on the ground.
“Roz, you okay man?” The rookie leans over him, gripping Ilya’s shoulder. Ilya is barely aware of his surroundings. There’s a buzz in his head, something low and constant. The lights all feel way too bright again, and this time it’s like it’s all getting worse at once.
“Breathe, man, breathe,” the rookie is saying, and Ilya realizes Jackie, Ruby, and J.J. are walking away, down the tunnel. Of course. Because they aren’t here for Ilya. And they don’t know... no one knows. “Sorry,” he winces, trying to be normal, but his heart is pounding out of his chest. “Sorry.”
“It’s okay,” the rookie says, but clearly he is in way over his head. “Um, just, uh, breathe. Breathe, yeah.”
Ilya wants to chase after Jackie Pike and tell her everything, and tell her how he saw her husband disappear, and then Shane– but he can’t move, he can’t get up, every limb in his body feels rooted to this spot, this place on Earth, like he’s trapped in this purgatory, cursed to grieve Shane completely alone. Which he can’t possibly do.
The panic attack itself ends, but the underlying feeling of absolute anxiety remains. Ilya kinda of zones out, unable to be fully in the moment. Somehow, over the next few hours, someone manages to get the surviving Raiders players back to their hotel, where they’re told to hang tight. It’s unclear when airspace may open up again, they’re told, because of staffing issues.
Right, staffing issues. Because half the universe just disappeared.
Ilya is supposed to share a room with Marlow, so he goes back and sits with a dead man’s belongings, and seriously considers if he wants to keep living. It’s a dangerous spiral, one that starts to get too dark… until the hotel room phone starts ringing, and Ilya, for whatever reason, picks it up.
“Yes?”
“Ilyusha,” Sveta’s voice comes out relieved and frantic, and then as she continues, it turns angry. “Are you fucking kidding me, you haven’t checked your phone, Ilya? I had to track down your hotel details– I– Oh my god, I thought you were– I–” She stops, her rant held up by her best efforts not to lose her shit.
“I am sorry,” Ilya says numbly. “It is at the bottom of my bag. I did not think–”
“You didn’t think, what? That I would worry? That I–”
“Sveta, stop,” Ilya interrupts her with little effort, his voice sluggish. His head hurts so fucking much. Miraculously, Sveta actually does fall silent.
“Are you okay?” she asks next. No, Ilya thinks. He can’t lie to her, so instead he says nothing.
“Was it– you were playing the game?”
“Yes,” he confirms, weary. He stares at Marlow’s duffel on the opposite bed. He would need to take it back to Marlow’s family. If his family is even still alive.
“Your team–”
“Sveta, I am tired.”
She huffs. “Fine, Ilya. Do you need help getting back to Boston?”
Yes, actually, he could use her help. But the thought of leaving Montreal makes him nauseous.
“I will stay here for a little time,” he decides, offering no explanation. Svetlana is quiet for a moment, probably trying to figure out what that even means. Finally, she says, “Okay. Don’t disappear on me, yeah?”
Part II: Denial/Depression
The remaining Raiders are stranded in Montreal for a week. Ilya lays in bed the whole time, barely gets up, barely moves at all. When the assistant coach comes to collect him on day seven, announcing that they’ve secured a charter bus back to Boston, Ilya can’t find it in himself to go with them, to get up, to pack his things, to shower and get on a bus surrounded by hockey players. So he hands the coach Marlow’s things, to deliver to his family, and Ilya goes back to bed.
He puts the Hallmark channel on the TV, lets it play on a low volume at all hours, allows his eyes to glaze over as he stares at the screen.
He wants to think about Hollander, but it his chest hurts so badly, and his throat feels closed shut, and his brain exists in a hazy liminal space where there are no real thoughts, just fleeting observations, and he can’t bring himself to break out of it, to push his mind into reality,
After two more weeks in the hotel room, he’s lost ten pounds. That doesn’t really bother him, but he’s grown sick of the small space, fed up with the scratchy, unfamiliar sheets, and the extra bed that mocks him with its emptiness, a reminder of Marlow, of everyone who just fucking randomly disappeared. Like Shane, mostly. So Ilya decides it’s time to go.
The airlines have reopened service, albeit limited. He books a direct flight to Boston, and he sits next to a young woman who knits the whole time, and he wonders if Shane would have ever liked to learn to knit, because it seemed nice, and calming, and a little boring, which were all things he associates with Shane.
He cries in the airplane’s little bathroom, splashes water on his face, but can’t hide the puffiness around his eyes. Embarrassingly, he’s still sniffling back in his seat. The knitting woman silently passes him a tissue from her bag.
“Thank you.”
His taxi driver recognizes him, tells him he watches all the Raiders games. Ilya doesn’t ask if he saw the Montreal game, the last game, because he’s afraid of the answer. He signs the man’s steering wheel, which is pretty funny and usually would have Ilya snapping a photo to post on social media, but he doesn’t, because it doesn’t fucking matter.
Ilya’s house is sterile and empty, just like the inside of his chest. He lays out on the bed, and he wonders if heaven is real. If he killed himself, could he still get in? He always thought his mama must be there, so maybe he could still make it.
Shane would be so angry with him, though. The thought makes him sick to his stomach – actually, he runs to the bathroom and manages to make it to the toilet before he hurls. No, he can’t kill himself. If he’s been cursed to survive, so be it. He can maybe do his best, for Shane.
There’s no more hockey, not for this season. Probably longer, if Ilya has to guess. He doesn’t really mind the loss of hockey, but it means he has a lot of free time, and that is really, really not good for his mental health.
Ilya holes up in his house and treats his body like shit, letting himself sink into the depths of depression. He fluctuates between binging fast food or not eating for days, especially when he’s playing video games. He doesn’t let himself think, or process, or dwell. He just keeps his brain stimulated with shooting zombies or dragons, or enemy soldiers, and he sleeps as much as possible, and constantly hates himself.
Outside the seasons change, the crisp Boston spring easing into a sweltering summer.
A week before Ilya’s birthday, Sveta shows up at his doorstep.
“What are you doing here?” Ilya asks not-so-kindly, because he's embarrassed of how he smells, how he looks, how Sveta sees right through him immediately, understands him intrinsically in a way that Ilya is not prepared for. She looks him up and down, assessing. Then her eyes lock with his. “This can’t continue.”
She makes him shower, scrub himself down and shampoo his hair, she stocks his fridge and throws away the rotting leftovers. She makes him wash his sheets, vacuum his floors. She forces him out of the house, for a walk around the neighborhood. She stays for two weeks, and things are a little better.
Then she goes home to New York, and Ilya slips back into the depths of depression, helplessly falling.
He refuses to let himself think, even a little, about Hollander. He cycles through Youtube videos, movies, video games, porn, anything to hold his attention. He doesn’t watch any hockey and he barely leaves his bed, or the couch. It’s the same as before, and yet worse. Worse because as the time eeks on, he feels even more disgusting, useless, deplorable. Why would he survive something like this? What’s the point? The fucking Snap should have taken him, not Shane.
One day he rolls out of bed at three in the afternoon and catches sight of himself in the mirror. Ilya honestly doesn’t recognize the man staring back at him; there are deep, dark circles under his eyes, his once-muscular frame is thin and weak, his curls limp, his face flat. He is a shell of himself.
He looks like his mama, when things were at their worst. Right before the end. That’s not a good sign.
He doesn’t know what else to do, so he calls Sveta.
“I’m not okay,” he tells her.
“Okay,” she says slowly, clearly thinking, scanning for solutions. “Come stay with me. We will figure it out.”
So two days later, Ilya is flying again, into LaGuardia, Sveta waiting for him in Arrivals. She doesn’t say anything about how awful he looks, she just wraps her arms around him and holds him very tightly and, for the first time since the airplane bathroom (months ago, now), something in Ilya’s chest loosens and breaks free, and he cries.
Sveta makes two americanos with the little espresso machine in her kitchen, and they sit on her green velvet sofa, coffees steaming. Ilya takes a tentative sip, careful not to burn his tongue.
“So will you tell me, Ilyusha, what happened? What you saw during the Snap that is haunting you?”
He knew she was going to ask, but it doesn’t make it easier to come up with an answer. “I can’t, Sveta,” he winces, avoiding her eyes. He doesn’t deserve her. He’s not sure he deserves anything.
“That’s okay,” she says, though he doesn’t believe her. She’s trying to soldier through, but Ilya knows his friend. He knows how frustrating he’s being. But he actually cannot fathom–
“Your person,” Sveta continues carefully. “Jane.”
The name hangs in the air between them.
“He is gone,” Sveta guesses, thought it’s less a question and more a statement. Ilya’s throat is tight.
“Yes.”
Even just uttering this answer rocks Ilya’s world. He sets his coffee on the side table, not trusting himself to keep it upright, to keep this beautiful green couch unstained.
“Ilyusha…” Sveta reaches out and touches his knee lightly. Despite how delicate and slow her touch is, Ilya flinches. She doesn’t retreat. “You cannot do this alone.”
“I know,” he snaps unnecessarily.
“Do you?” Sveta raises a skeptical eyebrow. “Because you haven’t even told me who he is. Ilya, you have to let someone in. Maybe not me, that is okay. But does he have family, friends, people you can talk to?”
“He wasn’t out,” Ilya almost chokes on his words. “I can’t…”
“I think you can,” Sveta states. “I think that’s an excuse. There are a lot of solutions to that. Say you are a friend, say you are–”
“Shane Hollander,” Ilya cuts her off, before she wastes her breath. He blows out a heavy breath, surprised with how much tension seeps out of him, just by saying the name. “It’s Hollander. He’s my Jane. So I can’t–”
“Ilyusha,” now it’s Sveta’s turn to cut him off. She’s shifted on the couch to face him completely. He makes the mistake of looking back at her, into her eyes, which shine with complicated layers of empathy and concern. And Ilya just falls apart; his shoulders rattling as he lets out hiccuped sobs that seem to take his body by surprise, no build up, just wretched cries. Sveta slides over to him, and pulls him into her arms.
He cries for so long, eons, lifetimes worth of tears. By the time he can focus his vision on anything, his head is pounding from the dehydration, and whole-body grief.
“I loved him, Sveta,” he says, because he needs someone to know. She rubs his back, like his mother used to when he was small and inconsolable. I love him, Ilya thinks, and it hurts so so bad.
New York City after the Snap is weird. There are still people everywhere – survivors who have flocked to the city in search of work, and food, and resources, and change. But everyone is a zombie – stricken by grief, by trauma, by the shock of it all, fumbling through life aimlessly, blindly. Ilya hates it, the city, but he loves Sveta, and he has nothing else, so he stays.
Ilya develops habits for himself, things to structure his time so it feels less like he’s a ghost in his own life, in his own body. He sleeps on Sveta’s green velvet couch, wakes after she’s left for her office job, buys $1.50 coffee from the corner deli and smokes a cigarette on the curb before hoping on whatever-the-fuck train to go wherever-the-fuck for however-fucking-long.
He goes to free art museums with big white statues and gold frames larger than the actual paintings, he walks deserted neighborhoods where businesses are shuttered and only ghosts make any sound, and then he dodges his way through heavily populated streets full of people in fancy jackets buying salads for lunch, he sits by the water and stares out at the ferries passing by, he gets lost in the park on more than one occasion, trying to find purpose in weaving his way through the trees. It’s aimless, his expeditions, just like Ilya himself.
Near the end of the summer, it's officially announced that the MLH will “take a season to regroup and consider the future of professional hockey.” Ilya’s not surprised, and not upset either, but it does raise some immigration concerns.
Technically speaking, Ilya’s no longer legally allowed to live and work in the United States. There’s all kinds of post-Snap statuses he could apply for (immigration to the US, as it turns out, is highly encouraged nowadays), but the Russia situation makes everything… tricky. Russia wants him back. They want everyone back, every Russian who has left the homeland, whether it be temporarily or a decade ago, they are eager to repopulate their cities, invigorate their industries.
“Sasha told me no one can leave, like it’s the fucking Soviet Union all over again,” Sveta divulges one night over dinner. “And they’re tracking Russian nationals across Europe. He said some KGB-looking-motherfucker followed him home from work the other day.”
“Really?” Ilya can’t cover his fear at the idea. He can’t go back to Russia – he just can’t. Whether it be through state sanctioned violence or his own doing as a result of living there again, a return to Russia would be a death sentence.
Ilya’s imagines that if he were in Boston still, he’d have letters waiting for him, demanding his return. Maybe someone has even shown up at his house, looking for him.
“I think Sasha’s going to come here,” Sveta continues.
“What?” Ilya blinks at her and sets down his fork.
“Yes,” Sveta nods, not looking at Ilya, just continuing to eat. “He doesn’t feel safe. He has a flight for Saturday.”
“Sveta,” Ilya balks. “That is in three days. You were not going to tell me?”
“I’m telling you now, Ilya. And this is my apartment, I’m opening it to my friends in need and that includes more than just you.”
Ilya frowns at his noodles. “But are we even safe here? You are dual citizen, yes? That means Russian too. They will want you. And how long until they figure out you are harboring two more of their prized sheep?”
“They are understaffed,” Sveta argues. “It will take them a long time. You can apply for–”
“If I apply for anything, they will find out where I am.”
“Ilya, you are paranoid,” Sveta sighs. “They may think they are KGB, but it is nothing close.”
“Then why is Sasha coming here, huh Sveta?”
She presses her lips together in annoyance. “Sasha is in Paris. Do you know how hectic Europe is right now? It’s easier for people to disappear.”
“Don't talk to me about people disappearing,” Ilya snaps, standing suddenly, the chair grinding loudly against the wood floors. Sveta flinches at the sound, incredulous. Ilya finds himself huffing, breathless and panicked, staring at Sveta. “Sorry,” he mutters and whisks past her to the front door, to escape. He can't– he can’t.
He lets the door slam behind him, hurries down the hall to disappear down the stairwell before Sveta can follow. He wants to disappear. He wants to fade into a crowd, to get lost in the city streets, to float away into the clouds.
Instead, he buys his coffee and loosie from Jamal at the deli, and he stands on the corner and people-watches.
He doesn’t have his jacket, but it’s only a little chilly, early October setting in. Besides, the wisps of cold air make him feel more alive.
Maybe Sveta is right. Maybe he’s being paranoid. But he really doesn’t think so. The unknown phone calls he's been getting, the emails from his agent back in Moscow. Maybe it’s nothing. But it could also be something. Something bad.
Does Ilya have enough of a survival instinct to care? The answer, to his own shock, is yes. Despite all his wallowing (and suicidal thoughts), Ilya only wants to die if he can choose it. The autonomy matters. And maybe, when he really thinks about it, he doesn’t actually want to die at all. He just wants… Shane.
Fuck.
Ilya finishes his cigarette and starts walking. Maybe if he travels far enough, turns a certain corner, bumps into someone in a crowd, he’ll see, or hear, or smell something, something to remind him of Shane.
But there’s nothing. There’s no one, no thing, no scent, no memory. There’s nothing.
“Where will he sleep?” he asks Sveta when he makes it back to the apartment.
“We’ll figure it out,” Sveta says, still very unconcerned. Ilya imagines it: Sasha in his space, twirling around the kitchen in the mornings, hogging the bathroom when Ilya needs to shit, creating messes and never taking out the trash. It’s all hypothetical, of course, but probably accurate.
“Fine,” he says, because he’s already decided he needs to find a new place to live as soon as possible.
Sasha appears on Saturday, more of a nuisance that relentlessly crosses Ilya’s boundaries than someone fleeing political persecution.
“Snap took away your sparkle, huh Ilya?”
Ilya grits out a very unconvincing smile. “Hi Sasha.”
Sasha eyes him up and down in a way that in the past would have simply irritated him, but in the present, it makes him want to curl up in the corner and die. He feels incredibly uncomfortable, and completely exposed to Sasha's unwanted advances – because if there’s one thing he knows about Sasha, it's that he will make a pass.
“So we’re sharing the bed?” Sasha flicks his tongue out of his mouth. Bile rises in Ilya’s stomach.
“Cut it out, Sasha,” Sveta hits him lightly on the arm. “I’m serious.”
Sasha shrugs, unperturbed, and waggles his eyebrows at Ilya as he follows Sveta into her bedroom.
Ilya goes on his phone and tries to find somewhere in the world where he might belong.
Part III: Nowhere
The lake house is small, but too big for him still. Maybe this was a mistake, he thinks, but he settles in anyways. Ilya only has one suitcase and his backpack. He’d only taken that much to Sveta’s, and he isn't going to go back to Boston for anything. There’s nothing worth going back for.
Ilya decides to take out the kayak. It’s dark already, but he’s not really bothered. He doesn’t need to worry about being quiet – no one else is around. The guy who rented him the place said most people clear out after Labor Day weekend because the little houses around this lake have basically no insulation. Ilya doesn’t need insulation, he's Russian.
Out on the water, there’s only the sound of the wind in the trees and the water lapping against the boat to keep him company. He lets his eyes adjust to the darkness, the only light coming from the stars in the sky and the distant glow of the porch light he left on, barely visible through the trees.
Ilya takes a breath, and it almost feels like the first real breath of air he’s taken since before. He feels hollow, of course, because he can’t shake that feeling, but there’s a sense of serenity to the water and the woods. Maybe this little New Jersey lakeside getaway is what he needs.
The lake days stretch. He lets himself think about Shane, miss Shane, hate himself for wasting all the time he could have had with Shane. The air turns colder, and Ilya buys a space heater in town which helps keep him warm at night. He kayaks often, even though the lake is too small for him to go much of anywhere. He wonders if Shane knew how to kayak. Probably, since he had that fancy waterfront cottage in the Canadian wilderness.
Ilya buys groceries in town, and cooks himself his favorite meals from childhood, the ones his mother used to make for him. Sveta calls, and Ilya tells her about the owl that keeps him up some nights, the way the leaves are turning, how he’s putting on muscle from rowing so much. She reports that Sasha has moved out, found his own place and a job uptown, tells Ilya he can come back if he wants. “No thanks,” he says immediately, already decided.
Everything gets much colder as fall seeps into early winter, and Ilya learns how to use the fireplace. Did Shane ever make a fire in a wood-burning fireplace? What technique would Shane use?
He buys a shit ton of groceries and he goes weeks without speaking to anyone, only breaking his silence when Sveta calls or he has to venture into town for more rations.
Some nights it’s so cold, he wonders what would happen if he froze to death. No one would know for so long.
He skates on the frozen lake, mostly trying to go as fast as possible, feel the cold air in his lungs. It feels good, even when it hurts.
Then the ice starts to melt, the winter slowly fading out.
It’s almost been one full year since the Snap when Ilya has his first dream of Shane. It’s simple, really, just Shane sitting at the bottom of the emergency exit staircase at his secret sex building, holding Ilya’s hoodie in his arms. He smiles at Ilya, soft and gooey, just like how he would in real life, and it almost feels real. For a brief, blinding moment. Then Ilya wakes up, staring up at the wood beams of the lake house ceiling.
He packs his bags, throws out his scraps, messages the lake house guy that his stay has concluded, he returns his rented car, catches a bus to Newark International Airport, and buys a plane ticket at the counter.
Part IV: Asylum
In the customs line, the agent asks Ilya if he would like to apply for asylum. “Asylum?” he asks, unsure how the word is defined in this context. Or any context, really, besides an insane asylum. But that cannot be what this very professional looking agent means, unless Ilya has really truly lost it.
“If you apply, and your request is granted, Canada will protect you,” the agent taps Ilya's red passport. Oh. Canada will protect Ilya from the KGB-wannabes.
“Yes, I would like this asylum.”
The application takes a swift twenty-two minutes, and by the end he is officially approved. They take his photo, print a temporary ID card, and inform him he can pick up the permanent version in one week from an address printed on a little card. “This office will help you if you decide to pursue citizenship. They can also help you find housing and work,” the agent tells him. “Do you have a place to stay?”
Does he?
“Yes,” he says, because he can figure it out. He still has some savings left, even if his hockey income is forgotten, dust.
“Welcome to Canada.”
The agent slides his ID over. The photo is grainy, but there he is, unmistakable. Ilya Rozanov, asylum-seeker.
In the realm of bad ideas, this is one of his worst. Ilya stands in front of Hollander’s secret sex building, clutching his life possessions.
This is crazy. He doesn't even know if the building is vacant – or if the door codes are the same. He could be arrested for breaking and entering.
But, he considers, it would be even more insane to show up at Shane’s actual penthouse where he used to live, and Ilya wasn’t doing that, so relatively this is… fine. Right?
The front door code is the same. No alarms ring, no lights start flashing, so Ilya just… walks in. It’s too easy. He climbs the stairs to the second floor, to their unit, the one where they used to meet up, and he types in the next door code. It clicks. Unlocked.
Ilya takes a shaky breath. He hadn’t really expected to make it this far; hasn’t prepared himself mentally for this next part. Maybe it’s better that way. He pushes the door open and steps inside.
It's just as he remembered it. All of it. Well, except it’s dusty and dark - there’s no one to pay the power bill. Besides that, which is honestly very forgettable because the setting sun through the windows provides enough light to see, the space hits him hard. It… it reminds him of Shane, so viscerally. He can see Shane in the living room, he can picture his shoes by the front door, his jacket on the hook. Small things that he probably never even paid much attention to in all their years of hooking up here. The couch, where Ilya’s fucked him. The stairwell, where they’ve hungrily kissed as they tripped over themselves to get upstairs to the bedroom. All the places they've touched.
Ilya, a little dumbfounded by how surreal it all is, wanders around the corner to the kitchen. There’s a low glow of the green digital clock on the stove – there’s power? Ilya tries the switch, not expecting anything, and nearly blinds himself with the overhead fluorescent.
“Fuck,” he curses to himself, blinking hard.
So someone must be paying the power bill. Shane’s parents? Ilya suddenly realizes he doesn’t even know if they are still around, or if they too were snapped out of existence.
Hazy, Ilya opens the fridge to find an assortment of produce which has shriveled and molded after spending nearly a year in the fridge. Shane must have been planning to make a smoothie – in the morning?
It would have been their first full night together. Or, no, it wouldn’t have, Ilya remembers. Because he had been planning to break things off. How could he ever…why would he ever willingly be parted from Hollander? If he had known, if he had considered that Shane Hollander’s company was a finite resource… well, he should have known. He should have done a lot of things.
Ilya leans onto the kitchen island, gripping the granite and getting dust all over himself as a result. Fuck. Grimacing, he wipes his hands on his pants.
Ilya coughs on the dust in the air.
He needs to clean this apartment. Shane would find it deplorable, the state of it. That won’t do. And Ilya could use a task to keep his hands busy anyways.
Shane is predictable, and that comes in handy. Ilya finds every cleaning supply known to man in the hall closet. Don’t cleaning services usually bring their own? He must be particular about the brands. Well, good then; Ilya would only use Shane’s preferred brands.
Ilya puts on a face mask (which Shane apparently also thought to stock) to protect himself from the dust, plugs his headphones in, music blasting, rolls up his sleeves, and gets to work.
Something like three hours later, everything is shiny and fresh, the fridge has been wiped out, the sheets are tumbling in the dryer, and Ilya, wet from his shower with only a towel around his waist, falls onto the sofa.
He almost feels okay. Here, in Shane’s space, being productive, taking care of Shane’s things. He has purpose, he has meaning. Even though Shane isn’t around.
His body doesn't have the patience to wait for the sheets to finish drying; he falls asleep on the couch as soon as he closes his eyes.