Rating:

Mature

Archive Warning:

Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings

Category:

M/M

Fandoms:

Heated Rivalry (TV), Game Changers | Heated Rivalry - All Media Types

Relationship:

Shane Hollander/Ilya Rozanov

Characters:

Shane Hollander, Ilya Rozanov, Original Children of Shane Hollander and Ilya Rozanov, Galina Molchalina, Svetlana Vetrova

Additional Tags:

Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Implied/Referenced Abuse, Kidnapping, Escape, Morally Ambiguous Character, Still somehow a love story, Stalking, Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Past Mpreg | Male Pregnancy, time jumps, slightly OOC, ...because of the kidnapping, Dubious Consent, because of the say it with me, BAMF Shane Hollander, Freak4Freak Shane Hollander/Ilya Rozanov

Language:

English

Series:

Part 8 of Heated Rivalry AUs

Stats:

Published: 2026-08-02 Completed: 2026-08-24 Words: 21,681 Chapters: 8/8

I'm losing my favorite game

Summary

When the police interrogated him the first time, Shane had told them that it had taken a only a few frantic moments to plan out the daring escape which had eventually earned him his freedom after six long years.

It was also a lie.

Notes

Listen, I know I haven't updated my other story in two months but it's coming, I promise, in the meantime, have this story that I had to exorcise out of my brain. It is already complete so expect regular updates for the next few weeks as I edit the chapters!

Finally, please read the tags! These two are crazy and also in love but emphasis on the crazy. Title is from The Cardigans "My Favorite Game" which really fits the vibe of Shane in this story.

Chapter 1

When the police interrogated him the first time, Shane had told them that it had taken a only a few frantic moments to plan out the daring escape which had eventually earned him his freedom after six long years of captivity.

It was also a lie.

They asked: "How did you escape?"

He answered: "I got lucky. He left the keys in the car and I drove until I found my mom."

The truth his therapist eventually wrung out of him:

Shane had known he would escape from the moment that Ilya had pulled the blindfold off of his eyes for the first time. Sure, Shane had buried it under the mundane minutia of daily life because he'd had too. Ilya had, presumably from his time stalking Shane, known every tell and if Shane allowed himself to drift, even for a second, the man he called a mate would know.

So he didn't. He cooked soups and cut sandwiches into shapes and packed for picnics while Ilya did laundry, and folded their clothes into little animals and neither of them talked about the locked basement door the children were too young to realize was strange. But there were the handful of minutes Shane had while Ilya vacuumed, the time he spent in the garden Ilya had built during his difficult first pregnancy, the hour Ilya allowed him in the bath while he cared for the kids, all became moments to let himself kick off the metaphorical boards and circle and circle until the plan became as solid as ice underfoot.

If he actually tried to quantify it, as his therapist, Galina, recommended him to, Shane would say it gained its shape the day his eldest, Ana, playing with her little play kitchen, reached out and scruffed her younger brother Leo.

His youngest had folded like a sheet off a line, a twitching pile on the grass, and Shane had been yelling before he'd even thought about it. Ana had been screaming back at him, her pale eyes all watery and wide, defending herself while her brother sobbed on the ground at her feet. The only words Shane could hear as he rocked Leo in his arms was his daughter's frantic scream that:

"Papa does it to you all the time!"

Ilya had come out then, drawn from making lunch by the screaming or maybe the spike in all of the scents. He was unusually keen on those.

"What happened?"

"Ana scruffed Leo." Shane had said, his throat burning with the bile he'd swallowed. His son, only three and still small for his age, was boneless in his lap.

Shane thought Ilya might have chided their daughter, but Shane wasn't listening because Ana stood, only four and so painfully an alpha even if she wouldn't present for years still. She was too much Ilya, too much Shane, and sometimes that made him want to vomit. Maybe she could be tempered if there were more examples for her to draw from, grandparents and the grocers, random people on the street and kids at school. As it was, she only had Ilya and Shane and Leo and it must have seemed simple in her mind.

"Shane?"

Hands touched his shoulder, too close to his neck where the bite sat over his mating gland, still tender after years, and Shane had flinched. Ilya had withdrawn, maybe sensing watching his son be scruffed and then being scruffed himself would not be wise.

It was that moment, if he had to say, that all the vagueness of his plans had crystallized into the sharp, cutting understanding that it had to be now.

Kneeling in the grass, his son's lax body in his arms, his daughter and mate yelling over his head, Shane found his hand resting on the slightest swell of his stomach. It had to be now, because if it wasn't now, it would be never.

He didn't tell his therapist that.

"So you decided you had to escape." Galina looked up from her notebook over the rim of her glasses. She was a specialist, Shane was told, in the victims of kidnapping, not that he could tell from her sun-drenched office painted a cherry yellow. "That must have been a difficult decision."

"I was kidnapped. Of course I tried to escape." Shane picked at the threads on the chair and counted down the clicks of her wall clock hanging over her framed awards and obnoxiously prestigious framed degrees. Forty-two minutes left.

"You had two kids with this man. Cohabited with him for six years. Refused to name him to the police." Galina laid it out like she was reading it out of the paper. Who knew, maybe she was, Shane hadn't gotten past his picture on the front pages before tossing them away. "You were brave to attempt escape. You mentioned last week wanting to talk about that."

"I believe I said I'd rather recount all six years there than spend another minute in this room."

Galina raised her eyebrow. "Exactly."

"What do you want to know?" Shane demanded. A lot of people felt entitled to his truth, even his parents. Shane had found himself strangely protective of it.

"What you want to tell me."

"I'd actually prefer to never talk about it again."

"Healthy, emotionally, I've heard." Galina smiled a bit. "How are the kids?"

"Fine." Shane huffed, then thawed the smallest bit. "The child physiologist you recommended really helped, than you."

"It's my job." She granted. "So is listening when you want to talk."

The fabric was rough under his palms, a thick weave that irritated him even through his shirt. He missed his old couch. It was a crushed cream velvet that was just firm enough and had taken Ilya two hours—

Shane flinched and sat up. Galina acted as if he hadn't moved.

"There was a girl, a friend of the alpha, who'd come up and visit every few months. Random visits so I couldn't predict them, but—" Shane shrugged.

"But?"

"But, like you said," Shane said softly, "six years is a long time. I learned a lot."

"He had tells?" Galina guessed. Shane nodded.

"He always did laundry without the lavender beads because they irritated her skin. He'd try to finished the bedding before I noticed, but I'd just weigh the container after each wash." Shane explained. "And when she came down, it was in her car."

"Did the alpha not have his own car?"

Shane shook his head because the truth was Ilya had two nice cars, one an expensive yellow and the other a sturdy all-terrain he'd bought when Shane had been pregnant with Ana. "I don't think you understand how this house worked."

"Explain it to me."

Shane's eyes locked onto the clock. Thirty-four minutes left. A part of him wanted to clam up, do what he'd done the fist six times he'd sat in this chair, but another part of him, soft and tired and so fucking lonely, still waiting to see if his plan would finally fucking work, seemed to pull the words up his throat. "There was a basement."

This was the first time all the session, in all of their meetings, that Shane could see that Galina clenched her jaw and that more than anything made the next part easier to let go.

"It was concrete, a long hallways and two parallel doors. One was a room with all of the keys." And the restraints, the hypodermic needles and cases of uniform bottles labeled in thin Cyrillic.

"And the other?"

"My room." Shane said, his voice surprisingly strong. "At least for the first six months or so. Then I got to go upstairs."

Galina looked down and Shane saw her twist around her wedding ring. Shane had one of those too. "You said keys. Keys to what?"

"Everything. Keys to the front door, the back door, the laundry room. The garage." Shane leaned his head back against the wooden back. "The bedrooms."

"Hm." Galina said, but her eyes were suspiciously shiny. Shane felt a momentary stab of regret for putting this on her, and then it was flooded with a vicious cut of vindication. She'd asked for this. Shane hadn't. "So…what next?"

"The thing about a man learning everything about you is that it takes time. I had time. Six years of it." Shane hummed softly. "He got—content. It made him sloppy."

Those first years had been, when Shane reflected on it, a systematic seduction of the highest order. Ilya had his favorite shows on dvd, a ginger ale always chilling in the fridge, a private personal library when Shane asked for a single book. But not one of those things had given him an out. The house had no wifi, all deliveries were made on random days at random parts of the property line or more often brought in during Svetlana's random visits, and his library was limited only to books Ilya had personally vetted.

"He thought you wouldn't run?" Galina had composed herself and Shane had the nasty urge to push that. See if he could get her to squirm. Did she want to hear about how bloody his hands got when he'd tried clawing the concrete off the walls when he'd first started showing with Ana? Or how when Ilya had scruffed him for the first time, Shane had been so confused by the flood of hormones that he'd pissed himself? Maybe about how after Leo's birth he'd leaned over the sink and thought earnestly about shoving his hand down the disposal to feel something other than that creeping, passive dread?

Shane felt sick with himself. The nail bed of his finger was bleeding from where he'd picked at it. Leo had gotten that from him.

"He underestimated what I would do, yes."

"What did you do?"

Shane looked up at her. Twenty-two minutes.

"What I had to." Was what he said.

The truth was that he had sat with his son on the couch until he came around, rubbing his snot into his shirt, and then put him to bed and went to Ana's room. He'd laid down next to her little body and felt her scoot closer until her milky baby scent, so much like Ilya's it sometimes itched his nose, curled around them both. She looked so much like him, yet her personality was all Ilya. He talked to her, waited until she was looking at him with the wide, pale eyes she shared with her father until he extracted a nod from her, and a wide smile as she tucked herself along his throat.

The truth was that he had needed to wait for the right shift to step onto the ice, two players to drift into the perfect alignment on an imagined rink only he could see, and that took a month. It felt like a sick sense of fate when the sound of wheels on gravel arriving right on time echoed over the scream of Leo as his sister scruffed him again, this time over a toy dog.

"Sounds like it was a difficult choice for you."

"Not really. I needed a routine." Shane whispered. "So I made a routine."

Human brains loved routine, Shane knew, they thrived on it. And Ilya, despite what be might have tried to say, was still human.

So he'd weighed the lavender beads and found their weight unchanged and then walked out top the living room and picked up Ana's plush toy she'd recently been obsessed with and hidden it in the coat closet. Then he woke them both up early from their naps, overstimulated them with tv until they pushed away his hands and then walked into the kitchen to pull the notepad from the fridge and start writing.

He had finished right as the screaming had started and Ilya had tore around the kitchen to handle discipline. It was his day after all. Shane finished his note, folded it up and pulled down the bag of sugar. The white paper blended into the grains until it was buried and then Shane walked into the living room.

Svetlana's keys had jingled in the lock and when the door swung open, it let out a loud chime that could be heard from any part of the house. The kids separated and while Ilya sat with a sobbing Leo, Ana ran into her aunt's arms. Svetlana juggled her bag, a red and white disposable plastic cup, and Shane's daughter in her hands. When she righted herself, she tossed her sweating drink onto his side table and Shane felt inordinately mad at the thought of the ring it would leave behind.

"What's happened here?" She'd demanded, any sly smile wiped clean off her face. Shane hated her. Only partly because when she saw him, her eyes dropped to his stomach and she, thin and model-perfect, called out, "Shanya, look at you!"

Maybe also because Svetlana could leave. She had a key. Also maybe because when he'd first seen her car in the distance, he'd felt such an elated joy that when the first words out of her mouth were Ilya's name and a string of Russian, the collapsing of that hope had hurt more than any punishment Ilya could have given him.

That she was the only one who'd talk to him about hockey was unfortunate enough that he rarely asked now.

"They're tired. They need a nap." He'd said and Shane had directed the children, a sniffling Leo and a frustrated Ana, up the stairs.

Leo had, unknowingly, created a routine and Shane hated himself for using it. To Galina, he gave, "I needed a reason to leave our bed and an excuse for him not to follow me. I found it."

The reason was comforting his son who wet the bed after being scruffed. The excuse was an hour before flicking the lock on their bedroom door and planting a hand on the faint strip of hair Shane could see peeking out from under Ilya's shirt. It was falling to his knees. It was getting his knees under him, pulling Ilya's head down so his nose was right over their bond mark. It was letting Ilya pant behind him, hands cradling his growing midsection and muttering Russian pet names as he whimpered and cursed. It was pushing Ilya down and crawling over him even when what he wanted was to give his knees a fucking break.

It was riding Ilya until the man gasped and they both came for the third time that night. It was tiring him out until he collapsed boneless next to Shane on their ruined sheets.

It was muttering, "No, it's midnight, meaning it's my day. Lay down, I'll be back," when Leo's little whimpers came over the baby monitors Ilya still kept in the kids' rooms because their room was, after too many close calls, soundproof.

What he almost wanted to tell Galina, what he hadn't breathed a word of to the cops or even thought of around his parents, was that he wished it was as bad as they all imagined. He almost wished it was an unending stream of abuse and anger because that would have been easier to swallow. Would've simplified his plan by a few steps, at the very least.

Instead he got a kiss to his bare shoulder and Ilya smiling at him, muttering, "bossy" in a soft voice. It was the tender way he let their tangled hands pull taunt and then frown when they inevitably broke apart with distance.

The truth:

If it was just us. No kids, Shane almost said, I think I would have stayed.

"Our time is up." Galina said softly and Shane stood up and left without a word.

Chapter 2

Chapter Summary

"Where were we last time?" Galina opened with.

"You know exactly where, you write everything down." Shane said casually.

Galina smiled. "You said you had a routine."

Chapter Notes

I was actually hesitating posting this story because I felt like is was more something I wanted to write and I wasn't sure people wanted to read, so I really appreciate being proven wrong by every lovely comment left on the first chapter! Thank you!

Chapter three will be out on Friday!

"Where were we last time?" Galina opened with.

"You know exactly where, you write everything down." Shane said casually.

Galina smiled. "You said you had a routine."

"Made a routine. I needed no one to notice anything until I wanted them to." Shane corrected. "So they would do what everyone does when something feels slightly off and just let it go."

"Did he?"

"Obviously."

Why wouldn't he? They'd had a routine, one borne of five years of child-rearing, of an ebb and flow. Ilya couldn't have seen Shane slip the small recorder they sometimes used for sex into the pocket of his robe when Ilya drifted into the bathroom for a wet rag. Ilya, too focused on the routine of replacing the soiled sheets as Shane slid on his robe and crept down the hallway to Leo's room, couldn't notice that Shane kept the light off, had left Leo's door cracked just so that he could slide the recorder through the door and click record.

Shane's eyes started watering sometime around the one minute mark, and he pushed it down, trying to wait long enough but eventually pushing open the door. "Leo, baby, it's alright—"

He sat the recorder softly on the bedside table where the baby monitor was tucked next to Leo's wooden lion and a small lamp. His baby didn't say anything, just let Shane clean him up and get him dressed in new pjs, let him strip the sheets, and was asleep before Shane could kiss his forehead.

Ilya was waiting for him on clean sheets of his own, raising his arm and letting Shane slid in next to him. "Did he go down?"

"You know he did, you were listening." Shane murmured into Ilya's chest. He was warm, still slightly musky with dried sweat, but it had been years since that smell had put him off. "I need the key to the laundry room. I want to wash those sheets before the stains set."

"Morning." Ilya groaned.

"Now, I don't want the machine to smell." Shane pressed. Ilya was many things, but mostly he was weak to this, the mock-domesticity that he kidnapped a Shane to create. Shane imagined seeing what he assumed was the fruits of all those labors would be sweet. Maybe that was why Ilya just leaned over and used his cross to unlock the bedside chest and hand him the only thing inside: a small key.

"Be quick." Ilya murmured. "I'm counting."

Shane kissed him, his lips warm and wet and the kiss more sultry than Shane could believe after three rounds, but he let him go, watching Shane fuss with the curtains so that they wouldn't let in light. Then, he slipped out the door to pick up the sack of laundry and slowly took the stairs, making sure not to step on any of the loose boards near the children's rooms.

To Galina, he offered, "I think he used to keep the floorboards loose so that he could hear where I was in the house."

"Was that also part of the routine?"

She was getting it. Shane smiled. "Obviously."

Shane stepped on two of them near the laundry room and made the padlock rattle the slightest bit when he opened it. Inside it was easy to do what he came here for. He opened the washer, loaded it quickly and from the dry section of the blankets, carefully unfolded the baby monitor and recorder. Stopping it, he sat both of the devices on the counter behind the cleaning products, clicking a button and letting the silence he'd recorded play.

Quietly, he moved over to the kitchen, knowing exactly which boards to avoid as he opened the cabinet and pulled down the powdered sugar and a bowl. Into it, he patted the powder flat, pressing the key down until the indent was clearly visible. Then he cleaned the key off, moved back into the laundry room, and was locking it up right as Ilya crested the hall. Shane knew this because Ilya stepped on the same boards.

"He knew that you knew?" Galina clarified.

"If he were stupid, I would have gotten out in weeks." Shane said with complete honestly. "Every preparation I had to take was because he thought of that outcome first."

There was a slight twitch of Galina's brow. "You almost sound—impressed with him."

Shane didn't say anything to that, would rather toss himself out that window than admit that there had been a strange rush of pride in himself as the night had progressed, as Shane systematically tore through every one of Ilya's defenses.

"You know, he once told me that he had twenty-eight contingencies for if I escaped?" Shane asked. Now it was Galina's turn to remain quiet, letting Shane speak. "I suppose after so long, I liked knowing someone still found me—I don't know. Impressive, in a way. Dangerous."

"Should've had twenty nine."

Shane burst out laughing and it seemed to surprise them both because Galina laughed a bit too, a first in their relationship. Maybe that was why he granted, "He had to want to believe me, is the thing. It only worked if he wanted it to be the truth."

"So, he wanted." Galina muttered.

"He wanted." Shane echoed.

Ilya wanted so badly to believe in Shane that at two in the morning when Leo's baby monitor rang with his pre-recorded cries, Ilya didn't bother to worry about Shane standing and going to calm him. Shane had done it twenty times before, Ilya too. It was routine. Routine meant he didn't need to listen to the words, just the sounds, routine meant he would be too tired to notice how similar it was too two hours past. Routine meant Shane had twenty minutes to walk down the hall unnoticed for the first time in months, to take the back stairs along the first floor, to step carefully on a loose board, to the kitchen where the bowl was left right next to his covered bread bowls.

"I made a mold and used superglue to make a key." Shane explained. "He used the same padlock on the basement door."

"What did you need in the basement?" Galina asked. "You said he locked everything up."

Shane smiled. "I only had to worry about the first lock."

"Had you been down there since…" Galina tapered off.

"No." Shane could see that he next question was before she'd asked it. "It was hard. Things were…different down there."

He didn't know what exactly he meant by that. It had smelt the same, like wet concrete and paint, cleaning supplies and leather oil. Shane had nearly blown the whole fucking plan by standing there looking into the room—cell—where he'd woken up.

Those first few weeks—Shane couldn't even touch the memories without flinching. They were mostly a clean divide between frantic fear and an oozy confusion brought on by the drugging. Ilya had been so twitchy those first few weeks. Now, Shane could almost laugh at just how panicked he was every time Shane screamed at him through the bars. He hadn't even gotten the dose right the first few times, enough to make Shane's limbs go limp but not enough to knock him out so Shane had just laid there as Ilya had cried and patted his hair like he was a pet they were about to put down.

"It got better when I realized he wasn't planning on killing me." Shane muttered.

"How long did that take?"

About as long as it took us to fuck for the first time, he almost said.

"A while."

Galina wrote something down and Shane had the stupid fear that she could read something on his face. "I know this is difficult, Shane. He gave you two children. Even now, I imagine there is a sense of loyalty to him."

"No." Shane said. He stared over Galina's shoulder.

She obviously wanted to push but just sighed and let it go, drifting onto the next topic Shane didn't really feel like talking about either. "So why the basement?"

"First you need to know about her."

Svetlana was, from what Shane could gather, Ilya's oldest friend and just as much a psychopath as he was. Shane told himself that, statistically, not all Russians could be straight up crazy but those two didn't provide the best case study for that argument. Instead, they seemed to feed each other's delusions. An alpha herself, Svetlana seemed to embody many of the traits his mother had warned him about, the types of personalities he'd had to grind out of players on his team. It was probably borne of being a female alpha in a country where that was frowned on and building one giant wall to protect herself. Shane still hated her because she always managed to find just when Shane felt like he'd weakened Ilya to maybe, possibly leaving the house and then she rolled up with her fucking old muscle car that roared down their road and trounced over any possibility with her fashionable, impractical kitten heels.

"I'll be honest, I kinda wanted to see her face." Shane granted. "Maybe that was why I did it this way."

If Shane had to imagine, he would guess it went like this:

Svetlana woke when Shane came down the back steps and his foot landed on a squeaky board. She'd caught him before in places he shouldn't have been. She liked making a game out of it. So she got up and grabbed her keys. It was rule number one of staying with Ilya, keep all keys locked up or on your person, and she must have been glad to have the house keys when she watched Shane open up the basement door and descend into a place he absolutely shouldn't be.

If she had left it there, gone and snitched, Shane would have been stuck, all his planning down the drain. But Shane was on the ice now and he was good at reading opponents; Shane always won in a long game. Svetlana would take the feint. From the top of the steps, she could see the light on in the cell, the door open.

Shane hadn't know what exactly Svetlana would do, had planned for a few different contingencies, but in a spark of fate, she decided to shut the basement door behind her, locking it and leaving the key swinging to avoid the way it jingled with her obnoxious keychains.

To her, the white florescent lights in the cell must have been particularly blinding. It might have taken her a minute to spot the small lump of a person under the covers but by then, she must have already decided on something cutting to say.

Maybe it was jealousy that she thought Shane had taken one of her 'toys' in Ilya, maybe she hated that he was a hockey player, or worst of all, maybe she was just what she said and thought it was a delightful game they were all playing. Whatever it was, it was cut off the moment Shane slammed the door shut behind her.

"What are you doing?" Svetlana had demanded. She'd banged on the door, screamed. He didn't have much time, but Shane could admit to himself that he spent a long moment savoring her screams. When she eventually had to stop for a breath, he slid open the hatch Ilya used to deliver his food.

"What did you say to me that day I met you?" Shane asked, even as she shoved her arm through the hatch and tried to scratch him. "'Scream all you like, we both know no one's coming?'"

"Ilya—" She screamed.

"—will hate you when he finds out it was your key that opened that door." Shane whispered spitefully. "He might never forgive you."

Svetlana screamed again, louder when he slid her keys out of the lock and moved to the opposite door and opened it. The smell of bleach and leather oil was stronger here and Shane felt his body tilt a bit for a moment before he could focus again.

The wall mounted storage was right where he knew it would be and Svetlana's key opened that too. Inside were neat little lines of hypodermic needles and rows of cloudy white liquid Shane knew the effects of intimately. Not in the last few years, never when he was pregnant, but there was the faintest longing for how simple everything felt when he was floaty and high. From the wall he pulled down a coil of rope and walked out, waiting for Svetlana to take a breath before he unlocked the basement door and slipped back out into the kitchen.

Listening quietly, there was no real sound, even while she screamed bloody murder down there. How many times had Shane lost his voice from that? Believing that if he could only get lucky and Ilya might open the door at the wrong time, a nosy neighbor might hear and call the police. He hadn't known then that the nearest neighbor was nearly thirty miles away.

With a stomach twisting in on it's self, Shane took down the bag of sugar, pulled the note out and laid it on the countertop, centered.

Galina noted his silence, sighed, and then pushed the conversation forward with a muttered, "So you got whatever you needed from the basement." Galina checked. "What's the plan now?"

"A knife, sugar, and his dead mother's birthday."

Galina stopped writing. "Seriously?"

"Seriously." Shane granted. "He used it for the door code to the garage."

"For the car." Galina made a note and then stopped when Shane shook his head. "What do you mean, no?"

"The garage door was like triple alarmed, all exterior doors and windows were. Nearly killed us all when I burned my first batch of bread and couldn't even air out the house." Shane explained. "But I needed the car seat. And a screw driver."

"Which was why the friend was there. You were going to take her car." Galina explained and Shane nodded. "Then what was the knife for?"

"I slashed that mother-fucker's tires." Shane shrugged. "The sugar in the gas tank might have been a bit of overkill, but…"

The whole he'd kidnapped you of it all ended that sentence. Galina didn't smile, but there was the little fond head shake she sometimes gave him. The cops had been off-put by how easily he answered or refused to answer their questions but she'd never acted that way. It was why Shane managed to come back. All the others made him feel like he was doing therapy wrong.

"So the windows and doors are all locked. You have her keys, but how are you getting out of the house?"

Shane rolled his shoulders again. "That's where the screwdriver comes in."

It had been, all told, not difficult to expand his library. It was a broken light fixture their first year that Shane had offered to change and when their dishwasher went on the fritz after Ana was born, Shane had asked to download the manual and fix it himself. Ilya had, maybe, thought it was good to keep him grounded and considering he seemed to see everything around him as disposable when it stopped working, Shane felt making himself invaluable was about as helpful as becoming familiar with electrical work. That he had ordered Shane an immaculate tool set he could never used except under supervision was another thing.

Svetlana's door had been left open and Shane shut it quietly, moving over to her locked side table where the key pad glowed in the dark. He ignored the front, pulling the wooden structure away from the wall and unscrewing the flat metal back. The locked box in their room was all one solid piece, impossible to open barring having the key and code or throwing it out a window. This one was smaller, cheaper, and if the manual was correct, opened directly into the drawer when the back was removed.

The final bolt had felt so loud when it had landed in his palm, like there should be some ringing bell sounding, but there wasn't. The back peeled off and there were her keys. They were old, and rattled a bit in his hands, but Shane knew even then that he would get out. He would, now. All that's left was—

"So you had the keys."

Shane glanced over at Galina. "Yeah."

"We are almost out of time for today, did you want to stop?" She offered kindly and Shane grabbed onto it like a life raft. "How are the kids?"

"Fine." Shane offered. "Leo is doing better. Likes pre-school. He has friends."

That more than anything made the sharp pain in his side lessen. There had been a moment when he was transferring Leo from his car seat in the middle of his escape that he'd wondered if he was doing the right thing. Ilya had, for his many, many faults, never taken anything more seriously than fatherhood. It used to piss Shane off.

But seeing Leo thrive—it had to be enough. Shane would make it be enough.

"That's good to hear." Galina took off her glasses, relaxing a bit now. "And little Liliana?"

"Feeding well. She's doubled in size." Shane pulled out his wallet. It was one of his favorite things to do now, to show people his children. It was the sort of thing he hadn't had for his other children and he treasured the experience now.

"By god, look at those thighs!" Galina laughed now, the deep real one. "She's getting big! Three months now?"

Shane nodded and took the wallet back. The photo his mom had taken and printed out for him. Shane was seated on their floor, surrounded by torn wrapping paper and holding his youngest on his lap while Leo leaned into his side while waving his dinosaur plush around his head.

"Shane."

He looked up and Galina was studying him with that sharp look she got and Shane never liked seeing. "You did what you had to. For your children."

Most of his children, Shane thought sharply, and slapped his wallet shut.

Chapter 3

Chapter Summary

"It wasn't my first attempt." Shane opened with, unprompted, and it seemed like both he and Galina were startled. Still, Shane felt like he had to say it because he hadn't, couldn't, explain it to anyone else. "Escape, I mean. I tried a few times."

"Twenty-eight contingencies." Galina murmured knowingly and Shane felt his lip curl up a bit at that.

Chapter Notes

I just need everyone to know I've had two drinks and have been sitting here re-reading all your amazing comments on Chapter Two and kicking my feet and giggling.

Thank you for all the lovely comments and all of the predictions (Most of you, unfortunately, are on the right track!).

"It wasn't my first attempt." Shane opened with, unprompted, and it seemed like both he and Galina were startled. Still, Shane felt like he had to say it because he hadn't, couldn't, explain it to anyone else. "Escape, I mean. I tried a few times."

"Twenty-eight contingencies." Galina murmured knowingly and Shane felt his lip curl up a bit at that.

"I think he started with maybe ten?" Shane couldn't keep the pride in of his voice.

Galina smiled mildly. "You never got close?"

"Oh, lots." Shane aimed for casual but his voice broke a bit and he had to swallow a cry and speak. "I ran one day. Just packed up a bag and started running. Apparently I was less than a mile from the only maintenance road."

"Close."

"Maybe. But I was heavily pregnant." Shane leaned back. "Not sure how long I would have lasted in the July heat."

Galina's brow furrowed and then she nodded softly.

Shane didn't want to talk about failed attempts anymore. He didn't know why he brought that one up in particular. It had been a spectacular failure on all accounts. He hadn't been adequately prepared, had been so deep in the dark headspace which had seemed to swallow him in the months leading up to Leo's birth, that he hadn't even realized that Ana had been screaming for her papa until it was too late.

Shane was stubborn and had been called hard-headed more than once, but he also learned from his mistakes. All of the attempts had taught him something, a something he'd avoided for years. There was a weak player on his line and Shane needed to win now.

"So you have the keys." Galina prompted.

Shane picked it up. "I went into the nursery. I had stored an old backpack under the diaper trashcan." Galina looked up from her writing with a raised eyebrow. Shane tried to explain. "He did all the diaper changes but I took out the trash."

There was an infinitesimal hesitation and Shane knew that Galina knew that he was holding something back. Yet, Shane couldn't bring himself to say aloud the thing which had felt like a beast chewing at his insides the whole night, the stark reality which he had understood all those years ago a mile from a road, hand pressed against his massive stomach and his daughter tugging against his hand towards her other father who stalked them through the trees.

Shane had not gone directly from Svetlana's to the nursery. That had been his plan, the one he'd had written out in his mind and circled thrice, but he couldn't do it. He'd stood in that dark hallway and seen the faintest glimmer of Ana's starry night light and broken apart. It wasn't conscious thought which had him pushing open the door and sitting on her purple unicorn bedspread, but a deep, sickening grief which seemed to crawl up to suffocate his heart.

"Daddy?"

Shane rubbed at his eyes and smiled down at his daughter. "Hi, baby. Did I wake you up?"

"Mh…Is m'kay." Ana hummed, rolling around so that she could shove her hand out of her little blanket burrito to pat him on his thigh. "I'm sorry, daddy. I didn't mean to."

It had felt imperative in that moment to say something profound, something to lessen just how horrible the decision Shane was making for the both of them. There was no chance Ana would come with him. She wouldn't understand, knew too little about how wrong this way of life was, and yet too much about the routine that any deviations sent her in hysterics.

It wasn't her fault, Shane wanted to argue to someone, anyone, but no one knew she existed and for her protection Shane had to keep it that way. So he was left alone both in the knowledge and that bedroom, that in every version of his plan he ran, there was a common thread in all of the failures: Ana wouldn't follow.

Ana would, in every case, give them away, run back to her father, scream until Ilya found them, because that was exactly what she had done every time before.

"Daddy loves you so much, Ana." Shane leaned down to kiss her forehead, smelling her clean hair, the softness of her little hands. She was already drifting back off to sleep. Then through his tears, "See you soon, little loon."

"In a while, reptile." Ana echoed and Shane knew in that moment that if Svetlana hadn't been locked up below, if he had been able to get up and put back into place everything he'd done, he would have. All for the little girl who curled so trustingly into his hip.

"How did you convince Leo to come with you?" Galina asked, solid but not unkindly. Shane felt confused for a second, a phantom weight along his side. "You said he was close with his father."

"He was," Shane said, choking back, they both were.

Instead, all he could mutter out was a quiet, "Leo was always…softer. I just told him we were going to visit his grandparents and to be very quiet and he listened."

Self-consciously, Shane pressed a firm hand to his chest, searching for the small lump of his necklace, feeling the flesh-warmed metal of his ring against the locket where he'd hidden a lock of Ana's blonde hair. His mother hadn't understood, had raged at Shane for wanting to keep the ring, for hiding the locket of hair away when the police came for the examinations in the hospital. She'd cried when he'd refused Leo to be tested, the first time Shane had ever seen his mother sob like that. He'd nearly changed his mind, but he was a parent now too. Funny, how priorities changed.

"You said all of the doors were alarmed." Galina prompted again. She seemed to understand that Shane had gotten stuck somewhere and the question worked like a lifeline to Shane who clung to it to drag himself forward. He cleared his throat.

"Like I said, I took the trash out." Shane explained. "I used to watch bats fly in and out of a few dormer vents over the garage. No alarms."

"So, the roof." Galina checked. "Holding a toddler."

Shane shot her a look. "If anyone could just decide to escape a kidnapper, everyone would."

Galina gave him an if you say so gesture and a motion to continue.

"There was an accordion ladder to the attic in the garage, locked, but I had a screwdriver so I just took off the whole fucking lock." Shane explained. "The ladder was loud, but—"

Shane shrugged. Somehow, Shane felt explaining how he had spent nearly three months letting himself get progressively louder in bed to convince Ilya they needed even more soundproofing in their bedroom was not exactly appealing to either of them.

He settled on, "We had soundproofing in the bedroom. I knew I could make a bit of noise."

Galina's eyes dropped then. They always did, Shane noticed, whenever he talked about sex. The cops had been pitying and the nurses treated him like he might shatter the moment he lifted his legs for their swabs. Not that his parents were any better. Shane had realized pretty quickly that without his words, their minds created vast horrible possibilities and when he tried to correct their assumptions, they only shook their heads, as if he were some stupid dog who didn't understand it was being taken round back to be shot.

Before Shane could stop himself, Shane muttered, "Don't do that."

"Do what?" Galina questioned, but her posture was just the slightest bit closed off.

"Act like I'm some weepy victim who needs to be coddled." Shane hissed. "I know what happened to me. I was there for it, not you."

"You are a victim, Shane." Galina said simply, but at least the look of pity was gone. "You decided that word was synonymous with weak and you're wrong about that. I've found victims of difficult situations tend to be some of the strongest people I've ever met, yourself included."

It was Shane's turn to look away. Galina sighed.

"I'm sorry." She said, solid and unwavering, no backtrack or defense. "You're right, Shane. I wasn't there. You are the one who decides what you feel about your time there. I'm only here to help facilitate that."

"My dad always said if your apology ends with a but, then the first part wasn't much use." Shane raised an eyebrow. "I'm sensing a but."

"No." Galina promised. "I let my own care for you, worry about what you might be grappling with and hiding from me, overwhelm my attempt to help you with what you asked for, which was just walking through your escape. I'm sorry."

Shane could feel his throat tighten and his vision grew a bit blurry. He tilted his head up to avoid blinking and spilling the tears he could feel hovering along his waterline. "Do you want to know the worst part?"

"Only if you want to tell me."

And, miraculously, Shane did.

"I miss him. So much." Shane whispered. "All anyone can say is how happy they are I'm here, how much I must hate him and want to see him caught and killed and every time the only thing I can think is that, in a sick way, I miss it. How easy everything was. The routine of it, the simplicity. Everything we built—" Shane shook his head, voice coming out rushed in a way to explain himself. "I know he was a kidnapper, I know, with the kids, I know, I know, I had to get out. I did leave, I did, but—"

"But." Galina stopped him and Shane nodded softly, able to ground himself.

"I know I did the right thing." Shane spoke clearly. "I just didn't think the right thing would feel like this."

"Do you think you are a danger to yourself Shane?"

Shane scoffed and rubbed at his eyes. "I think if I were going to kill myself, I'd have done it by now." Shane glanced up and saw the displeased look Galina was shooting him. "No, I'm not."

"Post-partum depression is a very really—"

"I know, I had it. I'm fine." Shane snapped, looking up at the clock and then sensing the way Galina's eyes caught his words. Shane wanted to growl at himself. "I handled it."

"After Leo?" She questioned and Shane nodded. He picked again at his cuticles again. "How did you handle something like that?"

The truth was, poorly. Shane had become distant, tired from the simplest things, and short-tempered. "I half expected him to snap at me, you know? Because I was slacking. I'd sort of wander around. Once I left the babies in the nursery and took a three hour bath."

Actually, he'd been contemplating seeing how long he could hold his breath and that had sent off the first alarm bells. The screaming of his children when he finally crawled out of the tub and into the hallway had been another. The final nail had been the look of Ilya down the hall, clothes still wrinkled from whatever meeting he'd been forced to take in whatever constituted the closest town, as if he were seeing a ghost in Shane's place.

More than all that, maybe, it was that insidious voice that seemed to slip in under their covers and coil around his brain until Ilya's words were washed away and he thought longingly for those early days when he didn't have to do anything but lie back. A body didn't need to think.

"I asked for some pills." Shane tried to think about how to say this without it sounding bad, because it was bad. "He flipped."

"Physically?" Galina hadn't written a thing down but her pen bounced nervously anyways.

"No, just cried. Asked me the same questions you did. Was I going to hurt myself, hurt the children." Shane laughed quietly. "I don't think he liked the answer."

That conversation on the bathroom floor, Shane on his knees begging for something to take, had been a gift he'd not appreciated the full breath of until he'd realized the tones of so many of the house's keypads were for numbers Ilya gave freely that night. The garage was one, her age when she'd died was Ilya's pin on his computer, her favorite flower his icon on their membership photos. Her name was embossed on every letterhead in his office. He'd named his company after her.

"Have you heard of the Irina Foundation?" Shane asked suddenly. "They reached out to me."

"Yes. They primarily work with mental health services for children but have expanded in recent years." Galina hadn't put it together yet, and Shane prayed she wouldn't. Wouldn't know what to say or do if she did.

Four years ago, Shane wanted to say, the Irina Foundation expanded their scope to include postpartum depression because four years ago Shane's first visit back down into the basement hadn't been the night he escaped, it had been after Leo had worn Ilya ragged with his crying and Shane had taken the key right off his sleeping neck and unlocked the door.

The drugs had been right where he'd left them, the pills too for when Shane had been too wriggly for a needle. Those were individually packaged and the foil had probably saved his life. Shane had only gotten half a handful down before Ilya found him and nearly all of them came up when Ilya flung him around to the cell and forced a finger down his throat.

On the cold tile floor, Ilya had called no less than ten professionals and all it had confirmed for Shane was that he did need help and that not even dying would get Ilya to put him in a car and drive him into town. It showed Ilya wanted to keep him so close it might literally kill him. It had added another contingency with the bedside lockbox, a fourteen day pill plan which Ilya dispensed like he was handling a grenade, and an earnest conversation that night with Ilya's head in his lap.

"She didn't wake up, Shane." Ilya had whispered into the slight pouch of his stomach left over after Leo's birth. "Please, no more. No more."

"The Irina Foundation reached out to help with my most recent pregnancy." Shane explained to Galina. "All these specialists telling me it wasn't my fault, that I'm still a good person, yadda yadda."

"It wasn't, you are." Galina clarified and Shane felt slightly bolstered that she was writing this time. Improvement to the pity. "Do you not agree?"

"It was my fault, I asked for the children." Shane shrugged and when Galina's pen stopped scratching and she looked up at him from over the rim of her glasses, Shane couldn't help the slight smile. "I told them I was a special case and they assumed they knew better and talked at me for about an hour and then I told them I asked for the kids and they looked at me like I was one of those quadriplegic puppies they have to strap into a wheelchair."

"What an image." Galina muttered blandly.

"It's true. The first time—" Shane paused and wanted to smack himself. "First time was a mess, my suppressants failed, his did too."

Shane figured telling her the time which resulted in his first child was mostly just a blur of Ilya crying and humping him as they burned through years of unsuppressed hormones might be a bit too much information. Shane had been told at nineteen that his unusually high dose of suppressants might lead to infertility. That had clearly been a lie.

"And yet you have two children."

Shane grimaced.

Leo had been an accident too. Shane didn't know how to be tactful so he just sort of—"I knew he wanted me but had all of these internal rules. It was almost a game a first, too see if I could push him and when it didn't work, I just asked."

That asking had been more effective than any of the attempts he'd made to entice Ilya months after Ana had been born. Leaning provocatively over the flowerbeds and scooting his ass back into Ilya's crotch before bed had only gotten him snide "Can I help you, Hollander?" comments from Ilya. A simple demand got him everything he wanted and more.

"Do you not see where someone might see a disparity in your relationship?" Galina asked. "Worried you were being coerced?"

"Yeah, the kidnapping bit, it had crossed my mind." Shane grumbled. "Doesn't change that I wanted the sex and I know that there's a whole name for people like me who end up caring for their captors, but if I didn't ask, we wouldn't have fucked."

Shane regretted ever saying the word fuck in front of a woman who reminded him of his mom, and when he realized he'd been leaning forward in his chair, he collapsed back and let all the air from his lungs. "Sorry."

"No, no, I want you to be comfortable." Galina didn't seem insulted which put Shane a bit at ease, more so that she didn't even look shocked. "You seem certain, and at peace with it. That's what I worry about."

Shane didn't. The sex was the easiest part really. Ilya had others, he'd had to have Shane thought, that had to have partly been the reasons for so many trips in the early years when Svetlana kept an eye on Shane for a week at a time. Ilya liked sex and Shane liked sex too, and the feeling of getting out of his head that had nothing too do with drugs except those naturally occurring after an orgasm.

It was also nice that, for a moment laying lax in Ilya's arms, Shane could also forget and pretend that they were just two normal people in a normal house with normal problems. It always came floating back in, but for a few glorious minutes, Shane felt grounded and real. A long nap did it sometimes, their kids did it too, coming up to them with little cupped palms during a family picnic, unfolding their little fingers to show pill bugs or cicada casings.

"I felt more myself then. With him. With the kids." Shane was no good with words which didn't have anything to do with hockey. He had no hope of explaining himself now, so he borrowed Ilya's words. The words he'd whispered into Shane's hair that first night as he'd sobbed and Shane drifted off on a wrong dosage. "Everyone gets tired of feeling miserable eventually."

An explanation, a plea, a pardon.

"We're at time." Galina said softly but made no rush to shoo Shane out. For his part, Shane took three deep breathes and then levered himself up and to the door.

Chapter 4

Chapter Summary

"We never got past the attic."

"I almost didn't either." Shane hummed.

Chapter Notes

I'm sorry for the late update; if I'm honest, I've been in my feels about the casting announcement and busy getting back into the swing of things at work. I plan to have the next chapter edited and ready to post in the next few days.

Thank you for all of the really kind comments, I'm so excited you're picking up on a lot of my little clues and so many of you are on the right track it makes me giddy! Next chapter is one of my favorites and was foreshadowed a bit so I'm excited to see what everyone thinks!

<3

"We never got past the attic."

"I almost didn't either." Shane hummed. Galina could clearly pick up on Shane's worrying but didn't say anything about it which was lovely. "I thought the dormers would be screwed in. They were glued."

"Well shit."

"Exactly." Shane rubbed his sweaty palms along his pants. "So then I had to bring out the big guns."

"You used a gun?" Galina's head snapped up at him, incredulous.

"It's metaphorical. Mostly." Shane waved a hand. "He locked up all the bigger tools, never bought anything crazier than a hand drill, but there was a saw for the fallen tree limbs."

"You sawed your way out."

"For nearly two hours, yes." Shane flipped his palm over to show the healed, slightly discolored patches on his palms. "With a sleeping toddler napping a few feet away. I wore my hands bloody but eventually the roof gave and I could slowly crack the wood."

Shane didn't have to talk about how he had been crying by then, knowing one wrong move and the noise would somehow travel along the edges of the house and be picked up by Ilya's keen ears. Everything had gone too smoothly, and Shane had expected something to go catastrophically wrong, but the hours of whispering to Leo to sleep and to keep quiet while Shane's blisters grew red and then burst eventually ended. The air was warming with the iron tang of blood as he cut and cut and cut—

"Rope then?"

Shane smiled. "You remembered. Yeah, I wrapped Leo and his booster seat around me and tied him tight and then climbed down a drain pipe to the side of the house. Last hurdle was the flood lights. He had them around the house. Set one off, they all go."

"You shut the blinds." Galina recounted. "How'd you plan around that?"

"I took out the trash." Shane smirked softly. "It wasn't hard to leave out a few crumbs to attract some local raccoons to come digging through our yard. When they kept setting off the lights—"

"He got you got blackout blinds." Galina was smiling slightly now too and that had Shane's shoulders unwind just a touch more. Shane shrugged but there was something close to white hot pride curling in his stomach.

"Twelve feet I carried Leo in that stupid fucking car seat." Shane murmured. His eyes were locked on his palms now. "I worried I wouldn't be strong enough to carry him but I did."

When his feet had landed solid ground, he'd allowed himself only a handful of minutes to look at how far he'd gotten and not yet worry about how far he'd have left to go.

When the flood lights kicked on, Shane knew he should have pulled out Svetlana's keys and run. Leo was getting fidgety on his back, maybe finally realizing they were doing something wrong, but for a long moment, all Shane could see were the large red smears of blood where his palms had gripped the steel gutters, weight balanced between his thighs and arms, the marks almost brown in the florescent lighting.

Years of planning, months of any sorts of exercises he could get away with, hours upon hours of imagining every possible outcome, and here he was. He was outside.

"Shane?"

He jerked back, body swaying slightly, like finding ones footing on a titling boat. Shane swallowed and pushed down a mouthful of saliva to try and loosen the tight clench of his throat.

"I took her keys, walked right up to her car and opened the lock." Shane paused. "I had a moment where I thought it should have been harder. Like, I kept expecting him to jump out and tell me he'd known all along, that he was just going along with it to see how far I'd get."

"Do you keep expecting that now that you're free?"

Shane opened his mouth and then cut himself off, the question hanging on his tongue: am I?

"Someone came and talked to me a few weeks ago." Shane said unprompted. If the sudden change in topic bothered her, Galina made no mention of it so Shane continued. "Ottawa has a new head coach. He said there might be room for me if I wanted to step back onto the ice."

"You are thinking about joining another NHL team?" She tried to keep her tone flat but Shane could hear the slight chill in her words. "We've spoken briefly about how Montreal's mishandling of your situation caused you considerable distress."

"They couldn't have known the house was unsafe." Shane defended weakly.

"There were many reports that you had lodged about a stalker. Upper managment should have put a protective detail on you, especially at a high profile event, even if it was a celebration." Galina didn't budge on her stance and Shane felt like he was hearing an echo in his mother's voice. "You had two drinks during a party to celebrate a feat shared by very few. You did nothing wrong."

"I know." Shane whispered. He didn't want to think about that party anymore.

Yet all he could see when he closed his eyes was the hazy tint the whole night got after he'd taken a single drink from one of his laughing teammates. Weeks after, when his whole world had been narrowed down to a gray concrete cell, he'd learned that it hadn't even been Ilya who'd drugged him.

A joke, he read later after he'd finally gone looking into the case and found that what little was left in the rental home his team had been celebrating their third Cup win had been picked apart by nearly six different government agencies. Seven teammates had admitted to light drug use. Said Shane had partaken. That he must have just wondered off.

"They weren't even punished." Shane huffed and groaned when he realized his vision was swimming with tears. "They dosed me, practically admitted it, and then they walked. I was so out of it, wandering around that nearly got hit by a car—"

Ilya had been so giddy at that, not the car thing, but at in his mind, saving Shane from himself. He held him as Shane vomited up whatever he'd eaten, seemed to enjoy bringing down large meals to help him replenish the calories he'd lost over the playoffs. It worked and Ilya seemed to enjoy helping Shane work through his stretches and whatever lifting he'd been able to do in the cell.

"I could hit them with a car?" Ilya had offered that first night he'd slept in the primary bedroom on a real mattress. At Shane's silence, he'd asked, "No? Zamboni then?"

Shane had huffed out a laugh and Shane had felt the way Ilya's mouth had curled up into a smile against his shoulder. Ilya had always loved making Shane laugh.

" Can we talk about the car instead?" Shane rubbed at his eyes and tried not to actually whimper when Galina nodded. "It was an old car, an old Lincoln Continental. I don't know the year."

"Nice car."

"It was." Shane granted. "Loud car too."

"You did say you could always hear her coming. Makes sense you could also hear her going." Galina framed it as a statement but the question was there.

"It was a manual, I just tucked Leo into his booster seat and clicked it into neutral. The tires on gravel was loud, but I couldn't risk more." Shane hadn't actually known if that would work, but he'd driven in his dad's old stick shift they kept tucked up at their cottage to move fallen branches and figured if worse came to worst, he could try and outrun him.

"You had to be flagging by that point. Running on adrenaline and two hours of sleep." Galina questioned. "Carrying, what, nearly sixty pounds of gear and and a kid down a drainpipe, sawing for hours, now pushing a car?"

"I couldn't stop." It was as simple as that. Galina nodded softly. "I got maybe a quarter of a mile away and then I just couldn't go farther. I turned it over and the engine roared—"

And Shane had cried. He'd woken up Leo who'd cried too, but Shane couldn't stop to see to him, he had hours to go and more to worry about. Eventually Leo had tired himself out and Shane had let his foot grow a bit heavier, the speed climbing until he could almost feel the way the wheels spit out gravel behind them. The trees and open fields became a long, dark blur beside them and Shane had a single, perfect moment before something darted across the road and Shane nearly crashed their car correcting the angle.

"I swerved to miss something, a possum I think, and I just sat there looking out at the headlights. I think I wasted twenty minutes doing that." Shane explained. "It hit me, that I'd gotten out of the house and now I had to keep going."

"It was scary."

"My whole life was that house." Shane hoped she understood. "It was…I don't know. A comfort in a way. And here was this long, dark road leading to who knows where. I thought more than once about turning around."

"Why didn't you?" Galina asked and there was an honest curiosity in her now that Shane vastly preferred to that hungry look more than one person had worn when asking for his story. Maybe that was why he gave her the truth.

"Leo woke up. He asked when we would get to grandparent's house. Then I felt bubbles in my stomach, Lili was moving…" Shane explained. "It was that simple."

Galina nodded and her pen clicked repeatedly against the metal clip of her binder. She watched him with a soft smile, but there was a coy little tilt to it. "I can't help but point out that you were found with an old Toyota, not a Lincoln Continental. In fact, the specific car you described was unable to be located along the route you said you took."

Shane, for the first time all session, met her eyes straight on and muttered tiredly, "I think that's time."

Chapter 5

"We don't have to talk about it." Galina offered after Shane spent the first twenty minutes of their session staring at her fake potted plant. "We could talk about the Ottawa offer?"

Shane was pissed at himself when he broke. "You read the news then."

"What news?" Galina prompted and Shane rolled his eyes.

"Yes, I signed with Ottawa. Crowell is kicking up a fuss." Shane picked at what he was starting to think of as his string seeing as he was the one slowly unwinding it from it's weave. "Weibe, the head coach, said it's no problem, but I guess we'll see when pre-season starts in a few months."

"Do you not want to allow yourself to hope?"

"I haven't skated professionally in nearly six years." Shane said point-blank. "Th—The kids changed my balance. I have to re-learn everything. If I fail, my return could set back people like me from playing in the sport I love."

"People like you." Galina repeated but Shane didn't rise to that low-hanging bait. Instead, he threw out—

"I drugged a gas station attendant."

Galina's cool exterior cracked and her disbelief bolstered him a bit. "You…um, wha—why?"

"I needed gas and—" Shane made a little hand wavy gesture Shane hoped she understood as you know how it is. "Contingencies."

Galina, not knowing how it is, simply raised an eyebrow.

"The car only had a quarter of a tank."

Shane wasn't sure if he could accurately talk about his state of mind in those first few hours after he'd turned that key and sealed his decision. He'd been colder, he knew, all his vision narrowed down to where he was going and the less than savory things he'd have to do to get there. The first of those had been the almost obnoxious red and white lights of a gas station which rose up on the side of the road about thirty minutes into the drive. It had been the first human thing baring mile markers since the house and Shane, even knowing what he did, felt his whole body tighten.

Leo had still been asleep. Ilya had taken him out on drives when he was still a baby and unable to settle and Shane had never appreciated that more than at this moment. Shane pulled in and sat in front of the gas pump for a handful of minutes, just watching Leo's little chest rise and fall before he grabbed his bag, and pulled out the right dosage into a small syringe for the size of man currently watching him from inside the glass building.

The door gave a chime and Shane couldn't hold back his flinch. The guy behind the counter watched him with wide eyes as Shane shuffled forward to the counter. He was mid-twenties, clean shaven with a nice watch on his wrist which shook when the man planted his hands on the linoleum countertop between them.

"Can I help you?"

"I don't really have any money." Shane explained. "Can I please use your phone and then I'll be out of your hair."

"We don't let people use our phones." The guy stuttered, looking out to the car. "Boss's orde—"

The syringe slid into his neck smoothly, exactly where Shane knew it should have from the many times it had happened to him. He had thought to wait, maybe get behind the counter, but the man had turned his head perfectly and Shane had pushed his advantage.

The man made a pained sound, frightened, stumbling around but Shane clamped his wrists down so that he couldn't go for whatever panic button was surely hidden under the counter. The man tried to struggle, but Ilya had picked his drugs well and the struggling was weak. Slowly, Shane peeled away his fingers and let him fall to the titled floor with a thump.

He grabbed a plastic bag and started dumping in overly possessed donuts and snack cakes, a handful of candy bars, the overripe bananas and slightly soft apples for himself. There was a wall of generically branded merch across form the counter so Shane grabbed a cooler and filled it with ice from the drink machine before dumping in the pre-made sandwiches and fruit cups as the man slowly stopped moving.

Eventually Shane finished, sliding behind the counter and clicking buttons until he figured out how to put money onto Pump One.

"Don…don't hur—t me…"

Shane didn't look down at that man as he clicked the buttons and then started work on opening the cash register. He hadn't planned on saying anything, but suddenly, Shane felt his anger roll up in him and there was finally someone to direct it at.

"Six years. Six years she came through here. Obviously delivering things for children you never saw and you never once thought to check on where she was going? To go to the police?" Shane demanded and the man's eyes had grown watery with tears. "The condensation on her cups. They still had ice in them so I knew there had to be something down the road, and so I tried to send notes through the orders. Then he tells me that he found them." Shane crouched down, so that the man could feel the pressure of his body. "Because you told him."

"I…I—" The man was blubbering now. The drugs made him lax and hazy, but you could still feel fear. Shane was keenly aware of that. "sn't ma fal-t…"

"Not your fault?" Shane demanded. "Do you know how many times he had to drag me back? Twenty eight contingencies he told me last time, and I'd barely made it through twenty. By my count you're twenty six."

"Do—nt…nt—ill me…"

"Stop crying. You're wearing a thousand dollar watch." Shane picked up his wrist and then let it slap to the floor. "Rolex used to send me nicer series because I was one of their walking billboards. But you knew that, because he paid you to do this job, paid you to do it well. And you did."

The man opened his mouth and Shane could see the beginnings of an apology that he didn't want to hear.

"I'm not going to kill you Patrick." Shane flicked his name tag. "I'm just going to let you lay here for hours, alone and afraid, waiting for him to find and punish you, so you can feel a fraction of what I felt. For Six. Fucking. Years."

Shane stood and scanned a few random products until he got the machine to open and emptied it of cash. He'd need to fill the tank up again eventually and he wanted to be prepared. It was why he raided the store one last time, randomly grabbing a tent he tossed into the trunk if Ilya bothered to take inventory and anything vaguely meal-like to avoid stopping or letting people recognize him before he was ready. Finally, he made his way through the only door to the back, ignoring the Employees Only sign. The cameras were logged in a back room on an old looking tape deck machine that Shane wondered even worked. Still, he unplugged everything, snapping disks and dunking all the pieces of anything that looked like it might store data into a big tub of pickles out in the hall. Let Ilya go digging through that.

On his way out he grabbed only three more things, a foldable map, an ugly set of clothes from a wobbly rack, and the key to the bathrooms around the side which hung behind the counter next to the locked display of cigarettes. The smell hit him like a freight train and Shane moved before he'd even realized, plucking one of the cartons from the shelves. It was Ilya's brand and he forced himself not to think about why he felt the need to tuck it away into his pocket before he made his way back into the car with his haul.

"Baby, do you need to go to the bathroom?"

Leo nodded sleepily, wanting to be carried even though he was getting much to big for it. It had been a fight, Shane remembered, Shane wanting to lessen the babying and Ilya seemingly unable to. Maybe it was his becoming a parent, but so many of the decisions he made as a parent now he saw reflected in his own upbringing. His parents helping him even when they were thousands of miles away. When Shane had asked Ilya about it, the man had gone nearly catatonic and simply shook his head to shut down the conversation.

"Did daddy get dirty?" Leo asked as Shane had pulled off his clothes and replaced them with the generic shirt, shorts, and flip flops the gas station had to offer. He didn't know for sure if Ilya had a tracker in his clothes, but he figured it was better to be safe than sorry.

"Yeah, baby, daddy got dirty."

To Galina, all he could offer was: "I got food and a map out of the deal too. They came in handy."

Galina hummed. "There was never any talk of an assault on a gas station attendant."

"Maybe he had a reason not to report it."

She picked up on the hint and, like she had with so many other details, let it go. "So now you're on the run. You wouldn't be in the public eye for nearly another week. That's a long time to be alone."

Shane smiled. "Honestly, once I got onto the highway, it was like everything opened up. I had Leo and a plan. And a Snickers bar."

"A celebration, then."

A bit, like those parties people hosted instead of funerals. Shane nodded. He could still taste the chocolate, the sweetness of Leo's laugh when he tried a Hostess cupcake for the first time, the way the summer air had whipped into the car and had ruffled their hair. Shane had sent them sliding along the white line and nearly into another lane because he got caught watching Leo's blond curls bounce through the rear view mirror.

"He swore Leo's curls would darken as he got older, like his brother's, Leo's uncle, but I knew they'd stay blond like his." Shane cut in and then felt stupid. It felt wrong to spend months talking about all the horrible things he'd seen and then have a conversation like this, but Galina didn't stop him, just smiled.

"They're still blonde."

"My mom says Liliana is looking more like me every day." Both my daughters do, Shane wished he could say. Instead, all he could do was smile too. "I hope she isn't like me as a kid though, my parents told me I was a nightmare."

"They said that?" Galina demanded and Shane felt a flame of warmth at her protectiveness.

"Not in so many words but there's only so many ways you can make a meltdown sound cute." Shane shrugged. Maybe it was the fact that he was a parent now that made him have a bit more empathy for his parents. "I was a biter."

"And Liliana's other parent? How was he when he was a kid?"

Shane considered the question before deciding maybe of all the people, Galina would be the least judge-y about it. "He was apparently a perfect angel. Helped his mama around the house, got straight As, that sort of thing."

"Did he tell you that?"

"No, after—" Shane heaved out a sigh. In for a penny. "After Leo's birth, he gave me his mom's diaries. I had to translate them but…they helped. I started to feel like an actual human again knowing someone else had felt the exact same as I had."

Galina nodded softly and the only sound in the room was her scratching on the paper until she asked, "So what was your first stop after you earned your hard fought freedom?"

"Can I get one Happy Meal?" Shane had only four hundred and sixty three dollars and wasting it on fast food when they had sandwiches in the cooler was not exactly smart, but Shane couldn't help but want to watch Leo eat one. They were expensive and filled with ultra-processed garbage but Shane didn't care in the moment, they had a little toy and stickers for his son to put on the little pink sunglasses Shane had grabbed him from the gas station.

"Look daddy!" Shane parked and turned around, watching Leo munch on his apple slices as he made the little plastic wings of the figure flap. Shane thought it might have been a dinosaur or maybe another character from a movie he'd missed in the last half decade.

"Yeah, baby, that's really neat." Shane pulled out Patrick's phone and turned it on. He'd need a new one soon but he figured the last thing on Partick's mind at the moment was that he couldn't find his phone. When Shane had slid it out of his pants while threatening him, the boy had been shaking so hard Shane had worried he'd drop it. In fact, if Shane's dosage was correct, he hoped the man had already come around and taken off. Give himself a break if Ilya went after the attendant instead.

"Fast food?" Galina asked.

"I needed time to get us a new ride and I couldn't exactly find that while driving." Shane defended. "So we stopped in a small town and I made some calls."

"Contingencies?"

Shane did the hand wave again. "Man liked trackers, what can I say."

"What were you looking for?"

"A new ride."

That was how he ended up rolling onto a cracking car lot with smarmy looking signs plastered over every window and an equally smarmy man nearly running to his car before he could turn the ignition off.

"Hello there! I'm Rodney Edgers, of Edgers' Motors. You looking to upgrade?"

From his lot, that wasn't possible, but Shane just put on his most pitiful look that sometimes worked on Ilya. "Actually I was looking for some cash? I got this car but I'm not sure how much it's worth because it's old."

Shane didn't get out quite yet. Being nearly six foot and, even smaller than he'd been since his rookie season, he still was packed with muscle. Like this, the man felt comfortable leaning in like he was letting Shane in on a secret.

"It's a nice car, but did you hear that click when you turned the engine off? That's going to cost some money to repair." Rodney listed off ten other things he found wrong with the car before shooting him a sad expression and then catching sight of Leo in the back seat, hunched down and avoiding his eyes. "Real cute kid! Hey, tell you what…I like you. I want to give you a good deal."

That was how he found himself standing in a dingy office signing Ilya's name on any document in front of him when it became clear the man was not looking.

"The guy gave me eight hundred bucks for a sixty thousand dollar car." Shane smirked a bit, shrugging his shoulders. "Couldn't say I felt too broken up by it."

"But you didn't buy a new car?" Galina asked.

"No, he would have just paid Rodney for that information." Shane raised a hand. "So I just clicked on the first ad for a running car in Thunder Bay for a thousand bucks and got the man to meet me a block over half an hour later."

"The Toyota."

Shane nodded. "Worth every penny."

"And much harder to trace."

"That too."

Shane let his head fall back against the wall.

"We can be done today." Galina offered.

Shane felt tempted but knew he had to explain himself for the rest of the story to make any sense.

"I never told anyone this, but even when I was driving down the coast of Lake Superior I kept expecting for him to just pop up in a car next to me. Call on a pay phone or I'd roll over on those uncomfortable motel mattresses and he'd just—be there." Shane whispered. "I missed him. How fucked up is that?"

Galina let his scoff slide. Maybe she could understand that Shane didn't need any reassurance, that the listening ear was enough.

"But Leo—" That broke Shane, and he was crying silently for the first time in months. He'd not allowed it, but now it was innate, unable to be pushed down. "God, Galina, the way he bloomed on his own? He spoke to strangers! He ate sushi for the first time. He talked more!"

Those three days he'd made his way across Canada to his parents' cottage Shane had expected to be a miserable slog of a screaming child and his own tortured mind. The latter was an issue, but Leo seemed to take to the road trip with an unexpected curiosity that had gotten Shane out of most of his misery spirals.

"Ocean?" Leo had asked and Shane had looked out along the coast and felt a strange renewed love for his son.

"No, Leo, that's Lake Superior." He explained and then was overcome with not only how much had been taken from him but from his children too. "But tell you what, after we get settled daddy will take you to the ocean. Would you like that?"

"Yes!" Leo had been nearly vibrating in his booster seat. "And Ana and papa come?"

Shane had known he couldn't work his way out of it, but he was already on the run physically, running from the truth emotionally was maybe more than he could handle. "No, baby. Ana's with papa and you're with me."

"Forever?"

Shane's throat clenched, so tight the words themselves came out strangled. "I hope not."

To Galina, Shane offered her a small smile. "I'll be gone next week. I'm taking the kids to see the ocean."

Chapter 6

Chapter Summary

"How was the trip?"

Shane took out his phone and showed her the photos of Leo in the surf, little Liliana all white with sunscreen under a huge bucket hat.

Chapter Notes

We're almost to the end! I have chapter seven completed and am editing chapter eight now so the finish line is in sight!

To everyone leaving such amazing, detailed comments, thank you! I love all of your theories and ideas, and you've also helped me find my own mistakes (like a name for a kid I renamed...sorry to everyone who thought this was some reveal, it's just my lack of beta showing...). I'm very excited for the last two chapters and appreciate every comment!!

<3

"How was the trip?"

Shane took out his phone and showed her the photos of Leo in the surf, little Liliana all white with sunscreen under a huge bucket hat.

"How does Leo feel about finally starting school?"

Shane kept his eyes on the photo. "A handful of the kids from his daycare attend. He says he'd excited but he also looks like a man on his way to the gallows when he does so I guess we'll see."

"And Ottawa?"

"What about Ottawa?" Shane asked, purposely obtuse but unable to wait out Galina's raised eyebrow. "They seem happy with their purchase."

"Do you see yourself as a commodity?"

"Aren't I?"

Galina wrote something down quickly and Shane let his head thunk back on the head rest. It was not an auspicious start. This was made abundantly clear when Galina, maybe as pay back for his shitty mood or, more likely and worse, because she honestly cared about him and wanted him to come to terms with the shitty roll of the dice life had given him, opened with, "How has your relationship with your parents been? I know it was strained there for a while, your mother emailed me every week."

Shane opened his mouth and then closed it again. Quietly, he whispered, "I was sure about the twenty eight."

"The contingencies again?" Galina looked concerned and Shane wanted to drop it but knew it would only come up again, in a different session when he was less prepared for it.

"I kept thinking that I must have missed one, that if I went to my parent's house, he'd somehow be there." Shane huffed. "I know he paid off some local cops, he had to, but I didn't know how far he went. If I walked into a police station and they hauled me back to that house?"

There was a heavy silence in the air.

Shane cleared his throat. "I couldn't risk it so I knew I had to be somewhere I felt safe. My parents have a cottage a few miles outside of Ottawa."

"Somewhere you felt safe." Galina offered and Shane nodded. "How did you bypass the wiretap?"

Shane hadn't actually known about the wiretaps on his parent's phones. It was one of those contingencies that he'd missed and that kept him up at night, waiting in the dark like he half expected Ilya to walk in through an unlocked door like Shane had never left. Luck, Shane had learned, had been on his side when he made the decision to drive up to the cottage.

"I just wanted to lay low for a bit." Shane offered. "I didn't even know my dad had put up trail cameras."

Leo had been fussy the last two days of the drive, when they saw fewer and fewer people and it became clearer that this was not an fun adventure but some fundamental shift in the life he'd grown up with. The temper tantrums were exhausting them both. Driving past the road up to his own cottage had nearly sent him into his own hysterics, matched by the crying toddler in the back of the car yelling for his papa.

"I know you want your papa, Leo." Shane had frustrated tears in his eyes, marks down his cheeks, his throat tight from choking back sobs of his own. "Baby, I miss him too."

Leo heard none of it. Instead it was the thick, heaving cries of a child who wants to stop crying but found themselves unable to. Eventually he'd had to pull off to the side of the road and crawl into the back seat to rock Leo. He said things, promises Shane was sure he couldn't keep, but all he wanted was a shower and his own parent's arms around him.

Under all that was a bitter irony chewing at his guts that he wanted to go home and that thought seemed to curdle and spoil any sense of accomplishment or joy at finally seeing the house that had helped raise him for most of his childhood.

The door code for the garage was the same. It clicked open with the same little staccato rhythm that Shane remembered kicking out on his dad's seat when he was a kid. The smell of motor oil and the hum of the chest freezer along the back wall were also familiar and all of the new stimuli seemed to distract Leo enough that Shane could finally take a full breath.

"You want to see where daddy grew up?" Shane had asked and Leo had nodded, tugging at his seat belt until Shane came and un-clicked it for him. "Hold my hand, Leo, then we can go inside."

"I hadn't realized until I walked in, but I sort of expected it to be unchanged, you know? Like a time capsule." Shane offered Galina. "But it wasn't. They put up all of this stuff, like my jersey and things. It felt like walking into a shrine. Or a mausoleum."

"They wanted to honor you."

Shane hadn't realized he'd been picking at his nails until with a sharp stab of pain, the skin gave and a bubble of blood welled up along his nail bed. When he moved to grip the armrest of the chair instead, he watched the smallest drop stain the blue fabric.

What Shane didn't say was that what hadn't changed effected him maybe more so. His bedroom, the one he'd always used when he was a kid and patterned with little cartoon loon wallpaper and a few of his hockey trophies from when he was in the youth league, hadn't been touched. There were still sheets on the bed, clean and tucked in along the corners like his mother always did. Like they expected Shane to just wander in one day.

"This was—" Shane had swallowed and made sure he wasn't pressing too hard on Leo's small hand. "This is daddy's room."

"Hockey!" Leo pointed to a small pair of skates his mother had kept. The plastic was faded and parts of the fabric was crunchy the way time made it, but Shane had the sudden realization that he could skate again. Not slowly on a rough pond or on the slabs of ice Ilya had made from a massive tarp and lawn stakes every winter.

"I broke down and cried. Just sobbed. And Leo saw it all." Shane huffed at himself, even knowing how overwhelming it had been. "I bet he'll talk about that with his own therapist."

"Maybe. Doesn't mean you were wrong to do so. You were clearly overwhelmed and now you were finally somewhere safe." Galina turned her head a few times to make sure she caught his eye. "It's not wrong to want things for yourself outside of your children, nor is it wrong to make mistakes."

"I never should have left that party." Shane rubbed at his eyes.

"And your teammates never should have laced your drink. Your kidnapper never should have taken advantage of that. The police never should have taken the word of a lawyer over an eyewitness, but they did. None of that is your fault. Hey," She hissed then, sharp and demanding for Shane to look at her. "Look at me. It's not your fault. I'll keep saying it until you start to believe it."

"What if I never believe it?" Shane asked, mostly to be a brat.

Galina, a bit of a brat herself, responded with, "Good, gives me job security."

Shane laughed and then felt the smallest touch lighter, light enough that it seemed possible to say more. "My parent's cottage has these huge windows out front that overlook the driveway. Leo and I crashed not long after we got there and slept longer than expected. When I woke up, it was to headlights."

"Your parents?"

"No." Shane muttered with a touch of humor. " My parents called the cops because they worried someone had broken in."

That got a laugh and Shane, now with some distance from the situation, could find some humor in it too.

"My dad saw a strange car drive in but never out so he called a cop friend to come check the place out. I'd never been so happy for my dad covering all the windows in the garage." Shane explained. "Leo was asleep and we hadn't turned any lights on so I just laid there in the dark on their couch and watched the flashlight move around through the windows."

"They didn't find you?" Galina asked and Shane realized she was pushing the story forward instead of letting Shane stew in his own head. He wondered how he'd missed that even as he appreciated the push.

"Mom had a huge rock garden out front and these ugly lace curtains from her mother. I don't think the cop could see anything. Leo slept through the whole thing." Shane on the other hand had nearly hyperventilated, sure that it was Ilya coming to collect him, needle in hand and face curved in that frown that told Shane that he'd done something wrong, missed some cue, failed.

"Eventually he left. I got Leo ready for bed." Shane rolled the words around in his mouth. "Moved his bedtime up so that I never had to turn a light on after dark. He hated it." After a pause, he added, "You know, when I was processed at the police station I had bruises all over me and everyone asked me if I'd been hit. When I explained I kept bumping into things trying to get around in the dark they thought I was lying, or like, covering for him."

It wasn't a full smile he got from Galina, but it wasn't nothing either. He was glad there was someone else to find some humor in it because his parents didn't. Ilya would have.

Shane picked at the scab that had already been forming over his cuticle and opened up the wound again. "I wanted to call my parents but…"

"You didn't know what to say?" Galina offered kindly and Shane nodded.

"Then I saw their car pull up a few days later and all I could think about was that I wasn't ready to talk to them. I wasn't the son they'd lost." Shane cut off Galina before she could say anything. "I was nearly six months pregnant, was already a parent, on the lam. I had changed. They saw it the moment they walked through the door."

Maybe even before. His mom had spotted him from the window and had nearly brained herself sprinting up the steps, calling for his dad to open the door because she'd dropped the keys somewhere. Shane had watched his dad watch him through the glass, face older than Shane remembered him looking, standing on that bottom stoop with the kind of expression that seemed to break them both. By then his mother had found the spare key and then he was turning and the moment he saw her for the first time, he was twelve years old again, scuffed knee from someone pushing him in the locker room, but the feeling of her thin, strong arms was the same, the smell of her perfume, and way she ran her hand down his head. The way she said his name though, that was new. It was frantic and disbelieving, a whimper and a cry.

Then his dad had been in the doorway and even with them being nearly the same height, the moment his dad's arms were around him, Shane realized there was still some part of him that had felt unsafe only because that part went quiet when his father's arms wrapped tight.

It had been the first time that he'd been sure he'd done the right thing, wholeheartedly and without regret. There was never another decision, not with the way they looked at him, patted his cheeks, rubbed his hair, pulling him to them so that they could check he hadn't vanished from their arms.

The second time had been later, after when his mother's hands had brushed his hips and the joy had drained out of her face, right when he'd called out to Leo who'd hidden behind the dining room wall watching with wide eyes.

"Leo, come meet your grandparents." Shane had said and enjoyed the joy of taking Leo's hand and introducing them, the awe on his mother's face, the mixture of tears and snot they probably got everywhere, the tentative little shake Leo gave them both and then the hug he offered because that was how his family said hello.

Of course, the hesitation came back the moment his mother looked up at him, eyes already asking for a plan, wanting to know why he was here and not at a press conference on the stairs of a police station, demanding an arrest. Leo had been the excuse, but toddlers had to sleep and then his mom and dad, mostly mom, sandwiching him like they worried if left alone he might vanish again, had begun the questioning.

He'd had hours on the road to perfect his story, but his mother knew his lies and by the time he'd finished she was already shaking her head. "Why won't you tell us the truth?"

The only truth he could honestly give was, "I can't."

Even after a year, it was as as true now as it was then. With Shane gone, Ana and Ilya could reintegrate back into society. His daughter would have a life outside of that house but only as long as her father remained free. The part which Shane could barely touch, even given the distance of time and location, was that it was as much for Ilya as Ana.

It had felt wrong to sick the cops on him. Shane understood him too much for that, even in the earliest drafts of his escape plans.

It was that fact that his mother could never forgive him for.

Galina's pen made a quiet tapping noise, bringing Shane back around. He blinked and then rolled his shoulders, trying to settle himself back into his body like he'd practiced. Galina gave him time, and then did what Shane paid her to and pushed.

"How long after this did you do the interview?"

"Maybe a week." Shane shrugged. "Mom was livid but I just wanted everyone off my back. Figured accusing the whole policing system of corruption would do that."

"They pulled manpower from your case not long after, I'm told." Shane didn't care. Maybe some of that showed on his face because Galina moved on without another word. "How are you sleeping? Is the medication working?"

"Yes." No.

"That sounds like a no."

"I'm fine."

"You know I can track when you don't fill your prescription. Since I prescribed them eight months ago, it's been, oh…" Galina raised her chart. "Eight months since you filled it."

"I sleep fine."

"You went through difficult circumstances and then a traumatic birth. You're entitled—"

"I don't want the pills. I will not take the pills." Shane hissed sharply.

"There is no shame in--"

"I can't take them. Drop it." Shane tried again. Galina was looking at her chart.

"They'll help--"

"You're as bad as he was."

Galina flinched, and Shane felt the instinctive flare of guilt but not enough to take back his words. It wouldn't have mattered about the pills anyway. He'd just gag them back up or send himself into a panic attack after swallowing.

"I think we should be done for today." Galina murmured softly.

Shane couldn't agree more and walked out without a backwards glance.

Chapter 7

Chapter Summary

Shane laughed a bit at that, then the words came out without his being able to stop them. "I've met someone."

Chapter Notes

The Penultimate chapter! I am sorry for the long wait, I got caught up in work and seemed to black out the moment I got home. That said, I do have the final chapter already edited so I hope to get it posted sometime in the next few days!

Thank you for all the lovely ideas and I love discussing all the theories in the comments, many of which people are uncomfortably close to correct with!

"I'm sorry."

Galina looked up from her chart, as cool as ever.

Shane tried again. "I let myself get too heated, I said things I didn't mean."

Galina didn't call him on the obvious lie that he did mean those things, but maybe she understood he felt bad for hurting her because she gestured to the chair. As he sat, his fingers instinctively found his fraying threadbare patch. He wondered if it was bigger than it used to be, if someone else had been tugging at it.

"The internal audit with Montreal finally settled." Shane felt it was important to explain. "The review board sided with them."

"I saw. How did that make you feel?"

"Besides like shit?" Shane asked. "Like my mom was right and I should have sued for damages."

"Still time."

Shane laughed a bit at that, then the words came out without his being able to stop them. "I've met someone."

Galina looks up sharply but not worriedly, tentative in her thoughts. "As in…?"

"He came up to me at a function for Ottawa. Said he was a fan." Shane thought about the moment again, how casual it was, how everything felt a step out of joint, like he was an alternative Shane living an alternative life. "Mom says it's too soon."

"How do you feel?"

"It feels too soon." Shane whispered. "It's too soon, right?"

"You decide that, not me and not your mother." Galina explained calmly. "Do you feel it's too soon to start dating again?"

"I want to see if I'm able to date again." Shane offered and Galina nodded and wrote something down. "I just…what if I'm risking the kids?"

"Do you think this person is a danger to them?"

"I don't know." Shane whispered, looking up at the ceiling. "I don't think so."

"Then, you decide if you want to date again and if so, try."

"When you say it like that…" Shane offered her a small smile and then let his eyes wonder again. The mandatory sessions had been for a year and they were quickly approaching that number. Shane wasn't sure if he would come back after, but he might. There was something meditative to talking with Galina, like she was in his mind untangling threads and helping guide Shane to their source. Maybe that was why he offered it up, "I left a letter, you know."

"To him." It wasn't a question but Shane nodded. "The one from the sugar."

"I wrote it the morning before I left. I wanted—I don't know—for him understand why I was doing this to both of us." Shane said quietly. "I told him I wished we'd met at a bar. Or in line at the grocery store. Somewhere normal people meet."

The thread snapped between his fingers and Shane looked down at it in shock. There was probably a message in there somewhere about cutting ties. Galina, either not seeing it or not understanding the significance, didn't stop him.

"I told him I hated him and—" And to watch out for Ana who wouldn't understand but Ilya who would. To give her the life a kid like her deserved with dance classes and shop visits, and trips for ice cream you pretended was against the rules. To leave that fucking house that he kept them locked up in, a place they would have outgrown in years and yet would have been unable to escape. Ilya had no plan that was long term. He was brilliant, clever and intelligent, but everything with him was in the short term. He had no idea about school or friends or the million other things kids needed to be emotionally and physically healthy.

I don't want my children raised in a house they're scared in. That had been one of his final lines. That and if Shane hadn't left when he did, he imagined it would have only ended with one of them dead.

"Did you want to finish your story?" Galina offered and at Shane's furrowed brows she said softly, "I worry based on how you speak about them, that you feel the press surrounding your return was nearly as traumatic as your escape might have been."

"I don't—it was just that everyone wanted a piece of me." Shane muttered. "The cops went on for days about it, wanted a rape kit done even though it had been over a week since I'd been with him, then they wanted to do a test of amniotic fluid, then they got really mad and started throwing laws at me saying they might try to take my kids. If I hadn't been with my mom, I probably would have folded."

"And the articles?"

"Fucking everywhere." Shane groaned. "I couldn't go near the windows because there was some weirdo on the lawn with a parabolic reflector to try and hear what I was saying. Our neighbor tried to sell a story to the tabloids. People I'd known for years suddenly knocking at our door with casserole dishes and so many invasive fucking questions. A photographer jumped our fence and then sold pictures of Leo playing and me, very pregnant, sitting beside him."

"It was difficult."

"It was a shit show." Shane corrected. "So mom and Farah, my old agent, decide we need to be proactive, get out in front of this thing, right? So we book an interview and it's fine, I tell them I'm still working through everything, that I just want some privacy, but the wanna-be investigator starts demanding I tell her about my children."

Galina glanced up. "Was that around the time of the leak about the drugging?"

"The day after." Shane felt like grinding his teeth. When the leaked documents hit the papers, it had just been an injection into the weakening story which shot it back into the headlines. "Everything plastered with 'Hollander Drugged by Team Members.' The front office stopped taking my mom's calls after that."

"So they tell you you're on waivers no team can claim and that was when you sued?"

"We sued the police." Shane explained. "An internal audit was done by the Metros, and can you guess, internally by the front of house. They said there was no misconduct they could find."

"It had been six years and the police were incompetent, that's little wonder." Galina huffed and Shane was pleased to watch her huff as she took notes. "And that they'd made the playoffs that year for the first time since your last season had nothing to do with it I'm sure."

The small smile was a little sharp but Shane felt he was owed the smallest bit of spite. His team had left him out to dry and his disappearance had done the same to them. All the pundits on the years of hockey podcasts he'd tried to catch up with to all agreed: Montreal was a winner when Hollander was Montreal. Without him they lacked the depth to get anywhere close to the playoffs. The fucking Centaurs had outscored them last season. Then the story had broken, team sponsors dropped out, players with the option made trade requests, and the Metros first run at the playoffs since Shane was their captain was over before it could really began.

"They couldn't risk blowing their budget taking me back when they'd already written me off." Shane bit his lip to keep the nastier words from slipping out. From Galina's face, maybe she still got the gist.

"Then Liliana." Galina seemed to be counting down those horrible first few months. "I was told it was a complicated birth."

"Breach. And she had her cord around her neck." Shane's hands fell to his flat stomach. It had been toned with months of hard rehab and strength training with the best trainers money could buy, but was still spider-webbed with stretchmarks along his hips. The emptiness had been disconcerting at first. It still felt strange. "Doctors said we might not have made it outside a hospital. Her almost certainly."

"So you made the right choice."

Shane nodded but there was the slightest hesitation not at his choice but at the weeks that came after. Ana and Leo's births had been rough in their own way, one in it's newness the second in knowing what was coming. But after that, the recovery when both he and Ilya were exhausted and too tired to string together a sentence, Shane kind of missed that. Ilya had always taken up the bulk of the work, making meals and doing laundry, washing dishes while Shane fed or burped. When Leo came, Ilya added toddler wrangler to his list of duties. It was when the house was the friendliest, when Shane's head was awash in hormones that kept his thoughts simple and calm. It was when he loved Ilya the most, Shane thought, with Ana on his hip, Leo wrapped in a sling around his chest, and his remaining free hand stirring their meal as he narrated what he was doing in soft Russian.

To avoid saying anything more incriminating, Shane murmured, "I did get six years of hockey games to catch up on. Leo hated them, but Liliana would watch them with me for hours."

"Sounds nice."

"It was." Shane felt a bubbling pride rise in him and pushed down the instinctive parental need to show someone his kids. "She's walking now. Not on her own, but walking."

Galina smiled. "And how is dating going?"

"Fine." Shane narrowed his eyes. "I know my mom emailed you about them too."

"I deleted it, but the by-line was attention-getting." Her voice rose a few octaves. "'Worrying dating development.'"

"Tell me she did not say that." Shane pressed the heels of his palms into his eyes. "It was a few people, I don't know why she's acting like I'm twelve again."

Shane did know why she was acting like that, she had gone through something traumatic just as Shane had, but her response was to wrap Shane up in bubble wrap. When Rolex had reached out and wanted to do another photo shoot to renew his contract with them, Shane's mother had been the one who'd told him he couldn't make the two hour flight if she couldn't come with. Galina seemed to be thinking the same thing if her judgy raised eyebrow was any indication.

"She'd wrap me in bubble wrap if she could. Just shove me into her purse and take me with her everywhere." He huffed but he was smiling now. "I get it, with Leo and Lili, but I don't need my mom holding my hand on my flights."

"You do seem surprisingly willing to let your children out of your sight." It wasn't pointed or suspicious sounding, but Shane tensed up nonetheless. He could feel his smile slide off his face. Galina continued, "You don't worry that he might come back for them?"

"No." Shane said softly. "I'm better at contingencies than he is."

"What do you mean?"

Shane should do what he did with the cops and the interviewers and any of the nosy people who came snooping around after his escape with hidden cameras and wires. He should play dumb. But Shane was so tired of the fucking kid gloves.

"He gets his freedom as long as he follows my rules." Shane explained. "He won't come around because if he does, I will send the DNA results to every police station in fifty miles. I couldn't just escape once, I had to do it twice, three times even. He stays away because I tell him to. Like I said, I'm better in the long game."

"And when did you tell him to come back?" Galina asked point blank. "A felon you met in a parking lot, a recently divorced failed businessman, and an old teammate who might have drugged you don't exactly give the best image of your taste in men."

"You read the email." Shane hissed. He hated her a bit then.

"This little parade of men you are seen with sets up a bad precedent, then you, what? Tell your man to come in on his white horse, clean-cut and good with kids, his kids, and then you get the happy ending you want?" Galina's face was cool now, but not unfeeling. "You are thinking about yourself. What about your kids—"

"I am thinking about my kids—" Shane hissed sharply.

Something close to understanding glittered in Galina's eyes and Shane stood up. Shane could see the realization flash in her eyes that Shane was not the waifish broken thing she's started meeting a year ago. He'd lost nearly twenty pounds from his child and packed on another fifty over six months in lean muscle. Now he towered over her and she seemed to realize it for the first time.

Shane brushed off the string from the chair and then turned to leave, stopping at the doorway when Galina made a soft sound he took to be his name.

"Shane. I didn't say this to be cruel or as an accusation." She hummed. "I just need you to know that I understand. That I'm on your side if you ever need me."

"I'll be fine." Shane said. He almost said he had a plan but it would have tipped his hand. Not that it mattered, Galina was watching him now with sharp eyes and a twisted mouth, looking for all the world like she might throw herself in front of the door to stop him leaving.

"Will you? Because from where I'm sitting all it looks like you've done is craft yourself a slightly larger cage."

Shane nearly snarled at her. He didn't know what he was going to say before he opened his mouth. "It won't—I am—!"

"You are so clever, Shane. Clever enough to see that this plan won't work." She was not pleading yet, but there was an insurance in her voice. "You're playing a dangerous game and I worry you don't yet understand what sort of ending you want."

"What plan? I got out. Plan complete. Happy ending." His eyes were locked over her shoulder on the polished brass handle. Galina watched him with an incredulous frown.

"I'm not stupid, Shane." She hissed, looking over her shoulder like she expected someone to enter. "Every element of your story is riddled with holes. The gas attendant, a witness, who never came forward, the car which would have had abundant DNA evidence was stolen off the lot a week after you sold it, your avoidance of all testing which could have narrowed down where you were being kept and by who, then you sue the police to get them to close your case out of spite." She looked really and truly angry for the first time in their acquaintance. She nearly spat, "It's cold, Shane. Calculating."

"Its not like—"

"Liliana, named I'm assuming because when Leo spoke of an Ana, you could convince everyone he was just confused? Not speaking about a child you were pretending never existed." Now her voice was more animated than ever, veering into panic. "Your recent reconnection with one Hayden Pike who was traded to New York after apparently leaking sensitive documents. Documents which showed your team drugging you and management covering it up. Documents I imagine you asked him to get for you. Am I close?"

"Stop." Shane hissed.

"Every one of these doesn't speak of a man running from his past, and everything of someone trying re-write it."

Shane's voice cracked. "Would that be so bad?"

"He's sick, Shane. He needs help. Both of you do." Galina whispered, her hand on Shane's arm. They'd never really touched. Her palm was warm. "The best thing you could do for those kids is turn him in. Move on with your life. Heal, grow. Or you'll spend the rest of your life on an edge, waiting for those bars to close in around you."

Shane let his eyes drop to her face, taking in the soft creases around her eyes, the way they were slightly misty with tears. Her hands were trembling so badly that her metal bangles clinked together like tiny wind chimes.

He allowed himself to think of that future. A house of his own, his children, all of them, circling his patio, mouths sticky with marshmallows and chocolate. The feeling of their small hands in his, the sugary sweet scent of their baby shampoo, the idea of no arms around him in the massive bed overlooking the lake.

No kisses behind his ear, or hands over the curve of his hip. No heated whispers covered up by the banging of tennis shoes in the dryer or hidden smiles over the heads of their children. No Ilya.

"I could do that, Galina." Shane said softly, watched the way her shoulders drooped with relief and felt the faintest stirring of pity for her. "I just don't want to."

She tried to say something else but Shane was stepping neatly around her towards the door. Even in anger, she had done it again; the hesitancy had vanished. He'd traveled of the stream of his unsurity and found the wellspring. The answer.

Maybe it was a horrid idea that would blow up in his face and destroy everything he was trying to build. Maybe Ilya would try and wiggle his way out of all the safe guards Shane would put in place.

Or maybe it would work.

Didn't really matter. Shane wanted it so he would work until he got it. It was as simple as that.

"Thank you, Galina. These sessions have helped me figure out what I really want in life." Shane slowly enunciated. "I don't think I'll be needing your services anymore."

Shane made sure to close the door behind him with a soft click.

Chapter 8

Chapter Summary

When the knock came on Galina's door during her lunch break, she had a feeling of who it was before it ever opened. Maybe it was that this was the only time baring her walk home that Galina's office was empty because her assistant always went across the street to ogle his personal trainer girlfriend, a reoccurring routine any observant person could figure out.

And Ilya Rozanov was anything by unobservant.

Chapter Notes

And here is the final chapter! I'll be honest when I say I'm really worried about this considering I really don't want to let anyone down so I'm going to politely ask for no hate on this ending if you are disappointed! In my mind, it is a happy ending of sorts!

I also went back and fixed some mistakes that I left in earlier chapters (Using Ilya's name in dialogue was just me being an idiot, I'm so sorry to everyone who thought this was me being slick and intentional, it was actually me being bad at editing...) so if you'd like to do a re-read, feel free to let me know anything else that you think could be explained better or was too confusing!

That said, this has been an absolute blast and I've loved reading everyone's thoughtful, insightful, and lovely comments! They have made this particular story my favorite to publish, so thank you preemptively if you do decide to leave a comment! I love you all!

When the knock came on Galina's door during her lunch break, she had a feeling of who it was before it ever opened. Maybe it was that this was the only time baring her walk home that Galina's office was empty because her assistant always went across the street to ogle his personal trainer girlfriend, a reoccurring routine any observant person could figure out.

And Ilya Rozanov was anything by unobservant.

He came in with hunched shoulders, like that might make his broad shoulders and massive height somehow softer and less threatening. It didn't. If anything, it made Galina think uncomfortably of crouching wolves looking up at you with their deceptive, misty eyes before pouncing.

"What can I do for you, Mr.Rozanov?"

"You know who I am?" He asked softly, taking another step into the room. His eyes were sharp, familiar in the almost frantic way as he watched her stand, as if cataloging her expression. He looked different in person than on television, there was something about his cheekbones that she didn't have time to pin-point.

"He never gave your name, if that's what your asking." She wouldn't say anything more than that. "But I do have access to the news."

The very public relationship of single father and philanthropist Ilya Rozanov who helped so many people with his foundation falling in love with the strong willed Shane Hollander had been front page news for weeks. Rozanov hadn't allowed any photos of the children, and Galina wondered a bit cruelly if it was to avoid how much his daughter might look like his new boyfriend.

"He spoke highly about you. Thought I'd take a spin around your office." Rozanov turned and sat in the blue chair. Galina's jaw clenched when his fingers landed on the small bald spot where Shane had pulled out strings. He touched it with reverence, the way a devout might touch the bones of saints.

"Why me?"

Rozanov looked at her then with a sly smile that didn't reach his eyes. Even with his tailored suit and shined shoes, he looked strangely like a boy trying on his father's clothes. That image was shattered when he opened is mouth again and his words were almost edged in ire. "I've been told I need help."

"I didn't mean this session." Galina hadn't moved yet, but it was one of the questions she hadn't gotten to ask Shane. "Why was I his psychiatrist at all? A colleague I knew to handle tougher cases passed him on, the therapist before me had their license revoked unexpectedly. It was what first told me there was more to this story before Shane ever sat in that chair."

Ilya's eyes were on the hole, smile softening as he looked at it, never picking, just hovering over it. "I'd heard good reviews."

Galina knew when someone was unwilling to budge.

"What were you thinking of discussing? Your issues with authority, or your mother?" Galina hurled out as she tossed down her half finished sandwich and moved to take the seat across from him. Never would she talk to a patient like this, but Ilya Rozanov was neither a patient or a person she had much respect for, so it wasn't hard to ignore the slightest flinch that last word caused. "Most people come to therapists before they do something to ruin their lives and the lives of the people around them."

"You eat sandwich alone in office four days a week and go home to your cats. I think my life might be better than yours." Rozanov shrugged and Galina felt the strangest disconnect when she recognized the gesture from Shane. Or maybe Shane learned it from him.

"You think you didn't ruin him." It wasn't a question and Galina refused to frame it at such, especially in the face of that shit-eating grin he wore which Galinda could see was thin as paper. "I have a specialization in kidnap victims, I've seen so many cases, and if you believe that, you're not as smart as Shane made you out to be."

That caused the slightest flicker at the edges of his smile. "No one's perfect."

"Shane was."

"Shane was breaking down at the edges. He was starving himself of food and company to fit in a box they all made for him." Rozanov hissed. "He was alone in every crowd, talked about behind his back in every room he stepped into, better then all of them and they knew it. And they hated him for it."

"Patrice Drapeau and Gilbert Comeau both testified that they found the ecstasy used to dose Shane in a gift basket from a sponsor but couldn't remember which one." Galina cut in. "Your company The Irina Foundation worked with the Metros, didn't they? Something about children's camps?"

Ilya Rozanov leaned back and spread his thighs, presumably to take up more space. "Is there an accusation in there or do you just like me?"

"I think you're just as smart as Shane thinks you are. So smart in fact that you would never do yourself what you can let others do for you. You just took advantage of the situation. Maybe waited outside like a creep, hoping his teammates would help you ruin his life." Galina explained. "I just think you also underestimated him the same way everyone else did and that must eat you up inside."

Rozanov scratched at his nose, a tell, and Galina knew she was on the right track and refused to let him get her onto her back foot. So she went for the throat.

"You want to do this therapy thing right?" She asked coolly. "Tell me about your mother."

Any pretense of a smile slid off his face and Galina faced the man who knew exactly what he wanted and did unspeakable things to claim and keep them. Maybe more surprising was the way he unclenched his jaw, looked at her like he was staring at her very soul, and then opened up.

"She was funny, but not in a way people expected. Mean sometimes, but so smart she'd think circles around my father and his friends. She was beautiful." Rozanov asked with the tone of one ripping off scabs. "What do you know of her?"

Galina wasn't going to say a thing about Shane. The low ball question she would have asked if she were twenty years younger was would your mother have liked you kidnapping people? as an attempt to create some sense of responsibility, but it looked like Rozanov might have jumped her coffee table if she did that. Instead she offered, "the types of drugs like Buprenorphine Shane described, the way they were kept and administered, all spoke towards a fear of overdose. Then there was the house itself. Every element speaks towards both an attempt at comfort and yet also of isolation. Maybe an attempt to protect someone you saw as a type of surrogate for someone you lost."

That got an honest to god laugh out of the man. "I want to fuck my mother, that's what you landed on? I think maybe Shane overpaid for your services."

"The type of man you are, the way you built this home, the plans you put into place, none of these speak to spur of the moment planning. Shane himself pointed this out too." She said, softly, almost gentle, testing a theory that had metastasized in her brain the moment Shane had spoken of the other man's mother's diaries. "What it seems like is inherited."

Ilya's whole body froze, like he was holding every atom in place through sheer willpower.

"I think you wanted to protect Shane the way you couldn't protect your mother. I think you listen now because you want to prove to yourself you're not like your father." Galina laid out calmly. "How old were you when she escaped and left you behind?"

Only Ilya's mouth moved, a pathetic, half-hearted smile. "She didn't."

That would do it, Galina thought sharply.

"I think you love Shane, in whatever way you can, and thought you were protecting him, even from himself." Galina laid it all out. "I think you knew it was unsustainable, had learned that from your own upbringing, and instead of facing that, you ignored it and pushed it down until Shane did something about it. You just got lucky it benefited you."

"Was it luck?" He asked, seemingly an honest question.

"What would you call him beckoning you back and you coming when he whistled?"

"A good dog?" He offered with a cheeky smile.

Galina couldn't hold back the slightest smile at that comment. Ilya was the most annoying type of person she talked to, the ones who thought they had themselves figured out and unwilling to waver in that worldview. Shane could be like that. She often was when she met with her own therapist.

"Why are you here?" She asked forthright. "Honestly, this time."

"Honestly?" He asked, casually. "I want to open Shane up and live inside him and the view from your windows only gives his side profile so I wanted to see where he sat and what he might have said. Hard to do from the outside considering you take all your current files home with you."

Galina's blood went cold.

It was more thoughtless than anything, but it was also more telling than all the other words he'd said combined. She watched him finally pick at Shane's spot and realized it would have been visible from the window.

"Does he know about the surveillance?"

"Shane is smart."

"Not what I asked."

Ilya shot her a look from under his lashes. "I just got him back and you think I should tell him about my extracurriculars?"

"So that's it." Galina clocked. "Some bumps in a relationship started with kidnapping? Who could have guessed."

Ilya was still smirking but it was brittle now. "He won't talk to me."

"You won't talk to him."

The man threw his head back and groaned like a petulant child. "I do! I say we can move, I'll get a new job, decorate the new house, whatever he wants!"

"Is that what he asked for?"

Ilya went quiet. "You think he wants…"

"A partner? Yes. I can't imagine why he might want someone who considers him not superior or inferior but an equal." Her sarcasm was not lost on him.

"He is my better." Ilya said, and she, horrifically, believed him.

Galina wanted to pick a hole of her own into her own chair. She had left her note pad on the far shelf and didn't feel comfortable moving now. Instead she took a note from Shane and rubbed her nail along the threads of the armrest. It was a good distraction to allow her to decide what exactly she wanted to say.

"He refuses to name you. Hundreds of hours of meetings and you're reduced to The Man and Him. If put in front of a judge and jury, I believe he'd lie to protect you." Galina explained, clearly and calmly. "There is also reason to believe he had contact with a woman through a book exchange you allowed. Yet, instead of informing the police, he asked for more romance novels. Apparently you liked to read them together."

"Why tell me this?" Ilya whispered softly. The tone of condescension was gone.

"I think as things are now you won't last a year."

"Why?" He demanded.

"You want to know what I learned about Shane?" She hissed as he stood as if to fight off the words themselves. "He can't sleep, barely eats, he's become disconnected from the world around him. Your relationship, in whatever form it was forged, is toxically codependent for both of you." Galina fought to keep her voice even and failed. "Want to know what I've learned about you? That you'll forever try to outrun what you did and what was done to you, the role you played in ruining his life and your own father played in ruining yours, and you'll never be fast enough. That to him, you will forever be that man in the basement he'll always be looking over his shoulder for."

Rozanov flinched, but also cocked his head and then nodded, like he'd realized something.

"Maybe." He granted softly. "But I think I know Shane better than you. I've seen him struggle to find his edges before, but he always rights himself. You give him time and space to work and Shane Hollander always gets his goal."

Galina glared at him, her face clenched so tight she felt a faint ache in her teeth. "You think you're his goal?"

"Yes." He whispered softly. "I think I can be."

Galina felt it happen again, the free fall of fear as she stood to do something, to give it one last chance even as the car speeds towards the cliff. "You love him?" She demanded. "I mean really love him. You said you took him to save him. Well, now is your chance to prove it. Let him go."

Ilya blinked slowly, but unlike Shane before him, he listened to the words and, heartrendingly, seemed to honestly be considering them. "Shane knows himself. He says he wants me."

"Shane knows anything is better than being in a cage so he's tried to expand his enclosure." Galina hissed back.

"Or maybe Shane understood a truth." Ilya offered. "That one of us doesn't mind the bars."

It felt crushing to watch him step away, failure writ in every line of his face—

There was something there, something she caught when the light his his cheekbones, something familiar.

Then it hit her.

It hadn't been the expression that had been familiar, it had been the face itself. She'd seen it in the files of two young boys almost twenty years ago, taken from the home of their father who'd kept the whole family locked up in a compound attempting to escape from Russian authorities. She'd talked to them in the back of a police cruiser as they looked at her dead-eyed, watching their mother's body, dress covered in vomit and skin molted with bruises from what looked to be both CPR attempts and regular beatings, be carried out in a body bag. They wouldn't give their names and Galina had been taken off the case not long after. Everything had been tinted crimson in her memory from the lights of the sirens, but she'd remembered the boys clearly, and she saw one of them now, standing in front of her and answering the question of why her without ever saying a word.

"My father always used to call me selfish. A selfish greedy boy. I suppose he was right about a few things."

His voice was soft when he muttered, "This was helpful. Thank you, Galina."

The door closed behind him and she grunted as she stood, marching over to her shelf and tossing Shane's file into the bottom cabinet, logged under the black tab, the patients who never came back.

And the patients she lost. Rozanov's mother's file might be in there somewhere.

Then she threw herself back into her chair, seeing her lunch congealing on the brown paper. She threw the rest of her sandwich in the trash.

She'd lost her appetite.

Chapter End Notes

To anyone who's sleep schedule I screwed up posting as late as I do, I'm so sorry! In poor repayment, if you want to come gush over HR on tumblr, hit me up @ whimper-soldier

And finally, to everyone who was following along and leaving such amazing comments, I love you! <3