I really wanted to play around with using this code for a couple of upcoming fics, so I needed something short and not necessarily sweet, but hopefully somewhat comforting :)

MAJOR shoutout once again to this code by smugrobotics, which is by far the easiest one i've found to use for these hover translations. so grateful to all the super talented folks who put this stuff together for us. please go give it some love!!

NOTE ON TRANSLATIONS: to use this super cool feature on a laptop, hover over the text. to use it on mobile, CLICK on the text. this is the first time I've used this coding so please kindly let me know if you run into any user issues so i can fix it moving forward x

TIMELINE NOTES:
- in this iteration of things, ilya still goes to russia and still has the phone call with shane in march, but it’s to handle the situation with his father’s memory. his father is still alive during this and when shane and ilya are at the cottage.
- this would take place sometime in the nebulous timeline gap between january and june, before ilya signs with ottawa in july and shane comes out to his team in october. (book timeline)
- HOWEVER. i do like the choice from the show to make them childhood friends, so i’m keeping that aspect

When Ilya comes to stay with her for the funeral, Svetlana thinks about the year that Irina died. 

Grief, she thinks, often has a way of shrinking someone down to the age they’d been when they first felt it; Ilya had been twelve years old back then, and he’s twelve again now, small and sad on her carpet, with his head in her lap and her nails in his hair as if she can pull out the bad thoughts with each pass of her fingertips. 

When they were younger, he spent months here, avoiding home. They would spread out across her floor and make plans, her pinpoint strategies and Ilya’s stubborn passion, a looming desperation overhead; Russia has not been kind to either of them, but Ilya was never built to endure it the way that she could. They both knew it. 

And so he’d left, and she’d followed for a while, familiarity in the form of a soft mouth and a willing body, if it meant sex or if it meant holding him just like this, speaking to him gently in a language he no longer heard those types of things from even when he desperately craved them. For a while when he was gone, Ilya had been truly happy, and Svetlana did not worry so much, so often. 

But then Grigori died and despite the fact that underneath it all she thinks Ilya might be feeling some sort of mangled relief, the grief has sunk its claws into him again. Dragged him back down to a boy on her floor again, avoiding the sunlight and refusing to cry. 

Stripped to its simplest form, it is a bad day. They have survived much worse together before. 

Before, though, she could help. Before, there were pieces of Ilya that have since scabbed over—still there, she knows, but not hers anymore. Not where she can reach them and pick out the salt, soothe the burn. 

She does not mind this. She’d known that she would not have all of Ilya, forever. Things are different between them, but the love is still there. That will never leave. 

But it means that when he suffers like this, it aches for her too. 

“Ilyusha,” she says, “Ty ne yesh'. Ty ne spish'. Ty dazhe pochti ne razgovarivayesh' so mnoy. Ya bespokoyus' o tebe.”“you are not eating. You are not sleeping. You will barely even talk to me. I am worried about you.”

She slips her keys into the bowl beside the door and eases off her shoes, crossing through the darkness of her apartment to reach the sofa. Ilya is precisely where he’d been when she left this morning, the television across the room casting shadows on the hollows of his face, the blank echo of his eyes. 

“Ya chertovski ustal. Mne seychas ne khochetsya razgovarivat', Sveta.”“I’m fucking exhausted. I do not feel like talking right now, Sveta.”

She sighs, folding her legs to sit on the floor in front of the couch. She faces Ilya while Ilya lies on his side and stares at the moving pictures, seeing but not watching. Her hand lifts, sweeping some of the hair from his forehead. 

“Ty razgovarival so svoyey Dzheyn?” “Have you spoken to your Jane?”

Ilya’s chest rattles on the next inhale, and then his shoulder twitches. She can hear the click of his throat when he swallows, see the wobble of his lip before the tears fill his eyes, before he squeezes them shut and tries to stop it. 

“Oh, Ilyusha.” 

She holds him until he falls back into a restless sleep. There is a glass of vodka on the table beside him, half-drunk but not his first of the day. She expects to see cigarettes or smoke as well, but they’re nowhere to be found. 

His phone rests face down on the carpet by the couch. Svetlana picks it up and takes it over to the charger by the wall so that it’ll be ready if he needs it. 

When she plugs it in, it’s nearly dead. The screen lights up with the charging signal, and when that fades, there are two new messages from Jane at the top of his notifications. They have been texting often since she’d picked Ilya up from the airport. 

The previews are hidden, but the phone unlocks automatically with her facial recognition. Svetlana’s thumb hovers above the lock button on the side, hesitating briefly. She glances back up to Ilya on the sofa, to the closed blinds and the bottle of vodka, to the flickering TV and the frown twisting his lips, even in sleep. 

She can give him something this time that twelve year old Ilya did not have, she thinks. 

She finds her own phone in her purse, quiet and careful, and clicks add new contact. And then she flexes her fingers, ready to strategize for a second time. 

She is going to need a plane. 

+

Grigori’s funeral is long and dull, and Svetlana spends the majority of it ensuring that Ilya doesn’t hurt someone or provoke someone into hurting him. 

There are traditions—religious rituals, burial proceedings, family meals. Most of them only still here to discuss the specifics of the will. They are a greedy family, and she has watched them take and take and take from Ilya for years. After this, she hopes, there will be no more. 

By the time they are able to leave and go back to her apartment, it is dark and cold outside again. The wind whistles like a tunnel even in the open air, skin pale and the tips of their noses red. Ilya used to make a joke about this kind of weather, something like—if our breath is going to be smoke anyway, we might as well have one, and Svetlana would laugh and take his cigarette between her knuckles, grateful for the fleeting warmth of their fingertips as they traded it back and forth. 

Today, they don’t smoke, even if Ilya’s hand twitches like muscle memory. Searching for something else now, maybe. 

She wraps his scarf tight around his neck and gets him outside and into the car and back to her place, checking her phone while he rests his forehead against the cold window and closes his eyes. Through the sidewalks and corridors, up the stairs, her own skin picked raw at her thumb. She does not like keeping secrets from Ilya, even if they are for his own good. 

He does not like the overhead lights on right now so she turns on the lamps instead as Ilya braces a hand against the wall and kicks off his shoes. She walks further into the apartment toward the kitchen, Ilya’s footsteps sluggish behind her as he yanks at the collar of his shirt. 

“Ya tak ustal, Sveta. Ya prosto khochu spat'.”“I am so tired, Sveta. I just want to sleep,” he says.

There’s a muffled scratch of one of her barstools against the tile near the island, the thud of a shoe hitting the floor. She reaches down to flick on the floor lamp by the dining table, and soft light floods the room. She steps out of the way and lets Ilya trail in behind her, still rubbing at his temples. 

He makes a confused noise when she stops abruptly, turning to look at her. Before she can say anything, though—

“Ilya?” 

Shane Hollander stands on the opposite side of the kitchen in dark jeans and a hoodie, his own face tired after a long day spent traveling and a long night of careful planning before that. Half the time Svetlana doesn’t have much use for the fancy things her father has set up for her disposal, but occasionally, she thinks, it pays to be able to pull some strings. 

Ilya blinks hard once, then again, as if convinced he’s seeing a mirage. His fingers twitch again. 

“Shane?” he rasps. 

Hollander takes a step forward, but Ilya spins on Svetlana before he can make it far. 

“Chto ty nadelala?”“What did you do?” he hisses at her, eyes wide and scared, young all over again.“On ne mozhet byt' zdes'. Oni... Eto slishkom opasno, Sveta. O chem ty dumala?”“He cannot be here. They will—it is too dangerous, Sveta. What were you thinking?”

“Ya pozabotilas' o yego bezopasnosti. Ya ne podvergla by yego opasnosti, Ilyusha. Yego nikto ne videl. Obeshchayu.”“I made sure he was safe. I would not put him at risk, Ilyusha. He was not seen. I promise.” She reaches out, presses a hand against his cheek. “On byl tebe nuzhen. I teper' on zdes'.”“You needed him. And now he is here.”

He shakes his head, but he doesn’t deny it. His chin dents in the middle underneath his lip, trembling. As if he can’t bear to glance over and make sure Hollander is still there, he squeezes his eyes shut. 

“I…” 

“It’s okay,” Svetlana says, in English this time, wiping away a tear with her thumb. She offers him a small smile, then nods in Hollander’s direction. 

Ilya’s head dips further and shakes again, chin touching his chest. His quivering mouth keeps in a sob but he whimpers, hard lines creasing his face. 

“Ilya,” Hollander says, sounding equally as distressed. 

Something in him gives out, his face turning finally. He takes one look at Hollander and falls in his direction, reaching him narrowly in time to bury a sob into his shoulder. 

Svetlana watches them for a moment; the tight pinch of Hollander’s eyes as he presses his mouth to Ilya’s ear and calls him baby, the fold of Ilya’s arms around his middle, knuckles white where he makes fists of Hollander’s hoodie. 

He is twelve and clutching at her shoulders again, sixteen and letting her hold ice against his cheek, twenty-one and sinking into her like an exhale, barely twenty-four when Svetlana looks over at him and thinks something’s different now. You look happy. You look like you could be happy.

He is twenty-six in her kitchen and holding onto the love of his life, and Svetlana can breathe again without worrying that he will stop. 

Hollander presses a hand to the back of his head, opens his eyes, finds hers over Ilya’s trembling shoulders. He offers her a watery smile. 

“Thank you.”  

“Thank you,” she returns. She looks at Ilya again. “You will care for him. Da?” 

His fingers spread, slide down to cup the back of Ilya’s neck, his expression tinged with determination now. “Of course.” 

Svetlana smiles. “Good. It is very nice to meet you, Dzheyn.”Jane.”

She leaves food in the kitchen, the shoes by the door, the lamps still on as she collects a bag and slips out of the apartment for the night, locking it behind her. They have good memories here together, her and Ilya, but time has weathered the corners, watered down the weight. This will probably be the last time Ilya comes back, she thinks. 

Svetlana slips behind the wheel of her car and cracks the window, rifling through the glove compartment for a lighter. The cigarette burns bright in the darkness of the front seat, snow falling soft around the headlights. 

She hopes the last taste of Russia for him is smoke and laughter and his mother’s smile, is hope instead of always fear. 

In spite of the cold, the cigarette in her hand burns and burns.

i'm on tumblr @ anincompletelist x

(and thank you to A over on there for your very kind and helpful notes on the russian! x)