Summary:

This was what tended to scare Shane the most, when Ilya was unwell: the gradual loss of him, despite being physically there. He would go quiet, blank, slow to speak and slow to respond, nothing like the pulse of intense energy and liveliness that sparked in him at his baseline. Shane missed him, when he was away in that place. It was not a place Ilya could always describe, and it was not somewhere Shane could rescue him from, or even join him in for company. So Shane waited, every time, for him to come back. He always came back. That was the only relief in it.