thinking about ilya who ignored his brother’s calls for weeks and weeks and weeks until he’s had enough, finally takes the call, after that heady rush he gets from playing against shane, and alexei tells him their father is dead.
and even before ilya steps into his brother’s orbit in moscow, all he hears ringing in his head is he is dead, ilya, our father is dead. and you weren’t here. you weren’t with him when he died. you could’ve been if you’d fucking picked up your phone. but you didn’t and now he’s dead. you haven’t even seen him in almost a year. but he’s called you often, more often than ever before, and he always asked for you, he remembered you, he didn’t remember alexei, he didn’t remember polina, he remembered you, and you weren’t there when he died.
and he hears the same from alexei, hears you selfish piece of shit, big shot hockey player too good for his family, can’t even be here to take care of his dying father. why weren’t you here? hockey? you’re always looking for excuses, ilya.
reads and hears the same thing in the news: ilya rozanov absent for his father’s death. he didn’t care enough to come be by his dying father’s side. left the family burdened with it. he did not honour his father. what an ungrateful son. how arrogant. put hockey over family.
and he sinks into it, into all these terrible things people are saying about him, and he thinks, yes, this is me, this is who i am, an ungrateful son who abandoned his sick and dying father, arrogant, i didn’t want to talk to my brother so much i forgot about my dying father, i ignored i have a dying father, i put it off for so long and now—
and then his phone flashes with a missed call from shane—a missed call, they don’t do that, they don’t call each other, but shane did, shane called, and something fucking comes undone in him. it’s big. enormous. it unspools quicker and quicker and he doesn’t know how long he can keep it in. but he’s calling shane back, and shane says sorry when he hears about his father’a death. he says sorry and you should take more time and i want to help, and ilya thinks that maybe what everyone is saying about him isn’t true, and maybe for the first time, he really believes that.
