part of me genuinely believes that Alexei and Ilya didn’t always hate each other. honestly, I think they were probably incredibly close when they were kids. protective of each other, even. people tend to look at their relationship through the lens of who they became as adults, but I don’t think that’s where the story starts. yeah, Ilya played hockey from a young age. yeah, he was good at it. yeah, it brought attention. but hockey wasn’t Alexei’s thing, so I don’t think it would’ve mattered much to him at first. they were just brothers. two boys growing up in the same house, with the same mother and father, navigating the same family.
and then Irina died. that’s the point where everything starts to go bad. because Grigori suddenly had all this anger, grief, and disappointment with nowhere to put it, and he chose Ilya as the target. the hockey prodigy. the son who could still be molded into something. and I imagine part of Alexei knew it was wrong. maybe part of him even wanted to protect Ilya from it.
but at the same time, all he could see was that their father was still paying attention to Ilya. it didn’t matter that it was cruel attention. it didn’t matter that it came in the form of criticism, pressure, and impossible expectations. to a neglected child, attention is attention. and meanwhile Alexei is standing on the outside looking in, grieving the same mother, losing the same father in a different way, and watching all of the focus continue to fall on his younger brother. that’s where I think the jealousy starts. not because Ilya did anything wrong, but because grief makes people irrational. because children don’t always understand that abuse and favoritism aren’t the same thing. because sometimes it’s easier to resent the person standing next to you than the parent who failed you both.
and then years pass. one brother becomes a hockey superstar. one brother struggles financially. one gets opportunities, money, fame, and a life beyond Russia. the other stays behind. and all those childhood wounds that never healed get layered over with adult resentment until neither of them really knows where one feeling ends and the other begins.
but even now, I still don’t think they hate each other. I think they hate what happened to them. I think they hate the years they lost. I think they hate that every conversation comes loaded with decades of jealousy, guilt, grief, and misunderstanding. I think there’s a part of both of them that wishes things could go back to before Irina died, before their father turned the house into a battleground, before they stopped being brothers and started becoming symbols of everything the other one lacked.
I think this ties into why Ilya “dislikes” Hayden so much. because Hayden is basically a brother to Shane. he’s probably the person Shane is closest to in the hockey world outside of Ilya himself. there’s trust there, loyalty, history. the kind of brotherhood that comes naturally when you’ve grown up alongside someone. and I think Ilya is deeply envious of that. not because he wants Shane and Hayden apart, but because every time he sees them together, he’s being reminded of something he lost. he’s looking at a version of brotherhood that survived adulthood, survived conflict, survived life, and he can’t relate to it anymore. so instead of acknowledging that hurt, he directs it at Hayden. it’s easier to roll his eyes, make snarky comments, and act annoyed than it is to admit that seeing Shane and Hayden together reminds him of what he and Alexei could have been if their family hadn’t fallen apart.
maybe there’s fear there, too. because the only brotherhood Ilya really knows is the one he had with Alexei. the one that started with love and ended with resentment. the one that slowly corroded under years of grief and jealousy until neither of them knew how to fix it. so maybe part of him looks at Hayden and worries that one day Shane will be hurt the way he was. that Hayden will disappoint him. betray him. resent him. because that’s the framework Ilya has for what happens to brothers. not because Hayden has ever given him a reason to think that, but because Alexei did. and when your entire understanding of family is shaped by loss, sometimes it’s hard to believe that other people get to keep theirs.