anyway sometimes i think abt how yes ilya left his mother's grave behind, & every other piece of her aside from the necklace, but when he was outed he was forced to leave behind everything else too. the first hockey stick he ever played with that he'll never be able to give his kids. all/any childhood photos that the hollanders might've wanted to see or frame or use in a fucking anniversary slideshow for god's sake. baby blankets & toddler skates & anything else he might've touched or been. his mother's recipes or clothes she knit for him, his first jersey, baby teeth, a strand of lighter near white blond baby hair from a first haircut. ilya was not born until age 17 to these people & now he's frozen this way.
one can ofc hope that maybe svetlana can go & bring some things back, but andrei might've burned it all, thrown it all out, lost it, or just flat out refuse, out of jealousy or petty rage idk. more than that, he will lose parts of himself purely to time without a photo or a visit or a way to remember it. he'll forget the exact route he used to walk from practice, the rink he used to practice at as a kid, the bakery down the street he & his mom would visit, the smell of his favorite meal cooking in the kitchen, or her shower soap, or the way her fingers felt against his forehead when he was sick (frail? skinny? warm? strong? there's no way to know). he forgets the exact shade of irina's hair & eyes & if in fact it's the same precise color as his or if that's just his memory trying to comfort him, soothe some jagged grief deep within him. moscow slang & the way the russian language changes over the decades. even just the accent, fading over the years.
ilya talks abt how he was born again, awakened, turned alive the second he met shane, had his breath stolen by polite nervous canadian chatter & stunning freckles, but i don't think we consider enough that to be born again you have to die first. mourning. god help him
