Chapter Text
Heavy steel rafters hung low over the arena as a restless audience milled along the bleachers. A sea of white stretched before Ilya's eyes, taking the form of an ice rink, one he was certain he had seen before. He had a bird's eye view from the balcony, and a dark-haired man glided across the ice below him, skating in time to a vaguely familiar piece of classical music—a song that Ilya couldn’t place, even as it echoed of some half-remembered fondness, of his mother’s fingers against a yellowed page of sheet music and the scent of honeyed medovik.
Ilya tried to pull away, only to cringe against the pain that shot up his arms. He looked down, confused when he was met with the sight of thick metal bolts that split his knuckles, spearing through his palms and keeping his hands pinned to the railing.
Finally, Ilya placed the rink, recognizing Sochi. Or someplace very like Sochi.
The ice skater below him danced with an impossible precision. The dark length of his legs seemed to shift with the tempo, as though his height were not quite fixed. The song grew faster, its familiarity fading as Ilya’s eyes struggled to continue tracking the skater. His blades left markings on the ice, a message that Ilya couldn’t decode before the rising water caught his attention, seeping through the rink, matching the pace of Ilya’s familiar, slow-moving dread.
Ilya looked for someone to intervene, some Olympic Committee representative, but the skater continued the routine. He opened his mouth to shout, looking to give a warning, but he was too far away, too high above the crowd to expect to be heard.
“Hey.”
The voice that broke Ilya from his stupor was laced with an ignorant sort of danger. Shane Hollander stood somewhere to his left. Ilya could see him in his periphery, wearing white and red, Team Canada with his soft voice and maple leaf motifs.
Ilya couldn’t turn his neck to look at him. He tried, but a steel rod sat against his back, digging into his spine with a bruising force. He couldn’t do more than watch the sinking ice skater, passively consuming this public execution. The skater was crying now. Ilya still couldn’t see his face, but the fear was an airborne contagion, a palpable scent. He couldn’t breathe against that fear.
“Not here.” Ilya’s words were pre-written, but he wouldn’t question them. Hollander wasn’t safe here. There was a danger hurtling towards Ilya. Why wouldn’t Hollander get out of the way?
“No, I’m not… I saw you up here. I wanted to see how you’re doing.”
Ilya could see what Hollander was trying for, offering him gentleness. He couldn’t accept it here. They would drown him like they drowned the figure skater. This wasn’t Hollander’s bedroom, or even some Canadian hotel. Here, that tenderness was a threat. A vice.
“Fine. Go sit down.” With a wrenching effort, Ilya managed to turn his head, watching Hollander stand only a few feet away. Snow fell from the arena rafters and dusted the Canadian’s shoulders, coating his dark hair with a powdery white finish. Even so, Hollander looked warm, and Ilya found a relief in that. Frost crawled along his own veins, a bone deep chill that Ilya would never be able to thaw. But Shane Hollander was warm. That counted for something.
“We had-”
“We are not anything.” Ilya interrupted the sentence, unable to allow Hollander to finish it. There wasn’t a bearable ending, not one that Ilya could imagine. “Go away, Hollander.”
“Are you okay?”
“Please. Go.”
“You didn’t answer my text.”
A stray cat that Ilya had taken to feeding, it was Ilya’s fault that Hollander thought he could linger at this door. Now, it was Ilya’s responsibility to drive Hollander away.
“No, I did not answer your boring text. Now, will you go?”
“Fine… Fuck.”
Hollander fell away. Maybe he fell over the balcony. Ilya wouldn’t know. He lay in bed, now, watching as Alexei stood over him. His brother’s face kept changing, like his mouth and his nose couldn’t align.
A woman cried in the next room. Ilya recognized her. He wanted to help her, but he knew she was beyond his protection. Something bad was going to happen.
Something bad had already happened.
Ilya’s lungs burned with the mingled scent of blood and disinfectant, as his shoulders seized with a raw sob of fear. The room was white, like it was waiting for Ilya to mar its sterility. He couldn’t focus his eyes, dizzy as he tried to track the movement of too many medical professionals, tried to catalogue the hands that were staunching the bleeding.
“Ilya? Ilya?” Hollander was talking to him in this place, too. Ilya couldn’t find him, though, too distracted by the sharp twinge of pain across his ribs.
“S balkona,” he murmured, mostly to himself, remembering where Hollander had gone. Over the balcony. Into the water.
When Ilya woke the second time, the room was no longer spinning. Instead, it seemed to rock back and forth with a dizzying irregularity, leaving him to scrabble for purchase, certain that he was about to be thrown against the wall. Only a single nurse attended to him now, a young woman making notes on a clipboard while dressed in blue scrubs, red hair pinned back.
“Mr. Rozanov?” She asked.
“Yes,” Ilya answered. The word ghosted over his lips, voice hoarse against the quiet room. “Where am I?”
“I’m going to call the doctor.”
She stepped outside, leaving Ilya to blink against the harsh lights. His eyes were heavy, but he was afraid to close them, afraid of returning to Sochi. He tried to take stock of his surroundings, recognizing that this must be a hospital, that he was hooked up to machines that beeped and clicked. There was nothing unusual about it. A window with drawn curtains. A few chairs. A sink.
He struggled to move his limbs, finding they were slow to respond to his commands. He was plagued with the strange certainty that he should be hurting, but he couldn’t quite register it. His muscles housed an echo of pain, dulled in the swaying hospital room.
Ilya couldn’t have said how long he lay there, staring at the ceiling, trying to remember how he came to be resting in a hospital bed, but at some point, another woman entered. She wore a white coat, and her dark hair was twisted away from her face. Something austere lingered in her expression, in the wrinkles around her lips and the deep set of her brows, but when she spoke, her voice was gentle.
“Hi, Mr. Rozanov. My name is Dr. Alina Gombert. I’m sure you feel afraid right now, but you’re going to be alright.” She pulled a stool close to Ilya’s bed, taking a seat. “Do you remember what happened before you came here?”
Ilya’s throat felt too tight and dry to give an immediate answer. He shook his head, swallowing as he scrabbled to find his English words. “No. I don’t.”
Dr. Gombert nodded. “That’s normal. Yesterday, you were in a car crash. You have some injuries to your body, but nothing is broken. You do have a concussion, though, and we need to assess how it may be impacting you. I need to ask you some questions. Are you okay to talk with me for a bit?”
Ilya nodded once, struggling with the new wave of dizziness that reverberated through his body when he moved his head. He closed his eyes, trying to breathe through his nose. “Can I have water first?”
Ilya didn't see who produced the water, too focused on regaining control of his breathing. However, a plastic cup had appeared by the time he opened his eyes, and he sipped on the water while Dr. Gombert questioned him. Her initial tasks were easy enough—counting backwards, listing vegetables, touching his finger to his nose. Even so, Ilya struggled to stay focused, at one point wishing it were possible to ask for a Russian speaking doctor. He knew the request was likely difficult to fulfill in Boston, so he didn’t bother to voice it.
Ilya kept waiting for the exam to demand something difficult of him. It never did, but Ilya struggled anyways, flubbing Dr. Gombert's simple questions. He wasn’t sure if it was 2014 or 2015, and the name of the Boston Raiders wouldn’t come to him immediately. A few of the questions felt almost invasive, asking Ilya for details of his childhood. He didn’t have the energy to argue the practice, though, simply digging through his brain to turn over the information the doctor requested.
Eventually, the questioning stopped, and Ilya let out a breath.
“Thank you, Mr. Rozanov,” Dr. Gombert said, still gentle with him. “I know that there were a lot of questions, and you did very well.” She was quiet for a moment. “Memory after accidents like yours can be a really complicated thing-”
“I am missing memory, yes?” Ilya interrupted her, too fatigued to tolerate her cautious bedside manner. He could read it in her face. The pain medication couldn’t dull his perception that far. “How much?”
Dr. Gombert hesitated. “I think you’re missing about seven years of memory.”
The beeping of the machines dropped to a low roar, nausea rising in Ilya’s throat. “Seven years?” He repeated, ensuring he had understood.
“Yes,” Dr. Gombert answered, giving a single precise nod. “You can imagine your life has had a lot of changes in that time. The memories might come back, but we can’t say for sure.”
Ilya nodded, trying to count his breaths, closing his eyes to collect himself. “Has anyone called my family?” Ilya couldn’t say what he expected his brother to do, all the way in Russia. The very thought of Alexei offering assistance made him feel hysterical, panicked laughter bubbling up against the underside of his throat. But he couldn’t find another question to ask, unsure of how he would go about reconstructing seven years of time when he could barely string a sentence together.
“Yes,” Dr. Gombert answered, nodding again. “Um, so last year, you were married to a man named Shane Hollander.”
And at that, Ilya actually did laugh.