Archive of Our Own

Their daughter is born at the end of June while rain falls in sheets over the city, steaming the sidewalk as the week-long heatwave finally breaks. It’s a difficult labour, but Shane doesn’t remember much of it once it’s over.

(Only hoping that he could push her out and getting cut open instead. Only staring at a doctor with his hands inside his stomach and not saying a word until he heard her cry.)

They all tell him that’s a blessing

“You did it, moy lyubimiy,” Ilya tells him afterwards, resting one hand on Shane’s head and the other on the baby’s. “She’s perfect.”

Even through the drug-induced haze, Shane knows that to be true. 

Her features are perfectly formed, with dark brown eyes, tufts of black hair, and ten tiny fingers. She almost looks unreal with how perfect she is, like someone sculpted her on purpose.

He never told Ilya, but he spent most of the pregnancy worried that she would come out looking like a half-formed alien, or something other than human. Even after ultrasounds confirmed that nothing was wrong, he had nightmares about giving birth to a hybrid-monster, so the relief that came with seeing her whole and healthy was earth-shattering.

Finally, he can breathe. He has fulfilled his end of the bargain, and now they can enjoy the spoils together after the loneliness of growing a baby inside of him. Despite Jackie and Hayden’s warnings that the first few nights are the hardest, Shane feels cautiously optimistic on the drive back to the cottage.

“You’re going too slow,” he tells Ilya, who insists on driving since Shane has only just got out of surgery.

Ilya looks over at him with an unbearably fond expression and says, “We have precious cargo,” glancing back at the baby.

“Are you sure you don’t want us to come over?” his mom asks over the phone once they arrive. 

He pictures her standing in her own cottage, just a couple of miles away, pacing back and forth. They’ve spent a lot of time together over the pregnancy, which took more out of him than he expected, given the close attention he pays to his health. 

“It’s fine, Mom,” Shane says. “Things need to get back to normal at some point.”

“Well, you won’t have that for a while, sweetheart,” his mom replies, laughing lightly.

Shane doesn’t reply right away. He’s so tired, but being back in his own space is already soothing his nerves. If it weren’t for the baby latched to his chest, it would almost feel like a typical day. Like nothing has happened at all.

But she is heavy in his arms, impossible to ignore. He wants to lie down now, so he lets Ilya take her, lingering in the doorway just out of sight to observe them together.

They fit so well, like puzzle pieces slotting in place. Ilya hasn’t stopped smiling since they got home, and Shane is beginning to think he never will. 

As he lies in bed, he twists his own mouth up into a smile, trying on the expression to check if it still fits. He can feel each facial muscle tugging upwards and hopes the sensitivity will fade soon. He doesn’t like feeling so much of his body all the time. 

Nine months of cramps, nausea, and headaches were more than enough to deal with. He should be able to smile in peace.

When he wakes up again, the baby is screaming, and Ilya is kneeling next to him with an apologetic smile, holding her up like an offering

Shane barely moves, other than to take her in one arm while propping himself up a little. 

“How are you feeling?” Ilya asks, running a hand over Shane’s forehead.

Shane shrugs, glancing down at the top of the baby’s dark hair. 

“It’s weird,” Shane says. “Like something’s missing.”

Ilya hums, his eyes flitting to the bump where the baby was until just yesterday. His stomach is still distended, though softer than before, like his body hasn’t caught up to what just happened yet. 

Shane isn’t sure that’s what he meant, but maybe Ilya’s right. Something was inside him, and now that thing is out in the world, a separate being that’s able to live and breathe without him. 

He’s sure he read somewhere that babies don’t know they are a separate person from their parent until six months, but the baby doesn’t cry when Ilya takes her away so he can rest. She isn’t hungry anymore, and that was apparently all she wanted from him.

Something strange curls in his gut, just around where the baby used to be.

Over the next few days, neither of them gets much sleep. Ilya herds off the stream of friends and colleagues who want to wish them well with practised ease, giving the three of them space to settle into their new routine, or lack thereof. 

On the third day, Shane asks Ilya if their coach has been in contact, if he has any idea when Ilya is getting back on the ice.

He says our because, even though he retired last year, Ilya still calls it our team, our trophy. So it is our coach, despite the sick feeling saying that sometimes gives Shane.

“They’re not rushing it,” Ilya says, waving away his question like it isn’t relevant. Like hockey isn’t the basis for everything they have here. “I want to spend as much time as I can with my little malyshka. Both of you.”

“I know,” Shane replies, “but you have to go back sometime. You already missed most of the playoffs.”

Ilya rolls his eyes, playfully batting away his concern. “I don’t think I will go back, actually.”

A cold chill runs down Shane’s spine.

“What?”

Ilya, noticing the change in his expression, leans into him, the baby settled in his lap for now.

“I don’t mean ever,” he says, though Shane isn’t sure he believes that. “But the off-season is soon anyway. I will have a few months to enjoy my family. That’s not so bad, is it?”

But it isn’t what Shane expected. He thought a few sleepless nights of piercing screams, and Ilya would want to be back on the ice as soon as possible, at least to finish out the playoffs. They have a good chance of winning this year, too, with the newer crop of players really working to prove themselves.

Then Shane would have a few weeks to acclimatise – to get good at the parenting thing so that, when Ilya came back, he’d be amazed at how well Shane had taken to fatherhood.

“Hey,” Ilya says, offering a small reprieve from his silent spiral. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” Shane whispers, feeling like the night is suddenly too quiet. There’s nothing to distract them from the conversation they’re pointedly not having.

Ilya worries his lip for a moment – a habit Shane has been trying to get him to quit for years now – then he asks, “Is it the baby? Do you not…want me around her?”

It’s the sort of thing Galina is always telling them to do. Communicate their worries before they grow into something bigger. It’s the sort of thing the Ilya he knew in their early twenties never would’ve asked.

“No! That’s not what I’m saying.”

But he’s not a million miles off, either. It’s not that Shane doesn’t want him around the baby. More like he doesn’t want him around Shane with the baby. Not until he knows what he’s doing.

He doesn’t know how to explain this to Ilya, though, so he doesn’t try. Galina wouldn’t be very happy with him.

“I’m just worried.”

“About what?” Ilya asks, his anxieties smoothed away as he directs it at Shane instead.

“Everything,” he admits. “Just a constant stream of worry from the second I wake up. Is that normal?”

At this, Ilya offers a tepid smile, meant to placate. “I think so, moy lyubimiy. I wish I could make it better for you.”

Shane lets his head fall to Ilya’s shoulder, wondering if there’s anything he could say that would actually reassure him. He’s not even sure what he’s so afraid of. All he knows is that he looks at the baby and feels all his muscles tighten, his breath stagnate in his lungs, like his whole body is a held breath, waiting for something to happen.

“It gets easier after a few weeks, Pikes say,” Ilya mutters into his hair, pressing a gentle kiss to his head. “They’re the baby experts.”

“I know,” Shane murmurs, shifting as his bones get ten times heavier. His body is all out of shape, right down to its foundations. It will never go back to the way it was before.

After a while, he’s almost drifted off to sleep, resting his head against Ilya’s chest when he hears him say softly, “It gets easier, moy lyubimiy. I feel it too.”

He really wants to believe that – to believe that he is not alone in the confusion, and the anxiety, and the endless uncertainty over what they’ve created together. 

But if Ilya knew what was really in Shane's heart, late at night when he doesn’t have the strength to deny it, he wouldn’t say things like that. 

Because Shane is worried he’s made a mistake, and he thinks the baby can sense that.

They started trying a month after Shane retired. 

He’d known Ilya wanted kids for a while, and Shane wasn’t opposed to the idea; it just didn’t fit in with their lifestyles, so it didn’t need thinking about. 

But then his back failed him. He could only push through the pain so long before it affected his performance and, at 36, he was already on his way out. Everyone agreed it was time to let go, hang things up, before it just got sad to watch. 

Shane barely let himself think about it. He went on until it was unbearable to do so any longer, not because of the pain itself, but the stares and quiet reassurances from his teammates who knew he couldn’t be the player he used to be anymore.

When Ilya lightly suggested quitting once the season ended so they could begin retirement together, Shane reacted with such sudden and unexpected anger that he never brought it up again. Shane was ashamed of himself for lashing out, but it was hard not to when his husband was suggesting ending his career early out of pity for his situation.

If Shane had the choice, he would never have left the ice, but that had been taken from him, too. Ilya still had that choice and wanted to throw it all away. Shane let him know very firmly that he wouldn’t do so in Shane’s name.

Everyone wanted to know what he was going to do with his time now that he didn’t have hockey to occupy every second of the day.

Some asked it jokingly. Others, like his mom and Ilya, asked it with the gravity the question deserved.

He could tell they were worried.

Shane was worried, too.

There had never been a time in his life when hockey was not the goal, where he wasn’t striving for the next cup, or personal record, or contract. He didn’t even know what to think about anymore.

That’s when the idea of starting a family came back to him.

Ilya mentioned it off-handedly one night after winning a game that Shane watched alone at the cottage, like it was something he had wanted once but given up on ever happening. Quietly, Shane latched on.

Within the week, he asked if Ilya would mind if he stopped taking birth control, and didn’t give him a clear answer when he asked why. Only a small smile and then a kiss, which deepened into sex the way it often did in the short bursts Ilya spent at home.

Maybe if Ilya hadn’t been so attached to the idea of the baby – or so surprised by Shane’s sudden acceptance of that idea – then he would’ve hit the brakes, slowed them down a little so they could talk things out.

But Shane didn’t want to talk. He wanted the family, the domestic life that Hayden and Scott and so many of his friends seemed to enjoy so much. He could give Ilya that. He could give himself value again.

So there was never a conversation. Just an end to anything that might prevent a pregnancy. Followed by as much sex as they could fit into the short hours they had together.

Ilya was relieved, Shane could tell. He told him he was acting like himself again, and Shane thought that was meant as a compliment.

When he had the first symptom – a deep, unabating nausea – Shane only allowed himself one day of panic before buying a dozen tests and taking them all at once.

He didn’t dare look at them until the twenty minutes were up, but it still felt like an anti-climax when all they did was confirm what he knew somewhere deep within his body to be true.

He searched inside himself for what he felt while staring down at the positive symbol. What he pulled out wasn’t excitement, exactly, but something closer to relief. He’d cleared the first obstacle – the plan he had made was set in motion. 

When he showed it to Ilya, the calmness he wore gave nothing away. All he offered was a raised brow and a quirk in the corner of his mouth that asked, What do you think?

On the quiet nights, the ones that come late, he recalls the look on Ilya’s face when he realised what he was looking at, the way he kissed Shane like he had finally given him everything he had ever wanted, and it reassures the part of him that senses the wrongness of their situation.

When it came to the pregnancy itself, it was somehow both worse and better than Shane expected. 

Everything he was afraid of happened. He gained weight, his muscles wasted away, he was exhausted or sick or in pain most of the time, and he felt like crying whenever he wasn’t. 

Once his parents got over their initial shock, they were very supportive, coming over for meals whenever Shane felt like cutting back, trying to lose some of the weight he was rapidly piling on.

But it wasn’t all terrible. 

He was still able to exercise, though it was far lighter than before. He could carefully monitor his diet to make sure he was getting all the right nutrients, and no one could tell him to stop because the baby needed them to. The baby was an excuse for a lot of things, including why he didn’t travel out to see The Centaurs play anymore.

Every new person they told about the pregnancy reacted with the same surprise that was quickly wiped from their faces, replaced by praise and well-wishes. 

But their initial reactions stuck in Shane’s mind for a long time after. 

Did they not think he would be a good father? Did they think he wouldn’t be able to handle it?

“That’s not what they mean,” Ilya reassured him when Shane brought it up. “They’re just surprised.”

“But why?” Shane asked. What was so wrong with him?

Ilya, for once, seemed stuck for words. Or maybe he just knew the answer and didn’t want Shane to hear it.

“I think it just…was unlikely. For you.”

After that, Shane had a dozen more questions to ask, but he chose to take the easy way out and ask none of them. It wasn’t fear, he told himself. It just didn’t matter what anyone thought. He was having this baby. It was too late to turn back.

Summer beats down with unrelenting heat. His body seems to have slowed in its healing, leaving him with an ache that never quite goes away, except for when he’s very still, and the world is very distant.

He stares over the baby in her crib.

“Do you think she’s sleeping too much? All she ever does is sleep.” 

Ilya shrugs. “Babies need a lot of sleep. She is very busy getting big and strong like her daddies.”

Shane doesn’t acknowledge how untrue that is. Ilya is strong. Shane’s body is a useless thing.

“I don’t know,” he says. “I think something’s wrong.”

Finally, Ilya looks up from his phone. “What is wrong?”

“Her sleeping,” Shane snaps. 

Ilya looks startled for a moment but quickly smooths it over. 

“Sorry,” Shane says. “I’m sorry.”

“No, don’t– It’s okay.”

“I just don’t like the way she looks like that.”

“Sleeping?”

Shane nods, letting Ilya come over to him and rest a steadying arm around his waist.

“It’s normal, Shanya,” he says. “Our baby is perfect.”

Shane tries to make himself stay as still as possible, allowing the closeness. He doesn’t want to pull away and upset Ilya, even if his touch feels like a scolding brand rather than a comfort right now. 

He does not want his concerns to be acknowledged. Each reassurance only sets them further apart as they take on these new roles.

Ilya doesn’t trust him. That’s all Shane can hear. He thinks he’s making things up. 

But the baby is too small, her chest barely rises when she’s sleeping deeply, and her face is too pale to be normal.

“I think something’s wrong,” he repeats, quieter this time, but Ilya catches it anyway.

“Please, Shanya. You’re going to make yourself sick worrying like this. If something is wrong, she will tell us.”

How? Shane thinks. She’s only a baby. Yet, already, Ilya can read her better than he does. He can sense when she’s crying out of hunger or simply wants to be held. He knows when she’s trying to smile and when her face is just twitching.

She has never once smiled at Shane. 

In the middle of the night, he stares into her eyes while she feeds off him and tries to find some recognition in there. Some sense that she knows him and maybe even loves him, too. But her gaze doesn’t stick to him like it does to Ilya. She is more interested in the ceiling, or the door, or the particles floating in the air between them.

It hurts in a way Shane can’t even articulate to himself, let alone Ilya, who probably wouldn’t believe him anyway.

“She’s asking for you,” he says, bringing her to Shane to hold, carrying her like he’s been doing this for years rather than a single month. 

Shane sits up on the couch, letting Ilya hand her over.

He isn’t surprised when she starts to cry – he can’t even muster the energy to feel bad about it, though it’s there, something buried inside. He must’ve been staring into the carpet for some time because Ilya puts a hand on his shoulder.

“Shane?”

It takes more strength to pull up his gaze than it should.

“Yeah?”

Ilya bites his lip, a tense smile taking over his face.

“Our daughter is hungry, I think.”

“Right,” Shane nods, opening his shirt. 

He feels like a robot with faulty wiring. His programmes aren’t equipped for this new role, so his mind feels full of cotton, like after a bad hit to the head. He knows the baby is in his arms, feeding off him, and that Ilya is standing over him, but he doesn’t feel like he’s there with them. 

It’s disconcerting, and Shane knows he should be concerned but isn’t somehow. It feels like a well-needed break from having to pretend he knows what he’s doing.

But Ilya must see it another way, because he invites his parents to sleep over for a couple of nights. 

“To spend time with the baby,” he says, but Shane knows that isn’t all there is to it. There’s something he’s leaving out, and it must have to do with him.

He doesn’t trust him. 

Ilya doesn’t trust him to take care of the baby.

Another flare of rage surges through him, but Shane manages to push it down before he can say anything he’ll regret. He tries to settle in Ilya’s arms as they watch a replay of one of the last games in the playoffs. 

Their team lost in the semi-finals. 

The reminder rests heavily on his shoulders.

He can’t understand why Ilya doesn’t seem to care. The next season could be his last; he may never win a trophy again, but the baby is all he wants to talk about. 

Shane turns his head away from the screen, burrowing into Ilya’s chest until he can get no closer. Ilya runs his hand through his hair instinctively. For a second, he can almost pretend this is normal. That they are back in the cottage the first time around, realising they were finally allowed to be together. 

Everything seemed so hopeful then. Like there was a clear way ahead, and they could go that way together.

He must’ve known how naive that was, but Shane wanted to believe in the fantasy. They both did. Maybe Ilya still does. Shane pictures Ilya and the baby living here together without him and can almost feel the intensity of Ilya’s happiness. The way he would smile down at her and sing.

Ilya still smiles at Shane sometimes, but it is getting rarer every day. More often than not, Ilya looks at him like a puzzle he’s trying to work out, or a quiz that he’s guessing the answers to.

He used to know him – no guessing required. Shane hardly knows himself these days.

The baby starts crying, and the game is paused. Shane is on his feet before Ilya can react with a quick, “I got it.”

His chest tightens in the nursery, an iron grip around his lungs. He is never calm, not even when he’s sleeping. The grip hardens, becoming more solid every day.

When his parents arrive the next morning, he falls into his mom’s arms like a little kid.

“What’s wrong, sweetie?” she asks once they’re out on the porch, away from Ilya and his dad. 

He doesn’t know where to begin.

“I guess I’m worried about the baby.” His mom nods for him to go on, but Shane isn’t sure how he can elaborate on that. He brings up his most recent concern. “She doesn’t look at me. Not even when I’m the only one in the room.”

She hums a low, calming note.

“Shane, you know, when you were a toddler, you wouldn’t look at me either. I kept wondering, what’s he thinking about in that head of his? But you were still listening. I could tell that. I’m sure she is, too.”

He nods along, but soon finds he’s actually shaking his head, fighting back the tears that spring to his eyes so easily lately.

“Oh, baby,” his mom sighs, pulling him in close and cradling his head between her hands. For a moment, he is a kid again, and the most he has to worry about is whether the other boys on the team will like him. 

“Sorry,” he says, sniffling into her cardigan. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”

“Nothing’s wrong with you, Shane,” she says, pulling him back by the shoulders to look at him properly. “I need you to hear me when I say that. This is all so new for you, baby. There was always going to be an adjustment period.”

Something in the air turns. Inside, a burst of laughter from Ilya and his dad.

He’s so glad Ilya has his parents now. 

Once again, he imagines this house without him in it. The laughter just rings around his head – rings round and round until he finds himself back on the porch.

“Mom, I don’t think she even likes me,” he says flatly. 

Her face falls, and Shane hopes she doesn’t start to cry. He’s not good at comforting babies, let alone grown-ups.

“That’s not true,” she says. “Oh, Shane, that’s not true at all.”

“That’s what Ilya says.”

Neither of them believes him, but they’re not in the room when it’s just him and the baby. They don’t hear the silent conversations between them or see the way he begs her to look at him with his eyes. 

She knows he didn’t think this through. His desperation must have a scent to it.

He doesn’t know what his mom tells Ilya the next morning. Only that they all look at him when he walks in for breakfast with bright, cheery faces that immediately set him on edge.

“Where’s the baby?” he asks, exhausted before the day has even begun. 

When he takes her from her crib, he holds her close to his chest like she might provide some protection between him and the rest of the world.

He can sense what’s coming, but he can’t stop his face from crumpling as his mom says, “We think that it might be a good idea for you to speak to someone.”

The tension practically chokes the air. For a brief, regrettable moment, Shane feels a certain thrill knowing that he has the power to hold a room’s attention like this, but that quickly fades to shame as he tries to parse their expressions.

“Like who?” he asks, making them force the issue. It’s not a very nice thing to do, but Shane doesn’t feel like being nice. He feels like screaming.

“A therapist,” Ilya says, in as neutral a tone as he can manage. “Like Galina.”

“Why?” Shane retorts. He knows he sounds childish, but, in this moment, he can’t bring himself to care. “Because I’m worried about the baby?”

“No,” Ilya replies. “Because all you do is worry. It’s not healthy. You don’t sleep.”

“New parents don’t sleep,” he retorts. “Isn’t that what Hayden and Jackie were telling us.”

“Pike is an idiot.”

Shane pauses, pinned under the weight of their collective gazes and the conversations they must have been having about him behind his back. 

“I’m doing my best,” he says. “I– I am.”

“We know that, baby,” his mom says. “We all do, but you’re not in this alone. Even if you just have one session, that would–”

“Why? Just because I’m having a hard time? I thought you said it’s supposed to be hard.”

“It is, sweetie!”

“Shane, no one’s criticising you, okay? We just want you to feel supported,” his dad says with placating hands.

“You are criticising me! That’s exactly what you’re doing!”

His raised voice disturbs the baby. She starts wailing, drawing up all of the oxygen in the room as their gazes redirect to her. 

Shane frowns, feeling a rush of jealousy as she screams, her face red. If he did the same, they would all think he’s crazy. Maybe there’s something about having a baby that makes you want to act like one, because the idea of screaming feels very appealing right now.

The only mature thing left to do is flee the scene.

“Take her,” he says, handing the baby over to whoever is closest, which happens to be Ilya. “I need a minute.”

His old coach taught him that trick when he was a pre-teen, and being part of a team wasn’t coming easily to him. 

Whenever they’re needling you, just walk away. Give yourself space to calm down.

So he walks. Out of the house, then to the garden, and then to the edge of the lakeshore, where he stamps out all his anger and frustration onto the stony sediment. 

He looks back at the house once it’s well in the distance and feels his lungs opening for air like flowers in the sun. Ilya hasn’t followed him. No one has. If they had let him have his space, this wouldn’t have happened in the first place.

Like those twelve-year-old boys who would rile him up and then leave him to get in trouble for reacting, they’ve managed to get a rise out of him – to prove that the cracks are there.

But before his rage can build again, he hears a loon call and is suddenly made aware of how alone he is out here. His whole life is back at the cottage, contained within its strong walls and carefully shut doors. 

If he keeps going, walking on as long as he wants to, he might never get any of it back. 

He wouldn’t be Shane Hollander anymore.

His body fills with cold dread, dripping down his spine like water. But beneath the fear is a deep, yearning current, tugging him in that direction. 

He wants to go. He wants to run faster than anyone can match so that no one can catch him.

He doesn’t trust his own legs anymore, so he sits by the lake and collapses in on himself like a dying star.

He remembers, years ago, his dad telling him that not all of the stars in the night sky are still out there. Some died millions of years ago, but they’re so far away that the absence of light hasn’t caught up to us yet. 

What would happen to us, he asked, if Earth died? Would they still be able to see us?

No, his dad answered. Earth doesn’t make its own light. They can’t see us anyway.

He stays like that a long time, until the stars hang in the sky that might be living or might be dead. Shane has no way of knowing, and it doesn’t make any difference.

When Ilya sits down beside him, he keeps a small distance between them, like he’s afraid to touch him. Not that Shane can blame him with the way he’s been acting lately.

“I think I need help.”

It’s the sort of thing he can only admit in the dark, once the exhaustion has set in and there’s no one around to hear.

Ilya says nothing. He only breathes in deeply before exhaling and closing the gap between them. Shane is too scared to see the expression on his face, but he imagines it as worn-out and tired. Tired of having to manage Shane’s tremulous moods.

“Okay,” he says, pressing their shoulders together. His steady weight makes everything feel more real, including the shame now doubling down on him. “We will make it better. It’s you and me, don’t worry about…”

Then he makes an all-encompassing gesture to the lake, the forest, and the stars. Everything, Shane supposes he means. Anything.

He decides, for now – for as long as he can manage – to believe Ilya means what he says. At the very least, he believes Ilya thinks he’s right, and that may be enough to carry both of them out of this.

He starts talking to Georgia twice a week, at Galina’s recommendation. She’s quiet, probably so he fills the space with all his inner thoughts. It doesn’t work too well. Their sessions are made up of long, drawn-out silences.

But it makes Ilya happy. Or less worried, at the very least, so Shane keeps it up.

He still doesn’t sleep, but he gets better at lying still instead of pacing the nursery. Everything is still heavy, like twin weights are chained to his ankles, but he searches his face in the mirror each morning and erases the lines of exhaustion as much as he can.

Then, the end of summer, relief from the oppressive heat that had beaten down on the cottage these past few months.

“There’s a training camp beginning next week,” Ilya tells him in the dark of their bedroom one night. “They want me back for it.”

Shane keeps his eyes shut. Better not to give anything away. 

“Okay,” he says carefully. “You should go then.”

“But Shane–”

“Seriously. I can keep it together now, Ilya, I promise. You can go.”

“I know you can,” he says. “But I will miss you both.”

Maybe that’s part of it, but Shane can’t help but feel a little upset that his efforts with the therapist still aren’t paying off. Ilya still doesn’t trust him enough to leave. 

“Ilya, if you don’t go back now, Coach won’t let you play out the season. Then that’s it. There won’t be another one for you.”

Shane hadn’t known his last would be the last. 

He had been playing through the pain for so long that it felt like something that would go on forever. Even when he read up on players’ statistics and worked out the average age of retirement, he never thought it would apply to him. 

He’d be flying across the ice with grey hair at his temples, crows’ nests in the corner of his eyes, racing past the younger players as he had in his prime.

That’s the worst part, Shane sometimes thinks. He didn’t even notice when he slipped past his peak. It was clear when he was slowing down, not making as many goals as he did before, but he could never truly identify his best play. After so many games, they had blurred together in his memory. 

“I want you to go,” Shane says, trying again. “You can have your victory lap, then come home to us. We’ll still be here.” Quieter, he adds, “We’re gonna be here a long time.”

Ilya nuzzles into the back of his neck, seeking out comfort the way he always does when it’s time to make a hard decision. 

But Shane is confident he’ll do what is right. For both their sakes.

A week later, Ilya is standing by the car, having checked the house twice to make sure he hasn’t forgotten something until Shane told him to stop lingering.

“I’ll be back every weekend,” Ilya says, clutching the baby close for another long moment before handing her back to Shane. “And if you need me. If you call, I will be back as soon as–”

“Ilya,” he interrupts. “We’ll be fine. My parents can’t wait to have an excuse to come over more often.”

“It’s just for one month,” Ilya continues, as though reassuring himself of that fact. “I cannot believe I let you talk me into this.”

“I know,” Shane repeats, as he has the other dozen times they’ve had this conversation. “Just focus on training, okay? Don’t get distracted out there.”

Ilya doesn’t rise to the bait. He only looks Shane up and down, taking him in one last time, before pulling him and the baby in close. Shane wishes he would just go. He doesn’t want to think about how much he’s going to miss this. Or how much he’s come to rely on Ilya since he retired for every kind of relief.

“Don’t forget how much I love you,” Ilya whispers into his hair. “I love you more than anything.”

Shane feels the breeze picking up as he whispers something back.

“You can stay.”

It’s too quiet for Ilya to hear, but that was the point.

Still, it hurts to watch Ilya drive away, the car retreating into the horizon line as Shane is left holding the baby, wondering how much of his life would be different if he had spoken up sooner for any number of things he cared about.

They go back inside. He sits on the couch with the baby and she, mercifully, does not start crying right away. She must sense something’s wrong with him, even though Shane can’t work out what exactly that is yet.

Maybe she doesn’t trust him either. She’ll save her crying for someone who she thinks can handle it.

It gets worse when the sun sets.

He remembers loving the privacy of the cottage when he first picked out the plot, then loving it even more once he realised he and Ilya could be in love here without anyone to find them out. But now that isolation feels more like a trap. Like anything could happen here, and no one would know about it for a very long time.

Other than his parents.

He has a few unanswered texts asking if Ilya got to the airport on time, then more general enquiries about how Shane is doing.

Once he’s given the vaguest answers possible, he goes to bed. It’s such a relief, lying down. He hadn’t even realised how tired he was. 

The baby sleeps in the mobile next to the bed. It’s just for tonight, Shane reasons, so he’ll be sure to hear her if she wakes up needing him. So he doesn’t feel suffocated in the loneliness of this place he’s built for them both.

His dreams are strange without Ilya’s steady heartbeat to ground him. They’re full of people from his long-forgotten past and half-remembered places where he lived and trained as a kid. It’s like his memory is reaching back in time to make up for the monotony of the day, filling his dreams with meaning where his real life lacks it.

It’s a strange feeling, waking up only to find that reality feels somehow less substantial than whatever he was dreaming about.

His memories have a vibrancy to them that Shane can’t quite replicate. 

This unreality has persisted since he was eighteen years old, a top draft pick for the NHL and on the verge of all his dreams coming true. It was all so predictable how it unfolded, but he did his best to enjoy each moment as they came.

It’s just never occurred to him that there’s an after to it all. 

After your dreams come true, and you’re left to live a life where you got what you wanted, and there’s nothing left to dream about.

Needless to say, the first week without Ilya is hard. He explains as much to Georgia, who suggests he reach out to his other friends, or find ways to pass the time that don’t involve Ilya or the baby. Their sessions are growing increasingly repetitive as Shan tries and fails to apply this advice.

Shane invites Hayden over. They talk in the backyard as the air grows cooler around them. Hayden tells him he seems to be feeling better, and Shane decides to believe him. It's almost like old times. They talk a lot about those hazy days, especially from Shane’s rookie season, when Hayden first got to know him, offering him a seat at his table when the homesickness got too much for him.

But then Hayden has to leave, and Shane is alone again, homesick at his very own table. It’s so easy for everyone else to walk away from him; he doesn’t think they realise how difficult it is to stay stuck in one place. He’s like a stone in the riverbed, slowly chipped away at while the rest of the world goes on above him.

There are new stars in the league now. New fan favourites and promising young rookies. There’s probably even a closeted player with a secret lover who won’t be able to love him out loud for years to come.

So much wasted time. Time repeating itself on and on in an endless, pointless loop.

Shane wishes his thoughts weren’t so negative these days. It can’t always have been this way.

Georgia doesn’t last very long. The whole therapy thing was never going to work for Shane anyway, but it falls apart when Georgia starts asking him how he feels about the baby, what their relationship is like while Ilya’s away. 

He can’t stop himself from getting defensive, which only causes the therapist to latch onto the topic and push harder, so he hangs up the call and never books the next session.

Since Shane did his research, he knows she can’t tell Ilya that he’s no longer attending the sessions. He seemed so relieved the last time he was home when he asked about Shane speaking with her, and what he doesn’t know can’t hurt him.

Besides, when Ilya is home, they don’t do much talking. It’s like both of them are desperate to press as closely together as they can in the short time they have, to remember the shape of each other’s bodies and leave an imprint of their own behind.

When Ilya is gone, Shane spends a lot of time outside, letting his edges blur. His parents come around often to take care of the baby. When they do, he wanders for long stretches around the lake and the forest.

It’s quiet, but not overly so. There are still the birds and the water lapping at the lakeshore. He isn’t entirely alone with his thoughts, which have started to scare him lately.

He tries to steer his mind away from the morbid paths it wanders down, but it creeps back towards them anyway.

“Did you know,” he asks his dad one night while they have the telescope set up on the porch, “Stars can come back from the dead?”

His dad lifts an eye from the telescope and looks at Shane oddly. Maybe because he hasn’t said much while they’ve been over, especially not unprompted.

“No,” he says, humouring him. “How’s that?”

“When a White Dwarf explodes, it can create a supernova that sucks in so much energy from other stars that it starts burning all over again. Like it’s eating the other stars to stay alive.”

“Huh,” his dad says with a small smile. “Well, I never knew that.”

Shane smiles a little at having shared one of the few facts about space that his dad doesn’t already know.

“I saw it on a documentary last night,” Shane says distractedly, peering through the telescope himself to see the pale outline of Mercury. He lets out a small laugh. “It’s sort of like a baby when you think of it.”

“What do you mean?” his dad asks after a pause, standing close beside him. 

“You see this tiny thing and think there’s no way it should be able to survive. It’s just constantly living on the edge. But it’s alive because of how it feeds on you. It takes all your energy to stay alive. A baby’s just like a zombie star.”

His dad must think that’s a pretty strange thing to say because Shane hears him repeating it to his mom as they’re getting ready to leave.

“Do you want us to stay over, sweetie?” his mom asks. “It’s pretty late to drive back now anyway.”

“I don’t mind,” Shane shrugs, because they taught him that’s a more polite way of saying I don’t care when he was still young enough to think that honesty was the best policy.

Once they’re set up in the guest bedroom, Shane brings the baby in to say goodnight. They’ve developed an odd sort of camaraderie while Ilya’s been away, like they both depend on Ilya and that everything will be worse until he comes back, but they know they need each other.

He sits down by the bed, resting his back against the mattress with the baby on his lap.

“Are you okay, honey?” his mom asks, running a hand through his hair from where she’s lying. 

His dad is still sitting up in bed, reading the paper, and Shane feels a wave of nostalgia swelling inside him. For a moment, he’s twelve years old and too scared to sleep alone in his room before an important game. The nightmares were always worse when he was stressed.

Then the baby makes a little sound, something like a yawn, and the memory dissipates in his hands.

“Sorry,” he says. “I know you’re tired.”

“You never need to apologise,” his mom tells him, and he almost smiles at the absurdity of that request.

It’s something only a mother can say to their child and truly mean it.

“You can come to us anytime you need,” his dad adds.

Shane nods, locked in a staring contest with the baby. His mind drifts from whatever he had come in here to say.

“Do you think she looks like me?” he asks instead. “Ilya keeps saying so, but I don’t know.”

His mom leans further over the bed, lightly touching the baby’s cheek with her manicured finger. It keeps slipping his mind that this is her granddaughter, too, and not just his baby. She’s another part of his mom’s legacy, another mark in her favour. 

Shane can’t imagine what the baby will have to do to meet the expectations that he set, let alone surpass them. It makes him a little sick to think about.

“She looks just like you, Shane,” she says. 

“Except her cheekbones,” his dad adds. “Those are Russian all over.”

At that, Shane smiles in earnest, then he misses Ilya so much that it feels like he might never smile again.

“Do you think she’s happy?” he asks in a quieter voice.

“She’s just a baby, sweetie.” His mom kisses him softly on the head. “She’ll be alright so long as her daddy is.”

He stares into her dark brown eyes, so dark that he can almost see himself reflected in her pupils. 

What if I’m not? What if I’m not alright? His reflection seems to ask

The baby won’t be either.

He doesn’t even realise he’s thrown it before the milk is dripping down the wall.

Ilya is looking at him with an expression that Shane has never seen from him before, like he can’t understand what he’s seeing, but he’s afraid of it. Shane is a monster in the dark, made out through squinted eyes and disbelief.

He can’t even remember what Ilya asked him, only that it felt like an accusation, his head hurt so much from the baby crying all night, and he just wanted Ilya to stop judging him for a moment.

They stare at each other, then Shane looks at the wall and the bowl of cereal in pieces beside it.

“I–” he stutters, pressing back against the counter. “I didn’t–”

“Shane–”

“No, don’t, Ilya.”

He lowers himself to the ground before his legs collapse from how hard his body is shaking. Ilya has broken out of whatever reverie he was in and approaches him slowly, like he would an animal in a trap.

Against his better judgment, Shane lets Ilya wrap his arms around him, whispering in his ear that it’s going to be alright. Shane explains that he doesn’t know what came over him. It was like blacking out, only there was no substance he could blame it on.

Ilya lets him ramble, talking himself in circles, stroking his hair while the baby sleeps through it all in their bedroom.

Finally, when he’s done, and nothing fills the quiet but his own hitching breath, Ilya pulls back just far enough for Shane to have to look at him.

“Shane,” he says in a tone that locks him in place. It’s warm, full of the love he’s known for years now, but it leaves no room for argument. “You cannot do that.”

“I know,” he whispers. “I’m sorry.”

“Yes,” Ilya replies. “But you can’t. We have a daughter. She cannot hear this.”

He’s never felt more like a scolded child, not even when he was an actual child. As far back as Shane can remember, they spoke to him like an adult. He was an easy child. He was reliable – the one the coaches didn’t have to worry about.

So much energy wasted trying to be what they wanted, only for it to all come crashing down now.

He lifts himself from the ground with the last thread of strength that he has and goes to the baby. Sometimes, when the noise in his head is too loud, he finds himself seeking her out without intending to, as though he’s trying to remember why all this is happening.

“My head hurts,” he mumbles when he senses Ilya following him. 

Shane doesn’t want to wake the baby, so he just watches her. The gentle rise and fall of her chest. The way her eyelids flutter as she dreams about whatever it is babies dream about.

He feels a terrible yearning to go back. Back before her, and Ilya, and everything. Before he had any idea what real pain felt like, it never occurred to him that he could disappoint anyone. 

He would have to go back a long way for that. 

Probably all the way here, to a baby lost in a dream.

“I think…” Ilya trails off, sounding unsure of himself in a way that sets Shane’s nerves on fire. One of them needs to be certain and, these days, he’s not up to the task. “I think maybe I should not go back to training.”

Shane doesn’t want to, but he has to meet Ilya’s gaze. There’s no other way to gauge how serious he is about that.

“Please, Ilya. I’m better. I’ve been better since I started with Georgia. I’m just having a bad day.”

“A really bad day.”

“Yeah,” he says, fighting back the raw urge to cry. So many years never feeling the need to, now he’s lucky if he makes it through a whole day without breaking down in tears. “I think I just need time, right? It’s an adjustment.”

Ilya reaches out a hand, and Shane takes it. 

“But I don’t want you to be alone.”

There was a time in Shane’s life when he thought everyone said what they meant. When that was proven wrong, he swung all the way around to thinking no one ever said what they really felt. Ilya was no exception.

Until he was. 

Now, everything he says is tinged with such sincerity that it makes Shane want to crumble to dust at his feet. Sprinklings of honesty that kept him fed for so many years have expanded into an endless torrent of truthfulness that Shane isn’t able to match.

The truth outweighs him. It crushes him more and more each day.

They come to an uneasy compromise. 

Ilya promises to call every day and check in. In the meantime, his parents will come and stay most days, even some nights if Shane wants it.

He doesn’t. The thought of seeing the judgment that must weigh heavy in their eyes when they see the mess he’s making of things is too much to handle on top of everything else. But he also senses the compromise Ilya is trying to make. 

Either he retires and comes home permanently, watching over Shane like a beautiful, vengeful angel, or he leaves behind witnesses to report back if Shane veers from the picture of domesticity they’re trying to paint here.

Once his parents begin staying over more often, Shane has to pick and choose his moments. 

Thankfully, he has a lifetime of acting to fall back on.

Laughing when a joke wasn’t actually funny. Pretending a small but pointed comment didn’t hurt when it did. Letting himself be reassured, letting them think they can comfort him.

The latter, he learned as a kid when his dad’s mom died. They hadn’t been very close since she was an old lady who didn’t remember him between visits, and he secretly found her quite frightening on the few occasions they were alone together.

At the wake, everyone kept trying to cheer him up with little games or treats passed under the table. 

When his mom noticed the strange looks he was giving them, the way he retreated to the edges of the room, she pulled him aside and told him that he should try to be more accepting.

“They’re only trying to help,” she said.

“But they’re treating me like a baby. Dad’s more upset than I am.”

“That may be true,” she acknowledged. “But if it makes them feel better, then what’s the harm in it?”

He always appreciated her candour when it came to things like that. Most adults wouldn’t have been so blunt about the reality of the situation, which is that, for the most part, if you show people what they want to see, they won’t look too closely at the details.

Everyone starts smiling at him again. Even Hayden, who brings his kids over on the weekends. Clearly, Shane is back on the list of adults who probably won’t traumatise my kids with his terminal fragility. Ilya looks so content playing with them that Shane almost forgets about the mess they’ve found themselves in.

He catches himself thinking of happier endings, with first steps and notes in lunch boxes. He could give that to them, Shane thinks. 

Then he starts counting up the days and weeks it would take to get there, and those days turn to months, and then to years, and the steady accumulation of mistakes and regrets starts to suffocate him, even though they haven’t happened yet.

Like before, his life is laid out ahead of him, every next step so obvious it feels redundant to take it.

Under-14s, to Juniors, to the draft, to a long career, to a legacy.

A baby, then a child, then graduation, marriage, grandchildren, and a plot in the family cemetery.

It’s like he’s lived it all before. Round and round and back again.

In the end, the only one he can talk to is the baby.

Late at night, when they should both be sleeping, he wanders with her through the house, humming quietly to himself, making small, unremarkable comments about what he sees along the way.

He shows her the tiles he picked out for the bathroom, the varnish for the counters, and the taps for the sinks. It had all felt so grown-up at the time. It may as well have been a hundred years ago.

“I just wanted somewhere to get away,” he tells the baby, then, after a moment, adds, “I guess it wasn’t far enough.”

How long would it take for someone to notice he had disappeared from this place? The baby would know right away, then his parents days later. They’d call Ilya, of course, because Shane can’t be his own person anymore.

He wonders where he could go where no one would find him. Maybe somewhere out of Canada, where the sky is crystal blue, and nobody knows the name Shane Hollander. 

“Shane?” 

He turns to the bathroom door, to the woman in the shape of his mother with the voice of a stranger.

“What are you doing up, honey?”

“Baby was crying,” he mumbles, looking down at his feet.

“I didn’t hear anything.”

“Well, she’s quiet now.”

“Why don’t you go back to bed? I can take her from here.”

Shane knows she’s right. In every universe, his mom would do a better job at raising this baby than he can. After all, she has given him everything he ever wanted in spite of what a difficult child he was. 

But he’s always had a selfish streak and, just once, he wants something to keep for himself.

So they wander together. Through the house and the garden, as far as he can go while remaining in sight of the cottage. He fantasises about taking her and running, but where? There doesn’t seem to be a world out there anymore.

He thinks back to a long road trip he took with his dad as a kid. It must have been for a scout, or training, or something like that. The specifics hardly matter.

Just a flash of a memory – one he knew, in the moment, he would remember forever. 

Driving through a smattering of houses on an endless stretch of road and wandering about all the lives he was speeding past, never to return. How there were so many hopes and dreams contained in those doorways and windows, so much he would never know about them.

The world suddenly seemed too big to be contained inside his head. It grew out of him like branches as he realised how little of the world he would ever get to experience, and how most people would know just as little about him.

“It’s lonely,” he whispers to her as the trees sway precariously in the late summer breeze. “They say it’s lonely at the top.”

The baby is the only one who understands him, Shane thinks. Maybe the only one who ever has.

She sees his faults and does not pretend to forgive him for them. She knows he has nothing to offer her but the truth. 

So that’s what he gives her.

“I miss you,” he tells Ilya on the phone each night. 

Every time, Ilya tells him how many hours it will be until his plane touches down, putting a mental clock in his head.

It ticks away all day and night during the week. The hours he has left to pace along the lakeshore. The minutes he has left to stand with his head to the wall, forehead pressed heavy into the peeling paint. The seconds he has left with his daughter – just the two of them – while he is still all that she has.

Then Ilya is home. Shane’s world rearranges itself around him. Sometimes, he thinks there is a version of himself that only awakens when Ilya is here. Then, when he leaves, Shane comes back again, more disoriented each time he reappears. 

Which version is supposed to be him?

If there were no Ilya, and no baby, what would be left?

The ice, the voice in his head supplies, a safe place to land.

His thirst is never-ending lately. He seems to spend all day drinking tall glasses of water, but it doesn’t sate the urge. More than once, he’s put his head under the sink, drinking as steadily as he can until he feels nauseous. Still, it isn’t enough.

He can’t remember the last time he ate without Ilya or his parents around.

It isn’t a performance diet – there’s nothing to perform for, anyway – he just isn’t hungry anymore.

Not hungry, or tired, or in much pain beyond the standard. 

It’s as though his body has frozen in time, blood stagnant in his veins, heart caught mid-beat.

He starts to resent his parents coming around, as well as Ilya’s visits, because his body jolts out of stasis when they do. He becomes ravenous, sick with hunger, or so exhausted he can barely stand.

The baby witnesses these changes first-hand. She sees him come alive and then hide away again when they leave. Not for the first time, he’s glad she’s too young to speak. Shane was two when he said his first words. Too late, the doctor told his parents. 

Maybe it’s too late for her, too. But, for now at least, they can still have secrets between them.

Like the therapist, and the steadily weakening lies he tells Ilya to keep him away from the truth and the house. That he is still seeing her; that he is being honest; that he feels okay. 

Shane can’t always be sure that the last point isn’t true. He can’t remember feeling any different to this, though he assumes there must have been a time when he didn’t. Before the baby, probably. While he still had hockey and a name.

Maybe this is just what okay feels like now. 

He doesn’t like to think about it too much. In fact, most of his day is spent as far outside his own head as possible. That way, he can remain one step removed from everything threatening to push him over the edge. From the slowly shrinking house and the dozens of eyes waiting to see him fail.

It feels like his first season in the league. There’s nothing anyone loves more than to see the golden boy fail. 

It bothered him then, but now Shane thinks of the scarred and grizzled veterans who scared him so often that season and thinks they must have been pretty scared, too. They saw him and knew their number was nearly up. 

Shane thinks the same thing every time he looks at the baby, growing more into his features every day.

That’s not to say there aren’t moments of clarity. 

He’ll find himself in odd corners of the cottage, blinking as though waking from a dream and finding hours have passed like sand through his fingers. 

He takes stock of himself and comes back to the same realisation each time.

Oh. There’s something very wrong with me.

Shane thinks he should tell someone this. He should call them, let everyone know he is still here, not all gone yet. He needs to tell them that he’s scared and they have to stay close because he isn’t sure what he’ll do by himself. 

Panic seizes him, pulling him to the door, when he hears the baby cry.

He blinks.

She must be hungry. The baby still needs him. 

He looks down at the phone in his hand and realises that Ilya is speaking. In whatever panic came over him, Shane must’ve pressed the call button.

“Lyubimy?”

He’s caught between the two of them, unsure of who to answer first.

“Shane, are you listening?”

“Ilya, I–”

“Wait. Don’t speak, just answer.”

Something in his tone wraps around Shane’s lungs and squeezes. He couldn’t get a word out if he tried.

“I checked the bank statement. You have not been seeing the therapist.”

Even the air freezes inside him. If he can’t breathe, he will die. That much Shane knows to be true.

“Not for months now.”

The baby’s cries crescendo into screams, and Shand wishes he could do the same. Combined, their rapturous noise might be enough to bring down this cottage.

“I am coming home on the next flight. We can talk in four hours.”

This, at last, unfreezes Shane. He draws a deep, desperate breath.

“Wait, Ilya, please don’t. You don’t have to do that.”

“Something is not right with you,” Ilya says, already sounding like he’s on the move. “I am calling Yuna and telling her this.”

Shane’s heart rate picks up, and his eyes flit to the door as though Ilya might storm in at any moment and–

And do what?

Would he hurt Shane?

Not with the baby in the house, surely. But if his parents took her away–

“Okay, okay, I understand,” he says, quickly pivoting to agree. “Just don’t call my parents. We can talk, I just– I need to talk to you. They can’t help me, Ilya.”

He hears the moment of hesitation before Ilya replies. It’s enough to latch onto. He lets a few tears slip free, not bothering to hide the hitch in his breath.

“Please, Ilya. I don’t need anyone but you.”

That cracks him.

“Shane,” he grumbles, low and worn-out. Like he’s already resigned to losing him. “Okay. I will wait. But we talk, yes?”

Finally, the fear loosens just enough for him to go to the bedroom. He picks up the baby, who stops wailing right away, as though she senses the other presence on the phone. Fresh tears scatter across his cheeks. He presses their foreheads together, and her small hand reaches up to his face.

“Shane, lyubimy.”

He sounds like he’s pleading now.

“Okay, Ilya,” Shane whispers. It doesn’t sound like him. Nothing was supposed to happen this way.

“Okay,” Ilya echoes, and Shane can’t be sure which of them ends the call.

He lets the phone fall from his hand and onto the bed, which he sits back on, cradling the baby closer. 

It’s hard to imagine ever having been this small. The thought of her tendons and bones stretching and contorting into adulthood fills him with a deep, existential dread. He never understood that phrase before now. The dread of existing. Of continuing to exist past the point you were supposed to.

She doesn’t have to, the voice says, letting that float in the air before Shane eradicates it. 

“Yes, she does,” he says. 

No matter how painful it will be. She deserves a life beyond this tiny place and time. He looks down at her impossibly formed features, a piece of him carved out of his body and taking on a life of its own right before his eyes. 

Through blurry eyes, he mouths the words so they stay between them forever. Not even the owls waking up for sunset will hear them.

“I love you.”

He knows she doesn’t love him back – doesn’t need her to. In fact, that would make this whole thing harder.

How many hours did Ilya give him this time?

Not enough, Shane realises. Not enough to fix any of it. Not enough to clean the house, re-paint the walls, and place new tiles over the ones he has worn with his endless pacing. 

Not enough to invent a time machine and give them all a second chance.

All these years he spent looking ahead – at the team, at the trophy, at his legacy. He hadn’t realised then that the only thing looking back was himself. This person and the baby, each waiting for their reckoning.

He sits with her for as long as he can, until he can’t put it off any longer. The baby shifts slightly as he places her back in the crib, turning up the thermostat as the house grows colder. Her lip trembles like she might start wailing, but Shane shushes her gently, and the baby is quiet.

When he goes outside, he finds that night has fallen over them like a blanket, the dark so thick that the porch lights barely penetrate a metre ahead. 

That doesn’t matter. Shane has traced these steps often enough that he could walk there with his eyes closed.

The air holds a different quality at night. It buzzes around him like it’s making room for his body. Carefully, Shane takes off his shoes and sets them to the side, just past the porch. They were a gift from Hayden, so they should get back to him after all this is over. The rest of his clothes, Shane keeps for himself.

He walks on.

When the hard ground gives way to softer sediment, he can tell he’s near. The water laps at his feet, gently pushing and pulling at the shore.

Another memory, stronger this time, of a rare day at the beach. One of the few days of childhood free from the artificial chill of the ice rink.

Footsteps in the sand.

“Some of the oldest fossils were found on a beach. They were the footsteps of a mother walking with her child over ten thousand years ago.”

“Like me and mama,” Shane replied.

“Imagine that. It was just one little moment of their lives, and it’ll be remembered forever.”

That old selfish part of him rears its ugly head once more. He hopes the baby has some memory of him to hold onto when she’s all grown up. Not for her sake, but for his. A reminder that he existed somewhere. A fossil that used to be a person who mattered, regardless of what came after.

The water is cool around his ankles. Autumn is deepening in this part of the country, and there is no sun to draw any warmth from.

He shivers, just once, then gets a hold of himself.

Further and further. 

His thoughts slip away like the ground from under him. He may as well be floating as his toes turn numb. Soon, the feeling crawls up his legs, all the way to his hips.

Not so much longer now.

“Just a scratch,” the doctor said, drawing blood in his early years, when his mom thought something must be wrong but hadn’t yet decided what that might be. “It’ll be over before you know it.”

His heart beats heavily against his ribs, slower than ever, like it’s dragging its feet.

The water consumes him, eating away at his lower limbs first, but steadily working its way up the rest of his body.

This body that has been on loan to him since the second he stepped out on the ice. It was a gift, as far as his coaches were concerned, but a gift that had to be returned someday. How can anyone enjoy a life they’re only renting out?

He’s deep enough to swim, but Shane lets his feet fall out from under him and drifts instead, letting the water carry him. The relief that washes over him at the lightness of his being is immense, almost unbearable.

My whole life, he thinks, I’ve been carrying this my whole life.

The water slips over him, retreating like an apology. But Shane makes no effort to move. He lets it fall over his ribs, neck, and face – whatever parts of him are still exposed.

But his eyes stay open. He’s losing touch with the rest of his body; it’s drifting away from him now, but Shane does his best to hold on to his sight.

The stars, startlingly alive, are so beautiful tonight.

It would’ve been nice, Shane thinks, as the darkness creeps in on him, to show the baby. 

“Shane!”

Ilya, too. 

He would’ve said the constellations are boring, that Shane is made up of useless information, but he would’ve listened anyway. 

Maybe he’ll show the baby.

Their daughter. 

He loves her, like he loved Shane once.

If there’s any justice in the world, one day she will find someone to love that much. It feels bright, that sort of devotion. Like burning. Endlessly burning–

“Lyubimy, please!”

Distantly, Shane thinks he sounds scared.

There was a time he thought Ilya was fearless, but there’s a difference between bravery and having nothing to lose. 

There’s no point in fighting it, Shane wants to tell him. He’s already lost, and is so close to making that certain, when he hears movement along the shore.

Shane smiles privately to himself. At least, he tries to. It’s hard to move anything now. He’s so far away from this place. He’s slipping under: down, down, into the darkest night he’s known.

The sensations come to him in the space between breaths – between thoughts and water-logged coughs.

Arms made of muscle and sinew cradling him out of the water. The shock of solid ground beneath his back. A high keening sound must be coming from him, because Ilya is barely breathing.

“Why would you do that?” Shane makes out between fits of Russian phrases. Then his name – just his name – over and over again.

That’s me, he thinks, whole body trembling with each violent shake of Ilya’s arms. 

My son. Moy lyubimiy. My Shane.

There was a baby once. It lived inside him until it outgrew his body. Or he outgrew it. His body was formed by a long, certain kind of life, the water chipping away at it until nothing but loose sediment remained.

Ilya holds onto all his many pieces and mutters his name like a prayer. He breathes life into this creation.