Chapter Text
Before the focus had shifted—quite reluctantly at first—to the KHL, it was all about figure skating for Ilya. His mother had been skating all her life, and when Alexei was born she rarely had time to set aside for it. Ilya became her excuse to return to the ice, when a family trip to the ice rink revealed in him a keenness, even a sort of belonging on the ice. Irina had been joyous, holding this gift close and dear, nurturing it, until at five years old, Ilya had won his first competition.
Not that his father ever cared enough to put up a supportive front. He never did approve of his being a part of such a nonsense sport—per his words, overheard during one of his parents' arguments in the kitchen.
"I’ve had enough of this feminine shit!" he’d whisper-shout.
Ilya had wondered on that word for a while, not entirely sure of its meaning, but he’d sensed it was something to be ashamed of. He became sure of it three months later, when a boy at school had leaned in and called him a ‘sissy-dancer', and the two boys beside him had snickered.
Then, his brother had started calling him a faggot when ilya was eleven. Alexei would repeat anything he heard their father say. And for his father, the word was thrown out at pretty much anything even slightly non-conforming.
Alexei could have their father. It didnt matter to Ilya, when mama was all his. With her as his coach, training three hours a day, six days a week, she was his. And the rest didn't matter.
But it did start to matter when Irina died a year later. Ilya had found her, and the first emotion that found him had been betrayal—that she had not taken him with her.
· · · · · · · · · · ·
Of course, it had never been easy to be a boy in figure skating in 90s Russia. But once his mother had died, and Ilya truly faced it alone, did he understand the kind of bravery it would take to continue.
The organisation had paired him with another junior skater—a girl around 10 years old. The coaches were sparse and there hadn’t been anywhere else to place him.
For a year, Ilya took what he was given and trained with an unmatched drive. He wanted to make his mother proud, even if she had left him to do it all alone.
And he was alone.
His father could never warm to him, not while he was one of two boys in the training programme consisting of sixteen girls. His mother had paid for his programme in its entirety—so practically, he didnt need his father’s approval.
One day, as he had been skating towards the gates off the ice, a force hit him from his left.
Ilya took the fall on his wrist, folded neatly under him as he had been slammed down. The ringing in his ears had not stopped when he lifted his forehead from the cold, wet surface and saw a boy in all black, wearing a faltering smirk—deeply, disturbingly pleased to see Ilya crumpled and clearly in pain.
The ringing had not stopped still when Ilya could make out more than actually hearing it, the boys lips moving around that word now so familiar to him.
“Faggot."
Ilya was starting to feel quite resigned to his lot in life. If his mother were here, at least he would feel her warm palm stroking his hair back off his forehead, she’d kiss him there, and tell him softly that she was there. Tell him he was loved. That he was brave.
Now, his father stood off to the side of his hospital bed, stiff and unreachable.
‘You will not be returning to the programme.’
“Father—”
“Your mother had entertained this long enough, but she is not here now. You will not be returning.”
Ilya was never brave enough to oppose his father.
But he had been on the ice since he was three. It would feel like abandoning every memory spent with his mother, those precious moments of her arms extended out to him as he wobbled forward into her embrace.
‘Father, please. Mama has already paid for it. I will never bother you about it, you won't have to hear about it.’
His father shook his head sharply. “I will not have my son being targetted for such silly things. This ends now.”
Ilya hadn't realised he had sat up. Panting, he tried to say something, wracking his brain for anything. Anything at all.
‘Papa, I- I’ll join hockey. I’ll play hockey and I can still be on the ice. I can still…’ he trailed off, desperate, even if it was far from what he wanted.
In the end, his father had assented.
· · · · · · · · · · ·
After the assault, Ilya made sure to never be the target of another.
It wasnt really for the sake of his own safety. An unexamined part of him knew he never much cared for himself. If it weren’t for the few things in his life driving him up and moving, he might not have bothered to protect himself at all.
Really, it was to keep under the radar—afraid that anything else would move his father to take him off the ice entirely.
Knowing how behind he was already, even at thirteen, Ilya trained relentlessly. And in that process, he became all hard edges.
There was not a moment to really grieve, that way.
His mum would have been dead five years, when Ilya had made it through to the KHL Junior Draft. He didn’t know what she would have felt, seeing Ilya demonstrate all the gracelessness required of the game, when she had spent tireless hours training that same gracelessness out of him.
Six years, and she would have seen him drafted to the Lokomotiv Yaroslavl—top of the league and most importantly, four hours away from his father. It hadn’t been nearly far enough.
It wasn’t long after that that the Bears had found him, like a search party after the shipwreck that had been Ilya’s life thus far. He had just turned 22 when Ilya left Russia behind, knowing he would never see his father again.
He was still fucked up, of course. You don’t undo years of violence and desperation just like that. But his new coach had insisted he try—had matched him with Galina not even a year in.
She’d told him that he deserved to have control over his own life. That he’d protected himself this far, that he could still do so while also allowing himself to feel whatever it was that he felt.