Chapter Text
Ilya spares a glance at the time displayed on the dashboard in luminous blue digits.
Two thirty-eight.
He’s halfway through the six and a half hour drive from Boston to Ottawa. Ordinarily, Ilya loves to drive. Distances have never bothered him because the longer the drive, the more opportunity for him to race the clock and shave as much time from the commute as possible without getting caught. Racing one of his many cars down a freeway has always been a surefire way to send a rush through his veins that few vices have ever compared to.
Today though, Ilya coasts along the I-89 North to Ottawa just barely pushing the speed limit. He would have preferred to take one of his many faster vehicles—maybe that’s what’s keeping him from enjoying himself—but a glance in his rear view mirror at the body of his Mercedes SUV stuffed full of his entire life built in Boston reminds him why that wasn’t possible.
The hum of the highway and the low, constant vibration of the engine beneath him agitate his bones in a way that travel never has before. It isn’t soothing tonight in the way that being in control of a metal box travelling seventy-five miles an hour down a highway historically is for Ilya.
He’s not travelling. Travelling implies a return to your home-base that is waiting for you.
Ilya’s moving—because he was told to, because he was traded. Really, even the term trading feels generous right now. It implies something nonexistent in this situation. More accurately, Boston threw him away and for some reason Ottawa made the decision to pluck him from the trash. Ilya supposes it's because they don’t know what happened. They won’t find out either, the league will be sure of that—if anyone who wasn’t directly involved found out what really happened it would have the entire league up in flames in a heartbeat. The only thing that the Centaurs—and the rest of the world—will hear is that the league’s most infamous asshole finally got what was coming to him… Or something like that.
Ilya has replayed the last forty-eight hours enough times over the span of the past three that the distinction between the genuine memory and the nightmare spooling around in his brain has begun to dissipate into something meaningless. Part of him has even started to accept that he did deserve this, that he is the problem. Honestly, it feels easier to accept that version of events. If it’s his own fault then there is no one for him to direct his anger at other than himself. He’s always been talented at that.
Everything sits wrong in Ilya’s chest nonetheless, but at the end of the day there is nothing he can do except nod and go where he’s told. When the other option is returning home to Russia and never playing hockey again—at least not in America—what else is he going to do?
Ilya’s grip on the leather steering wheel tightens as the rotting memory floods his mind uninvited once more.
_ _ _
“We’re done here, Rozanov. Ottawa is willing to take you, you’ll report there Monday.”
The words land on Ilya with a disconcerting dullness, with the nonexistent speed of a leaky faucet that lets loose a single drop every minute or two.
“I’m confused,” Ilya responds slowly.
“What’s not landing, son? You’re done in Boston. You are not to share a word of this situation to anyone or I will see to it personally that you will never play for another team in this league—this country—ever again.”
Ilya blinks twice, slowly. His eyes flicker around the room of stoic men staring him down in their stiff suits. The room smells faintly of bitter coffee and cigarettes. A framed jersey hangs to the right on the wall just barely in Ilya’s periphery. He almost has to laugh at the irony.
It’s his jersey.
One from his second year when his record breaking point season had brought Boston their first Stanley Cup win in two decades. “I am being traded.” Ilya deadpans. “You are trading me because of this?”
“Hopefully it will teach you to mind your business. If not, I’m sure some team in the KHL will be desperate enough for a few goals that they’ll take you.” The vitriol in Commissioner Crowell’s voice is vile enough to poison a body of water.
Ilya bites his tongue. He’s said and done some stupid things in his lifetime, but he’s not a stupid man, and he’s certainly no connoisseur of law. So, he swallows his pride, nods once, stoically, and walks away from commissioner Crowell and the Raiders ownership team without another word.
***
“Roz, you’ve got to be fucking kidding me. They can’t fucking do that!” Marleau slams a fist into the locker next to the one that Ilya is currently clearing out.
When Ilya hadn’t joined the team on the ice for their morning skate after his meeting with the high-ups, Cliff had come to check on him and found him here with no gear on and a half-empty locker.
“Is done, Marly,” Ilya utters through gritted teeth. He shoves a handful of random odds and ends that had collected at the bottom of his locker over the past almost decade—loose tape rolls, old mouthguards, a cracked phone charger.
“This is a fucking joke!”
“Yes. Is fucking hilarious! Crowell is clown, we know this already.”
“Can you at least fucking tell me what happened with Kent?”
“No, I cannot.”
“Why the hell not, they’ve already-”
“Because they will fucking send me back to fucking Russia you fuck! No one can know! No one!” Ilya slams his own locker—or rather the locker of whoever Boston brings on to replace him—shut with a wild force that echoes through the empty room. His anger, if that’s even what this is, splinters open and feels like it's splitting his entire body right down the middle.
Cliff stills. “Oh. Fuck, Roz.”
“Yeah, fuck, Marly.”
The fight drains from Marleau’s face as his shoulders deflate. “I’m gonna miss you, Roz.”
“I will miss your idiot face too, Marly. Now go please before I say words that make you think I like you.”
Marleau claps Ilya on the back, holding his hand there for a moment before pulling Ilya into an unsolicited hug that he didn’t ask for and absolutely did not pull away from. “I’ll miss your idiot face too, you’re a fucking beaut Rozy.”
“Go fuck yourself,” Ilya grumbles. Hugging Clif back despite the icy show he’s feebly attempting to maintain.
_ _ _
When Ilya comes back into himself, he’s nearly approaching the Canadian border. His car is still stuffed full of his life—condensed, folded, and forced into boxes and duffel bags—and for the tenth time this afternoon he doesn’t wake up from this miserable nightmare. One loose hockey stick that he’s wedged diagonally across the top of his belongings rattles faintly with every minor dip or bump in the pavement. The rhythmic sound serves to offer Ilya a near constant reminder that this is real. He could move it, probably, shift it even an inch to the left to keep the blade from tapping against the rear window. He doesn’t though, it doesn’t feel like there’s a point.
Ilya exhales through his nose, willing away tears that have been threatening to crack his steely gaze for two days straight. He’s not going to cry about this—he’s not going to give anyone the satisfaction, even if they’d never know. Instead of giving in to his pitiful emotions, Ilya rumages through the center console and pulls out his near-empty box of cigarettes. It was full when he started the drive. He slots one in between his lips and lights it, testing the limits of his lungs as he inhales for far longer than necessary. When Ilya finally exhales and the smoke clouds the interior of his car, he wonders briefly how many he would need to smoke in row with the windows closed to suffocate. It’s only a question, not something he would ever choose to investigate. He has those sometimes.
***
The morning had been utter chaos—dresser drawers left half-gutted and dozens upon dozens of unanswered texts. Ilya didn’t even need to leave for another two days, but the thought of even one more night in Boston made his skin crawl. It had stopped feeling like home the second he walked into that fateful meeting with the league and by the time he had walked out of it, Boston already felt like somewhere he used to live. Ilya didn’t let himself mourn the loss of the first house that had felt like home to him since his mother died and left his childhood house feeling like a shell of the home it once was. What was the use? Why feel sad over something that can’t be fixed?
It becomes easier to dissociate from it all the further from Boston he drives. The landscape began to shift somewhere north of Vermont and the longer stretches of forest and fewer exits carried with them less reminders of the city he’s been calling home for eight years. Any highway sign he passes now is no longer labelled with the names of places he recognized. Everything around him is foreign and materially meaningless to him. That makes it easier to ignore it all.
Ilya rolls to a stop at the end of a line of vehicles all waiting to cross the border. He tilts his neck to both sides, tension coiling deep between his shoulder blades as his phone buzzes in the cupholder with another message he won’t check. Red brake lights glow ahead of him in a slowly moving chain as every vehicle in line stops, starts, stops, starts, stops, starts—over and over again until it’s his turn.
The border crossing comes and goes in a blur of routine questions and practiced answers—his passport and work visa are handed over and he keeps his voice as even and polite as he can muster. There’s a questioning glance from the border officer, a stiff nod, and Ilya is waved forward and back on the road.
Crossing the invisible line into Canada makes everything feel a little more final than it had only a moment ago, regardless of only a few hundred metres of his new country sitting between him and the old one.
The sky is dark now, painted navy blue and a deep, stormy grey from the swollen clouds that are trying and failing to hold back a dusting of light snow. Every so often a few flakes drift down and vanish against the glass of the windshield upon landing.
Ilya pushes on deeper into Ontario, though he can’t see much of it. The surroundings in this low light are blurry at best—the dense forest and stretches of wide, empty fields on either side of him are muted under the night sky. Ilya cracks the window slightly. Cold air rushes in and carries with it the scent of wet soil and pine. The smell fills the car, cutting through the stale taste of too many hours spent alone and unmoving with only his thoughts as company and his cigarettes as air fresheners.
When he finally breaches the city limit of Ottawa, the first signs are nothing dramatic. There is no sudden skyline and no overwhelming rush of traffic that many bigger cities offer immediately upon entry. It’s more of a gradual shift, a widened highway with cars becoming more frequent and an increased number of road signs. Ilya registers under the illumination of the roadlights that all of the signs are printed in English and French. The French words mean little to him, but they do carry a sense of permanence that Ilya can’t seem to ignore. It’s not something he ever needed to pay notice to when he’d travel to Canada for road games for a few days each month.
Ottawa is no longer just a destination for him. It’s home now, apparently.
Ilya eases his grip on the wheel, thumb tracing absent circles along the barely used leather, and he slows his speed down with the flow of traffic as he becomes fully immersed in the city. A brightly lit silhouette in the core of downtown catches Ilya’s eye—a place he’s been many times before but never given much thought to. He’s never had to. Before today it had been nothing but an office that he was shuttled to and from on a team bus during their time here.
“Okay,” Ilya whispers to no one but himself. Ottawa is certainly far from feeling like home yet, but something within it does feel like it’s waiting for Ilya—whenever he decides to accept it as his own.