Chapter Text
Moscow, Russia - 2000
Ilya sleeps curled beneath his blanket, his fingers tucked tight under his chin for warmth. Outside, the winter wind moans through the birch trees, scraping branches against the frosted window pane.
A creak.
Not the house settling. Not the wind. The deliberate groan of floorboards beneath weight. His eyes fly open just as the hallway light spills gold across his bed. Slash of brightness cutting through the dark. He blinks against it, heart hammering, still half trapped in the gauzy remains of a dream about his mother’s singing, about sunlight, about—
"Vstavay."
”Get up.”
His father’s voice. Razor edged. No warmth, no pause, just a command hanging in the frozen air. Ilya doesn’t move fast enough. The blanket is ripped away. The cold punches the breath from his lungs. Grigori looms over him, already dressed in his usual pressed slacks and a wool coat, his silvering hair combed rigidly back. He smells of shaving soap and diesel.
"Seychas," he snaps.
“Now.”
Ilya scrambles upright, bare feet hitting the icy wooden floor. His toes curl involuntarily. He doesn’t ask why. He doesn’t ask where. He learned before he turned five. Questions were useless.
Grigori tosses yesterday’s clothes at him, stiff with dried sweat, reeking of gasoline.
“You wake up last, you lose.”
Beyond the window, the world is still pitch black, the kind of dark that presses against your skin. The garage light buzzes to life with a sickly yellow flicker. Its fluorescent hum the only sound besides the scuff of Ilya's bare feet on concrete. He stumbles, still warm with sleep, his pajama sleeve riding up as his father's vise like grip drags him forward.
"Papa—" His voice is small, breath puffing white in the unheated space. The protest dies when Grigori's shadow swallows him whole against the workbench.
A switch flicks. Not the light this time, but the deafening roar of a space heater coughing to life. Sudden warmth licks at Ilya's ankles as Grigori shoves him toward the kart.
"Look."
The kart looms like a sleeping beast. Its chrome exhaust pipe still steaming faintly from last night's adjustments. Wet from rainfall. Ilya's reflection stares back from the polished carbon fiber. A pale smudge of a boy with eyes too big for his face.
Grigori's calloused hand smears the condensation from the fuel gauge. "You see that? Empty." A jerky nod toward the shelves. "Canister."
Ilya's bare toes curl against oil stained concrete as he scrambles for the fuel. The metal canister slips in his small hands, sloshing petrol that stings his nostrils. Some splashes his foot, it burns slightly, like the time Mama accidentally spilled tea on him.
His father doesn't notice. Or doesn't care.
"Faster," Grigori growls as the first birds begin chirping outside.
Ilya's hands shake as he pours. He knows this ritual. The sun is rising. That means they're losing.
The kart's shadow stretches long and jagged in the flickering garage light, its nose pointed toward the frosted doors like a hunting dog scenting prey. Rainwater beads through the ceiling, one large drop lands on Ilya's collarbone and slithers down his chest.
"Get in." Grigori's command leaves no air between words.
Ilya's toes curl against the concrete, his body shook a bit between the cold and something deeper. The kart's seat gleams wetly. The frame bites into his calf as he climbs in, metal so cold it feels like ice. His threadbare pajamas, the ones with the faded racing cars that Mama bought, drink the moisture instantly. The damp spreads up his thighs in creeping patches.
Grigori doesn't wait for him to settle.
A gloved hand shoves the steering wheel into Ilya's chest hard enough to bruise. "Grip."
The wheel is slippery with condensation. Ilya's fingers, slide before finding purchase. He can feel every ridge of the hard plastic over his hands.
Grigori slams the kill switch to ON.
The engine snarls awake with a violence that shakes the kart's frame, vibrations traveling up Ilya's spine, rattling his teeth. The smell of two stroke oil floods his nostrils, thick enough to taste.
"Legs."
Ilya's feet barely reach the pedals. The extensions Grigori welded last winter are already rusting at the joints. His left foot strains to keep pressure on the gas. Then the slap of slippers against concrete. A whisper of floral perfume cutting through the gasoline stench.
"Grigori—"
Irina stands in the garage doorway, backlit by the flickering porch bulb, her silk robe barely covering the pajamas she wore to bed only three hours ago. One strap slips off her shoulder, she doesn’t notice. Her hair, usually pinned so carefully, spills curls wildly down her back.
"The sun isn’t even up yet."
Grigori doesn’t turn. His grip tightens on Ilya’s wrists, forcing them into perfect ten and two alignment. The kart’s wheel bites into the boy’s palms.
"Schumacher’s boy did 200 laps before breakfast at this age," he says to the fuel gauge, russian thick. "This one? He cries when his tea is too hot."
Ilya watches his mother’s hands twitch, those careful fingers that brush through his curls as she sings to him. Now they knot in the silk at her waist.
"Ilya," his mother says softly. Not to Grigori. "Do you want to come inside?"
The question hangs between them.
Grigori’s laugh is sharp and loud. "He wants to be great." His glove smears the condensation from the rev counter. "Don’t you, my son?"
The needle trembles at 5,000 RPM. Ilya doesn’t look at his mother. He can’t.
"Yes, Papa."
The gearshift is ice cold under Ilya’s fingertips, the metal etched with grooves. Grigori’s glove squeezes over his tiny hand, crushing knuckles against steel until the boy’s joints pop like firecrackers. Ilya’s mouth fills with the bright, metallic tang of copper. His baby teeth have sawed through his lower lip. A single drop of blood pearls on his chin, splattering onto the kart’s chassis. Tssss. The sound it makes on hot metal is quieter than his whimper.
His mother shivers beside him, one hand pressed over her gold necklace, the other clutching her slipping robe together. Their eyes meet for only a moment. She mouths something, "malysh", but makes no move forward. The space between them yawns like a track straightaway.
Grigori’s voice is rough. "Eyes front," he snarls, twisting Ilya’s chin toward the speedometer. The numbers swim. 40...60...80... redlining before they’ve even moved.
His mother’s shadow shifts in the doorway.
"He’s seven, Grigori—"
The correction comes swift.
CRACK.
Grigori’s stopwatch smashes against the wall beside Irina’s head. Glass shards skitter across the concrete, catching the light like tiny knives.
"You want him soft?" Spittle flies from his father’s lips, landing hot on Ilya’s cheek. "Like you?"
The silence that follows is worse than shouting. Ilya’s mother sways, just once, then turns away. Her slippers whisper against the concrete. She doesn't slam the door on her way out. Only clicks it shut. The backyard track materializes, as the large garage door opens. Moon bleached tires stacked into haphazard chicanes, potholes glistening with last night's rain. The birch trees lining the course, claw at the bruised purple sky, their branches clicking together.
Grigori's shove comes without warning. One palm between Ilya's shoulder blades, forcing him nose first toward the cracked dash. The kart's steering column digs into his sternum, knocking the wind from his lungs.
"Focus," his father breathes into his ear, vodka and mint.
The kart lurches forward. Cold air screams past his ears. Gravel pinging off the exhaust like gunfire. His stomach left somewhere near the starting line.
The world becomes a smear of shadows and frost, tire walls rushing at him, then dissolving as he jerks the wheel. The kart bucks over frozen ruts, slamming Ilya’s tailbone against the seat. Somewhere behind him, Grigori's stopwatch ticks.
Too slow.
Ilya’s hands remember before his mind does, the subtle weight transfer needed for the first turn. The way the chassis complains when you brake too late. His fingers, still throbbing from last week’s "correction," spasms against the wheel.
A rabbit darts across the track.
Ilya swerves. The kart's right wheels bite dirt. For one weightless second, he's airborne. Then the impact comes in layers. Knees slamming into the dash. Whiplash between the barely held together seatbelt and the force of the speed he was going. The taste of gasoline and blood.
Silence.
Grigori's shadow falls over him. Not checking for injury. Checking the kart.
"Again," he says, flipping the kart upright like it’s made of cardboard.
The world swims back in fractured pieces, snow flecked gravel, oil slick puddles reflecting the moon, his own breath ragged in his ears. Ilya blinks, and the black spots at the edges of his vision burst like blood blisters. His left wrist pulses with a deep, sickening heat, already blooming purple where it smashed into the steering column. He barely has time to register the deformity. The way his tiny wrist bends at a grotesque angle. The swollen lump beneath the skin. Before Grigori’s hand reaches forward.
"Pathetic."
His father’s gloves are damp with morning frost as they clamp around Ilya’s forearm. The boy’s breath hitches, he knows what comes next.
CRUNCH.
The sound isn’t clean. It’s wet and granular, like chewing cartilage. Ilya’s wrist bones grind against each other as Grigori wrenches them back into alignment, tendons snapping. A high, broken whine escapes Ilya’s throat before he can choke it down.
"Stop crying," Grigori growls, twisting harder. "I broke both collarbones at Spa and still finished the race."
Tears blur Ilya’s vision, but he doesn’t dare lift his other hand to wipe them. Not when his father’s grip is still vise tightness. Not when he can feel the jagged edges of bone still settling beneath his skin. Blood trickles from his freshly split lip, mingling with the sweat and grease on his chin.
Grigori releases him with a shove that sends him staggering into the kart’s side pod. The metal is unforgiving, biting into his bruised ribs.
"Get in."
And because Ilya is seven. Because he’s a Rozanov. Because his mother’s bedroom light just flicked off.
He climbs back in.
Ilya’s wrist screams as he grabs the steering wheel. His fingers, slick with cold sweat, slip once, twice, before finding purchase. Every movement sends white hot needles shooting up his arm, but he heaves himself into the seat without a sound. The steering wheel is an instrument of torture now, each vibration from the track jolting through his shattered wrist. His fingers tremble against the grips, his left hand already stiffening, the skin stretching taut over swelling tissue.
Grigori slaps the back of his helmet. "Faster this time."
And Ilya obeys. He knows the alternative. The shame. The disappointment. The crushing weight of being less than. Hurts infinitely worse than any broken bone.
Dawn bleeds across the track in streaks of orange and pink. Painting the kart’s windshield in colorful hues.
A thick droplet of blood rolls from his hairline, where the helmet padding has long since worn through, down the bridge of his nose. It hesitates at the curve of his lip, mingling with the split flesh there before dripping onto his trembling hands. The steering wheel’s worn rubber grips drink it in greedily, the dark material turning blacker where his fingers clutch. From the pit wall, Grigori’s stopwatch winks cruelly in the new light. The reflection dances across Ilya’s swollen eyelid each time he blinks, searing the time into his vision even when he closes his eyes.
30.2 seconds.
The radio crackles to life. "Again."
Ilya’s stomach revolts, a sharp cramp that has him doubling over the wheel for half a breath. The taste of bile mixes with the copper still pooling under his tongue. But his foot doesn’t lift from the accelerator.
The kart surges forward with a scream of tortured rubber. His split lip reopens with the first jolt over the curb, painting his teeth pink.
Grigori’s shadow stretches long across the start finish line as Ilya crosses it. The stopwatch clicks.
"28.8." Static. "Better."
Ilya’s breath comes in jagged gasps, his ribs burning where they’ve slammed into the seatbelts lap after lap. A crimson thread weaves through his eyebrow, dripping into his lashes. His wrist has swollen to twice its size inside his glove, the leather splitting at the seams.
He doesn’t wait for the command.
Foot to the floor.
Again.
In the distance, a cigarette burns unnoticed between Irina’s fingers. Slow, hungry kiss of heat creeping toward her knuckles. Ash flutters onto the windowsill like dirty snow, piling up in ways that only told of the countless other times in this position. Outside, the kart’s scream cuts through the morning air again. Ilya’s tiny frame vibrates with each impact against the curbs. His helmet dipping slightly on the straights. He’sgetting tired, he’s just a boy, he’s—
The cigarette breaks in her grip. Burning tobacco spills across her fingers, but she doesn’t flinch. The pain is familiar. The kitchen smells of last night’s food gone sour and the mint toothpaste she used to scrub away Grigori’s vodka breath kisses. A single lightbulb flickers above the sink, casting jumping shadows that make Ilya’s kart seem to stutter around the track.
"I could stop this."
The thought comes unbidden, unwelcome. Her hand drifts to the phone. One number. That’s all it would take.
Across the yard, Grigori turns. Even through the fogged glass, his gaze finds hers. Daring her.
Irina’s fingers uncurl. The phone stays silent. A flick of a lighter as she lights a new cigarette.
🏎️𖦹 ׂ 𓈒 🏁 ／ ⋆ ۪
Kazan Karting Circuit - 2000
One moment, Ilya’s wheels are planted, his line through Turn 4 flawless, just like Papa taught him, and the next, a tap from Petrov’s son sends him spinning into the abyss. His kart spins, tires screeching as they bite air instead of tarmac. Grandstands flipping like pages, the screams of volunteers warped and distant. Gravel peppers his visor. Ilya’s body is thrown out of the kart like a ragdoll, his knee dragging across asphalt with a sound like sandpaper on meat. The fabric of his racing suit splits like overripe fruit, revealing raw, weeping flesh beneath.
Around him, the world holds its breath.
The red flag waves frantically. Engines cut out one by one, an eerie silence descending over the circuit. Even the ever present Kazan wind seems to pause, carrying only the metallic tang of spilled fuel.
Ilya doesn’t wait for the marshals.
He’s already scrambling to his feet before the first medic starts running to him, his left leg buckling grotesquely as his ruined knee refuses to cooperate. His gloves are shredded, palms a mess of embedded gravel and asphalt burns. The laughter hits first, sharp as carbon fiber shards.
"Look at Rozanov!"
Misha Petrov's snicker cuts above the rest, bouncing off the hollow shell of Ilya's helmet. For one fractured moment, it's all he hears.
But then, he feels set aflame.
Not the clean burn of over revved engines. This is molten steel poured directly into his tibia, liquid nails driven through cartilage. His vision whites out at the edges as he glances down. His racing suit's left leg has sheared off entirely, hanging in tatters like butchered meat. Blood dripping in rhythmic gouts with each hammering heartbeat. The first tear falls. Then another. They carve hot tracks through the grime and pre-mix oil splattered across his cheeks, leaving streaks of childish pink skin exposed.
Weak. Pathetic. Disgrace.
Grigori's voice explodes in his skull, louder than the pain. Ilya bites down until a molar cracks. The new pain is clean, precise, a distraction from the inferno in his leg. Coppery warmth floods his mouth. Finally the glove against his jaw isn't just leather, it's the same weathered Righetti driving glove that gripped his tiny hands on his first day in a kart. Now stinking of engine grease and the acidic tang of last night's alcohol. The fingers dig in, pressing hard, inescapable.
"Look. At. Me."
Ilya's vision swims. A watercolor mess of pitlane asphalt. His own blood dripping in messy patterns. And the terrifying clarity of his father's rage. His tears carve paths through the grime, each drop plinking onto Grigori's glove.
"Tears are for the weak." Grigori's thumb brutally wipes across his cheekbone, smearing tears, snot and blood into a single humiliating stripe. The gesture isn't supposed to be comforting, it's diagnostic, like checking tire wear. “You want to be weak? Want them all to see?”
His father's free hand gestures to the gaggle of mechanics pretending not to watch. To Misha Petrov openly snickering on the race track. To the cameras already capturing his humiliation. Ilya's head shakes quickly, firmly, his matted hair flinging droplets of sweat and blood.
Plink.
A single drop of blood detaches from his mangled leg, splatting onto the shine of Grigori's shoes. Black leather blooming with a perfect crimson puddle.
Grigori's grip tightens fractionally, "Good," his father murmurs, "Now get back in the fucking kart."
The world tilts violently as Ilya lurches toward the kart. His left leg drags like dead weight, the exposed joint scraping a wet red trail through the gravel. Fresh blood wells up with every hobbled step, hot, insistent, pulsing in time with his racing heartbeat. Grigori doesn’t help. He watches. His hands, still gloved, grip the kart’s rear bumper, to keep it from rolling as Ilya hauls himself in. The belts, when he clips them, smell like sweat and months of unwashed fear.
His fingers curl around the wheel. The leather grips, once pristine, are now sticky with half dried gore. His exposed palm burns where it makes contact, salt and adrenaline turning each nerve ending into an inferno. Something inside his knee audibly grinds when he presses the pedals.
The green flag drops.
Ilya’s foot smashes the throttle before his brain processes the signal, the engine’s howl drowning out the wet click of his kneecap shifting again. His vision tunnels, adrenaline narrowing his thoughts. The pain is still there, of course it is. It lives in him now, curled around his spinal cord like a second nervous system. But it doesn’t matter. Nothing matters except the finish line, except proving to every sneering face in those stands that he could bleed out in this fucking seat and still cross first.
His blood slick hands slip, just once, on the wheel. The kart shudders over the curb, sending a lightning bolt of agony up his ruined leg. The sound that leaves him is barely human. It’s the screech of shearing metal, the guttural snarl of a wounded animal. But he keeps going. The checkered flag passes above him. Ilya doesn’t see it wave. His eyes are glazed, his lips split and blue from biting back screams. But the engine’s dying wail tells him everything.
Victory.
Back home, Irina’s hands shake as she peels the suit from his leg. The fabric has fused to the wound in places, taking chunks of flesh with it. The vodka she pours over it burns. Ilya doesn’t flinch. He’s somewhere else now. Stuck in the moment. In the cameras flashing as he held the trophy,. In the awed silence of the mechanics who loaded his kart post race. In Grigori’s hand on his shoulder, brief, bruising, but the closest to approval he’ll ever get.
“Mama, did you see me on the track? Did you see me win?” His hands fell into her curly hair.
Her hands shook as she dabbed the rag against his skin. “Yes, sunshine I did.”
When his mother presses a shaking kiss to his feverish brow, he barely feels it.
Victory.