Chapter Text
Everyone knew Ilya Rozanov’s life would end with a bang.
A particularly nasty hit on the ice – his fault, of course – or an overdose on party drugs after a two-week summer bender. Perhaps a dramatic face off with a puck bunny’s vengeful boyfriend, or a scorned ex-hookup, since he had no shortage of either. Or maybe some of those Russian mafia rumors had teeth – and guns to match.
Ilya Rozanov blazed so brightly it was impossible to tell if he was a thriving sun or a supernova mid-explosion. He lived loudly and fiercely and got under people’s skin like he could see the cracks in them. He carried himself like he was untouchable, invincible, floating above the crowds. Everyone assumed that one day he would die how he lived. Something drawn out, adrenaline-filled, flashy. A final scandalous headline to sweep the globe.
In the end, it’s not far off.
Yuna Hollander just never expected to be around to see it proven right.
Being online is legitimately her job. She ensures she’s never without an internet connection or a personal hotspot for longer than three minutes. She has Google alerts set for Shane, the Voyageurs, and a few other major topics closely tied to him. Her email inboxes are neatly organized, perpetually open, and addressed with a level of efficiency and passive-aggressive class that puts the country’s leadership to shame. She keeps her finger on the pulse of hockey out of a blend of managerial obligation to her son’s career, motherly protectiveness over her son himself, and her own fierce passion for the sport.
It makes sense, then, that Yuna Hollander is one of the first to see the video of a smoldering plane falling out of the sky.
Blessedly, she’s at home when it happens. She’s curled up on the couch with a mug of tea and a new contract from Speedo pulled up on her laptop. It had mystified her a bit when she had actually gotten bites from the Speedo people, since they were obviously more primed to sponsor swimmers. But they’re offering Shane a lot of money, and the more skin he shows in his advertisements the better they perform, and the representative had made some sort of comment about wanting to expand their target demographic and how there are just not a lot of options that look like…him…in swimming and how Shane is a rare example of having the skill to back up the demographic check-mark.
Yuna’s eye twitches. It’s good money. It keeps his name circulating and his presence on everyone’s minds. It could probably add another comfortable year to Shane’s retirement, a phase of her son’s life which she tries to ignore could open its gaping maw and swallow him up at any time. It just takes one unfortunate hit, one bone that doesn’t heal quite right, and everything Shane has built could come crumbling down. Yuna can’t imagine her son doing anything other than hockey and she’d never ask that of him, and so all she can do is try to set him up the best that she can, so that one day when it all explodes, he has somewhere soft to land.
Yuna thumbs open Twitter with half a mind to skim swimming fan communities for opinions on Speedo ambassadors and any overlapping interest with the hockey world. If Speedo isn’t the right thread to pull on here, maybe there’s another deal she can strike.
Every thought in Yuna’s head dies with the first video that’s served up on her feed.
Against a backdrop of bleak January sky, crackling flames smear brilliant orange into the dense gray fog. Yuna isn’t sure what she’s looking at until a spiraling plane slips through a gap in the clouds, showing off the inferno blazing on its side like it knows its final moments are being captured. Yuna’s stomach drops as she realizes the fire is coming from the clearly defunct left engine tucked under the wing.
The plane banks hard, trying to soldier on to a safe landing with only one working thruster, which swiftly drops to none. Slack jawed, Yuna watches the plane fall from the sky, clip the approaching tree line, and hurtle towards the ground. A thicket of trees briefly obscures the structure before a deafening explosion shatters the night, and the plane crumples nose-first against the earth like an empty soda can.
“Holy shit,” the person recording mutters. The camera shakes, but doesn’t stray from the massive plumes of tar-black smoke billowing up to the heavens.
It’s a horrible tragedy. Of course it is. But horrible tragedies aren’t as rare as they should be. Last week it was a family murder-suicide in the rural mountains of Montana. This week it’s a passenger plane en route to Montreal. Next week it’ll probably be some cruise ship sinking in the Mediterranean or another mass injury event in the States.
Horrible and sad, as all tragedies are. Nothing that crosses into Yuna Hollander’s little bubble, though. Like with all other tragedies both preceding and on the horizon, she can click her tongue in sympathy along with the rest of the bystanders making dinner for their happy and healthy families as the evening news drones on in the background. She can have her moment of sadness for those affected and then move on with her very unaffected life.
Except.
The caption of the video is oh my god Ilya Rozanov’s plane just blew up.
Absurdly, Yuna’s first impulse is to laugh. It doesn’t make any sense. The Centaurs just barely finished up a game in New York and aren’t slated to play Montreal for another three days, so there’s no reason for them to be flying so early. She can’t fathom Ilya ‘manwhore’ Rozanov willingly giving up free days in NYC, where the clubs never close and the alcohol stays flowing and there’s an endless stream of women begging for just a crumb of his time.
(Maybe Rozanov has been absent from the tabloids for a while now, but — a tiger never changes their stripes, right? And Rozanov loves animal print.)
Yuna is intimately familiar with what a hockey team charter plane looks like, and the craft in the video is definitely some commercial Air Canada flight. Surely Rozanov hasn’t gone so broke on that Centaurs salary that he’s flying economy?
She quickly scrolls through the comments, which are stacking up by the millisecond as the video goes viral. There are other videos too – some are alternate angles on crash, others are somber clips of the smokey aftermath. The wreckage is too mangled to get a good look at from a spectator’s point of view.
One post catches her eye.
it’s true, i paid for R’s flight info (long story). according to the broker his name was on the flight log and he even checked in at the gate, so unless he disappeared on the jet bridge, he was on that plane!!
Irritation wells up in Yuna where the shock has hollowed her out. What the fuck is Rozanov’s team doing, letting insiders leak his flight information for a couple of bands? It’s not uncommon in the celebrity world, but the first time Yuna found someone trying to peddle Shane’s personal information, she came at them with the full force of the law until the broker went into hiding.
Maybe this insider is selling faulty info. It could be a scam, a random faceless person on the internet claiming to know more than everyone else. It can’t be true.
Yuna clutches her phone to her chest, switches on the TV, and waits for the story to officially break. It doesn’t take too long for headlines to roll across the screen.
OTTAWA CENTAURS STAR ILYA ROZANOV POSSIBLY ABOARD FATAL PLANE CRASH OUTSIDE MONTREAL: WHAT WE KNOW SO FAR
So far, they don’t know much more than Yuna. But acknowledgement of Rozanov’s link to the flight from an official news network is a bad sign. That means they likely have credible information to build from.
Yuna fires off a couple of texts and emails to her contacts in both the hockey and media worlds. Predictably, no one has the time or patience to loop in the mother of Rozanov’s biggest rival when they’re trying to figure out if their star client is still alive. Yuna isn’t sure why she bothered.
She hates Rozanov. Most people do.
And, sure. Everyone, Yuna included, had an itchy feeling in the back of their mouths that Rozanov’s reckless lifestyle would catch up with him at some point or another, but no one had expected it to happen like this. So soon.
So young.
For God’s sake, he’s only a month younger than Shane. Her baby.
Yuna’s heart squeezes. Like him or not, Rozanov is – was – someone’s baby.
David comes home from work early. He’s frazzled in that way that only Yuna is able to pick out. His glasses are askew and his lips are drawn in a tight line and to the rest of the world his rigid shoulders might read as steady and calm, but Yuna knows he’s bracing to keep from caving in on himself. It’s the same look Shane gets after a particularly brutal loss on the ice.
He loops an arm around her waist and pulls her against his side, smoothing a hand through her hair. Yuna melts against her husband, holding onto him like a buoy in storm-churned waters. Nodding at her phone, he prompts, “What is the hockey world saying?”
“Not much. The investigation is still under way, and everyone involved is very tight-lipped.”
“So no word on…survivors?”
Yuna shakes her head. “Nothing at all. We still don’t even know if Rozanov was on the flight or not. Everything is just rumors and speculation right now, but the media is probably going to grill Shane about it regardless. We’ll need to start workshopping responses.”
David squeezes her hand. “Shane has nothing to do with this. They shouldn’t be looking to him for a statement.”
“They shouldn’t,” Yuna agrees. “But one of them can’t get a goddamn bagel from down the street without the media asking the other to compare their midday snacking habits so they can link the resulting impact on their scoring race. It’s absurd.”
When scary things happen, the easiest response is anger. Anger feels productive, invigorating, purposeful. Yuna can take anger and run with it until she exhausts herself out of all the fear and sadness that threatens to snarl around her ankles and force her to wallow in what-ifs.
Her baby takes at least forty flights per year. The odds of a plane crash are low, but Shane flies so much more than the average person. Every time she blinks, she sees the Voyageur’s logo embossed on the spinning tail of the crashing plane. That could have been Shane.
In every other aspect of their careers, Shane and Rozanov are interchangeable. One of them wins a trophy one year, the other one takes it the next. Any play Rozanov makes Yuna can picture Shane doing, but obviously better. She’s gotten so used to hearing Rozanov’s name and seeing his picture as he soaks in the glory of a win and thinking that should be Shane.
The news flashes a black and white picture of a surly-looking geared up Rozanov from the beginning of the season. Blood red text fades across the photo.
MISSING.
That could be Shane.
Instead of giving in to the real emotion pressing against her ribcage – the frightened, protective urge to take Shane into her arms and never let him go even when he bats her away for smothering him – Yuna scowls. Rozanov has gotten himself into another news shitstorm, and now Shane will have to deal with the fallout. He’ll be the one hounded for his thoughts on the tragedy, for his opinions on how this will shape the rest of the hockey season, for a snappy soundbite about the man that’s been a thorn in his side for his entire career.
“They’re gonna ambush him,” David says gravely.
Fuck. Yuna tries to get in touch with Shane’s agent, someone on the Voyageur’s PR team, anyone who can strike Shane from the post-game presser. It’s a home game, though, and even on an uneventful day there’s no face Montreal wants to see other than Shane Hollander. After a landslide win on home ice and his only real competition missing in action, there’s no way anyone is going to let Shane slip away from the rink in peace.
Indeed, Yuna is too late. She flips the channel to a broadcast of the game just in time to watch her son shuffle into the press room. Even after all these years he still squints at the camera flashes from the crowd, still fiddles with the microphone as if it hasn’t already been adjusted perfectly for his height, still swallows twice and wipes his hands on his pants once before ever opening his mouth.
“He doesn’t know,” Yuna croaks. “Honey, no one has told him yet.”
“Hollander!” A reporter from the crowd shouts above all the rest. “Do you have any information on Ilya Rozanov’s current status or what business he might have had in Montreal ahead of Friday’s match?”
Shane blinks. “Hey, I’m here to answer questions about tonight’s game. Last time I checked I’m a hockey player, not a personal assistant or a travel agent, right?”
The joke doesn’t land.
Get him out of there, Yuna pleads desperately from the wrong side of the screen. This is not his mess. Leave him out of this.
“Hollander, while there has been no official statement from the Centaurs’ front office regarding the fatal crash, Air Canada just officially named Rozanov as a confirmed passenger aboard flight 44218. Any comment on the ongoing investigation and identification process?”
Yuna sees the moment her son shuts down. His chest sinks on an exhale, then doesn’t inflate again. He’s not breathing, eyes wide and unseeing.
“Crash?” he parrots in a small voice.
The clamor in the room rises as all the reporters realize they’re getting to break the news to Shane Hollander about the presumed fiery fate of his longtime rival. Even better, they’re going to be able to clip his reaction.
Shane stumbles to the side and yanks his phone out of his pocket. Yuna can barely make out the pinkish hue of Instagram opening before his phone tilts out of view of the main broadcast camera. The screen follows him as he fumbles his way to the door, one hand fisted in his shirt and the other going bloodless around his phone as he turns white as a ghost.
Abruptly, Yuna stands.
The heat of her anger has burned away, but she’s left with smoldering embers that need to be funneled towards a goal. She can’t locate a missing person and she can’t solve a plane crash and she clearly can’t prevent the media leeches from harassing her son, but she can definitely drive two hours to hug him tonight.
“We need to–” Yuna starts, but David is already tossing her keys at her, with her purse slung over his shoulder.
Yuna calls Shane as soon as they hit the road. The first three tries go unanswered, which hardens the pit forming in her stomach. She doesn’t relent. On the fourth try, the line picks up.
“Mrs. Hollander,” Hayden Pike’s warbly voice comes over the connection. “Sorry, I – We’re in the locker room. Shane is here, but he won’t move or say anything right now.”
Yuna’s grip around her husband’s hand tightens. She puts the phone on speaker. “Thank you for being there, Hayden. Do you know what’s going on?”
Hayden sighs. “We probably know as much as you. Less, I guess, since we just got off the ice and we’re still catching up. Shane’s taking it really hard, though.”
Yuna’s heart breaks. Her sensitive, sweet boy. He may not like Rozanov, but Shane has a certain degree of respect for anyone who plays good hockey, and Rozanov plays some damn good hockey.
Played. Maybe.
“Shane, honey, can you hear me?” Yuna tries.
“Uh, he’s just staring straight ahead.” Hayden’s voice dims as he moves away from the microphone. “You with us, buddy?”
Silence.
“Hayden, can you make sure he has water nearby?” David chimes in. “And get a hoodie ready, it’ll make him feel safer if he can stand putting it on over the game sweat.”
“‘Course.” Hayden shuffles around and starts quietly trying to coax Shane into sipping on his water bottle. Even his best Dad voice doesn’t seem to be getting through to him. They sit in the tense quietness for a while, David’s foot gradually pressing harder and harder on the gas the longer Shane is unresponsive.
Then Hayden whistles under his breath. “Yikes. I’m hearing from a buddy who was traded through Ottawa and still has contacts there. There’s not much material for the search. It’ll take a while to officially conclude it, obviously, but it’s…not looking good.”
“The search,” David repeats tightly.
“You know, for…” Hayden’s volume drops. “Survivors. Apparently the front of the plane was basically pulverized. No one wants to admit how bleak it is though, especially without an explanation for why Rozanov was even on that flight. People are still holding out for answers, but...God, what bad luck. It's a horrible way to go out.”
A whimper tears across the line and directly into Yuna’s chest. Hayden fumbles with the phone. “Whoa Shane, relax! Let go. Let go. You’re gonna pull your hair out. I thought you didn’t want to be bald by thirty?”
“I – we were – fuck – m’fault, and I never–”
Somehow, the panicked sentence fragments ripped from Shane’s throat are worse than the dead air, even though they provide proof of life. It’s shaky proof at best because Shane sounds like he’s—
“Ill,” Shane gasps once, twice, before falling into a catatonic silence again.
“Ill?” Yuna echos. She casts a glance at David, who shrugs. “You’re feeling ill?”
“I dunno,” Hayden mumbles. He sounds faraway, distracted. The words echo in the locker room acoustics. “Shane, stop. Stop. Jesus. JJ, can you get over here and stop him from scratching? Thanks. Fuck, I just – wait, fuck, did you mean…Shane, was your Lily on that flight too?”
“Who is Lily?” Yuna presses with mounting distress. “Shane! Breathe, honey, we’ll be there soon. It’ll be okay.”
“No,” Shane moans. “No, no…”
“Buddy, I know Lily is from Boston. That flight was coming from New York. There’s no way she was on board. Breathe.”
“I don’t…I don’t know anything about Lily.” It’s hard for Yuna to admit. She can count the number of important women in Shane’s life on one hand. One is her, another is Jackie Pike, another is Rose Landry whom he miraculously stayed close with post breakup, and that’s…about it, actually.
Who is Lily, and when did Shane start keeping secrets?
“But I’ll find out what I can. I’m sure she’s fine. And listen, ignore anyone asking you for comments. Rozanov was your rival, your colleague at best, but not your burden. Let his team handle this.”
Shane sobs out something so tortured it doesn’t even sound like English.
“Shit!” Hayden yelps. “Hold him up, JJ. Yeah Shane, just like that. You need to stay awake, ‘kay?”
Yuna urges David faster. They’re flying down the highway. “Hayden, what on earth is going on?”
“Capitaine, breathe deeper. Let go. Your – what hurts? Your chest?” JJ’s voice grows panicked. “Whoa, we stay upright. I know my clean freak Capitaine does not want to lie down on a nasty locker room floor. Let go of your chest. Hayd, a little help?”
“He’s fucking doubled over, I can’t–”
“Hurts. M’arms, can’t…fuck…” Shane slurs.
“JJ, stay with him. I’m getting the team doc.”
“Calisse (Fuck), Hayden, no time! Call an ambulance, he’s having a fucking heart attack!”
“He’s fucking what?!” Yuna shrieks.
David floors it.
Two hours later, Yuna and David are sitting at Shane’s hospital bed with matching stunned expressions. The doctor patiently explains the diagnosis again.
“Takotsubo cardiomyopathy presents similar to cardiac arrest, but is less severe since it’s caused by stress hormones suddenly weakening the heart. His blood tests and imaging are clean of any indications of blocked arteries, so there doesn’t appear to be a need for further intervention.”
“What do we do, then?” David asks.
With a sigh, the doctor tucks her clipboard under her arm and fixes them with a tired smile. “There’s a reason this is commonly called Broken Heart Syndrome. It’s triggered by extreme emotion or a traumatic event. The main mitigation strategies are anxiety management and reducing stress, but we can schedule some follow up imaging to ensure that nothing physical is amiss with his arteries.”
Yuna’s hand presses against her mouth. Broken Heart Syndrome. Oh, her poor baby.
Shane hasn’t made eye contact with them since they arrived. According to Hayden, Shane passed out in the locker room after suffering intense chest pains. He had been mostly cleared by the time Yuna and David arrived, and was just being kept around for a few more hours to monitor for further cardiac events or emotional outbursts.
Yuna tries to run her hands through Shane’s hair. It used to soothe him when he was younger, but he cringes away from the touch now. She tries not to take it personally.
“Long day, huh?” she says softly.
“I’m dreaming,” Shane mutters. His voice is rough and ragged, like he’d been screaming. Yuna wonders when that happened. “S’not real.”
She sneaks a furtive glance at David and tilts her head towards the IV drip. Did they drug him, or something?
“We’re here. We’re real,” Yuna tries. She reaches out for Shane’s hair again, but he turns away, buries his face in the papery hospital pillow, and cries. True, guttural, heart-wrenching sobs.
Yuna hasn’t heard him cry like this since he was seven years old and got lost in the mall. Back then she was also brought to tears with fear as she searched for him. In the end she found him crouched outside the sporting goods store where they always got his blades sharpened. She was able to gather him up in her arms, hold him close, and promise to never lose him again.
He’s right in front of her now. Somehow, she’s still breaking her promise.
________________
Three days later the search is called off, and Ilya Rozanov is declared dead.
Hayden was right. The front of the plane was essentially dust, taking the brunt of the impact and the resulting explosion. The back of the plane didn’t fare much better, but at least there were bodies to recover. All the NHL got was a copy of a boarding pass for Ilya Grigoryevich Rozanov stamped for seat 8A – window seat, of course – and a half melted crucifix necklace. There was blood spatter discovered on some debris that proved Rozanov really had been there, but that’s it. There’s still the chance of matching a stray bone fragment to him, or perhaps a tooth if they can locate a real one, but the odds are low.
The search crews have reported their findings, experts have affirmed that there was no chance of survival for anyone on the front half of the plane, and Rozanov’s empty coffin is scheduled to be buried in a few weeks. Everyone is trying to move on.
Except Shane.
For the first twenty-four hours after being discharged from the hospital, Shane lays in his bed and doesn’t twitch a single muscle. He stares straight up at the ceiling as tears leak passively from his eyes and curve down his face. Occasionally his eyes drift shut, but Yuna can never tell if he’s actually sleeping.
On the second day, Shane is a little more responsive. He still seems to be in shock, asking if he’s at home in Ottawa because of a game injury, and why does his chest hurt so much, and why won’t Yuna let him have his phone, he really needs to text someone, please Mom, she’ll be so worried?
For once in her life Yuna bites back the burning questions about this Boston Lily because as much as it hurts to realize there’s a part of her baby’s life that’s been closed off to her all this time, for Shane’s own health she can’t risk bringing it up. If this Lily girl really was on that flight – which, considering the lack of phone calls to Shane’s confiscated phone, seems likely – then talking about it could easily send him into another tailspin.
On the third day, Shane falls motionless again. Yuna sits by his side for hours, anxiously tabbing between email inboxes that no longer provide her any sense of control.
Some call her a Tiger Mom, but she’s always preferred the term Mama Bear. Throughout Shane’s life there has been little her claws couldn’t solve. Now, though, no amount of threatening legal action or getting patched through to different agents can get Shane the relief he needs. Which is…
God, if only Yuna knew.
After what feels like years, when Yuna is fearful that Shane has completely reverted back to the nonverbal state he lived in until age five, Shane opens his mouth. He speaks it to the ceiling as if it makes it lighter of a burden to carry. His eyes shine with unshed tears. They sparkle at the ends of his lashes.
“He’s dead.”
Yuna swallows. “Honey.”
“I’m never gonna see him again.”
She thought she had done a pretty good job at keeping him away from the news, social media, or anything else that could put stress on his heart. Maybe he just felt the shift, somewhere deep in his core.
It must be complicated. Despite how much Rozanov needled him, the constant chirps and taunts, the way Rozanov was the only obstacle standing in the way of Shane easily sweeping the entire league, her softhearted boy must have at least gotten used to having the guy around.
Yuna remembers what it was like to hear that one of her childhood neighbors passed away in a car crash several years after she had moved away. It was strange. They weren’t close, and he was irritating at best, but it was odd to think that he was just…gone. Just like that. A constant presence at the periphery of her life, gone.
Never coming back.
“Fucking asshole,” Shane spits at the ceiling. Yuna wonders if he remembers that she’s still here. “Beating me to everything.”
Yuna doesn’t know what to make of that. She sits with him until his anger subsides and finally, finally, he slides his gaze over to meet hers.
“I can’t play hockey again.”
Yuna’s eyes blow wide. “What? Shane—“
Jaw clenched so hard it must be grinding his teeth, Shane just manages a tiny shake of his head.
“I, I know it’s scary right now.” Yuna is a puppet with its strings cut, a loyal dog abandoned off the leash, a lightbulb in a black hole. Utterly lost. “But the doctors said you can make a full recovery. Your heart — it wasn’t a physical problem. Nothing permanent. We’ll take it slow, ease you back into training, get regular checkup scans, find a nice therapist. You can live a normal, fulfilling life. I promise.”
Shane shakes his head again. “I can’t. Won’t. Not w-without—” He cuts himself off with a choked cry.
Yuna’s heart thumps in her throat. In all her worst nightmares about the end of Shane’s career, she saw him retiring from hockey after growing so old and achy that no team could justify keeping him on payroll anymore, probably after setting the record for being the first eighty-year-old to play professionally. If his career stopped early it would only be after snapping some crucial hockey bone.
Something physical. Something Yuna could lay a bandaid over, kiss better, and assure him that he did all he could, and it wasn’t his fault.
Maybe she was raised more old-fashioned than she thought. She had never considered that emotional injuries could be career ending. That a day would come where Shane wouldn’t want to get back on the ice.
Where he’d give it up willingly.
Her mind just circles back to the Russian Menace of it all. It’s not like Shane witnessed a paralyzing hit against JJ or Hayden, or someone else he’s close to on his team — is there anyone else? — this was Ilya Rozanov.
Shane would quit hockey over Ilya Rozanov?
“I know the rivalry was important to you,” she tries to empathize. During her brief stint as a competitive swimmer in middle school, she hated training alone. She always needed someone in the next lane over so she could pace herself, push herself, see them reach out for the wall and lunge to beat them to it. The adrenaline of competition, the desperate fervor of a neck-and-neck race, the achievements one could never dream of reaching alone. Winning feels better when you have to work for it — when there’s someone worth beating.
“You knew each other for a long time, I’m not blind to that. I know it’s sad, and it’s scary, but you can stand on your own. Your career isn’t just the rivalry, and there will always be other people who can challenge you.” Yuna’s words falter at the glazed film over Shane’s eyes. She’s verging on hysterical because for the first time in her life she can’t get through to her son. “Shane. You love hockey. You once told me you wouldn’t give it up for anything. It’s the most important thing in your life.”
“Not anymore,” Shane whispers. “Not…for a long time.”
Yuna can’t believe she’s pleading with her son to not set fire to everything he’s — they’ve — worked to build.
What is Shane Hollander without hockey?
What is Yuna Hollander, without Shane Hollander playing hockey?
Hockey or not, she will always be his mother. But is that enough to protect him?
Shane is usually pretty easy for Yuna to read. That’s her son. Her baby. She’s spent years and years training to decode all his microexpressions, and yet she has no idea what’s currently swirling in those teary brown eyes. She’s never felt so set adrift. He’s never felt so unreachable.
“He must have been so scared,” Shane sniffles. “And alone. It – It wasn’t supposed to end like this.”
Yuna searches for words of reassurance. She’s not so good at this form of comfort. She’s good at taking action, at unraveling the layers of a problem until she finds the first step to take towards fixing it. But what is she supposed to solve when her only son is grieving a man they all hated?
“He…didn’t suffer,” she tries, wishing she could sound more convincing to herself. “It happened so fast, he probably didn’t even know what was happening.”
She’s doing her best. Despite the years she and David spent pouring over parenting handbooks and taking classes and interviewing friends and family about their experiences raising children as they tried and tried and tried for their own, nothing has prepared her for navigating a situation like this.
Hell, most of the advice in those handbooks stopped applying after Shane’s path diverted from normal nerdy kid to once-in-a-generation hockey superstar in the making.
Well. Twice in a generation.
Ever so slightly, Shane shakes his head. “Alone,” he repeats, and the tears spill over. He opens his mouth as if to continue, but seemingly loses the will to speak, and his gaze goes vacant again.
At least he lets Yuna wipe his tears this time.
_____________________
“He just needs time,” Yuna says tersely. “Just a few more days. I can hold them off for that long.”
“Yuna.”
She fires off another email full of flowery bullshit. Yes, Shane is on a break from the public eye. No, it’s not serious or terminal or career-ending. Yes, he’ll be back on the ice and in front of cameras again soon. No, there’s no need to void any contracts. Shane Hollander never lets anyone down.
“It’s just shock. It’ll wear off.”
Any day now, Yuna is convinced Shane will wake up and jump out of bed for his morning run like usual. He’ll be embarrassed to learn about the fugue state he’s been in for the last two weeks, but she’ll have his protein smoothie ready for him and will reassure him that they sent someone to his Montreal home to take care of any spoiled food and Shane will smile at her again with so much relief because he knew he could trust his Mama to keep his life together even if he falls apart and it will all be normal again.
“Honey.” David’s voice hasn’t sounded this pained since their string of ill-fated pregnancies before having Shane. Their little miracle.
“Have some faith, will you?” Yuna snaps. “He’s our son. We’ve seen him go through tough times before. Change is always hard on him, he just needs time to adapt.”
It’s only half true. Sure, Shane is not good with transitions. When he first moved out to Montreal, he struggled visiting Ottawa because he’d suffer homesickness on both ends, like his heart was still confused on where it should call home. He’s going to retire his jersey with the same team that drafted him, not only because they’re the cream of the crop and pay him well and his whole life is in Montreal and he's their God, but also because he would never be able to handle the status quo blow that would arise from trading teams.
Shane runs the same route through Montreal every morning and has a shortlist of restaurants in the area that either cater to his diet or are willing to accommodate for it. He knows the best way to avoid traffic getting to the rink and which shops stock the freshest fruit and everything in his current life is perfect and in its place and he’s happy there.
At least, he was. She's pretty sure.
But Shane has never really experienced grief. Not like this. He was probably too young to remember his paternal grandmother’s slow decline. Her eventual passing at 92 in her sleep was as far from a shock as it gets. Yuna dressed Shane in his little tuxedo for the ceremonies and adjusted his tie and watched him take cues from them about when to look sad and how to respond to the constant stream of I’m so sorry for your loss.
That was really it. Shane is an only child, both his parents are only children, and he only has a smattering of distant cousins on David’s side. His circle of friends has always been tight and well-protected. He’s never really lost anyone.
There’s a niggling guilt at the back of Yuna’s mind that tells her he never really experienced tough times either. Of course there was the odd training camp where Yuna noticed Shane not really gelling with the other boys, but she never had to escalate a bullying scandal to the higher-ups. He had a few breakups under his belt, but even though he was never the one to cut things off, he never seemed particularly torn up about them either.
Shane has been shouldering the expectations of the entire hockey world since before he was old enough to train his body to handle the weight. Yuna had always felt like that was more than enough. She would stand between him and the world outside his training rink that just wanted to taketaketake until there was nothing left of her baby. She would handle everything for him so he only needed to think about getting on the ice and playing the best hockey anyone has ever seen, so no one could underestimate him again for the crime of looking like his mother.
All parents want to shelter their kid from harm. Shane just needed a little more sheltering than others, and Yuna was more than happy to do that for him.
David gently closes her laptop lid. She blinks away her blurry vision and he dabs at the resulting tears that arc down her cheeks. “He’s not getting better.”
“I know,” she whispers. For the first time in years, she doesn’t know how to move forward.
Emails are easy. Phone calls are even easier, because she can leverage her no-nonsense tone to get her way. Statements are a pain in the ass, but necessary and she’s gotten good at vetting them over the years. She can still fix the world for Shane.
She just doesn’t know how to fix Shane himself.
He only leaves his bed to relieve himself, and even that doesn’t seem to be more than once or twice a day. Very quickly he has run out of anything to empty. Bowls of yogurt and granola – separated, because he hated the lumpy texture when they were mixed together as a kid – spoil on his bedside table. Dinner trays go untouched even though David tries every recipe Shane has ever liked. He won’t even drink water until his lips get so chapped and his throat so scraped raw he can’t breathe, and even then Yuna has to force ice chips into his mouth.
Her son has disappeared and left a ghost in his place.
He’s like a doll splayed out on his bed, waiting for Yuna to pose him back to life. She searches for a string to pull, a little tab on the doll’s back that will activate his voice and tell her what he needs from her, but she comes up empty every time.
When he was young he used to go boneless like this when she was dressing him, turning when instructed and quietly ducking his head or arms through all the proper openings. He was such an easy child. He always nodded and listened and agreed with his mommy and sometimes it would scare her, that total obedience.
Right now she wants nothing more than for Shane to throw a tantrum. At least it would be something. She knows how to calm him down from a meltdown. She doesn’t know what to do with a ghost.
Time passes. Yuna starts dodging calls from the Voyageur’s front office. Shane has been placed on long term injury recovery to ensure he heals fully from his weakened heart tissue, but the season is winding down and Montreal hasn’t been getting the recovery updates they want to hear. Yuna can relate. She doesn’t know how to pivot the conversation from a physical ailment that has a treatment timeline and the lab results to prove it, to whatever psychological break Shane has clearly suffered.
A tearfully hushed midnight discussion determines that Shane will not be attending Rozanov’s funeral. David thought maybe it could provide Shane with some closure, but all Yuna can think about is Shane’s shaky voice repeating alone. In stark contrast with the memorials set up around Ottawa and Boston that fans flock to in droves, Rozanov’s services are limited to just family and friends.
Just friends, actually. It doesn’t seem like he had anyone left in his family. From what Yuna hears, the main attendees will be the Ottawa Centaurs and whichever Boston Bears are willing to make the drive. Scott Hunter. Some Russian girl claiming to be his childhood friend. That’s about it – no partner, no siblings, no network of grieving unspecified loved ones. For all his charm and bravado, it seems Rozanov didn’t actually have many true connections.
Alone.
Yuna can’t let Shane see himself proven right. These days, anything could be the final straw.
An invitation for Shane arrives in the mail a week before the services. Yuna can’t bring herself to shred it because it doesn’t belong to her, even though she wants to erase any trace of Rozanov’s presence around her vulnerable son. She instead hides it in a stack of old baking recipes she knows Shane will never touch.
“Talk to me,” Yuna begs late one night. She’s clutching one of Shane’s hands in both of hers. His wrists are bony and his muscles are clearly atrophying from lack of movement and nutrition. “Please, Shane. Can we call someone? We can get you help. You can check into a nice facility and they’ll fix you right up.”
Surely a professional can figure out what got shaken loose in Shane’s brain from the shock of Rozanov’s death. They can slot it back into place and reconnect the frayed wires and Shane will go back to being her awkward, perfect, beautiful son.
With great effort, Shane licks his lips.
“No.”
It’s barely a word. Barely a breath. Shane has spoken for the first time in two months and it’s to refuse help.
But he spoke. He acknowledged her. He heard her words and he’s clearly in there somewhere and they just have to keep guiding the spoon to his mouth until he’s strong enough to hold it by himself.
Yuna never learned to give up. She spit in the face of every coach who told her Shane was too weak to make it as a hockey player, which Yuna correctly translated as too kind, too quiet, too Asian. She refused to leave David even when her parents disowned her for it. She tried and tried and tried until she delivered a healthy baby boy that curled into her chest like he already knew how much he was treasured.
She won’t give up now.
She doesn’t care about hockey anymore. It doesn’t matter if Shane never laces his skates up again, if he never again touches a stick or places blade to ice. She just wants him to smile and call her mom again.
Yuna reroutes his mail from Montreal to Ottawa so nothing gets lost or stolen. She gets Rose on the phone, but she can’t get through to him either. Yuna handles his bills and organizes fan letters and starts stacking PR packages on his bedside table in hopes of jumpstarting some sense of routine and familiarity. Maybe he just needs to read a couple supportive words from people that love him for his craft, or open some custom jackets or cases of sponsored drinks, and everything will click back into place.
He’ll remember how much he loves hockey, how much people love him for loving hockey, and how it feels to be on top of the world.
But the packages pile up. The letters go unopened. Shane doesn’t speak again.
Four months after Ilya Rozanov dies in a fiery plane crash, Yuna walks into her miracle baby’s room and can’t find a pulse.
“Just one spoonful,” Yuna bargains, setting the smoothie bowl on the nightstand. It’s healthy enough for him not to worry about the macros, and she painstakingly blended it so he doesn’t even need to chew. It should go down nice and easy. Shane has always been such an easy kid.
He doesn’t respond when she touches his shoulder. That isn’t unusual. Gently, Yuna rolls him onto his back and tries to prop him up enough to let gravity take the food down his throat. It’s always a tough process. Maybe David was right about getting him a feeding tube.
Not a muscle twitches as Yuna poses her little doll. He’s even more limp than usual. She blows out a long, pained breath. It hurts to see. He’s a tall, bulky hockey player and she shouldn’t be able to push him around like this.
Yuna pries open his mouth, thumb lingering against his lip as she digs out a scoop of thick smoothie. She freezes at the sensation that hits her finger.
Rather, the lack thereof.
Shane’s mouth is bone-dry. His slackened jaw is jammed open by her thumb, but he doesn’t even seem to notice. With growing horror clawing at her stomach, Yuna notices the lack of breath ghosting across her finger.
“Shane,” she says. Or maybe screams. She’s not sure.
For the first time in months, Yuna lets herself really look at her son’s ghost. Really understand what’s happened to him. His skin is pale and cold, freckles stomped out from the lack of sunlight. His collarbones poke out from his skin and his cheeks are gaunt and the skin under his eyes is bruised purple like he’d just taken a nasty punch. A gold chain is tangled around his knobby fingers and there’s a package on the floor with a small hole in the corner and Cyrillic on the return address. There are dried tear tracks on his face, but he looks more at peace than he has since January.
His chest isn’t moving.
The spoon clatters against the bed. Oh no, Shane won’t like that. He hates messes. Yuna can fix this. She’ll apologize for the ruckus and throw the smoothie-stained sheets in the wash and set Shane up on the couch, maybe, swaddled in a new clean blanket with those seamless socks that don’t irritate him and she can put on a hockey game and–
“Yuna,” David chokes out. She wonders when he got there. Maybe he wants to feed Shane his smoothie this morning. Clearly Yuna isn’t doing a very good job of it.
David’s shaking hand lands against Shane’s cheek, stroking it gently. His thumb traces the harsh cut of his cheekbones, then trails down to press against the side of Shane’s neck, right underneath his jaw. “Oh, Shane,” he breathes. David is crying. Why is he crying? Shane is fine, he’s just tired. It’s been a hard few months. David knows that. He needs his rest.
All he’s been doing for the past four months is rest and he still looks so, so tired.
“Leave him alone, you’re hurting him,” Yuna gasps through sobs she didn’t realize were tearing from her mouth. She grabs onto David’s arm and pulls and pulls as he drives the heels of his hands into Shane’s chest.
“Yuna, he’s–” David cries. He can’t say it either. “We need to call for help.”
“No!” Yuna lunges for his phone and hurls it across the room. It shatters somewhere against the dresser. “No, no, he’ll be so embarrassed, David, he hates attention. He can’t stand when people think he’s weak or vulnerable. Don’t you remember when we pulled him out of a game in Juniors because he had the flu and he wouldn’t talk to us for three days? He’ll hate us, David, David I hate myself, I–”
David catches her as she collapses into him and they both sink to the ground. There’s nothing they can do but curl up in a pile of broken limbs next to their son’s deathbed and weep until night falls again.
Did he cry out for Mama in his final moments? When Yuna was downstairs, blending a stupid fucking smoothie she knew would meet its fate at the bottom of the garbage disposal, did her baby reach out for her one last time?
Was he scared, all alone?
In the light of a new dawn, Yuna gets up. She carefully peels the sheets out from under Shane’s – from under Shane. She swipes stain remover over the smoothie residue before putting it into the washer and wrangling new sheets onto the bed. Bamboo, because Shane’s skin is sensitive and these are the only sheets that don’t make him sweat at night. She tucks her son in and watches him sleep.
And sleep. And sleep. And sleep.
Eventually David rises from the floor too. It’s taken him longer to bounce back, but at least he seems to have processed some of it. His large hand rubs circles into her back but she can’t feel it. She can’t feel anything but the gaping hole in her stomach where Shane used to be.
It’s all her fault. It’s always been her fault.
David pulls her out of the room and Yuna follows because she doesn’t know what else to do. She doesn’t have a plan for this. She never thought she’d be around to see Ilya Rozanov’s sins catch up to him. She never thought she’d outlive her own son.
“We need to make preparations,” David is saying. Right. There are people to call and official channels to go through, and then there will be statements and announcements and so much I’m sorry for your loss and phone calls and paperwork and cemetery plots to buy and what would Shane have wanted on his tombstone and did he want to be buried or cremated because Yuna never asked because she never imagined, never in her whole life did she imagine she’d need to know.
Suddenly, Yuna understands exactly what Shane has been feeling for the last four months. Her chest is hurting like someone just sliced through the vessels keeping her heart in place. She’s drowning in the gushing blood and all she can do is open her mouth and croak out, “No.”
David’s face crumples again. He’s trying to be strong for her while Yuna is trying to follow their son into that closed off place he found in January and never stepped out of again. “Honey, he’s…gone. We need to figure out what comes next.”
“I’ll fix it,” Yuna pleads. “Let me try.”
Shane was right. It wasn’t supposed to end like this.
Yuna picks up the phone.
_____________________
I’ll cast a spell, Yuna had teased once.
It was a joke that started when Shane was young and completely mystified by the speed of Yuna’s fingers flying over the clunky keys of the family computer. She had told him that she was a witch in the same tone that she told him that turning the ceiling lights on in the car at night would get them abducted by aliens, or that under-the-bed monsters loved dust and vacuuming his room kept them away.
Her wonderful boy took everything at face value, looked up at her adoringly with those big brown eyes, and quietly requested for her to use her witchy powers to make the puck manifest in front of his tiny hockey stick.
Yuna enrolled him in private lessons and then spent the summer learning magic tricks on the bleachers, just to preserve that wide-eyed wonder for a little longer.
Years later, she’d developed a hell of a sleight of hand technique and a great running gag. Respond to your texts, Shane, or I’ll watch you with my crystal orb – Life360. David, pick up your socks from the floor before I turn you into one and toss you into the dryer on high. Ugh, I’m gonna hex those catty moms at the company bake sale so their sourdough loaves never rise correctly again.
It’s a lie.
Technically.
Yuna can’t perform any magic herself. Her family is just old, and traditional, and still clinging on to cultural practices long abandoned by the fervor of modern sensibilities.
So no, Yuna can’t cast a spell. But she knows where to find someone who might.
Two days later, a woman steps into a freezing house in Ottawa.
Yuna shivers when she opens the door. She’s cranked up the air conditioning to an absurd degree for mid-April, but it’s the only way to slow decomposition. Sort of. She’s not sticking her son in a goddamn freezer.
“Uh, thank you for coming all this way,” Yuna stumbles through clunky Japanese. It’s been a long time since she’s needed to speak anything other than English. The visitor reaches out a wrinkly hand, the one not clutching her mobility cane, and somehow finds Yuna’s wrist. She pauses for a second, like the pulse roaring under Yuna’s skin means anything, then relents.
“You may call me Miko. Show me the boy.”
Yuna had begged David to go back to work. One of them had to remain connected to the outside world and it couldn’t be Yuna. She promised that she just needed a quiet day to spend with Shane and say her goodbyes and then they could deal with everything that comes next after she makes her peace with it.
It’s technically true. She just needs to try something first.
Yuna never spent much time in Japan. Her parents were born there and occasionally dragged her back to see extended family and connect her to the culture, but she never saw the point. She was Canadian. She wanted so badly to just be Canadian, like everyone else.
She only learned the language when her mother started refusing to speak to her in English. Every new year she went with them to the only Shinto shrine in Montreal and prayed to deities she didn’t believe in. She awkwardly grinned through conversations with cousins she never got close with about shamanism and mountain gods and talismans.
When she was young all Yuna wanted to do was sever the ties that made her different. They were chains, not anchors. So she made white friends and assimilated and spent the rest of her life trying to compensate for where she came from and what that meant for her son and everyone else who looks like them.
After Shane was born, her attitude shifted. The features she wished didn’t exist on herself looked beautiful on her baby. Her stomach twisted when she imagined her little boy looking at himself in the mirror and superimposing another version of himself, one with blonde hair and blue eyes and a lot less to prove, over the face staring back at him.
Just like Yuna.
She refused to let that happen. She taught Shane that their heritage was something to be proud of, even if at times it felt like nothing more than an invisible cinderblock hampering their pace. She atoned for their cultural estrangement via brand campaigns championing diversity in sports, and a mentorship program for minority children interested in hockey.
Yuna embraced their identity as Canadian-Japanese, but the focus was always on the Canada of it all. She never personally reconnected with her Japanese side, no matter how many times she told Shane it made him marketable made them special.
She’s done a lot of talking about being proud about being Japanese, and not a lot of actually being proud of it.
Now, the heritage she dodged is her last hope.
Canadians don’t believe in spirits. They indulge in horror movies and haunted house attractions and a month during the fall where some might let themselves toy with the idea of it all being real, but there’s no deep-rooted cultural acceptance of mediums and miracles. Maybe some indigenous populations carry similar traditions, but certainly not among the modern public of Canada, the people Yuna brushes shoulders with day in and day out. For them, death is the end, and the afterlife is a nice thought that comforts those that get left behind.
But Japan believes.
So Yuna opens her door and welcomes the itako into her home and prays to deities that she’ll gladly start believing in that the woman’s blindness actually does connect her to the spirit world, as legend has it.
Miko hovers in Shane’s doorway for a heartbeat. She hums low in her throat, then ambles towards the chair Yuna prepared next to the bed. She shoulders off the smooth black tube on her back and leans it against a stack of boxes. According to the frantic research Yuna did after placing the call, it’s full of protective charms and proof of her itako training.
The woman arranges a complicated pattern of string necklaces over the bedspread. Yuna shudders at the animal bones mixed in among the smooth glass beads. She can see shells and teeth, which aren’t that weird, but also what looks like jaw bones and small skulls.
“A terrible tragedy,” Miko rumbles. She strokes one spindly finger across Shane’s palm. Yuna only understands half the words from her thick dialect. “You were not supposed to be separated. How sad. You must have gone looking for him.”
“What?”
Miko turns to Yuna as if just remembering that she’s there. “I will begin the ceremony now. I cannot promise I can find him, or bring him back, or make him speak with you, but I will try.”
“Yes, yes, anything.” Yuna swallows back her tears. “I’ll pay anything, just try. Please.”
She tries not to cringe as the itako scatters rice and salt across Shane’s body and around his bed. She listens quietly to the woman chant folk songs and call upon local kami spirits to protect them as she opens the connection between the living and the dead.
For a long time, nothing happens. There’s just a deepening wrinkle in the old woman’s forehead, the breeze blowing outside the window, and the sinking realization that Yuna just got scammed by an elderly lady.
She’s not sure what she expected. Maybe for the lights to go out, or for the itako’s eyes to roll back or start glowing, or for the hockey book on Shane’s shelf to start levitating. It’s nothing like the movies. Miko just sits there, still as death, and waits with bated breath.
After an eternity, she reaches a blind hand out and somehow navigates straight to the chain still wrapped around Shane’s fingers. They’ve gone stiff and brittle with death, and Yuna was afraid of snapping something if she tried to pry them open.
“I cannot bring him back,” Miko finally says. The words suck out all the air in the room.
Yuna dips her head. She expected this. Truly. She’s never believed in the occult – why would she be rewarded for a lifetime of skepticism?
Having Shane the first time was already a miracle. How dare she ask for a second?
Miko’s eyes open. Her sclera are gray and frosted over, completely unseeing, yet she meets Yuna’s wrecked gaze. “I cannot bring him back alone.”
What the hell does that mean?
“But you – you can bring him back? If you need more helpers, I can make calls. I’ll pay whoever you need. I promise.”
Hope is dangerous. Volatile. If Yuna climbs up on her hope and it doesn’t lead anywhere, she’ll surely die from the fall.
Miko clicks her tongue. “He is not alone. There is another soul tied so tightly to him that they will not separate. Not again.”
He is not alone.
The prospect is both bone-chillingly terrifying and unbelievably relieving. Her outcast son. Her baby who invited his hockey team to his second grade birthday party and only got two of twenty-five to show up. Her celebrity son who would rather take his hockey stick on a date to an empty rink than any of the wonderful girls lining up down the block. Her strong captain who never quite learned how to lower the walls of authority and connect with his teammates as peers.
Her catatonic Shane, who hasn’t gotten visitors in weeks.
Wherever he is now – somewhere Yuna can’t reach, can’t accompany him, can’t make up for what’s missing – he isn’t alone.
Not anymore.
Yuna never makes snap decisions. She prefers to explore all the potential consequences, make endless lists of pros and cons, and develop action plans for each way something could go wrong. She gathers all the information first and makes the most educated guess possible to avoid mistakes she can’t fix. She hasn’t jumped feet-first into a decision since she snapped at her mother that she would not leave David and in fact would be marrying him someday.
Fuck it.
As long as Shane comes back, Yuna can handle anything that comes with him. Whatever leech has latched onto her boy’s soul can be dealt with via exorcism or kitchen knife or bare fists as long as Shane can hug her back first.
“I swear, I don’t care if the devil himself is stuck to him. Bring my baby back.”
Miko nods sharply. She tangles another string of bones around Shane’s hand, intertwining it with the delicate gold chain. She clasps her hands together and rests them over Shane’s heart.
“篠田の森に住む老狐は、昼間は鳴くが、夜は鳴かない。篠田の森に住む老狐は、昼間は鳴くが、夜は鳴かない。篠田の森に住む老狐は、昼間は鳴くが、夜は鳴かない。”. (The old fox in the Shinoda woods, when he cries during the day, then he does not cry in the night.)
A spell. A plea for balance to be restored. A mother crying out for her child at the same time every night. Ritual. Order. Balance.
Yuna just glimpses a tremor in Shane’s lower lip before a headache splits her thoughts and turns her vision white at the edges. Miko’s hands, still clasped, move from Shane’s chest to cover Yuna’s eyes.
“Let the spirits settle,” Miko encourages her. “The world is readjusting. You must, too. Remember your promise.”
The air thickens, dense and soupy. It presses and presses until the weight of it nearly crushes her. All her senses slowly go numb, like the universe is shying away from her so it can bend and break and reform in peace. There’s a haunting ringing in her ears. On an exhale, she feels another pair of thin, feminine hands in hers. It can’t be Miko’s, which are still cupped over her eyes. The hands squeeze once before letting go. Yuna blinks away a vision of long blonde curls and sad eyes and that gold chain again.
Above the blood roaring in her ears, she hears an unfamiliar voice. No – not unfamiliar. Not at all. She’s heard it before, her head just hurts so much, and she – can’t quite place it. If she didn’t know better, if she didn’t know it was impossible, she’d think it was–
“Моя душа. (My soul.)”
Yuna bats Miko’s hands away and makes direct eye contact with Ilya Rozanov, curled around her son on a bed of rice and salt and bones, before she passes out.