Chapter Text
April 2008 — Moscow, Russia
Ilya Rozanov had been dealt a cruel hand long before he was old enough to understand what life was supposed to feel like.
An abusive older brother. An abusive father. And a mother who had died far too soon.
Some memories faded with time.
That one never did.
He could still remember the day he found her as if it had happened only moments ago instead of five years earlier.
He had been twelve years old, coming home expecting to hear her humming in the kitchen or calling his name from down the hall.
Instead, the apartment had been unnervingly quiet.
He had called for her once.
Then twice.
No answer.
His heart had begun to pound as he wandered through the tiny apartment until he reached her bedroom.
She was there.
Still.
Unmoving.
Her skin was pale, almost gray against the sheets, and when he reached for her hand, it was cold enough to make him recoil. He remembered shaking her shoulder with trembling hands, begging her to wake up, insisting she was only sleeping.
“Mama?”
Nothing.
No smile. No reassuring voice. No gentle hand brushing his hair back.
Just silence.
It was the first time Ilya truly understood what death looked like.
From that moment on, the apartment never felt like home again. Every room carried echoes of his mother's laughter that no longer existed. The walls felt colder, the silence heavier. It was as if the warmth had died alongside her, leaving only fear behind.
There was only so much pain a person could try to bury.
Hockey gave him an escape for a few hours each day. Cigarettes dulled the edges. Alcohol blurred the memories just enough to let him sleep. But none of it lasted. The grief, the fear, and the loneliness always came rushing back, stronger than before, until they became the only things he could feel.
Keeping his biggest secret only made the weight heavier.
He met other boys in secret—behind the arena after late practices, in empty parks, in apartments where the curtains stayed drawn. Sometimes they were players from rival clubs. Sometimes they were strangers. Once, it had even been his coach's son.
Every meeting carried the same risk.
Every stolen kiss could destroy his life.
A part of him knew he was being reckless. Another part had simply stopped caring. Maybe, deep down, he wanted someone to find out. Maybe he was tired of constantly looking over his shoulder, tired of pretending to be someone he wasn't.
Eventually, the secret reached the one person he feared most.
His father.
Grigori Rozanov stood in the center of the apartment, his expression as cold as the Moscow winter outside. He had grown up believing there was only one way a man should be. Twenty years older than Ilya's late mother, his views belonged to another generation, and compassion had never been part of them.
His voice was frighteningly calm.
"If you are going to be a pidor," Grigori spat, glaring at his youngest son with unmistakable disgust, "Alexei, show him what we do to pidory."
Alexei didn't hesitate.
Four years older and built like the hockey player he had once trained and failed to become, he towered over sixteen-year-old Ilya. His fist crashed into Ilya's jaw, snapping his head to the side before he could even brace himself.
Another punch landed in his ribs.
Then another.
Ilya curled inward, instinctively shielding his head.
He knew better than to fight back.
Every time he had tried in the past, it had only made the beating last longer.
Instead, he counted the seconds.
One.
Two.
Three.
He hoped Alexei would hit him hard enough to knock him unconscious. If he passed out, maybe he could wake up hours later to an empty apartment. Maybe he wouldn't have to hear his father's voice or see the disappointment in his brother's eyes.
But fate wasn't that merciful.
He felt every punch.
Every kick.
Every cruel word.
Every ounce of disgust directed at him.
Eventually, the pain became too much to process. He closed his eyes and imagined himself somewhere else. Somewhere his mother was still alive. Somewhere hockey was just a game. Somewhere loving another boy wasn't treated like a crime.
Anywhere but here.
When the apartment finally fell silent, he waited several minutes before opening his eyes.
The front door slammed.
Their footsteps faded down the stairwell.
Only then did he uncurl from the hardwood floor.
His entire body throbbed as he pushed himself upright, one hand gripping the wall for balance. His ribs protested with every breath, and his split lip left the metallic taste of blood lingering on his tongue.
He never knew where they went afterward.
His father and Alexei were both police officers. They shared stories over dinner, laughed at jokes Ilya was never included in, and wore matching uniforms that made them look like two halves of the same man.
There had never been room for Ilya in that picture.
He limped toward the bathroom, catching his reflection in the mirror.
A fresh bruise was already blooming across his cheek.
His lower lip had split.
Purple fingerprints were beginning to darken around his wrist.
As he bent over the sink to rinse the blood from his mouth, the gold cross slipped free from beneath his shirt, dangling from the worn chain around his neck.
His mother's cross.
The only thing he'd taken from her after she died.
His trembling fingers wrapped around it.
"I should die," he whispered in Russian.
The words echoed through the empty apartment.
No one answered.
He let the cross fall back against his chest and shuffled into the kitchen. Opening a cabinet, he grabbed the half-empty bottle of vodka his father always kept hidden—though never well enough to keep Ilya from finding it.
Unscrewing the cap with shaking hands, he took a long swallow.
The liquor burned all the way down, making his eyes water.
Another swallow.
Then another.
He leaned heavily against the kitchen sink, waiting for the alcohol to numb something—his bruised ribs, his swollen face, the ache in his chest that had been growing for years.
It softened the edges.
But it wasn't enough.
Not today.
He didn't know how long he remained there.
Minutes.
Maybe hours.
Time had stopped meaning anything.
The apartment was silent except for the occasional creak of old pipes and the steady ticking of the clock above the stove. It sounded impossibly loud, each second reminding him that tomorrow would look exactly like today.
Another beating.
Another lie.
Another day pretending to be someone he wasn't.
He thought about writing a note.
His fingers even reached for a pen before stopping.
What was the point?
His father would twist his words the same way he'd twisted the story of his mother's death. Whatever Ilya wrote would never be the version anyone else heard.
His truth would die with him.
A wave of exhaustion settled over him—not the kind that sleep could fix, but the kind that came from carrying too much pain for far too long.
His breathing slowed.
The room blurred around the edges.
As his strength faded, he slid down onto the cold kitchen floor. The vodka bottle rested nearby, forgotten now, while the apartment around him remained just as empty as it had the day he'd found his mother.
His body began to shiver despite the warmth of the room.
The gold cross lay against his chest.
His mother's cross.
His fingers found it one last time, clutching it tightly enough that the edges pressed into his palm.
"I'll see you soon, Mama," he whispered in Russian.
His voice was barely audible.
A single tear slipped down his bruised cheek as he closed his eyes.
For the first time in years, the apartment was completely still.
...
What do you think the afterlife looks like?
Ilya had imagined countless possibilities over the years.
A bright light.
Towering gates.
His mother waiting with open arms.
Maybe even nothing at all.
Instead...
There was only white.
No floor.
No ceiling.
No walls.
Just an endless expanse stretching farther than his eyes could follow, silent enough that he could hear his own breathing. It felt neither warm nor cold, neither comforting nor frightening. It simply... existed.
He slowly pushed himself to his feet.
His ribs no longer hurt.
The swelling in his face was gone.
When he touched his lip, the cut had vanished.
"I...?"
His voice echoed into infinity before disappearing.
Then, for the first time, he realized he wasn't alone.
Several feet away stood a figure unlike anything he'd ever seen.
It had no clear face, no age, no defining features. Its form shimmered like sunlight reflecting across fresh snow, constantly shifting just enough that Ilya could never focus on it completely.
"Ilya Grigoryevich Rozanov," the figure said calmly. "Born June fifteenth, nineteen ninety-one."
It tilted what should have been its head.
"You are here far too early."
A pause.
"This is not how your story was meant to unfold."
Ilya frowned.
The voice spoke flawless English.
Yet somehow, he understood every syllable as naturally as if it had been spoken in Russian.
"Where is my mama?" he asked quietly in Russian.
The figure regarded him with something that felt remarkably close to sadness.
"You came too early." The words were gentle this time. "You are not yet meant to see her."
Ilya's heart sank.
"No..." he whispered, taking an uncertain step forward. "Please. She has to be here."
"I'm sorry." The endless white seemed to stretch even farther around them. "There are rules. And one of them is that those whose lives end before their appointed time cannot cross into what comes next."
Ilya stared at the figure, confusion slowly giving way to dread.
"What do you mean... my appointed time?"
The figure was silent for a long moment. Then it answered with heartbreaking simplicity. "You were meant to live."
Silence swallowed the words.
For the first time since arriving, Ilya felt something stronger than pain.
Regret.
The figure watched him quietly.
"There was someone waiting for you," it said.
Ilya looked up.
"Your soulmate."
The words struck harder than any punch his father or brother had ever thrown.
"He was waiting for you."
Ilya blinked.
"I... have a soulmate?" His voice was barely more than a whisper. "A man?"
"Yes."
The figure's answer came without hesitation, without judgment.
"He has always been a man."
A thousand questions raced through Ilya's mind.
"So..." His throat tightened. "There was never anything wrong with me?"
"No."
The single word echoed through the endless white.
"There never was."
Tears stung Ilya's eyes.
His entire life, he had been told he was broken. Sinful. Disgusting. A disappointment. His father had beaten him for something the universe itself had intended.
It had all been a lie.
The figure continued gently.
"He is quite lonely."
A ripple spread through the endless void, and for the briefest moment, Ilya caught a glimpse of a teenage boy sitting alone in the back row of a hockey locker room, headphones on, shoulders slumped. The image vanished almost as quickly as it appeared.
"He needed you."
Another image flickered.
The same boy, older now, crying alone in the driver's seat of his car after a game.
Gone again.
"And you needed him."
A painful ache settled in Ilya's chest.
"Who is he?" he asked. "Can I see him?"
"You will."
"When?"
The figure smiled, though it had no visible mouth.
"Soon enough."
It gestured, and two chairs materialized in the middle of the endless white, along with a small wooden table that looked strangely ordinary compared to everything else.
"Take a seat."
Ilya hesitated before lowering himself into one of the chairs.
"We have quite a problem to solve."
"Who's 'we'?" Ilya asked, glancing around the empty expanse. "God?"
The figure laughed. Not mockingly. More like someone amused by a question it had heard countless times before.
"Sure," it said with a shrug.
Before Ilya could ask another question, the figure dissolved into countless tiny points of light that drifted away into the white horizon, leaving him alone once more.
"...That's not an answer," Ilya muttered.
Only silence answered him.
For what felt like the first time since his mother's death, Ilya realized something impossible.
Maybe his story wasn't over after all.
Or maybe...
Maybe it was only beginning. He sat in the endless white with nothing but his thoughts for company. There was no sun to rise or set.
No hunger.
No exhaustion.
No heartbeat to remind him time was passing.
It could have been seconds. Minutes. Years.
There was simply no way to tell.
When the figure finally returned, it appeared as quietly as it had vanished, materializing from the white itself.
"How long was I here?" Ilya asked, immediately rising to his feet.
The figure chuckled.
"We do not measure time the way you mere mortals do."
"So... how long?"
"It took us a while."
"Us?"
"The jury."
Ilya blinked. "...There is a jury?"
"There is for cases like yours." The figure folded its shimmering hands together. "Your mother presented your case."
Ilya's breath caught. "You... you got to see my mama?"
"Yes." A warmth entered the figure's voice. "She spoke beautifully. She did not excuse what happened, nor did she pretend your pain wasn't real. She simply reminded everyone of who her son truly was beneath the hurt."
A lump formed in Ilya's throat. "Was she... angry with me?"
The figure's expression softened. "No."
"Disappointed?"
"No."
"What did she say?"
The figure smiled. "She said, 'My little boy deserved more time.'"
Tears filled Ilya's eyes.
For a long moment, he couldn't speak.
Finally, he managed, "What... what happens now?"
"The jury reached its decision." The endless white around them shimmered. "You will become a guardian angel."
Ilya frowned. "...That's a punishment?"
"It is an opportunity." The figure continued. "You will be assigned to your soulmate. If you fulfill your purpose, you will move on.”
“To my mama?"
"Yes."
"And if I fail?"
The figure became serious. "Then the timeline will be reset."
Ilya stared at it. "...Reset?"
"You will begin again. You will watch over him again. You will continue until you learn what you were meant to learn—and until he receives what he was always meant to have."
Silence settled between them.
"There are rules," the figure said. It raised one glowing hand, and words of light appeared in the air between them. "You cannot reveal yourself. He cannot see you. He cannot hear you. You may influence only the smallest things."
The glowing words shifted. "A door left open. A hockey puck rolling where it shouldn't. A song playing on the radio at precisely the right moment. A feather drifting into his path. Nothing more."
Ilya nodded slowly. "If you draw upon too much of your strength, you will fade."
"Days?"
"Sometimes. Sometimes longer. And if you knowingly break the rules..." The glowing words disappeared. "...you risk being taken away from him entirely."
The thought alone made Ilya's stomach twist.
"I understand."
The figure studied him for a moment before nodding.
"Good." Ilya hesitated.
Then asked the question that had been burning inside him since he'd first heard the word soulmate.
"...Who is he?"
The figure smiled.
A name appeared in glowing letters between them.
Shane Hollander.
"Born May tenth, nineteen ninety-one. Ottawa, Ontario, Canada."
The letters dissolved into light, replaced by the image of a sixteen-year-old boy lacing up his skates in a quiet locker room. Dark hair curled beneath his helmet. His brown eyes carried a sadness that reminded Ilya painfully of his own.
"He doesn't look..." Ilya murmured.
"Happy?" the figure finished.
"No. He isn't."
Ilya couldn't look away.
"He has no idea you exist." The figure stepped beside him. "In another life, had everything unfolded as it was meant to, the two of you would have met on the ice."
A new vision appeared.
Two professional hockey players crashing into the boards.
Trading insults.
Trying to outscore each other every night.
Then another.
The same two men laughing together in an apartment kitchen.
Dancing badly while dinner burned on the stove.
Loving each other without fear.
The vision disappeared.
"You would have become rivals." The figure smiled knowingly. "And eventually, lovers."
Ilya's heart ached for a life he would never get to live.
"But," the figure said gently, "that story was interrupted." It placed a hand on Ilya's shoulder. "So now… You get the chance to help write a different one."