Chapter Text
July, 2022
How could this happen?
That was the first coherent thought that came to Shane’s mind as he watched the hospital ceiling pass by in front of him, his body lying prone on a stretcher. He remembered that it was night, he’d been driving home by himself after picking up a surprise gift he’d been working on for their wedding anniversary. He was vaguely aware of the neck brace keeping his head in place, but other than that…nothing. Someone to his side was manually ventilating him.
They were finally building a life together, a real one.
They’d just finished their first season on the Centaurs together, and although they didn’t win a Cup, they’d managed to make it to the finals before losing to Los Angeles in game seven. They’d finally been able to live together without fear of being discovered, everything feeling so much easier once the chaos of their FanMail outing had (somewhat) subsided. They’d gone out to restaurants, bars, sporting events, the grocery store together, hand in hand, without a second thought. A piece in Sports Illustrated here, another in Outsports there...everything was out in the open for the world to figure out how to react to, and the nature of that reaction had been weighing on Shane less and less with every passing day. Ilya had seemed to take it all in stride, but he could see it in the way Ilya moved throughout life, how he interacted even with their own teammates. He’d never been happier. They’d never been happier.
A year together had had their ups and downs, what with the two of them having to navigate how to actually behave like, well, a couple for the first time, and they’d had their fair share of arguments over things both important and mundane. Just this morning, they’d gotten in an argument over who would be cooking dinner tonight because both of them wanted to, just another symptom of their upcoming anniversary. It looked like Ilya would have to be the one cooking tonight, whether he wanted to or not. Shane just had to find a way to win that argument, didn’t he?
Their anniversary was in a week, and now Shane was probably going to have to be in the hospital for it. Just perfect.
The sound of bodies moving, metal clinking together, and bags being torn open filled Shane’s ears as he came to a stop, his body being lifted onto a bed in what he assumed was the ICU. His head was swimming. The lights above him were blinding, making everything around him into a blur of movement and vaguely humanlike shapes.
“Shane, can you hear me?” a voice asked, urgently. “If you can hear me, blink twice, please.”
Blink? They were asking him to blink? Well, he couldn’t respond verbally, not when there was still a ventilator over his mouth. But he could at least still…
Oh.
He couldn’t. He couldn’t move his arm. Or his leg. There was this strange disconnect between his brain and his body; it didn’t feel like his body was being held down or immobilized. It just didn’t feel.
“Shane? One more time. Please, blink twice if you can hear me.”
Shane blinked twice, he was pretty sure. At least he could do that.
“Two blinks, rapid succession.”
“Okay, could you confirm again Shane, just to be sure?”
He blinked twice again, their hesitancy doing little to reassure him.
“Two blinks again, likely lucid and responsive.”
“Good. Shane, can you feel this? Blink twice for yes and once for no.”
He waited to feel something, to figure out what they wanted him to feel. Only, that never came. There was just nothing, no pressure, no pain, nothing at all. He managed to look over to the left, at someone…a nurse, maybe, whose gaze was rapidly flicking between him and the monitors next to him. He blinked once.
“One blink, that’s a no.”
“Okay, can you feel this?”
One blink.
“Thank you for cooperating, Shane. I know this is difficult. How about this?”
One blink.
The man speaking to him sucked in a breath. His voice remained placid, but his unconscious reaction had already given him away.
“Okay, last one. Can you feel this here?”
Out of the corner of his vision, Shane could make out the medic’s arm pressing against his chest, but he couldn’t feel anything at all.
One blink.
The medic raised his arm and leaned over Shane’s face. He was a little older, gray hairs peppering his otherwise black moustache. He peered directly into his eyes then shined a light in them. Shane tracked the light as it moved with his eyes.
“We need to get him to imaging, now. Suspected complete dissection of the spine. Keep an eye on the monitors; if breathing isn’t being autoregulated, we’ll need to watch out for impaired heart function, especially due to shock from other injuries.”
As if on cue, one of the monitors started alarming loudly, sounding like something straight out of a medical drama Shane remembered watching, for some reason.
“Ah, Christ. Defib!”
Shane didn’t get the chance to find out if anything the doctor had just said was correct, his consciousness slipping away.
We were supposed to finally be happy.
[...]
Shane could hear voices, ghostly soft and flitting around the edges of his consciousness like butterflies. He couldn’t see, the world around him completely black, but snippets of conversations around him entered and exited his mindscape as they pleased.
…induced coma…
…likely tetraplegic injury…
…difficult surgery…
The words didn’t stick in his mind, like holding onto a snowflake to admire its beauty for just a second. Time was passing, undoubtedly, but Shane was just…there. Floating in some unidentifiable black void.
Whenever his brain decided to allow him to form thoughts, they wandered around aimlessly, lost without something to keep them corralled like hockey always did. What happened? He didn’t remember how he got here. Did his parents know, were they here, too? And Ilya…
“Shane.”
All at once, Shane’s attention focused sharply on that voice, casting a light into the darkness like a lighthouse shining a beacon over darkened, stormy seas. His name, barely whispered, with an unmistakable Russian accent.
Shane willed himself towards that voice, trying with every fiber of his being – whatever was left of it, anyway – to get to Ilya. To be with Ilya, to let him know that he was listening. That maybe…he was okay, even if he wasn’t.
“If you can hear me, I hope you understand. I…can’t do this in English. I hope the part of you that learned Russian for me is still there,” Ilya said, in Russian.
This? What was Ilya doing? And why did he…why did he sound so sad?
“I love you, Shane. You are the best thing that could’ve happened to me. Even when we spent years hiding, losing so much time that we should’ve been together, you were always worth it. I made so many mistakes on the way, but now I know. I was always ready to choose you.”
There was a pause, and Shane was worried that he was going to slip back away into the emptiness surrounding him, where once again time would have no meaning. He wanted Ilya, needed Ilya to come back. To hear his voice.
“They were able to get the photo collage that you had with you from the wreck. The glass is shattered, but...the wooden frame and pictures are still mostly intact. I don’t even know where you got some of those photos of my mother. But, thank you. It’s something that I’ll treasure forever, especially now that…”
Ilya’s voice cut off suddenly, hitching as he sniffled. Shane so badly wanted to see his reaction, to give him the gift himself and wrap him in the tightest hug he could and never let go. He’d worked so hard on it, enlisting Svetlana’s help to retrieve and get copies of a few photos of Ilya and Irina together. Ilya had almost walked in on him working on it more than once.
“I’m glad you included pictures with both you and my mother. A place to remember the two most important people in my life.”
A stab of recognition passed through Shane’s consciousness, followed by a deep resignation. If he could feel anything anymore, he’d wonder just how much this would make his heart hurt. Ilya’s wasn’t being direct, and yet he was saying things that Shane didn’t want to understand.
But with sudden clarity forced upon him, he understood. He was dying. Shane Hollander was dying, and Ilya was saying goodbye.
“Shane, star of my days gone by...you’ll remain forever in my tormented soul. Shine on, my star…”
The weight of Ilya’s voice changed, sounding almost melodic in its melancholy.
Then, Shane finally felt something. Where his right pinky finger should’ve been, he felt something cold and metallic. It slid down past his knuckles, resting at the base of the finger. A ring. Ilya had gotten him a ring for his right hand, where a wedding band typically went in Russian Orthodox tradition. They’d had disagreements before about which fingers to wear their rings on; eventually they’d settled on just wearing them on their preferred ring fingers: left for Shane and right for Ilya. Figures that Ilya would buy another ring for him so that he could have his way, too.
“Happy Anniversary, Shane. I love you.”
For some reason, he felt peaceful. The thought of dying should’ve terrified him, but that wasn’t the case. He was dying; Ilya would never lie to him about that. Nor would he lie about loving him, about always choosing him.
With his last thought, Shane was at peace. Knowing that he had been able to give the love of his life so much love, so much happiness. Even if only for a moment.
Happy Anniversary, Ilya.
[...]
Shane came to in a different place. Surrounded by light, uplifting and weightless, unlike the oppressive darkness he’d gotten used to. He wasn’t sure where he was, or if this was even real. Didn’t people often have dying visions, or something like that? Seeing the light, and all.
“You loved him,” came a feminine voice, in Russian.
“I did, so much,” Shane replied, also in Russian, almost unconsciously. He wasn’t sure where his voice was coming from.
“And he loved you, with every fiber of his being.”
“Yes, I know. I can’t believe I could have ever doubted it.”
There was a pause, some undefined amount of time stretching between Shane and whatever this voice was. It sounded so serene and calming, strangely familiar, despite not being able to identify the source.
“He’ll miss you, so deeply that it shakes him to his very core. But, he will continue on. For you.”
“I’m glad. I hope that he can still live on…live a fulfilling life.”
“However, one day, it will no longer be enough.”
“What?”
“He will not die by his hand, that you don’t have to worry about. But with time, sweet Ilyushka’s light will fade. Like every star, he must fade back into the dark night sky.”
“Because of me? Because I...died so early?”
“A star with nobody to shine for will eventually fade into the background, burned through its fuel as a beacon in the darkness.”
The heaviness of frustration settled somewhere deeply in Shane’s…soul? He knew, of course, that Ilya would never be the same once he died, especially dying so young, barely in their thirties. But hearing it spelled out so clearly and succinctly was something else entirely. There had to be something he could do, but…he was dead.
“You cannot go back to him, unfortunately. Your journey there has ended, cut short prematurely, but finished nevertheless.”
“Yes, I understand…I just can’t think about that, about Ilya just…withering away.”
“If you could have more time, would you take it?”
If Shane had feet to jump up onto, he would have done so in a split second.
“Yes, of course. I would do anything, everything to be with Ilya again. To never have to leave his side.”
“You may think it will be easy, with the knowledge of your past life. But neither you nor I can predict exactly how things will happen again, whether or not you consciously choose to make a change. You are not the same Shane Hollander, and life will reflect that regardless. Are you prepared for that uncertainty?”
“Yes, I’m prepared. I don’t want him to have to suffer without me. We had finally made it, building something that would last. We fought so hard, only for it to be taken away so suddenly. I love him. I’d do anything to fix it, to make sure our happy ending actually lasted.”
There was another pause. Then, the light around him seemed to condense, lifting him up and wrapping him in something warm and comforting.
“Very well. Shane Hollander…go back to Ilyushka, your shining star...”
[...]
Shane shot bolt upright, his heart hammering in his chest and sweat beading across his brow. His heart was beating so fast that it was making his vision blurry, taking some time before he realized that he was in a bedroom.
Instinctively, Shane reached his right arm out, searching for Ilya, only to find that the other side of the bed was empty. He turned, seeing nothing but white sheets haphazardly strewn across the bedspread. The spot where Ilya usually kept his pillow was nowhere to be seen, instead replaced by a number of decorative pillows that Shane didn’t recognize.
He looked around the room, fear sinking into his chest as his eyes adjusted and he realized that he wasn’t in his house in Ottawa that he shared with Ilya. He was in his Montreal condo, the one that he’d sold back in 2022 after officially moving in with Ilya. Shane ran a hand over his chest, feeling over it in the same way he remembered a doctor doing what seemed like only yesterday. A modicum of relief entered his body as he felt his own hand run across his bare torso.
In the darkness, Shane was able to make out his phone on his bedside table, an older iPhone model than he was used to. It was a technological relic to him now, its smaller size, rounded shape, and home button with a square symbol on it feeling foreign in his grip. The lock screen only showed the month and date - which was also wrong, it was supposed to be some time in July, not October - so he unlocked his phone to get a better look. The first passcode that came to mind – his and Ilya’s wedding date – wouldn’t have worked on the four-digit screen that popped up. Dimly, Shane remembered that his code used to be something a bit silly: 2481. It worked, which was just as relieving as it was worrying. The wallpaper was entirely utilitarian, one of the default ones that came with iOS, instead of a picture of Ilya kissing Shane on his cheek at the cottage lakefront like it was supposed to be. It made him feel a little sick. He opened the calendar app and stared at the date helplessly.
It wasn’t July 2022 anymore. He was back in October 2013. Nearly a decade, nine years in the past.
October, 2013
It was far too early in the morning even for Shane, but there was no way he was going to be able to get back to sleep now. He got out of bed and plodded to the bathroom. It was fairly sparse; he remembered that it would be a year or two until he finally took Mom’s advice and started a genuine skincare regimen.
The Shane Hollander looking back at him in the mirror was like something from the photo album Ilya had given him as a Valentine’s Day gift in 2022: younger, with a rounder face from some of the remaining baby fat that he’d yet to shed. His haircut was that shaggy, shapeless mess that he’d had for years, even after becoming something akin to a celebrity, having not cared for his appearance back then as much as he probably should’ve. His freckles were a little more prominent than he was used to, having faded slightly as he’d gotten older. And his body, while obviously still athletic, didn’t quite hold the same heft as he’d gotten used to, after being built up over a more than decade-long career in the NHL.
Hesitantly, he brought a hand up and watched a figure from his memories reflected back in front of him copy his movements. When this young Shane in the mirror touched his face, he felt it on his own. He squeezed the skin on his right cheek, feeling distant and disconnected from reality. He continued pinching harder until it stung, only to be disappointed when he didn’t wake up back where he was supposed to be.
He really was Shane Hollander, aged 22, all over again.
The realization made him lightheaded. Had he really died, or…was that somehow all a dream? An intense, detailed, hyperrealistic dream that somehow managed to span the next decade of his life?
No, that couldn’t be it. He had too many memories, real and solid as the world in front of him right now, for that to be true. He remembered getting injured by Cliff Marlow on the ice and Ilya visiting him in the hospital. He remembered the first time he and Ilya said they loved one another, at his cottage. He remembered the fight they had that he had been so scared would tear them apart, followed by a near-death experience for Ilya that brought them closer than ever. Their outing, their talks with Crowell, their wedding…it was all there.
And he could speak Russian, right? Shane dashed back to his phone, opening Safari. His phone didn’t have a Russian keyboard enabled, but thankfully 2013 was far along enough that it was easy to do so. He typed what he was certain translated to “Ilya Rozanov news” in Russian into the search bar and to his relief was greeted with news articles about Ilya, with headlines that he had no issues with understanding.
That life he remembered, that was real. There’s no way he could’ve just learned Russian in a dream, right?
But with that confirmation came an intense wave of grief. He would never see Ilya, or his parents, or Rose, or Hayden, or anyone from that lifetime ever again. The relationships he’d built up, the memories he’d made with everyone, not just Ilya. It would be years before any of those things could happen again. And now, if whatever that reality was still existed, they’d be grieving him, too. Shane Hollander, taken away from them far too early.
You are not the same Shane Hollander, and life will reflect that regardless.
Shane recalled those words with intensity, said to him right before he woke up here in 2013. Did that mean…that his life could never be what it once was? Was that a good thing, that he could find a way to make things better, easier for him and Ilya? Because that’s right, he wasn’t the same Shane Hollander – he wouldn’t have to make the same mistakes, he could change things for the better.
But what if the changes that he made ended up making things worse, regardless of his intentions? That maybe…he and Ilya wouldn’t end up together. Or, god forbid, one of his parents would pass away early. Or maybe he’d never meet Rose, or he and Hayden would have a falling out and he’d have nobody on the Voyageurs at all, or any number of horrible scenarios that he could think of.
Shane Hollander…go back to Ilyushka, your shining star...
No, he couldn’t let that happen. He wouldn’t just sit there and let this life play out with the same fucked up timeline his previous life had. He’d been given this second chance, with his memories intact. He could change things for the better. He wouldn’t make the same mistakes again. He knew Russian, dammit. He could help Ilya, really help him, be there when he needed him most. He would figure out a way to do it.
As he turned to leave the bathroom, he felt a weight in the pocket of his sleeping shorts that he hadn’t noticed in his earlier frenzy. He reached down and fished it out, finding a smallish ring, plain and golden in color. Its sheen had slightly faded, looking like it had been worn down with age. It was too small to fit on his ring finger, but it fit on his pinky finger almost perfectly...just like he’d felt while Ilya was speaking to him. He turned the ring over between his fingers, marveling at the way the bathroom lighting reflected off of it. It was real, as his memories and the date somehow being a decade in the past.
He turned the ring around his finger, staring at his reflection absentmindedly. This was real, this was his second chance. He was going to do it. Shane wasn’t going to be part of the reason that they’d wasted so much time in their younger years, not when he knew now just how easily it could be taken away.