Chapter Text
APRIL 2026
The cottage sat tidy against the slope. A gravel driveway leading to a wide front porch, a stretch of well-maintained lawn running smooth and green up to a dense treeline of birch, pine, and spruce; its lower reaches just beginning to fill in with the wisps of brambles and ferns that would become a near-impassable tangle once summer truly descended. Behind it, the lake glittered in the mid-afternoon light, current lapping against a gentle shoreline.
The cottage itself was smaller than Shane was used to. Of simpler, humbler construction; bricks and siding in place of wood and windows. He supposed he shouldn’t be calling it a cottage. Around these parts, such a building was known as a dacha. Summer home. And his new landlady was expecting him.
Her place was a few hundred meters down the shore, technically within eyeshot but obscured partially by a thin copse of trees. A simple dirt walking track peeled off from the driveway in that direction, linking the two properties.
Shane exited his rental car — a simple black sedan, completely unremarkable but comfortable to drive — and rolled his left shoulder. It clicked ominously a few times, but eventually the tired muscles released a fraction. An intercontinental flight and hour-long drive from Sheremetyevo Airport to the tiny town of Ozerovsk had not been kind on the stripped-down joint. He’d need to heat and stretch it before bed or he’d wake up tomorrow morning completely locked up.
As he retrieved his suitcase and computer bag from the trunk, the sound of footsteps drifted in off the breeze. “Is that you, Shane Hollander?”
“Olga Svechnikova?” he replied, extending his free hand.
She was a short woman in her mid-fifties, solid and sun-tanned in a way that spoke of hard work and long hours. Hair long gone iron-gray but still thick in its tidy braid. Dressed practically in heavy denim and a knitted sweater. She shook his hand firmly.
“Nice to meet you.” Russian was still a little thick in Shane’s mouth, despite how much he’d been speaking it the past seventeen hours.
But apparently still understandable as Olga said, “You as well. What do you think?” She gestured to the property.
“It’s lovely,” he answered honestly. “Reminds me a lot of my own back in Canada.”
Without asking, Olga grabbed his remaining duffle bag and started walking towards the porch. “I will help you get settled. Show you all the little quirks. She is an older building but she has good bones.”
The interior was the same at the outside: solid, if slightly dated. A short entryway that spilled into a living room, dining area and kitchen off to the right and a hallway leading to two bedrooms and a bathroom on the left. There were more windows on the east wall, showing off the back garden and lake beyond. The main bedroom was standard, so Shane dropped his suitcase there. The computer bag he carried into the second, where a twin bed gave ground for a large L-shaped desk on the corner facing the forest. Plenty of room for all of his equipment.
Olga took him through the kitchen, pointing out where he could find utensils and the kettle and the various pots and pans, how to turn on the gas and light the stove. She’d been kind enough to stock the fridge and pantry with a few basics so he wouldn’t have to venture into town until tomorrow if he didn’t want to. Shane's mouth nearly opened to point out that she should take the loaf of dark rye back with her, before he remembered he’d been off that performance diet for years now. Old habits, still dying hard.
As if reading his mind, Olga asked, “So what business does a retired Canadian hockey player have in our little town? If you don’t mind my asking.”
“Oh, you’ve heard of me?” Shane asked. He hadn’t disclosed his former profession during rental negotiations.
“Are you famous?” Olga asked, as if she wasn’t talking to the most well-known NHL centre of the 21st century.
He blinked a few times. Olga took pity on him and clarified, “I know you play hockey from how you walk. And that you are done from how you move your shoulder. This is Russia, Shane Hollander. We may not all care about North American leagues, but we know hockey. So, what brings you here?” she re-stated the question like she already suspected the answer.
No point in lying to her. “Rozanov.”
Ilya Rozanov. The most famous cold case in hockey history. Up-and-coming Russian phenom, International Prospect Cup champion and first overall pick in the 2009 MLH draft, poised to take the hockey world by storm with his powerful skating and exceptional skill. Until he vanished in February of 2010, just weeks after losing a second IPC gold medal to Team Canada. Shane’s Team Canada. An extensive police investigation led nowhere, and the disappearance faded into the annals of hockey lore.
Shane Hollander remembers Ilya Rozanov. The one player who could equal him on the ice. The endless hours of foreign game tape, the handful of in-person interactions Shane’s memory had revisited so many times they’d softened at the edges like an old cotton shirt. IPC 2008, outside of that rink in Regina. You will not be so nice when we beat you. That's not gonna happen. The gut-wrenching disappointment of the draft, and a different type of stomach feeling in the hotel gym afterwards. Boston is nice, too? We will be seeing each other a lot. IPC 2009, those Finals promotional shots that kept them on on the ice while their teams vacated from practice. The empty showers. I might open. I might knock. Hotel room 1410. You make me curious. Do I make you curious?
And then he was gone. The man who was supposed to race Shane to the top, his biggest rival, his most guarded secret. Vanished without a trace.
Shane’s career went on. He led Montreal out of the depths of mediocrity and fashioned them into a dynasty. Three Cups, another dozen playoff appearances. Pushing his body to the brink and beyond until his damn shoulder finally called it quits on his behalf. The first time his labrum tore, he was able to rehab it. Only miss about half the season, recovered in time for playoffs. Then it tore again. And then a third time and that third time made it clear that a fourth would result in consequences not even hockey could balance against. And so, two years ago, Shane retired. They gave him a hero’s sendoff and hung his number from the rafters.
Those first six months were Hell. Without the rhythm of routine, faced with so much time on his hands and nothing to fill it with, Shane started to go a little crazy. Not even his cottage felt like an escape when the trap was inside his own head. Going to games was too much. Too many people asking when he was going to start coaching or join a network. And he’d been offered. More than once. But coaching was too close to playing and he actually hated being on camera. So Shane just… drifted.
He’ll never be able to thank Christian Prior enough. A former teammate, and perhaps the best goaltender to ever wear Metros blue. His presence in the crease had bailed them out of many a close game; the kind of goalie that inspired the skaters in front of him to live up to his heroics. Highly decorated by the team and the league, and, as Shane would find out, highly pressured. His retirement was sudden. Around four years before Shane’s own. Alongside the disclosure that he was entering addiction rehab. They’d reconnected after Shane walked away from the ice. One of the few people on Earth who understood what it felt like for your body to surrender before your mind was ready to let go.
It took so much strength, not only to admit an illness but to recover so publicly. The kind of story authors wrote biographies about. Usually poorly, without an in-depth understanding of the ice as your home but the arena your jailor. So, in a fit of desperate inspiration… Shane learned how to write biographies. Mind in the Crease was an instant bestseller, at first because of the names attached to its publication, but then because Shane Hollander was a genuinely good hockey biographer. So good he was approached by none other than Scott Hunter with a proposal to tell the official story of MLH’s first openly gay player. Facing Off had released seven months ago.
Writing that particular manuscript had been just as revelatory for Shane. Pushed him to come out, too. Simply — just a social media statement and a donation to the Trevor Project — but publicly. It felt disingenuous, to write Scott’s story without being honest about his own authorial context. It didn’t cause the same kind of stir it would have, had he done it as an active player, but it had freed a part of him all the same.
All throughout the press tour, when they weren’t pressing for details about his gayness, people asked when he was going to write his own story. Shane gave them any number of reasons. Made jokes that his own story was way too boring. Dime-a-dozen generational talent. But the real reason was… Shane didn’t feel ready. Every time he thought about it, he felt like there was something missing.
Rozanov. It was supposed to be Hollander and Rozanov at the top; a rivalry for the ages. A potentiality forever unfilled. Strangled in the cradle. His career had always been haunted by the what-if of Rozanov’s ghost. And beyond that, Shane felt like he owed something to Rozanov. For being the one who got to live the dream. And for … well, if it hadn’t been for Rozanov and the memories of that hotel room, Shane might still be trying to convince himself he liked his best friend Rose Landry as anything more than a best friend.
Maybe by being here, by unspooling the life of the man who could have been, Shane could weave those loose threads into his own tapestry. Complete the picture. Find the design through the noise of colors.
“Many have tried,” Olga said, voice growing flinty. “Outsiders bothering us for years, trying to find information that is not there.”
“I’m not trying to solve anything,” Shane clarified. And he wasn’t. This book would certainly be a challenge of his investigative abilities, but Shane’s ego wasn’t big enough to believe he could crack the case. “I met him a few times. At the International Prospects Cup, and the Draft. He was… I just want to tell his story. Best as I can find it.”
“And you learned Russian for this purpose?”
Shane tamped down a blush threatening to spread up his neck. He’d been studying Russian for a long time, and it had started after Rozanov’s disappearance. Information was slow to cross the Atlantic, and Shane operated under the incredibly ridiculous logic that local information would be more thorough and that if he could read it he’d...know? Something. His Russian didn’t improve quickly enough to understand any of the news coverage in a timely manner. However, the impulse had reminded him how fun it was to learn new languages after mastering French through high school. So he stuck with it and picked up Japanese, Spanish, and ASL alongside.
“Languages are a hobby of mine,” he answered. “And I have a remote interpreter as a backup. I’ll be making a few trips into Moscow to interview some of his associates there. But I wanted to base myself in Ozerovsk to learn about his mother and the summers they spent up here.” He spoke quickly, struck by a need to prove himself to this woman. To show he was serious and not another exploitative outsider on the hunt for easy notoriety.
Olga continued to regard him coolly, before her expression softened just a hair. “If you want to know about Irina,” she began, “You should speak to Yakov Sytsevich. He was her best friend before she moved. I will tell him you are interested. Then go to the church and ask for Father Andrei.”
Shane couldn’t help but feel like he’d passed some sort of test. “Thank you.”
“Make sure you lock the doors at night,” she said. “The forest is close by, and sometimes wild animals try to get inside. I have left the house keys on the table by the front door, and my phone number. Please call if you need anything. I am close by most days. If you see my mother outside, make sure to tell her hello or she will become upset with you. Do you have any questions?”
Shane answered in the negative, and Olga departed as quickly as she arrived. Leaving him to unpack his bags and send a few emails. Simple things, letting his mother and his agent know he’d arrived safely. Giving his interpreter a rough timeline of when her services would be required. Rejecting an interview request from ESPN to talk about his books. (Because they’re just going to keep circling back to his queerness and his playing days in a way that has little to do with the actual work and he’s already answered those questions for much more progressive outlets.)
By the time he got all that done and prepared a simple dinner out of the ingredients Olga left for him, the sun was going down and the jetlag was starting to set in. Another one of those things that got harder and harder to deal with as he got older. But Shane forced himself to stretch his shoulder and apply a heat pack before slipping into a fitful sleep.
Shane awoke before the sun in a manner that had nothing to do with routine. Still exhausted from travel and timezones, he wrote off the morning as a wash for anything other than sucking down coffee and watching a few episodes of Rose’s latest K-Drama obsession. Something about true love breaking an age-old curse. Boilerplate Joseon-inspired stuff; ripe for miscommunication tropes and class-based posturing. But the leads were charming enough and the side characters entertaining.
By the second cup of coffee, he was feeling somewhat more human. His phone chimed from its place on the side table.
Olga: I have spoken to Yakov. You can stop by the secondary school in Vysokovsk tomorrow after the students let out at 3pm. He will meet you outside.
Shane: Thank you, I really appreciate it.
With something to look forward to, Shane found the motivation to start taking care of the mundanities of the job. Mapping his route to the school, checking his interview equipment. Then a quick trip to the grocer, where the clerks gave him their usual tourist-town charm but with an edge of surprise over having to use it so early in the spring.
Ozerovsk was one of many hamlets backed up against Zavidovo National Park; 1300 square kilometers of birch forests fragmented by meadows, wetlands, and small lakes. Back in the Soviet era it was a game reserve for Party officials, but these days it was a major recreation destination for city slickers from Moscow and Tver. Shane had scheduled his trip just ahead of the summer boom.
After a late lunch, the sound of the breeze rustling through the trees was too entrancing to pass up. Olga had left him a map of the nearby hiking routes, so he picked a trailhead within walking distance and geared up. Entering the forest felt like stepping into a different world. The sounds of civilization — cars on the road, the faint banging of distant construction — fell away into the crackling of branches and the twitter of bird song. The air felt heavy with an unseen weight. And though the trail he walked was recently maintained, the sheer age of the land beneath his feet trickled up into his calves.
It didn’t take long for Shane to feel… observed. Though, that wasn’t a surprise. A forest this storied had its own sort of presence, an identity born of its collective inhabitants. Memories and feelings given a rough shape; an essence of loam and water, rock and root, fang and feather, the shedding and regrowing of leaves and antlers. Breathing in a slow, endless cycle of freeze and thaw and freeze and thaw.
Shane’s felt this sort of thing before, in every arena he’d ever played in. It didn’t scare him. But it did make him notice the noticing. Just in case, he took a pull from his water bottle, then squirted a little onto a moss-covered stone. In the rink, this was something players did to connect with the ice. A little spit frozen into the fabric of the game, to strengthen a tie to their home arena or propitiate an opponent’s. Here it was sign of gratitude, a promise his presence was gentle. The weight didn’t lift, but it changed texture. Grew a little softer. He pushed on. The trail was supposed to loop him around a hill and then down towards the opposite side lake, and he was determined to catch the vista.
He hiked another half hour through the woods, the trail mostly gentle but with a few boulders and rises to challenge his legs. As he walked, Shane thought about his upcoming interviews. He’d managed to secure four participants in Moscow, now six counting Yakov Sytsevich and Father Andrei. Less than he would’ve preferred, but finding any information on Rozanov outside of his player statistics and media appearances was surprisingly difficult. Hopefully his interviewees would be forthcoming and open new avenues of investigation.
This book would require a different approach to his two previous. With Christian and Scott, he’d had direct access to the subject. Able to glean their direct perspectives, run ideas by them for accuracy. With Rozanov, Shane would have to rely on secondhand accounts and piece the story together from its disparate fragments. A challenge, and a responsibility.
Sometimes he thought he was being arrogant, believing he could do the man justice. But then he would think of that hotel room. The pen in his hands, the laugh in Rozanov’s mouth when he signed his number “Jane.” Maybe someone else in his history had access to that Rozanov. But they weren’t in the hockey world, and the hockey world didn’t know that Rozanov. So the thought of anyone else doing it, and doing it undoubtedly worse, kept Shane going even as bureaucracy and distance both physical and temporal compounded the challenge.
He wandered out of his reverie when the trees began to thin, patchwork of blue sky behind their branches and fresh leaves. But just as he spotted the glimmer of water on the other side, a different sort of watchfulness prickled the back of his neck.
Shane froze. He couldn’t hear the sound of anything moving. Perhaps wouldn’t have registered the feeling at all, if it wasn’t a dead ringer for his long-honed sense of opposing players approaching from his blind spots. He checked both sides on instinct, but saw nothing but woods.
Probably just his imagination.
Just the latent anxiety that accompanied his purpose here. The weight across his shoulders from a place that had no reason to reject him but no reason to accept him either. The unconscious tension of the outsider. Shane took a deep breath, shook off the feeling, and kept walking.
It has wandered this place for years. It knows every stream, every hill, every tree. Every pale, flat face in the place of straight lines. It does not know this face. He walks through the woods, treads heavy and obvious, sending prey to ground and birds to higher branches. An outsider. But he is gentle to the forest. Breaks no branches, stays on his flattened track, gives water to the ground.
It watches from a distance, following him by his sounds and his scent. Spicy like fallen leaves but with something cold riding along. Like the freeze of winter but…sharper. It does not recognize this smell, but… does it remember?
It chances getting closer, stalking silent through the thin underbrush. He freezes. Swings his head left to right. He has not spotted it. It does not wish to be spotted, yet. But it sees. Dark eyes, golden skin, dark patterns like stars across the nose.
Much of its mind is occupied with survival. Where to hunt, where to sleep, where to find water. It does not think much of anything else. Turns away from the dim, confusing swirl that lingers in the depths of itself. Feelings and visions that no longer make sense.
But it remembers him.