#fth 2026

When he was four, the world gave his family Ilya.

A tiny, red-faced little being that stole Alexei’s mother from him, that made his father’s eyes shine with a different kind of pride.

Cleaning the house, helping his mom, making sure he was in the kitchen on time to set the table, adding an extra space for his little brother. It all became routine. Expected.

He stopped hearing celebrations for following the rules. Stopped earning laughter from his mother when he swept crumbs for her in the dining room.

It was all pointed back at him. At Ilya. The youngest child, the most precious gift to the Rozanov name. At least that’s what Alexei heard time and time again.

“Alexei, I’m tired, I don’t have time for you to misbehave today.”

“Stand up straight, you look sloppy, boy. Is that any way to bring respect to our family?”

“Your brother needs you.”

He tried to settle the feeling that grew hard and heavy in his chest over time. The one that resented all the ways Ilya got what Alexei so desperately craved. What got shoved to the back of his mind at every opportunity.

No chance for creativity when the world expected him to fall in line.

It’s who he was born to be. His father’s son.

And Ilya belonged to his mother.

From birth they were destined for different paths, and it was that realization, the sinking feeling of dread and sorrow, that left him with the grim taste of envy on the back of his tongue year after year.

Hockey became a blood oath; one Ilya had traced through his DNA but tuned under the vigilant eyes of Grigori.

Watching him skate was magical, the way he embodied the game, the way he glided so easily around opponents, left audiences with their jaws lax and their eyes wide with wonder. Alexei too, and when he was forced to go to games through the years, there was always a sense of pride he didn’t realize he’d kept so tightly locked away.

That was his brother. Powerful. Delicate. A balanced act of every piece of himself Alexei didn’t dare let escape.

It still wasn’t enough, though, to write over the legacy of their father.

At 16, Grigori knocked on his bedroom door, so late the dark had started shifting to grays and purples, hazy with the threat of dawn. He’d whispered that something bad had happened and that Alexei must wake at once, must help him.

It changed Alexei, that night. The night he lost his mother. His father barely mentioned the incident, like it was nothing but circumstance and that the only thing that mattered was making sure their family stayed intact. That their legacy wasn’t tainted and sullied.

They’d rushed into his office and gathered paperwork, discussed how they would handle her will and the finances, how they’d make use of the time with family friends during the funeral. Alexei swallowed back bile and shoved down any emotion that threatened to overwhelm him. For her.

For Ilya.

He knew it broke his brother, finding her – gone. Alexei was already broken but Ilya didn’t deserve to be shattered so young. So, he’d taken notes and kept track of documents, tears rolling down his cheeks quietly that he’d brush away before his father had a chance to reprimand him.

He still thinks about Ilya’s face when he’d found them in the office, like she’d barely been worth the time it took to get her from the house to the morgue. Dreams about it sometimes, too.

When Alexei graduated high school, his name was already known. Through his father’s tight-lipped stare. His staunch support of the country. The way he raised his children.

But it was built in a way all his own, too. Every time he lost a part of himself to his younger brother, Alexei placed a brick in the walls of his foundation. Precision. Sacrifice. Expectation.

He gathered the grout of his father and grandfather and bloodline dating back, used it to pack the bricks together tighter. A structure so sound even jealousy couldn’t rattle it.

The military felt like home, in a way, so familiar were the words of his commanding officers, of admirals that were bred on the same battlefield as his father. It was easy, then, to climb the ladder, because of the familiarity of it ingrained in his bones.

Over time, his will grew stronger, steel-wrapped and lead-lined, protected with guns and distance from any emotion that didn’t serve him.

He met Anastasia after an ill-advised night of partying. One that started with vodka and ended with lines blurred on the sidewalk that barely guided him home.

She’d gone home first with him. With Ilya.

And he served her well, at least at first. She’d fallen for it like Alexei always did. The charm, the ease with which he moved through the world. The way his attitude carried him further than any effort did. They’d flirted with one another easily, Alexei saw it from across the bar. Ilya had bought her a drink and she’d asked him to dance.

She was impossible to miss, the way her honeyed hair traced over her cheeks, sharp and strong with the flush of alcohol and the heat of her body moving to the music.

Ilya moved easily behind her, his palms at her waist, shaping the way they flowed together, connected in more than the beat of the bass.

Of course she’d gone home with him, how could he have expected anything different? He’d bought her drinks, told her she looked radiant, kissed her lips gently and without the force of fear he’d gotten so used to feeling, skittering under his skin.

So he did what he always did. Escaped in the form of more booze, drugs, anything that would keep his mind pleasantly hazy, distant from the world around him.

The next day Ilya smirked when Alexei asked him about her, said she’d been just as beautiful under his lights as the club’s, filled a cup with orange juice and drank it in one go with a brow raised.

It made Alexei sick.

The next night he’d gone back. Tried to find her again, but she wasn’t there. He returned – again and again and again – until that spark of blonde flashed across Alexei’s vision. Her shoulders were drawn, dress draped over ivory skin, hugging each delicate curve of her body, each line of her beauty.

Alexei moved alongside her at the bar, insisting on getting her a drink and inviting her back to his table. Always ready with closed off luxury, leather soft and supple on the cushions of a couch tucked against the wall, a bottle in the middle of the table with glasses lined around it.

She was perfect in every way.

Beautiful, soft, kind-hearted and mild. She laughed at his jokes and leaned in when he whispered in her ear. His brother was a distant memory by the time they made it home that night. She stepped inside with him that night and never left.

She was Alexei’s escape, in the beginning. Her smile was wide when they danced in the kitchen together, she’d tucked notes into lunches made just for him. Ones that said I love you and A house with you is never empty.

The bricks he’d stacked so high – the ones worn against the press of his thumbs, the beat of his heart, over and over as he tried to take them down – they held firmly in place. Even with her. Especially with her.

She needed him to be strong, to protect her, to care for her in every conceivable way.

It was a job he took more seriously than anything Grigori had assigned him. One she showed her appreciation for in the way she cooked for him, kissed him good morning, left him sated and satisfied each night.  

Before his daughter was born, he thought he knew love.

Thought he knew it in the shape of his father’s pride, in the quiet lullaby of his mother, in the first kiss of sunlight with Ana.

It wasn’t until his little girl arrived that he finally understood his mother. That he finally connected the pieces of his childhood and found meaning where he’d otherwise lost it. She was perfect in every meaning of the word, her hair golden like her mother’s, features soft and warm, with her father’s nose and Irina’s eyes.

Beauty didn’t begin to describe her.

When Ilya’s career took off in the United States, when he was drafted so young to such an amazing team, it was natural to assume he’d want some of what he’d built to go to his older brother. He watched from across the world and reasoned, with every goal scored and every game won, that he’d earned it just as much as Ilya. That it was what he was owed when Ilya abandoned them in Russia and only found time to talk through the tinny speaker of a cell phone.

He faced his father’s expectations. Carried on the weight of their last name, their legacy. He’d suffered, in so many ways, when Ilya had been nestled so closely to his mother’s chest, to his father’s heart.

Ilya had it easy, the least he could do was share what Alexei shared equally with him.

And when Ilya became an uncle, a proud one full of that laughter he missed each day from his mother, it was only natural Alexei thought that would add more. That he’d been owed, as his father’s keeper. That Ilya just had to smile for the cameras, float across the ice, bask in the limitless wonder of America and all it had to offer.

Arguments built, battles for meager rubles, bargaining and threatening and waging a war Alexei had no interest in fighting. It all put a strain on an already taut relationship.  Money Alexei knew that Ilya could spare, especially as his daughter grew stronger and their father grew weaker.

Time spent taking care of the old man was tossed in Ilya’s face whenever the topic came up – vile anger spitting through teeth that were crooked with frustration and the tight set of his jaw from birth – built and built until it fractured the occasional happier moments.

They used to share inside jokes, sometime in their lives, Alexei used to know the lyrics to Ilya’s favorite songs. Ilya used to grab Alexei’s favorite snacks from the shop on the way home after school. He’d help Ilya study for class and Ilya would help Alexei flirt with girls, left notes in a locker of his high school crush one spring bragging about how cool his older brother was and if she’d want to go out sometime.

When Alexei stumbled on Ilya stealing kisses with the coach’s son, he’d been shocked but kept it hidden. Didn’t dare speak a word of it for fear of losing the one person that knew him more than anyone else in the world.

As Ilya grew older and soaked in celebrity, laughter grew sparse, yelling grew frequent, and Alexei felt less like a brother and more like a beggar, a pathetic excuse for family that hid behind fear and anger that masqueraded as bravery.  

The apartment he shared with Ana and their daughter didn’t get bigger. Their food didn’t taste better over time, their love didn’t grow deeper with age.

Instead, Alexei became an even bigger shadow, a larger shell of a man he used to wish he could become. His father lost pieces of himself and seemingly left them branded in Alexei, and every time he looked in the mirror he stared less at a reflection of himself and more of a reflection of every soldier he’d gotten to know. In the military or with the police.  

Cold. Hollow. Longing for something better but stuck exactly where he always knew he’d end up.

And Ilya was still on the other side of the world living the life Alexei wanted but never got.

His mother’s son.

Alexei left behind in Russia with his father.