In a slightly kinder universe, Alexei doesn't get twisted by their situations into a sharpened thorn to bleed Ilya.

In a slightly kinder universe Ilya and Alexei are all they have, quietly managing their father together until they can be free of him.

In a slightly kinder universe Alexei still does the hard things, but this time the hard things is slowly poisoning their father. Grigori dies in 2008, before the draft.

In a slightly kinder universe Alexei never met his daughter's mother, never married her, never had a daughter at all.

In a slightly kinder universe Alexei attends the draft at Ilya's side, stumbling through English but doing what he's always done: protect his baby brother. Like their Mama asked him to when Ilya was born.

In a slightly kinder universe Alexei marries an American woman and lives in Boston. Ilya has no reason to go home except to fulfill his visa requirements.

In a slightly kinder universe Alexei knows about Ilya, knows his brother, sees how his brother looks at Shane, and worries that the Canadian golden boy is gonna break his brother's heart.

In a slightly kinder universe, in 2016, he's proven correct, when Ilya starts to shut down emotionally seemingly out of nowhere. He's still their for his multiple nieces and nephews, but there's something empty behind his eyes and it reminds Alexei of their Mama. And it scares him.

In a slightly kinder universe Alexei begs Ilya to talk to someone, because he cannot be an orphan alone. He cannot explain to his children why their дядя Ilya isn't going to come play Princess Tea Party anymore.

In a slightly kinder universe Alexei meets the Hollanders at an All Star game in 2018 and they're so overwhelmingly loving that Alexei has to take his leave to a bathroom to cry about it.

In a slightly kinder universe Alexei uses his mother's maiden name, gives it to his children, and erases his father from existence.

In a slightly kinder universe when Ilya moves to Ottawa his brother moves next door. Family dinners at the Hollanders include Alexei, his wife, and his five children who are fast friends with the Pikes once they're in the know.

that's not great. but it's not the whole story.

a few things got worse right before the vote too. the language that explicitly protected encryption, saying the bill couldn't be used to force platforms to weaken it, got quietly stripped out on Friday. that safeguard just doesn't exist anymore.

but this isn't over. it heads to the senate next, and the senate is genuinely not on board. blumenthal and cantwell, two of the senators who wrote the original KOSA, are saying they don't want this version near a markup. blackburn, a republican and the other original author, called the missing duty of care provision a red line.

worth being clear here, blackburn isn't on our side. she wants the policy stronger, not gone. but that's still a crack we can use. her opposition means the house version has zero guaranteed path through the senate as written, and a stalled bill is a bill that isn't law yet. use her objection, don't trust her motive.

senate commerce hasn't even scheduled a markup yet. that's the next pressure point. this thing has died or gotten majorly rewritten at this stage before.

contact your senators: find yours here. tell them you don't want the house version anywhere near a vote.

and remember, if you have to, contact your senators scared. anything helps.

*cools ur dashboard down*

Irina is having a stilted conversation with one of the airport workers, maybe her tickets are wrong because they've seated her five year old away from her, I don't fly so whatever.

Anyway Ilya is bored and doesn't really understand the conversation anyway so he's looking around and notices Shane, who saw a dog and wandered away from his parent because he wanted to pet it and forgot that he should say something about the dog and wanting to pet it, something something mostly nonverbal Shane.

So Shane realizes that he can't find his parents or the doggy and starts to cry and well, no one really cares about one crying toddler when they have flights to catch, except Ilya decides that he's going to help this kid, so he goes over and gets babyShane to stop crying and tells him he'll help in his very limited English and takes his hand to take him back to Irina but they can't find her so they go on an adventure through the airport trying to find either of their parents.

Eventually Shane remembers the bording gate he and his parents were going to and they go off to find it, they get there and Ilya is helping Shane climb onto a seat but Shane won't stand on it because you're not supposed to do that, that's a bad thing and Shane's already been bad enough in his eyes today so Ilya is standing on the chair looking for two people that look like Shane because the concept of parents not looking like their kids is foreign to him.

However, they are only little and airports, adventures and new friends are exhausting, so eventually Ilya sits down in the chair and curls up with Shane and they fall asleep together sharing the same chair.

They are found by an airport worker who reports it but doesn't want to wake the children so they wait while the parents are located and brought over and while Yuna meets Irina David is taking a dozen pictures of the two on his camera.

However they do still have flights to catch and while Ilya doesn't wake up when Irina untangled him Shane does and wails the entire way to the bording gate and through most of their flight before he passes out from exhaustion.

Unfortunatly Shane asks for Ilya almost everyday for a year because he's his bestest friend and he helped him find his parents but neither David nor Yuna thought to get anything more than Irina's name, they didn't think their son would fixate on a boy he knew for a handful of hours so deeply.

Ilya also asks for Shane but well, he's no stranger to not getting things he wants so his asking doesn't last nearly as long.

Of course, David never got the pictures from that trip developed, at least not until after the Hollanov wedding, and he finds a handful of pictures of his kid with another kid (who he does eventually recognize as Ilya but not immediatly) curled up in an airport chair and thinks that looks familiar and realized that it's the same exact way Ilya and Shane curl up together on the couch or loveseat when they are over watching a movie.

And maybe there is a picture or two of Irina collecting a sleeping Ilya and of him sleeping on her shoulder before they leave.

And David wonders if maybe, just maybe they were meant to find one another.

He does, of course, use the pictures to embarass them at one of their anniverseries when Harris is asking aboit the Hollanov Timeline, David has the gleeful pleasure of saying that Ilya and Shane are both wrong as he whips the pictures out and says they were meant for each other long before Rookie season or the summer before and thus causes a breakdown in most of the team and their partners but also unlocks that memory for Ilya and Shane.

“Is it just peanuts, or also tree nuts or legumes?”

“You — what do you mean you don’t know? You need to know! Is not eight-year-old’s job to worry if you will poison him. Go find out and I tell you what shake you will have.”

And Ilya is so intense about it, but when the player texts his girlfriend to check for any other allergy-triggers he gets so many points with her for caring and actually trying to learn more.

like the way he asked "what is nur-ate-iv?" makes me think man TRULY was not catching all of the words getting tossed at him so fast the second his eyes were even a LITTLE open. like he wasn't asking "what story did you come up with?" he's asking "what word are you even saying to me right now?" man got like 0.2 seconds to be like "oh i'm awake now?" before he was getting PELTED with english because shane had a forty step plan that couldn't wait like. three more hours.

in my heart, shane sleeps like a ROCK and is also non-functional if his sleep schedule is disrupted

either ilya is completely mia because he went to lay down with whatever kiddo came to get him and then fell asleep in their bed without meaning to, or shane wakes up to little feet pushing into his kidney or a little fist tucked under his arm or a kiddo sprawled sideways over him AND ilya in a way that canNOT be comfortable

@zouisalmightie

wakes up at 6 am alone and goes to investigate where his husband ended up and finds ilya curled up on a twin bed he's taking up almost all of the real estate on, their wide-awake child reading their little picture book while using him as a backrest, and shane picks kiddo up, sends them off to the kitchen to wait for breakfast and then *gentle smooch smooch until ilya stirs without fully waking up* hey. i'm sure twisting up like a shrimp is super comfortable and good for your back, but we have a king size bed, too, in case you forgot. just a reminder that you have some options here.

GOD

and kid whose house their teenager is supposed to be at (who used staying at THEIR house as an excuse) also gets collected because they had gotten a ride from someone who isn't leaving yet even though the party is NOT fun anymore for young teenagers who just made one very bad choice that got out of hand, and ilya isn't going to wake up other adults at 2 in the morning, so other teen comes along and stays the night and gets a brief pause on facing the music from their parents until the next day.

but shane who still has a habit of doing a headcount of everyone each morning now wakes up to find?? a whole extra teenager in addition to HIS teenager who wasn't supposed to be here??? WHAT happened last night???

And they were "rivals."

After Irina dies Ilya is maybe sent away. He looks too much like his mother, hes a sad pre-teen boy which manifests as anger. He's getting into fights and embarrassing his father and maybe the last step is getting caught at 14 with Sasha. So he gets sent away, maybe there was an invitation from an international hockey program right as he's caught and so he gets sent there. Maybe his dad says something to the coach, not outing Ilya but it convinces him that Ilya's going to be trouble.

Like, the Ilya we know uses his charm and charisma as a mask very effectively. But this is a sad, scared, and angry 14 year old boy who has been outed and banished to a foreign country.

So he starts the whole thing on his back foot, his coach giving him a lecture in front of the team that Ilya can barely understand about how he needs to get his shit together, he speaks English poorly, and he's so talented on the ice that the other boys are jealous.

Then Shane Hollander, quiet, mildly popular, acknowledged best player on the team and generally a well liked, if intense, kid sits next to Ilya as they're lacing up his skates. He compliments Ilya on his hockey, says it precisely and carefully but not condescendingly so Ilya understands.

Somehow this weird intense canadian keeps sitting next to Ilya, keeps pairing up with him on the ice, somehow becomes Ilya's best friend. The other boys leave him alone, well no but he only gets the same amount of hazing as Shane and the rest of the 14 year olds.