Chapter Text
Ivan’s not sure what he was expecting, really.
No ghost lasts forever - that’s a fact. One day, no matter how long they’ve already lasted, someone will find them and exorcise them; it’s just a part of the existence of ghosts that has to be accepted. Ivan accepted that, he accepted it when General Winter was exorcised. He shouldn’t have expected more than that of Yao.
But he did, and the morning after their conversation, Yao is gone from his apartment. When he gets back that evening, Yao is still gone. Two days later and Yao hasn’t returned.
A week later, Ivan has had the ghost chasers constantly breathing down his neck but has not even glimpsed Yao, anywhere in the city.
He reminds himself that he did this for Yao, that it’s the best thing to do. It doesn’t stop him telling himself he is awfully, cripplingly lonely - but he pretends it helps.
He thinks about how Yao said he’d go somewhere else for a few weeks, wonders if that means he intends to return. He promised, didn't he?
A month later, after the loss of Yao Wang has sort of just begun to painfully settle, Ivan gets a phone call from his older sister Katyusha and he arranges to go and stay at his parents’ house for the holiday season that’s coming up. He jumps at the chance, to get away from this apartment, this empty space that something in him is still waiting for Yao to fill. His sisters will take his mind off everything, he’s sure.
When he arrives at his parents’ house, sees his family, catches up with them, they ask what’s happened in his life recently and he finds himself thinking of Yao.
“Nothing, really,” he says, “Just classes and stuff.”
He helps his sisters bake, the next morning at his parents’ house, and it reminds him of how they used to do the same when they were little. It’s the first fun thing he’s done for a while now - but Natalya sets the finished cake down on the table a few hours later and Ivan remembers Yao trying to get him to cook.
And somewhere along the way, Ivan realises he will never stop thinking of Yao and that’s kind of how loss works.
Eventually he leaves his parents’ house and goes back to his apartment, begins his ghost chaser duties again. He is suddenly taken off watch, allowed back into the ranks, and he pretends it doesn’t bother him - they were so suspicious before. It’s almost as if nothing ever happened, almost.
He searches up Yao’s case on the internet again one night, reads through the facts he’s already read hundreds of times over but can’t stop reading. Yao was twenty when he died, his next eldest brother fifteen.
How old would that make Kiku now - sixty-something?
And Yao would be in his seventies, if he had lived.
Ivan wonders what Yao’s siblings did with their lives - Yao used to talk about them sometimes, his four younger brothers and one younger sister. They’ll all have wives and husbands and children and maybe even grandchildren too by now.
He wonders about it, and then closes the tab and shuts down his laptop and leaves his apartment and tries not to think about Yao, until one day when he is out on duty with Toris Laurinatis.
Ivan is unable to resist asking if Toris has heard anything about Yao Wang since he reported him to the ghost chasers, and Toris freezes to the spot for a few moments.
“Is that the ghost that you...?” Toris begins, but cuts himself off when he glances up and nearly catches Ivan’s gaze. “Uh... I think he was- I don’t know. He hasn’t been mentioned for at least a month now. He might have been exorcised- I mean, he might- not have been, but...”
Ivan’s not sure what he expected, really.
Toris apologises, and it’s strange to hear him apologise for the exorcism of a ghost when Ivan knows that he hates every single lingering spirit wandering this city.
“He died in the 1960s,” Ivan says suddenly, and Toris immediately stops talking. He’s not sure what he’s saying anymore, not fully in control of his words. “He was our age, beaten to death by his classmates with a metal pipe. We never worked out whether it was because he looked like a girl or because he was Chinese.”
Toris opens his mouth but seems lost for words.
“Did you ever see him?” Ivan asks. When Toris hesitantly shakes his head, he feels a small smile tug at his face. “Ah. He was beautiful.”
He wonders if Yao went back to China to find his family. He could have done that. Would he ever come back to Moscow if he found his family in China again?
Are there ghost chasers in China?
He thinks about Yao, floating in front of the window, watching the snow fall outside, and wonders whether Toris would still hate ghosts if he had been there, spoken to the ghosts Ivan has. “Why do you hate ghosts?”
“I...” Toris begins - his voice cracks and he pauses, running a hand through his hair, searching for a reason. “I... don’t know, I just...”
“You shouldn’t hate ghosts,” Ivan says.
“I’m sorry,” Toris apologises.
Ivan isn’t going to stop thinking of Yao, isn’t going to start hating ghosts - so perhaps he should use that to his advantage. At least until- if- until Yao comes back. “I’m going to teach you to like them.”
“What?”
“I’m going to teach you to like ghosts.”
Toris does not reply, and Ivan looks at him and smiles. Yao liked teaching, didn’t he? He tried to teach Ivan to cook. This is what Yao would do in this situation. “Okay?”
“O-okay, but I don’t-”
“It’ll work. You don’t need to hate them. You shouldn’t hate them.”
Toris shouldn’t have hated Yao, either. “I’m sorry- okay.”
Toris looks at him, properly meets his gaze for the first time in a long while, and Ivan smiles again and thinks of Yao. “Let’s go and chase some ghosts, then.”
***
Toris crashes rather unceremoniously through the door of Ivan’s apartment at a surprisingly late hour of the evening, after a night of running around chasing a young Polish poltergeist that recently showed up in the area. For the first time in a while, it hasn’t been snowing recently, but the air still has a crisp, biting sort of chill to it and it isn’t nice to be out in for long.
He begins to pull his coat off, reaching to unpin the pink 13th birthday badge that Feliks the Polish poltergeist thought it would be fun to put there - why can they touch things? Some poltergeists are a mystery even to the ghost chasers - and eventually turns to the other person in the room.
Ivan is sat at his desk with his laptop open, displaying some kind of old-looking webpage that seems to have been forgotten about the moment he heard Toris arriving. He has spun around on the desk chair to face the door, watching with a cheerful gaze as he waits for Toris to hang his coat up.
“Have fun killing ghosts?” he asks.
“What?” Toris replies.
Ivan smiles, letting out a small laugh, and replies, “You’re supposed to say ‘no, not really’.”