a silver splendour, a flame

The night of Samhain, 1017 II Age

The room thinned out. Yakov and Lilia had responsibilities to dispatch at the festival of Samhain, responsibilities he theoretically shared but which nobody looked to him to execute now, like this. Yuri, obliged to present himself and his familiar since he was still bound by the wheel had followed them both looking pale and shaken, promising to return later, and Otabek had gone with him, stable and steady and showing only the slightest hints of contemplation on a face that never gave away its secrets.

For a long time the Katsukis stayed, and spoke little, and Viktor tried without success to redirect his thoughts away from the festival being honored elsewhere in the keep. For so long he’d thought Samhain the most beautiful of all of the festivals, solemn and somber, mysterious and powerful. Now it twisted his stomach: the promise of the flicker of a thousand different candles, less inspiring now that their light wouldn’t dance off of the soft edges of Yuuri’s face. The magic of it was as gone as Yuuri was, nothing more than the empty space of something he’d once loved.

Gods, the costumes. He’d liked the masquerade aspect, slipping into characters that were fearful and ill-understood and strange. How had Otabek looked upon that, Viktor wondered now, all of their child’s play at awe and dread: perhaps even a mockery of everything the ban side understood more than the aes sidhe could ever hope to. Lying down next to the fire to let smoke wash over him was something he could almost hope to understand, although the irony of it had made Viktor laugh into Mari’s still shoulder, bitter and choked. Of course that’s how things would be now: the protection of only a lingering set of ashes and a wash of smoke, nothing like the heat of the real thing.

It was the last tradition, the sprinkling of blood on the threshold, that he knew instinctively he’d never be able to watch again. Protect us from death. That alone was enough to make him choke on sobs again, leaning into Mari, Mari who he could no longer hear or for that matter even feel. She was physically next to him, real, which had once been enough, before Yuuri had flown into his life and brought him into a world that was realer than reality.

They all cried together, the Katsuki clan and Viktor, listening to the beautiful, sad notes of the two banshees singing on the wind.

All his life he’d heard their songs described as mournful wailing. What he was doing was mournful wailing; what they were doing was something mysterious and profound.

When Yuri returned he thought he might’ve finally been all out of tears, dried out in a way that was wholly different from what it had felt like to race through the desert. There was dehydration, and then there was this emptiness, this boneless thing, not dead himself but certainly hardly still alive, either. Viktor thought he might’ve heard something in his brother’s thoughts, like you beautiful idiot, and he barely recognized the way Mari shifted, the way she faded away with Yuuri’s parents before his brother sat next to him instead, their shoulders bumping together for a moment and a moment only before Yura put his arms around Viktor’s shoulders and forced him to lie down, swept fingers through his hair, tried to make him sleep.

Even when Samhain was long gone and only cold, distant starlight twinkled through his window, rest did not come. Even when Yuri’s breath evened out, when Yakov and Lilia’s sharp-minded thoughts faded into dreams and stillness, Viktor did not sleep.

He didn’t know how much time must have passed by the time he gave up and got back up, walking slowly and without purpose across his room, put Yuuri’s cloak on instead of his own, and shut the door behind him. Enough that even Otabek, the conscientious Ranger, had fallen asleep sitting up outside in the hallway, though someone had left a box there that he nearly stumbled over in the dark.

A pile of papers spilled over the floor, a mystery Viktor would’ve left unsolved because he had no energy for the surprise of it, no interest, except for his name on the front of them:

Vitya, it read, but more importantly, it read Vitya in the handwriting he’d only come to observe a handful of times; Yuuri, who wrote with the same surprising elegance as the manner in which he danced. He almost stopped to read them then and there, but down at the end of the hall the darkness outside was getting lighter, reminding Viktor of upcoming dawn and his original purpose: to get outside, away from this castle of death and grief, to try to find someplace he could breathe.

An hour later he was climbing up the Mosciren glacier when an eagle’s cry sounded overhead, piercing and high and sharp. Standing atop the ice, Viktor watched as it circled closer, swooped down, and landed in front of him, magnificent; looked into the bird’s big, dark eyes.

Vicchan.

You miss him too, huh?

Later, sitting there under the protective fold of one giant wing, watching the pink stripe of the rising sun grow on the Eastern horizon from his place here at the top of the world, Viktor unfolded the first piece of paper from the pile of them, and started to read.

- - -

1017 II Age: the first Yuuri letter

Vitya,

It’s just after lunch here in Ast Petyriel and I’ve just finished my afternoon ritual of watching you walk off to the library, intent on reading through every tome, book, and scroll in your mother’s incredible collection in the hopes that there’s something you can do to prevent what happens at Samhain from happening. … I’m supposed to be doing something with Mila or Georgi to occupy my time but I’ve begged off the entertainment for once, though it’s very thoughtful of you to keep arranging it.

It’s something about the way you walk in there that makes me want to write to you, and maybe when you read this you’ll be a little bit mad at me, for writing you something you’ll only ever read if you fail.

It’s a bad habit of mine, to always plan for the worst case. I didn’t really know to expect anything else until you came along and I guess habits take time to break. If you find a way and you never read this, I’ll be happy, because I’ll spend more of my time with you; and if you don’t, and I die anyway, I’ll be a little bit sad, because you’ll be alone.

You’re the type of person who should never be alone.

I’m not sure what else I want to say except to remind you I love you: that every time I look at you my breath catches in my throat because it doesn’t seem possible that someone could be so beautiful and still love me the way that you do. That I could spend years, I think, trying to decide whether or not your eyes have a little bit of green in them, in certain lights. That when my mind wanders it’s inevitably you it wanders off to: the neatness of your hands, the back of your neck, the silk of your hair.

If I’m gone now and you’re reading this and you feel like you’ve failed know this:

I am still grateful, and wherever it is that the dead walk I am still dancing, and it’s because of you and you alone that either of those things are true.

I want to sign this letter with “Yours,” which is a miracle of its own, to put quill to paper, like starting it with “Vitya” and the thought that you’re mine, my Vitya —

Yours,

Yuuri.

- - -

The day after Samhain, 1017 II Age

At sunrise he almost understood Yuuri’s words, you’ll see it too, watching the way a streak of red fire lit the horizon and then turned the sky the purplish color of a fading bruise. Then rosy pink. When the sun finally ascended, cresting fully over the mountains, color swept over everything, even the miles of glacier extending northwards, all pale, cool blues. He made a decision then, a snap judgment to watch it daily until he understood. Viktor read each of the letters three separate times, proving yet again that he had not quite exhausted his tears.

Only when he’d nearly fallen asleep in the ice, when the eagle nudged him, did he finally trudge back home, slow and exhausted and clumsy, and in the grips of a near faint he hardly noticed the presence of a steadying arm and the brief assessment of a pair of hazel eyes.

“Careful, Vitya,” said Christophe’s voice, or something like it: there was a strain there, too, some reason Viktor should have understood except that he was so tired, and felt so far away from himself, little more than an out-of-body wraith clumsily animating his own movements as though his limbs were those of a puppet, and he hadn’t yet learned to understand the strings. The person attached to this voice was helping him up stairs, into the suite that was Viktor’s, out of the cloak that wasn’t Viktor’s and down into bed. He hesitated for a moment, sank into a nearby chair. “… do you want me to …?”

To what? Viktor was in no mood for puzzles. Still the question forced him to try to shake himself back into his own skull, to think, however briefly for something else.

“No,” he murmured finally, and shut his eyes, turned over in the blankets and gathered up the pillow that had been Yuuri’s for something else to hold onto. The rest of the words wouldn’t come, piled up somewhere in his throat.

It hurt this way because Yuuri had mattered, and letting Christophe magically diminish his pain into something neat and manageable, somehow, took away from the magnificence of that simple fact.

Christophe gave a brief snort in response, enough to make Viktor think he’d gotten the answer he’d expected. “You understand I had to ask,” he added after a moment, and he could’ve meant one of two things, then or now, that what he probably meant was both, that maybe there was always going to be this stretched out apology between the two of them, the scar that Viktor had once considered the worst thing that had ever happened to him.

Was it, though? Or was this?

No. Nothing related to Yuuri could ever be that. He blinked slowly, got back to the question, found that he did comprehend, both now and for then. He’d understood what Christophe had meant, kneeling in front of the stag and willing to change the world if Viktor had only been equally willing to change what Yuuri was somewhere in the center of that beautiful soul.

“I do,” he confirmed, and even though it could only have been mid-day Viktor knew he was finally ready to let oblivion claim him. This was not forgiveness, not exactly, but it felt close, like a seed that had fallen in the right place, had a chance once winter was gone and the earth wasn’t so hard, so cold, so inhospitable for living things. “Goodnight.”

- - -

1017 II Age: the second Yuuri letter

Vitya,

I’ve decided I’ll write you one of these for every day that I’ll be gone, so that you have something to keep you company, something to remember me by …

It drizzled this morning, do you remember? You sat out on the balcony and let yourself get wet; not soaked, though, dewy, like how flowers look sometimes after the right sort of fog, came back inside with little clear beads of it water all over your tunic and dispersed through your hair and then you laughed at me a little bit, because you heard it, I guess, whatever it is my heart does when I’m convinced you’re too beautiful to be real.

You have the most amazing smile, you know that? But an even better laugh. We missed breakfast and this time it was my fault because I wanted to try to find out if I could drink that sound right off of your lips, to eat it up and swallow whole whatever it was that was making you so happy you shone.

I didn’t quite succeed, but we were both still laughing by the time we tumbled downstairs for lunch, and I had to swat away your hand under the table while your mother looked on disapprovingly and while your brother called us both idiots, such an ordinary moment, two morons in love; do you remember?

You probably don’t feel much like laughing today, I know, but don’t let that last for too long, Vitya. If you’re out of practice when I come back I’ll be disappointed: you should get to laugh loudly and often.

I am coming back, too: I will come over the hills the way the fog does, some morning, just before dawn, and I will be no different than I am now, just a halfling with an insatiable hunger for your smile.

Yuuri

- - -

One week after Samhain, 1017 II Age

Something about Yuri’s grief had changed Otabek, too; not deeply, where the core of him was unchanged, but in a dozen different surface habits, the way they touched more often now, in a way that was different than what it had been like to sleep turned against Otabek’s strong shoulder, or to lean against him while traveling the wheel. These were the soft brush of Otabek’s fingers, tucking stray strands of pale gold back behind Yuri’s ears, drifting down his arm and across the small of his back. It wasn’t gentle; Otabek, Yuri understood better than anyone, had always been as gentle as also was brutal, carried the two in equal measures and in perfect, assured balance.

It was delicate. That was the word. Otabek had rarely been that.

Yuri was grateful for it. The banshee captain remained close to him, steadfast, but the little gestures inevitably came when his resolve wavered or when his thoughts tripped over the empty space in the family’s consciousness. Yuri had sworn to show nothing since the first awful snapping, the thing which had yanked Yuuri’s entire consciousness from their family bond almost as quickly as it had come. Besides Viktor’s grief, which set his teeth on edge, he promised he didn’t miss the halfling, hadn’t gotten acclimated to the gentleness which his presence added to hard, Northern edges.

He was fooling nobody, but Beka let him pretend so beautifully.

It was pre-dawn and he’d decided to accompany his brother on one of these ridiculous glacier trips he knew Viktor was making, was halfway to the stables before he even registered Otabek’s presence. “Beka.”

“… Let him be for a few more days, Yura,” Otabek murmured back, and that, too, had the same sparkling softness. Yura. He liked the way it sounded when Otabek was the one who said it, with subtle fondness and, he thought sometimes, a little possessiveness.

There were a dozen different ways to respond to that. Brow furrowed, Yuri selected one. “I don’t like leaving him alone up there.”

“We have a tradition about the crossings souls make,” Otabek offered, in that roundabout way he had of answering an unspoken question by referring to something else entirely. When Yuri said nothing, letting his response be carried by the cock of one eyebrow and the tilt of his head, the ranger glanced around briefly. The courtyard was empty. He stepped forward, gave into an impulse to rest his hands on Yuri’s hips, and continued: “we say it takes nine days. Give your brother that. These nine mornings.”

To drape his arms over Otabek’s shoulders was an easy instinct. “You’ve been watching him too,” Yuri noted, which maybe shouldn’t have been a surprise; Otabek was in the guard, it was, on the surface level, his job. “Why?”

Otabek hesitated, and then turned his head slightly, chin against Yuri’s shoulder while he thought, and then turned his face to nose against the blonde’s chin. Yuri shivered and told himself it was because of things like winter and pre-dawn and cold, and not because of the momentary press of Beka’s lips against his neck. “… I don’t have a good way to say it without being rude,” he decided, after a moment, and moved no further away.

Yuri's green eyes were unwavering, glittering, sharp. “Be rude, then.”

Otabek drew back, only far enough to wind his arms between them, to smooth a hand along the blonde’s cheek. “None of my people has ever had the opportunity to watch what your brother is doing right now,” he said quietly. “To see someone of his pedigree …”

No royal aes sidhe he’d ever heard of had willingly let death into his house.

“What is he doing?”

“We would call it getting wiser,” Otabek admitted, and there must’ve been something in how he said it, or perhaps the subtleties of his expression itself. Some hint of respect, some growing admiration.

Whatever it was, it made Yuri kiss him briefly, short and sweet, and then Otabek was the one left to pretend he was affected by Mosciren’s unforgiving cold. “You’re an idiot,” the younger of the two princes muttered, but there was a gleam in his gaze that Otabek liked, encouraged even: you’re my idiot.

- - -

1017 II Age: the nineteenth Yuuri letter

Vitya,

You are the love of my life, but bear with me for a moment: I’ve realized there’s no way you have the personal discipline to read these one at a time. You, who charge into every idea you have, borne up on the wings of fortune and glory …

I can picture you perfectly. You’re tearing through each of these now, aren’t you? It’s okay. I won’t be mad about it if you’re not angry I’ve written them.

Just remember to read them one at a time after this, please. Do that and then do the things that we like: take walks and look at the things that you think are so beautiful, which you always pointed out to me; dance, by yourself, if you must, imagining that I’m there because in some way I will be, maybe just as the memory of your heart but even that is powerful:

look at what your heart’s done already, Vitya, picture me, sitting against a tree, ready to write you a million love letters if I must, to keep you from sorrow.

Yuuri

- - -

Two weeks after Samhain, 1017 II Age

“I’m not sure I’m ever going to like you,” Viktor admitted, finally, to Seung-gil. He wasn’t sure he could grow the capacity, could become big enough or forgiving enough.

Intellectually he understood the reaper’s obligations, now.

Emotionally …

Seung-gil’s smile was thin and wry. Unexpressive, Vitya decided, and then he did surprise himself with a momentary flash of sympathy. He’d lived in a world devoid of emotional range once; had known plains and valleys but never peaks. Perhaps someday, someone would show death love, too.

“I don’t do this to be loved.”

- - -

1017 II Age: the thirty-fourth Yuuri letter

Vitya, Husband,

This letter should just be that word, over and over again, which is all I can think of this morning every time I catch a glimpse of my reflection in a mirror, in a window:

husband, husband, husband, husband, husband

I’m not sure who I’m thinking of more or which is the greater oddity: that I am married to you, or that you are married to me, but you have to know the way my whole body sings it, the stunning, obvious fact of this word:

husband

Writing it down doesn’t diminish the miracle of it, or marriage, I guess, but you have to know: these words are too small for us. When I let myself drift into the part of my consciousness that’s yours now I feel like I’m lying on my back, floating on some warm sea, no land in sight, because every time I try to locate the borders of where your fondness for me might end (and I’m sorry to admit, I keep trying) it just doesn’t and —

husband, husband, husband

It’s a stupid word but you’re mine now and it’s the only word I’ve got so we’ll just have to make due.

Husband.

- Yuuri

 

- - -

Yule / Midwinter, 1017 II Age

Yule felt different this year, though Lilia made sure Mosciren stayed the same, decorated with wreaths of holly and pine; lit the castle’s thousand candles, ensured carolers still traveled through the household, singing midwinter songs.

It was with her help that Viktor let himself actually catch the change of solstice, marked the promise of it feeling solemn and subtly empty in a way that he’d learned to live with. Grief was a strange bedfellow, a new resident in the halls of his being. He took in the feast, subdued; registered the news that Jean-Jacques and Christophe would be returning soon to Ast Petyriel.

Sometimes, though, there were little signs of life, like Mari of all people catching him into a hallway with a fierce hug. “Happy birthday,” she said out loud, and when he looked at her, uncomprehending for a moment, she’d thumped his chest. “You’re still my brother now,” Mari reminded him, and that, too, was a gift: this second family who hadn’t yet left him, even if no bonds kept the obligation to stay close alive.

Later, at the feast, he found Christophe, stood alongside him, watching smoke rise from the Yule log, listening to Lilia harangue Otabek into a duet.

That was curious, too, but she’d also heard and marked the song of the ban side, back at Samhain.

“Does A’ve Palmera still have its wayseeing stone?”

Christophe glanced sidelong at him, flashed a wry smile. “It does.”

“Good,” Viktor decided. He considered his next words while studying the pale amber of ale poured into one of Yakov’s elaborate goblets, put the past century behind him once and for all. Life, as it turned out, was about the present. Yuuri had shown him that; was still showing him, even in absentia. “… Don’t be a stranger.”

- - -

1017 II Age: the fifty-first Yuuri letter

Vitya,

You ought to be getting around to this a second time around Yule, if I’ve counted my days correctly.

Born on winter solstice, you told me once, and I laughed a bit, because of course you would be; child of winter and wild hunts.

We never celebrated midwinter in Hasetsuil the way I’m told you all do in Mosciren. I’m sorry not to see it. Perhaps I’m there and you’ll never read this and I’ve wished you happy birthday myself. I hope that’s the case.

If I’m not, my birthday gift to you is this, a reminder: the days will get longer now, the sun will rise earlier, and in a few weeks I’ll be rising with it, coming up in the earliest part of the morning to hold you close, to kiss your cheek.

Make sure you still celebrate. It’s what I want, understand?

Yuuri

- - -

Seven days before Imbolc, 1017 II Age

Somewhere along the way Yuuri’s letters had stopped being in Yuuri’s hand, and Mari’s instead, a surprise of its own: so determined had his husband been to hide his project that he’d entrusted his confessions into his sister’s mind, let her dictate what remained. The content shifted subtly; stories about who he’d been as a child, for instance, and why that mattered now, why Viktor, who walked through the universe with such surety, so perfectly complimented Yuuri, who’d always interpreted it more tenuously, trembling sometimes with doubt.

There was no doubt now about what was coming. Imbolc, same as Samhain, had a horizon all its own.

Signs of Spring’s inevitability were everywhere: in the weaker snows that covered Mosciren towards the end of winter, the subtly warmer days, the drip-drip-drip of icicle melt, sun shining through each pure, crystalline drop.

Viktor could hardly sleep, for expectation.

It was almost a shame; Yuuri felt more real in his dreams than he had for a long time, visions of something Viktor could never properly remember but always woke up with sure of, heartbeat racing almost as fast as the halfling’s once had, gasping for fits of air and breath, sure that this time those had been Yuuri’s hands, or that had been the flicker of Yuuri’s subtle smile, like the little light of candleflame.

Seven days until a new year. Just seven more.

Somewhere along the way he made himself tolerate another conversation with Seung-gil, which must’ve been a two-way street because the reaper had been made to endure his eagerness, his hunger. “Where does he show up, when he comes back?”

“We’ve always been in the East when it’s happened,” Seung-gil admitted, which as it happened meant Nisgorieth, the place where Yuuri’d awoken bearing the phoenix for the first time. “But I’ve been told it’s not meant to be far. It won’t be there.”

“So you’re not sure?”

“It’ll be somewhere close to here. Some holy place. Do you know one?”

Sudden understanding hit Viktor and he smiled his first real smile in months. You’ll see, Yuuri had promised.

Where had he been, all these days, every dawn, without even registering it? “I do.”

We’re going to Hasetsuil, Mari told him later, unprompted, packing up her things because the Katsukis had left their duties back East for long enough, were due back to Minako’s service. He’ll want to be there for Imbolc.

Viktor, absently helping with the packing because his hands were empty, because he had nothing else to do with his time but to wander around like this, a little bit lost, still trying to fill it, had wondered at that. How were they supposed to cross so great a distance in so short a time? Even with Vicchan, left behind to await his master, it’d be … nearly impossible.

Mari studied him, then, flashed a brief, tanuki smirk.

“What?”

“You don’t know what you’re in for,” she murmured, sly. “I think I’ll let you find out.”

Another surprise, Yuuri?

- - -

1017 II Age: the last Yuuri letter

Vitya,

There’s nothing else to say at this point except for this:

See you tomorrow. It’ll be nice after all this time to tell you I love you again in person.

Yuuri

- - -

Dawn. Three days before Imbolc, 1017 II Age

It was a morning ritual by now, to rise long before dawn, and fetch a horse, to shift the evening’s fresh drifts of snow aside the narrow trail that led over the mountain to the glacier. Viktor knew this place well enough to ascend its face even in the dark, to stride out onto the open plain of unending ice. This morning he woke even earlier than usual, startled awake after a dream that faded quickly but left Yuuri’s voice ringing in his ears:

Vitya, vitya …

He woke no one in the alcazar as he stole outside, wrapped up in the great silver cloak and its furs, Yuuri’s crimson one draped over the horse’s quarters like a waiting banner. He carried it with him on the uphill climb, held it as he stepped out onto the glacier’s surface, gathered between two hands like a prayer unto itself.

The sky was clear and cold, just a twinkle of fading stars overhead, and already the Eastern horizon had begun to shift in anticipation of daybreak. Viktor turned to study the rising genesis of rose and and persimmon on the outline of the mountain, the golden glow that began to blossom in the sky; waited. There was no one moment where it began to happen; the shifting breeze or the little embers of gold lifted by the wind, like the falling flakes of a bonfire or like cherry blossom petals, he’d never be sure. There was warmth, too, uncharacteristic and impossible for these circumstances, subtle at first but growing stronger as a streak of sunlight outlined the mountain peaks; something that collected around him and swept across his shoulders, his arms, like blown sand: soft but sun-baked, dusty and delicate.

Viktor felt his first genuine smile in months. “Hello, Yuuri.”

Behind him something was becoming more solid, was gathering strength, and the twine of magic over his shoulders became stronger, though Viktor spared only a passing glance at the tendrils of magic that swept over his shoulders, along his chest, at the arms, not quite corporeal yet, that gathered around his waist.

In the East the sun cleared the mountain and he felt all of it at once: the rapid echo of Yuuri’s answering heartbeat, the press of his cheek between Viktor’s shoulders and the strong pull of his arms, holding them close, the overwhelming flood of his magic into all the edges of his consciousness.

Yuuri whose teeth were near Viktor’s ear, who nibbled, whose playful smile the prince didn’t need to see to be able to visualize perfectly. What he said was this:

“Hello, husband.”

Aren’t you going to kiss me?

Viktor turned and what he beheld there, standing under the dawn-stretched length of his own shadow, was a marvel: Yuuri, who looked hale, stronger than the peak of summer; Yuuri who wore a subtle, half-cocked smirk, whose eyes were molten and vermillion, whose entire body radiated gentle waves of magic in so much excess that Viktor felt some of it latching onto him, sinking in past his skin, working its way into the marrow of his bones. Yes, he barely had time to mutter, to think, because this Yuuri, reborn and ablaze, didn’t wait for him, gathered whole fistfuls of that silver cloak into his glowing hands and collided into him with a kiss that was searing. Viktor, who’d thought about this for months, imagined what he might do, might say, found himself wholly at a loss.

It was Yuuri who noticed the glittering of his tears, who swept them away and shook his head. It’s not the season for those, darling, hummed the cinnamon warmth of his thoughts, and then he stuck two fingers in his mouth and whistled. “We’ve got places to be,” he murmured, and reached down to gather the red pool of the cloak Viktor had dropped into the ice, swept it over his shoulders.

Mari’s words: you don’t know what you’re in for, do you?

“Where?”

This new Yuuri was younger, somehow, cocky angles and the seduction of spring. “Imbolc.”

The silhouette of a giant eagle overhead, chased by the brightest phoenix Viktor had ever seen, was the very least of the morning’s surprises. Yuuri’s outstretched hand shook him from his thoughts; Yuuri who, if he was any brighter, might’ve hurt to look at; who was realer than real, with those dangerous, glittering eyes, the grace and assurance in his movements, that subtle smile.

You’re not going to miss our dance, are you?

“Never,” Viktor swore, and he felt Yuuri radiating approval as he climbed onto the eagle’s back and held on for liftoff. Yuuri’s magic swirled around Vicchan’s body, around his, was too big for them both, couldn’t stay contained in his own skin.

Good.