Chapter Text
Through his panic, Yuuri notices something strange almost immediately. Well, other than his lover (and they’re really going to have to discuss that term when Victor wakes up) being passed out on the ground.
Victor is shivering.
“Mom!” Yuuri yells.
“What?!” She yells back. “I didn’t even say anything this time!”
“No, no, not that. I need blankets. And a futon.”
“I thought I said no se—”
“No, Mom, not for that!”
She collects the requested items dutifully and lays them out in an extra room, while Yuuri once more drags Victor throughout his home.
“Does he do this often?” his mom asks delicately as they both stare at his face.
“Increasingly.”
“You must have really worn him out.”
Yuuri colors again. “Jeez, mom!”
“Okay, okay.” She pauses, peers closer at Victor. “Is it just me or is his face more…” She trails off. “Never mind.”
“No, what were you going to say?”
“He just looks older for some reason,” she says, sounding incredibly confused. “My eyes must be going.”
Yuuri looks closer as well. “No, wait, you’re right.” All the color immediately leaves his face. “Oh, no. He’s three hundred years old.”
His mom squints dubiously down at Victor. “Uh…okay.”
“Without the power of the other souls sustaining him…it must be catching up to him all at once.” The tears come quickly, unbidden. “I don’t know how to stop this. I don’t know how to save him.”
“Yuuri…” It’s obvious his mother doesn’t know what’s going on, but she still reaches out to comfort him.
And then Yuuri’s eyes catch on the paper, still in Victor’s hands.
If he gives…if he gives Victor his soul…
He bites his lip in instinctual terror. No! He can’t. Without their souls, humans die.
But is he really living without Victor in the world, anyway?
Victor will be sad, the voice in his head tells him, sounding just as terrified. He’ll go back to being alone—
He won’t remember me. He’ll be a spirit again. Full memory wipe.
And he’ll be alive.
Yuuri makes his decision.
“Mom…” he says quietly. “I love you.”
“Yuuri?”
“Tell Dad and Mari I love them too.”
“You’re scaring me.”
Yuuri chokes out a laugh. “You and me both.”
Then he starts the incantation.
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There are very few people that know any details about the soul-bonding ritual, but those who do know a thing or two say several things.
The first is that it automatically kills the person from whom the soul is taken. This is technically incorrect.
The second is that the person who takes the soul immediately loses their memory. This is also technically incorrect.
Both of these are incorrect because the original purpose of the soul-bonding ritual is not to steal, but to give.
Victor wakes up to Yuuri’s mother sobbing over her lifeless son. His eyes are closed, his skin porcelain and cold.
“How could you,” she cries, and he’s not completely certain whether she’s talking to Yuuri or him. “How could you do this?”
His eyes widen, and he scrambles over to Yuuri. “Yuuri! What happened?!”
“He—did some sort of spell, and—”
Victor recognizes the paper immediately, and his eyes fill up with tears. “Yuuri…no.”
“Fix this,” she wails, pounding ineffectually against Victor’s chest. “Make him better.”
“I—I—”
It is then that he realizes that he can feel Yuuri’s soul alongside his, warm and comforting in his heart. Well, his right lung, but. Now is probably not the time to be pedantic.
While the soul-bonding ritual is written as a singular event, it is actually meant to be two separate, but equally important spells. An exchange borne of love and the desire to be together for always with the one that has your heart—your soul, if you will.
Victor does not know any of this. All he knows is that he can’t be without Yuuri.
“Well, here goes,” he mutters, and performs the incantation.
A bright light fills the room, almost blinding. Both Yuuri and Victor are lifted into the air, surrounded by something incandescent. Their souls rise from their chests and circle each other, then merge.
Yuuri’s mom watches in awe as the large blob splits in two again and slowly floats back over to the unconscious men.
They’re dropped rather unceremoniously on the ground by the spell, and the light dissipates as quickly as it appeared.
“Yuuri? Victor?” Katsuki Hiroko whispers hesitantly.
They both wake up at the same instant, gasping for air.
“Victor—”
“Yuuri—”
They stop at the same time, then laugh delightedly in concert.
“I can feel you,” Victor says joyously. “I can feel you, Yuuri.”
“Me too,” Yuuri murmurs. “It’s like you’re right here.” He taps his chest wonderingly.
“Exactly,” Victor breathes, then gets up to encircle Yuuri in a tight hug.
All of a sudden, he starts yelling. “What was that supposed to be, huh? Did you seriously think that I would be okay with you sacrificing yourself to save me?!”
“I thought you wouldn’t remember me,” Yuuri says awkwardly. “I thought you wouldn’t care.”
“Yuuri, I could never forget you,” Victor says sternly, but his tone is belied by the tender way he brushes Yuuri’s cheeks with his fingers, like he can hardly believe he’s real.
“You’re the one who left me first,” Yuuri accuses, all of a sudden angry. “So it’s your fault.”
“…Yuuri,” Victor says fondly.
“What the crap did you even mean, grand gesture? What kind of a gesture is dying?!”
“Yuuri,” Yuuri’s mom says urgently.
“I can’t believe you thought I would be okay with you being gone! What’s wrong with you, you ridiculous fop, I—”
“Yuuri!” Victor and Yuuri’s mom yell together.
“What?!”
“You’re on fire,” Victor says, then beams. “And you’re making it snow at the same time. It’s actually really adorable.”
“It’d be more adorable if there weren’t scorch marks on my nice floor,” Hiroko says irritatedly.
The flames go out and snow cloud disappear rapidly, Yuuri flushing. “Sorry, mom.”
“I may be a fop, whatever that is,” Victor says lowly, moving towards Yuuri with a predatory gleam in his eye, “But you still love me, right?”
“…Yeah.”
“Good. Because I’m pretty sure I’ve got fire magic now as well, and I’d really like to try making you warm.”
Yuuri turns a dark red. “Victor! In front of my mom, really?!”
“I’ll leave,” she volunteers. “I don’t have any interest in seeing my son get ravished.”
“I do!” Victor chirps, while Yuuri moans and puts his face in his hands.
When she leaves, though, Victor is surprisingly silent as he just holds Yuuri close.
“Victor?”
“I can’t believe I almost lost you,” he says quietly. “I don’t know what I would have done if the spell hadn’t worked.”
“But it did,” Yuuri says, rubbing his hand over Victor’s back.
Victor nods, just as quiet, and Yuuri decides that he has to change the subject.
“So…it’s weird that there was a legend about you, considering how isolated you were in that castle of yours,” he says musingly. “The legend of the ice princess. Hah.”
Victor groans. “No, I know exactly how that happened, actually.”
“Huh? How?”
“I used to play a game with my friends when I was younger and they always made me play the princess because of my long hair. I sort of adopted it as a nickname--the ice princess. I guess it must have gotten around when I went missing.” Victor sighs. “It seems so silly now that I’m so different. Maybe I should cut my hair or something.”
“No,” Yuuri says, stroking through it and kissing the strands. “I think it suits you.”
Victor smiles genuinely. “Yeah?”
“Yeah. I think you should stay exactly how you are. Just you, here, with me.”
“I think that sounds nice.”
“Yeah. Yeah, it does.”
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There is a legend in the land. It tells of two men who went around doing good wherever they could, helping the lonely and disenfranchised to realize their dreams. It tells of their love, a love so strong that they gave each other their souls, and of the kingdom they built from that love—a kingdom made of fire and ice.
But that, dear friends, is an entirely different story.