Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

There are three things that everyone in Ingary knows.

One: the eldest child in a family will never amount to anything particularly special. Fortunes and quests and adventure are all reserved for youngest children, particularly if they’re the youngest of three.

Two: the wizard Viktor Nikiforov is cruel and wickedly handsome. No one with any sense would ever trust him for a second, because the moment you do, he’ll eat your heart whole.

Three: don’t go to the Waste, because you won’t come back, and if you do, you won’t be the same.

***

PART I: A WALK IN THE SKIES

Whenever the train rattles its way past Yuuri’s open window, it spits a cloud of smoke in to mingle among the hats.

Yuuri’s mother, back when he was younger, had told him again and again to keep the window closed, but he can’t stand the space when it’s shut; it’s too closed off, too cold. So he picks between the two and chooses the smoke, which stings his eyes and gets into his clothes, but reminds him that there is a world, moving, outside the walls of his family’s little hat shop.

It’s a hazy summer day, and two girls are giggling, just below the window, their words floating up to meet Yuuri as he stitches away at hats. He catches only flashes, all high squeals and breathy little gasps, young and a little silly and full of sunshine. He pauses to listen, not stopping his stitching but stopping his talking to the hats.

(Talking to the hats is not in his job description, but Yuuri does it anyway. He tells them about what they’re meant for and what they could be. To the straw hats, most commonly bought by farmers, he talks about the warm sun, the scent of grass, the whinny of horses; he stitches wide ribbons around the smaller straw hats intended for farmer’s daughters and tells them about warm summer rain, wet earth, and ringing laughter. To the pretty women’s hats, he speaks of the scents of perfume and lotion, the exhilaration of carriage rides while gripping someone’s hand. He tells the hats what they will be to those people in their futures who will buy them.

People think it’s a little odd, a boy of twenty-four hunched over a work-table all through the afternoons, having conversations with his hats.

When asked, he says that farmers talk to their plants, and leaves it at that.)

“Oooh, have you heard, they’ve seen Viktor’s castle on the edge of the Waste again,” one of the girls says, and the other gasps.

“Have they really? Oooh, that’s scary. Has he come to town?”

“Of course not, he never comes to town,” the other one scoffs. “He eats hearts in his castle. He can’t do that in town, someone’d catch him.”

They move away before he can hear the rest of the conversation, but it’s enough to make him set down the hat he’s working on and stand so that he can look out the window, across the gardens of the houses near his, and towards the Waste.

He doesn’t say anything, or even change his expression. He just watches, until finally something moves, like a metallic leg in the mist.

He leans back from the window.

Yuuri doesn’t remember when he first heard of Viktor Nikiforov.

It was probably from his mother, or from Yuuko, or from one of the women who came to the shop to buy a hat. And what he heard probably didn’t involve names; more likely it was something along the lines of you had best stay out of the Waste, little one.

A silly thing to tell the oldest child, who was never going to leave Hasetsu anyway.

To Mari, the comments were slightly different; more along the lines of when she leaves to seek her fortune, make sure she doesn’t run afoul of Viktor.

Mari, being Mari, had snorted and tossed her hair and proclaimed she wasn’t scared of some silly wizard. “If he tries to eat my heart — or Yuuri’s,” she’d added, loyally, “I’ll punch out his teeth.”

Yuuri had only hunched down in his chair, his skin prickling uncomfortably, his fear mixed with fascination.

Viktor is a myth, a legend; he is a wild beast and a phantom, a traveller holding a lantern to lure others off the road. As Yuuri gets older, he hears about Viktor’s greed for the hearts of others, how eating them gives him power, how he seduces people and kidnaps them and takes their hearts for his own. How his eyes are cold as ice and burning with magic.

Viktor is terrifying, and yet — the stories fascinate Yuuri. They make him look out towards the mist whenever the moving castle is rumored to be near.

It’s not that he wants his heart to be eaten. (Yuuri’s heart is practically made of glass, he doubts the wizard would even want it.)

It’s just that —

“It’s a mystery,” he explains to one of the hats. It’s cold, and it’s April, so the window is shut to keep out the rain. “I think that’s why I think about it so often, you know. It’s something to try and figure out, even if I know I never will. It’s the only real interesting thing in my life, and it’s not even something that’s happening to me.” Feeling as if that statement is a little self-pitying, he shakes his head, and sets the hat on the stand to look at it. “You’re a pretty thing,” he tells it. “You’re going to make someone feel young and beautiful again.”

(The hat will be bought the next week by an old woman, and her back will seem just a little straighter as she walks out of the shop.)

“I suppose we all need something to think about,” Yuuri adds, getting supplies out to start another hat. “This just happens to be mine.”

It’s not as if it matters, though, in the long run. Mari left a year ago to go to Kingsbury and seek her fortune, and Yuuri is left here, with the hat shop. It’s a simple life, and he’s satisfied with it — not happy, not exactly, but satisfied. And he can’t close the shop, he can’t leave. Hasetsu is home.

And if home occasionally involves Yuuri watching the horizon for a castle in the mist, there’s no one to see but the hats, and they aren’t telling.

***

It’s May Day, but Yuuri doesn’t find out until an old woman shopping mentions it, offhand, saying something small about the festival later. It leaves him reeling, smiling through his teeth while he puts her money in the register and wonders at the passing of time.

Mari’s been gone now for a year and two months. And Yuuri has barely noticed the time pass, too busy doing the same thing, over and over and over.

Satisfied, his heart whispers. Not happy.

“Do you have anyone to go see today, young man?” the woman says, smiling at him with all four of her teeth. Yuuri smiles back, still moving automatically to pack up her hat and hand it over. He knows she means someone in the way all old people say someone, complete with raised eyebrows and secret smiles. Someone means romance. He’s never had someone.

Even when dropping the implications from the word, the only close friend of his who still lives in Hasetsu is Yuuko, and she’s married and working over at the bakery now. He hasn’t seen her in —

He blanks, at that. He doesn’t know how long it’s been.

“Yes,” he says, surprising himself. “I’m going to surprise my friend Yuuko.”

He doesn’t know where the idea comes from; he’s certainly never been one for spontaneous plans. But the old woman smiles, and he can’t write it off as just a thought when he’s already said it out loud.

“That’s lovely, dear,” she says. “I’m visiting my sister, myself.”

Yuuri takes off his apron to go and see Yuuko with the grim, quiet air of someone going to war. Mari, he knows, would toss her apron on the counter carelessly, burning the ground under her feet in her haste to get moving. It’s why she’s the youngest and he’s the oldest: Yuuri is a quiet, almost fragile thing, and festivals like May Day, where everyone will be pushing and shouting and drinking, are about as appealing as being cursed.

Perhaps, he thinks, that’s why he’s so fascinated with the moving castle. Perhaps it’s nothing to do with the wizard inside it, just the promise of endless solitude.

He locks the door to the shop and sighs, mentally berating himself. He’s being ridiculous about all of it; treating May Day like it’s a burden to be shouldered. It’s meant to be fun, a day off from work to relax in the spring sunshine and talk with friends. Enjoying himself, though, has always been just another thing that Yuuri cannot properly do, his head too high in the clouds and his mouth unable to catch up with his mind. In his head, everything races, going faster and faster until he has to take a break, stop, breathe. In his head, everything is a whirlwind. On the outside, you can’t see any of that besides glances, too often, at the door.

His mother used to say, worried, that he didn’t act like the oldest child, looking off into the distance like that.

Satisfied, he thinks again, not happy, and shoves his hands firmly into his pockets, hurrying along to the train stop at the end of the street.

The train on the way to town is crowded with people, some of them customers who send Yuuri nods or waves, but most of them strangers, packed together in the tiny space like fish at market. Yuuri stands as close to the door as he can, and watches the clouds as they pass, picking out patterns and shapes to distract himself from the press of people around him. Yuuko, he tells himself, you are going to see Yuuko, and it helps to have a goal, a purpose for subjecting himself to — to crowds, and noise, and all these things which make his hands shake.

He takes the back way to Yuuko’s, avoiding the May Day parade, which turns out to be a mistake.

“Hey there,” a half-drunk man says to him, leaning over from the stoop where he sits, his smile gleaming and sharp, sharp, sharp.

Yuuri stumbles over a dip in the road, too busy looking at the stranger’s teeth; his smile widens.

“Aww, don’t be nervous,” he snickers. “‘S cute, though, you’re like a little mouse. Where are you going for May Day?”

I’m going to my friend’s, to Yuuko’s, it’s on the tip of his tongue, but he can’t make it come out. He glances, without meaning to, towards the sky, his throat working as he swallows. (Somehow, the thought of telling this stranger to leave is just as terrifying as continuing to talk.)

“What’s your name?” the stranger asks, and Yuuri feels a hand on his arm, and tenses up, all through his body, like someone’s flipped a switch.

“There you are, darling,” and it’s a different voice, faintly accented, distantly amused. “I was starting to worry.”

“Ah,” Yuuri stammers, turning back the way he’d come, to the second stranger; holding his arm and smiling softly at him. He’s tall and silver-haired, but Yuuri can’t make out his features; he’s too stuck on his eyes, blue and deep as the spring sky. “I—"

“We’d better get on,” the blue-eyed man says, holding out an arm, and it’s then that Yuuri notices his coat, all red and blue and gold and showy, so showy. It’s nothing Yuuri would be caught dead in, he thinks, exasperated despite his confusion and his (very) distant fear.

He accepts the arm anyway, and the stranger starts walking.

“Where to?” he asks, gives Yuuri a charmingly crooked smile which looks faint and practiced. Yuuri is irritated with himself for finding it attractive anyway.

“I was going to the bakery,” he says. “Before you—"

“Helped you out,” the man finishes for him, cheerfully. “You looked uncomfortable.”

Yuuri considers establishing that absolutely everything makes him uncomfortable, but then decides against it. “Thank you,” he replies, which is an entirely safer response.

“Well, that’s what I live for,” the man says, winking. “Going about, saving people in distress.”

Yuuri can’t help but but blush, his heart moving quick as a jackrabbit. It’s a silly thing to be so charmed by this stranger’s elegance and good looks; silly because Yuuri is an unlucky eldest child who only knows how to make hats and hide away from the world. People like that do not get handsome strangers to fall for them.

“Oh, no,” the man mumbles, breaking his train of thought, and reaches one hand over to pat Yuuri’s arm. “I apologize for this. I think you’re involved.”

“Involved?” Yuuri says, his voice going higher and squeakier than he means it to. “Involved with what?”

“Oh, nothing,” the man says airily, flicking his hair out of his eyes. Yuuri does not feel particularly reassured. “Just — come this way.”

“This isn’t the way to the bakery,” Yuuri says, helplessly, as the man steers him off into an alley. It doesn’t occur to him to leave, just as it doesn’t occur to the man to let him go. (Yuuri will fault them both for it, when he overanalyzes this later.)

“I know,” the stranger tells him, pleasantly enough, but there’s a tinge of disinterest under his voice that worries Yuuri. “Don’t worry. We’ll get you there.” His smile is more genuine this time, softer and more reassuring, and Yuuri is suddenly over-aware of his heart pounding in his chest, not the soft flutter of joy that his friends or a good sunrise can cause, a thudding, heavy, terrifying feeling. He thinks it might be adrenalin, or love.

(Probably adrenalin.)

“Do you have a name?” the stranger asks, and before Yuuri can stammer out an answer, he’s being pulled into another alleyway. He can see, out of the corner of his eyes, something following them, and his heart is crashing, crashing like waves on the sea, like cymbals in the May Day parade. He’s much more afraid now than enamoured.

“Ah, there’s someone—"

“Some thing, they’re little puppets of hers,” the stranger corrects, and turns them into yet another alley, paved with cobblestones and ending in a wall. “Ah.”

“We can go around—"

“Hush,” he interrupts, and takes hold of both of Yuuri’s slightly shaking hands, one in each of his. “Now, you must trust me, and you must hold on.”

“What?” Yuuri squeaks, and then the man takes a step forward, all but holding Yuuri against his chest, straight towards the brick wall in front of them. Yuuri shuts his eyes, hoping whatever this — person is going to try won’t hurt.

He keeps his eyes shut, until he hears a low chuckle in his ear. “I do know what I’m doing, you know.”

He cracks one eye open, and they’re in the sky.

They’re —

He makes a noise; he’s not sure what kind. It’s most likely some form of a squeak.

The man holding him chuckles again, and he realizes they’re walking, one foot in front of the other through empty air, the stranger holding his hands. He leans back automatically, looking for something solid, and the wizard — there’s nothing he can be, Yuuri thinks, but a wizard — lets him, murmuring in his ear to tell him to step, forward, forward, good. Yuuri shivers.

They’re suspended over the May Day parade, their feet stepping gently on chimneys, looking down at a world made of color and light like they’re stars themselves, and Yuuri feels giddy and flushed, elated in a way he’s never been in his life. The sky, the sky — he’s walking in it.

“You’re a natural,” the wizard tells him, and Yuuri can hear the smile in his voice as he tips his head back to look up at the clouds, so close he could touch them. Despite their closeness, he doesn’t feel flustered; it’s as if the sky is reaching out tenderly to meet them, to welcome them home. He’s never felt this way before, he thinks, and his hands shake. For once, he is not quiet, unnoticeable, unwantable. He is held, hovering in the light, and seen.

He can see the bakery’s balcony in front of them, and he almost wants to turn back, to lean over to the wizard’s ear and whisper take me somewhere else, don’t let go, but he isn’t that bold, even in the sky, even when his old fears and shyness seem distant and left behind. Here, everything is golden, so he must be golden too. Here, he’s something worthy of sideways glances like the ones the wizard has been giving him.

But they land. (Nothing lasts forever, not even gold.)

The wizard’s earring glitters as Yuuri turns to face him.

“Will you be all right,” is what he asks, instead, “with the things that were chasing you?”

The wizard laughs. “It’s sweet of you to worry,” he says. “I’ll be fine, we’ve lost them by now, so she can’t find me.” He tilts his head, looking at Yuuri oddly and softly, like he can’t figure something out. “I am sorry for dragging you into this.”

Yuuri laughs, shakily. “You gave me that, ” he says, waving his fingers at the sky, and he knows the longing is open and honest in his voice. Back on the ground, he feels ashamed. It is one thing to want flight when you are already flying; quite another to want it when you’re not meant for it, when you never will be. Yuuri is not a wizard, or a youngest son with magical boots, or someone destined for happiness and adventure. Here on the ground, he remembers — he is meant for mediocrity. His voice is softer when he adds, “You gave me the sky, for a moment, so we’re even.”

The wizard stares at him, eyes wide, like Yuuri has said something utterly unexpected, and before Yuuri can do anything else, he takes a step away.

He wishes he could say something clever, something attractive or smooth; even something like will I see you again? What’s your name? But he doesn’t. He just watches the wizard as he steps back, and back, and back, holding his bright coat just a little closer around himself as he falls off the balcony and back up into the sky.

Yuuri lets out a long, shaky breath, and turns to the door leading inside.

“A wizard,” Yuuko muses. “That’s . . . something.”

“He certainly was that,” Yuuri agrees. “It’s more adventure than I’m cut out for, either way. How are you?”

“You’re not getting off so easy!” Yuuko laughs, and her smile lights the room. He has missed her, he thinks, which is a surprise in of itself; this past month he hasn’t managed to realize he missed anything. Perhaps it’s the change of scenery, being out of the shop, sitting next to Yuuko in the back room of the bakery like he used to when Mari would wink and agree to cover his shift.

He rolls his shoulders, and sighs. “What do you want to know?” It’s easiest to agree with Yuuko when she’s like this, to tell her what she wants to be told and hope her prodding doesn’t go on for too long.

She giggles, and knocks their shoulders together. “Was he handsome?”

“Ah—" Yuuri says, half a splutter, half a sigh. “I suppose he was.”

“Look at you!” she says, giggling still. “All grown up and meeting handsome strangers! What would Mari say, if she knew you’d had an adventure before she did?”

“I didn’t meet him,” Yuuri tells her, swinging his legs back and forth. They’re tucked onto one of the counters in the back storeroom, out of the way, surrounded by fresh bread and pastries. There’s a tiny window nearby, and Yuuri can see, barely, a sliver of sky. “ He met me , and dragged me along, and dropped me off here. It was hardly an adventure, and I doubt he’ll even — I mean, it’s not like he’ll remember me.”

“Still, that’s hardly nothing,” Yuuko says. She’s sobered quickly, rubbing one hand over her stomach as if she’s thinking about her child, on its way. They are not children themselves anymore, Yuuri thinks, and looks away. They cannot laugh about handsome strangers without worrying what those strangers might do.

Yuuri did not feel in danger, during that flight, he felt alive , but perhaps that is dangerous too, in its way.

She reaches out as if to touch his shoulder, and hesitates. Yuuri sees the movement of her arm out of the corner of his eye, and can guess what it means, but he doesn’t — can’t — doesn’t look at her directly. He’s staring out the window, high on the wall, at that little blue sliver of open sky.

“The castle’s been seen, on the edge of the Waste,” she says.

“Mmm,” Yuuri says. “You know, I’ve always wondered what it would be like.” He tries to keep his voice light, inconsequential, so he won’t reveal to Yuuko how often and for how long he’s wondered. It doesn’t quite work, though; his voice turns soft and distant as he stares up at what little of the clouds he can see beyond the buildings in town. A moment ago, he was stirring up that sky with his feet. “A moving castle. How it would work, I mean. How on earth would you move something so large?”

And, oh, he doesn’t know why he says it. Maybe it’s some of that bravery, brought on by sky. Maybe it’s something which has lived curled up inside him, finally given voice by that golden feeling of living, for once. In this moment, with Yuuko, he is brave enough to imagine it, for a moment, being the lucky youngest child, with seven-league boots and an adventure as his birthright, off to find a moving castle, to stop an evil wizard.

Brave enough to imagine it, but not enough to voice it, not all the way.

This is why he’s the eldest: even at his bravest, he is still afraid.

Yuuko sighs, and pushes the bangs back off his forehead in an offhand, familiar gesture. “Oh, Yuuri, that’s so like you,” she says, not without affection, but not without exasperation, either. “Thinking about the schematics of the castle when there’s a wizard who eats hearts inside of it.”

He doesn’t look at her, just keeps his eyes fixed on that sliver of blue. “I only wondered.”

“You’ll fall into trouble if you wonder like that,” Yuuko says. “And if you keep accepting skyrides from wizards. It went well enough this time but — imagine that had been Viktor! You’d have been made heartless for sure.”

“He wouldn’t have bothered, not with me,” Yuuri says, sharper than he means to. “Everyone knows he only eats the hearts of beautiful people.”

Little mouse , he hears again, and his eyes finally leave the sky, the distance. He comes back down to earth, to the shop, to Yuuko’s hand on his forehead. To a place where he isn’t holding the silver-haired wizard’s hands, walking on wind; where, instead, he’s dull and gray, faded and forgotten. A blotch on an otherwise lovely landscape.

“He’d never even think twice about my heart,” he says, softer, and he can feel it beat a bit softer, timid and quiet. His heart is a brittle thing, in his chest; glad to be safe, and at the same time, desperate to be picked, to be wanted. Even by some sort of monstrous wizard. He tries to smile, for Yuuko. “So there’s no need to worry.”

“Don’t talk like that,” Yuuko says. “I want you safe. You’re my best friend.”

“I am safe,” Yuuri says. “And I’m the eldest, anyway. I’ll inherit the shop. It’s not like I’m going to go out and — and seek my fortune.”

Eldest children don’t get fortunes. They don’t get adventures. They don’t get luck.

They inherit hat shops, and live comfortably. It’s the best Yuuri can hope for.

(Satisfied, not happy.)

“They work you too hard at that shop,” Yuuko murmurs, pushing his hair back again like she’s checking his face for fever, or weariness, or scars. “You don’t visit me for weeks — weeks, Yuuri! — and then you come in here looking so tired and far away that I could just—"

“It’s not their fault,” Yuuri says. “It’s been busy lately, that’s all. We’re selling a lot of hats.”

“Because of you,” Yuuko says, still soft, still gentle, “and they don’t pay you anywhere near what they should.”

“They do what they can,” he tells her, wishes he knew enough to explain it properly. “I’m just — I don’t know enough to run it yet. It’s slow going, and it’s a lot to learn, and I just—"

“Do you even want to do it?” she asks. “I know we’ve — I mean, I know we don’t talk about this. Mari went off to Kingsbury and left you with it and so there’s not really much else to say, but—"

“Mari left to seek her fortune, ” Yuuri snaps. “It’s — she’s the youngest, she’s supposed to. She didn’t leave me. I wanted her to go!”

“Don’t give me that youngest and oldest nonsense,” Yuuko snaps back, her eyes fierce as fire. “Not having some kind of reckless adventure doesn’t mean you can’t be happy! You could — be an apprentice somewhere, learn a trade, you don’t have to work in that shop, I know you feel like you should because of your parents, but—"

“I should go,” he blurts, and stands, and feels instantly awful for doing it.

“Yuuri,” she starts, and then stops, looking lost, confused at the end coming so quickly. Yuuko is the youngest; she’s a fighter, like Mari. (Yuuri just runs.) “I’ll walk you, if you like.”

“I’ll be fine,” he says, and hates how tight his voice is, how bright the sunshine will be when he has to walk back into it. Jumping down from the counter, he takes his hat, now slightly dusted with flour, off of the rack, only to feel Yuuko’s hand on his arm.

“Look,” she says. “I’m sorry. I only worry about you. You’re all alone over there.”

“I am fine, you know,” he tells her, and she smiles sadly, dropping her hand.

“ Fine doesn’t mean happy,” she says, and he can’t answer. “Come on, I’ll wrap you some bread and things to take home.”

By the time Yuuri gets back to the shop and settles back onto his workbench to make up some more hats, his thoughts are drifting back to the castle and the wizard within it. Mainly it’s because he doesn’t want to think about what Yuuko said to him, about being happy, doesn’t want to admit he’s not. Mainly that’s because he doesn’t know how he would go about changing things to somehow magically make himself happy.

The castle, though, is his old mystery. It’s safe. (Which is rather funny, considering a monstrous heart-eating wizard lives in it. Or is rumored to live in it, anyway.)

There’s a part of him that wonders if Viktor Nikiforov is a myth, an elaborate story about a neighbor or a friend or a man seen in the shadows in the dead of night which grew a mind of its own.

The odd part isn’t that he’s a wizard. There are plenty of wizards in Ingary, and there are several wizards and witches who live in Yuuri’s town of Hasetsu. There’s Sara Crispino who runs the hair salon, who can coax hair from bald heads and color back into the gray, who creates flatness from curls and curls from nothing. There’s an older wizard who lives on the outskirts of town named Celestino, who sits on his front porch and snaps his fingers at the wildflowers in the woods, making them grow, whose tomatoes and cucumbers sell quicker than everyone else’s in the market in the square. There was the man from today — who isn’t from Hasetsu, to be fair, but still. Wizards and witches are everywhere, scattered over towns and farmland, but Viktor Nikiforov still manages to stand out.

It’s subtle, see, magic. It’s a part of Ingary, part of the very air and ground and sea. But it doesn’t like to make itself noticed. Witches and wizards are just people who can see a little better, or hear a little better; who can tap into the endless magic of the country and its earth.

That’s what makes Viktor Nikiforov stand out. He’s just so unsubtle.

Evil, too, if the rumors are right, but Yuuri sometimes thinks those are lies, too. Who on earth would go about doing evil things and then broadcast it?

“Of course, it’s not as though it makes a difference,” he tells one of the hats as he stitches it. “If he’s really evil — well, perhaps that’s what eating hearts does to you.” He bites his lip, and adds a piece of ribbon. “You won’t be worn by a madman, I promise you that. You’re a simple thing. Quiet, and honest. But someone will see you, and know your heart is good, and they’ll smile. It’ll be the start of something, you’ll see.”

He puts the hat down and moves to the next one, still thinking about the wizard. “I mean, eating hearts. A moving castle. Honestly.” He shakes his head, torn between amusement and exasperation. “It sounds like he read about how to be evil in old stories, doesn’t it? You know, I wouldn’t be surprised if he didn’t eat hearts at all. It could be that he just likes spreading rumors. Sometimes people are like that.”

He folds the felt into shape and pins it, still gnawing on his lip.

“Then again, it could all be true.” He stabs another pin in, with perhaps more force than is needed. “Though it’s not as if he’d ever bother with someone who works at a hat shop. He’d steal away a — a pretty baron’s daughter, or something. There’s something attention-grabbing for you.”

He threads the needle, and gets ready to stitch.

“Attention-grabbing,” he mumbles. “That wizard today was like that. That coat, and that earring. That smile . He begged to be noticed. And I suppose that’s what I did. Maybe Yuuko was right, and I’m not careful enough. Or just—"

The hat, being a hat, does not answer him, and Yuuri sets it down, half-finished, and sighs, suddenly overcome with something quiet and dark, and very, very, cold.

“You’ll be lonely,” he says to it, softly, “for a long time,” and gets up to close the shop.

He’s counting the money in the register, the room lit by a single candle, when the front door opens.

Yuuri squints at the woman who’s walked in, and pushes his glasses just a bit further up his nose.

“Ah,” he says, unsure of how to start. “I’m afraid we’re closed, ma’am. The hours are on the door, I must have just forgotten to lock it.” He stands, and her eyes follow him; sharp, gleaming little eyes, like a bird’s.

“Closed,” she repeats. She’s a tall and wide woman, as unyielding as a brick wall. She’s beautiful, but in a far-off kind of way that’s nearly untouchable, like if you tried to reach out for her it would all fizzle away. But more significant than her beauty is the raw power in her, in everything from the color of her dress to the way her eyes flick from him to the hats and back again.

“I’m very sorry,” he tells her. “We open tomorrow at—"

“You’re a plain little thing,” the grand woman interrupts, and Yuuri’s eyes catch on the red glinting on her fingernails, the light scattering off the jewels on her neck. “Plain and dull, like these hats.”

Yuuri twists his fingers together behind his back, but doesn’t fight her on it; he knows she’s right. “Ma’am, I know these hats must not be up to your standard. It’s only a little shop.” He looks away, holds his smile together, forced and wide. “I appreciate you stopping by, but you might fare better taking your business elsewhere.”

She steps closer, looks into his eyes. It’s uncomfortably long, achingly silent, and he’s beginning to become frantic, wondering if he’s insulted her, wondering if he’s upset someone important, when she laughs.

“A dog, maybe,” she says, musingly, “you’re astonishingly eager to please. Or a pig.” She glances at the softness around his middle, and he feels his cheeks flush, but it’s an old embarrassment, a childhood wound. He doesn’t mind, he tells himself, forcefully. He doesn’t mind. “But — no, it’s not quite right.”

“Ma’am?” Yuuri blurts, his hands beginning to shake. There’s power in this woman, old, raw, like lightning. He thinks inexplicably of the man with silver hair in the square; thinks of soaring over rooftops. He shivers. “I can make something to order—"

“Oh, shut up,” the woman says, and smiles at him, like a knife going through skin. She turns for the door.

His hands are still shaking, but they feel sore, now; like he’s worked for hours on the hats, stitching and squinting.

“The best part of that spell,” she says, turning back, “is that you can’t tell anyone about it.” And her eyes are cold, glittering like ice, like diamonds, like the word ‘shatter’ whispered into a cold wind. Like Yuuri has always imagined magic might feel. “You had better realize that I let no one take what belongs to me.”

The slamming door rings in his ears, and his hands — his hands — he looks down at them and nearly screams.

Age-spotted and wrinkled and leathery, the result of a hundred years spent alone in this hat shop —

Across the room, an old man looks out at him from the mirror, with a shock of gray hair and clouded eyes, and a single tear rolls down his nose, landing in the middle of the counter; Yuuri stumbles back, afraid of his tears, afraid of hurting at a time like this, when his already-fragile heart must have weakened even further with age. He tries to breathe, and can’t quite manage it. There’s a wheeze in his chest, a rattle, like a breeze through a broken window.

I let no one take what belongs to me, she’d told him, and he doesn’t know what that means.

“She must have been a witch,” he says aloud, and then cringes away from the sound of his voice. It doesn’t sound like his, nothing about him feels like his —

But that’s the kind of thinking which leads to panic, and Yuuri knows he can’t panic, not yet. Later, when all of this is over, he will certainly curl up in a ball and shake, but he can’t yet, because he has to fix it, because he might be the eldest and might be tired and might be afraid, but he will not lie down and take this, not when he doesn’t deserve it.

He can hardly think of a reason he might deserve it, unless —

“Oh, damn it, ” he groans, laying his face in both his hands, his fear abruptly giving way to a rise of anger. I’m sorry for getting you involved in all this, he’d said, with those handsome, worried eyes, and Yuuri had eaten up every bit of it like the fool that he was. “ Involved, he said . I should have asked what that meant! Involved with who! I should have gotten names!”

Yuuri has never exactly had troubles with his temper before, and he doesn’t really know what to do about it, so he stomps around the room for a bit, muttering to himself. It’s terribly self-indulgent but it makes him feel a bit better, all the same. By the time he’s angrily cleaned up all the stray hats on the shelves and blown out the candle, he’s calmed down enough to try and make a plan.

As of right now, all he knows is that the wizard from earlier — and Yuuri stubbornly refuses to think of him as the handsome wizard, because thinking like that was what got him cursed — was being chased by things, which he had called ‘her puppets’. It seems reasonable to assume that this her was the witch who just cursed Yuuri for taking something of hers. It’s possible that whatever he took was the wizard, but Yuuri dismisses that idea as ridiculous, because he’s nowhere near handsome or charming enough to steal someone’s heart. (Still, perhaps the witch thought he was trying to, which Yuuri dubiously supposes is as good a reason as any to curse someone.)

“She must have been evil, to go about cursing people like that,” he remarks to the empty shop, attempting to get used to the sound of his own voice. He doesn’t automatically shudder this time, which is a plus. “Perhaps she’s the Witch of the Waste.”

He says it to sort through everything, but once it’s been spoken it hangs in the air, as if waiting for him to prod at it. And it . . . it makes more sense than it ought to, really. Ordinary witches and wizards — the type which are likely to be found around Hasetsu — tend not to use spells for anything more than household things, like turning pages of books or growing flowers. They might curse someone’s hair blue, but he doubts any of them hold the power for a curse like this, one that goes so deep in the bones he can’t even tell anyone about it.

Wizards and witches in general don’t have the power for curses like this, really, even the more talented ones. That’s what makes the Witch of the Waste and Viktor Nikiforov so terrifying — they have more power than they ought to. They have to be getting it from somewhere else, from some one else —

Well. Yuuri doubts he’s in much danger from Viktor now, at least. He’s old, and his heart is still glass-blown, and there’s no reason the wizard would want him. Viktor’s not rumored to gobble up old men’s hearts, just — just good looking-young people, and Yuuri wasn’t one of those in the first place.

So — a plan. He will go to the Waste. He will find the Witch. And he will — somehow — get her to remove the curse.

“It’s going to go terribly,” he remarks, dryly, to the mirror, and sets about packing some food.

It strikes him once he’s on the fringes of the Waste, bag of food slung over one shoulder, that this is the farthest he has ever been from Hasetsu, that one more step will take him, unchangeably, into another world. It’s a curious thought to have at a time like this, but he doesn’t delve too deep into it, the way he knows he would have a few hours ago. He just thinks, rather flippantly, well, that’s that, and takes a step.

He supposes there’s something to be said for having everything go completely wrong. It’s easy to stop caring what the universe could throw at you once it’s already done its worst.

He begins to whistle rustily to himself as he climbs the hill. He is entering the Waste, but who cares? He has already been cursed. He already lacks luck, being the oldest and all. There’s really nothing else to do at this point besides throw up his hands and leave the end to fate, and it does occur to him that this thought shouldn’t be calming, but he just continues his whistling and walks further forward, undeterred.

In a way, it’s rather freeing, being old.

This train of thought is interrupted when he trips slightly on a rock and realizes how much his back hurts from climbing this hill. He mutters a few choice words in response to the pain, and looks around for something to fix the problem.

He finds his answer in a stick stuck in a bush. It’s tall and thin, but seems about the right size to be a kind of cane or walking stick, which is better than nothing. Yuuri rolls up his sleeves and tugs at the stick.

When a scarecrow pops up from the underbrush, nearly hitting him in the face, he is forced to admit that it isn’t a walking stick at all.

“Well, how do you like that,” he mutters. “Your head — it’s a turnip.”

It seems idiotic once he says it, but it’s not as though the scarecrow can hear him. He tilts his head to the side, considering it, and then laughs in a soft, exhausted little way. “Well, you’re the right way up now. Have a good time out here, Turnip. I have to go.”

He leaves the scarecrow standing guard over the Waste, its tailcoat blowing proudly in the breeze, and wanders on.

(He doesn’t find another stick, but the road evens out, getting a good deal less hilly, and Yuuri considers it a good trade.)

It’s been dark for a long while when he comes across the moving castle, walking on its metallic legs like some overgrown beetle. It’s made of brick and steel, magic and man-power. There’s smoke rising through one of the chimneys, which can only mean one thing — Viktor is at home.

Yuuri had not set out meaning to find it, of course. He had meant to find the Witch, and tell her that she had made a dreadful mistake, and that he was not at all interested in stealing what was hers, and that he would like to go back to his quiet life alone in Hasetsu. However, as he had walked, he had realized that this plan was rather unlikely to work, because she was known to be quite ruthless, and she probably would not listen to him if he explained she was wrong, and would probably also curse him with something even more evil than an old — but still distinctly his own — body.

So when he sees the moving castle, he stops and looks at it for a moment, considering.

Viktor, by all accounts, is an enemy of the Witch of the Waste. He would probably enjoy inconveniencing her by breaking one of her spells. And he isn’t likely at all to eat Yuuri’s heart, whether it’s as an old man or as a young one. Once the spell is broken, he is certain Viktor will want nothing at all to do with him.

The plan is not foolproof, Yuuri reasons, but it’s a good deal more likely to work than politely explaining to an evil witch that she’s made a mistake.

He huffs out a breath, and hobbles up towards the castle, calling out a slightly breathless “Stop!” as he does, and feels pleased with himself when the spindly legs of the castle slow, and then crouch down, like a living being sitting on the ground.

There is a door, right there in front of him, and so he steels himself and opens it.

It’s an empty room.

Well, that’s not completely accurate — the room is full of things, mainly dust, books, dirt, and half-eaten food — but there are no people in it. There is a fire built up, which could signify that the wizard Viktor is here in the castle but not here in this room, or it could be a magical fire which runs all the time.

Yuuri, suddenly aware of the aches and pains in his body, decides he could not care less, and settles down in the wooden chair in front of the fire.

He means to rest only a moment, and then go looking for the wizard — truly, he does. But the fire is warm, and he has walked all day, and, well.

He falls asleep.

Chapter Text

PART II: VANITY AND FRIENDSHIP

“What the hell are you doing in here?”

Yuuri stirs. He’s pleasantly warm, and somehow still tired; he supposes it’s another thing to get used to about old age. You move one limb and suddenly you could sleep for years.

“Hmf?” he says, which is not exactly an answer, so he sits up a little more and blinks. “I’m here to see the wizard.”

“No one just comes to see Viktor,” the voice remarks, sounding annoyed, and also like Yuuri is an idiot. “Everyone’s afraid of him.”

“Oh,” Yuuri says, “I’m old. He’s not going to eat my heart.”

“But you’re not really old. It’s a spell.”

The voice is coming from the fire. When Yuuri looks closer, he can see a mouth, moving; yellow-orange flames that shift like hair, and a wide blue flame of a tongue. And two glittering, coal-black eyes, which are currently narrowed at him. He blinks a few times, rapidly and frantically, and then takes a deep breath and wonders why he’s surprised. It is, after all, an evil wizard’s castle. Surely talking fires are the least of his worries.

“He wouldn’t want my heart either way,” Yuuri says, finally.

The fire snorts, as if it does not believe this. “Well, if you're looking for help with that spell you have on you, you're not gonna get it," it informs Yuuri, crackling bitterly. "It's one of those stupid ones that can only be broken if you do it yourself through the power of love, or some other bullshit."

"The power of love?" Yuuri repeats, bewildered. "Really?"

The fire pops, and Yuuri wonders if the sound is meant to represent a snort or a sigh. He'd put his money on a snort. "Well, it's usually the power of love, but I don't know. All I do know is you have to do it alone. Coming to a wizard won't help, so you can go. Bye now."

"Hang on," Yuuri exclaims. "A wizard could at least tell me what kind of spell it is, right?"

"I don't know, and I don't care," the fire snaps. "Go away."

"I don't have anywhere to go!" Yuuri snaps back at it, smacking his cane against the ground. "I came to the Waste to find someone to remove the curse! I can’t go home, because I can’t tell anyone, and they don’t know me! I need to fix this!"

"Wow," the fire says, squinting at him. "What a trial you've been through. Too bad it's completely not my problem. Get out."

"I can help you, if you help me," Yuuri offers, pushing down the desperation he feels and forcing his voice to remain cool. The fire crackles, in a way that sounds vaguely like muttering.

"What could I possibly want from an old man like you?" it asks, but it sounds . . . hesitant, curious almost, and Yuuri sits back a little.

“What can I give you?” he asks, and the eyes of the fire glitter.

“How’s this,” it says, challengingly. “You break the contract I’m under, and I’ll break your spell.”

“Can’t only a wizard do that?” Yuuri asks, feeling rather like he’s about to be tricked, somehow. The fire pop-snorts again.

“Viktor’s useless with breaking spells,” it says. “He’s useless at everything, without me. I power this whole stupid castle while he goes off—"

“Eating hearts,” Yuuri finishes.

“No, you idiot, of course he doesn’t eat hearts, ” the fire groans. “You must be some kind of dumb hick if you actually believe those stories, he just tells them because he likes people to stay away. And then he just goes around doing stupid shit all day, and I’m left to deal with the fallout. It’s the worst .” There are a few more pop-snorts, and the fire looks back up at Yuuri. “Either way, I can figure out how exactly to break your spell if I have long enough to study it. And if you agree to break the contract I’m under.”

“What kind of contract is it?”

“I can’t give you the details, it’s the same as your spell. Do we have a deal?”

“I think it’s a bad one!” Yuuri snaps. “You already know that the spell is making me old and a little of how to break it! I don’t know anything about your contract.”

“Viktor’s going to be back in a little while,” the fire snaps back. “Do we have a deal or not?”

“Fine!” Yuuri says, feeling rather like he’s signing his own death certificate. “Fine, we have a deal.”

The fire sparks blue for a moment before it turns back to orange. “Good,” it says. “I’m Yuri.”

“Oh,” Yuuri says, “well, so am I,” when the door bangs open.

“Yura, it’s freezing in here, have you already eaten all the logs I left you — oh hello,” the wizard Viktor Nikiforov says to Yuuri, blinking and shutting the door with a loud click. “What on earth are you doing here?”

Yuuri just stares at him, wide-eyed and slightly shaken. Suddenly, the Witch’s comment about taking what belonged to her makes a little more sense.

“He’s here to clean,” the fire invents on the spot. (Yuuri would be impressed with his quick thinking if he wasn’t so shocked.) “I hired him.”

“Clean? Really?” Viktor says. “He doesn’t look like he cleans.”

“Don’t judge a book by its cover,” Yuuri manages, clasping his hands in his lap to cover up their shaking. He — Viktor is —

“Well, welcome,” Viktor says, and offers him a practiced, empty, charming smile, his earring glinting in the light and his silver hair sliding over one shoulder. “If Yuri wants you here, he must have a reason.”

“Yeah, and the reason is this place is filthy,” the fire snorts. “You never put away your stupid dishes and all your other shit and then I have to sit and look at them all day, it’s annoying —”

Yuuri barely hears it, because Viktor —

The man from the square, who gave Yuuri flight, for a second, who smiled at him so kindly, was Viktor Nikiforov.

He didn’t like me, Yuuri thinks, his heart beating sluggishly in his ears. Of course not. He just wanted my heart. I knew it was too good to be true —

“I have to go back out,” Viktor announces, picking up a slice of bread from the counter. After tearing off part of the crust and tossing it to the fire, he heads for the door, turning a dial which is near it to green before opening it. Through the door, faintly, Yuuri can hear people talking, and can smell salt and sun and the stink of a fish market.

“You’re not going to find him, you know!” the fire shouts, and Viktor raises a lazy hand before vanishing again.

Yuuri blinks at the door, and then at the fire, quite at a loss for words. There’s a weight in his stomach that wasn’t there before, heavy and tasting of loss, of dreams. He flew, that day in the square, and this is coming down.

He wonders why fate considers it so unfair to even give him a single smile.

“Told you,” Yuri, the fire, remarks snottily. “He’s useless.”

“Well,” Yuuri says, determined to shake himself out of it, because he can’t sit here and be sad over this, he won’t, he is old and ugly and there is no reason to want Viktor anyway, not now that he knows who he is. “What should I do?”

The fire beams at him, and for the first time, it strikes Yuuri how evil his expression is.

“I hired you to clean, didn’t I?” he says. “So clean.”

Yuuri had always wanted to move when he was angry, whether it was to run around town stomping and shouting or run all the way off into the horizon, chasing the sunrise. Getting angry wasn’t a common occurrence for him, though, perhaps because he’d been so predisposed to being afraid instead, especially as a child.

Perhaps it’s because he’s never dealt with love in the form of smiles and skies and hopes, or perhaps because he’s too old, but he doesn’t feel heartbroken. He just burns with how angry he is. That snake, pretending to like him, flying him over the rooftops, jumping back into the shadows when he’d caught a glimpse of Yuuri’s — his everything, his eyes, his face, his unwantable heart.

It is a special kind of humiliation, to have an evil wizard flirt with him, wanting to steal his heart, and then for the wizard to turn away, to decide just like everyone else that Yuuri is not enough.

He can’t run, not now — he’s too old, and there’s nowhere to go — so he just bites at his anger, attempting to banish it, and settles for cleaning, like Yuri told him to.

(Well, he doesn’t settle directly into cleaning. He does a fair bit of stomping and glaring first, and then another good bit of staring hopelessly at the seemingly endless mess. After all that, though, he very angrily rolls up his sleeves and begins to clean.)

“Dishes first, all in the sink,” he murmurs, “then put all the books away, get the tables cleared off . . . best to get everything off the ground and chairs first, then sweep . . .” He moves forward hesitantly, to take some things off the table, when he’s interrupted.

“Don’t throw out all those papers, they’re spells,” Yuri says, gnawing on a particularly large piece of wood like a dog with a bone. “There’s a drawer over there that they go in.”

“Thank you,” Yuuri says, and the fire grunts and pulls down low into the logs as if avoiding eye contact. Yuuri rolls his eyes. “You can talk to me, you know. I’m not afraid of you.”

“It’d be much easier if you were, ” Yuri remarks, and then settles down even deeper into the pile of ashes which passes for the castle’s fireplace. “You missed a spot there.”

Yuuri rolls his eyes again. “Isn’t there anything to eat here that isn’t moldy? I’ll be starved before the day is out with all the work I’ll have to do.”

“You say that as if Viktor eats,” Yuri mumbles. “Or as if I do.”

“If there’s food, he must eat sometimes,” Yuuri points out. “You already told me he doesn’t eat hearts.”

“Hmph,” Yuri says.

“Is there food or isn’t there?” Yuuri asks again, hands on his hips. He knows he shouldn’t get so impatient with a fire demon, especially one who holds his fate in his hands, but being old seems to have shortened his temper.

“There might be some eggs and bread,” the fire says, doubtfully. “But I won’t cook them.”

“Why not?” Yuuri asks, which in his opinion is a perfectly sensible question, but the demon puffs up as if he’s said something very insulting.

“I already run the whole damn castle! I’m not cooking your food for you, too!” Yuri is bristling at the very idea. “Viktor can cook, but that’s it. Not you, not anyone else. I didn’t even — I never — I’m not going to be some kind of — ugh!” He settles back down into the ashes, seething. “I don’t cook. Eat the bread if you’re so hungry.”

“That’s hardly a meal,” Yuuri says, but forces his voice into something softer, something understanding. The fire is trapped here, doing nothing all day, while Viktor is away. He’s bored. “I’m not hungry yet, though. I’d better clean first.”

Yuri is bored and tired and alone, and Yuuri can feel his anger at the demon slipping away, piece by piece. He certainly doesn’t trust him — he is a demon, after all — but Yuri’s bitterness makes sense.

“Well—" Yuri sounds as though he expected more of an argument. “Fine. Whatever. Just — just don’t expect me to talk to you.”

Yuuri hums his assent, and begins to clean.

It’s backbreaking work, cleaning.

He’s thankful that he’s still fairly spry for someone so old, but it’s still so much to do, so much to carry and push and pull around. He stacks books on shelves and dishes in sinks, stacks papers with strange spell ingredients listed on them into a drawer; he sweeps all the dust and dirt on the floors and the walls and the ceiling out into the Waste. When the room seems fairly dust-free, he straightens up, slowly, and lets his back crack, one piece at a time.

He breathes out, slow and even, and tries to avoid showing on his face that it hurts, that all he wants is to collapse again in front of the fire and sleep, no matter what Yuri might yell at him if he does. But Yuuri has always been a stubborn thing, pushing forward and forward, no matter how much he hurt. It’s what kept him up in the hat shop until the early hours of the morning, and it’s what keeps him up now.

He moves towards the dishes in the sink, intending to start on them next, and the fire growls.

“Oh, for crying out loud,” he says. “Get the stupid eggs and the pan and you can make some — some eggs and toast, or something. I think there’s jam.”

“You don’t have to,” Yuuri says, because he knows about choices, about work, about loneliness. The demon fixes him with an unimpressed glare.

“I’m not going to say it again,” he snaps, and Yuuri smiles at him, as softly as he knows how, and reaches for the skillet.

He’s sitting down at the table with a plate of eggs and toast, wincing at his creaking knees, when the door bursts open again, pushing in a gust of air, which still spells rather like fish.

Viktor comes in, too.

Yuuri is still feeling uncharitable towards the wizard, so he doesn’t say hello, opting instead to glance at the knob near the door, which is still on the blue section of the circle, and wondering what on earth it means. Viktor appears not to notice this, and, in fact, appears not to notice that Yuuri is even still there, falling into one of the now-clean chairs in the room and sighing deeply. “I can’t find him .”

“Told you,” Yuri says, scornfully. Yuuri raises his eyebrows and takes a bite of toast, wondering who him could be, and why the air had smelled like fish, when the Waste smells of . . . well, decay and mist, mostly. Viktor sighs again, the picture of misery, but there’s something curiously frustrated and glass-like about his eyes, like he’s searching for an thought that he can’t quite reach.

“He just disappeared, ” Viktor says, “out of nowhere! I was going to find him, but he’s gone, no one knows where, and I don’t know why he would just leave but I can’t ask too many questions about him, I had to pretend we knew each other from somewhere and I think they were suspicious, and I don’t know what to do. I just need to find him, he was so handsome, and he had the softest eyes, and I felt so—"

“ Spare me,” Yuri mumbled, burrowing back into the ashes. “Yes, so alive, I know, you’ve only told me two million times about how the guy is your soulmate or whatever.”

“It’s not whatever, ” Viktor says huffily. “I can’t find him, Yura, it’s tragic. ”

Yuuri realizes he’s staring at him, and hastily goes back to his eggs.

“What’s so tragic is how obsessed with this guy you are,” Yuri counters, and Viktor leaps to his feet.

“I’m not obsessed—"

He certainly looks obsessed. His silver hair is in disarray, his eyes wide and very, very blue, but they still look more like glass marbles than like eyes. Yuuri wonders how he failed to notice that, the first time they met.

There is a knock, then, loud as a gunshot and cutting him off. Yuri smirks.

“That’s the Kingsbury door,” he says, in singsong, and the dial on the handle spins until the green section is facing up. Viktor groans, and looks around as if waiting for someone else to step forward and answer the door for him. Yuuri is in the middle of thinking that it’s very spoiled of him when Viktor’s eyes fall on him, and glint happily.

“Go and open the door,” he says, standing and backing off to lean against the wall. “Remember, the wizard isn’t here. ”

Yuuri glances towards Yuri, who glances to the door and back at him.

“Well, I can’t open it,” the fire demon points out, and Yuuri sighs and hauls himself to his feet, leaving his eggs half eaten and walking down towards the door, opening it.

He’s greeted by a man in fancy clothing, but what’s much more interesting is the world beyond him, which is decidedly not the Waste. It’s a rambling mess of tall buildings and carriages, handsome men and pretty women riding in them. This city gleams.

It suits Viktor, he thinks, sourly.

“Good day, grandfather,” the man says, and it takes Yuuri a moment to register that that means him . “I come with a message from the king to the wizard Pendragon, might he be here?”

“No, he’s — he’s not here at the moment,” Yuuri lies, rather badly, all the while wondering why he’s bothering to help such a —

Oh, to break the curse the Witch cast. Right.

“I see,” the man says, without breaking from his smile. “Well, I am certain a wizard has much to do, yes? Please give this to him as soon as possible. The king prepares for war, and he needs wizards on his side.”

“Ah,” Yuuri says, accepting the envelope with concern. “Thank you.” War?

(Perhaps news doesn’t reach Hasetsu as quickly as its citizens think.)

The stately man bows, and turns back to the car sputtering on the side of the road, and Yuuri takes one more long glance around at Kingsbury before shutting the door.

Instantly, it’s as if the sounds of the city have vanished, and they’re left with the odd whistle of wind from the Waste. Yuuri squints at the door, fascinated, and is reaching to turn the dial to a different color to see what happens when Viktor clears his throat.

He snatches his hand back and turns, holding out the letter; Viktor takes it and promptly throws it, unopened, to Yuri, who eats it.

And, speaking of food —

“My eggs will have gone cold by now,” Yuuri mumbles, feeling more than a little bitter over the whole situation and carefully climbing the stairs to sit back down again. He wonders if Yuri will let him warm them up, or if he’ll gleefully insist Yuuri finish his cold food.

Probably the insisting.

He sits down with a sigh and a pop of his back, half listening to Viktor and Yuri, who are talking about having to assume a new identity and move to a new city, or something. All this because the king asked him to fight, Yuuri supposes, and he had worked out when he heard Pendragon that Viktor is working here under a false name. He does wonder why he’d bother working as a household wizard in Kingsbury, when he’s got a moving castle and a terrifying reputation to keep up with. It’s not really any of Yuuri’s business, he knows, but he listens in anyway because he’s old now, and he’s stopped caring about being perceived as nosy.

As he takes a bite of toast, frowning at its coldness, Viktor stops talking again to look over at him, now seeming finally to conceptualize that he’s eating something.

Yuuri tries not to pay attention to him and eats another forkful of egg, and Viktor’s eyes follow his movement. Just as it’s beginning to grow uncomfortable, the wizard speaks.

“You have food,” he says.

“I helped myself,” Yuuri says, then adds, “I can replace it if you like, but I was hungry.”

“No, I mean—" He seems to not know what to say. “Yuri doesn’t let anyone cook but me, and you have eggs.”

Yuuri takes another bite. Yuri, from the fireplace, sizzles loudly.

“I let him cook,” Yuri says, in a very pointed tone. “ You weren’t here. Would you rather he starve?”

“Well, it’s more on par with what people think happens in this castle,” Viktor points out, still looking at Yuuri, as if he’s very, very confused. Then he shakes his head and pulls out a smile again, a very distant and calculated one. It’s similar to the one he wore in the square, at the beginning, when he took Yuuri’s arm and offered —

Yuuri forcibly pulls his thoughts into a more sensible direction, one that won’t end in him getting angry again, or, worse, getting upset. “Once there’s more food, I’m sure I can manage without cooking, but today Yuri was kind enough to let me.”

“I didn’t, ” Yuri half-shouts, “do it to be nice, you old pig .” Then he ducks back down into the fireplace and says nothing.

“Are you a wizard?” Viktor asks, interestedly. “He’s never listened to anyone but me before.”

“He offered,” Yuuri says simply, “I didn’t order him to do it.” He stands to bring his dishes to the sink. “And no, I’m not a wizard.”

When he looks back at Viktor, the wizard is still staring at him, something calculating in his eyes that Yuuri isn’t sure he likes. But just as he sees it, it seems to clear away, leaving a cheerful smile in its wake.

(There’s still something about it, about everything belonging to Viktor’s body, that Yuuri can’t put his finger on. Something — something distant, and cold. Like he’s watching the proceedings from a long way away instead of actually living in them.)

“Well, that’s lucky,” Viktor says. “I wouldn’t have let another wizard live in my castle, even if Yuri liked him.”

Yuuri thinks privately that Viktor doesn’t seem to have much to do at all with what goes on in the castle, but he’s not fool enough to say it aloud.

“Where are you from?” Viktor says. “The Castle was near Hasetsu last night, did you wander in from there?”

“I didn’t wander in, I meant to come,” Yuuri says, “and no , I — “ He hesitates. He doesn’t know whether to tell the truth, or not. He’s hesitated so long that anything will sound like a lie, however, and so he shrugs. “I’m not — I don’t have a home, anymore.”

It’s not exactly a lie and not exactly the truth, but from the way Viktor’s brow arches, he seems to think Yuuri is hiding something. He doesn’t press, however; not about that.

“Hmm,” he says. “And can you hand me what you have in your pocket, by any chance?”

“I don’t think I’ve got anything in my pocket,” Yuuri says doubtfully, setting the dishes into the sink and checking anyway. He sees Yuri peek up from the ashes to look at him as he does, and sees the twitching flames of his eyes widen as he pulls out a small piece of paper.

“I didn’t know he had that,” Yuri says, his gaze fixed on the folded paper, and Yuuri makes to unfold it, curious as to what it might be.

“ Don’t !” Viktor is on his feet before Yuuri can so much as move, dashing over and snatching the paper out of his hands, only to wince and drop it when it sparks as if it’s going to burst into flames.

Yuuri watches in shock as the paper falls to the floor, burning a mark into the wooden floors.

“Damn it!” Viktor swears, and kneels down to examine it.

“They’re scorch marks,” Yuri remarks, sounding only slightly surprised, but Yuuri can see the wideness of his eyes and knows he’s faking it. “Can you read them?”

“Be quiet and let me try,” Viktor tells him, and Yuri huffs.

Yuuri watches, twisting his hands, as Viktor carefully examines the marks on the floor.

“You who have swallowed a falling star, o’ heartless man: your heart shall soon be mine,” he reads. Then, with a careful, concentrating look on his face, he runs his hand over the floor. To Yuuri’s surprise, the mark vanishes, and Viktor stands up, brushing off his hands.

“I’ve got to go and look into this,” he says, frowning. “Yura, move the castle, would you? She’s closing in on us, somehow, and I don’t like it.”

Yuri grunts from the fireplace, which Viktor seems to take as assent, and throws his gaudy coat over his shoulders before looking back, at Yuuri.

“You aren’t working for the Witch of the Waste, are you? You seem to be good at cleaning, I’d hate to throw you out.”

Having now seen that Viktor is, in fact, a powerful wizard, and having guessed that throw you out could be accurately translated to murder you , Yuuri shakes his head. “I’d never work for her, she — she —"

But his lips clamp together, not letting him explain, not letting him say a word. He growls in frustration.

Viktor, however, seems to relax. “No,” he murmurs. “I thought not.”

Then he walks out, through the front door and into Kingsbury, not saying another word.

Yuuri glances at the fireplace, and Yuri looks back at him.

“Are you sure you’re not a wizard?” Yuri asks doubtfully.

Yuuri considers it.

“Reasonably sure,” he says.

The fire demon grunts and lowers himself back into the fire. “Well,” he says, “I guess he’s acted weirder. You shouldn’t worry about it.”

“Is he always like that?” Yuuri asks.

The fire only crackles rather ominously, refusing to answer.

(Though, a non-answer is answer enough, Yuuri supposes.)

The cleaning is still slow-going after all that, but much more pleasant and much less silent. While Yuri does not openly admit to a change of opinion regarding talking, he begins sitting up higher while burning logs and answering Yuuri’s questions in a seemingly irritated but nonetheless helpful way.

“The door,” Yuuri asks him, while sweeping the floors. “How does all that work?”

“It’s magic,” Yuri says, and snatches another log into his steadily growing pile of ash.

Yuuri fixes him with his most unimpressed stare and says “Yuri, it’s a magical castle. I figured that part out.”

Yuri scoffs and does not answer for a moment, choosing instead to crackle to himself and watch as the dishes are washed. Eventually, though, he says “The castle is in a couple different places at once. Kingsbury, the Waste, Porthaven.”

Yuuri considers that, scrubbing absently at a pot (which might actually be a cauldron, he isn’t sure). “So you turn the dial, and each color is a different place. Where does the fourth one lead, then?”

“That changes a lot,” the fire demon says, shifting some flames in what appears to be a shrug. “Viktor doesn’t like staying still.”

Yuuri thinks back to Viktor hiding from the king’s messenger, tossing the sealed letter into the fire, not wanting the Witch to find him.

To be fair, it was entirely unlikely that anyone would consider being found and bespelled by the Witch of the Waste to be a good thing, but then again, Viktor seemed a powerful wizard. He could easily defeat her, Yuuri thought, if it came down to a fight.

“I did notice that, yes,” Yuuri says, thinking about Viktor flying him over the rooftops and then babbling, today, about some other person.

Not that he cares , of course.

Yuri laughs from the fireplace, and it’s a scattered sound, like wood popping. “It is sort of funny, him whining over this man he met. He’s never done that before. He usually just flirts and runs off and never talks to them again.” Contemplatively, Yuri bites at a stray branch, and then adds, “Are you going to sweep out the ashes or not? He never finds time.”

“Why do you stay here if you don’t like him?” Yuuri says, obligingly moving towards the fireplace and getting out supplies to clean it up.

The demon only snorts. “It doesn’t work like that.” The you idiot remains unspoken.

Despite trying for the rest of the afternoon, while he sorts books and occasionally flips through them, marvelling, Yuuri cannot get a better answer from him, and eventually he gives up, resolving to figure it out for himself.

(The urge surprises him; he was never so proactive when he was young.)

***

Age, Yuuri learns, makes you crave routine.

Or perhaps that’s just him, as a person. There’s no way to be sure, since he’s been plunged unceremoniously into both the good and the bad — mostly the bad — of old age, creaky knees and shaking hands and a temper which rises and snaps more quickly than he’s used to. From a timid mouse to a cranky old dog, he thinks, and winces. It’s not too nice of a change.

Still, cranky or not, old or not, Yuuri soon grudgingly turns the castle from a place of mystery and confusion to a place of good old-fashioned routine. He gets up to give Yuri a few extra logs in the fireplace and to make himself some breakfast, and then he’ll tackle a room to clean for the rest of the morning. The castle isn’t as big as it looks, but the mess is larger than life; it’s a lot to fix up in a short amount of time.

So he starts small, with Yuri’s room. He cleans the walls, the floors, the ceiling; sorts through books and papers and what look like ingredients for spells. Sometimes he’ll pause to read something, falling absentmindedly into books with spines that are half falling off, studying everything inside until he hears throat-clearing from the fireplace, and snaps the book shut.

“You know, I let you stay so you would help me, not help yourself,” Yuri tells him. “Anyway, there’s no way to break your spell in there.”

Embarrassed at being caught, Yuuri snaps, “I thought you didn’t want to talk?” and the fire demon smirks and retreats back into the ashes.

By this time, it’s been a few days, the room with the fireplace is near spotless, and Viktor hasn’t been back yet at all, so Yuuri decides it’s probably safe to move on to another room, maybe a more secret one, and see what he can find out about the spell that Yuri’s under.

Although — even now, even knowing that Yuri is a very powerful sort of demon, the kind who can create doorways to other parts of the world and move castles, Yuuri doubts that he can actually help in breaking the Witch’s spell.

“It’s not that I think he lacks the firepower,” he mentions, to the stick he claimed from a discarded pile on the side of the room (possibly meant as fuel for Yuri). “He seems to be a very strong demon. But it’s just that what he said at first made sense. I came here to break my spell, not have someone else break it for me.”

The stick does not answer him, but Yuuri is used to that, from the hats and all. And the stick is a good companion, all other things considered, and it does make it much easier to walk.

“It’s just that — well, I’d like to break it myself, I think. It’s not responsibility for my mistakes or anything like that. I just — I’d like to know I could .”

He stops walking to consider that, and then smiles a little.

“Still, I’ve gotten here, haven’t I? Not bad for the eldest son. Or for a hatter from Hasetsu.”

With renewed vigor, he sets to cleaning the hall floor.

This, of course, is when Viktor decides to make a reappearance.

“Yura,” the great wizard Viktor Nikiforov whines pathetically, flopping into the chair which Yuuri dragged over next to the fireplace. Yuuri does not say anything aloud about that being his chair, but he does do a good deal of brooding about it, making progressively more noise as he shuffles about, cleaning the hall. Viktor doesn’t appear to notice, too busy complaining dramatically from his place next to the fire.

“I’ve told you and told you you’re not going to find him, I don’t know why you’re acting like it’s such a surprise,” Yuri tells him irritably. Several sparks come out of his body as he says it.

“But I love him,” Viktor says. Yuuri is forcibly reminded of some of the young people who would come into the hat shop, all sighing to each other and clutching their hearts, and fights back a laugh. “I could feel my heart leaping when I saw him. And if I could only see him again—"

“Which you won’t,” Yuri says, pointedly.

“— I know he’d love me too, I just know it,” Viktor continues, undeterred. “He’s the one. But I can’t find him. I’ve looked everywhere. Twice!”

“Is there any news on the Witch?” Yuri snaps. “I’m tired of hearing you moon over this guy. Who you met once. Who you exchanged maybe ten words with.”

“We didn’t need words,” Viktor says mournfully. “We said everything we needed without them.”

Yuuri, despite having a vague idea that it would be smart to stay quiet, cannot help but snort.

Viktor’s head shoots up. “You’re laughing at me!”

He looks like an overgrown teenager, dramatic tears in his eyes and all, Yuuri thinks, though somehow, ridiculously, he still looks rather handsome.

He recovers quickly from this thought, glancing at Yuri instead, who looks delighted to find Viktor being laughed at.

“Are you still here, then?” Viktor asks. “I thought you’d left.”

Yuuri glances around at the meticulously clean room they’re standing in, irritable that his hard work hadn’t been noticed. “Obviously I am,” he says. “I take it you didn’t see how clean your dishes are now.”

“Oh,” Viktor says vaguely. “I haven’t.” He’s looking at Yuuri like there’s something undoubtedly fascinating about him, something puzzling and new. “I don’t eat much, you see.”

“Except hearts, I suppose,” Yuuri remarks, and Viktor surprises him by laughing, falling forward over his own body like someone’s cut a string keeping his back straight, laughing like it’s the funniest thing he’s ever heard. Yuuri smiles, and part of him almost wants to blush. No one has ever reacted like that to anything he’s said before.

“I’m glad that story’s still going around,” Viktor says, still chuckling slightly. “It keeps people out of the castle.”

“If you want people out so badly,” Yuuri points out, “why open up a shop and pose as Pendragon? You could just go away and live in the mountains, or by the coast. No one would look for you there.”

Viktor tilts his head. “No one’s ever asked me that before,” he says, which isn’t an answer, and Yuuri tells him as much. Viktor only laughs again, standing and stretching, leaving his coat draped over Yuuri’s chair.

“Where are you going?” Yuri asks rudely. “You still haven’t told me about the Witch!”

“I’m tired,” Viktor says. “I’ll explain in the morning.”

Yuri snorts as if he thinks this entirely unlikely, borrowing back into the embers the way he does when Yuuri asks him a question he thinks is too boring to answer.

“Yura,” Viktor says gently. “The morning. Yes?”

“Fine,” Yuri huffs. “Whatever. Go to bed already, you lazy piece of shit.”

Viktor smiles, hands him a log from the pile, and turns back to Yuuri, who has watched the exchange with some amusement and some confusion. He finds himself wondering exactly how long the two of them have known each other, how long Viktor has even been here in this castle; silver-haired but young, cheerful and chaotic. He tries to imagine Viktor as a young boy, talking to Yuri in the fireplace, studying magic from books. It’s an impossible image to conjure up.

Yuuri has heard old wives’ tales and horror stories about Viktor and his magic since he was a little boy, and yet the man starting in front of him can’t be more than a few years older than Yuuri ought to be. Certainly not ancient enough to have been eating girl’s hearts since before Yuuri was born.

Well, according to Yuri he never did that anyway, but still.

“Do you have a place to sleep?” Viktor asks, and Yuuri snaps to attention.

“Hmm? Oh yes, I sleep over here,” he explains, pointing at the section of the room he’s covered with a curtain. “Can I ask you something?”

“A question for a question,” Viktor hums. “It seems fair enough.”

“Is it true there’s a war going on?”

“Prince Christophe from our neighboring kingdom has gone missing,” Viktor says. “They think we’ve done it, of course. I don’t think we have, but kings do love making excuses for starting wars.”

Yuuri frowns. “Missing,” he murmurs. “Oh, dear.”

He isn’t thinking about the prince, rather, about himself, and Yuuko, and Mari, if she ever came home. Finding him gone, without a trace, the hat shop locked and the sign flipped to closed . He hasn’t thought about it for a few days, both because he doesn’t see any way to fix it and because he plain doesn’t want to — there’s no way to tell them about the spell unless they somehow guess, and all they’ll see is a strange old man coming up to them to talk. They won’t see Yuuri. Not their Yuuri, who grew up with them, who memorized their smiles, who misses them right now.

He chews on his lip; looks away. Maybe the prince has been cursed too.

“Well,” he says, trying for optimism, “I’m missing, and I’m all right. I suppose we have to hope he is, too.”

Viktor smiles, a quiet sliver of a thing, a flash of white in his face. “Is that all?”

“For now,” Yuuri says, wondering if he meant questions, or answers, or everything else. “Goodnight.”

Viktor sweeps out of the room without saying another word, but then again, Yuuri hadn’t expected him to.

He huffs a sigh, more to himself that to anything, but Yuri appears to notice, looking up from his bed of ash to scowl half-heartedly in Yuuri’s direction.

“Wars never last,” he says. “You shouldn’t bother worrying about it.”

“It could hurt a lot of people,” Yuuri says, with dignity. “I can’t help worrying.”

His thoughts flicker to Hasetsu; to Yuuko and her husband and her future children, to the smiling faces in the square that Yuuri has always half-resented but always loved. He sighs again, turning to his little screened-off bed and pulling down the covers.

“I have a heart, after all,” he murmurs, glancing back.

Yuri’s grin is all yellow-flame teeth. “ I don’t.”

It’s easy to forget, Yuuri thinks, when you listen to him complain, that the creature in the fireplace really is a demon .

And that Viktor — well, he’s as good as.

More than a little unsettled, Yuuri goes to bed.

He wakes up to a loud banging noise and the absence of Viktor once more, but as it is the loud banging preoccupies him too much to allow for wondering as to why Viktor has gone off again.

“Oh, good, you’re finally awake,” Yuri snaps, once Yuuri has pulled on a shirt and left his makeshift room. “There’s something stuck! I can feel it! Go fix it!”

Bewildered is not a good enough word to express how Yuuri feels at hearing this. “Stuck where?” is what he settles on, though many more questions come to mind, some far less polite than others.

“Outside, in the gears,” Yuri says, his flames going wild. “Go fix it! I can’t move the castle! And the banging is giving me a headache!”

“You don’t even have a head ,” Yuuri says. “Give me a moment!”

Yuri snarls at him, apparently too angry for words, before Viktor appears in the doorway, looking sleep-rumpled and tugging his hair back into a knot. “What’s that sound?”

“Something stuck in the gears,” Yuuri says, feeling more confused than ever, and attempting to ignore how handsome Viktor looks with his hair like that, “apparently.” He searches around for his walking stick, and then looks back at Viktor. “Could you give me a hand with it?”

Yuri makes another disgusted noise, but Yuuri manages to ignore him. Viktor only smiles.

“Anything to stop all that noise,” he says. “It’ll be somewhere outside. Come with me.”

He leads Yuuri up the stairs and outside to a balcony, and Yuuri blinks, overwhelmed for a moment by how lovely the view is.

“We’ve left the Waste,” he says, and then realizes how silly it must sound. Viktor doesn’t laugh.

“I like to keep moving,” he says. “The Witch is after us, you know.”

“Us?” Yuuri says, feeling almost flattered that he’s included.

Viktor does laugh, then. “Yuri and I.”

Yuuri is glad, after that, that Viktor seems to distracted by finding the source of the noise, because he can feel his cheeks going red, which was hardly a pretty sight when he was young but must be even worse now. He busies himself by looking for the banging noise’s location too, and eventually sees a stick poking out of one of the open parts of the castle’s side.

“There,” he says, pointing it out to Viktor, and the two of them set to work at pulling the stick free.

It’s not as bad as cleaning the castle, Yuuri thinks, but the stick is very well wedged into the crack, and it’s almost impossible to pull together so it’s just ended up with Yuuri pulling on the stick and Viktor with his hands wrapped around Yuuri’s waist to pull on Yuuri, which ought not to make him feel flustered, because he’s sworn off any sort of kind or romantic feelings towards Viktor, but ends up making him feel flustered anyway. And then he just feels annoyed at being flustered, and annoyed at being annoyed, and tugs harder at the wedged stick until it pulls itself out — revealing the same scarecrow he’d pulled from the bush in the Waste.

“You again,” he mumbles. “We keep meeting, don’t we?”

“Poor fellow,” Viktor remarks of the scarecrow. “He’s under a spell.” He sounds more fascinated than sorrowful. The scarecrow holds itself up, swaying in the wind very slightly and saying nothing, but there’s a curiously knowing look in its painted eyes.

Then it leaps forward, landing on one of the windowsills and staying still there, looking out into the distance. Yuuri stares after it.

“It’s followed me,” he says, astonished.

“Do you know him?” Viktor asks, shaking his hair out of the knot he’d pulled it into and blinking at Yuuri slowly. “He’s under quite a curse.”

“You can tell?”

“Oh, yes,” Viktor says, humming a little before explaining. “I can’t see who he used to be, but I can see that there’s magic tying him to this form.” He stares after the scarecrow for a moment before adding, “I know a bit about how to break it, but nowhere near enough to actually do it. It’s something to do with another person.” He wrinkles his nose. “Love, maybe.”

He sounds annoyed at the idea, and Yuuri abruptly feels close to losing his temper, though he doesn’t want to think about why.

“Well, he’s out of the gears now,” he says, picking up his cane. “And I’ve got cleaning to do.”

And then, for politeness’ sake, he adds, “Thank you for helping me.”

Viktor just smiles, puzzled and distant. “You’re welcome.”

Yuuri smacks his cane a little harder than usual against the castle’s floors and reminds himself of all the very good reasons to avoid liking Viktor as a person.

Instead of being angry, he sets to cleaning the bathroom, which is probably the most-used area of the house and thus the worst mess. He’s been putting it off, but he needs somewhere to expend all this unwanted energy, and so — to the tub it goes.

There are tins of powders and things in the bathroom, which Yuuri cleans rather haphazardly, mostly shoving them all into a cabinet above the sink and hoping for the best, except for a large tin labeled DRYING POWER which he leaves next to the sink, as there don’t seem to be any towels in the room. He doesn’t attempt to use it to dry anything, because he’s not fool enough to get mixed up in more magic, but he does — cautiously — leave it out.

Yuuri has always been the kind of person to talk while he works, and first it was to the hats, but now he’s got nothing stationary to talk at and results to either speaking with Yuri — who doesn’t respond half the time — to his walking stick, which feels foolish after a while, or to himself, which feels just as foolish but more productive, somehow.

“It’s not as though you’re doing a bad job,” he consoles himself while cleaning the tub. “Cleaning isn’t so bad. And you’ve learned a lot about Viktor and Yuri already. Soon it’ll be enough to break the spell.”

(Foolish it might be, but it still makes him feel better.)

“And now Turnip Head is back, too,” he muses. “It seems I attract spells and magic wherever I go! Why this couldn’t have happened to Mari instead, I have no idea. She’d be much better equipped to deal with it.” He ignores the squirm of anger in his stomach at the idea of Mari catching Viktor’s attention, and then the Witch’s, and then living here in this castle. Of course he doesn’t want her to be cursed, he reasons, she’s his younger sister, better-equipped for magic or no.

“Hey,” a voice says, and Yuuri looks up to see Viktor leaning in the door, wrinkling his nose at the strong smell of soap. “I’ve decided something.”

“Have you?” Yuuri says, and then feels guilty for being sarcastic. Viktor doesn’t appear to notice.

“Yes,” he says, “We can’t have two Yuris in the house.”

“Oh,” Yuuri says, and wonders if this is a polite way of saying that he’s fired.

“So I’ve decided to call him Yurio, and call you Yuuri,” Viktor says, and Yuuri is torn between relief at not being fired and confusion at how on earth Viktor has come to this conclusion.

“Shouldn’t I get a nickname?” he says. “He’s been here longer.”

Yuri, from the main room, yells “That’s what I said!”

“You’re a guest,” Viktor says cheerfully. “Anyway, Yurio suits him. It sounds bitter and angry.”

“I’ll show you bitter and angry,” Yuri screams, and Yuuri can imagine the flames creeping higher around him as he says it.

“If you think so,” Yuuri says uncertainly to Viktor, who smiles and nods.

“He’ll get used to it,” he says in an undertone. “He’ll have to, he’s stuck with me.”

Then he winks and leaves the doorway, and Yuuri remains crouched on the floor, slightly unsettled and more than slightly flattered.

“It’s a very bad idea,” he tells himself sternly, for perhaps the third time in as many hours, and goes back to cleaning the floor.

He avoids Yuri for the rest of the day, because the fire demon seems determined to be angry with everyone and everything he comes into contact with at the indignity of being called Yurio. Yuuri understands, in part; the nickname is clearly only a result of Viktor wanting to annoy him, because Viktor already calls Yuri Yura half the time, and Viktor doesn’t talk to Yuuri enough to warrant confusion over names.

On the other hand, for an ageless, timeless demon, he’s acting a lot like a disgruntled teenager, and Yuuri finds himself lacking the patience to deal with it. Instead, he remains in the bathroom, cleaning the mirror more times than is necessary as an excuse not to leave.

He hums to himself, to pass the time, pulling up old songs from his childhood, and after some time Yuri’s muttering and general bitterness quiets and Yuuri feels that it’s safe enough to stick his head out again.

His knees creak as he stands, and he sighs to himself. He’s started forgetting he’s old, until something like this reminds him, sends him jolting back to awareness.

“Still, you’re quite healthy for an old thing, aren’t you?” he tells himself reasonably in the mirror, refusing to sulk about it. “See you stay that way.”

He walks back out into the main room, where Yuri is carefully stripping a branch of twigs before eating it. “Don’t you think you’ve got enough spells on you?” he asks. Yuuri blinks, bewildered.

“What do you mean?”

“Well, if you don’t know, I’m certainly not going to tell you,” Yuri says obnoxiously. He still seems to be ruffled over what happened earlier.

“I won’t call you Yurio,” Yuuri offers, “If you don’t want me to.”

Yuri just snorts and continues stripping the twigs, as if he’s trying to seem unbothered. “Whatever,” he says. “Do what you want.”

He sends a small glance back towards Yuuri, though, and he decides to take that as a thank you — it seems as close as Yuri will ever actually get.

They stop next to a lake, that day, so Yuuri can do the washing.

Yuri complains rather a lot about having to stop and how difficult it is to keep the Witch off their trail without moving and how Yuuri is appallingly clean, as most humans are, despite having been the one to want the castle cleaned in the first place. Yuuri snaps back that perhaps he’ll just leave Yuri to a castle full of dirt and an unbroken spell, then, and stomps outside holding the laundry with the irritated feeling of being drawn into fights he doesn’t belong to.

“He’s only cranky,” he complains to his walking stick, “because Viktor hasn’t apologized for calling him Yurio, and he’s got no right to take it out on me.” The thumps of his stick against the ground seem more angry than usual. “As if it’s a bad thing to be clean! It’s what he hired me to do, isn’t it?”

The irritation sticks with him as he washes clothes, but as Yuuri is often inclined to do, he soon starts to feel guilty instead.

“It’s not as though he’s used to it,” he adds, to his stick, which is leaning against the side of the castle as Yuuri pins up some of the laundry. “He must have just lived in the castle alone, all this time. However long it was — though it couldn’t have been longer than twenty years, or so,” he adds, doubtfully. “Viktor’s so young-looking. But either way. It’s a long time to be by yourself and then — to have to get used to someone else.”

The stick does not answer, and Yuuri, with another fit of temper, thinks how foolish it is, to sit here talking to nothing, to still be here at all. He could leave, couldn’t he? Yuri or no Yuri, Viktor or no Viktor — he could just go. Being old isn’t so bad, after all. Why is he here, by this lake, doing laundry, and talking — for all intents and purposes — to himself? Is he really just a senile old man?

Why on earth should he stay?

Then he glances over at the lake, watching as the sun glittered off the water and danced across, back and forth, back and forth. He feels his cheeks twitch up in a smile.

“It’s not all bad,” he says, aloud, to the stick. The stick, again, does not answer, but Yuuri finds he doesn’t mind. The water ripples gently against the rocks, and Yuuri feels his shoulders relax, softly, until he cannot remember why he’d been so angry.

He has quite the hair-trigger temper for an old man, he thinks.

But he steps closer to the water, and breathes in deep, letting the air wash into him.

It’s not all bad, he thinks again, not at all.

"Yuu-ri,” a voice says, soft and singsong, and he blinks himself awake.

“Eh?” he says, embarrassed at having fallen asleep next to the water. He’d dragged a chair out while he waited for the laundry to dry, and sat down to watch the waves. He’s always tired, recently, so he supposes it isn’t a surprise, but it’s still not the easiest thing to admit to.

“You fell asleep,” the voice says, and it turns out to be Viktor, who looks absolutely delighted to find him here. He’s lit up by the setting sun, his silver hair glowing.

Yuuri’s heart speeds up, and he wishes he could tell it to stop.

“I’m sorry,” he says, because it seems like the right thing to say. Viktor appears not to care.

“Yurio was asking for you,” he says. “I think he likes you, you know.”

“He hasn’t got a heart,” Yuuri says, attempting to stand without the help of his walking stick. “I don’t think he can like anything.”

Viktor snorts. “I haven’t got a heart either, and I like you,” he says. “If he tells you something like that, he’s being ridiculous.”

Yuuri tells himself to firmly ignore the bit about Viktor liking him, and fails immediately when Viktor takes his arm to help him stand. “Where have you been all this time?” He means it to come out accusing, but it only sounds sad, like Yuuri had missed him, or something, which is not true. At all. He hopes Viktor is too self-absorbed to notice. It seems to be his permanent state of being.

“Looking for the man I met,” Viktor sighs. “And for clues on the Witch, but neither were successful.”

He looks sad and dramatic in the slow golden light of the sunset, tilting his head just so. Yuuri thinks that the man he met must be very lucky, and then remembers that Viktor is morally ambiguous (at best) and quite possibly genuinely evil (at worst) and then he only feels sorry for the poor soul who ends up with him.

“Yuri was a monster while you were gone,” Yuuri says, instead of asking the many burning questions he has about this mysterious man and how on Earth Viktor could proclaim to be in love with him after (according to Yuri, anyway) five minutes. Viktor laughs again, and Yuuri notices — not for the first time — how close his laugh comes to reaching his eyes, how it almost gets there, but stops just short.

I haven’t got a heart either, Viktor had said, and Yuuri feels an odd, uneven tug at his own heart. He’s not sure if it’s pity or sorrow. It could be both.

He’s known all this time, of course, that Viktor is heartless; it’s the first thing anyone ever learns about him. But he’d never stopped to consider the realities of it, how Viktor would dance across the world, just a step from touching hope or love or happiness, never quite feeling them. It must have been something dreadful, Yuuri thinks, that made him do it. Only the worst kind of sadness could make someone want to give up love.

He glances back once at the lake as they walk back into the castle, at the light glinting across the surface, and wonders if Viktor even understands that it’s beautiful.

Chapter Text

PART III: IN THE RAIN

Yuri is quiet when they get back, suspiciously so; or, at the very least, quiet enough that Viktor comments on it when giving him a log to chew on. Yuri doesn’t rise to the bait, though, just takes the log and sinks back into the ashes with it, looking contemplative and distant.

Yuuri wonders if he should be worried, then wonders why his first instinct regarding an ages-old demon who is blackmailing him is to be worried about him.

Either way.

“Have you see anything from the Witch?” he asks Viktor, because he needs information if he’s going to break his own spell, and Yuri doesn’t seem to be making an effort, so far. And, frankly, because he’s curious.

Viktor blows out a puff of air, shifting his bangs slightly. “No, nothing since the other day. Her being quiet, though, that scares me. It means she’s planning something.”

“Why does she hate you?” Yuuri asks. “I—"

He means to say I know why she hates me, but it gets stuck in his throat. Spells, and things, he thinks, bitterly. Viktor raises an eyebrow at him inquisitively, but doesn’t say anything aloud, just lets the moment pass.

“I rejected her,” he says, “once. A long time ago. She wanted me, and I turned her down.” He sits on Yuuri’s chair, in front of the fire, and smiles. “I didn’t love her.”

“That was your biggest problem?” Yuuri asks. “She’s evil!”

Viktor shrugs elegantly. “I’m evil too, or did you forget about that?”

He doesn’t allow Yuuri a chance to answer, only standing up as quickly as he sat down and beginning to pace.

“I must have been rude about it, when I turned her down,” he says, “and she’s hated me ever since. It’s interesting, having a nemesis. I’ve never had one before.”

Slightly exasperatedly, Yuuri raises an eyebrow back at him. “She’s cursed a lot of people in pursuit of you. The least you could do is stop her.”

Viktor just shrugs again, careless. “Why should they matter to me? I’ve never met them. And her curses aren’t as good as she thinks. They’re always quite easily broken.”

Heartless, Yuuri thinks, and glances away. Viktor chatters on in the background, more to Yuri now than to him.

Yuuri shifts in place and watches his careless, handsome face.

Easily broken? he wishes he could say. Mine isn’t. I’m an old man, because of the Witch, and because of you.

He doesn’t say it aloud, only moves towards the sink to get a glass of water, letting his cane clink harder against the wood floor than usual.

As he’s raising the glass, there’s a knock at the door.

Viktor glances sideways at the fireplace, and Yuuri is frozen, staring.

His first thought is the Witch — but that’s impossible, isn’t it? There’s no way she could have found them here.

There’s another knock, light and polite, which reassures him. The Witch wouldn’t knock. She’d push her way through the door,

He glances back at Viktor, who is still staring at the fireplace, at Yuri; he’s refusing to look over at the door or even more towards it. He looks almost concerned, except that his face doesn’t seem meant for concern. Viktor’s face is more meant for smiling mysteriously, half drenched in shadow. Concern looks insincere on him.

“Yura,” he says, very softly. Something about his eyes is different, Yuuri thinks, glinting like light, reflecting back the tiny flickers in Yuri’s yellow flames, as if they’re somehow one being.

“Mmm?” Yuri says, and then seems to jolt into awareness. “Kingsbury. The knocking—"

“Thank you,” Viktor says quietly, and stands, reaching for a cape hanging on the wall, his movements all grace, all fluidity; Yuuri watches him in the half-light, then glances back at Yuri, who is looking straight back. They both look away at the same time.

Viktor wraps the cape around his shoulders and morphs into a hunched-over old man with a long beard, as fast as Yuuri can blink, and he winks back at them before twisting the dial to Kingsbury and opening the door.

“Hello,” he says, his voice a creaky, smoky thing; it sounds more like Yuri’s voice than like Viktor’s. Yuuri glances back at the fireplace, but Yuri is back to pretending the rest of them aren’t there.

“Are you Wizard Pendragon?” the visitor says, pleasantly. He has a patchy beard and a friendly smile, and he’s dressed in a similar uniform to the soldier who knocked once before, all glinting buttons and gold braid. If Viktor had looked like himself, Yuuri thinks, he would have been concerned that he wasn’t the most handsome thing in the room. As it is, he only taps a finger against the doorknob as if wishing he could close it.

“No,” he says. “Master Pendragon is out. I will give him your message.”

“I am Captain Emil of the King’s Royal Guard,” the man says, giving a short bow. “I sent an associate a week ago to inform your master of the impending war, and to explain that the King has requested his help. I received no response and decided to come myself. It is of the utmost importance that Pendragon assist the King.” He then drops his formality, smiling kindly. “It’s a war — we’re not lying about that — and I know he might think himself unprepared, since he doesn’t have training. But assure him, if he is concerned, that he will not be on the field, only assisting the Head Sorceress with protective spells, all right?”

Before Viktor can respond in any way, Captain Emil is taking a step back.

“I must be going. Please have him report to the castle within three days. We cannot afford to lose time, and if he refuses to report . . .” His face darkens. “It may end badly.”

Yuuri takes a step forward, wanting to say something, but Captain Emil has turned away before he can think of what.

“Good day,” Viktor calls, quietly, and shuts the door.

In little more than a moment Viktor’s ripped off his cloak and come back to himself, and he’s pacing around and around the room, his eyes wild.

“I can’t go to the palace! It’ll ruin everything — there’s no way—"

“Viktor,” Yuuri says, trying to break in, “what’s going—"

“I’ll have to change my name and destroy the storefront—" Viktor is shouting, hands waving in the air around him frantically, continuing to pace. Yuri is watching, eyes twitching back and forth between Viktor and the door, before he sighs.

“Why do you have to run?” Yuuri says. “Just go to the King and tell him you won’t do it.”

It’s not something that Yuuri could ever do himself. He knows that. But Yuuri has always been a quiet thing, unassuming and shaky. Yuuri could not walk up to a king and tell him that he wouldn’t fight for him.

But Viktor is brilliant, glittering, powerful. Viktor is raw magic and bright coats and a sharp smile. He could say no, and Yuuri has no doubt that with the force of Viktor’s power pressing on him, the King would relent.

“Are you making some kind of a joke?” Viktor says, arching an eyebrow. “Of course I can’t do that. He’s the King . I’ll be arrested before I can open my mouth.”

“You could get out of it,” Yuuri points out. “You’re Viktor Nikiforov. You’re an incredibly powerful wizard.”

“Thank you!” Viktor says, seemingly automatically responding to the praise, then frowning. “I still can’t go. The Witch is tracking me, she’ll find me in a second if I step out.”

Yuuri considers mentioning that it’s never been a problem before, when Viktor ‘steps out’ to try and hunt down this young man he’s been chasing, but thinks it would come out sounding jealous, and he would quite honestly rather die than give Viktor the slightest hint about his feelings. “Well, if you don’t go, the King will have you arrested anyway , for resisting the summons.”

Viktor glances at Yuri as if he wants backup, but Yuri doesn’t respond, just looks back and forth between them.

Yuuri crosses his eyes at him once he’s certain Viktor’s back is turned. The moment they need his opinion, of course he wants to sit back and enjoy the show.

“Well—" Viktor says, as if he’s struggling for an answer. “That’s true, but—"

“Then you have to go,” Yuuri points out.

“No,” Viktor says, desperate, vehement. “We can’t. I can’t.”

Yuri glances at him, then sighs. “I could handle it,” he mumbles, as if insulted. Yuuri keeps his eyes fixed on Viktor, steady.

“We’ll — we’ll think of something,” Viktor says, still desperate. “We’ll — we will. But we’ll get out of it.”

Yuri opens his mouth, but Viktor, his eyes cold and wild, cuts him off.

“I don’t want to hear another word about it,” he says, fierce, and sweeps up the stairs to his room.

Yuuri stares after him, nonplussed and a little angry. Strong, clever wizard that he is — and he can’t think of any solution besides just running away?

He doesn’t know what to do, after that, so he goes to clean the bathroom again — that room, out of all of them, needs cleaning the most — but he can’t shake the feeling that something’s about to go horribly wrong. Yuri is still distant and stewing, sitting in the fireplace as if in a sulk, and Viktor has vanished to his room and hasn’t come back out.

It’s uncomfortably quiet.

He falls asleep uneasy and wakes with a jolt in the middle of the night at the sound of loud, desperate screams coming from out by the fireplace.

He jumps to his feet, heart pounding, and wrenches open the curtain separating his sleeping area from the rest of Yuri’s fireplace room, stumbling inside wearing only his nightshirt and rubbing at his eyes. “What’s happening?” he asks, and doesn’t get a response, besides more yells and Yuri snapping, “Oh, wonderful, ” through all the noise.

“It’s getting thin, ” Viktor, the source of the screams, says, which clarifies nothing. Yuuri raises his eyebrows.

“He’s lost it,” Yuri informs him, which makes slightly more sense. Yuuri nods uncertainly, but before he can say anything more, Viktor whirls on him.

“This is all your fault,” Viktor shouts, “you ruined the things in the bathroom!” He looks the same as ever, Yuuri thinks, hair shining and draping elegantly over his shoulders. The only thing he appears to have lost is his pink coat, but Yuuri can’t see what that would have to do with the bathroom.

“I just organized them,” he says, angry, but taking care not to show it. He feels worn, just as desperate as Viktor looked earlier in the night; dragged down by the spell and by being here, all this time. All his anger from out by the lake seems to rush back into him. He’s an old man, and Viktor isn’t. What on earth does he have to complain about? “I didn’t open them, or—"

“Liar!” Viktor shouts. “You’ve ruined me! I’ll have to hide my face for the rest of the month! ”

“You look the same as ever!” Yuri snaps. “You vain piece of—"

“I’m getting old!” Viktor yells back, and Yuuri feels a wave of anger and revulsion well up in his stomach. He thinks of looking into the mirror and seeing a stranger. He thinks of his creaking back and knees and not knowing how to fix it. He thinks of Viktor, carelessly handsome, his face unlined and soft, complaining that he’s old.

“Give it a rest, ” Yuri says. “Everyone gets old—"

“Not us, ” Viktor fires back, “It’s waning, you can feel it too, I know it, you’ve been distant all day, and we can’t — we have to fix it, if we don’t I’m not going to be beautiful anymore and if I’m not beautiful then I’ll never find —”

“For the love of—" Yuri starts, but Yuuri, boiling with anger, breaks in. His hands are shaking, and he’s thinking only of Viktor getting a good look at his face, there on the balcony of the bakery, an age ago. Getting a good look, and then turning right away.

Is that what he’s so afraid of? Becoming ugly, like a young man he saw, once?

“You think you have it so terrible,” he says, half a shout, his voice trembling. “Getting old. Becoming less beautiful.”

He can feel tears in his eyes, threatening to spill. Yuri is watching him with little emotion, but his flames are slightly lower than they were a moment ago. Viktor, though, Viktor is staring at him, almost in the way he stared at him on the balcony. Like he’s looking at something he’s never seen before.

“Well,” he yells, and the tears flow over, like a faucet. His heart pounds, stutters, throbs — a glass heart, threatening to crack. It’s threatened to crack far too many times, he thinks wildly, since he’s come into contact with Viktor Nikiforov. “I’ve never been beautiful, not once in my entire life, so you can just — you can go and just—"

But he’s crying too hard to finish.

“Wait,” Viktor says, almost in shock, and holds up a hand, but Yuuri does not listen. He turns and goes, clicking the doorknob to the Waste, and running away, out into the rain.

He stands there, outside the castle, and imagines his skin bubbling, straightening out, his limbs growing less fragile as the rain beats down on him; he imagines that this, the touch of water, would be enough to break the spell, to leave him as he was. Plain old Katsuki Yuuri, who works in a hat shop, who is less handsome and less charming, always, than anyone else in the room. Who has a soft stomach and messy hair and mud-brown eyes; whose hands are always pricked from needles, whose eyes need glasses from working in such low light. He could go back to being himself, to being satisfied with his life, to stitching hats, to seeing Yuuko, to watching the castle from a distance instead of from inside it.

He wants it, suddenly, desperately, being back to normal. To have never met Viktor. To be home stitching hats and worrying about making rent. It would be a blessed thing, now, just to have his own hands, his own body.

He can’t even comfort himself, the way he used to; he is too wide now to wrap his arms around himself, to hold on until he can breathe. To have even that taken from him is the worst part of it all.

He wouldn’t mind being old, he thinks, if he had come to it the right way, by going through the years and reaching it himself, but here he isn’t old, not really. He’s barely even himself.

He stares at his own hands, watery and distorted through the rain and his tears. “Go back to the way you were,” he says, “go back, go back, ” and his voice cracks, shatters, aches. His hands remain the same, and he does not know how long he stands there, shaking in his own skin, trying to will the spell away, to take a breath through his own lungs once more —

If I could go back, he thinks, half wild, half tired, I would never be upset again, that I wasn’t handsome or — or charming or youngest-born. I wouldn’t care. I swear I wouldn’t —

“Go back,” he whispers, to his hands, his voice so quiet and trembling that he thinks his heart will break.

“That won’t work,” a voice says, softly, and Yuuri freezes. “Your spell can’t be broken alone.”

It’s Viktor, looking at him curiously, like Yuuri’s done something new and interesting by crying his eyes out.

“You know, it’s very rude to look at someone like that,” Yuuri says irritably. “Like they’re just something to watch.”

Viktor looks away, and once he has, Yuuri finds himself wishing he hadn’t. He tries not to let that make him feel more confused than he already does.

“You are something to watch,” Viktor says finally. “Everyone is. But you — you never react how I expect you will. To anything. You remind me of . . .”

He trails off there, and Yuuri, wiping at his face, does not ask what on earth he means.

“I . . . never mind,” Viktor says, then goes silent again. Yuuri, for a moment, thinks he will say I’m sorry. But he doesn’t.

Heartless, Yuuri thinks, with more resignation than he has on previous days. The crying has taken quite a lot out of him, and he can’t scrounge up the energy to be angry or frustrated with Viktor any longer. He’s certain he’ll be angry again tomorrow, but right now — right now, he can only sigh and shake his head and, tiredly, smile.

“You couldn’t have known,” he says, which is true. He doesn’t apologize for shouting, even if he thinks it would be polite. He was angry. He shouted.

Worse things have happened.

“I came outside,” Viktor says, fiddling with a bit of his coat, “because I had an idea, you see. About how to get out from under the watching eyes of the King.”

This ought to sound off-topic, and overly dramatic. Knowing Viktor, however, it seems a logical transition. Yuuri can only press his face into his hands, and let out a watery chuckle.

“But I—" Viktor says, and rather awkwardly places a hand on Yuuri’s shoulder. “It can wait ‘til morning.”

Yuuri laughs again, still watery, shaky, but —

Heartless, he thinks again, with a touch more amusement. Hmm. Well, I suppose even he can pick some things up.

“Yes,” he says. “It can.”

He picks up his walking stick, and Viktor offers his arm, and together, they make their way back inside.

He lays down to sleep feeling exhausted, half from shouting and crying, half from turning so completely from anger to sadness to acceptance so quickly.

Through the curtain, he can see the softly flickering light of Yuri’s fire, and he can hear the soft murmurs of Viktor whispering to the fire demon and Yuri mumbling back.

Once, he even thinks perhaps that the curtain twitches back, and someone looks down on him, but it’s late by then, and he’s quite tired out, so it could just be his imagination.

***

The next morning, Yuri keeps sending Yuuri confused sideways glances as if he’s worried that he will begin to scream again. Once, rather awkwardly, he attempts to ask if Yuuri is all right, only he says it by mumbling, “You aren’t going to do that again , are you?” which only serves to make Yuuri feel irritated rather than cared for.

He bangs plates together as he makes himself some bread and butter for breakfast, because Yuri hasn’t felt inclined to stop so he can go shopping in several days, and he’s had to make do with leftovers. This makes him still more irritated, though he tries to ignore it, feeling guilty for exploding the night before and not wanting to do it again.

Viktor’s chirpy “Good morning, Yuuri!” feels far too cheery, but Yuuri makes an attempt to smile back, albeit tiredly.

Viktor sits down at the table, drumming his fingers against the wood excitedly, appearing to have completely forgotten the events of the night before. Yuuri decides not to think about whether he is happy Viktor isn’t talking about it, because he doesn’t want to talk about it — it’s embarrassing, to have someone see you cry! — but he would like some confirmation that things are all right, too, and —

Ugh.

He slams another plate and says nothing.

“What are we going to do about the King?” Yuri asks, sending another nervous look towards Yuuri. He breathes in and out and attempts to turn his mind to the reason he’s here: breaking the spell.

It’s harder to do than it used to be.

“Well,” Viktor says grandly, “I’ve had an idea.” He pauses here, appearing to want everyone in the room to watch as he reveals his grand plan.

Yuuri looks at him, and waits, but Viktor says nothing, just continues beaming around at them.

“Well,” Yuuri prompts, his curiosity outweighing his irritation, “what is it?”

The wizard turns his most blinding, charming smile on him.

“You’re going to go!” Viktor says, sounding as if he thinks this is the best idea anyone has ever had. “No one knows what I look like, I do all my work in disguise here. I’ll send you to see the king, you can say you’re too old to fight. It’s a perfect plan!”

It’s an absolutely terrible plan, Yuuri thinks.

“That might work,” he says aloud. A few sparks come off of Yuri’s body in what might be protest, but he doesn’t say anything.

“It’s genius!” Viktor says. “No one will ever suspect it!”

“Unless someone asks me to do magic,” Yuuri points out. “Then it’s all ruined.” Viktor waves a hand.

“I’ll follow you, of course,” he says. “In disguise! To protect you!” He looks gleeful. Yuuri thinks he might actually be having fun with all of this nonsense. “And if it comes to that, which it won’t, I’ll leap in and save you.”

Yuuri glances over and meets Yuri’s eyes. The fire demon gives an annoyed shrug, as if to say, This will go terribly.

“All right,” Yuuri says. “I’ll do it.”

By the next morning, Yuuri regrets his decision to just go along with whatever Viktor said, though he supposes it is easy to feel annoyed when he has to go out into what could only be described as 'dangerous waters' and Viktor and Yuri had been allowed to stay safe in the castle.

"It's not as if I could have gone," Yuri points out smugly from the fire. "And anyway, you agreed."

"I wish I hadn't," Yuuri snaps, tugging his hat onto his head with more force than is strictly necessary. "He'll be insufferable if it turns out to work, and if it fails, he'll be even worse."

"Now you know how it is to live with him," Yuri says, too cheerfully, Yuuri thinks. He picks up his walking stick.

“You’re going out in that? ” Viktor says, from the stairs. “No one will believe you’re me, dressed like that!”

“I thought no one has ever seen you in person,” Yuuri points out crossly. “I thought you did all your work in disguise. ”

“Well, yes,” Viktor says. “But you can’t just — go out, and say you’re me, looking like that—"

“And what’s wrong with how I look?” Yuuri snaps. For an old man, he thinks he looks just fine. No one looks for fashion when you’re old. It’s been a source of comfort for him, having to go out and get food and things, that no one ever expects him to look handsome anymore. He does not feel so endlessly watched, so stiff-shouldered and nervous.

Except that now Viktor, apparently, thinks he should look attractive, vain old wizard that he is.

“Just let me do a spell,” Viktor pleads. “I can’t have you going out and slandering my name.”

“That’s what you asked me to do! You asked me to get out of this! How else am I supposed to do that besides telling the King how absolutely terrible you are at magic?”

“You’re supposed to say I’m too old to fight, not that I can’t do it!”

“It’s all the same thing,” Yuuri points out, wearily. “I just want to get this over with. I’ve still got some of the rooms upstairs to go through—"

“Can you think about anything besides cleaning,” Viktor snaps, even though Yuuri wasn’t talking about cleaning, just snooping through his things to find information about the spell, “and think about what you’re meant to do , for a moment, please—"

Yuuri glares at him, tugs his hat on further, and heads for the door. “I’m not letting you put a spell on my clothes,” he says. “They’re fine enough as they are and anyway, I’ve had quite enough of spells.”

Slamming the door is very satisfying, he thinks. He ought to do it more.

Kingsbury is an overwhelming place. Yuuri thinks he would have hated it before all this — back when he was only Katsuki Yuuri from the hat shop — but now the city is interesting rather than terrifying. He can’t stop looking around in every direction, watching as the people move around him, from shop to shop, from one side of the road to the next. There are people from every walk of life and in every variety — people with clothes like Yuuri’s and people who dress more like Viktor does when he’s going out to look for the young man who apparently broke his heart. There are carts set up, too, along the sides of the road, selling flowers, books, sweets, and bread; Yuuri even sees one selling hats, and laughs to himself. Those hats could be the ones he used to sell back in Hasetsu — and the Witch of the Waste had called them plain!

He thinks of Mari, as he’s walking, and of how she must have felt, walking into this city for the first time. He wants to see her, sudden and aching, but he doesn’t know where to go.

She wouldn’t recognize him, anyway, it’s part of the spell. He thinks with a pang of the letters she must have sent, these past few weeks, sitting unnoticed in the hat shop’s mailbox. Left without a response.

Not that Yuuri wrote back, much. Compared to the fun Mari was always having, he never had much to say.

That makes him laugh, a little, sadly. He supposes he’d have a lot more to say to her now.

He reaches the castle walls after thirty minutes of walking, and feels exhausted, looking out at the grounds he has to cross and up at the stairs leading up to the door. As he looks, taking his hat off and fanning himself with it, there’s noise from behind him, and he sees a brown poodle meandering along the ground, lightly stepping like it doesn’t want to touch the ground with its curly paws.

Yuuri squints at it. Viktor had said he would following in disguise, he muses, though the dog is a little drab-looking to be someone as vain as the wizard is.

The dog tilts its head at him, an intelligent look in its brown eyes.

“Well, come on, then,” Yuuri says, turning back towards the castle. “We’ve still got a long way to go.”

The dog’s answering bark rumbles in its chest, and Yuuri tries not to smile.

He becomes used to the dog trotting along next to him as he walks across the castle grounds, enough that he nearly doesn’t notice another presence beside him until he hears a breathy chuckle from just behind.

He turns, and there she is: the Witch of the Waste.

His first thought is that she’s come to find Viktor, but the dog takes no notice of her, just continues plodding along; Yuuri takes his cues from the dog and keeps walking, looking back ahead of himself and trying to appear calm.

“Old age suits you,” she says mockingly.

“You know,” Yuuri says, “I think it does. I suppose I ought to thank you. I won’t, of course, but that’s another conversation.”

“I have heard,” she says, “that you’ve been living with dearest Viktor.”

Amazingly, he can detect jealousy in her voice.

“Oh, yes,” he says, dismissively. “He’s been running me ragged as his housecleaner. That’s why I’m here, to look for work. Some silly king won’t be half as demanding as a vain old wizard.”

She looks almost offended, and he fights to keep the amusement off his face, projecting tiredness, annoyance, and dislike, of Viktor, which he is surprised to find is false.

He might be a silly, vain, self-centered thing, but damn if Yuuri doesn’t like him.

Oh, hell , he thinks, his annoyance becoming real for a moment. It’s been creeping up on him, all this time, liking Viktor, and it will be inconvenient, all things considered, if he goes on being friends (however odd their friendship is) with Yuri and caring about Viktor. It will be inconvenient because he has to focus on breaking the spell, and because Viktor is far too handsome for Yuuri to trust his emotions around, and because it will be far harder to leave, in the end, once the spell is broken and none of them want to see him anymore.

He glances down at the dog who might be Viktor, and it seems confused at the sudden downturn of his mouth. It does not make a noise, however, not wanting to draw attention to itself.

“Why are you here?” he asks, turning the question on the Witch before she can say anything else about Viktor, and she preens.

“ I’m here on invitation,” she says smugly, waving her fingers at him. “From the King himself . He’s finally recognized my power, and asked me to help his Royal Wizards with the war.”

“How wonderful for you,” Yuuri says dryly. “I hope you don’t get injured, fighting the enemy.”

She doesn’t notice his sarcasm. He supposes that’s a good thing.

As they reach the stairs, he begins to walk up, and she clicks her tongue at her paladin-carriers, who begin to heave her up the incline. However, when he’s on the tenth step and she’s on the third, the dog trotting somewhere between the two of them, her carriers wobble, and crumble to dust.

“Oh, no,” Yuuri says, mildly surprised. “Are they all right?”

“Who cares about them, what about me? ” the Witch snaps. “Now I’ve got to walk up all these stairs alone. I haven’t walked up stairs in decades.”

“That’s a shame,” Yuuri says, and continues walking. “Good luck, then.”

“You must help me!”

“I don’t work for you, ” Yuuri says. “You’ve already cursed me, in case you’ve forgotten, I admit I’m not inclined to carry you up these stairs.”

“Perhaps I’ll remove it,” she says, “if you help.”

He pauses, on the fifteenth step, and looks at her, tilting his head to the side, consideringly.

“No,” he says, and feels almost sad, when he says it, “you won’t.”

He turns, then, and continues walking, the dog hovering around his legs and barking whenever he stops to take a break.

Irritating thing , Yuuri thinks, though his hand comes to rest on its head several times, carding through the curls around its ears.

When he reaches the top, there’s a woman dressed in the guard uniform waiting for him, smiling. “Hello!” she says. “You’re . . . ?”

“Wizard Pendragon,” Yuuri says, wondering if she can sense the lie. “At your . . . erm, service.”

“Good to meet you,” she says. “I’m Captain Mila, I’m a member of Grand Witch Lilia’s personal guard. It’s her you’ll be seeing today.”

She backs off as if to lead him inside, but he can’t help it — he glances back towards the Witch, who is still struggling to climb.

“Can’t you help her?” he asks, because he doesn’t like the Witch, and he doesn’t want to be the one to help her, but, well —

“We aren’t allowed,” she says, which is rather odd, considering she must have been one of the people who summoned them here, and touches his shoulder. “Come along.”

Yuuri peers down once more, watching as the Witch sweats and climbs, and then follows Captain Mila into the castle.

For a moment he feels guilty about leaving the Witch behind, but then his guilt is swallowed by nervousness and awkwardness and worry at finally being here, doing all this. The Witch pants her way up the stairs behind him, and another guardswoman walks out to wait, the door snapping closed with a crisp click .

Yuuri takes a deep breath, and steps forward.

“Now, his Highness was the one who summoned you,” Captain Mila chatters as they walk along, her hands clasped tight behind her back. Her smile is wide and her face is gentle, at sharp contrast with the straight lines of her body. If he were to see her from the back, Yuuri thinks he would be intimidated, but she has too kind of a face to truly scare someone. “Of course, you won’t be speaking to him personally; he’s incredibly busy with the wedding preparations and the threat of war, and he’s asked Madame Lilia, the head sorceress, to handle all the collecting of wizards and witches for battle. You won’t be in battle! That’s not what I meant. But you’ll be protecting the King and his fiance Lady Isabella, since they’re the most important people in the castle, and you’re the most powerful of the good wizards in the kingdom — we could have asked Viktor, of course, but I doubt he would have done it, don’t you?”

Yuuri tries hard not to glance at the dog, but he thinks he might hear a small noise from it — a noise which could be anything from a snicker to a sigh.

“Either way, we have reached out to the Witch of the Waste — it wasn’t my idea, but, well, Madame insisted. Said she could be helpful, or some other nonsense. I don’t trust her any farther than I could throw her, which is why Emil and I put our feet down, said we wouldn’t let her anywhere near the King. Madame had to concede, but she didn’t like it. She’s been angry about it all morning. But don’t let that scare you, she’s not allowed to curse people anymore.”

Curses, Yuuri thinks, half-hysterical. Witches. I’m wandering into the same mess all over again!

Aloud, he says, “Anymore?”

“Well,” the captain says, uncomfortably, “there was an incident some time back with a transformational curse — they’re her specialty, you know, she turned him into a — but that doesn’t matter!”

Yuuri raises an eyebrow, hoping to indicate that it matters quite a lot to him, thank you very much, but Captain Mila either does not notice or does not care.

“Shall you bring your dog in with you?” she says, nodding towards the poodle, which barks an affirmative before Yuuri can say a word. Smiling, Captain Mila moves forward to knock on a large door, looking relieved at having changed the subject.

The door swings open ominously at her knock, and Yuuri takes a deep breath and steps forward.

Madame Lilia is imposing in her age, in her small stature. Where Yuuri has grown smaller and softer with age, perhaps a little angrier, she has become an elegant, terrifying creature. Perhaps that’s the magic, Yuuri thinks. All the strong witches or wizards he’s met so far have been imposing, in their way. Her eyes are sharp and blue, like the hottest fire, like lightning, and he cannot meet them; he thinks she will sense the lie in his own eyes the minute he does.

“Wizard Pendragon,” she says, emotionless. Yuuri clears his throat, feeling small.

“Yes,” he says, and the words come out like a creak, so unlike her clear, even, ancient voice.

She does not say a word at first, just looking him over with those sharp eyes, taking in everything he’s done wrong, every single mistake he’s made in trying to pretend to be Viktor, in floating over Hasetsu with him and not telling him about it, in being jealous of Mari for being youngest. Everything he’s ever done is written on his face, he is certain; he is being judged and found lacking.

“Do you know why I’ve called you here?” she asks.

“To fight, Madame. Though I admit I am old, and not—" He stutters, fumbles with the words. She can sense his nervousness, he is sure of it. “I am not much of a fighter, anymore.”

“Hmm,” she says, then, abruptly, “bring her in.”

Yuuri turns around as quickly as he can (which is not that quickly) to see a panting, sweating Witch of the Waste walking through the same door that he did.

“Wizard Pendragon,” Madame Lilia says, “are you familiar with the Witch of the Waste?”

Yuuri hmphs, forgetting his fear for a moment. “I am,” he says, “unfortunately.”

The Witch of the Waste glares over at him, and seems about to say something, when Madame Lilia stands, elegantly. She is no taller than Yuuri, but — there is something raw and powerful about her standing, something about the way she holds herself. Sitting, she looks like a queen; standing, she is something stronger.

Yuuri doesn’t know who he’s more scared of, her or the Witch.

Probably not the Witch. She’s hurt him once already, he doubts she would try again.

“Wizard—" the Witch says, and raises an annoyed finger. “That’s not Wizard Pendragon!”

Scratch that, Yuuri thinks, already cringing backwards, looking for a place to hide, of course she’s tried again.

The Witch is glaring at him like she’s about to pounce, but before she can say anything more, or attempt to curse him again (which Yuuri wouldn’t put past her) Madame Lilia is taking a step forward, closer to them, and then she smiles, and it’s the most terrifying thing Yuuri has ever seen in his life.

“Idiotic woman,” Madame Lilia says, and for a half second, Yuuri thinks he might just get away with it, that he might have somehow convinced this woman and Captain Mila and the entirety of the castle that he is Viktor and Viktor is an old man who can’t fight, and then she says “I know he isn’t Wizard Pendragon.”

Yuuri’s hands shake. “I—" he starts, but she waves a hand, effectively cutting him off.

“I knew Pendragon wouldn’t show his face here,” she says dismissively. “I never wanted him. I wanted her.”

The Grand Witch has long, black nails, like claws, and Yuuri thinks the Witch might be afraid, for a moment, when they are pointed at her.

“You are a threat I have let go unchecked for far too long,” she says. The Witch of the Waste opens her mouth — to beg? To scream? To apologize? — but words never make it out. Instead, she only flinches back, at the mercy of some dreadful power coming from Madame Lilia’s outstretched hand, curling over as if she’s been punched in the stomach and —

Oh, dear, Yuuri thinks, half-hysterical. Oh, stars.

She’s shrunken. Her youth has been ripped away from her in an instant, and she lies kneeling and shuddering on the floor, her hands wine-spotted, her hair thin and white. Her skin pale and wrinkled and old, unquestionably old. She looks about ready to die any second.

Part of him cannot help but think she deserves it, but the rest just feels rather queasy.

Madame Lilia eyes him, then. “Who are you to Pendragon?”

He doesn’t see a reason to lie, but even the truth chokes him, for some reason. “No one, Madame. I clean his floors.”

“He trusted you enough to send you here in his place,” the Grand Witch points out, sitting back down, and completely ignoring the Witch of the Waste shuddering and wheezing on the ground.

“You aren’t angry?” Yuuri blurts, and then feels like a fool. Impossibly, the Grand Witch smiles. (It isn’t a kind smile, it’s a superior smile, a smile you might give to a child. Yuuri thinks, Even I must seem like a child to her .)

“Anger,” she says, “would only have come if I hadn’t known something like this would happen. Pendragon is a coward. He always has been. I knew he would never come himself.” She snorts delicately. “It would require that he have half a spine.”

Yuuri glances at the dog, who does not appear to be taking offense to any of the conversation. Perhaps Viktor is more self-aware than Yuuri thought.

“But you,” she says, leaning back in her chair and studying him. “What is your name?”

Again, he sees no reason to lie. “Yuuri.”

“Yuuri?”

“Katsuki Yuuri, Madame.” He manages a bow, leaning heavily on his walking stick. He thinks of telling her details: I am from Hasetsu. I was a hatter. I have a sister and no parents; he decides to keep quiet.

“I wonder how Viktor can even stand to look at you,” she says, raising one eyebrow. Yuuri feels his face and neck go red with shame. He ought to have known it would be something like this that fascinated her; how a plain, talentless thing like him could have made it into a famous wizard’s house. He is only an eldest child, only a lonely old man.

“He doesn’t have to look at me,” he mumbles, “much.”

“And he hired you to clean, not to apprentice!” the Grand Witch says. “He has always been an odd one.”

Yuuri blinks. “I am — erm — was a hatter, Madame, I don’t understand what good it would do to try to make me into a wizard. I wouldn’t be very good at it, I’m sure.” Her comment about having to look at him is making less and less sense.

Then again, Viktor never makes much sense either. Perhaps it’s common among wizards and witches.

The Grand Witch’s lips part in surprise. “Do you mean to tell me,” she says, “that you are not aware that you—"

“Grand Witch!” a voice booms from the doorway, cutting her off. It’s the King.

Yuuri attempts to bow again, but cannot get down too far. The dog-which-might-be-Viktor presses closer against his leg.

“I’ve come up with a new battle strategy!” The King is tall and enthusiastic, with dark hair and a handsome face, but a kind of smugness around his eyes and smile that Yuuri instantly dislikes. “It’s a real winner, this one, and we’ll need less wizards for it.”

Yuuri sees an escape, but before he can say anything, the King claps a heavy hand on his shoulder. “I’ll just escort Wizard Pendragon out, and we can—"

“That is not Wizard Pendragon,” the Grand Witch cuts in. “And you are not the King. Did you really take me for such a fool, Viktor?”

Yuuri can feel his eyes widening, threatening to bug out of his head, but forces them under control. The King? Of all people, Viktor decided that the King was the best possible disguise?

(Another question floated to the front of his mind — who, or what, was the dog, if not Viktor?)

He pats the dog’s head, anyway, because the dog is shaking.

“You’ll be all right,” he murmurs to it. “It’ll be some trouble, but you’ll come out just fine. You’ll see.”

The Grand Witch raises her eyebrows, and mumbles something under her breath. It sounds almost like luck, but Yuuri doesn’t know what it could mean.

“I would never think you were a fool, Madame,” Viktor says. “Only that I had improved in my impressions since you’d seen me last. Which, clearly—"

“Was a mistake,” she says, drumming her fingers against the arm of her chair. “I admit, I did not think you would come. But I knew if you did, it would be in some sort of ridiculous costume. You don’t have the strength to face me head-on.”

Viktor rolls his eyes, and bows, elegantly. He’s back to looking like himself, now, not the King. “Well, as lovely as it has been to catch up—"

“Did you really think I’d let you leave?” she says, raising one elegant eyebrow. “You are not as high of a threat, compared to the Witch, that much is true. But you are not a man I can just allow to walk away.”

Viktor tenses.

“It’s a shame,” she adds. “Yakov had such high hopes for you. And your talent! Raw, pure magical talent comes to only one in a thousand. But you have grown too powerful to be living without a heart, only acting in your own selfish interests. I gave you time, Viktor Nikiforov. And you squandered it.”

“I’ve been looking,” Viktor says, quietly. “Do you think that I — I found someone, the other day, I think that he could be the key — If you’ll just let me find him — ”

“Do not try to lie to me now, Viktor,” she warns. “I am a patient woman, but you have tested me too far. I cannot allow you to keep your power.”

“Yuuri,” Viktor says, under his breath, urgently. “Hold onto me.”

“Viktor—"

“You must trust me,” Viktor says, his voice low and intense, and Yuuri thinks of walking on air, holding his hands. His stomach leaps. “And you must hold on.”

Madame Lilia extends a hand, and Viktor leaps into the sky, pulling Yuuri with him.

Lightning cracks at the place his feet used to be.

“We need to get out of here,” Viktor says urgently. They’ve burst through the ceiling, and landed on the roof. Yuuri can almost sense the fury of Madame Lilia, a floor beneath them. (He feels sorry for leaving the dog behind to deal with it.)

“There were — flying machines,” Yuuri says. “I saw them. On my way in, that is. If we can get back there, perhaps we could—"

“Yuuri,” Viktor says, soft, awed. “You are brilliant. You are a genius. Yakov!”

Yuuri blinks. He’d liked the genius bit, but Viktor has lost him, now. “I’m sorry?”

“Yakov will have one!” he says. “And she’ll call him to help find me! He’ll fly here, and we can take it and escape!”

“Steal it?” Yuuri asks.

“Take,” Viktor says, waving an arm. “I suppose I’ll put a spell on it to send it back to him in the end.”

“She’ll find us in the meantime,” Yuuri points out.

“She can’t track us,” Viktor says. “I’ve put up a — well, a wall, I suppose. We’re invisible. And he’ll be here quickly.”

Yuuri nods. “If she’s Grand Witch, why will she need him?”

“That’s simple enough,” Viktor says. “He trained me.”

Yuuri blinks at him, which Viktor seems to take as an invitation to talk more about himself.

“I was his apprentice, a long time ago. Someone or another recommended me. I didn’t have much family to speak of, and Yakov was good to me.” He looks thoughtful. “He’ll be able to recognize the style of my spells, to trace them to the source — that’s why she’ll need him to find me. I might not be best at disguises,” and here, a small smile creases his mouth, “but I am very, very good at hiding.”

“Why did you leave?” Yuuri says, then feels foolish. “You were training, and she — she said something happened? And you left?”

“I met Yurio,” Viktor says vaguely, “and there were — complications.” He glances over the side of the roof. “There, look, there’s Yakov.”

A square-faced, tall, older man glances around, then vanishes into the castle.

“ Now, ” Viktor hisses, and Yuuri takes his hands without hesitation as they leap over the edge of the roof.

It’s not like skywalking. Yuuri’s heart is pounding too hard for the joy to rise up, his pulse thick and fast in his ears, and it’s not beautiful or golden, just vaguely terrifying. Viktor lands soft as a cat and Yuuri stumbles, and they both clamber onto the flying machine with only a little confusion. Viktor places a hand on the wheel, and there are sparks, and the engine roars — and then there is a loud barking as the dog from earlier pushes out the door and leaps onto the machine next to them.

“Oh, damn, ” Yuuri says, and Madame Lilia and Yakov run out the door after it.

“Hold on!” Viktor shouts, and then they’re in the air.

Yuuri watches as he waves goodbye, charming as ever, and manages a laugh though his terror.

Chapter Text

PART IV: IRREMOVABLE SPELL

“I want to keep the dog,” Viktor says. He’s already sent the flying machine back to wherever it came from, and now he’s cheerfully teaching the dog to shake hands, kneeling on the floor next to him. His hair is in his face, and he keeps tucking it back behind his ears in little, irritate movements that Yuuri watches without meaning to. “I think we’ll call him Makkachin. Oh, good boy,” he adds, delightedly, when the newly-named Makkachin places a paw in his outstretched palm. “What a good boy! Yes, that’s you! Good Makkachin!”

“Whatever you like,” Yuuri says, sitting comfortably in his chair in front of the hearth. The dog pants, and rolls over onto his back, which delights Viktor, if his excited cooing is any indication.

“Who’s a good, lucky, beautiful boy! Who made it home to us! Yes, you did! Good boy!” he says, and Yuuri bites hard on the inside of his mouth to keep from smiling too hard, or sighing, or both. A person with no heart has no right to be so kind to dogs.

Yuri snorts, but leans forward from the fire to peer at the two of them, on the floor. “We’ve got to move,” he says. “If they know where we are, then we’ve got to move houses.”

“ Now you want to move,” Viktor says, snottily, still rubbing Makkachin’s stomach, “when I’ve been saying for weeks that—"

“Shut up,” Yuri says, almost cheerfully. “We need to move and we need to move today.”

“I don’t know about today,” Yuuri says, glancing around. “I’ll have to pack things up.”

Viktor and Yuri both laugh. “Not that kind of moving,” Yuri says. “It’s easier than that. You’ll see.”

Viktor finishes drawing some kind of sigil on the wood floors and brushes chalk dust off his palms, shooting Yuuri and Yuri a beaming smile and flicking his hair out of his eyes. “Ready!” he says. “Yuuri, you had better sit up there.”

He motions to the table. Yuuri blinks, but hoists himself up until he’s sitting on it. “Like this?”

“Perfect!” Viktor says. “Makkachin, jump up with Yuuri!”

Makkachin, clever dog that he is, jumps up with a happy bark and rests his head in Yuuri’s lap. Viktor beams at them again, distracted only by Yuri rattling the edges of the fireplace impatiently.

“I told you we need to do this fast,” he complains. Viktor clears his throat and stands.

“Yes, yes, I’m getting to that, Yura.”

He picks up the shovel that Yuuri uses to clean the ashes from the fireplace, and picks up Yuri with it, carefully easing the flaming mass of his face, along with an odd-looking thing, almost like a lump of coal, but not quite. Yuuri cranes his neck, attempting to see it better, but then notices that it moves, steadily and terribly, like an organ. He looks away, repulsed.

Viktor stands on top of the sigil, holding Yuri, on the shovel, close to his chest, and murmurs something under his breath. Yuri laughs, a high, clear sound that’s close to being wicked, and then he turns to a tall mass of flame, a column of fire stretching to the ceiling, still laughing, and the room shifts around them, changing shape; new pieces of furniture appearing from nowhere. The hearth remains the same, but that’s about it.

Yuuri and Makkachin can only stare. The table they’re sitting on becomes longer and rectangular and a few more chairs appear around it. The chair Yuuri had dragged in front of the fireplace shifts into a comfortable-looking couch. The windows change position and become covered with drapes, and a mirror blooms out of one of the walls.

Viktor beams, and carefully steps away from the sigil, laying Yuri back into the fireplace. Yuri shrinks back down into himself, and Viktor grins at Yuuri and the dog. “Moving’s done!”

“What on earth,” Yuuri says.

Viktor laughs, high and glittering. “Let me show you! I’ve dismissed the connection to the old house we used — it was in Porthaven — and connected us to a new one instead! It’s much bigger, so you’ll have your own room, and Makkachin has lots of space to play, and most importantly, we won’t be found.”

“Hang on,” Yuuri says, weakly, trying to make sense of it all. “I thought — that we were in the moving castle? That the doors just opened into different places?”

“Well — the hearth is in the moving castle,” Viktor says, thoughtfully, laying one of his fingers against his chin. “But that’s the only thing that really is. Everything else is just — a house, you see? From somewhere else.”

“I see,” Yuuri says, though he doesn’t, really. “Where is this house from?”

“Oh, we’re in Hasetsu,” Viktor says, leaning out one of the windows and smiling. “Oh, look, there’s a train!”

Yuuri freezes.

“Hasetsu?” he says, his voice a creak. “A train?”

He walks to the window, and looks out, a lump building in his throat. It’s — they can’t be, it’s impossible, and yet — they’re in the apartments above the hat shop.

It’s been more than a month since he’s been here, and it’s decorated differently, but he would know the corners of this house in darkness, has known them in darkness. His fingers brush a dent in the wall — Mari had kicked it once while trying to play during a rainstorm. There’s the window where his father would sit and peel peas for dinner, there’s the wall that used to hold his mother’s cookbooks, there’s the doorway where Mari and Yuuri’s heights were measured all throughout their childhood. His fingers brush that, too, and he’s shocked to see that it’s not painted over, that the marks are faded with age but still there. The mark he and his sister left on the house, unblemished. His fingers hover over Yuuri, 10 yrs, in his father’s cramped handwriting, then move to touch Mari, 13 yrs and Yuuri, 12 yrs in his mother’s blockier, wider letters . Viktor and Makkachin move behind him, but he cannot look away from those faint scratches of pencil, his last remnant of his parents and their handwriting.

How could he have known? Yuuri thinks, frantic and emotional. Does he know who I am? Why would he bring us here, of all places?

He glances at Viktor, who is smiling at him hopefully. “Come and see your room!” he says encouragingly, and opens a door.

It’s the — admittedly rather small — room where Yuuri used to sit and make hats, choking on smoke, only now there are no hats and no workbench, only a bed and a soft chair and an empty shelf, to be filled with whatever he likes. It’s quiet, and cozy, and the window is open, making the room smell of smoke.

“Do you like it?” Viktor asks cheerily. “I thought you should stop living in the middle of Yuri’s room. That curtain was hideous.”

Yuuri laughs, because if he doesn’t, he’ll cry. “It’s perfect,” he says. “Thank you.”

He wonders, idly, who will be living in the room he used to share with Mari, or the room which used to belong to his parents. Viktor will have to sleep somewhere, of course. But all the books and papers have vanished from the room with the fireplace, and Yuuri suspects they have migrated to one of the bedrooms.

He tries not to think too hard about Viktor sleeping, perhaps, in a place where Yuuri had also slept for close to twenty-five years.

Yuri rattles the hearth again, pointedly, and he shakes himself out of it. “Which place did we break off from?” he asks. “Porthaven, or Kingsbury, or—"

He thinks of the black part of the dial, the one which leads to a different place every time he sneaks a look out of the door.

Viktor smiles. “Porthaven,” he says. “I’ve broken the castle’s connection to the specific place in Kingsbury that we were — Pendragon’s shop — but we’re still connected there, just somewhere else. I thought somewhere by the docks would be nice. I do like the ocean.”

“All right,” Yuuri said, glancing over at the dial by the door. The blue section, then, must stand for Kingsbury now; the Waste is likely still the red. “Is Hasetsu the green or the white?”

The black section on the dial is gone completely, but he decides not to ask about that.

“The white!” Viktor chirps. “It’s for the train and the smoke, I think. Yuri did it. The green is — well, I should just show you.”

“Oh,” Yuuri says, “that’s all right, I—"

“Don’t be silly!” Viktor says. “You’ve lived here long enough. It’s your house too.”

Yuuri swallows a laugh. You don’t know how right you are, he thinks. “Okay, Viktor,” he says. “Show me.”

“Makkachin should come too,” Viktor says delightedly, whistling for the dog. “We’ll be back in a moment, Yura!”

“That’s fine, just leave me here,” Yuri grumbles. “Don’t thank me for the new house. Not like I did all the work or anything—"

“Oh, yes, thank you very much,” Yuuri tells him. “My new room is wonderful.”

“You would like a cramped, ugly closet like that,” Yuri says, and snorts, and gives him a grateful look when Viktor’s not looking. Yuuri smiles back.

Then Viktor clicks the dial to the green section and opens the door, and Yuuri forgets everything.

Makkachin bounds ahead, barking and chasing the wind, and Yuuri takes a trembling step forward, out of the castle door. He feels as if he’s stepped into another world completely, a world made of gentle breezes and golden sunshine, a world of flowers and mist. There’s a silvery lake directly in front of him, a tiny cottage nestled next to it, and all the grass surrounding it is dotted with purple and white and gold flowers.

He breathes in, deep. His lungs don’t wheeze.

He could be young again, in this moment.

“Isn’t it lovely?” Viktor says. “I come here sometimes. To be alone.”

He’s standing next to him, looking completely content with being still, at least for the moment. Yuuri watches as his eyes skim over the flowers, and thinks there’s something sad and hungry in him, then; something desperately searching and unsure what, if anything, it will actually find.

It makes him sad, so he turns back to the flowers.

“It feels like I’m dreaming,” he says, his voice hushed. “It feels like — something in an adventure.”

“Why do you say that?” Viktor asks, tilting his head at him. Yuuri thinks he ought to feel nervous, or like he’s said the wrong thing, but he doesn’t. He understands, for a moment, Viktor’s words from days before — you are something to look at. Everyone is.

He feels seen.

“I’m the oldest in my family,” he says. “I’m not meant to have adventures.”

“I’ve never really understood that superstition,” Viktor says. “I never had any siblings, so technically I’m neither oldest or youngest, but I’ve had a fair amount of adventure, all the same.”

Yuuri shrugs. “Everyone knows oldest siblings are unlucky. Whenever they try to go out and — slay giants or fight wizards or marry king’s daughters, it always ends badly. It’s the same with me, I was always — timid. Nervous. I was much more suited to home.”

Viktor laughs. “It’s funny that you describe yourself that way.”

“Well,” Yuuri says, not sure if he should be insulted or not, “how would you describe me, then?”

He realizes how genuinely terrible of a question it was about two seconds after asking it, and two seconds after that, he realizes how much he does not want an answer. Better to go on believing Viktor tolerates him than to know how he really feels—

“Brave,” Viktor says, and smiles directly at him, and though there’s something distant about it, there’s something warm, too. “And stubborn, and kind, but I think most of all you’re brave, Yuuri.” He takes a few steps forward, moving closer to the dog. “There’s not many people who would walk straight into the castle of an evil wizard and make themselves at home.”

Yuuri stands shocked, fighting the smile that threatens to crack over his face.

Brave.

The sunlight seems, somehow, even brighter.

When they return to the castle and Yuri, Viktor only lasts a few seconds indoors before smoothing back his hair and skipping outside to look at the town, seeming fascinated by the streets of Hasetsu, as if they are something interesting and lovely instead of the same streets Yuuri has known since he was a child. Yuuri’s eyes follow him as he goes: the movements of his shoulders and back under his soft white shirt, so much less intimidating than his gaudy coat. The swirl of his silver hair, like moonlight. The eager way he steps, like there’s something fantastic waiting for him, just outside the door. He swallows hard, and looks away, meeting Yuri’s eyes from the fireplace and wanting to blush, for some reason. To get his thoughts back in order, he sets to trimming the stems of the flowers he’d picked while in the field.

“He’s not as evil as people say he is, is he,” Yuuri asks, to change the subject, and because he’s seen the spells lying around, seen the books and the trinkets, and none of them speak particularly of evil, just of wizardry. It’s not just that, though. It’s the desperate look in Viktor’s eyes, wanting so much when he looked at the field of flowers. Heartless and hopeless and yearning. “He’s not even as evil as he thinks he is.”

“No,” Yuri says, chewing on one of the flower stems which Yuuri threw to him, “but he’s careless and flighty, and I think that’s worse. He wasn’t made for all this. He had too much heart, before.”

“Before?”

Yuri’s blue-fire eyes examine him carefully, and then they look away. “Contracts,” he says. “Spells. I’m not allowed to talk about before.”

“Can I guess?”

“You wouldn’t get it right,” Yuri snorts, burrowing into the ash. Yuuri hums uneasily, and goes back to arranging the flowers from the field into vases, tossing Yuuri leaves to crunch on as he goes.

He wants to ask a million more questions, about Viktor and Yuri and meetings and beginnings. He thinks if he just, maybe, had one more piece of this puzzle, he could manage it. He could sever their connection, break their curse. Set them both free.

“You’re still cursed,” Yuri says, suddenly. Yuuri glances over at him, confused at how similar their trains of thought were, and tosses him another leaf. He catches it in his mouth.

“Yes,” Yuuri says. “I am.”

“You shouldn’t be,” Yuri says, through his mouthful of leaf. “The Witch of the Waste is — I mean, the Grand Witch took her power away, right?”

“I think so,” Yuuri says cautiously, placing a vase in the middle of the table.

“Then the curse should be broken,” Yuri says. “If its caster has no more power. You should be back to normal already.”

Yuuri glances at himself. “I’m not.”

“Yeah, I know, I’m not an idiot,” the fire demon snorts, spraying ashes in Yuuri’s direction. He coughs.

“Maybe I’ll be like this forever,” he mumbles, looking at his hands. He’s used to it now, certainly, but — he can’t help but feel horrified at the idea.

“Maybe,” Yuri says, almost cheerfully. “You’ll have to stay here. None of your old friends will recognize you.”

Yuuri nods, his throat suddenly tight. “I suppose.”

“Maybe Viktor will find that stupid guy he’s been looking for,” Yuri says, less cheerful and more thoughtful, and Yuuri feels it hit him in the stomach. Maybe he will. Maybe he will also look into that boy’s eyes, whoever he is, and tell him he’s brave. Maybe that boy will be a youngest child with bright eyes who will be able to break Viktor’s curse. Maybe he’ll get his heart back. Maybe whoever the boy is will slip into this little life in the castle, in Yuuri’s old house, and Yuuri will put flowers in vases and watch. “And we’ll all live here together.”

“That would be something,” Yuuri says, looking at the door to his room, where he used to darn hats, where he’ll sleep, now. Before, it seemed endlessly thoughtful, but now it only seems like something that will keep him out of the way. “Wouldn’t it?”

“I dunno,” Yuri says. “Maybe. I like you better. At least you talk to me.”

Yuuri spins to look at him, watches as his eyes widen and then narrow.

“Don’t tell anyone I said that.”

Yuuri can’t help smiling, then. “I won’t.” He turns back to his flowers. “For the record,” he says, “I like you, too.”

Yuri scoffs, but doesn’t try to protest it.

Viktor comes back bright-eyed and beaming. “Hasetsu is so wonderful! There are so many nice people here! I went to the park and the bakery and they were all so kind to me—"

Yuuri watches him talk on and on, something fond and gentle thudding at his heart, and sees Yuri look between the two of them and settle back into the ashes, his eyes intent and searching.

“Did you find him?” Yuri asks. Viktor blinks.

“Who?”

“That guy,” Yuri says. “You first met him here, right?”

“I — yes,” Viktor says, slowly. “I — didn’t find him. I wasn’t really looking.” He looks odd, then; troubled and thoughtful. “I wasn’t looking.”

“I thought you loved him,” Yuuri says, without meaning to. He tries to look as though he hasn’t been flicking through his mental list of all the handsome men he has ever noticed in Hasetsu for the last few minutes, trying to find out who could have captivated Viktor so completely. Mickey Crispino, maybe, or the mayor’s son, Phichit —

“Yes,” Viktor says, even more slowly. “I thought so, too.”

He looks back at Yuri, and Yuuri watches them both, Yuri intent, Viktor with his face half in shadow from the fire.

“Maybe I — maybe I really can’t,” he says, “Yura — maybe we can’t break it,” and he’s reaching up to touch the side of his chest, almost like he’s —

Oh.

His heart, Yuuri thinks.

Yuri says nothing, only sinks back further into the ashes, looking — for the first time that Yuuri can remember — nervous. He thinks, then, of the way Yuri had sunken into himself in the days before they went to the King’s castle, the way he’d been so distant and . . . exhausted.

He has a sudden, terrible feeling that if the curse is not broken soon, the two of them will break instead.

Feeling as if he’s observed something Viktor hadn’t wanted him to see, he quietly leaves the room.

He closes the door to his new bedroom, and lies down to sleep, but for hours, it seems, all he can do is think; about Viktor, about Yuri, about beings with no hearts, and how on earth they met each other and came to live in this castle. He thinks of crying, and aging, and being special; of Viktor calling him brave and truly seeming to mean it.

He thinks of being alive, despite everything; being separate from his friends and his family, and misses Yuuko and Mari in a rush which almost hurts. But then his mind just flicks back around, to Yuri in the fireplace, irritating and loud but sometimes shooting Yuuri quiet sideways glances, glad to have someone to talk to. He thinks Viktor’s big smiles and distant eyes, of the quiet, puzzled look on Viktor’s face when Yuuri had sobbed, the emptiness in it as he touched the side of his chest. Trying to feel grief just like he tries to feel everything else.

Then, he thinks of being left behind at the bakery, heart pounding, head barely daring to wish for something that just for a moment, he thought he could deserve.

I’m angry at him for it, for leaving, he thinks, and wishes he wasn’t. It would be much easier to not care what Viktor thinks of him, or what Viktor does, or even what Yuri does. But Viktor flew with him, and then left him behind. And now Viktor looks at him and calls him brave. Now Viktor sees him, and it’s the same as flying, the same as skywalking. The same rush and threat of falling.

Yuuri buries his face in his hands and breathes deep. It had been easier when Viktor was just a handsome stranger who’d left another crack in his glass heart. It had been easier when Yuuri hadn’t known anything about him besides his hands and smile and eyes. It had been easier when Yuuri hadn’t known how Viktor looked when he rested his hand over the empty cavity in his chest and whispered maybe we can’t.

You know all that, Yuuri tells himself sternly, and you’re still angry with him? But he can’t help it, not really. He may know why he was left behind at the bakery that day — Viktor can’t care about people, not in the way he wants him to — but it still happened. It still hurts.

But that young man, he thinks, whoever he is, he left Viktor behind, and puzzlingly, he feels sorry for Viktor for being abandoned, along with a rush of anger towards this stranger, for hurting him.

He rolls over and tugs the blankets up to his ears. He can hear the faint sounds of Viktor and Yuri talking, not loud enough to make out words, but enough to hear the tension.

Uneasily, he sleeps.

The next morning, Viktor is back to pretending nothing has happened, and Yuri is back to sinking into the ashes of the hearth like the rest of them aren’t there. Yuuri taps his cane cautiously on the floor in front of the fireplace, and then louder and less cautiously, before determining that Yuri is either deliberately ignoring him or too lost in his own thoughts to notice him, and deciding to leave him be.

“Did you know,” Viktor chirps, from the table, “this used to be a hat shop?”

“Did it,” says Yuuri, torn between remembrance and amusement.

“Yes!” Viktor says. He isn’t wearing his gaudy coat, today, only that same white shirt, loose and thin. Yuuri used to think he would only look like half of himself without that coat, but instead he just looks gentle, somehow. Softer around the edges, like he did in amidst the flowers, his hair tied up. “Maybe we can open a shop too. You’re good at putting those flowers together, they look so beautiful!”

“I don’t think I’d like a shop,” Yuuri says, glancing around at the flowers from the field, still in vases on various shelves and tables around the room. “When I was younger, I had one, but it was a lot of work for one person.”

“I’d help,” Viktor says, as though it’s the most obvious thing in the world. “You wouldn’t be doing it alone.”

Yuuri can feel himself going red. “You would — stay in one place? For that long?”

Viktor laughs. “Well, I’d have to get better at my disguises, so Madame Lilia won’t find us out, but — yes, of course. I think I’d like it, staying still for a bit with you.”

Yuuri goes redder, and tells himself Viktor doesn’t mean with you in the gentle way Yuuri wants it to be meant. “And Yuri,” he adds, nodding at the unresponsive fire demon. Viktor waves a hand.

“Of course,” he says again. “Anywhere I go, Yura goes too. We’ve been together for far too long to split up.”

“How did you meet him?” Yuuri asks, remembering how Viktor called him brave and vowing to act like it, at least as much as he can manage. Asking a question is a good step, he supposes.

Viktor suddenly goes brusque and cagey. “Ah, it was a long time ago,” he says. “I was a child.”

That does explain some things, Yuuri thinks; their ease and familiarity combined with the way they sometimes don’t seem to like each other at all. They’ve known each other for — well. He squints at Viktor.

“How old are you?”

Viktor frowns, but it’s a thoughtful frown, not a cagey one. “I . . . I’m not sure.”

“How can you not be sure?” Yuuri says, and raises his eyebrows. He believes him — Viktor’s fingers always seem to get twitchy when he openly lies, and he starts to play with his hair or tap on the table or worry the edges of his shirt between his fingers. “You can’t have had that many. It’s all right if I forget how old I am. That’s to be expected.”

Viktor laughs, then. “But you’re not really all that old, either.”

“Hmph,” Yuuri mutters, thinking that he sounds very old indeed. “You know I’m under a spell, not that I’m young.”

“Why would you disguise yourself as an old man if you already are one?” Viktor challenges, and Yuuri nearly laughs in his face.

You think I’m disguised, Viktor? he tries to say, but the curse doesn’t let him. He hmphs to himself again, instead. He’s come to realize that the curse allows him to talk about something that another person already knows, but he can’t give them new information. Sometimes the loophole is nice, and sometimes it’s dreadful, like now.

Viktor blinks at him, then the confusion in his face fades. “Ah,” he says. “You can’t talk about it.”

He seems intrigued rather than disappointed. Yuuri sighs.

He wishes he could ask Viktor for help, ask him why the curse hasn’t faded when the Witch lost her powers, but his mouth and throat close up. Perhaps it’s for the best.

Viktor looks out the window, the picture of grace, his feet kicked up on the table and his hands behind his head. “The war is still coming,” he says. “I wonder if I made a mistake, walking away from Lilia.”

“She would have taken your power away,” Yuuri says, and gives him a judgemental look. Viktor laughs again, but it’s a tired, sad laugh.

“Maybe that’s what I deserve,” he says. “She was right. I’ve only ever used it for myself. I’ve never — I’ve never wanted to use it for anyone else.”

Yuuri snorts, which is probably the wrong way to react to Viktor confessing something of this magnitude. Viktor only tilts his head at him, not seeming to mind.

“She wasn’t right,” Yuuri says, hoping it sounds final, solid. “You — you aren’t as evil as you think you are, Viktor. I think you ought to admit that to yourself.”

“I don’t have a heart,” Viktor points out.

“Anyone who’s seen you fuss over Makkachin will disagree with that,” Yuuri says. “You have a heart, Viktor, I’m sure of it. You just . . . haven’t been connected to it for a while. You need to find it again.”

“I thought that boy would help me find it,” Viktor says. It’s not the dramatic, mournful way Yuuri has heard him talk about The Boy. It’s — more devastated. More real. “When I first met him, I could almost feel it. A thudding, from somewhere far off. Something in my heart responded. Something — something knew him.” He looks away from the window and back over to Yuuri. “But — I don’t know where he is. And that faded, too, when I didn’t see him anymore. And I — I don’t know what to do next, Yuuri. I’m afraid if I can’t —"

He trails off, then, but it’s not natural; it’s choked and hauling to a stop.

Yuri’s voice echoes in Yuuri’s head: contracts. Spells. I’m not allowed to talk about before.

“Viktor,” Yuuri says softly, struck by sudden fear, “if you stay too long without a heart, will you — will you die?”

He watches as Viktor tries, desperately, to answer. To give him a yes or a no.

He can’t open his mouth.

Yuuri stands, struck by that same fear, and by recklessness. Maybe bravery, even. He has trouble telling them apart.

“You won’t,” he says, to Viktor, silent and struggling. “I won’t let you.”

Yuuri goes to pat him on the shoulder, in the comforting way of uncles and grandfathers, but Viktor surprises him by catching his hand and holding it to his face, leaning into the touch and sighing, slow and deep, as if at peace.

Yuuri is suddenly aware of all the nerve endings in his hands, all the minuscule places where his skin touches the wizard’s, the heat in his cheeks and the insistent thudding of his heart. Viktor’s smile is as slow and breathtaking as a sunset.

“When you say it like that, so determined, I almost believe it,” Viktor says, and then lets him go. “I suppose that’s the point, though, hm?”

“Ah,” Yuuri says, uncertain and desperately breathless. “Yes.”

Viktor just continues to watch him, his eyes ice-blue and glittering, and Yuuri can’t tell whether he should be looking back, which feels reckless, dangerous, electric, or walking away, which is much safer.

His fingers still buzz in all the places where Viktor’s skin had brushed.

Viktor opens his mouth to say something else, and then Yuri coughs irritably from the fire, and Yuuri jumps back, with the odd feeling of drawing away from a bright light, backing into shadow, into hiding. He thinks he sees a flash of hurt on Viktor’s face, but it’s replaced by amusement so quickly he can’t be sure if he really saw it or if he just really wanted to see it.

“Listening in on us, Yura?” he says easily, and Yuuri’s hands shake as they reach for his cane. He feels caught and watched, as if he’s done something he shouldn’t have. Glancing at the fire reveals that Yuri is looking back at him, unimpressed, sparks occasionally flicking off his hair and landing in the ash. He isn’t angry; the sparks are wilder then, and will sometimes land on the carpet, starting small fires that Yuuri will have to stomp out.

(Yuuri is reminded for the thousandth time over that he is sharing a home with two powerful and magical beings that he cannot ever hope to compare himself to.)

“It’s impossible not to,” Yuri grumbles, “you’re so loud.”

Viktor chuckles and stands to give him another log from the pile. “Well, when we have important discussions in the future, we’ll whisper.”

“Hmph,” Yuri says, and glares at them both before turning his back as best he can.

***

Yuuri can remember days passing quickly in Hasetsu when he was living here, before, and that doesn’t change: a week and a half goes by before he can think to catalogue it. Viktor spends a lot of time in the house, pouring through books in Yuri’s fireplace room and discussing things with him, and occasionally with Yuuri, when Yuuri is there. Yuuri makes sure they all eat, even though Viktor claims to not need to, and ventures out into the streets and market of the town he knows by heart. He’s shorter as an old man, and a little braver from his time in the castle. Brave enough to make conversation when he might not have, before; brave enough to cautiously visit the bakery and strike up a conversation with the cashier, casually asking after Yuuko.

(She still hasn’t had her baby. It’s a wonder; she looked so far along when he last saw her, and that was more than a month ago.)

He visits the Waste, where Turnip Head is still standing balanced on the balcony of the moving castle, which has stopped next to the beautiful lake they’d visited once before. Yuuri looks at the scarecrow, and the scarecrow watches him back. It has green-painted eyes and slightly more lift on one side of its smile, like it’s barely containing a smirk.

“You’re cursed, too,” Yuuri says to it, once. “We’re not ourselves, either of us.”

It bounces back and forth hard enough that its straw head sways in an almost-nod.

“I seem to have a lot of curses to break,” Yuuri mumbles, then looks back at it. “But I’ll keep an eye out for what to do with yours.”

More bouncing, even more enthusiastic this time. Yuuri smiles.

He learns, too, that the missing hatter is a household story in Hasetsu, but that hardly anyone can describe him in anything other than the vague terms of a nice young man, quiet, eldest-born, you know — dark hair and a sweet face. It’s a little disturbing to hear his entire life summed up so easily. It’s a little more than just disturbing to truly see the after-effects to the spell, his complete disappearance from his own life, and how absolutely no one has wondered enough to look for him.

He goes home — and it’s both odd and comforting to think of the castle as home — to Yuri and Viktor, and tells Viktor that the young people have been gossiping about him at the market to make him laugh, and gives Yuri the eggshells when he makes dinner.

(He can’t help but notice that even if the two of them eat a good meal, Viktor still looks tired and worried, and Yuri still sparks a little less brightly.

You won’t die, he told Viktor, I won’t let you. It’s becoming more and more clear that while it was an easy promise to make, it will be a hard one to keep.)

Yuuri is half dozing and half attempting to decode the frustratingly vague terms of Viktor and Yuri’s spell when there’s a knocking at the door, harsh and rhythmic. Yuri narrows his eyes at it. They haven’t had many visitors lately, ever since moving here and disconnecting from the shop in Kingsbury. “That’s the Hasetsu door,” he says, after a moment passes and the knocking only grows more insistent.

“Oh,” Yuuri says, and stands irritably to get it. “If it’s one more person who thinks this is still a hat shop, I’ll—"

He trails off and blinks as soon as he has the door open, his heart thudding unsteadily; it’s Mari, standing on the steps, a determined look on her face and several new metal studs in her ears. Her hands are clenched into fists, her eyes burning. Yuuri can remember her all throughout their childhood, looking like this, when people would laugh at her, when people would laugh at Yuuri. Ready to do anything. Ready, he thinks, to be brave.

“I want to talk to you,” she says, and he blinks hard, and notices that there are two people standing next to her: Yuuko, looking very pregnant, and Yuuko’s husband Takeshi, looking very worried.

“Should she be standing up?” Yuuri says, and then feels like a fool. It’s not his place, anymore, to worry about Yuuko. They don’t know him.

It hurts more than it should.

This will be over soon, he tells himself. Then you can hug Mari so hard your arms shake.

“Come inside,” he says quickly, before anyone can say anything more. “She can sit, and — I can talk. Do you want some tea?”

“Yes, please,” Yuuko says, placing a comforting hand on Mari’s arm, as if telling her to calm down. Something in Mari’s shoulders slumps, though it’s not quite relaxation. “I’d love to sit a moment. We had to stand on the train, you see.”

“Please,” Yuuri says, horribly aware of how croaking his voice is, how old he is, how little he looks like himself. “Come inside.”

When everyone is seated around the table, the tea shakily poured into cups, Yuuri takes a deep breath and tries to smile. It’s odd, so odd, to have them sitting right there and looking at him and not know him.

He spares a quick glance at the fire, but Yuri is nowhere to be seen, only Makkachin, snoring.

It’s good, that he’s keeping hidden, but Yuuri can’t help thinking that it would be comforting to have someone in the room who recognized him.

(Yuri, being comforting. An odd thought.)

Mari folds her hands around the mug of tea and looks at him, her eyes hard and searching. She doesn’t look like his sister. She looks tired, and lonely. “I wanted to talk to you about,” she says, and struggles with it. “About the man who lives here — lived here, just before you, I mean.”

Oh, no, Yuuri thinks. Though, desperately, he also feels glad, just for her to be here, looking, to be missing him enough. For his disappearance framed as a tragedy and not a story in the market.

“Of course,” he says out loud. “Though I can’t say I know much about him.”

“Did you ever meet him, when you bought the place?” Mari presses. “Did he tell you where he was going, or, or, why he was leaving? I’ve tried, I’ve looked everywhere I can think of, but I can’t find him — he was always supposed to be here.” The look on her face is haunting in its devastation. “I thought he liked it here, I thought he was happy, he always sounded happy, he — he just left. He never said goodbye.”

“It sounds like you know more about him than I do,” Yuuri says quietly.

“He was my older brother,” Mari says, and her eyes shine. She doesn’t look brave, in that moment, she just looks young, and alone. “Our parents are — he’s all I have left. Had. Damn it.”

“I don’t see how anyone could deliberately leave you,” Yuuri says. “Not in that situation. Not on purpose.” Let her understand, he pleads. I will follow the rules of the spell, but let her understand. “I’m sure he’ll be back.”

“We’re worried,” Yuuko says, “because before he vanished — or left, or whatever he did — he was acting odd. Distant. He kept looking out over to the Waste with this look on his face like he was searching for something — and he ran into this wizard, on May Day. Helped him out of a tight spot, or something. And after he was talking about Viktor Nikiforov’s castle and how it could ever work and — I don’t know. It’s not — I mean, our Yuuri’s too smart to fall for some wizard’s tricks, but — can you see why we’re worried?”

Smart, Yuuri thinks, and for a moment he’s half dizzy with the word. Smart. Not too plain or too quiet to be chosen. Too smart to fall for tricks.

It’s nice to hear someone describe him like that to a stranger.

“He’s always been soft,” Mari says, tracing her fingers over the rim of the mug. “Not in a bad way, I just mean — he loves people so easily, and so hard. It — it could backfire on him so quickly, with someone who didn’t deserve it. If he, somehow, ran into Viktor — if he — I don’t know. I don’t like feeling so helpless. Ever since we were kids, he’s been there for me, he’s encouraged me to follow my dreams, and he’s never taken a second for himself, I — I used to worry that one day he would wake up and realize I’m not worth his faith. Now I’m worried that that’s what he did.”

Yuuri takes a sip from his tea, and hopes they chalk his shaking hands up to his age and not to his heart breaking. Mari, he wants to tell her, Mari, I love you, you’ve deserved every ounce of faith I’ve given you. “I see,” he says. “I — I wish I could help. Truly.”

“Don’t be sorry,” Yuuko said, a gentle twist to her mouth. “We knew it was a long shot. If no one in town has seen him, how would you?”

“I do remember,” Yuuri says, hesitantly, wondering if the curse will shut him up. “Hearing something about a young man who — ran away. Something — something was stolen from him, I think, and he had to get it back. I don’t know if it was a tale or the truth, but it’s all I know.” Relieved that he’s been able to say something, he sits back. Mari is so clever, surely she’ll be able to figure out just a bit of it — surely!

“I see,” Mari says. “Well, thank you anyway.”

She sounds so tired. Yuuri aches to reach over and hug her, make her smile, do something. He grips the mug tighter, because he can’t, he can’t, he’s old, he’s not her brother anymore—

“If you find out anything more, I’ve been staying at the bakery — would you let me know?” she asks, and he has no trouble nodding, hands clenched around his mug, then the door, and then squeezing into his own palms, watching as Yuuko wraps an arm around Mari’s shoulders, as his stalwart, brave sister crumbles around the edges with the loss of him, while he can do nothing at all.

The door swings closed, and Yuri peeks up from the embers.

“Were they,” he says, and doesn’t finish; Yuuri is already nodding, half in tears at having to say goodbye.

“That was my sister,” he manages, and crumbles into a chair, shoulders shaking. “Damn this curse—"

“It’s not so bad,” Yuri says, hesitantly, “you’re here, with us, aren’t you?”

He tries to respond, but he can only cry, for Mari and Yuuko, for his loss of youth, for his loss of his life, of himself. Yuri sinks back down into the fireplace, and watches him.

He doesn’t offer comfort, but whether this is because he is uncaring or if he simply does not know how, Yuuri isn’t sure.

“I just miss them so much,” he chokes out into the silence of the room, his tears blinding him. “They don’t know me and I can’t tell them—"

“What are we then,” Yuri snaps, “just some kind of replacement family for them, or—"

Yuuri chokes on the word no, can’t get it out of his mouth; because after all this time, they are his family, but not replacements, just new, but he can’t lose anyone else, he can’t give them hope and disappoint them when he finally gets back to normal, he can’t —

“You’re — you’re Yuri and Viktor,” he manages. “And the castle, and Turnip Head and Makkachin, I — it’s not like I want to go, I just — my sister,” he says, and can’t explain it, not in a way that Yuri will ever be able to understand. “I wish she could know me. She’s my sister.”

“Some sister,” Yuri says, scornful, “can’t even figure out you’re under a curse—"

“Yura,” Viktor says, coming from nowhere, his voice soft and firm. “Leave him be.”

Yuuri looks up to him, standing there in the hallway, and for a moment it almost looks as though he will walk over, and put his hand on Yuuri’s shoulder, and attempt to comfort him. He doesn’t.

He only stands there and looks.

“You think it’s funny,” Yuuri mumbles. “When I cry.”

“Never,” Viktor says, with such intensity that Yuuri looks up and blinks. “I just — I don’t know what you want me to do.”

“You could tell me I’ll break the spell, eventually,” Yuuri says. “And that I’ll have them back.”

“I don’t know for certain,” Viktor says. “I wouldn’t lie to you.”

“It’s not a lie,” Yuuri says, “it’s faith, and — and I wish that someone would have faith in me, more than I do.”

Viktor says nothing for a moment, then sighs. “The young man who had something stolen from him,” he says, “and ran away — that was you.”

Yuuri nods, his throat too tight to speak. It’s not from the curse, though, just from his tears.

“I should have worked it out before now,” Viktor mumbles. “You’re the missing hatter. This was your house.”

“Duh,” Yuri says. Viktor makes a rude gesture at him in an attempt to hush him.

“I’m sorry,” Viktor says. “I — we can go to a different house. A different town.”

“No,” Yuuri says, and a hysterical laugh bubbles up in him. “No, I — I’m happy here,” and Viktor turns to look at him, his profile glowing in the firelight. He’s so real , glowing, reflecting Yuri’s light. Yuuri blinks away more tears. “I’m happy here.”

“You’re crying,” Yuri points out. “Ugh. You don’t make any sense.”

Viktor crosses the room and sits down next to him. “Would it help to tell me about her? Your sister.”

Yuuri thinks back to the last time he cried in front of Viktor, how he’d screamed about how he’d never been beautiful. Thinks of how skittish and confused Viktor was, and how different he is, now, how gentle the movement of his hand is as it reaches out to hold on to Yuuri’s shoulder.

He closes his eyes so he doesn’t cry harder. “Yes,” he says, his voice barely a whisper. “I think it would.”

Some of the stories are silly, but Viktor sits and listens to all of them with a quiet smile on his face, and Yuuri’s heartbeat slows, his heartache ever-present but faded enough to ignore. Viktor prods him for more and more stories, about himself this time, and now that Viktor knows the curse doesn’t stop him, and he talks about stealing raw dough from Yuuko’s parents at the bakery, how as a child he was always staring off into the sky, the summers of combing the nearby rivers and ponds with Takashi and Mari for tiny frogs, the winters when he would sneak out in the middle of the night and dance on the frozen lake, half a mile away. His childhood, summed up in sentences.

When he exhausts himself, when he has no more stories, Viktor touches his shoulder again, squeezing gently. “You told me — the other night — that if something tried to hurt me, you wouldn’t let it.”

“I meant that,” Yuuri tells him.

“Then allow me to mean it, too,” Viktor says, and holds his gaze. “You’ll break this spell. And anything that tries to stop that from happening will have to go through me.”

Yuuri fights the urge to cry all over again.

Viktor, then, smiles and jumps up. “I’ve been looking in my books for spells like it! It really is quite fascinating. Spells are supposed to break, no questions asked, if the caster is unable to maintain them. And yours has just kept going. It almost seems like it’s a different spell entirely, which makes no sense considering—"

Yuuri intends to listen; really, he does. But he’s old, and exhausted from crying and storytelling, and he drifts off in his chair, Yuri’s warmth falling on his face and Viktor’s voice in his ears.

It’s peaceful.

Chapter Text

PART V: LOVE UNDER FIRE

He wakes up to rattling windows and the smell of smoke.

“Yuri,” he says, “did something happen?”

“Get down,” Yuri shouts, intense and afraid, and Yuuri blinks and fumbles for his cane. Yuri sounding serious is odd; that he would sound scared is even stranger. The two combined is enough to make Yuuri very, very confused, and very, very worried.

“What—?”

“There’s fighting, idiot, there’s other wizards out there, get down—"

There’s another rattle, and a distant boom. Yuuri’s stomach turns over.

“Where’s Viktor?”

“How should I know?” Yuri snaps, and Yuuri can hear genuine concern in his voice, scarier by far than the fires outside. “Get — get under something, I can’t help you if this screws up—"

Yuuri ignores him and stumbles to the window, opening it hastily and looking out to try and find out what’s happening. His stomach turns over again, and he feels almost close to vomiting, watching as sparks burn out in the air, as smoke rises by the river. “Viktor,” he calls, and there is no response. “Viktor—"

There’s another rattling boom, and Yuuri feels a pair of arms circle his waist and pull him down to the floor, away from the window.

Viktor’s face, inches from his, is almost amused.

“Were you worried about me?” he says. “That’s sweet.”

“Shit,” Yuri says, with feeling, the log underneath him hissing and popping. “Vitya, you—"

“I’m all right,” Viktor says, waving an airy hand, and then extending it and helping Yuuri stand, either not noticing or not mentioning that his whole body is trembling. Yuuri suspects the former; Viktor may have been acting more understanding lately but he is still, at his core, rather self-absorbed.

Yuuri shakes his head to clear it.

“What’s going on?” he asks, and Viktor shrugs.

“I’m not sure, I came straight home,” he explains, tapping on his chin with a finger and looking calm, as if they’d heard the sound of distant music rather than an explosion. “I think something might have happened in the harbor.”

“Yesterday,” Yuuri says, trying to make sense of it, “you said the war was still coming, is this—"

Viktor’s face darkens a little. “It could be.”

He turns, as if to leave; Yuuri reaches out and grabs his wrist, before he can.

(He wonders at that, quietly. There was a time when he would have been afraid to even touch Viktor’s sleeve.)

“You need to explain,” he says. “Yuri can’t leave, and I don’t think I should either — but that doesn’t mean we don’t deserve to understand.”

“I don’t understand it myself,” Viktor says, “I’ve seen wars, and this is all too — perfect.”

Yuuri’s brows furrow questioningly and Viktor hurries to explain.

“A prince vanishes, and instead of — of raising and training an army, the King sends for wizards, and the Witch of the Waste, and then her powers are taken away. If you hadn’t been with me I would have shared her fate.”

“I know all that,” Yuuri says. “But what do you mean by perfect?”

“I don’t know, ” Viktor says, “but don’t you think that — perhaps Madame Lilia has more of a say in state affairs than she should?”

“You think this was all some kind of set-up to get to you?” Yuri scoffs, and flicks some ash at him. “That’s stupid.”

Viktor shrugs. “I don’t know if that was entirely it, but when she said all that about me being too powerful to be walking around without a heart, I wondered. It would have been foolproof were it not for Yuuri being there, after all. No one would have knows what had happened to me.” He pauses, tapping his finger to his chin again. “Maybe there’s something else to gain from a war, land or some such, though I doubt we’ll ever know. But it doesn’t seem — well. Organic, I suppose. It seems like it’s been planned out.”

Yuri is silent, then, and Yuuri thinks back to his words from a month ago — wars never last. You shouldn’t worry about it. For the first time, he wonders if he’d ever said the same thing to Viktor.

“Do you think she — I mean, do you think the prince is—"

“I don’t know, Yura,” Viktor says. “I don’t think — I mean, I hope he’s alive. If he isn’t, this situation is more dire than we knew.” He claps his hands. “But enough about that. If fireballs are dropping down here, we should move again.”

“Wait,” Yuuri interrupts, getting nervous when both Viktor and Yuri fall silent to look at him. “I need to — shouldn’t we go and see what happened? To make sure the people are okay?”

Viktor looks as though he has not considered this, though he at least blinks and tries to cover it up, while Yuri just looks like Yuuri is being ridiculous.

“All right,” Viktor says, after a moment of silence, “but let me come with you.”

Viktor gives no explanation for wanting to come along with Yuuri and Yuuri does not ask him for one, instead walking alongside him to the riverside and looking for signs of injured people. He doesn’t see many, but he sees smoke rising from the boats and from the middle of town, as well as from some houses on the outskirts. Yuuri remembers how his father liked to barter for fish by the river, how he always used to visit Celestino the wizard with Yuuri in tow and give him fish in exchange for his ruby-red tomatoes.

He hopes Celestino had enough magical power to escape the fire. Some of them seemed to have come dangerously close to his house on the edge of the Waste. Yuuri has always liked him, his loud laughter and his faint accent and his thick mane of hair that threatened to burst free from the band he used to tie it back. Especially, though, he liked how he would wave so enthusiastically when they approached, always crouching down to talk one-on-one with Yuuri, even when he was a child.

He doesn’t realize he’s stopped walking until Viktor coughs, and then he tugs his hat down farther and keeps going.

When he reaches the river, there are so many people gathered that for a moment Yuuri is reminded of the crowds of May Day, the ones that gather under the pink-flowered cherry trees and dance and eat hot food from stalls, the crowds he avoided that day when he first met Viktor. But the mood is too somber for May Day, and the people are rushing back and forth, afraid of further attacks. Some of the fishermen's boats have been reduced to charred wood, and some of the houses on the street are destroyed, too. There’s what looks like a makeshift hospital set up a few houses down, with the majority of the activity on the street concentrated there.

Yuuri’s throat grows tight, looking at the worried faces of the people that pass him, and he carefully stops one.

“Excuse me,” he says. “Who should I talk to if I need—"

“Help?” she finishes for him. “The mayor’s son is in that house there, the one they’re using for everyone who got injured. He’s trying to help with people’s burns. If you know someone who’s hurt you should go to him.”

“Thank you,” Yuuri says, but she has already rushed off, into another of the houses. He looks after her, at the closed door, and gets the ghost of an idea.

“None of us are hurt,” Viktor points out.

“I know,” Yuuri says, and sets off for the hospital.

Phichit Choulant is exactly the kind of handsome, joyous person that Yuuri might have been half jealous of and half in love with, once upon a time. He has dark, glowing eyes, and there is a hamster sitting on his shoulder, afraid and cuddled up next to his neck. When he sees them enter, he plucks it off, runs a finger down its head, and sets it down on the table, where it stays, watching him attentively. He shakes Yuuri’s hand with a seriousness that befits a king, not a mayor’s son.

“There isn’t much,” he starts to say, tired, like he’s said it many times that day, but Yuuri holds up a hand.

“I’m not here to take from you,” he says. “I hoped I could give something.” His ghost of an idea is becoming more and more solid.

“Anything you can spare,” Phichit says, and his eyes are sad. “We need a healer, most of all. Sara is a witch, but she mostly does hair spells. She’s not the best at fixing wounds. Though if anyone needs a dye job—"

“Oh, actually,” Viktor starts to say, and Yuuri smacks idly at his arm.

“I might be able to help,” he says. “There’s — a way to Kingsbury.”

Kingsbury has the best healers, the best hospitals, but more importantly, it’s solid and protected.

Phichit squints at him. “From here,” he says, as confirmation. “A magical way.”

“You could get these people to hospitals,” Yuuri says. “And get the rest out of the line of fire. I — I’ve lived here all my life, I can’t stand just watching—"

“You’re serious,” Phichit murmurs.

Yuuri sets his jaw and does not look at Viktor. “Yes. It’s through the old hat shop, where I live.”

“Hold on,” Viktor snaps. “I didn’t say they could go through my house — can you imagine how conspicuous that type of magic would be, transporting so many people, and Yakov — they’ll find me again!”

“What does that matter?” Yuuri says, his jaw still set. “These people need to get to safety.”

“Yuuri, I won’t buy their lives at the cost of ours,” Viktor says. His voice is low, intense. Dangerous. Yuuri might have once been afraid of him, speaking like that. But not any more.

“My sister is in town,” he snaps back. “All my old friends are here. Everyone I’ve ever known is here. We have to do this.”

“What do I care about them?” Viktor says. “I care about — ugh! It’s my house!”

He storms away before Yuuri can get another word in. Phichit clears his throat.

“If you can’t—" he starts, and Yuuri shakes his head and sighs.

“I’ll convince him,” he says, pinching at the bridge of his nose. “He’s a selfish, stubborn fool, but he’s good underneath all that, he really is. You can bring people to the shop whenever you’re ready.”

His cane clicks on the wood as he makes his way out. He thinks he understands Viktor’s anger, his deep fear of being caught, but what he said is true: he can’t bear just watching. Or running away: Viktor’s first instinct. Viktor told him he was brave, and Yuuri doesn’t truly know if he agrees, but being brave sometimes means doing something like this, something as dangerous as walking into a wicked wizard’s castle.

He is determined to hold firm on this, if nothing else. Even if he loses Viktor over it.

And anyway, a quiet, sad voice in his mind reminds him, you’ll probably lose Viktor eventually, anyway.

“Viktor,” he says, attempting to get a word in first, when he gets back. Viktor is not having it, he’s pacing, his eyes wild like that night when they received second summons from the King.

“You don’t know anything about this kind of magic,” he seethes, and Yuuri winces. Yuri looks annoyed, as well, though Yuuri can’t tell who he’s annoyed at. “You don’t even know if it could work, taking this many people. Were you expecting the whole town could fit through our house?”

“I thought we could try it, ” Yuuri says. “For the injured people, at least—"

“And their families, because they’ll want to go too! And everyone else, because they’ll feel left out! Did you even think—"

“Would it kill you to do something good with your magic for once?” Yuuri snaps. “If I had magic—"

“Oh, if you had magic,” Viktor says bitterly. Yuuri scowls at him.

“I would help people, not just myself.”

“And what do you think this is going to do?” Viktor yells back. “No, don’t — I’ll tell you. It’s going to send a beacon of magical energy. Yakov and Lilia will know exactly where Yura and I are, and they’ll come and steal my magic, and I’ll have no chance of ever—"

“You’ve escaped them once,” Yuuri argues, but Viktor isn’t listening.

“I don’t know how you think you can just stand there,” Viktor shouts, “and tell me what to do with my own house, with my own life, I am not going to enter into some kind of fool’s bargain — do you know what they’ll do to me if they find me? If Yakov gets an idea that I’m here, that Yura is — that we — there is absolutely no way—"

“Stop, just stop,” Yuuri screams, and Viktor freezes in place.

He doesn’t know what’s come over him, exactly, but there is so much bubbling in his chest that it is almost impossible to contain it. So he doesn’t try.

"You’re a coward," Yuuri snaps, and his voice cracks, and he wishes he had a voice like a hero, something hard and cold that would make Viktor stop and listen. But even old, like this, even with a shorter temper and a sudden affinity for shouting, Yuuri's heart is still fragile, soft, stuttering. So he screams at Viktor, and cries, the tears coming fast and ugly down his wizened cheeks. (Yuuri has never suffered artistically.) "I won't let you do this. You can run from everything else, but not this, not now when you have people who need you to do something—"

He pauses to take a breath, wanting to wince at the wheeze of his lungs, the hitching of his breath. How obvious it is that he is hurting, while Viktor only stands frozen and staring and beautifully cold.

"It's not fair, and if you think running away solves anything, then you really are heartless," he says, still sobbing, still shaking. He wants to beat himself into submission, for doing something as stupid as believing in Viktor. "And you're a much less talented wizard than I ever took you for."

Viktor is watching him, wide-eyed and glittering, his hand half outstretched. Yuuri can't look at him, he hates him suddenly; his easy beauty, his carefree youth, his cheerful spread of ugly rumors. His smile in the endless field of flowers, how it almost seemed like he was trying, holding Yuuri’s hand to his face like he could make it a lifeline. And, after all that, his willingness to leave.

He picks up his cane, leaning against the wall, and click-steps his way out the door.

He sits on the front steps, cane in hand, and his tears fade as quickly as they came, distilling into a kind of hurt, angry stubbornness that has been more and more common for him lately. Viktor does not come after him, not like the night he ran into the Waste and cried because he missed being himself, but Yuuri had expected that; he wonders idly if his relationship with Viktor will work like this, cartwheeling from extreme to extreme. One night, Viktor will hold his hand to his face and smile, but soon he will should and scream and call Yuuri an idiot.

He sits there for close to an hour, eyes closed, holding his cane across his knees and listening for the sound of the door opening behind him, a maybe still-angry but willing to listen Viktor behind it. The sound does not come.

What comes instead is a throat being cleared, from in front of him, and he opens his eyes.

And Phichit is standing there, along with a tall woman with dark hair, and several injured villagers. Yuuri makes to clear his throat, to wipe at his eyes, to straighten his shoulders. He wants to appear presentable. He wants, nonsensically, to appear strong.

Phichit smiles reassuringly. “We don’t have to go through just yet.”

“No,” Yuuri says. “We had better start. The afternoon won’t last forever, and there are people hurt.”

“You’re a good man,” Phichit says. “Thank you for doing this.”

Yuuri snorts, and with more bitterness than he means, he says, “It’s all I’m really good for.”

“This is Sara,” Phichit says, and Yuuri nods.

“Yes,” he says. “I lived here for some time, you know. I know—" He hesitates, then, looking over the small crowd which has gathered by their door. Mari and Yuuko are not visible, which hurts more than it should. “I know a few people.”

“It’s funny,” Phichit hums, smiling as if to put him at ease, but Yuuri is heartbroken and angry, and it doesn’t do much to help. “I don’t recognize you. I’ll have to do a better job, I thought I knew most people in town.”

“I’m a bit of a shut-in,” Yuuri says, and Phichit offers his arm to help him up the stairs.

Yuuri glances at the fireplace, but Yuri’s face is out of sight. There’s only the dog, dozing next to the hearth, his back against the warm stone.

“You have a fire lit?” Sara asks, helping someone else inside. “Goodness, isn’t it hot out for that?”

“Oh, when you’re old you’re too cold all the time,” Yuuri says, tugging an excuse from thin air, but Sara seems to accept it.

“This is strong magic,” she adds, tapping her chin with her finger and looking around the room. “Are you a wizard, or — oh, I’m sorry, I don’t even know your name and I’m asking you all these questions.” She laughs, embarrassedly.

“It’s all right,” Yuuri says. “I’m not a wizard. I’m just Yuuri. It’s — the door is magic, not me.”

“Oh, I see,” Sara murmurs, “but it would have to powered by something nearby, and—"

“Sara,” Phichit says, a slight laugh in his voice, but mostly just quiet authority. “Later.”

“Right!” She blushes, and goes to help more people inside. Yuuri takes the opportunity to nervously glance in Yuri’s direction again, but the fire demon seems to have decided to help him out by hiding. His shoulders relax, but only a little. It’s a fragile thing, having Yuri on your side; he could change his mind at any moment, especially if he thought scaring one of the villagers would be funny.

But he stays buried as they get as many people into the small room as they can fit, as Yuuri closes the door and twists the dial to blue, for the Kingsbury harbor.

He cracks the door open and looks. There don’t seem to be too many people about, maybe one or two fishermen or sailors, none of whom seem likely to pay much attention to the dozens of people Yuuri is intending to bring through the house.

It strikes him, suddenly, how monumentally stupid this plan is.

Maybe Viktor was right.

He sighs, and pushes the door open, stepping out, and the moment he does, someone else steps out of the alley next to the house.

It’s Guard Captain Mila, who arches an eyebrow. “Hello, Wizard Pendragon,” she says.

Yuuri’s heart stops, and it’s all he can do to move back, to angle his old, fragile body in front of the others, stopping them from going through the door.

“Captain,” he says, “please—"

She pushes off the wall and walks to stand in front of him. “Where’s Viktor?”

“He left,” Yuuri says, and she tuts and shakes her head.

“I thought you would stop lying to us after the first time,” she says, with genuine regret in her voice, and Emil the other guard steps out, too. “It doesn’t have to be like this. He’s dangerous, that’s all, and with this war coming we can’t afford to have him running loose.”

“I’m not lying,” Yuuri says. “We — he left, and—"

“I don’t know your name,” Mila says, “and I don’t know what you stand to gain, travelling around and helping Viktor. But you seem like a good person. You have to realize that he can’t be trusted with his power.”

“I disagree,” Yuuri says, his voice growing hot, “and—"

“Yuuri!”

It’s Viktor’s voice, fighting through the throng of people in the house, and Yuuri spins to see Viktor himself pushing past the others until he’s standing in front of Yuuri, and placing his hands on his shoulders. “I — shouldn’t have yelled at you. If this is important to you, then of course it’s worth the risk.”

“You’ve changed your mind,” Yuuri says, dubiously.

He shrugs, color appearing in his cheeks. “I went for a walk. I was so angry with you, for even suggesting it, but — you were really trying to do the same thing I was, protecting things you—"

He sees Mila, then, and straightens up.

“Captain.”

“Viktor,” Emil says. “We were hoping you’d make an appearance.” He frowns. “What are you doing, exactly?”

“Ah,” Viktor says, and glances back hopelessly at the crowd of people. “It’s all right, come on out.”

Phichit looks uncertainly at Yuuri, who nods.

The people file out, mumbling to each other. “We’re at the harbor,” Phichit says. “Where’s the nearest hospital?”

He poses the question to Mila, who points down the street. “Two blocks,” she says, “but wait — just wait a moment.”

“Some of them can’t wait,” Phichit argues.

“What is this?” Emil asks again, and Yuuri answers before anyone else can.

“The house is connected in multiple places at once, though I’m sure you already knew that if you were waiting here,” he says. “There was an attack in Hasetsu, and people were hurt, and we brought them through. We intend to bring as many as we can.”

Emil and Mila open their mouths and close them again. Phichit takes their silence as an opportunity to leave, and Yuuri prepares to go back into the house, to close the door and go back to Hasetsu and start the whole thing over again.

“Wait,” Mila says again, and Yuuri pauses, the door almost shut. She takes off her uniform hat and shakes her red hair out of its military bun. She looks younger, suddenly; kinder. “Let me help.”

“Mila,” Emil says, then trails off, uncertain. “Are you sure?”

“She said we needed to take him in because he was a danger to civilians, because he didn’t have a heart,” she says, and gestures at the people. “Does this look like something someone with no heart would do?”

“You’re saying Madame lied to us.”

“I’m saying that she might not have had all the details, Emil. Not everything is a conspiracy. We have new information, we should act off it.”

Emil looks around, and Yuuri can see in the set of his shoulders when he makes his decision. “Yes,” he says. “I’ll — I’ll help them to the hospital, or something, I — ”

“Go,” Mila says. “I’ll help here,” and then she turns and looks at Yuuri, which is odd. “What can I do?”

Yuuri looks at Viktor, who shrugs, the barest trace of amusement in the corners of his mouth. “You’re in charge,” he says.

Yuuri gulps. “There’s a lot more people to get through,” he says. “But staying too near it all will make it easier for them to find Viktor. We need — he needs to make himself scarce for a few hours so even if someone else comes, they won’t find him.” As an afterthought, he adds, “And he should take Makkachin with him, for company, and so he’ll stay out from underfoot.”

Makkachin barks from the doorway, indicating his agreement with the statement.

"Good boy," Yuuri says, affectionately. 

“I thought you wanted me to help,” Viktor says. 

“I want you safe, ” Yuuri says. “I want everyone safe. If the safest thing is for you to be — I don’t know, sitting out and watching clouds — that’s where you should be.”

Viktor blinks at him. “Oh,” he says, finally, as if he’s understood something great and important. Yuuri doesn’t know what on earth he could be talking about.

“So Mila and Sara and I will get everyone from Hasetsu through,” he says. “And you’ll keep away with Makkachin until we’re done.”

“How will I know when to come back?” Viktor asks, which — is a very good question.

“Damn,” Yuuri says, and smacks his cane against the ground. “Damn.”

They think about it for a moment, Mila blinking a little incredulously at them, before Viktor brightens and runs into the house. 

“Come inside,” Yuuri adds to Mila, being polite, and by the time he’s up the stairs, Viktor is back.

“Here, take this,” he says, and he grabs Yuuri’s hand and places a small, golden ring on his finger.

Yuuri stares at it.

“We match,” Viktor says cheerfully, wiggling the gold ring on his own hand, and Yuuri stares at that, too.

“What,” he says, weakly.

“They’re magic!” Viktor says. “Hold it tight and think of me, and I’ll know to come to you.”

He folds both his hands over Yuuri’s, and Yuuri watches, flabbergasted, at the glint of the rings next to each other.

“I don’t think you’ve quite thought this through,” he says, numb.

“What’s there to think about?” Viktor says cheerfully. “We can contact each other now! I think it’ll be very useful, don’t you?”

Yuuri is forcibly reminded that Viktor is not standing here being a fool, and thinking that the rings mean something important rather than just being a magical object that Viktor had lying around the castle, that they could not possibly mean what Yuuri had, for half a moment, imagined they meant.

Ridiculous, he tells himself, forcing the thought into severity, foolish, stupid, stupid, stupid. Viktor is still smiling at him, though more puzzled now.

“All right,” Yuuri says, and closes his hand into a fist, feeling the metal edge of the ring against his palm. “All right, now — now go, Viktor. Keep yourselves safe.”

Something in Viktor’s posture softens, and he leans forward and gives Yuuri an unexpected, tight hug. “Promise me that if you get into trouble you’ll run.”

“And leave Yuri to fend for himself?” Yuuri says, half-mumbled into his shoulder. “I could never.”

Viktor lets him go, then, and treats him to another one of his brilliant, sunlit smiles. “I’ll be back soon,” he promises, and twists the dial to the green — the gorgeous field of flowers — and vanishes out through it, whistling for the dog to join him. Yuuri thinks he sees a flash of feathers through the door, and then it’s closed, and he’s gone.

He’s gone.

Safe, Yuuri reminds himself.

He twists the dial back to Hasetsu and Mila clears her throat.

“Who are you to him?” she says. “You said when you met the Grand Witch that you cleaned his floors. But that’s not it, is it?”

Yuuri stares at the closed door and does not look at her; he is sure he would find her face open and kind and unfamiliar, sure she would be looking at him with an awe he doesn’t deserve.

“No,” he says. “That’s exactly it. I clean, and I badger him to keep out of trouble, and I suppose after this long he likes me enough to keep me.”

It’s a slight warmth in his chest, knowing Viktor wants him safe as much as Yuuri wants all of them safe, but a selfish piece of him knows that it’s nowhere near enough.

He cracks open the door and sees Sara there, with another group of people. Mila clears her throat and moves back a step, and Sara watches her, something light and considering in her eyes.

“Who is she?” she asks Yuuri, without looking away.

“Mila, this is Sara Crispino,” Yuuri says. “A local witch and hairdresser.”

Sara wiggles her fingers flirtily. Mila blushes, shifting from foot to foot.

“Sara, this is Mila, captain of the Grand Witch’s guard,” Yuuri says, then adds, apologetically, “I . . . don’t actually know what your last name is.”

“Babicheva,” Mila says.

“Charmed,” Sara says, and winks. Yuuri wonders if she might be laying it on rather thick. But Mila blushes again and hastily steps out of the way so the villagers can come through into the house, her movements flustered and too fast.

“Ah—" she says, “We have to — shouldn’t we—"

“Phichit is still in Kingsbury,” Yuuri says, taking pity on her. “We should go back as soon as possible.”

“Right,” Mila says, still flustered. Sara smiles at her once more, charming and already charmed. Yuuri watches the two of them flitting around each other and huffs a laugh.

When he was younger he’d had romantic notions. Ingary was full of them, all tied up in magic and third children and princes and giants. Slay a dragon, fall in love, all in one afternoon — Yuuri loved hearing about things like that when he was three, four, five, held safe in his mother’s arms as she told him stories, or held against his father’s hip as people gossipped in the hat shop.

He wonders if it works in cycles. When he was a young man he’d attempted to swear off it all entirely, thinking no one would ever see him that way, that feeling your heart pound after locking eyes with someone was a happy story and little more. And now — now he seems to be a silly old romantic again, smiling fondly after Sara and Mila.

He closes his fist again to feel the cut of the metal against his finger, and thinks that if he’s being honest, it had begun again before he’d grown old, from the moment Viktor took his arm and flew him over a rooftop. For all he’d tried to grow up, one touch was all it took to make him into a love-sick child.

He clicks the dial back to Kingsbury and watches as the people of Hasetsu trickle out and gawk at the buildings, as Sara and Mila shoot each other shy glances.

It’s not so bad, he thinks, not so bad at all. After all, it got him here.

They manage to get half the town out before he runs into Yuuko and Mari again. Phichit’s father had come with the earliest groups, staying with the injured and sick, and Celestino comes through, too, being led by Sara’s twin brother Mickey and leaning heavily on his cane. Takeshi is absent, maybe with his parents, or Yuuko’s.

Mari gapes around at the house before whirling on him.

“What are you?” she says. “This wasn’t here when we lived here! You — you can make doors! Why didn’t you tell me that, Yuuri could be anywhere, and you just—"

His barb-tongued sister, he thinks. His bitter, impulsive, dear sister. He can’t think of her without affection, even when she’s screaming at him.

Yuuko lays a hand on her arm, motherly, sweet. “Mari,” she says. “Please. This poor man’s just trying to help.”

There are black shadows under her eyes, her stomach too round to be only four months along. Yuuri wonders if he left time behind along with everything else when he entered Viktor’s castle.

“Can it lead anywhere?” Mari says. “Could you take me to him?”

She’s so desperate that he doesn’t know what to do.

“I’m no wizard,” Yuuri starts, gently, but Sara interrupts him.

“I’m a witch, though,” she says. “I remember Yuuri. He was a sweetheart. I could try to make the door take us to him.”

Yuuri’s heart flutters, quiet and hopeful.

“Who is this person?” Mila asks, her lips pursed and slightly disproving.

“My older brother,” Mari says, “he’s been missing for more than a month, and—"

“He used to make the most lovely hats!” one of the other villagers says, and there are some nodding heads, approving.

“We’ll get everyone through first,” Yuuri says. “And then — then we’ll try.”

He turns his back against the wild hope in Mari’s eyes.

***

It’s close to midnight by the time they get everyone from the village to Kingsbury, into hospitals and shelters. Mila and Emil both volunteer the space in the guard’s stations around the palace for the ‘refugees’, as they’ve been calling them. Emil goes with one group, Mila with another, while Phichit stays. Yuuko is gone, too, off to one of the hospitals with Takashi to be checked over. The house seems too full, and too empty all at once.

“If anyone else from Hasetsu needs to get through — if there’s anyone we missed — this is where I need to be,” Phichit says, with authority. “My father is with them, he’ll keep them calm.”

“That’s all right with me,” Yuuri says. “Viktor might object.”

Phichit grins mischievously. “He’s not here, is he?” He sits down on the couch, tossing his feet up on the table and closing his eyes.

“Now,” Sara says, “let’s see about finding this missing brother of yours.”

“It’s not going to work,” Yuri says, his voice smoky and cracking and very, very inhuman.

Phichit does a double take, and then stares. “The fire can talk.” His voice is blank with shock.

“Obviously, asshole,” Yuri says.

“Be polite,” Yuuri tells him, and Yuri scowls and blows ash at him. “Yuri!”

“You made me be quiet all day, ” Yuri complains.

“You did that on your own, I didn’t say a word,” Yuuri says. “Just—"

“It’s not going to work, ” Yuri says again, insistently. Yuuri glances around at the room — Sara, Mari, Phichit — to see that they are all staring, big eyed and nervous.

“Oh — you don’t need to be afraid of him,” he says, and they all blink and say nothing. “He’s not as scary as he looks.”

“I’m a fire demon! ” Yuri says, and hisses, sticking out his red-flame tongue at them.

“You aren’t helping,” Yuuri tells him.

“A fire demon,” Mari repeats, numbly.

Yuri snickers, and it sounds like two pieces of flint rubbing together. “They’re so much more fun than you were.”

Yuuri whacks his cane against the edge of the fireplace. “Can you help or not?”

Yuri appears to think it over, and they all watch him, which he seems to enjoy. “Sure,” he says. “I guess.”

That’s as rousing a yes as Yuuri has ever heard, so he turns back to Sara.

“Yuri powers the magic in the house,” he says. “Viktor has his own, of course, but Yuri makes the connections between places in the door. He’s the one to help with this spell.”

“All right,” she says, uncertainty. “Is there — should I — is he dangerous?”

Yuuri considers that.

“Well,” he says. “If you ignore him he gets very sulky, but other than that, no.”

Sara laughs, and looks surprised at herself. “All right then, little demon,” she says gently, and rolls up her sleeves. “Let’s see if we can’t find a missing brother.”

Sara casts a few spells on the door and fiddles with it, Yuri talking to her from the fireplace about the nature of the door. Phichit stays sprawled on the couch, his shoulders relaxed but his eyes alert and watchful.

Yuuri puts the kettle on, his hands shaking.

He wants Mari’s fears to be eased, wants the spell to work — wants nothing more than for her to know who he is and what he has been through, to feel his sister throw her arms around him and step in between him and danger, like she always used to. He thinks there will always be a part of him that wants to be protected. He wants to be known to her again.

But then — what comes after? Will Mari be happy? Will she be in danger, from Lilia and from all the other things that come with this castle, with Yuri, with Viktor? Will she be angry that Yuuri didn’t find some way to tell her who he was? Will she even understand why he couldn’t?

Will she ask him to leave, to come back with her Kingsbury?

He can’t imagine that, but then again, up until that moment with her on the porch a few weeks ago, he couldn’t imagine her without her sharp smile and brave eyes, either.

“There,” Sara says, startling him out of his thoughts. “That should do it.”

She’s beaming, her hands clasped together over her heart.

“He’s amazing!” she adds, turning her smile on Yuri, who sends out a few sparks in either embarrassment or smug delight. (Yuuri would put his money on delight.) “Where did you find him?”

“I fell out of the sky and took pity on them,” Yuri says, obnoxious as ever. Yuuri crosses his eyes at him, and the demon responds by deliberately aiming a few sparks to Yuuri’s discarded cane.

“The blue part of the dial should lead to your brother now,” Sara tells Mari, squeezing her shoulder. “Good luck!”

Mari squares her shoulders. “Thank you,” she says, to Yuuri, who cannot breathe. He closes his eyes as she walks through.

He hears rather than sees her confused shout, coming now from the opposite side of the room; hears rather than sees her walk right back to the front door and open it again.

“No,” she says, “ no, ” and it’s so anguished he has to look. When he opens his eyes, she’s wiping at her cheeks and walking as fast as she can back over to the front door, again, tugging it open and going through and just coming right back to this little room.

She breathes in shakily, clearly trying not to sob, and goes again, and again, and again —

On what must be her fifth try, Sara grabs her arm, to stop her. Her entire body is shaking with the force of repressing her panic.

“It didn’t work,” she says, “it just — you have to try it again, Sara—"

“It definitely worked,” Yuri says. “Who do you think you’re talking to? My spells always work.”

He looks very cheerful. Yuuri attempts, through the use of hand signals, to convey that this is (at best) very insensitive. Yuri doesn’t seem to notice.

Mari wraps her arms around herself and breathes, long enough that she must be counting them. Yuuri remembers her coaching him through panic when he was younger and, without thinking, takes a step forward, reaching out, opening his mouth. Her eyes snap to him, confused and hopeless.

Then her expression changes. There’s something there, something impossible to categorize, something which might, incredibly, be recognition. Before he can do anything — move closer, say her name, anything — she blindly reaches back and grips the handle of the front door, going through it one more time.

She exits from the door of his little room, the one where he used to make hats and now sleeps; she also exits with her body facing directly towards him.

“Yuuri,” she says. Her voice is softer than he thinks he’s ever heard it.

He doesn’t take another step towards her, only looking away and wrapping his arms around himself. “I’m sorry, Mari, I—"

She runs to him and throws her arms around his neck.

It’s an awkward hug. Her arms don’t fit around him the same way they used to, and his own shake from age along with nervousness. But she holds him tight, her fingers knotting in his white hair, and says his name, choked out of her mouth, half a sob.

“I’m sorry,” he says, again, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” and she doesn’t tell him it’s okay, just pulls back with fire in her eyes.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” she asks.

Yuuri tries, but his throat doesn’t move, his mouth won’t open. He looks at Yuri hopelessly.

“He can’t,” Yuri says, then, adds, disinterestedly, “he wanted to, he was whining about it so much.”

Mari’s eyes burn. “This is Viktor Nikiforov’s fault, isn’t it? He cursed you and now you — now you’re working in his castle when you should be home, I’ll knock his lights out, Yuuri, we can break this, I promise—"

“Wait,” Yuuri croaks, “No, Mari, Viktor — he — ugh! ” He wants to hit himself in the face, slap his own mouth into talking. But what seems most important, just then, is that Mari understand that it wasn’t Viktor.

Phichit and Sara, who have been watching in silence, perhaps to allow them their reunion, now move closer.

“You can’t talk about it, can you,” Sara says, and Yuuri, relieved, turns to her. “That’s part of the curse.”

“But the fire can,” Phichit adds, and puts his hands on his hips, spinning to stare at Yuri. “And you didn’t think to say anything before now?”

Yuri yawns. “It didn’t matter to me whether they figured it out or not.”

“Well, who did curse him?” Mari snaps.

“The Witch of the Waste,” Yuri says. “If Viktor cursed him, why would he come here? He isn’t that stupid.”

“Viktor’s been very good to me,” Yuuri interjects, and, without exactly meaning to, runs his finger over the gold ring on his hand. “He let me stay.”

“And he’s been trying to break the spell.” Yuri snags a new log from the pile next to the hearth and takes a messy bite out of it. “He’s just useless at it.”

This is met with stunned and puzzled silence.

“Viktor Nikiforov,” Phichit says, as if he could have heard wrong, “the famously evil and powerful wizard, can’t break the spell?”

“He’s not evil,” Yuuri says, exasperated, “he just likes people to think that—"

“Suddenly he’s not evil?” Mari says. “Yuuri, he eats people’s hearts — you can’t be serious, are you—"

“Of course I’m serious, and he doesn’t eat hearts, honestly, Mari.”

“But he can’t break it? The spellcaster is more powerful than he is?” Sara asks.

“The Witch wasn’t stronger than him, ” Yuri says, irritable at the very idea. “She didn’t have me. ”

“Maybe I just have to break it myself,” Yuuri snaps, “like I’ve been trying to do for the past month—"

“Oh, come on, you haven’t been trying,” Yuri argues, “you said it yourself that you like it here—"

“I’d like it better if I was me.” Yuuri feels his voice crack on the last word. Mari’s arm wraps around him again, gently, without the force she used to hold him with. She doesn’t seem to know what to do, now that she’s found him, which is fine; Yuuri doesn’t know what to do with himself. “I’ve told you both over and over again that I just want to be me again.”

“You already are you,” Yuri says. “You just look different. It’s all the same to me, either way.”

“It’s not the same to me.”

“If you’re worried Viktor won’t want you around — he’s never gonna find that guy he’s looking for.” Yuri sounds genuinely earnest, which Yuuri would think was sweet, if he wasn’t saying exactly the wrong thing. “He likes you. He’s never liked anyone before except me, and he has to like me. You make him like other things, too.”

Silence follows this announcement. Sara appears to think the whole thing sweet, but Phichit and Mari are looking at Yuuri like he’s crazy.

“Yuuri,” Mari says, her voice low and soothing, like she’s approaching a wild animal that she doesn’t want to spook. “Are you — planning on staying?”

Yuri sends out a shower of sparks. “Of course he is,” he says, like anything else is laughable. Then he pauses, and searches Yuuri’s tired face. “. . . Aren’t you?”

“I . . . don’t know,” Yuuri says. it’s evidently the wrong thing to say. Yuri’s sparks get wilder, panicked.

“You can’t leave,” he says. “You can’t, it’s — ”

Then his voice cuts off, and he growls in frustration.

Yuuri reaches his thumb to meet the ring again, on his hand. “I’ll tell you what,” he says, “if — when all of this is over, and the curses are broken, and the dust has cleared, if you and Viktor still want me to, I’ll stay.”

“That’s not enough,” Yuri mumbles. “You have to want to stay.”

Yuuri laughs, sadly. “You haven’t been paying much attention, have you?” he asks. “I’ll always want to stay.”

Mari’s face, when he glances back over, is troubled, but Yuri looks reassured, and settles back into the ash. Yuuri reaches over and squeezes her shoulder, quietly. He thinks, I’ll be able to explain it better to her later. We have time.

Yuri tells Mari, not fifteen minutes after, that she and Sara both need to leave. He says that Phichit should, too, but he “probably won’t”, which is accompanied by a moody glance towards him, still sitting on the couch. Mari opens her mouth to argue, but before she can, Yuuri nods in agreement, and tells her that the castle, while the safest place for Viktor and Yuri, is not at all the safest place for Mari.

She whirls on him then, to argue, with Phichit and Sara looking on uneasily, and with Yuri looking as though he wishes he could record it.

“You didn’t say you were safe here. And if you aren’t you should come with me—"

“I need to wait here for Viktor,” Yuuri tries to explain, for the thousandth time, “he gave me a — I don’t know, an artifact, I suppose, to call him back with when it’s safe.”

Mari’s eyes flash stubbornly. “Give it to the fire! Or to Phichit, since he insists on staying! Let him call the wizard!”

“No,” Yuuri says, more vehement than he means, but the idea of giving Viktor’s ring away strikes him hard in the stomach. “No, I can’t do that, he — he trusted me with it. I have to see it through.”

Mari’s eyes flash again, with something other than stubbornness — anger, maybe, or something sharper and more bitter. “I don’t understand you,” she says, bitten out, hands squeezed into fists at her sides. “I looked for you for so long, and I found you, and now you won’t even come with me. What’s so wrong with Viktor that he can’t find his own way home?”

Any argument Yuuri could give her sticks in his throat. There is nothing wrong with Viktor, only something terribly wrong with Yuuri, that he could so desperately want to see Viktor come home safe after only a few hours apart, so much so that he doesn’t even want to see Yuuko in person again and tell her he’s all right.

He tries to tell himself that it’s because he knows she’s safe already, that she’s in Kingsbury and in a hospital, being well taken care of by her parents and Takeshi, and that’s most certainly part of it, but Viktor has also shifted to be the focus on Yuuri’s attention over the past month or so, and it’s a hard habit to break.

It is also, if Yuuri admits it to himself, not exactly a habit he wants to break.

“Yell at me for it if you want,” Yuuri says, and forces his voice into calmness. “I understand. But I’m staying here. This is all — it’s my responsibility now, too, don’t you see?”

“No,” Mari tells him, blinking hard like she’s trying to suppress tears. “I don’t see, Yuuri, just like I don’t see what could be so special about a stupid wizard who can’t even break your spell and what you could like so much about all this adventure when you told me for your whole life that you weren’t cut out for it, and what you think you can even do about all this.”

“I don’t know what I can do,” Yuuri half-shouts, taking two steps closer to her, his cane loud against the floor. “But I’m not going to break the spell on me or the spell on this castle by going back to Kingsbury and sitting in a corner with a cup of tea! Mari—"

He takes a deep breath, looks away, and feels a rush of guilt. He doesn’t want to shout at her, not really. He just wants to make her understand.

“Mari, do you know when you left home I locked myself in my room and didn’t come out for three days?”

She blinks. She had been prepared for an argument, not an explanation. “What?”

“I didn’t want you to go,” he says. It’s easier to say, now that they’re past it. Now that time has passed and he isn’t sitting curled up next to his window, watching the train and trying not to look at the places on the wall which used to hold Mari’s things. “I saw you off at the station, and the whole time I wanted to beg you to stay.”

“What are you talking about?” Mari asks, crossing her arms. “Yuuri, if you were upset, why didn’t you ever say—"

“Because you were happy,” Yuuri says, looking back to meet her eyes, willing her to understand. “You were so excited, Mari. You loved the city. You loved living there. Whenever you wrote all you could talk about was how happy you were. How could I take that from you? What kind of brother would I have been?”

She’s silent, but a more considering kind of silent, not quite the angry kind she’d had before.

“Please,” Yuuri says. “I’m happy here. Let me be.”

She doesn’t agree instantly. She wouldn’t have been Mari, he thinks, if she had; he would have wondered what was wrong with her. He watches her toss the idea over in her mind, struggling with it.

“I’m not abandoning you,” Yuuri says, guessing at what she’s thinking, and her quick glance upwards shows him he’s got it right. “You have me back.”

“But I don’t,” she says, “not really, and I’m sure I’ll be glad soon that you found somewhere like this but right now—" Her voice cracks. “Right now I already miss you.”

He steps forward, intending to try and comfort her, but she only smiles wearily and holds up a hand.

“But,” she says, “I suppose I’ll just have to learn to deal with missing you. You certainly got used to missing me.”

“This is why I didn’t want you to know, I think,” Yuuri says quietly. “It broke my heart to see you so upset, when you came in that day, but at the same time — it’s easier, isn’t it? Or it would have been. To go to you when this was all over, with my own face, and tell you, Mari, I’ve made myself a new home. Don’t worry about me.” He folds his hands together and stares at them, heart pounding. “Now — now it’s all tangled.”

“But you have?” Mari asks. “Made yourself a new home? And you’re happy?”

Her eyes are so gentle, but he recognizes them. It’s not like the way her face has looked over the past few days, stressed and unfamiliar. He nods.

“Yes,” he says. “I’m happy.”

She leans over and kisses his cheek. “Then that’s what I need to know,” she says. “That you’re alive. That you’re happy. That you aren’t stuck in this curse with people who aren’t willing to fix it.”

“I’m sorry I couldn’t tell you,” he says, reaches over and hugs her again, tightly. His little sister. Gentle and stubborn and brave and loud and blindingly kind. “I’m sorry for everything, Mari.”

“I know you tried,” she says. “At least now I don’t have to wonder where you are anymore.” She brushes her fingers, rhythmically, through his hair, and doesn’t allow him to move away from the hug. “Just — just promise you won’t do it again. And promise that if I can help you, you’ll let me.”

He lets his head rest, for a moment, against her shoulder, and allows himself to be protected. “I promise,” he says, an old man’s croak. An old man who is still Mari’s brother.

“Good,” she says. He hears her smile in her voice, feels it against his hair. “And when all this is over — come and stay with me, for a bit.”

He holds her for one more long moment before letting go, and doesn’t have trouble saying yes.

Chapter Text

PART VI: IT’S LOVE, ISN’T IT?

Mari and Sara’s departure from the castle is one with little fanfare, apart from another tight hug to Yuuri from his sister and a jaunty and overly cheerful wave from Sara to Yuri, who only snorts and rolls his eyes. Then they vanish into the slightly rainy darkness of Kingsbury, standing close together on the wide street, Mari reaching out a hand to point Sara in the right direction. Yuuri closes the door, and breathes out a long, slow sigh.

Phichit glances sideways at Yuuri as the door closes, and then pats the couch where he’s sitting, inviting him to sit.

“I didn’t want to interrupt all of that before,” he says, “but — I wanted to apologize. I should have known you right away. Everyone in town’s been gossiping about the missing hatter.”

Yuuri snorts. “It’s all right. I’m not very memorable.”

“Of course you are!” Phichit says, then, sounding genuinely shocked. “You were a year above me in school. You were always so serious, and distant — you always looked like you were wondering about something else. I used to look at you and think, there’s a dreamer.”

His eyes are earnest and wide and brown. Yuuri doesn’t think he’s lying.

“A dreamer,” he says, tests it aloud, tries it on. It fits a little better than an eldest son.

“I should have known you,” Phichit says, and shakes his head. “I could have helped.”

“There’s not much that could have helped,” Yuuri tells him, “truthfully. And you’ve enough on your plate, I think, without taking on my problems.”

“Ah, I’m good at that,” Phichit says, then smirks and elbows him gently in the side. “Congratulations, by the way.”

“Eh?” Yuuri says, blinking at him. “Congratulations?”

Phichit nods at the golden ring, glinting on Yuuri’s finger. “On your marriage. I assume there’s a reason you didn’t tell Mari yet?”

Yuuri feels his cheeks flood with red. “Oh, that — that’s not — I didn’t — it’s just — Viktor gave it to me!”

“Oh, so an engagement ring, then,” Phichit says, still smirking a little. “I can’t believe it! You got Viktor Nikoforov, dreaded evil wizard, to settle down with you!”

“It’s not, ” Yuuri says, helplessly, unable to stop his blush from spreading down his neck and over his ears. “It’s — it’s to call him with, to let him know when it’s safe to come back. It’s not that. ”

Phichit’s smile doesn’t vanish, but he stops teasing.

“When’s he coming back, then?”

“I don’t know.” Yuuri twists the ring around on his finger. “I don’t know how to tell if it’s safe.”

Phichit watches him in silence for a moment, and then huffs a laugh to himself, leaning back onto the couch and closing his eyes. “Call for him.”

Yuuri bites his lip. “But what if—"

“The worst is over, I think,” Phichit points out, without opening his eyes. “Are you afraid?”

Yuuri does not answer at first, just wraps his hands around the head of his cane and stares at Yuri, flickering in the ashes. Yuri looks back. His eyes, all dancing blue flame, suddenly remind him of Viktor’s, but Yuri’s are too full of movement to be anything but alive.

“Of him?” Yuuri says, thinking of Viktor’s eyes, marble-like and reaching, grasping, trying . “No. Not anymore. But for him? Yes, always.”

Phichit hums, and the room falls quiet again for a long while, the light emanating from Yuri’s small body flickering on the walls. Outside, the Waste is cold and rainy; inside, Yuuri closes his eyes again and lets the warmth wash over him.

In here, it’s safe.

That, more than anything, convinces him; if Viktor is to be anywhere, it should be here.

He twists the ring around on his finger again. “Well,” he says, “it seems it’s your turn now, isn’t it? I’ve done my job, and now you need to call Viktor and do yours.”

The ring heats, glowing for a half-second around his finger. Yuuri and Phichit watch as it dims back to its normal gold again.

“That’s that, I suppose,” Yuuri says. “If you’re staying, we should get you some dinner.”

“You don’t mind?”

“Well, it’s nice to have company that isn’t Yuri.”

“I’ll remember that the next time you want tea,” Yuri says. “Dumbass.”

Viktor comes bolting in the door, Makkachin at his heels, about fifteen minutes later. His hair is a silver waterfall, down his back and off his shoulders, and he’s shivering without his coat. His shirt is dotted with raindrops, making odd patterns on his arms and back. There’s a silvery-gray feather stuck in one of his boots.

Yuuri finishes putting a stack of logs down next to the hearth, straightens, and smiles. “Welcome back.”

“Yuuri,” Viktor smiles, and seems not to know what else to say. He’s relieved and soft-eyed, pushing his damp hair back without breaking eye contact. Then, again, he shivers, and the moment passes.

“You look frozen solid,” Yuuri says accusingly. “Get inside and sit down.”

“I’m not letting you make tea,” Yuri snaps. “That’d be the third time today.”

“We’ll survive,” Yuuri tells him, tugging out a chair for Viktor to sit at. “You were all right? You weren’t noticed or followed or—"

“You’re sweet for worrying,” Viktor says, catching Yuuri’s wrists in his hands and squeezing once, gently, before letting go. “I was perfectly safe.”

Then he runs the moment by flicking gently at the end of Yuuri’s nose.

Phichit snickers. Viktor, for the first time, appears to notice that he’s there.

“Ah,” he says. “You’re the mayor’s son.”

Phichit nods. “Yuuri said I could stay for a night. Just to make sure no one’s still in town that needs to get through.”

“It couldn’t hurt, I suppose,” Viktor says, “though there’s nowhere for you to sleep.”

“Nonsense, there’s an extra room,” Yuuri tells him, spooning soup into a bowl and setting it down. “Eat.”

“My books are in that room.”

“For heaven’s sake,” Yuuri says, glaring pointedly at the soup again, when Viktor does not make a move to eat it. “You’re a wizard, Viktor, I’m sure you can conjure something for him to sleep on.”

“That’s not how it works, ” Viktor protests, eating some soup half-heartedly and continuing to shiver, off and on. Makkachin whines and sits on his feet, as if attempting to warm him up. “You’ve lived here long enough to know—"

“Then he can have my bed,” Yuuri says, and waves a hand. “I’ll sit up with Yuri. Eat, ” he says again, then, insistent; Viktor had briefly opened his mouth to argue. “You need to warm up. I won’t have gone through all that nonsense just to have you freeze to death on me now.”

“I’ll have to go back out,” Viktor points out. “You won’t have to sit up with Yuri.”

He raises his eyebrows pointedly and eats some more soup, and Yuri makes a noise which is something between a laugh and a snort, but also sounds like wood popping.

Yuuri considers getting stuck on the implication that Viktor will let him sleep in his bed, but pushes it away, to get stuck on later. “Why would you go back out?”

It comes out slightly more panicked than he’d meant, and Viktor pauses.

“I can stay,” he says, “I only thought — if we’re going to stay here, if we have to — I should go out and look around. In case Lilia has managed to find us, and sent spies.”

Phichit, eating soup himself, looks skeptical. “Surely she wouldn’t worry about that right now, with the war.”

“I don’t know,” Viktor says. “She thinks I’m as big of a threat, if not bigger. She’s in Kingsbury. The war can’t touch her there.”

Yuuri sits down at the table with them. Makkachin leaps up from Viktor’s feet to bury his face in Yuuri’s lap, tag wagging, not aware or not caring that every time it swings around, it hits Viktor in the leg. Viktor only smiles at the dog indulgently, though, and says nothing.

“She should still care, ” Phichit says darkly. “There still is a war. All of town was caught in it, and if it weren’t for the two of you — and she thinks you’re the threat!” His hand is clenched into a fist on the tabletop, and Yuuri reaches out and squeezes his shoulder.

“Everyone got out, Phichit,” he says, guessing at what he’s really upset about. “You got them out.”

The air leaves him in a huff. “I know,” he says, and tries to smile. “I just — it’s such a waste.”

He finishes his soup and stands.

“Is it safe to go out, into the Waste? I need a moment to clear my head, I think.”

“Stay in sight of the castle,” Viktor says. “Other than that you ought to be fine.”

“Thank you,” Phichit says, automatically, but when he looks at Yuuri his eyes soften, and he says it with more meaning. “Thank you.”

Yuuri smiles at him, and goes back to his soup.

He closes the door quietly, when he leaves — he doesn’t slam it or let it smash itself shut. One gentle noise and he’s gone, leaving Viktor and Yuuri alone with the dog and the fire, to finish their dinner and figure out what to do.

“You’re good at that,” Viktor says, suddenly.

“Hm?” Yuuri’s head is full of plans, places to hide, places to run to. He doesn’t really understand what Viktor means, until he nods at the shut door, and the Waste, and Phichit.

“Talking to people,” he clarifies. “Understanding. I’m not.”

Yuuri shrugs. “I didn’t have much else to do, before I was cursed,” he says, “besides watch other people. You learn, after a while, how to tell what they feel.”

“Was he — did you watch him? Is that how you knew?”

Yuuri shrugs again. “We didn’t move in the same circles,” he says. “Phichit is a mayor’s son, you know. Much more important than some hatter who didn’t like to leave his house.”

“Why didn’t you?”

“I didn’t think there was anything for me, out in the world,” Yuuri admits. “I thought if I tried, I would only be disappointed. It seemed safer to leave my apron on, and let Mari handle the adventures.” He eats some more soup. “Enough about me, it’s not very interesting. What are we going to do next?”

“I think it’s interesting,” Viktor says, but goes back to scratching any part of Makkachin that he can reach. Makkachin, who still has his head in Yuuri’s lap, seems pleased by this development. “Yura, what do you think we should do?”

“Get out,” Yuri says. “You and I can’t fight this off.”

“I think you’re underestimating us a bit,” Viktor says, injured. “We could —”

“For ourselves, yeah,” Yuri says. “We could fight and get out easy.” His flickering eyes turn to Yuuri, to the dog in his lap. “It’s not just us, though.”

“I could go to Mari,” Yuuri says. “I could take Phichit with me — it’s more important that the two of you get out, isn’t it?”

Viktor opens his mouth to argue, but then closes it, slowly. “I . . . suppose,” he says, sounding upset. “But I don’t want to just . . . leave.”

“If it keeps you safe,” Yuuri starts, but Viktor shakes his head and stands, giving the dog a final pat and carrying both their bowls to the sink. It’s domestic enough to give Yuuri pause. They have carved out such a place for themselves here, he thinks. They have made a bubble and kept it from popping. Yuuri, leaving, would do just that.

“I wouldn’t do that to you,” Viktor says. He says it with finality, with purpose. Yuuri scratches under Makkachin’s chin and tries not to smile, it’s too serious a conversation, but it’s nice. Nice to be wanted, nice to be needed. Nice to be too important to leave behind. “You should know that by now.”

“It was only a thought,” Yuuri says. “But what other options are there?”

“I could go out and look,” Viktor says. “Check around for spies — if there are none around, we can change the castle’s location again, and break the connection. We could go away for a while, until she gives up on us.”

Yuuri considers this. “How long is a while?”

“A year, maybe more,” Viktor says, and shrugs. “Until she stopped looking, I suppose. Until she assumed I was dead.”

“Or until your curse is broken,” Yuuri says.

Viktor blinks. “What?”

“She said you were too powerful to live without a heart,” Yuuri says. “She didn’t say too powerful to live, Viktor. She said to live without a heart.”

“You’re saying if I get my heart back, she’ll stop?”

“I think you’re right,” Yuuri tells him. “I think that she thinks you’re just as big of a threat as the war. But I think you’re not realizing she only thinks you’re dangerous because you’re heartless. If you broke your spell, and got your heart back — she might think differently.” He scratches Makkachin again. The serious tone in the room is making the dog anxious. “She might just let it go. I don’t think she truly wants to hurt you and I’m sure --- Yakov was your teacher, right? I’m sure he wouldn’t want to hurt you either.”

“Oh, so we just need to break it,” Yuri says. “Easy. Wonderful, we’ll just snap our fingers and get that done.” He flickers angrily. “You do realize that’s not simple, right?”

“I know,” Yuuri snaps. “I’ve been trying all this time, I know it’s difficult, but — we wouldn’t have to run, that’s all.”

“I didn’t know you’ve been trying,” Viktor says, softly. His eyes are soft again, wide and blue.

“Really?” Yuri asks. “I wouldn’t blame you, he’s been doing a terrible job—”

“Be quiet,” Yuuri tells him, and flicks a drop of water in the direction of the fireplace. Yuri yelps and attempts to wiggle out of the way, but in doing so, gets hit directly in the face.

Viktor laughs, leaning back in his chair, and Yuri sputters at him in annoyance. Yuuri grins over his shoulder at Viktor as he continues to snicker, watches as Viktor looks back and raises his eyebrows in delight. He soaks in the moment as it passes, this half-second with his imperfect little family.

I won’t lose this, he thinks, I’d die first.

He doesn’t say it, because — well, how can you just come out and say something like that? — but he knows it, deep in his stomach, in his heart. This is home, now, and it will always be home, and whoever could try to take it away — be it Lilia or a war or the Witch of the Waste, somehow revived, or some other evil creature — would never be able to manage it. They’d wrap themselves around it and each other and keep it safe.

“I’ll go, then,” Viktor says. “Have a look around, and come back.”

Yuuri watches him, one side of his face glowing in the gentle firelight.

He says, “Stay a bit longer. At least until you warm up.”

Viktor looks back at him, then, and meets his eyes for a long, long moment, stretched out and silent. Then he smiles.

“All right,” he says. “I suppose it can wait until morning.”

Yuuri dreams that night of a silver-feathered bird and a dark maze. He dreams he is a young man again, his curse broken, and that he is chasing this bird through the darkness and all the twists and turns of the maze. He dreams that he cannot, and will never, catch it.

He half-wakes, in the middle of the night, to a hand pushing hair off his forehead, but falls asleep again, and forgets it instantly.

Phichit shakes him awake, once it truly becomes morning.

“Viktor’s gone,” he says, then adds to the statement quickly when he sees Yuuri’s eyes widen. “He left us a note.”

Yuuri picks up his glasses from the table, stretches the stiff parts of his back (though it serves him right, sleeping upright in a chair), and reads the paper Phichit hands him.

Yura — keep hidden. Скоро все закончится.

It’s the language of the people from the north, who — from what Yuuri knows — have the same accent Viktor and Yuri share. He can’t read it, though, so he moves on.

Yuuri — I’ve left a spell for you and the mayor’s son. It will keep anyone from getting inside unless you tell them they can, even me, so I hope you are not so angry that I didn’t tell you goodbye that you won’t let me in at all. The spell might be a bit difficult, but you have Yura to help you, and you are so stubborn and steady-handed that I know you’ll get it in the end.

Stay safe.

Viktor

Phichit, who has been reading over his shoulder, hums. “What does that mean?”

“It’s for Yuri,” Yuuri says. He turns the paper and carefully shows it to the demon, who scans it, snorts, and reaches out with a bit of flame to destroy it.

“Well, you’ve got to do the spell, then,” Yuri says, though there is something of a comforted look in his eyes. “I’ll help, I guess, if I have to.”

Phichit grins, earnest and wide, like an excited child. Yuuri, feeling old for the first time in a while, eyes him.

“This is exciting,” Phichit says, bouncing on the balls of his feet. “Isn’t it? I’ve always wanted to learn magic.”

Yuuri thinks, uncharitably, that Phichit was a youngest son and was not told to shy away from dreams like that. Then he thinks, less uncharitably, that it’s nice he has a chance.

Neither are thoughts he voices. “Why didn’t you ever get to learn?”

“Oh — I thought it would be helpful, to the town, you know, but my father said I should focus on other things,” Phichit says, absently. He glances out the window, into the half-ruined town. “And once I was older it just stopped being a priority, I suppose.” He turns back and smiles again, wide and cheerful. “You must have had things like that.”

Yuuri tilts his head at him, and says nothing. Phichit’s eyes are distant and sad — over time, Yuuri’s grown used to Viktor’s smiles not quite reaching his eyes, but it’s unsettling from Phichit.

“I did,” Yuuri says, when it’s clear Phichit isn’t planning on saying anything else. “Everyone does, I think.”

Phichit offers an arm almost absentmindedly as they walk down the hall to Viktor’s spellroom. “I saw you once, you know,” he says, suddenly. “You stole out of your house in the middle of the night. I couldn’t sleep, and I saw you.”

“When was this?” Yuuri asks, astonished.

“I was fifteen, I think, or sixteen,” Phichit says. He shrugs, and pushes open the door. “You were older than I was. You — It was the middle of winter, and you stole away. I always wondered, after that, when I would see you. What it was you’d been doing, that night. Sometimes I thought it had been some kind of strange dream.” He sits down at the table. Viktor’s spellroom is the room which used to be Yuuri’s, back when he and Mari lived here together and refused to touch their parent’s room, letting it grow dusty and cold. Now, instead of two beds and dressers, it’s covered in bookshelves and scattered bits of paper. “What did you go off to do?”

“I used to go out to the lake, when it was frozen over,” Yuuri admits. “I never told Mari. She would have worried. But my mother knew.” He thinks of his mother, her soft body and warm hands. “She once took me there when I was very small, and taught me to walk on the ice.”

Phichit hums. “Why go in the night? People used to go there in the day, and play around. I would go.”

“Too many people,” Yuuri says. “It made my lungs seize up, like the cold does, when you walk out into it — for a moment, you can’t breathe. If there were too many people I could never breathe. I could only wait for them to go away.”

“I couldn’t have done it at night, alone,” Phichit says, laughing, and paging eagerly through one of the books as Yuuri sits down. “I liked being there with all the others, hearing them laugh and talk. It made me feel so safe to be surrounded by them.”

Yuuri smiles at him, fondly. “You and my sister would have been great friends.”

“I think you and I could have been great friends,” Phichit points out. “Not that we aren’t friends, now, but back then — I wish I’d talked to you.”

“I might not have answered,” Yuuri tells him. “Things are different now.”

“Breathing is easier?”

“A little,” Yuuri says. “I turned old.”

Phichit looks at him quizzically, like he doesn’t see how age could have made a difference, but then looks back down at the spell they have to do. “Oh, he’s divided it into parts for us,” he says, in surprise. “That was nice of him.”

“He has his moments,” Yuuri says, but his fondness bleeds into his voice, and Phichit shoots him an oddly mischievous glance. He clears his throat. “Let’s get to work on this.”

“We have a lot of free time,” Phichit says, teasingly. He turns his chair so he’s directly facing Yuuri. “You could tell me about how you met Viktor.”

Yuuri thinks of flying over rooftops, and how Viktor turned away, how it still stings, a little. “I wandered to his door and Yuri hired me to clean,” he says, which is mostly the truth. “It’s not very interesting.”

Phichit snorts. “That can’t be all of it.”

“Why would you say that?”

“You’ve downplayed every question I’ve asked you so far,” Phichit says, and grins. “Learn to tell a story, Yuuri! Audiences want romance and intrigue!”

“That’s not what my life is like, I’m afraid,” Yuuri says, but he can’t help laughing. Phichit is so earnest and cheerful. “How about you tell me a story, instead?”

“All right,” Phichit says, “I could tell you about how I first got my hamsters! But don’t think I’m letting this go. We’re friends now, I’ll get the real story out of you soon enough.”

He breaks into cheerful chatter, easily reading through the spell’s instructions, gathering ingredients, and talking at the same time. Yuuri listens, but at the same time is overcome with an image of Phichit, layered over the one in reality: a version of him that is a trained wizard, whipping up spells for everyone in town, laughing as he does it. The story goes on, and Yuuri watches, occasionally handing him things.

“You’re good at this,” Yuuri tells him, after the story is over, and then nods at the table, where most of the spell’s ingredients are laid out, and half of them already mixed together. “The storytelling, too, but this — you look calm, when you’re doing this.”

Phichit smiles, but it’s a more sober smile than the ones he has been giving so far. “When the fireball fell,” he says, “and there were people injured and we had no healer — I’ve never been as afraid as I was then.” He mixes a few more items together. Yuuri stays quiet, handing him things when he nods towards them. “I’m going to teach myself how to heal, any way I can. I don’t want the town to be in that position again, not when I could do something about it. They’re all my friends, and — I want to do whatever I can. I don’t want to feel so powerless.”

It’s Yuuri’s turn to hum. He reaches out and rests a hand on Phichit’s arm.

“You can’t protect everyone,” he says. “But I have a feeling you’ll try — and you’ll do a lot of good because of that. Sometimes people just need someone to try.”

Phichit grins, more lighthearted than before. “Old age has changed you,” he teases. “I remember you before. You didn’t have half this much good advice.”

Yuuri laughs, too. “It’s a side effect of the grey hair,” he jokes, and gently knocks his shoulder against Phichit’s. “Really, though. I believe in you.”

Phichit nudges him back. “Thank you.” Then he steps back from the almost-finished spell, and gestures dramatically to the table. “Your turn, I think!”

Yuuri’s section of the directions is very short, and just says tell the spell what it’s meant to do. Viktor writes this as if he assumes Yuuri has some idea what it means, but he doesn’t. Phichit peers at it over his shoulder.

“That’s much more cryptic than mine,” he remarks. “Have they been teaching you magic?”

“No, not at all,” Yuuri says, and stares at it for a moment longer. “We could ask Yuri.”

“Just try what it says,” Phichit suggests. “If it doesn’t work, then we can go see what he says.”

“All right,” Yuuri says, and clears his throat. “Spell,” he says, feeling a bit silly, “I know it must have been irritating, to be pushed around and ground up, but Phichit was only getting you prepared. Now you’ve got a job to do.” He glances at Phichit, who nods encouragingly. “Your job is to keep everything out of this house. People can only come in if Phichit or I say so. All right?”

The ingredients glow for a second, and then vanish into the air.

“All right!” Phichit cheers. “We did it!”

“Are you done?” Yuri shouts, from the living room. Makkachin barks loudly, like he senses something, too.

“I think so,” Phichit calls back. “Did it work?”

“I guess,” Yuri yells. “Come out here. I hate yelling.”

Phichit and Yuuri share an amused look. Yelling is one of Yuri’s favorite pastimes, usually.

Once they’re back out in the living room, though, Yuuri is shocked at how diminished the fire demon looks — he’s smaller and glowing less brightly than usual. Yuri glares at him, though, as if daring him to comment, so he bites down his worry and says nothing.

“Well, that’s done,” Phichit says, oblivious, and pats Makkachin on the head. “We just have to keep an eye out for Viktor so we can let him back in.”

“He should be back soon,” Yuuri murmurs, and Phichit glances sideways at him, knowingly, but doesn’t comment. As if to punctuate his statement, there’s a hearty knocking at the door, fast and desperate, and Yuuri looks over at Phichit.

“Well,” he says, “now we can test if the spell really worked!”

Yuuri nods and walks as quickly as he can to the door, aided by Phichit, who holds onto his elbow. Together, they wrench it open, and are greeted by — well. Not Viktor, which is almost enough to make Yuuri slam the door closed again, but Phichit stops him.

“I don’t recognize him, but he could be from the village. He might need to get through.”

Yuuri squints at the stranger. He’s tall and dark-haired, with broad shoulders and a plain, but gentle face. He seems trustworthy. Of course, Yuuri has no way of knowing for sure.

But he does trust Phichit, so he’s willing to give it a chance.

“Please,” the man says, and holds out his hands. He’s got a strong accent, and Yuuri doesn’t recognize it, but Phichit does, and gasps, his fingers tightening on the door like he’s about to slam it shut. The man holds his hands higher. “Please, I did not come to fight. I only came to see if — if you know where Prince Christophe is.”

“Why us?” Phichit says, his voice tight and choked. “Why come all this way to this town? Why come through all the fighting?” Yuuri realizes he’s angry at the same time the stranger does, and the stranger steps back.

“Please, I know nothing of this, I only —”

Phichit has been so easygoing, so gentle and smiling, that it is easy to forget his pain exists. But Yuuri saw it last night, his anger at Lilia and the King, and he sees it now, in his shaking, clenched fists and face contorted from holding back tears.

“Phichit,” Yuuri begins, but he is interrupted by the stranger.

“I only need a little help, I need —”

“Why even come here?” Phichit snaps. “We don’t have anything to do with a missing prince! You all just — just ruined hundreds of homes and you could have killed so many people and I was right here, about to let you through —”

“Phichit,” Yuuri says, placing a hand on his arm. He cannot help feeling angry, too, but not at this gentle-eyed man, only at the soldiers, the enemy wizards who set the world on fire. “That’s not his fault.”

The air seems to come out of him, and he just stares for a moment at the empty, ruined houses of Hasetsu, angry tears gathering in his eyes. Before Yuuri can say anything else, he closes his eyes and grits his teeth, turning to the side as if swallowing down a great sob, and then turns and vanishes into the shop.

“Please,” the man repeats, his accent even thicker now that he’s upset. “I’ve come so far. I just want to find him.”

“This missing prince,” Yuuri says, quietly. “He’s the one that started all this?”

“His name is Chris,” the foreigner says. “He has green eyes and blonde hair, and he wears round glasses, sometimes.”

Yuuri shakes his head.

“I must find him,” the stranger says, his eyes so desperate, so sad. Yuuri knows he should let the man through to Kingsbury and send him on his way — that would be the logical thing to do, the safe one — but there’s something in how he talks of the prince, something starved and terrified and kind. Something like love.

“I might know a way to find him,” he says. “Come in.” A shiver goes through him, then; the spell on the castle listening.

The stranger takes a step forward, then back.

“I—" he says, then trails off almost hopelessly. “I don’t know.”

Yuuri shrugs and turns back to the shop. “Then go,” he adds, over his shoulder. “I certainly won’t stop you.”

He allows himself a smile, quiet and pleased, when the man wrings his hands follows him in.

“Viktor won’t like this,” Yuri warns from the fireplace, and the foreigner gasps.

“He’ll just have to shout at me for it, then, won’t he,” Yuuri says. “Come in, sit down. And tell us your name.”

The foreigner sits. “Josef,” he says. “My name’s Josef. I’m a — I work in the castle’s libraries.”

“Here?” Phichit asks. His arms are crossed, his face tight and angry.

“No,” Josef says. “Across the sea, in Norland. I know you probably don’t know anything, but —”

He takes a deep, shuddering breath, and looks close to tears. Yuuri sits down across from him.

“Tell us,” he says.

Josef looks up, puzzled and hopeful. “You’ll listen?”

“Yes,” Yuuri says. “Tell us everything you know. If we can help you, we will.”

Phichit, looking unimpressed, leans against the wall near Yuri and exchanges a glance with him.

“They think I’m senile,” Yuuri says, conversationally, smiling reassuringly at Phichit. “Don’t mind them.” He won’t hurt us.

Phichit glances back at him and gives a miniscule shrug. All right.

Josef takes another deep breath, and stares at his hands, folded on the table.

“I’ve worked in the castle libraries of Norland all my life,” he says. “I grew up there. My mother was librarian before me, and my grandfather before her. I’ve always been surrounded by books, and I’ve never wanted anything else.”

He speaks, Yuuri thinks, with the cadence of a storyteller, even with his accent and the overly formal phrases he uses — the marks of a language that has been learned rather than born into. He speaks like someone who has been surrounded by words for a long, long time.

Phichit and Yuri seem to recognize it, too, and they all settle in to listen.

“I first met the prince when I was six years old,” Josef continues, twisting his fingers around each other. “He was a year older than me, and he wanted to hear stories. My mother would pass books along to his nursemaids, books based off the ones I liked. Finally he asked to come to the library, to see where all the books came from — he was always so curious when he was a child, and so willing to have things explained. His father always said it would make him a good leader. To me, it was — he was a friend. I hadn’t known I’d needed a friend until I met him.

“He got less interested in books as we got older, but he never got less interested in me. He would come to me in the afternoons, skipping his riding lessons or trying to avoid his history tutors. And he would always laugh at me — I think half his life must have been made up of laughing at me. ‘Josef,’ he’d say, ‘Josef, when are you going to get out of this stuffy old library and come have some fun with me?’

“And I would say, ‘I’m having fun right now, Chris. Aren’t you?’ and he would laugh at me some more.

“When he would leave the library, he would give me a hug and kiss my cheeks, like he did with all the aristocrats who came visiting. ‘Josef,’ he would say, ‘Josef, don’t drown in the books, or I won’t have an excuse to leave Monsieur Lawrence alone tomorrow.’ And then he would laugh at me again, and go.

“He was always so light-hearted, Prince Christophe. He could make anything into a massive joke, and as he got older, he could make anything into an opportunity to flirt. But he was someone who saw that the world was full of joy. He just wanted to wring every last ounce out that he could. He was never afraid to laugh and dance and live . I used to imagine he was never afraid of anything.

“Four months ago, he vanished. He didn’t come in to see me, one afternoon, and I thought nothing of it at first. I thought maybe Monsieur Lawrence had finally caught him, and I was prepared to laugh at him when I saw him next for it. But then the next day passed, and the next, and still, he didn’t come.

“For the first time in what felt like years, I closed the doors of the library and walked out. I kept putting one foot in front of the other, traversing this castle which I knew so well, which had been Chris’s playground and mine from the time we were children. I walked into the throne room and knelt before his parents, and begged them to tell me where he was. I knew in that instant, bowing before them, that my loyalty was no longer to them. It was an almost terrifying concept — but only almost, because I knew where my loyalty now laid, and it was with Chris. With my dear friend.”

Josef falls silent for a moment, lost in thought and staring at his hands.

“What did they say?” Phichit asks, his voice soft and measured.

“His mother told me to stand, and to go. She said, ‘there is nothing you can do for him now. The kingdom across the sea has taken him, and he is most certainly dead.’ There were tears in her voice when she spoke, and I looked up at her and the king, and I saw a grief that was great and terrible, settled over his shoulders like a cloak. But I was not upset, for I knew he was not dead.”

“How did you know?” Yuri asks. He crackles in the way which means he is interested, and trying very hard not to show it.

“I knew,” Josef says, simply, and presses a hand over his heart. “I knew.”

“You’re in love,” Yuuri says; he phrases it as a statement of fact, not a question.

Josef only bows his head. “Is it that obvious?”

Yuuri pats his hand where it rests on the table, and that, of course, is when Viktor blows the front door open, like a very handsome hurricane.

“I don’t think we can move the castle,” he says, grimly, “Lilia’s spies are—"

Then he freezes, staring at Yuuri’s hand, and then at Josef’s hand, then at Josef himself.

“Close your mouth, you’ll catch flies,” Yuri says. “That’s some librarian from across the sea. He’s in love.”

Viktor’s mouth twitches. Yuuri can’t tell if it’s an angry twitch or a happy one. “With Yuuri?”

“Be serious,” Yuuri says, and rolls his eyes, patting the poor man’s hand once more before standing. “As if anyone would fall in love with someone like me. Now, come in, what’s this about not being able to move the castle?”

“Ah,” Viktor says, and looks slightly happier — glad to be the center of attention again, no doubt, or maybe just happy to be able to step through the door. “Yes. Well, Yakov and Lilia had the castle surrounded back in Kingsbury — I managed to hide it by making them think I’d broken the connection, but now they know this is the place where you all are. Except Yurio.”

“Don’t call me that.”

“Yurio is the only one who can’t leave, physically,” Viktor explains, ignoring the demon and continuing to explain. “He has to stay in the hearth, it’s what keeps the castle moving. And not just any hearth, it has to be the one that’s actually in the castle. So this one doesn’t work. We wouldn’t be able to take him out this door.”

“So?” Phichit says.

“So what?” Viktor answers, flicking his hair out of his eyes.

“What’s the plan?”

“Ah,” Viktor says. “A plan. Yes.”

“You absolute idiot,” Yuri says, scornfully. “You don’t have a plan at all, do you.”

“I was in the process of creating one,” Viktor says, with great dignity. “What’s most important now is that we get Lilia’s spies away from the castle and fool them into thinking this is the real hearth.”

“And how are we supposed to do that?” Yuuri asks, trying to hide his growing panic. This is suddenly so much bigger than all of them, and so much closer to home. At least before, with the threat of bombs and fire and war, there was something he could do; a doorway he could open and people he could help. Now, he has a sinking feeling he’s going to be doing a lot of sitting and waiting, and that’s never been helpful when his fears take hold of him.

Viktor, however, doesn’t seem to feel any of that panic, and winks at Yuuri.

“Like this,” he says, and throws open the door, transforming into a monstrous, gigantic silver bird and flying away.

“That doesn’t answer my question,” Yuuri mumbles, but moves to the doorway to look up.

He nearly has a heart attack.

The blob-men are back, but this time they’re smaller and deadlier and can fly, and Viktor is surrounded by them; his feathers being torn from his body, his claws tearing back. Yuuri can’t look, but knows he must, at the same time.

His hand grips, too hard, at the edge of the window, and he stares up, in shock and in horror, watching as this man, this man he very well might love, is torn half to shreds.

He chances a single glance back at the fire, at Yuri, and Yuri meets his eyes with a grim, tired determination that is very unlike him. He seems to get smaller before Yuuri’s very eyes.

“You have to —” he starts, but then can’t think of what Yuri could do. But his heart roars, pounding like thunder along the veins in his wrists and neck and chest. Panic, for the first time in weeks. “He’s killing himself,” Yuuri says, and it comes out a choked, frantic whisper.

Yuri inclines his head.

Yuuri grips the windowsill still tighter, and begins to mutter under his breath, frantic and instinctual. It’s the only thing that brings him any semblance of calm, and he remembers Mari, seventeen and serious-faced, holding his wrists in her hands and murmuring breathe along with me, Yuuri . “They’re not going to hit you,” he says, mindless, helpless, lungs inflating to swallow too much air at once, air that feels like water, heavy and able to drown him. He holds onto the windowsill like Mari used to hold his wrists. “They’re not going to hurt you, you’re going to be fine, you’re going to be fine, you’re going to be fine —”

“Yuuri,” the fire says. When he turns back to glance at him he is burning low, cold and tired. “Don’t bother.”

Yuuri swears, bitterly, as the last blob-man bursts, and Viktor comes hurtling towards the front door.

The instant he’s inside, grinning like he expects to be praised, Yuuri glares at him. Viktor reacts instantly and negatively, crossing his arms over his chest and glaring back defensively.

“What?” he says.

“You idiotic, reckless wizard,” Yuuri snaps, his hands still half-shaking, lungs still heavy with too much air. Too much, too much. His heart pumping in his chest, Viktor’s death-wish smile — too much. “Have you decided to make it your life’s mission to terrify me?”

“Why would you be terrified?” Viktor asks, his head tilted sideways, eyes narrowed into slits. “I’m only doing this to keep you and Yura safe! If they see me defending this place specifically they’ll think this is where the hearth is, and you all can escape to the Wastes or to Kingsbury—"

“And you?” Yuuri wants to be angry, but fear has taken him over; the thought of Viktor, unmoving, not breathing. Lying on the ground in a shower of silver feathers. It would be quite a dramatic death, Viktor would love it; Yuuri wants to throw up. “What happens to you?”

“Oh, I’ll get out somehow, I imagine,” Viktor says, waving a hand. “Why does that matter?”

“Because I care about you!” The words burst from Yuuri unbidden. Viktor gapes at him. Phichit, from the kitchen table, exchanges a glance with the young foreign man before quickly looking away. Yuuri raps his cane irritably against the ground. “Oh, damn it, you weren’t meant to know that.”

“You care about me?”

Viktor’s voice shocks him. It’s small, and cracked open, and there’s something desperately hopeful in his eyes.

Yuuri softens his voice. “Of course I do,” he says. “Which is why you shouldn’t be antagonizing this fellow’s forces,” he gestures at Josef the librarian, “not to mention Madame Lilia’s, like some kind of colossal, magical, idiot. ”

Viktor beams, and before Yuuri know’s what’s happening, he’s being crushed in Viktor’s arms. “You care about me,” he says. “I’m so glad. I care about you, too.”

Yuri makes a retching noise from the fire, or as close an approximation to one as he can.

Yuuri notices nothing, because Viktor has his arms around him .

He thinks that in some silly old story this would calm his panic, still his frantic, nearly-shattered heart. But in a story, he thinks, he would not have panicked in the first place. Heroes stand stalwart, a single tear in their eyes. Heroes do not have glass hearts and shaky hands.

“I’m old,” he says, eyes squeezed shut, body stiff. He will not pretend that Viktor could truly care about him. He refuses to put his glass heart in more danger than necessary. “I’m old, and plain, and you—" His voice cracks. “You need to let go of me.”

Viktor lets go, but doesn’t move away. “Yuuri,” he says, places his hands gently on the sides of Yuuri’s face, and Yuuri’s heart thuds still quicker with love for him, greedy for the sight of his long silver hair and the way his hands flutter when he talks, the white of his smile and the way his mouth wraps around Yuuri’s name. He loves every inch of Viktor. He might not be able to pretend otherwise anymore, but he will pretend it doesn’t pound away at his heart, because right now the love turns into something rotten and thuds along in his veins like panic. Yuuri wishes, desperately, that he knew how to be breathless without stumbling, how to let himself love without fearing the eventual destruction of it, the near-future time when Viktor will no longer want him.

Viktor’s thumbs trace, tenderly, over his cheeks. It’s marvelous and it’s terrible and Yuuri can’t, he can’t, he can’t delude himself any longer.

“I’m cursed,” Yuuri says. He has forgotten their conversation, forgotten their argument; all that is real is Viktor in front of him. He cannot bear to push him away, but he refuses to pull him closer. He shuts his eyes and tries to turn away, to blur out the image of Viktor’s face, his mouth close enough to kiss.

“I know you’re cursed,” Viktor says impatiently. “What should that matter? So am I. So is half this castle, if my magic-sense is still working. We can break it.”

“And what then?” His voice cracks again, frantic and hysterical and ugly. “I know you, Viktor. I know Yuri, too. You won’t want me when all’s said and done. When I — when I’m not a mystery or a curse you can’t break and I’m just — when I’m just a hatter again. When I don’t have being old as an excuse for being ugly and uninteresting.”

It’s as if a shutter closes in Viktor’s eyes, and Yuuri feels fiendishly glad for saying it, getting it right enough that even Viktor, with all his avoidances, could not dance around it.

“It’s true, isn’t it?” Yuuri says, terrible and cruel in the stillness of the room. “You could have anyone you liked. You’re half in love with someone else, either way. I’m only interesting to you — to both of you — because I’m cursed and it hasn’t broken and you’re trying to work out why. I won’t let you — I won’t let you pity me!” It hurls itself out of his mouth like a spell. “I refuse. Viktor, I — I care about you so much, and you — you and I both know you can’t love me, and I won’t pretend. I won’t let you pretend, either.”

“You don’t know that,” Viktor says, low and insistent, in the voice he used when he convinced Yuuri to go to the King. It is the voice he uses when he wants something. Yuuri finds the strength to wrench his hands free. “I could. I could try. You were the one who said you thought I still had a heart—"

He turns away, tears stinging his eyes, and his hands shake, they shake, they shake. Mari, in his head, says breathe, Yuuri. Mari, in his head, says this will pass. And Viktor will pass too, Yuuri thinks, Viktor will pass and Viktor will someday fall in love with some other stranger who can promise him a piece of his heart without shattering his own in the process. “Please, Viktor. I won’t be able to say no each time. Don’t — don’t hurt me like this.” He picks up his cane and shakily moves a few steps away.

Viktor’s face is stony. “Yura,” he says, “keep them safe.”

Quick as a flash, he’s out the door, leaving only silver feathers behind.

Yuuri wipes at his eyes and takes a deep breath. “Idiot,” he says, half-heartedly, out the window.

Yuri, from the fire, snorts. “He does mean it, you know,” he says. “You’re both being dumbasses.”

Yuuri sighs. “He doesn’t mean it,” he corrects, gently. “He doesn’t have a heart, Yuri.”

“He still cares,” Yuri says. “He cares about me. And you. And that dog. It’s disgusting.”

Yuuri clacks his cane and says nothing. It’s still not the way he wants Viktor to care about him, the thing he is idiotic and selfish enough to want. Without anything to argue against, Yuri sinks back into the fireplace, and Yuuri turns back to Phichit and the foreigner. He hopes they won’t ask too many questions. If they do, he’ll certainly cry all over again.

“I’m sorry about all that,” he says, clearing his throat to hide how choked it is, and Phichit, nervously, smiles.

“It must be a good story,” the foreign man says, almost wistfully. “How you ended up cursed, and then here.”

“Well,” Phichit says, “tell us. We can’t leave just yet.” His smile is still nervous but it’s warm and understanding, and Yuuri feels a rush of affection for him underneath all his confused sorrow; he wishes he’d met him before this, when he was just a hatter and Phichit just a mayor’s son. It would have been nice to have another friend.

“I’ll make some tea,” Yuuri says, and click-steps his way over to the sink.

It’s a testament to Yuri’s newfound ability to detect Yuuri’s emotional state that he doesn’t even complain about having to heat up the hot water again.

Chapter Text

PART VII: THE BOY WHO SWALLOWED A STAR

"What should we do now, then?" Phichit asks. His cup of tea is empty in front of him, but he's grasping it between his palms like it can bring him warmth, even so.

Yuri hums from inside the fireplace, and it echoes up into the chimney, and back into the room. He doesn't answer the question, he just hums distantly, like he's thinking, and they all watch him, waiting. Wondering.

"I think we should just keep going," Yuri says, finally, his flames pale yellow and flickering a little, like a candle dancing in a light wind. He glances sideways at Yuuri like he expects him to add something, but he doesn't.

Yuuri himself has barely spoken, besides to explain, briefly, how he met Viktor. Josef had watched him and seemed disappointed at the lack of a long story, his hands wrapped, too, around his steaming mug of tea. But Yuuri had been still-shaking and embarrassed and cold and unable to imagine a prettier story, a story of warmth and wholeness like the one Josef told and is still telling, in every movement he makes. Yuuri's story is too much like life, which is only a veiled way of saying it is not interesting to live, or to tell.

"Going?" Phichit asks.

"With the plan."

"I thought there was no plan," Josef says. He still has tea left, and sips it. Yuri eyes him like he's not quite sure why he's still here, but says nothing.

"Viktor doesn't have one," Yuri points out. "But — well, that's not true. He sort of has one, and I almost have one, and together they make an entire plan. I think."

"That's very reassuring," Phichit says. He glances, eyebrows raised, and Yuuri, who shrugs at him half-heartedly. "Do we get to hear this plan or are you just going to tell us as we go?"

"We go to the Wastes," Yuri says, simply. "And you pick me up and take me out of the house."

He's met with silence.

"You're made of fire," Yuuri says, leaning forward in his chair, finding his voice with sudden urgency. "You'll go out."

"No," Yuri says. "I won't." He says it with such utter certainty that the room appears reassured. But Yuuri doesn't sit back.

"Taking you out —”

“It won’t kill him,” Yuri says. “He’s doing a good enough job of that on his own.”

“Yuri,” Yuuri starts, but the fire only rolls his eyes.

“I thought you didn’t care ?” he huffs, sparks flying off his body like tiny, crackling bits of lightning.

“Don’t,” Yuuri says, his throat tight. “This isn’t about — I just don’t want you to get hurt.” I can’t lose you too, he doesn’t say, looking at the little demon pleadingly.

Yuri only flickers. "It breaks the connection," he says. "Between the shop, and Kingsbury, and the lake. And it'll probably bring the castle down, too," he adds, an afterthought.

"He won't know we’ve done it," Yuuri says. Phichit and Josef exchange a look again, but Yuuri is too focused on Yuri, on the confirmation that Viktor will somehow be able to locate them, to come back. It strikes him in the chest, how much he wants Viktor to come back. Yuri just shakes his head.

"He'll know," he says. "He and I have —”

The spell cuts him off, then, and he growls, then shakes his head.

“He'll know the way to me. He can find me anywhere,” he says, instead.

"I vote yes," Phichit adds. "I think we should do it. To find us in the Waste — I mean, it'd be difficult, wouldn't it? We'd be safer there, if no one could get through from either side."

"I vote yes, too," says Josef. "If I get a vote, that is."

"You don't," Yuri says. "I do. I vote yes."

They all look expectantly at Yuuri.

"If you really think it'd be best," he says, looking at Yuri, who flickers in a less evil fashion than usual. "Then I trust you."

Yuri's flames flutter about for a moment, almost as if he's pleased. "That's the smartest thing you've said all day."

Turnip Head is waiting for them, still and silent as ever, when they step out into the Waste.

For the moment, Yuri is still inside, directing the castle as best he can; Yuuri had wanted to examine the terrain for a moment, as they would all surely have to walk somewhere else after the castle was gone to avoid detection, and he had wanted to check for paths or roads or nearby towns, or even small caves where they could wait for the battle to end. Phichit had agreed, and Yuri had, grudgingly, said it was all right to wait a little while. From here, they can see Hasetsu but little else, just the buildings, clustered together in sets. They are far enough away that they look nothing like people’s homes, only like slightly burned toys.

Phichit watches them for a bit too long, then clears his throat and looks away. "We can't go back there," he says. "The next town over is —”

He searches the empty landscape.

"There, somewhere," he says, gesturing off to his left. "About a day's journey, if I remember right."

Turnip Head, as if attempting to contribute, jumps up and down twice so its head bobs. Yuuri has begun to take that as a yes.

"Thank you, Turnip," he says, nodding back at it. It bobs again, then stops. Josef has just stepped out of the castle, shivering and wrapping his arms around his middle.

"It is so cold in this country," he says. His voice is distant, and sad.

Turnip, in what must be the fastest movement Yuuri has ever seen from it, bounces over to stand by his side, and then jumps a few more times for good measure. Its painted face cannot change shape or position, and does not leave its default expression of a slightly distant smile. But its straw body vibrates, which what almost seems to be excitement. Phichit blinks at it.

"Does it —” he starts, then cleared his throat. "Does it always do that?"

"No," Yuuri says, leaning on his cane and watching. "This is new."

“Ah,” Josef says, blinking at it, “is this a — demon? Like the one who lives in the fire?”

“I don’t know quite what it is,” Yuuri admits. “It’s a scarecrow, that much I know for sure. Vi — er. We thought it was under some kind of curse. I’ve been trying to figure out what, so I can try to break it, but.” He shrugs. “That sounds easier than it is.”

“I can imagine,” Josef murmurs, staring at Turnip Head. “Hello, there.”

“I call it Turnip Head,” Yuuri explains. Phichit laughs, and he rolls his eyes. “Yes, yes, very creative, I know.”

Turnip jumps again, its hat flopping up and down against its face. Yuuri knows it is impossible, completely, utterly, but for a moment he swears the vague smile on the scarecrow's face turns wider and more present, more delighted. Perhaps Josef sees it too, because he blinks and stares, hard, at Turnip's painted mouth, his brow furrowed and inquisitive.

"Right, then," Phichit says, and claps his hands. "Let's go. This is as good a place as any to walk from, I think."

Josef glances back inside, and tucks his hands back against his ribs, his arms crossed to keep warm. “You two go in,” he says. “I’ll stay here.”

Turnip wobbles again, and Josef glances back at it. An odd, half-smile traces its way up his face.

“I think,” he says, “this Turnip Head of yours likes me.”

“It just might,” Yuuri says, watching as Turnip sways in the wind, its painted face pointed directly at Josef. He has never seen the odd creature so still. “Maybe you’re the one to break its spell, if there is one to break. Wouldn’t that be a nice story for Chris?”

“Ah,” Josef says, and smiles again at the scarecrow, his mouth gentle and quiet. “Yes. It will be.”

“Lift me up with that coal shovel,” Yuri says. “Be careful to get all of me. And carry me out.”

“All right,” Yuuri says.

“Make sure I’m the last thing to leave the house! Don’t get twitchy and try to run out with me first, you’ll get hurt —”

“All right. ”

“Maybe I should help you,” Phichit says, glancing at Yuuri’s cane and his old, shaking hand as it reaches for Yuri.

“ No, ” Yuri says, glowing bright, pure yellow for a moment, nearly gold. “It has to be him.”

This proclamation is enough to shock them all into silence, and Yuri looks embarrassed for a moment, caught, almost, frozen in some strange combination of confusion and wariness. Yuuri tilts his head at him, and remembers his yellow-flame smile, his confident I have no heart.

“Yuri,” he says, as gently as he thinks the demon will accept, “hold on.”

Then he lifts him into the air, held aloft on a shovel amid bits of coal and wood. Yuri does not make a sound, just wraps his small, flaming arms around a stray piece, one lighter in color than the rest but round and mottled as a stone. Burned almost to nothing.

“If you drop me,” Yuri says, quietly, looking into Yuuri’s eyes, “I’ll kill you, idiot.”

Yuuri smiles at him, a gentle twitch of one corner of his mouth, and says nothing.

Phichit is standing in the doorway. “Are you sure about this?”

“It doesn’t seem like there’s much else we can do,” Yuuri says. “Get Makkachin. Make sure he’s —”

“He’s out already,” Phichit says. “He’s been chasing Turnip in circles for about five minutes, while you’ve been standing here and arguing.”

He grins at them, but it’s shaky and nervous. Yuuri grins back in precisely the same way.

“All right,” he says, “all right,” and he begins to back towards the door.

“Be careful,” Yuri says again, the barest whisper, the softest sound. Phichit, already out the door, does not hear him, but Yuuri does, and a fierce and terrible feeling wells in his throat, threatening to overcome him at the fear in the little demon’s voice.

“Yuri,” he says, “I promise, you’ll be safe with me.”

Yuri’s burning eyes meet his, and for the first time, he seems comforted.

“Just go,” he says, huddling down. “And try to hold something over me. It’s raining out there.”

When Yuri is taken from the castle, it’s as if a vortex swallows its insides whole.

It doesn’t entirely vanish, but it crumbles to the ground, any trace of Yuuri’s childhood home gone from inside, replaced by almost-rotting wood and heavy stone that falls in on itself, walls crashing down and turning to rubble. Yuuri steps back, almost running, before he remembers Yuri and steadies his hands, swallowing hard and forcing himself to move forward again, to hold the shovel tightly in one hand and his cane in the other, moving forward and picking at the shambles of their once-home for wood that’s not quite as rotten, for stone that he can build into a hearth. Yuri cannot live in his hands forever — already, he’s flickering, gasping quietly like a human who’s been underwater too long.

“Yuuri,” Phichit says, like a warning, and Yuuri glances back at him. He and Josef are staring at the sky, their eyes wide and dark, reflecting the stars.

He follows their gaze, and there are two blob-men, twisting and turning around a silvery shape, far, far too high to make out. But Yuuri knows that silver, knows that shape; he would know it in darkness and too-bright light, knows it in the depths of his heart. And just as he knows it’s Viktor, he feels, somewhere deep in his gut, that he’s weakening.

“Viktor,” Yuri mumbles, and draws himself up, turning more orange and less blue, growing big enough that Yuuri can feel heat on his hands. “We have to —”

“First we get you somewhere dry,” Yuuri says, and continues to dig in the rubble, unearthing some wood that is a little less rotten and gently setting Yuri down next to it. The demon reaches out with one tendril of fire and draws it closer to himself.

“He’s coming,” Yuri says, finally. “Told you he would.”

“He can take care of himself,” Yuuri says, resolutely, though every part of him longs to run to the place where Viktor is and shout him down, draw on every bone in his old body to somehow be a barrier of protection. But, he tells himself, sternly, Yuri is more important right now.

This, of course, is when Viktor crashes to the ground near them, tumbling over himself and shedding feathers as he goes; as this happens, Yuri, terrifyingly, flickers and goes out, for a horrible few seconds until he comes back, completely blue and shivering in and out of sight but there.

They all gasp, but Viktor only struggles to his feet and stumbles headlong to where Yuri is sitting, flickering and still wheezing a bit. Yuuri steps forward, and then back; unsure if he should reach out, unsure if Viktor would welcome it. Viktor doesn’t look at him, just gathers Yuri in his hands and breathes on him, his hands shaking.

Yuuri exchanges a glance with Phichit when he realizes Viktor is wheezing, too, just a little.

Then he moves again, shoves with his shoulder against a particularly large piece of the wall, pushing and pushing until it moves, revealing what’s left of the hearth. The large bit of wall is half-standing above it, making a little cave for Yuri to hide from the rain in.

Viktor sets him down, piling wood around him, but it doesn’t change anything. He’s still still and blue, and Viktor’s entire body is still shaking.

“We still have a bit farther to go, Yura,” Viktor says, still resolutely not looking at the rest of them. His voice is gentle, almost tender. Certainly more kind than the usual cheerful teasing he gives the little demon. “Just a bit farther.”

“Vitya,” Yuri mumbles, and then trails off into complicated syllables for a moment, his accent thickening. Viktor appears to understand him.

“I know,” he says, like it breaks his non-existent heart. “I know. I — I’ll find something.”

“What do you need?” Phichit asks, his voice small.

“Demons make bargains,” Viktor says, simply. “For him to live, I need to find something else to give.”

“We could,” Phichit starts, then trails off as Viktor holds up a hand.

“No,” he says. “It has to be me.”

He turns to Yuuri, then; looks at him almost embarrassedly.

“I — could you talk to him?” he asks. “Could you keep him —”

Alive, he doesn’t say. Yuuri can only nod, frantic, as Viktor spins on his heel and begins to hunt amid the rubble for something.

With the feeling of approaching someone’s deathbed, Yuuri kneels by the hearth.

“You’re going to be all right,” he says, in a whisper. Yuri’s face appears from the flame, his blue eyes twitching open. He says something else in the northern language that Yuuri cannot translate, then blinks, and blinks again.

“Oh,” he says. “It’s you. Sorry.”

Yuuri’s heart plummets. It doesn’t feel like a good sign, to see him apologize. “Yuri —”

“Where’d Viktor go?” Yuri asks.

“To find something,” Yuuri says. “It’ll help you. You’re going to be all right.”

“He has to give something,” Yuri murmurs. “Last time — I don’t know what else he could give, that would matter as much.”

“Give what?” Yuuri asks. “Can I give something? Can I help?”

“Your eyes,” Yuri lists, “your nose, your arms, your legs, your brain, your heart — anything. It just has to matter. So if you’re thinking of trying to give me your youth —”

“Viktor made a deal with you,” Yuuri says. He had known it for a long time, he thinks. He wishes he had said something before, wishes he had pushed further, trying to grasp it. All the threads have seemed to be untangling in his head for the past day or so but there’s been no time to try and stop to weave them back together.

“This wasn’t supposed to happen,” Yuri says, soft as a secret, and still shuddering and flickering in the wind. “I just —”

Then his eyes slip closed again, and Yuuri sucks in a breath, terrified. Phichit and Josef have gathered behind him, standing a few feet away as if they’re not sure what to do; Makkachin approaches the hearth and whines.

“You’re going to live,” he says, then repeats it, mindlessly, trying to mean it more and more each time, “you’re going to be all right, you’re going to live —”

Viktor, finally, gives a shout of recognition and then steps forward, a silver knife glinting in his hands. “This will do,” he says, “won’t it, Yura?”

Yuri’s eyes slip open again, and keep falling closed, like he’s struggling to wake.

“I guess so,” he says, and the silver glints stronger as Viktor gathers his hair in one hand and prepares to cut.

Yuuri reaches out, hand trembling. “You don’t have to.” I can give something, he doesn’t say. You’ve given enough. But he can’t think of what he could give that would be as effortless and logical and terrible as Viktor’s new sacrifice — his beauty, his charm, his hair. All the things he thinks he needs.

Viktor smiles at him, an odd little sad smile, one Yuuri can’t begin to understand. “I do, though.”

“Then let me,” Yuuri says, and takes the scissors from him, pulling Viktor’s curtain of hair back with his own hand. It is a peace offering, he thinks, and then jokes, “You’ll only make a mess.” His smile, he is sure, is trembling and uncertain. Viktor does not smile back, but the air between them softens a little, and so does the sharp line of Viktor’s unhappy mouth. Yuuri’s heart thuds unsteadily with the idea that even after all this, Viktor can still be soft towards him.

Viktor closes his eyes tightly, and refuses to look as Yuuri snips, gathering up the hair and handing it off to Yuri, only opening his eyes to watch as Yuri burns it up, as it turns from spun silver to ash.

Yuri explodes into a ball of flame, wilder and stronger than Yuuri has ever seen him. The ruins of the castle shake and roll and crackle, shifting of their own accord and forming into a makeshift house, like a cottage on mechanical chicken-legs. But there are four shaky walls around them, and a roof above them, and there’s even a balcony outside, that Turnip Head leaps onto with what looks like all of his strength as they rattle away. Josef breathes out a quick sigh, of relief, and he and Phichit both cross to the far window and look out. Phichit leans half his body out over the ledge, craning his neck towards town. Josef only looks to Turnip Head, who jumps again to make his head bob to the side, and his hat covers one of his eyes in what could be a wink.

Viktor sighs and looks away, standing to leave. Before he can, Yuuri catches his hand to stop him.

He reaches up and brushes the bangs out of Viktor’s eyes. His hair is chopped short enough in the back that Yuuri could see the line of his neck, paler than his face by a degree from hiding under his hair. Yuuri couldn’t bear to cut his bangs that short, though. Viktor’s hair was such a part of him that it’s strange to look at him and not see it.

“How do I look?” Viktor says, then laughs, choked. “Don’t answer that.”

“Beautiful,” Yuuri says, anyway. His fingers linger on the side of Viktor’s face.

Viktor sighs, bone deep. “I’m sorry,” he says. “For all the—"

He gestures vaguely with one hand.

“I still don’t know how to do this right,” he says, low enough that Yuuri thinks he probably wasn’t meant to hear it. “I still don’t know how to—"

Yuuri’s heart trips over itself. “I’m sorry too,” he says.

Viktor stares at him. He looks different, without his hair. Less like some kind of otherworldly heart-thief. More like a person. More like something Yuuri could reach out and touch.

“Yes,” he says, finally. Quietly, like he’s not sure he can. “I wasn’t going to say it. But that wasn’t fair. Telling me how I feel about you like you know better than I do. I — I don’t feel much, Yuuri, compared to you, compared to anyone. Or I don’t think I do, anyway. I felt more before, I remember that. I felt deeper. But I’m not mistaken about them. They’re quiet, but I know that they are.”

Yuuri’s heart taps at his ribs. “I’m sorry,” he says again. “I know. I know.”

“Why would you say something like that?” Viktor asks. “How could you — do you really believe that you’re some kind of — that Yuri and I only like you because of —” He cuts himself off, frustrated, and looks hard into Yuuri’s eyes. “I barely even see the spell anymore. I just see you. I see you, Yuuri.”

“No one’s ever seen me before,” Yuuri says, “and wanted to keep looking.”

“Maybe because you haven’t let them,” Viktor mutters.

Yuuri, hesitantly, considers that idea. It’s difficult. His instinct is to write it off, to say no, of course not. But where did that get him last time? It made Viktor’s eyes go cold and hurt, ended in them fighting.

“I know I’m not good at this,” Viktor says, then, and brings him out of his racing thoughts. “I know I don’t know how to do it properly. You’re so unpredictable, Yuuri. It’s why I like to watch you, it’s why you make me care about things, but it’s frustrating, too. I don’t know what you want me to do, what person you want me to be to you. I’m trying to figure it out but it seems to change by the day.”

“I don’t want you to be anyone,” Yuuri says, shocked. “I just — you’re Viktor, you’re you . That’s enough for me.”

“Well, then, why are you always turning away? Why do you keep hiding? If you like me so much, why is it whenever I feel you take a step closer to me, you always take two steps back?” He looks so tired that Yuuri bites his lip and looks away, for a second. He feels Viktor’s hurt like it is his own, and maybe it is. Maybe they have both been hurting all this time, and for no good reason. He takes a quick breath and looks back.

“Because it terrifies me, Viktor,” he says, and it feels good to say something like this to him, to not lie, even by omission. “What I feel for you. It terrifies me. And I — I’m not good at any of this either. That’s an understatement. I don’t think either of us know what we’re doing but I — I care about you and it scares me. Because one day you might stop wanting me around or — or you might get hurt fighting the blob-men and die. I promised I would keep you safe but I don’t know if I can do that. And I want to do that, more than anything.”

Viktor stares at him, suddenly looking equal parts joyful and tortured. Yuuri wants to sigh. He can’t guess what he’s thinking.

I know you so well, now, he thinks, with no small amount of hopelessness. But somehow still not enough.

“Yuuri,” Viktor says, in a whisper. He is still holding tight to both of Yuuri’s hands, his grip solid but gentle, almost cradling. His eyes are very blue and burning bright as stars. “Do you love me?”

No one else hears him say it. Yuri is still high in the fireplace, focused only on moving the castle, away from fire and bombs and the signs of war, and Makkachin is curled up next to his warmth, tired from all the fuss and now oblivious to the world around him. Phichit and Josef are scattered; Phichit is pacing with a twitchy nervousness and Josef is still leaning out the window, watching Turnip Head on the balcony. The world could be made only of the two of them, a single circle made in the way Viktor is holding Yuuri’s hands, in the way he whispers. Yuuri traces his thumbs along the line of Viktor’s wrists.

“How could I not?” he says, and he whispers too. He wants to close his eyes and live within the quiet peace of this moment, all of his truths finally told.

A tired, brilliant smile cracks across Viktor’s face. His mouth turns heart-shaped, imperfect, delighted. Yuuri thinks, I’ve never seen him smile like that, like he’s not thinking about how charming it looks. He thinks, with a healthy dose of quiet shock, he looks like that because I love him.

Either Viktor is still the vainest creature under the sun, just glad to hear that anyone loves him, or—

Or.

“Yuuri,” Viktor says, still beaming. He looks like he’s biting the inside of his cheek, fighting for control over his own smile. Yuuri thinks, dizzily: Oh, I’ve been such an idiot.

But before Viktor can say anything more, they hear a sharp and panicked bark from behind them, and the floor rattles, dangerously.

“It’s running out, ” Yuri shouts. He sounds as unstable as the house suddenly is, his voice shaking as it speeds up underneath them, both wobbling more and more. The roof flies off first, and Viktor grabs Yuuri by the waist and pulls him along, reaching out with his free hand to tug Josef back from the window, just as three of the four walls fly off, too. “Shit, shit, I thought it would be enough, I’m sorry — ”

“Yura,” Viktor tries, and Yuuri breaks free from his hold to reach out for Makkachin, who is whining and pacing, getting dangerously close to the edge.

Yuri’s taken them even deeper into the Waste in an attempt to get away, but what that’s done has brought them into the mountains.

Viktor takes a careful step towards Yuri, but then sways on his feet, as if woozy.

“No,” Yuuri says, “Viktor, no —”

“Yura,” Viktor says, eyes fixed on the fireplace. Yuri is trying valiantly to stay large and strong, a pillar of flame and power, but he’s dwindling down, fading and turning blue. Viktor sways again and falls to his knees. The mountains are a blur of green and brown, around them; Yuri trying to get them as far as he can before something worse happens.

“Viktor,” Yuuri says, and tries to reach out for him while still keeping Makkachin from running over the edge. His head turns, his blue eyes gazing for a moment, hazily, into the distance, before focusing on Yuuri.

“Time’s running out,” he says, and even his voice is distant, far off and scared. He tries, again to stand, but only stumbles again, falling onto his elbows this time. Phichit tries to help him up, and Yuuri tugs the dog over next to him, reaching for Viktor’s hand.

Yuri is flickering, there for a moment, then gone; the orange and yellow his his small face quickly vanishing, swallowed by the blue light of his eyes and growing smaller and smaller. He looks terrified.

“Vitya,” he says, coughing out a cloud of smoke, and Viktor gasps as if burned, and looks at him with such outright terror that Yuuri cannot breathe.

Before he can touch him, or even say a word, the last bit of orange fades from Yuri’s face, and then even that vanishes, leaving just a tiny blue flame wrapped around a small object, like a lump of coal. At the same moment that this happens, Viktor’s eyes fall shut, and he falls to the rocking floor with a hollow, terrible thud, and the castle begins to crumble apart, tilting and rocking.

Yuuri does not mean to — how could he — but, with his hand still wrapped in the dog’s collar, he slips out through the front door. He tugs at the dog, trying to go back in, but all of a sudden, he can’t. Quick as lightning, he remembers the spell.

Viktor does not move. Phichit opens his mouth, perhaps to say something, to let Yuuri back in —

But the castle jolts again, and Yuuri is not strong enough to hold on.

Makkachin lets out a desperate, terrified whine as they topple over the edge, and Yuuri instinctively wraps his arms around him, and his legs; he attempts to use his body as a cushion, as a barrier. The rock walls rise around him, and he closes his eyes.

***

He wakes to Makkachin licking his cheeks and forehead, whining, sniffing at the crooks of his elbows and the tips of his hair. He wakes to an ache in his body that will be hard to walk off. He wakes to walls of rock rising around him in every direction, and pieces of wood and metal lying around him in piles.

He wakes to dried, stiff tears on his face, and a hollowness in his stomach that is inches away from curdling into grief, the same that tore him and Mari both in two when their parents died.

He tears himself away from the word. Viktor cannot be dead, not now. Not yet. Not before Yuuri with his too-shaky hands has had a chance to become the hero of the story.

He reaches up to touch Makkachin’s curly face. “I’m not dead,” he says, and it sounds too still in the echoey valley. “He isn’t, either. He can’t be.”

Makkachin whines again, and licks at Yuuri’s cheek, where fresh tears have fallen.

“I told him I wouldn’t let him,” Yuuri whispers, and sits up. He tries to put the conviction he felt earlier into his body, into his words. He can only be tired. He can only be hurt, now, in this valley, hurt and confused and unsure.

Phichit and Josef both screamed, when he fell, but Yuuri had been far more afraid of Viktor’s silence.

More tears well in his eyes and he tightens his fingers in Makkachin’s fur. “I should have given something, Makka,” he whispers. “Something more than hair and youth and beauty. Something that would have kept them alive.”

Makkachin whines, and Yuuri lets go to bury his face in his hands, old back arched, old knees creaking, and begins to sob.

What have I done? he thinks, nonsensically, frantically, What have we done?

Makkachin barks softly and pushes at his elbow, but Yuuri does not look up.

Viktor, he thinks, Viktor cold and kind, laughing and frowning, handing Yuuri a golden ring in the sunlight of late afternoon, showing him a secret garden. Viktor with that tired heart-shaped smile, his eyes burning because Yuuri loved him. Yuuri thinks: I have wasted so much time wondering and waiting and wishing and now I will never get it back. He thinks: I would give my heart three times over to be next to him right now.

Makkachin barks again, and Yuuri looks up.

The ring that Viktor gave him is glowing, rattling on his finger. It hurts, a little, which is what convinces him that it’s real, and not some dream of his grief-ridden imagination. It hurts, and it is glowing, a fiery blue light reaching out as if to point him somewhere.

“Viktor, Yuri,” he whispers, and the ring rattles again, almost jumping off his hand. “Will this bring me back to you?”

He knows he must do something, that his time sitting in a quiet room is over, that his time being a coward has passed — or, even if it hasn’t, that he must force it into passing, that he must move on and battle his way back to their sides. He has Viktor’s ring on his finger and it has meant something all along, everything that he always wanted it to mean, and he promised Viktor that he would not let him be hurt; he promised Yuri that things would be all right and promised Mari that he would come home. He has too many people waiting on him to give up now.

Makkachin whines, nudging at the back of his leg with his cold nose. Yuuri hoists himself to his feet.

“All right, then,” he says, and lets his hand settle on Makkachin’s head. Together, they step forward, and the ring rattles harder against his finger, beginning to glow.

Ahead of them, he can see broken bits of the castle’s wall lying in the dirt. His heart shivers. Yuri had been so afraid, the walls crumbling around him. He tries not to imagine what must be happening now.

The light from the ring leads the two of them to the battered, half-destroyed front door of the castle. Yuuri can’t do anything except stare, for a moment, struck by the urge to cry again. What is he meant to do with a front door that leads nowhere, that isn’t being powered by Yuri’s magic?

Then he notices the dial next to it, still attached, and turned to the black section — the one that Yuri had said always changed, the one that he has never been allowed to enter. He takes a deep breath and places his hand on the doorknob.

“Can you take me to them?” he asks, because there is magic in the world, in the very air and earth and water, in the wood that made this door. There is magic that does not need fire demons and fancy spells, and Yuuri thinks that if there is any chance of his making it back to Viktor, he will have to appeal to the wood of the door and nothing else. This non-magical thing that has breathed in the magic of the castle, just like Yuuri has.

The handle grows warm under his hand, and he wishes for luck and swings it open.

He’s greeted with an opaque stretch of black, nothing more. It’s certainly not an empty doorway, but it’s not Viktor, either. The ring keeps glowing, burning his finger and urging him onward.

He glances down at Makkachin, who growls softly, as if in encouragement, and they step forward together into the darkness.

He can’t see or feel much of anything, but there seems to be earth beneath his feet, and he can hear Makkachin breathing steadily at his side. So he keeps walking forward, trusting that they will reach something eventually.

Eventually, the world gets lighter, and he begins to be able to see things in the distance. There is a little room, with a bed, a fireplace, and a table covered in bits of paper, all just the tiniest bit dull, like it isn’t exactly real. Makkachin whines, shifting from paw to paw.

Yuuri reaches down to pat his head and freezes, staring at his hand, which is unlined and soft, with callused fingertips from hat-making. Young.

“What?”

He quickly examines the rest of his body, too, and it has become less hunched and taller in the walk through the darkness, and his clothes are back to the ones he was wearing on the day the Witch cast the spell.

He grabs onto the edge of the table to steady himself.

Could the curse be broken?

But then — what broke it? Why is he in this strange place?

He rushes to the door and wrenches it open. Maybe the world outside will give him an explanation, he thinks, but then he’s hit by still more shock.

It’s the garden. The one Viktor took him to, the one with the beautiful flowers and glittering lake. But it’s night, and the colors are colder, duller. It isn’t just because of the time of day, either. There is something very subtly but definitively off about the way the world looks.

Across the lake, he sees a familiar, tall figure, silver hair flowing down his back, and all his confusion ceases to matter.

“Viktor!”

Yuuri is surprised all over again at how his voice sounds, when it comes out; it’s loud and strong and not the frail, crotchety thing he’s grown used to. How had he never appreciated the sound of his own voice, when he was young? And his legs, his strong legs — how could he not have been happy with them? Right now, he could run closer to reach Viktor, or he could leap in circles, or he could bend over backwards. His body doesn’t ache. It’s a marvelous feeling.

But Viktor hasn’t noticed him, and so he runs onward. As he gets closer, he realizes that this Viktor is younger than the one he knows: softer around the eyes and the jaw and slimmer in the shoulders. His hair is familiar, though, long and silver, flowing like water around his face. Yuuri’s heart clenches. This Viktor looks barely fifteen or sixteen. It’s too young to look so lonely.

Distantly, he thinks that this explains it all — why Yuuri appears young, why the colors of the world are dulled, why Viktor cannot hear him no matter how loudly he shouts. This is a dream, or a vision — it doesn’t matter which. But it’s Viktor’s past, unfolded in this black nowhere-space.

Viktor’s past, where he is barely sixteen and wandering the fields at night, by himself.

Makkachin barks and bounds forward, whining at the sight of Viktor. Yuuri breaks into an even faster run to follow him. The stars hang heavy and low, as if he could reach up and touch them, and for a moment he is suspended. Running, young and healthy, and surrounded by stars.

Then the moment passes, and the stars start falling.

Viktor starts to run, too; there’s a childish eagerness to his movements, but a kind of desperation, too, both things Yuuri has never seen in him before. He runs forward, hair streaming behind him; in the darkness he is the trail of a comet, and Yuuri follows him, because it’s the only thing that makes sense.

He holds out his hands for one of the trails of stardust, and catches it with a flying leap and a roll onto his side, and just lays there for a moment, holding the star against his chest. Yuuri manages to catch up to him enough to see the tears on his cheeks, the way his shoulders shake as he carefully opens his hands. There is such relief in his body, in that simple gesture, that it ricochets through Yuuri’s chest and hurts him. Viktor has been so alone, he thinks, he is here and he must have been always, to try and catch a star. To put himself in danger of burning alive, just to speak to another voice.

The star is glowing there, a tiny ball of flame. “Help me,” Yuuri hears, as if from a long way off, but right next to him, at the same time. It’s in the northern language. He knows that, and can hear the syllables rattling through the star’s voice, but he can also understand it completely. “Help me. I don’t want to die.”

It’s Yuri’s voice, panicked and shaky, but recognizable as the demon in the fireplace.

“Will you stay?” Viktor says, a child’s plea, as he cradles Yuri between his palms. “If I save you, will you stay?”

“I can’t make promises,” Yuri says. “Only bargains. You have to give me something in return.”

“Anything,” Viktor promises, the loneliness so deep in his eyes, in the careful way he holds on. “Anything. I just don’t want to be alone anymore.”

Yuuri wants to run to him, but he can’t seem to get any closer when he tries.

“Then give me something,” Yuri says. “Whatever you want.”

Viktor presses the star to his mouth and gulps.

You who swallowed a falling star, Yuuri thinks. It was Yuri, all along. And to think, all this time he’s wondered what on earth could have happened to Viktor to make him so sad, so angry, that he would think losing a heart was worth it. All this time, and it’s just been an exchange: a heart for a friend. A heart to save a falling star. A heart so he wouldn’t be lonely.

Yuuri did not think it was possible to love Viktor more, but he had been wrong.

“Viktor,” he shouts, as Viktor gasps and presses his hands to his chest, as a spark of blue fire slides out, along with a still-beating heart. “Viktor.”

In what must be a miracle, Viktor turns, just as the world begins to blur.

“Find me,” Yuuri shouts, and pours everything he can into it. All his strength, all his kindness, all his anxieties and sorrow and his love, solid and harsh and blinding. Everything he is, laid out bare. “I understand now. I can break the spell. Viktor, you need to find me! ”

He cannot hear Viktor’s answer, but he thinks — hopes — that when his lips move, he’s saying I will.

Yuuri and Makkachin tumble, once more, into darkness, but this time Yuuri can feel one thing — the tears on his cheeks.

Chapter Text

PART VIII: HEARTBEAT

The two of them, Makkachin and Yuuri, walk out into the same empty valley they were in when they fell. Yuuri’s heart falls for a second, disappointed, but out of the corner of his eye he sees movement, a jerk of a limb that almost scares him before he realizes who the limb belongs to. Viktor is standing there, hunched over, silver-feathered and shaking. Yuuri’s chest aches. Viktor’s feathers are star-bright, but his eyes are blank and distant, enough that it’s scary, enough that Yuuri wonders if he could be too late.

When Yuuri glances down at himself, he can tell that he is old again, the illusion of the dream-world gone. He refuses to let it bother him. He steps forward.

“I’m sorry,” he says, placing his palm against Viktor’s cheek. His face is there, unblinking and tired, nearly swallowed by his feathers, his magic. “I know how hard it must have been to get here. But can you take us back? I think I can fix it.” He thinks about that, then shakes his head, moving his thumb gently against Viktor’s face. “I know I can fix it, Viktor. Please. We’ve gotten so close. I know you have the strength to see it through.”

Viktor does not respond visibly, but when Yuuri lifts Makkachin in his arms and then carefully steps closer, leaving him the choice, Viktor lifts his arms to hold him close, and spreads his wings wide.

They fly up and out of the valley, Yuuri whispering encouragement to him as they go, but the moment they touch the ground Viktor crumbles, the feathers falling off his body in clumps. Yuuri winces and carefully flips him onto his back, passing a hand over his cheek again before standing and making his way over to Phichit and Josef, who are crowded around a cold, blue Yuri. They’ve piled wood and dried grass around him, trying to help, but it seems to be doing very little.

Yuuri reaches in and picks him up. The flames lick at his palms and he does not feel anything, not heat or cold, not life or death. Yuri’s blue eyes flicker open.

“You’re back,” he says. His voice sounds like nails on a chalkboard, like scratching and breaking and pain. His flames are still huddled around that little, mottled thing that Yuuri thought was a piece of coal. It’s not, though. It’s still moving, faint but undeniable, a gentle flutter against Yuuri’s palms.

“Can you do something, Yuuri?” Phichit asks, twisting his hands together. “We tried, with the wood —”

“I don’t think that will help now,” Yuuri says.

Yuri sinks into his hands and sighs, deep and tired.

“You’re not a fire demon,” Yuuri says. “You’re a falling star.”

“Yes,” Yuri mumbles. “But I’m a fire creature, too. Closer to a fairy than a demon, maybe, but demon sounds much more intimidating. So that’s what I told Viktor. And he believed it, I guess.”

“You liar, ” Yuuri says, fondly.

Yuri grins, and then coughs, hacking and desperate.

Yuuri sobers. “Why me?”

“Well,” Yuri says, and his voice is cracked, shuddering, wispy. Somehow, he still manages to sound like he thinks Yuuri is an idiot, and the familiarity of it draws a shaky smile onto Yuuri’s face, despite everything. “You can talk life into things.” Yuri coughs out a bit of smoke, and then adds, “Dumbass,” as if for good measure.

Yuuri thinks of his walking stick, of the hats, of the castle. He thinks of Viktor staring at him like he was frozen, holding his hand out without movement after Yuuri yelled for him to stop, just stop. Talking life into things. Part of him wonders how he never knew, never realized until now, until he was running through Viktor’s past, shouting loud enough to get him to look. Until he told the door to let him in and it did. His voice has magic. He has magic.

He knows, quite suddenly, what he needs to do.

Viktor’s heart beats staccato against his palms, and he swallows, once; tries to calm his shaking hands, to no avail.

“You’re going to live,” he says, and his voice does not shake. It is firm, warm, certain. Yuri flickers in and out of sight, and there is only the faintest hint of blue fire surrounding Viktor’s beating heart, but it is enough, it is enough. “Both of you will.”

And he takes another deep breath, and quietly — achingly quietly — he breathes out a final truth. Not to speak life, or to persuade, or to give motivation. Just to say it out loud. (There has never been a right time, but this is as close as any.)

“I love you,” he whispers, “and you will come back to me,” and presses Viktor’s heart into his chest.

Minutes pass.

Yuuri had always thought the breaking of a spell would be fast as lightning, fast as casting it. In reality, though, it’s a terrible stretch of time, seemingly endless, with him crouched and shaking over Viktor’s seemingly lifeless body, murmuring to it as if it will help.

“Is he going to be all right?” Phichit says, breaking the silence.

“Yes,” Yuuri says firmly, willing all he can into it. “Yes, he is.”

“Maybe you didn’t say enough,” Josef says. “Have you ever broken a spell before?”

Yuuri watches Viktor’s chest move up and down, barely visible, but alive.

He glances down at his hands, still wrinkled and age-spotted. Viktor’s chest moves under them, his breathing shallow. Yuuri thinks of the wizard’s confusion at Yuuri’s curse, not breaking even when the Witch was unable to use magic anymore.

“No,” he says, then, slowly. “But . . . I think I might have cast one.”

He thinks of being able to speak life into things, to make his own thoughts real, and of how many times he’s told himself you are old now. You are useless. You are ugly. You are not worthy of anything.

Oh, he thinks. That’s it. That’s why the Witch’s spell never broke. All along, he has been cursing himself. And if he is going to do this — if he is going to break Viktor’s spell — he has to reverse that.

He closes his eyes, and he thinks of Viktor looking at him with a heart-shaped smile, imperfect and lovely. He thinks of Yuri saying at least you talk to me. He thinks of his family, fractured but holding together; he thinks of his glass heart, held aloft above the world like it would stop it from breaking. He has been pulling away, shrinking back, but no more. He has come back all this way. He has come so close to breaking the spells. He has wept and screamed and laughed, and his heart has held solid all the way through it. He does not need to be afraid of breaking any longer.

He thinks of Viktor in the garden, smiling and a little distant, saying I think you’re brave, Yuuri.

He breathes, in and out, and thinks: you are not useless. You are not old. You are not perfect, but you are worthy.

A odd wave of peace washes over him. It does not feel artificial, only uncovered, as if it was buried by all of his anxieties, and he has managed to quiet them all, and unearth this gentleness, this surety.

You can do this, he tells himself, and for the first time in years he thinks that sentence and genuinely, truly believes it.

“I cast a spell, and now,” he says aloud, infusing as much will into it as possible, “I’m going to break it.”

Viktor gasps, and opens his eyes, a spark of light bursting from his mouth and rocketing off into the sky. Yuuri thinks he hears the faint sound of Yuri’s voice, screaming I’m free, I’m free, I’m free. Viktor only coughs, shaking his head weakly back and forth.

Yuuri feels rather than sees his body shift. There is no glowing light or shine in the air or puff of smoke, just the odd, scraping feeling of his bones reshaping, his skin moving. He glances down at himself once, absently, and sees the soft layer of fat on his stomach, the black of his bangs as they fall in his eyes, the calluses on his fingertips from sewing. Things he used to hate, which now seem — well, not exactly perfect, but alive, and his. It’s enough.

But then Viktor coughs again, and Yuuri’s attention is entirely diverted.

“Breathe,” Yuuri says, leaning over him. “Please, please, breathe.”

Viktor opens his eyes.

“Yuuri,” he says, insistently, desperately, his eyes unfocused and afraid. Yuuri runs a thumb over his cheek soothingly. “Who are you? Where’s Yuuri?” Viktor blinks, and his gaze focuses, and he furrows his brow. “But you’re — you’re the man from the square. I’ve been looking for you, but—" He looks around. “Where’s Yuuri?”

Yuuri smiles, wide and brave, so brave. “Viktor,” he says. “I bring you back from the dead and you don’t even recognize me?”

His eyes go wide, and Yuuri knows he understands. “You broke your curse,” he says. “And you’re — you’re—"

He cradles Viktor’s face between his hands, his unlined, work-callused hands. His, his. It’s a wonderful word. “It’s nice to see there are some situations which make you speechless.”

Then Viktor laughs, and for the first time that Yuuri has ever seen, it reaches his eyes, and floods them with warmth and life and love, and Yuuri thinks, I did this, I saved him, I brought him back. He’s become the hero of the story, and it doesn’t even matter much, not really.

What matters much more is that Viktor is sitting up and smiling and alive, and wincing at the ache in his limbs and the weight in his chest. What matters is the two of them, here in the end, together.

"God, your eyes ," Viktor breathes, and reaches out with one hand to cup Yuuri's face.

His hands are shaking , Yuuri thinks, and then, more distantly, so are mine .

"I'd thought I wouldn't find you," Viktor says. "And now—"

"Here I am," Yuuri says.

"Here you are," Viktor echoes, and looks amazed.

"Well," Yuuri says, "are you going to kiss me or not?" because Viktor smiling at him is very nice and all, but he'd really like it if something could finally happen with everything in the air between them.

"Your wish is my command," Viktor says, as if he’s trying to be charming.

Yuuri bursts into laughter just before Viktor kisses him, which makes it a very messy kiss, all bumping noses, but it's perfect, all the same.

“I feel as if the world has burst into color,” Viktor says grandly, “like I’ve never seen the world at all until I looked at you,” and Yuuri knows he’s hardly changed at all, and may in fact have gotten more dramatic after regaining his heart. The realization is enough to make him laugh again, burying his face in Viktor’s shoulder, in his ridiculous (and now torn) coat.

He is overwhelmed, breathless. He is himself again, glass heart and soft hands and all, but he is himself with happiness burning in his chest, as if it’s him who’s gained a heart and not Viktor.

“All this time I’ve looked for you,” Viktor murmurs, and Yuuri feels lips press against his hair. “And you were in my castle all along.” He seems to find this romantic, rather than confusing and slightly creepy. “How on earth did you ever—”

“I was looking for the Witch of the Waste, actually,” Yuuri says, and Viktor gasps and looks deeply offended.

“You didn’t come looking for me ?”

“Viktor,” Yuuri says, patiently, “I didn’t even know your name. And it was a good thing too, because if you’d told me I would have run screaming in the other direction, and we wouldn’t be here now.”

This seems to mollify him. “ I was looking for you, ” he says. “I looked all over.”

“I know,” Yuuri says, and lets the warmth of it wash over him. Viktor looked for him. This whole time, all of it, Viktor had been chasing after him, dreamy-eyed and distant, all passionate speeches and heartfelt declarations. “I did find it funny, you know, after I realized you didn’t have a heart. All that talk about how your heart ached for his smile and you felt your heart leap and you loved him so much you could die. How did you know what your heart ached for?”

“You’re doubting me,” Viktor says, but looks amused rather than upset. “I’ll have you know that even heartless, I was a true romantic.”

Yuuri laughs again, and Viktor kisses him mid-laugh, which, again, makes it a rather messy and terrible kiss. Neither of them seems to have very good timing.

Viktor, however, doesn’t seem to mind.

“Your eyes glow, when you laugh like that,” Viktor says, pulling back, tracing the line of Yuuri’s mouth with his thumb. “I mean, they always glow, but especially when you laugh, or when you’re searching for something. Like starlight. They’re gorgeous.”

Yuuri smiles, and ducks his head to kiss Viktor’s palm. “Do you know something,” he says, in a whisper, his heart pounding steadily in his chest, and he’s at peace with himself, finally, with his shaky hands, his soft, plain face. With his heart, glass-blown and beloved. “I think so, too.”

“I think we ought to live happily ever after,” Viktor says, and he has the voice of a dreamer, now; the voice of a charmer, the voice of a man who’s lost and found his heart. Yuuri can only beam. “Don’t you?”

Yuuri bends to kiss him properly, bad timing be damned. “I’m starting to.”

They have one casualty: Turnip Head’s pole, which has cracked in all the confusion.

“He’s still cursed, isn’t he,” Yuuri guesses, and Viktor hums with delight and squeezes him around the waist. Phichit is sitting, cross legged, next to the splintered remains of the wooden pole, but he looks up for long enough to smirk at Viktor’s affection and wiggle his eyebrows in a meaningful way at Yuuri. Yuuri sticks out his tongue at him, but Phichit only smirks harder.

“You can see spells now, too!” Viktor says, smiling at Yuuri like he has any idea of what that means. At Yuuri’s look of befuddlement, he elaborates a little. “You knew he was still under the curse.”

“No, I guessed,” Yuuri says, as dry as he can manage, “considering that he’s still a scarecrow.”

Josef smiles wanly at the two of them. “Yuuri, the spell — can you break it?” His gaze softens when he turns to look at Turnip, lying there pitifully, unable to even twitch. “He — it — jumped in the way, when the castle fell apart. I almost went over the side and he saved me.”

“Oh, well, I can try,” Yuuri says, and kneels down at the scarecrow’s side, looking at it for a long moment, wondering if it is looking back. He thinks Turnip is a person, underneath. He hopes so, anyway. Saving someone does seem to point in that direction, and he’d really rather if they didn’t have another demon on their hands, even if Yuri turned out to just be a star. “You’ve done a lot for us, haven’t you, Turnip? And I haven’t kept my promise. I said I’d break your spell.”

Josef chuckles, watery. Yuuri watches as Phichit pats his arm and then turns back to the scarecrow, a thought pricking at the back of his mind that he can’t quite get to.

“It was easier with my own spell,” Yuuri confesses, still just speaking, conversationally, to the battered scarecrow. “I knew who I was, underneath. I have no idea who you’re meant to be.” An idea strikes him, then. “But you do, don’t you?”

The air feels charged, and waiting.

“You know who you should be,” Yuuri says, and forces intensity into his voice. “Be that. ”

The hairs on his arms stand up, but nothing happens.

“Ah, well,” Josef says, softly. “Thank you for trying.”

He kneels down too, then, and takes the scarecrow’s gloved hand with a surprising amount of tenderness.

“ Merci, ” he says, and presses a kiss to each of its cheeks.

Yuuri can pick up on the spell, suddenly — can feel it, pulled taut and ready to snap. Pulled even tighter from Yuuri’s words.

And then it does snap, and there’s a loud pop like a balloon, and a man about Viktor’s age, with glowing green eyes and blond hair and a wide grin, is sitting on the ground, body sprawled into the same position Turnip was in. His hand is still in Josef’s, who gasps with surprise and recognition. Phichit looks suddenly incredibly amused, and raises his eyebrows at Yuuri over the stranger’s head.

“Chris,” Josef says, soft and reverent, and Turnip — Chris — winks.

“Took you long enough,” he says, and then he throws his arms around Josef’s neck, and they’re kissing. Yuuri smiles and stands, walking back and taking Viktor’s hand.

They’ve had a long wait, he thinks. He’ll give them this moment.

“So,” he says, and looks up at him. Viktor’s eyes are very blue behind his bangs.

“Are you going to stay?” Viktor asks. All in a rush, like he’s nervous. Yuuri blinks.

“What?”

Viktor has the grace to look embarrassed. “I — Yura told me that you weren’t sure if you would stay, when it was over. He said —”

“Do you want me to stay?” Yuuri asks. Viktor tilts his head.

“Yes,” he says, simply.

“Well,” Yuuri says, “all right, then.”

“But do you —”

“Viktor,” Yuuri says, smiling, covering his mouth with his free hand. “I’ve already said I love you. What on earth could make you think I don’t intend to stay?”

“You missed your life so much,” Viktor mumbles. “I didn’t know, then, not really, but now that I look back I can see it, and —”

“Nothing will change for me,” Yuuri points out. “I can still go and visit Mari and Yuuko and Phichit. We could even visit Josef and Turnip — I mean, Chris. But the difference is I wouldn’t be going home to a cold, empty house and a bunch of unmade hats. I’d be going home to you. ” He squeezes his hand. “Why wouldn’t I want that?”

Viktor beams, and leans down to kiss him again, gentle and swift.

“And anyway,” Yuuri teases, pulling back a bit and lifting their joined hands, “you’ve already given me a ring.”

“Ew,” says a familiar voice, now hovering somewhere behind Yuuri’s head rather than rattling out of a fireplace. “Can’t you stop being all mushy for a second? You should never have given him his heart back.”

“Yura!” Viktor says, sounding delighted, and not at all embarrassed that they’ve been caught kissing. Yuuri ducks his head again for a moment, against Viktor’s shoulder, long enough for his blush to fade, and then looks up to glare half-heartedly at Yuri. He can’t really be angry, when he’s so glad to see that he’s all right.

“You came back,” he says, and Yuri flushes blue for a moment, sending out sparks, before turning back to his usual orange and starting to talk very quickly.

“How could I not come back! I’m the only one who does any goddamn work around here! Without me you and Viktor would be dead within a week! And anyway I’m the only one who can move the castle and, you know, technically , Viktor gave me his hair, so, you know, that means we’ve entered another contract, and I have to stick around, and you have to work for me, and—"

Viktor just wraps an arm around Yuuri’s waist and laughs, cutting the fire demon off. “Ahh, Yura, still not going to admit you like us?” he teases, and Yuri continues to sputter and spark and call him names.

Below them, Chris and Josef are standing up, Chris wobbling on his feet after spending so long as a scarecrow. Josef laughs and offers his arm, saying something in their language that is clearly meant to poke fun at him. Chris makes a face, but his smile bursts through it, giving him away. Phichit is looking with a calm sort of fondness at both of them, and then raises his chin to smile at Yuuri, turning and walking up the path to come stand with him and Viktor, to look forward, to their next destination. He’s got dirt on his face and a rip around the ankle of his pants, but he looks happier than he’s been in days.

Viktor is holding on to Yuuri’s waist like it’s the only thing keeping him tethered to the earth, and Yuuri swears he can feel the metal of the ring on Viktor’s hand, even pressed to his side, through his shirt. Yuri is grinning, in the nicest way that Yuuri has ever seen him smile, his sparks shooting in all directions like fireworks.

Yuuri has to smile.

Happily ever after, indeed.

***

There are three things that Yuuri knows.

One: he can speak life into things, and despite being the eldest child he’s amounted to something which is actually quite special.

Two: the wizard Viktor Nikiforov is a little bit of an idiot, who hogs all the blankets and doesn’t know how to cook, and he’s stubborn and over-dramatic and warm and wickedly handsome. He kisses Yuuri like they’re stepping through sky, hand in hand, and once he swallowed a star and gave it his heart, and Yuuri took Viktor’s heart in two shaking hands and gave it back.

Three: he went into the Waste to look for solutions, and he came back with Viktor at his side, with hope in his heart, with magic in his voice. He is not the same.

He wouldn’t trade it for the world.