Chapter Text
”Are you still cold?” Father Frost asked, and then kissed his purpling lips.
Ah! It was colder than ice; it penetrated to his very heart. Once more, and he forgot all about his pain, his sorrows, his everything. All became numb and turned to ice.
#
Yuuri awoke in a dream.
Nothing felt real. Not the acrid smell of dust, not the sound of a dog barking, not even his own body. Yuuri floated, detached, in a reality without memory and where awareness slimmed down to two senses.
He opened his eyes.
Night ...
It was nighttime, with a bright moon and a hazy horizon of snow. Yuuri watched the wind play with the snowflakes, sending them into spiralling flurries that twisted around each other like teasing embraces. Dimly, he realized he should feel cold.
“Fuck,” Yuuri said. “Oh, fuck.”
A warm, fuzzy mass of fur pressed up against his chin. His dog, he remembered. He had a dog with him when it happened. Shoma, his Shiba Inu, licked his chin with a chilly and dry tongue.
Yuuri tried to concentrate. It had been a car ride that did it. A simple drive to one of St. Petersburg’s many parks. A series of wrong turns and a skid on ice. He was here in Russia for a new jumping coach -- jumps were his biggest weakness as a skater, and if anyone would be able to do something about it, it would be one of Russia’s best coaches.
It led him here, to the wreck of the car just got approved to lease, in Goat-Fucksville, Russia. In a snowstorm in the middle of winter.
Things felt more real now.
The dusty smell -- from the car’s airbag. He remembered it inflating, remembered the panic as the car first slid out of his control. And then things passed too quickly. People said time slowed down -- it hadn’t. If anything, it sped up. But this -- the aftermath -- this was when time became eternal and viscous.
Yuuri mumbled Shoma’s name. His dog nosed his cheek in reply. Yuuri tried to move his head to see Shoma more clearly, but something inside him didn’t connect. He hoped his dog was okay. Shoma was alive, at least. They both were. More or less.
Yuuri didn’t know how much time passed, but he noticed -- as if from somewhere far away from his body and the crash -- the sun beginning to rise over the snow-capped hills. He must have dozed off.
“Shoma?” he called, voice thin and cracking.
Shoma interrupted him, erupting in a storm of howls. He moved in front of Yuuri’s face, widening his stance. He’d never been much of a guard dog; Yuuri’s chest tightened and the feeling slithered from his gut to his throat. What could be out there?
And then, at once, Shoma quieted.
Yuuri called his name again. Shoma didn’t come to him.
Bracing his arms on the snow, Yuuri raised his head. From somewhere, he felt some kind of prickling sensation, but it was drowned out and muted. Shoma’s small figure cut a dark shape out of the golden sky. Yuuri couldn’t make out anything else. He let his head fall back on his arms, exhausted.
A wet, warm, and healthy dog tongue licked Yuuri’s forehead. He froze.
“Shoma?”
With a fond snort, a second cold and dry tongue joined the first, licking his eyelids.
Yuuri whipped his head up, making his vision whirr and blacken for a couple seconds.
A snow-kissed siberian husky touched her nose to his. Her dark ruff was tinged with gold from the rising sun, and her blue eyes seemed unearthly warm and comforting. They looked like ... like home. Like Hasetsu skies on a clear day, like the feeling of cool sea water curling around his ankles. He leaned toward the husky without thinking and breathed out a long sigh in to the dog’s fur.
The world turned snow white.
#
Yuuri didn’t think he’d wake up again.
But he opened his eyes to Shoma nosing his cheek. The husky was there, too, wagging her tail with a ferocity that shook her entire butt. Yuuri choked out a laugh. Then, wondrously, he lifted a hand to his chest. It felt lighter, much lighter. He pushed Shoma off him and discovered he could sit upright.
Yuuri’s clothes still hung off him, bloodied and tattered, but he could move. He bent his elbow as proof, shook out his fingers. It was as if the crash had been weeks ago.
His left side had been take care of, cleaned and bandaged. His entire left arm was in a hard cast, with the shoulder hooked in a sling around his neck. The collarbone must have been broken.
Yuuri’s brain hiccuped in a sudden moment of clarity. He’d been in a car crash, exposed to freezing weather for who-knows-how-long. He could have lost Shoma.
The dam somewhere inside him holding the pain back ruptured. Yuuri buckled forward, cupping his head, all at once dizzy and far too attached to the present. A scream ripped through his body from somewhere deep inside him and rushed out his throat.
Dimly, he could feel both dogs press against his either side, Shoma doing what he normally did during one of his anxiety attacks. They both huddled next to his chilled and trembling skin, grounding him like lightning rods.
Yuuri screamed till he had no voice left. He rocked back and forth, drawing his bottom lip across his teeth. Neither dog moved. Not until his breath evened out a little more and he calmed down enough to uncover his face.
He rubbed his eyes in the blinding light. White -- everything was white. Clean and sterile as a hospital. Was that where they were?
But it was cold, far too cold. His butt stung from whatever table he’d been set upon, as if the surface had been sculpted out of ice. Looking down, he realized to his alarm that he’d been right.
Yuuri leapt off the table with a hoarse cry.
He spun around wildly. Everything was ice. Everything! The room was small, medical, with a table and storage underneath. There was nothing else --
not cheery motivational posters or computers or any hint of where he was or who worked here. A single, tiny doorway led to another white and empty hallway, but the draft coming through it was so icy Yuuri didn’t dare take a step nearer till he could process what was happening.
Before Yuuri had even finished taking in his tiny room, the very air changed. Like a wave receding from shore, the steam from his lips seemed sucked out of his mouth. He watched in open-mouthed horror as it vanished down the hallway. He heard a whirring, howling sound like wind through trees, and then everything rushed back to normal.
Yuuri grabbed his chest when air surged back to his lungs. His ears popped.
“Makkachin?”
Yuuri whirled at the unfamiliar voice. It echoed throughout the room, vibrated through the walls, but he didn’t see anyone.
The husky at his side gave a whiny bark of excitement. She bolted out of the room. Yuuri heard a distant, weak sort of laugh and backed into the farthest corner.
He didn’t know how to act. This had to be the person who saved his life, but Yuuri felt dread curl in his stomach instead of gratitude. Who sculpted a house of ice? Who kept their heat off in the middle of a Russian winter? He shivered against the icy walls.
Yuuri heard a voice speaking Russian and the skid of excited claws on the floor, and then saw the husky -- Makkachin -- leap back around the doorway. Yuuri crouched down to receive her. Shoma pawed at his arm, and Yuuri curled him into the hug.
In no way was he prepared for the person who followed Makkachin through that door.
A man made of ice.
At least, he appeared that way. Yuuri’s eyes widened from where he sat, clutching Shoma tighter. The man’s skin was nearly blue and translucent, his hair silvery white and down to his hips. Eyes like a glacial lake and just as cold.
“Uhh ...,” Yuuri said, sounding just about as intelligent as he felt.
Makkachin squirmed in his grasp, unsure of whom she should go to.
If anything could make Yuuri feel a little more at ease, it was that the man looked just as surprised as he did. He stared owlishly back at Yuuri, and Yuuri noticed the way snowflakes clung to his eyelashes, refusing to melt.
“Makka, who is this?” the man asked.
Yuuri flinched, both from being ignored and from the man’s use of Japanese. “Your dog saved me,” he said softly, petting Makkachin and avoiding the man’s eyes. “She found me in a car wreck. Someone else must have helped me here.”
“There isn’t anyone else.” The man crouched down in front of Makkachin, one pale finger on his lips.
Yuuri looked away. The man radiated an icy chill that stole his breath.
“Makka . . . “
Makkachin backed up in Yuuri’s arms, sitting on Yuuri’s broken leg and forcing him to screw his face up in pain. She took on that guilty doggy look Shoma always wore when he stole something off Yuuri’s plate. He positioned her while fighting a laugh.
But the man was still engaged in this childish conversation with his dog, as if Yuuri wasn’t there. As if he wasn’t worth speaking to. He frowned and finally looked the man in the eye. It helped that Makkachin still demanded his attention; he wasn’t sure he’d be able to be so direct otherwise.
Yuuri,” he said. The man’s head whipped up to pin him with a startled gaze. “My name, it’s Katsuki Yuuri.”
The man glanced wordlessly from Yuuri to Makkachin, as if surprised he could talk at all.
“Yuuri,” the man repeated, testing it out. “And you’re ... alive.”
It wasn’t a question. Yuuri tucked himself farther into his corner. “I’m what? I ... hope so? Should I not be?” He paused. “Are you?”
Those icy lips twitched upward. It seemed to ease the tension in the room, and the walls around them seemed less cold and harsh. Yuuri noticed his own breath curling out before him, but the man’s breath was quiet--as if his body was as frigid as the ice and the palace itself. Yuuri shivered and tucked his chin into Shoma’s collar.
Now that he had it, Yuuri wasn’t sure he knew what to with his attention. Those eyes were unnerving, relentless. Not even blinking.
“No one’s ever been here before,” the man finally said, thoughtful. He tossed his bangs back as if it’d help him see clearer.
Yuuri wished he hadn’t locked himself into a literal corner. It was freezing, and yet he could already feel sweat making his armpits itch.
“I didn’t even know she could do that,” the man said.
Yuuri started. “Who? Do what?”
The man waved his questions aside, as if too distracted to deal with them. “Makkachin’s never taken such an interest in someone before.”
The husky barked in agreement, and Yuuri clambered away from her.
“What, the dog?”
The man nodded. “Makkachin,” he said, as if it were the most normal thing. “Though she’s known sometimes to the locals as Снегурочка, the Snow Maiden.” A tiny chuckle.
Yuuri shook his head.
Finally, it seemed he took pity on Yuuri. “I haven’t spoken to anyone in a long . . . long time. Not to anyone that wasn’t, well.” He beckoned his dog over to him and scratched behind her ears before continuing. “Makkachin’s job is to do all she can to make sure people in emergencies get help. She’s been around for centuries, and you’re the first person she’s brought back here.”
He paused, once again turning his full attention to Yuuri, letting him take in the full impact of his words. “And I’m Viktor, just Viktor. All I do is help reluctant souls of the dead cross over to better places. You’re in the palace of the Snow King, and unless Makkachin’s hiding another trick, you’re staying here with us for a while.”