Chapter Text
When Prince Yuuri of Hasetsu first saw Victor Tsarevich, he was accompanying his family to the royal wedding of the Tsarina to her new consort. Her son, only twelve years of age, fidgeted throughout the ceremony and banquet afterward, until the dessert course was served, and the Tsarina’s herald called him forward to perform a feat of magic for the guests. Murmurs rippled through the hall as Victor made his way to the center and stopped precisely before his mother and new stepfather.
Victor bowed, then raised one slender arm in the air in a soft, graceful movement and everyone gasped as the air filled with blue roses that floated down from the hall’s ceiling to hang suspended in the air above them. Victor raised his other arm and bright points of white light appeared among the roses. At his gesture, the lights flitted and danced between the flowers, casting the whole hall awash in dazzling, shifting spots of color.
Yuuri stared open-mouthed at the display, his heart pounding with a thrill he’d never felt before. He looked down from the lights to the boy standing below them, the prince’s face lit with a joy that Yuuri had not seen in him until that moment.
I want this, Yuuri thought to himself. I want to make magic, too. I want to be just like him.
Victor lowered his arms, the lights faded, and the flowers resumed their slow, dreamy descent to the floor, some even landing on the tables among the plates and goblets. Yuuri stretched out to catch one, but it was too far away, and his sister tugged him back into his seat. Yuuri cast his eyes downward, feeling hot, stupid tears of frustration rising in his eyes. He just wished he could have one of the flowers to take home, a keepsake from what now seemed to be the most significant event of his life.
Then Mari nudged him. “Yuuri,” she whispered urgently. “The Prince.”
Yuuri looked up, and Victor was right there, standing across the table from him. With a little flourish and a little smile, he produced another blue rose from thin air--this one on a long stem, and presented it.
“For me?” Yuuri asked.
“For you, Your Highness,” said Victor. Up close, his eyes shone the same blue as the roses.
Yuuri took it carefully, avoiding the thorns and the other boy’s fingers. “Th--thank you, Your Highness,” Yuuri said.
“You’re welcome!” Victor said brightly. “Thank you to you and your family for attending my mother’s wedding,” he added, with a slight bow to Mari and their parents.
They gave a polite response, but Yuuri was no longer listening. He ran his fingers over the flower’s soft petals, and tried to gather the courage to ask Victor how he did it--if he would teach him--but by the time he looked up again, the boy had returned to the high table beside his mother once more.
Yuuri carried the rose with him all the way home, and the color of the petals did not fade.
Yuuri went to the royal gardener and asked her for a pot and some soil. He brought it back to his room and stuck the rose down in the dark earth, and waited.
Two weeks later, Yuuri spotted a new shoot coming up from the base of the rose’s stem.
When the rose began to outgrow its pot, Yuuri showed it to the gardener, and asked for a bigger one. When the rose outgrew that, the gardener offered to plant it outside Yuuri’s window, so he could still look at it every day. Though he hated to give up the rose’s beloved place in his room, Yuuri agreed.
He brought blooms in now and then and floated them in bowls of water on his desk, but they did not have the same extraordinary properties as the first, and faded and dried like any ordinary flower.
One day, months later, Yuuri found their court magician Minako contemplating his rose bush.
“Prince Victor made this?” Minako asked him as he approached.
Yuuri nodded.
“That’s sophisticated magic for a little kid.”
“Prince Victor is amazing,” Yuuri said, and Minako laughed. “Lady Minako, could you make something like this?”
Minako shrugged. “Sure.”
“Could you teach me how?”
Minako looked at him sharply. “You want to learn magic?”
“Like Prince Victor,” Yuuri said.
“Well it’s a little unorthodox,” Minako said. “I can’t believe the Tsarina allows it; I always thought that court seemed so uptight back in the day.”
“Have you seen it?” Yuuri asked.
“I used to travel all over the world before I came back here to be your parents’ magician,” Minako said. “I met the Tsarina when she was still married to the Prince’s father. She was gracious enough, and even made me an offer to join Yakov in their service, but of all the places I saw, I still think the Katsuki Court is the most fun.”
“So--can you teach me to make roses?”
Minako shook her head and gave Yuuri a quirk of a smile. “No distracting you, is there? Well I won’t teach you a thing without your parents’ permission, so let’s go ask.” She took Yuuri’s hand, and off they went.
Upon hearing their younger child’s request, the King and Queen thought it was a fine idea, and so Prince Yuuri began joining Minako’s afternoon lessons with her apprentices Yuuko and Takeshi. Yuuri had a lot of catching up to do, as the other two were older than he, and had already studied under Minako for two years. Yuuri, however, dedicated himself to the practice of magic as if he was the apprentice. He wandered through the castle conjuring tiny points of light between his hands, until the lights grew stronger, bigger, lasted longer, and Yuuri at last began to be able to shape them into objects. As he grew older, Yuuri began to borrow the books in Minako’s library and learned all that had been written on magic in his native tongue. He forged ahead in learning foreign languages from his other tutors so that he could one day read the rest.
It took three years, but at last there came a day that Yuuri sat in Minako’s study one evening long after Yuuko and Takeshi had taken off for the night, and as Minako sipped wine and perused a novel, Yuuri took a deep breath from his heart, and conjured into existence a single, brilliant blue rose. Slowly, he let the petals unfurl until it opened wide in his hand, and it was real, not just an illusion. It smelled like a rose and it felt like a rose and Yuuri leapt to his feet and dashed out the door, paying no heed to Minako’s “Huh?” as she looked up from her book. Yuuri ran to the rose bush he’d grown from Victor’s gift, and held up his own beside it.
Soon, Minako joined him. “You really did it, kid,” she smiled. “Good work.”
A messenger delivered the news of Prince Victor’s death not long after Yuuri’s fourteenth birthday. Yuuri dropped his pen and fled the study where he had been helping his sister. He ran through the halls of the castle to his chambers, and threw open his bedroom window in spite of the chill air. In the nine years of its life, the rose bush had grown so tall that its highest branches were now on a level with Yuuri’s windowsill. Yuuri looked at the roses, still blooming and miraculous. Upon hearing the messenger’s words, he had been seized by a fear that the flowers would die without Victor’s magic out in the world somewhere sustaining it, and thought that a withered skeleton might be all that remained. But of course Victor hadn’t just died today. It was two weeks ago now, the messenger had said--an accident, thrown from his horse. And yet, the roses lived on, healthy as ever.
Yuuri plucked one and pressed it to his face, nose buried in the soft petals and scent. Maybe Victor’s magic had worn off years ago, and it was Yuuri’s that now kept the flowers growing and blooming. Once, that idea might have filled him with pride, but now it was painful to think that Victor might be gone even from the roses. Yuuri sat on the edge of his bed and cradled the rose in his hands as he wept.
There came a light knock on his door, and Minako entered without waiting for his response.
“Hey kid,” she said. She brushed her fingers through his hair once, then sat down on a chair beside his bed. “I know Prince Victor meant a lot to you.”
Yuuri shook his head. “It’s stupid, isn’t it? I didn’t know him at all. I just--” He brushed his thumb over the petals. “--he gave me the roses.”
“I know,” Minako said. “I understand.”
