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The worst part of it all? Yuri had been waiting for his scores. Sitting in the Kiss and Cry, listening for the announcement while he ran through the program in his head and tried to guess if it was enough. He’d done better in the free skate, but he’d had a lower score in the short program that meant Katsuki and Viktor weren’t that far behind. Then they’d both gone out and beaten their world records, so Yuri needed every extra point he could get from his better performance. The three of them would be the podium, but the only thing Yuri could be certain of was that Katsuki would be ahead of Viktor by four tenths of a point.
Then something made the world go nuts. White-blue light stole Yuri’s vision, and he felt like his entire being was being compressed into a point smaller than a pin. It reminded him of a dream he’d had as a child, right before he got picked up for a government sponsorship for his skating that meant he actually could afford to do it. In the dream, he’d been taken to a golden room, promised a lot of things if he would just abandon his family and come with the glowing being whose face he could barely remember. All he remembered was the disgust and horror when he told the being to fuck off and leave him alone, he didn’t need help to be the best.
When the light faded, Yuri found himself in a bedroom, so normal looking it almost felt wrong. Posters of musicians on the walls, a bed that was only halfheartedly made, dirty clothes strewn around… the only part that struck him as at all weird was the diagram poured in some weird mix of powders on the carpet with candles. Even the girl who stood beside the circle looked perfectly normal. Slightly on the short side, light brown hair braided back in two braids halfway down her back, basketball shorts and a crop top that could have come out of Mila’s closet if it weren’t for the… French?... writing on it that Yuri was too confused enough to bother with trying to translate. The logo matched one of the posters, so probably a concert shirt?
“It worked!” The girl spoke in French. Great. Madame Lilia was working on getting Yuri taught to speak enough French for ballet lessons, but it was a struggle and he was not going to have an easy time with this. Whatever this was. “Okay. Um. How does it work?”
“It would help if I knew what ‘this’ was,” Yuri muttered, he thought under his breath.
Not under his breath enough, and whoever this girl was, she apparently understood Russian even if she still answered in French. “I summoned you!” She held out the leg that was currently encased in a hard cast from mid-calf down. “See, I’m an athlete. A sprinter. Good enough to make the Olympics in two years, everyone thinks. Except for this.” She glared down at her leg and then stared challengingly at Yuri. “The doctors say the only way I’ll ever heal from what happened to my ankle is a miracle or if I make a deal with a devil. Well, a devil might be a bit much, but I figured it might be worth trying to make some kind of a deal with an angel instead. Why not, right? Devils are just angels who went south after the war…”
Now things made even less sense somehow. He did not know this much French. No matter what he played at on the ice, he was no angel. There was absolutely nothing he could do for this girl. “I don’t know what to tell you. Something went wrong. Whatever angel you were trying to summon decided to prank you, maybe. My name’s Yuri. I’m a human.”
The girl pouted, but brightened quickly. “I wasn’t expecting an angel with a sense of humor! The summoning ritual was supposed to work on an angel named Uriel. I wonder how it latched onto you?”
Yuri just shrugged. He couldn’t imagine. “Unless you’re wanting me to set something on fire for you to celebrate, because I skated a program to ‘Angel of the Fire Festival’… look, I really need to get back. My coach is probably destroying the rink right now.”
The girl opened her mouth to respond, but then everything froze. Yuri looked around as the room filled with the same white-blue light as before. “Yuri? You shouldn’t be here.”
The being from his childhood dream? Might as well make the weird day even weird. “You’d better not be Uriel.”
“No. My name is Ruth.” The being reached out to him. “Let’s get you back where you belong and memories altered.”
“What the fuck?!” Yuri jerked back, stopped by the edge of the powder circle he was in. “Don’t you dare fuck with my memory!”
“I couldn’t even if I wanted to.” Ruth reached for him again. “But it would be best if Yakov, your competitors, and the fans didn’t remember anything odd happening. I can put you back at the exact moment you left, and everyone will think whatever flash of light they saw was a badly aimed camera or glint of light off someone’s rhinestones or something.”
“Good. Then if you can put me back at the exact moment I left, you have time to explain what the *fuck* is happening here.” He gestured at the girl. “How’d her little summoning ritual grab hold of me?”
Ruth’s light dimmed, and for a moment, the being resembled nothing more than a photograph Yuri had seen once before Mama threw it in a fire, and Grandpa had explained as being a picture of the man everyone believed to be Yuri’s father. He’d disappeared when Mama got pregnant, so there’d never been any tests or anything, “It’s my fault. I’ve bound any powers you would have for it, and when you refused my offer, I decided you would never need to know – but you’re half angel.”
Yuri had never claimed to be the smartest, but he could do the math here just fine. “My father’s name is Ruth?”
“Your mother knew me as Lev, but yes. I don’t know what she told you about how you came to be – I assume nothing good – but when you were conceived, I offered to take you to gestate and raise myself. She refused. She wanted you enough that she would take the risks and the embarrassment of being a single mother with a deadbeat dad. All she would let me do for her was ensure she survived your birth by giving her an infusion of grace when the time came for her to start pushing.” Ruth’s light flared back up. “I can’t change your memories, so I can’t undo you learning of this. Your powers will remain bound only as long as you respect the binding. You have a much higher potential than I, and can snap that binding without even a thought. I hope that you’re old enough to understand the necessity of the binding unless you decide to embrace your inhuman heritage.”
“No shit. The ISU would never let me skate if they knew I had superpowers.” Yuri crossed his arms. “Okay. Send me back. And hey, since you’re here – I can’t do anything for this girl, but you can.”
“As you wish.” The white-blue light filled the room again. Yuri could feel the girl’s bones being dragged back into place and set to stay there as he was compressed again and returned ot the Kiss and Cry, just in time to hear his scores. Just good enough for gold.