Why am I doing this to myself? Oh, right, because Yuri on Ice is beautiful, the characters and ships are beautiful and I want to think about them all the time now series one is over and this gives me something to do until series two. I just want to write these characters and drown myself in everything got to do with this anime. I have a lot of feelings right now.

Unsurprisingly, this is a spontaneous fic and au idea. Today I just started thinking about that little factoid of the Mayflower curling rink being used as a morgue for the Titanic's dead and my lifelong interest in the ship came flooding back again. Half an hour later I had a historical au. I miss researching historical matters for a fic, even if it's making me impatient.

I'm actually really looking forward to this. Not only is it new characters and canon material to work around and from, but I've chosen not to use prose for this one. Don't know why, but I just wanted a change and regretted not taking the opportunity to use this style for a previous historical fic. I'm not used to first person, and since I've not written all but two of these characters it'll be a challenge, but fun too.

So yes, I have a lot to do, and haven't quite finished the synopsis, but I'll try to update this when I can. Warning for a lot of character death. I am sorry for that though. Look, they're all alive in canon so just roll with me here.

And you all thought episode eleven had angst. I'll show you angst.

...

Foreword by Kenjirou Minami, published 1986

...

If one has had the pleasure of observing Katsuki Yuuri's career, it is plain to tell that incredible talent was paid for in grave misfortune and tremendous loss, much of which has remained a secret, even now. We know of the various points in which the man experienced incredible tragedy, more so than one person ought to handle, but what he actually saw, felt, lived through, the man never said.

Of course, later tragedies all but defined the end of his career and life. We are more familiar with those than his earlier years.

As a boy, I greatly admired whom I considered to be Japan's greatest figure skater and one of the bests of his era. And as a boy and young man, I collected every magazine, every postcard, every scrap of paper with his face on it, down to boxes of cigarettes I needed to hide from my parents. I idolized him. I longed to compete on the same ice as him, meet him in person and become his friend. I imitated him for years, wondering how I could copy such beauty. Not only did he have unrivalled stamina that allowed him to perform late jumps no other skater would dream of, but his bewitching personification of unfixable, unyielding heartbreak was something I could never quite imitate correctly.

I now see why.

It was Yuuri who convinced me that I needed to develop my own style. Not find. Develop. I was far too full of joy to skate a pretend heartbreak, he said. Everything I did was with a joyous bubble I could never let burst, and it needed to show in my skating. It was the greatest day of my life!

I had the great pleasure of becoming acquainted with Katsuki Yuuri some years ago as a competitor, but it wasn't until great misery fell upon the both of us that I could truly become his friend.

I was interned at Topaz during the war, in the same block as Katsuki and his family. We helped each other get through the day, looked out for each other and made sure we were not suffering through the unpredictable weathers that would randomly ravage the camp and its inhabitants. Myself and his wife and step-daughters kept the atmosphere optimistic. Things were how they were and seemed hopeless, but they had to end at some point, right? The war could not last forever. When we were released, I stayed close to him, partly because I was family after everything we had been through, and partly because I feared the outside world and what I would come back to. Were we still feared? Would we need to fear? I needed Yuuri.

Many people associate his tragic death- only seven years later- with his experiences in the camp, his family included. He blamed himself for a lot, including his family's imprisonment, despite how none of what happened was his fault.

But though the camps spelt the end for Yuuri and his mind, they were in no way the beginning.

It is with the permission of Katsuki Yuuko and her daughters that I was entrusted with his diary from the year 1912, when he survived the first of his great tragedies. How he survived the sinking of the RMS Titanic was something that had fascinated historians and his fans over the years, but it was not something he ever spoke of. Yuuko and her daughters have given their accounts, but Katsuki remained mute. It was a subject even I dared not approach with him.

It is also with the permission of Katsuki Yuuko and her daughters that I was able to translate Yuuri's written- and only- account of that night, ready to tell the world. But his diary- as priceless as it is- was not enough for me. I needed the whole picture.

Tracking down every person he knew from that time, that had been mentioned in his diary, alive or dead, was miles more difficult than any jump I had ever attempted, but I was never one to shy away from the new or challenging. Every diary, letter, document and photograph compiled here and translated with the help of so many people is the result of thirty years hard work and I am more than satisfied with the result. I hope this not only brings justice and peace of mind to the Katsuki family, but also those who helped me and provided the vital sources of information now housed in this book.

Even so, I was reluctant to publish this straight away. I sat on my great project for years, unsure if it was good enough, respectful enough, if Yuuri himself would've approved. With the recent discovery of the wreck of the Titanic, the story surrounding the ship has been revived in a wave of sensation and fascination not seen since the fifties, which is- as far as I'm concerned- what truly finished Katsuki off.

I wanted to tell the story of this remarkable man, but I did not want people to think I was trying to get rich and famous off his tragedy. Even though I had already planned to give the money to Yuuri's family and various charities, it still felt wrong. Axel, Lutz and Loop Nishigori eventually convinced me otherwise, and in the time it took for them to do so, I was able to add yet more accounts and research to this anthology and refine what I already had. I think it is now time to show it to the world.

And so, it is with great enthusiasm and heartache that I present to you the story of the affair and disaster of Katsuki Yuuri and Viktor Nikiforov.