A/N: My submission to this year's Victuri Big Bang over on tumblr! I had the honor of working with Baph who created such astonishing art for this story. You can find links to the art and Baph's blog on my tumblr and a link to that is in my little bio section. I thoroughly enjoyed working with everyone who joined the bang this year and chatting with everyone on Discord. It was fun stepping away from my main works to delve into this idea that I've had on the back burner for over a year as well.
You can also find this story over on AO3. Baph's illustrations are embedded into the fic on there.
Full Summary: It wasn't all sparks and magic and glitter. When they met, it was blood and death and corded scar tissue that Viktor trailed with his quivering pinky. Meeting your soulmate was supposed to be like two stars exploding on contact, a supernova of feelings and a melding of the souls. It wasn't supposed to be post mortem with your organs replacing theirs.
Or - As Viktor deals with the aftermath of the organ transplant that saved his life, he finds that he may be falling in love with the donor that saved him.
There will be five chapters for this fic. Hope y'all enjoy!
He steps up to the curb, Chris all out laughing behind him, and lets the flow of the day carry him. It's the day before the competition and Chris is excited, ecstatic, really, babbling on about how this time is it. His routine is so hot that it will melt the ice, the hearts of his fans, and the medal right out of Viktor's hands. Viktor's going to reply, an encouraging comeback that's tinged with an arrogant challenge, but the taxi pulls up first.
Viktor slides into the cab, waving Chris away with an amused flutter of his fingers. He doesn't know where he's going, or what he wants to do for the remainder of the night, or even for the remainder of his life. He's done skating. This will be his final season. He's yet to tell Yakov, but he's never had to tell his coach these things. The man knows. It's in his eyes, his growly voice when he scolds Viktor, his guiding hand as it clutches Viktor's shoulder. It's a goodbye Viktor feels in his soul. Retiring won't be easy, but skating in his current, listless state is torture.
Viktor stares out the window, watching the world pass by. That's all he ever does anymore. The glass of his window is a lens he is used to.
The crash is sudden. A crunch of metal. A burst of glass that glitters the air. A horn that blares out. The car overturns and the feeling of floating is violent and wild and Viktor feels something for the first time in months.
He's scared.
Darkness takes him like a silent sea that absconds him from reality, calm waves soothing an ache he barely knows.
Viktor survives the trauma, but at the cost of another's life.
First, Viktor feels relief. It floods him as he wakes to Yakov and Christophe and Mila and Georgi and even Yuri. He's engulfed in tears and hugs. Yakov erupts into a spiel about him being too careless on his own, as if he should have predicted the accident. Yuri greets him with a cautious tap of his knuckles against Viktor's bicep and a mutter of, "You can't croak until I beat you, idiot." Viktor finds himself laughing. He's alive and the sensation as its born back into him all at once steals away the earlier melancholia that nearly consumed him.
But then he finds out why he's alive. How he was able to pull through even after the jagged end of a gear shift had shredded his insides.
He's robbed someone of their life.
There's an odd form of loss that swells inside of him. His heart feels tight with mourning, ready for a cloudburst that will pour forth grief for a man that he doesn't know.
The first thing Viktor does when he learns of the news is inquire. Katsuki Yuuri is the answer he's given. The name seems familiar. He knocks it around his brain, tastes it on his tongue, but nothing spills forth. Yakov tells him that he was a skater, a competitor due to skate against him at the GPF. He was on his way from the airport when he, too, fell victim to the crash. The information earns a reaction, a startling tear blossoming from the corner of Viktor's eye. He borrows Chris's phone to learn more - he has to know more - because this isn't right. It can't be real.
The news has yet to break. Everything is still in present tense, like Katsuki Yuuri is still alive and not pulsing inside of Viktor's body.
He's twenty-three. A dedicated young man that splits his life between his schooling in Detroit and his figure skating career under coach Celestino. He's a rising star driven by his love for his home country and the love of his family and fans. There are pictures of him in competitions, in his dorm room, and on the rink in Detroit.
It isn't enough to know him, to accurately feel the life Viktor has stolen. So Viktor clicks on a link and watches the videos.
Katsuki Yuuri skates beautifully. Every movement and action pulses with inspiring emotion, with the blood and fire of life. His jumps are a tad amateur and his delivery is often marred by a wobble or a touch down, but the pure feeling to his routines leaves Viktor breathless and shaking. He isn't skating, he's dancing out on the ice. His feet move in impossible steps and his body twirls and twists in ways beyond imagination. His grace, his passion, are tied up in each performance, his spirit laid bare before the audience.
Viktor watches video after video until a gentle touch upon his shoulder grounds him. As Chris leans in for a careful embrace, Viktor realizes that his face is a mess of tears and snot and misery. He took Katsuki Yuuri's life from him, stole away his dreams, his future. He can only succumb to the cracking pain that splits him apart from the inside out. He wants to know Yuuri. He wants to see him, hear him, skate with him.
But Yuuri is dead.
The morphine is the only thing that helps him sleep that night.
His days from then on are a blur. He doesn't feel anything. There's a numbness that has seared into his joints, joined with his bones. The only thing he feels, ironically, is what isn't his. Yuuri's heart beats inside his chest, and Viktor finds himself awake at night listening to it. Even when he's being visited by his friends, his dearest skate family, he finds his thoughts slipping away, entranced by the thrumming dance in his chest.
Viktor remains in the intensive care unit for five days before he is moved to a regular room. He doesn't leave until he's stable enough for transport, and even then it is only a little closer to home, to the hospital in Saint Petersburg. It is there that he recuperates, only leaves after he has gone through extensive testing to check his body's acceptance of the heart, has an inordinate amount of meds in his bag, as well as a schedule for his cardiac rehabilitation and appointments with a therapist to help him 'mentally adjust to the change.'
Everyone is loath to leave him alone, but Viktor needs it, sends everyone away with his classic, pasted on smile and a wave that let's everyone know that he's had it. He needs silence. He needs to process. He can't-
When the door closes, Viktor is off. He runs from his spot, the quick movement drawing nausea forth and already stealing his breath. He should be watching his exertion, needs to pace himself with his new heart. Viktor doesn't care.
He's frantic. He knows he has them somewhere. He skids around a corner, slams into the door of his spare bedroom in his haste until he finally twists the knob and runs to the closet. There, beneath old costumes and a fair share of dust, are some of the boxes he keeps.
He has to find them.
The letters from Yuuri.
It's haunted him since his third day awake in the hospital.
He's expecting a visit from Yuuri's family. Has begged and pleaded with Yakov to tell the Katsukis that he wishes to see them before they leave with their son's body. He wants to express… something. His condolences? His grief? His gratitude? His unending regret that he is the one that survived, and not their son?
He would trade places with Yuuri in a millisecond if he could. He knows this down to the blood in his veins. But Viktor winces. He'll refrain from saying that. Because he can't. He knows that the sentiment, as true and well intentioned as it is, would not be a comfort. There's no turning back time.
It's odd, Viktor thinks, that he would give his life so easily for a stranger's. He's never thought himself suicidal. And he has so much to live for. His career, his Makkachin and… well, his career. But it isn't as though Yuuri was given the choice. If he had, would Yuuri have done it?
If Yuuri was the one laying in this hospital bed staring at the glaring wind of sutures in his own chest, would he have wished for fate to twist her cruel knife in his direction?
A lone knock startles Viktor. He stares across the unending whiteness toward the newcomer and blinks. He recognizes her from a photo of Yuuri's family that had been stuffed within the pages of the internet. It's Yuuri's sister. Yuuri's heart thunders in Viktor's ears and he can't breathe. He feels tears flooding the seams of his eyes, hot and soggy and Viktor thinks that his heart is breaking all over again.
He's not ready for this. He wanted this, but he can't do it.
"Yuuri would have loved this," Mari says after Viktor has calmed down and awkward introductions have been made. Her eyes are barely open, puffy eyelids half-mast. She stares out into bright city lights through the filter of a smudged window pane. "I mean, not dying, but… his heart is supporting you, Viktor Nikiforov, his hero."
"I was…" Viktor's voice is weak and thready, still off from his time on the ventilator. He tries again. "I was his hero?"
She turns toward him and Viktor expects to find accusation in the shine of her eyes. There is only sorrow. "He idolized you."
Viktor doesn't know what to do with that information. Yuuri was a fan. He wasn't just a fellow competitor, but a fan. Somehow, the knowledge changes things, yet it doesn't.
"I can't even tell you how many posters of you he has on his walls. He used to send you fan mail, I think." Mari's voice is distant, and she stares at Viktor's chest like she's talking to it, instead of at it. "Pretty sure if Yuuri had a dying wish, this was it. Right, Niichan?"
Viktor rifles through his things with something akin to desperation, elbowing past love letters and random plushies. He keeps every fan letter he's ever gotten. They're his fans. Throwing out their letters would be like tossing away their hearts. Yuuri has to be in here, last scraps of him left behind.
The first one he finds is full of the tiny, scribbled writing of a child. The words are small, and quiet, and written in a very unpracticed English that is riddled with errors, but they're filled with so much adoration and heart that Viktor feels Yuuri's race in the face of it. Viktor reads it. And reads it again. It tells of the little boy Yuuri was, just a small, chubby thing. There's even a picture, a baby-faced child grinning in his first pair of skates. The letter reads like a thank you note. Yuuri is excited, so excited that his scribbles become illegible, but Viktor plows through it. Yuuri thanks him for inspiring him, for leading him to finding his dream. Because even from the time that he was tiny, stuffed into ill-fitted rental blades and falling face first into the rink, he knew that the ice was where he was meant to be.
Viktor cries after he's read through it the fourth time. He freaks when his tears hit the paper, and he holds it away from himself, protecting it from the onslaught that won't stop. The page is too precious to be destroyed. Viktor calms himself before he dives through the rest. It takes him the rest of the day and he has to go searching for more in storage.
In the end, he feels closer to Yuuri, knows more of this man than just the blurbs on the web. The letters serve as a window into Yuuri's mind, access to his soul, bright and open and sweet. Viktor hates himself for not taking the time to read through his letters before. Not one had been opened, let alone responded to. Viktor may not have tossed Yuuri's heart away, but he neglected it all the same.
"Isn't it funny, Yuuri," Viktor asks himself, splayed out on his bed, coated in torn open envelopes and too many letters to count. "I have your heart now. It feels like I've always had it." I just never knew.
Viktor can't help but reflect on himself as he sits with a glass of wine that night. He shouldn't be drinking, but the buzz warms the icy freeze that has settled in his veins. Through the haze of his wine, Viktor wonders how things would be if everything was reversed. If Yuuri was sitting here, still breathing, still living. Viktor can't stop feeling like that is the way it should be. Viktor was at the end of his road, considering retirement. Yuuri was still fresh, filled with excitement and hope. He was going to school, had a career and a best friend and a family and a life. Between the two of them, Yuuri was the one that deserved the heart. Viktor may have been made of gold and glitz and glamor, but Yuuri had a life.
A life that Viktor stole.
The letters keep Viktor from sinking. He's contemplated, a time or two, usually after a night of binge drinking or after staring at his scar until it's burned into his retinas, what death would be like. If he just fell, or never woke up, or brought his razor closer to his skin.
The thought of Yuuri stops him.
Yuuri gave him his heart. Every day is a gift, Yuuri's gift to him.
Viktor decides then that he can't retire. As soon as he's medically cleared, he's going to skate with everything he has. He's going to prove that he deserves this heart. That Yuuri's sacrifice wasn't for nothing.
Viktor hugs Makkachin to himself from his place beneath his duvet, smiles as she gives a put-out sigh.
His thoughts continue as he drifts off.
Maybe this is meant to be. Maybe this is what I need to pull myself out of this rut.
Viktor is disgusted by the thought.
His dreams are of a chipmunk-cheeked little boy. He's on new skates, giving a twirl, a quiet "ta-da." A little brunette is skating with him, taking his hand and laughing.
They're talking, giggling to themselves about the latest competition they watched the night before. She hands him a poster, all rolled up and she bounces in place as she watches him open it. His face is so bright, mouth split with glee as his tongue pokes out through the hole of his missing tooth. "You didn't?!" he exclaims, hugging it. "Viktor Nikiforov! I'm gonna put it up when I get home!"
Viktor often dreams of Yuuri from then on, fragments of Yuuri's life that Viktor figures he either memorized from Yuuri's letters or must have simply thought up.
He doesn't realize how true the dreams are.
Or that they are all in Japanese.
And that he understands them.
Recovery is slow, much to Viktor's chagrin.
Every day that passes feels like he's wasting something. Like even his breath on the air is laden with importance. Every second counts, but he's not quite sure towards what.
His skin itches when he watches his rink mates from the stands, as if hives are bubbling beneath the surface of his skin. His fingers yearn for the quick glide of laces and he needs to feel the wind whip against his cheeks, hear the whoosh in his ears as the world spins in a whirl of colors and screams and-
Nausea settles swiftly in his gut and Viktor leaves, Yakov and his subtle but always present concern at his back. He dry heaves in the quiet stillness of his own bathroom, feels that lens settle back onto his eyes. He wonders if it's the medication, or if he overdid it during his latest therapy session. That has to be the reason for the waves of nausea that crash over him and leave him drowning and gasping for air. His skin feels hot, and Viktor presses his forehead to the side of the tub, clammy skin against cool porcelain.
It has to be the reason that his vision has been blurring in recent days. Without warning his sight will shift, leaving him with a fuzz of shapeless forms and mismatched colors. It happens most often when he wakes, and for some reason he finds himself stretching an arm out, reaching for something that is never there. The action is what startles him. Viktor whips his arm back to his side like it's been scalded and the world shifts back to normal.
He's fine. He's simply adjusting, he thinks, even as alarms blare through his denial.
The doctors at the outpatient transplant center find nothing abnormal at his next check-up. All his disclosing of recent events earns him is an adjustment to his ever growing list of medications.
He takes his anti-nausea pills with a new round of immunosuppressants and antivirals. They don't help, but somehow binging on pickle crisps with a can of sweetened condensed milk does. Viktor's athlete brain balks the minute he eats more than three chips, but Viktor hardly feels like an athlete anymore. He hardly feels like himself anymore. He shrugs and buys three more bags at the convenience store when he runs out in the middle of the night.
Viktor spends an increasing amount of his spare time (most of the time he's not at the outpatient center) researching Yuuri. He reads online blurbs about him, watches old competitions, reads his letters again and again. One can call it obsessing, but it is all Viktor can do until he is finally cleared to fall back into the arms of his beloved ice.
It is all he can do to keep himself from thinking of the changes that are creeping up on him.
Viktor had been briefed extensively on the symptoms of rejection and the side effects of his medications post op in the ICU. Things such as shortness of breath, fever, fatigue, lack of urination, weight gain, and the development of stomach problems, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, etcetera.
Nobody told him that he would have mornings where he would look in the mirror and see brown eyes staring back at him. He wasn't warned that he would have moments of xenoglossia where he would suddenly find himself speaking Japanese. He was most certainly not informed that his hand could move on its own in his sleep.
Viktor wakes at his desk. He sits up and wipes his cheek of the drool that he's trailed across his keyboard. His face has typed a string of Ls into the search bar above videos of Yuuri. He's about to clean his laptop up and run off to his next appointment - he's already fifteen minutes behind on travel time - when he finds the new scribbles on the notepad next to his mouse. The top, in his crisp penmanship, is his new list of medications and the hours he takes them.
But beneath that…
Viktor stares. He looks at his hand, grasps it tentatively in his other one and holds it in a shaking grip. He thinks that it has to be some sort of prank. Did he leave the door unlocked? Did Mila or Yuri slip in and attempt to play a cruel joke on him?
Viktor recognizes his own handwriting, even if it is disguised in the characters of another language.
Viktor feels a chill in his bones and doesn't stop staring at the Japanese on the paper until he jams it in a drawer away from view. He doesn't want to know what it says. He doesn't want to know how it happened. He just wants this to stop.
He doesn't know what's wrong with him. He feels like he's being haunted, possessed, and he can guess by who.
"Is this my penance, Yuuri?" Viktor carefully speaks and is relieved to find that it is in the English he intended. "Is this the price for your heart?"
There is no answer.
There is nothing medically wrong with him. The news is maddening, infuriating, but unsurprising. Ultimately, he is left in the hands of his therapist.
"You think that I am making this up. I can read it on your face," Viktor says calmly and he can. For the blank canvas that her aged face is, Viktor can read the tells. The subtle twitch of her eyelids. The minute purse of her lips. Between the press, his fans and his coach, Viktor has mastered much of the art of reading microexpressions. He can practically read the notes she's been writing this entire session. "You think that this is all the work of my imagination."
In typical therapist fashion, she evades the accusation and comes back at him with a question of her own. "That is an interesting theory. Have you considered that the onset of these symptoms may be psychosomatic? That your mind could be crafting this alternate behavior in its attempt to cope with the accident and this change? This… tragedy?"
Viktor levels her with a look. "I speak Japanese sometimes. I watched an entire Japanese drama and understood all of it. Tell me that was my imagination." She doesn't answer, but her jaw tightens. "How can I understand-" Viktor rises from his chair, because he can't sit there anymore. He doesn't know why, but her stare picks at him, plucks at his sanity one glance at a time. It shouldn't. He's held the eyes of the world for years, not all of them kind. But somehow, now, he finds this unnerving. "How can I know these things? How can I know that Yuuri got a cut on his thigh from trying to land a quad flip right after I won with it at Worlds? How can I know that Yuuri used to make okonomiyaki for his sister on her birthday because it was her favorite?! How can I-"
Viktor stops, hunches over and grips his knees. He can't breathe. An invisible force seems to clench its fists around his lungs and Viktor thinks, Yuuri, you can't hate me this much, can you? Black spots dance in the peripheries of his vision and he can no longer see the woman's face. She's morphed into some blurred, faceless thing.
In the vague shadows of his being, Viktor knows what this is.
"And this…" Viktor gasps, praying that he's still speaking in a language that she can understand. "This is a panic att…ack, yes? Yuuri used to get these… But I-I… I nev…"
The world swirls into black as his breaths seize into a tight ball in his chest.
Viktor doesn't remember anything else.
He is recommended more therapy after his little breakdown, but he doesn't go.
He lays in bed enduring sleepless nights. When he does sleep, his dreams are not his own. There's a song, one he's never heard spoken in a language he doesn't know. It's in a woman's voice. Her face comes into his vision and Viktor feels who the woman is before he knows. She is the embodiment of home with a sun-warm smile and hugs that unwrap the folds of your heart. Her laugh is as magnetic as it is contagious. The woman brings with her the smell of fried pork and rice and it makes his mouth water and his stomach growl.
She is Yuuri's mother.
He can feel her hand, the gentlest, most tender touch upon his arm. Her hands are warm, but her skin is weathered. The hands of a woman who has worked her whole life and smiled through it. "Time to get up, Yuuri."
Viktor wakes to the frigid emptiness of his room. There is no welcoming smile. No light song.
Viktor is left with the most poignant sense of loss.
"You haven't been going to your appointments." Yakov's comment is as gruff and to the point as ever. They're in Viktor's kitchen as Viktor fiddles with the wooden spoon in his pot of cooking shchi. He feels like he hasn't had a decent meal in weeks. He hasn't been able to stomach much lately.
"You mean with my therapist? I do not need them. She thinks that I am developing a split personality, for god's sake."
"You have to take this seriously, Viktor."
As if he's not. He knows how serious this is. He's losing his body to a dead person. He'd much rather be losing his mind. But he's not. He refuses to accept that this is all in his head. What kind of person would do this to himself? Sure, he felt guilty, immeasurably so, but that doesn't mean that he would develop Yuuri as an alternate self and wear him like he would an old sweater. Just the implication makes Viktor clench his fists.
Yakov continues, steadfast, but there is a catch to his tone. A note of weariness. "If I cannot help you as your coach, then I will have to as your guardian."
Viktor swallows his scoff. "What exactly will you do as my 'guardian'? Ground me? Commit me? I am twenty-seven. Don't make me laugh." Yakov doesn't answer. He simply stands there, holding his hat and staring at Viktor with the eyes of a man that is fifteen years younger. Viktor feels small, like the unruly child he used to be when he would drive Yakov and Lilia up the wall before the table had even been set for breakfast. It was always easier to have their anger directed at him, rather than at each other.
Viktor's sigh is heavy and he watches as it billows his bangs. He holds himself up against the counter, staring down at the pot as it readies to boil over. "I just need time, Yakov."
Yakov steps into his space and swiftly turns the knob of his stove. The flame vanishes and within moments the encroaching bubbles back away and begin to die out. "I'm afraid of what you will do with it."
In his shock, Viktor can't stop himself from snapping, "You think I will-" but he stops short.
Would he?
Viktor thinks about all of the reasons this isn't right. He thinks about what he's doing to himself. The drinking. The poor diet. The sinking hole he's not even trying to fight his way out of.
He thinks about the jittery enthusiasm Yuuri held every morning when he would step out onto the fresh ice. About Yuuri's tireless determination that kept him skating over the scribbles of his failures late into the night until he got it right.
The answer is easy as he listens to Yuuri's heart.
No, he couldn't. He has to keep going.
For Yuuri.
It's when he's sitting in his study alone that Viktor decides that he needs to face this. He's opened his bottom left drawer and is staring at the paper he's repelled from his mind. He translates it with an app and what he reads is something he never expected.
Where am I?
The question is simple, but it brings with it a million thoughts that tremble Viktor down to his knees.
Yuuri has been trying to communicate with him, and Viktor was too busy ignoring the signs, ignoring Yuuri's heart once again.
Viktor stares in his bathroom mirror for a long time. "Yuuri?" he asks, a quiver on his breath. Viktor puts his hand to the mirror, all of his wishes and prayers and intentions pressing into his reflection. He hopes with every ounce of Yuuri's heart that his vision will blur, or that his reflection will change and he'll be granted a brief flash of Yuuri. He needs a sign, something that will tell him that Yuuri is there. That Yuuri has always been there.
Waiting.
"Why do you abandon me now?" Viktor asks, and he feels small again. He looks deep into his own eyes, but he's not seeing them. He's thinking of a little boy unbalanced on new blades. He's thinking of a laugh that's full and vivid and precious. He's thinking of mornings where he wakes to the lightest tune. He's thinking of a sister that speaks to his chest.
He's thinking of a skater whose passion weighs more than his mass. Of a skater he could have met.
They could have skated on the same ice. Won the same competition.
Viktor can imagine it.
Yuuri, trembly and terrified, speechless in his excitement. He can't believe that he gets to meet him, Viktor Nikiforov, his hero. Viktor reaches out a hand, but Yuuri's too stunned that he can't reciprocate the movement. So Viktor reaches just a little farther, into Yuuri's space-
"Do I detect some stage fright, Yuuri?"
He says the words through a smirk, but Viktor can feel his own fear raising the hairs on his neck. He stares at blue-green eyes and silver hair, his pale features that have taken on a sickly pallor he's never known. It is not the reflection he wants to see.
Viktor realizes now how the roles have reversed. It is Viktor who is trembly and terrified, he who is speechless in excitement.
Because as he stares, Viktor feels a glimmer in the air. He watches, motionless as the world shudders behind him. The bathroom evaporates in a fine mist and instead there's a whiteness. The sink is no longer beneath his hands. The air around him has gone frigid and his breath clouds in front of him, fogging against the mirror until it clears.
And there Yuuri is. Skating along like he never stopped. The world is eclipsed in a moon-like, milky white and Yuuri skates on it, simply floats along as if it's his home. He camel spins into a sweeping ina bauer and Viktor can't move, just stares at Yuuri, captivated by the grace, the impeccable flow of movement. Yuuri goes up, skates fleshing the ice as he spins. Viktor can feel it, the whoosh of colors and screams and-
Yuuri falls.
Viktor's breath seizes as Yuuri's form falls away from the reflection and Viktor thinks, No, not now. I've finally found you. Viktor turns faster than he can compute the movement, but stops.
He's in a snowy world, covered in ice and a bone-chilling coldness. There is no sound but his breath cutting the air. This world is real, true, not a mere illusion, or a cruel memory. Viktor can feel the crunch of snow beneath his feet. There's a red numbness to his fingers and he clenches them into fists to shield them from the air.
Viktor slowly turns back around to find that the mirror is no longer there.
Viktor gapes at the scene around him, this place he's stumbled into. He can't help but think that he's dreaming. He fell asleep at his desk and he'll wake up to a drool covered keyboard and blocky imprints on his cheek.
There's a groan, and Viktor's ears perk. He searches it out, head whipping around to find an expanse of the purest ice he's ever seen. It's a fine, crystalline blue. In its center is Yuuri, standing up, wiping the ice from his thighs, huffing, alive. The hairline cracks in the ice seal up until all that's left is that shiny, new ice that waits to be written into.
Yuuri breathes in. His hands come up in front of him and Viktor recognizes the pose. Yuuri lifts his head.
Their eyes meet.
It feels like he's still spinning.
