Alone in his small wooden house, which felt a lot smaller now that he knew what it was to sit in the clear air high above the world, Viktor brooded. The fire hissed and spat in the small grate, pine logs popping, and the flickering light threw Viktor's pale features into sharp relief, the black shadows crawling over his face as the flames danced.
It had been two weeks since the morning of his return to the village. The villagers had been hostile and suspicious, wondering how any human could survive for that long in the treacherous wood. They had muttered among themselves that Viktor must have been practicing dark magic, and that the dark spirits of the trees must have given him the strange furs that he now wore daily.
Whispers had run like a virus from house to house, and although there had not yet been any open violence against Viktor, he could feel the tension in the air whenever he walked past a group of people in the main street; he heard it in the hastily stifled conversations, and saw it in narrowed eyes and the fearful clenching of fists.
He was used to the suspicion and the simmering threat of violence, and it didn't hurt him any more than it usually did, just another scratch on a perpetually-open wound. More than anything else, Viktor missed Yuuri. The silence in his home, once so peaceful, now became oppressive, lying heavy and smothering over his heart. His carefully constructed routines, the barrier he had built around himself, and the studied indifference to company that he practiced every day had come crashing down, leaving Viktor dazed and blinking from the shock, newly exposed and vulnerable.
All Viktor could see when he closed his eyes was Yuuri's enigmatic smile, and the moonlight reflected in his dark hair in diffuse streaks of silver. As the weather grew steadily colder, day by day, Viktor began to long for the warmth of Yuuri's hand on his, and the heat that his lips had kindled.
The Dead Moon was now very close. Viktor had spent the previous fortnight hunting every evening, never venturing deep into the forest; he knew that he was watched, knew that the villagers had begun to wonder what he did in his night-time expeditions between the dark trees, and was careful to avoid suspicion, for Yuuri as much as for himself; he dreaded what the villagers might do to Yuuri if they caught them together, dreaded the ignorance and hatred with which they approached everything to do with The Forest.
Viktor curtailed his expeditions at the Cut, knowing that Yuuri never ventured farther than that into the forest, and that this would present Yuuri falling victim to any spies that might be following him. Although he didn't know the full extent of Yuuri's powers (for all I know, he thought, he's perfectly capable of defending himself against an entire army here in his own domain) Viktor still felt a powerful urge to keep Yuuri secret, to keep him safe from the true ugliness of humanity. Viktor had never told him of what he had suffered at the hands of the villagers, and he would die before he saw Yuuri exposed to their malice.
Every night, as Viktor entered the forest to hunt, bundled in furs and with his breath steaming in front of him, he felt Yuuri's presence as a calming whisper in his mind. The dark trees seemed to welcome him, murmuring in the freezing wind that cut exposed skin like knives of ice, and the odd stray snowflake would drift against Viktor's skin like a gentle kiss, immediately melting to nothingness.
At these moments, it was all Viktor could do not to run to Yuuri, to abandon the life that he led here; but every time these thoughts threatened to overwhelm him, he pictured the pitiful thinness of the village children if he didn't keep them fed, and the house which his mother had made a home, and he regained control of himself, focussing only on the scent of the trees and the frozen over tracks that would lead him to his next kill.
Although Viktor couldn't see Yuuri, couldn't seek him out as he longed to, he found a way to let Yuuri know that he had not forgotten his promise to return.
Every day, when he ventured into The Forest, Viktor brought a token with him from among his meagre possessions. The first day it was a pressed flower, bright and alien in the winter landscape, the second a small jet black rock that Viktor had found with a perfect hole in the centre.
Viktor left them by the edge of the Cut, in a small hollow in the ground, and when he returned the next day they had always disappeared; in their place, a handful of pine needles that Viktor recognised, their blue grey sheen too distinctive to be mistaken. Viktor saved the needles, keeping them in a bowl by his bed; they were his only connection to Yuuri, the only tangible evidence that he had that the whole episode had not been a dream. Every night when Viktor collapsed into his bed, exhausted from the night's hunt, he ran his fingers through them, their softness prickled here and there with sharp points like needles through velvet, remembering the feel of bark underneath his hand and the warmth of Yuuri's hand on top of his own.
Viktor hunted every night, and was able to store a good amount in the village smokehouse before the deadline that Yuuri had given him arrived. Though it wasn't as much as he would like, it would be enough to keep the villagers from starving until the spring and the return of the sun.
Just as Yuuri had predicted, on the first full moon after Viktor left him, the Dead Moon arrived, and the cold fell like a hammer blow. It seemed to be worse, more violent than it ever had been this year, Viktor thought as he huddled in his small wooden house, sitting a few inches from the small fire to absorb as much of its heat as he could.
The town well froze solid, and the river became a block of black ice, split with elegant white streaks where the water had frozen mid-flow. People were forced to melt bocks of ice over their meagre fires in order to obtain water, and within a week of the Dead Moon arriving, the snows had arrived too, falling at night and freezing solid by the next morning, forming fantastical shapes as the flakes were whipped upwards by the biting wind. The world was beautiful, and glittering, and deadly.
Viktor spent his time inside, trying to remember if he had ever seen cold like this in all his years. It was as though the winter Gods had finally noticed their small settlement, and were trying to squeeze the life out of them slowly, draining their vitality and warmth into the howling wind in a slow, agonising trickle. Viktor spent hours sitting in front of the fire, wrapped in the furs Yuuri had given him, dreaming of the warmer days spent under the white pine, and imagining what Yuuri's eyes would look like in the spring sunshine when it finally returned.
Two weeks came and went, and the Dead Moon was half spent, before Viktor was sure that this was no ordinary deep cold. Houses had started to split apart, the last vestiges of moisture in their beams freezing and expanding, popping open joints and logs, and allowing access to the wind that howled like a hungry wolf, day and night.
Viktor began to hear murmuring voices through the thick wood of his door, and the occasional angry shout. He put it down to the usual cabin fever of the winter months, and returned to his waking dreams of Yuuri, shivering and lonely.
One night, when the cold seemed to have reached its deepest, most penetrating bitterness, Viktor was sitting cross-legged on his woven rug in front of the fire, wearing nearly every single piece of clothing he possessed in an attempt to trap his non existent body heat within their layers. He held his pale hands out toward the small fire, trying to coax some life back into his numb fingers; he knew he would have to be careful to ration his firewood if he wanted to survive the winter, so the fire was never quite as roaring as he would have liked it to be. The dim golden firelight wove into his silver hair, tinting it in fiery red and orange, and the occasional spark shot up into the dimly lit room, briefly lighting the darkness, flickering and dying before it could reach the floor. The only sound was the howling wind, and the faint crackle of the flames as they danced, and Viktor allowed his mind to wander, lost in the changing tapestry of flame in front of him.
There was a sharp, sudden knock on his wooden door, violent and demanding. Viktor shot up out of his cross legged position, his heart pounding with surprise, his mind whirring as he tried to work out who could possibly be out on a night like this, in the deepest pit of a winter night.
Viktor crossed the small room in a few strides, feeling the blood flow back into his feet, and cracked open the wooden door so as to allow as little heat as he could out. The two inch gap that he made revealed a sight that caused his blood to freeze in his veins, an appalling presentiment of what Viktor suspected was about to befall him. With a sickening sensation of dread creeping through his mind, Viktor opened the door more fully, exposing himself to the biting wind.
Standing in front of the door, ranged in several rows reaching back to the middle of the street, was nearly every inhabitant of the village over the age of twelve, men, women, boys and girls. They carried flaming torches, the air thickened with the stench of reeds and animal fat as they burned. On their faces was an ugly expression of fear, mixed with a curious sort of excitement.
Directly in front of Viktor stood the Headman of the village, a middle aged man with dirty black hair and grease stained leather clothing. Viktor looked into his eyes, and saw bloodlust and fear mingling in a toxic blend of pure malice.
"What is the meaning of this?" Viktor asked, his voice strong, carrying out to the back of the crowd. One or two of the younger villagers shivered at the sound.
"Viktor Nikiforov," said the Headman, his voice rough and thickened with drink, "The Gods are angry with us. This winter has already killed three, and it is the worst we have seen for a hundred years, maybe a hundred hundred years. The town elders have discussed it, and we have decided that the Gods are punishing us for harbouring spawn of the devil within our borders." The Headman spat at Viktor's feet, the spittle freezing as soon as it hit the floor. Viktor felt a ribbon of ice cold fear uncurl down his spine, as the presentiment that had struck him when he first saw the ugly expressions and the torches was confirmed.
The Headman nodded to two men either side of him, and they roughly elbowed past Viktor into the house, knocking him aside when he tried to block them.
"No, please, please!" Viktor cried, his voice thin in the howling wind, terror making him inarticulate. "I have done nothing! I have spent my entire life trying to keep this village alive through the winters! I have-"
Viktor broke off, as he saw the two men that now stood like an alien presence in the centre of his room raise their torches, and then drop them, the rug and the wood floor catching like a tinderbox. Viktor stepped forward, towards the flames, trying to think of a way, any way to prevent what was happening, but was forced backwards by the heat, the flames now running up towards the ceiling, unstoppable and voracious. The villagers cheered behind him, their voices harsh and inhuman, as they saw him retreat.
"We cast you out, Viktor Nikiforov, we cast you out!" chanted the Headman, his voice climbing in pitch and volume. The chant was taken up by the villagers behind him, slowly, until every one of them was chanting in unison, their torches making their uplit faces into masks of malice, "We cast you out! WE CAST YOU OUT!"
Viktor stumbled out of the house, his face soot blackened, tears glittering on his cheeks as he saw the room in which his mother had sung to him, where she had held him, where she had died, consumed by the flames. In their dancing depths he seemed to see phantasms of her face, her soft voice echoing mockingly from the spitting pile of blackening wood, 'You are destined for great things, Vitya… One day, your destiny will find you'.
It has found me, though Viktor numbly, the chanting behind him an ominous rumble, as the roof of his house succumbed to the flames and caved in on itself with a crash. He felt two rough pairs of hands gripping his shoulders, and wondered if he was about to die.
"See, O Gods!" chanted the Headman over the continued roar of the crowd, "We have cast the devil from among us! He shall die in the snows as you wish! Save us from the Dead Moon and the deep cold, we who have obeyed your commands!"
Viktor felt himself hauled roughly away from the burning building, the crowd following him, swallowing him in its depths as they spat and chanted, their torches burning ugly wounds into the darkness, spitting in the freezing wind. They stopped at the boundary of the town, and Viktor felt the hands on his elbows release him; his body and mind still too numb to respond, he turned and looked back at the Headman.
"Begone from us, demon," the Headman cried, his voice richly satisfied, "Begone and never return!"
Viktor looked at these people, these villagers, who had known him his whole life, from cradle to man. He looked at their inhumanly gleeful, jeering faces, lit by the flickering remains of his house, all his earthly goods destroyed by their hand. Tears began to run down his face, exposing white trails of his skin gleaming beneath the soot.
Viktor turned, wrenching his gaze away from the last glimpse of his burning home, and stumbled away into the darkness, hearing the cheer that went up as he did so. His heart broke, and he began to sob in earnest, his breath clouding and immediately freezing in a haze of ice crystals as he moved away from the pool of light cast by the rude torches. He tripped, and sprawled on the rock hard snow, the cold shocking him out of his numbness.
Yuuri, he thought, I have to get to Yuuri. I'll die if I stay exposed out here for long.
The cold was wrapping its insidious tendrils around him even now, the wind working into every tiny gap in his clothing, and Viktor was, in a dim and distant part of his mind, grateful that he had been wearing nearly all his clothes when he had been banished.
Viktor lurched to his feet, and began to make his slow, torturous way up to the tree line. The Forest appeared slowly in front of him, looming from the darkness; every branch was rimed in frost, every tree a glittering fortress of icicles, pointing toward Viktor as though in a malediction. The cold leeched his breath from his lungs, stealing the oxygen as it tried to make its way down Viktor's throat, and he began to lose his train of thought.
With every step, feet slipping on the slick ground, Viktor felt one thought repeat itself in his sluggish brain; get to Yuuri. Get to Yuuri.
Viktor crashed into a tree, his mind having failed to move his limbs in time to avoid it, and icicles came crashing down around him, spearing themselves in the snow or shattering in a rain of crystal shards as they hit the iron hard ground. One caught itself on Viktor's shoulder, and he cried out as he felt the ice penetrate his skin. A bird that he had disturbed with his cry flew up into the night sky, disappearing before it could be caught in the deadly rain of ice.
Viktor was deep in amongst the trees now, the landscape around him ghostly and glittering, lit by the uncaring moon high above him. Viktor's silver hair caught and bound the moonlight, and his pale skin shone where it wasn't covered by soot. He looked like a being spun of moonbeams, made human and dropped clumsily in amongst the branches, crying for his lost home.
As the edges of Viktor's vision began to slowly blacken, and his feet began to stumble more frequently, the dim light suddenly cast a familiar tree into relief, and his straining eyes showed him that the Cut was no more than thirty feet ahead of him. With a cry of relief, Viktor crashed forwards through the underbrush, more falling than walking. Get to Yuuri, his mind repeated sluggishly, get to Yuuri.
Viktor looked at the Cut, swaying as he stood at the edge, his limbs feeling like blocks of unresponsive wood. Get to Yuuri.
He back up a few paces, his vision now almost entirely lost, his heart roaring in his ears, and began to run towards the chasm ahead of him.
Viktor leapt; and fell. His body crashed to earth at the edge of the Cut, before he could even attempt to make it across, and his hand lay stretched out into the empty gap, his white fingers luminous in the darkness.
Viktor lay, a statue of marble in a world of ice, and knew no more.
oooooooooooooooo
For Yuuri, the Dead Moon was the quietest and most restful time of the year. The animals were all hibernating, the only ones that still talked to him the hardy mountain ravens that loved to gossip with him in the evening before they returned to their bowers. The trees were silent, their slow speech quieted as they slept through the winter.
Yuuri sat now, high above the forest on the branch that he had shared so often with Viktor, holding the round stone with a perfect hole bored through the centre that Viktor had left him as though it was a talisman.
Yuuri had not expected to see Viktor until after the Dead Moon, knowing that he would have to hunt, and that the villagers needed his help to survive the winter. Yuuri had prepared his heart for the long weeks of aching that faced him, Viktor's presence so near and yet so far, hidden behind his wooden walls. Even when he was within the forest Yuuri could not approach him, for fear of bringing unwanted attention to Viktor if any of the villagers that followed him through the trees should see them.
So he had been shocked, and delighted, and his heart had warmed with a persistent small glow when he had discovered the first of Viktor's tokens, a dried marigold, a splash of gold against the frosty floor directly next to the Cut. Yuuri had taken it back to the white pine, and spent an hour staring at it with a slightly stunned expression, before running back to the spot he had found it and leaving a handle of pine needles in his place. Viktor's token felt like a hand outstretched across the distance between them, and Yuuri wanted to extend a hand back. They had continued this pattern every day, and the small things that Viktor had left for Yuuri had been placed in the heart of the white pine, forming a small collection of oddments that Yuuri loved fiercely.
Even though Yuuri couldn't talk to Viktor, he could at least ensure his safety when he walked in the forest. Yuuri had spoken to the trees, and the animals (with a particularly stern lecture for the wolves), instructing them that not one hair on Viktor's head was to be touched when he stepped inside the forest boundaries. The animals all learned that 'the moon haired one' was not prey, nor was he to be allowed to wander into the dangerous areas of the forest, riddled with bogs and marshlights that would tempt a traveller off the safe path. This much at least, thought Yuuri, I can do.
The cold, when it hit, had no effect on Yuuri. He wandered as he ever did, in the same silver furs, his bare feet dancing across the frozen snow as though it were the softest swansdown. Though it marked the end of Viktor's daily tokens, Yuuri welcomed the cold, as it heralded one day closer to the return of the sun, and the return of Viktor with it.
The ache of Viktor's absence had only grown inside Yuuri's heart since he had left, the glorious memory tinged with sadness in Yuuri's minds eye. He had taken to sitting on what he now thought of as their branch, reliving their conversations, searching every flicker of Viktor's remembered expression for hidden meanings, like an endlessly evolving and fascinating puzzle.
It was in the deepest part of the deep cold, a night when the moon hung high in the night sky like a beacon, that the bird found Yuuri. He had been sitting as he usually did, back propped against the ancient tree, legs stretched along its length and eyes fixed on the tapestry of stars above him, when a mountain raven had flown shrieking and agitated into his branches, landing with a slight prickle of claws on his outstretched foot.
The bird's language was so fast and worried that Yuuri took a moment to understand. Reaching out to the bird, he ran a finger down its soft plumage, the black feathers soft under his cool hand, and the bird calmed somewhat.
What is the matter, wing-child? Yuuri asked, his voice soft and comforting in the raven's mind.
The moon haired one!It shrieked in its guttural language. The one you warned us of! The one that was not to be allowed to suffer any harm within the forest borders!
Yuuri felt his heart stop beating for one terrible moment.
What has happened?He demanded, his voice urgent and harsh with terror. The bird bristled in fear, its feathers fluffing up in alarm at his tone.
I am sorry, Yuuri said, gentling his voice with an effort. Can you tell me what has happened?
The bird related the human stumbling into his tree, half dead with cold; he told Yuuri of the man even now stretched out in the snow where the chasm of the Cut cleft the ground.
Yuuri was gone before the raven had a chance to spread its wings, and it caught itself in flight as its perch abruptly vanished, the tree whispering quietly in the wind as though in a requiem.
Yuuri hurtled through the dark forest, his feet barely touching the ground, his heart a sickening drumbeat of terror. He saw the Cut approaching, and barely paused in his approach, leaping across it and landing lightly on the other side, eyes frantically searching the ground, afraid of what he might find, even more afraid of finding nothing.
There, by the chasm, lay Viktor, his silver hair pooling around his form as he lay face down on the iron hard snow, his skin ghostly and no pulse visible in his exposed neck. Yuuri ran to him with a cry, which echoed off the iron hard tree trunks, mocking him as it grew fainter and fainter on the air. He gently turned Viktor's prone form over, cradling him in his arms, brushing the strands of silver hair out of his eyes, with a sickening sense of déjà vu as he remembered the last time he had found Viktor in the forest, his lifeblood staining the ground. No blood was visible this time, and Viktor's eyes were closed, his perfect face as still as though he were sleeping.
Yuuri listened for one agonising heartbeat; a breath! Faint, and laboured, but he had heard a breath! His heart flaring with the heat of hope, Yuuri closed his eyes to the glittering forest, and dived into the spirit world, always present but invisible to all but him.
Viktor's moonglow of spirit, which usually filled his frame with a soft light, was nearly gone, only the faintest of flickers centred around his heart still present. Yuuri saw that this was holding on tenaciously, refusing to fade into the night air.
After a moment's examination, Yuuri opened his eyes and picked Viktor up softly in his arms, the set of his chin determined and his black eyes flaring with small flashes of light, like lightning forks in a dark sky. He looked less human, in that moment, than he ever had, his skin pearlescent and pale, his eyes consumed by white fire, and his lithe form holding Viktor as though he weighed no more than air.
Yuuri darted into the wood, leaving a trail of faint light behind him, his footsteps hardly touching the ground as he ran, he almost flew, back to the white pine. Leaping agilely from branch to branch, he lifted Viktor effortlessly into the central chamber, the pale heartwood of the tree glowing in the darkness, the moss rendered colourless by the pale moon.
Yuuri knew what had to be done, and what it would cost him, but he did not hesitate. He laid Viktor's terrifyingly limp and cold body down in the centre of the tree, and laid a gentle kiss on his forehead, his smooth, cool lips leaving the faintest of impressions on Viktor's skin before fading away. Yuuri then sat next to Viktor, his legs crossed, holding Viktor's hands in his own, and began to breathe softly and rhythmically.
Yuuri closed his eyes, the moonlight immediately extinguished, the only sound his own breath and his heartbeat, and the faint, irregular beating of Viktor's heart. Yuuri fell into the darkness where the spirits lived, and saw Viktor's, now no brighter than a match flame in the endless darkness. He saw his own, a blazing sun in comparison, and beneath them, threaded through the white pine in a series of root like tendrils, the lifeblood of the tree. He breathed in and out through his nose, Viktor's scent filling his mind, and he reached for his own lightning bright spirit, threading it through Viktor's veins, reviving the blackened flesh of his fingers.
It wasn't enough. Yuuri's spirit reached Viktor's wrists, and then stopped, as though an invisible barrier prevented it from reaching inwards toward the flickering flame at Viktor's heart. Yuuri gritted his teeth, and forced more of the pale green light into Viktor's hands, channelling it with all his might, but there was no change; it glowed more forcefully, blinding in the dark liminal place, but still stopped at the wrists, prevented from reaching where it was needed.
Yuuri's heart began to race, an agony deeper than heartache setting into his bones. He breathed calmly still, but in his mind, in the darkness where his love's spirit was rapidly fading beyond his help, Yuuri screamed. He thought of the many years ahead of him, an eternity, alone and having known love only for it to be torn away. He thought of the endless cycle of years, eclipsed by the one blazing moment that Viktor's lips had met his own, a thousand lifetimes worth less to him than that one brief minute.
And as if the white pine heard Yuuri's scream, his agony, his unbearable torment, the tendril like glowing vines of its spirit curled upwards, reaching for Yuuri as a loving parent reaches for a feverish child. Yuuri, in return, reached out for the tendrils, and felt the will of the tree in his mind; he was its spirit, and its child, but the tree itself possessed a life force greater than him, greater than the whole forest which had sprung up from its roots.
Yuuri grasped the deep green tendrils, and his head snapped back, mouth open in a silent scream as power rushed through him. He held tightly to Viktor's hand, feeling the bones grind with the force of his grip, and rammed into the barrier that prevented him from saving this mortal man that he loved.
The barrier broke, overwhelmed by the onslaught of power. Deep green light that blazed with the determination of a thousand thousand trees, that sprung with the patience of endless roots uncurling in white silence beneath the dark earth, that snapped with the vitality of a million leaves that unfurled in the sun to drink in its life-giving warmth, slammed into Viktor's veins from Yuuri's hands, chasing itself in a leaping tapestry throughout Viktor's body, burning the deathly blackness out of him. Yuuri saw his own spirit stream across their linked hands, melding with the light of the tree, and pulsing through Viktor's now blazing form in his mind's eye. Yuuri wasn't sure how much more of this overwhelming power he could survive, his vision whiting out, his heart racing faster and faster and then-
Silence. Yuuri unlocked his hands from where they had gripped Viktor's, the long imprint of his fingers lividly white on Viktor's skin. Viktor was a blazing pyre in his magical vision, a mass of a jewel bright green, and his own pale green like the underside of a fern. Yuuri watched, spellbound, as the light grew and grew, rising higher and higher, seeming to consume Viktor in its radiance, before it fell in upon itself, dwindling to the familiar pearlescent shimmer that Viktor always possessed. And with that final collapse, Yuuri heard a sound that made him gasp, and tears start in his eyes. A shuddering, vital breath.
Yuuri buried his face in the soot-blackened furs that Viktor wore, and sobbed. Eventually, exhausted, he opened his eyes and saw that Viktor was now sleeping peacefully, his eyes shut, his breathing even.
Yuuri pulled one of his furs over from one side of the room, and draped Viktor with it, curling underneath it with him and nudging his way under Viktor's arm. His head pillowed on Viktor's chest, his rhythmical and strong heartbeat a soothing lullaby, Yuuri drifted into his waking dreams, and his last conscious thought when he closed his eyes was that his own blazing sun of a spirit had disappeared. In its place, there was a pale covering of spirit, very like Viktor's own, that spread over his whole body.
Yuuri had known the cost, known what he would be sacrificing to save a man who was nearly dead, but he hadn't hesitated, and he had nor regrets now that the deed was done. With that final thought, he wandered off into his lucid dreams, remembering how Viktor had looked when he had kissed him beneath the white oak.
Viktor woke up.
This surprised him; he had not expected to wake up again, not expected to feel warm after his now-hazy journey through the midnight ice maze of the forest. But he was warm; warm, and comfortable, and….
He looked down, surprised to feel the weight of another person cradled against his chest. All he could see was dark hair, and a pale wood ceiling above him, achingly familiar. But, that meant-
"Good morning," said Yuuri, sitting up as he felt Viktor move. He locked his eyes on Viktor's face, sitting up from under the comforting weight of his arm, and placed a hand on his cheek. Yuuri smiled to feel the blood pulsing in Viktor's neck, the undeniable life coursing through his veins.
Viktor place his hand over Yuuri's, and reached the other one out, gripping Yuuri by the waist and pulling him downwards. In that moment, all Viktor wanted to was to feel Yuuri, to know that he really was there in front of him and that this wasn't a cruel dream. Their breath mingled as Yuuri pressed his cool lips to Viktor's, tears wetting Viktor's cheeks as they fell from Yuuri's black eyes. Viktor let himself drown in the kiss, thinking of nothing but the solid warmth of Yuuri's waist under his hand, and the sensation as their lips moved against each other.
"So…I'm not dead then?" Viktor asked when they broke apart, his voice cracked with emotion and the remnants of the smoke that he had breathed the previous night.
"You're not dead," confirmed Yuuri solemnly, "though it was a close call. What…"
Viktor saw the question in Yuuri's eyes before he asked it, and flinched, causing Yuuri to trail off into silence.
Viktor sat up, feeling no hint of soreness or fatigue, which surprised him given his memories of the previous night.
"They…they cast me out of the village," Viktor confessed, his voice low and laced with pain like splinters of iron. "They said…that I was the reason for the terrible winter, that I was an unnatural being and that I had caused the Gods to turn their face from them. They burned…"
Viktor broke off, sobs that had been trapped in his chest since he had seen his home go up in flames wrenching their way out of his throat, and he buried his face in the furs that wrapped around him and let his heart spill out in the tears that burned his skin, the wracking, terrible pain that made itself heard as he wept for his lost home and the pain of his banishment.
Yuuri held him as he sobbed, his cool arms a balm to Viktor's soul, his firm grasp the only thing keeping the shattered remains of his heart together. Eventually, Viktor regained some control, and he looked up into Yuuri's black eyes, which were snapping with a fury that Viktor knew was not aimed at him.
"I'm…I'm homeless now," he said hoarsely, the knowledge hitting him with a terrible finality. "They burned my home. I have nowhere to…" Viktor trailed off, looking hopelessly out of the opening to the chamber to the empty air.
Yuuri placed his cool hands in a firm grip on Viktor's chin, turning his face so that their eyes met. "As long as I draw breath, Viktor Nikiforov," Yuuri stated, and the words were heavy with promise, "You will always have a home."
Viktor couldn't help but let more tears run down his face at this, but they were not burning with loss and pain and the terror of the mob; they were tears of relief, of joy, and of the overwhelming love that blossomed in his heart at Yuuri's words. Yuuri climbed into his lap, and tucked his dark head under Viktor's chin, linking his hands behind Viktor's back and planting a kiss on his collarbone.
As Viktor held Yuuri close to him, burying his nose in his dark hair that always smelled of rain, the steadily brightening sky illuminated them both, and Viktor felt the weight of a lifetime of fear and hatred lifting off his soul like morning dew at the first sight of the sun.
The people that had always despised him for his differences had finally revealed the depth of their hatred and the blackness of their souls, but that meant that Viktor was finally free of them. He no longer had any responsibility to them, no longer had to fight for any tiny scrap of approval that they might throw his way after a successful hunt. They probably, he thought, are toasting to my death in the snow this moment…
Viktor looked down at Yuuri's dark head, resting comfortably on his chest, and noticed for the first time that a white hair shone amongst the inky black.
"I never noticed this before," he said quietly, running a finger through the shining black locks. Yuuri, too comfortable to move, made a small inquiring hum. "Since when did you, immortal spirit, have any white hairs?" Viktor asked, trying to make his voice light and teasing.
Yuuri just smiled, and didn't answer, turning his face back towards the warmth of Viktor's chest.