A/N: Question time! We're coming up on another bakng video. Anything you guys want to see them make? Let me know before the next chapter!

Hope you enjoy and review!

"I found you," Viktor said as he came up behind Yuuri, still a ways away in the sand. Yuuri didn't react, and Viktor figured that he didn't hear him.

Yuuri was out knee-deep in the gentle waves of the Hasetsu bay. The sun was gone, blipped right off of the horizon, leaving the sky a hazy purple. Viktor made himself wait, watched Yuuri breathe in the night air, the waves lapping at Yuuri's legs as the mist blew across his face. His glasses were tucked against the collar of his shirt. Yuuri was beautiful, even when his face was shadowed by night and the complicated emotions that tore through his eyes. Viktor felt cacti prickles in his heart as he watched Yuuri battle with himself in the middle of the water. It was like watching Yuuri yell out into the air on top of that building. But that same sense of pride was there, too. Yuuri was dealing with his problems, with himself, instead of running away.

If only you would run to me.

Viktor walked closer, feet slapping into the soggy grains of sand until he was trudging into the water, putting his arms around Yuuri's waist and pushing himself against Yuuri's back, holding him. "Found you," Viktor voiced again, speaking against the back of Yuuri's shoulder where he pressed a long kiss.

Those cacti prickles grew, longer and sharper, as Yuuri slowly, silently, respectfully stepped away. Viktor didn't let it show, but it was like a gaping wound where Yuuri once was. He tried not to think of the kitchen. The cacophony of gadgets. Wandering fingers.

"No one can fix it, because you'd have to fix me!"

Drunk. Dancing. Fighting. Bleeding.

Dying.

Viktor tried to breathe those thoughts out. It was difficult to let go of that hurt, that worry. He didn't want to feel helpless again. He hated that feeling, would rather have a bazillion family dinners with his mother over feeling like that again. But Yuuri wanted to work things out on his own. Was that the right thing to do? Should Viktor disappear again? Let Yuuri burn himself out like a star? Heaving a giant bang of light and fire, before fading quietly into silence. Viktor wanted to help, but was that selfish?

Viktor stared at Yuuri's back, his thoughts like a patched together prayer.

Reach out to me.

Please.

Don't let this be like last time.

Trust me.

I'll take your hand. Always.

Viktor breathed in every second that passed, bit down on his own indecision. He didn't know what to do. Should he fight and stay? Or should he acquiesce and leave?

What would make him the better boyfriend?

He should have known. He should have known what Yuuri wanted.

In the end, Yuuri was the one to make the decision.

"I didn't mind moving," Yuuri began, the crashing white of seafoam splashing up against his stomach. Yuuri smiled, laughed as the wave tipped his balance. Viktor launched to catch him, but Yuuri found his footing. All on his own. "At least in San Francisco, I still had a beach, waves, the sky." Yuuri's light, whimsical tone changed, sunk like Viktor's feet in the sand. "It's completely different. I can't explain it."

Yuuri put his hands down palm-flat against the water like he was feeling its pulse in his fingertips. Viktor did the same, wanted to feel the same. Feel the bay's, Yuuri's, lifeblood in his hands. Like they were one and the same. The ocean would forever be synonymous with Yuuri. The sun, the sand, the smell, the water's delicate caress and its fierce aggressiveness. All of it belonged to Yuuri.

"Nothing stays the same," Yuuri said as he stood straight, felt the sandy water like silt in his hands as Viktor did the same. "You have to keep moving forward, just like everyone else. I can't keep standing still."

Waves pushed and pulled against their calves, and they slowly sank deeper, were drawn in further, and the ever-changing shapeless whorls of water came time and again to eat them up. Viktor thought that he could let himself get lost in this, this moment of time. Until he stumbled, the waves sweeping him off of his feet, just like Yuuri. And Yuuri laughed. The ebb and flow of the waves held a serene quality, but keeping themselves standing took effort. Viktor still felt his earlier turmoil on the ice low in his calves, on the outskirts of his mind.

But Yuuri's quiet laughter decimated those thoughts.

And Viktor's deep disquiet with it.

"Minako always looks at me like she's sad. Like I'm wasting something." Yuuri took his glasses into his hands, smeared the lenses with water spots and little grains. It was impossible over the background noise of the waves, but Viktor thought he could hear the plastic creak within Yuuri's clenched fingers. "Although I feel her disappointment, I don't feel guilty. I'm doing what I love. I can't feel guilty for that.

"I'm ready to do something more with my life," Yuuri nodded it back to himself, like it was only ever himself that held him back. "Be something more. I'll go. I'll do the competition. I'll try, at least." Yuuri gave him that small, unsure smile that Viktor loved, and scratched his cheek, leaving a trail of sand behind. "Maybe I can at least get some recognition. Some notoriety and money. Eventually have my own place."

Yuuri, Viktor wanted to gush, but he kept it contained inside, that sounds like hope.

"Where you can bake whatever you want," Viktor added as he linked their fingers together, a chain Viktor would never resist. "Wherever you want." Yuuri made a noise, low in the back of his throat, lip curving into something cynical. "Don't doubt this now. You can have the world, Yuuri. And I assure you, it will accept you with all of its heart."

"You're a world champion skater. The concept is easy and natural and normal to you. For me…"

Viktor moved in front of Yuuri, in front of the darkening horizon that looked so distant, so unreachable. He splashed up waves of his own as he walked forward to take Yuuri's glasses out of the ball of his fist and place them in his shirt pocket. He brought Yuuri's hands up and bunched Yuuri's fingers beneath Viktor's chin, focusing his gaze back on Viktor. Tangible, here. "I wasn't born a world champion."

"No but you were always…" Yuuri's hands slipped from Viktor's grip. Viktor let them go, but was surprised to find Yuuri staying, his hands pressing against Viktor's chest. "strong, invincible, driven," his hands stopped, Yuuri's index fingers and thumbs making a triangle where his hands joined together, encasing Viktor's heart. "exhilarating." Viktor felt his heart beat back against Yuuri's hands, his unsteady self. He didn't think he'd ever felt anything more exhilarating than that.

"But you have more of something than I will ever have," Viktor said, plucking Yuuri's hands free to put them on Yuuri's own chest, stiff fingers over the damp folds of his clothing, until they both felt a ba-dump, ba-dump that never failed to shake Viktor with the destructive force of a thunderstorm. Yuuri looked up at him, questioning. "Heart."

That word settled across Yuuri's face, like the quaking aftershocks of thunder's power. Viktor dropped his own hands, let Yuuri feel on his own, witness his own most powerful weapon for himself.

Just like the first breath after a storm, the sun came back, shimmering across Yuuri's face in the form of a smile. Still afraid, but determined. "It's scary. Starting something new. It's like I'm leaving everything behind and making a new life.

"Hey," Viktor took hold of Yuuri's shoulders, knocked him back to Earth, "you're not starting over. You're just continuing on in a new direction."

"Is that what you're doing?"

Viktor didn't expect that. It sank its teeth into his spine, paralyzed him, and he could only stand there as he pieced his brain back together. Leave it to his little jack-in-the-box to make the charming, unflappable, media darling speechless.

Yuuri didn't wait for an answer. It didn't look like he expected one. "The future was always a murky place that I didn't want to enter." Yuuri looked back out at the blackened horizon. It definitely looked bleak, intimidating, but it also looked closer than it ever had before. Viktor thought that he had spent his youth crossing over the horizon, taking the world. Yet only then did it feel like it was within reach. "But it comes, passes by. With you, I think my future is becoming clear enough that I don't mind treading water."

Viktor wanted to pull Yuuri in, hug him and kiss him and love him. He wanted to hold him like he would a teddy bear, glomp him until he had lost all of his stuffing.

But the ocean beat him to it.

The tide had risen before they realized it, as their ankles were buried in the folds of sand. The ocean gushed, attempted to eat them as it swallowed Yuuri whole. Viktor held onto Yuuri through the crash of the waves. Only breathed when Yuuri surfaced with an explosive inhale and he chuckled at himself, holding onto Viktor's forearms bruise-tight as he wobbled until he found his footing.

"I-I think," Yuuri began through trembling lips, trying to pull his soaked clothes away where they were splattered against his skin, "we should head back."

"Definitely."

Viktor held Yuuri under his arm as they staggered back through the sand. He rubbed his hand up and down Yuuri's arm, hoping the friction would help as the night air chilled their waterlogged bodies.

"I'm thinking of going to the festival with Yuuko and her family tomorrow. Want to come with?"

Viktor nodded, hugging Yuuri closer to his side and kissing the crown of his head. It left a salty aftertaste that lingered on his lips, but Viktor rather liked having remnants of their time together to keep. Even if it was for fleeting moments.

Yuuri glanced over to the side, led Viktor's gaze to a nearby tree. "We'll have to come during flower viewing season."

"I saw them bloom one of the times I was here for a competition." Yuuri's face didn't change much, though Viktor caught the flicker of disappointment. "Somehow, I think the view will be much more magical next time."

Yuuri scrunched up his face in dismissal. "Ah, well, once you've seen it..." Yuuri stopped suddenly, put a hand to his stomach as he bit his lip. "I feel sick."

Viktor placed a hand between his shoulder blades, rubbed against his sopping shirt as Yuuri bent over the ground with hand braced against the tree. "That's because you ate four helpings of dinner, dear heart."

"Yeesh," Yuuri squeezed his eyes shut against the embarrassment. "I just didn't want to think about the future anymore."

"I'm just happy that I wasn't the cause this time."

Yuuri lifted his head, his eyes lighting up in remembrance before he glowered back over at Viktor. "You licked her."

Viktor's lips peeled back from his teeth in a wince. He just had to put his foot in his mouth. Could they go back to talking about cherry blossoms? "In hindsight, not my best decision." Viktor shrugged with his hands, trying to be flippant.

"What is?" The paleness to Yuuri's features passed, and he adjusted himself back upright, placing his glasses back on as they continued toward the inn.

"But it was better me than you."

Yuuri stopped. "Really? I wasn't going to lick her! I was just going to wipe it off for her."

"Still too close for comfort," Viktor replied, not a hint of apology on his person.

Yuuri spun back around, his flip flops making a squeegee-screech noise with the movement, and poked a finger into Viktor's chest. "Yeah? And how would you feel if I actually did lick her face?"

"I believe we already had this talk. Do I need to get my bat?"

"Hypocrite."

"The biggest." Viktor brushed a soggy tuft of Yuuri's bangs from his glasses, accidentally thumbing a corner of the frames. "But you love me for it."

Yuuri didn't look amused. "Jealousy isn't cute, you know? Neither is a lack of trust. Don't you trust me to be devoted to you?"

Woah. Viktor felt his emotions do an about face, his humor quickly caving into his stomach where it tumbled into that monster called shame. "Yes…"

"Yuuko is family. And even if she wasn't, I love you. That means everything to me. You are my everything, Viktor. No one else is capable of becoming my world. No one. You can retire that bat. You don't need it."

Again, Yuuri stole his words, left him bereft of a quippy comeback or anything that wasn't the sentimental gush overflowing his insides. Yuuri smiled, pleased. Until Viktor found a response. "I was never very good at baseball anyway."

Yuuri's shoulders dropped with a weighted sigh. "Come on, you dork."

They stayed coated in a comfortable silence as they walked back, drenched through their underwear and clinging in the cold. When Yuuri's hand slid back over Yu-Topia's outer railing, Yuuri's voice broke through.

"Am I abandoning my family, Viktor?" Yuuri braced himself against a gust of wind. Viktor gathered Yuuri into his chest, tried to take the brunt of the cold. "I remember how it felt," Yuuri shivered and it looked like it was against more than just the wind, but the freezing thoughts that dripped with the water along his pebbled skin, "when I thought they abandoned me. I don't want them to feel that way. No one should ever feel that way."

Yuuri's pain ricocheted through Viktor, bullets going this way and that and Viktor had no way to shield himself, no barricade to hide behind. He didn't want one. He would take in Yuuri's hurt, help him through it. "You are doing no such thing, Yuuri. You love them. You'll be living far away, chasing dreams away from their sphere, but you will always be thinking of them. That's not abandonment. That's growing."

"Crap, now I'm crying." Yuuri scrubbed at his eyes with a fist, but Viktor pulled it away.

"Yuuri, solntse moye, you can always cry. Although I do prefer your smile to your tears." Viktor pinched Yuuri's cheek, lifted it to get him to smile.

"Youch!" Yuuri shoved Viktor away with a laugh, rubbing his cheek. "Good. I think we have enough problems without you being a sadist."

"Then keep smiling, Yuuri!" Viktor dove for Yuuri's cheek again. Yuuri squeaked and ran for the door. Viktor paused, felt the eerie, hair-raising, nails on a chalkboard, nerve-grating feeling of being watched. Viktor turned, ignoring Yuuri's inquisitive look. "You head on in without me." Viktor clipped back on his smile, shiny, pristine. Yuuri's eyes said that he didn't believe it, but he allowed Viktor the out. "I'll be in soon."

"Sure… I'll be waiting."

"Done having your quaint little moment in the moonlight?" Valeriya asked as Viktor approached. She stood a ways off from the inn, hidden in the shadow of a tree.

Viktor bristled, hearing that his mother spied on such a private, intimate moment of his and Yuuri's. It made Viktor dislike himself, for a moment. It made him want to grip onto Yuuri, clench his fingers around him like a possession, declare him his and tell his mother that she could not touch his things. But Yuuri wasn't a thing.

She had no right to be here. She had no right to violate Yuuri's precious home with her presence. Viktor let the acid cool on his tongue, let it solidify into a more durable weapon. "Come to collect your due?" Viktor asked, his gaze flickering to the inn and back. He knew there would be consequences to acquiring her assistance with Yuuri in the hospital, but to ambush him in Japan? She was as ruthless as ever.

The branches swayed with the wind, making the spider web of shadows crawl across his mother's face. It was fitting. She had always been a stealthy and poisonous predator. "I don't require anything from you. Is it so preposterous that I would help you out of the kindness of my heart?"

An irritated tsk left his lips before he could stop it. "I don't have time for this. So please. Get on with whatever this is so we can get back to our evenings, yes? You don't do things out of kindness. You only ever work for yourself."

Her lips formed a rueful smile, her eyes… tired beneath thick lashes. Viktor didn't think his mother was capable of being tired. "I rather deserved that." Nor was it in her nature to take punches. "I had hoped to say what I needed to say without prying too deeply into the past, but… I think there are things you need to know before you understand what I have to say."

It's rare," Viktor felt himself bite out, "for you to be sentimental." Viktor kept his face neutral, but his mind faltered, panicking because this was new. He looked her over again, her appearance ever the same, elegantly and sharply dressed, hair back in a coil, heels tall, but her head was not high, chin almost tucked into her chest as she held onto her crossed arms. He didn't allow himself to think on Valeriya's demeanor. "The past is the past, isn't that what you used to say? When we would bump into each other at galas or charity functions as you would hold my arm and show me off to everyone like a prized monkey you trained to perform?"

Her gaze sharpened, warning him from twisting his knife any deeper. That was the mother he knew, with the gestures that meant far more than the words.

"The past is the past, you said. Yet you use the past against anyone in your way. Any enemy or friend or family or even innocent bystanders. You used it against Yuuri. Don't think either of us have forgotten. You used his most troubled times, his family, his goddamn abusive uncle against him and Yuuri has recovered from that because he is strong. Hell, he's probably even forgiven you because he is the kindest person I have ever known. But I am not strong and I am not kind. I will not forgive you."

Valeriya's grip tightened on her arms as her gaze fled over to the tree. Viktor felt a sharp sense of satisfaction as he cowed over his mother. He finally felt taller than her. Bigger than her, as he came to stand over her as she once did to him.

"I don't want to know what you have to say. The past is the past. Nothing more. Now I will pay my debt, because I will not owe anyone, let alone you. What is it that you want?"

The tree branches shifted, the moon surfaced from the bushels of gray clouds, and moonlight streamed down on the two of them. Viktor's shadow covered over his mother. It was taller, bigger, a monster he had always told himself he would never become. He never wanted to be like her. Arrogant, bitter, a terror to hide from.

Viktor bit into his lip, hard enough to sting, hard enough that he pierced his teeth in deep and tasted the memories of that first slap of his mother's hand on his cheek. He remembered the taste, like he sucked on a stack of pennies. It tasted like that now. He also remembered her face, her shock. She had always been good at intimidation, would give him that look that pinned him in place like a dead butterfly on display, and she would hold onto him, nails clawed into his chin until he would give. She never followed up on it. Never until that night. Never again until they were standing on that hill in San Francisco.

He always told himself he wouldn't be like her. That thought left him slumping back as he repeated a strained, "What do you want?"

She held his gaze. "I want you to listen."

"What?"

"That's my price." She firmed herself up, raised her head, and Viktor wondered if she'd played him. Acted vulnerable and he fell face first into it. "You want to pay your due, then I want your ear."

Viktor smiled, felt the laugh slip through his nose. "Can I just cut it off and give it to you?"

She actually looked a little amused. "It would probably be a kindness. You have your father's ears."

"What's wrong with my ears?!" Viktor cried, cuffing his hands over them.

She patted his elbow as she walked past him. "Come along. Let's get a drink. Any good bars in this backwater place?"

"What is that?" Viktor asked as he came back from the bathroom to find Valeriya with a giant glass that held some green slosh that looked like it was a mythical concoction cooked up by a wizard. He quirked his head, secretly thinking that it was as green as he'd imagined her blood to be.

"Something strong and filthy with calories," Valeriya cheered as she clinked her glass against Viktor's, teasing a wink at the bartender from over her shoulder.

Viktor rolled his eyes, sipped at his beer. He could still taste the shochuu from the night before in his throat. "We celebrating something? I'm still pissed. Take care to remember that."

"I won't soon forget," she said, taking a long, heavy drink before dabbing at her upper lip with a napkin. "Have you seen your father lately?"

Viktor's eye twitched right along with his heart. "Come to shade him a darker color?"

Valeriya sat back, posture rod-straight, perfect. She folded her hands, unfolded them. Her eyes stared at a piece of art on the wall, pastels on fabric. "We fell in love during the beginnings of my career. Your father was still full of such hope, then. He said my dancing made his heart beat, made it bleed so many colors that he just had to paint with them. When I watched him give himself to that brush, it drove me deeper into my devotion to dance. We inspired each other, we loved each other, but we hated each other, too.

"We stayed together because I was pregnant. I didn't know what to do, what kind of mother I would be. I didn't think having me for a mother would be fair to her or him, to you." She paused, swallowed another mouthful. Viktor didn't touch his drink again. He was already feeling ill. It was one thing to suspect your mother didn't want you, another to hear it. "Dmitry wanted to keep you. He was ecstatic. His family didn't accept me… but," that same rueful smile was resurrected behind her glass, "they had to because of you. They offered me money, fame, everything, with the promise of a binding contract to never speak of it. Dmitry said no. Even if I signed, he would leave after me, be gone, take their only heir out of the equation. So I signed myself to the Nikiforov name and a caustic marriage.

"We fought like cats and dogs, because that was how we saw each other. I was the conniving cat that only wanted his money. He was the dog that cared for nothing but his work and ignored me. Our love… had all but run dry. We had moments. Even the most tenuous of relationships do, but we weren't made for each other."

Viktor almost stopped her. Almost. There was a crack in his mother's mask, one much like, if not identical to, the one that had splintered forth when Viktor had told her that he loved Yuuri. Viktor didn't want to sympathize with his mother, couldn't. Not after all of this time. Love? If they were so in love, what happened? How could their love spoil just because of a child and a contract?

Viktor could only remember a house full of door slams and shattered dishes. When there weren't explosive arguments, there were silent dinners. Viktor didn't remember love being in the equation at all.

"Love and hate are much more intertwined than you think."

"It was hell. I absorbed the Nikiforov name. Became more of an heir than your father. We hated each other. He said I sapped the happiness and joy from his life, he… well, he bound me to a world that I could not escape from. I do not blame him for leaving."

Her glass clinked back down onto the table. Viktor watched a drop slither down its side. "That was after Yakov took me under his wing."

"He used to yell at us for treating you that way. For yelling at each other, at you. Yakov didn't understand how- Tsk, he and Lilia were trying to conceive back then. When they gave up, I think he looked to you to fill that void."

Viktor brought a hand to his forehead, rested himself against the tabletop. That was… a lot more than he knew. It made him feel the ache of loneliness in his chest again, and such a profound sadness for Yakov. Viktor didn't want to hear this. Every word was like snapping another bone in the foundation of this image Viktor had, in this body Viktor once knew.

"Once you were gone, we hardly saw a need to stay together. Legally, sure. But, he was gone within weeks. I stayed, took up his place in the family, because, well," She sighed followed by another drink that finished her glass. The bartender had already served her another with an indulgent smile. "I hardly had a choice by then."

So, what, I'm supposed to feel sorry for you? Viktor stifled in his throat. He didn't want to feel sorry for her. He didn't want to feel anything but burning hatred for his mother. He wanted to be angry. He wanted to be so angry. And stay angry. He felt that he had a right to that anger. He didn't want those years of flames to be extinguished by a little history lesson at a bar. He didn't want to let his anger go. He'd held onto it for so long. He didn't know what he would do without it.

But he did feel sorry for her. It was like a tiny spark in the pit of his heart. Viktor fought against it with all of his being. "That doesn't explain why you went after Yuuri."

"It was a part of my duty," she said, and it was like fanning the embers back to life or throwing water on a grease fire. "Truthfully, I didn't care. I saw him as just another one of your flings. You didn't care about him. Then you told me off. You defended him. Not once have you defended another person to me. It disturbed me. It scared me. I saw a repeat of the past. I saw myself losing her way, her happiness because of a fake or flawed love and I-" She shut her eyes, squished her lips together, biting down against emotions that were so alien on her face. "When your grandmother asked me to bribe off the Katsuki boy, I did so readily. I was a bad mother, but I thought I could save you."

"You wanted to save yourself," Viktor found himself saying, less heated than he expected, than he wanted, but more stupefied in the face of something so shocking. "The you that you saw in me."

"Perhaps. But then he stood up to me, too. Wouldn't leave and I thought- It startled me, but I didn't want to believe it. Then I saw the videos."

"You watched the videos," Viktor said, then processed what he said. "Yuuri's videos? You watched the baking videos?"

"Yes, I watched you caper about like a moron. Highlight of my motherhood, I tell you." She looked over at him, amusement dancing on her lips, "I do keep up with your life, you know?" and his mother, the one in his mind, fragmented then. He could no longer see her as he always had. She looked so human. Viktor kept trying to imagine green blood, a poisonous spider waiting to drop from its web, but she wasn't a creature in his eyes. Just a very, very flawed human being.

In his mind, the Nikiforov name was a symbol of chains and his keeper was his mother. But it turned out that she was stuck in those chains right along with him. The name was more than his mother. It was his father, his father's mother, and probably much farther up the ladder.

It was Viktor's family. His entire family.

"I saw the love between you two. It is… different than mine and your father's. It is a love that is meant to last."

Viktor felt his throat close, his lungs cease, his heart stop beating. Because as Viktor sat there, listening and listening, he'd almost transplanted himself into his mother's shoes, saw his mother and father like him and Yuuri. It was frightening, like a shadowy forecast over him telling him that all of these feelings, this love, could grow frail and die away. Viktor hurt to think of it. He hurt for his mother, his father, because he didn't know how they felt falling out of love, but he knew that he would never be able to handle falling out of love with Yuuri.

Valeriya was still wearing her ring. Viktor glanced at it, in the same spot it always was, as she looked down at it, too.

"I've been reevaluating myself since I saw those idiotic baking segments." Bending her thumb in, she rubbed against her wedding ring, spun it in stuttered circles around her finger, before slipping it off. "I'm going to leave the family." She placed the ring in the middle of the table, amidst crumbs and leftover drink circles. "But I won't without your permission."

Viktor looked up at his mother, wanted to laugh, like she was joking. A cruel joke he had to endure as his payment for Yuuri's good health. His hands clenched into fists against his damp pants as he only saw sincerity.

"If I leave, I will be disowned… and so will you. I won't make that decision for you. I've made enough decisions for you."

"Even if I say no?" Viktor croaked, wanting to stab himself in the eyes rather than cry, because he knew that what he felt behind his eyes were tears from some unnamable emotion stirring from within. "You'll stay… with them, with that family, for me?"

"It's about time I act like a mother, right?"

The comment wasn't funny. Nothing of this registered as funny. Viktor thought of Yuuri, facing his future, past his demons. Yuuri was forever strong, nearly indestructible to Viktor. Because here Viktor was, facing his future, his biggest demon, and all he wanted was to drown himself again. To melt into the background. Disappear. Forget. He couldn't do this, challenge his thoughts, his feelings, his beliefs. He had spent his life focused on his mother as the enemy. Swore he would surpass her, his name.

And Viktor thought of Yuri. Feral, destructive, powerful, little Yura. How alike they were.

"I was never meant to be a mother," Valeriya said, back to being cold in a clinical sort of way. Viktor fought against rage. She was composed, but she was off, like a dog told to heel against its nature, and Viktor thought that maybe, just maybe, she was drowning herself, too. "Caring for a child, coddling a child with love and affection, it was such a foreign idea to me. I couldn't understand the innocence, the vulnerability of children." Her hands were out, open in the air in front of her. Empty. Waiting to be filled with something that never came. "Even my own child." She met his eyes, unflinching, determined. "For that, I am sorry. You deserved better."

Viktor held her gaze, parried it. "Yes," Viktor hissed, slipping from the impeccable control that he somehow always lost when around his mother, "I did." But he was used to her winning. He had to shake himself free from the hands that gripped him, that pulsed with rage and fury and doubt and resentment and indignation. So many feelings, all of them putrid, and maybe that's what it was. Maybe that was why he couldn't skate. He lost all sense of those pure, ardent feelings he had for the ice, let them be poisoned and buried and all he was left with was grief.

Valeriya's hands were still out, still waiting. Chapped and dry, wrinkled hands that had warped with age. They were barren of the feelings she could never acquire. Of the things she didn't deserve.

"I don't deserve it…" Viktor whispered, and her hands fell. "I don't deserve to skate anymore…" There was a part of him there, stuck inside of him, eclipsed in something Viktor didn't have a name for.

He chose to think of the ocean, its pulse. That just a little over an hour ago he was feeling it beside Yuuri. Relishing Yuuri's trust and affection. His strength. Now Viktor smelled of briny sand, like a fish that sat out under the sun on a boat too long, caught in a net and long dead. He felt the sand like it was crawling all over him. It itched. Viktor wanted to peel off his skin, form a new shell, begin anew.

"Inspiration has never been kind," she replied

"But… you said-"

She gave him that smile that Viktor knew. That he used when guilty of a lie and would shed no apology. "We all, yes we, have moments like that. Your father," Viktor caught her swallow, saw a brief glimpse of that complex emotion he had never recognized in his mother's eyes before, "cursed at his inspiration more often than he praised it. I told myself that that wouldn't be my life. I couldn't allow myself to break down because of something as unpredictable and unstable as inspiration. It happened anyway." She shrugged, took note of the betrayal no doubt seething between Viktor's teeth. "Showing weakness, you get eaten doing that."

With that, she stood. Collected her bag and the light shawl she had been wearing out in the night. She was done. Viktor couldn't believe it. It was like she had delivered a nuke to his head -three nukes- and was walking away in the aftermath.

Still he said, "You have my permission."

She merely paused, before taking her ring and sliding it across the table toward Viktor. "I can't say that Yuuri Katsuki is a good match for you, but you have my blessing, for what it's worth. If you can have the love I couldn't keep, then treasure it. And Viktor," she slipped her shawl back over her shoulders, gave him a pointed look that he would forever be used to, "never, ever wear that dog suit again."

Viktor listened as her heels clacked their way out, bit his lip against a laugh as he realized he was left with the bar tab. He was tired, too tired after volleying himself between emotions at a blink-rapid pace. All he wanted was to slip into bed between his Yuuri and his Makka.

And that was what he would do.

A/N: Don't forget to tell me your requests!