CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED SIXTY FIVE

"...I don't know where it call came from..." Viktor said.

They'd moved to the dining room table by then. The younger silver figure had a blanket wrapped over his shoulders, sitting in his chair with his legs crossed despite how little space there was under the table. Mikhail set a cup in front of him and filled it with peppermint tea, then set the pot down and sat opposite him.

"I just had this weird feeling of déjà vu while coming up here, and the next thing I know, I'm reliving every day of my life since you left."

"...Just since I left?"

"More or less..." Viktor looked at the steaming liquid in front of him, feeling at the three oblong white tablets in his left hand, "I guess more, including the actual day you left."

"Back when you two were still living in St. Petersburg, Yuri told me that you didn't like to think about the past. That you'd even shut him down about any possible discussion about it."

"I did." Viktor said flatly, like there was no budging on the subject.

"So he has no clue about who you are beyond what he already knew from skating, and what he's seen himself."

"Pretty much."

"Why?" Mikhail asked, almost aghast at it, "Why on earth would you not share that kind of thing? He's the closest person in your life. He should know this stuff. He's probably told you everything about his past."

"I told him already that his family is my family, and the rest didn't matter. That was long before you popped up though." The younger answered, picking up the cup by the curved finger-hold on the side, and blowing lightly across the top of it before sipping a little, "I asked him not to poke into things. I told him that I don't want to remember. I still don't, but it seems I don't have a choice in the matter right now."

"But-"

Viktor lifted his head and looked over at his uncle sternly, "I got out of a bad situation, and as soon as my eye finished healing and I realized I was safe, I cut the past off. I went out of my way to forget. I threw everything I had at my skating and focused on that exclusively. The last thing on my mind was being reminded of all the things I left behind. I was never going to go back, so it had no right to bog me down."

"It's part of who you are though." Mikhail pointed out, "It's a gag that you're forgetful, but that all comes specifically from the fact that you wanted to be that way, and you're impulsive as all Hell because you were denied for so long as a kid, after being so patient. How can you not see how much those few years still have an impact on your life now?"

Viktor just side-eyed him, one lip curled barely over the top of the cup's rim.

"You're a fractured person, Vivi." The elder went on, "I could see that, plain as the nose on your face, when I saw the viral footage of your colossal melt-down at the Ritz."

The side-eye ended, and the younger silver turned back to his tea-cup, staring at the liquid as it rippled.

"You probably think it's because you were drunk, but there's a bigger reason why you fell apart like that." Mikhail pointed out, stirring a sugar cube around at the bottom of his own cup, "If you've never once talked to Yuri about your history, then it's no wonder it comes out in explosive bursts like this. You still carry so much resentment for the fact that I abandoned you that you think everyone else you love is bound to do the same eventually. You were just trying to convince yourself that you could control it this time, by telling Yuri in your drunken stupidity that he should just say so if he was going to leave you."

"I don't tell Yuri because I don't want his pity." Viktor clarified bitterly.

"His pity?" The elder coughed incredulously, "Why do you think he'd pity you?"

"I like that Yuri sees me the way he does. I don't want to drag his views of me down by putting all this ancient history on his back." Viktor answered stiffly, hackles raised, "He used to say that I was like a God in his eyes. He-"

"Whoa, no, stop. Viktor, stop."

"What?" He looked up, a bit offended.

"Of course he looks up to you. I know where you both were when you went to Japan to be his coach, and how things changed after that. I've heard the story of the Sochi banquet, and seen the pics and videos. But the thing of it is, Yuri worshipped the idea of you, but he fell in love with the real you, flaws and all." Mikhail pointed out, rising from his chair and holding his hands up dramatically, "Viktor Nikiforov, five time consecutive World Champion, Grand Prix Final Gold medalist, European and Russian blah blah blah...that's a caricature of who you are, just one of the many pieces that make up the whole. That's the face you put on when you're looking out at the whole world. Then there's Viktor Nikiforov, figure skating coach to Yuri Katsuki, and then Viktor Nikiforov, husband to Yuri Nikiforov. But on the side, there's this Viktor Nikiforov that got the shit kicked out of him by his father two or three times, and created this class-clown complex like he thought putting on a funny face and laughing a lot will hide how miserable you really are deep down. You need to tell him."

"I'm not telling him anything." Viktor said, looking away and popping the headache pills into his mouth, chasing them with a bit of the tea, "It's all over and done with."

"Apparently not."

"Just because it's all coming back to me right now doesn't mean it's because I'm trying." The younger Russian argued, pulling the blanket a bit higher onto his shoulders, "I didn't ask to start remembering. I'm just stretched thin from everything that happened and an epic lack of proper sleep."

"Offloading at me isn't going to help you much." Mikhail pointed out, "I can only apologize so many times for leaving before you stop giving a damn."

Viktor just slouched, setting the little ceramic cup onto its little ceramic coaster. He grabbed the blanket with that hand and used both to pull the blanket over his head before sinking even further in the seat, enough so that he could no longer keep his legs crossed over the edge of it and set his feet onto the floor.

Mikhail quirked a brow at him, "...What?"

"I'm not even mad at you because you left. I got over that a long time ago." Viktor answered, words muffled by the blanket.

"Then why are you being all dramatic suddenly?"

The younger man went quiet for a moment, though Mikhail could see him turn his head through the blanket, then lower it a little. The elder lifted the teacup in front of himself and held it to his mouth idly, waiting for his nephew to speak, even if it took a while for him to do so. Thankfully, he didn't have to wait long.

"Yuri said you came back for me once. I thought he was lying to make me think better of you, because I had no memory of it. He told me it was probably just because I was a kid and that even he had forgotten things from when he was that young, but..."

"I didn't see you the time I went back." Mikhail answered suddenly, "I don't know where you were at the time. Probably playing in the woods somewhere since it was broad daylight."

"...So it was summer then."

"I ran into Konstantin almost first thing." The elder went on, sipping at the tea again, watching as a single blue eye came back into view through a slit in the folds of the blanket, "His reception was lukewarm at best, but since it had been a few years, he didn't challenge it. I went and found my sister an-"

"...Why did you really leave?" Viktor suddenly asked, the sheet falling off the right side of his head lazily, "You've said before that the village residents were backwards and simple, but you never really went into detail."

"Are you going to let me finish one story before you ask me to tell another?"

The blanket came up again, and the eye continued to stare.

"...I went and found Tat. She had called me a few weeks beforehand, saying your father had done something incredibly cruel to you. I'm guessing it was when you said he found your skates and made you burn them."

"...It was stupid of me, leaving my backpack behind when I'd always taken it with me before..." Viktor sighed, head lowering under the blanket again. He'd snaked his hand out from under it though and was fingering the rim of the cup in front of him, "Especially since Yakov had told me to keep the skates after the winter, so I wouldn't forget to go back."

"I was really angry at him for it, even though I wasn't really sure on the details at the time. The thought that he would hurt you so badly when you were just a kid...that really pissed me off. But even after I showed up, had plane tickets and everything ready for you...Tat backed out at the last second. I don't know if it's because she saw Konstantin and freaked out or what, but in the end, she said no, and Konstantin escorted me back to my car without a clue as to what we'd even gotten into an argument over. After that, and up until Tat's funeral, I hadn't gone back. The next time I even heard from her was years later, when she told me Yakov had taken you, and I called all those skating rinks, like I texted about before you invited me to Worlds."

"You gave up pretty easily." Viktor mumbled.

That just earned him a swat against the side of the head.

"OW." He barked through grit teeth, the blanket falling off him, revealing the swath of messed-up hair under it, "What was that for?"

"Don't even go there, Viktor Nikiforov." Mikhail said, pointing at him from where he'd been leaning over the table, "You may be famous but you're not above reproach. Not with me."

"Jeeze, I already have a migraine, why'd you have to hit me in the head?"

"Cuz apparently Yakov didn't do it enough." He answered, sitting back down again, "Did he exert any kind of authority over you?"

Slate eyes turned aside, "...A little bit, but... Not really. At least not until it was too late and I wasn't willing to listen anymore anyway."

'You don't get to say that when you've never done as I said in the first place!'

'That man only thinks of himself!'

"I guess he just let me do whatever I wanted for a long time because he thought doing otherwise would make him seem too much like Konstantin." Viktor finished, sipping at the tea again before straightening out his hair, "Everything happened so fast back then... I'm sure I don't know all the details of what he went through, but I owe a lot to him. He put his whole life on hold just to give me a chance at having a life of my own. I should've listened to him more."

Mikhail just sat back, crossed his arms, and cleared his throat loudly and purposefully.

"...And maaaaaaaybe listen to you a little more, too."

"Tell your husband about your past." The elder said, both brows raised skeptically, like he wasn't sure Viktor was going to be true to his word, "You owe him that. Who else would be willing to get on the wrong side of a barrier-wall and strip naked on a public rooftop just to convince you not to jump?"

"It was a four foot drop!" Viktor said emphatically, "Where was I really going to go?"

"Then why bother with the theatrics?"

"I don't know, maybe in my drunken stupidity I thought it was higher!"

"My point still rests."

Viktor sulked, pulling the blanket around himself a bit tighter then, "Fine."

"So you'll tell him?"

"...In my own time."

"That might as well mean no!" Mikhail said, exasperated, "TELL HIM. While there's still some semblance of context for why you'd bother! Get it over with before NHK starts, so maybe you can have one event in this Grand Prix series that doesn't end with one or both of you crying."

"Alright alright...jeeze..." The younger Russian grumbled, "...To think I came all this way to make sure you got to Japan safely..."

"Keep it up, buttercup..." Mikhail glowered at him, "At the rate we're going, it'll be me making sure you get there at all."

"I'm not going to bail on my own event." Viktor said, pointing one thin hand at himself from under the blanket, "This season is my glorious return to competition. I have to make it amazing."

"...Mhm." The elder hummed skeptically, leaning casually against the back-rest of his chair and crossing a leg over the other, "Anyway... You asked why I left, too. The real reason, not just the general theme of it."

"Da."

"Travel the world, get away from home, see something other than the ass-end of rocks and turnips all the time...yadda yadda..." He generalized, waving a hand around to emphasize how trivial it all was, "The thing that set me off though..."

Viktor watched him carefully.

"...I actually kind of told Yuri about this in Bordeaux, but I don't think he realized I was being serious." Mikhail said, his voice a bit quieter, "Right after you faked-out Yura about hitting him. That was good, by the way...you really had us all convinced."

"Now who's digressing?"

"Mh... When you were really little, you were always following me around. My little silver shadow. You were with me more often than your own parents. At some point, and I don't know who started it, but someone started making the ill-fated joke that I was more of a father to you than your actual father was. Not that that took much effort...showing you the most basic affection and giving you a kind word now and then was all that it really took to dethrone Konstantin at being a dad. I guess...someone got a hair up their ass about me at some point, being the village rabble-rouser that I was, and started making the suggestion that I actually was your father. The joke became a rumor, and the rumor became an attack." Mikhail paused a moment, and side-eyed the younger man, "Did anyone ever tell you that Tat and I were twins?"

"...No."

"Da. Had the whole secret-language when we were kids and everything. We were really close, practically symbiotic, to hear it told. People thought we were telepathic. Anyway, that got used against me. Once it got to a certain point, even when I'd constantly point out the fact that you had the bear's eyes, and that of course you'd kind of look like me because Tat and I looked like each other...Konstantin started getting a bit weird about it. Maybe he believed the rumors for a split second, but then he and I got into it, and at that point I just said 'forget it.' I started making plans and packed my shit."

"...So that's why it seems like you were there one minute and gone the next. I had no idea."

"Of course not." Mikhail said glibly, finishing the tea quickly and setting the cup back into its saucer, "You were just a baby back then, barely 5 years old. That was back when Konstantin wasn't entirely fanatical, too. He got all spooky-religious and ultra-authoritarian only after I left, according to Tat. Made her nuts. In fact..." He twisted in his seat and pointed lazily at his nephew, "...Now that I really think about it, I'll bet that's what his real issue was that whole time. It wasn't the skating...it's that you and her kept going out of your way to undermine his authority. He's supposed to be this big-bad 'I am the head of the wife just as Jesus is the head of the home' kind of guy, and here you two are, lying to him for years about your secret skating adventures. Every time he thinks he's nipped it in the bud, he finds out you've just been hiding it from him some other way. Bringing Yakov into it...well, that was just another alpha male challenging him. That's probably why he lost it and hit you. I doubt he really planned it that way. He was never a violent person growing up...just big and intimidating."

"Well, he'd had a good 6 or 7 years of being completely unhinged after you left, as practice for the day he'd live out his Biblical directive against me." Viktor answered dryly, "You know, when he made me meet him to get the address for the funeral...he actually told me to my face that he had divine right to kill me for being disobedient. Said he'd 'end me' if he ever saw me again after the funeral was over."

"And then I made him show me where you skated!" Mikhail laughed, "Oh how he hated me for that. I wouldn't leave him alone though. He agreed only on the condition that I'd shut up and leave him alone after."

"...You're laughing but I don't think it's all that funny."

"Maybe not, and I can see why that'd be. Hindsight is always 20/20. But at the time, not really knowing anything from you directly...all I saw was Konstantin getting a prickly pear up his arse, and I thought he deserved it, so I laughed." He then moved a hand onto his chin, "...Though, for the life of me, I don't know why he went inside the rink area. I thought for sure he'd stay outside."

"Maybe he's a masochist who wanted to stoke the fires of his own hatred. Who knows. It doesn't matter." Viktor said, getting even more prickly than before, "I would've been happier never having had to deal with any of it. If Four Continents could've ended without Yakov ever sending me that text...Yuri and I would probably be in a very different place. I hate that he got dragged through all of this." He sighed, staring at his reflection in the pale green water.

"You may think it damaged your relationship...but I would argue that it made you two stronger."

Slate-blue eyes glanced up at the elder Russian cautiously.

Mikhail nodded, "In Japanese culture...the sword-smiths of old would strengthen their blades by folding the ingots. They'd blend in carbon to give the iron flexibility. They'd hammer away at the metal for weeks on end, beating out all the irregularities until it was pure and perfect. In the end, the violence that sword endured turned it into one of the sharpest, strongest, and most beautiful weapons that ever graced this earth." He raised his hand again and gestured at his nephew, "Your relationship with Yuri is like that sword. You've weathered hardships together, and been so folded and intertwined into each other's lives that it would be impossible to completely separate you two again into the people you used to be. You're stronger together because of what you've been through, and flexible to new conflicts, rather than brittle. Even though you say you hate how everything might've negatively impacted your relationship...I doubt Yuri would've wanted it any other way." Mikhail put a finger on his chin and looked aside, "Well, other than you getting hit, he probably could've done without that..." He gestured out again and smiled awkwardly, "But you get what I mean."

"...Like...a sword..." Viktor echoed, thinking on the man's words for a moment. Suddenly though, he dropped his forehead to the table with a thud, making the tea splash and the ceramics rattle.

"...The heck was that for?" Mikhail gaped.

"ImissedYuri'sExhibitioonnnnnnn..." The younger man whined, lifting his head to put his chin down where his face had been, "I told him I'd be watching and I missed it..."

"...He told you to sleep. Besides, I recorded it. We can watch it now if you want."

"...You did? Really?"

"Sure."