CHAPTER TWO HUNDRED FOURTY FIVE

Watching the two senior skaters heading off again, Yuri pulled off his blade guards and perched them on the outside ledge of the rink wall, setting them in a row near where the other two athletes had done the same thing. Sliding out onto the ice, he made his way around the perimeter to loosen up. It didn't take long for his zen to be broken again though.

"So what's it like being back in Detroit after so long?" JJ asked, his tone as mocking in its fake interest as ever, "The Forsaken King finally returns home."

Yuri drew in a breath, "I'm not the King here and I was never Forsaken." He focused his attention back down to his blades, slipping across the ice more quickly than he was used to. He paused and held to the wall for a moment, dragging the edges across the ice.

"No, I suppose you wouldn't have been, not back then." The Canadian's voice went on, "You only ever made it to the Final once while you trained here, and you were what...22 at the time?"

"Not everyone's an early bloomer like you are, JJ." The older skater retorted mildly, "But I've made it three years in a row now."

"I suppose that counts for something." JJ mused, spinning around lackadaisically, looking much like he hadn't been pushing himself too hard for the few hours he'd already been on the ice, "It's a shame Phichit didn't do the same."

Yuri raised his head and paused the blade-scraping, "You know, Phichit-kun scored higher at his first Grand Prix Final than you did in Sochi...which was, what, your second? Third?"

The younger skater just clapped sarcastically, "Congrats to him then!"

Otabek slid past, hearing the teeth-grinding that Yuri no-doubt was thinking quite loudly in his own head. He toe-picked the ice and came to a scratched stop a few feet away, looking at the Canadian grimly, "Would it kill you to put a cork in it once in a while? We all aspire to win the Gold but that doesn't mean we have to be jackasses to each other."

"Jackasses?" JJ echoed, shaking his head, "It's all just a bit of harmless banter."

"I've seen harmless banter." The Kazakh went on, "You're just condescending. It's poor sportsmanship to constantly wear down the people around you."

Yuri glanced between the two, feeling his heart pounding in his throat.

The Canadian just posed somewhat dramatically, gouging a toe-pick down into the ice for flare, "I'm perfectly sportsmanlike. I taught you the quad Salchow, didn't I? I even invited you out for dinner last year, though you shot me down."

"You act like doing one nice thing gives you permission to be a snarky little cunt for a few weeks at a time." Otabek crossed his arms, giving that steely glare that had once sent the slightly-older skater into his previous GPF mental breakdown, "Has it never occurred to you why no one ever wants to have you around, or be around you?"

JJ just scoffed, sliding off somewhat arrogantly, "Peasants will always kneel before the King, just as prey will always run from the predator. It's just the natural order of things."

Yuri watched the man go, sighing loudly before going back to dragging the edges of his blades across the ice, "I'll never understand him. I thought last year might've humbled him. Guess that makes me the fool."

Otabek just shrugged and turned to look back at him over his shoulder, "He's lucky he medaled at all last year. Having that breakdown and then taking Bronze anyway must've given him the impression that he could still win no matter what he did. People like that think they're immortal and untouchable...until those things are threatened somehow."

"I guess so."

The Kazakh uncrossed his arms, and looked out across the ice, watching JJ vault into an Axel jump, managing the 4th rotation but not quite getting in the next required half-spin before landing, "Look at him. He's trying for the quad Axel now."

Yuri glanced up, seeing the Canadian going for it again as well, but still only managing 4 rotations, missing the last extra half-spin that made the Axel such a hard jump to begin with, "He won't get it. I'm not even sure how Viktor does it. The one time I tried for it, I fell."

"You got all your rotations in though. If JJ lands anything less than 4 and a half rotations, even if the landing is perfect, it'll still only count as a triple."

The older skater huffed a laugh, "Yeah...and let me tell you. Falling on a quad Axel feels like all your guts are being shoved into your chest. I don't recommend it." He pulled one ankle across a knee and scraped the ice off his golden blades, "I should practice for a bit though. I need to wear these blades down a bit before tomorrow or I'll be slip'n'sliding all over the place."

"Just got them sharpened?"

"Yeah...just the other day." Yuri nodded, reaching for the second skate, "After nearly 6 weeks on the road, it almost felt like my blades were made of wood rather than metal. Viktor even had the grooves on his deepened so he could get that big ice-flurry effect in his Free Skate, so the bite on his skates was even worse." He set the boot down on the ice and tapped a toe-pick down before sliding forward, "At least he's doing something else for his Free Skate now. Watching him do the old one was wearing me out."

"Something new?"

"Yeah. After last weekend at NHK, he decided it would be a better idea to do something a bit easier for the Final. It's the show he did for that Exhibition, just without me in it." The older skater explained, standing up on his toe-picks for a moment before leaning down again onto the rockers, "Don't tell anyone though. He wants it to be a surprise for the audience."

Otabek huffed, "You and Plisetsky are the only people I really talk to anyway. Some of these other skaters are too emotionally draining to be around for more than a few minutes at a time."

Yuri made a nervous face, "...Ah...sumimasen..."

"You're not as bad as you think." The shorter figure nudged his head towards the other end of the rink after that, "I mostly meant JJ, Chris, and Viktor. Too high-energy for me."

"...Really?"

Otabek nodded, starting to slide back in a lazy half-circle, "Some people are here to compete. Other people are here for attention. I'll let you decide who falls into which category."

.

Viktor finally came out of the changing room in his next outfit; black sweatpants and his new black-and-red Team jacket. He slung his skates over his shoulder, tied together by their laces, and held his mostly-empty backpack by the top handle. He stepped over to where Chris was waiting and started walking through the concourse, "So when did you get here anyway? We didn't see you when we came to get our badges earlier."

"Oh, I've been here since yesterday." The Swiss skater answered simply, "Did some touristy stuff with the coach and choreographer earlier today though. I thought you and Yuri would come by later since Yuri normally needs to sleep off such long plane rides, so I waited."

The Russian huffed a laugh, "He's trying so hard to stay awake. Him and his friend were really excited to go see all the places they used to know from when they trained here before. It was actually a lot of fun to meet all the people they knew." He nudged the taller figure with an elbow, "What was really weird though was realizing how many of them didn't follow skating. Other than the folks at his old Skate Club, basically no one watched the sport. I thought more of them would've had some basic curiosity about what Yuri was up to that they'd have at least looked into it before the Final...but I guess not."

"What was up with that chick at rink-side?" Chris wondered, his brows raised slightly at the thought of it, "Making fun of him for the last name thing? I know we walked into the middle of a conversation, but it sounded a lot like she thought Yuri had lost his mind."

"Right?" Viktor sighed, getting a bit apprehensive again, looking back over his shoulder like he thought he could stare through the walls to make sure the woman in question was still hiding somewhere like he'd told her to, "She's one of those people who knew Yuri during his Detroit Arc. I've been hearing a lot about her in the last few days, but apparently she used to have a thing for him and got shot down." He turned his head back around to watch where he was going; they made their long and slow trek around the outer halls of the arena to where the main athlete's lounge was, "I hope this doesn't make Yuri lose his focus. I'd really like one event of the Grand Prix to be without a major emotional breakdown before a show."

"Well, hopefully you nipped it in the bud then. She looked pretty spooked when you made yourself known." The blonde noted, "How did things go after we spoke after your Short Program last weekend though? We haven't really talked much since then. That Free Skate was painful to watch."

"Really?" Viktor laughed nervously, "I thought you'd be more impressed!"

"I've known you over a decade now, Viktor." The younger skater pointed out, "You've never had the stamina to do more than 4 quads in a single program. You just belted out 8 though, and one was the Axel, which is technically what cost you Gold at Worlds last year."

The Russian sighed rather dramatically, "I just had a lot of pent up energy to get out. I don't think I would've been able to do it if my father hadn't been there watching." He said quietly, not wanting to be heard by anyone they passed, seen or unseen, "I know I haven't told you much about why I was estranged from my family...it was a lot of baggage, and I just didn't want to carry it around with me all the time."

"It didn't take a genius to notice that there was fire on that horizon." Chris explained, "For someone as popular and well-liked as you are, having practically zero friends outside of skating and competition said a lot about you. I just assumed the rest and let it be. I didn't want to rock the boat by prying when you seemed to be happy with how things were."

"I was." Viktor nodded, his eyes low for a moment, "After all the drama of my previous relationships, I just wanted to put it all on the backburner for a while. 'Rise above, focus on skating' and all that."

"Yeah, it was kind of shocking how you dropped everything so fast when you decided to become Yuri's coach. Before then, you were something of a hermit when you weren't competing or training. All these public appearances you would make, and making such a big splash when you did...only to completely vanish off the radar for a while when you were done."

"I've always been that way though."

"Yeah I know." Chris poked him with an elbow, "Which is why the whole world lost its mind when you just randomly decided to go to Japan. No one saw it coming. I don't think you could've found a way to surprise people any more than you did that day."

"And what's sad about it is that I didn't even do it for the world. All that energy I spent trying to surprise people with my skating, and then it was the one non-skating thing I did that got everyone's attention in the end."

"Well...that is kind of why I asked if you were only doing it for shock-value..." The younger skater said hesitantly, "Everything about it was so random and unexpected, even for you. I knew you didn't do it to hurt Yuri, since that kind of thing has never been your M.O., but it crossed my mind that you were being a bit selfish with it."

"From my perspective, it was probably the most self -less thing I've ever done." Viktor corrected, glancing aside to look at the other man, "But I guess I can see it from your side of things."

"I thought you were like me, living for life on the ice...but then you dropped it all like a bad habit, and attached yourself to someone who had fallen so far that he almost hit rock-bottom. For a while, I was really worried you were just using Yuri to get some publicity...taking advantage of the fact that you knew he was practically your biggest fan, and using it to get him to agree to anything you said. The only thing that made me question it all was remembering how you were with him at the Sochi banquet." Chris went on, thinking back on it, "Looking back on it, you fell for him back then, didn't you?"

"Oh yeah." The Russian gave a nervous laugh, "It really is true that you find something when you stop looking for it."

"I'm not even sure you were listening to most of the stuff he was saying that night." The blonde shrugged, "I was actually a bit jealous of how you danced with him."

"Whaaaat? You were jealous? Why?" Viktor laughed.

"Because you didn't dance with me!"

The Russian quickly remedied that, reaching to take his friend's waist and free hand with his own, putting them into something of a Tango start, "Then dance with me now, Chris! Dance like it's your last night on this earth!" He said excitedly.

Lime-green eyes gave a sultry look, but returned the pose in kind, "Viktor, you're such a tease."

"Are you looking for something else then? To sit on my lap all night like he did?" The silver skater mused, leaning his friend back a little, "Tell me."

"Don't temp me, you scoundrel. If I knew you played for our team I'd have jumped your bones years ago."

Viktor laughed and pulled the man upright again, letting him go to walk normally, the lounge door starting to come into sight around the curve of the building, "Wouldn't that have been a scandal!"

"None worse than you jumping Yuri's."

"Maybe not." The Russian shook his head, stuffing his hands into his jacket pockets and slouching a little, "I bet everyone thinks that's why Yuri got good suddenly."

"It might've crossed a few minds. What better motivation than having Viktor Nikiforov acting like a proverbial carrot on a stick?"

Laughing, they made a sharp right turn into an open door, stepping into the Comercia Player's Lounge.

.

"What in the actual Hell has happened in the last few years?" Celeste wondered loudly, gawking back and forth between her phone and out through the one-way glass that separated the medical team's set-up area from the practice rink. She sat with a huff, thumbing away on the internet to try and answer her own question. To her surprise, looking up 'Yuri Katsuki' turned up an entire Wikipedia page on just him, and she scrolled through it with perplexing concern, "...Didn't qualify for the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics, but made it the following year for the ISU Grand Prix of Figure Skating Final, also held in Sochi, Russia. After a disastrous collapse half-way through the event, Yuri came in 6th place. He returned for competition back in his home country for Japanese Nationals 2 weeks later, but sank even further to 11th place, being utterly eclipsed by many younger and more inexperienced skaters. He did not qualify for Four Continents, or for the following World Championships in Tokyo, where his...future...coach?" She paused and cocked her head up, looking at her phone like it was lying to her, but then read on, "...Viktor Nikiforov, placed 1st for the 5th consecutive year. In a surprising turn of events, Yuri performed a replica of Viktor's Free Skate, 'Aria: Stay Close to Me' at his home rink in Hasetsu, Saga Prefecture, and after video of it went viral online, Viktor resigned from competition to become Yuri's coach. Subsequently, Yuri re-qualified for the Grand Prix Final in Barcelona, where he took Silver, and broke Viktor's long-time Free Skate World Record with a score of 221.88."

"What's gotten you all twisted up suddenly, Tess?" Someone asked, getting the red-head's attention from her phone.

She pushed to stand again and pointed out towards the rink, "That guy out there...Yuri Katuski...I knew him from our college days back when he trained here in Detroit. We shared a bunch of the same boring core classes and did homework together a lot. He had to do skating on top of it all though, so to keep up with him, I would go to his practice rink." She clicked her phone off and put it into her back pocket, stepping over to the Team Lead, and watched the skaters on the ice through the one-way glass. She sighed and looked worried, "Back then, unless it had to do with school, the only thing Yuri ever talked about was how much he hoped to be as good as Viktor one day. He'd watch videos of Viktor's jumps on his phone and then try to replicate them. He'd memorize some of Viktor's routines, sometimes practicing them more than his own. But then, one of his rink-mates got hurt, and we all piled into the Skate Club van to take him to the emergency room. Yuri was all broken up about it, pacing nervously and being really quiet, more than normal. I made the mistake of thinking I could calm his nerves by trying to give him a hug, and he just...he practically hit me, he shoved me off so hard and fast. You'd think I'd just tried to mug him or something. I've never seen someone react so viscerally at just a hug before."

"Had he ever let anyone else hug him before?"

Celeste paused, "...I can't remember anyone touching him, actually. Not just hugs, but like...no one even pat his shoulder or anything. Maybe I hit a nerve. I was just trying to be nice." She crossed her arms and held an elbow with each hand, "I really liked him back then...thought I would make him see the rest of the world for what it was, rather than just through how Viktor influenced it. That guy was his whole world though. He even named his dog back home after Viktor, you know? It was crazy."

"Maybe that's all he could think to talk about." The older man shrugged, "If he kept everyone at arm's length physically, then it's possible he just did so with his small-talk, too. He was here to go to college and skate, right? Maybe that's all he wanted out of it."

"So you're saying I just annoyed him then?" She looked aghast at the man, "I was just trying to be his friend."

"You probably were his friend. Some folks just don't want people getting closer than that." He shrugged again, but then laughed.

"What's so funny?"

"I just remembered an episode of this show...'1000 Ways to Die.' There was a story in there called 'Ichi-boned.' It's a pun on the Japanese word 'ichiban,' which means 'number one.' It was about this Japanese couple...they were so modest, they couldn't even look one another in the eye, even while clothed, but apparently loved each other quite deeply. One night, some years after being married, they finally decided to consummate their marriage. Unfortunately..." The man sighed dryly, "They were so modest, that they both had heart attacks during the act and died from the nerves of it."

Celeste's eye twitched in disbelief, "...You're lying."

"Nope. You can look it up." The Lead medic laughed again, turning slightly away from the window, "Anyway...I guess my point was that...the story was about Japanese people being modest, and Yuri himself is Japanese...and modest. He probably got freaked out by how forward you were. It's not your fault."

"That's beside of the point now... What's gotten my goat is how he and Viktor were a minute ago. Yuri couldn't even talk to Viktor before! I remember him coming back from competition sometimes when they were at the same event, and he'd beat himself up for days because he was too scared to even say hi to the guy!" The woman protested, "But I disappear for a few years and now they're shagging each other?"

"They're married."

"Same difference!"

The man chuckled and roughly pat her on the shoulder as he stepped away, "I guess he finally got the courage to say hello. Try to be happy for him. How many of us can say we got to marry our heroes?"

.

Balancing a plate in both hands, Viktor followed Chris out of the players' lounge and started heading back towards the practice rink. He nibbled lightly on a French fry hanging from his lips like a stalk of grass, looking at the fare he'd collected, "...I guess chips and queso is close enough to nachos to make it kind of the same?"

"Nachos lite?" Chris laughed, "I doubt it'll make a difference."

A sudden bustle of boots and yelling caught both skaters' attention, and they hopped out of the way as a team of medics and a stretcher on wheels suddenly shot past them. Blinking in surprise and confusion, both of them turned around to watch the hustle, seeing, and hearing, that a certain Canadian skater was the one being transported away. Blood smothered the white sheets wrapped around the thin rubber padding under him, and they barely caught sight of the skater's left boot being slashed at the heel.

Viktor coughed, glancing at Chris in horror, "What in the world?"

"Looks like he's out." The Swiss figure said flatly, watching the team push the stretcher around the last corner leading to the southeast exit, "Must've screwed up a landing and caught himself."

They both quickly turned to go the other way, heading down the last length of hallway leading directly to the practice arena...however, the suddenly saw a second team coming right for them. Scrambling off the ice and pushing their way through the scant few rows of arena-seats, they rushed through the corridor in the same direction that the first group had gone. There was no yelling coming from that group though, and as the two skaters stepped aside to let them pass...they saw Yuri, unconscious, being wheeled away, a trickle of blood coming down the side of his face from under his hair. One gold skate, hanging off the end of the stretcher, was striped with blood, leaving a droplet of splatter every few feet as he was wheeled away.