The Land of Gods and Monsters

Disclaimer: I don't own Yuri! On Ice

Yuuri's beaming smiles can bring about world peace, cure illness, and make crops flourish.

The thing is, whenever Victor says this, he's not merely waxing poetics.

He is telling the truth.

He remembers his mother's hair falling around him like a curtain. ''Keep your eyes open, Vitya. If you look close enough, you can see the world's wonders.''

It's simple, and while the lashes of others flutter down as time passes, Victor's eyes never shut to the land of Gods and Monsters.

The world is big and Victor is a small boy when he chances it all alone. But he loves the ice, wants to be one with it forever, and it awakens something in him that shines bright as the break of dawn. He is the morning star, the first sign of daylight, and he spreads his wings to fly.

His mother kisses his forehead and cries tears of pride and sadness. ''Be safe, ангел.''

An angel, he is.

He flies across the ice, twirls and whirls in the air, his grace second to none. It's natural, Holy Grace fills him from head to toe, even if he doesn't have a god to dedicate it to. Instead, he offers it to the people. They adore him, for he never fails to show them the scant bit of magic their eyes can still perceive.

They crown him with roses blue as the deep sea and he laughs.

In the crowd, there is a boy dressed in white. His eyes are black holes, swallowing stars, and all Victor can think is Maneater. Manticore.

This is the difference between Gods and Monsters. Monsters build themselves, snatch what they can from others in order to create power so great they will never need to be worshiped. It can be lonely, it can be cruel, but it doesn't have to be.

So he smiles and tosses him a rose. It's red, as the love the boy devours with his every breath and Victor tells him: ''See you at the Worlds!''

The boy gasps and takes it. This is another thing to nourish him, to allow him room to grow, to lengthen and strengthen his limbs and become the Monster Victor wants to compete with.

Sadly, the rose is not the only piece Victor gives away. He spirals in tighter circles and the crowd sees his wings above his head. Spread! They sing He's flying!

But Victor is falling.

Stop this madness, the fairies whisper, Your wings will die, and what then? Who will you worship, angel-small? Who will carry your glass heart?

Victor plucks the last petal from the stem. For a moment, it remains in between his fingertips, staining yellow. He inhales, feels his lungs ache in the crisp morning air and lets the petal go. It drifts down sadly, crushed, wrinkled, defeated. A beautiful thing, ruined by greedy, angry hands. ''He loves me not.''

Yakov glares, his frame stark against the colorful, but terribly bleak surroundings. ''I don't have time for fairy tales!''

The stem hitting the mud below is like an explosion in space- A tragedy so great it is not even audible, a gaseous nebula crumbling, collapsing, tearing a universe apart.

In this case? Victor leaves his beating heart behind in the grass, surrounded by the fairies his mother taught him to love.

It's a safer place than Victor's ribcage, which is not so much a cage as it is an open door. He is an angel, he loses his heart on the drop of the hat. Too much love to give and too few people who keep it. He isn't sure how many times it can break before he breaks with it, so until he finds someone who will safeguard it for eternity, he cannot be allowed in its vicinity.

Summer and autumn die, Victor dwells in winter.

Here is the thing: The collapse of a gaseous nebula means the birth of a star and god knows Victor becomes one.

He dances his heart out, glides over ice and cuts it with every step he takes. Victor is a broken mirror. He reflects, but it's off. Nobody dares to come close, his razor sharp edges gleaming in the corners of their eyes. Logic dictates the crowd should have dissipated, left the empty husk alone, but no one ever said people were rational.

They love watching him fall apart. And he does so with pleasure, desperately moving, giving it his all, throwing himself before the feet of gods he doesn't worship, and forgetting what it was like to be loved instead of discarded.

Sometimes, though, he remembers. They crown him again and again and magic hums in his bones. Can't you feel it, heartless one? Worship, worship, worship. You do nothing but. Who is the god you follow?

He is empty. No answer comes.

The world turns bleaker by the year, but Victor can still see. It's everywhere. There is no ice in Yuri's soldier eyes, only fire. The boy is a blazing inferno and people watch him. The fascination with fire, the desire to play and the thrill of being burned are as old as time. They can't resist.

Victor lives in every blue rose he comes across. There is loneliness in grass, for it holds the heart he misses, and the color green is always full of envy. He cannot bear thinking of red (Red roses, red blood, red passion, red love. Red worship, red lips, red rage and red life. He has none of them, but he wants so badly).

The man is drunk, utterly wasted, but something about him screams alive so loudly Victor can't ignore him.

Something inside of him blooms, but the man is gone the next morning and Victor is glad his heart is not in his own possession, for it surely would have shattered. The absence of a heart doesn't make it any easier, though, and he cries tears of spun moonlight and midnight darkness liquified.

All of a sudden, the video is there, and Yuuri glides across the screen, arms sweeping and flowers sprouting wherever he goes. His body arches up, and though it is Victor's routine, a desperate plea of an angel to a God he does not know, it feels like an answer.

Stay close to me.

Victor bites his lip and when it bleeds red, he watches with wonder eyes. He takes the first plane to Hatsetsu. He can't let Yuuri go. He's a God and though he still a bud waiting for a chance to flower, he has wormed his way into the void cavity of Victor's chest.

Victor is spellbound.

Not many believe him, but Victor knows. He has always known. It's the way the world works, with a little bit of magic and a dash of luck.

Yuuri's smiles are as spellbinding as sunbeam-strewn flower fields on the first day of summer. And summer his smiles are, for Yuuri is spring, and his smiles are the perfect completion of his season, though Victor wants it to last forever.

The heavens may help him- he is gone for the godling.

Yuuri is spring and flowering is what he does best. He reaches for Victor's heart and cradles it to his chest, rocking it lovingly with every move he makes. He smiles and Victor… Victor dies a little.

But that's okay because Yuuri is spring and everything is alive in his realm.

Yuuri's beaming smiles can bring about world peace, cure illness, and make crops flourish.

The thing is, whenever Victor says this, he's not merely waxing poetics.

He is telling the truth.

Authors note

Inspired by I.W.P-chan's summary prompt!