Chapter summary: "They make it sound like some kind of door. You just have to open it and walk through and close the door behind you and it's gone. But it's not. The grief is never gone."

Death is silent. Its presence is a wave that swallows, traps one within its tide. It drowns out everything, all outside noise, creates a soundless atmosphere where only grief resides. Viktor can't hear anything now. Not Mari as she counts out each press into Yuuri's chest. Not the sirens that whirl around him. It isn't until Mari stops that the sounds break through. Her body stills over Yuuri, her hands folded on his chest, fingers crushed together so hard they're crooked and red. Tears and snot run a river down her face, her expression cracked open and screaming. When she drags herself away, she doesn't look back. Like a zombie she moves, walks through the crowd of gawkers, towards the nearest streetlamp and clunks her forehead against the metal.

Not one person stops her. Viktor stays in his spot, sitting back on his ankles. His fingers drift over Yuuri, mirroring Yuuri's touch that lingers on Viktor's cheek. It was only hours ago. Yuuri told him he was his Viktor.

Always his Viktor.

The fire burns behind them, bursting the glass of more windows. It generates more screams and terror, ignites mass hysteria. Viktor doesn't flinch, watching with glazed eyes. The onlookers scatter. Drivers dive back into their cars to peel off. The fruit truck remains, laying in just as much of a heap as Yuuri. The driver has yet to come out. The mother is hugging her son on the sidewalk across from them. She holds him in her arms, squeezing his face into her chest, the ball smashed between them. She stares at Yuuri's body, doesn't blink. Then she looks at Viktor for a single fraction of a second before her gaze flees.

An officer places his hand on Viktor's shoulder. It squeezes with apology, assurance, then tugs with urgency. Viktor needs to leave. An evacuation of the area has been ordered. Viktor reaches toward Yuuri, to secure, to protect, but he pulls himself away. There is no more Yuuri to protect. Not in this world. Viktor pauses to inspect something on Yuuri, something that juts out beneath the back of his shirt and Viktor's stomach swirls with the thought that it may be a stray bone. It's not. It's a book, Mari's book, partially concealed in Yuuri's back pocket.

Yuuri, you… you forgot your glasses, but grabbed Mari's stupid book?

Viktor pulls it free, shards of his heart wrenching themselves into his throat as he feels that the book is still warm. It retains a small portion of Yuuri's life. Viktor tucks it against his breast, holding onto it with as much strength as that mother did her son. He makes his way to Mari's side. She's fallen against the pole, her face sunken against it, cheek smooshed and stuck with dried tears.

"I won't leave him," Mari says, and Viktor is surprised that she registered his approach. "I won't leave my baby brother."

Viktor shakes his head, because they both know that it is Yuuri that has left them behind. Viktor doesn't voice the thought. He prods the corner of the book into Mari's side until she snatches it out of his hand with a glare. She glances to see what it is. Her face crumbles all over again before she buries it into the cover. Hard, silent sobs wrack her small frame that once looked so sturdy. A mountain that no one dared to climb. "He always dog-eared my pages," she sobs a laugh, "such savagery."

"I'm sorry!" the mother cries from across the street. "I am so, so very sorry."

It's too late, inadequate, but Viktor's instinct leads him to smile back, a pathetic, tiny thing, because he knows it was an accident. He knows that in this chaos it was nigh unpreventable. But Viktor can't forgive her, or the little child she holds. The boy clutches onto his ball and Viktor wants to pop it into oblivion.

"Yuuri had to die so that boy could live," Mari says to the book, fingers restlessly flipping its pages, back and forth, as if she can find more imprints of Yuuri left behind. "Is that fair?"

It isn't.

Death is never so kind.

They are unable to hold the night vigil. Yuuri's body is disfigured, Viktor knows, and it takes time to make his appearance acceptable for viewers. This, Viktor thinks is necessary. As much as tradition holds true even for the less devout Katsuki family, Viktor doesn't want Hiroko or Toshiya to see how a truck mutilated their son in his final moments. He can already see how the sight haunts Mari, his death stained into her eyes.

Yuuri is flawless at the funeral, posed peaceful. It's a trick, wrapping Yuuri's death in a pretty, fictitious ribbon. Viktor knows what his body looks like beneath the clothes and the makeup. The broken bones of Yuuri's body will forever be molded into Viktor's palms. Viktor doesn't touch the doll before him, sweeps his hand along the casket instead, bows his head and tries not to bite through his tongue when he sees the ring.

He sits to the side and watches the foreign traditions, once wide-eyed, lost and naïve at these gatherings. He considers himself an expert now. Black clad attendees mill about. Envelopes of monetary offerings are passed solemnly into Hiroko's hands. They bow and say kind, but useless words. Incense is burned until the smoke crowds above Yuuri. A monk chants words Viktor doesn't feel the need to understand.

Toshiya is nowhere to be found. He never is. Not in any world. Yuuri's death appears to hit him the hardest, leading him to lock himself away where he isn't seen for weeks. Hiroko stands strong, eyes red-rimmed and fingers shaking, but she remains.

Mari's grief is quiet. Viktor doesn't understand. He never understands. He doesn't know how Yuuri's death doesn't rip everything out of her the way it does Viktor. Even more so now, since she was there, a witness, a failed protector. But the book is still in her possession, clamped between her hands. No greeting or task steals it from her grip.

Viktor makes himself useful when Phichit arrives. The usually cheery bout of sunshine is dampened by the sight of Yuuri. Viktor steels himself when recounting the events that led to the accident. Phichit breaks down when Viktor gets to the bouncing, blue ball, and Yuuko holds Phichit as his legs lose their strength.

The girls hide around their father's legs, watching from a distance. It's the first time Viktor has seen them without at least one phone in their possession.

"Fruit Loop," Viktor beckons. She peers up at her father, receives an approving nod, and skirts her way around others to join Viktor's side. Her eyes are big as they stare up at him, lashes wet with dew drop tears. "Are you going to say goodbye?" None of the three have made it to the casket. Their shimmering eyes look scared, uncertain.

"It's just…" Loop looks up at Yuuri, fingers fiddling with an unlit stick of incense. "Yuuri wouldn't like this. It's too dark, too sad. He would hate it. So… we do, too."

Viktor hums a thought, though he wants to huddle in a corner and cry. "Should we fix it?"

Loop's fiddling stops. She blinks, grins. "Can we?" she asks, tone reverberating with excitement. "Because I think Yuuri would want his posters up. And his medals. And pictures. Lots of pictures of him and Phichit and you and Minako and Mom. Music! He would have his skates on in the background. No-No, wait. He would be way too embarrassed for that. But yours, for sure."

"What about… videos of both of us skating then. Us together. I know you have some," he adds wryly. They were never far during Yuuri's practices, a lens or three poised in their direction.

Loop nods, her smile bright even as tears begin to fall. "Yes. That would make him happy."

"Why don't you go ask Mama and Hiroko and see what they think?"

"Yeah!" Loop cheers, then runs off to her sisters to recruit them, too.

Viktor is proud of himself, his voice strong and sorrow restrained. The tears fall when Loop scampers off, the salt stinging his face, making his abrasions itch.

"You should get that looked at."

Viktor catches Mari's approach. She's black all the way to her headband and the aura that surrounds her. "It doesn't matter."

"Why? Because you're going to leave it?" Mari growls. Viktor doesn't expect the subject, his brow raising at her anger. "So you go on to another world. Say that I buy this. What happens to this Viktor? Does he just… pop back in?"

Viktor's mind spirals at the thought. He has always been fixated on Yuuri. But now… He doesn't want to think about the specifics of his world travel. If he does, he doesn't know if he could continue. "I don't know."

"He gets to finish his life. Without Yuuri. Without even getting to say goodbye. With a torn up face and a fucked up shoulder so you can have your happy ending. Is that how it is?"

"I don't know."

"Or did you kill him?" Mari does not relent. She plucks out every unanswered question, unraveling Viktor's practiced apathy and condemning his ignorance. "Will your body just die? Am I talking to an empty sack?"

"I don't know."

"Or maybe he'll follow. Maybe he can do this, too. There will be an endless string of Viktors trying to save Yuuri. But then, what happens if you all collide? Will you have to fight each other? Fight to the death to win Yuuri's hand? Will you make him choose?"

Mari's thumb flips through the pages at the corner of the book. Over and over again, nonstop like her enraged inquiries. Viktor doesn't understand why she's asking him this. Why she cares. Why she's so angry. "I don't know."

"What if it's you? What if you're the reason Yuuri dies? If you leave the other worlds be, will he live?" The pages flip and this time Viktor smacks it out of her hand. The book flops to the floor.

Like it bounced right off of the bed.

Still warm from Yuuri's hands.

The guests stop. The girls pause in their decorating of Yuuri's casket. Hiroko stares.

Viktor can't do this.

"Could you live on, knowing that he can live without you?"

Viktor's eyes search for exits. His mind formulates the swiftest escape strategy. He makes his first step just as a new guest arrives.

The attention is magnetized to her the moment the doors close. Her and the boy on her hip. Mari's jaw clicks shut, her teeth grinding down. She is the first to greet them, asking, "Where's his ball?"

The woman pales. She pets the boy's hair down, pushing errant strands behind his ears. "I-I thought it best to leave it behind. I just wanted to-"

Viktor can't do this. He doesn't want to hear this. He turns tail and leaves, stands outside in the open air, away from the smoke and the chanting and the accusations. He walks to where Makkachin is leashed. He bends down, revels in her comforting cuddles and nuzzles his face into her curls.

"I thought I would find you out here."

Viktor startles, swivels around to find Hiroko. There is a smile on her face, a first aid kit in her hand. Viktor can only gawk. Words escape him, have been eluding his speech since facing her over Yuuri's corpse. Hiroko motions to the patch of grass beside him. Viktor numbly nods. She sits, closer than Viktor thought she would, and unlatches the kit.

"Your cheek has been bleeding for some time."

Viktor feels it now, the heat of his face, the seeping. His hand flies to cover the cut, looking down to find drip stains on his tie. Hiroko plucks out a cotton ball and a travel size bottle of alcohol. Viktor hisses as she dabs along his cheekbone.

"You don't-" Viktor starts, pulling away.

"Let me-" Hiroko leans further into his space and Viktor can see how wretched his face looks as it's reflected in her glasses. "Let me treat my son's wounds, won't you?" Her smile doesn't hide her tears. It doesn't try to.

Viktor is left speechless again, but his heart speaks for him. "Thank you, Mama."

"It's a good excuse for a break, anyway. I- Yuuri had a lot of foreign friends and admirers. Speaking with them is… difficult."

"Your English is terrific. I'm sure you're doing fine."

"I took classes after someone brought so many international guests to our door."

"I wonder who that was…"

Hiroko poked his nose, leading him to laugh. "Two and a half years made me okay at English."

"I'm amazed by your strength in there," Viktor says as the kit snaps shut. "Listen, I-"

"No." Hiroko hushes him, her hand flowing through Makkachin's fur. "No apologies. No explanations. No regrets. Yuuri wouldn't want those." Her tears flow, never stop. Neither does her smile. "Let's help the girls redecorate, yes?" She stands, patting his hand as she leads him inside, "my sweet Vicchan."

A car takes Yuuri away. It is the last time Viktor will see this Yuuri in his earthly form. Their little family follows and soon Viktor is picking bone fragments out of Yuuri's remains. The ash gathering once made Viktor squeamish. Digging through the ashes of his loved one with what are essentially eating utensils felt wrong and revolting. But now Viktor does it with little feeling at all. Each bone plunks down into the urn which they place at the Katsuki gravesite, amongst family Viktor has never met.

And then Yuuri is gone.

Every piece of him is lost to Viktor.

Incense is lit. Flowers are set. Hiroko and Minako huddle around the headstones, arms around shoulders, talking to Yuuri like he can hear them. Like he isn't dirt that will rot away. Viktor stands a good distance away, Mari beside him. She holds the book like a bouquet in front of her. As if it's a promise of something she must keep.

Viktor feels a pull as he stares at Yuuri's resting place. Some intangible fishing line tugs at his insides, yanks something out. It's like a drain has been unplugged, and Viktor wants to scream. He does, muffling it into his arm, biting against zeros that mock him. Viktor screams and screams and screams until it is all out, and the fishing line retreats.

"He believed me," Viktor finds himself saying, dazed and exhausted. "Yuuri believed me."

"Even when I didn't." Mari blows out the smoke of her cigarette, tapping the butt against her lip. "I still don't, really… I'm sorry about that."

"Don't be. Sometimes I don't believe it either."

"He trusted you. He trusted you and he loved you. Of course he believed you."

"I failed him."

Mari and Viktor stay as Hiroko and Minako head back. They are all that are left, waiting and watching until the incense burns up. Viktor's hand cups the urn, absorbing its cold smoothness, following the curve of its sides. They sit in front of it, a triangle with Yuuri at the head. Viktor bums a cigarette from Mari, coughs up a golf ball of smoke after his first inhale. The rest are easier.

"Isn't this against some athlete code of health, or whatever?" Mari asks, blowing out a smooth puff like the experienced smoker she is.

"Yuuri smoked. In the second world. I know," Viktor says as Mari gapes, sitting up from where she sat leaned against some great grandmother she never knew, "it shocked me, too. I blamed it on your influence."

"I was the big bad sister that led him down the devilish path of smoking?" Viktor nods, laughs as she flicks her ashes his way with a "bullshit."

The incense burns out, yet they stay, sitting between headstones as their shadows lengthen into spikes. They remain in silence until Mari's pack is empty. She crushes it in her grip, shoving it into her jacket pocket, trembling from the cold. "What are you going to do now, Mr. World Traveler?"

"I don't want to leave him behind. I love him. This Yuuri. I was going to marry him. I was going to spend the rest of my life with him. I can't just say 'Oh well. On to the next one.'"

Viktor chews on the end of his last cigarette. He has spent months here, has beautiful, vivid memories with the man he loves, and a family that gives him the unconditional love he craves. But he remembers the devastation of missing the last Yuuri. Of losing a Yuuri he will never know. "I was too late. Yuuri was already dead when I reached the last world. I thought 'God, what if I spent too much time in the fourth world? Spent too much time indulging in grief and self-pity instead of saving the next Yuuri.' I feel like I'm abandoning Yuuri any way I go about this."

Viktor doesn't think he holds one Yuuri above others, but for as much time as he spent with this Yuuri, he didn't get any with Fifth World Yuuri. He didn't get to love him, or see what a great ecologist he would have been, if he also dreamed of riding the Ferris wheel all the way up with Viktor at his side. That scar lights up inside of Viktor, renewed like he dug in and carved a new wound over it. Viktor doesn't know how to do this. He doesn't know how to breathe. He's drowning on dry land. There is no life preserver to save him. No buoy to latch onto. No boat out with searchlights and horns. Just an anchor that sinks him deep.

"What about us?" Mari asks, idly plucking grass between slim fingers. "You're abandoning us when you leave. Did you think about that? About our pain of losing Yuuri being amplified by losing you?"

"I didn't care. I didn't care that anyone else was grieving. I didn't care that other people were feeling the same kind of pain. That I would get through it like everyone else. What does that even mean? 'Get through it.' They make it sound like some kind of door. You just have to open it and walk through and close the door behind you and it's gone. But it's not. The grief is never gone. It's there, the scarred part of your love."

Mari flicks open her lighter. The flame dances in the dark of her irises. She holds her hand above the fire, singes her skin, keeps it there until it burns a scorch mark into her palm. A small dot. Among others. "How do you do it?"

"No, Mari."

"Maybe if I-"

Viktor puts his hand over hers, his touch hovering over the burns.

"Why can't I save him? I love him, too! What makes you think that it's only you?!" Mari yells. When Viktor doesn't answer, she stands up and walks off, dust kicking up off the heels of her sneakers. He watches her stalk off.

"I already told you. It's because I can't live without him." Ashes litter his lap, and Viktor tries to swipe them away. They smear gray streaks on his slacks. "You can." His knowledge of that is limited. He doesn't know what Mari does after he leaves to another world. For all he knows, she could take his same exit strategy. Mari could have taken a knife to her own wrist, cut through skin and tendons and bled out her pain. She could have put a gun to her head, pulled the trigger, bam, spraying brain matter and-

Viktor can't stomach the images. He hides behind the darkness of his eyelids, forcing Mari from his mind. He opens his eyes to Yuuri's urn.

"I meant what I said, Yuuri. I don't want to leave you." Viktor digs Yuuri's ring out of his coat pocket, holds it in his palm, whispering its touch against his own ring. Viktor tugs his ring off, opening the urn as he sits up on his knees, and drops them both in. Night has absconded with the light, but Viktor looks into the blackness of Yuuri's ashes. "A part of me can remain here with you this way. Please don't hate me for leaving. I love you so much." Viktor closes the lid. He brings two fingers to his lips and kisses them against this Yuuri for the last time. "Goodbye."

Viktor stirs to a warmth at his back. Makkachin is snoozing on his toes. Viktor's heart quickens. Does he dare hope? That it was all a dream. A nightmare.

It isn't Yuuri's smell, the tangerine scent of his soap that makes him smell like a summertime creamsicle. It isn't Yuuri's sound, that wheezy little snore that tapers off in a kitten's purr.

It's tobacco, sniffling and sorrow.

"Don't leave," she says, scooting closer until he can feel the poke of her nose between his shoulder blades, her tears running in winding streaks down his back.

What would I do? Viktor doesn't ask.

"There's no place for me here."

"You are a part of this family. Even without-" Her breath hitches. She buries her face deeper into him. Viktor becomes a rock because this has never happened before. Mari doesn't fall apart, she doesn't break. Or… maybe she and Viktor share that mask of indestructible strength. Let the pain chip away until it finally crumbles. Mari sobs, harsh and snot-clogged. Viktor is unused to this brotherly role, Yuuri's jacket stiff and ill-fitting on Viktor's shoulders. He wonders what Yuuri would do. If he would hug her, hold her, lie to her that everything will be okay.

"You go off to some other world to save him and I'm supposed to stay here? I'm supposed to be the one who lives without him?" Her words are clear even when her breathing isn't. "What if there is a door? We can walk through it together. Shut it behind us. Yuuri would want that. He would want you to live on. Find a new happiness. Why can't you do that?"

Everyone thinks they know what Yuuri would want. Posters of Viktor on his casket. No apologies, excuses or regrets. Viktor to piece together the scraps of Yuuri's life to craft his own happiness.

But none of them know. They can't.

Because Viktor doesn't.

"Because I know that I can't find anyone else like him on this planet. I don't want to. Loving anyone else… I can't imagine it. It's a betrayal. It's treason. If I were a religious man, I would call it an irredeemable sin. Yuuri is my happiness."

"So that's it then." Mari retreats from him. He can feel her scoot back in rejected jerks, slotting into the place Yuuri once laid. Viktor turns over slowly, as if creeping in on a feral creature. The bright white moonlight cuts across the bed in crisscross stripes. Mari's face is swollen and glossy, her hair an untamed bushel around her head. She plucks a brown hair from Viktor's pillow, twirls it between her fingers. "Tell me about them. The other Yuuris."

Sleep is a dry weight at the back of Viktor's throat. He tries to clear it along with his reluctance. "I dream about them… sometimes. I feel guilty."

Mari sounds like she's come back from one of her boy band concerts, throat sandpapered into a rasp, but it doesn't hide her humored, "Dirty cheater."

Viktor laughs, a full, belly-quaking laugh. It feels good. Laying there, letting everything loose, and laughing with his sister. His hand is as empty as his heart, but Mari fills a spot, curbing some of the emptiness. "We were…" the word aches in Viktor's throat, a soreness that burns and burns and burns, "strangers in the last world." Mari takes his hand, runs a thumb over his knuckles, and it's nice, comforting, because his scar is tearing open, wider and wider, and he's screaming-

"But you met others," Mari cuts in, as if sensing his internal spiral.

Viktor nods, settling back. "Yes. I did."

Guilt is a burden Viktor is used to living with, a black, slimy parasite on his back. It has gained weight in this world, fed on all of the unanswered questions, Mari's inquisitions, the Viktors he doesn't think about, and the promise he has to break.

Viktor sits with Makkachin. Just sits. He pets her, brushes her. He scratches at that one spot on her belly where her curls are feather-soft and her leg jerks in the air, her tongue lolled out of her mouth with happy pants. He tells her that he loves her. That she'll be safe here. With family.

The temptation to stay comes with her whines as he tries to leave.

Viktor thinks about what life in this world could mean.

If he asked Yakov to take him back. Found a new purpose on the ice. Got Yuri to speak to him again.

If he took off and traveled. Let his footsteps trail along the list on the napkin in his back pocket.

If he remained with his family.

"I was thinking I could help out around here. I could clean, cook-"

"Burn the inn down, you mean?" Mari jests as she picks up her chopsticks.

"I'll learn. But I want to earn my stay here." Makkachin barks from beside him, her tail wagging fluff onto the table. "And Makka's. I can teach at the rink. I can be the resident celebrity here, become the main attraction to bring in guests."

"You already do that, Vicchan," Hiroko chuckles, placing his and Mari's bowls before taking a seat. "You don't have to earn anything. You are welcome to do as you like."

"Oh, boy. More broken dishes."

"I guess you'll just have to teach me, onee-chan."

They are only dreams. Lives that Sixth World Viktor may have lived.

This Viktor doesn't deserve any of them.

"Promise me. Promise me right now that you won't do this anymore. If I die, you can't… Don't end your life. Not for me. Not to continue like this."

I'm sorry, Yuuri.

Viktor goes out for a run.

He doesn't come back.