Yuuri's hand, wrinkled and spotted with age, smoothed the blankets away from himself as he lay in his bed. Always on the left hand side; even though the other side of the bed had been empty for months now, Yuuri couldn't sleep any other way. He reached out a hand for the cold, empty sheets, knowing that it wouldn't be long now.

Yuuri thought about his seventy years of marriage, and all that he had achieved. He thought about the school, now the Katsuki Academy, which had grown and grown until it was the premier college of magic in his hemisphere. He thought about the kingdom, more prosperous under Viktor's rule than it ever had been, and of the festivals, and of his wedding day, blurred together in his mind in a swirl of sound and colour and overwhelming joy.

I couldn't have asked for more, Yuuri thought. He remembered Vicchan, his familiar, still missed so many years later. He remembered the early lessons with Viktor, the way Viktor's eyes had sparkled as Yuuri had opened the forbidden knowledge to him and given his life meaning, even as Viktor had unknowingly done the same for Yuuri.

Yuuri's eyes were beginning to grow dim. He brushed his white hair out of his eyes, and lay back among the pillows, feeling as though he were drifting into velvet blackness, and knew that it was time. His last thought was of Viktor, and how he had been waiting to join him for too long now. Yuuri smiled, and the soft darkness closed over him.

Yuuri opened his eyes. Above him, a wooden ceiling; around him, the familiar smell of herbs, and the distinctive tang of the tea he always drank. He was….but how could he be…?

He sat up, and looked around, first noticing his hands: whole, unblemished, and young. He was in the wooden cottage that he had called home for twenty years. His drawings were still on the walls, and the pot that Viktor had exploded still on its shelf. As he thought Viktor's name, a sound broke the silence that made Yuuri's heart stand still.

knock…knock…knock…knock-knock-knock

Yuuri hadn't heard Viktor's knock for decades.

He leapt out of his easy chair, and sprinted towards the door, heaving it open with breathless anticipation.

A small ball of fur rocketed into the cottage, and somewhere in his mind, Yuuri cried for joy that his familiar had returned to him after so long.

But his eyes were riveted on the icy blue gaze of the tall, beaming man that stood in his doorway, his heart shaped smile as youthful and full of love as Yuuri remembered.

"I heard you know magic," Viktor said. "Will you teach me? We have all eternity together, after all."