Chapter Text
Vines stretch up over the castle walls, reaching far across the stone and into the darkness above, beyond what Yuuri could see. The thick, dark swathes of forest recede a little around the abandoned palace, allowing him some space to stare up at it. Trying to swallow back his nerves, he gulps down dry air and tastes the chilly fog in his throat. Yuuri’s found it.
“Tall…” Yuuri murmurs to himself, craning back his neck even further. He backs up a few steps from the cold stone walls but he’s still entirely unable to see the top of the castle. It’s a true fortress, stretching up higher and higher, all the way to the peaceful moon slumbering overhead... if the rumours are true.
If the rumours are true, this castle’s been abandoned for the past twelve years, structure left to crumble into dust and be rebuilt with greenery. Mist covers and fills what once was full of bright light, the castle surrounded by a forest so treacherous and unnavigable that only the most determined may find a way through it. If the rumours are true, the greatest kingdom in the world once ruled from this fortress, before they were forced to flee from a wicked curse cast by a wronged witch. Those who suffered the curse were doomed to be alone, unable to be found by anyone, unable to find anyone, with no way to break their imprisonment. Even though the people who had once lived within the castle escaped the spell, the castle itself had been enchanted, and lost to history ever since. Everything within it, every scrap of treasure or fine cloth, every important document or book, everything that once made it the most enviable centre of ruling in the world, had been lost for what many thought was forever. If the rumours are true, there is a treasure inside so grand nothing could measure to its equal.
So the rumours say.
The only thing that Yuuri knows is true- verifiably and unequivocally- with proof right before his eyes, is that the curse that kept this castle from view is fading. The most incredible treasure hoard of them all exists in their world once more.
Yuuri steps forward again- leather boots soaked through from trudging through tall damp grass, shivering slightly from the pervasive chill of the rain- and presses a hand to the side of the castle. It feels silent and still beneath his touch. As if there is nothing within, as if the entire structure is simple brick and nothing more.
“How can I get in…?” Yuuri wonders aloud, still captivated by the majesty of the castle, peering to his left and right to try and see if there’s any sign of a window, an entrance. The walls stretch away from him, seamless and unbroken. Any sign of a crack or opening is hidden by the veil of the night and Yuuri thinks he’ll have to wait until morning to keep going. He’s been travelling for a long time. It’s time for a rest.
“Who the hell are you?!” someone yells, all the way from the other corner of the castle, but so loudly that it easily carries to Yuuri’s ears. He blinks at the castle wall, then turns his head towards the noise.
Through the black, a tiny figure makes itself clear, though Yuuri has to squint, uncertain if he’s looking at a tree stump or a person for a while. They’re too far away for him to make out any details at all.
The idea of yelling out who he is to this stranger makes him uncomfortable, even if they’re the only two around, so he starts to walk towards them, suddenly entirely aware of how heavy his eyes are and how much effort it takes to keep dragging his aching feet along. The light rain made his glasses unusable a long time ago, and a droplet rolls across his lenses once more, distorting the figure.
“I asked you a question!” the person yells again, sounding even more agitated. Yuuri hastily stumbles forward a little faster, apologies ready on his lips for making them wait. They don’t look so far away now, and it’s obvious that the reason Yuuri had difficulty spotting them in the night is the collection of dark cloaks laid over their shoulders. They’re smaller than he expected.
“Sorry, just wait a minute!” Yuuri yells back, picking up his pace to a light jog to cover the last of the distance to the figure. He’s glad he isn’t wearing a cloak like the stranger’s- it would snag on everything and anything in that maze of a forest.
Panting a little, his breath clouding in the crisp fall air but dispersing immediately under the cold rain, Yuuri looks over the impatient stranger. He sees at the way the stranger holds himself with such self-importance, at the way his blond hair falls elegantly over his thin shoulders, at the lithe waist just barely visible under the dark fur cloaks. Yuuri immediately recognizes him.
“Yuri Plisetsky, crown prince of Russia,” he whispers into the night, voice quietly shaking. The sixteen-year old heir has every right to be sneering down at Yuuri right now, tossing his hair back with one haughty shake of his head. “I- I didn’t realize you’d be here.”
“Of course I’m here, idiot!” Yuri Plisetsky cries out, jabbing a finger forward and into Yuuri’s chest, getting into Yuuri’s personal space. Angry and loud and intimidating. “This is my country’s old territory, not yours! Go back to Japan!”
Yuuri can’t go back to Japan. His long, long list of failures is haunting him, weighing him down, dragging his ankles. Every second he’s in Japan he can feel pitying eyes watching him, feel the weight of his importance to the kingdom, feel lacking in every possible way. The only way he can ever feel free anymore is to set out on another quest, to leave Japan behind, to keep looking for his destiny- the destiny he wants. Every crown prince of any nation has a destiny, has a quest just for them, has a path set out for them. Yuuri just… seems to have missed his, somewhere along the way. It doesn’t matter if he keeps failing quests, as long as he’s able to keep looking for more, keep feeling so light and free. But Japan has a way of trickling into his thoughts and reminding him that maybe, just maybe, Yuuri doesn’t have anything meant to be tacked to his name other than ruler. Yuuri might just be the failure prince, who will probably die looking for his destiny, alone and afraid, suffering under the weight of a quest meant for another.
Yuuri simply can’t go back to Japan.
“I came here because of the rumours,” Yuuri says, calmly, because he is twenty-three and not about to let a sixteen-year old toss him aside in contempt. Even if the Russian is heir to the most powerful kingdom in the lands, and could probably utter a single throwaway decree and get Japan blasted off the map. His voice is far more confident than he feels. “And this isn’t your castle anymore.”
Yuri Plisetsky opens his mouth to protest, then bites his tongue as no substantial argument comes to mind, looking like if Yuuri so much as moves, he’ll lash out. A flash of silver catches the moon’s light as Yuri steps back, the dagger at his waist offering a much more immediate threat if Yuuri says the wrong thing.
He doesn’t think that Yuri Plisetsky could kill him though. The sword at his own waist can keep him safe.
“This is my quest,” Yuri declares finally, bristling with animosity, leaning up on his toes to try and match Yuuri’s height. It doesn’t work. “Stop trying to steal away everyone else’s destiny, you failure of a prince! How could this possibly be your quest? Find something from your own kingdom and legends!”
Yuuri looks down at the prince boiling over with anger before him- full of spit and scathing words, ready to burn anyone who goes near him- and then he looks beyond him. There’s no horse, no entourage, no supplies left closer to the woods. Yuri Plisetsky is the sixteen-year old heir of Russia, and he has no protection whatsoever. Yuri is alone here. The same as Yuuri.
“Is it really your quest? Is it really mine? I don’t think either of us know the answer to that,” Yuuri says, smiling just a little as Yuri openly blinks in confusion, drawn out of his temper tantrum for a moment by the mystery of Yuuri’s words. “You came here on your own, didn’t you? Just like I did.”
Yuri immediately goes red, shoulders visibly shaking with repressed rage, but there’s a gem of truth in his sharp green eyes that answers Yuuri’s question before the other boy even says anything. Yuri Plisetsky snuck out of Russia, the country he represents and will one day be responsible for, to come here. Yuri is a runaway, seeking out a quest he doesn’t know belongs to him.
Maybe there isn’t that much different about their situations after all.
“This is none of your business!” Yuri cries, hands flying to his dagger, white cotton tunic becoming more obvious beneath his dark cloaks as they fly open. Yuuri doesn’t bother reaching for his sword. Even as apprehension streaks through his head, he’s not going to open up the option of violence by responding to the threat. “I’m here for Viktor!”
“Viktor? ...Viktor Nikiforov?” Yuuri repeats back, tilting his head in question, the name familiar on his tongue. Yuri doesn’t deny it, because what other Viktor could he be talking about? The name brings up memories of an older boy, one with sparkling turquoise eyes and silky silver hair, who said things in a language Yuuri didn’t know and laughed with an emotion that Yuuri had felt like he might one day be able to understand. Confusion seeps up in the brief silence. “Isn’t… Viktor back in Russia?”
“Of course Viktor’s back in Russia, where else would he be?!” Yuri’s eyes are sparking, metal crashing against metal in the steely green, realizing he’s given too much away. His dagger’s drawn and his teeth are bared. He doesn’t move to attack. Yuri takes several steps away from Yuuri, like he’s repulsed by him, like he knows how flimsy and forced his excuse sounds. Like the only two options he has left are to run or fight.
“Please, calm down,” Yuuri says, raising his hands in a pacifying gesture, but the tension in the sixteen-year old’s shoulders only tightens, fingers in a white-knuckled grip over his dagger handle. Raindrops slip peacefully over the edges of the blade to the ground below. Yuuri still doesn’t believe he’ll use it. “I’m not here to fight you! I’m only here for the quest to find the lost castle’s treasure!”
“Leave,” Yuri hisses, glaring up at Yuuri furiously, slamming the dagger into the stone wall of the castle. It settles a good way in, creating the most awful sound to scrape through their ears. The blade’s definitely been ruined, Yuuri can tell that much, but Yuri only hesitates for a moment before continuing. Yuri has too much pride to acknowledge his own stupid move just ruined his only weapon. “I’ll take care of this quest. The treasure belongs to Russia, to me, not your lousy little nation.”
Yuuri suddenly feels the overwhelming weight of an seven year difference in maturity, watching Yuri turn on his heel and start to march away, leaving the dagger behind in the wall- it’s useless now- and reaching out to snag his shoulder, to catch the naive youth. The fur cloaks are drenched through under his grip. Yuri must be close to freezing.
“What now?!” Yuri yells, too agitated to control his voice, a hand already clenching into a fist, ready to punch Yuuri’s lights out. Quickly removing his hand lest he be scorched, Yuuri slings his travelling pack off his back, showing the younger boy the food he’s prepared.
“There’s no point searching the castle now. It’s too dark, and we’d be scrambling around trying to find a torch to see with,” Yuuri begins to explain, though he’s not certain if Yuri is listening anymore, too busy drooling over the food being offered to him. Yuuri completely understands, because it doesn’t look like Yuri’s eaten anything in the past decade. His waist is thinner than his patience. “We should camp out until morning. I can start a fire and make us food.”
Yuri doesn’t verbally agree, but he does snatch an apple out of the open bag Yuuri’s offering, and follows after Yuuri when he heads out to the widest clearing he can see from their spot by the castle wall, the grass trimmed neatly by wandering deer and the forest right next door for firewood. It’s exhausting, putting together camp from such an inadequate position- too much grass, difficulty in finding stones to contain the fire, and all the firewood he finds is damp. However, eventually Yuri starts to help, obviously tired of Yuuri’s careful and methodical method. He has a strange talent for finding dry spots under bushes, returning from the dark woods with enough dry firewood to last them the night, and they have a fire crackling merrily within an hour. At some point, the rain stops.
The warm, bright light of the fire lets Yuuri better make out Yuri’s face, lets him see the dark circles and creased brows. He can see the worry etched into every line of the teenager’s face. Yuuri doesn’t ask, knowing he won’t get a response other than anger. As he watches the coiled-up spring of tension fall loose as the younger boy grows warmer, and then as the long lashes fall closed over the clear green eyes, Yuuri does his best to think instead.
“Viktor Nikiforov,” He whispers to the fire, which only responds with a slight crackle, nothing else in the night awake to hear him, “Is… was the shining jewel of Russia, gorgeous and beloved, the light of the kingdom… shining on many, many more lives than he probably intended…”
A dinner party when Yuuri was eight. They travelled so far to get there. People talking, some softly in quiet corners, some loudly and boisterously at crowded tables. The walls were golden, emitting a glow that washed over everyone in the room, making them look unreal and plastic. His parents were drinking wine, laughing with some other adults, and he couldn’t see past the brightly coloured skirts of the ladies from his spot standing against the wall. Yuuri wasn’t supposed to be there.
He’d had a bad dream, crawled out of silken sheets, and left behind the guest room where they were staying. Following the sound of joyous conversation and beautiful music, he was immediately out of place in a room where everyone was dressed to their best. Yuuri was an eight year old in nightclothes. A dance floor stood between himself and his parents, and there was no way to cross it. There was only his bare feet on cold marble and the tears beading in his eyes, stinging viciously as he tried to contain it all. Someone took his hand suddenly, and Yuuri almost jerked away instinctively, but when he looked up, the person was smiling at him. He was young, not as young as Yuuri, but far, far away from being an adult. Yuuri thought the boy might have been a fairy, his silver hair falling over bare shoulders, clear skin emanating beauty through every pore. There was magic dancing in his turquoise eyes- the colour of the sea in tropical lands.
They’d danced, as silly as that was, a twelve year old and an eight year old, one in nightclothes and one the most beautiful person in the room; out of beat to the music because Yuuri didn’t quite understand how to match music at the time, but following their own rhythm. The night was a blur of silver hair and golden walls, blue eyes and the way they crinkled with laughter.
Yuuri hadn’t talked to Viktor Nikiforov after that night when he was eight years old, always embarrassed to speak to him, Yuuri’s aging allowing him clarity on how humiliating that must have been for Viktor. Still, he can’t help but feel warm when he thinks of it, drinking in the forgotten memory.
“But… Viktor’s gone,” Yuuri murmurs to the fire, which is quieting with every draft of wind. He starts to tuck more tinder into its flame, letting it grow and flare once more. “He and his mother were kicked out of the Russian royal family when the king took a new wife as queen… one who he already had a son with. He should be living in peace in Russia, albeit not as royalty.”
The wind blows furiously, the trees rustle, and the fire sputters a little more. Yuri’s platinum blonde hair stirs over his sleeping face, prompting him to turn away from the sudden wind, though he isn’t shivering like Yuuri is; he’s too well-protected by his (now dry) thick fur cloaks. Something feels ominous, with the castle hanging over him, the moon full and bright, the grass wavering in the breeze.
He thinks he hears a noise from the castle.
Yuuri suddenly desperately wishes he was already asleep, so he didn’t have to face that noise, didn’t have to face the creeping fear crawling up his spine. His eyes are huge, and as he stares at the castle wall, he becomes more and more convinced that the slight difference in colour between one section and the other means that there’s an entrance there. He’d walked right past it earlier.
Yuri Plisetsky is without a dagger, sixteen and over-emotional, but he is brave and brash, and if he woke up, he’d go plunging into the castle without a second thought. However… he wouldn’t allow Yuuri to go with him for the world, not even if Yuuri offered the other prince his sword or his kingdom. Yuri places far more value on his own pride than paltry things like weapons or gold.
“Sorry, Yuri,” Yuuri mutters, still staring at the entrance, becoming more and more convinced that he isn’t mistaking anything. That there’s a reason the noise only came once Yuri was asleep. “This might be my quest after all.”
He stands, feeding a few more sticks to the fire to keep it going, then contemplates the sleeping boy’s body for a moment. His dagger is gone. While Yuuri doesn’t think anything will come charging out of the woods… it isn’t safe to just leave him. Carefully, he unbuckles his sword sheath, leaving the weapon beside Yuri’s sleeping form, smiling to himself as soft and snuffling snores become audible to his ears when he bends to place the sword down.
He doesn’t know what’s in the castle, what he could be facing, but he isn’t leaving a sixteen-year old entirely alone without a form of self-defense, even if they seem to be entirely alone and reasonably safe out here. Yuuri trusts in his quest. He trusts it won’t immediately require him to need a sword, even though a lot of quests sure do seem to want him to have that.
Sweat prickles along his back, the wind tearing easily through his clothes to chill the beads of moisture. His hands are shaking. He can’t tell whether it’s from the cold or fear.
“Breathe,” he reminds himself as he starts to make his way back through the waist-high grass to the castle walls, the trampled path of Yuri from earlier making his journey twice as fast. “You can do this. You want… You’re getting...”
Yuuri pauses. There’s nothing in the castle he particularly wants or needs. The grand treasure of the lost castle is simply wealth, and Yuuri doesn’t really care about wealth. He’s only in this because… it’s a quest, and it could be his quest. Indecision, guilt, and uncertainty swarm up from his gut, engulfing his head, making him drag a hand through his hair.
Yuri is here for his history, his kingdom, his right as an heir. He’s here for Viktor, whatever that means, and he cares so much about this, cares so much about everything. He won’t forgive Yuuri for stealing this quest out from under him while he slept.
The quests, the ones Yuuri goes on and fails, there’s always someone else who completes them, in the end. He has a long long list of failures, failures that turned into successes for others, sometimes because of Yuuri’s help. Is that his destiny? Helping other heirs to the thrones complete their quest?
“That’s not enough,” Yuuri says, hoping the world is listening. He’s ready for fate and destiny to start paying attention to him for once. “But what am I doing here? Where am I hoping to go?”
The wind offers no answers, only humming in his ears, but the castle makes another noise, and then another. Like will o'wisps leading Yuuri closer and closer, until he’s standing on the layer of dust in the castle entrance created from twelve years of neglect. The wind is silent, left behind him. The floor under his feet is solid and dry. Yuuri vainly tries to parse out shapes from the darkness ahead of him, but sees nothing at all through the black.
Maybe this isn’t his destined quest. Maybe Yuri will rise in the morning and have to come find Yuuri’s dead body. Maybe he’s simply meant to be a failure- some people are.
He spies a torch, unlit, but perfectly fine, a little ways down on the stone wall. He hurries to collect it, breathing loud and quick in the quiet. A thick, richly red carpet- now brown with dirt- softens his heavy footfalls.
Yuuri sprints back to the fire, refusing to look at Yuri or his supplies he’d left behind. This is only a detour. He’s already plucked up the courage to enter the castle; he isn’t going to back out now.
Lighting the torch, Yuuri takes a deep breath, relishing in the fresh air. The castle’s air was thick with dust and mildew. He might not have the privilege of breathing in something so clean and clear ever again.
Yuuri heads back into the castle. The light from the torch illuminates what he couldn’t see before- stone walls that stretch high up, the ceiling at least twice Yuuri’s height. Delicate glass chandeliers hold lumps of wax that may have once been candles. Marble pillars line the hallway, lines of something silver worked into the white, catching the light of Yuuri’s torch and reflecting it.
Across the way, there’s a huge wooden door, complete with a steadfast silver lock. It’s nearly as tall as the entryway itself, and as Yuuri approaches it, he can’t seem to breathe properly. The door is intimidating. Everything in here is intimidating. It’s grand, if old-fashioned, and the shadows hiding in the corners of the room don’t waver no matter where Yuuri swings his torch.
Squeezing his eyes shut, Yuuri rests his free hand on the oak door, gradually letting it drift towards the silver latch. This is his last chance to turn back. There’s no telling what will be on the other side of this door.
Yuuri opens the lock, and slowly pulls the door open enough for him to fit through- grunting under the strain to his muscles. Shoving his torch through the darkened opening first, he lets out a soft gasp at what he sees. It’s a place out of his memories, out of his wildest daydreams, a place he thought he’d left behind long ago. Yuuri never thought he’d come back to that golden ballroom where he first danced with Viktor. Yet here he is.
Slipping through the opening, Yuuri’s too busy revelling in the majesty of the glowing walls and pearly white floors- etched through with silver, just like the pillars- to notice the door close gently behind him.
The silver latch locks itself again.
When Yuri awakes in the morning, the entrance to the castle will be gone, without a sign of it ever being there.
Just like Yuuri himself.