love is hate, twice cursed
a gift for @owlishann for @victuurisummerloving!
I hope you enjoy pain bc this one is full of it, but I promise a happy ending and lots of sweetness to go along with it 😉😘❤️
The first time Yuuri hears his name it's entrapped within the desperate gasps between his sister's sobs as she clutches at Yuuri's arms with bruising strength that has done nothing to help her save their father. He's ten and Mari is only six years older, still a child herself. But, unlike Yuuri, who could not leave their mother's side for longer than a day without crying for her in his sleep, their father kept Mari at his side like a royal retainer. He groomed her to take his place once he was gone, one day, somewhere off in the far, far future.
Neither of them expected that future to come by so soon.
"He killed him!" Mari cries, holding Yuuri like he too might slip her grasp. "Nikiforov... he killed him! Yuuri, he's dead. Our father– He's–"
Her tears stream hot into Yuuri's collar, salt burning his pores, stripping his skin until it feels like only bare flesh covers him. Bare flesh, into which she puts the first seedling of hate, one that over the years Yuuri will nurture and feed, and watch it blossom into something that will consume him whole.
"I'll kill him," Mari promises on a sharp gasp, her words biting into Yuuri's ear. "I'll kill him, if it's the last thing I do. Victor Nikiforov will die at my hand and our father will be avenged. I swear so on our father's soul. May the gods help me, I will take his head!"
And Yuuri, clutching onto his sister as his own eyes begin to weep, vows to help her in any way he knows how – to avenge their father and bring justice. To kill Victor Nikiforov.
***
The first time Victor hears the name Katsuki is when he's a child and sneaks under the table of his father's study, where the generals talk of matters that bore little Vitya to sleep. As if in a dream, he hears the name Yuuri, and he forgets all about it when he awakes. But since then, the name Katsuki seems to follow him everywhere he goes.
There is a war raging far beyond the castle walls and Victor grows up, knowing that one day he will fight at the very front of it.
And then he does. He is barely seventeen, still a boy more than a man, but he thinks he knows the world like the back of his hand, so his father allows it.
And Victor, magnificent and noble, and fearless with the courage of youth… he wins it for him.
He is hailed a hero, worshipped for his brilliance and cunning, for his skill and his bravery. But when this hero, whose name travels across the lands on common folk's lips, closes his eyes, all he sees is the carnage he left in his wake. He sees the girl whose father he's slain, the princess who held her dying parent in her arms, covered in his blood, and who spat at Victor's feet even as she ordered their army – her army now – to fall back.
It's her face that haunts his dreams, too. Yet it's not her name that puts true dread into him, though. That, truly, comes after.
There is peace for years after the Katsuki king dies and many hope that it will last. Victor remembers the princess' eyes – the hardness, the anger, the hate – and he knows that such hopes are futile. He doesn't know when, but he knows that the end of peace will come.
And then one day, it does.
And its name is Yuuri Katsuki, the brother, the son, the new king, who's come to repay the spilled Katsuki blood in Nikiforov blood of equal measure.
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