Chapter Text
Yuuri sighed tiredly, turning around in his seat to look at the children who were seated in the back seat of the car. “I’m just saying there had to be a better way to handle that, Clara-chan.”
“But he was pushing me!” Clara insisted, tightening her grip on the travel pillow on her lap. Beside her, Sonia was doing her best impression of a wall decoration, her head propped up in her hand as she looked out the window and tried to pretend she wasn’t there.
“But you got detention,” said Yuuri. “And a note sent home from your teacher.”
“But he pushed me,” said Clara. “So why didn’t he get detention?”
“He did—,” Yuuri began.
“—I have to see him in detention?!” Clara interrupted. “This keeps getting worse! Can we just stay in Japan, Dad?”
Yuuri exhaled, summoning up what was left of his patience. It was a little more difficult than it should have been. “No,” he said. “We can’t just stay in Japan. You have to go back to school after Worlds.”
“But why do I have to go to detention?”
“Because, Clara, you hit him in the face.”
“He was pushing me!” Clara said, frowning at Yuuri like she couldn’t believe he wasn’t getting this. “What was I supposed to do?”
“Did you try talking to him?” Yuuri asked.
“I did!”
“What did you say?”
“I told him ‘stop pushing me’. And he said ‘why? Are you gonna tell a teacher?’. And I said, ‘no, but if you push me again, I’m going to hit you in the face.’.”
“And then?” Yuuri prompted.
“He pushed me!” said Clara. “So I hit him in the face!”
“You know, I’m starting to think Klaroshka has a point,” Viktor said from the driver’s seat as the car pulled into the airport’s long-term parking garage.
“That’s what I’ve been saying this whole time,” Yurio grumbled from the backseat, staring down at his phone. “But you know, no one listens to me.”
Yuuri shot him an impatient look, but sighed, turning his attention back to Clara. The little girl was watching him uncertainly from her seat, as if she wasn’t sure whether or not she was still in trouble. He shook his head.
“I’m not going to scold you for standing up for yourself, Clara-chan,” Yuuri said. “But you can’t solve all of your problems by hitting people in the face.”
“Why not?” Clara asked. “It worked!”
“It worked this time,” Yuuri said. “Next time, it might be different.”
“What he’s saying is that you should always try to solve things a different way first,” Viktor said, glancing at them in the rearview mirror as he pulled the car into a parking spot. “Most people aren’t six-year-old boys. They can be reasoned with.”
“And if they won’t listen?” Clara asked.
“Sometimes it’s better to just walk away if you can.”
“And if you can’t?” Clara asked. “Like, what if they won’t let you walk away?”
“Then whatever happens next is their own damn fault,” Yurio said, not looking up from his phone.
“Yurio!”
“What?!” Yurio asked, looking at Yuuri. “Damn is like, barely a curse word!”
Yuuri sighed, unbuckling his seatbelt and getting out of the car. The girls filed out of the backseat, Sonia quietly going over to pull hers and Clara’s suitcases from the back as Clara wrapped her arms around her travel pillow, staring down at the floor of the parking garage.
“Am I still in trouble for getting detention?” she asked, not looking at him.
Yuuri watched her for a moment, warring with himself. “No,” he said finally, placing a hand on Clara’s back to guide her towards the slowly growing pile of luggage behind their car. “But…maybe we don’t mention this to your grandmother when we see her?”
Clara perked up immediately, smiling brightly. She was still getting used to the idea that she had more family in Japan—grandparents, an aunt, and people like the Nishigoris and Minako, who were so close to the family that they might as well have been aunts, uncles and cousins—but she was clearly excited about it.
“Okay!” she said, skipping over to her bags. “I want to carry Latte’s carrier!”
“Well, at least we don’t have to worry about anyone ever pushing her around,” Viktor said to Yuuri, while they were checking their bags and Clara was saying a tearful goodbye to Latte through the doors of her carrier. Makkachin, already an old hand at air travel, had curled up in his carrier and barely stirred as the airport staff picked it up to take it away.
Yuuri frowned, but Viktor could tell that he wasn’t entirely displeased by the prospect. “I blame Yurio,” he said, only half-joking. “We both know she didn’t get that idea herself.”
“Hey, I told her to push him back and tell me so I could deal with it,” Yurio said, tapping out another message on his phone. “I didn’t tell her to punch him in the nose and make him cry like a baby in front of the entire playground. That was all on her.”
He sounded almost proud. Viktor smiled, wrapping an arm around Yuuri’s shoulders as Yuuri gave Yurio a disapproving look.
It wasn’t the girls’ first time on an airplane—that was the flight they had had to take to get from San Francisco to Oregon in the first place—but it was their first international flight, and they were very obviously excited about it. Sonia stared out the window in wonder as the ground gave way to nothing but ocean beneath them, and Clara alternated between looking out the window and swiveling around in her seat to ask Yuuri more questions about Japan.
“It’s going to be nighttime when we get there?” Clara asked.
“That’s right,” Yuuri said. “It’s going to be about seven in the evening.”
“We’re going to see where you grew up?”
“Yes,” Yuuri said. “We will. You’re going to get to meet your grandparents.”
“And my aunt too, right?”
“She’ll be there too,” said Yuuri.
“Do my grandparents speak any English?” Clara asked.
“Hmm…only a little bit. Your aunt speaks English, though.”
“That’s okay,” said Clara. “I’m going to learn Japanese, so I’ll be able to talk to them!”
“Klaroshka, do you know what you’re going to say to your grandparents when you get there?” Viktor asked, leaning forward from his seat beside Sonia, one row behind Yuuri and Clara.
“Um…no,” said Clara. “What do I say to them?”
“You say ‘konbanwa’,” Yuuri said, smiling at her. “That means ‘good evening’.”
Clara frowned in thought, trying to get her mind around the unfamiliar syllables. “Cone-ban-wa?” she asked.
“Close,” Yuuri said. “It’s more like konbanwa.”
Clara’s brow furrowed and she repeated the word to herself a handful of times. From behind her, Viktor nudged Sonia in the side. She jumped, startled and turned to face him.
“What about you, Sonechka?” he asked. “Can you say it?”
“Um…” Sonia looked away uncertainly, face flushing. “Konbanwa?”
“Yes, Sonia-chan!” said Yuuri, turning around to face her. “That’s perfect!”
From his seat across the aisle from them, Yuri scowled, deciding that they were all disgustingly happy. He plugged his phone into the in-seat power outlet, scrolling through social media (because there was no way he was going to suffer through an international flight without internet access). There were the usual pictures from fellow competitors preparing to head off to Worlds, messages from his fans, Phichit’s endless stream of selfies (really, why did he follow the Thai skater anyway), and weirdly enough, a post from his roommate.
It was a picture of Mason and Susanna, sitting down on what looked like the floor of their dorm room with their backs to one of the beds. The caption was ‘@yuri-plisetsky left early for #Worlds2019, so we’ll be cheering him on from here’.
Speaking of sickeningly sweet.
Yuri scowled, but liked the post anyway, typing out a quick comment.
‘You two are disgusting and better not go near my side of the room’.
His phone buzzed a second later. He glanced down to see a message from Susanna’s account.
‘Thanks, @yuri-plisetsky. We love you too.’
The girls’ energy ran out a few hours into the flight across the Pacific, although they perked up a bit when they landed in Haneda. They took the opportunity to go through customs there, and the girls spent some time marveling about the Japanese writing everywhere and the differences in currency, food, and language before they succumbed to jetlag and passed out in the seats at their gate. They were awake again for the flight to Fukuoka and spent almost the entirety of that flight pressed up against the window, watching the country pass by beneath them. By the time they arrived at Fukuoka Airport, it was late afternoon Japan time, just past midnight Portland time, and the girls’ sleep schedules were thoroughly screwed. Watching them, Yuuri knew they were going to have a hell of a time getting them to go to sleep at a decent hour tonight, but he was glad that they were going to be awake when they met the rest of his family.
His feelings for that encounter were a mixture of excitement and anxiety. He wanted it to go well, but couldn’t shake the small part of his mind that worried about everything that could possibly go wrong. Sonia still wasn’t comfortable around new people and Clara was loud, active and boisterous. What if they didn’t all get along? Or what if his parents thought he was a bad father? Or that he and Viktor weren’t cut out to be parents?
“Yuuri, relax,” Viktor said, slipping an arm around his shoulders as they went to get the dogs. “You’re worrying again.”
Yuuri jerked in Viktor’s hold and exhaled, unaware of how tense he had been until Viktor pointed it out.
“I’m just thinking about later,” he said. “I want everything to go well.”
“It will.” Viktor pressed a kiss to the top of Yuuri’s head, smiling, and Yuuri flushed with embarrassment when he remembered that they were in Japan, where displays like that weren’t exactly appropriate. Viktor didn’t seem to care though, and he brought out a side of Yuuri that wanted not to care either. “Think about it. Your family loves Yurio. How could they not love our girls?”
Yuuri drew in a breath, but he could already feel himself start to relax. He nodded, trying to will the knot in his belly away.
From somewhere behind them, Yurio looked up. “Hey,” he said. “I resent being the bad example.”
Yuuri laughed. Viktor pulled him closer and looked back over his shoulder, giving Yurio a smile. “Then you should stop acting like one,” he said.
Yurio opened his mouth to reply, but whatever he was about to say was cut off by a high-pitched squeal as Clara ran forward—apparently, she had spotted Latte’s carrier.
“Latte, my love, did you miss me?” Clara cooed through the bars as Latte rested her paws against them, barking happily and wagging her tail. Behind Latte was the wreckage of whatever toy they had placed into the carrier with her, but Clara barely seemed to notice. “Who’s the best dog in the world? Who’s the sweetest? You are! You are!”
A breeze tugged a stray piece of stuffing out of the carrier. Yurio winced.
A few hours later, they parked the car outside Yu-topia and walked in, carrying their things and dogs with them. As soon as the car was locked and they were all moving, Viktor dropped his bag and ran into the inn, the movement so sudden that Yuuri had to rush to keep up with him.
“Mama Katsuki!” Viktor called, speaking in halting Japanese as he ducked into the kitchen with a grin on his face. He dodged Yuuri’s attempt to grab at him, laughing. “Save me! Your son doesn’t feed me! I’m starving!”
“Lies!” Yuuri said, chasing after him. “Whatever he’s telling you, he’s lying!”
Hiroko Katsuki smiled from where she was standing next to the dinner table, waiting with the rest of Yuuri’s family.
“Welcome back, Vicchan,” she said. “Don’t worry. I’ll make an extra-large katsudon just for you.”
After that entrance, it was hard for Yuuri to feel worried about introducing the girls. And as it turned out, he didn’t need to worry at all. As soon as Clara and Sonia crossed the threshold and Sonia mumbled a shy ‘konbanwa’ under her breath, her eyes on the floor, Yuuri could have sworn his mother started seeing stars. His mother fussed over her new grandchildren, taking their things and seating them at the dinner table despite the three of them barely having a language in common.
Seeing his mother try to speak English to the girls while Clara happily showed off all the Japanese she knew—mostly numbers, the days of the week, please, thank you, and the word for bathroom—and Sonia tried to get her meaning across with gestures and the occasional shake of her head made him feel the same sort of giddy warmth that he had felt upon seeing the girls’ adoption papers for the first time. He remembered Clara saying on the plane that she wanted to learn Japanese and in that moment he could see it, could see Clara and Sonia sitting here, speaking to his parents in their own language.
He made a mental note to find the girls a teacher when they got back, so that that moment could happen for real.
But for now, they sat down to eat his mother’s cooking, while Mari fussed over Yurio and his father told Viktor with no small amount of excitement how many more people would be staying at the inn now that it was Worlds and they were here.
Yuuri took a bite of the katsudon his mother set out in front of him and smiled.
It tasted like coming home.
After dinner, they took time to soak in the hot spring, then headed back into the living room to talk and catch up. Toshiya dug up a bottle of sake from somewhere in the inn’s stores, and Yuuri refused the cup that Viktor tried to pour for him with an upraised hand and an embarrassed smile, sitting back at the low table to talk with his mother. A little later on, Mari led the girls back into the room, now dressed in the inn’s yukatas with their hair damp from the bath. Clara giggled and immediately dropped down to the space beside him, pressing herself against his side.
“Auntie Mari took us to the bath,” she said. “It was sooo big and sooo warm!” Her eyelids were beginning to droop. Yuuri gave it about ten minutes until she fell asleep.
“Did you enjoy it?” he asked.
“Mm-hmm,” Clara said, closing her eyes. “I got to look at the stars. Auntie said the cherry blossoms will bloom soon—I want to see that. And Sonia fainted.”
Sonia, who was hesitantly taking a seat across from Yuuri, straightened up. “I did not!” she said in protest, looking at her little sister.
“Yes, she did,” said Clara, snuggling sleepily into Yuuri’s side. “She stayed in the water too long and phew—she went all spinny.”
“Don’t worry, Sonechka,” Viktor said, one of his hands still holding on to the bottle of sake. “Yurio fainted the first time he got in the hot spring too.”
“What? I did not!” Yurio said, looking up from where he was sitting on the ground with his back against the wall, trying to push the dogs away from him.
“Did something happen?” Yuuri’s father asked in Japanese, looking around at them.
“In the bath, Sonia faint,” Viktor replied before Yuuri could, taking another sip of sake. He smiled. “All okay now.”
“Oh, I know just the thing!” his mother said, getting to her feet. “Fruit milk! I’ll get some fruit milk for the girls. Would you like that, Sonia-chan?” She smiled at Sonia, repeating the words in halting English. “Frutto miruku?”
“Um—,” Sonia began, looking at Yuuri in panic.
“You know, like chocolate milk,” Yuuri said. “Except fruit flavored. It’s good.”
“Oh—,” said Sonia. “Um—okay. Hai. Uh—onegaishimasu?”
Hiroko hummed happily at that, going off into the kitchen. From her seat at his side, Clara lifted her head sleepily. “Me too…” she mumbled. “Tell her me too.”
“I think you’re ready to go to sleep, Klaroshka,” Viktor said, smiling at her.
“Mm-hmm,” Clara said, lying back against Yuuri’s side. “Sleepy now.”
His mother returned a few minutes later with glasses of milk for the girls, while Yuuri was answering texts from Minako and Yuuko, who both wanted to meet the girls tomorrow. Clara took a few sips of milk before curling up on the floor, her head resting on Yuuri’s knee. He ran his fingers through her hair absently while he read through the messages.
“Minako-sensei wants to meet the girls tomorrow,” he said to Viktor in English. “Yuuko-chan and Nishigori too.”
“Mm—well, we can see Minako anytime,” said Viktor. “We should probably introduce her to Sonechka.” At Sonia’s questioning glance, Viktor added. “She was Yuuri’s ballet teacher. I’m sure she’ll want to meet you.”
“Okay,” Sonia said, taking a sip of her milk. “Um—I want to meet her too.”
“And as for Yuuko…” said Viktor. “Hmm…why don’t we go to Ice Castle? It’s been a while, and Yurio could use some practice too.” Yurio perked up when he heard his name, trying to pretend like he hadn’t been falling asleep with his head resting on Makkachin’s torso. Makkachin licked at him happily as he sat up.
“Sure,” Yuuri said. “That sounds good. I’ll tell her that.” He turned towards Sonia, who was still watching the exchange. “Ice Castle is the rink I started skating at,” he said. “It’s where I practiced, when Viktor first started coaching me.”
“Before we moved to St. Petersburg,” Viktor said. “Ah, that brings back memories.”
“Oh, that reminds me,” said Mari, getting up. “The teapot you sent me is fixed. Let me go get it.”
She left the room and came back, the teapot in her hand. Yuuri’s eyes widened when he saw it, but he smiled as Mari set it down on the table between them. Gold lines crisscrossed the teapot, cutting through the original design and showing just where the pot had shattered. And yet, he thought, looking at it, the lines added something to the piece that made it better.
“It’s called kintsugi,” Mari explained, seeing Sonia’s face as she stared at the teapot. “You mix gold or silver with the lacquer and use that to put the pieces back together. It makes it so that the cracks are part of the piece, but that the piece ends up more beautiful than it was before.”
Viktor, who had been walking closer to the table to see the teapot, smiled, dropping to his knees next to where Sonia was sitting and wrapping an arm around her shoulders. She squeaked at the sudden touch, going tense, but relaxed quickly when she saw it was just him.
“I think it’s perfect,” he said. “What do you think, Sonechka?”
Sonia looked down at the teapot, and Yuuri saw tears start to form, blurring her eyes. She nodded, looking away.
“I think it’s perfect too…” she said.
They met Minako the next morning, after breakfast. While Yurio took advantage of the open ballet studio to practice and get warmed up, Sonia shyly demonstrated everything she had been practicing so far. That earned them an invitation to come back to Hasetsu in the summers if they wanted, so that Sonia could continue to practice here, and it was an invitation that Viktor was half-convinced they were going to accept. He’d already seen how happy Yuuri was to be home, and he had surprised himself with how happy he was to be here too. He would have been happy to be with Yuuri in Russia or America or wherever it was that would have them, but Hasetsu had been special.
It was nice to see that the girls were seeing that too.
In the afternoon, they headed down to Ice Castle Hasetsu. Yuuko had closed the rink to the public so that Yurio could practice, and Axel, Lutz and Loop, nine years old now and already taller than they had been the last time Viktor had seen them, followed him around as closely as they could with cellphones and cameras. He could already hear them talking about how many views they would get on social media if they posted exclusive photos and videos of Yuri Plisetsky practicing. Yuuko paused in the middle of her conversation with Yuuri to tell them not to post anything without asking, but Viktor knew that the triplets probably weren’t going to listen to her anyway.
He smiled at Yuuri as he stepped out onto the ice, and waved at Clara, who was seated on Yuuri’s shoulders. He could feel the triplets’ attention as soon as he started gliding towards Yurio, could hear them nudging at each other as if debating whether or not they should start filming him too.
That changed when Sonia skated past them, heedless of the triplets, of their attention, of anyone at all. She found an empty patch of ice and started moving, dancing along to a song that only she could hear.
The triplets stopped, watching her with wide eyes as she turned, brown hair streaming along behind her. Videos, cellphones, and social media sites were forgotten for a moment.
Viktor smiled. Sonia’s movements were raw and unfinished, but she did have that kind of presence when she was performing, that quality that couldn’t be taught. He’d seen it in her from the very first day. She skated like she was trying to find something, to uncover a truth deep down inside herself. It was like her mind was on another plane, and her body couldn’t help but move along to whatever it was she found. It was a very personal kind of performance, because it looked like Sonia was unaware that she was performing at all.
I’m doing this for myself, her movements seemed to say. I don’t care if you watch me.
But somehow, you can’t look away.
He pursed his lips in thought, watching her. A waltz, probably. Something traditional, a little melancholy. He could already see it, could practically hear the music.
He skated towards her, leaving Yurio to himself for a bit, and took her by the hand. Sonia blinked in surprise, coming back to earth from wherever she had been, but when she realized where she was, she allowed him to guide her, the two of them moving and turning together.
He picked her up by the waist and she went with ease, resting her hands on his shoulders. His back gave a small twinge at the movement. She was only eight years old, but already she was just on the edge of too big to pick up casually.
He realized that even though he had only known her and Clara for a year, he wasn’t ready for either of them to grow up.
“Do you think you can do a jump?” he asked, meeting her eyes as their momentum carried them through another slow rotation. He gave her an encouraging smile. “Just a single?”
Sonia looked nervous, but he could see her thinking as she considered the request. “Um…I think I can,” she said. “Just a small one.”
“Alright, Sonechka.” Viktor carefully set her down. “Fly for me.”
Sonia took a deep breath, facing an open expanse of ice. He saw the moment she settled her nerves, the moment that tension and fear gave way to determination and calm. He watched as she started building up speed, blades cutting furrows into the ice.
She leaped into the air—
—and came down to the sound of music, to applause and flashing lights as her blades cut a path across the ice.
The music of her free program played, the sound filling the air as the fabric of her costume swirled around her. Somewhere in the distance, the commentators were speaking, but Sonia could barely hear them. They were background chatter—she was focusing on the music.
“—another clean jump from Sonia. We don’t normally see that one at the novice level, do we?”
“No, we don’t, but remember folks, this is Sonia’s last year of skating at this level. Next year, she’ll be representing the United States on the international stage at the junior level.”
—a turn, a spin. In the back of her mind, she was somewhere else, moving through a darkened ballroom. It was cold, the cold of winter. She could taste the dust in the air, could feel the chill—
“That’s right, Mark, and Sonia is definitely showing that she’s ready to take on the challenge. When asked about her performance today, her coach and father, Viktor Nikiforov, only had this to say: ‘Sonia will be one to watch.’ I’d say that’s accurate, wouldn’t you?”
—the music picked up and lights flared across the ballroom, dancers filling the rink around her. She moved along with them, one of them. Her movements grew faster as she joined the dancers—
“She certainly is a remarkable young lady. And Viktor Nikiforov knows how to pick them. With all of the success coming out of his rink in the past few years, I wouldn’t be surprised to see Sonia excel at the international level next year.”
—the commentators were saying something, but she wasn’t listening, wasn’t hearing them at all. It was almost over, it was the end of the dance, the illusion was breaking—
“But let’s talk about today, Mark. What would you say? Another gold medal?”
“Absolutely. But Sonia clearly isn’t skating with a gold medal in mind—it looks like she has her eyes on something bigger and better.”
“Well, there you have it, folks. America’s rising star at the US Nationals—twelve-year-old Sonia Katsuki-Nikiforova! We’re looking forward to seeing where her career takes her.”
—The song came to a stop at the same time as Sonia did, one last note stretching out into infinity. She came back to earth in her final pose, breathing hard and feeling the warmth of the lights against her face. Sonia tilted her head up into the warmth, her heart pounding, hearing the sound of applause.
Sonia Katsuki-Nikiforova @soniakatnik
Um…I’m still not sure how to use this. Thank you to everyone for supporting me at #USNationals. I’m looking forward to next season.
Viktor Nikiforov, KlarikTheEpik, Yuri Katsuki and Yuri Plisetsky Retweeted.
Viktor Nikiforov @vnikiforov √
@soniakatnik My Sonechka <3
KlarikTheEpik @clarakatnip
@soniakatnik YAY YOU’RE ON TWITTER! CONGRATS ON WINNING NATIONALS! Next year we’ll be at the #JGPFinal, right? ;P #takeyoursistertoSpainmmkay? #Vamos! <3
Sonia Katsuki-Nikiforova @soniakatnik
@clarakatnip Um…I’ll do my best?
Yuri Plisetsky @yuriplisetsky √
@soniakatnik Good luck, kid.