Isolation | Candlelight | Found Family
Fandom: Yuri!!! on Ice
Rating: T
Tags: Solitary Confinement, Abuse, background Victuuri because that's always ambient in my works, Viktor focus
If he stands on the tips of his toes, Viktor can just manage to see a tiny patch of sky through the thin horizontal slit that serves as a window in his cell. Today it's cloudy, gray; is it autumn, now? The stone walls and floors have been getting colder, and the wind that filters in has a crispness to it.
He tries to breathe deeply, to see if he can catch any other familiar scents of the season: crisp leaves, smoked meats, or beer. But his nose feels numb at this point. All he's able to discern is his own unwashed odor, and the filth from the crude hole in the floor's corner that serves as his toilet.
I would have thought I'd be better at this, he muses. Viktor has spent much of his life alone, after all. His parents died young and his family was too distant to visit, so he'd been raised by paid servants, distant and deferential, until he'd gone to school.
Handsome, talented, and quite rich, many classmates were eager to be useful to him there, likely at the urging of their own families. Viktor learned quickly to remain polite but distant, to reject marriage offers carefully but firmly. To allow certain people to believe they were closer than they actually were, and to protect his own position.
A lot of good that did him, in the end.
It must be autumn. The days are getting shorter, he thinks, watching the weak sunlight pass across the bare walls. If he's still here come winter, when the sun rises late and sets early, Viktor will be spending most of each day in darkness. They don't waste candles on their prisoner.
There's the sound of scraping metal, which signals that the small slot they give him food and water through is opening. He hurries, picking up his empty tray so he can exchange it for a fresh one. If he's too slow, or tries to speak or yell, they will not feed him.
The empty tray is taken. A bowl of water, a bowl of thin soup, and a hard roll appear. Viktor takes them silently, trying not to think about how much weight and muscle mass he's lost here; how much his body aches. He's lucky he hasn't caught a fever yet, but if he's still here in winter—
There's a note under his bowl, folded up tightly. Viktor unfurls it with shaking hands.
He knows that handwriting—he knows those hands, intimately. Viktor stares at the note, doubting his own eyes. This could be a dream, or hallucination. Or even a cruel trap. Perhaps they've captured Yuuri, too, and have forced him to write this note, and he's locked away somewhere in a little box away from the sun just like Viktor is.
As much as he wants to keep it, the danger is too great. Viktor swallows the small paper alongside his meager meal, and hopes, and waits, as darkness falls.
