“I know who you are,” Yuuri whispers, huddled into himself as the pirate gazes towards the horizon, hand held over his eyes to look for the King and his hunting party. “With your talents, you can be no other.”
“Is that so, Highness?” The pirate returns his gaze to Yuuri. “And who is it that you think I am?”
Yuuri straightens up, forces his chin up into a challenge. “You are the Dread Pirate Nikiforov, are you not? Your manner and cruelty seem to imply it, sir. You have the countenance of one whose lips have never uttered a kindness.”
Nikiforov bows to him. “I admit it proudly, your Highness. I am the Dread Pirate Nikiforov, at your service.” There is a smirk on his face--it has the same familiar but unplaceable air of all his mannerisms.
Yuuri turns his head away, feeling tears gather at his eyes. At long last, he faces the man responsible for taking his dear Viktor’s life. At long last, he has the chance to avenge his love--and all he is able to do is sit here, and weep. His voice little more than a raw whisper when he says, “That being the case, sir, I wish your inevitable death to be slow and painful.”
Nikiforov comes to him, crouching before his drawn up knees and lifting his face up with finger hooked under his chin. His eyes dart over Yuuri’s face until he says, “Why such cruel words from such pretty lips?”
Yuuri feels two tears fall from his eyes and makes no attempt to clear them. If he is to die here, at this instant or another one soon, at the hands of the same man who stole his Viktor from him--the let it be with tears for his love on his cheeks. He takes in a shaky breath and breaths, “You killed my Viktor. The only man I ever loved, and ever will.”
The Dread Pirate Nikiforov’s eyes would look almost soft, were he anyone else. His thumb traces across Yuuri’s bottom lip. “No love for your kingly fiance, then? For the man who would give you fortune and luxury?”
“I need no fortune,” Yuuri snaps, slapping the pirate’s hand away. “And the luxuries of royalty only stand to mock what I’ve lost!” Once again, Yuuri’s eyes go to the distance as Nikiforov rises and paces somewhere behind him, likely agitated. “Viktor and I would never have had a rich life. He was a poor farm boy, and I have nothing to my name but the Inn I will inherit from my parents on their death. But my Vitya--he was kind, and beautiful, and we would have been happy. I would have slept every night under nothing but the stars, if it were in his arms I laid.”
Nikiforov is silent for a long moment. Yuuri does not turn to look at him, only listens to the hissing of the grass in the wind and the slow and quiet thump of the pirate’s boots on the ground. At last, when he speaks, it is it to say, “I have killed many men, but I believe I remember him--your Vitya.”
“You do not have the right to speak his name,” Yuuri hisses, glaring over his shoulder with tear-stained cheeks and wild hair.
“He died well, you may be pleased to hear.” Nikiforov turns his face to the steep and grassy incline not ten feet from their toes. Beyond it, the forest looms. Nikiforov, Yuuri is sure, intends to take him into those woods and kill him. Anger blooms in his body like a sickness. “Most people beg--scream, cry, shit themselves. He only looked at me and said...Please. I must live. I have promised my love I will return--and promises I do not break. Then he spoke of the beautiful boy with whom he was in love--you, I assume. He told me you were timid, and terribly fragile. That news of his death would surely destroy you. I see none of that in you as you stand before me.” Nikiforov tilts his head over his shoulder, so Yuuri can see smirking blue eyes and an almost-genuine smile. “He underestimated you, I think.”
Yuuri rises to his feet, fists clenched at his sides. “How dare you tell me his dying tale, sir. How shameful, that he asked you for mercy and you gave him none. There is no place in God’s kingdom for you. And I? I was destroyed that day. You killed me as surely as you killed him. The person you see before you now is what remains when a man has nothing remaining to lose.” He yanks Nikiforov’s shoulder to spin him, cranes his neck up to compensate for the inches between them at this proximity. “If I’m to die today, at least do me the courtesy of revealing your face to me. Cease this cowardliness, hiding behind a mask as you steal lives. A person deserves to know his murderer.”
He anticipates refusal, perhaps even swift death, but what comes is a smile. Nikiforov reaches behind his head to untie the mask and, as it and the bandanna covering his hair fall away, he murmurs, “As you wish.”
As moonlight hair and high cheekbones are revealed, Yuuri can only gasp, “Viktor?” as his knees give out from below him.
