The Beat of His Heart | Victuuri | Yuri!!! On Ice

1.

This was inspired by the song Cancer by My Chemical Romance. I recommend listening to the song while reading.

I did a lot of research, but info can still be inaccurate.

Enjoy the angst.

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"Good morning, Mr Katsuki."

Yuuri opened his eyes involuntarily. It was part of their routine by now. It was all Yuuri seemed to do these days. Follow the routine.

His nurse would come in to tear him from the slumber he longed to clutch onto. Bleak, dark eyes would study the infinitesimal strands of sunlight that crawled through the thick curtains. He would notice how the ice cubes bobbed up and down in the jar of water placed on his bedside table and the clicking of the nurses shoes on the spotless tiles.

He would feel the cold of the water and the wisps of a breeze fluttering through the opened window as the nurse bathed him. He would sit through his check up and pick at the plate of food set before him until he was forced to put some of the contents in his mouth and swallow.

Most of the time he would stare at the sickly white wall, not thinking, not feeling. Just letting numbness overtake him. As numb as possible when pain struck his torso every time he took a breath or when he coughed up blood that dripped down his chin.

Or he would turn his head towards the mirror. Yuuri didn't recognize the person he saw. It wasn't him.

His thick hair didn't hang so loosely as if every strand was about to fall out, or plaster so tightly to his sweaty forehead. His dark eyes didn't look so lifeless and devoid of hope. His face didn't look so hollowed out, nor did his bones stick out so sharply like they could pierce through his sickly skin. His lips weren't so chapped and dried.

He didn't look like that. The person in the mirror was nothing more than a living corpse to Yuuri.

If doing nothing and feeling nothing got boring, Yuuri would ask a nurse to hand him the large book he stored in his bedside table. It didn't have to much in it. He never had much photos and belongings to begin with, being an orphan.

The first two page were filled with pictures of him and his family. His sister standing by his mother as she held him, an infant, in her arms. His father handling the task of blowing out the candles on his cake on his first birthday. His older sister by seven years, Mari, holding him as they took a family photo.

The photos held snippets of his early life. Sometimes he wasn't even in the photo at all. Like a picture of his mother and father's wedding or his sister's first day of school. These were the ones he cherished most.

He wondered what they would have sounded like. What it would be like to hug them, or even just talk to them. What would they be like? Would they get along well? Would they have visited him as he laid on the rickety hospital bed?

Occasionally he imagined he felt a hand squeezing his shoulder and hearing voices say, "We love you, Yuuri." But when he looked around, he was alone.

Tracing the outlines of the crumbling pages, Yuuri tried to picture how different his life would have been if not for the accident. He couldn't remember much. Only the car severing to the side, the body of his sister shielding his and the feeling of comfort with her arms wrapped around him before all went black.

Yuuri was told it was a miracle he survived, being just five years old. He shook the image of three lifeless people with glass embedded in their flesh covered with white sheets and a five-year-old Japanese boy wailing for his mother, trying to crawl into the beds, to be held a last time, out of his mind.