Otayuri Oneshots

The Aftermath

~Otayuri, Yuri is an amputee after an accident, angst with a happy ending, AU

***

It was hard to lose a limb. It was even harder when, in the course of one dinner, you went from the youngest prima ballerina in the Bolshoi ballet to a surgery-marred amputee with a lost dream and what felt like no purpose left in life.

***

Yuri didn't remember that day. Otabek only remembered bits and pieces: he remembered Yuri crying; -- it had been the thing that had woken him up after the blast -- anywhere, anytime, Otabek could be brought back to the present by Yuri's tears. He remembered struggling to stand, pulling himself from the rubble and staggering through the ruins of the restaurant, calling Yuri's name as loudly as he could through the smoke and the haze. He remembered finding him, falling to his knees beside him, and pulling uselessly at the pillar that crushed Yuri's right leg beneath it. He remembered Yuri's quiet tears running tracks through the dust and grime on his face, and how Yuri's hand clung weakly to his as he sat by his side, Yuri's head pillowed in his lap, hearing sirens in the distance.

Otabek remembered the waiting room, the terror he'd felt as they pulled Yuri away from him as soon as they got out of the ambulance, rushing him off to surgery or something equally important. Otabek remembered how he'd struggled and insisted that he was fine as the ER doctors tried to examine him, remembered how they'd threatened to drug him if he wouldn't lie still and stop fighting. Otabek remembered the relief he'd felt when a doctor came up to him in the waiting room after he'd been pronounced medically fine and told him that Yuri had pulled through. He remembered the horror of seeing Yuri's leg for the first time.

***

Yuri was an award-winning dancer, coveted and internationally honored: a dancer with a dazzling career ahead of him. Yuri was, as of April 7th, 2026, a cripple.

After the explosion -- it had been a gas leak, as it was later discovered -- it had taken five surgeries for Yuri's livelihood to be pronounced unsalvageable, and for Yuri's leg to be lopped off for good. Five.

Before every surgery, there had been the hope that, with this one, he'd regain full mobility; after every surgery, he was told that there had been a complication. Until, eventually, Yuri wasn't told only that there had been a complication, but that there had been a life-threatening complication, that his heart had stopped on the table, and that the only to save him, had been to amputate.

Yuri would never forget the day he'd woken up without a leg.

***

"Don't give up," they said, "fight for it," they said, "you're an athlete -- you can do this!" they said. Yuri said that he wasn't an athlete anymore.

***

The meeting with the prosthetist hadn't gone well. If not for Otabek, it probably would have been much worse.

Yuri was the least receptive patient he had ever worked with, the prosthetist -- Yuri refused to learn his name out of spite -- hadn't been afraid to tell him. It was okay to grieve, to mourn your loss, the prosthetist had also told him, but it wasn't okay to let it consume your life and stop you from doing what you loved. Yuri had spat that he would never be able to do what he loved again, and, to his fleshy, useless, lump of a leg, he'd said: "consume away."

***

Otabek hadn't been happy when they'd gotten home, Yuri could tell. But, of course, being the patient, dutiful fiance he was, he said nothing, and helped Yuri from the car, carefully withdrawing his hands and making no comment when Yuri slapped them away and growled that he wasn't an invalid, dammit: fuck off, he could do it himself.