#I'm a sucker for soulmate aus so ofc I had to pick that

[katzuyas]

to get back to you (I’ll live a thousand lives)

for day 8 of @victuuri-week, prompt au: soulmates and day 4 of @yoimythologyweek, prompt: free rating: teen and up

read previous chapters here 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 or go to ao3 from the link in the title!

"The appearance of Marks is a slow process that takes place over many years," the teacher explains to them, standing at the small dais at the front of the class. "One day, you will notice a smudge somewhere on your skin that won't be possible to remove – that's how the Marks begin to show. Over time the smudge clears and forms letters that are the name of your soulmate."

Victor sits in the third row, next to a freckled girl and a ginger-haired boy, aged seven in body, but his soul is old – much older than anyone seems to think. It takes him months to realize what must have happened and it takes him even longer to stop mourning for the past that was his only present. It takes him even longer, still, to move on and focus on the future.

They must have found the universe tree, Yggdrasil, Victor reasons, and unknowingly moved to another realm: another of its branches. In the process, they seem to have lost their bodies, the mortal shells that contained their souls and thus... have died. Only to be reborn as infants again, holding their memories and minds intact. That was what happened to Victor, so he ventured a guess that it was also what must have happened to Yuuri.

Desperately, longingly, he still prays to be so.

Maybe, Victor thinks, maybe there is a way for them to get back. Yet, for it to be possible, he needs to find Yuuri in this new world and lead him to the tree once more. With his age reversed it seems like it will take him years to accomplish the first, but his parents seem to have found his fascination with the myth of the universe tree 'quite adorable' and indulge his, in their eyes, innocent quest. Their lenience if fruitful, and so, seven years after the rebirth, Victor makes the discovery once more.

The knowledge of where to find Yggdrasil, however, is useless to him without Yuuri. And for that he must wait, since there is no acceptable way for him to come up to the people who brought him into this world, loving, caring people who never deny him anything, and ask them to leave home at the tender age of seven to find his lost lover from a past life.

Instead, he plays the role of a small child in a performance that no actor would find shame in and sits through his life's journey impatient, but also curious – for this world is far different from the one he once knew. The times have progressed far, it seems, but that isn't all. The major difference between this world and the one Victor still remembers is in the general principle of two people joining together for life on the basis of the marks that show upon their bodies: the Marks of soulmates, two pieces of the same soul that have been parted upon birth and thus must join later on in life.

"Ms. Kotsky?" A girl behind Victor lifts a hand. "Is there a surname, too?"

The teacher shakes her head. "There isn't. Only their given name."

"How do we find them then?" The girl frowns. "Is it the first person we meet who has that name?"

The teacher shakes her head no once more.

"It isn't as simple, Lena. You might meet five people who share that name during your lifetime and neither of them could be your soulmate. The key to finding them is in your Mark. You see, when soulmates touch, their Mark glows red."

"Oh, like the colour of love," another girl says, and the teacher smiles.

"Exactly," she agrees, and turns her eyes back to the girl behind Victor. "That's how you know which person is your soulmate."

The children ahh and ohh, but Victor's mind is focused on a different thing. Is Yuuri his soulmate? He wants it to be true, he wants it to be real. Victor's body is baren of a Mark as of yet, and he prays it is Yuuri's when he gets one, but even if it isn't, his heart is already set on having no one else but Yuuri. And so is Victor's soul, as it has been even in the world before this.

It isn't until Victor is ten that the first signs of a Mark show on his hip. He is twelve when it fully sinks into his skin and the joy he feels is overbearing. The Mark is small, but to Victor it's everything, because in a tiny scrawl it says Yuuri. It gives him hope that one day they will meet and match their Marks, souls, and bodies once more.

With that hope locked safely in his heart, he tries to live his life like a normal person and lets the fates guide him. He tries painting again, but the craft he'd once loved feels alien to his new hands. They don't seem to move how they used to and after a few years of frustration, Victor hangs up his brushes to never return.

What catches his eye instead of that is a book of poems, which he reads from cover to cover in a single afternoon. It stirs something deep in his soul, something that he only remembers stirring when Yuuri was around, and it is the very next day that Victor begs his parents for another. They comply, as they always do, and that is how Victor's journey into poetry begins.

He writes his first poem that same week, publishes a book within a year, and in five – he's one of the best read artists of the craft at only eighteen years old. All his longing, all his love, every little thing he can recall about Yuuri; he puts it all into his writing.

The smiles that Yuuri used to give him when they awakened in the middle of the night Victor likened to the beauty of aurora borealis spreading across the sky with wondrous that lit up the darkness of his aimless existence. The warmth of love entrapped within Yuuri's eyes he matched against the chilling winter winds that ripped apart his clothing and dried out his skin, but the feeling shining through Yuuri's eyes kept him safe and sheltered from it all. The touch of Yuuri's hands, his lips, his skin over Victor's he compares to sunshine that kisses him softly, but can burn as easily if he isn't careful, yet he doesn't want to be – because love like theirs is not meant for cautious people; it is all engulfing and reckless, and it sets every fibre of his being atremble with how much he'd do if only Yuuri asked.

As he writes, Victor lives through his memories and remembers it all. Secretly, he fills more journals with the prose of his life: begins a diary of sorts. The writing passes him time, but even then he cannot deny that he misses his painting, misses his inventions, misses Yuuri most of anything...

It is when Victor is twenty that a traveller visits him in his rented flat above a hat maker's. The knocking on the door is eager and insistent as it draws Victor away from another poem that speaks of his loneliness that swallows him like a void of the unknown new world that he now has to live in without his beloved. Annoyed that he has to stop midverse, Victor stomps to the door and throws it open–

–only to be met with the same wide-eyed love that he now feels overtake him completely.

"Yuuri," he whispers and his voice finally, finally sounds like his own.

Tears fall from Yuuri's eyes as he stands before him in the flesh, and he smiles.

"Hello, Victor," he says. He lifts the small book he's clutching in both of his hands and Victor recognizes it as the first one he's written to print. "Am I interrupting? I just wanted to ask you to sign your name for me."

Victor laughs, stepping forward to envelop Yuuri in his arms, and as he does – he vows to never again let him go. Yuuri's body is different, it feels different, but there is something achingly familiar about him that helps Victor settle into him with no trouble.

"I will sign whatever you want me to," Victor tells him, aware of the dampness of his eyes. "But the most important sign you should already have on your skin, right?"

Yuuri's lips press against Victor's neck where he's buried his face, hot, cordial, grounding. He says nothing, but Victor feels his answer in his own burning heart, which flutters in his chest and repeats what Yuuri wants to say: I'm yours, always and forever.