Written In The Stars (1889 words) by phoenixwaller
Chapters: 1/?
Fandom: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Relationships: Phichit Chulanont/Katsuki Yuuri, Katsuki Yuuri/Victor Nikiforov
Characters: Katsuki Yuuri, Victor Nikiforov, Phichit Chulanont, Celestino Cialdini, Okukawa Minako, Yuri Plisetsky, Otabek Altin, Yakov Feltsman
Additional Tags: Alternate Universe – Space, Space Husbands, space travel, Loss, Grieving, Angst, Falling In Love, Happy Ending, end goal Victuri, Slow Burn, i think, Open Plot, tags may and probably will change, Aged-Up Character(s), Possible background OtaYuri, dunno for sure yet, MinaStino if you squint
Summary:
Yuri Katsuki is a scientist aboard a deep space research vessel. Their mission is to chart and study a black hole, but when there’s an accident Yuri is forced to abandon ship. Alone and adrift he can only watch as his husband, Phichit, and all their friends are killed. Then, with rescue likely years away, he goes into stasis.
Victor Nikiforov is the young captain of an exploration vessel. Known for his charisma it is his job to make first contact and establish friendly relationships with other space-faring societies. But his curiosity is piqued when his crew detects an old distress signal, and finds a lone survivor from a ship lost nearly a hundred years before.
Yuri docks at Gamma 153 with just over an hour to spare, cursing the asteroid field that delayed his arrival by almost a full six hours. He knew he’d been cutting it close anyway, and now it’s going to be seriously touch and go whether he can get to the House in time.
His ship, Hades, groans and whines around him, physically manifesting his distress, and Yuri pats the console distractedly as he fumbles at the nape of his neck to unplug himself from the internal system. “I know, I know,” he mutters, “I’m not loving this any more than you are.”
He eventually unplugs himself and powers down Hades, whispering soothing endearments to the ship as he prepares both of them for being planetside for the next three days.
Gamma 153 is a bustling port, filled to the brim with locals and travelers alike. Yuri throws some coppers at the nearest ship-hand, growling at the young boy to keep an eye on his ship, or else. He doesn’t know if it’s his trademark scowl, or the fact that he’s radiating pre-rut hormones, but the boy yelps and scampers away almost immediately.
By the time Yuri reaches the nearest House, he’s clammy with sweat, and can feel the itch of his rut threatening to erupt beneath his skin. The Beta on duty takes one look at him and ushers him immediately into an available room, where Yuri spends the next three days lost to the haze of his rut, fucking every toy available and only surfacing to inhale the food and drink that staff push through the small flap cut into the door.
He emerges on the fourth day exhausted and barely sated. It would be so much easier, he thinks, and not for the first time, if he just stayed planetside in the lead up to his rut. Maybe he could even find an Omega to spend it with next time. But that has never been Yuri’s style, not since he first bonded with Hades and took to the skies at the tender age of sixteen. The less time spent planetside the better, as far as he’s concerned, and if that means he has to suffer through an unsatisfactory rut every few months, then so be it.
He’s still feeling groggy as he pays up at the front desk, and barely reacts in time as he turns and almost hits the man behind standing him.
“Sorry, sorry,” Yuri mutters, nose crinkling at the unfamiliar smell. Omega, only just post-heat. He takes a second to look over the man; about his height with a stocky build and dark brown hair, shaved underneath in a style he knows is popular around these planets. His eyes are what most draw Yuri’s attention though, dark and pensive and filled with a tiredness that Yuri knows all too well.
“Rough one?” he asks before he remembers he doesn’t care.
“Aren’t they all?” the omega says with a wry smile.
Yuri has no idea how to respond – it’s been so long since he’s been around anybody who he actually wanted to hold a conversation with – so he mumbles another rushed apology and makes a quick exit from the House.
He heads straight back to Gamma 153, wanting to be in the air as soon as possible. He feels unclean having been planetside for so long, like the natural gravity has gotten under his fingernails and up his nose.
“Hey boy, did you miss me?” he says as he boards Hades, patting the dash fondly as he settles in the pilot’s seat. He picks up the heavy cable that connects him to the ship’s internals, and plugs himself in with a practiced ease.
“Okay, let’s get going,” he mutters, closing his eyes as he loses himself in the ship’s inner workings.
A whine, and then a thunk, and Yuri is jolted abruptly back into his body. He frowns down at the console, trying to decipher the sinking feeling that has started to form in his gut.
Hades doesn’t want to leave this port.
He doesn’t understand, this has never happened before. It’s why they bonded so well in the first place, both human and machine desperate to leave their crummy home planet and never look back.
“Hey, what is it?” Yuri asks, patting the dashboard again as he nudges at the machine with his consciousness. “What’s got you so worked up hmm?”
He can feel it now. Not just a desire to stay, but a desire to find. Something is calling out to his ship, to both of them, and Yuri knows that he’s not leaving this planet until he finds out what.
Hades starts humming, a low, insistent throb that Yuri can somehow feel in his bones and hear outside at the same time. Slowly he unplugs himself, and exits back onto the main walkway, following the sounds as it vibrates all the way through his skeleton.
The noise takes him across the length of the entire port, stopping just in front of a small ship and oh, she’s perfect. A carbon copy of Yuri’s own, right down to the bodywork detailing that he had lovingly had commissioned last time he was on Delta 727.
A head pokes out of the ship’s main hatch, and Yuri’s heart stutters as he recognizes the man from this morning. The man frowns and swings down to the ground, dusting off his hands as he walks over to where Yuri is still standing dumb.
“So you’re the reason Persephone here didn’t want to leave today,” the man says, voice matter of fact, and Yuri can only stare in shock.
He’s heard of ship-to-ship bonding, of course he has, but he’s never actually seen it happen. He especially never thought it would happen to Hades, happen to him.
The man pauses, giving Yuri a chance to respond. When it becomes apparent that Yuri’s brain has taken an indefinite leave of absence he smiles and holds out a hand to shake. “The name’s Otabek,” he says, “Would you like to come aboard and have a drink while we work out what to do with these idiot ships of ours?”
For lack of better candidates, someone’s parents jokingly named the Norse God Loki as the child’s godfather. He decides to take this seriously.
The whole thing got started because my
dad was a professor of Norse Mythology.
When I was born he and mom had both just gotten jobs at a new
university, which meant moving to a new town where my parents didn’t
know anybody. That was my dad’s excuse for naming an ancient
Scandinavian trickster god as my godfather.
He claimed it made sense at the time; apparently I was something
of a trickstery child myself, always getting out of my playpen and
into strange places, or making rude noises at hilariously inopportune
times, or crying for no discernible reason and laughing for no better
one. Plus, it was pretty soon apparent that I had inherited my
grandmother’s bright red hair. So my dad liked to call me a child
of Loki, which amused my mom. It didn’t amuse her so much when he
told her dad, after he got a bit too pushy about me not having a
godparent yet, that in fact I did have someone looking after me and
his name was Loki Laufeyson.
Still, even my mom didn’t expect
anything more to come of that than a bit of a row when my grandfather
got home and looked a few things up, so they were both completely
stunned when Loki himself showed up on the doorstep a few hours
later.
I was much too young to remember that
particular meeting, but from what I found out later, I can imagine
something of how it went. Loki would have looked like a tall, lean
man with hair like fire. Not red hair like mine, which isn’t even
really red but orange-ish; this was hair in licks of red and orange
and yellow, really like fire. He would have had eyes like fire opals,
strange and glittering from one color to the next. And he would have
had scars running along the tops of and bottoms of his lips, little
rows of puncture marks, white and old but still clearly visible. But
the rest of him would have looked handsome and charming, like a movie
star, only better. He would have looked like what movie stars dreamed
of looking like, and he would have flashed my mom a brilliant
gleaming grin when she opened the door.
I wish i had a context for this. But I really dont.
I was all ready to “um, actually” this, but, um, actually there’s about 3-4 grams of iron in a person, which x400 is 1.2-1.6kg, which is a smallish but not unreasonable sword. So. Math checks out.
How would you extract the iron, though? The more practical solution would be to kill a mere hundred men, then mix 1 part blood with 3 parts standard molten iron, imo. Cheaper and faster, while still retaining the edge that only evil magic can give you.
Or, you could just make the sword of iron, and then use the blood to temper the blade.
1.2 to 1.6 kilograms is a perfectly reasonable large sword. Your average longsword was 1.1–1.8 kg and I don’t even remember if that’s including the weight of the hilt, guard, and pommel or just the blade. Your more classic “knight sword” was a mere 1.1 kilograms on average; the blood of 400 men is more than enough.
This is using the comparatively crappy metallurgy of medieval Europe and their meh iron swords. Move east to, say, contemporary Iran and make a scimitar using high carbon steel (~2%) for a .75 kilogram blade and you only need the blood of about 225 men.
So putting my thoughts in on this… because how could I not.
So you’ve exsanguinated your 400 guys to get the iron for your sword. Cool. But now you have 400 bodies lying around.
Why not put those to good use and cremate them. Use the carbon from those 400 bodies (you won’t need all of them) and now you can make a nice mid-high carbon steel sword.
Now you have a sword forged with the blood of your enemies AND strengthened with their bones.
“high fantasy math” – the tag I should have expected to write some day.
The Archery Range 
