He turns back at his name. For the first words Victor's spoken since those two shouted. Since telling him to warm up. But what he hears sounds almost unreal. Except. Except. Except. It is. Except he watched Victor's mouth move. He heard Victor's voice. It wasn't in his head. Victor saying those words. Victor prying them from every dark space they'd been whispering at him all day.

Victor saying, absolutely straight-faced, back from whatever the earlier expression had been to something more flat, more business-like. And saying. Saying that he would take Yuri's shame. His failure. His weakness. Take responsibility for it. Stand up in front of the whole world. And say that it was his fault. That Yuri couldn't do any better this year than he'd ever down before this year, and it was --

It was his fault? He was the excuse? The scapegoat? The reason Yuri was this way?

That Yuri could just bow out? Just escape all of this, and leave it and everything else, all on Victor?

Yuri doesn't even realize it's started until there's moisture falling down his cheeks, dripping off his chin, and his fuzzy vision is blurring even worse against an amount of sudden, agonizing pain that seems to have only finally caught up with his head, his chest, his inability to pull in a breath, or stop the words that escape through his lips, "Why would you say something like that, like you're trying to test me?"