Clipped wings, I was a broken thing

Had a voice, but I could not sing

You would wind me down

I struggled on the ground

So lost, the line had been crossed

Had a voice, but I could not talk

You held me down

I struggle to fly now

Sia - Bird Set Free

He just wanted to be a dancer.

He had fled with his own legs and free will, sneaking into the darkness of the night, unseen by the many eyes that kept him pinned since birth, every move a product of plans that were drafted for almost a decade and a half of his life.

He became one with the shadows, climbed the tall gates, hid in carriages and boats, squeezing his small frame into anything that managed to cover his existence, long enough for the harsh, hopeful trips to last until he was finally past the borders, past the wall that separated the empire of Japan from the outside civilization, and past the barrier that, although never moved, kept striking him with heavy blows of oppression since the day he opened his eyes to the world.

And he ran.

He ran as far as his legs could carry him, away from the docks, away from the ships and boats, body filled with exhaustion and mind almost being feasted on by fear and anxiety.

And not long after, he was captured.

Not by the palace guards that would bring him back to his cage, not by the pirates that raided the docks, not by the bandits that roamed the streets, no, whatever gods that had watched over him, had witnessed his act of betrayal and sin, decided to force their harshest forms of punishments upon him so that they, in his desperate pursuit of freedom, had sent a party of slave merchants his way.

'I'm running away.' She had told him, with a smile that made men red with desire, with boldness that filled women with envy.

'From the palace?' he had asked, all expected innocence of a six year old boy.

'To Russia.' She said, her smile faltering before she continued, deciding to trust her student with her secret, in which, he now thinks, wasn't supposed to stay a secret for too long. 'At first, then to India, then to Ukraine, The Netherlands, England, then to wherever the wheels take me.'

'But sensei! T-that's-'

'I know.' She said frankly, sadly. 'I know.'

'Why would you-'

'Because I want to be a dancer,' she almost shouted, not from anger or impatience, but with excitement that he thought was absolutely illogical, excitement that forced her mouth into the biggest grin he had ever seen. "I want to be a dancer, Yuuri!

'But you already are! You're the most talented dancer in the whole empire!'

'A dancer who hasn't seen the world doesn't have the right to claim that title,' she said fiercely, 'I was never one, but I'm going to be, fully fledged and indestructible, and no man is going to stop me, not anymore.' She turned toward the window, her skin the color of pearls under the moonlight; she had never looked more beautiful in his eyes. 'My dreams are waiting for me to fulfill them, and I shall do them justice.'

'But they will find you!'

'So be it,' she shrugged, 'This is the last you'll ever see of me, either way,' only then did the excitement cease, the lines of her mouth returning to their solemn shape. 'Yuuri,' she looked down to the boy clutching at her thighs. 'You're from a noble house and believe me, you have it better than all the rest of us folks out there. They might've surrounded you with illusions, but at least yours are pretty ones.' She held his shoulders in a tight grip, her brown eyes piercing through his lighter ones. 'Don't ever attempt to follow my footsteps, little one.'

But Yuuri never promised her, the last memory of that encounter was of him desperately shouting her name as she waved away, fading and becoming a form of his imagination, a distant recollection.

And then, after being beaten half to death, crippled into submission, sold to seemingly endless days of slavery, every last bit of his dignity and free will being stripped away from him, Yuuri remembered, vividly and harshly.

And he did the exact same thing his childhood self did almost ten years ago, every night as he forced himself to stay awake and not surrender to the tempting darkness.

He chanted her name, over and over again, like a prayer, the only form he now believed in.

Minako.

Minako.

Minako.

He stared at his armlet like it was a device that recorded all of his past mistakes, gone the swelled and red area and only now he could see the sharp contrast between the pale skin of his arm and the gold in blinding revelation.

His was gold, not metallic like the most of them, not bronze like the ones rich people bought, nor silver like the ones nobles purchased.

'Such a precious merchandise.' The man who had captured him said, his smile ugly and terrifying, his grip tight on his broken jaw. 'Look at your eyes; people would kill to have you. You're going to make me the richest man in town.'

Yuuri, throughout the next years of his wretched life, would realize that everything that had happened to him was because of those eyes, and nothing more, not any other detail, not any other trait, not any other aesthetic part of him, not his social status, not his body, not his gender, it was just his eyes that brought him to the deepest depths of hell.

'They are so narrow, yet your pupils are so huge, so brown, so beautiful.'

It was, in the most disgusting, degrading way possible, the reason why the auction blew up when Yuuri was offered for the taking, the reason why a well-known noble was the biggest bidder and his first owner, the reason why the merchant became rich overnight and a golden ring was molten to fit punishingly into Yuuri's arm that same day.

Because the nobleman didn't purchase him for his own house, or else his armlet would've been silver per ritual, no, the man had purchased him specifically to be sent as a gift to gain influence from the court in the nearby nation, the place Yuuri was sent to a week later.

His was gold, the ring that only the most valuable slaves wore, the slaves that only served the royal families.

Ten seconds. Three months. Two weeks.

It was a pattern that seldom changed, a pattern that Yuuri had come to predict on instinct, a cycle that haunted him like a curse.

It started from Russia, the place where all of Yuuri's dreams dissolved into fragments, where the lethal chain of reaction sparked and took place, then it was China, where the nobleman took him for the emperor's palace, then it became a continuous loop that passed by Yuuri's life and never seemed to end.

Ten seconds.

That's how long it usually took for his new owner to examine his face, see his eyes, and realize that he was different, that he was somehow more valuable than the rest.

'They are so narrow,' they would always say until Yuuri had forgotten who had said it first. 'Yet your pupils are so huge, so brown, so beautiful.'

His new owner would instantly know that someone else would love to add him to their slave collection, to put him into better use.

Ten seconds was also the time it took for them to decide that he was going to be a gift for some other family to strengthen their relations, whoever their allies were; they always varied, they were always unpredictable with his nonexistent understanding of politics.

Three months.

They would put him under training to legitimize their brand before deporting him.

Those were constant; they would teach him bits of their language, rituals, and religious practices. They would teach him how to talk, how to eat, dress, move, breathe, bow, respect, and most important of all, they would teach him fear, they would teach him how to know his place, how to never dream of freedom ever again, how it was just a fruitless delusion, and that, surely, was accomplished by using cruel methods, constant brainwashing, and undeserved punishments.

Not quite undeserved, as every Madam who trained him would say, because he was nothing more than a slave, and whatever was inflected on a slave, was the treatment they deserved.

Yet, with him, they always added a different sort of training.

He would learn how to move in special ways in only special times, how to recite their poems, and sing their songs, and dance their dance , dances that once were the sheer wish of his to learn, that only became another form of punishment to perform.

They always had one aim, and none else, they derived from the art that he grew up loving, yet separated to create a theme he loathed and despised with all of his heart.

Pleasure. Seduction. Arousal.

Their sole purpose was everything but the art he wanted to practice.

That's the object they were slowly morphing him into, keeping him pure, yet at the same time engraving sinful skills into his being that he was terrified of the day he had to use them.

'A concubine.' They would call him, but even with his limited practice in their various languages, Yuuri would soon come to realize that people weren't allowed to address a royal slave with the correct term, and that this word was only a thin coat of gold that covered the rusty metal underneath.

He wasn't a woman for them to procreate with; he wasn't a female that could give them heirs, so Yuuri wasn't, in any logical sense, a concubine.

He was a sex slave, for them to use to satisfy their sick pleasures, for them to degrade, to put him in their harems, to have him whenever they wished.

A royal whore to be.

Two weeks.

He would spend that time mostly in ships or carriages, his soul losing its essence with every transportation.

By the end of those two weeks, Yuuri would find himself in another nation, in another palace, only to be brainwashed anew.

Because there always was someone more powerful that would have him better, someone who would love to add him to their collection more than their current owners, someone that would appreciate him as a gift, a unique sex slave, pure and untouched, with eyes from the Forbidden Kingdom.

The cycle would repeat itself again, and again, and again, until eventually, only little of his soul would remain.

'Don't ever attempt to follow my footsteps, little one.'

But Yuuri still won't listen, Yuuri will still use whatever he had left of him to chant her name in the darkness, until the syllables blur and the sound becomes incoherent.

Yuuri wondered how the gods could harbor such endless wrath, how they were still capable, after three years of adamant punishments, to continue and never falter.

The cycle had repeated itself so many times that Yuuri had lost his understanding of the world, slowly forgetting who he was and what was his purpose of living before he learned all those languages, before he learned all the dances and songs and poems or learned how to seduce men and women in theory, but never in practice.

And soon enough he was back to the starting point, and he had never been more frightened since the day his golden ring was clasped into his upper arm.

He slipped his pinky finger underneath the thick metal, rubbing it slowly against the tender skin with tight friction, easing the itch that was constantly there. The tip of his forefinger touched the lock hole, and the view of the palace before him only helped to diminish whatever hopes of freedom he had left.

Russia.

The place where all of Yuuri's dreams dissolved into fragments, where the lethal chain of reaction sparked and took place.

It was almost a hysterical realization; Yuuri knew that no one wanted him, that no one will want to keep him, but to think that he had crossed oceans and seas and continents, only to go back to where he had initially started, was somehow a marvelous achievement.

Perhaps that's how he would keep living, from ship to ship, carriage to carriage, palace to palace, until his life would pass by without any contribution from his part, perhaps he could finally be able to slide a blade against his throat without the fear of giving up on the potential future he might have.

Perhaps this time would be a successful attempt, unlike the other ones; perhaps he will finally have the courage to end his miserable life.

Minako.

His grip tightened painfully around his arm, cutting most of the circulation for a few seconds, his hand trembling with fear.

He stood in a line, similar to any other one he stood on before, countless times in countless places, Yuuri was merely waiting for the cycle to resume, for the ten seconds countdown to begin the moment a Madam would demand him to look up and meet the eyes of his new owner.

Though, he assumed, she would be called something else in this country, Yuuri did find that his ability to learn was faster when he was in France.

She walked back and forth, inspecting each new slave carefully, seven to ten they were, but Yuuri couldn't exactly estimate, his eyes were glued dutifully on the tiled floor at his feet, the woman's gaze piercing through each other bodies that, once again, he felt almost naked and violated.

Yuuri knew the worst part was when they would do their body check, but he pushed the thought back, he had gone through it enough times that it became numb like almost everything else that had been done to him.

Even with his well built mentality when it came to those rituals, he found that his heart was beating so harshly against his ribcage that his chest hurt, his breathing becoming heavier by the second, like stones moving through his esophagus.

Because he could sense it, a gaze heavier than the woman's, fixated and powerful, pinned on him since the moment he stepped into the hall, before he managed to hide his face.

His eyes. His eyes.

Whoever it was, they must have seen his eyes.

At that moment, he knew there won't even be ten seconds before he's sent away.

"The Tsar is watching you from the gallery." The woman finally spoke loudly behind them, her Russian slow enough for Yuuri to understand. "Don't look up, it's not your place to."

Yuuri's breath hitched, his head started to pound, and his already blurry vision had turned completely useless to his surroundings.

The Tsar. Their emperor. His new owner.

He saw it.

He saw it before Yuuri even started counting.

He saw his eyes and it was already time for him to go.

She took her time, filtering the ones she did not deem useful, the too old, the too young, the too unhealthy, the too ugly, until only four of them were left, Yuuri the only male.

The woman stood directly in front of him and he was ready, ready for her to receive instructions on where to send him next, whatever other nation, to whoever prince or king or emperor it might be this time.

He could see in his limited vision that she was looking up to the gallery, her face a mixture of three colors of skin that caught Yuuri by surprise.

He did not have enough time to realize that her face was an aftermath of burns before she nodded, suddenly placing a firm, somehow comforting hand on his shoulder, pulling him away from the rest until Yuuri stood one foot in front of the line.

He was taken aback by the strange warmth, since even after three years of being traded all over the world and to all sorts of owners, Yuuri was rarely touched physically outside of practice or necessity. There always was an unspoken rule not to touch a pure, royal concubine, for their worth was estimated only by their purity.

Yuuri heard several footsteps above them that slowly disappeared after a loud bark, indicating that the Tsar and his attendance had left the gallery.

"From this day on," she announced, addressing all of them despite her physical contact with Yuuri, "You'll be granted the honor of serving the imperial family of Russia. You are expected to serve without question, in absolute loyalty and without hesitance under the Tsar and his relations." She paused, her tone loudening with the continuation, "You are now a property of His Well Born and His Majesty, the ruler of the Great Russian Empire, Viktor the Third of the Nikiforov House."

Her final words were a whisper, only meant for him to hear, a sad, rich voice filled with sympathy and softness that it earlier lacked as she spoke close to his ear, and Yuuri had never wished to have put that blade into his throat like he did then. "You, pretty one, will be a part of the Tsar's harem."

He gulped, the very last bits of his dignity, worthiness, and hope getting crushed to a thousand pieces, all wasted and pushed down with the bile on his throat.

He just wanted to be a dancer.