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Author's Notes: I know it's been a long ass time since I posted one of these....
He jolted awake, panic surging hot like vomit in his throat and like flames under his skin. Beside him, the bed was empty. Yuri was gone.
It took all of Flynn's strength to keep himself from scrambling out of bed. Yuri was gone, but there was no danger. No danger that he was aware of at least.
It had only been a week, but it had been hard to bear between the loneliness and the waking moments of pure panic. He had grown so used to Yuri being here, to the warmth of his presence in the bed, the grumpy way he started his mornings, the shine of his eyes in the dark. The palace felt lonely without him. When Flynn wasn't bogged down with work, the silence that stretched through his state room where there had been soft breaths and heartbeats, the pad of feet and endlessly curious questions, was all-encompassing and deafening. But he worked through it. He had no choice. Yuri had made his decision and was out living it.
It was no mystery why Yuri had joined Brave Vesperia. At least Flynn had his strong suspicions. What better way was there to forget the horror that you had lived and then been drug through a second time than to get away from the place where it had all happened? It was a coping mechanism for Yuri, and Flynn couldn't blame him for using it.
The day after the trial, Yuri had packed to go, wearing a crooked smile, Repede at his side. Flynn had forgone the long and worrisome goodbye. Yuri wouldn't have endured it. A simple "Stay safe" and a kiss was enough to get his point across. He had been powerless to help Yuri, to protect him, to bring him justice, and Flynn was equally powerless to stop him from leaving. It would have been pointless to try. Yuri was going his own way, just like he had said he would when Flynn had spoken of sending him back to Earth. In the end, Flynn could neither force Yuri to leave, nor force him to stay.
The other residents of the palace seemed to be glad of his departure. The quiet that had been there before settled back in and everyone else moved on like Yuri Lowell had never been here. But he had, and Flynn wouldn't soon stop missing him.
It was still very early, dawn's light still hours from his window. He didn't sleep well anymore, not since Yuri had entered his life, so the thought of further slumber was distant. He rose, the hot spray of the shower washing away the last bits of panic and grogginess from his heavy limbs. For a week, this had been his routine. Shower. Dress. Go over the remnants of the work from the day before. Breakfast. Meetings. Lunch. Recruitment overseeing. Training practice. Reassignments and requests. More meetings. It all seemed so dull and unimportant, but he muddled through it. He had to. Terca Lumireis was counting on him and he had been plenty capable of doing this job before Yuri had come.
The day before had left him little work. He had been up well into the night in an attempt to keep himself from the barrenness of his bed. It obviously hadn't helped.
Overall, winter seemed to make the world quiet. Few monsters flourished in the harshness of the season and those that did made their nests at the ends of the planet, far from where people made settlements. The biggest problem was keeping people fed. With the blastia gone, storehouses full of food had spoiled and the shortage that had caused was hard to overcome in the short time between the day that the blastia had stopped working and the height of winter. As much out of necessity as a good faith gesture, even the palace had cut back on its own consumption. It was necessary in order to see that there was enough to go around.
Most of the requests waiting on his desk were for more supplies. Thankfully, Fortune's Market was more than glad to profit form the shortages by transporting and trading abundances elsewhere. He had already been working with Mary Kaufman for a resolution to suit all parties. She was shrewd, but not impossible to deal with.
All this work kept him busy until dawn's light came gray and hard through his window. The maid came with breakfast for one: a plate of eggs, sausage, toast, and a lone cup of tea. He ate and kept his mind on his work. It was all he had.
The morning meeting with the Council droned on too long and he found himself skipping lunch in favor of the troop recruitment. He wasn't hungry anyway. Training practice came next and, with Sodia's aid, he showed off some moves before starting the new recruits on the obstacle course that ran the breadth of the training yard. It had been some time since he had attempted to tackle it, so he might have been rusty, but these recruits would grow to learn it in spite of their current difficulties navigating its pits and ropes and walls. Sodia had no problem showing them how well a seasoned knight could do it.
It was a reminder to him that she need to be promoted. With everything that had happened after the Adephagos, he had rushed to fill position after position in order to keep the knights banded together, but he had never gotten around to her's. It was long overdue. He made himself a mental note on that while on his way back to his stateroom.
More requests awaited him there along with, thankfully, a tray of afternoon tea and sandwiches. His stomach was ravenous now, threatening to devour itself if he didn't put food into it. While going over the submissions, he ate. It gave him a moment of freedom from thought, where his body just worked on its own instinctively and he watched as if detached. Before he knew it, he had even drafted Sodia's letter of promotion.
She came to escort him a little while later, down to his late afternoon meeting with the Council and Ioder. This was as good an opportunity as any to present her with the letter.
He had sealed it only a moment before her arrival and the wax was still warm when he handed it to her.
"May I ask what this is, Sir?"
"Something that you've been deserving of for some time now. I'm ashamed that it took this long."
She took it tentatively, breaking the warm wax seal with one finger. Her eyes scanned the contents quickly but carefully, before they turned back up to him. "Sir...."
"Your assistance has been invaluable these months, since long before I became Commandant. I've been meaning to do this for some time, Captain."
"Thank you, sir. I... I don't know what to say."
He smiled, but it was forced. He was happy for her, but still felt heavy and detached. "We'll have a proper ceremony forthcoming, of course. And there will be a new uniform involved, as well as a captain's sword...."
"Thank you." She cradled the letter against his chest, fingers crinkling the parchment slightly in a gesture of tenderness that he had never seen before.
"We should get down to that meeting. The Council finally seemed to be getting their patience with me back. No point ruining it by being late."
"That would be because of Yuri Lowell."
That name brought all the thoughts back. He had finally managed a little detachment from the loneliness on his heart, to work free and clear of the pain and it was back in full force. His arrival and departure, the brief goodbye before Yuri had gone off to make his place, the trial, the suffering, and everything in between. It wasn't like Yuri was gone forever. He was off living his life and trying to come to terms with all that had happened. He would come back. Judith and Karol had promised as much. And he had Repede at his side to keep an eye on him. Yuri was in good hands. The problem was that he wasn't in Flynn's hands.
"You miss him, don't you?" Her voice was the sound of shattering glass that yanked him back into his body, into reality where all emotion he had been holding back was welling against his insides. Not hot like panic had been, but the warmth of sunlight and the feeling of seeing it for the first time in years, like having known the stars and then forgotten how beautiful they were.
He smiled and tried to wave it off, but he trusted her. There was no reason not to be open and honest with her when she had been at his side through trials and tribulations. He could have lied to satisfy her, but he did not.
"Yes." Admitting that aloud pulled some of the weight off his shoulders, a cumbersome burden of hidden truth. "I do miss him."
"Why?" It was a question of cold curiosity and he tried not to let it stun him. She must not have known that Yuri had weeks before stopped sleeping in his own bed and rather had started sharing Flynn's. Maybe it was better that she didn't, although he couldn't place just why he believed that.
"Since his coming here... I have grown terribly used to his presence. Fond of him, even." It was so much more than that, more than words whispered in the dark between their lips and bare forms. It was more than the touches that made Flynn feel alive and the thundering of his heart. It was something more than he had ever believed himself capable of feeling. "Perhaps 'fond' is not strong enough a word." It wasn't remotely.
"Sir...."
"We should get down to that meeting."
"Yes, sir."
He felt a little better for his confession. He missed Yuri and that was okay. And maybe, wherever Yuri was, he missed Flynn, too.