[ Flynn looks up at him, too, his lips parted in surprise. Not that Yuri is thinking about the same thingāthat happens too often, even now, for it to be startlingābut that he sounds like he actually wants to hear Flynn's opinion.
How long has it been since Yuri sought that kind of thing out?
Guilt tightens Flynn's belly. He swallows and lets his spoon rest, thinking on it. If Yuri's really asking, then he deserves a well-thought-out answer. ]
...I don't know.
[ Not the most comforting, though. Flynn, still watching him, tries again. ]
We remember the same thing, right? Leaving our... selves, it seemed like, to continue down the path we were on, and instead coming here to try something new. Based on what I saw, it doesn't seem like we're able to go home, but I can't square that with everything that we're working on. Why work to better ourselves and live up to our full potential if we can't go back to where we started and put all of that effort to use? I don't know that we're going to go home, but I'm operating under the assumption that we will. I don't know what else I could believe. There's so much left to do.
[ It isn't the answer he wanted to hear, but it's the one he would have given too. He nods slowly, pushing his curry around in his bowl ]
Yeah. Why are we trying to work on ourselves if, if it's for nothing? I don't want to be here forever. I don't want a new life. My old one was-- [ not fine, exactly, but ] I have stuff to do.
[ Stuff to do, like killing a man. ]
Maybe we go back the way we came here? Just... slip back into our lives, like nothing happened, only we're better? [ Or worse. Goddess, is Yuri any better, yet? He's pretty sure the only thing that's different about him now is that Flynn's come in his mouth ]
Yeah, you couldn't take him down, but you tried your damn hardest.
[ Yuri watches him with a small frown. ]
You're gonna get promoted and get more people to listen to you, and change the bullshit laws that Ragou used to get out of it. [ Obviously, this is the plan ]
[ Flynn snaps, louder than intended, his jaw clenched tight. It's the first time he's said it aloud but the thought has hounded him for weeks now.
Still. It's not Yuri's fault. Flynn looks down at his curry with a sharp sound, staring at the cut edges of vegetables. Yuri always does them so irregularly. ]
If I were going to change things by doing what I'm doing, then... there wouldn't be anything to improve. I would just have to keep trying. But Iā
[ His mouth twists. ]
I worked so hard on that report, Yuri. I tied up every single loose end, I laid out an ironclad argument, with your help we had more than enough evidenceāI don't think I've ever worked so hard on something for so long in my life! I didn't sleep! And after all that, after so many years of biting my tongue and making myself into a trusted resource and not some Lower Quarter firebrand to be tossed aside, after everything, he's getting off. With nothing. Not even a slap on the wrist! It's not right! Nothing about it is right!
[ Yuri listens to him, watching Flynn's face as he speaks. They haven't talked about this. Even when they were fighting to take Ragou, they didn't talk about it. Yes, Yuri wanted Flynn's plan to work. Yes, he thought it might, but when it didn't, it wasn't disappointment in Flynn. It was disappointment in the system, in the government, in the Empire that allows that sort of horrific bullshit to keep happening ]
That's why you have to change it. Come on, Flynn. That's why you're doing what you're doing. You're going to change that. Maybe, maybe you being here isn't about that. Hell, I don't know. I was going to take care of Ragou. [ It's out of his mouth before he can stop it. He grits his teeth, meeting Flynn's eyes like a challenge. If Flynn gets mad about it, well. That's why Yuri is here, isn't it? To become better than he was. Or, to be better for the path he's taking, the dark, looming path he can see in front of himself, that keeps him awake at night. ]
[ It's like a punch. Flynn flinches, goes silent for a moment, staring into the silent trees. I'll do things my own way, he'd said there in the darkness, when they'd had a conversation just like this. The last thing Flynn remembers of home: Dahngrest, dark and dirty, and the crushing sense that everything he'd worked for had come to nothing after all.
[ Fuck. He boxed himself into his corner, didn't he? He stares at Flynn and lets out a harsh breath. ]
I was going to kill him.
[ The words feel wrong coming out of his mouth, as true as they are. He could say more, but-- Flynn deserves to know, now that Flynn can't try to stop him. ]
...in other words, you were going to try to solve the problem yourself.
[ Because Flynn couldn't. Fuck. Is that what Flynn's failures would have led to? Yuri taking things into his own hands, fixing things without a single thought for the future? Yuri risking everything to solve it? ]
The Empire failed. Your hands were tied. How many more people will die if I didn't do anything?
[ Goddess, but there's a part of him that's so grateful that the fox didn't let him go through with it, that the fox took him here instead, where he can maybe find a different way. ]
It doesn't matter now, anyway. The fox took me before I could. [ Even if he's certain that the other him went through with it. ]
[ Flynn sucks in a breath and very carefully, slowly, sets his curry aside, pushing it into a little divot of pine needles so that he can look at Yuri properly. ]
It does matter. Were you even thinking? If you were caught, Yuriā Ragou is a councilmember! He tried to have me killed! I know my report was good, and convincing, and he still weaseled out of the charges! What did you think was going to happen to you!
I dunno. Probably prison, maybe, y'know. [ A death sentence.
He's considered it, thought about it. Maybe he didn't take the time to think about it enough at home, but he knows he would have accepted whatever came from it. ]
I'd rather him be dead and me be in jail than him feeding more people to monsters.
[ Flynn's hand slams into the space between them. Pine needles stab his palm. He ignores it in favor of holding Yuri's gaze, fear simmering sharply into anger because it's the only thing Flynn has ever known to do with it. ]
You don't get sent to jail for murdering a member of the Council, a noble member of the Council.
[ He's doing it. He's doing the thing, the infuriating thing where he pretends to be five steps behind Flynn when Yuri knows very well what he's talking about, what has fear lurching acid through his body. Flynn grits his teeth and bites out, sharp, trying and failing to keep all that feeling out of his voice, ]
[ Flynn's anger is boiling over, and Yuri is sure that a punch isn't far off. He sighs, and pushes his hair back from his face. He's not sure what the point of his fight is. He'd already made his choice. He has no idea if he could take it back, now, or if he would. ]
What happens if I didn't do it? More people are fed to monsters for that guy's amusement. Two people dead is much better than dozens.
He can't breathe for a moment, staring at a patch of moss on the base of the tree he's been sleeping in.
He thinks he knows what Flynn means, but it still doesn't quite make sense in his head. Yuri's life doesn't matter. He's just bidding his time until he dies, until something takes him out. At least this way, it was by his own choices, choosing to kill Ragou and accept the consequences. That's better than being killed by a monster or by his own complacency.
He scoffs. So much for the curry. He isn't hungry anymore. ]
What about the people he's already killed, huh? Are their lives worth less than mine? That's dumb.
His own ears are ringingāor maybe that's his heart, slamming staccato in his skull, drowning out the rest of the world. He sucks in another breath, and it still doesn't feel like enough, and so he tries again, staring at Yuri who is misunderstanding him, again, because Flynn is never ever good enough at saying what he means to actually... say it.
He lets his breath out again. Lets his head drop, feels his shoulders and everything else drop too, and ends up staring at his own knuckles pressed into pine needles, white with tension. ]
[ Silence settles uncomfortably, and Yuri is reminded exactly why they haven't seen eye-to-eye in three years. They're living different lives, their priorities are different even if they still want the same things. Yuri's skin crawls and he shivers, ears twitching, his tail flicking on the mossy underbrush. ]
Look. [ He finally manages to pull the words out of himself like pulling glass out of a wound ] I made the choice. Maybe the me back home went through with it, or I'm going to when I go back. He has to be stopped.
He should, probably, be opposed to Ragou dying. It's not an ethically correct thing to imagine someone getting murdered as a solution to the problem of them existing, but Flynn has done it countless times since this investigation started, and the idea that Yuri could justāwith a single swipe of his sword, probablyā
He should be a lot more against it. It ties him into knots that the thing that bothers him here is the consequences falling on Yuri, crushing the life out of him because Flynn knows intimately how the empire works now, and stepping that far out of lineādoing that, taking justice into your own handsā
Could Yuri, really? Kill him in cold blood, quiet enough not to get caught? Flynn doesn't know. Yuri doesn't know, either. He hasn't had the chance to do it, and the problem is, Flynn doesn't have a better solution. Yuri is right. If Ragou isn't stopped, finally and for good, then he'll continue, and then the blood of countless more people will be on Flynn's hands. A little blood on Yuri's, the possibility of Yuri dying and the certainty of no more Ragou, or a hundred other terrified civilians locked in a basement to be torn to shreds? Ragou would certainly escalate out of anger. Flynn is sure of that much.
He's sure of so little else.
He's holding a handful of pine needles. Flynn doesn't know when that happened. His hand is steady, but the rest of him feels shaky and light, knotted up and like he's unanchored from the ground at the same time. His skin burns. His eyes burn, too. There's no good answer here, and Yuri is right, Flynn is selfish for prioritizing Yuri's life over all those people but he can'tā ]
I hate this.
[ It's not a solution. It's not even angry: the words come out small and pathetic, and Flynn swallows them back, or tries to. Yuri's tail flicks into his periphery and out again, and Flynn squeezes his eyes shut, blocks out the world. ]
I hateā Iā if we go home, and things are exactly like they wereā
[ It's like Yuri is watching him deflate. Over the three years Flynn has been a knight, he's seen his best friend disappear, fade into the background, subsume himself into being a knight. The Empire is stealing Flynn away from him, one piece at a time, leaving this exhausted, defeated man in front of him. A part of him wants to go to Flynn, to comfort him, but that reminds him of hot, of hands and mouths and kissing and fuck. He can't think about that. He can't move. He can just watch Flynn and wish he were better, that he were more, that he could do more.
Instead, all he can do is say three words, small and barely there ]
[ For a moment, they're ten again, and they've just watched someone else get dragged away by the Knights for something that's barely a crime. Flynn is spitting mad but shouting will only make it worse, Hanks says, and so they shut their mouths and clasp their hands and hate this, together, the two of them against the world. Later that night Flynn had laid out everything wrong with the knights to a furiously-nodding Yuri, had worked himself into angry tears at the unfairness of it all, and Yuri had told him so, let's do something about it and a little light had flickered up in the darkness of Flynn's anger.
They hate this. It's unfair, and it's awful, and change is slow to come. Yuri believes he can fix it, though.
And Yuri is here.
Flynn drags in another breath. This one scrapes his throat raw, but he opens his eyes and sees his own sword-calloused hands, still clenched tight. He looks up, and Yuri is there in front of him, looking just as lost, just as unsure.
Flynn swallows. ]
Maybeā
[ his voice is shaky. Flynn presses on, because it's Yuri, and because messy emotions are the thing you trust your best friend with, apparently. Flynn certainly feels like a mess. Yuri will probably look at him and see a falling-apart shell of a knight who can't do anything about anything, but that's okay, because right now that's what Flynn is. ]
Maybe that's why we're here. Yuri, did youāif you thought you had any other way of stopping him...
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How long has it been since Yuri sought that kind of thing out?
Guilt tightens Flynn's belly. He swallows and lets his spoon rest, thinking on it. If Yuri's really asking, then he deserves a well-thought-out answer. ]
...I don't know.
[ Not the most comforting, though. Flynn, still watching him, tries again. ]
We remember the same thing, right? Leaving our... selves, it seemed like, to continue down the path we were on, and instead coming here to try something new. Based on what I saw, it doesn't seem like we're able to go home, but I can't square that with everything that we're working on. Why work to better ourselves and live up to our full potential if we can't go back to where we started and put all of that effort to use? I don't know that we're going to go home, but I'm operating under the assumption that we will. I don't know what else I could believe. There's so much left to do.
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Yeah. Why are we trying to work on ourselves if, if it's for nothing? I don't want to be here forever. I don't want a new life. My old one was-- [ not fine, exactly, but ] I have stuff to do.
[ Stuff to do, like killing a man. ]
Maybe we go back the way we came here? Just... slip back into our lives, like nothing happened, only we're better? [ Or worse. Goddess, is Yuri any better, yet? He's pretty sure the only thing that's different about him now is that Flynn's come in his mouth ]
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[ Flynn says, with a fractured little laugh. ]
I wish I had a better answer. I wish I knew for sure. All I can say for certain is that what I was doing before obviously wasn't working.
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What do you mean, it wasn't working? You just got promoted.
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Getting promoted wasn't my goal. Holding people like Ragou accountable was my goal, and obviously that isn't... it's not working.
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[ Yuri watches him with a small frown. ]
You're gonna get promoted and get more people to listen to you, and change the bullshit laws that Ragou used to get out of it. [ Obviously, this is the plan ]
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[ Flynn snaps, louder than intended, his jaw clenched tight. It's the first time he's said it aloud but the thought has hounded him for weeks now.
Still. It's not Yuri's fault. Flynn looks down at his curry with a sharp sound, staring at the cut edges of vegetables. Yuri always does them so irregularly. ]
If I were going to change things by doing what I'm doing, then... there wouldn't be anything to improve. I would just have to keep trying. But Iā
[ His mouth twists. ]
I worked so hard on that report, Yuri. I tied up every single loose end, I laid out an ironclad argument, with your help we had more than enough evidenceāI don't think I've ever worked so hard on something for so long in my life! I didn't sleep! And after all that, after so many years of biting my tongue and making myself into a trusted resource and not some Lower Quarter firebrand to be tossed aside, after everything, he's getting off. With nothing. Not even a slap on the wrist! It's not right! Nothing about it is right!
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That's why you have to change it. Come on, Flynn. That's why you're doing what you're doing. You're going to change that. Maybe, maybe you being here isn't about that. Hell, I don't know. I was going to take care of Ragou. [ It's out of his mouth before he can stop it. He grits his teeth, meeting Flynn's eyes like a challenge. If Flynn gets mad about it, well. That's why Yuri is here, isn't it? To become better than he was. Or, to be better for the path he's taking, the dark, looming path he can see in front of himself, that keeps him awake at night. ]
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He looks back up at Yuri, his throat tight. ]
What were you going to do?
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I was going to kill him.
[ The words feel wrong coming out of his mouth, as true as they are. He could say more, but-- Flynn deserves to know, now that Flynn can't try to stop him. ]
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[ Because Flynn couldn't. Fuck. Is that what Flynn's failures would have led to? Yuri taking things into his own hands, fixing things without a single thought for the future? Yuri risking everything to solve it? ]
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[ Goddess, but there's a part of him that's so grateful that the fox didn't let him go through with it, that the fox took him here instead, where he can maybe find a different way. ]
It doesn't matter now, anyway. The fox took me before I could. [ Even if he's certain that the other him went through with it. ]
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It does matter. Were you even thinking? If you were caught, Yuriā Ragou is a councilmember! He tried to have me killed! I know my report was good, and convincing, and he still weaseled out of the charges! What did you think was going to happen to you!
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He's considered it, thought about it. Maybe he didn't take the time to think about it enough at home, but he knows he would have accepted whatever came from it. ]
I'd rather him be dead and me be in jail than him feeding more people to monsters.
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[ Flynn's hand slams into the space between them. Pine needles stab his palm. He ignores it in favor of holding Yuri's gaze, fear simmering sharply into anger because it's the only thing Flynn has ever known to do with it. ]
You don't get sent to jail for murdering a member of the Council, a noble member of the Council.
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They've sent me to jail for much less.
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The penalty for a crime like that is death.
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[ Flynn's anger is boiling over, and Yuri is sure that a punch isn't far off. He sighs, and pushes his hair back from his face. He's not sure what the point of his fight is. He'd already made his choice. He has no idea if he could take it back, now, or if he would. ]
What happens if I didn't do it? More people are fed to monsters for that guy's amusement. Two people dead is much better than dozens.
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He can't breathe for a moment, staring at a patch of moss on the base of the tree he's been sleeping in.
He thinks he knows what Flynn means, but it still doesn't quite make sense in his head. Yuri's life doesn't matter. He's just bidding his time until he dies, until something takes him out. At least this way, it was by his own choices, choosing to kill Ragou and accept the consequences. That's better than being killed by a monster or by his own complacency.
He scoffs. So much for the curry. He isn't hungry anymore. ]
What about the people he's already killed, huh? Are their lives worth less than mine? That's dumb.
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His own ears are ringingāor maybe that's his heart, slamming staccato in his skull, drowning out the rest of the world. He sucks in another breath, and it still doesn't feel like enough, and so he tries again, staring at Yuri who is misunderstanding him, again, because Flynn is never ever good enough at saying what he means to actually... say it.
He lets his breath out again. Lets his head drop, feels his shoulders and everything else drop too, and ends up staring at his own knuckles pressed into pine needles, white with tension. ]
That's not what I meant.
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Look. [ He finally manages to pull the words out of himself like pulling glass out of a wound ] I made the choice. Maybe the me back home went through with it, or I'm going to when I go back. He has to be stopped.
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Flynn doesn't disagree. On principle.
He should, probably, be opposed to Ragou dying. It's not an ethically correct thing to imagine someone getting murdered as a solution to the problem of them existing, but Flynn has done it countless times since this investigation started, and the idea that Yuri could justāwith a single swipe of his sword, probablyā
He should be a lot more against it. It ties him into knots that the thing that bothers him here is the consequences falling on Yuri, crushing the life out of him because Flynn knows intimately how the empire works now, and stepping that far out of lineādoing that, taking justice into your own handsā
Could Yuri, really? Kill him in cold blood, quiet enough not to get caught? Flynn doesn't know. Yuri doesn't know, either. He hasn't had the chance to do it, and the problem is, Flynn doesn't have a better solution. Yuri is right. If Ragou isn't stopped, finally and for good, then he'll continue, and then the blood of countless more people will be on Flynn's hands. A little blood on Yuri's, the possibility of Yuri dying and the certainty of no more Ragou, or a hundred other terrified civilians locked in a basement to be torn to shreds? Ragou would certainly escalate out of anger. Flynn is sure of that much.
He's sure of so little else.
He's holding a handful of pine needles. Flynn doesn't know when that happened. His hand is steady, but the rest of him feels shaky and light, knotted up and like he's unanchored from the ground at the same time. His skin burns. His eyes burn, too. There's no good answer here, and Yuri is right, Flynn is selfish for prioritizing Yuri's life over all those people but he can'tā ]
I hate this.
[ It's not a solution. It's not even angry: the words come out small and pathetic, and Flynn swallows them back, or tries to. Yuri's tail flicks into his periphery and out again, and Flynn squeezes his eyes shut, blocks out the world. ]
I hateā Iā if we go home, and things are exactly like they wereā
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Instead, all he can do is say three words, small and barely there ]
Yeah. Me too.
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They hate this. It's unfair, and it's awful, and change is slow to come. Yuri believes he can fix it, though.
And Yuri is here.
Flynn drags in another breath. This one scrapes his throat raw, but he opens his eyes and sees his own sword-calloused hands, still clenched tight. He looks up, and Yuri is there in front of him, looking just as lost, just as unsure.
Flynn swallows. ]
Maybeā
[ his voice is shaky. Flynn presses on, because it's Yuri, and because messy emotions are the thing you trust your best friend with, apparently. Flynn certainly feels like a mess. Yuri will probably look at him and see a falling-apart shell of a knight who can't do anything about anything, but that's okay, because right now that's what Flynn is. ]
Maybe that's why we're here. Yuri, did youāif you thought you had any other way of stopping him...
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