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I Must Be a Light	By : xRIiFTBx Category: +S through Z > Tales of Vesperia Views: 1733 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I don't own Tales of Vesperia, Tales of Vesperia: The First Strike, or any of the characters of either, and I did not make any money from the writing of this work.

Chapter List
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A/N: Okay, so this one's a little shorter than the last one, I think – but the chapters will be getting longer soon, and there is mind-bendy smut in your future! I promise! Thank you for reading this far. <3

When Yuri returned, it was with a thin, worn spare futon sagging over one shoulder, and a cloth sack in the other hand. Dropping the former unceremoniously into what was probably the cleanest corner of the room, he waggled the latter at his distracted guest.
“Looks like barley rice with dinner, tonight.”
When those blue eyes didn't waver from their gaze out the window, though, he leaned forward to try to get into their path.
“Hey, are you okay?” Flynn resurfaced from his reverie with a deep inhalation, his eyes widening a little, before they shifted to his friend's face, and he pushed a weak, apologetic smile, responding quietly, “Yeah, just... thinking.”
Not taken in for a moment, Yuri smirked openly, and shook his head, “Miles away, maybe. Let me know when you get back to Terca Lumireis. I'm going to get started on the food,” and Flynn chewed his lower lip for a moment, still half-absorbed in thought, before rising from his chair and lifting a jar down from a shelf.
“I'll grab some water,” he grumbled, turning for the door to go and make his way down to the blastia fountain, the primary source of clean water in the district. He knew this path almost as well as the one from his own home; ever since his father's death, ever since he and his mother had been forced into the Lower Quarter years ago, Flynn had spent many of his days with Yuri. Drawn in at first by a sort of wild, impulsive charisma in the other – Yuri had always seemed to know the best places to find fun, or else how to have fun doing exactly what he was doing, and those deep, gray-violet eyes were always flashing with some form of excitement or mischief – the thing that had cemented their friendship for good had been his carefree, unconditional acceptance.
While the Scifos had first been greeted by the locals with a wave of concern and assistance, much of it came in forms that had been grating and unwelcome to the young Flynn; questions about his late father, tight lips and slow nods and knowing eyes full of sorrow. Empty words paying dull, trite lip-service to the young boy's supposed bravery, empty promises of the unlikely and dubious potential of his father living on in him, and each exclamation of unfelt sympathy left him feeling more and more dried-out and... empty. Just like the words and the looks and the promises. His father had been popular in the Lower Quarter, after all, as he had often gone out of his way to be a protector and advocate for the poor who lived there. Flynn supposed they must have felt some need to pay their tribute to the dead; he just resented being a living shrine for that purpose.
But Yuri had been different. He had known – of that, Flynn had always been certain – but those dark eyes had never looked past the face in front of him. With him, Flynn had never felt like a proxy, like some inanimate idol of his father. With Yuri, Flynn was always Flynn.
The thoughts that had taken him so far away, layered over peeking shimmers of those memories, both bitter and fond, had been musings about the day – mostly, about the theft, and what it signified. Sitting down next to the fountain, he lowered the small jug he'd brought into the water and watched it flow in. As he felt it grow heavier in his hands, he looked up and around. It was late afternoon, and most of the traffic was just passing by, but there was a little girl across the fountain with her mother, proudly carrying a miniature water jug of her own, matching the mother's heavier vessel.
Things had to be really bad, if Yuri was stealing. He'd always been something of a project for the people of the Lower Quarter, as far as Flynn could understand – an orphan, juggled from house to house, returned to the Elder when his most recent foster-family decided they no longer had enough 'extra' for him. That was Yuri, to most of the adult generation before him – an extra, an afterthought. And what's more, Yuri always seemed grateful to the families that had taken him in – he was friendly with most of the district, and never bitter or distant. But then, he'd also sustained himself for the past couple of years on odd jobs; whatever those families could afford to pay him for, he would do, and more, but things here seemed always to go from bad to worse, and those kinds of jobs were thinning out. Flynn just hadn't realized how thin the jobs had gotten, it seemed.
His gaze refocused on the mother and daughter, the former watching the latter splash merrily, flat, stiff hands beating up ripples on the surface of the water. Something had to be done. Something more permanent than a little extra cash or an extra scoop of rice. No one, however earnest or forgiving, could live forever on 'extra' alone.
Feeling more centered, if no closer to a resolution, Flynn took hold of the water jar he'd brought down, and set his feet on the path back to Yuri's room.
By the time he arrived, dinner was nearly ready – he must have been away, lost in thought, longer than he'd anticipated, but Yuri only thanked him warmly as he accepted the filled vessel. If Flynn wanted to talk about it, he would.
They spent much of their talk over dinner on how best to present the fight scenario to Flynn's mother the following morning – neither of them said it aloud, but they were both certain that the bruise around Flynn's eye (and the one probably forming around Yuri's, given the impact that caused him the nosebleed) would not fade by the time it was necessary for him to return home. The blond was inwardly relieved when Yuri opened the discussion by demanding outright that they not lie to her; the stolen purse and the label 'thief' slipped happily back from the uncomfortable surface of his thoughts. Even so, the formulation of a story that was both technically true and satisfying to a policy of non-confrontation was quite an ambitious task, and when they finally gave up and went to bed, they weren't far from where they'd begun.
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I Must Be a Light