Felinis: let's just say I wasn't late for this day's prompt
They'd been about seven when the plague first hit Zaphias and swept through the streets sparing neither rich or poor. It came like a sudden downpour with fits of coughing and light fevers at the start that quickly turned to vomiting and diarrhea followed by lesions full of puss and nosebleeds till the person usually choked to death or had a stroke. It was one of the ugliest diseases Yuri had ever seen someone die of.
It was the disease he was most familiar with the sight, smell, and even the feel of.
A good couple hundred people died of it in the first six months of the outbreak with no survivors and most dying after a little over a month and a half. It's existence was terrifying for the noble families who were being plucked off one by one- a beautiful young princess's being one of the earliest known victims- like an apple left to rot on the ground. The Lower Quarter was even worse.
Neither Yuri or Flynn like to bring it up when they reminisce about growing up but most of the people the children they played with and the adults they saw each day had perished from that illness. Even that dickweed Francis didn't deserve it and they both agree he was asshole kid.
Seriously, fuck Francis.
But, yes, the streets of the Lower Quarter at one point were full of sick and starving people who were quickly tossed in a fire so their corpses couldn't hope to spread the plague with no remorse. It took seven months to find a cure but in that time an order had been made that the disease was spread through contact, drinking water, and more than likely birds.
People still died. Wheelbarrows still came to collect the dead and the sick off the streets to toss them in the fire after snapping their necks or suffocation.
"It's really a mercy if they're this far gone. I know it seems very cruel to you children but it's kinder to let them die with some dignity left then have them suffer longer. You'll understand I'm sure." A doctor associated with the knights and the cleanup crew would say as they tossed the bodies onto a rickety cart.
Yuri did understand but he also understood that doctors never used anesthesia on purpose because the council didn't want to pay for it. They just wanted the corpses off the streets. He's never been able to forgive that small detail in an otherwise humane and reasonable act. Why not just use some anesthesia? Because it was expensive and they were just peasants…
The cure came out when Yuri was turning eight and the announcement had the city in an uproar. There was just one problem and it came down to the same thing it always did-
Money.
The cure was new and while he's never understood it entirely apparently, they still weren't entirely sure how to manufacture it for a mass market so it was kept under a high paywall due to its limited supply. If you wanted to live you had to be rich essentially.
So, they people started stealing and handing it out on the black market for gouging high but more still cheaper prices that were also stolen from and handed out very rarely. That's what ultimately killed Flynn's mother.
Let Yuri begin by saying that Norien Scifo was beautiful. Hair even brighter and more vibrant than Flynn's and eyes bluer than any hue that he's ever known and a personality that was infectiously happy. Yuri loved her so much. He'd never call her mom but she was one of the closest things he'd known and was lucky to have ever shared any of his life with her. But good things end and Norien was one of them.
She started coughing one night, "It's nothing. Just something in my throat."
Norien started to keep a sharp distance after that. She wouldn't cradle Flynn or give him light kisses on his forehead like she was fond of. She wouldn't squeeze Yuri tight and ruffle his hair calling him her 'other troublemaker'. Mostly, Norien smiled at them and said, "I love you both so much."
They both knew it. Flynn was even the one to bring it up.
"Mom's gonna die isn't she?" He had said one night as they laid in bed hearing the coughing fit from the other room. Yuri struggled to find an answer that wasn't just the word yes and opted for squeezing Flynn's hand. He held his breath and tried not to cry because he didn't want Norien to go.
Norien wobbled every time she stepped and coughed at every other motion as she tried to work while she still could. Yuri wished she had let Flynn and Yuri go hungry. They would have been fine and she could have been around longer. Just long enough for them to do something…
They planned to sell everything they could in the house and see if it was enough for a dosage. They just needed one and then they could go back to normal. That was the plan at least, and then Flynn started coughing.
They'd been playing army with some of Flynn's toys from before he moved to the Lower Quarter on a rainy Sunday. Norien was asleep with the fevers finally forcing her to be bedridden and almost always asleep. In hindsight, they shouldn't have fought so hard against staying with Hanks until Norien 'got better' like brats but they fought to stay by her side because they could let her be alone. Flynn was going to unleash his army of lizard monsters onto the field when he doubled over in a coughing fit.
"Flynn?"
It was such a wet cough.
"Flynn!" He forced him upright and stared in fear at the way Flynn was wheezing. He'd been feeling weak and dizzy from time to for a few days. Both of them were dying and Yuri's not ashamed of admitting he cried when he realized that in all likelihood unless a miracle happened they would all die because Yuri probably would fall into a fit of fevers with Flynn.
Their bodies would get thin and gaunt like Norien's and Yuri wondered how they would feed themselves if it got so bad that neither could get out of bed. Nobody would come to visit once they realized this was a plague house… They would probably die of thirst before they died of disease lying on piss, shit, and vomit-stained sheets alone.
"I don't wanna die!" He screamed as a panic hit him were the slightest motion of his own body living sent him into the fear that he was going into a fever. Maybe Yuri was going to start coughing soon like Flynn. At some point, Flynn stopped trying to be the voice of reason and they sobbed together on the ground in a pitiful mess that only children can pull.
The desperate plea for an adult to fix something. A want for a mother to kiss and make it all go away. The attempt for harsh denial at what the future likely held. It wasn't a fear of dying young but everything that would go away. He couldn't see his friends anymore and there was no way to know if any of the people he knew who died would be there to greet him.
They stopped crying when Norien stumbled up to them and shushed them with sweet soft words and told them to calm themselves.
"We'll be just fine." Her voice wasn't that usual soft sweet tone he loved to hear instead a frayed coarse warble of a sound. "I promise."
They all lied in the same large bed that fit an adult and two children well enough that night. Her arms cradling them in a way that made the future not seem as cold. There was still one truth to their plight that leads out...
Norien's skin was dry and covered in blisters that spewed green puss when she turned on them. It oozed into the sheets creating an awful stench that could only be described as sick. A constant attempt to empty the chamber pot full of vomit or shit was the only thing keeping it from smelling worse.
Yuri remembers constantly feeling like shit was running down his leg from diarrhea and it's one of the worst physical memories he has.
They could afford a single dose.
Exactly one of them could be saved and the option was even more terrifying than all of them dying when they chose to think on it.
"What if we stole it?' Yuri said and Flynn shook his head and he understood why. They were weak from the illness and at the end of the day could never hope to successfully steal anything as they were. But it was the only plan they had.
They left on crooked steps towards the black markets wheezing from time to time. They'd sell to anyone, right? They wouldn't just take the money, right?
It was luck that the group handling the medicine didn't care much they were children. Hell, it even made one of them sympathetic enough to nudge the rest. Yuri and Flynn kept making offers to work to pay off for more once better. Anything they could say coerce them into helping.
"I just want mommy to get better." Flynn wheezed and stopped to vomit on the street. "Please mister."
Yuri held up their nearly threadbare coin purse up with a cold nod. He didn't want to die either.
The vendor took the coins and counted them up before looking back at them with pity. He handed them back two vials and looked them straight in the eye, "I shouldn't say but the medicine doesn't work once the patient develops sores. Not yet. So you kids take it yourself and make your momma comfortable."
"But the medicine is supposed to fix this!" Yuri protested and almost rejected the bottle. "You're lying! Miss Norien will get better once she has some."
The vendor had put a hand to his shoulder and looked Yuri square in the eyes, "I'm sorry. She's going to heaven."
And for what felt like the millionth time in his life Yuri burst into tears because of that look in the vendor's eyes… that cold comforting smile… that firm hand- Norien- she- mom can't go! Flynn took his hand and the only thing between them was a silent thank you and a deep sigh.
They drank the allotted three teaspoons of medicine a day each till their individual bottles were empty for six weeks. Norien died during the third.
They were barely past the point where they stopped having to force the medicine down with vomit or bile and in that time they took care of Norien best as they could till she passed.
They asked to for help on how to cook and clean more than the small basics they already knew. They washed the blister soars in a sponge bath. Norien looked so thin by the time she died. Her hair lost its sheen and her eyes glazed with the prominence of her bones being ever present. They had been out getting water when she died. Doctor said she choked on her own vomit and suffocated.
She was thrown on the fire the next day.
Yuri remembers the way Flynn still clung to her hand screaming at the coroners to let his mother go. That didn't need to burn her. Despite the knowledge that what he was clutching to was a cold, dead, husk of a corpse Flynn still held tight crying till they ended up using brute force to get him out of the way.
They watched her corpse burn like paper in the flames. She was more skin and bones than flesh and muscle now. Yuri's not sure if he cried- probably. He does know that he hated the smell. It smelled like bad cooked meat and smoke.
He's never forgotten it. He can't.
Much like how he can't erase that when the world starts crushing him he does miss having Norien's arms to tell him that nightmares aren't real. It's hard to remember her like that in death, but sometimes Yuri bends his memories just a little. Gives her grace in her departure.
"Flynn…" A grown Yuri says to Flynn one night in Aurnion as they stare out at the night sky, "I miss mom."
"Me too," Flynn shudders plucking at the grass. "Me too."