A/N: You can blame bad0mens for this one. She loaned me a book and didn't bother telling me it contained one of the only situations in fiction that really gets to me. I find the whole idea extremely upsetting and have no idea why I actually wrote this. Being a personal trigger, it prolly won't be so bad for other people. Well, some of it might.

Warning: mention of major character death.

Disclaimer: The characters and settings in this story are from Tales of Vesperia and do not belong to me.

"Are you writing to him again?"

Judy's voice floated to him from the open door, but Yuri didn't bother looking up from his desk. "Yeah."

"You could always go see him."

They'd known each other long enough that Yuri could match an expression to that tone of voice, to the combination of amusement and barely detectable concern that colored the suggestion. It didn't make him feel any better to know she was worried.

"We've been busy."

"Yes, a month ago, perhaps. Things have slowed a bit, lately. Besides, I think you've earned a rest."

"You know me: always up for another fight."

"And Repede?"

He grew still. Repede was just visible from the corner of his eye. The dog was curled up on the floor beside him, sleeping. He had barely twitched an ear at the conversation. Yuri went back to work on his letter.

"Repede's fine."

"Fine with fighting, or fine with not having seen Flynn for so long?"

Rather than answering, he added another line to the letter.

"We don't have any jobs lined up for the next couple of weeks. You could manage a short trip, and I'm sure there'll be monsters to fight along the way."

"...I'll think about it."

He sensed more than heard her leave, and sighed. She was right that it had been a while. Remembering the last time he had gone to visit Flynn, he counted backward in his head—one, two, three... It matched the time he'd been counting since.

Staring down at the page, he conquered the urge to crumple it up, rip it to shreds. Stubbornly, he finished his letter to Flynn even as he thought about how soon he could be on the road.

Yuri didn't go to Zaphias...not right away, at any rate. His real destination when he left Dahngrest was the city of Halure, home to Estelle and—more importantly in this case—Rita. He needed her knowledge and hoped it would be enough to help him.

He and Repede arrived in the city shortly after noon. The girls—women—were both happy, though quite surprised, to see him. Estelle hugged him tightly and even managed to give Repede a quick squeeze. He was getting soft.

Rita watched the whole scene with a much milder detachment than she'd affected back during their travels together. She was nearly tall enough to look him in the eye. Estelle had grown her hair out and wore it braided over one shoulder. After making sure that they would be staying for dinner at the very least, Estelle hurried off to the market to be sure she had enough for everyone. Yuri watched her go, then turned back to see Rita staring at him.

"You haven't changed," she said. To his ears, it almost sounded like an accusation.

He nodded. "I need your help."

She sighed and glanced after Estelle, though the princess was out of sight. "Can you stay a couple of days? I assume you don't want to make a big deal out of this until you know what's going on, but if we skip the chit-chat today, Estelle will know for sure something's wrong." She paused then, studying him again. "Although, it's pretty obvious just to look at you."

He'd been afraid of that. It wasn't so obvious in the mirror, but he'd seen the increasingly common looks from Karol and Judy. Not so surprising it would be even more obvious to people he didn't see on a daily basis.

"Let's hope that she doesn't draw the same conclusions."

Rita snorted and turned back to the house. "Come on. We'll get started while she's at the market."

After three days in Halure, Yuri and Repede said their good byes and took to the road. Rita had told him to come back in a month when, hopefully, she would have some answers for him. Although he originally hadn't intended to go see Flynn, the lack of good or even certain news from Rita put him in need of a friend. Besides, he wasn't fool enough to think that Flynn wouldn't find out from Estelle that he'd been by to visit. He didn't want to invite more questions than he had coming.

As they neared the city, he slowed their pace. The delay had them passing through the gates after nightfall, and they slipped through the lower quarter unnoticed. It looked smaller than it had the last time he'd been there, though far less shabby than it had for most of his life. There were buildings along the street that he didn't recognize and shops he was unfamiliar with had moved in. The Comet was still open, and he wondered if the landlady had finally rented out his old room. She must have by that time. He'd meant to send word not to hold it for him any longer, but he'd never been able to make himself sit down and write the words. It felt too much like giving up.

No one stopped him on his way into the palace gardens, and he scaled the wall to Flynn's window as easily as the first time he had done it. Light shone from Flynn's room—the new sort that mages had come up with to replace blastia. It hummed and had a strange, weak quality, but people seemed to be taking to it well. Most cities now had generators humming away to make that electricity stuff that glowed cold and watery in its bulbs. Terca Lumireis was moving on and moving forward.

Flynn was sitting at his desk, his back to the window, but he looked around at once at Yuri's knock, and winced. Rubbing the back of his neck, he got to his feet and went to unlatch the window. The ache wasn't enough to keep him from smiling with infinitely more brightness and warmth than his electric lamp.

"Yuri." He moved aside, hands hovering without quite touching until Yuri's feet were solidly on the floor. He clasped one of Yuri's hands, covering it with both of his. "I received your letter just the other day. I was beginning to think I wasn't ever going to actually see you again."

"It hasn't been that long." He grinned as he said it, as if he didn't know exactly how long it had been.

"Four years." Raising a hand, he cupped Yuri's cheek. "All that fighting must keep you young."

"Quit talking like you're getting old!"

It came out harsher than it should have, enough that Flynn stared at him, startled. There was no use making some half-assed excuse, and Yuri didn't bother trying. He turned aside and flicked the lamp on his way around the desk. It teetered, but didn't fall.

"...Brave Vesperia finally allowed you a vacation?"

He wasn't letting it go, and both of them knew it. Flynn was going to circle right back around to that little outburst on his own time. Yuri took the reprieve as both gift and challenge. Put off the inevitable long enough, and it might have to wait for Flynn's next letter.

"You're one to talk. When was the last time you made it out into the field?"

"This world isn't at war the way it was back then—against man or monster. Believe it or not, I do far more good from this room than I could against any physical foe."

There was a time when he might have argued, just for the hell of it, just to rile Flynn up. Instead, he nodded and said quietly: "I know." It brought them to something of a stalemate. Flynn had worked out that something was troubling Yuri, and he was trying to decide on the best way to go about getting the truth out of him. Both of them knew that the direct approach only ever seemed to make Yuri clam up, at least when it came to personal matters.

Standing alongside Flynn's desk, they faced each other from the corners. Yuri could see the fine lines that had begun to form at the corners of Flynn's eyes and around his mouth. They hadn't been there last time he'd visited, or perhaps he simply hadn't noticed. That was the day he'd finally realized that what he'd been seeing in the mirror wasn't right. Flynn had confirmed it by noticing almost first thing, just like he had this night. He hadn't yet put the pieces together and begun to worry though, and Yuri was keen to avoid that.

He made the first move, stepping forward with a hand outstretched. "I missed you."

Caught between what he must know Yuri was initiating and his own concerns, Flynn hesitated. "What have you been doing for so long that's made you miss me?"

Taking on every job that got thrown Brave Vesperia's way. Fighting. Conducting his own search for answers. Talking to people all across Terca Lumireis who might be able to tell him what, why, how. Looking for some sort of cure. Trying not to consider what it meant, because those thoughts left him with a deep, hollow fear that he'd never experienced before and didn't know how to fight.

He didn't say any of that. Instead, he lied.

"I can't stay long. Tomorrow, I've got to be heading back."

It was enough, after a moment's consideration, to make up Flynn's mind. He took Yuri's waiting hand and pulled him close. The kiss was sweet as spun sugar, and melted just as quickly as it was heated by passion and longing. They made their way blindly to Flynn's bed and there, in the darkness, reacquainted themselves with each other with an intimate devotion that ached inside Yuri until he thought he might cry.

When Yuri rose before dawn and climbed carefully out of bed, Flynn was still sound asleep. He gathered his clothes and dressed, then slipped back into the state room. There was a mirror hung next to the door, and it caught Yuri's eye as he passed. Slowly, he turned to face it fully and study his reflection. Straight, dark hair, charcoal eyes, long nose, thin mouth...the same face that always stared searchingly back at him. He thought about Flynn, about the light etching of lines that were beginning to betray his age. Perfectly normal, perfectly natural. They were getting older. Except, as far as he could tell, Yuri hadn't aged a day since the Adephagos had been defeated over ten years ago.

After that, Yuri and Repede returned to Dahngrest and fell back into his life of odd jobs and monster battles and fruitless searches for information about his condition. His guildmates knew something was up, but they let him have his space. Maybe it didn't seem quite as serious to them. While Karol was now taller than Yuri, Judy hadn't aged all that much since they'd first met her. As a Krityan, though, that was to be expected. They were naturally longer-lived than humans. Yuri had even considered the possibility that he might have Krityan blood in his veins. He'd never known his parents, after all. It was possible that was all there was to his extended youth. He had a cold, lingering doubt that it would actually be that simple.

Barely a month had passed before he returned to Halure, impatient and doing the best he could to avoid thinking about all the worst-case scenarios. The moment Estelle opened the door, he could tell that she knew. He hadn't really expected Rita to keep it a secret from her. She sat next to him, all concerned determination to help as Rita explained that she didn't know anything for sure yet, though she had some leads. What those leads were remained a mystery. She refused to say, not wanting Yuri chasing wild theories before he came back in another month. He could have told her that he'd be chasing wild theories, anyway, but he didn't. He kept quiet and let her run some more tests and take notes. She still had a habit of muttering to herself while she worked, but it was so disjointed that Yuri couldn't make heads or tails of it. He left none the wiser, promising to return in another month's time.

The following month was a difficult one, and not because of the uncertainty. Repede was getting old. Yuri had been trying to avoid facing that fact, but it was reaching a point where he could no longer deny that the warrior dog was taking a bigger and bigger risk every time he squared off against a monster. He was sleeping more often. His movements were getting stiff. Yuri took to sitting with him more and more, stroking his fur and trying so hard to keep his mind blank. More often than not, Repede would chase him away with a bite. He didn't want to be pitied or coddled but, much as Yuri tried to respect his wishes, Repede was more than family after all their years together, and the thought that those years were coming to an end left a constant pain in Yuri's chest.

They made it back to Halure at the end of the month, though Yuri had to be twice as quick when monsters came after them to be sure no harm came to Repede. The dog was a warrior to the bone, but he couldn't fight the effects of time. Pride left him grouchy after that, but at least he was alive and well and capable of being grouchy.

Estelle and Rita had company. Flynn had been enjoying a cup of tea at the table, but he stood when Rita led Yuri into the kitchen. One guess as to who had invited him. Yuri waved off Estelle's apology. He would have had to tell Flynn eventually, anyway, as well as Karol and Judy. If Rita had his answer, might as well save the trouble of explaining twice.

They all took seats around the table. Estelle fixed Yuri a cup of tea and put down a bowl of water for Repede. She had a basket of sweet rolls that she set out in the middle of the table. Nobody touched them. No one spoke until she had finished moving around the kitchen and taken her seat. The ambient noise of the house rose around them like warm seawater, thick and suffocating. It was Rita who spoke into that weighty quiet.

"I know what's wrong with you, though I still haven't a clue why it happened. With some more research, I might be able to figure that out. I don't know if it can be reversed."

Yuri appreciated honesty. Better to be let down than to be given false hope. He'd always trusted Rita not to sugarcoat her findings.

"You told me that your best guess for when this started was when we fought the Adephagos. From what I've come up with, I'd say that's probably pretty accurate. You might not look like you've changed, but that's only on the outside. The reason you don't seem to be aging is that your body is acting like an Entelexia."

"I'm absorbing aer the way they do?"

"Yes, but that process isn't simple. It's tied into everything an Entelexia is. For your body to be doing that..."

"...You don't think I'm human anymore."

There was no gasp of surprise from Estelle, and only the tiniest flicker of some hastily-buried emotion from Flynn. They'd obviously been told already. Rita's hands curled into fists on the table. Her expression hardened, and she went on.

"You aren't. Not physically, anyway. What happened on Tarqaron—the conversion of the cores, the exchange of energy that you channeled—it changed you into something else. Your aging hasn't stopped, it's just slowed to the same rate as any Entelexia."

"So...what does that mean? I'm just going to keep on living until I turn into a Spirit?"

His hand flew to his chest. Did he have an apatheia forming within him? Was aer crystallizing somewhere in his body, trapping the essence of who he was? If he was killed, would he leave behind a rock rather than a corpse?

"Yuri..." Flynn's voice was soft. His hand had settled warm and heavy on Yuri's shoulder. "It'll be okay. Rita said that there might be a way to turn you back to normal."

That wasn't what she'd said, though. He looked Rita in the eye, and the tiny shake of her head gave him a sick sense of vindication. It occurred to him that she might be wrong, but he knew that was only the rising panic talking. He'd seen it often enough. He swallowed back the urge to demand she check again, redo her tests, go back over her notes. This was Rita. The study of such things had been her life's work. She was a friend. She wouldn't have given him such news if she hadn't been completely sure.

Without a word, Yuri shoved his chair back from the table and left. He needed to think. He needed to get away from those eyes that stared so pityingly at him.

He should have expected that Flynn would follow him. Maybe he'd even wanted it. He could use a good fight. Still, he didn't slow down, and Flynn had to dash to catch up to him.

For a while, they walked without speaking. Whether Flynn was letting Yuri get his head together or marshaling his own anger over having been left out of the loop initially, he couldn't say. He realized that he wanted Flynn to be angry. His own thoughts were sliding every which way over themselves, taking his emotions with them. He'd have picked a fight himself if he had been capable of sustaining his anger long enough to manage it. As it was, he cycled through the urge to throw a punch and the certainty that doing so would be useless half a dozen times before they came to a stop in a small, grassy dip behind a stand of trees.

Searching for something to say, a shaky laugh burst from Yuri's lips. "I guess it really was fighting that kept me looking so young."

Flynn's arms were around him in a heartbeat and, suddenly, Yuri didn't want to fight, didn't want to talk about it, didn't want to think. He twisted in the embrace and frantically kissed Flynn's brow and cheeks and hair—anywhere he could reach—until Flynn gave in and kissed him back. His hands were rough where they stroked Yuri's cheeks, and he cursed himself for having wasted so much time trying to hide and handle things on his own. He felt a terrible certainty for what the future held but, for just a little while, there on the soft grass with the rustling of the leaves masking their gasps...for just a little while, Yuri let Flynn drive away all the fears that haunted him.

Afterward, as they straightened their clothes and picked bits of grass out of Yuri's hair, Flynn asked, quietly: "How long have you known?"

He hadn't known, not until Rita had laid out her findings.

Still don't know for sure, whispered traitorous hope, but Yuri knew better than to listen to that voice.

"Can we talk about this some other time?" He ran a hand through his hair, staring back toward the city. "It's a lot to take in."

"Can you promise me that there will be a next time? You can't think I never noticed that you'd been avoiding me for four years. Is that when you first realized? What kept you quiet for so long?"

Denial, mostly. Back then, he'd still been able to convince himself that he was only imagining the lack of changes in his reflection. He'd thought that, even if it was true, he'd be able to find someone that could explain it and get him back to normal. Then, there had been all the little fears that had wormed their way into his mind at night. How had it happened? What else about him had changed? What if he never found a cure? What if he just went on living, even after everybody...?

Some of what he was thinking must have shown on his face. Concern in his eyes, Flynn reached out to stroke his cheek. "Yuri...?"

"I'll tell you about it another time." He covered Flynn's hand with his own, closing his eyes and turning his face to place a kiss in his palm.

Flynn sighed. "You have to promise you'll visit. I know you get busy with Brave Vesperia, but once in a season shouldn't be asking too much."

"I promise."

He realized then that Flynn had no idea how badly this scared him. If he did, he couldn't have asked such a thing so easily. That promise meant that Yuri would be forced to return to his side again and again to watch Flynn grow old without him. He had little hope that Rita could cure him. The change had happened when energy from that blade of light had washed over and through him. What force available now could undo that?

They returned to the little cottage. Rita had little else to say. She ran a few more tests, took some readings and promised to keep researching his condition even if, in her opinion, it was unlikely that she would be able to reverse it. Estelle would talk to the Spirits. Flynn swore to set the empire's most talented mages and scholars on the problem. Yuri would continue his own inquiries as he traveled. He had no real hope, but he refused to stop moving. With his friends around him, he knew he could cope because he also knew that, if they couldn't find a cure, the day would come when he would have to cope without them.

Flynn spent the night with him in the unused second bedroom and, although they shared a bed, nothing passed between them save for soft kisses and touches meant to reassure. Yuri drifted off to the feeling of Flynn's fingers carding through his hair, and an old song from their childhood, floating through the night air in his soft voice.

Dawn woke Yuri, though it seemed to have lost its power over Flynn. He left the house quietly, waking only Repede who stretched and yawned on the front step. Yuri looked down the road that led out of town and through the open countryside. He knelt before Repede and ruffled the dog's fur.

"Why don't you stay with Flynn, okay pal? He needs someone to keep him from staying cooped up in that office of his."

Repede groaned at him. He knew better.

"I know. He made me promise to visit. We can see how it's going then, all right?"

It was a sign of how tired the old warrior was getting that he agreed. Yuri leaned forward and hugged him tight. It wasn't a 'good bye,' he told himself, just a 'see you later.' He left Repede sitting in front of the cottage, and began his journey back to Dahngrest.

Very little changed after that. Flynn still had his duties as Commandant. Estelle still had her books, and Rita had her research. Yuri still had Karol and Judy and their work as Brave Vesperia. Progress marched forward. The world as it had been was left behind piece by piece, mostly for the better. All the time spent searching for answers yielded no helpful results, and Yuri almost grew accustomed to the looks he would get from people who recognized him as he walked the streets of Dahngrest, Halure, or Zaphias; looks of concern and awe, pity and envy. The envious looks were the worst. As far as Yuri was concerned, his altered nature was nothing short of a curse. He felt sometimes that he ought to simply go perch himself atop the crumbling remains of Tarqaron and wait for the whole ruinous tower to crumble in and take him with it. He didn't, though. He couldn't, even when things were at their worst.

Repede was the first of his family that he lost. Barely a year after leaving his partner with Flynn, he received word that Repede had passed on. He knew there would be more losses to come, but how was he to brace himself for such things?

Yuri was at Flynn's side when his other half died. Even having been there for weeks, even having seen it coming, Yuri nearly went mad with grief. All his sorrow and rage turned inward, howling through his mind until his reason was lost within that dark tumult. When he came back to his senses, he was told he'd been catatonic for over a day.

He held himself together for Flynn's funeral, then disappeared into the dwindling wildernesses of Terca Lumireis for the better part of a year. He slew hordes of monsters with a sort of self-destructive carelessness. Still youthful and sharp, with decades of experience to back him up, he barely had to be aware of the fight. Instinct guided his blade and kept him alive. He mourned for Flynn the only way he knew how: alone.

Estelle and Rita went peacefully in their sleep within a few days of each other. Karol led his guild, long since come to power as one of the five master guilds well into his golden years. He died surrounded by family. One of his great-grandsons looked older than Yuri.

Even Judy, Krityan and long-lived, went to her rest before him. Yuri was there for her last breath, as well. Still not looking a day older than he had when they'd fought off the Adephagos, he held her withered hand and promised to be a good friend to Ba'ul. By then, he understood the Entelexia as well as he had Repede, and their promise to take care of each other gave her comfort as she smiled her last.

In the years after the family he had found had all left the world behind, Yuri wandered. He met new people and liked them, laughed with them, but for a long, long time, he didn't open his heart to any of them. He knew what would come of it.

Eventually, he allowed himself to make new friends, find new families. They didn't ever eclipse the grief, but they could outshine it for a time, and he had found that he could bear loss easier than loneliness. He found new places for himself in the world where he could protect the people that became important to him.

Though he'd never believed in reincarnation, he couldn't help but look for signs of his family in the people he met. He looked for their quirks, their passions. He searched for people with strong hearts.

He looked for Flynn in all the lovers he took through the unending years. Blonde and blue-eyed caught his attention, but it was the earnest, stubborn ones who held his interest. He chose lovers he could debate with, fight with—lovers who were serious about leaving the world a better place than the one they'd been born into. He wondered sometimes if any of them ever saw something familiar in him, if they ever felt some unexplained connection.

None of them ever mentioned it.