A/N: It's not what the title sounds like.
Disclaimer: The characters and settings in this story are from Tales of Vesperia and do not belong to me.
Flynn stood silently outside the door to the barracks' showers, not sure himself if he was there to guard or hold vigil. Few of his fellow knights came down the corridor, and those who did took one look at him and decided that their shower could wait. The rush of water from behind the door had become a constant, something he felt with sudden irrationality must have always been at the edge of his awareness, would always be there, a hiss of background noise, an aural curtain which obscured details but couldn't hide reality away completely. He'd lost track of time ages ago, long before the muffled retching from within had finally stopped. The water must have long run cold, but it continued its hypnotic rush, washing the minutes away along with the blood and the vomit while Flynn waited mutely outside.
They'd been told by their superior officers time and time again that killing a man was no easy thing. It was much more difficult than learning the skills necessary to wield a sword effectively, much harder than the actual, physical force required for the act itself. To take the life of another human being was a weighty thing, they'd warned, but how could words have prepared them—sheltered youths as Flynn now realized they had been, despite the rough conditions they'd grown up in and in spite of—how could words have prepared them for the reality of it?
A small, ignoble part of him was relieved to know that Yuri was taking it so hard, to know that, when the time came for Flynn to bloody his own hands in the service of the Empire, he wouldn't be less of a man should it take the same toll on him.
"Flynn…?"
As if sensing his thoughts, Yuri's voice broke above the water, a croak, a feeble, tentative link back to the rest of the world. He shifted only to turn his ear closer to the door.
"I'm here."
Beneath the hiss of the shower—It was such a still sound. When had the splashes, the signs of movement stopped?—there was silence for several long moments. Then, quietly: "…something wrong with me."
Flynn entered, slowly, passing by empty shower stalls and Yuri's rumpled, singed, bloodstained uniform where it lay discarded against the wall. Only the door to the last stall was closed, and the area for several feet around it had been soaked. Water trickled down the walls. The floor was mottled with puddles. He stepped through them—splish! splish!—and pulled open the door.
The first few icy droplets to hit his face made him flinch and shiver. In the far corner, Yuri sat on the stone floor, knees drawn up before him, naked, drenched, and wretched. His head was bowed as if tied down by the thick, waterlogged ropes of his hair. When he looked up, Flynn shuddered, put suddenly in mind of childhood ghost stories about drowning victims who would return to enfold the unwary in their bitter embraces and drag them down, down, down.
He stepped into the shower, biting the inside of his cheek against the cold as he reached to turn off the tap. The last of the water gurgled away through the drain in the floor, and he looked down on his sodden friend.
"There's something wrong with me," Yuri insisted. His voice was quiet, thick with emotion and hoarse, but largely untouched by the shaking in his limbs. "He deserved it. He was going to sacrifice the whole town. If it weren't for him, Niren…!" His face crumpled, his eyes leaving Flynn's for the moment it took to regain his tattered composure. "If it wasn't for him…. He deserved to die!"
Until that point, Flynn hadn't realized that Yuri had been crying. Without the water spouting from the shower to hide them, his tears became apparent. They welled up, overflowing down his cheeks, dripping off his chin, and Yuri neither raised a hand to brush them away, nor turned his face aside.
Why can't I be glad he's dead?
His misery demanded an answer, but Flynn had no answer to give. He loved Yuri all the more for his suffering, for the fact that he couldn't take a life without escaping the consequences. He would rather see Yuri right as he was at that moment—furious and hurt and miserable—than to ever see him indifferent to death and suffering the way Garista had been. He felt terrible for thinking it, but he knew that Yuri would be able to get past this. To become what Garista had been…there was no coming back from that. People like him could be stopped, one way or another, but they couldn't be healed.
Slowly, Flynn knelt before his friend, ignoring the chilly puddle that seeped in along his shins and against his knees. Yuri was wounded, but not broken. He would pick himself up again in time. For the moment, Flynn did what little he could to offer comfort. Leaning forward, he wrapped his arms around Yuri's back, feeling clammy skin beneath his fingers and damp, clinging cold wherever the two of them were pressed close together. Tears wet his cheek, almost scalding by comparison, and a humid exhalation over his collarbone raised goose bumps across his skin. He had no words to offer and he bowed his head over Yuri's, unsurprised as tears blurred his vision. He let them fall unchecked to be absorbed into the inky darkness of Yuri's hair.