i'm consistently in a state of emotional stress and writing doesn't actually help. it just distracts
Flynn functioned in society due to a series of a complicated and somewhat hazardous prescription of drugs. His life without Yuri depended on them to keep him functioning when a part of him would whisper darkly over his shoulder that he could always just run back to him.
That Yuri was his soulmate and therefore what he needed. That he needed Yuri because he loved Yuri and anything less than that- the pen in his hand snapped.
Flynn was well aware of how much his body screamed and demanded for Yuri but he just learned to tune it out. Learned to bury that want to the depths of his soul and live with the joy of being without Yuri. Of coming home to an empty room.
This was what he wanted so why the hell did his body have to make him cry? Flynn didn't want to cry.
Or at least it used to…
Flynn looked over the paperwork in his hands and signed off on it as he debated what his next course of action should be. So much to do and never enough time. He sighed.
After years of his emotional state being wrecked and needed to be managed by medication, it felt wrong to be essentially normal. Oh, sure he saw the pitied looks in people's eyes as they muttered what was probably something along the lines of 'I heard his soulmate was killed by Alexei' or something of the sort.
"The last commandant didn't have a soulmate either."
"What's your point?"
"Well, doesn't that mean he'll turn out like the last one. Think about it, people who lose their soulmates always turn out a little nutty."
Flynn would subtly cough into his hands when he heard statements like these to remind people he was still there. He understood the logic though. Free will was the anomaly and now Flynn was a part of it.
Alone and a part of it.
Sodia gripped his hand in assurance, "Sir, I didn't realize that you and Yuri..."
"It's fine." It's not fine. But it has to be. Flynn just wishes he felt more for the loss. But all of it seems to have just poured out on top of Zaude and left him empty. He feels guilt about that.
"He was my best friend you'd think I'd cry more," He thinks.
Maybe Flynn was just too broken to brother.
"You don't need to pretend for me. I understand that he was- that he meant-"
"Please leave Sodia." He just wants to be alone. When all the eyes are gone his hands drift to a bottle of pills that he knows he technically no longer needs.
Just one. Just one to make him feel grief. Just to make him feel normal.
Flynn swallows the pill and takes that familiar vinegar in. A warmth spreads and Flynn finds himself taken aback by the way his eyes water.
His eyes watered and sorrow pools in his chest. He's not sure why but this melancholy leaves him with a disturbed sense of joy.
He's glad that this pill is forcing him to cry over loss. To feel something when every time he's thought of Yuri in the past few weeks it's been nothing. So much nothing.
Is that it? Is this just how freedom is?
Or is it simply he just doesn't know how to deal with loss? God, he should be stronger than this. He should be better because it's pathetic that he's run back to the taste of vinegar.
He's running back to what fate had decided was the taste of love. Strangely he can't even argue with that logic because really what else would love taste like, sugar?
No sugar is cloying and empty. It's one note on its own and even mixed in facets like chocolate and such it's fairly simple. Love is - should be - complex and messy.
But, love as much as Flynn has tried to fight it is not sour like lemons. No love is bitter and it bites but it is sweet. It does stick and it does burn in the wound but it stays with you like a medicine. It's healthy.
It's vinegar.
It's getting frustrated and yelling on a summer evening but still laughing by the fountain later. It's forgiving after being completely pissed at another. It's so many things and the longer he thinks about it the closer he gets to smashing those pills till they're dust under his foot.
"Fuck you, fate," Flynn spits and recomposes himself.