Inspiration – Kiddie outfits for the little versions of Yuri and Flynn. :) They were probably such adorable, mischievous little hellions as kids. (Yes, the word choice is deliberate.)

Teaser – "Hand me that spanner," Rita ordered, pointing to the tool in question. "If you're going to be awake at this ungodly hour with me, then you're going to hand me tools and tell me stories about being a kid with a best friend." (AKA – Rita gets hooked on Yuri's stories about growing up with Flynn, but will never admit it, and maybe realizes along the way that she has acquired a weird family that she most definitely hadn't been looking for.)

Observations

"So whats with this obsession you guys have with this Flynn anyway?" Rita asked as they headed towards Halure.

"It's just them," Karol said, waving at Yuri and Estellise. "I've never met him."

"He's the knight Estelle has a crush on," Yuri added quickly.

"Oh, not that again!" Estellise huffed, scowling at Yuri. "I don't have a crush on him. Why do you keep telling people that?!"

"Because aggravating you is amusing?" Yuri offered with a smirk.

Estellise just huffed again. "Flynn is a mutual friend of ours, though I've only known him for a few years. Yuri's his childhood friend and someone Flynn told me I could trust if I ever needed help outside of the castle."

"He… really said that?" Yuri sounded a little surprised, or maybe a little touched. Rita was still figuring him out.

"Of course he did," Estellise assured him. "Flynn even had me memorize the directions to the Comet Inn so I could find you, if it ever came to that. Though… I think I'd have been hopelessly lost that day if I'd had to seek you out all on my own. It's lucky for me that we ran into one another in the castle before I knew Flynn was gone."

"Huh..." Yuri looked away and muttered, "I wish he'd have mentioned that to me himself."

It was weird, but it kind of looked like Yuri's cheeks had gone a little pink. Most likely it was just the light from the sunset…

"So you must have traveled to a lot of places for your research, Rita," Estellise gushed, looking excited. "This is my first time outside the Zaphias barrier and it's been so… strange and wonderful."

Based on some of her and Yuri's comments from earlier, it was probably her first time anywhere outside of the castle, never mind Zaphias itself. But, whatever. If they wanted to hide the fact that Estellise was the princess, then that was no skin off her nose. Just so long as at least one of them realized the only person fooled was Karol, then Rita wouldn't feel too insulted by their attempt to skirt around the truth. "Yeah, I've been to Halure once or twice and to Capua Nor once when I was really young. Mostly I do research in the local forests. Accidentally blew up one of my cabins once when a couple of knights showed up unannounced while I was sleeping. The Captain thought it was hilarious; his protege not so much."

"I've done a lot of traveling lately too," Karol spoke up, then added sheepishly, "but this is the first time I've been an entire continent away from Dahngrest. What about you, Yuri?"

"This is the first time I've been away from Zaphias since I was a knight," Yuri answered. "I was stationed at Shizontania and… things went very badly there." Repede wandered over to his master and rubbed his head against Yuri's hand before sidling away again. "Well… when we were kids, Flynn and I would venture a little ways outside of town, in the areas patrolled by the knights. It was pretty stupid of us, but we thought we could handle anything as long as we stuck together."

Rita wondered why Yuri had left the knights and why Shizontania sounded so familiar. Something bad had happened there? Since Yuri had left the Knights and Flynn clearly hadn't… did something come between them then?

Sighing, Rita shrugged off her curiosity. What did it matter anyway? It's not like she cared about these people or anything. She just wanted to study Estellise, figure out if she was connected to the Rizomata formula, and then go back home. No attachments whatsoever.

"Wow, he's… different than I thought he'd be," Karol said, flopping onto the bed.

"Off! Off! You're going to soak the whole bed!" Rita exclaimed, shoving the kid onto the floor while Estelle disappeared into the bathroom in order to be the first to change into dry night-clothes.

"Owwww," Karol lamented from the floor.

"She's got a point, Karol," Yuri observed, toweling his own hair dry while another towel hung about his shoulders. "I don't want to have to sleep in a cold, damp bed."

"Sorry..."

Yuri waved off the apology. "So, if Flynn's not what you thought he'd be like, then… what did you think he'd be like?"

"Ah, well..."

"You're kind of a stereotypical rogue," Rita spoke up. "I, for one, thought he'd be more like you. Instead he's the stereotype for the perfect chivalrous knight. You two must argue all the time."

"Feels that way a lot lately," Yuri admitted. "He used to be more trouble than I am. We used to sneak into an apple orchard just outside of town for fun. Most of the time it was my idea, since I like apples more than he does, but the first time we did it was all his idea."

"Really, what happened?"

"Ah… well..." Yuri frowned for a moment, as if he were reconsidering telling the story. But then he shrugged. "I was worried we'd get caught, but Flynn wanted to teach me to climb trees and he swore those trees were the best to learn on. So we..."

"All done, who's next?" Estellise called, vacating the bathroom.

"In a minute," Karol demurred. "Yuri's telling us a story about him and Flynn sneaking into an orchard to climb trees."

"Oh, Flynn told me you two used to do that all the time," Estellise exclaimed, settling onto the bed. "That you never listened to him about getting caught or getting hurt."

"Getting caught?" Yuri rolled his eyes. "That's rich, coming from him. The first time we went there was all his idea. Anyway, he brought me there to teach me how to climb. Flynn was always so good at everything he did, so he was already a natural. Zipped up and down a few trees, trying to convince me that it was safe and I had nothing to be worried about. He wouldn't let me get stuck..." his tone softened some at the memory.

Rita wondered what it would have been like, to be so young and have someone to trust to come to the rescue if she got lost or trapped…

"Well, I wasn't about to let him think I was scared or anything, so I finally started climbing up one of the trees. Naturally, about halfway up, one of the limbs snapped and I broke my arm hitting the ground. Flynn freaked out; I swear, he was crying more than I was and I was the one in pain.

"Anyway, as soon as my arm was healed and strong enough to hold my weight again, I went back to the orchard and climbed that same tree. Flynn was so angry with me for it, but it was nice to finally get the view from the top and munch on an ill-gotten apple or two. He hated it every time I went back there, but he always went with me anyway."

"Why did you keep going back?" Estellise asked quietly.

"Yeah, if that happened to me I'd never want to see that place again," Karol added.

"I wanted Flynn to see that we shouldn't let the things that hurt us hold us back. I think he got it, eventually. Took a while, though." Yuri wandered into the bathroom. "Well, Karol, if you're gonna be slow about it, then I'm going next." The door shut.

"Huh..." Karol settled on the bed again, pensively.

"Off!" Rita snapped, shoving the kid to the floor again.

"Why can't you just ask?" Karol said morosely from the ground.

"Why can't you just think before doing?" Rita snapped back, scowling and crossing her arms.

Estellise, however, was watching the bathroom door with an odd expression on her face. "When Flynn would tell me about them sneaking into the orchard, he always said that Yuri was never one to let anything hold him back." She sounded a little envious, but whether it was of Yuri's friendship with Flynn, his innate sense of freedom, or some combination of the two, Rita wasn't sure.

There had been an odd tone to Yuri's voice, though. 'I swear, he was crying more than I was… I wanted Flynn to see that we shouldn't let the things that hurt us hold us back.' What was it like to care about someone so much that their pain hurt more than your own?

Or to care so much that you'd do something dangerous, and maybe even scared you, to make that person stronger?

When Estelle risked her life for Rita's, she felt like she understood Flynn a little better. She never, ever wanted Estelle to risk herself like that again.

'What do you think Estellise thinks of me?'

Such a stupid question, really. Estelle wanted Rita to be safe, even at the cost of her own safety. How did she even manage to deserve friendship like that?

"Well, I was taken in by one of the orphanages Altosk runs after my parents died. I guess that's when I started really looking up to the Don," Karol told Estelle. "I don't really remember my parents, though."

"I don't remember mine either," Yuri told the kid. "I had been on the streets a long while already by the time Sir Finath found me."

"Sir… Finath?" Estelle echoed curiously.

"Flynn's father. Sir Finath Scifo. Flynn looks a lot like him these days, or at least at lot like how I remember him being." Yuri's hands tightened for a moment before relaxing at his sides. "He died saving the lower quarter from a blastia that overloaded, like the one at Shi… at Heliord," he corrected himself. "Flynn doesn't like talking about how his father died, so don't say anything about it to him, okay?"

"Still hits him pretty hard, huh?" Rita thought a moment, then asked, "how long ago did he die?" Couldn't have been that long ago, right?

"Hmmm… we were thirteen, so about eight years ago." Yuri's hands tightened again, "his Aunt took Flynn away to the public quarter around that time and left me behind in the lower quarter orphanage. Hanks took me in not too long after; said he wanted to keep me out of trouble. Flynn was always sneaking out to visit me even though it always got him into trouble."

"Why didn't she take you too?" Rita asked, the question slipping out without her permission. She already knew why, after all. Because people can't be trusted.

"She didn't like me. Never did. She visited a handful of times while I was living with them and argued with Finath every time about bringing in a street rat like me to stay in the same room as her perfect nephew. She didn't think we could hear, or maybe she just didn't care. If she noticed that Flynn resented her for it, then I suppose she blamed that on me too.

"Eventually, though, she'd had enough and she told Flynn that if he ran off to visit 'that street trash' again, she'd kick him out… and so he packed his things. Came to stay with me and Hanks and got a job waiting tables at the Inn where I was the cook's assistant. We went back to sharing everything like we'd never even left off..." Yuri trailed off wistfully.

"Funny thing is, we didn't argue even half so much then as we do now."

They'd last seen Flynn just hours earlier, but Rita had the impression that Yuri had missing Flynn for far longer than that.

"What changed?" Karol asked.

Yuri shrugged and stood up. "We got older and our differences finally started mattering. We made a promise, when we were kids, that Flynn thinks we can only keep if we're both part of the Knights. He… he doesn't understand that I just don't fit there." Quieter, almost mournfully, Yuri added, "or he doesn't trust me to find another way to keep it."

"But..." Estelle stopped and looked down.

To Rita's surprise, her hand had followed her mouth's example and acted without permission. It rested, lightly, on Estelle's arm… which was warm and kind of nice. Rita had to mentally kick herself away from the distraction. "I think maybe we've wandered into painful territory he doesn't really want to talk about," Rita mumbled. "Let's give him some space."

Never let it be said she was completely tactless.

"Flynn and I used to go fishing all the time," Yuri said with a grin, having finished whittling a long stick into sharpness at one end.

"Don't you need fishing line and a lure for that?" Estelle asked, looking ever so confused.

"Nope. Spear fishing," Yuri said cheerfully, slamming the pointy stick right into a fish in the creek.

Estelle eeped with shock and Judy sniffed in mock-disdain. "I can do better than that."

"Better than getting a fish first try?" Yuri asked, depositing the dead fish on the bank and handing over the make-shift fishing spear with a grin. "Show off for us, then."

She did, neatly spearing two fish at once, and then presented Yuri with the fish with a flourish while he worked on gutting the first. "I don't gut fish, but I'll happily catch them for you and eat the final product," she told him with a grin.

"Works for me. Two more should be enough." He shooed her off and then waved off a rather half-hearted offer of help from a very green looking Karol.

Rita just picked up a knife and started helping him. "I'm not bad at fishing either, but I do prefer a line and a lure to go with the stick," Rita offered up. Then she added, "seems like fishing is more fun with friends."

"Seems that way," Yuri agreed mildly, giving Rita an amused, almost brotherly look.

"What's your favorite story about fishing with Flynn?" she asked, grinning in amusement as Estelle tried to get closer to hear better while steadfastly ignoring all the fish guts and bones.

"Ah, well..." Yuri started talking and Rita listened more to his tone then his words.

Yeah, there it was. Yuri was longing for Flynn's time and company. It dripped off his words in equal amounts of joy and pain. She wondered when the last time they'd been able to relax and have fun together had been.

What worried Rita – which, of course, she'd never admit to – was that though she could tell that Flynn missed spending time with Yuri too… she couldn't tell if Flynn missed Yuri the same way Yuri missed Flynn.

Unfortunately, she wasn't sure how it was that Yuri missed him, other than it was… more than a friend would miss a friend. Like… like maybe Yuri was missing his other half.

"He always won and then he'd have the nerve to say 'are you alright, Yuri?' Ugh, really, it's like he had no clue that he was just adding insult to injury. Just 'cause he kicked my ass doesn't mean I'm so fragile that he'd have actually hurt me. He was always way too much of a goody-goody for that… even when he was still making trouble."

"Can't sleep?"

"Just… what Flynn and I said back there..." Yuri trailed off pensively and shook his head.

"I bet he knows what you really meant," Rita said. "He was trying to give you a wake up call and I can't say I don't think he isn't right… somewhat anyway. But you were trying to give him one too and I don't think you're wrong either. Sometimes words get in the way; it's the fact that you're both still trying that matters. This is why I like blastia; so much less complicated than people. Hand me that spanner," she added, pointing to the tool in question. "If you're going to be awake at this ungodly hour with me, then you're going to hand me tools and tell me stories about being a kid with a best friend."

Yuri nodded, handed over the spanner, and told Rita about Shizontania. About being eighteen and stupid, thinking that with Flynn at his side they could do anything… only being too oblivious to see how Flynn was slipping away into a depression about living up to his father until Flynn started lashing out at him, pushing him away. Yuri pushed back out of instinct and everything just sort of spiraled out of control.

He told her about the exploding blastia and Garista's experiments and the town's inevitable destruction. About Captain Niren, who gave his life in defiance of orders so that the people he'd sworn to protect would live… and how his death had, for a time, brought Yuri and Flynn back together in their determination to avenge him and how, when they'd confronted Garista with the truth, they'd been forced to kill in self defense.

Rita realized, with a sort of painful sorrow, that the funny Captain who'd interrupted her sleep and inadvertently caused her to blow up her research cabin was dead. It was a shame, really. For a knight, he'd seemed like a nice guy. He actually cared about people and didn't yell at her for talking bad about the Empire's golden-boy Garista.

"You must have thought that everything was going to work out, after that. Between you and Flynn, anyway." Rita paused while Yuri nodded.

"Things were better for a while," Yuri agreed, "but then he started asking when I was going to rejoin the knights and… he really didn't get it. I could have made it in Niren's brigade, but in any other… it would have killed me to stay. But no matter how I try to tell him how I feel about the knights and everything else… it's like he's not listening, or just hearing the bits he likes and ignoring the rest. But the blockade in the mountains is the perfect example of why I couldn't stay. There's no way that could have been a legal action, but because the Commandant orders it done and orders are orders… that makes it legal somehow. Might shouldn't..."

"Make right?" Rita finished for him. "No, it shouldn't. But sometimes it does. Sometimes it's the only way to put a stop to something terrible… like a person who sics monsters on children for their own warped amusement." Yuri flinched.

"I know what the consequences of my actions are..."

"But have you accepted them? 'Cause if you had… I think you'd have let Flynn arrest you back there." She gave him a brief smile, adding, "I'm glad you didn't, though. If Raven were the second most competent person on this boat instead of you -"

"I'm assuming you're counting yourself as the first most competent," Yuri muttered with an amused smirk.

"- then I'd probably have to drown him for the sake of my sanity," Rita finished, ignoring his interruption pointedly. She paused and then asked, "do you think Judith had a good reason for what she did?"

"I don't know… I hope so."

"Me too. Dragon freak she might have been, but I liked having her around."

"He's as angry at himself as he is at you." She's not going soft, Rita tells herself. She just doesn't want to keep looking at the kicked puppy expression on Flynn's face whenever he glances up from planning with Sodia and Witcher.

They were all trapped in a large tent for the evening as a sandstorm raged outside; no one had wanted to risk Ba'ul in those winds.

"What?" Flynn asked, confused.

"We trusted Raven – he trusted Raven – and it turns out the old man was probably involved in Alexei's kidnapping of Estelle. So he's mad at himself for not seeing it. Yuri wouldn't have taken it out on you if he didn't think you could handle, it though. So could you please stop looking at him like a forlorn kitten? It's weird and I think even Karol may get over how much you intimidate him soon to try and cheer you up."

Flynn smiled ruefully. "Thank you, Miss Mordio. I'll try to be less irritatingly obvious about it, at any rate."

"Small favors," she allowed. "Also, it's Rita, not Miss Mordio. Mage Mordio if you absolutely have to be formal. I'd rather you weren't but I won't hold my breath hoping."

"Mage Mordio," he agreed with a teasing look.

Flynn started to head back to his posse, but Rita said, "he misses you. All the more because he thinks that all those stories he tells us, about the times when it was just the two of you against the world, are just that now. Stories. He hates being left behind."

She wasn't sure he'd hear her, over the roaring and whistling of the wind, but Flynn nodded. "I miss him too. But… I thought I was the one getting left behind these days. I suppose he and I have been talking past one another too much of late." He offered her a more honest smile. "Thank you… Rita."

Rita never wanted to see anyone look the way Flynn did when they had to tell him Yuri had fallen.

Grief overtook his features and he had to brace himself against the stairwell wall. His tanned face went pale. Rita had honestly thought he was going to collapse. It was almost a relief to have the excuse to go home to research the Adephagos where she wouldn't have to watch Flynn tear himself apart searching for his beloved friend.

She'd wondered, before, if Flynn felt as strongly about Yuri as Yuri did for him. Rita wished, now, that she didn't have that answer.

Yuri Lowell was a jerk. A complete and utter jerk, making her worry like that.

She hugged him anyway.

For too long, Rita's only family had been blastia. She hadn't been looking for a new one. She hadn't wanted to deal with people, not with her father abandoning her mother after getting her pregnant or her mother choosing dangerous research over her daughter. People betrayed her and abandoned her and made her feel like she wasn't worth anything because she was too young and emotional to be respected for her hard work. People made her feel like a freak.

But then Yuri, Karol, and Estelle broke into her life. Estelle treated Rita like she was amazing… like knowing her was an absolute delight. Karol deferred to her knowledge and teased her and made her feel like protecting him… when he wasn't so annoying that she wanted to swat him. Yuri…

Yuri treated her like an equal. Like her age and gender didn't make her unworthy of respect. Even when he'd thought she might be a thief – which she knew he gave up on way sooner than he was willing to admit to – he treated her with more respect and dignity than her fellow researchers. He was the first adult in years who just accepted that she was every bit as competent as she claimed – since his former Captain, really – and… he was the reason there were suddenly people in her life that mattered to her.

He was the reason Estelle left the castle and why Karol came with them to Aspio. He was the reason they met Raven and teamed up with Judy. He'd brought this bizarre family into Rita's life and it had all nearly fallen apart with what they'd thought was his death.

Rita wondered if this was how it felt to have an obnoxious older brother.

She kind of liked it.

When Yuri and Flynn reunited at what would later be known as Aurnion, the two of them defeated a ridiculous number of monsters with only Repede as their backup. By the time the rest of them reached the duo, after the 'Vesperia 1' had annihilated the rest of the aer sick monsters in the area, the two were sitting on the ground, back to back, talking about… something, but whatever it was had Yuri gesturing wildly and Flynn laughing, a wild, joyous expression on his face as he kept toying with Yuri's hair.

"They should just kiss already," Rita muttered, just quiet enough that only Judy's pointed ears could pick up the comment.

Judy doubled over with laughter of her own and refused to explain the joke to Raven, even as she used his arm to keep from falling over entirely. Later she told Rita that Yuri and Flynn weren't self-aware yet to recognize their own feelings, much less realize those feelings were mutual.

Having a sister was kind of nice too.

Maybe, Rita mused to herself, she should start asking for stories about what it was like to grow up with Ba'ul for a best friend.

A/N – And… that's a wrap. This was just an odd little Rita introspection piece… not that I could totally let go of the Fluri. (Because it writes itself. The Fluri just happens.)