An update? That didn't take over four months?

Blasphemy.

SaRan1999 this is all because of you. Thank you for always being in my corner and for keeping me going! Appreciate you so much, Squish!

Tsu! Hi friend!

You don't have to worry - I'll never abandon this fic! I know updates are super scattered because life gets in the way, but this story is so near and dear to my heart and I have so much fun working on it. Thank you so much for your kind words! I hope you'll keep sticking with me - I love hearing from you!

But uh. Here. Have like, 8,000 words of some dumb kids yelling at each other.


Chapter 22. I See You

Theme: I See You - MISSIO


When the sun rose over the harbor the next morning, I braced myself for a boring day. I really didn't have much to do. Valerian wouldn't have the contract ready yet, so there was no sense in going back to Fortune's Market, and I'd declined Estelle's invitation to tag along with everyone else and explore the market again.

So it was just me and Delta. Like old times.

It took some time, but we managed to track down a local blacksmith where I dropped off my sword to get it professionally polished and sharpened. I also slipped the apprentice an extra couple of glad to see if he could find me a nice whetstone to take with me. He'd seemed excited to get to work, and had told me to come back some time tomorrow to pick up my things.

But that was it. It wasn't even noon yet.

Delta and I took a long walk through some of the residential districts, reminiscing on the time we'd spent here. It felt like another lifetime. So much had changed since then.

I had changed so much since then.

Thoughts of that depth and introspection had taken up most of my day. Now, it was the middle of the night and I was standing in the middle of the little kitchen of the Inn, hands on my hips, trying to figure out where some snacks might be hiding. I'd already gone through the ice box and a couple of the cabinets, and I still couldn't find something that sounded good enough to snag.

I wanted chocolate. Dark chocolate. And if this Inn had any, I was going to find it.

The creaking of a floorboard near the threshold was the only sound that alerted me to his presence. I just shook my head and kept studying the cabinets, muttering, "Need to put a bell on you."

"Aw, but where's the fun in that?" came Yuri's soft chuckle.

I spared a glance over my shoulder and saw him leaning against the doorframe, arms crossed loosely and a faint smirk on his lips.

"The fun is not getting the shit scared out of me any time you feel like being sneaky."

His smirk widened. "No fun when it happens to you, huh?"

"Sneaking is my job," I reminded him. "Get your own."

"Not much into sharing, are we, Scout?"

I considered him cooly. "No."

"Bells, huh?" I pursed my lips at his grumbling and he was quick to hold up a hand in mock surrender. "Alright, alright. If that'll keep you happy, we can do it your way."

I nodded firmly, then allowed myself a small smile. If he only knew. "I wasn't going to wait for your permission, but I'm glad you're on board."

"You were going to just put a bell on me and see if I noticed?" he teased. "Come on."

He made it so easy to forget why I was upset with him.

"I think I could get away with it," I shrugged, turning away from him to figure out which cabinet I'd yet to search. I still wanted to find chocolate. "Professional sneak, remember?"

"Yeah, right. I'd like to see you try."

I just waved him off, and opened the last cabinet. "Think about it - you can tie them to your belt, or something. It'll be a great look for you. Break up all that black."

"Speaking of looks, that's a new one for you," he said. I glanced back to see him nodding at my outfit.

I looked down at the flowy, yellow dress I had on and reached down to smooth out the skirt. "Just trying to keep everyone on their toes."

"I didn't take you for the dress up type."

"What can I say, I'm a girl of many talents."

Just because I didn't do it often, that didn't mean that I couldn't. Or that I didn't like to. It was fun to look nice, even if just to remind everyone that I could.

He snorted. "I can see that."

One of those talents was not finding chocolate, apparently. I kept rummaging around the kitchen to try and find something that would satisfy me.

Yuri walked further in, taking a seat at the little prep table pushed up against the far wall. I tried to just dismiss him, letting a silence stretch over us.

I didn't want to talk to him. But he was in my space and it felt weird to not engage with him in some way. But - no, fuck that. Yuri could sit there and be awkward. I could ignore him. I could.

But when another 10 minutes passed and I'd run out of things to do with my hands, I realized I couldn't stall for much longer.

I couldn't take it.

"So," I said slowly, not quite turning to face him, "I think we need to talk."

"Isn't that what we've been doing?"

I just shot him a look. "You know what I mean."

Yuri nodded, suddenly serious. "Yeah. Yeah, I do."

Good. Great. That was one step done. Hard part over, right?

I took a deep breath and looked around the kitchen and tried to figure out how to stall for a while longer. "Okay, well I need a drink for this. Do you want tea? Or something stronger?" I opened one of the pantries and tried to remember where I had seen … Hmm ...

Some of the tension drained from his posture as the side of his mouth quirked up. "How strong we talking?"

"Considering I have yet to locate the liquor cabinet in this place," I said over my shoulder, "not as strong as either of us would probably like." A little silver tin caught the flickering candlelight, and I smirked as I pulled it free. I held it up in victory, giving it a little shake. "Coffee?"

Yuri insisted on drinking it black, the heathen, and he grimaced as I poured a heaping spoonful of sugar and a huge splash of milk into my own mug.

"What can I say," I shrugged. "I like my coffee to be a reflection of me."

"Aw, you think you're sweet." Yuri teased.

I just held out his mug to him, nodding at the bluish criss-crossing of veins running along the length of my arm. "Correction: I think I'm pale."

He shook his head and grinned, accepting the mug. I retreated across the kitchen and perched on the counter by the cooling stove. Not that I didn't want to sit next to Yuri while we talked things out, but I was a pansy and I didn't want to sit next to Yuri as we talked things out.

He blew at the steaming liquid and took a sip. Grimaced at the taste. Steeled himself. "So let's talk. I'm assuming this is about what happened in Heliord."

"A lot happened in Heliord," I muttered.

There was the conversation we'd had beneath the light of the barrier that had put me in a shit mood for the whole of the next day. There was the discovery that Captain Cumore was working with Leviathan's Claw in gathering weapons to wage war on the Union. There was the fact that we got our asses handed to us by Yeager and then had the brilliant idea to try and chase him down after he left us bleeding and broken in the mud.

Yuri made a noise of acknowledgement. "You can say that again."

I drew up one of my legs to my chest and balanced my coffee on my knee. "I feel like," I started slowly, not really sure where to begin or where to go, "we're never on the same page."

But Yuri could hold a conversation with a houseplant. He could handle my floundering attempts.

And so he nodded, hands curling around the mug before him. "Yeah. Not that we ever really were before," he said slyly. I made a face, thinking back to how we'd met. "But I guess we've been having some disagreements lately, huh?"

"It's not funny," I said, even though I was fighting a grin of my own. This was serious. I could be serious. "We're the adults. The others look up to you, to us. I don't like how it looks, us being at each other's throats." I frowned. "I don't like us being at each other's throats in general."

I glanced up at Yuri. He just nodded for me to continue, letting me steer the course of the conversation for now. As if he didn't know exactly what I wanted to tell him off for, but still giving me the space to go off.

"We don't need to agree on everything, obviously, but it would be nice to make sure that we see eye to eye on the important things, you know?"

"And what are the important things?"

Asking the tough questions, this one. That was fine. It was easier to handle than him disagreeing.

Actually, it wasn't all that tough of a question.

"Our health, for one," I said, staring pointedly at his chest. I may not have been talking to him, but I knew that it was still bothering him. Judith was great at keeping secrets, but she was a bit of a gossip when she wanted to be. And since she wanted this conversation to happen, she'd been particularly chatty about how Yuri was handling his injury. "That has to be the first priority. Always."

Which was a hypocritical thing for me to say, now that I'd said it out loud. While I had been the one to protest chasing after the captain and the guild boss, I had done a shit job of giving a good enough reason to stay and recover in town.

But whatever.

I saw the moment Yuri's attitude turned defiant. He set his jaw and furrowed his brow, and I braced myself for the argument that was about to begin in earnest. "I was fine. I am fine. Estelle made sure of it."

I shook my head slowly. It couldn't be enough that we had a healer. We had to be more careful, more mindful. Estelle wasn't always going to be around, or in the best shape, or powerful enough to do what we expected her to do. We abused her power enough as it was. The least we could do was make her life a little easier, right?

Something in my chest fluttered anxiously.

It was more than that.

"I thought you were dead," I said quietly. He stared back, eyes widening a fraction. "You were on the ground and you weren't getting up, and I thought that he had killed you."

"Caress of Death!"

A flash of red burst through Yuri's chest and out his back - oh god, was that blood or aer, please, tell me that was aer, if that was blood -

Eyes wide, Yuri fell to his knees. His dark lashes fluttered, briefly, then he fell, face first, to the ground. He didn't get back up.

It had terrified me. I hadn't realized what he'd meant to me, what he'd become until I'd almost lost him.

"And so when you got up," I continued softly, "when Estelle put everything she had left into getting you back on your feet…" I shook my head. "I can't - "

All I could think about was the growing puddle underneath Yuri's body that was distinctly the wrong color for rain.

My friend.

I took a shaky breath and forced the memory to the back of my mind, forced my eyes to focus on the man seated across the room. An impossible distance.

Yuri was right. He was okay. He was okay. He was okay.

"I can't put into words how relieved I was," I whispered. "That you were alive. That we all were. That we were going to walk away."

"We don't have the time to explain it, Scout. We have to do this on our own."

"And then you wanted to chase him." Yuri dropped his gaze, suddenly transfixed by the steam as it drifted in lazy spirals off of the mug.

My brain was screaming 'danger, no, bad idea, anything but this.'

Yuri, no.

"We had just pulled you back from the edge of death and you wanted to chase after it."

Wildly, I searched his eyes, trying to understand what he was thinking.

"You can't be serious."

No. Please.

Yuri's voice was thick when he spoke. "Scout, that's …"

I waited for him to continue his thought, but after a few beats of silence it became clear that he didn't have a good enough response. But that didn't work for me. We needed to talk, so he was going to have to talk.

"So why?" I pushed. "Why risk it? Why risk yourself - risk us?"

Because it hadn't just been his life he'd put in danger. It was all of Brave Vesperia. It was mine. It was Estelle's. It was Rita's. We'd gotten out of that first fight by the skin of our teeth - if we had actually caught up to Cumore and Yeager, there was no guarantee that we'd be as lucky the second time around.

Yuri gave a half-hearted shrug. "It seemed like the right thing to do in the moment. Like you said, we were alive. Flynn was coming and Cumore was running, and the only thing I could think about was that he was going to get away with it. Whatever he was doing, whatever he was planning, unless he was caught right then, he was going to get away with it."

He sighed and ran a hand through his hair, brow furrowed as he searched for the words. I'd never seen him look so openly conflicted - almost vulnerable.

"I've spent most of my life being pushed around by the nobility hiding behind the name of the Imperial Knights - by Cumore himself. But nobody believes the word of a Lower Quarter orphan over someone like him," he spat. "So when we had this opportunity to catch him, to prove just how corrupt and wrong he was, I just …"

He trailed off again, shaking his head and staring blankly at the wall above me. As if he couldn't look me in the eye. "All I could think about was making him pay. Making him suffer like I had all those years. Because he deserves it, Scout. He deserves to suffer for what he's done."

I took a sip of my coffee, letting it burn my throat on the way down. "Yeah. Maybe he does. But why is that for us to decide?"

We'd already played God once. That was one time too many.

"You've seen what the system does with people like him," he said flatly. "Look at what had to happen with Ragou."

A flash of movement. A soft exclamation of pain. A hot liquid dripping sluggishly down steel.

"Shut up already."

I shifted, as though my seat on the counter suddenly uncomfortable. "Yeah, well. Maybe… I don't know. Maybe there could have been another way."

The silence stretched. Grew fangs. Threatened to devour us whole.

"Having second thoughts?"

I bit the inside of my cheek. Maybe? It was more complicated than that.

"We can't change it, Scout," he said when the beast borne of quiet stalked closer. I glanced up and met his eyes, impossibly dark in the low light. Too intense. I looked back at my hands.

"I know. I know, I just…" Why was this so hard to put into words? "I don't regret it? It was drastic, but something needed to be done. But the more I think about it, I have to wonder if I feel justified in it because of how personal it was."

A beat. Then, "Because of what his blastia was doing to the barrier in Halure."

I hummed. He caught on quick. "Yeah. Halure was mine to protect, and he didn't give a shit about the consequences of his actions. All he cared about was hoarding wealth and power for himself, and fuck anyone who came between them."

Little ripples appeared on the pale brown surface of my coffee. I was shaking. Halure was safe. Ragou was dead. And yet I was still angry about what he had done.

Khana hummed lowly in the back of my head, and I latched onto the sound, letting it soothe me. The ripples slowly disappeared as my hands stilled.

"I wouldn't change it," I finally admitted. Because that was true enough. "But I wouldn't do it again."

"Good to know," Yuri said after a moment, voice low.

Something in the tone of his voice set me on edge. "Is that your plan then? To get rid of Cumore too?"

Yuri planted his elbows on the table and took a deep breath, his bangs fluttering in his eyes as he let it out in a harsh stream. "I don't know. He needs to pay," he repeated. "But damn, you've got a point. Maybe I think I'm justified because it's personal."

I nodded, more to myself than in response to him. It made me feel better to hear that my own conflicted feelings made sense.

"Besides, we don't have much of a choice but to let the Knights handle it at this point," he mused, taking the tiniest sip of his coffee. "Cumore is in the wind, the bastard. But the Knights have the weapons and the testimony of the men and women forced into the labor camp. Maybe they'll get their shit together and charge him with something that will stick."

"You don't sound very optimistic about that," I said.

"I'm not." He took another small drink. "I've been cleaning up their messes long enough to know how this'll go down. And I'll be there to handle it when they can't."

I opened my mouth to speak, then closed it again, trying to find the right words. He seemed so determined to dirty his hands with this when he could just walk away. He would destroy himself to destroy the people he thought deserved it.

I couldn't watch that happen.

Khana nudged gently, knowing what was on my heart. I set my mug down with a clink and leaned forward, elbows on my knees.

"I don't want to see you go down a path you can't come back from," I said carefully. "We're talking about lives, Yuri. People. People who have done bad things, yes, but people all the same. I don't want to see you get so caught up in this idea of justice that you lose yourself and become the same as monsters you're hunting."

It sounded eloquent and well-spoken in my head but hoo boy, was that apparently the wrong thing to say.

Yuri pushed back from the table violently and crossed his arms with a dark chuckle. "You sound like Flynn."

I bristled at his tone. "Flynn cares about you. If you want to wound me, find a different comparison."

If he thought I would take offense to being compared to someone like him, he was dead wrong. That was the best compliment he'd ever given me.

But Yuri just shook his head and crossed his arms. In a moment, the entire tone of the conversation had shifted from vulnerable and honest to hostile and guarded. Fuck. Why was I always fucking it up?

"What is it with you and him, anyway?" I asked instead. "I thought you were friends."

Yuri eyed me warily, then shrugged. "We grew up together in the Lower Quarter. We shared everything. Bought our first sword together. Joined the knights together as soon as we were old enough. He was just always…" He trailed off, waving a hand dismissively. "Flynn."

"What does that even mean?"

"Flynn is Flynn," he said as if that was supposed to explain everything.

Not that it explained anything. Typical.

I rubbed at my brow, trying to convince myself not to be fed up with him."So is that a yes to the friends thing, or what."

"Sometimes I wonder," he muttered.

That was a nonanswer if I'd ever heard one. There was something weird there.

"Oh shit," I said, sitting up straight. "Wait, are you guys together? Like together together?"

Maybe that's why he was weird about using the word 'friend.' They were more than that.

He leveled a flat stare at me. "What?"

I narrowed my eyes, trying to connect invisible dots. "That would explain so much. Like why you chased a fully trained knight literally across the continent when he can very clearly take care of himself."

He choked out a laugh. At least I thought it was a laugh. It was a strangled sort of sound. It wasn't a positive sound, but it wasn't exactly negative either. Maybe I was a little off.

"Okay, maybe not boyfriends?" I guessed. "Yet? Are you just pining after each other then? Because there's definitely something going on between you two."

Yuri just gaped at me. Getting further away.

"Ooh," I winced, "or is it more of a 'been there, done that' sort of thing. You're ex-boyfriends."

Sooner or later I'd get it right. Maybe I already had.

"Knock it off, Scout," he finally sighed.

I held up my hands in surrender. "Hey, I'm just trying to figure you guys out. You have the weirdest dynamic."

"We're not talking about this."

But I wanted to talk about this. This was the best thing we'd talked about all night.

"I can't say that the whole childhood friends to lovers thing is my favorite, but you do you. You'd be cute together," I said, hiding a smirk behind the lip of my mug. Score one for Is in lightening the mood.

"Shut up."

I took a drink, pleased with myself, and tried to ease back into the hard part of the conversation. "Either way, he cares about you, Yuri. And I understand him. I can't fault him for the way he thinks."

"He thinks he can change the system from the inside." Yuri scoffed and shook his head.

"You don't think he can?"

Yuri shrugged again, finger idly tracing the lip of his cup. "Honestly? I don't know. Corruption that deep doesn't just disappear overnight." He sighed and looked up at the ceiling. "But if anyone could do it, it would be Flynn. And he'd probably do it by sheer willpower alone," he finished with a chuckle.

I hummed. That tracked with what I knew of him. "Flash a couple smiles, give a heartwarming speech about equality and justice and peace."

"Yeah, that sounds like him."

A brief stretch of silence settled over us as we thought back on the blonde knight. He was the reason I was even here in the first place. If he hadn't asked me to watch over Yuri and Estelle, I never would have left Halure. I never would have met Karol or Judith. I never would have learned the truth about Khana.

I never would have murdered a man.

I felt my face screw up at the thought.

"Do you think he knows about what happened to Ragou?" I asked, if just to fight off the memories again. Talking about it was better than thinking about it. My mind had a way of twisting things.

Yuri blinked away whatever memories he'd receded into and raised an eyebrow in my direction. "That he's dead or that it was us?"

He said it so casually.

"Either. Both."

Yuri took a deep breath. "Well, I'm pretty sure it's common knowledge that he's dead. We overheard some knights talking about it back in Heliord while you were scouting the camp. If Flynn knows, he might suspect us. Or at least me."

Yikes. "That's … not ideal." I shifted on the counter. "What do you think he'll do about it?"

"Nothing," he said firmly, "if we stay ahead of him."

A sudden realization hit me. Wait. "You ran away from him. In Heliord."

Yuri pulled a face. "I did not run away."

"You totally ran away from him. You didn't want to hear what he would have to say about it. Because you knew he'd be able to piece it together and you knew he wouldn't be happy about it, and you don't want to disappoint him."

I might have hit a little too close to home because Yuri was quick to go back on the defensive.

"You don't know a damn thing about what you're talking about, Scout."

Which meant I knew exactly what I was talking about. I leaned back against the wall, pleased with myself despite the sinking feeling in my chest. "Don't bullshit me, man. I see you."

"Yeah?" His dark eyes bored a hole in my chest. Woof. This was about to get ugly. "You want to talk bullshit? What about you? I see you too, Scout."

I nearly spit out the coffee I'd been drinking with a strangled laugh. "Excuse me?" What was there to see?

Anger flashed across his features, wild and unrestrained. "You think I don't see you regretting what happened? See you judging me for what I did?"

I rolled my eyes. "Yuri, that's -"

But he just talked over me. "You've been acting weird ever since it happened. Whenever Ragou gets mentioned you just check out and fuck off."

"Well, yeah, I - " had a lot on my mind.

But Yuri cut in before I could finish the thought. "I thought we were on the same side on this. I thought you wanted him gone. You approached me that night, Scout. Not the other way around."

Was he going to let me talk? "Yuri-"

"So if you want to talk bullshit -"

Oh, fuck this.

"No." I finally blew up and pointed my finger at him, cutting him off this time. "Stop. You will let me speak." I held up my hand until he held his tongue. "I am not judging you. In case you forgot, I was there. I participated. I am just as guilty as you are."

Yuri scoffed a "damn straight" that I did my best to ignore.

"I'm not like you, okay? I can't compartmentalize as well as you can. There's just a lot going on in my head and it's been hell to try and sift through."

He didn't need to know that I'd done jack shit about sifting through it until now. That was between me and the spirit in my head.

"Then explain it to me," Yuri said, exasperated. "Or at least try. Because whatever it is you've got going on up there, I clearly don't understand."

God, but how to put it into words. I hadn't even unpacked it myself.

But Yuri was looking at me - looking through me. Waiting for me to explain it to him. Trying to understand me. Trying to finally get on the same page and stay on the same page.

Fuck it. I just had to go for it.

"Killing Ragou felt good." The words felt like poison as they seeped from my lips, but I couldn't escape how cathartic it felt to get it out of my system. "I enjoyed it. Not because of the act, but because I knew that he couldn't hurt anybody anymore. I am glad that he is dead."

Yuri's jaw clenched. Unclenched. Clenched again. "Then why the second guessing?"

"Because we murdered someone," I hissed. "How does that make us any better than him?"

"This is different," he growled back.

"Is it?"

"Yes."

"We slit his throat and shoved him off a bridge, Yuri."

A flash of movement.

A push. A splash.

An understanding.

His response was cold. Emotionless. "Yeah. We did."

I held out my arms as if to say 'exactly.' We were all in the same fucked up boat.

"Yeah," Yuri said again, "we killed him. But how many people died under that manor of his? How many died in Halure when the barrier failed because of him?"

My blood ran cold. Some part of my mind provided the image of a corpse, mangled almost beyond recognition, strewn in pieces across the path up to the base of Halure's tree. The sound of screams and a wailing woman. The heat of flames as we burned the dead, setting their souls to rest.

The anger was beginning to roll off of Yuri in waves, threatening to drown us both. "How many people in the Lower Quarter suffered when he stole the core of the single most important blastia they had? How many more would be dead in both of our homes if we hadn't stepped in?"

I ground my teeth together. He had a point, and I knew he did. It was the same thing I'd been telling myself ever since it happened. The same justification.

But still, a part of it didn't seem right.

We were comparing sins, even though they were all equal. Eventually, we would all have to pay.

"Justice isn't always pretty, Scout, but it has to be served. My hands may be dirty, but my conscience is clean."

He didn't feel any guilt. He just felt justified.

But again, that just brought it all back to how personal it had been for both of us. Were we too close to the situation to see it clearly? Maybe there had been another way - one that we could have seen if our vision hadn't been clouded by the memories of the people we had failed to protect.

"I understand that he was a shit human being," I finally said, hands balling into fists, "but he was still a human being. So don't you dare shame me for feeling conflicted about this. I won't apologize that I still value the sanctity of human life."

"Sanctity. Points for vocab, parasite."

The irony of the memory wasn't lost on me.

"You say that like I don't."

I let out a sharp breath. Why was he so frustrating? "Don't put words in my mouth."

A muscle in his jaw twitched. He cracked his knuckles, one at a time, slowly and methodically as he stared into my soul. I stared right back.

There were a few tense moments where I wondered if we would ever get past this little standoff. Neither of us were keen on backing down, especially to one another. We liked to push, to challenge, and when we thought we were in the right, it was best to get out of our way.

An immovable object and an unstoppable force. Which would be the one to yield?

And then he surprised me, as he so often did.

He loosed a long breath, the corner of his eyes softening a touch. "We aren't getting anywhere with this, are we."

Yet here he was, extending an opportunity for us to take a step back. To take a breath.

Maybe not quite unstoppable. Maybe not quite immovable.

I huffed a laugh through my nose. "Not really."

Which wasn't technically true. We'd said a lot of good things - argued through a lot of good points. Even if we ended up back at square one, we'd at least come away with a better understanding of the other's stance.

"I don't think that's a bad thing," I said after another moment.

"And here I was, thinking that the goal was to be on the same page."

I just shrugged again and shook my head slightly. "I think we're on the same page. More or less. Maybe different paragraphs, but I think we're closer than we were before."

Yuri considered my words and ended up just nodding before taking another drink. "I don't think we were ever too far off, honestly. We're just both used to getting our way. Having someone around to challenge that has been … interesting."

"Heaven forbid Yuri Lowell not get his way," I teased.

He smirked back. "And Hell beware the day Isadora Harroway has to bend."

The immovable object and the unstoppable force. Imagine the damage they could do when no longer opposed.

Gone was the silence with the fangs, leaving in its place the silence shared between friends. I relaxed into its embrace and settled myself into a more comfortable position. It was nice to not be at odds with him. To rest in the knowledge that while we might not always agree, we would at least understand and respect one another.

The weight that had been pressing on my chest lessened.

Lessened, but didn't disappear. There was still something I needed to say - something he needed to hear.

"I stood by you then, you know," I said, staring absently into the flickering candle on the table. "And I stand by you now. I stand by what we did, even if it doesn't seem like it. I'm just," I waved my hand vaguely next to my ear. "I'm working through it."

"Yeah," he said slowly. It sounded like a sigh. Like tension draining. Like an understanding. "Yeah, okay."

"Okay," I repeated. This was good. This was progress. "Okay. It's just a lot, you know?"

"I know."

And yet somehow he was fine with it all. It didn't seem to weigh on him like it was weighing on me. As if he had already been through this before.

Maybe he had.

But I wasn't going to ask. I didn't want to know. Not right now.

Hopping off the counter, I moved to pour myself another cup of coffee. As I stirred in my milk and sugar, I offered the pot to Yuri. His eye twitched, so subtly that I almost dismissed it as a trick of the light, as he politely declined. His mug was still half full.

I told him if he didn't like the way I'd made it he could make it himself next time. He told me he would.

Bastard. I made good coffee.

But still. He was my bastard.

"Hey, Yuri," I said, pulling his attention back from wherever it had slipped away to. "This thing with Cumore - it's going to come to a head soon. And I'll stand by you when it does - regardless of how it happens. Regardless of what you decide."

"Even if I decide that it's best for him to die?" he asked bluntly.

I looked him square in the eye and promised, "Even then."

He didn't look like he believed me. "Even if you don't agree with me."

"What you decide about Cumore has nothing to do with what I decide about you, Yuri," I said simply. "I'll support what you choose because I support you, as my friend. Everything else is everything else."

Yuri blinked rapidly a few times. As if he was seeing me, really seeing me, for the first time.

"I won't tell you what to think or what to do." I glanced up at the ceiling and muttered, "Not that you would listen to me anyway."

Yuri huffed out a laugh. Good. A laughing Yuri was a good Yuri.

"I trust you to do what you think is best," I finished with a nod. "But I am asking you to at least think it all the way through."

If he wanted to kill Cumore, I don't know that I would try to stop him. There was a history there that I didn't understand - couldn't understand. But I could empathize with his position. And it would make me one hell of a hypocrite to tell him to spare the captain's life.

All I could do was try and curb the bloodlust in the meantime.

"Thank you, Scout."

I hummed, taking another drink from my mug. "You know, you don't have to take responsibility for everything, man. You don't have to shoulder everything alone."

His eyes went distant. "It's a weight I'm willing to bear."

I saw the place his mind went. Saw the people he was willing to permanently stain his hands for. Heard the words he didn't say.

For them.

That made two of us.

"Well," I said as I raised my mug in a mock toast, "let me know if that weight is about to crush you. As the group's resident expendable lackey, it's only right that I share that burden with you." I took a drink. "Better it to crush me to pulp than you."

I meant it when I said I'd stand by him. We were already partners in crime. If Yuri went down a road that got him into trouble, either with the Knights or the Council or the Union, or even with our own group, I'd gladly take the bullet for him. He was too charismatic, too much of a leader for him to go down.

"Lackey, huh?" Yuri mumbled, brow furrowed.

"I think it's a generous term," I said with a grin.

He shot me a piercing look that had me shifting on the counter, looking for a way to explain what I meant.

"What do I have to offer that the group doesn't already have?" I shook my head. He was taking this too seriously. It was a joke. I'd made my peace with this already. "It's fine. I know my place." It didn't bother me as much as it did before.

There was a brief pause, then, "You think it doesn't matter if you die?"

I rolled my eyes. He was so dramatic sometimes. "I didn't say that. I don't have a death wish."

I tried to shrug it off, but Yuri wasn't having it.

No. He got mad.

"You just called yourself expendable. What the hell is that about?"

"Hey, it's true." What was his deal? Let me make a self deprecating joke in peace. "Doesn't mean I like it, and it sure as fuck doesn't mean I'm going to go looking for my death." I glared at him - the man who hadn't been satisfied when he'd been spared by death itself. "It just is what it is."

The immovable object and the unstoppable force, opposed again.

His hand slammed on the tabletop, the sound a sudden gunshot in the quiet of the night. "Stop doing that," he spat. "Stop acting like you don't care what happens to you. It makes you reckless, and we have enough going on that I can't afford to babysit you in a fight."

"Are you serious?" I sputtered. This conversation had taken a turn. Again. "You think you have to babysit me?"

That was rich.

His eyes burned. "If you're going to act like you're expendable, then I guess I'll have to."

"Fucking hell - I was making a joke," I tried to explain while I could still keep a level head. We were both well on our way to losing our tempers again. From the look on Yuri's face, I could tell I'd already lost him.

"It wasn't funny."

I slammed my mug down on the counter next to me just to hear the noise it made, just to exert a force on something, just to know that something would still yield to me. The liquid sloshed over the lip and onto my hand, and I grasped at the knowledge that I had caused it.

To Yuri I said, "It's called gallows humor, you asshole. It's not supposed to be funny."

But Yuri was not like the mug. Yuri was not like the coffee. He would not bend before me.

"Why is that something you can even joke about?" he demanded in return. "Why don't you care enough about yourself?"

I let out a strained laugh, a ghostly little thing. "Is that what you think this is about? That I don't care enough?" I shook my head. "You don't know a damn thing about what I care about."

His fists clenched tightly, turning white at the knuckles for the briefest of moments before he released them, then clenched them again, released them again. They were white again when he spoke.

"Damn it, I don't want you to die, Scout."

"And I don't want to die, Yuri."

Where the hell was the disconnect on this? We both wanted me alive, so why couldn't we see eye to eye?

The fire in his eyes turned cold. "We could have lost you in Heliord," he said, voice sharp like ice. "Yeager could have killed you."

It burned, a groove gouged into my body that seared like fire and wept red water.

It was a wonder he hadn't gutted me.

"I know." I hadn't forgotten. The scar on my torso robbed me of that luxury. "That's why I wanted to stay."

How was that me not looking out for myself? If anything, he was the reckless one in this situation, wanting to chase down Cumore so he could fulfill his twisted sense of justice.

"If that's really what you wanted, you had a strange way of showing it," he said, voice gruff. "I don't remember you saying so."

I made an indignant noise.

Rita's voice, "Are we following them or not?"

Um. No. That was a terrible idea.

"Uh, guys," I held up a finger weakly in protest, "I don't want to be a downer here, but I don't know that we can."

"I mean - we can, sure - but we shouldn't."

"We just got our asses kicked. We didn't win. They retreated. We can't do that again. Not right now."

"You can't seriously think you're in any shape to chase them down right now."

"When one of us gets sloppy and ends up dead because we didn't take the time to take care of ourselves, it is your fault. Not his. Not mine. Yours."

Maybe I hadn't said it in so many words, but I sure as hell had said so.

He shook his head like he was disappointed in me. "You think you're expendable, but I don't want to have to pick up the pieces when you get yourself killed over something stupid and it breaks us. You can't be so reckless with your life."

"Alright Mister 'Walk Off a Mystic Arte'," I spat, fuming about how unfair he was being. "Go ahead and tell me I'm the reckless one. I dare you."

It was a really good thing that we were still across the room from one another. I was going to strangle him.

"That's different and you know it."

"How?" I was getting sick of his 'it's different when it's me' argument. "How the fuck is it any different?"

Yuri scowled and made a vague grasping motion with his hands. As though he echoed the sentiment of wanting to strangle something. "Because we knew that I wasn't going to be at my best. It wasn't a secret."

"Oh, so it's okay for you to be reckless with your life so long as everybody knows it." That was fucking stupid. "God forbid you die a boring death."

"You're missing my point."

"What, that you're a fucking drama queen with a martyr complex? I think I got that."

"What the hell, Scout?"

I scoffed at his offended expression. "Do you need me to say it slower? You," I pointed my whole hand at him, "Yuri Lowell, are the single most dramatic person I have ever met."

"We know Raven."

"Yes. And you are still the single most dramatic person I have ever met."

He glowered. "Fine. Whatever. But if I'm dramatic, you're ignorant. You're still missing my point."

"Fuck your point."

We really were acting like children now, weren't we. What happened to having a productive conversation? What happened to the understanding we'd reached earlier?

The unstoppable object and the immovable force, opposed again.

But Yuri wouldn't be ignored. He had a stupid point to make, and damn it, he was gong to make it. "You are my point. So yeah, fuck you."

I bristled at the severity of the swearing - Yuri didn't say fuck as often as I did - but my mind stalled out at the rest of what he'd said. "What?"

He gestured at me, annoyed. "You. You don't care about yourself and it's starting to piss me off. You were hurt. Badly. But you came with us anyway, damn the consequences."

He was up on a high horse to think he could lecture me on a 'damn the consequences' mindset.

"Just because I didn't want to be left behind doesn't mean I don't care about my well-being." Those were two shit options. Of course I'd gone with them.

Yuri shook his head. "But you didn't even say anything. I didn't even know you were hurt in the first place."

I was almost pleading with him at this point, begging him to read between the lines.

I was hurting. I didn't want to go. Please.

If he didn't know, he hadn't been paying attention.

"I'm not going to drop everything and let you know every time I get a fucking paper cut," I scoffed. Fuck me if I thought I could show Yuri weakness. No thank you.

"Damn it, stop being difficult, Scout," Yuri growled. "This isn't funny."

"I'm not being difficult," I huffed. "You're being hypocritical - you were hurting too."

"Yes, but you knew that. But I didn't know that you were hurt because you didn't tell me."

I scoffed. Of course I didn't tell him. I'd trusted him to read between the lines, and he'd failed. "Would it've even mattered if I did? You hardly listen to me when I do speak."

"Yes." He said it with such intensity that I pulled back on reflex. He'd gotten to his feet at some point and his eyes were dancing in the low light, reflecting some emotion that I couldn't quite catch. "Yes, it would have mattered. Your life isn't something we can afford to just play around with. Estelle can't heal you, and Khana is too important to-"

His mouth kept moving. Kept forming words. But the sounds came out all wrong. Just a ringing of bells in my ears as something inside me broke.

My eyes slipped closed.

"Khana." Yuri stopped short in his rant at my whisper - at the utter defeat in the word. "Of course. This is about Khana."

Here I was, starting to think that maybe he had been worried about me.

I should have known. I should have known.

He didn't care about me at all.

It was just Khana.

I heard a soft clink - Yuri setting his mug down on the table - and then, "Don't be stupid, Scout, that's not -"

His voice was too soft. His words too slow. As though he thought he would startle me if he was too loud. As though he was approaching me like he would approach a wounded animal.

I didn't want him soft. I didn't want him kind. I wanted him sharp and barbed and loud. I wanted him to fight.

So I'd make him fight.

I lashed out like the animal he made me.

"Don't condescend to me," I snapped, wrapping my arms tightly around myself. As if I could keep from breaking by sheer power of will. "This was never about me, this was about Khana. This is about the fact that if I die, so does she. The Queen of Spirits - that's what matters here. It was never about me."

The spirit in question was still humming softly in the back of my mind, but her song turned sad. My throat tightened.

Yuri was watching me carefully, a muscle in his jaw twitching as he tried to find the right words.

If he wasn't going to talk, I sure as hell was.

"Nobody wants to hear what I have to say. I say smart things, you know. I'm not fucking stupid. I know how the world works, I see things and I observe things, but nobody cares. Nobody listens to me. Nobody cares about what I think or what I want. They just want to hear from her."

I was ranting. I was fuming. I was trying not to cry, because fuck weakness and fuck Yuri Lowell for making me feel like I couldn't show him weakness. Fuck him - he could sit there and listen to me for the first time in his stupid life.

"And you've done the same thing," I reminded him as he opened his mouth to interject. "Don't act like you haven't. Do you know what that's like? To live with that knowledge that there is someone else - something else - inside of you of higher value? To be a background character in your own story?

"It's hell." I laughed bitterly. "It's fucking hell, and I hate it. I hate her and I hate that nobody else does."

The spirit in question hummed a bit quieter in the back of my head.

There were so many pent up emotions in my heart that I thought it might burst. And then -

Oh -

My voice broke as I said the words I'd been struggling to find for so long. "I matter too."

The world froze. I felt the time pass in heartbeats.

One. Two. Three. Too quick, too scared.

"I matter too," I whispered to the silence.

Four. Five. Six. Seven.

It was strange. Yuri didn't do this sort of silent. When he was quiet, it was the menacing kind - meant to intimidate and make others uncomfortable. But those were few and far between, reserved for the special breed of bastard that made themselves his enemies.

The Yuri I'd become familiar with was all quick jokes and sarcastic comments. He was the lighthearted one, always making the others laugh, making them feel comfortable. Unless he was doing that stupid passive agressive 'I'm turning my back to you' thing, he always had something to say.

Eight. Nine. Ten.

His brand of quiet wasn't soft. He wasn't a gentle man.

This kind of heavy thoughtfulness didn't suit him, and he was just looking at me. I braced myself for him to fall back on our comfortable dynamic - he would tease me or tell me I was wrong or say something passive aggressive to get a reaction out of me.

Eleven. Twelve.

But he didn't.

"Is that what - Scout." The tone of his voice surprised me out of my stupor. He sounded so genuine, so heartbreakingly confused. "Do you really think so little of yourself?"

Would anyone care?

Apparently I did.

He was suddenly in my personal space. From my seat on the counter, our faces were at the same height for once, and I looked down at my lap to avoid him as he moved into the space between my knees.

He just dipped his head below mine, forcing his way into my attention.

And then he just stood there. And we just stared at each other.

Thirteen. Fourteen. Fifteen. Sixteen heartbeats fluttered in the cage of my chest.

I tried to speak, to tell him to move, to tell him to leave me alone, to tell him I didn't need his pity, but my throat was suddenly too tight - my voice was caught in that cage with my desperate heartbeats. All I could do was lose myself in the depths of his dark eyes - to latch on to the hidden challenge in them. To not be the first to back down and look away.

Seventeen. Eighteen.

Say something, please.

Nineteen. Twenty. Twenty one.

"Why," he finally said, lightly tapping his fist against my knee, "should it matter if we want her input? She's just another voice. You," he tapped my knee again, "are a whole person. You are the important one."

I didn't hear him. Or maybe I didn't want to. Him saying that the Queen of Spirits was somehow less than me was ridiculous. He was saying it to make me feel better.

I only shook my head.

Yuri made a frustrated noise in the back of his throat, though his face stayed sincere. "We were yours before we even knew about her. We would be yours if she wasn't around. If she disappeared, we wouldn't disappear with her, you know."

Mine.

He'd called them mine. As if I had any right to them.

"You hold us together, Scout," he insisted. "Not Khana. You."

But these people didn't need me to protect them. They were perfectly capable of taking care of themselves.

There was no worse feeling than knowing that your presence was unnecessary - than knowing that you are redundant.

They didn't need me.

Estelle was the heart and the healer. Rita was the expert on magic and blastia. Yuri was the de facto leader, and he and Judith had Brave Vesperia. Karol was the boss of his guild, and he was an endless source of knowledge on any number of subjects. Even Raven was a high-ranking member of Altosk.

Everybody had a purpose to serve.

So where did that leave me?

I guess the peace I'd made with this wasn't the kind of peace that lasted.

I lost the battle and pulled away from Yuri's searching gaze to look down at my hands where they were clasped tightly together in my lap. "You guys would be fine without me," I rasped.

I heard a smirk in his voice. "We really wouldn't."

I rolled my eyes at how simple he made it sound.

"What do I have to offer that you don't already have?" I asked again, softer this time.

"Common sense."

I shoved his shoulder. "Be serious."

"I let Estelle seduce an Imperial Knight," Yuri said drily. "And I thought it was a good idea. We were a wreck without you."

He … might have had a point there.

Yuri relaxed a bit when he saw the beginnings of a grin on my lips. His smirk softened - turned to a genuine smile - before it melted into a more serious line. The softness stayed, though. It lingered in his eyes, smoky grey, I noticed, at this distance.

"I don't know where this is coming from, but it sure as hell isn't true."

My jaw tightened.

He must have noticed because he reached up slowly, so slowly, and took my chin in his hand, pushing it up until I had no choice but to look him in the eye.

"You matter to us because you are our friend," he said firmly. "Not because of what you can do, not because of what power you have inside you. But because you are you. So I don't want to hear you say that you don't matter." He gave my chin a slight shake. "That's bullshit, okay? You matter to me."

A part of me didn't want to believe him - couldn't bring itself to take the words as truth. Another part of me was desperate to cling to those words, to make them a banner on my heart. And yet another part was paralyzed - what was I supposed to do with that?

The paralyzed part won out, and I just stared at Yuri, expression blank as I tried to process what he was saying.

But Yuri's gaze was intense, his hand still firm on my chin, his face just inches from mine.

"Okay?" he said again, dark eyes searching mine. Beseeching that small part of me that wanted to believe him and making it an offer. "You matter to me."

I nodded, throat still tight. "Yeah. Okay."

And I believed him.


The day we were set to leave, Karol and I stopped back by the Fortune's Market Headquarters to tie up some loose ends. I signed the contract Valerian had finished for me and ended up with a full box of other fun things from the Apothecary Corner crew. When I asked what the gifts were for, she only winked and told me to have fun before shoving me out of her office to wait for Karol.

Karol. Who had struck some kind of deal with Fortune's Market, allowing us passage to Nordopolica on one of their merchant ships in exchange for our work as bodyguards. Because mermen were apparently notorious for attacking ships in the waters between Capua Torim and Nordopolica. He's also managed to swing it that we'd get the ship when the work was done.

That boy deserved some serious credit, especially because he had almost passed out at the idea of even meeting President Kaufman.

Now we were escorting her out of her own headquarters.

Crazy how quickly things can change.

With President Kaufman and some other people from the guild in tow, we swung through the market one last time before heading to the docks to meet up with the rest of our crew.

The ship we'd gotten, the Fiertia, was a rough looking thing, but it was a sure enough vessel to get us where we were headed in one piece. And soon enough it would be ours.

I nudged Yuri's shoulder as I brushed past him and took my spot on the deck next to Judith. She raised a delicate brow, but hid a smile behind the lip of the cup of coffee I'd brought for her. Together we turned and watched as our friend tried to subtly check his clothes.

Yuri and I had managed to smooth things over the other night and had come to the realization that we just needed to talk to each other more. No sass, no walls, no teasing - just honesty.

Now Yuri turned, narrowing his eyes at me when he realized I hadn't yet followed through on my promise to stick a bell on him. He'd been on edge the past two days, waiting to see how and when I would succeed.

Because I would succeed. That wasn't a question.

But I had a different idea in mind.

I just stuck out my tongue and held out the cup I'd brought for him as well. He shook his head but accepted the drink and brought it to his lips for a sip.

I watched as a look of surprise overtook his features, then watched it melt into a sheepish smile when he realized what I'd given him.

Coffee. With cream and sugar. Just like mine.

Judith hummed - a happy little noise, and I smiled. We all smiled.

It would be a good trip.


We don't shy away from dialogue in this house.

We die like men.

-Han