Tales of Vesperia, "The Peerless and the Black Blade" (Flynn+Yuri)

[sincere]

A calamity has unexpectedly reunited two old friends, but things aren't the way they used to be.
Written for the areyougame prompt Yuri/Flynn: pirate au - "shipwreck and rescue". Therefore it is AU, of course. Short and slightly late, because I've been sick for roughly the last week. Sorry!


.the peerless and the black blade.
It was insult to injury to be tied up. There were already bars separating him from anyone outside, and he was as weak as a newborn from fever and exhaustion after a day adrift. He'd almost certainly lost his crew, his cargo, and his ship, and those failures weighted him down more effectively than any iron. But the manacles that bound his hands behind his back -- that was the worst of it.

If he hadn't lost his shoes in the ocean, Flynn would have kicked the bars in frustration.

"I know that someone can hear me," he said, voice raised. "I wasn't just plucked out of the ocean by serpents and left on an abandoned boat! If you went through all the trouble of rescuing me, you could at least introduce yourselves -- or bring me something to eat."

The noise from above him continued as if he hadn't spoken at all. He could hear boots, the jingle of tackle and rigging, low murmured conversation, and occasionally laughter.

He wasn't well, and he couldn't stay upright and awake for long, drifting in and out of consciousness. And then awareness came back to him, and he was prone on the uncomfortable cot with his hands free, and someone was in the cell with him... Flynn sat up suddenly and the sharp movement jolted wrenching coughs out of him, leaving him shivering and sallow.

"Hey there. Ease up, Flynn! I'm just trying to help, and you're undoing all my hard work," said a blithe voice.

Flynn forced his eyes to focus on the young man beside him; as clean as the sailing lifestyle allowed a man to be, with long well-cared-for black hair hanging in a sleek ponytail over his shoulder and laughing grey eyes, like a seal's.

It might have been the fever, but it took him a moment to place those features.

"Y-- Yuri?" he asked thickly.

The man smiled, straightening up, and spread his arms, a silent confirmation. "You sound surprised to see me."

"What-- are you doing here?" Understanding was slowly filtering back to him, and then alarm. "This ship -- I think these people might be pirates! I was... The Peerless, my ship--"

Yuri's eyebrows lifted. "Wow. Your own ship, at twenty-one? Not bad, Flynn."

"I'm being serious," Flynn rasped. "During the storm, we struck a mine. It exploded, and the ship had to be abandoned. I have no idea how many of my men escaped, but I ended up adrift and alone. These -- people rescued me, but they won't talk to me, and they keep me locked up like this..."

"So I can see," Yuri murmured, his gaze flicking down to Flynn's clothing, his shivering form. "They haven't taken very good care of you."

He didn't seem to be taking the situation very seriously. Which was very much Yuri the way Flynn remembered him: his childhood friend, longest and closest confidante for many years before they had joined the naval academy and Yuri dropped out mere months later. They had lost touch, but Yuri, it seemed, had not changed from that flippant, nonchalant free spirit who had resented being bound by rules and social conventions.

But it frustrated Flynn. He had to impress upon Yuri the importance of their escape. If these men were pirates, then odds were good that the reason he was alive was that they had recognized him for an officer and were planning on holding him for ransom. And even if that didn't offend him on a moral level -- even if he didn't know that Yuri wouldn't be so lucky, that they might kill him at any time -- he knew better than to think that anyone would pay it for a street rat like him.

"Where's your armor?"

"Wh-- What?"

Yuri nodded at him. "Aren't you knights supposed to be all resplendent in gleaming armor?"

Flynn gave him a weary stare. "How stupid do you think I am? You think -- I'd walk the ship in full regalia? So a rough turn of the waves could throw me off the deck and straight to the bottom of the ocean?"

The other man chuckled, getting to his feet. "I know, I know. I guess I just wanted to see the great Flynn Scifo, master and commander of the Peerless, in all his glory."

He was too sick to argue with Yuri much more than that, and he didn't resist when Yuri pressed him back into the flimsy cot and offered him a tray of fruit and cheese. Flynn gratefully took a slice of orange and drained it between his teeth, drinking the juice before slowly chewing and swallowing.

But then he said thickly, "We have to escape."

"Escape?"

"Haven't you been listening?" Flynn sighed heavily. "These men -- are pirates, Yuri."

Yuri tilted his head. "I know that," he said. "They're my pirates."

Flynn paused, frozen for a moment. "What do you mean?" he asked in a hush, but his addled mind was filling in the blanks, answering the question for him.

His old friend simply watched him, eyes lidded. "You didn't think you were the only one of us who could earn a ship of his own, did you?"

A pirate.

Suddenly Flynn shot up, the platter of food going flying; he reached for Yuri as if to wrestle him, but he was weak and his prone position put him at a further disadvantage, and Yuri was expecting it. He ended up on the floor, panting, with Yuri pinning him there easily.

"Don't worry," Yuri said, unfazed. "It doesn't count as a win when you're in this condition. Your record is still perfect."

Flynn gritted, "I don't care about -- my record!"

"You never did." Yuri looked down at him, neutral. "You never even noticed how much I cared."

He didn't understand, and he wasn't sure if he was too sick to make sense of it or if Yuri was just not making sense. He struggled pointlessly to shove him off. "You're a pirate, Yuri! This isn't-- some boyhood game! You're a criminal."

"Yeah, I know what it means." Yuri shoved him back, so that his head cracked against the wood floor, and Flynn sucked in a breath and held it, gingerly. "And now you owe this criminal your life."

He didn't fight when Yuri got up, leaving him there on the ground; he didn't move when Yuri added with more of his earlier amusement, "You'd better eat that food. You're sick, and you need the nutrition. Besides, oranges don't grow on trees, you know."

With that nonchalant joke he was out the door, and Flynn closed his eyes, wondering what had happened to their childhood dream.