Written for the ToV Challenge on Tumblr. This was prompted by Suguelya, based on a piece of fanart.

Lives Unsaved

One time when they were little, Flynn found a baby bird on the ground in the weed-infested lot behind the bakery.

"We have to help her!" seven-year-old Flynn had insisted.

Yuri just scuffed his shoes and fisted his hands in his pockets. "Look, its wing is broken, see? It's probably gonna die no matter what we do."

"We have to try!" He crouched and gently scooped the terrified fledging into his hands. "Sh… it's gonna be ok. We'll make you better. C'mon, Yuri, let's hurry home!"

They ran home as fast as they could. When they burst into the kitchen, Flynn babbled incoherently at his mom about how they needed to help the little bird, until Yuri translated more calmly. Flynn's mom set up a towel in a small box with a small bowl of soggy bread.

"There. That's about all we can do. Do you want to go to bed, sweetie?"

Flynn sat at the table with his head resting on his arms, eye-level with the bird. "No. I'm gonna stay with her and make sure she's ok."

Yuri exchanged a look with Flynn's mom over his head. They both knew that prognosis was not good for the little bird. Nevertheless, Flynn sat at the kitchen table long after his mom and Yuri had gone to sleep. He stayed with the bird all night long, until he fell asleep with his head in his arms.

When his mom gently woke him in the morning, the bird was dead. They buried her in the lot where they'd found her, and then Flynn ran off on his own. When he didn't come back after an hour, Yuri went in search and found him curled up on a deserted strip of pavement overlooking the river, sobbing his eyes out.

"Um… Flynn?"

"Go 'way."

Yuri awkwardly patted Flynn's shoulder. "It's ok, Flynn. It was just a bird."

"I – I couldn't save her," he bawled.

"There wasn't anything you coulda done."

Flynn sniffled and rubbed his red eyes on his sleeves. "She was my responsibility and I let her down. It's not fair. Why'd she have to die?"

Flynn had never taken death well. Yuri didn't know why he'd assumed things would be any better now that they were older.

Chastel had healed all his injuries from the fight with Garista, but that did nothing for his aching muscles. Had the captain's funeral really only been this morning? Yuri wanted to lie in bed, take the deepest sleep in the world, and then tomorrow he could sort out what he wanted to do next. He was pretty sure whatever he did next, it wouldn't be with the Knights, but he could figure out the details when he wasn't exhausted.

He had been about to retire when Hisca pointed out that Flynn had been gone for a while. After getting patched up, he'd mumbled something about going for a walk, but that had been almost two hours ago. It was now dark and pouring rain and he still hadn't come back, so Yuri set out to find him.

It didn't take long. Flynn sat on the steps of one of the side entrances to the fort, his head buried in his knees. He didn't seem to care that it was raining, although neither did his hair, which defiantly stuck up despite the water pounding down. He sat motionless, not even looking up when Yuri approached.

"Hey." Yuri climbed onto the step and held the umbrella over Flynn. "You all right?"

"Go away, Yuri."

It was hard to see clearly. The sky was dark, storm clouds blotting out the moon, and the only light was an orange glow filtering through the windows of the door behind them. Despite the low light, Yuri caught Flynn's head shift ever-so-slightly in his direction. A promising sign.

"You can't sit out here all night, you know. You'll get pneumonia."

"I'll come back in a little bit."

Yuri sighed, resigning himself to getting his ass wet. Cold water soaked through his pants as he sat next to Flynn, holding the umbrella between them.

"I'd like to be alone, Yuri."

He'd been alone for two hours. There was respecting Flynn's privacy, and then there was leaving his best friend to wallow in grief on a cold, rainy night. "Yeah, but I can't just leave you here without the umbrella, and I'm certainly not walking back without taking the umbrella with me. See my dilemma?"

Flynn finally raised his head. For a moment Yuri thought he was crying, before realizing the streaks of water shining with orange light on his face were just rain. "Fine."

"So, are you more upset about Captain Nylen, or what happened with Garista?" Personally, the fire that still darted through Yuri's nerves was caused mainly by vivid memories of stabbing Garista. It turned out that no amount of monster slaying could prepare him for taking a human life.

"Both. I feel… incompetent." He tried to wipe the streaks of rain away with his sleeve, but since that was also soaked, he just made his face even wetter. "Knights are supposed to save people, but we couldn't even save our own captain. What kind of Knights does that make us?"

Not a Knight for very much longer in my case, Yuri thought but didn't say. He'd talk to Flynn about leaving tomorrow; Flynn had enough on his plate tonight. "You know, sometimes there's nothing you can do. Sometimes people are beyond saving."

"This was our first major mission, and we butchered it."

"That's not true." Yuri shifted his weight to try to more evenly distribute the water soaking into the seat of his pants. Flynn had been rooted to his spot since before the rain began, so at least his patch of concrete was dry. "We solved the aer problem in this town, didn't we?"

"At what cost?" Flynn frowned and stared ahead. Yuri carefully kept the umbrella between them so that Flynn wouldn't get any wetter, but Flynn didn't seem to care. "Captain Nylen is dead."

"But the people of this town are safe. You can't save everyone, Flynn. Focus on the people you did."

Sometimes, Yuri wondered what magical power Flynn had buried inside that let him keep this naïveté. Most people from the lower quarter learned quickly that life was fleeting and death was inevitable, and sometimes you had to abandon the weak to sickness and starvation to keep the rest alive. Despite all this, Flynn had managed to hold onto the belief that no life was beyond saving if he tried hard enough. He was an adult and a knight now, but inside he was still that little boy who would sit up all night long just to save a tiny bird.

"I need to become stronger. I don't want to let anyone else I care about die."

If Flynn didn't want to see anyone else die, he might have chosen the wrong profession. What Yuri said, though, was, "I believe in you." It was true, to a point. Yuri was not nearly naïve enough to believe that there was ever a level of strength where you could for-sure protect every person, but if anyone could find it, it would be Flynn.

"Not letting anyone else die also means not resorting to murder myself."

Yuri looked over in confusion. "Murder? You'd never."

"We murdered Garista."

"Garista was the bastard behind all of this. He got what he deserved."

"That's how I felt in the heat of the moment, but now… we should have tried harder to arrest him."

"We didn't have any good evidence. He would have gotten off."

"It would have been the morally right thing to do."

Yuri scuffed his shoes in a shallow puddle at his feet. Here was the reason he was leaving the Knights. "You mean it would have been the legal thing to do. Moral and legal aren't always the same, y'know. What if Garista got off and went on to do the same to another town?"

Flynn hesitated. "I don't know. I believe we did the right thing in disobeying orders to shut down the aer problem at the castle, but Garista… I never want to do that again."

"Hopefully we won't have to."

"Criminals should face justice. The way we killed him… it almost feels like it was revenge for Captain Nylen."

Maybe it had been. Yuri couldn't deny that he'd had Nylen's last moments on his mind when he finished Garista off. "Does it matter? We got rid of a dangerous person and made sure he can't hurt anyone else."

"If one man kills a monster, then it's nice for the man that he got revenge. But if the monster is put down by the legal system, by a trial and a jury, then it means society itself has said they won't tolerate monsters. A functioning justice system is what proves society is worth protecting."

Yuri made an uncertain noise, the umbrella shifting with his changing grip. "I… guess so." Rain pitter-pattered on the umbrella in the ensuing silence. The idea of protecting society as a whole, or what the meaning of justice was, seemed far beyond Yuri's grasp. He was just a kid from the lower quarter – what did he know about big ideas like humanity? Flynn understood, though. Flynn was born to be a knight, born to rise through the ranks until he really could protect all of society. That's why he was still going to be here after Yuri left. "I don't know about society, but I think a little girl's smile when her dad comes home alive is what proves an individual life is worth saving. You have to start by saving the people right in front of you, and I'll do whatever it takes to do that."

"Saving one person at a time isn't effective in the long run. If we had managed to take Garista alive and put him to justice, it would expose the corruption in the system and maybe prevent people like him from coming to power in the future."

"Maybe." It was a diplomatic answer. He still didn't agree that there was anything inherently wrong with killing that bastard, even if his mind did keep replaying the sound his sword had made when it sunk into him or the way Garista had gasped at the last moment. Killing Garista had been far from pleasant, but doing what was necessary rarely was.

"I will never let myself get in that position again," Flynn said firmly.

"I hope you don't have to." If he did, Yuri wouldn't be at his side next time. Flynn would have to be the one to make the killing blow, and Yuri didn't want his friend to feel the same way he did. "Do you think you can come in now?"

Flynn shivered a bit, like he'd only just realized he was covered in water. "Yeah."

Flynn awkwardly got to his feet, his limbs stiff from sitting curled up for so long. "Thanks, Yuri," he said as they started walking back to the main entrance. "I really do feel better now."

"Good, glad I didn't soak my ass for nothing." They walked close together to share the umbrella, their footstep splashing in the puddles.

"I'm really glad you're here with me."

"Yeah." But I'm leaving. He didn't have to tell Flynn that tonight, though. Tonight, they could go back to the room they shared and reminisce about old times to take their minds off the funeral and confrontation with Garista. Yuri wasn't sure when he would see Flynn again once he left, so he was keen to make some good memories with him before he went.

"You're hogging the umbrella."

"Well, it's my umbrella. You didn't bring one out."

"It wasn't raining when I left."

"And that's my fault?"

The day after the bird died, Flynn spent the entire morning pulling all the weeds in the lot and gathering them under the tree. It was a cushion, he explained cheerfully. That way if any baby birds fell in the future, they'd hit the soft weeds and not get hurt, so they wouldn't die. The weeds, of course, blew away in the first gust of wind, but Flynn wasn't deterred and spent the following week coming up with every possible way to protect fallen baby birds.

That was the thing about Flynn. Yuri had felt bad for the dying bird, and if there was anything he could do for any future birds he'd of course help, but Flynn had made it his mission to change the entire system of birds falling to the ground and dying. Flynn didn't handle death well, and he definitely never forgot a single life he hadn't saved. Maybe it was childish to think he could save every baby bird from ever falling, but even as kid, Yuri knew that if anyone could, it was Flynn.