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[ memories = imeeji = pre-canon ]
(Ordered chronologically, numbered in order received)
NOTE: For fun and some ease-of-use, name censoring goes: ████ for Yuri himself, ▓▓▓▓ for Flynn and Repede, ▒▒▒▒ for the rest of the party, and ░░░░ for everyone else.
Childhood
- Meeting Flynn (Memory #1) [CW: mentioned parental death]
- Moving into the Inn
Teens
- Helping Out Around the Inn
- Cookies and Rivalry (Memory #7)
- Meeting Repede
- Joining the Knights
- Basic Training
- Patrol as a Knight
- Leaving the Knights
Twenties
- Days Go By
- Morning After (Memory #10) [CW: implied NSFW]
- Throwing Adecor in the River (Memory #2)
NOTE: For fun and some ease-of-use, name censoring goes: ████ for Yuri himself, ▓▓▓▓ for Flynn and Repede, ▒▒▒▒ for the rest of the party, and ░░░░ for everyone else.
Memory #1 [cw: mentioned parental death]
You're small — not just because you're a kid, but skinny for your age, too. You're four and one-quarter years old, almost but not quite four-and-a-half, and the difference is frustratingly important. You want to be five: you don't want to have to spend all day in this big room with all the other kids anymore.
(It has windows, but they're small and high up; a big, unfinished basement. There are slightly crooked rows of bedrolls everywhere, pulled out now for naptime — everyone else is asleep right now — but taken across to stack by one of the walls for lessons.
The thought of lessons fills you with boredom and irritation. They go on forever and it's so hard to focus. Besides, you already know most of it, but there are new kids all the time so you can't complain.)
Speaking of new kids:
You hear the door on the floor above open, and with it muffled sobbing. You're immediately a little less tense than you would've been — the new kids who are jerks and bullies mostly don't show up crying — but you're still ready to be wrong; ready to show this new kid that you're not someone to mess with and that he'd better leave everyone else here alone, too.
But the footsteps and the sobbing reach the door to the big room and pause, and when you strain your ears you can hear Ms. ▒▒▒ telling the kid, very quietly, that she knows he's sad about his mother but he can't wake everyone else up. He'll have to go sit in the backyard if he can't stop crying.
And that's obviously not fair, the kid didn't ask to get brought here in the middle of naptime, so when he can't stop crying, you pretend to be asleep and then creep out the backdoor to join him.
There's not much in the backyard, just a sandbox and a rusted swing set, but the new kid is sitting on the latter. All you can see from the doorway is that he looks about your size, hair short and blond and spiky. He's crying too hard to hear you, so when you sit down on the swing next to his, he jumps. It makes his swing spin a couple times and you get the impression of bluish-green eyes, but they and his nose are mostly red from crying.
"Hey," you say.
The new kid hiccups and doesn't say anything. He scrubs his face with a fist, then squints at you.
For a moment, you can't think of anything else to say. The two of you just stare at each other. Then his face crinkles up and he opens his mouth and you're suddenly sure he's going to apologize for crying, and you can't stand that, so instead you blurt out the first thing you can think of.
"Dead mom, huh?" The kid gapes at you. You look away from him, kicking off to start swinging. "Yeah, we all got those here."
And you can only kind of see it starting from the corner of your eye, but a few seconds later the new kid is laughing, wet and soft, and you're maybe a little glad that you aren't five yet.
Memory #2
You're older. Twenty-one, though you haven't been twenty-one for very long. You know what the man coming down the hill is here to do — it's not any regular tax collection, he's here for people who didn't pay enough already.
In your head, that translates to: he's here for people he knows can't actually pay.
The man freezes when he catches sight of you, then straightens up to his full gangly height. He's dressed in armor, in uniform — and the sight of it curls your upper lip before you force a smile.
"████ ██████!" the man cries.
You know his name, but you enjoy not calling him by it. "Hey, Tweedle A. Long time no see." You wink, and the not-his-name or the wink or both set him fuming.
When he charges, you stay right where you are, sword not even drawn, and then at the last second you step aside, extend one foot at just the right angle, and he trips.
He trips right into the river that runs through town.
The last thing you think before the memory ends is that you know it's not much of a solution — that nothing you can ever do is much of a solution — but he had a stack of documents with him, and you cross your fingers that the river will destroy the only actual copy of who owes what to the Empire. You know it's been a little disorganized over the past five months.
Memory #7
You're fifteen and you know your way around the Comet's kitchen. Sometimes you still need a stool to reach the highest shelves, but you don't need to ask Tillie or Owen to get things for you anymore, and that's nice.
(Makes you feel more useful and less in the way.)
Today's Sunday, though, and the tavern's closed, so you're not in the kitchen for customers. You're in the kitchen for some of the neighborhood kids.
You're not making dinner, because the makeshift orphanage a few houses over always has Sunday meals more than covered. You know that kitchen has too many cooks in it already, probably arguing right at this very minute over the menu or the recipes. You've helped out before. Everyone does.
So, the kids are set for sustenance. But there's more to life than sustenance, and even though you're pretty good at cooking green beans and broccoli in ways that little kids will eat without complaining...
...well, it can't all be green beans and broccoli all the time.
You hear the tavern door opening behind you, but you know it's ▓▓▓▓▓ even before he calls out. "████? ...What're you making?"
"It's nothing," you say immediately, then feel ridiculous because the whole kitchen smells like toasted sugar. "...Cookies."
▓▓▓▓▓ doesn't laugh, to his credit — but when you turn to face him, he's not doing a very good job of hiding his smile. "I see."
"...We had the extra sugar, that's all. It's not a big deal."
"I didn't say anything."
You scowl at him. "You were thinking it."
▓▓▓▓▓ wipes the smile off his face, eyebrows lifting in the very picture of innocence. "Thinking what?" His lips twitch. "Thinking that the kids are going to love it?" His lips twitch again. "Thinking it was sweet of you to think of it?"
"You're the worst," you tell him darkly, and that does it, now he's laughing. "The shittiest friend I've ever had."
The language widens his eyes a tiny bit, you're both still adjusting to being Old Enough for swears, and he smothers his laughter with difficulty. "I'm the best friend you've ever had, and you know it."
What's really awful is you can't even argue. "Shut up," you mutter instead, and it's a relief when the timer dings.
Except of course ▓▓▓▓▓ grabs the oven mitts before you can, so then you just have to watch him take the tray out of the oven with your arms crossed over your chest, hoping the look on your face still passes for a scowl instead of a pout.
At least he didn't come by earlier. For some reason, the thought makes you shiver.
But you don't get to dwell on why, because you look up to find ▓▓▓▓▓ staring at the tray of cookies and oh shit, that's right, you got sort of carried away.
"████," he whispers, and he sounds genuinely awed. "They look great. How did you create this design?"
You rub the back of your neck. "It's just the flower off the side of that one mug of hers. Cleaned it up real good and pressed it into the dough before they went in, the whole thing took like three seconds."
"What..." ▓▓▓▓▓ just keeps staring at you, ocean-blue eyes wide, and you begin to think he's not going to tease you for putting so much effort into cookies for the neighborhood kids. "How did you even come up with that?"
You're not sure what to say. Suddenly, all you can think is: Why did it have to be cookies. "It's nothing," you mutter, pushing the thought away as hard as you can. "Get them onto a plate for me, will you? I'm gonna clean up."
Memory #10 (cw: implied NSFW)
You're twenty. You wake up — mid-morning, more than a little hungover. It takes you a good two or three minutes to get past the pain and the sloshy feeling in your head to realize you're not the only one in your bed, and then you go very still.
Do you remember last night? Not really. Did you even get this person's name? Maybe, but good luck remembering it now. Shit, why did you bring them back here, you live here.
Slow and careful, you shift away — all the while intent on the sound of their breathing, all the while ready to freeze. Whoever they are, though, they seem like a heavy sleeper; you get to the foot of your bed and then to your feet without a hitch, and from there to the mirror, where you begin to take inventory.
You look like shit, but that's the hangover. A couple of visible bruises and a faint lingering ache. Doesn't look like a great or a terrible time — probably just 'fine', which describes a lot about your life right now.
Your clothes are crumpled on the floor, which is fine and what you were expecting, but when you go to retrieve your own pants, the light catches on something metal in the corner of the room. A pauldron.
For an instant, your brain just locks up, panic and something else, but there's more of the uniform scattered around your room, and when you realize it's the wrong colors (shades of green), the surge of relief is so intense you're briefly dizzy.
Stupid, you tell yourself, and go back to getting dressed. Pants, tunic, vest, boots, all black or nearly black. You belt the vest, roll up your sleeves, and you almost make it to the window totally without incident—
—but then there's this whuffling noise of disapproval.
You don't cringe, exactly, but you can't even look back at the dog you know is curled up in the corner of your room. You feel judged.
"Yeah, yeah," you mutter at him. "I've made better choices. Made worse ones, too."
You're sure he's just staring at you, completely unimpressed. That's fine, you think. You haven't done a lot that's impressive lately.
You drop out of the window, two stories up, to a light landing on the pavement below. By the time the guy in your bed wakes up, you'll be long gone.
Memory #14
You don't have much in the way of personal belongings. Just a coat and a change of socks for colder weather, really. ▓▓▓▓▓ has a little more, the coat and extra socks but also this thick book of fairy stories from the orphanage — Hanks insisted he take it with him, none of the other kids were half as interested in books like that with no pictures — and a simple copper necklace you know belonged to his mom.
But it's nowhere near enough stuff for such a big room, and you still can't quite believe you're really being given all this space.
You want to ask again if the grown-ups who run this inn are really sure about giving up one of their rooms for two five-year-olds, but the words lodge in your throat. You're more than a little afraid that if you ask again, Ms. Owen will realize what a dumb mistake they're making. And it doesn't help to have her standing in the doorway, watching the two of you get settled in.
▓▓▓▓▓'s feeling a little braver. He goes to set his book down on the end table, then stops, his face all scrunched up in thought. "Is this really all right? You rent this room."
He leaves the bit where neither of you have any money unsaid. It's not like it's not obvious.
Ms. Owen raises her big bushy eyebrows. "Oh, you're not putting us out any. This room's never been all that popular. Right off the stairs, you know? Makes it drafty in the winter."
▓▓▓▓▓ is gaping at her. You're not, because you know grown-ups are allowed to tell lies. But you are a little worried about what ▓▓▓▓▓ might say next.
Quickly, you put on your best manners. "Thank you, Ms. Owen." You even bow as you're saying it, flourishy, to hopefully make her laugh.
It works, but her laugh is a lot louder than you were expecting. When she can talk again, she waves a hand at you. "You're welcome, but it's Tillie, dear. Tillie and Owen Mason, but Tillie and Owen will do just fine. My goodness."
▓▓▓▓▓'s bright red from being embarrassed for you, but you're feeling a lot less nervous and shy, so you just grin up at her. "Ms. Tillie?" you suggest, and this sets her laughing so hard that she has to sit down.
You still don't really get why they're doing this, and you're already thinking up different things you could do to help out around the Comet — maybe they don't mind doing this and getting nothing in return, but you mind it and you're sure ▓▓▓▓▓ will too — but you start to let yourself believe it's not a terrible mistake.