I'd say learn every relevant app you can, regardless of what Adobe might have in store for Freehand, at the moment it's still better at many things than Illustrator (and of course vice-versa) and is still very much a 'going' concern in the design industry, you'd be surprised at how many high-end consultancies actually use it
Illustrator ISN'T a standard by any stretch of the imagination.
By not knowing it, you ARE limiting your potential to be employed by a design company.
These app's aren't rocket science, and at worst shouldn't take much longer that a couple of days to actually learn, a week at most, if you've sussed Photoshop then Illustrator will rapidly follow, and Freehand really isn't all that different from that. Same then follows for ImageReady etc.
But by not learning it... you're limiting yourself, and from my past experience, many design companies don't keep up to date with the latest software versions, so potentially you might end up going for an interview, and you could be asked about your software knowledge, and bam! not knowing it could lose you the job.
Or you could of course lie and say you do know it... but I've seen people sacked for trying to pull that stunt when it comes out under the heat of a deadline.
Regarding Flash and Illustrator, they'd be well suited to each other, both suffer from reasonably clunky, counter-intuitive interfaces and functionality, let's hope they incorporate elements of After Effects/LiveMotion should such an amalgamation ever occur.
