Ring A Bell
Disclaimer: Yeah, no.
Summary: Side-story taken from Alternate. In which Estelle become thirteen year-old Yuri's legal guardian and realizes that she's taken on more than anyone could ever prepare her for.
AN: YEAH, OKAY. So I really don't have an excuse for this except for the fact that after I finished writing Alternate I couldn't get this AU out of my head. It's totally different from the trends in this fandom and the character dynamics and whoops, sorry I'm not sorry. So yeah, this gets its own series and I know it's weird, but please regard me kindly. This first chapter is going to be the applicable section from Alternate and from there on, it's all new material.
Yuri meets Estelle from his jail cell after he's been arrested for breaking into her house. It would have been fine if not for the security system. It would have also been fine if not for the guards. Who even had guards these days?
Estellise Sidos Heurassein does, apparently.
Yuri didn't do it for much, just enough to keep him from freezing at night and to keep the numb feeling of nothing from sinking into his bones to make a home. Stealing puts a bad taste in his mouth but it's better than dying and he's getting better at it. He doesn't want to be better at it but it beats lying dead on the streets, another nameless face to be dealt with by the put upon cleanup crew.
It's five years ago to the day that Yuri's parents died, and it only took a year and a half for Yuri to weary of being bounced from home to home, family to family. Now a scrawny and underfed thirteen, he's had enough.
Yuri sits down in his cell and pulls his knees up, wraps his arms around them, and drops his head. He's done, he's had enough.
Stop the ride, he wants to get off. He wants to wake up.
The opening of the door catches his attention but he doesn't look. Showing that he's watching just leads to pain and people can make Yuri do a lot of things –steal and lie and cheat- but they can't make him watch.
A hand comes down on dark, uncropped hair. It's gentle and not the blow that Yuri was expecting.
"Someone said that your name was Yuri."
The voice is soft and quiet and female and Yuri forces down the instinctual twitch of his muscles when that hand moves, smoothing over his hair and trailing down his jaw. She can't make him, he thinks mutinously. She can't make him talk and she can't make him listen and she can't make him watch.
"You answer when Miss Estellise talks to you, urchin—"
"Quiet, Leblanc," the soft voice goes sharp and Leblanc (the noisy, beefy dude who nabbed Yuri I the first place) goes silent.
Yuri can't help but cheer, not a little bit vindictively, on the inside.
So there.
The lady (Miss Estellise, he thinks, not that it matters) doesn't say anything else but she also doesn't take her hand away. Yuri squirms with discomfort. This is new. He's used to being yelled at and cuffed about and he doesn't know what to do with this at all, not with quiet voices and quiet movements.
It's like she's trying to not scare off a stray cat and Yuri almost laughs. He's not a cat but he is a stray and he doesn't need anyone to help him. He doesn't.
"Yuri?"
Yuri can't help it—he looks.
Miss Estellise is a young woman with kindly green eyes and pink hair cut short around her ears. That pink hair is suffering from intense bedhead and she's half in pajamas and half in jeans. Yuri doesn't want to look at her at all. She kneels down on the floor next to him, one hand in his hair and the other hovering undecidedly around his shoulder.
"What do you want?" Yuri asks resentfully and her eyebrows furrow.
"What I'd really like to know is why you needed to break into my house. What did you want?"
Yuri flinches.
He didn't want her stereo system or her tv or the art on the walls.
Yuri keeps his mouth shut.
"You—"
"Hush," Estellise demands of Leblanc, sounding a little exasperated, and turns back to Yuri. "Listen, there's no need to be afraid. Tell me, please?" Yuri bristles. He's heard stuff like that before and it's always big fat lies. Always, always. "Yuri?"
"It's gettin' cold," Yuri mumbles and looks away. He's past the point of being embarrassed for doing what he has to to survive but god, it's hard to remember that when he's face to face with someone who's never lacked for anything. Yuri used to be like that too and he hates her a little bit for it. "You gonna lock me up?"
He always knew that this would happen, always knew how it would end. The little dreams he had of becoming the greatest thief to ever live, to be famous, to make things right, were never for him even though they were nice. Yuri knew this would happen, realistic as he was; he just thought that it would happen a little later in life is all. He's not surprised, he silently insists, he can't be surprised by something he saw coming.
To his horror, Yuri realizes that he trembling not from cold, but from fear.
He doesn't want to go to jail.
He just wants to go home but home doesn't exist anymore and he doesn't know what to do or where to go.
And then Miss Estellise is coming closer to wrap that undecided hand around him to tug him into a firm hug. Yuri resists and stiffens and shakes helpless in her grip until she begins to speak.
"No, Yuri." She tells him, "You're not going to be locked up. I can promise you that."
"How?!" Yuri bursts out, voice sharp and high with terror and anger and why-won't-she-understand.
"Because I'm not pressing charges against you—" Yuri goes wobbly and weak in the knees and feels kind of like he's going to throw up. "And you'll be coming home with me tonight. We'll figure out what to do a little later but I'll make sure that you're safe." Stunned, Yuri peers out from underneath his bangs to watch Leblanc go an amazing combination of red and pale to the point that he looks like a bullfrog about to croak. "Leblanc."
He straightens.
"Yes, Miss Estellise?"
"Run up the paperwork, if you don't mind. My parents were in the system records for years before they passed as emergency contacts, it shouldn't be too difficult for you. Please make it work."
The man does as she says with a short salute and turns away.
"Do I get a choice at all?" Yuri asks suddenly and Estellise pulls away. He gets to see her face fall briefly and then soften.
"Well…yes," she replies, "Of course you do. What would you prefer?"
And that's what makes up Yuri's mind because no one's ever asked. Everyone tells or orders or assumes but no one's ever just asked.
"I'll go with you," Yuri says.
It's all very simple after that, or it seems to be. All Yuri has to do is sign a few papers and sit quietly, and it all goes very fast. He thinks that probably just want to get rid of him. Everyone else did. Before Yuri knows it and has a chance to settle into those kinds of thoughts, he's being trundled into a waiting car.
He finds out that Miss Estellise is twenty-one years old and double-majoring at the local university in history and creative writing. He finds out that she plays the flute (badly) and the violin (not as badly). He finds out that her parents died in a car crash when she was twelve and it was only because she was at home with a fever that she didn't join them. He finds out that Leblanc (head of the guard and the occasional driver) has been around since before she was born and that for all his bluster is actually a very good man.
Theoretically.
Yuri still hates his guts.
Yuri doesn't say much of the ride back, just listens and tries to not bask in the warmth he can't count on for longer than he can see. He lets himself be shown where he'll be sleeping and where the bathroom is and he doesn't sleep the whole night.
At least, he doesn't think he does until he jerks awake to sounds permeating the house. He peers into the kitchen and sees Miss Estellise frantically scarfing down a bowl of cereal, her book bag on the chair next to her. She's got a sheaf of papers in her hands and Yuri doesn't know if it's for school or what but he forgets about it when Estellise sees him and her frazzled expression melts into a grin.
Yuri's never believed in fairy tales even before everything fell apart, never found himself mesmerized by knights and kings and dragons, princess and magic, saving the world. But for just a moment, he lets himself think about how, in another world, she could be a princess and Yuri Lowell lets himself wish (just for a moment) that he could be her knight.
AN2: Thank you very much for reading!