The Aftermath
Summary: The one where torture's a little bit harder to work past than it is in the game and no one's quite the same afterwards.
No one tells Estelle that after she was released from Alexei's control, she sleeps for three days without turning over. It isn't a conscious decision, she thinks, but she sees it as a kindness because it's easier to pretend that way. She lets them think she believes them because it's easier than telling them that she remembers every moment under that control and knows exactly how long it lasted down to the minute.
She can't make herself say a word because everyone's so tired and so worn out and she just can't put anything more on them.
How can she not remember when she counted every second of it, counted every blow she landed, counted every flinch that she caused?
Estelle has counted and added and divided and it comes out so heavy that she barely manages to shoulder it during the day and doesn't realize that it comes out at night in the form of cold sweats and liquid fire behind her eyes and breaths she can't quite pull in and a sort of constant fear that digs into her bones.
Estelle dreams, not always, but often enough of that last fight where it was just her and Yuri, and she couldn't control her body even though she screamed the entire time to stop, please stop, I don't want to do this, I don't want to hurt you and it feels like a violation. She can't resent Yuri for the injuries, not after what she does to him, and takes the memories like treasures underneath her skin.
He can stop me, she thinks sometimes when it's really bad and so hard to pull herself out of that dark place, He's done it before, he can do it again.
She was stronger in that battle than she's ever been and Estelle tries to avoid hating people, but a part of her can't help but hate Alexei for doing that to her, for turning strength she didn't know she had on the people she loved. She was stronger and faster and so powerful and it hurts to think that she might not be able to access that strength when she really needs to now.
She's happy that she sees Rita before she sees Yuri, because Rita's prickly and fluttery and her constant chatter smoothes over Estelle like a balm over burns; it gives her a little bit of time because Yuri would know if she didn't pull herself together, and she has to.
Those are the nights where she wakes up and has to force herself to not check on everyone because Raven and Judy are such light sleepers that she'd only trouble them. Sometimes, but not every time, she wakes up and forces down the shakes and has to go brush her teeth to get rid of the taste of acid. Sometimes, but not every time, she ends up scooting her bedroll closer to Rita. The warmth of another living creature is enough when it's bad, especially when Rita mutters formulas in her sleep and rolls over closer because she's a heat-seeker and Estelle knows it, and she can be sure that she hasn't hurt anyone.
Not again.
She does a good job, really.
She heals and fights and laughs around the campfire and tries to keep everyone else from hurting, and she does a good job until someone (she doesn't remember who) says something innocuous (she doesn't remember what) but it's enough that she freezes up and when she looks down, her hands are trembling. It's not a lot but it's enough that Judy levels an unreadable look in her direction and Yuri's suddenly watching her with an intensity that scares her a little bit.
She brushes it off but doesn't forget it, especially when she wakes up that night, breathing hard and still feeling the warmth of blood between her fingers, and Judith's sitting up and not even pretending to sleep. She doesn't look surprised when Estelle looks away immediately and says something stupid about the ground being lumpy and hard to sleep on (even though Estelle never complains about their sleeping conditions if she can help it, not if everyone has to manage too). When she sneaks a peek at the Krityan a few minutes later, she's not watching her but still sitting up as if keeping watch.
Estelle forces herself to remain still and eventually drops off into an uneasy sleep that's blessedly free of nightmares but not as restful as she needs.
No one says anything but the next day, it feels like they're going a little slower despite fighting fewer battles, and it feels like Yuri in particular is trying harder to avoid being injured. She doesn't understand but knows better than to bring it up.
That night, they forgo the tents to save them wear and tear (it's a nice night, cool and just the slightest bit breezy without being drafty) so they all sleep around the remains of the campfire. Estelle feels better with Judy so close (safe, safe, safe) but instead of keeping Rita at her other side as is customary, Repede lays down instead, curling his tail over his nose and tucking his paws up underneath his chin.
Estelle thinks that she might have imagined it (the nights are always so long that sometimes she loses track of what's actually happened and what she's dreamed up in her head) but she thinks at some point she edged closer to him and gotten a large paw in the head for her trouble but warmth too, because if she doesn't imagine it (and she must have) then that means that he's going to let her stay close, and she really, really wants that warmth.
No one's the same afterwards, not even now when they have a goal and a destination.
They're all so strong and Estelle envies them. Envious but not jealous, because she wouldn't in a hundred—no, a thousand, no—a million years begrudge them that strength. That strength will keep them safe, has kept them safe, and the thought of taking that away from the people she loves most makes her physically ill.
So it goes; she fights and laughs and lives because she wants to but there's a constant anxiety inside her that she covers up with ridiculousness and naivety because if she doesn't, she has to think about the rest of it and she doesn't want to. It's selfish, she knows, and Yuri would probably smack her for it if he knew, would tell her to stop being an idiot and depend on them more; the thought makes Estelle smile without even thinking. He would in a heartbeat.
Who would want to think about something like that, though, even to process it?
Who would want to sit down with their best friends and tell them how she counted the seconds and kept thinking that the pain couldn't get worse but it always did? Tell them that she's afraid of herself a little bit and of the power there and so afraid that it can be turned on them again? Tell them how proud she is of them every single day?
It hurts to think about and she can't so she doesn't.
It's getting harder though and Estelle has the feeling that she's not doing as good of a job as she needs to. The indecipherable looks are getting even more common and something has to change.
The change comes when everyone least expects it.
It's not even a difficult battle and Estelle still doesn't quite know what happens, all the she knows is that one minute she's duking it out with the rest of them and then the next there's a movement she's not expecting out of the corner of her eye and then she's on the ground with her hands flung out, a spell on her lips. Yuri freezes where he stands and she goes stock still and the magic fades with her breath, which is coming in stutters she can't control.
"Estelle…?" Yuri doesn't sound right, like he has absolutely no idea what to do, and Estelle can't even see because everything's gone blurry and she doesn't even know why all she wants to do is cry because she's tried so hard to pretend that it doesn't matter. Yuri's kneeling down in front of her, now, and the rest of the group clusters around them, and he holds out a hand. "You okay? Can you stand?"
And something in Estelle snaps with a crack and she can't take that hand. She can't reach out and take it like she always does because they're too busy hiding her face, and she curls in on herself when the tears come. Get up, Estelle, she orders to herself but her body doesn't listen and her heart can't do it anymore, even when all she wants is to act like nothing's wrong. Right now she's got nothing left to give, sitting on the ground and hiccupping sobs into her palms and feeling so stupid.
The first person to shake themselves out of their shock is Raven, surprising all of them. He kneels down next to Yuri and tugs her shaking hands away from her face and looks her right in the eyes.
"Easy, there. Calm down and breathe, little princess. Breath." His voice is calm and steady and she latches onto it to try and steady herself. She treats it like an anchor, trying desperately to do as he says. She can breathe, she can, she can… Estelle doesn't notice the look Raven sends to Yuri and even if she did, she wouldn't know what it meant but he apparently does because he reaches out and pulls her over to him, wrapping his arms around her shoulders after a visible deliberation of where to put them and nestling her nose into his collarbone.
"Hey, hey," he says, sounding almost like he's frightened, but that's not right at all, "You're alright, it's fine. You're strong, it's alright…"
Except that Estelle doesn't feel strong at all. Hasn't for a long time, and now it's like she can't do anything.
Gloved hands clench in dark fabric and Estelle presses herself closer until she's not sure whose heartbeat's pounding in her ears. There are more hands than can just belong to Yuri on her; Raven and Judy are both patting her hair and Rita's rubbing her shoulder and Karol's covering her hands with his and Estelle doesn't know when she got so lucky.
Words are tumbling out of her along with tears.
"I'm not strong at all, I'm really, really not," is what starts it and then once she begins it's impossible to hold it all back. Estelle finds herself hitching out everything into Yuri's shoulder, voice thankfully muffled by fabric and skin and in comprehensible with tears but not nearly enough, and at some points she feels his grip on her tighten to the point of pain. That's a pain she'll take willingly; it's proof that she's not alone even though she's felt like it for so long, and that she doesn't have to fight by herself anymore even though she never wanted to give this to anyone.
"I'm sorry, I'm scared, I'm sorry," is enough to inspire a squeeze hard enough that she squeaks and Estelle hears Raven say,
"Whoa, now. Don't break her. She's having a panic attack, not dying." His voice feels distant and far away even though she knows he's right there, and she wants to tell him that it's okay, because it doesn't feel like Yuri's breaking her so much as he's holding all of her pieces together. Her breaths are coming deep and too quick and something's wrong, this doesn't feel right, Estelle feels lightheaded and suddenly dizzy and everything's wrong.
"You stupid, stupid idiot," Yuri snarls into her hair, "Why didn't you say anything? We're your friends, the hell are you even thinking?"
His words cut off her air and she chokes. A hand (Raven's, she notes, from the part of her that watches this with a detachment she can only envy) lashes out to cuff Yuri upside the head.
"That's enough. You're not helping, Yuri," he orders, "There'll be time enough for that later." And then he's back down in her viewpoint and Estelle can't breathe, can't take in enough air to even sob. Her chest feels so tight and she's terrified; this hasn't ever happened before, she can't breathe, she's going to drown on dry land and there's nothing she can do about it. A calloused hand untangles hers from the fabric at Yuri's back and sets it to Yuri's stomach. "Breathe with him, princess. Follow what he does, in and out, in and out. Thatta girl, you've got to do as I say or you're gonna hurt worse."
Estelle tries to follow his orders the best she can, dragging herself behind Yuri's rhythm until she feels a rush of air into her lungs. It burns down her throat like alcohol and Estelle finds herself trembling in the aftermath. She's more scared now than she started; she's been frightened before but never to the point that she couldn't breathe and couldn't think. She's never needed help pulling herself together before and she's never been so scared that she thought she was going to die.
"I don't know what to do anymore," she admits when she can, voice quiet and low with shame, "It's too much," and Yuri waits a long time before responding. Estelle isn't sure whether it's because he has to think over his words or because he just doesn't know what to say. She won't blame him if it's the latter.
"That's why you need to tell people when it's too much, otherwise we won't know. You work so hard to keep us safe in battle; let us look out for you when we can."
Estelle's exhausted and she sags as the tensions drains out of her like water through a sieve. She can't, anymore. Not forever, not for long, but for now she just can't. For now, she needs someone else to make her decisions, just for a little bit. She whuffs out a breath into Yuri's shoulder and closes her eyes. She closes her hands too, getting a physical grip on the things she's been trying to hold onto with everything else.
"I'm okay," she whispers and doesn't know how much it sounds like a plea, "I'm okay. I'm okay."
No one believes her and Estelle is not okay.
She doesn't know how long they all sit there in the middle of the abandoned battlefield but eventually Yuri whispers "Can you stand?" againinto her ear and she nods and scrambles to her feet, and they make camp early that day.
This is what she's been trying to avoid, now, she thinks as she helps make dinner, because something's different and she doesn't like it. It's like Rita's walking on eggshells around her and even Yuri looks like she's going to shatter at any minute and it's everything Estelle can do to not scream that it's not different, that she's not different, that she's not broken.
Only Raven and Judith seem unaffected and Estelle couldn't be more grateful for them.
She and Raven are on the meal roster tonight and Estelle's surprised at how normal it is with him when she can't even look Yuri in the eyes. He doesn't sweep it under the rug but instead they spend the duration talking about panic attacks. Well, he talks and she listens while cutting and finds out that he knows a lot about them, certainly more than she did.
Surprisingly, she feels better afterwards because she doesn't feel so alien anymore, like a crazy person in a troupe of crazy people. Apparently they're normal after a traumatic experience, and Estelle can't keep back the flinch that shows when he says it.
Trauma, she thinks, and hates that word. She's not traumatized, she's…
Estelle doesn't know what she is.
She goes silent after that and Raven talks even more to make up for it until she feels more like herself and dinner feels better, like it used to. They all laugh and talk and for a while she doesn't have to try so hard to be 'normal'. She doesn't feel quite so much like she has to do hide and that does so much to ease her, taking away the nerves and the worries.
Afterwards, though…
Afterwards, when all the dishes are washed up and put back into the packs and they all settle into their spaces for the night, Yuri comes up and taps her on the shoulder.
"Estelle?" He asks, looking very serious. "Come with me for a sec."
Estelle follows him, past the outskirts of camp and through a few lines of trees until they reach a grassy clearing, empty save for a couple of mossy logs and patchy wildflowers. Yuri sits down and Estelle fidgets, on her feet, until sinking to the ground after him.
"What's this about?"
"You need to talk about this," Yuri tells her, and she feels a chunk of ice settle inside her. "You do."
"I don't," Estelle replies stiffly, "I'm fine." It feels strange to use that sort of tone, especially with Yuri. She doesn't like it. Yuri scoffs in response and drags a hand through his hair.
"Are you kidding me?" he asks incredulously, "Is that what we're calling it now?"Estelle looks away and stares down at the fabric of her skirt. "You froze and then you freaked. That's not fine. What if that happened in a battle that mattered? What if you died? What if someone else died?"
"Do you think I didn't think about that?"she retorts, a little sharper than she'd planned. Briefly, gloved hands clench before releasing. "Do you think I don't…? What, do you think I don't care?" She can't keep the hurt from her voice and Yuri hears it too, because he winces and scrubs the back of his head.
"No, it's not—shit, I suck at this. That's not what I meant. Don't look at me like that," Yuri protests, "…I hate this. I hate that I'm only finding this stuff out now. How long've you been feeling so—spirits, I don't even know how you feel. I think the only person who does is the old man and he won't tell me squat." He grits his teeth and watches her watch him. Estelle can hear faint sounds from the campsite; they're close but not in earshot. "Talk to me, here."
"…I don't feel like myself and it's getting harder and harder to fake it." The words come quietly, hitting like butterflies instead of boulders, "Sometimes I don't sleep well. Sometimes I have nightmares and when I wake up, it takes a little while to figure out where I am."The more she says, the easier it is to just keep going, because Yuri's face doesn't change and she knows he's listening. Because he wants to know, because she knows that he doesn't ask questions he doesn't want to know the answers to. "Sometimes, I take it a hit in the right place and it sends me back to when Alexei had me. He—" she can't say that it took so long, that there was a time where she was afraid that they wouldn't come for her, that when they finally came she felt even worse. "He'd never actually had a subject for his control system, you know," Estelle says instead, "It was all theory. So when he had me, he had to test it."
Over and over again, at the odd points in the night that she was actually herself and not half-mad with pain and despair.
"He hurt me, Yuri, and I don't know what to do. I don't know how to get past this and the whole reason I didn't say anything—I just didn't want to put anything else on you all. You went through so much for me, got hurt so badly—and I almost killed you."
That's the worst, Estelle thinks. More than the pain she suffered, she can't abide the pain she doled out. She hurt them and made them hurt her.
"Estelle, you weren't—"Yuri says, but she shakes her head.
"I know I couldn't help it," Estelle's words are accompanied by a laugh that isn't happy at all, "That's why it's so awful. I couldn't help it and I was stronger than I've ever been and I hurt you. What's the point of being strong if you're only strong under someone else's hands?"
Yuri goes stock-still.
"Estelle...how could you ever think that you weren't strong?" He breathes, "Do you think we don't need you in the fray with us? Do you think you need that power of Alexei's for us to need you? That power's poison and you know it. Not just for battle, too, half the time you and Judy are the only sanity in this crazy train and when you're not right everyone can feel it and—" He looks like he wants to reach out and shake her, "I'm absolute shit at this, you know. Anyone would know what to say better than me. But don't you dare ever, ever think that we don't need you, just as you are."
Estelle blinks and tries to ignore the burning behind her eyes. Yuri definitely looks like he wants to reach out and shake her; she can see his hands twitching at his sides. She wouldn't mind it if he did.
"When you woke up," And that's the closest admission Yuri's ever made to that period of time that he was laid up in bed too, because he doesn't talk about his own demons either, "You went straight to Rita." You went to Rita and not me goes unspoken.
"You'd have known," Estelle admits, "I didn't want you to. I was a wreck but she was so focused on what she needed to do, and I needed that. I didn't want to tell you, not when I couldn't even process it myself. And then it just got bigger and the world's problems got bigger and I thought I'd be okay because it was all so much bigger than just me, you know?"
"This really, really pisses me off."Yuri digs his hands into grass and yanks up some of the blades with a vengeance, "I didn't have a clue and it really pisses me off."
"I'm sor—"
"Don't say you're sorry," Yuri snaps and holds up a hand for silence, "Just—don't. I get why you didn't say anything. I do. Doesn't mean I have to like it, but I do. That also doesn't mean I'm going to just ignore it now." Estelle flinches. "None of us are. Not me, not Karol, nor Judy or Rita or the old man."
"But—"
"Are you stupid? Do you think that any of us could actually forget about something like this now that we know about it?"
Estelle thinks that it's a bad idea to say that she wishes that they would (because oh, she wishes that they would) so she doesn't, instead shifting her gaze to stare up though the break in the trees into the sky, speckled with stars. Brave Vesperia stands out stark among them and she can't help but give a watery smile at the fact that she immediately looks to it first before everything.
"Estelle?"
"I just want to be better," she confesses, "I want it all to go away. I want it all to not have happened. I know that I can't make that happen and it's stupid to think about it, but…" she trails off. Yuri looks over her with a considering stare. "What?"
"Well, you said that it's hard for you to fake okay," Yuri offers and Estelle cocks her head to the side, "Well, there's no need to fake it anymore because we all know, now. No secrets. Just just—feel how you need to feel and do what you need to do. No one expects you to be exactly the same, Estelle. Just be who you are. That's enough."
Estelle drags in a shuddering breath and absolutely does not cry despite how much she wants to. Instead, she reaches out and wraps her fingers around Yuri's wrist, not tightly but she desperately needs something to hold on to. He gets it, she thinks, and allows the contact. He doesn't even pull away when she shifts her grip to take his hand instead.
"Is it really okay?" she asks and hates how small her voice sounds.
"Yeah," Yuri says, "It's okay. We're not stupid, you know." With his free hand, he gives her a gentle slap upside the head, "So don't treat us like we are." Estelle can't keep back the tiny, tremulous smile that's somehow more honest than any she's given in weeks, and when Yuri stands and makes to tug her to her feet, she follows without hesitation.
It's not okay, and that night when they all settle down to sleep, Estelle still ends up nestled close to Rita the six-armed octopus and she still wakes with a start, but this time when she realizes that Judy's awake and watching over them all like an all-seeing night guard, she just meets her eyes, smiles, and settles back down to sleep. She's not hiding now, even though she's still embarrassed and a little bit ashamed.
These people have seen the worst of her and want her anyway, and that's the thought Estelle keeps and treasures when she feels her own breathing slow and Rita's mumbling is a lullaby in her ear.
It's not okay, but it can be.
It's not okay, but it will be.
Estelle will make sure of it.
AN2: Thank you for reading! If you have any thoughts, comments, praise, declarations of challenge, please leave a review! I'd love to hear what you all thought, especially considering that I've barely dipped my toes into writing for this fandom.