Honesty Is The Best Policy (depending on who you ask)
Summary: In which Estelle is shady as hell and Yuri's a liar...also known as That Time Estelle Found Out About That Whole Stabbing Thing.
Date: Yuri hadn't quite figured that out yet.
Time: Sometime in the afternoon, judging by the sun's position in the sky.
Place: The Lower Quarter in Zaphias.
Status: Lot. Of. Pain.
There was a princess practically sitting on Yuri's chest trying to heal him and he simply couldn't handle that right now, not if he wanted to go with his plan of not telling anyone about a stab wound for the rest of his life.
Shit.
"No, really," Yuri told her and did his best to ignore the stabbing pain (pun unintended) of something in his chest sticking into something else in his chest, "There's no need. I'm fine."
"Don't be ridiculous," Estelle replied with a familiar, bullheaded sort of tenacity that he couldn't pin down, "it won't take long. Just-Yuri?" Yuri grabbed her by the wrist before she could touch. Estelle was a tactile healer and was at her best and most thorough when she could reach out and touch and Yuri...didn't want that. She scowled and made to protest.
"Just don't, okay?"
That was the wrong answer, Yuri knew immediately, because Estelle's expression darkened like a thunderhead. He should have know better, should have found a better way, should have distracted her with another injury because he'd never get out of it now. Estelle could be talked or persuaded out of some things but if involved someone's health, specifically Yuri's health...
Not a chance in a frozen hell.
"It won't take long," she said in a tone that booked no arguments, "You could have an injury that you don't know about, especially after-" she swallowed hard, "Yes."
Yuri was sure that she didn't meant to make his skin crawl with guilt over putting that expression on her face but he did anyway. He'd been distracted by her bright smile but upon giving her a closer look, he could see that she was thinner and looked exhausted like she hadn't slept in weeks. Shit.
"Don't."
Yuri didn't recognize the voice that came from his throat even though he knew the words. His voice didn't sound like that, desperate and pleading and so very close to begging, something he hadn't done in years. Anything to keep Estelle from finding out, he'd do anything. It'd kill her and then Flynn would find out and then he'd be hurt beyond words and Yuri...Yuri just couldn't. Not when he couldn't even think about it himself.
How could he talk about what happened to someone else?
And suddenly there were hands on his face and Estelle was very, very close and all he could see was her.
"Yuri, you're not breathing," she told him urgently, "Look at me, please, breathe, okay?"
Was he not breathing? Yuri thought distantly, and probably would have been more worried about the ripples around his vision if he hadn't been so terrified of the idea of her finding the stab wound that Sodia left on him.
"It's okay, it's okay," Estelle was saying and Yuri tried to focus on her as best he could. Her hands were firm and cupping his cheeks. "I won't...I won't, okay? You're not well," she said finally, "Can you stand?"
Yuri forced his legs to obey him so that he could obey her, and she immediately wrapped an arm around his shoulders to help him back up to his apartment.
"Here now, get into bed," she told him worriedly and bustled him into his bed. It said something about him that Yuri felt like he was in the backseat of his own body. Once he was lying down, Estelle leaned over him and rubbed his forehead with a gentle hand. Yuri tensed and then relaxed when he felt nothing of her signature healing, that rush of comfort and overall good like getting into a perfectly warm bath. "Sleep," she said, "I'll be here when you wake up and we'll get you feeling better."
Something in her voice was strange and tight and Yuri thought that maybe he should say something, but the lure of sleep and of not being alone soothed his worries out of him.
The last thing he saw before falling asleep was the look on Estelle's face, something hurt and determined and guilty.
Yuri woke up slowly and then jerked. The first time he'd come to it had been with agony, pain shooting up every inch of his body. He'd been alone and frightened.
Then he remembered meeting Estelle and freaking out on her, and Estelle putting him to bed. He'd hurt then too because he hadn't let her heal him.
Yuri wiggled his toes.
There was no pain.
He took a deep breath, a move that before had brought on involuntary tears.
No pain there either and he went cold and jolted upright, his eyes wide and white around the edges. At some point in time Estelle had removed his shirt and a stark white bandage encircled his middle, right over the stab wound. She saw, there was no way that she hadn't. It was only then that he took notice of Estelle. She was sitting next to his bed in a chair that didn't belong to him and she had her face dropped into her palms.
"Estelle...?"
The girl finally looked up. Her eyes were red-rimmed and still wet.
"Three broken and two cracked ribs," she said lowly, "Lung damage. Deep tissue bruising. Cracked collarbone." She paused and Yuri's heart stopped.
She was silent for so long that Yuri thought she had broken.
He couldn't breathe. She knew. She knew and now he'd have to tell her about Sodia and then someone who have to tell Flynn about Sodia, and that would absolutely destroy him.
Yuri couldn't do it.
"Yuri," Estelle said very, very gently. Yuri wondered what his face must look like that she felt like she needed to talk to him like he was something small and wounded. "Who stabbed you?"
Yuri couldn't speak or breathe or do anything other than panic. If he just had some time, he could make up a story! Pretend it was a leftover from the battle with Alexei or...no. She would never buy that. She wouldn't buy it but maybe she'd feel bad enough for him that she wouldn't...no, that wouldn't work either.
Yuri'd fucked up the minute he ordered her not to heal him and double fucked himself when she found what he'd been hiding. He'd lied to her and she knew it now and all his plans about keeping it quiet went out the window. She could never let it go, ever; Yuri knew that. It'd be against her very nature to brush it under the rug. It'd be an insult to her nature to think that she could do that.
And a tiny part of him knew that it was even more because it was him.
"Can I not?" Yuri asked with a flippancy he didn't feel. It was said like a joke but he didn't feel it.
Estelle just looked at him.
"You should be dead, Yuri," she said lowly.
"What, you think I don't know that?!" Yuri snapped at her and then felt kind of bad when her steady expression that she must have practiced shook. "Trust me, if anyone in the damn world knows that, it's me!" He coughed with a hoarse hacking sound and Estelle bit her lip, swallowed her retorts that it didn't matter what he did or didn't know if he died from sheer obstinance, and encouraged him to lay back down with a quiet croon.
She had her priorities, after all. The here and now was more important than the past and Yuri's emotional health was what she needed to focus on first, now that the physical had been taken care of.
"I couldn't get rid of the scar and it might hurt sometimes, but I got rid of the infection and healed it as best I could," she said after deliberation. The subject wasn't closed, not by a long shot, but Yuri was what mattered right now and she'd give him what he needed to be safe, which right then was not an interrogation. Estelle would get her answers but she could wait for them. "I'm sorry."
Yuri stared at her. Was she not going to ask again? He'd assumed that she'd be demanding the story out of him that very second, if the iron that had settled in her eyes had anything to do with it, but apparently he'd been wrong. He swallowed hard to wet his throat.
"That's, uh, that's fine."
He hadn't even thought about the repercussions from it, merely of how he was going to have to hide it, and that scared him even more.
One of Estelle's hands came forward to cover his and Yuri realized that he was shaking.
"Yuri? Listen to me, please. This is important."
Yuri chewed his lip and couldn't find the strength to pull away from her. He wasn't sure he even wanted to.
"What?" He finally answered.
"I'm not going to say sorry for healing you. I'm really, really mad that you lied to me." Yuri did try to pull away then and she caught his hand again before he could. "You don't have to answer me right now; what's most important to me is that you're safe and feeling better. But I'll ask again and I'd really like it if you told me the truth instead of trying to hide it from me next time."
She took a deep breath and when she exhaled, her face was all steady resolve.
"I won't ask again today, or tomorrow. Or probably anytime soon," she said, "But when I ask, I really hope that you can tell me the truth."
Tell me the truth and don't be afraid.
Yuri stayed afraid for a very long time.
Despite Estelle's promise to not ask him questions right away a good bit of him still sort of assumed that she would, like Flynn who (despite being Yuri's best friend) seemed to think that a statute of limitations only existed until he forgot about it. She didn't, though, not breathing a word of what happened outside of what Yuri himself told them- that he was a little banged up from the fall and that Estelle found him and patched him up.
He didn't say anything about the secret they were both keeping that was still wrapped in bandages whenever it got achy, which was something that even Estelle and her talent for healing couldn't take away and he didn't let anyone see when he changed.
He didn't think she'd care but if Yuri did ever decide to talk about what happened (not that he ever would) he'd rather it be with someone who already knew. That list was a very short one, consisting only of Duke, probably Repede, and Estelle herself. Yuri knew that he wouldn't be talking to Duke anytime soon.
It took about two months of almost constant panic before the fear of an interrogation turned into curiosity and confusion. It wasn't that Estelle was a blabbermouth so much that she, like Rita, had a constant need to know everything she could and Yuri was fairly certain that knowledge about his well being and of the rest of the group was probably near the top of her prerogatives...so why hadn't she asked him about anything yet?
What was she waiting for?
No way she'd forgotten, not with the way she insisted on sitting down with Yuri every few days to check the scar and make sure that he was still mending properly and taking care of himself the way he was supposed to. It was funny, Yuri thought when he wasn't feeling quite so serious, that healing could save your life but just as easily mess you up even worse if the healer didn't know what they were doing. Ironic funny, not ha-ha funny.
So despite the fact that he didn't want the extra attention or to feel like she had to put extra time into him, Yuri didn't protest the clockwork exams. He was stubborn, not stupid.
He wasn't on the verge of death anymore or constantly coughing up a lung so why hadn't she said anything?
What was she waiting for?
He counted out all the perfect opportunities and all the openings left open for her to ask- and Yuri knew he wouldn't lie when she did. How could he?
Easily, he supposed. How hard would it be to make up a name when it came down to it or practice a story a few times until he could tell it without stumbling? Not that hard. Yuri is an asshole and a liar and a cheater and somehow, the idea of lying to Estelle of all people about this tasted bad.
And it was a stupid idea.
She wasn't an idiot; even Yuri could tell that he'd basically told her that day that it was someone she knew. Why else would he have not said something? Yuri could kick himself for being a moron.
And yet she still kept her mouth shut, even to him.
Estelle just let him keep his lies and his secrets and it was starting to freak him out.
And then she was there, in camp, following Flynn like a surly puppy dog and Yuri didn't expect his heart to jump up in his throat and start drumming nor for his palms to start sweating and he didn't expect to want to start running and never stop. Sodia couldn't do anything to him, not now when he was healthy and surrounded by people and Flynn would be first in line to commit murder if she did, Yuri knew that much. It'd just be stupid.
That didn't make it any better though, not when Flynn was the only barrier he had from her around the campfire, sandwiched between him and Karol on his other side.
It's stupid to be afraid of the kind of knight who's that kind of shitty liar.
Not like Yuri who lied too well.
"Here, I'll help wash up," Estelle spoke up, suddenly very close to Yuri's ear. At some point she'd gotten to her feet and was leaning down in between them, her hand gently touching the space between Yuri's shoulders. "Can you hand me your plate?" Sodia'd been staring at Yuri all night and every time he looked at her, all he felt was like he was falling all over again. She was watching him now. Yuri couldn't move. Estelle's hands on him felt like the only steady thing in the world. "Actually, could you help me?"
Flynn shifted where he sat.
"I can do the dishes, princess-"
"It's my turn tonight," Estelle said quickly, "I'm on tonight's rotation, it wouldn't be fair. Yuri?" Yuri scrambled out of his seat and didn't bother to inform Flynn that not only was Estelle not on tonight's dish rotation but it was almost always a one-person job. He was too relieved for the opportunity to get away from the violet-eyed viper a few seats over to care about fairness. In fact, the person actually on tonight's rotation (Raven) hasn't said a peep, stacked his dishes for them to take like nothing was out of the ordinary. Yuri was suddenly extraordinarily grateful for it.
"Sodia and I can help, at least…"
"Of course not, it's fine. We've got it under control. You two sit and socialize."
Estelle began gathering plates and cups and bowls. Yuri held his hands out to take whatever happened to find its way into them. He felt like he was in a too-sharp haze where everything was blocked out but the screaming need to get away from her.
They would take the dishes down to the riverbank on the other side of camp, blessedly out of eyesight from the fire, and when they got there Yuri felt the tension drain out of him like pulling the plug from a sink. This was the worst.
Actually, no. The worst was waiting on pins and needles for Estelle's inevitable demand that he talk about what just happened back there...because maybe no one else would see it, but she would.
She didn't say anything, though, just sat down and hiked her skirts up to wash. Yuri helped, still trapped in the horrible feeling of relief. Finally, she looked up at him and he couldn't meet her eyes. He didn't want to see the worry that would be there. He didn't want to see the pity either.
"Are you alright?" she asked.
"No."
There was no point in lying, not to Estelle who knew more than anybody else and who knew all of Yuri's soft spots. The difference, though, between Estelle and every other person who'd ever known anything about Yuri was that Estelle had never once dug her claws into him. She could, and so easily.
"I know."
"...aren't you going to ask what happened?"
Estelle went still and put aside the wash rag and the bowl she was rinsing.
"I don't need to."
Yuri felt like the bottom dropped out of his stomach, like some horrible thing was running circles inside him.
"Why?"
Estelle moved closer and reached out with both hands. Instinctively Yuri moved to press a hand to his side but she bypassed the scar entirely to press her palms to his shoulders, squeezing gently and then running her hands down, back up, and down again in a steady rhythm. Yuri hated how much it actually did make him feel better, if unwillingly.
"Because you told me everything you needed to. I don't need to ask because I know who hurt you now. The only question now is what I want to do about it."
Yuri went cold.
"You can't tell Flynn that she chucked me off a building. I'll never hear it end of it and it'll rip him apart."
Estelle looked up, eyes blazing.
"And you'd rather his closest lieutenant be someone who tried to kill you? Yuri…"
"No, Estelle...listen a second." Yuri was scrambling and the words he wanted to say were too truthful for comfort. "What makes what she did any different than what I've done? I'm not...I'm not saying that her trying to kill me is something I'm cool with, but-"
"Like it or not, Yuri, you are a civilian. She is a knight."
"Exactly, justice and all that rot."
"No!" Estelle's voice went sharp and high, and Yuri thought that he might have actually made her angry. "Yes, you've done some very...unsavory and illegal things." Unsavory? That was a nice way of putting it. "But the fact of the matter is that you did those things as a citizen of the Empire and that she, as a knight, is bound to laws that require her to protect those citizens -people that you are included in-, regardless of what they have done. If she wanted justice, she would have taken you to court, if she cared enough to make it legal through Flynn and myself."
"You never would have-"
"You're right," Estelle admitted, "And that's a failing I'm willing to admit."
"She sees me as a danger to Flynn," Yuri finally muttered, "And maybe she's right about that. She blames me for him getting hurt."
"Flynn knows what his job is. He can see past your actions, as much as he hates them, and see the effects of those actions. And he can see that they were good, regardless of how they were carried out. Flynn's job is to protect the people and Cumore, Ragou...they were getting in the way of that and that's something he accepts even if he doesn't like it." Estelle quieted for a few seconds and when she spoke again, her voice was soft and steady. "Flynn knows what his job is. The problem is that Sodia does not."
Gone was the vehement anger of a friend, replaced with a side of her that Yuri didn't see very often- that of the Imperial Princess. They all forgot relatively often that she took her position very seriously and he knew for a fact that he forgot until she recited one of them that she knew the laws inside and out. And now after traveling outside the walls of the castle and capital, she also knew which looked good on paper but were inherently unjust.
That was why she was able to look the way she did now.
"There's a difference between what you two have done," she insisted, "And the laws do not account for those differences. I can."
Yuri couldn't breathe.
"You were officially pardoned months ago. She knows that. Flynn and I both signed off on it."
Yuri didn't know that.
"I can't just...Yuri, even if it wasn't you, that's not something I can let happen."
"But it was because of me," Yuri protested.
"You know how easy it is to do something just once and then do it again and feel justified," Estelle responded lowly. "Yes, it was because of you this time. What about next time? Yuri...I can't have knights who hurt people. I can't."
"You can't let Flynn know any of this until after we get rid of the Adephagos," Yuri insisted. Estelle's hands stilled on his arms. "I can't be the person he needs to stand beside him right now and he can't do it alone. We won't spend a lot of time around each other and she won't-" Yuri swallowed hard, "She wouldn't hurt him."
Estelle wasn't happy with this if the look on her face was any indication but Yuri knew he was right about this.
"I'm not saying you shouldn't be angry. I'm angry. What's more important, me or the world? Just...wait until this is over."
If it was ever over.
That was the worst part.
The olive branch that Yuri offered in the form of a compromise didn't entirely satisfy Estelle but her look of discontent shifted to something slightly mollified, if not happy. Of course she wasn't happy; how could she be? She grit her teeth and turned her head away, muttering something under her breath.
"What?" Yuri asked.
She repeated her words, louder this time.
"The more I see of people sometimes, the more I think I'd pick you before the world every time."
The bottom dropped out of Yuri's stomach.
"Y-you...you can't say that," he said, "Don't say that."
"I probably shouldn't," she agreed and looked up again. Yuri nearly flinched at the look ferocity in her eyes, steel strong and with none of the normal Estelle-like squishiness to be found. He'd never been afraid of her, not once in the entire time he'd known her...but he was suddenly very happy to not be Sodia just then. That sort of rage was more suited to Flynn or even himself; to see it dripping from Estelle was weird as hell and Yuri didn't like it one bit. There was something very wrong about it but also, in a way, weirdly gratifying. There'd been plenty of people that angry at him but Yuri couldn't remember the last time someone had been that mad for him.
He wished that it didn't feel as good as it did.
"We've been gone a while," Estelle spoke up right when Yuri thought he could get his feet back under him, "We should probably head back."
"Probably," Yuri agreed.
He made to get up first but Estelle was quicker, on her feet and ducking down to brush her lips to his temple and whisper very quietly in his ear,
"You've spent so much time protecting me; I've got a lot to live up to."
And then she was speed walking back to camp before Yuri even had a chance to ask her what she meant by that.
Yuri found out exactly what Estelle meant by breakfast the next day. She was covert about it, blessedly; not enough so to fly under Raven's radar but no one else seemed to notice. She had never been overly friendly towards Sodia before she found out that she'd stabbed Yuri so the fact that she offered little more than a good morning wasn't particularly noticeable. She usually sat in between Yuri and Rita for meals so that wasn't weird either. There was something very deliberate and conscious in the way she did those things now, or maybe Yuri was only noticing it now because he had to.
His brain was still partially stuck on their conversation from the night before and partially stuck on the way she'd touched him like he was something precious.
The changes probably weren't noticeable to anyone else but they were noticeable to Yuri, even more so when he and Flynn spent an hour that day discussing tactics and, like any guard dog, there was Sodia on Flynn's heels...and there was also Estelle, pretending desperately to be interested in tactics with her fingers tucked protectively into the fabric of Yuri's shirttails.
When the two of them finally separated from the group, the veneer of false hospitality disappeared and she relaxed into something like normal, and when they set up camp that night, she pulled Yuri aside.
"When the Adephagos is gone?" she asked.
It was a complicated question but Yuri only had one answer for her.
"Yeah," he replied. "When the Adephagos is gone."