Estellise stands in the courtyard of the Manor of the Wicked, head tilted back in that way she has, as if solving a puzzle. It's a quiet nice. The stone flags are quiescent, peaceful, moonlight skittering across their backs. Crickets hum like violins. Fireflies phase in and out: she thinks she's pinned down where one is, but it'll pop up anywhere. The rosebush. The pond. The trees. Her hand.
Light spills from the windows. The door is propped open.
She steps in and finds a fire crackling in the open room. Tables are padded with red velvet and the curtains are drawn back to let in the night. The halls are empty of Red-Eyes, but the quiet makes her uncomfortable.
Then she sees him: a way back from the fire, at the table, proper posture and a teacup in his hand. He waves her over. "Oh, if it isn't the princess! I just am setting the table, come in, come in." He rises in a single fluid motion, moving with suave grace. She thinks if she moved that way, she'd end up breaking something (she doesn't know she already has that grace). He looks good even doing the simplest measures. Like pouring hot cocoa and setting it down on a saucer- wait.
He must've read her expression, because he laughs in delight. "Oh no, my pretties, I don't bite. I am just wanting to talk, ja? Sit, sit," he claps his hands. With his wide eyes, she thinks he almost looks like a child.
Maybe that's why she trusts him. "Yeager... what are you doing? You said yourself that we are sworn enemies!" The cup, hot in her hands, is half to her lips when that sets in. She hastily casts Recover on the drink, spilling it in her haste. Chocolate sinks into the tablecloth. "Oh no! I'm sorry!" She's flustered.
And then Yeager is beside her with a cloth, dabbing at the cloth. "Clumsy, clumsy! But you don't need to be worrying, I wouldn't try to poison you, ja? Hard to talk to the dead!" There's something macabre about his laugh that sets her on edge; she stays tense the whole time he's beside her.
Yeager settles back in: clothing impeccable, his hair falling over his eye, playful glint. He's smiling in a strange, distant way, as if she's a curiosity. She doesn't know how often she wears that expression herself. "You think I'm evil, ja?"
Clink. She set down the cup harder than she meant to. "That's... I mean..." she hadn't expected that. She turns a bit inward, her hands folded in her lap. "I heard how you helped the others find me. You risked your life to tell them about Baction, saved their lives at the Baction... even though it put you in danger. What if Alexei heard? Why tell us at all?"
Only a smile. Yeager shuffles in his seat, adjusts the lace at his neck. "You are confused. You say, this Yeager, his heart is black as coal! You cannot know why he does good."
"And mourning for the Don, after you helped kill him..." Estelle looks at him, now. The sad, self-mocking tilt of his lips. "I don't understand you."
"Ah," he rests his hands on the tablecloth. "Lieben, you think if you walk the world you know it, ja? The naive princess learning the world?"
Blood rushes to her cheeks, and she opens her mouth to-
He holds up a hand. "But! The spring and the fall are not the same! The summer and winter, not the same! You see newness every time, no?"
"Yes..." she's a little uncertain about what he's talking about. But she sees no weapons nearby. And suddenly her sword is at her side. She listens.
"You are well-traveled, ja, but you are young. You do not know time. You have not walked those corridors. You know where and what but not why and when."
"Does... does your heart tell time? With heartbeats?"
His face lights up. It's strange how he moves from the hooded eyes of a killer to the sparkling child's eyes. "Ja! Heartbeats are footsteps in time. You keep walking no matter what!" And what's time to man with no heart?
She asks. His smile fades.
"I... I have seen much, my pretty. Lost much. You are not yet regretting. Am I evil? That is a silly question. Ask your Yuri, he will tell you the answer. You in your castle, what do you do when you reach for the goal, the light?"
The answer comes easy. She's been living that. "I keep trying until I can!"
His eyes are deep pools, no bottom to them. "Ah, that is just it. If you cannot? You, a heir, what do you know of helplessness?"
She stares at him a long time. She feels her knuckles going white, clenched into fists.
He giggles, somewhat unpleasantly. "Oh, I am sorry Sour note. Alexei taught you a great deal, did he not, in your bubble. You want to do good, but you cannot... but what, lieben, what if you could? That Yuri, he killed Ragou and Cumore. He knows. Kill one to save a thousand? Easy, yes?" She nods, he goes on. "One for a hundred? There is no other choice! Do you? One for ten! Alexei, Yuri, learned, you will learn this, that the one with the baton controls the orchestra! You agree, yes?"
He doesn't wait. "You think it's like that, ja. But one day you save, and the one dies, claws out your heart." Crooked smile. "What is ten, hundred, thousand? Numbers. You know this, oh yes. You let Alexei capture you to not hurt your friends. Ah, you protest, that is not it? But you could have fought harder, no? You put the sword in the hand of evil, so that those you love would be safe! My pretty, you asked me why, let me ask you: why did you do that?"
"I was wrong, though! There was another way! I just didn't try hard enough to look for it, but Yuri made me see! He told me to never give up!" the cups rattle as she pounds the table. She stops. The slow vibration of china dies away into the still air.
"Ah, lieben." Yeager's lifted his cup so it doesn't spill, and now takes a drink. The ends of his bangs dip into the cup, but he appears not to notice. "You think there will always be a way, ja?"
She screws up her face, furrows her brows. Bites her lip, looks down. The black threadwork on the tablecloth: waves, and fish darting out of the surface. It's a lovely design; she traces it with one of her fingers.
"Is that why... you fought alone?"
Yeager's turn to blink.
"Because there was no way?"
He shifts. Strange that the silence is from him, now. She tried to ask him this before, at Zaude, but he...
"Is that way you let yourself die? Wait, you died! How are you here?" clatter. She sets down her cup hurriedly, and it spills. Rolls across the table and shatters on the floor.
He smirks. "The world is a strange place, ja?"
She can smell the cocoa, sees it seep towards her feet. "Am I dreaming?"
"Ohoho, now that is the question, is it not!" And suddenly Yeager is beside her again, cloth in hand, swiping the chocolate from the rug. With his head down and his eyes avoiding hers, he seems smaller somehow.
"Please, stop! You don't have to... let me help!" She furiously grabs a napkin and pushes out her chair, settling to the floor to scrub at the mess. Cloth rasps as their shoulders brush, blue hair mingling with pink. They breathe the same air. "This is the strangest dream..." she whispers, half to herself.
His eye - the one not covered by hair - is on hers. "Tell me, if you are dreaming, would you dream this?" He sets down the soaked rag; dries his hands on the hanging tablecloth. That's not helping, she thinks disapprovingly, and then his hand is on her shoulder, tracing her collarbone.
She can't help it, she flushes. "Y-Yeager! What are you-" and then she stops. Because his other hand, cool as night air, has cupped her cheek, slid back into her hair. She's aware of her heartbeat.
He looks so much like a child, his cherub face, eyes filled with a strange laughter somewhere between mischief and sorrow. Maybe that's why she doesn't move. Maybe that's why, she'll tell herself after. Still watching - watching each other.
His lips brush hers, soft as velvet. And then - aaah, what is she doing! - her own hands come up, and she's the one kissing, now. His lips move against hers but she can't hear what he says. His frame is light, muscular, but somehow fragile... she can't pin down the feel of him. It's as if -
and then she stops watching, or thinking, and closes her eyes -
Her face is pressed deep into the folds of her blanket. The fire crackles. The nightflowers are blooming, striving with the stars overhead. A thick stream. Listen close and you'll hear the stars speak / like water through so much rock. The snatch of a poem comes to her.
"Ah, you're awake." Yuri. He rests on one knee, the other leg sprawled in front of him. He's looking at her now, amused. It takes her a while to realize she'd spoken it aloud.
They sit like that, and listen to the fire crackling. She can feel that the tips of her ears are red, and she's breathing heavier than usual. She hopes he doesn't notice. "Did you get any sleep, Yuri? I know you're always up watching..."
He shakes his head, his dark hair barely visible against the forest. "I don't mind. I was just thinking."
Thinking... she's quiet, for a minute. Looks down at her hands.
"I said, what about you, Estelle? You drifted off there." Yuri's dry voice wakes her.
"Hehe! Oh, sorry. What was the question?" She suppresses a yawn, one hand in front of her lips.
"Did you sleep well?" he still looks amused.
Something in that smile reminds her...
"Yes... yes, I did." The word seems strange at first, but as she repeats it, she finds herself more sure. Yes, she did. She wondered if she'd dream again.
"It should be dawn soon." Yuri says, stretching. "We should get ready." "Okay," she says, looking at him.
They don't move.