Recoil

Summary: Breaking Alexei's control over Estelle doesn't make things okay. In fact, it makes them worse.

AN: You all can thank Mist for this.

Yuri's first thought is oh god, what have they done to her?

His second thought is oh hell goddamn fucking shit.

Because Estelle is not only attacking them like she means it even after they've defeated her, even after breaking Alexei's hold on her…but she's doing so without encouragement.

Estelle has officially lost her shit and that's really the only way Yuri can put it.

And this time he can't manage to do anything worse than defend himself. At least last time, he knew that she couldn't help it, knew to his very core that she was doing things she didn't want to do because she had to, and that fighting her was the only way to save her. …That feeling hasn't changed. Alexei's grip on her may have broken but Estelle's a shaking, violent mess. No longer wickedly accurate or as fast, her strikes are haphazard if still deadly and Yuri can't bring himself to do much more than fend her off.

What the hell have those monsters done to her?

Yuri wonders that so that he doesn't have to think about what happens if they can't defeat her twice. She might not have that accuracy that nearly did them in last time but she's still strong as hell and it takes everything he has to avoid her.

"Estelle, please!" he shouts over the roaring of his heartbeat in his ears, "It's over, Estelle, it's over!" Estelle doesn't answer but Yuri can see her flinch like he hit her instead. If they can just stop her, that's enough. If they can just stop her, they can help her.

Maybe they could do it if they were fresh, if she hadn't worn them down so badly the first time. They're all exhausted but even if he thought it could work, Yuri knows better than to suggest they retreat and try again. There are no do-overs on this one; they get Estelle back…or they don't.

Yuri is not willing to accept the latter.

From the look of it, Karol isn't either, if the way he ducks in and out of strikes and spells is to be believed. He swings his axe out of desperation and cuts her, and Estelle makes no move to heal herself.

Under Alexei's orders, she would have.

But no, this Estelle lets the blood drip down her arm and onto the hilt of her sword, and Yuri realizes that they cannot win. If they win, they kill her. If they lose…

Unacceptable.

"We gotta make a choice here, Yuri," Raven rasps from his left. He's clutching his heart and wheezing and it shoots an icicle through Yuri's stomach. "I know you don't want to, but—"

"We're not hurting her," Yuri snarls back and can't help adding a poisonous, "This is your fault in the first place." If they live through this, Yuri might eventually feel bad for saying that. It's a low blow. But he can't, not right now. It works because it shuts Raven up and gets him out of Yuri' face.

This is a losing battle and Yuri doesn't know what to do.

"O holy water…"

Shit, Estelle's casting.

"Rain down your power upon us…"

Shit, shit, shit.

And then something interrupts her spell with a bright wav of energy, knocking Estelle off her feet entirely and sending her flying. That something comes in the form of someone Yuri doesn't expect. Duke now stands where she once was, his ornate sword in hand.

Yuri doesn't know, as usual, whether he's there to help or do them in.

"I told you—"

"This isn't her fault," Rita snaps, wiping away a smear of dirt from her cheek, "If you wanna blame someone, blame Alexei. What did he do to her?"

Duke is unnervingly calm.

"If we do not subdue her, you will never get the chance to find out." Yuri grits his teeth, hating that Duke is right. "She will not stop until she is made to."

"You're not killing Estelle."

"That remains to be seen."

"Could you two put the rulers away and focus, please?" Rita bellows and struggles to maintain the shield she threw up, "Kinda not the time!"

Yuri focuses just as Rita's shield goes out and he nearly catches a photon blast to the face.

This has to stop.

It has to end.

"Let's stop this now," Dukes says and approaches Estelle without hesitation, "Child of the Full Moon, you must see that you have nothing to gain from this. You must stop."

Yuri doesn't think that Estelle much cares.

She goes very, very still.

"Stop?" she asks quietly, calmly, with an undercurrent of something reckless and horrible underneath, "Stop?" She told Yuri about hurricanes once, and Yuri remembers that in the middle of the swirling winds there is always a spot of quiet called the eye. Is this the eye of Estelle's storm? "You want me to stop? You think I have the luxury to stop?"

Green eyes blaze and fill with tears that mismatch with the look of rage on her face, and Yuri thinks that if she could Estelle would have set Duke on fire. As it is, she still might. A circle lights up beneath her feet and Karol steps forward, a hand outstretched to the person he considers his big sister.

"W-wait," he stammers, "It doesn't have to—"

The tears overflow and slip down soot-stain, porcelain cheeks.

"No one stops," Estelle whispers, "It's way too late to stop! NO ONE STOPS!"

They found her hurricane.

And then all they can do is just get out of her way. Estelle isn't even aiming anymore, isn't even casting. Incantations mean nothing when great dollops of liquid magic drip off of her and destroy everything they touch, burning leaves and bark off trees, reducing buildings to rubble…what could it to a person? Better not find out.

Estelle doesn't even care that it hurts her too.

Hell.

"Estelle, please—damnit! Estelle!" Yuri shouts. Estelle whips around and fixes on him. There's an imbalance between the destruction she's wreaking and the agony written all her face and that imbalance wraps a hand around his heart and squeezes.

"I begged him to stop every time I could. I begged him."

"I know you did, Estelle," Yuri had hoped that hearing her name—not Estellise, not princess, not your highness or milady or any of that bullshit might get through to her. It isn't working. "You did, and now he's stopped!"

Wrong thing to say.

"No," she hisses, "No, no, no, no, no, no, no! He didn't stop! He stopped because you made him, not because I begged him or because he should or because it's wrong!" Her words break with hiccupping, gasping sobs, "No one stops when I ask! No one stops when I beg!"

"So, what? That means you're allowed to kill everyone?"

Estelle cocks her head as if that's something she never even considered. That above everything else is what convinces Yuri that Estelle is completely and totally out of her mind—with pain, with grief…he can't know everything or even anything until he can talk to her, and she is not in a talking mood.

"Kill everyone?" she asks. "That's not what I'm doing at all."

"Then what are you doing, Estelle? Tell me so I can understand you."

Estelle grits her teeth and flings a spell his way that veers left. He doesn't even have to avoid it.

"It doesn't stop, no one stops." Her voice cracks and her next words come out in a scream. "So I have to make it stop!"

The decision Yuri makes when she lashes out at him is a very stupid one in retrospect and it's equally stupid right then when he does it. He doesn't have time to think nor does he have the time to consider other options. Even if he could, there's only one thing he can do.

"No one ever stopped!"

"Okay," Yuri decides, "It's okay, Estelle. I'll stop."

Yuri stops and Estelle's blade doesn't. It's a jabbing sword and the point is wickedly sharp, and it cuts through skin, through muscle, through bone and comes out the other side covered in blood. Estelle doesn't still as a statue and Yuri fights through the pain enough to grip her by the shoulders and drag her down with him when he drops. No one makes a move or says a word from shock, from Raven with his bow drawn and an arrow pulled back to Judith and her glaive at the defensive ready.

Yuri's boned, he realizes when Estelle slides her sword out of his shoulder with a sickening schlicking sound. He instinctively prepares for a second blow—

That never comes.

Instead of steel Yuri finds trembling hands press to the wound and then it's gone, the pain going with it. The pain and then the sudden absence make his body jerk and he curls himself tightly around Estelle who feels very, very small in his arms. Her eyes are open and she's breathing but she doesn't move or speak or even cry. Holding her is like holding something broken and barely holding together and the thought makes Yuri hold her tighter.

"I've got you, Estelle," he whispers into her hair, "I've got you. You're good, you're okay. I've got you, I promise." Estelle is not okay but she's also not destroying everything so at least that is an upgrade. "I've got you, you're good, I've got you."

As abruptly as everything in Estelle stopped, she moves again just as suddenly except that instead of coming out in violence, it all comes out in tears.

"Yuri, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, I'm sorry," is all Yuri hears in a horrible circle on repeat into her hands and he draws her in to shield her. Maybe he can't protect her from everything but damn it, he can try.

"I know, Estelle, I know. I know you are."

She doesn't reply but cries harder and sags against Yuri entirely. He knows that like this that he could do literally anything to her and the thought makes his stomach rile with nausea and his heart scream for payback on the monsters that had brought her to this.

Yuri's jerked out of his reveries when movement catches his eye and the next thing he knows, Karol shoots forward and throws his arms tightly around the both of them and suddenly Rita's there too, kneeling in the dirt with both hands running through Estelle's hair.

"Now do you see the ruin she brings?"

Yuri looks up sharply at Duke's words and in his hold, Estelle gives a full-body cringe like a wounded animal.

"Look, I appreciate the aid, but I've got to tell you that if you take even one step towards her or even look at her funny, I'll rip your fucking throat out."

Duke stops.

"I'd really recommend you listen to him, pal," Raven suggests in a way that makes it clear that it's less of a suggestion and much more of a demand. The lilt in his voice I belied by the steady grip of his fingers on his bow. "He's actually bein' pretty generous right now." I wouldn't be is what he really says. "Let's just go our separate ways as friends, what do you say?"

That is not a suggestion.

Nevertheless Duke just looks at them all like they're worse than scum under his shoes and then eventually, he turns to Judith.

"Even you, girl? You possess a bond with an entelexeia and you would still defend her?"

Judy stares at him, unimpressed.

"I am more than my relationships, Ba'ul is more than his species, and Estelle is more than the powers she was born with. So yes, I would still defend her and I'm pretty sure Ba'ul would too."

"He is young."

"Age is no excuse for you to be so ignorant."

Duke's eyes flash at the barb and from where he stands, Raven worries his lip in a gesture of 'oh, shit'.

"You have much to learn," is all he says in the end. Before he leaves, however, it appears that he has one more thing to say. "I would be worrying more about how you plan to defeat Alexei when he's so completely broken your healer."

Yuri could so easily punch Duke in the face for that one. Preferably more than once, but he would be alright with knocking him at least one good one in the head if it would take back the crap he'd just thrown at Estelle. Or at the very least make Yuri stop thinking about how exactly they were going to deal with that. The worst part is that he can't really refute it and Duke leaves with the last word and without getting smacked around because Yuri'd rather let him have the last word than be antagonized into dislodging Estelle. That is not something that is going to happen. Maybe not for days but atleast not until the princess in his arms lets him go.

…Estelle hasn't moved in a while.

Yuri looks down and nearly laughs. Maybe he would have if the situation hadn't been so bad. As it is he just sighs in sympathy because Estelle is gone, really gone this time. Her eyes are closed completely and she's buried her face in Yuri's tunic, limp and heavy and boneless. And warm, Yuri reminds himself when those comparisons come far too close to describing death, warm and alive.

Because of them and, Yuri supposes if he has to, because of Duke.

But only a little bit.

"Can we get out of here, please?" Rita speaks up, breaking the silence. "I feel like being here is good for exactly no one."

Yuri agrees wholeheartedly.

Estelle feels like nothing when he gets to his feet and brings her with him, and it's a too long trek to find somewhere with a bed that isn't scuzzy as hell or destroyed. They end up in the palace in the end and for once no one so much as dares to even threaten to arrest him. If they would, it would give it all a sense of normalcy.

Normalcy?

That's a damn joke. What is normalcy, anyway? Yuri doesn't have a clue.

The first day, they discuss going to duke it out with Alexei before Estelle wakes up, an idea that almost instantly gets shot down. Not only would Estelle never forgive any of them for leaving her behind but Duke had a point in that they needed her as a healer. Yes, Karol and Raven could both heal but not to her extent, a fact they were both quick to bring up.

Meanwhile, Yuri sits and simmers in a cold, furious rage at the fact that this entire time Alexei's just—just gallivanting around and not paying for what he's done. Not just to Estelle but to the whole world too, but mostly for Estelle because Yuri doesn't care much for the world but he cares very, very deeply for Estelle and in the end, that's what keeps him from storming off, wrapping his hands around Alexei's throat, and squeezing until he stops moving. That and the whole storm-and-strangle reeks entirely too much of Flynn and as Raven so charmingly puts it, what good is Yuri to anyone if he's dead?

So when it comes down to it Yuri settles for stalking around like a particularly neurotic tiger for the three days it takes for Estelle to wake up without screaming.

She's been through hell.

Physically she's fine; not a scratch on her except for what they put on her to keep her busy but mentally…she's a wreck. She spends more time asleep than awake and when she wakes it's with horrible nightmares and even then, she's incoherent and half-hysterical.

The word 'traumatized' gets thrown around by the healers and Yuri wants to shake them and make them see that this is as much an energy as what she has on her body. She's hurt, not broken. Get it right and help her, not fix her.

And then, three days after it all goes down, Estelle opens her eyes quietly, looks around, and then her gaze settles on Yuri who's been taking shifts in the chair next to her bed. Yuri, who's asleep with his mouth open and drooling onto his own shoulder. Yuri, who jerks awake when she reaches out to touch his hand, goggles at her for a few moments before he's rocketing the several feet of distance it takes to hug her—

Then stops short.

There were a lot of words flung around, trauma being one of them…touch-shy being another. It's hard to imagine tactile Estelle being even remotely standoffish but…the word sticks in his brain.

And Yuri remembers how many times Estelle had said the word stop and how no one had ever listened.

He won't do that to her again.

"Is it…?" he mumbles and waggles his hands a little helplessly, and Estelle hesitates only a half second before she meets him the rest of the way, hitting him with enough force to push him backwards. "Whoa, easy there. How're you doing?"

"I'm okay."

That's a really, really bad lie.

Estelle pulls away and Yuri looks her in the eyes. There's a sort of darkness there now that can't be mistaken, because she's been unmade and remade into someone different…but Yuri also can't mistake the sunlight that remains that can outshine all the darkness put in her. She's still Estelle.

Estelle is not okay.

She puts on a good face, smiles and laughs at herself and hits Raven on the head as 'payback' but in the end that's all it is…a good face. She smiles, she laughs…and she also freezes up entirely at the very mention of Alexei. All of her good attitude slips off of her like wet paint and Yuri doesn't know how to help her. Sometimes it's like he's watching her drown in herself all over again but this time he's even more helpless than the last time.

How are they even gonna do this?

Yuri doesn't like to entertain the thought, but how are they going to beat him if Estelle shuts down every time she thinks about him? It's not her fault and he doesn't blame her, but it's even worse to not know what he can do to help. Is there anything that can?

"Yuri," she says under her breath when they're alone in one of the drawing rooms, two days after waking up, "Maybe you should go ahead."

Yuri doesn't have to ask what she means. His answer is immediate.

"No," he replies, "No. We're going to Zaude, we're going to stop him, and you're coming with us." She manages a smile but it's shaky.

"You should go without me. Maybe…" she trails off and starts again, "I think I'll get in the way."

"No, you won't. We need you. Estelle—"

"You don't know that!" Estelle exclaims and twists her hands in the hem of her skirts and when she looks him in the eyes Yuri recognizes the look on her face. It's restrained but that same destructive agony and rage is still there shining out of her, just like it had when she cut him down. "I hurt you," she whispers, "I hurt you. And he made me. And I'm so afraid that he can do it again." Estelle's madness isn't insanity, Yuri reminds himself. It's just not. It's pain blown out and cracked open, all the places that Alexei got his hands in and hollowed her out. It's pain and a reaction to pain, not insanity.

"You won't."

"You don't know that."

"Yeah, I do," he says and reaches out to touch the top of her hand. The invitation is all she needs to slip her fingers into the spaces between his own and hold on tightly. "Do you know why?"

"..no," she says, "I don't. I really don't."

"Because he thought he won already. He thought he'd be able to break you and kill off all of us and go joyriding off into the sunset with you as his pet skullcrusher until he was done with you." It's harsh and Estelle flinches but doesn't let go. "And it just so happens that we're all still alive, you're here with us, and the world's still here too. So, did he win?"

"But Yuri—"

"Did he win?" Yuri interrupts her before she can convince herself of anything other than the words coming out of his mouth.

Estelle closes her mouth and finally, finally shakes her head.

No, he didn't win.

And he's not going to.

"Yuri, he has to die.," she says eventually.

"Will that help you?" That's not sarcasm, it's a genuine curiosity. It's not that Yuri wasn't planning on letting him come out of the battle alive, but if killing Alexei will help kill off some of her pain, it's a more than even trade.

Estelle looks away.

"Yes—no…maybe. I don't know. I know it's not—you know, something I can just forget. I'd like to. Even if he's dead, I won't ever be able to forget what he did. But it's not…it's not even about me or what he did to me. He wants to ruin the world, Yuri. And the world hurts too and ruins people just as much, but I can't let him do it." She looks up. "It could have easily been Ioder, you know? As easily as me."

But it never would have been, Yuri knows it to his core. Ioder would have died first.

Estelle fought. Estelle fought long and hard enough to survive and that's why it would never have been Ioder.

"He doesn't get to control me and he doesn't get to decide what the world should be."

If that's what she wants, Yuri would even hold Alexei's arms behind his back and let her take the final shot. Somehow, he doubts that it will happen like that.

"Even so…I don't want to stop him just for what he's doing for the world, or for what he did to me." Estelle's fingers squeeze tighter. "He made me hurt you, my family…and worse, he made you hurt me. And nothing will ever make that okay."

Even if Alexei's dead, that doesn't make it okay. Yuri knows that very well.

"Does it matter why?"

Estelle goes very still.

"I mean," Yuri continues, "You're going to fight, who cares what for or why? You have the right to your own reasons. Be selfish, be angry, let those feelings help you for a little while. They don't have to hurt you." Estelle just has to fight. If she can fight, just for a little bit and get through this, they can take the time she needs.

They'll have plenty.

"I don't know if I can do that."

Estelle's rage is terrifying but that's not the worst part about it. The worst part is that Estelle's not asking to not be angry, she's asking to be allowed to be, to want someone who caused so much pain to not be able to do it again, like her being a princess means she's not allowed to have feelings of her own. Like she feels she has to ask permission to deny her nature for once and not be gentle.

It's not that Yuri likes it but there's something almost reassuring in seeing firsthand that even Estelle can reach a point at which she doesn't care, but he doesn't like at all the way she came to it.

"If you weren't strong enough, you wouldn't still be here." This is the part where anyone else would offer a hug but Yuri goes for her hand instead, gripping it firmly like he used to greet the knights. She needs to feel strong, she needs to feel confident, and Yuri wishes he could take all those things and put them in her veins so there's no more space for Alexei's poison.

He can't, though, so he does his best to show her instead.

He squeezes again.

"You're strong enough."

There will be time later. Yuri will make sure of it.

"Will you come with us?" he asks.

Finally, finally, Estelle nods.

"Yes," she says, "I'll come." The edges of her lips tilt upwards. "Who else can keep you from overdoing it?" Estelle is still Estelle despite it all.

There will be time. There has to be.

There will be time.

AN2: Thank you for reading! If you have any commentary or feedback please leave a review or a PM, I'd love to hear it!