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The house was nice—not too small to be comfortable, but not so large so as to be lonely either. Standing outside on the neat cobbles that lined the street, Rita thought that it suited Estelle nicely—there was a small yard in front that she'd likely plant flowers in or something, and the high terrace of the Citizens' Quarter meant that she'd probably be able to see just the barest sliver of coastline from the second floor windows that faced out over the rest of the city to the west.
"Not bad," Yuri said, pulling a box down off the carriage they'd rented for this. Even with all of Brave Vesperia helping, there was no way they'd be able to carry all of Estelle's possessions by themselves. Rita thought there were probably nearly as many books as there'd been in Aspio's library, and definitely on a wider range of topics.
"Thank you all so much for your help," Estelle said, unlocking the front door. "I had no idea how I was going to manage alone."
"Of course, Estelle! You know you can always count on Brave Vesperia!" Karol assured her, before pausing mid-comforting-gesture and looking away awkwardly. "But uh, before we get started, we still really haven't talked about payment. I-I'm really sorry, but, well, we are a guild after all, so—"
"I'm not," Rita interrupted, lifting her own box from the carriage and striding towards the door. "So I guess I don't need to worry about charging my friends money to help them out."
"Hey!" Karol protested. "It's not like I make these rules up, you know. That's just how it is! A guild can't do work for free. Otherwise, why should anybody have to pay them? It's like playing favorites, and that's bad for business."
"No, it's fine," Estelle assured him. "Really, I don't mind at all. I know you need to be paid, and I wouldn't want to hurt your chances of getting hired by someone else, sometime. Um..." She stepped aside to let Rita through the door she held. "What would be good payment for this?"
"Uh—" Karol started, "you know I... don't really know. I'm not sure we've ever done anything like this before. I don't know what we should be charging."
"Eh, we'll figure it out," Yuri said, following Rita through the door, another box teetering dangerously on top of the one he'd already been holding. "Come on, Captain, you know Estelle's good for it."
"Oh, right. Uh, sure." Karol agreed, picking up a box and hurrying after. "I know Estelle wouldn't run out on us. Besides, we sort of know where she lives now."
Estelle laughed. "I'll have to be very careful not to cross you, in that case."
Once all the boxes were inside, there wasn't much room left over for people. They did the best they could, though, weaving intricate patterns around Estelle's belongings and each other as they sorted items. Rita dedicated herself to the numerous boxes of books, trying to sort them out first by topic and then by alphabet, lining Estelle's shelves much more neatly than she'd ever done for any of her own.
Across the room Estelle giggled quietly; Rita looked up to see her holding a sheaf of papers, yellowing around the edges and crackling softly as Estelle gently flipped through them.
"What's this?" Yuri asked, appearing behind Estelle to peer over her shoulder, and Rita snapped her mouth closed on the same question.
"Very important documents," Estelle said, serious, offering one up—then grinning as Yuri plucked it from her fingers and furrowed his brow at it. "I was a very responsible child."
"I can see that," he answered, flipping the page over to look at the unmarked back, before flipping it right side up again. "It's got the Empire's official seal on it and everything." Curious, Rita stood up and wandered closer, taking the page from Yuri's hand as he offered it to her and inspecting it.
She blinked. And blinked again, then closed her eyes and shook her head, trying to clear it—maybe trying to sort all those book of Estelle's really had gotten to her. She flipped the page over, as Yuri had, and stared at the blank side. She flipped it back over, but couldn't make any more sense of the symbols.
Estelle giggled again, and Rita looked up at her—the look on Estelle's face was patient; that cute, eyebrows-lifted, bemused face she made when she was trying to be supportive—and Yuri was grinning the way he did when he was about to say something really obnoxious.
"Okay," Rita said, hunching her shoulders a little, feeling ridiculous for even having to ask—she was the best researcher in Aspio, wasn't she? —"What does it say?"
"Under royal decree of Her Imperial Highness Estellise," Estelle recited, eyes closed and chin lifted proudly, "all stray puppies and kittens will be brought to the palace and housed in a special barracks, where they will be fed and played with and given fluffy blankets. These barracks will be under the direct supervision of Her Highness Estellise and whatever she says, goes."
Rita looked down at the complicated symbols curling across the page, then back up at Estelle. "It really says that?"
"Well, no, not really." Estelle said, smiling a little as she took the paper back. "I wasn't old enough to write anything nearly that complicated. I just know what kind of things I would have written." She turned the page out, holding it for Rita to see, indicating with her finger a blob of shapes at the very bottom. "And this one has a picture of a puppy on it."
Rita looked at the shape under Estelle's fingertip. "I-I see, of course it does," she said, hunching her shoulders further, feeling her face heat. Of course they were just silly childish scribblings, that was obvious—just because she'd spent all of her own childhood deciphering languages that looked like nothing but scribbles to the adults around her didn't mean she couldn't recognize something like that.
"I'm sorry I didn't tell you sooner, Rita," Estelle said, leaning closer, sensing her discomfort, like she always seemed to be able to. "You just—you were trying so earnestly to read it, I felt like I wanted to let you try."
"It's nothing, don't worry about it," Rita stammered, resisting the urge to take a step back. Estelle might have called her efforts at translation earnest, but everything Estelle did was earnest—it wasn't quite as weird as it had been when they hadn't known each other at all, but it was still a little strange. Why did she always care so much, anyway?
"It sounds like Estelle has always been Estelle," Judith said, drawing her attention away—and Rita may not always have liked everything Judith said to Estelle, but right now she was grateful for the interruption.
"Always been Estelle... What do you mean?" Estelle asked, eyes wide they way they got when she thought she was about to learn something new.
Judith smiled at her. "Always so quiet and polite, at least until she saw someone being slighted somewhere." Judith made a fist and slapped it into her open palm. "Then, look out!"
"Oh, no, I—" Estelle put her hands to her face to hide her pleased blush as Judith took the page from her, glanced at it, and passed it to Karol.
"But how did you get them to put the seal on it?" Karol asked, putting the page close to his face and squinting, as if he could detect the seal's authenticity better that way. "Isn't that a little dangerous, making a page full of scribbles an official document?"
Rita scoffed. "What are you, an idiot?" Karol scowled at her. "It's not like they can enforce what they can't read."
"Yeah, come on, Captain," Yuri said, putting his elbow on Karol's head and leaning over, making Karol sag and flail under his weight. "It's not like it could really do any harm. Nobody in their right mind is going to argue any of this actually says anything, so it's not like it could be used to make harmful laws or something."
"That's right," Estelle said, smiling. "But I wouldn't stop asking about it until they stamped it. It's how they kept me out of trouble, before I was old enough to read." Estelle swept her arm out, indicating the piles and piles of books that Rita had abandoned. "They'd let me stay in the offices, as long as I was quiet, so I'd draw all over the paper they gave me, and make up the most ridiculous laws. Of course, it all mattered very much to me when I was little."
Rita nodded, absorbing all this, and reached to pick up another of the pages. "What about this one?" She asked, showing it over—this one had very few "words" on it, instead it was decorated with a row of colorful blobs in a wide array of colors, connected by squiggly lines to a row of all-red blobs.
"Oh, that." Estelle put her hands to her face again. "That was my idea of making gels free to everyone... so long as they were all cherry flavored—Because that was my favorite flavor. The picture is the conversion chart." Estelle looked over at Judith briefly. "S-So I guess... I was still a little selfish."
"You can't call something like that selfish!" Rita insisted, faltering slightly as everyone looked over her. "Well... you can't. There isn't anything selfish about providing free healing to anyone who needs it. So you wanted to be able to enjoy it too, so what?"
"Yeah, I guess so..." Karol agreed slowly, the way he did when he was trying to think and talk at the same time. "And who knows—maybe everyone would have liked it! Who doesn't like cherry, right?"
"Thank you," Estelle beamed at them. "They're just the silly ideas of a little girl, but it makes me really happy that you'd all still support them."
"Of course," Judith said, smiling. "We're your friends, aren't we?"
"Yes! Oh, yes," Estelle insisted, and Rita blushed again—Estelle hadn't even directed that at her personally, but the intensity was still embarrassing. Didn't she know questions like that were rhetorical? In anybody else, Rita would have laughed at them—but you just couldn't laugh at Estelle, because she really meant it, really meant everything like that she said. There wasn't anything you could do but accept it. Rita wondered if everyone else felt helpless up against the pure concentrated goodness of Estelle the way she did.
"Here, I got it," Yuri said, taking the new page and walking over to a wall. "They used to do this in the Knights." He tacked the sheet to the wall as everyone watched, then stepped back, indicating his work with a grand sweep of his arm. "And all officially posted bulletins must be obeyed, or face very, very serious repercussions under the full jurisdiction of the law."
"I like it," Judith said, tipping her head at Yuri, hands on her hips. "After all, we can't really let Estelle live in an undecorated house. That's too boring."
"Yes, it's perfect," Estelle agreed. "I'd like it very much if you all helped decorate—that way, it's like there's a part of all of you here, with me all the time." The way she smiled at them made Rita feel warm all the way down to her toes. It was ridiculous, is what it was—it wasn't like Yuri putting a piece of paper on the wall and nobody else saying it looked stupid was that big a deal, and yet Estelle looked so grateful—like maybe they'd all come to save her all over again. Rita picked up the page with the dog on it again.
"This one, too," she said, stepping up to place it under Yuri's, studiously ignoring his obnoxious grin when she couldn't reach high enough to put it exactly next to. When she turned around again, Estelle was smiling so much it looked like her face was having a hard time containing it. Rita looked down at her boots, then back up, smiling back just a little.
"Hey, wait a minute you guys!" Karol waved his hands at them, and they all turned to look. "We can't start decorating now! We haven't even unpacked all the boxes yet." He took up that ridiculous pose he always did when he was trying to instruct—one hand on his hip and the other out, finger waggling at them like he could really tell them off. "If we do the fun part first, the rest will never get done."
Yuri laughed. "Aye aye, Captain. We wont get ahead of ourselves." He looked at the boxes remaining and sighed theatrically. "Though I wouldn't say no to a little break."
"Well, if we're taking a break," Judith said, "how about a snack? We did half the job, we can get paid now, and then we'll do the other half." She turned to look at Karol, eyebrows raised, "What do you think?"
"You want us to get paid in food?" Karol asked. "Well, I—" Whatever his answer might have been was interrupted by the sudden growling of his stomach, and he dropped a hand to it, sheepishly. "I-I guess that sounds pretty good, actually. Hehehe..."
Judith turned back to look at Estelle. "Is that okay?"
"Oh, of course! That's a wonderful idea, Judith," Estelle agreed. "Everyone, please make yourself comfortable. I'll make you something right away."
With Estelle tucked away in her kitchen—the soft sounds of dishes clanking and Estelle talking to herself drifting out from the small room—the rest of Brave Vesperia made themselves comfortable, fanning out through the small house, busying themselves with investigating Estelle's knickknacks or paging through her books.
After a few minutes, Rita glanced at the kitchen, wondering if Estelle needed any help. Probably she didn't, and anyway, she was going to have to learn to do it all on her own anyway, right? If she really meant to live here, all alone... Rita shook her head, told herself it was fine, and put another book on the shelf.
There was a loud crash from the kitchen, and Estelle's immediate shouts of "I'm okay!" didn't exactly make Rita feel any better, but she willed herself to stay where she was. What was she—some sort of hovering, over-worried busy body? Estelle would handle it; she was the one with the healing artes, anyway.
The third time she glanced at the kitchen, Yuri sighed loudly and came to lean on the wall next to her, where she ignored him. The minutes ticked by in oppressive silence, with Rita now unable to look towards the kitchen whenever there was a loud noise or muttering from Estelle, since Yuri had planted himself between her and the kitchen. He wasn't even acting like he had anything to say, except for the way that he was pointedly not saying anything, just... just being there, silently, waiting for Rita to cave. Well, he could wait forever for all she cared, because she wasn't worried, and she wasn't going to ask what he wanted, either. She wasn't—never in a hundred, thousand, million years was she going to give and ask that smug jerk what he—
"Okay, okay! What! What do you want!" Rita hissed at him, and was surprised when Yuri turned to her, his face serious, instead of with the smirk she'd expected.
"You don't need a good reason to go in there; you know she'd just be happy to see you," Yuri said, jerking his head at the kitchen. "You're making this way more complicated than it needs to be."
Rita turned and leaned her back against the bookshelf, so she wouldn't have to look at him, and crossed her arms. "Weren't you the one who said that people weren't as simple as blastia?" She muttered.
"Sure," Yuri said, shrugging one shoulder, leaning back against the wall again, so that they were side by side, watching the rest of the room. "But just because she isn't as simple as just following a formula, that doesn't mean she's all that complicated, either."
"What would you know about it," Rita retorted, picking at an imaginary loose thread on the edge of her sleeve and ignoring the way he mock-sighed with his whole body again. "I know Estelle and her formula better than anybody."
"And yet here you are, waiting around out here and second guessing everything." Yuri looked down at her, eyebrow arched questioningly. "You seriously going to be happy if we just finish up here and everybody goes home, without spending any real time with her? Did things really change that much after Tarqaron?"
"Idiot." Rita lashed out, kicking at Yuri's instep with the heel of her boot, smiling to herself at his protest, and pushed off the wall. "The entire world changed—what, are you saying you didn't notice?"
"Silly me." Yuri rolled his eyes, but didn't say anything else obnoxious, so Rita left him there and ducked into the kitchen.
Estelle was hunched over the stove, but looked up as Rita came up behind her.
"Oh, Rita!" She beamed, whirling to face her—and Rita ducked out of the way just in time to avoid being hit in the face with the wooden spoon she wielded.
"Oh, I'm—I'm so sorry!" Estelle gasped, reaching out to her with her other hand—jerking back sharply at the terrible hissing noise as whatever-it-was in the pot on the stove boiled over.
"It's fine! I'm fine." Rita insisted, holding her hands up. "Just—just pay attention to what you're doing, already."
"R-Right. I'm sorry..." Estelle said, turning back to her pot, stirring it to calm the boil. An awkward silence descended, leaving Rita fidgeting and feeling very much like that was probably her fault. After a few more awkward seconds, she edged up next to Estelle and peered into the pot.
"So, um... what are you making?" She asked, trying to sound as casual as possible.
"Scones," Estelle answered, perking up immediately, making Rita feel worse about her outburst. "I figured they would be a good mid-afternoon snack—not too heavy, but still filling."
Rita looked into the pot again, and raised a doubtful eyebrow at the thick red liquid bubbling away merrily inside. "I-If you say so..." she said.
"Oh, no. This is a berry sauce, to go on top of the scones." Estelle giggled. "The scones themselves are already in the oven."
"—Cherry?" Rita guessed, looking over at the oven, noting that it didn't appear to be on fire; which was silly of her, of course—Estelle had managed to cook things before, on their journey, and while they might not exactly have been the most thrilling foods, it wasn't like they'd ever been dangerous.
"Yes. Good guess." Estelle smiled and handed her the wooden spoon, then rummaged through a box, coming up with a tiny bottle. "I think this will make it better, though—a little lemon juice, for flavor."
Rita stirred the pot thoughtfully. "In cherry syrup? Are you—do you have a recipe somewhere around here? Does it really say you should do that?" she asked, doubtful.
"Oh, no. I'm making it completely on my own," Estelle said, tipping the bottle so that a little of the liquid inside dribbled into the pot. Rita winced, half at the hissing noise as the two liquids combined, and half at in apprehension of the flavor.
"You're just... making it up? And you think everything's just gonna come out okay?" Rita asked, incredulously. "Estelle, there's no guarantee that's true—remember what I told you? Cooking is like chemistry—there are equations, and formulas, and rules—if you just start doing whatever you want, who knows what could happen?"
Estelle just looked at her for a minute. "W-Well... of course, I did remember what you told me, about it being like chemistry. But then I thought... Rita's not like a regular scientist. There must have been so many times when everyone else said something wasn't possible, or maybe hadn't even thought to try." Estelle tucked a piece of hair behind her ear, taking the spoon from Rita's hand, and stirred her sauce slowly. "But you, Rita... you're brilliant. So what if nobody else thinks it's possible... you'd do it anyway, right? I thought that probably... you didn't care so much about having a perfect formula. You had to just trust that everything would come out okay, because you were you, right?" She turned and smiled at Rita. "It's what you did for me, isn't it?"
"O-Oh, um..." Heat flared in Rita's face again and she fought the urge to hunch her shoulders, or hide, or snap or—or any of the defensive tricks she'd picked up to deal with people when they got too close to her. She didn't really want to hide from Estelle, or snap at her—she wanted to be able to open up to her, to trust and share things with her, but—
"It's not really that simple." Rita stared at the cherry syrup, watching bubbles swell and pop on the thickening surface of the liquid. "It's not the same sort of situation."
"But it is!" Estelle insisted. "I can't let you all go hungry, not when you're trying so hard to help me. Really, it's the least I can do. I'll just have to take my chances and trust that everything will work out." Estelle fixed the pot with her most determined stare, as if it was the one that needed to have a pep talk given to it.
Rita took a deep breath and then let it out, trying to let go of the part of herself that wanted to insist that Estelle still needed the recipe, because Estelle wasn't Rita—no one was. But Estelle looked so determined, so sure, that she didn't want to quash that hope. What Rita did want—what she'd maybe always wanted—was to be able to believe in someone else as much as she believed in herself.
She wanted to believe in Estelle.
"Well, in that case... good luck." She said, trying for her best reassuring smile. "And I'll— I'll be right here, just in case you need me to help out."
"Thank you, Rita." Estelle said, shaking something that was hopefully cinnamon into the pot. "It's very comforting, knowing that you're always there, for whenever I need you."
"...Yeah," Rita said, her smile coming a little easier. "I really am."
And it really was that simple.