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'That's pretty pathetic,' Puck voices, as Subaru drags himself up into a sitting position.

His back still stings, like the punk's knife is still wedged in it. Maybe it is. He runs a hand over it to be sure.

It isn't. There's no wound there, either. And no blood. His hand comes away empty and clean.

'Stabbed by a group of hooligans and not even having anything of value for them to take.'

'Puck,' Subaru groans – and then does a double-take. Puck is there without Satella – or not-Satella. 'Where is –?'

'I thought so,' the cat-spirit hums, flying closer. 'You smell faintly of the witch, now. I didn't notice that before.'

'Witch?' Subaru echoes. 'You mean the Satella that's not your mistress?'

Puck frowned. 'That's horrible taste, you know, to call Lia by that name.'

'She's the one who introduced herself like that!' Subaru protests – but that's not quite true anymore, is it? That was two lives ago. Or rather, he'd died twice and almost a third time since then.

'Did she?' Puck asks aloud. 'When was that?'

'Uhh…'

Puck crosses his arms. 'It'd be in your best interests, to tell the truth… and then I'll decide if you're a threat to Lia or not.'

'I'm not a threat!' Subaru protests. 'I want to save her.' But to explain… 'But this is going to sound pretty crazy, you know, the whole dy –'

He chokes on his words. A black hand comes out from the growing shadows and wraps around his throat.

'That's no good.' And then the hand is gone and Puck is back, humming. 'So Satella has taken an interest in you, has she? An odd and inept human like you.'

The cat-spirit floats around his head thoughtfully, examining him.

'That explains the scent, at least.'

'Satella,' Subaru repeats faintly when, at last, his voice returns. 'The witch, Satella? She's the one who did this?'

'But it's no good,' Puck sighs, 'if you're going to just die in an alleyway without even saving Lia. You need to work harder.'

'I know that,' Subaru sighs, relaxing now that Puck as at least decided he's not a threat. 'But I'm a pretty useless human being, you know.'

'Shameless,' the cat-spirit yawns, 'to admit that so casually.'

Yeah, Subaru agrees. Shameless. Saved by a cat and still useless.

'It might suit Satella to give you endless chances, but you'll make Lia sad.'

'Make her sad?' he echoes. Maybe… if she hadn't worried for him, hadn't followed him into the warehouse and died as well…

Puck suddenly pats him on the back, right where he'd been stabbed. 'You'll just have to do well with this life, then. Good luck…' He trails off, waiting for a name.

'Subaru,' he says dully. So he is out of chances. Can he really do it? Or is he going to die once and for all without having saved anyone?

'Su-ba-ru,' the cat-spirit repeats.

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Puck looks sweet, Subaru understands, but Puck is a Great Spirit and he is dangerous.

He doesn’t feel any different when he leaves the other’s company, but he sees the evidence of it quick enough… and then hindsight, too. Those three thugs, of course. He’s cursed to constantly run into them. They panic, of course, because they’ve already killed him once. They try to rectify it, of course, and Subaru hasn’t picked up any magic fighting skills since ten minutes hence and so can’t stop the knife again.

Except he doesn’t need to, because it doesn’t kill him. It just hurts like hell before the knife falls out of his stomach with a few drops of blood.

It’s healed. Already, when he’s sure it was buried deep: through his gut and probably nicking the great vessel beyond. That would have killed him in minutes. Maybe less.

Aside from the pain though, he’s fine. It takes a moment to understand why.

Take care of this life. That’s what Puck’s said. Take care of this life because it’s going to last forever, huh. Well, at least he can’t get himself killed for his stupidity anymore…

But Lia. He can’t wind back the clock to save her anymore.

He stops himself there. He doesn’t wind back the clock himself. He doesn’t try to die, or get killed. It’s just that he’s too weak to avoid it and, in that sense, Puck has done him a great favour. And yet, in the first incarnation, Emilia most definitely met her end.

Yet he doesn’t knowingly walk into death to save her. Really, it terrifies him. He screams. He wants to be saved.

And this time he’s alive.  The knife sits at his feet. The three thugs against the wall, switching from mumbling about knights to mumbling about some sort of cult to mumbling about a witch…

Oh, right. Puck said Satella is the only witch.

Well, none of that’s helping now. They’ll get a third wind, maybe. Or they’ll run with their tails between their legs. Or someone will hear the commotion and come –

Ah, there’s a shadow in the alley way. Someone has come. A knight with a long sword and bright red hair that steals the breath of everyone there. Handsome and captivating…

And maybe it’s because of Puck, but Subaru thinks he can see a similar shadow behind Reinhard van Astrea as well.

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He almost asks Reinhard for help, but his pride stops him. He's weak, he knows, but in this third reincarnation of the world he has resources he can use. For one, he knows where the store house is. Secondly, he knows the identity of the murderer who comes calling. Thirdly, he knows what he needs to get, and how much it will cost (and, luckily, that he has just the thing to trade for it).

And fourth, he knows that while a knife hurts as much as it always does, it doesn't measure up to that pain of slowly bleeding out until he's dead. He's not going to charge in swinging his fists when they won't do any good, but at least he's a bit better prepared and he knows his weapons.

And he's picked up a knife, thanks to the three stooges in the alley way. That'll be handy, hopefully. Except that Elsa is quite slick and he'll be no match for her blade to blade. Not to mention she has more than one. It's the second one that cut him open, after all. And who knows how many more she has. He won't put it past her to have one for every limb limb like General Grevious, and then a few extras for good measure.

It'll be better if he can finish this without fighting. Which means getting the insiga from Felt before they meet Elsa.

It doesn't go as planned, of course. He has no proof (he should've asked Old Rom for a written quote last time) and she has no reason to believe him. They wind up at the storehouse again. Elsa comes, again. This time, though, the white-haired elf makes it first and Subaru doesn't know why. What's he done to change things this time around (aside from getting stabbed twice over and that chat with Puck…)

Is it Puck, he wonders? Why then, if he wants to protect her, has he brought her to the lion's den?

Well, she needs her insignia back and maybe he thinks he'll come through, this time. Or maybe he doesn't know what it is that Lia needs saving from. He didn't warn him, after all.

How much does Puck know? Who knows. Not enough, apparently, or too much, because they come early yes, but not early enough to end the fight before he's crystal again.

It's lucky Felt listens, this time. It's lucky Reinhard shows up. It's lucky Subaru can lift Old Rom's club and block Elsa's final strike. It's lucky he's not bleeding too badly and it's healing up before his eyes. And it's lucky Lia – Emiila, she introduces herself as – is more grateful than suspicious and invites him to come with her.

Reinhard offers too, but Emilia is his raison d'etre in this world.

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Emilia's home – though apparently not technically hers – is pleasant. The two maids are cute, though not particularly friendly (though Subaru thinks he's doing well with them, and his newfound job as a butler, all the same). Beatrice the librarian is cute as well, and equally difficult – but at least he's' annoying her right back by breaking her door-crossing. And Roswaal… eccentric but oh-so-kind for looking after and supporting Emilia as he does, and giving Subaru who has no skills to boast about a job in his mansion.

As for Emilia, he's making progress. Kind of. They're going on a date on Saturday, anyway. That's very real progress.

Until he wakes up in the middle of the night to a strange sensation. He can't work it out, at first. Thinks it's just nerves and tries to go back to sleep.

He can't. He starts feeling sick to his stomach instead.

When he starts throwing up something green, he realises. This isn't nerves. It's something else.

But when he crawls his way onto the staircase looking for help, he finds something else instead.

An intruder in the mansion. His heart's beating too fast. His mouth won't work. He crawls until his arm regenerates (and that takes longer than healing stab wounds and slit abdomens, he realises, and hurts far more as well). Then he tries to calm himself, and look.

Chains rattle in the air. Roswaal?

No, it's Rem dragging a ball and chain with her and a horn glowing on her head. 'Rem…' he pants. He still feels sick. That feeling hasn't gone away. And he thought he'd been getting along well with the girls. Why's she trying to kill him now?

At least Rem won't hurt Emilia. She's had plenty of chances to do that already.

'Who sent you?' Rem asks. 'I find you crawling around in the Mansion after the Master so graciously let you in.' Her face is disgusted though. Evidently, she doesn't agree with Roswall's grace.

'You…' Subaru tries. 'Rem, I only want…'

'What?' she asked. 'Emilia? The Master? My older sister? The Forbidden Library? No wonder you're able to break Beatrice's door-crossing –'

'Emilia!' he gasps. The ball's connected again and it's excruciating for a moment, and then it only burns. 'It's because… Emilia, I have to save…'

The ball comes again, and he's too slow to dodge. He can only make her understand with his words. 'I've been doing better. I didn't cut my fingers so much this morning.'

Another hit. Another pause. Ren comes closer. She looks… almost demonic.

But she's protecting her home, he reminds himself. He's protecting Emilia.

'How are you not dead?' she hissed. 'You're not an apostle, are you? You're one of the sins!'

Sins? Apostles? 'I don't now – aargh, any of that,' he gasps. 'Emilia saved me, so I just want to save her.

'With the Witch's scent pouring off you? How can you say that with your filthy mouth?'

What else can he say?

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Luckily, the others hear the commotion. Emilia is quick to run to him. Ram is quick to scold her sister. Roswaal looks Subaru over, eyes clouded in suspicion… and Subaru has no idea how to explain why he’s still alive.

Thankfully, Roswaal doesn’t comment. Instead, he calls for Beatrice, who disgruntledly removes a curse from his hand.

Subaru stares at the bite marks on his palm while the others stare at his bloodied clothes and unbroken bodies. ‘The puppy,’ he says, finally. ‘It was the puppy… when we went to the village yesterday. That the children were playing with.’ The children!

He jumps up and Emilia catches him. ‘Wait,’ she protested. ‘You’re hurt, even though you don’t –‘

                ‘I’ll heal him quick,’ Puck interrupts… which is probably more for his benefit, but helps Subaru too. ‘Rem was going easy on him, though.’

Rem’s face is still stone. She knows exactly how hard she struck, after all. But something changes in the forest, when they chase after the children. Something changes when he shields one and winds up with a bite-trodden arm for his pains. Something changes when Ren, wild with battle-fury, finds herself shoved to safety as Subaru drowns in the black malbeasts… and maybe they can’t kill him, but their fangs pierce him deeper than all the knives he’s faced in this lifetime. Something changes when, ridden with curses that should have already killed him, he stalks into the forest to save her a second time.

Something changes when they count the children they’ve saved, and some of them are just too cold.

And Subaru wonders if Puck’s power will ever run out and force him to live through it all again. Or the Witch’s. Or home.

Home. He hasn’t thought about home for a while because there’s only his parents, and the world shut in his room. It’s different, here. He’s found enemies. He’s found love. He’s found frustrating characters he wishes her were rid of and others he wants to get to know.

But most importantly, he’s found these two god-like spirits leaving command-seals on his soul. Or maybe the witch doesn’t cling to him right now. He doesn’t know.

No, he does. ‘You reek of the Witch’s scent,’ Rem had said to him.

‘Do I still?’ he asks, after, once the curses and bodies and malbeasts are all gone. ‘Reek of the Witch, I mean.’

‘You do.’ Rem turns away. ‘And it’s worse than before. But you saved us, and you cried for those children, and your feelings for Emilia-sama…’

He doesn’t understand either. Even if the Witch is responsible for his ability to reincarnate, that hasn’t happened since Puck stepped in make sure he stays alive. It’s not a good move, and those dead children are the proof.

But there are precious things to be lost, as well. Emilia’s promise. Rem’s smile of acceptance for him. This home he’s found.

They’re not worth the price, but such is weight of a single stab at life.

Chapter Text

He has only one life. It’s an unnaturally prolonged one, perhaps, with the calamities and second chances he’s faced but they’re not there anymore.

He realises that, when he stands next to Petra, watching her friends burn at the pyre. He’s lost those kids forever: kids he’d talked to about their dreams, and his own, and Emilia…

He hasn’t lost Emilia though. He’s the reason he’s kept on living, in more ways than one.

But she looks at him oddly, now. It’s not quite suspicious, but it’s something. And when they go on their date, it’s more pronounced. It’s blatant when they walk through the city again, after Subaru has paid the appa seller. It’s a slap to his face when Emilia forbids him from accompanying her to the castle.

He goes anyway, of course, because he can’t let her out of his sight. He let those kids go and they’re dead. He let Emilia herself go once upon a time, and she wound up dead.

He won’t allow that to happen again. He can’t.

It’s arrogance, in the end. Julius is a knight: proud and far more skilled with a weapon than he and his own weapons have no effect. Shamac fails. His words light a flame that burns him instead of his opponent and Emilia doesn’t understand at all.

When he tries to explain himself, ice and shadows take a hold of his soul. The Witch won’t allow it, it seems. Not will Puck.

How nice of them to protect her from him, after asking him to guard her. How cruel of them to give them this burden he can’t share with anyone, this responsibility hindered because he can’t explain it all. And how unfair of Puck to call him incompetent and take away the only advantage he holds. He doesn’t know the future anymore, and while it’s a relief to not die from mishaps he’s stumbled into along the way, he’s accumulating far too many regrets to resolve.

It’s unfair. It’s unfair but what can he do about it? He wanders briefly: some walls are high, cliffs steep drops, tongues pulsing with blood… But no. He remembers bleeding out on the bar floor and he doesn’t think he can do that to himself.

He can salvage this, right? It’s not like Emilia has cut all ties with him, or that she’s dead. The children though, they’re far too gone to save and he has to shoulder them.

He’ll shoulder them. All the more reason to make sure Emilia doesn’t meet that fate.

Chapter Text

Three days later, he's going stir crazy. He's snapped at Reinhard instead of thanking him like he'd meant to, and he's snapped at Felix and Crusch and Old man Wil as well because they're looking down at him for wanting to chase after Emilia. He's snapped at Rem as well, and he feels the worst about that because she just smiles and lets him rant, and then feeds him appa pie by the end of it.

He's still going stir crazy, and now these other emotions are piling up too. There's a sense of helplessness. A sense of failure. He has to go back to the mansion but he's snapping at everyone that moves and he snapped at Emilia too, before she left. How can he change that, when his tongue blocks his throat and his heart stutters non-stop.

He knows what he wants, but the ease of gaining that is rapidly slipping away.

If he'd died from the malbeast's bite, he wonders how many lifetimes it would have taken to clear the hurdle, and how many lives he could have saved.

I could solve anything if given the chance. He might have said that. It might be the truth, too, if he gains the courage of choosing to die by this time. But he's chained to this life, instead, forced to carry the sacrifices along the way when something could have been put in motion long before to make it all meaningless in the end.

Puck is a fool, he thinks. He's lived for so long himself he underestimates the value of mortality. Emilia is foolish too, for sending her protector away. Aside from Puck who sleeps through the nights and failed to save her once before, who else will put her above the horde? The maids answer to Roswaal. Who knows who Roswaal answers to, and Beatrice calls Emilia "that foolish little girl". The villagers fear her. The townspeople despise her. He's the only one.

But he has no-one to depend on. Rem, who's stayed by his side steals away in the middle of the night from the town. Crusch and Felix see them off with unenthused looks and an end to the contract they share. Otto, who he banters for a ride with, shoves him from the caravan and flees when the White Whale descends. Subaru is left alone in the middle of the road, swallowed by white fog until he can't recall his own name.

But he can't breathe anything but more white fog because his mind is blank but his heart babbles nonsensically on.

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He stumbles on the dirt road. There is no-one. There is nothing. Just him and he has no past, no sense of direction.

There is only him… and the white fog. There’s singing up above: a language he can’t understand, or perhaps just can’t recall.

There was something before, though: an echo – but it’s too far gone. So he wanders. Maybe he’ll stumble into it again. Maybe it’ll be fate. He finds a woman in a mad dash towards him, but he doesn’t know her at all. He finds people wrapped in black cloaks, and then another man whose laughter cuts through his heart and brain.

That hurts, for some reasons. The words don’t make sense but they hurt. Then the girl appears again: blue haired and glowing and swinging her ball and chain and screaming something that warmed his heart far slower than the cloaked man chilled.

There’s something in and amongst all of that. There’s something.

Except the girl dies too soon, neck snapped and dripping blood onto his shoes.

‘Su-ba-ru,’ she breaths with her last breath, and he should return with her name, he knows, except he can’t: he can’t recall.

But he recalls something else. Someone, saying his name. A cat. Then a human with silver hair.

Puck. And Emilia.

.

When he wakes up, the cloaked figures are all gone, but that’s okay. He has a direction now. He has a purpose. He has something he’s chasing… and so he chases after them.

He finds himself following a trail of blood instead. Blood through a village. Blood on a road. And then a mansion stained with blood as well.

He walks through the courtyard. There’s a red-haired girl that otherwise looks like the blue-haired one who’d fought for him and given him back a tiny sliver of his past. There’s a cute little yellow-haired one that looks familiar somehow.

There’s a girl behind a door who looks sad and angry and shocked at the sight of him, and slams the door in his face.

There’s a room lined with ice, where he leaves his fingers at the door and enters through.

There are more cloaked figures: some dead, some still crawling their way through the hole. There must be something here for that, he thinks, and he still hasn’t found Emilia, or Puck, and they’re all he knows.

So he keeps moving. His hand has frozen over and, at the next door, his other hand loses fingers as well. But at least there is a silver-haired girl frozen behind the ice, and a large beast who gives ice with every breath.

‘Su-ba-ru,’ says the beast, and this Subaru recalls. ‘You were incapable after all, it seems.’

Chapter Text

Subaru understands, even though understanding most other things is still beyond his head filled with white. Subaru understands, and tears slip down his cheeks when he can’t put it into worlds, but he understands.

He’s failed. There is something monumental wrapped up in the name Emilia, in that white-haired girl frozen in ice, and he’s failed because she should be bright and moving, not sealed behind ice like a statue.

‘Hmm,’ Puck frowns. ‘It seems your senses have taken leave of you, as well. How troublesome. And behind you on the road is more trouble. Really, Subaru. You’ve made a pickle of things this time.’

‘Emilia,’ he says, voice hoarse.

‘Pitiful,’ Puck sighs. ‘I entrusted my daughter to you and you couldn’t stay by her side. You couldn’t protect her.’

There are too many puzzle pieces missing. The details are still beyond him.

‘Well, I can counter the fog, at least, if only for you to understand what you’ve done.’

And then he breathes: small particles of ice that sparkle in the winter wonderland of his own making.

The particles dust him, and with those particles, puzzle pieces slot into face. There’s the face of that blue-haired girl: stained with blood, with a horn on her head, looming over him with her ball and chain…

Rem, that’s Rem. And there’s Ram as well, and Petra, and Beatrice and all the people he’s met in this world. There’s his parents, disappointed but accommodating him anyway. Reinhard who offered both his sword and a home. Julius who’d claimed he boasted instead of standing with pride. That little dog that had almost been the death of him. Elsa who’d slit his bowels open twice. Emilia – who’d called herself by a witch’s curse when they’d first met to try and save his ignorant soul. Puck who’d put his trust in him while simultaneously handing him a curse.

And now he’s trapped. They’re both trapped, in a world where Emilia is no more.

‘No,’ says Puck. ‘You underestimate my bond with my child. It is written in our contract. Should she die while under my charge, I will destroy the world.’

The word, the question – it takes too long to reach his lips: his thoughts are still jumbled up. But he doesn’t need to, in the end. Emilia has become the cornerstone of his world and there’s no point living without her anymore.

And Puck will destroy the world and leave him to wonder this desolate, lonely place alone? He can’t even stand the thought.

‘But I will undo the seal on your time before I do,’ Puck decided. ‘Though death is too kind a punishment for you, at least your accordance with the Witch may spare Emilia’s life a second time.’

Undoing the seal after it’s come to this?! Subaru laughs.

And when the frozen nightmare is replaced by the appa stall and Rem beside him, he is laughing still.

Chapter Text

The children he lost to the malbeast are still gone. He realises that, before he quite realises he's been whisked away, near-senseless, by Rem.

He wakes in Crusch's castle, with Felix over him. 'Your back,' he muses, 'but you smell worse than when you left.'

The witch's miasma, of course. But the time, in which Felix says he left and returned, was filled with many unspeakable things.

'I'm sorry,' Subaru returns. 'I forgot… but now, I may have to do some unsightly things to make sure it doesn't happen again.'

He tilts his head, and no wonder; the words sound nonsensical to even him… and yet they tell the truth. He's powerless to stop a problem of that scale… or problems, really. Too many problems for him to handle, and it's a miracle he managed to handle the malbeasts at all.

But at least now he knows. Except it doesn't do any good at all. He goes to Priscilla because she's helped him before (and Crusch, who hosts them, is the last boat he wants to rock) but she's quick to toss him out.

His dedication to Emilia is more than a slobbering dog to their master, he knows. But the words hurt anyway. And he can't afford mistakes and lost chances much more because there's two big enemies waiting on the road. He needs to do better. His question to Crusch isn't "can you lend me your power to save Emilia" but rather "how can I ask for someone's power?" and she laughs.

She laughs, but she gives him the address to a bar and tells him a master negotiator will be there.

So he goes, and there is Anastasia Hoshin, and he does learn a little. He learns how it feels to be strung along by words and how he's said too much and only realised it too late. 'You're desperate,' she finishes, as she stands to leave. 'It's an ugly look, and I don't know why Julius thought he could educate you.'

Julius… His heart still rages but Rem calms him and even Reinhard said that Julius had been harsh, but not wrong. It is Subaru who is wrong, then. Charging ahead without thinking. Storming along with pride when he has nothing to base it on. Thinking Emilia will understand and keep him at her side without a worry because he's saved her, when she doesn't know his limits are so different now from hers…

And, in that moment, he wonders why Puck doesn't bestow this sort of immortality on her after all.

Is it the witch's favour, the witch's scent upon Subaru that allows him to do so?

Is it even still there, or does removing it restore things back to the way they were?

He was arrogant. Arrogant and proud and powerless because he'd lost sight of what he had and what he didn't and he still doesn't know what he has.

Rem is there, though. Just like Puck and Priscilla and Anastasia can tell him what he lacks, Rem can tell him what he has.

Chapter Text

Julius has some answers, he thinks, so Subaru goes to see him. And, this time, they manage an almost civil conversation.

It helps that Reinhard is there as well. And Rem. Two extremes and the middle-man and it’s not perfect by any means but it’ll do for now, he thinks, until time and experience and maturation make a better man out of him.

At least he can recognise his strengths as weaknesses as well, and his weaknesses for strengths. He may not have the physical prowess of the knights of the capital, but he has determination and a way with words that can invigorate or inflame his listeners –

And that includes himself, he realises. All this talk about death and immortality and he’s back himself into a corner. He has only one life, regardless, he reminds himself and he has to live it like that.

Chapter Text

Things are so much easier when he remembers everybody else has only one life as well.

'You make it sound like a bad thing,' Reinhard says, amused, and Subaru realises he's said it out loud. 'But knowing our own mortality makes the lives we live more precious.'

There is something else in his tone, though. Subaru doesn't learn that until later, when he faces Crusch and Wilhelm van Astrea on the negotiating table, but he's not quite there yet. He owes the knights an apology (Reinhard two, and his thanks as well), and many other people along the way.

And Emilia. Definitely Emilia. And Puck as well, even if things hadn't worked out like the great cat-spirit had planned.

They need to talk, but before that he needs to quell the current threats and they're two-fold and he's racing against the clock and his own lack of allies on this road.

He knows, though, that most people won't help someone when there's nothing to be gained in return. Reinhard is a rare breed, or perhaps that's his desire: to save all.

Subaru's desire is to save Emilia, and that's all, and he doesn't have much to trade for her life but Roswaal has, and Subaru has Rem and her knowledge and experience, and Julius who'll poke holes into every failing plan until he's got a foolproof one to carry on, and Reinhard who'll lend his sword to save the lives on the road despite being sworn to another candidate, and Puck who in his own way believes Subaru can protect the one thing that makes his lonely eternal life worth living for.

'All right.' He grins. 'Let's go save the world.'

'And what does the world have to do with Emilia-sama?' Julius asks dryly. 'Except that you're that heads over heels in love with her.'

'Well, Puck will destroy the world if she dies, and he looks just about powerful enough to do that.' Though who knows if he'll succeed.

Hopefully they'll never reach that point again. But if they do, the witch's hands will pull him back in time again.

His last resort. That's all. He'll value every life because he can't guarantee they'll come back. But at the forefront of those is still Emilia, because she's the one he's chosen to centre his world around.