Chapter Text
It was a small mistake, really.
All he did was spend a few too many minutes negotiating for a carriage. All he did was read the terms and conditions. All he did was ensure he wouldn’t be caught in a bigger mess once that one was over.
It was a mistake. The last he would ever make in that timeline, but a mistake grave enough to make anything he did afterwards completely meaningless. He knew nothing would save him the moment they heard something snap in the woods behind them.
Otto had barely had time to start the carriage when they heard a loud crack of splintering wood in the distance. He froze in his tracks. The light faded from Felix’s hands as the sound broke his concentration.
“What was that?” murmured Julius. Whether he was referring to the sound, or the sudden reopening of the wound on his shoulder, was anyone’s guess.
The feeling of pure dread that had long since settled in Subaru’s stomach shifted, violently. from reach the villagers to an agonising feeling of fear that pulled him between run away and help them . He didn’t tell Otto to keep going. He didn’t jump off the carriage, either.
Not until the first hand burst from the treeline.
“ Get down !” he yelled, once again, and they were smart enough to listen.
He’s alive , his mind unhelpfully supplied, over and over and over and over. His muscles tensed up. There were wooden boards under his feet and then there weren’t, there was dust and stone and the bones in his foot crying out from the sudden impact; there was Julius, drawing his sword without care for the growing red stain on his jacket, there was Felix, whose gaze flicked all around him in search of a solution to a problem he couldn’t even see.
Subaru ground to a halt beside him as Julius took advantage of the dust raised by the carriage to block the first strike. But that dust was already setting and the second arm was already headed straight for him.
“Julius!”
“I know.”
The connection was nearly instantaneous this time, thanks in no small part to experience, but the unseen hand came just a little too close all the same. Thankfully, Julius’s cape took the damage for him.
None of them could expect the shambling monstrosity that rammed through the trees, but for once, Subaru would consider himself lucky that he could see the unseen hands; if not for that, aside from being in danger, he would’ve seen nothing but a mangled corpse floating after them in a maelstrom of dust and wood splinters. Empty eye sockets, broken teeth, the dirty remains of mangled fingertips, caked in dried blood and dust.
It looked horrifying enough when half of it was hidden by the dark substance forming its authority.
Its cries for the witch sounded just as broken as the corpse it was puppeting around as it barreled its way over to them, but at least there were only six hands coming from it as opposed to the veritable sea of arms they’d faced before. Julius seemed just as relieved as he sliced through two more limbs. Subaru could’ve said the same if only his shoulder and leg hadn’t begun to pulse and then sting the moment Nect had activated.
It was painfully obvious that they were on a timer.
Subaru was hardly listening to the creature’s broken screams; the blood pulsing behind his ears sounded too much like a ticking clock. Or a time bomb. There was no time. There was no time . He didn’t know whether he was angry or just afraid.
Probably both.
“Just die already!”
He wasn’t sure he’d voiced his frustrations until he felt at least two pairs of eyes on him. It didn’t matter. He meant every word.
Finally, an opening. Julius seemed to notice it a moment before he did and immediately went for the attack. He ducked under the thing’s shadow body and stabbed up before it could stop him.
To say that its furious screech of agony wasn’t satisfying would be a lie.
The hands chased him still, but Julius had the sense to rip the sword out, causing as much damage as possible in the process, and slide out of the other side. It still wasn't dead, of course. At least it was getting there, though.
Die, die, die, I don't have time for you, die!
Yeah, it was anger.
The thing was no longer focused on Subaru. On account of the stab wound in the center of its chest, it had wisely chosen to fixate on Julius instead, attempting to turn and face him with its nasty, decaying face. But the thing was not nearly as nimble as him, and failed to do so before the knight could take out two more limbs and get another slash into its side.
Furious, but powerless, the creature struggled to regrow its lost hands as it fell to the ground below it.
The way it writhed and cried gave Subaru a strange, familiar feeling.
The way Julius raised his sword one last time, aiming the strike at its pale neck, felt familiar too.
But the sheer elation and panic he felt afterwards bore no similarities to the despair that hung heavy in the air that time. No despair, just panic. No peace, just the terrible anxiety of the ticking clock catching up to him.
When the now headless body didn't move for a solid ten seconds, Subaru made his decision.
"Get out of this village." he told Felix and Julius, "I'm going."
The shortcut wasn’t enough.
It was enough to buy them several minutes; enough that, had they left the moment the first battle was over, it would have allowed them to reach the carriages and get rid of the fire stones. But they hadn’t, and it wasn’t.
Still, though he knew from the start that the timeline would end in tragedy, it didn’t become real until Otto flinched like he’d been struck. His ear almost seemed to twitch as well.
He looked down. Then at Subaru. Then, slowly, his gaze rose above the treeline.
His eyes seemed to turn a darker shade, too, the moment they set upon the growing column of smoke up ahead.
Subaru wasn’t quite sure why he’d insisted on going down the road still. It wasn’t going to solve anything, was it?
There was no way everyone had survived.
But, just like that weak shred of hope that had kept him running a wild goose chase throughout that timeline, there was something telling him that he couldn’t be sure until he saw it with his own eyes.
He was forced to admit defeat when his shoes met the first strands of burnt grass surrounding an enormous crater. All the wagons were damaged, some more severely than others, and at least half were missing entirely. Looking over the field before him, he couldn’t spot more than two dozen people still standing. All adults.
Emilia wasn’t there.
He wandered alone, all around the crater. Back. Forth. Around in a circle. He didn’t know what he was looking for.
A reason not to end the timeline himself, perhaps.
Whatever he was looking for, though, he didn’t find it.
The air was already getting colder.
He wandered, alone and unnoticed, back into the woods while those still standing hounded Felix and anyone who could help, carrying their injured friends, unaware of how useless their struggles would soon prove to be. The five or six people who could still walk, not counting Felix, Julius and Wilhelm, were much too busy to notice him leaving.
Perfect.
He really didn't want to see them go before him.
As the ground beneath his feet began to freeze over, Subaru lay down in the middle of a clearing and closed his eyes.