Chapter Text
He didn't really notice it at first. Maybe, on a subconscious level, it might have been off-putting from the beginning, but being aware of those kinds of details was about as low of a priority as they came. It was only when he was surrounded by them—the trees, that is—within the Sanctuary that he truly comprehended how uncanny most of them were– how unfamiliar, how alien they were.
To be fair, it wasn't like he had much of a leg to stand on in that regard. If anything was alien, it'd be him, and he for sure wasn't about to mention anything to anyone; he could picture their skeptical, pitying, dismissive faces already. 'Oh, the plants here are weird, woe is me': it wouldn't be the lamest thing he’d said, but it'd definitely be in the top fifty.
So, he’d ignored it, as he often did when it came to his increasingly insurmountable list of undoubtedly unsolvable problems, because what else was he going to do about it?
Unfortunately…
“Of course we had to put the obstacle course right next to all the damn trees.”
Garfiel had insisted that this very spot was the absolute best spot to set up their equipment for parkour training. Why? Subaru did not know. Something about a sage and a city. Maybe. Garf had been speaking very fast, and Subaru wasn't about to be a buzz kill over basically–
He grunted, suddenly registering a sharp burn across the back of his hand. He looked down, halting his run, and cursed. “Fuck! Again?! At least leave me some choice? Beako'll be pissed…”
He hastily wiped the slim upwell of blood on his pant leg, and pressed it into his side to apply pressure– a vain attempt to stem the flow before it made a mess of his clothes.
You see, the 'trees' were not just strange looking.
Back home, there had been plants Subaru didn't like. The ones with the spiky leaves, often featuring oils that would not-quite-metaphorically salt the wounds if one so much as brushed against an errant branch in the park. Why someone would sow greenery that was out for blood, especially in places children frequented regularly, was beyond him. He could give roses a pass, romantic-at-heart as he was, but trees? Shrubbery? Why?
Typically, though, it hadn’t mattered. He had never needed to interact with any such cultivated atrocity regularly, the sole exception being over the winter holidays. His parents liked celebrating despite their utter lack of piety in any relevant religion, and they would always enthusiastically employ 'live' decorations: namely the pointiest pines they could find, alongside what Subaru swore was biological barbed wire.
Here, however, almost everything was like that. While there was the occasional not-maple or not-cherry tree to take solace in, the overwhelmingly common trees sported broad, razor-thin leaves with the stiffness of cardboard and the brittleness of uncooked noodles. They would crack and crinkle unpleasantly underfoot if any had fallen—which they did almost constantly as if it was perpetually autumn—making it nigh impossible for a mere mortal such as himself to move quietly through a forest. Should he also be committing the grave sin of not wearing adequate footwear, moving at all was more akin to traversing a field of shattered glass than anything else.
He would know. These things came up a lot, all things considered.
He wasn't safe from the leaves while they were in the air, either. Courtesy of their bizarre, asymmetric shape, once separated from a branch they would spin rapidly as they flew– often leaving small tears in clothing or annoying paper cuts should one strike fabric or flesh respectively. If a particularly brisk wind blew through a grove, one could expect a small storm of too-vivid-green, slightly waxy ninja stars to follow soon after… as he’d just experienced.
He sighed, taking in the surrounding sight.
At first glance, his surroundings looked comfortable and friendly. The late afternoon sun shone high overhead; the white wisps of cirrus clouds and a slight breeze being just enough to take the edge off what might otherwise be an oppressive, early summer heat. The forest he was immersed within also did its part in maintaining the ideal temperature, casting diffuse, gently shifting shadows upon the ground in large, painterly splotches. The light that remained untouched beamed as golden rays through gaps in the canopy, shining upon portions of the undergrowth as though by divine mandate. Even he, as much as he wished to, couldn’t deny the quiet, surface-level beauty that surrounded him.
On further inspection, however, it was as though he existed within a garden of knives.
Not a single plant-adjacent object stood within a hundred paces that was not either bristling with sharp, blade-like structures or was a blade outright. Even the stalks of ‘grass’ he had trampled on his run had somehow embedded themselves point-first into the soles of his shoes, and what remained untouched glinted menacingly– the moisture coating their edges blooming with a gleaming, metallic sheen.
He found himself stumbling back slightly, whirling around as he did so in search of a non-existent haven, some place free of hazard. How was it possible that no one else was bothered? Was it truly just him, and him alone, who suffered such rejection from this reality– a rejection so utter, so total, that even what passed for clover would, at a mere moment's notice, bring its leaves to bear against him?
Why did he bother asking, again? He already knew the answer, and it’s not like anyone cared enough to ask on his behalf.
He heaved—heavily, suddenly—and doubled over, overtaken by the exhaustion well-paced exertion otherwise held at bay… not at all struck by the realization that nothing natural here desired his presence. Not at all struck by how the world took every available opportunity to expunge him. Not at all struck by how everything—everyone—around him unwittingly desired and relied upon only the direct consequences of his suffering.
Instinctively, he reached his uninjured hand out to steady himself against something, anything, only to hastily recoil when the object he had given his trust pricked at his fingers in stinging betrayal. He glanced up at the offending surface; an organic cheese grater lined with shattered, rust-brown teeth masqueraded as tree bark before him. It stared back with jeering ambivalence. After all, can it really be considered a masquerade if that's all anyone has ever known?
Can it really be considered a mask if that's all anyone ever sees?
He averted his gaze.
Unwilling to collapse into the bed of nails beneath him, he braced himself against his knees, and forced himself to breathe: in, then out, and in again–
“There you are, in fact!”
He looked up to find Beatrice, his beloved Contracted Spirit, hustling towards him through the lightly wooded underbrush, clutching at her dress to lift it above the debris littering the forest floor. It seemed she’d opted to take a direct path to him, rather than follow the meandering circuit Garfiel had cleaved through the foliage during the course’s construction.
Despite his panting, he tried to force some measure of composure into his response.
“Beako! Just about finished up– Is everything okay?”
She paused a few feet from him as she looked him over, before trotting to his side and taking his still-bleeding hand in her own. After a short moment of focus the shallow cut was closed, and she humphed in satisfaction.
She let the hand fall to his side, but did not let go.
“Better now, I suppose.”
He didn’t have the heart to tell her that she didn’t need to waste her mana on what was little more than a scratch, but her expression tightened anyway, and she looked up at him to speak before he could respond.
“Nothing Betty does for Subaru is a waste, in fact. You would do well to remember that, though I suppose Betty doesn’t mind repeating herself.”
He looked back at his shoes, one hand still on his knee, unsure of what to say. He had yet to catch his breath.
“Ah–”
He halted himself before an instinctive apology escaped his lips and instead followed the guidance granted to him so long ago.
“Thanks, Beako. Really don’t know what I’d do without you.”
That was a lie. He knew exactly what he’d do.
Her face flushed slightly, but her expression did not relax as she continued to scrutinize him. Unable to maintain eye contact as the small girl laid bare his soul with sight alone, his gaze fell to the side. She sighed, turned slightly to face the running path, and began towing him forward as she spoke– tone gentle, but allowing no argument.
“Walk with Betty. And don’t worry regarding dinner, we have plenty of time. The maid staff is running behind this afternoon, in fact.”
He stood, his breathing steadier, and followed obediently– his earlier strain seemingly dampened by Beatrice’s presence alone. With her hand in his, the latent misery the world itself had dredged up didn’t feel so sharp.
Still, it was a bit too quiet for his tastes. The conspicuous absence of bird song only served to amplify the rustling of the otherworldly trees surrounding him. Who knew that white noise could sound so out of tune?
He made it about fifteen seconds before he caved to his anxieties and prodded her into conversation.
“...Running behind because somebody was distracting Petra?”
At this, she turned towards him, suddenly animated with reeling indignation. “If the red-haired one had refrained from taking a three-hour nap, there wouldn’t be any issue, I suppose!”
He wholeheartedly agreed, but where would the fun be in leaving it at that?
With Beatrice on the back foot, he pressed his advantage– attempting to channel the stern voice of a disappointed parent. He had plenty of reference material to draw from. “Now now, we’ve talked about deflecting blame–”
“Betty is over twenty times your age, in fact. Save that tone for the village children,” she countered, easily, interrupting his stillborn rebuke with the dryness of a plain of salt and intonation about as flat.
He hopped in place to turn and pointed at her with his free hand. “Objection! That’s just another deflection!” Before he could follow up his verbal parry with a riposte, however, distraction took him: genuine surprise replacing his best Phoenix Wright impression. “Oh, hey. That rhymed.”
She sighed again and shook her head, though she was unable to fully hide her soft smile at his antics, delivering stinging words with an undeserved warmth. “What a troublesome man you are, I suppose.”
He felt his expression turn brittle.
That shouldn’t bother him. It was true.
“That hurts, but I can’t deny it,” he replied—his timing ever so slightly rushed even to his own ears—in an attempt to play off the discomfort with a double bluff: a classic maneuver.
Beatrice glanced towards him, remaining quiet a beat longer than he expected before speaking. Her now gentle, bashful words cut much deeper than they had any right to. “...and wonderful as well, in fact.”
His gut twisted on itself.
‘There is no way you believe that.’
Beatrice especially was well acquainted with just how pathetic a person he could be; no matter how much she cared for him, there was no avoiding it.
He felt her hand shift in his grip. The warmth of her fingers, somehow profoundly different from mere heat, mellowed without changing temperature.
Ignoring the swell of inwardly directed disgust, he smiled down at those bright, butterfly eyes blinking innocently up at him– tapping into the endless well of affection he had for her to drive the corners of his lips upward with true sincerity.
“You are adorable, Beako.”
Her shy expression wavered, ever so slightly.
‘And if you do believe it, you are surely mistaken.’
For a brief instant, he felt like she wanted to cry.
Beatrice wanted to cry.
Her ears heard one thing, while her heart–
Her heart–
It had taken her too long to arrive. She’d found him hunched over against his knees, staring wide-eyed at his feet, and forcing strained gasps through gritted teeth– hand dripping blood onto red-stained grass all the while. That moment was now burned into her memory alongside the rest: one more entry within her index of failures.
She hadn’t been surprised at the sight. After all, she could sense his emotional and physical state in great detail through their Contract, so she knew roughly what she would be witnessing even before his trembling form revealed itself through the trees. Indeed, the reason she’d bid farewell to Petra and beelined towards him in the first place was entirely because she had detected his mood beginning to shift, so it wasn’t as though she was unprepared to help.
What she had been surprised by, however, was just how quickly his condition deteriorated. As she’d reached the forest’s edge, she had felt his mental spiral through mild anxiety suddenly accelerate, first falling into all-consuming existential dread, before plummeting ever further towards total panic. She, too, had accelerated in response. Alas, even taking the most direct path possible could not offset just how slow she was on foot.
Late as she was, she still fortunately had arrived in time to stave off the worst of it, and had immediately gone to work pulling him up from the emotional pit she’d found him mired in. Though they had not been contracted for long, only a few months at this point, she liked to think she was ‘getting the hang of things’, as Subaru would say.
Forcing herself into action to avoid succumbing to hysteria at the sight of her chosen partner struggling through such an awful experience, she had healed his hand first; the shallow cut seeming to be the catalyst of his rapid descent. Once done, she’d kept hold of his hand to anchor both of them in the present, ensuring he knew she was there for him.
With the process of applying physical first-aid complete, she’d then started attempting to stabilize Subaru’s psychological condition. Leveraging the elevated emotional bandwidth she could maintain through their link when in contact with him, she had gently pushed comforting sentiments towards him whilst simultaneously absorbing and dissipating the distress he’d inadvertently let boil over the boundaries of his mind.
She couldn’t do anything about the source of that distress. While she wasn’t capable of imparting anything more than a gentle nudge in the first place, direct manipulation of his emotions was unthinkable. However, she would do all she could to help with whatever burdens her partner did share… even if he did so unintentionally.
Whilst she’d hesitated to label her actions successful, he had at least stopped shaking, and it had taken only the lightest of coaxing for him to take an evening walk with her instead of finishing his run. She supposed it could have gone worse. In fact, she knew it could have gone worse; she had just proved it so by making it worse with her thoughtless remark.
That any of this was even somewhat routine reflected poorly on her.
Her own inexperience certainly did not help. If Subaru, despite his prodigious Spiritual Affinity, struggled with internalizing the nature of their Contract and the connection it entailed, she struggled with basic social interaction. While he was still surprised and confused when she sensed his true emotions behind the front he put up, she was still surprised by just how much misery she could inflict with her words.
She was still confused by what words inflicted that misery.
She had felt his discomforted agreement when she said he was troublesome, mirroring it with her own regret. That had not been what she was trying to say– her reluctance to speak frankly had again hurt those around her. He was troublesome, but the subtext was that she liked that. She liked the silly verbal bouts they had. She enjoyed the bickering, and how lively he was when fully engaged in a conversation. She was happy to be around him, even if—and sometimes even because—he was troublesome.
But, that’s not what he had interpreted her words to mean.
Subaru was very clever, even if he didn’t think much of himself. When he fully leveraged his strengths, he could pick up on the tiniest of details and intuit a near-ideal course of action to achieve a goal. That goal might be as trivial as wishing to improve someone's mood or distracting attention away from something he didn’t want to talk about; or it might be a grand goal, a goal most would consider impossible to achieve.
He turned sworn enemies to true allies, convinced entire political factions to follow his lead, and orchestrated world-shattering events with a wink and a flourish. She knew there was more to it than that, of course, but she could not overstate just how competent her Contractor could be. It wasn’t just that he, somehow, could manifest the metaphorical cards he needed into his hand– his ability to know things he shouldn’t was insufficient on its own to secure victory. Subaru's true strength, she supposed, lay in knowing how to play those cards; all the foresight in the world would amount to naught if one lacked the capacity to capitalize upon it.
This competence didn’t extend to understanding what other people thought of him… though she supposed that wasn't quite accurate. On some level, he most certainly understood. It’s just that, oftentimes, especially when he was feeling down, he would take whatever was said in the least charitable way he could: willfully insisting on warped interpretations.
If someone said something negative which was intended to communicate something positive, he would either accept it at face value or fail to internalize whatever was implied, laughing it off as a joke. He might acknowledge that positive implication, as he did when talking with the rude red maid, but he wouldn’t believe that implication to be true.
Likewise, if someone offered him an honest compliment, he would go to great lengths to find some way to deflect it, typically onto others he cared about. Even if small fragments of praise made it through the psychological barriers he had erected, he, again, wouldn’t let himself fully accept what he was told.
But most of all, should someone be critical of him, whether it be for character flaw, social faux pas, or tactical misstep, he would treat that criticism as gospel. He allowed himself no grace, from any source.
Even knowing this, she knew she needed to at least attempt to make up for the hurt she had inflicted. She couldn’t undo calling him troublesome, but she could speak her true feelings. She could try to impart the sentiment she had wanted to in the first place:
That he was wonderful.
She believed that he was wonderful with all her heart.
She had spoken it: not impassioned, but sincere– a fundamental truth that she desperately needed him to hear.
She had worn the emotion, shy as it was, without shame: all masks set aside as she’d gazed deep into his eyes, looking for any confirmation that he understood.
She had tightened her grip on his hand: holding onto him without reservation, jealousy, or expectation for as long as he would let her.
She had tried to send as much of her feelings of adoration through their link as she could: that given all the time in the world to decide, and all possible people to pick from, she would never choose anyone else.
And yet…
Amongst his feelings of care for her, the stain of disbelief was unmistakable.
He did not believe her.
He could not believe her.
Subaru would not believe her.
Even with the advantage of being directly connected to his soul, able to communicate through pure emotion, her attempt to tell him how she felt was unable to breach the walls he subconsciously maintained.
Even as he now smiled at her—a true, genuine smile, even if it didn’t quite reach his eyes—and told her how adorable she was, she felt that disbelief morph into certainty: certainty tinged with self-loathing.
Beatrice wanted to cry.
And for the briefest of instants, before she could steady herself, she slipped. Before she could stem it, before she could apply pressure to the metaphysical wound she had just inflicted herself with, before she could do anything at all, the full force of that emotion bled across their Contract.
She rectified this immediately, tamping the anguish down as harshly as she could, but the damage was done.
She first sensed his confusion. Beatrice rarely sent anything towards him without intending to, let alone a sudden, raw spike of misery. Even when she was in control of the emotions she sent, he still didn’t seem to actually recognize in the moment that those feelings were not his own. As such, she could imagine what he was thinking:
‘Why do I feel like Beatrice wants to cry?’
She then sensed his concern, which quickly overrode both his confusion and the smile he graced her with– his brow furrowing. His understanding, or lack thereof, had no bearing on how he would act; she already knew what he was going to do, likely before he did. He paused their walk and addressed her.
“Just now, I… are you okay?”
How shameful. She failed to protect her Contractor, failed to adequately heal her Contractor, actively hurt her Contractor, and now she had the gall to bring focus onto her own issues even whilst he still struggled with his own.
Unacceptable.
Absolutely unacceptable.
She turned away, her chin drooping towards the ground as she searched for something to say. Her lack of response clearly indicating to him she was not alright, he crouched in front of her. Putting his free hand on her shoulder, he spoke hesitantly.
“I can’t help if I don’t know what's wrong.”
She looked up. Judging from his expression, he was completely oblivious to the astounding irony of him, of all people, uttering such a thing. This, as she had discovered over the past several months, was unfortunately entirely typical. She failed to repress a sigh, which she immediately regretted– she already knew she would need to interrupt what he was about to say, which meant she was running out of time: the right words had not come to her.
“If it was something I did, I’m–”
Beatrice ran out of time.
She spoke quickly, forcing herself to maintain eye contact as she interrupted an apology she refused to hear with her own. If her words would hurt him, she would at least say them while she could see him.
“Sorry– Betty is sorry, in fact. Betty isn’t maintaining her composure very well, I suppose…”
It took a moment for him to formulate a response, his countenance first stunned before quickly growing confused.
Another wave of misery washed over her: Subaru, in his current state of mind, could not fathom being apologized to. She struggled to wrangle herself back under control before she made the situation even worse, but words still refused to come to her. As she hesitated, Subaru started to respond, invariably with another apology.
“Wait, wait– why are you the one apologizing!? You shouldn't need to worry about being ‘composed’, I clearly did something–”
Again, she ran out of time. Again, she forced herself to maintain eye contact as she again spoke without a plan, this time incensed with his insistence on self-deprecation, irritation bleeding into her tone and expression.
“Quiet, I suppose! Betty refuses to hear it! Must you–!”
Her voice cut out as she watched his face crumple, his hand dropping from her shoulder. That had been too much. That wasn’t–
“W-wait– That isn't what– just wait a moment, in fact.”
There was a beat of silence. She felt his conflicting emotions vie for supremacy as they solidified into a glassy composite: fear, hurt, patience, frustration, confusion… affection. She needed to not mess this up. That glass was untempered– the internal stresses threatening to shatter him apart all on their own. Even if he would heal, even if he would doubtlessly accept whatever meager apology she could muster—the remaining fragments of that glass melding back together at the slightest touch of above-ambient heat—she would not forgive herself for hurting him so.
“Betty isn't very good at this, I suppose, but I won't accept an apology when you have done nothing wrong. I cannot bear– Betty is–”
She stopped.
It occurred to her that, at least at the moment, Subaru would not accept an apology for what she had done or had failed to do.
Further, simply demanding he believe her assertions for his own sake, or even hers, would never truly convince him. In fact, this situation was merely a symptom of a much larger issue, one she could never hope to solve in a single conversation.
She needed to do something different. If she couldn’t strike at the heart of the issue, then–
She started again.
“Betty is… is frustrated that she doesn’t know how to help her Contractor. The questions to ask to identify your troubles, and the words to say to soothe them– Betty regrets to admit that she doesn't know any of that, I suppose, and, even if she did… Betty has gathered you are not able to answer many of Betty’s questions, not because you don't wish to or don't know how to, but because you are not able to, in fact.”
She watched his eyes grow wide. Deep within her Od, knowledge was appended to memory.
“Betty knows that, and Betty will not press Subaru for answers he can not provide through no fault of his own. However, if a question can be answered… If it's possible for Betty to help… Betty asks that her Contractor—her partner—confide in her. Will Subaru do that for Betty? For me?”
She watched him hesitate, his gaze skipping away toward the forest like a skittish deer, and she quickly amended herself.
“Not all at once, I suppose! Just– when you can… Betty can do more than heal wounds and give hugs– not that I mind! Betty wants to do those things, in fact, but…”
He looked back to her as she trailed off, his eyes glossy as they stared into her own. She watched his jaw clench and relax rhythmically while his cheeks pulled his mouth taut, as though he was an archer nocking words in place of an arrow.
She did not look away as he probed her expression for something known only to him.
The tension coiled within him evaporated as he let loose the sentiment he had strained to hold.
“You already do so much for me, Beatrice, but… alright, I’ll– No, I promise I’ll try my best to answer what I can.”
She let out a sigh, as tension bled from her, too. Words she did not think to say came out of her mouth unbidden.
“...Thank you, for choosing Betty. I–”
She suddenly choked up; whatever force had possessed her to speak left as soon as it arrived, and she was left to finish the sentence all on her own. She forced herself to continue, her face burning ever more crimson the longer she resisted looking away from his patient gaze.
“I– I love you.”
He graced her with a smile: one that reached all the way to his eyes.
“I love you too, Beatrice. Always and forever.”
She stepped forward into his embrace and nodded her acknowledgment into his chest. Once more, knowledge was appended to memory.
By the time they stood and continued their walk, streaks of orange and red had bled into the previously unmarred azure sky. They had probably missed dinner. Given who was scheduled to cook, she didn’t particularly mind.
“Man, Ram’s gonna be pissed we didn’t eat our share of potatoes.”
“It is ‘tatoes’, in fact.” She knew how he would react, but her Contractor’s annoyance and bafflement never failed to entertain.
“Ugh. Have I ever told you just how dumb food names are here? Like ‘solt’? Seriously? It’s even harder to say!”
“Several times, in fact. Betty doesn't know what to make of it.”
He let out a theatrical huff. While she wouldn't press, she could tell the dejection he was affecting was not entirely faked.
“Maybe I should ask Emilia-tan to change all the food names when she gets elected. That’s a thing monarchs can do, right?”
“While Betty is sure you can convince the girl to make the attempt, she would almost immediately be deposed by the entire population of the capital, I suppose.”
While he was clearly speaking rhetorically, she answered the question seriously regardless. Subaru had decided her role in their performative exchanges would be as the ‘straight man’, acting as his comedic foil, and she had found that playing along tended to improve his mood. When they were alone, however, she noticed that continuing the charade also seemed to help him speak more freely than he usually would. For all his public foolishness and apparent openness, her Contractor spent a lot of effort directing the flow of conversation away from himself– perhaps the effort he expended on keeping up their ‘running gags’ distracted him from his worries.
“Hey now, not the entire population!”
Despite knowing that he was merely pretending, feeling his glee through their link, she could not help the surge of irrational anxiety that she had actually managed to offend him with how exaggerated his response was. She stole a look to double-check he was, in fact, grinning brightly at her, and stayed the course as she turned her attention back to the path ahead.
“I suppose Betty and her Contractor do have reasonable odds of halting such a thing…”
“Yeah, that’s the spirit!”
She glanced back towards him at the strange turn of phrase, her eyebrow raised.
“Must Betty remind you she is a spirit, I wonder?”
His grin lapsed to a sheepish expression, his improved mood losing some of its luster in the face of her apparent skepticism.
She silently cursed herself for not just ‘rolling with it’, or, better yet, asking for clarification. Subaru seemed to somewhat enjoy answering her questions about his mannerisms, but she had also learned that expressing even mild disbelief at the wrong moment would quickly cause him to ‘clam up’.
“That’s a good point… The cultural barrier strikes again. I guess for you I could say ‘that’s my spirit’, and it still sorta works? Doesn’t quite roll off the tongue, though. I’ll give it some thought.”
They lapsed into a mostly comfortable silence. She suspected something was being lost in translation despite them both speaking the same language, but she did not have the courage to push now that she had lost her conversational momentum. Instead, she watched the sun fall below the treetops, the shadows lengthening all the while.
As they walked, the path ahead narrowed as it curved towards the edge of the forest; it would not be long now until the manor was in sight. Despite that, her Contractor’s underlying unease became ever more pronounced. She knew Subaru did not enjoy walking through the woods at night, to put it lightly, so she would have thought that evidence they would make it to the main road before the sun fully set would assuage his fears, not amplify them.
“Subaru?”
She felt his stress tick up further. He attempted to mask his discomfort by probing her with a conversational stratagem he liked to use– playing off a sincere statement as a joke. “Beako using my name is just the best, but probably means she is serious.”
He paused. Likely longer than he intended to. Long enough for Beatrice’s guilt to solidify within her chest.
“What’s up?”
“Betty would… like to know what troubles you.”
She watched as his face fell in time with his shoulders, any pretense of being carefree dropped in favor of favoring the ground with his gaze.
“...Is it that obvious?”
She both felt and heard the sheer wave of inadequacy that washed over him as he spoke. Unable to uncommit at this point, she decided to address what seemed to be a lingering misunderstanding: Beatrice could sense Subaru’s emotional state. The paradigm of categorizing aspects of his condition as ‘obvious’ and ‘non-obvious’ was not applicable to the situation. While he could limit what he sent over their connection once he learned how, it was not possible for them to truly hide from one another: she too would become akin to an open book as she continued teaching him how to commune with the contract magic binding them. They had discussed this before, to a degree, but…
Beatrice very clearly remembered how uncomfortable he had been when she had tried following him into the restroom mere hours after forming their Contract. At the time, she had concluded that if even that was overstepping his boundaries, then Subaru would definitely be distressed upon learning he was inadvertently broadcasting every emotion he was feeling to her completely unfiltered. She had decided to ease him into it, explaining things as gently as possible.
However, ensuring he didn’t feel as though she was spying on him or invading his mind seemingly had resulted in him not understanding the full scope of their connection, and now that lack of understanding was causing her Contractor pain. That was unacceptable.
“Betty is Subaru’s Contracted Spirit, in fact. While Betty does not have the ability to telepathically communicate with her Contractor like Bubby and most other spirits can, Betty boasts a much more impressive empathetic link than any other entity she knows of!”
“I mean, I know that, but–” he started responding, but it was blatantly clear to her that he did not, in fact, ‘know that’. She interrupted, attempting an even more direct approach.
“As long as Betty is within the same province as you, Betty will know how you are feeling. Even if we were on opposite sides of the world, Betty would still be able to detect what direction you are in, roughly how far away you are, and your general condition, in fact.”
Saying ‘in fact’ might be a small stretch, but she was almost certain it was true, and now was not the time to weaken her point with conditionals. She would prefer that assertion remain untested, though.
“Well, sure, and I think that’s really cool, but–” he started responding again, still apparently oblivious to what she was trying to communicate.
She stomped her foot in mild frustration, deciding to save further discussion for later in favor of barrelling head-first into her underlying point.
“Betty knows when you are upset, I suppose! Even when Subaru pretends he is not. Betty respects your privacy, and won’t pry unnecessarily… but… when Betty finds her Contractor in distress…”
She looked to him, trying to figure out how to delicately express something she could not even fully put to words in the first place: how terrified she was of the condition she might find him in should her attention lapse, how unwilling she was to truly look away from the psychological wounds he wished to hide. She resorted to pushing the feeling towards him rather than risking saying the wrong thing.
“...I think I get what you mean. You’ve… seen me in some pretty freaky states, right?” He laughed awkwardly. She allowed herself to frown as he gazed off into the evening sky, but did not verbally rebuke him for making light of such dark things. “If you were going through, uh, similar things, I’d also want to be there for you in any way I could. I don’t blame Beako for doing her best.”
While not exactly what she was going for, it was close enough– especially with what he said next.
“It’s the plants. The trees, especially. I… don’t like them.” He paused, shame bubbling up through his anxiety as he looked over at her with a crooked half-grimace, and then back to his feet. She kept watching him, expecting him to continue.
“...”
He didn’t.
“...”
Oh.
He was trying to smile.
He thought she was going to laugh at him.
He was waiting for her to do so, like this was a comedy play.
He was pausing for effect.
She wanted to cry.
She again tamped the urge down before it could spill anywhere. The consequences of having a negative emotional response the first time she convinced him to share his burdens with her in this manner would be disastrous. She refused to fail to such a degree. There would not be a second chance afterward, at least not for a very long time.
When she did not respond the way he was expecting, he tried to respond in her stead.
“I know, pathetic right? I–”
She tamped down harder, and interrupted, her voice quiet.
“No. It is not pathetic, in fact.” She swallowed, heavily, and let him reply at his own pace.
It took him several seconds.
“...But they are just plants,” he spoke finally, confused. “What is there to get so worked up about?” he asked, genuinely.
She tamped down harder.
Instead of tearing the world apart in search of whoever had done this to him, she continued to meet his questioning gaze with her own.
“Betty thinks her Contractor is best equipped to answer that question, I suppose. Will… Will you?”
He stared at her, blinking slowly, before looking back towards the path ahead.
“I… honestly thought…”
He looked to the sky as he paused– the clouds wreathed in optical fire as the day continued burning to dusk. With a sigh, he looked back down, casting his gaze around them.
“Everything is just so sharp here. The grass impales itself into my shoes, which is insane all on its own. Is this just not a problem other people have? How does anyone go barefoot?”
He paused, lifting his right leg to show her his shoe; sure enough, dozens of green blades protruded from the sole.
She narrowed her eyes at the sight. That was… not normal. She did not bother inspecting her own shoes: made from her mana as they were, she already knew that they were completely intact. While the grass in this forest was of a different type than elsewhere, and was more reed-like than typical, she was fairly sure they should not be putting holes in Subaru’s strange footwear.
“Anyway, the trees– I get that the bark is supposed to be protective, but this is on another level! I’d hate to see the result of a bear trying to scratch its back on the stuff. And the leaves are the worst part by far: it’s like I’m being attacked by a ninja or something with how many times they slice me up, and when they aren’t doing that they’re shredding my clothes. I like sewing, but needing to do patch jobs every time I come out here gets pretty tedious. The noise they make when I step on them gives me the creeps, too. It’s like they can’t make up their mind on whether they want to ‘crunch’ or ‘pop’, and that’s ignoring that– that squelching noise they make instead after it rains.”
He shuddered violently, and she clutched at his hand just a little harder.
“I don’t know about you, but I’d rather not have to pick between ‘man eating his own fingers’ and ‘man being eaten alive’ as my training montage soundtrack. What kind of sick joke even is that? Like, no, Garfiel, I don’t want to go on a run when the leaves are wet. Oh? It’s so I can get experience doing parkour when the ground is slippery? There’s no avoiding it then– I’ll just have to hear a tiny wolgarm taking a bite out of my leg every time I take a step for the next four hours.”
He paused, brow furrowed as he vented frustrations he had clearly been harboring for some time. Aside from her confusion over what he meant by the term ‘training montage soundtrack’, something bothered her about the oddly specific, rather disturbing descriptions Subaru was using. He continued before she could think on it further, though, and instead filed it away in memory to review later.
“I mean, it’s not all bad. The flower fields are pretty nice, and the grass there generally isn’t out to get me, I guess. I feel like that’s a really low bar, but on the other hand since no one else ever complains about it, it’s more likely that my expectations are way too high.”
She watched him kick at a small rock as they continued to walk, sending it tumbling off into the woods with surprising speed.
“But, yeah. There isn’t really any avoiding the trees, so… I dunno. They aren’t so bad with you here, anyway. Maybe I just need my cute Beako to protect me?” He flashed a half-hearted grin at her.
She felt a slight frown begin to form at his implied self-deprecation. He had stopped saying as much, but she knew for a fact that he felt asking a ‘little girl’ for protection was a pathetic thing to do, especially when he felt he was the one who should be protecting said ‘little girl’. She schooled her expression and responded in full seriousness.
“Betty will not hesitate to stand with her partner against whatever may come: an enemy of Subaru is an enemy of Betty, in fact, no matter said enemy’s nature. I may not be able to help with unpleasant noises directly, I suppose, but Betty would gladly assist in clearing the ground of their source.” After a moment's pause, she then continued, quieter, speaking more to herself than Subaru. “...assuming I don't decide to rid this place of trees altogether, I suppose.”
While it would make for good entertainment, it probably was not the best use of their resources to lay waste to the surrounding countryside on more or less a whim–
“Wait, you can– that’s an option?”
He stopped their walk suddenly, looking at her with a dumbfounded expression. Of course he would ignore her heartfelt proclamation of support to focus on–
His question belatedly registered in her mind.
Beatrice was the daughter of the Witch of Greed, keeper of forbidden knowledge beyond mortal grasp, Great Spirit of yin magic, banisher of the Great Rabbit… and Subaru doubted her ability to best inanimate wood?
She was almost insulted, and now she was tempted to destroy some trees just to prove a point. She hadn’t woken up that morning expecting to need to demonstrate her magical prowess, but if he needed a reminder of her capabilities, then ridding the world of something that unnerved Subaru was not the worst use of mana she could think of. Even if their surroundings accounted for a minuscule fraction of what tormented him, this was a rare instance where, rather than something abstract and unknowable, there was a physical target she could direct her animosity toward.
“Of course it is an option, Betty is a Great Spirit, in fact! Betty could annihilate each and every tree in this entire domain, I suppose!”
Her words apparently taking a moment to fully sink in, his eyes widened and he began wildly gesticulating in a fruitless effort to pacify her. “Woah, woah, hold on, there’s no need to start nuking the place, okay?!”
Beatrice disagreed. Maybe she wouldn’t ‘nuke’ the entire forest, assuming that meant ‘inflict mass destruction upon that which has engendered her unfettered wrath’, but she’d inquire about that later. In the meantime–
“Would you not find it cathartic, I wonder?”
He paused, unsure.
“Well, maybe a little, but–”
She held up a hand towards a nearby tree, and, after confirming nothing with an Od existed in that general direction, spoke a short, unimpressed incantation. Such pitiful things as plants did not warrant anything but the simplest of offensive Yin magic.
“Minya.”
Said tree was promptly cleaved in half by a massive violet lance of weaponized space-time, her initial target loudly toppling over as it crashed into its compatriots, spreading the effects of her spell to all it touched. Second by second, more and more trees were caught up in the sudden display of violence– any trunks not outright felled by her projectile crystallizing over before spontaneously shattering into thousands of tiny fragments. Subaru, too stunned to do anything other than utter a single “Wow,” stood transfixed as they watched, giving Beatrice some time to think.
‘...could it be?’
Beatrice was not blind to the scent of the Witch and how it weighed upon her Contractor’s aura like an ever present storm cloud, nor was she unaware of the primordial sins—the Witch Factors—he carried within him and how they groped at his soul. Fortunately, not even the Factors’ otherwise absolute power was capable of disturbing the immutable Sacred Contract binding her to Subaru; the attempts the accursed things had made to wriggle ever deeper into the core of her partner’s Od had been trivially resisted, and she had effortlessly evicted any vestiges of corruption that had made their home there prior to that fiery night almost four months ago.
Still, the Factors persisted. Disbarred as they were from Subaru’s innermost essence, they had bound themselves to him nonetheless. Relegated to the outer reaches of his Od, they writhed around and pried at any pieces of her Contractor's soul outside the shielding purview of Beatrice’s contract with him. She didn’t like it, but could do nothing about it. Besides– to attempt to remove them entirely would be a denial of Subaru’s true nature; that he was able to safely harbor more than one Factor in the first place, after all, had only one explanation.
She had elected to… ‘cross that bridge when she got there’, as it were. There was no point in prematurely brooding over such despicable, unfair burdens being hoisted upon her Subaru without his knowledge or consent when there was no knowing when those burdens would, if ever, attempt to take their due. She had resolved to live in the present and enjoy these moments per her Contract, as was her duty and desire.
That said, it was not as if she hadn’t thought about it. Though his status had not yet come to fruition, she wasn’t at all surprised by how aggressively he attracted the ire of fate just by existing. That was ‘par for the course’. However, while there had been precious little information on the previous Sage in the Forbidden Library, nothing she had learned from what existed ever indicated that it was possible for there to be tangible, physical effects associated with being a Sage Candidate. Like grass willfully attempting to spear one’s foot, for example. However, though Beatrice had been insulated from the events of 400 years ago, and so was ignorant to much of the truth, her ability to use context clues was exemplary.
As a potential locus of power antithetical to the Od Laguna, was it so out of the question that Subaru be literally despised by the world, as opposed to being despised on a merely metaphorical level? And, if so, was the world truly so blind as to reject one who would, without hesitation, confront impossible odds to save it? Was it so blind as to find itself unable to look past the past– recognize that the boy beside her would do his utmost to defy fate and status alike, aligning himself with what surely could be considered truly good? Had it not learned anything at all– that choosing a path of contempt, of petty sin, to avert prophecy would almost certainly result in tragedy?
Maybe she expected too much from what was more a force of nature than anything else. Maybe she should pity it, as one would pity an abused animal lashing out on instinct against those who would care for it. She knew not, and she lacked any way to find out.
She did know one thing, however. She’d learned it while endeavoring to learn more about things she didn’t know. All of Subaru’s other friends and loved ones had learned it too, to varying degrees, whilst they struggled by his side against tides of apathetic providence driven by moon and star. They had all learned something that most had no inkling of, but Beatrice was proud to say she understood it best of all.
In light of both that something—that precious truth she held in her heart of hearts—and what Subaru had just shared with her, there was only one conclusion to draw:
“The world does not deserve Betty’s Subaru, in fact,” she said, after dispelling her still-flying minya shard before she accidentally killed something sentient. She looked at him as he gaped at the hundred-meter-long, dozen-meter-wide swath of forest she had just purged from reality.
“...I–”
“Whether you believe it or not, Betty is certain it is true,” she asserted herself over Subaru’s burgeoning denial, expression and voice soft. “One day, I hope you will come to see yourself as I do.”
A hint of mischievousness bubbled into her tone as she continued, granting him a reprieve from responding to words he was not yet ready to answer. “Additionally, I hope it is abundantly clear that Betty would, in fact, definitely win against such a field of puny twigs as these.”
She offered him a teasing smile as he turned to her straight-faced.
“Holy shit am I seriously glad we’re on the same side.”
Perhaps before they had met, Beatrice would have taken such irreverent words as an insult. Instead, she smiled wider. After all–
“If anyone is on Subaru’s side, it is Betty, in fact.”