Chapter Text
The ceiling of Natsuki Subaru's room had nothing new to offer. It never did.
He'd been lying there for two hours. Maybe three.
The door burst open.
"SUBARU!"
He didn't fall off the bed. Barely.
"Dad." He sat up. "Knocking. Ever heard of it?"
"I'm bearing gifts." Kenichi announced, stepping in with the energy of a man who had definitely rehearsed this entrance in the hallway. "Knocking is for people who aren't bearing gifts."
"That's not how that works."
"It's exactly how that works." Kenichi crossed the room and held out his hand. "Your mother's birthday. Look at these, I bought them for three hundred yen."
Subaru looked down.
Two small earrings. Silver, oval-shaped, simple. The kind his mother actually liked, nothing flashy, nothing loud. Old metal, warm-coloured, the sort that felt like it had a history.
He picked them up.
They were heavier than they looked.
"Antique shop near the station." Kenichi said, clearly proud of himself. "The one run by the old woman who always smells like pine resin."
"You bought mom jewelry from a woman who smells like a forest."
"Character, Subaru. You can't manufacture that kind of character."
Subaru turned one earring in the light and stopped.
"Dad. There's writing on these."
Kenichi leaned in "Is there? I thought that was decorative."
"It doesn't look decorative." The marks were small, pressed into the inner curve of the silver. Not any alphabet he recognised. The lines curved and crossed each other in a way that made his eyes want to slide off them. "It looks like runes."
"Runes." Kenichi repeated, nodding slowly. "Excellent. Very mystical. She'll love it."
"Don't you think we should find out what they mean before we give them to her?"
One full second of consideration.
"Nah."
"Nah?" Subaru echoed.
"It's definitely something cool." Kenichi was already moving back toward the door, the matter apparently resolved. "Hold onto them for now. We'll give them to her together tonight." He pointed at Subaru from the doorframe. "Don't lose them."
"I won't lose them."
"You lost your student ID twice."
"That was situational."
"Don't lose them, Subaru."
"I won't lose them."
Kenichi grinned, the same grin Subaru saw in the mirror every morning, and pulled the door shut behind him.
Subaru looked down at the earrings in his palm.
He tucked them into his tracksuit pocket.
Went back to the bed.
Stared at the ceiling.
Then, between one blink and the next, the room tilted, and a warmth spread from his chest outward, following the exact spot where the earrings sat, and he pressed his hands against his eyes almost on instinct-
When he pulled them away, the ceiling was sky.
Cobblestones under his back. A market full of noise and colour and smells he didn't have names for.
He sat up slowly.
"Huh." he said, to no one.
Twenty minutes of walking had taught him three things.
He had no money. Nobody seemed bothered by his tracksuit. And he was very obviously being watched.
"Hey."
Subaru turned around. Took one look at the three of them and immediately did the mental calculation that told him this was going badly.
"Gentlemen!" He pointed at them. "Fantastic timing. I was just looking for someone to ask directions."
"Directions." the man in front repeated.
"To literally anywhere that isn't here, specifically."
"Weird clothes and no friends." The man smiled slowly. "What's your story, kid?"
"Epic. Genuinely. You wouldn't believe it." Subaru took one casual step sideways, triangulating the exit. "Look, I don't want any trouble-"
"You don't get a vote on that."
"-which is a shame because I'm actually incredible in a crisis-"
His heel caught the cobblestone. He hit the wall behind him with his back and the three men closed in and Subaru's hand went to his pocket on pure instinct, fingers locking around the earrings.
"Okay." he said, spreading his hands. "Okay. Real talk. I have nothing. Zero. The tracksuit is not designer, I promise-"
The man in front reached for him.
And then, very quickly, stopped.
Something whistled through the air, and all three men stumbled back as though the ground had shifted under them. One hit a market stall. One went sideways into the wall. The third managed to stay upright for approximately one second before something invisible and precise swept his legs out entirely.
All three of them looked up.
A woman stood at the entrance of the alley.
She wasn't tall, exactly, but she stood like she was. Blue military uniform, immaculate, a single red flower at the collar. Green hair. She looked at the three men on the ground with the particular calm of someone for whom this had been, at most, a minor inconvenience.
"I suggest." she said, her voice level and clear, "that you leave. Now."
They left. Faster than Subaru would have thought physically possible for men who'd just been thrown around an alleyway.
Subaru watched them go. Then he looked at the woman.
She was, objectively, extremely beautiful in the way that people who clearly didn't care about being beautiful often were. She was already turning to leave, apparently considering the matter fully resolved.
"Wait-" Subaru said.
She stopped.
"You're really pretty." he said.
She turned and looked at him with an expression that was not quite surprise and not quite flattery and somewhere in the vicinity of mild recalibration.
"...I beg your pardon?"
"Sorry, sorry-" He waved a hand. "That came out first. What I meant was… thank you. Genuinely. That was impressive and you didn't have to do that and I'd be significantly poorer and possibly bruised right now if you hadn't, so." He pointed at her. "Thank you."
She regarded him for a moment.
"You're welcome." she said, with the careful precision of someone filing the interaction under unusual but resolved.
She turned to leave again.
"Can I ask your name?" Subaru said.
She paused. Glanced back. Something in her eyes shifted, not warmth exactly, but attention.
"Crusch." she said. "Crusch Karsten."
"Natsuki Subaru." He put a hand on his chest. "Pleasure."
Crusch looked at him. Her gaze moved from his face to his tracksuit to his shoes and back up again with the efficiency of someone used to evaluating things quickly and accurately.
"You're not from Lugunica." she said. It wasn't a question.
"That obvious?"
"Your clothing alone raises several questions." She tilted her head slightly. "And your manner of speech, while comprehensible, carries patterns I haven't encountered." A pause. "Where are you from?"
Subaru opened his mouth. Closed it. Opened it again.
"Far." he said. "Really, genuinely, incomprehensibly far."
Crusch looked at him steadily. "That is not an answer."
"It's the most accurate one I've got right now."
A beat of silence. She studied him with an expression that suggested she was deciding whether to push further or file it away for later. She filed it.
"These garments." she said instead, nodding toward the tracksuit. "What are they made of?"
"Polyester, mostly. Maybe some cotton blend." He looked down at himself. "It's sportswear. For exercising in. Or, in my case, for lying around in."
"Sportswear." Crusch repeated, as though testing the word. "You wear your training clothes in public."
"In my world it's very normal."
"In your world?" she said, very carefully.
Subaru realised half a second too late that that had been a significant thing to say.
Crusch, to her credit, didn't push it. She simply held the information somewhere behind her eyes and moved on with the composure of someone who had learned that patience extracted more than pressure.
"I see." She straightened. "Well, Natsuki Subaru. I'm glad you're unharmed." She turned. "I have business to attend to."
"Wait." He took one step forward. "Is there anything I can do? To repay you, I mean. I have nothing on me right now, literally nothing, I checked, but I'm not useless, I'm actually pretty resourceful when the situation calls for it-"
Crusch stopped walking.
She turned back slowly, and this time the look she gave him was different. Still measured. Still composed. But something in it was genuinely, carefully considering.
"You wish to repay a debt." she said.
"It's the least I can do."
"You have no money. No apparent trade. You're a stranger in a city you don't know wearing clothes no one here has ever seen." She said it without cruelty, simply as fact. "What exactly are you offering?"
Subaru met her eyes.
"Honestly? No idea yet." He shrugged, easy and open. "But I mean it. If there's something I can do, I'll do it."
Crusch looked at him for a long moment.
Then, very precisely, she said: "Walk with me."
Subaru kept pace beside her, which required slightly more effort than he wanted to admit.
"So." he said. "Business. What kind of business?"
"The kind that doesn't require commentary." Crusch said.
"Right, right." He nodded. "I'll just walk then."
Silence.
"It's a big city." he said.
"It is."
"I got turned around about six times in the last twenty minutes."
"I noticed."
He glanced at her sideways. "You were watching me before those guys showed up?"
"You were difficult not to notice." She didn't look at him. "The clothing. The way you were moving. You had the look of someone trying very hard to appear as though they knew where they were going."
"That's called confidence."
"That's called lost."
Subaru opened his mouth, closed it, then pointed at her. "Okay. Fair."
The corner of her mouth did something. It wasn't quite a smile. It was the controlled precursor to a smile, the thing that happened before she decided whether a smile was appropriate.
He filed that away somewhere without meaning to.
She stopped at a merchant's stall near the centre of the market. She spoke briefly with the merchant, quiet, precise, none of it apparently requiring any back and forth. She examined something, made a decision, and moved on.
Subaru caught up.
"You're decisive." he said.
"Is that surprising?"
"Most people take longer. Especially shopping."
"I don't shop." Crusch said. "I acquire what's needed."
"What's the difference?"
She considered this for exactly one second. "Intention."
Subaru thought about that. "That's either very wise or very sad."
She looked at him. Not irritation. Not amusement. Something more like recalculation.
"You say what you're thinking." she said.
"Pretty much always. It gets me in trouble."
"I imagine it does." She resumed walking. "Though I find it preferable to the alternative."
"People who don't say what they're thinking?"
"People who say something different from what they're thinking." she said. "The gap between those two things is where most problems live."
Subaru was quiet for a moment.
"That's true." he said. Less performatively than usual.
Crusch glanced at him. Said nothing.
They turned off the main market road onto a quieter street.
"You said you were from far away." Crusch said, without preamble.
"Yeah."
"How far."
"Define far."
She stopped walking and turned to face him fully. It was a different kind of attention, not hostile, not warm. Just completely, uncomfortably direct.
"I'm attempting to." she said. "You've given me very little to work with. Your clothing is unlike anything produced in any of the four kingdoms I'm aware of. Your manner of speech follows no regional pattern I recognise. You were navigating a major city market with the orientation skills of someone who has never seen a city laid out this way before." A pause. "And when I ask where you're from, you say far, as though distance is the relevant variable."
Subaru held her gaze.
She was watching him with an expression that was careful and patient and not going anywhere.
"You're very observant." he said.
"Yes." she agreed, without modesty.
"And if I said the full answer would sound insane?"
"I would say that I've encountered a reasonable number of insane things." Crusch said, "and I've found that dismissing them on that basis alone tends to be a mistake."
Subaru looked at her. Really looked at the fact that she was genuinely, carefully listening.
Something in his chest did something he chose not to examine.
"Different world." he said. "Not a different country. A different world entirely." He watched her face. "I told you it sounded insane."
Crusch was quiet for a moment.
"You believe that." she said. Not a question.
"It's not a belief, it's just-" He stopped. Started again. "I woke up here. I wasn't here, and then I was. And everything before that was somewhere completely different, where none of this-" he gestured broadly at the street, the sky, the distant shape of the castle, "-existed."
She studied him.
"You're not lying." she said.
"I'm not." He paused. Then: "Wait… you actually believe me? Just like that?"
Crusch looked at him evenly. "Should I not?"
"I just told you I'm from a completely different world! Most people would laugh or call the guards or both!" He stared at her. "You didn't even blink!"
"I blinked." she said.
"You know what I mean!"
She was quiet for a moment. The kind of quiet that meant she was deciding how much to give.
"It's not common." she said finally. "It almost never happens. But there are accounts of people who arrive in Lugunica from somewhere beyond the Great Waterfall." She paused. "The stories describe them as people who don't belong to this world."
Subaru opened his mouth. Closed it.
"That is." he said slowly, "an extremely accurate description of my last twenty minutes."
"Yes." Crusch said. "It is."
"Okay but-" He turned to face her fully, and there was nothing performed about it now. "The Great Waterfall. What is that? Because in my world there's no… I mean, we have waterfalls, obviously, but none of them lead to other worlds as far as I know-"
"No one knows what lies beyond it." Crusch said. "The Great Waterfall marks the edge of the known world." A beat. "The working theory is that the world simply ends there. What's beyond it remains unknown."
Subaru stared at her.
"The world just... ends." he said.
"So it appears."
"And people fall over the edge and land here?!"
"That is a significant oversimplification of a phenomenon that isn't fully understood." Crusch said, with the precision of someone who disliked significant oversimplifications. "But in essence, yes. There are perhaps a handful of recorded cases across several centuries."
"A handful." Subaru ran a hand through his hair. "So I'm not just a stranger in a strange city. I'm a once-in-a-century freak occurrence."
"Twice-in-a-century, at most." Crusch said. "Historically speaking."
"That's not better! That's the same thing said more precisely!"
"I find precision comforting." she said.
Subaru looked at her. She was watching him with that steady, measured expression, but there was something underneath it.
"So you believed me." he said, "because you already knew this was possible."
"I believed you." Crusch said, "because you weren't lying. The possibility simply made the truth easier to contextualise."
"You knew I wasn't lying." he said slowly. "From the beginning."
"Yes."
"How?"
A pause. Brief, but deliberate.
"Call it intuition." she said.
It wasn't the whole answer. He could tell that much. But her expression had closed the door on that particular line of questioning, and Subaru had enough instinct to recognise when pushing wouldn't help.
He filed it away.
"Okay." he said. Then, quieter: "Okay." He exhaled. "I'm really here."
"You are." Crusch said.
"And I can't go back."
A pause.
"I don't know." she said, and for the first time there was something careful in her voice "No one who has arrived this way has ever returned. Whether that means return is impossible, or simply that no one has yet found the means-" She stopped. "I don't know."
Subaru nodded slowly.
He breathed in.
Breathed out.
"Right." he said. And then, because he was Natsuki Subaru and standing still in the wreckage was never really an option: "Well. I guess I'd better make myself useful here then, hadn't I?"
Crusch looked at him.
"That." she said, "is either a very brave thing to say or a very foolish one."
"Can't it be both?"
The not-quite-smile. The most visible it had been yet.
She held his gaze for another moment. Then she turned and resumed walking, and he fell into step beside her again, and neither of them said anything for half a block.
"The clothing." she said finally. "In your world. Everyone dresses this way?"
Subaru looked down at the tracksuit. "The comfortable ones, yeah."
"It looks designed for movement."
"That's literally the point of it."
"And the material." She glanced at it briefly. "It's not wool. Not linen. Not silk."
"Polyester."
“Poliyster.” She repeated the word quietly, as though storing it.
"We have a lot of synthetic fabrics." Subaru said. "Cheap to make, easy to wash. Very practical."
"Practical." Crusch said, and this time the not-quite-smile was slightly more visible. "I appreciate practical."
"I noticed." Subaru said. "You have, like, zero unnecessary decorations."
She looked at him.
"The uniform." he clarified quickly. "I just meant, it's clean. Functional. No frills. I respect that."
"Most people." Crusch said, with the precision of someone choosing their words carefully, "comment on the masculinity of it. They consider it inappropriate for a woman."
"Most people are wrong, then."
She stopped walking again.
He stopped too, a half-step later, and turned to find her looking at him with an expression that was harder to read than the previous ones.
"You said that very easily." she said.
"Because it's obviously true." He shrugged. "You move like someone who knows what they're doing. The uniform matches that. Why would frills improve it?"
Crusch looked at him for a long, measured moment.
Then she turned and walked on.
"You're a strange person, Natsuki Subaru." she said.
"Is that a problem?"
"I haven't decided yet."
They reached a broader street, and Crusch slowed.
"This is where our paths diverge." she said. "I have a meeting."
"Right." Subaru nodded. "Well." He turned to face her properly. "Thank you. Again. For the alley thing."
"You've thanked me already."
"It deserves two." He paused. "And for the walk. That was-" He stopped, searched for the right word, landed on an honest one. "Nice. Actually."
Crusch looked at him steadily.
"You still wish to repay the debt." she said.
"It's not even about the debt anymore." Subaru said, and then immediately wondered if that was too much, and then decided it was exactly honest enough. "I just… don't know anyone here. And you were the first person who talked to me like I was worth talking to."
A silence.
"Where are you staying?" Crusch asked.
"Nowhere yet."
Her expression did not change. "You have no lodgings."
"I have no lodgings, no money, and a tracksuit."
She was quiet for a moment that felt like a decision being made.
"There is a matter." she said slowly, "that I've been attempting to resolve. It requires someone with no existing allegiances in this city. No connections. No history here." She paused. "No one who would be recognised."
Subaru stared at her. "That is, objectively, a perfect description of me."
"Yes." Crusch said. "It is."
She held his gaze, and this time the look she gave him was different from all the previous ones.
"Come to the Karsten estate tomorrow morning." she said. "Early. Ask for Crusch." She turned to leave. "We'll see if you're as useful as you claim."
"I never claimed to be useful." Subaru called after her. "I claimed to be resourceful. There's a difference."
She stopped walking.
"What is the difference?" she asked, without turning around.
"Intention." he said.
A pause.
She walked on. But the not-quite-smile, when it came, was the most visible it had been all afternoon.
Subaru watched her go.
He was grinning.
Looked back at the direction she'd gone.
"Right." he said quietly, to absolutely no one. "Okay. Fine."
The city looked different at dusk.
Subaru walked without direction, hands in his pockets, fingers occasionally brushing the earrings.
He had a destination for tomorrow.
Tonight was a different problem.
“Karsten estate.” he thought. “Early. That's one thing. But early requires surviving until morning and surviving until morning requires-”
He turned a corner without looking and walked directly into someone.
The collision was entirely his fault. He went sideways, caught himself badly, and ended up on one knee.
"I'm sorry, I'm sorry-" He looked up, already wincing. "I completely wasn't watching where I was… oh."
The woman he'd walked into hadn't moved.
She stood exactly where she'd been, as though the impact had registered somewhere beneath her notice. Dark hair and a really revealing dress.
She was, objectively, extraordinarily beautiful.
"Are you hurt?" she asked. Her voice was soft.
"I'm… no, I'm fine." He got to his feet, brushing off his tracksuit. "That was completely my fault, I wasn't looking. Are you okay? I basically walked straight into you-"
"I'm perfectly fine." she said. The small smile didn't change. Her eyes did something subtle, a slow, interested sweep from his face down to the tracksuit and back up. "You're quite earnest, aren't you?"
"I've been told it's a problem." He rubbed the back of his neck. "Seriously though. Sorry. I was thinking and I stopped watching where I was going and that's… yeah. Sorry."
She tilted her head the other way. Just slightly. "You apologise a great deal for someone who's clearly had a difficult day."
"Is it that obvious?"
"You've been walking in circles for the better part of an hour." she said pleasantly. "This is the third time you've passed this corner."
Subaru stared at her. "You've been here for an hour?"
"I've been around." Her gaze settled on him with a warmth that was gentle and patient and somehow made him feel like a very small thing being looked at through very clear glass. "What is a boy like you doing alone at this hour?"
"Boy." he repeated. "I'm seventeen."
"Mm." The smile. "What is a young man like you doing alone at this hour?"
"Honestly?" He exhaled. "I don't have anywhere to stay tonight. I'm new to the city. Very new." He looked down the darkening street. "I was sort of hoping something would present itself but so far the city has not been forthcoming."
The woman was quiet for a moment.
She looked at him. That quiet, tilted attention.
"I may be able to help." she said.
"...Yeah?"
"I have space." She said it simply, without elaboration. "And my little sister would enjoy the company. She gets restless in the evenings." A small pause. "In exchange for a place to sleep, you'd only need to spend a little time with her. Keep her entertained."
Subaru looked at her. She looked back, soft-eyed, unhurried, the picture of mild generosity.
Nothing about her felt wrong, exactly. She was perfectly still and perfectly pleasant and the offer was straightforward enough.
"That's… really kind of you," he said. "Are you sure? You don't know me at all."
"I know you walked into me and apologised four times." she said. "That tells me something."
He laughed despite himself. "Fair point." He stuck his hand out. "Natsuki Subaru."
She looked at his hand for just a moment before taking it. Her grip was light. Her hand was very cold.
"Elsa." she said.
"Just Elsa?"
"Just Elsa."
"Okay, Just Elsa." He fell into step beside her as she turned down the street. "Lead the way."
She didn't talk much.
That should have been fine, but something about the quality of her silence made him quieter than usual. She walked smoothly, unhurriedly, and the city changed around them as they moved.
The slums, when they reached them, were quiet in the specific way of places that had learned to keep noise to themselves.
"It's not far now." Elsa said, without looking at him.
"No problem." He looked around. The streets here were empty. "Your sister lives out here with you?"
"She does." A pause. "She's shy with strangers. Don't be alarmed if she's slow to warm up."
"I'm good with kids."
"Are you?"
"I have a very non-threatening face."
Elsa glanced at him sideways. The smile again. "You have an earnest face." she said. "That's different."
"Is it better or worse?"
"It depends." she said softly, "on what someone wants from an earnest face."
He didn't entirely know what to do with that, so he let it go.
The house was small, set slightly back from the lane. Elsa pushed open the door without knocking and stepped inside.
"Meili." she called. Soft, warm. A different quality to her voice than she'd used with him. "We have a guest."
A pause.
Then movement, and a girl appeared from somewhere deeper in the house. Young, maybe thirteen, blue hair, wide eyes currently doing a rapid and thorough assessment of Subaru from the doorway.
"Elsa!" She crossed to Elsa quickly, then stopped, looked at Subaru, and tilted her head in a way that reminded him of the way Elsa tilted hers. "Is that him?"
"Meili." Elsa said pleasantly.
The girl blinked. Looked at Elsa. Something passed between them.
"...Hello." Meili said, redirecting to Subaru with a smile that was slightly too wide for the question she'd just asked.
"Hey." Subaru waved. "Natsuki Subaru. Nice to meet you." He looked between them. "Is that him? What does that mean?"
"She means is this the guest I mentioned finding." Elsa said. Smoothly. Without a beat. "I told her I might bring someone back."
"Oh." He relaxed. "Yeah, that's me. The guest."
Meili was still watching him. Still smiling.
"You have funny clothes." she said.
"Everyone keeps saying that."
"I like them."
"Thanks… Meili?"
Elsa moved further into the house. "Make yourself comfortable." she said, glancing back at him over her shoulder. "I'll get you something to drink."
"You really don't have to-"
"I insist." she said softly. And went.
Subaru stood in the small front room. Meili was still watching him. The house was very quiet.
He looked at the door Elsa had gone through.
Then back at Meili.
The girl's smile had changed.
Something hit the back of his head, and the room went dark before he could turn around.
He woke up cold.
That was the first thing. Cold, and unable to move, and staring at a ceiling that was not the ceiling of anywhere good.
His wrists were bound to the edges of a wall. His ankles too. He tested them once, rope, tight, knotted by someone who knew what they were doing.
The panic came in fast.
"Hey!" His voice came out louder than he intended. "HEY! Let me go! Someone let me go RIGHT NOW-"
The door opened.
Elsa walked in.
Same dress. Same soft expression. She carried a small lamp, which she set on a table near the wall, and then she turned to look at him with her head tilted gently to one side.
"~Fu fu fu, you're awake." she said warmly. "Good. I was beginning to worry I'd hit you too hard."
"You-" Subaru pulled against the ropes. "What is this?! What are you doing?! I thought you were being nice-"
"I was being nice." Elsa said. She crossed the room, stopped beside the table, and looked at him with the same patient attention she'd given him on the street. "I still am, in my way."
"This is NOT nice! This is the opposite of nice! Untie me RIGHT NOW-"
"I'm afraid I can't do that." She tilted her head the other way. "My contractor was quite specific. A boy with black hair. Strange foreign clothing." Her eyes moved over him. "You match the description remarkably well."
Subaru went cold in a way that had nothing to do with the room.
"Your contractor?" he repeated.
"Mm." She reached out and took hold of the zipper of his tracksuit top. "They were specific about bringing you in. They were less specific." she continued, pulling the zipper down with unhurried precision, "about the condition."
"Hey, hey, what are you-"
She pulled the tracksuit open. Then, with the same calm, she took the hem of his shirt and pushed it upward, and Subaru felt the air hit his stomach and twisted against the ropes.
Elsa looked at him. At his abdomen. Her expression shifted into something that was almost reverent.
"My." she said softly. "Your insides must be beautiful."
The bottom dropped out of Subaru's stomach.
"Please." he said, and hated how small his voice came out. "Please, I don't know what's happening, I don't know who sent you, I just got here today, I don't know anything-"
"I know." Elsa said gently. "That's not really the point."
She reached somewhere he couldn't see.
"WAIT-" He pulled against the ropes with everything he had. Nothing gave. "WAIT, PLEASE-"
His hand. His right hand, fingers spread.
The earrings.
He'd put them in his pocket. But the pocket was-
The tracksuit had been opened. The pocket was right there.
He twisted his wrist, forced his fingers sideways, felt the fabric of the pocket, there, there-
"That won't-" Elsa began.
His fingers closed around the earrings.
He didn't know why. Pure instinct, the same way a drowning person grabs anything within reach. They were the only thing he had. The only thing from home, from before, from his father's hand.
The warmth hit immediately.
Subaru didn't know what he was doing. He had no framework for this. He just held on, because letting go felt like the worst idea he'd ever had, and the warmth kept spreading, and the air in the room changed-
The lamp blew sideways.
The shadows moved wrong.
And then Cu Chulainn was standing in the middle of the room.
He hadn't been there. And then he was, with a long red-tipped spear in one hand. He looked around the room with sharp red eyes, took in the lamp on its side, the ropes, Subaru on the table, Elsa beside him with something in her hand.
He was quiet for exactly one second.
Then he looked at Subaru.
"Hmm, so you’re my Master" he said.
Subaru stared at him. "Who… WHAT-"
"Good. You're not dead." Cu turned his attention to Elsa. Something in his posture shifted. The kind of easy that meant he'd already calculated everything in the room and liked the odds. "You. Back away from him."
Elsa had gone very still.
She was looking at Cu the way she'd looked at Subaru's stomach.
"My." she said softly. "Where did you come from?"
"Away." Cu said. "Back away from the kid. Last time I ask nicely."
Elsa smiled. Tilted her head the other way. "You're very tall."
"Lady-"
"And that spear." Her eyes moved along the length of Gáe Bolg with something approaching appreciation. "That's not an ordinary weapon, is it?"
"No." Cu said. "It's not. Which should be a reason to step back, not a reason to lean in."
"Mm." She didn't move. "I was hired to deliver the boy. I wasn't told anything about-" she gestured at Cu with something almost like delight, "-whatever you are."
"I'm his problem." Cu said flatly. "And right now, so are you."
Subaru had been staring between them with wild-eyed energy.
"EXCUSE ME!" he said loudly. Both of them looked at him. "CAN SOMEONE UNTIE ME FIRST and THEN have the threatening conversation?!"
Cu glanced at him. Then back at Elsa.
"Don't move." he told her, in a voice that had stopped being casual.
Elsa moved.
Not toward the door. Not away from him. Straight at him, fast, low, with two kukri knives appearing in her hands.
Cu brought Gáe Bolg up and caught the first strike on the shaft, turned the second aside with his forearm, and pushed her back in one clean motion.
Elsa stumbled.
"Fast." she said softly. "Very fast."
"You haven't seen fast yet." Cu said.
They moved again, Elsa driving forward with a combination that was elegant in the specific way of someone who had spent a long time learning exactly where to put a blade. Cu gave ground, barely, reading each strike a half-beat ahead and turning them aside with the spear or simply not being where they landed. He was bigger and had the reach, and he was using both.
But she was fast. Genuinely, unsettlingly fast.
She ducked under a sweep of Gáe Bolg and got inside his guard, one blade dragging across his side, shallow but real. Cu stepped back and she pressed.
Then Cu caught her wrist.
One hand, mid-strike, locking her right arm in a grip that stopped her cold.
She pulled. The wrist didn't move.
She tried the left, he caught that too, both her arms now locked, her knives pointed at nothing useful.
"Done?" he said.
Elsa looked up at him with that quiet, warm attention.
"Not quite." she said.
She twisted, not against his grip but with it, using his own leverage, and one knife spun free and left her hand and Subaru had no time to do anything before it hit the wall directly beside his head.
The blade buried itself in the wood five centimeters from his ear.
"THERE IS MY FACE-" he started.
Cu glanced back at him.
One second. One.
Elsa's knee drove into his stomach, broke his grip, and she was free. The second kukri came up from somewhere, and she slashed fast and low and Cu caught it on the spear shaft again but the exchange had reset, and they were back to distance, and she was smiling more widely now.
But something else was happening.
Elsa paused. Just briefly. Her left hand moved to her forearm. She looked at it.
The cut from the spear shaft, where Gáe Bolg had nicked her wrist during the first exchange.
It hadn't closed.
Elsa touched the wound with one finger.
Looked at Gáe Bolg.
Cu met her head-on this time.
He stopped giving ground.
Elsa was still fast but Cu was faster now that he'd stopped being careful, and the accumulated cuts were real and she wasn't closing any of them, and when she overextended on a thrust that should have worked, Cu stepped inside it, caught the knife arm for the third time, and this time didn't let the grip become a contest.
He swept her legs. Took her down hard. Put the butt of Gáe Bolg against the floor and his forearm across her collarbone and his weight behind it and pinned her flat.
She pushed. Didn't move him.
The door burst open.
Meili stood in the doorway in her nightclothes, wide-eyed, taking in the overturned furniture and the broken lamp and Cu kneeling over Elsa on the floor.
"Elsa!" She stopped. "What's happening?!"
"Meili." Elsa's voice from the floor was still soft. Still perfectly even. "Run."
"But-"
"I said run!"
Meili's wide eyes moved to Cu. Then to Subaru against the wall. Then something shifted in her expression and she raised one hand.
Something came through the window.
It was large and it hit the room like a decision, all muscle and teeth and something fundamentally off about the way it moved. Subaru flattened himself against the wall and had no useful thoughts whatsoever.
Cu was off Elsa and had the spear up in under a second.
The creature came at him, and Cu sidestepped with the bored efficiency of someone stepping around a puddle.
"Really?" he said, to no one in particular.
He drove Gáe Bolg through its centre mass without breaking stride. It dropped. He pulled the spear free and flicked it once, clean, and looked at Meili.
"Cute trick." he said. "Got anything else?"
Meili bolted for the door.
Cu was faster.
He crossed the room in three strides, caught her by the back of her collar before she cleared the doorway, and deposited her, onto the floor next to Subaru.
"Stay." he said, pointing at her like she was a dog that had gotten into the kitchen. Then, to Subaru: "Watch her."
"What do I do if she-"
"Watch her." Cu repeated, already turning back.
Elsa was halfway to her feet, second kukri up.
Cu looked at her. Looked at the knife. Looked back at her face.
"Third time." he said pleasantly. "You're persistent, I'll give you that."
"So are you."
"Yeah, but I'm winning." He rolled the spear once in his grip and tilted his head. "You're not closing those cuts, are you? I can see you checking."
Something moved behind Elsa's eyes.
"Interesting spear." she said.
"Everyone says that." He was already moving. "It gets old."
He crossed the remaining distance fast, knocked the kukri aside on the first exchange, caught her knife arm on the second, and hit her once. The heel of his palm to the side of her head with exactly enough force to put the lights out and nothing extra.
Elsa folded.
Cu caught her before she hit the floor, lowered her down without particular tenderness but without dropping her either, and straightened up.
He looked around the room.
Broken furniture. Dead creature. One unconscious assassin in a very nice dress. One kukri still buried in the wall.
He looked at Subaru.
Subaru was sitting against the wall with Meili beside him, the girl had gone very still and was watching Cu with large, careful eyes.
"You good?" Cu asked.
"She offered me a place to sleep and I said yes and I walked here voluntarily."
"Yep."
"She seemed nice."
"Buddy." Cu pulled the kukri from the wall and cut ropes on Subaru’s wrists and legs. "She was going to gut you."
"I KNOW THAT NOW." Subaru pressed both hands over his face. Then dropped them. "Who are you? What are you? How did you get here? Why are you blue? Why does your spear do… whatever it did to her arm-"
"One at a time." Cu said. "And not here."
"Then where?"
"Anywhere that isn't a room with an unconscious knife lady and a kid who controls monsters." He jerked his head toward the door. "Move."
Subaru scrambled to his feet. Looked at Meili.
Cu glanced at the girl. "Leave her. She's not our problem."
"She's a kid."
"She's a kid who just sent a monster at us."
"Dude-"
"Master." Cu's voice was flat. Not cruel, just final. "She works with an assassin. That's not a rescue situation, that's a complication."
Subaru looked at Meili again.
She was watching them both with that careful stillness.
She looked very small.
"How old are you?" Subaru asked her.
Meili blinked. Like the question was unexpected. "...Thirteen."
"Thirteen.” Subaru repeated. He looked at Cu. "She's Thirteen."
"I heard her."
"She's thirteen years old and she lives in a shack in the slums with an assassin who is her sister AND who tried to gut me." He kept his voice level. "That's not her fault."
Cu stared at him for a long moment with an expression that was professionally unreadable.
"You don't know that." he said.
"No." Subaru admitted. "But I know she's still a kid."
Another silence.
Cu looked at the ceiling. Then back down. The expression on his face was the particular one of a man who had already lost an argument and was taking a moment to process his defeat with dignity.
"She comes with us, she doesn't go anywhere alone, and if she pulls another stunt-"
"She won't.” Subaru said.
"You don't know that either."
"Dude."
"Fine." Cu pointed at Meili. The point was very direct. "You. Up. And if anything with teeth shows up in the next ten minutes I'm going to be very annoyed."
Meili looked at Subaru.
Subaru nodded.
She stood up slowly. Her hand finally made contact with Elsa's shoulder.
"What about my sister?" she asked quietly.
"We're not leaving her here either." Subaru said.
Cu turned to look at him.
"We're not leaving her here either." Cu repeated, in the tone of a man encountering something he should have anticipated but somehow didn't.
"She needs a doctor and she needs to answer for… whatever she was hired to do." Subaru crossed his arms. "There has to be someone in this city whose job it is to deal with unconscious assassins."
"Knights." Cu said. "Royal Knights, probably. If this city has them."
"Does it?"
"Most do."
"Then we bring her to them." Subaru looked at Elsa on the floor. "We can't just leave her here to wake up."
Cu was quiet for a moment.
"She's going to be heavy." he said.
Cu exhaled through his nose, and crouched down beside Elsa. He checked the cuts on her arm briefly, then lifted her with the ease of someone picking up a coat.
"This." he said, standing, "is not how I expected tonight to go."
"Me neither." Subaru said. "To be fair."
"She invited you in."
"I KNOW-"
"She offered you a bed and you said yes."
"She seemed NICE.”
"She had a bowel ripper in her dress."
"I DIDN'T KNOW THAT." Subaru turned to Meili, who was watching this exchange with the expression of someone encountering a species of human they hadn't previously encountered. "Come on. Stay close."
Meili looked at him. Then at Cu carrying Elsa. Then back at Subaru.
"You're both strange." she said.
"Everyone keeps saying that." He headed for the door. "Let's go."