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They were leaving for Chaosflame in the morning.
Abel, Taritta, Medium, Al, and… Subaru, or Natsumi, rather. As that was who he was at the moment. She was. She’d had to refashion this identity into a dancer and now again into a military woman.
Being treated as a woman twenty-four-seven for the past few weeks was an interesting experience. One that Subaru didn’t dislike, it was just something that she had to keep reminding herself that it was only temporary; the people she mainly interacted with knew and she was lying to the rest. Even if it felt bad, she at the very least had Rem and Al reminding her of who she was.
She was pacing.
There was a need to break her new shoes in, the ones for the most recent iteration of Natsumi, which is why she was wearing them under her dress while pacing. There were no other reasons to pace.
There were of course things that she needed to worry about. Rem, Louis, Todd, Arakiya.
But she’d dealt with every problem in Vollachia so far and had only died twice. Albiet she hadn’t been truly successful. The siege wasn’t fully bloodless, Mizelda had gotten burned, and people had died to Todd and Jamal breaking out Arakiya.
At this point though, it had been weeks, there was nothing she could do now. Even though there was so much that she needed to. She’d already messed up, so Subaru needed to do everything perfectly from now on. No one else could die. Not to fucked up snakes, fire, arrows, or attractive yet terrifying bandanna wearing murderers.
All Subaru had to do was keep everyone alive and safe and use every life she had to its fullest potential and she needed to make sure that there were no errors in her sewing for her new clothes, needed to make sure that she had all of her makeup together, needed to remember to pack her whip, to make sure everyone was okay, needed to check on Rem because she hadn’t done that yet today and maybe if she did that she’d run into Priscilla and be called beautiful again but being honest with herself what were the chances of Priscilla complimenting her more than once, and she needed to break her shoes in.
Which was of course when the bastard in chief opened the door that she had very carefully shut walked himself into the room like he owned the place.
Technically he did own the place.
Not that it counted because even if you are supposed to be the emperor it doesn’t count if some other guy is sitting on the throne while you’re trying to get it back. Also it was some random person’s house anyway.
“What exactly are you doing?” Abel asked. Had his eyes stopped functioning as soon as he walked into the room? Could he not see Subaru still walking back and forth because why would she stop walking just because some prick had started speaking to her.
Subaru was about to hit the wall when she turned around to see Abel’s frustratingly pretty face. She didn’t say anything him until she had gotten to the opposite wall and turned around again so she didn’t have to look at him.
“Breaking in my new shoes, obviously.” She stepped unnecessarily hard as she started saying ‘obviously’ for emphasis.
Her tone was appropriately upset at his interruption of her work. Just because he was leading this whole stupid operation that she had been roped into didn’t mean he could just do whatever he wanted. She could always just hit him again. In the face this time since no one was around to tell her to not hit him in the face. And Rem could heal people from basically any injury even if they were inches away from dying of blood loss because their limbs had been systematically crushed by a spiked metal ball, so he could just get a black eye or broken nose or fractured jaw healed in an instant.
She couldn’t see what his reaction was because she was too busy making it to the wall again, but when she turned it was to see him in exactly the same place as last time wearing the exact same face under his stupid mask with the only difference being he’d crossed his arms.
How no one had assassinated him yet on the grounds of his e v e r y t h i n g, she had no idea.
And she walked to the wall again, noting that her footsteps were louder now, she’d probably been too busy with her own thoughts to think about the sound her footsteps were making before. Either that or they were echoing more now that the door was open. Which made perfect sense. The hallway was acting as an amplifier or something. Because why would she suddenly start making heavier steps?
Again, again, she walked to the wall and turned and Abel hadn’t moved at all. He was just standing there, watching her. Probably judging her. Definitely judging her. Because of course he was. Everyone does.
Then, with his stupidly nice sounding voice that he didn’t deserve because of how annoying he is, he spoke again.
But not without taking his ~precious time~ to sigh first because he was an arrogant piece of shit who was somehow more upsetting than Julius because at least Julius had to open his mouth to be annoying and all Abel had to do was walk into the room.
“You’ve been breaking in your shoes for three hours?” And he had the gall to question her.
What? Was she not allowed to-
…
It had been that long already?
That didn’t sound right. But there was a clock in the room and she had started this just after lunch so that would have been around one and the small crystal clock that rested on an ornately carved shelf could verify that he was bullshitting to confuse her and why were her legs starting to hurt all of a sudden that didn’t make any sense?
Oh. It was four in the afternoon.
Well, okay, it had been three hours then. Did she have anything to do this afternoon? Other than making sure that everything was ready for when they left tomorrow and checking on Rem and making sure that everyone was okay and turning before she hit the wall because that would be embarrassing and had Utakata said something about playing today? No that was yesterday she didn’t need to worry about that.
Though of course she had to consider that Utakata had said about playing with her again today after yesterday but Subaru didn’t remember that happening but she could have just forgotten just like she had forgotten so so so many things and she can’t go around forgetting things again because then people will get upset at her and she can’t have that.
Rem of course was upset at her though, because she was pretending to be Natsumi and Subaru knew that it was wrong, she just couldn’t be Subaru while in Vollachia it would be a political nightmare and she ignored how she had told Todd her name without thinking about it before but who was he going to tell anyway? Jamal? Or his superiors. Which, when considering the circumstances could -turn- make its way to the fake emperor, Chisha Gold.
Should she tell someone she did that? It might become important. But if it never came up then she would feel stupid. She would get called stupid anyway because she had told Todd. Todd. Of all the names he could have it was Todd. Did his parents hate him or something to name him that? Not that she should speculate about his parents that was rude.
Shit.
She’d tried to feed him to a snake Mabeast. The fact that her plan, or his plan, because she wasn’t Natsumi at the time had worked, was a miracle and she probably should have come up with a better one because that could have gotten the jungle burned down with her in it that day and she had ended up getting what was probably ninety nine percent of that military camp killed anyway because she wanted Rem to be safe. How could she have done that?
It would have been better if she died to the snake and then have had time to come up with a better plan that didn’t involve a massacre but what if it -turn- had happened again? Even if she didn’t mean for it to happen even once the deaths were still on her hands for providing the information and-
As she was halfway across the room again, it wasn’t a very big room. A small sitting room. Rich people small, that is. Nicely decorated too. With a sofa that was probably very comfortable against the wall that was to her right when she came into the room but was now her left that faced the beautiful view of the city through large windows but that didn’t matter at all because she’d closed the curtains when she came in and they were thin enough that the room was still bright in the afternoon sun and also because Abel had just closed the door.
Which had made her stumble. That dick!
But she kept on walking because she had to break in her new shoes and she should probably walk over to the door and open it again and leave and visit Rem and visit everyone probably just in case there was something she’d missed and if she hadn’t missed anything she could probably have tea with General Ozman again like she’d done last week that was nice, he was nice. He knew and was still nice. Really nice. Nicer than she deserved really, she had gotten a sword pointed at his throat. Which though she was loath to admit it was probably better than her original plan anyway.
And she had to turn again and why wasn’t Abel saying anything?
He clearly wanted to. What with the way he had taken his mask off so she couldn’t have the pleasure of ripping it off his face like she wanted to. But this way she could hit him in the face without worrying about breaking it because he was obviously attached to it for some reason and that’s why he wore it all the time because it’s not like it worked as a disguise anyway it only covered the top half of his face this wasn’t an anime and it wasn’t like Emilia-tan’s magic cloak.
If Emilia was here. If anyone was here. Even if they couldn’t go home things would at least be better because there would be more safe people for Rem to rely on. For Subaru to rely on as well because she wasn’t blind to the fact that she was weak and needed other people’s help because she couldn’t do anything by herself and if she tried then everyone would end up being killed and it would be her fault.
Woah! That was a bit close when it came to not hitting that wall. Her skirt wasn’t particularly flowy, but it had clipped the wall anyway that wasn’t good.
None of this was good.
In fact, the least good thing about the situation was that the worst guy she knew had made the idiotic decision of standing behind her as she turned.
He was standing way too close to the point where she didn’t have time to course correct and go around him and as a result Subaru walked into him and immediately bounced back not because he was solid even though humans probably counted as solids, right? Scientifically, she means.
Even if they are filled with liquids and gases and that’s probably not how it works is it, it’s been a while since chemistry or is this physics and she wanted to grab something to stop her fall but Abel had been standing in almost the middle of the room and they weren’t close to the curtains which she probably would have torn or the coffee table, or was it a coff table here or did they just call it a low table that probably made more sense but it hadn’t come up in conversation before but she wasn’t walking close to it because she didn’t want to accidentally stub her toe.
Which left Abel to hang onto which she very nearly did before realising what she was doing and it wouldn’t have mattered anyway because she was already on the floor.
At the very least he had the common courtesy to take a step back afterwards.
Falling over was something she tended to do in front of him. Was this the third time? No, she’d tripped the other day. Right in front of him. She remembered him laughing.
Oh. That’s what this was.
He was laughing at her. Laughing. Because she was a joke. This was a joke. Walking back and forth for a few hours in a room all alone was pointless. She could have broken her shoes in doing anything else. Going to see someone, doing something, anything other than shutting herself in a room for a few hours like an idiot.
Then she’d fallen, after Abel blocked her path, and she didn’t stop walking for some reason. She needed to stand back up but her legs hurt and when she put her arms on the floor to push herself up it didn’t work. Why didn’t it work? Why couldn’t she push herself up she needed to do that she needed to get up off the floor where she had been walking for three-fucking-hours because this must’ve been ridiculous to look at why didn’t she stop walking when he came in like a normal person why did she keep walking and why couldn’t she breathe-
Why did her head feel hot- why couldn’t she breathe- her legs hurt- why couldn’t she breathe- oh god her eyes were stinging- why couldn’t she breathe- those were tears she was crying in front of him of all people- why couldn’t she breathe- her legs didn’t hurt enough- why couldn’t she breathe- her hands couldn’t grip onto the carpet properly- why couldn’t she breathe-
Subaru could feel her body tilting forwards and this situation couldn’t have been any more humiliating when her head met not trodden down carpet, but a soft lap.
Her body didn’t listen to her as her hands grasped at the clothes on the legs which belonged to Abel of all people. She didn’t want to be doing this. She would rather be doing anything but pressing her face into the thighs of a man who she never wanted to see her in a state of weakness, more so than even Emilia. And if she were to press her head into his thighs, she would rather it be under very different circumstances.
But fuck. It wasn’t like she could get comfort in this place.
The few seconds this would last would probably be it before she was thrown onto the floor and she was killed for her insolence and would go back to some other point and do everything right that time.
She felt Abel shift beneath her, but for some unknowable reason, he didn’t stand.
What… was he doing? Getting comfortable? Why would he be getting comfortable? Why isn’t he kicking her to death? Strangling her? Anything?
If anything, it seemed like he was trying to make her comfortable. Which made no sense. None of this made sense. And as if the world was ending, the most nonsensical thing happened.
“What is wrong, exactly?” There was a hand in her hair.
A hand.
In Subaru’s hair.
Vincent’s hand in Subaru’s hair.
His hand was in her hair and he was asking her what was wrong! What?
Subaru sniffled out a ‘What?’ and Abel repeated his question. He sounded… awkward. In any other situation Subaru probably would have immediately started making fun of him for not showing his supposedly endless confidence for once. But the fact that he was asking her.
How was she meant to respond!? By telling him the truth!? She could try.
“I-” she was so stupid. “I was only going to be a few minutes-!”
He hummed an acknowledgement and ran a hand through her hair. Wig. Subaru missed having long hair so badly that the ache at the back of her neck, the jarring place that when she touched there was no long hair to greet her it was always jarring even though he hadn’t had long hair for ten years now, the pain was so sudden it was like a knife through her stomach in the pathetic sound it caused her to make.
Though it wasn’t real she could feel it like it was as Abel ran his hand through her hair again. Being careful not to snag his fingers on the lace and pull it away from where she’d pinned it.
Subaru tried to explain why she was in the room, that it was only going to be her getting used to the feel of the new shoes before going about her day. That she genuinely didn’t realise how long it had been when he’d opened the door. But when Abel asked her what had distracted her, she dissolved into unintelligible blubbering.
Some words made their way through, short apologies and confessions of things being her fault.
Each time though, each time she brought something out, Abel rebuked her. Said her apologies were unneeded, that she was confessing to crimes that existed only within her head. As if he lived in a dimension outside of reality. One where Subaru’s only missteps were the times she had insulted him. Yet he was kind to her regardless.
Abel listened, and told her she was wrong. He didn’t push her away, kept his hand in her hair. He acted completely unlike himself. Because of her.
At some point Subaru must have fallen asleep because the next thing she knew; a hand was shaking her shoulder.
There was a warm light visible through her eyelids, and as Subaru came back into herself she realised the hand was to small to be Beatrice, so the only person it could be was-
“Emilia-tan?”
She blinked open eyes that seemed almost glued shut to hear the worst thing possible.
“No. It’s just me, I’m afraid.”
Eugh, Abel. He sounded almost like his usual self, but there was a strange note in his voice that Subaru couldn’t quite place.
The earlier incident flooded her with shame as the naptime dam broke in her brain.
She had cried. In the lap of the worst guy ever. To sleep. If she was any weaker she would have killed herself to escape what was clearly the only unsalvageable timeline she had ever existed in.
“Dinner is in fifteen minutes; I figured I should wake you up.”
…
He only gave her fifteen minutes to redo her makeup after crying!? Was he insane!? It took her two hours to get ready in the morning! And after that she would probably have to redo her hair as well this was one of the worst days of her life. Potentially worse than some of her deaths.
Subaru very successfully stood up from her sitting position to not run back to her room to prepare herself for the humiliation ritual that dinner was sure to be.
Leaving Abel sitting on the floor behind her without so much as a thank you.