Re:zero - Tumblr Posts
Saw this after forgetting you existed for like a month (woops) and just. Dear God. My good tentacled friend, you not only can draw well, but you have a fantastic grasp on the character’s personalities. I’d analyze and comment on the opinions, but I’m not here to put an essay in your notifications (plus i don’t think anyone really cares about me talking about that stuff lol). Please continue blessing us with this content.
I realized that I never made it clear how I perceive the relationship between the main quartet, so here is 2 charts (one simple and the other one more in depth) about how I view each characters relationship and opinions of each other:
This is, of course, my opinion on the matter, yours might differ, so let me know what you think.
(Also, let me know if you'd be interested in hearing some headcanons I have for the 4 main characters, because I'm be very happy to share them lol)
manifest with me everyone
I am absolutely obsessed with witch cult victim theory. I also think it would make a lot of sense to the cast, especially if it was combined with the theory that Subaru got his name and memories eaten.
Although this is more just what I think would make sense with what the rest of the cast knows about Subaru. Not nessasrally what they might actually think about him. Although I'll also consider that.
He would undergo the typical witch cult victim theory shenanigans (torture) while in the witch cults custody, which I think could include having his name eaten. He may have also had some of his memories eaten as part of this, but I prefer to think he lost them due to insanity. Although I don't actually think he really "lost" his memories in this hypothetical situation. I think it would make more sense that they were just...jumbled up in a way. He may remember things like his relationships with the people he cared about, what these people were like, certain aspects of how the world works, some things about his hometown, and the sorts, but none of it really makes sense anymore. He knows he cared about Emilia, but he can't remember her name. He knows he was her knight, but he's not quite sure what a knight actually is anymore. Or how one is supposed to act. Written words don't make any sense. Details about his homeland that may have seemed a bit strange or unique to the average person get twisted and blown out of proportion to become fantastical.
So basically, I think it would make sense if he was from some village that got destroyed by the witch cult (like what happened with Rem and Rams village). This village may have been pretty isolated, with very little or almost no contact with the rest of the world. This might explain why no one has ever heard about anything he mentions as being "from his hometown."
I do also think some characters probably think they knew Subaru before, but then his name got eaten. So It could be that he fled when his village was destroyed, somehow got involved in the royal selection (probably by becoming Emilia's knight), and then got kidnapped by the witch cult as he was hunting them down for revenge. Or, he may have left his hometown for any other reason, became Emilia's knight, and then went back to visit his village and was there when it got attacked. Either way, he ends up being kidnapped by the cult.
Anyways, like I've said, I don't think anyone in Re: Zero would have it that thought out, to the point where they've basically just written an angsty fan fiction in their head about Subaru’s hypothetical Tragic Past. This is just what I think would make the most sense considering what they know about him.
I also like the idea that the witch cult probably put him under some sort of taboo so he's not able to tell anyone about any of this.
What are your favorite plausible in-universe theories that the characters have to explain Subaru’s many eccentricities? I’ll go first:
Subaru was a soldier of some sort who served Lady Emilia as one of her only subjects, but after an encounter with the White Whale he lost his Name and thus nobody remembers anything about him beyond the day he saved Emilia from an assassin. The Whale also stole almost all of his memories, which is why he’s illiterate and also lacks common sense most of the time.
So I’ve been working here and there on bits and pieces of a reaction fic of my own, and here’s a bit of a ficlet that kinda shows what I’m going for lol.
Reaction Fic Excerpt: A Stroll Through The Capital
____
“This is it! This is my chance!“
In the present moment, Subaru’s face turned scarlet.
Julius snorted loudly, quickly moving to cover his mouth with his hand as Subaru’s antics quickly escalated onscreen. “Sorry,” he apologized. “I just— forgot about that part of what you are like.”
“Shut up,” Subaru muttered.
Ferris was making no such effort to hide his mad cackling. “I didn’t forget!” he crowed. “Aw, this is gonnya be so much fun. I’m nyever letting nya live ANY of this down—“
“Shut uuup—“
Ferris was having fun teasing him. Many of the more naïve members of the audience were giggling right alongside him — but on the other side of the theater, Wilhelm had a darker look on his face.
Beside him, Rem was sporting a similar expression. “Wilhelm-san, is it?” she said quietly.
“That is correct,” Wilhelm said, not unkindly. “How may this old man be of service?”
“That boy…” she chewed her lip. “He got dragged into an entirely different world,” she clarified. “Without his knowledge and against his will. He was left entirely alone on the streets of a strange city where he did not know the language, with no understanding of the world around him, no means by which to defend or provide for himself, and with nobody willing to help a stranger like him out of the goodness of their hearts.”
“That…is correct.”
Rem didn’t say anything more. She didn’t need to: Wilhelm had already come to the same conclusion as her — as had most other individuals throughout the theater, if the looks on all of their faces was any indication. Even Ferris had a subtle air to his movements that hinted at his teasing being more of an attempt at a distraction from that horrifying revelation than a genuine source of amusement — though perhaps it was both.
Emilia was not one of those individuals. Neither were Beatrice or Garfiel, both of whom she was attempting to shush. “It’s reeally not nice to laugh,” she scolded. “Subaru didn’t even want us watching any of this, so be nice. And we promised not to make fun of him for anything embarrassing we see here, remember?”
“Subaru makes it difficult not to laugh, I suppose,” Betty giggled.
“N-Nah,” Garfiel sucked in a breath, his mouth twitching. “Princess’ got a point,” he agreed. “This is already — kinda private. My amazing self wouldn’t want anyone laughing at my memories either, no matter how embarrassing. Captain deserves — at least a little grace —“
Everyone watched as onscreen Subaru was gently shoved away from a demihuman-only bar, somehow tripping over his own two feet and falling over the railing and into the river of the Capital.
Garfiel burst out laughing all over again. This time Emilia gave up on trying to make him stop.
“Is this really how it was supposed to be?” The Subaru onscreen muttered to himself, sitting in an alley, absolutely drenched. “Wasn’t I summoned into a parallel world?!”
Anastasia watched with interest as Subaru rifled through his things, grumbling. “That’s the metia you used to find the White Whale, ain’t it?” she pointed out, eyes flashing greedily. “How did that work if it was from another world? Did ya have a bunch of mabeasts there, too?”
Subaru shifted nervously, embarrassment being taken over by something resembling unease. “N-Not exactly,” he admitted.
“Hmm…” Anastasia watched the caged Subaru for a moment longer before turning back to the screen.
“The truth is,” onscreen Subaru was saying, “I have no idea what to do next, and I still have no idea how or why I was summoned. I don’t remember stepping into a mirror or falling in a pond —“
“Wait, so.” Julius frowned. Oddly enough, he seemed to be relaxing at the sound of this statement. “Is this sort of occurrence normal, then? For castaways from beyond the Great Waterfall.”
“…N-No,” Subaru admitted, his face burning. “I kinda just — i-it was a popular book trope back home, so…” He hunched in further on himself. “I just assumed things were like that?”
“Oh.” Julius looked uncomfortable all over again, perhaps even moreso now than before. “I see.”
“— and if I’m to believe this is the otherworldly summoning format I’m used to, where is the beautiful girl who summoned me?”
Julius choked, hastily coughing into his fist. Everyone else had no such restraint. The room burst into laughter once again.
“I think I knyow what kinds of stories Subaru-kyun likes to read!” Ferris teased.
“Can it!” Subaru retorted, face almost as red as Reinhard’s hair.
“You know,” Julius attempted to soothe, the corners of his mouth twitching. “I do have a number of romance novels in my collection. If you would like to borrow—“
Subaru buried his face in his knees and screamed, the sound muffled.
Been working on this one for a while! :D
Reaction Ficlet: The Cave
____
“Why are you pretending to be a madman?”
Ferris snorted.
Everyone abruptly turned to look at him.
“That’s such bullshit,” he muttered, in answer to their unspoken question. “He’s nyot faking this. Petelgeuse is full of shit.”
“…How can you be so certain?” Julius asked tentatively. In the corner of the room, Subaru flinched. Julius hastily moved to clarify: “I’m not taking the word of a Sin Archbishop over yours, Ferris,” he said. “And even if it had been the case that he was correct—“ His eyes flickered to Subaru, trying desperately to convey his intentions through his hunched back. “— I wouldn’t be able to fault Subaru for trying everything he could to get back to his loved ones after — that — even if the method DID end up being somewhat cowardly. …But what made you come to that conclusion?”
“Because,” Ferris said stonily. “If Subaru-kyun had wanted to fake something like this, he would have had to fool a woman with the ability to read people’s intentions —“ Crusch blinked. “— the psychopathic stalker who had been making careful nyote of his every movement for the past month —“ Rem flinched. “— and also me, the greatest healer in Lugunyica. Even one of those things would have been difficult, but all of them at once? Far better liars than Subaru wouldn’t have been capable of it.”
“Your madness is too lucid,” Petelgeuse was saying. “The crafty, deliberate way you seek sympathy and beg for love, it is quite rude to those who are actually insane.”
Wilhelm growled, looking very much as though he would like to leap through the screen and tear the Archbishop’s head clean off his shoulders for that comment.
Ram stared at the screen, a look of silent agony on her face as the horrifically tragic implications of those words sunk in to her being. Was he really that desperate for uncomplicated affection, that he might go this far to get it?
“He would’ve been desperate enough to try it,” Tivey said quietly. Nothing about his tone was accusatory: his eyes were full of sympathy. “I wouldn’t put it past anyone to give it a shot in a situation that dire, and sometimes people can surprise you.”
“Nya think I’ve nyever had to deal with a patient lying about being sicker than they were?” Ferris shot back, keeping his voice quiet even despite his clear agitation. “It is nyot difficult to tell true from false — and it DEFINYITLY would nyot be hard to do so if I were examinying him so closely, or if he had been attempting to falsely mimic something that complicated, OR if it were immediately following such an emotionyally traumatizing experience on his end, let alone all three at once.” Ferris leered at the screen, his tail lashing. “That Sin Archbishop is projecting. Subaru wasn’t faking anything.”
Tivey didn’t look convinced. “But—”
“Subaru,” Ferris interrupted, letting his tone rise to a normal level of loudness as he called out to the boy in the cage. Subaru flinched. “Were nyew faking it?”
Everyone in the room erupted into yells as his question met their ears.
“Oi!” Garfiel shouted, eyes widening. “What’re you asking here??”
“Indeed, I suppose!” Beatrice agreed, visibly enraged by the accusation.
“Over the line!” Ricardo roared, eyes widening.
“Why would you ask him that?!” Tivey cried, having kept even his own assertions at Subaru’s likely guilt quiet enough for the boy not to hear any of it.
“Ferris!” Wilhelm snapped.
“I…” Subaru stared back at him, eyes wide and guilty.
“Subaru, you don’t have to answer that,” Crusch said quickly. “I’m sorry my knight asked you something so insensitive. I’ll reprimand him for it later, please just — try to relax.”
If anything, this only made him look even guiltier, prompting him to break eye contact and stare at the bottom of his cage, hugging his knees. “I might’ve been,” he admitted. “I don’t remember much about— about that loop.”
Anastasia — one of the only ones to not have reacted to the healer’s outrageous proposal — hissed softly.
“And there nya have it!” Ferris said, voice dripping with false cheer. “Nya can’t fake something that elaborate on accident. This was all real.”
“It seems she has arrived,” Petelgeuse said, in his sing-song voice.
As if to answer him, another called out from the shadows:
“—I’ve found you.”
Rem leapt forward, morning star in hand, and the fight began.
“So she did find him, then,” Julius said softly.
“Maybe he’ll escape…?” Mimi asked hopefully.
“It won’t make a difference,” Ferris said dully. “He’s dead either way. We all knyow that much.”
“You are a band of fools to enter the domain of Master Roswaal, Lord of the Mathers Territory and commit illegal acts,” Rem was saying. “With my master absent, I, Rem, sentence you to death in his place.”
“As tattered as you appear? You should not make promises you cannot keep. To begin with…” Petelgeuse grabbed Subaru by the hair, mocking her with his manhandling of his limp body. “You have come only to take this young man away from here, so enough with your convenient excuses.”
“…ch him.”
“Eh? What was that?”
“I said, DON’T TOUCH HIM!” Rem roared, launching herself forward in earnest.
“Awfully bold of him to mock an oni with the object of her affection,” Ricardo muttered darkly.
“Please get him out of there,” Otto whimpered, staring at the oh-so-familiar cave in which his friend was trapped. “Please don’t — I know he’s going to die, but please don’t let him die THERE.”
“It is deeply regrettable,” Petelgeuse lamented. “A devotee of love to an extend such as thee… Why are your eyes firmly locked on one such as this? An effete, ignorant, disgraceful, shameless sight such as this… Truly the product of sloth!”
“What do you know about Subaru?!”
“Disgusting,” Ram growled. There was only one word for this display, after all. Take your eyes off my precious sister! she wanted to shout. But it would be useless and pathetic to shout at a memory, so she bit it back.
“Please tell me Natsuki-san didn’t internalize an insult from an Archbishop of Sin,” Otto muttered, already dreading the answer.
— Knowing what he did about the man’s self-esteem, the answer was undoubtedly “Yes.”
“He isn’t finished!” Rem shouted. “I am here. I have not forgotten Subaru’s words. I will take him by the hand and lead him away. So long as I am here, he is not finished!”
“I…” Wilhelm pressed his lips together. “…am not sure how to feel about this situation.”
“Don’t get between Subaru and me!”
“Neither am I,” Crusch muttered.
“I think it would be sweet,” Ferris said casually. “If she wasn’t also his murderer.”
Julius looked at him, concerned.
“Do not speak such words so cheaply!” Rem spat. “I already have my salvation! After that night when I should have lost it all, there is no greater than what I had that morning! That is why!”
“Ah,” Rem whispered in the present moment, having realized something important. Her eyes flitted towards Subaru, curled tightly into a ball as he sat in his cage. “So that’s how it is…”
Petelgeuse lavishes rambling praises over the oni girl as she fought. He cawed, and cried, and celebrated as she rushed forward desperately to save the boy chained to the wall—
For just one moment, she caught his eye. Time slowed down. Love filled her gaze, and she opened her mouth to call out.
—and then, all at once, her body collapsed in on itself.
Everyone in the audience fell dead silent, struck dumb with shock and horror at the image in front of them.
Rem’s eyes widened, a horrified choking noise escaping her throat.
“The Authority of Sloth,” Petelgeuse whispered dramatically. “Unseen Hands.”
Julius covered his mouth with his hand, pupils having shrunk to pinpoint dots.
“You are not permitted to run from this,” the Archbishop whispered. He extended his hand forward, guiding Subaru’s eyes. “Look. Go ahead, look. Look, please. This girl is dead. She died for love. She fought while injured, struggled against her fears as she stepped forward, and died with her desires unfulfilled. Look, please. Look at her burns. This is the result of your actions.”
Wilhelm roared, breaking the silence that had just a moment before taken over the room so thoroughly. “Don’t even suggest such a thing!” he howled, momentarily forgetting that he was watching a memory. “What a vile thing to say to a victim of your own sin!”
“It was by my hand!” Petelgeuse crowed. “It was by my fingers! It was by my flesh! But it was you, you, you, you, you, you who, who, who…killed her, yes!”
“Subaru,” Otto said desperately, turning around to face the recipient of those horrible words. “Subaru, please tell me you didn’t listen to that!”
The present Subaru was shaking, having tucked himself away so thoroughly that even his ears were no longer visible.
High above them, Rem’s body danced like a puppet on strings. There was a horrible tearing sound as her muscles ripped. “Owww,” Petelgeuse mocked in a high-pitched voice. “Ow it hurts, it huurts, the pain, the paain, save me, saave me…ah, Subaru?”
“He’s dead now!” Julius suddenly shouted, eyes fixed desperately on Subaru’s shaking body. “Subaru, he’s dead! You killed him! You took care of it, he’s gone!”
“That’s enough!” Anastasia’s yell wasn’t aimed at Petelgeuse, or the other audience members, or Subaru in his cage. “That’s enough! We get it, we understand! Now stop it, let him go — you’re hurting him!”
“Subaru!” Beatrice cried, banging her fists against the glass. “Subaru!”
Inside the cage, Subaru was having what looked like a seizure. He was shaking violently all over, his mouth was starting to foam slightly, his fingernails were digging long, bloody trenches in his arms — and he wasn’t responding to anyone’s screams as they desperately attempted to snap him out of it, his eyes glazed and his mind trapped somewhere dark and cold and full of the cruel laughter of a violent madman.
Ram felt as though she was ready to pass out. Her little sister’s mutilation and desecration, her little brother’s cruel memories, the fact that she had been nowhere near EITHER OF THEM—
“N-Nee-sama?”
Ram jerked.
Her dear little sister was staring at her, alive and well, eyes full of worry. Ram croaked something intelligible, and then jumped forward to hug her tight and bury her face in her shoulder.
The Subaru onscreen had no such luxury.
“PEETEELGEEEUUUSE!” he screamed, lunging forward to bite the Archbishop’s throat. The madman jumped back, evading his attack and letting him smash his head into the rock floor — laughing at the sight. “I’ll kill you, I’LL KILL YOU! I’LL KILL YOU! DIE! DIE! DIE, DAMN IT—”
Even knowing good and well that such a promise had long since come to fruition, Wilhelm roared in agreement. That show of pure, unbridled rage was at once comforting and agonizing in its familiarity: comforting in that it was something the old man could understand, and agonizing in that he understood too well just how much it hurt.
—Maybe if Subaru heard his show of support, it would soothe him out of that frightened, miserable state, seizing and whimpering on the floor of his cage.
The Subaru onscreen raged and screamed and cried, but Petelgeuse merely turned away from him, as though he was hardly there at all. They would continue with the plan, he announced. Regardless of this setback, they would go forth.
He turned to the wailing, enraged, frenzied boy only at the end of his little ceremony, nothing but mild interest in his eyes for the victim of his awful crime. “If you accept the Gospel into your heart,” the Archbishop declared as he left. “Then I know you shall be saved.”
Wilhelm slammed his fist into the armrest of his seat. It splintered under the force of the blow.
—Or he would have left, except that he stopped to admire his second victim before he was gone.
“You, too, are a devotee of love,” he praised. Her lifeless body dropped to the ground with a clattering sound. “You died for love, defying your destiny with all your might. However, you lie ruined and unfulfilled, having lost the object of your love, unable to fulfill your desire with emptiness hovering all around you…because you were slothful!”
And then Subaru was alone, with nothing but the dead body of a dear friend to keep him company in the dark.
“What an awful way to treat the dead,” Crusch muttered, disgust in her eyes. Disgust for this barbarity, for this senseless violence, for this injustice disguised shoddily as the hand of fate — the Soldier King Candidate condemned it all from the bottom of her heart.
The sight of Subaru being chained and left to die in that cave made Otto want to be sick. In another life, that…
That…
“So he starves this time, then?” Ferris asked tonelessly.
Otto didn’t know how to answer that. Everyone knew what was going to answer next, after all. There was only one way this could end.
“Kill you…kill you…kill you…”
He was going to be sick.
Subaru was thumping his head into the rock, exhausted and bloodied and bruises from his efforts, and all for naught: he was still trapped and sealed in his fate. And the worst part was that he didn’t even care. “Kill you…” he whispered, eyes unfocused and blurred with rage. “Kill you…I’ll kill you…”
Wilhelm stared, a very uncomfortable feeling settling in his gut.
…Perhaps he would have felt less uncomfortable, if the present Subaru was not shivering and softly crying out in his cage. If he had been able to look upon this moment with righteous vindication. If, today, he had been fully satiated with how things turned out.
But there was something that had been lost forever in that dark place, wasn’t there?
— Had Wilhelm, too, lost something of himself that was truly irreplaceable, in that dark moment when news of his wife first reached his ears?
Julius stared at this horrible scene and thought back to the moment where Subaru had entrusted him with the death of what had been his greatest enemy. A sense of guilt settled strangely in his stomach. Had he stolen Subaru’s chance at closure, back then? What right had he to steal a moment so important?
It was your rightful duty, his mind whispered. Subaru asked you to save him and his loved ones, and that is what you did.
— The vain hope slipped through Julius’ mind, then, that the boy’s nightmares of today ended with him stepping in to whisk him to safety, once and for all.
“…Why wasn’t I there…?” Reinhard whispered.
“Petelgeuse!” Subaru cried, overwhelmed with hate and rage and grief, in a cave where nobody could hear him scream. “Petelgeuse! Petelgeuse! Petelgeuse!”
Otto would have died in that cave, once upon a time. Perhaps he had, even. Had this Subaru just taken his place?
Ram gripped her sister tight.
Garfiel gripped his own knees, wanting nothing more than to launch himself forward and free his friend from that disgusting place. But this was a memory, and he could do nothing but watch.
Beatrice wasn’t even watching anymore, too busy calling out to the seizing boy who couldn’t give her a response.
And Emilia—
There was a noise. A subtle movement. Subaru raised his head to look, his eyes fixing on a truly gruesome, miraculous, horrific sight.
“No fucking way,” Garfiel gasped.
“Rem,” Subaru whimpered. Then, louder. “Rem, REM—”
He broke off, using his teeth to grab the collar of her shirt and drag her the rest of the way forward. For somehow, Rem had survived her brutal treatment at the hands of the Sin Archbishop — and even with all her limbs mangled and broken like those of a doll, had managed to crawl towards him in the dark of the cave.
“Oni strength is nothing to sneeze at,” Wilhelm muttered to himself.
Julius could only stare in awestruck, speechless horror.
Rem coughed out blood, spilling all over the manacles.
“Rem—!” Subaru whimpered, but Rem was too focused.
Too focused on — something — to respond.
“Hu…” she whispered. “…ma…”
At once, the blood that Rem had coughed up froze within the manacles. At once, the manacles broke apart, bursting from the inside.
Ricardo whistled lowly. “Smart,” he commented.
“Rem…wait,” Subaru begged. “Rem, wait, do…”
“Live…” Rem whispered. “I…lo…”
And then she was dead in his arms.
Ferris exhaled slowly through his teeth.
The wails of grief echoed from the metia and throughout the theater: long, high-pitched, punctuated by heaving gulps for air, and utterly heartbreaking.
Slowly, as she listened to someone mourn this loss so completely in her stead, Ram began to loosen her hold over her beloved sister. Slowly, she sat up again.
Rem squeezed her hands comfortingly. Ram took a deep breath, and then let go.
The sun was bright as the pair exited the cave. One of them was walking. The other rested limp in her arms, never to wake up again — not in this life.
Subaru smiled, eyes dull and faded. “Let’s go, Rem.”
Ram swallowed.
Eventually, somehow, the boy arrived back at the Mathers Estate. He was too late. The village had already burned to a crisp.
Snow had started to fall.
“Petelgeuse…” Subaru hissed.
“The snow…” Otto faltered.
Subaru had frozen to death in that last loop, they all remembered that. But Roswaal had been gone, so he couldn’t have caused it — and none of the Witch Cult had any sort of fire magic that could do the same.
So who — or what — had been responsible for it?
There were bodies. Old man, young woman, the man who gave him a sword, the lady who had flirted with him that first day — none had been spared. Each body found was more gruesome than the last.
“Petelgeuse…” Subaru snarled.
If Subaru were to lose sight of his rage, he would lose his mind. This was a situation that Wilhelm knew intimately — but he had never seen it from quite this angle before, and he was slowly realizing just how badly it unsettled him.
That rage, that anguish, that loss… Far from being embridled with righteous fury on the boy’s behalf, Wilhelm found himself wishing more than anything for Subaru to never have experienced any of it.
This was nothing but pain. There was no honor here.
Ram was dead, in front of the shed that everyone knew held the corpses of the village children. The bodies of no less than five Witch Cultists surrounded her. She hadn’t gone down without a fight.
Subaru fell to his knees in front of the manner proper, the snow picking up in a proper storm. His voice rose above it in a wail. “PETELGEUSE!”
The roof of the manor cracked, and broke, and the large head of a monster burst out of it all at once.
Julius’ eyes widened. “That—”
“But we all knyew that was coming,” Ferris muttered.
“SLEEP.”
—said the Beast of the End.
“ALONG WITH MY DAUGHTER.”
Subaru’s body had frozen solid. A gust of wind blew his head off his shoulders, and — finally — this loop of nightmares came to a close.
Emilia stared at the screen, uncomprehending. She had not said a single word since Petelgeuse had first shown himself in the cave. Her face was blank, her eyes glazed and dull.
Ram sat next to her, wordlessly placing her hand over that of her dear friend. Emilia twitched slightly, and then — gingerly — took her up on the offer, squeezing once. Neither woman said a word, wrapped in their own little bubble of silence.
On the other side of the room, Beatrice was sobbing, desperately trying to call out to her contractor curled up tight in his cage. More people were joining her, unable to bear the sight of Subaru melting down for even a moment longer. Ricardo was trying to tease him (“Kinda embarrasin’ ta see yerself cryin’ like a baby, right? Don’t worry, we won’t tell Emilia—”). Julius was trying to talk him up (“Subaru, it’s over, remember? He’s gone. He’s dead. You won, and everyone got out safe!”). Garfiel was trying to break the glass (“WHY. WON’T. THIS. BREAK—”)
But then, in the midst of everything—
“Subaru-kun.”
Everyone’s heads whipped around at the sound of a name being called.
Rem was smiling gently, standing by the far side of the glass cage. How had none of them noticed her getting close. “Subaru-kun,” she called out, with the exact same inflection she had watched the version of herself on the screen voice time and again. “Subaru-kun.”
“What do you think you’re doing?!” Garfiel growled. “What are you doing?! Get away from him, you psychopath!”
“Leave him be, I suppose!” Beatrice snapped, still pressed against the glass herself. “You are the last person who should ever be allowed near him again, in fact!”
“Using a nickname like that — after everything you’ve done?” Wilhelm stood up, ready to pull her away by force. “Will you never be satisfied?” he hissed. “What more will you do to that boy?”
“That’s not fair!” It was Otto who objected, leaping forward to shield the woman from the other audience members. “Rem saved his life,” he snapped, still shaking from head to toe. “She did the best she could. If you want to blame anyone for that cruelty, then blame the Archbishop that — that forced the two of them into such a horrible situation!”
“She may have helped him once, but that doesn’t matter right now!” Julius said, striding forward with the intent to remove her by any means necessary. “Subaru shouldn’t be anywhere near her and all of you know that. Rem, I must insist that you back away!”
More voices joined the fray, each louder than the last as each one — in their confusion and terror and anguish — tried to do what they thought was right. But before a fight could well and truly break out—
“Rem…?”
Everyone froze.
Subaru was uncurling slightly. His gaze was shaky, unfocused, as if nothing else in the world existed, but then it darted over to the source of that nickname that had called out to him again and again and seemed to bring exactly one thing into focus.
Just this once, Rem told herself.
The Oni girl pulled away from the others easily, slowly kneeling on the other side of the glass. “Subaru-kun,” she called out again, in that same light, warm, cheerful voice she had not invoked even once since she had awoken in that horrible theater. “Everything’s alright now, Subaru-kun. I’m right here.”
“Rem,” he said hoarsely, as if nothing else in the world made a lick of sense, crawling forward on his hands and knees like a dog. “Rem.”
Rem didn’t move. “Yes.”
Two hands, and then a forehead pressing against the glass. Subaru’s eyes widened again in distress, a keening noise escaping him as he realized once again that he could not get out — not even to reach his — his —
“R-Rem!” he cried.
“I’m here,” Rem murmured, resting her hands against the clear surface, palm-to-palm, as if she were reaching out to hold his hands. Her forehead followed, bumping gently against the spot where Subaru’s was pressing hard enough to bruise. Soft blue eyes met a set of brown on the verge of madness, and crinkled gently at the sight. “Your Rem is right here, alright?”
Subaru couldn’t reach her. Rem couldn’t hug him. But she was there, and she was smiling gently at him from the other side of the glass, and that was enough. Tears welled up in his eyes and he finally started to cry.
“…I can’t even make fun of him for this,” Ferris said quietly, watching the exchange. “This is just—” He cut himself off.
Rem, his murderer. Rem, his torturer. Rem, his savior. Rem, the girl who loves him more than anything in the world. Rem, who died in his arms with a smile on her face. Rem, the one he cries out for in his darkest moments. Rem, his very best friend.
“…Disgusting,” Wilhelm muttered.
THIRD AND FINAL ILLUSTRATION FOR THE @tpfbotd ZINE!! he ate.
Me and the guy I pulled by being quirky (mimagau if)
completely lost motivation to post and be online, but have some outdated stuff. I'll try to post more painted sketches 🙏😔
Maybe I'll do requests.
By doing this challenge I’ve discovered that I’m kinda-sorta ambidextrous! XD Compared to other people’s “left hand drawings”, honestly, I don’t think mine’s half bad! At least I know that if my right arm gets chopped off, if I’m persistent, I can still draw. Lol
