Drabble: 200 words if you count the title. One take on Subaru's reaction after Rainbow Bridge.
Warning: Spoilers for volume 16 of the manga.
Existence
By chibiryu
No one says anything to him the week the Sakurazukamori died. Kaumi tried, but Subaru brushed him off with dead eyes and haunting silence. He sits in his room, tasting sorrow on chapped lips, hearing anguished spirits within his heart, watching broken memories play over and over again in the dark.
He eventually gives up his title as the Sumeragi head. No one says anything to him after that – not the other Seals, not his grandmother, certainly not Hokuto's ghost. Kamui occasionally sneaks anxious glances at him when he thinks Subaru isn't looking, violet eyes shadowed with a strange mix of pity and hope and something Subaru no longer understands, perhaps never did understand.
Subaru has long since passed the point of caring. He will live for Seishirou-san as the new Sakurazukamori. That's what Seishirou-san wanted, and Subaru, whose mind, body and soul belonged to him, will fulfill his last wish.
"But Subaru," Kamui says one day, his expression that of one who knows a different kind of pain, and not nine years of raw longing and a future trapped in the past. "Are you happy?"
Subaru isn't happy. But he isn't sad either. He simply exists for Seishirou-san.
End notes: Wow, it's been so long since I've written a fanfic...I'm getting rusty (not that I was ever good to begin with, but it's the state of going from bad to worse).