Satella had only been in a contract for a minute or so, but she couldn't shake the feeling that something was missing. That something was wrong. A horrible sense of dread began to crept up on her as she surveyed her surroundings, with no clear reason as to why. The capital remained as alive and bustling as ever, down to the throng of demi-humans bustling around the crowded marketplace coupled with the tolling of a distant bell tower. But as lucidity returned to her, the reason for her unease became disturbingly apparent.

She couldn't see Subaru.

Throughout her life, he was a constant. A fact. In her mind, her reason for being started and ended with him. There was nothing before Subaru, and thanks to her intervention, there wouldn't be anything after. She could always take solace in the fact that even though she was imprisoned within an impenetrable crypt at the end of the world, she could reliably see every step of his journey. His journey to meeting the Witches of Sin. His journey to meet her. Yet, he had disappeared. She was falling into darkness again and unlike her breakdown in the meadows of Echidna's dreamscape, he wasn't there to comfort her with warm words and softly spoken promises. Her support system had seemingly vanished into thin air, and her world was crumbling around her as a result. Her prince had abandoned her, leaving her in the tower that was complete with its own dragon, Envy.

He wouldn't leave her alone so easily, right? Not after all she had done to earn his trust. But what if it wasn't his fault? Had something taken him away from her? What could she do? She had never been away from her Subaru. She couldn't see him, so she had to find him quickly, or! -

She gasped as the horrible reality began to dawn on her, the crimson sun filtering through her mind illuminating the broken corpse of her hopes and dreams. Had he truly...gone?

"Subaru, where are you?" she screamed, beginning to hyperventilate as visions of an endless void returned to haunt her every waking moment. "Please don't leave me alone again!"

She desperately pushed against the walls of the space surrounding her, unknowing or perhaps uncaring of the fact that escape was virtually impossible, for she was trapped inside a Pyroxene crystal - one of the few things capable of sealing her.

"I don't know what I did wrong, but please come back! Subaru!"

She needn't have worried. In answer to her prayers, her body jolted in a display of barely concealed shock, granting her a momentary glimpse of the orange and black shoes skittering across the ground and kicking up dust in their wake.

"Don't frighten me like that!" Subaru hissed. "What's wrong? Are you hurt?"

"What does that matter?!" she snapped, retaining her fiery attitude despite her evident distress. "I can't see you! Where did you go?"

"I'm right here," he winced, covering his ears to shield himself from her harrowing cries. "Why can I hear you in my head?"

She let out a long, shaky breath.

"You're really there, right?"

Her voice was hard and brittle like glass, and a single rejection from Subaru would shatter her. Permanently.

"Naturally," he replied quizzically, setting his question to one side. "Why wouldn't I be?"

"No reason!" she laughed, attempting to infuse her voice with her typical boundless enthusiasm. She couldn't let her mask drop now. She had only just reached the starting line of her new relationship with him! If he saw past her joyful personality, he would see her for who she truly was. Broken, just like everyone else.

"Are you sure?" he asked. He understood what a fake laugh sounded like. Hers sounded hollow and desperate, a sharp contrast from the deep and throaty laugh he had heard from her just hours prior. Something was wrong.

"Positive!" she cheered, but her mind was racing. She hated lying to him, but she needed more time. Time heals all wounds, and the best remedy for her fragile heart was his company, nothing more, and nothing less. All she wanted to do was spend enough time with him for the nightmares to go away because the faster they were alleviated, the less opportunities he would have to find out about them. Satella knew that if he asked her from a place of genuine concern she would tell him, even though it would most likely devolve into a shouting match due to their headstrong personalities. Part of her even wanted to. And from these fears she repeated her innermost mantra: Don't stop smiling, even if it kills you.

Subaru knew that she was lying; that much was painfully apparent from the way her voice cracked during the affirmation of her well-being. He couldn't fault her for this, because he was also lying to himself. He hated this version of Satella, even more so than Envy. She sounded so...empty. So he pushed his worries to the back of his mind and decided to focus on helping her regain her lively self.

"Anyway, shouldn't I be asking you the same question?" he said. "I can't see you either, but I can hear you well enough."

She breathed a deep sigh of relief.

"What did you expect?" she said curiously, her worry steadily fading due to Subaru returning to her, safe and sound. "We're contracted together, it's only common sense that you can hear me."

Subaru frowned, raising the amethyst crystal secured to a silver curb chain secured around his neck and rolling it in the palm of his hand. "Is it to do with this?"

"Anything to do with what?" she queried. "You look like you're jumping."

Seriously, he said the weirdest things sometimes! But that didn't matter to her. One of the reasons she fell in love with him was because he wasn't perfect. He was loud, brash, and tended to grow excited over the smallest things, almost frighteningly so.

But he was also caring, considerate, brave, and had a smile that sent her heart into overdrive, like pistons firing beyond their capacity. She remembered the first time he had smiled at her, uncaring of her situation and focusing solely on his own selfish desire; making her happy.

She knew that was the moment she fell hopelessly, head over heels, in love with him. She was a woman with an oftentimes undesirable personality, fuelled by her emotions to the point where it was almost primal in nature, but he had chosen to smile at her. Like so many others, the decisions that he viewed as selfish and incorrigible were also his most selfless.

That memory alone was nearly enough for her anxiety to fade into non-existence.

Granted, his attitude may have changed if he knew that she would one day commit mass genocide, but she chose to ignore that for now. What they both needed was for her attention to be entirely focused on him, something she was more than happy to give. Coincidentally, he also seemed to be doing the same.

"Oi, Earth to Satella" he said loudly, rapping his knuckles against the hard surface of the crystal. "You went all quiet. Are you alright?"

"Are you alright…" she repeated, unintentionally ignoring Subaru for the second time as she fell deep into thought. Even a day ago, that simple question would have been unthinkable. It was like drawing blood from a stone, but she could feel the concern underpinning his voice. In his own way, he cared for her wellbeing.

In her eyes, that alone was a miracle of astronomical proportions.

That would normally be enough but for once, she needed to hear it from him. Despite the unbridled joy of contracting with him strengthening her resolve to an absurd level, she couldn't stop a small tremor from entering her voice as she timidly voiced her thoughts through their mental link, the emotions filling her heart threatening to overflow and cloud her judgement like a steam kettle left on for too long spewing steam into the air. She forced her feelings down into the pit of her ethereal stomach, ignoring how they fought and screamed for release, electing to use tact rather than the standard declarations of love. This time, she would let her brain do the talking.

"Hey, Subaru…" she said slowly, clearly struggling to form a cohesive sentence.

"What's up?"

"Do you…do you care about me?"

His reaction was immediate, and entirely predictable. "What do you mean, do I care about you?" he spluttered, his face igniting into a raging wall of flame. "Of course I, I mean…"

To Satella's mild annoyance, he quickly gave up on expressing himself through the medium of language and quickly resorted to gibberish. A violent torrent of Subaru-isms tore from his mouth as he desperately attempted to justify himself using words only known to himself, and of course, Satella.

"We only properly met yesterday! I can't enter your route so quickly; you know I'm simply infatuated with Emila-tan! Wait, if I say no, will you put up a death flag?" he gasped, pointing at what was undeniably thin air. "Are you actually a game master in disguise, and this whole adventure was just another way for you to level up? Don't turn to the dark side Ella, come back to us! Come back!"

"Please stop speaking in pop culture references and give me an answer," she said severely, cutting through his hastily constructed mask with ease. She had poured every ounce of her resolve into asking him her question, leaving her emotionally drained. She didn't have time to deal with his nonsense right now. She needed a straight answer from him now more than ever, and it seemed one he was unlikely to give.

Satella resigned herself to the inevitable as Subaru's chest rose, signalling another massive intake of air, and another outburst to accompany it.

It never came. Subaru visibly deflated like a lead balloon, nervously running his hand through his hair.

"I don't know," he conceded. "I'm so used to working hard for the people I care about so I can reach tomorrow without losing anyone, I was completely blindsided when somebody actually said they loved me. Rem gave me a reason to stand and helped me when I was at my lowest. But I always ignored you, the person who loved me before anyone else, because you were a monster. You were an irredeemable villain feared by everyone in Lugnica, and you made my life a living hell."

"What's worse, you wouldn't even let me tell anyone about the curse that you inflicted upon me! But now I find out that the person I was so afraid of wasn't you, but the Witch of Envy - which means I have to completely change my perception of you. It's now impossible for me to think of you as an enemy now, but rather my partner that I have to trust and work with. What's worse, you're essentially an extremely powerful high school girl with a crush."

"I just don't know how to act around you," he continued. "Saying that we're already best friends would be an overstatement, but you seem nice enough. I don't know if I care about you in the way I care for Emilia, Rem or Beatrice. Hell, Otto is probably higher up on the list than you, which is quite an achievement. You should be proud of yourself."

"Look, what I'm trying to say is...I would be sad if you died. Definitely."

Satella tried to keep that from going to her head, and failed miserably.

"But lay off the heavy questions for now, alright? We need more time to let our partnership develop."

"O-okay…" she mumbled. "I'll keep that in mind. Thank you for being honest with me."

Subaru was quick to express his disbelief at her lacklustre response. "That's it?!" he asked incredulously. "I expected you to completely tear apart my argument while simultaneously confessing your love."

"See, you do know I would normally act" she teased, an audible smile in her voice as her enthusiasm returned with the force of a typhoon, tearing up the resistance of the poor souls unlucky enough to wander into its path. Much to her glee, it appeared that Subaru himself would be on the receiving end of her well-intentioned abuse for the foreseeable future, much to his emotional chagrin. "I think our relationship is coming along quite nicely."

"You've already changed it from partnership to relationship…" he groaned. "Talk about closing the distance."

"Tee hee!"

"Don't 'tee hee' me. Aren't you supposed to be the mature one? You're four hundred years old!"

"Hey!" she complained. "Didn't Naoko teach you to not ask about a girl's age? It's really rude! Your precious Emilia-tan is over a hundred years old, and I don't see you complaining about her!"

Subaru's hands balled into fists as he hissed, "Why are you referring to my mother by her first name?"

Satella paused to think. "Because she's my future in-law?" she answered, like it was perfectly obvious.

"No, she most certainly is not! Besides, how would I even introduce you to her? 'Hey mum, this is Satella' - "

"Ella," she reminded him. "Keep up."

"Ella," he growled, "my friend -"

"Girlfriend."

"Friend who just happens to be several centuries older than me? How do I even begin to explain that?!" he snarled, although his voice was considerably more bark than bite.

"Just refer to me as being the same age as a high school student," she answered. "Isn't that what you said a moment ago?"

"Like a high school girl! Like!" he stressed. "How do you even arrive at these conclusions? Did you think I just ignored your age on purpose? There's a limit to the things I can overlook!"

"To be perfectly honest, I thought you were into age play," she said candidly, her tone turning accusatory as she challenged him. "Am I wrong?!"

"Obviously!" he screeched, earning him some wary glances from the surrounding demi-humans. Satella watched with a sense of morbid amusement as one mother physically shielded her child from the raving madman in the middle of the street, her tail lashing wildly. If he kept going, there was no doubt that he would be labelled a Witch cultist or mentally ill, earning him a visit to a prison cell completely free of charge.

She coughed pointedly in acknowledgement of his delusions, but when he continued to shout about how he 'wasn't a closet pervert,' a statement which Satella heavily disagreed with, she decided to take a more direct approach.

"Subaru, can you quieten down a little?"

No response.

"Honey, can you stop shouting at everyone?"

Still nothing. She had been certain the pet name would elicit a reaction but alas, it wasn't to be.

"Natsuki Subaru, I love you to pieces, but will you please shut up!" she screamed. Ah, there was the shouting match. It came a little later than she expected, but there it was regardless.

Despite the impressive nature of her yell, Subaru only faltered momentarily before continuing in his righteous crusade against being labelled as an age play enjoyer, not that there was anything wrong with that in her eyes. Even though it wasn't her preference, she did have her fair share of kinks that she hoped to one day try out with Subaru. It was something she had long dismissed as mere wishful thinking, but with this contract who knows? Maybe she would have her chance after all.

For her next attempt at quietening him, she chose Plan D: Cupid's Arrow.

"If you don't stop embarrassing me this instant, I'll confess to you on a loop all day while graphically describing how I want to kiss you," she uttered, her voice completely devoid of emotion.

That shut him up.

"Please don't do that" he begged, attempting to calm the waters. "Anything but that!"

"Now you listen to me," she huffed, still reluctant to countenance his weak apology.

"I'm being serious here!"

"So am I!" she argued passionately. "A key aspect of our contract is communication!"

"Yes, and so is decency and common sense, but you're incapable of displaying that!" he retorted.

"Jeez, I know you're stubborn, but give me a break here!"

"You've been on a break so long you may as well have taken a sabbatical! All you do is watch me day and night!"

"I prefer to call it spying on the man I love!" she shouted, shamelessly broadcasting her intentions.

One second passed. Silence. Three seconds, and Subaru averted his gaze, choosing to count the cobblestone bricks in his field of vision. Five seconds, and Satella began to wonder if she had gone too far. Seven seconds. Subaru's previously fierce expression softened, and he started to look up. Satella wondered if he would accept a bouquet of roses as an apology, not that she could buy one. She was a romantic, after all. Nine seconds. Satella started to seriously worry about whether she had hurt his feelings. Meanwhile, Subaru's lips curved into a small smile as laughter began to build up inside him, like a bubbling cauldron with the heat turned up to the maximum. Thirteen seconds, and he was grinning. Satella had entered the five stages of grief at the ten second mark and was well on her way to a full-blown existential crisis.

Finally, after fifteen seconds of awkward silence, Subaru's eyes lit up and joyous peals of laughter rang out across the streets of the capital, tearing Satella from her thoughts concerning the meaning of life, the universe and everything.

"You come out with the weirdest things sometimes, you know that? The way you just came out and said it so boldly, I mean, how do you even do that?"

Many people would quite rightly be embarrassed at the humiliation that Satella was enduring, but that's based on normal societal standards. Therein lies the error. First and foremost, Satella was not a normal person, far from it. More importantly, she neither viewed her current situation as either shameful or embarrassing. Most would attribute this strange mindset to her low shame threshold, largely due to her perverted nature, but the reality was far more profound. Subaru was laughing because of something she said! It was a glorious occasion for the love-struck woman. She focused intently on the tone and pitch of his laughter, taking great care to note down the precise date and time, accurate to the closest second. After four hundred years of being trapped with the Witch of Envy, Satella had developed an acute sense of timing, something she was secretly quite proud of, viewing it as one of the quintessential qualities of a potential wife. Whether it was chores or housekeeping, leave it to her!

"You know, I really appreciate that you can act so naturally around me," she said softly. "It makes me feel special."

Satella expected for Subaru to enter his famous tsundere mode and immediately refute her claim, but he didn't. Instead, he chose to subvert her expectations in the best possible way.

"Yeah, I guess you are," he giggled, and she couldn't take it anymore. How could he be this sweet without even trying? Did he want to give her a heart attack? She knew that she didn't have a heart that could fail while she was stuck in this damnable crystal, but that didn't matter! She would show him her physical body soon, and all her womanly charms that came with it!

"Oh Dragon, I really do love you more than anything…" she whispered to herself.

Subaru stiffened. "I think we got pretty side-tracked," he stuttered, pulling at his tracksuit sleeves. "What were we talking about again?"

"You're hopeless, you know that?" Satella sighed, completely unaware that Subaru had overheard her. "It's a good job that I love you."

"It appears that I'm in your semi-capable hands, Satella-sensei," he commented, fighting the rising urge to blush.

"Why don't you call me babe?" she asked eagerly, annihilating any chances of the fated blush appearing.

"No" he said curtly.

"Darling?"

"Definitely not."

"Princess?"

"I refuse."

"You're no fun, you know that? Not that I can complain much, this is the most fun I've had in years."

"I'm not surprised, half of the things you've said so far is a form of sexual harassment," he said. "Now please can we pick up where we left off, preferably before the sun sets? You said you remembered what we were talking about, didn't you?"

"I didn't say that."

"You certainly implied it."

Satella paused. "Ah."

"You forgot, didn't you?"

"...I love you?"

"Nope, that's not a valid excuse this time. I -"

"Iloveyou."

"I know, you just said that" he replied, a small smile working its way onto his fierce features.

"IloveyouIloveyou."

"Uh...Satella?" he said nervously.

"IloveyouIloveyouIloveyouIloveyouIloveyouIloveyouIloveyou."

Subaru's breath hitched as his mind was filled with her obsessive mantra. Only one person said those words in such an oppressive manner. The Witch of Envy. His blood turned cold as glacial sweat glided down his neck like clawed hands, preparing to grasp his heart. He opened his mouth to scream as he fell further into the horrible rhythm of her words, his nails biting deeply into the skin of his palm. His limbs shuddered uncontrollably, unconsciously seeking suicide to escape her presence. He didn't want to feel that pain, the agony of his arteries being crushed in its unrelenting grasp. His knuckles turned white in anticipation of the metallic taste of blood rushing into his mouth, and the pained expression of the one watching him fade from existence.

Perhaps he would have accepted his fate if he was alone, but in this second attempt, this new game plus, he had a partner. A woman with eyes cut from the finest amethyst, and flowing hair as bright as the moon illuminating a cloudless sky. Not Emilia, or the Witch of Envy. Satella. From that thought, the flickering flame deep within his heart once again began to smoulder. If the Jealous Witch was here, then where on Earth was Satella? She had explained in no uncertain terms that they were different people, so where did she go? Did the Witch...kill her? New as their partnership was, such a thought was unbearable to him.

"As if you could kill her…" he forced out through gritted teeth. "If you think you can extinguish that personality of hers with a few shadows, you're wrong. As insufferable as she is, she wouldn't leave me without a fight."

"IloveyouIloveyouIloveyouIloveyouIloveyou."

His eyes narrowed to slits, and his mouth twisted into an enraged snarl. "You...what did you do to Ella?"

Author's note: Yes, this is to arbitrarily boost the word count. Sorry I've been away for so long; some personal stuff came up. On the plus side, it's now summer and updates should now come more regularly, so look forward to that.

The reason this chapter is the shortest yet is because it's actually half of the chapter I had originally envisioned. Don't worry, the next chapter is nearly fully written, and it just needs a bit of polish before it's ready for release, I just felt the need to post because I had been away for a month or two.

Please leave a review if you can, I really appreciate all feedback given. See you in the next chapter! (hopefully sooner rather than later.)