Emilia was not one to feel JEALOUSY.
Why should she? She had been living a good life, even before she had been invited into Roswaal L Mathers' mansion by the clown man himself, having spent her days alongside her father, the spirit known as Puck, tending to the flowers and frozen Elves that populated the icy world that had become of Elior Forest and its people, and rarely going outside to assay to trade whatever she had for food from the people that passed by her wintery home.
They never liked her, of course, and some were even affright of her, for her resemblance to the Witch from years come to pass (Why did everyone think that she looked like the Witch, she had never even seen herself in the mirror. Puck would never allow it), And she personally never liked it when they called her the Witch of Frost, but she never really paid much mind to it. Not when she had a forest and frozen people to tend to.
But then, the incident with Melukuela came to pass, and her contract with Puck was formed (It got reeeeeeeeally hard to think and bethink herself of the things that came before when that happened), And years later, on a yonder beyond her frozen home, she came to meet the one known as Roswaal L Mathers, whom offered her a Dragon Jewel that glowed in her hand, and gave her the chance to free her people with the promise of the Dragon's blood.
As long as she became King of Lugunica.
And so, Puck and she accepted the clown man's offer, and made their residence within his home, where they lived for a years, pampered and catered to the staff of the manor, maids and all, as long as she studied and worked every single day for the next year in order to win the royal candidate selection, become king of Lugunica, and gain the Dragon's blood that she needed to free the Elves of Elior Forest.
(None of the maids ever got to know her, though, nor did the little spirit of the manor's library who seem to take to Puck so well, but that was fine... Really, it was. She had Puck, and surely that was all that she needed.)
And so, that was how it was for an entire year... Until she met him.
Her knight.
Subaru.
He wasn't her knight yet. That much was obvious. But he was definitely someone that she quickly attached herself to. After all, he was quite the silly one. Eccentric, even, judging from all of his silly words and movements and actions and desires to become a leman to her. He was someone who wanted to get to know her, even. Someone who wanted to be with her, even after she put him in so much danger with the Bowel Hunter and the Wolgarms, and even after he worked himself half to death just to prove that he belonged there with them- With her.
He was someone who wanted to know about Emilia, and not the Witch.
He was someone who saw Emilia, and not the Witch.
Or so she thought.
As it soon turned out, though he might not have thought her as the Witch, it was most certainly not Emilia either. She was an object to him- A thing that he was owed.
And she hated it. And she hated him for it.
But then he made up for it. He brought low both the White Whale and the Archbishop of Sloth to save so many people, and to- To what? Apologise to her after what happened in the Capital? Maybe it didn't even matter the reasons as to why, for when he did admit his flaws to her- His mistakes- And apologised for it, Emilia was more than ready to accept it.
Subaru wasn't perfect, but neither was Emilia, and the both of them could learn how to improve them from the other.
She learnt this best in the Sanctuary, where Subaru finally admitted how he truly felt about her (She still worried that there might be a baby growing in her belly after their kiss. Unprotected kisses lead to babies, mister! It was just common sense!), And together, they thwarted Roswaal's loathly games, brought low not just the Bowel Hunter, but the hordes of the Great Rabbit itself, and then eventually turned Meili Portrute to their side after a long year.
And then, as that long year came to pass, and Subaru was (Rightfully so) Made into her knight, after so long, they came back together to not only defeat the Witch Cult and their dreadful Archbishop of Greed (And what a greedy man he was! How could he not know that marriage was meant to be between two people, not two hundred! She wouldn't call him a dunderhead for it though. He didn't deserve the title!), But then peregrinated hither to the Pleiades Watchtower, and conquered not only Shaula, the guardian of the Watchtower, but also Reid Astrea, the many trials of the Watchtower, Volanica, the Archbishops of Gluttony, and the Witch herself.
They had accomplished so much together, her knight and her, overcome so many obstacles, and grew so much closer together as a result, and Emilia cherished her knight because of it.
But... There had always been... Something else that she had felt, around her knight.
It had been there after the White Whale and Archbishop of Sloth (Geuse, oh Guese...), And it had grown when Subaru had been knighted- No, before that, when she had recovered her lost memories, of Mother Fortuna, of Geuse, of Pandora...
And even before that.
When Subaru had brought the girl known as Rem to the manor.
She was a victim of Gluttony, having lost her name and memory to the horrid brother, just as Crusch had lost her own memories as well. From what Subaru had told her, Rem was Ram's twin sister, and had been a maid at the manor as well.
And she had... She...
'I love Rem as much as I love you, Emilia-Tan~'
…
Emilia didn't know why she didn't like it.
She didn't know what Rem had done to earn a place in Subaru's heart, much like she had herself, and she didn't know why Subaru had been the only one to remember her (Perhaps it was something to do with the Witch Miasma that clung to him like a second skin), But...
But something about it hurt her.
Subaru was a good boy, but he could certainly be a knave sometimes. A real picaroon, in fact! He was always keeping secrets to himself, and was always trying to play off his injuries as nothing when they were most certainly something. Worse yet, he would always deflect any compliment that ever came his way, as if for some reason he didn't deserve them, and sometimes... Sometimes...
Sometimes, he would know things that they didn't, as if he had lived through them already.
Sometimes, he would ramble about things that didn't make sense, or deflect when people asked about how he was doing.
And sometimes, he would look to the side of a room, and just stare.
Stare...
Stare...
Stare.
It hurt Emilia. Subaru was hiding things from her- Her knight was hiding things from his charge- And she hated it. Hadn't they been through enough already? Hadn't she shared her pain with him already? Shouldn't that mean that he should share his pain with her as well? Wasn't that what LO-
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Wasn't that what it was meant to be all about? Sharing their pain and never keeping secrets from each other?
Emilia hated secrets, and yet her knight seemed to have so many.
And... That girl.
Rem.
Who was she? Why did he work so hard for her? What had that comatose girl done for her knight that had made him as indebted to her- Perhaps even more so- Than he was to his charge already?
(It wasn't fair.)
It hurt Emilia, and she felt like a real mooncalf for it, but she couldn't help it. Subaru was her knight, and this woman- Rem- Was stealing away his heart, just like seemingly all of the other women around him that sought his attention, and-
And the twisted hurting feeling in her chest returned.
It made her feel angry, and she didn't know why.
Where was Puck? Where was her father (Where was Mother Fortuna and Geuse)? He (They) Had always been there to explain things to her- To clarify and help her understand anything and everything about the world, and yet he was gone, and she was left to figure it all out on her own.
On her own...
She hated being on her own.
But now, here she was, on her own, and Subaru was lost halfway across the world with that Rem woman and no one else, and she hated it, and it twisted into a bitter and dark feeling in her mouth and chest. She was becoming a real jade, surely, but she didn't care. Not anymore. Subaru was her knight. Hers to touch and smile and laugh and cheer and laud and LOVE-
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…
She finally figured out what it was that she was feeling.
JEALOUSY.
No... No, not that. Not just that.
It was something very simple.
ENVY.
Emilia, the Witch of Glaciation, felt nothing but ENVY to those that tried to take away her Subaru.
Because of course they would. They had everything that she wasn't. They were smart, beautiful, talented, pure, not contaminated by the presence or legacy of the witch peering over her shoulder constantly like a voyeuristic cad.
And meanwhile, she was just... She was just Emilia.
And sometimes she really hated being Emilia.
But she... She LOVED Subaru.
She LOVED him so much that she forgot what hating herself felt like.
And now there were people trying to take that- Take him- Away from her, and she could do nothing but morph into a seething ball of JEALOUSY and ENVY.
How dare they. How. Dare. They. Hadn't Subaru confessed countless times that he LOVED her? That he desired and cherished her? Hadn't he been the only one to remember her when Gluttony took her name? Hadn't they fought together through countless battles, against the Sanctuary, against Roswaal and the Great Rabbit, against the Witch Cult and Greed, against Shaula and the Watchtower, against Gluttony and Reid, and so many others that had come before and were surely soon to come?
Didn't they belong together?
Subaru was Emilia's, just as Emilia was Subaru's, and no one would ever take that- Take him- From her. Not Rem, not Shaula, not Petra, not Crusch, not anyone.
She LOVED Subaru, and Subaru LOVED her.
And she wouldn't let anyone take that away from her.
No one.
No one at all.
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"WOULDN'T YOU LIKE TO KEEP IT THAT WAY?"
Emilia jumped out of her bed, and looked around. Her bedroom in the manor was dark, with the illumination of the moon in the night sky outside hidden behind her curtains.
She was alone (And she hated it).
What was- What was that just now?
Was there- No, she wasn't alone. There was something else that was here. Something-
YOU'RE IMAGINING THINGS.
Ah, so she was just imagining things.
Emilia grumbled to herself, cursing her poltroon mind (She reeeeeeeally didn't like it when her mind went into overdrive like that), And then pressed her head back into her pillow, and went back to sleep...
Oblivious to the Witch of Envy whispering into her ear.
I had to look up a list of antiquated words just to make this work...
And before anyone decides to follow this, will I be making a second part or sequel to this one-shot?
No.
Why?
Because, my friends, some things are best left to the imagination...
But, I will compromise. You see, I have been noticing a disturbing lack of yandere fics for Re:Zero, and considering how the Witch of Envy herself is one of the biggest yanderes in all of anime, this poses quite the annoying conundrum for me.
So, I present to you an offer: Compose for me a yandere Re:Zero fic where the characters are not OOC in the slightest, and the premise makes sense (Please, I've seen too many damned fics where the yanderes are completely out of character, full of cringe, and detrimental to the story itself), And I will write another one-shot for all of you.
I call it, the Yan:Zero challenge!
Let's get our obsessive LOVE on!