Chapter IV: Post-Trauma

The next few days passed in silence with little fanfare. Subaru, unweakened and free of injury this time around, passed the days keeping himself physically fit on the manor grounds, only seeing Rem on occasion, and only with her sister close at hand. Rem, on the other hand, found herself lost in the jarring simplicity of keeping the manor clean after the excitement she had just been through. On the day before Roswaal's return to the manor, she felt as if she would explode inside as the aftershocks of being in such a stressful situation finally caught up with her.

She wasn't able to talk to him- Subaru, that is. He couldn't be seen being too close with her or else Ram and Emilia would grow suspicious. Roswaal would immediately find out on his return and the entire manor would suspect questions with answers that they couldn't give. The overthinking she was prone to when it came to Subaru (and her sister) drove her mind into a spiral. She lost out on sleep and eventually started internally punishing herself for ever hurting him, forgiven or not. She was traumatized by the thought. Torture? Subaru? Death? The thoughts hounded her.

Her conversation about it with Subaru played over and over in her thoughts, and though she had believed him when he had comforted her at first, eventually self-conscious doubt started to creep into her mind and she hurt inside. Her mood and strength worsened. She needed him to keep affirming it. She needed him to tell her it was okay again.

Subaru noticed. He was unable to think up an excuse to approach her for the first three days and forced himself to give her only passing comfort in the form of an uneasy smile, until the fourth day happened. It was on this day that the only meeting that Subaru and Rem managed changed their lives again.

She was trimming the hedges when he finished his morning jog. He was so used to seeing her composed and calm that the sight of her made him physically seize up. Traumatic memories filled his mind- waking up in the mornings, she always made sure to make her hair and clothing immaculate and flawless, but on the fourth day, when he came upon her on the grounds, she was in disarray- disheveled and in upheaval, her mind racing away from her and her shears uncharacteristically making sloppy trimmings. Her hair was a mess, like that day in the forest... She hadn't even noticed him, so far gone was her mind.

Ever the thoughtful, yet so very thoughtless buffoon, Subaru walked up behind her with a look of concern on his face. When she heard his footsteps, her head jolted towards him and he saw her face. She looked so similar to how she had when she attacked him that day that for an instant, his legs caught up and he stopped for nothing more than a microsecond. He was still Natsuki Subaru, though, so it only stopped him for that moment, and he moved forward again.

For the last few steps, it looked all the world like she might explode, but then he was in front of her and he gave her that apologetic smile that said more than his words ever could, and then her brain stopped working.

His arms were around her. His voice filled her ears but she didn't hear the words. His hands brushed against her cheeks, rubbing warmth into them. Her mind was nothing but buzzing and stress.

She was broken again.

Rem woke up with her face on a hard, warm, firm pillow that drew in breath and made the sound of a heartbeat. Blearily, she raised her head and saw Subaru looking down at her worriedly. They were in the same room as the last time they had reset, his hand clutching a scroll of parchment and wrapped around her waist in a gentle embrace, her hair all over the place and her clothing ruffled.

"Subaru-kun?" she accidentally repeated her first word from their first checkpoint. His worried look turned into a smile that melted her inside.

"Hey," he said in a tone that wasn't like him; it was oddly serious, like a switch had been flipped inside, "I'm sorry."

"Subaru-kun is... sorry?" she replied confusedly. There was nothing for him to be sorry about, was there?

"I'm sorry I assumed you would be okay after... Well, everything. I should have tried harder to talk to you after the first day," he said. Then it clicked in her head that she had lost herself shearing the hedges of all things. She didn't remember anything from after Subaru hugged her, though. Somehow they were back at the last checkpoint, though. Had she...? She couldn't have again, could she? If she had hurt him again, she might...

A hand brushing through her hair interrupted her thought process.

"No. No, nothing like that," his voice returned her to the real world. He knew what she was thinking.

"How?" was her subdued response.

"How else? Ram," he said. Her sister must have found him hugging a very unconscious Rem and assumed the worst. She didn't know Subaru like Rem did. Rem felt herself fill with an unfriendly and unwanted feeling of anger against her own sister, a foreign feeling that moved into her stomach and made her feel ill, like she was hating a piece of herself. Subaru ran his hand through her hair again, "and I don't- can't- won't blame her for... you know? If I were her I'd... Yeah."

It did more to comfort her than he knew. He had fumbled the words, but a feeling of guilt settled into her as she realized she had been feeling hostility towards her sister for doing exactly what she would have done- had done, she remembered with a stab of pain in her heart- in the same situation. She cut her own thoughts off and returned to reality again, her head still buzzing and overwhelmed with thinking overthought thoughts.

"But... why is Subaru-kun sorry? It isn't his fault Rem... lost control," she forced out. She didn't think it possible, but his face softened even more and her heart lurched.

"I've been dying forever. I mean, I've died a lot. A lot a lot. It's been so long that I'd forgotten how... I couldn't remember how destructive... I didn't think about how much of a burden it would be for you, seeing everything in a day. I'm the only person you can talk to about it and I didn't even think about it," he said. His voice hurt her. She didn't like it. She shook her head violently and squeezed him until his ribs hurt.

"Rem and Subaru-kun can fix it," she murmured almost inaudibly and much more confidently than she actually felt. He could feel that much. She was shaking. He gave her a rueful smile that she didn't see. He loved the idea of sharing the resets with someone, but he hated that it had caused this. He regretted telling her about... those resets... but knew he would also have regretted holding it back eventually.

"The first time you realize your life doesn't matter is when it hurts the most. I mean, it always hurts," he said, wincing as she crushed his ribs again. He stumbled over himself to fix his mistake, "but! But it fades. I didn't have anyone to talk to about all of this so it took me weeks. I mean, probably a month! I know it feels terrible, that this is hard, that it hurts to even think about, but we can find an excuse to talk. I mean, like friends instead of generals, right? No planning, just... Us? It'll help."

"..."

She was silent, but eventually she looked up at him again and his breath caught. A strange feeling welled up in his chest. It was the same as when he felt protective over Emilia against Julius and the aristocracy, but it somehow felt more tangible, like it was grounded in something material. Eventually, she spoke.

"Subaru-kun is hurt," she softly whispered. He knew she was talking about his mind- his soul- and not his body.

"Yes," he said. Her eyes shifted away from him, "We both are. We're both hurt and there's not much we can do except talk through it. Try to be better. Keep each other sane."

Her face scrunched up in a way that would have been cute if they both didn't feel like they had been emotionally run over by a carriage. Subaru realized that Ram would enter looking for her sister soon and, with a great amount of regret, stopped running his hand through Rem's hair, patting it down and then pulling her off of himself by her hips. She stood beside the bed as he got to his feet in front of her. With a heart's beat of hesitation, he leaned forward and pressed his lips to her cheek this time.

"Retracing my steps," he said softly. He wasn't used to feeling this heavy even with all of the experiences of death and hardship he had seen since starting out. He had been selfish. As much as he sacrificed himself for the people he loved, he had only been doing it because losing them hurt him, and without considering how they might feel. They would hate him dying. They would hate being the cause. Now that the result of that was smacking him in the face, he felt sobered and humbled, and the trauma of dying so many times suddenly collapsed back onto his shoulders. He felt something hot and warm on his face and reached up to feel, startled to find that he had tears on his cheeks.

Rem, a pure soul, wiped his other cheek with her tiny hand. He looked down her arm at her and found that she was crying too. They stood there in silence for a second before he reached forward and tugged her into him again. He felt so strange, being so emotional after spending so many lives carefree and reckless. He would, he supposed, have to start treating his lives more seriously. More maturely. He would have to take the world at face value instead of seeing it only as something that he could manipulate. He would have to stop taking the people around him for granted.

His thoughts returned to reality as he felt Rem squeeze the life out of him for the third time.

"Yes," he thought, "especially her."

The first week at Roswaal Manor had been hard for him because of physical challenges. He died because the world was arrayed against him. Never in his lives had he imagined that the difficulty of living through Roswaal Manor again would be growing up.

The door opened and Ram entered to find the two of them in the center of the room, clinging onto one another with all of their might. She wasn't sure how to react.