Subaru stood alone in his room, completely naked. Behind him, the window let in no direct beams of light, serving as a reminder that it was sometime around midday. He pondered aloud, "So, I've got about an hour to myself. First order of business is clothes."
He turned to look at the various articles of clothing he left littering the ground late last night, trying to ignore the mess along with the equally visually disturbing bedsheet tossed down beside them. He mumbled to himself, "I'm not wearing that shit again."
Approaching the nearby dresser that took up an unreasonable amount of the room's wall-space, he wondered, "Did the other me keep his tracksuit?"
Sliding the door open, Subaru gazed at the variety of clothes all neatly hung up in a row. They ranged wildly in style and color but were all seemingly high quality and hand-crafted. They were all the garb of the nobility and any man would be proud to sport such fine apparel.
"You've got shit taste, Natsuki Subaru," he declared to the seemingly amazing line-up, scowling, "How is the blood supposed to wash out of any of these?"
Not seeing any desirable clothing in the entirety of the dresser, he turned and walked towards the side of the bed, eyeing the pendant he left lying on the ground.
Grabbing the black crystal off its place on the floor, he asked with a frown on his face, "Hey, Witch. Where's my tracksuit?"
"I'm surprised you came to me of your own free will like this. Are you finally warming up to me?" teased Echidna in her usual attempt at a flirtatious tone.
"Answer the question or I'll break the damn crystal," Subaru spat, uncomfortable and fed up with her voice in his head.
"I wonder if there's another way to say 'you're no fun'," Echidna said, irritating her contractor even more.
In response, Subaru lifted his arm and prepared to throw the damn necklace against the ground and finally be done with the Witch but was interrupted mid-arc by the return of her voice. Still calm but lacking her teasing intonation, Echidna said, "Subaru left it in the library quite some time ago."
"Why the library of all places?" he asked, immediately halting his throwing motion.
"He said it was to 'Classically Condition himself to associate it with his mistakes'," she explained, sounding excited as she repeated the foreign phrase. To this, Subaru did not reply and gracelessly allowed the crystal to drop back onto the ground, wondering, "Fucking weirdo. Who thinks to Pavlov themselves?"
Turning his back on the pendant and returning to the dresser, he searched through the line-up of clothes for a few seconds before picking out the least tacky outfit he could and hastily putting it on.
"This still looks like shit," he thought to himself as he gazed up and down at his reflection in the mirror.
Subaru, having decided that all the outfits prepared were inadequate, had taken a random assortment of various garments and put them on haphazardly, the only unifying factor between them being a common orange hue that was sorely lacking from the otherwise colorful selection. As a result, if any normal person were to see him now, they would surely call him a walking fashion disaster.
However, Subaru, being the embodiment of stubbornness and Pride, didn't see it that way. Instead, he merely grumbled to himself about his other self's choice in apparel as he set out to find his true clothes, visibly uncomfortable in the hodgepodge of an outfit he'd assembled for himself.
Subaru walked through the quiet, empty halls as a strange sinking feeling took hold of him. The gait of his walking was rigid and uneven as he lost himself in thought, "So, Envy brought me here: Question answered. I'll break my contract with Echidna at the next Tea Party: Solution found. There's a lot of unknown specifics between those two issues but now I've got to deal with the mental elephant in the imaginary room."
He took a deep breath and heaved a large sigh, "Emilia. What do I do about her? All my subsequent actions beyond just gathering information depend on that."
A cold anxious feeling crept up on him as his mind began to take account of his list of desires and needs, "I promised to save her and to make her King. But now… I- I want-"
He slapped his own face as hard as he could, relishing in the pain, "I can not think that. I can't think for a second that anything's changed. If I lose my one goal, my one conviction, then I'm… I'd be nothing."
He scowled deeply with a look of utter hatred, a look intended for himself, as he shouted, "SO WHY? WHY DO I WANT MORE?! WHY DO I WANT CHANGE?!"
He glanced up and searched desperately for something, anything else to occupy his mind. He couldn't let the gears turn. He couldn't let the conclusions be made, "Clothes. I need to find my tracksuit. I need to find the library. Focus Subaru, focus."
His walk turned into a jog and his jog into a run as he sprinted through the halls frantically looking for the library like his life depended on it. After a full minute, he spotted it in a far off section of the mansion. Immediately, he ran inside and shut the door behind him.
Panting heavily, he said to himself, "Library Hah… Hah… found. Next Objective: Tracksuit."
He looked up to see he wasn't alone. There was a little girl in a pink and red dress sitting with her head in her hands on a step ladder. She had creamy blonde hair that formed drill-like pigtails on either side of her head. Frankly, if he wasn't a moment away from having a mental breakdown, he'd find her adorable.
"Well this is as good a distraction as any, I guess."
He walked up to her, stopping about a meter away. He noticed her fingers were white from the strength of the grip she had on her own head.
"Hey, kid. Kid. Hey kid!" Subaru called out, trying to get the girl's attention.
She didn't respond or even stir.
"Kid! HEY, KID! KID, LOOK AT ME!" Subaru continued, quickly turning his gentle calls into a scream.
"Just leave me the hell alone, I suppose," responded the girl, her voice shaky, raspy, and full of hatred.
Used to this attitude being directed towards him, Subaru remained undeterred and lowered his voice as he replied, "Maybe I will if you give me your attention for a bit."
"Shut the hell up, in fact," spat the girl, her head still held in her hands.
"Well, that's rude. Kid, what's wrong with you?" Subaru asked, noticing that, though she remained silent, her grip clearly tightened.
"You know, your resistance is only strengthening my desire to figure out what the fuck's wrong with you," he added, moving closer to the girl.
Suddenly, she snapped her head up and glared at him. Her butterfly-filled eyes stared at him with utter contempt and were laced with tears as she shouted, "You're what's wrong with me, I suppose! You forced me to break my promise with Mother, in fact!"
He smirked and crossed his arms, leaning back slightly. However, it was clear he was trembling, even through the awful outfit he had on. Despite this, he managed to still reply to her in a relatively calm voice, "Well I've changed a lot since yesterday afternoon, I suppose. I've changed to the point where I'm quite literally an entirely different person, in fact."
"What's that even supposed to mean?!" she asked, equal parts confused and aggravated.
His smirk faded and he looked down at her with frustration in his eyes, his calm demeanor vanishing and the thoughts he'd been wanting to distract from returning to him. He began to rant at the little girl, "It means that I'm not your Natsuki Subaru, kid! I don't even know any of the people in this godforsaken mansion! And all the ones I do know are totally different from how I knew them to be!"
She attempted to shout back but he talked over her, "That clown isn't trustworthy! Reinhard's a massive dick, as usual! Perfect annoying asshole."
His voice raised even higher as he continued, "Emilia's in love with a Subaru who I'm impersonating! I don't know any of the maids and I don't know you! What's your name? Fuck if I know! It might as well be Susan B Anthony as far as I'm concerned!"
She sat there shocked at his outburst as he yelled even louder, his voice trembling, "I just… I need someone on my side right now! The one thing in my life I was sure of, the one fucking thing that kept me together was snatched away from me. And now I'm on the verge of falling apart!"
"Do you have any idea how that feels, kid?! DO YOU?!" he shouted, his face having become red with rage and his question to the girl before him almost an afterthought to his rant.
She responded to him with a lower voice, also trembling, "Betty knows, I suppose. Betty knows exactly how that feels, in fact. Betty had her purpose ripped away from her as well. And now... Betty just wants to die."
They both stayed there for a moment, shaking under the weight of years of suppressed emotion being let out, the only noise in the room being the sounds of their mutually ragged breathing.
The girl saw a kindred spirit facing the very same dilemma she has lived through for years now. It turned her hatred into sadness.
The boy saw what he could become should he lose his sense of purpose, direction, and meaning. He forced himself to think about literally anything else.
As a result, Subaru was the first to break the silence, saying, "Fuck, kid. Fuck. Well, at least you don't have a greedy witch breathing down your neck, trying to manipulate you every night."
She looked up and into his eyes, tears forming, "Did you say a greedy witch, in fact?"
Still caught up in his own thoughts, he did not notice her reaction and explained as honestly as he could, "Huh? Yeah, the Bitch of Greed herself is contracted to yours truly. God knows why your Subaru thought it was a good idea to take Echidna's hand. Fucking idiot."
Her voice shook with a betrayed fury, masking the pity she had been developing for the boy, "Y-you're contracted with Mother? Why did you never tell me?!"
Subaru sighed and looked down at her with understanding eyes, "Kid, you're asking the wrong guy. I want nothing more than to break this godforsaken contract and be done with her. Your Subaru was a fool and made countless mistakes."
His voice started to break as he continued, "And... I don't even know if I'm any better anymore."
There was another moment of silence that was filled in Subaru's mind by his own thinking.
"I- Was it all worth it? Was it all justified? Were all my crimes truly for the greater good? For her? Or… Were they…"
He couldn't stop himself from completing the thought.
"… for me? For my Pride? For my Satisfaction? And never for her sake?"
Tears began to stream down his face as he felt something he considered foreign to himself.
"When was the last time I felt this? Elsa's death? Meili's death? Blue? The man who could've been my friend? The Spirit Knight? Plummy? No. None of their sacrifices made me feel this way. None of them made me feel this… this…"
He fell to his knees and scratched at his arms.
"Regret."
He scratched harder, tearing through the thin fabric that covered them.
"Regret. Guilt. Sorrow. Remorse. The payment of my sins. The cost of my Pride. The consequences of my own rotten character."
His arms started to bleed as he tore past his shirt and into his own flesh. His hands mechanically glided his fingers up and down, soaking them and dying the once white shirt red, only the orange trim remaining consistent.
He began to mutter to himself, his thoughts growing too heavy to remain contained in his own mind, "All that I've done. All that I've worked for. It was all worthless wasn't it? I'm worthless aren't I? I might as well just die-"
Suddenly, he felt a hard slap across his face, prompting him to cease his motion. He turned to see that the little girl held a shoe in her hand, glaring at him. She screamed at him with a renewed fury, "AND WHAT NOW, I SUPPOSE?! WHAT WAS ALL OF IT FOR, IN FACT?!"
Her tears flowed freely as she continued yelling, her voice only slightly calmer, "You may not remember it but you took everything from me, in fact! I cursed your name for what you did to me, I suppose! And yet…"
Her voice broke and the tears began to overwhelm her, "And yet you still had hope in my… my future, in fact."
Subaru's eyes widened as he considered her words, "Hope despite mistakes? Fulfillment despite sins?"
"How? Why?" he asked, desperate for the answer, clenching his hands and digging his nails back into the skin on his arms.
"I don't… Betty doesn't know, I suppose," she replied, calming herself slightly.
Controlling her voice as best as she could, she continued after a moment of tense silence, "You… He said this to me once: 'I'll be like this no matter how many times you vent your anger at me, it's fine. Even if the flames of regret don't seem like they're vanishing right now, if you keep pouring them out maybe they'll vanish someday.'"
Subaru couldn't take it anymore. He released his grip on himself and allowed his arms to fall to his side. A torrent of tears and drops of blood fell to the floor alike. How could words from a him that was so unlike him ring so true?
But it was her next words that struck even closer to home, "'I'm so glad that you're alive. So, I'll always look forward to the day where you'll once again get sulky in front of me.'"
He lifted himself up and approached her as she finished her last quoted line, "'――Because that hope still lives in me.'"
He brought the little girl into a tight embrace, his arms bleeding and feeling like jelly, his ribs still broken, and his sins weighing on his mind. She did not resist his motion.
"Hope? How cliche. How fitting. How true."
She returned his hug, crying along with him.
"I agree, I suppose."
