A:N- A horizontal line indicates a perspective switch.
Subaru's Suitors 2
Sitting in a cold room a nameless noble woman waited and pondered the interaction she just had.
This woman came to this party for the same reason as many of the other women in attendance, she wanted a chance to get as much information on Subaru Natsuki as possible as well as hopefully get as close to him as possible. But when she first arrived she couldn't find the man, he was a black haired and brown eyed man of a lean build and average height wasn't he? Well as it turned out while that description was technically correct it did leave out quite a few important details, for one he had nasty, sharp looking eyes that hid behind them a great deal of pain. She would know, since ever since her brother became a knight and went on his first mission he carried the same look in his eyes though to a much lesser degree. This was the first clue that Subaru Natsuki was not who the rumors made him out to be. The next was the various scars and marks littering his otherwise unremarkable body. The most concerning of which was his blackened hand, an after effect of battling with the Sin Archbishop of Lust apparently.
Not one to judge based on appearances alone once the nameless noble figured out who Subaru was she went to approach him, but stopped as many other young women were flocking to him and she concluded she would have to wait for the others to leave him alone before she got her chance. Luckily it wouldn't take long for her to get her chance as a series of little girls, or lolis as those in the Mather's domain called them, would take the tactless women away from the man, and she saw her chance.
During a brief period of reprieve from the women who were flocking him the nameless noble decided to make her move.
Subaru was resting near the banquet table while picking up the occasional morsel to snack on, and as such was distracted. So seeing an opening where she could make a natural introduction to Subaru the nameless noble made her way over to the banquet table while making sure to highlight her many attractive features as she walked.
Once at the table she picked up a plate and started putting some interesting dishes on it, the dishes themselves were quite tantalizing with many new and exciting items she had never seen before strewn across the table. But as luck would have it the genuinely most enticing dish was being blocked by Subaru, and thus would allow for a seamless introduction between herself and Subaru.
"Um, excuse me sir, but could you please move that way just a little." She spoke with a smooth and silky voice and a nervous tone. Subaru jumped a little before moving and apologizing,"Ah, so sorry ma'am. I was just a little lost in thought." The noble woman picked up some of the food Subaru was blocking while she responded,"Oh, no. No, it's fine Mister… …I'm so sorry, I'm afraid I don't recognize you. Would you mind giving me your name?". As soon as she finished her sentence the nameless noble felt a chill that she brushed off as her anxiety, but unfortunately for her the chill was actually brought on by a pair of amethyst eyes that had been keeping watch of Her knight.
Standing by a wall adjacent to Her Subaru, Emilia watched as a well endowed blonde woman approached the table Her Subaru was at. Though Emilia was not an unreasonable person she did consider it possible that the woman was just trying to get some of Her Subaru's homeland's food. It was quite scrumptious afterall, and at first it seemed as though that was truly all the lady was after. But just as Emilia was ready to write this woman off as someone slightly snackish she revealed her true colors.
This lady was a snake just like the rest, and she was admittedly good at it. If not for the circle of people the woman was previously conversing with, Emilia would have been fooled by her act, and if this were the Emilia from before the journey of the watchtower she still would have been fooled. But Emilia had grown since then, she had become stronger, smarter, more observant, and she had finally figured out what she wanted.
Emilia wanted Subaru, and Subaru wanted Emilia. So everything should have been perfect, yes? Well, unfortunately for these women Emilia now knew just how vulnerable Her Subaru, Her Happiness, Her Reason for Living for Pushing Forward was. She knew that he could be taken away from her at any time if she was careless, so she vowed to herself to never be careless, to never let him be taken away from her again. She had seen what Her Suabru went through in Vollichia, what that thing did to him. She couldn't bear seeing something like that happen again.
And so she staged this party to smoke out all the snakes that would try to hurt and use Her Subaru. She would never let that happen again. She would find all the snakes and ensure none of them would ever get the chance to do what it once did to Her Subaru.
While Emilia was observing her the nameless noble continued her conversation with Subaru, but the nameless noble was surprised by the direction the conversation had gone. She had come into the conversation expecting Subaru to be… well she didn't know quite she expected, but it certainly wasn't this. Subaru Natsuki was supposed to be a knight, a man of chivalry, but instead here he was most befitting the description of odd. From his dress, a tracksuit as he called it, to his vocabulary everything about him was odd. Not entirely unfamiliar, but also not exactly something most people would ever meet. For instance they were currently talking about some strange exercise that had recently become popular throughout not just the entirety of the Mathers territory but some of the surrounding areas as well.
"I'm sorry Sir Subaru, but I honestly can't figure out the appeal of such a ridiculous activity." She spoke to Subaru who had just finished a quick demonstration of "radio calisthenics" as he called, and still had his arms up in the air. "Well, of course you won't get it if you don't try it." Subaru sighed somewhat dejectedly before continuing,"Also, didn't I already tell you to stop calling me sir, just Subaru's fine. I never felt right whenever someone called me sir anyway.".
Once Subaru finished the nameless noble didn't take a second to respond,"Sorry, Subaru. I guess I'm not quite accustomed to such a lack of formality, especially after having just met you." The nameless noble was careful not to turn down Subaru's show of goodwill when she said his name. Too careful, so much so that she unintentionally scrunched her face a bit to avoid using the title she was so used to attaching to the names of those men she tried to court and caused Subaru to give a small chuckle. A fact that caused her to become slightly irritated,"What?! You think it's funny that I struggle to comply with your request?!" Her clear agitation caused Subaru to go from a light chuckle to full blown laughter, which in turn caused the nameless noble to become even more agitated. "Oh, so you find my frustration funny, eh! Well in that ca…" the nameless noble was about to go on but Subaru, with his face toward the ground, put his hand out and interrupted her,"Sorry, sorry. You just reminded me of a certain silver haired girl back when I first met her. Getting all flustered and confused by even the most basic goodwill."
Subaru looked back up at the nameless noble and continued,"Probably shouldn't tell you any of this, so make sure it stays between us, got it?". Subaru went on to tell the nameless noble all about how he and Emilia first met in the successful timeline anyway and some of their more lighthearted adventures afterwards. Such as the time he first showed off his Natsumi Schwarz persona which she found particularly humorous, but most importantly she noticed that when Subaru talked about Emilia not only was there a fondness in his voice that screamed his feelings for her but his eyes had lost some of that pained and haunted look they constantly wore. Though it wasn't as though that look disappeared completely, it was more like it became something manageable, something that one could bear, and lost the fear and regret that was held within them.
Watching the nameless noble and Her Subaru's conversation was Emilia.
Emilia watched as they spoke over the course of forty-five minutes only ever getting distracted by the odd noble brave enough to speak to her. It was just another nuisance associated with politics. Luckily for Emilia the nameless noble and Subaru weren't talking about anything too important whenever these nobles distracted her, and when Her Subaru spoke about her none of those nobles were distracting her.
Emilia listened intently to Her Subaru's words. She felt warm and comforted knowing that she was number one in Her Subaru's heart just as he was number one in her's. It was also quite satisfying to see the expression on the noble woman's face change every so slightly as she came to the conclusion that Subaru's heart belonged to Emilia.
But just because Emilia knew the noble woman realized her sin it didn't change the fact that she needed to atone for trying to steal Her Subaru from her. But of course the fact that the noble woman realized her mistake did mean she was a special case, especially considering the fact that out of all the beautiful women to approach Subaru she was the only one who didn't bring up the subject of marriage or love or anything of that nature and as such she was the only one who realized her mistake without being explicitly told.
Emilia took a few minutes after Subaru and the noble woman parted and went their separate ways thinking of the proper punishment, and after lots of contemplation she finally figured out just what she would do.
As the nameless noble was finishing her plate of now cold food a blonde haired little girl wearing a red dress approached her. "Come with Betty, I suppose." upon reaching the nameless noble the blond child named Beatrice instructed her to follow her, and while normally the nameless noble would have put up some resistance to anyone telling her what to do she decided to follow the Beatrice since she was a guest here and it wouldn't do to go making a scene with a child.
As she walked with Beatrice down the hallway the nameless noble tried to initiate a conversation with the girl leading her to wherever they were going. "So, where are we going?" Beatrice didn't even turn when she responded,"Betty was told to take you to meet with the half-elf, I suppose.". Hearing who she was going to meet the nameless noble felt guilty and confused. Sure she had tried to seduce Subaru, who loved Emilia, but from everything he said Emilia was pretty much unaware of her own feelings and didn't reciprocate Subaru's feelings. Combine that with the fact that she was from a rather minor noble family which only controlled a small number of villages, and she couldn't come up with any reason why Emilia would want to meet with her.
She would soon find out.
With the party over and the snakes successfully discovered Emilia went to ensure one snake in particular would never get a second chance to hurt Her Subaru.
The nameless noble had been led to a standard guest room in the mansion and instructed to wait for Emilia to arrive, and she followed her instructions under the assumption she didn't really have much of a choice. So while she waited the nameless noble thought through her interaction with Subaru Natsuki trying to figure out what she did that may have caused Emilia to want to meet her.
While the nameless noble was searching her memories she suddenly landed back on a certain chill she felt early in her conversation with Subaru, one she had written off as her nerves at the time, but now it struck fear in her heart as the door opened and the temperature of the room dropped drastically.
Emilia made her way throughout the hallways of the Roswaal estate and found the room she had instructed Beatrice to take the noble woman to. Stopping right outside the door to the guest room Emilia dismissed Beatrice to allow Beatrice time to be with Subaru. Emilia felt terrible that she wasn't the one spending this time with Her Subaru, but knew it was necessary for Beatrice to tend to him and his broken gate at least once a day. Thinking back on it, Her Subaru broke his gate helping her didn't he? So shouldn't she be the one to help Her Subaru with this problem? She'd need to work on learning how to help Her Subaru with his gate later for now she had to deal with the pest behind this door.
Opening the door Emilia saw the noble woman sitting in a chair looking up at her and shivering from the aura of cold she was emanating. Emilia took a seat on the bed next to the noble woman, and began to speak to her in a chiding tone,"Hi. I wanted to talk to you. You did a reeeeally naughty thing you know." At the end of her sentence Emilia's icey aura got even worse and the noble woman's skin started to slowly freeze, but it didn't matter to Emilia who continued,"You came to my sponsor's estate with suuuuch a bad goal, didn't you? You came here to steal My Subaru away from me and hurt him didn't you? You reeeeally shouldn't have done that." Finishing her sentence Emilia's tone turned serious and she continued. "You see Subaru's not very strong nor is he very smart. Though that's not to say he's an idiot or weak or anything. No of course not, he's amazing, but he's still very vulnerable. It took me almost losing him to realize that, but now that I have I'm definitely going to protect him just like he's protected me and everyone else soooo many times. But to protect him I need you to never speak to him again, okay?" Finishing her speech Emilia turned to the frozen corpse of the nameless noble, and walked out of the room to find Her Subaru and give him his reward for dealing with all the snakes that had tried to deceive him today in the best way. He turned them all down and let them know she was his number one, not that it would have mattered what he did; they were all going to die anyway, but the way he handled the situation sent Emilia's heart a flutter. And she had to reward him for it.