The arrival at the mansion was without much fanfare. Subaru did not really remember much about coming to the manor in the first place, being that he was unconscious whenever he was taken in by the Roswaal family in the previous timelines, but he figured that since he had basically shot through several possible reset points in the past day without much of a break, he was entitled to enjoy the novel experience for at least a day. Rem, to the suspicion of her sister and Emilia, was happy to show Subaru back to his "temporary room for the night" in preparation for joining the manor as a guest in the morning to meet Roswaal and continue the resets from there. He could see from his window that Emilia was in the front garden, sitting in a grass field and reading what he guessed to be something about politics- obviously the arrival of Reinhard had startled her more than she let on.

Subaru looked back at Rem in the doorway. This was the first real chance to be alone with her that he had gotten since the resets happened, given that they had made a straight line from the start in the town square to saving Emilia and Felt from Elsa without much more than a few words between the two of them. He walked forward and beckoned her in, closing the door behind her and patting a spot on the bed beside him to sit and talk. It said a lot about their relationship that instead of pulling up a chair or refusing in favor of standing, Rem sat next to him on the bed and smiled shakily at him.

"I'm... sure you have questions. We didn't really get to talk much since the fountains. Everything happened so fast," he opened. Rem shyly nodded.

"Subaru-kun went through a lot the first time, didn't he?" she sadly questioned. Subaru grimaced. The girl had accurately surmised that he hadn't survived the first few encounters he had had with Elsa, even though he didn't remember giving her any hints to that fact.

"It's not as bad as it seems, once you get used to it. And look! I'm still as happy as ever, see?" he said, starting off comfortingly but then getting falsely upbeat. Rem smiled at him again, but it didn't reach her eyes. She looked hesitant for a minute, but then reached forward and hugged him into the crook of her neck, gently patting the hair on the top of his head. Subaru's eyes widened but he relaxed when she started to speak.

"Subaru-kun doesn't have to do it alone anymore. Rem can remember now. She'll help Subaru-kun keep himself safe from now on," she said gently, her voice wavering quite a bit as it sounded like she had started to cry again. Today had been stressful for her, not because she had been endangered or because of the fight, but because she must have realized how close to dying all of them had been so often, were it not for Subaru sacrificing himself so many times for all of them. He pushed himself away from her for a moment, making her freeze and think that she had been presumptuous- Of course, he had been doing this alone for so long, so why would he ever ask a maid for help?- but he immediately swept that fear aside by pulling her into a hug of his own. This was Subaru. This was the reason she felt so safe with him around even if he couldn't fight. He needed someone to comfort him too, but the moment that someone around him needed help, he forgot all about his own needs and pushed them aside, eager to sacrifice his own happiness for theirs.

She didn't know that he wasn't always this way, of course. He had, at one time, been an awkward and somewhat selfish teenager, and when he had basically mindbroken and shouted at Emilia after getting beaten by Knight Julius, some of that had resurfaced due to his loss of sanity, but the person that he had become thanks to the resets remained to be called upon just like it was now.

"You don't need to cry for me, Rem-rin. We'll get through these resets together. I promise," he soothed. Her mind raced for a moment with thoughts of mixed pleasure at being comforted by him and stress at the way he was ignoring his own problems to comfort her, but she calmed down quickly and then sat back away from the hug, wiping the last tear away and smiling resolutely.

"Alright, Subaru-kun. We'll get through them together. That means... That means that Rem and Subaru-kun will need to make a plan. Subaru-kun has been surviving on memory this whole time, but now that Rem is here to help, we can think things through and draw them out," she said. Subaru's face held a bit of trepidation at the idea of making a concrete plan instead of using his surprisingly good memory to guide him, but he relented and gave her a respectful nod. She clapped her hands together and stood, getting a piece of parchment and an ink stylus and encouraging Subaru to join her at the small desk in the corner, where she unfolded the parchment and spread it out over the flat face of the desk.

"Subaru-kun needs to tell Rem everything that he remembers about each reset. It might be hard for Subaru-kun to go through those memories again, and Rem will be sad to hear them all, but Subaru-kun needs to be thorough so Rem can plan for everything," she all but commanded. She looked over her shoulder and frowned when she saw that Subaru seemed to be tensing up, so she put a hand on his arm and smiled warily at him, continuing to say, "Subaru-kun doesn't need to worry. If it's too hard, Rem will let him take a break and Rem will write down what she remembers."

Subaru sighed. It wasn't that reliving each of the resets would be difficult, he feared. No, he would have to tell Rem about the five or six resets where... she killed him. Or she died. He didn't want to break her heart. She obviously liked him quite a bit to be so immediately trusting with the resets as she was, but if he informed her about how she had killed him, had tortured him, the girl would be distraught. Shaken by a moment of indecision, he nonetheless steeled himself for the upcoming task at hand and nodded. Then, he began.

He told her everything that he remembered from start to finish, his excellent memory and sheer number of resets producing many results for the first day alone, which Rem nodded along to and at the same time listened with melancholy as she listened to him recount his various encounters with Emilia, her "competition" for Subaru's attention, and his multiple deaths and restarts to face Elsa. For almost an hour, the next section of her writing concerned his experiences joining Roswaal Manor the first time as a worker, then experiences working for the first time. Rem had been surprised at how well he performed some of his tasks when he was first hired in the timeline that she remembered, so to hear that he had struggled made her give an uncharacteristic giggle, but when he reached the part where he was bitten by the dog and then died after asking Emilia on a date, the happy moment was gone.

He explained how he died the first time in his sleep, and then he inwardly distrusted everyone in the manor including her and Emilia, surprisingly enough. He went through everything in the previous day but failed to make an impact because he wasn't expecting Ram to interfere in his day by tutoring him and getting closer to him, so he failed to stop the curse from afflicting him again. Rem's heartbeat picked up as she realized that, with him asking Beatrice loaded questions about curses and his well hidden but still somewhat noticeable suspicion of everyone in the manor, and his smell of the witch, she had probably been extremely defensive over Ram. Inwardly, she started going into denialism. No, she thought. No, she couldn't have. She wouldn't have, would she?

Subaru looked like a dead man on his feet as he sighed and prepared himself. Then, he explained that he had been attacked in the manor after waking up coughing up blood, and he could watch as Rem's eyes darkened and she started killing herself on the inside. Her heart broke, he saw, as her eyes began to look as if she had gone numb. His voice cracking with emotion, he continued shakily.

He explained how he found out that the curse was working by touch, how he had tried to avoid his assailant by recreating the first day he died of the curse once more but asking to be a guest, and how he had done almost nothing but watch for the next few days. She tensed and he grabbed her free hand on the table, pulling her into a one armed hug in preparation for the next part. He told her the story of the two demons despite Ram's insistence that he shouldn't, which made her clench his hand almost hard enough to hurt, and she sniffled. He pressed on.

"And then... I left the manor. I thought, perhaps I could catch the attacker if I watched from the cliff above, but I couldn't see anything for a while, and I ended up resting until it was almost nighttime. Then, when I was standing up to move, I was attacked again, and..." he cut himself off as Rem squeezed his hand again, and this time it did hurt but he bore through it.

"And Rem... Rem was the one who attacked Subaru-kun, wasn't she?" the broken girl asked quietly. Her eyes couldn't meet his, so all he could see was the guilt behind them as they looked forward to the wall, her writing hand shaking and blotting ink over the parchment as she failed to write.

He closed his eyes and if Rem could have seen his face at the moment, she would have seen that he had aged by decades in that moment. He couldn't speak for a moment, so he licked his lips and then squeezed her hand in what he hoped would be a comforting gesture, but it did nothing for her.

"Yes..." he said hauntingly. The word came out as a whisper and hung in the air for a few moments as the two occupants were silent. Subaru relived that night once or twice in the next second, his hesitation becoming traumatic stress, but he was snapped back into reality by a silent sob from Rem, who looked up at him frantically.

"What did Rem do to Subaru-kun!?" she half-shouted, tears welling up in her eyes.

"I don't think..." he started, but he stopped when it looked like it just hurt her more.

"What did Rem do!?" she fully shouted this time, standing up and looking him in the eyes, a mixture of shame and anger at herself on her features.

"You... you tortured me and then... then you killed me," he answered in shame. As soon as he had said she had tortured him, her eyes widened and she looked almost as if she had just been informed her sister had died, her eyes were so shocked, but the moment that he told her she had killed him, she let out a small shriek of torment, turning her head away from him and then he had a split second to react as she tried to storm past him, ashamed to be in the same room as him, heading for the door.

He grabbed her wrist but she tried to pull away gently, afraid of hurting him... again. He kept hold of her and she struggled for a moment, but couldn't put forth a good effort through her sobbing and lack of wish to cause him harm. He took advantage of that immediately and pulled her towards him, hugging her from behind and shushing her from above. Unlike the previous stressful times when she had been sad for him, this time she was tormented and it came out in long sobs. This was the first time he had seen her in such a state and he hated it. He brought one hand up and gently ran his fingers through her now disheveled hair soothingly.

It took nearly fifteen minutes of standing there like this, rocking slightly back and forth, before she calmed enough for him to talk to her and be heard.

"It wasn't your fault, Rem-rin. It wasn't your fault. You had no reason to trust me and I was so suspicious, so stupid... I looked like a danger to everyone in the mansion, especially Ram. You had no choice. Shhhh..." he repeated over and over, her breathing further calming as he continued. After a few more minutes, she turned around and looked up at him, guilt still covering her eyes.

"How does Subaru-kun... How do you still put up with Rem... With me?" she asked, losing her usual, slightly playful verbal tic of referring to everyone in the third person, she was so shocked.

"Rem-rin, you're a good person. Honestly, even while you were... were hitting me, I was declaring my love for everyone in the mansion. I've never blamed you," he responded softly, still running a hand through her hair, from the front this time.

"How? How can you not blame me?" she said in distraught incredulousness. He could do nothing but shrug and think for a moment.

"I think about how stupid I was, and how selfish I had been before that, and then I think that if I were you I wouldn't have trusted me either. And then I remember that even if it were your fault, that you doesn't exist anymore. You're... you didn't do it. I'm still alive and you haven't ever hurt me. I trust you, Rem-rin. Probably more than I've ever realized before this point," he said sincerely, his usual awkward but golden personality finally making an appearance for the night.

Rem almost teared up again, but buried her face in his chest, squeezing him tightly. In a soft tone that struck something inside of him with all of the subtlety of a hammer and shook him to his core, she spoke.

"Okay."