Work Text:
『Who is Natsuki Subaru to you?』
— EMILIA —
"My knight."
She says it out. No pause, no ifs, no beating around the bush. She says it like she always does. With her heart, her silver hair shining in the light her violet eyes not bothered at all by what she's saying.
"My knight " Emilia says again. Now there's a small frown on her face the one she gets when she thinks someone isn't listening. "Is that weird? Subaru told me himself. He said he'd be my knight and he meant every word. Every single time."
She tilts her head to the side.
"...Even when it scared him to death. Especially then, I think."
She looks away for a second. For a moment something huge flashes across her face. The memory of a hand reaching out, to her when no one else would, a boy who put himself in harms way over and over.
"He's my knight " she says, softer now. "I don't think he really gets what that means to me yet."
She smiles like sunlight on a cold winter morning.
— REM —
"My hero."
She does not say anything at first. She just sits with her hands folded in her lap her hair framing a face that has seen a lot of sadness and she says it like it is just a fact.
"My hero."
Then she says it quieter: "The person I love."
She stops for a moment. She looks at her hands.
"When I first met him I thought he was a dangerous person. I was wrong about what kind of person he was." Something crosses her face. It might be shame. It might be the memory of feeling ashamed. "He saw something in me before I thought there was anything good in me. I had already decided what kind of person I was. He thought differently about me."
Her fingers get a little tighter in her lap.
"He was knocked down multiple times and... " Her voice becomes steady. "He still got back up every time."
She looks up. Her eyes are very clear and very sure.
"That is not something a normal person can do. That is what my hero does." She takes a breath. "So yes. He is my hero.. I will follow him anywhere. To places I should not be able to go back, to."
She says that part like she really means it and she is going to do it.
— RAM —
"Barusu."
Just that. She says it with her arms folded, one eyebrow slightly elevated, the expression of someone who has been asked an extremely tedious question.
"Barusu," Ram says again, and somehow the second time it sounds completely different from the first.
Ram's gaze drifts toward the window. The light catches the pink of her hair. She is very still in the way that proud people become still when something catches them off guard.
"...He is irritating," she says finally. "Loud. Presumptuous. Dramatically incompetent in ways that defy simple explanation." She pauses. "He once tried to comfort me with a story about two oni. He told it without knowing what it was."
Another silence.
"He is Barusu," she says. "He stays when he should leave. He says the things that should be left unsaid. He treats Rem as though she is the most important person in any room." Her voice doesn't change. Her expression doesn't change. "...He treats me that way too, which is simply a sign of his appalling lack of discernment."
She smooths an invisible wrinkle from her sleeve.
"Next question."
There are no more questions for Ram. There don't need to be.
— BEATRICE —
"Betty's contractor. In fact."
She says it with her nose slightly upturned, her drills bouncing, her arms crossed over her chest with the practiced authority of someone four hundred years her interviewer's senior.
"Betty's contractor," Beatrice states. "In fact, that is what he is, I suppose."
She shifts in her chair.
"Do not look at me like that, I suppose. The contract is real. He found Betty. He said the words. It is a factual designation, in fact."
Silence.
"...He is also," she begins, and then stops. Her golden eyes move sideways. "He is also the person who chose Betty. When Betty had already decided there was nothing left to choose." She says it carefully, like she's handling something that might crack. "Four hundred years, I suppose. Betty waited. And everyone Betty has ever explained this to assumes the waiting was the hard part."
Her voice drops half a register.
"It wasn't the waiting. It was having decided it was over. Having decided there was no one left, and then — " She stops again. "He chose Betty anyway. Before he even knew what he was choosing."
She smooths her skirt with enormous dignity.
"He is Betty's contractor," she repeats. "In fact, that is a great deal more than it sounds, I suppose."
She does not elaborate further. She does not need to.
— GARFIEL TINSEL —
"My Cap'n! No arguments!"
He says it at full volume before the question is even finished, grinning so wide it looks like it might split his face, his shark teeth gleaming.
"My Cap'n! That's all there is to it, ya hear me? Ain't no better answer 'n that!"
He's leaning forward in his chair practically off it his golden eyes bright and entirely unself-conscious. This is Garfiel's great gift: he has never once in his life been embarrassed by the things he feels.
"I know what some people think," he says, the grin going a notch more fierce. "They see this scrawny guy in a tracksuit who can't even lift anything and they think what're you followin' him for, Garf? You got half-beastman blood! You could smash a stone wall!" He snorts. "And yeah. I could."
He leans back.
"But the Cap'n doesn't lead from the back. He doesn't throw people at problems and wait. He goes first even when goin' first is gonna hurt him especially then. And he's scared, sometimes, I can tell. I can smell it." His voice gets quieter, which for Garfiel is still relatively loud. "But he goes anyway."
He rolls his shoulders.
"That's what a real Cap'n is. Someone you'd follow because they earned it. Not cause they're the strongest." A pause. Something passes through his expression. "...He ain't the strongest. But he might be the bravest. And in my amazing self's book, that counts for more."
He says this with the certainty of someone who spent years hiding behind walls and finally learned what standing outside them feels like.
— OTTO SUWEN —
"My best friend. The absolute worst person for the job."
He says it with a long-suffering sigh, rubbing the bridge of his nose, which is something he does so frequently around Subaru that it has become involuntary.
"My best friend," Otto says. "I have thought about this a great deal, actually, because one doesn't simply end up best friends with Natsuki Subaru. It happens to you. Like a natural disaster. Like stepping in a hole."
He pauses, apparently reconsidering this comparison.
"He is also loyal to a degree that is frankly irresponsible. He will decide that you matter and then there is simply nothing to be done about it. He will risk his life for you before you've even agreed to the arrangement." Otto's expression shifts into something caught between exasperation and a depth of affection he will not name directly. "I was a merchant who happened to give him a ride. That should have been the end of it."
He looks at his hands.
"He ruined my business model, honestly. You cannot make rational, self-interested decisions when Natsuki Subaru has decided you're worth saving." A quiet breath. "I stopped trying to be rational about it a long time ago."
He straightens. Composes himself.
"My best friend," he says again. "Even if he is completely, catastrophically impossible to keep up with."
He says it like a complaint. He means it like a vow.
— FREDERICA BAUMANN —
"Someone I entrust my family to."
She says it calmly, with her hands folded, her eyes steady. Frederica is not a woman who gives trust lightly, and she says this as though that fact explains everything that needs to be explained.
"Garfiel is my family," she says. "He is difficult and proud and he spent years hiding behind the gate of our home because he was afraid of the world outside it." Her expression doesn't waver. "Subaru walked through that gate anyway. He kept coming back. He didn't leave even when Garfiel tried to break him."
She pauses.
"That tells me everything I need to know about the character of Natsuki Subaru. Someone my brother respects is someone worth my trust." She dips her chin slightly. "And Lady Emilia trusted him first. That was perhaps the original proof."
She says nothing more. It's more than enough.
— PETRA LEYTE —
"My hero! ...And, well he doesn't know this part but he's kind of my reason."
She says the first part bright and confident, her cheeks already a little pink at the edges.
"When I was little - well, not that long ago, but still the village was in danger. Everyone was scared. And this strange boy in weird clothes showed up and just..." She gestures vaguely. "He didn't have a sword or anything. He just decided we were worth saving. Twice." She holds up two fingers emphatically.
She twists her apron slightly.
"Now I work at the manor. I learned how to do things properly, how to be useful, how to — " She stops. Starts again more carefully. "I wanted to be the kind of person that someone like him would be proud of. He doesn't know that. Please don't tell him. He'll make a whole thing of it."
She huffs. The pink in her cheeks deepens.
"He's my hero," she says firmly. "He just - he looked at Arlam Village like we mattered. Like I mattered. And I never forgot that."
She is sixteen years old and has already decided who she wants to become.
— ROSWAAL L. MATHERS —
"My most important piece. And the one variable my book never accounted for."
He says it languidly, a smile playing at the corner of his painted mouth, his mismatched eyes half-lidded and thoroughly amused with themselves.
"Subaru-kun is, without question, the most valuable asset in my current arrangement," Roswaal says, as if discussing a particularly interesting investment. "He was, for a time, a pawn. A useful, predictable pawn with a remarkable ability and an attachment to Lady Emilia that made him easy to direct."
He lets that settle.
"And then," he continues, and something infinitesimal shifts behind his eyes, "he stopped moving the way pawns are supposed to move. He looked directly at me. He told me quite plainly, without flinching that he saw exactly what I was, and that he intended to win anyway."
A pause. The smile gets strange.
"He wagered everything on the possibility that I could be better than my book. And then, exasperatingly, he turned out to be right." He tilts his head. "I do not enjoy being wrong. I enjoy even less discovering that being wrong was the finest thing that ever happened to me."
He straightens. The smile remains.
"My most important piece," he repeats. "Though I suspect he is rather more the player than the piece, at this point."
He does not sound displeased about this. He sounds almost grateful, though he would never say so directly.
— REINHARD VAN ASTREA —
"A dear friend. One of the finest I have known."
He says it simply, with his hands resting loose at his sides, his red hair catching the light like something ceremonial. Reinhard does not say things he doesn't mean. It is perhaps his most disarming quality.
"I am aware," he begins carefully, "that my existence is somewhat... difficult, for the people around me. The blessings I carry make it hard for others to stand beside me as equals." He pauses. "Subaru never tried to stand beside me as an equal. He stood beside me as a friend. Those are entirely different things."
He looks somewhere past the interviewer, quiet for a moment.
"He is also the only person who has ever been genuinely, straightforwardly angry at me for something I couldn't control." His expression is complicated, warm, and a little helpless. "Do you know how rare that is? To be treated as someone who could have done better, rather than someone beyond expectation?" He exhales slowly. "It was one of the greatest gifts I have ever received."
Reinhard van Astrea, the Divine Protection of the Sword Saint, the greatest knight who has ever lived says this about a boy from another world with no powers worth mentioning, and means every syllable.
— FELT —
"My dumb big bro. Obviously."
She says it like she's been asked something embarrassingly obvious, sprawled sideways in her chair with her chin on her fist, her red eyes almost rolling.
"Seriously? You're asking me this?" She huffs. "He's my big bro. That's it. End of answer."
A beat.
"He picked up my insignia that time. When everyone else was making a fuss about Emilia which, fine, whatever he just... picked it up. Gave it back. Like it was normal." She looks at the ceiling. "He didn't know who I was. Didn't know about the Royal Selection, didn't know about any of it. He just thought it wasn't fair that I got hurt."
Her voice stays flat. Her expression doesn't change much. But something underneath both of them is doing something it doesn't have a name for.
"He's annoying," she says. "He lectures me. He makes these horrible jokes that aren't funny. He worries about everyone all the time and it's exhausting to watch." She drops her gaze from the ceiling. "...He's the only person other than Old Man Rom who ever just looked at me and thought I was worth something without wanting something back."
She shrugs. The motion is too sharp to be casual.
"So. My big bro. Obviously. Next."
She says it like a dismissal. She means it like a declaration.
— OLD MAN ROM —
"A good kid. One of the real ones."
Rom says it with his elbows on the table and his great scarred hands folded, his voice low and unhurried in the way that very large men's voices often are.
"I've been around long enough to tell the difference," he says simply. "Between someone who's good because they've got nothing to lose and someone who's good because that's just who they are."
He pauses.
"The kid's got plenty to lose. He loses it all the time." A rumble that might be a laugh. "And he still shows up."
That is all. It is enough.
— CRUSCH KARSTEN —
"A man whose word I would wager on."
She sits straight. Her green eyes are direct and unhesitating, the eyes of someone who has spent a long time learning exactly how much weight to give her own assessments.
"In this kingdom," Crusch says, "it is not difficult to find people who will say the right things. Promises are made over wine, agreements over candlelight. I have heard extraordinary things committed to and then quietly forgotten."
She folds her hands on the table.
"Natsuki Subaru made me a promise in the middle of a war road with the smell of the White Whale still in the air. He had no reason to honor it. He had no political standing, no leverage, no way to compel me." She pauses. "He honored it anyway. Completely. Without being asked."
Something behind her eyes is very still and very sure.
"I have faced opponents in the Selection who are more eloquent, more powerful, better connected. But I have not met many who are as simply, stubbornly honest as that boy." A beat. "A man whose word means something is rarer than any sword. I would wager on him."
She says this as if closing a contract she fully intends to hold.
— FELIX ARGYLE —
"Suspicious~ But anyone who fights for Lady Crusch earns a pass from Ferris."
Ferris says it with one finger raised and a look that is half-playful and half-completely serious, which is how Ferris says most things.
"Subaru-kyun smells weird~ There's something about him that I still can't put my finger on, and Ferris has very good instincts, nyaa~" He tilts his head. "But."
He lowers the finger.
"He stood at the front when Lady Crusch needed someone to stand there. He didn't hesitate, and he didn't ask for anything in return at the time." His voice, for just a moment, loses the lilt. "Ferris doesn't forget things like that. Lady Crusch's supporters are Ferris's people. Simple as that."
The lilt comes back, but softer.
"So. Weird, suspicious, smells wrong~ But probably good." He pauses. "Probably."
He means definitely.
— WILHELM VAN ASTREA —
"A fellow swordsman. One who reminded this old man what the sword is for."
He sits like a man who has survived things he was not meant to survive, upright and quiet, with the particular stillness of someone who has learned to live carefully inside grief.
"I have wielded a sword for most of my life," Wilhelm says. "In service of duty. In pursuit of the sword itself. And then, for many years in pursuit of the White Whale." He pauses. "I had reduced myself to a single purpose. A single promise to a person who deserved more than a promise."
He looks at his hands. Old swordsman's hands.
"Subaru-dono fought the White Whale without a sword. Without any combat ability worth naming. He fought it because the people around him needed someone to move first, and he decided to be that person." His voice is very level. "He was terrified. I could see it. He moved anyway."
A breath.
"He reminded me that courage is not the absence of fear. My wife always told me this. I had forgotten." He straightens slightly. "I did not thank him properly at the time. I intend to correct that."
He says it with the quiet gravity of a man who has learned, very late, not to leave things unsaid.
— ANASTASIA HOSHIN —
"The most interestin' deal I never closed."
She says it with her fox shawl draped over her shoulders and a smile that could mean five different things at once, her kansai drawl warm and entirely unhurried.
"I'm a merchant, see~ Everything is a transaction at some level. Even people. Even alliances." She taps one finger against the arm of her chair. "So when I first looked at Subaru-kun, I was looking for the angle. What does he want? What does he have? What's he worth in the ledger?"
She pauses. The smile doesn't change, but something behind it does.
"And then I watched him work. Over and over. Campaigns where he had nothing and somehow left with more than he came with, not for himself, mind, but for the people around him." She tilts her head. "A merchant who doesn't profit for himself is a puzzle. A puzzle is interesting. And I like interesting things."
She settles back.
"He's not a deal. He's not an asset. He's the kind of person who makes the whole board look different just by bein' on it." A small, genuine smile, different from the polished one. "I haven't figured him out yet. I find I don't entirely mind."
Anastasia Hoshin, who has figured out almost everything worth figuring out, sounds almost fond.
— JULIUS JUUKULIUS —
"My friend. And I say that with every ounce of respect the word deserves."
He says it after a considered pause, with his hands folded and his posture impeccable and his violet eyes carrying the careful weight of someone who has revised his opinion more than once and has no embarrassment about saying so.
"When I first met Subaru," Julius says, "I thought him a boor. Loud. Graceless. Given to spectacle and self-pity in equal measure. I told him this, rather publicly, and at the time I believed I was doing the knights of Lugnica a service."
A pause.
"I was wrong about what I was looking at." He says it cleanly, without self-flagellation. "I was looking at his surface and mistaking it for his sum. I did not account for — " He pauses again. "For the fact that what looks like recklessness from the outside can be, from the inside, the most deliberate courage."
He straightens slightly.
"He has bested me. Not with a blade. Not with magic. He has bested me in the ways that matter most to a knight in loyalty, in sacrifice, in knowing when to stand and when to fall and how to make both mean something." His expression is grave and sincere and completely without irony. "He is my friend. I do not use that word lightly. I use it because he has earned it, and because I intend to be worthy of his, in turn."
Julius Juukulius says this the way knights speak of the things that make them better than they were.
— RICARDO WELKIN —
"A solid fighter. Weird as all hell. But solid."
Ricardo says this with the absolute ease of a man who is six feet of relaxed muscle and has very few complicated feelings about anything.
"I don't overcomplicate things," he says pleasantly. "You want to know what a person is? Watch them in a fight. Not how good they are, how they carry themselves." He leans forward. "Subaru can't fight. Everyone knows this. He goes anyway. That's the read."
He grins. His canines are impressive.
"Weird kid, though. The smell of him is something else. And he talks a lot, even when he's scared." He shrugs enormously. "But when the Iris says to move, he moves. When the Captain needs someone to hold a position, he holds it with his face if that's what's available. That's all Pops needs to know."
He says it with the easy authority of someone whose respect means something precisely because it is not easily given.
— PRISCILLA BARIELLE —
"Amusing. The world set him before me for a reason."
She looks at the interviewer as though the question itself is mildly beneath her, her crimson fan open, her scarlet eyes half-lidded with the casual sovereignty of someone who has never once doubted her own importance.
"You expect me to say something dismissive," Priscilla says. "Very well. He is a commoner with no breeding, no magic, no title, and a fashion sense that suggests his world had given up on aesthetics entirely."
She pauses. The fan turns once.
"And yet." She lets the word hang. "He stood before me and he was not afraid. Not of my station, not of my reputation. He was annoyed with me, which is a different thing, and vastly more interesting." Something glitters in her expression. "The world favors me. This is simply fact. But the world does not send fools to stand before me. It sends the things worth her attention."
She closes the fan.
"He is entertaining. He is improbable. He keeps arriving at places he has no business arriving at." A pause. "The world placed him in my path. I choose to find that appropriate."
She will not say: she watched him once, from a distance, make a decision that cost him everything, for people who could not know what it cost. She will not say it. But she saw it.
— ALDEBARAN —
"My pal. The only other one who gets it."
He says it quietly. Not the way he says most things, which is with his helmet and his easy sprawl and the deliberate performance of a man who has decided the world is very funny. He says it quietly, without the act.
"My pal," Al says. "Yeah."
He's quiet for a moment.
"You know what it's like, coming from somewhere else? Waking up in a world with different rules and no map and no one who understands the references?" He's looking at his gauntlet. "You learn real fast that you gotta make a character. Something that fits. Something that doesn't ask too much of the people around you."
He exhales.
"Pal's got a character too. The yelling, the jokes, the big gestures." A pause. "But I know what I'm looking at underneath it. I know what it costs to keep getting up in a world that didn't ask you to come." His voice is very even. "He pays that cost every time. Without complaint. To people who don't know he's paying it."
He leans back. The act comes back partway, but not all the way.
"My pal," he says again. "The kind you don't find twice."
Al knows things about Return by Death that he has never said aloud. He keeps them like something sacred.
— ECHIDNA, WITCH OF GREED —
"The most fascinating variable in four hundred years of study."
She sits across the tea table with her hands wrapped around a cup that steams with something that isn't quite tea, her dark eyes carrying the warm, avid glow of someone who has found exactly what they were looking for and is not sure yet what to do with that.
"Variables are, in principle, the enemy of knowledge," Echidna says pleasantly. "An experiment with too many unknowns yields no data. I prefer constants. Predictability. Elegant systems."
She takes a sip.
"Natsuki Subaru is the most inelegant system I have ever modeled." She sounds delighted. "He has no innate ability worth recording. His emotional regulation is catastrophic. His strategic thinking is erratic at best and suicidal at worst." She sets the cup down. "And yet he produces outcomes that my calculations should have ruled impossible. Over and over and over."
She tilts her head.
"Do you know what that means, from a purely intellectual standpoint? It means there is something in him that I have not yet identified. A factor. Something that does not appear in any variable I've tested for." Her eyes are very bright. "It's the most interesting problem I've had in centuries."
She pauses. Something softer crosses her face, quickly.
"...He also refused me. In a way that was not strategic, not calculated just honest. Honestly, inconveniently, ruinously kind." She picks the cup back up. "I find I have not stopped thinking about it."
The Witch of Greed, who wanted to know everything, met the one thing she has not yet been able to fully understand. She finds, against all expectation, that she is glad she hasn't.
— MEILI PORTROUTE —
"Onii-san. He's a little scary. But he's kind."
She says it with her head tilted and her pigtails swinging, her blue eyes considering the question with the unsettling focus of a child who has been taught to assess threats before people.
"Most people who are scary aren't kind," Meili says thoughtfully. "And most people who are kind aren't actually brave. They're kind because it's safe to be." She pauses. "Onii-san is kind even when it isn't safe. Even when it costs him something."
She blinks.
"He read my book," she adds quietly. "He didn't have to. Most people don't want to know the things in my book." Her voice is very matter-of-fact, the way children are sometimes matter-of-fact about things that shouldn't be matter-of-fact. "He read it anyway. And then he tried to help."
She tilts her head the other way.
"Onii-san," she concludes. "A little scary. But the good kind of scary. Like something that protects you."
She says this with the simple certainty of a child who has finally learned the difference.
『Who is Natsuki Subaru to you?』
join thxxx