Chapter Text
The night went by in a blur.
Subaru could remember everything up until dinner. After that it all starts to get a bit blurry. Some parts stuck out though. Such as the clothes. By God did she remember the clothes.
The underwear, the blue dress, the wedding dress.
The beautiful ivory silk gown. While the skirt was covered in silk-tulle and the sleeves were tulle entirely, the bodice was uncovered. It was a front close bodice that went down to her waist and the hem was closed with a blue ribbon that trailed down the skirt like a waterfall. Over the closing was a layer of ruffled tulle, while under the closing laid nothing but skin.
Really what she remembered was that the tulle tickled.
The chemise from before had probably gotten blood on it over dinner and that’s why it was removed. Or something.
Subaru could also remember that there was ribbon around the ends of the sleeves just below her elbows, and ribbons folded into roses sewn onto the skirt creating gathers in the tulle.
The last things about the dress she could remember was that she almost got her heels caught on the skirt’s long chapel-train and that the dress had a wide neckline.
Not that any of that mattered. Because then the dress became covered in Subaru’s own blood and she was throwing up into a bucket with Reinhard’s coat around her shoulders and Emilia holding back her hair and Julius rubbing her back on the floor of a shaking carriage with Reinhard sitting awkwardly in the corner.
Subaru had no idea how she got there.
Logically she could piece it together. She was in the wherever Eduard lived, then Emilia, Reinhard, and Julius showed up, then they took her outside into a carriage. The details escaped her though.
After a few more minutes of heaving, Subaru felt well enough to put the bucket down and lean back.
Julius took the bucket from her and placed it to the side while Emilia and Reinhard helped her up onto a bench set into the carriage wall. The second after they sat, the carriage suddenly jolted, it had likely gone over a rock.
“Subaru, why is your vomit red?”
Huh? That was weird. Why was Julius looking at her puke? Also it being red, she supposed. Subaru hadn’t eaten any beetroot or anything recently, so.
“That’s probably the wine.”
Everyone looked at her weirdly at that.
Shiiiiit. Now they’ll think she was partying it up while being kidnapped and they were all panicking for nothing. Which she was, sorta, but they didn’t have to know that.
Emilia-tan especially was looking at her weird.
“You don’t drink though?”
So in her case the weird look was confusion. Good to know. What wasn’t good though was that Reinhard was looking also confused and Julius was looking alarmed.
“I didn’t want to be rude…”
Julius made a strangled noise before gently putting the bucket down in the corner of the carriage, away from where everyone was sitting.
“You… didn’t want to be rude.”
Hey, Subaru had her priorities on straight some of the time.
She shifted in her trainers. There had to be a reason for why everyone was acting like this. Hmm…
Going over the night, or two nights, does it count? - Subaru put recent events in order.
She was kidnapped while walking back to the inn, she was stripped while unconscious and put in sexy underwear, then discovered there was no easy way out, then met her really hot kidnapper, got dressed, went to dinner, drank wine even though she doesn’t drink because even when she said she doesn’t drink it was poured anyway, made out with her kidnapper, he drank her blood again, was left on the table for a while, got proposed to, and hm.
Subaru was beginning to see the problem.
Even though Emilia-tan and Reinhard and Julius weren’t there for these things, they were still there for the very fuzzy ending. And looking back on everything, it does seem pretty bad in retrospect, even if it was really attractive at the time.
At least now she wasn’t covered in blood anymore. Some of her usual clothes had been brought to the Valentin Mansion in a carriage. She was grateful. It would kind of suck to be wearing bloodstained clothes for the whole ride back. Even if putting them on while extremely out of it was a hassle. Wait, if she’s not in the dress anymore is she still allowed to be a girl? Oh fuck. Everyone probably thinks she’s a freak. Maybe if she didn’t think about it, it would go away?
Back to the point.
“Um, I’ve thought about it. It was pretty bad. But hey! You rescued me! It’s completely fine.”
Subaru’s attempt to lighten the mood was a complete failure. Maybe it wouldn’t have been if she didn’t have a killer headache. But at least throwing up a minute ago cleared her thoughts.
“Subaru, you are a very dear friend to me. Anything similar to tonight would be more than ‘pretty bad’, it would actually be extremely bad.”
‘Oh. Thanks Reinhard, that’s really sweet of you.’ Subaru thought to herself in a completely platonic matter where her heart did NOT skip a beat. She was having a completely normal moment with a friend who she had normal feelings about.
The carriage suddenly jolted, before quickly settling into the still motion that was expected of dragon carriages.
Unfortunately, the sudden jolt was enough to unsettle Subaru’s barely settled stomach. She quickly dove for the bucket; barely making it in time before emptying the remaining contents of her stomach for a second time that night. This time, little more than bile left her throat; the lamb dish from dinner having already been vomited up in its half-digested state.
The night went on, with Subaru drifting in and out of sleep the whole way back to the inn.
Her state changed as time passed. The carriage lights began to hurt her eyes and the pounding in her head became stronger. Even though the carriage had stopped shaking like before, her stomach still didn’t properly settle. The soothing words spoken to her by her friends only made her want to cover her ears. Not even burrowing her head into Emilia-tan’s lap and having her hair be gently pet could cure her of these things.
The one conclusion that Subaru could come up with was that this was the aftereffects of drinking the wine earlier. She had never been drunk before, but this is the sort of thing she probably would have expected.
It sucked. Subaru wondered why Otto liked getting drunk so much if this was the effect.
The sun came up, but there would still be a few more hours till they returned to town. The brightness made it so Subaru could no longer even attempt to sleep, and she instead sat up from the lap she was laying in. Which was not the same one as she had fallen asleep in.
“Ah, good morning, Subaru.”
A gentle melodious voice came from above her.
“Nngh-”
Subaru regretted opening her eyes to see who it was. Reinhard’s smile was too bright to look at, almost rivalling the sun. She covered her face with a half asleep hand that she pulled out from underneath her.
“Ah, sorry! I’d meant to switch back earlier,” Emilia-tan’s bell like voice began. “The three of us had been rotating through the night so none of our legs were overworked.”
Subaru didn’t blame Emilia-tan for the idea, it was sweet, and reasonable. She wouldn’t want Emilia-tan to have to suffer in any way. In fact, she wouldn’t have minded if it was just switching laps between Emilia-tan and Reinhard. But it being ‘three’ meant that Julius was involved in the mix. Which was an unforgiveable slight. She would… complain about it when she felt better.
In the meantime, Reinhard was surprisingly comfortable. Did he have a Divine Protection for that too? Probably.