A 'Rock' Awakening

A/N: Sorry for the delaaaaaaaaaay, chapter was hard to write. And harder to rewrite. If there's something you wanna say about it, do it in the comment.

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Taking it all in, Julian frowned. Even if it wasn't his fault, this was hardly appropriate considering the situation.

"Well, sorry about that. But I have no control over it." He apologised actually feeling a bit awkward, dipping his head, he tried to scratch it. Only to be reminded that his left arm was gone.

'Right, time to study some biology and practice my angel side power a bit through EC. I just hope it isn't something that'll follow me anywhere else but in re-zero.' The possibility of repeating his ritual stunt in every new world crossed his mind, but he discarded it quickly since it was a dangerous train of thought.

Unfortunately, his appology seemed to fall on deaf ears as the damage was already done. The two sister were both blushing, though one of them was part because of restrained anger. Ram looked like she swallowed a lemon while Rem looked panicked, trying to wrench her gaze away but not quite achieving to.

As for Emilia, well. She looked clueless, confused about both what he was talking and the phenomenon in question.

"Nevermind... that. It's not important. You've been asleep for a week. Now that you woke up, Ram and Rem want to talk with you." Ram stated, procceeding to ignore the anaconda in the room.

"Impatient much, heh? Couldn't it like, wait? Like you said, I just woke up from a week long nap. Besides, I already know what you two wants to talk about." Sliding outs of his sheets first thing first and sitting on the bed side, thank Kass he wasn't naked, Julian sighed. A headache already building in premonition of the conversation je was about to have.

At that moment, Emilia spoke up. Wrenching her hands together in nervousness. "Ju-Julian-Kun. I have to tell you somethi-"

"Emilia-Sama, there's no need for you to do it yourself. Let Rem deliver it, as the one truly responsible for it." Rem cut Emilia off quietly, starting by looking at the ground before she bit her lips and procceeded to stare straight in Julian's eyes.

"Julian-Sama, Su—"

"He's dead, I know. I knew he was dead from the moment he was the only one absent back then in your room." Julian said calmly, his hands secretely tearing at the mastress for a second before relaxing. Subaru wasn't even really dead. It was just his own consciousness reminding him how good of a buddy he was.

At his words, a deafening silence fell on the four of them. The implication making the two sisters widen their eyes in disbelief and confusion.

"So... You... You decided to..." Even the ever witty Ram struggled to put her thoughts into words.

"I did." Julian nodded slightly, lettting the rest go unsaid, there was nothing else to say. He had saved Rem instead of saving Subaru. At least, in their eyes, it would seem like it.

"Why?.." Both sisters whispered at the same time, making him chuckle ruefully.

Before anything else, Julian smiled wrily to Emilia. "Sorry Emi, but I think what will be said next is quite personal. And while I don't really care about it. I'm not sure about Ram and Rem."

"Emi?.." Mumbling the surname, Emilia looked more curious than anything else but as she saw how the twin suddenly tensed up and became on edge. She got the hint.

"I see... I still nedd to catch up on my studies. So I'll let you three do your thing, I guess?" Tilting her head at the end, she put a finger to her lips and made for the door.

"Regardless of everything, I'm glad that you're fine. Julian, see you later." Just before leaving, she turned back and gave him a smile.

The door closing. Julian smiled wrily at the two sisters' paranoia. "So... why? That's what you girls want to know. Right?"

The two sisters staid silent, sending an unsure glance at each other.

Julian sighed and lowered his eyes to the floor in thought, he stayed like that for a few second before gazing at both sister in turn. "What, exactly. Do you girls know about me?"

Again, the sisters exchanged a look. Making Ram say. "Nothing, besides the obvious."

"That's right. Nothing. For you two, I'm a perfect stranger." Julian said, leaning forward presenting his open palm to make a point.

"I don't want to go ahead of myself, but if there was a reason to pin on why I saved you. It would be personal and frankly, even if I told you right now. You wouldn't understand."

"That's why I offer you to ask me any questions you have on your mind to change that fact. And I'll answer them to the best of my ability, we can even sign a contract stipulating that I'll only answer the truth if you are doubtful. I hate being doubted." Julian offered, Idly inspecting the bandage covering his stump.

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Ram hesitated, it would be disrespectful to ask such a contract to someone she had such a dept of gratitude to. Yet, before she could even make up her mind on the subject, her dear sister proved herself less tactful.

"What is your relationship with the witch's cult? Why do you have the stink of the witches on you?"

She tensed, inwardly wanting to reprimand Rem but staying silent. They were supposed to forget about that, as not only the boy was no doubt powerful after defeating the bowel hunter and bringing back her sister. But he had made a deal with Roswaal and became his apprentice.

Rem was brash, but these questions should have been taboo and asked only in thoughts for obvious reason.

On one hand, bursting the boy's cover could make him unpredictable and possibly attack them. And while they were in the manor and under Roswaal's protection, if Julian could kill them before someone strong enough could intervene was all but uncertain. Making the endeavor a dangerous affair.

On the other hand, if Julian somehow was not related to the witch cult. Then the question was plain rude and entered in personal territory.

So, with that in mind. Ram prepared herself for the worst, blade of winds at her fingertips.

The answer Julian gave blew out of the water both option completely and would change her life forever.

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Julian was not surprised by Rem's question, he was simply surprised that there was less hostility coming along with it than he thought it would have.

"None, never even met a member of the cult in my entire life. As for the second question, it's dangerous both for me and you to answer it. Literally, but eh. I was the one who said I would answer truthfully, didn't I?" Julian shrugged, he was confident that after his first taste of it, he had found how to counter Satella's influence on him. So the true danger was limited.

"This witch stench that you smell from me, it comes from a c—"

He didn't even get say more than one letter from the word curse that he found himself in a familiar situation: Time froze and the world progressively lost all light.

It meant that Satella wanted to keep her little secret at all cost.

It was understandable, but he was done playing along with the rules. Also, he wasn't the same as last time. Now, he was one-armed and crippled.

It obviously meant boosted power. Since that was just how things worked.

Julian made himself able to move again by using his own time manipulation, then he exploded with PoD. Banishing the shadows encroaching on him away.

"You're not Subaru. Yet you have the gift I made only for him." The distorted voice of a woman reached his ears, it sounded devastated and was interrupted by sobs of sadness.

Then, it twisted into a screech of utter hate.

"I HATE YOU!"

"Yeah, fuck you too. Satella. Would it really kill you to just stop playing favorite with Subaru and give me some of that love too?" Julian grinned, defending himself against the renewed onslaught of shadows hands and spikes with difficulty, but notably less than his first experience with the witch.

Then he had been stupid, trying to win in a contest of raw might against the witch of greed, even if just a manifestation. It was impossible for his current self, and would remain so for some time. Incarnation of impossibility or not.

The thing was, he didn't need to defeat her, he didn't even need to win at all. He just had to isolate himself from her little private timeline and block the direct influence she had on him because of the curse of back from the dead.

In hindsight, it was pretty easy to do. He only had to use the right tool.

But before that, some training to accustom himself to his missing arm wouldn't hurt...

Evading a salvo of creeping spikes and slapping away a couple of giant shadow hands with PoD infused palm. He was taken by surprise as the hands changed formation and came at him like a veritable wall of darkness, leaving nowhere to dodge.

'Okay, maybe, just maybe, I shouldn't have taunted the crazy world destroying witch.' Not willing to receive whatever attack was inevitably hidden behind the wall of hands after he would destroy it. Julian brought out his wings.

Then, he coated his body in the orange glow of EC and willed for his time to slow down.

And just like that, he snapped back to reality, exactly where he had been before Satella' rude intervention of his Q&A.

His hunch was based on the fact that to affect reality in this manner and isolate him so thoroughly from the world. Satella needed a crutch in space to possibly apply her dominion over time, since he doubted she could really freeze the entire world like that. Even at her full power.

With only influencing a limited place, like the space taken by a body. She could basically do whatever she wanted with way less power needed. Like speeding up someone's conciousness and freeze their body.

It wasn't hard to see that the curse's bearer was a sort of relay for her power. Since it was showed in all version of the canonical work. (A/N: Correct me if I'm somehow wrong.)

Satella may be powerful, but her reach was limited and she was not inevitable. Not for him at least.

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Snapping back to the present, he was met with the twin still waiting for him to finish his sentence.

So he did.

Clearing his throat, he repeated. "It comes from a curse, granted by Satella herself. In normal circumstances, I can't speak about it. Or either I'll die, or the people I'm talking to will..."

"Urg!" Suddenly, Rem covered her nose as Julian felt more than saw something darting from himself and reaching for the sisters.

"Like that." His eyes glowing, Julian enlightened the strange sensation with light. Showing two ethereal hands slithering toward Rem and Ram.

"Wait! Don't panic!" Julian called out and raised his hands, seeing their eyes widening in answer to the apparition. Freezing the hands with time magic. He explained.

"This is part of Satella authority. It happen everytime I share too much knowledge I shouldn't have known. She's probably resorting to this because I should have been died by now, by these same things."

Dispelling the hands with a burst of PoD, Julian sighed. "The curse bring me back to life to a specific point in time each time I die. And like I said, I'm normally forbidden to talk about it. But now, I found a way to banish Satella's influence on me. So yeah, that's your answer Rem. Anything else?"

Needless to say, he was met by blank faces.