Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Pandora had lived through countless ages, but time had long since lost meaning for her. She no longer counted years, only moments of fascination, glimpses of madness, and the rarest exceptions that made her immortal existence bearable. The Vainglory Witch Factor was a curse — or perhaps a blessing — wrapped in an enigma even she struggled to fully grasp.

Beyond commanding reality itself to obey her whims, Pandora’s greatest secret lay in her vision. She could peer beneath the veneer, beneath the carefully constructed masks that people wore to survive and to deceive. Humans were fragile creatures, desperate to belong, desperate to hide their rot behind smiles, hollow words, and carefully rehearsed gestures. To others, their facades appeared flawless, polished, perfect.

To Pandora, they were transparent.

She saw everything: the raw soul, the fractured mind, the chaos beneath calm eyes. She loved the grotesque uniqueness of each spirit — the ambition, the lies, the despair, the filthy truths no one dared admit even to themselves.

This was how she chose her Sin Archbishops. Not for power alone, but for the delicious insanity they embodied, for the way their witch factors twisted them into abominations of thought and feeling. To gaze upon them was to witness a mind unraveling — to watch a person become something utterly alien, beyond sanity.

Petelgeuse Romanee-Conti had been a curious specimen before he embraced the Sloth Witch Factor. There was a sliver of light in his soul, a twisted but still human core: his obsessive devotion to Flugel and Satella, the secret love he guarded for Fortuna, the strange protective fire that burned beneath his madness.

But once the witch factor took root, it devoured him whole. Pandora saw his former self trapped in a cyclone of shadows, writhing and screaming, drowning beneath a tide of insanity. Now all that remained was a puppet — eyes empty voids, mouth babbling incoherent threats and worship to a queen of madness. His aura, once faintly warm and protective, had turned to a vile, oozing blackness — a cloud of despair and corruption that stank of rot.

The fact he had been slain by a boy named Natsuki Subaru was… disappointing, but intriguing.

Natsuki Subaru. The boy whose name stirred a storm in her curiosity. The one who toppled the White Whale, killed the Sin Archbishop of Sloth, defeated the Great Rabbit, and now had crushed the Sin Archbishop of Greed beneath his feet. The legend, the hero… but who was he truly?

She had to see him with her own eyes.

With a flicker of her authority, she teleported herself into the ruined city of Pristella, rubble strewn across the streets like broken memories. The air pulsed with a myriad of auras — candidates for the throne, their loyal followers, and others whose motives were obscured by layers of hope and desperation.

The Sword Saint’s aura caught her attention immediately — bright, unwavering, the unmistakable glow of “hero.” But underneath the light, she saw the fractures: self-loathing coiled tightly around his heart, invisible chains forged from expectation and duty, cracking his resolve with silent pressure.

“How curious,” she whispered to herself.

Suddenly, a voice interrupted her thoughts on the Sword Saint. “Hey, you there. Are you lost?”

The concerned tone belonged to a young man, unmistakably Subaru. His gaze was sharp but gentle, scanning her like she was just another frightened girl amidst the chaos. She smiled softly, and with her authority gazed deeper.

What she saw made her falter.

Before her was a broken thing — not a living human, but a corpse reanimated by some unnatural force. His body was ravaged beyond recognition: torn open, his innards exposed, his head caved in with his brain matter splattered. Blood coated him like a second skin, dripping and pooling beneath his feet.

A horror that would have turned any sane man to vomit, yet here he stood, alive.

His voice softened, almost pitying. “Where are your parents?”

Her answer was silence.

The grass beneath him seemed to wither with each step, a subtle distortion that only her witch factor could perceive. Darkness clung to him like a shroud — the shadow of Death itself.

Yet in his eyes burned a fire so fierce it seared her vision, a blazing light of willpower and defiance. It was unnatural, impossible. He carried two opposing forces simultaneously — the chilling inevitability of death and a gentle radiance of care and kindness.

For the first time in her existence, Pandora felt something she had never known: fear.

This was not mere death. This was an abomination, a walking paradox — a monster who defied the laws of existence. Death was meant to be the end. It was not meant to have a heartbeat, a mind, or a soul.

And yet here, standing before her, was Death itself — given shape, given breath, given will.

With a shiver, Pandora tore her gaze away and vanished in an instant, retreating from the impossible truth she could not yet comprehend.

Chapter Text

Pandora stood in her sanctuary — a realm that existed outside the flow of time and logic, carved out by her Authority long ago. It was serene here. A white void dotted with impossible flowers, blossoms that never wilted, growing from nothing, suspended in silence. A still place, a place meant for reflection.

But today, the silence screamed.

She sat cross-legged atop a floating platform of woven silver strands, her eyes half-lidded, her fingers trembling slightly. Not from weakness. Not from anger.

From fear.

Pandora — the Witch of Vainglory, who had walked through empires and plagues and war, who smiled as kings begged for mercy and mothers wailed for lost children — was afraid. The moment replayed in her mind over and over, unbidden.

That boy.

That thing.

What she saw through her Authority should have been impossible. The sight beneath Natsuki Subaru’s mask.

She had gazed into souls hollowed by sin, warped by obsession, bloated with pride, shattered by despair. She had seen men who thought themselves gods and women who begged to be monsters. But Subaru…

Subaru was not warped.

He was emptied.

He was not cracked — he had been broken, again and again, with surgical precision. A corpse that refused to rot. A soul that had died dozens of deaths but refused to stop moving.

And what she saw—

“The Great Rabbit devoured him once,” Pandora murmured to herself, palms against her temples. “Gnawed through flesh, split the bone, drank his marrow…”

She could still see it, feel it: a memory clinging to his essence like soot.

Then came the Bowel Hunter, her blade slicing his stomach open as if unzipping a garment. Pandora had seen that, too — intestines falling out, the stomach lining torn as he screamed soundlessly. Wishing for death.

There was more.

His throat had been slit clean across. Once. Twice. She wasn’t sure anymore.

His ribs had been cracked open like a cage forced wide. His guts had spilled forward in grotesque loops, pooling at his feet as he continued to stand. To smile. To help others.

His skull — crushed. The moment of impact frozen in her mind. Bone shattered. Brain matter exploded like fruit under pressure. One of his eyes had burst — the other had been gouged out, torn free, left dangling by a sinew.

He’d been frozen solid — blue lips, blue skin, eyes staring in mute horror as his body became a sculpture of death.

He’d been hanged by Sirius’s chains, his own spine nearly pulled out through his neck as he convulsed, and still… still he came back.

“His arm,” she whispered. “A single blow… Severed at the shoulder.”

She should not have been able to see these things. The Vainglory Witch Factor only revealed a person’s truth — their inner world, their hidden self. Not literal memory. Not accumulated death.

So why had she seen all of it?

Why had she felt it echo through his being like a choir of screams trapped in a single breath?

Subaru Natsuki was not a person. He was not even a soul. He was a concept. A looping paradox that mocked the natural order. A monster of will forged through annihilation.

He died. And he died. And he died.

Each death stitched into his essence, layer upon layer, until what remained was something that should never be.

“I saw a boy who had his eye stabbed out… and I saw the same boy gutted… and I saw him eaten alive… frozen to death… bled out on the floor…”

Her voice broke.

She was never one to get emotional over others, but what made this so much more terrifying was that there was kindness.

There had been kindness in him too — and that was what made it worse.

That gentle flame — the one that made him kneel before broken people and offer them warmth, the one that made him reach out even as he bled — it had no right to exist within that corpse.

It should not have endured.

“No one… no one should still be able to love after that…”

Her stomach twisted.

Had she created this?

No — she would have remembered. She did not give him a Witch Factor. She had never touched him. He was not hers. And that was what terrified her most.

She could understand madness. She welcomed it. She could peel back the layers of an Archbishop and trace every deformity, every corruption like notes on a page. But Subaru…

Subaru had no tune.

He was an orchestra of screams, a silence made from a hundred thousand deaths, stitched together by a will that refused to yield.

And now she understood the truth.

She had not seen Death that day.

No. Death was merciful. Death was kind. Death ended things.

Subaru did not.

Subaru was something far worse.

He was the refusal of death — its antithesis.

He was Persistence.

And somehow… somehow, even that frightened her less than what lurked just beyond the veil of his soul. The presence that watched, always watched — not him, but the world around him. A thing without form. A shade that reached out from his shadow like it had been waiting for her to look.

When she met his eyes, it was not just Subaru looking back.

There was something else.

Something that smiled through him.

Something, no someone that said:

“You were not meant to see me.”

Pandora stood. Slowly.

She didn’t tremble anymore. The fear had become cold. Controlled.

She needed to know. To understand. To witness this thing to its conclusion.

“Subaru Natsuki…” she said, closing her eyes. “You are not mine. But I will learn you.”

And in the still air of her sanctuary, where even time was afraid to move, Pandora began to prepare.

Because the next time they met, she wouldn’t run.

She would look deeper.

Even if it destroyed her.

Chapter Text

She felt it before it happened.

Not magic. Not intrusion. Not force.

Just… presence.

The air in her sanctuary shifted like breath drawn into lungs that didn’t exist. The silence bent inward, recoiling from a shape that should not have been able to enter this place. This world was her own — sealed, untraceable, untouched since she created it. Not even the other witches could reach her here.

Yet now, someone walked its endless white fields.

Footsteps echoed through the nothing. Measured. Calm.

She stood slowly on her silver platform, eyes narrowing. She’d woven her sanctuary from the very fabric of her Authority, hidden it between instants of time, beyond reason. He could not be here.

He should not be here.

And yet—

“Natsuki Subaru,” she whispered.

He stepped into view.

Not frantic, not confused, not bleeding.

Just there — as though this place was where he belonged.

“Sorry,” he said quietly. “Didn’t mean to walk in on your private space.”

She stared.

He looked perfectly ordinary. Human. Messy black hair, tired eyes. No wounds. No screaming. No broken limbs or shattered bone. Just a boy. But she knew better.

She said nothing, only lifted her hand. With a flex of her fingers, her Authority bloomed open — the full force of her perception laid bare.

She would see him. Truly. Deeper than before.

The world around him peeled away.

She saw the corpses first, of course. Dozens. Then hundreds. The familiar deaths. The Great Rabbit chewing through his flesh. Elsa’s blade slicing him open. The glint of frozen breath as his heart froze and head rolled off. The sound of his own throat getting slit. Every agony, every mutilation — painted in the space around him like brushstrokes on a void canvas.

Then more. Wounds she hadn’t seen last time. A knife through the gut as he cried. His body thrown down a hallway as he got struck, with his arm flying off. His leg torn off by the Great Rabbit, his face cracking as he froze.

All of it — again, and again, and again.

And yet…

Behind the corpses… was warmth.

Kindness. A warmth that embraced all things, like a fire lit for others in a frozen world. It burned steady — not with the naïve optimism of a boy, but the earned gentleness of someone who had lost everything and still chose to reach out.

She saw his forgiveness.

Of people who betrayed him. People who killed him. People who used him. Forgiven.

Of those who mocked him, who abandoned him.

Of the world itself, for being cruel.

But that was not his core.

Even the warmth dimmed before it.

At the center of everything — buried beneath corpses, beneath death, beneath gentleness and love — was a black mirror.

A bottomless void of self-hatred.

Not theatrical. Not shallow. Not born from guilt alone.

It was personal. Intimate. A hatred that spoke not in screams, but in whispers.

“I ruin everything I touch.”

“It’s always my fault.”

“They’d all be better off if it wasn’t me.”

“If I had just stayed dead.”

Her Authority faltered.

She stumbled back, breath caught in her throat, as if struck.

The hatred he bore toward himself… it dwarfed every sin she had ever admired in her Archbishops. It was deeper than Petelgeuse’s delusions, more intimate than Regulus’s narcissism, more devastating than Sirius’s twisted love. It was real.

The boy who stood in front of her was still smiling — just a little. Tired. Soft.

“Why did you come here?” she asked, quietly. Not in accusation. Not in command. In awe.

He shrugged.

“I don’t know. My legs kind of brought me here.”

His voice was so normal. But she now knew the weight it carried. It was the voice of a boy who woke up screaming in silence. Who stitched himself back together with trembling hands every day. Who carried the weight of a thousand deaths and still said:

“Let me help you.”

“Do you hate me?” she asked, before she could stop herself.

He blinked. “Huh?”

“You know who I am, don’t you? What I’ve done.”

He looked away. Then up, into the endless void sky above them.

“I’ve met a lot of people who’ve done horrible things,” he said. “And a lot of people who’ve suffered through worse. I stopped keeping score a long time ago.”

Pandora’s lips trembled. That response should have angered her. Or confused her. Or amused her.

But instead… it wounded her.

“You are a contradiction,” she said, softly. “You should not exist. You are stitched together with death and denial and duty. You’re not a person. You’re a monument to pain. And yet…”

He tilted his head, waiting.

“…you love. And still you think you’re the villain.”

He looked down.

“I do,” he whispered. “More than anyone ever could.”

The kindness, the fire, the strength — they weren’t there because he thought he was good. They were there because he thought no one else deserved to suffer like he had.

That was his sin.

And it was beautiful.

For the first time in centuries, Pandora felt something break inside her. Something small. Something distant. A quiet little crack in the part of her that once thought she’d seen all humanity had to offer.

She had been wrong.

Subaru didn’t belong to any of the Witches. Not even Satella.

He belonged to himself.

A boy with no chains but the ones he forged himself.

He turned to go.

“Wait,” she said. “Will we meet again?”

He gave her a faint smile. “Probably. That’s how these things work, right?”

And then he walked off the edge of the sanctuary.

Pandora stood alone.

But not untouched.

This time… she didn’t flee in fear.

This time, she placed her hand over her chest and whispered:

“…What are you, Subaru Natsuki?”

Chapter Text

The sanctuary was still.

Subaru had long since stepped off its edge, and yet his presence lingered like a flame that refused to go out — soft, persistent, unbearable in its warmth. Pandora remained standing, one hand over her chest.

She should have sealed the world away again. Hidden it between instants of time, as she had always done. But instead, the words slipped from her lips like a prayer:

“Come back. I need to understand. What are you, Natsuki Subaru?”

No spell. No command. Just something quiet and unfinished. A single question.

And the void answered.

Footsteps — soft, measured.

He returned.

No fanfare. No shadow. Just Subaru, with tired eyes and a quiet smile, as though this place had always belonged to him.

“You’re persistent,” he said, hands in his pockets. “Or maybe I’m the one who can’t stay away.”

She looked at him — not the corpses, not the deaths, not the thing watching from inside him.

Just him.

“I want to look again,” she said.

He tilted his head. “Still curious?”

“I’m not looking for horror,” she replied. “Not anymore.”

He nodded. “Go ahead. Take a look.”

She reached.

Her Authority unfolded — not as a weapon, but as a hand offered in reverence.

She bypassed the pain, the death, the madness. She plunged through the fire and the kindness and the mirror of self-loathing — until she reached a void.

Black. Empty. Eternal. His self-hatred.

She touched it.

And fell. Sucked in.

A memory.

The capital, cracked and silent beneath a blue sky. A boy standing on the stone floor, his shoulders trembling.

Rem stood in front of him. Care and love was in her eyes. She called his name, told him it was easy to give up.

But Subaru — Subaru — broke.

“Did you just say what I think you said?”

His voice was sharp. Desperate. Then louder:

“Don’t give me that crap! There’s nothing easy about giving up! Nothing!”

Pandora flinched.

This wasn’t physical suffering. It was deeper.

“You think I’m just doing nothing? That I’m not thinking about anything? That I threw my life away without a fight? That’s a lie! It was never that easy for me.”

His fists clenched.

“It was easier to believe there was something I could do. But I know now — there’s nothing I can do. There’s no way out. The only path everything leads to is giving up.”

Pandora felt her breath catch.

“I’ve given up. Carrying it all was impossible from the start. My hands are too small. Everything I cared about slipped through my fingers, and I couldn’t hold onto anything.”

She had watched his body shatter — ribs crushed, eyes stabbed, flesh eaten.

But this…

“What do you know about me, huh? Nothing! I’ll tell you what kind of man I really am.”

And then the truth:

“I have no strength — but I want everything. I have no knowledge — but all I do is dream. There’s nothing I can do — but I struggle like an idiot.”

“I— I hate myself.”

The words cut deep.

“I talk a big game like I’m someone important, but I never do anything. I’m just a coward, a weakling, a worthless crybaby. I’m a fraud — and it’s amazing I can even live with myself.”

“Before I came here, I did nothing with my life. All that time, all that freedom — wasted. I could’ve done anything. But I didn’t. And this—this pathetic thing you see—that’s what came out of it.”

He stared into the floor like it might swallow him.

“This is all the product of my laziness, my weakness, my fear. I tried to act like I was doing my best, but I wasn’t. I just wanted the right to make excuses.”

“Even when you helped me study, it was all a pose to cover how ashamed I was of being so stupid.”

His voice cracked.

“Deep down… I’m just a coward. A filthy, self-centered coward who’s terrified of what people think of me. Nothing about me has changed!”

And then—

“I’ve always known… everything that’s happened is my fault.”

“I’m the lowest of the low.”

“I absolutely hate myself.”

The words echoed.

Pandora’s Authority faltered.

This pain… it was too naked. Too human. It wasn’t born of madness. It wasn’t shaped by a Witch Factor. It was just a boy’s truth, spoken into the dark.

And still—still—he’d kept going.

A hatred forged by his own hands. A prisoner of his thoughts. And yet — he still loves. He still shows kindness.

The sanctuary returned.

She staggered, clutching her chest. The silence screamed.

“I thought I understood pain,” she whispered. “I thought I understood love.”

Her voice cracked.

“I didn’t. I never did, I never have, and I never will.”

Subaru stood across from her. Quiet. Waiting.

“Do you still hate yourself?” she asked.

He hesitated.

“…Some days, I don’t know,” he said. “Most days… Yes.”

She exhaled, long and trembling.

“I think I understand your sin now.”

He didn’t correct her.

“You love others more than you’ll ever love yourself. You die because you think their lives are worth more than yours. You smile because you don’t want them to suffer. You persist… not because you think you matter.”

She looked at him — and for the first time, her eyes were wet.

“You don’t believe you’re a hero. You don’t even believe you’re a person worth saving. And yet, you save everyone else anyway.”

He didn’t deny it.

He just smiled. Soft. Worn. Real.

Subaru stepped back. Glanced toward the edge of the sanctuary.

“Will we meet again?” she asked, barely above a whisper.

He turned.

“…If you want to,” he said. “I’ll probably still be around.” He grinned.

And with that, he stepped off the edge.

Gone.

The world stilled.

No voice. No shadow. No boy.

Just Pandora — standing in silence, hand over her heart.

She didn’t tremble.

She didn’t speak.

She just thought — quietly:

His sin is self-hatred.

His sin is self-loathing.

His sin is his kindness.

His sin is his forgiveness.

His sin is love.

His sin is hate.

His sin is pure.

His sin, what is his sin?

She then learned, as if enlightened:

He was never hers to understand.

His sin was never hers to understand.

He is more than mere sin. 

He is self-hatred.

He is love for others.

The sanctuary was still again.

No voice. No memory. No hatred.

Just a question.

”What are you, Natsuki Subaru?”

And at last —

she accepted that she might never know.

And that not knowing…

was enough.

She did not need to grasp him completely.

She did not need to hold his truth in full.

She did not need to understand him —

for her Vainglory to be satisfied.

Not anymore.