Long Lost Family
Caren Ortensia never had a father.
That was the fact she had lived with for her entire life. Ever since she was a baby, she had lived with her mother's family. Not that it made her close with her mother. She died when Caren was still an infant. About her father, everyone never had a talk about him, let alone telling her the truths about him. He simply never existed in Caren's life.
With that said, and her abnormal ability to detect demonic possession that often resulted in her skin being torn off, Caren wasn't exactly a happy girl. If not a downright ill fated one.
And here in the present day, the priestess walked on the pavements in the road in Fuyuki city. Wearing her blue-white coat and her blue beret, she strolled around the buildings. It was a father's day, and quite interestingly, there was some kind of festival in the city. Every kid was holding their fathers' hands, which was why Caren suddenly came to think about her own father.
Being a member of the Holy Church, Caren had slipped into the data room. She did have some information about her father, like his name and the fact that he was a member of the Holy Church as well. When she discovered his file, he was employed in a place far across the sea from where she stood.
That's why it was rather hauntingly interesting that now, she had his position, in a church he served and became the master of his two servants. Certainly fate was being playful.
"Good morning, lady priestess."
Someone greeted her from the corner of the street. It was an elderly man with weird green coat and a cane. His hair was already white, yet he stood tall with dignity and youthful pride.
"Good morning too, sir." Caren politely greeted him back.
"It's a lovely festival, right, miss?" He said, walking towards her, head observing the situation back and forth.
She nodded. This person wasn't a usual elder man. In her eyes, she could see a magnificent magical aura seeping out from his physique. She could sense vampire blood rippling in his bloodstream. His eyes were deep enough to drown everything between them.
"Perhaps you want a little gift today, for your hard work?" He offered.
A big hand blocked Caren's vision. And suddenly, she was absorbed by a dark hole that appeared out of nowhere. One second later, she wasn't in the spot she stood at.
When she opened her eyes, she was sitting in the church of Fuyuki. Nothing seemed changed. She could remember the old man at the corner of the street. And then she blacked out.
"Ah, you're the guest?"
Someone greeted her from behind.
Caren automatically looked towards the person. There was a muscular man in white t-shirt and dark blue jeans, his blue hair in ponytail. He wore twin strange-looking earrings. In his hand, it was a grocery bag.
This man, without a doubt, was Lancer. With grocery bag.
"Lancer?"
"Ah, you know my name?" He raised an eyebrow. "Guess the priest or his colleagues tell you so much things, huh?"
The priest? Colleagues?, she wondered in her head.
"Kotomine said that you would come, but I didn't know if it's today" Lancer walked casually, passing her. "But he's not here now, you mind doing something?"
Kotomine?
"Excuse me, is it Kotomine Kirei you are talking about?" She asked.
Lancer looked at her with bewildered face. "Of course. Only one Kotomine here, and you're supposed to meet him."
…..Kotomine Kirei. My father.
"Nah, you must have a long trip. You want to have a tea on the park?" Lancer pointed at the church little park.
Without responding, Caren walked to the park Lancer pointed at. As she found her seat, her mind was working rather hard. It seemed that she was thrown into an alternate reality, where Kotomine Kirei wasn't dead, she wasn't assigned here, and by some sort of fate, she was scheduled to meet him.
Somehow, she wanted to know what Kotomine Kirei was really like. But before she met him, it'd be better to prepare for that.
"So, I don't expect the guest to be a pretty cute girl. Your name?" said Lancer while pouring tea into Caren's cup.
"Tell me about Kotomine Kirei." She bluntly asked him, without answering his question.
"Huh, are you that interested in him?" the blue haired man sipped his tea. "Well, Kotomine is a priest here, as you know. He is also a highly manipulative man. He stole my former master's command seals, and I ended up here. He is also blunt, strangely like you in so many ways. He is also a slob who never minds doing his laundry, and he likes hot mapo doufu. He seems to like stuffs from hell."
First impressions of Kotomine Kirei: 1. Manipulative priest and master. 2. A slob. 3. Favorite food: Mapo doufu.
"I see." Caren got up and leaved the park. "I'm going out a bit."
"Wanna companion?" Asked Lancer flamboyantly.
"No. I don't want to be accompanied by a dog."
Then Caren exited the park, leaving Lancer in very foul mood.
Back to the hall, a golden person was standing on the altar. One glance was enough for Caren to know that it was Gilgamesh, the other servant aside from Lancer.
"You." She calls him.
The man with blonde hair looked at her. "Heh, Kirei's guest, aren't you? You sure have the guts to call me with 'you', mongrel."
"I don't care if you're an ancient King of Heroes or something. I have a question for you." She walked towards him, unflinching.
"You should lick my shoes, first, woman." He smirked.
"Really?" She continued to walk. "Somehow I wonder why Kotomine Kirei gets along with a heroic spirit like you."
"Why does he, girl? Hahaha, that's funny. It's because he is an empty person, whose satisfaction can only be quenched by other's misery. He has always been a sinister spectator. A perfect clown in this boring garden." The King of Heroes laughed.
"Only that?"
"Oh well, he does have a first rate wine cellar. He's got a good sense when it comes to wine. After all, as I would put it, wine is heaven's milk."
Addition impressions of Kotomine Kirei: 4. An empty and evil person. 5. Wine lover, even if it's not allowed for priests to get drunk.
"You answer my question." Caren passed the King of Heroes.
"He- wait! You haven't licked my shoes yet!" The servant roared. "Damn, you manipulative bitch!"
On the Shinto, Caren saw a trio from far. Emiya Shirou, Tohsaka Rin and Matou Sakura. It seemed like they were going to school.
Emiya Shirou. Back in her world, she knew him as Avenger, the stray eighth servant who caused a 4 days loop in hope to relive the 5th Holy Grail War. The ancient demon known as Angra Mainyu, the core of all the evils in the world., who turned out to be a clueless, laid back, half assed boy. And also the one Caren fell in love with.
But this world's Shirou, the one she saw with her eyes now, was just the usual Emiya Shirou. The one she had never met, nor fell for.
"Good morning." Sakura greeted her first. The nice girl realized pretty quickly that Caren was looking at them, or at Shirou, to be precise.
Caren greeted back, "Good morning."
Almost as fast as detecting a bug, Rin looked at her. No, it was rather like scanning her. An experienced magus like her should figure it out that Caren wasn't a normal human.
"Are you a new foreigner?" Rin asked her.
"Yes. I'm meeting Kotomine Kirei." Caren answered. "I'd like to ask you for your opinions about him."
"Why do you need that?" Shirou tilted his head.
"Because I want to know if he works well here." She tells a lie smoothly.
"Uh well," The orange-haired boy slightly wondered, "Kotomine is scary, to say at least."
"He is my guardian, and only because my late father appointed him." Said Rin. "He's a stingy, manipulative, annoying, enigmatic troll. He found it amusing to send me cute dresses when I was little!"
Shirou looked at the twin-tailed girl rather uneasily, "Tohsaka, that's very rude of you…"
"Priest Kotomine, like Senpai said, is scary. There's something unsettling about his aura. But my grandfather hates him, apparently." Sakura made it sound like she confessed a sin.
Caren knew that Sakura's grandfather, Matou Zouken, was a disgusting monster who abused Sakura ever since she was a kid. Which made Kotomine Kirei, her father, something, for Zouken bore a hatred for him.
"But you know, Kotomine likes mapo doufu. He often goes at the downtown's restaurant to eat it. When the restaurant was closed for one month, he literally begged me to make the dish and even offered money." Said Shirou.
For some seconds, Caren fell silent. And then she excused herself from the trio, after saying a formal thank you.
Because of the situations in her entire life, Caren was made into thinking that Kotomine Kirei was a complete evil. It was based on the fact that he was never standing besides her, never existing in her life. All the people near her always avoided talking about him, which made her think that her father was a demon that everyone thought she better never knew him. That her father was so evil he didn't have any good point or simply a human characteristic.
But based on today's investigation, based on everyone's opinions, here what she got. Kotomine Kirei's a manipulative priest, cunning master, stingy troll who never did his laundry, owned a first rate wine cellar, hated child abuser, sent cute dresses to a girl, and loved to eat mapo doufu.
Honestly, that didn't sound so evil.
If demon is what everyone defines as something that lures humanity to damnation, who laughed and feels amused at humanity's misfortune, which thinks of himself as the greatest being without the need of loving something, then isn't it wrong to define Kotomine Kirei as one? Because that man had normal things he liked and attitude that was not demonic. For all the sins he had, Kotomine Kirei was also a human.
Or maybe, Caren wasn't able to imagine horned demon begging his enemy to cook him mapo doufu.
After one hour strolling in the town, Caren got back to the church. To her surprise, a tall priest with long coat already stood at the altar.
"Caren Ortensia, isn't it?" He said with heavy voice.
"Yes."
Kotomine Kirei stood before her. His eyes were dark enough that light didn't reflect on it. Wearing black attire like that, he sure matched the impression of dark priest.
"I apologize for not being here when you arrived, Miss Ortensia. I was in the middle of a business." He said formally.
"No, it's fine." She shook her head a bit.
While Caren walked to sit on the front bench, her brain quietly jumped. It WAS her non-existent father in front of her. He was talking to her, his daughter. Deep inside her heart, she wanted to tell him that she was his long lost daughter. She wanted to yell, even. But she couldn't gather the courage to do it, nor the readiness to face everything that would follow. Like if, her father never wanted her and abandoning her had always been his choice, what would happen after that? What good would come if Kirei knew that Caren was his daughter?
"Before we talked about the stuff," said Kirei after Caren sat down, "There is something for you."
He handed a wrapped box in front of her. Stunned, she looked at him.
"Open it." He said, even though it sounded like commanding.
Caren slowly accepted the box and tore the wrapper. Then she opened the box, finding a cute, white summer dress in it.
"For…. Me?" She hesitantly asked.
"Yes." He said. "I knew it'd be good for you."
Looking at the dress, Caren couldn't find a word to say. Was this really the evil father? As emotionless as she could be, she now wanted to just hug him and yelled that she was his daughter.
"Thank you.", was all she could say.
"Your welcome." He stoically replied. Even then, there was a slight hint of care in his tone.
Caren held the box tightly and shut her eyes in peace. It was very nice that she could be here, in this other world, receiving a gift from her father. She would live here forever.
"You aren't from this world, are you?"
She snapped her eyes open. Quickly, she stared at the Kirei.
"I scheduled the meeting tomorrow, not today. I checked the flights and there was no schedule change." He explained with a surprising calm tone. "And you didn't bring any luggage or the stuff I requested to the Holy Church. But I could clearly sense that you weren't anyone other than Caren Ortensia herself. Am I right?"
Nah, that was a clever deduction. Caren slumped her head down. Just when she wanted to stay here…
"But the one you planned to meet, it's still Caren Ortensia, right?" She asked quietly.
He answered, "Yes. It's still Caren Ortensia. Even though it's not you."
"And do you already figure out that-"
"Caren is my daughter? Yes. I never forget the surname."
Sometimes, instead of an emotional outburst, a stoic, almost monotonic conversation hurts more. Despite that, Caren forced her head to face her father's.
"Will you treat her the same way you did to me today?"
"Yes. I still have another dress to give her."
"Please do." Caren gulped. "Because she is your daughter."
"You are, as well."
Hugging the box to her chest, she managed to say one more thing to Kirei. "Can you pat my head?"
"Yes."
One second later, Kirei's warm hand was on Caren's head. Even though it wasn't smooth patting, it was more than enough for her. Then another second later, the world went black.
"Oi, master, you can catch cold if you sleep here."
The face of Lancer in his Hawaiian shirt appeared in front of her. The yellow color almost hurt her eyes. Grunting, she got up from where she laid down.
She muttered, "Where am I?"
"Where? The church, of course. You just slept on one of the bench." Said Lancer. "You bought that?"
Following his gaze, Caren found a newly opened box beside her. She took a peek inside, and found the white dress in it.
"Well, not really." She shrugged. "Anyway, I'm hungry. Buy me food."
"Returning to yourself so fast, huh?" Lancer sighed. "Okay, what do you want?"
She thought of something a bit, and then answered, "Mapo doufu."
Lancer instantly raised an eyebrow in confusion and surprise. But he didn't ask anything and leaved the church immediately.
Fifteen minutes later, the serenity of the church broke when Caren ran around for a glass of water. For the first time since her arrival, Lancer could laugh at her until he couldn't take it anymore. She already made sure he couldn't escape from her later, though.
Even then, Caren planned to buy the dish again tomorrow.