A/N: This contains spoilers for Fate:Grand Order's Camelot chapter and Fate/Extra, and assumes you have at least some knowledge of Fate/Stay Night or Unlimited Blade Works.
They stand at the ruins of the church, watching what remains of the world's evil melt against the black night sky. It bubbles and growls, almost sounding like the deep refrain of a priest's sermon.
However, Kirei's services are no longer needed, for Shirou Emiya and his Saber class Servant, Artoria Pendragon, have won the Holy Grail War. Silence weighs heavily against them – Saber's time is nigh, and her contract should end soon.
After all, she found the Holy Grail. Or that's what Shirou thinks, but he looks at her and her lips are pursed tight, her eyes devoid of joy, her throat arched as if trying to push back a scream.
He wonders if she sees the same in him, because all the times he's seen those little hints – when they've talked about their shared dreams, between chats while sparring, and sometimes even when he's just cooking dinner. They've always carried a cordial, friendly air to them that he's happy to respond to, but why didn't he ask her out on the one day he could've…?
He doesn't get to finish that thought, as Saber opens her mouth.
"Shirou, I…"
"Saber …"
Their unspoken words are left in a shower of golden dust, as she fades into the fabric of time and space.
He clenches his fists and swears to never hesitate again.
Sir Bedivere does not return after he leaves the third time. Just like she has with Lancelot, Guinvere, (and Shirou, because she could've told him much, much earlier) she silently forgives him. In war, anyone's heart can crumble with time; his pure one (the reason she wished he preside at the Round Table) simply cracked after it was over.
She stands up, her cracked breaths steadying as residual blessings of eternal youth wash over her; a telltale sign that Excalibur still exists within this world. Perhaps it is by this miracle that she still stands and breathes, but it is her last as King Arthur – hero, king, (unrequited love).
Without Avalon, she cannot be mortally wounded, and without Excalibur, she can die of mortal age.
And without a desire of her own….
Artoria Pendragon clutches the bandages on her chest, and begins a slow and steady walk out of the Garden of Avalon.
Had she looked back, she would've realized that her body still remained under the tree, her face forever frozen in grief.
It has been two years since Illya has departed from this world. He throws himself into mastering Gradation Air, as he knows it's the only thing keeping him at the Clock Tower under El Melloi's watchful eye. Sometimes Tohsaka looks at him as if she's seen a ghost.
He doesn't blame her – between the tanned skin from repeated Magic Circuit use and his narrowed frown (when he fails to recall Caliburn's shape again), he's a bad hair job away from looking like a former acquaintance of theirs.
At least, that's what he tells Luvia when she bounces up to him, her rich German accent and long blond curls swirling around him with her latest fashion statement. The peach-colored dress is formal but betrays hints of purple here and there, teasing him with thoughts of a night filled with a tart taste against his tongue.
He brushes aside the imaginary sword at her side and slides a hand around her waist, letting hidden feelings stay buried under Tohsaka's angry (but pitiful) glare.
Mordred's gaunt, tear-stained face has long dried when she arrives back at Camlann. ( It is not the first crying face she has seen this month.) The kingdom is falling into ruin and the looters have already passed this battlefield, leaving nothing but rotting flesh in their wake.
For the first time in her life, she is grateful that Mordred's (her son's) armor was custom made to fit her small frame. Without her helmet, she could easily be mistaken as one of the many women who masqueraded as a man to join a cause worth fighting for, only to find an unjust end at the end of a lance.
Her lance, Rhonghomyiad, which loses any signs of blood and scratches the moment it recognizes her touch. She pulls it out, as it hums a soft whispered tones of 'poor child, poor king who could not change the world...'
She ignores the imagined mockery (or would he have pitied her the same way?) and heads off, her shoulders a little taller and her muscles feeling a little thicker.
Politics are politics, and he has had enough with Mage families and the desire to shed blood to cover up even the slightest embarrassment. Even El-Melloi's hushed, stern tone does nothing against the council as they proclaim Shirou too incompetent to advance any further in his studies.
He's lucky he didn't end up with a Sealing Designation instead, though he suspects it is because the tests never demonstrate any unusual aptitude. Tohsaka has a better word for it (bullshit) but he honestly didn't think his home was here, anyway.
(It's at her side, in a grassy garden under a forever green tree, as they laugh over her queries of what a swimming pool is and he asks what she wants for dinner.)
Luvia cries, but her resigned face suggests that she knew this inevitable. Her bloodline's magic is too valued for her to endanger the aristocracy (and she probably realized he was chasing someone else, anyway).
Tohsaka waits for him at the end of the hall, as he drags his last suitcase out to the cab. Her long formal red dress garishly clashes with his rough, khaki jacket and pants.
For one last time, they stand under the same umbrella and the same history as Masters of a Holy Grail War.
"I'll see you again?" She states quietly. It's not a question.
He nods, a tanned rough hand reaching out to grab her smooth yet firm one. He wonder if it's his imagination when he feels a small tug.
"You don't have to go alone, you know." She exhales, sliding his red mage's coat over to him, her eyes narrowing with years of experience and wisdom. "I'm here. Luvia's crazy enough to run away with you if you tried. Sakura and Taiga are back home."
He doesn't have the heart to tell her that he doesn't remember what the sparring room looked like anymore.
Morgan's magic has no effect on her any longer. 'You can rely on me', the spear at her hand whispers, as her sister, the envious magician, flees a broken, terrified wreck. 'No one else knows your heart and soul like I do.'
She slams the spear's point into the ground as if to silence it, but her remaining loyalists take it as a sign of fury. They scamper before the older fallen king, her once youthful eyes underlined by wrinkles as she holds a hand up, telling them not to pursue Morgan (because a king exercises restraint).
'But what would the girl do?' Rhonghomyiad trills in a leering voice. 'Poor, poor country girl, who lost her whole home due to a sister's childish whims.'
She is no longer thirteen years of age and has no more time for imaginary friends. Thirty year old Artoria Pendragon turns around to the few dukes, housecarls, and knights that still stand at attention, fighting for a kingdom long lost.
Their descendants tell tales many years later in dim keeps and knotted forests, saying that the king simply disappeared into the horizon, her tall, proud figure never to be seen again.
Sakura ensures that he calls her often. As she knows firsthand, prolonged isolation in horrible conditions is the first step to losing touch with the rest of the world.
The man that gets in front of the webcam today is very different than the one that had helped the police kick down her door and arrest Zouken Matou for child abuse. His eyes burn with determination over an unseen war against unseen forces, but today they also have a strange hollowness to them – one that reminds her too much of a time she'd rather forget.
"Senpai… what happened?" She uses that old tone, filled with concern for him. It doesn't matter if his bright red hair has been scorched white from goodness knows what – if his spirit to save others has been shaken, she will be there, just as he was for her.
He ends up breaking down and confiding in her about the nuclear reactor, about whether selling his soul is the right thing to do, about if a suspicion he has about his future is what he thinks it is.
"You should just…try to do what you can for everyone, Senpai." She tries to console him, not fully understanding, but thinking back to the times he's helped her after that fateful day. "That's what you did for me."
She starts to worry when Taiga says it didn't sound like he fully understood either.
Richard the Lionheart is a child playing at being a brave king. He has no idea how to rule, and he knows Robin would be shaking his head now if he had lived to see the temporary truce he forged with Saladin to purge the vampires among their ranks. It is another temporary ally towards another common enemy to hide his own lack of talent.
That is why he is completely unprepared for even more of his and Saladin's men spurting bright red eyes from their necks and legs and places eyes should not be, proclaiming themselves servants of King Amon as they torch the land in the ancient figure' name.
He is bleeding out against a ruined wall when a knight riding a bright horse rides in, the reinforcements slaughtering the blackened oozing figures he once knew as the Crusaders. They bear a coat of arms he has seen from the storybooks, but it is the singing golden lance and her stern, hawkish face that makes him believe.
King Arthur Pendragon stands in front of him, witnessing his failure to stave off the demons that corrupted the noble men that fought for the Holy Land.
He tries to apologize – for failing, for being an insult to her name, but she holds a hand up to his mouth, her golden hair dazzling like the sun.
"You may rest." She speaks, a flat, regal tone that sounds nothing like the brash and compassionate king he imagined her to be. "I shall cleanse this tainted ground, and rebuild it anew."
He does not hear the anguished screams of everyone around him; he merely sees his men ascend to heaven on bright beams of light.
Kiara Sessyoin sits in her control room, vial of neurotoxin at the ready. Her journey of salvation will end here, as her worshippers, glistening with sweat from their stained white robes, throw themselves desperately at the dark-skinned, middle aged man who guns them down without a second thought.
She finds the idea that someone would deny themselves a grand, fulfilling life of pleasuring her foolish. However, she supposed it was impossible for her to grant everyone salvation, especially if someone could be that afraid of dying for her love.
After all, for all the paths one can take, there must also be a way to fall off such paths. She wonders if she should attempt to seduce him one more time – he clearly has some grasp of sexuality, and just a bare knowledge of the concept is enough for her to twist highly trained intelligence agents around her finger.
It is when he bursts through the door and sees his eyes in her dying breaths that she finally understands that Mr. Emiya is forever chasing someone else. He may bend to the false bodhisattva's will, but it is it not her that will break him. His black PMC uniform and pistols hover before her eyes, but she knows he will be too slow, fighting off her sweet, pheromone-laced perfume with images of his nonexistent lover as her spasms end and her visions go dark.
It is why she does not expect the flash of an engraved, ornate blade to be the last thing she sees, accompanied by a tearful whisper of "I'm sorry, Saber."
"They will come to understand the Holy Selection." The Goddess of Rhonghomyiad, no longer King Arthur, thunders, her powerful yet compelling voice causing every worthy man and woman in the throne room to stand at attention. "You will have everything you want to eat, everything you desire to work for, and no demons to plague your lives, human or otherwise."
They cannot doubt her, for she has already shown them that with a wave of her hand, Camelot's inner white walls contain gardens with golden fruits tasting like ambrosia and meat with juice that could meat in your mouth. (As she loved to tell…whom? She had once told someone it did not matter where the meat came from, as long as it was delicious and clean…)
Another loud wave of protesters reach her attention beyond the layers of blessed brick. She bids her subjects farewell and mounts Dun Stallion, heading towards the outer wall.
Her melodious voice stops half the protestors in their tracks, standing in awe at the Goddess-King as the smoky ashes of Solomon's thwarted attempts to incinerate this timeline waft into her nose.
(If she was still human, she would've choked. Not that she remembers what choking is.)
It makes her subsequent scrying and purging of the impure ones that much easier. Their skin color and origin do not matter – if the holy power in her deems them pure, she can preserve them (And her memory of Camelot) beyond the universe's death.
Would she hesitate if it was…that person? She clutches her head (her new knights are too awed to notice the slight movement) and tries to remember who she meant.
All she can remember is that she was not referring to a knight.
As they return to the repaired Grail War in S.E.R.A.P.H., Archer is glad that he doesn't have to explain to Hakuno how Kiara Sessyoin's death in real life results in him being handed the death penalty in 2040. At least he understands now who thwarted her cyberterrorism activities back in 2030.
He'd hoped to put his previous attempt to kill Shirou behind him (and he tries not to think of the other possibilities he's lived through in his dreams), but it was just his luck that he'd get summoned into a warped Grail War involving one of Rin Tohsakha's strangely identical descendants.
Hakuno, ever the master of observation (and his current Master, he reminds himself), naturally starts to query him.
"What's your relationship with Rin, Archer?" The bubbly brunette faux innocently asks, her playful brown eyes sparkling from under her messy brown hair. Archer tries to say something about a comb but instead falls off his already tilted chair (because BB reminds him that somewhere out there, Shirou Emiya grows up, gives up his ideals, and saves someone he can realistically save).
"Just so you know," He snarks, "I fell out of my chair because I lost my balance, NOT because of your question."
Hakuno's smirk, a brown crescent against a moonlike face framed in a sea-blue window, tells him she wasn't convinced at all.
"Oooookay." She drawls, giggling. "But you are trying way too hard to act disinterested in Rin."
(Well, that's not wrong. I fought with someone like her, loved someone like her, and protected someone like her. Three times…maybe more.)
"She's your type, isn't she?" Hakuno pushes beyond any defense he's ever prepared in his life, probably all because he let something show on his face.
"Objection!" He retorts, half-jokingly. "On what grounds?"
"Methinks the brave Archer doth protest too much, or are you leaning forward dramatically for no reason?" Hakuno waves her hands in one of the worst Shakespeare impressions he's seen in his many lives.
"Ah, I apologize." He chuckles. "I'm not normally this immature." Hakuno thankfully relents, but she leans back expectantly. He hasn't answered her question.
He clears his throat and sighs. Perhaps he can manage with a half-truth.
"Listen, Master. That girl has got enough ego to fill a concert hall, and that's not exactly a turn-on. My type would be more…" (He tries to think of anything his first love wasn't, and another love comes to mind.)
He's not sure what kind of motion he meant to make, but Hakuno's snickers confirm that it looks far too much like he's pretending BB is right in front of him. (Thankfully, she relocated back to the nurse office as 'Sakura'…)
He gives a sigh of defeat and puts his hands behind his head, as Hakuno gets up to pat him on the back. "Nevermind what I said, Master. I feel like no matter what I say, I'll dig my own grave."
"That was the idea, pretty much." She chuckles.
(What was the name of his first love, though?)
The Goddess-King dully recalls a feeling of resent when she finally summons Mordred to this era. Ever oblivious to her king's distrust, the once rebellious child eats up her commanding song like the sweetest honeycake and happily heads straight for the wastelands to purge any remaining resistance that has been potentially contaminated by Solomon's efforts to pollute history.
(If she remembered another time when a weaker boy threw himself in front of her, she would've been furious at Mordred.)
Gawain, Lancelot, and Tristan return from an expedition, and Agravain, his dusky hair contrasting sharply against her citadel's pristine walls, informs her that the dragon meat not of this era is ready to be cooked. She wonders if Gareth will complain about Gawain's potato soup again at dinner...
'Gareth is dead. You had Tristan put an arrow between her eyes for rebelling against you.'
The lance only speaks when something stirs in her. She doesn't remember what the feeling is called, but something tells her that perhaps she could've tried reasoning more.
'No. The only way forward must be carved without hesitation. Do you wish for Camelot to fall again?'
"A king without greed is even worse than a figurehead." She whispers quietly, though she has long forgotten who would dare tell her such a thing.
As the surviving Knights of the Round gather for dinner, the Goddess-King, her eyes sharpened with clairvoyance, grimly notes that two knights never answered her calls to the Throne of Heroes.
She peers back into the first Singularity, over a flame-razed town she somehow recognizes, and notes that that blackened, but still human, effigy of her has been defeated, and that Chaldea has been informed of Solomon's plot to eradicate humanity.
"When the foreign star shines, the walls of Camelot will crumble." Only one of them can be humanity's saviors, and it is only a few months before she will find out which group is correct.
'As if a young brash boy that wants to save everyone could be remotely correct.' The lance trills with mocking amusement.
When he first came to Chaldea, he was genuinely shocked to find that he had been tasked with saving humanity in such a…work-friendly environment. The remainders of humanity, despite his previous witnessing of their panicked attempt to defeat him and a corrupted Saber (how long has it been since he has remembered that name?), had recovered quickly.
He admittedly suspected Cú Chulainn's quick arrival had something to do with it. Despite being dressed in what he considered a ridiculously unfitting garb for the Lancer ("It's 'Caster' now," Cú would groan, before launching into an hours long tirade of how Cú Chulainn could even be summoned as a mage), it wasn't long before he was surrounded by allies new and old, including the face of a woman he once loved.
"The Archer cloaked in red... To be able to fight with him is pleasing, but also sad. Whatever path in life he has chosen, that Heroic Spirit is destined to continue fighting." It is a decidedly neutral answer, born of a copy straight from the Throne that has received information from the previous Holy Grail Wars but none of the feelings.
He struggles to remember Rin's original lecture about Saber's pact with the World. Shouldn't she remember more clearly than him, of all those other times they'd fought on the same field in Fuyuki?
The smile she gives him is wistful, as if she is struggling to recall bits and pieces of it all. Da Vinci rattles off some explanation about Saint Graphs lacking corresponding human history to properly pull from due to the damaged timeline, but it flies over his head.
Months pass, and he realizes with the lack of memories comes innocence. She makes a silly movie about "The War of Sabers" with Da Vinci's hologram projector, and acts as Santa when Christmas comes around, as a subtle thank you of sorts for freeing them from Lev Lynor's schemes. He provides the food for all of these events and they become fast friends once more, as if nothing has ever changed since that first Holy Grail War.
Between the next round of fried rice for everyone, he wonders if everything she remembers is locked away, somewhere beyond time and space.
"You are WRONG!" (Galahad, no… you're…) Mash Kyrelight screams at the top of her lungs as she stomps closer and closer to the Goddess-King, even as the rest of Chaldea is forced to kneel by heavenly pressures. She does not repudiate the young shieldbearing Servant – she knew, deep down, that her ways of 'preserving humanity' would eventually lead to unrest this strong.
"I will not acknowledge the happiness that you offer!" The woman, the very striking image of Galahad's white-haired face (when he's about to go on a tirade where he knows he is in the right) stands tall, sheer willpower resisting any pull the king's songlike yet steely voice might possess.
"There are those who would throw their lives away to save their children! There are people who would mourn that loss!"
("Emiya Kiritsugu is a great person in your memories. But he is not like that in my memories.")
"There is one who would raise his face and keep on living, believing that as long as he survives he can carry on his mother's life!"
("…To state it simply, he was a typical magus. He was only interested in his objectives and he eliminated everything in his way. I could not see any human emotion in him.")
"The end is not meaningless. Life is something that continues on, not an ad hoc matter!"
("Kiritsugu. Please, tell her something." She starts to remember now, watching Diarmuid curse her fate as he impales himself with his spear. Kayneth El-Melloi, collapsed on top of his wife, begging for mercy, as she slits his throat to end Kiritsugu's torture of him.)
"If you are the wild wave... the end of the world, as you say! Then I WILL fight you, with all my might!" Her words inspire the silver haired knight and Diarmuid beside their black-haired Master, one she has seen in dreams of another life, to go from kneeling to forcing themselves to stand, but their wills are still weak.
This is a battle between her and the shieldbearer. Or at least, that's what she thinks until she slightly tilts her head, letting a sword-shaped arrow pass by her neck. A tanned man in a red mage's garb, one she feels like she's seen before, now stands behind the Shieldbearer, poised and ready for battle.
His eyes. She has seen those eyes before, asking to understand, asking "Why are you doing this?". But the lance tells her to 'silence yourself and focus on your goal to protect humanity' and she charges the rather shaky formation with Rhonghomyiad. Knights and hostile Servants alike are torn apart by the force of the spear, being slammed into the walls as she commands Dun Stallion to swerve against the castle platform and charge once more.
On the second charge, she is so focused on trying to remember where she has seen those brown eyes that she completely fails to realize that someone has thrust Excalibur into her side. It does not pierce flesh, but Excalibur remembers its owner, and she suddenly remembers Sir Bedivere.
Something within the divine lance snaps, and for a moment all she can hear is a flood of memories ("And she has had only one wish, ever in her life – but there was something that made her want to choose differently.")
She coughs and clutches her chest in pain, as if remembering that fateful day, the day King Arthur is meant to die on Camlann, and Archer watches the eerie green glow of her eyes become replaced with a much more natural, deep green tone.
"Be proud, Bedivere. You have indeed- fulfilled it, your king's order." She says to the knight that has helped them this whole time, and those are the only words she can manage before he finally disappears, his own abuse of Excalibur's power now paid back in full.
He wants to say something, but Da Vinci is making terrible jokes to Doctor Roman on the comms about disappearing and Mash is trying to relay to everyone that they're being pulled back into the normal timestream. King Artoria Pendragon, released from the song of the spear, immediately begins to tell Roman what she has seen of Solomon's attempts to upset history and clarifying her original plans.
It is not a concern of whether Saber- no, the King shall die, at rest on her throne. She has been a deity far too long to die so quickly. History must correct itself first, and the first step in that correction is to return the outsiders back to time they belong in.
"Thank you, Lion King! Next time, I'll give you a kiss of gratitude!" Roman jokes, and Artoria wryly smiles, casting at quick glance at the red-cloaked Archer before averting her gaze. He realizes she has been gazing anywhere but at him on purpose, or as an old friend would've put it, "trying way too hard to act disinterested."
He suspects it's his nature as a Counter Guardian that keeps him here after everyone else has faded away – leave it the Counter Force to want a cleanup agent on watch. Cú Chulainn (now with a proper Gae Bolg) tries to make a joke before he returns, but his sense of humor is terrible as a Berserker and he settles for giving Emiya a rough clawed pat on the back.
The only people left in this room now are the Heroic Spirits Emiya and Artoria. She looks directly at him now, and he wonders if the welling he's feeling in his chest is the same as her's.
"Agravain comes back in an hour." She states matter-of-factly. "He'll-"
"-disappear one way or another, yeah." He stares back directly, carefully considering his words. "Do you remember anything?"
"I do." The golden haired king stares tiredly at Emiya – this is the first time in a long time she has looked that way. "You don't have to stand at attention, Red Archer." It's the best she can manage, without saying his true name.
"After all that time making everyone kneel just with talk, I think I'll pick standing." He replies with a chuckle. "Good grief, Goddess-King. How long have you wandered to get yourself into this miserable situation?"
"I believe I've lost count. My apologies." It is the smile (a genuine smile that he had seen lifetimes ago - just not the first time, when it really counted) that convinces him that this is the person he has wanted to talk to, all this time. "It has been thousands of years since that oath, has it not?"
"Mm." He agrees softly, the mechanics of time travel be damned for once. It is bright day, as the sun slides softly over her shoulders, threatening to block out the view of the radiant woman he'd chased with its glow. "Whoa, don't disappear on me yet. You've got something you've wanted to say for a while, haven't you?"
"For as long as I have lived." She exhales quietly and looks down. "I am going to perish here with my ideals, Shirou. I am not sure it matters."
("A king is not human." He thinks. "One cannot protect the people with human emotions.")
"You've fought for a long time, Saber." He starts, but the words just aren't there yet. "Was this how you wanted it to be?"
"I was not sure." She tries to laugh, but the pain in her chest is clearly spreading. Without the sacred spear, Artoria is dying again, as history dictates she should. "What about you, Shirou? Have you found peace pursuing your ideal?"
"Don't think so. I even tried to kill myself once." He answers honestly. His snarky wit is betrayed by a softer tone and the way he says I – this is an I reversed for that blue Saber in the kitchen, and only when no one else is present. (That blue Saber, a copy with only the foggiest of remembrances.)
"How foolish." She admonishes him, but with a kind tone. "It was not an attempt at self-termination you sought, but answers, is it not?"
"Yeah. In the end, I don't think there's a history where I won't move to save someone." He lets himself have a small smile. He won't bother asking how much she knew of that fight because he's about to ask the impossible. "Saber, you should come back with us."
"I do not believe that is possible, Shirou." She doesn't stop smiling, even as her voice takes a sorrowful tone. "Everything I have carried shall remain with me, as another flawed timeline set to be pruned."
As expected. "I'd have really liked it if you could." He exhales. She had waited on this shining, blood-stained throne for centuries, to verify if she was the chosen defender of human history, but also for someone that never arrived, to tell her that perhaps she was wrong in her cause. He had chased his ideal through time and space, through mountains of corpses but also the soft echoes of her image, blurred and distorted through other women, until it refocused on the one person that could've changed all that.
The sun was almost directly above their heads now, and he quietly stepped towards her throne as golden dust began to flicker from his finger tips. There's something they both need to affirm, before Artoria Pendragon is lost to time and what remains is only a faint echo of her life after her first death.
"Shirou…" She inhaled deeply, and placed her hand on his. "I love you."
He answers with a kiss on her lips that she returns. The affirmation holds for a second, before the sun directly hangs over them and his world goes dark.
"Artoria, I thought you were going to train-…"
He makes a noise from his throat as she walks in and sits down near him, the humming of the stove sending steam that whistles gently over the countertop.
"I believe they wanted to surprise you, Red Archer." Despite possessing Clairvoyance, the 30-year old Artoria quickly looks from side to side before taking a softer, more relaxed tone. "I think they have realized I would rather directly tell you that my Saint Graph is now whole, Shirou."
"And more, but they'll ambush us and we'll never hear the end of it." He chuckles.
"I have a lot to account for and I think they will at least grant me that privacy." Her formal tone is betrayed by a childish pout, her deep green eyes glowing not with sacred fire, but light frustration. Emiya realizes her sight is carefully following the fish he's put out to grill.
"Well, I have all the time in the world, it seems." He smirks. "But I want to ask a question first."
"Gladly."
"What would you like for dinner tonight, Saber?" The regal woman immediately answers and folds her mouth into a radiant smile, and Shirou Emiya realizes that the love of his life has truly come home.