The first of them Waver meets—although that's putting it generously—is a strapping blond dressed in white and red, the straps of his ornamented leather armor hanging from his shoulders to his knees and belted in place. It happens the morning after the summoning, when Rider discovers the TV—a strange look of concentration passes over his broad face, and the air slams back around the stranger, whom Rider embraces like a brother.
Waver squawks in shock and scuttles backwards into the corner of his bed, but after no more than a curious glance from the blond and a dismissive hand wave from Rider, the two men ignore him completely. They spend the next four hours sitting in front of the TV, exclaiming over its wonders, slapping their knees, excitedly sharing their thoughts, and failing to even notice Waver when he leaves to get some aspirin for the stress headache dancing into existence between his temples.
He almost has to use a spell to get to sleep.
That evening, when Waver comes back upstairs from dinner, it's to find another stranger in the borrowed bedroom, this one slimmer and more solemn, silver accents twining across the shoulders of his dark robes. Either he or Rider has cleared off Waver's worktable and spread sheets of papyrus across the surface; the new man is rapidly filling up the page with a flowing, confident script. Black hair moves in a gliding sheet as he turns a cool, measured stare on Waver . After a moment, he turns back to Rider and asks, "His name?"
"He's not yet shown enough spirit to make it relevant," the Servant snorts, the returned derision running down the back of Waver's throat like melting iron.
The scribe—or whatever it is he's meant to be, Waver thinks, glaring, hands curled into fists at his side—tilts his head again and replies. "Be that as is it may, I would prefer to be thorough."
Rider gives a put-upon sigh and turns a commanding stare on his Master.
"Boy!" he barks, and Waver hurriedly closes the door behind him, his attempts to shush his Servant trampled over as thoroughly as if Rider had run them over with his chariot. "What is your name?"
Outraged that Rider hasn't even bothered to learn that much—wait, is this the first time he's even asked?!—Waver crosses his arms on his chest and scoffs. "Usually strangers introduce themselves before asking a bunch of questions about the host." When Rider frowns, Waver hurriedly adds, "It's Waver. Waver Velvet."
It's infuriating how little time it takes the dark-haired man to write it down. When the two men return to their discussion—histories, it seems, and the recording of an account of the Fourth Holy Grail War—Waver announces haughtily that he'll be checking the enemy camps via familiar and expects Rider to be ready to move as soon as they have a target.
That there is not a flicker of activity from the Matou house or the Tohsaka house all night, and that the ridiculous castle manor the Einzbern had restored is standing empty, serves only to nettle him further.
The next morning, it gets worse. Waver drags himself out of bed for the requisite breakfast, then waves the MacKenzies off to their day. He stumbles back up the stairs, still bleary-eyed, and walks face first into the naked man coming out of the upstairs bathroom.
The naked man isn't even Rider.
At Waver's incoherent shriek, the man—skin darker than Rider's, but with soft layers of ash blond hair framing his cheeks, and, Waver's brain gibbers to remind him, still no clothes—tilts his head, examining Waver with open curiosity in his eyes. Rider sidles out of the bathroom behind him, equally naked, but with a towel thrown across his shoulders, and grins over the new man's shoulder at Waver, his conqueror's good humor apparently restored.
"Boy! I was showing Calanus the newest wonder of the modern age—these hot showers!" Barely pausing for a response—and Waver certainly isn't coherent enough to form one—Rider goes on, "Have you found me opponents? If we're going to spend another day waiting, I'll have you fetch me new magazines. The military ones—"
At this, outrage finally breaks through the suffocating waters of mortification, and Waver points at the both of them with a wildly trembling hand.
"We're not going anywhere until you put on pants!" He whirls and flees to his bedroom, slamming the door behind him. The sound of Rider's gusty sigh chases Waver back to his bed.
Please, please, anyone else get to Fuyuki tonight, he pleads with the other Masters of the Grail War. I can't take much more of this!
The man in the turban—Ptolemy, he introduces himself—wants to talk comparative religion and Egyptian history. Waver contemplates throwing himself into the Mion.
But then Ptolemy starts talking about libraries and, well, at least it passes the night.
By the third day, and into the fourth, Rider is engrossed enough in his finds (bought on Waver's money, of course) that he doesn't whip out any more friends, and Waver is grateful for the relief from the world's most unsettling magic trick. By the fifth, the war is finally underway, and Waver doesn't see another of them until Rider has made the insane decision to talk kingly shop with Saber and Archer.
The fifth friend, then, is a statuesque woman with tumbling yellow curls and a straight Grecian nose, languid of movement but with eyes as sharp and amused as a cat's. She levels a long stare at Waver—who flushes deeply red—before laughing and making a comment to Rider.
"So, have you begun to mentor him yet?"
The Servant returns the smile, amused and with a cunning edge. "In the ways of the Greeks?" he drawls out in response, and shakes his head. "I don't think it would suit him. Shall we?" He gestures to the wine shop in front of them. The woman chuckles, tuts, and saunters inside ahead of them.
Waver spends the next twenty minutes in a corner fuming, internally debating whether or not to protest his perfectly adequate capability with the Socratic method, thank you so very much, staring blankly at the labels of the shop's shirazes while Rider and the Grecian woman loudly debate the merits of this or that vintage.
He doesn't see the woman again that night, but…
There are so many. Thousands of them array in endless lines under the scorching sun, calling out their loyalty in clear voices that ring across the dunes. They sweep down onto the Assassins like hawks diving out of the sun, and in the center of it all, their king—Alexander—rides down his enemy from horseback, a whirlwind in gold and red.
Waver wishes the empty desert would swallow him up too when it closes. Rider's mood is soured by the conversation with Saber, and neither of them speak on the way home.
Waver sees the faces all over again that night, dreaming of Rider at the head of a column of men, riding in long lines down a grey, mist-hung beach. He wakes with Oceanus on the tip of his tongue, skin tingling with sea spray, ears ringing with the sound of the waves. All through the day, going shopping with Rider, whenever they pass a food cart, the smell of salt plunges Waver back into the dream.
He has never felt more alone in his life.
The woman waiting outside the bookstore for them when they exit laughs to see the two of them, gesturing something Waver is sure must mean "so small!" She's got no room to talk, he thinks; she is the smallest any of them have been so far, dark-skinned and dark-haired, dressed in deep red silks, with a bright, birdlike shine in the depths of her eyes. She steps over to join them and actually touches him, running her palms down Waver's cheeks. He flushes and jerks away, fists clenching.
"Hey!" He can't deal with this right now, he can't.
Her expression changes, and she pulls her hands back, dropping her cheek against one as sympathy (but it's still flavored with amusement; Waver grits his teeth and glares at her angrily) softens her eyes. She looks between him and Rider, then leans in, her nearness a wash of heady citrus and cloves.
"Be brave," she tells him, near his ear. "You'll win out."
He leans away sharply, staring at her, but the shock doesn't last long before the anger and self-loathing come crashing back as the woman returns to Rider's side, sliding one of her arms around his waist. Rider, for his part, leans down and kisses her in broad daylight—well, twilight, but still—
That's deep kissing, and Rider has cinched the woman up into his arms, and people are beginning to stare.
"R-Rider! Come on! We have to get back to the house soon; it's getting dark!" Waver doesn't wait for an answer, whirling on his heel and striding off as fast and as far as his legs will take him.
The shopping trip is the last of any of the Hetairoi that Waver sees until almost the very end, because then there's Caster, and Caster's monster, and the second deployment of Rider's Reality Marble, which leaves the Servant drained to the point of insubstantiality. He doesn't have the prana to talk to anyone but Waver.
And on the walk back to the MacKenzies, after losing the racing head-to-head with Saber, he does. When Waver asks, with aloof huffiness to hide his weariness and vulnerability, Rider tells him who the people are—the first blond, as Waver had since guessed, was Hephaestion, Alexander the Great's friend from childhood and most beloved of all his companions. The dark-haired girl who stroked his cheeks was Roxana, Rider's first wife, whose dancing disguised her ambition; Rider had adored her for both. Eumenes was the writer, the king's secretary, called out of the Marble to discuss the recording of this new tale of Alexander in the Far East. Ptolemy had been one of Alexander's closest friends and generals; Calanus a sage who had decided to follow him east out of India. The list goes on and on—Rider had brought out even more people when Waver hadn't been looking.
"I want to show them everything," Rider says, voice a low, pleased rumble. "How could I not sample wines with Thaïs, not show Nearchus the ships on the river, not challenge Hephaestion at the arcade? How could I not test myself at chess with Craterus, not ask my seer Aristander what these stars portend?" He waves up at the clear sky, the stars glittering overhead like grains of sand washed up onto an endless black shoreline.
"And there's more," Rider breathes, reverential. His huge arm sweeps out, the gesture encompassing all of Fuyuki—all of the world—below. "I would wrestle lions at the zoo with Lysimachus. I would tour museums with Ptolemy. I would sample the finest dishes with Oxyathres. I would ensure that Coenus may finally see his homeland again.
"The Grail is so small—once this little war is won, the whole world awaits. I intend to savor it, every mote of it, every color and taste and sound. I will make it mine and then share it with everyone who has followed me for so far." He laughs, loud and unabashed in the still night air.
Waver's palms hurt where his fingernails have pressed into them. Tears burn in his throat, unshed.
Rider is talking, Waver notes hazily, and rolls over in bed, his eyes drifting open.
The Servant sits by the window, his book of Homer's works laying open in his broad palms. Eumenes—no, not Eumenes, another new stranger, wearing red instead of black—is standing across from him, staring through the glass and out over the rooftops.
"I always did like this passage," Rider says, the words floating to Waver through the fog of exhaustion—his legs still hurt from all the walking, and just one of Martha's meals isn't really enough to make his hunger from the all-day camp out go away.
Rider points at the page and the man at the window looks down at it, face shadowed by his long hair. After a moment, he snorts. "Very funny." He pauses, then adds, "I should get going."
"So soon?" Rider queries. The room is chilly; Waver burrows deeper into the covers, not wanting to wake up yet. When it's time to wake up, Rider's eagerness will get the better of him and he'll stop wasting time chatting with his friends. "So, no hints?"
The man at the window chuffs out a soft breath. "I already told you no." Another pause. "I'll see you soon."
"Mm," Rider hums. "Very soon, I think."
Waver lets his eyes drift closed again. Prana regenerates faster asleep than awake, and for the sake of their victory, he needs his sleep—even if he doesn't what his victory will even look like anymore.
Rider's is one thing; he's been very clear. But as to his own…
Where would he take me? The thought floats through his mind courtesy of his not being conscious enough to squelch it. His heart squeezes in his chest, and he pulls the covers up over his head and tries to get back to sleep.
END
NOTES:
o This is only vaguely compatible with canon, but in my defense, if you look at the scene in the novel where Rider sends Mithrenes out of the Hetairoi to communicate with Waver during the Caster!beast fight, the text says only that Waver is surprised by the man's vigor, not his presence.
o Title is from the first line of The Odyssey.