This is how it ends.
Not with a bang, but a whimper.
Ritsuka tries to hold it back. She's stared down two dozen kings and told them all at least once to sit still and behave. She's suborned a goddess by elbow-dropping her from three hundred metres high. She gave Primate Murder head-scritches. There should be nothing in her that knows weakness—not after Camelot. Not after Babylon. Not after Solomon.
But here she is, sitting with her elbows on her knees and her face in her hands, limp red hair damp with sweat because Da Vinci hasn't quite fixed Chaldea's climate control yet. Crying.
The sheets are soft beneath her thighs. She still remembers the day Mash delivered them, a bright smile on her face and red fabric trailing from her arms. On Doctor Roman's orders, she'd exclaimed, fussing from white wall to white wall in a housekeeping hurricane of purple hair and senpaiiiii I told you to tidy up after yourself!
Ritsuka chokes back a sob, grinding her palms into her cheeks until it hurts. They won. They won. Why is she still sad? What would Nero say? Or Drake? Or Gilgamesh? The world is saved, the grand order of history has been put to right, and she can go back to sleep and not wake trembling, wondering if there will be a tomorrow. Duty is heavier than a mountain—but hers is done. She can breathe again.
"Don't be an idiot, Master." Ritsuka jumps, startled, and then glares with wet eyes at a corner of the room. Cú Chulainn—Servant Lancer—steps from the shadows, a sleek stretch of sharp muscle and sharper smiles. He raises an eyebrow. "What? You're being an idiot, so I'm calling you an idiot. My teacher made sure I knew what that looked like."
Ritsuka coughs an unwilling laugh. "Did it involve shoving your face into a mirror?"
Cú snorts. "A lake, actually."
He steps closer to kneel before her so their faces are level. It's a gentle gesture from a violent man. The burnished pauldrons that are his bodysuit's only concession to armour clink as he moves. Cú Chulainn is not someone who particularly cares if battle hurts, which makes the way he reaches over to wipe away another trembling tear from the corner of her eye all the more remarkable. He touches her like she'll splinter beneath the heat of his thumbs, and if he presses harder she probably will. Ritsuka's only mortal. Just a fragile little bunch of bones. So easy to break.
"Listen," he says, releasing her but still continuing to kneel. Like most Servants, even his features don't seem natural—red-wine eyes, hair as blue as the deep ocean, and through them all the faint smell of blood and sparking mana. For all that, though, his voice still sounds like the delinquents she used to avoid in high school. "I let it go the first few times, but it's been a week. Every night, you wake up at some stupid hour known only to dogs and whores, bawling like a babe—and by morning you've powdered your face and all you have for the eggplant when she comes to visit is a smile bright as steel."
As she opens her mouth, Cú pokes Ritsuka in the forehead, startling her reply to pieces.
"And that would be fine, 'cause I'm sure as hell not gonna tell you that you should let people see you cry, 'cept for two things. One, no Master of mine should be having nightmares, 'cause they're for bitches. Two, no Master of mine should look so angry at herself when she cries.
"The first makes you a wimp, but the second makes you an idiot, and I'm pretty sure that's worse. You're going 'I shouldn't be crying', right? That 'cause it's all over for everyone else, it should be all over for you? That you've won, so what reason is there to be sad?"
How does he know?
Cú must read the question in her expression, because he laughs, short and barking.
"Like I said, Master, you're an idiot. I won a fight, once. Worst mistake of my life. What matters isn't whether you win. It's what you lose. And I think we all know what you lost."
He shakes his head, ponytail whipping across his calves.
"Romani was a wimp, too, but that doesn't mean he isn't worth your tears. You're not a Heroic Spirit. Maybe you will be after you die. Fujimaru Ritsuka, Servant Ruler. Doesn't matter. You don't have to pretend to be strong now, Master. You never had to. That's why we're here. All you have to do is be human so the rest of us can remember why it matters. Weeping over a lost friend? That's what humans do. Let yourself cry, Master. Let yourself feel."
"You asshole," Ritsuka chokes out. She's started crying again—great, galumphing sobs that splatter among the scars that cover her pale legs. "Now I'm never going to stop."
Cú smirks, a slash of teeth across his face. "Girls don't like me 'cause I'm charming, Master."
"Well this girl doesn't like you at all." It takes her thirty seconds to stutter out the sentence, which cuts most of its impact—the rest is watered down by the insincerity of her tear-soaked glare. "Go away and let me be human in peace."
He stands, and—the bastard pats her on the head. "Sure. Wouldn't want your girlfriends catching me in here, anyway."
She's still spluttering when he disappears into a cloud of sparkling ether, like ocean spray glittering in the sunlight.
Outside the plain metal door to Ritsuka's room, Cú reappears, feet alighting on the tiled floor with the almost-desperate silence of a man who learned stealth beneath the boot of the Witch of Dún Scáith. Next to him, leaning against the wall, Mash Kyrielight—the girl who once stood before all the evil of human history and told it not today—blinks her lavender eyes blearily.
"Is senpai okay now, Lancer?" she asks. Her pink pyjamas are rumpled, and her eyelids are drooping. It's clear she's been here all night.
Cú rests a hand on her shoulder. She's so small compared to him. So young. So tired. But she stands strong. He could keep pushing and the floor would move before she would. "Not now, no. But I'm pretty sure she will be."
"Thank you." Mash smiles, and it is no less beautiful for the way it morphs into a yawn halfway through. "I—aaaaaaah—I think I'm going to wait here a bit. Just in case senpai needs me."
"You two are made for one another," Cú says, shaking his head fondly. "Bunch'a idiots."
Mash blushes, her cheeks blooming like a sunrise, but doesn't refute him.
Releasing her, he straightens slightly, cracking into an upward stretch that looks like it should have probably broken a few bones. "Well, I'm off. Take care of each other, yeah? That girl's too dumb to cry on someone else's shoulder, and you're too stubborn to shove your way in and make her. But you'll figure it out. You've got all the time in the world, now, don'tcha?"
"Yes." Mash sounds almost awed. "We do."
Cú grins. "That's the spirit. See you round, Shielder."
He tosses her a lazy salute and starts down the hallway, framed by the flickering light-strips along the roof and the cool white of the walls. Mash watches him go, swaying slightly on her feet with exhaustion, but does not move to follow. The night is long, and her watch has not ended.
No.
This is how it begins.
Title from Do Not Stand At My Grave And Weep by Mary Elizabeth Frye. Cover image from the short comic Gudako's New Mystic Code.
I wrote this months ago, right after I finished the Solomon Singularity. Didn't like what I'd written then. I like it better now. Decided to publish it since I needed a break from the insanity that is my workload: four 3000-word assignments and one 3-hour exam all due within three weeks. A word to the wise, don't procrastinate Master-level course loads. You'll end up killing yourself trying to get them all done.
For those of you who read this far, a reward. I wrote an alternate ending. It doesn't fit the mood, which is why I cut it, but I think it's funny.
"Thank you." Mash smiles, and it is no less beautiful for the way it morphs into a yawn halfway through. "I—aaaaaaah—I think I'm going to wait here a bit. Just in case senpai needs me."
"That's a very good idea," Cú says, and Mash is far too innocent to fear the innocence in his voice. "In fact, I know an even better place for you to wait."
"Oh?"
"Yeah." He nods. "Right here."
If Mash doesn't want to be moved, she won't be. That is Servant Shielder. The wall that does not break. The castle that does not bow.
It is, therefore, mildly suspicious how easy Cú finds it to flick open Ritsuka's door with one foot and trip Mash into the room with the other and a guiding hand on her shoulder.
He walks away whistling.
(Elvis Presley's Hound Dog, for the curious).