AN: Sorry for the delay. Got sick twice in the past month. Also, short chapter.


Fate/Far Side: Synchronized Body

Chapter 4

There Amidst


There really was no way I would be getting sleep at this point. Thoughts and distant memories kept swimming through my head, and even if I did manage some kind of rest, I would probably just feel worse for it if my dreams turned the direction I thought they would. So I just found myself wandering the halls, getting a little lost in the Tohno mansion, before drifting toward the kitchen—apparently, the natural haven my mind seemed to crave.

It was a bit after dawn when Kohaku made her way down to start breakfast. She spotted me instantly as I stood off to one side, my hands folded obviously before me like I was trying too hard to look innocent. She gave me an over-the-top frown and narrowing of the eyes, searching me up and down for some sign that I had been active within her space. Like an errant ladle would still be hiding in my pocket, or something. "Good morning," she said, her voice deep and suspicious.

"Good morning. I'm completely innocent."

Revenge. She would constantly second-guess her work all morning.

The maid knew it, too, with the look she shot my way. It was like she could see the oncoming bus but had no ability whatsoever to avoid being struck. I was going to plague her work all day, and there was nothing she could do to stop it.

"I'm…going to make breakfast now," she said, still watching me like one might keep an eye out on a nasty-looking spider without a shoe to smash it or jar to catch it with.

I smiled. "I won't be in the way."

"Uh huh."

So Kohaku started her work, glancing over her shoulder at me whenever she went for a new pan or set of ingredients, watching me for a reaction. I kept that same innocent look the entire time, calmly watching as she started up a traditional Japanese breakfast.

Hmm, maybe not an entirely effective form of revenge. Watching her make food but being unable to help was just about my own definition of torture. And yet I couldn't say anything, else let my plan fall to pieces. I really was my own worst enemy.

"So what are your plans today, Shirou-san?" Kohaku asked as she finished setting the miso aside and went to slice salmon fillets. I had nothing to say about how she prepared food—Kohaku seemed quite skilled at cooking—but I just wanted to do something. It had been far too long.

Still, I had to remain stoic and perfectly even for her to continue the suspicious looks she continued to shoot my way. "Well, since you showed me around town yesterday, I thought I would actually try my luck at looking for the doctor I came to this town looking for."

"Hmm. He helped your father before, you said?"

"Something like that." I wasn't even really clear about all the details, either, and it would have been hard enough to explain to someone who knew all about magic and curses and all. Explaining it and censoring myself would pretty much be impossible to come up with anything coherent. "Afterward, I was thinking if there was something I could bring? Since you won't let me cook for everyone, is there something you or Tohno-san would enjoy that I could bring back?"

She hummed in thought. "I can't think of anything, no."

"I would be a terrible guest if you didn't let me do something."

"I'm still not turning this kitchen over to yo—oh."

I peered to where Kohaku stared down at the cutting board as she raised her hand. Blood began to fall from her finger. Apparently she had cut herself while slicing the fish fillet—those knives were razor sharp, after all.

The strange thing, though, was the absent way Kohaku stared at the wound. The fact that I could see blood rolling right down her hand said how deep the cut was, but she only smiled, looking a little embarrassed. "That was really clumsy of me," she said.

Something about that reaction just reached right into the pit of my stomach and jabbed at me, gutting me from the inside-out.

I made my way over, grabbed for her hand and held it up. The cut was one of those that just looked painful. It was right at the second joint of her finger and had slashed completely across the digit. I didn't know much of anything about human anatomy, but I would have been really surprised if she hadn't cut right into muscle or a tendon or something.

I remembered seeing the first aid kit in one of the cupboards yesterday. After rummaging past a few other household tools—batteries, plastic wrap, old phone directories—I pulled it out from the back of one clearly oft-used storage space. Though it was old and obviously hadn't been used in the past few years, the band-aids and disinfectant were still useable.

Kohaku gave an embarrassed smile as I wrapped the pad around her finger. "I guess I should be more careful," she said, laughing to herself. "You're a distraction, you know that?"

There it was, that distancing from the event. It bothered me. It bothered me a lot, and now I had a good explanation as to why. It was the sort of distance, the sort of dulled emotion that I recognized from multiple sources. Not just Tohsaka in the months following the war. Not just Kiritsugu as I look back on my childhood. But also in that quiet girl I taught cooking to, and in that cheerful girl that danced in the snow amidst a war of life-and-death. "You really aren't fooling me, you know."

She laughed again, though this time it seemed forced. "Think this is an elaborate plan to make you have sympathy for me so you would stop harassing me and cease attempts at invading the kitchen for your own nefarious plans?"

I secured the band-aid around her finger, though instead of drawing back, I kept my fingers hooked with hers. "Is there ever a time I can catch you being serious?"

"Well…"

"Whatever hurt you in the past," I said, watching every millimeter of her expression for a change, "I don't think you should try to hide it like this."

Kohaku kept the exact same embarrassed-amused expression, though her eyes fell to our fingers and the bandage around her cut. "A lady of the court is always allowed to keep her mask on. I could imagine that is where the masquerade evolved from, after all."

Knights and ladies again. Still, I refused to be dissuaded. "Ladies dropped those masks for the errant knights that served them, though."

The maid giggled, though once more I felt like there was something underneath it that was unsettling. "So, you would be my courtly love, would fight in my name against the evil dragon threatening my life?"

"If it meant I could save her, yeah."

Kohaku pulled her hand back. For a split second, that mask, that thing that I was trying to get her to remove did indeed drop, and all I saw beyond was a sense of melancholy. She smiled, reached back to put the strips of fish she had cut into the now-heated pan. It sizzled, and the sound somehow felt like a wall being erected between us. "Nobody ever thinks about that poor dragon, though," she said. "Why only the sacrifice of the maiden would be enough to appease it and remove the plague it brought with it."

One image immediately swam up into my mind and I felt like I wanted to rip it right out of my brain even if it meant lobotomizing myself. The only thing that helped me keep that from showing was the warmth that pulsed from around my neck—there was only one dragon I knew, and she certainly was not the evil kind.


This time, it was Hisui that stared after me like I was dangerous vermin as I set the table. I had prepared the table the day before and I had the feeling that this only exacerbated the reason she had to glare. Hisui seemed like she was a perfectly-proper type of maid that did not appreciate my attempts to do her job. "What? I feel useless unless I can help out."

"No, it is not that," Hisui said.

I stopped halfway into setting out silverware and eyed the maid carefully. "Was it something I said?"

"Perhaps." Her brow furrowed, and though her expression did not change much beyond that, I could somehow make out that she was working out her thoughts carefully. "You stayed with nee-san after the film last night?"

"Yeah. I couldn't really sleep." I thought about it for a second, then the meaning behind Hisui's words sank in. "We didn't do, uh, anything, if that's what you're worried about."

"I was not particularly concerned with that," Hisui said. "I am curious as to what happened, however. Nee-san seems to be in a strange mood."

I'm not sure what qualified as strange for Kohaku—everything about her was strange to me. Hisui, though, clearly had some kind of mental line that she drew and could somehow measure her sister's actions by. Apparently, Kohaku had crossed it today, and before she had entered the kitchen as well. I'd intercepted Hisui before she had even been able to go for the table setting. "That is probably my fault. We just ended up talking, and I said some things that probably upset her."

"I do not think so," Hisui said. The maid had taken the opportunity and while I was distracted thinking of what all I had said to Kohaku, she had stolen the remaining set of silverware and hastily set it out on the table. "I do not think she is upset. She seemed concerned, worried."

That made two of us. "I think I'm the one that should be worried." I caught Hisui's eyes and gave her an even look. "She's had things happen to her, hasn't she? Something bad. She hides it well, but I can tell."

Hisui's eyes fell. "It is not my place to speak of it."

"I kind of feel like I've done something terrible to her," I said, glancing back to the kitchen. "When we met…like I gave her some kind of false hope."

"I would not say that."

"I would." I gave Hisui a helpless look and shrug. "I've done it before. I recognize the signs now."

Kohaku took that moment to exit the kitchen, breakfast plates at hand. Hisui fell silent, and I clamped my jaw down fast enough to hear my own teeth click. Still, I guess that even Hisui could figure out what it was I was going to say before we were interrupted.

I wasn't going to let it end the same way this time.


Synchronized Body, There Amidst, End