The door opened and closed again. Ren opened her eyes, but she seemed to be alone in the darkening room. Something moved at the corner of her vision and the back of her neck prickled. Jack appeared to be a cute little girl, but Ren could never entirely set aside the fact that the child Servant was also a dangerous and inhuman killer.
On the other hand, that wasn't a truth to be changed by setting her at a distance, so she softly said, "Hi, Jack."
"Hi, Mommy," said Jack from right beside her, as her Presence Concealment faded. "Rider said you wanted to see us?" Her green eyes shone unnaturally bright in the chamber's gloom, and the points of her face seemed accentuated to knife-like sharpness.
Ren held up the brush. "Time to untangle that mop of hair, kiddo."
Jack reached up and pulled on a strand of her own hair, crossing her eyes to focus on it. Then she looked at Ren again. "But why?"
Exhaling softly, Ren took the strand of hair from Jack's fingers and ran the brush lightly over it. This was what she'd expected in the Raven Tower: questioning, doubt, even anger. Jack had only clung to her then, too rattled by the strange situation to question. But now that they had time, now that she'd managed to tend to everybody else before Jack, Ren had to pay the piper.
"Because I want to keep you with me," Ren said.
Jack leaned back, pulling her hair away from Ren and tilting her head. "We don't understand. Is it because we kill and dismember? Is that why you want to keep us?"
Ren's mouth tightened and she tilted her own head to match Jack's. "No. I want to keep you because you deserve better than being thrown away."
The testing expression on Jack's face became genuine confusion. "Huh? We are thrown away. We don't deserve anything. That's just the truth."
"Jack… you deserve a hug if you want one, at least. Because everybody does." Ren put the brush down and opened her arms.
The little girl looked at her warily for a long moment, crouched on the end of the bed like she was about to spring. Then she crept into Ren's lap and nestled against her chest. Carefully, Ren closed her arms around her.
"Some mommies didn't throw us in the river," said Jack softly. "They let us be born and hugged and kissed us. Then they gave us to other mommies and went away and our new mommies let us starve until we were nothing but howling bones."
"That's not what happened yesterday," Ren said, remembering what the enchanted Jack had said about the worst mommies not even noticing when their little one was dragged away. "They stole you from me, and when I woke up I was very upset."
"Hmm," muttered Jack, rubbing her nose against Ren's chest. "Is that true? We don't know. Maybe if it is, we should go back inside and start over, so nobody could ever take us away again. And then you couldn't get tired of us and give us away." She looked up, her eyes glimmering. "That would be good, right, Mommy?"
Ren's stomach clenched reflexively. "I think Ritsu would be pretty sad if that happened. She'd miss us."
Jack's mouth twisted in dissatisfaction. "Ritsu… guess that might be true." She considered. "Ritsu's nice and we're supposed to help her, but she's so busy she might not even notice."
Ren shook her head a little and picked up the brush again. This time when she began to draw it through Jack's hair, the Servant didn't resist. Instead she sucked on one of her fingers, making little thoughtful noises.
As the magic charge began to build in her hair, Jack's little shoulders relaxed a little. "I like berries. They don't fill me up but they taste and pop so good!" Ren noticed the shift in Jack's speech and her own shoulders loosened as well.
Then Jack said, "I think you should have another baby, Mommy," and her shoulders tightened right back up again. "Another Servant baby like me, so we can play with each other when you're busy doing grown-up stuff. The human babies are adorable but they're so fragile."
"Um," said Ren, floundering. "That… that would require Merlin's help and I'm not…"
Jack twisted to look up at her, sniffing. "But you've already had Merlin's help making another baby, right? We can smell it. We can always smell that."
Ren suddenly felt like throwing up, so strong was the surge of emotion that swept over her: rage and frustration, shame and confusion, and an impossibly wide vein of hurt. She dropped the brush, her arms clenching over her stomach, inadvertently pushing Jack off her lap.
"Mommy?" Jack sounded alarmed and Ren knew distantly she ought to reassure her, but all she could think of was the emotion flickering off and on Merlin's face as he'd tried to laugh off what he'd done to her.
"Mommy? You didn't want his help? Mommy, if I dismember him, will that fix it? Mommy, please don't cry!"
Ren managed to open her arms and wrap them around Jack, pulling the little girl as close as she could, hiding her own face in Jack's narrow chest. She wasn't crying, she wasn't, but if she didn't press something against her face she might yet.
Hesitantly Jack stroked her hair. "Does this help, Mommy? It helped me."
"You are such a good girl, Jack," said Ren, her voice muffled. "I'm not very strong alone, but I will always fight for you and I will always come for you, okay?" She lifted her head to meet Jack's gaze.
Jack ran cool fingers down Ren's cheek, even though Ren was sure she hadn't shed even a tear. "You don't have to, Mommy. We're your Servant. We're supposed to do the fighting."
A hint of exasperation showed through Ren's storm of emotion. "Shh, you. I'm going to be the mommy you deserve." Her mouth tightened and she added, "And I'll even get you that sibling. But… not today. We've had a long day already." Merlin had no doubt fed well on what he'd induced in her, and he could damn well bear the cost.
Jack looked at her for a long moment. "Tomorrow?"
"Maybe?" Ren said. "Tomorrow or the next day, assuming nothing explodes."
"Okay!" chirped Jack, as if that settled everything. Then she flopped in Ren's lap again and said, "More brushing, Mommy!"
More than an hour later, Ren tucked a sleeping Jack in the bed, stroking her back for a while. When Astolfo, Ren and Tora came in talking about supper, she rose and followed them down to the kitchen, grateful that they allowed her to lend a hand without asking her any questions. And after they were done, dinner of sliced meat, grilled vegetables and more pancakes had to be carried on platters up to the Great Hall, because there were now too many of them to crowd into the kitchen.
Ren looked at her little army sitting on the floor as she picked at her own dinner. Merlin sat in the midst of Ritsu's four little adopted siblings (the girl who had been locked in her house having been acquired that afternoon by certain troublemakers), with Ritsu and Jekyll nearby discussing magic theory. Astolfo and Flat, the above-mentioned troublemakers, sat together, both eating messily and laughing more than seemed sane. Jack sat close to Ren, keeping an eye on Merlin and the kids, while Tora sat near Ritsu, doing the same thing.
A traumatized demi-Servant soldier, an overly-serious child prodigy, four twisted Servants, four tiny children, and Flat. She was responsible for all of them. And then there was Cú, when he returned….
Before she could hesitate, before she could feel the curl of fear at the potential consequences again, Ren reached out along their shared connection for the Lancer.
My lady? I'll be back very soon.
His mental voice had a more intimate caress to it than he'd had before, and it made Ren's stomach clench again. She pushed her plate over to Jack and hugged her knees, watching the children around Merlin. Ichigo, Kay, Pan and Lulu. They clearly trusted and adored the Magus of Flowers already. Ren almost envied them. Trust was a pleasant sensation, and the hole when it fled was the genesis of nightmares.
When Cú materialized a few moments later, right beside Ren, his arrival rippled through the supper party like a big rock in a small pond. Jekyll stopped talking to Ritsu and concentrated hard on his nearly finished dinner. Jack, long done with both her and Ren's meal, gave Cú a hard, blank look. Merlin laughed at something a child said, without appearing to even notice the Lancer's arrival. Tora smiled, while Astolfo said, "Oops!" to Flat, his head swiveling between Merlin and Cú and back again.
All in all, it wasn't a set of reactions Cú could miss. His ruby gaze sharpened as he too inspected each of the room's inhabitants before dropping to one knee beside Ren.
"My lady. I saw Lord Kirri to his HQ. Learned that he'll be sending various supplies by wagon to this castle in a couple days." Cú snorted. "He's letting people believe whatever they want about his trip, and mostly they're believing he conquered the fortress and left Tora in charge. He's also going to write you a letter or something. Mind if I eat?"
"Please," said Ren, glancing over at him and then looking down at her hands again. He snagged Jack's plates and went to fill them both before returning to Ren's side, silently passing one of the plates to Jack. Jack gave him a dubious look, before accepting the plate with a nod of approval. After that, he settled close to Ren, as close as Jack, watching her little army in silence.
Jekyll stayed quiet and Ritsu transferred the focus of her chattering to Tora. Merlin, on the other hand, grew even louder, doing magic tricks for the children and telling them little nonsense stories about each of the other Servants. Not once the whole dinner had he looked directly at Ren. She'd been waiting (hoping) for even a glance, but… nothing.
Not that she wanted him to look at her anyhow. Meeting his gaze would just make her stomach hurt more.
As Cú finished eating, he put his hand on the small of Ren's back: a simple, casual gesture that could mean so many things, ranging from I'm here for you to You're mine.
Ren clenched her jaw. She wasn't anybody's. She'd enjoyed what she'd done with Cú unreservedly, and she'd do it again when he needed it. But at that particular moment, the thought of letting anybody's hands rove over her, of being used, made her want to hide away.
His fingers rubbed the tense muscles beside her spine as he said very quietly, "What happened while I was gone? You're pissed, I can see that."
"I recharged everybody else who needed it, and swapped Hyde for Jekyll." She thought that concisely summed things up.
Cú cocked an eyebrow. "Ah, and that's why you've got this murderous aura pouring off you? But Jekyll isn't that bad."
"Merlin is," piped up Jack. She was lingering over her third plate of dinner.
With a hard chuckle, Cú said, "You got that right, brat." He fell silent for a moment and then said, "Lady, you remember when I told you that you ought to start sleeping with a knife?"
Startled, Ren glanced at him. "Yeah. You… you said I was beautiful."
"Well, yeah," he said, as if that was obvious. "What I kinda meant is that you don't have to put up with anything you don't want. Not with us Servants around… and not from us Servants, either." His hand lifted conspicuously from her back. "You don't like something, all you have to do is say the word. You rule us, not the other way around."
Ren drew in a deep breath and then exhaled, a certain tension flowing from her. For the first time since supper had started, that obsessive corner-of-the-eye awareness of what Merlin was doing faded away. She leaned toward Cú, and his shoulder was there for her, a warm, solid rest for her head.
As his hand once again settled on her back, she muttered, "I wish I could bring back something I liked just as easily."
"Hey," said Cú. "You got me back, yeah? Sometimes you can."
"She's got me, too," Jack added. "Mommy should still have a knife, though. Knives dismember a lot of problems."
"Yeah," agreed Cú. "I'll get her one soon."
Ren closed her eyes, concentrating on her breathing: pushing out the bad and inhaling the good. While Cú was clearly trying to behave himself, she could just detect an echo of the possessive growl he'd given when Merlin had interrupted them under his words and the movement of his hand. It… didn't bother her, given how he seemed to be handling it.
Yeah, that made sense, she realized. He didn't like complicated things. And apparently the best way in his mind to keep things simple was to hand her a knife and tell her to do whatever the hell she wanted, with whomever she wanted.
Good old Cú.
She lifted her head from his shoulder, straightening
"I'm going to be summoning a new Servant in a day or two," she said quietly.
Cú's fingers moved on her back. "Yeah? Good idea." His voice was.a little louder than hers, just loud enough that it carried to others. "I bet your victory over Kirri will make a whole lot of enemies notice you, just as soon as they figure out he's quietly betraying them."
Tora winced at Cú's word choice, but Merlin looked up from the children, directly at the Lancer. He didn't say anything, but Ren recognized the hardness in his eyes from other strategy meetings. Once upon a time, it would have annoyed her.
Once upon a time, he would have been looking at her.
Ren cleared her throat. "Yeah. I want to take a day to rest and recover, if we're allowed it. And then… we'll summon more help."
And finally, finally, Merlin focused his gaze on her. Something dark flickered across his face before he politely said, "Do you have any particular type of Servant in mind this time?"
Well, thanks to Jack, she did. But what kind of answer did she owe Merlin, he who refused to ever fucking explain himself to her?
"Oh yes," she said, baring her teeth in a smile at Merlin. "But you'll just have to wait and find out."
Author's NoteIf this were a novel, somewhere around here is where I'd end Book 1. It's not, so I'm just going to keep going!