Fifteen minutes since Cu had stormed from the building with not a word of explanation. The look on his face… there was almost no way to describe it. To call it "dark" seemed like an absurd, ridiculous understatement. Despite everything, despite all the power she knew she held over him, there was a grain of something deeply unsettling in that expression. A kind of anger she'd never really thought he was capable of.
Maybe the confrontation she'd pushed him into had been worse than she'd realized.
She'd tried to follow, but he'd evaded her surprisingly easily. He'd been gone almost the moment she'd hurried out the door, only catching the barest fraction of a glimpse of him as he rounded a corner. By the time she was looking down that alley herself, there was no trace of him.
She called his name a single time. Even her own tinny echo was lost in the growing curtain of snow.
"Damn it," she muttered, and turned around.
Things were changing so rapidly that it was hard to get a good read on any part of the situation. Yesterday morning, she'd been the biggest bitch on the block. Exactly where she belonged and where she most loved to be. Ever since Abaddon had shown up, though, she'd hardly had a single moment where she felt like she was standing on solid ground. Everything was in flux. Everything was unknown and unknowable. His arrival had shattered her plans to pieces. If the Holy Grail War were a game of chess, the shitty old man had thought to cheat his way to victory by giving himself a second queen. Instead, Abaddon had overturned the board and set it on fire. She simply wasn't playing the same game anymore. A different game, with different rules, where one mistake meant a shameful death — and she was flying blind.
The uncertainty did carry its own kind of thrill. The scheming, the politicking, the manipulation… Manipulating Cu came as easy as breathing. Browbeating her greaseball would-be-Master into the ground had been child's play. Making the old man dance to her tune had been as simple as could be. Abaddon, though? He would test her to her limits, and it would be all the sweeter when she came out riding on top in the end.
The decrepit old lobby of the shitty, cheap motel had a vending machine, and Medb was thirsty. Had her footstool still been around to take orders, she might have tasked him with purchasing her something. Maybe she would have ordered him to break into it if he didn't have any money, and then wandered off when someone, inevitably, came to investigate, leaving him to deal with the mess. Again, though, the game had changed. Now, she couldn't afford that kind of attention. Not until she knew where she stood.
The problem was that she had no money. They'd spent the last of what she'd been able to loot off of the old man's corpse, and nothing else had really presented itself as an option. That wasn't even to mention how dirty she was, or how bruised, or how scraped.
She looked like shit.
She hated looking like shit.
The least this shithole could provide her was some cold water that hadn't come from a tap.
The vending machine hummed cheerfully, and she glowered at it.
There wasn't anyone manning the help desk, which seemed like an awfully egregious dereliction of duty. The proprietor of an establishment like this should always be available to his customers, no matter the circumstance. A tarnished old bell, helpfully labeled "ASSISTANCE," sat askew on the cheap wood.
Medb sighed. Her hair was already a mess, but there was an art to looking both helpless and harmless at the same time, and it started with the hair. Just the right level of frazzled and messy. Then, she worked her way down. A timid, slouching posture. There was already a tiny rip near the collar of her t-shirt, so she made it a little bigger, exposing her collarbone and a bit of cleavage. That skin, at least, was fairly clean, which might work to her advantage. She folded her arms under her breasts, pushing them up just enough to draw the eye to the rip, and leaned forward on the counter. She rang the bell.
Nobody came.
She frowned, irritation pulsing in her chest.
She rang it again.
Nothing.
A fly buzzed.
She rang it a third time, and the man from whom they had purchased the room came bustling out, grumbling. He was in his mid-fifties, or else he had aged exceptionally poorly. He seemed like the kind of man who cheated on his wife and then couldn't understand why she would want a divorce. The easiest kind to manipulate, really. "What is it?" he asked bluntly, clearly irritated about her hammering on the bell.
"I'm sorry to bother you, sir," Medb said, raising the pitch of her voice a couple of notes and adding a breathy nervousness to the edges of her words. The perfect image of a poor girl who had lost everything, and just needed a big, strong(?), unshaven man with a beer belly to take pity on her. She looked down at the counter, as if unsure, then back up at him. She was good at making her eyes look big and innocent without being obvious about it. "It's just… I haven't had anything to drink all day, and I spent the last of my money on those rooms for me and my friends..."
The help desk guy seemed unimpressed. "Tap water in your bathroom not good enough for you?"
Of course it's not, you oblivious pig. None of this is good enough for me. In a just world, Medb would currently be grinding this stupid guy's stupid mug into the cheap scratchy carpet. She smiled sweetly, drawing upon every ounce of fake vulnerability that she possessed. "I just need a little money for the vending machine. It's very important to me."
The man studied her face for a long few moments, before his eyes wandered down to the rip in her shirt.
She pretended not to notice. "I'm sure I can pay you back somehow…" She said, making it very clear with her body language exactly what she was implying.
The man seemed to do a few calculations, then sighed. "Alright, alright. Twist my arm, why don't you." He rummaged around in one pocket for a couple of dollar bills, led her to the machine. She pointed to the one she wanted, and the machine dispensed it with a satisfying thump. She swiped it out of the dispenser before he had a chance to try to be the gentleman and immediately turned her back on him.
The seething annoyance radiating from him behind her was immensely satisfying. "Really?"
She slowed to a halt, lazily unscrewed the cap, and took a long, slow drink. It was every bit as cold and refreshing as she had hoped it would be. She tilted her head back and smiled at the man.
He went pale.
This, at least, was a situation she could control.
"Don't pretend you're even worthy to look at me, worm," she said sweetly. "You're lucky I don't make you grovel for the luxury."
Her walk back to Abaddon's room was completely uninterrupted.
When she came upon the room he'd retired to, the door half-open on broken hinges, Abaddon was sitting on the edge of the bed, wearing only jeans. The rest of the clothes he'd been wearing previously were crumpled in a rough, careless ball against one of the walls. His hair was matted to his scalp, his eyes were downcast. His rippling muscles shone with sweat, and even though tall, sweaty, muscular men were very much an interest of hers, there was nothing appealing about this image.
Something was wrong.
Something was deeply, fundamentally wrong.
Something had been wrong from the start, of course. Medb wasn't an idiot, and from the moment of Abaddon's summoning, she'd been able to feel the strange disconnect between his form and his mana, the dark shadows that rippled just beneath the surface of his affable smile and boundless emotion like leviathans in a black sea. He was, fundamentally, a thing that should not exist.
Something had changed. Curruid was no longer content to lurk beneath the waves.
Where the white carapace of Abaddon's regrown arm merged seamlessly back into more or less human flesh, he still bore the marks of the deep cauterizing burn she'd given him. It still must have hurt tremendously, but he'd never mentioned it. There was a sickly grey pall to his skin, though. Lifeless and unnatural. He had not taken many wounds in the fight at the church, but the once he had taken had not scabbed or scarred or healed — rather, more bits of carapace seemed to be pushing out from his skin everywhere it had been broken. Around each point of new growth, his skin was distended, as though stretched to the breaking point by the chitin just below the surface.
He balled his hands into fists, then released them. One of them cracked audibly. Whether it was the natural or the angelic, she couldn't tell.
More than any of the physical changes, though, was the feeling that radiated off of him in waves. Righteous anger and guilt and joy and pain manifested as something almost physical, a tide that would sweep her away if her guard were to slip even an inch.
"Medb," he said, not looking up from the hole he seemed intent on boring into the ground with his gaze. "Have you come to challenge me, as well?" Despite everything else, his voice was unchanged. Melodic and musical, every word dripping with emotion. His was the voice of the lost.
In a fraction of a second, she took stock of the situation and weighed her options. The balance of power had shifted in the last few minutes. Shifted, or else become more honest. The awestruck-friend persona wouldn't have the same effect on him if he wasn't trying to be her friend, and so, she discarded it like a mask that had served its purpose at the end of the masquerade. What would fit best, in this new stage? Something more subservient, perhaps, but not too subservient. He likely had enough of a grip on who she was at this point to make total submission ring immediately hollow. The disciple with greater ambitions, then. It was what he would expect, and if she presented what he wanted to see, it would lower his guard. The most important thing she could accomplish in this moment was to establish herself as a continued ally. He could end her in a heartbeat if he so chose. Her time would come.
Her pause wasn't long enough to have registered as hesitation. She dipped into an elaborate curtesy. "Of course not, my lord." The words were bitter on her tongue, but she knew how to leaven the sound of it with sweetness. Let him hear the edges of it. See what she wanted him to see.
He waved a vague hand in her direction. "There's no need for that," he murmured. A droplet of sweat ran down his cheek, and he made no effort to wipe it away. "I suppose you want to know what happened between Lancer and I."
Lancer, not Cu Chulainn, this time. She nodded. He'd recognize a denial as an obvious lie, no matter how well told, so there wasn't any point.
"We had a disagreement," he said helpfully, each word implacable as cool marble. "A difference in philosophy. Words were exchanged."
That wasn't much to go on. "Is he… coming back?" she asked cautiously.
"He is," Abaddon said softly. "And he'll keep coming back. He does not possess the capacity to choose otherwise."
"Glad that's settled," she said lightly.
"Settled…" He murmured. "Settled, indeed." For the first time, he looked up, and those unsettling pale blue eyes met hers. She held his gaze, refusing in this one small respect to give even a single inch. "Come here, Medb. Let me look at you."
Medb had long ago mastered the art of veiling her caution behind a facade of carelessness; when she entered the room to approach him, her casual swagger hid one who watched and analyzed every movement for danger.
She was used to dealing with people with more physical strength than her. The ways to speak and move to put them at ease just long enough to utterly dominate them, body and soul. There was more than one kind of power.
Abaddon watched her every step, silent, as though taking stock of their new reality himself. Something about his gaze unnerved her, and that in itself was almost impressive. When was the last time a man had genuinely unnerved her?
Medb stood before him, and he stared at her.
No, he stared through her, as though gazing through the material flesh and bone of her body and into her soul. There was something piercing about his gaze that she hated with an intensity she reserved for the greatest of disrespects. He thought he could see her. The real her. Not the theatrics, not the varied false faces she showed the world, but her.
Maybe he could. Maybe he could see the naked hate beneath the subservience. Maybe he could see the ambition, the scheming, the need for power and control. The calculation and the cruelty.
Or maybe he was a self-righteous old bastard drunk on his own self-importance. Men and women alike had thought to take the measure of her before, and none had ever won a single scrap of power over her. What he could see didn't matter a single bit. Still, they would play this game. Still, they would dance this dance she'd spent a lifetime and an eternity perfecting.
The wheels of fate turned. Ages came and passed. The steps shifted, but the dance never changed.
Abaddon nodded. Whatever he'd seen in her… either he'd found no hint of duplicity, or else he'd found exactly what he expected. He'd play his moves, and she'd play hers. For now, they remained allies.
"I no longer trust Lancer," he intoned, as though this were a topic the conversation had naturally reached. "He will seek to betray or escape me, and I will not be able keep my eyes upon him at all times, especially once our work begins." There was a sad, mournful look in his eyes, but his voice was cold steel. "Nor will I be able to give him instructions to account for every possible loophole he might find. I do not trust you either, Queen Medb, but I do trust that you do not want to see Lancer die the glorious hero's death he so craves. Not yet, at any rate."
"He's mine," she replied simply. "He doesn't get to die."
Something that looked a whole lot like disgust flickered through his gaze. That wasn't especially shocking. What did surprise her was that she wasn't sure who he was disgusted with — himself, or her? Cu? The world? His own mortality? She filed that away for later.
"I will think on this," he said finally. "Several options present themselves, and I must decide which is correct."
Ominous son of a bitch. He sure loved to talk without saying anything of substance. "Alright," she said finally. "What's next? You've had time to think, right?"
Medb expected a lot of different things. Anger, perhaps. Determination. Disgust. Bloodlust. She didn't expect the sadness to return. A bone-deep melancholy, tinged with the expected wrath. "I have been gifted with… an unprecedented opportunity. A chance to set right something that should have long since been corrected."
Melodramatic bastard. "So you'll fight," she prompted. There were times when she needed to move heaven and Earth to get Abaddon to stop rambling, and there were times when getting him to say a single useful thing was like pulling her own teeth.
Abaddon's silence was all but deafening. The moment stretched. "Yes," he said. "I will fight. The Holy Grail will have its pound of flesh."
She nodded. The second battle at the church had been deeply humiliating in ways she had mostly chosen not to deal with yet, but maybe it had been a blessing in disguise. No more exhausting dreams of a pathetic, boring normal life. "So what's the first step, then?"
Abaddon looked down at his remaining human hand. He hadn't washed the dust off of it, and one of those unnerving bits of carapace protruded from the back like an enormous white splinter. "One day. I will require one day to gather my strength, and to reacclimate to this body. Tomorrow, at sunset, our campaign will begin."
The first stirrings of excitement began to swirl within her breast. The old joys of lust and battle. Good. She was far from patient, but she could wait at least that long. "Who do we kill first?" For all the battles that had been fought, all the blood that had been shed, seven Masters and seven Servants still remained on the field. Present company excluded, of course.
Abaddon seemed to be thinking along the same lines as she was. "As I see the situation, we have three enemy forces that will need to be dealt with," he said after a moment. "There is my old enemy, Assassin, alongside Archer and their two Masters, along with your true Master. Then, there are the Servants who have turned Ryuudou Temple into a fortress; Caster, her Master, and her Saber. And finally, there is the Einzbern girl, alone with her Berserker."
Medb nodded. "I'd agree with that assessment."
"Tell me, Queen of Connacht," Abaddon said. "Which target would you eliminate first?
An authentic grin spread across her face. She hadn't become queen by being an amateur tactician, after all. "Well… My first instinct says Berserker."
"What of Archer and Assassin?" he asked pensively. "They're beaten and exhausted too, aren't they?"
Medb shook her head. "Definitely not. Well, they are, but there's also too much we don't know. The way I see it, there are two big problems we need to get figured out before we go after them."
"Enlighten me."
"The first one is obviously Assassin," she replied. "You won today, but it was through kind of some loophole technicality bullshit. You didn't actually beat him, he was just too strong for that weenie holding his leash. That guy's a dumbass, but those other two are real magi. We don't know if they'll be able to figure out a way to fix that. He might be better tomorrow."
"And the second?" Abaddon prompted.
She grimaced. "My Master. I have no idea what's going on with her. Like, no idea. She could take me back at any moment if she wanted to, but she hasn't. Normally I'd think she's probably just a coward, but she stood up to the guy who's been beating the shit out of her and stuff for like ten years to get to that kid who summoned Assassin, so that tells me she's got some kind of fight in her. I don't like it, but if we show up to kill her boyfriend, she could use a Command Seal to just tell me to kill myself or something." Remembering the water bottle in her hand that she'd just gone through all that bullshit she'd gone through to get for the first time in a while, she took a drink to buy herself a few seconds to think. "I've got some ideas for dealing with her, but I'll need to work on that. Too much I don't know."
"So, Berserker, then," Abaddon said.
Medb sighed. "No."
He raised an eyebrow. "No?"
"Berserker is a big boy, but he's also alone. If he tries to get us, I think we can get him. He has a chance against me or Cu in a straight fight, but if we got on him together, he'd go down, and that's before adding you to the equation. I've also met that creepy kid he runs around with. She's pretty proud, so I don't think she's the type to make friends. I don't think she'll be making a lot of alliances on her own, and he is a Berserker. I think it'll work to our advantage to leave him on the board causing chaos for a little longer."
A slow smile spread across Abaddon's lips. "Then…"
Medb nodded. "Caster and Saber. They need to go first." She snorted. "Well, mostly Caster. I don't think that kid's much of a threat at all, especially since I'm pretty sure she can't actually leave. It's more than them, though. In the end, it mostly comes down to that mountain. That spooky bitch has had time to make it a tough nut to crack, but with those leylines and the fact that it's already a natural fortress, I think it's key to this whole thing. If we can hole up somewhere that defensible, with that much raw power waiting to be tapped, that gives up a huge advantage when it comes to dealing with the rest. Whoever holds Ryuudou Temple holds the Grail. So how'd I do? Did I pass?"
"With flying colors," Abaddon murmured. "I had come to the same conclusion, but I wanted a second, unbiased opinion. Given all of the magical power she possesses and the leylines upon which she has built her web, Caster is the greatest threat. She has also shown that she is willing to work with her own enemies to spit in my eye; should she make a true alliance with Assassin and Archer upon the mountain, victory will not be impossible, but it will become exponentially more difficult. She will be our first priority."
"It's not going to be easy," Medb said. "Like I said, she's had time to set up her defenses. I poked around her Bounded Field, and from what I can tell, it wasn't recent. I'm pretty sure she was summoned first this time. Not to mention that she's not stupid. She knows you exist and that she specifically pissed you off today. She'll be ready for us."
"She has had time to entrench herself, but it will make no difference in the end. When we march, we will break her at the very seat of her power. Our craftiest enemy will be dead, and we will have the power of the leylines at our disposal when the time comes to deal with the rest." There was a sense of finality to his voice. The finality of a cold grave. "Tomorrow. Ryuudou Temple falls at sunset."
Medb grinned and raised her water bottle in a toast. "They won't know what hit 'em," she said, then drank. The water that filled her mouth was…
It was wrong.
It was thick, and it was hot, and it was coppery. A familiar taste.
Blood.
Before she'd even finished processing what the problem actually was, she spat. True to the taste, a spray of red painted the carpet at her feet. Am I hurt? Am I bleeding? The thought was slightly panicked, but nothing hurt; nothing felt like it was wrong. Poison? Can I be poisoned? Nothing but the taste in her mouth.
Then she saw the bottle, still in her hand. The water was gone. All the water was gone.
The water had turned to blood.
Shirou sat in silence, cross legged on his futon. His bare room, illuminated by soft light, seemed almost claustrophobic. Even incorporeal, Assassin's presence loomed larger than life. The soft, rhythmic ticking of his clock, normally so soothing and repetitive, only highlighted the tension in the air.
"What happened out there?" he finally asked, his brow furrowed. "I mean…" He looked down at his hands. "What did we do wrong?" His hands were shaking. Strange. "What did I do wrong?"
Assassin's heavy, tired sigh filled the room. "The mistake was not thine, Contractor."
"Was it not?" Phantom nausea curled in his gut, and with a shudder, he recalled that horrible pop just as his body had given out. "I wasn't enough, Assassin. Me. Not Rin, not Archer, not… not you. You would have won, and I screwed it up."
"Thy failure was not predicated upon thy choices," Assassin said, and Shirou was reminded just how surprisingly gentle the great, otherworldly killer could be. "One can make no mistakes and still lose the battle. That is not weakness, Contractor. Standing thy ground against an agent of chaos was a noble endeavor, and had thou run, thy body would have given out yet more quickly. Loathe as I am to find myself in that woman's debt, Caster may not have had the time to intervene before thy head separated from thy shoulders."
Shirou shook his head, frustrated. "But I could have been more! If I was better at magic, or stronger, or if I just spent more time training, I could have—"
"Nothing would have changed. Thy limits are thy limits, and I misjudged thy strength. One does not pass judgment upon a blind man for being unable to see, or upon a tree that cannot bear fruit for not straining enough to grow."
Shame replaced the nausea, hot and painful. Some hero. Some hero of justice he was, if his body was so frail and weak. He looked away, silent.
Maybe you'll make a better assassin than you do a hero.
His fingers curled into painful fists, but it was himself he loathed in that moment, not anyone else. Not even Archer. How could he be angry, when all Archer had done was speak the truth? "I'm sorry you got stuck with such a pathetic Master," he said. "Maybe you should just go contract with Rin instead of me. She's probably got enough magical energy to spare."
"Perhaps I must need be more clear," Assassin rumbled softly. "Thy magical fortitude may be weak, but thy will is strong. Few I have ever known could have stood their ground in the face of even the weakest of Messengers, and thou did not budge even an inch, not even as thy flesh itself failed."
Shirou's gaze remained firmly upon the ground, his hands clenched so hard they shook. "I don't get how—"
"I have lived long, Contractor," Assassin continued as though he had not spoken. "And I have seen many things. I have seen horrors one with a good heart such as thine could never imagine, and I have seen wonders that would have thawed the heart of a man long dead. Millennia have passed since I was born. Nations have risen, and empires have fallen. I told thee I worked with Azrael on occasion, I believe."
"You did," Shirou said softly.
"In all that time, tell me, how many number the mortals who could look him in the eye and tell him 'no?' How many planted their feet, said 'this far and no further,' and did not falter even as their death approached? To see his approach, and to never for the briefest moment consider surrender?"
Shirou shook his head.
"Before this day, to my knowledge, it has happened but a single time. One man in the multitude. Only one man has ever defied the angel of death so steadily."
"Oh yeah?" Shirou said, and he hated the petty, self-deprecating edge in his voice. "And who was that?"
Assassin did not respond. The moment stretched on.
Shirou blinked. Frowned. "You don't mean—"
"I never had a talent for the mystical, Contractor. In that respect, I have already been surpassed." His booming voice was almost… nostalgic. "I was already ancient when Azrael came to the village I had then called home to destroy something that was precious to me, but still, I was filled with youthful rage. A profound lack of wisdom and piety. The angel of death himself stood in my doorway, and I held my spear to his throat. Though my hands shook, though I had no chance to best him, I planted my feet and held my ground."
Shirou's mouth was dry as the desert in his dreams. "What happened?"
"It was the first time we had ever met, though we had been made aware of each other by then. He had taken a human form, and the tip of my weapon was but a millimeter from his jugular. I knew that I could never have killed him, even should I have separated his head from his shoulders, but I also knew that I would make him pay dearly for every inch in blood. As I said, I was young, and I was full of misplaced hatred. I had not yet begun to reckon with my sins."
Despite himself, Shirou was rapt, his eyes fixed upon the empty air from which Assassin's voice came.
"Without moving a muscle, he shattered my spear as easily as he shattered my legs. I collapsed, though I still feel a spark of pride that I did not give him the satisfaction of screaming. He stood over me, looking down at me. Cold. Yet free of hatred or vindication. 'You do not understand yet,' he said, 'but you will. Your time has not come. His mark is upon you in more ways than one.'" Assassin let the silence hang for a moment. "He stepped over my writhing form to fulfill his task, and there was nothing I could do to stop him."
"What was it?" Shirou couldn't help himself. It hardly seemed to be the point of the story, but his curiosity had been unlocked. For a moment, it was more powerful even than the regret. "What did you have that was so important?"
"It is…" It seemed impossible to believe, but Assassin sounded almost as though he were lost for words. "When one lives as a mortal for as long as I, one's past grows… hazy. This memory strains at the barest edges of my recollection. I recall the scene, and the feeling, but the why…" Another pause, this one bordering on the agonizing. "It is as sand in the whirlwind."
"Was it some kind of artifact?" Shirou pressed. "A weapon? If it was something like that, it might give us some kind of clue that we could use to hurt him."
Assassin's voice remained as firm as ever, but in a way that Shirou would never be able to adequately describe, sorrow deeper than the spaces between the stars danced in the quiet spaces between words. "A keepsake," he said. "Not a weapon. Not a magical artifact. Something that reminded me of something. Perhaps someone. I no longer recall." Assassin did not sigh, but the sense of a quiet exhalation was unmistakable. "It was something that threatened not the fate of the world, nor something that I could have used to hurt anyone who still drew breath but myself. It was my last connection to a past I could not bear to leave behind. Perhaps if it had not been taken from me..." Assassin trailed off. Had Assassin ever trailed off before?
"I know what that's like," Shirou said. He didn't know where he was going with this, but something about Assassin's behavior was deeply unnerving. Shirou had never met anyone more unflappable, but Assassin seemed very much flapped. "You, uh. A few days ago, you told me a little about how the last war ended. You told me that you destroyed the Grail, and that there was a… backlash."
"And I asked if it was what haunted thee."
"Well…" Shirou hesitated, suddenly deeply anxious. What are you doing? This was something he tried not to think about. Let alone talk about. "There was a… fire. A big one. A lot of people died." If Assassin had been having the dreams that Rin said he should be having, then he already knew what an understatement that was. "I was just a kid. I had a family. I was happy, you know?" His breath caught in his throat, and he had to take a moment to compose himself. Assassin allowed him his silence. "They died. My house burned down. That might seem pretty small compared to whatever you've been through—"
"The loss of a home is never small, Contractor. The loss of a family even less so."
"I didn't have any other family, and I got adopted by Kiritsugu right after that happened. I never had a single thing from that part of my life." He sighed. "When I was a kid, I thought I'd remember forever. How can any kid forget their parents? But when I try to think back to that time, it's all foggy. Far away." He waved his hand in a vague gesture. "Dust in the storm."
The clock ticked, marking each second of silence.
"I don't even remember what they looked like," he whispered.
"To forget can be a blessing," Assassin said. "Or a curse."
"Yeah," Shirou said. "It can. It's… I don't know." The familiar dull ache thudded behind his ribs. This was more than he'd talked about any of this in… maybe forever. "I'm glad I met the old man, and I never would have without the fire. But I can't let myself be happy, because that means being happy that all those people died."
"Fortune and misery are all too often irreversibly entwined. What kind of a man was Kiritsugu Emiya?"
Shirou blinked, then smiled sheepishly. "He was a good guy. When I was a kid, I always teased him for being lazy, but I think he was actually just sick for a really long time. He had these terrible pains a lot of the time, and he had this... weird pattern on his hands that got worse when they hurt. He said they were a birthmark, but I don't know. I always thought they looked like scars." Shirou looked down at his own hands, almost reflexively. They were dirty and bruised and scraped. "He was the kind of guy that hated bullies more than anything. I remember one time… it was one of those days where his legs were so bad that he had to use his cane, and he still beat up a couple guys who were harassing this old lady with it. It didn't matter how much it hurt him if he could do a good thing for someone. He taught me a lot about that kind of stuff, even though he was usually really easygoing."
"Interesting."
Shirou frowned. "What's interesting?"
"What did he do for a living?"
Shirou laughed. "He had a bunch of money, so he didn't have to work. That's why he said he was so lazy all the time, even when he didn't hurt as much."
"And what did he do before he found thee?"
Shirou shrugged. "He said he travelled a lot, but he never said much more than that. He always seemed kind of embarrassed about it, though, and he talked about adopting me like it was a new start, so I figure he was a real troublemaker." He smile turned nostalgic. "The way Fuji-nee talks, the old man probably had kids all over the world he never even knew about, but I don't know about that. Why are you so interested?"
"Then perhaps he found his peace, in the end. Perhaps he found meaning in his destiny."
"His…" The words didn't make any sense. Individually, he knew what each of them make, but in that order, they failed to cohere into something meaningful. "What do you mean?"
"Thou asked me about the nature of my previous Master, and I told thee that in the end, he was. He was a man who believed so strongly in his ideals that he would have been willing to do anything, to kill anyone, in the name of saving the world from itself. He was not driven by rage, nor was he cruel, but he did terrible things nonetheless. A greater killer the world has not seen in generations."
Shirou shook his head, struggling to keep up with the rapidly changing topic. "I don't see what that has to do with anything. I mean, I'm curious, but—"
"My Master's name was Kiritsugu Emiya."
For a moment, all was still, and then the words hit him like a hammerblow, all at once. He was on his feet, and he didn't remember standing up. Invisible flames beat at his face, the weight of rubble ten years gone weighing upon his bones. "Assassin? What are you talking about?" His voice shook, as hard as he tried to keep it calm.
"I do not think I need to repeat myself."
Rage flared in Shirou's breast. Rage that was replaced almost as quickly by a bone deep terror, blending with the cold flame of desperate derision. "My father wasn't a Master. He wasn't even a Mage. He couldn't do magic."
"Yet he taught thee, did he not?"
"Yeah, but—"
Kiritsugu placed his hand gently on Shirou's forearm, and the boy had never seen such worry on his father's face. "Remember, Shirou. This isn't a toy. This isn't kid stuff. You could die if you aren't careful. Or worse."
Shirou grinned. "Don't worry. I'll be careful."
"You're lying." His mind prickled. Ice water had replaced his blood, and bladed edges bristled in his bones. "All the magic he knew was just… just theoretical! He didn't do it himself! He couldn't! His body—"
"I have never told thee a lie, and I do not intend to begin thus."
Shirou's mind was entering a tunnel. A great roaring blankness that threatened to overwhelm—
lungs choking
vision flickering
the feel of a warm hand on his—
This wasn't rational. He wasn't being rational.
He was also hyperventilating, so that knowledge wasn't as helpful as it could have been. He could almost hear the flames, the screams. His skin burned. His throat—
It wasn't true.
It wasn't true.
It couldn't be.
If the fire was Assassin's fault, he could live with that. He would never like it, but he could be okay.
But if the fire had been his father's fault…
"Contractor, sit. Sit, and I will tell thee of the Fourth Holy Grail War. Sit, and I will tell thee how thy world was ended."
No promises on anything in regards to timing on the next stuff because I'm in depression-anxiety-stress hell but I am still here and I am still very very slowly working on all of this! I know my chapters have been super intermittent and everything but I'm really grateful for everyone who still reads and everyone who is only just hopping on board. I don't take it for granted and I really appreciate all of you! I go back and read the comments people have left a lot because they really do brighten my day every time.
The next two chapters are gonna be a little different, but they're something that a lot of people have asked for — an overview of and scenes from the Fourth Holy Grail War. Who did Kariya summon? Who lived? Who died? Who killed who? And did Assassin really ever get to go all out on a dude? These questions and more will be answered in the next couple posts!
Next chapter: Threads in the Tapestry
