Sakura was used to being by herself. Aside from the time she spent with Senpai, it was when she was happiest. No smiles to fake, no abuses to endure, no agonies to suffer. Silence was peace, because silence meant that she had nothing to fear.
Today, silence meant uncertainty, and uncertainty meant terror.
Had she ever been in this house without a chaperone before, outside of the few brief moments the day before? She didn't think she had. Senpai or Ms. Fujimura were always around, even if that only meant her Senpai was passed out in the shed on the other side of the property. To be utterly and completely alone here was… a new experience, and not one that she entirely liked. Everything was so still; even the air seemed to hang heavy. Familiar furniture and appliances seemed to take on sinister intentions, even in broad daylight.
The first thing she did, after standing in a daze for a couple minutes, grappling with all that, was turn on a faucet. It was white noise, but it was better than the silence that seemed to whisper death in her ear. Not her own death, of course. It was an easy lie to tell herself that her own death didn't scare her anymore, but the idea of not knowing whether Senpai was still breathing, wherever he was, was enough to override almost everything else. What if they were right, and there was a Servant at the temple? What if they were captured? What if they were killed? What if Rin stabbed him in the back? She could be betraying him right now and Sakura would be powerless to do a thing to stop it.
Why did he trust Rin? Why did he believe in her? Sakura knew one thing about magi, and it was that you could never, under any circumstances trust one. (That applied to her just as much as it did to Rin, but she was too cowardly to make Senpai understand that.) They could smile and laugh together when it was safe, but when it came down to life and death? That was something entirely different.
He was not dead. He was not being killed or torn apart. He was not being tortured and he was not being betrayed. He was fine and Rin was fine and the blood she saw in her mind wasn't real, the breaking bones weren't real, the distant rustling of worms and sounds of screams were not real because Senpai and Rin were fine and Sakura was a stupid, stupid girl who let her fears carry her away, but what if-
The circumstances were new, but the spiral was familiar, like an old set of slippers, and she knew how to combat it. She had to stay busy, and there was a lot to do in this house. Signs of battle were still everywhere, not having been fixed or cleaned in the two days since Lancer's attack, and she set about doing what she could to remedy that. Humming tunelessly under her breath, she swept shards of glass into a pile, then swept that pile into a dustpan, which she emptied into the trash. Over the open window, she hung a sheet, to at least give the illusion of privacy, then began collecting the pieces of a broken table. She wasn't much good with her hands, but she might be able to do something with it.
It took two trips to carry all of it out to the yard, dumping the wood into a rough pile with a clatter. After arranging the pieces into a facsimile of what it had once been, she pressed her hand to the largest hunk of wood and closed her eyes. Magic didn't hurt, not anymore. Instead, it felt like plunging her hand into freezing jelly; slimy and unnatural and stomach-turning. She didn't like it or dislike it anymore. It was just how things were.
Beside her, in the garden, one of the flowers she had planted withered into something grey and twisted; then another, and then another. Matou's magic was not like Tohsaka's magic. Grandfather liked to call what they did "redistribution," but he always said it with an ironic smile on his face. It was stealing energy from one place so that you could put it into another. Usually, that meant killing something to get what you wanted done. Practice at home usually involved the death of a few worms, but she wasn't exactly about to mourn those. The flowers were more of a loss. They were the only things on the property that were hers, and she didn't want to take what didn't belong to her.
Sweat beaded on her brow, and her breath came faster. Had she been a true Matou, and not a counterfeit, this would have been easy, but for her it was anything but. Threads of energy twisted from the dying plants into the splintered wood, and the end table began to knit itself back together. She wasn't as good at this as she should have been; the repair job was anything but seamless. Where each break had been, there had emerged a gnarled, ropy scar that stood out from the smooth surface. She released the spell with a sigh of relief.
She frowned down at the table. Where before it had been shattered, it had been functional, now it was ugly and misshapen. Would it even be level enough to set a drink onto it? She wasn't sure. It would probably wobble and topple over if someone weren't careful but… She had to remind herself that it was beyond any kind of usefulness before she'd touched it, even if now it was scarred and twisted and wrong.
She wondered if the strange feeling she felt in her gut was what Grandfather felt when he looked at her.
There were more things to mend, but she felt drained, and there weren't a lot of flowers left for her to use, so she focused on cleaning. Each chore led to another to another to another, and before she realized how much time had passed, the house was glimmering and spotless. Her hands ached a little from scrubbing, and her skin burned a little from the chemicals she'd used. She'd moved in a daze, forcing herself to focus on the repetitive tasks. If she kept herself on task, there would be no extra room to think about how worried she was. (Senpai's headless body, torn to pieces by an enemy Servant, embraced her in her mind, and she forced the image away before she started screaming.)
There was nothing left to do, though, to drive away those images, and Surviving Sakura had begun to take violent hold of her thoughts before Feeling Sakura had a thought that broke through the numbness —
Why don't I cook them something? You don't cook for people who are dead, so if they have food waiting for them, they won't die.
It was the logic of a child, and it was stupid, but she latched onto it like a lifeline thrown to a drowning girl. It was something else to throw herself into, and hopefully they'd be back before the food was done and she found herself all alone with enough food for four people all to herself because Rin and Senpai were dead on the pavement somewhere-
They're fine, and I'm going to have lunch cooking when they get back.
For a while, it worked, and as she chopped and measured and poured and simmered, it turned out that for a while was long enough. Just as the idea of thoughts she shouldn't have began to drift at the edges of her awareness, she heard the distant sounds of voices shouting. One was male, and one was female, and the pot of food was left abandoned on the stove in her mad dash to the front door. It has to be them, right? Please, just let it be them. Pulling it open just enough for her to peek through with one eye, she found herself shaking almost too hard to manage it.
And there, coming through the front gate were Senpai and Rin, bickering loudly over something she couldn't hear. They still had all of their limbs and their heads, and they were both walking under their own power, so they must be okay, right?
They were okay. They were okay. She exhaled a breath she hadn't realized she'd been holding, then ran back to the kitchen. The stew simmered merrily; she hadn't let it burn in the few seconds she had left it alone. (She'd been worrying the food like it would all get destroyed if she weren't constantly messing with it.)
There was a mirror sheen on the counter, and she squinted into it. There wasn't much in the way of detail that she could see, but she could make out a few things that needed fixing. She closed her eyes and forced herself to breathe slowly. Inhale. Exhale. They don't need to see you like this. Gently, she massaged her cheeks; she knew she'd gotten pale with worry, and this might bring some color back into them. Finally, the voices nearing the door, she wet her fingers and ran them through her hair, doing what she could to straighten it back out after the frantic cleaning had left it in slight disarray. They're okay. They're okay. They don't need to know that you're not, because they need to be okay. Her nerves crawled under her skin, and the relief she felt was intermingled with shame at her fear and her lack of trust and the tremor of fading adrenaline.
The sliding door clacked open, and she clasped her hands behind her back, put on her best welcoming smile, and turned to face them as they entered. "Welcome home," she said.
"Welcome home," Sakura said, cutting through their argument, and for a moment Shirou could almost pretend that everything was normal. How many times had he comes home to see that very same smile, full of warmth and quiet joy, waiting for him?
For the first time since leaving Tohsaka's house that morning, he almost felt safe. It wasn't that he expected Sakura to fight anyone who might attack; it was just so hard to imagine anything being so rude as to disrupt that peaceful image.
"What do you mean, welcome home?" Rin shouted.
Well, maybe one person. As Sakura shrank away, Shirou nudged Rin with a grimace. "Don't yell at Sakura just because you're mad at me."
Rin turned her furious gaze back to him, and Shirou made himself look her dead in the eye. After a moment, she sagged, closing her eyes with a sigh. "I don't have the energy for this anymore. You win. Whatever." She dragged herself over to the table, sat down on the floor, and rested her forehead on the wood.
"Um," Sakura ventured quietly. "Lunch will be ready soon, if you're hungry." She laced her fingers together before her, a nervous habit she fell into when she was feeling especially shy. "What happened, Senpai? Is everything okay?"
"Well," Shirou said, "we're still in one piece, so I guess it went okay." He walked to the kitchen and leaned back against the counter. Sakura drew closer, nervously, like a rabbit about to bolt. "Thanks for cooking, Sakura. You didn't have to do that for us."
She shook her head, and there was a small smile on her lips. "It's really nothing. You're letting me stay here, so I'm just doing my part, since I can't fight. I cleaned up a little, too."
Shirou grinned. "Well, you don't have to do anything, but if you want to look at it that way, I guess it's okay." With a shrug, he rolled his neck. It popped more than usual. "We figured out that Caster and Saber are using the temple as—"
Her eyes widened. "There were two Servants?"
"Yeah, and we all ended up fighting them," he said. They'd survived without any permanent damage, so he was pretty much done being bothered by the brush with death. "Well, Assassin didn't, but I told him not to."
Sakura frowned, and something hard flashed across her eyes, but her voice was as gentle as ever. "Isn't that a little irresponsible of him not to fight? You could have died."
Shirou shook his head, wondering whether Assassin was standing over them as they spoke. He probably was (Shirou could tell that he was near, now that he understood such a thing was possible, if not exactly where), but what he said was not just to placate him if so. "Actually, I think it was the opposite."
She tilted her head. "What do you mean?"
He scratched his chin idly, trying to figure out how to put it into words. "I told him to only come out if he thought there wasn't any hope otherwise. Even when things looked bad, he didn't show himself. He's not afraid of fighting, so I figure that means he must have trusted us to get through."
Sakura looked unconvinced; she hid that particular emotion poorly. As far as Shirou could guess, she nodded to keep from arguing any more, though."If you say so, then I'll believe you, Senpai." She went still, and Shirou blinked at her.
"Are you okay?" he asked. "What is it? Is there something on my face?"
With tender, gentle hands, she reached for him, and he was too surprised to back away before her fingertips were lightly brushing the skin on his throat. A sting accompanied the touch, but for some reason, he didn't want to move. "Your neck," she breathed. Her eyes were wide and concerned, her mouth slightly open in horror.
Shirou looked away, feeling his cheeks start to burn. "Yeah, uh, I got strangled a little is all. I'm okay, though." What are you doing, idiot? Be normal. But it was hard to be normal when she'd never exactly done this kind of thing before.
A moment later, Sakura seemed to realize what she was doing and pulled back, blushing furiously, her hands pressed to her mouth. "S-sorry, I just," she stammered. "It looked like it hurt is all, so I probably shouldn't have touched it, but—"
He shook his head. "No, its okay," he said stupidly. "It didn't really hurt any more than it already did." Good going, Shirou, that'll set her at ease.
As expected, she grew more flustered, not less. "I should get you something, I mean, to help you feel better, right? Maybe some painkillers or a compress... I shouldn't just reach out and poke it, and I'm sorry…"
"Oh my god, will you two just get a room?" Shirou and Sakura both jumped, having forgotten that she was still in the room, and turned to see Rin glaring at them with one eye through her hair, her head resting sideways on the table. "This is the most pathetic flirting I've ever seen, and I've been hit on by Shinji."
"We're not flirting!" they protested in unison, then looked at each other in surprise. Shirou's cheeks burned hotter just as Sakura's went an even deeper crimson.
Rin didn't dignify that with a response. "Don't burn the food," she said instead, turning her head to once again be face down. Sakura squeaked and turned back to the stove, hurriedly (and probably unnecessarily) stirring at the stew with a wooden spoon.
It didn't smell like it was burning.
Shirou rubbed his arm, searching desperately for something to say. "Tohsaka is mad because I didn't just tell Assassin to come out when Caster hit her with a spell, but she won't come out and say that."
"Am not," came Rin's muffled voice.
"I don't want to start this again," Shirou replied.
"Actually," Archer said, materializing just behind his Master, "she's mad because a Master as incompetent as you saved her life without using your Servant."
Rin groaned without looking up. "You freak out about a little girl, let Shirou fight a Servant by himself, don't say a word the whole way home, and this is how you choose to make your triumphant return?"
"That sounds about right," Shirou muttered. Archer shot him an infuriating smirk; looked like the bastard was back to being his normal self. I guess I just haven't gotten over him wanting to kill me.
"What was that about, anyway?" Rin asked accusingly. "That was weird, even for you."
The images he'd seen flashed before his eyes again, and Shirou frowned. Archer's smirk turned into a look of warning, and Shirou shook his head. He wouldn't tell Rin if that was really what Archer wanted; it wasn't like he'd learned much specifically that wasn't obvious from Archer's reaction. He knew that Saber. The specific imagery didn't seem important.
Archer shrugged, even though Rin couldn't see him. "I don't want to kill a kid. I think I made that pretty clear."
Sakura's voice drifted from the stove; she wasn't facing them. "Did you… fight a child?"
"Yes," Shirou and Archer said at the same time Rin muttered, "Not a kid."
Sakura glanced at Shirou, frowning, and he shrugged uncomfortably. "Saber turned out to be younger than us, but she still tried to kill us. I don't think she wanted to hurt us, but she didn't have a choice."
"What makes you say that?" Sakura asked, Rin and Archer having begun arguing in quiet voices.
Shirou couldn't really pick out the specifics of their own personal little war, but then again, he really didn't want to. Talking to Sakura was easier than trying to figure out their weird dynamic, and besides, he'd been deeply bothered by what he'd seen.
That look of resigned sadness Saber had worn as she raised her sword against him hadn't faded, and it was all he could see in his mind after that question. Her sad eyes. Her tight mouth. Shirou told Sakura about the girl, focusing especially on the way she'd looked when Shirou had offered his meaningless help. "She told me that duty isn't something you get to ignore just because you don't like it," he finished.
He couldn't see Sakura's eyes, but she was silent as she poked away with the wooden spoon. Shirou thought he heard the spoon hit the bottom of the pan and scrape. He grimaced. "Do you believe that?" she asked quietly. He couldn't read her tone.
"Oh, um," Shirou said. "I guess… sort of? I guess it depends what you see your duty as. She seemed to think duty was about expectation. She needed to do what Caster wanted to her, whether she agreed with it or not."
Sakura's voice grew quieter, and he had to draw closer to hear her. She was going to turn the stew to mush at this rate. "What do you think duty is, Senpai?"
"I've never really thought about it specifically," he said, trying to ignore the familiar honeysuckle smell that clung to her, and how distracting and nice it was. He was still a good foot away from her; that wasn't a weird distance, was it? "I guess I think your duty is to follow whatever your ideals are. If someone wants to be a good person, but they do something bad because their boss tells them to, then I think that person is probably irresponsible." He didn't hold it against Saber. He really didn't. The poor girl had been young and inexperienced and two steps from broken.
Her head tilted so that he could barely see her eyes. Her face wore that carefully blank expression she got whenever she was trying to pretend she was okay when she really wasn't. "And what if you don't have any ideals, Senpai? What is your duty then?" She'd worn that expression a lot, when they'd first become friends. In contrast, her voice was almost quietly pleading.
"If…" Shirou looked at her. No, he didn't just look at her. He tried to understand her. Something was moving under the surface of his awareness, but he didn't have enough pieces of the puzzle to figure out what it was. There are a lot of things I don't know about you, aren't there? he thought, not for the first time since she'd shown up at Tohsaka's the day before. Surprisingly, there was no sting of betrayal to it. He didn't know what her life was really like, and all he felt was a kind of aching sadness for reasons that he didn't entirely understand. He'd never asked more than she'd been happy to tell about her life outside of this house—outside of what she'd willingly offered up. He'd never thought he needed to ask. "We're not talking about Saber anymore, are we?"
Sakura smiled then, embarrassed, and shook her head. "I'm just being silly, Senpai. Forget I said anything. Sometimes I just ask weird questions when I'm worried."
The dreaming eye twitches, though the body knows not what it sees.
"Sakura…" What was there to say? What could he even ask? Do you know about that disease your soul apparently has? "Would you tell me if you felt… different?" He lowered his voice; for all his bluster, he didn't think he was ready to bring Tohsaka in on this, yet. His lips pressed together, suddenly afraid of what she might say.
"Different?" Sakura physically recoiled at the word, and his stomach collapsed into a black hole. There's too much recognition there. Too much of a reaction. There's something. "H-have I-"
Shirou shook his head vigorously. "Never mind, it was a silly question. You aren't acting different." That… wasn't entirely true, honestly, but he was beginning to realize that maybe Sakura had never stopped being the strangely hollow girl who had tended to him when he'd been injured. She seemed so much more… vulnerable.
For the first time since he'd left the house to find Caster, he remembered holding her, wrapping himself around her in a fit of protective passion, and embarrassment lanced through him. He'd been… presumptuous. Impulsive. She'd only returned the gesture of affection reluctantly, and when she finally did, she'd been shaking like a leaf in his arms. He must have upset her terribly.
He'd never known she'd be so small and warm.
He opened his mouth to speak, but before he could get a word of apology out, Assassin beat him to the punch. "Someone approaches."
Archer stood, ramrod straight, from where he'd been kneeling to argue with Rin. His eyes were wide. "That presence…" Without another word, he faded away to nothing.
Rin leapt to her feet, shooting Shirou a meaningful glance, while he shared a surprised look with Sakura. "Go to the shed," he said calmly. "It's where you'll be safest while we deal with this."
"Not a lot of time, Shirou," Rin hissed, dashing over to the side of the room so that she wouldn't be visible from the door. "Get her out of here."
Sakura was frowning, but not in a way that suggested fear. "Wait, Senpai, I think…"
Shirou's bounded field around the property was weak, but an enemy should not have been able to breach it while he was home without triggering a quiet alarm. Either this enemy was head and shoulders more powerful than he or Rin, or…
"Oh no," he said. Rin shook her head and glared quizzically.
The worst possible scenario was here. A possibility so horrific that he'd refused to contemplate that it could happen at a time like this. The sliding door slammed open with a crash, and a deafening voice like a tiger roar filled the house. "SHIROOOUUU! WHY WEREN'T YOU AT SCHOOL TODAY? IF YOU'RE NOT LYING IN BED DYING, YOU WILL BE SOON!"
Rin looked shell-shocked. "Is that Ms. Fujimura?" she mouthed at him.
Shirou nodded like a man being marched to the guillotine.
Artoria Pendragon sat on her step, much the same as she had for the past month, dreading her Master's return.
Every day was the same as every other day. Every day, she sat here with her butt on the cold stone, gazing out at a wondrous city she'd never be able to visit. It was gleaming and beautiful, all iron and glass and bustling movement; nothing like the cities she remembered. She wondered what Kay would have thought about it all. Would he have been impressed? Jealous? Or even… Hell, she would even have taken Merlin's company at this point, as cryptic and obnoxious as the bastard was. He, at least, had cared about her in his own way.
Merlin had probably seen all of this before, if all that nonsense he liked to spout about "living backwards" had meant anything at all. She wondered if he was here in this world somewhere, too. Did he know she was here? Would he recognize her?
It was all meaningless. Artoria had nothing to do but watch and to think.
She'd finally managed to earn a little of her foster brother's respect; no longer had she been just Wart, though she still thought of herself that way sometimes when she wasn't paying attention. She'd had dreams. She'd had a goal that meant more to her than anything else in all the world. She was the Knight Princess, the girl who would be king. And now…
What was she?
To call her a puppet, dancing on her Master's strings, would have been too generous. She wasn't allowed even that token amount of freedom, a pretty lie that she could tell herself to pretend she was her own person.
Her Master refused to tell her what had happened after Artoria's memories stopped, but she would say that Artoria had lived a full life, and that her current form was a result of an imperfect summoning. That comforted her a little; at least she had not been cruelly plucked from her own time before she could do what she was meant to. She had been king, and she had ruled.
She hoped she'd ruled well. She hoped that she didn't die filled with regret.
When would Caster return? Would she return? What would happen to Artoria if she didn't? She genuinely didn't know the answer to that question. Artoria had been summoned by Caster, but she was bound to and fueled by the leylines beneath her feet. It was possible she would disappear with Caster's death, but it was equally possible that she would simply remain here, even more alone, until one of the other Servants came to take pity on her and end her.
As horrific as that thought was, she wasn't sure it was worse than Caster remaining alive. Caster was… Artoria didn't know. She'd never understood anyone less than she understood her Master. (And she'd had to put up with Merlin, of all people.)
"I ask of you," she asked in a solid voice. "Are you my Master?"
The woman in purple only smiled, but there was no warmth in it. "Tell me your name." Her voice was smooth and deep, and it sent chills down Artoria's back.
It brooked no dissent. "Artoria Pendragon," she said simply. "The future King of Britain." Not how she usually introduced herself, but the instinctual knowledge of her position had already filled her mind at the moment of her summoning.
"Artoria Pendragon… The child." Caster looked at her for a long moment, then tilted her head slowly. "Interesting," she said softly. "So you have no memories?"
Artoria frowned. "I have memories."
"But none of your future. Interesting," she repeated, "but irrelevant. A tool does not require memories to be effective." That was the first moment that Artoria realized that she had not been summoned by a good person. "I will, of course, need you to swear a vow."
"A vow of fealty?" she asked skeptically.
"Something of the sort," Caster said. "You see, I am no fool, and I will not be betrayed when you do not have the stomach for what must be done."
Artoria's blood ran cold.
Not 'if,' but 'when.'
"A Command Seal is powerful," she continued, showing Artoria the sign on the back of her hand, "but ineffective over the long term. The more general the command, the weaker the compulsion. So I will not order you to be loyal with such." Caster stepped forward, inches from the line of the summoning circle. "A knight's word is her bond, correct?" She didn't wait for an answer. "Your honor will not allow you to break a promise. You will vow to serve me as you would your patron lord. You will fight and die for me, and my goals will be your goals."
Artoria felt as though she'd been thrown into a bottomless lake, her armor swiftly dragging her down into the cold black. "I cannot do that," she said, and she wondered if she sounded as childish as she felt. "I will not dirty myself with—"
Caster held up a hand, and Artoria's throat closed. Not with any sort of magic; Caster's commanding presence was just that powerful, and she was already off balance. "The summoning in itself is a contract, is it not? Would disobeying me not constitute a breach in that duty?"
Artoria didn't respond. She could no longer see the light from the surface. Everything was freezing blackness and crushing pressure.
"Then such a vow would be a mere formality, would it not?" Caster knew she had trapped Artoria, and she was savoring it. "Surely you can show me enough respect to give it to my face."
Something was wrong with this woman, and now Artoria was having to do something she wasn't entirely certain about. She'd been so freshly summoned, and now this strange woman was asking her to do things in ways that made her stomach try to leave through her mouth.
Artoria grit her teeth, bile rising in her throat, and knelt.
Caster been cold and cruel from the start. Dismissive of Artoria's wishes, withholding of any sort of praise, occasionally outright derogatory. If that had been all, if the tenor of it all hadn't changed at all in the last month, Artoria would have been able to stomach it all. She'd have been miserable, but an abjectly cruel person, she could at least understand.
But as the weeks had gone on, Artoria had felt something change. The things she said didn't change. She didn't become a kinder person. But she would hesitate before the icy mask slipped over her face. Artoria would feel her eyes on the back of her head in the night. She'd even flinched once or twice when Artoria had been especially hurt by her words, and Artoria didn't know if she had even noticed.
She'd called Artoria's request for food foolish, and then shared a pizza with her not four hours later. There was a part of Caster that didn't want to be cruel. There was a part of her that she had to suppress to be as cruel as she was, and it was getting harder for her.
That was frustrating. It made Artoria angry. If Caster wanted to be a good person, somewhere deep down, why didn't she allow herself to be one? Why all this effort and emotional self flagellation to contort herself into a caricature of an evil witch? Caster wasn't an evil person following her nature, Artoria was sure. Caster was forcing herself down the path she knew to be wrong, and that was something Artoria could not understand or forgive, no matter how she turned it over in her head. The fact that Artoria was her target was mostly immaterial.
Caster strode through the front gate in her casual outfit—jeans and a dark jacket, and Artoria stiffened. Her hands were in her pockets, and were it not for her ears barely poking out of her beautiful hair, she might have looked like anybody else on the street. Her face was absolutely neutral; Artoria had no indication of what to expect.
Would she be the Caster who had ridiculed her for wanting food, or would she be the Caster who had brought her a pizza to eat together in silence?
Slowly, Caster made her way up the steps, eyes directly ahead, not acknowledging Artoria at all. Her stomach twisted itself into a knot, waiting for the coming barb. She hadn't won a single fight since she'd been summoned. True, she'd never allowed anyone past who wasn't permitted, but she also made Caster do all the hard work herself. That should be enough to damn her in the strange woman's eyes.
Caster was silent as she passed. Artoria watched her, not wanting to break the silence, and relaxed when she had passed. The footsteps stopped. Here it comes, she thought tiredly. Had Caster seen some perceived insolence in her gaze? Hunching forward, she waited for the attack.
"You've done well, Artoria," Caster said.
"Thank you," she said automatically, irritated at the swell of pride that touched her heart at the words. Now keep walking. We have nothing to say to each other.
But the footsteps didn't resume. Artoria twisted, glancing behind her, and she could have swore that for a moment, before the mask slid back over her features, Caster was looking at her with pride. It was gone as quickly as she had noticed it, and she wondered if it had been there at all. "I expect that this performance will continue," she said briskly.
Artoria smiled sadly, and nodded. "It will, Mistress. You can count on me."
Caster nodded jerkily. "Good. Now that I know that you are so capable, I expect great things from you." The footsteps resumed, briefly, but then came to an awkward halt again.
Artoria didn't say anything. Let her take the initiative if she had something that she wanted to say so badly. A minute passed. Two. She traced a flock of birds in the air with her eyes, wishing that she too had the freedom to soar through the city below.
In the end, Caster kept whatever it was she wanted to say to herself, walking away without ever speaking another word.
It didn't occur to her until later that night that Caster had just used her name for the first time.
Thanks for your patience, everyone! Unfortunately, after this first week of my new temporary job, I've had so little spare creative energy remaining that I've barely been able to write anything. I still have quite a large buffer, so we're not in danger of running dry, but it is looking very unlikely that I will go back to weekly posting until the end of my summer.
For the thousandth time, thank you all for reading, and thank you for your wonderful comments. I do try to reply to them all, but this time it took me a while.
See you in two weeks!
Next chapter: Unlimited Fuji-nee Works