A second chance was all she wanted - Chapter 3: Pitch Black.
Again, I honestly wasn't going to continue this because I felt that I'd only let people down. Have had to make some changes to my plans with this fic already and I really don't know where this might go in future. I intended to focus on their romance rather than the grail war, and because of this I've not really plotted ahead. That coupled with my basic understanding of the Fate universe = Me majorly stressing when I get criticism. But the wiki has proved quite helpful. Anyway, Plot plot plot plot plot. I know it's just getting to the Shirou and Caster interaction but I don't really know if I'll update in future, just a fair warning.
'...She hears the sound of rain.
It was a night without moonlight.
The surroundings were pitch black, and she wandered with an empty mind.
That is where she met him.
With bloodstained body and frozen limbs.
A chanced meeting that was more miraculous than any miracle.'
If the crumpled figure had heard his raspy voice over the downpour, it hadn't stirred an inch, or given any evidence that it still retained any life in the least. From where Shirou loped on, hindered by bearing the brunt of the rain upon his face, It looked like little more than a large umbrella that had been lost to the tempestuous torrent of wind and rain with the way it seemed to flutter and flap under the weather's assault. Naturally, the figure became less obscure the closer he came, and yet the closer he came, the more of a mystery the figure became. Caked in dirt, mud and possibly blood, a dark cloak of some fine material that Shirou didn't recognise shrouded the distinct curves belonging to a female body within. What were her circumstances? Had she been attacked? Robbed? Hurt? Killed? Was she some sort of homeless person? No, the cloak was far too fine, even crusted with grime and whatever else the heavy rain had brought about in the forest. He shambled into a crouch over the figure, arms stretched to shake the bundle by it's shoulders; and then he paused.
Just who was this?
He paused and let his eyes marvel at the beauty beneath the cloak. At a distance, she had looked like little more than a decrepit, pitiable shape upon the floor. Up close however, was entirely different. She made even her fragile, haggard state of unconscious seem like the graceful, dignified slumber of a queen; full violet-crested lips parted with shallow breaths, bangs of powder-blue cascading either side of a pale, dirt-marred face as if to frame it like the evocative picture it was. What clothing was visible to him seemed bizarre and otherworldly, as if she had leapt straight out of some fantasy game with knights, wizards, goblins and the like. Even if he couldn't see the entirety of her face, she was enchanting; breathtaking, and completely unlike any woman he had ever seen before.
"Hey... Hey...!" The teen called to her fruitlessly as he took the unresponsive woman into his arms, handling her with the sort of great care befitting a priceless sculpture. She was lighter than she looked. Worryingly so. It was almost as if she was weightless. Almost as if she might fade from existence the moment he took his eyes off of her. Even though there were ink-like blots of what Shirou assumed was blood upon her, she didn't seem to possess any noticeable outward injuries. Perhaps she had simply fainted from exhaustion, or perhaps her damage was internal. Whatever the case was, she was alive, but barely. When his every effort to wake her proved ineffectual, he could only grow more and more worried. It was times like this that he rued the rules about mobile phones on school premises.
The woman, the mysterious foreigner, (for what else could she be?) was in dire need of help. He glanced left to right, and panic soon threatened to overwhelm his mind. He couldn't, and wouldn't, leave her side; His moral code forbade it, but he had to get her medical attention. It was only when he made to lift her, and opened his mouth to shout out for help did the sound of a singular splash behind him catch his attention. Had someone had snuck up on him again? Wasting no time, Shirou wheeled right around, half-expecting to see the sinister clergyman from earlier but when his eyes met the source he could only blink, dumbstruck. It was difficult to say what was harder to process, Who it was, clad in a coat and beneath an umbrella of red, or the fact that he hadn't heard her make her approach before what sounded like a splash landing.
"You there. Step away from-...Emiya-kun...?" Judging from her reaction, Homurahara's own model student and idol must have been just as surprised as he was.
"Huh...? Tohsaka?" He croaked her name in disbelief, as if he needed her to affirm what his eyes were seeing. Not that there was any mistaking her. Ever elegant, ever composed, even whilst clutching an umbrella in the midst of a torrential downpour, Tohsaka Rin stood before him eyeing him with an expression not unlike she was looking at a grossly misplaced jigsaw puzzle piece. Obviously, they knew each other in passing from school, but with such an uncommon meeting, she soon banished any air of familiarity behind a cool stare from her eyes of deep ocean blue.
"It's the wrong sort of weather to be out for a late night walk, don't you think?" The brunette mused with a curt and frosty tone that was a far cry from her supposedly polite and approachable persona at school, examining him and the figure he clutched with suspicion in her eyes. Not only did it seem to him that the girl knew who, or perhaps even what the woman he clutched really was, if he wasn't watching her like a hawk, he might not have noticed her gaze subtly flitting to his hands, grasped around the frame of the mysterious cloaked woman as if they might explain everything. Admittedly it was quite suspicious to be found carrying a woman in the middle of nowhere and in the dead of night, and the possibility came to mind that Rin might think he was in the process of mugging, or manhandling the woman.
"I...-" He began with the intention of explaining, but cut himself short. What could he possibly tell her? That he was practicing magic when he was suddenly attacked by a man of the cloth who tore something out from inside him, and he was in the process of running home when he saw this woman crumpled upon the ground? Not only did that sound completely and utterly ridiculous, even as fact, but Magecraft was also something that was to be kept secret from ordinary humans at all costs. The best he could do is simply hope that she knew him better than that. "Look, it doesn't matter, she needs help! Do you have a phone with you or something?" The red-haired teen wasted no time in getting to the point, motioning with his eyes to the woman clasped in his arms. Despite asking this, her approach had made him more than a little worried.
As if she suddenly came to realise something, Rin's expression shifted in the blink of an eye to that of an 'innocent' and disarming smile. "Of course. Don't worry, Emiya-kun, I'll take care of her. You should run along home before you catch your death of cold." Shirou, of course, didn't buy it, and didn't move a muscle. That butter-wouldn't-melt smile didn't do anything to assuage his suspicions, even when accompanied by the sweetest of tones from a tongue no doubt skilled in charming people. Such suspicious manner hardly encouraged his cooperation when it seemed that she clearly wanted him out of the picture for some reason, and who knows might have happened had he not turned out to be a fellow schoolmate. "What are you really here for, Tohsaka?" He challenged. Clearly her presence here and at this time had purpose, and was definitely not one of coincidence.
With her 'idol's charm' rejected, Rin's more intimidating demeanour reared its head again in an instant with an icy foreboding glare. There was no more sweet smiling honour student to it where there had been before. Perhaps Ryuudou Issei's allegationsabout her underlying malicious nature weren't all hot air after all. "That woman is dangerous, you need to leave. Now." Her warning-come-demand sent a shiver down the boy's spine, and reflexively, he tightened his grasp on the cloaked woman who was quickly growing colder. In fact, her body warmth could almost literally be felt escaping her and that only fuelled the feeling of urgency within him.
"Dangerous to who?" Shirou exclaimed loudly in disbelief, narrowing his eyes at the girl beneath the umbrella. "She's out cold!"
Tohsaka paused for a moment regarding the fallen woman with what might have been irritation. And with another splash in the rain, she took a step closer to Shirou with dark intent in her eyes, the movement leaving her dark locks batting her features with the wind and seemingly making her appear somewhat more menacing. With a slow deliberate motion, she pointed the forefinger of her free hand at him, and somehow, Emiya Shirou knew he was looking down the equivalent of the barrel of a loaded gun. "I'm warning you, Emiya-kun; for your own good, leave and forget you saw anything tonight. "
"Or what? You'll kill me?" Now he was tempting fate, given how she was seemingly entertaining the notion.
"Really, Emiya-kun? You really won't back down?" She frowned harder, if that were possible, her annoyance thinly veiled behind a cool and collected persona. "You're willing to die for a complete stranger when I'm telling you that they're dangerous?" His behaviour seemed to perplex her. Was it really that baffling that someone would want to help a fallen stranger? Was it not human nature? The right thing to do?
"Right now you're the one looking dangerous, Tohsaka. I'm -not- leaving." Insisted Shirou with a firm shake of his head, turning from Rin to shield for the unconscious foreigner with his own body, his eyes shut and his body tensed in apprehension for... something. Some sort of deathblow perhaps. He had no idea what she was capable of, or what she might do, but it certainly felt like nothing would surprise him after the evening's turn of events. Regardless he was ready to protect this mysterious stranger from anything she could throw at them by any means necessary. A mutual silence that seemed to span a short eternity descended after that with Rin's eyes boring holes into him.
She inhaled hard and then...
...Prodded him roughly in the back of his head, eliciting a small yelp from the redheaded teen.
"...Geez, Why do you have to be so stubborn?" A loud, unladylike groan of annoyance punctuated her sentence. "Alright, fine. You can keep your pet, but you better be willing to take responsibility for it, got it?" And with that, Rin seemingly deflated with that groan of hers, relaxing her posture into folded arms with her umbrella still clasped close and her head had turned away from him in disdain.
Nonplussed at both her sudden change in behaviour and her choice of words, all Shirou could manage when he peered back over his shoulder and rubbed his head were a blank expression and a dumb-sounding "...Eh...?" as his body swivelled to face her once again.
"Well, what are you standing around for? We've wasted enough time as it is." Rin snapped haughtily. "If you want to save her, we need to get her...-" Trailing off, she jabbed her slender pointer finger upward in the direction opposite where she stood. "-...Up there." Instinctively the boy turned his head to follow the finger to its indicated destination; the almost sinister shadow of Ryuudou Temple standing above the trees and beneath a clouded moonless sky. It struck him as a particularly strange place to take someone ailing and possibly dying, but she was right. Their little encounter had seemingly taken its toll on the mysterious woman, and time was of the essence.
There was nothing for it. He would just have to trust Rin. And after sparing a glance in the direction of the path toward its many steps, he exhaled slowly and spoke his mind. "I don't really understand, but I'll do it." Shirou replied with a firm nod, peering at the ever-unreadable Tohsaka. "I know it's asking a lot right now, but can you do a favour for me?"
Caught by surprise, the girl beneath the umbrella quirked a brow inquisitively, replying with a tentative "What is it?" as he groped around inside his trouser pockets and eventually withdrew a set of orthodox looking keys.
"You know where I live, right? Big Japanese style house in north Miyamachou? Please..." He began sincerely, holding the simple keys out to her. "I think someone might have broken into my place, and if Fuji-nee and Sakura were there, then-" Evidently, the concern in his voice spoke volumes, and he needn't have said any more as the brunette stormed up to him and snatched them from his hand.
"Alright, alright. I'll take a look, but you need to get moving. And don't attract any further attention." Her tone was sharp and irritable, but it was clear she meant well. Or at least, he hoped she did. Whatever her plan had been before, she hadn't counted on Shirou being there, and being as stubborn as he was. With a nod and a brief-but-grateful smile, he stooped down and scooped the motionless cloaked woman up and into a fireman's lift as carefully and gently as he was able. Renewed with vigour born of purpose, the sores and pains of Shirou's bruised and battered body had subsided or at least numbed with the disposition of bearing the burden of another life on his shoulders. Yet her strangely light body was no burden to him at all as he begun to take his leave toward the many stairs of the path to the temple.
After a number of steps, the sound of Rin's voice reminded him that she hadn't left just yet. "Oh and Emiya-kun, I don't think gaping holes are part of school uniform. You'll have to explain that one to me later~" His heart skipped a beat. Of course she would pick up on his sorry-looking state; anyone with a good pair of eyes would since not only had he made no conscious effort to cover it up, but he also lacked any means of doing so. It was the most obvious indication of Shirou's less than ordinary day, and yet he had no idea where he could possibly begin to explain the evening's events to her.
He spun around and urged his brain to formulate some sort of response, but regardless of whether he could find the words, she had simply vanished, almost as though she had never been there in the first place.
Once again, he was alone, save for the crumpled heap on his back. His only choice was to soldier on through the downpour and up the stairs to the looming darkness and find sanctuary in Ryuudou Temple.