AN: The Old Republic has stolen all of my goof-around time, so slow. IT IS JUST A COINCIDENCE THAT TOR WAS DOWN FOR A SERVER UPGRADE AND PATCH WHEN I GOT MOST OF THIS DONE. Also, lots of work for school. I just did a presentation on King Arthur's feminine traits, looool.

Fate/Far Side: Synchronized Bodies

Chapter 2

Beside You

On the pretense of Kohaku showing me around town, we headed out after breakfast to take a look around Misaki. Of course, my pretense was for the purposes of convincing Kohaku that I needed to cook for my hosts that evening. Kohaku's seemed to be as a private investigator out to discover my deepest, darkest secrets. Tohno-san added her yen to the fold before we left, teasing Kohaku over the idea that she was in fact an "old maid" and was finally being taken out on a date.

I waited for Hisui to just move in for the kill, but the stoic sister had nothing to add to the situation, standing military-like behind Tohno-san's shoulder.

"So, she lives at your place, doesn't work for you, but calls the place 'home,' and you trust her to keep it nice when you're away." Kohaku nodded in an exaggerated fashion. "This is what we call a 'common law marriage,' Shirou-san. You and Rin are married!"

Don't let her hear that, she'll fandangle me out of my estate…

Honestly, though, it probably was an accurate depiction, at least in theory. Tohsaka had put off her trip to London to join up with the Association to look after Fuyuki and my place. Though the pretense she gave was something around the lines of further study to be better prepared for entrance into the Clock Tower, I had the feeling that a lot of her motivation had taken a blow from the war, not unlike mine, I guess. It was still there, yeah, but we still had to cope with everything that had happened before getting back up on our feet—and I think, in a lot of ways, Tohsaka was starting to wonder whether she even wanted to be a part of a magical guild that supported something like the Heaven's Feel ceremony.

Wandering Misaki and its early-spring chill reminded me just enough of home to consider what Kohaku was trying to make more like a joke a little more seriously. Other cities that I had visited around Japan were usually larger and busier, places where I could learn more about the general state of the world, how communities acted when so tightly woven, that sort of thing. The "concrete jungle" I heard someone term it in a book back at school, once. Misaki was a little more isolated, despite the fact that it was no backwater town. A microcosm of a world, something that I had learned lent itself to feeling almost boundary field-esque. Which of course, reminded me of home.

"Ohhh, in here, in here, I should get us a movie or something while we're out," Kohaku said. She was directing me toward a local film rental place, waving excitedly at the shopkeeper—apparently they knew each other. "What kind of movies do you like?"

The store itself looked a lot smaller on the outside than inside, though the fact that it was flanked by two much larger buildings probably didn't help with that perception. Still, it was somehow fitting to me that Kohaku knew about it of any of the locations around this part of the downtown area. "I don't really watch a lot of films, to be honest. But I guess I like, uh, heroic stuff, epics and all."

"Heh," Kohaku raised a hand to cover her snicker, the sleeve of her kimono lending her that older-woman-laughing-at-a-silly-little-boy sort of look. "Interesting," she sing-songed. "Most boys would say 'action' or 'fighting' to describe films like that. You say 'heroic' and 'epic.' Quite the old-fashioned romantic, are we?"

Snorting, I followed after the maid as she wove past displays toward the drama section. "I wouldn't exactly say I'm a romantic." In fact, I didn't particularly find any of that sort of thing—historical or fictional—romantic at all. I probably knew too much, as it were. "I just like to think we can learn from the past, and take what's good about it and emulate it."

The way Kohaku listened to me when I said that—the tilt of her head, the much more subdued smile—seemed to at least momentarily get her past the jokes. "I see," she said. "So, then, what have you seen? Now that we're here, I think we really should get something to watch."

An errant thought occurred to me. "I never saw a television in the house. Do you hide it, or something?"

Kohaku's smirk returned. "Oh, no, Akiha-sama is just a very old-fashioned type. She doesn't have much use for television. I keep one in my room, though. Partially to keep up on the news that is more up-to-date than the paper, at least."

I guess in that way, Tohno-san and I were kind of alike. I think the only reason I ever kept the television in my place was because Fuji-nee used it so often. "I don't want to bore you. Or Hisui-san, if she would watch things with us." Though something about Kohaku's sister told me she would somehow find a proper excuse to avoid frivolous activities. "What kind of things do you like to watch?"

"Pornography."

Dear god and all things not false like Kotomine, I was glad I didn't have anything in my mouth to spit out right there. Instead, I nearly choked on my tongue.

She said it with a completely straight face too, though it broke out into a grin when I started coughing. "Oh my, you don't actually believe me, do you? As if a fair maiden such as myself would ever delve into such things." The only thing that was missing was the high-class accent and a tilt of her chin skyward, and she would have been the perfect noblewoman.

"I will never play poker with you. Or hanafuda. Or anything that requires cards."

A sigh. "Such is my lot in life, to never face an equal at gambling." She shrugged, motioned toward one row of movies. "Honestly, when I come here, I probably watch anything and everything, but I probably have tried romance more than others. I've tried to get Hisui-chan to tear up, since for some reason I feel it would be easier than attempting a laugh out of her."

"In other words, you're the real romantic."

Kohaku's face scrunched up. "You should never tease a woman about their preferences, or any excuses they make up to conceal such a thing. It is like making fun of a woman's choice in dress or makeup." She waggled a finger my way. "No making fun of romance films, got it?"

"Yes ma'am." I tried not to grin back at her, but it was difficult. She took on the role of a boss real easily.

Seemingly placated, Kohaku hummed in thought. "Well, why don't we combine the two. How about First Knight? It has swordfights and a romance story about Lancelot and Guinevere…"

Probably catching onto the strange look I had to be sporting, Kohaku's voice trailed off. I couldn't help it though. While I had since the war looked into reading up on mythology a little more than I had before, things about Arthurian myth now somewhat bothered me each time I was exposed to them. While I think Saber herself might have been vaguely amused by them, I couldn't help but consider depictions of "King Arthur" as sad and entirely false representations. "Maybe, something different? I might prefer to keep it Japanese, if that's alright."

Kohaku shrugged. "Alright." She then leaned in to give a stage whisper. "Have something against the British?"

You have no idea.

From the rental place, we wandered back toward the suburban area where the Tohno estate was located, taking a different route from the one we came by, again just to let me take a look around. While I didn't intend to stay that long, I didn't mind getting a broader view of the city, nor spending more time around Kohaku.

"I know you said Japanese, but this really is more American than anything," Kohaku said, looking over the movie we had decided upon. "I mean…Tom Cruise? Not very Japanese."

There was something just, well…off, about how she acted. I couldn't quite put my finger on it, but every little movement she made, the way she closed her eyes when she smiled broadly or put her hands behind her back as she walked about seemed to be telling me something I ought to know.

I had a lot of hard-learned lessons in life, and understanding how the public actions of someone informed on their private lives was one of them.

"Just try it out," I said. "There's a nice, understated romantic story in this."

"So, you've seen it?"

"On a whim, once. I liked it, though, and have thought about seeing it again." I grinned. "Kind of terrible about historical military facts, but, well, American."

Kohaku nodded to accept that, glancing instead down one street as we passed by. "How about we get some snack food while we're at it? Some take-out, perhaps, and make a night of it? It might make Akiha-sama and Hisui-chan more likely to involve themselves, since they will feel guilty not to participate."

"Well," I grimaced, "I wanted to cook for you all…"

The grin that sprang much too fast onto the maid's lips told me everything I needed to know: yes, she was aware of that, and this was in fact another way to counter my incursion into her kitchen territory. In another lifetime, Kohaku was probably a master of the boundary field.

"Fine," I relented.

"That…was so…beautiful…" Kohaku sobbed.

"Indeed," Hisui added.

The three of us sat huddled under blankets and pillows in Kohaku's room, watching as the credits scrolled along the screen. I would have gotten up to turn the television off, but my legs had gone numb under me.

Being in the bedroom of a girl I had hardly met yesterday was bad enough. I was not about to sit on her bed behind closed doors with her.

We had managed to convince both Kohaku's sister and Tohno-san to come watch the film with us, and the take-out Chinese food we had brought with us seemed more appropriate to pick and eat at rather than sit up at the formal dining table for. Tohno-san, however, had eventually wandered off, apparently not moved at all by Tom Cruise or Ken Watanabe—though I wasn't exactly surprised. For some reason, this kind of film did not strike me as her kind of fare. She had surprised me with how willing she was to hole up in her maid's bedroom to "hang out," so to speak, even if it had not lasted the entire movie.

"How cruel our society is, our history is," Kohaku went on, though now she muffled herself with a handkerchief as she wiped at her face. "So beautiful, yet so tragic…but I don't want him to have a different end, but…it's still sad!"

"Nee-san, if that is all, I should go clean this up," Hisui said, crawling off of the bed and picking up the discarded food cartons we had left out.

I tried to get up and follow her lead, but my numbed legs betrayed me and she had all of the garbage swiped up before I could make it to my feet. "Let me help you with that?" I tried.

"You are a guest, Emiya-sama," Hisui said. "It is my job to handle things such as this." She gave a quick bow of her head, then was out the door before I could conjure up a response to stop her.

"Don't worry," Kohaku said, dabbing at her eyes again, "Hisui-chan is probably just as moved and needed privacy to let it all out. She's very shy, you know."

To be honest, I think Hisui was more interested in the sword fighting than even I was. "If you say so," I said. Trying to shake the prickly feeling in my legs away, I kept kicking one leg up from the shin like I was stretching for a run. "You really liked it that much?"

Nodding, the maid hit the controller in her lap so the film ejected from her game system, doubling as a DVD player at the moment. I went to replace it back in the packaging. "I actually liked the other relationships more than the romance, though. Katsumoto was based on Saigou Takamori, wasn't he?"

"I think so." This was, after all, a film about the end of the samurai, and Takamori is often called the last true samurai. "Who was wounded by gunfire and then had his allies help him with seppuku at the end…so yeah."

"Think…his end was actually this beautiful?"

"Probably not," I said. That…just isn't right, ultimately. People die like that, and it is bloody and terrible. You don't get last words that close up the person's journey so perfectly like that. They just die, and it's sad. "Though it would be nice."

"Lost someone, have you?" Kohaku asked.

I couldn't help but smirk a little at the way she carefully edged her voice into the question, and I looked at her askance. "You sure you're not working for some international agency that wants to prove that I am, in fact, an international terrorist?"

"Oh, of course not, they fired me many years ago. I work as an independent now." Kohaku stuck out her tongue. "Seriously, though, it sounds like you're speaking a little from experience."

"Maybe a little." I considered the last few minutes of the film and decided I really didn't want to go there. "What about you?"

"What about me?"

This time, I was the one that got to give the all-knowing gaze. "A couple of things, really. You seemed to get very quiet whenever the main character was drinking."

She gave me a funny look, her forehead furrowing but keeping a bemused smile up. "What? Doesn't it make you uncomfortable watching someone drown their sorrows like that?"

"Yeah, a little." I felt a quick surge of victory at the way she phrased that. "You know, I couldn't help but think that part of the reason I can't remember meeting you very well is that, well, what I can remember is odd. It doesn't really line up. I mean, I remember meeting someone, but she was very very quiet." I let my eyebrows raise a bit. "You're anything but quiet."

"Are you calling me a loud-mouth?" Kohaku looked like she couldn't decide on whether to get angry or start pouting.

I opened my hands and shrugged. "If the shoe fits…"

"I wear sandals."

I made to flick at her forehead with a finger and she gave a relenting little laugh. "I'm trying to be serious here."

She waved off my hand, though her shoulders slumped a little. "Promise you won't laugh, then?"

"Stop making jokes and I can be a very dour person. In fact, you might just find me outright depressing." Which is true. The more I think about that other self, the more I get a little depressed. While I still don't understand what tipped the scales completely…

I guess I could only hope that I would never find out.

There was a chair to the desk next to Kohaku's television, and I pulled that up to settle into. Again, something about sitting on a bed next to a girl felt way more intimate than even just being in the same room with them. "You have my full attention," I said.

"Well, doctor, I am starting to have dreams about my mother…"

I glared. "Just so you understand, I would make the most terrible therapist this world has ever seen, no joke."

Kohaku sighed, then looked to the window. Night had long since fallen, so there was little to see—the glare from the single lamp left on over the course of the movie still produced enough glare that all I could see was a dim reflection of the room. I suppose that if Kohaku wanted to reveal something about herself, though, that might in fact be an apt vision to do it to. "You know how they say that the story of a damsel in distress is very un-modern, kinda sexist?"

"Yeah."

She gave me a worried sort of glance. "Does it make me a backwards kind of girl to like those sort of stories?"

I swear, every once in a while, that feeling that hung from around my neck would give me clear and tangible visions. The irony or appropriateness of one person asking me such a thing when I spent so much of the war convincing another person something similar was not lost—in fact, I had this sneaking suspicion that the warm feeling that crept up on me right then was Saber somehow listening in and sharing in the amusement. "I am also the last person you want to ask that question to."

"Oh?"

Nope, not going to let you turn this back on me. "I'm sure there are plenty of girls out there that like that sort of thing. Even wish for it, guilty pleasure or, well, not-so-guilty pleasure, whichever."

Kohaku made a noise that sounded somewhere between a huff and a protracted laugh. "When I was younger, I had a crush on a boy. I wanted him to be my knight in shining armor, you know. It's silly, you know. Just like me, right?"

Well, I didn't really know about that. I pointed out the film because it reminds me of her overreaction to things, whether cheerful or sad, angry or guilty, over regular things—like his overindulgence in drinking.

Like one girl, cheerfully learning how to cook.

Like another girl, cheerfully playing amidst the snow.

"Is that why you remember me?" I asked, a little dumbfounded as the connection sort of made it in my head. I understood that a lot of people had strange mnemonic strategies to keeping hold of information or specific events, and that they often were associated with personal quirks of obsession or enjoyment. Again, I was probably the last person on earth to relate that to, since mine had to do with ancient weapons of war, but, I guess it made sense if I looked at it from that kind of perspective. "Just because I was being polite, or something?"

Kohaku looked a little embarrassed. "See why I thought you'd laugh?"

"I guess." Though I didn't find it funny at all. Actually, I found it a little disquieting, a little too close to home.

Sitting up and shuffling over to one end of her bed, Kohaku pulled an umbrella from where it must have been leaning in the corner of the room. She extended it handle-first to me. "This is yours."

I took it, the vague sense of familiarity returning to me. Normally, I suppose, I might have instantly recognized it since the physical makeup of things like this were always my strong suit, but I think I must have given this away before I had attempted to learn magecraft and started visualizing the world in such a way. The thing is, I didn't really remember it per se, but now the image in my head of a young Kohaku did solidify to be clearer. "Yeah, I kind of remember now."

"Knights, you know, used to entrust things to women of the court before they went off on their errant adventures," Kohaku said. "I guess, you didn't take this back, so that's how I remember everything so clearly."

I could remember a girl, remember holding this out over her to protect her from the rain—

Dizzy. I felt really dizzy.

"Shirou?"

I sat back in the chair, looking at this simple little cloth and aluminum thing, and for a moment, I really, really felt like throwing up.

"What's wrong?"

Swallowing back on that sensation, I shook my head. "Don't worry," I said, though my tongue suddenly felt numb and slow to respond. I wasn't even quite sure what I was saying. "I wouldn't laugh at you for something like this."

Yeah. It wasn't something to laugh over. Or even wonder if she was silly for remembering.

Maybe, after all this time, I should be laughing at myself. Apparently, I was a lot smarter and more aware of things when I was a kid, than I was when I really needed it.

Synchronized Bodies, Beside You, End

Cherry blossoms in Japanese are "sakura." The samurai attached much meaning to them as a metaphor for the ephemeral nature of life. No coincidence that Katsumoto dies viewing them in The Last Samurai.