If you were here beside me instead of in New York
If the curve of you was curved along me
I'd tell you that I loved you before I ever knew you
'Cause I loved the simple thought of you
–"New York" by Snow Patrol

A Dream Fulfilled

This place could only be heaven, he decided.

After all, what other name was there for a place where white, fluffy clouds adorned an endless azure sky? What other word could describe a land where a warm sun cast its light on an infinite blanket of fresh green grass dotted with fragrant, brightly colored flowers? Even the air he breathed tasted sweet, untainted by anything that could spoil such incredible beauty.

If this was not heaven, then he did not know what else it could be.

Even so, it was not merely his surroundings that had caught Arthur's attention. He spent a moment looking around the peaceful meadow, quiet aside from the soft wind blowing past, before his gaze landed on a figure standing some distance away. He began walking to the figure, and as he got closer, he could see that it was a girl. His pace quickened into a jog, then a sprint as an eagerness he had never felt before flooded through his veins, his heart filling with a joy he did not understand.

As he continued running to the girl, drinking in the sight of her like a parched man who had at last found water, she turned to face him. Tresses of hair as red as fire cascaded down her back, glinting beneath the sun's rays and swaying in the slight breeze. Her bright brown eyes were sparkling rapturously, matched only by the delighted smile on her face. The white and blue garb she wore appeared strange to him, but he hardly gave it a second thought as he stopped a few feet away from her, unable to resist giving her a smile of his own.

Arthur had never seen this girl before, but for some reason, she felt as familiar to him as though he had known her all his life.

He could not say how long he spent simply looking at her, wanting nothing more than to commit her to memory. Soon enough, though, she hurried forward and wrapped her arms around him tightly. His breath hitched in his throat as he felt her body, as slender as a willow tree, pressed against his own, but his hands settled themselves on her back as if on instinct, while his chin rested on her head.

In this ethereal paradise, enveloped in the arms of an exotically beautiful girl he had never met, Arthur felt at home.

And then, to his initial, inexplicable disappointment, he woke up, not to the sight of a splendorous utopia, but to the simple two-room hut he'd lived in for the past fifteen years. Rather than feeling soft, feminine arms encircling him, he felt the hand of his brother Kay roughly shaking his shoulder. Instead of the sound of a gentle breeze, he heard Kay's voice loudly demanding that he get up.

As Arthur prepared himself for the day ahead, images of a green meadow and a red-haired, brown-eyed girl flashed into his mind. It had been a nice dream, he supposed—but also quite odd. The girl in his dream was a complete stranger to him, yet how could a stranger stir up such strong emotions within him? Why on Earth had he felt so elated, so ecstatic, to see her?

Those were questions without any answers, and by the time Arthur and Kay left the village for Camelot, the dream had been pushed into a corner of the former's mind.

Many hours later, as Arthur pulled Caliburn from its stone, the dream had been forgotten entirely.

The only thing Saber could hear was the sound of heavy breathing—his and Shira's. He rolled off of her and lay on the grass of Avalon, allowing the breeze to caress his heated skin. It wasn't long before Shira, just as flushed and naked as Saber was, moved to curl into his side, and he draped one arm over her to pull her closer as her fingertips traced patterns on his chest.

For a while, both were quiet as they came down from their climaxes from just a few minutes ago, their minds lost in a blissful daze. Eventually, Saber found his thoughts drifting from the present to the past, to a time where the woman beside him was nothing more than a brief dream, and he tore his eyes away from the sky to stare down at Shira, placing his hand over hers.

"I love you," he said softly. "Perhaps ever since that night I dreamed of you, so long ago."

Shira hummed as she tilted her face up to get a better look at Saber. "I remember that dream. You were here in Avalon, and you looked so happy...It took me a while to remember that I was in the dream, too, and that's what made me realize that we'd be together again eventually."

She paused; a frown came to her face, but she seemed more thoughtful than angry. "Funny you should say that you loved me years before we even met, because you sure didn't act like you loved me."

"I confess that my dream had long been forgotten by the time you summoned me," Saber admitted. "I only remembered it on the last day of the War, after I had rejected Kotomine's offer to give me the Grail."

"You never said anything," Shira commented as she extricated herself from Saber's hold and got to her knees.

"There never seemed to be a proper time to bring it up," Saber told her as he sat up as well. "And even if there was, what could I have said? The future is not set in stone; for all I knew, our efforts to reunite would all be in vain. It's entirely possible that my dream could have turned out to be exactly that—a dream."

"Except they weren't, and it wasn't," Shira reminded him, smiling slightly. And before Saber could reply, she crawled into his lap and kissed him, her hands roaming over his body: his shoulders, his back, his chest, his neck. She was slow in her movements, even a bit lazy, but her touch was enough for sparks to course through him, coaxing him back into the amorous mood from before.

Shira was right, Saber thought as he returned her kiss, one hand trailing down to her hip while the other cradled the back of her head. Possibilities may be endless, and some were worse than others, but it was reality that was most important. And the reality was that, after everything they had to endure, both together and apart, they were free to spend eternity with each other.

It was something that nothing could ever take away from them. What they were denied in life, they now had in death.

Saber did not want to waste a second of it. And judging from Shira's soft moans as their kiss increased in intensity, neither did she.