Her breath hung in the air like ice on water; it floated upward in a cloud of crystalline moisture, reminiscent of her youth in Bristol long ago. She recalled being 'the Wart' to her brother Kay's 'valiant knight,' the two of them navigating childhood as children do—him attempting to woo local maidens, and her trying to hide when one showed interest in her.
She giggled at the memory. Her guise as 'Arthur' had been quite popular with the womenfolk, much to Kay's chagrin. She hadn't understood it then. No, she had been too focused on her training to care much about wooing women, and given that she wasn't much attracted to her own sex, she had never seen the appeal.
"What are you laughing about, Artoria?" Shirou asked.
She felt her mouth tilt upward slightly at his question. She tilted her head, spying Shirou out of the corner of her eye. He leaned against the yacht's rail, his eyes brimming with hopeful curiosity and a polite smile adorning his face. A smile that said 'Tell me, I really want to know,' not 'You have to tell me now,' although to her, they meant the same.
Let his heart bleed for a moment, Artoria thought, seeing no reason to divulge her thoughts. It played with how easily he could be flustered. She relished the silence between them for a few heartbeats, not daring to be the first to break it.
But alas, her will was weak under his gaze.
"A fond memory of my childhood. I once dreamed of being a master swordsman," she finally answered. Her response was intentionally vague, leaving him to interpret the fragments of memory she had given him. He leaned forward, curiosity piqued, waiting for her to share more.
"Well," Shirou said, "I'd say you got what you wanted, wouldn't you? You're far and above the best swordsman I've ever met, even among the other heroic spirits that we've met."
Artoria sighed with a slight blush at his praise and leaned forward, crossing her arms on the railing and hanging her head to the side. She pretended to contemplate in an attempt to deepen his curiosity, though whether it worked or not was beyond her. A breeze ran over them, sending tendrils of icy touch that tickled the hairs on the back of her neck and sent another wisp of chill over her skin. The air faintly reeked of brine and even more subtly, tasted like it—that's to say, like fish. This close to the Equator, not far from the Port of Gamba, Ghana, where the boat that carried her and Shirou had departed, she had no doubt he could taste the distinct flavor and quality of their surroundings.
In truth, they were on something of a vacation together; traveling the world and helping everyone they could. She sighed again, perhaps from nostalgia, perhaps just for show, but regardless, she decided to humor him.
She pressed a finger to her chin and pretended to ponder for a moment. "Perhaps," she said, turning to face him with her own smile. "Perhaps I did get what I wanted."
At that moment, Artoria savored his expression. Shirou blinked once, twice, three times, and when comprehension dawned on his features, his cheeks blazed into a vivid crimson. She delighted as he broke eye contact and looked down at his feet as though they would somehow calm the effervescent coloring of his skin. His fists closed and unclosed, clenching and relaxing in a rhythm that failed to match the thrumming of his heart.
Artoria let out a giggle. "There's no need to be embarrassed, Shirou," she reassured, taking her place next to him and squeezing his hand. "You are my lover, my sheath and my consort alike. It is only right that I delight in your company."
Shirou looked up, biting his lip, swallowing as he met her gaze. With some effort, he nodded. "Yes. Yes, I suppose it is."
A moment passed, and the former king of Britain relaxed as she leaned up and pushed herself off the railings with her hands. Without moving her feet, she followed the whims of a slow arc to the far left of the yacht. The rails groaned a muffled, high-pitched croak, pressing downward as the yacht leaned with her.
Shirou watched her float her foot a few centimeters off the boat; the yacht returned upright as soon as she moved onto its starboard. That was one of the basic advantages of being a heroic spirit. As King Arthur, her skill of "Riding" had been one of her crowning skills as warrior king, and the skill had become one catalyst among several in shaping the legend of the lance Rhongomyniad, the sword Caliburn, as well as Excalibur when Caliburn had shattered to dust. Her skill was such that she could guide this boat using only the faintest breadth of her core and the creative use of a bounded field.
–Her thoughts drifted again.
In her past, she had been raised as the standard for chivalry, the symbol of justice by which the order of Briton kings following her rule came to be defined. It was truly ironic. The person who united the Britons under one common kingdom carried the shadow of deceit over the accomplishment until the day of her death and even after. With the use of the Holy Grail, she had sought the power to give her Camelot stability after so many centuries gone from the earth, and it was only by the guidance of a naive Japanese boy that she had come to understand the depths of her delusion.
Artoria shook away her thoughts, observing him with intent. Despite their years together, she found that the mysterious essence that had so defined her search for the truth about the young magus had never been answered. That essence, lingering in the recesses of her thoughts, had always tempted her on a primal level: What was Shirou Emiya truly?
And indeed, for an ordinary human magus, he must have surely fascinated every magus and servant alike. Shirou was no ordinary human, to be certain, but a curious talent, her sheath, as it were; an "enigma of fate," as she'd heard Tohsaka call him on one occasion, right before calling him an idiot of the highest order. She smiled slightly at that. Yes, of all the things that Shirou was, he was still a foolhardy boy, endlessly chasing after his ideals.
Some would call that naive; idiotic, as Rin had. Still, in a world where the black spirit of humanity was itself humanity's greatest concern, the last great threat of which humanity would be subjected to for eternity until their eventual demise, could one not agree that a selfless, childish drive of idealism was exactly what the future should, could, and would take? Was this not a trait worthy of a vow of fealty?
"Ah, we're almost there," Shirou remarked, casting his hand in the direction of the land to the east of the coast.
Artoria was torn from her thoughts and brought back to attention. There, as though painted on a canvas, the moon rested against the vibrant pink, purple, and orange horizon. Above, the tinge of darkness rested against the azure firmament, signifying the nearing day.
A memory flashed of a life no longer lived, of a young, golden-haired boy with eyes just as incandescent, a figure framed against the backdrop of a fire on the horizon, setting the plains and mountains aglow.
Words spilled from her mouth before she had even acknowledged the yearning. "The sunsrise was always so stunning growing up," she mused aloud as her gaze rested on the silhouette of the coastal mountains.
…
He was stunned, and he should be, really. Artoria would be surprised if he were anything else. She'd even say she'd be surprised if he responded without his hair catching on fire first.
(Well, she could hardly talk about what he would do, considering his stunt during the war with that stupid, silly, inexplicably romantic idea of surprising a heroic spirit with a date, unannounced and out of the blue. Why, his own servant hadn't even known about the date he was planning, let alone him asking her to go on one. Who did that?)
…Only her sheath, truly.
She continued. "It was something else that would capture my attention, no matter how small or large," she revealed. "It almost felt as if everything were to catch fire at its touch."
There was once a time, during the peak of her reign, when Artoria remembered sitting outside her tent as the stars crept to the edge of the sky, illuminating the bleached clouds.
She had been so obsessed with keeping track of every battle, every location of her soldiers, every name of friend, ally, and enemy, even to the point of being lost without someone to ask for her whereabouts. As a warrior first and foremost, she believed the war could not come to a stop; not without the complete destruction of their enemies or themselves were they to fall first. Only in stasis, her peace, hope, and death found in the arms of her long-lost sister's daughter–her son, her successor—and her killer—could she truly stop for a second to see the magnificence that was the heavens above her.
'It is ever so grand,' she had marveled, and in a simpler time, the stars had always seemed so far away, as if from another plane of existence entirely. Yet how large they seemed to her in that moment, how precious and awe-inspiring; the war and rebellion had almost seemed like nothing compared to the age of the heavens.
And in the years preceding her fall, when the sun rose the morning, and as she observed her entourage assembling the camp for another marching cycle, she had felt that the warmth from the sun would be enough to drive her people for a thousand more days, through all the hardship, death, deceit, and cruelty. She had told herself that if her armies were able to endure for this moment, for this ray of warmth, then her kingdom would persevere, that if they could achieve the impossible—that her country would succeed despite the might of all the forces that were arrayed against it.
Just this moment, in front of her, with her entourage, her knights: Lancelot, King Ban's son and the Knight of the Lake; Tristan, second only to him for guile, strategic mastery, and emotional pedigree; Bedivere, whose fiercest loyalty had been seen in his willingness to cast aside everything to stand with her until the last moment; Guinevere, her wife and high queen, and the lover of Lancelot; even Mordred, her unwilling flesh and blood and the heir to the throne. And most of all, Kay, the boy who in their youth had pulled the thorns from her palm when she had stumbled into a bramble, her trying not to cry and him reprimanding her for her whimpering, stating aloud that men were not to be seen shedding tears.
It all seemed so long ago, now. And yet, somedays, when she closed her eyes with the stars above, it felt as if it were all but a yesterday away.
"I still have dreams of the memories of my past," she said, pausing and tilting her head at Shirou. She smiled again and winked at him. "They'd make for a good story, don't you think? You see, once there was a foolhardy boy named Arthur, who was called the Wart-"
Shirou laughed at the name and shook his head as her words enveloped him, and she took a moment to smile as the chime of his mirth sent tingles down her spine, even after all their time together.
(In that moment of pause, Artoria realized how familiar this banter and the words she spoke were. Then, it clicked for her: she had told him stories of all sorts, of how her lands fared when her kingdom stretched from the shores of Ireland to the Lands of the Picts to Londinium and Dumnonia alike. He had told her about Japan: how the Emperor used to be a symbol of their whole nation, bound to traditions much like her own, only much more rigid and stagnant. They were both rulers, different in some ways and the same in so many others.)
She hadn't the heart to tell him that the Holy Grail had already well-informed her of such things. Instead, she laughed with him; at his awkward jokes and the way his head would tilt when he tried to see if she was able to follow along with all his talk of foreign histories and modern amenities that a younger her could have never dreamed up given a thousand thousand years.
"-And then, Kay, that womanizer; he'd let a maiden snore into his shoulder and not have the heart to complain about her drooling into his shirt," Artoria said, her cheeks holding a noticeable flush.
"H-hey, he doesn't sound so bad to me," Shirou protested weakly, a dopey grin on his face.
"-As he would do for me, when I was in much the same position. Not I on his shoulder, but for another maiden on mine, when he would try to 'hook me up', as it were," she retorted to the boy's mortified glare.
"No way," Shirou gasped, half-surprised and half-joking in his shock at the 'betrayal.'
Artoria rolled her eyes. "Yes way. Verily, there was even one time when I-"
"Nooooo, no! I don't wanna hear this! This isn't fair," Shirou groaned and made a gesture as if she were a teacher interrogating him and not someone he could escape from.
The hero of wrought iron turned to plead with the moon that bobbed on the horizon. "I beg the moon: Slay me, O righteous Goddess! Spare me the indignity of this terrible story of Arthur and his womanizing ways," he whispered as though its judgment was necessary.
When he received no response, he looked back to his lover and pointed one finger accusingly. "You said the moon faeries would judge us when we faced them in times of adversity. And that their power was absolute. Now I know what I call unfair and a lie at that!"
He pantomimed a jester, a hand pressed dramatically on his hip, the other raised to the sky.
"An eye for an eye, and an ear for an ear-"
"-I shall report this indignity to the court! There, we shall hear what the good King Arthur has to say on these matters!"
Artoria in a rare fit of mirth, burst out laughing and a hand shot out to grab her stomach. Shirou's expression soon became one of amusement and his cheeks tinged red again as he joined her in the laughter.
She pressed a hand to her lips and looked back at Shirou. "I-I cannot believe you remember me saying that!" she said, giggling despite herself. "That must have been three years ago, and on a lark at that!"
Her cheeks softened into a smile. The faint taste of fond memories had long fallen to the wayside, replaced by the enjoyment of the present.
A moment passed, and then another, with only the faint breeze to give life to the world around them.
"So," she grinned. "Shall we dance, o' consort of mine?"
…
The thrum of the guitar, the deep steady drum of the bass, even the wail of the violin or the faint hum of a hundred thousand instruments seemed to echo in her head among the roar of the wind that heralded the change of day to night. It was a silent symphony of the ocean and the Earth herself singing to them.
"Watch me, Shirou. I wish to show you something," Artoria said as she smiled. And just that easily, she stood up and over the yacht's railing as the craft reached their destination, a beach that had yet to be seen by any of humanity outside of the past eight hours.
Shirou let loose a shout and dashed forward. Hands caught his arms and tried to force him downward in an uncontrolled tumble. "Artoria, slow down! What do you think you're doing-"
"Leap with me." Her feet started to glow.
"What-?!" She disappeared from his grasp. Then, there she was, standing several meters out from the boat, as though to speak to the moon before the both of them. "Leap to the water. This will be grand and enjoyable. You won't sink, I promise."
…
He did his best to look brave. Truth be told, this would be a challenge, particularly if the temperature of the ocean was colder than what her form indicated.
"Alright," He licked his lips nervously. "This is crazy."
(Never mind the part where she was a king—that she should be dead–)
–He didn't dare continue that thought.
They met gazes in a final show of sanity before Artoria, former King of Knights and now simply a wife and woman, would force her lover off of the yacht that had borne them from the mainland and across the blue waters.
-And then they were standing amongst the waves, and he spared a small thought that not even his feet were wet, but the better part of him was merely awed that they were standing at all and not floundering about, cold saltwater soaking them to the bone.
"What-what is this?" Shirou managed after blinking and nearly slipping.
"Oh, a little work from my dragon core is all," she shrugged as if his question meant nothing, an easy display of magical power, one that he also recognized as a form of chivalry—to answer his inquiry as it was.
"How?"
With an amused giggle that threatened to set him afire (he wasn't sure how that was even possible), the blonde answered, "A technique of magecraft that the Fae practiced and later bestowed upon me during my time as King, as a favor."
Her smile brightened, in the way that had always melted his heart whenever he saw her do it. "My mentor, Merlin, once said 'only with a gift can a man be expected to believe.' So, they gifted me a few."
Shirou took in a shaky breath.
"That is beyond amazing..." He trailed off, distractedly.
Artoria's reply fell on deaf ears, as Shirou cast his gaze about, enchanted as the former British king continued to recount old tales. The ocean itself rippled in the wind, and the cool wind that blew over them was alive with the magic of the earth. All his senses tingled with an otherworldly feeling, as though time itself had halted around them; they were so small as the center of it all.
Then, the skies opened; their own lull was drowned out by the tides surging higher, and the familiar roar of water cresting over the line of the horizon with the first kiss of daybreak.
This one, a song without a song, danced to the beat of the water crashing against the waves.
Her voice was lost in the sound of the swell and was soon replaced as the pair lapsed into silence, and Shirou made a split decision as the water fell onto them without wetting their clothes.
"Artoria," Shirou took her hands in his own, as the wind drew in and pulled at their hair.
It was like how the gods came together and created the world with how the waves crashed. First, it was a beautiful disaster; then, it was a symphony, a clash of beauty and life that could not be torn away from the person who stood next to him, gazing into his eyes. And then Shirou found himself lost in her eyes and in everything that she was.
A small smile came unbidden to his face, and he was grateful. For that moment, with the salt-blush dawn that seemed like a great golden eye, he told himself that he would only be looking forward. He would no longer be bound by the shackles of Fate, and the red strings around his own wrists would, no doubt, connect him to the woman whom he would call his one and only wife.
His throat burned for a moment, before he let go of his worries.
It was beautiful like every other moment they'd spent together, and this was Shirou's wish, given by whatever higher power that had decided that from among millions of others, Shirou, of all the men and women in the world—
That he would be worthy of her affection.
That she would stay the night, and every day after.
And as they danced on the waves to the symphony of nature, the world danced around them, with the light of the sun rising over them in a new dawn of their lives.
