~ Singularity F, July 25, 2017 ~
Ritsuka sits against a sooty wall looking out into the red-llit night at the silhouette of the temple mountain, the apparent source of whatever disaster has ruined this city. It's easy to pick out, because the mountain is dark, and everything else is on fire.
Director Animusphere and Dr. Roman keep throwing around terms like 'Spiritron' and 'Human Order Foundation'. Ritsuka presumes they know what they're talking about. Right now he feels like a grade schooler working with nuclear physicists to stop a meltdown: he knows what the words 'melt' and 'down' mean, but he's pretty sure that's going to hurt more than help. On the other hand, he's also pretty sure he knows the word for a dimension where everything is burning populated only by legendary villains and the wrathful dead, and it's not 'Singularity'.
He's gotten through today running on a mix of adrenaline, dogged determination, and complete ignorance of how terrible things actually are, and all three are just about used up. The wound on his arm from some skeleton's knife is trickling blood again under its grimy bandage. He's filthy with ash and soot, and his throat is raw from coughing on the ever-present smoke. He's too weary to run, almost too weary to stand. Most uncomfortable of all is the grinding ache inside him, like a bone bruise on his soul, which Doctor Roman said is his untrained Magic Circuits running at full blast non-stop.
Beneath all of that, he is more frightened than he's ever thought possible. Today has been awful, and tomorrow will be worse. Even a talentless amateur like Ritsuka can feel the oppressive power coiling inside the temple mountain, like a volcano ready to erupt. So of course, that's where they're headed once they rest up.
Right now, rest sounds like a bad joke. He can barely stay upright, but sleep feels impossible. How did this all end up on his shoulders, anyway? Wasn't there anyone else, anyone more fit for the role?
He hates himself a little for wanting it to just be someone else's problem, but he still does.
He glances back at the people who are, for lack of an alternative, relying on him. 'Caster', who'd said his True Name was Cu Chulainn, vanished almost as soon as neither of the ladies were awake to flirt at, which meant almost as soon as they'd stopped walking. Director Animusphere sleeps fitfully in one of Mash's emergency blankets; she seems much younger now that she's not verbally tearing strips off of him every five minutes. Next to the Director, Mash has practically passed out in another blanket. He's glad she's resting at least; if today's been awful for him, how much worse has it been for her? Her fluffy white companion's settled atop her where it can keep her warm. Whenever Ritsuka looks, it's awake and watching either him or the mountain with its little purple-grey eyes. This time, it's watching him.
"Guess you can feel it too, huh?" he asks softly.
"Fou," the beast says, quiet as a whisper. It licks Mash's face once, then settles down and closes its eyes to dark slivers.
There's a rustle of fabric, and the red-coated Archer he'd summoned earlier sits down beside him, casual as anything. That summoning was his first act of real magic, which in any other time and place would make this the best day of his life. Now that he's thinking about it, he can feel a subtle tug inside him toward the Servant, the draw of energy from his overtaxed Magic Circuits, pulsing in an aching rhythm.
The Archer had said to call him 'Emiya'. Theoretically, he's a legendary hero, though none of them have ever heard of him. It gives Ritsuka's companions fits, but he can't bring himself to care about the contradiction. Maybe if there's a later.
Emiya folds his arms. "Hanging in there, Master?"
"Yeah," Ritsuka replies, dropping his eyes.
The Servant doesn't move. "No, you're not."
"Not even a little bit," Ritsuka says, without looking up.
Emiya nods. Ritsuka waits for him to say something heartening, but he doesn't. When he glances up, the Archer's watching the distant mountain like it's an old and bitter foe. Ritsuka follows his gaze. As ominous as the ever-present flames are, there's something even more ominous about the complete lack of them there.
"Are we dead?" Ritsuka finds himself asking.
"Depends on who you're talking about. Caster and I are dead, though there's... technicalities involved, I guess. Being killed never stopped either of us for long anyway. I'm pretty sure you and the Animusphere girl and Shielder are alive." Emiya turns to look at him. "What brought that on?"
"Well," Ritsuka says in a quiet voice, "this is hell, isn't it?"
"...Huh." Emiya looks at him with a peculiar expression for a few seconds, then nods. "Yeah, kid. It's hell. Or close enough as makes no difference. Living people end up in hell more often than you'd think."
Arms propped up on his knees, Ritsuka slowly lowers his head into them. Not looking at hell doesn't make being there any better, but he's so damn tired, and the effort it takes to keep his head up doesn't seem worth it right now. He wants it all to be over with. He wants some semblance of safety and sanity back. He wants it all to have been a bad dream, or a really sadistic and thorough practical joke, or anything other than exactly what it is.
"I don't understand," he says, into the space between his arms and chest. His voice comes out muffled, and he hopes he sounds like he's just whining, instead of giving voice to his panic and despair. "This was supposed to be a summer job! I'm due back at school in a month! This morning was fine, but then there were explosions, and everyone died, and I had to sit with a girl while she bled out under ten tons of concrete, and then a computer voice sent us to hell to get attacked by skeletons, and those shadow-people came, and… I've been dealing with it, just minute to minute, you know, but it's… too much." He clenches his right fist, where he knows that red crest is showing, the brand of his responsibility. "Why is this on me? Why am I this 'Master'? I don't know anything about hero ghosts or alternate histories. I barely know what magic is! Why am I the one who's supposed to get everyone out of this? Why is this fucking happening?"
Before he can stop himself, he's sobbing into his arms, shaking with each one and trying to keep as quiet as he can while he's losing it. It's bad enough he's breaking down in front of a mysterious, legendary stranger and a weirdly knowing cat-bunny-squirrel thing, but he doesn't want to bother Mash, and God forbid his crying wakes Animusphere.
It takes a while for Ritsuka to cry himself out. Emiya doesn't move or say anything until he's done. He takes a few deep breaths and tries to relax, wiping his face with a grimy sleeve, which probably just smudges the dirt and ashes around, but who cares at this point? "Sorry," he says, a little embarrassed by how raspy his voice is.
"Nothing to apologize about, Master. It's a shitty position to be in." Somehow, the dry matter-of-factness in Emiya's voice is more calming than sympathy or tenderness. The Archer gives the impression of someone who's been through more awful situations than Ritsuka's heard stories about. If he says so, it's probably reasonable to be scared and confused.
"I never wanted to be…" Ritsuka swallows. Emiya raises his eyebrows inquisitively. "I never wanted to be some kind of… hero. I mean, sure, I used to pretend I was a samurai or a mecha pilot or whatever, but that was just for fun. I didn't really want to be a superhero, or whatever. I just wanted to live my life."
"That just means you're sane, kid." Emiya tilts his head. "From what Shielder said, though, when everything went to hell, you ran towards the danger instead of away, and stuck with her instead of trying to save yourself."
"I mean… I couldn't just run away." Ritsuka shrugs. The difference feels obvious to him, but it's hard to put exactly why to words. "If someone's house was on fire and they needed help, I'd try to put it out. That doesn't make me a firefighter. I couldn't just give up on her."
"There's lots of ways to become a hero," Emiya says.
"Well, I don't want any of them." Ritsuka looks up at the taller man."I don't know your story, but you must've been in situations like this. What did you do?"
Emiya makes a sour face. "I'm a lot of things, but one thing I'm definitely not is a role model."
From somewhere, Ritsuka drags out a weary smile. "So, tell me so I can do the opposite."
"Nice try." Emiya matches Ritsuka with a wry one of his own. "I'll say this, though, you're right that I've been where you are."
"In hell."
Emiya gives him a flat look. "Actually, smartass, yeah, that too, but I mean tossed into a fight to the death with no warning, knowing you're in way over your head but not how far down it goes, stuck relying on magic you barely know and allies who know more than you, and still feeling responsible for everyone anyway and scared you're going to let them down."
That's accurate enough that Ritsuka chuckles, though there's no humor in it. "Go on, give me the bad news."
"Sure," Emiya says, without missing a beat. "The bad news is, just like when it happened to me, whatever we find under that mountain is going to be worse than you expect, and after we deal with it this whole shitshow will probably be just the beginning."
Ritsuka closes his eyes for a second. "...God damn it, Emiya."
"Don't ever dare a Counter Guardian to give you the bad news."
"A what?"
"Never mind. When you're safe, and I'm not in the room, ask Animusphere. It'll be funny."
"If you're right," Ritsuka says, "it's going to be a long time before any of us are safe." Saying it out loud makes him realize he already knew that; whatever had gone wrong back in Chaldea wasn't something that was going to go back to normal anytime soon.
Emiya shrugs. "Probably. That doesn't mean you can't get there. You held it together all day without knowing a damn thing about what was going on, you kept your head and made the calls when you had to. And you survived, which means they were the right calls. This isn't beyond you, kid. It's just rough going. So, speaking as someone who's been there, do you want some advice?"
"Yeah. Anything's better than nothing."
The Archer starts holding up fingers. "One, trust your Servants. Especially that Shielder. She's inexperienced, but she's got guts and good instincts. Two, trust yourself. If you were incompetent we wouldn't have made it through today. Use your strengths, and whatever keeps you going, hang on to it. Three, and this is the big one, keep your eyes open and your mind working. A Master's job is to stay focused on the goal and look for ways to get there. Your Servants can do the heavy lifting, but they'll be busy keeping you alive." He smirks. "And heroes are prone to tunnel vision anyway. "
Ritsuka supposes people who overthink things and second-guess themselves don't become legends too often. Well, that puts him out of the running, which is comforting in a backwards way. "Okay. Thanks." It doesn't come out very strong, but he means it.
The Archer's grey eyes give him an assessing look. "So. What're you going to do, Master?"
That's the question, isn't it? "I don't know. My best, I guess. Even if I don't know what that is."
Emiya nods slowly. "Keep your chin up. You haven't seen what we Servants can really do. I don't think you've seen what you can really do, either. So trust that what you can do will be enough, and then do it." Emiya rises smoothly to his feet. "I'll be around keeping an eye on things. Let yourself sleep when you can. Between Caster and me, nothing's getting near you tonight." With that, Emiya bends his knees, leaps, and vanishes into the night with a sound like a breath of wind.
Ritsuka looks upward after him, then back to his sleeping companions. If this is hell, he's in strangely good company for it.
"Trust that what you can do will be enough, and do it," he whispers. He clambers to his feet, shuffles over, and tucks Mash's feet back into her thin blanket, giving a wan smile to Fou when the little critter cracks an eye open at him. He pulls Animusphere's covers back over her as well, too wrung out to worry about what happens if she wakes up to find him messing with her bedding.
Straightening up, he finds the dark mountain drawing his gaze again, feeling the dim pulse of its power from all this distance. It makes him wonder how his best could possibly be good enough. He's no hero, no magician, no warrior. It would take a miracle for him to make a difference here.
But after what he's seen today, can he really say miracles are out of the question?
Ritsuka learned about heroism from hot-blooded mecha pilots and defying odds from light novels. He knows how this sort of thing is supposed to go. Digging deep, he closes his eyes and gathers up every bit of righteousness and resolve he can muster, fills his heart with the fire he's inherited from the stories he's steeped himself in. He drags his unwilling face into an approximation of a fierce smile and opens his mouth to swear he'll set the fire in his heart against the fires out there, that he'll fight the good fight, that he'll believe, that he'll win.
His eyes open onto the burning city, and in the face of that hell, the words won't come.
A hot, ashy wind gusts around him like a draft from a crematorium and shoves the trite posturing back down his throat where it belongs. He stands there with his mouth half open until he has to cough, bitter grit scraping his tongue. Wiping his mouth leaves a black streak on the back of his hand that makes him grimace.
A place this awful shouldn't exist.
He hates this place, hates its desolation and its pointless torment. Most of all he hates that anyone's stuck in it. No one deserves this hell, not even the fucked-up, blackened legends they've battled here. Today's taken a sledgehammer to everything he understood about the world and his place in it, and the pieces are still falling, but as he stares at the smear of ash on his hand and wonders if it used to be a person, he knows one thing about himself with perfect clarity: if he could, he'd drag them all out of here with his bare hands, one by one if he had to, Mash and Animusphere and the Servants and the godforsaken skeletons too.
Ritsuka looks up again. Watching the ripples of heat rise off of the ruins, he shakily whispers, "Okay, then. I won't turn away. I'll help everyone I can, until I can't." No one else will ever know about this promise, and on some level he's glad of that, that the only one who can hold him to it is himself - but he's not talking to himself, not really. No matter who they are, anyone and everyone caught up in this horror deserves a miracle, if by some chance he's got one in him. "I won't give up on you," he finishes.
As if those were the words he was waiting for, all the tension that's held him upright slips away, and he barely manages to make it back to his blanket before he slides to the ground and curls up. He lets out a sigh that wants to be a laugh. The resolve he'd gathered is crumbling already. Compared to whatever set this world aflame, he's laughably small and ignorant. He doesn't even know how he's going to survive tomorrow. It's utter hubris to think he could save anyone else.
But wouldn't it be nice if he could?
This time, when Ritsuka closes his eyes, he's asleep in moments.
March 12, 2018
It had been a long time since Ushiwakamaru dreamt at all. Servants, she knew, in that strange knowing-without-having-learned way that came with summoning-granted information, didn't dream. Couldn't dream, in fact. Dreams were a thing of the living, and she was perfectly aware that she had died. Given her circumstances, it would have been hard to miss.
As with every rule, though, there were exceptions.
When she opened her eyes in the darkness of her room, she wasn't sure whether to smile or frown. She was certain, somehow, that what she'd seen was a true vision of her lord's past - the so-called 'Singularity F' which neither he nor Kyrielight would speak much of.
Bitter lessons had taught her that reading people, understanding them, was not her strong suit. She'd thought that the blithe confidence and affability Fujimaru demonstrated was simply who he was. And maybe that was the case, but now that she knew it was there, she could think back and spot the cracks in the facade - a flinch here, a weary look there, always smoothed over before she considered whether they meant more.
It was one thing to challenge hell with the confidence and prowess of a hero. It was another thing entirely to lack it and challenge hell anyway.
It reminded her of her brother, in a way. Yoritomo's skill at arms was mediocre, and he'd utterly lost the only battle he'd led, but he'd pit himself against the Taira all the same, knowing the only thing he had going for him was his refusal to submit. He'd hidden his fears and anxiety behind his lordly facade, and somehow he'd done it well enough to weld together the squabbling Minamoto and their fractious allies into the tools she'd needed to win their family vengeance.
She missed him. Yoritomo had made her feel that there was a place to belong for someone like her, someone who looked at the world the way a bared blade would look at a straw dummy. She truly believed he'd meant it, too. Just because it had all gone wrong in the end didn't mean it had been wrong from the start.
"Okay, then. I won't turn away. I won't give up on you."
Maybe this place, too, was somewhere she could belong, at least for now. It would all go wrong again eventually, she knew. She couldn't change that.
But wouldn't it be nice if she could?
She closed her eyes to sleep again, still uncertain, but willing to hope anyway.
Author's Notes:
This is probably my favorite chapter so far, except maybe the first one.
The theme for this chapter is 'Brave', by Riley Pearce.
The map's gone, so are our footprints, too
To get home now would take something
That I'm not sure if I have left
I'm trying, yeah, I'm trying to be brave