ITP: Days of Our Lives

[no_longer_a_king]

Characters: Saber Lily Saber of White and Avenger Shirou
Setting: Cafeteria
Format: Whichever Sura wants
Summary: Arturia runs into a not-quite old flame.
Warnings: Possibly graphic descriptions of character death? Also more soap opera-level shenanigans.

Arturia tended to keep to herself most days. True, she would check in with those she had come to know every now and then, but most days she simply wandered the Tower, trying to build up the map she and Diarmuid were slowly but surely putting together. An idea was forming in her mind after talking with a few others. If their goal was to reach the lower levels, then they needed to map it out in order to figure out what the best way to strike was. This was enemy territory they would be going into and they needed to be ready.

She entered the cafeteria, trying to remember who had gone down with her and breezed past the line into the kitchens to get more of these "dinorsaur chicken nuggets" she found bland, but were amusing to look at while she ate and play with when no one was there to see. It was here that her thoughts ground to a halt.

There, by the stove, was a shock of red hair on a boy she had a vague idea might show up, but she had never expected to see in the flesh again. A boy who, in one moment, she remembered meeting, serving, fighting alongside, kissing, and so much more. So much more that ended in his death at her hands for a wish that ultimately meant nothing. Feelings she had been attempting to keep at bay for the sake of moving on raged like dragonfire within her heart and she had to take a moment to quell it before finally speaking.

"Shirou?"

Comments

[no_longer_a_king]

"There are people here from multiple worlds and timelines, Shirou. No two people here come from the same world."

Here it was. Time to drop the first bomb on him. Hopefully he wouldn't be too disappointed. Arturia drank some more of her milkshake, trying to figure out how to word this so Shirou would understand. She had cared greatly for the boy, but that didn't blind her to the fact he could be rather dense.

"For example, I am not the Saber you had known in your Grail War. The events I went through would not be the same as they would have been for you, slight as they might have been."

The situation with Rin she could cover later. That was a very complicated matter at heart.

[heroicprinciple]

"Ah? Nobody at all comes from the same timeline or world...?"

He does sound rather disappointed. Surprisingly, Shirou grasps the concept of what she is proposing easier than initially expected. The girls back in his world had already rattled off a lot of complex phrases involving "mini-terminal", "malfunctioning causality", "crossing of phenomena", "the future leading into the past" at him and he still didn't understand it, but he... got the general gist at least. He sighed, one elbow braced against the table and rubbed his forehead. To his credit, he takes every word Saber speaks as the truth unlike the blatant skepticism he had given the letters he had received upon arrival. "And if you remember a different series of events than I do... Saber, are you talking about the Second Magic?"

So this Saber wasn't just her donning a new wardrobe. She was a different version, like Lancer? It was harder to wrap his mind around that fact than it had been with Lancer. But if the Rin he had met in the cafeteria wasn't the one he knew, that meant the one he knew was more likely than not dead and that meant—

That meant—

[no_longer_a_king]

"Yes, the Second Magic. And more. There's much magic here that should, by all accounts, be impossible to accomplish and yet they manage it somehow through some combination of magic and machine."

Inwardly, she's proud of him. Proud of how he seemed to have an easier time grasping the concept than the magic she and Rin had tried to explain during the Grail War. Was this Shirou from after and had learned other magic? Or was he gifted with a better understanding than the one she had known?

It didn't matter. All that mattered was explaining the way things worked within the Tower to him and enjoying this meal.

"There is a chance we might be able to restore the worlds. I do not know if it is possible, but the Administrators here claim they're trying to fix what devoured our worlds, but...."

She trailed off, realizing how much of a blow she was dealing him by telling him this. In one fell swoop she had told him she was not the Saber he'd known and everything he knew and loved was dead. Shirou was slow, but not stupid. And she put down her fork to look at him and hopefully contain the shock he no doubt got.

"I apologize, this must be much to take in at once and unlike when we first met time can be taken to explain everything."

ugh I'm late, sorry :(

[heroicprinciple]

It's been half a year since the Grail War had concluded, and they had needed to cram the explanation into a roughly two week-long time period before he got them killed through his own ignorance of magic. It only stood to reason he could grasp just one concept he had known of beforehand rather than the information dumps he'd been given on magecraft.

"No, there's no reason for you to apologize to me. It's a lot, but I can handle it."

At least she's enjoying the meal he'd prepared for her. He stopped poking at his warm chicken nuggets with his fork, and held his head in his hand, elbow braced against the surface of the countertop. Alright, it was the Second Magic at work but it was something more than that. A series of impossibilities made possible by joining magic with technology, the chance of restoring the worlds, but—

—It's not the issue here. The issue is that it happened in the first place.

People had been in danger, and he had done nothing. People were dead and had died. And if they had died, that meant they had been hurt.

Saber must understand. He had to keep everyone from getting hurt.

Yet he had not. If he couldn't help anyone, then what's the purpose at all?

"—Aa, Saber, don't be mad or anything but I need a moment to think this through, so I don't misunderstand anything."

[no_longer_a_king]

"It's all right," she says quietly, her own eating having slowed down.

She isn't poking her food like Shirou has, but she knows him well enough to understand the shock he must be going through. It's the same shock she had gone through when she arrived here, elated momentarily by her newfound freedom which had been followed shortly by the shock of how she had utterly failed in her duties. Put on top of that how desperately Shirou had wished to save people and she knows he must be beating himself up over this.

In what she hopes is a comforting gesture, she reaches out to him, forces down the urge to pull away from him when her fingers brush his shoulder, and sets her hand upon his shoulder. It feels just as warm and strong as she remembers and she has to fight down both a blush and the urge to get as far away as possible.

There is no Grail here, no temptation, not even a hope for her own kingdom to be saved somehow. Just the two of them and a meal. In this moment she is no danger to him.

"You must not blame yourself for this," she says in a firm tone that she only used when she expected to be listened to, "From what I understand, no one could have known this is happening until it had already happened."

[heroicprinciple]

The hand on his shoulder, sudden and reassuring, doesn't shake him out of the bout of shock that grips his chest tight, grinding his brain to a halt. Not even the notion of a girl touching him which would normally cause the teenager to overreact works. But the firmness of the tone she uses on him does. He averts his eyes momentarily before peeling his hand from his face, and turning to look at her. The cant of his head suggests attentiveness, the indecisiveness of a kid being told to snap to when he doesn't want to.

His shoulders don't slump.

"I don't think I can do that," he confessed. Shirou had experience with survivor's guilt and it doesn't go away. City blocks of people. A world of people. Numbers and methods and survivors aside, it was only the magnitude of this where it differed. He thinks it's unfair. He doesn't know why or how it's unfair, but it's unfair that this is how their situation is. But complaints about the unfairness of it all will not solve anything.

Saber was right about how he couldn't have stopped it. But he had been in no position to stop the fire either.

The best he could hope for was preventing it from repeating itself.

(Archer, his face closed and blank, sneering. Heroes clean up after disasters, nothing else. That's not salvation. That's merely burning shut the wounds that have already appeared. An incorrect ideal.

Mentally, he told him to fuck off.)

So Shirou smiles. "It's stupid of me, but I can't accept that reason for an excuse for not doing anything. I'm not going to whine about it or hate myself for it, however. So there's no need to worry."