towerofanimus | ITP: Days of Our Lives

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ITP: Days of Our Lives

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?"

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Standing in the kitchens beside the stove, he busied himself with his favorite hobby—cooking. Sure, the options of ingredients were quite limited but the sense of mild contentment he derived from the act of making himself of use to others still made itself known when he did it. That was enough of a reason to continue: plus it was a tried-and-true method of coping with an unexpected crisis for him.

And the so-called destruction of the world was definitively something that qualified as a crisis. Every time he attempted to think, his train of thought comes up short. Shirou doesn't how to make this problem be resolved, not at all. It was right about then a voice broke through the clatter that always served as the background noise in any large kitchen. The teenager turned around, distracted from the dinosaur chicken nuggets baking on the stove and saw Saber standing frozen behind him. His eyes widened, pupils diluting, surprised then progressing from that shock to vivid relief to a joy at her continued existence.

"Saber?" He grinned delightedly before lifting up the cooking utensil in his right hand and waving it a little at her in welcome. He repeated himself, smiling at her: "... Saber! You're alright?"

She was alive, she hadn't died with the universe, and her life had been spared and he could ever dismiss the odd wardrobe as something she could have picked out of her trunk: he experienced a great swelling of gratitude for this stroke of luck.

"Uh, yes. I am," she said her heart squeezing tight at the sight of his face, his smile, his utter delight at seeing her. Part of her knew on some level he would forgive her if he ever found out what she did. Arturia did not delude herself on the matter: he would find out eventually. To see him and that smile after so long, to see him alive at all, sent joy through her. She wanted to run up to him, take him into her arms, and kiss him until everything around them fell away. She wanted to apologize to him for what she had done, tell him it would never happen again, tell him that she thinks she.... she thinks she....

But she squashes that desire down. This was not the Shirou she had known. That boy was dead and now this boy who wore his face stood before her, greeting her.

"Are you well, Shirou?" she asked, coming more into the kitchen so as not to block the doorway. Every step felt like she was being tugged in two directions. On the one hand, she felt like she should run and stay as far away from him as possible. On the other, she really did want to see him again, smiling and whole and cooking. Even he could make the food here smell heavenly.

"Excellent!" Shirou kept smiling unabashed, cheered by her presence and their surroundings (the cafeteria kitchen struck him as much less sinister than the rest of the Tower) and temporarily putting the issue of the apocalypse out of his mind, wanting to postpone reality for some time and enjoy the company of someone he knew was reliable. He had faith in his good friend and it was reassuring to see her whole and living; it meant he had not failed her like the rest of the dead bodies back in his dimension.

At her question, the teenager blinks.

"Well, I'm as fine as I can be, considering the situation," he said sheepishly, remaining standing next to the stove and the dinosaur chicken nuggets backing on it. It wasn't something he thought of until she prompted him, his personal welfare. Not when there were other people who might need help. He had no grasp on how to organize his priorities like always.

And Saber, it's doesn't look like there's anybody else around to lay claim to Shirou's cooking...

It's a good thing her stomach chose right then to growl. She actually blushed a little, hands going to her stomach. Normally she could just play off when her stomach growled as something else, but with how long it had been since she had tried Shirou's cooking it was hard to contain herself.

"Ah, may I have some of what you're making when you're done, Shirou?" she asked with a sheepish look.

As if he would ever deny her food.

But of course, let him happily feed you. His smile gains a knowing edge when her stomach gurgles hungrily and she holds it, flushing slightly.

"Sure," he nodded and checked the dinosaur chicken nuggets on the stove. They were very easy to bake, but a good chef wasn't careless about his food. "It shouldn't take very much longer. Would you like something to drink as well?"

In the meantime, he briefly abandons his post by the stove and walks over to the nearest cabinet and bends down to pull out a plate for her, and after some deliberation, a plate for himself. Food tasted much better if you ate it with someone else and eating alone was dull. After grabbing some eating utensils as well, Shirou straightened up and walked back over to her, setting the plates on the wide counter.

"If you don't mind?" she asks as she sits on a stool by the counter. It's surreal for her, watching him be busy when her last clear memory of him was his corpse in the basement and--

No.

Arturia had promised herself she would move forward. That she would move on and not forget, but would try to forgive herself for what she had done. Something that was easier said than done as her eyes followed Shirou's every move, tried to force it to memory because she was half certain he would disappear at any moment. The last time she had taken it for granted he would always be here. She would not do that this time.

After setting out the plates, one in front of her and one in front of the stool next to her and arranging the silverware to his satisfaction, Shirou walks over to one of the smaller refrigerators, pulls it open and pokes his head in before calling out to her, "There's a choice of soda, milkshake, or hot chocolate?"

Which one would she prefer alongside chicken nuggets?

Then he belatedly adds, noticing there were some extra cartons of drink near the back of the chilly fridge. "Oh, there's apple juice and mint water too."

"Milkshake, please?" She had grown fond of them over the last couple months here when they were served. Not having been through a Jason month and his bare minimums, she hoped they would continue until next month.

But that's neither here nor there. All that matters to her is Shirou is here. Here and real and breathing and she literally cannot keep her eyes off of him despite how neutral her expression is to hide the hurricane of emotion swirling through her right now. She knows she should leave, perhaps watch him from the shadows as he goes about life in the tower and yet.... she can't.

No matter how she tries she just can't seem to leave the prospect of another meal made by Shirou. This? This is how he manages to ensnare her. Not by looks or kind words, but by good food and simple company offered freely. Things she rarely had when she had been a King and had come to treasure dearly in the Fifth Grail War, regardless of her oft confused feelings about the boy himself.

"Coming up!" Shirou hummed as he pulled out a bottled premade milkshake, snagging a carton of apple juice for himself as well. Placing the ingredients on the polished countertop, the teenager selects a glass for himself, pours the apple juice smoothly into it and then selects a larger, tall cup for Saber's requested milkshake. He unscrews the cap and tipping up the bottom of the bottle, pours in the flavored milk.

He directs his attention back to the refrigerator to return the drink containers and restoring them to the back of the cold fridge, before pausing and after searching for a few moments, comes back with a can of whipped cream.

Shaking it briskly takes a second. He aims the nozzle at the top of the milkshake and carefully sprays on a fair dollop, swirling it around into a wavy finish. Shirou considers the end result before nodding and picking it up to present it to the Servant. He set it down next to her plate, "Go ahead, enjoy it."

Shirou felt a little disappointed he hadn't located a box of maraschino cherries to top the whole thing off with like he had seen in cooking shows or fast-food restaurants.

Those dinosaur chicken nuggets were probably ready by now, weren't they? Let's go check on them.

They were indeed done and Arturia sat idly as he worked just sipping on her milkshake. It was just poured by him and already it tastes all the better. Part of her wondered if it was some magic he didn't realize he had (like Avalon) or if it was just the simple fact it was he who gave it to her. Maybe it was that little extra thought he put into it with the whip cream.

Despite it going against her character, she reached out to grab his wrist. Warm. Warm and alive and real and truly there. She could feel his pulse under her finger tips, the faint callouses on his palm from endlessly tinkering with machines in the pursuit of his magic. She released him as quickly as she grabbed him and tried (but failed) to keep her fingers from lingering.

"....you're really here," she says quietly, as if she is still having trouble believing it. Arturia was just glad her voice didn't come out as choked as she felt in her chest.

He was just setting down the plate of chicken nuggets down on the counter in front of her when her hand reached out and gripped his wrist, like she was reassuring herself of its reality; Shirou stops, too taken aback by surprise to really react before the Servant quickly releases his wrist, finger brushing against his skin as she lets go. Her grip was strong, practiced from training with wielding a sword but he didn't feel like he could identify what the undercurrent of unreadable emotion behind that sudden gesture was.

The plate of warm chicken nuggets clinks down onto the counter.

Then she speaks, and he sits down on the stool next to her with a thump.

"Yeah," his smile is a little guilty and self-reproaching as he says that. Saber's voice doesn't give away any hint of her internal turmoil when she talked. Yet she was his partner, and Shirou felt that old cage of inadequacy slam down again when he remembered he hadn't been there for her like he should have been in a place like this. "Sorry I wasn't before."

"You couldn't have known." Were not responsible for it. She was the one responsible and she's amazed she can even keep down a blush as he sits next to her, reminding her of that period of time when every little brush of the hand was electric.

Being so close didn't make her stomach twist embarrassingly, thankfully, but even without her tangle of emotions it was awkward. She should tell him. It would be wrong to keep what she had done a secret from him, but how did she even broach the subject? Especially with a meal he made right in front of her? It didn't taste exactly how she remembered, but she chalked that up to the holes in her memories and slowly at the food he'd put before her.

"How long have you been in the Tower? Did Archer or Rin make you aware of the dangers here yet?"

That didn't seem like much of an excuse to him, when it came to his absence when he should have been there to stand beside her and protect her back best he could, but he kept quiet about that, sipping his glass of apple juice. She ate with her usual gusto as he watched, though more slowly. Even being in a Tower full of crazies after the so-called end of the world didn't put her off eating good food when it was offered to her, the teenager mused happily to himself and shifted his weight on the stool slightly.

He admitted dryly that his term of residence within this place was only a period of, "Just a few days."

Shirou poked at his smaller helping of chicken nuggets with the end of his fork. "Archer's... Archer, he's not really keen on being helpful," to him, anyway. That would be his intense self-loathing at work there. "Rin talked about me being here before? She was dressed oddly and she didn't remember some things."

The award for being densest and for having A+ Denial Skills when it comes to accepting unpleasant realities goes to...

"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.

"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—

"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."

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."

"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."

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."

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ITP: Days of Our Lives

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ugh I'm late, sorry :(

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