towerofanimus | ☠ 005 | you said we were born with nothing

Characters: Avenger, 'Shirou' and OPEN to all.
Setting: The graveyard on the forty-eighth floor and the hundredth floor.
Format: The exact opposite of Kotomine Kirei's lovingly composed monologues.
Summary: 'Shirou,' on his way down to the cafeteria to do his regular job, comes across the evidence of Rin's departure, and also Archer's disappearance as well. He's not happy.
Warnings: Typical fare for the Tower of Animus such as mentions of death, the destruction of worlds, and sadness.

[ SCENARIO A || FLOOR 48: OUTSIDE ]
[ This was a floor of pointless mausoleums, open graves, and fields of unattended gravestones. Some of the names littered on the headstones he recognized and knew—llya, Sakura, himself. He came by here every morning on his way down to the cafeteria to see them, and that routine never varied. 'Shirou' didn't leave flowers at their graves; it seemed a paltry gesture for failure to keep them safe and well. So, normally he would stand there and talk a little about random things. Saber, the food being a lie, what information they had found out, a video game he'd played in the media room.

But when he came down this morning, there was an unexpected new name among the graves.

Matou Rin, carved into the stone like it meant nothing at all. Like it didn't mean the magus was now in terrible danger, from Ruana's power-sapping to supply the Tower now that the power cores were running out. Like it didn't mean there was now another girl roaming the desolate, destroyed land of the world she came from like so many others. Like it didn't mean another failure.

His knees suddenly seemed too weak to hold him up, and he sat down hard on his rear in front of the gravemarker, one small slab of stone with a polished surface and scratched edges in the lines of gravemarkers stretching out like small, gray pittances. Shirou sat there and rebuked himself, feeling hollow as he thought about Rin, wandering alone in the ruined landscape of her world. And also thought more angry thoughts about how he was going to make the administrators pay for this injustice.

And that's how any nearby passerby's will find the teenager. ]

[ SCENARIO B || FLOOR 100: THE HOLOGRAM ]
[ For those of you who don't give a shit about 'Shirou's little episode of upset—a Servant is slowly pacing about this floor, late within the depths of night. He seems to be vaguely confused.

His back is turned towards the staircase, his face turned away from it. It looks like he's trying to figure something out; ]

—Mm?

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[ Avenger doesn't care. About a lot of things, he was apathetic. Here is an abridged list of some of the things he doesn't care about: other Servants, other people, humanity in general, the Tower, Diarmuid, Waver's brutal injuries and his pain, the world, what other people think of him, justice, the rightness or wrongness of a thing or why such vague concepts matter at all, the wrongness of hurting people or killing people, and so on and so forth, etc etc.

But he's not incapable of affection or interest. Respect, even. (Especially when you explicitly make an exception for them as a master and impose this rule when they don't count as a human being to you, and therefore don't want to kill them immediately on principle.)

And gosh, Diarmuid, you're not the only servant allowed to develop a complex, mutual relationship with your master where you behave differently in regards to them than you do about others. ]

Oh, do you? [ Personally, Diarmuid can always do both! Ah, those were pleasant memories, their time together. Arguments. Eating at cheap remen shops. Bazett getting killed or dying in horrible agony, multiple times. Exploring the city and getting caught in harmless traps. ]

Mm? Come to think of it, I did feel some attachment to her.

[ ~~:|a Why doesn't Diarmuid appreciate his shitty, thoughtless wordplay. :c :c~~ He does remember what he told him in their first conversation, yes. Avenger then lifts an eyebrow upward. ]

Really. Well, think what ya' like.

[Talking to Avenger is an exercise in frustration. Diarmuid will really be happier once he accepts that, but he's ~~not very good at being happy~~ not able to let things go that easily. Not when there is the chance that he might be able to learn something that might help Waver in his quest to destroy the Grail.

Besides, he can't help but be curious about who this master was that actually managed to break through Avenger's wall of indifference and make him feel anything let alone an attachment. Whoever she was, she must have been quite a women.]

Did she die in that dream, then? Or were you able to change her mind and bring her back out?

[Part of him hopes, no matter how unlikely it is, that whoever this woman was she managed to end up happy after the war. He of all people knows the value of a good Master and, if nothing else, she deserved it after putting up with Avenger.]

[ Indifference comes with the package when you hate everything, wrappings and all. It's vital to tolerating existence with a conscious intellect when you don't have the current motivation or means to kill everything. Avenger is frustrating to speak to, even when he somehow likes you (as Bazett had learned) so sadly Diarmuid was in for an increased amounts of said frustration throbbing through his skull to begin with.

Avenger huffed exaggeratedly, and whatever his thoughts are, they're hidden from the surface of his insolent face. ]

Who knows? I got yanked here by that kid before anything happened. [ Canon points, man. Aren't they a blast? ] It's not like the apocalypse cares if you've got business to finish before it runs its course.

[ He had offered her his hand. He had held it out to her steadily with the declaration of giving up now that the fun had gone out of things, offered it and known full well what it had meant to do it.

...

Angra couldn't remember if she had taken it. ]

Oh...

[Diarmuid's first instinct is to apologize because, while he's heard of people being pulled at bad times, that one is probably one of the worst. He knows that it would be devastating to him to be pulled here when he was trying to help someone he cared about, and even though he and Avenger are so different, he can't help but think it is hard for the odd Servant too.

Of course, he's come to realize that Avenger isn't going to react well to sympathy, genuine as it is, and so the 'I'm sorry.' remains unvoiced.]

Just one more reason to keep trying to take down the administrators and fix the worlds...

[ Diarmuid's sorrys' and sympathy, genuine though it was, can fuck right off, thank you.

So it's for the best the Servant left his useless apologies unsaid and kept them to himself. Avenger wordlessly grunts, not inclined in the slightest to discuss more of the matter now that he'd said his piece. What he personally thought of it and his own current inability to complete that business, he kept to himself.

Avenger shrugged. ]

Eh, anything that'll give me a chance to kick the admin's asses or have somebody do it, I'm alright with. [ He scratches idly at the collar around his neck. He hated the collar, necessary though it was. He hated being collared, hated being restricted, he hated it, he hated it, he hated it, he hated it. ] Ah, great. You do that.

We will do that.

[Diarmuid does not, of course, mean he and Avenger. What he means is that it will take the whole Tower to succeed at this and he knows most of the Tower residents will not give up until it's done since they have things they want to go back to. Things they want fixed. Avenger has...his master if she really does mean something to him. Avenger's previous words seemed to indicate she did, but his total disregard for finding a way to get out of here and fixing the worlds seems to say otherwise.

All he seems interested in is hurting the administrators as much as they have, presumably, hurt him.

All the contradictions are giving him a headache. He's sure Avenger would be pleased to know it too, which is why he says nothing and instead turns toward the stairwell to leave. Diarmuid had come to the floor for some piece and quiet so that he could mourn Rin's loss.

He won't find it here.]

[ Avenger lets him turn his back on him and walks towards the staircase without any reaction or interference, certainly seeing no reason to stop him.

It's only by the time Diarmuid has made it to the stairwell and has his foot on the first step, that Avenger's words follow after him and reach his ears, easily heard since to Avenger, they're both standing in a bare, metal room with no source of noise to hamper it. ]

Good luck then.

[ It's... difficult to tell whether that was mocking or genuinely a well-wishing for his and everybody else's success. But what follows, hot on its heels is much more undeniably immature and snide, the smirk practically visible in his voice alone: ] Be seeing ya' later, mister chivalry.