Should I? Probably not.
Will I? Definitely.
This is the (surprisingly tiny) first chapter of my would-be fanfic contest entry, one of the two and a half I managed to finish before the deadline due to reasons. Looking at it now I'd say it was a beneficial twist of fate, since it would require too much work and would end up being more trouble than it's worth.
Again, as always, feel free to rip me to shreds. I welcome it.
Disclaimer: Nothing is mine, I'm writing this for fun only and all that jazz. I hope I didn't make some horrible lore transgression somewhere.
***
1 - An Unfinished Sympathy
It arrived that morning, and she spotted it while doing her usual mailbox check before work.
Stuffed awkwardly all the way to the back of the tiny Tohsaka mailbox as it was, she could have easily overlooked it in favor of tossing away numerous promotional leaflets that crowded the box as usual, but she didn't. Some part of her still expected Emiya’s letters, even after six months without as much as a word from him.
She opened the tiny mailbox doors and fished out the envelope, a tattered piece of paper that looked more like a 20th century war document you'd see behind glass in a museum, and less like a piece of secret correspondence between faraway friends. She slipped it into her pocket and made her way towards the station, wondering what could make him want to write to her now. He was probably just bored out of his head after he managed to successfully alienate her, the only person he could actually talk to since he left, half a year ago.
But something was off.
She tried not to think about it, at least not before arriving to work and getting inside her tiny Clock Tower office, locking the door behind her. She usually avoided bringing any of his letters to work - any piece of information that could be traced back to him posed a risk of someone in the Association discovering who he was and what special…talents he had, and making her or someone else find him and bring him here to be probed and dissected and stuffed into a jar of formaldehyde. A risk she deemed not worth taking, since he was in some way still her student and her responsibility and, despite her reluctance to admit it to herself, her friend as well.
But today was different. Today she was somehow beyond caring. She plopped down into the chair behind her desk and tore the envelope open carefully.
And after opening it, she was immediately taken over by a strange, but familiar feeling of dread. A feeling which, she realized with resigned surprise, she'd felt before.
When she left her apartment this morning, when she first touched the letter.
When she'd wake up in cold sweat almost every other night for the last few weeks, torn from her sleep by long forgotten nightmares of shattered landscapes and a somehow familiar, suffocating pain. Nightmares and pain that were not her own, but were too sharp and clear to be completely foreign.
Somehow she knew what the single piece of paper inside the envelope was before she even unfolded it fully. And it was not from him. Technically.
It was how the letter itself was dirty and carelessly folded, with something that looked like a food stain or a section of a coffee mug ring, and how there were no careful and precise, almost girlish signs filling the page, but instead a few short, fading sentences of roman letters, punched in by a typewriter so hard it cut the characters into the paper. But mostly because she was expecting it would arrive, sooner or later.
Short and cold and to the point, it formally informed Rin Tohsaka, contact person, of the execution of private military contractor Shirou Emiya by hostile forces, following 120 days of POW status.
Location of imprisonment and death unknown, no mention of remains, no personal effects.
His company registration number was added, and the letter, if it could even be called such, ended with a short and awkwardly written message of condolence.
And that was it.
The life and times of Emiya Shirou, brought to a short conclusion in some faraway, war torn country, and reduced to a number on a dirty piece of paper sent halfway across the world because she was the only one who knew what his life was truly like.
Had been like.
She thought it would make her cry, or maybe even laugh at how well deserved and fitting his eventual and inevitable grisly end would be. She was expecting at least an emotion, any emotion, but all she felt was passionless, empty resignation.
What a waste, she thought, and decided that it would be her last thought on the subject. He most certainly won't be the last of her students to die.
It was the life of a magus: to lose friends, students, family.
Wasn’t it? It certainly was the assumption she worked from when she forced herself to accept it a long time ago. She accomplished that task perfectly, as she would any other.
Because she was Rin Tohsaka, and being anything short of textbook magus just wouldn't do. And magi don't waste time on crying for the fallen.
So she stuffed the letter and the envelope back into her coat pocket and commenced her preparations for today's classes.
***
She couldn't remember why they fought. She also couldn't remember the reason they started writing to each other in the first place.
It felt like an eternity had passed since then.
She had already settled comfortably into her faculty life at the Clock Tower. The melting pot for magi from all over the world and the hotspot of political intrigue, it felt like it opened up to her completely only after she took up the professorial mantle, even if she had to climb her way up from assistant status before she could truly claim the title.
After years spent carefully crafting her academic and social influence as a member of the student body, it was natural that she would be chosen, and given the chance to personally select which professors would mentor her - a perk not available to less promising candidates.
A small office was awarded to her, and enough funds to cover the expenses of more extravagant materials she would need for the more advanced magecraft she would be doing as part of her teaching and training. She calculated that she could soon afford moving from the tiny townhouse apartment she spent her post-student life in and find a place more appropriate for a Clock Tower professor.
Clock Tower Professor Rin Tohsaka - the title filled her with pride and satisfaction.And was well deserved, for working her butt off to earn her own place and respect in this thankless place.
In addition to hard work, life as a professor entailed numerous hours spent socializing, attending parties, galas, promotions and ceremonies, and being pulled around by the whim of everyone who happened to occupy a higher rung of the social ladder. Rin navigated through it with learned ease and grace that was unfaltering even in the face of inevitable petty adversities that always bloomed when so many important and self-important people gathered at one place. In time, she learned which people to politely smile to, which to befriend, who to flatter and who to safely ignore, and treated it all as an amusing puzzle to keep her wit alert in the face of her impressive and ever increasing workload.
Each social encounter or gathering filled with small, self-imposed challenges, to be always more, always better. It became her lifeblood, and she felt like her reputation finally started taking a direction of its own, building upon her talent and proud inheritance, and not those few cold, sad and bloody days of her youth back in Fuyuki.
So it was somewhat of a nuisance when his first letter arrived, but she read it anyway, for curiosity’s sake.
It had to wait a few weeks for a chance to be read though, and she ended up opening her desk drawer to look for it one day when she felt like taking a small reprieve from presently futile attempts to cram the Basics of Mana Storage inside a three hour lecture and using the pauses in that to write out a saccharine letter to her elderly jewel dealer, asking about health and grandchildren and hoping that her complaints on the purity of the latest shipment were sharp enough to be noticed, but gentle enough to net her an apology discount on the next batch.
Few people wrote to her these days, most favoring more secure and efficient methods of communication or personal visits, sending messages of invitation via couriers or familiars or, as was the case with a certain drill-haired nuisance, simply inviting themselves over and barging into her apartment unannounced whenever they wanted to share juicy gossip or play the bloody madrigal on her already worn out nerves.
At first she thought it was Ayako, or some other high school friend she'd kept in touch with after leaving for London, but the girls preferred to incessantly message her on the hellish device popped into her suitcase when they helped her pack after a visit few years ago, ‘to modernize her’. The thought of operating the thing still made her frown.
No, the only person who could've possibly written to her was Emiya, since no one but him knew her London address. She inspected the letter a bit: it was tarnished by its journey, but even before seeing his name on it the precise and space-conserving handwriting it was written in removed any doubts she may have had. She was, after all, the one who loomed over him with a ruler, ready to smack him on the head at any sign of faltering dedication to his English crash course. She could recognize that handwriting anywhere.
EMIYA SHIROU
(post office address)
Algiers, Algeria 16132
She opened the envelope and unfolded the letter. Inside was a single, moderately filled page.
He greeted her with a simple Tohsaka, the omission of a Dear or any such term entirely in-character for him.
He apologized for not writing sooner, took him long enough, and asked about her health, her life, her studies. Mentioned being thankful for her lessons and how many of them serve him well in his job. He talked about himself, although briefly: he was apparently on a short leave before being called on again by his company, but offered no further details on the subject of his current employment.
I really don't want to hear about it either.
He talked about meeting an amiable Clock Tower magus recently, who spoke highly of her and told him about her shining talent and growing influence inside the organization, as well as her new teaching position. He congratulated her for it.
He's being chummy with random magi, the idiot, she thought, but found herself smiling a bit at the words regardless, at hearing from him again. Awkwardly conversing with Shirou, even if it was currently one-sided, made her feel like a young girl again. Not that she was old now, by any means.
And him being an idiot was nothing new.
She was broken out of her reverie by arriving to the postscript, one that she didn't even notice before.
''What happened to your paper? Did you publish it?''
She grimaced.
The damned paper.
She folded the letter and stuffed it back into the envelope, opening the desk drawer to return it to its place there, but some infernal, idiotic impulse made her look at it, sitting quietly and rotting away at the bottom of the drawer.
A stack of paper, waiting for 'better days', days when she'll actually have the mental fortitude to torch the whole thing. Amateurish work that couldn't hold a candle to the things she's dealing with these days.
A stack of paper that was a product of her youth. A symbol of a different life.
A road they once walked, together.
She groaned and pulled the papers out.
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Originally Posted by Sesto
