Heroslayer inspired me again....
------------------------Price of survival, settlement with fate------------------------
She remembered feeling a bit tired....
"NANOHA! MOVE!"
She remembered losing the feeling in her limbs for a moment, making it impossible for her to move out of the way as Vita yelled at her. The last thing she remembered was a impact knocking her out of the way.
-----
She felt like she had been asleep for years, and her mind was still dull as she recognized the woman sitting at her hospital bed.
" How long have i been...."
"4 days" Lindy answered the girl, as Nanoha tried to sit up in her hospital bed. " You exhausted your linker core to the point that it forced you into a unconscious state to prevent fatal depletion. The doctors tell me you should restrain using your powers for at least a few weeks. As result you are on forced leave for the next 3 months and no more training for you"
Something.......
"I.... I see. The assignment?"
" The target had already vacated the old belkan ruin before we finally managed to track it down." Lindy's face twitched, before shifting back to her normal visage as she continued. "It seems like he used the confusion of the attack to escape"
There is something I'm forgetting.......
"I'm sorry. I let you all down" The girl spoke as she looked at her feet, unable to watch her superior in her eyes. It also caused her to miss the fact that Lindy too was having trouble facing the girl. " Is everyone else okay?"
"V-Vita is okay, although she still is a bit emotional. The others are here in the hospital too, down in the visitors area."
The sound of steel slicing trough flesh, only to be replaced by the sound of steel scraping against metal...........
"S-Shirou must be worried!" Nanoha spoke with a trembling voice as she tried to laugh, desperately trying not to think about that sound, about that memory because if she did....
Lindy looked at the girl, before hugging Nanoha as tears flowed down the young girl's face as the final memories returned to her.
----
The belkan droid mercilessly struck the target, and the enchanted blade easily cut trough both the armor and the skin of the boy as if it wasn't there at all. But Shirou's body wasn't made of flesh at this point. The dark blade suddenly met resistance as it met steel where flesh was supposed to be.
For a single moment, Emiya Shirou's body was made out of blades, before reality reasserted itself. That one moment was all Vita ha needed to strike at the drone.
But in it's final moments it still lodged the tip of it's blade into the boy's spine, before tearing the boy's back apart as the drone itself was slammed into the ground under the unrelenting pressure of Graf Eisin's assault.
----
Nanoha had felt warm, even while laying in the snow. Of course it was warm, as Shirou laid on top of her, as his warm blood flowed over her body into the snow, turning the pristine white jacket and the cold white snow of the world a sickening red.
He smiled as he lay dieing on top of her, his eues unseeing as he kept muttering that she was okay, over and over again.
-----
They told her she couldn't see Shirou, as he was still in surgery, the third one this week as they kept him in an artificial coma to prevent any more damage. They promised her that he was going to be okay, and that she shouldn't worry about it.
The nurses whispered that he'd be lucky if he ever woke up.
-----
Signum-san, I want to spar against you" Fate had suddenly asked the knight who, after looking at the girl for several moments, had agreed to the young girl's request.
What started as a display of pure firepower and skill soon turned into nothing more then a brawl as a crying and screaming Fate threw punch after punch at the knight, who simply blocked the awkward strikes as the blond threw out all of her fears and pains.
Nether of them would ever speak of it again, but Signum realized that she soon found it she started to refer to the girl as 'Fate" instead of 'Testerossa'
----
Hayate and Vita slept in the same bed for the next few weeks, nether Master nor knight knowing who needed the comfort more then the other to drive away the nightmares they suffered from.
----
"Nanoha, You need to get some rest." Momoka spoke as her daughter refused to leave the seat, as she simply sat next to the boy's bed as he remained in the land of the sleeping. silent beeps the only thing confirming that the boy was still alive, as a display displayed the activity of the boy's brain.
Even though he had lost most of his blood his brain had miraculously sustained no damage from the encounter, even though the doctors couldn't explain how. One of them simply guessed that the cold of the planet might have preserved him a bit. They had been able to restore most of his back, but restoring the nerves in the torn spine had been beyond their capability.
Emiya Shirou would never walk out of the hospital on his own two feet.
----
A week later Emiya Shirou started defying modern science by waking up. After hearing the doctors tell him that his dream of becoming an hero was utterly destroyed, he wished for a moment that he never had. He simply looked on with blank eyes as Nanoha, Fate and Hayate hugged him as they cried tears of gratitude.
----
Shirou smiled as adults tried to convince him that things would turn out okay. He simply nodded as Hayate and her knight promised to help him around as he moved around in a wheelchair for the first time, Vita trying to cater his every single whim quickly getting on his nerves. He politely turned down Momoka's and Shiro's invitation to recover at their place, as well as Lindy's invitation to stay with her family.
He disliked relying on people like this, and the thought of him having to do so for the rest of his live burned as acid trough his stomach.
----
"I'm not sorry Nanoha, even though things ended up like this"
"How can you say that. Look at you! All because I was stupid and......" Nanoha was unable to form any more words as she pressed her crying face into Shirou's bedsheets.
Eventually she recovered enough to continue to speak to him.
" Why do you keep smiling like that, how can you say that things are okay like this?"
" Because, at least I saved you, and that's all that mattered."
And for the first time Nanoha though that Shirou smiling face was wrong.
----
The feeling in Shirou's legs returned two weeks later. The doctors were puzzled, as the nerves had been thoroughly torn apart the last time they checked . But when he started moving his legs, they pulled him trough several detailed test and confirmed the impossible.
"I don't care if it's a saying on your planet!. People don't just grow a spine on mid-Childa!"
----
Shirou had spend weeks in bed, unable to practice his magecraft, nor being able to move his legs. Thus as he tried to regain both functions he soon found out that the hardest part of his recovery had just begun. The next few weeks were a living hell, as his struggling body tried to relearn a skill that he had taken for granted.
The nurses praised him as he walked 50 meter in one line for the first time at the end of his therapy, but all his pain-driven mind could comprehend was that it was still not good enough.
And so he tried ,and failed, and tried and failed, and tried and failed until the nurses banned him from the exercise room, stating that he had done the impossible and that his health was good enough for him to be released.
The doctors that had wanted him to stay, or even wanted to study him, had already disappeared from the hospital weeks ago after a furious Lindy Harlaown had caught one of the surgeons trying to take tissue samples from Shirou, even going so far as to drug the boy in his sleep.
Somehow the blatant abuse of power and authority had seemed unfitting of a person of Lindy-san's composure, but Shirou was just glad that the people on earth never would hear about this.
The Magus association disliked people preforming miracles in public after all, as it tended to blow away their cover.
-----
A week later Emiya Shirou walked out of the hospital as a free man, several hours before he was supposed to. Thus he had some time for himself as he had neglected to inform the others about the change of schedule, giving him some well deserved 'me' time. As soon as they would get their hands on him it would be weeks before he could train himself, so he decided that he would try one more thing that had been itching at him for the last few days.
He walked towards the jumping bar on the sports field of the hospital, a bar placed way to high to jump without the use of a good spell-casting, and this the ideal exercise for recovering mages.
But Emiya Shirou had other plans......
-----
They had known Shirou was hardheaded. They had known that he was Stubborn. But as Nanoha,Fate and Hayate watched the boy trying to jump over the bar, they realized that Emiya Shirou was more then just Stubborn. He was Emiya Shirou, and nothing was impossible as long as he ran head-on into it.
And so they watched the boy jump and fall as he continued on stubbornly, unrelenting in the face of the impossible challenge. For the first time since she had fallen down on those snowy field, Nanoha truly smiled.
---------------END---------------
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Originally Posted by Kiiam
Great stuff 
