III. Convenient Accommodations
The sound of the rain drumming against the window glass is unrelenting. The first drops had fallen, fat and plodding, the very moment her fever had begun to break. Now, it seems they will never stop. They have become thin streaks that fall so close together that they look to form a curtain made of needles between this house and everything, except possibly for the nearby trees. The gray light that comes in through the window is the only light in the room.
The house is dark and quiet.
Looking out the window, rather than turning around to face the rest of the room, is the simplest option. As long as she does not let her eyes break with the scene beyond the window, it is almost like this has not happened. It is almost like those trees could be anywhere in the world, at any time between the end of time and the beginning of it. This rain could be falling onto the sodden soil of Britain, and she need never know the difference. If only she could keep looking, past the pristine glass and nowhere beyond that row of trees.
The moment she sees her own eyes interrupting the scene, she knows the truth. Fixing her gaze on the familiar form of her reflection, imperfect and faint like in a shaded pool of water, she has no choice but to see the glass for what it is. It is something keeping her inside, keeping the rain out, and it is something of this era, not her own.
She raises her hand with a thought to touch the glass. She does not know what she means to test it for, but she does so gingerly. A single fingertip touches the pane and she draws it away with a curling of her hand. On the glass, there is a faint, lined reminder that someone has touched it. Her brow tightens with concentration as she considers the very clear concentric pattern, interrupted by a few little lines that look like guesses at covering imperfections in the delicate loops. They are difficult to follow, but she can see them.
Before she realizes it, she has leaned in closer to the window. She notices only when her breath becomes as visible as the touch of her finger against the glass. She straightens and brushes both hands down against the front of her body, over ribs that feel surprisingly intact. She cannot say the same for her suit.
She breathes in, drawing her abdomen tight. Her fingers run down, feeling the subtle rise of each of the buttons – one, two, three. In spite of everything, the buttons have held in place. She drops her head to see where her fingers lose contact with the final button, and takes note of the dull sheen of the gloves that cover up her hands. She starts with them.
She plucks them off and lets them rest neatly across each other on a dressing table. Her fingers curl inward, testing their flexibility. Her palms face upward. They are strikingly light in contrast to the dark shades of the fabric that cover the rest of her body. After they seem sure, her hands return to her body to feel along the seams of her jacket. None of them even seem frayed.
The trouble is, she knows that it is not as simple as the pieces that make up her garments holding together. She can feel it each time she moves, the way that all across the smooth fabric there are swaths of stain. The stains are thick where they linger, making the fabric stiffer than it ought to be. The feeling is particularly noticeable down her back, all the way down her legs. On her right flank, she can see a flourish of sandy-colored soil that has made a home atop and between the fibers of her clothing.
If there is any way to restore the clothing to be as it once was, she does not know what it would be. She cannot imagine that such an abundance of mud and filth will ever completely wash out.
In the same movement, her fingers begin to work at the buttons as she looks back over her shoulder. She sees the bed askance. She looks back down at the front of her own form as the jacket slips away and she takes it by the back of its collar. Considering the mud, it occurs to her that she had never removed her shoes at the door. She had known that it was customary to do so in this country, but her first tour of the house had been with a cloud of sickness still lingering over her head. She had no intention of honoring customs or wishes or requests any more than she had already agreed to.
Now, she steps out of her shoes. She nudges them out of the way with her foot until they rest just to the side of the dressing table. She finally turns back to the bed and its contents, which she had purposefully only half-seen when she had been shown to this bedchamber. She had been brought here by the wicked priest Archer made it his business to hold company with. She had listened to very little he had to say, gleaning only the points most pertinent to surviving this place.
A part of her does not know why she had listened that much. Yet, the part of her that has always tried to listen will not just stop trying.
Somewhere in the silent house, a sound rings out. It squeaks and sings as a valve is tightened. The response seems to be silence where there had been the quick sound of water rushing that she had first mistaken as part of the rain. She looks toward the ceiling, past the bed's canopy, then down a wall and to the floor. She knows that the sound comes from beneath her, but it seems to come from everywhere at once like a faint reminder that the house is occupied by someone apart from her. It seems far away, and she determines that it is not a threat. With no more need of distraction, her eyesight focuses keenly on the bed.
The bedclothes are smooth and neatly made. The sheets are white, while the heavier blankets are decorated with a pattern of officious carmine flowers that reach out to meet one another in squared sections with a more shyly pink backdrop. The smooth blanket's pattern is interrupted by a few distinctly arranged displays. The embroidery that gives the blanket its pattern seems to be constructed of thread that might give off a brighter, almost glinting shine if only more light were given to the room.
To her left hand, there is a light blue skirt. When she touches it – because of course she understands, these are for her – a sheer layer of fabric crumples in her hand. Another sheer layer rests beneath the first, and a third, each longer than the last. A fourth and shorter layer, an opaque underskirt, at least seems to be made of something that is sound to the touch. Each layer is pleated with the same regularity, loose and flowing. With its dull color and cascading layers of fabric, it reminds her of the sheets of rain presently falling from the sky. The waist has no ties, no buttons, and not even zippers. Instead, it tightens inward around itself into a small shape that will stretch around her body, holding itself above her hips.
Tucked beneath the waist of the skirt is a delicate top. It is constructed of a familiar, floral pattern in something that looks like netting but which is much more fine, soft to the touch. While she has not learned the names of any of these fabrics, she knows simply from looking, only from touching, that they are very well-made. The shirt would be nearly see-through were it not for the matching lining affixed inside. It, too, is soft and seems to move more like water than cloth. The lining only extends around the torso and up to a thin section at the shoulders. She can see the bedspread through the sleeves. They spread out, wide and gentle, like weak and impossible wings.
Beside these things, there is a pair of simple, dark brown shoes. They are not very resilient, but they will cover the bottoms of her feet and her toes. They will provide no soundness to her ankles, no protection, but they are certainly shoes.
At the foot of the bed, there is a box constructed of very thick paper. It is square and decorated with thick stripes of white, black, and an obtrusive shade of pink. Carefully, she lifts the lid from the box and peers at what is inside, tucked neatly inside a wholly pink lining. There are three distinct sets of undergarments. Two are softer, lighter, and less rigid in form – one set is white, the other some shade that is only a little darker than the color of her skin. The third set is more sturdy in its construction with cleaner lines and a watery shine. It is a dark shade of blue. Without comment, internal or otherwise, she places the lid back on the box.
The final arrangement, closer to the head of the bed and its row of pillows, is the last one she turns her attention to. It is the simplest, and it does not take long to work out its purpose. It is long, and lying on the bed it is nearly shapeless. It is so long that it seems it will cover her small form from neck to ankle. It looks almost rectangular without a person wearing it and has long sleeves. The only fitted part of the garment seems to be those sleeves from elbow to wrist. The closure is made up of many small buttons, covered with little cloth garments of their own. To either side of the closure, there are many tight, permanent gathers extending out about the length of a finger. Looking at them, they remind her of dozens of sets of rib bones from a tiny animal, but they are made of nothing of the sort. The fabric feels cool when she touches it. It is almost enough to send goose pimples down her arm. It is cool, and yet it is of a thickness and durable flexibility that makes her think it feels almost safe. It seems like it would be capable of being warm, given some source of heat. She understands that this gown has been provided to her for the purposes of sleeping. She understands that it could not be more simple, more plain, but what she notices most of all is that it is the purest shade of white she has ever seen.
Her fingers feel along the tight ribbing, and as her palm flattens out she can feel the longing pull of fatigue. She could shed her dirty clothes in favor of this clean covering and fall on the bed. She would not even mind that it did not belong to her. The heaviness in her limbs needs some kind of respite, time to repair, and this soft, simple thing almost calls to her.
She shakes off the temptation to give in and fall asleep now. She glances at the long shadow she and the bedposts cast across the floor. It is still daylight, however dreary, and so she rejects the thought of sleep as much as she would have rejected wine laced with poison. She draws the lid from the box at the foot of the bed once more, roughly taking hold of one of the softer sets of undergarments. The delicate white fabric compresses almost entirely into her hand. She also chooses the clothing provided to her for daytime wear, taking care to hook the two little brown shoes in her fingers. She keeps them clutched tightly toward her palm, clinging to them like a lifeline. Even if they are useless in comparison to some boots she has worn, she has a strong conviction that she may need some covering for her feet. She will not run away in them, but she also has no desire to show herself weak.
Outside the door, the hallway is empty. It is brighter than the bedroom with a long expanse of windows. Looking left and right, she steps out into the corridor. She tests the handle, closing the door tightly behind her, making sure it will open to her again before she sets out into the open space. A floorboard creaks softly beneath her feet as she makes her way toward the stairs.
She stops out in the open. She feels exposed, halfway between her room and her intended destination. Something compels her to look back at a darkened part of the path behind her.
After the row of windows, there is a sudden and almost complete lack of light. Only small and crisscrossed beams of sunlight reach it, illuminating air that has a faint glitter of dust wafting around in it. It makes the house seem neglected more than abandoned – too empty and not empty enough.
The light that reaches the shaded space comes from an open door. Around that corner, she hears the faintest indication of movement. Fabric on fabric, one material rougher than the other. Her breath holds in her chest as she comes closer, further and further from sunlight.
Around the corner, the sight she sees is strange for how unremarkable it is. A man in a priest's garb kneeling on the floor. His head is bowed, the crown of his dark hair clearly visible while he shows no part of his face. At first, he seems to be at prayer. The sound is familiar. His voice is low but so deep it carries to her where she stands in silence. The phrase, spoken in Latin, sounds like a confident exhortation, befitting the words of a priest.
Only, this is not a house of worship. The room beyond the doorway is well-furnished, comfortable and ornate, but there is no altar. There is no focal point for prayer, no forward-facing seating to do away with worldly distractions. The chairs in the room are drawn instead toward the singular focus of a low table. This room is designed for matters of men, matters of business, and matters of state. It is certainly no house of God. No, this is the place is where the things that must be repented of are decided.
While it is no fit domain for a priest, the priest before her seems entirely at ease where he bows in mockery of his vocation. Upon the fine rug, there is a stain – a stain which neither water nor time could seem to wash out. The fact that it is blood is obvious to Artoria Pendragon without question, but the smell that is summoned up into the air leaves no doubt.
He pours the contents of one vial and then another. The contents are clear, flowing from darkened containers that seem to indicate a uniform origin. When the liquid touches the carpet, it seeks out the blood, once dried, and causes it to become a rich and vital red. Pooling up from the fibers in a bubbling puddle, the bloodstain lifts higher until it floats like a cloud. It becomes an almost mocking pink, and as the man – Kotomine Kirei – runs the back of his hand through the sickly cloud, the smell of heated metal fills the air. His prayer continues, either incantation or cheerful blasphemy.
His head lifts up, betraying his malicious joy through the smile on his lips. The strange, fading pink mist creates a curtain of thinned, fading blood between them that seems to leave the world somewhere just above his head. It is neither as dark nor as thick as it ought to be, then it is gone as if it never was.
Standing to watch this process makes Artoria feel as if the vanished blood clings to her skin. Her eyes narrow with derision, but she cannot look away from the aftermath of this murder.
“You killed the master of this house,” she says. That Kotomine Kirei is a murderer is no surprise to her. Every look at his fingers reminds her of the lives he has destroyed. One life, chiefly among all others. She thinks of it more calmly than she had been able before. Irisviel had been a sacrifice from the beginning. She understands that now, and she knows that there is more than one man to blame for her death. Irisviel had tried to warn her, but it does nothing to cleanse the blood from this man's hands. He does not even try to wash them clean, instead dirtying them with even more pointless sacrifice and death.
“It is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment...” Kotomine says, familiar words in a foreign tongue. His smile becomes more sinister, and he appears proud of himself.
Artoria's hands clench and her jaw sets. She searches for words, but there are none for this man, for this monster. Even with the cloud of fever drained from her body, there is no room to reason with him, and she cannot pass judgment. All she can do before him is breathe in and breathe out the scent of the same blood he has spilled.
She looks down at the perfect carpet, the blood's absence as sickening as the stain itself had been. Powerless as a king, complicit as a witness, she turns to walk away. It is the only judgment she can make.
┈ ┈ ┈ ┈ ┈ ┈ ┈
The washroom is a strange rush of warmth in the cold, empty house. The air is thicker, like the dew of sweat that lingers after happy sparring on a summer's day. It seems strange, when all the rest of the house is pervaded by the breath of damp, dreary winter. The large mirror is nearly clear, but the mist clings to its edges as her own breath had clung to the window upstairs. Thinking it through, she comes to the conclusion that the sound she had heard was of this room meeting its use for another.
With Kotomine Kirei upstairs, draped in his black priestly garb, making revelry of his sins, it can only mean one thing. He is still here. Tension swells in her shoulders as she looks left and right, but there is no sign of the Archer, the man called Gilgamesh, in this narrow pair of rooms.
The exhale that overtakes her comes from deep inside. She braces her small stack of clothes against the bathroom vanity, her head bowing forward as she feels as if all her breath is about to leave her. She feels that it has been a long time since she could allow her shoulders to slump, her small frame to nearly give way under the weight of everything. She sucks in another breath, her eyes shut tight, and she thinks she might have nothing left between herself and the tears she had left at Camlann.
If she lets them fall, will it take her back there? Will it wake her from this strange, impossible dream?
One of the little brown shoes falls to the floor with a clack of its sole.
Her eyes open up, falling past the glinting flecks of stone in the surface she is using to hold herself up. She looks at the shoe and, with a huff of something like mundane disgust, she picks it up.
She examines the room with her clothes tucked into the crook of her arm. It does not take her long to find a dry towel. She retreats entirely into the second section of the washroom where the larger plumbing is placed.
She pushes back the faintly dripping curtain, peering down into the bathing pool. Fresh clothes set aside, she examines its mechanisms as she methodically removes the rest of her dirty clothes. Shed one piece at a time and with little care, she hardly notices her own body until there is an uncomfortable pull of fabric tugging away the remnant of dried blood from her thigh.
She only looks down at her injured leg when she has corked the drain and set the tub to filling with warm, nearly hot water. She fiddles with the valve until it is as hot as she can touch without drawing away. Seated on the edge of the tub, she examines her unclothed body with careful attention to the puncture wounds that remain. That should remain.
Her body had been pushed to its limit before she had ever laid eyes on the Holy Grail. Even the thought of how far she had gone, how much she had fought, what she had done to reach that beautiful, sad light, and all for naught, is nearly enough to tempt her to tears again. She only closes her eyes. Opening them again, she still finds that her crooked thigh shows only the shadow of a wound, blood painted over unbroken skin. She can see the lines his blades at left, but they are just a shade of sickly, pure white.
Her thumb tests what her eyes see, and when she feels no sting of pain, no heat of infection, she curls her fingers away and braces herself to lower into the water. Shutting off the valve once she is beneath it, she settles into water hot enough to turn her pale skin faintly red. For a while, she sits in this shallow pool, knees lifted, elbows touching them, and head bowed. Her fingers slide up into her loosened hair, and she closes her eyes, feeling nothing but warmth like fire seeking out her bones.
There is no sense in her survival. She had been a few poorly placed movements from death before she had ever stood before Archer in that great, now ruined hall. Lancelot had nearly killed her, and part of her had been ready to let him. Finally, her eyes do sting. She reaches down and takes cupped hands full of water and splashes them against her face. Her tears will do nothing for him now.
Gradually, she unwinds her posture and starts to wash away blood and sweat and water alone. Whatever has left behind the healing skin she finds, she cannot help but feel it is both undeserved and treacherous. She had him. She had been ready to take the head of the man who could be nothing but her enemy while he spoke words of love, peace, even marriage. But he had been there – ruined, on the ground, disarmed in the filth that covered so many stolen lives – and she had not been able to do it.
She searches her palms for some hint, but what had been in her hands is gone. It had seemed to flow from Excalibur itself. Some melody of hope and mercy that has never belonged on a battlefield. A melody she certainly cannot hear, even in memory, anymore. She knocks her hands against the water with fruitless anger, catching ragged breaths.
“What mercy is letting him live?” she asks herself aloud.
Alarmed by the sound of her own voice, she forces herself to be taken with her surroundings. With no answer for her question, she takes one of the bottles from the side of the tub. There are several, and each of them is ornate in one way and then another. With squinting eyes and careful touch, she uses each several of them for their intended purpose, washing away whatever she can with the smell of flowers and honey.
When she has washed whatever she can away and the water around her has begun to cool, she stands just outside the tub, water dripping from her body and onto a rug. She clutches the thick towel around herself and begins to dab away the water. The tub drains, gurgling down the water so loudly that she hardly hears the sound ahead of her.
The latch on the outer door of the washroom giving way is just a soft click, but Saber knows to trust nothing either of the men in this house might do. There is no one else here. They had killed the person who ought to be here, and no soap, water, or magic will wash that away.
“Saber,” he calls to her, his voice low and happily unassuming, always at odds with his actions. She can tell Archer is somewhere just beyond the door, but his voice seems to have halted before coming the rest of the way through. She glares at him through the wooden pane, but remains calm and methodical as she puts on her undergarments. The first piece is quite obvious, not difficult at all, but the second is more of a puzzle she has never needed to solve before. Her glare and deep frown shift to it.
She tries to move quickly, but she is not certain how to put it on. Her shoulders shrug and squirm beneath the brassiere, its straps loose and falling over her shoulders until she pulls the pieces of the band at her ribs taut. At once, the straps are too tight, pressing into her flesh. With audible, frustrated breath, she feels a shiver of anxiety run over her bare skin as she slides the whole thing down to examine it.
She looks at it with contempt, feeling along its delicate construction until she comes to the rounded, white, hard hooks. Holding them close to her face, she practices the movement, seeing the way two of them come together at the center to firm up the strap. Then she tests the same metallic, white slides, feeling as they make the straps longer with adjustment. She concentrates, for a moment, on making them even.
Back along her arms, up to her shoulders, she exhales. The straps settle atop her skin rather than pressing welts into it. She pulls tighter and aims the hooks against one another. They fail to catch. She tries again, twisting as she can feel her shoulder blades jutting out. She knows with every passing moment he is more likely to do something even more wearisome, but she refuses to answer until she is ready. She tries a third time, and finally one hook catches. She loosens her grip and dances her fingers along until she can align the second set of hooks, securing them both in place. Her breath releases, and she tries the movement at her waist. Once she settles a little, lowering her hands loosely to her sides, it feels a little more like protection than unusual restraint.
“Why have you come here, Archer?” she demands, only when she is covered by that much. She picks up the skirt, straightening its layers before stepping into it while she awaits for an inevitable, unwanted reply.
“You've been in here quite a long time,” he remarks. He always speaks as if they are negotiating while he has the upper hand. She cannot help the grinding in her teeth. “I thought I would come to see what was taking you so long.”
The layers of her skirt fall over her hips, each of them light before finally settling into a shape that rests some weight over her thighs. She reaches for the shirt and has no choice but to handle it delicately. The lace folds over her hands with an easy, cool touch that makes her have even more impulse to grasp at it. When she has oriented it the right way, she pulls it down over her head, arms finding their places in the airy sleeves. No matter how firmly she pulls it in place, it is still still too light to the touch.
“I am sure the priest would prefer your company,” she counters. The only satisfaction she has is stamping her feet down into the shoes.
Her hair still drips, and she tends it with the towel. Only when she can no longer feel droplets making their way down her back, into the groove of her spine, she reaches out for the door handle with one hand. She keeps minding her hair with the towel with the other. He is halfway between her and the outer door, his back leaned against the wall. She does not look above or below his waist, her eyes cast down with disinterest rather than shame.
“Does it matter?” he scoffs when she is in his sight. “When I would much rather see how you find it here...”
She continues to ignore him as she makes her way past, but something catches her. His hand just above her waist, cupping at her rib cage. She looks up at him, affronted, but he only smiles into her deadly eyes.
“You should answer me,” he instructs her, as if tutting a child.
Caught close, she can only look up at him to speak to him without looking like exactly that.
“I have no words for you—”
“Of course you do,” he interrupts her. With that, a fingertip brushes her lips to hush her. As he lowers his hand, he gently pulls and the towel she had forgotten about holding easily slides from her grip, however tight it is. “Unless you would prefer I stop talking,” he suggests, his tone recovering its confident lechery she has despised from the start.
A fluffy, dampened towel bunched at their feet. She looks down and sees it, the dark trousers he wears taking in as little of her attention as she can allow. She senses the movement before it happens and is as ready to strike back as if he had drawn another blade to hurl at her. She snarls with disgust as she looks back up at him, her own back to the wall now. He leans over her, reaching up for her jaw.
She dimly remembers the same when she had known nothing but his taunts and the fire.
This time, she reaches up to catch his wrist. She grips it tightly until she feels the bones respond to her hand. Only then, she locks her eyes onto his – wide, interested, and the red of a precious stone.
“If you touch me like this again, I will leave you with scars that will never heal so long as you walk this earth,” she warns. Her gaze falls in time with her words before she jabs her elbow into his abdomen hard enough to push him back. He forces a laugh through the gasp for air it causes. Being so close to him, she notices something else when she pushes him away. His stomach gurgles, and it is such an odd thing to notice after her anger has been so highly demanded of her. Her hand securely on the doorknob, already turning it, she glances back at him one more time. “And you should learn to tell the difference in your appetites.”
A heartier laugh certainly had not been what she intended to draw from him, but she hears it from within the washroom as she walks away, leaving all her shed dirty clothes and him behind.
She sets out across the living room, its furnishings all oriented toward a great fireplace. It is empty and cool.
“Oh, Saber?” he calls, his voice carrying through this one as it had in the last.
She looks back only with a half-longing glance at the swords arranged as part of a display above the mantel, the coat of arms above the fireplace. She looks at him, believing he will understand that she has far more intent to fight than to talk.
“Don't you have words for me?” he taunts again.
She looks at him with icy expectation and silence.
“You mentioned having other appetites,” he echoes to her, pacing out into the room. He does not go far, this time keeping some distance from her, though she hardly believes it to be out of healthy fear of her anger. “And so I ask, Saber, where else would you go?”
“Speak plainly, Archer,” she warns him.
“Are you hungry?” he asks her, apparently very compliant and nearly disinterested. He pokes at a detail on one of the unlit lamps in the room.
She narrows her eyes and watches him quietly. He does not seem to have any purpose for his question beyond the topic at hand.
“You are offering me food?” she asks.
“If my appetite for such a thing has been roused in this era, surely yours has been too,” he counters.
“You are offering me food that belongs to the master of this house, whom you killed,” she says, rather than addressing his presumption. She accuses him with her body angled toward the mantel in such a way that she thinks it matters little whether she has the strength to summon Excalibur to her hand or not.
Rather than a returned challenge or even mocking amusement, he answers her with a short sigh. He walks past her, as she had tried to walk past him, without being stopped.
“Come with me,” he instructs her.
Her back tenses, her jaw sets, her fists clench, but to defy him leaves her with no more options than to obey him. Before he walks out of sight, she follows him, if only to seek out an opportunity for their combat to be justly renewed. She is convinced now that she made a mistake in letting him live.
He leads her to a kitchen rather than a dining hall, where there are two bowls with simple, large spoons and a mixture of red-brown sauce and something filling it. The blonde colored pieces are something she cannot identify, and the most recognizable thing appears to be tiny loops of green on top in the center – a plant, at least. While she spends a moment looking at it, he stands before it and takes one of the bowls into his right hand. His left reaches for the other and holds it up to her, expecting that she take it.
She does not waste the energy on giving him a further glare than she is already giving the food. She scoops up the bowl in both her hands and follows once more to an open table where she reluctantly takes a seat. The bowl is still faintly warm to her hands, and she takes a moment to let go.
“That was hot some time ago,” he remarks, making it impossible to forget his presence.
Rather than responding to him, she sets the bowl down and takes up a spoonful. She holds it near her mouth but does not move to eat it before she smells it.
“The food isn't stolen,” he adds, uninvited as ever. “It belongs to Kirei.”
The attachment of that name to it almost takes her appetite, but she realizes that if she does not speak that he will never quiet.
“And you do not believe it is poison for us both?” she asks, but she does not look up from what appears to be some kind of hot-smelling food.
She notices that he takes a few bites of it. She hears him swallow, and the closeness of it makes her choose to look at him, occupying more than one of her senses. She takes a small bite, not so much tempted as challenged, as she had been with the wine.
“He wouldn't,” he remarks when he notices that she has responded somehow.
“What honor is there among murderers?”
The adjustment of his grip on his spoon only serves to confirm what she believes about him. He has a blackened fire always coursing just beneath the surface, and she can feel it even in his sweetened words. The room is filled with knives, and more than any fear she feels it might be some welcome break from pretense, battle breaking from stilted banquet.
“If it pleases you to know, this place has been Kirei's home for some time. The master of his house was killed before that farcical war ended, and I am sure that even in your righteousness you understand the need for sacrifices in war,” he bites out before biting into his food with equal vigor.
The food does not repulse her, but its texture is strange and spices in it burn her tongue and numb her lips, but as she stares at him these strange sensations are nearly lost on her. She sets the spoon down where it fits along the edge of the bowl.
“The three of you,” she says, watching him without wavering. “The three of you were in the church...” She thinks it through, looking past the lascivious gaze she had thought to burn out of him with her eyes. “Where is he now?” she asks, already knowing the answer. “Your Master...”
“My first Master is dead,” he concludes for her, having eaten enough that he is idly spooning at dregs in his bowl.
“The blood upstairs belonged to Tohsaka Tokiomi, and this is his home,” she says, taking in the truth rather than questioning it.
“I am surprised, however glad, that you made it so far as to be the last one to challenge me,” he remarks with half-hearted humor that does not reach his face.
She returns her attention to her bowl, taking in the food methodically without regard to the spice. She watches as the food disappears, each bite a step closer to leaving this table without a hole gnawing at her stomach. This had been Tohsaka Tokiomi's house, and she had never known. The maps she had been shown, the plans that had been discussed without any regard to her input, all of them now empty and dead. She had come here in a feverish haze, and she had never come here before. There had been so many things Emiya Kiritsugu had not been obliged to share with her, and so many of them could have been useful. It is a surprise that she had made it so far, as Archer has pointed out, with her Master telling her nothing, trusting her with nothing except those things he had already been prepared to lose.
As she scoops her bowl nearly dry, she knows that she has given herself time in this place. She has prolonged her life for another few days, but the need to survive drums to the back of her mind as it has since the Holy Grail was again lost to her. Instead, she simply notices the gnawing that remains in her stomach – not hunger, but a pang of envy.
“It is better, isn't it? To kill than to be killed,” Archer remarks.
Artoria puts down her bowl and spoon, sitting back from the table.
“We are to protect our Masters with our lives,” she recites.
“And in exchange, we are given the opportunity to achieve any wish our hearts could desire,” he says, believing in the emptiness of his words. He scoffs a little after them. “And what when a Master knows he cannot spare your life to achieve his ends? Your Master, who leans on you for protection in his time of greatest need...”
Artoria looks down at her forearm. The skin there has prickled with cold she cannot feel, but there is no gleefully wicked smile to accompany Archer's feat. Instead, he looks like a far-off wise man, laying down the most basic rules of a magic or an ideology. He is reciting law. She swallows tightly.
“Is it murder or is it a right to save your own life, King of Knights?”
She does not understand him, and she does not understand the way her heart beats faster – the rush of the moment just before a sword clash, the building gallop of a steed hurtling toward an open sky. She settles her feet on the floor and pushes the rest of the way back from the table. She stands, looking down at the bowl as if the dish might offer some anchor, some notion as to what to do with it.
“Enough,” she warns him. Then, to have something to do with her hands, she takes up her bowl and spoon and places them – empty – back in the place where they had started. They clatter against each other, refusing to settle in the same way she cannot settle her fingers. They do not tremble, but her thumbs trace along each of the others. She stares at them before she drops them down to her sides.
“If you had a choice... your Master or your lost country—” he says from somewhere behind her. She remembers that she needs to walk away.
“Enough!” she demands of him again. She leaves the kitchen, visions of blood dripping from the knives left behind lit behind her eyes.
She does not know whose blood it is.
- - -
It certainly took me long enough. I'm hoping to pick up the pace after this, but we'll see what happens. Thank you for reading!
Originally Posted by Snow
Reply With Quote
