#fate go fic

[ziracona]

I finally got the intro to arc 2 done. Hope you have fun with it! As always, Tumblr gets the update first but before the final editing pass--a little glass half full, glass half empty ^.^' Enjoy: [Fate/GO AU – The Kid (pt: 1, … 22,23, 24, 25, 26, ?)]{Some spoilers for original Grand Order run/through Temple of Time, vaguer situational spoilers for later arcs}

.

.

“Roman?”

“Mmmmmhmmmph,” I groan unhappily, unhappy to have heard anything. I shift a little, trying to stay unconscious, because it’s better in here.

“Sorry, but you gotta wake up sometime soon. We’ve got like 100 people with guns who aren’t super happy about the 200 new people we just dropped on them without guns,” comes a woman’s voice, “You and I can take a real rest when we’re dead. Or when nobody’s looking. Which I wish was right now, but.”

I hear her, unfortunately, and I’m awake enough to know what the words mean, so I sigh, then scrunch up my face and drag my eyes open. I do not expect to find the blurry face of Da Vinci looking right down at me from above.

“…Da Vinci?” I double-check, squinting up at her. Yeah. I’m pretty sure it is.

“Oh wow, you actually woke up,” she says, patting my shoulder sympathetically, “I know you’re beat to hell, but, I’d love it if you cared to confirm what happened.”

“…Where is everyone else?” I ask, blinking and trying to shake off the lingering weight in my head. I feel sort of terrible, and sort of peaceful, somehow at the same time. It’s bizarre. Right. I shouldn’t feel peaceful at all right? Because there’s a lot of people to explain things to, who are upset and worried. And then there’s the whole situation to…to try and fix…

I look back up at Da Vinci, since she hasn’t answered me. My vision is starting to clear, and now that I can see her face, I realize she looks…sad. No, sad and happy. Nostalgic? Homesick? She’s looking at me like I have seen David look at me a few times now, when he thinks I’m not paying attention. Like it’s painful, in a way that is deeply good.

I…feel guilty, that I don’t know her. For all I know, she could be lying about knowing me, I guess, and I’m not a naïve person, but, I don’t think she is. And it makes me sorry.

There’s a little crackle in my head then, which I feel an instinct to panic at, because, you know, how could that be a good sound for the inside of a head? But then I hear her thoughts slipping through the space between us:

“I missed this. How can I be so sad? How can I miss him so painfully, while talking to him, face to face? I feel like I’m watching a memory, but, I’m not. Not this time.”

My stomach drops as I realize I’m unintentionally getting her thoughts.

“He looks so like he always did. Tired and cheerful and steady. He was our rock, and I’m not really sure I ever thanked him for that. That wasn’t my job. My job was keeping us alive, and giving him a hard time. But still, someone should have said it. It wasn’t easy. I know, because once he died, I had to be him. Dying the best you can for the people around you, and asking those kids who are like your own by now to live, and live happy, with the weight of the world on their shoulders? Is even worse.”

It ends then as soon as it began, with another crackle in my head like static, and I know I did not make that happen, but I still feel deeply wrong. I know whatever caused it, it wasn’t her either, and it was an intrusion; I wasn’t meant to hear it. I wish I’d been awake enough to think of a way to stop it.

I…I should be thinking about how to play this, or that this is confirmation then, that I am certainly going to die, because that’s important, but then, I’ve known that all along, right? And it’s not what I’m thinking. I’m thinking: “Wow. After everything, you have someone who misses you this much.” I should feel anything but reassured, but it’s all I feel. Peace. Or…gratefulness. I guess if only one of us two being able to remember it all, in the end, was enough for me then, then only one of us remembering at the start, here, is good enough for me, too.

Okay focus. She’s still staring into space. Maybe you can…

“Da Vinci…?” I ask, deciding to act like nothing just happened and hope she doesn’t know, “Did something happen? You look worried?”

“Not really,” she sighs, refocusing her mask with precision and speed, and putting on a smile while making a grand little shrug, “But you sure left us a situation. You try explaining the shit we just pulled to a room of angry mages sometime, and see how you like it.”

“Did anyone-?!” I ask with sudden fear.

“—Nobody got hurt,” she chides, “You think I wouldn’t have mentioned that? Your staff heard what you said before you passed out. We’ve got a bunch of confused civilians, which aren’t a threat, and a Holy Grail War’s worth of heroic spirits, which are, but are too much of one for them to want to start something. If they wanted to try to shoot us, they’d be doomed. And we have no reason to want to shoot them either. So no one did anything. It’s just been extremely uncomfortable.”

“Where am I?” I ask, blinking at the ceiling above me, and turning my head to try and see the room, and somehow only then realizing I’m using her lap as a pillow. Shit. I try to shoot up immediately, but she snags me and drags me back down. “-H-Hey!”

“Easy!” comes Makeda’s voice, from somewhere.

HUH?

“Hold still if you would? We’re sort of in the middle of something,” she says apologetically, and I see her as she steps into my field of view.

That’s reassuring, I think with intense distrust. “The middle of what?”

“Welllll,” says Da Vinci awkwardly, “Heh heh. Uh.” She gestures to the ground, and I turn my head from my prone position and see intensely complex sigil work on the ground. Makeda is holding a brush and ink, and seems to have been in the middle of adding more.

“What the hell are you two doing?” I reiterate, because this has absolutely cleared nothing up.

“We’re doing a spell,” says Makeda, “A divination. There’s a lot of strange stuff going on—I expect with you too, after the way you passed out. I’m happy to explain all of it, but a lot of it seems to be connected to you, so we’re using you as the focal point. I need you to more or less stay still. You can move your arms, and head, if you want!” she adds like it will cheer me up.

“We uh, thought you’d be unconscious longer,” says Da Vinci apologetically.

“It won’t hurt you,” promises Makeda.

I sigh. I know, I realize as I think it, and wonder why I was so concerned in the first place. I guess it’s that as out of control as all of this is, I want as many fragments of control as I can get, just to hang onto. Okay, Romani. Deep breaths. Calm down, and focus.

“Alright, go ahead. But please, do explain,” I add, unhappily accepting my fate. Couldn’t they have just gotten me a blanket and pillow or something?

Da Vinci sympathetically reaches down and rubs my shoulders absently, which in other circumstances sould be incredibly weird, but given…everything. I just really don’t care. I sigh again and accept it.

At least it feels good, and I feel like I’ve been thrown down a flight of steps.

You could have picked a better bench, though, I think just a little bitterly. I have no idea what conference room we’re in right now, because they all look the same, but the padding is too firm for a nap to be ideal. I’m going to be so sore after this… I guess at least Da Vinci’s contribution might save my neck.

“Well, you passed out, and we got to talking,” says Makeda as she goes back to finishing the edges of her sigil circle, I’m pretty sure massively sugar-coating the situation after I passed out, “And it was very easy to pick up that Chaldea wasn’t on the same timeline as us—that is to say—in the common sense. It’s our metaphysical timeline, obviously, but they seem to be a full two months ahead of the rest of the world.”

“So, for them, three days ago was the turn of the year,” says Da Vinci.

“Right.” I knew that part, and I guess Da Vinci can see it on my face, because she nods.

“I thought so,” says Da Vinci, pleased, “Just to cement a few things, can you confirm what happened when you exited the shadow border?”

Sure. Why not. “I got hit with a second set of memories,” I reply, “Both felt equally real, which was very disorienting, because they contradicted. The influx of that much detailed, emotional, and complex information all at once, overloaded my already very tired brain, and I passed out for…?”

“Two and a half hours,” says Makeda, glancing over.

“-Two and a half hours,” I finish.

“And this new set of memories?” prods Da Vinci.

I shrug the best I can on my back with my head in her lap. “About what I think you already expect. It was of being here, when Chaldea went through the turn of the year. I survived a bombing that took out most of the base, and the betrayal of a staff member. Ritsuka Fujimaru’s brother, Akira, and Mash both survived the bombing miraculously, by being rayshifted out. Our director ended up with them—Olga Marie Animusphere. We—the surviving staff—were able to fix enough equipment to contact them and try to help. They’d been transported to one point of history targeted by Goetia, Fuyuki city, during a holy grail war. A servant who’d lost his master helped them, thankfully—uh—an alter, of our Lancer, Cu Chulainn—oddly. They were able to succeed, and repair the broken point in time, just barely. The traitor to our organization, Lev Lainur, attacked our director, and took her out of commission, indefinitely. Then was killed. It was terrible. They’re just kids, and they went through hell with no preparation. I couldn’t be more proud of what they accomplished, or feel more awful, that they had to do it at all.”

They’re quiet this time, both of them. I guess it was more than they thought I’d say.

Honestly, it still feels so real I could throw up, and like a bad dream. I feel even more guilty over that. I get this…free sense of dissociation, to help me cope, and I didn’t even have to be there to see it first hand. God. The poor kids. Ritsuka too. Ritsuka, Akira, Mash, all the civilians—even our heroic spirits, who are tanks among men have all been put through hell. We need a break. They need a break.

“I’m sorry,” says Da Vinci, stopping her shoulder rub to pat me on the shoulder, “That is about what we’d gathered, though.”

“It’s not your fault,” says my father, popping up from over the back of a nearby chair he’s apparently been sitting in, and I just about jump out of my skin.

“Were you there the whole time?!” I ask.

“Of course,” he says in disbelief, “Did you think I wouldn’t keep an eye on you?” He clicks his tongue at me and crosses his arms over the back of the chair to lean on it. “As I was saying, you did everything the best you could, and it sounds to me like it’s been enough. The Fujimarus were ecstatic to see each other, and he and Mash both had a lot to say about how you got everyone through this.”

I don’t know if I believe him, but I’m too exhausted to consider arguing with my dad right now. I guess I appreciate it either way.

“Where are the kids?” I ask as it occurs to me, and I accidentally start to sit up on impulse, and am very kindly pushed back into place by Da Vinci, “—Sorry.”

“They’re outside,” says Da Vinci, “It’s just Sheba, me, and David in here with you. The kids all wanted in, but we forced them to stay outside—both so we could do the spell, and just in case there was anything you wouldn’t be ready to tell them as soon as you woke up, with whatever was going on. We three already know all your secrets.”

“Thanks…I think,” I say, then double-take, “Wait—you know all my—?!”

“Yes. Obviously,” she replies proudly, “Remember? I knew you later. It’s all old news to me.”

I start to say something, but then I remember what I accidentally heard, and I don’t. She looks at me quizzically.

“…When did we meet, the first time?” I ask instead as something occurs to me.

She smiles a softer smile, pleased. “Oh. A few months from now. –Or, a few days, depending on the memory set.”

Ah. I smile back as it clicks. “You’re the first successful summon, aren’t you?”

“Clever boy,” she replies.

“And you chose to stay and help? And became the…’technical advisor��?” I ask.

She nods. “Most of the building was blown up. Why not give me a title? You were the only staff head left. Although, I guess by now you know that.”

“Yes,” I say, glancing away and fiddling absently with one of my gloves. Even if I wasn’t close to everyone here, and some of them were awful people, it’s so much death. And not everyone deserved it—not by a long, long shot. It’s…

“You really need to start watching your health better.”

I look up in surprise to see David shaking his head at me.

I give him something between a grimace and a smile. “If I had any choice in the matter, believe me.”

“Well, if you won’t do it yourself, I will,” he warns pleasantly.

Terrifying.

“You do remember both sets of memories fully, right?” asks Sheba. She seems to have finished her sigil, because she walks back over and kneels by the bench and holds out a hand for me. I take it, and feel her magical energy fill the room like a wave lapping at the beach: soft, gentle, but unstoppable in sheer mass and power if circumstances change. “We weren’t totally sure that after…”

“-Experiencing a temporal displacement overlap?” suggests Da Vinci.

“-It would be smooth,” continues Sheba, “That’s also part of why we wanted you to get a chance to talk to us first. Everyone out there is hoping you’re ‘their’ Romani, but, you’re ours regardless of what information you retained. We both knew you from before,” adds Sheba, gesturing to Da Vinci and herself with her free hand.

“-And any version of you is my ‘Romani Archaman,’” says David, playful inflection on my new name.

“We just couldn’t get rid of him,” explains Sheba tiredly.

Unsurprising. David is a force. “Well, everyone’s about to be relieved, I guess, because I have all of both,” I confirm. Hadn’t even occurred to me that people would be worried about that, but, of course they would be.

“I’m not surprised, but it’s still a relief to hear,” says Da Vinci, “By all accounts from the Chaldea staff, it’s January, and you’ve been here the whole time. Actually—you are on-camera, vanishing, the second the door to the Border opened. There’s a little ‘flicker’ and the you at your desk is gone. The you at the Border flickers twice, like an electromagnetic spike, and then the video is normal, but you’re a half foot to the left.”

“Fascinating,” I say, not sure exactly what that means, “I’d have thought it would be when we finished the zero sail, not opened the door. I wonder if it’s a temporal delay, or if there’s more weight triggered seeing yourself face to face when it comes to time fluctuation than I’d thought?”

“So, convergence set aside for the moment without enough information to pursue it, what’s the point of divergence?” asks Makeda, something in her tone suggesting this is a much more important question.

“Oh, uhm…” I scrunch up my brow, thinking it over, “…The…day I heard about Ur-Shanabi, I think.”

David looks very interested by this.

“It’s…strange. My memories since the Incineration are very strong in both versions, but…the time at Chaldea leading up to it is…foggy,” I continue, a little disturbed to find this as I go, “…I. I hadn’t noticed, until you asked, but…”

“It’s the same for the others,” says Makeda, “When we heard their accounts, we checked some of the readings from SHEBA-“ She pauses to give me a coy smile in recognition of the device being named for her, and I flush.

God, I used to have so much game. The only thing my second life is giving is anxiety.

“—and saw a lot of distortion. After being quizzed closely, everyone here we’ve been able to talk to, only remembers the time before what I’m assuming is the day a version of you heard about Ur-Shanabi, and the time since December 31st on. They have…ideas, and impressions—generalities—of the rest of the time. But, it’s more like it’s there to sustain the jump in time, than of enough material stability to be truly real.”

“That’s so bizarre,” I say, truly fascinated, and again starting to sit up on instinct so I can truly think. Both women pull me down this time. Right. “Sorry. So, the version of me who summoned you inside Unlimited Blade Works, that timeline, I do have concrete memories of the days since I heard about Ur-Shanabi. Which makes the second set the anomaly, I think.”

“I’m inclined to agree, to a point,” says Makeda.

“To a point?” I ask.

“In the other timeline, the one that’s mostly just since the end of the year, did you not go to Ur-Shanabi, or not hear of it?” asks Da Vinci, ignoring my question.

“I never heard of it,” I say, “Which…should be impossible. It’s not like I heard about it in the other in some passing comment.”

I do not love that. Or that they could guess so on their own. I don’t have a good feeling about this.

“Do you think someone meddled with your memory?” asks Sheba.

“…No,” I say, glancing down at her, “I…think someone meddled with time.”

“Yes,” agrees Da Vinci, “They absolutely did. But we weren’t sure if they did both.”

“Why though?” I ask, “Shit—wait! If Chaldea is past January first, then, we’re no longer somewhere we’re seeing the effects of Goetia’s actions before he’s taken them are we? So-”

“-No, we’re still ahead of schedule,” says Makeda calmingly, giving me a smile.

I can still feel her magical energy pulsing through me and the room slowly, in steady beats, like a heart at rest. It occurs to me to wonder finally what exactly she’s doing.

“That’s what we were able to use your SHEBA observational lens to discover. It’s the first—well, second, after making sure you really were alright—thing that we checked. It’s like this space, just the building, is in its own bubble,” adds Makeda.

“Couldn’t Goetia be in one too?” I ask dubiously.

“No,” says David happily. I look over at him. “She checked,” adds my father smugly, pointing to Makeda.

“Really?” I ask.

She nods gracefully, long hair cascading over her deep brown shoulders. It’s been so long, but I’ve never forgotten how smart or how beautiful she was.

“Thank you, Makeda,” I say softly.

“For you? Of course,” she replies.

“So, you’ve already found him then?” I ask as it occurs to me.

“Uhhhhm,” says Da Vinci, and she teeters a hand in a ‘kind of’ gesture.

Makeda sighs, looking worried. “It keeps…changing.”

“Every time we lock on, the coordinates shift,” says Da Vinci.

“He’s moving?” I ask in surprise.

“No. The coordinates shift as if they’ve always been something else. The log always reads completely changed, all two hours of it, in an instant—as if it’s performed one search function, and gotten the same answer. But what’s on the screen changes about every two seconds—it’s half real, half moving, and half make-believe,” says Makeda.

“That’s not…possible,” I say, thinking quickly. I’m missing something obvious, because I’m exhausted, and I can’t afford to.

“No, it’s not,” agrees Da Vinci, and I look up from where I’m still stuck on her lap, and see her watching me with those fixed, calculating clear eyes. I think about what I shouldn’t have heard her think, and for some insane reason, I feel desperate to live up to my own future reputation.

“…It’s not real yet,” I say. It was a question when I thought it, but it’s a statement as it exits my lips.

“That’s what we think,” agrees Makeda, closing her eyes, and I feel an intense increase in her magical output.

For few seconds, we are all quiet, waiting. I feel her familiar circuits where her hands hold mine, and I feel a sudden pause in the heartbeat-like pulse of her magical energy.

It’s like time has stopped.

The energy holds, but she opens her eyes, which glow like a breathing galaxy.

“I’ve got it,” she says in an inhuman voice, and then the tide of her energy ebbs back into her, soft and controlled like it filled the room, and she releases my hand.

“What’s the news?” asks Da Vinci excitedly, seeming to forget she’s holding my head, and bending over so far towards Makeda that her stomach is smashing me.

“Can I get up now?” comes my muffled voice.

“Yes,” says Makeda apologetically.

Da Vinci sits back and I drag myself up, still and sore, and lean against the bench seatback, rubbing my face, and trying to get sensation back in my limbs. Makeda climbs up beside us, on my other side, and, apparently feeling left out, David drags his chair closer, then climbs back in.

“We were right,” says Makeda, to both Da Vinci and me, “It’s a spell.”

“A…” That is cosmically not what I thought was going on, or said. I—I guess she means about Goetia’s location not being real yet.

“A spell…” says Da Vinci, who I personally think from her expression, also did not actually think that’s what was going on.

Weirdly, I look at David, and he, alone, seems unsurprised. What do you know, old man…

“Can you elaborate?” I ask.

“Well,” says Makeda, “We’re not a singularity, and we’re not a lostbelt.” A what? “We’re built a little like one or the other though. Or a wish.”

“Like a grail?” suggests Da Vinci rather dubiously.

“Only in vague concept,” says Makeda, then, reconsidering, “…But, in vague concept, not a bad analogy. The ways in which we are similar to a singularity or lostbelt is in nature—partially complete and partially real, still growing—not in function. Functionally, more like a grail. The same way holy grail rituals have set rules and functions, so do most rituals and big magic. And this is certainly a function of intricate structure.” She suddenly looks embarrassed to be explaining this, to me, I assume because of my rank.

“So, the timeline we’re on has been altered. In a very significant way, from its original. It’s not a naturally occurring alternate timeline, but an intentionally constructed one,” I say, then pause, to consider. “…Any guess as to by who?”

She looks at me for a long few seconds, and then says, “No,” but I can’t help but feel there’s more to it than that.

“Okay,” I say, not pressing her for the moment, and moving on to the question I don’t want to ask, but know I have to, “…Can you tell if this…aberration, is it dangerous, like a singularity? Is it…are we hurting the world, by existing?”

Makeda shakes her head.

Oh thank God.

“Whatever we are, we’re not convergent, or concurrent,” adds Makeda, “Even if we’re not an alternate timeline in the natural sense, whatever bubble we are, it’s its own in the same way one would be. It’s magic, but, it’s magic not growing or building in opposition to, well, anything. It’s…disconnected. In ways that are zero sum.”

“Alright,” I say, feeling a few worlds better, “Then. …Whoever, and whyever they started whatever this…spell is, if it’s still in construction—if the magic is still in process—that probably means we either need to dismantle it, which, if it’s not dangerous, I’d very much prefer not to do, since in this timeline we could save a whole lot of lives by reaching Goetia before he acts, and uh, well, I have to assume this version of all of us would probably die—or, we’ve got to finish it—the spell, I mean—get it to cement—so it doesn’t deviate, or unravel.”

“Exactly,” agrees Makeda, “I think that’s where we should start.”

“Great! A plan,” says David happily, “So, how much are we telling the others?”

I hold up a hand. “Before that—you said this is some sort of spell. You mean magic—not magecraft, but magic. Like, First Magic.”

“I do,” says Makeda, “It’s the only class of magic that could do something like this.”

“What do we know,” I ask, ‘we’ meaning ‘her’.

Makeda sighs and places her chin in her hand, bouncing a leg absently as she thinks it over. “This?” she decides after a moment, glancing over at the rest of us, “Doesn’t leave this room. Not until we’re sure it should.”

I nod, and see Da Vinci move in my periphery.

“Alright,” says Makeda, and she opens the little lamp she carries, and smoke billows out, forming distinct shapes in the air as she sways her fingers through it, like the shadow puppet show of a master.

“Da Vinci and I have matching knowledge of another timeline. That alone isn’t odd. But in it, we know of events and people spanning from before the Age of Gods,” A sprawling mountain and a cloud city appear, floating islands of smoke, desert kingdoms, "to the distant future.” Building shapes from countries around the globe and centuries apart, fell into a timeline. Frontiers, temples, castles, modern skyscrapers, and past them, massive space ships. “We, should be here.” She indicates a modern urban skyline in her set of smoke-made history. “And we are. Ritsuka should be, and she is. Akira wasn’t at Chaldea, but him being here isn’t really odd. You’re mostly where you should be. But some people, are missing.”

Here, she makes a handful of figures out of the curling whisps, and then passes her fingers through them and watches them go.

“What’s more,” she continues, “A lot more, is that there are a considerable amount of people who shouldn’t be in this time, who are.”

Makeda raises a hand to her lips and exhales like she is blowing a kiss. Smoke forms humanoid figures along far separated points on the timeline, and they lift from those places by floating cities and icy mountains and desert sands, and settle into the urban skyline.

“Actually, they shouldn’t be at all,” she says, eyes on something far away, no changes in her smoke story this time, “At least many of them, should never have existed. Yet, here they are.” She looks at me. “And not transported, and confused. Here they are like they’ve always been, with normal memories and normal lives, somehow, in spite of everything, alive.”

“People who should never be?” I ask, a sinking feeling in my chest.

“It will take a little while to explain to you fully, but for now, people who lived in versions of time that only existed at all by destroying the time around them, and whose broken time had to be corrected, that is, erased,” says Makeda softly.

I nod, and keep quiet. I can imagine, since I’d been a little afraid after waking up with two sets of memories, that I could be a version of me that shouldn’t exist.

“Our reality, it’s real,” says Makeda, refocusing, “But instead of starting at the beginning of time and moving forward, as time is meant to, it starts here.” She indicates a point not long before what she’s designated as ‘now.’ “And it grows forwards and backwards from there. No, grows isn’t the right word. It…’becomes set.’ Like a writer starting a book in the middle: the beginning happened, because otherwise the characters wouldn’t be who they are, or have memories of their upbringing, or loved ones they share a past with. But it’s not stable, until it’s on paper, because once the writer forgets, there will be nothing to hold it all in place.”

A terrifying metaphor, I think, but I don’t say it.

“Whatever, or whoever, caused this,” says Makeda, “it hasn’t stopped working. But it’s magic still in progress. At a guess, something has to be…done, or ‘finished’—fulfilled—for the ritual to be complete, and the timeline to stay. If it doesn’t, it’ll collapse back in on itself, and…”

“…And we all cease to exist,” I say shakily.

“Well,” she offers me a sympathetic smile, “This version of us.”

That’s great for the heroic spirits, I guess, but it really sucks for the rest of us. God, especially the ones she says ‘shouldn’t exist’ at all anymore. It’s…a heavy fate, that. Not to be taken lightly…

“And this point?” I ask, tapping the little swirl of smoke she’s left to indicate the start point. The smoke is surprisingly warm to the touch, and almost thick enough to feel soft to me.

Makeda watches me with her bright eyes full of their knowledge and sight. “You, Solomon.”

I am so taken aback I don’t know what to say.

“Me?” I check after a full ten, very suddenly awkward seconds.

“Don’t you mean ‘Romani’?” asks David, whom I’d completely forgotten was even in the room with us, and it makes me jump.

To my surprise though, when I look over, he’s not joking. He’s being pointed about the name.

“What,” he says, looking from one of us to the other, “That’s about when you would have been ‘reborn’ into a last life, right?”

He points and I look at the timeline again, and my breath catches in my throat.

“How many terrible things did I cause?” Wait, did I say that out loud?

“Not terrible,” says Da Vinci, patting my shoulder with one of her gloved hands, “So long as we can keep this thing going, it’s good.”

“Very, I would say,” agrees Makeda, and again, I see in her face that there’s something she knows she’s not telling me, and I’m sure she has her reasons, but it distresses me a lot not to know. This is beyond high stakes universe poker. This is all or nothing, eleventh hour Russian roulette shit.

“That’s not all,” adds Da Vinci, stretching, and looking very gleeful to have her own lore to share, “I ran some tests when you were out because something about Ur-Shanabi has been bothering me ever since the others told me about it.”

“And?” says David with interest.

“And,” says Da Vinci, looking annoyed to be interrupted, “There’s been a change in the world state. You know how in a holy grail war, the ritual is designed so when a heroic spirit dies, their energy is used to fill the grail—to power it, more or less.”

We give our various forms of assent.

“Well, it struck me really odd the Counter Force would let something like that go on so long without proper recourse, and it wasn’t apparently even Alaya that finally sent in the Counter Force Agent we’ve got—Ritsuka summoned him. But, when something like a grail war is on, the Counter Force tends to be less active. Rituals bring their own, shitty ass rules, and tend to be allowed more—some might even say inadvisable –catastrophic damage.”

“Yes,” agrees Makeda, “It’s about the way magic works. Even the universe itself, is bound by rules. That’s why the Counter Force has to use agents in the first place. Even power has limitations.”

“So, I looked into it,” continues Da Vinci, “And the way this thing works, the whole world is…sort of designed to soak power up, from everything, but especially from people.”

“That’s horrible,” I say, disturbed.

“Not really,” she disagrees, leaning forward and gesturing broadly, “See, it’s not like a leech. It’s designed to soak power out of people only when they’re trying to give power—like—it’s in a hyper-high-performance catalyst state. But it’s not forcing anything—people aren’t all slowly taking magic-radiation-damage or something. It’s just wildly amplifying and accelerating physics around energy and its transfer, when it comes to magic specifically. Heroic Spirits, though, we’re made of magical energy. And with the rules around magical energy, and the transformation and transfer of it altered—altered to make the change in form easier, not just when it’s offered from or created by humans, but in all forms. Well. ...”

“The physical structure of anything made of magical energy entirely has become a vulnerability,” I say, mental calculations locking into place, “The same way Achilles’ heel would be, or Samson’s hair.”

“Exactly,” says Da Vinci, way too happy about this.

“Well that’s genuinely terrifying,” I say.

She shrugs, a grin on her face. “At least we know what we’re up against. Half the battle.”

“I suppose so,” I agree a little uncertainly.

“Anyway, the other half of the issue may be that we’re not the only ones to have figured that out,” adds Da Vinci.

“Meaning who?” I ask, “I mean—obviously if Ur-Shanabi had it working, it was only a matter of time before someone else did too, but. The world is currently…well, incinerated. It seems like one problem takes care of the other, in the temporary anyway.”

“Well, you know how when she described what was happening with Goetia, you said ‘it’s not real yet’?” asks Da Vinci.

Makeda raises a hand and gestures to her smoke tapestry, and it begins to curl and dissipate, leaving a few floating ‘islands’ almost, as it were, along what was once a solid timeline. “Goetia’s attacks, when they come for real, target specific points in history, to de-stabilize and collapse the timeline. We know where, from our own memories, and the data we’ve been able to run with the effects already in place here. But the thing is…”

Slowly, almost delicately, Maketa weaves her fingers into the smoke, and then tugs like the is pulling it apart, and the image shifts from a 2D image, to a three-dimensional timeline, pieces splitting away in different direction. Of these, a select few’s smoke begins to shift into shades of pink, and I am sure this must be the ones Goetia has picked, because I recognized the 2004 Fuyuki a version of me has just vicariously experienced as one of them. Other pieces stay their original, almost purple shade of grey, and then a few more begin to turn a cyan blue. These, as Makeda makes a circular motion with her index finger, begin to rotate.

“They aren’t the only points reading as anomalies,” said Makeda, turning to look at me, “Da Vinci is till collecting data, and we expect it to take a while, but…”

“What we know for sure, is the Counter Force is—or at least was—active in all of them,” says Da Vinci, “But as far as we can tell, Goetia wasn’t.”

I look at the blue points on the map unhappily, and let out an exhale. “And…these all activated in the years between now, and 1985.”

Da Vinci gives me a sympathetic grimace.

“Well, think of it this way!” suggests David, “That certainly limits the damage, and narrows down the search area. Besides.”

He tries to reach way forward and tap Makeda’s smoke diagram, and his hand goes right through it, dissipating an image.

“Since what Ur-Shanabi did was considered ‘breakthrough research,’” he continues, totally nonplussed, “I would bet a lot of money that the points before the last couple years won’t have deeply significant change. If they had, someone in the mage world would have heard about it.”

Da Vinci and Makeda both look annoyed by this, but Da Vinci mutters, “…He’s probably right,” rather unhappily, and my father grins.

“See?” says David, reaching too far forward to try and pat me on the shoulder, and just having to latch onto it instead to not fall off the chair, “All good.”

“Well, that part is an overstatement, but, he’s right it’s not an immediate threat,” says Makeda, miffed, and she waves her hands and the smoke curls back inside the lamp she wears at her belt. “In the meantime, you should go talk to your staff and the others and let them know you’re alright.”

“Yeah,” agrees Da Vinci happily, swinging her feet in anticipation while she watches David very awkwardly make it back upright in his chair, “I’ll keep running calculations and try to get some kind of gameplan together. But we need more data before doing anything concrete.”

“I’ll help,” I say, honestly just relieved to have a little breathing room.

“You will NOT,” says my father sharply, “Not until you get some proper sleep! Look at you!” He gestures broadly with both arms. “You’re a wreck! You’ve been up for three days straight, and went comatose from memory bombardment for almost two hours! You’re exhausted! You transplanted a magic crest, onto yourself, then summoned two heroic spirits inside a reality marble, and stayed up for another forty hours!”

“I, uh,” I try awkwardly, taken aback.

David crosses his arms and eyes me. “You and Ritsuka are both going to take a rest. You act like you forget, son, but you’re only human now. The last thing anybody needs is you to work yourself to death. Or past usefulness.”

I wish he didn’t have a point, but I feel like death warmed over. Still… “I should be able to help though, and it’s-“

I was going to say ‘my fault in the first place,’ but all three turn to look at me as one with such a united front of deeply terrifying energy, like a pack of guard dogs just itching for the command sick ‘em to come,that I don’t.

“…I think David is right,” says Da Vinci, recovering her mask of pleasantness first, and smiling at me with her eyes shut. She pats me on the shoulder. “You can come help in the morning.”

“…Yes,” says Makeda simply, but the way she says it has an undercurrent of chilling.

I’m not getting out of this… “Alright, alright,” I say as I feel the pressure in the room begin to grow tense again, and I put my hands up, “I’ll rest. But, I do need to talk to staff first, at least a little, to explain things—and the kids.” God, poor Mash. She is so inclined to worry, too.

“That’s fine!” says Da Vinci, her same eyes-shut smile still on, “Just don’t stall too long.”

“Yes,” agrees David, hopping out of his chair and offering me a hand, “Let’s do that.”

I let him help me up, but the second he lets go, I almost lose my balance, with my legs so completely asleep, and me so dead-tired. The instant I do, David, Makeda, and Da Vinci all make a move at the same time to help me, and I can’t help but laugh, a deep, full body laugh, as I catch myself and then straighten up on my own, feeling a lot better now.

“It’s so funny,” I say, glancing from one to the other with a smile, “I’ve been the most isolated I think I’ve been my entire existence, for months, and now that things have really fallen apart, I’m surrounded.”

Da Vinci smiles back. “Good.”

I nod. “Good indeed.”

As I wait for my painfully asleep legs to get some feeling back in them, I survey the room for real for the first time. “Where are we right now, anyway? Which conference room is this?”

“It’s the one closest to the command room,” says Da Vinci.

I nod. Finally getting a little painful feeling back, I take a few steps towards the door, testing my balance. Ow.

As we begin to walk, my whole little horde of tag-alongs staying suspiciously within ‘he might fall again’ distance, David says, “Question, Miss Da Vinci. You seemed to know Ritsuka, from Chaldea, but it’s her brother here who’s done this Rayshift, which should be how you meet, or met her, in the future. And then you said it was odd for him to be the one in the Fuyuki singularity, but not very odd. So, was it both of them who helped you, originally?”

“No,” says Da Vinci, seeming surprised—by the question, or by it being from my father, I’m not sure, “I’ve never met the brother before, although I knew he existed.”

“Interesting,” says David.

Interesting indeed.

“Where are the kids?” I ask.

“Didn’t I tell you?” asks Da Vinci, “They’re outside.”

“W—You mean in the hall?” I ask, taken aback, “They’re not resting?” Ritsuka is dead on her feet, and Akira and Mash just returned from a rayshift like three hours before we arrived!

Da Vinci shrugs. “Like father like-” She stops and almost seems a little flustered, then just offers me an impish grin.

Weird, I think, since it’s really no secret I see Mash as a daughter, to anyone. I guess I probably deserve that though. …Damn it! WHY didn’t I do a better job at teaching her to prioritize her health? Stupid! Kids watch what you DO, not just what you say! Stupid stupid! Bad job, Romani! Bad job!!

“Okay, well, let’s fix that too,” I say, increasing speed towards the door. God knows we ask enough of them as it is. I hope they haven’t been too exhausted and miserable out there.

------------------------------------

“I just can’t believe you’re here!” says Akira, beaming at me, “I mean, what are the chances?!”

“I know!” I chirp. I’ve been grinning so hard the past few hours that it hurts my cheeks, but I’ll never stop! “And you?! Holy crap! The Last Master of Humanity??”

“No-no!” he corrects, his mouth full of the pb&j he’s been working, raising a hand and then pointing from me to him, “The Last Masters of Humanity.”

I laugh.

“Like, go Fujimaru twins, am I right?” he asks, mouth even fuller as he takes another bite.

I elbow him. “Don’t do that! Didn’t dad teach you manners? Not in front of a kouhai!”

He chokes on the pb&j and desperately grabs his milk bottle to help wash it down, then after a solid swallow, gives his friend an apologetic little, “Sorry Mash.”

“Oh, it’s okay,” she replies hurriedly, flushing at us both, “I know you’re hungry and tired.”

“Well, you must be too, right?” I say, offering her a box of pocky.

Hesitantly, the purple haired girl just a year or so younger than me, takes the box and opens it, giving me a little smile.

Mash is neat. We’ve all only been talking for like, two hours or something—it can’t possibly have been that long since my group even arrived—but, I like her. Somehow, she feels like somebody I’ve known all my life. I guess she just must be that kind of person. And, it makes me happy. And relieved.

She’s timid, and quiet. Big eyes, soft voice, always watching the stuff around her like a baby deer taking in the world. But, from Akira’s stories I’ve been getting, she’s also like, super brave and dependable. And a ‘Demi-Servant,’ which, as far as I gather, is a heroic spirit kind of reverse-possessing someone, so instead of them getting the body, they let a normal living human use their power. Apparently, back when the building exploded, Mash got trapped under a fallen pillar, and my brother went and was going to die like a hero holding her hand while another bomb went off, so she wouldn’t be alone (a story she told me trying not to cry, and while staring firmly at the ground, while he turned the reddest I’ve ever seen him, and also looked so, so smug). But instead of either dying, they were saved by whoever is letting Mash use their heroic spirit power, and got rayshifted out.

Rayshifted, as far as I gather, is like teleporting and time travel. Okay, mechanically, it’s more like going to another plane in D&D, where you’ve got a thread connecting your body to a duplicate body, but if one dies the other is in big trouble—you know what—I don’t get all the science. Miss Da Vinci said you’re broken down into your spiritrons, and those are transported to other coordinates in time and space, and re-assembled. So, I wouldn’t know how to do it, but, I get what it does, which I think for me is the important half.

Anyway, when time got incinerated in the city, apparently it was because specific points in history were getting messed up, and my bro and Mash went and repaired one. So one ‘Singularity’ is now stabilized, and, if they fix them all, the world will come back.

So far, it’s been a crazy ride—I mean, his story might be even wilder than mine. And we’re both not even totally done telling the stories. We’ve really only covered bare-bones.

But anyway, to me, the important part is that he’s here and okay and alive, and that this can all be fixed. And, that I’m really glad Mash was here. Akira is brave, but we’ve always done stuff together. We’re strong because we were born with somebody to lean on—I think that’s part of why I’ve been able to do so well with these heroic spirits helping me, despite not being very good at magecraft: I literally came out of the womb as part of a team.

Akira’s the same. We’re strong when we have somebody to lean on, and to prop up, but not alone. And, while I wasn’t here, Mash has done that for him—really reliably!

Plus, I think, smiling as I watch her chomping on the pocky with more gusto than I’ve ever seen anybody else eat it, like a toddler trying ice cream the first time, I bet they’re good for each other. He’s got a lot of charisma and adaptability and he knows how to make you smile when it’s rough, so you can keep going. Mash sounds like she’d be there to be a voice of reason, and pull you up when you fall, but might need somebody who can make her feel like it’s okay for her to smile and talk more too. I bet they’re going to be great friends.

“I’m glad he was the first one you summoned,” says Akira, who has already forgotten what I just said, and gone back to talking with food in his mouth—indicating Billy with his head. “He smiles a lot.”

“He smiles a lot?” I echo.

“Yeah,” agrees Akira, giving me a grin, “You don’t have me there to crack jokes when you need them, so you need somebody else to remind you it could always have been worse, and it’s gonna get better.”

I snort, but then I think about it, and I smile. He’s not totally wrong, and even more than that, it’s reassuring. Twin-morphic-resonance. We were thinking the same thing.

------------------------------------

“How’re you doing, you sad bastard?” asks Lancer, sidling over to where I’m sitting slumped against a wall near the conference room, holding a bottle.

“I feel like I might do nothing but throw up for the next year,” I reply dryly, annoyed to have to pry my eyes open again at all. It just makes the headache worse.

“Well hey,” he says, sliding down against the wall next to me, and slapping me on the shoulder, “You got the world record now, for longest sustained reality marble. That’s gotta count for something.”

“Great. Put it on my tombstone,” I reply, shutting my eyes again and leaning my head back against the wall.

“Oh, get over yourself. You’re not even injured,” he replies in an annoyingly amicable way.

I sigh. “Why are you over here bothering me. What do you want?”

There’s a clink as he taps something glass—I have to assume the bottle—against the metal guard on the back of my hand.

Annoyed, I crack open an eye and glance over. He’s raising a large bottle of what up close I can tell is definitely alcohol of some kind.

“Come on,” he says, “Gotta push through.”

‘Push through’?! I think, irritated, I just sustained a reality marble for almost three days. I’ll kill you.

“Alcohol isn’t exactly going to make a headache better,” I reply dryly.

He snorts. “Not going to make it worse.”

Yes it will, stupid. “What do you care, anyway. Go bother someone else,” I reply.

He rolls his eyes and removes the glass cork, then takes a swig. He holds the bottle out to me.

I’m annoyed, but I’m too tired to keep arguing, and I want him to go away, so exhausted, I take it, and drink. I'm even more annoyed that it's actually pretty good.

“Not bad, huh?” he says, grinning at me.

Oh go fuck yourself, I think. “How’s the doctor?” I ask instead.

Lancer shrugs. “Seems fine now. Everyone who’s useful at that kind of magecraft is in the command room, trying to figure out how the hell this happened. Everyone else is supposed to rest up.”

Great, is there a bed somewhere then? That actually might help. “Anywhere better for that than here on the floor?” I ask.

When we arrived, after what was more of an awkward than dangerous standoff when the doctor fainted, we were more or less asked to stick around this general area, and it would have been more trouble than it was worth not to comply. Besides which, as tired as I and everyone else are, the civilians who are actual living humans have it worse, and some of them are injured. They were given access to a large conference room and as many pillows and spare blankets as the staff here seemed able to find. Us spirits, and the Fujimaru kids, stuck around near the command room to wait for the doctor to wake up.

“They’re working on it. We brought in almost two-hundred people,” says Lancer, a little more seriously, “And the facility was bombed not long ago, so a lot of their shit is under rubble right now.”

“Bombed?” I ask. News to me. But then, I missed a lot the last few hours. Basically as soon as I could tell there wasn’t going to be a fight, I went to collapse and rest somewhere, with as much dignity as I could, before my core knocked me out completely.

“Yeah. Right—You left,” says Lancer, cocking his head and thinking, “Some guy turned traitor, and took out a lot of the staff a couple days ago—to them, right at the turn of the year. They’ve been scrambling ever since.”

I nod, too tired to ask a lot more right now. “Anything pressing, for us?”

He shakes his head. “Nah. You can pass out.”

On the floor? I’m not sure I’m that desperate. Not with this group of people.

Lancer takes the bottle back and drinks, then passes it back to me. I give in and take another swig. Energy is energy, and it’s not bad. Even if it won’t help the headache. I guess I’m physically past caring about that.

“…It’s weird, isn’t it?”

I glance over at Lancer, waiting for him to elaborate. His tone has changed. It���s light, but there’s an undercurrent of seriousness, study, almost. He’s not really looking at anything I can tell, though, just eyeing the empty hall.

Finally, he turns his face back towards me, and smiles, but I don’t believe the smile. I don’t really think I’m meant to. “It’s familiar.”

Is it?

I’m skeptical, but, as he says it, and I turn my own head to look over the nondescript, white-blue walls, it’s…

“There’s…a cafeteria. That way,” I say, not sure why, pointing to my left. “Two halls down.”

I haven’t walked that way at all.

Lancer nods. “There is.” We meet eyes, and we both understand something I almost wish we didn’t.

“…We’ve been here before,” I say. It’s not a question. “Together.”

He nods, very slowly.

“How did you know?” I ask.

“I…remembered,” says Lancer, thinking, and quieter than usual, “And I didn’t. ‘I’ haven’t been here. I’m sure ‘you’ haven’t either. But some version of us has. Because I remember, a Christmas with you.”

“…And…Robin?” I ask, perturbed by the sudden inkling. It’s not a visual memory. It’s like…information, like the throne fills in when we’re sent to a different area. Or the familiar emotion a smell brings, if you knew it well. “…No. David and Robin, but not you…” I add to myself, under my breath. The hell? Were all of us…?

But then, Da Vinci said that, didn’t she? That she knew all of us aside from Salieri.

“It’s our own future summons,” I suggest, “That we’re remembering.”

“But if it is,” says Lancer skeptically, “That would mean we’re all about to die. Then get re-summoned, and be remembering the re-summoning. We can’t remember the summon we’re on.”

He’s right. “That…seems a little far-fetched. But I don’t know what else it would be,” I say. Maybe I do.

“Parallel timeline?” suggests Lancer.

“Our memories, or, sense of them, is way too keen for that…unless, there’s a reason we’re being allowed this much,” I add, thinking.

He shrugs, seeming to completely relax again suddenly.

“What?” I ask.

He glances at me and smiles. “Ah, nothing. I could tell you remembered stuff too. Figured if we were about to die, we’d both have some kind of bad feeling. Or one of us would, at least. But neither of us does. If we aren’t about to die, the memory stuff is a problem for future us.”

The way you live your life, I think, smiling at the absurdity in spite of myself. He holds out the glass and I take it and drink. “Well, good luck to them then,” I say tiredly.

Lancer grins and holds up the bottle in toast. “To them. Probably gonna fuckin’ need it.”

------------------------------------

“So, that about bring everyone up to speed?” asks Da Vinci pleasantly.

The Chaldea staff around us trade looks, confused, but glad to have answers, even if they’re answers they don’t understand. The civilians who aren’t resting, and chose to attend, seem to be feeling an even stronger version of the same response. Something like ‘Oh thank God somebody has an idea.’ –I guess I can kind of relate. I flip up the hood of my cloak, and relax a little against the back wall. Even if the situation sucks, it’s reassuring to have some answers. Plus, the doc and his two casters look a lot more relaxed, so, I gotta believe they have a plan forming now, at worst.

In the front, I see Ritsuka’s hand shoot up, and just a half-second later, her brother’s beside her. Da Vinci nods at them both.

“So…” says Ritsuka with great focus, glancing at her brother then Da Vinci, “If our best move is to stabilize things enough we can find Goetia, then what’s our next step to stabilizing?”

“Our next step,” answers Doctor Romani with a tired smile, “Is for you to rest—for everyone, to rest. Those of us who do analysis, we’ll take shifts, so we can keep running tests on the situation. Everyone else, we need to be in tip-top shape.”

One of the kids goes to ask him a question—the brother—Akira? – and Doctor Romani cuts him off with a gentle hand.

“-Akira, Mash, you two just got back from a harrowing experience. Eat, sleep, and then report tomorrow for a physical exam and mental health checkup. Ritsuka, you just helped sustain a reality marble for the better part of three days. After almost dying, and contracting a grail war’s worth of spirits. You do the same. On the subject of spirits, obviously Emiya needs time to recover, but as much as possible, I want everyone else to, too. Rest up, because we need you sharp. We’ve uh—finally—got accommodations and rooms worked out. Sylvia has a print out with room assignments, as well as directions to bathrooms, the cafeteria, and medical quarters.”

“And after we report?” asks Akira.

Doctor Romani sighs. “…We don’t know for sure yet, but, it’s pretty likely we’ll be having to send out small groups to contend with both the targeted singularities, and the new anomalies. We’ll let you know more when we do. But for now, the assignment is rest.”

“Yes sir!” calls out the little purple haired girl—Mash—almost over the end of his sentence. She turns pink and stutters out an apology.

“I can’t believe he wasn’t lying about the daughter thing after all,” mutters Emiya in disbelief nearby.

I try not to laugh.

“And that goes for the Doctor, too! I’m afraid he’ll be out of commission while he sleeps,” says David in a friendly tone with more than a little danger hiding inside it warning against being challenged, “There are other people on standby at the medbay though—don’t worry.”

Doctor Romani sighs again. “Any last questions?”

“I got one, but not for him,” says Billy’s voice in my head, “Robin, uh—everything he said—you got the gist of it, yeah?”

“I did,” I reply, mostly ignoring the end of the briefing in favor of this.

“Well, if some human mages figured out some kind of First Law type magic altered the world state, I can see those greedy bastards runnin’ around breakin’ all kindsa shit tryin’ to get more power—ain’t like mages ever been careful before,” he replies, “But they ain’t the ones who changed it. Too much experimenting. And I believe the Doc didn’t do it. I know the kid didn’t. So who do you think did?”

“Why would I know?” I ask, turning to lean against the wall and trying to find him in the crowd so I can give him a look, “I’m not a Caster, or any kind of magic user, for that matter. If they don’t know, no way I do.”

“Well, sure,” says Billy awkwardly, and I find him in the crowd finally, near the far left side, already watching me. To my surprise, he looks…deeply contemplative. “But you would know who would want us to have a chance to see each other.”

“Come again?” I say, truly taken aback.

“I…thought it over,” says Billy, meeting my gaze, “What got said back in the bar—about how everyone but Kotarou seems to come in a set? Think about it.” He ticks off on his fingers. “You, Me. Emiya, Cu Chulainn. David, the Doctor. Mozart, Salieri. Doesn’t it seem way too random to be random?”

… “I take your meaning…” I offer slowly, “…I do. …But. …No one would. Right?”

Billy nods, looking concerned. “I could only think of Geronimo, for us. But, I don’t think he’s ever even met any of the others. They sure as shit don’t remember him. And I can’t think of anybody else. But it can’t be coincidence, right? Two is coincidence, three is a pattern—that’s the sayin’.”

“Well…whoever did, it seems non-malicious, right?” I say after a few seconds of thought, “Even as much as Emiya and Cu Chulainn bitch at each other, they’re not actually mad to both be here. And it’s a straight-up gift to most of us. I don’t think we need to be worried about it.”

I look across the room at Billy, and the expression on his face says he could not be more sure that I’m wrong.

“I think you want to know a donor, not just a robber,” offers Billy.

And when I consider the re-painting of the whole world going on around us, I realize pretty quick he couldn’t be more right.

“Alright!” comes Da Vinci’s voice, loud through the speaker system, and sharp, snapping me back to attention, “That concludes the briefing! Everyone rest up. We all need it, and it's a big day tomorrow.”

------------------------------------

It’s quiet in the room. Somehow, it feels almost like being home. I really like it.

I mean, it doesn’t look like home. The walls there are not the off-white of paper walls like I’m used to at home, and there aren’t all the pictures and posters Akira and I hung up on them; it’s kind of sparse in here—just white-blue walls and floor, the Chaldea emblem on the wall, a desk and an empty shelf, and our beds—but, just the same. …It feels like getting in your bed at home does. Dunno why. Maybe because Akira is here, and we’re always okay together.

“Aki,” I say. He’s been quiet, but I know he’s not asleep. He doesn’t like, snore when he sleeps, but he breathes louder, and I know the sound super well. He isn’t doing it right now.

“Suka,” he replies. I can tell he knew I was awake already too.

“…Are you okay?”

I haven’t gotten to ask that before. We always had Mash, or Doctor Romani, or Billy, or somebody else nearby. I mean, I could ask, but he couldn’t have said the truth, if I had, and I couldn’t have either.

“…”

I hear him sit up, so I roll onto my side and look over. Even in the dim light from the hall outside, spilling under the door, I can see him enough to make out his expression, and see he’s looking at me, too.

“…No,” he says simply. He leans against the wall, and tucks his knees up to his chest.

I climb out of my bed, and walk over to his, clambering up beside him. Taking my place next to him, where I always am, I sigh, letting out some real tension finally, and I feel him lean his head on my shoulder.

“How about you?” says Akira.

“I’m not either,” I say quietly, “…But. You know. It doesn’t matter.”

It’s weird. I wish it did, but, I feel selfish, and bad, for wishing it did.

“Yeah,” he says in the same subdued tone as my own.

“…We’re gonna be okay,” I promise, looking over.

He exhales slowly. When he speaks, I can hear an attempt at a smile in his voice. It makes me sad… “Are we?”

I take his hand. He squeezes mine, and we sit in silence for a few minutes, just thinking, and breathing together.

“…You wanna tell me about it?” I ask finally, in the stillness of the room that feels like my bedroom at home somehow, even though it’s on the other side of the world, at the end of it, “About it for real? With all the bad parts, and awful feelings, and stuff you’re afraid to even think? The stuff that wakes you up at night?”

He thinks about that. “Yeah. I would. But you go first.”

“…I got somebody killed. For real, forever. Not because I wasn’t fast enough to help. The heroic spirits helping me killed them, for doing bad stuff. And now they’re just dead.” I think about that for real. About Mr. Toujou. Miss Ayase.

I turn and look at Akira, and see his eyes reflected back in the dim light, like my other half.

“…I feel bad. I didn’t want it. But, what’s worse is…I don’t feel very bad. I know I should feel worse than I do. I know I should feel guiltier, and have tried harder. But, Mr. Toujou threatened to kill you, and Mom, and Dad. He was going to kill me, and make me kill my heroic spirit. They were torturing people. Director Ayase was running that whole place. And I…I saw, what they did to Billy, to Robin, Cu Chulainn, David, god, Salieri. …Kotarou. I just…”

He's still watching, listening. No judgement.

“…I’m scared it’s gonna change me,” I whisper, letting go of his hand to bury my face in my knees. “What if I become bad? What if I care less someday? I don’t want to stop being me, but I feel like I’m already letting myself down.”

“…” Akira watches me a few more seconds, then looks away. “…I saw a bunch of people die,” he whispers, “When that bomb went off, there was fire everywhere. Parts of the ceiling had fallen on them. The walls. Some had even burned alive. The worst part, was that not everybody was dead yet. And…” His eyes tear up. “…Mash was there. A column had crushed her body. Everything in her midsection must have just been pulp, and I couldn’t lift the column, and it wouldn’t have mattered if I could. She was dead, it was just taking a while. And I could hear another bomb ticking down. I was so scared. I wanted so bad, Suk, to live. I wanted to run out that door, and not look back. But god, she was so scared. She was crying, and shaking. I knew the scariest thing on earth, to her, was to die alone. And I knew I wasn’t gonna achieve anything, except a few seconds being less bad, if I stayed to die with her. If I died, you and Mom and Dad would all be so sad, too. It would have been so easy, to leave her. I wanted to leave her.”

I realize he’s crying.

“…But you didn’t,” I say.

“I’m scared it doesn’t matter,” says Akira, “Matter enough? I thought about it. She was so pitiful, and helpless, and I thought about leaving her to die alone, to save myself.”

“But you didn’t,” I say again, putting a hand on his back.

He nods, breathing slowing back down. “I know. …What if I do someday, though?”

Oh. We’re exactly the same, huh.

“…You won’t,” I say after a few seconds. “I know, because I know you better than I know myself. Even if you did, I’d still love you, and I’d forgive you, and you’d still be good, but you won’t. Because you’re glad, right?”

He glances at me.

“You’re glad you stayed. And not just because you got a miracle, and survived. It was scary, when you were deciding, but after, it was easy, right? Like peace.”

“…How did you know?” he asks, shifting to face me more completely.

“I saw how you looked at Mash,” I reply easily, smiling, “You were grateful, right? That you got to save her.”

He nods. “I was really glad.”

“Then don’t worry. You aren’t how you feel, you’re how you choose to be. And you’d always save her. I bet you know that already, deep down. It’s just really scary, the first time you have to act the way you always thought you would,” I say.

“You realize you’re not holding yourself to the same standard, right?” replies Akira with a tired smile, plopping a hand on my head, “You’re worried you’re bad because you aren’t feeling guilty enough.”

“-W—no—and I didn’t try hard enough!” I argue.

“Didn’t you?” he says, unimpressed.

Did I? I’m not sure anymore. I’m so jumbled up, it’s hard to tell.

“You know how when we were kids, you always really liked the character who was the hero’s friend, who got trapped sort of turning to the dark side—not because they were bad, but because sometimes someone had to do something a little bad, so the hero didn’t have to?” asks Akira, “They were such a good friend, they’d even lose themselves, so the hero didn’t have to?”

“Is that what I’m turning into?” I ask nervously.

He grins and shakes his head, like I’m being stupid. “No. But you should love yourself at least as much as that, if you ever started to. Those people who died, it was to protect your friends right? And you feel guilty you didn’t try harder to keep them alive, even though probably there was no way to do it at all?”

But…what if there was? And I’m just not good enough to find it…

I nod, and look at the sheets.

“So if you even did anything wrong, which I think you didn’t, even a little, you only did it to protect somebody you love,” says Akira, like it’s so easy, “You put them before an ideal that was gonna hurt them. That’s not bad. That’s love. You’ve always been good, and you always will be Ritsuka. And if you ever have to do things you wish you didn’t, I already know the only reason you’re gonna do them is so someone like me doesn’t have to. I hope you never, ever have to do that again. But if you do, thank you.”

He reaches over, and he pulls me into a hug.

It’s a little unexpected, since we were talking, but, I think I needed it. I feel the urge to cry build up in my throat, and lean in against him, wrapping my arms around his back.

“I know you want to save everybody, and have everybody be good, and never hurt anyone at all,” whispers Akira, “You want to love everybody, and see it all turns out alright. So thank you, for taking a bullet for everybody else. I know it hurt. And I know it hurts to ever act how you don’t want to be. But thank you, and I love you for it. Thank you for loving me enough to do the hard thing yourself.”

“Do I have to do it?” I whisper, voice shaky, trying not to cry. I can’t, so I stop talking, and lean my head into his shoulder, doing it silently.

“No,” says Akira, “You never have to. I hope next time, I’m the one who does.”

I don’t want that at all. I’d much rather it be me.

Oh.

There’s something in that thought that gets through the way the rest of what he’s been saying hasn’t quite been able to. Maybe…maybe not every part of it isn’t bad, about me, even if most of it was. Maybe there’s a little piece of love in there too, after all.

“Let’s hope neither of us has to ever again. I want to grow up a little slower,” says Akira.

“Me too. But so long as I get to do it with you, I think we’ll both be okay,” I whisper back.

And it helps.

In the way my twin has only ever been able to help me.

Akira and I talk, for several hours, when we should be sleeping, but, I think we both need this a lot more. I talk about helplessness and weakness and my inability, and the weight of quick choices, and my fears. He talks about failing to save somebody, and needing to never do it again, and how lonely it feels to survive.

But, it’s not all bad.

I already knew it wasn’t, for me, but somehow when I say the good and all the bad together to Akira, I really hear how much is good in a different way—even with the parts that are bad; like, how I was so scared Toujou would kill him and Mom and Dad, and how Emiya said he wouldn’t blame me if I made him die there to save them, and how he thanked me after. How he promised he’d keep them safe from Ur Shanabi, and did it too. How Salieri makes me so sad and worried, and said he’s not like a real person, but I gave him food, and talked to him the same, and I didn’t think it would matter, but I saw him smile at the shop. How Doctor Roman bought the goofiest swimsuits in the gift shop, to try and help me relax, and wore it all through an operation. How I was a little worried about tying my pool of energy to somebody I didn’t really know, but he keeps coming to check on me and make sure I’m okay, and he hasn’t betrayed me or hurt me once. I keep gambling, and winning—I said that to Akira. He said, ‘No. You keep putting faith in people, and they keep proving you right.’

I’m not sure if it’s different. But, I like the way he says it.

It’s been scary. I watched the world wipe away, like a bomb was taking out the whole planet. But, we saved people—people that weren’t alive in the version of the world Akira knew about, here in Chaldea. Maybe it’s only ninety-six people who wouldn’t have made it, but that’s so much more than zero. I’m really proud of it. Even in the horror, we’ve done little things okay.

It's the same for Akira. He doesn’t tell me until the next morning, when we’re getting ready for the day, but, he feels awful for what happened to Olga Marie, but he says he also saw her change—grow—that, in the short time they worked together, she got less mean, and less hard, and he was proud. She said she didn’t want to die, because she hadn’t proven herself yet, but he said, ‘I wish it felt like it might have mattered to her that she did, to me, in Fuyuki…’ I said, ‘I think it would.’ He smiled. And he talked about Mash, who’s shy, and awkward, but she’s brave, too. He said she’s gone from being barely able to say no to a request, to risking her life to protect him—and she’s not just braver, she seems happier. Not that all this bad stuff happened, but she’s really…alive. He says Doctor Roman told him that talking with Akira after the mission was the happiest he’s ever seen her. It would be great, if nobody had died, and she still got to feel that way, but the fact it happened a bad way, doesn’t make the goof part not good.

I can tell he’s different, too. Akira’s impulsive, like me; Mom and Dad call us ‘the tornado twins,’ because we ran around causing messes on accident so much when we were little. I know he hasn’t changed much, but, I can see him thinking hard now, and I know he’s thinking about how to make everybody happy and safe. I wish he hadn’t had to grow up a little so fast. I wish it hadn’t happened at all. But, for parts of him to grow into early, I’m really happy he picked such a nice one.

We talk for several hours, quiet, like we used to when Mom and Dad had said it was bed time and we better not, and we’d whisper to each other through the wall of our rooms anyway and be bad, because we were too excited about a trip the next day. I know they were right, and so is the Doctor now, but I think this time we were too, because at the end of it all, I climb back in my bed, and I hear Akira whisper, “Hey, Suka? I really love you, you know?” and I whisper back, “I love you even more,” and we go back and forth trying to one-up the other for a minute, and then call it a tie, and the room gets quiet, and I really rest for the first time since this all started, since the day I got Billy out, like I’ve learned how to sleep again by talking with my brother.

Maybe I have. Maybe if he can be proud for me, and I can be sure for him, we can both really be…okay.

------------------------------------

Timeline: Two Months, Sixteen Days, Two Hours Forward. Coordinates: -4.R48X91, -R1.559X46 Graph: 10912.1326

The jungle is dark and full of shadows, but it is not quiet.

That is a good sign. There is nothing more fearful, in a jungle, than the absence of noise. Can you even imagine the terrors it would take to scare every type of beast living in one, into silent submission or flight?

So, it is a clearly good sign.

What is clearly not a good sign, is the man-made structure up ahead.

Kuhaha, I mutter as a scoff in my throat. Irritating, being dropped here for this. Not that I’d prefer a master; I wouldn’t. But I’d prefer some damn idea of what I’m being flung here to do.

It isn’t like planning or persistence are issues for me, which is probably why the Counter Force chose me, but it’s not my job, and I don’t love being spat out by it. I shouldn’t be here at all. And if I’m in the prison tower after this again, I’ll hunt her and that demon down myself.

Still. I let myself melt into the shadows and fade in and out, towards the building. It’s an ugly thing, built at odd angles and jutting out, like boxes of different sizes stacked haphazardly about. I have become curious, so, I may as well indulge. Despite my distaste for the system, it does tend to throw heroic spirits at the more disgusting humans in this miserable world, and I have a taste for blood.

There is movement behind me.

How. The HELL, did I not notice the-?!

Cursing, I swing around, and am uppercut in the face by a massive blunt object the size of a bed.

Shit, I think it is a bed, I register as I fly backwards, breaking through two trees before catching onto a third one with a clawed hand and swinging around it with my momentum, landing back on my feet with an aching jaw.

Fast—hell—too fast! I feel almost no spike in magical energy, but the red figure who attacked is a blur, tearing at me at a sickening speed. Tch-!

I leap up, and call black flames to my hands, raining them down on the thing, but it dodges and weaves, and I see it raise a gun, so I mentally calculate the time it takes for a bullet to be fired and aim taken, and dodge, leaping from the tree I’m clinging to, smack into the path of the gun, because it THROWS it at me! Not shoots! No! It throws the whole gun at me!

It doesn’t even hurt that much, but it catches me by surprise, and expecting that, the red figure takes that fraction of an opening, leaps, and kicks me out of mid-air, through another three trees. I hear trunks snap and thud around me, and curse as I dig my claws into the ground to bring myself to a stop. It’s going to draw guards, like this.This thing is probably their perimeter security. I need to retreat, if I want to at least avoid being identified.

I sink into the shadows, and begin to melt from one to another, and the stupid thing appears from among the trees at a full-tilt run again, going right for me—I swear! The damn thing locks eyes! It’s a human, too—a heroic spirit, it must be, and it’s running at me like a football player going for a tackle.

FINE! If that’s how you want it!

I dash forward myself, and having run away before, I catch her by surprise, ducking under her arm and slicing her through the gut with a black-fame’d claw.

She cries out, more in surprise than anger or pain, and whips around to follow me like she hasn’t even noticed.

Tch. It didn’t go as deep as I meant.

The woman twisted on impact, like even too late to dodge, she somehow knows the best place in her gut to take the hit. This is a pain. I’m not really hurt yet, but neither is she. I need to make this really fast, or whatever is in that building that the Counter Force found important enough to throw me at, is going to come out here, and I’m not a man who likes to rush in blind. I should take this more seriously.

Annoyed, I catch another tree and swing myself around it again, sliding past her as she barrels after me, and slicing into her leg.

Almost too easy. She caught me by surprise, but she’s not as fast as me, just odd.

Moving faster, I tear off into the cover of shadows again, her, single-minded as a bull, plowing after me through the underbrush, then I turn and leap to a tree, propel myself off the side to another, and then from it, dive down at her, tearing a gash across her chest as I go past.

Breathing hard, she hesitates, turning to see where I went, and I use the opening to dash in and swing at her back with a claw, and my fingers sink in and find flesh, just as I feel a vice-like hand clamp down on my neck, raise me up, and slam me hard into the ground

JESUS! How strong-?!

It actually stuns me. Just a split second, but she slams me down so hard that the ground dents around me, and I’m at least two feet down, in a crater, throat burning.

“Hold still,” she says like a mildly-irritated reprimand, and that tips me off like nothing else has. She’s not even mildly threatened.

Shit-

“I don’t need mercy!” I shout, raising a hand towards her face, and managing to dig my fingers into the side of it, drawing blood, but her eyes are fixed on me like steel, and she’s already calling hers out, too:

“I will purge all that is toxic, all that is harmful.”

“I follow a path that is beyond love and hate!” I spit, digging my claws deeper and feeling my mana surge around me.

            “For as long as I have this power-“

“Enter Chateau D’If!”

I do it—I’m faster.

Around me, I feel my body speed up, my mind sharpen, until the pace is so frantic, time may as well stop around me. Wrenching myself from her grasp, I rip a claw up and through her torso, scouring her body with black flames, curses of death. I move at the same time left, right, behind her, above, tearing her back, her legs, her arms, her face; I am everywhere, I am fire itself, I am death and hate in that moment, I am the concept of inescapable suffering and the unconquerable march of the reaper. In an instant, I attack from every conceivable angle, and cover her body in the flames of the cursed poison inside me, then skid to a stop on her left as the phantasm breaks and ends around me, the world catching back up.

You’re finished, I think, relieved, and surprised to be threatened enough to be relieved, No one can survive those flames.

And no living witness to a phantasm, no identity given away.

Her uniform, as I’m only now recognizing it to be, hanging in tatters around her, blood seeping from her chest over breasts and down her torso, past the hole through her stomach, and along shredded leg muscles, she blinks in surprise at where I was, then turns to see me where I am now, as if she can still sense it. Her face is not twisted in pain or anger. Her eyes are red, like mine, and burn, like mine, but burn a different color. Blood seeps down her forehead, and it’s like she doesn’t feel it, the way I don’t. And she looks at me, but not the way I am looking at her. She reaches out a hand, but not the way I reached out mine, and she calls:

            “I shall lead everyone to happiness!”

She’s still using it, I realize, taken aback. She has to know using that much energy would kill her instantly, with my flames consuming her body at speed already. She’s going to take me out with-?

“Nightingale Pledge!”

A waterfall of white flames erupts around her and the black flames of my phantasm that are burning out her life, and behind her, a massive figure the size of a building appears—like her—I think it is her, but made of white flame as well, and with a sword, and she raises a hand and the sword comes down with a ferocity and speed—I try to move, and find I can’t, and it hits me.

And passes through.

I breathe raggedly, reaching a hand to my chest, and I find myself undamaged, only—Wait. My flames have gone out?

They always glow around me and my claws, but-

Shit!

I look back at her and see they’ve vanished around her as well, and as she stands there, unmoving, the slashes across her face heal, and the hole in her stomach closes, and-

Mer…

I see her. I see me, in the Chateau D’If, and—?

“Mercedes?” I ask, taken aback, and I forget for just an instant, to move.

She is on me like an attack dog, her force and size knocking me to the ground again, and I see an outstretched hand holding a pad with what can only be chloroform on it from the smell—Stupid! Poison won’t even work on me! I just used my own-

My back hits the ground and the pad rams into my face, and WHY THE FUCK IS IT WORKING?!?

What the HELL is going on with her?! WHY-?

Damn it! Her phantasm! That’s right—some part of me remembers; it blocks the effects of other—

“Mercedes!” I try, voice muffled by the pad, “Get off of me!”

I could stab her until she lets go, but now that I remember who she is, I suddenly don’t want to; I also suddenly remember she’d probably die before thinking to move, the insane  nurse! Instead, I try to just grab and pull her off, but it’s like wrestling a goddamn rhino.

What kind of insane strength do you HAVE, woman?!?

“Please sit patiently. You are in need of treatment,” she states calmly, pinning me down without mercy, and not budging an inch.

“I do not need treatment!” comes my muffled voice as I thrash around under her, trying not to breathe, “I’m fine! Get off! We’re on the same side!”

“I’m sorry, but you are clearly disoriented and unwell. You may be suffering an injury to the head,” she says with sympathy, “I am not Mercedes.”

YOU BITCH! Do you remember me too, and you still-?!

Shit, it’s getting hard. We don’t exactly do body functions the way humans do, but it doesn’t matter, because her chloroform is seeping in not exactly the way it’s supposed to either. Holding my breath seems to slow it down, but I think it’s sinking into my skin anyway. Also, it’s also agonizing, which it shouldn’t be, because I don’t actually have human lungs! I should be able to hold out until it starts damaging my prana cycle, and instead she’s…fucking somehow forcing my body to think it’s functioning like it’s flesh and blood! “You remember me?” I manage.

She tilts her head and blinks at me, considering my face, staring deeply.

“…No,” she decides.

LIAR!

“Listen to me!” I choke out, “I don’t want to kill you, but if you don’t get off me, I’ll rip you to shreds! We both need to get out of here, before the people in that building get here to check out the massive disturbance you caused!”

She turns her head to look, then looks back at me.

“Oh.” Her eyes widen. “I do know you.”

Finally! Thank-

I relax for just an instant, and she dumps a whole bottle of chloroform onto my head, then slams me in the gut so I involuntarily take a breath, before I can even process what just happened.

Shit…

“I’m sorry,” she says, sounding genuinely sorry, “You were agitated and needed to be sedated. I decided the best way for you not to hurt me like you want, is for you to go to sleep.”

“You bitch…” I wheeze weakly, forgetting not to take a breath, with my head suddenly so hazy. This is so stupid. I’ve made so many mistakes in a row, and it’s just because I remember her! This is why it’s a mistake to ever let anyone get close to you—only someone you trust can ever stab you in the back! Why did I do this?! I’m so frustrated I almost do hope she just bashes my head into a puddle now. Maybe I’d finally learn that lesson.

“That’s extremely inappropriate language,” she reprimands harshly, as if she’s disappointed in me now, too. Gripping the lapels of my coat firmly, she jerks me up, and hoists me over a shoulder in a fireman carry.

…this sucks.

“Just…kill me,” I hiss out unhappily. Damn it. My head is starting to feel numb.

“I told you—I am not going to kill you,” she replies, “You need treatment.”

Great.

I feel a gloved hand pat my head. “That’s good. Please remain calm. Your anger was consuming you so much you could not listen to reason, but do not worry; I will find a way to cure you even if I have to kill you.”

“…please don’t,” say dryly, giving up and hanging limp over a shoulder.

“I am Florence Nightingale,” she says, ignoring me.

No shit. “I know…who you are,” I manage between labored breaths.

She glances at me and tilts her head again, curious this time. “Then why did you call me-?”

I pretend to pass out, because I don’t want to answer, and I’m exhausted now anyway.

“Hmmm. Poor man,” she says with a sad sigh, and forges on.

Angel of Crimea, more like Angel of Brute Force Sanity, I think, but I’m not as annoyed as I could be. I’m not as sick as I’m acting, either. The effects of her drugs will knock me out if I’m not careful, but they only worked full force when she was smashing me in the face with them, and with her noble phantasm wearing off now too, I could choose to activate my poison resistance and shake off the effects. The thing is, though, I actually don’t really mind letting her have her fun, and just going along with whatever it is she’s planning. I could fight back now, or break free, and run away, but I don’t really have a reason to.  I mean, she’s not going to kill me, no matter what she said; she just isn’t like that—and it isn’t like Alaya gave me instructions, so if it can’t be bothered to lift a finger, why should I run around slaving for some malicious god? Besides, as much of a pain as that crazy nurse can be, she can also be fun, and the fact she’s here at all is interesting.

The fact both of us are?

Maybe there is a reason, I think, contented, and I begin to plot.

[ziraconarose]

Little The Kid doodles to celebrate updating for the first time in…uh. A while.

[hinamie]

So remember me in a softer light

[starry-bi-sky]

mmmmmm read a disciple shen yuan/shizun luo binghe fanfic about two days ago where the first chapter was the Immortal Conference arc, and SQQ was the one who had to be pushed into the abyss (he was still the villain) except Luo Binghe was refusing and was like, lowkey losing his mind about SQQ being so close to the edge. SQQ ended up having to be the one to fall in himself because of the system's punishment system. The rest of the fic is leading up to that moment. But like, MMM i've been obsessively thinking about that first chapter for DAYS ever since.

now i've been in svsss for a grand total of *checks watch* a week. but god obsessed with that. I want to write/read a fic where disciple SQQ goes a little nuts down there. Like keep all of the things that make SQQ, SQQ, but just. Throw in a little bit more trauma in there. A little bit of a mental break. Let him go a little nuts as a treat. Just a tad unhinged. I wanna see him go, just a little, "god fuck it, i've tried so hard to change this shitty story's outcome and it feels like everything i've done has been for nothing. I'm going to die in this world no matter what I do, I've been doomed from the start, so might as well die the way I want to." and he just, breaks a little! Under all the stress.

He still retains the traits that makes shen yuan, shen yuan, like his overwhelming kindness. But he's just! yk. A little less patient. Paranoid. Jumpy. Colder. A little more aloof and closed off. A little more Shen Jiu. He's no asshole child abuser, but he was a Number One Hater in his past life and he's leaning into that old habit a little more now.

(On a totally coincidental not-at-all related note, there's not enough SJ-and-SY-are-the-same-people fics out there that i've found. This is totally unrelated...)

The Endless Abyss turns the mind into an over-sharpened blade, and SQQ is both fascinated and perhaps a little excited to explore a place that doesn't have a lot of info on it in the mortal realm, but still terrified out of his mind. And he's no Luo Binghe, he doesn't have the sheer brute strength and power to just bulldoze his way through, so he has to be a lot more sneaky and cunning if he wants to survive.

The fic itself role-swapped LBH and SQQ so that SQQ was the half-demon (which lowkey fucks) and LBH the human, but I'm equally-if-not-more obsessed with the idea that LBH remains the half-heavenly demon and SQQ the human. If only because I keep thinking about SQQ befriending some demons (particularly and specifically a group of succubi) and they grow very attached to this Human Cultivator so through magic plot stuff they create some kind of seal/illusion/talisman that makes SQQ appear as a demon because a human cultivator in the endless abyss may as well be the equivalent of putting a giant neon target on your back.

And iirc Shen Jiu was taught demonic cultivation by that one guy(?? i've only been here a week so im not caught up in ALL of the lore yet) so that could totally happen here.

(On the other end of the realms, poor Shizun Luo Binghe is just. losing his fucking mind over losing his most precious and beloved disciple. About .5 seconds from burning down the peaks himself. somebody sedate him.)

The Endless Abyss sucks and SQQ is having a really terrible time and can feel himself going lowkey mad, but also holy shit look at all this WORLD-BUILDING. look at all this flora and fauna, and oh if he had the equipment for it he'd be writing all of this down. ALL OF IT. He was kinda-sorta-already planning on never leaving the Abyss as some sort of fucked up self-exile and self-preservation thing, but now he might? actually just?? never leave if he can help it, like he lowkey likes it down here.

anyways the next time anyone ever sees SQQ again he's got hair so long its almost touching the ground and he's either in rags and half-feral or he's been completely dolled up by his adoptive succubi sisters and still about three seconds from biting anyone who tries to touch him. (he's also lowkey trying to book it back down to the abyss even if he has desperately missed all of his friends and shizun)

[betweensaintsandmonsters]

okay okay vampire obi-wan and anemic human anakin who goes to be his meal at like a fancy vampire bistro that pays willing humans to "donate" blood (get bitten) and tastes like shit whomst obi-wan then tries to take care of (in all the ways he can from sunset to sunrise) first so his food tastes good (bc anakin keeps coming back) and then because he cares

sends cookbooks to his apartment, tries to get him to go to the doctor, sends him other little gifts when he sees thinks that make him think of anakin, obi-wan just like wants to take care of his boy because he's clearly not taking care of himself (he signed up to be vampire food so that much should have been obvious) and obi-wan just wants him well is that too much to ask?

they fight about this often. (first: "how did you get my address?" "It's on the form you filled out to be here" "invasion of privacy much?" then: "you could always just... choose someone else?" "and let another vampire suffer from your lack of self care? absolutely not."") ("i don't know why you're putting so much into this? "i must have nothing else to do.") ("if this bothers you so much... just let someone else feed off me." "no.")

anakin stops showing up to be dinner for a few weeks and obi-wan gets worried. but he's not sure how far he's allowed to go in his worry, they're technically just... predator and prey (though obi-wan wouldn't describe them like that) it's just that no one tastes like anakin (that's definitely it) and nobody sasses him like anakin, and nobody is anakin and anakin is missing and clearly if he's been gone this long he can't possibly be okay

(and obi-wan is right, anakin isn't okay. he's in the hospital with an arm that might need to be amputated (but it was obi-wan's favorite place to drink from since he won't touch anakin's neck for reasons he WON'T explain)

(if you asked obi-wan why he didn't bite anakin's neck to begin with, he'd heavily imply there's no reason, but when pressed, it would be that anakin let's out this breathy moan when he's bitten, and it's music to obi-wan's ears, a symphony to his soul, he doesn't think he'd survive it if that was right in his ear, he'd have to kiss the boy then and there, have to keep him, and he can't do that, so his neck is off limits. it is IMPERATIVE anakin does not know this)

and he's lost a lot of blood and he's suffering and not alone because ahsoka and padme keep visiting, but he doesn't know how much he misses obi-wan until he isn't seeing him)

so one night obi-wan goes to anakin's apartment to see he isn't there and hasn't been there in weeks based on sent, and panics because what if he drove his beautiful boy away, or what if someone went after him, and obi-wan can't go in bc vampire rules say he needs permission and also it's good manners.

eventually anakin comes back to him, sans one arm, apologetic because "i know that's where you liked to bite" as if that could possibly be the reason that obi-wan is as upset as he is when he comes in. "i'd understand if you need a different meal," he says, as if that's all he is when obi-wan refuses to bite him because for the first time, he looks fragile and that's heartbreaking

so anakin leaves and obi-wan is gobsmacked, flabberghasted, realized anakin waited to have this conversation as close to sunrise as possible so obi-wan couldn't follow him out of the bar, but he doesn't realize that his vampire would absolutely run into the sun for him (except quin and satine 1000% don't let him "that's not how you get your man, he doesn't want a pile of dust, where's that going to get you, man, think for just a fraction of a second")

so obi-wan send anakin more little gifts, things he can puzzle out one handed as he gets used to being an amputee, trinkets he might enjoy, notes that are meant to make him smile, or that say he'll find somewhere else to feed on the boy if that's going to get him to come back when nothing else has worked. all he wants is to let anakin know that he's he's appreciated, make him feel wanted and loved.

eventually anakin sends him a note back with his phone number and then texts him to come over. he makes obi-wan stand on his stoop for an excruciating amount of time and he gets a lecture about personal space, and respecting people's wishes and "it doesn't matter that you're 300 years old, some people just don't want anything to do with you!" and anakin tries to say all of this with a straight face, before he cracks because he misses obi-wan and it is an act, and he's been in love with this vampire since he decided it was his job to take care of one human that wasn't taking care of himself.

then anakin kisses him and gives him a goofy grin and asks "what are you doing just standing there?"

"are you inviting me in?"

"i guess i am. you're stuck with me though, i'm your problem now."

"darling, you've been my problem for a long time, and i wouldn't have it any other way."

and eventually they fuck, and obi-wan bites anakin's neck, and here's his symphony played out in the most desirable circumstances. and they live happily ever after

(until anakin pesters him about making him a vampire "so i can be your problem, permanently" and they argue about it, but agree that anakin gets a life first "you've gotta be at least 40 before i turn you, i'm not going around looking like i forever robbed the cradle!" "you're not even 40! 25." "nope." "fine, 30 then, final offer." "and if I say no?" obi-wan's grin is feral, like he knows he's lost but he's still willing to play the game. "i know you won't" so does obi-wan)

[alissssssaka]

this is truly... our The Red Leash of Fate.... thank you @murdertrashbabyrat i love you very very much

[jayholdenworld]

Okay, so… I’m new in the Motorsport world, watching my first F1 season and everything, but who was going to tell me that Carlos Sainz Jr. was in the Eurocup Formula Renault 2.0 in 2011? (The same category Lando won in 2016 and Oscar in 2019) And why I just discovered it when I needed to do a timeline of Oscar’s racing career for a fic about Animal Shifter!Oscar?

Like, if I try hard enough, I can find a connection between Carlos, Lando, and Oscar that could be older than Oscar being Lando’s fan and Lando fanboying over Carlos.

I can create a bigger red thread of destiny connection!!

[cubbyhole-for-flea-bee]

Apologies

[ziracona]

I return! Intro to The Kid Act II. As always, tumblr gets it first. [Fate/GO AU – The Kid (pt: 1, … 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, ?)]{Some spoilers for original Grand Order run/through Temple of Time, vague situational spoilers for later arcs}

.

.

The sky is grey.

That’s what I thought, when I got here. I knew there was a sun, because there’s light back behind the clouds, but, I can never quite see it.

That’s not quite right, though.

I’ve been watching it now, for a really long time, and it changes. Sometimes, you can see beyond the clouds that block out the sun, and the sky past them is grey, like a desaturated photograph. But, sometimes, if you’re watching for it, the clouds part, and the sky flickers like a candle, and it’s blue. It’s not a normal change, like weather. It’s a quick one, back, and forth. Like a glitch in the world. Like it can’t decide what it’s meant to be.

I’m trying hard, to think about this, because I don’t want to think about anything else that’s happening.

It’s too much. It’s too big, too awful.

How can a person even think about something like that?

I still don’t get what happened. I don’t get where I am.

I think nobody does.

Well, not nobody, I think, watching the man in white with peach hair, walking nearby, deep in conversation with about six other people. They know what’s going on.

I could ask. A lot of us have. But, what would the point be?

I’m not stupid. I know whatever is going on, it’s really bad. They’re scared, and they’re the ones who managed to snatch us away from…whatever that was, and put us here. If they don’t know how to fix it, no way I could. Maybe it’s better not knowing at all.

So stupid.

I…I keep thinking, “Mom’s at home all alone. I didn’t ask anyone to check up on her. I was supposed to be home two hours ago. She’ll be so confused. What if she wanders out again? What if she thinks we still live Esso and gets lost, wondering where the mountains went? What’ll I do if she gets hurt, without me there to look out for her?”

But that’s so stupid.

She’s gone. She…has to be. There was…everything, is gone. Everything. Everything but the…the fucking 200 people in this weird…thing we’re in. Everything.

And what’s the point, without her?

What does it even matter, if I die? What’s left to go back to? Not just her. …everything. It’s all…

“Hey.”

I didn’t hear anybody get close. I must be losing my senses too, not just my sanity.

I look up, and it’s one of this group of whatever they are. She looks normal, but, I remember, before, when the big walls of nothing were closing in around us, she was one of them, running around screaming for people to get close. I think she’s the one I came to.

“You’re hurt,” she says, worriedly, “What can I do to help?”

I stare at her, and forget to answer.

“I-Is it really bad?” She kneels down, and reaches over for my shoulder.

“I’m not hurt.” I hear my own voice. Empty, confused.

“But you’re bleeding?” she says, puzzled. Her hand touches the left side of my chest, and I feel no pain, like I expect, but I look down, and the front of my jacket is covered in blood.

What the hell?!? I think in, as dissociated as I feel, I believe still a pretty fair amount of alarm.

“What?!” That can’t be. I was fine eighteen seconds ago. Wasn’t I?

“What happened to you?” she asks, fear level rising, and she pulls my jacket off, taking a bag off her shoulder and dropping it on the ground. I see a medical kit inside. No idea where she got a thing like that. She sure didn’t have it earlier. “Doctor Roman!”

The man with peach hair looks over in surprise, but not the kind of surprise I expected, which is strange. I don’t really have time to wonder about it. He stops what he was doing and runs for us though, at the sound of the tone in her voice.

“I’m really fine, I think…” I say, still confused, as bad as this admittedly looks for me. The hell would have hurt me? I wasn’t one of the people getting chucked around like a baseball by those freakishly strong guys. All I did was go stand by the redhead when she started screaming and crying. Hard to argue with the massive amount of wet blood on my chest, though. I…guess at least I don’t feel it. ?

“What? What’s wrong?” asks the Doctor, out of breath as he reaches us.

“I don’t know,” says the redhead, who I finally realize has been trying to get my shirt off so she can tell—damn I’m out of it…–and I comply, helping her, “But he—”

We both stop and stare. The shirt comes off, and I’m fine. I’m looking at my bare chest, and there’s not even a scratch. We look at each other, then at the shirt as one, and I see no red. Kind of worried, we make eye contact, and I turn it right-side-out while she goes for the jacket.

Nothing.

How is that possible? Clean—well—as clean as they were after a day of wearing them. No blood.

What the fuck?

None on my hands either. None on hers.

“…He’s? Concussed?” guesses the Doctor, taking a knee too, at least as confused as we are.

“No…he,” says the redhead, looking about like I feel.

“There was blood,” I say, almost to myself, mystified.

“There was what?” echoes the Doctor, looking to me. I shrug. Maybe I’ve gone completely insane. Maybe we all have.

Honestly, that would be a relief. Maybe Mom would be okay.

“He…When I walked up, his jacket and shirt were covered in blood—like—like Billy, the first time I saw him,” says the redhead, looking like she’s worried he’ll think she made it up, “Like he’d been shot.”

Shot?

There was just blood, not a tear, not a bullet hole in the jacket. Why say ‘shot’? Why…do I…

Weird feeling for a second there. I blink, trying to clear it out of my head, and it goes.

“Huh…” says the Doctor slowly, to her great relief, and my somewhat dulled surprise, completely believing her, “It…could be a lot of things. A temporal fluctuation. An alternate reality, even, bleeding in. There’s a lot happening to time right now.” He’s almost talking to himself, but he turns to look at me then. “Okay look, uh—I know this is a lot, and I know it’s overwhelming, and hard to believe, and I wish I had time to explain, but I can’t—yet—I-I’ll do my best later, just, please. Please take this seriously. If some…” He pauses, grimacing as he thinks about what to say, then he refocuses on me. “If some other version of you. If the version of you meant to exist in time before…that thing that just happened, uh, happened, was going to be shot? It’s possible time trying to rewrite itself—to fix itself to what it’s supposed to be—is affecting you. –Don’t worry, you’ll be alright. Just. Don’t lean into that. You don’t want to be shot. You want to be here, alive, right now, in this place.”

He gestures to the field of swords around us.

“Right? I know everything is overwhelming, and the easiest way to handle that is to try to zone out of it all, but I need you to focus. You not doing that might be having an effect on how…present you are, in a literal sense. And if your other option is shot, you really need to be grounded here. Alright?”

He looks so sincerely worried about me. It’s funny.

“Sure,” I say automatically, “I’ll try.”

He gives a nod, and a worried little smile, then looks at the redhead. “Has this happened to anyone else?”

“Not that I’ve seen,” she replies, “But there’s a lot of people here. I’ll keep looking.”

He gives a nod and starts to stand up, then hesitates and looks at me again, then her, “Take him with you, if—uhm—if you’re alright going.”

“Huh?” I say, having started to zone out again already.

“If you don’t mind,” he says, working to hold my attention, “Go with Ritsuka here, to try and help anyone who was injured. It’ll give you something to focus on, and she can keep an eye, in case that uhm…”

‘Ritsuka’? Why does that…

“Ah,” says the Doctor worriedly. I follow his eyes and look down at my chest, and for an instant, there’s blood, and I feel the bottom drop out of my stomach. Then my chest flickers, like the sky does when it gets blue here, and I’m fine. I look back up at the Doctor. “Go with her,” he says with a lot more force now, like a prescription, and pretty scared by that myself, I nod. He turns to Ritsuka. “Please let me know if that keeps happening, or if it’s happening with anyone else.

She nods.

The Doctor stands back up, and turns back to the waiting group of men who followed him here.

“Wait—Doctor Romani!” she calls, and he stops. That same surprise on his face for just a second before his expression goes neutral, and he looks back at her with the sort of reassuring default smile.

Oh. She got his name wrong. Before. That was why…

“Uhm. Can I do anything to help?” she asks.

The smile becomes more genuine. “You already are. I promise,” he replies.

She nods again, and he turns to the others.

“Is that a bad sign?” asks a man with green hair as he joins them.

“I don’t know,” the Doctor says genuinely.

As they move on, I turn back to the redhead and watch her watching them go.

“Why don’t you go with them?” I ask.

She looks to me then, surprised.

“You’re part of the group. I don’t know what you people are, but you were there, calling us to come to…” I gesture at the space around us. “So, you’re one of them.”

“Oh, uhm. I am,” she agrees. She thinks for a second, then looks back. “It’s hard to explain.”

Big surprise.

“But…there’s things it might be dangerous for me to know. For a good reason, but, I’m not sure how much I’m supposed to tell…other people. I’m sorry.” She does look apologetic.

I pick my shirt back up and pull it on. “Did you people do this?”

“WHAT?” she asks in horror, “No! No, not at all! I would never!”

I come out of the shirt grinning, because it’s such a teenager reaction for her to be having to a situation like this where I can barely think at all. “Okay okay—I believe you,” I say, “But I don’t guess you guys are going to explain any time soon?”

“We’re…trying,” she says, looking around at all the people. Most are sitting down, talking to each other. Some alone, like me, zoned out or thinking. Some trying to help the ones injured by being thrown about. A few more investigating the swords, or walking around, I think trying to see how big this place is. Some were mad, demanding answers and fighting, or scared and hysterical, but that shit died out what must be over an hour ago now.

“Yeah, I guess,” I say, too tired to want to fight. I watch her for a few seconds as I pull on my jacket. I wonder how much you really know. “…Can this be fixed?”

She looks back at me, eyes big and worried.

“Everything?” I gesture, emptily, “It…kind of looked like the world was ending.”

“I think it was,” she says, voice shaky and scared. “But. It can be fixed.” She looks over at the Doctor for a few seconds, then back at me. “Doctor Romani says it might not even have exactly happened yet.”

“Come again?” I say.

“Well,” she says, shifting to face me a little more, “It’s like…you know how in a tsunami, the tip of the wave is the part that hits you first, but it’s not the wave itself—not the real wave, just the crest? Or—maybe more like—you know it’s coming, when the water vanishes, but that’s not the danger yet. Not the actual thing. He says something’s gone wrong, and we’re seeing…the effects, before the trigger. Time is messed up. But, that’s good. Because well, I thought about it, and I'm pretty sure that it means, if we can stop it before it happens, then, none of this will ever be. Everything won’t even really get ‘un-done,’ it’ll just…never have to be like this at all.”

“So…whatever…happened, with the world out there. That big whiteness, burning the world away. That hasn’t happened?” I ask.

She nods. “It’s like…getting pulled into a premonition, kind of. He said it shouldn't have happened, or I guess, it won’t 'really' happen, in linear time, for another two months.”

“So, they’re not really dead?” I ask, sitting up, ears perked.

“They?” she asks.

“-People!” I say excitedly, “My Mom—my friends—everyone! They’re not-?”

She’s nodding.

“Oh thank—why didn’t you people say so?!” I ask, overwhelmed with…I think joy? I almost trip over myself standing up, and offer her a hand. “Come on! Two months? That’s no time to lose! Stand up and fight for it! Just tell me what to do!”

She looks surprised, then smiles shakily, and takes the hand and stands with me. “Right! Okay. First thing is to make sure everyone is at their best, so we can work together. They have to think of a plan, fast, so only the people whose skills don’t help with that are available to look after all the people here. That’s not many of us.”

“Then we find some people who can,” I say, and I turn to the people around us and cup my hands. “Okay people! The world hasn’t ended yet—we can still fix it! Working on a plan! So organize already! Get up! Anybody who has medical skills at all—CPR certification, medical school, I don’t give a shit! If you can set a bone or fix up scrapes, over here with me! Anybody hurt bad, raise your hand or get someone near you to so we can find you easy! Let’s go already!”

Ritsuka looks at me and blinks, then turns and watches as around us, people confer, and some start to get up and walk towards us, from all around. Hands go up. Her expression changes, and I see the fear fade, and she starts to smile. A real one. A happy one this time.

“What?” I say, smiling back, “It’s our world too. Did you think we weren’t gonna want to help?

-------------------------------------------------

“Look—I-I don’t have time, to explain all of this.” This is a living nightmare. I am so beyond lost. I know I’m lucky to be alive at all right now, but this entire situation is a wildly unfair twist of luck, or fate, and I do not feel especially lucky right now. I feel emotionally as if I’ve been hit by a bus that then switched to reverse and backed over my mangled body again just for good measure.

“Well, you’re gonna have to explain more,” says Cú Chulainn.

They’re mad. Everyone is mad. Civilians tried to attack us, despite doing our best to explain what’s going on. I thought the Lancer was going to strangle me for a second when we first arrived. I’m pretty sure I’ve made the little girl cry three times. This is my nightmare. I’m living my nightmare, but I still have a shot maybe to fix it, so I can’t give up and die. I’m trapped. In this extended, long, dragged out version, of my nightmare.

Quit complaining. Think hard. You can do this.

Just breathe. And think. And focus. Put all that wisdom to good use, if ever, ever there was a time…

I feel eyes on me—I mean, everyone, has their eyes on me, but, intently. Trying to get me to look back. And I look over and see my father. At least David’s here.

At least I’m not alone. That’s not something I expected, and it’s the only good thing.

He looks so worried about me, and he’s trying to get me to smile at him, and that’s so sad it makes me want to cry, but I can’t, because I have to hold it together. Oh this is hell.

But still. Even as awful as it all is, I appreciate the attempt, and I do feel, minisculely, better.

That’s…something.

I guess all things considered, they’re actually being pretty patient, I think with a sigh, letting some small bit of the tension in me out.

Okay. One task at a time. This can be done.

“Alright. Alright…” I turn to the others. I gave people the bare bones on arrival, but we’ve had so much to do—civilians freaking out, two badly wounded enough that I, as the only doctor on hand, really had no choice but to tend them before doing anything else, and with only so much I could or should say, in front of human strangers. And no one liked that. Me included. But what else could I do? “But I’ll have to give you the short version.”

“Do, then,” says Robin.

“Yes,” prompts Mozart, “How did this happen?”

I run a hand along my face, then look up again and mentally count. “Shouldn’t Emiya be here for this?”

“Emiya isn’t going to be here for anything,” snaps Cú Chulainn, “He’s concentrating on running blade works at maximum efficiency, so we can all stay alive as long as possible. I’ll tell him later. Just go.”

“Okay.” I let out a breath, and after triple checking to make sure we’re far enough now from any humans, turn to face them. “I’m…like you,” I say in defeat.

Cu Chulainn blinks, and looks at Billy, then Robin.

“Like us?” says Billy.

I see something click on Robin’s face, and he looks from David, to me. I nod.

“Yeah. I uh…I a—I was, Solomon.”

There’s silence for a second around the group.

I guess, uh, to my benefit, or, something, the hostility in the air significantly lessens.

“Ohhhhh,” says Cú Chulainn, looking from me to David now too, “This actually explains a lot.”

“Yeah, but not the why he knew about the whole world getting erased bit,” adds Robin with significantly less hostility than before.

“He’s getting to it,” says David with patience he’s clearly trying to will on everyone else.

“Look, the short version is, I won a holy grail war. I got my wish. And…” I shrug, exhausted, “The rumors are true. It’s a monkey’s paw. I wished to get off the throne, live once, and get to move on like a human. It took me off, and for some reason, broke every seal I’d left as Solomon when I did. I knew it the instant I was human again, but, it was too late. I had a lot of demons sealed, from when I was alive. One of them, Goetia, is uh…determined to rewrite history—everything, I guess. I knew he was trying to do…some version of this. But, not enough to know when, or exactly how, or to stop him in time. Especially with…the no magical circuits the grail decided to leave me with, no allies, and no one to believe anything I said. And now, you’ve seen what I was trying to prevent, two months before it should have happened at all.”

There’s silence.

“…Shit,” offers Billy finally. I actually appreciate that so much. There’s about 500 possible reactions to what I just said, and I was afraid of about 402 of them.

“The best I could do, after the Grail dumped me here, was try to find a way to survive it happening, and undo it, because I can beat him, but not until I can find him, and I had no way to find him, until he acted,” I finish, “So. That’s why I know. That’s the short version of my context. As for why this is all happening now? …” I shake my head hopelessly. “It shouldn’t be possible. It isn’t. But…”

Robin waits a second, then turns to David. “That’s all true this time, right? I mean, it clearly is, looking at you two, but, for security’s sake I feel like I have to ask.”

David gives a nod.

“Why can’t we tell Rits?” asks Billy.

“Because she can’t shield her mind,” I say, “I have a way to beat him, if I can get close, but I can onlytry it once, and it will only work if I catch him off guard, and the only advantage I have on him at all right now is that he doesn’t know I’m alive. Given I’ve been playing about 18 steps behind this whole time, I’m not going to tell anyone,” I look at David, “-not even you—what my play is, because if he finds out, it’s all over. You’re just going to have to trust me on that one, single thing. But. Beyond it, I just need to keep me being alive, being ‘Solomon,’ completely off his radar. Please. So, Ritsuka can’t know. She can’t keep herself from being mind read, at her level of mage ability, and I just can’t chance it. Not until I know where he is. Not until I’m sure he doesn’t have a way to use that against us.”

They seem to understand that, thank heaven, and not have a problem with it. The worst I get is Kotarou and Billy looking disappointed.

“Aside from that, I’ll do my best to answer anything I can,” I add tiredly.

“…You said you can’t explain why this is happening now, but, you said before it might be a case of the relativity of simultaneity,” says Salieri, thinking it through for himself, “If you’re right in that hypothesis, and we’re seeing two months into the future…early, essentially, I don’t suppose you have any guess as to why?”

I consider again, just in case something will occur, and shake my head. “It can’t be happening early.” I don’t sound sure in my own ears when the words come out, but…it just. can’t. It can’t. This is the only thing that makes sense. If ‘makes sense’ can even be applied to this state of things at all. “So it’s got to be that. But…no. I don’t know why.”

There’s quiet among us for a second.

“Well…know why or not, ain’t this… ‘simultaneity’ experience…a good thing?” suggests Billy.

I glance at him in surprise.

“Well,” he says again awkwardly, looking to Robin for support, then back at me, “You said you were waitin’ for him to act, b’fore you could stop him. Had to hear the gun go off to aim your own, right? So, if you’re seein’ him make a move, don’t that mean you can find him now?”

I stare at him.

“Right? I mean. Even if it ain’t happened in reality, it happened to us. So, it’s even better than it happening when it’s s’posed to, ‘cause maybe then we stop it ‘fore it happens,” adds Billy.

….

I AM SO STUPID!!! In the midst of all my terrible little panic, THIS hasn’t occurred to me?!?!

“Oh heaven. You’re right,” I say in the voice of someone not remotely there.

“That’s right?” says David, suddenly excited, “Is he right??”

“YES!” I say, having mentally crunched the numbers at warp speed, and launching forward without thinking at all and grabbing Billy, overjoyed, by the shoulders, “I can’t believe it! You’re right! If I can just get to the right equipment! I could even—none of it ever has to happen at all!—”

I am thinking so fast I want to vomit. This is the best I’ve felt since I was incarnated in this form. Oh, God, thank you. Thank you thank you thank you. I can’t believe it! This is a real chance. It won’t be easy, not at all, maybe not even doable, but it’s a chance. A real chance, to avoid it all. To keep it from happening. Oh, I thought it was a curse, but it’s a miracle.

“Okay,” says Cú Chulainn, more relaxed and almost pleased, “So then, we got an idea, good, but what’s the immediate plan going forward?”

Okay okay, he’s right—slow down—think.

“You said ‘if I can get to the right equipment’,” adds Kotarou, “Is that from this Chaldea place you talked about?”

….Chaldea…shit.

Mood fluctuations like this cannot possibly be good for the heart.

“How can we get from a reality marble to there?” muses Mozart, turning to Salieri, “I mean, if it’s even still there. It might have gotten wiped like everything else that’s not been destroyed but also been destroyed.”

“Schrodinger’s destroyed,” says Robin helpfully.

Mozart nods.

I’m barely processing this, mind racing. Trying to take a gift and a curse and wrap them together into some kind of horrible, workable reality. Uhg, I’m so close and so far, and… There has to be a way. There has to. So then…

“Well, there should be ways to find out,” says David.

“From inside a reality marble??” says Mozart.

“…There is,” I say unhappily as the numbers I’ve been running fall into place.

They all look at me again.

I return the looks, and let out a tired breath. “You’re not gonna like it.”

I don’t like it, and it’s my terrible plan.

Cu Chulainn gives me a grimace.

“—Wait—I’m sorry—before we switch topics for good, I’m gonna be thinkin’ about this all day if I don’t ask real quick—Why were you at Ur-Shanabi if you were in the middle of a long-con?” asks Billy, raising his hand.

Cu Chulainn, Robin, Salieri, Kotarou, and I point to David, who David points to himself.

“—Oh. Duh. Sorry—carry on,” says Billy, flushing and giving an awkward grin.

“Should we get Ritsuka now?” asks Mozart, “Before the terrible plan we’re all going to hate?”

I sigh and nod. “Yeah. We need her for it.”

I look off into the crowd, trying to spot her again. She wanted to go help people when she was asked to step away, and I see her a ways off, talking to an old man. The young man from before is with her, and they seem to have drawn quite a crowd. I shouldn’t be surprised. She’s really something. I feel terrible I’ve dragged her into all this. Why is it always the kindest people who end up being asked to give the most, over and over again? It’s not even fair the first time.

“We need her for it?” I half-hear Cú Chulainn echo behind me. “Oh…shit. You don’t mean…?”

“…I…I think he does,” says Robin in similar disbelieving horror.

“Mean what?” asks Kotarou.

I can only guess from their tone they’ve guessed correctly. I sigh.

“Mozart, any chance you can find something that passes for a leyline?” I ask, turning back to them.

“IN A REALITY MARBLE?” says the Caster, between disgusted and elated at this insane request.

“That passes for one,” I say, exhausted, “It’s a complex inner-scape. The density of magic must be higher somewhere in here than everywhere else.”

“Oh, you’re really going to do it,” he says in horrid fascination. He turns to Salieri. “The man says such terrible things so casually. I love it.”

“Oh, no,” says Kotarou, looking between us, “No no no. That’s never going to work!” He glances desperately over at Ritsuka. “I-I know My Lord has quite the pool of mana, but, she’s already giving Emiya what he needs for Unlimited Blade Works. Even trying to summon another spirit, inside a reality marble? It…”

“It’s crazy,” I agree, turning to face him, “But. We’re out of options.”

That’s the cold, hard, simple truth.

Cu Chulainn has a scowl on his face, deep in thought. “…I hate to say it,” he exhales, glancing up, “But I think he’s right.”

“Will that even work?” asks Billy.

“Maybe, maybe not, “says Robin, “But right now, we’re on a timer. If…nothing changes, then, eventually, even Ritsuka runs out of mana. And, when she does…”

He glances over at the around two-hundred people we managed to save, expression worried, and grim.

“If we try this, and fail, they die. If we do nothing, they die,” says Robin, “If we try and we succeed. Maybe we all live.”

I nod slowly.

“There’s nothing else we can do?” asks Kotarou, “That… the odds of success have to be so slim. Isn’t there anything more careful? If we mess up here. If we’re…all that’s left.”

“Yes,” says David, moving closer and putting a hand on his shoulder, “But the longer we wait to act, the worse it gets too. The simple fact is,” he adds, glancing to me to make sure this is right, “The only place left out there—places, I should say—according to the calculations he made before, will be Chaldea. And wherever Goetia is.”

I nod.

“We can’t get there on our own,” says David, “We need a spirit with clairvoyance, time travel, or some kind of mechanical, technological marvel that can get us from a reality marble, to one of those two places. And…none of us can do that.”

Billy seems to think really hard, like he’s trying to find a way to do it himself, then sighs and nods at David.

“Okay. Well, Mozart, I guess good luck doing what he asked,” says Robin.

Mozart makes a dismal ‘ha-ha’ sound in response.

“Doctor, we’ll bring Ritsuka. You make whatever preparations this insane plan involves on your end,” continues Robin, “You’ve probably got a little time, because the rest of us need to take a minute to talk about long-term plans, because even if we get a spirit, chances are it won’t be on the first try, and like it or not, the biggest draw of her mana after the reality marble—”

“-ah shit,” says Billy with a grimace as he gets where Robin is going.

Robin nods sympathetically.

I consider saying something to try and cheer them up, but what can I say? I know this situation is grim even better than they do. And…they’re right.

“Come along,” says David cheerily, slinging an arm around Robin and Kotarou, since they’re closest to him, “Let’s do it then. We’ll go with Mozart so he can be part of the discussion while praying to trip over a leyline.”

“Your compassion is overwhelming,” jokes Mozart.

They start off, and David flashes me a reassuring smile over his shoulder.

I appreciate it more than he can possibly know.

“Ab,” I say, and he pauses, the others with him. “Everyone. …Thank you.” I really mean that. “I know this situation is terrible. And, intentional or not, I know it’s my fault. I’m sorry. And I’m sorry you all got caught up in the middle of it this way.”

Some of them trade glances, then look back at me.

“Ain’t really so bad, for us. This is still a good summons,” says Billy.

“Besides, you didn’t know,” adds Kotarou, lost in thought.

“Yes. I’ve been pretty happy,” adds Mozart, slinging an arm around Salieri, who seems to momentarily be too deeply lost in thought to notice that or what I’m saying to him.

“Well, I know we have to plan, but I wouldn’t give up on your manifestations just yet,” I add, feeling better, and trying to think this angle over too, “I’ve got a few ideas on summoning from in here. We might get lucky. And, uh, I’ll do my best to give us an edge.”

Robin gives a tired smile, and I get a friendly nod from Cú Chulainn too. They’re all taking this really well. There’s…almost something familiar about it, to me. Telling someone to defend a point as long as they can. Well, that’s not exactly what this is, but. I feel strange nostalgia I can’t place anyway. It’s a good feeling though, and I’ll take whatever luck or good omen I can get.

-----------------------------------------

“Rits! Hey!”

I look up at the sound of Billy’s voice and see him easily even in the crowd, because he’s waving a hand above his head. Also, because Cú Chulainn is by him, and that guy’s really tall and has blue hair.

Actually, I think it’s everybody—oh, uhm, except Emiya. Right, I think, getting to my feet and wiping my hands off on my knees, I better go make sure he’s okay too.

I want to bring him some food, because even thought Heroic Spirits don’t need it, it helps them conserve energy, and he must be getting so tired keeping his phantasm going a long time like this, but, the only food we’ve got is the food people brought with them. We’ve got about 200 people here, but even though we were in a shopping district, not a whole lot of them were carrying food or drinks, and most of the ones who were had a snack, or a partially drunk water bottle. We’re going to have to be careful to conserve what we can.

“Can you stay with him?” I ask, indicating the older man we’ve been helping, “I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

My new friend gives a nod. We’d fixed up the gash in the man’s arm already – all that was left is wrapping it with a bandage, and I’m sure he can do that alone. “Yeah, sure. Just don’t be gone forever. The rest of us would really like some idea what’s going on, at some point?” he replies, taking the roll of bandages I hand him.

“I’ll be back,” I promise, “Uhm. Try to…”

“…Not let my mind wander, and start bleeding to death from a gunshot wound?” he jokes. The old man we’ve been helping gives him a deeply concerned look and he grimaces. “Ah. Uh. Sorry—kind of hard to explain. Uh…”

I give him a smile, then turn to face my friends and start walking, hearing him continue to talk behind me. For just a second, I see him glance over and watch us as I go, but then he goes back to trying to explain things to the old man.

“Hey guys,” I say as I join the others.

“Doing some good work,” observes Robin, surveying the crowd.

“Yeah, they’re a lot calmer than before when they wanted to murder us,” adds Billy casually.

“They’re helping a lot now,” I say, “We just explained that there’s a chance to fix things, and people are pitching in.”

“Glad to hear it,” says Robin, “So, uh. Look.”

Uh oh. That doesn’t sound good. They all look…kind of nervous too. “W…What’s going on?” I ask, suddenly deeply worried. They aren’t all here but Emiya, either. Mozart isn’t.

“Nothin!” hurries Billy, “Well—nothin’ bad. Or. Nothin’ so bad-“

“—He’s trying to say, we have a plan going now,” says Robin, “And we need you for it.”

“Oh! That’s good, though,” I say, confused, “Why do you all look worried?”

“Well,” offers David, gesturing for me to follow. I go with them, and we start to walk. “Uh. You know the general situation is that we’re in a reality marble, and if it stops…being projected, we, uhm, die.”

“R-Right,” I ask worriedly, “Wait! Am I running out of manna?”

“Are you?” asks Robin, turning to stare.

“No. I mean. I don’t think so. How would I know?” I say.

“How would we know?” says Robin, mystified.

“Can’t ya…tell?” asks Billy, “I mean. How do you feel?”

“Okay, I think,” I reply. Everyone looks relieved.

“Look, the short of it is, Blade Works can’t stop. Or everyone dies,” says Cú Chulainn, on target, “Supposedly, Chaldea is safe out there. If we can get to it, we could stop being in Blade Works. Which is great, because even Archer can’t do it infinitely.”

“That’s good,” I say hopefully.

“Yeah,” agrees Cú Chulainn, “But we have no idea how to get there from a reality marble. Generally, uh, a reality marble stays connected to reality where it was.”

“So, if he stopped…we’d go back to the city,” I say, heart fluttering and making me feel sick. The image of everything turning white and vaporizing around me is still very fresh in my head.

“Yeah, if we did it right now,” says Cú Chulainn.

“But, Doctor Romani has a plan,” says David with enthusiasm. He sounds so sure of himself, it makes me feel more okay too. “We’re going to summon another servant—one who can help us get to Chaldea.”

“Can you do that in a reality marble?” I ask, eyes wide.

“We’re about to find out!” says David with great optimism the same time Robin says, “God I hope so…” with considerably less.

“Yeah, and the Doc needs your help with that, so we’re gonna go over there,” continues Cú Chulainn, “But. We needed to talk to you too.”

“A…bout?” I ask, uncertain about the look on his face.

“About…” Billy pauses. Everyone stops with him, and they trade looks. He turns to face me, and puts his hands on my shoulders. “Look, uh, Rits. I know you ain’t gonna like this, but we’ve all talked it out.”

I feel very worried about this.

“Summoning a new servant…it’s gonna cost a lot of mana, and, that’s if it works. Or, works the first time,” he continues.

“Even if it does, we don’t know how fast they’ll be able to provide a solution,” says Salieri like an exhale. He’s been quiet, and when I look at him, his expression is very far away. I’m really, really worried now.

“Usually, the smartest thing to do…” Billy pauses, glances at Robin, then Kotarou, then back at me. “…Would be to just dismiss us all but Emiya, right now.”

“No!” I say in horror.

He lets go of my shoulder with one of his hands to hold it up. “But! Uh. We also know with what caused this bein’ so big and scary, keepin’ us, as many of us as we can, around, is gonna help in the long run.”

“R-Right,” I say, heartbeat still racing.

Why don’t they look like that means it’s okay?

“Still,” he says more softly, “We gotta face facts that, unless we get real lucky, we could be stuck here for…days, weeks. And…the longer we’re up, the less energy you got left to keep Blade Works going. The less time all these humans have to live.”

He gestures past me, at them. Trying to make me look at them. I don’t want to. I don’t like this. I hate it.

But, I look. I’ve talked to so many of them the last few hours. Names, faces, fragments of life stories. My newest friend is still only about fifteen feet off, tying off a bandage, trying to make this old man smile. Telling him some kind of story.

My chest aches.

“We’re…spirits.” Billy shrugs, and I turn back to look at him. He’s smiling at me, but he looks sad. They all do. “Worst that can happen, is we go back to the throne. These folks? This is their first life. This is all they got. When it comes down to it, you gotta do things you don’t always like, for the people who need you.”

I shake my head. “There has to be another way.”

“There…isn’t,” says Salieri. He looks calm right now, like when I first met him. Like a teacher. “We’ve talked it out, and, it seems most reasonable to us to be pragmatic.”

“Yes.” David looks sad. He sighs, shuts his eyes, then puts on a smile. “The Caster is almost finished with what he needs to do. After that…”

“After that, he and I will be the biggest drain on resources, because of our class,” says Cú Chulainn. There’s no fear in him, just a little chagrin. Like this is all normal, and okay. “After us, the Assassin, then Salieri. Avengers generate a little of their own mana, so if you cut him off, he can probably hang on for a little while.”

Salieri gives a nod, but there’s a look on his face like he wouldn’t want to.

“Obviously, Archer—Emiya,” says Cú Chulainn like he’s annoyed to call him that, “Can’t go at all, because it’s his phantasm. The rest of the Archers can probably last about a week if they don’t do anything. Gunner might not last quite that long, but several days.”

“You want me to break your contracts now?” I ask in horror.

He looks kind of surprised, glances at the others.

“I mean. If you want to wait and see if we get a miracle at the summoning circle,” suggests Robin Hood like it’s half a joke.

“No,” I say emphatically. I put my foot down—literally, and I’m embarrassed about stomping like a little kid, but I can’t help it! “No way!”

They look at me, look at each other, like they expected this. Like it’s…a problem. But! It’s not – they’re-!

“…Ritsuka,” tries Robin.

“-No!” I cut him off. I can tell some of the normal humans around us are starting to listen, and I’m probably being too loud, but I’m so upset! “Look—I get it!” I say, trying to calm down, and doing a really bad job, “I know this is bad! I saw it—I saw the world getting erased around us. I saw people getting swallowed up! I saw everything bad close around us! I know this is really serious, and really bad! I’m not stupid! But-!”

It's just too much! It’s not fair! It’s not right! It—It’s something more than that that I just can’t…can’t find the words for, but, I’ve got to! So they’ll understand! So this won’t happen! So—

“Look,” I plead, turning to them in turn.

Cu Culainn and Robin look sympathetic, like they’re sorry I’m wrong. Salieri looks sad. David looks pained. Billy looks worried. Kotarou is staring at me, taken aback, so I focus on him first. I think ‘maybe he’ll get it’. Like maybe he can help.

“We’re all trapped here, alone, together. There’s…” I counted, before. I try to remember. “There’s … two-hundred and six people here, including you, and me, and the doctor. Two-hundred, and six. That’s everybody that we know is still alive. If we…hours into being stuck here, start deciding it’s okay to get rid of people, for the greater good…” I shake my head. “No. I won’t do it. –Look, I feel fine. I’ve got energy. Maybe, if…if things get worse, and you’re right, maybe we have to do extreme stuff later. But, that’s not the right way to fight this. We’re protecting everybody, including each other. Everybody we have left. We’re down, to two-hundred and six. I don’t want two-hundred and four, I don’t want two-hundred, I don’t want one-hundred and ninety-nine, when we get to Chaldea. I want everybody.”

They all exchange looks again. Cú Chulainn gets a funny expression on his face.

“We aren’t going to fight a losing battle when we just got here,” I say, calming down a little. Squaring my shoulders and my stance. “Thank you, for offering, but you’re all going to help these people and me a lot better here, and alive. I promise. I can do it. I can keep everybody going.”

Robin laughs, and I’m worried, but, it’s not a mean laugh, and he gives me a tired smile and shakes his head when I look at him, like he doesn’t know what to say.

“Well, I told you that’s what she’d say,” says Billy, taking off his hat to run a hand through his hair.

“Yeah, you did,” sighs Cú Chulainn. He gives me a glance. “You know this is stupid? I can’t make you break a contract I agreed to already, but, if you don’t cut us loose, you’re putting everyone at risk. Idealism can only go so far in reality.”

“Let’s see how far then,” I say hopefully.

He almost chokes on a laugh, lets out a deeper sigh, and grins. “Well, I know when I’m beat. For the moment, anyway.”

“You’re sure…?” asks Kotarou tentatively.

I turn to look at him. He looks confused.

“I mean, he’s right,” he offers.

“I don’t think so,” I say, and I realize when I do that it’s true. That I…I think I’m right. I was upset, and worried, and distressed at first, but, I couldn’t figure out the right thing to say. Now, I think…I think I get it beyond just the feeling it would be wrong, though. “I know…there’s good reasons to suggest that,” I say, turning back to Cú Chulainn, “But…I think, in a situation as bad as this, it’s not just that I don’t want to do it. Or…that I need you, or that it’s wrong, and not fair. I think…it would also be the wrong thing to do, because…because in a situation as bad as this, what matters most is that all of us stick together. All of us—you too. That…we make sure everybody knows, for certain, that everybody is important; them, and the person next to them, and every person here, and…and that we aren’t going to drop them, as soon as they become too hard to carry, or feed, or, take too much energy away from the rest of us. We were…”

I glance back. The people close enough are definitely listening, although some of them are trying to be polite and pretend they’re not, which is nice of them. The old man and my new friend aren’t pretending at all, they’re just watching. My friend has a focus in his expression, and he tilts his head at me when I look his way.

“…All in chaos, before. People were arguing, and fighting. Everyone was scared, and mad, and hurt, and nobody trusted each other.” I turn back to the others. “But look at them now. We’re working together, and everyone is looking out for each other. People with skills to help are helping, and people with food and water are sharing, and people who were alone are meeting the people next to them, so nobody is alone anymore, and, and now we can all believe we’re going to make it. And that makes it so we can. Because we’re not trying to win. We didn’t grab all those people and take them with us so we could forget about them while we try to get to a safer place. We’re trying to save everyone. Every individual. And, that includes you guys. I’d rather be low on resources, with people who know I’m not going to leave them, than have everything I need, and people who know they’re expendable. Because, they’re not.” I smile at them. “Even when they’re trying to be heroic about it.”

“…She makes a good case,” says Salieri. He smiles and turns to gesture to the others. “Morale is more important to the outcome, often, maybe most of the time, than resources.”

“Well, it’s her decision,” decides David graciously, “So I guess we have no choice but to listen to our leader.”

I grin at him.

“Thank you,” says Kotarou.

Surprised, I look at him. He looks overwhelmed and really taken aback, like he might cry. I forgot, this is still like, day one after being kidnapped and tortured for him. No wonder everything is so terrible.

“I…shouldn’t thank you, because I should try to talk you out of it,” he says ruefully, glancing at the ground for a few seconds before looking at me again, “But…Just the same. I….we. …”

I shake my head. “I know you want to protect everyone, even if you have to go. I’m not saying I think that’s wrong. But, I’m not letting anybody get sacrificed because it ‘might’ be better in the long run. I don’t believe that.”

He looks at me and smiles hesitantly, but it’s a real smile.

I’m really glad. I know he’s had a rough time just adjusting to being up and okay again.

“Well, I figure we got told off pretty good,” says Billy, grinning and slinging an arm around me. I grin back at him. “I don’t rightly know what the proper tactical choice is, but I can’t say I got a problem with this one personally, and I think I trust her judgement.”

“Yeah,” sighs Robin.

“Well, she has proved pretty dependable at that,” concedes Cú Chulainn with a distracted little smile like he’s still thinking about a joke someone told a while ago.

“So, since y’ain’t cuttin us loose just yet, guess we better really double down on gettin’ a good spirit to come help,” says Billy.

“Right!” I say, “Let’s go right now, if they’re ready.” I turn to my new friend and the man we were helping. “Will you all be okay alone?”

My friend waves me off. “Yeah, yeah—I can roll some gauze. Go summon a whatever and save the world or something—I mean the second part; seriously. Get us out of here,” he adds, but I think he’s pleased.

I give him a nod and turn to the others.

“Amadeus is this way,” says Salieri, and he leads us.

[shadow-pixelle]

Here's a random DCxDP snippet!

Wrote this on Monday. Was gonna post it yesterday and then kinda... forgot. It's a completely disconnected snippet- that is, I have no context for what's going on here, what kind of AU it is, or much of anything else at all. Also currently have no plans to try and expand it, though I might mess with it in the future when I have time? We'll see.

Honestly 80% of the reason I'm posting this is because I sent it to Kali and absolutely devastated her with the worldbuilding, so shrug.

--

“I need you to understand,” Danny said, gripping the side of the table. Tucker put a hand on his shoulder for support, and he leaned into it slightly, being very careful to keep his focus on any Bat other than Hood. “And I mean really understand, that this isn’t just- a crime. It’s not that simple.”

“Phantom…?” Red Robin sounded confused, and slightly wary.

Danny couldn’t blame him, given the situation. Ancients, Danny had just had to give up his secret identity just to make sure he didn’t try and kidnap a Bat. Nothing about this situation was normal or reasonable.

“The Infinite Realms has a lot of beings in it.” Tucker said carefully, and Danny could kiss him for being willing to lead the conversation. “Like, a lot. And they’re all ghosts in some form. But the thing about ghosts is that they can’t be killed. They’re already dead, or- like, similar to dead? The only thing you can do to stop them is imprison them or End them.”

“And Ending someone is serious.” Sam took over, stepping forward to lean into Danny’s side. “Ending someone… nothing comes back for that. When we say Ended, we mean it. There is nothing left.”

“The previous Ghost King was a being called Pariah Dark.” Danny began, fixing his eyes on Batman for someone to focus on. “He was insane, a tyrant and a conqueror. Violent. Unwilling to compromise. Anyone who stood in his way was dealt with, one way or another. He wanted to claim everything.”

“No-one tried to stop him?”

Danny’s eyes flicked to Nightwing as Tucker laughed, raw and exhausted. “He was the Ghost King. He ruled the entire Infinite Realms. He carried the sort of power that gods dream of.”

“The Ghost King can force his word, his Rule, on pretty much every being in the Realms. As close to absolute power as you can get, in the end. Everything in the Realms is made from ectoplasm, and the Ghost King can manipulate that at levels most people can’t even start to believe. There’s only two types of beings that can even try to resist that.”

“One’s the Ancients. They’re old ghosts, the oldest you can get. Incarnations of gods, concepts, things like that. But the problem with that is that they’re also limited, kinda. They can disobey the Crown, no matter what sort of Rules it puts out, but fighting back? They can stop him, sure, that’s how Pariah Dark got sealed away the first time, but they can’t stop him being King. They can’t take the Crown, even if they win. They’re bound too much to the things they incarnate, the gods they were and are. They can’t be the Ghost King. Those ties stop them being as firmly Ruled over, but it means they can’t take the Crown away. All they can do is delay it.”

“The second,” Danny took over again from his friends, grateful for their support, as the various Bats around the room looked horrified. Afraid. And for good reason, really.

It was only going to get worse.

“The second were beings called Halfas.”

A breath.

“Halfas are the only beings in the entire Infinite Realms that aren’t entirely ecto. Not alone. They’re… well. Half.”

“Half beings.”

“Half living, half dead.”

“And because of that, they’re the Balance.” Danny leaned into Sam, letting Tucker step closer again. “Equally alive and dead. Equally bound to their ecto and not. Halfas were the Balance because they cannot be Ruled.”

“From what we understand, Halfas were created by the Realms itself.” Sam said quietly. “They existed to be the Balance. Slipping from living to dead to living whenever they wanted, all the powers of a ghost and all the benefits of a living being mixed into one.”

“They were rare, because they couldn’t be killed. Kill the human side, and the ghost half keeps them alive until they recover. You can’t kill a ghost, and anything that could contain a ghost, the human side walks right out of. They were there as Balance, between the living and the dead. Advisors to the Ghost King, helping to keep things smooth between the living and the dead whenever they had to interact. Balance. Beings that couldn’t be Ruled by the Ghost King because they were as much alive as ecto.”

“They were there to stop tyrants.”

Tucker nodded at Robin’s quiet voice, and paused. It was an offer to Danny, he knew, to take this part as well. He and Sam knew everything about this. Danny didn’t need to be the one to explain.

He spoke up. “From what records say, there were around six thousand Halfas at the start of Pariah Dark’s reign.” He told them. “They were the Balance. They saw what Pariah Dark was doing and had a duty to stop it. Up until ten years ago, there were no Halfas in existence.”

The group seemed to pale.

“Halfas can’t be killed, but anything can be Ended.” He said quietly. “Pariah Dark went around every single Halfa that came to stop him, and he destroyed them so utterly that they cannot exist any more. Not as ambient ectoplasm in the Realms, not as shades or smaller spirits, not as a being in the reincarnation cycle waiting to live and die. Every single one of those Halfas no longer exists, because he destroyed everything that made them them and then destroyed all the remaining pieces as well.

“Dark Pariah was a tyrant. And he was the reason that I learned everything about my entire species from second or third hand knowledge. Everything that I know about myself? I either figured it out myself, found it in some of the few books that still exist about Halfas, or heard it from the Ancients. And those last two didn’t know much at all, in the end. Halfas were so rare that the only thing most beings got were rumours, and the Ancients weren’t an exception to that, and not many Halfas ever bothered to write things down about themselves and their powers. They couldn’t die, after all.”

Danny shivered, a little. Sam and Tucker leaned in more on either side, keeping him upright as much as the table was. None of the Bats were moving.

“I’m telling you this because I need you to understand,” he said again. “Pariah Dark was a tyrant. A nightmare. The worst thing to happen to the Realms ever. He committed so many genocides that there aren’t records of it any more, and the only silver lining,” he spat the words, mocking, because there is no silver lining in senseless slaughter, “Is that all but one of these were against the living. They were allowed to exist as ghosts. Pariah Dark was a monster.”

Danny wrenched his eyes away from Batman and looked directly at Red Hood. He pushed down the impulse to take him away, to hide him, to get him to Frostbite for help and maul and destroy anyone who got in his way, who tried to threaten him-

He pushed down his shudder, and looked Red Hood directly in the eyes.

“Pariah Dark was a monster, and even he would consider what was done to you unforgivable.”

Hood jolted. So did the rest of the Bats, looking for all the world like they’d just restarted breathing again, no longer frozen in time.

“We can’t explain to you what we’re seeing.” Sam said from his side, and she sounded almost apologetic. “It’s- literally, there are no words in any living language to explain what it looks like. And we’re only Liminal, a little bit dead. We don’t see as clearly as beings like Phantom do. But it’s-”

Words seemed to fail her, and Tucker reached around Danny’s back to squeeze her shoulder in comfort.

Danny tried, pulling his eyes away from Hood again so he could think past the urge to steal him away and hide him somewhere safe. “It’s like I’m looking at a baby.” He tried to explain. “Or- I don’t know. A puppy? Whatever cute little thing you want to go with. Something small and delicate and needing to be looked after. Something that shouldn’t be on it’s own, because it’s too young to survive. Like someone took a premature puppy, and then just.” He paused. Gestured. “Just mutilated it. Whatever horrible things you can think of, the most evil things you can imagine at all, just. All of that. And then left it crying in the trash to rot and die, except it can’t die.”

None of the Bats that he could see out of the corner of his eye look well. Hood was-

His core, the half-mangled thing that was barely there, barely able to exist and yet still trying desperately to survive, was shrieking in horror.

“Phantom’s a Protection spirit.” Sam murmured, into the silence of that. “He’s a guardian, every instinct he has is aimed at keeping people safe.”

“I can’t look at you right now.” Danny confessed to that tiny lost child. “If I look at you too long, I just- Every instinct I have is telling me to get you away, to take you back to the Realms and hide you somewhere safe while I get a doctor or twelve, and that if anyone else gets even close to you they need to be mauled. I transformed because those instincts were even worse in ghost form, and I didn’t want to hurt anyone who wasn’t responsible for this.”

“I want to wrap them up in vines and strangle them.”

“I’d kinda like to suffocate all of them in sand and then mount them on a wall or something.”

“And they’re Liminal.” Danny added. “They’re not even fully dead, barely even dead at all. Any being of the Realms that sees you is going to want to help, or at least get vengeance, because it’s-

“It’s not even something Pariah Dark would do, and he committed a genocide of an entire people just because he didn’t want to be held accountable and couldn’t stand having people he couldn’t control in the Realms.”

For a long, long moment, no-one spoke. None of them even seemed to be breathing.

Danny flickered his eyes across Hood one more time, then focused on Batman again.

“So,” he said, as firmly as he could. “I’d quite like to know who did that to him. Because my next step is going to be to call the Council, get war declared on them, and then erase them.”

[pilferingapples]

Fantine Fic Recs!

Things being how they are for Fantine, these are pretty much all AUs, but I'm going to roughly sort them into Canon Era AUs and More AU Than That:P

Actual Canon Era:

A Bit of Philosophy on Love, by mgrbienvenu A conversation between the grisettes

Canon Era AU

the Less Miserables series, by @robertawickham : Chance twists a little differently for Fantine, and she starts on the road to a very different life. Featuring a lot of Zephine , too !

At Summer's End, by @saltedpin : Fantine meets a stranger on the road to M sur M , and it changes her path and theirs. A fix-it for multiple characters!

Ailes des Jais, by @akallabeth-joie : canon era, BBC setting, following up on THE hot new character from that series: Fantine's Bead Bird. Ignore my snark, this is a very sweet little tale.

Silent Night, by crimsondust/ @aflamethatneverdies : fixit for Georges and Fantine !

Grand-père Noël, by @akallabeth-joie : fix it fic! Victurnien makes a grave error and ends up helping out. And Cosette and Fantine get a mysterious visitor...

A Right to Flowers, by @midautumnnightdream: Fantine stays in Paris, and life goes a little more gently. Fix it fic for Fantine and many others.

Vulture, Lark, Sparrow, Owl, by @breadvidence: " ... in those explorations of the Infinite there are realities where the most wretched souls are extended pity in life which they elsewhere knew nowhere but under the sheltering mantle of our mother. All that Providence required was a little more snow, and a cloud traversing the sky out of season sufficed to renew a world" . Fix it fic in M- sur -M.

More AU Than That

A Favour, from @shitpostingfromthebarricade : Modern setting. Fantine and Favourite meet again some years later, now both single mothers, and renew their acquaintance.

As a Hen Gathers Her Brood, by @shitpostingfromthebarricade: A Scarlet Letter AU!! getting out classic lit in our classic lit....

Miserable Spectres, by crimsondust/ @aflamethatneverdies : a Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell AU ! Focuses largely on Fantine and Eponine as parallel figures.

En l' annee 2014: a wonderful modernizing and rewriting of Fantine's story --and Favourite's , and Dahlia's -- to bring it into the 21st century. I am in awe of the translation of themes and details across the centuries. Go go go read.

If You Ever Need Help, Call For Me, by jubilantly: a fairy tale AU! " Fantine helps three animals, and gets help in return when she needs it."

Under a Moonlit Sky, by badassindustries / @badassindistress : " The year is 1817. After Félix Tholomyès' little suprise, a despairing Fantine thinks she might go to her hometown of M-sur-M to find work. Instead, she decides to find Tholomyès and make him acknowledge Cosette. Enter a young man who would love to have an excuse to travel South (as far away from the law faculty as possible) and is uniquely suited to hunting down terrible men" . Also Bahorel is a werewolf. Don't worry about it .

And as always , tip your fic writers (leave comments !)

[princescar]

Now that it’s plain you are never gonna be sane, living in this world all the same Maybe it’s better if you play really dumb and you say you’re giving in and fall away

ANYWAY, going back to my roots with this piece. Redraw for @aparticularbandit's fic (chapter of outfit here)

[possamble]

I'm not allowed to be on social media for more than two seconds today but I just wanted to say that Laios will absolutely have his own reaction to all this as someone who would die for Falin but has also imprinted on Marcille as his Emotional Support Comphet White Girl Not-Girlfriend along the way

[caelysiiium]

y'all made me realize there's still not a single tanfang first time fic on ao3 (which is actually crazy to me) and now I have to write it

[honeydots]

always innocent in red

[ephemxras]

“I want to see the next day, but I’m so scared to let you go.”

“Then hold me, for as long as you like.”