route_1065 | ☘ // history repeating

Entry tags:

☘ // history repeating

Who: Lancer and Carmen
Where: A largely nondescript restaurant on the coast of Goldenrod.
When: Saturday evening
Summary: Lancer tries to figure out what the heck Fate/Hollow Ataraxia even was.
Rating: T for probable descriptions of violence/blood.
Log:

This was the fourth day.

All reason told him that no, it was impossible for the time loop to carry over into Johto. And Lancer believed that, but still there was part of him (instinct?) which remained on edge. For now, the legendary hero in black sat at a table with his head leaning on his right hand, staring out a window at the water. His left shoulder was healing--luckily for him the wound didn't seem to be at risk of opening up again. The arm itself was still pretty limited, and it wasn't hard to tell his whole shoulder was carefully wrapped in bandages.

Fragarach; the weapon only Cu Chulainn could counter. Had killing its owner brought the looping dream of Fuyuki City to an end? Had Emiya managed to handle the rest once Lancer himself had died? His chest and shoulder ached, therefore it must have been real in some measure...but just how real was it?

...And why did it have to be her of all people that was behind it?

People tended to talk to friends when they had problems, right? (He wouldn't really have known; Lancer wasn't the sort to confide in most people.) But if the alternative was this awful headache he was getting from trying to reason the whole thing out after the fact, he'd decided to give it a try. Talking candidly with Emiya about his past had been...what was the word for it? 'Liberating', maybe? Hell if he knew, but maybe asking Carmen here would have a similar effect. And she was smarter than Emiya, so maybe he could make some sense of the whole thing talking to her.

Whether it helped or not, if--when 11:59 of the eleventh ticked right on over into 12:00 of the twelfth, Lancer couldn't help but admit he'd be a little more at ease.

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It was beneficial, really, that the circus was in town, and moreover that it'd fallen on the weekend it had. That was how a lot of things had been playing out recently — fortunate accidents and coincidences aligning properly to make this evening come to pass. It'd been on a whim that she'd called Lancer back during the week when he'd turned out to be unconscious; it'd been serendipity that Hiccup had wanted to come back to Goldenrod for the circus just in time to coincide with this particular invitation. Granted, if you asked her, Carmen would always say that she was never one to believe in good or bad luck either way, but whatever one wanted to call it, things had worked out neatly in producing the circumstances that brought her here tonight, and here she was.

...And Lancer had beaten her to the restaurant. Hardly surprising, but it was something she turned out to be glad for, because it gave her the opportunity to look him over a bit from a distance before heading over to make her presence known.

He'd looked disoriented and ragged over the Gears; tonight, he'd cleaned up a little better in appearance, but it was fairly obvious that the time since their last discussion hadn't done much to ease his spiritual agitation any. Hopefully, dinner and a little conversation would change that.

Without preamble, she lightly dissuaded the hostess and instead strode deliberately over to where Lancer was looking out the window, sliding into her seat across from him without being invited — or going out of her way to make her presence known. Not that she thought he'd fail to notice her, of course; his intuition and awareness of his surroundings was likely too good for that. But there was something of a game in it, and it amused her, so she did it.

"Evening, stranger," she said pleasantly. "Fancy meeting you here."

Luck was a tricky subject for Lancer--not only did he believe in it, he had a solid statistic measuring his own. It was times like this he was more than willing to believe it really was as rock bottom as it was rated.

"Yo." Snapped out of his thoughts, Lancer straightened up just a little and offered a small wave with his right hand. Of course he'd been aware she was approaching, but 'disoriented' was still a good word for how he felt. He was definitely a little off, readjusting to a corporeal body with human senses being one of the more obvious problems.

"Funny little coincidence, hm?"

"Don't let me interrupt, if you're admiring the view."

...Given that he'd turned his attention away from the water and over to herself by the time she'd said that, it was anyone's guess which 'view' in particular she was referring to. (Thanks, Carmen.)

Still, once she was seated, she tipped her head a little to the side as she regarded him carefully — still smiling, but one that gradually softened the longer she looked him over.

"You've had a rough few days, haven't you."

"Hey, either view's just fine with me."

That much came with a hint of the usual smirk; he was exhausted, but some things didn't change no matter what. He dropped his head on his hand again, punctuating those words with a laugh.

Lancer didn't really know about 'rough'--that was just the problem. The whole cycle had been too perfect, however many times it was. And the past few days in Johto had been--well, he couldn't say 'quiet' with a lunatic cat making siren noises, but it was normal for where he was.

"...You could kind of say that."

There was a conscious effort made not to look at the nearest clock. Paranoia, he told himself. Nothing but simple paranoia.

"And a rougher few before that, for...however long you were at home."

Even over text, the hesitance to discuss whatever he'd gone home to had been palpable. She couldn't even begin to guess what it was that might have been — the bits and pieces she'd already heard of his history were complicated enough that she never would've stood a chance at guessing them on her own — but whatever it was, it'd clearly been tumultuous.

The waiter would be arriving shortly to take down their orders; with that in mind, she turned her attention to the menu waiting for her and began to glance it over briskly.

"Let's get this out of the way first, and then you can tell me about it uninterrupted," she suggested.

"Sure, sure." Human bodies were so troublesome. Servants didn't need to eat, strictly speaking, and he'd forgotten more than once in the past few days.

...Fish sounded like a good idea, since Lancer recalled that Fujimura kept taking most of the ones he caught. Nice girl, but not entirely there if one were to ask him.

As predicted, the waiter (a charming lad in his mid-twenties who looked a little bit like he had the minutes until the end of his shift counted and re-counted, but not in the sort of way that anyone could really hold against him) soon arrived, and orders went smoothly from there. Fish for Lancer, pasta for Carmen, and an appetizer of egg rolls with sweet and sour sauce because sometimes the thing that went best with an in-depth conversation just happened to be something to munch on.

That settled, the waiter retreated and Carmen turned her attention back to Lancer, leaning forward to place her elbows on the tabletop and rest her chin against the platform of her interwoven fingers. "So," she said easily. "A rough few days?"

"I ain't sure where to start, honestly." Begin with the smaller details working up to the bigger picture, or the other way around? Not to mention there was still too much Lancer just didn't understand and couldn't explain if he tried.

"I guess...I could say it ain't been rough so much as it's been the same few days." It even sounded crazy by his standards. "Back home, Fuyuki's--well, I don't know what the hell's happened. But I know two things for sure: we've been livin' the same four days over and over, and there's a damn good number of us that ain't supposed to be livin' them at all, if you know what I mean."

Bigger picture first, then.

"The same few days," Carmen repeated, as she evidently mulled the prospect over — though, to her credit, the idea didn't read as unheard-of so much as simply unexpected. "A...time loop, then. When you reach the end of the loop, it doubles back and starts over again."

Maybe that should've seemed stranger than it was, but then again, this was a woman who owned her very own time machine and occasionally made use of it in ways that, left unchecked, irrevocably changed history in the process. So yes, she could imagine how something might 'go wrong' — despite not knowing what that something was — and result in such a phenomenon.

And then it clicked. "Then that's why you've been so anxious about what date it is. Because you're used to it being the same date over and over again."

"This should be the fourth day." he remarked with a slight nod to confirm Carmen's line of thought. "It's kinda pointless--I mean, the whole time loop thing didn't bother me--but I keep thinking tomorrow's gonna be the eighth again."

The only thing that bothered him was the paranoid idea whatever caused it could reach a place that was already pretty impossible. Those repeating days in themselves were something Lancer had stayed neutral over, until Emiya had come along and made it his business.

"People like me--Servants that were supposed to be dead were walkin' around living normal lives. The only way I can describe it is to compare it to a dream--y'know, the kind where you know something's wrong but everyone's playin' it off like it's normal."

He didn't doubt that all of them had known, on some level. But since it was probably the only 'normal' that Servant had ever known, he suspected none of them wanted to call attention to it.

"A normal life spanning four days, at least." Still, she could empathize with that, herself — not that (almost) anyone knew it, but she'd run off herself to a quaint little town in the middle of nowhere once before, and taken up a perfectly ordinary life, and it'd been charming...for a while.

Even now, she couldn't say she didn't miss it every once in a while, and yet at the same time, the cabin fever that had eventually ensued more than drove home with her why she would never want that sort of life forever.

"Still, that's an unsettling coincidence, that of all the days you could've woken up from one of those temporary comas, it turned out to be the same day you'd been repeating all along."

"Just my luck, really." Sometimes it seemed that was the one Servant skill he'd kept here. "Still--it wasn't so bad. Saber was around, and the whole thing wasn't much different from anything I'd been doing here."

Minus the adorable animal buddies.

"But...dreams're made to end, you know? Much as I wanted to stay out of it, this kid I know was dead set on finding whoever was causing the whole mess. Talked me into getting involved, eventually."

Mindlessly, Lancer's usable hand brushed against one of the earrings he always wore. That damned stubborn kid, he'd had to come by with proof that girl was still around.

"And that's how you ended up getting hurt," she finished, her gaze drifting to his left arm and shoulder. "Your detective talked you into helping to solve the mystery, and you were left with the consequences of it."

The fact that it was his left shoulder in particular...no, that didn't sit well with her at all. Too many important things were on the left side of the body, and while Lancer seemed fine enough...

Of course she wanted to ask outright what had happened, how he'd gotten hurt. At one point in her life she probably would've; that sort of directness would've been indicative of her agitation over the injury and some incomprehensible urge to fix it, fix something, regardless of whether or not there was actually anything within her power to fix or not. But by now she'd come to understand that sometimes the answer wasn't to force solutions, but simply to listen — and that sometimes doing that was a solution in itself.

"What about the other...Servants? Did your kid involve them, too, or just you?"

"If he did, I didn't hear anything about it." Odds were good he'd have involved Saber first, since she was his Servant to begin with. Or Rider, since he was pretty sure she lived there too. "Thing is...I'm the only one that could have done it. There's something I can do that no other human or Servant ever could, and that's what could stop her."

He gave a small shrug with his right shoulder, frowning.

"If I say the name 'Fragarach' to you, does that mean anything?"

Edited 2014-10-12 13:05 (UTC)

"Fragarach?"

Admittedly, Irish mythology was less one of her strong suits as some of the other world mythologies, but that was of course measuring by Carmen Sandiego levels of "strong suits". So it took her a minute or two to place it, turning over thoughts in her head as she worked through the word's sounds and associations.

"It was a...sword," she said at last, with that sort of vague certainty that so frequently accompanies the recollection of a memory but the uncertainty of whether it's the right one. "Manannan mac Lir's sword. That was the one that made people answer questions truthfully when it was held against their throats, wasn't it?"

Because if it was, she could see how a sword like that might come in handy in terms of getting to the bottom of a mystery.

"Good, spares me a little of the explanation. That's why they called it 'Answerer'--or, that was one reason."

Lancer was genuinely impressed, even if he didn't sound it. In a place where his legends didn't even exist to most people, it was nice to have the explanations be a little bit shorter.

"It had another ability; in short, it warped cause and effect." Saying something completely absurd as though it was nothing of consequence, Lancer spoke carefully to be sure he was both making actual sense and understood.

"Lemme use Saber as an example for a minute. If she were to unleash her sword, Excalibur, it would destroy it's target easily with no question about it. But say she was fighting someone with the ability to use Fragarach. As soon as she invokes Excalibur, Fragarach gets activated; so they both attack at almost the same time, with Excalibur moving first. The obvious consequence is that they both strike each other and die, right?"

Lancer expected Carmen to ask why on earth this was related; she'd have been right to. From her perspective, he must have taken a sharp left turn in the conversation to reminisce about weaponry.

But of course, it was unsettlingly relevant.

It warped...cause and effect.

Yeah, that was a little absurd, all right. But still, the gravity with which Lancer was explaining all this lent credibility to his words, even the seemingly incomprehensible ones. All right, then, she'd just have to try to work her way through the logic, setting aside her disbelief and uncertainty as to how such logic was even possible.

So instead, she focused on the scenario Lancer was describing, and absentmindedly lowered one gloved hand to the tabletop as if to trace out the events on its surface with her fingertip as she followed them.

"They also called it 'Retaliator'," she said slowly, her brow furrowing with thought. "That's why you said it 'gets activated'; there's something about the sword that lets it...respond to that kind of an attack?"

She still didn't see where this was going, but it was clearly important — and it wasn't as though she was any stranger to seemingly unrelated puzzles all coming together in the endgame, either.

"Retaliator, Answerer, all means about the same thing. What Fragarach does is strike first against an enemy's strongest attack...but it has to be invoked after that attack's begun."

'That Which Comes Later Cuts First'. It was the ultimate counter, a Noble Phantasm that all but killed Noble Phantasms. Cu Chulainn used it himself once or twice in his original life, as he recalled.

And somehow, through a couple millennia it had been passed to the hands of a human girl.

"It changes destiny, canceling the attack by killing the enemy before their strike was ever made."

Sighing, he idly leaned his head on his hand once more.

"Now that I'm assuming you get the idea of how that sword works, you want to know why that's important."

She frowned, mulling this new piece of information over. A sword that changed destiny...

Well, the subject of time loops was already on the table, so in a sense the description of what Fragarach could do wasn't...so different. Replace 'destiny' with 'history' and it made even a little clearer sense: like going back in time to change the events of one thing to make it come out a different way — she had plenty of personal experience with that. So using the sword Fragarach would mean that, so long as it struck second in time, some power would activate and alter the sequence of events to force it to strike first.

Quite the brain twister, but she was pretty sure she had it set out.

(The waiter passing by to drop off their egg rolls, on the other hand, seemed completely perplexed, but of course the topic of conversation had nothing to do with him anyway.)

"That was your sword too, for a while," Carmen said at last. "Was that why your detective needed you? Because that sword was the key to breaking the time loop?"

"No... the girl who used it was. Among all those that were supposed to be dead, there was only one that was never involved in the Fifth Holy Grail War."

She was dead before it even got off the ground--should have been dead, at least. There was no doubt in his mind that Lancer correctly remembered the bloodstained body of that girl in the church.

'You'll have to use one of those Command Seals if you plan on ordering me around. Always watching your back and never sleeping could get tiresome.'

Vengeance had been his in the end--even in the repeating time loop, that priest had been dead without any doubt. But of all people, she was alive and Lancer wasn't sure he knew why.

"This kid, Shirou Emiya, he was digging around to find what caused the whole thing. He apparently ran into this girl and faced Fragarach in one loop or another. So one day, he comes lookin' for me while I was fishing, and asks for my help. I guess he thought defeating her would end it--since he'd fought me before, he knew Gae Bolg was the natural counter to Fragarach. "

A sigh. The whole thing was just...so annoying.

"That sword plays havoc with cause and effect, but so does my lance."

Gae Bolg — that red spear she'd seen in action just a few weeks shy of a year ago. Maybe it'd really only been a dream then, but if it was, it was at least a shared dream. She wouldn't have come up with something like that on her own, she knew.

Of course, now she was starting to see why he'd brought the matter of the weapons up in the first place. Breaking the time loop, defeating the girl — he meant killing her, didn't he? And undoubtedly that would explain the injuries, too...

"The natural counter to Fragarach," she mused, intent on trying to work out the puzzle for herself. It was a grim riddle, to be sure, but she couldn't help but set herself to the task of trying to solve it anyway — whether arriving at the solution herself was necessary or not. If Fragarach used time loops to change the sequence of events in a battle...what was the 'natural counter' to something like that?

"Then Gae Bolg...does something that renders Fragarach's reordering of events irrelevant? Something that...it doesn't matter who struck first?"

"You're just about right. I'd probably give you the point, it's close enough."

There was a laugh with a slightly dark edge to it. Of course, it had to be Lancer that could kill her. It was just his luck, after all.

"The minute Gae Bolg's been invoked, it's already struck. Swinging the lance is the second action taken to fulfill that conclusion. The secret Scathach taught to only one person is a complete reversal of cause and effect. That's the trick to it; Fragarach has to be called second, but both are a certain 'first strike'. Gae Bolg can't be cancelled by its effect, because it's already hit. And Fragarach was invoked after it was called, so it also already struck." A frown. "...I think it's called 'mutually assured destruction'."

'She didn't teach me that.'

She didn't teach anyone that. She had but one favored student, and one apprentice to whom her skill was granted.

'Yours is the guilt which clung to me. On you my blood was shed.'

It was only Cu Chulainn, and it was always only Cu Chulainn who remained. Scathach's greatest ability, the demonic spear passed to only Culann's Hound--

'Ah...hey, wait. I...have one, too...'

--had only ever destroyed that which he loved.

Lancer had grown very quiet, staring out the window again with a distant expression as his hand went back to one earring. Was the true impact of it all only just hitting him, now that he was off a battlefield? He'd killed someone important again, and there was no way to be sure it had even worked. Would she and her mystery Servant wake up on the morning of the eighth all over again? For that matter, would he eventually do the same?

"I'm...sorry. Geez, I ask you here and then do nothin' but talk your ear off. Ain't like me at all to do that."

There, so that was it. Fragarach, the sword of retribution, couldn't defend unless its opponent had been invoked — but by the time Gae Bolg has been invoked, it's already beyond defending against. That explanation, which she surmised quietly, allowed her to see the connection at last. That also must've been how Lancer had gotten hurt; he was hit by a sword that had struck first, even as simultaneously his own lance had found its own target. Mutually assured destruction, indeed.

But something about it was still bothering her — the way he'd been fidgeting with his earrings, something about the way he'd phrased things when he was talking about the girl wielding Fragarach.

All those that were supposed to be dead, he'd said.

How would he have known what state the girl was supposed to be in, unless —

"It's all right. I'm here for a story, aren't I?" Carmen answered gently, even as the growing realization nagged at her. "From what you've said, it sounds like something you needed to get off your chest."

But then she paused, silently debating, and finally added:

"You...knew the girl who used Fragarach, didn't you?"

"..."

Naturally, this conversation was going to get there eventually. The heart of the problem, to excuse the obvious wordplay. Lancer didn't want to talk about her, had never really wanted to talk about her, and yet here he was.

"Bazett Fraga McRemitz."

For the first time in over three years spent in Johto, he spoke her full name.

"She was my original Master--in other words, the person who summoned 'heroic spirit Cu Chulainn' into the living world. Fragarach was something passed down through her family for generations, but hell if I know how they ever got their hands on it in the first place. She died before the war even started, and I formed a new contract with the guy that killed her. Didn't have much of a choice, since I wanted to live long enough to kill him myself."

He gave another half-shrug, frowning.

"...I just don't get why she was there. Never mind how she seemed to be the one responsible for the whole time loop."

"Maybe it's because she was the odd person out that it all hinged on her."

It was hard to put the concept into words without sounding patronizing, and given how dramatically it had affected Lancer, that wasn't something Carmen particularly wanted to risk. Of course literature had explored the idea of such things, and from a theoretical sense there was value in those kinds of thought experiments, but there was no tactful way to start comparing such very real circumstances to 'something I read in a book once', so she ultimately decided to just leave it at that.

"Is she the reason you're worried this will all start over again tomorrow?"

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if you thought i wouldn't use bgm eventually you were wrong

let the record show i continue to hate you

u love me c:

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