Lancer || Cu Chulainn (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
solas_ion) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
route_10652014-10-11 05:25 pm
solas_ion) wrote in route_10652014-10-11 05:25 pm
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.
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.
u love me c:
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."
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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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The whole world ended on the fourth night; he'd seen it himself a couple time. One Servant would be too easy to reset along with the rest of the city, so didn't it only stand to reason that dying would just result in going back to the start?
"There's no way whatever's going on could go this far." he said as if to confirm it for himself. "This place is impossible enough already."
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Of course, that wasn't all there was to it, was there?
"...but I'll stay up with you, if you want. Until the date changes over for certain," she offered.
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But that brought more of an actual smile to his face; Lancer was starting to think he was being kind of an idiot over this. What was done was done, after all. He learned through experience that being miserable wasn't going to bring anyone back from the dead.
"The offer's a nice one, but I'd be pretty awful company. I'm all but dead on my feet lately, I'd probably fall asleep long before midnight."
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...Also, those egg rolls were looking delicious, thank you very much. It'd be a shame to leave them unattended now that the conversation was lightening up.
"But there's something to be said for 'early to bed and early to rise' — it's said to make a man healthy, wealthy, and wise."
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When one was usually the scariest thing around, there wasn't a hell of a lot to be afraid of. (Also, now that he realized they were there, he sure would be taking an egg roll.)
"Is that what they say now? I like to think there's some fun to be found in late nights when one's not half dead."
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(Fortunately, there were enough egg rolls for two, and boy were they ever delicious. Even if eating one gracefully was apparently not something Carmen was accomplishing very well at the moment.)
"Speaking of things keeping you up at night, how fares that little cat of yours?" she added.
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"Dunno, really. Every so often I have my Venomoth help it get some sleep, y'know? I've tried everythin', but I can't figure out why she's so damn screwed up. Tyrfing says I didn't even catch her; he saw her pick up an empty Pokeball and whack it on her head while I was stuck under a pile a' the things."
...So yeah, that sounded sane.
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...And then eventually Carmen just kind of shook her head with a laugh.
"You're far from the only one with that problem," she said. "It's hardly unusual to find a Pokemon with that kind of quirky personality — I should know, I've got more than a few of them myself — but it seems like those cats in particular are proving to have some of the most baffling ones I've ever heard of."
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Even if her million-yard stare freaked him out.
"I mean hell, I don't like cats, but I ain't heartless." Lancer shoved another egg roll in his mouth, momentarily showing off far sharper than average canines.
...Which was probably ironic.
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She paused. "Allusions to present company entirely unintentional, I've also always gotten along well with guard dogs," she added, thoughtfully dipping her egg roll in a bit of the sweet and sour sauce. "But that's more that they tend to like me, rather than me being particularly partial to them."
A handy trait for a master thief, after all.
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"...I've found animals are usually good judges of character. S'part of the reason I like this place so much. Then again, maybe these guys are a little better at it than your normal dogs and cats."
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...as she, you know. Frequently did. With unsettling regularity.
......she was really trying to get better about that.
"They really are, aren't they? And the intelligence some of them display is absolutely uncanny." She smiled. "One of mine regularly goes out and makes friends on the Network all by himself. I wouldn't say he's necessarily the best judge of character, but that's only because he's the type to assume that everyone is his friend right from the start. It's...sweet, honestly."
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"I get what you mean. Can't say I've had any regularly on the Network-..." Pause. "...at least not that I know of." Gods only knew what thy got up to behind his back.
"Past couple years I've noticed all of mine are pretty clever. Especially Olldóiteán and Tyrfing--he was actually Emiya's, until the kid left. Best nonhuman sparring partner I've had in a long time."
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...
...Whatever she was imagining Shirou Emiya to be like, her imagination was probably not corresponding well with the reality of the situation, um.
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"Interesting? That's one word for it--kid's dumber than a brick, but stubborn as hell. You probably know the type."
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In fairness, her henchmen tried very hard, really they did, but sometimes they were just utterly impossible. That wasn't ACME's MO at all, though; they took the brightest and best and trained them to be even better. (Just look at her, after all.)
"I thought you said he was the one who worked out that something was wrong, back home?"
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Beat.
"Hell, even killing him didn't stop him for more than a couple hours."
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......
WELL OKAY THEN.
"Dare I ask how he managed to recover so admirably?" Carmen finally managed, for lack of anything better to say.
Because so help her, if Lancer said the kid was too dumb to recognize that he was supposed to die from a fatal injury, she was just...
Educational systems, why.
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"I think Tohsaka had something or other to do with it." He was oddly casual about this. Obviously it made sense, because magic.
"Usually when I stab somebody, they stay dead. So I ain't sure how exactly."
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"Is that what you meant when you said he'd fought you before, and knew what your lance could do?"
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"...Do you know why I'm called 'Lancer' at all?"
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She frowned a minute, brow furrowing as she mulled things over. That's right, she did remember some of it — in that sort of fractured way that tends to come with knowing information without really knowing why it's important, so that interconnectedness of context isn't quite there to hold it all together.
"And you could've been a...Berserker, instead of a Lancer. They're like slots that legendary heroes can be fit into. Summoned into, rather. By mages? For the sake of a...holy grail that isn't the same one from the King Arthur legends. It's something like that?"
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She did have most of the important parts, from a Servant's perspective, so that wasn't too bad.
"Yeah, there's seven of us--'heroic spirits', we're called--summoned into the classes Saber, Lancer, Archer, Rider, Caster, Assassin, and Berserker. The Holy Grail's said to be an omnipotent thing that grants any wish of the last Servant and Master pair remaining, so in an ideal war that didn't take a wrong turn anywhere we'd just kill each other like normal knights."
Wasn't a bad deal, as far as he was concerned.
"Thing is, mages like keeping their magic and all that secret, so the war's fought at night away from your casual observer. I met Emiya on one of the first nights; he was in the wrong place at the wrong time while I was fighting Rin and her Archer."
Who was....also Shirou, if Lancer recalled what he'd learned in Johto correctly. Who knew how the hell that worked. It sure didn't make the other Servant less annoying.
"Policy is 'no witnesses', you know? I didn't like it any more than he did, but rule's a rule. So I stabbed him, realized...maybe an hour or so later that he didn't stay down, so I went to stab him again to finish the job."
Good times.
"That's when he summoned his own Servant, and that's how I met Saber."
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