Chapter CV: Parting Glass

“…last we checked,” said Marie. “It won’t be possible to track their movement from this far out, but based upon where they were when Aífe’s Saint Graph dissipated aboard the Argo, half a day isn’t impossible.”

So she actually managed to buy us that much time? Just when I thought Aífe had stopped impressing me.

Although I suppose it really shouldn’t have. After all, in the myth, hadn’t Cúchulainn held off an entire army for a year by forcing them all into single duels one after the other? Aífe keeping Caenis occupied for several hours using the same method didn’t seem that unlikely by comparison.

“I see.” I looked out at the ocean, where the last embers of twilight glittered on the water and cast the island in a sort of halfway point between light and dark. “Thank you, Director, that was exactly what I needed to know.”

“Don’t think I’ve forgotten about that Noble Phantasm,” Marie warned. “I’ll be expecting your full report on this ‘Ark’ after you’ve returned.”

My lips threatened to smile. “Of course, Director.”

The connection terminated, and I let my arm drop. Good news — I’d come to expect the worst often enough that it felt novel when things actually went my way.

With that taken care of, I stepped out of the spot in an alleyway I’d sequestered myself away in for privacy and back onto the street, using my bugs to navigate towards where Drake and the others had gone and avoiding the ghosts whenever I saw them pop up.

Still hadn’t gotten any less creepy to look at them, let alone walk through them. At least Servants in spirit form turned invisible to the naked eye.

Drake and the crew had holed themselves up in what was likely originally a military barracks, a sturdy building made of stone much like the fort, but squatter and nowhere near as big, with a large, open courtyard for them all to congregate in. There, they had set up camp, as though there weren’t quarters available to all of them just a stone’s throw away in the barracks. Maybe they had simply gotten used to spending all of their time outside. Who knew?

The twins, at least, as well as Mash and Drake, had been given quarters inside the building. The officers’ quarters, to be more exact, and they’d even found a room for me to use, too. I didn’t know what I was going to do if one of Morgan’s ghosts barged in while I was trying to sleep and laid down in the bed with me, but I guess that was something I was going to have to worry about when the time came.

The crew had all gathered as I slipped in amongst them, murmuring amongst themselves with a kind of tired energy that only men on the eve of battle could have and each carrying a tankard that smelled of alcohol. The Servants were among them, although only ours and Euryale stuck near the twins, while Artemis and Orion had gone off to mingle a little. Our new allies had elected to stay in the fort, perhaps somewhat uncomfortable with the idea of joining our group when they didn’t really know us at all.

When she caught sight of me, Drake stood and climbed atop a barrel, and when she clapped her hands loudly, the voices all died down and the crew turned to her, waiting.

“Today,” Drake said solemnly, and her words carried across the courtyard, “we went out to a fight, another of many a scrape we’ve been in before, and not all of us came back from it.”

Dead silence greeted her.

“We’re pirates,” she went on. “We ain’t exactly unfamiliar with losing folks to a hard fight. It’s a goddamn miracle all of us have made it this far in this crazy shitstain of an ocean, especially considering the bastards on the other side. Us mortal folk weren’t made to fight fucking legends brought to life, and God only knows how we all sailed away without much of a scratch until now. Guess when everything in this place is trying to kill you, well, you just don’t have time to worry about what’s gonna do you in so much that you trip and take a dip in the drink.”

A few scattered chuckles rumbled across the group.

“That don’t make it any easier when we do lose someone,” Drake continued, all traces of levity gone. “Especially when that someone — those two — sacrificed themselves to give us time to win, and all we could do with it was turn our tails and run the other fucking direction. Don’t matter if we’ve only known ‘em a few days, they’re crew, and we take care of our crew, don’t we, boys?”

“AYE!” the entire group roared.

Drake nodded. “That’s right. Emiya and Asterios weren’t with us long, but they were crew, and that made ‘em family. And today, we lost two of our family, not to some freak accident at sea or a typhoon that swept in and carried ‘em all off to the depths, we lost ‘em both to the flunkies of a jumped-up, would-be ‘hero’ who don’t care who he hurts or what he has to do to get what he wants. Normally, I’d call that there pirate-y behavior, but even scumbag buccaneers like us have standards and principles, don’t we?”

“AYE!” the crew roared again.

“Tomorrow,” said Drake, “we can worry about taking back our pound of flesh from the asshole who stole away two of our family — and you mark my words, boys, by the end of this, that pansy is gonna rue the day he killed two of ours — but tonight, we remember. Tonight, we honor those two who sacrificed themselves for us. Tonight, we all pour one out for them.”

She retrieved her Grail from inside her chest and lifted it towards the sky. “To Emiya and Asterios!”

“EMIYA AND ASTERIOS!” the crew echoed.

And then she tipped it over and poured her entire drink out on the ground. The others followed in her lead and did the same.

“Alright,” Drake said. “Tonight, our party ain’t just a mindless reason to let off steam! Tonight, we’re celebrating the folks we owe our lives to, so give thanks to whatever god you believe in that we met two outstanding guys who aren’t here to eat with us, and honor them with every bite!”

The crew let out another roar in reply — no one noticing the one person slipping away in the furor — and set about partying when Drake stepped down off of her barrel.

I moved to follow, pressing through the throng as Drake went around and started passing out food from her Grail to everyone, like some sort of strange mimicry of Catholic Communion. It looked like one of Emiya’s dishes, one of the ones he’d prepared for us before while we were here in this Singularity, and it even smelled the same — just as mouth-wateringly delicious. My stomach growled to let me know I hadn’t eaten yet.

But as I passed by a group who had already received theirs, I heard one of them murmur, “Just don’t taste the same. Something’s missing, ya know?”

“Yeah,” one of his companions said. “That Emiya… Even the Cap’n’s magic food can’t measure up.”

Eventually, I made it through and came out of the crowd of bodies, and I made a beeline for the one I was following, tracking her with a small collection of well-placed bugs as she left the party behind, too, and ventured out into the city.

My brow furrowed when she started to wander aimlessly, exploring the town without any apparent destination in mind, and I backed off for the moment to leave her to it and wait until she either approached the edge of my range or found a place to settle.

In the meantime, I turned and headed towards the other woman who had slipped away from the party and gone to be alone in the quietest part of the town: the church, a wooden building situated off to the side of the fort that had the distinction of being one of the tallest in town by simple virtue of the steeple that jutted up from its front.

If not for that, I might not have thought it was a church at all, looking at it from the outside. I was used to imagining towering gothic cathedrals or expansive brick monoliths designed to fit hundreds of people at once, and the much smaller, much more compact thing that stood in their place was, perhaps expectedly, much more befitting a smaller, tighter knit community. Something you might see in a sleepy little hamlet out in the midwest, compared to the ones I’d seen in Brockton and Chicago.

Medea didn’t move when I opened the heavy double doors to the chapel, she just stayed in the chair she’d chosen, staring up at the crucifix hanging behind the pulpit. Like it was some fascinating kind of insect she’d never seen before and she wanted to understand it better. She didn’t react at all when I walked over and took a seat in the chair next to her, although I was certain she knew I was there.

“Do you ever wonder if he’s still around?” she asked me without looking my way. “If he’s still watching and meddling, whispering in the ears of his faithful and answering prayers, or if he’s just like all the other gods and can’t do anything at all anymore except watch it all burn down?”

“Not particularly,” I answered. “I’m not sure he’d like it if I actually did.”

Because it would mean everything was part of his “plan,” and I…wasn’t entirely sure what to feel about that idea. Not after everything I’d been through.

She made a sound I couldn’t quite parse in the back of her throat. “It was all after my time, so I don’t have any firsthand experience with him and his worshippers, but… Well, I do know some of it. Through the Throne, I mean. The idea always sounded farfetched. A god who loved everyone equally and forgave all sins? Who welcomed everyone that sincerely repented and punished the wicked in the name of justice?” She chuckled bitterly. “A fairy tale. A fantasy you tell children to make them behave.”

She fell back into silence, and I let her have it for a moment or two, let her stew in her own thoughts and ruminate about the meaning of life or whatever it was she was thinking about. Frankly, I didn’t particularly care about the question of God. I guess, by whatever standards you held me up to these days, I could count as an atheist. At the very least, I’d stopped actively believing somewhere between losing Mom and fighting Leviathan, so it was all kind of moot.

At length, I decided to address the elephant in the room. “You lied to us.”

She chuckled again. “You knew that from the beginning. After all, you never believed I was the real Calliope, did you?”

The possibility had occurred to me, yes, but that wasn’t what I meant.

“You never told us that Jason was the real enemy, or that this whole thing was one long chain of patsies for your other self.”

She huffed. “Because I had ample reason to trust you,” she said sarcastically.

“By the time we were chasing down Blackbeard?” I said. “Yes.”

Medea grimaced and hunched in on herself, and then she said the thing that I had heard way too many times for my liking: “You don’t understand.”

“Then make me understand.”

Her head whipped around, eyes flashing as she snarled at me. “How could you? How could you possibly understand what it was like to watch that ignorant brat fawn over that bastard like a lovesick maiden? What it was like to be violated by yet another pitiless god, forcibly subjugated to his design? To tear yourself in half just to escape it, left with only scraps of who you used to be and gaping holes in your very self?”

She stood suddenly, ripping her black cloak off at last to reveal her body, thin and waifish and clothed in a purple dress that looked like it barely fit her with how it hung off of her body. She wasn’t quite emaciated, but there was no way she was as full-figured as she should have been.

“I am Medea of Colchis!” she bellowed, and it echoed off of the walls. “I learned sorcery from the Goddess of Magic, Hecate! I know spells and potions and all sorts of secrets that magi like you can only dream of!” She waved a hand, and sparks of pink light flickered up and down her fingers impotently. “I can barely cast a single spell without risking my very being ripping itself apart!”

Her lip curled into a sneer. “And yet you wonder why I, who was betrayed by everyone, refused to risk being betrayed again?”

Calmly, slowly, I stood, too, and carefully, I brushed my hair aside, tucking it behind my ear, and gave her a good, long look at the pair of scars that dappled my forehead, normally hidden by my bangs. Her eyes were drawn to them immediately.

The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

“I understand better than you think.”

She didn’t seem to know what to say to that.

“I’m not going to preach to you about the merits of trust,” I told her. I wasn’t that much of a hypocrite. “But when it has so many implications for Chaldea’s mission and our success at it? Yes. Keeping secrets like that could have gotten us all killed.”

“Those wounds…” she murmured.

“If you were to look,” I said calmly, “you would find two corresponding marks on the back of my head. Entry wounds.”

Her brow twitched. “You were shot in the back of the head.”

Betrayed, she didn’t say, but she was almost certainly thinking it. I didn’t do anything to dissuade her from that conclusion, even if it wasn’t, technically speaking, the right one. It wasn’t like I hadn’t ever been betrayed before that moment, after all. Just that the bullets had been more mercy than anything else.

“It took me six months to piece myself back together,” I said. “So yes, I know a thing or two about having gaping holes in myself.” Both figuratively and literally. “What it’s like to hold onto whatever scraps of yourself you have left. I do have some idea of what you’re going through and what you’ve been through.”

Even if it wasn’t quite exactly the same.

“But what I do for Chaldea and Chaldea’s mission are bigger and more important than my problems,” I went on. The story of my career, really. Putting aside old grievances for the greater good. “Too much is at stake for me to let my own hangups get in the way. I may not tell my team everything, but when it could mean the difference between success and failure or one of us living and dying? My secrets aren’t worth that.”

“How do you do it?” she asked me quietly. “How do you let someone in again, after something like that? Something that almost killed you?”

She was talking about the bullets, but my thoughts instead went to Emma, to the Locker, to Lisa and the Undersiders. My mouth started moving before I could think better of it.

“I had a friend, once. She was like my sister. Grew up with her and everything. Told her all my secrets, all my fears and worries, all my pains and sorrows. She held me when I cried after my mother died. One day, she turned around, and for no reason I ever knew, she spat on all those years of friendship and stabbed me in the back in nearly every sense.”

And even then, the Locker came closer to the literal than I was comfortable with.

“She taught me caution,” I went on. “Made me jaded. I made other friends later, and I did things with them that I’m not entirely proud of. Hurt some people I shouldn’t have, even killed. From them, I learned camaraderie.” My lips pulled into a tight smile. “And then I left them behind for the greater good.”

Even if I wasn’t sure how much good it did in the end. Supposedly, it made the numbers better, but what that even meant when so many people had died…

“When I arrived at Chaldea, I had nothing. My friends were all gone, one way or another. I’d betrayed so many people, including myself, and I’d been betrayed in turn. And despite knowing that, despite knowing what I’d done, what I’d sacrificed, and what I’d thrown away, someone still decided to trust me and put her faith in me. I couldn’t do anything else than the same for her.”

“And she knows everything?” Medea asked.

“Maybe not,” I admitted. “But she knows enough.”

“So there are still secrets you’re keeping,” she accused me.

“Everyone does, Medea,” I said, unfazed. “Everyone carries secrets around. Traumas that left scars. Stupid mistakes they regret. Evils they committed, whatever the reason might be.” I sure as hell did. “Some of those secrets are no one’s business. Keep them. Lock them away in your heart. But no secret is worth letting the whole world get destroyed. Not yours. Not even mine.”

She looked down at her hands. Clenched and unclenched her fists. They shook, like the effort was almost too much for her diminished body.

“Even when those secrets are all you have?” she whispered.

“Even then.”

Arguably, especially then.

For a moment, she was silent as her hands fell. I wasn’t sure if that was all of it. Whatever she might still be holding back — if anything — I wasn’t sure she was going to share, and as the moment stretched and the seconds ticked by, I waited for something that might not come.

Outside, my other target had finally stopped wandering and was slowly heading towards the pier, and my stomach was still rumbling. I didn’t have the time to stand there all the rest of the day with Medea.

Just as I was about to leave, she brought one of her hands up, and in a flash, she held a crooked, jagged dagger with a rainbow-colored blade. It looked more like a decorative piece or something designed for rituals than a functional weapon.

“My Noble Phantasm,” she said, “is Rule Breaker. With it, I can cancel any and all forms of magecraft, including,” she emphasized, “a Servant’s contract with his Master.”

The pieces started slotting together. “Herakles —”

“His Noble Phantasm cancels mine out,” she admitted. “Caenis, as well. Even were it possible, I haven’t the strength necessary to force my will upon them now. Servants as unruly as they are would never obey me unless I subjugated them first.”

She looked down at her dagger, and then it disappeared as she let her hand drop again.

“When Hektor used his Noble Phantasm against Asterios,” she began, “and I put myself in the way of his attack —”

“You stole his contract?” I said sharply.

She nodded. “Jason doesn’t realize it. As long as Herakles and Caenis are still around, however, there isn’t an opening for Hektor to take advantage of. Only when the both of them are gone can he make his move.”

I had a different concern as the bugs in the background began to buzz. “He could have handed us the Grail after he stabbed Blackbeard.”

Medea shook her head. “The Grail belongs to Jason and my other self. Taking it from Blackbeard would have had no meaning, because it never belonged to him. Even if it might not seem like it from the outside, these Singularities — if they truly are formed from the usage of Grails — are technically Holy Grail Wars.”

I froze. The implications unfolded in my mind like a particularly ugly flower, and I liked none of what they showed. It was true that none of these Singularities had the same sort of structure inherent to the Holy Grail War that I had learned about in Chaldea, the battle royale for the prize of a wish granted, but to begin with, those were rituals set up by magi. Some form of structure and a set of rules was to be expected.

But what would a Holy Grail look like in nature? Drake had handed me the answer to that when we met her, in the form of a golden chalice that she used to produce endless food and drink, which she had wrested from the sea god, Poseidon, during pitched combat. She won it, fair and square, and so it granted her wish — hers and no one else’s. We could sip from it, we could eat the food it supplied, we could use its power to hurt Caenis, but we couldn’t summon Servants with it or fulfill our own deepest desires.

Drake had won the Grail, and she’d made a wish. Her Holy Grail War was already over. Presumably, anyone who wanted to use it again would have to defeat her and take it by force.

And ours wouldn’t be — hadn’t been before, in any of the other Singularities — until we beat the current owner and took the Grail through conquest. There had to be a quest, a journey, a challenge to overcome, just like there was in all of the legends about the Holy Grail. It could never be freely given.

“I see,” was the only thing I could say. “That’s good to know.”

Her brow knitted together. “Aren’t you angry?”

I was furious.

“I am,” I admitted calmly. “But there’s nothing I can do about it now, so there’s no point. What’s important is that we can use this going forward.”

“Carefully,” she said, guarded.

“Yes,” I agreed, “and it’s going to be your responsibility. As his Master, it’ll be up to you to see the moment and seize it, because it’ll be your orders he follows.”

She frowned. “I understand.”

I nodded. “Good. And Medea?”

I waited until she turned her head up and looked me directly in the eye.

“Thank you. For telling me now.”

She blinked, bewildered, and her mouth dropped open a little soundlessly, and I took that as my moment to turn around and leave, walking back towards the double doors at the front of the chapel. Behind me, as I pushed them open, I heard her whisper to herself, “Oh. So that’s what that feels like.”

Night had fallen almost completely by the time I stepped back outside, leaving only the barest hint of light shining across the dark sky, and I turned out of the church and towards the north to follow the road. My other target had journeyed there and settled at the docks not far from where we had set anchor, and I made my way there now. There were more ghosts I had to dodge around along the way, presumably making the trek towards whichever of these houses had counted as home when they were alive.

Running into them was no more fun now than it had been when we first landed here. Not the worst thing ever, just supremely uncomfortable.

I found her out on the pier, sitting on its edge with her legs dangling and her shoulders hunched as she looked out across the sea towards the horizon. She didn’t seem to mind the fact that her view of the sunset was obscured by another island that sat to the west, nor even that the sun had finished setting maybe an hour or more earlier.

She was so lost in thought that she didn’t even seem to hear me coming.

“Rika.”

Rika’s head turned towards me, and she blinked, looking a little lost. “Oh. Senpai.”

“Do you mind if I sit?”

“Oh. Sure.”

She turned back towards the water, and I made the last few steps over to her and sat down a few feet away — close enough for her to feel my presence, but far enough not to crowd her. I folded my fingers together, let my hands fall into my lap, and silently, as the waves lapped at the stone below us, I waited.

I’d been overthinking it, I found as I sat there. Back when we’d started this adventure and things got a little tough, I’d agonized over what to say and what I could do to help them deal with the weight of everything. How I could give them what they needed to bounce back from the tragedies and the trauma and how I could teach them to shoulder the burden this job was putting on their shoulders. I hadn’t been able to find the right words that would solve it all.

But I didn’t really need to, did I? It wasn’t that complicated. Special training might have made it easier, given me techniques to use, but what they needed most and what would help them the most wasn’t any of that, it was just me, listening, supporting, validating. Giving advice born from my hard won experience.

They didn’t need me to be their therapist, just their leader.

“Did you ever…” Rika began suddenly, “…screw up that badly?”

“Plenty of times,” I said mildly.

Her head swung around, disbelieving. “Really?”

“Yes,” I said, staring out at the ocean. The picture of calm. “I made many, many mistakes when I was younger. Did plenty of stupid things, screwed up a lot. Nearly died more than once.”

“But you’re…”

She trailed off.

I hummed thoughtfully. “You remember what the Director said about why I was chosen to be a Master of Chaldea.”

Her head fell, and she stared down at her lap. Her fists clenched together.

“Yeah,” she said, self-loathing in her voice. “You’re a badass who’s done tons of amazing stuff, and Onii-chan and me…we’re just kids off the street. Extras. Spots to fill out a quota. We weren’t even supposed to be down there that day, it was just dumb luck.”

“I know I’ve told you before,” I said. “The first time, it’s luck. The right place at the right time. Things coming together just right. After that, you have to make the choice to keep doing it.”

“But you’re so cool and amazing!” Rika burst out. “And I’m just…me. Stupid, slow, and so bad at this Master thing that I…”

She didn’t finish her sentence.

“I didn’t pop up out of the ground like this, you know,” I told her wryly. “I just told you, I made a lot of mistakes, especially when I was first starting out. But that’s the thing about mistakes, as cheesy as it might sound. You learn from them. You get better. So that next time something like that happens, you don’t make the same mistake again.”

“I-I got Emiya killed,” Rika said, voice thick with emotion. “Somehow…I don’t think…that’s a mistake you can learn from. Th-there is no getting better for that.”

“If that was true, then I wouldn’t be here.”

Her head whipped around again. “W-what?”

“If getting people killed somehow made it so that you could never help anyone or do anything good ever again, then I wouldn’t be here either.”

“B-but you’re…Senpai!” she protested. “You’re always so…!”

Oh, Rika. If I was half as amazing as you made me out to be, I wouldn’t be here now either.

“Because I learned from it. I fought smarter. I picked up new tricks. I did whatever it took, no matter how dirty it might have been. And when I screwed up again, I kept learning. I kept growing. I kept getting better.”

Until the only person I sacrificed was myself.

“And I still make mistakes. I still screw up. I still make sure I learn from them, so that I can stop myself from making them again.”

Even if that was a whole lot harder than it sounded. But Rika didn’t need to hear that part. She could figure it out on her own later.

“You guys are still young,” I went on. Rika gave me a complicated look. “You still have a long ways to go. One day, you’ll look back on the person you were at the start of all of this, and you’ll be surprised at how much you’ve grown since then.”

Because it’ll feel like a lifetime.

“I don’t know if I’ll ever get there,” Rika murmured.

“That’s why I’m here,” I told her. “Why the Director’s here. Why Romani and Da Vinci and all the rest are here. So that we can help you get there. So that we can help you learn and grow and get better. That’s why Emiya’s your Servant, too.”

Her hands clenched so tight that her knuckles turned a stark white. “Will he even want to be my Servant, after I got him killed?”

I let out a long, slow breath. “Don’t you remember, Rika? Servants know what their role is. They know that we Masters will sometimes have to make a call that will get them killed. And each and every one of them was prepared from the moment they were summoned to give their lives for the mission. Emiya is no different.”

“But I…!” Out of the corner of my eye, I saw her bite her lip so hard she almost drew blood. “I-it’s my fault he died! I’m the one who ordered him to fight Herakles! I-I’m the one who told him to last as long as he could! I-I’m the one…who wasn’t good enough to help him do it!”

“Then get better.”

Her shoulders tensed. “I can’t!”

I turned to her, and calmly, confidently, I said, “Yes, you can.”

“I-I can’t!” she insisted, shaking. “I-I’m not like y-you! I’m not like O-Onii-chan! I-I’m a no-good screw-up who barely passed high school b-because my brother wouldn’t let me fail! I have no business being a…a Master and trying to save the world!”

“And you think he’s going to let you fail now?” I asked.

She hunched further in on herself. “Th-that’s not…!”

“We’re all here for you, Rika,” I said. “We’re not going to let you fall behind. We’re not going to let you down. We’re all here to help you become the Master we all know you can be, and that’s not going to change.” More firmly, I added, “But we can’t make you get better, and we can’t do it for you. If you think you’re not good enough to be Emiya’s Master, then set yourself to becoming good enough and follow through. No one else can make that decision but you.”

Rika gasped.

“You’ve got two good legs,” she breathed, like she’d just come to some kind of epiphany, “so get up and use them.”

My brow twitched. What? Was that another reference?

Hands trembling, Rika splayed her fingers across her thighs, and the stark red of her Command Spells stood out against her skin. She lifted her hand up, staring down at them, at the design printed there and engraved into her flesh by Chaldea’s FATE System.

“N-no one else can do it for me,” she said. “So I…have to stand up and walk that path myself.” Her hand trembled. “N-no matter how hard it is…or h-how many mistakes I make along the way.”

She clenched it into a fist. “I just have to…keep moving forward. A-and if I stumble or…or trip…”

“Then your brother and I and Mash and Emiya and everyone else,” I said, “we’ll catch you.”

She turned to me, eyes wet and bloodshot, her face streaked with tears, and she gave me a watery smile. “Yeah!”

My stomach chose that moment to remind me — loudly and in no uncertain terms — that I was actually very hungry. Rika broke out into a burst of hysterical giggles, then had to stop when her own stomach growled just as loudly. She blinked at me.

Then she giggled harder. Even I could stop myself from breaking out into a smile.