I create a world of finite somethings

This is sort of the crux of what I would want to explore with the whole dismantling-the-grail concept. I had something similar when I was working out what exactly IANT was going to do. Also, the excuse to write not-comedic-or-lolhollow ataraxia Saber material.



It was far from the perfect harmony they had once shared at the climax of the Fifth Heaven’s Feel.

Saber was naturally a quiet, attentive person. Even before the kingship that had distanced her from the people of her country, the little girl that had dreamed to uphold an ideal had been one of seriousness and silent devotion. She worked hard toward her goals, never once complaining, and sought with every pore of her body to be as capable as she could with not even a single breath wasted. So her silence came naturally, as did the way she watched the world around her unfold.

Of course, before, she had been so exasperated by her Master’s bullheaded naivety that she could not help but speak up whenever he was about to do something extremely daring or foolish. And he did daring and foolish things often.

Though exasperating, it was endearing in its own way.

The man she looked upon now was still the same person. She understood that people did not change, so to speak—they grew. The base form was always the same. But like a tree, the base grew thicker, the branches spread out, and any number of leaves and blossoms could sprout from that base. Winds blew branches down, humans pruned errant limbs, and the weather might stunt growth, all of which guided the growth into certain directions.

He was still the same, yet very much different.

His growth had certainly not been stunted, nor clipped away, nor blown down, but he was definitely growing in one specific fashion. Refined, she might say, like steel was wrought from iron. The naivety was present, but overgrown with protection to keep it from being harmed. He was still daring, most definitely, though the foolishness had abated from the day-to-day actions he might take into something that she thought she understood to a certain extent: the foolishness of continuing down a path that had no end. Or at least, no end that any mere human had ever seen.

It made her feel both happy and sad at the same time.

He was, perhaps moreso than before, her equal. No longer the boy that only had a goal but little in the way of actualization to his dream. He was now older than she had been upon Camlann, had seen his fair share of war—and though the scope and nature of warfare might have changed since her times, she would never say that one was greater or lesser than another.

He was also no longer the idealist she had to look out for. No, Saber decided, he was certainly someone to protect, to shield from harm, though it was different than before. He would not recklessly charge into the fray and push her from the arc of Berserker’s swing—he now had the capacity to do something more than place his life between those he wished to save and the death that came to strike them.

She was certainly proud of that, though she felt she had little in the way of influence there. Perhaps, she was simply proud of being able to claim I love this person, proud to say that the feelings she had found as a woman were to a person who had gone from helplessness to strength, almost as if overnight.

It was sad, though, that she no longer could say that she held some kind of authority over him—before, she was his superior, both in ability and in experience. Even if his heart had not wavered like hers had, even though he might have had strength greater than hers within him, she could still hold onto the fact that her experiences had not been for nothing, that the power she lent him could be rightfully wielded.

She wondered, now, if she had anything to give. Though he was still not her equal in ability, his experience was now great and he had clearly made do with what he had—all a knight could ask for.

If she was going to protect him, she knew, it was no longer from the world at large. It was from becoming what, eventually, had led to the weakness in her heart, the thought that in the end, it did not matter at all. She wanted to make sure that the choice he made that day—the choice that she realized should have been her own all along—would never be tarnished, would always be kept close to his heart, no matter what else may stain him.

It was no longer the harmony they shared as before. He was beyond the boy that knew only a goal and what it took to reach it, and she was no longer the weapon by which to pave the way.

He was the boy that had been her scabbard, worthy to keep the king's sword protected.

She now had to be his blade, one worthy to be wielded by a peerless blacksmith.




I'm not sure this would go in, or if it did, if it would even be all together like this, but I guess it's part of the reason all this stuff won't get out of my head. I've said before how I always view the three route pictures of Shirou with the heroines as indicative to the story being told (Saber is holding Shirou up in Fate, Rin and Shirou are back-to-back in UBW, and Sakura is being embraced by Shirou in HF), so I guess this is my mind going, "how would that work going in the opposite direction?"

inb4 Shirou and Rin front-to-front.