Difference between revisions of "Knight, Restored"

Revision as of 22:35, 25 July 2014

The Black Knight has posed:
"Saber, go kill Arturia." Catherine says, staring at the radio on her desk incredulously as this icy Servant was nearly impossible to truly get to accept a duel.

"I refuse. I allowed you to disguise my identity, I have not questioned you. But this, this I will not do. You are asking too much of me." The purple-haired man says as the smaller, blue-haired girl stares him down without an inch of hesitation.

Her eyes are hard, "I need this so they don’t know I work with the Union. My lineage never questioned you simply abandoning the father of my family line. We served in Arthur’s court loyally at your request, even."

Lancelot grits his teeth, "I will not kill her." He says firmly.

Catherine thinks for a moment, "Very well, you leave me no choice in this matter." Catherine crosses her arms, "By my station as your Master, I order you to go and fight Arturia."

Lancelot’s face hardens, but immediately he sees a change in the command.

Catherine winces as one of the command spells vanishes off the back of her head, "Very well." He says, turning towards the door before softly murmuring, "Thank you."

"Shut up." Is the response he gets.

—–

Which brings us to the present. In the wharfs of Fuyuki city, the abandoned areas of the docks where everyone has gone home for the night, stands a servant in jet black armor. He wields but a simple broadsword in his hand and he kneels under the white circle emitted by an overhanging illumination source.

Calmly, he leans on the tip of his sword, softly in prayer as he waits for his opponent to sense his presence and come to respond. He rarely questioned his Magus’ decisions, and her cunning tactics and cold detachment had won them against this War’s Archer already, but this was a decision he was hesitant amount.

If he fought Saber in disguise and won, it would be a hollow victory. If his disguise came off, he was uncertain he and Saber would even be able to fight. And he’d be violating Catherine’s orders. And if he lost, he may die and lose his wish. He understood that Catherine’s plan hinged on understanding that Saber could not kill Mordred, but it was risky and he didn’t like doing this to his former King.

Saber has posed:
Saber was angry, which was a difficult thing to accomplish when one’s name was not Gilgamesh. However, Catherine had known which of her buttons to push to prod the King of Knights to regard her as an enemy. Slow to anger, raising her sword only when the cause was just, Saber nevertheless would have had no qualms about answering the challenge but for one simple reason: the woman’s Servant himself. The existence of that very Servant was the reason that, beneath her anger, lay the bitter remorse and guilt that defined her rule. Mordred, the Knight of the Round Table who had led the rebellion which led to Camelot’s fall, was to be her opponent once more.

A person she had already killed once before… and who had killed her in turn.

It was a truly twisted thing to do, but Saber could not objectively blame her: they were, after all, Servants. Their entire purpose for existence on the material plane was to fight one another to the death, until only one remained to claim the Holy Grail. She had surrendered herself to that fate for the chance to undo everything, and at the time it had been her single hope for the salvation of her kingdom. But now… now that she had witnessed so many different possibilities in the multiverse, Saber was no longer certain.

But this was one battle that she could not avoid. Perhaps she should have alerted Sakura and brought her with her as was the custom of Heaven’s Feel, but it was best that the young woman be protected from reliving its horrors. Whatever the outcome, her Master would be safe.

The King of Knights was, however, somewhat baffled when she arrived at the scene of the duel. The armour of the other knight obfuscated his identity completely; it was not as she had remembered Mordred. How much of him had changed when he ascended to the Throne, she wondered.

Carefully keeping her emotions in check behind her stoic mask, she nevertheless regarded the mysterious Black Knight with eyes that subtly betrayed her regret. "I am here," she spoke in a voice so soft that perhaps only a Servant’s ears could hear it.

The Black Knight has posed:
"I… am sorry." The Servant says as he slowly rises to his feet, "That it must be like this, yet again, I apologize." The bitter irony is that this is a statement equally valid from a scorned son fighting his father once more to Lancelot, meeting Saber in a Grail War for the second time. The heavy armor he wore clattering around him, he rises into a standing position.

"I did not wish for us to meet like this once more." His hands slowly lift up the sword. It weighed heavy on his heart, and lifting it was like lifting the slab of stone that had allowed him to first discover his name when he fought the Dolorous guard. The Servant takes a step back instinctively, moving into a footing and pondering how to handle this match.

Saber did not know his true commands did not require him to kill her. But she thought he was here to do just that. He had an advantage in that Saber was expecting the moves and skill-set of Mordred, but he ran the risk of revealing his own identity if he used to many of his original moves and techniques from his life as Lancelot. Additionally, if he lost the sword, he would be unable to make full use of his Phantasm as that would immediately give him away to Saber.

An entire battle, an entire war, rages behind those purple eyes of the Servant. He goes over every outcome, the pros and cons of an action. And then he makes his move in towards Saber. There’s a woosh of air behind him as he rushes in towards Saber with the unnatural grace and skill so defining of the Saber class. It’s a simplistic and basic move, but any knight knows that those are where victory can be found against true opponents, as elaborate moves will only bring death when fighting a master.

His sword comes high up over his head. This was the second time as a Servant that Lancelot had fought Arturia. This time, though, it was as much a fight against her as it was against his own heart. He did not have the veil of madness that protected him from the weight of his actions against his Once and True King. It was only the hands and heart of a man, a knight, that was aiming to strike down his king for the second time in his life.

He would give anything to be a Berserker again at this moment.

There’s a gust of air behind his blade as it comes down towards Saber from above.

Saber has posed:
"As am I," the petite king replied, carefully keeping the note of regret out of her voice for what she must now do. Even still, at the very least perhaps there was some way to convey her feelings, the ones she had been forced to deny for the sake of the kingdom. Even if her words did not reach him, she had tried, and it would be one less thing for her to regret. "But know this; in spite of the circumstances, it is an honourable battle between knights."

Knights. She had spoken the word, and with it all its meaning. While his actions had been terrible ones, she bore the homunculus no ill-will otherwise. And it had not been him who had been a disastrous failure of a king.

She was ready for him when the Black Knight burst into action; he was indeed a Saber just as she was. Rather than waiting for him to reach her, the diminutive Servant burst into action, racing towards her reluctant opponent with a speed that no human being could ever hope to match. She brought the invisible Excalibur up to bear, meeting his own sword with equal strength.

A fleeting thought formed in the back of Saber’s mind, the possibility of allowing the other Servant a victory with her death. Perhaps it would bring her ‘son’ some measure of peace. But that thought was quickly discarded; with his change of heart, it would be an unforgivable insult not to treat him as an equal in battle. Similarly, she was no longer a participant in Heaven’s Feel; her Master was no longer her Master, but a dear friend… and that friend would grieve with Saber’s loss. Her new duty was to look after Sakura and protect her. It might have been selfishness on the part of the King of Knights, but she wanted to see Sakura mature into the great woman the knight was confident she would blossom into.

She had to live. She had to live to protect her Master and friend. And she had to continue her quest to save Britain.

And with that, her doubts were swept aside, replaced with determination. She would return.

Forgive me for what I must do, my son, she thought. But I must do this.

The Black Knight has posed:
"A duel between knights? I am ashamed to say it is not, as I hide my face from you even to this day." Soft green eyes, filled with regret, stare upon Saber as they are hidden from view by the heavy black armor that he wears. In Mordred’s voice, but in someone else’s words, the voice replies, "I can never face you as a knight, so while I am in this armor I ask that you treat me as a brigand on the highway."

The broadsword, handed to Lancelot on his first day in the Multiverse when he stood defending Catherine with nothing but a pocket knife, is not of the same quality as the legendary Excalibur. And even with his power to make it a Noble Phantasm, it cannot face the blade on even footing. As she swings up to meet his own blade, they collide in a spray of prana and sparks. And a heavy nick is cut into the edge of the blade.

Lancelot steps away, pulling the blade back and shifting his feet across the paved ground, digging up a slight groove as he moved. Years of swordsmanship run through him. Years of service. It would be dishonorable to use that against Saber, the intimate knowledge he had of her strengths and weaknesses as her best friend when she thought him someone else.

No matter what form he took, Saber would never blame him. It was a fact that, to his dying day, had drove the Servant to grief. He could see that look in her eyes, the one that meant she didn’t blame her opponent, will all the blame laying on herself. Every failure the people around her committed, Saber martyred unto herself.

With a deep exhalation, he moves in towards her again. This time his slash is heavy and horizontal. He anticipates being parried, and when she block ed the strike, he ducked and whirled, bringing the blade swinging at her opposite side to try to find the resulting hole in her defense.

He thinks to himself, I am sorry, my king. Once more, I must be the engine of your demise. Perhaps this time you will be able to blame me.

Saber has posed:
With a slight shake of her head, Saber was gentle yet she still denied his words. "No… you had always hidden your face, but you were nothing less than a knight. I am afraid I can treat you as nothing less than that."

It was true that if there was one person she blamed besides herself for Mordred’s twisted upbringing, it was her treacherous and greedy half-sister: Mordred’s mother, Morgana. She was certain the boy had been nothing more than a tool, but perhaps if he had been raised correctly, truly brought up with the ideals of chivalry…

But it was not to be. The only thing that could save them both was for Saber to be granted her wish. The other reason besides her friends that she fought on.

The little blonde intended to deflect the incoming blow into a parry; his speed was at least equal to hers as a fellow Saber. But her surprise reflected in her jade eyes: he was not wielding Clarent, the sword given to him by his mother. But what was even more astonishing was that it was an ordinary broadsword judging by the nick Excalibur left in it. She was certainly confused: had Mordred somehow acquired another Noble Phantasm? Was such a thing possible?

"Mordred, you…"

Yet her question proceeded no further in lieu of fending off the Black Knights next attack. It was another simple one, certainly indicative of the homunculus’s direct style. Yet, something seemed odd about it. She did indeed parry as he anticipated, but when he chained it with a spin and backhand blow that Saber was forced to hop backwards and sideways to evade, she found herself wondering just how different a Servant Mordred had made from the knight she had known.

She closed the gap once more to get within melee range with a quick forward slide, pivoting her sword into what seemed to be a simple strike aimed at his hip, only to bring the sword around her tiny body and redirecting the momentum into a decapitating manoeuvre.

The Black Knight has posed:
In a battle such as this, Lancelot is losing his ability to pretend to be the homunculus’ son of the King of Knights. He didn’t know Mordred’s direct mannerisms in the first place, and the hardest to fool would be Arturia. He lacked Clarent and he was a much different fighter. When Arturia calls him a true knight, he pauses, a momentary flinch, "Your respect is not something I deserve."

As he moves in towards her, his facade fails slowly. Was he always that big? Was he always that bulky? Mordred was supposed to be around the same size as his father. But it’s that singular moment when she calls him Mordred before evading his powerful sword strike that he is off guard. And when her counter comes in, he can’t properly react until the last moment.

Her blade horizontally swipes and he brings up the broadsword to defend, but her powerful move with her sword slices through it with the ease of a loaf of bread. He steps back, the tip of her invisible sword scraping through his armor with just the tip-most of the blade. Had he been from any time other than Saber's own, she would have gotten a killing blow. She missed lethality by no more than an inch. As it stands, his helmet is split open from cheek to cheek.

Bleed slowly seeps from the wound, and beneath that red visor it almost looks like he’s crying tears of blood. He regains his footing and says, "Enough. I cannot give you the battle you deserve and… I am being dishonorable if I continue this façade further. I apologize…" He tosses his broken half of a sword aside before reaching to his side as if there were a scabbard there.

"Only one blade can match yours, Arturia. And I will hide who I am from you no further." His hand stresses, arm straining as if he were pulling the weight of the world to unsheath a weapon, "Oh blade, bestowed upon the truest knights, tainted by the dishonor of its owner…" As it is drawn, a torrent of white light fills the area. Though that white light is tainted with swirls of black and red, as if it were once meant to be pure, but has since fallen to a taint.

"ARONDIGHT!"

When the blade is drawn, the illusion around Lancelot vanishes. His black armor resembles a form Saber will more closely recognize. And his helmet, cut open by her, shatters to reveal the purple hair and eyes of her once best friend. He stands to his full height and then… sticks his sword into the ground, burying the tip as he falls to his knee, bowing his head.

"Your Majesty, I beg your forgiveness for my deception up until now."

Saber has posed:
The flinch did not go unnoticed. When they had lived, fought, and died, there was so much she wished she could have told him, yet was hindered by her need to maintain her façade until the very end. What harm would it do now to tell him, when it was only the two of them to hear her words? Perhaps he would never forgive her; she couldn’t blame him. Yet, she owed the boy at least that much. "Had you only thought of the people rather than chasing after a failure of a king, you would have made a fine one."

Once more she was surprised; Excalibur was easily one of the most powerful of Noble Phantasms, but unless it was extremely weak, another Noble Phantasm could at the very least counter it. Yet, the Sword of Promised Victory effortlessly cleaved the inferior broadsword in two and nearly took the head off of her opponent with it. In any other battle, that would have been fortuitous, but in this battle it was hardly what she wanted. But the most devastating shock of all was yet to come.

Even as the Black Knight began speaking, the realisation dawned on the Once and Future King of Britain that her earlier words had been wasted, for they were not directed at the correct person. Instead, they had been directed at another who held even less blame in her eyes. And on her girlish face was reflected all the shock she felt, sea-green eyes wide as they beheld the true form of the knight before her.

Saber’s mind reeled with an impact as forceful as any physical blow, and she nearly dropped her holy sword with her sudden, unexpected weakness. "It… it cannot be…"

Yet, as impossible as it should have been, there he was before her as she remembered him in life; not the Servant whose mind had been clouded in madness until the seconds after she had run him through, but the only one who had known her true identity. Her finest knight. Her only friend.

"…Lancelot?"

The Black Knight has posed:
Lancelot had disobeyed every order of his master in relation to keeping who they were a secret. A bond with Catherine that went beyond Magus and Servant due to their shared blood was superseded by the one person his loyalty had truly belonged to. His head remained bowed respectfully and he stared at the ground, his loyalty preventing him from gazing upon his once-King without her permission to rise. His fealty kept him that loyal, but his shame also kept him so humble.

One arm remains crossed over his knee while his right hand grips the hilt of the sword as it pierces the ground, radiating with its power, even fallen as it was due to its wielders failures. When he speaks again, he says, "Yes, Arturia. It is I, and though I have no right to ask it after I’ve deceived you this long, and with the history between us…"

He hesitates, remembering what he said to Saber in his dying moments. He slowly releases his grip on his sword, the blade clattering to the ground to rest at his side as his other hand returns to his knee and he tries to think of the words to make his request. He furrows his brow, hair obscuring his face from view, which is good, because Saber might see the single tear in the corner of his eye. Finally, he finds the valor to speak his request.

"I request your punishment and reprimand as my Lord and King for the crimes I have committed against Camelot, that I may serve my penance and return to my place…" He stops for a moment, words catching in his throat before he finally exhales heavily and manages to force out, "As one of your loyal knights. And as your friend."

Saber has posed:
Just as she had when he lay dying in her arms before she faced Archer, Saber was speechless. Books could be filled with all the things she wanted to tell him, reassurances that he was still a knight, that he had not been the one to fail her, that by all rights he should have been free to love a woman shamefully married to another simply to maintain an equally shameful illusion. Everything he had sacrificed had been for the sake of a king who should never have been the king to begin with.

Once more, she could not seem to be able to say what she truly wanted to; there was too much to say. Rare was the moment when the King of Knights was reduced to hopelessly stammering, lost in confusion and overtaken with the emotions she had suppressed for many years for the sake of her kingdom. She was, effectively, disarmed.

"No, I… you… it was not…"

There was, however, one very important difference between the end of their last battle and now. He was not disappearing in her arms from a fatal wound she had given him. By some miracle, she had been granted a second chance, one she had given up as impossible until she had been granted her wish. She could not waste this reprieve. Not this time.

Rather than reassure him that she still considered him a knight, or insist that he had already been punished enough, or that all the blame was hers, there was one very simple thing that mattered above all else. The one thing she could say that would be the starting point for everything else. She could say all those other things later, once she had made one thing absolutely clear to him.

"You were always my friend…" The tears that had been welling in her eyes finally spilled down her pale face, and she did nothing to stop them. "…Always."

The Black Knight has posed:
Lancelot waits for Saber’s response, afraid of how she would take his request. It was one that carried a heavy weight, and despite Saber’s insistence, he felt like it was he who had truly failed Camelot. He had broken, in modern parlance, the cardinal rule of putting a woman before a true friend. And for that he was forever shamed. And his actions had sown dissent amongst an already unstable society.

His purple eyes, locked onto her jade gaze, betray a sadness. She had been forced to kill him to break the cure of madness, but because of his second death he had been allowed to be reborn as a Saber… as a Knight. When she finds herself unable to speak, he slowly stands and says, "You had slain me when last we met. I died in your arms… the death of a true knight. Your kingship allowed me to… regain my knighthood, Arturia."

He slowly extends a hand towards her, the metal plates of his armor vanishing to reveal a purple tunic and quilted pants as was traditionally worn under platemail in their time. His hand extends towards her palm up as he slowly steps towards her, a boot padding on the ground with a heavy footfall, "Your Majesty…"

"Tears do not suit your station…"He lets his hand brush over her cheek, wiping away the tears from her eyes before he lets the hand drift behind her head and then he embraces his King, his best friend, hugging her to his chest unless she pulls away. She had made a powerful statement to him, and it was the first time in a long time he had known her to break down in any capacity, even when he was a Round Table Knight.

"I… will never betray you again, Arturia." He says to her softly, "And I’m sorry it took me so long to return to my duties."

Saber has posed:
In her mind, her First Knight had committed no sin that could have been avoided had there been a king without a need to hide his gender, to rule with a deception that forever separated her from her subjects… even her knights. While he had slain fellow knights, it was an action to save the woman he loved, the woman that she herself could not save. Some part of her was glad that he had, though she wished she could have spared the lives of those knights who had simply been following their orders. So many had to die for her sake, for a king who could not even save her country from ruin. Did she even have a right to be content with her life with Sakura, Rin, Shirou, Agrias, and all her other friends? Did she truly have the right to have her old friend once again?

Saber could not help but feel shame and guilt; in no measure did she deserve such blessings.

At no time did she feel this shame and guilt more keenly than when the Knight of the Lake told her that she had released him from his forced madness, that she had restored his knighthood simply by dying in her arms. And when he pulled her into his embrace, what was left of the crumbling walls around her heart fell. Instead of pulling away, she sobbed openly and without reserve against the purple-clad chest. All the words that she had wanted to say before remained unsaid, but even as she sobbed she uttered a single phrase over and over, the other most important thing she had to tell him.

"I’m sorry… I’m sorry… I’m sorry…"

The Black Knight has posed:
By contrast, in his mind, his actions had been the ultimate betrayal. He had fallen in love with his king and best friend’s wife and then used Guinevere’s weakness and Arturia’s trust to break his code of ethics. He’d killed his fellow knights. He’d even lied to Arturia after she’d killed him and he’d come back.

Arturia had been his best friend for most of his life. He knew the ruler like few else ever could, and he knew that for her to be in this state was unheard of ever before. His hand gently pets the back of her head as she sobs into his chest, and his chin comes to rest on top of her head. She might feel the streams of tears that run down her most loyal of knight’s cheeks in return, echoing a mixture of sorrow for her state and happiness at her accepting his fealty again.

He takes a deep breath and says, "You do not need to apologize any more, Your Majesty. Perhaps the fall of Camelot was… all of our failings as humans. And not just your sorrow to shoulder any more." He hugs her tight against him.

Saber has posed:
Rider had scorned her, Archer had mocked her, and her own previous Master had, at best, seen her as nothing but a tool in spite of his loftier goals. Of all of the, Rider had come the closest to making Saber lose heart and abandon her wish out of despair, and only with Irisviel’s reassurances had her faith been restored. When she was informed by Rin and Shirou that the Holy Grail of their timeline had been destroyed — and at her hands a second time — it had simply meant she would have to find another way, a better and more reliable way. Her friendship with Agrias, her 'family' with the Tohsaka sisters, her new ‘job’ with Fate… all of these things had dulled the pain of her loss, of her failed duties. It remained buried beneath her mask, kept from even those who were closest to her. It was Saber’s burden alone to bear.

Which was perhaps why the words of her faithful knight might have had the opposite effect he’d intended. She didn’t deny them; perhaps he was right and it was a failure on the part of everyone, in spite of her self-blame. In a way, she didn’t want to believe it; if she simply removed herself from the picture, everyone would be saved, the people would have their utopia, and her loved ones would be happy. She could make everything better if she simply tried harder.

And yet his words reached a place she was not even aware of, a pain that she had been shouldering alone. Paralysed by the fear of causing anyone else pain, she bore it to protect those around her. But Lancelot was her friend… did she really want to hurt him yet again?

Rather than speaking, her tiny hands clutched at the fabric of his tunic. She had never felt so vulnerable, so uncertain about where to go from this point. Could she save her kingdom? Should she try to save it?

The Black Knight has posed:
Lancelot slowly pulls Saber off from clutching his chest, instead shifting their stance so that instead of her crying into his chest, the much larger knight has one of his arms around her shoulder and he can begin leading Saber away from the Wharf. His sword on the ground dissolves into flecks of white, black and red, their streams wisting into the air as it dissolves to be summoned again later.

"Come, Arturia. This is a new time, and we have much to discuss, as I wish to know how far you have come since I was felled last war." He says to her softly as he walks, wiping his eyes with the back of one of his sleeves before using it to wipe at her own jade eyes, "And I wish to know more about how a knight like me can fit into this timeframe, as Catherine has given me permission to explore though I have not seen fit to use it."

He hugs her to his side as they walk, "Perhaps, with no kingdom to rule over, we can be equals this time." He smiles faintly before putting his hand on top of her head and petting her gently, "Or as equal as we can be, since you shall always be my only king and lord." He says to the blonde.

Saber has posed:
It was a strange and wholly unfamiliar experience for the King of Knights; instead of being the strong one, she had been pushed beyond her limits and had ended up relying on someone else’s strength more than she ever had before. It would have mortified her otherwise, but she had relied upon Lancelot so many times already. Now that he had been restored to her, Saber somehow found herself slipping into that familiar pattern.

She had many questions about his new Master, and given this encounter she was disinclined to trust her, even if she trusted the Servant completely. "There is much I have yet to learn myself… though I have been with my current Master for more than two years…."

Now that she thought about it, she would be lacking in her duty if she did not introduce Sakura to her old friend, and vice versa. "If you have no objections, I would like to introduce you to my Master. She is a woman of upstanding character and quite proficient as a magus."

The moment was completely and rudely ruined by the unmistakable sound of a growling stomach: hers. The expression that flickered across her face was one of mixed embarrassment and annoyance before she sighed. She really should have eaten something earlier. "Well… and she is a most excellent chef. Perhaps a proper repast is on order," she declared with as much regal bearing as she could under the circumstances. "I would be honoured if you would join me, my friend."

With a slight smile and a sigh, Saber eschewed her usual sense of inferiority about her height. He was, after all, tall by any standards. "Equals, now. The King of Knights I might be, but I am a Servant and a friend now before all else."

The final smile she turned up at the Knight of the Lake was subtle, but as bright as any the little blonde shared with anyone. "And it is my friends who are my greatest treasure."