Name: Family Values
Author: Anon


A Fate/Zero Story
--------------------------
Waver Velvet isn’t sure how he keeps winding up in situations like now.

Well, that’s not entirely true. As a magus expecting the unexpected is simply par for the course, especially when competing in something as fantastic as the Holy Grail War, but he hadn’t foreseen this. Pinching his brow in what he knows is a futile attempt to alleviate his growing headache, Waver looks down at the newest complication in his already over-complicated life.

The little girl with the strange purple hair and dull eyes doesn’t look back, or do anything besides what she’s been doing in the hour since she woke up-stare silently at her feet and remain very still.

Waver sighs. Sprawled out on the bed, Rider helps himself to one of the senbei crackers Martha had brought up earlier.

“Now what?” Iskander asks, crunching down on the cracker. His Master doesn’t respond, not having any more of an answer himself.

-----------------------------

Like practically everything relating to Waver’s life these days, it had all begun innocuously enough before quickly spiraling out of control. “Go out and find Caster’s hideout” had seemed a straightforward goal, even if he had to bribe the initial water for the search of Rider with a set of modern clothing. He had covered his bases, not forgetting that while out for Caster other Servants and Masters could easily become an issue. Waver had been careful about things, meticulous in his planning. Every Servant in the war he had taken into account what he knew of them and their abilities. Admittedly, some were more thorough than others. Berserker, for instance, is such a largely unknown factor beyond ‘very fast, very strong, can make anything weapon-like a Noble Phantasm’.

New information had recently extended those parameters, although Waver really hasn’t had the time to condense it into anything other than ‘also very unpredictable’ and ‘Oh God, Oh God, I’m really going to die this time’ with a generous amount of incoherent babbling and some frantic hyperventilating. This is chiefly because Berserker had ambushed both Waver and Rider while they were some ways from the MacKenzie house, and even now is dedicating his minimal mental faculties and impressive physical ones to turning them both into smears on the pavement.

Rider, of course, is being his usual self about things. From Waver’s point of view, anyone who looks that thrilled about someone coming this close to landing a fatal strike on their person was due for a serious talk about how often they had been dropped on the head as a child. Only Alexander the Great could make a still in-progress battle to the death feel more like a friendly rugby match. 

“A splendid strike, Berserker!” Rider congratulates the raging black beast genially, parrying vicious blows made with a telephone pole-turned-Noble Phantasm all the while. In turn, Berserker gives off another of his strange, howling roars and swings his impromptu weapon at a speed Waver’s eyes are incapable of following. The best he can do is guess the trajectory from the way things are being smashed around them, though by some miracle he’s avoiding being hit by debris thus far. Somewhere in the back of Waver’s mind he notes that being able to mire up inner sarcasm is actually an improvement on his mental standing during battles, probably a sign he’s becoming more accustomed to his life being in peril. This realization does not in any way comfort him, as does the thought Rider’s special brand of madness must be contagious.

What also doesn’t come as any particular comfort is their location. Though their initial landing spot had been chosen specifically because it was far enough away from the MacKenzie house not to arouse suspicion, Waver’s carelessness in not checking to see what else it was near was the cause of their predicament now. By this point they are in the midst of the oldest and stateliest part of Miyama’s residential district, where the Western-style houses and mansions can be found. This is bad, to say the least. It’s not just the possibility of attracting outside attention that has Waver on edge. He knows enough of the area to be aware the further south they find themselves, the closer they get to the Tohsaka mansion. Engaging Archer under such poor circumstances, in a location as unfit for combat as this-even someone with his poor experience in battle can see this should be avoided if at all possible.

“Rider!” Waver practically yelps when a piece of concrete torn up by Berserker just barely avoids turning his skull into something with the consistency of porridge. “We need to finish things off before Tohsaka decides to send Archer in!”

Rider gives him a look Waver has quickly learned to read as ‘the king recommends you chose your words more wisely and fast’, and he scrambles to add, “The more you toy with Berserker the less strength you’ll have to face Archer. You already said Berserker can’t be conquered, so let’s just finish him and move on!”

“Mm…well said. It’s good you’re starting to show a bit more nerve, kid,” Rider says conversationally. He parries once, twice, three times more before hitting Berserker’s makeshift weapon at such an angle that it is hurled out of his hands. Temporarily de-armed, the Black Knight races to pick it up again with blazing speed. However, the King of Conquerors uses that split second of time to his full advantage. A slice of the air with his sword while grabbing Waver’s collar with his free hand brings a crack of thunder and the Gordius Wheel before them. On the defensive, Berserker waves his reacquired polearm only to be clipped by one of the sharp scythes on the side of the chariot as Rider charges forward. “Maybe now you’ll only have to wish for twenty-nine centimeters of height from the Grail instead of thirty!”

The contact causes the Berserker to crash through the gates of the old manor they are in front of with powerful force. He finally stops when he collides into the ground, creating a crater deep enough to reveal the pipelines underneath the Servant’s body had cracked open. It’s not a killing blow, but even Waver can tell it’ll only take one more good strike to eliminate the weakened Berserker. Why his Master hadn’t waited longer for the Servant to recover from the first time Rider had run over it Waver didn’t know, but his enemy’s lack of judgment could only be his gain. 

Then what his own Servant said hits him. “I only improved by one centimeter?!”

“It was generous, I know,” Rider laughs while Waver sputters with indignation. Before Waver can try to take him to task for it the massive Servant takes the reins in hand, expression going rather more focused. That combined with the ozone-like atmosphere of Rider’s prana gathering tells Waver all too clearly what’s coming next. “But you can thank me after we finish this guy off, eh?”

Waver should be satisfied by all rights, that Rider is taking this seriously now and they’re about to finish off a dangerous Servant with a minimum of damage. For the most part, he is. But there’s this nagging feeling in the back of his mind that he’s missing something important, something that could prove their undoing.

“Via Expugnatio!” Rider shouts, invoking the name of the chariot’s true charge to give it that much more power. Considering Berserker barely survived the unnamed one, there’s no doubt in Waver’s mind this strike will prove the end of him. And yet, as they move forward with incomparable power he still feels uneasy, and that strange smell in the air isn’t helping-

Lightning crackles with the fury of the storm brought to earth against its own will, and in a split second four very significant things happen.

Berserker disappears in an instant, with a surge of prana that can only come from a Command Spell issued order.

Waver realizes that the manor they are currently on the grounds of is the Matou one.

Rider is still moving forward with the full power of his Noble Phantasm and unable to slow the charge in time.

And that smell in the air is leaking gas.

If Waver had more time to think about it, it would have been that the movies had it all wrong. Time didn’t trudge to a halt, the disaster playing out in slow motion. There had merely been the beginnings of ‘Rider, stop’ on his tongue before the lightning and gas collided and his world reduced to an explosion.

-----------------------------

Someone is calling Waver’s name. He thinks. It’s kind of hard to tell when sight and sound have been reduced to the same consistency as golden syrup. Even his memories are…what had just happened…

Enough of his facilities come back that Waver can switch on his Circuits for a full body prana charge. It’s a pretty rough method by anyone’s standards, but in his current state it works like a cold shower for a hangover to bring him some approximation of coherence.

“Kid! Kid! How many fingers am I holding up?”

It’s reassuring Waver is in command of his senses enough to realize how inane that question is. And that Rider is the one doing the questioning.

“Three, and stop shaking me.” Waver takes a look at his surroundings, trying to recall what had just happened. There had just been a fight, that much is obvious. But what else had happened?

“Well, if you’re feeling good enough to be prickly I’m not worried.” Rider sits back on his heels, bright eyes alit with amusement. 

“What happened?” Waver gives up trying to make sense of the situation on his own, and can only hope he’ll get a straight answer from his boisterous Servant.

“It’s not obvious just by looking?” Rider says before looking to his side. Following the path of his gaze, Waver’s jaw drops. The Matou manor-

No, it couldn’t really be called a manor in that state. Not a building, even. Wreckage is probably the best term to describe a place that consists of mostly rubble and one tentatively standing wall. 

“You got stunned by the force of the explosion, but we were far enough away that Gordius Wheel didn’t take any damage. Not that a mundane blast would even dent it,” Rider says with a sniff. “That building took the worst of it.”

Waver doesn’t know what to think. This is a war and it isn’t like the Matou were unaware of the risks when they entered. But even someone as selfish as himself lacks the coldness to just walk away as if nothing happened.

“How long ago was the explosion? How long was I out?” Waver finally asks.

“Not long. Two minutes, maybe?”

Two minutes. That doesn’t leave them much time before emergency services will presumably show up, but it’s enough.

“We need to do it fast, but let’s look for any survivors. The least courtesy we can give them is a chance to live.” Waver can’t pinpoint why he feels strangely embarrassed by the look Rider gives him after that, but he isn’t given long to dwell on it when that large hand slaps his shoulder with approving if not bruising force.

“We can,” Rider says with pride before taking another glance at the rubble. “It seems like it was practically empty though.”

“Let’s just get to it. We don’t have much time.”

To Waver’s secret relief, it seems that Rider is correct in his assessment. He finds the crushed corpse of one man, a half empty bottle of sake still clutched tightly in his hand. A massive slab covers another so completely the only hint anyone was killed under it at all is the blood-flecked walking stick just by it. The guilt weighs at him, but it could have been so much worse. Waver still can’t quite believe a massive house like this one hadn’t even had a single servant in it, but who is he to complain about fewer casualties?

“C’mon Rider. I think those two were the only people in the whole mansion…” Waver trails off, seeing his Servant staring at what little remains of the building intently. The great man is moving strangely too, taking a few steps, stamping his foot down, then taking a few more steps again before repeating the process. “What are you doing?”

“It’s hollow, underneath. There must be a basement or something,” Rider says, brow furrowing as he carefully paces the ground. All Waver can wonder is where his Servant is going with all this.

“In a house like this, probably, but why would someone be down there this late at night?” Waver asks skeptically. Despite this, an anxious feeling is starting to make its way to his stomach. Good instincts come with the territory of being a magus, a survival mechanism ingrained from the earliest divide between those with magical power and those without. Foolhardy magi don’t live long, as a rule. Right now, everything Waver has is telling him there’s something down there he doesn’t want to see. The fact that he last had this sort of feeling at Caster’s base is not helping matters any.

Rider moves aside a slab that once served as a wall, revealing a half-demolished door barely hanging onto the hinges. The entrance, to the underground space. Waver doesn’t want to go down there with a strength that is palpable, but as usual Rider takes the matter out of his Master’s hands and into his own. Darkness looms, worn stone steps trailing down into the dimness like jagged teeth. Every nerve in his body tells him to stay away, not that it matters. With his natural fearlessness Rider descends, and by this point trailing him has become second-nature to Waver.

Master and Servant aren’t far down before the smell hits them both. Damp, sickly sweet, and above all reeking of decay, it assaults the senses. If his stomach hadn’t already been empty from seeing the gruesome horrors of Caster’s lair, Waver probably would have thrown up right then and there. As it is Waver still can’t help but retch emptily on air till his throat feels raw with it. His knees buck with a wave of dizziness, but even through that the derision he feels towards himself now is clear. Why had he gone down those steps in the first place? Waver knows he’s no sort of great man, nor even a good one.

It’s Rider’s fault. Rider and his ability to draw you into his vision of the world despite all knowledge, experience, and instinct speaking otherwise, and make you believe it to the point it became your vision too. Waver would call it charisma so intense it had a presence all its own, but someone he doesn’t think it comes down to just that. Something about his Servant just makes it so much more-

“Calm now?” Rider’s voice rumbles to break Waver’s thoughts up. 

Not really, but he doesn’t feel like sharing that. It doesn’t matter, as he at least has it together enough to keep his priorities in order. “I’m fine. Let’s just go now, there’s obviously no one here.”

Rider cocks his head, not replying. Waver is about to take him to task for it when the larger man says, “Someone is. I can hear breathing. Faint, but it’s still there.”

“In a place like this?! Who would be down here?!” Waver can’t help his incredulous tone. He doesn’t actually doubt Rider, knowing full well how vastly superior Servant senses are to his own. In terms of visibility and smell, Caster’s lair had been worse than this basement, and Rider had done just fine when the Assassins showed up. But trying to fathom why this place of rot and decay would have a person in it…Waver knows enough of how magi can be to connect the dots, and his mind has only begun to scratch the surface of the chilling scenarios as a result.

In all this time Rider didn’t respond to the question, rhetorical as it is. He merely continues heading down the stairs with his usual self-assurance, leaving Waver no choice but to follow or be left alone. And the prospect of being without his Servant’s protection in a place like this is by far the scarier option. He relies on Rider’s back before him for a lead to follow than anything else. There’s a dimness suffusing the basement, a phosphorous glow not unlike that given off by certain types of mold, but it isn’t nearly enough for eyes that are still adjusting to it. Waver has a feeling it’d be hard to see in even for someone used to the level of illumination.

After what feels like forever, the stairs finally end at a floor of the same cold, worn stone. That isn’t all that’s there. Waver had only been dimly aware of it before, between his own turbulent emotions and the gloom of the basement, but there are insects chittering everywhere, on every surface, skittering in and out of the many holes where bodies are tucked away to slowly decompose . As this is the basement of a magus family, there is no chance that these are ordinary vermin and he finds himself stepping closer to Rider without thinking about it. The revulsion he’s feeling right now skips past conscious thought entirely, landing straight into primal instinct. Do not get close to those things, they are vile, they are dangerous. Stay away. Those feelings are as written into his body as the need for air and sustenance.

The one thing that reassures Waver is that Rider is simply far too powerful for them to bear. Unable to withstand the sheer force he radiates any more than a human can walk on the sun, the worms flee away in black ripples to retreat as far as they possibly can. As the insects that can only be some level of familiar do so, another shape is revealed amidst the gloom. It’s too indistinct for Waver’s eyes to make out, bigger than the worms but far smaller than Rider’s massive form or even his own slighter one.

Waver squints, trying to discern what it is without having to move away from Rider. Especially when the Servant takes in one single, deep breath and tenses up. If Waver hadn’t had nearly the same experience happen to him in Caster’s lair he wouldn’t have seen the action for what it is-a struggle to keep control. A chill sets upon his spine, knowing Rider can see that small thing far more clearly than he can. And that whatever it is, it caused a reaction like that out of a man who had seen far more than a young English magus.

“Stay right here. Those parasite familiars won’t get close enough to be a problem, but I can’t be sure of this. Not with the kind of magus who would have a workshop like this to begin with.”

Rider moves forward, calm and measured. But if he meant to protect Waver, it’s already too late. His eyes have finally adjusted to the point where he can see clearly enough, as much as he now wishes they hadn’t.

It’s a girl, that little shape he couldn’t make out. A young, young girl. 

The way the sheer horror washes like an icy wave over Waver has a weird effect of being so all-consuming his emotions become numb with it, leaving nothing but observational thought behind. Five, maybe six years old at most. Unconscious but breathing. Completely naked, and shackled to the floor at the wrists and ankles. So she couldn’t possibly get away, not the tiniest bit, in this place of rot and damp and bugs-

Waver backs away in a way that requires no cognizant thought, and bumps into something on the ground. Tearing his appalled gaze away from the girl he nearly jumps before seeing nothing but a little basket. He picks it up to see there’s clothes in it, a pink ribbon, dark violet dress and socks. Despite its innocuousness, that basket just makes things that much more disturbing. There’s something in it that adds a cold calculation to the nightmarish tableau. Someone brought that basket down so there would be a place for those clothes, someone who calmly went ahead and chained up a young child to leave her to the mercy of the vermin abounding in this place.

Waver doesn’t even realize he’s shaking and near hyper-ventilating until Rider’s heavy hand on shoulder snaps him out of it. It’s oddly reassuring, that touch. Somehow, Waver finds it in himself to pull it together and face his Servant. 

The King of Conquerors holds the purple-haired girl as carefully as a great treasure, her small frame wrapped up in the heavy folds of his great crimson cape. It’s a little hard to tell when she’s so completely covered, but she at least doesn’t seem to be in any immediate pain. Waver reaches out a hand to perform a basic analysis on her, only to have Rider pull just out of his reach.

“It might not be safe for you to touch her,” Rider cautioned, serious expression visible even in this poor light. “I’m no magus, but there’s something-several of them-underneath her skin. I could feel it when I picked her up.”

Waver doesn’t bother to respond, the analytic part of his mind that allowed him to pull ahead so far despite his brief lineage working at a furious pace. He embraces it thoroughly, the place of pure logic and thaumaturgy’s laws that leaves no room for his still-present horror. There’s only so much he knows about the situation, but it’s enough. Familiars, especially of a parasitic type as these worms, and something strange in the flesh of a girl trapped in a place full of them. A girl who can only be the descendant of magi, that much he can tell from her weak but present magical energy. He’s not a magus whose strengths revolve around surgical modification and healing, but genius means nothing if not finding some sort of solution.

The first step to take now is obvious: leaving this place. Waver is no saint, but even he can’t fathom leaving the girl behind. 

“Let’s go, then. You’ll have to carry her up.” Waver says shortly, voice slightly raspy from all the abuse his throat had gone through. Trusting his Servant to follow, he makes his way back up the steps and has never been so relieved to leave somewhere in his life. Moving quickly, it isn’t long before they are out of the house proper and off the grounds completely.

The second step is obvious as well. There isn’t much time for it, maybe a minute or two more before emergency services arrive. But the one thing Waver has never doubted about Rider is his unfaltering strength. The King of Conquerors can surely manage what he is about to be tasked with.

“Rider,” Waver starts, and when his Servant looks at him in acknowledgment some small part of him thinks it’s with a regard he hasn’t seen before. “Can you destroy this place so completely not a single one of those insects remain, and do it fast?”

A grin splits Rider’s face as he carefully sets the girl down and draws out his blade, but it lacks the jovialness Waver is used to. This is a different sort of smile altogether, one that can only come in anticipation of a well deserved beat down.

“One minute.” Rider slices the air, the familiar crack of thunder greeting the arrival of the sacred bulls. “That is all I need for total obliteration of low-level vermin.”

“Good,” Waver says, meaning it completely. “After that, keep the Gordius Wheel out. We’re going to have to stop by where I summoned you before going back to the MacKenzies.”

Rider raises a brow at that, but merely takes his rightful place in the chariot before charging off. It’s fine, Waver thinks. After he’s done, there will be plenty of time to explain why he needs quick access to a fully ready magic circle.

-----------------------------

After the destruction of the Matou grounds, things had progressed so quickly Waver still hadn’t fully processed it.

First had been his business with the summoning circle. Had Waver been at the Clock Tower with full access to his lab and materials he would have been ashamed for anyone to see such a rough working of thaumaturgy. But the circumstances were what they were, and getting rid of the Matou place wouldn’t have done much good in the long run if he hadn’t done something about the familiars still in the girl’s body.

Even with the useful backup of a full magic circle, things probably wouldn’t have turned out as decently as they had if the spell Waver had fallen upon wasn’t of the most basic sort. The main challenge of dealing with the worms had been his inability to remove them at all, not without causing serious or possibly fatal damage.

So he had done the next best thing possible.

It was an old spell, one long out of fashion and that even a devout researcher like Waver only learned of in his studies of magic circuits and mage bodies for the thesis he had put together. A simple spell, most popular in the days witch burnings and the Inquisition had been at their most serious level of threat to every magus across Europe. But one where simplicity only aided in its effectiveness.

στάση, or stási̱. A Greek spell of freezing and locking all prana movement within the body, to the point where the person it was performed upon became indistinguishable from a being lacking magic circuits. Similar in effect to St. Martin’s cloth, the ultimate means of avoiding detection by witch hunters. A simple but risky spell that fell out of style for its primary weakness of needing to be broken by someone with working circuits, requiring a level of trust and reliance uncommon in the magus community. Nonetheless, even the seal keeping the spell in place itself does not generate prana, leaving the person it has been performed upon completely off the radar of those seeking magi. The effect of paralyzing all prana sources in the body includes those that may be originally foreign to it.

It was a stop-gap measure to be sure. But it would hold for the time being, and for now that was enough. No longer having to worry about physical contact with the girl, Waver dressed her in the clothes he had brought along from the basement. Just thinking about it disgusted him, but it was all available for her to wear. 

That had just left the MacKenzies as the most immediate problem to be dealt with. Waver could only imagine how two grown men showing up with an unconscious little girl late at night would look like to them. It was far beyond the point where simply overwriting their memories would work at all, and he was getting wary of overusing that one any way. In the end, he had settled for as much of the truth as he could safely share, aided with just enough magical suggestion to be persuasive. 

The girl’s home had been destroyed in an unexpected accident and her family with it, Waver had told them. Her body was delicate and had a physical condition due to be treated, and he couldn’t simply send her off for social services to deal with. She had no one and nowhere else to turn to, and Waver had taken it upon himself to keep an eye on her for the moment. The only outright lie he had told was that she was the sister of the ‘friend’ he had gotten the chickens from, but how else to explain a connection to her?

All this, along with Rider collaborating his story, had been enough for Glen and Martha. It had probably been the effect of his Servant’s extreme charisma more than anything, but Waver was pragmatic enough to take his victories however he could. Something of a Mother Hen attitude had taken over Martha, and after bringing the child up to Waver’s room she had shooed both Master and Servant away to change her into an old nightshirt. Only after tucking the little girl in had Martha deemed it okay for them to enter the guest room once more. She returned once more to set out a spare futon for Waver, who could only resign himself to the loss of the bed with grace, and senbei crackers for them both before excusing herself to go back to her interrupted sleep.

Shortly afterwards, the girl had woken up. Waver hadn’t been sure exactly what to prepare himself to deal with, but it hadn’t been what he had gotten. The purple-haired girl had looked about the room silently, a kind of muted confusion visible on her face. He had tried in vain to get anything out of her, but the girl just sat on the bed without a word, listless and passive.

-----------------------------

Which brings them all to the present moment.

“Look,” Waver tries again. He’s never been good with children, and considering what this one has probably gone through he feels like he’s walking on eggshells filled with dynamite. “Don’t you want to know what’s going on or anything?”

Still nothing from her. Waver slumps, wondering at how someone so passive could also be so rock stubborn. He doesn’t have any idea about what to do, now that thaumaturgy isn’t involved.

Beside him, Rider rubs his chin in thought. Then he straightens like something has just occurred to him, and reaches over to where the girl’s things are piled up.

“Well, will you at least let us return this?” Rider speaks to her for the first time, dropping the pink ribbon into the girl’s lap. “This belongs to you, after all.”

Of all things, that does get a reaction out of her. The girl clutches it to her chest, careful and possessive at once like she’s afraid they’ll take it back. But it’s an opening, and if anyone can do something with that it’s Alexander the Great.

“What’s your name?” Rider asks, and his voice is just the right balance between gentle and friendly. “Mine’s Alexander, or Iskander, or a couple other things depending on the area. And this guy’s Waver.”

The girl visibly hesitates, eyeing them both. It takes a moment, but she eventually decides that much can’t hurt at this point.

“Sakura.” Those strange purple eyes are cast immediately downward, and she stares so hard at the ribbon Waver half-expects it to burst into flame. “M…Matou Sakura.”

“Mm, yes…that means ‘cherry blossom’ in this country if I recall. It suits you,” Rider says, and though her face is still quite emotionless she at least doesn’t seem scared. For Waver, it will have to do.

“Sakura, how much do you know about what’s going on in this town right now? You are the child of a magus family, after all.” Waver strikes a compromise to put her at ease as best he can, serious tone but not burdening her with a direct gaze on top of it. It doesn’t work, and every bit of her body language closes up stiffly. Fortunately, Rider dives in to salvage things.

“What he wants is to make sure you know your situation,” Rider tells her in a reassuring tone. “It isn’t just about the Holy Grail or gaining any sort of advantage, but why you’re here and what’s going to happen.”

“…Uncle told me…” Sakura begins very slowly. “That he had to do something big…and I know a little bit from the stories. There are seven spirits, and they’re fighting for a wish.” She’s silent for a moment, lost in her own thoughts. “Which one are you?”

Rider straightens in a grand manner, and about the only comfort Waver has is that he’s not yelling it out at the same volume he had at the pier. It’s depressing to realize that he’s gotten used to everyone knowing his Servant’s real identity. He could still do without the dramatic posing, though.

“I am Alexander, King of Conquerors! Brought forth in this war under the Rider class!” The Servant pauses for a beat, during which Waver catches a flicker of deepest confusion on Sakura’s face. “Follow me, and you shall know the thrills of world domination-”

“She’s a bit young for that,” Waver cuts him off mid-speech, a brief vision of the little girl clad in full Greek armor rising up in his imagination before being dismissed. He braces himself for a finger-flick, but it surprisingly doesn’t come. Thrown by this, it takes him a second to regain his bearings.

“Anyway, so you know there’s a big fight going on right now.” Waver sneaks a glance at her as subtly as he can. If he isn’t good with kids, he’s even less skilled with small girls. But he remembers distinctly he never appreciated being talked down to when he was young, and so speaking plainly is the least he can do. “Rider and I here were engaged by Berserker tonight, and the Matou house ended up getting destroyed in the crossfire.”

Sakura shows no more of a reaction than if he had told her the sky is blue. Feeling more uncertain, he forces himself to continue. “When we looked for survivors, you were the only one we found. As this is a matter between magi, I thought it would be best to bring you back here.”

“Why?” Sakura asks, so softly Waver suspects she didn’t intend for him to hear it.

“I can take responsibility for that much,” Waver says, hating the embarrassed flush rising to his face. Quickly, he adds, “And there’s a very dangerous Servant around who’s been making off with kids. Right now this is probably one of the safest places in the city.”

Sakura gives a tiny little nod, accepting this. Then she glances down at her hands, flexing them as if testing the sensation.

“It’s a stasis seal,” Waver tells her before she can ask, and feels a little more at ease now that the topic has switched to magecraft. “Don’t worry, I can take it off whenever you want. It doesn’t hurt, does it?”

“….no. It doesn’t.” Sakura seems to accept this as well. Waver knows it probably feels quite strange to have no sensation of prana in her body, but considering the alternative...

“That’s it for now. If you aren’t hungry or anything, go to sleep.” Waver watches as Sakura settles in without protest-not that he expected any-setting that pink ribbon with care on the side table before curling up in a little ball and shutting her eyes.

Master and Servant wait in silence, until her breathing has evened out into the pace of true sleep. 

“Got something in mind, kid?” Rider finally says as Waver goes to turn off the lights. As usual, he doesn’t bother to dematerialize, but after today Waver just doesn’t have the mental energy to try to get him to do so.

“For her, or the war?” Waver can’t help the dryness infusing his tone. He lets out a sigh as he flops down on his futon and tries to get comfortable. “We’ll go into town tomorrow. We can figure it out then.”

------------------------------

“Here you go!”

Waver pauses, piece of toast half-way to his mouth. Still in her borrowed night shirt Sakura nibbles quietly away at her own food across the table from him, while Rider spears the very last bit of egg on his plate with gusto.

“Clothes? They’re a bit small for me, Grandma.” More than a bit small actually, and though they are clean and smell of being freshly washed, he can tell the little jeans and simple white and blue t-shirt have been worn before.

“Not for you, for Sakura-chan. Didn’t you tell me last night she had nothing to wear?” Martha smoothes down a crease, a soft smile alight on her face. “These were Luke’s when he was her age. I dug them out of the attic this morning. It’s not terribly cute, but it will do until she can get some new clothes, right?”

“Right,” Waver agrees, brain kicking into gear. He had thought the MacKenzie residence had gone unnoticed and their location still secret, but the presence of the Assassins last night had cast doubt on that. If the house is being watched, there could be some advantage in concealing the identity of its newest resident. After all, anyone looking for Matou Sakura would be expecting a girl, not a boy. It certainly worked for Saber. It still left the matter of her distinctively colored hair, but… “It’s bright out. Is there a hat or something she could wear?”

“Mm…yes,” Martha says after a moment’s thought. “Shoes too. I’ll go get them down now.”

The matronly woman bustles off. Finishing her toast, Sakura looks up at Waver, then Rider uncertainly.

“We’re going into town today. When Martha comes down with the other things, go and change, okay?”

Sakura tilts her head slightly and blinks, but obediently scoots out of her chair and heads for the stairs. Not for the first time, Waver can’t help but wonder what the hell he thinks he’s trying to do.

“The marketplace?” Rider asks, eyes bright with enthusiasm. Waver snorts, surprised at how excited the King of Conquerors looks at the prospect, but nods in acknowledgment all the same. “Ah, I look forward to it. There is nothing to tell you the character of the land like its bazaars.”

“You just want to shop,” Waver grumbles, feeling the danger of his Servant’s feelings catching. A thought strikes him abruptly, and he quickly stands and points in the most authoritative way he can muster. “And no stealing and trying to call it ‘conquest’! I’ll just give you money if you need it, alright?!”

“Yeah, yeah.” Rider brushes off his words, energy not dampening in the slightest. “How are we getting there?”

“Your way,” Waver says, checking around to see if anyone is close enough to hear. “I’m worried about Assassin still, and anything to help keep them from tracking us. You can find a remote enough place to land from the air, right?”

“Of course.” Rider looks almost offended at the notion he wouldn’t. But then he looks to the stairs, pausing. “Think she’ll be able to handle it?”

“Considering the other option, she’ll have to.” Waver stands to pick up his plate, and the one Sakura left behind-something he’ll have to talk with her about. “Besides, I got used to it, didn’t I? Just skip the standing on the very highest part of the bridge part.”

“Heh, true.”

-----------------------------

Sakura takes her first trip on the Gordius Wheel far better than Waver did, and he’s not sure if that should be a credit to her or a blemish on him. She does hold on to Rider’s leg tightly when they’re really high up, but other than that doesn’t do anything remotely worrisome. Once they find a discrete enough place to land, they dismount and walk the rest of the way into town.

Waver keeps an eye on her as they cross the great red bridge spanning the river, though it isn’t really necessary. An old Toronto Maple Leafs’ baseball cap, one just a little too big for her head, does an excellent job of concealing those plum colored locks. Someone would have to be right in front of her to spot the delicate features she’s still growing into. Anyone else would simply see a little boy, and that’s just fine by him. Once Assassin is gone they’ll have a little more leeway for what she can wear outside, but Waver hasn’t gotten this far by being stupid.

Thumbing through the guide to town as best he can with the rudimentary Japanese he’s picked up, Waver takes the time to note other things about her. She stays close enough to Rider and himself for safety, but no more than absolutely necessary. There are no attempts to hold hands, or cling to a convenient piece of clothing. Sakura doesn’t talk freely, and she doesn’t look at all at her surroundings. The little girl moves through life as if she drifts long enough she’ll find a way out.

Waver’s been a part of the magus community his whole life, and as a result he knows he shouldn’t be so surprised by this. But still…you always heard rumors, crazy things like little towns that had their whole populations vanish, or corners of the remotest parts of the globe where a magus would all but declare themselves a god and proceed to act out their blackest excesses, or even that the Church still made good use of experimentation chambers constructed during the Inquisition. Sometimes they are even true. But usually rumors were all there is to it, because inevitably either the Association or the Counter Force would take care of you. It simply isn’t worth the risk.

But that scene in the basement…that was madness on a different level. There is no advancing of knowledge, no hard work that still results in the continuation of a family legacy. It had just been cold blooded torture, and for what? Waver doesn’t know much of the Matou family, but that’s going to change fast. Berserker and his Master are still out there.

Had Matou known? Participated? Meant to help but hadn’t for whatever reason? Waver didn’t know. All he could believe in were the facts presented to him. Sakura had been purposefully hurt by that family. She could not be left to their devices.

“Ah, kid! Isn’t that the place you marked?” Rider points at the sign, fortunately written out in English. ‘Verde’. According to his guide, it is the biggest shopping center in town. When he had asked the MacKenzies that morning about children’s stores, they had remembered one where the clothes were well made and reasonably priced. It’s as good a place to start as any.

It doesn’t take them long to find it. Stepping inside almost gives Waver the feeling of being in a Reality Marble, this strange alien place that abounds with bright, cheery colors and lively animals and flowers on the walls. To be honest, he’s not even sure where to start. Defeat by children’s clothing store, that had to be a new low among lows this whole war had brought him to.

His helplessness must be more palpable than he originally thought, because it isn’t long before a salesgirl catches sight of the three of them standing awkwardly near the entrance. Walking over with a friendly air, she greets their odd group in a genuine manner that puts Waver a little more at ease.

“Good morning, sirs! Is this your first time coming here?” The girl-whose nametag reads ‘Otoko’-smiles in a very feline sort of way.

“Er…yes. She needs some new clothes.” Waver nudges Sakura gently forward, conscious of his poor Japanese.

“‘She’?…ah, I see!” Otoko’s smile widens when Sakura pulls off the baseball cap, leaving her hair to tumble free. “Let’s find you some cute things, okay? What colors do you like?”

“Pink,” Sakura murmurs very quietly. The salesgirl doesn’t appear to mind her shyness, and makes a gesture indicating the far wall of the store.

“There’s lots of good things over here in your size, especially in pink. Come on, let’s go take a look.”

Otoko-or Neko, as she politely but firmly insists on being called despite the nametag-ends up being a minor Godsend to Waver. Rider of course immediately takes a shine to her, moreso when she recommends her family business as a nice place for a drink. She makes what could have been a much more tiresome task easy, offering up suggestions without being pushy, and providing a woman’s much needed perspective for appropriate attire for a girl. An hour and a half later Sakura is in possession of a coat, two dresses, three shirts, two skirts, overalls, pajamas, a matching set of gloves, scarf, and hat, and some much needed socks and underthings.

“Ugh, finally,” Waver says as Oto-Neko-san waves them out, though in truth things didn’t turn out nearly as expensive as he thought they would. Sakura walks some ways in front of them, close enough to keep an eye on her but still noticeably distant. “Now that Sakura’s taken care of, we can go get the stuff Martha asked for and then go back-”

“I can’t agree with you there, kid,” Rider interrupts, and his eyes have a rare somberness that has Waver paying attention despite himself. “She still needs something more.”

“Like what?” Waver’s brow winkles in thought. Clothes, food, shelter-all the essentials are covered. “I didn’t miss anything.”

“Only if you mean for her to survive, not live,” Rider says with a note of sharpness that takes Waver aback. Staring up at the great man, Waver barely remembers to check and make sure Sakura can’t hear any of this.

Rider sighs, deep and low. There’s a haze over his face now, the kind one gets when sifting through memories that carry their own sort of darkness.

“Things were so different from the way they are now. But some things never change. You could always tell back then, even when they never said anything. The children who jumped at the barest hint of noise. The children who shied away from any man. But those weren’t even the worst ones, because there was at least something in them to still react.” Rider pauses. “The worst ones were those who didn’t even have that much. The ones who broke and became nothing more than flesh that still happened to breathe.”

“What would you have me do, then? I can’t magic away trauma,” Waver says bitterly.

“No. But to go through that and live, she’s a tough little thing.” Rider indicates Sakura’s small figure with a lift of his chin. “It depends on her, but you can help. Give her something to do. Something for her to think about besides that place. All she has now is her own mind to retreat to-and there’s only one place she’ll go from there.”

“Like what?” Waver asks as Rider stops abruptly. Noticing they are no longer walking, Sakura goes to rejoin them, face as still as ever.

“Like that.” Rider points with one large finger. Following it, Waver takes in the shop they’ve stopped in front of before groaning.

“Are you kidding me? ‘Fancy Shop’ is possibly the dumbest name I’ve ever heard for a …” Waver cuts himself off, pressing both hands to his temples in anticipation of a headache. “Let’s just get this over with.”

He has to nudge Sakura inside, and after enduring the unabashed gaze of more than one salesgirl for a lengthy pause, gives in and pointedly clears his throat.

“Well? What are you waiting for?” Waver asks.

“For you to finish,” Comes the soft reply. It’s another thing he’s noticed about Sakura. She only speaks when spoken to, and never a single word more than absolutely necessary.

“What would I want with a stuffed toy? We’re here for you, now go and pick something out.” Waver takes a deep breath and tries to calm himself. It’s not easy when he realizes why Sakura is giving him her equivalent of an astonished look.

“…for….me?” Sakura trips out the words unevenly, looking around the store again like she’s seeing it for the first time. A lump rises in Waver’s throat at that, and he fears saying anything. Even someone like him can read the fragility of the situation right now. A single poorly chosen word could tear down everything in an instant.

“I know, it’s hard to pick. So many!” As usual, Rider steps in without a single care and makes it all work somehow. Not all embarrassed by being seen examining the soft plushies so diligently, Rider starts to wander through the racks, Sakura trailing behind him like a baby chick following its parent. Not for the first time, Waver thinks Rank A Charisma is truly a force with which to be reckoned. It takes a real effort not to be won over by Rider, and the King of Conquerors didn’t gain his fame by losing battles.

Lost in his thoughts as he is, a few seconds pass before it registers that he’s been left behind. Restraining the urge to grumble, not to mention wonder why the number of salesgirls looking his way with interest has increased, he finds the great man and the little girl two rows over.

A brown bear. 

“Too big.”

A penguin with a red bowtie.

“Too small.”
A very weird looking cat…thing…in a white shirt and purple skirt.

“….no.”

A yellow and green mushroom holding a mallet of some kind.

“Yeesh, what are they trying to sell to kids here?”

As these and other toys are deemed unworthy by Alexander the Great and summarily tossed aside, Waver finds himself more interested in what Sakura is doing. She’s being pretty subtle about it, but he can see her eyeing a pile of bunny plushies. They are cute, he has to admit. The soft brown fur and white ribbons around their necks reminds him a little of reading The Velveteen Rabbit as a small child, and how desperately he had begged at the time for a bunny of his own.

“Oh, there’s a white one too.” He almost misses it, buried under the other ones as it is. Tugging it carefully out, he sees this one has a dark rose ribbon instead. While examining it he draws Rider’s attention as well, his Servant tossing aside a creepy white weasel thing with ruby red eyes and gold rings to look at what he’s holding.

“Hey, it’s almost the same color as yours!” Rider’s referring to the ribbon of course, the one around the rabbit’s neck. Side-by-side they really are practically identical, only a few shades off. Through all this Sakura hasn’t said anything, and remains just as expressionless as always. But this time it feels a little different-more like a game face than springing from genuine apathy. She’s already steeling herself for disappointment, and the realization of that makes Waver a strange combination of angry and sad.

Nonetheless, he does his best to force the feeling down. Even knowing her for the short duration of time as he has, Sakura has already proven unusually empathic towards the emotions of others. He doesn’t want to frighten her, after all. Waver kneels down instead to meet her at eye level, and presents the rabbit to her. 

“Do you like this one?”

Sakura hesitates for a long moment, and the hands she eventually holds out for the bunny are trembling slightly. When the plushie is in her arms she buries her face in the soft white fur, hugging it closely. Waver supposes that’s answer enough. She doesn’t let go as they make their way to the counter, and he’s surprised she even relinquishes hold of the bunny long enough to pay for it.

“-Sir? Sir?”

Waver forces himself to pay attention to the politely smiling woman at the counter. Seeing she has his interest, her smile widens while her gaze flicks from him to Rider and back again.

“As I was saying sir, it’s so sweet of you two to go out shopping for the young miss here.” The woman leans forward slightly, and Waver can’t quite pinpoint just why her eyes are sparkling the way they are. Or why she seems to be flushing a little. “You gentlemen have such a natural rapport. I bet you must have been together a long time.”

“Uh…only about a week…” Waver gets out, confused about what that has to do with anything, even more so when the salesgirl clasps her hands to her chest and looks ready to swoon. He can see that Rider looks like he wants to say something, but is showing an unusual amount of restraint about it for once. “Anyway, the rabbit?”

“Oh, right,” Comes the response with a somewhat diminished amount of enthusiasm. Bouncing back, she holds up a little card shaped like a heart. On it are two lines, one blank and the other filled in with the date. “Has your little girl decided on a name?”

“Name?” Waver echoes. Then the rest of her sentence hits him. “A-and she’s not mine, I’m just watching her for a friend-”

“Be that as it may, sir,” the words following an ‘I’m humoring you now’ sort of smile, “We give all the stuffed toys we sell a name. It goes on the heart and then we sew it up inside-a more personal sort of touch, if you will.”

It’s a little sentimental for Waver’s tastes, but then he supposes he’s not exactly the demographic the store has in mind for this thing. Turning down to look at Sakura, he’s surprised to see her fingers playing against each other like she’s anxious.

“Can you think of a name, Sakura? If you need time that’s fine.”

“…” Sakura whispers under her breath, the mumble so indistinct Waver can’t make out a bit of it.

“A little louder, so she can hear you.”

“…R-rin.” Sakura looks down at her feet, and Waver knows that’s all he’s going to get out of her without pushing hard. Thankfully, the salesgirl is better at reading Sakura’s mood than his, and merely beams.

“Rin-chan, mm? That’s a lovely name.” She writes it on the card in very elegant hand, the hiragana characters “り” and “ん” together. It’s simple, enough for a child or even an inexperienced foreigner such as Waver to make out. Turning back to table behind the counter laden with a very strange looking sort of machine, the salesgirl makes an easy incision in the bunny and slips in the heart. Closing it back up again with some pins, she sets it up under than machine to sew the seam up so neatly Waver doubts he’d be able to spot it without having known beforehand.

“All done!” The salesgirl practically sings the words. “Now, would you like a bag?”

Waver glances at Sakura, the longing in her eyes palpable. “We’ll just carry it, thanks.” Once the bunny is safely back in her arms, the little girl clings to it like she never wants to let go.

-----------------------------

Exiting the shop, Waver lets out a sigh he hadn’t been fully aware of holding it.

“We are never going back there again. The merchandise is weird, and their salesgirls-” Even now he can catch them looking out the window at them, all women and all more interested in their group than common sense can explain.

Rider’s mouth twitches a little, from amusement or something else. “Hey kid, can I guess you’ve spent the past few years doing nothing but being buried in books? Your knowledge of magecraft is first rate, but I think you’ve paid for it in worldliness.”

“What does that mean?! Riderrr-!!” As Waver sputters indignantly his Servant holds him off with his thumb and index finger alone, his other hand grasping the list of things to pick up Martha had written out for them that morning. Absorbed in her bunny, Sakura barely pays either of them notice.

“Yarn…ah, I see. To the craft store!”

“Rider, explain yourself first!!”

Waver never does get his explanation, though at this point he really should learn to resign himself to Rider getting his way. But the next couple of hours while away pleasantly enough for all he’d rather be focusing on the war, going from shop to shop with a short break for lunch. Rider is even livelier than Waver is used to out in the market, every place catching his eye and every bit of merchandise worthy of examination. The great man takes such delight in all that he sees, in a way Waver can’t even fathom. He just supposes he should be grateful Sakura isn’t as much of a handful to watch after-if he had to deal with such energy from two different ends his hair would have gone whiter than the Einzbern lady from the stress of it all.

Although, he’s still worried about Sakura. Waver had thought they made some small bit of progress today, but she’s gotten so quiet and listless by the time the clock strikes four. His concern must be more obvious than he realizes, for Rider stops his intent examination of a crepe store’s window and slaps his hand against Waver’s back. Thankfully, Rider’s learned by this point to modify his strength some in regards to his Master, which in turn prevents a face-first collision with the concrete. Instead, he just stumbles some before regaining his footing to give his Servant an annoyed look.

“Eh, kid, so serious now? It’s been very interesting out here.”

Waver clears his throat and lifts his chin Sakura’s way. She’s sitting on a close by bench, head resting against her rabbit’s.

“She’s even quieter than usual and I don’t know why-”

“You should, it’s not so great a mystery.” Rider laughs easily at Waver’s frustrated expression, and elaborates, “We’ve been walking around for a good couple of hours now. She’s just tired. It’ll be better once we get back and she can take a nap.”

Sure enough, once Waver looks a little more closely he can see Sakura’s violet eyes shuttering open and close like she’s barely managing to stay awake. Seeing as it is such a simple reason, he feels more than a little foolish for not figuring out the clearest answer. It’s a little hard to remember Sakura is just a child, sometimes. Her behavior is so unlike any other Waver’s met before.

Rider just moves forward, confident as always. Crouching down to Sakura’s level, the large man holds out the arm not laden down with purchases unaffectedly.

“Come on, up now. We’re ready to go back.”

Sakura stares at the arm in silence, old wariness at war with her own exhaustion. But eventually her dwindling energy takes the win, and she lets Rider pick her up without protest. Waver can’t help but watch in muted astonishment. Even regarding his own experience with his Servant’s ability to win people over, he knows just how remarkable this is. The rules that apply to the world and the way it works seem to skip over Rider entirely.

Or more like the King of Conquerors decided long ago not to be bound by them. He’s looking at Waver like he doesn’t know what he’s so shocked about, and his day has been tiring enough that he doesn’t feel like pursuing it.

“Let’s get going. Martha needs the food we got to start dinner, and more importantly we need to plan what to do tonight.” Waver turns on his heel before Rider can pick at his thoughts. Though he expects his Servant to say something anyway, he doesn’t, and merely follows while carrying the drowsy child like she weighs nothing at all.

----------------------------

After spending the day doing nothing to advance their position in the War, Waver is absolutely determined to make up for the lost time. While Sakura naps away and the sounds of dinner being cooked play out distantly, he and Rider make their plans. They’ve located the castle hidden in the forest, and by extension Saber and her Master. Tohsaka’s place they already know, and Waver is keeping as close an eye on Kotomine Church as he can without violating the rules. He doesn’t know for sure about Lancer’s status, the destruction of the Fuyuki Hyatt that he knows can’t be a coincidence aside. Anyway, as his student he’s more personally familiar than most of Lord El-Melloi’s skill set. He’s sure the bastard wouldn’t be taken out as easily as that.

That just leaves Berserker and Caster still unaccounted for. They’ve dealt blows against them both, Berserker with his injuries and Caster with the loss of his lair. But Rider points out that a cornered animal is all the more vicious for its desperation, and Waver can concede the wisdom of that. He’d like to take Berserker out of the picture while he’s still weak, but tracking his Master is even harder now that the Matou manor is gone.

Eventually, they settle on Caster as the most practical option. He’s guaranteed to come back to the wreckage of the lair, so it’ll be just a simple matter of leaving a few familiars to alert him to that event. After that, Rider’s speed when mounted will mean cornering Caster before anyone else can get the chance to. Waver doesn’t want to share victory with anyone, not with an extra Command Spell at stake.

A knock on the door puts a stop to their planning. 

“Dinner’s ready,” Martha says, peeking her head in. Her usual kind expression warms even more at the sight of Sakura sleeping so soundly, and Waver wonders if she’s remembering her own son as a child. “Wake Sakura-chan and be down as soon as you can, alright?”

They settle down to a dinner of simple yet homey and comforting food. There’s a mix of western and Japanese dishes on offer, perhaps out of a concession to himself and Rider. He knows after so many years of living in this country the MacKenzies cook Asian food more often than not, and it’s probably what Sakura is used to as well. She doesn’t speak much through dinner, but she does seem a little less stiff to Waver’s eyes. She has surprisingly refined table manners for a five year old, and when Glen compliments them as such her ‘thank you’ is unassuming. 

After dinner Waver and Rider retreat to his room to finish planning up and prepare to go out. Sakura doesn’t follow for some reason, but he knows he can trust the MacKenzies with her. It’s only later, when he and ‘Alex-san’ are making to leave that he sees what she’s been occupying herself with.

“Grandma, Grandpa, we’re going out for a bit!” Waver calls, not seeing either one of the older couple. Not getting any response, he steps into the living room and catches sight of distinctive purple hair. Sakura sits on the couch with Martha, eyes focused on-

“Knitting?” Waver blinks, the too-large needles in Sakura’s small hands almost comical in their disparity.

“Ah, yes.” Martha holds up her own project, what looks like a scarf of some sort. “I started with the yarn you brought back. It’s always nice to do in company and Sakura-chan didn’t know how, so it seemed like the thing to do to teach her.”

He can see now Sakura already has a little square of material already completed. He supposes it’s not too bad for a first timer of her age, occasional uneven spots of being too loose or too tight aside. The color, however…

“Sure is unfortunate,” Waver says without thinking. He immediately regrets it when Sakura’s face falls in her restrained way, and Martha frowns severely at him. The little girl looks down at the square of material with slumped shoulders, and it’s all Waver can do to explain himself before things get even worse.

“The color, I mean! You’re doing a great job for your first try at this,” Waver hastily babbles, and he never thought someone as gentle and maternal as Martha could look so scary just sitting there. By some stroke of luck, Sakura takes his words to heart and her hurt air lessens.

“Green…isn’t good?” Sakura speaks up unprompted for the first time, and it’s so unexpected it takes Waver a moment to reply.

“No, no, I like green!” Though not that shade, a truly ugly mildew-like shade Martha must have deemed good enough for practice before starting her on something nicer. There’s no way he can just say that, though, and quickly casts a way for an out. “It’s just…see that tan yarn there?”

Pointing to the item in question, Waver waits until Sakura spots it before continuing, “I just think that one’s a bit better because it matches more. You know, it goes with the green I’m wearing, but also your clothes and Ri…Alex’s, right?”

It’s something of a stretch. But for once the universe takes pity on him, and Waver breathes easy again when Sakura nods in agreement. Martha’s serene look returns as if it had never been gone, but suffice to say Waver won’t be forgetting that sensation of an irate mother bear any time soon.

“When you’ve gotten a little more practice maybe you can try that one,” Waver says. “Anyway, Alex and I are going out for a bit. Be good for Grandpa and Grandma, and don’t forget to brush your teeth before bed.”

He retreats to the safety of the yard before he can say something else thoughtless. Once outside, he looks up at Rider who stands with clear anticipation. Without needing words, they start to make way to the newest hidden spot they’ve picked for taking off, another night’s work ahead of them.

---------------------------

They’re out later than originally projected and cover an extremely wide range of ground. It’s tiring, and leaves Waver so groggy the next morning he agrees to Rider’s request to go back into town with a minimum of protest. At least, that’s what he tells himself between yawns and sips of the hot tea he had been fully prepared to murder someone for. The truth is probably more along the lines that Rider wanted to go and Waver would have been pulled into things whether he liked it or not, but there is such a thing as being able to live with oneself. Even if it gets harder and harder each passing day of this War.

Watching Rider go around with even more excitement now that he no longer has to worry about his company, Waver finds himself missing Sakura. Her quiet presence would have been very much welcomed now, though having her stay inside at the MacKenzies had undoubtedly been the wiser decision. As it is he finds himself barely able to keep up with Rider. He swears the King of Conquerors doesn’t know the meaning of ‘slow down’, and would just disregard it anyway if he did.

Draining away the very last precious drops of his Earl Grey, Waver throws away his now empty cup and feels awareness slowly return to him. Rider isn’t hard to spot at all, inevitably being the tallest man in any crowd of people. Even one as large as that surrounding what looks like a liquor store and pub in one-Copenhagen, the tavern Neko-san had mentioned the other day. There are banners and balloons about, and he figures there must be some sort of event. It takes a second for him to mentally translate, but there’s something about an anniversary and prizes…?

Well, how Rider wanted to spend his time in town didn’t really matter to Waver. Disinterested in the pub in a way that had nothing to do with the fact he is quite the lightweight by British standards, he scans the area aimlessly for something to occupy his attention until Rider gets bored and wants to go somewhere else. There’s not much, though. He doesn’t know the area that well, and just about the only place he recognizes is the craft goods store he had picked up Martha’s yarn from. 

Boredom being what it is, he walks over to it anyway and scans the window. There’s not anything he’s really grabs his focus, just a set-up of activities suited for an area still feeling the chill of winter. Tea blending kits, lanterns with fanciful shapes, and unsurprisingly a large set up of assorted yarns and needles. One of them does catch Waver’s eye due to nothing more than sheer pinkness. A little set of three balls of yarn, ivory, light blush, and dark magenta, along with a pair of child sized metallic pink knitting needles. ‘Ideal Set For Beginners!’ the package reads in cheery font, along with ‘Ages 5 and up’.

Waver takes a long, hard look at it and tries to tell himself he’s being ridiculous. 

The knitting set continues to sit there, completely uncaring of his internal struggle.

His brain points out he’s disgracing the Clock Tower and magi everywhere by even thinking about it. His conscience points out he thinks the Clock Tower is a rotting, corrupt beast of an institution anyway, and doesn’t Sakura like pink? It’s such a small thing, what could it hurt?

It is times like these Waver kind of hates himself, a feeling that only increases as he steps inside and asks about the set in the window with his faltering Japanese. By the time he walks out again, one pink knitting set the richer, it takes everything he has not to pull his collar up and look for the uppity Association nobles who seemed to have some sort of sixth sense for when he was embarrassing himself and turn up accordingly.

Shoving the bag in the deep pocket of his jacket, Waver decides to go check and see if Rider is done yet. He can already spot the large man waving at him like he has something to share. Making his way through the dense crowd with some effort, Waver finally manages to reach his Servant who stands genially next to-

“Archer?!” Waver squawks in a way he’d normally acknowledge as doing his dignity no favors. Ultimately, primal fear in the face of a man who has the very air of someone who would crush you like a bug and think about the same of it wins out. He’d run behind Rider and perhaps demand to know why he looks so cheery in the face of mortal peril, but his legs refuse to cooperate towards this end.

“Mongrel,” Archer replies boredly. Waver is at least still alive at this point, and his lungs decide to start working up again. Having expanded about all the attention he deems Waver worthy of, the golden Servant currently clad in modern, extremely expensive looking clothing turns back to Rider. “This isn’t doing much to convince me on your part.”

“Don’t be so uptight! Even kings can have their fun. Besides, anything’s got to be better than being holed up in that dreary mansion, right?” Rider grins, looking like he’s having a chat with an old friend instead of standing freely before someone he’s supposed to fight to the death. “If you didn’t think otherwise, why would you be out here at the bazaar right now?”

Archer lets out a long sort of snort through his nose, but doesn’t dispute the point. The tiny part of Waver’s brain that’s still somehow thinking through the terror supposes that counts as a victory on Rider’s part. The rest is too frozen in place to do much.

“I dislike boring things, and wastes of my time,” Archer finally says. Evidently done here, he turns neatly on his heel and starts walking away. “See that you are not guilty of either tonight.”

Rider waves him off in a carefree way. “Yeah, yeah. Don’t be late, you shiny guy.” He shakes his head before looking down at a still speechless Waver. “He’s a friendly fellow, eh?”

Never before have words failed Waver Velvet so completely. Evidently taking his silence as permission to go on, Rider points to the stage where several prizes are set up, from smaller goods like rice cookers to bigger ones like basket assortments stuffed with goods. In the very center is a barrel of wine, with the script ‘Vosne-Romanée Les Beaux Monts’ in French above it. Waver doesn’t know much about wine, but the murmuring of the crowd and urgent holding of lottery tickets tells him this is definitely worthy of being a grand prize.

“That’s the one I’m getting,” Rider says it like a simple matter of fact. “I’ve been searching the marketplace for the best wine for tonight’s symposium. Only that one there will do for a gathering of kings.”

Words don’t fail Waver now, but they do have to fight amongst themselves for the right to come out first.

“W…what are you going on about, Rider?! A drinking party? With the other Servants?!” Waver forces his volume down once he sees heads turning their way, but his emotions still run strong. “Have you gone crazy?”

“Of course not. True conquest is subjugation without humiliation. I am merely following the means to that end. And this is for kings only, so there will just be Saber and Archer.” Rider raises one thick brow like he has no idea what Waver is so worked up about. “Calm down before you hurt yourself. They’re about to announce the winning ticket.”

“Which brings me to that,” Waver whispers in a furious tone. “You can’t just go jump whoever wins that wine and call it conquest-”

“There’s no need for that,” Rider says, looking affronted. “I’m going to win it.”

“Rider, you-”

“And now the last and best prize, our Rouget’s Vosne-Romanée Les Beaux Monts! This is a rare treasure indeed, fit for a devoted lover of wine-or just those who wish to enjoy a drink fit for royalty!” The older man who could only be Neko’s father nods to the girl herself, standing next to a large barrel stuffed completely full of tickets. Giving a few strong revolutions before drawing to a halt, the teenage girl reaches her hand inside and pulls out a ticket. She hands it to her father, who reads it over with a bemused expression before leaning towards his mike again.

“We have a winner! Would ticket number 720356,” the man pauses for a second, “um…‘Alexander the Great’-san please step forward? That’s ticket 720356, ‘Alexander the Great’-san.”

Rider beams and strides triumphantly towards the stage to claim his prize, while behind him Waver’s palm meets his forehead in a pretty spectacular manner. Even with A+ Luck, shouldn’t there be limits to how much nonsense Gaia would take with probability? Judging by the lack of a Counter Force closing in on the area, evidently not. Really, one couldn’t be blamed for falling into despair in a universe where omnipotent personifications of the planet itself couldn’t be counted upon to follow their own standards.

It’s a relief like cold water on a hot day to get back to the MacKenzie’s, where normalcy still has some small say in things. Waver lets himself in while Rider finds a place to stash his wine until it’s time to go to their ‘symposium of kings’. His words, not Waver’s.

“I’m back,” Waver says tiredly to thin air. The sound of light footsteps reaches his ears, and then the girl herself emerges from the living room. Sakura looks up at him, and then around. “Rider’s out back, but he’ll be inside. Where’s Grandma?”

“Living room,” Sakura says. She tugs at his sleeve for the briefest of seconds, then releases it to walk back to the place in question. Martha sits on the couch, cup of tea in hand and her knitting project on her lap.

“Ah, so that’s why Sakura-chan dashed off so suddenly!” Martha smiles at the girl currently seating herself next to her. Sakura evidently took Waver’s suggestion more seriously than he expected, because that camel-colored yarn is now on her needles, the shape of a scarf already emerging. “Would you like some tea too, Waver-chan?”

Looking at the table he can see they have a whole traditional tea set up, nice china and little treats included. It’s the sort of thing he can see a young girl having a soft spot for, and a part of him can’t help but admire Martha’s savviness. He’s not really in the mood for tea though, but before he can decline the elder woman stands up.

“I’m sorry, I forgot we’ve already drank up the last of it. I’m going to put on the kettle for more.” As she bustles off to the kitchen, Waver finds himself alone in front of Sakura.

“It looks good,” Waver says a little awkwardly, but he genuinely means it. Compared to the knottiness of her earlier effort, this new scarf looks a lot tidier. He remembers his purchase then, and fumbles around his pocket. Presenting it to the purple haired girl goes less smoothly than he would have liked, but Waver never had such high expectations of himself to start with.

“Here.” Dropping the set in Sakura’s lap, she looks down at it and then up at him with a perplexed little frown. “Look, the needles are more your size. You won’t have such a difficult time this way.”

Sakura doesn’t say anything, her fingers lightly stroking the package like it is a mirage that will vanish away if she presses any harder. Still feeling flustered himself, Waver decides to go before things get even more awkward.

“Thank you, Waver.”

The words reach his retreating back, soft and ephemeral as a fleeting dream. But they’re no less real for it.

“Just do something good with it, alright?” Waver says, and feels his ears redden with every step he takes up to his room. Rider doesn’t take long to show up afterwards, and provides a much needed distraction. Tonight’s plans end up the topic of discussion. For a completely insane idea, Rider has put a great deal of thought into it. Waver’s still not sure exactly what he hopes to accomplish with it, though.

“I just don’t see either Saber or Archer giving up the Grail like that. Charisma only goes so far, you know.” Waver flops out on his futon, exhausted from the way the conversation is going in circles.

“It’s not giving up if it’s for mutual gain,” Rider says with confidence. “Besides, we are all kings, Saber, Archer, and I. The minimum we can do is a civil discussion.”

Waver really doubts it will be that simple, but Glen announcing dinner saves him from having to attempt the herculean task of convincing the King of Conquerors otherwise. Walking down the stairs, he’s surprised to see Sakura helping out. The extent of her contribution seems to be setting out the place ware, but she goes about it with utmost seriousness. It doesn’t explain the apron, far too big for her and folded up several times around the waist to counter this.

“She helped with dinner too,” Glen elaborates when Waver asks about it. “The salad, at least. Martha chopped everything up and she mixed it.”

“It’ll be really good, then,” Waver says, conscious of sensitive ears and little girls in need of every bit of self-assurance they could get. Besides, it’s not like she could really mess up something already prepared. What if Martha tries to get her to help with other things, though? They need to be careful about that. Waver isn’t sure how well she’ll be around sharp objects.

Looking back, it’s not like that dinner is anything truly remarkable. Not to say it isn’t enjoyable. Martha’s simple, tasty food is just right for the atmosphere-comfort food, Japanese style. Time and conversation flow like honey, easy and smooth. If Waver had to pick a word to describe it, it’d be cozy. Yes, a gentle, soft, warm sort of gathering, where everyone is at ease. Sakura even looks a little bit content now. Perhaps this is why, but for such a small thing…

Then again, maybe that’s why. Waver fumbles a little with the chopsticks he’s still not great with as his mind flashes back to that grandly forbidding manor. By the standards of this country the MacKenzie house is quite generously sized, but one could probably fit the combined kitchen and eating area into the kind of formal dining room that mansion would have with room to spare. To say nothing of the casual air, free and relaxed. Waver can’t imagine it ever being like that for her. 

He can’t help but think on it all through the dinner, rendering him a little reserved though Glen and Rider do more than fill that void. Still, the magus does his best to enjoy this time. He’s well aware the ‘gathering of kings’ is before them tonight, and even a very optimistic soul would have a hard time believing that meeting will be as stress-free as this one.

-----------------------------

It’s so much more than even Waver could have possibly imagined, as it turns out. By the time they return to the MacKenzie house the moon is high and pale in a dark midnight sky, as serene as his thoughts are jumbled and his mind reeling.

There’s so much that happened in such a short time. Saber, Archer, the meaning of kingship, the sharing of that golden liquor, the Assassins showing up only to be defeated just as quickly. But there’s only one thing Waver finds himself going back to again and again, a labyrinth trapping all his thoughts.

Ionioi Hetairoi: Army of the King.

It isn’t awe over the sheer power of the Noble Phantasm, though that emotion is there. Nor envy towards such a rare piece of magecraft belonging to one with no aptitude for the art, or even anger that Rider hadn’t shared this beforehand with his own Master.

No. More than anything it is idea at its core that Waver cannot let go of, or maybe cannot be released by. Rider had sought to smash Saber’s ideals for the hollowness that he thought them to be that night. Judging by the look on her face afterwards the King of Conquerors had done something close to that. It is just unfortunate he happened to take down all Waver had held in such high regard in the process.

Undying loyalty. He’s not ignorant of the concept, defining it to be devotion at its zenith. But he’s never really understood what that truly means until now, even if it is just in the most fleeting of ways. Believing in someone and all they are so completely, so utterly it became engraved upon the very soul and could defy the laws of the world. Beyond following to the very end, it is dedication at its very essence. And all Waver can think of right now is how pale and thin his goals and dreams now seem in comparison.

To be acknowledged by the Clock Tower? To prove his superiority? Oh, those had been things he had wanted, but it now seemed to be the way a child wanted things. Fleeting, a desire held in the moment until something new came along. He’s never really had faith in anyone or anything. Having seen that fire for himself, it all seems so meaningless now.

Rider doesn’t raise the issue, but with his usual canniness can sense the current of Waver’s mood. He’s simultaneously grateful for it and disappointed. The distraction would have been a welcome change from thinking about how petty his life feels at the moment.

Even once settled on the futon he’s become more accustomed too, sleep eludes Waver. He tosses restlessly, unable to calm down his racing mind no matter how tired his body actually is. The magus feels what he considers a fairly justified annoyance with his Servant, who snores away blissfully ignorant of the turmoil he instigated. Likewise, Sakura-

Waver blinks upon seeing her. She’s asleep, but it’s different from what he’s seen thus far of her habits. Every other time she’s been at rest like the dead, completely still and silent. This is different, though. Even through the weak moonlight, he can see her shuddering underneath the blanket. No, she isn’t just shuddering. Sakura’s scraping at her skin like she’s trying to tear it off, leaving angry red trails where her fingers have dug in. Hard enough that little gashes are emerging here and there, welling up crimson against pale flesh.

“Sakura, wake up,” Waver whispers, trying to make his voice as soothing as possible as he lightly touches her shoulder. Why hadn’t Rider woken up already? The great man would be so much better at this than him, he’s sure of it. “Sakura.”

Her eyes flutter open, purple eyes made even darker with how stark white her face as gone. Waver can see the way the pulse in her throat is pounding, how she breathes hard like she’s been running, and he’s reminded of nothing so much as a small, desperate animal caught and cornered. They stare at each other for a long moment, the clumsiness of words unsuited for the situation. It isn’t until Waver feels she’s fully alert and aware of her surroundings that he even thinks about speaking.

“Sakura…” What to say at a moment like this? ‘Are you okay’ just seems so stupid. She’s not okay. Waver doesn’t know if she ever will be. He’s so terrible at this, he knows. All he can do is take it all one step at a time. “We need to treat those, before they get infected.”

Sakura doesn’t blink, doesn’t even move. Waver wants to avoid forcing her into anything if possible, and tries again. “Come on, bleeding shouldn’t be left alone. Please.”

Something about that gets through to her. Sakura moves slowly, but she does slip out of the bed and into the bunny-head slippers they had bought her. Very carefully, Waver holds his hand out for her. The little girl looks at it before laying her own onto it, light as a feather but there all the same. With care, he curls his fingers around hers and knows just how much is being placed upon him with that one gesture.

“Let’s go. The medicine kit is right downstairs.”

They sit at the kitchen table while Waver sets to work. As much as he’d like to use magecraft on the scratches, he’s aware that using thaumaturgy on Sakura’s body at this point would be vastly overstepping the glass-fragile trust built up of the past few days.  Fortunately, the cuts themselves aren’t serious, and the redness is already starting to fade away. Waver settles for antiseptic and band-aids instead of words of power, and does the best he can with that.

Through it all Sakura sits at the table in silence. Even bringing down her bunny to hold onto doesn’t ease the stiffness in her frame much. Waver remembers well what Rider said about the danger of letting her mind go back to that dark place. The least he can do is bring forth a light to keep those shadows at bay, no matter how insignificant it may be.

“Whenever I have a hard time sleeping,” Waver begins awkwardly, “I try drinking some warm milk with honey. It always helps me relax.”

Sakura doesn’t exactly respond, but she doesn’t protest either. Waver considers that the best he’s going to get, and sets to work. It’s been a while-the truth is his mother used to make him the drink when he was small, but he has a feeling talking about pleasant childhood memories with Sakura would be salting a still fresh wound-but it comes to him with ease. Sauce pan, milk, a few tablespoons of honey, dash of vanilla, some cinnamon…

“…You…can cook?”

Waver’s so absorbed in getting the drink together he nearly misses it. Whisking away, he tries not to falter in his action and instead be as natural as possible.

“I’m magus with strengths in alchemy, cooking isn’t that far removed from the lab,” Waver says. “Besides, not all of us come from grand houses with hundreds of years of prestige, you know. This much isn’t unusual.” 

“It’s only two hundred years…” Sakura starts before shutting up abruptly. Waver can feel her eyes gauging his response, and only the motions of whisking the milk and other ingredients hide his slight jolt of surprise.

“Close enough,” Waver replies with a dismissive air. Seeing Sakura’s tense shoulders lose some of their rigidity out of the corner of his eye, he makes a show out of looking for the cups while his mind jumps into action, adding this fact to the ones he already had at hand. 

Two hundred years, she said.

Waver knows the Matou family has a five hundred year history. After that encounter with Berserker he hadn’t stinted on the research. Research which had also spurred him on to further look into the other two original Grail War families. The Einzberns, with their millennia of striving for that distant miracle, and the Tohsaka. The Tohsaka family, of their young but brilliant two hundred years. 

Pouring out the warm milk into two ready cups with casualness at odds with his thoughts, his gaze falls to the rabbit held securely in Sakura’s arms. ‘Rin’…Tohsaka Tokiomi had a daughter named Rin, didn’t he? She’s a little bit older than Sakura, a year and change. A pretty girl who takes after her father in coloring but her mother in features, especially the line of her nose and rosebud mouth. Features that Waver could now see as being extremely similar to the girl sitting in front of him.

“It’s a little hot, so be careful,” Waver cautions Sakura when he sits down. Taking his cup, he blows on it before taking a testing sip. He has to go first. Waver’s shared enough meals with the purple haired girl to notice she never eats anything someone else hasn’t tried beforehand. It hardly takes a mind of his caliber to figure out why.

Waver takes the time granted by drinking his beverage to sort through his thoughts. He’d like more information, but there will be no getting more of that without leaning on Sakura. It’s something he can’t bring himself to do.

So that leaves speculation based on what he does have. Waver still doesn’t think he’s all that far off the mark. Sakura must be a daughter of the Tohsaka house, maybe even Tohsaka Tokiomi’s own. He had wondered how the Matou family, one known to have the magical power all but vanished, could have counted a girl with obvious circuits among their members. It all made sense-a horrible sense, but sense all the same-if one took into account the fact Sakura wasn’t born one.

So, Sakura had been given away to another family to serve as successor. Waver knows any magus would praise the decision as a sensible one, and he should do the same. Just the thought of it has bile rising in his throat.

Oh, presented in black and white Waver could see why it would be a good idea, even a thoughtful one. Though the rule is that only one can fully inherit a family’s legacy of magecraft, it’s rarely so cut and dried. In a backwater like Japan he could see keeping the other children ignorant of the true nature of the family, but that’s really a waste of what tends to be considered as much as resource as a Crest. In Europe the more common solution is usually to teach those not given a Crest the basics, perhaps more if they were from a prestigious family or were born with rare attributes. Then it’s either a lifetime serving the Crest holder and getting their protection in turn, striking out on their own as a Freelancer, or being married off to the Crest holder of another family in thaumaturgy’s unique take on eugenics and political alliances. 

Compared to all that, being chosen as a successor to even an outside family can be considered the best option. Even if there are additional hardships when adjusting to a different style of magecraft, it’s at least a chance to be in control of one’s fate. Waver knows of a few people who had that happen to them, though in both cases it was still to families with some biological link to the original one. For what had happened to Sakura…

It’s inexplicable. Not that it could have turned out that badly, but that the Tohsaka head wouldn’t have taken any sort of safeguards for such an eventuality. Even if Tohsaka Tokiomi hadn’t cared at all for the girl, there is still the possibility his family secrets could be taken from her body. And if he had cared…how to explain it? Either he had been stupid enough to blindly trust the Matou, naïve enough to believe Sakura would be well treated without any sort of guarantee, or arrogant enough to assume purely because it had been his decision everything would be fine.

It depresses Waver to think how likely that last one is. Magi arrogance is a universal trait, it seems. It’s just tragic that a little girl had to be the one to pay for it.

“It’s good,” Sakura murmurs, breaking his train of thought. Looking down, he can see her cup is already empty.

“Thanks, but it’s much better with fresh milk taken that morning.” Waver stands, both cups in hand. “There’s a little more left if you want some.”

Sakura nods, and he pours out what’s left into her mug before bringing it back. She sips daintily at it, but her eyes are on him like there’s something she wants to ask.

“Yes?” Waver prompts.

“Fresh milk?” Sakura asks, and for all he doesn’t understand why… she looks genuinely interested. It’s a little embarrassing to go over how he knows this, especially considering the sort of disdain his family history has always gotten him at the Clock Tower. On the other hand, this is Sakura. He can’t even imagine her being malicious about it.

“As far as magi families go, mine’s a very young one,” Waver begins awkwardly, a flush he can’t help for anything rising up on his cheeks. “Not even a hundred years yet. I’ll be the third head. It was chance that ‘Velvet’ happened to become a magus lineage at all. Before that we were just a farming clan from Sandford, Gloucestershire. ” He sighs a little at Sakura’s blank look. “It’s a county, in England.”

His backpack is nearby on a hook, and it’s a simple enough matter to pull out the mapbook Rider had ‘conquered’ away from the library that first night and bring it to the table. Flipping through it to the page on the British Isles, he points out the approximate spot in England’s south for her benefit. “Right there, see? The farm and the land, it’s still ours too. At this point we’re probably still more renowned for that than magecraft.” Something which brought him no end of torment, but there’s not any point in weighing Sakura down with his baggage.

She traces the spot he’s pointed out with her finger, moving around to various places that catch her interest. After a second, she glances up at him.

“If you weren’t a magus clan originally, how did it happen?”

That’s a little less painful to go over, even if it’s not quite the saga of glory some of the great families have. And lecturing is something that has always come easily to Waver. It’s a bit in depth as far as set up, but Sakura’s bright. He knows she can keep up, and this will give her something to think over besides basements and worms.

Waver takes a moment to flip the map over to the one that encompasses all of Europe. At five going on six, he doubts Sakura’s got any notable knowledge of military history, but some explanation is necessary for her to follow along.

“You probably haven’t learned it yet, but back in the early part of this century there was a huge war between all the countries in Europe. The wrong person got killed, basically, and once countries started calling in favors other countries owed them, and then those countries started calling in favors of their own…well, things blew up really quickly. At the time they called it the Great War, because there hadn’t been any conflict so huge in history, but now it’s usually known as World War I. You got that?”

Sakura nods, and she isn’t getting that glazed over look yet so Waver supposes he can go on. “So basically, there are two sides fighting against each other here. The Allies-” He circles them for her benefit as he lists them out, “-England, France, and Russia, against the Central Powers. That would be the German Empire, Italy, and the Austro-Hungarian Empire.” At that last one Waver rests his finger on the border that separates what was once a single entity, and he can’t help but think how easily things can fall apart. Before he can get too distracted, Waver returns to the gist of things. 

“Anyway, my grandfather was drafted to fight for the British when the war first broke out. He was only my age at the time, but he didn’t know then he had any sort of magical capabilities.” Waver takes a second to find the Somme River within the borders of France. “He might’ve even never realized it he hadn’t been part of a very big battle around here. When they were fighting in the trenches he realized a grenade had been lobbed in right next to his unit’s medical officer. It was only because he ran so much prana through his legs sub-consciously that he was able to move fast enough to pull the man out of harm’s way in time.”

“And that’s how he found out?”

“Well, sort of. When he did that he pretty much mangled his left leg. But the man he saved, Jason Constantine, happened to be a magus from a family specialized in surgical procedure and modification. He fixed it up as best he could at the time, and I guess he felt like he owed Grandfather or something because after the war was over he sponsored his admission to the Clock Tower. His great-granddaughter Judith Constantine is the current head of Althos Department. She’s the one who wrote the letter of recommendation that got my into Advanced Evocation program at the Eulyphis Department.”

Waver can see sleepiness finally starting to take a hold on Sakura, and moves to wrap things up. “Anyway, he worked incredibly hard and managed to form a Crest to pass down. That brings us to now, more or less.” He takes a moment to return the used cups to the sink before pulling Sakura’s chair out for her. Her yawning very noticeable by now, Waver nudges her in the direction of the stairs. “Back to bed now. We both need to rest.”

Sakura settles into the sheets looking much more at peace. Waver does the same on his futon, not knowing of the dreams that would come that night. Of how a single word would continue to haunt his waking mind.

Oceanus. The sea at the edge of the world.

-----------------------------

After that dream of Alexander before misted waters, Waver can’t really look his Servant in the eye. He takes refuge in talking with Sakura, who needs updating anyway as the only other person in the MacKenzie house truly aware of the undercurrents in Fuyuki.

“Assassin is gone for good now, so it shouldn’t be a problem for you to go outside. But since Caster’s still at large, just go out to the backyard until I say so, okay?”

Sakura nods, and though Waver wars with himself for a moment over it he believes her up to handling the responsibility of what he asks next.

“Sakura…I know you don’t have your normal sensitivity because of the seal. Nonetheless, I believe your instincts haven’t been dulled by it. If you feel like something strange is going on, head inside the house and make sure Glen and Martha do too. I’ve put up a few bounded barriers that will at least hold someone off long enough for Rider and me to show up, but they won’t protect you if you’re outside. Can you do this?”

“Yes, I can,” Sakura says, softly but with conviction. She then tilts her head, eyeing him. “Did something happen?”

“No, everything’s fine,” Waver quickly says, regretting how perspective the little girl could be. “So don’t-”

“Hey kid! Breakfast is ready, so come on.” Rider injects himself into the conversation, and Waver’s not sure to be relieved or worried over the distraction. Unbidden, images come to mind, dreamlike yet crystal clear all at once-

-Walking shoulder to shoulder, bolstered on by nothing more than their belief in that great man, onward and outwards until beholding that sea of legend-

“Fine. After we’re done, let’s go into town. ” Waver turns his face away from two surprised expressions, and feels the redness coming.

“Eh? That sounds like a fine prospect.” Rider grins, and for one brief second Waver thinks it’ll end at that. Of course, that would take far more luck than he has. “What made you change your mind about going?”

“I need a book,” Waver says as they sit down, and tucks into the morning meal with vigor before he can be further prodded.

As much as Waver would have liked to keep just which book he was interested in a secret, he should have already seen that wish as being fruitless. But still, for Rider to have shown up after purchasing that silly video game set and instantly figure out Waver had been looking at a biography of his life…if Luck Ranks could be attributed to non-Servants, his would probably be at E.

Still smarting from their conversation, it takes Waver a moment to realize Rider has a book of his own at hand. Normally he wouldn’t have cared that much, but anything to move away from the conversation of Rider when he had been alive.

“Did you want to get that?” Waver asks, looking to see the title. “…The Complete Works of Aristotle?” That’s a pointless purchase when it’s being done by a man who was personally tutored by one of the most noteworthy philosophers in history. Waver can’t imagine why he’d want it.

“Some of it has been lost to the ages…and the translation, but it will do for a start.” Rider thumps his chest in a matter of fact way. “If you don’t start a proper education early, how else will Sakura grow up to be a good adult?”

There’s so much Waver can say to that, and wants to. In the end, pure disbelief wins.

“She’s five! Don’t you think you’re starting at least ten years too early?!” Waver throws his hands up in frustration. “And I don’t want to hear about being a good adult from you!”

“Virtue is knowledge, and the man who knows the right will act rightly,” Rider issues forth the famous quote of Socrates without missing a beat. “Age is irrelevant in pursuit of philotimo. It is a way of life that takes from all forms of goodness, from family to friends to even the small kindnesses of strangers. That girl was never given such a foundation from the start, so the difference needs to be made up.”

They go back and forth on the issue until Waver finally gives in. Rider does at least accept the point Aristotle will be easier for Sakura if she has something a little more on her level to bridge it to. By the time they leave the bookstore Waver’s backpack is dense with literature, Aristotle nestling next to Japanese translations of Alice in Wonderland, Anne of Green Gables, and several other children’s books just enough above her level to challenge her without being hard.

It’s only when night falls and they are on the path back to Miyama that Waver realizes reading will have to wait. His Circuits aching in resonance with the strange prana in the air, as one Master and Servant look to the river dividing the city.

“And off to battle once again,” Rider says, though his tone is more somber in light of this new threat. “Come, kid. Let us take Caster’s head!”

-----------------------------

Waver doesn’t realize it at the time, totally overcome by the pure light born of the Sword of Promised Victory. But that battle on the river is the first domino in a chain of them, the defeat of Caster marking the beginning of an inevitable end. Maybe he hadn’t wanted to see it, caught up in those peaceful days and exhilarating nights.

But it had come down to this, end of the Holy Grail War. The end of Waver Velvet’s role as a participant, at least. Bereft of his Command Spells and his Servant-his King, his friend-the young magus stays where he kneels on the ground, watching the retreating back of the victorious Archer recede into the distance.

Even now, he can hear the sound of waves.

He could have stayed there forever, but that last order won’t allow for such a thing. Live, Rider said. Staying this close to where the Grail will be summoned and the remaining Servants will battle it out can only be a death sentence. Waver Velvet gets to his feet and starts the long walk back to the MacKenzie house, feeling like a stranger in his own skin.

On the way Waver only falters one time, because the flaring of his Circuits had become too much. The Grail must have been summoned, or close enough to it-and then a golden light that Waver has seen before flares up in the distance. Numb as the loss of Alexander has made the former Master, he still keenly feels the shock. As suddenly as it appeared, the Grail’s energy seeps away. The only cause could be the Noble Phantasm of the King of Knights. 

Why had Saber thrown it all away just as it was within her grasp? He can’t even fathom a reason. But this is no longer his concern, he supposes. What remains to him now is to carry on.

Only about twenty minutes have passed since Waver had been left alone, but the night is so late it bridges the very earliest morning. It comes as a surprise to him that both MacKenzies are awake and waiting for Waver when he lets himself inside. Perhaps it stems from some primal alertness deep within, that kept the old couple on edge at this advanced hour even without Magic Circuits to key them onto the events taking place not so far from their home.

“Grandma, Grandpa?” Waver does his best to affect surprise, though the effort doesn’t truly require much. “You’re up late.”

“We were worried,” Glen says with a stern note in his voice, tempered with real concern. “You and Alex-san still hadn’t come home, and without a single word-” The older man stops abruptly, registering the missing presence. “Where is he?”

“I’m sorry…” Waver begins, hiding the true grief he’s feeling. “There was an emergency, and that guy had to return home suddenly. I just saw him off. But he told me to thank you two for your hospitality. He really…had fun.”

The couple glances at each other, no doubt sensing some of sadness filling Waver despite his best efforts. But they don’t press, simply taking it for the pain of one friend missing another.

“That’s a shame. Please tell him he’s welcome here any time, alright?” Martha says, tone gentle. “We’ll be heading to bed now-be careful not to wake Sakura-chan up.”

“I will, Grandma,” Waver tells her. It’s unfortunately a promise he won’t be able to keep, not when the little girl will know the real reason Rider is no longer by his side. Sakura’s too bright for that, and she’ll want the truth even if she won’t say it outright.

Sure enough, when he opens the door to his room Sakura isn’t even in bed. Curled up on one of the futons with a small light to read by, she looks from Alice in Wonderland to up at Waver instead.

“You’re back,” Sakura says, placing a bookmark on the page with care before shutting the volume. Those violet eyes flit about the area, searching, until once more they rest on him for explanation.

“Rider’s gone.” This is the first he’s said those words aloud, and the mere admittance feels like a stab in the heart. “The War’s over. It was Saber against…I’m not sure which one, but probably Archer. I don’t think anyone really won, though. The Grail disappeared too fast, and…” Waver chokes up, unable to continue.

“Rider’s…really…” Sakura echoes, and she looks thrown in her own quiet way. Then it vanishes just as fast, leaving nothing in her face. Waver probably should pay it more heed, but he’s just so tired, body and soul alike. “What about Berserker and his Master?”

“They must be gone, the both of them. Every Master who’s ever summoned a Berserker has always died of mana deprivation.” Some part of him wonders why she’s asking about that specifically, but he lacks the energy to pursue that thought any further. “I’ll tell you the whole story later, I just…I need to rest.” Waver tries to move to his futon, but Sakura’s small hand clutches his pants leg to stop him.

“Take the bed,” Sakura tells him, and shakes her head when he tries to protest. “You’ve had a long night. It will help.”

She looks so resolute about it, and Waver just doesn’t have it in him right now to argue it over. So he does as Sakura says, and even through the exhaustion he can’t help but be a little amused when the purple haired girl tucks him in. Who’s really the caretaker here, he wonders as his eyes shut.

“Go to sleep too,” Waver still manages. “You shouldn’t be up this late anyway, it’ll throw off your internal clock.”

There’s a pause, one a Waver more in command of his facilities wouldn’t have missed.

“I just want to finish this chapter,” Sakura says. Another pause, then just as sleep has all but claimed him-

“Thank you, Waver. For everything.”

Deep as his sleep is, it does not end up being a long one. Strange hands shake him awake barely an hour later, and it takes him a moment to realize it is Martha. Groggy as Waver is, the distraught look on her face still registers quickly.

“Sakura-chan’s gone!” Martha tells him urgently, and those words have him snapping to full awareness in an instant.

“What?!” Waver sits straight up and scans the room. No little girls in sight. The only indication she had ever been there at all are all the belongings she’s acquired, clothes, books, toys alike, neatly folded up and piled together. On top of them all is the camel-colored scarf she had completely, a note reading ‘Waver’ pinned to it that is written out in the style of a hand that copied the shapes of the letters rather than understood them.

“I found her stuffed bunny downstairs when I was getting a glass of water…” Martha begins shakily. “I brought it up so she could sleep with it, but…she wasn’t in here. I’ve looked all over the house, even Glen’s looking outside-”

Why had Sakura done it? Why had she left, now of all times and not bringing a single thing with her? Cold fear and hot anger clash together, leaving Waver torn. Kneeling down on the ground, he picks up the clothes…and sees what’s missing.

“And all those children who have disappeared, oh God…” Martha continues on, before taking a deep breath and straightening with determination. “I’m going to go call the police.”

“Wait, Grandma.” Waver pulls his coat off the hook and heads for the stairs. “I think I know where she is. Give me a chance to get her before calling the authorities.”

Martha rushes after him, brow knit with worry. “But-”

“It’s alright.” Done pulling his shoes on, Waver stands and turns to her. “I promise, I’ll bring her back so you can scold her properly for worrying us all.”

The older woman blinks, but something in his voice sways her in the end. As Waver opens the door to leave, she lightly presses her hand to his shoulder.

“No, there won’t even be a scolding. Just bring her home.”

There’s no one out at the hour to see Waver running too fast for a human being. His body is not the most athletic to begin with, but with the right reinforcement he’s able to overcome that for now. It helps that he knows exactly where to go, not wasting a single second. By the time he arrives at his destination his lungs are burning with exertion and sweat beads against flush skin. Waver doesn’t feel it. Not with what he had sought right in front of him.

It’s a far sight from what it had been just two weeks ago, the Matou grounds. There’s still emergency tape barricading the area, but Waver ignores it. Ducking underneath the black and yellow plastic, he walks to the small figure seated at the edge of the hole that marks where the mansion used to be. Sakura hugs her knees to her chest, face buried in the hem of that gloomy purple dress that had been the only clothing she had when they first met.

Waver can’t ever remember being as angry as he feels right now in his life. Not that kind of fury that would bring him to lash out at her-never that-but that she would do something so stupid, that she would run away from home without even shoes on her feet. It’s cold out, and that thin dress and those socks are no protection at all. What had she been thinking?

But even in through the red haze coloring his thoughts Waver knows expressing this is not the answer. A few deep breaths in and out has his head cooled enough to talk calmly. Keenly he feels how fragile this moment is. Waver Velvet knows the danger of carelessly smashing it.

“Sakura,” Waver says, quiet but utterly firm. “I don’t know why you decided to come out here, but we’re going back to the MacKenzies now.”

“I can’t.” The words come out muffled, soft and sad. “I don’t belong in a place like that. This is where I should be.”

“That’s not true-” Waver starts, only to be cut off.

“It is.” Sakura lifts her head up, and her sorrowful eyes bore right into him. “Every day, I told myself that I would leave. Someone like me would only darken a warm place like that. I-if I really valued your kindness, I’d return to the Matou land…b-but I liked it so much, and I was too weak to do the right thing.” The little girl inhales, her delicate frame shuddering with the motion. “It was a wonderful dream, even though I was fooling myself the whole time. But when you came back, a-and Rider wasn’t there I realized it was time to wake up.”

“Only a kid would say something so ridiculous.” Waver drops himself on the ground next to her. “Thinking that is your delusion. The real Sakura is the one who I got to know at the MacKenzies, the one who likes pink things and rabbits and reading. Trying to convince yourself you belong in this dying place is just a lie to yourself and everyone else.”

Sakura’s lower lip trembles, and she looks like she doesn’t know what to say.

“Your name, didn’t Rider say it meant ‘cherry blossom’? Those can’t survive in the dark.” Waver feels the tension that had carried him along this far leave his body as he exhales and finishes. “Their place is under the sun.”

“…I don’t have anywhere else to go,” Sakura finally says in a small voice. “Everyone is dead or…doesn’t want me.”

“Someone who wants you is right here,” Waver snaps, embarrassment giving his voice a harsher tone than he would have liked. His attempt to be collected about this having already failed, Waver gives up any pretense of dignity to get his message through. “Look, I’m not a great man like Rider. I’m just me, so I’m sure there’ll be times I’ll mess up, and you’ll get mad or upset. But I’m a magus, so the least I can do is make an equivalent exchange with you.” He looks her right in eyes gone wide with wary hope. “I’ll swear to do my best if you promise to do the same. It’ll be an oath between magi, alright?”

“You…you really…”

“We need to go to London anyway, because the only person good enough to treat your body is there.” Face very red by now, Waver finishes in a rush. “I’m just asking if you want to live with me in England when you’re better.”

Sakura stares up at him, and he knows just how much faith is being put in him by even considering his offer. She’s a girl who has been let down by hope before-he cannot do the same. It would break her completely.

“Is it really okay?” Sakura asks timidly. She’s shivering so strongly by now Waver can barely understand the words. Frustrated with her stubbornness, he takes off his coat and drapes it over her slight shoulders.

“I wouldn’t say if it I didn’t mean it. Now will you at least come home with me before we both freeze?” Waver does his best to frown and show his firmness on this point, but it seems Sakura already can see right through his posturing. She sighs softly, but something in her expression clears up.

“Let’s go to England together.” There’s such hope in her voice, and a trust Waver feels he doesn’t quite deserve. He’ll earn it, one step at a time.

“First we need to get back to Glen and Martha. You really worried them, you know?” Waver gets to his feet and crouches. “Get up. If I let you walk back without any shoes on in this cold, I’ll get lectured for hours.”

His coat trailing off her small body like a dress, Sakura climbs on carefully and lets herself be picked up. He’s lucky she’s still so light, otherwise he just wouldn’t be strong enough to do it. That’s a thing to remember, isn’t it? She’s just going to keep growing. And he’ll be there to see all she’ll become.

As they make their way back to the MacKenzie’s neighborhood, Waver can see that a fire has sprung up downtown. He wonders about it for a second, but it won’t cross the river. Waver’s already made his choice on what to prioritize. He’s sure this won’t be the first time he’ll be put into a position where Sakura comes first, so it’s only natural to get used to it.

----------------------

When he had promised to take Sakura to England, Waver had been mentally preparing himself for all that would entail. Just getting her into his legal custody and out of the country would take months on his own, even using magic to bypass anything that prevented him from doing so.

What he hadn’t taken into account is how much his value had risen at the Clock Tower. Upon contacting Judith Constantine on Sakura’s case so she could begin putting together a treatment plan, Waver had been informed in no uncertain terms just how many higher-ups wanted to talk to him. Many people wanted to know what had happened in Fuyuki, and he was apparently the only surviving Master with membership in the Magus Association. Kotomine Kirei had also survived the War, he had been told, but he would only answer to the Church. 

Waver felt indescribably uneasy upon hearing that, an instinct surpassing his conscious knowledge. It’s not hard to decide to not go anywhere near Kotomine Church, and avoid contact with the priest at all costs.

Still, he doesn’t understand the urgency. There’s no changing what has happened, and magi are accustomed to waiting for their goals. Then he finds out the two groups clamoring the most for his return: the Archibald family, and more surprisingly, Jubstacheit von Einzbern. That worries Waver. He has the sense that no good could ever come out of drawing the attention of such an obsessive family.

Nonetheless, he sees his chance in this interest, and knows he’s not likely to have a better opportunity.

“I need to get Sakura to England and under my guardianship,” Waver tells Judith when she calls him with the news. “Until then, I cannot and will not leave Japan.”

“You’re playing a dangerous game here, Waver. That Acht, he had all his hopes pinned to this. As you can imagine, he’s not happy,” The Althos Department head tells him, but there’s a note of grudging respect he’s never heard from her before. “I’ve never known you to risk yourself like that.”

“Just let them know,” Waver says grumpily. “No matter what you think of me for it, this is something I can’t compromise on.”

Three weeks later a somewhat confused looking worker from social services arrives with paperwork clearing the adoption of Matou Sakura. Waver doesn’t want to think too hard about exactly what had been done to make this happen with such speed and likely exploitation use of magical persuasion, which is probably the best case when dealing with people like the Einzberns. The papers are legitimate, and that’s enough for him.

Sakura peers over his shoulder as he signs paper after paper. When he’s finished, he hands them off to the social worker for processing and filing.

“It’s done?” Sakura seems anxious about it, and frankly he doesn’t blame her.

“Yeah.” Waver leans back and stretches, sore from sitting in place for so long. “I already got your passport, so pretty much all that’s left now is to get you a few shots and get our flight arranged.”

They all have a big dinner that night to celebrate it, though the MacKenzie’s pleasure with the adoption is tempered somewhat by the fact they’ll be leaving soon. The week leading up to their departure is spent simply as family, no matter how unconventional it may be, and Waver remembers it with fondness. It seems like almost no time at all before Waver and Sakura find themselves at the train station that will take them to the airport, bags in hand.

“Oh, I wish you could stay longer,” Martha says tearfully, 
giving Waver another hug.

“You know we’d like to, Grandma. But Sakura needs this surgery as soon as possible.” The call for the approaching train sounds, and for what feels like the millionth time Waver checks to make sure they have everything they need for the trip. “I promise we’ll come and visit as soon as she’s recovered.”

“Alright then,” Glen smiles. “Come back. If we’re lucky, the cherry trees will still be in bloom.”

“A flower-viewing?” Sakura pipes up. 

“You want to go see the trees in blossom?” Waver asks her as the train pulls up and the doors open. He gathers up their bags, allowing the MacKenzies to hug them both one last time.

“Yes. Let’s go see them together,” Sakura says, slipping her small hand in his. For the first time since they’ve met…she smiles.

-----------------------

Ten years pass.

Waver’s not quite sure where they all went, sometimes. Everything just happens so fast-Sakura’s surgery and recovery, the meetings with the various Clock Tower groups wanting information on the 4th Grail War. The title of El-Melloi being passed onto him. 

He finds his rapid rise more than a little mystifying. The fact that just when he stopped caring about prestige in the Clock Tower marked the start of his own only convinces Waver that the universe is not without its own merry sense of twisted irony. But it still happens, the whole “Lord El-Melloi II” and custodianship of the Archibald family. Waver doesn’t understand the idea behind tying their fortune to the man who had contributed to the loss of their head and Crest, but whenever he tries to bring up the subject to the girl who had been next in line all Nora Archibald does is glare and make comments about taking responsibility.

The professorship had come to him much more naturally. As much as Waver would have rather focused on his own thaumaturgy, teaching and lecturing came as easily to him as breathing. He had made professor just two years after returning from Japan. Only a year later he already assumed leadership of the Eulyphis Department. Word had got out by that point, and Waver’s intrinsic skill with magecraft theory and maximizing the potential of Magic Circuits had garnered him no small amount of fame among the Western magi.

Of course, he never would have bothered with that kind of research as much as he had if Sakura hadn’t been around. Having removed the remaining parasite familiars from her body, much of the work and advances Waver made had simply been to undo the damage caused by the tampering of her body, and compensate for what couldn’t. She has flourished in England beyond his wildest expectations, as a magus and simply as a girl. Waver knows there are people out there better suited for raising a child than himself, but when all is said he hadn’t done a half-bad job of it. It hadn’t happened overnight, but Sakura reaches the point where she can smile honestly, where she can take pride in herself as a magus. For Waver, that’s enough.

Simply being raised by Waver puts Sakura far ahead of her actual age group as far as magi go, and that’s without taking into account her excessive raw potential. She grows up learning his methodology, how to analyze to produce the greatest results. Combined with the Crest Waver worked to return to the more traditional form as with any other magus, Sakura Velvet is well-known for being Waver Velvet’s protégé.

He hadn’t been certain of that, both the Matou Crest and the family name. But Sakura had simply said taking control of the Matou magic to live her own life was part of overcoming the evens of the past, and it happened to be a good combination with her Imaginary Numbers element. As for the last name, she had smiled and said it was one to be proud of and that was that.

Waver never stops thinking about the Holy Grail War, and doesn’t think he ever could. Not when it shaped the man he had become so drastically. But he does think its role in his life is done with, and when the MacKenzies move back to Toronto for health reasons neither he nor Sakura have any motive to go to Japan.

Unfortunately, he’s wrong about that part.

It’s a peaceful day in late January when it happens, ten years after the 4th Grail War. The view of London from the luxurious apartment he and Sakura have in the upscale Belgravia neighborhood-one of the few things Waver had appreciated about inheriting the title of El-Melloi was never having to worry about money again-is made softly dreamy by the gray winter’s day. He would have preferred to enjoy it without the stack of thesis papers he’s been grading since the morning to occupy his attention, but it could be worse.

“Mail’s here,” Sakura says in English that carries the faintest hint of the Japanese accent she’s never totally dropped as she sorts through the stack. Waver can’t help but be amazed at the difference between the beautiful, confident young woman in front him, compared to that timid and gloomy girl in the past. His pride in her is absolute. Not that he’ll share that-he still has some image to think of here. “Oh, your new issue of Edge.”

Waver takes the gaming magazine and starts to flip through it, feeling he deserves a break. A few pages in, though, and his already semi-perpetual scowl deepens.

“That contributor you don’t like again?” Sakura asks, sweetly and maybe only halfway teasing in her manner.

“Sakura, if I’ve taught you anything, it’s that using italics every other word is the surest sign of sick mind there is. Such people need watching. Preferably from a safe distance.” Waver turns the page past the offending column as a dainty snort reaches his ears.

“You or Terry Pratchett? That’s stealing, Waver.” Sakura shakes her head at him, setting down the rest of the mail but for one enveloped postmarked from Canada.

“It’s not stealing, it’s an homage,” Waver says, closing the magazine. He looks at the letter in her hands. “From the MacKenzies?”

“Yes.” Sakura opens it, scanning the contents with a fond smile. “Martha says Glen’s arthritis has improved immensely since he’s started taking that medicine you bullied Althos’ R&D section into making.”

“I didn’t bully anyone,” Waver says calmly, “I just suggested with…emphasis.”

“Too bad, I already know your secret.” Sakura tucks the letter back into the envelope with care, lips quirking up in a way more mischievous than innocent. “Waver Velvet, ‘Professor Charisma’…is just a big softy.”

“Sakura, I believe I told you the penalty for bringing that up,” Waver says, having zero mercy to spare in this regard even for her. “I hope you didn’t think I was joking when I said your allowance would be forfeit.”

“It’s a little hard not to, seeing as just yesterday I got…” Sakura pauses, ticking off her fingers, “Four confession letters for you, three offers for ‘you and of course Professor Velvet’ to attend various upcoming functions, and Professor Halévy of the Numerology Department said she would love to have you come along for a ‘private training seminar’ at her summer home in Bouches-du-Rhône.” The violet haired girl finishes that sentence with her best effort to mimic Shoshanna Halévy’s Gallic purr, before raising a brow at her guardian.

“Okay, you hate me right now-”

“Just a little,” Sakura assures him.

“-And that’s understandable. But rest assured, I’m at least a hundred times more miserable than you about it. So no more bringing up ‘Professor Charisma’, understood?”

The sound of the kettle’s boiling whistle interrupts anything Sakura might have been ready to say. She heads to the kitchen to prepare their afternoon tea, leaving Waver to lean back in his chair and sigh. He supposes some level of increased female attention isn’t strange with success, but the level of popularity he has-and never asked for-with the Clock Tower’s female population just furthers his opinion that even Akasha pales as a mystery compared to feminine mind. Acting cranky only encourages them, for some reason. All Waver can pray is that Sakura will keep her sensibility as she grows older, one of his sole remaining bastions of sense in an increasingly irrational world.

Sakura returns with the tea set prepared and even snacks. When she first started learning to cook Waver had been doubtful, but she truly had a gift for it. If Waver hadn’t been the sort who often forgot to eat when in the depths of research, he’d probably have a much harder time keeping his weight reasonable with her around.

But more than perfectly brewed Earl Grey and fresh scones are required for his forgiveness, and when Sakura sits herself at the table he passes her half of the remaining thesis papers.

“I’m pretty sure you have TAs for this sort of thing,” Sakura wrinkles her nose, nonetheless grabbing a red pen for marking. 

“And when I think they’re actually up to the task I’ll give it to them,” Waver says flatly. “You’re still years ahead of the idiots they keep foisting off onto me.”

“That’s the Velvet charm talking, I kn-aghh!!” Sakura drops the pen, grabbing her left hand as pained tears spring to her eyes. “What the…”

When Waver sees her hand, his stomach sinks. Three red marks, fanned out like the petals of a flower and radiating tremendous prana. Command Spells.

He should have known. With the energy cut off so suddenly and unused, of course it would be far less than the normal sixty years until the next Grail War. But it’s fine, Waver tells himself. Sakura doesn’t have to go. They’ll contact whoever has been chosen as the supervisor for this round-probably Kotomine-and simply tell him she’s opted out.

Only Sakura doesn’t look like that. Rather, there’s an expression Waver knows all too well: determination. No, he doesn’t like it at all.

“Sakura, you’re not going,” Waver says in a tone that books no argument. It doesn’t work; she simply presses her lips together and if anything looks more set on it. 

“You don’t think I’m capable?”

“That’s not it at all,” Waver replies sharply. “It’s not your abilities I doubt, it’s the one of the six other supernatural entities who will be doing their very best to kill you. And I’m not letting a fifteen year old girl throw herself into danger for a mere chance at a wish.”

Things go downhill from there. Waver can count on the fingers of one hand how many times he and Sakura have actually had a fight over years. It’s not even a fight in the sense most people think of, because he has never been able to bring himself to yell at Sakura even at his angriest. More like a mutual freezing out, in which each side waits for the other to break first.

Such a strategy won’t work this time, though. Not with time ticking down to the start of the War. And Waver knows Sakura. When she’s set on something, there’s no dissuading her otherwise.

Waver thinks about all this, five nights from when her Command Spells appeared. If he’s going to lose to Sakura the way he usually does, it may as well be on his terms. Standing outside her bedroom door, he clutches a box in one hand and knocks with the other. There’s a stretch of silence, but it eventually swings open to reveal the girl on the other side.

“Sit,” Waver says as he makes use of her desk chair. Sakura tilts her head, clearly on guard but nonetheless does as he asks. He just looks at her for a moment, and despite his frustration is warmed by the glow of pride. 

“I don’t want you to go to Japan,” Waver begins, ignoring how her eyes narrow slightly, “But I know you’ll find a way over there whether I like it or not. So you can fight, and I’ll give you my blessing and support. On one condition.”

“Condition?” Sakura asks skeptically. Without another word, he hands her the box. Opening it carefully, she draws in a surprised breath before closing it once more. “Ah. I see.”

There’s a playful note in her voice Waver takes issue with. “It’s not like that. I’ve already accepted the way things finished there. This is only because I want your Servant to be someone I can absolutely trust to get you through this in one piece.” Waver looks her over again, this girl who blossomed so wonderfully in every way sometimes he can’t even believe it, and sighs. “You’re a much finer magus than I was at the time. Without a doubt, you’ll be a splendid Master.” He coughs awkwardly, and changes course before things can get too sentimental.

“Get your passport and anything else you need. We’re taking a flight out tonight.” Waver stands, raising a brow at her. “I assume your bags and supplies are already packed up.”

A guilty pause. Then Sakura reaches under her bed, pulling out a fully stocked traveling trunk along with another suitcase.

“I would have been disappointed if you hadn’t,” Waver says with grudging pride. “We’re leaving in an hour. If I am letting you go gallivanting off in Asia, I’m covering all my bases.”

The flight doesn’t take long, only about four hours during which Waver longs for one of his cigars. By the time they touch down in Thessaloniki his edginess is peaking to points it hasn’t since he was a teenager. Sakura notices, of course, and gives him a concerned look even though she has much better things to be worrying over.

“Are you sure you want to stay for this?” Sakura asks as they board the train that will take them from Thessaloniki to Pella. She bites her lip, then continues, “With…how the records work there…”

“It’s nothing I don’t already know,” Waver says. He settles back in his seat to look out at the passing scenery. It’s mountains he sees, with the occasional town to break them up. It’s a little strange to think the quiet town they’re headed to was once the seat of an empire, but that’s time for you. Unforgiving and relentless. “It doesn’t change anything either way, so put it out of your mind.”

Sakura looks very much like she wants to respond to that, but out of some concession to Waver stays quiet. Fortunately, the train ride itself only takes about an hour, and by the time they exit at Pella he indulges in a much needed smoke. Sakura on the other hand merely examines the map she brought along, growing worry knitting her brow.

“Something wrong?” Waver asks, extinguishing his cigar and throwing it away.

“Well, it says there’s a tourist center just over there…but it’s not and I know I’m not reading this incorrectly-” Sakura’s frantic rambling stops when her shoulder is gently tapped. Both magi turn to see a young man, one with a sleepy expression, dark mussed hair, and for some reason two cats at his feet.

“Tourists?” He asks, Greek accent coloring the English. Sakura nods, calming down a little. “The center’s…closed for remodeling…now.”

“It is?” Sakura’s recovered calm vanishes, and she looks more stricken than ever.

“Don’t…worry…” The man yawns a little. “Mm, where are…you headed?”

“Um, the Pella Hotel,” Sakura tells him, blissfully ignoring years of Waver telling her not to give strange men personal information. “But we really need to get to the palace ruins.”

“There’s a bus…coming in ten minutes. You…can take it to…the hotel…” The Greek picks up one of the cats-four now-and rubs it gently behind the ears. “It is…not far from the ruins. They…will take you…to the site from there.”

“Thank you, Mr…ah,” Sakura trails off awkwardly. The man gives her a slight smile, green eyes gaining somewhat more animation. 

“Herakles. Herakles Karpusi.” Setting the cat back down, Herakles gives them a lazy wave as he walks off. Like some strange Greek Pied Piper, the felines follow right after him. “Enjoy…Pella.”

“So much for ‘don’t talk to strangers’,” Waver says sarcastically to Sakura, who primly folds up her map and tucks it in her bag. There’s something unusual about that man, but he can’t quite put his finger on it.

“Waver, I’m not five anymore, he was friendly, it’s bright day out, and finally we’re surrounded by people.” Sakura’s smile takes some of the bite out of her words, though. “Also, I’m a magus. Now let’s go get that bus. We don’t have time to waste.”

The directions prove correct at least. Sakura’s magical power hits its daily peak around midnight, and so it’s shortly before then they make their way onto the ruins of the once grand palace. While Waver establishes a simple bounded barrier to keep out any unwanted attention, Sakura takes the jugs filled with ox blood and starts to draw out her summoning circle.

One minute till midnight. Waver tells her as much.

“Are you sure?” Sakura asks as she sets down the delicate artifact with great care. Waver stands some ways back, there if she needs the support but mostly observing.

“What kind of idiot would get the time for a summoning wrong?” Waver shoots back before checking the watch again. “Thirty seconds.”

Sakura places herself before the circle, taking a deep breath to center herself. Waver can feel her prana humming to attention, ready for activation.

“Now.” It comes out hoarser than Waver means to, but his part here is done. Sakura’s eyes half-shut, releasing the trigger that will open up her Circuits as she begins the incantation.

“Ye first, O silver, O iron. O stone of the foundation, O Archduke of the Contract.”

Waver’s heart pounds like he’s running a marathon, and his legs feel like they’re barely keeping him up. He doesn’t know how things are going to work out here. But he’s not regretting it. He’s not.

Sakura’s magical energy surges as she chants on, but even the impressive levels she can manage are nothing compared to the sheer power spilling from the glowing lines of the circle. It’s mana so dense it warps the air around it, misting like a phantasmal fog. It out glows the moon hanging overhead. The spell is nearly done, and Waver’s hands tremble at his sides.

“Thou seven heavens, clad in a trinity of words,” Sakura raises her voice, nearly shouting to be heard over the wind whipping with a fury around them. “Come past thy restraining rings, and be thou the hands that protect the balance-!”

The light flares up, a sun chained to the earth. Waver Velvet does not look away. It fades away, and the dust kicked up by the wind dies down. Not that he needs it. Nothing can conceal the strength and overwhelming power of the presence standing majestically in the center of the circle.

Alexander the Great is before him for the first time in ten years, and for a moment Waver feels like that brash young magus again. He can’t speak, he can’t even breathe.

The eyes of the newly summoned Servant move from Waver to Sakura.

“I ask of you, are you my Master?” 

Sakura seems as unable to form words as Waver, but she holds up the hand bearing the Command Spells and looks the King of Conquerors right in the eye.

He looks satisfied with that. “Then my sword is yours, and your fate mine. Thus, our contract of the Servant Rider is sealed.”

Waver isn’t sure what to expect next, but as he remembers being typical with Rider it’s about the last thing he sees coming. The great man grins brilliantly, and bounding forward picks up both Sakura and Waver in a firm embrace.

“Glad that’s done with. You two are looking good!” Rider tightens his grip, managing to support the two of them with ease. “It’s been what…ten years, I’m guessing?” He pauses, taking a closer look. “You grew up to be a real beauty, Sakura! And you, kid….” He blinks. “What did you do with your hair?”

“I keep on trying to convince him to cut it, but he always says he doesn’t have time-” Sakura says apologetically, like this is all totally normal.

“Wait, wait, wait!!” Waver yells, his language centers finally kicking into gear. “How do you remember? That’s not possible!”

“There is nothing impossible to him who will try,” Rider says calmly as he sets them down. Waver can already feel a headache coming on.

“First, it’s pretty narcissistic to quote yourself, and second, there’s the whole matter of ‘laws of nature and the Throne’ you’re ignoring here.” Waver crosses his arms, choosing to overlook how amused Sakura is looking by all this.

Rider laughs before shaking his head in amusement. “I know you’ve grown, kid, so I can’t believe I have to explain something so obvious. We have an oath, you and I, unaffected by Death or what follows it.” Stroking his beard thoughtfully, he continues, “Of course, the nature of the Ionian Hetairoi helped. ‘The loyal servants of Alexander shall follow their king, and he will keep them in his heart in turn’. The record was added as my dying dream, but the memory will not leave now.”

“…” Waver doesn’t say anything, but in this moment words we be just trite. Rider seems to understand this, and turns to Sakura.

“So, you’re the one chosen this time.”

“Waver insisted, but it was the same as what I wanted,” Sakura smiles. “I’m glad we could meet again.”

“As am I.” Rider scans their surroundings, looking thoughtfully over the ruins that were once the grand heart of his empire. Maybe he has a moment of ruefulness, but it vanishes before Waver can be sure.

“Let us be off to the battlefield,” Rider declares, unsheathing his sword. A slice of the air and a crack of thunder breaks through to leave the Gordius Wheel before them. “Victory awaits-and then conquest to the very edge of the stars.”

They’re in the chariot, which takes off smooth as silk. There’s thunder and wind rushing past Waver’s ears, tremendous and undeniable.

Beneath it all, like the pulsing of the heart, he hears the sound of waves.

{FIN}
------------------------

Well, this has been a strange yet fun journey. Thank you to everyone who stuck through with to the end-I know it couldn’t have been easy. I’m not even quite sure where the whole inspiration for this sprung from, but I think it started with the dropped ‘amnesia loli Assassin’ subplot in Fate/Zero. Seeing as Team Bros (which, naturally, is BEST TEAM) already had a semi-canon-ish penchant for loli-adopting, the progression to Sakura seemed natural. I didn’t even intend for things to be this long, but the story wanted to be told completely and wouldn’t let me half-ass things. This is intended to companion Fate/Zero-after all, we have the actual novel if you want to read about fights instead of stuffed animal shopping. Having finished, I’d like to write more of Sakura and Papa Waver. Theirs is a good combination: a man whose specialty is Magic Circuits, power flows, and maximizing the skill of his students (knowing what we do of Waver from both Zero and Companion Materials, I strongly suspect his Origin is “Teaching” or something similar), and a girl who has a lot of raw potential that has not ever been properly realized. I’d even think Sakura raised by Waver would be a finer magus than Rin as we know her, simply because Waver is such a great teacher and Rin’s had to do a lot on her own (I’m not counting Kotomine as all that good a magus after all). Even genius can only take you so far by itself. How the 5th War would play out under these circumstances I’d find extremely interesting to explore as well.

Two points where I had to make my own connections, though I did try to follow according to Nasuverse canon:

Sakura’s worms: Based on Heaven’s Feel (where not only had they been activated, but had grown vastly within her body and nerves over the course of ten years), Kotomine was still able to remove most of them. I figured treatment and full recovery when she had only carried them for a year, under the hands of a healer equal in capability to Kotomine would be likely. As Waver did not have the means to remove them himself at the time, I felt a spell that froze and locked in mana much like St. Martin’s cloth would work until he could find a good enough healer for the job. Added bonus: showing up like a normal person under Kiritsugu’s heat scope and avoiding the inevitable headshot.

All of the worms located in the Matou mansion were destroyed by Rider’s charge, the ones in Sakura are destroyed eventually, and the ones in Kariya died of mana deprivation in the Berserker vs Saber fight. Zouken is gone for good, and Waver worked to basically give Sakura a normal Crest with the knowledge in her body. (I personally don’t think any of the insect mastery is in there, because I believe it to be Zouken’s personal preference rather than a signature attribute of the Matou. It’s only because he’s run the show for so long it appears that way. Again, just personal opinion).

Rider’s memories: I based this on simply the way the Ionian Hetairoi works. Waver was loyal enough to him and vice versa to qualify for being recorded in it (if Kayneth had been his Master, Rider wouldn’t have recalled anything). And then there is this quote from Zero itself: “In the face of the oath, even separation was meaningless; under the command of Alexander, the bond formed between King and servant was eternal and beyond time”. Try finding a clearer indication of “Alexander remembers Waver Velvet and the 4th War” than that. Besides, this is Nasuverse, land of rules are rules except for the incredible specific circumstances where they aren’t. I think we can all agree Team Bros>The Throne of Heroes anyway.

I had a good time with this, and hope you all did too. There are also a couple of Shout Outs here and there, so bonus points to anyone who catches those. Thanks again for reading-it’s been a blast.