Chronal Disassociation Ch. 71 (Patreon)

“You alright?”

Lena found Archer on an exterior walkway overlooking the water, his forearms resting against the railing. He hadn’t turned when the door opened, and he didn’t turn now, although she doubted that she had managed to sneak up on him. The drills had taken longer than she’d intended, mostly because Hana apparently considered being told to slow down a personal insult. Still, they were Reinhardt’s problem for the moment. Lena stepped up beside Archer, leaving enough room that he couldn’t accuse her of crowding him.

“I will be.” He replied, which was considerably more honest than she had expected. She had come prepared to argue with him, actually, and finding that she didn’t need to left her with very little to say. Below them, a maintenance crew worked their way along the seawall, their voices occasionally carrying over the water. 

Archer watched them for a while before continuing, “You know, I didn’t think I ever was one to be moping about allies dying.”

“Well, I’d be a bit worried if you weren’t bothered.” Lena replied as she kept her eyes on the maintenance crew, giving him the same courtesy he was giving her. It was easier, sometimes, when the person you were speaking to wasn’t watching your every expression. She knew that much from experience, although Archer would probably find something objectionable about being compared to her, “You’re allowed to miss someone, you know. Don’t think anyone’s going to report you for it.”

“That would certainly make for an interesting addition to my file.” There was enough of his usual dryness in the response that Lena almost smiled. Almost. 

“Was she much like you?” Lena asked. Archer turned his head far enough to give her a distinctly unimpressed look, and she raised a hand before he could object, “With the swords, I mean. I asked Genji, and he said Musashi was some samurai or something, so I’m assuming there were swords involved.”

He also said that Musashi was a man, but after Archer told them that King bloody Arthur was a woman, another mistaken case of history failing to remember someone’s gender wasn’t as shocking.

“There were usually several. Restraint, on the other hand, was rather less reliably present.” He looked back towards the sea, but the answer came more readily than the others had, “She once offered to help in the kitchen. I made the mistake of assuming that meant preparing food, rather than sampling everything I had already prepared.”

“Quality control.” Lena supplied with a chuckle.

“That was her explanation as well. Almost word for word, in fact.” He sounded sufficiently offended that Lena allowed herself a small smile. For a moment, she could picture it without needing any of the explanations about Heroic Spirits. Just someone nicking food while Archer complained, probably continuing to do so because getting a rise out of him was half the fun. She wondered whether Musashi had known how fondly he would eventually complain about her.

Archer rubbed his thumb against a scratch in the railing, considering something before he spoke again, “It was different at Chaldea. You could watch someone disappear, then find them complaining about lunch a few days later. Not always, of course. There were circumstances where certain Servants wouldn’t be resummoned until a while later. But it becomes rather easy to expect another opportunity to speak with them.”

Lena turned towards him at that. She had understood, vaguely, that dying wasn’t necessarily permanent for a Servant. Hearing what that actually meant was something else entirely. An empty chair that wouldn’t stay empty. Things you could leave unsaid because there would probably be time later. She could see how someone might get used to that, and how bloody cruel it would be when the one person you expected to come back didn’t.

“Musashi was…different from the rest of us.”

“Different how?” Lena asked. Kiara had said something similar, just before Archer left, although she hadn’t particularly cared to explain herself. At the time, Lena had assumed it was another complication with the whole Servant business. There seemed to be enough of those that she’d stopped expecting any of the rules to apply to everyone. Archer took a moment to answer, his attention following one of the workers as they climbed down a ladder.

“She came from a world that no longer existed. Even before she joined us, she was wandering between places she had no business being in. Different worlds, different periods of history. She couldn’t always control where she ended up, or how long she stayed.” His mouth twisted slightly, “Naturally, she treated the entire affair as an opportunity to sample the local cuisine and challenge anyone carrying a sword.

“However, that also meant that when she came to Chaldea, she wasn’t a Servant of Proper Human History - the timeline that should have housed her history no longer existed. Therefore, her summoning was a miracle beyond miracles that not even Fujimaru could explain.” At this point, Lena was certain Archer was just talking to himself, lost in his own thoughts.

“And you don’t think it can happen again?” Lena asked. It felt like an obvious question, perhaps even a stupid one, but she would rather ask than stand there pretending she understood. Archer had mentioned enough impossible things over the course of their acquaintance that she had trouble knowing where he drew the line. Apparently, there was a considerable difference between something being impossible and being impossible even by his standards.

“No.” Archer sighed as he looked up, staring at something only he could see, “The method by which she could have blocked off Chaos…I know what she was capable of, what she had always wanted to do, and what she had already done when she was alive. A blade to cut ‘nothingness’...”

Lena waited for him to finish, but the explanation apparently ended there. She looked out over the water, trying to imagine what that would even mean. Cutting something that wasn’t there sounded like the sort of thing he would normally dismiss as nonsense, right before doing it himself. This time, though, she suspected asking for a demonstration would be in particularly poor taste.

“What happens to the person holding the sword?” She asked instead.

Archer lowered his gaze, “To cut nothing, is to cut everything. But Newton's third law still states that for every action, there must be an equal reaction. Heroic Spirits usually circumvent natural physics by the nature of our bodies being composed of spiritron particles. A technique that attacks the concept of nothingness however? Expect a reaction that attacks your own concept of everything.”

Everything.

She had understood the word perfectly well before he’d explained it, and now she rather wished he hadn’t. Her fingers tightened around the railing as she tried to follow the explanation to its conclusion, “You mean there wouldn’t be anything left to summon.”

Archer nodded, “That is what I suspect. I would need to know precisely what happened to be certain, but Kiara’s choice of words was rather telling.”

Lena loosened her grip on the railing. There wouldn’t be a recovery team, then. No waiting for a report, or checking whether somebody had made it out through another exit. She knew better than to suggest any of those things aloud, but her mind kept offering them anyway. They were the questions she knew how to ask, the things that turned waiting into something useful. Archer had apparently worked through his own version of them before she’d even found him.

“Did you know her well?” She asked quietly.

“Well enough to know she would find this conversation embarrassing.” His mouth shifted, although she wouldn’t have called it a smile, “She preferred discussing what she intended to do next.”

Lena nodded. That, at least, she could understand. It was difficult to imagine yourself as the subject of a conversation you wouldn’t be around to interrupt, especially one where everyone suddenly spoke carefully and forgot the parts of you that had annoyed them.

The pilot looked towards the door behind them. She wasn’t particularly eager to invite the AI into this conversation, especially after the way she’d delivered the news in the first place. Still, she could hardly go and demand that Kiara exercise some bloody tact without leaving Archer alone, and she wasn’t sure she wanted to do that either. He was taking this calmly enough that she suspected he had plenty of practice.

“Did, uh, Fujimaru know?” She asked, “About what using it would do to her?”

Lena hadn't remembered the name fast enough, but the information that Archer had divulged with them about Chaldea had included the name of the last Master. R-something Fujimaru. 

“I imagine that became apparent afterwards.”

“That wasn’t what I asked.”

His eyes shifted towards her. Lena held his gaze, although it occurred to her that she’d just used almost exactly the same words he had in the simulator. There was an unpleasant implication here, one that she couldn’t quite leave alone.

“Would they have ordered her to do it?”

“No.” There was no hesitation whatsoever, “Fujimaru would have ordered her to come back.”

Archer straightened before she could ask anything else, rolling his shoulders as though they’d merely been discussing a particularly tedious briefing. Lena recognised the change immediately. Apparently, that was all the honesty she was going to get out of him today, and he intended to make that decision for both of them.

“Regardless, I’ve indulged in quite enough sulking.” He said, “Loss is only to be expected in my line of work. I knew that long before Chaldea, and standing here taking exception to it won’t accomplish anything.”

“You’ve been out here for less than an afternoon.”

“And you’ve evidently been counting.” His eyebrow rose, although the effect was somewhat spoiled by the tiredness still evident in his face. Lena folded her arms. She wasn’t going to drag him back to the railing, but neither was she particularly inclined to congratulate him for deciding he’d finished being upset. He glanced towards the door, “How did the squad fare?”

Work. Something he could actually do something about, preferably involving someone else’s problems.

For a moment, she considered refusing to let him change the subject. Then she thought about what, exactly, she expected to happen if she did. Another admission that he was upset? He’d already given her that, which was considerably more than she’d expected when she came looking for him. Making him stay out here until she was satisfied with how he was handling it would mostly be for her benefit.

Still, she made a note to check on him again later. Preferably without opening with the same question and giving him an opportunity to rehearse his answer. She could manage that much without making a bloody production of it.

“Hana tried to race me.” Lena replied, allowing the change of subject for now, “Yuna stopped her before she made herself sick. The others are learning when to take a breather.”

“Then perhaps the afternoon wasn’t entirely wasted.”

“No, but they’re knackered. If you’re planning another round with that sword, you can forget it.”

Archer paused with his hand against the door panel, then looked back at her, “I was going to suggest we review their eating habits. Sitting down, if that meets your exacting standards.”

Lena considered him, then nodded. “I’ll get Winston.”

…

By the time Lena arrived at the canteen with Winston, Archer had managed to make five people look guilty without saying a word. He stood at the end of their table, examining an empty packet that Hana had apparently made the mistake of leaving beside her tray. Yuna watched him over the rim of her water bottle, while Jae-eun quietly nudged something beneath the table with his foot. Lena decided she didn’t particularly want to know what it was.

“This is a snack.” Archer said finally, turning the packet over, “I asked what you had for breakfast.” Hana folded her arms, immediately defensive, and Lena settled into the seat opposite her before the argument could properly begin. At least there was actual food on their trays now, although Seung-hwa seemed more interested in watching Hana dig herself into trouble than eating any of his.

“It was there, I was hungry, and we had an early briefing.” Hana replied, “What was I supposed to do, tell the captain to wait while I cooked?”

“When did the canteen open?” Winston asked. Lena glanced towards him, grateful for the interruption. Archer looked ready to answer Hana’s question rather literally, which probably wouldn’t improve their relationship with Captain Myung.

“After we’d already left.” Yuna lowered her bottle, “There’s food put aside if we ask, but sometimes the schedule changes. Yesterday we went straight from maintenance checks into a promotional shoot. By the time we finished, lunch was over.” She glanced towards her teammates, as though checking whether anyone wanted to contradict her. Nobody did.

Lena’s amusement faded. She’d been prepared for another argument about gamers living on crisps, but that was considerably less funny. Archer set the packet down and pulled out the remaining chair.

“Then I’ll need your schedule as well.” He said, “Including whoever has the authority to change it.”

At that moment, nobody could have thought that Archer had been talking about a dead - truly dead - ally of his. Whether it was because the Spirit was over it, or because he had seen the injustice that was being done to his new protégés (no matter how much he denied it, he was already going above and beyond what a trainer should be doing) and decided to put their well being over his own troubles.

Either way, Lena wasn’t going to leave him to argue with the captain alone.

“Send me a copy.” She told Yuna, “I’ll arrange the meeting.”

Yuna hesitated, then reached for her phone. “I’d like to be there.”

Archer looked up from the schedule, considering her for a moment before nodding, “Then finish your lunch. We’ll go together.”

Lena caught the small, surprised look that passed between the pilots. Apparently, someone asking them to attend a meeting rather than simply reporting for a reprimand was a novelty.

That needed changing, too. Emily would tan her hide if she did anything less.

…