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[anna settles in next to him, oblivious to how ungracious she's being—no, that's not wholly true, is it? she knows what she's doing and she is not going to apologize for it. this is all for his benefit, and sometimes that's what it takes, is someone being inelegant and blunt.]

[next to him on the couch, she bumps her shoulder against his. it's a familiar hurt, the one he's feeling. she hasn't felt it with kainé yet, but in the back of her mind, she wonders if it's only going to be a matter of time.]

I know. I know about the emptiness. [but kainé isn't the only one, of course. everyone she's grown close to, every friend she's had here who has gone home too early. but she needed to stop herself from falling down that hole; once she goes too deep, there is no return. and she hopes desperately that she can stop waver from falling like this.]

It's miserable. I'm sorry that it happened to you. [she's quiet. she remembers a couple things about what they've discussed.] You could try summoning him...?

[He'd never ask for an apology. Waver had already suspected certain parts of Anna's nature when he asked to partner with her as a team when he first arrived. She was boisterous, with an empathetic spirit that had taken steps to accept her own scars and inner darkness and step more fully into her own Self. Asking Anna to do any less would detract from their agreement, Waver knew.

This was the kind of person he needed.

Waver didn't move away when Anna pressed in next to him, the solidness of her presence in his world providing an anchor that was momentarily lost. Instead, he just heaved a sigh and leaned in towards her. Touch was vitally important, even for the most isolated of people.

Especially for the most isolated of people.]

...Yeah, from the city you came here from. Recolle, right?

[A glance. Waver watched her with the recognition one aggrieved person had for another that had been dealt a similar hand-- he had been paying attention to her stories as well.]

This was... inevitable. The call of the ocean is too strong for someone who finds their life's adventures in the unknown. I'm not surprised-- that doesn't mean it doesn't hurt.

[It would always hurt. But, that was what a life spent chasing after someone that was impossible to reach was like. Okeanos had given him a handful of months. Compared to the scarce few weeks they had spent together in Japan, that was more than enough.

To the question, he held out his hand so that the both of them could see the back of it. It was as bare as ever-- as he expected.]

I don't have any Command Seals that the Grail would use to bind us together.... because the Grail isn't here. But, even back home, I was turned down for my chance to try the ritual again.

...Besides, [he added in a low voice that was thick with his grief.] Summoning him again would effectively be like a factory restore on a computer. He would remember all of his life and all of the matters necessary for being a Servant, except for the time we spent together.

[ah, fuck. it would be exactly the same as what had happened with clover, with violet, with lina and lillian and astin and rose. except, she gets the idea, there's not even a ghost of a chance that he would remember waver when he came back. she doesn't know what to say for a moment, so she just leans herself against him, resting her head on his shoulder.]

It's terrible. Always being afraid to make connections because you don't know if they'll be around tomorrow, but... you and me, we still want them so badly. We'll eat the hurt if it means we can be happy for a day. But eventually it feels like everybody hits a breaking point, you know?

[she reaches a hand over to try to hold his. not romantically. just to keep him there. this is about waver losing iskandar, but this is about the two of them losing each other, too.]

We can prepare all we want and it'll still hit us like a punch in the gut. And all we can do is sit here and take it... but it still hasn't left any of us as alone as it feels. You and me still have each other. No sole survivors around here.

[The offered hand was welcomed for the weight of connection that it represented. Waver squeezed that hand and heaved a sigh-- glad that he didn't need to live out a replay of Sole Survivor again.]

No. Not anymore.

[He chuckled, in a bitter and lonely sound as he assessed once more the sheer futility of the circumstances he had been thrust in. While the possibility of his Iskandar returning remained non-zero, they were far from encouraging.

He wasn't ready to give up just yet.]

I've already dealt with this quandary twice now. I never imagined that I would face it a third time.

Yeah... yeah.

[she sighs deeply. it's hard to think of the right thing to say here, but she's trying. it just doesn't seem easy, or that encouraging.]

It never gets easier. It gets harder the more times you run into it, really, you know? 'Cause the first time, you think that's gonna be the worst. You spend all your mental energy recovering from it. Then the second time comes, and if you're lucky it comes when you have the energy back, but nobody's ever that lucky, you know? Then the third time...

[there's a pause, and a conspicuous breath of air from her nose.]

The third time it hurts. It never stops hurting. But by then you're learning that this is just the way this place works. That's when you start figuring out the way of things, and the idea that what happened the first time wasn't a tragedy. It was just normal. All of this is just normal. [her other hand balls up into a fist.]

We can do a ritual for him. Funeral rites. A proper sendoff.

[He slowly heaved a long exhale, chest dropping while he all but sagged underneath the weight of this grief. The third time did hurt-- and, even more ridiculous was the fact that he had to once more grieve his own ideas and imaginings for a future with the same man. Waver squeezed Anna's hand.

It was too normal. All of it.]

...There's still a non-zero chance that the Iskandar that I knew from Fuyuki, the one that was here, may still return. With the presence of the multiverse, it's always going to be non-zero.

I know funerary rights are for the living, but I'm not certain if it's premature. There's really no precedent for this sort of problem, is there?

Edited 2022-12-22 03:26 (UTC)

[there's always a chance. there's always a chance that, despite everything, something could change. something totally unexpected. she feels something stir in her chest, and she asks,]

Did I ever tell you about Lillian? She's this girl I knew from back home. She was transforming into a robot, too, but when I say that it was saving her life, I mean it a lot more literally. [she thinks, quickly, on how to share this story without making it too dramatic. her emotions aren't the point of it. she litigated this last year. she doesn't need to do it again.] See, she had a chronic illness, and the doctors really didn't give her long to live. But she started getting all these mechanical parts back to replace the ones that were failing in her body.

[and here's where she skips ahead.]

But I met her on the app. The same thing that gave me all these parts of A2. And one day, she fell off the app. She lost all those mechanical parts, and she lost all her memories of the time we spent together. Or she was supposed to, you know? And I didn't think about it until I brought it up here, but... when she died, they invited me to her funeral because they found my name in her phone. [she smiles, but there's that same melancholy pain behind it.] She wasn't supposed to remember anything about me, but I was there in her life right 'til the end of it.

There's always a chance that something can happen that isn't supposed to, is I guess my point. It's always nonzero. [long way to go just to say she agrees with him.] But they did still send her off, in the end.

...You did mention it before, and I can't imagine the kind of pain and horror you felt.

[He shook his head, as if the movement alone would help him escape the weight of said imagining, and squeezed her hand.]

That must have been worse than this. Knowing that she was still out there, slowly losing herself while her body fell apart and still risking the chance of seeing her face when you went out to get coffee. A friend-- but now a stranger, except for a small piece of you forgotten on the SIM card of her phone.

[It was almost too painful to consider.]

For what it's worth: I'm sorry you had to endure that, Anna.

It's... thank you, Waver.

[well, great, now she feels like a dick for digging up her old trauma when she's already told him that story. she looks ahead of herself for a moment, letting the feeling pass, and her gaze goes down to her hands folded in her lap.]

All I'm trying to get at is that, like... whether it's premature or not, I think it's still worth taking the time to remember his life and the time that you two had here. [sigh.] I never took the time to do it and I just ended up living in the past until it all broke last November. I don't want to see that happen to you.

[ She wasn't an asshole. People were like the tides; emotions and threads came in cycles. Some themes and stories might repeat, but something always ended up somewhat different. Waver was unfussed by being reminded of Anna's story with her friend. It was good to hear it again, and be reminded about the possibility of hope.

Waver shifted, and glanced over at her with questions in his eyes. ]

I wasn't here last November. Was it the Zealots, or the Tower?

[and she smiles and puffs out some air through her nose, a little like she's embarrassed of herself.]

Neither. I just had an emotional breakdown in the middle of the night and decided to make it the network's problem. [she closes her eye like she's remembering that night.] I told them the story about Lillian. And because I was really in a fucking state, I started blaming myself for her death, even though there's no way I could've been even a little responsible for it. And that's when I met a bunch of people who were willing to sit down and talk with me about it until I could get some sleep.

But it's a nice little reminder that we can fuck up our own lives without anyone's help, yeah?

[That... sounded about right.

Waver huffed a bitter little laugh and leaned his head on Anna's shoulder, just glad for the companionship.]

Totally. No one can fuck up our lives more than we can ourselves.

...I'll do my best not to make this the Network's problem. For one thing, I'd need to kill everyone if one of my superiors from the Association arrived.

Well, don't do that. More killing is never gonna solve the shitty way you feel inside.

[she means it as a joke. like it's an obvious thing that any normal person would already know. don't take it too seriously.]

Listen, Waver. I'm not great at this... and, like, you know that by now. I'm still figuring out how to feel my own emotions and everything. But if you need to offload some of your brain power onto me for a while, just, like, let me know, all right? I'm gonna double down on making sure you're feeding yourself, and if I don't see you getting some sunlight I'll drag you out there myself.

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cw: chronic illness, death

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