9:35 pm, The parking lot of a Glyfada mall
Monica sat in the center of the empty lot on a parking block, kneading her hands together out of both anxiety and boredom. Next to her, Saber stood stoically leaning on a streetlamp. He was in what she'd come to internally refer to as his "sword mode". His eyes were sharp, and he dutifully watched the dark, foggy surroundings. He could've looked like a bouncer if not for his small frame, but even so, she was nonetheless intimidated. She wouldn't dare to look him in the eye, and the last hour they'd spent here had been utterly miserable and awkward, if only for her.
She was not one accustomed to guilt, much less to accountability. Her parents had been uniquely able to manage being overly strict and overly permissive at the same time, being incredibly overbearing when they were around her, especially around the guests they occasionally held, but not caring at all what she did otherwise. Even when her older sister had been sent off to school and it was just her and her parents, she could do as she pleased. She would run off into the woods around their home, disappearing for hours, sometimes days, and when she would come back, she would only be chastised for the dirt on her clothes. She learned when she was young that her parents' rules were entirely arbitrary, and to not allow herself to take their criticism seriously and, eventually, not to take them seriously either. At her work, she could do the same, disappearing and neglecting her responsibilities, and received no serious repercussions. Truly, it wasn't until Rhiannon that she realized that her actions had consequences, and that realization affected her deeply. But, of course, there was no recourse for that guilt; there was no way to undo what had been done.
Rhiannon was dead. Whatever apologies touched her lips, whatever words she screamed and sobbed into the night sky wouldn't bring her back. Her empty words drifted into empty space, falling only on her own ears, and serving only to heavy her heart.
Her mind swam through the options of what she ought to say, what she ought to do, or whether she should do anything at all. In truth, she wasn't entirely sure where this guilt, this sense of wrongdoing, even came from. She couldn't think of any single thing she'd done wrong, or, at least, nothing that she so far found herself regretting. For someone so unaccustomed to the company of others, especially intimate company, it took some time for her to realize that her sense of guilt came not from within, but from without. It wasn't a judgment of herself, but a judgment of Chrysaor. She felt that she'd done something wrong because, to her, it seemed that he felt she'd done something wrong. The warmness of his eyes had frozen over. He often became this way when danger was afoot, but, normally, this ire was directed towards their surroundings, or, in confrontations, against the enemy. In contrast, this coldness seemed to be directed towards nothing in particular. She wasn't sure if she'd done something wrong, or, if she had, what that wrong action was, but these questions left her more on edge than the pressing threat of Assassin, wherever she was.
In her anxious thoughts, she had, without realizing, been staring at the cold Chrysaor, at his pale, rose eyes. As he scanned their surroundings, he met her stare by accident, and she, brought suddenly back to reality by his gaze, quickly looked to her feet instead. She felt his stare linger on her, before he, too, looked back to the foggy darkness that laid beyond the sanctuary of the dim streetlight.
She went back to kneading her fingers and tried to push those whirling thoughts to the shadows of her mind, but those memories of Rhiannon rushed to take their place. She hadn't thought about her friend much since Saber came around, but, in this moment, all those regrets, that guilt, flooded her mind to the farthest edge. But in that deluge of darkness, there was a touch of something else. It wasn't light, it wasn't hope, it was... a depth so dark that it came back around to resembling light. Not so much a memory, but a reminder, those words which she'd found herself repeating in the dark of night over and over:
YOU ARE READING
FATE\Deus Decipit
FantasyAthens, Greece, Modern Day In the light of the 5th Holy Grail War in Fuyuki, many duplicate Grail wars are being held across the globe. In Athens, an ancient circle is discovered, and the groundwork for a Grail War of unknown origin is unearthed. A...