FATE\Deus Decipit

Chapter 57: Tea for Who

11:30 am, A Diner in the Old City

...

Monica was used to sideways glances. Girls had to be. If she were bothered by every stare that lingered just slightly too long, she would never be able to go anywhere or get anything done, but the last few days had seen an increase in both the amount and duration of these glances. At first, paranoia had led her to suspect each one, but she eventually realized that the simple reason was that she was constantly accompanied by a man with pink hair. Though not nearly as odd a sight as it would've been, say, ten years ago, it was still rare enough to warrant some attention.

But these were nothing compared to what the current ensemble experienced.

The four were sitting in a booth, herself and Saber on one side, and Massiah and Echo on the other. Of course, they would've received far more attention had she been in her true form, but, instead, Monica sat eye-to-eye with a mirrored reflection of herself: Echo maintaining her illusion through a set of earbuds that played her own voice on repeat.

Under normal circumstances, it would've been wiser to keep Assassin in Spirit Form, but Monica had only a slight inkling that such a thing existed, and, even if she had known, or if her company had the ability or forethought to tell her, it wouldn't have mattered, since the stone that layered Assassin's arms kept her firmly planted in physical reality. Moreover, the stone wouldn't be hidden by whatever skill disguised her appearance, and so her arms and legs were wrapped in a blanket as if a serious injury.

The four of them, a girl with blonde and blue hair, her apparently injured twin, a boy with magenta hair, and an inexplicably gaunt woman from the East, were a sight to see. Any one of them would be considered at least somewhat strange individually, but to be grouped together with no clear cohesion brought undue attention to them all, though, thankfully, the waitress didn't seem to mind.

She had probably worked herself up to it by the time she reached them.

She ordered shrimp and crayfish croquettes herself, but the clammy silence that had followed the four up to now had made her forget that the two across from her couldn't speak at all. She nearly panicked, but, of course, Echo just repeated her exactly, and Massiah, who had been studying the menu together with her servant, held it up and pointed to a picture. This, thankfully, was enough for the poor waitress to understand, and the four were left to their stiff silence once more.

It seems none of them were conversationalists.

She was racked by unending discomfort. She sat across from two women who, only the previous night, had not only tried to kill her and her only friend, but who they themselves had almost killed. Their mutual inability to communicate only made things worse, but even this wasn't half as bad as the self-awareness that the entire situation inspired.

It was the first time that the two of them, Saber and Monica, had spent any significant, casual time with somebody else. For the last few days, which was the only time they'd known each other, their relationship had possessed a certain privacy to it, beyond the bounds of other people's perceptions or expectations. Now, including her conversation with the 'friend of a friend', it was becoming an increasingly public spectacle, and their private issues weren't so private any longer. Perhaps the fact that she could hardly even look him in the eye while in the presence of other people was a problem in and of itself, and this led her to wonder what, in precise terms, was their relationship in the first place? If someone stopped her, say a coworker, and asked who he was, what would she say? Echo, as she was now, could be passed off as her twin sister easily. Massiah could be Echo's friend, or even a homeless woman she'd chosen to take in off the streets, but what of Chrysaor? Who would honestly believe her if she said that he was 'just a friend'?