From Fake Dreams

39

"So that's what happened." Shirou evenly stared at Saber.

"Yes." The King of Knights nodded.

"You told Rin and Luvia about my Apostle condition."

"Yes."

"After I had passed out from said condition and other peculiar reactions."

"Yes."

"Followed by essentially telling them everything that we have gone over about the War, the Grail, my general plans, my magic, Gilgamesh, what we've gathered on Caster, and how I've been leading everyone for the past two years."

"Essentially." She didn't bother to bring up Archer. She didn't want to put more on his plate at the moment.

"And everything concluded with keeping everyone paired up for their own safety and a possible alliance for so long as Caster is around."

"Potential unanimous destruction keeps people together unanimously."

"Merlin?"

"Lucan, though Merlin did agree with it instantly."

"Hard to see why not." Shirou sighed with a small grimace as he sat on the edge of the open walkway of his home. Not because of the situation, but because from his perspective the midday sun felt unusually oppressive.

Just opening his eyes made him feel as if he was outside in Jerusalem, only with more color. The religious apex of the planet rarely had a day where there was a cloud in the sky, and the vast majority of the buildings there were made out of a white stone found in the area. The combination of the two made it incredibly hard to keep one's eyes open for any period of time during the day when walking outside even if said individual was a day person.

His body had been heavy and sluggish from the instant he had woken up. He didn't know if it was simply because it was daytime, or because his body might have changed for whatever reason during the night. All he knew right now was that it was a pain in his ass. It made his morning workouts take far longer than they should have and even after he didn't feel as loosened up as he should be.

He had been so out of it that Sakura had taken kitchen duty again despite his protests. As if he didn't have enough to drive him nuts at the moment.

He had cleaning duty though. Thank god for small mercies.

His chest in particular was tight for obvious reasons. Even if he did supposedly heal from getting his heart blasted out earlier, it didn't mean that everything was the same. The skin over the new organ was still an irritated red, and breathing deeply proved to be a bit of a chore. Everything under his skin felt tender and he didn't like it. Still with Avalon, he figured it would take another half day to get used to the feeling enough that it wouldn't constantly distract him anymore.

On the other side of the coin, his new heart worked just fine as far as he could tell. It kept steady pace while he was working out earlier. No sudden transformations. No spewing up blood. No tearing apart his insides. No spontaneous heart attacks.

So cardiovascular based issues weren't going to be a factor in his plans after all... unless of course someone blasted or tore out his heart again, but he'd just file that under combat risks along with all the other dangerous shit he'd likely be doing in the near future.

At the same time he realized that his body was tightened up, he felt as if another change had occurred. Much like the tipping of scales, where one factor had been constricted, another had been relaxed... the problem was that he didn't exactly know what was in that latter category at the moment. All he knew was that it was there with absolute certainty.