To love a sword

Chapter 43: Heavy Snow Part 1

Beta read by Shigiya, Paragon of Awesomeness and FabledLife

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-Sainan-

He had lived a long life. 

When combining both his time alive as a human and his existence as a Counter Guardian, things had a way of stretching into something that was by definition endless. An existence without a clear beginning or a proper end. Time itself was a concept that did not truly exist where his true self resided — in a sense, even before he made that contract, Counter Guardian EMIYA had always existed. There was no single moment that could truly be called his start, and there was no fixed point that could be called his beginning and his conclusion; he was simply there.

A life like that naturally led to an immense accumulation of memories. Different summonings blended together, each deployment, each interaction, every time he witnessed humanity at different points in time and development. Every kill, every correction, every task that he carried out as the cleaner of the world piled up one after the other with no particular end in sight. His work never truly ended, and neither did the echoes of it. Even Emiya himself could not perfectly remember everything, and in fact, he was certain that there was much that he had completely forgotten. 

He believed that if he did remember, it would have been more of a curse than a blessing. At some point, carrying every detail intact would have driven him mad. Perhaps this limitation was another safeguard, a way to prevent beings like him from collapsing under the weight of their own existence. Humans, after all, were never meant to endure such a thing.

Still, a large portion of that information remained buried within him. He never worried about anyone else seeing it. Even during the dream cycle, Rin had only ever brushed against the core memories. She never saw the full depth, and even if she did see more than necessary… most of it would be forgotten upon waking up. 

That was how it was supposed to work.

For someone else to use a different method and bypass his mind entirely, to fully immerse themselves in everything he’d lived through, was something he had never believed possible or experienced for that matter. Now, sitting there, he had undeniable proof that he had been wrong.

They were on a rooftop, he and Mea sat close to the edge together, their legs dangling over open air. A single careless movement would have been enough to send someone falling, but the area below was empty, with classes soon starting and no one walking outside. Then again, with how easygoing the people in this world had shown themselves to be, Emiya figured such things would be ignored. 

"Feeling better now?" he asked quietly, turning his head toward the red-haired girl beside him.

There was no response. She continued to stare at the half-finished drink he had handed her earlier, her fingers wrapped loosely around the can. He could not tell if she had even heard him, or if she was taking a long time to think about the question. Her posture was stiff, her shoulders drawn in.

He knew that being flooded with someone else’s memories could be… uncomfortable at the very least and traumatic at worst. Even so, he had never imagined it could affect her this much. Logically, this should have been the perfect moment to reprimand her, to warn her, even to threaten her into staying away from his family and from him. The words were there, ready to be said. Yet none of them felt right.

"You probably saw a lot of things that did not make sense," he said calmly. "And plenty of things that feel like they should not exist."

She flinched harshly at that, her body trembling, signs of what she saw shook her.