Late to Church

[old_man_acht]

The boundary around the church feels spun-glass fragile, but still there is power enough here to make Acht's teeth ache. This has been rebuilt after being broken, he thinks as he picks his way carefully over the sleet-strewn ice, and the rubble nearer to the church only serves to confirm his suspicions.

He keeps to the shelter of the trees, his hands clenched in his pockets. The cold is almost unbearable, but for Lara's sake, he will bear it and watch.

This is the place. He has only to remember the priest's stricken face in the headlamps of his car to know that this is the place.

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[come_to_spoil_everything]

The sun has nearly gone down, but there's still enough light to work by, and still repairs to make on the bike. In spite of the chill, Risei's left his coat downstairs with Lara, and even set his overshirt aside since there's only so many times he can wash it. The oil on his hands is cold, but it doesn't stop him from working, or the work from needing to be done. And it doesn't stop him from smiling, either. Lara's here, and as safe as she can be, and recovering, and that's almost more important than the rest.

He revs the engine, and there's still a rattle loud enough to echo off the construction and the cement blocks. Darn. But there's still time, and he breaks out a wrench, goes back to work...

[old_man_acht]

While the priest is occupied with the rattling engine and the intricacies of its intestines, Acht breaks from cover to circle around the back of the church. He is seeking a back way or an unseen entrance that will permit him to access the interior; in the lowering darkness, he searches for light gleaming through cracks that might be doors or shuttered windows.

[come_to_spoil_everything]

He finds one, a simple back door, unguarded except for a curious tanuki. The beast waddles off into the postcrypt and sits at the top of a staircase leading down, and if Acht looks in after it all he'll see are its shining black eyes in the dark.

[old_man_acht]

The creature seems ill-omened, almost too canny to be natural--or you've spent too many years in ducking enemies' familiars, Acht chides himself. He follows the tanuki into the darkness, one hand to the wall and his forward foot searching for each step.

[come_to_spoil_everything]

After a few steps down, the tanuki might be following him, rather than him following it. Its claws make little scraping noises on the stairs, like a particularly large mouse might in the walls.

Just when Acht's eyes have grown accustomed to the darkness, there are signs of a faint light around a pillared corner, and traces of heat creeping under a door.

[old_man_acht]

It must be Larasviel, he thinks, and then immediately, or a trap, or another damn animal. He pauses, then kneels to offer his hand for the tanuki as though it were a cat.

[come_to_spoil_everything]

Curious, it noses closer. There's no magic about it.

[old_man_acht]

Acht catches the tanuki as gently as he can by the scruff of the neck and then brings it to his chest, the better to keep it still while he breathes an incantation to soothe it.

He could use hair to bind the creature, but he is an Einzbern, and a binding by water will take less of him in the long run. Once the tanuki has stilled, he slices open his finger and describes a spell on the soft belly. I bind you to me, my eyes and my ears and my nimble feet, it says. The arcane letters shine for a moment before they fade into the fur.

Acht lowers his familiar to the floor, then, and sends it to scout the light and heat from the door while he remains in darkness.

[come_to_spoil_everything]

The tanuki yips once, a little plaintive, but does as its new master obeys, and easily budges the door open with its snout.

Larasviel is there, sitting on a futon, bundled in pillows and blankets and coats as she reads. The light is from an electric lamp beside her on the floor, supplemented by the faint residual a small stove-fire in the corner. She hasn't drawn up any wards to protect herself but the room, like the church and the barrier, has a palpable power to it. That tanuki, however, seems rather ignorant of all these facts, and plods about with Acht's orders in his mind until it (she, rather) nests at the foot of Lara's bivouac.

[hikikomoe]

Reading the bible in Japanese is strange, particularly when Lara encounters familiar passages. She expects the text to read a certain way, and the Japanese is largely faithful, but there are shadings of meaning missed and new ones added in their place. Some of the kanji in the passage about Noah's Ark are entirely unfamiliar; counters, she supposes, to indicate the numbers of everything brought on board, but nearly every animal and article requires different words to indicate the same number.

She lowers the bible, and with it her eyelids, though only briefly. This is more taxing to her faculties than it ought to be.

[old_man_acht]

His spy was unnecessary, then--a relief, although he can't help regretting the wasted prana. Once the tanuki has curled up amid the blankets with her nose pillowed on her tail, Acht steps out of the shadows and pushes the door open wide enough to admit him.

"Larasviel," he says, and his voice nearly cracks at how weak she looks. (He cannot permit it to crack. She is not yet a person. She is a tool, and he must not feel the loss of her as though she were a person. He must not feel the loss of her when she is curled up with a book in her hands, as contented as he has ever seen her.) "I'd feared you were dead."

[hikikomoe]

The bible slips from her hands, and her reaction time is too slow for any decent attempt at catching it.

"...I'm not," she says, doesn't open her eyes.

[old_man_acht]

He sees at once that she can't be expected to walk from this place, and he recalculates. "I'll carry you," he says. "There are stairs, but we can take them slowly."

[hikikomoe]

"Can you carry me?"

The question slips out, but she supposes it's a better response than lying inert would be. She considers the possibility that the damage has run even more deeply than she first realized, which wouldn't be a small task; but it's a plausible explanation for the numbness that pervades her, the flatness of her breath, the slowness of her neural processes to make the necessary connections.

Grandfather is here. Surely Risei must not know, unless...

[old_man_acht]

"If I must. I can't leave you here."

[hikikomoe]

"You left me on the battlefield," she says, barely above a whisper, and clutches her blanket closer.

[old_man_acht]

There is nothing self-justifying in his tone; he is merely explaining a fact. "I couldn't find you on the battlefield--the priest stole you and brought you here before I could reach you. No doubt he meant to intervene in the battle by drawing you away from your Servant."

[hikikomoe]

"He didn't arrive until the battle had ended." Her hands continue to tremble, though the movement makes them no less stiffer. "You'd know that, if you had seen it."

[old_man_acht]

"And you saw it?" he asks, skeptically. "After a point, I could no longer sense you on the field. It was as though you had burnt out--and still you saw him arrive?"

[hikikomoe]

Her flow of blood heightens, but in her face, not her hands. "I see no reason to disbelieve him. He would have had difficulty entering the battle after Caster raised his Noble Phantasm, and he didn't enter before."

[old_man_acht]

"You sound as though you don't want to leave this place," he snaps.

[come_to_spoil_everything]

"Lara!" Risei charges in through the open door, throws down his overshirt and nearly skids on the floor to her side. "Mr. Einzbern, you can't take her, she's barely alive--"

[old_man_acht]

The interruption shocks Acht out of his ire. When he meets Risei's eyes, his own are cold. "But you could take her, when she was closer to death than this."

[come_to_spoil_everything]

"And I've been healing her ever since." Risei glowers: it may be hard to deal with the cold in the old man's eyes, but Risei's stared him down before and won't back down now. "I don't use my magic to leave people to die."

[old_man_acht]

"You use it to spirit them away from those who would heal them and protect them, because you believe that you can do it better."

[come_to_spoil_everything]

"Yes," Risei says. "I do believe that."

[old_man_acht]

"You hope to win her loyalty with her gratitude--and then what? And then to end the war with her at your side?"

[come_to_spoil_everything]

Risei knows he's being insulted, that Acht, like all magi, can only see acts of kindness as self-serving. He remembers Katya and her duplicity, Kirsikka and her bargaining, Lara's fear of him from the start.

How long has Acht lived with all that contempt and constant fear?

Risei shuts his eyes, and when he opens them again he's looking down to to Lara, the futon, the books, the heap of blankets.

"I hope to end the war," he says, truthfully, "and I want her to be safe. She doesn't have to be at my side to be safe, and if she wants you to take her home I won't stop you. But I do believe I can help her more here, and it's because I've seen you hurt and kill and send her to die."

[old_man_acht]

More than anything else that remains to him in this world--more even than his hope of the Grail--Acht believes in Larasviel's loyalty to her family. He has written the coding in her heart, and he knows every sigil and syllable; he knows what she will choose, when she is made to choose. Therefore, he speaks with the certainty of a man repossessing stolen property when he says, "Then let her decide whether she will go with me to the Einzbern base, or stay here. I will abide by her choice."

[hikikomoe]

Grandfather offers her a choice now, when he began this war by threatening to modify her will. Then what choice is this?

Lara keeps her eyes closed, refuses to look at either of them. This, however, forces her to turn her senses inward. To the inscriptions at the deepest levels of her consciousness, written in an Einzbern hand; to the pathways of her Circuit, set down generations before she was created; to the memories she has borrowed from her predecessors. None of her predecessors could conceive of a choice like this. There would be no choice. There is only what they are, and what they must do.

She has said, from the first, that she knows why she was created.

"I will return," she says, eyes still shut, voice lifeless.

[come_to_spoil_everything]

He's prepared for that answer. That doesn't mean he wants to hear it.

It takes a few breaths for him to feel steady enough to nod, then speak. "All right. I'll help carry you out. Where did you park the car, Mr. Einzbern?" His voice gets less shaky with every word he says, but the tightness in his chest doesn't abate. "If I'm carrying her, could you take the books?"

[old_man_acht]

"I will," he agrees. He knows that he has won, and for the first time, it feels like a victory. He can afford some small magnanimity. "The car is near the road. Screened by a stand of maples. My driver will be waiting." And probably warmer than I am, after a day of surveillance.

[come_to_spoil_everything]

Risei nods, and stoops to shoo the tanuki out of the blanket nest and help Lara up. It takes more strength to look her in the eyes than it does to lift her up, but he does both, and manages to smile. He rearranges the coat around her shoulders, ignores his, and settles her into his arms.

"You probably have a much warner room there than here," he says, quietly. "And I know the wards are stronger. From experience, I mean,"

[hikikomoe]

"...thank you," she says, her head nestled against his chest. "For bringing me here."

[come_to_spoil_everything]

A little color and heat seep into Risei's cheeks. "You're welcome" he says, holding her a little tighter. "And you're welcome here. My offer still stands, okay?"

When she nods, he carries her to the door, and waits for Acht.

[old_man_acht]

Having gathered up an armful of books, he comes to follow Risei up the stairs. The tanuki trots curiously at his heels.

It would do no good (and perhaps no little harm) to warn Lara against accepting Risei's offer. She knows it well enough.

[come_to_spoil_everything]

With all the warmth of hope and hard work gone, the chill air hits Risei's shoulders as soon as they make it outside. He ignores it, and walks Acht out through the postcrypt door, assuming that's the way Acht came in in the first place. "And that offer extends to you too, Mr. Einzbern. If you need sanctuary, come here. We can talk. We can all talk."

[old_man_acht]

Acht can only chuckle at that. "The Matous and Tohsakas finished talking a hundred years before you were born, boy."

[come_to_spoil_everything]

"And they wouldn't come to the Church to talk unless they were serious about talking. I know. And I know how naive I sound. But I wouldn't have come to Fuyuki if a magus hadn't been brave and repentant enough to expose you and your war. It's rare, but it happens, and all I can do is hope that it happens again and make myself available."

[old_man_acht]

The Bibles are heavy in Acht's arms. The stairs are steep, and the light is behind them. "We are too old for repentance."

[come_to_spoil_everything]

Risei sighs, shakes his head lightly as he carries Lara toward the car. "Hearken unto me, ye stouthearted, that are far from righteousness: I bring near my righteousness; it shall not be far off, and my salvation shall not tarry."