blastedtree:
“Uu.” It was a noise of affirmation that should be familiar to Caules. She’d never spoken to him during her summoning; it was troublesome and painful to even try, her throat straining against the madness that gave her tremendous strength. The circumstances of Chaldea were different, though – rather, everything was different. She had survived countless battles under Gudao and Gudako’s command, had explored herself as a person and grown in ways she never thought possible. There’s a sense of nostalgia in facing Caules now, even if she can’t remember most of their time together. What would he think about her being a hero, fighting to save the very species that had spurned and hunted her?
She slipped the gloved pads of her fingers across his face, tracing the dip of his cheekbone, then the rims of his glasses. He certainly felt real enough. Her head tilted, strands of her hair leaning sideways as she examined him through bright and curious eyes.
“Aaa…?” It was only fair for Caules to explain how he’d been faring, too. She was one of the first Servants to fall during that Grail War; did he survive, even without her protection?
A small wave of relief washed over him at her affirmation. Both the fact that she seemed otherwise unharmed, and that he could still pick up on her verbal cues after all this time. Even if they never made it to the end of the war as a team, he’d have been a true failure of a Master if he couldn’t do that much. Naturally he still had questions about her and her time here, but it was his turn to do the answering.
“I’m fine. Don’t worry, I made it out of the war okay. In fact, we wouldn’t have survived without you.”
As unexpected as it was, even in retrospect, the spark of life and energy from the Blasted Tree was instrumental to their survival. The lines of the factions had blurred so completely towards the end that it could hardly be called a victory for the Yggdmillennia, even if their servant was the sole survivor. Still, he hardly minded something like that. Even with meager ability, he was able to keep what was important to him safe in the end and it was more valuable than a cup he didn’t care for to begin with. A weak chuckle left him as he grinned and straightened himself in the face of her touch.
“I never got to say then, but thank you for looking after me, Berserker.’
