Chapter Text
Waver is just approaching the edge of the forest when he realises he’s being followed. A mage like him shouldn't be able to pick up on two women of such skill so easily, but it’s as if they’re not even trying. He scowls. How does this reflect on him as their teacher..?
“I believe I told the two of you that this would only be a short errand,” he mutters, pinching the bridge of his nose with a weary sigh.
When Gray steps out from behind their cover she at least looks guilty. Rin is just huffing with her arms crossed, looking indignant. “And yet you’re also the one who told us to be cautious until we’re sure there isn’t going to be a dangerous reaction from dismantling the Grail. Really, Professor, there’s no way we weren’t going to follow you when you head out so soon after that.”
“I’m perfectly fine, Tohsaka. Even someone like me should be able to handle himself in the area he lived in for a year,” he says flatly. Gray perks up.
“You lived here, sir?”
Waver’s eyes flicker to the side. A familiar rooftop peeks out over the houses between them, but he hesitates to let his thoughts linger on the couple it homes. With things as volatile as they are at the moment, it would be irresponsible to visit just for his own satisfaction. “Just as a guest, it hardly matters now.”
Rin’s gaze follows his, but he knows even before her eyes narrow into a frustrated squint that she wouldn’t be able to find anything of note. “What exactly are you doing here then?”
“…Paying my respects, I suppose.”
It’s foolish to come back here, plain and simple; which is precisely why he had avoided giving out any details to where he was going. It's barely been a day after their conflict with the Clock Tower had finally settled down, and he wasn't so inexperienced to think that being settled down meant there wouldn't be backlash still coming. There was always something out to make his life harder, after all, especially when they've directly interfered with something as powerful as the Grail. But even so… just being here again after ten long years, after everything he had gone through to even make it to this point… He wanted to sit in that clearing again and tell him. He wanted to be able to share the tales of his own personal conquests, even if only for himself, knowing the true recipient wouldn’t hear a word.
Waver clears his throat, tightening the tie around his neck to rid the restlessness from his hands. It half works. “It’s fine,” he says, voice carefully neutral. “We can head back now.”
“Are you sure that’s what you want?” Gray asks quietly. The concern in her gaze is piercing, and wholly unnecessary, yet he can’t seem to find the words to dispel it.
Fortunately, the silence between them isn’t allowed even a moment to settle before Rin interrupts it, hands perched stubbornly on her hips. “It astounds me that you’ve been a Lord of the Clock Tower for so long without getting any better at lying,” she snipes, shaking her head like she’s disappointed in him. “If you’re going to come out all this way then you might as well see it through. Otherwise this would have just been a waste of time for all three of us.”
He scoffs, utterly unsurprised by her haughtiness. “I seem to have missed the part where it was my fault you decided to follow me despite my saying otherwise.”
“Maybe you should pay better attention then,” she huffs.
The only thing keeping him from rolling his eyes is that she’d probably criticise him for that as well. Far from it to expect any respect from one of his students.
“Um, if you don’t mind, sir…” Gray speaks up, her eyes disappearing back behind her hood as she ducks her head. “Could we stay here while you finish your business, just in case?”
Really, there was no danger for them to be worrying about, and he’s sure that Rin knows that and had convinced Gray otherwise to tail him. Yet he isn’t so cruel to deny her of something this simple.
He still makes a show of sighing, waving his hand by his head. “I doubt I have any way of stopping either of you. Just wait here, I won’t be long.”
Miraculously, they both listen.
Finally making it to the clearing only makes him feel more absurd. There’s no sign of what happened here all those years ago, and of course there wouldn’t be. Waver hadn’t come here under the delusion that there would. Even at the time, the traces of his magecraft had disappeared the moment the summoning was over. Even so, against all logic, he can’t help but take the same spot he'd stood in then and murmur that same incantation, as if it will be enough to summon even a dredge of Iskandar and have his voice actually reach him. It’s just another comfort, like the very words he came here to say, but he isn’t yet strong enough to not at least long for the illusion. Even if he doesn’t believe it will work, he wants to believe that something as simple as this was all that was between them meeting again.
"…Thou Seventh Heaven, clad in the three great words of power…"
He doesn't need to think to recall them. His memory of that night and the words he said have never strayed, locked in his memory like a precious jewel.
"…come forth from the circle of binding, Guardian of Scales…"
And then, without warning, fire runs through his veins.
Waver bites back a gasp at the rise of molten heat and the breath catches painfully in his throat. It’s not just him – all of a sudden the very air around him seems to be burning, a build-up of magical energy so potent that it’s almost as if he’s been transported back to the Spirit Tomb Albion, hundreds of feet below the earth he had just been standing on.
“Sir!”
The hands on his shoulder appear out of nowhere, and he flinches back from that face staring down at him–
It’s Gray. Without noticing, Waver had sunk to his knees, and now Gray hovers above him, her face painted with alarm. As soon as the magical energy around him had exploded, she must have come running, more regard for his safety than her own. And yet, he doesn’t have the right to admonish her for that when he feels so grateful for her presence.
“What is that?” comes Rin’s dumbfounded voice from behind them, and it’s the trigger to make his gaze finally focus on what’s changed; what the source of such a massive surge of power had been.
It feels like Waver’s heart stops.
Somehow he’s found himself in an all too familiar position. In this forest, in this clearing, brought to the ground by magic well beyond his strength… and above him, an impossibly large figure, their cape billowing from wind that doesn’t exist. He doesn’t dare to move, he can’t move, else risk shattering what has to be an illusion.
Iskandar, king of conquerors, stands before them. His expression is guarded as it stares down at Waver collapsed in front of him. Distantly, he feels Gray’s grip tighten.
“I ask you, are you my master, boy?”
He’s shaking his head before he can think, the words too instinctual to stop them stumbling from his lips. “No, I’m not, I’m–” His eyes catch on his right hand and– There… really is nothing there. He slows, and his next words stay ringing in his head like a taunt. “I’m not your master…”
“Is that seriously a servant?” Rin asks, her voice tight with tension. “How could destroying the Grail cause this?”
“Destroying?” Iskandar repeats. Despite Rin being the one that had spoken, it’s Waver that the weight of his gaze stays locked on to for answers. It’s a weight he can’t bear to hold. “It appears I’ve missed quite a lot, not just your funny appearance.”
“My… What?”
His head spins. There's so much he should be thinking about, but the moment he tries to piece together any rational thoughts, it feels like a wave crashes over him that just leaves him wanting to cry. Somehow Iskandar, his Rider, is standing right in front of him, just as absurdly larger than life as he's always been. He has to pull it together and say something. He wouldn't be able to live with the shame if he let himself fall apart here.
“You– You are mister Iskandar, right?” Gray asks, not moving from her protective position over Waver. He can’t even find the words to tell her that it's unnecessary. “How are you here…?”
“Would it not be the ones that summoned me that could answer that question?” he asks, and yet his voice sounds awfully unconcerned. “Come now! Why the glum expressions; you are in the presence of a king!”
Waver is able to get to his feet, but he’s not sure if the strength in his legs would be enough to keep him standing if Gray left his side. “We personally dismantled the Greater Grail,” he manages to say, and yet he feels disconnected from the words. It feels like a stranger is speaking with how steady his voice is compared to the maelstrom in his heart. “It shouldn’t be possible for a servant to be summoned anymore.”
“Ah, yes.” Here, Iskandar does sober. “I’m afraid you’re going to have to explain that ‘destroying the Grail’ business for me.”
It’s a fair request, and yet not one Waver is certain he’s capable of answering clearly right now. “Just… give me a moment to think.”
Surprisingly, no one speaks up. He isn’t sure if he’s grateful or not.
His only definite strength is his ability to think, so that’s what he has to do. To think about why this is happening. Magecraft blurs the line between what is and isn’t possible, but there are still rules. Even the Holy Grail War, which bent those rules to such an unbelievable extent, could only be manipulated so far. Without it, and the classes it provided as vessels, summoning a spirit from the Throne of Heroes simply wasn’t something that could be done. And yet, here was undeniable proof of the opposite.
Him and Rider being in this exact spot can’t at all be a coincidence. It’s clear that this must be related to dismantling the Grail, but thinking about how it’s happened is an endless string of questions with no answers. In any other situation, he would try to focus on the whydunnit instead, but… is that even something he can ask here – the motives of a cup? The Grail was supposed to exist to fulfil the victor’s wish, so by emerging victorious against those that had opposed destroying the Grail… Was this Waver’s wish…?
Iskandar has remained silent, unmoving from where he had been summoned. It’s uncomfortably reminiscent of the last time he saw him, and the pain from that day, both physically and emotionally, still lingers deeply in his heart like a scar. It had taken an impossible level of resolve to see it through to the end, resolve he never thought he was capable of, and that’s exactly how he knows that this couldn’t ever be his wish. He needs to reach Rider through his own merits. What would his journey so far have been for if he was willing to just wish for such a shortcut? And besides, Angra Mainyu would never grant this, not without a catch that Waver would never accept.
He has to refocus. The definitive fact of this case is that Iskandar was summoned just as his previous master returned to where he had summoned him. The main concern right now is the other servants; whether any of them returning is a possibility, even without their masters as a catalyst. Waver glances at Iskandar’s chest, completely free of the gaping wound that ended their war for the two of them. And then his gaze lands on Gray by his side, whose hood is on just as securely as always, covering the the blonde streaks that have stained her hair. He isn’t sure what the worst-case scenario would be.
“…Tohsaka. You summoned your servant at your home, correct?”
Rin’s steely gaze locks onto him and he can practically see the questions racing through her mind behind those eyes, dragging her eyebrows down into a furrow. It’s with clear reluctance that she eventually nods and answers his question rather than raising her own.
“That’s right. Specifically, I was in the basement, so if my position is relevant then we may not have triggered the conditions for him to be summoned again earlier,” she says. It’s relieving to know that she was able to immediately follow where his train of thought had led.
He steps away from Gray now, feeling significantly more steady on his feet the more his thoughts become occupied. He doesn’t have to focus on Iskandar at the moment, just that a servant has been summoned, and what their plan of action from here has to be.
Waver isn’t eager to continue relying on a student like this, but even in normal circumstances he wouldn’t want the Clock Tower finding out they had a Heroic Spirit. With how volatile things are at the moment, it isn’t even a question, which leaves them without many options.
“I apologise, Tohsaka. It appears we'll be imposing on you for a while longer.”
She sighs. “That’s fine. But I expect answers when we get there.”
It isn’t a conversation he’s looking forward to even slightly, but it’s a more than fair price for having to house them. And they’ll have the possibility of her servant to consider too. For the moment, it probably isn’t wise to test if she would be able to summon him as well. Despite how useful it would be to get an idea of how widespread this issue is, having two servants to deal with isn’t something he wants to risk until they at least figure out how to deal with the one they already have.
But before he can think on that any longer–
“Come now!” Rider exclaims, with a sudden slap against Waver’s back that knocks the wind, and any complaint, out of him. “What point is there in standing around thinking when we can take action instead? I, for one, am very eager to explore this modern world again.”
Waver has barely caught back his breath when it leaves him again in a rush, not from any physical impact, but from finally processing Iskandar’s words.
…Again?
“It appears I’ve missed quite a lot, not just your funny appearance.”
What is that supposed to mean? What implication is he supposed to draw from that other than– But it’s impossible. Waver is excruciatingly familiar with how the Throne of Heroes is understood to work. You don’t summon them, you summon a copy created from their record that could very well be discarded by the Throne after its use and their memories with it. It isn’t possible for a servant from a separate summoning to remember–
He almost stays silent. If the answer is no, if he’s just reading into the words of someone he knows is prone to saying totally ridiculous, exaggerated things without any concern for the other party– Waver wouldn’t be able to take it. But… if the answer is yes…
“Do you know who I am?”
Iskandar grunts in surprise. “Now what kind of question is that, boy? Did you not swear to be my retainer? That isn’t a vow I could forget lightly.”
“That isn’t how it works,” Waver insists fervently, because if he doesn’t he might really start crying. “No servant is supposed to retain memories from their previous summons.”
“Well, I am no normal servant; I am a king! It is my right that I am able to traverse my future lands however I please,” Iskandar declares, and it’s such a typical response from him, how could Waver have expected anything else?
“You idiot,” he mutters, the sob caught in his throat holding back any bite to it.
Iskandar just laughs, and Waver jostles as a large hand lands on his head.
“I am glad to see you again,” he says with a grin. “Waver Velvet.”