Chapter Text
Under his ragged breathing, he could hear the distant clanking of chains approaching him once more. He thought he had finally lost them. He really had hoped that they would leave him alone after he had assured them that he would not partake in the war. But Akaashi wasn’t that type of person, despite his calm demeanor and a proclivity to settle things with a simple icy glance, if his heart was set on something, he wouldn’t be stopped. Tetsurou and him were friends, had known each other since they were kids. Their families had never been in good terms, but they were different. Had been different.
Not anymore, I guess.
He had aided Akaashi to carry on the ritual. Together, they had found – and stolen – the last piece of Bokuto Koutarou’s garment. How they had survived the past of time, he didn’t know. It was nothing short of a miracle, really. Close to the starting date of the Holy Grail War, some no name – archaeologist? Paleontologist? Who cares, man – had discovered them. And Akaashi, driven by some kind of madness, had pleaded him for help. Had he known his friend would try to kill him, he might have thought about it twice before helping him. But deep down, Tetsurou knew that he would have done it anyway.
I am the best friend someone could ask for or fucking stupid, still deciding on that.
When they were kids, they had promised to not participate in this. They didn’t want to be like their families. Generations of mistrust and backstabbing and for what? One way ticket to death! Lovely, but hard pass. It wasn’t even due to some kind of survival instinct; he had been aware of his lack of it for some time now. It had more to do with the fact that the whole thing felt like a scam. Sure, the reward was juicy. A wish. A reality-altering and time-bending type of wish. But if Tetsurou was good at one thing – aside from magic – that was maths. And one in a fourteen chance of getting it wasn’t a probability high enough for someone who didn’t have any particular thing to long for. Anything he wanted, he could achieve it on his own. So it was a pointless endeavour, really.
Despite that, he had caved in and helped Akaashi. Since he wasn’t participating himself, their relationship wouldn’t be affected by it. Or that’s what he thought at the time. He had made himself clear, he didn’t want anything to do with it. His involvement started and ended with the adquisition of the catalyst. Further partaking was out of the question. Not even for his friend. Would he die in the process, Tetsurou would mourn him accordingly. He had tried to disuade him in vain, so if he was so adamant on participating, there was nothing he could do about it but pray for him.
But now I am involved for some fucking reason. Just perfect.
He turned right in the intersection. He was close. Almost home. Living in the same neighbourhood, which had never looked as unearthly as it did now, for the past twenty years was a blessing when he had to focus every bit of energy into running. His lungs were burning. His legs were close to giving out. And the chains. Those fucking chains were closer and closer.
A laugh, a really grating one, had joined what seemed his own personal requiem. Couldn’t say he liked it more than Mozart’s, and he wasn’t into classical music. It was midnight, so there was not a single sound that would camouflage his steps or his pursuer’s racket. A blessing and a curse. It meant that hiding was near impossible. But that, at the same time, he could also pinpoint were his enemy –as hard to accept as it was; yes, his enemy – was.
The backdoor of his household was in front of him. His salvation four steps away. Lady luck was having none of it, though, so before he could jump over the stone-made wall, he felt an acute pain in his right leg. A scream – his – joined the raucuous laugh. A chain had encircled his limb in a deathly grip, and someone – the Servant – was pulling from the other end of it, shredding skin and meat with it.
In a split-second decision, he grabbed the gems he always carried with himself from his jacket’s pocket and crushed them. A magic projectile was sent in the direction of his captor, who yelped in surprise and softened the grip on his leg. He doubted he had as much as scathed the dude, but this opening was enough.
Tetsurou tried to ignore the pain that came with falling into his house’s garden. The grass did nothing to mitigate it, and he felt himself nauseous. His bone wasn’t broken, but his skin was ablaze, all torn apart. The dizziness from seeing all the blood he was losing wasn’t helping him either.
He limped towards his home’s warehouse, the nearest building of the property. A rundown building that had been there for generations. In the past it was where his family kept all the relics they had collected for centuries. Now, it was nothing but four walls made of timber without a roof and enough dust to kill someone mildly allergic to it. Safe to say, no one – Kuroo included – cared about it or its content anymore. The thought of rebuilding it not crossing their minds even once. When it fell due to the rot, they would clean it. Until then, they ignored its existence. Presently, though, it was his oasis in the middle of the desert.
A chanting could be heard from behind him. He had approximately five minutes before Akaashi broke the warding spell. Under other circumstances, it would take someone weeks. He was that confident about his family’s abilities, but his (ex)friend had practised with him the defensive spell countless of times before this. Tetsurou himself had asked him to. He would have been bored otherwise, he alledged. He had ignored his parents’ multiple complaints about sharing family secrets with others, but at that time, it had seemed like a brilliant idea.
Maybe I should have listened for once. If I survive this, I may owe them an apology.
Nah, fuck that. They do not deserve it. And I am not spending my last minutes thinking about them.
Seeing you soon, though, gramps! I hope you are ready for your least favourite grandchild to torment you even in death!
Yeah, no. I am not dying here.
Or that’s what I would like to say. What am I supposed to do now? Kenma won’t make it in time.
He closed the warehouse’s door behind him. Not that he could hide. The trail of blood followed him all the way to the building. But not seeing their attempts to destroy the barrier while he rummaged through his family belongings gave him a false sense of security. The moonlight that came from the open ceiling was enough to see in the darkness that surrounded him. Perhaps he could find something that could help him. A talisman to teleport? Old runes? An invisibility cape? He huffed. As if. What the hell was his family even storing here? The most useful thing he found were a pair of glasses – not that his sight was bad, but at least it was something with a purpose. And its intricate design would have obsessed him had he found them in a less life and death situation – and a hand made of wood? Definitely getting saved by it. At least he could handhold something when he died. Less lonely.
He let himself drop to the floor to inspect his wound. The sight of it made him retch. The idea of touching it at all, forgotten. He wouldn’t say he was afraid of blood, but he was not a fan either. And his leg shouldn’t look like that. The scar that wound would leave wouldn’t be the cool type. To everyone’s vexation, surely.
His incesant inner rambling wasn’t making him forget his pain. And the dizziness came back with a migraine. Yep, he wasn’t looking at that again. If he wasn’t killed by Akaashi, the blood loss would do it for him.
Might as well send Kenma a message so he can cremate my body before it rots, I am not letting this place be my tomb. If there is anything left at all, that is. With that in mind, he left the wooden hand he had been handholding next to him. Took a slightly bloodied paper that had fallen near where he was sitting, scribbled a message he knew Kenma could dechiper and sent the origami-bird, now as alive as a real one, to his destinatary.
Perks of being a mage!
He would allow himself a bit of sarcasm and bitterness before imminent death caught up to him by the hand of one of his childhood friends.
Having found nothing that could be deemed useful to fight or escape, Tetsurou decided to welcome the afterlife without the memory of betrayal engraved in his retines. The blood loss had crossed the safe point, rendering his previously in overdrive brain incapacitated. So much for someone considered cunning by his contemporaries; caught off guard by another mage. It would be pathetic if he regretted trusting Akaashi, but he didn’t. Having faith on his friends wasn’t a weakness. And it would never be. At death’s door or not. Magus pride be damned. So he refused to remember his friend as a murderer. Taking with him the memories of winters in Hokkaido, soaking in the outdoor onsens of their favourite inn, all laughs and silly stories; of volleyball matches that would amount to nothing in their future, but that they had enjoyed playing with non-Magus; of summers under the fan, eating watermelon in a silence only disturbed by Kenma’s console’s bips and bups.
Immersed in his thoughts as he was, he didn’t realise the glow that had been radiating from the wooden hand since the moment that it had gotten in contact with his blood.
What he couldn’t ignore was the scorching sensation that traversed his whole body right after the brightness reached its peak. His magic circuits awaken, rapidly depleting the last remains of his energy, forced his eyes open. He had expected death, a merciful one at least, that much courtesy should have been a given.
Ready to yell at his friend for needless torture, his words were forever lost at the sight in front of him.
An angel was staring back at him. What seemed the glasses he had once held while rummaging through the warehouse, now framed elegantly the delicate features of a boy that didn’t seem much older than him. His golden hair glowed under the moonlight, giving the guy a ghostly appearance that was more alluring than scaring. The eyes that were fixed on him were of similar hue, more amber than golden, but as vivid. Tetsurou wished he could get lost in them.
There was no apparent emotion displayed in the countenance of the man in front of him, indifference was all that could be found with the exception of a minute – imperceptible for eyes less trained than his – scowl. It seemed that the divine being was not pleased with what he had encountered. He would have loved to look more presentable for the Adonis that had come to reap his soul, but he was too busy dying to do anything about it.
He had to give credit where credit is due, though. Akaashi knew him well enough to create this illusion to greet him before the final blow. He even got his uniform kink in mind. He was sure he had told him in passing only once. He could admit himself impressed.
To what era or country that attire belonged to, he didn’t know. The features of the man weren’t clear enough, a mixed person maybe (half European?). The clothes were not Japanese, that much he could tell, but something about him – his eyes mainly – told him that, in some way, he was related to the country Tetsurou was from.
He would have loved to see the hands of the man, which he was sure were lovely. If something as fickle as cosmic justice were to exist, they could only match his face. But they were covered in leather gloves. Partially a shame if someone cared to ask him, since this also did it for Tetsurou. Win-win situation! If he were to die, he was glad the unnamed vision would be the last thing he would see.
Had the blood loss not numbed his mind to such degree, Tetsurou might have realised that the door wasn’t open yet, that the chantings from his friend could still be heard from outside the barrier, and that the boy in front of him was as real as he was. Had he been in a better state, he would have understood the situation he was in. A Servant. His Servant had answered his plea, he had listened to his desire to live and had come to save him or to accompany him in his last breath had he arrived too late. This bit, he would not know until much later, when the young man deemed him worthy enough to allow himself to be vulnerable with the one who had summoned him.
Thankfully for Tetsurou, before he could open his mouth and make a fool of himself, the soldier spoke, “I ask of you… Are you my Master?”