Chapter Text
"I can't help but feel a little responsible for not enforcing regular check-ups." Ritsuka glares down at the doctor's pale orange hair, his face obscured by the angle as he, in turn, glares down at his clipboard. "Sorry, Ritsuka." She bites back the urge to kick the sad smile right off of him- something about his defeated self-deprecation always pissed her off for some reason. It's only been a day, but already all of the holiday decorations are long gone- she would never know that he had decorated it, had da Vinci not told her.
"Just tell me if I'm dying." She's here because Mash asked her to be here, for her own peace of mind. Any excess time spent in Doctor Archaman's clinic was time wasted, as far as she's concerned, and she's already been here for nearly an hour while Romani examined her vitals, tested her blood, asked her if he could observe the process by which she opened her magic circuits.
"Not anytime soon, but only if you stop trying to accelerate." His tone is grim, apologetic. "You're hurting yourself very seriously, and then it seems like you unconsciously use Magecraft to recover, which is reducing the immediate pain- but it's exacerbating your burnout." He sits up, looks her in the eyes- she hasn't seen him this serious since that first day at Chaldea, as they sprinted to the control room. "To put it bluntly, Ritsuka, we're all worried about you. You're overworking yourself."
"I have a lot of ground to make up." She can’t look at him. Not really. She hears this kind of thing over and over- it's okay to be weak. Fine to drag everyone else down. "Mash got hurt in Orleans because I wasn't serious enough about this." That horrible image sticks in her mind, black stakes tearing up through the ground, lancing through Mash's leg. She had recovered quickly but- she never should have been injured in the first place.
"No."
"No?"
"No. Let me tell you this as plainly as I possibly can: you're never going to be a great Magus, no matter how much you hurt yourself. That's not who you are, it's not what you're good at, and it's not even remotely what anyone else needs from you."
Ritsuka sits, speechless. She wants to lash out- to tell him he's wrong, and a bastard, and a piece of shit, and she's going to kick his nuts in. Who is he to determine that about her? How could he possibly decide that she was destined to be weak? But- he's an entirely different person from the pathetic, sleepy man she's known until now. The look in his eyes is stony, immovable. He does a good enough job echoing Archer's severity, but lacks his firm respectability. Ritsuka opens her mouth to respond, but he speaks again before she can get anything out.
"Here's my piece: you need to be a good Master before anything else. You need to get used to commanding and moving defensively. Let Archer and Operator Mao teach you the basics of magecraft- slowly. At a normal pace. You're not a combatant- you're a normal human surrounded on all sides by monsters. Your job is to survive, because as soon as you die the Grand Order ends."
"But I-"
"Do you think that, if you had mastered whatever you've been trying to kill yourself to learn, it would have been any use at all against a genuine Dragon like you had to face in Orleans? That was the first Singularity, Ritsuka. There are more. They will probably be just as dangerous, if not worse. There is no universe where you can fight a Servant without being killed, let alone a dragon."
He's right. Of course he's right. Rituska sits, fingernails digging into her palms as she bites hard on her cheek, looking anywhere but at him- at the expensive looking digital equipment, readouts showing her things she could never begin to understand, or at the floor, the same blinding white tile as everywhere else in Chaldea. Archaman's words cut at her- she aches to tell him he's wrong, that she can be more than he thinks she can, that with enough hard work she can actually become someone good enough to keep Mash safe- but he's not, and she can't.
Let me be the strong one for you.
The words twist in her gut and she bites harder on her cheek, the metal taste of the blood spreading out slowly over her tongue. For a moment, she's lost again in that moment- in the biting cold, and in Mash's tight embrace. But that night is over, Ritsuka's slutty christmas dress is safely disposed of, and she's back in her hideous casual clothes. A hand settles on her shoulder, heavy and reassuring- she fights back the impulse to slap it away.
"I'm not telling you to give up pursuing magecraft. I'm telling you that magecraft has to be a long-term investment. You'll be a worthwhile magus in ten years, or twenty, not in a month. But today, and tomorrow, and until the Grand Order is complete, you're just going to be Ritsuka Fujimaru, the dropout. Maybe that's not good enough for you, but…"
He trails off, maybe expecting to be interrupted- Ritsuka is silent, staring down at the floor with her eyebrows knit tightly together in frustration.
"I'm not going to tell you to accept yourself. That's useless- I know what it's like to feel like you're letting everyone down just by being there." That hangs on the air for a moment- heavy, suffocating.
Romani Archaman sits down next to her on the stiff examination bed, pulls his hand from her shoulder and lets it fall to his lap. He considers his next words very carefully- the two of them sit there in silence forever with only the steady beeping of the clinic's equipment to anchor them to reality.
"The reason it has to be you- it doesn't have anything to do with your rayshift compatibility, really, or any special circumstances of your physiology. Do you know why you have to be the Master of Chaldea, and not Mao, or Meuniere, or any of the two dozen magi still alive here?"
Stupid question. Because everyone else is dead, and she's what's left. Olga Marie had been very clear about that in Fuyuki. It was her assumption that there was just nobody else at Chaldea who was capable of bonding with a Servant- but- it doesn't have anything to do with your rayshift compatibility, really.
"Why?"
She looks up at Romani, and he smiles down at her. An easygoing, kind, friendly smile. For a moment she forgets her antipathy for the man and just lets herself be warmed by it.
"Because when Lev bombed the control room, you ran straight there to risk your life. We all watched- you were ready to throw your life away in a second if it meant a chance at saving even one person."
"It- it wasn't like that. I just moved without thinking." She hated this- when people talked about her like a hero just for showing up. She hadn't even accomplished anything. Mash had saved herself by fusing with a Heroic Spirit, and then she had saved Ritsuka from the consequences of her stupid decision.
"Exactly. That's why Mash loves you. Why everyone at Chaldea admires you. The rest of us- we had to think first. Before I had even processed the state of emergency enough to stand up, you were already sprinting towards Command. While everyone else who survived was shaking off the rubble and waiting for their hearing to come back, you were throwing debris out of the way trying to find Mash. If we hadn't seen you- I think a lot more people would have died. You inspire people, Ritsuka."
She stares down at the command seals, vivid red burns on the back her hand. She doesn't get it- how anything she did was special. Why anyone could be inspired by her. Why it even matters if they are, if she's not actually strong enough to accomplish anything. But-
Let me be the strong one for you.
At the vivid image of Mash's kind face, her glowing smile, wreathed in the bright snow of the blizzard, her heart skips a beat. The fire in her chest when she watches Mash fight, that pressure to get in and help her- is that what other people feel when they look at her? Is that really all there is to it?
"Doctor Archaman-"
He doesn't respond. Waits for her to decide how to get the words out.
She's never going to be a great Magus. She's never even going to be a good enough magus to fight. But even though that's true- even though she's a useless dropout who can't ever be expected to accomplish anything on her own-
That's why Mash loves you.
-but there were other ways that she could get better for them. For her. For herself. Power wasn't the only way she could make herself worthy of da Vinci's affection, of Shirou's trust, of Mash's love.
"Do you think you could train me?"
His eyes widen, his calm expression evaporating to be replaced with utter confusion. It's the last thing he ever expected to hear in his life- Ritsuka is asking to spend time with him. The same woman who had told him to shut up every single time he had ever spoken to her outside of the command room. The same woman who glared at him at all hours of the day whenever she had the chance.
"What? I'm- uh- well, I'm not a magus myself, so-"
"In medicine, dumbass. Like- first aid. Field medicine."
"Oh- uh- probably! I can't make you a surgeon or anything, but setting bones, cleaning wounds, that kind of thing- definitely."
He smiles down at her, still trying to process her change of heart- I must be pretty good at this counseling thing, he thinks to himself- and for the first time since arriving at Chaldea, Ritsuka Fujimaru smiles back.