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“The very least you can do in your life is figure out what you hope for.
And the most you can do is live inside that hope.
Not admire it from a distance but live right in it, under its roof.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, Animal Dreams
There were deficiencies in Crow’s training. Some of them, he knew, were a direct result of his own short comings. Being well trained implied having the time to train, after all, and he spent most of his hunting, killing, and fixing his armor. There was never much else available and he never really felt the need to experience more.
His master, on the other hand, was more than willing to share his own accounts.
Between the trips into woods Crow spent most of his childhood wondering if grew in the human realm and long spars he would later equate to practice in learning how to take a hit than in avoiding them, Eiji seemed surprisingly loose with information. At least, information that would keep him (mostly) alive, if not intact, and seemingly inconsequential asides about how the rest of the world lived.
Crow had always been just good enough to warrant the extra trips and the hours of explanation. If he was going to be useful - and he was being given one of the more useful armors - he would need to interact with the people he was protecting. That meant extra observation time spent explaining how, to the rest of the world, they were a fantasy. It meant extra sparing so he could face the human, or humanlike opponents his master’s other disciples would probably never encounter. Extra advice on humanity in general.
It didn’t help.
Knights were one thing. Priests. The Senate. People of his world he could more or less understand. Even casual interactions were mostly transactional - his master often nearby, shaking his head or gruffly smirking about his lack of charisma. Crow far more easily called to mind the layout of stars on clear nights and the reassuring sensation of perfect balance on a high branch than he faces of more than a dozen people he’d met in his life. He didn’t need to, really. Not with his work.
As usual, it seemed, Garo was the problem. No amount of hearsay or reading could have prepared him for Saejima Raiga, and though frequently left stressed and confused as a result, Crow could hardly claim to mind. The first time they met, he’d spent the rest of his night desperately wishing he’d known where his master had drifted off to at such a time, and equally glad he didn’t have to deal with the teasing that would no doubt follow.
Eiji liked people. Crow wasn’t used to it.
His master was confident and proud, kind and capable, and far more deserving to be at the side of the vaunted Golden Knight than he. And that was, perhaps, the one part of his own deficiencies Crow couldn’t quite manage to blame on himself: his master’s inability to impart any of that to him. Clearly, Eiji had talent. All he had ever needed were the moves and the experience to make use of them. For him, swordplay was as natural as walking, and the priestly callings as simple as picking up a book.
He expected his pupils to be the same.
Now, Crow was glad that simply wasn’t the case with him: it would make everything much harder and he already had no idea what he was doing.
No idea how to handle something that should have been a tool becoming a person under his protection instead. No idea how to deal with the desperation of trying to save one friend and live up the expectations of another; to deal with a time limit unrelated to his armor; and to actually care about the person he could save instead of the one he had to cut down.
His master once said having someone to protect was different than just protecting people. That it could make you strong, but that was years ago and Crow felt so weak when his sword recoiled from the horror’s barrier. Eiji had seemed so weak. His master slightly hunched where he’d sat, calmly telling him of a descent into the darkness he’d been raised to fight against had seemed less evil and more defeated than anything else. If it had been a test, he’d thought at the time, it was the worst kind that could be given.
Not because it was too hard.
Crow had never felt the desperation that had apparently driven his master to such lengths. It was a betrayal of more than mere morals when the man revealed himself, unbowed and unwilling to give up on a crusade he would have once declared fruitless. There had never been anyone to go to such lengths for. Friends and family and lovers were stories his master wove together at dusk by a river. All Crow knew were acquaintances and priests and knights and a master he had to cut down because he was a good disciple, even if his training wasn’t perfect.
That’s what it meant to be a shadow instead of a person.
The difficulty wasn’t in the decision to uphold his oath, but long after, during another experience his training had glossed over. Protecting people could make you strong, his master had said, strong or stupid.
Unfortunately, Crow had never been strong.
Stubborn, perhaps. Enough to keep throwing all of his strength into each strike against a barrier he didn’t know how to break. Desperate, because his wounds weren’t bad enough yet to warrant the shortening of breath, and the slight shakiness on the grip of his sword from the reverberation of each blow down his arms. And stupid because the touch of concern to Mayuri’s normally placid features reminded him of the tone of Raiga’s voice when he’d told him to leave the fight.
The fight he was helping Raiga lose against the man who had trained him to be something better than what he had become. Something capable of standing up to a rogue knight and removing him. Maybe even someone.
Crow wasn’t someone, though, least of all someone powerful enough to protect anything. The only time he’d ever been able to save anyone was because Garo had been there. Raiga had been there and stepped in and thanked him for being there.
He could do that.
“STOP!”
Being there was something shadows would always be good for, and if that was all he had, he’d use it.
“Stop! … Eris!”
He held out a hand and allowed himself to hope.