Chapter Text
Saber scans the bar, ignoring the drunk men with their arms around womens' waists and the shrilly blaring television. A man lounges against wall at four o'clock, as handsome as she remembers. He plays darts idly — a flick of the wrist, a thunk as they hit the bullseye one after another. Nobody else pays him attention.
"Saber," he says, mole twitching upwards in a smile. "I was getting bored with no one here to talk to."
Saber moves towards him and pretends she does not feel his eyes watching her steps, her hands, her vital points.
"I am not here for idle chitchat," she tells him, taking a stool at the bar.
"Of course not." Lancer throws his last dart. She doesn't look but can feel it sticking in the board, twanging with impact. He seats himself beside her. "But you may as well be. I have all the time in the world to waste on idle chitchat."
Her throat closes. She signals the bartender for a pint and does not look at Lancer, though she feels him watching her neck bob with the first foaming gulp.
"Does it taste like regret?" he asks. She sets it down harder than she should,
beer froth slopping over the rim and soaking into the black of her gloves.
"I did not know," she replies, quiet under the tinny cheering of the men on the screen playing some incomprehensible sport. "I would not—"
"Betray?" Quiet, unblinking. A single lock of hair twists in front of his face and she feels sick, absurd, wants to fight him again, wants the clang of blade on lance. She wants to dance with him, Excalibur in her fist and Gáe Dearg in his. Instead, this.
Saber nods. "I would not betray. I did not know."
"I know," says Diarmuid Ua Duibhne more quietly than he ever spoke in life. When she looks over, blood is spreading over his diaphragm, dark as tar where it seeps out between the seams of his armor. He meets her eyes and the alcohol roils in Saber's gut: this ghost still blames her.
"Forgive my ignorance."
"The dead do not forgive so easily as the living repent, king."
"I know," she says, and she has had this conversation before, she has been through this time and time again, the same dead man in a dozen busy bars and the guilt heavier but more distant and useless every time: like she is wasting away inside her gilded armor, alone with alcohol that does nothing to dull her senses. He feels real, beside her. She feels not like a king.
"Man," he muses, "to corpse, and corpse to legend, legend to holy spirit and, glory of glories, holy spirit to common poltergeist."
"The King of Knights has failed you, knight. I do not deserve the title."
"You do, though." The blood is gone. He takes a sip of beer: not from one of the glasses the bar serves, but from a dented tankard. Stronger ale, wilder yeasts. A memory of banquets past. "My hate is fixated. Unpleasant, but it is a part of me. I am just a shade, but you are a spirit, Pendragon, closer to alive than I. You should not come to visit me any longer. I am surprised you still do, after this long."
"You are not."
He smirks into the tankard. "No, I'm not."
She does not bother to tell him the thousand ways she would be unable to live with herself if she stopped. He knows.
Instead, she asks: "What would happen if I cease coming to see you?"
The remnants of Lancer lean back, puzzled. "I'm not sure. Disappear, likely. I believe my prolonged existence is fueled by you; the grip of your guilt is stronger than the veil of death, it seems."
She closes her eyes as he goes on. "I think I will live on in the curse I laid on the Grail, too. Funny, the things that bar me from eternal peace. Spite. Vengeance. Betrayal. You."
She does not have to look to know the blood is back on his chest, streaming from his thin lips, bright against his fingers. "You will live on in other things, I swear it. You will. I will preserve your name, your honor, your deeds."
Diarmuid laughs. "Artoria Pendragon," he says so gently she wants to drown, "you are no bard."
He is too close, somehow more real and more present than any other being around, tall and muscled: the stuff of legends utterly ignored by every being in the room except her as he sips beer. Can he taste, she thinks. Can he think. Is he anything except a dummy, here to hate — and only hate — me, and only me?
"We will fight again," she replies, after a long moment. "In another war. The Fifth Holy Grail War. If not, the Sixth, the Seventh. The Hundredth, if that is what it takes. We will settle this score."
Diarmuid's smile is so warm, when she turns to look.
"Always war. How many times will you die on the battlefield, Saber?"
"Until we fight again."
"But we will not fight."
She looks at the thing that is not Lancer.
"I desired only to serve honorably and die honorably." A drop of blood slides down his cheekbone and into his tankard. "I asked that much, and it was denied me. I died with my own spear through my spine and a curse on my lips, King."
She bows her head, grief as heavy as any claymore.
"You should know this much. I will not be returning to the Holy Grail War."
She grits her words out from between her teeth. "You lie, ghost."
"No." His lock of hair shakes with his head. "I am simply the embodiment of my last, bitter oath, Saber. I exist to torment you."
Saber does not speak.
"Although," he says, "I do not need to. You do a fine job of it yourself."
"Am I mad," she asks of him, knuckles tight beneath fine black doeskin. "Am I mad."
Lancer smiles, scarlet coursing down his chin, spattering the floor. "You would not allow yourself the luxury."