Providence in a Fall

“My wish...” the woman said finally. She finished her cup of tea, choking lightly, and Watanuki poured her another one. “I suppose... I have one. I would…well, I suppose I would like to meet my future husband.”

“Your future husband?”

“Yes,” she fervently nodded. “Or... even know who he might be. It's…” She sighed. “It's difficult, just waiting. I've…admired... some men before, but I think... it would be nice to know who is meant for me.”

“Ah,” Watanuki said. “But you know that being hurt, loving others and letting them hurt you is also an important part of human interaction. Destiny isn't just a single answer. However painful some of those relationships may be, ultimately they would affect your life.”

“Please,” the woman stubbornly insisted, which nearly devolved into a fit. “Please try. I... don't have any more time...”

Watanuki nodded. “Very well.”

Watanuki looked at her and saw. The scarlet thread of inevitability, weaved around her finger. Thousands and thousands of interlaced layers, age, work, tears, and tangled within the skeins of life...

“I...” Watanuki looked away. “...I am sorry. I am so sorry.”

The woman's face crumpled.

“I need you to go on a date.”

The cup thudded against the table, but Diarmuid was too absorbed by the sudden request. “Excuse me?”

Watanuki sighed. “I just received a client who wishes to experience... well, a romance, if not love. She would love to go on a date for the first time in her life. Since obviously I am out of the question, you are the only one I can trust to fulfil this.”

Diarmuid immediately sat up. “M- Master...”

“Well, it was just an option,” Watanuki lightly replied, though his expression remained heavy as he looked at Diarmuid, and then made a very obvious comparative look at himself. Diarmuid's jaw began to develop a tick at the familiar look.

The son of Donn, grandson of Duibhne, was the strongest and the most beautiful warrior of the Fianna. Not only was he famous for his great abilities in battles as he once destroyed seven hundred soldiers single-handedly but he also gained inarguable popularity among the opposite sex. With a tall height and a body that could be argued as the epitome of physique, being neither too slender nor too bulky, women gasped in awe no matter the age the man appeared. This would therefore lead to many men silently comparing Diarmuid's physique with their own body, which in this case was not only paler than perhaps a vampire's complexion could be imagined to be but also drowning in voluminous robes of silk.

“But... why?” Diarmuid finally deigned to ask.

“Our shop specialises in the granting of wishes, and the woman is willing to pay the price I request.” Watanuki gave an elegant shrug, those his expression hidden behind his spectacles remained pensive. “And... we do not have time.”

The woman, named Anise, had gasped as soon as she laid eyes on Diarmuid, but otherwise she showed no other sign those afflicted with the curse of Diarmuid's love spot usually exhibited – see feverish, highly attracted and obsession, and refer to The Pursuit of Diarmuid and Gráinne for one particular case that became the entire summation of the legend of Diarmuid Ua Duibhne – and was actually quite rational.

Diarmuid tugged at the collar of his shirt. His dark green armour had been changed for this occasion, and he now wore a modern white shirt and faded jeans, an admittedly novel experience. With his collar buttons open, and a pair of sunglasses to block the love spot – which he mentally kicked himself several times over for a very large blind spot in common sense, but then sunglasses did not exist in Ireland for a very long time anyway – he looked like some male model than a Heroic Spirit from the Fenian Cycle.

The three Ms – Maru, Moro and Mokona – had heckled before Watanuki let him loose with Artemis, more demurely dressed in clothings Diarmuid thought were more suited to an invalid in the modern sense and dark hair piled up. At least it was not red hair; despite his luck with red-heads Diarmuid did not think he could deal with tempers like his own countrymen at the moment¹.

“Thank you for agreeing to this,” Anise smiled, a demurely brilliant expression on a pale, sickly face.

“It was nothing,” the first knight of the Fianna resolved. Watanuki had laid out the mission quite clearly; he would treat it as an escort mission. And as a knight, of course he would escort the lady where needed.

“Diarmuid-san, was it?” She bit her bottom lip, probably a nervous habit. “Please, are you troubled?”

“Not at all,” Diarmuid replied. “To escort is a knight's duty.”

She laughed, a sound of relief. “I am sorry for the great trouble I have caused for the shopkeeper and you. I... I don't know where to go.”

Neither did he, but he kept his thoughts well to himself as he pulled out a bag Watanuki had loaned to him for this express purpose. Rifling through it, he found two stubs of paper that he distantly recognised as slips of paper that granted entrance to a picture show, or 'movie'. While the Holy Grail had provided ample knowledge, context, as well as the ability to speak English and Japanese on top of Gaelic, experience was one thing he did not know.

Her eyes scanned the paper. “Sadako? Do you like horror films, Diarmuid-san?”

The knight actually paused before answering. “I am afraid... that my experience is rather limited in this... endeavour.”

“I've never watched it,” Artemis sounded fascinated. “The doctors seem to believe that being shut into a large, dusty room with the air-conditioning on all the time is a recipe for asthma to act up.”

“Well...” the warrior considered the pros and cons of actually reaching for a new experience. If he was going to do this... “Shall we, then?”

Having been Assured that everything on the big screen was falsified, Diarmuid could finally stop the impulse to smash the screen and focus, and determine that whatever it was, the fact that humanity could falsify such realistic scenes purely for the sake of entertainment was definitely an advancement credited to the modern world. While magic had been waning since, the fact that there was... choice...!

“Yes, it's overwhelming, isn't it?” Anise seemed understanding when she was faced with the array of restaurants within the largest mall in the Fuyuki City limits.

The wielder of the twin spears dumbly nodded. There was a difference in knowing, if rather distantly, about the wide variety of choice available, and then seeing it for himself. Where the Fianna hunted their own food and keep in his own time, the choices available could make his head spin. Kayneth and he had never actually interacted on such an informal basis, as it were; the late former Master probably did not believe in interacting with an essentially immortal Servant that did not require sleep, food or most bodily needs.

In a way, such a transcendent existence was an insulation in and of itself; he had not suffered the drawbacks of life, but neither had he experienced life in the modern world. Not having enough time to just stop... had been something he never had had enough time for.

The truth of the matter, was that Diarmuid was beginning to experience something he had almost entirely forgotten could actually live within his heart. His unusual circumstances aside, there was something hopeful beginning to form. The gradual understanding of just what kind of person his Master was brought with it a slow and cautious hope: that this just might work.

Anise began coughing. “I... my...”

Recalling the instructions of his employer, Diarmuid fished out a Ventolin dispenser, slightly at a loss until Anise took it and puffed some into her mouth, breathing in as much as she could while wiping her mouth with a tissue. As she packed the two away with a dewy-eyed alacrity, the knight then understood. The thick coats, the caution advised, the bag...

“Shall we?” Diarmuid offered one arm to her, the other behind his back in the form of a gentleman. Anise considered in slight surprise for a moment, but smiled and took his hand.

“T- Thank you,” Anise fidgeted as they left the establishment and began a slow, measured walk back to the shop. “For today. I've never... really stepped out and enjoyed the world.”

“Ah, it is an honour to escort a lovely lady,” Diarmuid gave a small smile in return as they continued a small, measured walk-and-talk. “Please... you made a wish, did you?”

“I wished to see my future husband,” Anise's eyes were at half-mast, lost in remembrance. “I wanted... to know if there was someone waiting for me. That's what I asked the shopkeeper for. He said... he apologised.” She gave a bitter laugh. “I'm alone most of the time. Who would want a sickly dependent?”

“That can't be true, Anise-sama,” Diarmuid addressed the woman, the client, for the first time. “You are intelligent and soft-spoken.”

“I have nothing else to do but read,” Anise shook her head, before shivering as a chilling wind blew past. “Have you ever cursed fate, Diarmuid-san?”

“Things happen,” the knight chose his words carefully. “Sometimes for a reason, sometimes not. In the end, does our ultimate fate truly matter as long as we live by our ideals?”

“You are very deferential, Diarmuid-san,” Anise said chidingly, but she smiled. It was tinged with sadness as the shop and its high walls loomed. “Oh...”

“Anise-sama? Anise-sama!” Diarmuid shouted as the woman suddenly crumpled, holding on to her. A quick burst of speed, and the former Lancer was already in the compound.

As usual, Watanuki stood waiting. “Come, place her on the futon.”

Maru and Moro solemnly held up the necessary blankets and handled the woman gently, though halfway through her eyes slid open, blinking faintly.

“Oh.” she sighed. “I...”

“I hope you enjoyed your date,” Watanuki commented, in a voice that could be meant to be a teasing lilt.

“Yes, shopkeeper,” Anise answered, smiling. “Now I know better what you are capable of accomplishing. Which is to say, nearly everything, short of cheating death itself.”

“I'll do even that if I have to. I am not averse to a challenge.”

“That does not mean you will win," she told him kindly. “I am as mortal as my father and my brother, after all.”

“How can you be so stoical about all of this?” Diarmuid offered quietly.

“I gather I was not so stoical before.”

“You were... not very outgoing,” he said gently. “Neither was I, on hindsight. Our exchange of opinions regarding the horror stories of the modern world has yet to be completed, Anise-sama.”

“Mmm,” Watanuki offered. “The price is the remaining time you have left out of the hospital. In one hour, the paramedics will come, and they will take you back. It is unlikely that you will leave... alive, that is.”

“I have faced death before,” she reflected weakly. “I have learned to manage it. I cannot help but think the undiscovered country would be worth seeing. D... Diarmuid-san... Shopkeeper... thank you.”

“Sleep well,” Watanuki offered. “Diarmuid, come with me. We should let our client rest.”

Silently, the former Servant Lancer walked out behind the master of the shop, before going to the common room usually reserved for receiving visitors. There was a moment of silence as Watanuki laid out sake and cups, and poured a generous measure.

“She was dying.” Watanuki murmured, breaking the silence.

“I realised,” Diarmuid nodded stiffly. “A romance?”

“A passion serves nothing but pain,” Watanuki offered. “But a romance can last forever. I think, for a woman who was always sick, who had never truly gone out into the world, this one day of freedom could be laid up in lavender and enjoyed for a very long time. So...”

Diarmuid accepted the offered cup. “To charity.”

“Charity,” Watanuki solemnly echoed, both of them drinking in a room where the moonlight spilled in and the magic of exchange echoed in the air, finalising the sacrifice made for just one chance to live.