kaisou | text: un: coffeelvr4ever

[After a minute or two of trying not to break something:]

Are you available to meet me somewhere? I would rather the direction this is going end up away from 'anyone and everyone hearing about it.'

i'm always available for you ;)

and sure! give me time and place i'll be there

extremely not the time for that

are you at the church? i can head over there now

yeah you know me. priests habitat and all. i'm there

[For better or worse, Waver had a fair bit of time to think on the way there. Most of it was spent trying to talk himself out of catastrophizing--after all, if he understood the matter correctly, whatever happened had already happened.]

[...That made him feel much worse, and instead he resolved to give Flat detention for the rest of their natural lives the second he got home. At least that way Waver could be sure he wouldn't do legitimately the single worst thing he could imagine.]

[Needless to say, by the time he got to the church, he was looking a little pale and a lot stressed out.]

[Oh, this is a sight. Hansa's smile falls when he sees Waver come in, and he approaches, concern written all over his face.]

Hey. Talk to me.

The good news is that I'm not questioning whether or not I can trust you anymore. Whether you--or the you in another life--was an Executor or not, the fact that 'I' asked that of you at all says enough.

[That much, he'd safely concluded. Even in a situation where his options were limited, if he was desperate beyond measure, or whatever else might conceivably keep him from tracking Flat down and dragging him back to London by the collar--Waver was certain he would never ask someone else to keep his dumbass kids out of trouble unless he truly believed they weren't a risk.]

[Tense and with his mind racing, Waver took off his sunglasses entirely and folded them with a quick gesture of one hand, slipping them into a pocket.]

Knowing that to be the case, I have very little reservations about telling you what I can. His name, first off, is Flat Escardos--he's one of my students.

Flat Escardos. I'm finding that mages in your world have...rather creative names.

[He says, a little flatly (pun not intended). But he folds his arms, frowning slightly. That blond kid, smiling brightly as he chatted over the phone with...Waver? Another Waver? The Waver of that world...]

What's the bad news, Professor? The fact that your student is involved in this war of sorts?

Don't start, I've heard them all.

[But he took a deep breath to collect himself and gather his thoughts, even if the majority of those thoughts were creative expletives that Waver wasn't going to invent in a church.]

Escardos is impulse and chaos personified. He never looks before--or during and after--he leaps, and usually his sheer talent and brilliance is enough to cover for him. Without any doubt, he is easily the least predictable individual I have ever taught, with more power than sense. [Though it seemed like a complaint, there was a thin undercurrent of something like pride in those words.]

...The Holy Grail War is a competition between mages. Cutthroat, cruel, self-serving monsters chasing their own advancement with no regard for the blood they shed to get there. If the Waver Velvet of that world turned around long enough for Escardos to get involved with the last thing on earth I would ever allow him to do, then he's a fucking idiot.

Sounds like you really appreciate the kid. [He says, sincerely - yeah, he hears that pride, alright.] Though he also sounds like a handful and a half.

[Sort of reminds him of him, in a way - maybe that's why that other him decided to agree to look after him in those kind of circumstances, outside of the Waver aspect.]

...Now, now, don't be too harsh on...yourself. That version of you. I don't think he'd be calling if he didn't care. And I think Flat was in good hands, with you and that Hansa.

Maybe he is. [Quickly brushing aside any accusations of caring, because that was kind of what he did.] Honestly, with the kind of talent he has, I'd almost believe him to have better chances than most. It isn't as though I never taught him anything, and he's powerful in his own right.

But that doesn't change a whole lot. It isn't just a matter of surviving or not surviving. I didn't want- [His voice broke off harshly, as though he had to consciously refrain from stopping the admission that came next.]

...I never wanted him to make the same mistakes I did.

...

[Ah. Now this anxiety makes sense. His expression darkens a little. Waver, involved in a cruel war of mages...]

[No wonder he was this guarded. Anyone would be, after an experience like that.]

You were in a war like that? [And then his eyebrows furrow together.] Ah. Your tutor...he wasn't...

[He wasn't killed in that war, was he?]

[He'd never spoken about what happened that night. Not to anyone, even the people he trusted. It was better left a distant memory, painful on several fronts. Accepting blame from Reines had been easy--she assumed Waver's actions had indirectly caused Kayneth's failure.]

I killed him.

[The truth was much worse, written all over Waver's face in how utterly exhausted he looked to finally admit to it.]

Rather...Kayneth El-Melloi Archibald was killed by someone acting on my behalf, to save my life. The distinction is irrelevant.

Edited 2022-09-08 21:04 (UTC)

[His eye widens...and then his expression settles into something more serious, solemn, not because he's sad about what happened with his mentor, no, but...imagining Waver having to live with the memory and name of this man is devastating to think about. His own personal albatross.]

[His tone is heavy as he speaks.]

Was he trying to kill you? Is that what these wars do? Push people into such cruelties?

I won't act like I was completely blameless. I stole something of his and sabotaged his chances of victory, so it's no wonder he was out for my head. But that's just how mages are. Proper nobility on the surface, but damn near every one holding a knife behind their back. The Holy Grail War is just more open about it; outright Church and Association-sanctioned warfare between seven participants.

[Waver shrugged as he tried and failed to brush off the weight of his own confession. For a moment, he looked unsteady on his feet; then he simply sat down with his right leg crossed over his left, and that cleared up in much the way his nerves didn't.]

...He was an excellent teacher, if not in the way he intended. I learned more than I ever expected about how much of a mistake I was making, and about just how cruel our world really is. I got lucky, he didn't--it's as simple as that.

...

[He has to think about everything he was just told for a moment. He watches as Waver moves to sit, and after a few seconds, he moves to sit next to him, hands clasped in his lap. This is nothing like any confession he's used to. But it's a confession, all the same.]

...I want to reassure you. That Hansa of that world praised you effortlessly. "You survived a den of demons", he said. And I believe that, now. As much as you've been through, you've come out as someone to rely on. Whether its your students, or the people around you. The world may be cruel. But you're not, and that's what matters.

I don't need reassurance. I don't regret doing what I had to in order to survive--I don't even regret being stupid enough to enter the war in the first place. [Was it the worst decision of his life? Yes. But in far more ways, it had ended up the best one he had ever made.] I am what I have to be for the sake of the people that matter; whether that's cruel or not is meaningless to me.

...But you're right. You're exactly right. The Clock Tower is a den of snakes and demons, and the only hope the whole society has is for the next generation to stay alive and learn common sense enough to salvage what we've ruined. That's why I'm livid about this.

The students of the El-Melloi classroom--my students--are my responsibility. For some of them, I might be the only one who gives a damn if they live or die. Flat Escardos may well be the walking personification of my every headache, but he's still one of mine. Each and every one of them, past and present, knows they can rely on me, and if it were necessary I would lay down my life for any of them without hesitation.

[I'll show you a star worth chasing, he'd promised long ago. A leader to inspire those who were loyal to him, and to prove himself worth that loyalty in turn. And though that promise had never left his mind, to Waver that was not the case here (even if the reality of the matter said otherwise). His students weren't knights or soldiers, they were teenagers. And while he wasn't the only decent human in the Clock Tower, he was the only one to seek out the troublesome yet brilliant students no one else would take.]

[After all, he’d once been one himself.]

What I saw and did all those years ago...as much as I value those it led me to, there are horrors in that war I wouldn't wish on anyone. A stupid, reckless, idiot kid doesn't know that, and if he doesn't then it's my failing as his teacher for not impressing upon him what it truly is to fight for survival.

If anything like what I went through happened to any of them--if Flat ran off to make the same mistake I did and wound up hurt or killed, I would never forgive myself. I haven't failed a single one of them yet, and I'm not about to start by failing him.

...

[His hands tighten over each other, slightly, as he listened, before he lets out a low sigh. Ah, Waver. What a fierce heart you have.]

I know you don't want reassurance, but I don't want to see you beating yourself up over this. I don't know what happened in that universe. All I know is that you were putting that kid into my hands to protect. That Hansa's hands, anyways. Whatever happened, whatever led to that situation...there's no way to know.

[A pause, before he reaches over, taps at Waver's forehead.]

Don't get too deep in your own head. You have done a world of good for your students. You will continue to do a world of good. Keep your strength in that, and your heart. It won't fail you, and you won't fail your students.

[He scowled at the response, but said nothing—tacit admission that Hansa was in fact correct. No matter what he felt about it, there was nothing to be done here and now. That was—had been?—likely a completely different world from his own. If he started worrying about every single one of those, he’d drive himself completely mad before long.]

[He shoved the priest’s hand away from his head halfheartedly, a token resistance against the continued invasion of his personal space.]

…god damn it, how am I supposed to argue with that? Stop being sensible, you’re making it difficult to be furious with myself.

Hehe.

[And now he's pulling back the hand to rest his chin in its palm, shifting to bump his shoulder against the other's.]

I'm just very good at what I do, what can I say? Someone has to do it, anyways. Might as well be me.

How painfully stubborn of you.

[Waver sighed, unconsciously placing his left hand over the faint marks on his right.]

But then again, there’s not a great deal of difference between stubbornness and tenacity.

No, there isn't. So why not take it as a virtue instead of a flaw?

[He closes his eye for a moment, looking pleased as a fox.]

Regardless, life is life. It requires you to bite the bullet.

Roll with the punches, as the saying goes. I’m usually better at it than this.

[He caught himself wondering, if Flat couldn’t possibly be dissuaded from the worst imaginable course of action…what would he actually do? ‘Attempt to tie him to a chair’, while the kneejerk response, would only serve to encourage the embodiment of chaos further. Then, if ‘entering a Grail War’ is a foregone conclusion, I would…]

[In that hypothetical, there was only one thing he could do to protect his student—give him exactly what had kept Waver himself alive.]

[He quickly realized he’d been thoughtfully silent for a few seconds too long, shaking his head.]

…Who knows? He probably did better than I did at his age.

Edited (phone typos my beloathed) 2022-09-09 17:09 (UTC)

Now you're treating it like you entered a regular sports competition back then. It was a war. Your actions and his are going to be different because of who you are as people, naturally. Not to mention the chaos of it all.

[nooooo comparing yourselffffff]

Besides...you survived, didn't you? You're here, today, after everything.

[It was easier to think of it that way. In the clinical and matter of fact descriptions committed to his haphazard research, rather than the reality of it. If Waver thought about the situation on the level of a human rather than a mage, he’d inevitably think about the sky tearing itself apart and a workshop full of unspeakable horrors—that would put him right back at being pissed off Flat was so careless, and that wasn’t going to accomplish anything.]

It’s not like I did that on my own. I’m alive because someone else protected me. Without him, I’d have died at least three times over back then.

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