A Matter of Baseball

“Man! What a match, huh?” The foreign master is grinning from ear to ear, taking off her baseball uniform. “I hope we get to face each other off again next year! This was so much fun!”

The uniform she’s changing into is one from Chaldea. The black one, to be precise. The one you’ve been wearing through every lostbelt so far. She recognized Mandricardo earlier. She’s been almost as far as you. She’s seen almost as much as you do. She’s worked so hard, gotten so far, and she has-

failed.

No command spell ornate her hand. Liz, waiting for her outside, will surely dissolve with the singularity. This master, this you from another world, is alone.

“Well, this is a goodbye.” She concludes, buttoning her shirt all the way up. “See you later-!”

She moves to leave the lockers, but you grab her arm first.

“You don’t need to leave.” You tell her hurriedly. “There’s space in the Border. We could use a backup Master, even. We could-”

She smiles at you, and you end your sentence here. It’s not like her earlier smile. This one is very small, and very sad. You know that smile. You know it because it’s your face. You know it because she’s you.

She cannot stay here. She cannot stay anywhere. Such is the curse of Musashi’s kin, of these survivors from pruned timelines- doomed to hop from world to world, never to stick around.

The woman suddenly reaches up, to your face. Fingers graze your cheek.

“Give me something to remember. Please.” And then, a little quieter: “it is so cold out there, and I have been so lonely.”

A pang of hurt ripples through your soul. You understand. You understand. You can barely imagine a life without your servants around, without at the very least the comfort of the suitcase by your side. Such a fate would have been torture to you- and therefore must be torture to her, now.

You lean down, and catch her lips between her own. The kiss is brief, but heated, not so much lust as hunger, as the desperate need to remember the touch of another human.

When the two of you part, she rests her head against your chest, breathing heavily.

“... Give me a name.” She mutters eventually. “That, I can carry with me.”

You think back to Fairy Britain. That’s a heavy responsibility, a name- identity and duty all into one. You are no magician. You do not have clairvoyance. All you can do is pick a sound you like, and hope it gives her a better fate to look forward to. “How about Rokka?”

“Rokka… Yes. Yes, I’ll remember that.” She tilts her head and looks up at you. “You’ll take care of them, right? Our beloveds.”

“Of course.” Your servants have died so many times for your sake already. And it will happen again. But you can’t let it be for good. You can’t. You can’t.

“You have to survive this. You can’t end up like me. It sucks. You have to live through this.” Her hands clench around the fabric of your shirt. “One of us has to. One of us has to make all these corpses worth it. One of us has to make all our corpses worth it. You have to live through this.”

You circle your arms around her, and hold her tightly. “I’ll… do my best.”

“Hey. Listen.” She tilts her head up to look at your face. “I know you don’t like yourself very much. I know because I don’t like myself very much. We have done terrible things. Nothing will ever change that.” She reaches up to take your chin again. “But I know you love me. I know because it is in your nature to love. So believe me when I say this: no matter what happens, whether you succeed or fail, whether you are victim or murderer, I love you. ”

You know. You know. You know. You want to say so, but your throat feels swollen.

She smiles again, a bittersweet thing. “I’ll cherish the name you gave me. Try to forget it though, alright?”

She gets on her tiptoes, presses her lips against yours, and-

-You wake up in a jolt, safely nestled in your bed back in Novum Chaldea.

Slowly, you raise a hand to touch your lips. Then, with a huff, you throw an arm over your eyes.

“Idiot.” Hot tears are gathering at the corners of your eyes. “Of course I’ll remember you.”