FIC: Nearly Beloved [Fate / Stay Night, Rin x Shirou/Archer]
Title: Nearly Beloved
Author: Omnicat
Spoilers & Desirable Foreknowledge: Everything there is to spoil.
Warnings: None.
Pairings: Rin x Shirou and Rin x Archer
Summary: It isn’t that she doesn’t love him. Post-canon Rin x Shirou / Rin x Archer.
Author’s Note: Written for ISADG, which Cozzybob just got me hooked on. Check it out, it's fun. :D
Nearly Beloved
There is no life more full of sacrifice than that of a mage.
As much as he likes to tell her she - they, them - has broken the jinx, that she’s proven that a magic circuit doesn’t have to mean endless suffering and struggle, Rin knows better. Maybe he isn’t just saying it - no, he definitely keeps telling her because he honestly believes it, or at least because he wants it to be true. So she doesn’t disabuse him of the notion - for once. But she knows better.
It isn’t that she doesn’t love him, after all.
What she feels for him is solid, enduring. Looking back, she can hardly remember a time when she did not harbour even a secret, in-need-of-being-squarely-dismissed affection for him. It is a time-honoured sentiment, as integral to her person as her love for Sakura. It was a silly, counter-intuitive crush, and it lasted, so of course it’s true.
But his hair is still red. His eyes still brown. The only tan his skin knows is that of the sun, and his body is only flesh, blood, and a lost little magic circuit.
He is everything she ever wanted, but ever since the Holy Grail War, it’s been only ‘close enough’. He’s almost perfect - no white hair, or a being forged like steel into a form it was never meant for - and the harder she craves him in any way, shape or form, the more avidly she feels all the places where, as they are now, he doesn’t really fit.
Rin is a mage, though, and here is no life more full of sacrifice than that of a mage. She’s known that since long before she met him, let alone his other him. Just because Archer (good, loyal, suffering Archer) made it seem okay to be discontent doesn’t mean Shirou can solve anything.
He always was and always will be a failure as a mage. There’s no reason to condemn him to that old, miserable fate by saying anything.
It still wouldn’t make him him, anyway.
PSAN: The end! :P
Author: Omnicat
Spoilers & Desirable Foreknowledge: Everything there is to spoil.
Warnings: None.
Pairings: Rin x Shirou and Rin x Archer
Summary: It isn’t that she doesn’t love him. Post-canon Rin x Shirou / Rin x Archer.
Author’s Note: Written for ISADG, which Cozzybob just got me hooked on. Check it out, it's fun. :D
Nearly Beloved
There is no life more full of sacrifice than that of a mage.
As much as he likes to tell her she - they, them - has broken the jinx, that she’s proven that a magic circuit doesn’t have to mean endless suffering and struggle, Rin knows better. Maybe he isn’t just saying it - no, he definitely keeps telling her because he honestly believes it, or at least because he wants it to be true. So she doesn’t disabuse him of the notion - for once. But she knows better.
It isn’t that she doesn’t love him, after all.
What she feels for him is solid, enduring. Looking back, she can hardly remember a time when she did not harbour even a secret, in-need-of-being-squarely-dismissed affection for him. It is a time-honoured sentiment, as integral to her person as her love for Sakura. It was a silly, counter-intuitive crush, and it lasted, so of course it’s true.
But his hair is still red. His eyes still brown. The only tan his skin knows is that of the sun, and his body is only flesh, blood, and a lost little magic circuit.
He is everything she ever wanted, but ever since the Holy Grail War, it’s been only ‘close enough’. He’s almost perfect - no white hair, or a being forged like steel into a form it was never meant for - and the harder she craves him in any way, shape or form, the more avidly she feels all the places where, as they are now, he doesn’t really fit.
Rin is a mage, though, and here is no life more full of sacrifice than that of a mage. She’s known that since long before she met him, let alone his other him. Just because Archer (good, loyal, suffering Archer) made it seem okay to be discontent doesn’t mean Shirou can solve anything.
He always was and always will be a failure as a mage. There’s no reason to condemn him to that old, miserable fate by saying anything.
It still wouldn’t make him him, anyway.
PSAN: The end! :P