Chapter Text
Premise: The process of Arjuna Alter reclaiming his humanity forces Arjuna to examine certain things about himself.
Or
Arjuna doesn’t know how he’s supposed to feel watching another version of him cling to the master like some overgrown shoulder cat.
Ship: Arjuna x Ritsuka Fujimaru (F) x Arjuna Alter
The Problem with Lilies
Arjuna has heard about him of course. The Final Dark God who reigns over the fourth Lostbelt, Yugakshetra. A warped mirror version of him ruling over a warped mirror version of his once homeland. The idea boggles the mind. But in this place called Chaldea where they fight the end of the world, apparently, it’s just another, albeit hard day.
Regrettably, he wasn’t actually there to witness the entire thing firsthand. By sheer practicality, it was decided that the Master would zero sail into the Lostbelt with only a handful of companions and then contract the stray servants summoned by the world in that same Lostbelt to make up her fighting force. It is an expedient tactic because any servants summoned by the world itself are surely the best fit for defending Human History against their divergent alternatives, for all that it denies Arjuna his rightful place in defense, and in witness, of that other version of him. But as always, ever the ideal hero, Arjuna keeps his peace, stays at home base, and awaits the Master’s triumphal return.
And she does, in tatters and with yet more scars to add to the constellation on her skin, as she always has done. And following in her wake is him.
“My existence is to destroy evil. All evil shall be judged,” declares his dark Alter as he trails behind a frazzled-looking Ritsuka, floating inches off the ground and bending to hold her hand.
It’s not every day that Arjuna gets a look of himself inside a funhouse mirror. It is his face… and his body. But it’s also a face and body that has been scrubbed clean of any traces of life. Immaculate and perfect, without a single scar or mark that time has left on Arjuna. Inhuman. Godly. Him in the best and worst way possible.
Arjuna stands there in the foyer of Novum Chaldea, his mouth parted open as he observes his Alter, momentarily at a loss for words.
“Hi, Arjuna! Bye, Arjuna!” croaks Ritsuka as she trudges past, looking decidedly dead on her feet. “I sleep. Now. Talk later, bye!”
Incredibly, his alter follows her down the corridor, around the turn, heading to, what Arjuna assumes, the Master’s bedroom. The thought sends jolts of alarm through Arjuna’s mind. Beyond the fact that it’s highly improper - the Master is the Master, but the Master is also a young woman and if a version of Arjuna can be accused of improper conduct with her, it would be as if Arjuna himself is to take that fault too - is also the fact that this version of him is… was… the enemy just a short time ago. He grips his bow in hand and makes to follow them, but an equally frazzled-looking Mash stops him halfway.
“It’s fine, Arjuna,” she says timidly. “Senpai can handle it, I’m sure.”
“You all nearly died fighting him,” counters Arjuna. He has watched some of the records of the fourth Lostbelt, the small bits that they managed to capture through wave interference. Even with mere glimpses, it is clear the kind of firepower at the disposal of his Alter. It is not the kind he wants anywhere close to the Master, let alone within arm’s reach in her private space itself.
“And he died fighting us,” replies Mash in that same deceptively mild tone. “This one. He’s not… quite like how he was in the Lostbelt. He materialized right after the fourth Lostbelt collapsed. Da Vinci says he has less of the gods in him. Perhaps he wants to…” she pauses for a short moment, still barring his way through the corridor and to the Master’s bedroom, where his Alter could be doing gods know what to the Master. Arjuna frowns at the Demi Servant.
“Senpai says perhaps he wants to reclaim his humanity,” says Mash, her statement finally giving Arjuna pause. “And so long as she is his master, she will honor his wish.”
Arjuna purses his lips, contemplating the new information. His Alter, he does appear very… inhuman, doesn’t he? Mechanical, one can say. But then, the way he trails behind the Master speaks of a decision fueled by things other than pure rationality. Arjuna would know. It’s him, and it’s not him. But the part of the Master wanting to honor Alter’s wish, no matter how useless or frivolous, that part rings true to the woman Arjuna knows.
“Won’t you at least accept Senpai’s decision on the matter?” says Mash as she eyes his fisted hand on the stem of Gandiva. Arjuna looks past her, thinking of things the worst part of him would do in the presence of the Master, and the best part of him.
“Very well,” he says finally as Gandiva dematerializes from his grip. “But I will be keeping an eye on things.”
“I’m sure Senpai will be glad to have you looking after her,” says Mash as she gives him a small, tentative smile, her enormous shield dissipating along with Gandiva.
So he does, watch, and think that is. This other version of him, ponders Arjuna, has to have come from that time when he bore the name Kiriti and wielded the mantle of heaven in the place of his father. It has to have been from that time. Because from no other chance could he have usurped the authority of heaven so completely.
The next day Ritsuka emerges from her room, Arjuna’s dark Alter following behind her, and she sets about acclimatizing him to Chaldea, as she does for every new servant that joins. That means training and ember farming. And Arjuna, as it happens, is on the team.
“I think it will be good for him,” says Arjuna’s beloved Master to him before they enter the Chaldea Gate. “to have you there. It might remind him he was once human.”
You are too kind, thinks Arjuna, to even consider the comfort of spirits long dead. But the logic is there, and it allows him to be near should issues come to the fore. Besides which, it is… fascinating… to watch this other version of him, another him that could have been had things turned out differently.
The first thing Arjuna realizes is that there is very little that is human in his Alter.
“Gandiva. Target sighted. Fire”
“Collapse.”
“Break.”
Then once he has finished carpet-bombing the poor Divine Arms and absorbing the Embers that materialize out of their atomic remains…
“Physical performance improvement verified. Correcting excess…”
It is as if a machine is puppetting a body molded after Arjuna. A war machine at that. There is no hesitation nor consideration, only perfectly mechanical execution of the Master’s orders. And the sheer power! If there is one adjective that can be used to describe Arjuna Alter’s sheer damage output, then it would be disgusting. It doesn’t matter what sits on the other side of the battle line, should the Master order it, Alter would crush it wholly and completely.
This is the him that gave up his humanity and memory for absolute power, thinks Arjuna. It is both fascinating and sad, and not just a little alarming. Alter is how far Arjuna could fall… can fall. He cannot say he is not tempted. But on the other hand, what is the price for that power? What else has he given up besides his humanity and his memories? Because clearly, there are other things missing here. There is so little of Arjuna left in Alter, so little human. No wonder he was so easily manipulated by evil.
“You must utilize me like a weapon without a will”
Yes, no wonder he was so easily manipulated. There’s nothing left in there but power and Arjuna’s mad drive for a perfect world. His best and his worst, brought to the fore with the contrast dialed up to maximum. All of this wrapped up in a divine shell. Arjuna cannot say he is entirely unaffected to see another him reduced to such a state. Perhaps the Master is right to intervene, if only out of kindness.
“Makes ya think, don’t it?” The blue Irish lancer stops by one day to gander.
“I beg your pardon,” says Arjuna, peering at him over his half-bitten apple in the half-time between the Ember Gate and the Berserker Class Training Ground.
“Your Alter,” clarifies lancer with a languid shrug and jerk of his head, gesturing at the other Arjuna, who is floating behind Master like an oversized pet.
Right. This one too has other versions of him running about. Another younger lancer version of himself, a caster, and finally a Berserker. One that was created from a Holy Grail no less.
“It’s either seeing the worst part of yourself, the best part of yourself, or the parts that are embarrassing and ya don’t want to think too much about… all of that made manifest in a way that you can’t deny. Makes ya think. What other parts of myself that I didn’t care to look too closely at? And will it show up one day wearing my face? You and I are hardly the only ones with alters running around,” says Lancer.
“Your Berserker version was created from a grail answering the wish of a licentious queen. You had no part in his creation.” He is even somewhat similar to Arjuna’s Alter, an awkward marriage of pure power and the worst personal flaw of the original version with very little else of the man left. And just like Arjuna’s Alter, he too schemed to harm the Master.
“That he was,” Lancer agrees amicably. “But I also can’t deny that he was made based on me. Medb made him from what she liked about me best. What does that say about how others saw me? I can look at him and think. Man, if I ever have the worst day and decide I have lost my mind, then that would be the thing to come out.”
Arjuna frowns, thinking of the implications of Lancer’s words. It is a known fact that alters and their original versions rarely get along even inside the halls of Chaldea. Some have even been known to try to murder the originals. The Dragon Witch comes to mind. So do the dark female king and her numerous blackened counterparts.
“Well, ya don’t have to think too hard about it. How you take it is really up to you. As it is, he’s helping the Master and staying out of trouble. It might be weird to look at him now and then, but it don’t have to be worse than that.” Lancer makes to get up then, seemingly having said whatever he wants to say, and starts to turn and walk away.
“Least he’s not a Lilly,” he throws in like an afterthought, just before he clears the threshold. “Alters might be tough to deal with, but Lillies would just be downright embarrassing.”
Lilies? Ponders Arjuna as he gets up from his seat and prepares to enter the Class Training Ground. Images of a much younger him float around his head. A younger Arjuna with all the awkward boastfulness of a mortal child yet to come to terms with his divine parentage, eager to please and equally eager to make troubles, well before he honed himself into the perfect hero he is. Arjuna finds himself agreeing with the Irish lancer. Yes, that version of him would be mortifying to have around. Whatever one can say about the Dark God, none can say he is an embarrassing sight to behold… even when he trails behind the Master like a particularly murderous lost child.
.
.
.
The Master keeps at it for weeks, patiently and meticulously overseeing training battles with Arjuna’s Alter, then feeding him materials to further along his Ascension in the hope that it might galvanize humanizing growth in him.
“Physical performance regression verified. What does this mean?”
It’s doing… something. That much is clear as Alter’s more inhuman traits slowly recede. Whether the change is positive is something entirely though.
“He is weakening,” comments Arjuna one day to his infuriatingly resolute Master. “The more human he becomes, the weaker he gets.”
She nods without really looking at him, her eyes resting on Alter’s form as he slowly absorbs the floating Embers.
“His strength comes from his divinity,” she says almost absentmindedly. The lightness of her comment puts a frown on Arjuna’s face.
“And you are alright with this?” He presses.
“Hmm… why wouldn’t I be?” she blinks, turning away from Alter and looking at him at last. Arjuna takes a second to enjoy her undivided attention before explaining.
“A weak servant is of little use to you,” he states matter-of-factly. “A servant that grows weaker as he ascends is… perhaps not a servant you would care to devote time and investment into. It makes no sense for you to continue on this course if all it does is render him of less and less use, even as he is… as you put it… reclaiming the man he once was.” Especially when the perfected form of that man is already standing right here beside her.
“Arjuna!” Ritsuka gasps, as if Arjuna has just said the most ridiculous thing. This close, he finds his eyes sliding between the soft curves of her face and the slender column of her neck with a fondness he is not about to disclose to just anyone. She purses her lips, her brows furrowing in thought.
“Am I wrong?”
“You are not,” concurs his Master. “But… even so, this is what Alter wants.”
“This is what he wants?” he says, unable to keep the incredulousness from his voice.
“I know it,” says Ritsuka with the certainty of a woman declaring the sun rises in the east and sets in the west.
“Even at the possible expense of your mission?” presses Arjuna. He is not blind to the enormity of his Master’s task. It is already so much more than what he achieved in life. She seeks to upend gods and fight for the whole of humanity. It is a task that even Arjuna would recoil from. And she is so much… less… than he was… is. Incredibly, the Master trudges on, stubborn and resolute to the point of insolent. She has already laid low the gods of Scandinavia and India. He quietly wonders what other sets of gods will Ritsuka deny when next she takes to the field… and what price she will have to pay for such weighty triumph?
She appears to be thinking his words over. “Yes, even so,” she looks at him and then at his Alter, whose skin is growing into a vaguely human shade, whose hair is darkening from white to gray, and whose horns are shrinking minutely. “If it’s just a matter of power,” she says, light and wistful. “Then it wouldn’t be me who is standing here. That I have made it this far is thanks to more than the strength of arms of those who stand by me. There’s more to you, all of you, than just parameters and powers.”
Arjuna’s master inexplicably has a way of looking at them… at him… that makes him feel like more than the shadow of a man long dead. He is both told and knows by the instincts of a Servant, that this is not the case for other Masters. It doesn’t make the weight of her gaze any lighter, nor the unseemly heady elation filling his chest any easier to rein in. One of these days, he thinks, one of these days he will hold her gaze and not feel like wanting to be more than the imprint of the venerated dead, like he can transgress the line between Servants and Masters.
“If I cannot go above and beyond for my servants, then I have no right to expect them to do the same for me. Well, that’s what I think anyway. I know it’s not exactly a popular viewpoint among magi,” concludes Ritsuka with an easy, self-deprecating grin.
“You will commit to this course then. There is no changing your mind.”
“Nope,” says she, the ‘P’ popping from her lips.
In the face of such determination, there is nothing else Arjuna can say.
“Very well,” he declares mildly. “It will be as you wish.”
“No change. Continuing system corrections” announces his Dark Alter like the punch line of some cosmic joke.
.
.
.
It’s by the third Ascension that the glimpses of an alternative Arjuna finally peaks past the overwhelming divinity in Alter. His form has changed considerably now, to the point that there is minimal divergence between the body of Alter and the body of Arjuna himself. The same form, the same shade of skin, the shape of his face, the color of his eyes, even the hair which has grown short and darkened, although Alter’s is just the tiniest bit messier, as if his hair is permanently tousled by some invisible wind. The only differences left are the horns, which now more resemble sharp feline ears, and the dragon tail sprouting from his back. He has also put on more clothes, which Arjuna deems of acceptable quality for another version of him, gold regalia and greaves.
He is less powerful - his annihilation beam only reducing enemies to charred clumps instead of atomic dust - in exchange for seemingly more finesse in executing orders.
And finally, Alter is actually seeing Arjuna, as if he has, at last, noted their shared name, origin, and appearance. His eyes, no longer vacant, would linger now and then as they cross paths or fight in the same training team.
He cannot deny it is engrossing to watch something finally coming to life within that once empty divine shell. Arjuna is curious to see which aspect of him will take the helm once Alter reclaims more of his lost humanity.
The bulk of Alter’s attention still rests on Master, however, and he hasn’t yet stopped trailing after her, although he speaks less of exterminating all the evils of the world. And then one day…
“What do you… desire?”
They are standing in the command center, discussing the particulars of an upcoming ranking mission with the little Da Vinci and the Demi-Servant Shielder when Alter floats before the Master, looks her in the eyes, and delivers this question.
“Eh?”
“What do you… desire… Master?” repeats Alter. There is something different in the way he looks at Arjuna’s Master now. There is a presence in those eyes that was not there before. An intention. Curiosity, wonder…
“You seek no compensation for your goodness…”
Now he has the attention of not just Master and Arjuna, but also the little Da Vinci and Mash. This is new. He hasn’t ever talked of other things aside from evil, annihilation, remaking the world, or urging Master to make use of him as her personal Sword of Destruction.
“The steps you take have no hesitation”
He floats close to Arjuna’s Master, bends so that they are at eye level. The proximity sends jolts of wariness through Arjuna. But his Master seems to share none of his concern. She appears transfixed by Alter’s sudden bout of eloquence. Eager even. She leans into Alter, until there is only the span of a hand between them.
“You embrace both suffering and sadness… you simply look straight ahead…”
Alter cups both hands around Master’s face, his grip uncharacteristically tender. It occurs to Arjuna then that for all that he hovers behind Ritsuka all the time, this would be the first time Alter initiates physical contact with the Master. The thought is startling even to him.
Alter goes quiet for a second, seemingly lost in thought, unbothered by the palpable anticipation from Master and Da Vinci, and the concern from Arjuna and Shielder. Reflexively, Arjuna grips his bow, thinking of possibilities. But before he can put much more thought to his nervousness, Alter breaks his momentary silence.
“That is… beautiful…”
The intensity of his gaze on Master leaves little room for doubt on who he is referring to. Almost immediately, a fluorescent flush spreads its way across Master’s features. She chuckles abashedly, her small frame shaking.
“Awww… thank you! I think you are very handsome too, Arjuna.”
Arjuna is dimly aware of the little Da Vinci’s amused titters and Mash’s relieved sigh next to him. The entirety of his attention is riveted on Alter’s face, which is suffused with what he can only describe as pure, untainted adoration.
Oh, he thinks with a sinking, complicated feeling. So even another him, the mangled leftover piece of another him inside a divine vessel, is also now held captivated by Master.
He seeks to speak with the Master in private on that same day, anxiety jumping about like live frogs in the pit of his stomach.
“Why do you let him touch your person with such liberty?”
“Whatever do you mean?” hedges his sometimes infuriating Master.
“It is not…” proper, he thinks in the privacy of his mind. Arjuna has never allowed himself to touch the Master in such a way. “... safe.” It’s not even a lie. Arjuna’s Alter is a Berserker of overwhelming power, for all that he has diminished since the day he stepped foot into Chaldea. Should he wish to, even the slightest touch from his littlest finger is enough to render Ritsuka’s soft mortal body into atoms. And Berserkers… there is no reasoning with them. Madness is built into the class container itself.
Master’s face softens with gratefulness.
“Thanks, Arjuna, for thinking about me,” she says earnestly. “But I will be fine. I trust Alter. It’s another you, after all. And I definitely trust you.”
Infuriating, stubborn woman, screams Arjuna in his head. But outwardly, he maintains the image of the perfect hero.
“Besides which, I think it’s good for him.”
“Allowing him…” to touch you when I won’t… “...liberty with your person is good for him?”
Master chuckles abashedly.
“Haha! When you put it like that, it does sound silly, doesn’t it?” And then with utmost sincerity. “But I really do think so. Arjuna, you should have seen him back in Yugakshetra. Before Pepe came, he was alone. The only existence of his kind. And even after, I don’t think he held anyone the same as him.”
Why would he? Thinks Arjuna, when he is already made from the mold of perfection. If Alter is anything like him, and if the events of the fourth Lostbelt are anything to go by, then yes, he is him, then he would be beholden to the same impossible ideal.
“How long has it been, since he touches another human? So yes, I think it’s a good thing. It probably reminds him of a time before he became… well… that… So what if he gets a little touchy-feely? I don’t mind, especially if it helps him reclaim himself. I deal with Kiyohime all the time, after all. It’s hardly any difference.”
The difference, thinks Arjuna, is that he is another him. The difference is that he wears Arjuna’s face. And the sight of himself so unrestrained in her presence, with perhaps nothing held back, is putting thoughts and emotions into Arjuna that he is not sure he is equipped to deal with.
“And… don’t you think that there’s something… different about him?”
“Different… how?”
“Doesn’t he seem… young?”
Arjuna blinks, caught flatfooted at the sudden revelation. He has been so focused on the divine nature of Alter and the world-breaking power at his fingertips that he has failed to realize something so blatant.
“Right? You see it too, right? It’s not just me!” Master exclaims excitedly, bouncing on the balls of her feet. “Alter is younger than you, Arjuna! He’s not just your Alter. He’s your Lily!!”
Arjuna dazedly watches that last word drop from Master’s lips and reverberates down the empty corridor where they stand, sending echoes every which way.
Lily.
Arjuna has a Lily.