Fate/Hollow Order

Marian. You know the least about her, don't even know her Noble Phantasm. She got the closest look at Atalanta's capabilities and survived. Best to start with her.

<Marian, I would like to talk to you at your earliest convenience.>

You can't see her of course, but you imagine you can still sense her do a double-take as she hears your voice. No answer comes over the link, but a moment later the Archer simply materialises in your room as if she were waiting there the entire time. You look at her. She looks at you. She's stitched up the claw-marks in both her clothes and her chest, looking to all the world as if she had escaped the battle unscathed. She looks at you, Asclepius' poultice doing almost nothing to hide the horrific severity of your burns, and she brings her hand to her mouth with a soft gasp. You can't imagine the full extent of how you must look, but you can guess.

"Regarding our stra-"

She's already stepping forward. She's already reaching out to you to hold you and bring your head against her chest in pity-

"I'm fine!"

Smack. The back of your hand jerks up and catches her square on the wrist, flinging her away from you the moment her fingertips brush your hair. She reels back as if you struck her on the mouth, eyes widening with shock. You hit her rather harder than you intended. But it must not have actually hurt, you're sure of that. Just shock.

She looks at you in silence. You look back in silence. It feels like a translucent lead blanket has descended between the two of you, snuffing out all sound and thought. That strange feeling strikes again, like some sort of serpent blindly squirming around in your numb guts. Marian overstepped her bounds and presumed too much, you were perfectly within your rights to rebuke her. Perhaps you were... a little harsh in doing so but still.

You wet your throat and swallow. "I am... fine," you repeat hoarsely. "At the time the pain was being suppressed by what I suspect was a combination of adrenaline and Galahad's own traits. When those wore off it was a shock to my system. Now I have been treated by Asclepius. I believe there was a topical numbing agent in the poultice he applied, and my Crest is automatically deadening certain other nerves to preserve function. I am not in pain."

Marian turns her face away slightly. Her hood hides most of her features, just like Medea. You don't know what expression she's making in response. The quiet stretches on for too long. The lead blanket is wrapping around your throat, squeezing the raw flesh, pinning the strained cords. Suffocating you. Fine. If Marian wishes to be unhelpful out of offence, you will remain silent until she offers something useful or leaves of her own accord. You have no patience for this today.

She meets your gaze again, her expression neutral. "I fought Atalanta," she replies at last. "She completely outclassed me of course, but thanks to Arash's help, her madness and her own propensity to save her strength for a final push I was able to read her somewhat. I believe that the Boar's pelt has not completely overwritten her. I think it is not only possible, but our best course of action, to somehow lure her into a situation in which Medea may strike her with Rule-Breaker."

"What is it that gave you this impression?" you ask. Neutral. Flat. Businesslike.

"Merely a feeling. Disregard it as you like," she replies in complete candour. "But I believe I am her opposite, in a way. Her legend is that of an abandoned princess emerging from the wilds and into civilisation - mine is that of a lady leaving civilisation behind to immerse herself in the wilds. It is my belief that I could impose that 'civilisation' upon her, draw her out of the wild madness of the Calydonian Boar and disorient her long enough for Medea to strike. If in her sanity she wishes revenge upon Jason then all the better."

"No, this is adequate information," you say. "The theory is sound. The difficulty is in separating her from Jason's other Servants long enough to execute the plan. It will likely have to wait until Pollux and Penthesilea are fully healed, ideally once Karna has recovered as well."

She opens her mouth. She closes it again.

"Is there a problem?" you ask.

She looks at you. The way she looks at you makes your jaw tighten and your guts draw up into a tangled, fist-sized knot. A Servant should not be looking at you like that. A Servant has no right to look at a human being with... with knowing pity, like a comrade in suffering. The least Servant in all of history still has the right to look down upon you like no more than a flea.

"I know what it feels like," she says at last.

"No you don't." The words spill out like acid, burning your lips as they pass, unable to be taken back. Your burned fingers twitch and tremble.

She raises her right hand and bites down on her fingertips, tugging the glove off. The soft leather comes away easily, dropping from between her teeth and into her waiting left.

It looks like the hand of a corpse. Half-rotted and discoloured, mottled and grey-black. Only her thumb, her lesser and her ring fingers escaped the ravages of whatever did this to her without withering away to the bone. She wordlessly adjusts her grip on the glove and tugs her sleeve up further, exposing her wrist and forearm. The corruption extends further, seemingly following the cephalic vein all the way up to the outer side of her bicep. It seems only a miracle could have neutralised such an all-consuming toxin before it reached her heart.

"The name I was given at birth is Matilda Fitzwalter." She looks down at her revealed hand pensively, turning it slightly this way and that as the memories return to her. "I was seventeen when King John invited me to join in at the May Day festivities he was hosting. He saw to it that I was crowned the May Queen of course, but through it all there was this... one man." She smiles slightly at the memory. "Anything and everything a young girl could want. Dashing and charming, so skilled with bow and sword he put every other competitor to shame."

She looks down at her hand, palm facing the floor. At the ring of especially deep scarring just past the knuckle on her index finger. Her face grows solemn.

"I would have been mad to refuse the king but I did. I ran from him and I told my father of his advances. My father was furious. I would... hah I would explain but I suspect you understand my place in history now?"

Matilda Fitzwalter, daughter of Baron Robert Fitzwalter. Leader of the twenty-five barons that rose up in rebellion against King John for his abuses of power and forced him to sign the Magna Carta, the document that would become the first step on the road to the death of monarchy.

"The King sent me a gift," Matilda goes on. "Something to show that there was no bad blood between us, something to apologise for his treatment of me. And I... the naive girl that I was, I believed him. It was the most beautiful ring I had ever seen, a signet ring with my father's seal, a sign that I was a worthy daughter. The band was poisoned."

She turns her palm up once more, unconsciously tracing the path the poison took as it tore through her body. "I was in my carriage when I first put it on. All I remember after that was... running, mad and blind, through the forest while my arm rotted away."

She cups her scarred hand in the other, the slight smile returning. "And that was where he found me again. Delirious and dying but he found me, and he took me in. I became Maid Marian rather than draw more attempts on my life, and he trained me to be one of his band. To be what I am now."

She takes a long, slow breath and silently pulls her glove back on, masking the withered and poisoned flesh. Adjusting the fit until it's just so once more. She curls the hand into a loose fist and raises it to her chest, bowing her head until her lips hover just a few inches from the knuckles. Peering out at you from within the shadows of her hood.

"I do know what it feels like," she repeats with a sad smile. "To love something like the sun, so distant and glorious that it seems like your own deeds are paltry fires in comparison to its brilliance-"

"You forget yourself."

The words are no less harsh or venomous than the slap, but she weathers them far more easily. The look she gives you is so patient, so knowing, it makes you sick. You want to shout at her. You want to order her to stop saying such things, by force if you must. You glance down at your arm reflexively, as if to check how much of a waste of resources that would be.

Three Command Seals left. You could have sworn you had four before.

Your arm. That curious tingling. A Command Seal must have activated instinctively, given you the strength to reach the surface again despite the leaden weight dragging you back down to the depths. You want to laugh. You want to break something. You want to do both and neither. A Command Seal wasted, with nothing to show for it but Karna being little more than dead. Your left hand begins to curl into a first. You remember Asclepius' poultice at the last moment, force the fingers to slacken. Change the subject. Ask for more information. Contextualise the mystery of 'Marian's' nature, that's a puzzle you can grapple with for a decent while.

"Then who are you?" you ask. "What are you? Matilda, Marian, or the Queen of May?"

"I'm the one you can trust when she says she won't run," she replies simply. "The one you can trust when she says that you won't either. That has a quality all of its own, imperfect replicas we may be. At least, I would like to think so."

You're not sure what to say to that. So you say nothing at all.


She lets out a self-effacing little laugh. "Look at me, making this all about me." Marian shuffles a little closer, seeming to master the urge to reach out and touch your shoulder only at the last moment. You don't back away, but you feel yourself tense at her closeness.

"Well... Asclepius has done what he can, and I see nothing I can add with my own skill," she goes on after a moment's pause. "And for what it's worth I believe Karna will recover too. I think he would be proud to see what you did to save him."

If you'd saved him he wouldn't be in this position. If you'd saved him Bellerophon would be dead and Karna would be right here having a different conversation with you about how to kill Heracles or Achilles or all of the above. Instead you have Marian giving you platitudes.

"Thank you," you say. It isn't very sincere. She doesn't seem to mind. She takes a single step back, sketching a half-wave, and vanishes once more. The glittering blue particulates of her once-solid form flit through the door and you're alone again.

You're alone again.

Still time until Asclepius calls for you. You should talk to someone else.

[ ] Medea.
[ ] Penthesilea.
[ ] Pollux.
[ ] Astolfo.
[ ] Arash.
[ ] Blackbeard.