A Poisoned Chalice – A Retrospective
So, after almost 5 years and over 200,000 words,
A Poisoned Chalice is complete. It is, by far, my most popular fic on both SV and FFNet (although it's outstripped on AO3 by my ridiculous Game of Thrones SI oneshot), has been recommended on TVTropes (although no-one has made a trope page for it
yet), and my mum has given it the glowing verdict of 'lovely, dear'. I am more proud of completing this than I am of any of my other non-professional accomplishments, and frankly it beats out quite a lot of those too.
This post is, first, to thank each and every one of you who have read, reacted and commented. Genuinely, I could not have done this without your constant support. Second, it's to indulge myself a little bit more in what it was like writing this whole thing. Third, it's to answer the question: what happens next? To the characters, and for me as a writer?
The Seed
I may have mentioned this before in this thread, but the seed of the idea that grew to become this fic was actually from one of my other fics,
Damascene. If you haven't read it, please don't trouble yourself – really, don't, it's dead and I have no plans to continue it. Here, I'll even post the relevant section:
"In the last War, the Masters were a collection of fools, myself chief among them. There was just one who understood what we were trying to do, who worked towards his goal with cunning and ruthlessness. Magus Killer, we called him, for his methods, and he was the Master of Saber. Just like the Saber of this War, she was powerful and glorious in her might, undefeated on the field of battle. But I tell you this, Rin.
"Had the Magus Killer and I swapped Servants, so that he drew Assassin and I, Saber… I would surely not be alive today."
Now, at this point I was already having trouble continuing
Damascene, and part of that was the length it had bloated out to. So what I thought of was a simple, seven-part fic – Kiritsugu summoning an Assassin, followed by how that Assassin pulled off effortless kills against the other Masters, one per chapter.
But, I couldn't just assume that the other Master-Servant pairs would do nothing while they were dropping like flies from an unknown source, and of course they'd have their own conflicts to deal with, so I needed at least an offscreen plot to follow even if I wasn't going to show most of it. And, if I was going to far as to change out Kiritsugu's Servant, I may as well think up who else got what…
… and at that point I hit on the 'compatibility summons only' idea. The rest is history.
Writing A Poisoned Chalice
When I look back on writing this fic, mostly what I remember is the dizzying array of places in which I wrote it. I started it on the US naval base in Bahrain, and posted the final chapter (and this retrospective) in Mersin, Turkey – but in-between, I've been almost literally round the world. Some of the early chapters were written on a tiny minehunter slamming into 4 metre waves, driving into the teeth of the Southwest monsoon off Oman (to which I attribute their poor quality). No small few were written in quarantine on various naval bases. At least one was written over the course of a 20-hour flight. One was written while crashing at my cousin's house while searching for a place to stay of my own. Most recently, I've had to fight for internet in various random ports just to upload what I'd written at sea – I had three chapters to upload in Jakarta and was diving into random coffee shops to do so.
I feel extremely lucky to be able to track my life across the last 5 years by what was happening in
A Poisoned Chalice at that time.
As I'm sure was pretty clear, while I did have a basic plan going in to this fic, much of how it turned out was a complete surprise to me. This is the danger of not
completely planning something out. In particular, I feel like the themes of this story really only came into their own about halfway through the fic – if I had to put a point on it, I'd say that Ibaraki's death marks the point where I stopped smashing action figures together (however competently) and went 'oh shit I'd better actually have some things to say'. Or rather, I found I was saying them, and kind of rolled with it.
The first theme that emerged was 'dealing with the past'. This was what the premise really lent itself to, and is I think the most coherent message. Enkidu's thesis was that the past should stay there; da Vinci thought one should build on it; Martha forced Tokiomi to confront it; Avenger just dwelt on it. Serenity literally uses the crystallised Mystery of Kiritsugu's past – Severing connections and building new ones – to finally kill Avenger for good, and that one definitely wasn't by accident because I'd realised what I was doing by then.
Building on that is a tangential theme of 'succession' – Kiritsugu passing his dream on in various ways to various people and Waver receiving Caster's tutelage are the most obvious examples here, but you could probably find others.
The second big theme was… well, Accidental Christian? As in, look, I'm not religious – I'm an atheist, although I was raised Church of England. And yet, especially throughout the last third of the fic, I somehow found themes of redemption and forgiveness and the importance of family cropping up again and again, coupled with Christian imagery. Like, I realised only after the fact that I had Serenity descend into a fiery pit to do battle with someone calling herself the Devil, then later find her final rest and ascend to her rewards by being buried in a crypt beneath a church.
And even after realising what I'd done there, I still slapped my forehead when I realised I'd accidentally made Tarrasque form an Old Testament-style pillar of fire in which the Grail was to be purged.
Super awkward, because Serenity is very definitively – some would say
fanatically – not Christian. There were a lot of characters who were, though! In fact, given that two of my major characters were priests, another was a saint, arguably the main character was a fanatic, Ryuunosuke has his own bizarre take on God, and Enkidu, Ibaraki and Atalante probably had Strong Opinions on gods and religion as well, it's amazing that this fic managed to stay as non-goddy as it did for so long.
I reiterate, I'm not religious. But you'd be forgiven for thinking that I was, like, a youth pastor if all you knew about me was this fic.
Anyway, returning to the subject of my writing this by the seat of my pants, here are some things that were originally planned to be in the fic but didn't end up making the final cut:
- The Servants were actually fairly set for the most part, but the Saber was the last to be chosen. For a hot minute I considered Waver summoning Nero, on the basis that both were desperate for attention and recognition. I think what stopped me was, first, I would then have no idea which Caster to pair with Kayneth; and second, I've never played Fate Extra and I'm sure Nero is a rather more complicated and layered character than she seems, and I didn't want to get things wrong. Still, I'm satisfied with the final result, not least because it gave us the SS d'Melloi (another of those things that just happened while writing).
- For whatever reason I was very fixated on the idea of Team Assassin triggering a massive backlash by kidnapping Sakura, thus prompting reactions from especially Atalante but also Tokiomi and his gang as well. I had all sorts of ideas for how it might play out: Kariya swallowing his pride and going to Tokiomi, leading to a siege of the Einzbern house by Enkidu, Atalante and Tarrasque while Martha went to retrieve Sakura, Serenity needing therefore to dodge both Atalante and Tarrasque while both were being guided by Enkidu, and Maiya having to escape Martha. There was definitely a bit about Tarrasque going berserk after being summoned for too long, proving both the opportunity for Serenity to escape and the first hint as to Avenger's identity. I also seem to have planned a bit where Kiritsugu bluffs his way out of a situation by holding an Origin Bullet to Iri's head, so I'm glad I didn't end up needing to use that.
- I also toyed with the idea of having Shinji kidnapped along with Sakura. I did read that apparently Shinji was sent away for the War, though, so he did not appear in this fic. Something I did wish I'd been able to include was a scene where Atalante is basically the only person in the Matou household to be nice to him.
- At one point Serenity was going to shapeshift into Atalante, probably to kidnap Sakura. I really can't stress just how fixed this idea was in my head, and I really don't know why.
- Speaking of Sakura, I did play with the idea of having da Vinci being convinced to fix her up. In the end, I thought it was a bit fix-fic-y, and discarded it.
- Speaking of Caster, around that point d'Eon would not trustCaster at all, and persuade Archer to team up with them and assault Team Caster's lair, which would have been a pretty bonkers fight scene – both have Magic Resistance, d'Eon would have anything Kayneth could cobble together, and Archer is in some ways the second-most powerful Servant of the War. Kidnapping Sakura (seriously what was my obsession with this plan) would have been a distraction to help break out of that.
- Kirei's first chapter was a talk with Martha, instead of with Enkidu – Martha would have finished by huffing that Kirei shouldn't take any notice of what some heathen mudball says, who wasn't even around when humanity was saved by the Son of God. Presumably Enkidu would have been far out of earshot at this point.
- When I realised where the themes were going – round about Kirei's talk with Enkidu, actually – I realised that Kiritsugu had to die. Initially, though, I'd thought about Kirei as Serenity's replacement Master, with Enkidu able to supply himself from the Earth enough that Kirei wouldn't really feel the strain. In the end, though, I picked Maiya to do that, and I think you can start to see a little uptick in Maiya's screen time from that point on.
And, just for fun, a few things that were never planned but were some missed opportunities:
- Probably the biggest one – despite knowing each other in life, da Vinci and Zouken never meet in this fic. In the end, it's probably better that way. The two didn't really have a reason to be onscreen together other than for me to go 'hey look I know this fact'. There's no reason for even da Vinci to connect 'Makiri Zolgen' and 'Matou Zouken', while Zouken would only know Caster as 'Caster', if he's even bothering to keep track – and, of course, da Vinci looks very different from how she did in life.
- There are a couple of skills and Noble Phantasms which I never got to showcase. The big loser here is d'Eon, who never got to use any of the three forms of Fleur de Lys. In fact, of course, d'Eon never really needed to, because d'Eon kinda… wins every fight they're in? Ibaraki retreated both times before d'Eon needed to resort to it, and of course neither Serenity or Kiritsugu were a match to begin with.
- Likewise, Ibaraki never got to use Great Flame of Mount Ooe. Again, though, there isn't really a moment where it would have made a difference, so I'd be including it just to show off the fact that I knew she had it.
- Finally, Serenity never exploded, or even used Dance of Silence to spread poison. The perfect moment would have been in the Hyatt, but obviously I had a more specific and tragic end to that particular fight planned. Again, for a lot of the fic Serenity not poisoning everybody was not a problem with her delivery system but of whether it was appropriate to do so right then. Had she wished to, she would have managed just fine with her knives, until she was left with only those opponents on whom poison was useless.
So, yes, this was kind of a mess from start to almost the finish, but I hope I managed to wrangle some satisfying themes out of it and wrap up the story threads nicely. However, I didn't manage to wrap up
every dangling thread – and that's where the next part of this post comes in…
Where are they now?
Okay, this isn't actually going to be a where-are-they-now style montage. However, if you're interested, I do have some thoughts on what happens next for various characters and how that might affect the wider Type-Moon world going forward. You're not getting a sequel out of me – with some possible exceptions that we'll go into – so if you just want to satisfy your curiosity, that's what this bit is for.
Of course, if you hate any of these ideas, they needn't be part of your personal
A Poisoned Chalice canon. Everything past that bit where I wrote 'THE END' is just my own thoughts.
First, Maiya. As she said in the second epilogue, she basically does what she's always done with Kiritsugu, while searching for wish-granting artifacts that aren't tainted by the French. I did kind of imply some shipping between her and Kirei… I don't know where that came from. If you hate it, it goes nowhere. If you think Illya needs a mother and not just some maids, well, that's one option. Something I didn't really go into was Maiya's loadout. Obviously she's got Enkidu's Noble Phantasm Contender (the Thompson Champion?), which in my head has bonkers firepower but always damages Maiya's Grail-burned hands anew whenever she uses it at full power. If Kirei's not there to
hold her hands provide healing, it can put her out of commission, so she needs to be careful.
She also has the two Deutsche Marks that Serenity carried. Again there wasn't really a place to put this, but I like the idea that they took on some of Serenity's poison semi-permanently – soaking them in water for ten minutes produces a batch of not-quite-full-strength Delusional Poison Body, which can then be used in any way Maiya can imagine. It does need extremely careful handling though, and also she's very polite about asking Illya if she can use them.
Matou Kariya died peacefully. He did manage to get Zouken's secrets to Tokiomi, through Aoi.
Kotomine Risei is still the priest of Fuyuki parish, although the church took a while to rebuild given that, you know, the hill it was standing on disappeared and they needed to do surveying and that to make sure there weren't any hidden sinkholes or anything. There weren't, because Enkidu does good work, but still that takes time. Risei is enjoying being a grandfather properly, and is just the softest touch for Caren.
Right, so much for the canon side characters. What about the Stay Night crew?
So, obviously, Sakura is back living with the Tohsakas. Tokiomi did say it was just a temporary arrangement, but I imagine that changed with Kariya spilling the beans on Zouken – or maybe Martha's pleading did have an effect and Tokiomi was just being tsundere about it. It is genetic, after all. Tokiomi surviving has a couple of effects. First, Rin is probably still the heir in 2004 rather than already inheriting the Crest and the Tohsaka name, with all the time in the world to continue to study magic. I'd guess she's a little more laid back because of that – unless, of course, she feels even more driven to impress her dad. Further on down the road, the lack of a Fifth War means Rin doesn't help Shirou project the Jewel Sword Zelretch, which means she doesn't catch Zelretch's eye so easily and become one of his personal students.
It is anyone's guess how Sakura feels about the whole thing, but 'relieved' is probably about right. There's still a lot of trauma, but she doesn't have to study magic any more and gets to be with her family, so on the whole she could come out of it a lot worse. (I imagine Tokiomi asks Kirei to deal with the worms as a priority as soon as he gets the opportunity – it's easier than in canon, because Zouken hasn't moved in there yet.)
Having been saved by a saint, it's possible that Rin and Sakura are slightly more religious than they were in canon. Or maybe they just feel grateful to Martha personally, which Martha would probably be just as happy with.
Of course, this whole 'Sakura stays with the Tohsaka family' thing does kind of beg the question – would she even have anywhere else to go? More pertinently, does Shinji have anywhere to come back to after the War? As Sakura puts it, Assassin killed the Matou house… but, like, the Matou family are rich, and insurance is a thing, so there's no reason they couldn't buy another. Unless, of course, there wasn't anyone left to actually
be the Matou family apart from a horrible little worm monster.
That is to say, I'm not sure what happens to Byakuya in
A Poisoned Chalice. The fact that Kiritsugu is able to find him in the Matou house in Zero kind of implies that he was, like, still living there? During the War? If that's the case – and if he was in when Serenity poisoned the place – then he is
super dead, either from the bombs or from just trying to leave the house (remember, Serenity put poison on every single doorknob, so there kind of wasn't any way for him to leave short of diving out the window, which he didn't have any reason to do).
If so, then Shinji is kind of fucked. Zouken sure isn't going to be buying a house and taking anyone in, because I don't think he actually has a legal identity or is even known outside of the Matou family and a few others like Tokiomi – I imagine he just kind of haunts the streets of Fuyuki in horrifying but impotent wrath for a while, and becomes an urban legend to the homeless population until Tokiomi hunts him down and kills him. Shinji, on the other hand, might just go to the Tohsakas, in an ironic reversal from canon. How he feels about that is… well, probably 'resentment' doesn't cover it.
Which brings me to the first of my possible sequels! It's a family drama, focusing on Shinji in 2004, increasingly angry and frustrated over his two perfect foster sisters and the fact that everyone in the house seems to hate him. Now, who should come by but his 'grandfather', the figure of barely-remembered terror from his youth, saying he wants a reconciliation, and that everything he wants can be his, if only he'll help him fight back against Tokiomi (who never liked Shinji, suffers him in his house only because Sakura asks him to, and isn't shy about showing it). But, can Shinji really turn on the people who've put a roof over his head for the last ten years? And what does Sakura really think about the situation? What happens when Rin finds out? Does Shinji even want to go back, and does he want Sakura with him if so? Find out, in:
The Worm Turns…
… which I am absolutely not writing any time soon, if ever. Up for adoption until I do start writing it, though, if anyone's interested.
Speaking of named characters dying, though – I said this wasn't to be a fix-fic, but there really were a lot fewer named character deaths than in canon, huh? However, more people probably died overall, as a result of Ibaraki's rampage. I'm not tying myself to hard numbers, but at least a few hundred died from that – and yes, I know, it contradicts what we now know about Ibaraki's character. Nothing I can do about that. However, an interesting effect appears, where due partly to the fact that Ibaraki is a little more discriminatory in her targets than Angra Mainyu and partly to the fact that Kirei isn't harvesting orphans as power batteries for Gilgamesh, it's likely that Homurahara contains a
lot more orphaned children than in canon. No Issei, though.
Fujimura Taiga is fine, on the other hand. Raiga would have lived through the Third War, and known
exactly what was up when people started disappearing, one of his bars mysteriously goes up in flames, and weird green lights start falling from the sky onto Tohsaka's house and street. At this point, he'd have left strict instructions to his men to keep their damn fool heads down, taken Taiga, and noped out to go and chill in Okinawa or Hawaii or somewhere until it all blew over.
Kirei, as we see, is busy being a dad, still trying his best to change who he is. Whether or not he manages to succeed rather depends on if you think such a thing as a nature is real and unchanging to someone or not – that's a philosophy question that I will not be tackling today. What I will say is that if anyone can change such a basic fact about themselves – if it's possible
at all – then Kirei is certainly putting in the requisite amount of effort to do just that. If it's futile… well, sometimes we do just have to suffer through life.
And what about our OG protagonist? What about Shirou?
… well, honestly, I have no opinions on how he ends up in the world of
A Poisoned Chalice. If you want to take him down a canon-like road, then there's certainly a chance he was orphaned by Ibaraki and saw his neighbourhood in flames. Without Kiritsugu and the moonlit porch scene, it's unlikely he settles on 'Hero of Justice' as his goal, and it's even less likely he becomes a magus. Without Avalon, his sword element and Origin are probably whatever they originally were. But you could find ways to restore all these to him. (Well, probably not Avalon.) If you want a Shirou like the canon one, you can have it. It's not Random Chance/Stay Night, after all.
Now, let's turn our gaze away from Fuyuki, and have a look at one of the characters who came out of this the most changed – Waver.
I said this wasn't a fix fic, and I think that's true nowhere more clearly than Waver. Because, as I see it, Waver is in a much worse place than canon here, for all that he has an adorable sidekick and an Iron Man glove that goes pew pew. See, as I think I've said before, Rider challenged him and his philosophy, and in later life he kind of accepted he was never going to be a great mage, instead taking pride in what he could do instead. It's a much healthier philosophy.
This Waver, on the other hand, has taken the one-in-a-billion fluke that was da Vinci, and gone "Well, heck, looks like my idea of hard work triumphing over bloodline talent was
one hundred percent correct," and built his life around recreating both her and her success. He might even succeed. But he'll be working himself to the bone every day, and his results will still not satisfy him, because the sad fact is that under magecraft as it is right now he is
one hundred percent wrong.
Worse, he still thinks of himself as a student: Caster's student, specifically. This being the case, I don't see it as very likely he'll want to purchase and restore the El-Melloi classroom – which is a shame, for a few reasons, because that was a safe place for a lot of otherwise-outcast magi to go.
Reines may well try and put the screws to Waver just like in canon, of course. However, this Waver as I see it, feels less guilty over Kayneth's death due to not stealing the relic (even if he did kinda sorta point Assassin at him and say 'please'), and more to the point actually has a chance at fending off Reines' goons. For this reason, I don't think Reines will be able to secure Waver as a mentor and sield against Clock Tower bullshit. She grows up as a typical magus, or else dies in a power struggle. At least the El-Melloi crest wasn't ruined by an Origin Bullet this time?
Waver's relationship with Gray also takes a hit, in my opinion. Gray had an immediate point of connection with Waver in canon, because like her he hated her face (the last time he saw it, it was firing an Excaliblast at him). More to the point, he understood on a deep level that it was supposed to be Artoria's face, and therefore its being on Gray was something unnatural. Here, even if he'd sympathise, he wouldn't get it, so that point of connection is lost. Instead, he'd see her as 'a pretty girl' – while he wouldn't hit on her or anything, his inherited aesthetic sense as an artist would lead him to encourage her to show off her face instead of hiding it, which might be worse.
Flat, at least, is one relationship that isn't ruined by Waver's new outlook. Indeed, they might get on much better, once Waver gets over just how eerie the similarity is. A perky, eccentric genius who can revolutionise every field of study he turns his hand to? I give it a week before Waver slips up and calls him Caster.
In general, though, Waver's problems aren't insurmountable, and there's every chance he can rebuild something of his canon relationships, if by a different path – and a lot more besides. I'm about to lose all credibility as a fanfic writer, but if his canon Case Files self was formed of the SuperLock sides of the triangle,
A Poisoned Chalice!Waver is much more of a SuperWho: a science hero who can get involved in anything and everything and probably figure a way out. Waver in more subspecies Grail Wars? Absolutely. Waver vs. Dracula? Damn right. Waver in the Servantverse? Sign me up. Follow his thrilling adventures in
Velvet Hand, Steel Glove…
… which I'm also not writing.
So, what
am I doing next?
What am I doing next?
Well, for one thing, I can reread some Fate fics. I've not read any of my old favourites for five years, because I haven't wanted to be infected by fanon. You know how it is – you read something somewhere, and then in another place, and then before you know it you've forgotten how everything really works and now Incarnations are a thing.
I also want, after that, to replay the Fate VN, because it has been a
hot minute. And, why not, while I'm at it I can try to finish off the Tsukihime original too – I only ever played Arcueid's route!
But, in terms of writing… well, the most immediate plot bunny that stands out to me as a palate cleanser is a little Spy X Family thing, 5 connected Hurt/Comfort chapters. I'm not actually sure someone hasn't already done it, I'd need to check, but the tentative title is
The Five Worst Days In Anya Forger's Life. Just a little fic to get back into things, and also to remind myself how to write fanfiction that isn't Fate.
Crossing The Void stares accusingly at me from my hard drive, but, sorry, I just really don't know how to progress that one…
And… fine. I have mentioned this in other places, but there is one plot bunny that, annoyingly, sounds more and more tempting the more I think on it. I won't give much more details here, but it's a recursive crossover between
A Poisoned Chalice and Kara no Kyoukai – featuring an Uryuu Ryuunosuke who lasted long enough to surrender to Risei and then, against all odds, managed to survive the War.
Risei didn't know what to do with him. He's unquestionably a psychopath, but as per their conversation in Chapter 20 of this fic, believed that his fascination with death can be channelled in more productive ways. So, he handed him off to a magus that helpfully appeared, offering to act as guarantor and mentor to foster the young necromancer – one Aozaki Touko.
Story starts in Mifune City, where a series of brutal murders has taken place… again. This time, the police have dubbed the suspect 'the Oni' – and Touko sends Shiki and Mikiya round to check up on her apprentice, to make sure he isn't relapsing. There's mystery, horror, love triangles (well, not really, but Ryuunosuke is
really fascinated by Shiki) – read all about it, in
Walking With Death.
… this one I might actually have a go at, if I can sketch out a plot I'm happy with.
Conclusion
So, that's it. That's my ramblings on the longest fic I've ever finished, and one of the things I'm most proud of doing. Once again, thank you all for your support. If you liked it, please do stay tuned for whatever might come next. If you liked the sound of one of my plot bunnies, let me know and it just might happen.
Toodle pip, and Happy Holidays!