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While Maverick was sorting out the mess, Lily was not idle.
She held onto the certainty that Maverick would come looking for her eventually — or that Wuai would catch her scent, or that the magical connection between them would guide her back. In the meantime, there was a city slowly cooking under two suns and a rising temperature, and Lily was not constituted for standing still while people needed help.
Merlin had always told her: a King must think in scales. Cities, nations, history. Don't exhaust yourself over what lies immediately in front of you when there is so much that demands a wider view.
Lily had thought about this a great deal.
Her conclusion was: if she couldn't help the person collapsing in front of her, what exactly was the wider view for?
The elderly woman had gone down on the sidewalk three blocks from the commercial district. Heat stroke, clearly — the particular stillness of someone whose body had stopped negotiating with its environment. Lily had her up before anyone else had finished processing what was happening, and she carried her the whole way to the health clinic with Caliburn tucked back in its scabbard and one arm keeping the woman's head steady.
The female doctor at the clinic — glasses, efficient, the manner of someone who had been dealing with heat-related cases all afternoon — had taken over without questions.
Lily sat on the bench outside and breathed.
The heat pressed down on her armor. Her face, she knew without checking, was thoroughly red. Sweat had made her hair stick to the back of her neck in a way that was deeply undignified.
"You really saved us, young lady." The doctor reappeared, holding two ice creams. "If you hadn't brought her when you did — the heat's been relentless today. No one knows why." She offered the ice cream with the straightforward warmth of someone who didn't have time for elaborate gratitude but meant it anyway. "Please rest a while. Don't go back out in this."
"Thank you, Doctor." Lily hesitated. "Could I... possibly have one more?"
"Of course." The doctor smiled, already turning back inside. "Rest as long as you like."
When the doctor was gone, Lily held both ice creams and looked at the empty space beside her on the bench.
"Arash," she said. "Would you like this one? I took the liberty."
A pause.
"...When did you know I was following you?"
"Haven't you been following me the whole time?"
Another pause, this one with a different quality to it.
"I thought I was being reasonably subtle." He materialized — the heavy armor, the bow across his back, and an expression that was caught somewhere between embarrassed and amused. "That's somewhat mortifying."
"The ice cream will melt."
"Right. Yes." He accepted it. "Thank you."
They sat in comfortable silence for a moment. The sounds of the city — distant, muffled, the particular texture of a place under stress — filtered through the afternoon heat.
[GentleScene]: I was watching a stream about ranked mode Holy Grail War and suddenly there are two Servants eating ice cream outside a clinic.
[Transition]: This is a completely different energy from everything else happening right now and I need it.
[ArashWatch]: He followed her the whole time. He's been following her since his Master died. That's — he didn't have to do that.
"Why have you been following me?" Lily asked. Not suspicious — genuinely curious, the way she asked most things. "Your Holy Grail War ended when your Master was eliminated. You don't have any reason to fight anymore."
"No," Arash agreed. "I have no wish for the Grail. Someone summoned me, and I came. And now I find myself..." He turned the ice cream in his hands, looking for the right word. "Uneasy."
"Uneasy about what?"
He looked at her.
Lily registered the directness of it and felt her face, already red from the heat, go slightly redder.
"About you," he said.
She processed this.
"I'm a Servant," she said carefully. "I'm not—"
"I know what you are," he said, not unkindly. "And I know what kind of hero you're going to become. That's exactly why." He paused, organizing his thoughts. "You're pure, Lily. In the way that a very few people are — where the goodness isn't performance, it's just... what you are. But purity like that has a cost. It can't tolerate impurity. It can't make compromises with the world as it actually is." He looked at the second sun burning above the city. "The road ahead of you is going to be very hard. Even to the point of—"
"I know," she said quietly.
Something in her voice made him stop.
She was looking at her own hands — small, in their knight's gauntlets, wrapped around a melting ice cream.
"I know," she said again. "But as long as I can do what I'm capable of doing, that should be enough. Shouldn't it?"
"Is that what you believe?" He watched her. "Or is that what you've decided to say?"
Lily's hands went still.
"You see through people too easily," she said.
"Occupational habit. Archers watch things from a distance." He waited.
Lily set the ice cream down very carefully and looked at her hands again.
"Everyone has their role," she said. "Maverick is... he's extraordinary. He understands the game better than almost anyone. Medea—" a small, slightly awed pause, "—Medea can take apart half a city block as a casual exercise. Even Astolfo can provide air support and mobility for the whole group." Her voice went quieter. "And I have one sword. I'm not weak, but I'm not — I can't do things they can't already do. I seem so..."
"Dispensable," Arash said.
She didn't answer. Which was its own answer.
[LilyMoment]: She carried a stranger to a clinic in full armor in extreme heat and her actual worry is that she's not useful enough to the group.
[Hurting]: Stop. Stop this. I wasn't prepared for this.
[ArashListening]: He's not trying to talk her out of it. He's just letting her say it. That's the right move.
[ThinkingAboutKings]: The thing about Lily is she's going to be Artoria someday. And Artoria carries the weight of a kingdom alone for her whole life and tells no one. You can already see it starting.
Arash stood.
He turned toward the sun — the real one, the one that had always been there, the one that belonged — and spoke with his back to her.
"There's nothing wrong with being dispensable," he said. "The world is made of dispensable things. Every hero has gaps. Every king has things they can't do. Spending your energy grieving the gaps just makes you tired."
"I know that too," Lily said. "But knowing it and—"
"What is a hero, in your view?"
She blinked at the change of direction. "Someone who accomplishes things that others cannot."
"That's one way to see it." He turned back. "You'll have to find the other way yourself. That's not me being evasive — that's just the nature of it. Some things only make sense when you arrive at them." He looked at her with an expression that was direct and entirely without condescension. "You have time right now. Not much, but some. Would you like to spend it usefully? A training session, one on one — with the hero Arash as your sparring partner. You won't find that offer available elsewhere."
Lily stared at him.
"A Servant's body can't be improved," she said carefully. "That's how it works. Strength, speed, parameters — they're fixed at summoning."
"Fixed, yes." He rolled his shoulder, the archer's gesture of loosening up. "But technique isn't a parameter. Neither is timing, or reading a fight, or the specific way you recover your center of gravity after a deflection. You hesitated twice today when you shouldn't have. Not because you were afraid — because you weren't sure what came next."
He picked up his bow.
"Come on. We have maybe thirty minutes before someone finds us."
Lily looked at the second ice cream, melting steadily in the heat.
She looked at Arash.
She stood up, drew Caliburn, and smiled — the lily smile, the genuine one, the one that didn't have any weight behind it.
"Please don't hold back," she said.
"I wasn't planning to," he said.
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