FATE/LAOCH GAN FINSCEAL

"Hero Without Legend"

Epilogue: Reunion of the Hounds

"-ster… Master…?"

Ritsuka's eyes twitched, and she slowly opened them. She blankly stared at the white ceiling for a few moments.

"Are you okay?"

She looked over to see the young Lancer sitting on a stool next to her bed. Her light smile was reassuring to Ritsuka, who just went through a series of vivid and violent dreams involving the child Servant. The details weren't as candid as told throughout this story, but she saw enough of the important parts to make her feel like she had just run a marathon.

"Senpai!" Ritsuka heard Mash's voice exclaim nearby. "You're finally up! You're totally drenched in sweat!"

"That's…"

"I'm sorry, Ms. Kyrielight," Lancer implored. "It's my fault. I showed Master my past through a dream, and it knocked her into a temporary coma."

"A coma?" the young Magus wondered.

"You were asleep for two whole days," Mash said as she wiped Ritsuka's forehead with a damp cloth. "Your vitals were nominal the entire time, but nothing we did could wake you up! I'm so glad you're okay!"

Lancer looked aside shamefully. She felt responsible for making Mash worry about Ritsuka so much, having failed to anticipate how showing the teenager such a graphic tale would affect her. She stayed quiet and folded her hands in her lap, while Mash helped her exhausted friend sit back up on her bed. The door whirred open, and Dr. Roman entered with a concerned look on his face.

"You're finally up?" he asked Ritsuka. "The other Servants have been asking me how you've been."

"Oh…"

"Man, that must have been one heck of a dream Lancer showed you. She apologized over and over again for causing this, but she told us that her history was bound to be incredibly violent and difficult for a normal person to bear in just one night. With no way of waking you up though, we agreed to have Lancer extend the dream through multiple days so your mind would remain intact."

Lancer sighed despondently and said, "I've caused so much trouble for everyone. Master and Ms. Kyrielight should be out resolving conflicts, and yet I paralyzed Master's mind so badly. I should have been more considerate of Chaldea's situation…"

Ritsuka suddenly put her hand on the girl's head and rubbed her hair. She smiled and said, "Don't worry about it. Thanks to that, I have a much better understanding of who you are and how you can help us."

"That's right. Senpai's not the type to get angry over something like this," Mash added. "Don't beat yourself up anymore. If Senpai believes it is a good thing, then I will as well."

"Mm…" Lancer nodded, still feeling unsure.

"Say, Ritsuka," Roman said, "if you saw so much of Lancer's past, does that mean you figured out what her True Name is?"

The Magus shook her head. "I'm pretty sure I heard her name called out a couple of times, but it was too hazy for me to pick up."

"Shucks. Her Identity Concealment must affect her Master as well. As I thought, the only ones privileged to know her name are those who knew her in her lifetime."

"Well, I wouldn't get too worked up about it, Doctor. Her dream allowed me to see how she fights, so I'll make good use of those skills in our upcoming battles. Da Vinci can analyze the data and do some research to see if any Heroic Spirits match her description."

"Yeah, I know. One step at a time."

Ritsuka got to her feet, and Mash exclaimed worriedly, "You shouldn't get up so quickly!"

"Relax! I'm fine! Although…" the Magus muttered as she put her hand over her rumbling belly. "I am kind of hungry."

"Okay, let's go have something to eat. The other Servants will want to greet you as well."

"Sure. After that, we'll do some more Ember hunting. Of course, I'll be making Lancer work twice as hard over the next two days to make up for this setback!"

Lancer nodded, relieved to hear that she would be put to work as a proper apology. "I'm looking forward to it!"

A month later, Ritsuka and Mash returned from another mission via Rayshift and awoke in their pods.

"Phew…" Ritsuka sighed. "I'm exhausted…"

"We've been working nonstop these last couple of weeks," Mash added. "There's still much for us to do, but it's important that you get plenty of rest."

As the pair got back up, the door opened to reveal Lancer approaching with some papers and a tray of beverages. She quietly asked, "Is everything okay?"

"We're fine," Mash assured. "But I'm surprised to see you here. Where are Roman and Da Vinci?"

"Hm…" the child looked puzzled. "I'm not really sure. They just shoved all of this onto my hands and told me to stay with you two until they got back."

"That's strange. Usually the Doctor is eager to greet us after every mission."

"He said he had some kind of important news. Could it be another major Singularity they're keeping an eye on?"

"Maybe," Ritsuka's expression became firm. "Let's go see."

The trio left her quarters and went around the Chaldea complex looking for Roman and Da Vinci. It took about half an hour of frustrating searching and backtracking, even having to ask other Servants if they saw them, but they finally came upon the two scientists near the mess hall.

"Geez, where the heck were you guys!?" Roman exclaimed. "We looked everywhere for you!"

"That's our question!" Mash objected. "Lancer told us that you both looked like you were in a hurry! Is it an emergency?"

"No, not a real emergency, per se…"

"Now, now, let me be the one to tell them," Leonardo Da Vinci, genius gender-swapper and eccentric extraordinaire, cut him off abruptly.

"No way! I was the one who found that document!"

"And who was the one that had to translate it from Gaelic?"

"That's nothing to you! Do you have any idea how difficult it was to find that ancient scrap in the first place!?"

Mash shouted, "Will you two calm down already!? What in the world is going on here!? Is it bad or good!?"

"Oh, it's good!" Roman smiled. "Remember how we couldn't figure out who Lancer was when Ritsuka summoned her? From the clues we gathered about her over the last while, I was able to find a short document from Ireland with details that matched Lancer to a T!"

"Really!? Does that mean you know what her True Name is!?"

"You bet! It's-!"

"Now hold on! I should be the one to say it!" Da Vinci objected.

"Nope! Lancer's True Name is-!"

"She is none other than-!"

"Connla!?"

Lancer looked over at the source of the new male voice which ceased this silly argument with his resounding surprise. Standing there across the hallway was a familiar ponytailed man dressed in a blue bodysuit. His red eyes were wide and his jaw dropped in astonishment as their gazes met. Lancer – or rather, Connla – accidentally dropped the papers she carried as she stared at the man.

"You're…" Mash uttered. "You're Cuchulainn, aren't you?"

No one paid attention to her. After a moment of gaping stillness, Connla happily shouted, "Father!"

The two rushed in to give each other a hug. Connla let her emotions run rampant as she cried against Cuchulainn's shoulder for a few minutes. The others stepped back and silently agreed to leave them alone to their family time. Further down in the hallway, Da Vinci pleasantly grumbled, "Darn it! I was so close to saying it! Why didn't you tell me that Cuchulainn had been summoned!?"

"Um… Guess I forgot," Ritsuka sheepishly scratched her chin.

"So who is that Lancer anyway? He said her name was Connla, right?" Mash asked.

"Yeah. She is recorded in those old texts as the son of Cuchulainn and Aife, a warrior woman from Scotland. She was also Scathach's last known pupil, but her tutelage was a very short one before Connla left for Ireland to confront Cuchulainn in that fated battle."

"Fated battle?"

"Where he killed her, not knowing she was his child until after Gae Bolg struck her heart."

"Ah…" Mash's eyes widened slightly.

Ritsuka wasn't surprised to hear that. "She showed it to me in those dreams. The grief he felt from making that mistake is what eventually led to the Singularity that she corrected on her own."

"That's right," Roman said. "And now she's here as a Servant. Or rather, they're here now, finally side-by-side after Lord knows how long they've been apart. Boy, I can't wait to see how well they'll fight together! It'll be like we have two Cuchulainns on our side now!"

"Aside from Caster, Berserker and Prototype?"

"Come on, you know what I mean…"

Once Connla calmed down enough, she wiped her eyes dry of her excessive tears and hiccupped a few times. Cuchulainn asked, "You okay?"

"Mm-hmm."

"But this is quite the surprise. How did you wind up being summoned after so long? Did they find a catalyst they could use to call you here?" he wondered, raising his eyebrow in confusion.

"You don't remember anything?"

"About what?"

"The Nevada Singularity."

"Huh?"

"Um… Well… I mean, you were the one who…" Connla's voice trailed a few times.

"Hmm…" he hummed curiously, then put his hand on her shoulder. "I get it. One of my 'other selves' must have caused you a lot of trouble in some alternate universe. Cu Alter told me about his hazy memories of how he was a king in some North American mythological war, and Cu Caster was involved in a similar Fuyuki Grail War to the one I was in, but his went way out of control and caused rampant destruction. Even though those were versions of 'me', that doesn't mean that 'I' remember anything about what happened in those worlds. My memories are mine, and theirs are their own. Master simply summons those alternate versions as separate Servants. You get what I'm saying?"

The girl looked bewildered. Cuchulainn playfully rubbed her hair and said with a fanged grin, "Guess it's a little too much for you to comprehend right now. Even I don't get the details sometimes. But don't worry; the one and only Cuchulainn you remember from your life is right here in front of you, got it?"

She nodded lightly.

"Good! Don't be too upset by whatever happened to you before. We're here, and that's all that matters."

"Okay," she replied, then took off her right glove and said, "By the way, I wanted to show you this."

She let him see the gold and red-patterned ring on her right thumb. He smirked and exclaimed, "So you're keeping the promise I left for you? Good girl!"

Connla took Cuchulainn's hand and made her long-awaited apology to him:

"I'm sorry for being so late. I'm finally here, Father."

AUTHOR'S NOTE: To those who have made it through yet another one of my patented lengthy stories, congratulations and thank you for reading! I want to extend my thanks to Nasu Kinoko for creating the original Fate/Stay Night series, Delight Works for producing Fate/Grand Order, and various online resources such as Wikipedia, the FGO Wikia, and fansites for compiling many terms and characters that I needed to research. I want to thank the people I asked for input while I wrote this. And, last but not least, I want to thank anyone who has taken the time to read this story. Whether it was just one chapter or the whole thing, I appreciate the time you spent reading my personal take on the Fate universe.

I have some interest in pursuing new stories of Connla interacting with other Servants, but I would like to take a break from writing until around NaNoWriMo 2018. For the meantime, let me know if you're interested in seeing Connla meet a particular Servant in a future story. I should get caught up on my other fics as well! Sorry to everyone waiting on my Ace Attorney story! Dx

If you have any comments, suggestions or questions, feel free to send a private message to me, a review for the story, or send me a tweet benit149 (more likely to see it that way). See you in the next story!

- Benit149, 2018