The hero without a legend has been drifting, and sometimes it's hard to remember why.

In his lucid moments, he knows why. Something tainted his soul the last time he was embodied in the world. When he instinctively tried to return to the Throne of Heroes as the small white girl carrying his soul stepped through the gate, instead of being reunited with the original record of his soul preserved there, he was violently thrown out.

Why?

The answer doesn't come to him in words, but in knowledge. You don't belong here anymore. He'd taint the pure soul preserved there if he was allowed in.

So now he's not a hero without a legend, either. He's just a lost soul.

"That's really melodramatic," a familiar voice tells him. "Quit floating around being melodramatic and come home, Archer!"

Home? He lost that a long time ago. He lost it racing along the path of the hero, leaving everything he'd once needed behind him. And now he's lost whatever made him a hero, too. He only sometimes remembers why.

A thousand different realities grow up around him only to be destroyed. Then they're rebuilt and destroyed again. That's probably the wrong way to put it, since it's more like he's the one being destroyed and rebuilt with every new slice of the cosmos he passes through. Is this sort of experience the thing that all magi are aiming for? No wonder the white girl closed the gate. It's madness.

He fights in most of the worlds. He's too used to it to do anything else, even stripped of his title as a hero and guardian. Of all the countless possibilities out there spinning around the root of reality, there are very few worlds in which the spirit who was once the hero Emiya can do something other than wield his swords.

Sometimes he's in a world for two seconds, sometimes for what might be a century.

There's one where he stands back to back with Saber on a desolate plain covered with ashes. She doesn't recognize him, but he offers to be her knight for a while. For some reason she can't accept, but they travel across the wasteland together for a long time anyway, and they fight shadows.

In another world there's a boy he remembers, a boy with a familiar face and orange hair. Here, this boy's something terrible, corrupted and driven senselessly mad, and the hero who isn't a hero any longer has to fight him over and over again. It's strange, because he knows that this is what he wanted once. He might even enjoy it at first. But it loses its luster after a while, and all he can remember is what that boy looked like holding onto the white girl, in another world entirely.

Yet another world presents him with endless copies of the white girl, all trying to infiltrate strange and terrible magical secret societies. He has to decide which ones to kill without question and which ones to reason with. Somehow he knows how to make the choice without flinching, but it's not as easy as it would have been in the eternity that came before his last summoning.

World after world, each stranger than the last. But between them, as he flashes through the space between realities, the hero who's been disowned by the world keeps seeing one face. At first it's totally familiar: a blue-eyed girl with black hair held up into two tails by ribbons. Over endless time, it changes a little. The hair comes down from its ribbons, the face grows a year or two older and more mature. But it's still recognizably her. And isn't it natural he should see that? Because he remembers her name even when he forgets what his own was. Rin Tohsaka is the one he died for after his last summoning. The one he shielded from the shadow and held in his arms afterwards as he struggled not to fade away yet.

He knows he shouldn't have done that. No, that's not right: he knows that he couldn't have done that. Practically speaking, he would have been able to save more people if he hadn't taken that blow to save Rin Tohsaka, if he'd stayed behind and fought the shadow to prevent it from taking more lives. But in one instant, Rin's life had mattered more to him than all those people. And he'd jumped in front of her then.

It's no wonder he sees her face in between worlds now, it's no wonder he sometimes hears her voice scolding him, but there's one thing that confuses him. It seems almost like she's looking for something. Like she knows someone is seeing her and wants to see him too. Why is that? It's impossible. He's just a scrap floating between realities, and she's the entire life he saved. Shouldn't she move forward without hesitation instead of looking back for something like him?

Studying the Second Magic is a grueling affair, but fortunately Rin has a teacher who's up to her level.

She has a few other teachers, of course. Some of them are idiots, but others are worth learning from. One of them even started out seeming like an idiot, with his grumpy face and stupid cigar, but turned out to be quite challenging in his own way. But Kischur Zelretch is the one who will open the multiverse to her.

There's only one thing she can't ask him, and that's a simple question. When she practices the Second Magic and all the magecraft related to it, why does she sometimes see a familiar face? How is it that she can swear she sees her long-gone Servant when she reaches out through the realities?

At first she thought there was an easy and stupid explanation. "What's it like when you're in love with someone?" she asked as she handed in an assignment.

Lord El-Melloi II abruptly slammed down his own papers. "What the hell are you doing asking something like that? It has nothing to do with our lessons! Go bicker with the Edelfelt girl—"

"Because I thought I'd be able to bully you into giving me an answer more easily than most people," Rin said simply. "You wind up thinking of them a lot when you try to do romantic things, don't you?"

"Well, yes—"

"And faces related to theirs might appear in your dreams so you can yell at them?"

"Related to theirs?" He frowned (but he didn't ask why you'd yell at someone if you were in love with them; he clearly understood that much). "That's sketchy."

"Would you feel a presence that makes you think of them when you practice magecraft?"

"That's just being bad at focusing on your magecraft, Tohsaka." He rapped the desk. "I'd have expected better of you."

She threw her papers at him and left, then. But by then she was beginning to suspect that her flustered, muddled thoughts of Shirou Emiya during her first few awkward attempts at dating at the Clock Tower had nothing to do with the strange presence that plagued her studies.

Now she's certain of it.

The dreams start coming after a particularly arduous night of trying to recreate the designs she put into the Jeweled Sword. They're always similar. She's standing in something like the cavern that the Greater Grail was in, only filled with light instead of the poisonous darkness that permeated that one. In the distance, the light concentrates in a swirl that she somehow knows is Akasha. But she can't reach it.

At first, she concentrates on that aspect of the dreams. It's only later that she notices the rushing waters filled with debris in between her and Akasha. And then she starts to notice something in those waters that isn't just debris—

No, it's not something. It's someone.

Rin wakes up one night determined.

"This isn't something as silly as love," she mutters to herself as she gets out of bed and starts sorting through her things. "It's something much more important. It's a chance to use all my magic to get back something of my own, just like my sister has Emi—just like my sister has Rider," she corrects herself.

Rin lays out her renewed designs for the Jeweled Sword on her desk, and she starts to modify them as necessary. This is something she can do, so naturally she won't fail at it, no matter how difficult it is.

He couldn't tell you what world he's in when he sees it. A rent in the air, lined with a red glow. No, it's not just a glow: it's hot melted gemstones, burning themselves into the fabric of reality itself. Something at his side hums strangely in response to the sight.

It's a pendant. It's the same shade of red as the glimmering jeweled outline of the rip in reality, but why is it acting up now? He's had it all this time. It's important. He can't get rid of it. It used to be that it was a reminder that once upon a time someone saved him, but now it's so much more than that, and it's precious.

It's precious, and it's tugging him toward where the world breaks open. He hesitates, bewildered. It feels like he's being called home, but that's impossible. He doesn't have such a thing.

"Of course you do!" It's that same familiar voice, coming from beyond the hole in reality. "Stop standing there being maudlin and come home to me, Archer. I've been waiting for a few years now and I'm getting tired of it."

He follows, because he can't disobey her. As he moves, the pendant vanishes from his side, and he realizes that he did give it up after all. He gave it back to her, and is this what she's done with his precious thing? Has Rin melted it down for some cheap purpose like ripping open a space between the worlds? He breaks into a run. He has to tell her off for that. She can be foolish sometimes, and she doesn't always know what to do with her precious things. He'll go home to her and help her make sure she doesn't mess up with the important things at the worst times anymore.

Archer dashes through the opening.

Melting down the pendant was the hardest part, Rin tells him later. Not because the magecraft involved was particularly difficult (it was the later steps of the procedure that were complex and thorny), but because it was her last reminder of him. Of the knight who'd protected her and given his very existence for her in the end, even though she realized later he was no ancient hero or glorious knight at all, but just a boy who'd once known her, all grown up into something else.

"So you're saying all the difficult magic was the easiest part," he tells her as she drapes herself over his chest. He's still a bit weak, both spiritually and in the flesh; the journey through all the layers of reality reduced him to barely a shadow, and it's taken all sorts of prana from Rin to start restoring him. But she doesn't seem to mind.

"No, of course not," she says, shoving at his face. "I appreciate the difficulty of my work, Archer, and you should too, so don't say frivolous things like that! No, the easiest part was dragging you up off the floor afterwards."

"What? I weigh half again as much as you do, at least, and you were exhausted! There's no way that was easy, Rin."

"It was," she says, and suddenly she's smiling up at him. "Because I was touching you again, and it was up to me to save you."

"But Rin," he says, "as soon as I'm back to my usual strength, it'll be my job to save you, you know."

"I know," she says. "Um, it's not like I need saving, but I like having you around to save me all the same. Is that okay, Archer?"

"Of course," he says. "I'm certain now that's why the Throne of Heroes threw me out, you know."

"What?" She sits up abruptly.

"Yeah, it's because I chose saving you over sticking around to be a hero. That's exactly the opposite of what I was supposed to do, as a guardian."

"Archer..." Is she blushing? He enjoys it when she blushes, so he doesn't mind if she is.

"It's fine, Rin." He reaches up to touch her face. "There's another version of me who's going to keep being a hero, under the command of the world. That's rotten luck for him, but it's not like you've taken a hero away from the world or anything. So it's fine."

She grabs his hand as he reaches out. "I wouldn't mind if I had taken a hero away from the world. Because I'm selfish like that, and I want you at my side."

"Then I'll stay at your side." He wraps his arms around her and pulls her back down to him.

"I have a lot of adventures to have, Archer," she murmurs against his chest. "So I'll need a hero sometimes. Stay with me. Is that clear?"

"Yeah," he says. "You're telling me to be your hero, isn't that right?" He doesn't know how well he can do that. He's still pretty sure that he's broken. He's still quite certain that he's empty. But if she wants him at her side as her very own hero, he has to pretend that he's worthy of that honor. And the longer he pretends, the more true it seems like it might be. So maybe, just maybe, he can do it.

"That's right," she says. "That's all I want."

He feels her smile against him, and he knows that he's home.