help 3

thinking more about makoto’s attempts to pretend like Everything Is Perfect and Nothing Bad Can Happen Anymore and how that concept of self-preservation comes from enduring a lifetime of trauma. ;;

and that archer doesn’t. know everything. there’s so much he doesn’t know — while shinji confessed some of his secrets to shirou way back then, they were more his personal fears and paranoia than implications of the abuse he suffered within his family. archer doesn’t really know about that. he doesn’t know how excruciating and horrifying it was for shinji to deal with his body changing. he doesn’t know that he was sold off to the highest bidder before he could even truly understand what happened. combined with the years of physical and mental abuse brought on by her late husband and how small makoto made herself just to survive... it’s so much trauma for one person to have lived through.

makoto wants to believe that because her husband is dead that he doesn’t control her anymore, but she’s wrong. the impression he’s left is still there; still deep. it’ll always be there and she doesn’t want to accept that. instead, she keeps pushing the thoughts of him away. he’s dead. he’s gone. she wants to act like he never existed. but the marks are still there like stains that refuse to wash out.

makoto, just like shinji, wants to be Perfect. so much that she pushes down anything inconvenient. but she’s been through so much that she’s just too fragile to hold things at bay for so long. she starts cracking in little, subtle ways until it’s too late to do anything to save face. she so badly wants to be perfect for archer and perfect for their baby and it’s a horrifying thought that either of them could one day learn how thoroughly broken she is.

it collects like rainwater until eventually it becomes too much for her to carry. a loud noise that makes her flinch and protect her face. a word or a scent that makes her stomach tie itself in a knot. a memory that’s so demoralizing she wants to sleep for days.

she touches archer often. at a glance it could be taken as an act of affection — and it is, however, it stems from makoto’s subconscious need to remind herself that archer is Real and Present. she feels so completely desperate to be loved and seen that she worries he isn’t actually there. sometimes her touches are cautious and panicked.

she’s wanted to explain herself to archer on so many occasions but there was never any time or emotional bandwidth available for them. now she’s aggressively trying to pretend everything bad away so she can enjoy her fairytale ending.

makoto frets about being a mother, and while she’s so certain the baby belongs to archer, there’s always that tiny chill present at the base of her spine that suggests she may be wrong; going directly against her intuition. it makes her blood run cold. and while she never expected to be in the situation of carrying a child to begin with, she is even more horrified to think she won’t be able to provide it with the kind of love it needs to thrive. the more time that passes and the more real it becomes the more scared she feels.

makoto has never felt familial love. she never felt love from her husband. the only love she’s ever truly been given is from emiya shirou. he’s standing before her again and opening his heart to her and it makes her feel clumsy and unworthy. she’s always wanted to be thoroughly and genuinely loved and she can’t even enjoy it properly because she’s terrified of it crumbling and blowing away in the wind.

she dreams again and again about archer killing her. about him standing beside her late husband as he gives the order and drawing his bow. she feels his arrow pierce her heart as she jolts upright and gasps and sobs into the dark. she can’t return to sleep no matter how much she tries to for the sake of the baby.

makoto is so frustrated knowing she should feel happy but instead she’s still crumbling. she thinks it’s because she isn’t strong enough when in reality it’s because she’s surpassed her limits a hundred times over.

she’s tired. exhausted, really. she’s losing herself in a sea of memories and emotions and charades and she has no idea what she should do. it’s like she can still feel the sting of her grandfather’s cane or the pressure of her late husband’s hands around her throat.

she doesn’t even know if a person like her deserves happiness but that doesn’t stop her from obsessively craving it.