"You know what I think?"

Saber does not release Diaofei. She doesn't even suggest the possibility. Her arm squeezes, and this is possession. Her fingers caress the top of the monk's head to feel the fine hairs that rise up in defiance of her vows, and this is adoration. Her free hand plucks the molotov off the dashboard and seemingly moves to drink it before simply turning it in the light instead, and this is tenderness. 

She leans closer, and her heavy straw-and-iron braid falls carelessly down Diaofei's shoulder and into her lap.

"I think that you are a blade. That you have been sharpened, and sharpened, and sharpened until it has made you too brittle for use even as a kitchen utensil. I think you feel this in your soul, and you quiver because of it. You must plunge into something, else why should you have endured all that painful scraping and grinding? But you know that it will be your unmaking and you cannot find it in yourself to endure that final thrust and [i]snap[/i]."

Saber's arm slinks around her Master some more. She takes Diaofei's chin in her hand and tilts her head up, up, up. Away from the shrine, away from the mad nest of cables and toward the steel colossus that shades and powers it. Above even that to the skies that stretch over everything, and the stars that twinkle beyond the scope of what is possible to grasp. Even in the sick glow of the shrine and the fierce headlights of the Kun Temple, they twinkle on.

Those fingers tilt Diaofei's head down again, gripping her cheeks firmly but without pain, to gaze upon another giant instead. Saber herself. She leans close, close enough for their breath to mingle. For their noses to touch. She smiles her shark's smile, but makes no motion to close the final gap and consummate the gesture. Perhaps that is beneath the dignity of a king? Or perhaps she simply refuses to be the board that snaps the knife in two.

"I suppose you believe this is fate. Destiny or, whatever. That is why you ignore me when I talk about making you well again. You do not believe it can happen. Pathetic. Unacceptable. Why accept it? You called to me! Your heart is [i]filled[/i] with desires! What point in dreaming if you do not reach with your own hand to seize what is owed you? If you want destruction, have the courage to say so! If you want her back, say that too! If you want her dead..."

The closeness ends all at once. Saber kicks open the cab door behind her and slides outside. In the same, lazy motion she grabs for the top of the door and vaults up and over to the other side. Her feet touch the ground before she's seen to finish clearing it, and when she opens the driver's side door to stare at Diofei again, she drops smoothly to one knee, holding the molotov in a parody of one of the English knight's little sword ceremonies. But there is no smile on her face, only steel in her eyes.

"I will ask of you one last time: are you my Master? And what do you desire, Diaofei the brittle knife?"