"So, this is what the Throne of Heroes is like." As she wandered its grassy plains, she saw no trace of any other beings. It was just sun, wind, and grass. She was almost tempted to lay down and savor the sweet relaxation afforded by this perfectly beautiful landscape. It was such a contrast to her life; turning into a vampire, killing her parents and the entire town, and then... the Church. Her experiences within the walls of the Vatican were too painful for her to conjure up in this safe place.

She resolved to enjoy her time here. It could be centuries before she was summoned as a Servant, so she may as well.

If only Tohno-kun were here with her. That was the only regret she had when she died; that she could never see his smiling face ever again.

Ciel walked on, memories floating in her mind like puddles in her eyes. Eventually she reached a forest in the meadow. She entered the forest, ducking under low-hanging branches, and avoiding thornbushes littering the ground.

Soon a clearing emerged among the dense green growth of trees. It was perfectly empty, except unlike the thornbushes covering the rest of the forest, there were swords. One after another, swords of all forms were stuck in the ground, as if a man had stabbed the life-giving Earth.

She inched forward, unsure what to make of this scene. The weapons seemed to exude a faint glow; were they Conceptual Armaments? She was seized with a sudden urge to touch one. The nearest sword was blue and gold, with a beautiful hilt and a razor-sharp cutting edge. Her trembling fingers moved toward it, and she was reminded of her first night with Tohno-kun. The temptation welled up within her, and she began to blush.

Quieting that emotion, she steeled her nerves and grabbed the sword by its upward-facing hilt. It was hot to the touch, and pulsated.

Ciel immediately withdrew her hand, and jumped back. What sort of weapon was this? Was it... no, not a Conceptual Armament. This is a Noble Phantasm, definitely. But... whose?

She saw movement out of the corner of her eye. As if in response to her unspoken question, a dark-skinned, white-haired man stood up. He was cloaked in red, and holding two short blades, one white in black, and the other black in white. There was a look of pain in the man's face, a look she knew well.

"Can I help you with something?" he said. His voice was deep and it made her feel safe, though the tone was threatening.

"No, no," she said, embarrassed. "I was just wandering around, and..."

"You found my place," the man said. He had this aura about him that was so... indefinable. Ciel wanted to know more, but she couldn't ask. There was no way to ask, not someone like this. So, strong.

"No one can find this place without being meant to. I ask you, who are you, that your feet led you here?"

"I-I..." Ciel stammered. She couldn't find the breath to speak in the face of his overwhelming charisma and strength. He was like a coal miner, mining for decades without complaining even once about the conditions. That was the sense she got from him, and it scared her. *shhrrrrrrr*. Her limbs shivered, and she found her fingers couldn't stay still. She regretted coming into the clearing in the first place, and wanted nothing more than to leave. Or else, have the ground swallow her whole.

The red-clad man walked over to her, his powerful thighs pushing against the ground. He grabbed her face, but was surprisingly gentle in his grip. "I won't hurt you. You are not worthy of receiving my blade, but if you do not tell me who you are, which Land hails you as an Epic Hero, I will make you wish I killed you."

Her throat was completely dry. If before she was stopped from speaking by psychological barriers, the barriers were now physical. Her tongue could not move to form words, and she only nodded.

He let go of her face.

Moisture returned to her mouth, and she was barely able to pronounce the name, "Ciel."

"Ciel, is it?" the man said. "And from which land do you hail?"

"J-Japan." Well that was the most recent place, but it was accurate enough and hopefully he wouldn't press her further.

"I see." He thought for a moment. "Are you familiar with a city called 'Fuyuki?'"

Asking a totally unexpected question like that.

He threw her off completely.

"Er-rmmm... I haven't..."

"Of course not." He shook his head from side to side, and she thought she could see the cross-shaped tassels on his garment twinkle and wave.

"Are you from the Church?" she asked. There was no downside to this question. Unless of course he had an animosity to the Church, but he had already seen the crosses on her Burial Agency uniform, so that was unlikely.

"I was, once. I was also against the Church. My relationship with them has been quite complicated." What an apostate-like thing to say.

"O-oh..."

"What era are you from?" He continued the interrogation.

"The late 1990's."

"Ah, that explains it." He nodded to himself, as if he had just solved a particularly difficult trigonometric equation. "I suppose you weren't in that area of Japan, either..."

Ciel was too scared to ask what he meant by that.

"So, what is your story?" The man just did not quit with his incessant questioning. This is getting too personal.

Let's see how he likes me turning it around.

"Before that, who are you?" I asked defiantly. "Where are you from, *when* are you from, and what did you mean about being from and against the Church?"

He laughed. The laugh was completely without malice, just a pure expression of surprise. It made him seem endearing.

"What an excellent question. Why not start at the beginning?"

Shock. Perfect shock filled her face. It was so easy to disarm him, why hadn't she tried it before? Why had she let herself be intimidated by him? She hated that aspect of herself, the weak will that arose whenever she was in unfamiliar circumstances that would make her meekly bow her head to whoever seemed the strongest in the room. Like he would be able to protect her from her vampiric nature. But she wasn't even a vampire anymore! Hell, she wasn't even human!

He just ignored her expression, and went on talking. "Long story short, I started out as an ordinary boy, like any other. Then something terrible happened, and I nearly died. I met a man, though. He inspired me to live and to work to help others, to save them. I took in his ideals wholeheartedly, and I became that which he always aspired to be. A Hero of Justice."

Ciel couldn't suppress a chuckle. What a stupid-sounding description.

"Hey." The man's voice poured ice into her veins, and she was immediately silent once more.

He continued with his story. "I worked and sacrificed myself for others on a daily basis in the ordinary ways. Fixing things, helping people. Nobody else showed up who needed me to save their lives, though. I felt unfulfilled. Then an opportunity came. I became involved in a sort of large - well, it was large to me - conflict between Magi, without any real idea of what I was doing. I was weak as a Magus, but I worked hard and learned to use Magecraft well. All I could do was imitate, but I did that perfectly, over and over and over again. After the War was over, I just kept saving people. I saved people over and over again; not on my own, of course. I had help, I had a contract with a higher power. But to answer your question, I have, at different points in my life, been on the side of the Church, and against it. Whatever was needed, to ensure proper balance remained in the human world."

His brutal honesty is amazing. His voice gives the impression of a selfless warrior, sacrificing himself and shouldering all the Evil of the World.

"H...How did you die? If you don't mind answering." Ciel added the second bit in a flushed voice.

"I didn't."

B-but if he didn't... how was this possible? Ciel couldn't even form the words, she was too astounded by what he just said. Instead, she wordlessly cocked her head to the side to indicate her interest.

"When I was young, I heard something. Something that stuck with me ever since. 'People die when they are killed.' It seems so obvious, such a tautological statement that it need not even be said. But then I thought about it. I realized something. It means that no matter what, there is always an end. There is always death, always ready to swallow us in its jaws. No matter how happy we are, and how much we want to go on living, it can only be fended off a little bit. It is born into the fabric of all things, that they must return to their Origin in the Spiral of the Root of Creation, and there is nothing anyone can do about that. Of course, if you've been sapped of the will to live by endless pain and sacrifice to a higher ideal, 'dying when killed' doesn't sound so bad."

He laughed bitterly.

"Of course, by that time, it was already too late. I had already set out on this path, and I was too foolish to see the hell I was walking into. I didn't know how much I'd want to be freed from my endless cycle. Not reincarnation," he said by way of explanation. "More like, being brought in as a temporary contractor to fix a leaky pipe. But the pipe leaks all the time, so I might as well be there all the time. Maybe it makes more sense if I say it like that.

I thought that doing things that way would make me happy. I thought that if I could just see the smiling faces of the people I saved, I would be happy. I thought that it would plug the hole in my heart created by that fire. I was blinded by this dream, and couldn't see the consequences of what I was doing."

He shrugged.

"And that leads us to where we are now. I'm not even a proper Servant; I'm a Counter Guardian contracted by the Will of Humanity to clean up after its messes. And since I pledged my soul to its service, I never get that sweet relief. I never die, no matter how many times I am killed. I endure the stabs and slashes and shots and the burning hellfires only to go back into the fray."

He stopped speaking, and gave Ciel a look that shot darts into her retinae.

"That's enough about me. What about you? You invaded my special place, I'm entitled to at least that much out of you."

Ciel paused before speaking. Is this man telling the truth? Well, he must be. No reason to lie in the Throne of Heroes. But... what sort of horrible life. I should know that better than anyone, heh.

"Me? Umm.."

"I haven't got all day... You know what I mean. Start talking." The nameless man was pushy. Ciel hated pushy men, but it wasn't like she had a choice here. He couldn't kill her now that she was already dead, but he could definitely follow her around the length and breadth of the Throne of Heroes and make her death a living hell. Living.

Ciel grabbed her head as if to punish herself for her slip of her mental tongue.

The man touched her arm. Ciel immediately blushed, then started talking, so that he would be distracted and she could slip out of his grip.

"I... well, you'll believe this, you're an Epic Hero - after a fashion, anyway." She was afraid of upsetting him by miscategorizing his status here, but to be frank she barely knew more about the Throne of Heroes shortly after arrival than she knew while she was alive. "I was a fairly ordinary girl until the age of sixteen. On my sixteenth birthday, something horrible happened. A vampire who had possessed me since I was born, though I didn't know it, finally reared his ugly head. He took control of me and made me kill my parents, and eventually exercised his power on the whole town. I tried to stop him at first, shutting myself inside my room, but even that wasn't enough. He broke through and did those things. After that, many things happened, but eventually the Church got their hands on me. I had somehow gotten rid of the vampire in me, but my body was forever changed. No matter what injuries occurred to me, even if my heart was pulled out of my body still beating, I was fine. Well, no, I wasn't fine. I was in hell. But I lived, though I wish I didn't. I went to the Church in the hopes that they could help me, but they only saw me as a demon. They didn't even want to kill me; they experimented on me. They tortured and killed me all day, every day for weeks in order to conclusively prove that I was immortal. Apparently my body reverses time, rendering the injuries nullified. Screw that. The point is it was a life of madness, and I just wanted it to end. I begged the priests, threatened the nuns, to give me some way to achieve death."

Ciel took a deep breath before continuing, the speech so far draining her energies.

"No matter what, nothing they tried could end me. And they hated me, they wouldn't've minded if I had died. Eventually, after my body was thoroughly subjected to all the pain in this world, I was shuttled to the Church's secret Burial Agency, where I could put my skills to good use. I found out that if I killed the vampire who possessed me, I would be able to die. Finally, after many years, I was able to end that bastard's life, and then my own."

She thought of Tohno-kun's face, but couldn't say anything. It was too painful, and he didn't ask about stuff like that. This nameless man.

"So that's my story. You satisfied? I hope you are. I know I'm sure as hell done with it."

The man smiled.

"You know what? I like you, kid. I can relate to you."

She turned crimson in her cheeks, but she was still too embittered from reminiscing over her life to be too embarrassed anymore.

"Can you?"

"Yeah." The man held out his hand. Oh, he wanted to shake hands. "Call me 'Emiya.'"

Ciel hesitantly put out her hand and joined it in his.

"'Emiya'... is that a first or a last name?"

Emiya chuckled. "Last. Why do you ask?"

Ciel looked downwards for a moment, not sure herself. She wished she hadn't asked, she didn't want to be put back on the spot like this. "What is your first name?"

"My first name? Hmm... I, don't have one."

She cocked her head.

"You... don't have one?"

"Well, I did." Emiya replied. "But I discarded it long ago; at some point in the endless cycle, I lost sight of my own identity. I didn't see myself as myself anymore, but only as an extension of my father's ideals. Thus, I stopped calling myself by my own name, instead using only the name given to me by the man who adopted me. 'Emiya.'"

Ciel poked him in the abdomen. "Come on, you're still you. That never changes. Believe me... I know."

Emiya ignored the poke. "You're right, I suppose. In that case, call me 'Shirou.'" His eyes darkened as he said it, but Ciel could see sadness as well as anger in that darkness.

Ciel let go of his hand, and stepped back.

"What are you doing?" Emiya said.

Without answering, wordlessly, she stuck out her hand.

Emiya tenatively took it in his own, a wariness in his eyes betraying that he really didn't know what she was going to do next.

Ciel smiled. "Let's start over. Hello, I'm Ciel."

Light dawned on Emiya's face, as he understood.

"Hi, I'm Shirou."

This was inspired by discussing the ending of the Ciel route with a fellow I know; so kudos to him. He came up with the title too.

Listened to the album "7th Son of a 7th Son" by Iron Maiden while writing this. Good album; favourite song on it is definitely "Can I Play With Madness."

I suppose if Ciel were a Servant she'd be an Assassin? Hmm.

Thanks y'all, hope you liked it!