In Fire, In Lead, In God We Trust.
"Kill me!"
"What?!"
"Hurry!"
Clink. Metal dropped to the ground.
...
There are two ships lost at sea. One ship has 200 people on it, another ship has 150. Suddenly both ships malfunction. You have the tools and time to save one ship. The ship with the 150 people attempts to force you to fix their ship. What would Emiya Kiritsugu do?
"Doctor! Doctor! The heart beats going crazy!" A green clad nurse yelled as she desperately tried to restrain the thrashing pair of limbs on the table. Her left hand scrabbled at the side for a pair of Velcro restraints.
"Hurry! Restrain him quick, we don't' need any extra complications on our hands!" A old, graying, old man snapped. He was thin as a rake, but at the moment, he was a veritable chainsaw, barking orders all the while as he quickly prepped a pair of needles with a speed born of practice.
"I'm trying! The brat just won't stay still!" She cried out panicky. Another nurse zoomed over, a horde of green scrub clad figures all scrabbling and amassing around the body of an orange shirt clad body.
"And for God's sake! Get that thing out of his hands!" The doctor snapped as he set the pair of injections on a steel tray, along with tweezers, and a scalpel. He bustled over with the swiftness born of experience.
"We can't! Dead man's grip!" The nurse exclaimed, to busy for the medical jargon as she quickly wrapped her latex glove clad hands over the boys neck, quickly baring the carteriod artery.
The Doctor grimaced, as he eyed the full loaded and functional Spring Field handgun in the boy's hand. Dead Man's grip, it was known in medical circles as Rigor Mortis,it was also one of the tell-tale signs of a dead body. In no other instance, could the body seize up and stiffen to such a degree. So some how... the body had managed to con the mind into thinking it was dead. Except clearly... it wasn't. This was going to be a pain. At the very least, the gun hadn't gone off yet.
...
"Did you really see so little talent in me?"
"No quite the opposite, I saw too much talent. It takes most assassin's years before they can separate their emotions from their trigger fingers."
"Doctor Salvatore! Hurry, the heart rate is dropping!" The first nurse cried, already steadying the boys legs and arms to ensure he had a clear shot at the boy's chest, which thus far had been too turbulent to even consider operating.
He quickly sliced open the front of the boys shirt with the scalpel. The tool scrapped a narrow gash over the boys left pectoral, but what was a cut, compared to blockage that was somehow slowly preventing the blood to pump oxygen to the brain? It was no wonder why the boy's brain though it was dead. Though, he grimaced as he placed a hand on the boy's chest, if the wound was in a tricky area, he had no wish to cut through tensed up muscle.
He quickly gripped the tweezers and lifted the boy's chin, identifying the "wound" if it could be called that. It was like someone had shot a crossbow at the boy. A fang of some sort was lodged almost 2 inches into the boy's neck, just above the collarbone.
He immediately set to work, opening up the wound a little to allow easier exit of the fang, which after an experimental tug, almost seemed to have small barbs on the edge of it. Then with the tweezers firmly gripped the fang he wiped his brow for a moment.
"Ready?" He asked, looking around at his team.
"Ready." They affirmed, two on standby with clean cloth bandages, one with disinfectant, and another with another shot of painkiller.
The thrashing was stopping, the Doctor realized, that meant that the lack of oxygen almost had him.
"3….2…..1….. Go!" he snapped, as he quickly pulled up with all his force. A sickening squelching sound came from the wound. He kept on pulling, ignoring the globules of blood that dripped down the side of the boys neck. With a final heave of effort he tore up the fang. The before mentioned fountain of blood immediately started spilling from the boys neck.
The intrusion popped out, and the nurses quickly assumed their roles, stemming the flow of blood first, disinfecting the wound, bandaging, and applying pain killers as as he was about to inject a final dose of painkiller to put the lad to sleep, the door slipped open and a soft sonorous voice said simply. "May I have a talk with him before you put him under?"
Words. Words that weren't his own flooded his mind.
"For that we have to thank the Glorious hero, who in every era has blinded the masses with tales of his heroic deeds. The actions of those people and their refusal to admit that blood shed is in itself evil, means that humanity has stayed on the same spot ever since the stone age!"
The room Immediately grew silent as they observed the golden glimmering cross that sat on the front of his robes. Even in medical circles, priests were still highly respected. After all the one realm that scientists couldn't experiment on was death, he thought soberly as he inclined his head slightly in respect. None the less, he couldn't allow him to danger the life he had just spent the last thirty minutes saving.
"He's not in any condition to…" The doctor protested.
"On the contrary, he is." The man said quickly cutting him off as he swept into the room, black frock rippling around him like a second skin as he bent over and examined the boy. In the black get up, he looked oddly out of place in the sea of white and teal scrubs, just like, the doctor thought grimly, a messenger of death.
A image of a man clad in black throbbed in his mind. His back turned and a air of resigned determination emanated around him.
"In the end killing is a necessary evil. If so, it is best to end them in the maximum efficiency and the least cost, least time. If you wish to slander that as foul and demean that as nasty, then do as you wish. Justice cannot save this world. I have no interest in things such as that..."
The doctor blinked, the boy's eyes had fluttered open, and the darkest pair of black eyes stared back. They were painfully empty the doctor noticed. He had seen similar eyes before, on those who had escaped from massacre and murder scenes. Just what did this boy go through?He thought to himself as he watched those obsidian orbs blink.
"Father…." The boy rasped softly. It was a voice stained by smoke, and rasped with loss. It was like hearing sand paper.
"Hush child, everything will be alright…" The man soothed, as he placed a cool palm on the boy's forehead.
"Dead?" It was voiced as a question, though the empty tone and utter hope in the voice made the doctor cringe. "Are they dead?!" He demanded with the force he could muster, as he began to struggle to a sitting position. The doctor rolled his eyes, young uns and their apparent belief in the invulnerability of their bodies, once the boy smoked a joint or two, well that'd quickly go away... The doctor moved and quickly pressed the boys chest down.
The father blinked for a moment, interpreting the information before stating simply, "No, the only casualties were your father…. And Shirley." He said, saying the last segment with no little hesitation.
"Father... I'd appreciate it if..." The doctor began.
"Good... I'm glad" The boy rasped. A dull clunking sound echoed around the as the boys fingers finally relaxed from their iron grip, allowing the gun to fall.
His mind burned.
"To save someone, you must sacrifice another. Such is the order of things."
To save you must sacrifice. Was that the order of things? Then why? Why did his heart feel as if it was torn in two? He had done that hadn't he? Killed her. To save everyone. Guilt. It tore at him.
"Get this boy hooked up to a heart monitor, I want someone with him 24/7. Go." The doctor snapped dispelling his momentary shock, the silence sending him out of his stupor and into action.
"Wait." A nurse said, looking at the boy with curious eyes, "Boy, first, what is your name? I need it for the patient records."
"His name is Kiritsugu. Emiya Kiritsugu." Father Maxim said simply, as he watched the boy begin to drift off to sleep. "13 years old, no occupation, and you may list me as the guardian."
"So will you be taking him then? Father?" The doctor asked. The doctor slipped a cigarette from his pocket and fumbled around for a lighter. It was a bad habit he needed to break, but as he took a short drag, and felt the day's stress ebb away, he really could care less at the moment.
"I suppose I will, although he won't be going back home. Home is no longer safe for him." The father said as he shifted his gaze to the intense doctor's.
"Then where will he go?" The doctor asked worriedly as he looked down at his patient, another cloud of noxious fumes spiraling from the stick in his mouth.
"There is a place, in Italy. The faith will take him in." The priest said, hand in the depths of his crock. "Thank you, Doctor for saving him." He said, bowing slightly.
"There are no thanks to save a life," The doctor said shortly, but not unkindly. "Now let's leave the boy to rest." He made way to the reception room before vanishing into the depths of the medicine cellar.
"Of course." The father murmured, already picturing the future of the boy that laid before him.
The island held too many dark memories for the lad, and Father Maxim nodded once to himself as he strode down the battered hallways of the hospital. Yes, the faith would be good for him. It would be a new surge of hope, for a boy who had killed his own father and love. Although…. Father Maxim thought wryly, young boys like Kiritsugu who possessed any inkling of magical talent were always valued, and he knew from the lad's now deceased father, that the family seal was already implanted in him.
Yes. The priest thought sadly, as he sat in the reception room to wait. The boy's life would be hard, harder than most. The father closed his eyes and bowed his head to the lord sadly, and he prayed.
Even as he prayed, he remembered the scene he had seen, a boy knelt on the ground, a knife buried into the chest of the girl that everyone knew he loved, and the corpse of his father with a bullet hole through his head, gun clenched in the boy's grip.
And a scream that knew that nothing in the world would ever be alright again.
This time the scene was in sharp detail. The same black clad man was sitting next to a exquisite four poster bed. A woman with flowing white locks was in front of him.
"Why? My love, you killed Illya!"
"Ten million human lives."
"Curse you..."
"I reject you, I reject the grail, to save the world."
A heart wrenching snap.
"There are no heroes...in life, the monsters win."- George.R.R Martin
AN: It's been far too long. Legend, is still my little pet project for those of you who are still waiting for an update. And to you, I say I'm sorry. I'm so so so so, sorry that this isn't an update. In fact I'm thinking about writing a new rayshipping fic just because I have no clue where the plot of legend is going. (And the critics telling me I suck, but that's another story).
Anyway, this is another fandom that I so happen to love. Well at least some parts of it anyway. This is a fic written as an AU of Fate Zero. The most gorgeous, thought-provoking anime I've seen in a long while. It centers on the idea of, like Fate Zero, a hero.
Anyway, I hope you guys liked it! Also, a review would be greatly appreciated!
Until Next Time.