Bring For A Fire
You have defiled your sanctuaries by the multitude of your iniquities, by the iniquity of your traffic; therefore will I bring forth a fire from the middle of you, it shall devour you, and I will bring you to ashes on the earth in the sight of all them that behold you. You shall be object of dread and will cease to be forever.
-Ezekiel 28, A Lament Over The King Of Tyre
Tohsaka Rin was coming to kill her. She understood that, but she had already lost precious seconds that's to the blinding light coming from the sword she had throw towards her, and now that she was approaching, lighting fast, she understood she couldn´t avoid it. Her body wouldn´t possibly catch up to her thought. Is only natural. For eleven years, pain was what dominated her life. The pain of the worms, death, Shinji, the pain of the very idea of losing Shirou and the dizzying knowledge that the Holy Grail War was approaching. So it´s only natural, after all. Even that Rin is going to h-hurt her, kill her, is normal. But.
She closes her eyes. She doesn´t like pain, never did, even if she had learned to stand it to an extend. At least, this would be over soon. It would hurt for a moment, but then all her pain would vanish forever. Is almost a beautiful thought. She thought she shouldn´t have stopped Senpai before. He wouldn´t have suffered so much if only she quietly went ahead and died. Like she deserved too.
The sound of a blade piercing through flesh sounds loud like a gunshot to her ears, drowning out even the rumbling of the cavern as Angra Manyu was making its way to it´s rebirth. There was no pain. None at all. Just... a strange warm. Sakura opened her eyes, and saw red. The red of her sister´s shirt, and the blood flowing from her stomach. Her sister´s stomach. She didn´t understand. No, she didn´t want to understand. Rin was definitively faster that her, so she would have easily finished her off. So had she stabbed herself instead, and why was she embracing her now? Was this... a dream?
"Nee-san?" That is the only word that comes out of her mouth. Is a wonder she had be capable of mustering enough presence of mind to say even just that. The foundations of all she believed in during all her long time on torment were starting to crumble.
"Geez. I can't be complaining about Shirou." A faint, weak voice. A dying voice. But is still what she always dreamed of. "I am stupid. Yeah, it can´t be helped. I can´t ignore a slouch. I like orderly schemes, and it irritates me when people aren´t repaid for their efforts. I like you, Sakura. I've always watched you, and I wanted you to smile. …Yeah. I wanted to believe that you had it better the more I suffered. I was so preoccupied with that, so I didn't even have time to think about if it was painful or not."
"Nee-san." It couldn´t be happening. The girl who abandoned her couldn´t be talking like a sister right now, but... but she was.
"I am sorry for being a selfish sister. And thanks. I am gland you always wore that ribbon." And with that, she collapses, taking her warmth with her. Dead, dead, dead. She was dead after giving her everything she had ever wanted.
"No... No..." She was wrong. She had been suffering alone, but there were people who cared about her and loved her. "And... And I destroyed them all."
Her hands go to her head, clenching, clenching. She screams towards the distant, dark heavens, too far gone to be saved. Somewhere in between, her scream turns into dry, bitter sobbing. This is it. There is nothing for her anymore. She had destroyed everything, and now she was alone. Truly alone. Nobody could be saved anymore. This thing would be born and destroy everything...
Oh, right. Senpai. Senpai was still alive, he could do it. She had no right to ask him anything, she never had, but he could do it and he was going to do it. So she had to hold on until then. Until she could see his brilliant smile, and his gently eyes. She needed him, needed him, needed him. So much...
She has to fight, for once. She has to fight that thing writhing like poisonous flower inside her, to give him time to make a miracle. The black tentacles envelop her before she can even react, having sensed her intend. They restraint her hands, and legs, her whole body. She tries to fight out of this situation, but the tentacles don´t even budge. They tighten, gaining enough force to rip her limbs if she was a normal person. She bears the pain without even a change of expression. Is natural. This pain is nothing compared to the worms.
She couldn´t do anything against the tentacles. Physically, at least. They were connected to her, though, as a part of Angry Manyu, so she might be able to command them.
"Let me go!" she tries, screaming those words desperately like a spell. Nothing. At least, there is no movement for what she can appreciate. But. Is the only thing she had, at this point. So she tried, anyway. She tried controlling them like she could more or less control the worms inside of her, she tried a lot of things. Nothing worked, even a little bit. Even though it was the firm time in her short and yet far too long life that she had gathered the courage to fight back, she couldn´t do anything to change her situation.
Senpai. He had to save her. He hadn´t come here yet, but Saber was guarding the way. It was a matter of course that it would be hard to get through her, even though he surely had Rider´s help. But. The unthinkable had not happened. He was alive, and trying to come to her side to save her. She had to believe in him, just like he always believed in her... Footsteps. Heavy, determined. Her face light up with joy, despite of the pain and her sister´s death. She blinked until her vision cleared up, and...
It wasn´t Senpai. The one slowly dragging himself towards her wasn´t him, but that priest. She is surprised to see him. She had squashed his heart back at the forest, so that he could still stand was naturally a surprise. But he wasn´t alive. Where his heart should be was a pulsating, black energy. He didn´t have much time before dying.
"What... what are you doing here?" she demands of him in a hoarse voice. Her eyes narrow, and she felts the tentacles responding to her intend to kill. Now they were twitching above her head, waiting for the moment she would lash out.
"You should know that well, Matou Sakura." he speaks in that same calm, expression less voice, like at that time. Even though she had the advantage. It irritates her. It really... it really fucking pisses her off. He was the one who made her like this. Just like Zouken, this priest is nothing but a monster. Her hands clench into fists. "The gist of it, anyway."
"I... That´s true." she doesn´t move the tentacles. There´s nothing he can do to her at this point, and he is not going to do try anyway. Killing him would be meaningless. And... her anger deflates like a ballon. She is tired of killing already. The priest comes to a stop only a few meters in front of her. His life is fading away, but he could cross this distance in less that an instant and snap her neck. He couldn´t hurt her until Angra Manyu could be born, until it didn´t need her body, but the time was drawing near.
Senpai, where are you?
"I want to see it with my own eyes, what I have striven for since ten years ago. That´s the full truth. I also hoped to see Emiya Shirou here and face him, but is too late already. Uh. Well, he is luckier that me. He died content."
hediedcontenhediedcontenthediedcontent
Those three words slam into her like a knife, driving all her remaining streght out of her body and her oxygen out of her. The tentacles wrapping her body are the only reason she doesn´t fall down.
"W-what?" she breathes out, not believing him. Unwilling to believe him. That couldn´t be true. It was just one more of his lies.
"Don´t look so surprised. Emiya Shirou was strong, but he wasn´t invincible. Without Rider´s help, he had to face Saber alone. The strongest servant in this war, the heroic spirit of the sword. He won, but he had to sacrifice himself for it... Well, that´s not the whole truth. It´s heart must be still beating, but his mind is completely destroyed. He might as well be dead already."
"N-No. Why should I believe you? "
"You don´t need to do it. But I think you know the truth, yourself. After all, if he were alive, he would have gotten here before me."
"H-how can you know what happen to me?"
"Saber´s is not back to your side, and he is not here, so that must mean he used Archer´s arm and the weight of it shattered his might after he defeated her. That´s the only thing that makes sense. And if he did, that also must meant he was alone fighting Saber. Maybe that´s not completely correct. I didn´t see it. What I saw was both Saber and Emiya Shirou as I went here. She was recovering, and he was laying in a pool of his own blood."
"So... Senpai is gone..." her voice wavers, and disappears. She doesn´t care about anything anymore. Even if she could be saved somehow, with both Senpai and her sister gone she had no reason to keep on living. She contemplated asking Kirei to finish her off for a moment. Just one moment. She backed down only because she fully knew he wouldn´t grant her that request.
"I wish I would have be as lucky as you." the priest´s outrageous words broke the silence.
"What? Don´t fuck with me! You saw what I went through during the surgery, what was implanted inside me, violating me constantly! What is lucky about that, y-you stupid bastard!"
"Oh, shut up. You suffered. So what? You are not the only one who lead a difficult life. You aren´t the first one to be beaten and raped, either. In fact, there are persons suffering quietly while we are speaking, trapped in abusive relationships for longer that you have been alive. Until the moment they end up getting killed for the sole crime of existing. No everybody gets the power to fight, and get their life back."
"You think I don´t know." she spats out. "But what of it? Does it change anything of what I have said? How could anybody want to be in my place?"
"Because I am the same as yourself, Matou Sakura, but I wasn´t as lucky as you. Everybody loved me. My father called me Kirei, hoping that I would be beautiful like my name. But I was born wrongly, something unwanted by everybody, an existence that could only take pleasure in the suffering of other´s. Does that sound similar?"
It does. She doesn´t want to admit it, but it does. She told Senpai as much before, at that time. That she had keep on watching in jumping the bar enjoying seeing him fall, waiting for the moment he realize it was impossible to see the despair in his face. She only took pleasure in seeing other´s suffer because she was perpetually miserable.
"I see you admitted it." Kirei continues, his tone not changing a bit. "I tried to change myself. I believed wrong things were wrong, and what was right was right. But that didn´t change the impurity I had inside myself. I entrusted myself to the church, believing God would save even somebody like myself. That the day would come where my suffering would end, and I could finally live like other people."
That´s right. She had though the same, not too long ago. Nee-san was too her what God had been to the priest, somebody who would definitively save her if she held on for long enough.
"It was useless. I didn´t change. The only thing all my struggles were accomplishing was furthering my self hatred. And I eventually realized that day would never come, that I was defective from birth."
She winced. Listening to him was hard. It was like seeing herself. No, more than that. Like he had opened her mind and was ripping her own thoughts out.
"Gilgamesh opened my eyes to that, when I was still the Master of that war´s Assassin. I realized nobody could come to save me, and so the only choice I had was grasp the power I had at my fingertips. Grasp it, and destroy everything in my way."
I wonder what kind of face people who didn´t help me will make when they realize I exist.
"I did it. I killed Tohsaka Tokiomi" that name makes her tense up, but she doesn´t feel anything. Not anger, nor sadness. Nothing at all. She had forgiven Rin, but that man had sold her and that was the end of that. "I killed him with the Azzoth Sword he gifted to me as his apprentice, and took Gilgamesh from him. I arranged for Matou Kariya," that name, instead, makes her blood run cold. She doesn´t remember much of it, but he was one of the few people who had even tried to help her. ", and Tohsaka Aoi to stumble upon Tokiomi´s corpse at the right moment, and that lead to Kariya strangling Aoi to death."
"You..." she couldn´t say anything. She had done far worse things, in the end. She still clearly remembering facing him in the forest, willingly making the decision to squash the fake heart created from Angra Manyu´s energy. How she had enjoyed him coughing of blood, a powerful Executor of the Church crumbling under her power. He had send that horrible thing out, but if Kariya hadn´t been bad enough of person to strangle mother then nothing could have happened. If good and evil was determined by involvement, she was not only like him but worse that him. Still she held his gaze, her eyes clearly showing her hatred of him.
"I did terrible things, and each one pleased me to not end. And for what? Because there was a person who I though was the answer to everything that was wrong with me, somebody similar to me who could give me the peace I wished for so long. For me, that person was Emiya Kiritsugu. He was false, nothing but an idealistic fool bend of going through a self destructive course. But Emiya Shirou was different. He is the right person for you, the one who could give you the peace you wanted. And you threw him away on a whim. So, yes, I wish I would have been as lucky as you."
Sakura looks down. She doesn´t answer. What she can answer, when she knows he is telling the truth?
Space distorts. A shadow pools between her and Kotomine, and Saber, clad in black, the coldness of her gaze slightly intimidating despite that she was under her control, emerged from it unscathed. So it was true. She had believed the priest, but some part of herself still held on to some hope that it was only a cruel lie to make her suffer. She should have know better. The tentacles of black energy when away at that though.
"Sakura." despite that she is nothing like she was before, her poster and her voice still contains an elegance that she will never have. "Do I finish him off?"
"...No." she answered.
"Very well." the swordsman nodded, and walked to stand beside her, ready to strike back the second the priest made a move. Sakura looked away from her. She couldn´t stand to look at her, knowing that she had done this to her. She might not have gotten her killed, but as Saber was now death would have been better for her.
"How gracious of you, Matou Sakura." his smile widens. "Anyway. As I was saying, I wish I was as lucky as you. But. You are still useful to me. I need to know the answer Emiya Kiritsugu couldn´t provide me, and you are perfect for that. A person unwanted by everybody, hated by everybody giving birth to ´all the evil´s of this world'. Is the only way I can get that answer."
"... I don´t understand." she really didn´t.
"The meaning of a worthless life, the meaning of birth. I merely want to know if is a crime to live as you are, when you are different for others. What happens here will show me that. If you will be able to forgive yourself after destroying and losing everything, and if Angra Manyu can. That´s all there is to it."
"I don´t understand." she repeats. "You are going to die soon anyway, so why...?"
"Is the only way I know how to live. That won´t change, even in my final moments. Unless you show me the answer before my death. And before Angra Manyu shallows you, of course. So tell me, Matou Sakura, what is your answer?"
Forgiving herself. She didn´t know if she could ever do that, or if she deserved to. Furthermore... The pain of the tentacles is nothing, as she said, but she can´t think straight because of it. But still she thought. Maybe it was to distract herself from everything that happened, or maybe because of some other reason. Either way, she began to seriously think about this question.
Destroying and losing everything. Indeed, she had done that. But that had happened because of the crest worms, and that Zouken had implanted Angra Manyu inside of her somehow. That had been the cause of everything. It also was the cause of nearly every sin she had to carry. So, if one talked about forgiving herself for that, she shouldn´t even have to. She hadn´t carried none of those wretched things out of her own will.
But. She couldn´t deny it her will had be behind everything that happened because of that. Like the priest had said, even though she had been swallowed by the mound and had become addicted to violence, her will was behind it. She had enjoyed killing Shinji for all he had done to her, for treating her like shit during the majority of those eleven years. She had enjoyed being in control, putting him down, for once... Well, admittedly, Shinji didn´t deserve to live. She had know that even before being swallowed by the mound. She didn´t admit it to herself until then solely because she was supposed to be a good girl. But things were how they were. She had enjoyed it, she had enjoyed seeing the Servants come under her, she had enjoyed tearing apart the only protector that girl called Ilyasviel had, she had enjoyed that even her oh-so perfect sister was, deep down, desperate and without much of a chance of defeating her. In short, it was undeniably that they had given her a gun, and she had used it because she couldn´t stand herself, couldn´t stand this world, couldn´t stand none of it anymore. And besides, there were also other things where she had nobody to blame but herself.
"I...I don´t know." she answered him.
"Uh. I expected as much." he said, a hint of amusement on his voice, and then he died. His remained life extinguished, and he went totally limp. The black energy dissipated, and went back into her body. Did he smile in his last moment? She could clearly see a smile on him, but she wasn´t sure if it was out of bitter self hatred and disappointment or a genuine smile. The priest´s corpse wavered, steadied for a moment and then felt down on his back. For some reason she couldn´t fathom, the sight saddened her greatly.
She took a step forward. A stone cracked underneath her feet. She started walking down, away from the hideous Great Holy Grail, her mind empty. She was only vaguely aware that Saber was following her quietly. Her steeps were wavering, weak. She went on. The only thing she was sure of was where she was going. Her mind... no, her whole self had been poured out like water. There was nothing remaining from her anyway. Except from Senpai.
Soon enough, she reached the part in which he had bravely fought Saber alone, all for her sake. She looked over at his body. She forced herself to look at everything, despite herself. Despite that she felt like she was suffocating. She didn´t deserve to look away from the results of her own actions. His broken, mangle body. His head, turned upwards towards the ceiling. His wide open eyes, all spark gone from then. His slightly open mouth. She took a good look at everything.
"I am sorry, Senpai." she breathed out, half crying. "I am s-so sorry, Shirou."
She approached his body, came to a stop near him and dropped to her knees. With one hand, she brushed the strands of red hair away from his eyes. She can still heard his heartbeat. It´s still going strong, even though he is in this state.
"I am sorry." her broken voice resonates in the cavern, as if it laughing at her. "I wish things would have been different, that I could have made you happy."
She didn´t have much time. She felts it in her bones. She is already feeling faint, so her unconscious would shatter any second now. And, more importantly, the rumbling it´s intensifying. Soon it would reach it´s peak. She had to move forward before she disappeared, since she still had things she had to do. Something to tie her to this absurd, horrible world. She bends down, pushing her own hair away from her face with her left hard, and brushes her lips against him.
It´s not something to bring her one last pleasure before her death. She had never been vain enough for that. No, this his was for his sake. She had destroyed so much for only thinking of herself, so she should at least do this much for him. It´s not like it was going to hurt her, after all. The restrains had gone away from her once she thought that there was no point in fighting anymore. The message was clear. She could do what she wanted as long as it didn´t interfere with it´s purposes. And this didn´t, so it was fine.
So she put more effort into the kiss, never once breaking away even the slightest bit, so he couldn´t have time to breath. She would steal his breath away from him, his very life, like she had stolen so many things before. His honesty, unwavering ideals, his admirable innocent everything that had happened to it. He had willingly destroyed every last one of those things for her sake, and she had let him. Those were the crimes she wouldn´t never forgive herself for, since they were her crimes and her crimes only.
It´s not for pleasure, but she can´t deny that even at this point it feels good to her. His lips were as cold as a corpse, and the feeling was nothing compared to when he could respond. But his lips were also incredibly soft, and simply kissing him makes her feel good to begin with. It reminds her of better this. Like this, with her eyes closed and shutting the pain away, she can almost pretend all of this mess had only been a bad dream and they had still good times before them.
She felt it immediately when he died. Her body was lightly against his own, so she noticed that his stomach had stopped going up and down. She heard his heartbeat coming to a stop, too. She opened her eyes slowly. The sweet dream had ended. Now, it was time to wake up. She drew away from him, her gaze never leaving his corpse even though it was nothing but a cloudy haze to her muddled vision. She made a shaky smile with her dry lips. And...
"I love you." she muttered.
In the next moment there was pain, great roaring pain through her whole body. It was too much. Even the violation of the worms was bearable compared to this. The pain turned her vision white. She twitched, trashed, feeling like she was melting from the inside. And...
Her mind shattered.
Matou Sakura ceased to exist, leaving only All Evil´s Of This World pouring out.
Angra Manyu was born once again. It had obtained a new body, one much like the one it had taken during the Third Holy Grail War. It´s memories of what happened back then were hazy, but it knew as much. It walked on out of the cavern, the shadows of it´s energy trailing behind it like a carpet. The remaining tool of those who that girl had acquired, too. It came out of the cavern it had been born it, and beheld a forest and the city beyond it. Things living happily, when all that it had been left it was pain. It would pour their energy inside of itself, to drown out the pain it was feeling even now.
It didn´t think about retribution, or sharing it´s pain with others. Such complicated concepts couldn´t break through the haze of pain that filled it´s mind. It only wanted the pain to end, even if it was only for a moment. It had adsorbed plenty of energy, but it wasn´t enough. More, more, more. It needed more.
Even if it fully knew that it couldn´t never be enough.