It's not like I don't realize the ultimate futility of it – a dream like mine, much like world peace and prosperity, or an end to disease, would always be impossible in the end. In a world of no absolutes, an ideal like mine, at its core an absolute, would never be completely achievable.
And this, Rin, is where you go wrong.
Not getting it?
Look, as I see it, and as I think he saw it at the end of the very first adventure I had with you, "completely" is the operating word.
Please, don't make that face… you always get stubborn when you make that face. And this time, this time first and foremost I want you to listen. Listen, because there might be a chance we might never see each other after this.
You can curse me later, Rin, but for now, at least, hear me out.
Yes, I know it hurts for me to say that. I wish it didn't, but it does. And who knows? After all that's happened between us, that it hurts might actually be a good sign.
But that wasn't the point – yes, it's cold to say that, but what I've been talking about, Rin, is the one thing I have to get off my chest, the one thing I have never properly explained to you. There's no time to sort through the rest, Rin, and if this is to be the last time you see me, I at least want you to know, to truly understand, the motive behind what you think is my madness.
Don't laugh like that, please, Rin. I've been around you long enough that I can tell when you're forcing it.
But listen, Rin – what I'm saying is the truth. I know what I'm talking about. I've known what I talked about since I fought… since I fought myself in the halls of Castle Einzbern, all those years ago.
But you weren't there to see, and I never did fully explain.
You told me he told you to watch over him, over me.
I'll tell you, then, what he showed me.
What happened back there…
Rin, during that fight, every flaw in my philosophy you've ever pointed out, every defect present in the machinery of my ideal, every weak point in the fiber of my life's ideology was shown to me in excruciating detail.
This ideal is unachievable.
You cannot save everyone. To protect something, it must first be put in danger. To save a million, you must be prepared to slaughter a thousand.
This ideal is unachievable.
But I realized that it doesn't matter to me if it is.
You see, back during that fight, Emiya Shirou never stood a chance of actually defeating Heroic Spirit Emiya.
It was simply impossible. It was just something that could not be done.
He was, in all ways you could think of, the culmination of my dream.
But at the same time, I could not lose against myself. It was impossible to defeat him outright, but as I pulled myself from the floor I realized that I could at least make such an impossibility become as close to the truth as possible.
That if I was going to die here, that if I could never beat him back into giving up his vendetta, I might, at the very least, show him the truth of everything.
And in doing that, I showed myself the truth.
That this ideal is unachievable…
…but it is not a mistake.
My father, Emiya Kiritsugu, realized this before I was even born. He knew the Utopia he longed for was one that was ever-distant, one that was unreachable, but he kept on running, believing that he would some day get there if he got far enough. And even though he didn't reach this… this… Avalon, each step he did take only took him closer to, not farther from, his dream.
And that, Rin, that which Kiritsugu did is what I have been doing all these years… and what I intend to do now.
This dream is impossible.
But even if it is so, then I'm still going to give my best to make it as close to a reality as it can possibly get.
I might, like Kiritsugu, like Archer, not ever be able to reach Utopia, Rin.
But I can at least make a projection of it.
I know it, Rin.
I know that you can't save everyone.
But you can damn well try.
So don't cry, Rin, please don't cry.
This is something I can't deny Rin, you know it now. Please, understand.
That's better…
Oh. The clock's hit twelve.
I… I have to go now, Rin.
Please say goodbye to Sakura for me.