Author's note:

Standard FanFic disclaimer: I don't own any of the copyrighted playgrounds of this fic. I just sneak in at night to play on the respective owners' toys.

I am not an expert on any of these universes. I will spend some of my limited time and effort in an attempt to study the related materials but expect to see several mistakes and discrepancies.

AU and/or OOC: This fic was originally intended to be the third in a multi-part series based around various characters from RWBY and Fate/Stay Night unwittingly stumbling through dimension-hopping adventures. Trial and error during the writing process revealed that the first two parts worked best as gradually revealed back story. Thus the reader will find several significant characters will seem very OOC and the many concepts will have veered sharply from original source materials.

o.O

AN2: Due to honest and blunt feedback (which I really appreciated) I have replaced the first chapters of this story. The original chapters will eventually be posted in a revised format

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Rhaenys Targaryen/Illyasviel von Einzbern

Fate repeats itself. Like a horrible spiked wheel which crushes the same souls beneath its heavy tread with each rotation. Illya just had a different name in this life.

In both of Illyasviel's lives her fathers hesitated and held the newborn babe at arm's length when they observed her crimson eyes.

Both of her mothers were kind, gentle, and fragile women who bathed her in gentle touches, soft words and loving kisses.

In both lives she was born into nobility. Families of wealth, prestige and power.

Both of her fathers were distracted and distant. Too focused on a divine mission and their supposed role to give the desperate little daughter clinging to their pant leg the time and attention she pled for.

Both of her fathers abandoned her.

Both of her fathers died due to a war they could have avoided.

Both of her mothers died as victims in the wars their husbands dragged them into.

But in this life Illya had to listen, her sobs muffled by the pillow she bit into, as her baby brother's cries were horribly and abruptly silenced. Her mother's screams were horrible and soul shattering and pierced too easily through the little hands she had pressed over her ears.

The little white-haired girl closed her eyes and tried to ignore the sounds that followed. The vulgar words and grunts. The slaps and thuds of flesh striking flesh. Her mother's screams and cries and sobs. The final muffled choking.

And whenever Illya opened her eyes she could see the boots moving around the floor surrounding her father's bed. The Lannister men threw open her father's closets and dumped over his dresser. The walls and fireplace were examined for possible hidden passageways. Her parents' gold and jewelry were surreptitiously hidden within the searchers' clothing. One of the men sat on the bed as he exchanged his own worn pair of shoes for the soft boots from Braavos her father wore the last time he danced with Illya's mother. The frame of the bed curled slightly under his weight, pressing against her slender shoulder.

Illya opened her eyes and gasped at the dark eyes glaring at her.

But the runes she had carved into the floor with her father's knife withstood the perception of the fourth man to peer into her hiding spot and his frustrated glower withdrew.

Illya's nurse was pinned against the wall just inside the door where the trunk at the foot of the bed obstructs Illya's view. The men threatened the kind plump woman again. The nurse sobbed that she didn't know where Rhaenys was hiding. Then the Dornish nurse screamed again.

Illya pressed her hands harder into the sides of her head and tried not to listen.

TIme passed.

Illya's poor nurse fell silent.

Men came and left until the savaged room was left silent and empty.

Shadows moved across the floor as the sun crept across the sky, bringing into sharp detail the tiny mangled mass of black fur at the base of the nearby wall. She'd tried to hide Balerion with her but the kitten had escaped her grasp while she was carving the runes into the floor.

The exhausted three-year clutched the soft pillow close and reluctantly drifted into sleep.

Rhaenys awoke with a strangled gasp which she tried too late to bury in her pillow. The angry shouts above her hiding place stopped and a voice commanded the other men to be silent. The boots of the men which surrounded her hiding space froze in place and a suffocating silence pressed down.

Illya's lungs burned as slow agonizing seconds passed until she couldn't hold her breath any longer.

Her gasp for air was too deep and too loud, fear driving her lungs and terror pounding in a chest that she thought had gone numb.

"Princess Rhaenys?" A man's voice called out gently. The stranger had an accent from the North. He was one of the men who killed her family.

The man knelt down, hair splaying across the floor. His dark eyes searched her hiding space uncertainly before he gave a startled gasp and she felt the feeble uncertain web of concealment collapse.

Rhaenys scrambled desperately away from his grasping hand. His coaxing words and the excited shouts of the other men in the room were drowned out by her own screams.

The world lurched and staggered and exploded into smoke and roaring green flame.

Rhaenys choked on the fumes and frantically kicked at the man who was dragging her out from the shelter of the bed.

The room spun and twisted drunkenly around her. Her hearing was muffled and rang oddly following the explosion.

Her masked assailant held up an protective arm to shield himself from her ineffective thrashing and used his free hand to pull down the wraps of cloth which concealed his face.

It took time for her shaken brain to register who she was seeing.

At first she thought it was Jamie Lannister, her Golden Lion. The protector who would help her find Balerion when the kitten escaped her room. The young Kingsguard who would tell her stories. The smirking teenager with the beautiful face who would tease her with compliments until she would blush and he would laugh and she would wonder if she would marry someone like him someday. The kind man who would ignore the strict rules of her new society, who would hold her and sooth her sobs when she missed the father who abandoned her and the whispers in the Red Keep which suggested that she would lose her mother as well unless the maester's newest medicine was effective.

Then her vision cleared and something in her brain seemed to snap back into place with a pop and she recognized the man who was as alien to this world as she was.

Juane Arc, the foolish naive hero cursed to wander between realities until he had completed twelve impossible tasks for the immortal wizard Zelretch.

Juane was breathing hard, blood flowing down his cheek from a head wound and his clothing was ragged and singed. All indications that his Magic Core and Aura had not yet adapted to their new world any more than her own Magic Circuits had.

"Sorry, princess." he offered with a tired grin. "I know I promised not to burn down your next castle but the interior design team did a truly horrible job. I mean, really, pasley and stripes? What kind of blind man came up with that combination?"

"Stupid Oniisan!" Illya cried as she threw herself into his arms.

There were constants in Rhaenys' lives. Fate always seemed determined to crush her. And Illya always knew, if she could just hold on long enough, her family would come for her. Regardless of dimension, time, or even death.

Because screw fate. Family comes first.