Gilgamesh stood in what was perhaps amazement or else an anger so large that it stunned him, "That elf witch pretender queen has kidnapped my gardens."

Jeanne was already running, the empty church abandoned for all it was worth, chasing after the castle in the sky swiftly making its way towards the Yggdmillennia castle on the outskirts of Trifas.

It was an ominous, red, glowing thing. A great demonic eye in the heavens looking down upon the earth in judgement, and though Jeanne had no inherent reason to distrust red over black, she nevertheless saw it as an ill omen. A physical sign, perhaps, that red had always intended to stray from the rules of the war long before their attempted assassination of her and refusal to meet her within the church.

Gilgamesh either found it beneath him to sprint or else was still too enraged to move from his position staring up at the sky like a fool as he repeated, "That she-dog has stolen the Hanging Gardens of Babylon for this mockery of a war! She has not simply taken any city, she has stolen my city!"

Yes, Jeanne had gotten that point, that if it had been anything but the Hanging Gardens Gilgamesh would have likely been far less personally offended. Still, she was swiftly falling behind, not nearly fast enough through the fields and forests to keep even in the shadow of the castle. More, from a distance she could see bones of the dead, of men and demons, dropped from the fortress to the earth below where they assembled themselves into skeleton warriors to lay siege upon Yggdmillennia.

The war that Jeanne had thus far only glimpsed in visions had now begun in earnest.

The rose of the war was blossoming and what poisoned heart it truly contained, whether the grail itself as Lily and Gilgamesh seemed to believe or something else entirely, was unknown to her.

"I suppose there's nothing for it."

Jeanne looked up, startled, as Gilgamesh caught up to her. Not, she noticed to her profound irritation, by sprinting as a normal man or hero might, but instead lounging upon a golden hovercraft like a king. Because Gilgamseh, king of heroes, would never stoop so low as to ride in anything other than style.

"Well, schoolgirl, are you coming?" he asked, golden eyebrow raising as he poured himself a drink as if he were merely cruising about town.

Jeanne was very tempted to deny him, if only to see the look on his face.

As it was, she asked dully as she ran, "Schoolgirl?"

She had been called many things in life and since her death, prophet, maid of Orleans, and witch among them. Only Gilgamesh had ever had the audacity to call her a schoolgirl.

"What else am I to call you?" Gilgamesh asked as if he had all the time in the world to debate such trivialities, "You claim neither the title of warrior nor king, and I highly doubt you wish for me to simply call you Jeanne."

"Please refrain from using my Christian name, King of Heroes," Jeanne replied automatically and tersely, much to his apparent amusement. Jeanne had the horrible feeling, only growing over the past few hours, that Gilgamesh considered her a friend.

Whatever it even meant to be a friend of Gilgamesh of Uruk.

"Then schoolgirl, I'm afraid, you remain."

She supposed, though it irritated her, that she could not argue with that. Given that she had no inclination to give him the title of prophet or saint to call her then she had to settle for what she was given. She just wished what she was given was less… pitiable.

"Well, are you coming?"

Jeanne sighed, gripped her banner tighter in her gauntlet covered hands, and resigned herself to accepting aid from a rogue servant of all things. Ordinarily she would rebuff him for his clear lack of neutrality, but time was slipping away from her, and Gilgamesh had proved he was not aligned with either the black or the red.

He certainly had his own agenda, but in this strange war, that made him neutral enough.

With a small nod she launched herself onto his floating platform, skidding to a halt just behind his throne, grabbing on just in time as the craft flew forward at a far faster pace than before to allow them to gain on the castle.

Still, with the wind whipping through their hair and the castle ahead she could not help but look at him and ask, "Are you truly aiding me for your own pettiness alone, Gilgamesh?"

He was quiet for a moment, giving her a rather flat look as if it was now his turn to find her audacious, but she had never pretended to be less than she was or to dance around words. A flaw, perhaps, but Jeanne had neither the time nor patience for such verbal dances.

Finally, he said, "I have said before, though you undoubtedly will not believe it, that you remind me of my wife. Were I simply as petty as you imply then I would have destroyed my own gardens without hesitation rather than see them in the hands of a thief. For your goals, whatever they may be, you have the chance to meet the priest Kotomine while he remains alive."

Unless, of course, he was bluffing and did not have a phantasm capable of destroying the gardens. Still, as arrogant as the man was, thus far Jeanne did not believe he was inclined to bluffing or overestimating his own abilities.

Certainly, he believed he was capable of it.

And strange as it was, she supposed that was worth something, from him. Given his legend she would have thought such actions, even perhaps for Enkidu, would have been impossible. So, she could only incline her head, nod, and take his action for the graciousness that it was, "Thank you."

She had always been isolated, kept apart by her position and by God, and thus had felt like an island among her family, the dauphin, and the troops she had fought with and inspired. Friendship had never been an easy, or perhaps even a known, thing for her.

Not since she was thirteen in her family's garden all those years ago.

Perhaps she was not simply Gilgamesh's odd friend, but perhaps, in his own strange way, he was her friend as well.

He looked smaller than he had in life, Lily thought, which was rather amazing as in life Caules Yggdmillennia had looked quite small. His glasses had fallen from his face, cracked now on the pavement and just out of reach of his still fingers. There was no blood though, no sign of distress, only the body of a boy on a street.

It'd hurt more than she'd expected it to, more than killing Kirei Kotomine had. She'd thought it'd be the same, a brief sort of hollowness, and then trudging forward toward the final stage prepared for Emiya and the holy grail.

She hadn't realized how different those circumstances had been.

There Lily had already existed in the world, hadn't been summoned from death or some other plane but instead simply from England. She'd had her own body, her own limitless magic, and being tied to Kotomine had been formalities and command seals.

She didn't really exist in this world, was made of magic and light just like every other servant, and all the power she drew didn't come from herself but instead came from a boy who was now dead.

When he'd hit the pavement, it'd been like tearing out her own heart.

She took one deep breath then another, reveling in the scent of the night air, the air she hadn't thought she'd breathe in so soon. They'd had more patience than she'd expected, a night, a day, and then another night she'd been rotting inside that dungeon with the Marquess de Sade as a host.

God only knew how long it would be if it was left to them, if Wizard Lenin hadn't forced Caules' hand out of nowhere.

"Are you alright?" he asked, giving her a peculiarly fond and soft look rather than the irritated expression she had expected at getting herself summoned into another goddamn grail war.

"Peachy," she responded drily, clenching and unclenching her fists as she forced the holes in her palms to heal themselves. Which itched far more than she expected it to, obnoxiously so, really.

His eyes moved to her hands, to the closing wounds, and seemed to reach the correct conclusion on his own. That Lily had lasted about as long as one could expect under the thumb of a family of despot mages and that there had been a reason she hadn't lifted a finger for Caules.

She sighed again, crossing her arms, and taking stock of her situation.

She had teleported, well really more been yanked, to some city that probably wasn't Trifas. Caules was dead, Lily was no longer his servant, she also wasn't in a torture dungeon porn basement anymore, and the holy grail still rested in Yggdmillennia castle.

"Whatever you're thinking I suggest you stop it at once," Wizard Lenin said, cutting into her thoughts.

Already he was disposing of Caules' body, forcing it into dust and light so that only the pavement remained. He kept his eyes on her though, that pale translucent blue that always seemed to be able to see to the heart of everything.

"We were summoned into this world, Lily, for better or worse you are reliant on the magic of a master. Unless some other poor fool of a master claims you as a servant any magic you use now comes from your own limited life force. Use too much and you'll disappear from this world entirely."

Disappear? She assumed she would depart back to her own home world then, that at least had been her initial idea, but now that he said it she had the thought that maybe she'd go somewhere else or would just… Disappear…

She was using her own life energy, after all, whatever that was worth here. If she used more than she had then would she even end up in a train station?

"I've unfortunately been summoned as Assassin, which means I can't claim you as a servant," Wizard Lenin added with a sigh, standing from his crouched position so he could properly look down at her.

"So then, it's only a matter of time."

"Unless you suck the very life from enough hapless mages or servants," Wizard Lenin said, clearly implying that this was the gruesome means by which he had lingered in this world.

"Somehow," Lily said as she looked at his hands covered in metaphorical blood, "That does not sound like my particular cup of tea."

"I didn't say it had to be your cup of tea," Wizard Lenin scoffed brushing dust off of his impeccably dark outfit that made him either look like he was dressed for a funeral or else a fashion show, "I only have done this much looking for you."

"Looking for me?" Lily asked, a little baffled, much to Wizard Lenin's apparent annoyance.

"You disappear in the middle of a sentence, which of course has my golden self-proclaimed brother-in-law breathing down my neck until he disappears only a few days later. Of course I came looking for you and the end of the goddamn world! The last thing we needed was you under yet another mage's command when they figured out they had infinite power at their fingertips."

"Oh," Lily said dumbly, "Right."

She hadn't really thought about that, well, she had she supposed in the beginning when the memory of Kirei Kotomine had been nice and fresh but it'd almost slipped her mind later. Caules had just been so… clueless. He'd been so insistent, for the longest time, that Lily was something in his own power level and then he'd gone and thrown her in the dungeons for bad behavior.

It hadn't even occurred to him to start abusing Lily's vast and terrifying arsenal of abilities for his own benefit.

It'd only occurred to him that if she pushed too hard she might destroy herself…

And now he was dead and his words ironically true.

"Right," Wizard Lenin sneered, "Honestly, Lily, you could have simply said no!"

"And let someone else get the grail?!" Lily balked, now taking a step forward towards him, throwing her hands wildly in the air at the very thought of the catastrophe that would happen in that case, "And use it to blow up everything?"

"No one, Lily, has ever retrieved the holy grail!" he spat, "Not in four holy grail wars and certainly not in this one!"

"Well, that's comforting—"

"It should be, it at the very least means that you do not have to risk—"

"It's a risk of infinite stakes! If even one of them gets it and uses it what do you think will—"

"Then let the damned king of Babylon deal with it! Let me deal with it! You do not put yourself under the command of a dog of a mage!"

They both stopped, breathing heavily, and almost unwillingly Lily's eyes drifted to the spot where Caules had so recently been. She wondered if his family would even think to mourn him, the sister probably, but anyone else…

Well, they had seemed more or less the kind of family accustomed to eating one another.

Quietly, closing her eyes, Lily said, "It must be destroyed, Lenin."

"You didn't manage it last time," he said but Lily said nothing to that, forced herself to remain calm, objective, and pragmatic.

"They have the greater grail already, a wish is basically within their grasp, and I must manage to destroy it this time."

She stepped towards him, grabbed his hand in her own, this war bereft of the command seals he'd worn in the last grail war, "Lenin, if any of them get it, even if they're the best of people… We don't have a choice this time, I don't have the option of failure."

"You won't make it," he said, a hand drifting softly through her curls, "You'll write yourself out of this world before you have a chance to get close to the thing."

Borrowed time and borrowed magic.

Lily, slowly but surely, was already leaking out of this world.

"Still," Lily said, leaving unsaid that she had to make the most of the time and powers she was given, just like the rest of them.

She stepped away from him, steadying herself for the teleportation and the drain she knew would come with it, when she was a few feet away she stopped and looked him over. As always he looked coldly competent, perhaps more in his element than he did even as Voldemort.

With a slight waive and a smile she said, "By the way, if I do happen to die in glorious battle, if you have a chance do try and destroy it for me. After all, I kind of like the world and I'd hate to see something happen to it."

Before he could answer or even open his mouth she was already gone, hurtling through time and space towards Yggdmillennia castle and whatever hidden sanctuary the holy grail had been left to rot in.

"We should have stolen a faster car!" Mordred shouted over the roar of the engine which in itself was not all that different from the thundering of horses' hooves, "They've started the party without us, master!"

Sisigou had little to say to that, too busy cowering in the passenger seat and clinging to the leather interior of the hunk of junk they'd stolen in Sighisoara. God, Mordred would have killed for four-wheel drive, as it was he was swerving like a maniac to avoid budding golems, skeleton warriros, and homunculi by the barrelful.

Not that he'd had any idea what a car or four wheel drive was before this whole grail war thing but he still would have killed for them.

"Are you sure you have that rider skill?" Sisigou shouted, sweat dripping down his brow as yet another skeleton warrior crashed across their windshield and over their hood.

"Damn straight I do," Mordred said with a determined grin as he tried to drive as the crow flew towards the battlefield, "And we'd be there already if I wasn't riding the equivalent of a crippled mule!"

Not that they'd had much of a choice, getting out of dodge it'd been pretty clear that it was the closest care on hand or nothing, but they were paying for it now and Mordred would have killed even for a good horse.

The important bit was that once again Mordred and his master were missing the goddamn war and if they'd just stayed put and avoided getting shot at by Archer and somehow missing Assassin completely then this wouldn't have happened! They'd done that detour for nothing!

"I am going to kill so many servants when we get there," Mordred said under his breath, cursing God, cursing his mother, cursing his father, Merlin, the man in black, anyone he could think of that had delayed his arrival to the battlefield and his rightful wish of confronting the sword in the stone, "I am going to kill all of them for having the goddamn nerve for starting without us!"

"I'm sure that was the first thing on their mind," Mordred's master unhelpfully cut in, as dry and sardonic as ever.

"Shut up, master, you'll bite your tongue off!" Mordred said after a particularly gnarly turn that had said master pressed against the passenger window screaming in mortal terror.

Which, honestly, Mordred had ridden faster and more furious on horses. You'd think Kairi Sisigou was a pansy incapable of handling any kind of excitement by the way he was shrieking let alone a mage who'd volunteer himself for a grail war. Well, that was why Mordred supposed that was why they were a team, he could sit there and summon creepy dead shit and Mordred could get them to the goddamn battle on time.

It was in the middle of shifting gears and avoiding yet another golem that it happened. It, of course, being a girl falling out of the sky and landing right on top of the hood of their car.

"Shit!" Mordred cursed, breaking to a halt and hoping to mitigate the worst of the damage, or at least not run her over.

As the car screeched to a halt Mordred took a shuddering breath, trying to think. Mordred had an intense dislike of involving civilians in battle. For one thing, it simply had not been done in his time, or at least, not directly. Wars were waged against fellow knights of neighboring kingdoms, against castle walls, the civilians were the ones who suffered in the aftermath as soldiers would loot, rape, and pillage in the name of their king.

Arthur had strictly forbidden such actions, by his nobility and stoicism had inspired his men to refrain from it, but it was an expected norm.

That did not mean Mordred had ever liked it.

It was, in fact, one of his first commands to his own master. That whatever they did, wherever they went, however they intended to fight and win this grail war, they would avoid civilian casualties at all cost.

He had not realized at the time that Sisigou was a remarkably similar breed of man, even being a mage, and had been more than willing to accommodate Mordred's ideals.

This was the battlefield though, a land made barren by magecraft and legendary warriors, where once there'd been open fields and forests there was now only a rock filled desert to serve for the birthplace of golems.

This wasn't a place where any normal civilian would just crash down from the sky.

Except, Mordred thought dully, he hadn't expected to defeat enemy servants simply by running over them with a car. Maybe he hadn't though, slowly, painfully slowly, the girl was picking herself up from the ground and dusting off her dark clothing.

"Watch yourself, asshole!" Mordred cried out when it looked like she'd live, if in great pain for the next few days, "Some of us are driving here!"

The girl said nothing, just turned her face towards the windshield and…

"Mother of Christ," Mordred said dumbly, and he could feel Sisigou struck dumb next to him, because in all the places to look they'd found the man in black's woman.

She was as unnerving in person as she was in a photograph, maybe more so if Mordred thought about it. Her eyes had this particular unnerving glow in the dark that hadn't quite been captured by a camera's lens. Mordred had thought her eyes looked like his, like his father's, but they didn't at all.

They looked like something that didn't quite belong in this world of mortal fools.

Without thinking Mordred stepped on the gas, accelerating this hunk of junk of a car for all it was worth, and intent on trampling over the enemy before she could really get to her feet. Without a word the girl lunged to the side, alarmingly quickly given her lean stature, and skid to a halt outside the range of the car.

"Master," Mordred said calmly as he swerved the car around, spinning it to get them in position for another joust, "Now might be a good time to start shooting monkey fingers or whatever the hell it is you do."

He had no comment for that, which was rather typical of him in the heat of battle, but instead loaded his shot gun and positioned himself at the passenger window for a drive by shooting. The girl however didn't look alarmed in the least, in fact, Mordred would say she didn't show any expression at all.

It was not quite the stoicism and determination of Arthur in battle, but something more resigned, something more unnerving for it. Like her battlefield lay somewhere entirely beyond Mordred and it was a battle she was destined to lose.

Still, she lunged again out of the way of the car, ducking under the bullets as well with a nimbleness that marked her as likely being the enemy Saber. Only, a Saber who for whatever reason hadn't just drawn his damn sword.

Not that Mordred had either, but he had places to be and servants to kill. Besides, given the man in black, this one just irritated the hell out of him.

"Come on, is that all you've got?" Mordred asked as he swerved the car for yet another go, which, this car really couldn't handle this kind of treatment. If it really were a steed the crippled mule's knees would be buckling right about now.

The girl said nothing for a moment, just stared forward, then her eyes narrowed and finally moved into a stance that indicated she was about to at least do something. Unfortunately, that something wasn't drawing a sword, a lance, or even a bow but instead raising her hand forward and without a word or a motion blowing up their car.

Mordred quickly tore her master out of there, shielding him with his body as the car exploded in a mushroom of fire and petrol, while the girl took the distraction for the opportunity it was to sprint off towards the battle.

"Did you just blow up my car?!" Mordred asked, donning his armor without even thinking, "Did that bitch just blow up our ride?"

"You hated our ride," Sisigou noted as he brushed himself off.

"But at least it was a ride!" Mordred said, but he didn't waste time, already he was hauling his master like a pack of potatoes over his shoulder. Oh, they were going to make it to the battlefield, Mordred wasn't missing this fight for the world, and if he had to haul his master there personally on foot then by god he was going to do it.

And the first thing Mordred was going to do was strike down anything that even looked like it had red hair.

Lily, as she sprinted along, absently wondered if this was what normal people felt like. When you pushed past your limits, or even just brushed against them with your lungs burning and fingers shaking, was this what it felt like?

Lily hadn't had limits for as long as she could remember, there'd always been this unnatural well of strength that greatly outpowered her physical abilities. If she was limited in any physical sense she could just bend the world around her to suit her needs.

It'd never seemed possible that it could ever run out or that she had to be wary simply by drawing too much power versus the consequences of her actions.

She didn't like it.

She was lightheaded while her feet felt as if they were filled with lead, her hands were shaking even when she ran, she felt cold sweat pouring down her brow, and there was this feeling that if she stopped here and now she'd never get back up again.

Everything else, Arthur Pendragon reincarnated into the form of a scruffy foul mouthed biker chick who looked like she belonged in some racing franchise or another, or the impending battle on the horizon felt distant.

She'd missed, or else powered out, teleportation had been more draining than she'd thought and that left her sprinting towards the fortress and wherever the hell the grail was. That, or somehow, miraculously killing everyone else in this war before they could even think of touching the thing.

No, she'd find it and destroy it this time, it wasn't a matter of having a choice. As dramatic as it sounded, failure was not an option.

Even if, more than in the chamber or with Quirrel, it felt as if failure was swift and inevitable. How ironic, in a world where she hadn't been expected, had been continually underestimated and mistaken for a patchwork monster, she was going to die without honor or glory for a cause no one understood.

Fitting, in its own way.

She ducked under the cover of trees, clearly reaching the outskirts of the battle as skeleton demon warriors made their appearance, which of course Lily had neither the time nor energy to deal with.

How far away was the castle? It felt as if she'd been running for years and she hadn't even seen it on the horizon yet. Plus, when she got back inside, she'd have to find the damn thing when she'd even gone looking for it when she'd had access to the place.

"I am too old for this garbage," she huffed out to herself as, with what little energy she had remaining, decimated the skeletons around her.

"If you prick us, do we not bleed?" a voice called out from the shadows, and Lily lifted her head to see the figure of a caped man begin to form at the edge of the clearing, "If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die? And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge?"

A man appeared, ordinary looking enough, save for the outfit out of place and time as well as his delighted grin directed towards her, "Lily, hero without cause or country, this barren stage has been a lonely place without you."

Lily straightened, unwilling to speak, unwilling to even guess with her pounding head and heaving lungs who this was supposed to be and why she wasn't the only person in this war who thought to quote Shakespeare for the occasion.

"Oh, no words?" the man ask, tilting his head and giving her an almost puzzled look, "I had expected plenty, perhaps my own for that matter, from your lips. But perhaps, for once, you believe that brevity is the soul of wit."

He answered for himself with a small, almost amused, smile, "Ah, but then, you are the type to march to your destruction with a stoicism that the prince of Denmark could only envy. No madness, no wailing, no grief for you but instead a steady march into the very jaws of Hell. We have been here before and will be here again, isn't that what's going through your mind?"

The man opened his book then, pages began to flutter out of it and towards her as Lily took a stunned step back, unable and unwilling to expend the energy to dispel whatever this was.

"Out, out, brief candle!" the man cried, but it sounded distant to Lily's ears as the pages quickly began to close in, smothering her.

Then she was no longer standing in a forest but instead inside the glittering walls of Hogwarts. Only, they were not glittering tonight, instead they seemed washed out somehow as if in the washing machine of her mind they had been sent through one too many times.

What remained was sterile yet barren, barely containing a hint of the soul and life they had promised to so many.

She walked forward, and distantly she felt the sword of Gryffindor in her hand, the sign of knighthood she had taken unasked upon herself when no one else would bare the sword. The halls were silent, empty and unforgiving, as she walked downwards towards the chamber of secrets or whatever other dark forgotten realms existed inside Hogwarts.

"I have been here before," she said to herself dully, because he was not wrong, she had been here so very many times.

Only if her life was a play it was a continually anticlimactic one. For, although she had been victorious most times so far, there had never been a return in triumph. Always, always, it was a quiet disappearance surrounded by suspicion and doubt.

In Lily's experience, the hero was never truly rewarded, only given a sunset to quietly depart in.

This was simply another chamber of secrets, in its own way, and just as Morgan Gaunt was a kind of death that had been unlike any other this disappearance out of this parallel world would be another.

She was a mayfly here, just like any other, and she would be gone before they even truly learned her name.

What a pale and pathetic shadow she cast upon the earth.

"Why help these people?"

Lily turned, and she was in the forest once again, only this time the floor was covered in white swaying lilies. Gilgamesh looked in his element, dressed not in his gleaming armor but instead pale satin which he had likely worn in Babylon five thousand years ago.

He gave her a fond smile as he repeated a question he had often asked her, "Why do you insist on belonging to the curs of the world, Lily? You know they will not give you their gratitude, and if they do it shall be fleeting? What ties you to this role of hero you've taken upon yourself?"

"I…"

"They will never thank you," she turned and Wizard Lenin was there as well, leaning against a tree, looking past her towards the sky with the weariness he so often tried to hide.

"They will spit on you, loathe you, revile you, and perhaps worship you but they will never truly have the capacity to thank you."

"I do not do it for gratitude," Lily said to both of them, but neither truly understood that, it had never been in their nature to understand why it was that she did what she did. Even in the face of all opposition.

"Leave them to their sour wine guzzled from their holy grails," Gilgamesh said, reaching towards her and holding out a pale glowing hand for her to take, "We were made for greater halls and glories than this."

"I don't do it for glory either," Lily said, but his hand was warm and she was so tired…

Still, she looked up at him, met those strange red eyes that spoke of two-thirds divinity and one-third humanity, and said, "It's fate."

She stepped back, a fire of determination lighting inside her soul, reinvigorating what little of herself still was left in this plane of existence, "It's simply fate, immovable, non-negotiable, all-consuming destiny that no power on earth can fight. I will destroy the grail and save humanity, just like I blew up Lenin and once saved Britain, because somewhere in the great text of the world it is already written."

With that the illusion dispelled itself and Lily was left staring at the flabbergasted and flamboyant thespian. He stared down at her with an open mouth, it opening then closing again, and before either could say a word he disappeared in a shimmer of light leaving only Lily behind.

"On the one hand," Lily said to herself with a growing smile, "It's nice to find a fellow appreciator of Shakespeare, on the other hand, did he have to be such a Lockhart-esque cad?"

Still, her battlefield, her prize as it was, lay elsewhere and without further delay Lily set off towards the heart of the battlefield and the holy grail.

Author's Note: Brought to you once again by AlleyKat2014 and the brief time I had this morning to write during the holidays. Ah there's nothing quite like all these characters killing each other to bring in the holiday spirit.

Thanks for reading and reviewing, reviews are much appreciated.

Disclaimer: I don't own Fate/Zero, Fate/Apocrypha, or Harry Potter