He was the winter wood, an ashen coat of selfish selflessness that covered soul scars. He was the winter wood, the trill of the unmated hawk seeking solace in its emptiness. He was the winter wood, the roots of hundred-year-old evergreens that dug into drained soil, dry of nutrition and afflicted with a dearth of sustenance.

He was the winter wood, dead and cold in the bright light of dawn.

"What a sad end for a sad little boy, no?" Mephistopheles says to you, crouching down and leaning back against a tree trunk, staring at the bloody gory remnants of Shirou Emiya. "I think that neither you nor I could make the decision as to whether or not he deserved this, but nonetheless even I would say that this is not the ending he wanted."

He sighed.

"Unrestricted by the written word, by your eyes upon him, he had the ability to choose his own path... and this is where it led him." He motioned to the shards of bone that lay before him. "I am sure that some of you may throw metaphor upon metaphor upon this. You may decide that this is why he is, and always was, a stupid child. Or perhaps you say that he, the protagonist, should never have attempted to snap his puppet strings."

The sharp blue eyes meet your own.

"That is what you want, yes?" A remnant of his old playfulness managed to appear. "You like to believe that you are Shirou Emiya. It is not a matter of being an empty shell for you to fill yourself into, like that one boy in Antarctica, no. Shirou Emiya is a person, and yet, he is you—or perhaps it is more accurate to say he is the ideal you wish to become."

His empty laugh grates on your ears.

"Justice," he says disdainfully. "Saving others. What a joke, a punchline greater than any prank I could have ever played. What a sick fantasy that he deludes himself with, a lie he covered his eyes and ears with. Not that I fault him, of course."

Finally, he stands up, and begins to circle around the decaying entrails as the sun continues to rise. Your sense of smell is stimulated in disgust as the sunlight accelerates the rot.

"The trauma that he underwent is not something that a fully-grown adult could be expected to easily recover from, you know." In his rapid stride, he hit one of the trees, but the only reaction he provided was to move aside and walk around it. "If his crutch is to destroy his self-worth to the point that the only valuable action he can commit to in his life is helping and saving others, well..."

He stopped, and his glinting white smile appeared once more.

"I can think of more than a few other traumatees who should have taken that attitude instead of engaging in systematic genocide."

His eyes turn to you with one eyebrow raised, though that stare does not last long, for Mephistopheles looks at his feet and observes that golden dust is slowly coming off of them.

"Time is, as always, short," he says, looking back to you. He motions with a 'come hither' gesture, and you cannot help but come near him. "Come. Let us see what this city can tell us."

He takes your hands in his, and the both of you stand atop a tall skyscraper.

"You remember what I said to you, I hope?" he asks without looking, walking to the edge. Golden flakes are now falling off of his legs, and his feet have all but disappeared. "About actors and their characters."

You wished that you could answer, but as always, your voice is silent.

"I am a nothing," he continues, "not a something. I was here for barely a moment, and now I am here for less than a thought. I am..."

The sunrise is blinding, and yet he stares into it unblinking. The golden dust has risen to his knees.

"I am the figment that disappears at the dawn of the next day," he says. "And in this light shall I be forgotten, and in this moment shall I not be known."

He turns to you with the first pure smile he'd ever shown.

"Goodbye, good riddance, and godspeed, dear reader."

And he was gone.

EDIT: He appears briefly, his face flickering.

"Oh, and one last thing," his frown is pained. "Please stop making requests. There is no muse in the world that can truly pay attention to the din that a vibrant audience creates. Please continue to be as raucous as you have been, but know that she is deaf to your pleas and cries. She can only hear the sound of her own voice."

He waves goodbye.

Yes, I am that drunk.

Thanks for reading.