I saw Heaven's Feel on Thursday with my partner in partial cosplay (I was Shirou, they were Rin) and it was the most fun I've had at the movies in a while! My love for Fate/stay night and my love for Sakura Matou are reinvigorated.

If y'all are curious, my google doc for this fic is up to about 66k words and 16 chapters in total, so we're not running out any time soon! If that's a third of what this ends up being, I'll eat my own belt. That said, I am gonna go to the every-other-week schedule I mentioned in the first chapter, so expect the next chapter in two weeks.

The walk was long, though the church wasn't especially far, and Rin put that down mostly to Shirou temporarily being an invalid. Ever since she'd made him bring Assassin out into his physical form, he hadn't been able to do much more than hobble. According to him, it wasn't because moving hurt, but rather because he simply had no strength in any of his limbs. Still, it was a pain in the ass, and she'd ordered Archer to help keep him steady as they walked. Nobody was happier about this than Archer.

"Rin, this is humiliating," her Servant protested. When she'd ordered him to help, she'd expected that he'd do something normal, like putting his arm around Shirou to support him. Archer, instead, had walked up behind him and grabbed a fistful of the back of Shirou's bloodstained white-and-blue shirt. Every time Shirou wavered, Archer gave the shirt a firm tug to right him.

It also seemed to be taking every ounce of willpower the Servant had to not just let the idiot fall.

Rin, meanwhile, was trying not to fume and failing miserably. Every time something like inner peace approached, she'd remember how much time and effort and preparation had gone into her botched summoning of Archer. How much mana she'd stored and burned, how many sleepless nights she'd spent calculating variables, the sheer willpower it had taken to direct the magical energies involved in the ritual. What had Shirou done? He'd gotten stabbed. Anyone could get stabbed. Hell, if it would have worked, she'd have skipped all the hard work and just stabbed herself. Saved some damn time.

And then there was Assassin. It still boggled the mind that anything that powerful could be called an Assassin. She'd done a fair bit of research into the Grail War before she'd made her move. She'd read up on each class, its strengths and weaknesses, its tendencies. If anything, when she'd told Shirou that Assassins were weak, she'd undersold it. Records of past Grail Wars were spotty. According to Kirei, the last War had been such a debacle that all the surviving Masters refused to speak of it, and what remained from the first three were spotty at best. The records she could find indicated that Assassins had never actually won a one-on-one fight that hadn't been rigged in some way. Masters, they were proficient at killing. Other Servants? There was almost no contest. She'd read analyses by experts in the field of Familiarity. Studies on the vessels the Grail used as frameworks. The precise latticework of power that had been shaped into the Platonic ideal of the Assassin simply should not have been able to sustain the kind of raw power that she'd seen in the fight with Archer.

And Shirou had stumbled into the role of Assassin's master with nothing more than a cute butt, a hole in his chest, and a dopey look on his face. Then she'd think about how hard she'd worked again, and the cycle would start anew.

Definitely not fuming.

Mostly, they walked in silence, broken by short bursts of conversation. In a stronger voice, Shirou asked, "What happened to, uh, the guy with the spear?"

Rin hissed in a sharp breath. "So Lancer was there?" In all the confusion and lecturing, she'd forgotten to check. "Assassin, did you kill him?"

"He yet draws breath. Our weapons clashed but twice before he withdrew. I would have given chase, but I sensed thy Archer's approach and determined that I should not leave my Contractor undefended."

"That was probably the right move," Shirou replied, nodded vaguely in her direction. "He definitely wanted me dead, and Tohsaka wasn't helping me yet. I passed out right before all that happened, though."

"If he'd gone after Lancer, you'd probably be dead," Rin said bluntly.

"I'm glad I'm not," he said earnestly.

When they reached their destination, she stopped to allow Shirou a moment to breathe. They stood outside the gates of a great western-style church that loomed up into the blackness of night. She was supposed to know the denomination, but frankly, she cared so little about what the false priest claimed to believe that she'd never bothered to remember. It was all just The Church to her.

Shirou looked up at it, slapping Archer's hand away from his back. There was something like grim determination on his face. He probably thought he looked nice and heroic, but he was brittle. At least he seemed able to stand on his own, now. "So he's in there?"

Rin nodded. "He's a priest. Kirei Kotomine. Also, he's the supervisor of this Grail War."

"The war has a supervisor?"

"Of course it does. Someone has to make sure it isn't compromised, and that too much attention isn't drawn by the combatants." She launched into another lecture on what she understood of the Church and its role in all this. Before too long though, she found herself interrupted.

"This is no house of Allah." Assassin's voice came from unnervingly close. If he'd been manifested, he'd have been standing shoulder-to-shoulder with her. (Or, well, shoulder-to-elbow, she supposed. Elbow-to-waist? He loomed large in her memory). His voice, painful to hear though it was, sounded surprisingly pensive.

Shirou looked up into the empty air. "It's not a real church?" His gaze turned back to the ominous steeple looming against the night. "Looks like one to me."

"A church is a building. A mosque is a building. A shrine is a building. Stone and brick and mud molded into something the builders profess to be piety. Stone cannot believe. Walls cannot bear faith alone." Pensive, shifting into quiet disdain. "A house of Allah is defined not by the shape it is given nor the name it is assigned. A house of Allah is made manifest by the people within."

"What do you believe, then?" Shirou seemed genuinely curious. It was like he'd forgotten where he was, or what he was talking to. He was like a distractible puppy.

"I believe in Him," he said, as if that explained everything.

Rin rolled her eyes, but Shirou leaned closer. "Yeah, but like… there's a lot of kinds of God, right?" In his interest, he'd moved a little too close to Rin for comfort, so she gave him a gentle shove back to where he'd been standing. He stumbled back as though she'd decked him, and shot her a glare.

"Religion speaks nothing more than words. Attempts to encapsulate the Divine into a form that the mortal, conscious mind can comprehend. God, Allah, the Root that magi worship. All aspects of the same divine spark. There are more facets to the face of Allah than grains of sand in all the deserts in all the world combined." It wasn't a lecture, nor was room left in his tone for debate. It was a simple statement of fact, and they could accept it or not.

It was an interesting perspective, but Rin felt herself gearing up to argue with the big scary skull man. The Root was not something so petty as a god, nor did mages worship it. She opened her mouth to say so, but she paused when Archer put a hand on her shoulder. "Rin, we came here for a reason. Let's get the kid some answers and go home. I will remind you again that this is war, and every bit of information our enemy has is a potential sword to be used against us."

Rin grimaced. He was right, and she didn't want him to be. She was procrastinating having to go talk to Kirei.

She really didn't want to go talk to Kirei.

Assassin continued as if he'd never stopped speaking. "What dwells within the church is not a man of God. It is a presence I recognize. What dwells within is barely a man at all." There was something like a tired sigh in the air. "I will remain outside."

"Holy ground?" Shirou asked, in what he surely thought was a helpful tone.

"This ground is sanctified, but it is not holy. No. If I meet the priest that dwells within, I will be dutybound to kill him. Unfortunately, it is also a breach of duty to bring harm to an appointed neutral supervisor, and so I will remain without. Nonetheless, should danger present itself, call out, and I shall hear thy voice. My justice will be swift."

Shirou blinked. "Okay."

Rin kind of wanted to see Kirei with that giant sword in his chest, and the thought made her smile.

"Shirou… Emiya." A look of something unreadable flickered over the priest's face, but it was gone as quickly as it had appeared. A narrowing of the eyes, a tension in the forehead. An emptiness. In its place was a gregarious smile, a sweeping bow just exaggerated enough to make Shirou wonder if it was intended to be mocking. "I thank you, Emiya. You have brought Rin here. If it were not for you, she would not have come. I have been trying to contact her for days, you see."

"You just don't like being hung up on," Tohsaka muttered, shifting until she stood shoulder to shoulder with him, her chin raised as if they were defiant children about to be scolded for stealing cookies.

"Then let us start," Kotomine said, and placed a heavy hand on Shirou's shoulder. Weakened as he was, he needed to focus to keep his knees from buckling. "Shirou Emiya, you are Assassin's master, correct?"

If there was a human being anywhere on planet Earth that loved the sound of their own voice more than Tohsaka apparently did, it was Kirei Kotomine. He had a deep, musical voice, and he used it to drone on and on about the minutiae of the Holy Grail War. Shirou's focused waned. His mind drifted. He couldn't help it. This was just interminable.

Also, every time Kotomine said his name, he said his whole name. It was grating. He hadn't even done anything particularly shitty, and yet, Shirou found himself agreeing with Tohsaka's assessment of him as a bastard.

"Assassin's presence causes you pain?" Father Kotomine asked thoughtfully. He spread his arms wide, ambiguous. "I would know little more than Rin, of course, as my knowledge of the Art is limited, but I believe her theory is correct. You are simply insufficient as a Master. Rin is resourceful, however. I'm sure a workaround will be found."

As the conversation continued, however, a coiled anger grew within his chest. A fight to the death. Collateral damage. The careless way in which Father Kotomine described horrors, as if he were speaking of things no more distressing than a cloudy day at a picnic.

Still — all this was so wrong. Why should he participate in something so meaningless and cruel? He didn't want any such thing as the Holy Grail, and he was barely something that could be called a Master in the first place.

The priest nodded understandingly. "So you are not concerned about what the winner of the Holy Grail would do, even if it leads to disaster?"

Disaster? "That's-" Shirou's mind had suddenly gone uncomfortably blank. Disaster.

"That is fine, if you have no reason to fight," Kirei said in a sympathetic tone, the way you might tell a kid that he doesn't have to play a game with his friends if he doesn't want to. "But," Kirei continued heavily, sadly. "I suppose that means that you are not troubled by what happened ten years ago.

The disaster ten years ago.

blood on his hands fire all around him the screams of his parents(not his real parents because he knows his father) (what did they look like before they were nothing but char and smoke?) and the screams of strangers (friends) and pain and choking and the cool feeling of rain on a burn and

the desperate joy on kiritsugu's face

Shirou didn't collapse, but that was only through sheer force of stubborn will. He sat upon one of the pews, rage so deep he couldn't think, nausea so overwhelming that he couldn't speak. Rin went to him with a look of concern. With a halting, hesitant motion, she placed a hand on his shoulder. "Emiya…?"

He tried to wave her away, but he was shaking so badly. When his fingers brushed her wrist, his fingers wrapped around it, rather than pushing it away. His teeth chattered and

fire burning burning burning suffocating

he could feel his eyes jittering. Tohsaka didn't pull away. Later, he would realize that this was the moment when Tohsaka truly, irrevocably proved herself to be a good person in his eyes. He held her wrist so tightly, so desperately, that it must have hurt. Later, he'd notice the subtle bruise in the shape of his

broken screaming choking

fingers. And still, she didn't yank her hand away, or yell, or hit him. She didn't even flinch.

She stood silently with her hand on his shoulder.

His breath came in ragged gasps. Eventually, each was slower than the last. Eventually, he didn't feel as though he was

choking on the smoke

struggling to catch his breath. He glanced up at Tohsaka. Her brows were knit together in concern, and she was biting her lip. Sheepishly, realizing what he was doing, he released his grip. His knuckles creaked with tension.

"Emiya…" Her voice was softer now than he'd ever heard her. Every trace of superiority, of haughtiness, was gone, at least for the moment. "Are you okay? You're white as a ghost." When he didn't respond, she sighed quietly, but there was no irritation in it. "We can rest a while, if you'd like."

Shirou smiled shakily, and hoped he didn't look as pathetic as he felt. "Don't worry. I feel better after seeing your weird face."

Her face fell into one of suspicion. "What's that supposed to mean?" she asked, her voice now less than tender.

"I meant it literally." He raised his hands in surrender, and they still shook. "No hidden intentions. I feel better."

"Well, I guess that's…" She frowned, the gears visibly turning in her head. "No, wait. That's definitely worse." Every hint of compassion gone, she leaned closer and slapped the back of his head hard enough to make his vision blur.

When it cleared, he actually felt like himself again. "Thanks, Tohsaka. That helped too."

She looked at him like he'd grown an extra set of ears.

"You did! No need to keep bullying me. There's some more I need to ask."

She looked at him like she hadn't decided whether or not she'd hit him enough yet.

The priest laughed, standing exactly where he had been this whole time. Shirou couldn't tell whether it was genuine, or whether he was being laughed at. It seemed to change from moment to moment. "You still have questions, then?"

The lecture continued. Shirou regretted that he hadn't let it end, but at the same time, he needed as much forewarning as he could get his hands on.

Then the life seemed to leave Kotomine's eyes, and his gaze grew hard. "Tell me your decision, Shirou Emiya. Will you fight?"

Shirou's mouth opened, but he didn't know what to say. Rin was frowning beside him, and it seemed like there was something she wanted him to say, but he couldn't tell what it was.

"After all this, you are undecided?" Where there had been questionable joviality in his voice before, now it was cold and clinical. No longer discussing the weather; now he was talking dispassionately about ridding his home of an insect infestation. "A Master is not something you can be just because you want to. Rin," and he gestured to her with one hand, "has been training as a mage her whole life, and yet, it was never a certainty that she would be able to become a Master. All she could do was prepare, and to hope that the Grail would choose her." A smile spread across his lips, and there was an open cruelty to it that Shirou had only previously suspected. "Only magi are to be chosen as Masters. If you are truly a magus, you should have been prepared, Shirou Emiya. If you say you are not, then… well, it cannot be helped. You and your teacher were merely failures. For you to fight would be nothing more than an annoyance, and the right thing for you to do would be to surrender your command spell. Retire from the battle."

Shirou felt himself sweating. Rin was mouthing something at him. Kotomine was smiling that cruel smile. He opened his mouth, but until the words actually left his mouth, he had no idea what he would say. "I won't run away." The words emboldened him, and he stood as tall as he could, shoulders proudly back. "I will fight as a Master. If the fire ten years ago was because of the War, then I can't let it happen again."

Rin sagged, though whether in relief or disappointment, Shirou wasn't sure. Maybe both. For a long moment, the priest didn't move. Finally, though, his smile grew to encompass his whole face, and he brought his hands together in front of him. "In that case, as supervisor, I officially witness and approve of you as Assassin's master. And with that, all seven Servants are summoned, all seven Masters verified. The war begins now." With a condescending hand, he ruffled Shirou's hair. "Good luck, Shirou Emiya."

They rejoined Archer and Assassin, and began the trek back to Shirou's home. He was tired to his bones, but there was no way to sleep until he was home. Tohsaka's home was much closer, she said, but she wasn't going to allow him to "bleed all over my stuff," so they were going back to Shirou's.

The world was lightening now, the first hazy blues and oranges appearing in the pre-dawn sky. This part of Fuyuki, where the church stood, remained quiet. They walked in silence. Shirou was strong enough to walk at a normal pace, now, and he didn't need Archer's help to keep upright. That was good, because as they walked, he was pretty sure he could feel Archer's gaze boring into his defenseless back like a dog being held back from a big, juicy steak. It was irritating.

"Thy decision has been made, then?"

Shirou nodded. "Yeah. You probably already knew I was going to, but I'm going to fight."

"I believed that this would be thy choice, but I was not entirely sure."

Their footsteps clicked quietly in the early haze. "Is that a good thing, or a bad thing?"

"I have not yet determined the answer to that question," Assassin replied bluntly. "But for the time being, thou art my contractor. We share the same goal."

"Well, I guess I'll just have to show you that I can be just as good a Master as anyone," Shirou said lightly.

"The world is a place of infinite wonders," Assassin replied cryptically. Shirou didn't know how to respond to that, so he let the conversation lapse into silence.

They hadn't gone nearly far enough when Rin froze; at the same moment pain pulsed through the back of his hand, where his command spell had been burned into his skin. In a blink, Archer was standing before them, twin swords of white and black in his hands. Before Shirou could be too distracted by that, though, he heard something drifting in the breeze. A melody, carried on a voice high and childish. It sounded like a lullaby. If not that, something light and airy. He couldn't make out the words, but the song grew louder as the singer approached.

"What-" Shirou started to ask, but Rin clamped a hand over his mouth and shook her head. Her eyes were wide, and they darted back and forth, searching.

The song grew louder, and Shirou realized that it wasn't a language he knew. German? Maybe German. He was trying to puzzle that one out, when the second monster he'd seen that night appeared.

From an alley before them emerged a giant. Taller even than Assassin, Shirou thought, but without even a scrap of armor to artificially inflate the silhouette. His skin was a strange, stony brown, as if he'd been roughly hewn, fully formed, from rock rather than born. His eyes were a dull red, and a mane of thick black hair swirled around his head. In one hand, he lazily dragged a sword that was big and broad enough that Shirou's brain couldn't decide whether it was a sword, or if it was just a club carved to look like one. In the end, it wouldn't matter; that thing would be equally deadly. Steam hissed from the giant's mouth with every breath, and every step shook the ground. An invisible miasma of death followed him, the same way it followed Assassin.

And yet, the strangest thing about the discordant image was the girl perched comfortably on the giant's shoulder. She was bundled up in expensive-looking purple and silver winter clothes, her small hands clasped before her in black gloves. A strange flat cap sat atop her head. She was as pale as anyone Shirou had ever seen, with long flowing hair that was a brilliant, unnatural silver. Her eyes were shut, and she sang with a smile on her face.

Shirou had met this girl once before, just a day or two ago. That brief encounter was beginning to make a little more sense.

"Berserker," Archer hissed, his grip on his swords tightening. His voice was high and tight. "Your orders, Rin?"

"This foe is beyond thee," came Assassin's voice. "Do not fight him head-on. Use the shadows. Find the beast's blind spot, and capitalize upon its weakness. There is nothing on this Earth that is truly invincible."

"I have fought battles before, Bones," Archer said drily. "I think I know what to do."

"Hmm."

Shirou broke in, speaking through the lump in his throat. "Maybe she just wants to talk." She'd seemed like a sweet girl, if a little strange, when they'd met. Implied threat notwithstanding.

Rin glared at him, but before she could retort, the little girl spoke in a high, clear voice. "Good morning, onii-chan. It's nice to see you again." Her eyes opened to reveal irises of deep, crimson red. She blinked, and her smile was warm. "You made me wait longer than I thought I'd have to."

The fear was filling his body again, charging every fiber of his being with the urge to run. No, she wasn't here to talk. Not riding on the shoulder of something like that. Berserker. A Heroic Spirit granted immense strength and speed, at the cost of its mind. Could Assassin fight that? Shirou didn't know. He'd only briefly even seen his Servant.

Power for power, this thing might have the edge.

Rin had her hands in her pockets, standing casually. Now that she knew where the threat was, it seemed that she could at least pretend to relax. "Isn't it past your bedtime, kid?"

The girl frowned, almost pouting. "I don't have a bedtime. And it's morning." The childishness just didn't fit with the image of the monster she was perched on.

Rin blinked.

The girl smiled again, and Berserker lifted a massive hand beside her, palm up. She grabbed hold of it with her arms, and he gingerly lowered her to the ground. She stood straight, dusted herself off, and curtseyed deeply. "Nice to meet you, Rin. I am Illya." When Rin didn't react to the name, Illya continued. "If I say Illyasviel von Einzbern, you should be able to figure it out."

That did get a reaction. Tohsaka jumped. "Einzbern…?"

A old man's voice like rustling, dead leaves. More importantly, Shirou Emiya. Is the daughter of the Einzberns doing well?

Illya frowned, her gaze sliding to Shirou. "Where's your Servant, onii-chan? I wanted to meet them." The frown became a narrow-eyed smile. "Unless you haven't managed it, yet. I did warn you, didn't I?"

Once more feeling as though he were in a dream, and sliding slightly into autopilot, he said, "Oh, Assassin's here. He can't come out to play, though."

Tohsaka punched him in the arm, hissing. "Why would you tell her that, numbskull?"

Archer stepped forward. "Rin, go. I can cover you long enough for you to get away." Even Shirou could see that this terrain did not favor an Archer. It was too small, too enclosed. Buildings on every side. It would be hard to get enough distance to fire a bow.

Illya pushed her lower lip out. "I don't care about Archer. I wanted to kill Shirou's Servant first…" She sighed, then clapped her hands once. Her face lit up in a bright, cheery smile, bursting with life. Shirou smiled back out of sheer reflex, but then Illya spoke again in a childish singsong voice. "Guess it can't be helped. Kill them, Berserker."

The giant roared, bursting windows all around them rained glass down onto the street, and the world went mad.