NOTE: I'm sorry this is so late in the day! It's finals week and I am burdened with PAPERS and STRESS and honestly I just straight up forgot what week it was. Also some medication-related horseshit I won't burden y'all with. It's been a rough week, but the chapter is here now!

As usual for chapters featuring our girl Sakura, content warning for touching on dark shit. Nothing explicit, but she dances around some of the Real Bad Shit.

The Einzbern castle, nestled in the forests of Germany, was lonely, but Illya had never known it to be an empty place. It was where she lived. It was where her mama lived, and she loved her mama more than anything else in the world. Except maybe her daddy, and he'd been spending a lot more time at home than usual lately. It wasn't fair to choose one over the other. Not when she loved them both so much. Her home was warm, even during the winter, and their little family filled it with all the love the rest of the Einzberns seemed to lack.

Daddy had spent so much time playing with her lately, and she couldn't be happier, even if he was a cheater when they played games sometimes. Even a little girl like her knew that wasn't proper behavior for a role model. She couldn't be too upset for long, though, because lately, whenever he thought she wasn't looking, he would frown, and his forehead would wrinkle, and Illya was pretty sure that meant something was making him very sad. That made Illya sad too, but she loved her daddy, so she gave him her biggest smile and squeezed his legs in a hug so tight that she worried she might hurt him. He always laughed and rubbed her head, and sometimes he even picked her up to swing her around or plop her onto his shoulders.

Her mama wasn't as good at hiding it. For the last few weeks, she'd smiled just as much as she always did (her mama had a beautiful smile), but just like with daddy, there was always something sad about it. Illya wondered what was making them so uncomfortable, and she hoped it wasn't her. She trusted them, though. They'd tell her if she was. She was a good girl, even if she did get in trouble sometimes.

It was the day that mama and daddy were going to leave on a little trip, leaving her with their servants. Daddy did this kind of thing a lot, but mama never had before, and Illya was worried about being all by herself, but she was very mature for her age, she thought, so she'd be okay. Besides, daddy's trips were never too long, and he was always so happy to see her when he came back. That first hug when he walked through the doors almost made him being gone worth it.

There was a stranger in the house. She knew he was there, because her parents had started talking about "their friend", like Illya wouldn't be able to understand there was another person somewhere if they didn't use a name. But for almost a week, Illya saw neither hide nor hair of their mysterious guest. She wanted to meet him, but when she asked daddy, he'd ruffled her hair and changed the subject. She pretended not to notice.

In all the vast castle, there were many rooms she had never been in. Sometimes, when she was sad or bored, she would explore these unknown places, to see what sort of interesting things she could find. Sometimes there were empty rooms; other times the walls were stacked high with treasure. Once, she had found a room buzzing with so much magical energy that her hair had literally stood on end for the rest of the day, and she had blushed and looked away and been too embarrassed to even make up an excuse when mama had asked her about it.

In one of those rooms, on the day mama and daddy were to leave, she met the man in the black armor. He sat cross legged in the center of a barren stone room, a crimson magical circle inscribed in the ground beneath him. Illya approached, thinking that the armor was empty, that this was nothing but another of the strange, exotic artifacts her family collected, when—

Blue flame kindled to life in the skull-helmet's eye sockets.

Was it a helmet, or was that just his skull, on the outside?

Strangely, Illya felt no fear.

"Are you a person?" she asked. This seemed the logical question.

The voice that boomed forth from the armor was deep and completely uninflected. "I am an Assassin." Her teeth rattled with the force of it, but she drew closer regardless.

"Like…" She furrowed her brow. "The kind that kills people?"

"The very same." Monotone, but not monotonous. The voice was fascinating.

"Are you friends with my mom and dad?" Illya asked, standing just outside the circle. Part of her knew she should be afraid, but she felt no sense of danger.

"I serve Kiritsugu Emiya and Irisviel von Einzbern," the armor said.

What did her parents need with an assassin? Her furrow became a frown. "Well, I'm Illya." She crossed her arms over her chest and tried not to pout. "It's polite to tell a lady your name when she introduces herself."

The armor was silent for a moment. "Assassin is enough."

Illya heaved a heavy sigh. Clearly nobody had taught this strange man any manners, because Assassin obviously wasn't his real name. "Okay, well. It's nice to meet you, Assassin."

The man in the armor was silent.

As cool as the armor looked, Illya was quickly growing bored. He wasn't exactly giving her a lot to work with. "Are you going on the trip with mama and daddy?"

The skull-helmet tilted a few degrees to the left, like a curious dog. "Yes."

That was very odd, but Illya didn't have enough information to know why it was odd. Where were they going, and why did they need such a weird, boring guy to go with them? "Where are you going?" she asked quietly.

"I have been asked not to reveal that information," Assassin said.

Nothing made her dig her heels in like being told 'no,' but something about those words sparked something unpleasant within her that all the rest of her parents' weird behavior had not. "Where are you going?" She asked a little more forcefully, balling her little hands into fists.

The black armor did not respond.

She planted her feet. "Where are you—"

Her plaintive yell was cut short as a familiar heavy hand fell gently on her shoulder. "Hey, chestnut," her daddy said. Even without seeing him, she could hear the love in his voice.

All the fight went out of her.

She turned to find him kneeling behind her, that sad puppy dog look heavy in his eyes. Her lip trembled, and she threw her arms around him, pressing her face into his big barrel chest. He held her back, not saying a word.

"Where are you going?" she whispered.

"Japan," he said, but the word carried with it a weight that seemed too heavy to bear. "Have you seen your mother today?"

She shook her head, face still mushed against him.

The rough, callused hand stroked her hair. "You should go give her a big hug, chestnut. She's been looking for you. She misses you already."

Then she shouldn't go, she thought, but she just nodded obediently. "Okay."

The stroking turned into a playful ruffle, and she grumbled. She hated when he did that, but not enough to tell him not to. "I love you."

Illya didn't have the words to say how much she loved her daddy or to express why she was so worried, so she didn't say anything as she left, her hands shaking and her eyes wide. She didn't know what was wrong, but it had hit her all at once that something was very wrong, and she couldn't stop the thought swirling swirling swirling around her head that whatever it was, it was too late for her to—

Her father spoke again before she was completely out of earshot, and his voice was not directed at her. It was cold and hard in a way she'd never heard her daddy before.

"Maiya called. It's time."

The presence Illya felt in Shirou Emiya's house was the same. There was no doubt. She'd seen a glimpse of the Servant in black armor the night of their battle, but she hadn't wanted to let herself consider the idea that the two might be the same. Many Heroic Spirits over the years had worn black armor, she was sure. Even Assassins, probably.

But now, she knew she couldn't deny what she'd been trying to avoid.

Shirou had not only inherited her father's love, but his Servant as well.

And even if it was faint, barely there, Illya could feel the unmistakable presence of her mother. She didn't know why or how, but her mother was still very much in this house. With him and not with her.

Things that should have been hers. Shirou had gotten everything that mattered, and she'd been left in her gilded cage.

(It was where she wanted to be. She was as comfortable as she could be, given the circumstances. But it was the principle of the thing. She'd have preferred her father at her back. She would have preferred the warmth of her mother's love, even if she wasn't around to give it.)

(They told her he was dead of natural causes. When Kiritsugu Emiya had left her all alone, he had chosen to leave. If he had stayed with her until his natural death, that would have been a parting she could understand.)

The house in which she now took refuge didn't look like something the father she'd known would have picked. It didn't feel the way it would have felt, or smell the way he would have smelled. But she could feel him. She could feel him in the floorboards and in the air and in the pillow under her head. This had been his home. For a time, she knew, this had also been her mother's home, but her essence was much less… palpable than her father's.

(He'd given up one home and gotten one he loved more.)

The door opened again and broke her out of her moping. For the moment.

The Makiri girl peeked around the corner, soft purple eyes nervous, as though she expected Illya to blast her with a curse the moment she showed her face again. (Illya had considered it, but it really would have broken the laws of hospitality just a bit too much to make her feel good about it. She was a Magus and a Master, but she was also a lady.) She carried a pair of steaming mugs in her hands, and she lifted one of them in a silent, wary peace offering.

Illya sighed. If her body hadn't felt so weak, she'd have been gone by now. But after that backlash, magical energy still buzzed through her like static, fuzzing her out every few minutes like a television with a bad connection. She was fairly sure the Makiri girl was too cowardly to make a move to hurt her, and besides, Berserker was just outside. She could feel him, now that her groggy haze had begun to clear. Not being able to immediately sense him had been her first panic, but now that she knew he was there, she relaxed, even if it was just the tiniest bit.

"I brought you some hot chocolate," she said warmly, and Illya wondered how much of that was a veneer, hiding… something else. "I didn't know if you liked tea or not, but I figured—"

"I like tea," Illya said, but quickly added, "But I like hot chocolate too."

The Makiri girl's face had started to fall the instant Illya said she liked tea. How sensitive. How... unexpectedly sensitive.

"O-okay," Sakura mumbled, and drew near, pressing one of the hot mugs into Illya's chilly hands before withdrawing to that same chair she'd planted herself in earlier. She was determined to play nursemaid, even though Illya was in no immediate danger. Illya didn't know how to feel about that.

"How are you feeling?"

Illya found herself staring again. The Makiri girl wore a pink and shapeless shirt over a long tan skirt, and, strangely, a heavy scarf. It wasn't cold enough for that inside the house, and Illya kept noticing the way Sakura fidgeted with it and tugged on it when she was nervous. The way she winced every time she turned her head. Was she hurt under there? Did Berserker do it? she wondered for a brief moment, before coming to the conclusion that if Berserker had been involved, Sakura would be a smear on the ground somewhere outside.

Some part of her was a little bit glad that Sakura wasn't a puddle of gore in the dirt. On a completely surface level, she found herself wanting to like Sakura. She had been nothing but warm and sweet and caring in the hour or so that Illya had known her, and she had brought Illya in from the cold apparently out of the goodness of her heart, and yet…

There was something… something different, something wrong about Sakura, and Illya just… couldn't figure it out. There was a humming deep in her own bones, a kind of resonance, like a singing crystal placed side by side with a wine glass, but there was something sick about it. Something rotten and slimy and twisting and writhing. At first, it had been like the sheen of oil on water, but the longer she was around the girl, feeling Sakura's aura was like immersing herself in spiders.

But there was something beautiful, too. Something brimming with potential and benevolent power and familiar. It put Illya at ease in a way that she hadn't been since her early childhood. She couldn't place it anymore than she could the darkness.

Both coexisted and commingled.

None of it made any sense.

Sakura didn't make any sense.

She was a contradiction.

Sakura began to shrink away from the intensity of her gaze, and Illya forced herself to smile. It felt weird and unnatural, but Sakura seemed to be a little less like she was going to cry. "I'm feeling much better, actually." Talking to Sakura was like holding her hand out to a beaten dog; it seemed to want to trust, but simply didn't have the capacity. She wondered when Sakura would bite. She wondered when she would have to put Sakura down. Part of her really, really disliked that thought.

Sakura looked down at the mug in her hands. The string of a teabag was draped over the lip. She was quiet for a moment, and seemed to be working up the courage to speak. They'd been avoiding the issue for this whole time. After that first, passionate outburst, Sakura had fled the room, and only been back in a few times to check on her semi-willing patient. (It was easier and smarter to just roll with it.) Each time she had brought some small gift; a new pillow, a washcloth, hot chocolate.

Illya was in no rush to talk about it, so she let Sakura build up to it. She took a sip of the chocolate and burned her tongue.

"What happened to you?" she asked, once Illya had stopped coughing. She didn't meet Illya's eyes. "Out there. I-it didn't seem like a fight, because you weren't hurt or anything, but..." She trailed off. The corner of her lip pulled back twice, the tic clearly involuntary, and then was still. When she spoke again, her voice was barely a whisper. "Did something happen last night?"

Illya didn't respond.

Thy spirit shall be under my command, thy fate determined by thy sword. Thou who hath no will and no reason, answer my call.

Grand Rider.

Azrael.

She was trying so hard not to think about it, because every time she thought back to that ritual, to the feeling of power that had suffused the air, to Zouken Matou's words of summoning, her blood ran cold, and she started shivering. It was bad. It was really bad. What she'd seen—

She hadn't seen enough. She didn't know if it had worked or not, or if Zouken and Shinji had been killed by the same backlash that had torn her familiar apart and overloaded her own magical circuits. (Lancer and Rider, at least, were still alive. None of the Heroic Spirits had yet returned to her. The War was still in its early stages.) But if it had worked, then the game had just changed. Something monstrously powerful was here, and it was involved. Not just a second Rider. A Grand Rider.

The Grand Rider.

Sakura pulled the hot chocolate from Illya's shaking hands so she wouldn't spill it on herself. Illya barely noticed.

Servants were so far above normal humans in power that it just didn't compare; did an equally vast gulf separate a normal Servant from a Grand one?

She had an impulse she didn't understand, and she had been grappling with it since she'd awakened. She wanted to warn them. She wanted to tell them about this new danger, about what she knew.

Because she had an idea where this magic had come from.

She had an idea where Zouken had stolen it from.

To speak it aloud would be to betray her family. The Einzberns held onto their secrets with an iron fist, and even as one so important as she, it had been a nearly impossible task to find the family's hidden libraries, to uncover her family's secret studies in the field of Familiarity. Their experiments in the construction of Pseudoservants were all failures, but their research into Grand Servants and the Grail War system itself had been much more fruitful.

They had learned the wrong lessons from the Third Holy Grail War. She was only just beginning to realize the depths of how badly they had led themselves astray.

If this is Einzbern's mess, it's my duty to clean it up.

But Illya wanted to tell them. She didn't want to be the only one who knew. The only one with a responsibility. Her Berserker was the most powerful Servant there was, but if there was a Grand Servant involved… Could she do this alone?

She wasn't sure.

But above and beyond all of that, Sakura's grandfather had been the one to summon it. If she was wrong about Sakura, if she was just an incredible actor and that torrent of confessional emotion had been a lie, then to even mention his name would be to tip her hand to the true enemy. The risks outweighed the benefits. Zouken might not know that he had been observed, and the element of surprise was too important to throw away. "Even if there was something to tell, I don't think I should tell a Makiri," Illya finally said. "Even if you say you're not on their—"

"Please don't call me that," Sakura said in a small voice. Her eyes were hidden behind her hair, like a funeral shroud.

"A Matou, then," Illya said with a petulant sigh. She didn't want to play this stupid game.

Sakura's shoulders hunched together, her head dipping lower as she drew in on herself. "Please don't call me that either." Her hands squeezed the mug in her hand. Relaxed. Squeezed again. Over and over. Her voice, quiet as a mouse, shook. The transformation in demeanor had been nearly instantaneous. Were her mood swings so bad, or had this been simmering just beneath the surface this whole time?

Illya frowned. Was this a tactic? Sakura trying to distance herself from her family to gain her trust? To find out what she knew? That was what she wanted to believe, but it didn't feel right. There was too much… too much something in those words. "I shouldn't call you what you are? I'm not going to trust one of my family's oldest enemies just because you made me hot chocolate."

With trembling hands, Sakura set both of the mugs down on the nightstand by the bed. Illya still couldn't see her eyes, but she tensed, wondering if Sakura was freeing up her hands to attack. Instead, the Matou laced her fingers together in her lap so tightly that the nails dug into her own skin. "Would you like to know what I am?" Her voice had gone utterly flat. Devoid of life. "Would you like to know how much a Matou I really am? Would that make you call me something else? Of all the ones in this War, you should know best what I am."

Illya felt out of her depth, but she nodded. This was more than she'd bargained for, and she didn't exactly know what else to do. Are you still there, Berserker? she asked, and felt the reassuring pushback of his presence. A question. Did she need him? Not yet. But be ready if I do.

"The Matou bloodline is dying," she said robotically. "They no longer have the talent, or the ability to learn. My brother should have been the heir, and all he can do is alchemy, because it doesn't require wielding magical energy." Her fingers tightened, relaxed, tightened, the way they had on the mug. "I am not Matou by blood. Or at least… I wasn't. Not at first."

Illya blinked. There had been speculation among her family that Zouken had allowed his bloodline to grow thin and weak, but to the extent that a man so prideful as he would go outside the family for an heir? Her jab at Rider had been more pointed than she'd realized. But before she could follow the chain of implication, Sakura was speaking again.

Squeeze. Relax. Squeeze. "I became a Matou when I was six. It started with infusions. Blood magic. Bodily transformation. I had to look the part, so they changed my hair and my eyes and even my skin." Squeeze. Release. Squeeze.

Change like that wasn't easy. Change like that came with a price. It wasn't a bottle of hair dye, a pair of colored contacts, and done; it was a fundamental alteration on a genetic level. A rewriting of DNA. Delicate, dangerous… and painful. Every cell in the body, altered. Of course that would hurt.

We're ready to perform the summoning, Illya.

Will it hurt?

It may.

I'm strong.

"But that was easy. That was the easy part." She took a shuddering breath, but her tone of voice didn't change in the slightest. "Do you know what a Crest Worm is?"

Illya blinked, then shook her head, her mouth dry. Zouken used bugs and worms and other disgusting things like that, but a Crest Worm? Apart from a guess that it had something to do with a Magic Crest, she was drawing a blank. She read up on other prominent families and their abilities, but with the decline in magical ability on the part of the Makiri, she may have just realized she was skimming those notes.

The corner of Sakura's mouth ticked back again, then became a bitter smile. "Then you are truly lucky," she said, still monotone.

Your whole body is a Command Spell.

He is powerful, Illya, and you are very small.

That's why you are in pain. If you understand, then why are you crying?

Pathetic.

"Grandfather's basement is vast, and it is full of them. Even from my bedroom, I… I could hear them. Slithering, and chittering, and squealing. Crying out for me. Missing me. What they would do to me." Squeeze. Release. Squeeze. A trickle of blood ran down her fingers, and Illya realized that her palms were covered in similar scabs.

Illya had a scar too. Teeth marks on her back.

Berserker!

The wolves.

Please help me!

She shivered, and the old (but not that old) scars burned like fingers crawling up her spine.

"My grandfather threw me in with them and left me to rot. They feed. They feed and they feed and they feed—" her voice being so calm didn't make sense with the way her breath came in short, ragged bursts— "until there's nothing left of you. Body or mind. I thought more than once that I was already dead, but then I would be pulled out. Be me again just long enough to understand what was happening to me. Then I would be put back in. I didn't think there was anything left. I always thought there was nothing left. But they always found more of me to take. More of me to make theirs." Sakura took a shaking breath, her eyes still hidden, but Illya knew that Sakura wasn't crying. Illya wouldn't have cried. She knew they were enough alike to hold it together when they needed to. "I'm probably not even human anymore. Grandfather said it was for a purpose. A purpose. That I suffered for a purpose, and that he was so proud of how well I bore it." She was shaking again. Like the last leaf in the winter wind. "He was so proud of me. He was so proud, and I just kept going back because I knew if I didn't then he would make me anyway. They would all make me do whatever they wanted because I was just a possession. I was theirs. And I couldn't fight back. If I fought back, it would be so much worse… I couldn't even—"

Ah, Illya, you're back. How was your stroll?

I can't move anymore. He's hurting me. Please help me.

You survived out there. You learned from the pain. We would not want to undo all of that progress, would we? You will walk to bed.

Illya couldn't move. Her mouth tasted like blood, but nothing was bleeding. Her fingers shook, and she with slow realization finally understood the scabs on Sakura's palm.

"But I don't know if there was a reason for what my brother did to me. What he did to me. What he did to me. What he made me." Now there was something in her voice. A desperate scream dancing on the edges, straining to be released. Barely controlled anger and hatred and sorrow and guilt and jealousy. Her eyes were still hidden. "He hurt me because he hated me. He hated me because I wasn't a Matou. He— He—" She couldn't speak for a moment, for the way her lips ticked back, for the way her head twitched. Squeezereleasesqueezereleasesqueezerelease. "He tortured me too. He liked torturing me as much as Grandfather, but at least Grandfather loved me. In a different way but the same way, but it was because I wasn't a Matou and I could never be a Matou and, and—" She took a shuddering breath, and the room trembled.

She's going to explode. She's going to lose control. Illya's eyes widened, but before she could prepare for whatever Sakura was about to unleash—

"And—"

She saw Sakura's shadow.

She'd been vaguely aware of it, the way she'd been vaguely aware of anything else in the room. But Sakura's shadow… It had started out as just the twitch that could have been Sakura's slight movements, but Sakura was motionless, save for the shaking. She could have just been cold.

Now, behind her, splayed across the floor and the wall by the soft, warm light of the lamp by the bed, Sakura's shadow was tearing at its hair. It had been a slowly creeping movement at first, the raising of arms by fractions until they climbed to the shifting hair, twisting like snakes. The shadow tugged and tugged and tugged more and more and more violently, snatching from one side to the other, and something gave way; tufts of it tore out and disappeared into the light. An animal shredding into a carcass. The head slowly turned as if shaking its head no and increased in speed until it whipped back and forth, like a cornered animal looking desperately for an escape and seeing no way out. Illya thought that there were bared teeth somewhere in the shadow itself, but that made even less sense.

Nothing about this made sense.

Every single thing about Sakura of the Makiri or the Matou or the… whatever… made zero sense.

The arms of the shadow lowered and wrapped themselves around its body, its shoulders heaving in a pantomime of heavy sobs. Everything that Sakura wanted to do. Wanted to be. Violent. Grief-stricken. The silent heaving shrugs of sobbing changed as the thing wriggled like a caterpillar transformed, wriggling and shaking in its cocoon, trying to break free. Swelling, writhing, a giant, angry worm ready to explode. That image coalesced into a much larger version of the shadow that had been, and an indistinct head threw itself back, tendrils of hair spanning the floor like ropes or vipers, snaking their ways to all corners. The shadow screamed soundlessly, and its edges shook and trembled with the silent violence of it, like the surface of water near a bass speaker.

The unrestrained violence of the shadow rippled from the floor and into the air, bleeding its magical energy—its pure, violent, evil-ridden magical energy—into the air with an angry hornet's nest hum. The droning increased and built on itself until Illya felt nauseated and weak. The air in the room went tight and stale and electrified.

Sakura's mug of tea on the nightstand exploded, boiling liquid and shards of ceramic spraying through the air, and Illya barely got a barrier up in time before any of it could hurt her. She prepared a counterspell, but the moment the explosion of magical energy had faded, Sakura went limp, and all the power went out of the room. She hung in the chair like a marionette whose strings had been cut, arms dangling at her sides, head so far down Illya halfway wondered if she'd snapped her own neck. She wasn't even sure if Sakura was conscious or unconscious until she spoke.

"I'm sorry," she said, her voice choked with tears, so quiet Illya could barely hear her even from the bed.

Illya looked at her with open-mouthed shock, the magic fading from her fingertips. Nothing about what she'd just seen made sense. None of what she'd just felt made sense. Magically or emotionally.

It was a broken record thought, but that knowledge didn't stop it from recurring.

Now that the danger had passed, she was a deer in the headlights.

No books or lessons or training had ever prepared her for whatever the hell this was.

"I'm sorry," Sakura whispered again. Her fingers twitched, raised halfway to her head, dropped again. Her neck twitched twice. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm—"

Something clicked inside her.

"Stop," Illya said, and the sheer commanding presence in her voice surprised even her.

Sakura froze mid-tremor, as perfectly and completely as if she were a Servants and Illya had used a Command Seal. Her breaths came in jumping gasps, like someone who was crying without tears. Silent hiccups and soundless sniffles. The room was silent. Slowly, jerkily, her head lifted enough for Illya to see her wide, red-rimmed eyes. Her lips were pressed together so tightly that she must think she'd be killed if she spoke out of turn again. She was more pale than any living thing Illya had ever seen.

Illya didn't like the feeling. She didn't like being feared. At least… not at this moment. It didn't make sense; she relished the power that came from being feared. But this just made her feel bad. "Just…" She didn't really know where she was going with this, but her mouth was moving all by itself. "Just stop, okay? Stop crying. Stop apologizing. It's okay. It's okay, Sakura."

Sakura's lip trembled, but she nodded shakily. Behind her, her shadow mimicked her every move, the way a shadow was supposed to. It was a struggle not to allow herself the fantasy that whatever Illya had seen was nothing more than a trick of the light, a product of her tired, overtaxed mind, but that wasn't a luxury she could afford. Sakura Matou was a ticking time bomb, for all she knew.

Don't call me that either.

"Sakura," Illya said firmly, as though speaking to a dog, and Sakura flinched back. The metaphor clarified her feelings a little; instinctually, on an animalistic level, she knew not to show fear. Not after a display like that. "Is that what you want me to call you?"

Sakura nodded, then looked away.

Look at me when I am speaking to you, Illyasviel.

You are not a child.

There was something in Illya's chest. It hurt. She didn't know what it was. She didn't like it. It felt the way—

Chestnut.

—it felt when she thought about people she used to love.

That's just part of being a Magus, she wanted to say. They hurt us so we can be better. We only learn by getting hurt. If that was all it took to break you so badly, you were never worth anything to begin with. I survived the wolves. I survived the Seals. I survived Berserker. Do you think any of us have happy childhoods? Do you think any of us remember what love is? This is the path to power. This is the path to glory. This is what we're supposed to be. Survivors. So stop crying about it. Give up your magic or deal with it.

"When I was eight years old, my dad killed my mom," Illya said instead, her voice soft and distant in her own ears. Sakura's head didn't move, but her eyes flicked over to look at Illya. "I thought he loved her, and I thought he loved me. They went on this trip. Now I know they were part of the last Holy Grail War, but all I knew then was that they were going on a trip, and that they'd be back soon." She looked away, stubbornly staring a hole in the wall to her right. She wanted to stop. She needed to stop. This girl or thing didn't need to know this. She didn't stop. "My dad betrayed her. He betrayed everything they were working toward, and he betrayed my family. I sat there in my room, smiling and laughing and looking out the window to see if they were coming up the path, at the same time that he was doing it. At the same time his hands were..."

She remembered those days clearly, in retrospect. She'd had nightmares every single night, especially at the end, but she had stubbornly believed that things would go back to normal.

"I didn't believe it when they told me. Not even when they started pushing my training until it hurt so bad that I couldn't breathe. I kept thinking he was going to come strolling up the stairs to pull me into his arms. To wake me up from the bad dream. To save me."

He killed her, Illyasviel. With his bare hands, he killed her.

And would you like to know what he did after that? The very next thing your father did, with your mother's blood still wet on his hands?

"And then I found out that he had replaced me. He had a new son, already. He got tired of the child he had, and he just… got a new one." She could remember it so clearly. The jagged, bleeding edge of betrayal. She couldn't remember why it had tipped her over the edge, but hearing that had finally made her believe what had happened. She faced reality and understood what kind of world she'd been born into. "That's when I understood. The world is broken. Everyone is broken. It happens to different people at different times, but you either break and rebuild or you die."

It was a remarkably terrible pep-talk, even by her own standards, Illya thought, but Sakura looked up. Her hair was a mess, as though she'd just awoken from a deep, dark slumber, and the one eye that Illya could see was wide and shimmering.

Illya shifted uncomfortably. "What?"

Sakura's lip trembled.

Illya didn't like that.

No one had ever looked at her like that before.

The silence stretched out. The moment didn't seem like it was going to end.

Sakura pushed herself unsteadily to her feet, and alarm bells began blaring in Illya's head. Is she going to attack me? After all that? She looks like she's going to pass out if she moves too fast. Still, after the whirlwind of the last few minutes, it was better to be safe than sorry. Illya fumbled for her magic, grasping for the threads of power that she could weave into a second spell if Sakura came for her. It was harder than it should have been; the protective shield she'd conjured to protect herself from the flying glass and boiling water had taken a lot out of her.

Sakura drew closer, and Illya scooted away, the cold trickle of fear once again running down her spine. "What are you doing?" she hissed, confused, still grasping for her magic. She missed every time. Her magic circuits burned the way they did when she over-exerted herself, and for the first time she found herself wondering whether the ritual's backlash had done real damage.

Sakura stood over her now, and she didn't stop getting closer, and she extended her arms and as Illya threw her mind wide open to shout for Berseker—

Illya found herself not under attack, but wrapped in a tight hug. Sakura's arms wrapped tight around her and squeezed. Not enough to hurt. Not so weak as to feel awkward. It was the perfect hug. Cradled in soft fabric and softer skin and the smell of honeysuckle.

It was the first time anyone had held her like this in a decade.

"It's okay," Sakura whispered, and it was the steadiest her voice had been since Illya had called her Makiri. "It's okay, Illya. You've been through so much, but you're still here." A strange sensation. It took Illya a moment to realize that Sakura was stroking her head, as though she were soothing a child throwing a tantrum.

Illya was not a child. Her growth had been stunted by the restrictive command seals etched across her body, and her voice was prepubescent, and her demeanor was childlike because she enjoyed the fantasy of being a child, but she was no child. She was eighteen years old. She had been through ordeals that would have killed anyone so genuinely immature. A child could not endure the pain of Berserker's presence. A child could not have survived the wolves. A child could not have survived the training she had. Tears were for children, and she was not a child.

Wrapped in the closest thing to a loving embrace she could remember, Illyasviel von Einzbern started to cry.

NOTE: Got so many papers to write. Pray for me, y'all.

Next chapter: The Art of Failure