His presence is erect before her, a tall, imposing figure.
He is red, but the blood of life flows in his veins.
She can feel the power he exudes.
She wants him.
But she... she can't let herself have him.
It wouldn't be right, not when her heart was still tied - and it always will be - to Senpai's.
"Who are you?"
He bends close to her, she can feel his hot breath on her face, like a dog's.
Senpai, where have you gone? I want you to ravish me, dirty me like the bitch I am.
I want you to taste my fruit and grow drunk in its juices.
"Where is he?"
"Who do you mean?" she asks, pushing herself back, away from his threatening presence.
He pursues her. "You know who I mean. Him."
I can't let him hurt Senpai. I can't let anything happen to Senpai.
"I don't know where he is," she says, standing her ground.
"Oh? Well, isn't that something," he says.
He scares her.
He goes back to his rubble throne, and begins directing her.
"It seems you are my lawful Master, girl. In that case, I should tell you how this arrangement works. Listening?"
She nods dumbly.
"Great," he says without humour. "I am a spirit summoned by a magical artefact, bound to your soul by the most high thaumaturgy. A 'Servant,' as they call us. But make no mistake," she quivers, "I am incredibly powerful, and could kill you where you stand. If I felt like it. So make sure I don't feel like it."
Her breaths grow shallow, drawing less and less air with each draught.
Her head is swimming.
His dim voice penetrates her, though.
"You seem weak, a natural victim. You have that smell about you. So here's rule number two: Do not expect me to save you, or clean up your messes. If you want to get saved, then go ahead and save yourself. Or not. I really couldn't care less."
Senpai!
Her knees are weak, but she stands.
"And finally, princess, you are involved in something whose importance you cannot even begin to guess at. So I suggest you continue to do what you're good at, and stay in bed. If I need mana from you, I'll take it. If I tell you to do something, you do it. Otherwise, you risk violating rule number one, which is... inconvenient."
He held up three fingers on a red-gloved hand.
"Got that?"
She nods.
Satisfied, he puts his hand back at his side.
Her eyes float to his hand, their gaze like a ship rocked by turbulent vortices. She can see nothing but those hands at his sides, strong hands that can fulfill wishes, if only they are given the opportunity.
But she senses that his heart does not wish it. She cannot bridge the gap between them.
But perhaps his wishes will coincide with her own? Perhaps she is only being paranoid? Her mind is weak, and is long accustomed to preying on itself when there is no one else around to prey on her.
"M-may I ask your name?"
"Why?" He retorts, the harshness of his tone tearing at the vulnerability she had to expose in order to ask him even that.
"It's more convenient that way, isn't it? I need something to call you, and, well, it wouldn't be polite to just say 'you' all the time."
He laughed. "Satisfy yourself with 'Archer', for now at least. If you knew my true name that would make things much more difficult for you, kid."
His volatility scares her. How he can be threatening at one moment, and genial the next. Her eyes closed in fear.
It reminds her of the transformation her Nii-san made.
He was once kind to her. He loved her, and was jealously protective of her.
He always wanted to take her away from Grandfather's training sessions, and play with her.
She loved him, and was only happy when he was with her.
Sometimes she even had stupid thoughts that she might run away with him and get married.
But then, one day, he learned what Grandfather was doing with her. He learned about Magecraft, he learned that the Matou were a family of Magi, and he learned that he had been cast aside.
She tried to shield the blow as well as she could. She told him it didn't make a difference to her, that she didn't think any less of him. She tried to cheer him up, telling him in detail about how painful the worms were, how they ravaged her body, and how happy she always was when he would embrace her, take her in his arms and in his warmth she would forget everything else.
But when she explained herself to him, and could barely see his face through her tears, something changed in him. It was like a switch had been flipped. His look of anguish, the bowed head that she cradled in her bosom, the soft curls of his head that she kissed... they all departed from her. He pushed her away, and began to laugh.
The look in his eyes was unlike anything she had seen before, except... except in Grandfather's own, when she had first arrived at the Matou manor, before Uncle Kariya disappeared.
His laughs filled the silent room. The Matou manor was built with dark rooms and stone walls, off of which Shinji's voice echoed, assaulting Sakura from all sides.
"You?! You mean to pity me? How dare you?"
Her heart sank and bile rose to take its place.
He grabbed her shoulders, started shaking her.
She couldn't believe that her Nii-san, the only one who cared for her in this world of evil, in whom she had placed all hope of salvation, had finally turned on her.
So she didn't believe it.
She just disconnected herself from the situation.
Nii-san isn't shaking me. He's just shaking a doll that is shaped like me. But this doll has no feeling, so it's fine.
Shinji shook the doll, whose porcelain skin and finely painted eyelashes rattled with incredible realism.
"You think you're better than me, don't you? Just because you were the one they taught Magecraft to? Well, I don't need Magecraft to show you which of us is better."
He pushed the doll to the ground, and it cracked.
His face grew more monstrous.
"Ah! I know how to show you the pecking order in this house."
The doll lay still, as dolls are supposed to.
It was dark, and his precise movements were invisible, but there was a sound of metal teeth letting go of each other. Then, soft cloth falling to the floor.
Shinji crept closer.
He caressed the doll's broken cheek, and for a moment the doll thought she might be human again.
Then his hand went to her neck, and squeezed.
The doll didn't need to breathe, so it didn't.
Dolls don't react, so he soon grew bored of this.
He touched the doll's thigh, his fingernails digging deep and irreparably damaging the doll's craftsmanship.
Then he pulled aside its skirts, and after that, her records are empty.
Consigned to oblivion.
Since then, there have been two sharing this body. Matou Sakura, happy kouhai of Emiya Shirou and Tohsaka Rin. And the doll.
They have divided life's labors between them, until now. Now, neither of them know what to do.
Sakura must save Shirou, no matter what, even if it costs her her life, even if she must suffer.
But the doll will do nothing. The doll will lie, motionless, until Senpai comes back, and he does as he wills with her, nothing but a convenient vessel for his sperm.
This person called 'Archer' confuses the person called 'Sakura', and gives the doll no hope of anything - even momentary relief of her satisfied tormentors - to be won by her passivity, for if she does nothing, Senpai will surely die, and her only light of salvation will be snuffed.
So what will this body do? Neither of the tools it has wielded, the masks it has worn, will work.
Only one thing remains. The body of the one called 'Matou Sakura' has no strong Origin that allows it to invent personalities and scaffold them like the rooms in a skyscraper, infinite concentric circles concealing spirals leading to everywhere and nowhere. It is weak, and its powers of creation were exhausted by the two it made: One at birth, and the other at death. It requires a third for rebirth, and since it cannot make its own, it will borrow one.
Where to borrow it from? What a silly question. To save Senpai, what is needed is strength. This body has felt many things, but it has only felt true strength, the hardness of tempered steel, once.
Not in Shinji, who could only abuse a doll, but would die if that doll opened its eyes.
Not in Uncle Kariya, a man built of desire to help her, but who disappeared without accomplishing anything.
Certainly not in Grandfather, whose secrets she knew and who could not save the only person he wanted to save: himself.
There was only one person remaining, whose strength was like a shining blade that cut through the darkness of night. Only one who could sacrifice himself for others, who could sharpen his body like a razor and save anyone.
Could he save himself?
No, no he couldn't. In fact, he didn't even care that he couldn't.
And while this caused Sakura no end of sorrow, she realized that he might be okay, as long as someone else was there to save him.
So she would be the one person who could save Senpai, and herself. The sister she had watched from the shadows, always taking everything! She had been born happy, in luxury, heir to the double inheritance that was just as much Sakura's by right, and even now, she moved to take Senpai from her too. She was kind to Sakura, but only as Tohsaka-senpai never as a sister. It was as if she had decided to abandon their shared past together. Could Rin have forgotten their life before the 4th Holy Grail War? Perhaps she wanted to, perhaps she needed to, if she was to live her life without being bothered by poor Sakura's sufferings.
It tears at Sakura to have to adopt that mask, the mask of the sister she's always hated but idolized. The perfect, beautiful, Tohsaka Rin.
But she has pledged to save Senpai, and she will be nothing if he disappears. Thus she makes the final sacrifice, and discards all the sweet tragedy that she has endured. Both the girl named 'Matou Sakura' and the doll with the tag of 'Matou Sakura' on its breast die, and on their ashes she builds an imitation of splendor.
Her body communicated this wish to her soul, and without her conscious mind ever becoming aware of it, the psychic shift was complete.
She doesn't know why, but she opens her eyes, and feels vibrancy in them. Her gaze is clear, and she can see every follicle of Archer's raised eyebrow.
"What? Why are you still here?" He gestures to her bedroom door behind her. "Lie down like a good little girl."
His eyes are hard, issuing hers a challenge.
She meets their gaze with a smirk.
"Listen, Archer, you'll have to dispense with the needless formalities. I don't know who you are, but more importantly, I don't think you know who *I* am. Come over here, lemme tell you a secret, okay?"
"As if anything you had to say could matter. Why won't you just shut up and stop barking like the bitch you are?"
He turns aside, ignoring her.
She strides over to him softly, with feet light as air.
She bends close to his ear, and whispers.
"I don't know which land or era created your legend, but you were summoned by the Holy Grail, right?"
His eyes widen, but her fingers keep his lips closed.
"Though, your clothes recall the Tohsaka... Be that as it may, you must desire the Holy Grail, if you answered its call? Are you aware of its secrets?"
Archer is silent for a moment.
"What do you propose to tell me, that I, a Spirit summoned from the Throne of Heroes, a realm outside space and time, would not already know about the Grail?" he asks.
"Simple, Archer," she says. "I am the Grail."
His features contort in shock. She smiles sweetly at him.
"So make sure not to get on my bad side, okay? Otherwise, it could get very unpleasant for everyone concerned. Especially you."
She slaps him on the back, and moves to the wall, where she flicks on a light switch.
"Dear God," she says, "I can barely see anything in this dust. Give me a hand with that, will you?" She pointed to a folding table stacked against the wall.
Archer audibly sighs, but gets up and does as she said. The two of them unfold the table and set it in the middle of the room.
"All right." She is panting after the effort of moving the heavy table. "You're an Archer? So what skills does that grant you? Eagle eyes, and all that?"
He is unnerved. "You might say that."
"Excellent," she says, and slaps the center of the table, sending the dried blood and mucous on its lip to the ground. "I need you to find paper - there must be some in this house, I don't care where you get it from - and bring it to me. I'll tell you where the pencils are."
"Whatever you say, kid," Archer replies. "But satisfy my curiosity: What for?"
She looks up at him, and he sees a fire in her eyes. She is revelling in her own power. In life, he had seen the girl he called 'Matou Sakura' look like that, and it frightens him. The plague of Angra Manyu had then turned her to the mother of black mud, and he was disoriented. He can't let that happen again. He doesn't know what's causing her to act this way, but he knows he has to stay by her side and do whatever he can to save her from that horrible fate. This is important enough to forget about that idealistic fool for now; Sakura's disease is far more potent to the masses.
He is disoriented, though she can't know why.
"Why, maps, Servant. I trust you can take a detailed look at the city, pinpoint concentrations of magical energy, and so on. It's time to begin our war council."
