Chapter 29: Shirou's Captivity

I wake up in an unfamiliar place. Hopefully it won't become the norm in the future. My eyes searched the walls for a clock, but there wasn't one. In place of torn wallpaper and plasterboard was hard stone. It was an actual dungeon out of a fantasy book. My arms and legs were bound as to be expected. According to my internal clock, I overslept. It was strange to think that I was getting more sleep than usual.

My ears pick up the sound of footsteps and the sound of jingling keys. The sound of scraping metal erupts behind me. Who will it be this time? Tohsaka? Illya?

My nose picks up the scent of something burnt.

Either this place had erupted in fire, which I doubt or I'm going to be served breakfast. Breakfast cooked by a stranger….

The sealed door of solid metal is parted away to reveal one of the Einzbern maids. She was one of the two maids who looked after this entire castle. She was the one who didn't lose her arm. I didn't know her name, but she had called the other one "Leysritt". The hood that concealed her hair was reminiscent of a nun's habit. It must have been something designed to do away with individuality like the rest of the uniform that hid even the ankles. If the castle was straight out of a fairy tale book, the maid uniforms represented a harsh reality that the boys in my class would not be able to handle. That was why I knew I wasn't hallucinating. Her red eyes weren't even looking at me.

In her hands was a plate of burnt toast and a cup of milk.

"Maybe you should have let Archer handle the cooking."

"It was the mistress that made this, which is a lot more than you deserve," was her defense.

I didn't know what made me shudder more, the caretaker in front of me or the fact that I had plenty of classmates that would be envious of my position right now. Of the two maids, she certainly had something against me and I couldn't say I didn't deserve it. She was certainly the more talkative one though it wasn't like she talked very much at all.

She folds the burnt toast and dips it into the milk to soften it in order to ruin the best part. She forces the food into my mouth. Was it strange of me to think of the flavour as nostalgic? Though it didn't prepare me for what happened next.

She jams her whole hand in.

I hold in my gag reflex. She didn't like the idea I was enjoying this even for a moment, but at the same time wanted to admonish me for not enjoying the food that was so graciously provided. Frankly, there was no right answer.

"Thank you."

It was frankly a miracle I was still alive, but such so-called miracles seem to be common for me. I tried to cut down the small girl she had served before proper introductions were given. That same girl had tried to do the same to Miyu. In a sense, I was the same as the maid in front of me.

"You truly are a deviant," was her harsh judgement.

"It's only polite to enjoy what others make for you or are you just being a little jealous that I got to eat your master's cooking?"

From that remark, she calmly forces the last of the milk down my throat. Maybe it was the dehydration or the hunger, but my body happily received it. My dignity had already taken plenty of damage these past few days. The resulting mess is wiped with a handkerchief off my cheek, but her gaze certainly did not do me any favors.

"Are you implying you're the same as me?" was the blunt question she asks that doesn't need an answer, but I answer it anyways like a broken record.

"If so, why are you idly talking to me when the small girl you're taking care of is going off to kill herself?"

She doesn't react to my words. The words of a broken record. Her finely sculpted doll-like face is without emotion, but that doesn't mean she doesn't have any. A sharp pain assaulted my cheek, but that was all it was. I could have sworn she had whispered something into my ear.

"If you want someone to blame, then blame your father who discarded our 1000 year dream."

It wasn't long before she turned the other way.

Everyone in this world carries their own wounds unique to them. Just because I was wounded myself did not give me the authority to speak for all of us, but that's just how self-centered humans can be. It was evidence of how frustrated I was right now about the situation despite how collected I still was.

A single life cannot be equal to a thousand year dream.

In truth, maybe I didn't care at all about the small girl who was the master of this castle. I was saying whatever I could in the infinitesimally small chance that she won't hurt my sister as fruitless as it was. The great dungeon walls around me in the modern city of Fuyuki no less spoke of the power and history behind the Einzbern name.

Magi in the end were vessels for the wishes of their bloodline, whether they be Holy Grails or not. It wasn't limited to magi, all humans were like that. Miyu wasn't any different. Miyu's family….

They simply wished for their children to grow up healthy. A wish any parent would make.

People kinder than anyone else…...even if I sealed those early memories away to protect my glass heart, it was something I mustn't forget. It was the same wish Kiritsugu made for us from the bottom of his own shattered heart. That primordial wish I made for Miyu.

It was the wish that drove me and continues to drive me. If the world considers that wrong, then that's a world not worth protecting. The world I wish for...

"A mere thousand years is all you have? People have wished for the health of their children even before they started scribbling on caves."

The maid stops, but doesn't turn her head to face me. She wasn't shaken at all by my words.

"People? It seems like I have to apologize. You seem to be ignorant of what we even are," was a mere statement of fact without contempt or pity. She wasn't acknowledging me any further. She has already completed the task of feeding me. She simply departs from the cell, sealing the door behind her. I'm once again alone in this cell for who knows how long.

I muster my body, loading the chamber in my head, gathering the potential circulating through my veins only to burn myself once again. Yet again, I gleaned nothing from the structure of the restraints that bound me. It was painfully obvious that I wasn't a very good mage, but it seemed like Tohsaka still thought I was faking it for some reason. The situation was hopeless, but I was always a hopeless person. What was I even going to do if I managed to escape this cell? Let alone Berserker, Archer was an enemy I could never hope to defeat on even terms.

I was a genuine imitation of Heroic Spirit EMIYA, but a faucet cannot deliver more water than the pipes that fed it. I could beat a mere shadow as a child but I had a hard time imagining beating the genuine article if he could really be called such. The food he made yesterday was certainly better than what I could make. His swords must have been no different. Still….

There was no rule that an imitation can't beat the original.

I couldn't lose to myself, but I couldn't think of him as the same person as me. Even if my gut told me we were the same person in a sense, my heart refuted that conclusion despite all the evidence my brain had collected.

But...

Right, wrong or correct had no place in the conversation. Our standards were the same. We simply valued different people, yet that had made all the difference. Miyu was my sister and Illya was a stranger, but it was evidently clear that it was the reverse for him. Our paths had diverged from the very beginning. The only thing I knew for certain was the fact he was mulling over the situation on the roof just as I was in this basement. Hopefully Sakura doesn't get tangled into whatever happens next, but that would be delusional of me.

It wasn't long before the sealed door opened again. I had hoped it was Tohsaka so we could talk more about Sakura's situation so I could know more about the story on her end, but that wasn't to be.

Illyasviel.

She was a small girl with white hair and red eyes. As childish as she could act, sometimes it felt like it was all but an act. The magic power she effortlessly wielded belied her fragile form. Whatever the truth was, either conclusion had terrifying implications.

In her hands was a bowl of pork liver rice porridge. Wounds heal on their own, but not from nothing. Replenishing blood requires iron. Was it her own thoughtfulness or...

"Taking cooking lessons from Archer?"

"Aren't you lucky that I'm thinking so much about you?" were her uncomfortably sultry words.

For someone who had accepted her own death, she could only be described as lively.

"Shouldn't you be thinking about yourself? About where you are or what you're even doing?"

"It's not like Kiritsugu ever stopped to think about those things," was her response to my half-hearted advice.

Kiritsugu? Before I could order my thoughts, she had already sat down next to me with the bowl in hand.

"Always looking somewhere else paying no heed to where he was or who was around him. Not for birds. Not for stars. Did you know what he was looking at? Or did he already find what he was looking for when he lived with you two?" were those hard questions asked without mercy. Her tone was one half curiosity and the other contempt.

I recall him. That weary lost man who spent his days on the porch gazing upon the sky whether it was day or night. The man I considered my hero even as he stressed how the title didn't suit him at all. The man who saved me had always considered himself a failure.

I always tried to fix what I did wrong, but I only ever made things worse. Endlessly repeating until I couldn't bear it anymore. I wanted an easy out. For a miracle to happen. It was like chasing the clouded moon…..a journey in a pitch black dark night...

A hero who chased after what was right, taking whatever shortcuts he could to reach his destination. As long as he kept running, he thought he would make it there.

"He was always like that. Like a child. Travelling the world, chasing his dreams, but I guess he took too many shortcuts and lost his way. He had failed to become what he wanted to be."

It wasn't laughing matter.

"By the time he realized it, it was too late to turn back. His legs had already given out by then."

Chasing his dreams while running from his mistakes until he could no longer run. By the time he lived with us, he had no choice but to face the reality of his powerlessness. All he could do was pass on what he learned on to me, but I was too young to understand the lesson he tried to teach. If he had any hatred in him, it was always towards himself. Maybe I was more hopeless than he was.

"Is that all? If his legs gave out, why didn't he just use his arms? If those arms didn't work, he still had his mouth? He could have at least hired some help. He could have at least did that much," was her unreasonable demand.

If Kiritsugu really wanted his daughter back, there was nothing he could personally do with his ailing body. He had always come back home from his trips dejected despite the smile he tried to make in front of us. He could have roped someone else in to help him, but with the lesson he must have learned when he ended up alone, there was no way he could do such a thing.

"He couldn't forgive himself if he involved anyone else."

It was frustrating thinking back on it now. If I knew….if he just asked for my help back then….if I….

"Everyone in this family is stupid," was her statement of an irrefutable fact.

Life isn't so simple to be reduced as right or wrong, yet that's all we humans do in hindsight when we look at the results. They were nothing more than biased standards we created for ourselves. Kiritsugu made mistakes and I continue to make the same ones.

"Don't look down on stupidity. It has taken more lives than malice ever could."

I sometimes wonder about the books Miyu ends up reading, but it seems it wasn't all impractical stuff. Never attribute to malice that which can be explained by stupidity. Hanlon's Razor was it? Still, knowing that won't help me at all right now. Judging by Illya's downcast eyes, it was a conclusion she had always suspected, but wanted to deny.

Everyone wants the world to be simple. Science, religion and mage-craft were ultimately tools to achieve that end. To not worry about food. To not worry about death. To not worry about the unknown, by knowing everything.

"Maybe I should just cut out your tongue considering nothing useful comes out of that hole," was the threat she made.

"You knew what you were in for when you decided to come down here to talk to me again. You really wanted to talk more about Kiritsugu didn't you?" was the assessment I made.

"..."

She doesn't answer but I could understand her feelings on some level. I was sure I was like that once. For a young child, a parent is their whole world. For Illya, that hasn't changed even after he died.

"What did he wish to become?" was the small question she utters.

She must have already known the answer, but….

"A hero," escapes my lips.

That was the truth behind the Magus Killer.

"Is that so? Those Class Cards. Special cards that let you become a hero. She really is as thick as she seems," was her conjecture about Miyu's relation to those cards.

That hasn't really changed. Outsiders will form their own explanations about my family. Well, I couldn't really blame them because the truth itself was….

...Children of God...Holy Grail…..Ainsworths…..

The truth I knew may very well have been a fever dream by inhaling too much smoke 10 years ago or a coping mechanism to cover up what I had lost in that fire. If the past was nothing more than a network of memories, then those strange memories I had couldn't be called such because I was the only one who had them. Archer's existence simply complicated things. The conjecture of actual magi will always sound more plausible than whatever illusion a third rate like me knew as truth, but those illusions were the basis of my swords.

"Whatever explanation you try to come up with yourself, you will never reach the truth."

"That's the problem isn't it? You won't reveal the truth," was the conclusion she came to.

The truth? A harmless truth. The same ones I gave Tohsaka. Ones she brushed off as lies without having to speak.

"She's just a child of the Sakatsuki family," was the same answer I gave to Tohsaka. My answers were never good enough.

"That's a weird way of saying Sakazuki. Does that mean you know about the cavern where the Greater Grail rests? Funny that's something not even Rin seems to know and you call yourself a third rate?" was her barrage of questions I could only half follow.

Ten no Sakazuki…...Heaven's Cup…..That ominous cavern…..Julian?...my wish….the altar….Miyu?...

The memories from that strange dream flood my head. Memories of a former friend I have never met. The reason why I found it hard to make any. The reason why I had trouble trusting others completely.

The earth shakes.

The scalding hot porridge is poured all over me as I break the fall of the falling girl. She brushes herself off but pays no heed to her ruined purple blouse as she closes her eyes. An ominous smile appears on Illya's face.

"She's here already?" were her ominous words.

She bears into me with her ominous red eyes before another set of eyes appear. The mismatched eyes of the Grecian Hero Heracles tower over me like a pantheon statue. His sculpted hand of bronze envelopes me.

The day I had been dreading had come too soon.