Chapter Nine

Guileful Lamb

Cold. So cold. And the light above was out of reach, no matter how much she kept struggling, reaching and kicking in the water.

Ilya was scared, so scared. She could hardly comprehend what had just happened, not a moment ago she'd been ecstatic, and then the ice beneath her had given way and now she was sinking, sinking, sinking into the icy, icy water, unable to breathe, lungs burning for air.

But she had no idea what to do, how to get back to the world above.

What was going to happen? Would she never see her mother and father again?

Unable to open her mouth to cry at that despairing thought, she whimpered deep in her throat, flailing uselessly, wishing she knew better how to swim.

Then a shadow blocked the precious light. Though she was wrapped in darkness, strong yet gentle hands hooked her underneath her arms and pulled her upward. She broke the surface, winter wind slashing her face, but she could hardly think of that as she was at last able to gulp in air, coughing up what little freezing water she'd inhaled accidentally, shivering violently, teeth chattering.

Her cold wet clothes clinging to her skin were peeled away, but she was only exposed to the frigid air for a moment before she was wrapped up in the most wonderful dry warmth she had ever known, and held close to a strong, warm chest. She squinted open her eyes and through the blur of tears and water, she made out the beloved face of her father. And though he was smiling, it looked like it caused him pain to smile, as though he'd start crying any minute.

"Ilya…Ilya, can you hear me? Don't be scared, you'll be just fine. It's okay, everything's okay, Daddy's got you…."

Despite the way his voice trembled, Ilya herself smiled, so relieved and so happy that she was safe in her father's arms. Yes, everything really would be okay—

Ilya blinked open her eyes with a small gasp. She found tears again, like she used to when she had her old nightmares. She sat up in her bed, sniffling and frowning puzzledly at her hands.

"Was that…real?" she whispered. "Was that really you…Daddy?"

It had felt so real…she remembered how cold that water was.

Then it struck her that that indeed had not been just a dream, but a memory. How? How had she managed to forget that day…when she'd fallen through the ice…and her father…had saved her?


No matter what she did to shake it off, the dream conjured from an old, nearly-forgotten memory would not let Ilya go. It tugged at something deep inside her that she thought she'd lost for good. So, she wasn't entirely unhappy that she couldn't rid herself of it, save for the possibility of it affecting how ruthless she could manage to be in the coming battle ahead. Still, she gave on trying to just the same.

It did soften the awful feeling she'd carried with her back to the castle, fairly certain that her chance at retribution-by-proxy had slipped through her fingers as there couldn't possibly be a way that Shirou Emiya had survived the injury he'd suffered from Berserker's blade.

However, even that changed for the better when she sat before the remote viewing crystal ball to take a routine peek at the grounds of the Fuyuki Church, and lo and behold, there he was…alive and well, stepping out into the dawn light and meeting his Saber Servant outside the gates.

The relief at seeing him alive made sense, but what was underneath was more unclear. Obviously, the part of her that itched to spill his blood, cause him pain, hear him scream was there, but there was something else there. She put her hand to the cold, smooth, curved surface of the crystal ball. It was true that his connection to Kiritsugu made her seethe, her father's betrayal magnified by the boy for whom he had betrayed her, but by that same token, it also gave her a taste of some unfamiliar feeling…or perhaps, one she hadn't felt in a very long time…for while it felt foreign, it also felt nostalgic.

After the dream she had last night though, just thinking about it, her throat grew tight. And for the first time in a long time, she longed in her heart to speak to her father again: not berate him for what he had done, but to implore him to tell her why, particularly when he really had been so kind and loving to her and her mother both. The way he always opened his arms to her, from the time that she could crawl to him to the time that she could run to him…and then he'd scoop her up and hold her close, laughing tenderly, his warm breath in her ear as he stroked her silver hair he said reminded her of the snow.

Suddenly, cutting the flesh off Shirou Emiya's bones didn't have as strong an attraction for her as it had before, not nearly so much as the questions she wanted to ask him about why her father had left her for him. She was still quite driven to cause him excruciating pain, but there was more…heat to it, not as cold and unfeeling as it had been before.

Illya hugged herself and shivered, shaking her head. She couldn't afford to be weak, to be merciful, not now that she'd come this far. She took a deep breath and let it out, swallowing and pushing everything deep down, like before.

And when she opened her eyes, they were once again sharp with cold fury, thirsting intensely for violence.


As she had done since she'd first arrived here, once again she slipped out of the castle in daylight against Sella and Leysritt's warnings that she remain within the castle walls for the sake of her health, at least while the sun was out and Berserker was slumbering. It was bad enough she'd gone out those nights and had Berserker with her, now she was brazenly leaving the castle all by herself. And again, there was the matter of their treating her like a fragile snowflake that would crumble at the faintest breath of wind.

Ilya, for her part, welcomed the challenge, and was quite pleased when she managed navigating her way out of the Einzbern Forest and then down into the city. Fuyuki in the daylight was very different from Fuyuki at night. It was deceptively warm, even in the cold winter air. The streets had characters of their own, which fascinated her to no end. Some were sleepy and quiet, even at the height of noon, and other places there were masses of people, of bodies hurrying here and there, back and forth, going about their lives as though a war weren't being waged right beneath their noses.

Clasping her hands behind her back, Ilya smiled rather smugly to herself at the thought that she knew far more than the citizens themselves about what really went on around here. Though objectively that was a good thing, seeing as how drawing non-participants disconnected from the world of mages into the war resulted in things like silencing by death in the case of only one or two people, and if it were a whole crowd of people well…that could break the entire war down, and Ilya certainly couldn't have that.

As she made her way through the lively shopping district, she passed a side street where she glimpsed some green. Curious, she turned onto this street, and found it to be another spot quieter than the main street, though people still floated about here and there.

The green was that of a small park. Here there were things called swings and even a large metal structure upon which one could climb over for fun, as well as a long balance beam inches above the ground. There were wooden benches too where people could sit within the serenity of nature.

Or at least there would be serenity if there weren't things like tiny shrieking children allowed.

"Daaaaaddy! No faaaaaiiiiir!"

Ilya stopped close to a tree, peeking around at where a small girl sobbed and kicked at her father as he tried to get her come with him willingly.

"Sweetie, c'mon, we don't want to be late to meet up with Mama, do we?"

"But I wanna play more!" The girl looked up at her father with eyes that spilled tears.

The father shook his head, beleaguered but patient. And something resonated with Ilya in the way he crouched and said, "But then…who will take Rainbow the Unicorn out for a ride?!" and then swept his daughter up into his arms…and as she broke into peals of giggles, he perched her up on his shoulders and grinned up at her.

"Giddyap, Rainbow!" she crowed, kicking out her legs.

And her father obliged, taking them out of the park at an improvised trot.

Growling at the growing ache in her chest even as she clenched her fists, Ilya stalked away. As she stepped out onto the sidewalk though, a familiar voice caught her ear and she darted back behind the tree.

"Saber, did you really have to come with me?"

"As your Servant, it is my duty to protect my Master's life at all costs."

"But…I really don't think anyone's going to attack while I'm at school. I mean, this is supposed to be a secret war, right?"

Ilya ducked down into the bushes and then peeked through the bramble with her red eyes. She covered her mouth to suppress a wicked snicker at how thick-headed Shirou was being, as she watched him wearing the same jacket as he had the night before, carrying a box wrapped in cloth, while the young woman that could only be his Saber Servant from the night before kept pace a little ahead of him in a white coat and lovely blue midi-skirt, a lavender scarf around her neck, her green eyes shifting here and there hunting for signs of danger.

Sad as it was, it appeared that the adopted son of Kiritsugu Emiya was a smidge clueless, beyond doing something as stupid (not to mention irresponsible) as shield his Servant from a deadly blow.

Though it did get Ilya thinking now that she had a moment to do so…why was he so clueless and irresponsible about being a Master? If Kiritsugu had adopted him, as a mage he would've taught Shirou about this stuff. But he didn't seem to know a thing, including any magic. Leastways nothing useful.

Her memories were still fuzzy at best, diluted to the point where most of her feelings had been washed out to a gray, lusterless mist, when drips of red bloodlust didn't seep in whenever she contemplated the depths of her rage for her father, but from what she could manage to remember, her father hadn't been a mage in the traditional sense. Even so, her mother had referred to him as such.

Surely he'd have taught the boy something?

Unless maybe he'd decided Shirou wasn't worth teaching?

Ilya huffed and put this aside for later as Master and Servant disappeared down the street.

Unfortunately, this was the most fruitful thing that Ilya managed to come across that day. That and the dark pulse she sensed radiating from Ryuudou Temple, but it was too amorphous to identify as anything like a Servant. It felt Servant-y though. Though it was perplexing that something so dark would have a Servant-y feel and yet couldn't possibly be a Servant.

When she felt Berserker waking up, she had to return to Einzbern Castle. As far as Leysritt and Sella need be concerned though, their princess had been shut up in her room all day. And so she would make it appear the following day, when she slipped out yet again to see if anything new had come up that she could reap for intel.

Today however, instead of his Saber Servant, he had someone else entirely with him.

Ilya could've palmed her forehead, groaning in lament at his imbecility.

Moreover, this other girl was meek and demure, with a pink ribbon tied at one ear in her violet hair, her blazer and midi-skirt the same beige color as Shirou's uniform was. Ilya caught that her name was Sakura, and wondered briefly if she wasn't Sakura Matou. It would indeed be a huge coincidence, but then, if it was her, she was the child of the family who was to remain ignorant of magic, and thus Ilya need not be concerned about her either.

Unless she needed some of what they called "leverage". Given how close she and Shirou seemed to be, just at a glance, that was definitely an option on the table.

She was distracted from her calculating huntress' thoughts though when Sakura spoke again.

"It's really no trouble at all, senpai," she told Shirou softly, sweetly, clutching her bag in her hands. "I didn't think you were…that concerned about me."

Shirou laughed, his hands in his uniform trousers, his bag tucked under his arm, a plaid scarf thrown around his neck. "'Course I'm concerned, Sakura. I'd hate to see you get hurt or worse." Then he stopped, and Sakura stopped too.

"Senpai?" Sakura reached up and twisted the pink ribbon in her hair delicately between her fingers, like an unconscious tick or habit.

And then Shirou looked at Sakura and said, more quietly, "I have to keep an eye on you. I wouldn't be much of a senpai if I didn't look out for my kohai."

Their eyes met, and once again, something that two other people were doing resonated with Ilya. Or rather, this time it triggered a memory (cloudy as it was) of peeking her head out of her bedroom, about to call for her bedtime story, but stopping short when she found her mother leaning up to meet her father's lips in what they called a "grown-up kiss". It wasn't the first time she'd seen it, and perhaps this memory was a combination of many different ones patched together, but even so, the feeling it evoked was clear and sharp enough to cut through the disconnected smoke.

Ilya had glowed at the sight, at the way her parents held each other, at the way her father gently broke away and then wrapped his arms around her mother, leaning close to her ear and whispering softly into it, something Ilya couldn't hear. A secret, meant for her mother, and her mother alone.

The spell was broken though when her father spotted Ilya watching them, and he chuckled, saying, "I think we have an audience," to Irisviel.

"Hm?" Irisviel blinked and twisted around, and then brightened at the sight of her daughter. "Oh, Ilya darling!"

There was that damn ache again. Ilya swallowed it down, and then doubly cursed her distraction as Shirou and Sakura moved on.

No matter.

From what she'd observed thus far, Ilya formulated a plan to draw Shirou Emiya in with the innocence of her small stature and childlike demeanor (something that up until this point she'd considered more of a curse than anything else as it held her body back from growing any further, into something as beautiful and femininely elegant as her mother had been). Sure, the boy had witnessed her attack him with cold-blooded eyes and a hungry smile, but she had a feeling she could easily appeal to his naivety and his seeming softheartedness with a convincing enough performance.


A fresh layer of snow iced the streets after the quiet powdering the night before. It was sticking really well too, wet enough to take a fistful of it and mold it into little balls. Ilya took a fancy to scooping up some in her small hands and packing it together into a projectile as she idled along the sidewalk in the shopping district, equally amused by the idea of hitting Shirou square in the back with this as she did say…a knife point.

She abandoned the idea though in favor of catching her prey off-guard by not even showing the faintest hint of violence, no matter how innocent or playful. That settled, she launched the snowball at the lamppost across the street, where it exploded into a burst of snow against the frozen metal of the pole, something that in and of itself was satisfying. The jangling chime that played whenever the sliding glass doors of the nearby supermarket opened chimed again, followed by a fleck of ginger out of the corner of her eye.

Shirou had stepped out of the market with two full grocery bags in tow, and for a moment, Ilya found herself distracted by witnessing the act of food-shopping itself, seeing as she'd never had to concern herself with such things before, but she knew from her many books that it was something normal human beings did.

But then she remembered herself, and, giddy with anticipation, she stepped up and down on her tippy-toes and then crept whisper-quiet behind Shirou as he made his way obliviously down the street, stopping at a crosswalk. She stopped a few steps behind him, and then reached out and tugged at the back of his brown uniform blazer.

"What the—?" Shirou jerked away and turned around. Finding Ilya behind him, he leapt back, grocery bags swinging.

Ilya beamed at him, radiating pure innocence as she stood there, waggling her small fingers on either side of her. "I'm glad you're alive, onii-chan."

Shirou stared at her with his golden eyes, blinked in astonishment. "I-Ilya…?"

And, in spite of herself, there was something warm hearing him speak her name like that, like they knew each other. Like they'd known each other from since they'd been very little.

Rather adorably too, Shirou seemed to mistake her staring back at him at the use of her pet name (something she hadn't heard since her parents had been with her), and he quickly sputtered out, "Oh! Sorry! Ilyasviel: I'm sorry for getting it wrong." And then, something of her mixture of sadness and anger at being reminded of happier days in her life with that simple utterance of her shortened name must have shown on her face, as he then hastily added: "I—I didn't mean to make you mad, I just…blurted it out…."

But now Ilya just found his flustered behavior genuinely amusing, and not even in a cruel way either. Just so, she continued to play innocent, smiling wide again and asking, "It's okay. Will you tell me your name, onii-chan? It's unfair that I don't know it."

As if she didn't already.

Not that he knew that.

Not that he'd have thought about that, anyway.

"Oh. Hem. I'm Shirou. Emiya Shirou."

"Emiyashirou? That's a strange name, onii-chan."

"No—Emiya. Shirou."

"Emi…yashirou?"

"Emiya. Shirou."

"Emiyash…irou?"

"No. Emiya is my last name, Shirou is my first name." Shirou's face colored, piercing Ilya with a very annoyed scowl, grocery bags swinging again as he flapped about in frustration. "Look, if it's hard to say, just call me 'Shirou'."

Ilya flinched, only slightly hurt by the anger in his voice, but even then, she was surprised that it affected her even just a little. She used that to her advantage though where her act was concerned and put on just the slightest of pouts.

Lucky for her, Shirou was indeed truly tender-hearted as he immediately softened. "I mean…if you want to."

Admittedly pleased by his contrition, Ilya switched from a pout to another smile, albeit a milder one. "Shirou. Shirou…. I like that name. So I'll forgive you for snapping at me." Before he could respond, she pounced and threw her arms around one of Shirou's arms and embraced it tight.

It had been ages since she'd hugged anything besides a lifeless pillow, or even Berserker's arm on occasion. But given what she'd discovered thus far, she was convinced that expressing such giddy, open, innocent-seeming affection would adequately lull him into lowering his guard.

"H-Hold on, Ilyasviel, what are you doing?!" he exclaimed.

"It's okay, you can call me Ilya!"

"Yeah, but—!"

He shook his captive arm, but Ilya held fast, and instead of nothing, an unexpected delight swooped up in her stomach and she burst into a genuine giggle like the girl with her daddy from the other day, a sensation that echoed that same lift inside her that she'd get every time her own father would gather her up into his arms and hold her, or pick her up and put her on his shoulders.

"Damn it," Shirou growled. "What, do you wanna fight me right now?!" and he gave up trying to shake her off like a clinging burr and tried instead prying her off by elbowing against her small chest hard enough to force her to let go.

She staggered back, winded, and gave a whimper that was just as genuine as her giggles had been a moment before. She took some satisfaction though at the immediate look of regret that crossed Shirou's face, before he shook his head, gripping his grocery bags in his fists and fixing her with a sterner eye.

But Ilya was just getting a feel for where to tug on his proverbial heartstrings and play him like the perfect fiddle. She blinked up at him, acting like she was captivated in some way, putting an index finger to her chin.

"Oh, what? Do you want to be killed?"

Shirou put up his hands, groceries hanging from his thumbs as he took another step back. "No way! I don't wanna die, and I definitely don't wanna fight you here of all places!"

Ilya grinned, all teeth. "Masters can't fight in the daytime silly! So of course I'm not here to kill or fight you. I don't even have Berserker with me. He's asleep right now."

"Oh." Shirou lowered his hands, still uncertain, but foolishly quick to ease into a measure of wary trust. "Okay…so…why are you here? I mean…did we meet by chance?"

"Not at all. I snuck out past Sella and Leysritt and specially came to see you. You should feel honored, you know."

"You came to…see me…?"

"Talk to you, actually."

"Talk…to me…."

"I've waited all this time. It's okay, right? You don't mind? If we talk?"

Shirou knitted his brow, considering. When he seemed too close to teetering towards rejection, she frowned, trying, hoping, to look as forlorn as possible, giving him what they called, "puppy dog eyes".

That did the trick.

He relaxed into a small smile of his own. "Okay. Sure. I don't mind talking with you. Actually, I kinda wanted to talk to you too."

Again, Ilya was caught off-guard by a reaction that was genuine, blinking now in genuine surprise. And then she grinned again. "All right! Then let's go over that way!" She pointed in the opposite direction of the street. "There's that small park over there!" She spun on her heel and started skipping down the sidewalk. "C'mon, c'mon! I'll leave you behind if you don't hurry!"


The park was empty, the emerging cloud-cover casting a desolation over it. For Ilya, it couldn't be more perfect. If there had been people here like a couple of days before, it wouldn't have been a huge problem for her, but getting Shirou alone was preferable. Not even for anything devious, after all, as it was established, Masters could only fight at night, keeping the Holy Grail War hidden from the world of non-mages; it was more because she felt she could think more clearly without the distraction of people chattering nearby, children shrieking or laughing, that sort of thing.

She parked herself on a bench, and even though she had grown some from when she'd been real, real little, her feet still dangled over the edge without touching the ground. Forcing herself not to let it bother her this time, she swung her legs, humming a tune to a song she vaguely remembered her mother singing to her years ago, as Shirou took a seat beside her.

He'd put the grocery bags on the other end of the bench first, and after he sat down, he interlaced his fingers together and rested his chin on them, propping his elbows on his knees.

"Okay, you first: what did you wanna talk about?" Shirou glanced round at her. "Was there something you wanted to ask me?"

"Oh, there's nothing I really wanted to ask you," Ilya informed him sing-songily.

"But…you're the one who said she wanted to talk. There's nothing important that you wanted to discuss?"

"You mean we can't talk if there's nothing important that needs discussing?"

"N-No, not necessarily, I mean—" Shirou shook his head and sat back, resting his elbows up on the back of the bench instead. "It's fine. We can talk about unimportant stuff. If you want. Only, I don't know you very well…."

"All right, let me ask you this then. Promise you won't get mad?"

"Sure, I won't get mad."

Ilya peered up at him, canting her head to one side and batting her silver eyelashes. "Do you like me?"

"Wh-What?!" Shirou spluttered. "What kind of question even is that?!"

"Hey!" Ilya put on her pout again, this time making it even more indignant. "You said you wouldn't get mad!"

"I'm not…mad, I'm just…shocked." Shirou let out a breath, calming himself, uncurling his fisted fingers. "It's just weird that you're asking that after you've already almost killed me once."

Ilya folded her arms and stuck her nose up in the air, acting even more affronted. "It's not my fault, you're the one who jumped like an idiot in front of Berserker's blade."

"Right, like you weren't planning from the start to pulverize me with that thing," Shirou groused. "It just doesn't make sense, you asking me if I like you after something like that. Why would you ask something like that at all?"

Ilya clasped her hands to her chest, flat against her pale lavender scarf, assuming a hurt demeanor, and, as expected, Shirou immediately looked sorry, giving her another taste of what sorts of faces she'd be able to make him make in the coming future when she got her fangs into him for real. "If I hadn't stopped him, you really would be dead. So there."

Shirou made a sound of regret deep in his throat, and though he looked away, he rested his chin on his knuckles and leaned forward on his elbows again. "Look. It's not that I don't…I mean…I don't hate you. I just…don't really know you all that well, so, I can't really say." Then he gave her another one of his small, gentle smiles. "I have to say though, I'd like to be friends, at least when you're like this."

Even though she was working to create a convincing innocence act, hearing this still gave Ilya pause, just like those brief, respective moments of genuine joy and hurt earlier. And found her voice quiver with a sincere hope that he was telling the truth.

"Really?"

"Yeah. Y'know, if I didn't know better, I'd wonder if you weren't my long-lost little sister or something crazy like that."

"Mm. Yeah, crazy…."

"And I really am sorry for being so harsh. You just kinda threw me off. Truce? At least while we're talking in the daytime?"

"Um…okay!"

True delight leapt up inside Ilya once more, and before she could manage it more calculatively, she simply grinned for it and threw her arms around Shirou's arm again, squeezing tight and squealing. And this time, her hugging him like this made her happier more than anything else. When her high fell back to earth though, she remembered herself, reorienting her enjoyment of this time with this boy who'd stolen her traitorous father from her towards her objective.

"Shirou…" she piped up. "Do you have a father?"

Her insides bubbled at the way she felt him stiffen, but he relaxed just as quickly.

"I did. But…he's gone now."

His voice resonated with the desolation of the park, the wind stirring sadly.

"Gone?"

"He died."

"Oh. I'm sorry." Ilya traced circles on the wood of the bench with one finger.

"I mean…he wasn't my…actual father…. I mean, he wasn't the father who had me with my mother, I don't remember him, he died too, years earlier than…well…." Shirou huffed. "What about you, Ilya?" he suddenly asked, as though eager to shift the focus of the conversation slightly. "Do you have a father?"

Ilya hadn't quite anticipated his turning the tables on her, but in hindsight she felt she should've. It was natural to have such back-and-forths in conversation, wasn't it?

Still, his seeming sadness at the death of who could only be Kiritsugu and not whatever father he'd had before echoing those moments she'd glimpsed him in the crystal ball quickly seeped into Ilya. With a heart that had grown both empty and heavy all at once, she relinquished her hold on him and sat up, smoothing out the wrinkles in the skirt of her long purple coat and then folding her hands primly in her lap.

"I did," she admitted.

"Did?" His voice was so sympathetic that Ilya was dangerously close to being the one who was lulled into a false sense of amity, rather than the intended reverse.

Yet, just for a moment, she dredged up one of her few memories untouched by her ire for Kiritsugu Emiya. The last fragments of the little girl she used to be still glittering, even in darkness.

"He said the reason he liked snow was because it reminded him of my and my mother's hair."

"Ah well. You do look like a snow-fairy."

Ilya giggled again, amused despite herself, but broke off at the way Shirou was looking at her. Like watching her laugh made him sad, somehow. It was too much like the way Kiritsugu would look at her sometimes, even through a smile, when the two of them would play together.

She turned away, pondering her swinging feet, gripping the edge of the seat of the wooden bench, fighting a shard of pain lodged in her heart.

"Hey…Ilya?" Shirou asked, very carefully.

And very carefully, Ilya looked back up at him. "What?"

"Can I ask you something?"

"Of course. What is it?"

"Do you recognize the name…Emiya Kiritsugu?"

The shard of pain in her heart shattered, freezing her into a numb suspension of her own feelings. Something about the simple question brought to bear so many odd things, like the idea that Shirou was more observant than he let on, or wondering how he even had the intuition to ask that in the first place, or how fragile being asked that so directly suddenly made her feel.

Thus the deadpan lie slid so easily past her lips:

"No. I don't know anyone like that."

The winter wind passed through, fluttering Ilya's silver hair, Shirou's ginger hair shivering.

The overcast sky was growing darker, not from more, thickening clouds, but from the light of the sun hiding behind them fading. The edge of sundown.

Ilya hopped up off the bench and spun around on the ball of one booted foot. "It's almost nighttime, Berserker will wake up soon. So I have to go now. After all, once the sun's gone, we'll be enemies again."

"Yeah. Right." Shirou's shoulders slumped in an incomprehensible disappointment. But then his head snapped up, and a smile played at the corner of his mouth again. "Can I talk with you again, Ilya?"

Something gold and warm bloomed inside Ilya at that, like a flower made of sunlight, breaking through cold winter.

She returned his smile, more sincerely than ever. "Do you really want to, Shirou?"

"Yeah. I wouldn't ask if I didn't want to."

What did it matter, really? She didn't trust him all that much anyway. She didn't trust anyone. At least anyone who was human like her father had been.

"Um…okay! Then…I'll come back here tomorrow if I feel like it. But don't you keep me waiting, you hear? It's rude to make a princess wait."

Shirou chuckled. "Oh? You're a princess now are you, not a snow fairy?"

"I'm both," said Ilya, as if it were obvious, and she graced him with a curtsy. Then, before she could really understand why she was compelled to do it, she blurted out: "Also…I was lying. Emiya Kiritsugu is someone I know."

The smile dropped off Shirou's face as he blinked, stunned. "Il…ya…?"

Ily scraped the heel of one boot against the gravelly ground, hands clasped behind her back again. "I was born into this world to win the Holy Grail War. But my own personal mission…is to kill you and Kiritsugu."

Shirou's jaw dropped, sound but no words coming out of his mouth. Before he could regain the power of speech, Ilya whirled around and sprinted off and out of sight behind a tree along the edge of it. She peeped back out once she felt he was no longer staring after her, and saw him leave with his groceries. So normal.

As she gripped the trunk of the tree, her nails scraped bits of bark right off it, as another old wound was awakened and weeping yet again.


Something about Shirou's intuitive mention of Kiritsugu had not only infected Ilya with a sadness that overpowered her long-harbored anger and hate, but that sadness, frustratingly enough, stuck with her fresh after she left the park.

It was almost as frustrating as her just throwing caution to the wind at the last minute and telling him her intentions for him outright. Though…she supposed that given they were both Masters, he was already keeping in mind that she would have to kill him at some point. So it was more just her giving away that she'd intended to hunt down and kill Kiritsugu too that might be a problem, but on the other hand, perhaps that would loosen his tongue all the more easily down the road.

Just the same, she tried to make herself forget. So, as she was making her way back, she sidetracked, wandered off the most direct path back to Einzbern Castle. She hopped a bit, trying to regain the momentum of some modicum of her enjoyment earlier, if a pale shadow of what she used to feel as a smaller child. Then she skipped along as she'd come to like doing on these snowless sidewalks. It was so strange, being able to walk outside without crunching in white powder and crystal, how here, when it snowed, people were quick to clear walks and roads of it and ice so people could use them safely.

In diverting from the path, she found another secret side street that seemed to snake around towards a small wood that, when the wind blew through, produced a gentler, sweeter breath than that of the forest barrier of the Einzbern Forest.

She continued along that way, skipping and hopping down the side street and towards the sleepy wood with the rare anticipation that preceded a revelation.

Even in winter, with the leaves mostly dropped from autumn, there was still green to be had, especially in the grass. And the wood of the trees themselves was so much warmer. Ilya put her hand to one of them, and something about the softness of it made her smile, so different from the bark of the walnut trees, toughened to survive the frigid cold year-round.

"Ilya…."

Ilya jumped, snatched her hand back from the tree's trunk. She spun around, eyes darting everywhere for who had snuck up on her. But there was no one there, no matter where she looked. She sighed, irritated now more with herself for letting herself lower her guard like that.

And yet, something about this place, even though it wasn't blanketed in snow, she was reminded of the many walks she had taken with both her father and mother…the games she'd played with them.

In her moment of hesitation, her eyes listed further on the path ahead, where the trees thinned out. Remembering her inquisitiveness, she ventured to the other side of the wood where it opened up onto a large field…covered in rows and rows of stones…in all shapes and sizes. Intrigued, Ilya inspected a few along one row, finding they were all engraved with symbols meant to look as though they'd been drawn on with a paintbrush or calligraphy pen, with small bouquets of flowers left there, or even smoldering sticks that gave off a peculiar fragrance that put Ilya's mind at ease. A warm fragrance, one of warm nostalgia…yet evoked again that ache in the heart. This time though, she didn't even try to fight it.

Ilya felt something familiar about these stones…like she'd seen them in some pictures somewhere…perhaps in some book….

It had been so long, she felt, since she had truly read or looked at books for pure pleasure. Everything for so long had been for the sake of preparing herself for her time here, and the last task she would undertake of her life.

The mystic code…the Dress of Heaven…the Holy Grail…the all-powerful wish-granting device….

There was something comforting though, in running her hands over the cold stone, even if some were rough while others were lacquered smooth. And her rigorous studies, working as hard as her mother had at her own, proved one advantage at least: she was able to read the kanji she came across here. Her maids were flummoxed by the writing system, but Ilya could decipher the various symbols composed of dashes and lines, some crisscrossing, others angular or perpendicular to each other, quite easily.

She'd even tried her hand at writing in kanji a few times. She remembered…her father had sat with her with pen and paper, and he'd written his name for her in the script…and she'd been rather disappointed that her name couldn't translate as well into kanji…leastways not without distorting the meaning of her name in German. Her father had said that would be "stretching it", or something like that.

She even thought she could remember what his name in kanji had looked like….

衛宮 切嗣

Yeah…that was it….

In fact…there it was…right there…on the very next stone. One with some of those scent-sticks burned to give off that same nostalgia-and-heartache-inducing fragrance. They were still smoldering, as though someone had recently been here to put them in and light them.

Ilya breathed in the scent, and her eyes filled, though from the sting of the hot smolders or from that feeling that scent evoked inside digging deeper into her chest, she couldn't be sure. But she had a feeling that if it wasn't both, it was definitely the latter…for it came to her then what these stones were.

Gravestones.

Markers bearing the name of the deceased person buried beneath them.

Because of how she was meant to fulfill her role as the Grail in the previous War, there had been no such stone for her mother. And there would be no such stone for Ilya either, when her time came.

But her father…this…this was where they'd buried him…when he'd died…she remembered seeing Shirou in the Crystal Ball, arguing with that woman called "Fuji-nee"…about "visiting him"…she must've meant…visiting Kiritsugu's grave….

"Daddy…" she whispered the word, croaked it out because her throat had grown tight. She reached out and touched her fingers to where her father's name was engraved vertically into the stone, slowly sinking to her knees before the grave without really giving it thought.

Underneath her…that was where he'd ended up. After all this time…she'd found him.

She'd finally found him.

Her lip trembled, and she bit hard down on it, so hard it drew blood. Her eyes filled more, but she fought back her stinging tears.

She would not cry.

Yet as she efforted to stave off the wave of cries that threatened to break free from her, it got more and more difficult to breathe. Until she could no longer bear it and she let out a savage yell, curling her small hand into a small fist and stamping and grinding her knuckles into the smooth, decorative stones that artfully surrounded the ground at the base of the grave.

"Damn it," she hissed between her teeth. "After all this time…here you are…here's where you were hiding….!"

Struck with ireful passion, she let out another yell and raised her hands, seeing red and nothing but herself scratching at and raking the gravestone with her fingernails like an angry cat attacking drapes, as if she could tear her father's name right off it.

But she froze, stopped herself, right before she came down upon the marker. The wild rage evaporated at her father's name there before her, as quickly as it had arisen in her, for at the same time her mind had flickered to a snowy memory…the same one that had come to her mind before she'd left Germany, when she'd taken one last walk amongst the walnut trees—

"Can you wait for me, Ilya? Even if you're lonely, can you last until Daddy comes home?"

Still, she did not cry. She licked the blood from her bottom lip, the warm copper taste spilling into her mouth. When it beaded again, still not quite congealed, she flicked at it with her fingertip, catching a drop of it on the delicate pad.

When she left the grave behind, there was a small faint smear of red blood across the silver lacquer of Kiritsugu Emiya's name.