Chapter Ten
Puckish Lamb
For all of Sella's carrying on about her sneaking off in daylight, Ilya had no time to give it much thought when she'd returned home and announced she would stay in for the evening. Not that she ever really did, but now she really didn't. Indeed, her eyes met a sight that ignited a feverish train of thought in her brain as she observed the city of Fuyuki by night through her crystal ball.
A black kite.
An aberration.
Or rather, the remedy (if only in the textbook sense)to one that had been introduced into play by another Servant, none other than Caster. She paid dearly for trying to harness a Servant of her own in a False Assassin, as the True Assassin burst from inside of that one. And he painted Ryuudou Temple with blood, including that of both Caster and her Master.
Only for Caster's corpse to be dragged off by what seemed to be the darkness itself.
A shiver skittered up Ilya's spine, but overruled any natural fear with her own confidence in her ability to calculate. The connection she had to the Holy Grail of Fuyuki through her being a Vessel like her mother had been sensed a twitch. A wrongness. A shadow.
Another.
"This all has the putrescence of Matou," she declared under her breath. Though she couldn't put her finger on why she knew that to be the case. Perhaps her forebears that strung all the way to Lord Justica were able to tell her something of the matter, and that was how she intuited such. Either way, a sadness within her passed down from generations of previous Vessels contemplated that she would have to face that man, Zouken Matou, directly, and soon.
New prey had presented itself for her to hunt down, it would seem.
Why did it have to hurt so much? These memories clawing at her heart, when she'd thought she'd locked away such beasts for good? Yet her encounter with Shirou, her stumbling upon her father's grave—those catalysts had set them free, set them loose inside her where they tormented her in her dreams.
Her mother's sweet lullabies whispered once more into her ear, curling up her spine.
"The moon has risen/ The little golden stars shine/ In the heavens so clear and bright/ The woods stand dark and still/ And out of the meadows rise/ A wonderful fog./ How the world stands still/ In twilight's veil/ So sweet and snug/ As a still room/ Where the day's misery/ You will sleep off and forget./ Do you see the moon standing there?/ You can only see half of it/ And it is round and beautiful!/ Such are several things/ That we laugh at mockingly/ Because our eyes do not see….."
That was one she'd sung when she'd been very small, all the time.
But there was another she'd only heard her mother sing once, when it had just been the two of them. Her mother had been in a peculiar mood that day, and after she'd sung it, had asked Ilya to keep it just between the two of them.
"Die Lorelei", it was called.
Though Ilya had promised sincerely, when it became clearer to her that one day her mother would leave her forever, and her father would come for her after all was said and done, she promised herself that she would sing the song for him, in hopes that he might smile to hear her sing it.
Though, the song was in truth quite horrifying when translated from the German, one that waxed poetic on that same Lorelei that lured unwitting sailors like sirens to their deaths. But it was the memory of wanting to sing that song as beautifully as she could for her father that brought it forth to her mind so prominently, after she'd since long forgotten it, even in the days she'd had to watch her mother leave her and father betray her.
She woke with that morning with the words to it on her lips, half-formed and sleepy, and for a moment actually thinking that her father would be there at her bedside, closing her small hand in both of his large, warm ones. That is, until she remembered with an ache that he'd long since died.
At which point she couldn't help crying into her pillow, crying with an unbearable pain in her chest, begging someone, anyone, to tell her why after all of that, her father had still abandoned her and her mother both as he had done. It just didn't make sense. Especially since her memories of him, coming back to her, shined so brightly like sunlight directly into her eyes, garish and searing. Ones of her father there…looking at her like his gaze alone had the power to keep her safe even as he'd played traitor to that promise.
And yet. And yet.
Her father's desperate voice on the icy air of the Einzbern's winter barrier, her grandfather's unhidden dislike for the Mage-Killer they had called Kiritsugu Emiya…the way Shirou had closed up at the question of whether he had a father.
"Enough," Ilya told herself, not for the first time.
Yet her usual ability to cut her mind off from her heart proved harder to manage, as though a connection she could normally sever clean with a knife was stubbornly remaining whole and forcing her to saw at it to get it to come apart, as merely her sitting up in bed like this triggered a flood of more memories colored by time and melancholy.
In fact, she imagined that her expression reflected one she called her mother had had once. Almost tired, even though it had been the middle of the day. Sometime earlier that same morning, if memory served, her parents had been speaking to each other in heated but hushed voices while Ilya had been sitting up in bed still rubbing the sleep out of her eyes, just like she was doing now.
Noting the odd look in that moment of midday, when it had just been her and her mother, little Ilya had gingerly asked:
"Mommy, are you and Daddy angry with each other?"
Irisviel looked up from where she'd been idly flicking aimless colors onto a sheet of paper with the set of oil pastels that they were sharing between them at their table in the library. Ilya swung her own small legs over the edge of her chair as she watched her mother blink at her in surprise, and then, somehow understanding, frowning in cautious yet pensive thought.
"We…did disagree on something this morning," she finally replied, "but really, looking back, it's a much smaller problem than it seemed to be at the time. Sometimes, that's how things work: how awful something seems to be, it can seem less so after a little while. Emotions seem to affect the size of problems, or even what counts as a problem, if that makes sense." She chuckled, but it wasn't very happy. "In any case, to answer your question: well, yes and no. We were angry with each other, but…even so, we still love each other. I'm guessing that's what you're really worried about."
Ilya's eyes, red as her mother's, widened. "Really? You still love each other?"
"Oh yes." And then Irisviel's smile turned warmer, more genuine, brightening the gloom that had been hanging around her. "I love your father very dearly. You and he are both very precious to me. When he comes back after he's finished with his work for today, I know that he'll want to apologize quite as much as I want to apologize to him. It's like when you, little miss, might be misbehaving, and your daddy and I have to speak to you more harshly than usual to get you to stop it."
"Um…." Ilya's cheeks colored.
"We still love you, even when that happens." Irisviel beamed as she reached over and tenderly brushed hair out of her daughter's eyes. "So it is with your father and I. Because we love each other so much…."
And indeed, when Kiritsugu came back later that evening, he reached for Irisviel, gently, and pulled her close, and softly whispered something in her ear. The two of them shared a kiss, and her father cradled her mother's face in his hands and touched his forehead to hers. Then, sniffling as though he'd been crying, he turned a bright smile to Ilya and reached for her too, and little Ilya happily joined the sphere of love glowing in the room.
At once, this memory had always protected Ilya, but had also threatened to destroy her for how much she was reminded of how desperately she longed to feel that way again, to have back the people in her life who had made her feel that way.
She huffed again in her growing frustration. "Enough."
Yet that day, after she pushed aside her blankets and got dressed, instead of applying herself specifically to strategy, she slipped past Sella and Leysritt like the little rapscallion she could be, and went back out into the city of Fuyuki on her own to see if Shirou was waiting for her at the park like he'd said.
Waiting out in the open like an idiot for her to kill him.
That ginger hair was a dead giveaway, and all the better seeing as how indeed Shirou hadn't brought Saber with him. Again.
Excitement leapt inside her when she spotted him, as did something impish, as she crouched down and hid behind the trees and bushes. As she peeked in between the branches, she stifled a giggle, observing as Shirou sat on the bench they'd sat on together the day before, setting aside the shopping bag he was toting. He leaned forward, elbows on his knees, chin cradled in his hands. There was a wistfulness about him that touched Ilya to a degree, as though he had something heavy on his mind.
Reminding her again of her father when he'd thought his daughter couldn't tell he was thinking hard about things that made him unhappy.
She realized then, that Shirou, her prey, was starting to mean something different to her. Although, when he stood after some time, presumably to leave as he picked up his shopping bag, she had no intention of letting him go. But she decided she wouldn't kill him yet either.
Not quite yet.
She had every intention of having some fun with him just the same, however.
So, she reached out to him from behind, to his retreating back, and contacted him through his vision. He froze the moment she did, quivering all over, the shopping bag falling from his hand as he would have lost all feeling in all his limbs. Stifling another giggle, Ilya pranced over, arms flung out, and spun around to stand in front of him, somewhat enjoying the shocked expression into which his face had been locked, if only for a moment or two.
Then, with a strangely beleaguered sigh, she snapped him out of it, though she still relished in showing him her tongue stuck playfully out of her mouth as he came out of his entrancement.
He blinked, staring wildly at her. "I-Ilya?" he rasped.
"Did I surprise you?" Ilya ribbed him, hands clasped behind her back, all innocence.
"I…um…."
Ilya's grin widened, amused in spite of herself at his naivety. But, to be fair, technically, he was younger than her, so she supposed he could almost be forgiven in the end for being so easily duped. Which was why she felt such satisfaction lecturing him next on the importance of being more aware of his surroundings. Made all the more satisfactory when he admitted openly that he probably should have as he regained his bearings and picked up the shopping back he'd dropped.
"So why were you just sitting here?" Ilya wanted to know, almost admonishing him. "You would've been dead if I came here legitimately as a Master."
"Well, I just came here to see you," Shirou admitted matter-of-factly. "You told me yesterday that we could meet again."
Ilya blinked, her smile sliding away. She certainly hadn't expected to really mean what he'd said, deep down. It hadn't really been an official promise anyway, so why should he have felt the need to keep a promise that wasn't even really a promise. Especially to her?
"Why? You came to see me, even though I've told you I want to kill you?"
"That's your choice, not mine. I just want to talk to you, not fight. And anyway, Masters don't fight during the day, right?"
"Ah, well…." Ilya scraped the heel of one boot through the gravel, somewhat avoiding meeting Shirou's expression with his raised eyebrow, his hands on his hips.
"Do you want to kill me more than you want to talk to me?" he pressed.
Knitting her brow, Ilya argued, "That's an unfair question. After all, I have to do both. I'll admit, it's fun to talk to you, but I can't forgive you either. I can't choose just one." A pain shot through her head as she struggled with it, and she unclasped her hands as she pressed the heel of one to her forehead, a bit caught off-guard that she felt this way.
In the presence of this boy.
Who stole her father from her.
"Hey."
"Hm?"
"Are you okay?"
The concern in his voice was sincere enough. That unnerved Ilya for some reason, even as something warm settled inside her at the same time. Which unnerved her even more. The struggle intensified quietly inside her as she endeavored to dredge up an answer for him, one that would keep him from trying to emotionally dissect her further.
She settled on a slight frown.
"I see," Shirou finally said softly. "Then I won't ask you to choose one."
"Mm."
"Since we're both here though, why don't we talk? I brought something for you for today, so we can fight some other time."
Something for me? Ilya perked up, her nose catching a delicious scent that now wafted on the air after a rustling in the bag Shirou had with him.
He pulled out a package containing what appeared to be a selection of some kind of puff pastry, each one the size of a mitten and in the shape of a fish.
"They're called 'taiyaki'," Shirou explained, carefully but warmly too. The way her father would do when giving her a present from a foreign country that she didn't understand. "Cakes shaped like fish. These are filled with paste made from sweetened azuki beans." He held them out to her.
Ilya hesitated. Then her stomach rumbled and she took them with a nod.
The two of them sat together on the bench with the fish cakes between them. After turning the cake this way and that in her hands, Ilya finally settled on taking a bite from the head first. The sweet bean and pastry filled her mouth, the tastiness unfurling on her tongue, in her mind. She was grinning before she could stop.
"Mm, yummy!" she enthused through the mouthful of confection, kicking out her legs like the child she used to be.
"Glad you like them," Shirou said, seeming satisfied enough with that fact alone as he took a bite of one himself.
"I hardly ever get to eat sweets anymore," Ilya confessed after she swallowed and thought a moment. "I used to get to eat more when…." She shook her head. "I'm told they're not good for me now that I'm here."
"Well you can take these home with you. Just don't let anyone see."
"What an idea. And I was already planning to do that, ha, ha."
"Nyan!"
Ilya quit swinging her legs and recoiled slightly as a small stray black cat approached their bench.
It sat back on its haunches and twitched its whiskery nose.
"Shoo!" Ilya jabbed at it with the toe of her boot.
"Hey!" Shirou threw out a hand to grab her by the shin, but the cat was already darting off. "You don't like cats, huh?"
"Not so much."
"Why not?"
The cat had already switched from targeting the taiyaki in Ilya's hand to a small warbler that had hopped out of a shrub. It pounced, snatching the bird by the tail before it could fly off and escape. As it held it down under its clawed paw, it bent over it and bit down on its neck, and the madly flapping bird went still.
"Because I like birds." Ilya finally said as the cat carried the dead bird off in its mouth, out of sight. She chomped into her fish cake again as the crisp wind picked up, and she shivered, finding solace in the warm treat.
"You cold?" Shirou asked, solicitous.
"Uh-huh. But I like the snow. Isn't that weird?"
"Mm. Not really. Snow's pretty, after all."
"Listen to you. You sure know what to say to a girl."
"Well, you seem like someone who needs cheering up."
Ilya paused halfway into her taiyaki and then finished the rest off. In between sucking the crumbs off of her fingers, she asked: "What makes you say that?"
"I can't really say, honestly." Shirou lifted the tail of his fish cake to his mouth, but didn't eat. "Just…I feel like I've seen your face before. I mean…not yours specifically just…something in your face is…familiar to me."
"Mm?"
"It's nothing. Never mind."
Ilya watched him as he sank his teeth into his cake again, almost too eagerly, as though he were trying to forget something, to lose himself in something that would make him forget. If nothing else, that was something that was familiar to her.
The rest of the cakes sat between them, but Ilya didn't feel like eating another one.
"I better not take these with me," she said. "It's bad enough I've been sneaking out, and my maids don't miss a trick. Or at least, if they catch me, they'll box my ears for sure. Or try to, which is tiring enough as it is."
"So you didn't come here to Fuyuki alone?" Shirou asked through his last bite of cake.
"Nuh-uh. I came with my maids, Sella, Leysritt, and Frau—well, I call Leysritt 'Leys'." Ilya giggled a little at her nickname, though she couldn't think why. "I don't like them all that much, but…I wish that I did. That I could."
"Why can't you?"
"Ugh. I don't know. Would you like to meet them?"
"Um—I—"
"Here." Ilya hopped to her feet. She took Shirou's face in her hands.
He started to protest, naturally. "Woah—hey, Ilya—"
"Just be quiet. You'll enter some other place if you resist me too hard. It's troublesome to return things to normal when that happens." Ilya gave a warning glare for good measure.
Shirou quailed, nodding, but there was something adorable about it, not to mention more playful than actual quailing. "Oh—okay."
"That's a good boy. Then close your eyes. And don't look around too much, okay? Even though I'm transferring you, you'll get motion sickness because the view is another's."
He stiffened the moment she touched her forehead to his. A humming line connected them, and through that line, Ilya projected a series of impressions that would pull his consciousness out his body like candy out of a jar. She traced it from where they were in the park, across the winter sky, through the Einzberns' forest, to the castle that stood proud and taller than the trees.
"Can you see it?" she asked him. "I transferred your vision to my forest."
Pointless to ask, given Shirou couldn't answer her in his current state. There was even a small sheen of sweat on his brow, which had knitted with growing discomfort. She couldn't decide if that pleased her or not.
She traced his consciousness further along, into the Einzbern Castle, after she pointlessly asked next if he'd memorized the route for future use. Into the foyer and the front hall before the grand staircase, up all the way into her private bedroom, where, sure enough, Sella and Leysritt were looking about for her, wondering where she'd gone to. While Frau was no doubt in the courtyard fiddling with the car.
Ilya let Shirou listen to their back-and-forth for a bit, their usual routine of Leysritt saying something that Sella found a reason to admonish her for. Then she gave him a little shake and reeled him all the way back into his body as though reeling in a fish (not that she had ever done that, but she imagined it was about the same, and that was basically how she was taught to perform this piece of magecraft on a basic level).
Shirou's shocked goden-brown eyes flew open, and he gasped as though he'd been holding his breath the whole time.
"How was it?" Ilya asked, withdrawing her hands from his face and clasping them behind her back again. "That was some great transformation magic, right?"
"Uh…um…." Shirou blinked dully, and then his eyes went wide again as he sucked in his breath, clapped a hand over his mouth, and dry-heaved. "Ilya…what was that?" he finally croaked.
"It's transfer of consciousness. I moved your vision into another object." When Shirou took his hand way from his mouth and stared at her in bleary confusion, Ilya explained further with as much patience as she could muster. "There's a nerve going from your brain to your eyes, right? Well, I connected that nerve to something other than your eyes. So you were getting information from places like the trees in my forest instead of your eyes."
"Okay. So…it's not that I became the tree, more that I received their vision and then just mistakenly thought I became one?"
"Right. You know, I thought you were dense at first, but you're actually pretty bright."
And, after explicating the mechanics further, Shirou asked conclusively if it was something similar to a dream, what he'd just experienced.
Ilya thought about it, vaguely aware that they were carrying this conversation somewhat as equals. Perhaps not in terms of actual ability, but just in the ability to discuss.
Finally, she said, "It's a bit different from a dream. You can wake up from a dream using your will. But that's why transferal is not fit for offense. It's more for self-protection. If you transfer your consciousness to your familiar or a doll that can move, you can safely pursue magic."
"So…your consciousness just returns to your original body even if an enemy destroys your familiar?"
"That's right. Magi who transfer their minds usually hide their original bodies in a safe place. In cases like this then, you need to be careful about transferring into the body of a familiar with its own soul."
Her final caution to him in their discussion, was that even if one transfers their consciousness into a familiar or doll, they will disappear if the original body grows old and dies. That it isn't immortality.
"The only eternal things in this physical world are souls," she said as he listened to her with appreciable raptness. "But nobody can keep souls by themselves. A soul cannot stay in this world without a body, and it will be destined with 'eventual death' once it obtains a body. Well…it just means that's the limit of the magic of the Einzbern and the Tohsaka."
"Einzbern and Tohsaka, huh…?" Shirou fell into a thoughtful silence with her.
A bell rang the time. Three o'clock. Midafternoon.
There was a sense of a spell being lifted off of them.
Ilya brushed at the front of her long purple coat with a heavy sigh. "I should be heading home."
"Yeah," Shirou agreed. "Me too."
"Thank you…for the…?"
"Taiyaki."
"Right. That." Ilya turned on her heel. But then she stopped halfway out of the park and looked back. She ground the toe of her boot into the ground, tentative. "Um…will you come see me again tomorrow, Shirou?" she asked, a candle of hope lit inside her against her better judgment. But having it lit again like this, she remembered she enjoyed the warmth of it, small as it was.
Shirou had stood and put the taiyaki back into his shopping bag. He canted his head to one side, and then his mouth curled into another softly amused smile. "Of course I'll come tomorrow. You showed me your house today. It's only fair I show you mine next."
Ilya blinked, genuine surprise stirred within her. "Really? You'll let me come see your house?"
"Of course. Why not?"
"Okay! Then I'll be sure to call out to you first tomorrow!"
Spurred on by growing excitement, Ilya darted out of the park and nearly ran all the way home. At least as far as the edge of the forest before slowing to a walk. Catching her breath as she picked her way through the trees, the bracing winter cold was a joyful thing to her for once, as it had been long ago when she would head out to play the walnut game with her father. Tomorrow, she would get to see the place where he had lived without her for all those years as his life had been dwindling out. Maybe that mattered more to her than whether or not it had been a place where he had been keeping himself away from her all that time.
Once she'd caught her breath, Ilya skipped the rest of the way to Einzbern Castle, and was even able to take Sella's vituperations at her having snuck out rather mildly. All of which culminated in Sella throwing up her hands in frustration and marching off, Leysritt peering after her with her usual expression of vague dumbfoundment.
Not long after she'd returned home, planning only to stay for a spell before reemerging for what battles might lay before her after hours, it began to rain. It continued on into nightfall, the wind carrying sheets of silver over the city. Ilya was watching it, her chin cupped in her hands, after having spent most of the remaining daylight hours strategizing until she felt her head would split. That was when she felt Berserker awaken.
She smiled. "Shall we, Berseker?"
Thus, they took to the streets together, hunting beneath the precipitative veil.
In the shades of the rain-slicked city, near the same park she and Shirou had just been sitting and talking together in, Ilya shivered as she perched on Berserker's shoulder from where they were keeping out of sight, sensing something similar to what she'd felt pulsing from Ryuudou Temple only…worse.
This was troubling.
It was that shadow. That another.
Not unlike like sensing like, though, oddly, not enough for her to like this like in the slightest.
Gold flickered out of the corner of her vision, from across the street. Her red eyes met the red eyes of someone else. Of what appeared to be a gold-haired young man walking about the back alleys of this city, wearing an ordinary open black jacket and black pants. Yet he himself was far from ordinary.
At first, he seemed a Servant, but then…there was something…anomalous about him too.
Moreover, she had the sense of being a small white mouse cornered by a viper about to strike, as even at this distance, she could see the wicked smile he gave her.
An explosion downtown jolted her, and Ilya nearly slipped off of Berseker's shoulder. Thankfully, he caught her midfall in his arms and gave her an almost stern look along with a gruff snort.
"Thank you, Berserker. Sorry. That was less than graceful."
Berserker grumbled gently and low in his throat before perching her back on his shoulder. As he did, she furtively glanced about for the man with the red eyes and the gold hair, but he'd disappeared, much to her dismay.
One by one, all the streetlights in the immediate area extinguished themselves. The hackles raised again on the back of Ilya's neck, and she turned toward a dark pressure coming at her from the other end of the street she and Berserker currently occupied. Steeling herself, she felt her red eyes flash fearless fire as she glared down at what approached.
The world seemed to hold its breath for a moment and then…all sound and color were sucked from the world…and it slid into view.
Foreboding prickles buzzed through Ilya's nerves, her eyes widening, every part of her frozen still save for her pounding heart. In spite of everything, she was terrified, far more so than of that gold stranger. The last time she had been this terrified was when she'd had that nightmare about the seven gigantic lumps coming into her body and tearing her apart from within.
It wasn't a person. Not even a creature. No…a thing.
That shadow.
Tall. Thin. A funereal shroud that had come to life.
No, not given life, precisely. More…infected with a specific drive.
An angry drive.
Faceless. Limbless.
Just…sitting there.
Waiting.
The anger, and the malice and appetite for violence that radiated from it called to the same emotions that had gotten gnarled and tangled up in Ilya's own heart.
Like to like, just as she'd thought.
She was right in thinking that that was what had been making her shiver tonight, and not the cold.
Berserker gave another low growl, this one far more furious and forewarning, but Ilya could tell from the trembling in his shoulders that even he was wary of coming across this very unnatural thing.
A great cry echoed in the night then, bounced off the buildings in the empty streets. A crazed cry, full of savage abandon.
Ilya looked up just in time to see something—creature or person, she couldn't be sure—leap from one building to the next, silhouetted briefly against a brief appearance of the moon before it was concealed in darkness once more. Another figure soon darted after it, the moonbeams catching on the point of a red spear.
And then it and the moon were both swallowed by the heavy cloud cover.
Two servants.
A hound.
A black kite.
The wind shifted, shaking the sheets of rain, a breeze rippling through gossamer.
An arrow of ill-will struck Ilya square in the chest, ill-will born from the shadow still standing there in the middle of the street. She sucked in a deep breath through her nostrils and steeled herself a second time. Whatever she felt, she could not afford to be afraid. If this indeed had something to do with the Grail, or rather, some corruption that threatened it, as the Vessel, she had to confront it as much as she would have to Zouken Matou.
"Miss Ilaysviel!"
Ilya and Berseker both whipped their heads around.
"Frau?" Ilya croaked.
Why was she here? Was she not the Einzbern Master? The Einzbern Princess? This was part of her expected role, to take to the streets of Fuyuki at night, when battle was upon them.
Yet here Frau was, running blindly towards her, clutching the white folds of her skirts. Perhaps Sella had sent her. Maybe she had come to the decision that her lady couldn't be trusted to fully handle the reins of a Master, even after all of her training to get to this far. Or maybe it was something else. After all, all three of her maids should know better, whatever Ilya did in the daylight.
Worse still, the shadow sensed Frau, and directed its arrow of ill-will toward her instead.
"FRAU!"
Frau didn't even have time to scream. The shadow lashed out a strip-like tentacle that whipped out and snared the unfortunate homunculus, bathing her in the color black until she was nothing but a silhouette of her former self. And then the outline of her diminished as she was absorbed into the shadow. And as it retracted its tentacle, the empty spot where Frau once had been felt like something had literally taken an eraser to her and erased her clean out of the world.
"Frau…." Ilya's eyes stung to see what amounted to one of her sisters slaughtered so. She found her fear again, but she only let it paralyze her for a moment. "Berseker! Get back!"
Berserker was already leaping back, and the shadow whipped out another black flat tentacle, missing the Heroic Spirit by a hair's breadth.
"It'd be foolish to try and fight this thing as we are right now," Ilya decided. "Let's go, Berserker."
Berserker grunted in agreement.
When the shadow lashed out a fourth time though, it was so fast that despite Berserker nimbly clearing it again, this time…the edge of the tentacle, despite its being flat to the ground, grazed Ilya's temple as though it had zoomed right by her like a knife blade.
Ilya cried out at the pain that burst through the side of her head, her vision bleached to white as she lost all sensation of herself and instead was caught in an incoherent jumble of images roiling with pain, sorrow, fear, and rage.
A dead rabbit, bloodily tormented to death.
Crying.
Evil worms flooding her veins—
With an immense effort and her own strength of will, Ilya pieced herself back together in her mind, and clawed her way out of the anguished chain of thoughts and emotions back into a peaceful blackness. A warmth wrapped around her, and a strong heartbeat against her ear—
"Ilya…Ilya, can you hear me? Ilya, don't be scared, you'll be just fine. It's okay, everything's okay, Daddy's got you…."
Daddy? No…it's…Berserker….
Yet the memory conflicted with what was really going on, the cries of Sella and the terrified eyes of Leysritt interspliced. Then Ilya could no longer hold onto the real world as it slipped out of her fumbling grasp again.
She stumbled backward, the back of her heels hitting a marble step. With a gasp she looked up and realized she was in the ballroom of the Einzbern Castle, and the whole glorious golden room was flooded with afternoon sunlight. The chandelier above glittered as though made of stars. Yet the floor beneath was torn up, broken through and smashed, and—
Berserker!
Skewered by golden lances.
Bloody.
Evaporating into violet dust.
The death-dust of the defeated Servant.
Ilya's scream was stuck in her throat.
This really couldn't be happening.
Yet it felt so real.
It felt like…another nightmare—
A pair of legs appeared, and Ilya looked up into the face of the gold-haired young man she had spotted in the streets earlier that night. For her, he had a Cheshire grin.
"Hello there, little doll." The man tilted his head to one side, his own red eyes, so like a viper's, and delightedly cruel.
He held out a hand. "Come here, my little Princess Homunculus."
Ilya caught the flare of murderous intent from that gaze and staggered back. Only to remember that she couldn't stagger back because she was already backed up to the steps, so instead her attempt to escape was tripped up.
She tried to open her mouth to plead for mercy, even though she knew without having to ask that with this man, it would fall on deaf ears.
Still grinning, the man produced a sword from behind him and raised it. Ilya tried to throw up her hands to block him, but he was too fast. He struck her across the eyes, and the pain seared through all too realistically.
Ilya cried out, blinking red blood. Pathetically, she dropped to her knees, using her hands to try and feel her way over the rough rubble on the floor to any sort of refuge. For Berserker, who couldn't possibly gone, who would save her just in time like he always did.
"Berserker," she moaned.
The gold-haired man took her by the chin, his sword thrown aside. The viper poised to strike.
And Ilya, the little white mouse, too overwhelmed with terror even to struggle.
He plunged his hand right into her chest, grasped her wildly beating heart in his fist, and tore it right out of her.
To say the least, it was horrifying seeing her own heart beating and spilling thick blood in the palm of this golden monster. What was even worse though was the scream that was not her own, the raw, broken scream of a man. The scream of one who had lost what had been most precious to him in the world.
"ILYA!"
Numb with death, Ilya fell back with the fountain of blood that burst from within her, like a butterfly breaking from its chrysalis. She couldn't believe her eyes, but she thought it was her father whom she saw past the golden monster and the shower of red before her, letting out that scream.
Kiritsugu, on his knees, reaching out for her with one hand but unable to get to her, helpless to save her as he wished to. His eyes wide and shaking with anguish such that he was almost unrecognizable. Frightening. The idea that someone strong like her father had been had ever cried or fallen apart like that.
Surely it was just some dream she had wished for that could never come true.
Even so, when she hit the ground, immobile and bathed in her own blood, the last of her tears trickling from her staring lifeless eyes, the image of the father she scarcely remembered, blurry as it was, clearly curled into himself in despair as she died right in front of him.
One burning thought of, Why are you crying, Daddy? All of this is your fault to begin with, clashed with another, a more innocent, pitying thought of the girl who at one time would reach up to softly touch her father's face when he would seem sad for some reason and didn't think she could see.
Such was his agony that the words he moaned out were incomprehensible. In the face of his daughter's death, and a violent one at that, he could only bury his face in one hand as he wept as though he'd never stop, reduced to a wounded beast in unbearable pain.
It was enough for Ilya to awaken in her own bed in the Einzbern Castle, her eyes full of tears for yet another dream of her father. Yet, this time, she didn't berate herself for weakness, or even furiously scrub at those tears with her arm. Finding herself in her nightdress, she plucked at the gossamer fabric underneath her blankets and sniffled, shaking with sobs of her own. Then she turned over and curled into herself as much as her father had done. Crying and crying and crying until she was hiccupping uncontrollably and had to get a hold of herself if she had any hope of breathing normally again.
She emptied herself as she had done so many times in the past, and slowly but surely, she became still and calm. For a bit, she simply lay there breathing. Then Berserker's presence tentatively brushed her mind, and she managed a small, wan smile.
"I'm here, Berserker," she whispered to him into the dark. "I'm okay. I'm here."
Reassured, Berserker gave another one of his gentler low growls and fell back into slumber in Spirit Form.
Drawing in a deep breath, Ilya sighed and then let herself drift back to sleep, back to dreams pulled from happier memories, even if that made it all the more painful for her still when she awoke again with the rising of the winter sun.
