Chapter 185
Within the halls of the Einzbern mansion, the two Servants followed the silent maid, heading towards destinations unknown. After going through several twists and turns in the enormous structure, they went up a flight of stairs before finally coming to a stop in front of a massive set of doors. Without a sound, they swung open, revealing a relatively normal room. Their eyes traveled from the king-sized bed, the set of drawers and wardrobe, to the table and chairs set to the side. A luxuriously thick carpet of red wool covered the hard marble floors, with golden lines that weaved a crest on the center.
Walking over to the sole table, she pulled out something from within the folds of her dress.
"Ring the bell if you have any requests. However, you will not be allowed to leave the room until the mistress decides otherwise."
Placing the bell on the nearby table, she left through the sole entrance, curtsying outside.
"I hope the room is to your liking."
With those words, the doors closed, sealing off the view of the hallway outside and Leysritt, closing shut with a click and a brief flare of runes and glyphs that swiftly faded away.
Once the door sealed shut, Caster placed a hand against the floor.
"We won't be able to break out quietly any time soon, it'll take some time for me to undo the enchantments."
The mana pulsing through the room revealed the multiple layers of wards stacked against each other, some placed on the walls and stone itself, others as up as Boundary Fields, while others were created as immaterial walls that all the same proved solid to spiritual entities like Servant, superimposed on the same space the physical walls were.
They could break through with brute force, but Illya would surely know in an instant, and they could easily foretell the consequences of their actions.
Several swords hung in the air, looking suspiciously similar to the weapon possessed by a certain Lancer from the past Holy Grail War.
"I'll get to work now, I'll tell you when I'm done."
As the two were trying to break out of the room, Illya, Sella, Souichirou and Shirou were on the far side of the manor, with Illya stabilizing the man's injuries, though Avalon had already done most of the work.
Leaving Sella to continue treating Souichirou in one room, she and Shirou went to another, this one completely empty save for a chair right in the middle of the room. Helpless to resist, he felt himself move to Illya's commands, the strings making his feet rise and fall as he neared the chair, then sat on it. Placing his arms on the hand rest of the chair, he felt parts of his body tighten as strings so thin they were almost invisible wrapped around his waist, arms, legs and chest, firmly restraining him to the chair.
"What do you want with me?"
He tried the strings, testing their strength. There wasn't even a hint of slack in their bondage, his limbs barely moving at all. It also felt like there chair was bolted to the floor, for some reason.
"I just want to talk with my onii-chan, is that too much to ask for?"
The innocent smile plastered on her face was far from enough to convince him, but he had little alternative other than staying silent as he felt his mouth clam shut from making further sounds.
Slowly, she approached him, the doors swinging shut behind her, leaving the two of them alone in the entire room. A predatory glint entered her eyes as she slowly paced across the room, the red irises gleaming under the lights from the chandelier.
"Tell me, what was your father like?"
The unexpected question threw him for a loop as he had been tensing his body for some rough treatment, so it was a moment before he could formulate a response.
The delay was enough for her.
With a start, he felt his body clench up, and then his muscles writhed as he felt his body lock up, each limb going rigid as he opened his mouth, but no sound passed through his lips. A moment later, the shock subsided, allowing him to relax as he gasped for air, the pain unlike anything he'd felt before. If he had to describe it, the closest thing would be an electric shock, but it felt deeper than that, like the strings attached to him were tampering with his nerves.
"And please tell the truth, onii-chan~"
With added incentive, though he was already planning on telling her everything anyways, he started talking about Kiritsugu, the man who had pulled him out of the fire and proceeded to act as his father for the rest of his life.
"My earliest memories are from the fire of Fuyuki ten years ago, where Kiritsugu found me…"
The next few hours passed in a blur as he basically told his life story to Illya, the particulars of how he came to know magecraft through him, daily life taking care of the old man, the mysterious trips he frequently went on, and eventually, his peaceful death that night.
Throughout the entire process, Illya sat on the floor, listening intently without saying a word, until the part about the trips was mentioned.
"You don't know where he went?"
Shirou shook his head.
"He never told me, and I never asked. All he said was that they were business trips, and we left it at that."
"I see."
After that, she stayed silent until the end.
When he was finished, they sat in silence for a while. Shirou swallowed, his throat dry from all the talking, his limbs stiff and sore from being kept in the exact same position all the while, in the cold, austere room that only had the sound of wind outside the window accompanying them. Illya stared at the floor, her long flaxen hair hiding her expression from Shirou as she sat as still as a statue, hugging her knees to her chest. The chandeliers shone brightly, but there was no light to shine on Illya's face. Even so, it was plain as day to see that her white hands were trembling.
Eventually, unable to bear the sight of the girl looking so pitiful in front of him, Shirou spoke up.
"Are you alright?"
Silence followed his words, then the girl stood up, finally letting Shirou see her face. There was no trace of inner turmoil on the albino skin, her mask honed from years of education in the Einzbern household. Despite her being the person who had basically enslaved him, he couldn't help but feel relieved that she wasn't shaken, as he'd initially thought when he saw her hands trembling.
"I guess it was a good idea to listen to Berserker."
"Hm?"
Berserker? What had her Servant told her?
Before he had more time to think about it, Illya walked up to him and placed her hands on his thighs, pushing her face uncomfortably close to him.
"Look, I just have one more thing to do before I let you out of this chair onii-chan, so please be patient ok?"
Raising her hand, she placed her middle and index fingers on his forehead with her right hand, the skin cool and smooth to the touch.
"Traum"
Eyes sliding into the back of his head, Shirou slumped over in the chair, his head lolling to the side without resistance. An army of pale wires sprouted from the ground, a spell array formed in an instant through precise manipulation of the thread that formed the basis of her bird familiars seen before. The ends of the translucent lines connected to Shirou, inserting themselves into various places all over his body, the skin's pores wide enough to accept the foreign matter's entry. When her setup was finished, Illya took a step back, inspecting her own handiwork. At a glance, it now looked like white hair was growing all over his body, and in a sense it was true, given the true nature of the thread.
In his unconscious state though, the entire process gave him no pain as he remained suspended in sleep, a deathlike coma state induced by the magecraft of Illya.
Satisfied that the conditions were met, she proceeded with the ritual.
A simple porcelain dish filled with water was carried over by one of the birds, and laid on the ground at Shirou's feet. Kneeling down, she pricked her finger with the transformed familiar in the shape of a blade. A small, almost unnoticeable pinprick of a wound was made on the tip of her middle finger, and by squeezing the finger by pushing upwards from the middle joint, a drop of blood welled up from that insignificant hole, forced out by the pressure applied. Lowering her hand, she grazed the surface of the water with that finger, a haze of red disappearing into the clear water as her blood mixed and became one with the water, diffusing until it was like it never existed.
A thin thread wrapped around her wound, bandaging it neatly as several threads wrapped around to seal the tiny hole, tightly binding her finger as a glowing white ring.
The shackles binding Shirou's right hand came loose, allowing Illya to move his arm and prick his finger in the same manner. Another drop of blood joined hers in the water, dissipating the moment it dropped into the liquid.
Pushing the dish into a circle that was directly between her and Shirou on the spell array laid out, she placed her hands on both sides of the dish, the threads connecting her and Shirou draped over the both of them like a sparkling web, a blanket of opaque threads that shone brightly as the chandelier turned off, leaving them bathing in the scant moonlight that penetrated the window, the pale illumination turning the threads into an ethereal cage around the two.
The scenery wasn't something Illya noticed at all as she focused her mind on the spell she wanted to cast. Divination wasn't her strong suit, and while it was the most direct solution for her questions, she disliked it, especially since it ran the risk of exposing her to him as well. Still, with the vast amounts of mana she wielded, as well as the signature 'Wishcraft' of her family, all she had to do was set up the array and recite a single line incantation, along with the catalysts needed for her to see Shirou's past herself.
Reaching deeply into his subconscious while he was asleep with all his defenses down, she would be able to see the truth of his past for herself, and witness her father once more to know what had happened. It wasn't that she thought he lied just now, but more that her heart didn't accept it. Somewhere deep inside, part of her cried out at the unfairness, yearning to blame someone, anyone, for her isolation. Even if it was a truth, that part wanted his words to be a lie if only to assuage her pain and find a scapegoat, a reason to justify her having been forced to live that life until Berserker was summoned.
"Nebel des Traumlandes, enthülle die versunkenen Erinnerungen vergangener Zeiten"
Staring deeply into the still water of the dish, the water spontaneously rippled from the center as she finished the chant, and she found herself swallowed by sounds, smells, sights and sensations she'd never experienced before, the concentric circles of water luring her deep into the dark recesses of a foreign mind.
She felt a rush of darkness envelop her, and then she was falling through a tunnel without light, a sense of weightlessness gripping her as she drifted through an abyss. Without warning, her momentum came to a sudden halt, leaving her suspended in a lightless oblivion, with no sense of her body accompanying her. During the interminably long wait in the darkness, she focused on the one thing she wanted to see, the visage of the man who meant the most to her, at least in her childhood.
Before she knew it, she was spirited away, a flood of light stinging her nonexistent eyes, blinding her and rendering her mental self stunned as she was catapulted through the immaterial space to the memory that she desired to witness.
When she came to, the world was on fire.
Heat surrounded her on all sides, flaking her skin and consuming the air, making every breath a struggle as her throat scraped in ash and heat while the insides of her mouth baked like the insides of an oven. Tears couldn't even fall out of her eyes as they evaporated from the corners of her eyes, unable to leave an inch from the tear ducts. Her limbs felt sluggish, each step a herculean effort that was more taxing than a marathon. More than anything, pain sank deeply into her bones, the heat scorching her body and wreaking havoc both on the outside and the inside, her blood practically boiling, her lungs suffocating under the noxious gases and lack of oxygen. Burn marks deeply imprinted on her skin squeezed her nerves dry of pain, the ugly tissue unlikely to be healed ever again. Raising her eyes to the sky, all she could see was smog and wavering air from the heat, with not a single star in sight.
It took her a few seconds of screaming before she realized there was no sound coming from her mouth, and then she understood. While everything certainly felt real, it was simply a reproduction of everything he had experienced in his past, and she was stuck in his perspective to relive the same things.
She'd known it would have been something like this, but she didn't expect it to be quite so vivid or intense.
Helpless, she could only watch as her/his body trudged on, every single second of suffering he had felt transmitted to her mind as she was burdened by the constant torment that had warped his soul. It was even worse than experiencing it firsthand, being unable to control the body as she was taken for a ride while still feeling everything in excruciating detail. There was no way to express herself, no method to cry, scream or collapse from the exhaustion. All she could do was howl deep inside while her mind and body were frozen.
Seconds stretched into hours, until she felt like the life she had lived as Illya was a lie, the only reality being the flames, corpses and wreckage that never ended no matter how much Shirou's body walked, her mentality pushed ever closer to the edge of no return. There was no respite in sight, and despite logically knowing that Shirou must have survived this catastrophe to live until the present day, her heart was gradually losing hope of escaping this hell, the nightmare inescapable.
Still, her will persisted. Having endured everything up until now, the years spent in grief and anger after Kiritsugu's abandonment fueled her, giving her the motivation to endure even though she could cancel the spell if she wished to and end the suffering. She'd felt pain of a similar level before as well, the constant burning of her Circuits when Acht had forcibly removed her self-imposed limits on Berserker, and the fateful night that had Berserker defending her from dusk to dawn, burning through extraordinary rates of mana that almost killed Illya in spite of her prodigious stores of energy.
Gritting her metaphorical teeth, she gathered her willpower and waited, balling her fists mentally as the body continued it's journey through hell. Time and time again she pulled herself together, the image of her father seared into her mind more deeply than the false flames of the past ever could.
It was a relief to her when the trembling legs finally failed, the young body collapsed to the ground as the lungs struggled to circulate the remaining bubbles of oxygen throughout the body, the world dimming and blurring before Shirou's eyes. Illya could feel it as he slowly entered a sleeplike state, the lack of oxygen shutting down his bodily functions, the five senses slipping away from his grasp as the heat finally receded, even if it was just an illusion. The swelling of his throat and constant itching of his entire respiratory system slowly faded into the background, his breathing getting shorter and weaker as he stared up at the night sky, the life slowly strangled out of him.
The fires were no longer burning as brightly, which combined with his dulling senses, made it feel like a chilly autumn day when compared to before. As Illya laid there with him, slowly, weakly, he turned his head and took in his surroundings.
There was nothing left alive. Everything was blackened, consumed by flames and ashes until there were only shrivelling corpses and unrecognizable heaps of charred detritus.
Far above, clouds gathered, clumps of darkness that swallowed the smoke billowing from below as the rumbling promised rain and thunder.
I'm glad
Those words surprised her, the boy's faint relief that it would rain and putting out the fire being something she would never have considered at all. Letting out a sigh, the eyes devoid of any emotion gazed into the rainclouds, his thoughts melting away as his brain ceased to think. There was no sadness, no anger, no fear, no joy, no regret, no feelings. Everything had been burnt up, leaving only the body behind.
The emptiness in the boy was slightly worrisome to Illya, but she pushed it aside as she continued to live the memory.
In one final act, the boy raised his hand to the sky, a reaction born not of the desire to live, or defiance against death, but simply because he could. At this point, there was nothing left for him to do but die, because he couldn't be saved any more.
Then a shadow fell over him, the sky hidden behind the figure of a man.
Tears fell on his outstretched hand as it was taken, the callouses brushing against his skin as it was firmly held.
The first drops of rain fell as two streams traced their way down the man's face, the hand grasping Shirou's raising up to the man's cheek as he pressed the back of his hand, crying tears of joy without holding back.
The expression was something the boy had never seen before, an unparalleled, unadulterated happiness that almost made it seem like the man had been saved, instead of Shirou.
I want to be him
The stray thought crossed his mind as he gazed up at the grizzled features of the man, the seeds of a desire sewn into his soul from that fateful meeting.
For Illya though, none of that mattered. Instead, she was too focused on seeing the man's face, the features she was so intimately familiar with making such a foreign expression that she didn't know how to react, emotions swirling and clashing within her.
Why was he so happy to see Shirou? Why the hell hadn't he shown this face to her, or shown his face at all by coming back? What was going on here?
Questions and angst welled up in her heart, but she suppressed them with difficulty as she continued to watch the memory.
Darkness enveloped her, the last sight being her father's tearful smile as she drifted off into darkness, the curtains drawn on the memory as Shirou lost consciousness.
However, a golden light soon lit up the darkness, or that was what it felt like to Illya. Warmth surged through her veins, the frozen blood pumping once more as the life came back to the body's organs, something alien yet powerful undoing all the damage that had been done to the lad's body.
As she felt his body recover, her mind went back to the fire she had just witnessed.
If the spell had been done correctly, that had been the first memory he had with her father. However, she couldn't accurately say when the memory had occurred, only that his appearance roughly matched what she remembered of him right before he left. The trench coat and crooked tie was there, and he didn't seem to be noticeably older, despite being much more haggard and worn out than she remembered.
Still, even if he had saved Shirou, did that mean he had to abandon him? Inside her, she wondered if he'd only shown that expression to Shirou was due to the fact that she'd simply never truly been loved. Why else would she not have seen that side of him? It was true he always smiled at her, but when had that smile ever been as raw, as genuine as the one Shirou saw?
There must be something more to it. Some deeper reason or meaning to his actions, instead of throwing her aside in favour of Shirou. The years of jealousy, anger and irrationality balked at investigating further, darker urges of vengeance yearning to see Shirou writhe and twist on the floor, to revel in the sight of him repaying the sins of his father.
"He sounds as sweet as my red bean buns."
The novel comparison from Berserker surfaced in her mind, one of the few replies she had given while listening to Illya talk about her father as they snuggled in the kotatsu. Thinking about it, it was true Kiritsugu had never treated harshly, when he could easily have neglected her during his time at the Einzbern estate.
She was, after all, born only to serve as a last-ditch attempt, the final and strongest Master of the Einzbern. Her purpose was ordained at birth, simply a fail-safe in case Kiritsugu failed. She struggled to believe that Kiritsugu had actually wanted her after listening to Acht for so long, yet she still yearned to confirm the truth, if only to put to rest her suspicions and doubts.
Guess I'll have to continue
She allowed the spell to continue flowing, her transition between memories jarring and brief as she suddenly found herself in a hospital.
"...I'm a sorcerer."
Caught by surprise, she felt like she would fall off the hospital bed as she reeled in shock, but Shirou's body remained still.
He just casually revealed himself to the child? Just like that?
And what's more, Shirou simply took it in a stride, gazing back at Kiritsugu with bright eyes. Without any hint of cynicism, he believed this stranger's words, who he had never met before in his life. It wasn't just childhood innocence, but also something else, a trust of such purity towards that man who saved his life that whatever he said, Shirou would take as reality. Of course, it also made sense to the boy that only a sorcerer would be able to create a miracle, that was to save him from that inescapable fate in the fire.
Keeping an ear out for anything important, she continued replaying his past through the spell, watching everything as the red-haired boy left the hospital and moved in with his newfound foster father, settling in the sprawling Japanese-style mansion with an energetic older sister that often came around to play with him.
The time spent immersed in his memories was in reality, a mere few hours. It was well-documented in the Moonlit world of how the world of dreams was a transitory realm, often a gateway to the magical and fantastic, beholden to rules of its own that seemed to twist reality. The passage of time was among one of them, with time spent in the land of Morpheus unequal to the time spent sleeping. Utilizing this uncertainty that managed to stretch the perceptions of second into years, Illya's spell was able to compress decades of memories into the span of a day, the dreamlike state induced bringing them away from reality as the common sense of mankind ceased to hold sway over them.
As her consciousness flitted from memory to memory, she couldn't help but notice that Shirou as a child was quite strange. It wasn't about his period of silent trauma that he quickly got over after moving in with Kiritsugu, along with the help of Taiga, the energetic older sister figure whose name she had learned. It wasn't about bouts of maturity either, displaying a natural sense of taking care of the house while his old man proved useless in many aspects such as cooking, cleaning, laundry and others, with Kiritsugu often ending up as simply buying daily necessities and then ferrying them home for Shirou to deal with. It wasn't those rare moments of silence when Shirou was alone either, when he would stare blankly at nothing for periods, his eyes devoid of thought and emotion.
It was the constant feeling of emptiness that persisted even as he started opening up more, first to his old man and sister, then to others in his school as he started attending class. It wasn't like he didn't feel emotions like others, or that there was a gaping hole in his heart. Being linked to him closely through her spell, his feelings bubbled to the surface and brushed past her mind, impressions of anger, sadness, joy and annoyance passing by her. He also had a mission in his heart as well, wanting to be like Kiritsugu, the man that had saved him paradoxically looking like he had been saved himself inspiring him as he strove to help people as much as he could.
But there was just always a niggling sense of something wrong, an explainable gap that was lodged in Shirou's heart as he failed to consider things normally, his view deviating slightly from the masses, yet not enough that he was openly considered to be aberrant.
From what she could see, he didn't seem to have a sense of self, except in critical situations where his bodily instincts were triggered.
Most of the time, had failed to consider any consequences at all, doing it obviously enough that even Illya, who had barely known Shirou before this, was able to trace a pattern after seeing enough of his past and the incidents that he was involved in since childhood. In addition to refusing rewards all the time no matter what form they were, even from Kiritsugu or Taiga, he often had to juggle his schedule to assist different people, double-booking or triple-booking the same time slot regularly in his zeal to help others.
There was nothing about her though, to the point that she had to wonder whether Kiritsugu had actually undergone self-hypnosis to wipe her from memory, until he finally went on an unscheduled trip to places unknown. After several of the trips happening in front of her eyes, it finally dawned on her that it was possible, that hypothetically, he could have been visiting her home.
It was plain to her that his physical condition was slowly deteriorating, his skin pallor sickly as his movements were dulled, with Shirou often catching his brief slips of expression whenever he thought the child wasn't looking, torment distorting his face when he did simple things like walking up the stairs, or opening doors, carrying pots and the like. In addition, she saw him take the unassuming wooden box that she was 99% sure was the one that carried the Thompson Contender with him for the first trips, which combined with the multiple passports that he pulled out whenever he prepared for a trip, were enough to clue her in that he was on serious business.
Could he have been trying...to reach her?
Was it possible that Acht had been lying to her all the time, and Kiritsugu had never abandoned her?
An idea that had been destroyed by Jubstacheit's words resurfaced once more, breaking through the thick ice that wrapped around her heart, a ward and barrier against warmth to her father and anybody related to him. Ten years ago her childlike self had been unable to resist the pressure from the old homunculus, the environment he created conditioning her to accept what he told her and remodeling her naive and impressionable self to his liking. Now though, she was older, the presence of her Servant helping her more than she knew in the past few months, eroding the mental shackles that bound her memories of Kiritsugu.
However, there was the fact that there was no concrete evidence to prove beyond the shadow of a doubt that Kiritsugu was actually visiting her, which made her reserve judgement. After all, it could simply just be matters of business that he had to attend to, such as tying up loose ends from his past occupation and similar reasons. Just going overseas with his gear wasn't absolute proof, though she was admittedly hard pressed to imagine more than three reasons for him to do so otherwise if it wasn't to find her.
Her mind absorbed the rest of Shirou's memories as it progressed, duly registering what he saw, heard, felt and experienced as she continued living his past, most of the everyday life memories going by in a breeze as she didn't really pay much attention besides the parts with Kiritsugu in them. Still, she couldn't deny it was interesting to see the life of an ordinary Japanese boy, particularly with her sheltered upbringing, and the stories about Japan told to her by her mother when she was young, since Irisviel had been interested in the country Kiritsugu was born in.
From washing the laundry, to cooking hamburger patties, to sparring with Fuji-nee, the young lady that often visited the Emiya household for English tuition with Kiritsugu, it was all new to Illya in many ways, and sometimes she couldn't help but watch avidly as the young Shirou did simple things like chopping white radish, or airing the futons in the sunlight. The smell of fragrant onions and saltiness of dried seaweed, the soft smell of clean sheets that felt warm under the sun, the harsh bite of the summer sun as he walked back to home from school, they were all things she had never experienced before in the castle, and while it wasn't her intention while casting the spell, she savoured the sensations all the same. Gradually, she immersed herself in the world of Shirou, drifting closer and closer to his true self, the id within.
Of particular note, there was a vivid memory that caught her attention, a day of high jumps.
It was just sitting there on the field, a high jump mat along with two poles holding up the crossbar. The sun was still high in the sky when Shirou saw it, his eyes turning to land on the set up as he was about to leave school. The track and field team had forgotten about it, leaving it there as it was after practice, and there was no one else on the field any more making it look a bit lonely.
Feet turning, he placed down his school bag at the side of the field and walked towards it, his school jacket coming off in favor of the white shirt underneath.
Arms crossed his chest as he stretched, warming properly in preparation for the activity ahead. His legs were placed horizontally parallel to the ground, thighs, calves and glutes all pulled as the muscles were stimulated. Blood rushed through his body in anticipation, warming him up and staving off the chill air.
In a matter of minutes, he was running up and down the track leading to the crossbar, using the height it was originally set at before he arrived. It felt like an Olympic level standard to the young him, the bar sitting above his head at a height that would surely have been intimidating to any high-schooler, let alone a kid who wasn't 16 yet.
In spite of that, the crossbar fell over and over, pushed by the boy as it was sent hurtling off the rungs of the high jump standard poles as he repeatedly challenged it again and again, his footsteps filling the empty field as the puffing sound of his body hitting the soft mattress was heard at regular intervals.
Soon enough, his body became covered in sweat, his skin reflecting the sunlight, minuscule droplets spraying as he ran. The middle of the mattress became stained a darker color everytime he landed on it, moisture soaking through his white shirt to reach the mat. Even the crossbar wasn't exempt from this fate as he collided with it every single time, the white and red fibreglass rod turning slick after rubbing against his body time and again.
But he never stopped running. The jumps continued long past the hour most students had left. One or two turned to look out of curiosity, but they quickly left after they lost interest. He didn't even know anyone was watching though, since his entire focus was placed on the bar that filled his vision until nothing else was left. Just outside the fence surrounding the track, the girl clutching her textbook stayed unnoticed, while unknown to her a familiar face gazed down at the same sight through a window, the two of them captivated by the boy and his futile efforts.
Breathing hard, he slowly jogged back to the starting point and stopped, taking a moment to gather himself as he traced the path he would take once more, bouncing lightly to keep his body active.
Air was inhaled through his nose, and then exhaled in rush out of his mouth as he ran forward, taking high, bouncing steps for the first meter, then rushing forward madly as he neared the jump, angling his body to run parallel as he controlled his footing to lift off on the correct leg. In a burst of speed, he dashed and placed all his momentum in one point, the energy converted to vertical lift as his back arched, his head pulled up like it was connected to a string as he used all his might like he was trying to fly and free his body from gravity.
The effort poured into the attempt was met with failure as the rod dug into his back, skirting past his shoulder blades and then pressed out of the fittings as it accompanied his fall, the hard material depressing the mattress underneath him as the cushioning prevented it from harming Shirou.
Under the setting sun, his shadow crossed the white lines repeatedly as it lengthened over the uneven ground, a black elongated giant that crashed onto the unassailable shadow of the mattress without any self-regard. Day turned into night, the soft shadows cast by the sunlight replaced by sharp outlines traced by electric lights, and only when the pale moon revealed itself did the pounding footsteps cease.
Utterly confused, Illya watched as he walked away with a strangely satisfied look, the serene acceptance after failing despite putting in so much effort, for no reason at all, just didn't make sense to her. To her, he had just wasted half the day jumping there, with no results to show for it.
He's strange.
Besides that particular memory, there wasn't much that really stood out to her, and even the scenes with Kiritsugu passed quickly. Soon, the fateful night came, and she knew it was his final memory of her father, tinges of sorrow from his current self bleeding into her consciousness.
Gazing up at the moon, the two figures sat on the porch. One, a red haired boy, the other thin, haggard old man in a kimono.
"When I was a child, I wanted to be a superhero."
A wistful look accompanied his words as he gazed upwards with weary eyes, bags sitting deeply on his face.
"What? What do you mean by 'wanted'? Did you give up?"
The child's words were met with a short burst of laughter that drowned in silence, a short cough following it.
"Yes, unfortunately. Being a hero is a time-limited thing, and it becomes hard to call yourself that when you grow up. I wish I'd found that out earlier."
Was that the truth? Illya pondered, but no satisfactory answer came to her. No matter what he'd done, he had been her hero and father when no one else was, then disappeared when she needed him the most.
"I see. Then I guess it couldn't be helped."
"Yeah. It really couldn't be helped."
Quietly, she marveled at how calmly Shirou accepted all this. Then again, he had accepted Kiritsugu being a magus quite quickly too.
"Yeah, it can't be helped, so I'll take your place.
It's impossible since you're an adult, but it should be all right for me. Let me take on your dream."
"―――I'll make it come true."
He closed his eyes for the final time.
"Yeah―――I'm relieved."
Letting out a contented sigh, he finally fell into a painless slumber.
Illya gazed at Kiritsugu's face with Shirou's eyes, doing nothing, unable to do anything, as her father died in front of her.
Warms droplets coursed down his face as she stared up at the moon with him.