A Matter of Time

Time, n

ethymology

Old English tīma, of Germanic origin; related to tide, which it superseded in temporal senses. The earliest of the current verb senses (dating from late Middle English) is 'do (something) at a particular moment.'

The boy of ten stared down at his father's corpse through lidded eyes, the full moon's silvery light illuminating the porch. He didn't feel sadness, per say, but there was definitely a sense of loss, a nostalgia for his company that Shirou knew he'd never experience again. There had been affection, in their messed up doppelganger relationship, each of them an imperfect stand in for what they'd really lost. For Kiritsugu, it was his daughter. For Shirou, his humanity.

Sighing, the boy knelt down and touched his father's face, pushing a lock of hair out of the way. It was a forlorn, tentative kind of touch. "Goodbye, Kiritsugu. You failed to save the world, but in the end, you did save me." He knew he was supposed to cry now, but tears refused to well up. "I suppose that'll have to be enough." Getting up from his prostrate position, the boy put his hands in his pockets and strolled through the halls.

Casually, he picked up a key and opened the door, exiting the property. He had a priest to see.

/

"You want to desecrate your father's corpse in order to take his circuits?" Kirei asked, the priest staring at the small boy standing in front of the church door.

The boy nodded his head resolutely. "Kiritsugu told me a lot about you, priest-san. You're a spiritual surgeon, aren't you? This should be well within your capabilities."

Despite himself, Kirei felt an excitement start to build in his chest. Interesting. This boy was so interesting! "And he told you we were enemies?" Kirei asked, a creepy, searching smile stealing his face.

The boy finally looked up, fixing Kirei with an unnaturally steady stare, his eyes focused yet lost in a way that Kirei had never seen before. It was like staring into a time-machine, to a younger version of himself.

Searching. For purpose, for humanity, for acceptance. Lost, yet so focused on a search for meaning that the search became meaning in and of itself…

"The dead have no enemies." The boy replied.

The smile that stole across Kirei's face could've killed kittens.

/

Lying on a blanket across the floor, Shirou stared up at the church roof, taking deep breaths to prepare himself for the operation. His father's corpse lay a few feet from him, cold and immobile in a way that was somehow reassuring.

Kirei, the mad priest, prepared his tools, silvery scalpels and clinical scissors gleaming as he applied antiseptic. He sung a popular pop tune as he did so, clearly in a good mood.

"You're lucky you came to me as early as you did." The priest commented casually, still cleaning his knives. "Any later and it might've been too late, fortunately the soul stays with the body for a short time after death."

"Yes." Shirou replied to the man's inane chatter. "Lucky us."

"So," Kirei continued, "You want his crest, is that right? Some of it may be unusable due to the curse that killed him. Never seen anything like it." The priest lied.

"His crest, and any other circuits you believe are salvageable." Shirou answered.

The man's cleaning slowed. "Already, transplanting a magic crest, which is meant to moved, to a person outside of that bloodline holds high chances of rejection. Transplanting his circuits as well… well, I would put their chances of survival under 10%."

Shirou stayed silent for a moment. Finally, words left his lips autonomously. "Kirei, how many people do you think died in the Fuyuki fire?"

Kirei looked up, unsure where this was going. "Around 300, I believe." 336, to be exact. Kirei was always a man that appreciated details.

"And how many survived?" The boys voice became higher near the end of the question, as if he was genuinely curious.

Ah. So this was where he was going.

"One, I believe."

Shirou turned his head in the man's direction, staring at him for the first time since the conversation began.

"Where would that put my chances, you think? 1 in 300? Less than 1%. Not odds any gambling man would take."

"No," Kirei acceded.

That fey light twinkled in the boy's eyes once more. His voice was steady. "I'm a magus, Kirei. We make our own luck. I won't die, not so long as my goal remains unaccomplished. I refuse to die. That's why I'm not afraid. Go on with the procedure."

The austere man nodded, feeling something stir in his chest for the first time since Kiritsugu. Excitement. This boy excited him. He was so much more vivid, so much more alive than the others, not unlike the heroic spirits he'd seen in the war. But, unlike them, who seemed like complete, finished works of art, frozen perfectly in time at their most heroic, this boy was unfinished. He was an unfinished painting, just waiting to be influenced, just waiting for someone to tilt the strokes of the brush.

"You have terrible bedside manner," Shirou commented as the priest stared at him fixedly for a minute, totally silent.

The unnerving man smiled like it was a compliment. "It is time to begin."

Even under hypnosis, Shirou screamed as his soul was butchered by his own choice.