The car pulled to a stop and Rin got out as quickly as she could, slamming the door and whirling on Shirou. He had taken them back to the abandoned apartment complex where he had laid out the complex wire trap. The drive had been agonizing, neither of them speaking as tension stretched between them until it felt like something was going to snap and spark an explosion.
"Now you are going to tell me everything." Rin said, trying and failing to keep the anger out of her voice as she advanced on Shirou.
"Who was that? What was he talking about, calling you Omega? Is your name really Shirou? What are you? An evil twin? A robot? A time traveler? Some sort of…of…" Rin said angrily.
"A clone." He said, cutting off her impassioned rant.
Rin gave him a flat look.
"Is that really any more farfetched than anything else you just suggested?" He said.
Rin had to concede the point.
"Although I suppose evil twin is accurate too. You know, twins are technically naturally occurring clo…" Shirou began in a rambling tone.
"Don't deflect." Rin warned.
Shirou looked as sheepish as he could given the grave circumstances and resumed his tale.
"The story starts with Kotomine." He said.
"He was a Master in the last Grail War, one of the foremost contenders. He was arch enemies with a man named Emiya Kiritsugu, another master. The next bit you know already. Kotomine was selected to head up Project Omega but he betrayed the church and the mages and set up shop for himself. He used all the resources that they provided him with for his own projects but make it look like he was still their man, still doing their bidding."
"And the project was…" Rin said cautiously.
"You guessed it. Me." Shirou replied. "Me and my…well, brothers isn't really the right word. Me and the others are all clones of the original Shirou, a small child that Kotomine got his hands on somehow right after the fourth war. He was his first ever test subject, his first guinea pig.
"Well, maybe clone isn't the right word either. I am, as Kotomine always put it, 'A marriage of magic and science, a wonder of biology and wizardry'. I suppose that puts me somewhere between a clone and a homunculus. The way I understand it, and bear in mind I'm no scientist, I'm some kind of hybrid between the original Shirou's DNA and a magical power source that Kotomine gained in the war. I've never seen it but he codenamed it A or Alpha."
Shirou barked a bitter laugh.
"It has a sick sense of poetry, doesn't it? Alpha and Omega?"
Rin reached out a hand towards him but he pulled away.
"So he kept you there? In his laboratory with the other subjects? Until Emiya rescued you." Rin said.
"No." Shirou said, his voice heavy with hatred. He turned his face away.
"I was…the test subjects that we kidnapped…oh god. Rin, the things we did to those people were horrific. Unforgivable. I killed people. Executed fathers. Forced mothers to…Dragged them screaming from the arms of their families to be tortured and experimented on. I silenced Kotomine's rivals. Defended him from the mages and the church alike. Did whatever unspeakable thing he ordered me to."
"No. But Emiya…" Rin said, her eyes widened in horror as Shirou continued.
"Emiya discovered one of Kotomine's laboratories. Broke in. Freed as many people as he could. Laid waste to the experiments and research that was going on there. I was Kotomine's top enforcer. His right hand. So he dispatched me to hunt down Emiya and kill him." Shirou said.
He spoke grimly, carrying on with his awful tale despite the toll it was taking on him. He seemed like a man rolling a boulder up a mountain, struggling against a weight he couldn't hope to master without any sign of stopping or giving up.
"I hunted him for years. He was impossible to follow, his movements didn't have any kind of pattern. He did things that made no sense to me. Helped people even when it exposed his position. Gave up tactical advantages to let civilians escape. I just couldn't understand it. What was his game? What was his end goal? But the more I followed him, the more I hunted him, the more I came to know him.
"He was the first person I'd ever know who was, well, maybe not happy. But content. He knew who he was and what he wanted out of life. He was the first person I'd ever known whose life wasn't about hatred, or pain, or manipulation. He had this serenity about him, this…I don't know what. But I hadn't ever known anyone like him. And slowly, slowly, as I learned more about him, I began to wish that I could be a man like that.
"But I still didn't understand him. I still didn't see how he could possibly be the way he was. I didn't understand until the very end. And as he lay there, dying, I finally spoke with him. I asked him every question that had tormented me throughout our long chase. His answer shattered me to my core, pierced every layer of armor that I had built up. It was so simple and yet I didn't understand it until my makeshift mentor whispered it with his dying breath."
Shirous words were so full of bitter regret and self loathing that Rin felt like her heart would break. He was so damaged, so broken. And yet even so he had taken Emiya's words to heart. Had changed his entire life to revolve around them.
"Be good." Rin breathed, remembering their conversation from the night before.
Shirou turned back to her and nodded, his eyes as grim as steel.
"I'm still not really sure what it means to be a human. Let alone a good one. But there is one thing that I'm absolutely sure of. Kotomine has to be stopped. And I'll spend every minute of life that I have left to stop him. To make up for everything I did in his name." He said.
Rin was awash with conflicting feelings. The past that Shirou revealed was horrifying, almost nightmarish. But Rin knew Shirou. She knew that he was a good person. After all, hadn't she told Berserker that who you chose to be now is more important than who you were in the past? But there wasn't just Shirou's dark past and his struggle to over come it. There was also the fact that he had lied to her about it. He hadn't once been honest with her since she had met him.
As it so often happened with Rin, and so often to her detriment, her anger won out.
She whirled on Shirou and marched up to him, her fury coloring her cheeks as she confronted him.
"So you're a genetically engineered magical super soldier cooked up in a laboratory by the very person that I need answers from, and you never thought that little fact was worth mentioning? You lied to me, Shirou! You lied to my face, over and over, from the first moment that I met you!" Rin said accusatorily.
Even though her words rang true Rin regretted them. The traumatic retelling and the sudden revelations had left both of them emotionally distressed, vulnerable, and fragile. What Shirou need most right at that moment was compassion and understanding. What Rin needed most was trust and strength. He needed someone to forgive him, or to teach him to forgive himself. Rin needed someone she could count on, someone who would simply be there for her. But her wounded pride got the better of her and instead she lashed out at him.
Her words struck him like a blow. His eyes dropped and he seemed to retreat back into himself.
"I…just wanted you to know." His words were wooden, automatic.
Rin bit her lower lip.
"I just don't know how I can trust you. How can I trust you?" She asked, her voice filled with tremulous uncertainty.
The question wasn't rhetorical. She desperately wanted Shirou to defend himself. To say something, anything, that would make the awful feeling in the pit of her stomach go away. To tell her that everything would be alright.
Instead he took a step back, his shoulders slumped.
"I see." He said hollowly. "For what it's worth it's the truth. It's everything I know. But I…I understand."
Shirou turned away from Rin and began walking back to the car. Rin felt a hollow place forming in the pit of her stomach. She didn't want to leave things like this between them. But what could she say? She had wasted her chance to be understanding, to be forgiving. Why? She cursed her pride as she followed a couple of steps behind Shirou.
To Rin's surprise when he reached into his pocket for the keys he didn't open the car door. Instead he set them on the hood and then continued walking. His steps were heavy. His proud back bowed. Rin's head snapped up in alarm.
"Wait! Where do you think you're going?" She demanded.
"I'm just…going." He said in that same hollow voice.
Rin was taken aback but her fiery nature quickly reasserted itself. She waded forward and planted herself in front of Shirou, hands on her hips. He didn't look at her.
"We're a team, remember? You are not just going to walk out on me." She said fiercely.
"You're better off without me. I'm nothing more than a malfunctioning tool." He answered bitterly.
"Oh, quit that. You are you. I know you, Shirou. You are a good person. I've seen it over and over again."
Shirou snorted.
"A good person? I'm a beast covered with the veneer of civilization. I'm every bit the monster I ever was." He said, his bitterness and self loathing tainting his voice into a husky growl.
"Don't let Sigma's lies…"
"No, you don't understand." Shirou cut Rin off.
"The things I've done, the evil…you don't need me. I'm just an animal. Like a caged wolf suddenly set free. Someone who could never…"
It was Rin's turn to interrupt. A crack echoed across the lawn like a gunshot as she hauled back and smacked Shirou across the face as hard as she could. His eyes shot wide but Rin gave him no chance to speak.
"Oh, would you CUT THAT OUT! Oh, woe is me. I did some bad stuff when I was a kid. GET OVER IT! You sound like a whiny fourteen year old. What's next, bad poetry and black jeans?" She ranted.
Shirou stumbled backwards as Rin stalked forwards, shouting up into his shocked face and thumping her pointer finger in the middle of his chest to emphasize her words.
"You are NOT a bad person. Not any more, no matter what you were in the past. Trust me. And we ARE a team, whether you like it or not! And who says that I need you anyway! Well, I do, and don't you forget it. But don't forget that YOU need ME just as much! More even! I'm the one that knows how to find Kotomine!
"So here is what's going to happen. You are going to un-wad your panties, cowboy up, and quit this mopey emo bullshit. You've been through some trauma. I understand that. I will help you with it however I can. You and I are a team but you lied to me. I have some trust issues. You need to understand that. But that doesn't change anything."
Rin finished her tirade panting and staring angrily up into Shirou's surprised face. His cheek was red and puffy where Rin had slapped him, his brown eyes were wide in surprise. Rin waited for him to say something. To turn and walk away. But instead, almost involuntarily, his features split into a grin.
He suddenly swooped forwards, sweeping Rin up in a bear hug that pinned her arms to her sides. He laughed and spun them about, eventually setting her back on her feet and wiping a tear from the corner of his eye. Whether a tear of laughter or of something else Rin couldn't tell.
"You always know just what to say, don't you." He laughed.
He stepped forwards and took Rin's hand, holding it up between them.
"I like you, Rin. I mean I really like you and I…wait." Shirou began but interrupted himself as a sudden thought occurred to him. "What did you say about Kotomine? You know how to find him?"
Rin found that her heart was suddenly beating very fast.
"K-Kotomine? Oh! Do you remember what Sigma said in the church? He called in the other Masters to attack us in order to cover his escape. It was only the mistake of sending two when one would have done that let us get away." She said.
Shirou quirked an eyebrow.
"But what does that have to do with finding Kotomine?" He asked.
"Think about it. It means that Kotomine is in contact with the other masters. One of them may have a way to get in touch with him, and that means we can track him down."
"Right, but we don't know where the other masters are any more than we know where…Oh!"
"Magnus!" He and Rin said in unison.
Shirou took off at an excited jog for a dilapidated pay phone near where he had set up his elaborate wire trap.
"What, um, what were you saying?" Rin asked hopefully, trailing after him.
But Shirou was already dialing.
"Oh, heya Melva. Put Ilya on the phone, would ya?" He said.
"Ilya! Ilya? Are you okay? No, nothing, you just sounded a little…okay. Yeah, no problem. Yes she's here." He said glancing at Rin.
"Listen, we need you here right away, and bring Caster. We've got a chance to fight Lancer. Yeah. Yeah, here's the address." He said, giving Ilya directions to the wire trap.
"Okay. See you soon."
Shirou hung up and then turned to Rin.
"You ready?" He asked, holding the receiver out to her. Rin nodded.
"Arright. Find some way to lure Magnus here. We'll jump him and take out Lancer when he arrives. Then he can tell us how to get to Kotomine."
Rin nodded grimly and began to dial.