Chapter Four

A Choice Meant for Humans

On top of everything else Irisviel absorbed in her learning, she was also quite keen on games that tested one's wits, a trait which Kiritsugu shared with her. So he introduced her to chess, a game that he and Natalia used to play. That and he thought it was a good way to sharpen Irisviel's ability to make strategic decisions for the upcoming Grail War. Truth be told, he found himself more interested in developing this kind of strength in her than he was before, since before he hadn't counted much on his ever thinking he might need her input on anything battle-related. Now however, he'd begun to see there was far more worth buried within that mind of hers than he'd originally thought, but he kept this observation to himself.

At this point, Kiritsugu was hardly surprised at how quickly Irisviel grasped and mastered the game of chess, but he was no less pleased as he watched her do it. She got a look on her face when she was thinking of her next move that made him realize how she herself was at once so wise in some ways, thanks to the cells of Justeaze von Einzbern from which she was created, and yet at the same time so much a child. He had to admit that he was rather drawn to the effect.

"What?" Irisviel said after a minute, looking up from the chess board in the middle of their most recent game one afternoon.

It was then Kiritsugu realized he'd been watching her with an unconsciously large grin on his face. For the first time in a long time, he felt a rush of color to his cheeks and he coughed decisively into his hand, trying to hide it now that he was conscious of it.

But Irisviel didn't miss it. "Your cheeks went very red. Is that that 'blushing' you mentioned sometime ago?"

"I—well, yes…." Kiritsugu gave up coughing into his hand and instead ran it through his hair in an unrepressed vent of suddenly tangled up emotions.

Irisviel blinked and then let out such a burst of laughter as Kiritsugu hadn't yet heard from her that it was actually quite jarring for him.

"I've never seen you so red," she positively gushed. "It's…what's that word again? Oh…yes…. Cute." She gave him—of all things—a teasing wink to emphasize her point.

At this, Kiritsugu went from agitated to relieved, letting out a shaky chuckle, again unable to help his amusement. "I think you're the first person to ever say that about me." Even Shirley never thought that, I don't think, even if she did only just think of me as her little brother. Then Kiritsugu wondered why he was even drawing that comparison.

Irisviel was still smiling at him, but it was more of a studying kind of expression, like she was toying with an idea. Kiritsugu found he very much wanted to know what that might be. But he also found himself discomfited again against his will and averted his gaze.

"It's still you turn," he mumbled, clearing his throat.

"Ah, have I disturbed you?" Irisviel asked, raising a fine and impressive silver eyebrow.

Kiritsugu made a show of tracing a line of grain in the wood of the table with his index finger. "It's very…disarming," he admitted, in spite of himself. "It actually makes me…uncomfortable."

"'Disarming'?"

"Yes…it's…never mind."

"Kiritsugu?"

At once Irisviel sounded quite concerned, and Kiritsugu regretted a little that he allowed himself to grow so gruff toward her when she'd really done nothing wrong. Inexplicably vexed despite his efforts to control himself, he rose from his chair and moved to the window.

"I do apologize…for disarming you, as you said…" Irisviel began carefully.

"No…it's not something…." Kiritsugu pinched the bridge of his nose as he fidgeted with his lighter in his pocket.

And then it all quite suddenly became very hilarious to him, and like the day Irisviel nearly crashed the car and then laughed at the expression on his face, he couldn't help another burst of his own laughter as before.

"Kiritsugu?" Irisviel was understandably confused now.

But Kiritsugu shook his head and turned to her, his grin returning, no longer faltering. "I don't understand myself. I suppose it comes from the fact that…much like you once were…I did my best to be nothing more than an empty shell that acted purely on instinct."

Irisviel, relaxing in the face of his sincere amusement, went back to teasing him. "I see…. Well, that seems a bit contradictory, considering how much you were going on about how ineffective that kind of thinking was."

"Ah, indeed. I suppose even for as many years I've lived and for all the things I've seen, I'm still such an idiot about some things."

"Am I allowed to agree with such an observation?"

"Only if you really do."

Irisviel giggled again. "Then I do. Compared to people like Grandpapa and those others of my Einzbern kin with whom I've spoken, you're very different. I'd say that compared to them, you probably are an idiot about some things. But I must say that at the same time, that makes you a far more interesting person than they are."

"Oh?" It was Kiritsugu's turn to raise an eyebrow.

"Oh, yes." Irisviel placed her fingertip on the head of one of her white pawns on the chessboard and rotated it playfully, and her smile returned with a very musing attitude to it. "They're all very straightforward, and despite my limited experience with humans, after meeting you, I think you paint a far better picture of what humans are really like than they do, even though in biology you are all fundamentally the same."

"Well…I've always thought mages were a bit odd that way," Kiritsugu confessed. "The traditional ones, in any case."

Irisviel turned her smile on him, and it was very lovely, and Kiritsugu realized that it was because it was one born of very true enjoyment with her current situation.

"I'm really glad we can speak like this, you know," she told him. "It makes me happy. I like that."

"I feel the same way," Kiritsugu responded in kind, openly acknowledging the sentiment without a trace of wavering.

Perhaps he had worried and labored emotionally over nothing, but for the time being, Kiritsugu knew for a fact that he had never been more eager than he was now to resume playing a simple game of chess.

The following day, Kiritsugu was coming back inside the castle after his usual morning smoke, when his keen ears picked up the echoes of what sounded like a struggle in a hallway off the entrance hall.

He followed the sound to its source and found the young and golden grandson of Jubstacheit, Malte von Einzbern preying on Irisviel in the corner. And though she was cornered, Kiritsugu took in enough of the situation to note that Irisviel's fists were clenched, as though she had the will to fight, but some outside force was preventing her from doing so.

"Come now, that's not how a good homunculus acts," Malte taunted. "Tsk, tsk for attempting to use alchemy against me." He wagged a finger at her. "You're nothing more than a puppet for the Grail War. Otherwise you do nothing but collect dust. I'd prefer to make some kind of use out of you. You do, after all, resemble a very beautiful woman." He attempted to lean in.

Irisviel withdrew as far as she could, and though it was established that Malte was the one preventing her from using magic since she had clearly attempted to use it on him before, that didn't stop her from displaying a venomous glare and cracking the back of her hand across Malte's face.

This sent him staggering back, clutching his reddened cheek and choking on rage. "Little bitch."

Though he attempted to lunge after the ducking Irisviel, Kiritsugu had already strode across the room, fully immersed in machine mode, and struck Malte from behind, precisely at the temple, sending him falling unconscious to the floor before he even knew what hit him. Only as he coldly regarded the sight of Malte supine but breathing on the floor did Kiritsugu mildly consider the consequences of attacking Jubstacheit von Einzbern's beloved grandson.

"K-Kiritsugu." Irisviel's voice was very small.

Kiritsugu looked at her, and for a moment he fully felt like his old mechanical self. Irisviel shrunk back, only a little, but he imagined it was at the vacant nature his dark gaze usually possessed. True, she had seen them before, but that was before he'd taught her about emotions. Back then it hadn't mattered, but now….

"You moved…without the slightest hesitation," Irisviel finally said, trying very hard not to sound intimidated. Actually she might've been a little bit in awe at the same time.

"Of course I did. Were it not for Acht, I'd have just killed him."

Irisviel shrank a little more.

Kiritsugu closed his eyes and breathed a moment, and felt everything flooding back, all the new things that—

Now he realized it: it was Irisviel who was changing him, making him feel things again, just as he was making her feel things for the first time.

Was this…how Natalia felt…when she was raising me…not even realizing she was lowering her guard until…?

When he opened his eyes again, he said, with an effort to sound gentler, more human, "Perhaps that's going a bit far, even for me. Still, he had no right to try and touch you that way." He pinched the bridge of his nose and regarded Malte's prone form again. "I suppose I'd better come up with some excuse…."

"Kiritsugu," Irisviel said, trying to sound bolder, something that Kiritsugu couldn't help warming to.

"Yes, Irisviel?"

"Could you…teach me something like that? Like how to knock someone out like that?"

Kiritsugu admittedly hadn't expected her to ask this.

Irisviel pressed on at the clearly baffled expression on his face. "I can perform alchemy well enough, but…if I'm to…. I mean wouldn't it be prudent to give me as many weapons as possible?"

"Ah…." Kiritsugu recalled something of his own words when he'd first met Irisviel. He imagined her porcelain hands making a fist and striking another's jaw, her ivory skin painted with another's blood.

She did have a point though. It was the point he himself had made. And he shouldn't deny her this opportunity.

He inclined his head. "Very well. I'll teach you what I can." He picked Malte up and threw him over his shoulder fireman style.

Behind him, he heard Irisviel say, very softly, as though what she was saying was rather sacred: "Kiritsugu…thank you."

Kiritsugu replied without turning, though he couldn't help a small smile touching his lips. "You're welcome…Irisviel."

That night, the image of Irisviel fixing Malte with such vengeful anger on behalf of defending the honor that frankly was due her regardless of her being a homunculus would follow him into his dark dreams.

After that, Kiritsugu moved his lessons with Irisviel to include some basic self-defense. They cleared a space in the library by moving the furniture around, and Irisviel was given a set of yoga pants and a grey t-shirt to replace her usual white and gold dress, which would be entirely impractical for this exercise.

Though he warned her that he wouldn't hold back, he certainly had no desire to put a scratch on her. Fortunately, Irisviel had taken the things Kiritsugu had taught her thus far truly to heart. This was almost a test of that, and she passed with flying colors, hardening her resolve and not afraid to put as much effort as she needed to hold her own against him in a fight sequence.

The important thing was getting the pattern of movement down. The application of force would ultimately be necessary too, but that had to come naturally, be an afterthought almost. At this point though, Kiritsugu had far more confidence in her than he would have had a few months ago.

In fact, Irisviel had been of great assistance in dealing with the whole Malte fiasco as far as Acht was concerned. She wasn't able to take responsibility for knocking him out, but she worded the situation such that in Acht's eyes, it would appear that Malte had tried to do her a harm that would ruin her ability to perform her duty as the Grail Vessel, which was the only thing Acht and the other Einzberns really cared for from her. Still, she had observed enough about Malte's character to make her story believable. True, if he had gotten what he'd wanted from her, in all likelihood, she still would have been able to function as the Grail (psychological scars wouldn't have entered into the issue), so she had to make it so that his intentions for her would destroy everything the Einzberns had worked so hard for, leaving Kiritsugu no choice but to strike him down.

For his part, Malte grew jumpy around Kiritsugu whenever the two happened to cross paths, which was usually only around mealtimes, and even then, Kiritsugu preferred the kitchen to the grand dining room anyway. Eventually though, Malte made the awkward announcement that he was going to travel abroad for a while to "get away" and was gone the following day.

As for Irisviel and her progress with both her education and her skills in self-defense, Kiritsugu was more than satisfied with her handling of the task, especially on the day when she managed to knock him flat with a well-aimed strike where she connected her foot with the inside of his leg, hitting just the right nerve to make his knees buckle.

As he looked up at her flushed and beaming face full of unmistakable pride, he began to think that his work in recreating her to better suit his needs in the Grail War was more than complete. At the same time though, it was the first time he really began to think about what was going to happen to this woman in the end, and his own pride in his formidable teaching skills suddenly crumbled from underneath him. The same pressure in his chest that had emerged when he'd rescued Irisviel from the snow emerged once again.

He looked away from her.

"Kiritsugu…what's the matter?" Irisviel asked him as she caught her breath, shoving her silver hair out of her crimson eyes.

Kiritsugu stood. "It's nothing," he lied. "Well done," he added, forcing himself to look at her and give her the smile she deserved.

"Well, I did say I was stronger than you, so it was only a matter of time," Irisviel teased, and she did a kind of aimless twirl, her hands clasped behind her back as she reveled in her own sense of being pleased with herself.

"Maybe we should leave it here for today though," Kiritsugu suggested, making a show of rubbing the spot where Irisviel had struck him earlier on the jaw.

"Okay," said Irisviel, perfectly at ease. "Maybe we could take a break then from the self-defense and move onto—No wait, don't tell me. I…want it to be a surprise this time," and she giggled that giggle of hers.

Beyond the disturbance of his thoughts, there was something else he couldn't seem to shake even long after he'd left the library, and that was a particular scent lingering in his nose, the scent of irises, if he wasn't mistaken.

Irisviel's scent.

Kiritsugu thought long and hard about it, tossing and turning that night, staring up at the void that was the dark ceiling. Strangely enough however, when morning came and he ventured a look at himself in the mirror, he didn't think he appeared nearly as bad as he thought he would. Actually, he looked like he got a much better night's sleep than he did.

Today though, he was particularly anxious about seeing Irisviel, mostly because something new was driving him today, something entirely against how he would have normally thought about things. He pushed away everything Acht might say to him were he to know Kiritsugu's intentions, and acted entirely on that same impulse that had driven him on that cold day he rescued Irisviel from the cruel mercy of the snow and the starving wolves.

Irisviel, as usual, was ecstatic to know what he had planned for her today, and, steeling himself, Kiritsugu tried to get a reading on what she alone felt inside herself, without the influence of what the Einzberns had always told her about her destiny—what she would desire now that she'd gained something of a free will.

"Did you want to know even more…about the world?" he asked her as she expressed her continual amazement with it.

"Oh yes, but you needn't worry about my forgetting my main purpose for the Grail," she added, losing none of the fervor in her tone. "I know what I have to ultimately do, and no matter what, I will carry that out. If anything, for your sake."

Kiritsugu frowned at her from where he was leaning over the back of his usual chair by the fire. "What do you mean, 'my sake'?"

Irisviel ceased fidgeting with her hands in her lap as she sat in her own chair. She fixed Kiritsugu with a strangely heartfelt expression. "Well…there's something about you that seems sad sometimes, even when you're trying so eagerly to teach me how to be happy at the exact same time. I thought maybe…you had your own reasons for wanting to win the Grail…and I'd like to think that if you did win it, you mightn't be so sad anymore."

Kiritsugu lowered his eyes to the carpet. The words she had spoken had spelled out for him quite clearly what he must ask her next. He had no more qualms on this matter. "If you wanted to…you could simply deny fate…and walk away."

Irisviel blinked at him. "Eh?"

"The world can be truly yours," Kiritsugu plowed on, his dark eyes still shadowed. "I want to give that to you, for real. All you have to do…is leave this place. Leave this place and never look back. I would do that for you."

"But what about the Grail—?"

"The Einzberns can make a new vessel," Kiritsugu cut in with unintentional urgency, raising his eyes from the floor to address Irisviel directly, intently. "It doesn't have to be you, necessarily. You—" He grew restless suddenly and stalked away from the chair, striding about the room like a caged panther. "Now that you've moved beyond a mere sense of self, now that you have a true idea of what you'd give up if you continued down this path…surely you have the right to choose. Trying to create a tool with a sense of self was Acht's fatal mistake: the two concepts are incompatible."

"Ah…." Irisviel folded her arms and regarded Kiritsugu with an expression that was more adult and serious than anything he'd seen on her face before.

Kiritsugu quit his pacing, stopping at the mullioned, frosted window. He leaned his palms against the sill, as if he suddenly needed a prop again to keep himself standing. For some reason he was shaking a little. "Ask yourself, Irisviel: will dying for the sake of the Grail War—never mind my sake—truly justify the bloodshed that must come with it?"

"Do you believe that I should leave everything behind then?"

"If you wish for it. Think of nothing else but what you want."

He felt Irisviel rise from her chair and draw close to him, but he didn't turn around. Something in him made him afraid to turn around, this man who'd felt nothing like fear in years after a string of struggles on the hell of the battlefield.

Then Irisviel said: "I think I'm beginning to see why it is you decided to educate me. Is it because you…felt the need to bequeath to me all the joys of life that you have abandoned in your own pursuit of a higher purpose?"

Though she could not have been more incorrect, Kiritsugu did see why she might observe something like that. And he didn't wonder if, thinking back on the last few months, that mightn't have eventually entered into it, even if it wasn't there originally.

His silence though prompted her to suppose that she was in fact incorrect in her thinking and quickly reevaluated.

"No…that isn't it. If that were the reason, I don't suppose you would be presenting me with this unexpected proposal. Perhaps you are bequeathing me a choice in my fate…because you had none?"

Kiritsugu opened his mouth to speak, facing Irisviel at last, yet he couldn't seem to find anything to say. He felt somewhat uncharacteristically diminished, like a tree that's having its bark peeled away and can only stand there in martyrized patience.

What had happened to his usual instincts to strike back at anyone who tried such things?

Irisviel went on, and she pointed out the fact that while he was human, he'd trained himself instead to behave like a machine, all the while giving a choice meant for humans to her, she who was nothing more than a doll, a puppet. Even as Kiritsugu went back to his original explanation, that it was necessary for him to modify her behavior for his needs on the battlefield, there was the tiniest fraction of something ringing false with his words. Not entirely, for it still wasn't entirely untrue, but it was enough falsity that he noticed.

Regardless, he asked Irisviel not to get any strange ideas, because that appeared to be exactly where she was heading. Though he couldn't help commenting on how eloquent she'd grown in the last few months since emerging from the cultivating tank, when she was able to express in words her understanding of how eliciting anger, happiness, and pride in herself would be her ultimate driving force in surviving possible combat. In a way, this whole conversation was like a final exam for her.

Actually, she took that beyond what he had expected, when she went on to say that she had made an original observation from all of the books she'd read, the stories she'd listened to him tell, the movies and photos and pictures she'd seen: that anger wasn't so much a source as it was a branch off a deeper impulse underneath.

"That impulse," Irisviel declared, "is love."

Kiritsugu stared at Irisviel as her words hit him, and suddenly he couldn't seem to breathe, utterly confused at where all of this was coming from where Irisviel was concerned, and feeling as though he'd just been sucker punched. He was so stunned that he found himself unable to speak. He could only stand there as Irisviel eagerly explained herself.

"In all I've seen and read in the learning materials you've given me, where there have been acts of anger, I have noted acts of love behind them: ordinary people willing to kill to defend their families, or their country, a mother protecting her children to the death, soldiers spilling blood to avenge their fallen comrades without a moment's hesitation—acting much as you did when Malte was harassing me. So I gather I must learn about love, for that is what gives anger its greatest power, yes?"

Kiritsugu's heart began to pound insistently, and at first he assumed it was the strange fear he was experiencing. But there emerged that aching pressure in his chest again, which made it, if possible, even more difficult to catch his breath, despite the fact that he was standing quite still.

And yet…and yet….

To hear such words coming out of Irisviel's mouth, it was positively insane. At the same time though, when she said them, and he looked at her, regarded that face, he knew then that he thought it was beautiful, that he liked to look at it, to look at her, that he had grown not simply used to being in her presence, but enjoyed it. Truly enjoyed, without letting anything distort it.

Meanwhile, Irisviel seemed to be pouring out her very essence, positively thrilled at the idea that she could take something so powerful as love and experience it to a level beyond herself, to carry it to other people. She was absolutely beaming, her face grown suddenly as flushed as it was after their last combat session the day before.

"In fact…Kiritsugu Emiya…I find you very interesting. You're the first person I've spoken to…about whom I've wished to know more, just in how you carry yourself, how you speak, what you say and what you don't say, even when your eyes—"

"Irisviel, what're you getting at?"

Kiritsugu had the sensation of alarm bells going off inside him.

"If I am to gain the most of what I will need to fight, and to win," Irisviel reasoned, "I wonder…would it be appropriate for me…to love you?"

"Don't—don't joke about stuff like that!" Kiritsugu snapped in a sudden panic, flinging out an arm and stepping back as Irisviel drew close. Much too close.

Irisviel stopped, blinking at him in sincere bemusement. "I'm only trying to better understand what I must do in order to achieve what you ask of me. I can be at my strongest…if I have someone like you to fight for." She attempted to close the gap between them again, despite Kiritsugu's being pressed against the wall. "I think you're the kind of person…I would want to fight for. Isn't that enough?"

Kiritsugu heaved a frustrated sigh, and at last forced himself to face Irisviel head on. He wouldn't run, but he wasn't going to let her be fooled by all that she'd read in the books he'd given her, for while they gave love a poetic character, they were nothing more than postures, even the most realistic portrayals. Real life would always be realer than anything else.

"It isn't that simple," he said, trying not to sound tired. "Damn it," he muttered under his breath, and, with an attempt at his usual stoicism, he folded his arms with the intent of reestablishing his authority as a teacher, fixing her again with eyes that were cold. "I suppose we'll move on to the subject of love, if that's what you want. And you'll see how wrong you are about it."

Irisviel though could be nothing but overjoyed at the prospect.

For Kiritsugu's part, for the first time in a long time since starting to teach Irisviel about the world, he was glad to escape to the solace of his own chambers soon after that whole blunder.

"What the hell is she thinking?" he growled to himself.

Meanwhile his heart thumped wildly in his chest to the point that again he found it somewhat difficult to breathe. He shoved his dark hair out of his eyes, trembling as he leaned over the writing desk by the window and tried to master himself.

And now that he was alone with his thoughts, all that had just occurred between him and Irisviel began to really sink in. He began to have second thoughts about his decision to teach her more in depth about love.

In truth, what did he himself really know about it? He'd felt it, yes, but much of his experience with it had been so twisted by pain and loss, most of which had been like repeatedly plunging a sword into his chest, as much of all that had been his own doing, his hand forced by the ideals he desired so desperately to reach.

In many ways, he was really better off not loving at all, which suited him fine where people like Maiya were concerned, people who could behave just as mechanically.

But Irisviel—

And then there was Natalia. And his father. And Shirley.

Perhaps he was a fool to think he could live so easily without love, despite its risks. Perhaps it was because of these risks that he couldn't help but love when he found it inside himself. Even with Maiya—

But again, Irisviel—

Kiritsugu gave another sigh of frustration and quitted his rooms in search of a breath of fresh air outside. Having left all his weaponry in the care of Maiya, and having run out of his cigarettes with no hope of replenishing his favored brand, he resorted to venting an enormous, crushing wave of frustration he hadn't experience in a very long time on an unassuming walnut, kicking and punching it with such an unleashing of blind fury that for a few moments that made up his entire being.

But his brain caught up with his heart and he remembered himself. He leaned against the marred tree as he caught his breath, the act itself somehow calming in its own way.

And then his usually sharp senses alerted him to the fact that he was being watched. He looked up, finding Irisviel standing at her window, watching him as she had that day months ago in the aftermath of the snowstorm he had rescued her from.

Unlike then however, now, looking at her, his heart started thudding, and that pressure in his chest returned, but this time it took on a new form: an ache that was tender, like a sweet pain that quickened his pulse, sparking the dormant flow of his blood to life.

Was it because of what she just said, were her words affecting his thinking?

No.

He knew then that this was something that had already been growing inside him, that for a while he'd been rather smitten with Irisviel von Einzbern.

Indeed, she was a beautiful doll, but the spirit she had developed was thanks to him. Some of her beauty was his doing, and suffice to say, it amazed him to find such things were still within him alive and well.

So Irisviel watched him, and Kiritsugu watched her. Only the threat of catching his death of cold forced Kiritsugu to turn away at last and make his way back into the castle.