Ashes (I)
The sound of falling droplets hitting the ground was the only sound that could be heard inside the underground safe house. Most lights were off, save for a few here and there, to allow people to navigate the space safely.
Rider sat on the ground next to the bed of her unconscious Master. His body had knitted itself back together despite his grievous wounds over the course of the previous day. Yet he still slumbered.
His complexion was ashen, and he seemed to be barely breathing. His pulse was slow and almost imperceptible. The Servant didn't fear for his physical health, but she was very much concerned about his mind and his spirit.
Shirou was strong in every sense of the word, but the grief of losing Caster alone must have been overwhelming, and then he had done something that managed to hurt the King of Heroes when no one else managed to even put a scratch on him. Magecraft came at a price, more so if it was powerful, and improper use could even damage the caster's soul.
So yes, Rider was tremendously worried, yet there was nothing she could do but wait.
At some point, she heard footsteps approach until she sensed Saber standing on the threshold of the makeshift infirmary.
"What is it?" Rider asked
"We are convening to decide our course of action," replied the knightly Servant. "Shirou is still not awake."
"Unfortunately, time waits for no man."
Rider knew Saber was right. Rider also didn't care in the least. She didn't care about the Grail War. She didn't care about innocent victims. There were only two people in the entire world she cared about. Everyone else could burn for all she cared.
But Shirou would have cared. Shirou would have wanted her to keep up the fight and defend the innocent. She could do nothing for him except act as his Servant should and carry out his will.
She got up and walked out, following Saber to where Illya and Rin had already gathered. Rider stood to the side while Saber took a seat with the other girls at the only table in the place.
"How is he?" asked Rin.
"Nothing's changed," Rider replied. "He's still sleeping."
Rin nodded.
"Alright, then, let's move on with the topic at hand. Without Caster, we can no longer deal with the Grail the way we wanted to. That is to say, a controlled dismantling."
"We probably should have realized that plan was unfeasible after the Grail started to use her countermeasure against us to spawn those Shadows," Illya added. "We have just been trapped in the sunk cost fallacy of that strategy, but it was holding us back and spreading us too thin."
"So, what are you suggesting we do?" Rider asked.
"We are going to dismantle them and cut off the Shadows' means of accessing the physical world," Rin said. "Once that's done, the Grail will manifest itself in time."
"Regardless of how many Servants are left, the Grail was originally meant to materialize within two weeks of all seven Servants being summoned," Illya elaborated. "If we manage not to lose more Servants until then, it shouldn't have too much power and we should be able to destroy it with minimal backlash."
"And by destroying it, you mean that we will kill you, Illyasviel," said Saber. "Shirou will not permit that," Rider objected.
She knew him well enough to know that much.
"That's nice and all, but he doesn't have a choice in the matter. Besides, I was created to channel the Grail, and even if I somehow survived the War, my body cannot sustain itself much longer. I have maybe six months left to live if that."
Rider frowned. Another person that Shirou was going to lose. Another loved one that would slip through his fingers. Was there truly nothing she could do to help him?
"That said, do we even need to break down Caster's countermeasures? Shouldn't they have failed the moment she passed?"
"She's smarter than that. Was," Rin corrected. "She set them up in such a way that the Grail itself is keeping them up, which is why it could use them as foci to manifest the Shadows in the first place. As for breaking them down, she left instructions with me just in case something went wrong and we had to carry out the plan ourselves."
"Do you think... she expected this outcome?" Saber asked.
"Perhaps. Or maybe she was just covering all her bases," Rin replied.
No. Rider understood well enough, and by the looks on Illya's face, so did she.
Caster might have hoped that her end would come later, that she would have more time with Shirou, but the tragedy was inevitable. Just like a monster will always be slain by a hero, sooner or later. Humans had the fortune of not knowing what their ultimate fate would be. But for those whose history had crystallized into a Heroic Spirit, it was clear as day.
There are no good endings for witches. Just as there are none for man-eating monsters.
"Either way, we know what we should do next, but we need to decide how to move. With Gilgamesh, Zouken and Kotomine out there, we need to assume not everything will go on smoothly," said Illya.
"Wouldn't they want us to unshackle the Grail just as much as we do?" asked Saber.
"Zouken, probably. I cannot begin to fathom what Kotomine would want, or the King of Heroes for that matter."
"We cannot assume anything and must be on our guard at all times," said Rin. "Breaking Caster's failsafe will take me some time for each location. During that time, I cannot be disturbed at all."
"How long will it take?" Rider asked.
"Anywhere from five to ten minutes. But if I'm interrupted, I'll have to start again from the beginning."
"And we must take into account that the Grail won't stop spewing out those black creatures and False Servants in the meantime," said Illya. "Which is why we should start working on it immediately."
"Agreed," said Saber. "So let's hash out a plan for tonight." "I'm not leaving Shirou's side until he wakes up," said Rider.
"I wouldn't expect anything different," Saber agreed. "But we still need to decide how to operate in both scenarios."
Thus, for the next hour, they went over various possible courses of action, deciding which seal they should deal with first and what to do in case one of the other Servants appeared.
There wasn't much they could really do to prepare for the coming night in advance, but it was better to be on the same page in case one thing or another happened so that they wouldn't have to decide on the spot.
Once they were all agreed, Rider returned to Shirou's room only to freeze on the spot when she got there.
"What's wrong?" asked Rin as she was walking in the same direction toward her own room.
The bed was empty. Putting a hand on the covers, Rider found that there was no trace of warmth left. Just as no trace of Emiya Shirou was left anywhere inside the safe house.
[br]
The house was empty and dark. The Boundary Fields around the property were gone with the death of the person who had set them up. Someone had been inside in the interim, he could tell, but he couldn't care.
He was numb to everything. His body was still aching, but it was just background noise, like the voice in his head frantically calling his name.
He walked through the corridors like a ghost, searching for other ghosts, but found nothing. Not even her scent remained of her in this world. Her room was empty, like her presence in that house had been nothing but a figment of his imagination. A dream that had been wiped away at dawn.
His feet led him outside to the shed, standing inconspicuously in a corner of the courtyard.
The metal door swung open with a creak, and the hidden door on the pavement slid open slowly at his approach, revealing the stone stairs leading down below. As his footsteps echoed down the stairs, the torches that normally would have illuminated the path remained cold and unlit.
At last, the ragged form of Emiya Shirou made his way down to the last step of the stairs.
The only light came from the furnace at the farthest end of the room, still fizzling with burning embers. He didn't get off from that final step. He remained there, not daring to set foot onto the floor of the Workshop, watching it with distant and vacant eyes instead.
He lost track of how long he stood there, rooted in place, holding his breath. But no matter how much he waited, she wasn't there. She wasn't anywhere anymore. He knew he wouldn't find her here, but he had come anyway for some reason.
Yet despite coming all the way here, he didn't dare to take another step forward. This was their Workshop, not his. The place where she taught him, guided him, and where they grew close to one another.
As long as he didn't set foot in it, he felt, it would still be their place and not just his own. He didn't want to be there without her anyway. He didn't need any of these things. What use did he have for them? What good could someone like him accomplish with them?
What kind of hero couldn't even protect the woman he held in his arms?
He turned to leave, but just then, something in the corner of his eyes caught his attention and stopped him in his tracks, freezing his breath and simultaneously making his heart skip a beat.
A brief flicker of purple light.
He almost didn't dare to look. He didn't know what it was, only what it couldn't be. The one thing he longed for the most. He wanted to leave without finding out but found that his feet wouldn't move.
He forced himself to look.
In the middle of the Workshop, at about eye level, a purple flame was burning seemingly out of thin air, shining like a beacon and calling out for him. He could feel it in his bones; this was something she left behind for him.
Whatever it was, he didn't want it. No memento of her could fill the void she left in his heart.
And yet he couldn't bring himself to turn away. After failing to fulfill all her other wishes, he owed it to her to grant at least this small one. He stepped onto the Workshop floor, exhaling a heavy breath as he did so.
One slow step after another, until he finally stood in front of the enticing flame, which burned brighter and brighter the closer he got. Without a second thought, he reached out to grab it with both hands. It exploded in a flash of light and fire and when it faded, he was left holding a slender glass ampule with a deep purple fluid inside.
"Ah... ah..."
His vision blurred as tears fell from his eyes for the first time since Medea disappeared in front of him. His legs buckled and he fell to his knees, holding the treasure to his chest.
"Gh!... Hkk! AHHHH!"
For the first time in years, he wept, curled upon himself. Why? Why? Why?
Why would she leave this to him? The Original Rule Breaker reduced to conceptual form? Didn't she know he couldn't cut it without her? What did she think he could accomplish on his own when he couldn't even protect her? Even when he failed her so badly, did she still want to believe in him?
He gritted his teeth, swallowing the knot in his throat. Slowly he got back on his feet and took unsteady steps towards the forge. He stumbled and almost fell down a couple of times, but he finally got in front of the fire, still holding the ampule to his chest.
Tears were still flowing down his cheeks, blurring his vision, but he didn't need to see to know what he had to do. He had spent hundreds of hours in this place, working under her supervision
His hands moved on their own, with no input from his mind. The flames were fanned, the tools were gathered and a piece of metal was brought to the forge. Soon the sound of metal hitting metal echoed through the room.
It was a furious yet sorrowful cacophony. A memory flashed before his eyes with each spark that flew in front of his face.
The corner of lips turned upward. The frown on a perplexed face. The sound of a teasing laughter. The warmth of an intimate touch. The sound of a raspy sigh in his ears. The softness of intertwined fingers.
Every moment he spent with her was clear and vivid as when he lived it, forever etched in his memory, and now forever beyond his reach.
With each memory, a tear fell onto the metal. With each tear, the hammer fell harder and harder.
CLANG! CLANG! CLANG! CLANG!
His arm burned, but he didn't stop. Not even when the hammer finally broke. His closed fists continued to hit the metal before him.
WHAM! WHAM! WHAM! WHAM!
His unprotected skin sizzled in contact with the melting steel until it burned away completely, exposing flesh and blood underneath.
SPLAT! SPLAT! SPLAT! SPLAT!
With each strike a layer of flesh was seared away. The smell of charred meat slowly filled the place, and yet none of it registered to the man who was so frantically destroying his own body as he searched for something he knew he could never find.
SPLAT! SPLAT! SPLAT! CRACK! CRACK!
At last, there was no more flesh left standing between metal and bone, and his knuckles hitting the steel directly, shattering under the force of the impact. Soon even those would burn away, reduced to a fine powder.
CRACK! CRACK! CRACK! CRACK! CLANG!
Underneath the skin, underneath the flesh, underneath the blood, and underneath the bone,
there was yet another layer.
CLANG! CLANG! CLANG! CLANG! CLANG!
Once again, steel met steel, yet no matter how much he struck, he didn't know what he was trying to create. There was no tool that a mortal man could make that would bring back what he had lost.
Finally, he ran out of tears, and his arms fell limp to his side. He kneeled on the ground in front of the forge, with the ampule sitting on the floor right in front of him. He couldn't use it. He didn't know how to use it. He neither had the means or the will to use it, or a vision worthy of her final gift to him. He remained there, sitting on the ground and staring into the flame and the misshapen creation in the forge without actually seeing either one.
"Shirou."
The voice came from behind him, but he didn't turn or react in any way, not even when two arms wrapped around him and he was pulled into Rider's soft embrace. He just let it happen, hating himself for the faint relief that it brought him when he knew he deserved none of it.
[br]
Rin, Saber and Illya ran through the dark streets at night. Rider had left them in the dust and rushed where Emiya was presumably going, back to his house. Saber might have kept up with Rider, but that would have meant leaving her Master and Illya on their own while there were enemy Servants out and about and that wasn't an option.
Splitting up at a time like this was foolhardy at best. Emiya and Rider had both made that mistake separately, but the other three weren't about to do the same. Any moment they spent separated was a moment they could be picked off individually, either by Lancer, Gilgamesh or Zouken's Shadow.
At that time there wasn't any public transportation, the roads were clear of traffic and with this being an industrial part of town there wasn't even a parked car that they could borrow. They had to make their way on foot but being on opposite sides of town, it would take a long while before they could get there. A window of time during which anything could happen.
"Damn, that idiot. Why did he have to leave like that?" Rin grumbled, though she knew the answer all too well.
He wasn't in his right mind. No one would be right after losing someone dear. He probably didn't even think about the implications, nor did he really try to sneak out. He just went searching for something that couldn't be found.
Rin knew all about that, having lost all of her family over the years, in one way or another.
In reality, her grumbling was just a reflection of her concern. She wished she could have done more, but in the end she had been just as powerless as anybody else. Being left behind in this instance only drove the point home.
She was shaken out of her thoughts when the headlights of a car suddenly came into her vision. She couldn't make out the shape of the vehicle rapidly approaching or who was
driving it, but it was clearly heading towards them. Saber took a defensive stance, but the car screeched to a halt as it turned to the side, blocking their path.
"Need a ride?" asked the driver.
"Dojima-san!" Rin exclaimed. "Good timing. Quick, we need to go to Emiya's place."
"Alright, hop in," he said.
Illya and Rin promptly got in the back of the car but Saber walked around to the driver seat.
"I'm driving," said Saber. "Please move over."
"Do you even know how?" Dojima asked.
"I have the Riding Skill. I can operate any vehicle better than most people."
"Alright then," he said as he moved onto the passenger seat, "but take care of it, alright? I haven't finished paying the installments on this baby yet."
Saber got into the driver seat, and not a second after she had closed the door, the car was screeching down the street at velocity tethering on the specs limits of the engine and in complete disregard of the laws of traffic.
"What the hell did I just say?!" Dojima yelled as his body was pressed into the seat from the sudden acceleration.
"Sorry, there's no time to lose."
"Where's Shirou? Why isn't that woman teleporting you around like usual?"
"She's dead," said Illya from the backseat. "Shirou is not in his right mind and slipped out of the safe house while we weren't looking."
"...Shit," Dojima summed up.
"Yeah," Rin agreed. "We have you been? Rider said you were staying back there at the safe
house too."
"That's my question. You have been missing for days. I looked all over for you guys." "It's complicated. What about you?"
"I couldn't stay cooped up in there any longer. I went to see my daughter out of town for a bit. I figured that if Shirou needed me for something, he would have called. Not like I'd be of much help in a crisis, anyway. I came back now because I couldn't get in touch with him either at his home or on his mobile. I thought something might have happened, so I was going to check the safehouse first."
"Hmm. His mobile is probably dead and it wouldn't get any signal down there anyway." "What happened? I thought you guys had everything under control."
"We thought so as well. Then we found out there were more players than we knew about. We were ambushed and a Servant we knew nothing about killed Caster. We lost Berserker too."
"Ah, for fuck's sakes. What are we going to do now?"
"We have a backup plan, but it's not going to be any easier than the first one," said Rin. "If anything, it's going to be much more difficult."
"Great. Just fucking great. Is there anything I can help with?"
"You'll be the first one to know as soon as something comes up. At this point I'm past being picky. I'll take any help I can get."
Dojima nodded. He would have asked more questions but they were almost to their destination.
[br]
Rider was kneeling on the ground with her Master in her arms. Her heart went out to him, but she didn't know any word that could bring him comfort. She could only hold him and hope that her closeness could give him even just a fraction of the comfort that he had brought to her with his own.
Was there anything she could have done differently that would have spared him this sorrow? Was there any way she could relieve him of this pain? She knew that there was nothing she could realistically do for him beyond what she was already doing. People couldn't take the pain away from one another, only share it and bear it together.
Rider couldn't feel the loss of Caster the same way Shirou did. They weren't even friends and only tolerated each other out of necessity. But they had at least something in common.
'We both love the same man.'
Perhaps that was the reason why Medea hadn't interfered in the growing bond between Rider and Shirou. This way, Caster knew that if things turned out the way she feared, there would still be someone else left to watch his back and care for him.
'You were a conniving woman till the very end,' she thought. 'But I won't begrudge you this.'
Rider wasn't so shallow as to believe she could replace Medea in Shirou's heart. People weren't placeholders that could be exchanged with one another. She would support him as long as she could as her own self and not as a replacement.
But... sooner or later, even if it were years away, if she lived long enough, one day, she would become a monster that would need to be put down. Could she really nurture their bond and then force him to kill her in the future?
She couldn't put that on him. He deserved better than a monster for a life companion. She wasn't the one who could stand by his side.
However, that was a concern for a later time. Right now, she would be his unwavering support as his Servant, and if they lived past this war, she would decide which was the best way forward.
She stayed there, holding him without saying a word, until she heard soft footsteps coming down the stairs. Rider turned her head to see, but she already knew the newcomer's identity.
Rin stood at the bottom of the stairs, watching the scene in silence. Rider had left in a hurry and rushed here as fast as she could run. Barring the use of vehicles, she was the fastest Servant and wound up leaving the others behind.
Rin's face was in the shadows, so Rider couldn't tell which kind of expression she was making, but the Servant had known the Magus long enough to understand her character. Rin wasn't an unsympathetic person, and she had a history with Shirou that predated even Caster's.
Her feelings were likely similar to Rider's, and probably not just about Shirou's loss. She filed that thought away for later. Now all she had to do was hold her Master however long he needed.
[br]
"Is everything alright?" Dojima asked the moment Rin emerged from the Workshop.
"As much as it can be expected under the circumstances," she replied.
"What now?" asked Illya.
"I guess we are staying here for now. Dawn is just a couple of hours away anyway. We should be reasonably safe if we stick together."
Saber nodded.
"Let's head inside then. I don't think Shirou will begrudge us if we use his facilities." "I could use a cup of tea," Rin agreed.
Any other time she would have given Shirou a piece of her mind for making them worry like that, but under these circumstances, she felt she could let him get away with it. Just this once, she would put up with his lack of forethought.
Just this once.
They moved to his living room and true to her word Rin started making tea for everyone. No one said a word. After all, what was there to say? They had already discussed the plan, and no one was in the mood for a casual chat.
They sat together and drank until some time later, when they heard two sets of footsteps approach, and Shirou appeared at the door with Rider behind him.
He sat at the table, and no one asked any inane questions about how he felt. His hands were bloodied and bandaged, but at this point his physical injuries didn't seem to bother anyone, least of all himself. He had bounced back from much worse.
"Rider told me about the new plan," he said after a moment without looking at anyone in particular.
"Any insights?" Rin asked.
He shook his head.
"If there's nothing else, I'll be in my room," he said as he got up again.
He was almost out of the room when Rin decided to speak again.
"I'm sorry for your loss."
"Thanks," he said without stopping or even turning.
Rider followed him, and the three women and the detective were once again left to contend with an uncomfortable, melancholic silence.
[br]
Elsewhere in the city, a woman was sitting next to a bed, tending to the wounds of another young man.
Matou Shinji laid unconscious in Caren's bed. He had passed out the previous day on the doorsteps of Shirou's home. She took him to her hotel's room to treat him, and while the wound wasn't too deep, he had lost a great deal of blood.
'What do you think happened to him?' she asked her Servant.
'He stepped on the wrong toes, surely. An ordinary human getting involved with the Grail
War is just asking for trouble.' 'You are not being very helpful.'
'What do you expect me to say? If we go with what's obvious, he got on his grandfather's wrong side and barely made it out with his life.'
'What about the less obvious?'
'He's bait. If any of the people part of this mess wanted him dead, he wouldn't have made it five steps away from where he started. Whether he's acting of his own volition or not, his purpose is to stir up drama.'
"You could at least pretend to care about him a bit,' she replied.
'You always had too many expectations of me. I'm already a dead man with no stakes in this world. Once my time here is over, everything about me will be erased like it never happened. No one will even remember whether I cared or not, so why bother? It's pointless.'
'No action is pointless, and caring is the most important action of all. Even if people aren't aware of it, it still matters.'
'So you say,' he replied, not at all convinced. It was then that their guest started to stir. "Hm-m..."
Little by little, Matou Shinji came back to consciousness. His eyes opened slowly, at first seemingly not fully aware of his situation. Then his gaze moved and fell on Caren. His body immediately stiffened, causing him to upset his wound and hurting him.
"Argh! Who...?"
"A member of the Church," she said. "You don't need to worry, Matou Shinji. You are safe here."
"How did I get here? Where even is here?" he asked as he tried to sit up, holding his wounded side.
"You don't remember? Ah, I guess you were already out of it. You collapsed on me on the doorsteps to Emiya's place. As for where we are, this is my room at a hotel in Fuyuki."
"You... I remember. W...Why were you there? Where's Emiya?"
"Your guess is as good as mine. His home was empty and looked abandoned from what I could tell. I tried calling his phone, but I didn't get any answer, and I couldn't exactly go looking for him as I had to tend to your wounds."
"What's your relationship with him?"
"You could say that we are friends, sort of. We worked together on a few occasions. Now back to you. The other night you said you needed him to save Sakura. I assume you meant your sister. What is the problem?"
He averted his eyes.
"Fair enough," she said. "I guess you don't really know me, and the relationship between the Holy Church and Magi has never been cordial."
"Is it... really fine?" he asked.
"I do not intend to force you to speak. I would like to help you if I can, but I can't make you trust me. I took care of your wound at best I could. You should be fine if you are careful and avoid any strenuous activity, but you lost a great deal of blood. I would advise you to eat something and rest a while more."
When she brought up the topic of food, Shinji's stomach let out a loud growl.
"I'll have room service bring us something."
"Ah... thank you," he said sheepishly.
One call and a few minutes later, Shinji was tearing his way through a steak and some potatoes, flushing it all down with copious amounts of water.
"Slow down, or your stomach won't be able to keep it down," she warned.
Surprisingly, he seemed to listen and took his time filling his stomach. Another few minutes later, the plates were spotlessly clean.
"Better now?"
"Yeah, thank you," he said as he cleaned his mouth with a napkin.
"Good. Feel free to stay as long as you need. However, once you leave, I must ask you not to return to this place. I made sure we weren't followed on the way here, but you cannot guarantee you could do the same."
"Look... are you really Emiya's friend?"
"I'm the one who introduced him to the Church. Ah, but you probably wouldn't know he's working with us."
"Emiya is...? But... he's a Magus."
"He's a contractor, not a member. But you should also know that there are other Magi and even some Dead Apostles in the ranks of the Burial Agency. The Church can be more flexible than you imagine, as long as it serves their bottom line."
"Their bottom line?"
"I'm part of the Church, but I'm a servant of the Lord first and foremost. I don't necessarily agree with every decision the organization makes. There is an 'us', but there is also a 'them,' if you get what I mean."
"There's not necessarily unity of thoughts inside the Church," he said.
"Precisely. While we share the same faith, we might differ in how we go about it. The Lord gives us plenty of leeway to make our own path. I cannot claim to understand it myself, but I fully trust in His wisdom."
"I see... anyway. I need to get in touch with Emiya."
"I can give you his number, but he hasn't been answering his phone for the past day, Paired with the lack of Boundary Fields around his house, I worry he might have been incapacitated or worse."
"No way! He had two Servants, and he's in an alliance with Tohsaka! No way he could have lost. Zouken didn't even have any Servants until... the other night."
"What? How did Zouken get another Servant after Rider? "You knew about that?"
"I spoke with Shirou a few days ago. He brought me up to speed with what transpired until then. I know that Rider used to be your Servant.
Shinji looked away, clenching his teeth.
"Yeah. Asshole took her from me, but that's not what matters. Zouken has another Servant now. Berserker."
"How did he summon it?" she asked.
"He didn't. He... he took him from the Einzbern Master." "How did he do that?"
"It's..." he stopped and took a deep breath. "He made Sakura into a Lesser Grail. From what I understand, she has the Element of Imaginary Numbers, which is a counter to all spiritual beings, including Servants. He's been using her to manifest an entity that successfully consumed Berserker the other night. When I left, he was trying to get control over it. It's only because his attention was elsewhere that I managed to slip away. That, and he really knows I'm no threat to him. He wrote me off a long time ago."
"How do you know all of this? You aren't a Magus and I doubt that Zouken would have explained it all to you, if he wrote you off, as you said."
"My dream... my wish for the Grail was to become a Magus. Sakura became the heir in my place but... well... that's not really the case. She's no heir either, just a tool for Zouken, like I would have been if I could do any Magecraft. Anyway, the point is that I never gave up the hope of one day becoming the Matou heir. Even though I couldn't do any Magecraft, I still learned all that I could. As far as theory goes, I know everything there is to know about the family Craft and then some. I could fucking teach the subject."
"Does he know that?"
"I have no clue, but it would surprise me if he just flat out didn't care either way. I was ever only a failure to him. I... can't... I took it out on Sakura all these years when she was just as much of a victim as I am. No... she had a far worse deal than I had. Fuck... I'm fucking scum!"
He was clenching his fists and a tear even made it off his face. Caren wasn't sure what he was talking about, but it seemed that the boy had done a bit of soul searching and found himself lacking.
She put a hand on his shoulder.
"Everyone in this world is a sinner. The Lord teaches us that the first step to salvation is acknowledging our faults and asking for forgiveness."
"God can't forgive the things I've done," he said, sounding far too certain.
"God accepts all, yet it is not Him you should ask for forgiveness, but the people you wronged. If you can earnestly do that, your soul will be saved."
"I don't care about saving my soul, right now. I want to save Sakura. If we let things go the way Zouken wants them to, she'll become the Grail and die. I can't do anything to help her myself, but Emiya and Tohsaka should be able to do something. At least they should know what's up. Emiya won't let Zouken hurt Sakura anymore if he finds out what she's been going through."
"On that, we are in agreement. As for your soul, I do believe it's already well on its way to being saved, whether you can appreciate it or not. Anyway, you should rest some more. In the morning we'll head to Emiya's place to see if we can find some sign of his whereabouts.
Shinji nodded and leaned back to rest on the bed.
'You know this is a trap, right?' Avenger asked telepathically. 'Zouken wants the kid to know what's up with the girl, so that he won't be able to act against him. Maybe even rope him over to his side somehow.'
'Maybe. Either way, we can't keep this knowledge from him. He has to know if we want to come up with a plan to change this.'
'...Why are you so adamant about helping the boy?'
'I can't let him turn out like you. You should understand that well by this point.' 'There's millions of people out there that could use your help. Why him specifically?'
'Because I couldn't save you the first time around. I know you remember that much. The Dream Cycle is muddy, but I saw myself there through your eyes. You have always known that, haven't you? You have forgotten yourself, but somehow you could still remember me.'
'You are reading too much into it,' Avenger protested.
'Perhaps you are right, but I choose to read it as a sign from the Lord. This is why I became a Master. This is why I summoned you. It is my role in this Holy Grail War.'
'There's really no point in talking sense with people who run on faith. Whatever. It's no skin off my back anyway. As a Servant, it's my job to support you, just don't expect me not to call it stupid.'
'I wouldn't expect anything different from you," Caren replied. 'I'm going to get some rest too, now.'
The room had a big enough couch to let her lay down, and it had been her makeshift bed since the previous day.
'Sleep tight, Master. I hope the night will bring you better counsel than today.'
Although Avenger's tone was as sassy as ever, Caren knew that her Servant had become pensive. What he was thinking about, she wasn't sure, but she hoped that he could find it in his heart to agree with her.
God knew she needed all the help she could get. [XXX]