Speaking of songfic...
I guess you could consider this a sort of lead-up to The Hearts of the Suffering.
Your Shadow Sleeps, Kyrie Eleison
I touch the sighs of May
The calling voice of a thrush
Crying peace in the sky
Echoed until the end
The moonless night offered little light, but color blossomed all around. Wisteria hung like a cavern, and the lamp she carried illuminated flecks of white and violet cast like stars.
“If you had a sense of duty, you would have brought me to such a place,” Caren Ortensia said to no one.
She said to no one, because no one was an apt depiction even if he was here.
Within the heat-hazed eyes
I found prayers and consolations
As if a song
Was born in the midst of silence
Nine years since she had seen him. Nine years since his dream had ended. She was the only one that could recall with clarity, the only one to have seen it from the outside: the struggle of Bazett Fraga McRemitz and her strange Servant.
Nine years since his violence and hatred, his fear and despair, his cynicism—and ultimately, his kindness—had spilled over into the world Caren knew.
“You would have taken responsibility,” Caren said, scowling, staring up at the canopy of color above her. “If your desire to live as one who is normal, you should have done such petty things in my name.”
At the very least, she would have made him do so. Whether he liked it or not.
Kyrie
Since your voice resounds
In the garden where recollections echo
I wander through the midst of time
Kyrie eleison
She passed through one end of the tunnel-like canopy to stare out into the dark sky. Though it was dim within her vision, the priestess could see the new moon hovering just over the horizon.
A dark moon, a black moon.
The description Shirou Emiya had given of the portal made by the Grail was of such, an orb of shadow hovering in the sky like a full moon’s negative image. Caren understood that image well, as it came unbidden to her mind. Occasionally, it would haunt her dreams or her wandering thoughts when in that place between wakefulness and sleep, a presence that she could recall, yet had never visited. A spring of overflowing shadow, like the moon cast light upon the world.
It had been in his mind’s eye as well, as far as she could know what dwelled within his thoughts. The only reach he truly had into the land of the living, the only influence he could exert in his desire to exist.
He wanted that to stay, wanted that to still be.
I fell in love nearby the murmuring spring
In a garden of grief
No one's around anymore now
Caren’s free hand went to her belly, to where the awkward way his desires had manifested about her body. She knew that dream world well, despite not having glimpsed it directly herself, for the memory echoed through her body. It stayed within her, about her, the same way a runner knew power to their legs or a wrestler knew strength to their arms.
She knew the pain, the anger, the hatred. She knew how much he despised everyone in this world. She knew he despised himself most of all.
She knew his desire, and she thought that as terrible as he was, it was fine for him to wish such things.
To the happiest place
Inside your memory
We could've gone
Through the little road of thorns
She knew because even within that pain tearing through her body both from within and from without, she could perceive the sad little boy that was not to be, hidden beneath it all.
She knew that boy truly cherished what he had taken from that dream, even if what he had taken was merely an illusion.
After spending just a little time with another, she understood a few things about fakes and imitations.
It was, in the end, something she knew by feeling that pain, too. She experienced nothing in the world of reality, yet understood something in the midst of a world that no longer existed, if it ever did.
Kyrie
Since the quietness engraved into my soul
Sings as if it fell in love
I carry it through the midst of time
There was a sense within her that knew this to all be growing again, returning to the point that it had known before. Less than a year, and it would be so once more.
And even if she knew it was right to seal him away forever, she knew it was not right to do so at the same time.
Kyrie
In the garden where recollections echo
Of the birds that sing about light
And your shadow sleeps
Kyrie eleison
“I pray that when the time comes, we can find you a new dream,” she whispered to no one.
For like her father, she had a desire for him to be born into this world, but unlike him, she did not wish it out of some twisted sense of justice.
It was only a small prayer that she held within her, one she refused to voice to anyone else.
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Originally Posted by Lycodrake
