A Touch of Heaven

[Prix with a Silent X]

I tried to google it and came up with results about a fictional character. I was at least relieved, in retrospect, that I wasn't being flippant about not knowing about some major historical figure I was meant to know about.

[warellis]

Er, yeah... I mean... a real person would probably be a more sensible match, but I just saw Bolshevik Revolution + handgun and that's where my mind went.

I was thinking either one of the soldiers who attempted to shoot the tsar and his family (only to find bullets bouncing off all the jewels they sowed into their clothing) or one of the conspirators who tried to kill Rasputin.

Also where is the "possess baby" idea for Zouken mentioned? Because that is horrifying.

[Prix with a Silent X]

Alright, so I'm not sure where the discussion of whether or not Sakura was ever really intended to give birth to an heir is because I feel like it exists but is scattered throughout? If someone wants to correct me or whatever, fine, but it was initially presumed that the next HGW was supposed to be in like 2040, right? So that would be the right time for a child of Sakura's to have reached adulthood if she procreated at a normal age. So that means that there was at least some contingency for this.

Then there's the "Zouken's End" chapter of HF where, when he believes that Sakura's mind has snapped irrevocably or that her soul has died or WHATEVER is going on here, he decides to go ahead and "take possession" of HER body. It says that he put his actual soul or essence into that tiny worm for the purpose of being able to do this eventually should the need arise, and the need arose because he was having a harder time maintaining the worm-bodies that he constructed by devouring people he murdered and because Kirei had killed the last one he had. I think that it seems reasonable to extrapolate that since the Zouken Worm was hidden away inside one of her nerves around her heart or something that this contingency had a longer and less extremely-specific-odd-circumstance-plan reasoning than this application. I think it's reasonable to extrapolate that he figured Sakura was so submissive to his will at the point at which he inserted his Soul Worm into her heart that he kind of figured that she would eventually provide him with a flesh body he could overtake in the way he plans to overtake Sakura's body in that chapter later on. He doesn't specifically want to kill Sakura, but he wants a new body, and his bullshit excuse is that taking over her body was a last resort and he pleads for his life, but she eats and digests him. It says that he ordered the Worm that was Him basically to "eat her brain" per the lparchive.

So, like, I kind of assume this would've eventually happened to a baby if she'd conceived one??? Otherwise why is the Zouken Soul Worm in there but not to kill or overtake Sakura immediately?

[warellis]

I always thought that little heart worm was where he stored his soul and he was sort of remote piloting his "old man bug body" from it.

[Prix with a Silent X]

That is true, but he was remote piloting his "body" before he had Sakura around. He moves his consciousness into little worm and placed it in her for some specific reason and it wsn't just doing that, from my understanding.

[SpoonyViking]

For what it's worth, I've seen other fics use that idea, too.

[warellis]

It does make me wonder how Zouken was able to maintain the fiction of being Byakuya & Kariya's "father" or Shinji's "grandfather" since he was centuries old by that point.

[Prix with a Silent X]

He's just ugly.

[warellis]

One random thing I've been thinking about: apparently anyone can perform alchemy??? It seems like Shinji is depicted as using it, and Waver uses it, and it just seems like yeah alchemy and chemistry are the same thing but are there certain compounds created with alchemy that have magecraft-y properties not known to modern science a la the aphrodisiac he used to fuck up Sakura's senses?

It required magical energy to activate. Like that glowing substance Shinji saw was reacting to Sakura, but not to him, since she had the magecraft in her.

You know looking on it, I wonder if a magus Shinji would've turned on and murdered Shirou early on. Then again I wonder if a magus Shinji would've ever been friends with him and I suspect not.

[Prix with a Silent X]

I don't think that's the case. I think that had Shinji been a magus, he would've been less inclined to violence. The reason that Shirou even considers Shinji his friend is that, apparently, at one point when they were like middle school age Shirou and Shinji actually got along. Shinji was not always so angry and embittered. Before he worked out that he was not special at all and that this stranger who was now supposed to be his sister was "getting his" as it were, despite how horrific the process was, he was apparently smug but not necessarily violent or vicious. Shirou isn't so stupid or doormat-ish that he would've considered Shinji his "friend" had there never been a point where he was, in fact, friendly in a way Shirou bought.

[warellis]

I don't think that's the case. I think that had Shinji been a magus, he would've been less inclined to violence. The reason that Shirou even considers Shinji his friend is that, apparently, at one point when they were like middle school age Shirou and Shinji actually got along. Shinji was not always so angry and embittered. Before he worked out that he was not special at all and that this stranger who was now supposed to be his sister was "getting his" as it were, despite how horrific the process was, he was apparently smug but not necessarily violent or vicious. Shirou isn't so stupid or doormat-ish that he would've considered Shinji his "friend" had there never been a point where he was, in fact, friendly in a way Shirou bought.

Ahh. I'm wondering, due to Shinji's smug attitude and superiority complex being sort of justified if he actually did have magical powers making him "special" and above the common masses of humanity, whether or not such a superiority complex kind of Shinji would've been too smug and jerkish to have become friends with Shirou when they were like 12-13.

Because Shinji does have a superiority complex so it makes me wonder if a magus Shinji would've been too proud or something.

[Prix with a Silent X]

I think that's one possible route. I think the other route is that a magus Shinji would've had every right to be sad and miserable like all the other Matou magi except Zouken who's cracked into gleeful sadism.

[warellis]

I think that's one possible route. I think the other route is that a magus Shinji would've had every right to be sad and miserable like all the other Matou magi except Zouken who's cracked into gleeful sadism.

You have a point there. Sometimes I wonder if the world would've been better off if Zouken had just died in London in the 1800s or during the 2nd or 3rd War. Or somehow was badly incapacitated before the 4th War.

[Prix with a Silent X]

I mean I don't think one has to wonder. I hate Zouken passionately lol.

[warellis]

I mean I don't think one has to wonder. I hate Zouken passionately lol.

Honestly, if it wasn't for the fact he was sort of explored more in side materials stuff, I'd say he was kind of a one-note character with a last-minute sob story.

Lots of stuff he does seems to be for cruelty's sake alone.

Makes me wonder how Tokiomi would've reacted if one could tell him Zouken's eventual fate for Sakura, thanks to the Grail, would've been to burn her out in experimentation before wearing her body briefly to attempt to take over a lump of curses to become immortal.

What a waste of talent there. To the point Sakura probably has no real desire for anything to do with magecraft except due to having to mearn stuff due to Rin dumping responsbility of being the 2nd Owner onto her.

Kind of a sad joke for Tokiomi's grand plans for her and Rin when you think on it.

Hell Tokiomi created practically every big dangerous problem needed to be solved by Rin & Shirou in the 5th War (Gil & Kirei) and (Dark Sakura & Zouken).

[Prix with a Silent X]

Father of the Year!!! I guess it could have been worse. Somehow.

- - - Updated - - -

Wait, it's Kiritsugu that the Corrupted Grail is Pregnant or whatever the hell. The fact that it was all ready to go again in ten years.

I also get mad at him easily.

[Prix with a Silent X]

III. Temptation

The moments following the summoning do not go quite the way Sakura would have imagined, if she had imagined. The knowledge that she would be conscripted into the same war that had stolen hope from her had taken shape, a little at a time and then all at once, months ago, when her grandfather had walked into the darkened sitting room, which she and Shinji had both occupied for a strange moment, and sent Shinji off to his room.


The only life she truly remembers began in the Matou household, in the Matou basement, in the Matou workshop where she is both magus and the magecraft. Training is one way to think of it. Being made – as a product, as a doll, as a weapon, as a womb – is another way to think of it.


Either way she thinks of it, Sakura never imagined herself in Kariya’s shoes, in his place, falling apart, piece by piece, because of an over-infestation of worms tearing his body from the inside out. She thought she was smarter than that. Wiser.


Kariya had been a dreamer, full of wishes and hope of an escape made twice. If there is one thing that makes the worms angry, that makes them eat faster, it is hope.

When Grandfather had come to her, she knew she had no choice, though, and it took little instruction for her to know what to do. Her body was built for it, and Shinji – when they had been real children, for a short time – read her books about it in dusty rings of sun and candlelight. Being too young to remember was also untrue and a useless excuse. Only an excuse.


She had wished she had any to hold onto.


When the tiny bruise had begun to bloom on the back of her hand in three distinct spots, each growing toward the other with the sickly determination of most of the plant life around the Matou mansion, she had sometimes watched him across the archery dojo, hardly ever picking up a bow. Not when he could touch girls as he taught them how to handle a bow.


Most of the time, sick jealousy would have curled around in her stomach.


Instead, she picked up her bow and planted one, two, then three arrows around the center of the target. Not perfect aim but good.


This made him look at her as the source of the sound of each arrow piercing the canvas. He blinked at her, but her eyes were cold and hard as she stared at him.

Instead of brother, instead of captor, instead of boy she wished would love her, for a moment, she saw him the way she saw the target. As something to pierce a hole through. If he could take her place, take this burden away from her, set her free, then maybe she would finally be the one between them with a little bit of power.


Seeing his face drain of color for a moment, as if he understood anything about their lives, had been worth the cold and extra bruises she had worn the next day.


By the time Shinji had begged, only a few hours ago, to take her place, the wild idea had faded away again. It was too close to hope to be trusted, and besides, when she saw this woman – provocative clothes that could only be called light armor for what they managed to cover, nearly floor-length hair that she did not recognize from any of the mythological stories Shiniji had told her when they were children – there was no way she could surrender her to him. No reason to, selfish or selfless.

Her first reaction, instead, had been a desire to protect her and to ask to be protected by her at the same time.


She ushered her out of the basement as quickly as she could without arousing her grandfather’s thirst to throw someone into his pit. A Servant would be excellent food for the worms, she imagined. It would be what came before that would be so terrible, though.


It was only when they were standing on floorboards and worn, fine rugs that Sakura felt as if she could speak to the woman. The Servant.


“Which one… are you?” she asked.


She glanced down at the back of her hand, the shape finally formed into something that vaguely resembled three petals of a flower.


She led her over to a chair and tried to make her sit down, the strange notion of being a host to anyone in this house striking her with some desire to grovel and apologize for daring to summon anyone or anything with dignity into this place.


“I am…” the Servant replied, brow furrowing while her eyes were concealed. Sakura wondered if the mask over the eyes was somehow translucent to her. It didn’t appear to be. She wondered why the woman seemed puzzled by the question for a moment, “... Medusa,” she finally answered.


“Oh,” Sakura said, feeling dumbfounded and dumb at once. Covered eyes and long hair. It made sense. She sensed a field around the mask when she paid attention. Keeping something in rather than keeping something out. “It’s nice to meet you,” she said, compulsively. “I am Matou Sakura.”


“... You need not look upon me,” Medusa said to her in a low voice. It was difficult to tell if it was resentful or gracious. It was commanding, but it was difficult to say in which direction. “Simply give me your orders.”


“Oh,” Sakura repeated, reaching up to pull a strand of hair that had caught on her dry lips. “I… hope that you will… protect me, while I am in this war,” she said.
“Do not hope, Master. Tell me, and I will obey. Then you will not need to look upon me,” Medusa said.


Sakura didn’t understand, but she wanted to comply with this clearly powerful creature who was also a woman who seemed to have done nothing wrong. She wet her lips a bit and tried again.


“Protect me,” she said in the simplest imperative she could imagine.


“Yes, Master,” Medusa said. She stood up abruptly and disappeared in a purple and golden rimmed sparkle of energy that disappeared like a slow, distant lightning flash.


For a moment, Sakura felt afraid. Then, she remembered that a Servant disappearing in such a way did not mean they were gone.


“Call for me, and I will obey,” the voice of Medusa said, without a physical form to ground its exact location. It wrapped around her ears, and it seemed almost as if it simply touched her eardrums directly. “In this form, I will require less of you.”


“I… have plenty,” Sakura said with a faint, rueful smile as she gripped the crook of her own opposite elbow. This was better, though. Safer. “But if you prefer… not being seen here, then it is… for the best.”


Sakura exhaled a sigh of relief when the conversation concluded. She could feel her Servant’s presence, like a new ripple in the strange sea that overlaid her nerves and the core of her being, beyond and beneath her form as a human being.


The relief was short lived when there was a feeble, uneven clapping a moment later. She turned her head abruptly to see her grandfather, smiling with that phony mirth that always seemed to fool outsiders he occasionally came into contact with.


“This one knows her place. Remember yours, Master of the Matou,” he said, and then he waved her off, apparently satisfied with the amount of time spent in the pit for the night.

⧞⧞⧞

The desire to get some fresh air is overwhelming. Most of the time, she manages to make herself get some sleep in preparation for the nights when she will not or else to rise early enough to meet Shirou in his morning-time lifestyle that is so different from anyone who should be a magus. She wishes he had been born with no circuits, no ability, no potential at all, when she thinks again of the bruise on the back of his hand.


The second she hits the front door and pushes her way outside, not quite making sure the heavy wooden thing latches, she whirls around as if her own momentum might turn her right back around and make her go back inside. The fresh air fills her lungs, and she glances up at Shinji’s window. The light there is low but not dark like the rest of the house. It’s hard to tell if he’s still awake, seething in jealousy or trying to distract himself with something like studying to make himself feel good at the world he was born into, despite his heritage.


She thinks, again, of making him take this all away from her. He would do it in an instant.


He has already accepted it. He has already demanded it. His birthright, woven into her body.


She catches the door and, fumbling, manages to pull it closed behind her. She winces at the sound the old metal latch makes, as if there is anyone inside the house who would begrudge her for sneaking out in the middle of the night, nearing dawn, when they are not in present need or want of her.


She knows that Masters and Servants can communicate with one another telepathically. It has been less than an hour since she has formed this contract with her Servant, Rider, but she feels terrible for considering breaking her contract again. Breaking it by giving Rider over to Shinji whose hands have been everywhere on her and nearly everywhere on any other girl he can touch.


Gulping air down, she turns away from the door once more, words pushed out as she exhales and tries not to hiccup or sob. She reaches for her abdomen, over her diaphragm, and senses some vague directional energy toward her Servant in her dematerialized form.


“I’m sorry,” she says out loud. Sometimes, it’s like a force of habit. People in this country apologize for everything, but sometimes, Sakura truly feels like she should apologize for breathing. For having ever been born.


It is not Medusa who answers her. Instead, Medusa is on alert, at an angle that shortens the distance between herself and the street, without coming into the visible spectrum.


Sakura lifts her eyes and they adjust on the figure right as he speaks from the end of the empty driveway.


“Empty words cannot save or absolve anyone,” he comments.


The sight of him freezes Sakura in place with a seizure of cold fear around her heart. He appears to be just a man. A lost or curious foreigner, out for a stroll. He has golden hair, and he’s a bit tall and athletic looking.


Handsome, strange men in the middle of the dark, speaking to women they do not know, brings instinctive fear to the hearts of many women. Sakura is quite surprised to discover that she is one of them. She reaches up, breaking out of her fixated stare, to touch over her thudding heart.


Master, he is dangerous, Medusa warns through their telepathic link Sakura had dreaded the confirmation of, in case she had been able to hear her treacherous thoughts as she looked up at Shinji’s bedroom window.


Sakura shakes her head. Right now, she doesn’t care.


Rider seems agile. Fast. If she had a reason to follow her first and only order so far – ‘protect me’ – she thinks Rider will be able to do it. And a reckless part of her thinks it might be a small mercy if Rider were to nobly try but fail to follow the order, if this man is someone a Servant cannot overwhelm. It would set them both free from this war quite quickly.


Sakura has never been brave enough to do anything to end her own life. A part of her, stubborn and primal, has always sought to preserve it, even when all sense of self-preservation ought to have turned to self-destruction of the body to keep some piece of the soul.


She takes a small step toward the road, her shoe scuffing some loose debris on the driveway. She looks right into the man’s eyes. His golden hair looks illuminated in the scant street light. She, a Matou whose magecraft is centered around parasitic bugs, feels herself drawn like a moth to a flame. His words admonish her, and for once, she wants to hear such a thing.


Perhaps, it’s because it’s simply from someone outside the house at her back.


“Sorry,” she repeats, knowing it is in disobedience to the warning. “I’m not sure I understand. Sorry, sir, are you lost?” she asks. He is a stranger. She doesn’t recognize him. He speaks to her in words she understands, but she can’t decide what his accent is. Not that she has much context. Shinji might venture a guess. He’d probably be wrong.


“To whom were you apologizing?” the man asks with a smirk that seems condescending but less cold than Shinji when he looks at her like she’s less.

The difference is, before this man, she feels like she might be less.


Nevertheless, it is a test of bravery for her to go to meet him on the road. On the part of the hill that doesn’t belong to the Matou or the Tohsaka but to the town they live in. At least on paper.


There is a streetlight near enough that when she comes closer, he is much easier to see. Much more blinding.


She can sense Rider’s unease, but she doesn’t give into it. She doesn’t back down.


“Does it matter?” she asks. “If my words are ‘empty.’”


She wishes she had her school bag with her, if only to have a reason to link her hands in front of her body. The weight of her school uniform, the shape of it, is still hanging on her body, and it feels inappropriate, somehow.


“Are you… challenging me?” the man asks her.


She looks up at him, eyes squinted ever so slightly against the streetlight glare and then against the halo around him that reveals his eyes. Moments before, she had believed that he might simply be an impertinent stranger. A tourist, lost in a residential neighborhood of western-style homes. Perhaps he would have been staying in one of those not occupied by a magus, she could have imagined.


The moment she sees his eyes, all thought that he might be an ordinary man, out past the time when normal and decent people should be walking about on the streets, dies away.


They are a vivid red. Not like blood. Not colorless and pink and red like someone lacking pigmentation. No, they are pigmented a gemstone and blood red, and something about the pupils doesn’t quite look right, though they are relaxed as they look at her, his back to the nearest light source.


“Not at all,” she says. “But this is my house,” she says, tilting her head and speaking softly as if she is innocent. As if anything about her is innocent, anymore.
“A filthy sepulcher,” he says.


She isn’t quite sure what the word he has chosen means. It’s unfamiliar and formal. But she can tell from the taste and tone of it that it is true and that the word means something about death or decay. She doesn’t betray anything, holding her face neutrally in a skill honed over years of finding out what showing her true feelings could bring, if she stops for a moment and allows herself to be tired of hiding it.


“I apologize that it does not suit you,” she says simply.


“Never mind such empty chatter,” he says. “You need not trouble yourself with manners nor houses for much longer.”


Sakura’s stomach twists. It is with some fear, but there is more curiosity than she should ever admit to anyone.


Master, Rider urges. She can feel the instinct to lash out, defend, attack being held at bay. He is very dangerous.


Sakura glances in the direction of Rider’s presence only for an instant. It occurs to her for the first time that Rider might be afraid of the man, the being before her.
She regards him, patient and with a gentle hint of a smile on her face that is a practiced and well-worn fashion accessory, when she doesn’t want anyone to see what might be crawling beneath.


“Do not waste your Servant on me,” the man warns.


She wonders if he is a magus. He does not seem quite like one. There is something else about him that is hard to determine. He looks human, except for all the ways in which he doesn’t.


“I don’t—”


“Never lie to me,” he says. “Not that I plan on seeing you again.”


The tilt of Sakura’s head is genuine, not a performance, when he says that. It’s curious, because she doesn't know who he is nor why he came to see her, if indeed he did, nor why he would not plan on seeing her again, if that were the case.


“I don’t know what you–” she tries to tell him, almost gently, in case he would like to start making sense.


“You should go inside. Or elsewhere. Wherever matters the most to you. Look upon whatever thing holds you here, to this crumbling house and your violated form, and take the image of it with you. Hold onto it and see that it is fleeting, and run ahead of it, to save yourself much more pain. Meaningless pain is not noble nor necessary.”


Sakura feels the twist of curiosity in her stomach coil upward toward her heart and her throat, as if they might choke her or put a stop to her pulse. She feels pleasantly dizzy for a moment, like she might not mind it, especially coming from a man who is strange, different from any she has ever seen, and nice to look upon, even if he is terrifying.


“I don’t understand,” she tells him softly again.


“You need not be coy. I am the closest thing to an ally you will ever know, because I am telling you the truth. Listen, as a wise subject might, or choose not to and accept the judgment of your own choices and defilers,” he says.


Defilers. How does he know so much about her?


She feels so dazed by his words that she could almost call it drowsy, but the stubborn fists inside her chest that don’t show on the outside of her body, fingers down at her sides, smoothing her skirt absently, refuse to let him draw her fully into such a trance. If it’s under his thrall at all.


“But I’m…”


The man makes a weary, dismissed, perhaps disgusted noise and waves her off as if she no longer amuses him. That, she has seen before. She even deserves it, because she is not doing a very good job of listening nor obeying, is she?


“I will not exercise my authority to force you to do a thing. I believe you have had enough of that for a lifetime. I simply believe that you should listen and end your life before it ends in the ruin of whatever you might seek for solace in your final moment.”


He turns to walk back down the hill, away from her.


She feels less entranced but intrigued. She feels a bit at a loss, like she would like to hear him speak again.


Part of her is surprised and a bit proud that he did not make his way up the rest of the way to Rin’s crest of the hill.


She reaches up, feels the front of her throat as if she might choke herself. Then, her hand drops to her wrist, loosely feeling out her pulse. She glances up at the window of Shinji’s bedroom, now definitely dark.


She sees the man’s figure retreating, further and further from her, looking smaller and smaller, but nothing about him seems small in its presence.


Master, that Servant is far more powerful than any Servant should be, Medusa informs her, closer to her shoulder now, as if she really had been afraid to approach.
Sakura’s ankle gives slightly, and for a moment Medusa is real and steadies her shoulder from behind.


She nods while privately wondering why a Servant would pay a personal visit to a rival Master without any follow-through on a threat of violence. She wonders if she has private thoughts at all anymore, as she looks back around at Medusa and seems to make eye contact without ever seeing her eyes.


“Do not worry. I will not put you in needless danger,” she says. It seems the proper thing to say.


“I am here to fight for you. It is simply that I may not be able to hold off such a thing as him on my own, while he is leisurely at his full strength,” she says. “I am not sure any Servant could on their own.”


Sakura takes in the information dutifully but with little interest. Another glance at the treating figure – black, white, and gold, and farther and farther away now – makes her think about his words.


What would she choose?


Where would she go?


It seems like good advice. It’s a taunt, and it seems wasted on someone like her, if his intention is to intimidate some Master out of the running before the game has ever really begun.


She wonders if clinging on to life through this is another form of hope she cannot afford to let worm its way inside. She lifts her arm, palm and underside upward. She looks at it, making out purplish veins and a little telltale movement someone might mistake as a muscle twitch without knowing better. Hope is a deadly and foreign disease Sakura must inoculate herself against at every opportunity, but temptation is the disease she has been infected with.




---
Necro'd this fic because I wanted to work on something and also because I never meant for this fic to stand on the merits of just the first chapter. It seems to give a weird impression of my investment.

[warellis]

When the tiny bruise had begun to bloom on the back of her hand in three distinct spots, each growing toward the other with the sickly determination of most of the plant life around the Matou mansion, she had sometimes watched him across the archery dojo, hardly ever picking up a bow. Not when he could touch girls as he taught them how to handle a bow.


Most of the time, sick jealousy would have curled around in her stomach.


[b]Instead, she picked up her bow and planted one, two, then three arrows around the center of the target. Not perfect aim but good.


This made him look at her as the source of the sound of each arrow piercing the canvas. He blinked at her, but her eyes were cold and hard as she stared at him.

Instead of brother, instead of captor, instead of boy she wished would love her, for a moment, she saw him the way she saw the target. As something to pierce a hole through. If he could take her place, take this burden away from her, set her free, then maybe she would finally be the one between them with a little bit of power.

Seeing his face drain of color for a moment, as if he understood anything about their lives, had been worth the cold and extra bruises she had worn the next day.

I really enjoy this bit. It captures that feeling that Sakura realizes how garbage Shinji can be because for all his sheer desperation to be a magus and gain Zouken's approval, he really knows nothing about how terrible it would be to be a Matou magus.

[Prix with a Silent X]

I really enjoy this bit. It captures that feeling that Sakura realizes how garbage Shinji can be because for all his sheer desperation to be a magus and gain Zouken's approval, he really knows nothing about how terrible it would be to be a Matou magus.

Thank you! That part was fun to write. It was one of those bits that inserted itself while I was typing without preplanning on my part. Fortunately or unfortunately, that seems to be when I get some of the better parts of my writing.