Fate/Stay Night Fan Fiction ❯ Escaping Fate ❯ Garden of Sins ( Chapter 25 )
[ X - Adult: No readers under 18. Contains Graphic Adult Themes/Extreme violence. ]
By: Zekk_Skywalk 
Returning to where it began.
Anime/Manga: Fate/Stay Night Fan Fiction | Genre(s): Supernatural / Horror / Fantasy / Hentai / Drama / Action | Type: Continuation | Uploaded On: 09.29.2011 | Pages: 2 | Words: 2.5K | Visits: 283 | Status: Completed
Returning to where it began.
Anime/Manga: Fate/Stay Night Fan Fiction | Genre(s): Supernatural / Horror / Fantasy / Hentai / Drama / Action | Type: Continuation | Uploaded On: 09.29.2011 | Pages: 2 | Words: 2.5K | Visits: 283 | Status: Completed
AN: No, Ryougi will not be showing up to shank a bitch, despite the title. Maybe some other time…
Escaping Fate
Chapter 18
Garden of Sins
She stood there, motionless, staring paradoxically at nothing and everything at the same time.
She did not really know what to expect when asking to be shown this place. Fear, revulsion, anger, sadness…they were all amorphous ideas and concepts rather than a solid feeling when she associated it with expectation.
As the electricity in the facility no longer worked, Yumi had to Alter a piece of wood, giving an eerie glow to see by.
The room was the color of gunmetal, gray and dull from wear, now painted faintly green by the firefly light in Yumi’s hand. Counters had various surgical tools and medicinal supplies, now in disarray and gathering cobwebs. A single table sat in the center of the room; a box of surgical gloves the only thing atop it. Rust and blood stains coated it and the floor surrounding it, though it smelled as antiseptic as any hospital. A portable light hung over it, more reminiscent of an interrogator’s device than a tool of surgery.
She could not remember what she had thought upon seeing this place for the first time, all those years ago. She had been anxious, and scared, and excited, told she had been adopted; her things packed away and shipped off already. She had wondered what her family would be like, if her new mom would be like what she remembered of her birth mom, if she would have siblings.
Yuushi-san had told her she would be getting a quick examination before heading out.
He continued to tell her that in the days that followed.
The pain, of course, was not physical. At first, even though she had watched him cut so deeply into her, there was no pain, since the anesthetic was powerful. But when he had changed the direction of his cuts, when somehow, it felt like he was piercing her from the inside-out, it had hurt. It had hurt like being told by someone that they hated her, or that she was truly a nothing that nobody would ever love again.
It hurt like the lie, “Only a little bit more, and then the examination will be over.”
It hurt like the truth, that it would not be “a little bit more.” That there was no family, and she would not be leaving this place.
She looked at it now, where she should have died, where she had died and something else, something too much, too full, had taken her place.
She hated it.
Cursed it.
Wanted it dead.
She smashed the stick into the table and swept everything onto the ground. She picked up the lamp and flung it across the room, where it crashed into empty vials and plastic boxes. She slapped her hands atop the table and flooded it with prana until the surface had the consistency of molding clay, then pulled at it until it tore apart from the table’s center.
When arms seized her by the waist and shoulders, she wrestled with them, but could not escape. She screamed and growled at everything until her throat was hoarse and her muscles sore.
She didn’t cry, didn’t wail, didn’t feel like breaking down, and she wondered why.
Instead, she felt tears hit her cheeks, and looked up to find Rin and Sakura, Rin with her arms locked around her, Sakura kneeling just to the side. Rin was crying, and Sakura looked as stoic as Yumi had ever seen.
“Why are you crying?” Yumi scratched out.
“Because you aren’t,” Rin said.
Yumi looked up at Sakura. “Why are you…strong?” she asked, unable to find the right words.
Sakura said. “So you can be weak.”
I watched the girls calm Yumi, watched as our charge slowly came down from her fit and willingly stay in Tohsaka’s arms. I considered going in to see if I could help, but, well…
In the end, I was still pretty bad at this. I never knew what kind of face I needed to show Yumi; Sakura did, and Tohsaka was generally better at it than I was.
There were signs that Yuushi had been here, though he had not used that room again. A boundary field had been erected again—I had once more used Joyeuse’s shifting magical state to cut through it—and we actually found a few supplies of food and drink in the regular office Yuushi had used as “proprietor” of the orphanage. What was disturbing instead was he had apparently been doing his research on us, as Tohsaka had found photographs of my house and an old, once-was-trashed piece of paper listing Sakura’s working hours. From what we could tell, he had been staking the place out and waited until he saw Tohsaka and I leave to enter the house. He probably hadn’t actually thought Sakura and Yumi were still home, since Yumi should have been at school and Sakura at work.
A magus that did his homework could be a very dangerous threat. A magus that did his homework but had terrible timing could be an even bigger threat.
That’s not even considering what this demon-Zouken Matou hybrid could do. I’m not sure I had anything capable of destroying thousands of little demons instead of one centralized demon. If I Broke Calabolg it might work, but the secondary energy from the explosion was not actually a great amount and for the most part it was confined to a space more suitable against a single target or small area.
Excalibur…the times I had tried, it had been nothing short of disastrous. It was bad, terrible as even an imitation. And even if I could make it, it was impossible for me to generate the prana necessary to use it like Saber did.
I wonder what she would do, in this situation.
I climbed out of the underground facility and, though it had been approaching dark when we got here, was surprised to find it completely twilight. Caren stood at the doorway, eyes darting about the place. “Anything?”
Caren shook her head. “All’s been silent.” She glanced back the way I had come from. “How is she?”
“Better, I hope.” Seeing Yumi explode like that had once again made me realize how much she must be bottling up. I hoped we could be there for her when she had fits of other things than anger, too. “Yuushi hasn’t been experimenting here. I really don’t want to think he’s gone and killed more people elsewhere…that would be my fault for letting him go.”
The white-haired priestess pulled one of the bandage ends at my arm and turned me to look at her. “No. Shirou, it is not wrong to hope that someone could find repentance. And your responsibility was to those around you, here. It is not your fault that others lost track of him.” She raised her chin. “If anything, you should be angry with me, as I was the one to dictate how he be transported.”
I was not going to play a blame-game with anyone. “Let’s not go there. I don’t want to be angry with anyone, really.”
Caren smiled. “I know.”
I looked around at the abandoned orphanage, shaking my head. Kudzu had overtaken much of the landscaping and Japanese ivy had run rampant up to the first floor windows of the main building. In another decade or two, I wouldn’t be surprised if it resembled the ruined building outside the Einzbern castle.
Caren was watching me closely, and I decided I would not reminisce on what had happened during that time.
We waited to see if Yuushi would come, Sakura and Yumi inside the main building on the second floor, Tohsaka and Caren around the sides of the administrator’s building. I ended up climbing onto the roof and Reinforcing my eyes in an attempt to glimpse the man if he returned, though in the darkness it would probably only let me notice movement in the bush as opposed to spotting him outright.
Though, even after it had passed one in the morning, nothing had happened, and I wondered if he was attempting to stake out my place instead. In which case, this would be a very long waiting game. The demon, perhaps, would come for us instead, though I’m not sure if it had a way to track us.
“Shirou?”
I glanced over my shoulder to see Yumi staring up at me from the roof access hatch, her eyes and little else peeking out at me. I smirked at her. “Expect me to play whack-a-mole? Come up if you want to talk.”
She did so, carefully brushing her waistcoat and skirt off, then came to kneel down next to me. Unlike what I expected, with her sitting there for a while organizing her thoughts, she just came out and said what was on her mind. “You once told me you wanted to save everyone.”
I nodded. “I did.”
“I…” she frowned, then shook her head. “Why couldn’t you save everyone before me?”
I understood that it wasn’t an accusatory question, just, one that she couldn’t wrap her head around. I understood survivor’s guilt a great deal more than the average person, probably. “I’m sorry that I couldn’t. But…I’m not an ally of justice, not a hero like on television or in books. I’m just a human that wants to be.”
Her fingers tightened in her lap, and she said, “I lied earlier.”
“About what?”
“This doesn’t feel exactly like you,” she said, pulling at her waistcoat. “They feel…like you do when you Trace that one sword. Saber’s sword.”
I gave her what Tohsaka often called my “dorky grin”—something she cited she wanted to wipe off my face every time I did it, because it looked stupid or something. “Oh?”
“I think…” her voice dropped almost to a whisper, “Shirou should already think of himself as a hero. He saved Saber, right?”
I chuckled. “I highly doubt that.”
“And that means he saved all the people Saber saved, right?”
My brows probably furrowed at that. “I’m not sure I understand.”
Yumi looked up at me, and something from her gaze was different from only a moment ago, somehow, the difference beyond anything I could hope to use words and define. It wasn’t hopeful, or even inspired, nor determined…
Just…
“If I have in me everybody else…if I live the life they never could…and you saved me, doesn’t that mean, they were saved too?”
“I don’t need the Holy Grail. I can’t stray from my path for the people I’ve left behind.”
And Saber…had accepted those words.
I cocked my head at Yumi, staring at her, feeling a little weird. For someone who never met Saber, she certainly seemed to, I don’t know, get her.
“Shirou!” came Tohsaka’s voice from the ground level.
I motioned silently for Yumi to crawl back the way she had come, then crouched low and peeked out over the edge of the building. Tohsaka and Caren both were there, half behind the cover of the administrator’s building. I followed their line of sight and saw him, the figure of a man, white hair apparent even in the dimness of the night sky.
“I see I once again have intruders on my property,” he called out.
“Not your property anymore,” Tohsaka retorted. Even from this distance and in the darkness, I could see the signs of her palming the last jewel she had, still not anywhere near the power of ones used during the war, but still dangerous to a magus like Yuushi. “I’d suggest you get out now, while you still can.”
“Not talking about the lands,” Yuushi said. “I’m talking about her!” and pointed up to the second story of the building beneath me, where Yumi would be returning to Sakura’s side.
Tohsaka lobbed the jewel in his direction.
At the same time, an arc of golden light bounded out from him, surrounding him in a rotating circle of energy. The jewel struck the edge of the light and exploded prematurely.
“You will return it!” he shouted from behind the cloud of smoke.
That same golden light suddenly encompassed an area surrounding me, moving along the rooftop—
The wood beneath my feet gave, and I crashed down not just into the second story, but through the floor of that and into the first.
This…was not going to be pretty.
The darkness indeed knew.
It had heard Sakura, damned Sakura, call out the name of a magus.
That magus floated amidst the memories of the demon.
The torturer, the killer.
The one that had made them.
It came to mind, amidst the forest near Einzbern, not too far away:
A house full of children, a garden of ivy—
A dark, hollow place of despair and curses.
Home beckoned.
Converting /tmp/phpfzdLMT to /dev/stdout
Escaping Fate
Chapter 18
Garden of Sins
She stood there, motionless, staring paradoxically at nothing and everything at the same time.
She did not really know what to expect when asking to be shown this place. Fear, revulsion, anger, sadness…they were all amorphous ideas and concepts rather than a solid feeling when she associated it with expectation.
As the electricity in the facility no longer worked, Yumi had to Alter a piece of wood, giving an eerie glow to see by.
The room was the color of gunmetal, gray and dull from wear, now painted faintly green by the firefly light in Yumi’s hand. Counters had various surgical tools and medicinal supplies, now in disarray and gathering cobwebs. A single table sat in the center of the room; a box of surgical gloves the only thing atop it. Rust and blood stains coated it and the floor surrounding it, though it smelled as antiseptic as any hospital. A portable light hung over it, more reminiscent of an interrogator’s device than a tool of surgery.
She could not remember what she had thought upon seeing this place for the first time, all those years ago. She had been anxious, and scared, and excited, told she had been adopted; her things packed away and shipped off already. She had wondered what her family would be like, if her new mom would be like what she remembered of her birth mom, if she would have siblings.
Yuushi-san had told her she would be getting a quick examination before heading out.
He continued to tell her that in the days that followed.
The pain, of course, was not physical. At first, even though she had watched him cut so deeply into her, there was no pain, since the anesthetic was powerful. But when he had changed the direction of his cuts, when somehow, it felt like he was piercing her from the inside-out, it had hurt. It had hurt like being told by someone that they hated her, or that she was truly a nothing that nobody would ever love again.
It hurt like the lie, “Only a little bit more, and then the examination will be over.”
It hurt like the truth, that it would not be “a little bit more.” That there was no family, and she would not be leaving this place.
She looked at it now, where she should have died, where she had died and something else, something too much, too full, had taken her place.
She hated it.
Cursed it.
Wanted it dead.
She smashed the stick into the table and swept everything onto the ground. She picked up the lamp and flung it across the room, where it crashed into empty vials and plastic boxes. She slapped her hands atop the table and flooded it with prana until the surface had the consistency of molding clay, then pulled at it until it tore apart from the table’s center.
When arms seized her by the waist and shoulders, she wrestled with them, but could not escape. She screamed and growled at everything until her throat was hoarse and her muscles sore.
She didn’t cry, didn’t wail, didn’t feel like breaking down, and she wondered why.
Instead, she felt tears hit her cheeks, and looked up to find Rin and Sakura, Rin with her arms locked around her, Sakura kneeling just to the side. Rin was crying, and Sakura looked as stoic as Yumi had ever seen.
“Why are you crying?” Yumi scratched out.
“Because you aren’t,” Rin said.
Yumi looked up at Sakura. “Why are you…strong?” she asked, unable to find the right words.
Sakura said. “So you can be weak.”
I watched the girls calm Yumi, watched as our charge slowly came down from her fit and willingly stay in Tohsaka’s arms. I considered going in to see if I could help, but, well…
In the end, I was still pretty bad at this. I never knew what kind of face I needed to show Yumi; Sakura did, and Tohsaka was generally better at it than I was.
There were signs that Yuushi had been here, though he had not used that room again. A boundary field had been erected again—I had once more used Joyeuse’s shifting magical state to cut through it—and we actually found a few supplies of food and drink in the regular office Yuushi had used as “proprietor” of the orphanage. What was disturbing instead was he had apparently been doing his research on us, as Tohsaka had found photographs of my house and an old, once-was-trashed piece of paper listing Sakura’s working hours. From what we could tell, he had been staking the place out and waited until he saw Tohsaka and I leave to enter the house. He probably hadn’t actually thought Sakura and Yumi were still home, since Yumi should have been at school and Sakura at work.
A magus that did his homework could be a very dangerous threat. A magus that did his homework but had terrible timing could be an even bigger threat.
That’s not even considering what this demon-Zouken Matou hybrid could do. I’m not sure I had anything capable of destroying thousands of little demons instead of one centralized demon. If I Broke Calabolg it might work, but the secondary energy from the explosion was not actually a great amount and for the most part it was confined to a space more suitable against a single target or small area.
Excalibur…the times I had tried, it had been nothing short of disastrous. It was bad, terrible as even an imitation. And even if I could make it, it was impossible for me to generate the prana necessary to use it like Saber did.
I wonder what she would do, in this situation.
I climbed out of the underground facility and, though it had been approaching dark when we got here, was surprised to find it completely twilight. Caren stood at the doorway, eyes darting about the place. “Anything?”
Caren shook her head. “All’s been silent.” She glanced back the way I had come from. “How is she?”
“Better, I hope.” Seeing Yumi explode like that had once again made me realize how much she must be bottling up. I hoped we could be there for her when she had fits of other things than anger, too. “Yuushi hasn’t been experimenting here. I really don’t want to think he’s gone and killed more people elsewhere…that would be my fault for letting him go.”
The white-haired priestess pulled one of the bandage ends at my arm and turned me to look at her. “No. Shirou, it is not wrong to hope that someone could find repentance. And your responsibility was to those around you, here. It is not your fault that others lost track of him.” She raised her chin. “If anything, you should be angry with me, as I was the one to dictate how he be transported.”
I was not going to play a blame-game with anyone. “Let’s not go there. I don’t want to be angry with anyone, really.”
Caren smiled. “I know.”
I looked around at the abandoned orphanage, shaking my head. Kudzu had overtaken much of the landscaping and Japanese ivy had run rampant up to the first floor windows of the main building. In another decade or two, I wouldn’t be surprised if it resembled the ruined building outside the Einzbern castle.
Caren was watching me closely, and I decided I would not reminisce on what had happened during that time.
We waited to see if Yuushi would come, Sakura and Yumi inside the main building on the second floor, Tohsaka and Caren around the sides of the administrator’s building. I ended up climbing onto the roof and Reinforcing my eyes in an attempt to glimpse the man if he returned, though in the darkness it would probably only let me notice movement in the bush as opposed to spotting him outright.
Though, even after it had passed one in the morning, nothing had happened, and I wondered if he was attempting to stake out my place instead. In which case, this would be a very long waiting game. The demon, perhaps, would come for us instead, though I’m not sure if it had a way to track us.
“Shirou?”
I glanced over my shoulder to see Yumi staring up at me from the roof access hatch, her eyes and little else peeking out at me. I smirked at her. “Expect me to play whack-a-mole? Come up if you want to talk.”
She did so, carefully brushing her waistcoat and skirt off, then came to kneel down next to me. Unlike what I expected, with her sitting there for a while organizing her thoughts, she just came out and said what was on her mind. “You once told me you wanted to save everyone.”
I nodded. “I did.”
“I…” she frowned, then shook her head. “Why couldn’t you save everyone before me?”
I understood that it wasn’t an accusatory question, just, one that she couldn’t wrap her head around. I understood survivor’s guilt a great deal more than the average person, probably. “I’m sorry that I couldn’t. But…I’m not an ally of justice, not a hero like on television or in books. I’m just a human that wants to be.”
Her fingers tightened in her lap, and she said, “I lied earlier.”
“About what?”
“This doesn’t feel exactly like you,” she said, pulling at her waistcoat. “They feel…like you do when you Trace that one sword. Saber’s sword.”
I gave her what Tohsaka often called my “dorky grin”—something she cited she wanted to wipe off my face every time I did it, because it looked stupid or something. “Oh?”
“I think…” her voice dropped almost to a whisper, “Shirou should already think of himself as a hero. He saved Saber, right?”
I chuckled. “I highly doubt that.”
“And that means he saved all the people Saber saved, right?”
My brows probably furrowed at that. “I’m not sure I understand.”
Yumi looked up at me, and something from her gaze was different from only a moment ago, somehow, the difference beyond anything I could hope to use words and define. It wasn’t hopeful, or even inspired, nor determined…
Just…
“If I have in me everybody else…if I live the life they never could…and you saved me, doesn’t that mean, they were saved too?”
“I don’t need the Holy Grail. I can’t stray from my path for the people I’ve left behind.”
And Saber…had accepted those words.
I cocked my head at Yumi, staring at her, feeling a little weird. For someone who never met Saber, she certainly seemed to, I don’t know, get her.
“Shirou!” came Tohsaka’s voice from the ground level.
I motioned silently for Yumi to crawl back the way she had come, then crouched low and peeked out over the edge of the building. Tohsaka and Caren both were there, half behind the cover of the administrator’s building. I followed their line of sight and saw him, the figure of a man, white hair apparent even in the dimness of the night sky.
“I see I once again have intruders on my property,” he called out.
“Not your property anymore,” Tohsaka retorted. Even from this distance and in the darkness, I could see the signs of her palming the last jewel she had, still not anywhere near the power of ones used during the war, but still dangerous to a magus like Yuushi. “I’d suggest you get out now, while you still can.”
“Not talking about the lands,” Yuushi said. “I’m talking about her!” and pointed up to the second story of the building beneath me, where Yumi would be returning to Sakura’s side.
Tohsaka lobbed the jewel in his direction.
At the same time, an arc of golden light bounded out from him, surrounding him in a rotating circle of energy. The jewel struck the edge of the light and exploded prematurely.
“You will return it!” he shouted from behind the cloud of smoke.
That same golden light suddenly encompassed an area surrounding me, moving along the rooftop—
The wood beneath my feet gave, and I crashed down not just into the second story, but through the floor of that and into the first.
This…was not going to be pretty.
The darkness indeed knew.
It had heard Sakura, damned Sakura, call out the name of a magus.
That magus floated amidst the memories of the demon.
The torturer, the killer.
The one that had made them.
It came to mind, amidst the forest near Einzbern, not too far away:
A house full of children, a garden of ivy—
A dark, hollow place of despair and curses.
Home beckoned.
Escaping Fate, Garden of Sins, End
As an orphan in a terrible orphanage, Yumi’s history is somewhat inspired by Miyo Takano from Higurashi no Naku Koro ni. The very first idea for what snowballed into this story was from an image of Shirou, bow in hand, rescuing children from such a place as depicted in Higurashi Kai. Admittedly, that also sprung up the idea that Yumi would want Shirou to “become a hero” in the same way that Takano wanted to prove Hifumi was correct in his research. Hopefully, I’ve disguised that enough that you didn’t think of it if you’re familiar with the When They Cry verse. Converting /tmp/phpfzdLMT to /dev/stdout