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She is beautiful, he thinks - the Persephone he could not drag to the underworld.
He remembers the little girl she had once been, the Matou Sakura with empty eyes and trembling, bruised hands. He remembers how cold those hands had been, when his hands had settled over then to guide them. He remembers when she would stand in the rain, swaying like a scarecrow whose straw was rotting, those hollow eyes incapable of comprehending anything. He remembers when she had been a (un)holy vessel, and he had filled her with stew and hot tea, and she had smiled at him, tiny like a flower blooming in the crack of the road.
Archer remembers these things, remembers that pained little girl, and he knows that Emiya Shirou would never have been able to save her, except –
There she is. There is Sakura, smiling with Shirou by her side.
Archer had lived by this contradiction: Emiya Shirou’s selfless, childish ideals were deadly, but to abandon them was to abandon his identity as Emiya Shirou. If they were indulged in moderation, perhaps he could live as himself, but otherwise, all that was left was to drown in those ideals and die, suffocating on sickening self satisfaction as those around him clamored for his death.
He had been born as Emiya Shirou in flames, forged by the guilt of surviving whilst all those around him perished. He had been born as Emiya Shirou in snow, shaped by his father's long-abandoned wish. He had been born as Emiya Shirou in blood, watching those around him suffer while he ached to fight, to help. To abandon his ideals was to deny his own birth, his own identity, his very root of existence.
And yet, there is the Emiya Shirou of this world, helping Sakura cook dinner.
Archer watches it out of the corner of his eye: nothing more than a ghost of a shard of his existence remains there. Most of him is preoccupied with killing everything that breathes before him, his body soaked with blood as he embodies a natural disaster. Even children cannot, must not be spared: even their delicate, birdlike bones must snap. Everything must be turned to horrific viscera, rendered pulp and dust. He is a monster born of flawed ideals, and this is the only end for him, as well as the most fitting one. This is an eternal hell for a foolish idealist who traded his soul away. This is a perfect punishment for an idiotic man who selfishly abandoned everything and tried to save everyone in front of him without thinking.
In one timeline of countless, Archer gave Shirou his arm so that he could protect Illya. Archer entrusted Shirou with a piece of him, and even with Shirou's new body, the graft still lingers on his soul. All Archer is permitted to do is watch. That is more than enough.
Perhaps the reason why he hesitates to acknowledge this man as Emiya Shirou is as thus: if he could have gone down this path, if he could have been selfish and human and greedy, then killing his past self is pointless. The one who needs to die isn't Shirou, who only went down one of many paths. The one who needs to die is Archer, who picked the worst possible path. But, of course, he cannot die - he does not even own his own life as a Counter Guardian. And so, in order to sustain his contradictory, painful existence, he must continue believing a foolish lie.
And, more than that - couldn't Archer have chosen a path that saved Illya? Couldn't Archer have chosen a path that kept Saber by his side? Couldn't Archer have chosen a path that didn't make Rin cry? Couldn't Archer, too, have saved Sakura, the girl who had become his shadow and who he had so callously tossed aside?
He had to be selfless, and so the people he valued most were sacrificed. He had to save everyone within his sight, but he had blinded himself to those closest to him. He had to destroy everything he loved, and embrace everything he hated. He had become someone cold and callous and cruel, someone that no one could recognize as Emiya Shirou.
Maybe - maybe, maybe, maybe, the word rings in his mind like a curse - the one who deviated from the origin was Archer. Maybe he is the flawed one, with no right to be called Emiya Shirou. And, maybe, the true Emiya Shirou is the boy smiling at Sakura as they discuss how to season the stew they're preparing for dinner.
Archer had never seen Sakura smile this honestly before, he realizes now - he had never seen her smile without the taint of darkness, her fear and trauma preventing her from such things. He would have killed Sakura if at all possible, to keep her from hurting anyone else. He would have killed this girl who smiles with the sweetness of spring, and he would have pushed down the shame and guilt and called it necessary. He would have shown her no mercy, even if she had called him Senpai, even if she had begged him with tears in her eyes, even if, even if -
He falls to his knees, blood splashing about. He wants to drown in it. He, the one with no recourse, who can never return to those halcyon days, who can never make the right choice, who regrets it all and yet hasn't learned a thing - he is the drowning one. He chokes, lungs seizing, and he falls forward into the puddle of blood.
In another world, Shirou takes a sip of the stew, testing the taste, and he gives Sakura a thumbs up as he grins. Sakura claps her hands delightedly, and he pulls her in for a brief kiss.
Blood fills Archer's lungs, and he drowns, dies, revives - the physical agony nothing to the mental anguish. He chokes, drowns, dies, revives - again, again. He is not permitted to die.
“Huh, my arm's falling asleep,” Shirou notes, puzzled.
Sakura frowns slightly. She kisses her finger and then taps his arm.
“...You.” A disinterested, far-off voice. Footsteps. “Get up.”
Archer obeys. Blood leaks from his mouth, and his throat is sore from screaming. “...Sakura.”
He looks up at her. He is a bloodied mess, covered in the proof of his countless sins. She is spotless, crimson eyes and white hair, a wicked shadow self who doesn't show even a drop of blood. She has not fed in a long time, has not consumed in ages - perhaps she will devour him, and he will at last rest.
“You're bothering Senpai.” Cold, rude, disinterested.
He cannot help but smile. “Sorry, Sakura. You can cut the connection if you want.”
“..........Who are you?” She tilts her head, akin to a curious child.
He isn't Emiya Shirou. He isn't a boy who holds onto selfless ideals, nor is he a boy who has embraced selfish heroism for just one person. All he can do is smile. He isn't the boy who captivated her trying to overcome an insurmountable obstacle. He isn't the boy who saved her. He's nothing more than the remnants of a man who did nothing right in his life.
“EMIYA,” he replies. The name he was given as a Counter Guardian, to mark his surrender.
She stares at him, at this messy, terrible thing that dares to call itself by the name of her beloved, and then she laughs. At first, it is a small chuckle, but soon it becomes the cackling of a witch.
“You - You -” She laughs, laughs, laughs.
And he only smiles. “Yes. I'm sorry.” That she has to see this. That he intruded on her idyllic happiness. That he is an Emiya Shirou that couldn't hold anything in his pitiful hands.
“Why?” The word is angrily spat out.
He sighs and closes his eyes, so that he will not have to see her expression. “Not every Emiya Shirou chooses to be selfish,” he murmurs. “This is what lies at the end of a selfless path.”
Footsteps - but, instead of fading into the distance, it is Sakura approaching him. Or, rather, the tiny, shaved off piece of herself she sent along the tenuous connection.
She falls to her knees, blood splashing about and staining her porcelain skin, and embraces him. He startles - this is more physical contact than he's had since he was a teenager.
“Sakura -” he calls out haltingly, unsure of what else to say.
“Is it lonely?” she whispers.
He nods. “Very lonely.”
“A version of Senpai that chose ideals over everything… Yours is a punishment even worse than I would pick,” she mutters.
A bitter laugh escapes dry, cracked lips. “I chose this for myself. I thought that I would be able to save people for eternity.”
Around him, not a single person has been ‘saved’. Their deaths are the will of humanity, perhaps a grand sacrifice for some grand cause. Or, perhaps, their lives were culled for nothing more than humanity’s passing whims. His role is to bathe in these oceans of blood. His duty is to destroy all human life as he passes. Perhaps, once in a while, he faces off against a monster, a true enemy of humanity - and then he still must destroy all the humans around him, hardly any better than the beast he destroyed.
“Is this salvation?” Sakura asks, drenched in the blood he has spilled. He can only shake his head. “You were a fool.”
“I was,” he agrees. “...I still am.”
A fool that rejects selfish, human ideals as ‘not himself’, even as his own selfless, stupid dreams led him to this path of devastation.
Her arms tighten around him. “Do you regret it? Do you want to be saved?”
He smiles sadly. “Even you would lose against Alaya, Sakura.”
Just to have this warmth for one solitary moment is a cursed salvation in its own right, one he won’t soon forget, one that will be engraved upon his being forevermore. He is not like the Heroes that reside within the Throne: he carries the memories of all his timeless years in servitude, not permitted to forget. If he was wiped clean, made anew, his blade would be duller, weaker, more inexperienced. Alaya would not grant mercy merely for the sake of ‘kindness’.
“Besides,” he adds, “I’m not Shirou. I’m the person who left you to die.” She owes him nothing - not even a scrap of affection or pity.
She rests her head on his shoulder, her white hair sullied by his blood-soaked clothes. “Senpai is Senpai,” she says simply. “Even one that didn’t choose me. Especially one that chose to die alone.”
He brings crimson-tinged fingers to her hair, stroking the silken, beautiful strands. For all the power she holds, her vessel is delicate, soft. He would call her kind for her words, except that they are uttered with the possessiveness of a demon. Perhaps, for all that she acts sweet and docile, the wickedness she had awakened during the Holy Grail War remains.
“I admit that there isn’t anything I can do,” she confesses, voice sweet like poisoned honey that he cannot help but swallow. “But, if you’ll continue to watch over me, then I’ll continue to keep you company, even in this eternal hell of your own making.”
He freezes, too shocked to utter a single syllable, until a small sob wrenches itself from his lips. He embraces her, the way a drowning man might cling to driftwood, and allows himself to shed tears. Whether he obtains only this moment, or an eternity, this is more than enough –
“Sakura,” he whispers, and he inhales lavender and spun sugar, the scent of the girl who had once been an empty shell, and who now wishes to accompany this empty shell of Emiya Shirou. He realizes that he is pathetically weeping, as if he is a mere boy again and not a man forged of steel, a sword that exists solely to cut down his enemies, a Counter Guardian whose existence does not allow for any unnecessary, pointless joys.
She has come here, descending into Hades, a Persephone who willingly swallows six seeds so that she can remain by his side. He thinks this will shatter him: he thinks this will be his undoing. He clings to her in a pool of blood of his own making, staining her with the sins he must commit for humanity’s sake, weeping like a pitiful child who never left the fiery pit he was born from. And, he knows this, too - that she is no innocent girl, that she takes him for a fool, that she lets him cling to her because it pleases her to have an Emiya Shirou with nothing left but her, with no choice but her.
“Did you miss me, Senpai?” she asks, and her voice is almost-cruel in its sweetness, in the blade that threatens to strike him down. “You’ve been so lonely, after all.”
He knows the answer he must give. He knows the script he must follow. Perhaps, in a way, the witch who grants him mercy is crueler than the master who grants him nothing at all. “I missed you, Sakura.”
Archer does not speak of the girl with starlight in her hair, the king he admired. He does not speak of the girl with determination gleaming brighter than the jewels she used in battle, the classmate (Master) who wept for him when he passed. He does not speak of the girl born in snow, the sister he could not save. He misses them all so dearly that he cannot speak their names. He has failed them all so completely that he is ashamed to even dare to miss them.
“But,” he whispers, and the protest makes her stiffen - “I can’t cling to you.” Because she might be hurt. Because Alaya might protest this. Because, if there is even a fraction of a chance that this will ruin a world in which Matou Sakura is happy, in which a girl who cannot be saved has received a miracle, he will not allow it.
“Senpai -” Genuine hurt, surprise, betrayal, perhaps even hatred -
Swords pierce through her body, and she turns to nothing but mud. Archer stands and walks onwards. He is a Counter Guardian who protects humanity, and there is no room for salvation here, in this self-imposed hell that he can never escape.
“Huh? Sakura, is something wrong?” Shirou asks.
Sakura scowls and then sighs, shaking her head. “No… Nothing at all. Is your arm alright?”
“Yeah, it’s fine now.” His smile - that warm, gentle smile - is her guiding light. “Was something going wrong with it?”
“...It won’t happen again,” she murmurs. “...Just a loose end that’s been closed up.”
A man who cannot be saved, and who rejects even the smallest fragment of happiness. A girl who was saved, and who greedily, selfishly seeks every scrap of happiness. If he is ever to receive salvation – she wonders who it will be from.