Author's Note: To those about to read this note that this is a crossover of "Fate/Zero" (and that I haven't watched "Fate/Stay Night" or any other things of the Fate series) as well as "Lily and the Art of Being Sisyphus" so if you're unfamiliar with either of those this shall be very confusing. Other note THIS IS SO NOT CANON IT'S NOT EVEN FUNNY. Thank you for your time.

England, 1996

"Fifteen years," pale blue eyes stared out the blinds, out onto the English countryside and towards the church and cemetery of Little Hangleton where the remains of Wizard Lenin's massacred family were buried, "It has been fifteen years since that night I nearly destroyed myself."

Sixteen years since Lily had been alive, four since Wizard Lenin had finally managed to regain a body for himself with Lily's assistance, and she wondered when finally, that date would come when they would count years since the victory of Wizard Lenin's bloody revolution.

The war, as it was, was nearly over, Dumbledore on his death bed, the Order of the Phoenix with members few and far between, and the ministry filled with nothing but bureaucrats and cowards…

The resistance now relied upon Neville Longbottom and a handful of eager eyed school children.

The end, with Lily half dangling on the couch in Wizard Lenin's study and Wizard Lenin musing as he stared out the window in this final place he could take silent refuge from his sycophants, was more than in sight.

Golden sunlight, peeking through the blinds, streamed through his dark hair, and even staring at his back as he looked out and away from her, Lily couldn't help but think he had the bearing of a king to him.

So that even by standing still, the sunflowers that were his knowing and unknowing subjects, turned their heads towards him.

"I had once thought I might be doing something quite different this year," finally he turned from the window, crossed his arms and eyed her speculatively, "Did you know that the fourth grail war will be beginning soon in Fuyuki, Lily?"

Kicking pale feet back and forth, she sighed, and decided to get straight to the question he was no doubt expecting from her, "The hell is a grail war?"

Lily had never heard of anything like that, and while she didn't usually pay attention to wizards, if something generally important like that came up then usually she'd have some reference of familiarity to it.

But Wizard Lenin enjoyed his rhetorical questions on obscure topics even most wizards would scratch their heads at. More, when you got to the heart of it, he was also something of a radical when it came to magical theory, or at least, compared to what someone like Hermione Granger or Snape might spout. And he liked pointing out his very strange opinions to anyone who would listen which mostly ended up being Lily.

Because damn if Bellatrix LeStrange wasn't the worst person in the world to talk to.

"It is a battle to the death, among seven alchemists, necromancers, rune masters, and masters of transfiguration, mages if you want to lump them all together, with the use of heroic spirits as servants for an omnipotent wish granting device, the grail," he held up a hand before she could even ask, "And before you ask, no, it's not the holy grail, that's simply what it's called."

A battle to the death among seven mages… Well, that sounded… Actually, a lot like wizards if she thought about it. She herself had two years before participated in a miniature version of this complete with dragons, people drowning at the bottom of lakes, and resurrection rituals in creepy graveyards.

She really should just stop questioning all these strange past times they seemed to have. Although, she had to say, wizard gladiator tournaments did sound more interesting and less time consuming than your average quidditch match.

However, there was one odd phrasing she was stuck on, "An omnipotent wish granting device?"

"Supposedly," Wizard Lenin said, "Three great pureblood families summoned it together two centuries ago, however, none has managed to claim it in the three wars since. Regardless, it has shown itself to be an object of incredible power. Capable of summoning and binding the dead and forming magical contracts between the living and their servant."

He then sighed and shook his head with his typical wry and rather derisive smile, "Fortunately or unfortunately, the grail will only manifest at certain times and under certain conditions, and there are many rules that have arisen among the wizards who participate. I was too young when the last occurred, sixty years ago, that being before my eleventh birthday even. However, had I still been bodiless, or else still searching for immortality, then I would have sought out a means to summon one of the seven classes of spirit and enter the fray."

"So, it's a god then," Lily stated, straightening herself on the couch to get a better look at him.

"Of a kind," he seemed… Strangely unenthused by the idea, granted Wizard Lenin didn't have the same weakness for mystical knick-knacks that Wizard Trotsky or even Hindenburg did, but all the same, for that kind of a tool to just be passed over…

It was unlike him.

"Are we going to Japan then?" Lily asked and received a rather irritated glare in response.

"Of course not," Wizard Lenin practically spat out, eyebrows lowered, sounding more like Wizard Lenin than he ever did at any of his meetings with his cultists, "The grail is a quest for fools or else the hopelessly desperate, of which I am neither. The Matous, Tosakas, and Einzburns have bred themselves and trained for centuries for the sole purpose of obtaining the grail, not to mention the other deep pureblood families of the world with their eyes on it. Even for me it wouldn't be easy to slaughter the competition… Which, it is, by the way, a slaughter, every single time it manifests. More than that though, they forget themselves, power like that always comes with a steep price, it is the nature of such things…"

Then he walked over to her with a somewhat fond if exasperated smile and placed a pale hand on her head, fingers ruffling through red curls, "Besides, I already have my omnipotent wish granting device."

He went on then to sigh, slump in his desk, and ask her for her thoughts on this whole England business and even what she thought they should get up to afterwards, when Dumbledore finally did kick the bucket and resistance was proven to be futile as all opposition was assimilated into the Borg.

And Fuyuki, a city Lily had never even heard of before Wizard Lenin bothered to bring it up, on the complete other side of the world, wracked by wizarding war upon wizarding war, lay forgotten.

Of course, Lily should have known that would be somehow too convenient and that, like Murphey's law dictated, when something could happen to her, it somehow did.

"Were you expecting someone else?"

Kirei Kotomine stared down at the girl, the heroic spirit, Assassin, summoned by a relic for participation in the fourth grail war, and for the first time in three years found himself…

At a complete and utter loss.

The command seals were now tattooed in red upon his hand, a clear mark of the grail's approval (although, to what end, what someone like him could want from the grail remained an utter mystery), but where he had expected a horde of shadowy figures with a skull's mask for a face there was instead a young teenage girl who couldn't be more than seventeen, bright red hair seeming to glow even in the half light of Kirei's borrowed laboratory, limbs thin and lithe, skin pale as if it were painted, dressed in a school girl's uniform complete with dark knee length socks and a plain gray skirt, a large silver sword with red jewels upon the hilt, clearly designed for a much taller man, strapped across her back, and eyes an eerie intense green that seemed to cut through to the very heart of him.

The pact had been made, she had accepted him as her master, and yet…

And yet, he had no idea who she was, or why he himself had been chosen.

"Assassin," he started, and her eyebrows raised, she leaned forward as if to inspect him.

"Assassin?" she parroted before leaning back, grimacing, "Well, when you put it like that I suppose I am most famous for assassinating a dark lord… I mean, in most circles. This grail thing though… I have to say, after being wrenched from England and dragged here to be your familiar or whatever, and then having information dumped conveniently into my brain, I'm a bit fuzzy on the details."

"I was told the grail would supply you with sufficient knowledge," he stated, at least, Tosaka had assured him of as much. The girl nodded and offered him a small and casual shrug, and she was, so casual and unrefined for a noble spirit of an ancient warrior.

There was something almost insultingly modern to her, as if she had taken modernity and coated herself in it, but only just barely so that the wild, fey, dangerous side of her was still quite visible beneath this.

"Oh, yes, it gave uh… quite the rundown. However, you having summoned me here, I assume you have some idea of what an 'omnipotent wish granting device' even is, especially since you seem to want it badly enough to enter the wizarding equivalent of a WWE tournament for it."

"I have no desire for the grail," Kirei offered her blandly, "I am here merely as a support to another master, Tosaka."

For a moment, the girl merely stared at him, as if dumbfounded by his response, and finally remarked, "That's a strange amount of effort to put in for something you're supposedly not interested in."

The girl stepped out of her summoning circle and next to him, looking him directly in the eyes, and why was it… Why was it that he felt, in that moment, that she could see him somehow better than he could see himself? That she could see past the emptiness and overwhelming apathy within his soul to…

But there was no feeling in him, there never had been, not for some time now.

"Didn't really answer my question though," she remarked, "I asked what you believe the grail is, not if you yourself wanted it."

"It is an omnipotent wish granting device…"

"Yes, yes, I heard all of that," the girl interrupted, holding up a pale hand to his face and utterly dismissing his words, "But what is that? You're a priest, do you think it's God?"

Her words were certainly blasphemous, but then, no more than Tosaka's often were. Indeed, looking at her, her eyes on the black he wore and the golden cross about his neck, she expected a reaction out of him. Perhaps, she even anticipated it.

He found himself frowning, staring at her, assessing her… "You accepted me as your master,"

"I accepted you as a temporary source of magic for me in this physical plane of Fuyuki Japan for a period of two weeks while I perform whatever shenanigans you need done to get you closer to this grail," the girl said rather dismissively, "Master is a strong word for that agreement."

"And you yourself do not want the grail?"

"I don't know what it is," the girl scoffed, shoving her hands into her pockets, "Just that it was pulled into this dimension from somewhere else and, having experience with that sort of thing myself… Well, let's just say, that's risky business."

She then sighed, "I really should write a letter back to Lenin, he won't be pleased to know I've been kidnapped by a magical cup… This thing does only last about two weeks, right?"

He blinked, blinked again, tried to… He knew her, he knew her from somewhere, he was certain of it. He had come across that face somewhere in some paper that was far too recent, "I did not have your relic. You are not Hassan-i Sabbah."

"…The universe isn't always consistent," the girl dismissed with a wave of her pale hand, as if circumventing the will of the grail was mere child's play or an unremarkable coincidence at best, "Your grail is proof enough of that."

"How could I have summoned you when I have no idea who you are?"

That stopped her, she turned, looked at him puzzled then suddenly amused, "You don't? What a strange world, I don't think I've ever been not recognized by someone in the know… Maybe I'm only famous in England."

She held out a hand to his, gripped his in hers, eying the red command seal on his skin, "Eleanor Lily Potter, but anyone of real import just calls me Lily. And you?"

"Kirei Kotomine," he said then, with a jerk, removed his hand from hers. He was not here to humor heathen servants.

He stepped away, began to walk up the stairs, the girl raising her eyebrows as she looked up after him before following up, watching with raised eyebrows as he explained the strange developments to a disbelieving Tosaka, dismissing the girl from material form yet feeling, even as she instantly (jarringly) disappeared from view, that her green eyes were still watching and judging him.

As if hers were the true eyes of God upon him.

There was something about Kirei Kotomine…

When you looked into his eyes there was nothing in him, a dull flatness, no spark of soul or divine inspiration. Or at least, none that Lily could see, he was an empty husk of a human being.

The funny thing was that no one except the priest turned wizard himself seemed to realize it.

Lily wasn't really appreciating being kidnapped by a giant cup, again, but that said when she'd heard his proposition through the ever-present glitches in the universe and the call of an omnipotent wish granting device… Well, how could Lily say no to that?

(That, and, it hadn't really seemed like something she had the power to say no to.)

Even if Kirei and his master Tosaka didn't seem to appreciate her presence either. The wizard, at least, had seemed to recognize Lily for exactly who she was and had spent about five minutes having a complete panic attack and muttering something about the grail choosing this or that and how this wasn't supposed to have happened.

Then he'd seemed inordinately thrilled.

And then he'd kicked Lily out of their secret meeting and she was left twiddling her thumbs in the basement wondering if this was really going to take only two weeks and if she was really comfortable with the idea that this priest now wielded infinite power through her own abilities should he be inclined to use those handy dandy command seals.

Not that he or his master appeared to know or appreciate the extent of Lily's abilities.

Which, perhaps, was for the best.

Now she and Kirei stood on a hill, overlooking the Tosaka estate and its rather impressive rune work (not quite enough to rival Flamel's but pretty damn snazzy all the same), the last master caster having finally been summoned and the war on the eve of its starting.

And once again, as he stared out at this mansion, there was nothing in him at all.

Lily sniffed, wiped her nose against her sleeve, ignoring the feeling of the sword of Gryffindor against her back (and honestly, why the sword of all things, she wasn't even good at using it and never had been), and remarked, "It's cold out tonight."

The man made no move to even acknowledge her, did not even look at her, instead continued to stare down the hill. And they were almost… Well, no, they weren't like Wizard Lenin's eyes, they lacked his passion and will and drive although there was a hint of his ruthlessness inside of them. Neither were they like Wizard Trotsky's, they lacked the erratic and desperate madness and grasping at life that always existed in his pale blue gaze.

Hindenburg, yes, Quirrell at the very end, the way he'd looked at her when the stone was in her grasp and not in his. There had been smugness in him, arrogance and distant amusement, but that eerie flatness…

It wasn't unfamiliar.

"Assassin," not even a twitch from him, not even a glance, forever looking towards the jewels and the wards surrounding the mansion, mind constantly turning in on itself.

"Lily," Lily corrected, but he didn't seem inclined to listen, he hadn't, as far as Lily knew he hadn't even called her Eleanor Potter yet.

"Assassin," he repeated, "You are to enter the Tosaka compound below and kill Tokiomi Tosaka."

Lily blinked, looked down at the compound, then blinked again, "Holy shit," she then whipped her head back towards him, "Isn't this a little early for backstabbing on this kind of a level?"

This time he did look at her, with that empty blank expression and those dead brown eyes, a slight frown on his face, "Are you questioning me?"

"Well… Yes, yes I am!" Lily said before pointing, "This thing hasn't even started yet and you're already driving a knife into his back. I mean, I'd say I'm impressed but… damn, you are very fast."

Lily wasn't even sure Wizard Lenin and all his derivative brothers were this heavily steeped in chronic backstabbing disorder.

"Is this not your specialty, Assassin?"

"Well…" Lily hesitated, grimaced, and thought back to all that she had ever truly been great at. Death, it was in her name, it was her past her present and her future, and ultimately she would always be a destroyer of worlds, "Yes, I suppose it is. All the same… Isn't he like, super wizard or something?"

"Surely, his traps are something you can dismantle," the priest offered.

"Well, yes, but… Doesn't he have his own servant, the archer?" Lily asked, although she wasn't really so concerned about that, she just… Lily had learned, over the years, that it was best not to walk into situations that screamed trap at you.

Even if you were immortal there were sometimes… consequences.

"Archer won't be an issue," and was it her imagination or was there a slight quirk to his lips, the barest ghost of an amused smile.

"Right," Lily lamely agreed, well, far be it for Lily to argue with a man about to impersonate Brutus, "Well then…"

Lily closed her eyes and sat down upon the grass, concentrating and seeking out the aura of Tokiomi Tosaka, who, unfortunately for him, had become rather familiar in the past couple weeks Lily had been loitering around his mansion. Granted, he wasn't exactly… likeable.

He wasn't dislikeable either but… Well, he was a wizard and it showed. He was the kind of man who believed himself to be more honorable and cleverer than he really was, the kind who, had he come face to face with Wizard Lenin, would have either been taken for a pawn or else slaughtered.

Apparently though, he didn't even need Wizard Lenin to do the job, not with the apprentice backstabbing priest to do it for him in so little time.

Lily really had nothing to do with this, and he knew the stakes, they all did, he'd even sent his daughter and wife away. So really, he had to have known this was coming, though perhaps not so…

"What are you doing?!"

Lily opened her eyes, looked up to see an almost alarmed Kirei staring down at her, which was really more expression than she'd ever seen on his face before. Lily, disgruntled, and losing her concentration responded back curtly, "Doing what you told me to do, killing Tosaka."

"From this distance?!"

"Yes?" Lily responded, eyes glancing down towards the mansion then back to him, "You think I'm going down there? No, no, this is much easier and less likely for me to end up arrowed to death."

Having been stabbed to death, concussed to death, and pretty much everything in between Lily wasn't looking to add emulating Saint Sebastian onto her list.

"You are going down there!" he commanded, calloused fingers pointing towards the mansion.

"…Why?" Lily asked, feeling that somewhere along the lines, they had gotten their wires crossed. Although how Lily could have possibly, supposedly, misinterpreted the order of 'kill that asshole who feeds me and teaches me magical nonsense' was beyond her.

"To eliminate Tosaka!"

"Hold up, I'm confused," Lily said holding up a hand, "Is the point eliminating Tosaka or breaking and entering? Because if it's the first one then I am staying as far away from that house as I want to."

For a moment, there was almost an expression of disbelief on his face, but then, then it faded again and a cold husk of contempt took its place, "Are they not the same thing?"

"No, they are absolutely not the same thing," Lily scoffed, "I'd actually prefer to do the second, if that's really what you're after… He has a daughter you know,"

"I am aware of his daughter," Kirei responded, perhaps a bit too swiftly, but not quite offended enough to say that he had been insulted rather… It was almost an automatic response he was expected to give in this situation but one that had no real intent behind it.

Lily continued anyways, eyeing him from the side, trying to get a hold on this man and exactly what he wanted, "Her name's Rin, I like her, not sure if she likes me or not (we didn't really get a chance to talk what with her and the mother fleeing the city)… She thinks you're an asshole, which, given that you've just ordered me to shank her father within minutes of this thing really starting I can't say I blame her."

"It is not your place to question my motivations," he was so… dull when he said it, or rather, like he was dampening down his own feelings and had been doing so for so long that he himself almost mistook it for apathy.

But it wasn't, not really, at the heart of things Lily thought he was anything but apathetic.

He sighed, and whatever tension was in him appeared to release itself, and he stated, "I will make this clear, you will enter the mansion, you will navigate past his defenses, and you will make an attempt on Tosaka's life."

"Alright, alright, fine, we'll do it your ridiculous way…" Lily sighed, somehow certain that doing it the priest's way would ultimately be worse for Lily, though she couldn't really say why. Just that her girl who lived senses were tingling.

"Just don't blame me when it goes to hell," Lily spat back, but there it was, the apathy.

Stuffing her hands into her pockets she teleported to the edge of the estate, frowning to herself, at the very least it was only two weeks out of her life. That was hardly anything at all, Wizard Lenin was gone much longer than that all the time…

She hadn't gotten a chance to call or write him, actually, that might be a problem.

"Alright, wards, dismantling wards…" she stared at them and they were… more intricate up close, tied to a series of jewels throughout the yard. Honestly, way too intricate to bother messing with.

Concentrating, exerting her own indomitable will forward, reaching out for the eager strings of the universe Lily cut the strings holding the barrier apart and watched as they fell limply, shattered deflated and invisible bubbles, to the earth.

She waited for a second, then another, expecting… Well, something certainly, and when the sign seemed clear enough she hopped over the gate and onto the lawn itself, where she was instantly met by a barrage of flying swords.

"Holy shit!" she backed up, looked up to the roof and found herself staring at a golden man, who was in turn standing before a golden rift in both time and space (and that… that was more powerful than any wizard could manage, more than any wizard she had ever seen, even Lily didn't play so casually with space and time, or at least, not on a daily basis…)

"Little worm crawling on the ground," a calm clear and utterly derisive voice called down to her, "Who gave you permission to look up?"

Stepping backwards Lily summoned a shield around herself just in time for another barrage of swords to storm down upon her from the golden extradimensional portal.

"You are not worthy to gaze upon me," the man continued, making no move to move from his position, "Yet you dare to use parlor tricks against my vast treasury when you should be staring at the ground until you die?"

"Well," Lily called up to him, spreading her legs and letting her will spread into her fingertips, "I'm afraid that might take a while, you see, I'm not so easy to exterminate."

"All mongrels are pitifully easy to exterminate," the man replied, and it was hard to tell in the light, the darkness on the ground and the golden glow surrounding him like the noonday sun, but she thought she saw a smirk on his face, "It is in your nature."

Cue another barrage of swords, this time several of them piercing through Lily's shield somehow and forcing Lily to teleport out of their range. Then, before he could land another blow from that kind of a distance, she teleported onto the roof itself.

And he was… He was like the sun, all red and gold in a single being, his skin fair but his hair practically glowing even in the dark, and his eyes… His eyes slit and the red of stoplights.

"You dare stand so close to my presence?!"

"Yes, well, it seemed like a good idea at the time," Lily offered with an almost sheepish smile, "You must be Archer, then."

She ducked out of the way of a sword, flying down from above her and hitting where her neck had been only seconds before.

"I have no desire to speak to vermin," the man said.

"And I have no desire to be stabbed but we can't always get what we want," Lily spat back, barely dodging yet another sword even as she strengthened the shield around herself.

"I am the king of kings, I do not have to want, because anything worthy of my treasure horde is already in my possession," he sneered even as he looked down from her, not that he was all that much taller than Lily but apparently, he was tall enough, "To covet, to desire, that is for lowlier beings than I."

"That's nice," Lily offered, teleporting to his other side before a thought struck her, "Wait, so then you don't want the grail?"

"You misunderstand, worm, the grail is already mine. If it is a treasure worthy of my attention then it already belongs to me, any who attempts to take it is nothing but a lowly thief." He sneered as he turned again to face her, "I find your trick tiresome."

"Well that makes… no sense," Lily said before holding up her hands in defense, "Which is fine, the universe doesn't really go out of its way to make sense on a regular basis anyway."

And that was about when he must have started getting truly annoyed, because the next weapon was quite a bit larger than the others, and tore itself through Tosaka's roof, leaving Lily to just barely teleport out of its way, and then out of its way again as it crashed down where she stood.

"Look," Lily said holding up her hands, "If you don't mind, then I'm kind of busy…"

Apparently, he minded, he minded quite a bit, to the point that Lily felt that the collateral damage was becoming somewhat ridiculous. At this rate he was going to crush Tosaka before she even got a chance to try. If she was going to kill Tosaka then… Well, there was a thought that deserved attention, what was she doing this for?

A pact?

A promise to a man who might as well be a homunculus for all the human feeling inside of him?

And it hadn't even really been a promise, he'd just sort of said go do it, not even bothering with a command seal and then Lily was off to be arrowed (or, well, sworded) to death by someone who was wearing about as much gold as what was in her Gringotts vault.

"Enough!" Lily cried out, and with a great wave of her own power sealed herself and the golden king of kings, whoever that might be, off from time and this dimension as well as whatever golden dimension he pulled endless swords from.

"You… You dare…" but for once the man didn't seem angered so much as stunned, hopelessly stunned as he stared at her as if seeing her for the first time.

"Look, you work for Tosaka and I work for that bastard priest Kotomine, but that's not important, I think we both understand that this servant thing is bullshit," Lily started, holding up her hand, "Now, I don't know about you, but I don't appreciate any of this, at all."

For a moment he stared, the air around them in this world that was not a world at all seemed to almost splinter, cracks of golden light spilling through but then… Then it held, the light faded, and only Lily and the king of kings remained.

And it was as if some dam had broken between them, a fire seemed to go out of her opponent though his arms remained crossed and his eyes critical, "It seems, mongrel, that I was wrong, you do possess some power after all."

He sighed then, appearing almost put upon, eyeing the grayed-out world of the dimension that was not quite the one they were used to, "As for my master, he is deferent enough, but he is proving to be duller than I expected and provides very little entertainment."

Seeing his more relaxed posture Lily herself relaxed her stance and decided it was a good time to vent her own frustrations.

"Here I am, going about my life, then all the sudden, wham, I'm kidnapped by a magical cup to participate in this territorial wizarding pissing match which could end in the world's complete annihilation," Lily said, gesturing wildly as she spoke, trying not to feel too intimidated by the way the man's eyes now lingered on her, as if trying to decide what kind of a mongrel she truly was, "Now, this is the second time I've been forced into magical contract shenanigans by an ancient cup. Isn't once enough for anyone's lifetime?"

Then remembering the fact that they were comparing masters, Lily continued, "More, at least your guy has expressions, I'm pretty sure Kirei sold his soul for his wet blanket of a personality."

The man let out a harsh, amused, laugh, his golden armor clanking against him, "You, girl, are more amusing than I had previously thought. I believe I shall allow you to live tonight. However, I disagree, I find your Kirei Kotomine to be a diamond in the rough."

"He just sent me into this cluster fuck," Lily said, motioning around them, to that other world where Tosaka's roof had caved in on itself.

"A man who claims he has no wish of his own, no desire, merely follows the orders and schemes of my own master. Tell me, girl, do you not think such a man has his own hidden, entertaining, depths?"

"Well," Lily said, considering, blowing out, "He hasn't shown them yet, I can tell you that."

They stood there silently for a moment, considering Lily's wet blanket of a master, who had just sent her to what he probably had thought was her death…

Had that been his goal in all of this, not to kill Tosaka, but instead to dispose himself of Eleanor Lily Potter? But to what end, when he had expended so much effort in obtaining her…

"So," Lily said breaking the strangely cold and contemplative silence, "We both agree this is unbelievably stupid, just to be clear."

The man said nothing but he didn't disagree either which was rather telling. Looking at him out of the corner of her eye, in all his golden splendor, she wondered if he wasn't a bit like her. A man who could rip apart the fabric of space and time with little more than a whim. Overpowered by half, unchallenged, trying in his own way to make some meaning out of the mortal coil even while the petty expectations of the world were dumped upon his indifferent shoulders…

(However, he didn't seem the type to have had greatness thrust upon him, he himself was the incomprehensible and terrible greatness.)

Still, she found herself smiling at him, and thinking, against all logic, that perhaps she was looking at a potential friend in the unlikeliest of circumstances. She stuck out her hand towards him, "It's Lily, by the way,"

"You are a presumptuous girl," the man sniffed, not even looking at her hand, "And a lowly one, if even you, a noble heroic spirit, have no title to accompany your legend."

"Oh, there are they're just… ridiculous," Lily grimaced, "Let's see there's girl who lived, that's a common one… Destroyer of worlds works too."

"Destroyer of worlds?" he asked before ushering out another harsh laugh, "What a strange and presumptuous title to earn for yourself, girl. How can you destroy the world when so much of it belongs to me?"

Well, Lily wasn't about to get into all of that, "What about you?"

"I am the king of kings and king of heroes, all noble spirits and legends are derived from me, including your own no doubt," he scoffed and then seeing her raised eyebrows added in an almost disbelieving and derisive manner, "I am none other than Gilgamesh of Babylon and Uruk."

"Gilgamesh, really?" Lily asked, granted she had never gotten too in depth with the Epic of Gilgamesh but all the same she could appreciate the name when she heard it, "Well, it's an honor to meet you."

"Of course, it is an honor to meet me," the man offered, with a resigned and tried patience, "Now, I have had enough of this discourse, you have entertained me and so you shall live but you will restore us to our world and me to the Gate of Babylon."

"Right," Lily said nodding, "Well, that will leave us right back where we started, won't it? And then they won't learn anything at all from all of this…"

"Learn?" he laughed again, "You expect them to learn from this?"

"One can hope," Lily said before admitting, "Although I'll admit it's a faint one that I can't quite bring myself to believe in."

Although it had a sort of pointlessness to it if none of them learned anything from all of this, but all the same she couldn't… She couldn't really picture them all faring well at the end of this, whatever seven wizards had been pulled into this mess.

Gilgamesh, king of kings, broke the silence, "You are more powerful than I had expected, more that sword, which surely is in my treasury, is not your noble phantasm."

"My what?" Lily asked but he barely seemed to be paying attention to her.

Instead, he mused as he stared at her, "Perhaps, girl, with your power that can even begin to rival my own, you yourself belong inside of my collection."

And Lily was officially too weirded out to deal, she offered him a sheepish grin, took a step back and said with a small wave, "Right, well… It's been fun but I have go now."

And with that she moved them back to where they had been standing before, reasserted time and space to its original positions, with her standing on a split beam while he stood across from her, the golden gates opened behind him still even as he stared at her.

And, to the sound of his laughter, face flushing, she teleported back to whence she came next to a stunned Kirei Kotomine, "Right, well, Kotomine, Gilgamesh and I had a talk and we decided that wrecking his house was close enough to killing him… And that this is all very stupid and you people are boring mongrels."

Gilgamesh was beginning to grow tired of this affair, he had not imagined, well, he was not entirely certain what he had imagined when he'd heard Tosaka's call from the void of eternity. Nothing like his own legend, certainly, Enkidu was millennia dead and buried and the world had never been quite the same without him.

But there had been a certain assumption, given by Tosaka's recognition of Gilgamesh's position and stature as well as his own unworthiness (such clear-eyed recognition was a rarity for most mongrels), and there was this promise of brief amusement on the material plane where the grail tantalized potential thieves with its promise of an omnipotent wish.

And perhaps, in that moment he had consented to Tokiomi Tosaka being his vassal, there had been a touch of curiosity, to see what cheap imitations of himself the world had produced in his absence.

However, since his summoning he had been rarely utilized, only officially sent out against Assassin in a battle that, while interesting in its own right and worthy of reflection, was little more than a cheap charade on the part of Tosaka as he attempted to be clever.

Tosaka, despite or perhaps even because of his respect for his lord and king Gilgamesh, was proving to be quite the dullard.

As for the other heroic spirits and their own masters, from what Gilgamesh had glimpsed of them (shirking Tosaka's orders to the point where that mongrel had dared, dared, to use a command seal to force Gilgamesh's will) they proved disappointing and more than that insulting.

Lancer was a mongrel of no particular import, a romantic chivalric soldier who frankly wasn't even worth Gilgamesh's attention. His master an arrogant mage who if possible seemed duller than Tosaka.

Caster had yet to make an appearance, or his master for that matter, but Gilgamesh held little hope for their entertainment value.

Berserker nothing more than a mad dog tearing at his leash, his master, an unseen mongrel likely cowering away somewhere in the shadows.

And then the other two.

Rider, an oversized mongrel brazenly naming himself Iskander the king of conquerors, so freely and with such pride in Gilgamesh's golden presence. There were mongrels in the world, and Gilgamesh tolerated them as he might tolerate ants beneath his boot, but the undeserved ignorant arrogance of a mongrel who dared declare himself king… Well, it was little better than a thief. His master though, a strangely attractive mage with pale blue eyes and a fire for a soul, looking rather frustrated at his servant's antics even while he drank wine in the chariot, perhaps held a spark of promise for entertainment, mongrel though he too likely was.

Then, finally, the little girl with the hidden sword, king of knights she called herself, looking up at him with such fierce pride and determination in those large green eyes. Such pride, passion, and arrogance within her even as she, with chivalry as always, stood guard of the pale haired woman with the red eyes.

If she wasn't so garishly insulting to Gilgamesh's very existence, then perhaps, she could have been of some entertainment.

But as it was Gilgamesh had spent these past few days on the physical plane loitering, drinking through Tosaka's bland wares and waiting in this tedium for the call to action, a call that didn't seem to be coming anytime soon.

And it was beginning to grate on him.

Perhaps, the only true boon to this situation, where Gilgamesh could come and go as he pleased within the manor as well as the church where Kotomine and Assassin had secluded themselves, was that it gave him ample time to satisfy his curiosity with the only two mongrels surrounding him who did provide him with a spark of entertainment.

The priest and apprentice, Kirei Kotomine, and his noble heroic servant Assassin, Eleanor Lily Potter, Destroyer of Worlds.

Kotomine was a man of self-imposed layers, a man who had twisted himself so thoroughly that his own desires, his own joyfulness, remained hidden even to himself. Gilgamesh would speak to him in his own time and at his own leisure, prod away at his defenses and see for himself what lay beneath this devout servant of Tosaka and the church.

Today it was the girl, little more than a child with the sword of a man strapped to her back, dressed still in her school uniform, desperately scribbling out a letter that he chose to observe.

Eleanor Lily Potter of England, or so Tosaka had described, savior of her country and destroyer of dark mages, a girl reviled and adored for her sheer inability to die at beings seemingly far more powerful than her.

A wild card and unexpected servant, one with unknown abilities, but given her reputation and growing legend, a legend not even yet finish, one which perhaps could be made use of.

They had expected Gilgamesh to put her down like a dog when she'd entered the Tosaka estate, and this was far from unnatural, as had she been anyone else just that would have occurred. Gilgamesh had underestimated her, he was not too proud to admit that he had assumed that she would have the toys or trinkets available to all such mongrels and had used his own paltry means to eliminate her. However, when she had opened her own unnamed gate to another world, closing the Gate of Babylon and painting reality into her own image where Gilgamesh's stores of noble phantasms were out of reach, he acknowledged that she perhaps, was worthy of the might of Ea itself.

A part of him itched for that battle.

It was a pity that she was the one rival he would likely never face again, as Tosaka through Kotomine only tasked her with reconnaissance at this point to spy on the other masters and their servants, them believing she had perished in her battle with Gilgamesh.

Often though, both he and she were left to waste on the side lines, both caught in Tosaka's petty schemes that he no doubt thought quite devious, and Gilgamesh was left to the wine and the tedium and the thought that this was not what he'd had in mind when he had agreed to Tosaka's proposition.

She had hardly looked at him when he materialized, glass of putrid subpar modern red wine in hand, just a glance up with those green eyes (different, somehow, than Saber's yet achingly similar all the same) and then back down at her paper, chewing on the end of her pen. There was an irritating lack of acknowledgement of his glory, but then, that seemed in her nature. She was disconnected from this plane of existence, despite herself being solid, materialized completely by her own mana and will, she seemed somehow further cut off than the other servants as if she peered through this world through thick and frosted glass.

And it wasn't as if she did not see him for what he was, she did, and she acknowledged it, but at the same time she lacked the ability to act as a sycophant or even a proper vassal. Rather, when she looked at him, her eyes reflected the other worldly light that was his own divinity and she did not dare to flinch at the sight of him.

Strangely, and he wasn't entirely sure why, perhaps it was because he too had acknowledged but never flinched, it reminded him of Enkidu.

She was innocent in her impudence, and she seemed both young and ancient in a single moment, a girl of hopeless contradictions, and for that he tolerated her more grating habits.

"Girl, what is that you're writing so fervently?"

She glanced up, eyes taking a moment to focus on him, to take in his casual modern ware before breathing out with a sigh and holding up the cheap parchment she had been scribbling upon, "I'm trying to write to Lenin, he's back in England, and explain that I've been kidnapped and or coerced into the grail war by the holy grail. I mean, he might have guessed, this is the kind of thing that seems to happen to me on a yearly basis, but on the other hand I figured it'd be best to tell him."

He frowned at that slightly, irked for some reason he could not quite explain even to himself, "This Lenin you speak of, I assume is as common a mongrel as any. Surely, next to something such as yourself, he is petty and insignificant and unworthy of your attention."

Perhaps it was that she reminded him… In some ways, of himself, not as powerful or glorious by any means, but Eleanor Lily Potter, Lily as she called herself, was no mongrel or pretender. And he imagined, in this modern era, she found herself positively surrounded by mongrels and pretenders as Gilgamesh himself had once been.

She let out a harsh amused laugh, "Lenin is anything but common, my friend."

Friend, he blinked, what an innocently impudent thing to say to him, as she smiled across at him with that face that was still halfway between a child's and a woman's. When had a being last dared to claim Gilgamesh, king of kings, as their friend?

She, however, didn't seem to realize the momentousness of what she had so casually said and in such good humor, as with passion burning in her eyes and wild hand gestures with pale hands she went on to describe this man Lenin.

"He's a revolutionary, you've probably actually heard about him from Tosaka, goes by the name of Voldemort when it suits him, turning England on its head, crawling his way back from the grave itself… We're irrevocably intertwined, Lenin and I, his doing not mine. You see, when I was a year old he tried to kill me and… Well, it backfired famously and magnificently and he ended up trapped inside of my mind for eleven years. Either way, he's been there since almost the beginning, my oldest and… And perhaps one of my only friends."

The dark mage, Gilgamesh had learned less of him, there had been no need and while the grail supplied him with knowledge of this modern world and how it operated specific details of a country he was not in were hazy at best.

However, he could imagine it, a young and terribly innocent god, with only the barest inkling of what it meant to be human or divine for that matter, and an overambitious, long suffering, mongrel as her own companion of any true worth.

"Friends," he remarked, tasting the word on his tongue, its taste complimenting the bitter and sour wine, "No, Tosaka said nothing of you being friends with the rogue mage."

She dismissed this with a wave of her hand, "Tosaka is a wizard, and even if he's not an English wizard he's still wizard enough, they only have ever seen the illusion that's Eleanor Lily Potter, and not anything else."

Then, without warning, she pushed the letter into his hands, "Now, thoughts?"

Thoughts, the thoughts of Gilgamesh were not simply asked for so casually, still offering her a contemptuous glare and sipping on Tosaka's cheap wine, feeling ennui scratching at his very soul, Gilgamesh slowly read through her English script.

It was just as insultingly blunt and casual as the girl was in conversation, and if he wasn't sure that Lenin was a mongrel, then he might very well pity the man. As it was, he could imagine well enough the look on this man's face, having already seen such an expression on Tosaka's when he'd realized how thoroughly Assassin had destroyed his ancestral manor.

And even in here, was her strangely casual acknowledgment of the king of kings, Gilgamesh, and their battle.

He let out a biting laugh and handed it back to her, "I find it to be the physical embodiment of perfection."

For a moment, she simply stared at him, rather nonplussed, but then nodded and replied, "Good, because I don't have any more time for this, Kotomine wants me to be in about five different places at once and if I don't give him some results well… Actually, there's a thought, I'm not sure what he can do to me if I don't get him anything. Either way, I'd better get to something. Now, Rider, Saber, Berserker, or Lancer, given that we have no idea where the hell Caster is?"

(Kotomine, she never called him master, even Gilgamesh occasionally referred to Tosaka as a master when the man served a role more as a vassal than anything else.)

He mused on this for a moment, his lips twisting into an amused smile at this strange girl who was anything but a girl, "Saber."

"Right, Saber again, I feel like I did Saber last time. I really should get on watching Rider… He's kind of hard to track though, those two are all over the place, plus it's very hard to teleport to their location since I haven't seen him or the master before," the girl mused before her eyes brightened, "He's Alexander the Great you know, as master of strategy if there ever was one, I'm sure Lenin would have loved to meet him."

"Rider is nothing more than an upstart mongrel who claims titles which he has no right to," Gilgamesh scoffed, "The man vexes me."

"Well, I'm sure Lenin would want to meet you too if that makes you feel any better," Lily commented as she brushed a stray red curl behind her pale ear, "And Arthur Pendragon, although he never said anything about her secretly being a woman this whole time…"

"I do not care for the opinion of this Lenin of yours," Gilgamesh cut in before she herself could unwittingly insult him further, as if he cared for the opinions of the mortal vermin of this modern age.

She laughed, a bright joyous amused sound, and yet… And yet he found himself amused with her, as if she were not laughing at him but because of him, and somehow that was more than tolerable.

"I'm sorry, that was just, such an unbelievably Lenin thing to say," she said, a bright grin growing across her lips, "You'd either hate each other or get on like a house on fire, I'm really not sure which."

And with that rather innocently insulting remark she offered him a stiff bow before straightening and smiling so brightly at him, "Until later then, Gilgamesh."

Gilgamesh, without garnish, without title, as if they stood upon equal ground, were comrades in arms rather than an unquestioned king and strange little girl. And yet, he was still smiling even as she warped the fabric of time and space and fell through to wherever it was that Saber and her master were hiding themselves.

Yes, he could tolerate this tedium and Tosaka, he couldn't remember a time when he had been so entertained.

(Of course, Lily had not realized that Wizard Lenin, upon her disappearance, would have enough intuition and gumption to go to the mage's association in London, and then to steal the ancient relics acquired by the ninth son of the Archibald family, Keyneth El-Malloi.)

Iskander, king of conquerors, and his strange revolutionary master, a man who claimed to barely have a name at all, calling himself 'Lenin for your purposes', were seated once more upon the great red bridge crossing the river of Fuyuki, drinking the wine Lenin had been kind enough to purchase in bulk from the local market place.

The man, dressed in dark if fine quality clothing poured himself another glass, seemingly unconcerned by his surroundings even as he offered Iskander a dangerous smile as well as a toast, "It says far too much about my life that, even if you had told me ten years ago that I would be sitting on a bridge in Fuyuki, above rushing traffic as well as a great river, getting plastered on muggle wine with none other than the resurrected spirit of Alexander the Great while we are engaged for a war for the holy grail, I wouldn't have disbelieved it."

Iskander for his own part barked out amused laughter and touched his glass to Lenin's. He was not quite sure what to make of this man. He was an underhanded, cunning, snake in a grass who had little honor but… Well, he was strangely honorable in how up front he was about this very fact.

He alternated in reveling in his own cleverness and confounding those around him with a shocking blunt levity.

For example, his desire for the grail, which Iskander had asked after at the first opportunity, he had confessed almost with irritation that he had no desire for the object at all, that anything he could not earn for himself was not worth anything, that instead he was only getting involved in this nonsense for the sake of another summoned servant who he suspected had been coerced into the grail war.

Iskander hadn't known quite what to say to that.

Well, he had, he'd confessed his own desire to conquer the world which the man hadn't seemed put off by in the slightest, instead had treated it as a rather redundant fact, as if of course this would be what Iskander wanted from the grail or else that Iskander's interests were redundant to him.

"Well said, my strange master who longs for kingship," Iskander eyed him, "You may be horribly puny but your wit does you wonders. You may end up king of your small island yet!"

"Thank you," he offered both wryly and drily, "You're too kind."

"It is a pity that you do not wish to join my army instead," Iskander offered, quite genuinely as he had offered even before, should he claim the grail himself and earn his wish then he could imagine the many uses a man such as Lenin could have on a campaign towards the west, towards that ocean at the edge of India which Iskander had never quite reached.

"As a good friend of mine often says," the man said as he took a drink, a smile curving almost unwillingly upon his lips in nostalgia, "There can only be one lord of the rings. I'm afraid I wouldn't make a good vassal."

"Too stubborn and proud, that's your trouble," Iskander scoffed as he threw another glass back down his throat, "You said it has taken you how many years to claim this tiny island?"

"Well, to be fair, I was out of commission for eleven of those," the man groused, eyebrows lowered and now a look of true irritation upon his face, but Iskander just barked a laugh out and continued.

"And before I was thirty I had conquered Persia itself and gone on to conquer lands our people had not even heard of in Macedonia," Iskander pointed out.

"And crossed over the mountains of Afghanistan, I know," Wizard Lenin responded before sighing, "Of course, you did end up drinking yourself to death in Babylon, let's not forget that, king of conquerors."

"I died as I lived, Lenin, can you say as much?"

"Strangely, yes," Lenin mused, thinking back to that strange event he had briefly talked over with Iskander but never truly exposed details of, something which had to do with why he sought out Assassin.

He frowned then, eyed the wine, "This is terrible, I should have gone into the magical district in Fuyuki or Tokyo and gotten some fire whiskey or divine sake, something with a true kick to it. Of course, those places are swarming with mages, and with the grail war on again everyone's on edge."

"This happens often?"

Lenin shook his head, "The last was sixty years ago but they are… Unpredictable and violent, and push the very edges of the statute of secrecy. My people enjoy their privacy from the muggles, and every time there's a grail war, well, the tension expands just that much."

"And with Lily involved, well, who knows how much collateral damage their might be," Lenin said, shaking his head.

"You speak of Assassin?"

Assassin who at the hint of her death, Lenin had burst into hearty laughter, and explained cryptically that such simple means of death could never truly destroy the girl.

"Yes," Lenin said, and then staring out at the river past Iskander, there was a strange uncharacteristic softness to his expression, "How apt, that she should be Assassin rather than Berserker or even Saber or Archer. She is, after all, ultimately a being of destruction and revolution herself."

Then the softness was gone, that bitter dry wit and derision returned to him, "Hopefully, that priest is not as idiotic as half the wizards involved in this madness, and knows what powers are best left untouched even in pursuit of the grail."

"You do not wish to seek her out directly?" Iskander asked then and he looked… There were times when it was easier to remember that this strange man was a man after all, that he had a proud and beating heart as all men did, and for all his passion and his cold determination he had ties in this world as anyone else did.

There was a spark of true kingship in this man yet, if only he could search within himself and find it.

"No, not with three command seals still binding her to Kotomine," Lenin remarked, "She would side with me, but unwillingly might follow whatever desperate command comes out of Kotomine's mouth. And that could get dangerous, no, we must wait until we're a little further in, and these people start eating each other alive."

"Such a dark sense of humor," Iskander said with a frown of distaste, "You should think more positively, if you keep frowning like that you'll start looking like an old man. Of course, that may stop you from looking like a woman at least."

He was clearly a man, but he was just a bit too pretty, his cheek bones too angled, his nose too straight and aristocratic, and his chin too beardless, for Iskander to ever truly call him masculine. Among the Ionian Hetairoi he'd look like a little girl dressed for battle.

Iskander's glass of wine shattered in his hand.

"Don't try me," Lenin offered with narrowed eyes and a truly terrifying glare that could put the fear of Zeus into any mortal man. And once again, Iskander burst out into hearty laughter, spirits rising as he sat with this strange dark man on the very top of all of Fuyuki.

"Oh, laugh while you can," Lenin huffed, "I'm sure it will all go to hell in a handbasket at any moment."

Author's Note: Lenin's Spidey Senses, or, well, his Lily Senses are tingling. Written for the 3700th review of Lily and the Art of Being Sisyphus by AlleyKat2014 who asked for a crossover of Fate/Zero and "Lily and the Art of Being Sisyphus", mostly because of the Fate series I've only ever watched Fate/Zero (when you try to go to Fate/Stay Night from that, well... I kept waiting for Shiro to die a horrible death, because he had no idea the terrible shenanigans he was getting into). Anyways, obviously this is a part one of two (for realz this time, I'm damn sure it should only be two parts).

Thanks for reading, reviews are much appreciated.

Disclaimer: I own neither Fate/Zero or Harry Potter