Fate/Black Eden

The Witch and the Shadow

It was a simple matter of appearing before the purple-haired girl, even a few words would get her head working. But it was better to interfere fully and directly now that there was something to be carefully gained from directing the girl's hunger and loneliness.

A delightful, pleasant little reprieve from the normalcy of the Pendragon family's lifestyle, if she was honest. There was only so much Morgan could do before her predilections would start to encourage her. For all that her husband was a hero, she was still a villainess.

It was a fun contrast within their marriage that kept things fresh and new, in her opinion.

Sakura lived on the edge of society, cast aside by her sister and longing only for the affection of the boy she loved. A prime target for the Witch's machinations, hence why she'd made the easy choice to afflict her. As she stood in the path of the girl's walk home to the Matou manor, Morgan offered a light smile and gestured into a storefront she'd set up as a small Workshop.

Allured, she felt the presence of the girl's inner darkness as she followed within. "You're-" Her voice was soft, unsure. Morgan couldn't help but find herself smirking in amusement at her uncertainty- which soon would be abated if all went according to her whim. "The woman from my dreams."

"I am." Morgan noted as she settled into a plush chair and gestured across from her to another. "Sit, dear. We only have a short time together for the moment, so I'll have to ask you to keep your questions short." Sakura looked perplexed for a moment, her body following the direction and settling into the chair across from the Witch. As Morgan folded her hands in her lap and brought one leg up over the other, the blonde woman felt her eyes crinkle along with her smile.

"Can you- can you-" It was exactly the question she'd expected from the girl. Even the stuttering and hopeful look on her face could have been calculated, if Morgan had felt it necessary. The young and in love were the easiest to manipulate. Insist that you could help, and even the most cynical and wary would eventually fall. The prophetic dreams and doctored memories were merely to incline her to accept. "Can you really- free me?"

"I can help you to free yourself, sweet girl." She felt her voice was dripping with honeyed malice, but that was simply the nature of her own being. Nothing she could affect, even though realistically she should have just killed the girl- but then they would lose an advantage that her family could not ignore. Her petty feelings of hungry jealousy were not worthy enough for that. "And then you can live your blessed life with the man you love, isn't that grand?"

Though Sakura's face did not change much in scope, the light that entered her eyes suddenly was a harsh difference from the blank, deathly look that had been in them only moments before. "How?"

Morgan le Faye's smile grew. "I'm going to help you embrace the darkness within that will allow you to consume all that has caused agony to you, sweet child. And all you will need to do after that . . . is keep your beloved safe."

+x+x+x+

Shirou sat atop the roof of the Pyndraig manor as evening turned into night, Saber standing at his side while he tapped his fingers against the insides of his knees. His gaze was drawn towards the Tohsaka home in the distance. As Summer arrived, he'd known that time was drawing closer and closer to the week that had begun the Holy Grail War. Nonetheless, vigilance was better than resting on one's laurels- especially one as simply destroyed as a discernment of the timeline. His own version of vaunted Clairvoyance was only good for minutes into the future at a time ever since the days of the Lion King's Britain, so he tried not to rely on it anymore than he simply had to. Besides, the peaceful quiet of the encroaching night was a pleasant chance to enjoy time with his Servant- his Artoria.

The only music of the moment was the sound of Mordred down below on the porch, strumming her guitar lazily while they waited for Morgan to return from her manipulation of this history's Matou, Sakura. His other self would be safer with Rider and Sakura around to take care of him- though how that might affect Rin he wasn't sure.

If he'd ever thought Archer able to get past himself, he might have seen worth in convincing his old friend- and potential paramour- to be one of this self's guardians as well, but . . .

Archer hated Emiya, Shirou. Why, he'd never learned, but it was a danger that needed to be nipped in the bud. If Rin lamented losing the War as a result, that was fine. It brought nothing but pain and misery to those it touched, even if none of them- save Sakura- knew it yet.

That would leave their only danger in the hands of the priest at the Church on the Hill. Caster would be dealt with all on her own, and Shirou privately enjoyed the thought of giving the woman the treatment he'd experienced at her hands. Was it a heroic thought? No, but Shirou comforted himself with the fact it was only paying due evil upon evil done.

"Is this okay, Shirou?" Saber's voice drew him out of reverie, and his amber gaze turned unto her, noting the way her lips were thinned into a line. Working himself up unto his feet, he craned his neck this way and that to a satisfying pop.

"Letting Morgan control Sakura?" The affirmative sound that came from his friend and lover's throat made him hum in turn. "Probably not. But, it's better than what happened to her once upon a time because neither I nor Rin took the time to care for her. It's all that I owe her for taking care of me, you know."

Saber's head drooped, and he understood. Sadly, the happiest ending was not always brought in at the hands of justice and righteousness, and they both knew that far deeply than most. Artoria's own history was rife with things that would have went better if she'd been anything less than a paragon of virtue, and Shirou's failings had always been on the coat-tails of his now long-dead dream and the distortion before it had warped into the world of Shadows.

Sakura had suffered alone, a misery he couldn't comprehend, after he'd left. He never found out what happened to her, since he'd lost contact with even Rin after he'd gone to Atlas Institute save for the times they came across one another as antagonists. All he'd known was that, a year or so after he'd left, Rin had lost that glimmer in her eyes.

Sakura must have died, or worse. He didn't want to believe it, but part of him feared that Rin had been the one to do the dirty deed that destroyed herself in one fell swoop. He'd been too entrenched in his own pain and loneliness without Saber to see it at the time, but now . . .

Now it only made sense, knowing what he did. Sakura had loved him, and he'd left her abandoned, just the same as he'd done Rin.

All for the blonde woman once again at his side- and one he'd abandoned the world as a whole for. Morgan was worth it, and had been for a long time now. To say that Shirou Pendragon- no longer Emiya- had given everything up for the Witch was not wrong. If he could do even one small heroic act in giving Sakura the dream she'd comforted herself with?

It was his one saving grace in the dark night they would bring on the Holy Grail War.

Only what the hated ritual deserved, in his opinion.

+x+x+x+

Mordred found herself enjoying the stillness of the night, the strumming of her guitar to the chords of a British song she'd learned when it'd premiered forty years ago. A popular band that had made such a sad song. Covered countless times by plenty of others who had made it a heavier tune. "While my guitar, gently weeps~" She wasn't the best singer, but she'd be damned if she wasn't going to sing it.

The world was a fantastical, beautiful place to the former Princess of Britain. She had her father and mother, and now even her birth father around. It was the Knightslayer's own pleasure to know such peace when the world around them roiled with a waiting battle. For that, she couldn't wait. To share the battlefield with her father again, to feel the direction of the Black Dragon and know that what she was doing was -right- by pure virtue instead of her own instincts.

Somewhere out there, her mother was doing something -right- for another addition to the handful of times she'd done such. Even though her mother insisted on her own corrupt and evil existence, the blonde girl knew that her father had influenced her mother just as much as she had influenced him. The two had found balance and peace in one another, and Mordred could only luxuriate in such a lovely family, where she could just be a girl and know the affection she'd longed for so long ago.

It was a peace worth fighting for. An eternity with her parents and a world that moved oh so fast around them that there was always something new to -learn- and -do-.

Clarent and her bow were comfortably in her room, and ready to be wielded, and so the only thing remaining now was to wait. Her parents' planning was over, the preparations complete. Most of the city's leylines had been hijacked and backpacked by her mother's Magecraft, and her father had thoroughly prepared the battlefields they would fight upon for the upcoming ugliness.

This would not be the battle for Britain so long ago, where she'd feared she would lose her beloved father, where she'd killed Gawain and Tristan, and her father had mortally wounded Lancelot and killed her birth father.

She wondered sometimes if Aethach had found the death she so longed for, or if she still wandered the world as a warrior husk. The nanny, as she'd called her, had been a pleasant bit of her life that she had missed for a time. But, it was her own prerogative to go hunting for a glorious death- it was something Mordred could respect as a woman and a fellow warrior.

TWANG!

"Aww, shit. Son of a bitch- fucking- oww- that hurt-!"

"Are you okay down there, Mordred?"

"Y-yeah Papa, broke a string!"

+x+x+x+

As Morgan watched the girl's hair fill with white and her eyes turn bloody red before the black and red coated her in a thing that existed beyond the reality of this world, she indulged in something she hadn't in awhile.

"Mn-hnhnhn-hahaha-

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!"

Let the war begin. Morgan Pendragon, the Witch of the Black Lake, gleefully thought to herself.