Chapter Text
The days were beginning to blend together.
Wake up. Service Shinji. Get freshened up. Go to school. Walk home with Shirou. Eat dinner there. Take note of something, anything, so that if Old Man Zouken asked there would be something to report, however minor. Go home. Do homework. Wash up. Warm Shinji’s bed. Wake up burning hot in the middle of the night. Use Shinji’s body. Collapse, aching, chafing, soaked in sweat and a few other things, to sleep for a few hours before dawn.
Sakura Matou’s routine left much to be desired, from her perspective — but what exactly would she change? She had to have a certain amount of sex to pacify the worms; she had to pacify Zouken or he would probably manually set the worms loose, and she had to satisfy Shinji because she was also using him to satisfy herself. Talking to Emiya, pretending that she was building a future life away from home, had been one of her few escapes. She was aware that Zouken would probably call it “playing house,” since he would never let her go.
Sometimes she would reflect that she was probably lucky in a way that Zouken Matou was so far gone himself and likely could not reproduce with normal humans anymore, and thus had to leave that up to his descendants. As much as Shinji was a little monster — or had been, before the transmigration — all his cruelties were petty, almost naive in scope next to what an ageless horror who had long ceased to be human was capable of. Shinji could only ever be a little horror next to the incredible menace that Zouken Matou was.
Of course, one of the real problems with Magus society was that their horrors tended to multiply. And so it was with the Grail War. Shirou had abruptly stopped speaking to her, not out of any real malice, but probably to protect her or because he was instructed it was necessary for safety or something. She wasn’t too bothered by this. She had had the talk; she understood.
Then things began happening to her that she did not understand.
Sakura Matou panted and struggled in the darkness.
She had long since discarded her clothes, streaked with blood and slime. She was too far gone to feel horror, but she watched with disgust as the third pale egg dropped out of her vaginal opening.
Crest worms were artificial life. They were not only parasitic, but in different phases of life, flying, crawling, amphibious, carnivorous, and even at times acid-spitting scavengers that ate dead flesh. She had seen them eat a grown man before. She had watched them kill Uncle Kariya and consume him, and he wasn’t even dead when they started. Then, because her own worms had been excited by the spectacle, she had been forced to go back to her own room and masturbate while sobbing, in a vain attempt to get them to settle down so she could get sleep and escape the horrors replaying in her mind. This had not worked, but it had been a core formative experience for young Sakura Matou.
Among the living Matous, Sakura had perhaps the fewest illusions of what Crest Worms were capable of. The fact that they had once again used her body and reproductive organs to complete whatever passed for an unholy life cycle was not a surprise, but a sickening reminder that she did not matter. In the Matou family, her personhood did not exist. Sakura Matou was not even a concubine or handmaiden used to get another generation of heirs for a rich and powerful family. She was less than that, less than a brood mare or sow. She was being used by worms to repopulate their own kind.
Sakura vaguely remembered being Misato for a bit. She had suddenly gained memories from another world, memories where it didn’t hurt all the time, memories where her first sexual experiences weren’t until she was in college, and while they were awkward and fumbling, they weren’t forced on her before puberty by a wicked old man, or by literal inhuman monsters. She had been cheerful for a bit after that. It was as if some cosmic force wanted to give her memories of an alternate life where she got to be a normal girl. She could pretend she was a person.
Then, she tried acting like a normal girl. That swiftly got her violated and nearly killed. No normal life was allowed to Sakura Matou.
But why? What was her sin? Being born to the Matous? She didn’t remember it very well, but she hadn’t been. Being born to the Tohsakas? Rin was their daughter, and she lived in a mansion, got good grades, and was almost like a school idol. Sakura was sure Rin didn’t have to spread her legs for inhuman bugs, to feel them burrowing through her flesh.
She groaned as another egg worked its way through her birth canal. Above all, Sakura was sure Rin didn’t have to go through this. It was almost comical. What was the point of all her suffering? To be heir to the Matous? Shinji would be heir. As the natural-born son, he had been a disappointment, but the minute he showed promise again — when that Crest appeared on his hand — they had been quick to promote him over her. They ignored the years of sexual abuse, the bug infestation, the forcible reshaping of her body and magic circuits to Matou-style magecraft, as if all her suffering had been an afterthought. Why all this, when she was just going to be thrown away again?
How could there be a world that did this to little girls, in which justice was remotely a coherent concept? It is not Justice this world needs, but Vengeance.
“This world cries for vengeance,” she spat aloud. “If the Grail cared for humans at all, if there was any kind of justice in this world, I would have an answer! All this stupid war across centuries over a wish. Where is MY wish? What do you want for me to be free? What do you want so that little girls don’t have to live like this? WHAT DO YOU WANT FROM ME? I WOULD PAY THE PRICE!”
She stopped, panting and sweating. It was unwise to yell, here in the mansion, but at that moment, she had given up on caring.
A powerful feeling swelled up from deep within Sakura, a chorus of voices resonating in her skull. It was like a child, an old man, and a woman all speaking at once. “BY MY GRUDGE AS AN AVENGER, I ACCEPT THIS CALL. LET THERE BE JUSTICE, EVEN IF THE HEAVENS MUST FALL.”
In the darkness of her room, one of Sakura's hands briefly flared with light. It was red, like the start of a signal fire.