Fate: Hammer Time

Chapter 10: Going to Town

Illyasviel von Einzbern was not a happy little girl.

At first sight, such a statement would seem ridiculous. If one would look through her personal room at that moment, one would never guess that she was living a miserable life. The room was positively ornate. There were several large mirrors clad with gold, desks that seemed to be made from the most expensive of woods, closets that were filled to the brim with the most stylish of clothes, expensive little trinkets thrown about everywhere, and even the walls themselves were covered in gold and silver.

But as was so often the case, appearances were deceiving. Illya could have had all the riches of the world and it would not have changed a thing, for no amount of riches would save her from the blinding pain she was suffering.

Illya was in agony. It was unbearable. It was present in every aspect of her being. She was physically in pain, mentally in pain, and her heart ached like someone had stabbed a dagger into it and was now twisting that dagger with glee.

The physical pain actually hurt the least, for it was something she was already quite used to. It was caused by an operation she'd just suffered through, and operations were a dime a dozen for her.

She was supposed to become the perfect Master in the next Grail War, someone who could win that accursed cup for the Einzbern once and for all, and being the perfect Master required extensive magical power, which had motivated her grandfather to order her to be filled to the brim with Magic Circuits.

And of course, because her family was completely horrid, they put those Circuits into her through cruel operations, for which she wasn't sedated at all.

The mental attacks were just as horrible. The constant manipulation they subjected her to was wearing down at her mind, slowly driving her to madness. They were trying to make her into nothing more than a doll, like one of the more primitive Homunculi, and the methods they had chosen for that were astoundingly cruel.

But both the physical pain from the operations and the mental pain from the manipulations were nothing, absolutely nothing, compared to the pain in her heart, the pain of knowing that the only ones who had ever loved her had abandoned her years ago.

Her mother. Her father.

Irisviel von Einzbern and Emiya Kiritsugu had not been perfect parents by any definition of the word, but they had treated her like a person, which made them infinitely superior to the rest of the Einzbern when it came to raising a child.

They support and love, clumsy as it had been sometimes, had given Illya the strength to last in the Einzbern-castle. Their constant presence had made her life bearable, and sometimes even more than that. They had made life fun.

The Fourth Holy Grail War had ruined it all however. Her mother had been forced to become the Lesser Grail, which was the fate that also awaited Illya herself during the next War, while her father...

Her father had abandoned her. He'd had the Grail in his grasp, but had ordered his Servant to destroy it, for no other reason than to spite the Einzbern and spit on his wife's sacrifice.

He had betrayed the family, and then he had abandoned Illya, replacing her with a son while leaving her in the claws of the Einzbern, forgetting all about her as he build a new life for himself.

That was what hurt her most of all. That her father, the person she loved most in the world, had left her behind without as much as a glance backwards.

By all accounts, she should have hated him, despised him even, but she didn't. She couldn't. He was her father and she loved him. Hating the boy he had adopted, Emiya Shirou, was much easier in comparison, and it was something she indulged in quite often these days.