Fate/Recursive Wisdom (Snippet 1) (Patreon)

                                                                      — o.0.O.O.0.o —

I was a mistake. I was an accident. I was an aberration.

I was a blessing. I was a gift. I was a miracle.

Both were true. Neither was wrong. One, I was told almost from birth. An empty platitude, perhaps. The kindness parents tell their children when they don't want to say "unplanned." The other, I realized on my own later, after...well, after. 

I was not supposed to exist. Every breath I took was wrong, every heartbeat stolen. Every day I lived, the universe was knocked further off its proper course.

I never found out if my parents' reaction to my birth was joy or dismay, if I'd been a happy accident or an unwelcome surprise, if they'd smiled and laughed and thanked whatever god they believed in or if they'd cursed every deity whose name they recognized. Now, I never would.

Maybe it was better that I wasn't planned. Maybe it was better that I hadn't even inherited all of the sheer talent that my sisters had. 

Small mercy, that. Because I hadn't received Rin's unparalleled genius or Sakura's unique attribute, I had been spared both the "glory" of the Tohsaka and the "generosity" of the Matou.

Instead, I was the child who would languish in obscurity and mediocrity. I was the third child, the one who had inherited the potential but not the raw ability, destined to remain ignorant of magic and mystery. 

Except I wasn't.

Could I call it fate? Could I call it destiny? Or was it too arrogant to assume that I was part of some special plan and not a fluke, a mistake in an otherwise smoothly functioning machine?

My name is Tohsaka Yukio, and I am living in a fantasy world.

 
                                                                     — o.0.O.O.0.o — 

I woke up with a pounding headache to the first rays of sunlight and clenched my eyes shut with a groan.

What?

"Oh, you're awake," said a deep voice.

I blinked and looked blearily over to its owner, a young man who sat in a chair beside my bed. I didn't know why he was sitting there, and I had the vague sense that I should know him, but there he sat, regardless.

As he set his book down — a thick, leatherbound tome embossed with a golden cross — he turned his empty brown eyes my way, devoid of life, warmth, and compassion. Vaguely, in some distant thought, I noted the mop of brown hair and the robe-like shirt, the brassy crucifix, and the unique collar that declared him a Catholic priest.

"Rin will be delighted to hear," he said, sounding somehow disappointed. "She's been worried sick, these past few days."

Rin?

"Uh-bwah?"

Not the most elegant of responses, perhaps, but the only one I could manage, at the time.

"Oh, are you still not feeling well?" 

Aren't priests supposed to be kind and caring? Why the hell do you sound so pleased by that? 

"In that case, I suppose you may have to miss the funeral."

"Funeral?" was my first coherent question. Had someone died? I...couldn't remember. My memories were all a jumble, and every time I tried to focus, it just made the headache worse.

"For your father," the priest clarified.