The hallways were grand and opulent as any palace, however, they were cast in shadow which made them seem forbidding and narrow. Not good terrain for any fighter, saving, perhaps, Assassin.

Still, even as Gilgamesh and Jeanne navigated their way inside Jeanne expected the red faction to return at a moment's notice to fight here just as they did on the battlefield below. To bar her access to their enigmatic director, as they had since the very beginning of this holy war.

For now, though they must have still been occupied with the siege of Yggdmillennia and whatever attempt they made to sack the fortress and claim the greater grail hidden within its depths.

One or two servants were likely to remain within the castle, but, Jeanne thought as she spared a glance for her companion, Gilgamesh could and would like be more than enough to handle them. Even though, they were in fact, his own comrades.

He glowed inside the dark, like a lantern crafted of delicate opaque glass, so that Jeanne did not even have to truly peer into the darkness to mark her way through the halls. She could only hope that God was guiding her true, into the heart of the place and the iron throne upon which the priest Kotomine would sit.

He was somehow keeping pace with her, a few steps behind as he leisurely strolled in his golden splendor, but not so far behind that she lost track of him either as she darted ahead. There was no sense of urgency in him though, no sense of danger for what they were doing, and at once that both made Jeanne terribly fond and terribly exasperated.

He was a man who, even more than she herself, was always certain that God was on his side and he would be victorious. For Gilgamesh of Uruk, failure was not even a concept.

Except, then, suddenly he stopped.

"Archer?" Jeanne said, stopping in time with him to meet his eyes. He didn't seem to see her, his strange red eyes were instead wide, seeing nothing as he peered ahead into the dark. His fingers twitched in their golden gauntless, nerveless.

"Gilgamesh?" Jeanne repeated, stepping forward, grasping her flag tighter as she prepared for whatever silent threat it he sensed. There was nothing though, the halls were still empty, the servants still below them in the fight, and no defenses yet to meet them that were not a part of the castle itself.

He turned to look over his shoulder, slowly, as if he had been stabbed in the stomach and only just now felt the shock of it. Softly, in a tone she did not know he could use, he asked, "Lily?"

"Gilgamesh," Jeanne said, more forcefully, and this time he did look at her and seemed to mark her image, "We must hurry, they will not dally much longer."

"She never came to Trifas," he said slowly, not quite as slow as before, but as if this realization only just occurred to him, "We stayed all night in that squalid tavern and she never came."

"Gilgamesh!" Jeanne said, "I am sorry, my friend, but we do not have time for this. Your wife will wait for you."

"Yes," Gilgamesh said slowly, a strange wobbling smile cast across his features, "Yes, she will wait for me. As Enkidu has waited five thousand years, she, too, shall wait."

It was the wrong thing to say, Jeanne realized, insensitive and cruel and unworthy of both of them. Gilgamesh's shock though seemed to be giving way to rage as his features darkened, and there was the king she had always suspected him of being, a haughty arrogance and righteousness that could not be dissuaded or defended against.

"I had told her, that they were unworthy, as I have always told her they were unworthy," Gilgamesh said, and he glowed brighter with every word, no longer a lantern but the sun itself fallen to the earth, "These pitiful mages, their arrogant servants, they shall pay for this tenfold!"

"She is not dead!" Jeanne said, before correcting herself at his wild and accusing eyes, "You do not know she is dead."

"I would know," Gilgamesh said, his voice now seeming to mock her as he glared down at her as if she was just as insignificant as all the rest, "She burns so brightly, of course I would feel when she was snuffed out of this world."

As failure had been an anathema to him, Jeanne thought in growing realization, so was uncertainty. Whatever was true, he believed that his wife was now gone, just like that out of his sight and due to his belief it might as well be true.

A smile graced his lips and now he moved forward with the urgency of a mortal man, no longer so indifferent to this world of theirs, "First, I think, the priest Kotomine and then the black. But not Ea, they are unworthy of Ea."

His swords emerged from the golden void, the Gates of Babylon, and began to plunder the hanging gardens he claimed belonged to him. Beneath the weight of a thousand noble phantasms from across the ages the walls crumbled inward, the floating castle collapsing and falling to the earth.

Jeanne could waste no more time convincing him otherwise, he was free to do as he wished in this war and if it was to kill both factions then perhaps Jeanne should let him. There was still her own task to accomplish though, to see this Kotomine, to discover the roots of poison within this war.

She darted forward, avoiding crumbling walls, pillars, the castle defenses, as well as Gilgamesh's flying swords.

For a moment, perhaps, there was another shudder, a stop in the blades for a single moment of hesitation. However, the castle was already falling to pieces and Jeanne had no time to stop, only to move forward and finally come face to face with the man whose back she had seen in visions.

White hair, a small build, simple black robes of a priest, wide eyes that spoke of determination as well as a kindness that Jeanne had not expected to be inherent within him. On seeing him she skidded to a halt, stopping dead in her tracks, while he in turn regarded her as if he had been waiting for nothing else.

"So, you have arrived," he said calmly, "A pleasure to meet you, truly, but you will forgive me if I am distracted for a moment. It seems Archer is insisting on causing trouble."

He held out a hand, adorned Jeanne saw in horror with far more command seals than he should posess, the command seals of all masters, "Archer of red, king of heroes, I command you to cease fire."

The swords stopped entirely, the golden gates, Jeanne saw out of the corner of her eyes, closed and the castle remained floating. No longer in pristine condition, but condition enough to remain airborne.

Golden light flashed beside her, and there he was, all rage and light as his lips curled at the sight of the priest and his command seals, "Kotomine, I should have known it would come to this."

Jeanne however could only stare at him, at this man who should not be here, with wide and horrified eyes, "His name is not Kotomine."

The priest, the sixteenth servant masquerading as Shirou Kotomine, Shiro Tokisada Amakusa only offered a pleasant sort of smile towards the pair of them, "Gilgamesh, as you can see, I am effectively your master now. If you insist on causing trouble, then I will have no choice but to remove you."

There was almost a thrum in the air, a vibration as Gilgmaesh tried and failed via his own power, against the will of his master and the command given, to open the Gates of Babylon once again and rain the swords of heaven upon the earth.

Gilgamesh's voice was measured, but it was not calm, instead it provoked and called to action from even the most impartial listener, "You would dare—"

"I have dared more than that," Amakusa, the saint and servant who should never have been in this war to begin with, interjected, and once more he held out his hand, armed as it was with throwing blades, and commanded, "Archer of Red, Gilgamesh, twice I command you to kill yourself."

"No!" Jeanne cried out but it was too late. She turned, slowly, and watched as for a moment Gilgamesh simply stood there in that same silent shock that he had been in the hallway when he had declared his wife dead.

Then he laughed, a loud, growing thing that had him tilting his head back, "So, it has come to this has it?"

"Even you, proud as you are, cannot defy the commands of a master," Amakusa said with that same calm smile, that same utter certainty and faith in his own decisions, that God himself would bless his defying of the rules and whatever cruel ambition he sought that allowed him to discard lives so callously.

"No," Gilgamesh hissed, "That is the price of this farce, as it has always been the price of this farce. But then, just as this is not the tale of my wife it is not my tale either. Fitting, I think, that we should both leave it here and now."

He smiled then, even as the golden gates opened above him, "However, I do not intend to go quietly into the night."

Amakusa's eyes widened as Gilgamesh drew forth a great, black, sword that seemed to be made of a lifeless void. He threw silver swords towards Gilgamesh but they were deflected easily by great swords falling from the gate.

"By my own hand, Kotomine," Gilgamesh mocked even as he poured his magic, his life, his light into the great blade, "Such a pity, that name, I always did like the other Kotomine so much better."

"Gilgamesh!" Jeanne cried, clutching her banner tightly even as the great black pit that was his sword, the destroyer of armies and civilizations, expanded.

For a moment, as his strange eyes met hers, they were soft and they were fond. Human for all their color. His smile was that of a friend, the kind of friend she'd never truly known in life, and when he looked at her, he said, "Perhaps, Jeanne D'Arc, I shall see you on the other side as well."

And then it the sword swallowed him whole, the floating castle, Amakusa, perhaps even the battlefield below as well as the holy grail itself, while Jeanne unfurled her banner and stood bathed alone in holy light against the sea of infinite and raging dark.

As Jeanne opened her eyes she was not in a castle, not falling to the earth, nor in rubble.

Instead she was in a train modern train station. Only, it was not a true train station, the air was too pure and too clear, and the station itself was unnaturally empty of both trains as well as people. Only one train remained, a single dark steam train waiting for passengers.

Sitting in front of it, on a bench facing the train, was Gilgamesh's red-headed bride, the girl Lily.

"We didn't get much of a chance to talk, did we?" Lily asked, looking over at Jeanne with far too knowing green eyes and a crooked smile that was almost like Gilgamesh's and yet not at all. Still, she suited him, Jeanne could not help but think.

"No," Jeanne said slowly, and, just as slowly, feeling the pain of wounds she could not see, she sat beside the girl.

"I couldn't save him," Lily said, "All that effort, for one boy, and I couldn't even keep him alive."

Somehow, Jeanne knew she was speaking of the homunculus, "Neither could I, though I tried."

"We both tried," Lily concurred.

With that they fell into silence, both staring forward at the train, perhaps waiting for the other to speak. The grail war, Jeanne thought, waited for Jeanne outside of this station. She could feel it pressing down on her back with an unbearable weight and with it an uncertainty she was not familiar with.

Who even remained to fight, she wondered.

If Amakusa, however he had become involved, was now dead and he had held the command spells then were all the servants of red banished with him? Yet, who remained of the black?

And was it even worthy of Jeanne's time and effort to bother with it. This war had been out of her hands from the beginning, beyond her, as both sides had prepared sixty years for its arrival. Ruler, what a joke, she had never had the slightest chance at intervention.

"This is an odd vision," Jeanne finally remarked.

"Is it?" Lily asked in a way that made it seem as if she was pondering Jeanne's words as one might ponder just about anything, "I seem to always have out of body experiences involving trains."

"I do not know why I am here," Jeanne finally admitted, though not simply of this train station, of sitting beside Lily, but also the grail war itself.

"Do any of us?" Lily asked, "I for one always thought that was sort of the point of things. And, more to the point, why a holy grail is such a cheap thing. There is nothing in this world that is worth simply wishing for."

Yes, Jeanne supposed there wasn't. Anything too grand and humanity should have the right, no, the opportunity to earn it for themselves. Anything too mundane was cheap. And anything malicious, well, that was unobjectively evil.

Perhaps, Jeanne thought, this vision allowed her to finally understand why Lily had been so vehemently opposed not only to the grail war but the holy grail itself.

"If it has survived," Jeanne said, "I shall see that there is no wish granted."

And Lily smiled, as if there was no greater reason for this vision than that one simple realization.

"If you see him, give Lenin my regards," she said, and then the station was fading into the mist, leaving Jeanne standing alone with her banner amidst the destruction of the holy grail war.

And there was not a hint, no single sign, of any servant or master remaining among them. Only a Ruler, and, perhaps, the greater grail.

Author's Note: Originally this was going to be a bit longer, with Jeanne and Wizard Lenin needing to derp it out as team black 2.0, but I couldn't conceive Gilgamesh committing suicide on an epic and mass scale. So, here we end.

Thanks to readers and reviewers, reviews are much appreciated.

Disclaimer: I don't own Fate/Zero, Fate/Apocrypha, or Harry Potter