Cold blue moonlight spilled through the open window, painting the naked torso of the sleeping Shirou Emiya a pale azure. To his lover, it looked almost as if he'd been turned into a glass sculpture, the slow rise and fall of his chest with his breathing seeming nothing more than part of the artistry rather than a dissonant note.

Perhaps it was because of what the young man's body truly was that Sakura Matou was able to make such comparisons. It was, and yet was not, a thing of flesh and blood, a work of magecraft and just a wisp of Magic. It breathed, it ate, it bled, it made love, as it was inhabited by the soul of Shirou Emiya. But it was not his true body, only a puppet.

He'd lost that true body saving her. Put himself at risk for her. First his arm had been taken, then his mind corrupted by the overwhelming power of his future self, then his entire form torn apart by—or perhaps becoming—a forest of blades sprouting from within.

That was her sempai.

For others, he gave of himself without a second thought.

Hardship, pain, suffering, he would endure them all. Not "without complaint," no—he felt these things as keenly as anyone else. But without hesitation. She thought, sometimes, that he would give up his life to spare her a minor injury.

The thought terrified Sakura.

As if called by her thoughts, the moonlight picked out a faint white line curling up and over between his neck and his right shoulder. Six hours ago, it had been a gaping wound. Flesh torn apart. Bone shattered. Muscle fibers rent. Arteries severed, pumping blood.

His life's blood, gushing out of him. Spraying from a wound he had taken in her place. He'd thrust her aside just in the last instant, kept the blade from piercing her at the cost of his own injury.

Sakura was getting better at healing. At manipulating the twisted principles of "absorption" and "binding" that lay at the core of the Matou magecraft to accomplish more than cruelty.

It wasn't as if the magus that attacked him needed his health.

But what about the next time?

Because there would be a next time.

Because sempai was sempai. If he wasn't, he wouldn't be the man she loved.

So there would always be a next time. Because there was always someone who needed saving, even if that someone wasn't always Sakura.

As long as he could help, he would.

As long as he could help.

In the corners of the room, where the moonlight could not reach, shadows crept. Lurking fears whispered to her from the dark. That one day her talents wouldn't be enough. That one day he would not come back to her.

She'd gotten one miracle to bring him back already. Sakura knew enough not to expect two in one lifetime.

Yet he would continue to risk himself, so long as it was possible for him to do so. He would do it first, last, and always for her sake, but that did not mean he would set others aside.

He would always do what he could.

As long as he has the ability to try, the shadow whispered.

The only way to keep him safe...

Is to take away that ability.

An injury that crippled his ability to fight.

A wound that incapacitated his body.

A curse that stifled his power.

The Matou magecraft was "absorption." To take from another their life, their strength, their power, whatever was needful.

Her fingertips brushed the smooth planes of his chest. Silently, he slept on.

It would be so easy.

So simple to arrange.

A moment's thought, and he would be safe forever. Hers forever.

She trembled in horror at her own mind. Still shivering, she lay down, curled herself up against the warmth of him. No glass sculpture to the touch, he, but heat and light and love.

Sakura closed her eyes and slept. The whispers had fallen silent.

But the darkness was waiting, watching.

~X X X~

A/N: As someone with a bit of a yandere fetish, I have to say that Sakura does not make a very strong one. Her "yan" moments (setting aside Dark Sakura's issues with Rin, which aren't "yandere" at all but come from a completely different place) are entirely based on her fears of losing Shirou, who in-game is pretty much the entire positive center of her life. And they're really just a variation of Kiritsugu's "kill one to save a hundred" ideal—to damage Shirou in order to save him. (I find it slightly ironic, and kind of interesting, in a meta-story sense that this particular form of insane thought appears in the route where Shirou chooses to save one precious person and let third parties be at risk.) And of course her mind is quite literally breaking down from being the Grail at the time as well. So I could never really see her acting on such thoughts.

But I can see her having them, and being afraid.