Why Siegfried Loves Clara(Written for Sors)

The reasons for which Siegfried loves Clara Ultovex, an essay by Shirou Taiyang(son of Emiri Taiyang,) AKA Siegfried.

Have you ever been in love? I ask not rhetorically, but literally. I don’t know your history any better than you’d know mine. Frankly, I doubt either of us has ever given a shit. I’m not writing this stupid essay because I want your approval. I’m not doing it because I’ve ever wanted your approval.

Clara wants us to get along. It’d make her life a lot easier, I suppose. I don’t entertain the notion that I can defeat you. I’ve seen you in battle. Ethan Hawke and Taiga Rowan tell me stories of how you are certainly one of the most skilled necromancers that has ever lived, and what’s strange is, unlike everyone else, you don’t seem content where you’re at, either. I’m sure you have learned atleast three new tricks that no one’s even aware you can use. Maybe you don’t remember, maybe you do, but at the Dawn Insurgency, I witnessed you firsthand, staring down over ten mages that would make anyone else piss their pants, and you just looked bored, and somehow, you not only got out of that, but my father nearly died.

I don’t say this to inflate your ego. I’m sure your followers do that plenty. I am bringing you up…so that I can add levity to this next point: I would fight you, if I thought that you would bring harm to her. Why would you do that, you might ask? You wouldn’t, or atleast, I hope not. Hopefully, there’s atleast one person those rattling chains don’t threaten. I want to believe that there’s some part of you that it makes sense that she loves.

Your daughter and I met when I was a reporter. I came to Dawn to understand their perspective, and why they did the things they did. She was very kind, and very welcoming. A lot of people were...it surprised me. I'd been told this was the big, bad necromancer town. And then? Of all people, Taiga Rowan strode up.

She fought him when she didn't have to, because he was an enemy of Dusk. She didn't stand a chance. To this day, I have a hard time imagining how someone defeated my father in battle. He was a monster, able to evade every strike that she tried to muster with casual ease, as if he were fighting a child. That isn't to say she was weak, by any stretch, but...

She knew this was a fight she could not win. For her city, she told me later, she fought it anyway. For you, she told me, she would do anything. And later on, as she showed me, for me, she would do anything.

And I for her.

When I last saw her, it was on the floor, her pressing alcohol to my wounds. The last thing I ever said was that I'd be back soon, like I always said, and the last thing she ever told me was that it'd all be okay, like she always said.

How were either of us to know it'd be the last time?

Shirou loves Clara because when we’re together, neither of us talk about Levengard or Dawn, about the names Taiyang or Ultovex. I asked earlier, Sors, if you’d ever been in love…because if not, I could write this letter until I’m blue in the face, until my fingers fell off, until time stopped, until Clara and I were reunited in the great beyond, until none of this ever matters, and I’d come no closer to making you understand.

Trying to tell you would be like singing about colors to one born both blind and deaf.

When her and I are together, we talk about nothing but one another, the future, our hopes, our dreams, philosophy, music, everything, nothing. She plays the piano, at times, and I sing. I’ll spare you the details. I’m sure, once, a long time ago, before you were an idea, before you were the void, the face of oppression and liberation, a figure as divisive in Agartha as he is notorious, you loved, as a teenager. There’s things that we’ve done that I’m sure you, as her father, have no interest in knowing about.

Some of which I’m sure she’s already told you. She never could hide anything from you. It drove me mad. But I understand it.

I never kept anything from Taiga, either.

When I fought Magdalen for her, she tended to my wounds, and then she left me. I saved her.When I came to Dawn, I’m sure you’d have killed me that day, if not for her. And then, from that day onward, both of us protected each other with our lives.

I’m sure at this point, you’ve already rolled your eyes, or cackled, or something. You’ll stop to do either one if you read this infront of me. I don’t know you well, Sors, but I know you well enough for that. But I’ll tell you one thing: I did not charge Isaac Shimasu in the middle of Huangzhou and fight him and his militia expecting to live.
I did it for her.

And she’d have done the same for me.

And I’m done with this shit. I’m done trying to justify myself to you, or convince you that we were in love. I won’t sit here and plead my case. I won’t try to convince you not to hate me for failing her, because I hate myself. I look in the mirror everyday and wish I had died and not her. I tell everyone I meet to cherish their one true love, because when it came time to protect mine, I failed, and I have to see her killer's face erected on statues and monoliths and presented as a bastion of hope.

Of peace.

Of prosperity.

When he robbed everything from me.

I remember very few things that Emiri taught me about my heritage. I, infact, went out of my way to know much about it. I don't care to be the perfect son. I don't know if he even wants one.

But there's an ancient Huang proverb that I will erect upon Isaac Shimasu's grave after I bury him:

"You cannot live under the same sky as your lover's murderer."