Wanderings Of A Tiger

Fujimura Taiga clearly remembered the first time she saw Emiya Shirou. Before that, she hadn´t paid attention to him, as she knew him before that only through Kiritsugu´s words and, well. He distracted her. She really couldn´t help it. He was the sort of man she liked. Older, but not too old. Unkempt, but not too the point of being disgusting. Rather than that, it gave him a manly appeal. And he was significantly taller that her, too. All of it combined into fonder from certain fantasies that send her teenaged, hormone riddled mind spinning.

That changed when she first saw the boy that had already been in her care from twenty three years and had grow into a fine man, after her third meeting with Kiritsugu and the first time she actually had a conversation with the man. He had called Shirou out, and he had come to her. She remember´s thinking he was sort of cute, with his low height and unruly mane of red hair, and his precocious formality, but that changed when she noticed his eyes. They were a brilliant gold, but they just seemed so empty that it honestly worried her. It was the first time in her life where she thought about anything but herself, her family, her friends and her own future.

She managed to maintain her composure around him, but soon enough she was on the verge of crying. At that time, she didn´t understand why. Honestly, it was kind of silly. She didn´t even know Shirou had been adopted by Kiritsugu yet. She just knew that he was only eight years old, and his eyes looked like those of an old man on his deathbed, and that made her felt like she was drowning. She didn´t know what she could have done if she had to continue talking with him like any other kid, pretending nothing was wrong.

Thankfully, Kiritsugu was perceptive. He send Shirou away with some excuse she didn´t really heard, because the boy was too polite to leave unless he had been told so, and when he was away from viewing and hopefully hearing, she broke down. Kiritsugu warmly smiled at her, despite that he was the one who had to carry the boy´s pain and she didn´t know anything at all about any of them, and hugged her to his chest, softly rubbing her hair as she continued to quietly cry. She latched on to him like a lifeline. That was the point where her love for him blossomed. Where she started to think of him not as the hot guy on the other side of the street, but as the kind, gentle man who put other´s above himself.

After she managed to calm herself down, she drew away from him, vaguely embarrassed, whiped her tears with the back of her hand and asked him about Shirou. He told her. He told her everything. He told her that he had been near the Fuyuki Fire when it had happened, and, seeing the devastation, he had waded into the fire looking to save as many people as he could. And the only person he was able to save was a boy, who had somehow survived that inferno, and got out with him. The boy´s physical wounds weren´t severe, so he recovered on that front pretty quickly, but the body didn´t matter in cases like this. Everything that made him had burned up. His heart, and his mind had shattered there. From his previous life, the only thing he had left was his name and he couldn´t even be sure of that. Those were invisible wounds which would take long to recover, if he ever recovered at all.

Somehow, she managed to listen to the whole thing without breaking down again. There was some sadness, of course, but the principal thing the story stilled in her was not that but a righteous fury against the world, and a desire to send things right. So she had begun visiting everyday, not for Kiritsugu but for Shirou. She talked with a bit exaggerated cheerfulness, trying to make him laugh, even dragging him into playing with her. And he had done so, with a smile, just like a normal kid.

But. He never initiated the conversation himself, nor tried to shift it even if the topic was clearly boring him. He never suggested a game, nor complained about anything she did. He was indulging her, because the boy felt from the bottom of his heart that making people happy was the right thing to do and he could care about himself later. That was all their time together was to him. Or so she thought at the beginning, anyway. Ah, well. The point was that everything about it frustrated her, and it made her felt so empty inside. She didn´t care that he didn´t even want to go and make friends like a kid of his age, she just wanted him to care about himself.

Little by little, she managed to settle into his life as his big sister of sorts. She was there to babysit him when Kiritsugu was away, and their relationship grew into an honest friendship, not something she started out of pity. But he didn´t change at all. Not even Kiritsugu´s death managed to change him. Well, his drive for that had grow, of course. But in the end, he was the same. As a kid, he gave portions of his lunchbox to those that had forgot it; took back the lunchboxes that were stolen; saved bullied kids from getting beat up and got beat up himself with a smile in his face, even if the other kid never thanked him for it. Always thinking of others, and not caring about himself. As a teenager... well, it could be said that the scenery had changed, but the plot went through the same motions.

Taiga sighed, and keep on staring wishfully at the full moon through the window. Without Shirou around she was getting lonely. Sakura visited her regularly, but it wasn't the same thing. He was different. They had truly come to view themselves as brother and sister. He understood him better that he understood himself, in most cases. Only in most cases, since she fully knew he was hiding things from her. Anyway. With him gone, it was like having a piece of her missing. It wasn´t even a metaphor, really.

She knew it was silly, that she should be happy for him. He had studied in some prestigious institute in London, and now he was out there, helping people like he had always wanted as a lawyer, because being there gave him more opportunities to pursue his dream. And that was a great thing, really. Furthermore, he regularly called her. So it was supposed to be fine. Even though he still only cared about other´s, and might be deceived into supporting a guilty client because he or she gave him a sob story. But she couldn´t help it.

She could control himself during most of the day, since work distracted her from those thoughts, but once it was over and she came back home to find it empty, and had to wander through the silent corridors and rooms, looking all over the building, remembering the thing that had happened here, the little moments she had shared with Kiritsugu, remembering Shirou... it was just too much, sometimes. It was partly her fault for choosing to live in Shirou´s house after he left, but she couldn´t leave that house in spite of the pain. Maybe that made her selfish, but she was only human.

Tomorrow, Shirou called her during work hours, after all the students had already gone home. She sneaked away from the teacher´s room with a half assed excuse, and received his call. She had the phone set to vibrate only, so they didn´t find about it. It wasn´t like they would fire her over something so small, but she didn´t want to get a lecture and have to wait to talk to Shirou. It wouldn´t be fair. So, bending the rules a little was perfectly reasonable.

"Hello, Fuji-nee." she heard his voice through the line. It was rough now, but his words were as gentle as ever. Since he had gone away, she had practically lived solely for these moments.

"Hello, Shirou-chan. How are things going over there?" she replied to him, maintaining the sweet, cheerful tone he remembered her for. He already had enough things to worry about, without adding her mental health into it. Just because he was adult now and far away from her didn´t meant she had to stop caring about him.

"...It´s okay. You know, same as always." Shirou said, after a moment´s pause. She didn´t like the sound of that at all. When he had left to London, so many years ago, after Saber had died, he had sounded like that too. Not sad, but bitter and full of doubt about himself. "Is just... I suppose I now get what Kiritsugu said to me before he died. That being a hero when you are an adult is hard."

"Why is that, Shirou?" she asked, feeling a sudden tightness in her throat. She couldn´t cry now, not when he could heard her, but she was feeling uneasy, feeling that same sense of drowning that had invaded her first days with Shirou.

"I say I wouldn´t allow anybody to cry, that I could save all the people that came into my sight. But I failed plenty of times. And, in the end, a hero is somebody who can only save those he sides with. I trample on other people to save others, and I trample on even more people to save those I couldn´t save. Is endless..."

"Come on, Shirou-chan." she let out a weak laugh, overwhelmed by his words, and his tone, and just that same emptiness she felt in him so many years ago, during their first meeting. "That´s natural for a lawyer, right? I meant, they are paying you for that kind of thing. It´s just... It´s just how things are, the rules of the system."

"...That´s right." he replied, his tone back to normal. But to her, it sounded like an end point. That the vast, incompressible thing that was time had drew a line here, that the wishful past and all the happy memories would fade away into an uncertain present. Things were already determined, and there was no longer anyway to take it back. That´s what she honestly felt, when listening to his weary and resigned words. Though if somebody had asked her to put it into words, she would have a difficult time expressing it, that was how things were now. Her heart understood faster that her mind that this was an end.

Throught the following weeks, she couldn´t get Shirou´s words out of her head. He seemed serious, far too serious. He had always been a kid who took the suffering of other´s to heart like it was his own, but, well, she thought that such a mark wouldn´t have been left on him just for working as a lawyer. There was something else, something truly serious, that he was hiding from her. She knew him better that to think he would tell her even if she insisted on it, so calling him to talk about it didn´t even enter her mind. The only other option she had was enlisting the help of her father, Raiga, and his yakuza group.

It couldn´t be helped. She didn´t like asking her father for favors, but it was for Shirou. She loved him deeply, so she couldn´t leave him alone at a time like this. Besides. If she didn´t help Shirou, when he had been left in her care, she couldn´t possibly bring herself to face Kiritsugu in heaven. So she called her father, and begged him to investigate his own nephew thoroughly, to bring out to light whatever he was hiding. He accepted without a question, nor a complain. He loved Shirou, too. And he knew she loved him more that her own life, so she wouldn´t ask for anything that would do him harm.

After that phone call, she got out of the house and walked into the cemetery. She went to where Kiritsugu had been buried, and dropped to her knees in front of it. She stayed some time there, alone, while the wind blew the leafs off the trees, another sign of the coming of autumn, thinking about all sorts of things. She tried to thing of what Kiritsugu would do in this situation, what words would he have to comfort her. She closed her eyes, and imagined his big, strong arms hugging her to his broad chest. His hand gently rubbing her hair, as he whispered to her. For a moment, she almost believed it was real. But of course, it was only a disillusion. She knew that even before opening her eyes. She wasn´t that desperate.

She stood up, apologizing to him, to Shirou and to herself, too. Then she walked away, back to the home that had stopped being a home fifteenth years ago.

Raiga called her soon, in about a week. As expected, his organization was quick and efficient. The news he brought weren´t so good, though. Shirou wasn´t a lawyer. There were definitively papers confirmed he had become one, and the respective papers for the cases he had supposedly undertaken, but it was all a forgery. He didn´t know anymore. Who did that, why would anybody or even if Shirou was or not the culprit. But that was fine. It was enough information for her.

When she hanged up, she drew in a breath, trying to control herself. This was bad. Really, this was all kinds of bad, and she even what to think about the implications. Which were many. But she had to calm down. She couldn´t speak to Shirou while crying her heart out, and letting her frustration take over wouldn´t do her any good, either. But it was hard to calm down, no matter how much she knew she needed to do it. After some time, when she thought she was calm, or at least as calm as she was ever going to be, she picked up the phone again and called Shirou. He had told her that she shouldn´t call her because it would interrupt his work, that he would call her outside his work hours, but it didn´t matter right now because it was a lie.

The phone ringed a couple of times, and Shirou didn´t pick it up. He had not reason to not answer the phone, so he must be doing whatever he was doing right now. She knew that. She was not stupid. But still that he didn`t pick it up made her nervous, and kind of pissed her off, so she called him again immediately. He didn´t pick it up this time, either. Somehow, through a great feat of willpower, she managed to hold on and not call him for an whole hour.

"Fuji-nee, what is it?" despite that she hadn´t not expected anything bad, hearing his voice still made her let out a sign of relief. And the worrying in his voice made her happy, even though she knew about what he had hidden from everyone. "What is it? Has something happened?"

"Yes." she muttered, and steeled herself for a difficult conversation. "I... I found it out, Shirou."

"...What."

"T-that you are not a lawyer, that there are a lot of forged documents putting you in cases you were never involved with. Please... I just what to know what you know about it, and what you are really doing."

"Fuji-nee..." the roughness of his voice left him with that word, leaving only the vulnerability of a child. For a moment, she thought that this was it. That he would answer her, and she could help him, and things would eventually return to normal. "Forget about it."

"How could you even ask me to forget about it?!" she screamed, incensed despite herself.

"It´s better for you, and for me, Fuji-nee. That´s just how things are. You can´t help me with this."

"I don´t care how things are, Shirou! You have to tell me, at the very least!" she tried, but she couldn´t quite the get the desperation out of her voice.

"...I made the forgery for your sake, but since things have come this far I just come clean with it: no, I am not a lawyer. I don´t even have a real job, really. I am wandering the world in order to save people, supporting myself through odd jobs and other such things. Now, please, don´t stick your nose into this. It doesn´t have anything to do with you, and I don´t want you to get involved, anyway."

"Shirou..."

"Just live your life, Fuji-nee, and be happy. That´s all I want." then, without warning, he hung up. She drew the phone away from her ear, and stared incredulously at it. Tears stung in her eyes. She threw the phone away, to the wall. The force of the impact was enough to break it in half. She really didn´t care about it. She covered her face with hands, and let the tears fall.

It took her a long time to stop crying, but when she did she went to the land line telephone and called Raiga. She told him about her talk with Shirou, and before she could say anything else he said that they would go look for him, and bring him back safely. He also tried to comfort her about, well, everything, but she really wasn´t in the mood for such a thing. She assured him that she was fine, told him to please hurry up with him, and hung up.

She sat down on the ground, put her back against the wall, and curled up into a ball, with her arms around her knees. She felt small, and so very powerless that it was nauseating. Her head ran in circles with thoughts about Shirou, about herself, about where exactly had things started to go so bad, hoping and praying that there would be news of him soon, as the sun started to vanish behind the horizon.

She got her news about a month later.

Emiya Shirou had died alone in a hill, betrayed by the very people he saved, with a smile on his face. Raiga told her a lot of details over the phone, his voice only barely managing to stay firm for her sake, but that was all it boiled down to. Shirou´s kindness had been abused, and now he was death because of it. He wouldn´t never come back again. She wouldn´t heard his voice, nor see his gentle, brilliant smile. It had only been an hour since she heard that, but she knew she couldn´t never been herself again. Only an hour. Eh. It was better to say that it had already been an hour since she knew she lost him forever.

The reason for that was simply. Shirou u-had understood her, and she had understood him. That was a connection she hadn´t never had with any other person- not even Kiritsugu or her own parents. It was something special that hadn´t been broken even through the fifteenth years they spend away from each other, even though it had indeed strained, and now it had been took away in instant without any meaning at all. At least, not to her. Raiga had said Shirou had died with a smile, so... that idiot had surely been happy for helping people, though he had been betrayed and would see his death coming.

But also... it was also because, no matter how you looked at it, this end was her fault. He had tried to reach out to her, about a month ago, that time where he called after after classes were finished, and she hadn´t done anything but outright laugh him off, and try to comfort herself. To believe Shirou was happy though she wasn´t, even if it was only for a moment. Yeah, yeah, yeah, she called Raiga to investigate Shirou after that, but it had took her weeks of thinking it over, and when she had actually got the information she hadn´t tried to understand his situation and his actions. Instead of that, she had tried to interrogate him.

Maybe such an end would have been inevitable, considering the dangerous work he was undertaking without telling anybody. Not even her. But even if it was so, she couldn´t deny that she hadn´t been able to change him, and a month ago she had pushed him away because of her growing insecurities. She had to take at least that part of the blame, because it was her´s. There was no two ways about it.

Many people to her house to give her their condolences, all the people who Shirou´s life had touched in one way or another. Even Sakura came to comfort her, even though she had lost her brother and her grandfather only five years ago, so she must have been feeling as bad as her, if not worse. It didn´t help matters, in only reminder her of what she had lost. But still, she couldn´t deny it was comforting to that, at the very least, even though Shirou had died for the sake of his ideals, he had managed to accomplish them. His death wasn´t meaningless, because he was a hero for so many people already. It couldn´t help her to accept his death, not even to bear with it, but it did make her a little happy. Something was something.

Shirou´s funeral was not long after that. She didn´t have any kind of output on that. She dressed herself in a black dress like she was supposed to do, and went to the cemetery like she was supposed to do, but she couldn´t even bring herself to say anything, so she just stayed there with her head down. She didn´t remember much of it. It was a haze, a colorless haze.

A few days after the funeral, instead of leaving school and going straight home she went to a bar and tried to drown her memories in alcohol. It didn´t work. Even at that point, all she could think about was how Shirou would react if he saw her so drunk. His soft complaining along with his indulgent smile, protectively around her and then lead her to somewhere where she could lie down at rest. And it only made everything worse, since she fully knew it wasn't possible anymore. She stayed in the bar, drinking more that she had ever done in her life, until the owner had to practically kick her out.

She was very, very drunk, but she still got in her car anyway. She drove back to her house, the car slightly swaying as it advanced. At some point she wasn´t really sure about, rain had started to fall. The sound of the pouring rain hitting the car was maddening. Close to the house, she turned a corner. The blaring of a horn. A huge crunching noise. Then white.

Taiga Fujimura survived the crash, for what was worth. She received a grave concussion, several broken bones and nearly broke her spine. But the ambulance got there in time, she was taken to a hospital and was stabilized. She stayed knocked out of cold in that bed, unknowing of the constant visits of her father and Shirou´s friends, until five days later, when her heart finally gave out.

He came to know of Taiga´s sudden, brutal death after his ascension to the ranks of the Counter Guardians. As the human called Emiya Shirou that had transcended his existence, everything that he was, could have been, would been and never was adsorbed into his mind. All the reflections of him that the Kaleidoscope set, including his own. The sudden influx of memories was confusing, but in time he managed to distinguish his world from the others, and learned what had happened after he was gone.

Taiga Fujimura became another person he couldn´t save.

Another person that disappeared meaninglessly due to the dreaming´s of a fool who was only a nuisance to others.

Another person that pushed Heroic Spirit Emiya to the decision of trying to erase himself from existence.