Saber's Wish

Chapter 4: Run For Cover

"Thanks for the bite as always, Shirou," Taiga said to Shirou as she put on her coat, both of them standing at the front door of the Emiya residence. "You never cease to impress."

Shirou shrugs before lightheartedly boasting:

"Well, it comes when you've lived with two adults who didn't know the difference between a saucepan and a wok. You should've been there when the old man tried cooking for both of us the first time..."

"Bet it wasn't as bad as the time I accidentally put a knife in the microwave," Taiga remarks while buttoning up her coat, and both her and Shirou laugh.

"You and Kiritsugu are the only two people I know who are absolute menaces in the kitchen," Shirou said before composing himself. "Anyone can learn to cook with enough time you know."

Taiga giggles.

"Some of us have full-time jobs you know. Six days a week in Japan," she says before adding, "Even Kiritsugu couldn't just sit around while he took care of you..."

Awkward silence followed as Shirou found himself reflecting on his late adoptive father; Saber's master in the Fourth Holy Grail War and the one who saved the boy when the Great Fuyuki Fire happened immediately afterwards.

"I really do miss him, Taiga," he eventually said, causing Taiga to pause as she slipped her purse over her shoulder. "I wish he could be here right now... see how well things are going."

Taiga's cheery demeanor fell, turning nostalgic as she puts a hand on Shirou's shoulder.

"I do too, Shirou," Taiga's tone was soft. "I imagine he would be proud of the fact that I raised you right. Even more at the boy he pulled out of the rubble."

"You think so?" Shirou found himself asking with uncertainty. Although he did not know Kiritsugu as a person before passing away when Shirou was twelve years old, the red-haired boy never doubted that the man raised him like he was his own child and cherished him as such. This was before Shirou got dragged into the Fifth Holy Grail War, when he learned about the real man Kiritsugu was from both Saber, Illya, and even Kotomine.

A broken man prepared to give anything for the sake of his ideals. The kind of man Shirou would have become if not for Arturia...

"Come on, Shirou," Taiga reassured him. "You're in your final few months in high school, you have friends, a steady income, and your special other. You have a plan for what you want to do with your life going forward. You know how many parents hope for their child to have everything figured out by adulthood? It doesn't happen as often as you'd think."

Shirou knew Taiga was saying all of this as his legal guardian as well. Taiga was old enough to adopt Shirou after Kiritsugu passed away; dying from as it would later turn out to be a curse inflicted on him from the Grail; The same curse that perpetuated Kirei Kotomine's existence until Shirou and Saber ultimately extinguished it. Taiga then adjusted the strap on her purse uncomfortably as she then confesses somberly to Shirou:

"After Kiri's death, I feared every single day that you would end up lost and aimless after your mandatory education was over. All you ever seemed to do was worry about other people's needs over your own, like yours didn't even matter."

Shirou found himself looking mildly astonished at Taiga. It seemed even she was aware of his disposition in the years following Kiritsugu's passing. Having sworn to carry on the broken man's ideals of justice the night before he died, Shirou lived by that philosophy as a way with coping with the fact that his only parent in his life was gone, leaving him alone in a home that was not even his own. Shirou closed himself off from everyone; Sakura, Issei, Ayako, even Taiga herself to an extent and wallowed in his seclusion.