Part One

Dark Night

Taiga Fujimura was far too prone to procrastination for her own liking, but she simply couldn't help it. As smart as she was, and as determined as she was to be the best English teacher Homurahara Academy had ever seen, she couldn't help losing focus amongst her stacks of exam paperwork for her first ever batches of students, and letting her mind wander into a daydream. Perhaps it was lucky that her daydream was about Kiritsugu Emiya, remembering those days when he would tutor her in English, giving her no quarter as he refused to speak to her in anything but English, a teaching method that Taiga had learned to gulp down and bear putting up with, for in the end it had produced excellent results.

"Not to worry, Miss Taiga: your teacher has utter faith in you," Kiritsugu would always conclude their English lessons in that selfsame language, wagging his finger at her, his dark eyes curiously playful, along with his smile, and enough to spark Taiga's eagerness in being around him, even in the setting of a grueling English tutorial.

"Ah, Kiritsugu…" she sighed, leaning back on her hands as she sat at the little low table in the main room of her little efficiency apartment—though she spent more time at the Fujimura compound or at the Emiya house than she did here. This place might as well have been considered simply the private study where she kept a futon for sleeping.

As much as she wanted to dwell on just the thought of Kiritsugu's place in her life, eventually she did force herself to resume focus when she imagined how much he'd scold her for not doing right by her students and getting this exam prep work done. After all, that was the whole reason she actually hadn't stopped by the Emiya house that day as she usually did, and she wasn't about to waste this. She was so close to being finished. It was a beautiful moon out tonight, she at least wanted to see that!

"Right!" she said to no one in particular, pumping one hand into a fist. "Back to work!" And for a little bit, she managed to work at it solidly, the only sound that of her pencil scratching on paper.

But then she began to wonder if Kiritsugu and his son Shirou weren't out right now on that garden porch, admiring that moon together. She wouldn't be surprised. She knew it had been a while since the two of them had sat out on the porch together, but she had a feeling that tonight they were. And if they were, she hoped they were both happy right now. Kiritsugu, for his part, always carried an air of melancholy about him that he tried to hide but Taiga noticed anyway, and perhaps that was why he brought out the zaniest aspects of her personality when she was with him, because she was always making an effort to coax a smile or a laugh out of him, and that effort usually succeeded, much to Taiga's own happiness. For indeed, whenever she saw Kiritsugu smile or laugh, it evoked a precious golden light inside of her, as though she had uncovered a miraculous gem she could polish and protect.

The same went for Shirou too. Even if he wasn't Kiritsugu's biological son, the fact that he was adopted wouldn't have been clear right away to any stranger. Sure, they would notice fairly quickly that physically there was little if any resemblance between them, but it was also clear that there was a bond between them that Taiga found endearing. According to Kiritsugu, Shirou had been the lone survivor of that terrible and mysterious fire that had consumed much of Shinto five years ago. When she had first met Shirou, her first thought had been how absolutely adorable he was, and from there she couldn't help but make her own adoption in her heart, proclaiming herself as his big sister, insisting that he call her "Fuji-nee".

Being called Taiga, she couldn't abide by that anymore since its likeness to the English word, "tiger" and the fact that having those tiger stripes on her shinai had disqualified her from kendo championships across the country felt something like a terrible brand—although she didn't mind somehow when Kiritsugu called her "Taiga-chan", the same way her father and grandfather did. In fact, she recalled blushing the first time she heard him add the "chan", and she was more than a little embarrassed about it. But she could live with that.

Even so, she adored Kiritsugu and Shirou both, as this tiny, extended family that she was determined to see live out their days with nothing but joy. She couldn't remember how it was she had grown so determined in this, she just realized one day long ago that that was how she felt about them. No matter how many times Shirou got nettled with her for her playful teasing, he had also grown from that numb, empty little shell that had survived that traumatizing fire and was building a life for himself, looking up to both Kiritsugu and Taiga as if to ask, "Really? It's okay if I just live my life as I wish?" and even in that respect, he was infinitely kind, and always did his utmost to be helpful to anyone he could.

Just like Kiritsugu.

As her feelings regarding that man stirred awake in her heart despite her efforts to suppress them, she gave another sigh and gave up trying to stay seated upright anymore, the end of her pencil between her teeth, whereupon she had begun to gnaw on it like an agitated beaver. She let herself collapse onto her back, where she lay on the floor and tucked her hands behind her head, swinging her stocking feet and relishing in the comfortable feel of her brand new pair of cotton capri cut-offs. For a few minutes, she swung the pencil back and forth with her teeth, before she tore it out of her mouth and flung it away, as if in rebellion. She heard it clatter when it hit the wall after rolling across the carpet.

Meanwhile, something niggled at her mind, a tiny regret that she hadn't been able to pay her usual visit that day. Maybe it was what Kiritsugu had said to her the night before, the last time they had spoken, when he had asked her if she would be willing to be the one to look after Shirou should something happen to him, the way he had hugged her when she had told him yes, the feel of his warm arms around her, the sound of his heartbeat against her ear. She couldn't remember another moment in her life when she'd been so filled with electric happiness. They had spoken beside that iris patch he still tended so attentively. He had given her one of those blossoms once, and she had slid it in her hair, to which he had said something to the effect of how lovely she had looked with it. Or that was the way she chose to remember it.

The smile she wore now at these memories gave her a sense that she was floating, and it was a wonderful feeling. Then a quiet giggle bubbled out of her, one that helped to keep at bay the darker thoughts, the ones that liked to creep out from the back of her mind now and then of late and point out to her things like, Doesn't Kiritsugu-san look a little more tired than he should? or How is it that a man as young as Kiritsugu-san has to move around like a man three times his age these days? Or the fact that they were long overdue for another kendo match, and that the last time they'd sparred, he'd looked for a second like he'd keel over before he'd managed to catch his breath.

Yet another reason for Taiga's upswings of energy—she didn't deal with anxiety well, and she either had to distract herself with good thoughts like these cherished moments she'd had in the past with Kiritsugu, or hyperactivity.

She began to tap her feet on the carpet to the rhythm of a restless energy as the stillness of the night sank in.

She was just contemplating the prospect of paying the Emiya house another visit tomorrow, and pay them back twice for having missed out on today, when her phone rang and jarred her from her thoughts.

Giving a small sound of exasperation, Taiga forced herself to roll off of the floor and crawl over to the little table where the phone sat and pick up the receiver.

"Hello, this is Fujimura."

"Fuji-nee!"

"Shirou?"

Taiga became at once as alert as a skittish cat at the note of panic straining in Shirou's voice on the other end of the line.

"It's jii-san!" Shirou's voice cried, referring of course to Kiritsugu, whom he'd always called "old man" rather than "Dad". "Something's wrong with him, I can't wake him up!"

"Can't wake him up?"

"We were talking and then he fell asleep and…." Poor Shirou sounded on the edge of tears. Taiga had never heard him sound so distraught. "I don't know what to do…Fuji-nee, please, help him…."

A thrill of fear fell into Taiga's stomach like a bucket of ice. But she quickly turned that into action. "Quick, Shirou, call 110! I'll be right over!"

"Okay…."

Taiga's heart kept trying to claw its way out of her throat as she barreled down the road five minutes later on her brand new yellow scooter. The engine buzzed through the quiet night, and all she could think was how she wished she could go even faster. It felt like a painful eternity before her way to the Emiya house was lit by red and blue flashing lights.

Skidding to a stop past the gate, Taiga leapt off, tearing her helmet off her head. "Shirou!" she called out to the pack of policemen and emergency responders. "Shirou!"

"Fuji-nee!"

Taiga followed the sound like a beacon, muttering hasty "Sorrys" and "Excuse mes" as she pushed her way through to the main room and then to the porch overlooking the garden within the compound.

She'd barely freed herself from the throng when Shirou, half her size, slammed into her with enough force to knock her off her feet.

"Shirou...!"

Shirou threw his arms around her, burying his face in her shoulder, as though trying to hide from the scene around him. "Fuji-nee!" he croaked. "There was nothing I could do, I couldn't save him!" He was shaking as Taiga had never seen him shake before. "He's gone...Fuji-nee, he's gone..."

And looking over Shirou's shoulder, Taiga saw something that made her want to hide too.

"Oh no...Kiritsugu-san..." she moaned.

If it weren't for the fact his chest was quite still, and that the only thing about him that stirred was his dark hair from the soft night breeze, Kiritsugu might have been asleep where the medics had him laid out on the porch. So he and Shirou had been watching the moon. At least he had that beautiful last memory to carry with him. Actually, his face had a very peaceful, smiling look, far more peaceful than she had ever seen on him before, a further testament to the terrible truth...

...that Kiritsugu was dead.

Suddenly Taiga's lip was trembling as this truth sank in, and something split painfully within her chest.

Her heart.

"Kiritsugu-san..." she rasped.

Shirou let out a deep howl that was muffled by her shoulder, but Taiga felt the power of his grief ripple through her body from that wail, as his tears soaked through her shirt.

He clutched her tighter as he let out another heaving sob. "Fuji-nee...what'll we do...Fuji-nee...?"

In face of Shirou's sorrow, Taiga forgot her own, and hugged him back just as tightly. "Everything'll be all right, Shirou," she told him, comforting him as she had done those nights when he'd grow distressed over Kiritsugu's being gone so long when he'd take his mysterious trips abroad, rubbing his shaking back and doing her best to smile for him, since he couldn't. "I'm still here. I won't leave you."

At this, Shirou found the courage to lift his face from her shoulder and blink his tear-filled golden brown eyes. "You won't?" he sniffled.

Taiga brushed back his red hair with sisterly warmth. "Of course not."

Shirou bravely tried to work up some semblance of a smile himself, even as tears went on streaming down his face. "'Kay," he gulped.

She left him only for a moment with a reassuring pat on the head when she had to stand to speak with the man in charge of issuing a certificate of death and making arrangements for the wake and funeral. After that she got in touch with her grandfather and let him know what was going on, and within half an hour, both he and her father, Kichirou Fujimura, arrived on the scene, naturally with the intention of both offering comfort as well as toasts of sake to Kiritsugu's memory.

In the meantime, Shirou had quietly found a spot where he could sit with his knees tucked in, and it occurred to Taiga as she looked over at him from the table in the main room that he was acting much as he had when he had first come to live with Kiritsugu and was dealing with wrapping his head around the trauma of the Shinto fire.

He was withdrawing into himself, regressing. Though at the very least it didn't seem he was going to let this turn him back into a mute, as he had been when Taiga had first met him. The thought of him curling up with grief though was almost more than Taiga could bear, on top of losing Kiritsugu…and she'd never even really been able to tell the man how she'd felt about him.

"Do you want to talk about it?"

Taiga gave an exasperated sigh. "Not right now, okay Dad?"

Kichirou raised a hand in acquiescent surrender and then knocked back a sip of the sake Raiga had brought with them, while at the same time loosening the suit tie around his neck.

"Well, if you aren't going to talk then have a drink already!" her grandfather insisted, his usual black kimono ideal for the occasion at hand, reaching across the table for the bottle and an empty glass.

"Grandfather, no, please…." Taiga repeated her initial refusal, glancing Shirou's way again, watching him as he crouched in the corner with his face buried in his arms.

The arrangements for the wake were already being made, including the construction of the coffin. Then at the wake there would be a viewing where everyone would have the chance to say their goodbyes if they wished, and offer flowers and candles. On the one hand, such contemplations made Taiga nervous, considering the cloudburst flicker of emotions that had erupted when she first laid eyes on Kiritsugu's body, the hollow deadness of it, how both sad and unsettling that was, and her own anxiety with facing it again. Much as she knew she wanted to be strong for Shirou, and do Kiritsugu proud, she wasn't sure right now if she would have the courage to say her piece when the time came.

Or perhaps it was just that she didn't want to. Didn't want to expect that he was gone from them so suddenly. Sure, he had seemed to have been weighed down by some strange infirmity the last couple of years or so, but in his eyes…there had still been something of a youthful fire…one that must have burned even brighter before whatever it was that had happened to him had done its damnedest to snuff it out. Even so, she had been drawn to the flame she could see was still there, and there were so many damn times where she had wanted to speak to that flame, so many damn times that flame had spoken to her, and she hadn't known what to say because she'd been too damn scared of her own feelings.

After all, she had been much younger than him.

And the weight of regret that she had never been able to outright tell Kiritsugu what she'd felt about him pressed crushingly in upon Taiga again, making the offer of a drink all the more tempting. But she also knew she would never be able to forgive herself if she did something stupid like get drunk in front of Shirou.

Then she felt a hand on her arm, warm and reassuring, and looked over at Kichirou, who gave her a soft, comforting smile. "You don't have to stick around us adults right now, Taiga-chan," he told her with a kind of sober positivity, knocking her lightly and playfully on the chin with a knuckle.

Ah. Kiritsugu-san, you came to call me that too…like I was special to you….

Even as Taiga knew her father was trying to give her the escape she desperately wanted, at least a little, she still had to scowl. "I am an adult, Dad. I have a job and live on my own now."

"Ah, that's only the you on the outside," said Kichirou with a wink, taking another sip of sake.

"Heh, heh, the boy has a point," Raiga agreed with a grin, and now it was Kichirou's turn to scowl at his adoptive father for the same reason his own daughter had scowled at him. Actually, this was made all the more poignantly amusing by the fact that father and daughter very much resembled each other in the face and the hair, just that the father was a much more masculine version. And of course didn't have hair long enough to be worn in a ponytail.

At this, Taiga had to give at least a small smile, and with that, she wordlessly rose from the table, dropped a kiss on her father's head (who felt it necessary to give Raiga a grin of victory at this), and then went to depart from the room, looking over her shoulder once at Shirou.

As if sensing her eyes on him, Shirou looked up, and she gave him another smile of reassurance, which in turn coaxed a little smile out of him, one that said he trusted her to carry him through this. Nodding in some satisfaction, Taiga disappeared into the hall, hearing her father's and grandfather's quiet voices behind her as they began discussing far graver things.

Once she reached the bathroom, she shut herself in, but didn't lock the door, just so she could have a moment to herself and give into the sorrow that was so terrible it was making her sick in the stomach. A moment where she could sink to her knees, hugging herself and letting her own tears fall, gasping quiet sobs. She couldn't remember the last time she'd cried like this, after she'd led such a relatively sunny life. If she had to think of it, the last time she'd really cried had been when she'd been very small.

She felt that small again, weeping for the first man she had come to love, weeping with that terrible, youthful certainty that she would never love like that again, weeping for the man Kiritsugu Emiya who had always smiled as if hiding a terrible sadness of his own, one that neither she nor Shirou had ever been able to shake from him.

"Damn you, Kiritsugu-san…damn you…damn you…damn you…you…deserved so much better…I just know it…."

The only hope she had left to her for his sake was that wherever he was now, he was finally, truly happy at last. But then, thinking about it that way somehow broke Taiga's heart even more, and she let the rest of her feelings break through and spill everywhere along with her tears as she cried out and wailed openly, her grief echoing pitifully against the polished bathroom walls. Then she curled into a ball and let herself tip over onto her side, shaking and crying, taking the defensive stance of a hedgehog.

And then she must've fallen asleep, because shortly afterward she found herself waking up hours later in the guest bedroom, where her father must've carried her, the way he used to when she was little and she'd fall asleep after a long trip, those days when working for the Fujimura yakuza didn't make him quite so busy.

Quite aware that exhaustion hadn't left her, Taiga promptly rolled over and fell back asleep, where she fell into a very vivid dream where she found herself on an empty plane of blowing dust overlooked by a low, cloudy sky.

But then this depressing vista opened up into a patch blue-skied spring, and grass and flowers were blooming beneath her feet while birdsong floated on the much kinder, gentler air. Looking around her for what had caused this abrupt change in the previously bleak scenery, Taiga came face to face with a woman in a gown of white trimmed with gold. A woman who was slender and very beautiful, with the air of both a sage and a child. A woman who was both playful and regal when she smiled. A woman whose beauty was actually quite strange, her hair silver and her eyes red.

"Um…hello…?" Taiga gave an uncertain wave.

The woman went on smiling radiantly at Taiga, and then she said in a clear, sweet voice: "Thank you…thank you, Taiga-chan…."

Taiga didn't even care that this woman had called her by her first name, or rather, she was more intrigued than annoyed because she had no idea who this woman was, and yet she had spoken to her like…

…Kiritsugu….

"Hey, who are you? Do you—did you…know…Kiritsugu…?"

The woman blinked slowly, as though thinking of something that affected her deeply, made her pensive and full of soft affection. Like a widow remembering a dearly beloved husband.

"Ah yes…." Those red eyes flicked up to Taiga's face. "I cannot thank you enough…for what you have done for him…but still…thank you…again…."

And then before Taiga could ask anything further, the woman burst into a cloud of butterflies…yet they were butterflies…whose wings resembled the petals of…

…iris blossoms.

And when Taiga blinked open her eyes in the rosy light of dawn, she felt a beautiful new strength within her she didn't realize was there before, and suddenly she felt she could face that day, and what lay ahead, far more than she'd felt she could last night.