Chapter Text
Distantly, she wondered what it would’ve been like to burn to death.
She was dragged out- she remembered that much- but some ponderous part of her psyche wondered if something was left behind. She was too tired to feel upset, or scared, or angry. Instead, all she really felt was numb.
Move the hand down. Fumble the chopsticks.
The responding limb was small and pudgy. It hurt when she pinched it, bit it, and nearly pulled off its pinky nail, so it was probably hers. Scratchy hospital sheets and linens were draped around her, too. It kind of looked like a cocoon. The thought was amusing if juvenile.
Fumble the chopsticks.
Give up.
She put the styrofoam bowl on a foldable plastic table. With the body’s other hand, she picked at the thumb. Pulled it backward.
It hurt, and she was awake, or at least she thought so. She didn’t feel tired so much as half-alive.
The doctors and nurses were run ragged and quick to label it as shock. The digit twinged uncomfortably. She let it drop. Apparently, a lot of kids were orphaned in the inferno- a group she was supposedly a part of, now. Everyone lost someone that day.
She would have preferred to not lose her body, though.
The last thing she remembered, a girl whose name didn’t matter fell asleep. She had a difficult- but mending!- relationship with her parents, decent grades, and a good idea of what she wanted her life to look like.
She woke up waist-high, choking on fumes and being bodily dragged out of the wreckage that would’ve otherwise been the spot of her death. The next few days passed in a feverish, incoherent haze of nasal cannulas and medication. When she finally came to an eggshell-delicate lucidity, she had a printed plastic wristband, a scratchy gown, and a haze of numbness that weighted her every thought.
And she was a boy. It was difficult not to notice.
It was also difficult not to notice that everyone around her was speaking Japanese. When she was coherent again, translators were required on and off as the days slogged on- thankfully, a few nurses understood English decent enough. If she focused on the ambient conversations that occurred in the background, she could kind of make out what they were saying- but it was pretty obvious it wasn’t her first language. She vaguely wondered if it was some sort of muscle memory, but those thoughts she tried not to linger on. The person who was once (or maybe still is?) her didn’t know if she could stomach the possibility that she killed the body’s previous inhabitant.
He was just a child. She twisted the plastic band around her wrist. Tracing beneath the printed hiragana with her finger revealed an array of characters that she instinctively pieced together right-to-left into ‘Yamada Taro’. Who was he? Did he have any dreams? Family?
On the other hand, she poked the lukewarm rice bowl with an undersized finger, maybe he was already dead anyway. The thought was inelegantly shoved aside with a grumble that reverberated strangely in the throat. She tumbled off the cot, padding onto the floor from a little stepping stool. The coldness of the tile was offset by a pair of scratchy socks with little rubber indents on the bottom- likely for traction. She dimly noted that the cot was about chest height. Something unpleasant churned at the observation.
Swallowing a lump, she turned her focus back to the meager meal provided by hospital staff. An empty bowl of powdery miso sat next to what remained of the rice. She’d tried and given up on chopsticks several times. She wasn’t really hungry, but it wasn’t like any nurses were around to watch her pick at the stuff with her bare fingers.
It had been about twenty minutes since someone last came in to check on her. Everything was clearly frantic, and it was a horrible idea to wander around the hospital without telling anyone, or really being able to speak the same language altogether, but the thought of lying sedentary rankled almost as much as the body.
Even though it was a distraction at best, focusing the scraps of her ire on minor inconveniences was a lot more palatable than worrying about everything else. She disliked the scratchy texture of the socks, she disliked the tangible anxiety and grief that made the atmosphere heavy, she disliked the damn chopsticks that fumbled from her grip every time.
She disliked the smell most of all.
The rice lumped unpleasantly in her throat as she toed open the door. Above her, an intercom buzzed absently. A moment of dedicated focus to translate told her it was another code blue. They happened with what was probably an alarming frequency. She’d imagine she should normally be more distressed, but the observation was more clinical than concerned. It took more mental energy than she had to muster concern for someone she couldn’t see or hear.
Stepping out of the room, the temperature had notably dropped. The acrid smell of various cleaning agents and antiseptics was much stronger. Her nose wrinkled. The lives of strangers hadn’t prompted a physical reaction, but a bit of bleach obviously crossed the line. Her lungs roiled with disgust.
She glanced around. The hallways had emptied out a bit- likely due to whatever person was having a worse day than she was. The walls were painted a gentle teal that was clearly meant to be calming, but the only thing that came to mind was toothpaste. All the nurses were congregated behind a desk- likely exchanging information about their patients. Her most frequent nurse- introduced as Mitsuzuri something or other- had described it as evening huddle. She was one of the few nurses who could understand her without a translator, and as a result, she was assigned to her more often than not.
Nobody was paying attention. If she wanted to wander, now would be the best time to act. No time like the present, right?
She gummed a bit more rice, looking down both sides of the corridor. Left, right. Left…
Right? No.
Weren’t the stairs the other way? She nodded to herself. She couldn’t have been too high up- how many floors could a hospital have, anyway?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
She counted four floors below her.
The elevators were in constant use, but the cramped staircase towards the corner of the building was empty enough to make her feel uneasy.
Or… something close to uneasy, anyway. The feeling lingered for only a couple moments before dissolving into a familiar numbness.
She had to reach up to grab the railing rather than down. She guessed the cold metal came up to around her shoulders. Each step felt more like a drop than the last. It was easy to imagine her kneecaps as jelly instead of cartilage with the way the impacts of her descent jolted up her calves.
Reaching the bottom floor- at least, she hoped it was the ground floor and not a basement- felt like an achievement. She opened the door with her free hand, revealing another toothpaste-colored hallway.
Where was the lobby from here? There was a sign of some sort on the wall, but trying to parse the mix of hiragana and kanji took more effort than deciphering intercoms or the simple questions asked by whatever nurses were in the room with her.
Her finger twinged unpleasantly in the styrofoam bowl as she plucked out another clump of rice. Bending it back like that had hurt , but she couldn’t say she wouldn’t do it again. A peculiar unreality shadowed her every step. Maybe this was all real, or maybe it wasn’t, or maybe she never existed at all except in the mind of a traumatized boy, but she was almost out of rice and the prospect of ruminating on her own thoughts in an empty room made her want to pluck off her fingernails.
She came back to the present with a lurch and a hand on her shoulder. The air conditioning jolted to life, humming almost pleasantly and filling the hall with white noise and cold. Her skin prickled.
“Taro?” The hand was warm, but she still jolted in her skin. It lifted a second later. Part of her wanted to pull it back down and pretend it was somebody she knew. She turned around.
The woman was tall- compared to her, at least. Soft brown hair, dark blue scrubs. She looked toned; in one of their fumbling conversations, she admitted to being a former martial artist. “Mitsuzuri?” A slurry of emotions scrunched her face, but she couldn’t identify a single one.
“Let’s get you back upstairs.” That one she recognized as disappointment . Her chest tightened until it felt ready to burst. She looked away. Her desperate scramble for approval was dumb and childish and she blamed the body’s original owner.
Mitsuzuri grabbed her hand. It completely engulfed her own.
The nurse maneuvered them through winding hallways and scrambling medical staff to an elevator. The hustle and bustle formed a blanket of white noise that made it hard to think.
The pediatric ward was quieter , at least when the other children didn’t scream themselves awake or get too enthusiastic during scheduled recreation. Here, it was easier to see the frantic mess for what it truly was- a desperate attempt to bring order and safety to more people than they could realistically handle.
Her issues seemed so small in comparison. Keeping her there seemed like a waste of resources.
She made to grab her finger, only to realize it was already being held. Her right hand twitched uselessly at her side. Mitsuzuri gave her an odd look, pressing the ‘up’ button with a ding .
The company was weird, for lack of a better descriptor. The nurse’s age felt both close and impossibly far from her own. She was pretty sure even her real self would’ve found her cool, though. The two of them loaded wordlessly into the elevator, along with a doctor and a couple of residents. The graduates looked as dead as she felt. She caught one of their eyes for a moment- something was shared, then. A commiseration of exhaustion and a bone-deep refusal to drop until there was nothing left they could do.
She respected it. She nodded in their direction, and before they could catch themselves, they nodded back.
“Oh, Taro.” It took her a moment to realize that the statement was directed at her. She turned up, squinting in the elevator’s harsh fluorescent light. “Someone came by to see you.”
Ruminating on the thought, it was probably when she wandered downstairs. But she didn’t know anyone, really, or even speak Japanese. She wondered if one of Yamada Taro’s relatives had crawled out of the woodwork.
Was it crueler to wish the body was an orphan or was it crueler to tell his family that she was possibly responsible for killing a child and wearing its corpse? Even before , people and relationships were things to be abstracted, but not fully understood. If emotions were something that could be observed from a distance, something that could be measured and sorted, maybe she’d know what to do.
Instead, she was left wondering. Why? How? Nothing made any sense, and the frazzled routine she’d settled into was the only bulwark standing between her and something unknown.
She wanted to curl up somewhere dark. Pick through the travesty’s tangled threads in her own time, in a place where she was utterly and blessedly alone.
The elevator dinged.
Mitsuzuri was still waiting for a response. It’d been nearly a full minute, and all she had the energy to do was stare blankly.
“Okay,” she spoke up after a moment, thinking nothing of it. How could she? The nurse hummed, squeezing her hand to guide her back through the pediatric ward.
“Visitor’s hours end in five minutes.” The upturn in her voice meant she probably wanted another response. “Would you like to see him? I’ll be in the room with you, and if he makes you uncomfortable, just let me know and he can leave.” Briefly, the two of them made eye contact. In that moment, something passed between them- an uncomfortably warm sensation squirmed beneath her rib cage. She couldn’t label her feelings, much less these ones, but they almost felt like a mockery.
Was it normal to feel bad about feeling good?
Mitsuzuri squeezed her hand again. She- Taro, whoever- nodded. They had no connection beyond patient and medical caretaker, but she was fairly certain that the nurse’s desire to help wasn’t restricted to her occupation.
They approached the playroom past the nurse’s station. The absence of the daytime’s frenetic activity had turned it into an uncanny liminal space. Toys, books, and the like had been packed away. The weirdly-vintage television was off, and the remote was nowhere to be seen.
She dragged her footsteps. The non-slip socks squeaked.
“I-” she caught the words in her throat before they fell out, but the question wouldn’t leave her alone. She paused. Something was oddly intimate about voicing her innermost thoughts. If she shared them, if she spoke up with a voice that could be heard and understood, then they didn’t only belong to her anymore. “Why do you…” the Japanese was stilted. She switched to English. “Don’t you get tired of helping?”
The two of them stopped. The older woman tilted her head after a second. The mechanical drone of a wall-mounted cooler blared to life. At that, the corners of Mitsuzuri’s lips twitched upwards. She responded in English that was a great deal more coherent than her stuttering, rambling attempts at Japanese.
“Yes.” Her confusion must’ve been palpable, because the nurse continued before she could get a word in edgewise. “It can be scary when people are hurt. I like to think, though, that just being there for someone and saying ‘I got you’ in their hardest times can give them the strength to keep going. It’s the small things that help people get better- slowly, and with things that we might not think make a difference.” She coughed lightly, covering her mouth with her other hand. Her face dusted a light shade of pink. “That’s what I believe, anyway.”
The words were strong, laced with convictions that went deeper than Mitsuzuri would likely ever show.
Her chest still twinged unpleasantly.
But why, she wanted to ask, did you help me?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Her first impression of the stranger: he was unimpressive.
His outfit would’ve been fancy if he took good care of it; the button-up was wrinkled and half-untucked, the slacks had a stain towards the ankle that she doubted he knew about, the loafers were so scuffed that they hardly resembled their original color.
Each article of clothing was colored black. Combined with a strong five o’clock from the previous week’s shadow, he looked less like a businessman and more like he was homeless.
His eyes were partially obscured by his hair- predictably as dark and shaggy as his sense of style- but it was nearly impossible to miss how happy he looked.
She glanced to the corner, eyeing Mitsuzuri before looking down.
They probably wouldn’t have let him in if he was actually homeless, right? He wasn’t, like, on anything. Probably.
The two of them sat on stiff plastic chairs that came up to her knees. The table was a bit taller, though that wasn’t saying much. Little loops of wire arced above its wooden surface, each one carrying round wooden beads painted in bright primary colors.
It was oddly nostalgic, but not enough for her to forget she was a seven-year-old boy in another country.
The silence grew longer and more uncomfortable. She only spoke up first because the anticipatory dread of interaction was somehow less weird than sitting in silence with this man. “...’llo.” Something flashed in rapid succession across his face- she couldn’t identify what he was feeling, only that he was feeling a lot .
“Hello, Shirou.” he spoke thickly, “Do you remember me?” The sound of his voice was hoarse and soft-spoken. It wasn’t like Mitsuzuri’s. She’d wager it wasn’t like hers, either, but she didn’t know enough about how she- the body, it wasn’t hers- sounded to contest the point.
A moment passed before she realized he wanted a response. It took another moment for her to find the right words.
“No.” his face fell. “Who’s Shirou?”
He paused, and his face again twitched. “You are.” he said it with certainty. Did he know the person, the body beforehand? “You told me your name after I pulled you from the fire.”
Did she? Did… he ?
The name Shirou didn’t have any more meaning than Yamada Taro. There wasn’t any flash of recognition, no deeply buried instinct that this was what she was supposed to be called. After the thought had run its course, she held up the plastic wristband for emphasis. Look, she gestured, shoving her wrist forward.
His face did something funny again. It looked like a wince. “Yamada Taro isn’t a real name.” But wasn’t it? That’s what they called her. She waited for elaboration. “It’s a placeholder. Doctors use it if they don’t know your name.” The realization came as she took time to process the words.
Like John Doe ?
“I- yes,” he said, and then- “you speak English?”
The conversation changed languages just like that. His accent was hard to place, but she didn’t think it came from the United States. She nodded, head tilted sideways as she tried to formulate a response.
“...” she couldn’t say that she just woke up here. Who’d believe something like that? She picked at the joints of her fingers. “My mom’s American.”
It was believable, right? Surely bright red hair wasn’t that common in Japanese youths.
The look she received seemed more scrutinizing than anything. She made a mental comparison to being under a magnifying glass.
She wriggled in place. Suddenly, the plastic chair was a lot less comfortable. He sighed, and she didn’t feel the tension leave her spine until he relaxed, too.
“My name is Emiya Kiritsugu,” he introduced. She didn’t recognize that name any more than she recognized Shirou. Something nearly imperceptible tensed in his posture, but his face didn’t move. “It may sound sudden, but would you rather go to an orphanage, or be adopted by a man you just met?”
It took her about half a minute to process what he proposed. His slipshod appearance, his confusing demeanor, and the utterly abrupt nature of his offer twisted into a tangle of knots that made it difficult to respond.
She looked to the table, absently tracing wooden whorls with her index finger.
By all means, she should have said no. Kiritsugu was sketchy, apparently familiar with whoever this body was before (if only in passing), and just… Kind of seemed like a loser.
She would’ve liked to say she carefully thought this through. Maybe that she weighed the pros and cons, or found the prospect of the unknown more terrifying than sticking with a weird- but seemingly nice enough- stranger.
In reality, she thought back to the expressions he wore when he first met her for real.
The one that stood out to her- the one that stayed with her- was joy . He was happy, for no other reason than the fact that she was alive. And she couldn’t stop herself from thinking: when was the last time someone looked at me like that?
When was…
…
…She thought about what Nurse Mitsuzuri said earlier. At that moment, she didn’t think she could have said no.
I want to make other people feel like that. I want to feel like that.
All of a sudden, adoption didn’t feel like a betrayal of the people who raised her. More than one person could share the same name. Even if she wasn’t the same Shirou he thought she was, they didn’t seem to know each other anyway- it wouldn’t be a serious lie if she just called herself as such, right?
Please don’t leave me behind.
She- Shirou- made her decision.
“...I’ll go with you.”