that's hell you're walking into

Hairu was not off put by his sudden casual behavior, nor the contact he created between the two of them. She, too, was someone who often struggled with being overly friendly with others, so Shirou’s actions felt perfectly normal to a weirdo like herself.

“Eh? Really, you’ll really show me?”

Her eyes sparkled with a pure light, and she easily matched the grip he had on her hands. Her perceptions were skewed– asking a boy she had just met to teach her how to cook, thinking that someone like herself could do anything that a so-called traditional housewife could. She was delusional, and didn’t even realize it.

“I’m a quick learner, I swear!”

“Please show me how to cook, I want to be able to make really delicious food!”

Hairu, of course, did not even notice the people that happened to stare at two people making a scene in a grocery store. She was unable to notice that she, herself, was complicit in it all, so how could she notice on-lookers?

Shirou had brought her all the way back to his apartment. He remembered the first time he started teaching Sakura to cook. Back then his kitchen was never empty. He pulled open a drawer and started to gather supplies. 

“The first thing I’m going to teach you how to do is cut vegetables.”

Shirou set up a cutting board, and pulled out the fresh carrots he had bought for Hairu. He cut through them all without even looking. Shirou was the exact opposite of a genius when it came to everything else but cooking. 

"I’m a slow learner but even I got good at cooking. You take this, and start chopping vegetables while I prepare some other things for you.” 

Mukuro blinked.

That… wasn’t very nice of you.

But that was it? Nothing more/ No looking at her like a louse? No glares? No spitting?

How awful am I? Was she not even capable of surprising someone with how awful she was? Did she wear her awfulness on her skin? 

“I wanted to make Junko happy,” Mukuro managed, tearful. “I didn’t care about them.”

She wished she could. She wished she could be a normal girl. A good girl. 

She wished she could care, so she could be cared for. 

Shirou never in his life felt like crying.

When he lost his parents. When Kiritsugu closed his eyes for the last time. When his arm was mangled by a chain. When the flesh of his skin ripped. When he looked down at his side and there was a chunk missing. 

He never thought it was worth crying over. For the first time Shirou wanted to cry. The thought of Mukuro alone all that time, he choked, gasping for breath, but he was fundamentally unable to. He wished he could cry because Mukuro herself could not cry over her life.

He leaned forward until his forehead was pressed against hers.

“What about me?” 

He asked. His voice was quiet. He didn’t know what he felt. He didn’t know. But he wanted to know her feelings. He needed to know. He didn’t know how he felt about her, but if she felt nothing for him he might stop existing in the next few seconds. 

“Oh,” Hairu responded. She supposed that made sense. If no one was there to teach you, you learned yourself. So, then why couldn’t she do things no one had taught her? Was she not trying enough?

He smiled, but Hairu was unsure if she should return the gesture. What expression was she wearing now? She tried to give him a forced, weak half-smile, but she knew it couldn’t compare to the nice, polite smile that he wore.

“A house wife…” Hairu echoed, still following the young man in front of her. What was being a house wife like, she thought, how different was it from being an investigator? Could she get that man’s attention if she could do things that a house wife could?

“You must be good at those things then, if people tell you that you are.”

“I wish I was good at that sort of stuff, too.”

“You can be good at it too!”

Shirou said, immediately taking her hands without thinking. He leaned in closer than he should, because he never noticed the distance between himself and other people. He wanted to be close to people. He got close without realizing. 

“I’ll always be by your side to help you.” 

Shirou had met this woman five minutes ago and he was already swearing this kind of thing. He was a little bit too desperate to help others. He just got too excited in the moment and took it way too far. He could feel her hands, despite how delicate they were, for some reason the underside was covered in scars. 

“I’ll make you a wife!”

Mukuro didn’t know what to say. She wondered how she would feel with a family who didn’t tell her how they felt. But could they otherwise show her they cared?

She could not imagine losing her sister. “I’m… sorry about your sister.” 

“I had… my sister,” Mukuro said. “She wanted to kill our classmates. So we did.”

She faced him, heart pounding, waiting for her judgement 

“Well, that wasn’t very nice of you.”

Shirou said, innocent, boyishly. But his smile was fake as always. Deep inside himself he made a promise he was going to kill Mukuro’s sister if he ever met her. Even if Mukuro did not forgive him, he had to protect her. 

She was the reason that Mukuro could not smile. 

Shirou felt just a little bit guilty that he had made up his mind so easily to betray someone so close to him. 

“Mukuro, I don’t think you wanted to kill them. You’re sad, aren’t you? You’re sad, you just don’t know how to show it.”

“Heh, I guess it comes with the territory of being married. Besides, it took me a long time to understand her enough for us to feel comfortable being together. Love is not an easy process, if you mean to take it with the weight it deserves.”

He would by no means consider himself an expert romance advisor. Battler is a dork when it comes to love and he is not afraid of admitting it. He knows that his overaffectionate style isn’t fit for everyone. Or rather, he developed said style due to Beatrice. Quite frankly, he has no idea of how a relationship with someone else would have turned out.

Still, he guesses that it wouldn’t hurt trying to help Shirou the way he can. “Sounds good to me! Why don’t we start this exchange program immediately, in fact? Go get yourself ready to make and teach me a recipe and I’ll think of stuff to ramble about. Ihihihi!!”

 Shirou was far too naive. He thought the best of everyone he met. So, he just assumed that Battler knew everything about love. It did not even occur to Shirou that both redheads might be equally clueless. 

Shirou picked up an apron and tied it around his waist. He definitely looked like he would make someone a good housewife one day. “Then, how about let’s start simple with a cake. What’s beatrice-san’s favorite kind of cake?” 

Midna could have watched him all day, honestly. Stood there with her arms crossed, eyes on the mop as it was flung about, an incredibly amused expression on her face. If she hadn’t wanted to not be caught, she might have laughed when she first saw it.

But she was caught anyway, so she laughed now instead.

“The janitor… and the royal-guard-to-be?”

“You didn’t need to let me interrupt your training.” That was all she was able to get out before he was fussing over her now. Midna was a bit taken aback by how immediately he disregarded his own work for her, a guest. But less in an ‘I’m touched’ way and more in a ‘Is this what Crow hired him to do?’ way.

“…You are incredibly subservient, you know?” He might even rival Link in that regard. “I had breakfast this morning, so no, I didn’t forget.”

Sure, that might have been like, ten hours ago, but still.

“…And what about me looks faint?”

“I can multi-task. I can be the world’s greatest hero and the world’s greatest janitor at the same time.” 

Shirou said, pouting just a little bit. He was constantly training to be a hero, but cooking and cleaning was the only thing he was good at. For some reason people needed him to cook for him more often than they needed him to defeat some evil with a sword, or rescue them. 

Subservient...?

He tilted his head. Shirou was the most stubborn person he knew, other than his own future self who was so stubborn he had a permanent mop stuck up his ass. He wasn’t doing this because he had been ordered to. Shirou had decided this all on his own. The only thing he wanted was to help other people. 

She could hear his heartbeats, echoing one at a time. Mukuro swallowed. The beat was a rocking rhythm to her, comforting and calm, as opposed to the chaotic music. 

She didn’t want to let go. She wanted to close her eyes. She wanted to–well, not sleep.

Rest.

“I don’t know my dad,” Mukuro said. “There were no boys. There was only–Junko. My sister. I had to protect her.” 

She wasn’t sure she had ever wondered. Or, if she had, she felt certain she had blotted it out of her mind.

‘What was your dad like? Did you have one?” 

“I had a family but they died in a fire when I was young - so that sucked.” 

Shirou was excellent at expressing his emotions as usual. It didn’t hurt. He did not even remember the family that he had lost. He was missing nothing. The only memories that stung him were those of ashen hands reaching out to him in the fire, begging him for help. 

“A man saved me from the fire and adopted me. He was well, he never let his feelings show on his face, and he was very distant, always going off somewhere. But I liked him.”

Shirou had no idea why he was telling her all this. He thought his own story was very boring. She wouldn’t care. There was nothing inside of him to care about. 

Mukuro’s face reddened. Was her failure that evident? She wasn’t used to struggling with anything physical. But her athletic ability didn’t translate into rhythm. 

“Oh–okay,” she stammered. She reached out, her arms wrapping around Shirou’s waist. Her face was probably the color of blood at this point. 

She had no idea what he meant by “no need to fight” anymore. He needed to be protected, if anything. She always had to fight. Even now, she was fighting herself.

I am no good for you.

I need to run. 

I should spare you.

But she liked the comfort of having someone’s arms around her. 

Shirou looked afraid to touch her for a moment. It was a mystery to him, how a girl who was so strong could look so fragile. He was just... a little bit embarrassed of his sudden forwardness.

Gah. I’m so lame.  He wanted Mukuro to be able to forget about her problems for a night. To go to the dance and laugh like a normal girl. Maybe, if Shirou were more of a normal boy he could have given her that. He didn’t want her to find out. He was scared. One day she might realize, how empty he was. 

That was why when he wrapped his arms around her, he ended up hugging her a little too tight. He held her head against his chest, as if afraid to let go. 

“Follow my steps okay...” 

Shirou said as he began to spin around with her. 

“So you’re dad didn’t teach you to dance or anything? There weren’t any boys you wanted to dance with? What did you do all day besides fight people?” 

@ferroics​

‘What kind of things have you fought before?’ Link was taking a break from their little sparring match, his legs swinging from the bench he was sitting on. ‘Everyone here has such different stories. I’m curious. I can tell you some of mine, in return.’

Suddenly, there was a young man by her side. Hairu had blinked, and he had appeared. It was strange, but Hairu was strange, too– so, she gave it little thought and accepted the red head’s presence. She silently listened, mouth agape in surprise. She wasn’t shocked at his appearance, no, but rather his advice. Could those things truly occur if she didn’t eat vegetables?

“Oh, no…”

She watched him, putting back all the things she had picked up at random. Were they really such bad choices?

“Cooking for someone else?” Now that he mentioned it, there was certainly someone in mind that she would like to try and make food for. Yet, Hairu knew that she was a terrible cook. “I… I can hardly cook for myself.”

She frowned.

“How do you know so much about this sort of thing?”

“That’s okay, it doesn’t matter if you’re terrible. I can just do everything for you.” 

Shirou said, smiling sweetly as he already began to push her cart away from the frozen food’s section. He did not even look back to see if she was keeping up with him, he just assumed he would. 

For Shirou the most important thing of all was helping people. He rarely stopped to ask whether or not they actually needed his help. This was different than getting in a fight with a heroic spirit several times more powerful for than him, because the kitchen was his battlefield. 

“I learned to cook, because there was somebody I wanted to come home and eat my cooking. He was always so far away from me...”

Shirou said, his smile not breaking even after he said something so gloomy. He was being a tad, too optimistic. 

“You’re welcome to, but you should be careful if you go into that vault; it’s not all human blood and some if it is quite special.” She watched him as he retrieved the bottle, then walked over to bring a glass down too. She had a fair idea where this was going. 

“Is that a particularly vampiric thing to do? Well, I have drank it from a wine glass before. The visual helps things not be too obvious if I’m at some sort of gathering or what have you.” One of her eyebrows raised ever so slightly. “I’ll bear that in mind.”

The moment he’d opened it she knew there was blood involved, and her assumption had been close enough to the mark. Crow reached for the glass after it was poured, swirling its thick contents a moment. The smell reminded her of Yharnam’s pungent cocktails. She closed her eyes as she took a swig, and though every time she drank blood it hit her with the same wave of powerful ecstasy, that delight didn’t make it to her features. 

“This is pretty interesting. And you managed to get it to ferment without just rotting? Well done, I like it.”

Then he asked more about her home. How unfortunate that her strongest memories of that place were its halls stained with blood and empty of people. She set the glass back down after a moment.

“I don’t really remember. I don’t really remember much of what happened before, only bits and pieces. The first change left my memories in tatters. But…” Her brow furrowed, just for a moment. “I don’t think I was a particularly nice person. A brat really, entitled. While that’s kind of you to say in a sense, you only really know the surface of it. I don’t consider myself the same person anymore, but that’s fine.” 

“I only know the surface of most things.” Shirou said with an innocent smile. He did not consider himself to be a very smart boy. Not just Crow, most people were a mystery to him. He just could not imagine how people could live filled with so many different emotions inside of them, like the clockworks of several different mechanisms. 

He could not even imagine it when he was so empty. His smile was just on the surface too. He just could not feel anything underneath it, even when he wanted to be happy and enjoy himself with his friends. 

“To be honest I don’t remember anything from my old life either. You know I used to be a normal kid, with a normal family? Then that kid died and I became me. It’s nothing to worry about.” 

Shirou casually shared this information as if the fire his childhood self had died in was no big deal to him at all. The only emotion he showed was a slight tightening of his fingers. As far as he was concerned though the Crow that stood in front of him was the only one that mattered. 

“I got the wine recipe from a ghoul. That’s how I got it to ferment. Be careful, you can really get drunk off of that stuff!” 

@ferroics​

It was obvious when someone was somewhere they probably ought not to have been. Someone might look nervous, or they may be dressed in a way that clashes with the environment. Whatever it may be, it was true that Hairu looked out of place in the grocery store. It was not because she was dressed in an odd manner, or that she wasn’t the type to shop at all– rather, Hairu was unsure of what to buy for herself, and so had filled her buggy with the most random of items. 

Even as she stopped, looking at frozen foods, Hairu stared with child-like eyes. Did she need frozen vegetables, despite the fact that she didn’t like to eat them? She had no idea, and so she stared, debating on whether or not to add something (or, many things) to her buggy.

“Hmm…”

Without anyone asking him to, Shirou Emiya was here to help. He leaned over the shoulder of the pink haired girl who looked absolutely clueless in the freezer section. Watching over her, Shirou immediately began to pass judgement. 

“You shouldn’t be any of these frozen meals. None of them are really healthy. You need a proper meal otherwise you can’t grow up big and strong. If you don’t get enough nutrition during the day, your mood will drop, and your complexion will grow worse. Your hair might start to fall out too if you’re not eating enough vegetables.”

Shirou hovered behind her and began to fuss, like a nagging mother. Before she even asked he started picking up food from her cart and putting it back on the shelf.