Author's Note: So. A few days ago I was talkin' to Beams, as we are wont to do. And I had been noticing some major upswings in my mood lately, and with them, the desire to start writing once again. So, just in general to thank her for being the best pal I've ever had, I asked her, "Do you have any requests you'd like filled that nobody else has? Anything you'd like to see me try?"
I admit, I was all ready to start writing 'Lesbianworld: The Mysterious Story of the Virus that Turned Everyone into Women and Made them All Gay'. But in fact, she asked for Shirou/Ayaka! Who would have guessed?
So here we go. Beams... enjoy.
'Still in the Oven'Ayaka Sajyou fell to all fours, nearly displacing the bandages around her hands, and sobbed in exhaustion.
The room was not well ventilated, and as a consequence was thick with the smell of sweat and blood. The stains on the floor told a tale to any who understood the language; a circle, drawn, erased, and re-drawn a dozen times, all in a thick red liquid that did not handle erasure well.
It had to be perfect, or the spell would not work. It had to be perfect, or her father would stare at her, for the thousandth time in her brief existence, as though she had somehow insulted him just by being born. It had to be perfect, because Manaka would have gotten it completely right on the very first try and Ayaka was worthless if she was unable to follow in her footsteps.
It had to be perfect, but it just wasn't.
You're just not good enough. You never have been, and you never will be. I don't even know why you bother to try. Said her father's voice in her mind. He had never actually spoken those words to her, of course, never put it so very, very bluntly, but he might as well have. He said them with every dismissal, every action that showed her on a daily basis that she wasn't worthy of his attention.
She let out another short, breathless sob, and pounded her tiny fist into the concrete. “Why. Won't. It. Work?!”
“I don't know, but it all looks very complicated. Maybe you should take a break?” Said a young boy's voice.
Ayaka let out an undignified squawk that her sister would have very politely mocked her for, and jumped to her feet. It was...
Ah.
A few weeks before, her father had brought a young boy, just a few months older than herself, to meet her. Manaka had been stuck in the lab for the day, and so Ayaka had been left alone to entertain the guest while her father had talked business of some sort Ayaka didn't truly understand with his own father.
The boy had been... odd.
“S-Shirou, right?” She asked somewhat shakily, her mind clouded by both exhaustion and confusion. “How... how did you...?”
“I came to visit.” Shirou said, sounding almost proud of this, though for the life of her Ayaka couldn't tell why. “Your father let me in and told me where to find you.”
“I... see...” Ayaka said. This did not improve her feelings; her father wouldn't have allowed a virtual stranger to interrupt her training if he had seen any sort of point in her doing the training. Just one more little way he showed how worthless he found her to b-
“I brought cookies!” Shirou said, cutting off her reverie to hold up a small cloth bag with a picture of a ridiculously smiling cartoon tiger on it. Once again with pride whose source Ayaka couldn't quite see, he asked, “Want some? They're really good!”
“You... what.”
“Cookies.” Shirou said, and Ayaka noticed he raised his voice slightly, as if he thought the problem was that she somehow couldn't hear him. “I brought them. For you. To have.”
“...”
“You seemed like you didn't get many sweets.” Shirou said.
Despite herself, she let out a small, tired chuckle. “Well... I... no. Not really.”
“Then you can have these! I made them myself.” He said. Then, his smile fading somewhat, he said, “Um... Fuji-nee gave me a lot of help, so they might not be any good.”
"I... thought you said they were really good."
"Yeah, I... well, I was trying to make them sound good so you would smile and... yeah. They might have been good if Fuji-nee hadn't... helped..."
“... so, you're so bad a cook that you can't make them even with help?” Ayaka asked. It was mean of her, she knew, but she was tired and in more than a little pain, and the boy seemed totally oblivious. She was justified in being a bit snippy.
“Other way around,” Shirou muttered. Taiga seemed to be biologically incapable of telling the difference between salt and sugar. Or the difference between vanilla extract and soy sauce. Or the difference between the minute button on the oven and the hour button. Or...
“Fuji-nee has a unique brand of help that I feel clashes with my cooking style.” Shirou said diplomatically.
Despite herself, Ayaka laughed again, more genuinely this time. “You sound like an old man. Are you sure you're my age?”
Shirou pondered this. “Not really. A lot of things from before Kiritsugu took me in are fuzzy. But we look about the same age.”
“... … you're weird.” Ayaka said, shaking her head.
“Does that mean you don't want the cookies?”
Ayaka sighed. He meant well, which made it hard to be angry at him. But she was also in the middle of something here, and if he couldn't get it through his head, she would have to be blunt with him. “Look. I'm in the middle of important training. I have to do this. I have to finish it. I can't afford to be taking breaks, or...”
“Why?”
“Because if I start slacking off, my sister will get even further ahead in her studies! I'm already probably never gonna catch up, she's best at everything, so I need to work twice as hard, or papa will...”
“No, I mean why do you need to do it at all?” Shirou asked blankly. “I mean... you were crying. And you're hurt. You obviously hate doing this. And your family, if they love you, they wouldn't force you too. Right?”
Ayaka stopped dead, her tiny jaw dropping. How could he... why would he...?! “You... you... you!” She began, unable to get even a complete sentence out amidst her childish rage. “What would you know?! Papa... papa said your father won't even let you try! He said he's soft, and coddles you, and you'll never be a real Magus because of it! But my papa, even though Manaka is the heir, teaches me! Lets me study and work hard and train, and someday... someday...!”
“You'll die?” Shirou asked.
Ayaka blinked, her rage popped like a balloon. The boy in front of her was the same one who had walked into the room, she was sure, but suddenly his eyes looked very, very old. “What... what did you say?”
“Someday you'll try too hard and you'll die, and that will prove to your papa that you were good?” Shirou asked.
“N-no...”
“My father said something about your father too.” Shirou said. “He said, 'That man is a True Magus, Shirou. Someone who treats their family like a weapon. You saw the girls... the scars, the haunted eyes. You know why? Because he works them to the bone every day. No friends, no real connection to anyone outside their family, only leaving the house enough to keep up appearances. Each child is just another expendable bullet in the gun named 'Sajyou'. I respect his power, and I respect his strength of will. But it has been many, many years since I have had any desire at all to be like him. And that is why I will not teach you magecraft. Because what you do with your life should be your own choice.'”
Ayaka was very, very silent.
“It just made a lot of sense to me.” Shirou said. “And if I should get to choose, so should you, because... well... because...”
The boy's voice trailed off. Ayaka was, at the moment, a bit too stunned to be impatient, so she just let him gather his thoughts in silence.
“... because you looked really nice when you smiled.” Shirou said.
“... what.”
“You... you smiled at me last time I was here. I think you were just being a polite host, because it was just once, just for a second. But you smiled. And it was nice.” Shirou said, blushing furiously. In sharp contrast to that hidden, surprisingly mature solemnity he'd displayed before, his tone now was jumpy and frantic. “I, um, I just thought about it a lot, especially after what Kiritsugu said. That, well... if you never got to smile normally, but you got to smile when I was there, I thought... that I should... be there. More often. For you. To smile at.”
Ayaka blinked a few more times. She wasn't used to this sort of speechlessness, but then... she also wasn't used to having someone to be speechless at.
“... Would you like the cookies now?” Shirou asked, trying his very hardest not to look her in the eyes. His face was as red as his hair.
“Heh.”
“... Hey, did you just...”
“Heeheeheehee... hahahahaha!” Ayaka laughed, doubling over in helpless giggles. “Y-you! The look on your... heeeheeheehee! L-like a lost puppy!”
“... I was just trying to be nice. You didn't have to make fun of me.” Shirou muttered.
“N-no, I...” Ayaka said, gasping for air. “I'm not. You're... you're silly. But not bad. I'm not making fun of you, I promise.”
“You're laughing a lot for someone who isn't makin' fun of me.” Shirou said, his posture suggesting he was preparing to sprint from the room if needed.
Ayaka shook her head. He was a weird kid. He was crazy, and sometimes he talked like an old man and sometimes he talked like a baby, and he couldn't seem to decide if he liked her or if he was scared of her.
But he was the first person she'd met in her entire short nine years who had cared if she smiled or not. Who wanted her to be happy, and for no particular reason, even. He didn't even know her, and he wanted her to be happy. And that was... it made her feel oddly warm inside. So clearly she had to do something in return.
… Just as a Magus, of course. She couldn't be in debt, obviously. That was the only reason.
As a gesture of peace, Ayaka held out her hand. “Gimme the cookies.”
Shirou set the little tiger bag in her open hand. “Um, if you're sure. Again, they... might not be any good. So be careful. Try to nibble on one before you...”
Without a word, Ayaka slipped a cookie from the bag and popped it into her mouth.
She regretted this.
The cookie was... well, it wasn't so much that it was horrible, as that it very aggressively wasn't cookie. Ayaka rarely got sweets, given her home situation, but she knew what a cookie should taste like. Cookies should be, depending on ingredients, crunchy or soft, and pretty much exclusively sweet. There was no world in which a cookie should be gritty... no, slimy. Gritty and slimy? That made no sense. And a cookie, at least one with chocolate chips in it, should most likely not be spicy. Or, if there was a spice at work, that spice should be cinnamon, possibly ginger. Not, under any circumstances, should such a spice be what Ayaka deeply feared was wasabi.
She didn't hack the cookie up, but it was a close thing. She felt she was going to choke, her stomach rebelled at the foreign matter entering it, her eyes watered.
“Your expression tells me a lot about the taste.” Shirou said, sighing sadly. “Darn it, Fuji-nee..."
Ayaka took a deep breath. “It's. Good.” She gasped out, and took another out of the bag.
Shirou's eyes widened. “W-what?! You don't have to eat th-” he began, reaching for the bag in her hands. Ayaka swatted him away.
“No. You made them for me, and I'm gonna eat them.” She muttered, trying to work up the courage to bite into a second cookie. She was a Magus and she would not be beaten by baked goods. Maybe... maybe if she broke it into pieces and swallowed them without chewing?
“... and you say I'm weird...?” Shirou muttered as she took a bite.
***
Ayaka stayed in bed most of the next day. She had eaten every last cookie, and that had been possibly an even bigger mistake than the flavor had suggested.
She couldn't be completely sure, but she thought that maybe her soul had briefly left her body after the fifth one.
Still, half a bottle of stomach medicine, a few hours purging, and a day in bed seemed to have dealt with the worst symptoms. She was left now with a kind of general numb feeling and the feeling she might never eat again, but it could have been worse. And, she thought wryly, it's not as though anyone cares if I spend the day in bed.
Something tapped on her window.
Blinking in confusion, she got out of bed (Just a little dizzy!) and walked to the window. Another tap sounded before she could get the curtain open and the window open, but she looked outside to find a small red-haired boy with a handful of pebbles... and on the ground next to his feet, a tiny cloth sack.
“Don't run away!” Shirou said frantically, as soon as he saw her. “Fuji-nee didn't help with these ones, I swear! I just... well, I wanted to make up for yesterday, and so I waited until she went home and worked all night and I'm sure they'll be good this time and I'm really sorry so don't be angry 'cause I don't wanna make you angry 'cause you're nice and...”
He was cut off by the sound of Ayaka's giggling. “You... you really are crazy, you know that?”
Shirou stopped to consider this. “Um... well, I guess as long as you don't mind, that's okay?”
Ayaka shook her head. He was a strange boy, and he didn't make sense, and half the time nothing he did matched up to anything else.
But he made her smile. Sometimes even on purpose.
And she was starting to find she didn't mind that.
“I'll be right down,” She said, grabbing her bath robe.
She wasn't terribly hungry, but surely one or two little cookies couldn't hurt, right?
Originally Posted by LeopardBear
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