Effecting Fate: Was I successful?

I wrote this because I found it depressing at how so many people wrote Shirou. That by the time he dies, he’s just Archer. Depressed and jaded, believing he’s wasted his life. I dislike that view, and it’s absolutely not the only path.

I plan on putting this somewhere in Effecting Fate. Or, a variation of it. Just not entirely sure when/where. References to the Church’s betrayal is also mentioned, and more details of that can be found in another story here on my patreon - “Taiga finds out”.

Please let me know what you guys think!

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What defined a life as 'successful'? 

Philosophy was hardly something that Shirou indulged in often. Especially when the question was one that was as debated as this.

For better or worse, Shirou tended to boil it down to a slightly different question: Was a person happy? 

Everybody, whether they were considered ‘good’ or ‘evil’ did what they did for their own reasons. Yet despite that, when one got to the root of those reasons, it was usually that 'they wanted to be happy'.

Shirou was no different. Nor was Rin, nor any other person in the world. Their differences lay in what it was that made them person happy. 

Shirou’s goal, the thing he strove for (besides to be reunited with Saber of course), was to help other people. For years, that has been his goal. He remembered saying to others how he would ‘become a hero of justice that could save everybody’.

But what did that mean exactly?

Rin, in a bid to change his course, had once told him that ‘The World’ was just another name for everything that mattered, and that trying to control anything that wasn’t part of Your World was a waste of energy.

Shirou had spent a lot of time thinking of that statement before acknowledging that there was some merit to it.

Take an example - let’s say you stubbed your toe.

At that moment, around the world, there were numerous people suffering in one way or another. Starvation, sickness, terrorism… Afflictions considerably worse than a stubbed toe. Yet in the moment of stubbing your toe, that becomes more important to you, simply because it is a part of Your World, and those other travesties aren’t.

Not to say that you don’t care about them, but despite their suffering being greater they are much farther down on your priority list.

That was simply human nature.

Now, that might be a more extreme example, but Shirou would acknowledged the truth in it.

He had once stopped a magus from infecting a town that would have killed 90% of its population, while leaving the remaining 10% in a state worse than death. Yet despite the amount of people he had saved and the suffering he prevented, he had felt more when he finally managed to save Sakura from her grandfather.

It wasn’t that he felt nothing by saving the town. On the contrary, he was beyond grateful he managed to make it in time.

Yet to use Rin’s example, they weren’t a part of ‘His World’, Sakura was. Thus, saving Sakura meant more to him than saving that town.

It was at this point that Shirou’s thought process diverted from Rin’s, much to her exasperation.

Where Rin had kept her World small - to three or four people she would call friend - Shirou decided to expand his World.

That’s… Not to say it was easy. It wasn’t. But he allowed himself to get to know the people he helped. And for them to get to know him.

There was Sophia, a magus that specialized in alchemy. Once Shirou had realized that alchemy could be used to create cooking ingredients - and that he was rather poor at alchemy himself unless it involved metal - he tried to bring an alchemist on less dangerous missions. Sophia was the most frequent volunteer.

Then there was Olivia. A housewife with three children, she ran a soup kitchen he enjoyed assisting with. He had first met her when he rescued her from a mugger, and she realized he was wounded (a chimera he had been hunting got a good blow in just before meeting her) and she bullied him into letting her help him.

Shirou had a great deal of respect for the woman, as despite how busy she was, the struggles she had gone through in her life, she still managed to take the time to help others.

Sato, a giant of a highschooler Shirou had met in Mexico. Shirou had been ‘cornered’ by a gang at one point. There had been zero danger at the time as they attempted to mug him, but Shirou was surprised when this large boy saw what was happening and stepped in to help. After the dust settled, Shirou had had to help the kid bandage his injuries, and afterwards had taught him how to actually fight. They kept up a light correspondence after that.

Inspector Krieger had been a lucky encounter for the both of them. A detective that dug too deep into a case that ended with a Dead Apostle. When Shirou killed the apostle, Krieger had been one of the survivors that had been taken hostage.

The inspector would occasionally call Shirou and ask for assistance regarding cases that felt more along the lines of the supernatural, and Shirou would ask for advice on his own investigations. In the end, they had a mutual respect for each other.

Little Ritsuka had been found in a bombed out town in Ukraine. She was just a child, not even ten, and yet everybody she had known had died in front of her. When Ritsuka first saw Shirou, she had thrown herself at him and clung to his pants, sobbing in relief that somebody had found her.

The parallels to himself were painful to witness.

The orphanages were overflowing, and Ritsuka practically had a panic attack whenever Shirou wasn’t around. More than anything, she needed stability, so Shirou took her with him.

Taiga had been thrilled to adapt the little girl when Shirou brought her.

He actually saw a lot of Ritsuka in Tabitha. Not that he needed a reason to save somebody, but if he did that would have been it.

Pino, Noki, and Kio Gepetto were three brothers - triplets actually. Eccentric yet brilliant scientists and inventors, the three had discovered a Phantasmal Beast trapped in the ice in Antarctica. And by ‘discovered’, he meant they found it when their excavations accidentally released it. They were actually crucial in helping Shirou find it so he could kill it.

They had no issues with promising their silence, so long as Shirou could tell them ‘everything he knew about magic’. They even asked him if he could cast a geas on them to that effect, just so they could feel what it was like.

He couldn’t, just to be clear. But he knew somebody that could.

Shirou actually introduced those three to Rin. After she had finished calling him an idiot in as many variations as she could think of, she reluctantly admitted that their theories ‘had potential’ despite them not being magus’ themselves.

There were others. Some became close friends, others were merely acquaintances. Either way, they became part of his World.

Rin was furious with his interpretation of her words when she found out, but it wasn’t like she had room to argue.

His main introduction to Rin had been her straight up admitting she was his enemy, her wanting to fight him so she could take Saber and his Command Seals, and then hypnotizing him to make him forget any of that ever happened. Maybe even all knowledge of magecraft from him - she had been pretty upset to realize a magus had been living in her territory without her knowledge.

If Shirou were to abide by her interpretation, they would never have become friends, and yet his friendship with her was one that he treasured.

Also, having more people in your World helped so they couldn’t all be taken away from you at once.

Rin and Sakura…

Shirou thought it horribly ironic that Rin would constantly berate him for actions that she considered foolish, but would refuse to acknowledge any of her own actions as such.

Like accepting an apprenticeship into one of the most dangerous fields of magic under The Wizard Marshal himself. Somebody whose previous apprentices all either died or went insane.

‘To be a magus was to walk with death.’ That was the phrase every magus was told since before their first spell. But just because you were walking with death didn’t mean you had to spit in its face and taunt it as well!

Shirou never did learn what happened to Rin and Sakura. Zelretch only laughed and said they weren’t dead yet. Which, when you were talking about parallel universes… did that mean anything?

Of course, then the events with the Church happened, and he wasn’t able to visit the Clocktower again after that.

Failing the mission, being chosen as the scapegoat for the church, had hurt. But for it to happen on the heels of losing Rin and Sakura had been agonizing.

The fact that Arturia was waiting for him had been one of the few things that kept him going. That there were still people he cared about had been another.

There were downsides to this of course.

Shirou had been met with his fair share of backstabbing and being taken advantage of. He had experience with loss when a friend either drifted away or died.

Shirou’s desire had been to save everybody. In that, he failed. And yet… He was fine with that.

He had always known it was an impossible goal. So how could he be upset at something he knew would happen? It was still something he strove towards. And in doing so, while he hadn’t saved everybody, he managed to save many people.

Poor Ritsuka had had PTSD and night terrors after what happened to her. It used to be that she couldn’t stop shaking unless she knew Shirou was nearby. But over the years, he had the pleasure to see her grow into a fine woman, overcoming her previous struggles to the point where she was able to go off on her own to an internship all the way in Antarctica for a few years,  eventually coming back to inherit Taiga’s position.

By the time Inspector Krieger retired, he had broken the record for cold cases solved. And that wasn’t even counting the number of cases that would never be officially solved. He lived peacefully with his wife after that.

Pino, Noki, and Kio went on to publish scientific theories that were centuries ahead of their time. They never mentioned magecraft, but it would have been clear to any magus where their inspiration came from. Luckily, most magus’ had trouble with just a cell phone. Shirou was sure they were safe.

In fact, many of their published ideas had been crucial to the development of Element Zero and its interaction with the human body, thus leading to the creation of biotics.

Olivia died one day to natural causes, but surrounded by friends and family and a smile on her face. Her soup kitchen had been small, and in truth it had little impact, but it still had fed thousands of hungry people. After her death, her children took up the task of keeping the soup kitchen going.

Sato went into law, of all things. Shirou was suspicious, as the decision seemed to come right after Shirou had been declared the number one terrorist. But the kid seemed to enjoy it, so who was he to argue?

These people were proof that while he had failed to save ‘everybody’, there were many he had saved.

If Shirou were ever asked if he was happy in his previous life, even if you didn’t take into account that he managed to find Arturia… Shirou would say yes.

As it was, since Shirou had managed to find Arturia, he couldn’t imagine himself being any happier.