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Reyn volunteers to be on the first shift of guard duty at night while the group passes through Satorl Marsh.
The group takes shelter in the corners of the cliffs, where the big animals stray away from and only the smaller, inconsequential ones seem to pass through. Once everyone’s all wrapped up for the night and headed off to sleep, Reyn sits on the ground and watches out, eyeing every living being that might cross by. His weaponry lay next to Shulk, who lay on the ground closest to him, but he opts not to use it for these nights, since it’s rather noisy. The last thing he wants is to shoo away something only to have the metal and steel creak loud enough to wake everyone up anyways.
To be honest, he’s mixed on the place. On one hand, it’s sticky and hot during the day, it smells like dead plants and dirt, and there aren’t too many tucked away places to rest in, hence the fact that they need to establish a nightly guard duty in the first place. On the other, though, when the place lights up during the night and the temperature drops, Reyn thinks it’s the most beautiful place he’s ever seen. So, he doesn’t particularly mind staying up if it means he gets to see more of it.
There’s nothing else to really do on these nights but sit around and appreciate the sights, so that’s what Reyn does. Of course, he doesn’t ever talk about the fondness he has for the scenery— especially when it’s something as girly as appreciating nature. If you asked him about it, he’d probably moan and groan about all the bad qualities it had for laughs. But now, in his mind, he takes everything in, just stares out and thinks. Thinks that, even though the circumstances they arrived here under were grim, he’s glad he gets to see something like this.
Fiora would have loved to see this, too, I bet, Reyn thinks to himself. That thought isn’t unique, though— it’s the sort of thing that always runs through his mind wherever he and Shulk end up going. Whether it pops in out of sadness or guilt, he doesn’t know. Maybe it’s both. He’s never really asked Shulk if he thinks the same. Knowing him, he probably does, and would admit to it if Reyn asked, but it would definitely hurt him to acknowledge it aloud.
There’s a lot they don’t talk about. They’ve had their moments, sure. Mourned together, reminisced together, got angry together, even got angry at each other for not being able to communicate properly on a few occasions. But they’ve never… gone deeper than that. It’s the sort of barrier that neither of them want to cross. Instead, they’ve just skirted around or stopped discussions before they headed into more emotional territory. Reyn, because he wants to seem strong and he’s not particularly good with handling emotions, even if they are his best friend’s, and Shulk, because… well, Reyn doesn’t know. Afterall, he isn’t asking. He can guess it might be for the same reasons.
And Reyn knows that if Fiora were here, she would call the two of them idiots and demand that they have a real heart to heart. She would force them into a discussion if she had to— she could make them do something like that, because she was that kind of girl. But on their own… they just can’t have that discussion. The tell me how miserable you really feel, and I’ll tell you how miserable I really feel, and then we can support each other over it discussion.
So they don’t have it.
Reyn looks over to Shulk, only a few feet away, blanket over himself and grass in his hair. He falls asleep way too easily in comparison to everyone else, it’s almost impressive.
Memories of finding Shulk napping in unusual places makes Reyn chuckle to himself, finally bringing him out of the more unhappy thoughts of the past and back into the present. He shifts in his spot and rests his chin on his hand, his arm propped up on his crossed legs, and he continues his watch.
About forty minutes later, though, while Reyn is busy pondering over what they’ll catch for dinner the next day (they tend to just catch whatever they can on their travels and cook it over the campfire), he hears rustling come from behind him.
Thinking some pest managed to sneak up on the group, Reyn turns to shoo it away, but all he sees are his sleeping teammates. He squints to try and notice anything under the aquamarine glow of the marsh, and at first, he really doesn’t see anything. But then, the rustling continues, and Reyn finally notices that it’s really Shulk tossing and turning. Curious, he crawls over, wondering if his friend woke up, but is surprised to find him with his eyes still closed, face scrunched up. Was he not feeling well? Or maybe having a bad dream?
Before Reyn could think about it any longer, Shulk shoots upward.
The Monado wielder looks around their campsite frantically, blanket being squeezed in his fists under his chin. It takes a moment for him to process being back in reality, but when he does, he just lets out a shaky sigh. He looks over in Reyn’s direction for a moment, and recognition fills his face. “O-Oh, Reyn,” he mumbles. Then, he narrows his eyes. “Hey, were you watching me sleep or something?”
Reyn leans closer to him. “I mean, only for a second. You were rollin’ around ‘n whatnot,” he shrugs. He keeps his voice low so as to not wake everyone else around them.
Shulk looks down at the grass between them. “Is that so…”
“Shulk? You alright?” Reyn wraps an arm around him, keeping him upright.
He tilts his head onto Reyn’s shoulder. “Mn. Yeah. I’m fine,” he whispers. His breath is hot against his skin.
“Don’t really seem fine to me,” Reyn quips back. “You have a nightmare?”
Shulk nods. He doesn’t say anything more than that, but he doesn’t pull away from Reyn, either. In fact, he all but curls around him, using his closest arm to hold onto Reyn from the side. Almost like a caterpillar going into a cocoon or something, Reyn thinks.
Well, going back to sleep probably wouldn’t do him any good. So Reyn ruffles Shulk’s hair and smiles. “Wanna stay up with me for a bit?” He asks.
For a second, Shulk is silent. But then he looks up at his friend, eyebrow quirked, “You’re that bored?”
“I’m not bored. But if you’re gonna be awake, it doesn’t hurt to have you as company.”
So the two of them are on guard duty now. Reyn’s returned to his original spot, and Shulk’s joined him, blanket draped over him and Monado in his hands. Unlike the creaking of Reyn’s gunlance, the Monado was always silent, as if it didn’t exist in the first place, so it was a pretty valuable weapon when they needed to be quiet. Not that it wasn’t valuable enough already.
For a little while, they sit in silence. Reyn ponders over asking Shulk what his nightmare was about, in an attempt to make him feel better, but he doesn’t want to come off as being too pushy, and it’s not particularly his business anyways— and while Reyn is busy thinking that, he notices that Shulk’s begun to speak.
“It’s really pretty here at night, isn’t it?” He asks, bouncing the Monado in his hands. The glow it gives off is enough light to show Shulk’s face, which now has a small smile on it.
Reyn shrugs. “But during the day, it’s dreary as all hell. Not to mention humid...”
Shulk nods, not losing his smile. “Yeah, that’s true. Still, it’s nice, though.” He looks over to Reyn. “Might be my favorite place we’ve seen so far. But there’s still a long way to go, so that could change.”
A fly buzzes by Reyn’s face, and he swats it away. “Yup. Still a long way…” He mumbles. Maybe the next area wouldn’t have all these annoying little gnats in them.
“We’ve gotten farther than I expected, if I can be honest,” Shulk says. He quickly adds to that statement, possibly embarrassed. “Not that I think either of us set out expecting to fail, but…”
Well, Reyn doesn’t really disagree. When they had decided to take revenge for Fiora, it was a trip they prepared for, but it was also a trip based on emotion. Reyn had been confident the two of them could do something , but, at the same time, there was a part of him that was still in disbelief at the whole scenario. It still felt unreal. “I get you,” is all he says in response.
A beat goes by without words.
“What do you think Fiora would think about all of this?”
Reyn turns his head to look toward Shulk, who’s still smiling, but it’s different now. It’s a nervous tightening of the lips, the kind that comes before someone bursting into tears. After all this time has passed, Reyn thinks he’s cried enough for an entire century, but he doesn’t judge Shulk if he’s got a few more tears to shed.
Before they had set out, they had had a similar discussion, where Shulk had said Dunban told him Fiora died wanting to protect him and Colony 9. Wasn’t doing this kind of thing— putting themselves in danger, wanting to fight the very mechon that got her killed— going against that wish? Shulk had admitted there was part of him that thought so, but he still wanted to take revenge anyways, just like Reyn did.
So even now, it seems there are still doubts sowed in Shulk’s mind.
Reyn ponders it for a moment, as serious as he can be. “Well…” he muses, “if the situation were reversed somehow, and it were me instead—“
And Shulk spins his head around to glare at Reyn, “ Don’t say that. Don’t,” he all but cries, his voice bitter. The Monado in his grasp is lowered, so it touches the grass below them, the light now being directed to the ground. “I don’t even want to picture that—“
“I know, I know,” Reyn nods, putting a hand on his shoulder and pushing him back slightly. Any closer and Shulk would basically be pouncing on him, and that’s not what Reyn wants even, if the Monado can’t hurt him. “...But if that were the case, is what I’m saying. And if it were, I wouldn’t hold it against ya, either, no matter how dangerous of a trip it’d be. Hell, Fiora and you would be here instead, doing the same thing we’re doing now, I’d bet!”
Shulk stares at him, eyebrows furrowed. He doesn’t say anything— maybe because he’s in disbelief or because he just doesn’t know how to respond. The Monado is put down on the grass next to him, to the side, not in between the both of them.
“Afterall, we’re like three peas in a pod, yeah?” Reyn continues the conversation. “We think exactly the same. If it were you—“ he says it as an example, but thinking of Shulk ending up like that legitimately bothers him for a second, and he pauses mid sentence. He soon picks himself back up and pulls Shulk to his side, so his arm wrapped around his friend’s shoulders and his head lay on his chest. “If it were you, well, even if neither of us could wield the Monado, you’d bet we’d still go out to do the same thing, me and Fiora.”
“Yeah, well, you’d just be throwing your lives away. I wouldn’t want that,” Shulk grumbles. He doesn’t bother struggling out of Reyn’s grip, probably due to his (lack of) strength, so he allows himself to be held.
“We’d figure something out. Have a little faith in us, eh?”
On that kind of note— bringing in a joke to lighten the mood— their serious conversations would normally end. They’d move on to talking about something else, completely ignoring the past couple minutes. And that was how it always was.
But this time, Shulk tugs his blanket up, leans into Reyn more. It’s becoming more of an intimate gesture, but Reyn doesn’t mind it. Instead, he moves his arm down so his hand now rests at Shulk’s hip, giving Shulk more freedom to move around and get comfortable. He does that, eventually settling on resting his head against Reyn’s thigh.
“I dreamt about her,” Shulk mumbles, in a voice so low Reyn almost doesn’t hear it.
“Hmn?”
“Fiora,” Shulk clarifies. He keeps his cheek rested against Reyn, so he doesn’t have to turn up to make eye contact. “I dreamt about her, about that day, if you were wondering what all that was before. I… I dream about it a lot, actually.”
Reyn feels his heart drop. That certainly wasn’t good, but he wasn’t sure how to say that without sounding insensitive. He wasn’t good at this kind of thing, never has been, which was, again, one of the main reasons they had never had a deep conversation about any of this, so… He can only stare down at Shulk, dumbfounded, and stammer out, “Oh. Uh…”
Shulk brings a hand up to his face to scratch at it, then rests it on Reyn’s knee. “Sorry. I bet that’s probably not something you want to hear,” he sighs.
And hearing that just makes Reyn feel even worse about it all, which makes him realize he can’t keep putting this kind of talk off any longer. So, he quickly shakes his head even though Shulk can’t see it and protests. “U-Uhm, if you wanna talk about it, then…” he starts, his voice a little too loud out of nervousness, so he lowers it a bit, “you should. I’m not great at responding, but I at least can listen to you if… i-if ya need…”
A few beats go by without any words.
Still on his lap, Shulk turns his head up so he faces Reyn. When they lock eyes, Reyn can’t help but think of how tired Shulk looks, and not from the fact that he’s missing out on sleep time right about now. His eyes just seem so… lifeless, so done. It makes Reyn’s heart hurt.
“It’s the same thing every time,” Shulk starts, “I’ll forget somehow, that she’s gone, and the three of us hang out like old times. But no matter what, it all ends with… Metal Face and the mechon showing up, and I’ll remember everything in that instant, but it’s already too late.” He looks off to the side, which happens just to be Reyn’s stomach, but he keeps his stare there for the sake of not having to look up at his friend. “And I see her just… die. Every time, in front of me, and…”
“I feel like… I feel like a failure,” Shulk’s voice cracks, and Reyn feels like he’s about to die. “For not preventing it in the first place.”
Immediately, Reyn replies, “Come on. You’re not.” He knows just saying that probably won’t be enough, but he says it anyways.
Of course, Shulk just shakes his head. “I couldn’t even save her when the Monado gave me the chance… Even though I knew it was coming, I couldn’t do anything…!”
“Shulk…”
“I told Dunban I saw it, and he didn’t even care. He should hate me for that. I don’t know why he—!“
“Shulk.”
Reyn puts a hand to his friend’s head, silencing him. Gently, he brings his fingers through his hair, a motion he remembers his parents doing for him when he was as young as his mind went back to, hoping it’ll calm him down somewhat. It seems to for the moment, because Shulk turns to face back up, and his eyebrows aren’t furrowed, nor his teeth clenched. His eyes are half-lidded, and all he does is just stare up at Reyn, waiting for him to say something else.
“You’re losing yourself, man,” Reyn mumbles. His fingernails scratch Shulk’s scalp, and Shulk’s eyes droop even more. “No way Dunban’d hate you. He’s not that type of guy.” He wasn’t around when Shulk had spoken with Dunban, but Reyn knew enough about the former Monado wielder to know that it wasn’t like Dunban didn’t care. He was just much more mature, compared to the two of them— and he knew where the actual blame lay for Fiora’s death. If he steeled himself enough not to shed tears for his sister, to be able to move on, he wasn’t about to blow up on someone who felt guilty about her death.
Shulk’s eyes close completely. His lips quiver for a second.
“Don’t you hate me for it?” He asks, voice shaking, barely even a whisper at this point. “I saw her die, but I couldn’t stop it.“
It’s a serious inquiry, but Reyn scoffs at it involuntarily. “Uh, no? You’re not the one who killed her, Shulk,” he says. Feeling his tone is a little bit too joke-ish for the matter, though (and he has no idea why his nervousness ended up in him nearly laughing at something so serious), he readjusts himself and continues more seriously. “Listen. It doesn’t matter if you saw the future or not. Back then, you could barely even stand. And even though you warned Fiora, it was her decision to fight on, anyways. So, it was… set in stone, I guess.”
Talking like that, so fatalist, feels weird for Reyn. He wonders if it would just make Shulk feel worse to realize there was nothing he could have done in comparison to his thinking that there was something he could have done. But then a part of him thinks that they need to just stop focusing on the “what if”s of the past. “If you think too much about the past and what you could have done,” he says, “there’s just no point to it. But thinking about the present and what we can do now… That’s got real weight to it.”
Shulk keeps his eyes closed during Reyn’s mini preaching session (and now that he’s thought that up, it makes him feel like such an idiot, trying to talk all important). He doesn’t respond for a while, just remains silent on Reyn’s lap, but that’s fine. Reyn keeps running his hand through Shulk’s hair, now looking out to the rest of the marsh. Something in the distance slowly crawls by, far away from the group, and honestly, Reyn would kill to just run out and fight something if it meant he didn’t have to feel so awkward about what he just said.
Eventually, a hand reaches up to touch Reyn’s, and he looks down to see Shulk’s stopped him to instead opt to hold his hand (in an albeit odd position, but Reyn doesn’t complain). “...That was surprisingly deep of you, Reyn,” he says, teasing in his voice. The smile on his face is enough to tell he’s satisfied, though.
“Shut up. It’s not like my head’s full of nothin’,” Reyn grumbles, pushing Shulk off of his lap playfully. He does get up, surprisingly enough, but grabs the Monado and the blanket he had draped around him and begins to move around in a way Reyn can’t process. When he finally gets settled down, Shulk is sitting between Reyn’s legs, back nearly brushing against his chest, with the blanket wrapped around the two of them instead. The Monado is back in his hands, held up defensively, as if something was going to pop up any second now to demand a battle.
Well, Reyn had only thought Shulk would be around for 20 or so minutes before heading back to bed, but this setup makes it seem like Shulk plans to stay up with him until Dunban picks up the later shift in a few hours. Not that he minds the company.
Reyn fixes the blanket before it can fall off of his shoulder. “Hey,” he murmurs. “...Did you really think I’d hate you?”
Referring to his outburst before. Shulk doesn’t respond.
“You know I’ve never even thought that. Not once.”
“...Mn.” He nods.
“I mean it. I love you, man.”
Shulk nods. “Mmm.”
“Can’t even say it back? That’s cold.”
Shulk just shakes his head, giving a small, broken laugh while his shoulders tremble. His breathing becomes more stilted, stuttering, and the light from the Monado seems to be suffering from the same effect. From there, it doesn’t take Reyn any more brainpower than usually needed to figure out Shulk’s crying now.
So, carefully, he reaches out and wraps his arms around Shulk’s chest, bringing him into a hug. Shulk all but melts into it, still holding back the sounds of his sadness, but getting comfortable in Reyn’s hold, dipping his head down and to the side to rest against one of his arms.
To try and put Shulk at ease, Reyn continues to talk, even if he doesn’t need a reply from Shulk. “This place really is pretty at night,” he says. Those observations were something he was pretty sure he would keep bottled up, but he just feels like saying it now. “Every time I have duty out here, I just feel like I’m in a whole other world.”
Shulk nods again.
“Fiora would have liked it here.” He continues. He doesn’t really know where he’s going with any of this, it’s more like him spilling deeper thoughts in exchange for Shulk’s. “Honestly, I think about her a lot, too, man. I miss her.”
“Y-Yeah,” is all Shulk can reply, voice thick with tears.
“...Don’t beat yourself up about that stuff anymore, okay?”
Back to nodding.
“I’m… I’m here for you.”
And he nods one last time, and Reyn gives him some time to catch up with himself.