(September 28th, 2018)

Disclaimer #1: Marth and Roy both belong to Intelligent Systems and Nintendo, while Master Hand and the Super Smash Bros. series belong to HAL Laboratories, Sora Ltd., and Nintendo. I don't own any of those properties and neither do I own Intelligent Systems, Sora Ltd., HAL Labs, or Nintendo.

Disclaimer #2: I can't speak Japanese. Any words in Japanese and translations that appear in this fanfic are purely the result of Internet research. If there's any mistake regarding the language, please don't hesitate to let me know.

"A friend is one who walks in when the rest of the world walks out."

Walter Winchell

"Walking with a friend in the dark is better than walking alone in the light."

Helen Keller

"Boku wa makeru wake-ni wa ikanain'da!" Marth called out to no one in particular. He turned around with pride as he swung the Falchion, before doing a maneuver and pointing its blade downwards.

He had been practising his swordplay in the castle grounds, looking forward to the interview that would win his entrance to the Smash Bros. tournament. He had always had a talent for swordfighting, but his dream was getting into the tournament, so he had squeezed a couple hours of extra training into his schedule. He had thought his moveset up, so as to impress Master Hand and spare him the work of assigning him movements. Surely, the hand would try to amend it to his liking, but at least part of the job was done. As meticulous as Marth was, he had also settled on every celebration, defeat pose, and taunt that he would use on the battlefield. He couldn't be more ready for the challenge.

"Bravo! Bravo, Marth!" Caeda, his wife, cheered in perfect Japanese. She clapped, sitting in a nearby bench, as she witnessed Marth's sword practice. He bowed repeatedly until she stopped clapping. "Subarashi! Amazing! But aren't you going to be late for the interview?"

"Hai, I'll get going now." Marth said, sheathing the Falchion. "Nintendo All-Star! Great Fray Smash Brothers, here I come!"

Without another word, Marth departed from Altea. He walked alone for a short while before he came across an elegant palace, with the symbol of Smash proudly displayed over the doors. He entered the building without hesitation and found himself inside a large waiting room, with white plastic chairs lined up at the walls. Even though he didn't recognize anyone inside, he could make out the figures of a young boy with a hat and a sword, a red-clad plumber with his green-clad counterpart, a kid, a dinosaur, a pink puffball, an oversized penguin, a bounty hunter in a suit, three Pokémon, a giant turtle, an anthropomorphic fox, and a racer.

Despite everyone that had been waiting before him, there were a lot of empty chairs, so Marth took a seat. He silently waited, without being able to erase an excited grin from his face, as he looked around and inspected who'd probably be his future fighting companions. They talked amongst themselves, walking around the room, and showing off their abilities. Marth was tempted to go introduce himself to a small group, but he noticed that they were speaking in another language, so he decided not to intervene. They must've been foreigners. He turned his attention towards another group, but after a moment of observing, he realized that they were also speaking in a strange language he couldn't understand.

Marth breathed in, becoming conscious of the amount of foreigners that surrounded him. The problem was not their nationality, but the fact that Marth couldn't understand a word of what they were saying. He wasn't one to judge people on country of origin and he always strived to make people feel at home, especially when it came to foreigners in his kingdom, but how would he accomplish that if he didn't know how to communicate with them? He let out a strained breath, trying to convince himself that Japanese would do the trick, but he couldn't help but wondering… Did they speak Japanese?

Marth looked up to the wall and noticed that the monitor that was counting up, calling the next interviewee, was displaying the number 21. He stood up and made his way towards the door as quickly as he could. On the other side, he found a small office with a desk, two chairs, and Master Hand waiting behind the desk.

"Hajimemashite, Masutāhando-sama." Marth greeted, as he bowed markedly. "My name is Marth Lowell and I come from the kingdom of Altea. Yoroshiku onegaishimasu."

Marth went back to a correct, proper standing position, but he didn't get the reply he expected straight away. He stared at Master Hand, his smile dropping, while the room fell into the most absolute silence. The only noises that he could hear were the voices of the people waiting outside. Master Hand said and did nothing and even though it didn't have a face, Marth could tell that the hand was... baffled? But why? If anything, Marth should have been the one to be baffled right now.

Master Hand moved his fingers a bit. If it had to be described in human terms, the movement would've been similar to tilting his head. He remained quiet for another moment, as if thinking about what to do next. And finally, he spoke. However, everything it uttered was an unintelligible mess of strange words and sounds that Marth could only identify as the language that the people in the waiting room had been speaking.

Marth's breath caught in his throat. "Wakarimasen." He said, stepping back. "Mou ichido itte kudasai. I don't understand. Please repeat it one more time."

When the hand was taken aback, fidgeted nervously, and talked again in an incomprehensible dialect, Marth realized that he was the one who was amiss.

"Wakarimasen." Marth repeated, as his breath began getting quicker and his heart started to pound against his chest. "Wakarimasen. I don't understand!"

Marth watched as his hopes and dreams fell apart in seconds. The opportunity of a lifetime was slipping away from him and he didn't know what to do about it. He should've known. Why didn't he see this coming? He found himself without words; his arsenal of varied terms and expressions was gone. Even the script he had practiced for this very interview was deemed useless in seconds. His efforts had been in vain.

"Wakarimasen." Marth said, in disbelief. "Wakarimasen!"

Yet, every effort was futile. The hand didn't understand a word of what Marth said and he didn't understand Master Hand either. Marth panted as he became dizzy and the world began to spin around him. He knew he shouldn't have gone. He knew he shouldn't have tried. It was useless. He wished he could have chosen not to present himself. He regretted trying.

Before Master Hand could spit another speech of nonsense, Marth turned on his heel and flung the door open. He wanted to run away, but he was met with a crowd of curious faces, both tall and small, which surrounded him and left him with no escape route. Everyone around him was talking in a plain and monotonous tone of voice and in that gibberish he couldn't begin to decipher. They seemed to be asking him questions. They all wanted to do the one thing he couldn't. Talk.

Marth grimaced, as he pushed someone aside. He fled, sprinting through nothingness, without a destination or a pathway to follow. He didn't know where he was going or when was he going to get there, but he simply wanted to get away from everything. He closed his eyes and tried to forget his embarrassment, but the crowd and the hand followed him closely, and they continued talking. They wouldn't shut up.

"Wakarimasen!" Marth said while he was sprinting away. "I don't understand!"

However, Marth came to a stop when he saw Caeda, standing calmly in the middle of nowhere. He breathed in and out, trying to get himself together, and he smiled to his wife. He wanted to tell her how glad he was to see her, but he was so tired he could only pant. Caeda talked instead. However, she spoke in English.

Marth's world's crumbled. He couldn't even speak to his own wife. The blood left his face and he sighed in defeat. "Wakarimasen. Wakarimasen." He clenched his fists, looked up, and yelled towards the sky. "Wakarimasen!"

Marth shifted and turned, before opening his eyes. He was met with darkness. He was sweating all over his body, especially on his neck, his heart was racing, and his breathing was desperate, as if was gasping for air. Slowly, Marth sat up on bed, throwing his sheets away, as he tried to steady his breathing. He took his hand to his forehead, lifted his hair, attempting to cool himself off, and sighed.

He remembered very well the confusion and the anxiety he had felt during his interview for the first Smash tournament, so he didn't need a dream to remind him about it. After everything he had lived through, failing an interview certainly shouldn't be nightmare fuel, but, no matter how many times he told himself to relax, he still kept stressing out over it. Furthermore, he had gotten into the second tournament, even after his failure, so it shouldn't be a big deal. Still, everytime he remembered that time, he grew extremely embarrassed. Roy had even pointed out how Marth flushed only by thinking about it.

Marth looked towards his night table and turned on the small lamp on it. A dim yellow light brightened part of the room, but the majority of it remained sunk in darkness. The bed that was next to Marth's was lightened up, uncovering the image of a red-haired teenager tucked in and soundly asleep.

Marth sighed. If this situation was tough for him, then it must have been even tougher for Roy. He was much younger and he needed to make friends, discover himself, grow up, learn, and explore the world. Sometimes, the fact that Roy didn't have anyone but him to talk to worried Marth, but, in fact, he had fared very well despite the circumstances and the language barriers. In a way, Roy was way more outgoing than Marth, because he dared to go out and try to talk to the rest even if they didn't understand him. He had even managed to make a few friends. Still, Marth wished that Roy had somebody else to turn to rather than him. Even though he rarely showed it, it was clear that it pained Roy to be singled out from the group everytime and to be a complete stranger to everything that was being talked about in the tournament.

It was difficult. Even asking for something as simple as food, the location of the bathroom, or the schedule of the matches was a complex task. Not to mention the awkward moments when somebody talked to them, asked a question, or stared at them from afar. Marth didn't mind the weird looks so much, though Roy certainly did. Even though it did make Marth feel embarrassed, what mattered even more to him was being unable to follow Master Hand's commands, find books, movies, and shows in Japanese, and make friends. It was a very lonely existence, after all. Marth and Roy only had each other. It was the two of them against the rest of the world of Smash.

Careful not to wake up Roy, Marth took a sip of the glass of water that stood on his night table. He had to stop overthinking about the issue. If he kept on being this dramatic, he would eventually lose it. Even though he shared the same ills as his roommate, Marth was not one to talk about his feelings often. He knew how hard it already was for Roy, so he didn't want to load him with his own worries and responsibilities, since Marth had to deal with his problems on his own. Roy was just a kid, so it wouldn't have been right to bestow him with such a burden.

Marth sighed, massaging his temples with his hands. Not sharing his burden with anyone meant he would spare everyone else of the worry, but it also meant he would soon reach a breaking point. In spite of his efforts to calm down, he was still sweating all over and his breathing wouldn't slow down to the point of relaxation. Clearly, he couldn't go back to sleep now.

The night table didn't only hold a lamp and a glass of water. It also had a pile of books of all colors, sizes, and ages, which only had one thing in common. They were all either written in English or in a mixture of English and Japanese. Marth snatched a small notepad, a pen, and a thick, heavy Japanese-English dictionary and threw them on the bed in front of him. Grasping the pen in his right hand, he opened the notepad to the first page, where he had already scribbled a list of words.

The first word was "おはよう". Beneath it, Marth had written its English equivalent, "Good morning", slowly and carefully, though the result was poor, to say the least. The following words were also greetings. "今晩は" and "Good evening", "お休み" and "Good night", "こんにちは" and "Hello". However, no matter how many times Marth attempted to read or write in English, the words he copied from his book still looked like hieroglyphics. Under the existing list, Marth added the word "済みません". He sighed once again and yanked the dictionary open, sleepy but determined to find a translation for the newest word.

"Marth?" A whisper. "Are you awake?" Roy had turned around in his bed and was now gazing at Marth, concern gleaming in his eyes. The question was a bit unnecessary, but Roy was probably asking it out of pure courtesy.

"Gomen nasai." Marth apologized, putting down the notepad and the pen. "Did I wake you up?"

"Heh, don't worry." Roy said, smiling. "I'm a light sleeper."

"Roy, please go back to sleep. If I'm disturbing you with the light and the noise, I can go outside."

"Iie, iie. Not at all." Roy said. "You're not disturbing me. Really, I can sleep under harsh conditions."

Marth resisted the urge to point out the contradiction. He knew that, even when Roy was fairly brave and independent, he didn't like to be alone, especially in a foreign country, so Marth decided not to press the issue. He grabbed the dictionary, placed it on his lap, and continued working. "Then go back to sleep." He said, glancing at the clock in his night table. "It's 1 a.m., too early for you to be up."

"Then why are you up?"

Marth smiled to himself, having been discovered. "Roy, get some sleep. We have matches later today and you need energy to fight."

He waited for a few minutes until he was certain that Roy had obliged. Once again, the room was flooded in silence and Marth concentrated in his reading, scouring page after page for the word in question. Once more, he was alone in the middle of the night, dictionary in hand and pen in the other. Even though he could use a little company, he was relieved knowing that Roy was getting the rest he needed, especially because he wasn't exactly a fast sleeper and he had trouble falling asleep from time to time.

However, Marth was deep into the dictionary when he felt a presence walking towards his bed and sitting down on its border. It didn't take a genius to figure out who it was, especially after living with the suspect for a few months and learning his quirks. Marth blinked and slowly lifted his head.

"Did you have a nightmare?" Roy said casually, as if he hadn't just disobeyed an order.

"How did you know?"

Roy shifted in the bed, faced Marth, and crossed his legs. "Well, when someone wakes up in the middle of the night sweating and panting, it's not because of the heat. What are you doing?"

Marth dropped his head on his hand in a mixture of stress, exhaustion, and defeat. "Nothing to worry about, Roy. Please go back to bed. Don't make me repeat myself again."

The boy tilted his head and reached out towards Marth, grabbing the notepad and the pen in his hands. He began to doodle something on it. "I think that the word you're looking for… is… this one."

Roy handed the notepad back to Marth, who held it with both hands and inspected it. Under "済みません", Roy had written, in crooked handwriting, the words "Excuse me".

"Sugoi!" Marth said. "Wow, Roy, you can write in English? How are you such a fast learner?"

He grinned and tugged at his collar unconsciously. "It's nothing, really. I've been studying, that's all."

"Oh, don't be so humble." Marth said, shoving the dictionary aside, facing Roy, and crossing his legs like him to concentrate on the conversation. "I've been studying too and I haven't gotten results nearly as satisfactory as yours."

"Well, for starters, you could begin by studying during daytime and not by bits in the middle of the night."

Marth chuckled, placing his hand over his forehead dramatically. "Hai, I should really get my schedule together."

Roy nodded lively. "Mm-hm!"

He kept on nodding and smiling at Marth, in approval. Marth, in turn, looked at him and smiled back. Both of them stayed put in the partial darkness, the only movement being Roy's nodding. Slowly, but surely, he conceded to the awkward silence and he stopped, his smile dropping until he was making a face. Marth remained still, as he tried to stifle a nervous laugh.

"So…" He said. "This is awkward."

"Yeah." Roy snickered.

"I guess this means we should go back to sleep." Marth said, shifting as he pulled back the strands of hair from his face.

Roy pouted. "But... I don't feel like going back to sleep."

"To be honest, me neither."

It is normal to lose sleep after being jolted awake by a bad dream. Marth was no different. Even though he had achieved a fair level of relative calmness, his nerves and his stress hadn't died down completely, and he had been energized by both the soft light of the lamp and his conversation with Roy. Besides, it was not very often that he got to spend time with his roommate, since, during the day, they were usually busy with matches, or otherwise, they were hanging out with their friends. Marth also had additional duties, such as the daily, mundane tasks like grocery shopping, to sending orders back to Altea to keep the kingdom running. Duties, which, of course, were made longer and harder by the fact that he couldn't speak English. Marth sighed.

"Now that we're both awake," Roy shrugged. "I could use some practice, don't you think?"

Marth perked up, sure that his face had probably brightened up at the request. He wouldn't miss the chance to learn from Roy and spend some quality time with him all at once. "Hai! If it doesn't bother you, of course. I must warn you; I'm a bit of a slow learner."

"Hey, Kangaesugiruna. Don't think about it too hard." Roy stood up and sat closer to Marth, picking up half the mountain of books that were on the night table. He began to look at them one by one, as if searching for one in particular. "We're here to learn. I help you and you help me; that's how friendship works. It's a two-way street."

Marth playfully shook his head from side to side and chortled at Roy's use of the term 'friendship'. At this point, the two of them were like family, so, certainly, calling each other a 'friend' was a huge understatement.

Marth breathed in with relief. "You're the best, Roy, omaewa saikoda! Doumo Arigatou."

Roy placed one book on Marth's lap, took one himself, and left the rest on the night table were they originally were. "Oh, by the way," He said. "From now on, I don't want to hear 'Arigatou'. I want to hear 'Thank you'."

Roy spoke in a slow, rough, and forced English with a strong accent, but it was clear he had made way more progress than Marth had. The latter grinned, half-nervous and half-amused, but, overall, he was glad that he had gained a learning partner. He knew, by experience, that problems are made easier when there's someone to share them with.

"... I'll try." Marth said.

"Tsk, tsk. That's not the mentality you need to learn something." Roy said, moving his finger from side to side, symbolizing a 'No'. "Come on, Marth, kimi nara dekiruyo! Or, should I say…" He opened the book on his lap and searched for a word, before lifting his face and giving Marth a jokey smirk. Then, in English, "...You can do it."

Marth smiled. Far from Altea, even amongst all these foreigners and amongst these strangers, these were the kind of moments that made Marth feel at home. At first, he wanted to join the tournament for the same reasons everyone else wanted to be accepted: for support, fame, fortune, success, accomplishment… but now he knew that happiness didn't come from such things. Sure, he had achieved his dream of getting into Super Smash Bros., but there wasn't a single worry-free day in Marth's calendar since he had joined. The issue wasn't the tournament. No, the tournament was great, the matches were fun, and being in allowed him to practice his sword fighting. However, outside of matches, it was a nightmare. Day after day, he was singled out, excluded from the group, and left all on his own. He didn't blame the Smashers, though. They couldn't understand him just as he couldn't understand them.

Still, it was a very lonely existence. Marth cherished variety and culture and he was glad that he could meet such a diverse cast of characters, but his language alienated him from the team. Even when languages are meant to communicate, sometimes, they can divide. Not being able to speak to anyone about his ideas, his concerns, his feelings, and his needs concerned Marth everyday. As independent as someone may be, everyone needs support. Everyone needs to be loved and cared for. And everyone needs a friend.

Someday, if he continued with his studies, Marth would be able to talk to and befriend everyone in the tournament. Meanwhile, there was a long road to walk through before he reached his goal. However, learning shouldn't be a lonely road and Marth was thankful to have Roy by his side. Having a friend to share struggles with made everything more enjoyable. Roy was going through the exact same thing, so being able to vent to him and rely on him for help made him feel relieved. Even though Marth didn't want to worry him because it was his responsibility as an adult to take care of him, he could use the company. Besides, every now and then, even adults need help from children. Roy's optimistic outlook made everything look brighter and his previous experiences would help Marth advance faster. Of course, he could still see a long and hard road ahead of him, but a process which would normally be hard and difficult would be made much better by sharing. After all, as Seneca once said, "One of the most beautiful qualities of true friendship is to understand and to be understood."

A/N: Happy Fire Emblem Warriors anniversary! I've been wanting to put this one-shot out there for some time and I thought today was the perfect day to do it (I love that game so much; I had to do something for its first anniversary). To be honest, my first thoughts when I heard Marth was now fully voiced in English were something along the lines of "Aw, I'm going to miss the unique, cryptic, Japanese swordsman we all know and love since Melee." However, after awhile, I realized that, in the Smashverse, it must have been very difficult for him to speak Japanese when everyone else spoke English (that only applies to the localization, of course). So, the idea for this story was born. I hope you enjoyed it! If you have any feedback or suggestions, please let me know. Thanks for reading!

Edit: Thanks to MayumiWorld, who has pointed out some mistakes in the Japanese! They've been corrected so that the representation of the language may be as accurate as possible.