When he walks into the battle, the first thing he notices is her glare.
First off, it doesn't look right on her. Shulk has never seen her face before (because she always sits in the back corner, hiding her face with a book), and she has that quality in which you just don't want to see her angry, because she's much prettier when she's smiling. He's never seen her smile, of course. But he knows she'd look much prettier with a smile on her face.
Her brown eyes flash suddenly, making him leap backwards. She tilts her head up, and then smirks at him, opening up her book.
"Scared?" she asks quietly, and in just that one word he can just hear brimming with confidence.
"Far from it," he replies, smiling confidently at her. "If anything, you should be scared."
She laughs, and holds out her hand as electricity crackles in it. "Oh, sweetheart, I think that's my line."
When the battle begins, he does feel a rush of terror, and he doesn't have to use his Vision to know who the winner will be out of this battle.
(tick tock, goes the clock, and look at that, he lost)
He cannot sleep that night, because his thoughts are all questioning the battle on how did she win how did she do it how did she scare me because he never gets scared, not here, and he never gets scared of anyone, ever.
Yet there's Robin, who has scared the living shit out of him, and he can't figure out why. And obviously, if he just asked how she did it, how she intimidated him, she would just look at him and laugh humorlessly.
Yes, all very funny, wasn't it?
He punches his pillow and tells himself to go to sleep and not spend any more time thinking about that woman.
(but he still can't get her devilish smirk out of his mind)
She's sitting in the library as he passes by, her face once again concealed by a book. He ignores her and tries not to think about her, but it's too late, her pretty face takes up his mind and enters all of his thoughts and all he can think about is her pretty brown eyes and her long silver pigtails that stream down her shoulders, and the thought hey Shulk I thought you said you weren't going to think about her anymore enters his mind but he pushes it away.
"Wanna train?"
He looks up to find Robin's eyes staring at him. "W-what?" he stutters, because he is surprised (he thought she had more important people to talk to, that's why she only talked to Marth and Ike and Lucina).
She rolls her eyes at him. "Gods, are you deaf or something? Do-you-want-to-train?" she says this loudly and clearly so he can hear her, yet all he thinks is that her voice is pretty and melodic.
"Sure, why not?" he says without thinking.
But when he steps into the room battle, he realizes this was a mistake, because he's going to get his ass kicked.
(it's not the real thing, but you're still going down, down, down)
Training with her is brutal, yet for some odd reason that he can't fathom, he enjoys it.
"C'mon, fight back," Robin tells him, her eyes twinkling mischievously. "Don't just run away. Counter block me."
"It's a little difficult when you've got magic and I only have the Monado," he replies.
She rolls her eyes. "You can see the future, can't you? Try and do that."
She jabs at him, and Shulk rolls to the side, grinding his teeth in frustration. In a desperate attempt, he tries to see her next move.
He can't.
He tries again, but all that comes up is a foggy mist. He gasps and stumbles backwards, fear slowly taking over him.
"Something wrong, Shulk?" Robin asks, her eyebrows raised.
"I can't see what you're going to do, my Vision isn't working," he replies.
She blinks for a moment, stunned, and it's that look of sincere confusion that he knows that she didn't do anything. Then she looks triumphantly at him. "Well, too bad for you, but good for me!"
She lunges out with her sword and strikes him hard.
When it ends, he's hurting all over and he's limping, but as she's walking away he manages to call out, "Robin—wait—same time tomorrow?"
She pauses and then turns around to face him. A slow smile spread across her face.
(Shulk was right—she did look prettier when she smiled).
"Be ready," she says, and then opens the door to her room and slams it.
(you can't prepare yourself against an enigma)
Gradually, Shulk grows used to training with this girl.
She always manages to injure him with a different, complex spell each time (whether it is accidental or not accidental), so he leaves with a bruise on his knee/arm/chest/leg and a (not-so) sincere apology from Robin.
He knows she's not truly sorry. He knows that she's enjoying the fight, where he tries to fight back and she ends up defeating him before he even gets his good battle moves in. He knows every time that he fights, he is dead meat. He knows that she more or less enjoys battling him rather than winning against him, and she's always satisfied when he leaves with a marking of where she hit him.
And strangely, he's mad enough that he could punch her, but he's also okay with it. Because he gets the feeling she hurts him physically just to impress him, just to show that she's a girl that he should not mess around with, and that he should not enter her little game.
But he wants to play her little game, just to see how it goes. And so he does, and ends up paying a price for it.
(you keep on playing to keep on losing)
When they battle it out, not in training, that's when the competition heats up. At first, she wins consecutively, battle after battle after battle, but then, slowly, he starts beating her.
When he wins against her, she smiles, hiding her disappointment behind a mask. "Good job, Shulk," she says, and punches his arm where a bruise is.
As he lay in bed, his thoughts were always full of I beat her I actually won against her oh gods I won against her what will training be like tomorrow I beat her I beat her I beat her.
Strangely enough, he always feels almost bad at beating her. He had felt bad looking at her forced smile, and it felt odd that he won anyways. It didn't feel right, because he was supposed to be going down, and instead she was the one that went down.
Even though he wins, he feels like he lost, but he doesn't know what he lost.
(once you play a game enough times, it's easy to predict what the moveset is)
He tries apologizing to her, everyday at training, but she waves her hand in the air to dismiss it. "You won, you should be happy," she tells him. "It only means that you're getting better." Then a cool smile takes over her face. "Now, c'mon. Don't be shy. Let's play."
And so he does, again and again and again and again (and wins, again and again and again and again).
Her game is fun, he realizes one afternoon as he walks away from her (he beat her the previous day, fifth time in a row). But it's starting to get easy for him.
And as he twists and turns in his bed, he realizes that he did not lose anything, but Robin did: she lost her own game, so carefully crafted to keep people out and to win against everyone, and it now it was broken, because he beat it.
(the enigma has lost her mystery)
He dreams that night of Robin, trapped inside a complex maze, her maze, and that finds her in the center, and realizing that someone had beaten her game, she panicked and used her Arc Fire, and the fire was spreading, surrounding Robin, and he had to save her-
And then he wakes up, shaking and sweating.
He remembers long ago that he had once told himself to never, ever, think about Robin, and here she was, appearing in his dreams like a damsel (although she was far, far from it), and he was the hero that was supposed to rescue her.
Essentially, he realizes as he flicks off the light, that he now views Robin the same way that Mario views Peach and Link views Zelda: she is his princess, and he has to save her from a horrible villain.
But, he thinks sickeningly, he is both the villain and the hero, because he knows that when she steps into the arena now, she is going down, she is going to lose, and he's the one that's beating her up, isn't he?
He realizes that he loves her, but he's sending mixed messages by hurting her everyday.
He falls against his pillow and tells himself to shut up and for once, stop overthinking things.
(the mind never shuts down, nor does it shut up)
She slashes and fire spells at him, but she's not up to her usual forte; after all, he has beaten it. It's not a challenge anymore.
And finally, he's worn her down and she's on her knees and she's panting heavily, her hand over heart, and all he can think of his dream, of what happened in it.
"You're Peach," he blurts out, and then covers his mouth.
She looks up at him, an eyebrow raised. "No. I'm Robin."
He blushes. "Sorry…I meant that you're like a princess, kind of like Peach."
She rolls her eyes at him and stabs at him with her sword. "No," she says. "Because I am not a damsel. Now c'mon, let's fight."
(you are not a princess, but you are a princess to me)
He is finally defeated the next day in a real battle, after months of wearing Robin down to her core.
"I won," she says flatly to him.
"You should be happier," he replies.
She shrugs and flashes a rare smile at him, her features lighting up. "I am happy."
He smiles back. "Good." He notices his shoelace is untied and bends down to tie it.
Shulk is not sure what happens next, but he hears a soft, clattering of a sword, and the blade—the blade is inches away from his face.
He yelps and skids backwards. "You don't just go around throwing swords!" he snaps, turning to Robin.
She tosses her book behind her. "Yeah, I know. Now, take a jab."
"What?"
She is unarmed, and unprotected. Her hands are folded neatly behind her back, and her face is emotionless, a blank mask. With a sickening feeling, he knows what she's telling him to do.
"Take a jab," she says, gesturing at him. "Punch me, hit me with your sword, whatever. But winning…doesn't feel right. So give me something, and then I'll return the favor."
It's not really a favor, and he doesn't want to do it, but when he tries to protest, he meets Robin's determined brown eyes, and the protest dies in his throat.
This will not improve anything. He remembers that night, when he awoke from his dream, feeling like the hero and the villain. He does not want to be her enemy. He wants to be her hero.
So he leans in and gives her a long kiss on the lips.
And in return, she gives him 3 bruises, a slap across the face, and another, much longer kiss on the lips.
(you know, maybe I just beat you up because I liked you-)
Fin.
I have been trying to write a Shulk and Female Robin oneshot for a very long time. This was the best one out of all of them, which is not saying much. I don't know why I had such hard time writing about them, and even now I can find a billion things wrong with this. (For starters, I may have rushed their relationship). But hey, I really want to upload something about them. Eventually, I'll write a better story about them.
Anyways, this is dedicated to LegitElizabethWWEFan, because she was the one who pulled me out of my Shulk/Female Robin writing slump. Thank you, Elizabeth! You guys should totally check out her Shulk x Female Robin fanfic, it's really, really good.
Please review, as always and thanks for reading this.