"Healing Aqua!"

The slight tremor in the voice couldn't obscure its familiarity. The cadence roused memories, opened the mind to battle cries and whispered promises. Above all else, it returned life to the silence that enwrapped Shulk. A soft prickling went through his body as the spell repaired the torn tissue and the fractured bones, but it was the return of sound that stirred Shulk from unconsciousness. A part of the pain remained, but it no longer controlled and devoured him. The roaring in his right ear, like stereo from a severed radio connection, faded to a manageable annoyance.

Shulk opened his eyes.

Too many complex emotions waged war on Melia's face for him to make sense of. Tears swam in her eyes. Melia never cried, not since the death of her brother. But now her eyes shimmered.

"Hello, Melia," Shulk whispered. "Are you alright?"

She didn't bother with an answer, instead she wrapped her arms around him and buried her face in his shirt. Usually, she wasn't this… physical. A quality they shared, Shulk supposed. He let her keep his battered shell together and waited for his senses and his memory to return to him. When he swallowed, his throat burned, and with every attempt to turn his torso, his pain receptors erupted into a firework. So, he just sat and waited.

"We noticed your signal," Melia said after a while. Her irregular breath chilled the skin under Shulk's torn shirt. "And then I saw the fire on the cliffside. I thought you were…"

Slowly, droplet by droplet, memories returned to Shulk. Where he was; how he had gotten here. Past Melia's shoulder, the burning Havre had shrunken to embers and a pile of scorched metal. A pair of High Entia guards stood at a respectful distance. Nothing else breathed on the ledge.

Shulk's hand trembled.

"Teelan?"

The question hung in the air between them. Cold. So cold.

Melia looked sideways. Shulk's quivering hand tore into the pebbles next to him, desperate for something to hold.

When Melia re-established eye contact, her voice had regained its firmness. She needed only five words to confirm what Shulk already knew. "He has returned to Bionis."

The old saying. Words that had once offered comfort to the survivors. But in this world, there was no Bionis, there was no place where the souls of the dead gathered to await their rebirth, there was nothing but fog and darkness.

Shulk wanted to scream. But his words came out as a weak, broken whisper. "I didn't see it."

Melia placed a hand on his cheek, a touch so faint, so cold. "It's not your fault, Shulk. None of us guessed that a Fogbeast was hiding here all this time."

"I didn't see it. I should have seen this future, and I didn't!"

"Your visions do not make you all-powerful," Melia pleaded. "Even if you had known of this future, you couldn't have—"

"I should have at least tried! But here I am, just as blind as back then. Just as useless as back then. All these visions, and I still didn't see it…"

Shulk choked on his tears. His hand would not stop shaking. Regret overpowered him, regret for his wishes and his failures, regret for every step he had taken, and now it was his turn to bury his head in Melia's shoulder.

Teelan's absence rampaged with merciless claws at his insides. What had Teelan tried to tell him, the moment before the Fogbeast arrived? Shulk hadn't understood. When he craned his neck, a blank nothingness still clung to his right ear, and Melia's breath grew almost as faint as Teelan's. The cries of two strangers hammered all the more loudly in the insides of Shulk's head. Visions in which Teelan didn't exist. Why him? Why would the Fogbeast attack him if Shulk should have been the one to draw its rage, why hadn't he prepared for such a scenario, why had he suggested this trip to Teelan in the first place?

Tyrea would never forgive him. Shulk didn't even want her to try.

And if Aaron had stood at the Havre's helm next to Shulk? Would Melia still embrace him and whisper empty reassurances? How long before he made a mistake she could not brush away, until a guilt stained his hands he could not run away from?

Too late. He had already lost himself past that point.

In a world without visions, Shulk was powerless. Worse, he was a burden. The crumbling Shoulder, this boundless sky above and the tireless waves below, all this was part of the world he had wished for, but the world was resisting his wish. Had Zanza planned this final punishment for Shulk because he had dared to defy him? Or was it all a cruel twist of fate, that, in a world with no gods, Shulk's hands would forever remain empty while a faceless, impartial might snatched away whatever he tried to hold?

Shulk trembled. Melia's arms kept his physical shell together. They both breathed the fog. And they both feared its implications.

"I will inform Tyrea," Melia said and pulled away to look at Shulk. Never had her century-long life shown more on her face. "It may be for the better if you avoided Alcamoth for a while. You will need distance."

"And you don't? The Havre crashed because I made a mistake during the repair. Even with all the work I've done before, all that wasted time where I thought I could…" Shulk paused, unable to stop his hands from trembling. Powerless. "I should tell her. I can still—"

"I am not asking for your aid in this matter."

"I killed him."

"She will not see it this way. No one will."

"I can at least let her know that she was right to never trust me!"

"No! Stop… please." Melia closed her eyes, and the anger in her voice faded. Only the steel of royalty remained, this tone that allowed no room for discussion. "Tyrea is my sister. I will tell her."

Shulk had no more energy to argue. Without the support of Melia's arms, he would have slumped, would have flown apart like water in a broken glass. Distantly he nodded.

"I will settle all matters myself," Melia said. "And for this I will need no distractions. I hope you understand. You should take Aaron and visit Colony 9 for a few days. The trip will benefit both of you, I believe. We can talk when you return."

"Will you still be there when I return?"

Melia smiled, a tear-soaked but honest smile. "Certainly. You need not worry."

And on the same day, Shulk fastened Aaron's seatbelt on board Junks, and the streamlined ship abandoned Alcamoth, the Bionis' Shoulder, and the sky altogether with course for Colony 9.

01/06/22: Sorry for the ridiculously short chapter, this is a record I'm not too proud of. But I couldn't divide this section in any other way that felt right to me. Hopefully the next chapter can compensate a bit when it arrives. I believe it's one of my favourites.