Shulk functioned like clockwork. He tinkered with ether lamps and the various rusty equipment crammed into Reyn's storage room. When someone called for lunch, he heaved himself to the table, said little, ate less, before he escaped Sharla's questioning gaze. He rewired the heating unit in Gaby's room to not think about Teelan. He dismantled Reyn's old shield-gunlance to avoid a stroll through the streets of Colony 9. While the clock ticked off the hours, Shulk ticked off the requests of neighbours; he collected rabbit diodes at the beach for a Nopon refugee from the Shoulder, retrieved a lost watch, and repaired the damaged memory unit of Sharla's Machina patient as promised. His efforts earned him thanks and grateful smiles, only half registered, and for a moment, that was all it took to maintain the world.
But as soon as he ran out of work, and the noise of Colony 9 seeped into the forefront of his conscious, he fled back behind Reyn's garden fence. With mechanical, unfeeling movements, he turned the pieces of his puzzle box while the rest of the house lay fast asleep and mist stroked against the window.
Doing small things; Shulk wasn't good at that. It kept his hands busy for a while. But not his mind after he placed down the screwdriver.
So he dreamed. Of a burst of small High Entia feathers scattering. Of fog. Of two people he didn't know, falling apart. Over and over. And while a weak ether lamp painted landscapes onto the floorboard and clouds swallowed the outlines of Colony 9, Shulk started up from his pillow, Fiora's name on his lips.
By the arrival of morning, he once again functioned like clockwork.
Until his farewell to Colony 9.
Sharla excused herself for work early, although she did not leave the house after a final check on Shulk's pulse. By the look on her face, the result spoke against her liking but not her expectations. Gaby could not be bothered to offer 'Uncle Shulk' more than a brisk wave before she resumed her game, which involved marbles and a row of unsuspecting cans aligned on the garden fence. Liza, meanwhile, after many nervous giggles, handed Aaron a drawing of hers. The gesture left him utterly confused.
Reyn patted Shulk on the back. "Safe flight."
"I'll be careful," Shulk said and swallowed to wet his dry throat.
"And say hi to Melia from me. Better yet, tell her to show herself down here more often. The door is always open for her. Same goes for you, obviously. You're part of the family. So stop by once in a while, will you?"
Shulk's chest cramped. He choked on his words. "Thank you, Reyn. That's…"
"Hey, don't sweat it. Just make sure not to work yourself into a hole again. I need someone to fix these stupid ether lamps for me. They act up more and more with each year. Though I shouldn't be surprised if someone keeps using them as practice targets." Reyn puffed out his chest and laid all the authority he had in his voice. "Gaby, stop harassing these cans, or you'll have to buy new ones."
Gaby tossed a marble into the air before she easily caught it with her other hand. "What do I get if I stop?"
"I'm not negotiating with you, young lady. You'll stop whether you like it or not. Maybe you get a kiss if you play along."
Gaby pretended to think over the offer. Then she grinned. "I want my own house."
"Not before you're thirty. We barely have enough space for the people of Colony 9 as is. Now go and annoy someone else." With a tired groan, Reyn turned to pet Aaron's head. "I hope you never grow up to become like them. Behave yourself when you go back home."
Aaron regarded Reyn with an enigmatic look. Then he nodded.
A moment later, Junks rose above the hill, and the remains of morning mist dispersed under the might of its engine. Shulk performed the system check three times, but the ship hummed along in perfect harmony. At a twitch of his hand, Junks gained altitude. Colony 9 grew smaller and smaller until even the tall shape of the central plaza tower merged with the shapeless landscape around.
That was the last time Shulk saw his hometown.
Out of a sense of righteousness, Shulk should have searched for Tyrea as soon as Junks docked with the open-air landing platform at the bottom of Alcamoth. He owed her an apology. Several, long apologies which would nevertheless fail to convey to her how much he wished to change the past as he had once done with the future.
But Shulk did not hurry to the nearby teleporter, nor did he question the handful of pilots and staff members on the platform about Tyrea's whereabouts. He stood screwed onto the spot. His hands wandered across Junk's control panels without aim. On and on, data flashed across the orange screens around him, but Shulk paid the information as little attention as he did the view beyond the cockpit window.
And he might have stood there for another hour if Aaron hadn't raised his voice. "Father?"
Shulk whirled around. Aaron had stopped near the bulkhead. In one hand, he held the drawing Liza had given him. Next to the metal walls, amidst the many screens and mechanical parts that shaped Shulk's world, he looked smaller than usual.
"I'm sorry, Aaron," Shulk said and tore himself from the control panels. "I didn't know you were waiting. You could have gone on without me, you know?"
Aaron scrutinised Shulk. The intensity of his blue eyes could cut through skin and steel, and Shulk felt all his secrets and failures crawling to the forefront for Aaron to judge them. He squirmed and had to break eye contact.
"Father?" Aaron repeated. "Will you leave mother and me?"
Shulk kneeled down and, as he had seen Reyn do so many times with his daughters, he placed a hand on Aaron's shoulder. "Where did you get that idea from?"
"I saw it."
Shulk froze. No. No, the visions – they were not hereditary, were they? Genetics shouldn't transfer an ability founded on understanding the flow of ether and the mathematical laws that determined the future. Without the Monado, without Alvis… Aaron couldn't see the future, that shouldn't be feasible, not anymore, not in this world. Not at his age. Otherwise… What if things other than imaginary demons disturbed his sleep? What if visions chased him out of bed at night? Could this small child, his child, could it already know the painful hole left by the loss of two strangers? Did Aaron understand?
No. Visions were a burden Shulk wished onto no one. This had to be a mistake.
Shulk's hand trembled as he tightened his grip on Aaron's shirt. "What did you see?" he whispered.
"The Havre. I saw you work on it. Was it because you will leave mother and me?"
The relief flooded Shulk's system. He breathed out, but it sounded almost like a desperate sob or a laugh or a mutilated combination of the two. No visions. That demon remained his and his alone.
Shulk cupped Aaron's face and thanked the universe. Aaron's cheeks emitted the slightest bit of warmth, and his heartbeat throbbed in the veins under Shulk's hands. So alive. Maybe even lively when the right time came.
"I don't know," Shulk said. "No one knows the future for certain. Someday I might leave. There are… things I can't forget. But whatever happens, I want you to be safe. And happy. Do you understand?"
Aaron stared into Shulk's eyes. Then he nodded.
Shulk smiled and climbed to his feet. "Good. How about you go ahead and greet your mother? She will be glad to see you, I'm sure. I'll join you in a minute."
Aaron maintained eye contact, stared through Shulk's walls and safety bulkheads, and for a moment he thought Aaron would accuse him of lying.
But Aaron turned around without another word and ran ahead. His feet pounded on the metal floor. A moment later, he had exited Junks and rushed to the nearby teleporter on the landing platform.
After Shulk had shut down the last of Junks' systems, he followed Aaron. But his path didn't lead to the throne room or Melia's office or any other place where she might dwell at this time of day. When the teleporter spat him into a tall, white hallway with silver ornamentations on one of Alcamoth's lower layers, Shulk avoided all detours and marched to his laboratory.
The familiar smell of oil made him halt, but after a heartbeat of stasis, he grabbed the pieces of the Bionis' Shoulder from the workbench to the right. Roughly half of the samples levitated a few centimetres above the surface. The others could not be distinguished from normal pebbles.
Teelan had placed them there for Shulk to find, like he had said. He was gone, and a handful of stones was all he had left behind.
Shulk needed to figure out what caused the alterations in their behaviour. He had wasted too much time already. With everything at stake, doing small things was no longer enough. He had to protect a future. Aaron's future.
And for that future, he couldn't allow the faces of two strangers to bind his hands until they trembled.
After Aaron arrived on the doorstep to Melia's office, she waited three hours for Shulk, despite knowing that he would not come. Aaron perched on the cushioned bench near the door and passed the time by nipping on a mug of hot milk. But his expression contained neither anticipation nor anxiousness while the minutes passed by. He had already accepted what Melia knew to be true in the deepest, painful corner of her heart.
The shadows from the window frames crept across the walls, and the pile of answered requests on one end of the desk grew ever so slowly. Against the mountain on the other side, both in form of paper and digital files on Melia's data pad, the progress she made hardly qualified as such. But every time she set another paper aside, she glanced up, and against her better judgement she waited for the doors to slide open and Shulk to step in.
She did not know why she waited. After all, she had made her decision, and her resolve was firm.
Still, she comforted herself with senseless bargaining. If Shulk entered the office before she finished the next file, it meant he would stay in Alcamoth because he wished for it. If he announced his presence with a hesitant knock against the doorframe before the desk's shadow reached that spot over there, it meant he loved her, and all would be well.
Yet Shulk did not come.
And Melia was glad for it. Her decision, the vow she had made to let him go, it gained more validity because of his absence.
When the three hours had passed and Aaron had set aside his fourth mug, Melia rose from her workspace. She placed a kiss on Aaron's hair, but he showed no signs to have noticed. The simplistic, childlike drawing in his lap had entirely enthralled him.
Melia left him and strode through the palace's grand halls. She knew where to find Shulk. And for one last time, her path led her there, to his side and into the comforting soundscape of his laboratory.
Machines mumbled, engines huffed, and the crackling of ether exhaust pipes filled the room. Shulk sat in the centre of it all, with his back to the teleporter and accompanied by a handful of rocks and an assortment of gauges, few of which revealed their purpose to Melia's untrained eyes. Strangely, the Monado replica lay on the floor next to Shulk, activated but forgotten.
Melia did not approach him right away. A part of her waited for the question he always opened her visits here. The other part hoped to postpone that which she had come here to say for as long as possible.
So instead, she approached the workbench closest to her. A handful of blueprints caught her eye first, inventions Shulk had planned and discarded. Among them were designs for all number of weapon types – staffs, katanas, rifles the likes of which Sharla used – as well as practical knick-knacks. More efficient heating units, a palm-sized variant of Alcamoth's teleporters, a high-distance communicator, all of them formulated to the tiniest gear and brought to paper with absolute precision. In between the blueprints, the lonely book on the workbench lay there as though plucked from a different time.
Melia ran her hand across the leather binding. The title read Collectopaedia in gold letters.
She opened the book. And in an instance, she found herself transported to that different time in the old world. Page after page, the book presented places of Bionis and Mechonis before these places ceased to exist. Sometimes a dried flower charmed the Collectopaedia and emitted the faintest tinge of its scent. Other times a curious gear or a metal shard stuck between the pages. Shulk had taken notes on everything, every plant and fruit and oddity he had come across on his journey. With a careful hand trained in the drawing of blueprints, he had sketched landmarks into the book, snapshots of Colony 6 and Makna Forest and Agniratha, the lost capital at the top of Mechonis.
When Melia ran her fingers across Shulk's drawing of old Alcamoth, she had to bite back tears.
"It was Fiora's idea."
Shulk's voice startled Melia, and for a moment the simple walls of the laboratory left her disoriented. She had almost lost herself in memories of the Bionis, of towns and mountains and waterfalls that now only existed in between the book pages.
"Back in Colony 9, Fiora used to keep track of all the interesting plants she came across," Shulk continued. "I think it was mostly for cooking purposes, but she treated it like the diary of an explorer." He smiled, though only for a moment. "I started my own rendition shortly before the attack on Colony 9. She said it would convince me to leave the lab more often. And afterwards I kept going… I don't know why. I never found the time to show it to her."
Melia needed to fight all the harder to keep the tears at bay. Fiora's absence stung in her chest with the intensity of metal splinters. They all carried such splinters, even after twelve years, and sometimes the pieces were a comforting reminder. Other times they shifted to draw blood. Melia missed Fiora's optimism, her encouragement, the thyme leaves that always seemed to get stuck in her hair when she cooked. Would things have turned out differently had she lived longer?
It mattered little. That future was lost.
With uneasy steps, Melia walked over to Shulk and placed the Collectopaedia in his lap.
"There are still a few pages left," she said.
"Yeah. But I wouldn't know what to put in."
"Shulk…" Melia swallowed. But she needed to continue. "You promised to explore this world with her, didn't you? To journey across the ocean and see what waits on the other side of it. Is it not so?"
"I did make that promise. But I don't see the point in it now."
"If this is what you want, you owe it to yourself to go."
"That's not what I meant. To be honest, I don't even know if there's a point to anything anymore." He gestured towards the unremarkable rocks in front of him. "I figured it out. Why the Shoulder is falling apart, I mean. It's the ether. Before, on Bionis, everything was made up of ether. This world is different, different on such a fundamental level I didn't even bother to look. There are all these other parts, atoms and particles I can't make sense of."
Melia held up one of the rocks. "I'm not sure I can follow. What does this have to do with the Shoulder?"
"Parts of the Bionis were transported into the new world, right? Like this stone. This world has inherent amounts of ether too, but the point is that the concentration in objects from Bionis is a hundred, maybe a thousand times higher. That's why the Shoulder was floating so far up in the first place: The differences in ether concentration increased the effect of hover stone hidden inside the Shoulder. But the balance isn't sustainable."
"Then the effect is wearing off over time?" Melia asked. She still struggled to follow Shulk's argumentation.
"Exactly. It's like with polarizing energy, positives and negatives; the parts move to where there is less of one and more of the other. To reclaim a balanced state. I should have seen it sooner. The Shoulder is emitting its surplus of ether to its surroundings. And in the process, the hover stone loses its abilities. Until it's nothing but plain rock."
Shulk took another pebble from the pile. As soon as he let go, it dropped to the floor where it crash-landed with a sharp clank. The stone did not rise again. If that had been the Shoulder proper…
"And is there a way for us to revert this process?" Melia swallowed. "Or to slow it down at least?"
Shulk's defeated expression spoke volumes. "I wouldn't know how. Even if we could somehow find an ether source pure and large enough, it would only give us a few years." He reached for the Monado replica. "I tried to trap the non-levitating rocks in the Monado's ether field. They hovered for about ten minutes. Then they all dropped down. Including those that had worked fine before. Melia, there is no way to undo this."
She took his hand. Even though Melia had sworn to let him go, she reached out once more. "You mustn't give up hope. We will not give in even when the obstacles seem insurmountable. You taught me that."
"But it's not just the Shoulder. Don't you see? Everything we have created, everything we are is built on ether. The ether lamps Reyn and Sharla hang on their porch don't last as long anymore because of the depletion of ether. If you summon elemental orbs, they are becoming weaker, right?"
Melia bit her lip. The fight with the last Fogbeast had cost her more energy than she liked to admit. "I thought I was imagining it."
"You're not. It's this world. This horrible world I wished into existence."
The Monado lay all too innocently before them.
"We will manage, I'm sure," Melia said.
"I don't see how. The Havre engines, the teleporters – without ether, all that will no longer work in a few hundred years, maybe sooner. We will have to start from scratch."
"Then you have all the more reason to go."
Shulk blinked. He stared at their interlaced hands but didn't seem to comprehend. "Why should I go?"
"To explore the world as you promised. To finish the empty pages in your book. Maybe you will even find a place for a new beginning." Melia laid a hand against his cheek. Her thumb stroked the fine wrinkles around his eyes.
She had always known their shared time would be limited. But still the years had flown by so quickly.
"I don't understand," Shulk said. "I can still… I should…"
"You should live the way that best suits you. I thought that by keeping you in Alcamoth and by letting you do small things, you would one day heal and live happily. But you are not made to do small things, Shulk. You never were."
"I can't just leave you. I… I still have so many things to repair."
"We both know you won't find peace in machines forever. Your visions have returned."
"Visions I don't understand."
"And you will not find the understanding here. If these visions contain the answer on how to save the Shoulder, or even just a place to live in this world with reduced ether, should you not follow that call?"
Shulk's breath stuttered. "Do you think I could change the future again?"
"If anyone can, it will be you," Melia said. And she fully believed in what she said.
"Will you… be alright?"
Melia stood up and with the hand still interlaced with Shulk's she pulled him to his feet also. "I will. Alcamoth is where I belong. And I truly hope you will find a place like that for yourself."
"But it's not going to be here," Shulk said. And as the words passed his lips and the truth sank in, he stood a little more upright. "I think you're right about that. Will I see you again?"
"If we both do our best to make that future a reality, then yes. In some form we will surely meet again. In the meantime, go where your visions take you. Live and do great things."
Melia pulled Shulk's worn bag from underneath one of the workbenches, paused when her fingers recognised the rough leather where years ago, they had filled it with marine marble. How short the time they needed to pack… A repair kit, a few spare parts, and provisions wandered into the bag. Finally, Melia filled the free space with the Collectopaedia and the wish that its empty pages would find completion.
She handed Shulk the bag, and once more their hands touched.
They embraced. For a moment they held each other, relished the warmth of the other, and listened to the other's steady breath. And a small, selfish part of Melia hoped for this embrace to last until the end of days, until the Shoulder collapsed and all ether had fled from this world.
But they parted. Shulk took up the Monado replica and clipped it to his back where it belonged. When he reached the teleporter, he stopped and threw a last look back. A true smile charmed his features.
Then he was gone.
Shulk only stopped by his quarters long enough to stuff an extra pullover into his bag. The strap exerted a comforting pressure on his shoulder, neither too light to suggest ill preparation nor too heavy for travelling. Just right. He left the puzzle box on the balcony table for Aaron to find.
The babble of voices in the glass dome barely reached Shulk's ears as he shoved his bag into an unoccupied Havre. His hand didn't tremble once while he initiated the starting sequence, and a moment later the vessel leaped for the sky beyond Alcamoth.
An endless horizon stretched ahead. The world was vast.
The Havre had passed the borders of the Bionis' Shoulder when Shulk threw a look down. But a sea of clouds blocked the view of Colony 9. Strangely, the sight did not discourage him in the slightest. The wind murmured unknown promises into his ears. The air carried a pure freshness that conjured a smile onto his lips.
Shulk set course for the horizon. It was time to find out what lay beyond the sky.
19/06/22: Well, Shulk has finally run out of sidequests and now has no choice but to do the next story mission. It was about time, wasn't it?
Also, did I say I wanted to finish posting this by the time Xenoblade 3 comes out? Yeah, at this pace, I don't really see that happening anymore. I have a completely different story sitting in my docs, and editing two books at the same time sucks.