A/n: I have a feeling I haven't properly established headcanon/characterisation but I'm too lazy and I've come too far to start now. Play The Binding Blade :v
Chapter warning: mental health issues.
vi
They have Robin now, their tomes and their despair for their missing friends and the lost world. The day's battles are easier on the body, but the burden eats away at their souls and their respite. Roy's fleeting happiness slips through his fingers, bubbling uselessly into the scared earth. Robin was with them now because Lilina had acted before Roy could throw himself into harm's way.
The night with the blade had revealed that mindscape. It swung at his hip as they trudged on, clattering louder than the petrified forest. To the blade, that night had been a tantalising disappointment. But it didn't matter who would get it done, and out in this new world there were plenty who could rise fulfill the role. The blade didn't have such high expectations. It wasn't a perfectionist. And it didn't have to pretend it was anything otherwise.
They settle down before dawn in a thicket, Lilina and Robin in particular needing the extra rest. Usually, this night would be too inclement for a break, leaving them to wander endlessly as their soulless bodies had—No, that's a lie.
Not one of them had ever been soulless. Perhaps it was a mercy that their spirits hadn't been brutally ripped from their bodies. But the agony of still being within it, but being pushed into a corner, having no control over it, watching it move, coerced by malicious hands to stalk, to fight, to terrorise those whose souls remained. Having none of the protection a body granted you, feeling like your connection would sever, that you would merely vanish into the ether if you were merely looked upon in the daylight, exposed for your pitiful conquering, was a pain incomparable. It ran deeper than ten blades twisted into the back, hurt more than the moment of their collective defeat. The experience crept up the throat, filled the ears, the nose, the mouth with a thick, oily vapour of shame that choked the heart.
And why should he have been freed from that if he couldn't save them all?
He knows he should sleep so the others aren't held back later, but it's hopeless. He looks one more time at the three of them asleep under Robin's coat before he unpins his cape, drapes it over his friends and leaves the thicket. Out of that cramped space, he realises the nervous energy pent up in his limbs that is impossible to shake off. He supposes it's the inherent uncertainty of fighting the lost souls, the possibility that the next soul they fight is the last that they free, and the next will destroy the link between the soul and body for good. He supposes that there is an order to the Light, that all were entrapped in the same way, but they aren't privy to that, how the Light thinks, why it had stolen the spirit of the world itself. (Really, he didn't see what it sought to gain by claiming him.)
Nonetheless, the reality of there being no escape from his psychological condition was strangely comforting. At least out of that terrible spirit prison he could entertain the vague possibility of success. He supposes he should start practicing. And if he was found by the enemy, well, how else was he to spend the restless night?
He finds a small clearing, as quiet as the rest of them, and pulls out his blade. They glare at each other for a moment before he exhales its whispers away. He starts out simple, moves onto the more strenuous motions, imagining an invisible foe as he'd been trained to do. Swipe, sidestep, jab. He takes one more swing and sees Marth's eyes glint behind the slash of the blade. It slips from his hand.
The space in front of him empties. He falls to his knees, the wind knocked out of him, and sits back for a moment, overwhelmed by despair. The face of his lost friend fills his mind, but it ripples, the image fragmenting as if he's beginning to forget what it looks like. The swirl of negative emotion in the pit of his stomach is unbearable, so after catching his breath he decides to attain a different vantage point, up a nearby tree. He hauls himself up to the first branch before his boot slips on the bark and the rest of him follows. He crashes onto his back and slips into a dream.
Marth is alone, save for the darkness, as usual. Roy approaches but his partner steps back.
"I don't want to hurt you," he whispers. He suddenly collapses to the ground, tearing at his hair, convulsing in pain. Roy bolts across the space between them and shakes his shoulders. Look at me, he cries.
He looks on helplessly until Marth falls limp in his arms and gazes up at him, his face strained but relieved. He averts his eyes shortly after, grinning slightly.
"Do you remember when we sat together in the mess hall after curfew?" he murmurs. Roy leans in closer to listen, peering through Marth's bangs as he speaks. "We were on the couch under a huge blanket, watching the fireplace."
"You mean the time when Bowser crashed through the window?" Roy asks. Marth chuckles, an enchanting little sound.
"Even with that, being bundled up with you that night was one of the most peaceful moments I've ever had in this world." When Marth's eyes flicker up to meet his gaze, Roy retracts himself and grows warm in the face. Marth raises a hand slowly and caresses his cheek, which tingles beneath his touch. Despite himself, Roy cannot look away.
Marth's other arm twitches and a spire of pain flares through Roy's stomach.
The Falchion draws blood, which pools on the invisible ground between them. Marth's eyes are hollow with despair, now.
"End this," he begs.
"No!" But against his own will his hands close around Marth's throat. He goes light-headed from his own pain as Marth begins to writhe. He tightens his grip as they both scream.
He shields his face from the light when he wakes and finds it otherwise difficult to move. It takes a moment for his eyes to clear up before he realises that the tightness in his chest is in reality Pichu curled up on top of him.
Lilina and Robin call them back from the tree line and they continue on incognito, as always. They evade the eyes of the possessed hidden in the greenery. Forlorn wisps reach out for them as they pass and look on in mourning as they are left behind. Above the drone of the grieving souls, the crashing of waves begins to trickle through the thinning forest until it gives way to a view of shrubs, sand dunes and eventually a beach.
Quite unlike the night before, it's a beautiful, cloudless day. The golden sand stretches for miles in either direction, curving gently along the coastline. The water sparkles like crystal in the sunlight, cool and inviting. But like everyone else, the lifeguards have been supplanted.
They briefly discuss a method of attack, then set their sights on their chosen foe stalking the beach: a hulking, spiked shell—Bowser. The other is an imitation of the angel Pit, borne from the shadows of their gleaming antagonist, a body that would dissipate on defeat. The soul trapped within exists within a hellscape, but the three tacticians, and even Pichu, feel the ache of their brutal expediency. If the soul can hang on just a little longer, Bowser too can come to their aid.
With Robin's other tomes lost, fire is their disadvantage but their only long-range option. Robin murmurs an incantation, flicks their hand through the air and sends a fireball down. It skims along the sand dunes harmlessly until it reaches Bowser's shell and explodes, provoking a twisted roar as he crashes onto his stomach. Lilina follows up with a fireball that explodes in his face.
Lilina and Robin watch in silence as Bowser searches for his attackers. Robin distracts Bowser with another burst a short distance away. Roy and Pichu watch their backs, suspecting every rustle in the breeze.
Robin pulls out their Levin sword, nods to the others and springs out from the dunes with Lilina. Pichu goes after them after scanning the area, leaving Roy to pick up the rear.
He springs up and feels a sharp pain in the back of his knee. He wills his foot forward but he locks up in pain and falls to the ground.
It's not a pulled muscle.
Two more sharp blows pierce his shoulder and back between the gaps in his armour, leaving him prone on the ground and coughing up sand. He pivots around and, with a ragged yell, pulls out a violet arrow from his shoulder. A pair of shadows pool in his field of vision. The last thing he sees is the flash of a golden circlet in the sunlight.
A/n: Beach episode!