It was some time after Nephorius's destruction that the dust of battle lifted. When it did, it found the twelve surviving SSBM fighters all exhausted, many of them bearing the marks of battle: bruises, burns, and scrapes; torn clothes and scuffed armor.
"At last," panted Fox. "It's finally over…no more Smashers can die at his hands…"
The looks with which many of his fellow fighters heard this utterance were bleak. None could take any relief from having defeated Nephorius; they thought of only the friends they had lost.
"But is it really over?" asked Mario. Luigi merely looked at his brother with a look of pain, the traces of tears streaking his face like they had done Mario's on the morning of the fateful dream.
"Mario's right," sighed Marth in despair. "We've all lost fellow Smashers at Nephorius's hands…but what have we won by defeating him?"
Samus tapped a foot. "Nothing, it would seem; apparently Mewtwo's revival spell didn't work," she answered gravely, the usual derisiveness of tone absent from her voice.
"And to think—I had the heart to hope—it would work…" Ness could barely mange to say before being overcome with sobbing much as he did when he and his three best friends had been recaptured on the outskirts of Port Town.
"Pika pi…" muttered Pikachu, blinking back tears. Kirby sighed something inarticulate in response.
Watching Ness try vainly to repress his sobs and sway to and fro as if he would soon fall down upon being overcome completely, Captain Falcon remained silent. In truth, he was now thinking again of everyone who had lost fellow Smashers and had been broken-hearted: Mario (and probably Luigi soon after) had been overcome with grief upon receiving news of Princess Peach's death; so had Princess Zelda, who had been the last person to speak to the Ice Climbers before their drowning and who had broken Link's heart when she herself died. Fox had lost Falco; Marth had lost Roy. Pikachu had lost Pichu and Jigglypuff, and probably felt some grief over Mewtwo's sacrifice, which was apparently in vain, for Ness was overcome with crying and none had been revived. As Bowser and Ganondorf were villains, none lamented their deaths—and probably because he was a psychic, Ness alone felt the loss of Mr. Game & Watch.
Poor Ness, Falcon thought, he felt the loss of everyone who died, and then some because he knew not only did Peach die for him, but I risked my life to rescue him and his friends—which must be hard on anyone, especially a child—
"Buck up, Ness, there's no point in crying about it now," admonished Link in a last-ditch attempt to retain the strength not to shed tears, and to restore that same strength to other fellow Smashers.
Hearing these words addressed to the weeping psychic boy, the usually unshakably calm F-Zero pilot lost control. "FOR PITY'S SAKE, LINK, LET THE BOY HAVE HIS TEARS—IT'S OBVIOUS HE'S SUFFERING A BROKEN HEART!" shouted a voice that Captain Falcon barely recognized as his own.
Even Samus was shocked at this sudden bout of shouting; Fox forgot a few more tears that he shed for Falco, and Mario and Luigi looked up from their futile attempts to comfort each other.
When Link could not respond for shock, Captain Falcon strode over to where Ness stood unsteadily, just as surprised as everyone else who witnessed the shouting. "I'm sorry, Ness," apologized Falcon in a low, shaken tone of voice as he drew Ness close to him, "I'm sorry."
But Falcon's embrace, far from comforting the boy, had the opposite effect: drawn close as if into his own father's arms Ness abandoned himself, his sobs frequently punctuated by sharper outcries, his tears flowing unheeded into the spandex of Falcon's racing suit—such grief as could only come from a broken-hearted child.
It was torture for the good captain to see Ness cry like this, as it reminded him forcibly of having brought Princess Peach's dead body into the Intergalactic Travelers' Center to bear news of the princess's death to Mario, Link, and Princess Zelda. Ness was sobbing as uncontrollably now as Mario had on that occasion—and while Falcon himself shed no tears then, he was quite unable to reproach those who did.
To think that the voice of the princess who vehemently asserted that, "The heart of a bounty hunter is unbreakable," was the very same voice that pleaded with the accompaniment of a feeble handclasp, "Get Ness and his friends safely home…tell—tell Mario I love him…" just before the delicate hand that clasped his went limp—after she had been the one to spare Falcon from the jaws of death in the Wormhole Crisis…to know that he owed his life to Princess Peach and was unable to save hers in return…
For once in nobody-knew-how-long, Falcon realized that the princess's death and the resulting fallout that fateful evening had broken his heart—and he hadn't even realized that his own heart was broken. He could not have admitted it, even to himself, after what Peach had said about bounty hunters being too tough to be heartbroken…being a bounty hunter by profession Falcon had stopped listening to his heart long ago. He had always prided himself on being able to overcome any challenge, to take anything in stride, without any groveling over perceived defeat. Perhaps that was why, seeing that sort of behavior in both himself and Samus Aran, Peach believed that a bounty hunter's heart could not be broken.
But at last Captain Falcon's heart was broken, as evidenced by his breathing that remained heavy as Ness cried…and by a single tear that finally slipped down his weatherbeaten cheek.
A/N: "This is How a Heart Breaks" is actually the title of a Rob Thomas song (doubt if the name rings a bell, but oh well). I was thinking, how marvelous that would be for the title of a chapter in which a tough Smasher suffers a broken heart...but have I broken the character of anyone involved?