I love you more today than yesterday (but not as much as tomorrow)
No he's not.
This title has been baking for so uncountably long...presented without further comment...I hope you enjoy. <3
Reyn is just like Gadolt. At least, that's what Sharla had thought two months ago when she first met him. Standing next to Shulk, he looked exactly like Gadolt standing over a scrawny young Juju, the big lumbering one who'd watch out for them all. Yes, Reyn is just like Gadolt.
No he's not, what are you thinking, Sharla? After all, Gadolt was strong and sophisticated, in a way very different from Reyn, but then there was still certainly something admirable about him - and no, Sharla is not about to sit here and reduce him to a vague, iffy "something admirable". She's not going to sit here and pretend that she wasn't attracted to him, that she didn't want to marry him--
Whose thoughts are these? Her mother's? She hasn't seen her mother in years. And it was her mother who'd tried most fervently to convince her that marrying Gadolt would be good, that having a strong man around to support was just what she would need as she came of age...ugh. It makes her shudder, twitch and roll from shoulder to shoulder, just to think about it.
Even now, sometimes she slipped up and referred to him as a brotherly presence, because it was what she'd always thought, before taking it upon herself to meld into the status quo, like a good soldier would. Like the colonel would have wanted her to, really. After all, no point in entering an arranged marriage kicking and screaming, right? Just get it over with, team.
And who is the team? It's her and Juju. Juju for whom she'd said she could see a father figure in Reyn, as if Reyn himself wasn't barely old enough not to need his own father's guidance. Reyn, still a kid - and you yourself, even! In some ways. anyway. Ridiculous. Again, what are you thinking?
Reyn's voice rings in her head. What are you playin' at? Playing at love, playing at hope, playing at dreams, one supposes. Playing with the ideals of a new future but being unable to completely wrest them out of the mould of the present.
Because they will have a new future, after all. Just one final bit of dawdling in the reconstructed Colony 6, where Juju himself looks so grown-up, so capable - not half as much as Reyn, but not a quarter as much as herself. As far as she has to go, to find her own independence and purpose, they've still all got farther. They haven't been on their own at all yet, and she's only just started trying.
It's half been in vain, hasn't it?
"This is a little odd, don't you think, Reyn?"
He turned obligingly towards her, always cheery and ready to tackle the challenges of the day. Someone less serious than Gadolt...indeed. But Gadolt had seen a lot more, even now, of sustained war tragedies and fallen brothers than Reyn had. Which, to point...
"How do you mean?"
"I mean...I'm twenty-one, and you're only eighteen."
"Oh." His shoulders drooped a little bit, unexpectedly enough since Sharla had just, well, been thinking on his resilience. "That's not so bad, is it? What, three years? Hell, my parents were five years apart. It's no big deal, right?"
Sharla laughed. Of course. It's simple enough, isn't it? Simple like scrambled eggs with Black Liver Beans. Because Gadolt had been a full twenty-six, and he...oh. Phooey. Big brother, indeed. Who got you into this mess, my girl? Aren't you smarter than all that? Don't you have your own concerns?
"All things in time, Reyn," she answered him. "You're right, in the grand scheme of...all life, however long that might be," because after all who knows what'll come next, for them all? After they destroy the genesis of the entire cycle that perpetuates their world?
"But right now, I don't think it's the proper time and place. You know? We haven't had enough time to get to know each other like real partners would. Do you even know my mother's name?" Back to her again.
Reyn shrugged, scratched the back of his head. "I dunno...Marianne?" Maybe he was right, maybe he wasn't, but she certainly wasn't going to confirm and throw the whole plot right there.
"Reyn, you dolt!" Still, she couldn't keep from giggling again as she swatted at his bare bicep. "I wasn't asking you to guess, I was just pointing it out."
"I mean, how should I have known? You never told me. If you'd told me, I would've remembered!" And somehow she believed him. He would have. He really is just about that earnest.
"I haven't had a reason to tell you, don't you see? That's my point. In a little while, when everything is more...stable..." Condition stable. Heart rate steady, blood flowing inside and not outside, ether levels normal...she was still on edge, all the time.
Gadolt had always been on edge as well. Serious, but never quite calm. Always haunted, even before this. Yes, he had his moments of joviality, but sometimes just trying to get him to crack a smile had seemed like the most difficult task in the world, even with Sharla's most superlative bedside manner.
You really remind of me Gadolt when you get angry, she had said. And what good is the similarity of ire? It's truer, and then again it's more false.
Effort makes success appreciable. For her and Reyn to be no more than starry-eyed in their infatuation...it wouldn't do at all. "We'll just see how it is, alright?"
A slightly older Reyn, she guessed, would have clasped at her hand as it left the bubble of his personal space, but right now he just grinned, only the tiniest bit hesitant in his heartenedness.
"Alright. I'll be waiting, to see how things are, too. You're worth waitin' for - don't you know that, Sharla?"
No, it's not that that wasn't something Gadolt would have said, but...oh, no, never when he'd said it in a context like this had it sounded half so nice.
"You too, Reyn." You too.
canon Sharleyn makes me *squints*
fanon Sharleyn makes me *smiles*