Reiji and Shinji fanfic [All the King's Horses and All the King's Men...]

[sewnonheart]

Title: All the King's Horses and All the King's Men...
Fandom: Pokemon/Pocket Monsters
Characters: Reiji and Shinji (Reggie and Paul)
Rating: G
Summary: Revisiting old memories prompts Reiji to wonder where everything went wrong... and forces him to confront that maybe everything was never quite right to begin with. Genfic, no pairings.


Opening Author's Notes: Another Tobari brothers fanfic, but much longer than my first. This fic certainly changed a lot before I was through with it. Many scenes were snipped out and some parts were completely rewritten.

As always, I have no beta, so if you catch anything I missed in my revisions, do alert me. I'd appreciate the help! <3

The narrative might be a tad confusing as it goes back and forth between present and past, but if you pay enough attention, it should be easy to tell which is which. Enjoy!

All the King’s Horses and All the King’s Men...
Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.
All the king’s horses and all the king’s men
Couldn’t put Humpty together again.
... Could he have been broken to begin with?

Sometimes, Reiji wondered.

One of those times was as he flipped through the dusty old album filled with captured memories of his long-forgotten childhood. A young boy caught his eye with purple hair pulled at the back of his head into a bare tuft of a ponytail, face turned away from something he carried in his arms as he forced a smile and tried to look happy about the small intruder into his picture-perfect life; the smile was as out of place as the infant peering through the folds of cloth, staring into the distance.

Reiji smiled ruefully to himself and flipped through several more pages of either forced brotherly love or outright rivalry, stopping on the last picture in the oldest album he still retained in his possession.

A faded old photograph of Reiji sleeping on a futon spread out on the floor as his toddler brother slept in the center of the bed, swathed in his baby blanket over the untouched sheets belonging to his older brother, two pillows forming a barrier on his right side to prevent him from rolling out of bed or a protective wall to keep the enemies at bay. Enemy lines, indeed.

A rather sour note to end the album on, in his opinion.

He was not at all willing to leave his vacuous bed to his younger brother for a futon on the floor. Still, that was the last of the pictures taken of both brothers together that was not a professionally-taken picture. Naturally, most of them were of Shinji and the few that were not taken by Reiji were either of Reiji’s body (with his head outside of the frame) or of the grass, sky, floors, walls, off-center shots of Pokemon, and one was even of the contents of the refrigerator.

Perhaps a better way to have ended it would have been a sincere moment of the brotherly love they attempted to emulate in mixtures of embarrassment, amusement at the other’s expense, and disgust.

But perhaps such moments were not meant to be caught on film, but instead in one's memory; one such moment also involved Shinji in Reiji's bed (curiously enough), but that was the last of the similarities...

Reiji shifted under the covers, snuggling into his pillow as a small voice called out to him. It took him a moment to recognize it as human and belonging to his brother and another longer moment for his mind to register it as speech; by that point, all he had understood was "big brother?" and the rest were sniffles.

"Wha?"

He cracked open an eye, then propped himself up on an elbow as he leaned over the side of the bed to find his little brother looking embarrassedly at the floor. Reiji remembered vaguely wondering if his brother had had some sort of "accident."

Then came the confession. "Nii-san... I'm scared."

He blinked, surprised at this statement coming from Shinji. "Of what?" he asked somewhat tiredly, feeling an uncomfortable aching in his shoulder and neck (did he sleep improperly again?).

This obviously had taken a great deal of will-power on Shinji's par to admit to, as he jerked his head up to give his older brother a bland stare. "I'm scared," he repeated again, forcefully this time, though he was in no position to be giving commands.

Why did he come to him, then? Why not mother? What a brat.

Instead of asking, Reiji simply shifted in his bed and willed himself to move further back. Shinji blinked, confusion replacing the commanding look on his face. "What?"

"Come on," Reiji offered, almost immediately regretting it (he was going to be kicked all night, he just knew it), but still he persisted when Shinji hesitated. "You can sleep with me tonight."

Perhaps he imagined Shinji blushing in the muted light as that look of embarrassment settled in one more. He had never seen a child of his age with so much pride before.

But of course, child that he was, he succumbed, lifting himself up onto the bed and crawled into the covers, snuggling into the warmth of a slightly confused Reiji's chest.

It was his turn to be hesitant, as he reached out, as if Shinji might grow fangs and bite off his hand. But as the boy closed his eyes, head reclining against Reiji's chest, tiny body nestled into the covers for warmth, Reiji took notice, as if for the first time, just how tiny Shinji really was.

A smile graced his lips, and he no longer held back, carefully, albeit awkwardly, draped his arm over Shinji, tugging the blanket to drape over the small boy's shoulder. He could feel his shirt dampening in the spot pressed against Shinji's cheek from the invisible tears that had tracked lines down his cheeks, but Reiji did not care.

He was filled with a strange warmth that he was sure was not just his brother's body heat; a pleasant warm feeling as he cared for him and laid his fears to rest.

For a moment, they were the vision of picturesque brotherly love their family strived so hard to emulate in photographs, thereby encouraging them in life.

"Nii-san..."

Whisper-soft was Shinji's voice, that Reiji almost did not catch it. "Hm?"

"Your scent..." he began quietly and Reiji remained quiet so that he might hear.

"It's like sweat. Also, your chest is too hard, mother's much softer."

Brat.

That simple moment paved the way to his future profession; as soon as he realized one could make a career of caring for and raising living creatures, he decided he wanted to become a Pokemon Breeder. One could say Shinji was his inspiration.

But Reiji inspired nothing more in Shinji than a desire to make himself known, so he would not live life in the shadow of his brother. He derided him for his choice.

"But you have such power," he said, incredulously. "Why become a Pokemon Breeder?"

"Because it is what makes me happy," Reiji said simply, but Shinji did not understand.

He neatly set the album back into the drawer after cleaning it off and removed the next album from the pile. This one was slightly more recent and was often revisited, but still had a fine layer of dust coating the cover that annoyed the older brother. He wiped it off with a cloth before it popped open in his lap and before he could reach down to lift and close it once more, he was tranfixed by a hard stare, perfectly captured.

Slowly, he lowered the cloth and picked up the album, cracking it open to reveal the rest of the picture.

A young boy stood in grey shorts covered in patches of dirt in the park that was the site of Tobari City's famous meteorites.

His hands were crammed into his pockets, a habit he retained to this day.

His purple hair fell in messy wisps, now reaching past his shoulders, bangs parted in a style not too different from his brother's, framing a youthful round face which contrasted most sharply by his hard dark eyes narrowed in a critical stare; no, not a glare, just a cold critical stare which was somehow far worse and gave the impression of someone much older than he really was.

Shinji stared ahead, not at the camera's lens, but somewhere above it.

Reiji paused, knowing what came after, and for a moment considered simply closing the album and returning to the task he set out to do in the first place, which was to clear out the drawers of useless items; clean their contents; and replace them.

But instead, he turned the page to find Shinji standing and looking somewhere to the right, hair cropped short, far above his shoulders; it was a messy job, as if he cut it on his own.

Which he did, to differentiate himself from his brother, so that he could stop having to be little Reiji; Reiji was never told this, but he knew.

He was forced to wear little Reiji's clothes, be held up to little Reiji's standards, and was essentially expected to be little Reiji.

Shinji had no say in this matter, he was powerless, save for one thing and one thing only. His hair; unlike clothes, which he did not have the money to buy for himself and people's expectations, all it took was a pair of scissors to sever that shared trait.

Or at least, that was how Reiji interpreted his actions.

Shinji was hard to read and understanding him was key to aiding him; their closeness in kinship did not erase the immeasurable distance between them. He figured he might never understand him, despite their “closeness.”

But maybe he was closer than most...

He blinked as he heard some movement behind him. He turned, looking only over his shoulder at who he knew was standing behind him.
"Here. You seemed pretty distracted."

Eyes averted to the floor, bangs casting shadows over his eyes and the lower half of his face half hidden in the collar of his jacket, he carried in his arms the rest of the old scrapbooks and albums that had remained outside. "They're heavy." As always, short and abrupt.

... Or, more likely, he was just as close to understanding him as he was to capturing Dialga with the aid of a single butterfly net.

Reiji nodded and smiled, "thank you."

He realized he would not be able to take them as he was with his back turned to Shinji, only his head turned to gaze over his shoulder, so he turned around to face him, but did not stand.

Edging closer to ease away the gap between them, he accepted the books from an irritated-looking Shinji, who immediately retracted his hands after making sure Reiji had adjusted to the weight of the books and required no further assistance. Cramming his hands into his pockets, he looked at the floor and leant one cheek as casually as he could into his shoulder, pressing the collar flat against it, leaving one scarlet-tinged cheek in full-view. Maybe he thought his hair would fall to cover his blush.

Reiji's smile grew wider and he rose, shifting his weight onto his knees so the top of his head reached just beneath his standing brother's eyes.

Shinji turned his head to face his elder brother, a look of confusion etched into his features as the blush faded. "What...?" he spoke slowly this time, eyes widened in a sort of alarmed confusion, looking as close as he could be at that point to his younger self.

Sometimes, at times such as this, Reiji wondered, when did Shinji change? What caused him to change? Was it just one incident or a series of events that shaped him, made him what he now was? If so, then what?

He would blame himself; for not noticing it sooner, for not doing anything to stop it, for not convincing him otherwise, for not changing him...

And then he would remember. It may not have been obvious at the time and least of all to Reiji, but the seeds were already sowed, even in the childhood he looked back on so fondly. Sentimentality aside, he knew Shinji was, at essence, always this way. He just hadn't accepted it.

From the first time Shinji interacted with Pokemon, at the age of three when his mother set him down in the meteorite site filled with citizens and foreigners alike so that he might approach the Pokemon of the Trainers who had agreed to show them to him, it became immediately apparent what kind of Pokemon he preferred.

Shinji gravitated towards the strong; he seemed to have no preference as to Types or colors or species, all he cared about was strength (which was subjective, in Reiji's opinion, but not so much with Shinji).

"Which one is your strongest?" he would question the Trainers, always politely.

This question was always met with amusement until they took note of the gravely serious expression on his face; some would continue on to say "all of them are strong in their own way" or some other such phrase which was far too trite for Shinji's tastes, "sign of a weak Trainer" he loved to repeat to me (always once they're out of ear-shot), others would be immediately unsettled by his serious demeanor and most felt there was something not quite right about the boy.

Others, such as the mothers whose company Reiji shared waiting for his teacher to arrive during parent-teacher conferences, often showered him with a most uncomfortable rain of praise.

"Shinji-kun is so polite!"
"Shinji-kun is so quiet! I envy you... you really raised him well, despite being a boy and all!"
"Yes, he's so quiet! Look at him, sitting there in the corner, like a good little boy. Mine is so rambunctious, he's always moving and making messes."
"You never hear his voice!"
"Ah, isn't Reiji-san a Breeder? Ne, can you take my boy and raise him too? When can I pick him up?"

They would congratulate him, then joke and laugh, but Reiji would only feel more and more uncomfortable, casting glances over his shoulder at where Shinji sat in his chair, quiet as ever, staring off into the distance as the other boys and girls played, laughed, or clung to their mothers' apron strings.

They would have made the easiest game of spotting What Does Not Belong.

So Shinji remained alone; praised by teachers as the model student, lauded by thoughtless women as the model child, and forgotten almost entirely by the children; after his first year, Reiji could no longer ask his brother's classmates to lead him to him. Few remembered who he was, and those who did, did not know where to find him.

Sometimes, Reiji wondered. How long would Shinji remain reclusive and if he was being a poor older brother by not encouraging him enough to make friends. Maybe setting a good example by keeping on friendly terms with his clients was not enough...

But as Shinji stood before him, still confused, Reiji ceased to wonder and, with trepidation, reached out with both hands. State of alarm rising to panic, Shinji tried to duck and run but was caught by the strap of his backpack.

As he already had one leg in the air, he was off-balance enough that a simple tug was enough to send him straight to the floor, or in this case, into Reiji's chest, arms enveloping him.

Shinji blinked again, staring blankly at Reiji smiling down at him, as if oblivious to the bizarre and uncomfortable position he had thrown his brother into.

Shinji struggled to keep himself elevated so that he won't have to rest on his brother's lap on that one foot that remained planted on the floor, the other leg bent with foot sticking out to the side uselessly.

His back was brushing Reiji's chest as his brother drew him closer. It took Shinji another moment to realize he had just been captured in some clumsy embrace.

"Aniki!" he growled uselessly, struggling to get away. "What's gotten into you...?"

Reiji smirked and ruffled his hair before literally pulling him into a hug, Shinji's last hope slipping away like his foot on the tatami floor. He should have taken off his socks first.

Reiji nuzzled his brother's cheek, while the other surrendered begrudgingly, without returning the affection. "... You're weird," he stated, voice muffled by the crook of his brother's arm.

"And you're grumpy!" Reiji replied with a smile.

Shinji sighed and rested a hand onto the floor to help him swivel to face his brother, resting on his knees again for support, pulled back, and simply sat, facing his brother, and mirroring his position as both laid their hands on their thighs and observed one another, Reiji with a calm smile and Shinji with a half-lidded unimpressed stare and his mouth forming a mostly-straight line that strayed downwards at the ends.

They remained that way for a long moment, in which no words passed between them only silent facial expressions which conveyed their feelings about the previous scuffle, but betrayed nothing else.

The one to break the silence spoke.

"I am not grumpy," was simply stated by the usually silent before he sighed and rested his head on his brother's lap, surprising Reiji and, judging by his expression, surprising himself as well.

He slowly untucked his legs from beneath him and lay on his side, switching to a more comfortable position and Reiji blinked, before running a hand through Shinji's hair.

His cheeks flared red and Shinji heaved a sigh . "I'm just tired... that's all."

Shinji, Reiji realized, had never changed, not entirely.

"Aniki?" he said in a surprisingly soft voice.

"Yes, Shinji?"

"... Your lap is too lumpy."

Reiji blushed and shoved the smirking Shinji away. "Of course, it is! I'm not your mother!"

Hair tousled and bangs falling messily into mischievously-glinting eyes, Shinji pushed himself up into a half-way sitting position, a smug expression on his face. "It doesn't matter, I prefer it this way."

Smirk fading as he stood up, Shinji walked off, mannerism so aloof that Reiji almost doubted that the previous affair had even taken place outside of his own imagination; but both the warmth and the feel of his hair were both real and unlike the first time which felt like some intangible sweet deception of a dream, but instead felt solid, flawed, and real.

The distance was not as great as it seemed.

"He'll never change," Reiji said to himself, after Shinji had left the room, in a tone that was neither angry nor accepting, but the strangest of fond inclination.

Closing Author's Notes: I'm still not quite pleased with how I ended this one, but it's not too bad.

Please read and review. I especially like it when people tell me exactly what they liked, or pointed out their favorite parts!