#spacetalking

I’ve mentioned before that as much as I genuinely like Devrim as a character I would have loved to have seen Shin in his place, because that’s the kind of answer I want to give to “what is his relationship with the non-City humans?” I like to think that Shin has spent his post-Yor years focusing on everyone outside the walls, keeping tabs on the settlements still out there; offering to escort them to the City if they wish, but also offering to help them maintain the home they already have. He’ll deal with a pack of Fallen that have been harrassing them, scrummage up needed supplies, pitch in to mend a broken roof - whatever they need that he can give.

If that’s at all true, then he’d get on famously with those settlers, and also with ex-City folk like Hawthorne who grew disaffected with City life for whatever reason. He’d be understanding of her issues with Guardians and approving of her protectiveness towards others, and she’d find him more down-to-earth than those Light-blighted battleheads in the Tower who are oh so willing to go be heroes but probably couldn’t tell you the names of half the civilians who work among them. (Neither of them are entirely fair in their attitudes towards the City, but cranky kindred spirits are still kin.)

However, that could all be wishful thinking. Maybe he sees his role more as the watcher of the watchmen, the silent sentinel crouched in the distance, guarding the secret of Thorn. Maybe Hawthorne would find his story somewhat sympathetic, but judge that he ultimately still falls into that big picture blinkering that she clearly finds grating about Guardians (“it’s for your own good,” they say, and restrict access to the wilds or push you away from the fight or run away to Titan right when you need them). Maybe the only relationship he has with those outside the City are the awed murmurings of the one of their kind who rose to the Light.

I live in rueful admittance that there may come a day when Headcanon Shin and Canon Shin diverge severely enough that they end up glaring at each other in high offence.

I do think, either way, that Shin would care about the destruction wreaked on the City, and the loss of the Light would absolutely be a shock to the system. He’d be better braced for it than the rest of the Guardians - less “what am I now, how do I fight this fight when I only have one life to give?”, more “oh, back to me again”, and he’s been trained to fight as a simple mortal - but he clearly regards the Light and presumably the Traveler with enough respect that having that fire snuffed out would be a hollowing feeling. He has a very personal attachment to the Light, after all: he’s the only Guardian we know of to have consciously agreed to take the duty on. There’s also his Ghost, who is quite probably his last link to Jaren and his childhood: having it abruptly fall out of the sky would be hellishly emotional. It’s been there throughout some of the worst moments of his life, its known him since he was a boy, they shared the loss of a man and a home they loved and they shared the vengeance on the one who took them, and now it’s is crumpled and weak and maybe dying and he has no idea how to fix it. That’s gotta be hard.

To that end, I don’t know whether he’d regard Towerfall as a ‘humbling’ experience for the others. We’re getting into the finer nuances of headcanon here, but I see him as having a bit of a confused mix of feelings about the Tower and the City: there’s some real bitterness for sure, but there are also still the remnants of the hero worship of his youth. “If you had to live like we lived,” he’d think sometimes, “if you had to lose what I lost-”, and then they do and they have and there’s no satisfaction in it. He never wanted his story to be anyone else’s, not really, not truly. Somewhere, deep down, a small boy mourns for the final shattering of the dream - for the promised paradise of the last safe city, shining even in the night.

In that sense it’s almost more of a humbling for Shin; perhaps the kind that finally draws him behind the walls as more than a fleeting visitor. They are making some changes of their own, after all, with Hawthorne on board and efforts to make the Tower more integrated with the rest of the City. Maybe he’d be interested in having a voice in that. Maybe he’d have found himself with a greater appreciation for their perspective, even as they got a glimpse of his. Maybe with the Traveler blossoming a-fresh overhead he’d finally, tentatively, wary but willing, start to shuck the ‘renegade’ tacked on ahead of Hunter.