Chapter Text
“Chrom?” Lissa says. It’s a little meek, but a great deal concerned.
“Yes?” Chrom replies. It’s a little too cavalier, coming off the high of a public speech.
Lissa doesn’t seem to know what to say from there, not with Chrom’s placid expression. How to ask him if he’s alright when he seems so completely unruffled? How to trouble the notion that he’s fine with having just seen a good comrade – and friend and wife and mother – vanish into the aether, potentially losing her forever?
Doesn’t that kill a man inside, at least a little bit?
It certainly did when Emmeryn fell. Chrom hadn’t been so relaxed then, when he was a prince and not the Exalt, but he’d still buried his grief under duty and determination and all those things.
Now, it seems positively eerie that he can even smile, mere hours after losing his wife. It’s a dead smile, blank and plastered on like his jaw is made of stone, but it’s a smile nonetheless. Grima is gone forever, but at such a personal cost –– a cost he had railed against.
It turns Lissa’s gut into knots more than her own grief does.
So Lissa turns her eyes to Frederick, maybe a little desperate. Surely he has something to say?
“Milord,” he says, calm but serious. “It's not every day a man fights a Fell Dragon. You need to rest. You have wounds that need tending to.”
“They’re fine,” Chrom says. Then his voice is quieter: “I’m alright, Frederick, I need to see that the rest of our allies are settled, that it’s safe to make camp… we probably lost part of the convoy, so maybe we’ll need to locate supplies.”
As if Chrom has ever had anything to do with the convoy beyond owning it. Lissa looks up at Frederick again, but he keeps his eyes settled on Chrom. The silence that follows is almost painful, and Chrom takes a few steps across the floor, closer to the war table, and he looks away from them to fix his gaze elsewhere. Lissa takes a tentative step after him, but he turns his back completely.
“I can assign another detail for supplies if you’re concerned,” Frederick says, “but Cordelia is already seeing to it.”
Chrom gives a little noise of acknowledgement, and then he adds: “You can see to it yourself, too. And Lissa, I’ll need you to, ah…” He pauses, and between the high backs of the chairs Lissa can see a stack of Ada’s books. Chrom rests his palm on them like he’s pinning them in place, the muscles in his arm tense, that one cut on his lower arm oozing blood. “Uh, see that we have enough fires, I guess.”
Lissa rolls her bottom lip between her teeth for a beat, just to keep herself from saying something rash, but it comes out anyway: “Chrom, this is crazy.”
“Thanks,” he says, absently.
Lissa’s mouth falls open, and when she’s sure that the tension in the room will cut them all to ribbons and she just wants to pound her fists against his chest until he has a reaction, Frederick lays a broad hand on her shoulder and she’s momentarily grounded.
“We’ll leave you, then, milord,” Frederick says.
“I don't want to leave him!” Lissa says, somewhat louder, and the first tears roll then, but Frederick uses that broad hand to steer her out by her shoulder blades. He pushes her right through the flap of the tent door, despite her sniffles, and on the other side of the door they wait.
Not ten seconds later, they hear the crash of those books toppling over. Thirty seconds pass like hours, and Lissa just grips Frederick's arm like she's six years old again and not a woman who has long outgrown her guardian. Inside, there's another crash that sounds like a chair toppling over, and then a strangled yell of pure pain, something deeper and more raw than the cut on his arm.
"Give him a moment," Frederick says, "just a few minutes."
So they wait. Sumia joins them shortly after, practically tiptoeing over, big eyes round with concern, as does Say'ri with a look more solemn than usual, and the four of them wait some more.
"I feel terrible," Sumia says, "He sounds like he's in so much pain. This should be a happy time, but..."
"Six of our party members grievously injured, ten more with minor wounds, and the rest exhausted just the same... and one gone." Say'ri pauses. "Where are their children?"
"Lucina and Morgan are in the healing tents with Maribelle," Frederick says.
"Are they okay?" Lissa asks.
Inside, books are being torn.
"They'll be fine," Frederick says. "They've survived worse already."
The four of them cringe together.
"What are we waiting for?" Lissa asks, feeling testy again. "We should be with him."
"You know as well as I do that he would never allow himself to appear weak before another, after this long campaign," Frederick says, and then he sighs. "Though I loathe to hear it." He puts a hand to Lissa's shoulder blades again. "Go, see to him, then. Sumia, Say'ri I am sure Lord Chrom would appreciate--"
Lissa doesn't wait for Frederick to finish; she pushes back through the flap of the tent door. Sure as it sounded, two of the war table's high-backed chairs are knocked over, and the books are knocked asunder, many split on their spines. One has a great deal of pages torn out –– her notebook, Lissa realizes. Had there been some clue? Had she planned it all along? Could he have changed her mind somehow?
"Chrom," she says miserably, to her very miserable brother, who is on the floor with one hand gripping the table top and the other clutching his own face. Lissa sinks to her knees in front of him, skirts settling around her, and she lays a hand on his knee.
"She promised me," Chrom chokes out. He's shaking, and Lissa reaches for his hand. He lets her take it, his fingers winding around hers. With his eyes red and his nose running and mouth twisted into a grimace of pain, he hardly looks like her brother at all. Her brother is always either dead serious or smiling.
She hasn't seen so much as a tear out of him since Emmeryn died.
"I know," she says, and she shifts to wrap her arms around him. He hardly budges either way, but that's okay. "She lied, but she did it to protect us."
"Protect us?" Chrom is angry again, even through his tears, and he moves as if to wrest Lissa from him, but he stops short of even jostling her. "Protect us! We were a hair's breadth from sealing Grima away for a few hundred years, we did not need protection!"
"Protection for our children," Lissa reminds him, as gently as she can. She could tell him that it was him who wanted a permanent solution until it was personal, but she doesn't want to fight him. That won't help. "For their children, and theirs, and theirs."
This time Chrom does pull himself from her arms, dragging himself back a few feet on the floor, and he snaps: "What of our children? A baby at home, two more here, another unborn?"
"We have to believe she'll come back," Lissa pleads. "Chrom, shh."
He's like a boy again, not a man with grown children, weeping messy tears on the floor, angry and grieving. Anyone would be -- Lissa could only imagine what she would do if her husband were to do the same to her. Could there be anything more bittersweet than saving the future at the cost of your dearest one?
"I thought I could be sure," Chrom says, "but then..."
He trails off.
Lissa moves to him again, and this time, Chrom reaches to hold her, choking on his own breath and dampening her shoulder. She just keeps her arms around him. It's the same way they were years ago when Emmeryn fell, but this time she's the one protecting him.
"I'll plead to Naga," Chrom says, finally. "I'll throw my own life down, if need be."
There's the rustle of the tent flap opening behind them, Lissa looks up expecting to see Frederick, but no –– there's Lucina, echoing her father's emotions but with command over herself. She looks down at Chrom and shows grief for a moment, and then seems to steel herself.
"You will do no such thing," she says.
Chrom seems at least momentarily pulled together by his daughter's presence, and he thumbs his own tears away and sits up straighter.
"Lucina," he says, and he doesn't look at her.
"Grima is dead," she says. "Grima will never terrorize this land again, and it has come at great personal cost." Her own eyes are glittering with tears, too, and she stands over her father with clenched fists. "Once, I have lost you, and twice, I have lost my mother. I will not lose you again."
Lissa looks down at her brother nervously, and he says nothing. He dares look up at his daughter now, though, and she meets his eyes as boldly as a child can in the face of such emotion from a parent.
"You are the strongest man I have ever known," Lucina says, and now she's weeping, too, though her voice remains resolute. "Have your grief, but then you must be strong again, and prove our bonds are tight enough for her to come back to us."
Chrom breathes deep and drags himself to his knees, and Lucina reaches for his hands. He takes them and she helps him up. He stands with burdened shoulders and aches and pains, but he stands nonetheless. Now looking up to him, Lucina adopts more concern.
"We will weather this together, father," she says, and Chrom nods with some difficulty before pulling his daughter into a brief hug. Then he reaches down for Lissa's hands, pulling her to her feet with them.
"We will," he says, finally. "Gods, this hurts."
"It will for a long time," Lucina says. Perhaps forever. Sadness could never truly be forgotten, after all.
"It's embarrassing to be seen like this," Chrom says.
"Well, at least Sumia didn't punch you this time," Lissa says.
That gets the barest crack of a smile.
"What?" Lucina says, taken aback. Chrom starts to explain.
He'll be okay, Lissa thinks. Someway, or somehow.