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Lon’qu peered into the tent with reddened ears, ashamed at his piqued curiosity in where their tactician spent too much of her time. A sliver of light through the door traced the contours of tomes and papers scattered across a table and the corner of a cot with a threadbare blanket peeking out. All else was hidden in the shadows, too dark for his eyes to adjust to before her voice called out.
“Are you just peeping or are you coming in?” There was a soft slur to her words, sluggish and quiet.
He tied the tent door back, his fingers slow and deliberate as he tried to stave off the burning flush spreading to his cheeks. Sun filled the space, a cold and harsh light, but he could see now. With his boots, wiped clean of blood and mud from the last battle, carefully placed besides hers in a corner, he looked up to face her.
Robin sat up in her cot, a folded over pillow supporting her back. A gauzy aura draped over her, with glazed eyes narrowed from the sunlight, and a sheen to her face, bangs plastered to her forehead. There was a placid smile on her face: the one she carried into conversations she wanted to avoid or Frederick’s drill exercises. She sniffled and patted the seat of a wooden chair beside her bedside, her dark robe slung over its back.
The only other furnishing was a light trunk, filled with laundry and other books. Her tent was strikingly bare; its canvas walls free of the posters and charms decorating the other Shepherd's tents (his own had space reserved for manuscripts detailing the variety of insects given to him by Khan Basilio and blades of Lon’qu’s own procuring). Even the smell of the tent felt indistinctive underneath the clinical scent of beeswax and eucalyptus oil.
His steps, wary and silent, stopped at a delicate clinking sound.
At his feet lay two bottles--one half empty--of a drink he was all too familiar with at Khan Basilio’s gatherings.
“Mead?” He asked as he bent to pick them up. He never pegged Robin as a drinker.
“Gregor gave me some from his new batch. He says two bottles is the best cure for any malady."
“Is Frederick aware there’s a meadery being transported all over Ylisse?”
Her nose crinkled as she let out a strained, weak laugh. “When he finds out, Gregor won’t be able to feel his limbs after a hundred laps around camp. But with everything else going on--” Robin struggled to continue, but her words subsided into stifled coughs.
Averting his eyes when he caught a glimpse of smallclothes in the dirty laundry, he placed the bottles against the heap. Mindful of the distance between them, Lon’qu pulled the chair back and sat down, his limbs tense.
This was the first time he had seen her without her cloak. In battle and even the encampment, that bulky garment magnified her presence with each arc and flourish of her movements. At times, it was almost deifying, enshrined by the lightning from her tomes.
But now the stark light exposed her for the bone and muscle mortal she was. Just like any other soldier or civilian.
"How have you fared since the battle?" He asked, though the hollows of her eyes and the fresh bite-marks around her nails were answer enough.
With pursed lips, she launched into a diatribe, "Not a single Shepherd has informed me of our location relative to our enemies' last known or predicted whereabouts and everyone’s been especially hush-hush about any talk about logistics or--"
"Regarding your health, Robin."
"Oh." A blank look flashed across her face as she processed his actual question. "Well, Libra said I had an infection and I'll be able to resume my duties in a few days. Hmm, and…” Robin tapped her finger against her lips twisted in recollection. “Ah, and that Tharja character left some biscuits she claimed were a Plegian remedy, but they were delicious if nothing else. Chrom dropped in a day or two ago while I still had my fever and said I was muttering absolute foolishness.”
Her laugh settled as her hands clasped over her lap. The soft creases of her smile plummeted into a strained line and her eyes tightened. “Was I really so sick?”
“You fell off your horse and it took us an hour to find you in the mire. The clerics were surprised you were able to last through the battle without being slain.”
“Aw, don’t make it sound so serious.” The words fell hollow despite the labored pull of a smile on her lips.
He grimaced and grit his teeth. “This isn’t a trivial matter. You’ve been asleep for a week and healing staves aren’t much of a cure for what you had. They say you’re lucky to be so alert so soon.”
“Okay, fine, I get it. I was sick.” A dart of her eyes towards the open tent-door raised the hair on Lon’qu’s nape. “So, can you tell me one thing?”
Lon’qu held his breath.
“Do you know anything about Lissa? Maribelle and Frederick refuse to tell me anything,” she paused, “and I don't dare ask Chrom. Not yet.” Lon’qu watched her hands tighten, fingertips pressing into the hollows between her knuckles and tendons. Her face was as pallid as the grooves her nails left in her skin.
He hesitated, parsing his words. “She’s coping.” A lie, a slight side-step.
Was he to tell her that Lissa hadn’t left her tent in a week? That she had to be held down by Frederick and Chrom so Maribelle could feed her? That she had him guard her tent for the last two nights because he was one of the few who understood her new nightmares?
It was enough to see Lissa curled up, shaking from the memory of her sister’s fall, or Cordelia's spear jabs more precise and powerful than ever, though her eyes were rimmed with tears. Even Frederick, with his impenetrable visage, had thrown himself deeper in his desire to carry the entire army on his shoulders. As for the Lord Chrom, Lon’qu had seen little of the prince--no, Exalt--but even at a distance, he could see anguish nipping at the young leader’s heels. Feelings Lon’qu was all too aware of.
There was no point to share their despair with their tactician. The battle had left too many streaks of caked dirt and gore as is.
Robin turned, meeting his glance head-on with her dark eyes. "Lon'qu, enough people are keeping me in the dark." Her pupils began to waver as her voice tightened. "What’s going on? How many soldiers survived? How many casualties? What about the rations, or--” The questions continued till she drew back with a bowed head.
Had she been one of his subordinates, perhaps even his equal, in Regna Ferox, he'd call her "pathetic" and tell her to run sword exercises till she sweat out her illness and this incessant worrying--but she wasn't.
“You’re still ill. Recuperating is your first priority. Leave the issues at hand to the rest of us,” he said, biting his tongue and crossing his arms.
“Whether I’m bedbound or not, I can still carry out my duties.” Now her hands clutched the ends of her blanket, the fabric on the precipice of splitting. “I can’t make the same mistakes again.” Robin's voice wilted beneath the already hushed, unsettling whispers of the encampment filtering from the outside.
Lon’qu sighed, his words stilted, “There was nothing you could have done.”
The fierce snap of her head betrayed the listless and heavy weight of her shoulders and arms. “Of course there was. There always is. I could’ve gotten there faster, repositioned troops, just anything.”
“What, short of time travelling, could have helped you accomplished that? None of us can foresee the future.” Impatience began to claw its way up his throat.
“It’s my job to do predict things and prepare ourselves. If my skill can’t carry us to safety, what use am I?” What little sickness that coated her last words had fled entirely; now she spoke with the same biting words as in the war councils.
He shot up, preparing to quietly surrender and leave at the sight of the hollows and indents of her frame and waning muscle and flesh. Instead the glare of her eyes met him with a clashing force, and a flood of infuriation jolted him into speaking.
“You’re acting ridiculous. Holding yourself accountable for Exalt Emmeryn’s death is self-martyrdom and asking for pity. Nothing good comes out of dwelling on what you could’ve done. Her fall was out of your control; it’s on Plegia’s hands,” Lon’qu exhaled and gripped the fringe of his obi ornament, “The Exalted family and the Ylissean people lost a sister and a leader. We--this army--need you to be strong. You’re more than capable of it. You’ve prevented uncountable losses and we all know it. More than anyone, even yourself.” He began to sputter as he began to lose his momentum, "But Robin, you’re not an automaton. You can’t study books and simulations endlessly. Faltering is only human.”
The simmering anger in his gut faded and now Lon’qu just felt breathless and the itchy burlap beneath his feet. His eyes went out of focus for a moment, looking for pinned letters from home or kitschy baubles as souvenirs or even scriptures from the word of Naga to ground himself. But there were none.
Lon'qu dropped back into the chair, his words echoing in the confines of the tent. They mocked him with the sound of his disjointed sentences and harsh voice--how his ever present companion of regret gnawed at him.
The swordsman began hastily, “I apologize. I shouldn’t have said any-”
The wave of her hands stopped him. “No. You’re right--about everything. Chrom and the Shepherds need me and I've been wallowing in self-pity,” she conceded, her posture and face easing up. "It's silly to admit, but I just feel involved somehow. I'm sure it's just my nerves."
"But you know," she continued and her eyes full of a familiar guile flickered in his direction. "You're in need of your own advice." Robin tilted her hands, watching the shadows of her fingers trickle down her palm. "I mean, for someone who skips meals to whack at haystacks and spends more time in the training field than the barracks, it’s awfully hypocritical, isn’t it?”
Lon’qu blinked at the turn of the tables, the sly switch of cards. “I do not ‘whack’”, he said dourly, “and I’m just another blade. If the command of my weapon falters, the rest of the army suffers.”
“So, you agree, you’re being hypocritical?” The raise of her brow teased the line between a jest and a polemic.
“Bah, I did not come here to be mocked, woman.”
Her laugh joined in with the whistling of the birds outside. Now he was the target of a flock of hecklers. “Sorry, it’s my turn to apologize.” She wiped at the corner of her eyes. “But really, Lon’qu, we’re not that different are we?”
“I didn’t realize you had a deep-seated fear of women as well.”
“You know what I mean.”
“...I suppose we have our similarities.” The sternness of his face yielded to the crack of a smile.
He waited for her to pounce at his amusement and continue with her teasing, but instead Robin pulled her legs in and rested her head atop her knees--eyes peeking at him with a glimmer. “So, why did you come here?”
Lon’qu pulled a pouch from his pockets. “Here, tea from Regna Ferox,” his voice fluttered as her nimble fingers, careful to avoid contact, accepted the pouch from his hands, “I’ve dealt with similar bouts of infection and I would stake my life on this brew.”
And with that, he stood and walked to his boots. Robin called out to him one last time, her words restrained. “Thank you. For the tea, for the talking.”
He turned to meet her smile. The same smile that appeared when she won a battle of chess against Virion. The same smile that shone during the midst of battle after she found a tactic to wiggle their way out. The very same smile she flashed at Lon’qu with the sly reveal of figs hidden up her sleeve months ago.
A slow nod of his head and he had left, light taking his place.