Archive of Our Own ^beta

i. The Verge of History, the aftermath of:

The newest and oddest addition to the Shepherds is as easy a man to lose as he is to find, as it turns out. Chrom turns away for half a second to confirm with Frederick what supplies need restocking before they head out, and then back to discover that Robin is nowhere to be seen. Judging by the way Frederick’s face goes somehow even stonier, this bodes poorly, but Chrom finds he’s not that worried. If Robin were going to run off, he had ample opportunity to do so. That he came instead to help out, despite having no reason to do so besides the goodness of his heart, makes it hard to doubt his loyalty now.

Chrom is, as always, content to leave the incessant worrying to Frederick the Wary. He himself is just curious, more than anything. Where does a mysterious and amnesiac stranger abscond to anyway?

He ambles around Southtown to look, poking his head into a few shops as he goes and then hastily and apologetically backing out once it’s clear that Robin’s not inside, only a shopkeeper very flustered to be met with the realm’s prince. He’s just about to give up and let Robin make his own way back when he spots a flash of white hair out of the corner of his eye.

“Here you are,” he says, half-jogging over to where Robin is perched on the end of a crumbling wall. He’s got a journal lying open in his lap, the page half covered with what appears to be a crude map of Southtown.

“Oh, hello,” Robin says, blinking up at him. He’s got the same pleasantly startled expression as before, when Chrom found him in that field. “I’m sorry. Have I caused you trouble? I just needed a spot of shade to go over some notes.”

It’s certainly true that there are a few less trees around, thanks to the bandits’ fire. Chrom sits down on the wall next to him and peers at the journal. “No trouble at all, friend,” he says warmly. “Might I ask what you’re working on?”

“Tactics, I think,” Robin says, following Chrom’s gaze down to the pages. There’s something deeply satisfied in his voice when he says tactics. Like the shape of it feels right on his tongue. “I was offering suggestions on instinct, mostly, but it seems to me that any strategic instinct I possess has been long honed. See, I’ve just been going over the battle. There are several instances where I can see now that, had we acted differently, the scales might have tipped in the bandits’ favor. If I’m truly to serve as your tactician, then I ought to fully understand what I’m doing.” He looks up again, almost bashful. “Clearly I have the knowledge somewhere. I just have to unearth it, and this is a good first step.”

Sound logic. Even Frederick would be hard pressed to argue with that. Chrom doesn’t intend to even try; he hadn’t second guessed any of Robin’s tactical advice in the battle, so there’s hardly any reason to do so now.

If anything, he just feels more sure than ever before that they were meant to meet, for some reason. He’s never fully gone in for divine providence, or fate, or anything like that — it all reminds him too keenly of the excuses his father used to wage war on Plegia. He’s seen firsthand the pain that’s brought to both countries, in ways that still ripple out to this day. The battle they’ve just won is proof enough of that.

Still, it feels something like fate that he’s met Robin, here and now. It would have been so easy to miss him; if they hadn’t crossed the field right there, if Lissa hadn’t spotted the buckles of his coat gleaming in the sunlight, then they might have had to face down the bandits alone. Chrom’s fairly certain it wouldn’t have gone half so smoothly had that been the case.

Robin has already slotted neatly into place, when Chrom had barely noticed something was lacking until then. In hindsight, it seems obvious. Like the Shepherds were waiting for him all along, a seat at the table already reserved. Chrom feels good about having offered him the role, too: if he’s even half as brilliant as he appears, the Shepherds — and therefore Ylisse — will be in good hands. No matter how Frederick scoffs and advises caution, Chrom has rarely felt more secure of a decision than he does about this one.

“A good first step indeed,” he agrees, belatedly remembering that Robin would have been waiting for an acknowledgement. He’s hardly going to make a good first impression by getting lost in his own thoughts. “I can hardly believe that was all instinct. You led as well as any experienced commander would.”

“Ah, well,” Robin says, looking in equal parts pleased and flattered. He plays with a page in his journal. “I’m glad to hear you think so. I can’t imagine everyone would be so thrilled to learn they handed the reins over to an amnesiac, even if the results were ultimately in our favor.”

Chrom dismisses this as insubstantial. Clearly his missing memories aren’t holding him back. His instincts are good, as he’s shown, and if he’s right about having had formal training at some point, that will be easy for him to recover, or at least relearn. As for actual experience, the only way to get that is by diving in headfirst, as Chrom has found out many a time. Given the ongoing tensions with Plegia, he’ll get that experience readily enough. Chrom will be surprised if they make it all the way back to Ylisstol without incident, especially seeing as they still intend to be out patrolling for a few more days, at a minimum.

“I’ve always been a good judge of character,” he says. It would perhaps be more accurate to say he’s become one, as he’s gotten older, but he doubts Robin would be interested in all those old tales. “If you weren’t trustworthy, I wouldn’t have offered you the job. For that matter, you wouldn’t have been here to accept it. A lesser man would have taken the chance to run the other way, you know.”

Robin laughs quietly. “I suppose that’s true,” he admits readily enough. “I just couldn’t stand the thought of saving my own hide instead of going to help. It was the right thing to do. I wouldn’t have regretted it even if the outcome hadn’t been so favorable.”

It’s a shame Frederick wasn’t here to hear that. It might have gone a long way in soothing his concerns.

“And that’s why the Shepherds are glad to have you,” he tells Robin, meaning every word. “I’m glad to have you. I can think of no one better suited to be our tactician. But perhaps you might save the rest of your studies for later? We’re about to head out and I shouldn’t want you left behind. And besides,” he adds, standing up himself and stretching out his back, “there’ll be battles a-plenty in the future to learn from. You needn’t linger on the ones just past too long.”

Robin closes the book carefully and ties it shut, before slipping it away into the depths of his coat. Chrom hadn’t had the time to wonder during the battle where he’d stashed his sword and tome. Now, he finds he’s curious just how much Robin has hidden away.

“Of course,” he says, standing up to join Chrom. “Lead the way, then.”

—

ii. Two Falchions, prior to:

Somewhat embarrassingly, it’s not the sound of footsteps that makes Chrom turn; it’s the fact that he recognizes them. Specifically, the fact that he recognizes them as Robin’s. It’s only that he’d gotten used to having him around to confer with, and now he’s been more or less absent since they reached the Feroxi capital. Besides their brief meeting with East-Khan Flavia, Chrom’s seen neither hair nor hide of him.

Until now, obviously. Chrom tries not to let on how glad he is to find Robin striding up to him.

“Might I have a minute of your time?” Robin asks. He’s got his strategy face on. Chrom’s only seen it a handful of times thus far — with the bandits, the Risen, twice, and now the Feroxi border guards — but he thinks it might be his favorite of all the expressions Robin wears. There’s just such assurance in it. This is what Robin excels at, and he’s well aware of it.

“You can have as many of them as you’d like,” Chrom says. “What’s troubling you, friend?”

Robin offers him a fleeting half-smile. “Nothing, exactly,” he says, sounding, indeed, only mildly troubled. “I’ve just finished pestering Frederick and now it’s your turn. What do you know about the Feroxi? I have the basics down already, of course, but I really need as much information as I can work with if I’m to aid you in securing their assistance.”

“What for?” Chrom asks. For a second he can forget the lingering worries about Plegia and the terrible new foe and just delight in the idea of Robin losing a tournament as clean-cut as this one seems to be. “I hardly think we’ll have any real trouble. The Feroxi are strong fighters, true, but so are our Shepherds, and our need is greater. I have every faith that we will come out of this the victors.”

A furrow appears between Robin’s brows. He purses his lips and glances down the hallway, as if already seeing the arena. “I still don’t like it. I’d rather not go in blind. There’s no telling who we might face there. You haven’t heard of any Feroxi champions?”

“I’m afraid not,” Chrom says. “Truthfully, we’ve not had much contact with Ferox in recent years. With all the trouble with Plegia, we haven’t had as much time to devote to this border. Whoever this West-Khan will send out, though, I’m sure he won’t match up to our combined strength.”

“Well, let’s not presume them to be male just yet,” Robin says, laughing ruefully. “I’ve put my foot in my mouth far more than either of us needed to on that point, I think. Regardless, I don’t disagree with you. I just —” he clicks his tongue in self-reproach— “dislike being so ill-prepared. It would be nice to have more than a single skirmish to base my tactics off of.”

Chrom throws an arm around his shoulder, continuing on down the hall. “Think of it this way,” he says. “Soon enough you’ll have two, and hardly any need for either moving forward.”

Robin gives him a sideways glance, mouth twitching in amusement as if he’s said something odd. “I rather think it’ll be helpful to know how they fight — to predict how they fight, more accurately — if we’re to have them as allies. Or will we not be fighting alongside them against the Plegians?”

Oh. Chrom hadn’t really thought that far ahead, “No, we will,” he says. “I assume, anyway. But — I’m sure they’ll handle their own tactics themselves. All you’ll have to worry about is leading at my side. Er, you’ll be at my side for this battle as well, won’t you?”

“Well, I’m hardly going to join the Feroxi contingency now,” Robin says, squinting at him in bemusement. His mouth twitches even more. “It would be a little late for that, don’t you think?”

“Hah,” Chrom says. “Very funny.” If he’s being honest, even just the thought of Robin fighting for anyone else — fighting against Chrom — makes his chest feel oddly tight. He knows he hardly has a claim on Robin’s abilities, but — well, even after knowing him for such a short amount of time, it feels odd to imagine a path forwards without him.

Still, that wasn’t what he’d wanted to ask. “I meant that we’d be fighting side by side, like we did with the Risen,” he explains. “I know there’ll be fewer of us, but since you had us lead opposite teams at the Longfort I wasn’t sure. Given the unknowns about this tournament, as you’ve just pointed out, I would feel safer having you beside me, that’s all.”

He knows he’s overplayed his hand as soon as the words fall out of his mouth. You’d have to be a fool to miss what he really means, and Robin is no fool. Chrom’s gotten ample evidence of that.

“Oh,” Robin says. He sighs and pulls away from Chrom’s embrace, although he doesn’t fall out of sync with Chrom’s pace. Small mercies. “This again. Chrom, I told you, it was only a glancing blow. I barely even noticed it until you pointed it out.”

A glancing blow that had taken two uses of Lissa’s staff to heal fully. Chrom doesn’t know that he’ll forget the image of Robin with a torn overcoat and bloodstains in the snow behind him so quickly.

“If I were the one to have been injured—” he starts, only to be cut off by Robin.

“That would be different,” Robin says. He clicks his tongue again, this time in Chrom’s direction. “You’re the prince. I’m merely one of your men. It’s hardly comparable.”

“It is to me,” Chrom says. He stops walking and catches Robin by the arm to force him to come to a stop as well. “Perhaps I haven’t been clear enough. Robin, it’s not that I doubt your strength in battle. I just — I don’t want you hurt, that’s all. Is that truly so offensive a notion?”

Robin doesn’t answer immediately. His eyes have gone round and wondering, as if this is news to him. He searches Chrom’s face and then drops his gaze down. “No,” he says, almost bashful now. “No, of course it isn’t. I’m sorry. I’ve misunderstood you. I thought… I was disappointed in myself for failing to dodge the blow. I suppose I’ve been assuming you must have been disappointed in me as well.”

“Angry at the fool who hurt you, maybe,” Chrom says. It’s a challenge to say it lightly, as if nothing more than a joke. Really, he had nearly demanded to know who had been responsible so that he could give them a taste of their own medicine. Foolish; as if Robin would have just left them alone after they’d proven themselves a threat. “Not disappointed in you. Never disappointed in you. I’d just rather you’d stay nearby, so I can make sure it doesn’t happen again.”

By all rights, Robin ought to point here that he’s no less sturdy than Chrom is, or not by a significant margin, anyway, and that Chrom is, little as he likes to admit it, the prince and therefore in more need of protection himself. Chrom is expecting it. Is braced for it, even. Instead, Robin just smiles, another one of his lightning-flash smiles, and knocks their shoulders together affectionately. “Alright,” he says. “I’ll watch your back and you watch mine. That’s as sound a strategy as any I’ve come up with.”

Chrom bumps him right back. He feels buoyant, filled anew with determination to win this tournament and win the Khan’s aid for Ylisse. “In that case,” he says, “I pity whoever it is that has to face us.”

—

iii. Foreseer, the aftermath of:

It’s near morning by the time Chrom steps out of the council room, head pounding with a combination of stress and exhaustion. The second the door swings shut behind him, he has a sudden urge to go back in, make sure once more that Emmeryn is truly fine, that the room is fully secured — but Phila will have that well in hand. His sister needs rest as much as he does. More, perhaps, for such a rude awakening. And besides, his work is far from over; he should speak to the new recruits, to Lissa, scout around to see if that Marth really has disappeared once more, or is perhaps still lurking around the grounds somewhere. Although he barely knows her, there’s some part of him that protests the thought that she might be out there alone.

First, though, he thinks, he should see what Robin is doing.

“What are you doing?” he asks, staring in befuddlement at the tableau spread out in front of him: Robin, cross-legged on the floor of the hallway, with his books and papers scattered about him. He has a quill ready in his hands and an inkwell and lit candle beside him. He looks exactly as focused as he did when preparing for the competition back in Regna Ferox, only… on the floor.

“Oh, Chrom,” Robin says, and sets about gathering up all his materials. After a beat, Chrom crouches down to help. “I was hoping to catch you before you went to bed. Do you think you could point me in the direction of a study? I’m not sure where the library is, and I was only getting in people’s way wandering around.”

Chrom pauses with his hands still full of loose papers. “To a study?” he repeats, incredulous. As if he can’t see the early rays of dawn already. “Shouldn’t you be sleeping too?”

“The barracks are a little cramped at the moment,” Robin says, smiling genially. He takes so much in stride that it always catches Chrom off guard to see these flashes of intense concentration. Sometimes he wonders which one is the truer version of Robin, or whether they’re both equal. “I’m not sure they were even able to get in cots for Panne and Gaius after all. Anyway, I’ll only keep people up with the light. I’d like to get this finished before I sleep.”

Now that Chrom’s looking closer, he can see the cracks in Robin’s easygoing affect. Not so genial after all, then. His smile is just a touch strained, if you know what to look for, and it doesn’t reach his eyes. Not quite.

Chrom shuffles the papers into order and then sets them down on the floor. He settles himself, too, more comfortably. “Robin,” he says, leaning in a little to better catch his gaze. “What is this really about?”

Robin presses his lips together, fiddling nervously with the tie of his journal. He doesn’t do Chrom the disservice of pretending that everything is fine, which is appreciated. Chrom’s had enough of platitudes. “The leader of the assassins seemed to know me,” he says, softly. “With him dead, there’s no more danger, I know, but… there’s no chance for answers either. Besides that — how can you still put your faith in me? If it weren’t for Marth, you would have been badly hurt, or worse. I was there and it still wasn’t — I couldn’t —”

“Peace, Robin,” Chrom says. He lays a hand on Robin’s knee, hoping it might provide some small amount of comfort. “I was no better prepared for that than you were, so you’re no more at fault than I. There was no reason to suspect that Ylisstol might not be safe anymore. Despite that, you rallied admirably, and led us to another victory. It was thanks to your directions that Emm is safe and that we suffered no other casualties among the Shepherds.”

Robin looks far from comforted. “It was thanks to Marth’s warning and aid, you mean,” he corrects. “And to Panne and the others. I did very little of use besides that. If this was my first true test as your tactician, then I failed it.”

It’s difficult to know how to counter this. Not because he’s right; far from it. It’s just that so much about it is wrong that Chrom hardly knows where to start.

“Robin, I think you dispatched more of the assassins than I did,” he says, aiming for mild rebuke. He has a feeling he lands more in fondly amused. “That’s hardly nothing. You also discredit how much assurance I get from your trust in people. Had you been wary of letting either Marth or Panne guard Emm’s door, or of recruiting Gaius to our side, then I wouldn’t have been able to fight half as effectively. The simple fact that you feel confident in something or someone is enough for me to share in that confidence. It does me good just to have you at my side.”

Robin lets out a huge, shaky breath. “That part’s easy enough,” he says. “I just trust in your judgment. You have a way of seeing right through to a person’s heart, I’ve found. I’ve no need to fear those you let in.” Quieter, he adds, “And my place is at your side, always. There’s nowhere else I’d rather be.”

“Good!” Chrom says, more heartened by this than he perhaps should be, given the hour and the circumstances. “Then put the rest out of your mind. We’ll get through this, so long as we stay together. All of us, I mean,” he corrects hurriedly. “All the Shepherds. In the morning — well, later in the morning, I suppose — we’ll send word to the Feroxi to apprise them of the situation and get Emm to safety. It’ll all be alright, you’ll see.”

“If you say so, then I believe you,” Robin says. He snuffs out the last guttering flicker of his candle. “I won’t keep you here any longer, then. You have lots to attend to, I’m sure, and I’ve taken up enough of your time with my worries as it is.”

Chrom shakes his head. He doesn’t know how to put into words how much it’s helped to be able to sit here and simply talk with Robin. “A favor given and a favor returned,” he says instead. “You lent me your ear earlier in the night, and now I’ve done the same for you. All’s even in the end.” He stands up and then reaches out a hand to help Robin to his feet. It’s an odd echo of their first meeting, and brings a smile to his face. “Come on, you should rest. Leave the tactics for some other time. We’ll need that brilliant mind of yours in top shape, I’m sure.”

Robin holds his armful of papers to his chest and smiles back. “As my prince commands,” he says. “Oh, but — I don’t know where to do that, either. Vaike fell asleep on my bunk.”

“Take his,” Chrom says, and then tries to arrange his face into an expression that definitely doesn’t suggest he has, in fact, crashed in the Shepherd’s barracks a number of times instead of making the trek back to his own rooms.

“He’s asleep on that one too,” Robin says. “Never mind. I’m sure I can find a nice patch of grass or something.”

That’s a joke. Chrom’s pretty sure of that, anyway. It’s a joke and Robin actually intends to… steal away to the library instead to work some more, probably. Sighing, Chrom grabs him by the wrist and sets off in search of Frederick. He won’t approve of it, more likely than not, but he’ll have to agree that Robin has long since earned his own set of rooms in the castle by now.

And if, privately, Chrom also just wants him close, well. He’ll keep that much to himself.

—

iv. Emmeryn, prior to:

It’s not as if it’s a new occurrence. Rather, it’s a long-standing habit of Chrom’s to make the rounds before he turns in for the night, when they’re away on a mission. He’s in charge of the Shepherds, and so he likes to ensure that everyone is where they should be, and as well as they can be all things considered.

Tonight, though, there’s a phantom weight on his shoulders as he does it. He can’t shake the knowledge that he might not be doing this as their leader and prince, but rather as their exalt-to-be. If their intel is wrong or outdated, or if tomorrow goes wrong…

It hardly bears thinking about. At the same time, it feels like a betrayal to Emm to think about anything else. To even consider sleeping when she’s in danger. When tonight might be the last night he ever has as a younger brother.

But then, to think that feels like a betrayal too, only this time to Robin. If Chrom had any doubts in his plan — and he doesn’t, of course he doesn’t, not when Robin has been unfailing thus far — then he should have aired them earlier, when they were all hashing out the details. To do it now is churlish of him.

He repeats that firmly in his mind, and then looks up to find that — of course. His feet have led him to Robin’s tent. Even more predictably, there’s candle light dancing inside, just enough to paint a stark picture of his faithful tactician hunched over his desk and scribbling so madly that the shadow of his hand blurs into the tent’s canvas.

Chrom should leave him to his work, not bring his own insecurities and anxieties in to mix with Robin’s own. Only…

Well, he knows better than to think that Robin will rest any time soon. Not of his own accord, anyway. If the past has taught him anything, it’s that Robin will go until he feels he’s planned for every deviation, every twist and turn, every possible outcome. For smaller battles, that usually doesn’t take him too long. For this, with the weight of Ylisse’s future resting on his shoulders? It’ll be a wonder if he’s even noticed how late it’s gotten.

Mind made up, he ducks through the tent entrance. “Robin?” he asks, keeping his voice hushed so as not to disturb any of the other Shepherds.

Robin hums, distracted, and then startles, somewhat belatedly. “Chrom?” he asks, jolting up in his seat. “Is everything alright? Any news from the scouts?”

“No, no, nothing like that,” Chrom says, coming further into the tent on the theory that Robin would have shooed him out already if he wasn’t welcome. “I just wanted to make sure you weren’t pushing yourself too hard.”

Robin’s mouth twists up and he turns back to his desk. Now that Chrom is closer, he can see that it’s covered with maps of Plegia and strategy after strategy after strategy. “We’ve had this conversation before, I believe,” he says neutrally.

Chrom sighs. There’s a stool on the far side of the desk, nearly hidden beneath Robin’s discarded overcoat. He carefully moves that to the cot, piled high itself with tomes and books of all sorts, and then takes a seat at Robin’s side. “And we’ll keep having it,” he returns, “until it actually gets through to you. Robin, there’s little to be gained by working yourself to the bone. You came up with a fine strategy. Trust yourself that it will work.” Foreseeing Robin’s likely rebuttal, he adds, “Or trust that I trust you, if you can’t trust yourself.”

That quiets him, at least for a bit. He’s still staring down at his papers, quill held so loosely in his hand that Chrom half fears it’s going to go tumbling to the floor at any minute. “That’s what scares me,” he says, eventually. “You’ve put so much faith in me, and if I can’t… If I’ve overlooked something, then…”

“If you’ve overlooked it, then so have we all,” Chrom says. Gently, he points out, “You’re doing it again, my friend. Taking all the blame before it even exists. I won’t deny I’ve put a lot of expectations on you, and for that I’m truly sorry. But you aren’t doing this alone. Your mistakes are our mistakes. What was it you said before? We’re stronger when we lean on each other.”

“Yes, I know. I just…” Robin says. It trails off.

Chrom lets him gather his thoughts. Something tells him this isn’t just Robin’s usual bout of pre-battle jitters. There’s more at play here, something deeper and more preoccupied.

“I just…” Robin repeats, and then lets the quill fall to the table after all and buries his head roughly in his hands. “Do you ever feel like you’ve missed something?” he asks. “No, not feel — do you ever know? There’s something I haven’t thought of, Chrom. I can just — I can tell. I know. I just can’t find it.”

He’s agitated now, well and truly, in a way Chrom has never seen before. Robin has always kept his cool, even in rough waters. It speaks to how deeply perturbed he is. To how seriously he’s taking this.

The conversation reshapes itself in Chrom’s head. He had come in here thinking — well, thinking that Robin was just running in circles in his own head again. But it’s become clear to him that Robin truly does possess some amount of uncanny intuition, where he’ll know something almost as it happens, and not after. Perhaps he ought to be taking it more seriously, too, then. Not that he was brushing it off before, only — it just bears additional consideration, that’s all.

“If you haven’t found it by now, then you’re not likely to,” he says. He rescues the quill and returns it to the inkwell, and then sets about rolling up all the maps. “We can go over it again tomorrow, with clearer heads. Perhaps something will jump out at us then. If not, then we’ll just adapt on the fly, as we have before. You’re good at improvising, Robin. Don’t discount that.”

“You’re right,” Robin says. He doesn’t sound particularly happy about it. “I know I’m not getting anywhere, I just… How can I sleep on a night like this?”

Now that’s a question Chrom would sorely like an answer to. It must show on his face, because Robin softens entirely.

“Oh, Chrom,” he says, and now he’s the one with the gentle tone. “I’m sorry. Here I’ve been catastrophizing about tomorrow, when you’re the one with the real cause to worry. I didn’t even think to ask how you were holding up.”

“You know how I’m holding up, I think,” Chrom says. He still feels the lingering shame from having lost his head so thoroughly… as well as the lingering ache of where Sumia punched him. “I’m angry, of course, and terrified. I won’t pretend otherwise. But I’m not alone either, and that comforts me.” A little pointedly, he adds, “It’ll comfort me a great deal more if you do your best to get some sleep.”

At long last, Robin smiles. It’s faint and etched with tension, but there. It’s enough, for the time being. “I could say the same to you, captain,” he says. “We’ll all feel better if you don’t have such terrible shadows under your eyes when leading us to victory on the morrow.”

Emmeryn would be the first to tell him to worry about himself, first, and her second. She’d be hypocritical to do so, but still. He’s loath to ignore any of her coaching right now, even if it’s only in his head. “Well, we’ll see what I can do on such short notice,” he says, and finds he can dredge up a smile of his own. “I’ll see you tomorrow, then. Bright and early, I’m sure.”

“Yes,” Robin says, and reaches out to squeeze Chrom’s wrist. “And then we’ll save your sister. I promise, Chrom. I won’t fail you. We will win.”

Chrom takes in his determined expression, eyes blazing with conviction, and feels the echo of it in his own heart. “I know,” he says, and finds he means it, completely. “Of that I have no doubt, my friend.”

—

v. Interlude:

“Fiiiinally,” Lissa groans, slumping dramatically against the doorframe to Chrom’s office. “I’ve been looking all over for you!”

“Clearly not, if you’ve only just now thought to look here,” Chrom says. He doesn’t bother to look up. When Lissa’s in this sort of mood, she doesn’t really need a willing audience or not; just a captive one. “What is it now, Lissa?”

Lissa abandons her dramatic pose in favor of perching on the corner of his desk, the way she knows he hates. “It’s Robin,” she says, and then smirks when he does look up at that. “Hah! I knew that would get your attention.”

“What’s wrong with him?” Chrom asks, trying to pretend that he’s utterly unbothered by the way she sees right through him at the most inopportune times. Judging by the way her smirk only grows in smugness, it doesn’t work. “Is he sick after all? I told him to take it easy today.”

Lissa groans and flops backward so she’s sprawled across the length of his desk, totally obscuring all the documents he was attempting to puzzle through. He’d make her get off, only then he would have to go back to reading them. “Yeah, and so did I! But you know Robin. Totally convinced he knows best. It’s like he thinks he’s invulnerable or something!”

“So he is sick,” Chrom surmises. He writes the paperwork off as a lost cause and stands up, readjusting his cape as he does so. Robin comes first, always. If pressed, he can just point out that, given how much Robin does, his health is paramount to Ylisse’s continued well-being. “I wish he’d at least close his window when he stays up so late. He’s practically asking for it letting all that cold air in.”

“I know!” Lissa says, following doggedly at his heels. “Believe me, I’ve lectured him over it a bunch too! He just never listens.”

He’s never more grateful for insisting that Robin be given quarters near his own than in cases like this. Not that Robin gets sick all that often, somehow, despite how hard he pushes himself. One would think that he’d take it a little easier, now that the war was over, but one would be wrong. If anything, peace has just inspired Robin to work all the harder. Stay up later, and take on more. At least during the war his responsibilities were mostly limited to strategizing.

Now, though, it seems that he’ll do most anything that’s asked of him. His duties are more varied than Frederick’s are, some days, something which seems to rankle at Frederick no end.

All of which comes at a cost, of course, and one worse than Frederick being a bit snippy for a while. This is the third time in recent months that he’s come down with a cold for no reason other than overworking himself.

“Did he let you check him over, at least?” he asks Lissa, rounding the corner. “Or Maribelle? Libra?”

“I know who our healers are, Chrom,” Lissa says, and skips ahead of him to bang loudly on Robin’s door. “Robin? It’s me again! I brought company this time!” To Chrom, she says, “No, not yet. That’s why you’re here! I figure he has to do what you tell him, if he won’t do it for me.”

Impeccable logic, if Robin actually paid any heed to Chrom’s title. Any respect he held onto while Chrom was merely a prince has long since left him. Oh, sure, he puts up a good act when there’s others around. His manners are irrefutable. But for all that Chrom is the exalt in everything but name, Robin listens to him only when he feels like it. He’s easier to coax by outright pleading than he is by royal proclamations.

So it’s a good thing that Chrom’s not opposed to bargaining with him, if that’s what it takes.

“Go away, Lissa,” Robin says, muffled through the door. He sounds congested. “I told you, I’m fine! I don’t need any healers, thank you!”

Chrom reaches over Lissa’s head to knock on the door himself, in the same rhythm he always uses when visiting Robin. “How about friends?” he calls. “Might you be willing to spare a few minutes for those?”

A long, very telling silence. Good. It’s always easiest to guilt him when he already knows that he’s in trouble.

The sound of footsteps, hesitating just before the door, and then the faint squeak as he swings it open. Not wide enough for Chrom or even Lissa to barge through; just barely wide enough for his sheepish-yet-unapologetic face to poke through. “Hello, Chrom,” he says, tone equally sheepish yet unapologetic. “Did you get through all those missives already? I thought that would take you longer.”

“Were you distracting me?” Chrom demands, incensed. And also amused, despite himself. Once a tactician, always a tactician, it would seem. You can take the tactician out of wartime but not the war tactics out of the tactician. “So that I wouldn’t discover that you’d gone and made yourself ill after all, even though I told you—”

“Yes, yes,” Robin says, waving off his lecture with a careless hand.

A rare misplay, coming from him. Chrom takes advantage of his now one-handed grip on the door to push it all the way open and then makes his way inside, Lissa following close behind.

Robin watches them with a resigned sort of air. “It wasn’t intentional,” he says.

“Distracting Chrom or getting sick?” Lissa asks. She starts rifling through his papers, something that Chrom really has no right to protest given how frequently he himself does it. It just… feels different when it’s him, that’s all. “Because I don’t believe the first one was an accident at all!”

“Nor that the second was unpreventable or unpredictable,” Chrom puts in. “Seeing as I specifically remember telling you—”

Robin cuts him off again, this time via a fierce glower. “I remember!” he says. “No need to rub it in! Believe it or not, it really wasn’t intentional. It’s not as if I like being sick. Now’s such a terrible time for it, too,” he says, chewing on a nail. “We’ve got the council meeting in just a few hours and then I’m supposed to approve the next season’s budget for reconstruction…”

“Well, you’re skipping the meeting, that’s for sure,” Chrom says. “I’ll have someone else take the minutes. I’m sure we can find someone else to look over the budget for you as well. Miriel is supposed to be in Ylisstol again soon, isn’t she? She’d be more than happy to run the numbers.”

“I’m well enough to sit in on the meeting, if nothing else,” Robin argues immediately. “Have someone else do the minutes if you must, although we both know they won’t do it properly and I’ll just have to go and fix it later, but don’t pretend like I’m incapable of sitting around and listening to people talk for an hour or two.”

Chrom fixes him with a look. As if Robin has ever managed to hold his tongue during a council meeting. “Only that won’t be all you do,” he says. “You’ll end up carrying it, as always, and then afterwards you’ll be roped into more projects than I even knew we had, and none of it will be conducive to resting.”

“Are these all from today?” Lissa says, gaping at the row of a half-dozen empty teacups on the desk. “Just how sore is your throat? Have you eaten anything?”

Robin pinches the bridge of his nose and sighs wearily. It catches at the very end, just a little, like he’s trying not to laugh. “You’re both such nags, you know that?” he asks rhetorically, and then collapses down in his chair with another sigh. “Fine, fine, you win. I’ll just sit here and do nothing, then. Happy now?”

“No,” Chrom says, coming over to lean against the back of the chair. “Because I know you, you liar, and there’s no way you’ll manage that. You’re still so shortsighted sometimes, you know that? If I’ve told you once, I’ve told you a million times. You do your best work when you don’t push past all your limits.”

“Yeah, just half of them,” Lissa mutters, still fussing around at Robin’s desk. Chrom has the sneaking suspicion that he’s here not to convince Robin to rest and recover after all, but rather to serve as a distraction while she rigs his desk with pranks. Come to think of it, he ought to be careful when he gets back to his own. She would have had easy access to numerous hiding spots while lying on it.

He’d warn Robin, only he really brought this upon himself by failing to heed Chrom’s excellent advice.

“I just want to be useful to you, that’s all,” Robin says. He doesn’t seem to harbor any suspicions of his own, only yet more unfounded concerns. “It’s so much more… nebulous, now. I haven’t the faintest idea what an advisor to the throne is even supposed to do. I suppose it’s possible I’ve been overcompensating for that just a little.”

Chrom hums in agreement. “Just a bit,” he says. “You needn’t prove your worth, Robin. You’ve already done more for Ylisse than I could ever ask. All I need now is you, same as ever.”

“You have me,” Robin says.

“You do not have me,” Lissa says, and makes hastily for the door. “Goodbye! Let me know when you’re done flirting and are actually ready to get better!”

Chrom resists the urge to clear his throat, having learned from previous experiences that acknowledging the awkward atmosphere only makes it ten times worse. “I’m going to kill her,” he says, and it’s only half to make Robin laugh.

But it still does make him laugh. So maybe it’s all worth it.

—

vi. Of Sacred Blood, prior to:

If anything truly good has come out of surviving one war together, it’s that, now that they’ve found themselves embroiled in a second, Chrom hardly needs to wonder where Robin might be. It’s as if he’s got an extra direction on his compass; north, east, south, west, and Robin. He follows the tug of it now, until he’s able to catch sight of Robin, standing over a makeshift table with Cherche and Gaius, clearly mid-discussion.

He speeds up, just in time to catch the tail end of what Robin’s saying: “...Just be prepared, that’s all I ask. If something goes amiss — and it will, I nearly guarantee it — then I don’t want to be caught unawares.”

As expected. Given how the last parley with the Plegian king went, Chrom rather figured this would have Robin on edge.

Perhaps that’s not fair. He’s in the no-nonsense mood he gets in on the eve of a battle, yes, but he’s far from the nervous wreck he once would have been. Victory against Gangrel and the following two years of peace have let him settle into himself. If his confidence was half bravado before, now it’s all entirely sincere.

Feeling strangely nostalgic for the days long past, when they were both young and utterly blind to what was to come, Chrom crosses the last few feet until he can come up beside Robin.

“Perfect timing,” Robin says, and hands him a veritable pile of scrolls. “Hold these, will you? I just need to find my map of the Plegian coast. I know it’s in here somewhere.”

Cherche is watching with no little amount of shocked amusement. For all that she seems comfortable enough interrupting her own ruler, evidently this is a step farther than even she would take. Gaius, by contrast, is solely amused, and not shocked in the slightest.

That’s nostalgic in its own right. Chrom had almost forgotten what it was like for the Shepherds to all send him those sly looks, like they think he could possibly be oblivious to how he feels for Robin.

Obligingly, he stands still and lets Robin search through the various maps he’s amassed over the years. Once the furrow in his brows is deep enough to cast a shadow, he says, “Hello to you too. I was just coming to give you our map of the Plegian coastline.”

Robin pauses in his hunt and squints up at Chrom suspiciously. “That can’t be right. I know I had it with me.”

“Yes,” Chrom agrees. “You did. And then you left it behind in your tent. I thought you might want it, so I brought it over to you. I’d hand it over now, only my hands are a little full.”

Gaius snorts loudly with laughter and Cherche covers her mouth with one hand. Robin’s mouth twitches once and then goes carefully flat.

“I see,” he says, and takes the maps back. “Go ahead and spread it out, then. I wanted to show them the most likely escape points.”

Now seems an optimal point to regain some of his dignity and remind them all that he is, technically, the exalt of the Halidom. He opts for fetching the map instead and spreading it out, as asked.

It’s a good quality map. Robin had picked it up the last time they were in Plegia. Possibly he looted it off the corpse of one of Gangrel’s men; Chrom has never asked. He does know that Robin had Tharja look it over to verify its accuracy, but not when she learned the specific details of Carrion Isle, nor the fortress they’ll be meeting in. He’s not sure he wants to know, either. Not that he’d ever admit it out loud, but Tharja is very good at being unnerving when she wants to be.

“Thank you,” Robin says, focus already back on the map. “See, here’s where I want our fliers stationed. Here, here, and here. That way we’ll be able to fall back in any direction we need. Cavalry here, in case of archers. And then Gaius, I want you to keep an eye out for doors once we get to the keep. It’s more likely that any ambush will come while we’re outside, but I don’t want to count on that. If we need to make an escape while inside, then I’ll be looking to you for routes, alright?”

“Sure thing, Bubbles,” Gaius says, glancing over the map. He seems more concerned with unwrapping another candy and popping it in his mouth than he does with the prospect of being trapped in the Plegian keep.

Cherche studies it more carefully, before nodding. Her pleasant smile would perhaps come off as lackadaisical had Chrom not had Frederick around growing up. “I’ll pass the word along to Cordelia and Sumia,” she says. “We’ll be ready.”

Making the executive decision that Cherche and Gaius have now seen what they need to, Chrom rolls the map back up and tucks it away, ignoring Robin’s cry of protest.

“I wasn’t done with that,” Robin says, now extra peeved at having been ignored.

Chrom ignores that too. “Walk with me,” he says.

For as much that has changed over the past few years, this hasn’t been among the count: that Robin is always willing to lend his ear or his shoulder to Chrom, whenever they may be needed. He glances once, askance, at all his supplies, and then tucks them away and steps closer to Chrom.

“Is there something amiss already?” he asks, almost amused by it. This part of Plegia is more shadowy than Chrom is used to; even so, there’s enough sun to turn the collar of his grandmaster attire into a gleaming halo around his neck. “We’ve not even gotten to the negotiation yet.”

Chrom resists the urge to check over his shoulder to make sure none of the other Shepherds are around before answering. He’s fairly certain that between Vaike, Sully, and Gaius, the betting pool has been reinstated but quick. No matter. They can gossip all they want, just so long as it doesn’t come between him and Robin. “Everything’s fine for the moment,” he says. “I’m sure you’ll be put to the test later, but not quite yet, it would seem. I just wanted a bit of your time to clear my head before we go meet this king.”

Robin sighs. “Is it wrong that I almost hope it goes poorly? I know we dearly need their help if we’re to face Valm, of course. I’m just not looking forward to trying to reason with the Plegians. It’s fair enough they might resent us, I suppose, but still.”

“We’ll figure it out,” Chrom says, although frankly it’s a good thing that Robin’s had so much practice dealing with nobles, foreign or otherwise, by this point. He isn’t entirely sure he can trust himself to stay level. “Together, as we always do.”

That wins him one of Robin’s rare smiles. Two years and some months have done nothing to dull its shine. “As we always do,” he repeats.

They walk along in easy silence, making a slow lap of the camp. Chrom knows he really should go help with packing everything up so they can get on the road, but he’s loath to sacrifice this time with Robin. It’s been too long since they were able to go for a stroll like this.

After a few more minutes, Robin sighs again. “Chrom?” he asks.

“Yes, my friend?” Chrom says, curious what might be troubling him now.

Robin stops walking and takes Chrom’s by the arm. His face is very serious. “You aren’t going to introduce me as your other half again, are you? Because I keep telling you, that gives people the wrong impression and we really need to be on our best behavior for this—”

Chrom pats him just as seriously on the shoulder. “I will make you no promises that I can’t keep,” he tells him, and then flees to help with the decamping after all.

—

vii. Smoldering Resistance, prior to:

The first call of “Land sighted!” goes up and a palpable tension spike sweeps the deck. Chrom casts his gaze around, trying to pinpoint whether he needs to give a rousing speech to bolster morale, and then stops, eyes caught on the distant figure of Robin leaning out over the prow.

Best to first see how his tactician is feeling, then. The rest will feel better only if Robin does.

He leans against the railing next to Robin, peering out across the ocean in search of the Valmese shores himself. “Nervous?” he asks.

 Robin breathes in a little suddenly, like he hadn’t noticed Chrom’s approach, and then slants him a look. “Not particularly,” he says. “At least, no more than I ever am. They’ll be at the advantage, of course, but—” he laughs— “well, when are we ever not at the disadvantage, really? I have faith in the Shepherds.” Almost demurely, he adds, “And in you, naturally.”

A pity he hadn’t said that where the rest of the Shepherds could hear it. The first half, anyway. Chrom will hardly be able to come up with anything more encouraging if he tries.

“We’ve come a long way, haven’t we?” he asks rhetorically, still ostensibly gazing out over the ocean but really just watching Robin out of the corner of his eye. It’s been — good. Having him back as his tactician, proper. These past few months in Ylisstol, they’ve barely had time to see each other. Chrom would never wish for war, not anymore, but he can’t deny that it’s a benefit of it that he gets plenty of excuses to talk to Robin once more. “From petty bandits to conquerors. It’s hard to believe.”

“You’re telling me,” Robin says, laughing again. It’s more rueful this time. “I really had no idea what I was doing back then. I’d like to think I’ve a few more qualifications now.”

If that was him with no idea, Chrom doesn’t even know how he’d describe him now. “One or two, I think, yes,” he says. “To say nothing of my own. It’s a wonder any of you followed me to begin with.”

“No,” Robin says, and turns to face him fully. “Not a wonder at all. If you could see yourself the way I do — the way we do, I mean myself and all the Shepherds — you would understand. I’d follow you anywhere, Chrom, and gladly. To Plegia, to Valm — wherever you feel we ought to go.”

“Well,” Chrom says, trying not to let on how terribly flattered he is by that. “I can only hope I live up to that. I’m glad to have you by my side. I can’t imagine doing this without you.”

Robin nudges at his ankle with one foot. “Of course not,” he says. “I mean, how would you ever have gotten out of Ferox, if I had stayed behind? To say nothing of making it this far. Not just anyone could conceive of a plan like burning half of Plegia’s ships, you know.”

He says it lightly, half-jokingly, but there’s an undeniable amount of truth to it. Robin’s strategies are never very conventional, to say the least. He’s rarely concerned with following well-worn footsteps. It’s one of the reasons they work so well together, Chrom thinks; after all, he’s rather unconventional himself. But being unusual doesn’t make them poor tactics — Robin’s results speak for themselves, there — and indeed often make the difference between winning and losing. If the enemy can’t even begin to imagine a strategy like Robin’s, there’s no real way to counter it.

(Unless they had Robin’s ability to improvise on the turn of a dime, anyway. Chrom dreads the idea of ever coming across someone with a mind as sharp as Robin’s almost as much as he privately thinks it would be rather amusing to watch the sparks fly.)

“Nor would just any commander let them go through it,” he parries back, lightly stepping on the front of Robin’s boot. “You’re lucky you’re my best friend. Otherwise—”

He breaks off, leaving the sentence hanging awkwardly in the air. The last thing he said is replaying back, almost accusatory in a way it’s never been before.

That’s not the only thing replaying in his mind. Lucina’s words from before have come back as well: that Chrom was murdered by someone dear to him. That, along with the other recent revelations — Robin’s birth family, the doppelganger hierophant, Validar’s impossible return to life — carries with it sickening implications.

Loathe as he is to admit it, he’s had trouble thinking of anything else these past few days. And if it’s been bothering him that much, then —

Robin has turned away again, jaw clenched tightly as he stares out, unseeing, at the fast-approaching Valmese coast. He has one hand holding on tightly to the other, nails digging into the leather of his glove.

Chrom exhales, a little unsteadily, and goes to press their shoulders together. When Robin attempts to flinch away, he follows after. “Robin,” he says, gently. “We can’t know what happened in Lucina’s time, but we can know — I do know — that I can trust you. Always. With my life and everything else. You would never hurt me; of this I am sure.”

“There is no being sure,” Robin hisses back. He still won’t look at Chrom. “We don’t — there’s too much left unanswered still, but it’s clear that the tiniest smidge of wariness would hardly be remiss. If it’s true what Validar said — if it’s true what your daughter said — then — Chrom, I —”

“Peace, Robin,” Chrom says. After a moment’s hesitation, he carefully pulls Robin’s hand free, and smoothes his thumb over the back of the other. “I trust you. No matter what. There is nothing anyone can say that will change that. Whether you were — Lucina never said you were the one to do it, in her time. It’s likely she’s no more aware than any of us. Perhaps it was someone else entirely. Regardless, that was a different time. Here and now, as we are in this time — in our time — I cannot begin to doubt you.”

“That,” Robin says, voice very rough, “is what scares me.” Despite this, he hasn’t made any move to take his hand back. Nor will he meet Chrom’s eyes, even still. “If I am to carry the burden of distrusting myself, when I also have to lead you to victory… Chrom, I don’t know if I can do that.”

“So don’t distrust yourself,” Chrom says. He grips Robin’s hand a little tighter. “If you cannot have faith in yourself, than have faith in me. I’ve told you that before, haven’t I?”

Robin’s shoulders draw inward. He presses his face against one of them, as if to hide away from Chrom. “You have,” he says. “But it’s more complicated than that now. If I should fail you—”

“Then I’ll help you up,” Chrom interrupts. He finds a smile tugging at his mouth. “Now I know we’ve had this conversation before. If you fall, then I’ll offer you a hand up. That’s what friends are for, or so I’m told.”

Robin laughs, sad and shaky but genuine. “Yes,” he says. “Well. I suppose that’s true. Just… don’t let yourself be blinded by trust alone, alright? Promise me that much, at least.”

An easy enough promise. Chrom has never been blinded by trust, not where Robin is concerned. It’s not that he’s unaware of the dangers that seem to lurk behind every word now. It’s only that he has always seen Robin truly, and so he knows, beyond a shadow of any doubt, that he has nothing to fear from him. “I promise,” he says, and means it.

—

viii. Inexorable Death, the aftermath of:

By the time they finally find a suitable place at the mountain’s — the volcano, that is, according to Say’ri — foot to bunk down for the night, Robin has made himself scarce. It’s exceptionally rare for him not to have a hand in choosing the rotation for night watch, let alone the scouts’ positioning and guards’ patrol routes, which is how Chrom knows it’s serious. If he’s left all that up to be worked out by the rest of them, with no say in the matter whatsoever, then he must be in a fine state indeed.

Not that Chrom finds it all that surprising. If it’s rare for Robin to take a step back from decision-making, it’s infinitely rarer for him to be so neatly outplayed. Even if he came out the victor in the end, that his initial guess was wrong has to have left him shaken, if not worse. Especially when they only escaped alive thanks to the Khans’ noble sacrifice. Chrom keeps telling himself that no news is good news, but it rings hollow even in his own mind.

He does his rounds first, no matter how badly he wants to reassure Robin before anything else. Most of the Shepherds are grim-faced and dour. Say’ri is clearly unnerved by the volcano’s proximity. Lucina is nowhere to be found, not even when Chrom asks some of the other future children where she is. He nearly leaves the camp in search of her; doesn’t only when Owain, unusually serious, promises to keep a lookout for her.

He’s a good lad. Chrom pats him on the shoulder in gratitude and then heads for the war council tent. No sense in even bothering to check Robin’s personal tent. He won’t be there, that’s for sure.

As predicted, Robin’s tent is dim. The tarp isn’t even fixed properly. Across the way, the war council tent is ablaze from the inside and Robin’s shadow is pacing around restlessly.

Chrom doesn’t announce himself before ducking inside, so that Robin doesn’t get the chance to try and send him away. He so hates to be comforted when he’s like this, as if he’s least deserving of it when he most needs it.

“Shall we get straight into it?” he asks. What he means is, of course, the same discussion they’ve had countless times before, but perhaps he could have phrased it better.

Robin gets very still and tense. He stops pacing when he’s on the far side of the table, looking away from Chrom. “As you wish,” he says, soft and braced. “Would you rather hear my report first, or skip to your critique?”

“My critique?” Chrom echoes, honestly thrown. “About what? Robin, you must know you handled today’s events beautifully. It was an unfortunate situation, to be sure, but —”

“But?!” Robin says, cutting him. “But? What but! Chrom, I nearly got you killed! And Say’ri, and Lucina, and the Khans, although I daresay that’s happened regardless, since I couldn’t think of what else to propose, and at the end of it Walhart would have had the Fire Emblem in his grasp for very little trouble. Surely even you can’t overlook this. I ought to be removed as your tactician, by all rights.”

At least he isn’t actively trying to resign. It’s a reassuring sign that he isn’t so far in his own head that he thinks they’d stand any chance of defeating Walhart without him. “I’d like to think he’d have more than a little trouble, if only for the sake of my ego,” Chrom says. “Even if we were cornered and outnumbered, he’d have to tear it from my hands. That’s assuming you’d even let him get close,” he adds. “Given that we were both cornered and outnumbered, and yet now we’re here with minimal casualties.” Unless they really have lost both Basilio and Flavia, but Chrom’s not prepared to face that head-on yet.

“But we never should have been in that situation to begin with!” Robin says. He spins around, finally, so that he can meet Chrom’s gaze. His eyes look almost red by the glow of the candlelight. “That’s what I’m trying to get you to see!”

“I do see,” Chrom says. It’s a struggle to keep his patience, but for Robin he tries. “I’m not disagreeing with that, Robin, only the extent to which you’re taking the blame. If anything, it was Say’ri’s intel that was misguided. If anyone ought to bear the brunt of the blame — and I don’t believe anyone should, save Walhart and that tactician of his — then surely it would fall to her before you. I can hardly expect you to understand the political intricacies of a country you’ve never visited before.”

Robin is shaking his head furiously before Chrom has even finished speaking. “You don’t get it,” he says, sounding distraught. “That’s not — Chrom, my actions today could have gotten you killed, and the Fire Emblem stolen.”

It’s not so much what he says or even how he says that actually gets through to Chrom. It’s the look in his eyes. Chrom has only seen him look that desperate — that scared — a scant few times before. In Plegia. On the ship, after Lucina offered up some of the details about Chrom’s death in that other world.

Of course. Any lingering frustration Chrom has dissipates instantly. He can’t even begin to fathom how terrifying it must be, to have to doubt your own mind. Chrom doesn’t even know if Validar has shown himself again; he refuses to talk about it.

Perhaps that in of itself answers the question, though.

“They could have,” he agrees slowly, trying to feel out the best way to navigate this. In truth, he doesn’t know himself if he can promise Robin that it was purely a coincidence, and he doesn’t want to offer any falsehoods. What he does know, and what he can, therefore, offer instead, is that his own faith remains unshaken. “They didn’t. That’s what matters. Focus your attention on that instead. If fate was trying to lead us to a tragic end, you averted it. If I know anything at all, Robin, then I know there’s no safer place for my life to rest than your hands.”

“That makes one of us,” Robin mutters bitterly. “If I averted it, it’s only briefly. And now we might well have lost Basilio, just the same way he died in Lucina’s time. Tomorrow, on my advice, you face Yen’fay in the midst of a mountain on fire. How can you be sure that your end wasn’t there?”

“I can’t be,” Chrom says. “Simple as that. Nothing is ever assured. Not even fate. How can you be so sure it will be?”

Robin rakes a hand through his hair, face screwed up in frustration and something more. Grudgingly, he admits, “I… can’t, I suppose.”

That’s progress. Heartened, Chrom presses his advantage. “If you’ll allow me some arrogance, I feel confident that we’ll be able to match Yen’fay. It would be a rather ignominious death, if not. Besides, I doubt Lucina would follow without protest if this was where her Chrom fell.”

“It’s only arrogance if you can’t back it up,” Robin says. Despite how tense his posture remains, he says it fondly. “Say we survive Yen’fay, then, and come out the other side. What then? Do you feel as confident when facing the Conqueror?”

“That depends,” Chrom says, and then gives Robin a smile. “Will you be next to me when I do?”

For a second Robin’s gaze grows shadowed and strained again, and Chrom thinks he’s pushed too far. Then it clears, and Robin smiles back, weary but true. “Yes,” he says. “Always.”

—

ix. An Ill Presage, prior to:

With Walhart put to rest, Valm freed, and Flavia back with them, hope should be easier to come by. But then with Basilio’s absence looming as large as the man himself did in life, with Robin’s betrayal, unwilling though it was, and Lucina’s panicked response to it… well, perhaps Chrom can’t blame himself for faltering. It’s a fine mess they’ve found themselves in, that’s for sure.

And now they’ve returned to Plegia. For likely the last time, to face off against Validar once more. If they don’t stop him from bringing Grima back to life, then all of this will have been for naught. The dark future Lucina and the other children sacrificed so much to avert will be upon them.

They’ve changed the future before. Chrom holds onto that for all the paltry dregs of hope that it possesses. They’ve done the impossible many, many times. They can do it once more, now, when it counts the most.

That is, if Chrom can find his other half first, so there is a ‘they.’ Ever since he’d been forced to steal the Fire Emblem, he’s been more of a ghost than an actual presence in the army. The longest Chrom’s seen anyone hold him in one place was when Lucina tried to…

Chrom can’t blame her for feeling it was necessary, not after learning all that she knows. Nor can he quite be surprised that Robin was going to let it happen. He can only be grateful that he got there in time to stop it.

It was the calmest he’s seen Robin, too. That scared him more than the sword pointed at his heart.

He pauses by the first Shepherd he sees, which happens to be Lon’qu. At least he won’t ask any uncomfortable questions. Or… any at all, probably, knowing him.

“Have you seen Robin?” Chrom asks, striving for casual. It might have been more convincing if his voice hadn’t broken slightly on Robin’s name.

Lon’qu immediately gets the half-panicked, half-annoyed look on his face that he always wears when confronted with emotion, or unexpected social interaction. Both, in this case, Chrom supposes. “No,” he says, and goes back to sharpening his sword.

“Do you… know who might have?” Chrom prods.

“I would have thought you,” Lon’qu says. There's a cautious undertone, like he’s not sure if he’s overstepping by saying that much. “Is that all?”

For one inane moment, Chrom has the urge to snap at him. Is that all when he’s hardly been of any help to begin with. In the next, it passes. He’s helped as much as he could, and must be feeling Basilio’s loss more keenly than even the rest of them. Besides Flavia and perhaps Olivia, he would have known the man best.

“Yes,” Chrom says, and pats him once, awkwardly, on the shoulder. “Thank you.”

He strides on, making sure to check every shadowy nook and cranny he passes. No telling where Robin has tucked himself away now. Chrom can’t even check his usual haunt of the war tent, given that this isn’t to be a long enough rest to warrant setting it up.

Perhaps if he could find Tharja. She always seems to know where Robin is.

In the end, Robin finds him first. He appears practically out of nowhere to fall into step besides Chrom.

They walk in pace, silently, for a few minutes. Then Robin clears his throat. “I hear you’ve been terrorizing our poor men to track me down,” he says, with a wry note of humor in his voice.

“That’s not—” Chrom starts to protest, offended — he’d asked one person, politely — and then drops it as inconsequential. With a note in his own voice that’s a little too bitter to be a joke, he says, “Just making sure you weren’t off being stabbed anywhere. You and Lucina might at least take turns disappearing, so that I don’t have to run up the red flag every time.”

“No stabbing,” Robin says. He reaches out for Chrom’s wrist and then freezes. He drops his hand. “Just… thinking, I suppose. Is this insane?”

There’s any number of things that could be referring to; only he wouldn’t be so vague about it, if it were anything but The Plan. His brilliant, awful, terrifying, genius plan. Chrom has hardly dared even think of it, for fear that he’ll give it all away.

He knocks their elbows together. “You tell me, tactician o’ mine,” he says, and takes the opportunity to really study Robin’s face. Not so much to identify how stressed out he is — the answer is very incredibly, for all that he’s trying to hide it, and obvious enough for anyone to see — but just in case this is the last time he truly sees it. He trusts Robin absolutely, with all that he is.

Still. He doesn’t want to forget. This is what Robin looks like when he’s scared but determined to see it through. This is how his eyes light up when he thinks of something ingenious. This is the smile he keeps reserved for just Chrom, when they’re alone. If either of them should fail to come out of this, Chrom wants to have those memories tucked close to his heart.

This is what it sounds like when he laughs, a dry chuckle that nonetheless makes a smile come to Chrom’s face. “I’ll tell you it’s insane, then,” Robin says. “If you were anyone else, you never would have let me even finish suggesting it, much less signed off on the damn thing. Chrom, what if…”

“None of that,” Chrom says, and gives in to his desires. He throws an arm around Robin’s shoulders and tugs him in close. It makes walking harder, but that’s a small price to pay. “Don’t muddy the waters with doubts now. You’ll see it through. Anything less insane would never work, and you know it.”

“But how can you be sure that I was truly the one to think of it,” Robin whispers.

This again. Chrom wishes he could do a better job of reassuring him. “Well,” he says, carefully, “because it seems clear to me that neither Validar nor his dark god have a mind quite like yours. Robin, give me some credit. I know how to recognize one of your strategies by now, and this has you written all over it.”

“It’s just…” Robin trails off, tucking himself closer to Chrom. Instinctively, like he’s seeking warmth. “I should have told you right away. Or after Carrion Isle, when we knew… after Lucina, certainly… Chrom, ever since we met, before we met, even, I’ve — there’s these dreams I have, only they barely seem like dreams at all, and the closer we get the more certain I am that I’ve seen this before — but how it must have gone before, when you… when the other you, I mean, from Lucina’s time…”

Robin has always been predisposed to slightly rambling sentences, but this one takes Chrom a bit to puzzle through. “We’ve been here before, you think?” he asks, once he’s pretty confident he’s understood it. “Or some version of us, in some other future?”

He feels Robin’s nod against his arm more than he hears his murmur of yes.

“Well, good,” he says, and then has to come to an abrupt stop when Robin freezes dead in his tracks.

“Good?!” he demands, goggling up at Chrom. “Now you’ve gone and lost your mind too! What about it is good? Did you not hear what I said?”

Chrom raises his eyebrows at him mildly, for all that he knows dismissing Robin’s concerns so offhand will only rile him up further. “I heard,” he says truthfully. “But that was a different time under different circumstances, with different men. This is us, now. It might not play out the same. And,” he continues, over top of Robin’s protest, “if it does, then it sounds to me like my tactician has just professed to having seen it all once already. I can’t think of a single commander in history who wishes his strategist had been more in the dark about an upcoming battle.”

Robin makes a series of furious, incredulous faces, and then sighs explosively. “I hate it when you make sense,” he says, tone grudging. “But even so—”

“Robin,” Chrom interrupts once more. “I think perhaps there is one thing you’re overlooking.”

For all that he’s been insisting as much, Robin looks highly offended at the notion. “What’s that?” he asks.

“Validar had us at his mercy and yet still commanded you merely to steal the Fire Emblem,” Chrom says. “Nothing more. He had the advantage of surprise. He could have told you to kill me then. Yet he didn’t. You see? I know what Lucina has said, but it seems to me that even he knows I have nothing to fear from you. Not this me, not from this you. There is no compulsion he can put you under that’s stronger than the bond we’ve forged. If anyone is going into this blind and unprepared, it isn’t you.”

Robin looks at him for a long moment, eyes intent on Chrom’s face. Then, with a weight to the words as there’s never been before, he says, “Well. May the better tactician win, in that case.”

Chrom grins at him. He feels like a boy again, suddenly, with the wind at his back and Robin at his side. “He will,” he says. “He always does.”

—

x. An end / the beginning:

Chrom’s met his daughter from the future along with a whole host of other children yet to be born, faced down reanimated corpses, fought people brought back from the dead, stared down his own death, met the divine dragon, survived the holy flames, seen and defeated the destroyer of worlds, and yet this, this is the most surreal experience he’s ever had: walking through a sunlit meadow back to Ylisstol, with Robin keeping pace at his side.

After a year of fruitless searching, even his unwavering faith had begun to waver, just a little. But now here he is, and here Robin is, and things finally feel right again in a way he can barely explain to himself.

“But what was it like?” Lissa is asking, for maybe the fifth time in ten minutes. “You must remember something!”

It would be fair of anyone to be fed up with the repetitive questioning, but Robin just laughs. It’s hard to say whether it’s because of his generally easygoing nature or because he, too, is so swept up in relief that it’s impossible to feel anything else. “My answer is hardly going to be different this time,” he teases. “I’m afraid I truly don’t remember a thing. Just that I was gone and now I’m back. It was like being asleep.”

“But really nothing?” Lissa asks, undeterred. She’s holding on to one of his hands with both of hers as she skips along; it’s charming in its immaturity, when she’s matured so much and so quickly, these past few years.

“Hm… you know, I think something is coming back to me,” Robin says, eyes twinkling. Chrom’s heart feels fit to burst, watching two of his most beloved people joke around. “Yes, yes, now I remember — it was very quiet there. Ever so quiet, in fact. Why, I could even hear myself think, as strange as it sounds.”

Helpless to fight it, Chrom laughs outright at that. Even Lissa scowling at him isn’t enough to damper his mood. “It sounds quite rejuvenating,” he says. “I wouldn’t blame you if you missed it.”

Robin glances at him out of the corner of his eye. As always, he seems to see right through to the heart of what Chrom is really saying. “No,” he murmurs. “I can’t say I miss it at all. I’d rather be here.”

It soothes something in Chrom that he had hardly been aware of before. Of course Robin wouldn’t prefer limbo over this. It hadn’t exactly been his first choice. It hadn’t even been his second, really. And yet — well, he had still sacrificed himself. Even after promising Chrom that he wouldn’t, he had gone and felled Grima with his own hand, unmaking them both. After everything that he went through, all that he suffered, it’s not so outlandish an idea that he might have welcomed a peaceful ending. Might be dreading the thought of being thrust back into the thick and thin of it.

He doesn’t look like a man dreading anything. He looks — alight from the inside with joy.

“I missed you,” Chrom says for the fifth time in ten minutes. “I — Robin, I —”

Robin gets it, by the look on his face. Which is a relief, because Chrom isn’t sure he gets it himself. “Yeah,” he says, as he has the previous five times. “As did I, Chrom. More than you can know.” He reaches out with his free hand and tucks it into the crook of Chrom’s arm, tugging him closer.

“I also missed you!” Lissa announces, and pulls Robin back towards her. He staggers a little, laughing, as he’s caught between them. “Probably more than Chrom did, I bet!”

“You did not,” Chrom says, knowing he’s being baited and yet unable to ignore the gross overstatement.

“Did too!” Lissa says.

Walking a few steps ahead of them, Frederick turns to share a weary look with Robin. “In case you are wondering,” he says, tone just as weary as the look, “yes, they have been like this the entire time. A full year of endless bickering.”

Robin laughs again. He’s laughed more times since they found him than in all the time Chrom knew him before, and he was hardly dour then. “I imagine you’ve missed me as well, then, Freddy. I’m sorry for leaving you to be the sole mediator.”

“Is that what you do?” Chrom asks. “Here I thought the term for it was ‘egging us on,’ but you’re the tactician.”

“Oh my gooooods,” Lissa says, dragging out the vowels. “We knooooow that he’s your tactician, trust me! We all get it! No one forgot! I don’t even think it could be possible to forget, with how often you bring it up!”

A year without Robin means that Chrom’s newly unprepared for how terribly embarrassing it is to talk to him while Lissa is around to offer her opinion. He leans back so he can glower at her without Robin seeing and pretends he can’t feel the heat in his cheeks. Undeterred, she pulls a grotesque face right back at him.

“I’m sure I don’t know what you mean,” Robin says, presumably in response to Chrom’s comment. “I would never egg you on. That would be unprofessional.” A mischievous glance in Chrom’s direction, and then he adds, “Speaking of, I can’t believe you would let her talk to you like that. Are you truly going to let such a grievous insult to the exalt’s dignity go unchallenged?”

“You’re such an instigator,” Chrom tells him fondly, and can’t find it in him to mind when it wins another bout of laughter at his expense. There are, he thinks, far worse fates than this.

For all that he knows that the walk from the field back to Ylisstol takes the better part of a day, he’s still a little surprised when he glances up and realizes that they’ve passed the outer walls and are nearly returned to the palace. After such a liminal amount of time spent trading jokes and catching him up on gossip, it feels very abrupt that Frederick is bowing and taking his leave and Lissa is dashing off to spread the news among the rest of the Shepherds. Somewhat selfishly, Chrom finds he’s glad that none of them happen to be in Ylisstol at present; he’ll be overjoyed, tomorrow, to have them all converge in to welcome Robin back. Today, he’s not quite ready to share him around just yet.

So instead of making his own excuses — by some manner of speaking, anyway, since it probably doesn’t count as an excuse when he really does have a very full workload waiting for him that he already put off to go looking again — he walks with Robin back to his room. He’s braced for any sign that Robin might want a moment alone, but none come. If anything, Robin looks braced himself for disappointment when he pauses in the doorway to his quarters and asks, “Are you… busy? Or…”

“Never too busy for you,” Chrom says and happily follows him in.

Only to immediately freeze in horrified panic.

“Oh,” Robin says, following his gaze to the absolute mess that is his desk. Every spare inch of it is covered in strewn-about papers, themselves nearly black from the amount of ink scrawled across them, in the form of proposed and then crossed-out strategy after strategy, rejected modification after modification.

Chrom can see the exact moment Robin registers that he’d died far from Ylisse. That his own strategies and notes for that very final battle — unmistakably what these are all for — never made it out of Plegia by his own hands.

“Sorry,” Chrom says, unable to get his voice working louder than a soft rasp. He pushes past Robin and starts gathering them up. Despite his burning desire to get them out of Robin’s sight as quickly as he can, he can’t help but go carefully. He’s never been one for superstition, but — in some ways, this was the last thing he had of Robin. It has always felt like if he didn’t treat them with care then it would be akin to giving up on Robin.

After a beat, Robin joins him, hands moving with the same cautious precision. “I’m sorry I lied,” he says.

Chrom has to go still again at that, for fear that his shaking hands will give him away. He shakes his head, as much against the burn in his eyes as anything else. “I didn’t give you much choice,” he says. “This is… I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to burden you with this. It just… helped, on the restless nights. I knew it was pointless, but I just — wanted to see. If it could have been possible to save you. To stop you from sacrificing yourself.”

He ought to leave it at that; ought to have left it well before that. But this room has been something of a sanctuary for him, privy to all the thoughts he couldn’t share with anyone else. He has always imagined that they might somehow reach Robin’s ears. So he continues, numbly, “If it was, I haven’t yet found how. Hundreds — thousands — of strategies and they all come down to the same conclusion. The only way you could have lived through it would have been if you cared for me, and this world, and everyone in it, less, and if that were the case then you wouldn’t have been… you.”

Robin touches the back of Chrom’s hand, feather-light, and then surges forward and draws him into a fierce hug. Like this, it’s impossible to deny that he truly is back; Chrom can feel the warmth of his body, the steady pulse of his heart, can feel every breath in and out. He brings his own arms up to hug him back, scarcely believing that he finally can.

“I’m sorry,” Robin says again, words shaped against Chrom’s shoulder. “Truly. I’m so, so sorry, Chrom. Leaving you was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do. If I had to do it again, I’m not sure if I could. I just… I wanted you to be safe.”

“I know,” Chrom says. That had always been the problem, he thinks; what he had wanted, more than anything — Robin, alive and well — was irreversibly at odds with what Robin had wanted more than anything: that being Chrom alive and well. There was no true ending but for one of them to leave.

Robin had left. Robin has come back. Chrom squeezes him tighter. “I know,” he says again. “I know.”

“I don’t regret it,” Robin whispers. “I can’t, not when I see you now. But — I am so sorry, and I promise — really promise this time, I mean — that I won’t ever leave you again. My place—” and how sweet it is to hear this now, for the repetition— “is at your side, now and always. You can leave what’s happened in the past, where it belongs. We have our future to think of now.”

Chrom’s never had the best self-control to begin with, not over his actions and certainly not over his words. Even if he did, he’s had a long, emotional day neatly capped by an even more emotional conversation. So the words we and our future lance through him and erode the last bit of his filter.

“I’m in love with you,” he blurts.

Robin goes very still and then nearly cracks him in the jaw when he goes reeling backwards. “You what?!” he says, face flushed and eyes huge.

Chrom feels a little lightheaded. No use backing down now. “I’m in love with you,” he repeats helplessly. “I — I think I always have been. Um, I didn’t mean to — you don’t have to respond. I know now’s a bad time for this. I just — I love you. You are — there aren’t words for what you mean to me. I cannot conceive of a future without you in it. That’s all.”

“You—” Robin says, and then breaks off. His mouth works wordlessly. “You—” he tries again. “Chrom, you — I —”

It occurs to Chrom, a little belatedly, that he should probably let go of Robin so that he doesn’t feel trapped. Only the second he loosens his arms, Robin clutches at his biceps with desperate fervor.

“Wait,” he says. “I just — give me a minute.”

Chrom does. Chrom gives him several, in fact, even though something an awful lot like hope is beginning to hammer away in his chest. They’ve never been conventional with each other, of course, but — this doesn’t seem quite how it would go if Robin were intending to reject him.

Robin swallows, and then eases his grip on Chrom’s arms in favor of sliding them back up around his neck. “Say it again,” he says, not quite meeting Chrom’s eyes.

That’s easy. Chrom would gladly say it every minute of every day, if he were permitted. The difficult part has been keeping it to himself. “I love you,” he says, obligingly. “I’m very in love with you. I always have been. I would be honored if you would allow me to stay by your side always, in that future you spoke of.”

Robin gives a shaky laugh. He’s got tears in his eyes, which might be alarming if it weren’t for the breathtaking smile joining them. “I think you’re usually supposed to put a little time in between confession and proposing,” he says.

“There’s been time enough,” Chrom says. “I wanted to make sure I got to say it, just in case. You don’t have to—”

“I want to,” Robin says, and then rises up to press a shy kiss to the corner of Chrom’s mouth. “Chrom — yes, yes, of course. Don’t you know? I’ve always loved you. Everything I have ever done for you was out of love.”

Some very small part of Chrom’s brain acknowledges that, yeah, now that he’s mentioned it, that does seem pretty obvious, and he really should have known. The rest of it is very preoccupied with dipping down and kissing Robin properly, the way he’s spent hours daydreaming about, and more so with obsessing over the way that Robin kisses back.

Five minutes later, an hour later, Chrom pulls back and rests his forehead against Robin’s. “Together,” he says.

“Together,” Robin promises.