#( In his master's step he trod; where the snow lay dinted || solitaryblade )

[invisibleimpossibilities]

His hands gently touch the sides of her protruding stomach, oddly tender despite their callouses and strength. He lets out an exhale, obviously trying to hide his nerves, but knowing that not only are there TWO children in there and the due date is just around the corner, it's hard not to be anxious. Especially when he doesn't feel like he knows how to be a father yet. "Do you need anything?" Perhaps he's overly attentive, but ... that's a lot to carry on her own. Physically and emotionally.

Baby time! // (unprompted!)

     Softness comes easier to both of them lately. Robin follows his hands with her gaze, hoping the babies growing in her belly feel as comforted by her father’s gentle touch as she does. All sources say it’s possible unborn children held some level of awareness of the sounds around them, so perhaps they could sense pressure as well. Heh, well if not, they would certainly find plenty of physical affection after birth, at least. 

    Robin had been nervous too, at first. However, the hardships and pain she’d survived so far made her feel like she must be doing something right, as well as make the day that the little ones would finally erupt from her and be done with it more welcome than terrifying. Lon’qu’s endless attention from the moment she’d told him she was pregnant also let her know that he’d be there to pick up the slack, even if she does slip a little bit in motherhood. Some days she can hardly believe there was ever a time he refused to be near her. Maybe all this fretting is simply punishment for how she’d egged Frederick on to Chrom’s chagrin for so many years…

     “I’m alright,” she assures, placing her hands over his own - pressing them a bit harder into her taut flesh so he could actually feel the movement of little legs kicking… and letting him know that none of the three of them are so fragile. 

     “Just stay with me awhile longer…” her head droops to rest her forehead against him. Robin offers a tentative request; Lon’qu had already given up so much of his training time, and here she is asking for even more of the limited hours available to him before their worlds completely change. Still, he’d vowed himself to her and all of her needs, and quite selfishly, she accepts - every day, every part. Then again, she can’t recall the last time she’d had enough focus to get through a full tome either. They are most certainly in this together. Two parents and two infants. Hoo boy. “They feel heavier by the day… and I am… really quite tired.”

     The unending warmth of his hands and body helped ease her aches and help her rest. Yes, Robin decides, the babies must be able to feel Lon’qu’s touch too. He’s going to be a great father. “You’ve taken such good care of me - of us - the whole time. Now… I only need you to stay and keep us company.”

[invisibleimpossibilities]

It's not like he bothers to ask if he can enter her tent at this point, just the usual address of her name as warning before he does so. Today, however, when he moves the flap aside to walk in, the top of his head brushes against something unfamiliar, tickling at his hair. Pausing in the entryway, he leans back and glances up to see an odd looking plant that looks somehow familiar hanging there. He quirks a brow, then looks to her. "Why is there a weed here?"

Mistletoe-d Tent // accepting!

✒ ✒ ✒ ✒ ✒

     The number of people who carelessly rush Robin’s tent grows lately. Still, she knows of Lon’qu’s presence by his pointed footfalls and the quick rush of canvas as he lifts it over a tall frame just as well as his having announced her name. Her eyes follow the slight startle of his movement until she tracks his cross-eyed stare to a bundle of waxy looking green leaves and buds of white splaying themselves proudly just over his head. “…A weed?” 

     Hungry curiosity and some sense of self-preservation for the spot where she sleeps has her setting a slip of leather down to hold the page of her book and up on her feet even faster than her brain can process the sight properly. Thoughts of poison berries or curse-carrying herbs flash through her mind, and she’s already reaching up for a better look - standing next to Lon’qu beneath the plant - before the connection between what she actually sees and what she knows takes place. “…oh. Mistletoe.” 

     Hanging by her tent. Heh… A few faces of those daring enough to pull such a prank on her come to mind, but one stands out as having the most to gain at such displays of affection across camp. Why is it here, indeed. Well, considering the visitor and the circumstance, Robin has little complaint in playing along and offering some of her energy. Lon’qu just stares at her now, apparently awaiting an explanation even after she’d named the “weed.” It remained meaningless to him. They must not have such a tradition in Regna Ferox.

     A grin spreads across her face and causes a glint in brown eyes as she looks back at him. She’d always preferred showing to telling, anyway. Her hand glides down from the vines to reach the back of his head and anchors there to pull herself up on tiptoes and bring her face closer to his. “It’s part of the Yule festival,” she breathes innocent words, but so heated against his lips in the briefest of anticipation before pressing her own against them and fluttering her eyelids shut. It’s not the first time, and yet still feels new, and always freeing to express her feelings just so. She doesn’t want to release him, to let go of any silly little moment she can find an excuse to confuse and be near him at the same time, …but it is meant to be a chaste tradition, not a make-out session.

     Her heels fall as she, too, comes down from the high. “It hangs overhead, because any couple caught underneath is meant to kiss for protection and good luck,” she informs in words as well, anyway. “… Not that I need an excuse to kiss you, but… better not to take chances.”

     It occurs to her that there must still be an original reason for him coming to her tent, but… she’ll happily just wait here with her arms around him until he decides to tell her what it is.

[invisibleimpossibilities]

Rocky Start (Cont.)

@solitaryblade

     One quip is all she allowed herself. One remark glinted from her sharp tongue, just to see his reaction; just to gauge the extent of the aversion she’d been well informed of. For her information, for her assessment... and yeah, also for her amusement. Finding a safe route home wasn’t the only challenge laid on her plate right now, and damn her and her immutable curiosity, her irresistible desire to get under the skin of people who may not be as sociable as she.

     She liked her alone time just as much as anyone. She introspected perhaps even more than most, trying to fish for pieces of her own forgotten soul and tie them together. However, the world was full of other people, and one couldn’t simply ignore that fact. Especially when becoming part of group where lives depended on one another. Everyone at least knowing the surface of all their comrades would make her job that much easier, and their lives that much safer. 

     Call it reason or rationalization, it’s what she tells herself when she so artfully takes flight and begins circling around her objectives of personal growth when it comes to her assigned soldiers. (Maybe one day she’d learn to be more nurturing than pecking-order prodding about it.)

Anyway...

Let’s hope it doesn’t get so cold we have to strip naked and huddle for warmth, huh?

     He’d walked past her to lead the way, and as soon as his ear lined up a few paces away from her lips, the phrase shrugged from them in the same languid way her shoulders moved. Two steps forward, three back in this initial meeting, perhaps, but adventure should soon allow her to gain back some of that trust. It’s not like he had any way of backing out in the meantime; he’s under orders and already agreed to the plan.

     But now... now she feels the bitter irony of the statement. The sass had long drained out of her shoulders as she huddles them closer to her neck, trying to sustain the warmth carotid arteries bring to her face from her core. Even the enchantments of her cloak begin to reach their limits when snowflakes start falling and the wind starts whipping in circles. Getting the best view meant climbing even higher into the mountain. 

     It’s colder and offers less coverage. From the wind... and from any eyes that happen to wander upwards to notice dark dots crawling against the white hillsides. 

     She wants to ask questions of the man who keeps walking forward in silence. To at least make conversation, or try. But when she opens her mouth, the only sound uttered is the clicking of teeth and the shiver that traps her voice within its chest before it can pass through vocal chords...

     Are we there, yet?

[invisibleimpossibilities]

Prelude to Reunion

@solitaryblade

Her body betrays her. It plots against her own constancy; it overstimulates her skin. The clopping of hooves along the path match the pace and pounding of her heart. Her breath comes out heavier in little puffs as the air gets colder the closer they get to the mountains. Tingles begin as a memory on the back of her hand and creep their way up her arms, leaving gooseflesh. These things feel far too intense, too foreign. 

But perhaps foreign presences could be things to welcome. Chrom had taught her that. All of their Shepherds had taught her that, gathering from far and wide. She hadn’t seen it during the Plegian war, but it became more apparent in the aftermath. Robin had time to process what their battles had gained, time to witness what people coming together could reclaim and rebuild... time to realize what the absence of the only people she’d created memories with in this new life felt like, learning to appreciate the less gruesome, sorrowful, terrifying bits of their time together.  Different reaches of the region broke stereotypes and boundaries to come together to from something stronger than they were as separate parts. 

She has so much of her own strength to thank them for. 

Actual strength in particular, and one shepherd in particular. 

(She’d returned to Ylisse determined to master every skill she had yet to on the battlefield itself. Once she’d done so (and even had the promotion to show for it) she returned to her melee weapon of choice. Her stance had steadied to a solid trunk. Her thrust and parry perfected to sleek and flowing form. As she sliced at the practice dummies, she could still hear Lon’qu’s sharp instruction in her head; still feel his breath brushing strands of her sideburns against her cheek, his hand over her hand guiding her hilt, his thigh against her thigh as the tip of his boot pushed her foot into the proper placement. Frederick’s analytical gaze of her sparring technique never matched in silent intensity. She’d even gained enough skill for a few rounds toe-to-toe with Chrom... and even when she won, she’d still exit the barracks by herself, feeling like something was missing.

For a long while she wondered if no one else pushed her in quite the same way Lon’qu did when they would train together, if he offered a different type of challenge she’d yet to step up to. ...Eventually she had to admit that she simply missed the man.

But surely this greater sense of loss for one person only clung to her, because she did not have the option of lettered correspondence with him as she did with Shepherds who had returned home to other cities, right? )

Thoughts only drifted this way, or so she told herself, because the Shepherds are en route to Regna Ferox. The threat posed to Valm easily extends beyond Ylissean borders, and their allies are on the way to a rendezvous point, so of course they would stop to see if similar aid to the last threat of war could be offered.

Two wars within three years. Her own life and the life of her friends at risk. She should feel dreadful... somber, at the very least. Yet, as she keeps her hands folded in her lap to keep the pretense of stillness, her body still betrays her. Her toes tap impatiently, the only sign of the true giddiness she feels as the carriage travels.

And this time she readily admits it’s in part happiness at reuniting with a friend, because what she doesn’t want to accept is the part that’s been so utterly bored with the idleness over the last few months of peace, and is more than ready to get back to battles she’s more prepared for than ever... 

[invisibleimpossibilities]

“I found you beat half to death in a dumpster. When I said I would call 9-1-1 you punched me in the face and said no before passing out.”

continued from ~*~ @solitaryblade​: 

  He’s still a bit disoriented when he comes to, but he’s sitting up, leaning against a wall. The smell of garbage still lingers, but it isn’t as strong. After a moment, he realizes it’s just stuck to his clothes. One hand moves to his head, palm cradling his forehead as he groans. He isn’t really bandaged up much, but he’s not bleeding so much now. There’s still throbbing pains wracking various parts of his body, though.

   Remembering exactly what happened isn’t coming to him right away, but the first thing he notices is the woman in front of him. Lon’qu reels back a bit, nearly hitting his head on the wall behind him again. “ Who the hell are you?”  

 Her response only comes as somewhat of a surprise really. Slowly, bits and pieces of his memory creep back. He remembers he ran into a gang downtown, though he doesn’t remember their faces or how the fight started out, he does know that even after fighting off one or two, he’d been too outnumbered to win. But at least they didn’t kill him.

   Why she bothered to pull him out of the dumpster or clean his wounds (he assumes it was her, anyway, considering no one else is around), he isn’t sure. Especially considering he punched her…And there’s evidence of that by her slightly swollen cheekbone that already had a slight bruise starting to show. No, he doesn’t want 911 called, particularly not with his track record and terrible luck, but maybe assaulting her was overkill. He must not have been thinking straight. He glances away for a moment, groaning as he tries to figure out where he is based on his surroundings.

   “ You didn’t, did you ?” Doubtful, considering he doesn’t hear sirens and if he passed out they probably had time to get there by now. But just in case she had, he needs to get out of dodge, even if he hadn’t technically done anything wrong. But that hadn’t exactly helped him before. He looks back to her, shoulders pressing into the wall like he’s trying to keep as much distance between himself and her as possible.

  “ Sorry about your face .” It hardly sounds like a sincere apology, but he rarely offers them anyway.

     Robin’s been around the block a time or two with people coming to. Punches. Fevers. Alcohol. Bar brawls. ...Bomb-blasts. She expected a certain level of struggle and bewilderment upon hefting a groaning man from a dumpster. Getting socked in the jaw by a pointed right fist which seemed to spring to life on instinct immediately after she wrapped her arms around him had not been part of her plotted outcomes, however. Perhaps blame the few full glasses of wine spinning in her system for lack of reflexes to protect herself.

     The man’s surprise, afterward, when she was nursing her own bruises now, more followed the typical path. Part of her said to leave him, he must be some sort of scoundrel or another in a back alley on a dusky night. The other, more protective side, felt she should stay with him at least until he could get on his feet, especially when logic says whoever did this to him were more likely the bad guys, and he wasn’t. Perhaps not fully innocent, but who really is? Still another part filled with insatiable curiosity bid her to find out why he wouldn’t want public services involved and why he’s acting so strangely.

     She needed to sober up anyway, and his would likely be a sobering story.

     He’s tense beyond what his wounds should call for, but scooting away along the length of concrete wall with more strength than he should be able to. Bits of refuse still stuck to him in manner of debris and of odor. Even through a bit of bleary haze she can see blood seeping out from under his coat sleeve, and she can only hope he hadn’t been stabbed on top of everything else. He’s in no shape to be running off to anywhere just yet. 

     “I didn’t. I won’t. I won’t hurt you either. And my face isn’t a priority right now,” assurances drop from her mouth calm, but stern, “Pah... you just chased away lord knows how many guys who did that to you. Stop cowering like a pup. And let me see the rest of those wounds before you high-tail out, huh? I can’t match an ambulance, but I’ve got a bit of field first aid under my belt.”

     Literally. She pats a pouch full of gauze, tape, and ointment strapped to her waist.

     “Tell me, do you think you can actually even stand right now?”

[invisibleimpossibilities]

"If the arrangement has me sitting next to a woman, you're trading seats with me." Uncouth a muttering as it might be, it's less to suit his preference and more to avoid embarrassing her because of his /issues/. Though not as bad as they once were, he didn't need a surprise hand on his arm or shoulder when the champagne started flowing. With a thoughtful glance at Robin, however, he pauses, mulling over words for a moment, obviously very out of his element. "You ... look nice, by the way ."

     “Don’t worry, Lon’qu,” a reassuring smile might appear more coy by the way makeup elongates and points her features, “The wedding planner was made well aware of that necessity. I can’t promise no other women at the table at all, but if I recall correctly you’re between me and then the groom’s party. I have a feeling you and Edgeworth will get along just fine. He’s very pragmatic as well. …Er, that is… as long as any of the times you’ve been caught never saw him as your prosecutor…”

     She knows when his mind is trying to fish for words, and waits with a slight tilt to her head. His mouth opens purposefully, and her eyes light up, “Oh…?” Such compliments were never usually ones she prided herself on, but somehow when he said things like that… they felt like real accomplishments. Not to mention… real in general. Genuine. At least, compared to other ways she’s heard those kind of sentiments. 

     Fingers brush through his bangs, trace his jaw, and settle on each of his shoulders, if only just because she can. “Thank you. You’ll have to show me how much you think so after the reception,” (and probably a few drinks…) Her voice twinkles with playful intent, but no longer with any teasing lilt just to get a rise out of him. No, the tone is soft and affectionate - inviting rather than daring. 

     “For now, you should get dressed too. You’ve put it off long enough, you know. The ceremony starts in an hour.”