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wardencommanderrodimiss · 1 year

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In time, this world will take a dark turn; for now, in Southtown, fighting bandits, Chrom, Frederick, and Lissa gain a new ally.

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Plumes of dark smoke rise from the direction of the town. These blasted brigands made it before the Shepherds could intercept them, leaving Chrom scrambling to catch up. He can see the flames crawling up the sides of houses and devouring brown shingled roofs; no matter how fast they move now, there’s already damage done. Hopefully they can intervene before anyone is killed.

Chrom takes the lead and Lissa follows close behind Frederick, clutching her staff as though to use it as a club. The main cobblestone road takes them in toward the center of town, past hastily-abandoned wagons still laden with bounty from the fields. The center square, when it comes into view, shows more clear signs of daily life hastily interrupted: farm stands battered and overturned, crops littering the ground. At this distance, indistinct yells and screams reach Chrom’s ears. He is ready to charge into the fray, careful approach be damned, when a clatter of footsteps precedes a woman who throws herself around the corner of the house to Chrom’s left. She collides with an empty farm stand and then intentionally catches hold of it to bring herself to a stop. Glancing over her shoulder, her eyes catch on Chrom’s and the relief spreading across her face hardens immediately into a determined scowl.

“More of you damned brigands,” she hisses, straightening up. One hand plunges into her coat as though seeking a weapon, and she holds the other straight out, fingers splayed, straight towards Chrom. “Fine, then—”

A ball of lightning begins to form in her palm, crackling brightly and loudly sparking and snapping the way the flames do. She knows magic, and she probably means to kill them.

“Wait!” Chrom throws his hands up. He’d like to be ready to draw Falchion, but he’d like a ball of lightning to the chest even less, and if he goes for his blade she will probably strike. “We aren’t brigands! We’re Shepherds, here to help!”

“Awfully well-armed for shepherds,” the woman replies curtly, not lowering her hand even slightly. “Though you don’t sound like brigands.”

She shifts her stance and her long dark coat moves with her, revealing a glimpse of a blade sheathed at her hip. This woman is no ordinary resident of a simple farming village, that’s for damn sure. But she still hasn’t attacked him, so Chrom is optimistic about his chances to calm this situation. “So what do brigands sound like?” he asks.

“Plegian,” she says. Her eyes finally leave Chrom’s face, darting briefly across Frederick and lingering longer on Lissa, who takes up the rear. Surely she doesn’t think that a girl of Lissa’s age would be part of a bandit incursion? “You don’t, but you don’t look like knights - and certainly not like shepherds, either.”

“We hear that a lot,” Chrom says.

The lightning disappears from her palm, but her hand remains raised, still ready for the situation to turn south. She looks back behind her, toward the main square, as though expecting others to appear around the corner. When no one does, her gaze turns back on Chrom, cold and appraising. “Whatever you are, if you truly mean to help, your timing is perfect. These brigands think I’m their only opposition. You can easily ambush them while they’re preoccupied.”

“Wait,” Lissa pipes up from behind. “You don’t mean that you’ve been trying to fight a bunch of bandits all on your own! That’s crazy!”

The woman draws her hand back; her other still lingers inside her coat and the tome surely hidden away there. “What else was I to do?” she asks. “Let them run unopposed?”

“Surely the danger of such a venture has not escaped you,” Frederick says. He still looks wary of her - typical Frederick - but not as though he will be the first to strike.

The woman waves her hand dismissively. “Yes, yes, I know,” she says, and she sounds just as dismissive as her gesture was - sounds as though the danger of such a venture has in fact escaped her. “Now, they’re still going to be on guard waiting for me to attack again, but if you sneak up through here” - she indicates a thin alley between two homes that are thankfully not yet ablaze - “and I catch their attention from the main square and draw them toward us, you can strike from the side while they’re distracted.”

Her strategy, while simple, seems solid, and has more thought put into it than Chrom would have (his strategy being to run the bastards down immediately). There is just one key point that he objects to: “So you are going to charge them, alone.”

“I’m not charging them,” she reminds him. “I’m getting their attention and drawing them back, and I’m hardly alone if there’s an ambush waiting on my side.”

“That’s a lot of faith to put in strangers,” Chrom says. Her life in their hands, and they don’t even know her name. And she might be a stranger, but she’s fighting for the people of Ylisse; that makes her a friend to the Shepherds and the Exalt, and they’re short on friends as of late.

“So it is,” she agrees. Her expression doesn’t waver; her eyes don’t leave Chrom’s even as she says, “And you, girl with the staff - if this goes wrong, you might be my new best friend, not a stranger. Now shall we?”

She seems to have determined Chrom to be the leader of them. He nods and looks to Frederick. He does not appear at all happy, but he does not offer any verbal objection, either. Presumably he will go along with what Chrom goes along with, and Chrom is going to go along with this plan that is only slightly insane because he has no plan at all. “Let’s.”

The woman darts off into the main square, ducking around the broken farm stands as she moves between cover. Chrom wonders why she’s bothering, if she intends to get their attention, and several seconds later, as he advances down the alleyway, he realizes that she probably intends to make her approach appear less suspicious than an outright charge.

He really would have just charged, himself.

The alley between the houses, about two feet wide, is littered with debris. Chrom crouches behind the rainwater barrel that stands at the far mouth of the alley and presses his back to the wall. Further ahead lies the bridge across the river which cuts the town in half, and on the other side, the church. Two brigands, one with a large axe and the other with a sword, cross the bridge, yelling what must be every derogatory term to refer to a woman that exists. Moments later, a small javelin-shaped burst of lightning streaks through the air, slamming directly into the chest of the swordsman. He howls as he tumbles to the ground, still alive despite the force of the impact, and his companion continues on, disappearing out of Chrom’s line of sight.

Chrom gives himself another few moments, watching the swordsman return to his feet and put his back to Chrom. Then the sound of metal-on-metal rings through the air, and Chrom decides that is enough.

He throws himself forward from the alley, drawing Falchion. Now he can see the stranger, with a sword in her hands to parry the axe that bears down on her. The second brigand limps towards the duel and does not make it; Falchion tears through his back and he falls with a gurgling sound. The axe-wielding brigand, about to bring a second swing down on the stranger, hesitates and turns towards the sound. “What the—”

Falchion arcs through the air, meeting the chipped, rusting axe blade. The brigand’s face, contorted in fury, suddenly goes slack. He looks down; Chrom, however, does not dare take his eyes off the axe - not until it clatters to the ground from now-limp hands of a man with lightning magic still sparking in his chest.

“I killed two of them earlier, before I had to run and met you,” the woman says, lowering her right hand; in her left, she clutches a tome close to her chest. “I believe there should only be one of them left—”

She drops the tome and lunges forward. Chrom has no time to react and next he knows, she has knocked the two of them to the ground. Crackling flames burst in the air above them, right where Chrom had been standing; even from a few feet away, the spell warms the side of his face and he wonders what it would be like to have taken the full brunt of it. “I thought I killed two of them,” the woman amends, falling back onto the ground away from Chrom and fumbling for her tome again, and then with a wordless yell of anger she throws lightning right back.

Chrom scrambles to his feet. Across the square, he sees another man fall, a tome slipping from his grasp. “My apologies,” the woman says lightly, as though she didn’t just strike a man down with magic, turning her head to glance at Chrom. “I didn’t expect that.”

“That’s all right,” Chrom says. “I much prefer being thrown around a little to burning alive.”

“Glad to hear it,” she says.

“Anyone need help?” Lissa waves her staff about as she runs up, Frederick still doing his best to stay ahead of her and keep himself between her and any danger. It is, Chrom suspects, a losing battle, but Frederick valiantly fights it anyway, and for that Chrom is grateful. He doesn’t have to keep both eyes on Lissa at all times with Frederick around. “We’re all good?”

“The last man seems to have been the one giving orders,” says the woman, indicating the bandit lingering on the other side of the bridge. “Let’s see if he has any bite behind his bark.”

To the little credit that Chrom would give any Plegian brigands who are ransacking his halidom, the sole remaining man is not a coward who folds once he sees his backup is dead. Unfortunately this also means a second round of fighting, and more chances for someone on Chrom’s side to be hurt. And fortunately, when the stranger catches a thrown axe, it is with the inside of her billowing coat, and not any critical piece of flesh, and Frederick’s lance puts the bandit down before he can do any real damage to anyone.

And then there is no time to waste, as the town is on fire and the four of them cannot put it out by themselves. Lissa scrambles about trying to convince the townspeople that it’s safe to come out and help, and Chrom and Frederick search for any buckets; by the time Chrom returns to where he remembers a rain barrel, he finds that the woman has scaled one of the houses and stands on a roof about fifteen feet away from the crackling flames.

There’s something admirable in her audacity, that she’s running towards danger for the sake of helping others. That’s the kind of person who would be a good fit for the Shepherds. And Chrom’s no tactician or politician, but he can read the writing on the wall the same as anyone else: Plegia’s building up to something, and Ylisse needs to be prepared to fight back.

They need all the help they can find, here and everywhere else.

It is late afternoon before all of the fires have been put out and the wounded villagers treated. Chrom has not met a person who is not profusely thankful, offering anything they have as repayment. He politely refuses offerings of meager coin pushed on him - “it’s all we have but please, milord, you saved our homes, you saved us–” - to make his way back to the center of town. A man who had earlier introduced himself as one of the village elders greets them there.

“You must at least stay the night, milord,” he implores. “We would happily toast the valor of you and your companions with a feast - where has the last one of you gotten off to, do you know?”

Chrom looks to Frederick on his right and Lissa on his left and back at the older man. “You mean - that woman? She wasn’t with us - you mean she isn’t from here?”

“Goodness, no.” The man shakes his head. “We would surely know if we had any mages in town. I have never seen her before.”

Lissa has already begun to imagine, out loud, what sort of meal they might be having when there, rounding the corner, comes the stranger woman. She stops dead when she sees an already-assembled group of people staring at her, and she flinches when the town elder calls her over. Her eyes do not linger long on him even as he extends his grateful invitation to her; they rove, suspiciously, between all of them. “That’s a generous offer, sir,” she replies, her eyes finally settling on the village elder, “but I’m afraid I must decline. I’ve been away from home long enough and my mother will be getting worried.”

“Likewise, we must be returning to Ylisstol,” Frederick says - exactly what Chrom had expected him to say. They need to report back to Emmeryn.

Lissa, however, stops in the middle of a sentence. “Wait, what? Frederick, it’s nearly dark! We—”

“We will simply make camp where we find ourselves and hunt for our sustenance - as I believe you said that you would be ‘getting used’ to roughing it?”

Frederick has a point. She did say that, and from her expression, she clearly remembers saying that and can’t accuse him of making it up. “Frederick,” she says wearily, “sometimes I really hate you.”

The woman covers a laugh with her hand. “If you’re also heading north,” she says, “my mother and I live along the road back to Ylisstol. If we leave now, we should be able to make it before nightfall and you can have a roof to sleep under for the night - and I won’t have to worry if I run into another pack of brigands on the road.”

It’s a practical suggestion, but there’s something strange about the way she speaks it - a catch in her voice after she offers them her open door, and then the hasty addition. Like her offer of assistance would be too suspicious if she didn’t also gain something from it. Like people don’t help each other only for the sake of helping each other, like there always has to be a reward, but she was here in this town fighting bandits alone and might easily have disappeared without getting anything in return. And Frederick frowns, like he does find that offer suspicious, because he finds everything suspicious - that is Frederick’s way. And Chrom thinks of Emmeryn, and will do as his heart wills him, and he answers, “I think we all would be grateful for a roof after the day it’s been - my sister especially.”

“Hey!” Lissa aims to stomp down on his foot, but Chrom gets out of the way quicker than she can strike. “You - you shut it!”

The woman lifts her hand again, obviously shielding a smile from the way her cheeks rise to her eyes. “Oh, of course,” she says, lowering her hand and failing to compose her face into a stern expression as she tilts her body just slightly in towards Lissa. “He’s using you as the excuse.”

“Exactly!” Lissa cries, and the stranger’s mischievous smile widens and she doesn’t seem to think to hide this one. “Don’t listen to a word he says about me. He’s called me delicate before - delicate! As if!”

“Let’s not start this again,” Chrom says.

“Then maybe you shouldn’t have started it—!”

Frederick clears his throat. “That is generous of you, milady, but as you said - if we leave now.” He glances to the sky, tracking the position of the sun and the length of the shadows. “So we should, then, be off.”

The woman straightens up. “Of course,” she says with a sharp nod, and already her teasing feels distant or imagined. She dropped her guard and then snapped it back up, and that just makes Chrom all the more curious as to who she is and what her story is. “That we should.”

“My name is Lissa, by the way,” Lissa says. “And this is Chrom, my brother - you actually shouldn’t listen to anything he says, not just about me - and Frederick.”

Frederick gives a curt nod of acknowledgement. “Pleasure to meet you,” Chrom says.

“Likewise,” the woman replies. “My name is Robin.”

She has short hair, a pale, sandy blonde lighter in shade than either Lissa or Emmeryn’s. Her long, dark coat has maroon detailing along the arms and through the interior and, as she offers when questioned, more than a few pockets sewn within it. Frederick’s first line of inquiry - as suspiciously as he ever asks such things - as they set off down the road is where she learned to fight, and she reaches within her coat and produces a book on battle tactics. “My mother was a mercenary tactician, and a mage,” she says. “She taught me everything she knew, and the other members of her company taught me the basics of the sword.”

“A tactician, huh,” Chrom says. “The Shepherds could really use one of those now.”

“Is that so?” Robin asks. “Is the situation with the brigands getting worse? The news we get from town was always of smaller incursions such as that, but nothing more.”

She’s eager for news from Ylisstol and hangs intently on Chrom’s every word about the progression of the situation with Plegia. If she lives a few hours’ walk from such a small town, it’s no surprise that she’s not up-to-date.

When Frederick returns to the question of her skills and Robin proves, among other skills, an uncanny knack for knowing where exactly in her tactics book to find certain references or information. It’s almost like a game, as Frederick or Chrom opens discussion of a cavalry or infantry formation and Robin immediately produces pages of diagrams in her book. As battlefield experience goes, she admits to having little - but Chrom’s recruited people to the Shepherds who have none at all, and Robin has already proven that she has quick reflexes and keeps a level head in a fight.

Gods, he’s really considering this. Ylisse is in dire straits.

“Have you always lived around here?” Chrom asks at a lull in the tactical discussion. Robin has a bit of an accent he can’t place; it isn’t the Plegian accent he’s familiar with, but she doesn’t sound quite Ylissean either.

The way she looks at him suggests that she knows the question buried beneath that: where are you from? A question of allegiance - though allegiance does not always correlate with one’s place of birth - but Frederick would probably be furious if Chrom didn’t ask before he asks his other question. “I spent my childhood in Ferox,” she says. “Until I was - eight or nine, maybe?”

Her pointed gaze lingers on Chrom for a moment longer, as if asking him if that answer is good enough, until Lissa pipes up, “Isn’t it cold in Ferox?”

“I have seen snow,” says Robin solemnly, “in every month of the year.”

Lissa scrunches up her nose. “That’s horrible!”

“It would have its charms, in moderation,” Robin replies.

“So, like, just a bit of snow sometimes would be nice,” Lissa says. “Like in the winter. Having a bit of snow in moderation in the winter, like we have here, is nice. That’s what you mean?”

Robin scratches her cheek. “Yeah, that’s - I deserve that, don’t I?”

“It was pretty silly,” Lissa says. “But you’ve sounded pretty smart otherwise, so it’s okay. You know how many silly things my brother says in a day–”

“None at all,” Chrom cuts in.

“—but without anything smart to balance it out?” Lissa continues, as though Chrom did not speak.

Frederick, as ever, stoically perseveres, his eyes on the horizon. Long ago he wisely chose that he would not involve himself in petty sibling squabbles. Robin, however, has not yet had cause to make that choice. “You’re awfully mean to your brother,” she says - as if she hadn’t joined Lissa in it back in town.

Lissa shrugs. “Yeah, but that’s what little sisters are supposed to be.”

Robin raises her eyebrows. “Is that so?” she asks, glancing to Chrom for confirmation, as though he’s going to say yeah, my little sister is doing exactly what she’s supposed to be doing every day of her life by calling me a dummy.

“Do you have any siblings?” Chrom asks. He thinks that her answer may clear the matter up quickly, or add a confounding new layer to it.

She shakes her head. “Just myself and my mother.”

“Lissa is convinced, that as my baby sister, it’s what she’s supposed to do,” Chrom says. “It does not mean she’s actually supposed to.”

Lissa skips up behind him and tries to kick him in the back of the leg.

“I still don’t understand,” Robin says.

“You won’t,” Chrom says. Lissa tries again to kick him.

“I find it better to simply carry on and not acknowledge any squabbling,” Frederick says. “It will pass momentarily.”

Robin nods and steps up beside him, leaving Chrom with room to try to ruffle Lissa’s hair while Lissa continues to try to kick him in return. A part of him has concerned himself with the impression that this will make on Robin, but she already seems to have taken easily to Lissa - and most of the Shepherds could be said to be a bit eccentric. If she couldn’t handle Lissa then what would her introduction to the other Shepherds look like?

He might be getting a bit ahead of himself.

Frederick and Robin are discussing weapons training, and if Chrom has heard right, Robin has been running the same drills since she was eight. “After we left the mercenaries, there was no one to teach me,” she says, and yes, that really does sound like it - and that means that Robin was a child traveling around with a bunch of mercenaries. Her mother worked as a mercenary with a child in tow. It’s impressive, Chrom thinks, if unfortunate.

He should just go for it. At a lull in the conversation, he clears his throat and steels himself. “Robin,” he says, and she sharply turns to look at him, eyes wide and then narrowing in suspicion. “I meant what I said earlier about the Shepherds needing a tactician. I know this is a very large thing to ask so suddenly of someone I’ve just met, but you’ve proven yourself willing and able to fight for the people of Ylisse - I’d be honored if you would consider joining us.”

“Join—” Her eyes widen again. “You want me to join your… Shepherds, as a tactician?”

“I do,” Chrom replies. “You are more than free to say no—”

“Milord,” Frederick says. “This is very sudden indeed.”

“I know, Frederick. But I said to you the other day - we have to be on the lookout for others willing to help us, no matter where we might find them. Even if your answer is no, Robin, and I’d understand that, I’d rather ask than wonder.”

Robin is quiet, her jaw moving like she keeps stopping moments before a question surfaces. Finally she says, “There are more than just the three of you, I hope?”

“Wh - yes! There are.” Her answer is a question that is not an outright rejection, so Chrom tells her a little bit about the others within the ranks of the Shepherds. He explains that they go wherever they’re needed, because the pegasus knights have to focus on the border and especially the Exalt, and with the situation with Plegia as it is, there’s more and more need to keep the Exalt protected. Robin is ready with a deluge of questions, but when she has exhausted them, she gives no further answer. That she has not outright said no bodes well - though Chrom tries to temper that hope. She has not said yes, either.

The sun is gone from sight and its light fading in the sky when Robin leads them off the road, into the trees. Frederick lights a torch which he carefully maneuvers beneath the hanging branches, and Robin conjures a ball of lightning that hovers above her head and illuminates little more than the ground directly beneath their feet. Chrom can sense Frederick’s ever-increasing suspicion - it would be easy for them to disappear here.

“Before we arrive,” Robin says, stepping over a tree root which Lissa stumbles on, “I should warn you that my mother is - well, she can be - she’s rather… brusque. If she starts to make you feel like you’ve personally offended her, you haven’t; that’s just how she is, I promise.”

She stops, holding up a tree branch to let the three of them easily duck beneath it. Lissa’s furious grumbling does not cease, but she grumbles something that might be a thanks in Robin’s direction. Robin smiles, just a little.

“Just as long as you’d understand some of the other Shepherds to be rather… odd,” Chrom says. He told her that the Shepherds have come from all manner of backgrounds, with all manner of skills. And while he’s sure that when he described Miriel as a scholar of magic, Robin can probably conjure in her head an image that’s similar to the real Miriel, describing Sully as a dedicated knight doesn’t capture what makes her Sully. And then what can even be said about the likes of Vaike?

Robin lets go of the branch behind him. “I think we have an agreement,” she says, and Chrom though he wants to does not ask if that is an agreement as someone who would be their tactician, because how weird the Shepherds are won’t actually matter to her if she never meets or joins them.

Lives alone in the woods with her mother is still very much not in the kind of recruit Chrom expected to be considering, to be hoping for, but - Ylisse is in dire straights, indeed. Lives alone in the woods with her mother is the start of fairy tales of witches who eat children.

And just as it seems that they will forever be surrounded by trees, just as Chrom is seriously trying to dig up the memory of any such witch stories, they step forth into a clearing. A fence, half constructed, partially circles a chicken coop, and past it sits a plain, weather-worn house. “Mama!” Robin calls, breaking the spell of the quiet hum of nature. “Mama, I’m back! And I brought company, so don’t be alarmed!” She glances around and stares at the chicken coop for a moment longer, and then yells louder, “Mama!”

The door of the house swings open. “I heard your squawking the first three times, birdie,” rasps a voice from within, and Robin’s magic lightning-light is joined by three small white flames which pop up into the air above the stoop. They illuminate an older woman with a stress-lined face and thin hair the same color as Robin’s where it isn’t starting to gray. “What in hell do you mean, you brought company?”

Robin holds out a hand and gestures to them. “Mama, this is Chrom, Lissa, and Frederick. They’re part of a militia and they helped me fight off brigands from town. I offered them a place to stay on their way back to Ylisstol. Everyone, this is my mother, Morrigan.”

Morrigan has the same cold and appraising glare as her daughter does. Even as she approaches Robin, her wary eyes continue to rove across Chrom, Frederick, and Lissa. She takes her daughter by the chin and turns her head side to side before she roughly lifts one of Robin’s arms away from her side, like she’s inspecting her. “Mama,” Robin sighs. “I’m not hurt.”

“Hmph.” Morrigan drops Robin’s arm and, over her shoulder, meets Chrom’s eyes with that withering gaze again. “Then I suppose I should thank these strangers for bringing my daughter home in one piece.”

“Not at all,” Chrom replies. “She helped us a great deal, as well.”

Morrigan’s attention snaps back to Robin. “Then you haven’t learned a thing from this, have you?”

Robin frowns. “What am I supposed to have learned? That everyone in town was right when they worried about being attacked? That I was right when I said they had no one to protect them?

“They did have someone to protect them!” Morrigan waves her hand through the air, a broad, sweeping gesture that encompasses Chrom, Frederick, and Lissa all. “But what of you, next time you go running off alone to defend strangers?”

She warned them that her mother was brusque, but Chrom starts to think she did not warn them that they would walk right into the middle of an ongoing argument.

“I’m not going to hide away while the countryside burns around us!” Robin says. Her gloved hands at her sides tense into fists, and she glances back at Chrom. “And I won’t be alone next time. They asked me if I’d come with them and help them fight, and I will.”

Chrom has spent this long waiting for her answer and now he’s been blindsided by it. “Wait,” he says. “You will?”

He’s not sure either of the women heard him. Morrigan stands statue-still, her expression unreadable; Robin stares back. “I know what you’re going to say,” Robin says, “and I—”

“Grab more firewood on your way in, if you please, birdie,” Morrigan says, turning away from her daughter and to the door. “Since I’ll be cooking up extra for our company.”

The door snaps shut behind her.

“Oh dear,” Lissa says.

Robin’s mouth, still open, closes slowly. She stares at the door. “That was,” she says, dragging a hand through her hair, only for it to immediately fall back into place over her forehead, “not what I thought she was going to say.”

“Er, right,” Chrom says. “Listen, Robin, I know I was the one to ask if you’d come with us, but if - I don’t want to be the person responsible for ruining your relationship with your mother—”

“Oh, it’s not you,” Robin says, directing them around the house to a pile of unsplit firewood and an axe, which Frederick immediately grabs and sets to work. Chrom takes the pieces he has chopped down to size, while Robin and Lissa gather the splinters into a kindling pile. “We argued before I left, too. She told me not to be stupid and risk my life, so then I snuck out and left before she got up the next morning.”

“You didn’t even say goodbye?” Lissa asks, her mouth hanging open. Chrom knows she is imagining doing that to Emm - how unthinkable to set off on a mission without their sister knowing. But Emm would never try to stop them, either; they all know what they must do for their people. They all agree on the responsibilities and the cost. Robin and her mother, evidently, don’t.

“We would have started arguing again,” Robin says. She picks up a sliver of bark that cracked off of a log and slowly bends it until it snaps. “I’d say I couldn’t stand by and do nothing; she’d say that it’s foolish to put myself into such danger for the sake of people who wouldn’t do the same in return.”

“What do you mean by that?” Chrom asks. “That - doesn’t seem right, to assume that of people without knowing them.”

“Yeah!” Lissa agrees. “Everyone in town was really grateful! They would’ve fed us!”

She turns a glare on Frederick, presumably for not letting them stay and indulge in that feast. Frederick, however, is not looking at her - and anyway, he would tell her anyway that she still has a roof to sleep under and someone else assisting with the meal, so she cannot complain. They could, he would say, be sleeping in the woods.

“Back when we were still with the mercenaries,” Robin says, “my mother saved every bit of gold she could. After years and years she had enough that every little town we passed through she’d ask around if there was enough room for a mother and her daughter to settle. But all the same people who gladly paid for her to risk her life and drive off a few ruffians balked at the thought of actually letting her - us - into their communities.”

She stares at the pieces of bark in her hands and drops them into one of the coat pockets where she has been gathering kindling. “It’s easy to be grateful to a stranger who sets off down the road at the end of the day; harder to welcome one into your peaceful village where you’ve known everyone since the day they were born. So we keep to ourselves out here, and she travels into town every week or two to trade, and we’ve always managed like that.”

“Until now,” Frederick says, “when we find you in a town under attack, rather than keeping safely to yourself.”

He does not try to conceal the air of mistrust which hangs around his words.

“Mama came home last week telling how bandit attacks are more and more frequent,” Robin replies, “and that people in the village are afraid that they’ll be hit soon. The forest out here will burn the same as a town if we hide away waiting for war to reach us. Or, I could go to meet it and perhaps make a better defense - I understand your suspicions, but all I can tell you is the truth. I heard they were afraid and I wanted to do something.”

“And the truth is, Frederick, that she helped us,” Chrom reminds him.

“And the truth is that the task of wariness has always fallen to me,” says Frederick. “Someone must be.”

“You and my mother are quite alike in that regard,” Robin says.

Frederick nods curtly. When the four of them return soon to Morrigan with the requested wood, they find that she has not started food preparations yet; she has waited to ask for their help. And that means that Frederick has an excuse to hover by Lissa’s shoulder. Make sure she doesn’t hurt herself (of course she’s not going to hurt herself; she knows how to cook). Make sure everything that goes into the meal is something that should be there (Frederick would hover to keep careful watch of ingredients anyway, but he is polite enough that he would rather have the excuse).

(Chrom wonders if the reason that Morrigan waited was to give them the excuse.)

The house is not furnished for guests, and when it is time to take their meal, Chrom finds himself seated on the floor with Frederick and Robin. A stool in the corner goes unused; Robin had insisted that she did not invite guests in so that they could all sit on the floor, Frederick had insisted that Lissa and Chrom seat themselves before him, and Chrom had insisted that he couldn’t further impose on Robin by kicking her away from her own table.

“You’re all so stubborn,” Lissa says from where she sits above him at the table with Morrigan, and even though Chrom isn’t looking at her, he knows she is rolling her eyes.

“If they all wish to be so foolishly sacrificing, then that is their prerogative,” Morrigan says. She almost sounds as if she is making a joke.

Robin shed her long coat when everyone came inside, but she still wears her gloves. “Yes Mama, it certainly is,” she says, and as she lifts her bowl to drink the broth her eyes flicker towards Chrom in a way that he can only think means something like watch this or well this had to come back up sooner or later.

Morrigan sighs deeply. “So,” she says, her attention turning without even a glance towards Robin, “this militia of yours.”

She asks many of the same questions that Robin did, but every single one of them feels particularly pointed in a way that Robin’s didn’t. And that makes Chrom feel like every answer he gives is the wrong one, especially the times when Morrigan will glance at Robin and something will pass between them. But whether they agree or disagree with each other, Chrom can’t begin to guess.

Only once everyone finished cleaning their dishes does Morrigan finally address her daughter again. “You know what I’m going to say, birdie.”

“Yes, Mama,” Robin says.

“And you’re going to tell me none of it changes your mind, is that so?”

“Yes, Mama.”

“Then that’s it, is it not? If nothing I’ve already told you will stop you, then I’ve nothing new to say that will change your mind now. You well made your point running off like that.”

It is dark outside, and in the quiet inside, even past the windows, Chrom can hear the chirping and chittering of the insects in the woods. He almost wishes to grab Lissa and Frederick and drag them out into the night; this feels like a conversation that no one else should be privy to. Robin stands rooted in place, still holding a towel for drying dishes, staring at her mother who has crossed the room and opened a door on the far wall.

“You could at least give me your blessing,” Robin says quietly. “If I’m going no matter what, I could at least not feel like I’m abandoning you.”

“My blessing to throw yourself onto the front line of a fight?” Morrigan asks, her hand still on the doorknob, and Chrom glimpses what appears to be a bedroom past that. “I want you safe. I can’t tell you I’m okay with this.”

“We’ll burn the same out here as the towns do,” says Robin. “I would rather face the bastards with the torches - die on my feet if I would die either way.”

“There’s plenty terrible fates besides death. You know if you’re captured by those bastards, you’ll be lucky if all they do is kill you.”

Lissa shudders. As royalty of Ylisse, she would be spared from death by her use as a hostage, instead, but Chrom knows that he would rather die than be used against Emmeryn in such a way, and he suspects that Lissa feels the same. Anyone else - especially a woman - captured would face one of several other dire fates.

“I know, Mama.” Robin cracks the knuckles on her right hand. That statement, at least, seems to weigh on her; her words lack the same degree of confidence as her prior answers.

“You do know,” Morrigan agrees. “You’re a smart girl despite yourself.” She sighs. “You’ve my permission to take my damn coat with you, though I can’t fathom what you like so much about it.”

Robin straightens her shoulders. “It has good pockets for tomes and other books,” she says brightly.

“You know how to sew,” Morrigan says. “You’ve plenty of coats of your own to add book pockets to.”

“But this one already has book pockets,” Robin says. “And I know it’s sturdy enough to take whatever I put it through.”

Morrigan shakes her head. “That damned coat will outlive us both if you’re not careful.”

“I’m careful, Mama.”

“Hm.” With that, Morrigan disappears into the bedroom, leaving Robin staring at the door that closes behind her.

The only sounds that follow come from beyond the windows and walls of the house. Robin sets the dishrag down and starts massaging her hand again.

“You know,” Lissa says faintly, “you really don’t have to come with us.”

Robin shakes her head. “I told you this would happen no matter what,” she says. “We argued before I left; we’d still be arguing if I came back alone. She’s just trying to protect me but I can’t just - hide here. Meeting you was - it’s safer for me to go with you than to go off alone again. And I probably would.” She reaches towards a chair but as she lowers herself, she ends up on the floor instead, her back resting against the leg of the table. “I feel like I have to go. But I can’t be angry at her. She just worries. She never wanted me to have to fight the way she did.”

“I would hope that most parents should feel the same,” Chrom says, and he thinks of the mess that his father left Emmeryn and hates him again for it.

Robin’s mouth twists into a grimace. Is it over her mother’s protectiveness, or is it a thought about another parent? What brought Morrigan into the mercenary life - what brought the two of them out of Ferox to Ylisse, alone, instead?

When Robin next speaks, she has more questions about Ylisse’s military situation, and they discuss that such situation until she retires to bed in the same room as her mother, leaving Chrom, Lissa, and Frederick to the open floor of the living area. “Better than the woods, right?” Robin asks Lissa with a wink.

“Yeah, Frederick,” Lissa says after Robin has gone. “You wouldn’t have trusted her and had us sleep in the woods.”

Chrom wakes in the morning just before dawn. Lissa is still asleep and the bedroom door is closed; Frederick is nowhere in sight, but from outside comes the sound of axe hitting wood. Chrom eases open the front door - its latch already lifted - and around the side of the house finds Frederick splitting more large logs from the firewood pile.

“I woke when Robin left,” Frederick explains. “She said that she intended to go hunting and chop more firewood for her mother before she left with us. I am simply providing my assistance, as thanks for allowing us to stay the night.”

“That’s kind of you, helping out even though you’re sure she’s going to turn around and stab us in the back,” Chrom says.

Frederick frowns at him. “I am not sure of any such thing, milord. I am cautious, as is prudent, but I always hope that my suspicions should be proven wrong.”

“Frederick?”

“Yes, milord?”

“I was teasing.”

Frederick continues to frown, as though the very concept of a joke eludes him.

Almost all of the wood has been cut down to size by the time Robin returns with a wild turkey slung over her shoulder. She grimaces at them as she approaches. “What are you doing?” she asks, as though the answer is not obvious as Frederick brings the axe down on a long branch. As though the idea of someone helping her is still so inconceivable. “I said I would handle those–”

“I was already awake and with idle hands,” Frederick replies. “This way we will sooner be able to leave for Ylisstol - and consider this our thanks for providing a place to stay the night, as well.”

This thoroughly practical explanation seems to appease her, and without further protest, she simply says, “Thank you.”

On returning inside, they find both Morrigan and Lissa awake - though Lissa is yawning a great deal - preparing breakfast. “I wondered if you had run off with my daughter and left me this one as a replacement,” Morrigan says gruffly.

“He’d regret it if he did!” Lissa huffs, staring pointedly at Chrom, though Morrigan’s you could refer to all three of them.

Morrigan’s attention turns to the turkey that Robin hands her. “Birdie, why were you out hunting?”

“I wanted to make it easier on you when I left,” Robin says. “So you won’t immediately have to go yourself.”

“I’m not infirm, you know,” Morrigan says. “Really now, worrying after me when you’re about to go marching off to battle.”

“I don’t want you to think I’m abandoning you–”

Chrom really, truly wishes that they wouldn’t start arguing again, but he suspects if he tries to intervene, they’ll both turn on him instead. Lissa’s shoulders slowly hunch up towards her ears, like a turtle retreating into its shell.

“Hell’s bells, girl, I know you better than to think that.” Morrigan sighs and shakes her head. Her tone has less bite than it did yesterday. “Even when you left without a damned note, I didn’t think you were abandoning me. You know what your problem is, birdie?” She smacks Robin’s shoulder with the back of her hand. “You keep looking back over your shoulder while you’re trying to march forward and you’ll get nowhere for it.”

“You’d really prefer I just go?” Robin asks, sounding confused and, even more than that, indignant. “Just leave without any thought to what I’ve left behind?”

“Well, I’d know that you have some confidence in the choice you’re making,” Morrigan says, “if you’re willing to burn your bridges behind you.”

“I’m plenty certain of my path, Mama,” Robin says. “Even without starting any fires.”

Morrigan huffs and turns away. “Then I suppose that will have to be enough.”

Chrom wonders what ashes Morrigan has left behind in her time.

Within an hour, they have eaten and prepared to leave. Robin has to be assured several times that Ylisstol has several libraries and large bookstores before she is willing to remove some of the books from her pack and trade them out for extra clothes. Morrigan watches silently, grumbling some answers only when Robin asks her which tomes she would rather keep here. Despite his time with Ricken and Miriel, Chrom doesn’t recognize any of the tomes; he can only guess, based on the magic she cast yesterday, that the two tomes Robin selects, each emblazoned with a yellow rune on its cover, are probably Thunder magic.

He pulls Lissa and Frederick outside soon after, to give Robin and Morrigan a private moment to say goodbye. It gives Frederick one last opportunity for questions as well: “Milord, you are certain?”

“I am,” Chrom says. “She went out of her way to help, at great risk to herself. My heart tells me we can trust her.”

“Your heart, yes; and what of your head?” Frederick asks.

“My head is telling me that this situation with Plegia will not be so easily solved,” Chrom says. “We can use the assistance of anyone willing to offer it.”

“I like her,” Lissa says. “I think she’ll be a great addition to the Shepherds! You worry too much, Frederick.”

“I find that I worry quite the proper amount,” Frederick replies, “given the circumstances.”

The door creaks open, and the object of one of those worries steps out onto the stoop. Morrigan clasps one of Robin’s hands between both of her own. “I know, Mama,” Robin says, exasperated, like she’s said it again several times already. “I know. But I’ll be fine. I promise.”

“Hmph. I’ll just have to believe you, won’t I?” Morrigan pats Robin’s hand twice before releasing her, slowly, her bluster failing to mask her reluctance. “Goodbye, birdie. Don’t be a fool.”

“It’s not goodbye,” Robin says. “Ylisstol isn’t far. You know where to find us - and I’ll be home again, once everything’s calmed down.”

Morrigan shakes her head. “I don’t need you to home to stay. I just need you safe, wherever you are.” She turns her dark, piercing gaze over to Chrom, Lissa, and Frederick. “And I hope for all your sakes that I won’t hear that these skirmishes have turned to war.”

“The Exalt would say the same,” Chrom replies. And he - of course he doesn’t want war, either, but there well might come a time that these incursions turn to one, no matter what Ylisse - and Emmeryn - want. Emmeryn can hope, but Chrom has to prepare.

“Hmph.” Morrigan does not sound convinced, but she has not sounded particularly convinced by anything, especially not where the intentions of other people are involved. “But those fools in charge of Plegia hardly seem to agree, now do they?”

They call him the Mad King for a reason.

Robin steps back from Morrigan, slowly, and then another, until she stands with Chrom, Frederick, and Lissa. “I’m sorry I didn’t finish building the fence, Mama,” Robin says.

“Bah.” Morrigan waves a dismissive hand at her. The facade has sprung back up over the concern she showed mere moments ago. “If you apologize for everything you didn’t finish, you’ll be here all day. Get going, you fool girl. Stop looking back.”

“Yes, yes,” Robin says with a smile and a small laugh. “We’re going.”

“Thank you,” Frederick says, bowing to Morrigan, “for your hospitality. It is greatly appreciated.”

“Yeah, Chrom probably would’ve hunted us a bear to eat or something!” Lissa says. “Thanks for not feeding us bear!”

At that, Morrigan laughs, but it still sounds strained. Why wouldn’t it - she put these strangers up in her home and in return they stole her daughter from her. Chrom elbows Lissa, and to Morrigan, he says, “Thank you,” hoping she’ll understand that it is, really, about much more than the prospective bear meat.

He hunts normal animals, usually. Why does Lissa only remember when he brings down a bear?

“Bear’s not so bad,” Robin says, taking the lead out of the clearing to guide them back to the main road. The forest swallows them in an instant, the greenery pressing in on all sides. Robin weaves her way along a faint trail that Chrom can only see because he knows she’s following it; she stops and holds the branches of a bush back for Lissa to pass by.

“What?” Lissa says. “You’re crazy! No offense. I can’t believe we’ve let a lunatic join the Shepherds. We already have a lunatic leading us!”

“Very funny,” Chrom says, easing his way past Robin and waiting for her to resume her guidance.

But she stands there, eyes blank, and Chrom follows her gaze through the trees and the overgrown brush to catch a glimpse of the house out in the clearing, its front door already shut.

“Are you all right?” he asks.

She tears her eyes away and smiles at him. It looks strained at the edges, but the bright spark of confidence is back in her voice as she answers, “I’m ready. Let’s go.”

#i started this fic two years ago. pretty much right after i finished my first fic introducing robin's mom #since it got me thinking about how chrom/robin would've met in the original timeline/what was robin doing out in that field #when grima whacked them with amnesia.#and only now. have i finished the last third of this fic. i've had this sitting mostly done for like. a year.#roddy fanfics #fire emblem chatter tag #fe #fe awakening mamabird lore #anyway Yes the actual prologue of the game is titled 'the verge of history' everything i do with chrobin is carefully overthought #also i love to write my fics with robin or corrin where i specifically mention facets of their appearances that are #Not in line with the default appearance. i love this for me. robin has short hair that's not quite white. corrin has black hair. hell yeah.

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