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After three full years of marriage, Robin shouldn’t be surprised that her husband is an expert at reading her tells.
“Can’t sleep?” Chrom’s voice, low and rough with grogginess, rumbles through her. Robin stiffens for only a moment before sheepishly lifting her head from his chest. Their tent is too dark to make out his expression.
“I was trying not to squirm,” she sighs. “What gave me away this time?”
The blankets rustle, cot creaking as Chrom shifts to peer down at her. “You’re listening to my heart again.”
Robin winces. For as long as they’ve been sharing a bed, she has habitually sought out Chrom’s pulse after having a nightmare. Its rhythmic, steady thump has always been soothing to her, but recently, it has been the only thing capable of calming her down at all. Ever since their confrontation with Validar at the Dragon’s Table…ever since her sinew and muscle were transformed into puppet strings; her own magic used to nearly halt Chrom’s heartbeat.
“I’m sorry for disturbing you, love,” she murmurs, dropping a contrite kiss on his pectoral.
Chrom pets her head, his large palm sliding down to cup her cheek. Robin nuzzles into his hand readily. “No need for apologies,” he says around a yawn. “I was having trouble sleeping myself.”
Chrom sits up, then, free hand fumbling around on the crate they use as a bedside table.
“What are you doing?” Robin asks.
“Giving us some light to change by. If we can’t sleep anyway, we might as well relieve whoever’s on the night shift. And I’m sure some fresh air will do the trick.”
The words are punctuated by the striking of a match, pale orange flame bursting to life in their oil lamp. Robin smiles softly as her husband’s handsome face melts into flickering visibility, still cast in strong shadows.
“You always know just what I need,” she murmurs.
As they step out into the moonlit camp, Robin pulls her coat tighter around her. The Shepherds have spent the last few days scaling Mount Prism, and the temperature has dropped as they near the top. That’s the very last thing Robin wants to think about right now, though.
“I’m going to see if I can intercept whoever’s on patrol,” Chrom says. “Would you care to join me?”
Robin shakes her head. “Maybe on the next loop. Right now, I just…I need a moment to collect myself.”
If Chrom is taken aback by her answer, he doesn’t let on. “Alright. I’ll come find you after then.”
“Just be careful.” Robin bites down on her lip to stop herself from mentioning his injury, but he must be able to read it in her face anyway.
“Not this again. I’m fully recovered, Robin. Lissa never would have let me out of the infirmary tent if I weren’t.” Despite his chiding tone, the kiss he presses to Robin’s forehead is thoroughly tender.
“I know…”
…But you nearly died, she wants to say. A person doesn’t just bounce back from that.
Except, of course, that Chrom has; and that they’ve been through an iteration of this conversation at least once every day for the last week. So Robin swallows her protest and nods instead.
“Shout if you need me,” Chrom says, giving her hand one last squeeze before jogging towards the camp’s edge, “and don’t think too hard.”
Robin shoots him a weary smile. “I’ll do my best.”
She watches until he disappears behind the wall of tents. With a sigh, Robin plops down on a log beside the dwindling camp-fire, resting her elbows on her knees. Somewhere deeper in the woods, the plaintive hoot of an owl reverberates, prickling her skin to gooseflesh. Robin shivers and prods at the glowing coals with a branch, hoping to cajole them into something livelier.
This will all be over soon.
Just a few days remain until they reach Mount Prism’s peak. Robin tells herself again and again that this is a good thing. Chrom will complete the Awakening ritual, and they will lay to rest this Fell Dragon business once and for all.
She tells herself that, and yet just thinking of the impending ritual knocks the wind out of her. Her stomach seethes, the blanket of ever-nearer stars overhead turned smothering and claustrophobic. Robin yanks her gaze away from them and down to the stick still clutched in her right hand, only for her mind to paint over it in blinding, jagged white. She can still feel remnants of static shooting up her elbow—and the horrible, tendinous resistance of slicing through flesh.
Robin drops the branch, shaking.
Chrom is alive, she reminds herself. Whatever trial Naga has in store for him, it cannot hold a candle to what they’ve endured already. He’ll be found worthy; Robin is absolutely certain that no one has ever been worthier.
But that hasn’t stopped her from being frightened.
Gods, she’s grown so spoiled since her marriage—inept at carrying her own burdens when Chrom is always there to shoulder them with her. And yet each time she considers giving voice to this one, terror gnashes at her more viciously than ever. What if Chrom mistakes her fear for doubt? What if it causes him to doubt himself too, and Naga unjustly deems him lacking because of it?
Robin lets out a shaking breath. She needs to recenter: she’s supposed to be pulling herself together, not coming apart. She watches the shifting flames, trying to memorize every shape they take until her mind will not have room to hold anything else. She strains her ears, trying to soak up all the forest’s sounds: the leathery flap of bat wings, the distant drone of rushing water, and—something else.
Robin lifts her head in search of the source of the familiar rustling just as the flaps of a nearby tent part, revealing her daughter’s furtive figure. Silent as a shadow, she sneaks into the night.
“Lucina?”
Robin keeps her voice soft so as not to disturb the rest of the camp, but her daughter doesn’t seem to hear her either. Lucina slinks off into the darkness with nary a glance around her. Perhaps it’s just a trick of the moonlight, but the sliver of her face that Robin caught looked ashen.
Robin wars with herself. She shouldn’t intrude; Lucina knows how to take care of herself. In all likelihood she just wanted to stretch her legs and would not appreciate being followed. But Lucina is so wary by nature. The fact that she didn’t register another person’s presence even after being called to can only mean that she’s not feeling herself.
Propelled by instinct, Robin pushes to her feet and sets off after her. She only saw the general direction that Lucina left in, yet Robin knows, somehow, what her destination must be. Lucina is her father’s daughter, after all.
Robin rounds the weapons storage tent and emerges in the Shepherds’ make-shift training grounds—arranged this time beside the basin of a frothing waterfall. Night’s dark makes it difficult to discern from a distance but—yes, sure enough, there’s Lucina. But while Robin isn’t the least bit surprised to find her daughter here, she was not prepared to find her perched atop a crate, clutching her knees to her chest.
Robin hesitates. Seeing her like this feels like an intrusion, especially when Lucina has been keeping her distance from her these past two weeks. But then Robin’s eyes adjust enough to the darkness to discern Lucina’s shaking shoulders, and suddenly the prospect of leaving her here alone is unthinkable.
“Lucina?” Robin calls again, throat thick.
Lucina startles, head whipping up. “Mother? W-what are you doing here?”
“I could ask the same of you,” Robin says, voice gentle. Gingerly, she takes the seat beside Lucina on the crate—close but not quite touching. “Are you alright?”
Lucina ducks her face again. When she unfurls her knees a second later, she’s visibly pulled herself together. It breaks Robin’s heart…how trained her daughter is at folding up all her pain and stowing it neatly away. She always suspected that the mask Lucina wore as Marth was meant to conceal more than just the brand in her eye, but this last year has proven it.
“I’m fine, yes. I just wished to stretch my legs,” she says steadily. “I’m sorry to have worried you, Mother.”
Robin frowns. “Lucina, if there’s something upsetting you—”
“There’s nothing,” Lucina says at once. “Thank you for your concern, but there’s no need for it. You should get your rest.”
Robin breathes out a laugh. “Oh believe me, I tried to. But I couldn’t get my mind to settle, and eventually Chrom suggested we trade night shifts. He’s doing a sweep of the perimeter now.”
Lucina nods, eyes fixed on the tumbling waterfall. The moon’s reflection trembles in the pool beside them, its face half light, half shadow. Despite the careful set of her mouth, there’s still a wildness to her eyes—something haunted. Hunted.
Robin didn’t miss the way her daughter’s hand fluttered to Falchion’s hilt as she answered, either. She clutches it the same way that Chrom does when he’s distressed. The familiarity of the motion spawns an idea in Robin’s mind: Lucina takes after her and Chrom in so many ways…perhaps she’s like them with regards to what it takes for her to open up too.
“I wonder, would you be willing to let me stay with you here for a while?” Robin asks. “I know you said that you’re alright, but it would be for my sake. I could use the company.”
Lucina frowns—that puzzled ridge forming between her brows the way it always does just before she asks a question. She wrings her hands in her lap and Robin wills her to take the bait.
“Of course, Mother,” she says slowly. “You’re welcome to stay if you would like to. But if it’s company that you sought, then why not go with Father?”
Robin pieces together a wry smile. “Because I didn’t want to tell him why I couldn’t sleep.”
That gets Lucina’s attention. She knows as well as anyone that her parents don’t make a habit of keeping secrets from each other. She glances at Robin, then away again, lower lip clamped between her teeth. Robin can feel her hanging on her every word.
Bullseye, she thinks, more pleased with herself than she probably should be, only to sober again almost immediately. Igniting Lucina’s curiosity is not the hard part of this gambit. It’s what comes next that is.
…Because if there’s one thing that loving Chrom has taught her, it’s that the only way to convince someone as stubbornly self-reliant as her daughter to be vulnerable is to take the plunge first herself.
Robin draws a deep breath, letting the chilled air expand and fill the whole of her diaphragm. “I still have them, you know. The…the nightmares about killing Chrom.”
Her daughter tenses, spine standing straight as her sword blade.
Robin keeps her voice just a hair above a whisper. “I thought they would stop once the events in them were behind us, but they haven’t. Even though I know that we managed to change things, and even though I know that Chrom survived it…those visions are still there waiting for me nearly every night. It doesn’t matter how many times I’ve dreamt it or how hard I try to train myself to recognize that it’s not real. I’m terrified every single time. I don’t think the thought of losing someone that you love like that ever stops being horrifying.”
“Mother…” Lucina’s throat bobs, “why are you—”
“Why am I telling you this?” Robin smiles down at her lap, flexing her fingers wide then balling them into a fist again. “I’m telling you because I saw the look on your face when Chrom fell to the ground after I stabbed him.”
From her peripherals, Robin can just make out a flash of something raw on Lucina’s face but she cannot allow herself to back out now.
“My plan to stab Chrom with a weakened bolt hinged entirely on making Validar believe that he had succeeded. I knew that losing Chrom that way was what you were more afraid of than anything else, but in spite of that—or rather, because of that—I decided not to warn you what I was going to do. I used your terror to sell the charade.”
The confession hovers in the air between them; an axe blade poised to fall. All of the calculated intentionality that Robin brought into this situation has been utterly stripped away now—her tender insecurities on full display. Robin forces herself to press on, voice much steadier than she feels.
“As you can imagine, I had all sorts of justifications for it. I told myself that it was risk management—that this plan was dangerous enough, and that I needed to control for as many variables as I could. There was too much on the line to warrant anything else.” Robin scoffs, shaking her head. “That’s all well and good, of course, but it doesn’t change the fact that in the end, I prioritized my fears over yours. I let you experience the exact grief and horror that I wanted so desperately to protect myself from. My own daughter—”
Her voice cracks on the last word. Shame squeezes like shackles around her. Robin lets out a quivering laugh, forcing the prick of tears back and turning her face skyward, where the wind captures her long bangs and tickles her neck and cheeks.
“S-so. I guess what I’m trying to say, then, is that I’m sorry, Lucina. For hurting you, and for being so frightened of my nightmare coming true, that I let you believe yours really had.” She swallows thickly. “I know no amount of bad dreams can serve as an excuse, and I don’t expect you to forgive me. But I suppose I thought that maybe…maybe telling you would help you understand.”
“It does.”
Robin swivels sharply to face her daughter, half convinced she must have imagined her speaking. But there can be no question of what she heard when Lucina adds, “I do understand.”
“Y-you do?” Robin manages.
Lucina’s eyes bore into hers, unwavering. “I will not do you the disservice of saying that I was not hurt by it. I have never felt as frightened and despairing as I did in that moment. Still, I am thankful for what you did all the same.”
“Thankful?” Robin croaks. “But…why?”
“Because it was the decision with the best odds of ensuring Father’s survival. That made it the best one as well.”
Robin stares at her—at the resolute fire blazing in her daughter’s eyes. Slowly, the writhing guilt in her stomach starts to transform into something else; something warm, like molten sunshine, pushing through her veins with every pump of her heart.
“You’re remarkable, you know that?” Robin says, sniffling. “I’m so sorry that you’ve had to live a life that made you this strong. Here I am telling you how shaken I am just from some nightmares when you’ve had to live through this.”
Lucina’s expression tightens. “Please, Mother, don’t be so quick to dismiss them.”
She wavers, lips parted, and for a moment Robin fears that it will all be for nothing. That she just tore her own gristled innards from her chest and laid them out before her daughter, and that it will still not be enough to prove to her that she’s safe to do the same.
But then Lucina’s eyes flicker back to hers, wide and ghastly blue.
“I…I have them too,” she whispers. “The nightmares. It is just as you said…they never become any easier to endure.”
“What do you dream about?” Robin asks softly.
“The end,” Lucina says, the words tumbling out of her. Where before she was hesitant, she no longer seems able to stop herself, her recount of the images cascading from her lips like the relentless waterfall beside them. “Smoke and flames engulfing my home, the castle teeming with Risen, the roof cratered in and the sky overhead blotted out by Grima’s wings. I want so desperately to fight, but it’s no use. I can never do anything but run. There’s screaming coming from both behind me and ahead, and bodies beneath the rubble—c-corpses, and no time to drag them free. T-to see who I’ve lost. I cannot—” Lucina takes a ragged breath, nails biting into the palms of her gloves. “It’s the not knowing that is the worst of all.”
“Oh, Lucina…” Gently, Robin places a hand atop her daughter's and though Lucina flinches, she doesn’t draw away. “Is that why you came out here?”
Lucina shakes her head, the whole of her quivering with it. “I’m afraid it’s much more shameful than that. I’ve learned how to bear the nightmares but I…when Morgan and I first began sharing a tent, I thought that it might help. S-sometimes it does. But tonight…tonight, when I awoke and saw him sleeping so peacefully, I was…I was envious. I wished that I was the one who had forgotten everything instead of him.” Her shoulders crumple together, her voice small and fragile. “It’s unforgivable.”
Robin’s heart throbs—aching for her. “No,” she says firmly, squeezing her daughter’s hand. “No, Lucina. It’s not unforgivable at all. It’s completely understandable. And you know how Morgan is. He would never hold that against you.”
“But I’m his sister!” she exclaims, shrill and sharp enough to pierce skin. “I’m meant to—I-I’m supposed to protect him!”
“You do,” Robin tells her. “But you’re also only human. Extraordinarily strong and selfless, perhaps. But still human.”
Lucina starts to cry then. It’s the full-body kind of crying—sharp, spastic sobs ratcheting from somewhere deep inside her and leaving the whole of her quaking with it. Robin wraps her arms around her daughter and pulls her against her chest, and Lucina clings back to her just as desperately.
“I’m s-so afraid,” she confesses.
“I know,” Robin murmurs, hugging her tighter. “I know, sweetheart. Let it out.”
“I’ve fought s-so hard. And what if—what if it’s not enough?”
“It will be.” Robin strokes her hair. Certainly kindles bright inside of her, stoked by each of her daughter’s broken sounds. “You’re enough.”
“I can’t b-bear it, Mother; I can’t bear to l-lose you all again. I’m not s-strong enough!”
“We won’t let that happen,” Robin says fiercely. “I promise you, Lucina. In just a few more days, we’ll be at Mount Prism’s peak. Naga will grant Chrom the power to defeat Grima, and then he’ll never be able to hurt you or anyone you love ever again.”
Robin hopes Lucina can’t hear the way her voice shakes over the Fell Dragon’s name. There’s a singular kind of ache that comes with learning that all this time, the monster that her daughter fears most has been festering inside of her. But at least for the moment, it seems to be of no object. Lucina just burrows her face more thoroughly into Robin’s coat. Her grip is so tight, it borders on painful.
“I just—just want it to be over,” she hiccups.
“I understand,” Robin soothes. “My poor girl. You must be very tired. It’s been a long journey, for you most of all…”
“Y-yes,” Lucina admits.
They don’t talk for a while after that. Hot tears continue to spill from Lucina’s eyes, dampening Robin’s shirt and skimming along the length of her collarbone. Robin cradles Lucina against her while she cries, wishing with all her might that there was a way to hold her tightly enough to erase every hurt she was left all alone for. Slowly, Lucina’s gasps begin to die down, sobs quieting. Robin rests her cheek on her daughter’s head and breathes in rhythm with her until her shaking has nearly stilled.
When Lucina speaks again, her voice is muffled and rough. “Mother…aren’t you frightened?”
Robin almost laughs. “Gods, yes. Of course I am. I’m terrified.” She hesitates, teetering on the edge of saying more, but what sense is there in withholding this when they’ve both confessed so much already? “Though…maybe less of Grima himself than of what comes next.”
Lucina pries her tear-slathered face from Robin’s coat. In the moment their gazes meet, understanding passes between them. “You’re worried about it too.” Her eyes widen minutely. “Is…that why you couldn’t sleep?”
Robin offers a fragile smile. “It’s silly isn’t it? If ever there has been a human whose heart is worthy, it’s Chrom. But when I think of him putting his life in Naga’s hands…” Robin swallows the lump in her throat. “It’s not your father that I don’t have faith in, it’s her.”
Lucina’s eyebrows draw lowly together, pinched and pensive. “I wish that there was a way that I might complete the rite in his place. Father is much worthier than I; and he would never allow another to perform his duty for him. Still, I cannot help but…”
“I know,” Robin says, hugging her again. “I keep thinking that we’ve come too far on our own to leave something so important to the whims of a capricious goddess. But then, we both know I’ve never done well with letting others call the shots.”
Lucina gives a watery laugh, swiping at her eyes with the heel of her hands. “Thank you, Mother,” she says. “I think that perhaps I needed this more than I had realized. Though my fears have not vanished, I don’t feel quite so alone anymore.”
“It’s helped me too,” Robin tells her, squeezing her fondly. “It’s nice having someone to confide in, isn’t it? I know you had to make do on your own before, but that’s over now.”
“Yes, I know.”
“I mean it, Lucina,” Robin says, channeling some of Chrom’s sternness. “It’s your father’s and my job to support you. Don’t take that away from us.”
Robin watches her daughter mull the idea over at length, treating it with the same earnest consideration that Chrom would. “Yes, I’ll—I’ll endeavor to remember that,” she says, nodding at last.
They’re both steadier now, Lucina’s tears and sniffles all dried up, but Robin can’t quite seem to pry herself away. It’s so strange how the two of them can be so close in age and Lucina can still elicit the same emotions from her as her baby back home at the castle. Pride and protectiveness, awe and affection—all jumbled together with no means of expression fit for capturing the raw intensity of it. She’ll just have to trust that her daughter can read her well enough to feel it anyway.
“There you are! I wondered where you’d gotten off to.”
Robin turns to see Chrom cutting through the clearing, his white cape gleaming like a sheet of moonlight behind him. There’s a slight rumple to his brow, but it smoothes and softens as he takes in the two of them, wound around each other.
“Are you both alright?” he asks.
Lucina springs to her feet, closing the distance between them eagerly. “Yes, Father. I am more certain than ever that we will be.”
Robin stands too, brushing herself off and melting into a smile of her own at the sight of Chrom’s. Were he anyone else, Robin might expect him to be more concerned about finding the two of them alone together with Falchion, but Chrom’s well of trust has always run deep.
“Good,” he says softly, ruffling Lucina’s hair. “I’m glad of it.”
Lucina beams. Without preamble, Chrom spreads his arms wide and gathers both her and Robin into a crushing hug. Robin’s back pops from the force, but she can’t bring herself to mind.
“What say you to heading back now?” Chrom asks.
A look passes between Robin and her daughter before they both nuzzle more tightly against him.
“...Maybe not just yet,” Robin answers, wriggling her arms free so she can hug them both back. Here in this moment, there’s no place she’d rather be.