The sun was setting, giving the world a warm, orange tinge. Here, the land looked peaceful, but that was far from the truth. War was at hand and no one can see past the red when they are a participant. However, this is beside the point of this story.

A white-haired tactician named Robin was walking through a grassy plain. He was in no rush, but was definitely growing concerned.

"The letter said to wait here, but no one else is here. I wonder how much longer I should be here…"

He continued walking. In boredom, he walked in a series of circles to make a little picture from the trampled grass.

"Heh. Quite the artist, aren't I? Ah, I suppose I should go now. Perhaps I waited in the wrong plain, although this looks like the only for miles."

The air was getting cold and his patience was loss. Just as he was leaving, however, a blue-haired princess named Lucina emerged out of the woods half a mile away.

"That looks like Lucina. Is she the one who brought me out here? By the looks of it, she's holding something in her hand."

Robin began to walk towards her. After some minutes passed, they met each other halfway. They stood in front of the other, three feet apart. Being this close to her, Robin could now see what was in her hand.

(These… these are flowers.) Robin tried not to stare at them, focusing on the person holding them, but a sense of discomfort swelled in his heart.

Lucina, who constantly looked trouble, looked more or less the same to a stranger. In reality, she looked like a nervous wreck who was putting up a straight face so as not to make it obvious.

"R-robin…"

She extended her right arm, bringing forth the dainty pink flowers to him.

"I j-just wanted t-to s-say…"

Her hand began to tremble, causing the flowers to droop.

Robin said nothing, not wanting to disturb her any more than she already was. He was almost scared too. Lucina was somebody he considered a master of hiding her emotions. To see her so vulnerable like this made him question what is making her so nervous. The probable answer to that, though, terrified him more.

"I just w-wanted to say…" she repeated, "that I… respect and admire you! You are an incredible asset to this army and an even more incredible friend to us all. I… just wanted you to know that."

Robin's eyes grew. They quickly glanced at the flowers, which Lucina saw.

"I know this is a little unconventional, but I wanted to give you these flowers… as proof that I really do mean what I say."

Robin looked at her, waiting for her to add anything else to her gratifying words. She looked more calm than before.

(I suppose something like this is new to her.)

He smiled and took the flowers away from her. "Thank you, Lucina. I'm always given praise, here and there, but something so personal like this really makes me glad to be with you all."

"Yes," she quickly added. "Very grateful."

He stretched his arms and let out a yawn. "Ah! Well, I suppose it's getting late. Let's head back to the camp before the sun goes down. It'd be a shame to get lost after you made my whole week after this!"

He turned around. Just as he was about to make his first step, a hand laid upon his right shoulder.

"Wait… there's…something I've been wanting to tell you."

Robin held back his reaction. He turned around and asked, feigning innocence, "What is it, Lucina?"

She tried looking at him in the eyes, but she was not strong enough. Unable to maintain proper eye contact, she dropped her head to stare at the ground instead. "I… think I… may have… developed feelings for you, Robin. Deep feelings. I think I'm... very much in love with you Robin."

Her heart was pounding and her face was hot enough to scald a child. She wanted to look up, but she just didn't have the courage to do so. Instead, she waited for a response. Seconds passed, her mind began producing negative thoughts. Every second Robin stayed silent, the thoughts multiplied. She felt like her hair was ready to fall off.

(Please, Robin! Say anything. Anything will do. Just take this weight off of me!)

Finally, Robin did say something. "Lucina… this is very flattering, but are you sure of what you just said?"

Knowing that Robin did not ignore her, or worse, laugh at her, she felt enough relief to stay sane. She knew Robin would never do either of those things, but she didn't know what to expect. A thousand scenarios went through her mind today and many of them were not positive. However, even if Robin had not given her the worst case scenarios, she didn't give him one she expected.

Confused, Lucina looked up and asked, "What do you mean?"

"I just mean if you are certain about what you are feeling now and what you want from this. Love is a serious subject matter. Tharja is someone who occasionally throws the word at me, but I think we can agree that she's not using a definition most can agree with, correct? I just don't want any misunderstandings, just so we're clear."

Lucina pondered about it and raised a hand to her chin. "Am I positive if I… love you?" She began to doubt herself, wondering if she really had been lost in some sort of lustful thinking and gone to Robin during a heated moment. She quickly through such thoughts away. In perhaps the most confident state she's been in the whole day, she said with clear diction, "Yes, Robin. I am very confident in my feelings for you. I've fought with myself over that same question, time and time again, throughout this last week. Every single time, I've ended with the same conclusion. There was a time, Robin, when I was wary of you. I knew almost nothing of you and thought of you as suspicious. I saw your close bond with my father as dangerous and, as a result, I asked you to let me fight along your side instead. Out of everyone here, I trusted you the least. But, as time passed on, as I observed you at all possible time, I saw you for the man you really are. In battle, you were always on alert. You fought hard while you also guided everyone else at the same time. You always made sure that everyone survived with minimum injuries. Even outside of battle, you talked and got along with everyone. My father always called you a great man and I began to see what he meant. Eventually, I started getting envious of my father for having such a close ally. I… started to open myself with you so that I could also experience the same, unbreakable bond with you. The more we talked, the more I felt happy. It was then when we started finding some of my allies from the future when I began to feel… jealous and unsure of myself. I saw you talk to some of the others like with me and it hurt me seeing you treat the others and me the same. I didn't want to be a mere friend to you. To me, you were more than a mere friend. To me, you are someone I care about so dearly. So much so that I now find it impossible to vision myself in any way without you and I supporting each other. The battles we've shared, the talks we've had… they've all accumulated to the love I have for you today."

Robin nodded and asked, "And what do you want right now?"

She almost blurted out, "You," but she knew he wanted something with more substance. Her mind thought back to earlier in the conversation and the day. She fantasized and wanted a life with him. She imagined receiving her first kiss from him, their first makeup after their first quarrel, their wedding with her father giving her to him, their first night 'together', and her and Robin holding their newborn baby. This was all too much though, and even she wondered if that was what she really wanted. It would also certainly scare Robin away. She was certain about wanting Robin and sharing a life with him, however.

"At this moment," she said and repeated, "At this moment, after I have said a fraction of what I feel for you, I would like to know… how you feel about me."

Her voice started shaking near the end there. Robin felt he had stalled long enough and began expressing his feelings for her.

"Lucina… from the very start, I have thought very highly of you. Before I even knew who you were, I saw you fight as Marth. After you revealed your identity to your father, I thought about how you must have been living in isolation as Marth, coming from the future to change fate and was amazed by your tenacity and determination. Seeing your friends and how well they respond to you, I saw you took your father's leadership and made for an excellent captain even in times as dark as yours. You are a lovely girl, Lucina, but-"

She felt herself freeze. She could feel something was off in his voice. Hearing that conjunction, she finally identified the tone of his voice: pity and sympathy.

"-but I just don't see the two of us in that kind of relationship. To me, you are my best friend's daughter, and as such, I see you as something like a niece. I know that the two of you are two different entities, but just because the present-you will grow up into someone else doesn't help me see you as someone other than Chrom's daughter. The two of you are like family to me and I can't see the either of you as anything else."

(Family, is it? That's all you see me as?)

She felt foolish. The pity and sympathy she was getting was bad enough, but to hear say that she's her as nothing more than a family member hurt her even more. What did her confession sound like to him? Like a little girl wanting to marry her uncle? Reducing her emotions to child-like behaviors did not sound like Robin, but then again, she also would have never have thought that Robin saw her like a niece, like a friend who also had to take care of from time to time. In all of their battles together, she saw themselves as two partners protecting each other, but now she saw that it was more Robin aiding her for partly the sake of Chrom. Even if Robin didn't reduce her to a child crying about the future, the fact that he would never see her as an equal was perfectly clear.

(To him, I am Chrom's daughter. He probably held me at least once back in Ylisse. Why would he ever see me as anything else? I might only be a few years younger than him here, but the difference between us is more related to status than age, isn't it?)

"I… I see."

She began to shed a tear.

"Lucina-"

"No, Robin. You're right. It's as I first thought. It was a mistake to go on and tell you how I feel."

"Lucina, please don't think you should have kept quiet about your feelings," he said.

"I should have," she said. A few more tears began sliding down her cheeks. "I've already interfered with the past much more than I would have liked. To think I would have ever considered settling down here… it's stupid!"

"Lucina!"

"It was stupid of me to think I could be with you! My plan was always to change my father's and the world's fate and to go back, if possible, to my desolated future. Why did I forget that? Why did I forget that the real Lucina of this time period is just a baby, a little girl to you and my father?!"

"Lucina."

Robin took a few steps toward her, to which she responded by pushing him back.

"I'm, I'm sorry! Please Robin, let me be by myself. I… I just need to be alone for now."

Robin didn't take the push as a personal attack, however, it was indeed a clear sign of just how much his presence was hurting her. He nodded and started leaving. No matter how big the distance between them grew, he could still hear the sobs of a girl's rejected heart.

Just when he was about to go through some woods, he turned back to see her again. They were far away now, not even her cries could be heard, so now was the time for him to say the last thing he wanted to say to her.

He sighed.

"I'm sorry I don't feel the same for you, Lucina. I feel horrible for not accepting your feelings, but I would feel even worse if I played along and pretended to love you. I'll... I'll keep your flowers in a safe place. I just hope one day you can feel the same thing you do to me to another person."

With that said, he finally left.

Some small rumors rose, but Robin and Lucina assured that nothing happened. That was a clear lie, though. Everyone noticed the two talked a bit more stiffly to each other. Many noticed the two avoiding eye contact. Some even noticed Lucina fighting away from Robin, keeping her distance from him. Unfortunately, despite these changes in behavior, one thing did not change: What Robin and Lucina felt for each other.

A/N-

-Something different, I suppose. An attempt at an emotional scenario, although I could easily extend this another thousand words using "show, don't tell" and made it better. First try though, so why give it my all?

-While MU/Lucina is a plain, boring couple I happily endorse, let's not forget that this pairing means Robin going after his best friend's newborn from the future. I'm sure marrying your best friend's daughter was a normal thing in the olden time, but for the sake of unreciprocated love, let's put our modern values into it to give Robin some ground to reject Lucina. (Super creepy to think that the baby you're holding will fall in love with you in any shape or form, right?)

-Two more parts, with the next being the "Lucina wants to kill Robin before easily giving up" scene.

-If somebody rejects you, understand that feelings must be mutual and cannot be forced. Also, friend-zone is bullshit. Don't be a baby because you didn't get something you wanted: A human being.

-By the way, my normal writing is more dickish than the things I post online. Usual style, Robin would have laughed at Lucina's face and thrown her flowers away before leaving, plotting how he's going to betray Chrom and become Grima. It would be near the end of the story and make you hate Robin for ever thinking he was a decent character. Lucina would probably die in the end for extra drama, although that might be pushing it.

Don't normally ask this, but since this is different for me, please review this story and critique it. Do your worst!