1.
Robin sees futures that can never be, and Lucina is desperate to save more than just the world.
"I know you," Robin says to the smoky air of the burning forest. "I don't know how, but I do. Please, Lucina... don't get hurt."
"Robin! Are you alright?" Chrom's voice calls back through the trees, and Robin's head snaps up in his direction, as if she's coming out of a daze.
"Tired," she responds honestly, running to catch up with him.
"But unharmed?"
"Yes. That was quite the battle, though..."
"Indeed. Let's be sure we're prepared for the next one. How about I introduce you to our other companions? There wasn't a lot of time to say 'hello' earlier."
"That'd be, well, rather nice."
Their voices fade out of earshot. Behind a tree, Lucina shakes. When she is sure they are gone she lets herself slide to the ground and buries her head in her hands. "She knew my name," she whispers to herself. "She... but how?"
Please, don't let it be- no, if it were, I couldn't bear it. Not... not my own mother...
2.
Somewhere around the five-hundred-and-twenty mark, they stop keeping count.
What feels like fifteen hundred different lives (but Chrom knows, in reality, has only been five hundred or so) pass them by, and in the spaces between, whispers try to tell him something he can never quite decipher.
The latest life ends with fire and a delirious "Promise me you'll escape from this place-"
Then Robin is gone and the world dissolves into black.
-o-o-o-
She wakes up at two A.M. and the faerie lights bathe her room in a soft blue glow. When she looks down, she's wearing nothing but shorts and a sleeveless shirt. She lifts up her hand- it is still there, ink-black and threatening. Six eyes etched into skin stare at her, alien and all too real. She drops her hand. "Damnation."
And then the last life hits her and she gasps, tears springing to her eyes.
There's a knock at the window. Robin looks up sharply, hand grasping for something that just isn't there, but then blue hair glints in the moonlight and she stops, gets up, and opens it.
"I'm sorry," is the first thing she says once he finishes climbing through the small hole. But he just shakes his head and pulls her down into his arms and they sit there on the floor, his head buried in the crook of her neck. She clutches at his back with shaking hands and a bleeding heart because- "I'm sorry, Chrom."
"It's not your fault," Chrom says, leaning his forehead against hers. There are shadows in his eyes, but they've been unmade and that would throw anybody for a loop. "Okay? Not this. You didn't choose this. Nobody could've seen it coming."
"You are too good to me," she whispers, and at her trembling he tightens his arms and presses a kiss to her lips.
"We're going to find our way out of this," he breathes when they part. "I still believe that. A thousand lifetimes could pass, Robin, but I don't plan on giving up."
"Chrom? Is that you I hear?" calls a familiar voice through the door, and the pair on the floor freeze.
"Breathe," Robin advises him quietly, ignoring that she's not any better off than he is. She clambers off of him and squeezes his hand. He squeezes back like she's the only thing keeping him in the present, and perhaps she is. "He's in here."
The door opens and a woman they haven't yet seen in this nightmare of a waking dream steps in.
And she's the same- except not.
She's whole.
"I had a dream," Emmeryn says, closing the door softly behind her. She sits as gracefully as she fell. "A dream that I ruled a country called Ylisse. I died for that country."
"Emm," Chrom whispers.
Emmeryn takes his other hand and just looks at him. Impossibly gently, she speaks. "Chrom... It was no dream, was it?"