A/N: im chrobin trash and i'll see you all in hell
Her calves are burning viciously and there is sand in her mouth. The ground has become more solid since she travelled out of the pure desert, a place where she slipped and slid around and fell on her face, but it is still soft and she still stumbles. The limp body on her back does not do anything to help and she only wants to sink into the ground and disappear.
Her mind is fuzzy- it is flickering like the flame of a candle. One second she is clear-headed, angry, scared, weeping, and the next she wants to throw the body and laugh and lift her arms to the sky, knowing that after years she is free free free. The switch is painful and all too frequent, and she feels that she will go even more mad than she already has in the past day.
When this violent impulse comes on, she fights it. She squeezes the arms thrown around her neck even tighter and clenches her teeth around the grits of sand that have flown into her mouth. The putrid stink of death is starting to hang in the air and is rubbing into her coat with every step she takes. Her cheeks are wet with tears and even more dust is sticking to her blood-crusted face.
She is tired. So, so tired.
The ground becomes more dirt than sand, finally, after hours of walking through the hot and dry terrain. Collapsing to her knees, she huffs and puffs, but still holds the body. At this point, it may have broken her back, but it is the most precious cargo she has ever handled and she holds it close and carefully, though she knows she must let go of it soon.
There are very few flowers in the field she has fallen in, but there are enough to make it a beautiful place. The grass is surprisingly soft and plush and the soil is sandy and pliable. The sun is still beating down and she is still gasping, sweat tracing paths through the muck on her face, and she squeezes her eyes shut as her head pounds again.
Two are in there now, and one is much stronger. She hasn't much time left.
The body feels as though it is glued to her and will never peel off, but she releases the arms and it does indeed fall, slumping on its back to the ground with its limbs in a tangle and its head lolling. She sobs and falls on the grass as well, curling in on herself and reaching for its hand- his hand. His glove has come off at some point and the flesh is all too soft. It has no inner warmth- it is hot only from the desert sun.
Her head is screaming at her and a beast is laughing and clawing at every corner of her mind. She starts to sob and scream in response, begging horribly and pathetically to be left alone, and after what feels like hours upon hours, it dies down as though it has grown weary. It takes a while, but her temples stop pounding and she can think clearly again and see his face. There is blood underneath his lips and bags under his eyes- he didn't sleep much in the past days. Was that it? Or were they swollen from the heat?
But after a few more minutes of thinking mindlessly over such a trivial topic, she gets on her knees and lets go of his hand. Her breath is shaking as she presses her nails to the ground and starts to dig. She scrapes to get past the grass and rocks on top- the soil underneath is even softer than she initially thought, but it is painfully dry and gets into the cuts on her fingers. It stings. She cries harder at the pain but keeps digging until the sun starts to fall to the ground. The temperature falls with it.
The sky is a delicate shade of pink by the time she has a sizable and proper pit, as wide as it is deep, and while she would normally feel proud of herself for performing such a feat with only her bare hands, she only feels numb and tired. There is only a minute of rest before she wobbles to her feet and looms over the body. She glares down at the face, then leans down and grabs the loose, rough hands and begins to drag him towards her hole in the earth.
He tumbles into the pit in such an inelegant way that she sobs again. Her grave is not as big as she thought it was; he is scrunched in an awkward way that should make her laugh, but it is only miserable to her in that moment. He looks much too peaceful for a man who has just been murdered and buried by his wife, his best friend, his other half of the same whole, and it makes her boil with a feeling she has never encountered before and can certainly not identify, but it is cold, prickly, and makes her feel slimy.
Her head is pounding again and the laughing starts once more. She reaches down into the pit with shaking hands and grabs his own, laying them over the gaping hole below his ribcage, and she wonders how it was only two days ago they were laughing in their tent like children, holding hands and counting callouses and scrapes that weapons and the desert had left there.
One last time Robin brushes his bangs out of his face- his hair was always so unruly and he never cared to fix it. Maybe she hopes he would suddenly open his eyes, perhaps she is hoping that she would wake up right after and they would be in that same tent, but Chrom's face stays still and inhumanly pale. It is then, when her heart falls into the grave next to his limp body, that she resigns herself, dries her tears, and starts to push the soil back where it belongs.
In the end, they were the pawns of a scripted fate.