With Love, From the Outrealms, a fire emblem fanfic

South of Ylisstol is the Outrealm Gate, the link between worlds. A march of two days at an easy pace, the Outrealm Gate is close enough to the capital to be considered property of the halidom, but no exalt had ever thought to plant a flag on the island; poor in resources and of no tactical value, it is nothing but a hill of dirt, a ring of metal older than Naga herself, and its gatekeeper. Put a coin in her hand and she'll send you off to strange places, and you may not return the same.

Robin has too many ties to wonder if this is holy ground, and to whom it belongs; the company marches towards the Gate on occasion, for training exercises and breaks between battles. Anna - that is, the woman who fights for the Shepherds - says nothing at the gate, not even hello, but chortles a little when the company pays its way through. Surely this is not a sacred place, Robin thinks, unless the family worships money, which all things considered may be true. A tithe only exists if someone is there to collect it.

"It's odd," Robin says, after a battle in a place that could not have been anywhere but Elibe. "Such a powerful artefact surely would be used for evil more often than for good." Robin is good-hearted, but pragmatic; intent on preventing death at all costs, but with an empathy for evil that is shared only in whispered conversations after midnight. "What stops someone from using it to summon all of our greatest heroes to crush their foes?"

Anna laughs, high-pitched and ugly, not the delightful laugh she uses to sell goods. "My sisters, that's what stops them!" She chuckles again. "Anything can be bought and sold. The skill's all in setting the price."

"So your family fancies themselves a force of good, then?"

Something sparkles in Anna's eye. "Shall I tell you the story of the Dark Druid and the Fire Dragon?"

She does, for no small cost, but it draws the whole army to the campfire and gives them relief from their own sorrows for a night, and that is priceless. It's a haunting tale of camaraderie, sacrifice, and the pursuit of power; and everyone is silent except for Nowi, who periodically tugs on Cherche's sleeve to ask her what she thinks a laguz is. Halfway through the story Anna suddenly forgets the name of the principal characters and sets up a collection to jog her memory, and only then does the Einherjar in the shape of the Lady of Sacae step in and fill in the pieces.

I think I married you, once, Robin thinks, looking at the way the firelight dances in Anna's eyes. Not often. But it happened, or it could happen, or it is about to happen.

"He was patient, and kind," Tiki says, her eyes half-closed. "There was no doubt of his nobility; he wore it in his skin. But it was a sign, I think, of a childhood aborted, for in confidence he could be naive and frightened. In the flight from Altea he was forced to send his retainer Jagen to his death, and that sacrifice followed him for the rest of his life."

Chrom bears the mark on his skin. It burns, sometimes, when he thinks of his father, an absurdly tall man with the Brand on the palm of his right hand. Perhaps the memory is altered by how young Chrom was when his father was killed; Lissa was always blamed for their mother's death in childbirth.

"I could not save him," the Einherjar says. "And I thought that night that I had lost my sister, too. I could not save my country. I could not save anyone."

Tiki does not like his company, this thing called Marth. She calls him a shadow, not worthy of the name he wields. He reminds her of the things she lost while she was sleeping. Once on a cold night, half-asleep, she told Robin what it felt like to be awake while the bards were still composing the Thirty-Two Ballads of the Lord and the Knight - that in truth the bard was a crafty old fool of a manakete named Xane, and they were celebrating not Marth and Shiida, as the legend had it, but Nyna and Camus, when their love was still young.

They sang the first thirty-one for Chrom and Sumia, for the thirty-second made reference to a Sable Knight and was not considered canon. All through the wedding Robin had wondered why she knew that she had, or could have, married Chrom; that she loves him, or loved him; that all things had all happened, in her mind.

"I have a confession," Robin says, one night after dinner. Libra looks up from his painting. He'd been aching to collect the night colours on a canvas, but the Creed of the Divine Dragon insists that to help someone in need supersedes all other duties, and Libra is good at listening.

"Please," he says, putting down his brush. "If my attention is soothing, I shall give it to you."

Libra's rapt attention is like a prayer and Robin wonders how many times they were wed. "I see possibilities," he says, for Robin was wed to Lissa in a quiet and tasteful ceremony soon after the cacophony of the royal wedding between Chrom and the travelling dancer had died down, but he could not stop from feeling as though he'd married Olivia himself, once. "Not just on the battlefield, but off it, as well. Sometimes I lose track of who has married whom, of what we are doing next, of what gender I am - I feel as though this has all happened before, in different ways."

Libra tilts his head, thoughtful. "Naga is said to wield time as a harpist plays a harp. Perhaps she has blessed you with foresight, to aid you in winning this war. It is a gift, not a curse, that has kept us all alive."

"I see numbers," Robin says, shivering. "Not like days left, but of life left remaining. If - say - Sully was hit four times by a knight of certain skill holding a steel lance, her life would end." He swallows, over and over again. He's certain he saw Libra die on the battlefield earlier that day, but something had twisted and reset, and here they are. "Sometimes I lie awake at night, trying to figure out what went wrong, only to find that nothing has gone wrong. I fear I'm losing my mind."

It's not an easy thing, what they do. "If only there were more than of of you," Libra says, with a soft little smile. "But, alas, we depend on you and only you to carry the day." He places his hand on Robin's knee. "That you use this skill to save us and deliver us, even though it causes you pain, is a sign of your sturdy and noble heart. Ground yourself in what you can sense, and we will support you unfailingly through the rest."

In an event that never happened, Lissa fell and gashed the back of her head open; and when they shaved her hair off to see if it was a the kind of wound that needed magic or medicine, they found the Brand, just above her hairline. Is Naga a kind god? Robin feels old, so old.

Priam sparkles like the sun and the moon, but only a true noble is every star in the sky, and it is an indignity that Robin sees only when he is exhausted and near sleep. He refuses to surrender to his blood. She loves that stubbornness and irreverence about him, the same thing that drew her to Chrom, and she knows that in her lives she has married both of them.

"I'm sorry," the Einherjar named Ike says; and when he first strode into battle and spoke the word Aether, it was as though time had stopped around him. "This whole business of noblemen and inheritance was never really for me, but it seems as though it's my only legacy."

"All is forgiven," Priam says. All one needs in life is purpose and meaning. If Ike's blood is his blood, surely all things are possible.

Robin loves Morgan beyond measure, beyond meaning, beyond time.

"Are you awake?" It's Lyn, again. "I found you unconscious on the plains. I am Lyn, of the Lorca tribe. You're safe now."

In the beginning, and in the end, there will be dragons. It's in Robin's blood, that promise of death.

But death is not the end. Marth has spoken of it, softly, the sight of the Aum Staff in his sister's hands; Tiki, in that moment, remembers dying. She talks of hands at her throat, and Robin looks to the shadow of Grima over Origin Peak, her choice clear.

"The only thing that proves my existence is the bonds I've formed," she says, her head in Chrom's lap. Maybe the choice was always clear. "Will you miss me, when I'm gone?"

"Don't say things like that," he murmurs. They're spending the evening at a hot spring, the army of ghosts and misfits, lords and orphans, sharing bunks and sleeping together.

Eirika and Ephraim have spoken about it, in darkness, the way that love is stronger than death. Perhaps that was in Emmeryn's thoughts, or on her father's lips on long nights. Perhaps that's the only thing that defines good from evil - what we do with our capacity to love.

"I'll miss you, some day," she says, regardless. The biggest difference between Robin and Chrom is in the meaning behind checkmate and anything can change: the resignation to the end. Chrom's vibrant, and emotional, and intense, because he knows that he will only live once.

(Lucina stares down the Fell Dragon. So ends the human race, it says. The end was laid out, thousands of years ago perhaps, and there will be dragons. She hoists up the Falchion. Marth stares down Medeus; the Twins will not kneel to Fomortiis; Ike rejects order. I say when it ends.)