Pre-story notes: I've written something before, but I took it down to be replaced by this. I suppose you could say that I've been inspired to make an OC self-insert as realistically as my current writing skill could allow (which isn't much, but hey, that's why we have reviewers to concrit our works, right?). Sounds ambitious, I know, and I hope I end up doing well in the long run because I'm still learning to be actually good at stuff like this.

Prologue

-oo-

Introductions were something I found difficult to pull off because I could either sound overeager or too boring, but the sooner this was done, the better.

So. Ahem. My name is River, but believe it or not, that wasn't my real name.

Sounds stupid, right? I probably sounded demented or something. After all, how could I have another name when I've been River since the day I was born? That that sweet, fifteen-year-old girl you see around the village? She was actually someone else. Which technically didn't make sense when you could push me to my parents—and my parents' friends—only for them to say the same thing: That I was the same baby that they've watched grow before their eyes.

I wish I could say the same for myself.

But no, unfortunately, I couldn't.

Truth be told, I wasn't always… well, me.

That, um… well, once upon a time, I lived in a world where guns and bombs were weapons instead of blades, bow and arrows, or magic. That instead of sprawling, rustic villages dotting across a wide field of green, there were urbanized cities with skyscrapers reaching out to the smoke-filled skies.

I'm not joking. Nor am I high. Or drunk… or delusional.

In fact, let me ask a question: Ever heard of the cliché in fiction where the main character finds himself—or herself—miraculously in another world after a buildup of events ranging from boring to overly tragic?

Ahaha… yeah, that's what basically happened to me. No bullshit.

However, it wasn't all sunshine and rainbows like most stories made it out to be.

For one… no, it was hardly simple.

No, it didn't involve any usual set-up scenes of falling asleep and waking up in the middle of no-freaking-where. Or did it involve any magical doors that you'd just have to open and step into. Hell, it didn't even involve the presence of some divine entity that would inform you of what happened and what was now to be your new role, your new purpose in your new world.

(Although, it did involve dying. I'll give you guys that.)

Aaaand, no, what happened was not some fangirl's dream come true. In fact, you'll find that life was just as harsh and as wonderful as it was in your previous world. Although, during the time that I came to be, I couldn't exactly come to that conclusion at once. Infants didn't really have much room for thinking. For anything other than wailing in the middle of the night and generally being a lovable nuisance, anyway.

So let me ask another question: ever heard of reincarnation?

I wasn't about to claim to be an expert in the concept, but I could say that that was what basically happened to me. I didn't fully understand how it happened, but I knew it did. Even though, well… until now, I wasn't fully convinced my reincarnation occurred. Maybe I just thought I had a past life. It wasn't difficult to think things happened that way.

The mind, after all, was a powerful thing; for all I knew, my old life was nothing but the product of a young girl's wild imaginations when she had nothing better to do but lie on the grass and stare at the clouds. Kind of like the way a kid from the twenty-first century would imagine himself clashing blades with an imaginary villain in an attempt to save the princess trapped in a tower.

Fifteen years was a lot of time to spend for something that could be one big, fat lie, after all. If my new life was just a concoction, that's some great deal of attention to detail right there. Understandably, I couldn't dismiss this one as a fake.

For the record, my mother had given birth to me. Painfully. And my father—well, in an attempt to push aside any awkward details about how babies came to be, I'm just going to say that he helped me to be. I had an older sister who had a different father but might just be the family favorite, for good reason, and I definitely had friends when I grew up, too. And, sure, I've had my share of bridges burned, growing up. It was a typical life that didn't raise any alarm bells because it all felt so real and normal.

Well, relatively normal, in my case.

How was there any room for doubt? I smiled when happy, cried when sad. I saw love bloom and fall apart. I saw people live and die, and I've experienced life's ups and downs. I fell, got hurt, and stood back up. I lived life as it was.

What I'm saying is, everything I experienced was genuine.

But then, I'd remember my nightmares. Or were they dreams? Regardless, they were strange dreams I encountered as I grew up. They were flashes of images that felt familiar and unfamiliar at the same time. And like water, they slipped through my fingers before I comprehended what I saw. And in those dreams-slash-memories, I'd hear voices, calling my name. Some I realized were family. Some were friends; some were even enemies. I'd hear myself calling them back with a smile so bright the sun looked dim in comparison. Run to them, embrace them, and laugh like I'd never laughed before.

I knew them. And the places I've gone to? I've recognized them. And when one surprisingly vivid dream—which turned out to be a memory—involved myself looking straight at a mirror, I realized that the stranger I was staring at was me.

Dreams had the tendency to be forgotten at the end of the day. Unless I owned a dream journal, I wouldn't recall shit. But then, these flashes of images remained burned into my mind as days, weeks, and years passed. It actually made for a pretty confusing childhood, now that I thought about it.

And I couldn't puzzle out all those memories at first. In fact, I've spent a lot of time pondering about what I just saw, which also meant several curious days when Mother's little girl wasn't as responsive as she usually was. Yeah, those moments were spent poking and flipping over each memory. I might have even shaken some of them. Figuratively speaking.

Heck, it wasn't until I've heard the word "Ylisse" in passing that I realized my dreams actually made sense. Even more so when I saw the Mark of Naga in a picture book (or at least I thought it was a picture book...). And when I dared to look at my mother's closet to take a closer inspection of her clothes because my thoughts wouldn't stop pestering me... I realized how the colors and patterns resembled that of a certain tactician's attire in a video game. Hell, I was shocked enough when I realized that I knew what a video game was. The revelation nearly made me stumble back with a gasp.

Everything clicked together like one big jigsaw puzzle.

I was in the Fire Emblem universe for eight years and running. By the Gods, it took that long before I could get over my denial.

Why me, though? Not to put myself down too much (because, let's face it, a low self-esteem didn't do anyone any good), but I was hardly special. I was just an average, eighteen-year-old teenager trying to get through her first year in college. I worked part-time in a nice little café, owned a car, and went home to her parents during the weekend. I even had a dog.

And, as far as I knew, I was barely a bad person. Screaming at the sight of a flying cockroach and hiding under a table hardly qualified as being evil incarnate. If someone threw barbs at me, I'd return them gift-wrapped with a smiley face on the card. I doubt kicking someone in the family jewels for being an ass counted as evil, either.

Basically, I was so averagely average that I didn't even foresee this whole thing happening the moment this asshole of a drunk driver t-boned my car and crushed me inside.

What's done was done, though. Fortunately or unfortunately, this was my life now and it was up to me to live it as it was.

There wasn't any much choice, really. Nor was there point in despairing over what had been lost, who I had left behind. My current life was just as much of a kick as my old one, and who was I to question things when so far, everything was going fine? I was River now, and nothing would change that.

Yes. River, the second daughter of my mother who used to be a Grimleal fanatic back in Plegia. The daughter of the woman who fled with her firstborn child for fear of both their lives, who had settled down in a faraway village, met my father, married him, and had me. Yes, that same woman we all know of from Fire Emblem: Awakening.

And, yeah-huh, you guessed it.

My older sister? It was none other than Robin, future tactician of Chrom's army.

…Maybe something was wrong with me if it took me eight years to realize that our Robin was no one else but that Robin.

I'll probably come back to this again in a couple days to see if there's stuff to add or fix. For now though, reviews are very much appreciated! I'll probably tackle some pre-main game story events first before cutting to the chase. Gotta establish the relationship between the two sisters first, after all. I just hope I'm up to the challenge.