To be completely honest, if there was one thing Chrom could have changed about how the past two years of his life had gone, it would have been to not fall in love with some lady he met online. They had known each other for maybe a month before he proposed to her, and even then, it wasn't so much a proposal as it was a suggestion to get married right away. Easily one of the worst decisions he had ever made in his life. But for every bad decision he had made, at least there were a couple positives. One, for instance, was that the woman-when she decided she was just going to up and leave-had insisted that he never contact her again ever...regardless of the fact that they did have a child together. Two, also for instance, was that his little precious princess Lucina had inherited absolutely no part of her mother's appearance, so looking at her wasn't as painful as it could have been.
However, being a single dad to a growing child was definitely painful in terms of his wallet, and he needed to be able to give her the best while making sure she was in good hands. Yeah, sure, he was making pretty good money just sitting around at home (all thanks to his family and what they had done to support themselves for generations), but that was enough to put food on the table and keep a roof over their heads. How was he going to be able to afford everything possible for his baby girl if he wasn't trying to be more active in his family's company? He wasn't, that's how.
And that was when Chrom turned back to looking online for someone who could reliably take care of Lucina while he tried to get more involved in helping his sister run the family business. Some of the listings were...less than optimal, that was for certain, but there were a couple that caught his eye and provoked more research. The one he ultimately went with was some girl named Robin who was pursuing her education at the nearby private college, who claimed that she needed some extra money to make sure she could have something to eat and drink whenever she wasn't living like a beggar in the school's library. If she was educated and really needed the money, she had to have been a perfect fit for the position.
A couple days later, about half an hour earlier than he had expected it (therefore rendering him completely disheveled and unprepared for what was to come), there was a knock at the penthouse door. Having no choice but to open it, even though he was still in sweatpants, a dirty tanktop, and holding an inconsolable child, Chrom figured that the potential hire would take one look at him and run for the hills. No amount of need for cash would convince someone to help him out, he figured. But the girl (or, more accurately, woman) standing on the other side of the door didn't seem to mind his current state when she saw him. In fact, she gave him a once-over, locked eyes with him, and smiled. "So, is this how you typically greet people?" she asked, a laugh embedded in her voice. "Or is this a special occasion?"
There was something to her that Chrom really liked. Was it her sense of humor? The way she didn't seem put off by him at all? That little glimmer of attraction in her eyes as she stared into his? In the moments they held their gaze, he could feel time slowing down and everything but her fading away, replaced by the faint sound of wedding bells in the distance.
He hired her on the spot. Was she actually any good at taking care of Lucina? Not really, but there was something about seeing this dedicated college student taking care of his young child that made his heart try skipping beats. After a week, he asked her out on a coffee date, and she refused, claiming that studying had to come first, but once she was through with her finals she would take him up on his offer. And take him up she did, appearing at his door unexpectedly once more while he was, once again, being his disheveled single dad self, and her being there wasn't even questioned.
The work arrangement lasted for the summer, before he offered for her to move in with him. By then, she was spending almost every day up in the penthouse with Lucina anyway, so it wasn't much of a change for her. By the middle of the fall semester, he asked for her hand in marriage, because he had fallen that much in love with her over the short amount of time they had known each other. She accepted, on the condition that they held off any sort of ceremony until after she had finished her degree, not wanting to put off what dreams she'd been chasing for anything. He was okay with that, because it gave them more time to get to know one another before they jumped into that ultimate commitment (and he knew that a second failed marriage would do nothing but break his heart to pieces).
How funny was it that this romance had started all because he had decided to look online for someone to babysit his daughter while he was trying to work a bit more, and it had ended up with that babysitter quite nearly becoming family? Even though she and Chrom were most definitely engaged, Robin didn't treat herself as if she was Lucina's soon-to-be mother; instead, they still shared a relationship that was more like a child learning from someone who just came around to watch and play with them. But things liked to change in weird ways, and there came a moment where that relationship had to snap into being more like a parent-child one, a moment that no one had exactly planned for—but then again, how much of any of this had been planned for? Absolutely none of it, that was for sure.
Within the span of a month that following spring, there was a college graduation by one formerly broke student, a small wedding ceremony to join two people madly in love in holy matrimony, and the birth of the couple's first child together, a son to join his sister two years older than him. Those events, of course, did not necessarily happen in that order, as much as it would have been perfect for them to have. Some things couldn't be as perfect as the matchmaking skills of online babysitter shopping, though.
A/N: And there we have it, my first actual FE:A fanfic. A request fill for someone on tumblr, who asked for a Chrobin "hot single dad hires broke babysitter" AU. I couldn't do that and not make it a modern AU, obviously, and so this monster was born. Whoops.