Disclaimer/Author's note: Fire Emblem Awakening is thoroughly not something I had any hand in, but I'm pretty glad it exists, 'cause otherwise maybe my 3DS library would be lonely. Thanks also to redrach, for providing the part of Morgan who actually knows jack-all about tactics, Rally, for proofing my words before I could embarrass myself, and mini Kagiyama, for offering up titles till one stuck. Joke's on you guys; now you've got your names attached to a subpar fanfic for eternity! Seriously, though, thanks.

The ruins are infested with Risen, and between them and the rubble-lined pathways he's lost sight of the rest of the Shepherds. He cuts into another enemy, wondering if this hasn't been a fool's errand—

And then there is a premonition and he steps back as the nearest Risen explodes.

"Ha! Oh, wait—whoops. Hey, are you okay?"

No, I'm not, he wants to say, but the words don't make it to his mouth. His head is spinning, and in the space of an instant his world has been transformed into dark afterimages and the sharp smell of lightning. He staggers against a wall, willing his sight to clear.

When it does, there's a woman inches from his face, dark eyes peering into his.

"Oh, whew." she says, smiling. "Sorry—I thought you were dead. I mean, not dead dead, but—like one of those creepy things running around. What kind of place is this?"

The barrage of words almost overwhelms him. He fixes on the question as a drowning man fixes on a rope. "You don't know where you are?" he says.

"Er...not really, to be honest." The woman's smile doesn't fade, but her fingers tense around the dog-eared tome against her chest. "I woke up on the grass outside—actually, I can't remember anything before that. And then these dead things appeared..."

And it's a familiar story, but the enemies surrounding them take precedence. "We'll discuss this later," he says, quickly. "For now—how skilled are you with your magic?"

"Well, I've been good so far. How skilled are you with your sword?"

He almost gapes at that, but then the Risen swarm in, and he hasn't the time.

He didn't marry, after the war ended. He might have been wise to. Two years of peace certainly afforded him the opportunity.

But he let that opportunity pass, and it doesn't matter anymore. If he falls here, Ylisse will follow.

Robin adjusts to having a daughter his own age with frightening ease. Chrom trusts him—he wouldn't have made him his tactician, if he didn't—but even he wonders sometimes if whatever wiped away the man's memories didn't leave him distorted, somehow. Perhaps that's why he's not as surprised as he should be when he enters his tent to discuss strategy with Robin and finds Morgan there with him.

"Morgan's interested in becoming a tactician," Robin explains before Chrom can ask, and Chrom barely stops himself from telling Robin he knows. Everyone knows. Even now, her eyes keep flickering between him and the maps across the table. "I thought I'd let her sit in on the meeting—if that's all right with you?"

But he can't see a reason to refuse, so he nods. "That shouldn't be a problem."

"Oh, thank the gods." Robin's face sags in relief, and Chrom has time to wonder who the driving force behind the request was before Robin seems to realize he's spoken aloud. "Er—I mean—"

But Chrom never does find out what he means, because there is a "Yes!" and then the weight of something set upon him. He lifts his hands to free himself—and stops, fingers curled loose, at the feeling of hair pressed to his cheek and breath against his neck.

It's Morgan, he thinks, and then, My friend's daughter from the future is hugging me, but that thought doesn't seem to make sense, either.

He is still grasping at nothing at all when she finishes disentangling herself. "Thank you," she says, her voice quieter, though no less excited. "I asked Dad—Father if he'd let me, and he said it was up to you—I don't know what I would've done if you'd said no."

"No," Chrom hears himself echo. "Yes—that is—"

"Anyway," Robin says.

"Well, actually, I probably would've just listened in from outside the tent," Morgan admits, unheeding. A smile curves across her face. "But this way's better, right? I can watch you work out your strategies, instead of just trying to imagine it!"

"That's true, but there are times when you might have to go into a battle blind—to the environment, to the enemy forces, or even both." Robin redirects the conversation to the matter at hand, and Chrom has never been so thankful. "Luckily, this isn't one of those times—Chrom, can you hold down that side of the map?"

It's a task simple enough to move one of the heavier tomes, and by the time he looks up again, the worn parchment has captured both their attentions entirely. For a moment he lets himself take the sight in—Robin and Morgan, speaking to each other in low voices, fingers tracing symbols and terrain against the table.

She's forgotten he's there. They both have.

Robin is taller than Morgan, but only just.

Sometimes, when the day has run long and his thoughts have grown loose, he looks at them and thinks that they seem more as brother and sister than anything else.

"Hey, Chrom! Want to help me with my magic?"

There is little warning before Morgan is in his tent—just that self-announcement, and then she is there, flap wavering in the air behind her, tome set solid in her arms. It is a different tome than the one he saw her carrying the day he met her, one more powerful—and more expensive, if Robin's halfhearted mutterings are to believed—but already the edges are worn with reading, and if he looks closely he can see the ink stains on Morgan's fingers.

He does not look closely. "Wouldn't it be better to ask your father?" he asks instead, and then, hastily, "Not that I mind, but magic isn't one of my better strengths."

"Well, yeah, I wasn't expecting you to teach me magic. I mean, I already know you're terrible at it. And I already asked Dad for help four days ago—that's why I'm asking you now. See?"

"I'm...not sure I do, to be honest."

"It's pretty simple. Dad says I should fight a variety of opponents—that way, I won't be caught off guard no matter what kind of enemy we're facing on the battlefield! So first I fought Dad, then three days ago I fought Donnel and Ricken, then the day before yesterday I fought Freddy Bear..."

The question is too strange to ask. "And yesterday?"

"Yesterday I recovered from Freddy Bear—come on, let's go!" And before he can raise any further objections, or even think to form them, those thin, ink-stained fingers are curled around his wrist, pulling him stumbling out the tent and into the afternoon.

Her hand is warm. It reminds him of something, some outline of remembrance long faded—but there is the embarrassment of being led, and the effort it takes to keep to his feet, and between those and others even the memory of memory is lost.

A tempest saves his life, and Morgan shuts her tome by the spine. "Did you see that?" she asks, afterwards.

"It would have been stranger to miss it," he says. "I hesitate to think what might have happened between me and that Risen's axe—if you hadn't jumped in when you did."

He is trying to thank her, but she only laughs, raucously, unabashedly so. "You don't have to worry about axes with me around," she says, and reaches up to clap the great bruise he can already feel blossoming across his shoulder. "What would you do without Dad and me, right?"

By all expectations, a bout between the two of them should be little contest. He is captain of the Shepherds, after all, and she is too young, too slight, a presence barely perceptible in her oversized Plegian robes.

And then her fingers find the edge of the tome or the hilt of a sword, and suddenly that slightness is litheness—and the space in those robes is all that his practice blade can find.

At last, though, she makes her missteps, and staggers to the side as his blade finds armor instead of air. "Do you yield?" he asks.

Morgan laughs, settling to her haunches. "Yeah, you got me today—whew! You're almost as good as Dad is, when we spar."

"Only almost?"

"Well, yeah. I mean, you're getting better, but Dad doesn't let me kill him four times when we fight. Three, tops, maybe."

And suddenly, he's not so sure of himself. "Wait," he says. "That bolt of magic, the one that went over my shoulder—that—"

"Dad says I shouldn't hit people with magic when I spar, even if it is weak." And her smile is not entirely unselfconscious. "I've been making sure to aim to the left, every time I think I've got a killing blow...hey, you don't think that's gonna cause problems in battle, do you?"

He can't help it. He passes a hand over his eyes and sinks to the ground to join her.

He doesn't mean to stay there, of course—only a moment's rest, at most—but after all that effort even the grass is comfortable and before he knows it he is sitting there, eyes closed, face tilted upwards against the sun. He sighs, feeling the wind fan his hair, almost in response—

And then a memory blooms behind his eyes and suddenly he is no longer at the training ground but back at the castle courtyard again—back home—and it is years ago, forever ago, and he is only a child half-drowsing in the grass, watching his older sister guide a faint breeze to soften the summer haze, and he turns his head to see and she smiles at him and the expression comes back in perfect and painful recall, her expression—her face—the scar at her temple, and this, he thinks—

This is what I didn't want to remember, he thinks, and then he thinks:

I'm glad.

He opens his eyes.

Morgan is standing over him. Her hand is loose, inches from his forehead, alight with the telltale glow of magic.

"Morgan?"

The glow fades. So too does the breeze. "Whoops—sorry. You didn't wake up because of me, did you?"

"No, I just..." He trails off. For all the time, the memory is still raw. "Was that you just now?" he says.

"Yup! It's pretty hot, so I decided to cool us down with some wind magic! Neat trick, huh?" She laughs, and then stops. "Or—oh, wait, do you want me to stop? I guess some people might not like getting wind in their faces while they're trying to sleep."

"No—no, it's fine." He closes his eyes again. "You can do that, if you want to."

"That's great! Because I do want to."

It's a response he doesn't understand, not entirely, but he closes his eyes anyway, and lets the wind bear him away.

There are times, when they are in the same space together, that Lissa looks between the two of them and laughs.

It is a quiet laugh, hidden behind her hand, but her shoulders shake, and each time Chrom finds himself looking at Morgan to find her looking at him back—as if this time one of them has figured it out at last.

In southern Valm, it all goes wrong.

The archers are a surprise, and the volley of arrows falls upon them almost before any of them can react. In an instant, sight and sound become meaningless. Chrom is dimly aware of shouting—falling—that he is shouting too—

"Robin!" Lissa screams.

And with that single name, awareness sharpens. "Robin?" he echoes frantically, looking towards his sister. "Lissa, where's Robin?"

Lissa doesn't answer, and she doesn't need to. Chrom can see for himself—Robin, propped by his elbows, back curled somewhere between pushing himself up and lying down again. His friend is wearing a dazed expression, as if he has only just now realized his own presence on the battlefield.

There is the shaft of an arrow through his stomach.

The blood stops in Chrom's veins.

And suddenly somebody is pulling him down to shield him from the next volley, and again everything is chaos and noise and the next thing he understands is Frederick grasping him by the shoulders, speaking sternly, loudly. "Milord," he is saying, and Chrom wonders how he can be so calm at a time as this, "Milord—you must focus—"

"Robin—" he gasps.

"Your sister is already tending to Robin," Frederick says. "Milord, you must command the troops—if they begin to panic—"

And he is right, no matter that he might hate it, so he grits his teeth and finds the voice everyone expects from him. "Regroup and advance!" he shouts, loud enough for every Shepherd to hear. "The plan hasn't changed!"

Except that isn't true, he realizes, even as he says it. Because whatever tactics Robin had in mind, they didn't take into account the archers, and he doesn't know what—

"Cavaliers."

The voice cuts through him, even in the din of battle.

And Morgan is standing over her father, head high, gaze focused on something only she can see.

"Morgan?" Chrom says.

Morgan's head twists towards him, and when her eyes meet his it is only that too many things have happened that he doesn't flinch. There is something steel there, something he has never seen there before but that he recognizes easily. He has talked to her father long enough for that.

"Cavaliers," Morgan says again, and even her voice is strange, sharp and distant all at once. "We need to move out of range of their arrows, first. And then—they're on open ground. Sully and Stahl can charge to break their ranks with Frederick, and Tharja and Henry to cover them. Once they're in disarray, even foot soldiers should be enough."

The strategy is sound. Morgan says nothing else. Her face is blank and her father is bleeding out at her ankles.

Chrom makes a decision.

"You heard her—to the southwest!" he shouts. "Take the wounded—"

Take Robin—

And at battle's end he finds her at the edge of the field, back straight, tome clutched with whitened knuckles.

"Your father is fine," he says. "Actually, he's almost as worried for you as you are for him. It's all Lissa and Libra can do right now to keep him off his feet."

Morgan does not speak. She does not move, or give any sign of having heard him.

He tries again. "You did well, and I'm not saying that because it was your first time. I don't want to admit it, but...I panicked, back then. If you hadn't interrupted me, our losses could have been severe. Thank you, Morgan."

Still no response.

"Morgan?"

And finally, finally, she turns to look to him, and that is when her legs give out.

"Morgan!" He does not remember catching her, or even running to catch her, but she is in his arms and they are on their knees in the grass the both of them so it must have happened. "Morgan, are you hurt? Oh gods, a healer—"

"Is it like this every time?"

He can barely hear the words, murmured against his armor. His speech dries out in his mouth.

"I'm okay," Morgan continues. "I don't need a healer—I didn't even get hit. See?" She turns her head and he can see that she is smiling, just faintly, before her face is hidden again. "It's just—I wanted to be a great tactician, just like Dad. I didn't think it would start out like this, though."

"I don't think anybody did. But you rose to the occasion anyway, and..."

He stops. There are things he wants to say, but he can tell before trying that the words will not come out right.

And yet—

"Morgan," he says, "all these battles—these skirmishes—for as long as I lived, I always admired my sister—that is, her dream of peace. But it seems—it's as if the only way I can even start to forge the peace she wanted is through more fighting."

Yes. It has already gone wrong.

And he finds to his horror that he cannot stop his tongue.

"In the future she hoped for—what would you do, if there were no longer a need for soldiers, or Shepherds, or—or tacticians?"

Morgan says nothing, and for a moment he is sure he has offended. But then she raises her head.

She is still smiling. And there is, to his relief, a familiar light returning to her eyes.

"Dad says that no matter what you believe in, there's always going to be someone who wants to fight about it," she says. Her smile tightens, around the edges. "So I don't think we'll ever be out of a job. You or him or me."

"That's too bad. But as long as the world needs tacticians..."

He trails off again. Morgan's smile begins to fade.

"Chrom?"

"As long as the world needs tacticians, and I need a tactician—would it be wrong for me to rely on you?"

He means what he says, and also more than what he says, and something must show, whether through his eyes or his voice because Morgan turns her face inwards and laughs, weakly, against his throat. "Aw, Chrom," she says. "That sounds almost like a proposal."

And now his words have left him completely, so he closes his eyes and holds her tighter.

Past the sounds of wildlife and the watch making its rounds, the camp is almost empty of noise. The loudest voices faded away hours ago, and the forest swallows what's left.

Just the watch, and him, and Lucina, brand burnt into her eye.

"You wanted to speak with me?" he says.

"I did," Lucina says, though she looks as if she would rather be anywhere else. "It...concerns Morgan. No—your wife."

The conversation is overdue. He has seen it coming, dark and unpleasant across the horizon, and has done nothing to either escape or hasten it. And now it has arrived.

"Is it that...Morgan is not your mother?"

Something flits across Lucina's face—and then her expression is set again. She nods. "You already suspected."

"The Chrom of your future—he would have watched his friend's child grow from childhood. I don't think that he would have..."

"No," says Lucina. "He didn't."

And Lucina's eyes stray towards the tents, and for a moment there is the temptation, surprising in its intensity, to ask her who it was in that time of hers—who he woke with and slept with and leaned upon when the burden was great.

The moment passes.

"I'm sorry."

"There is no need. I sought to alter the past, and I succeeded. I just didn't think..." She trails away, breathes deep to speak again. "No—that is all. The hour is late. You should return to your tent. It may not be my place to tell you this, but I understand we have much ground to cover, tomorrow."

"Lucina—"

"Good night, Fa—Chrom."

And she turns and walks away.