Oh god, this story. This is the story I've been calling the story from hell to all my friends whom I tell about it. And it's not because I don't enjoy writing it or I don't like where it will go, but because it is a dark, grim depressing story mixed with an already difficult romance to justify while expanding on various things I've seen in the game that never really went anywhere because Fire Emblem.
So as a pre-warning, there will be more below including on this particular incarnation of Robin, this will be grim, depressing and sad for a fair amount of the story if only because both protagonists are marching towards their doom and refusing to let the other in while simultaneously falling in love wholeheartedly and being terrified of it. There are implications of suicide, both thoughts and attempts, depression, guilt and all of those other lovely emotions that build up to make a bad situation even worse. Also battle, blood, snotty comments and a bending of the canon including of Robin herself into a darker character with some of the canon traits she shows exacerbated from the effects of what she's seen, along with a rather cavalier treatment of Fire Emblem's battle rules, equipment and logic, because while it works amazingly for a game, not so much for a story, so some things will appear that were not in Awakening, and other things will be drastically toyed with following the logic of say how powerful Thunder tomes would more likely work in battle.
Everything began with a bloody red sunrise just off the coast of Plegia's southernmost island. Despite the fact that for all intents and purposes he was dead to everyone who mattered and hopefully his body would follow his reputation at some point, though he had to admit that he wasn't actually trying very hard to get killed. The pirate king seemed to find it amusing that he clung to life like the maggot he was called by all the rest of them, and it was out of some dark, ruinous sense of self-preservation that he only protested it when they were all passed out on the awful stuff they called ale.
The former self proclaimed Mad King of Plegia and now gruesome parody of a cabin boy pushed the red hair that refused to stop curling into his eyes out of the way so that he could scan the horizon. It really was too long again and cutting it with the edge of his Levin sword was growing more and more tempting despite the fact that it would make him look even more a mess than he already did. He bit back the thought that his pride was doing him no favors even when he had nothing else left.
Shielding his eyes from the direct glare of the sun, he looked towards the village on the west of the island, where the people below as tiny as ants from his gods forsaken high vantage points started their days as all Plegians did nowadays, struggling to survive in a world that had hated them for things none of them deserved.
Gangrel growled as his stomach twisted and his mind reminded him of the fact that even with solid earth under his feet, he was still too far up for his own comfort, and the fall from here was probably one he could actually survive. It was hard to decide whether or not that fact was disappointing.
Crawling back into the tall grass, he snuck back to the pile of drunken excuses for pirates that preyed on the weak. It made him sick to serve them, but two years of the mess his life had become made it very clear that he deserved nothing less. Still, he wouldn't mind frying a few of them, especially the ones who had already earned his ire for various...acts they visited on the people they robbed. A little bloody death never hurt anyone, but they took it to disgusting levels and left their victims alive to live with the fact.
As it was, he felt no need to wake them from their drunken stupors. Here, he had as much power as he ever deserved, the power over sleeping vile beasts who thought with nothing above their distended bellies. The power to decide whether or not they were waking up that morning.
Of course, the small serenity of their state faded away as the morning light touched them and reminded them that in fact, they did live and had not joined the ranks of the Risen yet. Not that it would make much of a difference to their joyful personalities. Some of them would actually be improved by the change to undead, namely the inability to yell drunken things that he didn't particularly want to dwell on.
The Great and Mighty Pirate King was the first to yell for him, the foul screech of "Maggot" ringing round the clearing. Gangrel resisted the temptation as he did every day to ignore him and vanish into the island, a temptation that only held strong due to knowing that each and every day of this was exactly what he deserved. A second yell propelled him to his feet, making him walk as slow as he dared to reach him.
Zanth's piglike eyes were still red with intoxication, a bottle of foul smelling grog clenched in one meaty fist. "Maggot," he growled as Gangrel offered him a mock bow that entirely lacked respect, "yer slow t'day."
"Yes," he said with a repressed sneer, "I was looking out on the vantage, like you told me too." Despite the lack of proper speech or grammar amongst the brutes, he refused to slip back into anything close to the speech he'd grown up with. "Nothing has changed."
The man snorted, sitting up and blessing the world with his nasty smell and said "O' course nothin's changed! Who'd challenge the Pirate King?"
He could think of at least one man foolish and brash enough to challenge, and blessed enough in his allies and skills to win. But the chances of the great princeling of Ylisse arriving on the tides with an army to crush the pirates and him into the dirt and dust till all that was left was blood was about as likely as the Grimleal's plans were to come into fruition. And since they had been left floundering after their supposed promised child vanished when he was roughly ten, it was very unlikely that anything would change.
A sharp pain in his head reminded him that Zanth was waiting for the usual answer. Gangrel glared up at him and refused to put a hand to his head and acknowledge the pain. "No one," he growled through his teeth, letting his pride keep him from giving the brute respect he didn't deserve. All he got were those two words.
Either Zanth picked up on the fact that he was not in a mood to be pushed around, or more likely he was just done playing, and walked past him to start kicking other members of what he called a crew into consciousness. Gangrel watched him go and determinedly did not touch the new lump forming over his skull. It wasn't the worst blow he'd taken, and probably wouldn't be the worst to come.
As several of the pirates lumbered to their feet, staggering around like they were still drunk out of their minds, he turned his face to the wind coming off of the ocean. The fresh snap of salt and fresh air was about the one thing he had left that wasn't corrupted by his own actions or what his life had become.
He almost missed the faint tang of iron on the air, dismissing it at first as something irrelevant before he realized what it meant. A ship. Or possibly more than one. It was entirely probable that they were just passing by and the smell would vanish, but between the fact that rumors had suggested that the Valmese war had indeed ended with the entire continent under Walhart's subjugation, and much more dubious rumors that Chrom had decided to take the fight to Walhart before he could prepare to launch an invasion, it seemed unlikely that a ship would pass nearby without planning to stop. Even if it wasn't for long, this was the last large island on any map to have fresh water between Plegia and Valm.
Should he tell the pirates? He'd probably get punished for not saying so. Then again, it took almost nothing for him to end up in trouble for something and he was already feeling particularly unfriendly towards them. Perhaps he might join in the fighting if the situation promised a victory on the side he'd been forced onto.
The smell of iron on the wind grew stronger and he took the chance to make sure that his sword was firmly tied against his side. The lack of an effective sheath made carrying it around difficult, but he wouldn't be caught dead without it. Whoever managed to kill him would have to pry it from his hands if they wanted it.
The small flock of Pegasae flying over everyone's heads alerted the pirates to their sudden danger and Gangrel to exactly who was challenging them. Apparently his sarcastic thoughts about Chrom having anything to do with the situation were a little more likely than he'd thought. In fact, they seemed to be headed by the current queen of Ylisse, if he recognized the protective armor on her pegasus at all.
Well he was sure to end up in even worse trouble than he thought, he mused as the brigade of pegasus knights swooped over them in a flurry of glowing white wings lit even brighter by the sunrise behind them. A second troop led by a woman with long red hair that streamed out behind her noticeably even from the relative height distances came flying in from the other direction, and he had to look away before vertigo seized him and made him useless.
Zanth's voice rang out through the clearing strongly. "Well look a' that, boys!" he snarled, and Gangrel saw him striding through with his ax grasped in one meaty fist. "We got us some pretty girls to take out o' the skies!"
If there was one thing at all that he could find not repulsive in the repulsive excuse for a man, it was his ability to inspire his crew to battle with just a few words. It was the choice in words and implications that generally left him feeling vaguely sick to his stomach. All around him, men grabbed up weapons, squabbling over the few bows they had and generally preparing for a battle the pirate way.
He was trying to decide whether or not to join what they called preparations when Zanth caught his elbow, his stench making Gangrel wrinkle his nose. "Don' think o' backing out now," he said in a low whisper, blowing foul air onto his face. "Or ye'll live t' regret it."
He could only grimace in response to being assaulted with bad breath, and nodded, though only in response to the second part. He had no desire to fight the Ylissean princeling and his lackeys, no matter what the pirate king said.
The pirates had just mobilized to attack when the first volley of magic spells struck them from the pegasus knights flying over, and he thought he recognized the black one leading the charge. So Aversa had thrown in her lot with Ylisse instead of the Grimleal, had she? He hoped that if he could bring anyone down, it would be her.
Screams echoed around as the smell of burning flesh started rising into the air. Across the bay, he could see someone with blue hair jump down into the surf, running towards battle as people on the ship dropped a rope to drop down without the risk of breaking legs or other important body parts. The pegasus knights swooped over again as two wyvern knights took off from the ship as well, flying practically in sync towards the army.
"Fight, ye blind maggots, fight!" Zanth yelled as his farce of an army tried to run for cover or their lives, only two of them nocking arrows to fire back at the winged assault. Gangrel gritted his teeth as the pirates grouped into a mess somewhat closer to an organized formation. He had no expectation of making out of this battle alive, but better to die at someone's hands than a coward, running away. If the princeling was anything like he'd been three years ago, he wouldn't hold back when he saw him.
More of the army was leaping out of the ship, or crowding up to slide down the ropes. The only ones he didn't see that he would have expected from an Ylissean army were cavalry, and he suspected that they weren't going to get them down before the battle was over.
Well, might as well make the most of his last hour, he thought bitterly as the Exalt's head on sprint with his shiny sword brought him to the first of the pirates, blocking an ax aimed at his head with one smooth motion. Behind him, a young woman with the same shade of blue hair and shiny sword charged in to defend him as the pirates did what they did best and moved as a mass of destruction towards anything in their way, with the archers bringing up the rear.
He melted into the mess, not forcing his way towards the front, but not letting himself get shoved out the back either. This did have the consequence of no longer being able to see the battle itself, but he was in it for now.
Gangrel wished he had a staff at that moment as the mess of pirates was slowly bisected by the superior force of Ylisse's army, men he knew and wished he hadn't falling in varying states of dead to the ground and staining the dirt with blood like the last time he'd been in battle against them.
The air prickled around him with the smell of lightning, and he just barely dodged the spell as it struck the ground next to him so forcefully that the dirt was left blackened from the impact. He looked out over the throng for the mage who had nearly ended him without so much as a warning, but no one obvious appeared among the mess. He did see the self proclaimed pirate king charging at Chrom with his ax raised above his head, yelling something to either encourage or berate his men. Above them, the pegasus knights seemed to be switching from magic to lances, chasing after runaways. For some reason, he was the only one who had yet to engage in true combat with any of the Ylisseans this time around.
Zanth swung his ax straight down at the princeling's head, but he ducked and caught it with his sword at the same time that the blue-haired woman prepared to catch and toss the ax as well, the result trapping the blade of the ax so securely that none of them could break through.
Then he saw the mage with the thunder magic that had almost killed him, and why he hadn't noticed her before. Not only was she wearing a cloak that hid her unusual purple hair till she'd taken the hood off, but she held the tome in her left arm, fighting right handed with a sword that sparked with lightning just like his did when he used it. The steely look in her brown eyes was the same one he'd seen three years ago when she unraveled all his plans and struck him down in the wastelands of Plegia, but left him alive whether out of pity or simply not realizing he hung on by a thread. Chrom's tactician held up her tome, lips moving rapidly to cast her magic, and the Exalt and the woman dropped their swords and dodged at the same time as she released the powerful lightning bolt that made all of the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end, using Zanth's ax blade as a stepping stone to his blackened death.
As the former pirate king crumpled to the ground, the smell of charred flesh rising in the air, he became aware that he was the only one uninjured, the only one left standing in the small group. All that remained with him were a single archer and three pirates with axes, all of whom looked small and pathetic without their leader. Around them, the pegasus knights landed, and he could see Aversa off to his right, holding some tome of infernal magic and smirking dangerously, entirely unchanged from the last time he'd seen her. They were surrounded. And he hated it.
Chrom knelt and picked up his sword from the ground where he'd dropped it, dust sliding off of the gold and white blade like it was water before stepping forwards. "Your leader is dead, along with his army," he said loudly, standing there all like a noble who expected to get his way from what he said, "you have three options here, either you can join them, you can surrender and go to the mines in Regna Ferox, or you can join us in the fight against the Fell Dragon." As he spoke, the woman with blue hair and his tactician moved to flank him, along with the two leaders of Regna Ferox themselves, with spatters of blood on their armor from fighting. "If you choose the latter, I swear I will keep you alive until either we reach Regna Ferox next, or the Fell Dragon is slain. If you choose the former, your death will be quick."
The archer behind him, Morg, he thought his name was, growled and nocked an arrow to his bow, swinging it up to shoot at the Exalt. His arrow never left the string as the tactician cast her lightning magic so quickly that the air snapped and left his ears ringing as the archer dropped to the ground stone dead. "If you try to attack us, you will not succeed," she said calmly to them, the tome floating above her hand slightly with the aura that was surrounding her. "Death by lightning is not the most pleasant way to go."
Gangrel didn't know whether they had recognized him and not said anything, or if he had simply fallen so far that even his almost killer and the man who hated him most didn't believe he was who he was. He didn't want to ask.
Slowly, two of the ax-men in front of him set their weapons on the ground. The third hesitated a few moments longer before doing the same. Only he still stood there, his sword drawn, but not presented as a threat or to cast the magic on it. He watched apathetically as the three ax-men were tied up, choosing the mines over either death or almost certain death fighting the Fell Dragon, and marched back towards the ships where now they were preparing to unload the horses from the deck, he could see several people on the ships struggling with panicking war horses.
Chrom looked at him with patience, which made him want to laugh himself sick with the idea that he could behave anything like his older sister once he knew who he was. "What's your choice?" he asked, and Gangrel grinned at him mirthlessly.
And told him who he was.
She had a headache that refused to go away. Headaches themselves weren't that uncommon for her, what with staying up past the haunting hour most nights with a single candle and her books or maps before rising at dawn for another long day slogging through Risen to try and get that much closer to her foe. The part where Libra's tinctures, that tasted and smelled roughly like the inside of Vaike's boot, couldn't get rid of the headache was the more worrying part.
Not helping matters at all was the outcome of their last battle with pirates raiding along the Plegian coastline. It seemed like the ghost of everyone's pasts were coming back to haunt them, and this particular ghost was one she could have sworn she'd laid to rest herself two years ago. The Mad King himself, fallen as far from grace as she thought anyone could, somehow alive when so many others weren't. And she could only take the fault for his existence having continued to this point, because she was the one who should have made sure he truly was dead rather than leaving him with his army to rot in the sun.
Yet here he was, alive if not for lack of trying. Chrom had refused to let her try to kill him again when he asked for it, refused to let Lucina kill him for what he did to Ylisse, and then conscripted him into their army with words and cold anger alone, till the former Mad King finally cracked under the pressure and gave in, telling him loudly enough for everyone there to hear to throw him at Grima rather than anyone else, he had no intention of surviving that fight.
Sighing, she pushed the long strands of hair back behind her ears again as she looked at the parchment containing the current arrangement of their army, blotted and scribbled over due to additions that refused to stop appearing. At least with the goal of the army having changed from defeating Walhart to only those who were determined to bring down Grima, she could fit everyone on one small sheet.
That didn't make the realization of where she had to put the former Mad King any easier. If it weren't for his hatred of Walhart, made very clear the first time he'd been brought into the camp and tried to attack him, she would have put him with the Valmese, far enough away from those who had a personal grudge against him to not have to deal with someone slaughtering him in his sleep. But his reaction to the conquered conqueror made it all too clear that wasn't an option.
Putting him with the main group wasn't an option either. Despite the fact that Chrom had forbidden anyone to touch him, she wouldn't trust him in with that encampment anymore than she would put a rat in a den of cats. Which only left her with the option she was trying to avoid.
She groaned and put her head in her heads, prompting the woman lounging at the back of her tent, trimming her long nails while waiting for her to be done with this thorny problem, to quip "he always was impossible, even before he lost his mind."
Rhiannon bit back sharper words that were mostly brought on by her headache, reconsidering how she wanted them to come out before opening her mouth. "I know exactly where to put him so that no one will kill him and he won't kill anyone. I just don't like it."
Aversa smirked at her and returned to filing at her nails to get them battle ready again, though from the way that she grinned, her attention was still on her. "So we're putting him with us outcasts? That should be interesting. I wonder how he'll react when our dear fallen princess comes to visit."
She didn't even want to think of how that would go. Probably bloodily and possibly with her having to intervene so that Chrom didn't break his word no matter how much he wanted to. "Why are you even in here?" she asked the other woman rhetorically, not expecting a serious answer.
Aversa didn't even look up from her nails. "I'm waiting for you to be done so that I can make sure you fly today." she answered, her voice bored. "You'll never get brave enough to take risks if you don't learn how to fly properly."
Rhiannon sighed and flexed her arms, wincing when the healing cuts hidden under her coat twinged and pulled. "I flew in battle today. Wasn't that enough?"
"Hardly," the older woman smirked. "But if you're this determined to shirk your flight today, I'll work you twice as hard tomorrow, little sister."
Her arms hurt, her head hurt. "Please leave," she said, resisting the temptation to moan with pain. She couldn't allow herself any weakness. "I need to focus and you're not helping."
The older woman gave her a sharp look, but stood up. Despite her flirtatious air, the woman who called her little sister and she hadn't decided if she liked the idea or not, was far too sharp for her comfort. "We'll fly tonight, after dinner," she said without any room for argument in her words, and Rhiannon wasn't in the mood to argue with her anyway.
It really wasn't any better in her tent after Aversa left, though she tried to pretend it was. Sighing, she looked over the parchment with the tent arrangements again and uncapped her ink bottle. With some difficulty, she dipped her quill and drew a fresh triangle in the much smaller circle that Aversa had dubbed the outcast's camp. With him added, they would be six. She recapped the ink.
The cuts on her arms still hurt. Maybe after the next battle, she would get a healer to help them along since it was hard enough to hold a sword already. At least she hadn't managed to permanently ruin her ability to hold and use a sword with that particular flight of fancy. It was still too soon to go that route, though the night before had been a bad night. If it hadn't been for her plans, she might have not caught herself till it was too late.
It was after the ink had dried and she had gotten up to go get the newest member of the camp a bedroll and tent so that he wouldn't be sleeping out in the chill that Chrom had come in to speak to her, his blue hair disheveled and pushed out of place from him running his hands through it in thought. She wasn't surprised that he came, and only surreptitiously pulled on her sleeves a little more to hide the bandages around her wrists as she looked up to see what he needed.
"Rhiannon," he said after a moment, "am I bothering you?" Technically, he was, but she had a feeling that she knew exactly what the conversation was about to be about, and shook her head in response, the strands of hair behind her ears slipping free again with the motion.
Chrom sighed again and pushed his fingers through his hair in that way that was said to be endearing by a few women around the camp. "Am I doing the right thing?" he asked her, sounding more tense. "I mean...we know what he's done, what kind of person he is..." he took in a breath and she saw the way that it pained him to do so. "I just...I didn't want to be the person to put a sword through him when he was begging for it."
Rhiannon bit the inside of her lip as she tried to contemplate how to respond. Aside from finding him a place to stay within the arrangement of the tents where he wasn't likely to be assassinated in his sleep the first night there, she hadn't even really considered how to respond beyond that.
She thought that perhaps she could lay some of the blame for her current problems at his feet. If he hadn't done the things he had, she wouldn't have had to live with the guilt of not being good enough to account for everything. But there was far more that couldn't, and she had been surprised to see that not only was he alive, but he seemed to resist it in every way that didn't involve falling on his own sword. That he seemed to want someone else to do to him. So in that one way, he was better than her. And it was no longer surprising to realize that aside from his actions in a short month, she really had no idea of what he was like, of why he had gone so far to no avail.
Despite the fact that she couldn't bring herself to forgive him completely for the things he did, she was just a little curious about who he was behind the masks he put up. And she could see now that both faces of him that she had seen were at least partial masks. She had plenty of experience with those.
Chrom was waiting anxiously for an answer, and she gave it to him. "Sometimes the hardest thing to do, is to grant mercy even to those who you feel don't deserve it," she said carefully. "Maybe he will have a part to play we don't know. And if he hasn't changed at all, if this is a ploy...then it's better that he's here where no one will let him go free if he tries to kill any of us." The scabs on her wrists itched dully to go with the throbbing in her head. "Regardless, he hasn't done anything yet, and he may not do anything at all. It may be that he has changed in these three years, at least enough that we can trust him in battle."
Chrom nodded slowly, some of the worry on his face fading away. "Thank you," he said, shifting his weight from one leg to the other. "I needed to hear that."
Rhiannon nodded and stood up, wincing as her whole body protested the motion to varying degrees, and put a smile on her face for him. "I'll see you later," she said, deciding to escape from people and thinking while she could, "I have to make sure he's equipped and then I have flying lessons."
Chrom let out a soft laugh as he opened the tent flap for her before following her out. "Then I'll see you later as well."
Ah, Rhiannon, my first proper tactician on my own game, and the one with the most expanded character behind her.
Rhiannon is build three, face two, hair three, hair color eight, voice three, birthday is January 1st, known as the second day of the turning of the year, and the first day of Isthoro, in the Ylissean calendar. Her asset is magic and her flaw is luck. If she was built with more specifications, her strength and defence would be poor, and her luck as well, but her magic, resistance and speed are all as high a bonus as you can give. She was once the very kind gentle Robin character we see in the game, but events that will come to light along with the effects of her lack of past before she was found in game and what she's been through in the time between when she was found and where the story begins has made her darker and less willing to let people in, though she'd die before she'd let them see that. She is twenty two, though she has no concept of how old she actually is and merely has made logical guesses based on her physical state. I picked the name Rhiannon because it has an R in it just like every other playable Plegian barring if Henry married a character who doesn't have a child with an R in their name, and because it's fun to say, and because the three meanings I've found behind it are sea witch, goddess, and more specifically, a Welsh goddess of horses who chose her lover despite all protests to the contrary and then suffered everything to stay with him because he was the one she chose and she would not give him up.
The fact that it's also my favorite Fleetwood Mac song is merely a coincidence, though a happy coincidence. Some other aspects of the song may show up later if I can fit them in.
Until next time.