And One More

Chapter Two

Robin rubbed the sleep from his eyes, standing in the blue-green pasture, impatiently porting the heavy black bag at his side. The strap of it felt as though it were digging into his shoulder as he tapped his foot, waiting by the modest wooden cart, the horse whinnying in equal distaste. At last, their guide arrived: "Sorry for the wait," she yawned, "had to give my finances a once-over." She began to load her bag onto the cart, beckoning her companion to help her lift the heavy piles of merchandise aboard. As he prepared to load his own bag, she halted him, "What all do you have there?"

"A few tomes and quills, nothing special," he sighed, trying to move on.

"Nothing else? What exactly do you plan to do for the next three days while we're travelling?" she cocked an eyebrow.

"Read and write. I figured that was obvious," Robin shrugged.

"What about something a little more, I don't know, fun?" she poked.

Robin's face twisted a moment as he tried to find a reply. He gestured toward the pile of books "I don't know. This is just what I do. I never really had time for anything else."

"This is why we're taking a break," she chuckled, ruffling his hair.

Chrom stepped out of the gates of the castle. The air was still and quiet, a light mist setting in, and no sounds of birds chirping or insects buzzing. His footfalls only barely reached their ears in the quietude brought on by the pale peachy glow of the rising sun. "So, you're determined to leave us?" Chrom looked to his tactician.

"Only for now, Chrom. I promise, I'll return before too long, and if you need me, I'll-"

"Stop," Chrom put a hand up, "We're at peace now. Everything is fine. Concern yourself with your respite, Robin. If anyone deserves one, it's you."

"Thank you, Chrom," Robin managed.

"And I, uh, apologize for yesterday's… indiscretions. I might have had a little too much to drink," he coughed. "I didn't mean to imply anything," he looked at Anna, busily crossing off a list as she inspected the cargo.

"Please, Chrom. It was your wedding day. You had every right to enjoy it to the fullest," his tactician corrected.

He laughed, "Right, then. Thank you for your services to the Halidom of Ylisse, Robin. I wish you a safe journey and, at some point, a safe return," he extended a hand.

Robin took it, "And thank you for taking me in, Chrom. As I said, I'll be back before long. I just need to… clear my head."

"See that you do," Chrom waved him off and headed back toward the castle. Robin finished loading up his books, struggling to stuff the bag in one of the small spaces left unoccupied by Anna's merchandise.

"I should probably apologize for yesterday, too," Anna appeared behind him, "I was goading you a little too much when all you wanted was some privacy."

"It's no big deal," Robin announced with a plain face, internally rolling his eyes as he finally managed to squeeze his bag down into a crevice between a piles of swords and vulneraries. He turned and hopped out of the back of the cart and then began to walk around to the front of it, taking a seat at the front on the other side of where the reins had been tied. Anna took to the other side, untied the reins, and hopped into the seat next to him, giving the reins a taut whip to indicate to the horses to begin moving. They complied, dragging the wooden cart away at a brisk pace, with the occasional squeak and groan of the old wood as they worked up to a trot.

"Well," she sighed, adjusting her posture slightly, "we've got a long ride ahead of us. It's usually too quiet on these trips for me, so, do you have anything you want to talk about?"

"Where are we headed?" Robin put a hand over his face as the sun cut across their faces.

"First to Regna Ferox. I think you were there before with Chrom, right? We'll head to a nice little town called Deulldrama. Lots of good people there; it's where I started," she looked upward fondly.

"I never even thought about that," Robin lowered his hand and looked to her, "When exactly did you get started with this business?"

She laughed a little and put a finger to her head to remember, "Well, in my family, as you might have guessed, I helped my parents and older sisters with business all the time. They taught me the ropes on bookkeeping, how to properly gather and maintain an inventory, and, of course, the best ways to haggle and barter."

"But when did you set out on your own?" Robin brushed some hair from his face.

"I was getting to that," she smiled sarcastically, "I set out by myself at age eighteen. Took my first ride up by almost this same route. Brings back a lot of memories."

Robin looked off, mulling over her response. His face livened as a thought crossed his mind: "Wait, so you and your sisters aren't all the same age?"

"Of course not," she laughed, "Why would you think that?"

"You all look identical! How could Inot think that?" Robin threw his hands up.

She tapped her index finger on her chin, "I never really thought about that. It's kind of hard to see how it might look to someone outside the family." Robin stared at her a moment. Realizing she had nothing more to say, he turned to look at the horizon, sighing into the fresh, cold air of the morning. "What about you?" she stole a glance at him, "Do you remember anything about your family?"

Robin eased himself back, considering carefully for a moment, "There is one thing…" She leered at him inquisitively, leaning in. "I can recall my mother, very briefly. It's something that's not easy to put into words: I can recognize the scent of her perfume, the most vague vision of her figure, and the soporific murmurs of her voice, but, beyond that, there's nothing. It… sort of pains me to think about."

She nodded succinctly, "Sorry, I didn't mean to cause you any discomfort."

"It's all right," he waved a hand carelessly, "it's all a part of why I came out here. Understanding what sentiment plagues me." They shared a noiseless stare, then simultaneously turned their heads the other way, examining opposite ends of their horizon as the cart bounced along pebbles and dirt mounds that ravaged the trail ahead of them.

"So, know any good songs?" Anna laughed, turning an uncertain eye to her travelling companion.

"I never participated much in the other soldiers' revelry, I'm afraid," he looked down, grabbing a small blue book from behind him.

"Now what are you reading?" she glanced down at the small book, whose cover was well worn, bindings loose, and whose pages were stained with oily smudges.

"It's a journal," he remarked simply, producing a quill from much the same place.

"I didn't know you kept one," she mused.

"I do. Having already lost my memory once, I thought it proper to commit everything I can to paper," he set about scratching at a half-filled page, a few underlined dates dotting it above a landscape of illegible scribbling.

"Everything?" she pressed on, desperate for conversation.

"I make note of the days' events, battle plans, and individuals of importance that I meet. You never know," he looked to her and winked before setting back to the page.

"'Individuals of importance,' eh?" she looked down to the small book again and, in an instant, snatched it from his grip, "Did you write anything about me?"

"Is this whole trip about gathering more gossip?" he huffed, "because you won't find any in there. I try to be objective in the description of people."

"'Anna the Merchant,'" she read, "'Also known as 'The Secret Seller,' she has a bevy of identical sisters, each of whom run a shop much like her own. Anna has a well-developed skill as a locksmith that can make her invaluable in dispatching with doors and chests despite a lack of keys. She's also rather handy with a sword and uses an evasive style when in combat, useful attributes for any soldier. I am concerned that she, like other units bearing her style of fighting, cannot stand the raw damage that may come from stronger enemies. Her dodgy maneuvering ameliorates those concerns a bit, but I prefer to keep her out of danger, to bank on the certainties, until I feel confident that she will not be severely wounded.'"

"Can I have that back now?" he growled impatiently.

"BO-RING!" she chuckled, "Where's the good stuff? Secret loves, tales of heartbreak, fantastic speculation?"

"There aren't any. It's for recording facts," he repeated, now yanking the book from her hands.

"Fine," she sighed, "Why can't you do anything fun, huh? Live a little!"

"I think we disagree on our definitions of 'fun,'" he scoffed, making a few more marks in the journal before putting it away.

The two remained silent as the trip wore on, Robin turning to his books and Anna concentrating on the path ahead, occasionally admiring the landmarks she remembered from her youth, until they arrived at a bright green field, the sun now high in the sky and beaming proudly upon them. She gave a tug on the reins to tell the horses to come to a halt and shook her companion's shoulder, "Lunch time!" Robin nodded and hopped off the cart, circling around to the back to dig back into pile of inventory to reach his bag, pulling from a different compartment to withdraw a small loaf of bread and a ruddy dried fig. "Out here," she ordered from the nearby meadow, waving her hand. At her feet sat a baby blue blanket, covering the grass. Robin walked over and sat on it, breaking the end off of the loaf of bread. Anna stared intently at the fig, "Where did you get that?"

Robin looked down into his palm, then back up to Anna, "The fig? I just… found it."

"They don't grow in Ylisse or Regna Ferox," she reported, "And they certainly don't come dried."

"No, I dried it after I found it. I've heard that makes it taste better," Robin remarked, taking another bite from the bread.

"They're a Plegian specialty, dried figs," she continued.

"Oh?" Robin feigned interest.

"And I've always wanted try one," she cast him a sheepish stare.

"You want it that much? Take it," he handed the scarlet fruit over.

It was Anna's turn to stare into her palm, "Just like that?"

He looked puzzled, "Just like that. What, did you think I would charge you for it?" She didn't reply, only continued to stare at him sheepishly. "Money's not everything to everyone, you know," he smiled.

"That's not true," she took a bite out of the fig, "people say that, but they don't mean it. Everyone and everything in the world can be bought: safety, power, even love has a price."

Robin shook his head, "You can't honestly believe that."

"But I do. Everyone looks for finances in a partner. Nobody wants to marry a poor jester, no matter how sweet he may be," she demonstrated.

"Well…" Robin began.

"Or say there was some lovely lady you had your eye on," she continued, "what would you do? Take her out to fancy restaurants, buy her expensive jewelry?"

"I admit that your argument has some merit," his eyes tensed, "but isn't it kind of, I don't know, sad?"

"Look, I'd love to live in a rainbow-sprinkle world where money didn't matter, too, but that's just not the case," she stood from the blanket, scarfing down the last of the fig.

Robin sighed and stood as well, brushing a few crumbs from his cloak and holding half of the loaf of bread, "What about just now, then? If I only cared about money, why didn't I make you pay for that fig?"

"I don't know," she gave him a snide look, "Why didn't you? What ulterior motive did you have?"

"I didn't have an ulterior motive, I was just being friendly," he argued.

"So you wanted me to have a higher opinion of you," she calculated.

"No," he sighed exasperatedly, "how can you be so intelligent and yet so infuriatingly foolish?"

"I could say the same of you, Mister Genius Tactician, why don't you understand how incentives work?" she barked.

They both scoffed at the other and returned to the cart to put their things away, then hopped back into their respective seats wordlessly. The journey continued into the dark of night without a word, until, at long last, Robin posed a question: "Where are we going to sleep?"

"Tonight, in the cart," Anna had cooled off since their earlier argument and returned to her typical disposition.

"But there's no room in there! And what if we're attacked?" he railed.

She placed her finger over his lips, "Shh. War's over, there's no more gangs of bandits running around after a conflict like that. Anyway, we're in the middle of nowhere. Plus, there's plenty of room." She reached behind their seats and opened the flap of the cart which covered the cargo to reveal an empty space with two small blankets laid out on it, a pillow at the opposite end of each. Robin nodded in deference and crawled into the cart and onto one of the spots, draping the blanket over himself. Anna steered the cart off of the path a bit, called the horses to a stop and followed him into the cart, also covering herself. She looked to Robin to find him scratching at the pages of his journal again and rolled her eyes. "Go to sleep already," she commanded before rolling over. She heard Robin sigh and a few thumps as he shut the journal and tucked it away, turning opposite Anna.

Anna sat up, drowsy, but awake and alert. She looked about the inside of the cart for anything that might have woken her. Finding nothing, she began to settle herself, and her eyes settled on Robin, sleeping noiselessly, almost breathlessly, and his journal not more than an inch from his gloved hands. Anna thought to herself a moment before arching her back to reach over his sleeping form and pluck the journal away again. There has to be something more to this, she thought, rifling through the pages. As she turned, a small card slipped out from between the folds of the weathered text. Picking it up, she read it silently, "Debts," she traced a finger down to her own name, "Unpaid. Anna has elected to take me on a trip around the world with her. Needless to say, this is an important experience for me, and must be quite expensive for her. Her birthday is in just a few days; I'll have to try to find something for her. Now, what does one buy a retailer?" A smile alighted her face as she replaced the card. "Are you hiding anything else?" she whispered to the pages as she turned them once more. She came to the end of the book and found a page with some writing on it wedged inconspicuously between the last page and one more before it. This particular page was different from the others; however, in that it was not pockmarked by smudges and the lesions of age, but was almost as clean and well kempt, Anna imagined, as the day it was printed. She tried to read the hasty scrawl, "The nights are only bearable because I force my mind to be silent. Each day is a new torture with this pain. What do I feel? I've been telling the others it's a stomachache, or that I don't know, myself. I think I know, and it's no stomachache, for it isn't my stomach that pains me. I watched Chrom at the altar, coddling his blushing bride, as a few of the other Shepherds have done already. They've all got their mothers and fathers and husbands and wives to confide in, and I..." the text stopped, the final line was written at the page's base, "Well, I've my journal." A single mark seemed to dot the page precisely at the conclusion of that last sentence. Anna eyed the book carefully before replacing it by her companion's hand and lapsing back into sleep.