Disclaimer: I don't own Fire Emblem. Fire Emblem is the property of Nintendo and Intelligent Systems.
Purple fire crackled in her mind while the scent of earth and the buzz of insects beckoned her toward . . . something else . . .
. . . Something warm . . .
She fought against the starless night that had her trapped within its inky depths.
Wet ink trailing hope . . .
. . . A butterfly . . .
A promise . . .
. . . A warning . . .
The images of her dream fractured, broken glass that shredded thought, darkness dripping through the cracks. And . . . someone . . . someone important vanishing . . .
Taking a part of her heart with them.
She clawed against the unrelenting nothingness that had become her existence. Screamed until her throat was raw with fire.
Bright fire devouring worlds. Cackling with glee until all that was left was gray ash.
How did one escape a world that had no top, no bottom, no meaningful way to orient oneself?
Was this death?
. . . Or something in between?
Madness, perhaps?
Whatever it was, she clung to it, a stubborn barnacle that wept diamonds and dreamed of sunlight.
And in those dreams, she leapt into a puddle of sunshine the size of her heart.
"What do you think happened?" An airy voice pressed itself into her consciousness, pulling her from shattered glass and hopeless wandering.
Something rustled near her head, and she could almost feel the weight of the shadow blocking the sun. Her heart sped up, thumping against her rib cage. Her body wanted to open her eyes and leap to her feet, but she hadn't quite shaken off the paralysis of her dreams yet.
"No obvious wounds," a deeper voice observed, and something about it reminded her of sunlight and . . . something she could almost remember.
She knew that voice.
But how?
"Yet she breathes," a third voice remarked, deeper than the others. Even with her eyes closed, she knew it was frowning with polite disapproval.
"I don't know, Lissa," the second voice continued. "Perhaps she fell asleep?"
"Really, Chrom? Right here on the side of the road where bandits or who knows what could attack her?" Lissa said before fretting some more. "What are we going to do?"
Chrom. She had found Chrom.
But what was a Chrom, exactly, and why did cool relief slip through her fears?
A brief silence fell over them, and she managed to move just enough to work at prying her eyelids open. She blinked against a searing light that blurred the world into a mess of color with no distinct shapes or lines.
"Well, what do you propose we do?"
"I don't know." Lissa's voice resolved itself into a sunny girl a few years younger than herself. Her golden hair was gathered into pigtails, and a worry line had worked itself between her eyes. "But we have to do something."
The man standing next to Lissa noticed her watching them. He started, and his expression softened into a smile.
"Ah, I see you're awake now." Then, smirking a little at Lissa, the blue-haired man continued, "There are better places to take a nap than on the ground, you know."
Lissa smiled and gave her a friendly little wave while he extended his arm toward her.
"Here, give me your hand."
She placed her hand in his almost automatically, frowning at the purplish mark on the back her hand while he helped her to her feet.
The mark meant something, but what? And why did she suddenly feel sick to her stomach?
"Whoa, easy there," he said as she staggered. A blinding pain exploded in her head, right behind her eyes. "Are you hurt?"
She clutched her head, willing the pain to cease, the world to stop spinning, and for her stomach not to upend itself.
"Lissa," he murmured, shifting to support her weight better.
"On it."
Chrom. His name was Chrom.
He had kind eyes, and Lissa—
A flash of green light, and then a warmth invaded her senses. The pain she was drowning in receded enough that she could order her panicked thoughts and breathe again.
The sensation was a lot like how she imagined being dipped in sunshine would feel. It smoothed away her aches and pains while warming her as it curled itself around her in a protective shell.
She blinked and straightened, managing to keep her balance.
Lissa lowered a staff she had extended toward her and polished the clear gem at the top with her thumb.
"Feeling better now?" Chrom asked, releasing his hold, but poised to assist if she needed further aid.
"Much better," she said—or meant to say. Her lips moved, but no sound came out. Eyes wide, she put a hand to her throat. That feeling that something vital was missing from her thundered in her ears once more.
Surely it was too soon to panic quite yet.
Maybe.
Possibly.
Perhaps.
Chrom narrowed his eyes and glanced at Lissa who shrugged.
"The staff did everything that it could. She's completely healed."
"What is your name?" he tried again.
She opened her mouth, then froze. Tiny prickles of fear took root in the dark space where her name should have been.
Where it currently wasn't.
She had a name, of course she did. Everyone had a name, and she'd produce hers once she found it.
Any minute now.
Her mouth moved with her explanation, but only once she got to the end of it did she realize that not a single sound had escaped her lips.
She snapped her mouth shut and closed her eyes. No name and no voice, could it get any worse?
"Milord," the deepest voice murmured, "have you considered that she might be a spy or some sort of distraction sent to lower our guard?"
Of course it could.
She opened her eyes, made eye contact with Lissa and then Chrom, and shook her head. Then, because her patience was fraying along with an integral part of herself, she glared at the third member of their party. A tall man housed in blue and silver armor who stood rigidly at attention.
Behind him stood a horse, also rigid and alert.
"Peace, Frederick," Chrom said, holding up a hand as though to silence the objections Frederick was collecting and preparing to impart.
"Can you tell us your name?" A thin line appeared between Chrom's eyes.
Eyes wide, she shook her head. Fear trembled through her, urging her to flee. The only thing that kept her in place—besides the certainty that Frederick would skewer her if she tried to run—was Chrom.
She was supposed to find him. It was important, although she couldn't have said why. Only that it was.
And she had.
So. There was one thing that had gone right. Pity about everything else.
"You don't know your own name?" Frederick's voice was drenched with skepticism. Oh, it was properly starched and perfectly-polite-pinkies-out skepticism, but skepticism nonetheless.
She shook her head again.
"Hey, I've heard of that," Lissa said, looking strangely pleased with herself. "It's called amnesia. You forget everything you ever knew, except things like how to walk. You still remember how to walk, right?"
Frederick snorted. "What it's called is a load of pegasus dung." He turned to Chrom while keeping her in his line of sight. "You can't honestly believe the girl has no idea what she's been called all her life, milord."
Chrom held up his hand once more, his eyes never leaving hers. "Can you speak?"
Tears welled up in her eyes inexplicably, and she shook her head again. And even though the world wavered, she could practically hear Frederick rolling his eyes.
"Oh," Lissa said, some of her sunshine diffusing.
"Milord—"
"Peace, Frederick." Then he caught her eye once she'd scrubbed the tears away. "Are you traveling with anyone?"
She chewed her bottom lip, but shook her head uncertainly. Was she traveling alone? It was certainly possible, but so was traveling with someone else.
The thought triggered a memory that was lost so far in the darkness that she couldn't catch more than a glimpse of its shape.
"So we are to believe that you can't remember your name, you can't speak a word in your defense, and you just happen to be wandering through the halidom on your own?"
She grimaced. Frederick had a way of taking an unlikely situation and making it sound absurd even to her own ears.
"But what if it's true, Frederick?" Chrom asked, the hint of a smile in his tone. "We can't just leave her here at the mercy of bandits or worse. What kind of shepherds would we be then?"
Frederick responded without hesitation, "Shepherds who are doing their job to keep the wolves from falling upon their flock."
She pointed to herself and shook her head. She could quite possibly be many things. Some of them even unsavory, though she didn't like to believe it. But she was fairly certain that she wasn't a wolf.
At least she thought so.
Surreptitiously, she checked her ears and made sure the tail she didn't have wasn't there.
Chrom and Lissa started laughing before she realized Frederick hadn't been quite as literal as she'd taken him. She huffed and crossed her arms. It wasn't her fault her brains were a little scrambled, and the very unloving look Frederick kept shooting in her direction wasn't helping matters any.
"We'll take her to town and sort things out there. If she turns out to be an enemy operative, then we'll have the means to deal with her there. And if it turns out she's telling the truth, well, we can deal with that too."
Frederick's glower faded as she donned one of her own.
Didn't she have a say in any of this? She hadn't asked to be dropped in the middle of . . . of wherever here was with no name, no way to communicate, and no way to defend herself.
Some of her thoughts must have shown on her face, because Lissa laid a friendly hand on her arm. "It's going to be okay. He may be a bit thick sometimes, but you can trust my brother. Chrom—"
Everything else Lissa said vanished into those two words.
Trust. Chrom.
She was back on a path running through the outskirts of a forest and along a patch of rolling hills. A woman with snow-white hair was standing before her with an expression that could have taught Frederick's ever-present scowl a thing or two.
"You must trust him, Robin. That's the only thing you need to understand."
Trust who? Her lips moved with the words, but no sound came out.
The woman's dark green eyes flashed as her gaze bore into her own.
"Chrom."
She startled as the memory wrapped itself about that cold, dark space inside her. The place that had held all that she was, her history. The space that was currently empty.
Nearly empty.
Robin.
The word caressed the space, nudging against the bleakness and settling itself in deep enough to take root.
Her name was Robin.
Chrom stepped beside her, a concerned look on his face. "Is something wrong?"
Lissa inched forward, healing staff at the ready. "We can help."
Fredrick didn't say anything. He didn't have to. The disapproval he radiated was enough that she could have basked in its glow a kingdom or two away.
But that didn't matter quite so much anymore. She had a name. A piece of herself.
Robin shook her head and tried to smile through the fire burning in her throat. She wasn't as lost and forsaken as she had supposed after all.
She had her name. A starting place.
"What is it?" Chrom asked, inclining his head toward her.
Robin opened her mouth to tell him, remembered it would be no use, and then looked around for something to use in place of her voice.
The road they were standing next to must have been a common one, although there was a curious lack of anything so small as a pebble or a twig. Only the lightest spattering of dust served as the top layer, and the earth below was packed so tight, she would have bruised and broken her fingers trying to carve out her answer in the dirt.
Robin frowned at the road before her eyes lit up.
Her fingers!
Feeling a strange mixture of shyness that was offset by a sudden boldness, she gestured to his hand and raised a questioning brow.
Chrom's brows beetled together as he tried to piece together the significance of her request, but to her relief, he held out his hand.
Moving slow enough that even Frederick and his horse couldn't mistake her movements as posing any sort of threat, she took his hand in hers, palm up. Hardly daring to trust her luck, she gently tugged his glove off, and began to trace out the letters of her name.
Once she was finished, Robin caught his eye, pointed to herself, and then spelled her name out once more, line by line, curve by curve, letter by letter.
Chrom cocked his head to the side, his gaze slightly unfocused as he concentrated. "Could you do it one more time? I think I've almost got it."
Nearly giddy with relief, she spelled her name out a third and final time.
"Robin." The corners of his lips darkened as they curved up. "Is that your name? Robin?"
Robin nodded and released a breath she hadn't been aware she'd been holding. It would have been easier to speak the words aloud, but even so, her lack of a voice wouldn't be a complete detriment to being able to communicate.
She pointed to her head and then tapped it twice.
"Robin," Chrom tried her name again. "Is that foreign?"
Her early cheer faded as she froze. The answer was somewhere in the murky darkness that even the memory of her name had been unable to pierce.
"You remembered!" Lissa's eyes went wide and she clutched her staff with excitement. Then she noticed Robin's reaction, and smacked her brother on the arm.
"Hey!"
"Chrom, you dolt. How is she supposed to know if her name is foreign or not when she's only just remembered it?" Lissa turned back to Robin and patted her arm. "That's great you remembered! Maybe with time you'll be able to remember everything else."
Behind them, Frederick coughed.
Deciding not to worry about either Frederick or her fate, Robin grinned and nodded, happiness blossoming a little more in that dark spot that was now a little less cold, and a little less empty.
Frederick cleared his throat. "Now that you've managed to remember who you are, perhaps you could tell us what you are doing here."
And just like that, the bloom wilted.
She sighed and turned toward him, but met with a gentle resistance.
Puzzled, she stopped. It was then that she realized she was still holding onto Chrom's hand. Her face ablaze with mortification, she dropped his hand and automatically babbled a senseless apology no one could hear.
In the end, Robin settled for burying her face in her hands.
Chrom chuckled a little, but it was Lissa who spoke up.
"You can't honestly expect Robin to spell out everything letter by letter onto Chrom's hand, Frederick."
Robin parted her fingers just enough to see Lissa standing with one hand on her hip while the other waved her staff in exasperation.
"Well, no, milady," Frederick drawled. His horse's harness jingled as he moved it aside to access the saddlebags. "I had thought to provide her with vellum and ink."
Oh.
Chrom laughed at both Lissa's and her dumbfounded expressions. "It can wait, Frederick. Unless you also have the means to provide a table as well."
Robin gritted her teeth. While unlikely, she wouldn't have put it past Frederick to whip something together. Despite his suspicions toward herself, she couldn't help but admire how prepared he was. And how steady, despite unwelcome surprises such as herself.
"Alas, I am afraid not," Frederick said. Robin could almost see his mental note to procure a table as soon as could be done conveniently.
"Well as that's settled, why don't we head back to town?"
Chrom turned in a swish of ivory cape, expecting them all to follow at his word. For a brief moment, Robin considered refusing. She had only just got her bearings, and she wanted a little more time to settle in.
Of course, she couldn't discount Frederick simply throwing her over the side of his horse if she proved too troublesome.
Speaking of Frederick, she could feel his disapproving gaze boring a hole in the back of her head. "The sooner we set off, the sooner we can put this all behind us."
Robin frowned. She hadn't asked for their assistance or their meddling, but she couldn't ignore that voice in the back of her head urging her to trust Chrom.
"Don't mind them," Lissa said, hooking her arm through Robin's. "Now that you're here, I can't wait to show you around! Maybe we'll find something that can trigger more memories."
Robin looked unsure, but allowed Lissa to pull her along. Lissa, for her part, cheerfully kept up what amounted to a very one-sided conversation.
Frederick hesitated. Duty directed that he keep his charges safe, but even he couldn't be in two places at once. On the one hand, it would be prudent to march behind Robin in case she really did turn out to be an assassin. On the other, who would act as the vanguard to ensure their group met with no misfortune?
In the end he settled for walking next to Chrom, sending dark looks back over his shoulder every so often.
Chrom set the pace a little slower than he would have liked, but Lissa was still building her stamina and Robin didn't look as steady on her feet as she let on.
"Milord," Frederick said, keeping his voice low. "I feel it right to urge you to exercise caution. We know next to nothing of this girl, and what little we do know is too fantastic to be credulous."
Now it was Chrom's turn to sneak a backward glance. Robin was frowning, but she looked more thoughtful than angry. Lissa, of course, was ecstatic to have someone she could relate to a little better than Frederick or himself. They were nearly the same height, although Robin seemed a year or two older.
Between the two of them, they might have been able to scare some of the local wildlife. If they worked at it.
"I don't think she's likely to grow claws or fangs," Chrom murmured, not bothering to hide his amusement.
Frederick set his jaw. "And if it turns out she can? Southtown is ill equipped to hold anyone more dangerous than the occasional chicken thief."
"Then it's a good thing you whipped their militia into shape." Chrom's good humor darkened momentarily. "Especially when they're so near the border."
It was not a coincidence that the hardest hit by the bandits were the villages closest to the divide between Plegia and Ylisse. Thus far, they had confined themselves mostly to simply looting. But there were tales starting to spring up that worried him. He couldn't deny that Em had very good reasons to avoid a show of military strength, but her aversion to strength by the sword was going to leave their people open to those who lived by the sword.
And far too many innocents were going to die by it.
He gripped the hilt of falchion and forced his temper back. The shepherds were doing good work. Protecting the weak and teaching them to be stronger. He had to have faith that their people would rise to the occasion.
"Hey look! There it is," Lissa said, her normal exuberance magnified as they approached civilization. She had lost her fondness for nature about a week into their patrol. "I can't wait to show you around—after Chrom makes sure you aren't some evil death lord or something."
Robin froze, her gaze flitting between him and the spires rising from South Town.
"Everything all right?" he asked.
Robin shook her head, her eyes stormy. She put a hand to her chest and her mouth moved for a moment before she clenched it shut. But her expression was clear. She was afraid, and Chrom found he didn't like her looking at him that way.
"You have nothing to fear from us," he murmured, as though speaking to a skittish colt. "Once we're certain you pose no threat to the halidom, you'll be free to go your way."
For some reason, her eyes darkened at that. Then she cocked her head to the side and raised a brow.
"You know," Lissa said, waving her arms. "The Halidom of Ylisse. Here. Where we are."
To his surprise, Robin only looked more confused.
"You've never heard of the halidom?" Frederick scoffed. "Ha! Someone pay this actress. She plays quite the fool. The furrowed brow and wide-eyed confusion are especially convincing."
Chrom sighed. "Please, Frederick." Then he turned to Robin who was looking decidedly like a thundercloud about to hurl lightning. "This land is known as the Halidom of Ylisse. Our ruler, Emmeryn, is known as the exalt. If we were closer to Ylisstol, we could take you to her instead."
He studied her expression. While her scowl had relaxed somewhat, there was still a wariness in her eyes as if they were the ones who might grow claws and fangs.
"You'd love Ylisstol," Lissa said, a happy, faraway look on her face. "It's beautiful. And it has things like real beds and hot food."
"Our meals are hot when they need to be," Chrom said, crossing his arms.
Lissa rolled her eyes. "Yeah, but the second qualification was that the meal be made of food. You wouldn't believe some of the things they think qualify as food." She shuddered, clearly remembering the wild boar they'd chanced upon a few days prior.
Robin's brow furrowed a little, but she'd lost some of her fear. She managed a small smile in their direction, while the rest of her seemed a thousand miles away.
"You were grateful for your supper at the time," Frederick reminded her, patting his mare along the neck.
"Only because I was on the verge of starving to death," Lissa retorted. She gave Robin a conspiratorial grin. "It's no wonder the bandits are so cranky if that's all they have to eat. You're just lucky us shepherds found you instead of one of them."
Chrom shook his head. This was Lissa's first patrol, and they'd been lucky enough that they hadn't come across any bandits so far. Em had agreed it was time to allow Lissa to grow up a little more, but he wasn't looking forward to watching the process.
Especially if some of the newer reports were true.
Still, she was nearly as safe with Frederick and him as she was back in Ylisstol.
Robin frowned and gave him a questioning look.
"Huh?"
She gestured at them before lightly tapping his pauldron.
"My armor?"
She pressed her lips together in thinly veiled frustration. Then gestured at them again.
"Us?" And then once she crooked her finger. "Ah, the shepherds?"
Robin nodded and tapped his pauldron once more, her gaze so intense he could almost feel her willing them to understand.
"You want to know about our armor?" Lissa asked, hugging her staff uncertainly.
Frederick stiffened, but Chrom decided to ignore him in favor of figuring out what Robin was trying to say.
Robin nodded sharply, then crooked her finger again.
"Oh! You want to know why shepherds go around in armor?"
Some of the tension went out of Robin's shoulders when she indicated, yes, he'd stumbled upon the answer.
Chrom chuckled. "Well, tending sheep can be dangerous. Just ask Frederick the Wary, here."
"A title I wear with pride," Frederick said, giving him a pointed look. "Naga forbid one of us exercise an appropriate level of caution."
Then, to everyone's surprise, his expression thawed a little and he addressed Robin directly. "I have every wish to trust you, but my station mandates otherwise." His gaze flicked over to Lissa and Chrom before returning to Robin.
Her lips rounded as her eyes widened with understanding. She glanced around for a moment, then settled for laying a hand on Frederick's forearm and nodding once.
Some of the weight on Chrom's shoulders lifted at that. If Robin and Frederick could come to an understanding, perhaps there was hope that Plegia and Ylisse could do the same.
"And which we shall soon clear up," Chrom said with confidence. "We're almost to the—"
"Chrom," Lissa cried, a look of horror on her face. "The town! Look!"
Heart sinking, he turned and immediately wished that his biggest problem was preventing Frederick and Robin from coming to blows.
The breeze had been blowing away from the town or they would have smelled the smoke that billowed up in long skeletal fingers toward the sky. Beneath the dark cloud of smoke, he could make out red and orange tendrils of fire.
"The dastards," Chrom growled, fury coiled about his chest. The reports had been true. The bandits no longer contented themselves with stealing. "They've set the town ablaze! Frederick! Lissa! Quickly."
Without further ceremony, he sped off in the direction of the town. Lissa squeaked in surprise, but followed gamely.
"But what about her?" Frederick called, clearly torn between following them and standing guard over Robin.
In case she had anything nefarious planned, of course.
In the distance, Chrom raised a hand and called back, "Unless she's on fire too, it can wait!"
Frederick's face cleared and he swung himself up into the saddle. He spared one glance in Robin's direction that made her very glad she wasn't among those in the town setting things on fire before he urged his mount into a gallop.
Robin stared dumbly after them for a moment. What was she supposed to do now?
She glanced at the quiet path behind her, ostensibly free of bandits, and then swung her gaze back toward the town. In which direction lay chaos and danger, and the distinct possibility of an untimely demise.
So why was she running toward it like her life depended on it?
Robin shook the thought from her mind. Apparently she lacked a healthy sense of self-preservation. That was good to know. She could only hope that somewhere in her past she'd been trained to be useful in combat, because the clash of metal and shouting that could be heard over the roar of the fire assured her there would be fighting ahead.
Her heart thumped wildly against her chest, and not just because she'd been running. Soon enough she would find out whether or not she had anything approaching heroic within her. If not, well, she'd be too occupied with dying to spare any thought for regrets.
As if to drive home her conclusion, the ground shook as an explosion rattled the town and sent plumes of flame soaring upward while bits of debris and ash rained down.
Coughing, Robin covered the bottom half of her face with her sleeve and ran toward the inferno.
A/N: I just wanted to thank you for reading my story. I hope you've enjoyed reading it as much as I did writing it. Thank you so much for all your support and encouragement! Fractured will be following the big plot points in general with a lot of . . . differences along the way. When I first tried to write this, a very specific scene popped into my head. I can't wait until we get to that part. The Robin in this story was always meant to be without her voice. It took me a bit to realize this, but once I did, everything else fell into place beautifully. This Robin (and a major plot twist) couldn't have happened any other way. Thanks again for your reviews and for just stopping by!
Mycenwood: Thank you so much for your review! Heh. Yes, I definitely agree with the weird part. I think I subconsciously mirrored Awakening's structure: Interesting, but what-on-earth-is-going-on? first scene that makes more sense the further you get into the game. I'm crossing my fingers that I can pull it off at least half as well. All will be revealed in time. :D