Sumia has never hated Robin, per se. She hasn't exactly liked her, either. Since first laying eyes on her in the barracks that day, everything about the young woman just screamed ruddy.
Her clothes were an absolute mess: an ugly black robe with eye patterns on the sleeves, which were so oversized that they couldn't at all be practical in the heat of battle; a shirt that looked as if it was stained a color that represented a disgusting affinity for waste and mucus; and her baggy pants, grass-stained at the backs of her thighs and muddy at the knees, flared out in a way that just made the girl wonder what in Ylisse Chrom was thinking!
But it's never the outfit that catches the eye—well, for Sumia, it is, but that's really not the point. As the woman looked into the stranger's eyes, it were as if something slimy crawled along her spine and licked the base of her backside. One fierce chocolate iris framed within a pale red cornea. A black-as-Plegia eyepatch covered a presumably offending eye, and, well, in her case, it was probably just as well.
Yet what really, really frustrated her?
She was pretty.
A gentle, natural blush across a soft face. A single eye that seemed to sparkle, as if Chrom was a light source reflecting a spray of tiny, luminous orbs into her pupil. A smile that, when turned upward, was as kindly and wise as a majestic pegasus, or, if she really wants to go there, Sumia's mother. Her hair, navy as it were, shined a pretty pale blue in the sunlight. While it was messy, it was also styled in a way that was carefully complementary with the woman's calculating, complicated personality.
It really made Sumia mad.
Every morning at precisely five o'clock, Sumia rises out of bed to brush her hair, brush her teeth, check for plaque, brush again, and throw on some powdered rose petals from her garden for an extra touch to her slender cheeks. She made sure to part her hair just right—it was neither left nor right, but the middle, the middle every time, every day. It couldn't have a single flaw. It had to twist just right in the wind, that's what her mother said.
And yet Robin here made it look easy! She just gets on out of bed in the morning at precisely midnight and barely even runs her fingers through that hair of hers before getting on with her day! She doesn't have to worry about crushing rose petals or bringing out the hazel in her eye. It's just there, it just happens!
When Sumia ponders in her closet to find the perfect outfit for the day that'll be complementary with the perfect armor choice—you must be prepared for the battle ahead—Robin just throws on anything and wow! is she pretty as Naga. She doesn't bare her legs, yet they don't say anything as to how that's so strange, or how that's super weird or something for a girl. She hides her entire body, yet not one person made comment! Not one! When Sumia joined the Shepherds, ooh! they were after her like locusts on a carcass.
Yet, she supposes, she feels bad for her. Like when they found out that Validar was her father, of all people! Or that she had to die for Grima to die, she resolved to die for them, her friends, the hearts hers was tied to, set upon, deeply interwoven in. She missed five years of her life rotting away in some dark cave by herself. She barely even recognized Chrom and Lissa after they found her asleep; she attacked them with a stick and nearly took Sumia's husband's eye out (granted, that may have been purposeful the way her eye is probably all mangled beneath that patch—if she wanted someone to get it, they would certainly get it then) once awake enough to go into defense mode.
But what really makes Sumia guilty for just thinking all those things about Robin? Nothing for her ever lasted. Her attempted relationship with Chrom never happened after Chrom turned her proposal down. Her sanity practically came apart like her robe after being told about her past, what she was, what she is, what she will always be. Her trust in Lucina, her close friend, the respective daughter of Chrom who always admired his tactician, turned cold with her attempted homicide of the woman. Her beauty tarnished into a trembling, tiny mess, nothing more but skin and bones, that pretty chocolate eye now sunken and dull. Her hair ceased looking well put-together and instead just looked sloppy, even torn-up in spots.
In short?
Sumia pities the poor soul.
A part of her even wonders why she hated her so much.
And then she remembers:
It was because she still had feelings for her husband.
It was hard to watch Robin stare almost hungrily with that broken gaze upon his helping her from his horse. Her thin hands not releasing his wrists. In fact, Sumia watched from her bedroom's window as they only clenched around him tighter. It was as if she didn't even hear him when he told her to take a nice, long shower and forget about what happened. Her lips only shuddered as she whispered a pale acknowledgement. She nodded, but it was hollow and empty. A limp marionette.
Sumia remembers that day, the day when she was in the kahn's home, about to read her flower petals and see where the delicate life will take her on such a shaky day, the day they were about to do battle in Ferox—when she heard a voice.
In the corridor outside her room, she remembers hearing Robin and Chrom. And something Robin said drove a stake to her heart that was worse than the heartburn Vaike's cooking would give her: "Chrom, I…I like you. I like you a lot, in fact." Sumia can imagine the expression on the girls's face: embarrassment, an attempted aloofness that can't quite come through. "When we first met, I didn't really think I belonged in the Shepherds. But when we fought together… I couldn't imagine anything I would do in place of it. Everything seemed to change, you were there, you stood by my side even when no one else seemed to care. I want to be by your side in return."
For a long moment, Sumia recalls not being able to move, not even a twitch. She had to force an inhale, then an exhale. Her hands clenched around a carnation bouquet.
Then it passes at Chrom's reply, pained and apologetic—just what she would expect from her leader. "Robin, I'm sorry. I can't go into a negotiation when I can't commit to the pact. My heart has already found its truth." Those last seven words. That final dagger he thrust through her chest. My heart has already found its truth.
And then he made it worse, he made it horribly wrong, all of it. "But I would love it if you stayed. You're a valuable asset to the Shepherds, we'd have long lost this war if you never decided to choose to stick with us."
You never tell a girl that. That's as if Chrom told Sumia that she was great for the team—her flower readings really gave them some fantastic morale!—but not for anything else.
Sumia doesn't even think Robin heard him.
That night, after the decisive battle, after Lon'qu was pressured to join the Shepherds and the group all sat down to a feast—Robin was absent. Sumia knew why, she knew that, if the woman was anything like herself, she'd be crying in her quarters or taking a shower with enough steam to cover up even the thickest of tears. But the gentle animal-loving girl never excused herself, never got up to talk to Robin about it. She doesn't even think Robin knows that she heard the proposal.
And then Chrom proposed to Sumia, right before the final battle against the mad king, that dark moment when no one was quite sure they'd make it out alright—right in front of everyone.
Robin was strong, stronger than she'd ever even admit. But she can be more than a little stubborn, too. Sumia wishes she just gave up, but every time she thinks that, she can just imagine it—the grit determination as the tactician lived through another day, tackled down another bear, choked down its meat, and looked up to the sunset as she mused, "I'll meet up with you again, Chrom. I promise."
Did that actually happen?
The girl has no idea.
And yet here she stands in front of her, her clothing ragged, her frame haggard, expectantly staring up at Chrom as he utters those dangerous words, "Unfortunately, I have some business to attend to at Ferox, so I won't be able to stay." Sumia cringes as she sees the shattering hopes in her hazelnut eye. "But I'm sure that you and the rest of the Shepherds will have a lot of catching up to do, so I won't want to get in your way."
"Oh. That's okay, don't worry about it," Robin replies. She takes in a breath, glances a pursed expression Sumia's way, and straightens her collar—now too big on her—out. "I should find something better to wear, shouldn't I?"
"You look fine as you are," he reassures. Sumia fights back the urge to snark a retraction, and she bites her lip hard. Robin's return to the Shepherds is more than a little awkward.
Sumia pauses at the castle doors to see her husband off, little Lucina tightly clutching her hand. Robin, of course, made sure she was present as well to cast him one last pathetic look—and probably to watch Sumia, too. Robin always was the snoop, though, the girl supposes, her role in the Shepherds dictates it. Right? But wasn't a tactician supposed to be trusting of her own group to make the plans she draws up a success?
She's never understood that about the woman, not even after finding out the whole truth about her past. After all, she was supposed to be amnesiac when they stumbled across her all those years ago, and her actions certainly screamed that.
Doubtful, awkward, nervous. All those things Sumia's mother forbid her daughter to never let slip from her façade.
The queen jolts from her thoughts to give Chrom an enthusiastic wave.
"Bye, Daddy!" Lucina croons happily.
As Robin lowers her hand from her own wave, static and unflinching, she itches at her head and exhales. Checks under her fingertips. Itches at it again. It was as if she hid her discomfort from Chrom up until the last second.
Her shoulders stiffen, and the tactician stretches. "I should freshen up," she finally says, turning to leave.
Sumia doesn't do or say anything at first. Then, with Lucina still cheering for Daddy, she rushes to follow the woman whose pace has suddenly quickened tenfold.
"Hey, Robin—" The tactician pauses mid-stride down the corridor. "In the baths, behind a loose stone, there's a hairbrush I put there so Tharja didn't use mine again. You can use it, if you want, for getting out the…dirt…" Sumia gestures vaguely to her own head of ashen-grey locks.
Robin smiles over her shoulder. It's taut and a little strained, but it's a smile nonetheless. "Thanks. Why wasn't I aware of your secret hairbrush?" She cocks an eyebrow up, the smile turning up a little further in the way of genuineness.
Sumia knits her fingers behind her back and tips herself up on her heels. "A good Shepard needs her secret stash, and a great Shepard keeps it even from the most—" The queen catches herself before almost saying, "snoopy." "—perceptive of tacticians."
The tactician smirks a bit and turns around fully now. She puts a hand to her hair, ratted and thinned out. "You sure I won't wreck it?"
"Positive," Sumia affirms.
Chuckling, Robin continues toward the baths. "No wonder you'd have dust all over your clothes," she murmurs to no one in particular.