Author's Notes: Unfortunately, this chapter isn't all that long, but at least it's now ready. I hope you'll enjoy it.

EDIT: Well... Darn. I accidentally uploaded a wrong file on the internet. That one was one of the earlier drafts. :/ It should be the right one now. I'm really sorry for any inconvenience that my mistake might have caused.

Gratitude

Chrom leaned against the canvas of Lucina's tent, seated on the ground, holding his face within the palm of his hand. Dull pulses threatened to take him away with them, to sleep, and what always laid beyond. He wasn't looking forward to it. Never had. He had hard time imagining anyone who had ever exerted control over a force of arms having a good time sleeping.

He exhaled tiredly, turning to the still figure of a girl on a camp bed. Her face was pale from loss of blood, the grimace of her lips sharp, pained, and somewhat angular. He hadn't seen Morgan like this ever before, and the fact that it was his own fault made him feel like an iron wire had been coiled about his heart, its ends being pulled in two opposite directions.

Remorse. It could be a literal pain.

Not that Chrom was unfamiliar with the emotion. Some remnants of the last war still troubled him at times, more so when he was in a state of exhaustion. His thoughts were already only flickers of images, strengthening in emotion and potency if he put his will into them. He chose a particular memory – the sight of a desolate battlefield - and held to it in an effort to stay awake. He reminisced the moment he had ran over to where Sumia was, requesting her to take off and bring him to the camp where Morgan, if she were still alive, would wait. He had left Frederick on the battlefield to inform Robin about Morgan's situation, and had urged Sumia to go back and look for Lucina after she'd dropped him off at the campsite.

Now he was here, looking at Morgan's face. When Chrom had walked into the tent, her bangs had been been wet from sweat, as had been her whole hair. Presently, her cheeks had some spotless parts, running through the dirt that had accumulated in the form of multiple streaks, all starting from the corners of her eyes. As to what could have caused the tears, Chrom's mind offered multiple reasons, each one of them wrecking him inside.

The healer had done her job, leaving Chrom with some meager advice before taking off to help other wounded persons. Severa had tarried a while longer, but even she couldn't stay for too long. In the end, Chrom had been left alone with his granddaughter, mulling over his choices during the battle. One choice especially kept surfacing to the brim of his mind: his decision to charge off and to leave Morgan without any protection. What a master-stroke that had been. What a fool he was, to let the inferno burning deep inside him consume his mind momentarily and to blind him from the danger that eventually found itself upon the daughter of his closest friend; the sweet girl that did not deserve to be wounded in the way she had been, a rough slash halfway through the collarbone.

He reached for Morgan's wrapped shoulder, then stopped, realizing the gesture would do more harm than good. Though the girl was already in sleep, the pain from the touch would probably seep into her dreams, resulting in nightmares. He sighed, and once again fell against the tent canvas at his back, damning Robin's slow approach. The tactician was taking ages, and totally at the wrong time.

The tent flap moved aside, its movement tugging at the cloth at Chrom's back, urging the prince to jump up to his feet. Following the movement, a fellow stepped into the lantern light, his coat consisting of slithering purple against midnight black. He brushed it, to dust off the dirt, quickly stopping to hold it as if it were his own heart when his eyes found the girl lying on the bed. A short silence fell, one that Chrom hardly felt willing to indulge. "You sure took your time."

The tactician turned to look at him, his eyes slightly red in the lone lantern's weak and yellowish flicker. He swallowed. "Yes, well..." He squeezed his eyes shut, and eventually simply shook his head. "We'll get to my reasons momentarily. How's she?"

Chrom grimaced. "Blood loss and weapon-inflicted trauma," he said, feeling awkward at his choice of words when the tactician flinched. "But she'll live. The healer who took care of her promised as much."

Robin exhaled aloud in relief, then releasing the first few notes of nervous laughter. He moved his fluttering eyes to behold Morgan.

Chrom felt the tiredness dull his head still and decided to push the conversation forward, so that he could be done with it while it was still night-time. "And that other matter?"

Robin let out a sound much alike to one being choked. "About that," he said with a strained voice, "...I have both good news and bad news for you."

"I am not in the mood for games-"

"Just humour me, Chrom. Some things, they are too hard to share except by the way of questioning."

The prince shook his head and sighed. "I cannot say I understand your logic, but... Fine. Tell me your good news, then."

Robin turned away from the prince. "She's alive."

Chrom felt the doubt sneak in like a thief. "Lucina?"

"Yes, she. But the bad news is... She was wounded. Fractured ribs on the right side of her chest, and a crushed nose bridge. They said that last one will take at least a month to heal, since they can't expend any staff charges on healing bruises. She'll look somewhat awkward for a while."

A familiar kind of pressure began to constrict Chrom's head again. "Why didn't you look after her?" he asked, feeling the anger incite him to wrath. "Isn't that what you gave me your word for?"

"She charged ahead while I was giving orders!" Robin said, still facing away. "I didn't notice she was absent till the bloody wyvern was almost upon her!"

"You should have been more alert!" Chrom exploded, lifting his hand to grab the tactician's shoulder. It was then that he caught the look on Robin's face. It had been twisted by remorse, to the point of tears being unable to burst out.

The image from when he himself had mocked the choice previously made now flashed in Chrom's mind with incredible amounts of relateability. They were both same; they both despised the foolish choices made on the battlefield tonight.

Chrom also realized that it might not necessarily have been as much Robin's fault as it were his and a certain else's. Thinking that, he swallowed down the boiling anger and overzealous will to protect, lowering his hand. "Robin... We might be looking at this the wrong way."

"What do you mean?" Robin asked, turning around with his hands clenched into fists.

"Well...," Chrom stammered, feeling the furnace of fire finally die in the pit of his stomach. A gripping cold took its place, making the prince suddenly feel like retreating, even though there only was canvas at his back. "Like Lucina, I also left someone behind... Morgan wasn't wounded because I somehow failed to protect her. She was wounded because I wasn't there."

Robin's eyes grew sharp. "Then where in Valm were you?"

"Where the main battle was, staving off the brunt of the Valmese charge."

"Blazes, Chrom!" the tactician cursed, "Did you suddenly feel like repeating the Gangrel incident over? Do you remember what happened then?"

Chrom grimaced, then noticed that he was already touching the left side of his chest. He dropped his hand quickly, but it was too late; the tactician had already noticed the gesture.

"You do, don't you?" Robin asked, gesturing his open palm at Chrom. "Your place wasn't alone on the front lines, not during this one battle! You were supposed to protect Morgan, so why, why did you leave her alone?!" The tactician flicked his hand carelessly toward where Morgan lay on the bed, then lifted his fingers to rub his closed eyelids. A familiar habit. Robin'd repeated it dozen times before, whenever he'd had to deal with each individual battle's death count.

The tactician's disturbed, grimacing countenance was compelling enough of a reason for Chrom to turn away from him and look at Morgan's pallor-stricken features. He sighed in the tent's dead air.

The silence soon grew too uncomfortable to bear. "I guess we are both just really bad at looking out for each others' daughters," Chrom muttered.

The tactician exhaled fumes out of his mouth, then walked briskly past Chrom, to a bed roll next to the camp bed Morgan lay upon. He slumped down on the bundle with a prolonged grunt. After a while, he said, "I am inclined to agree," in a slightly trembling, angry-sounding voice. What he said drowned into another spell of stillness. "For now... It would make sense to have you look after Lucina during the battles, while I take care of Morgan. Later on-"

They both flinched as Morgan suddenly moaned weakly on the bed, her face slowly contorting, the grimace of her teeth flashing out. Robin's features grew rigid, as if to hide any oncoming emotion, and the frowns above his eyebrows deepened more than those of a man of his age should.

It took the tactician a while to gather his composure. "Later on... I think she'll be able to manage with Lucina. We both know they did well on the ship, and besides, I think that your daughter has more maternal instinct than she gives herself credit for."

"I concur," Chrom said, the many times when Lucina had turned her head in the middle of a conversation, to take note of where Morgan was, flashing in his mind. He then focused his mind back to the tactician, wondering if he should let him be. "Anything else? If not, I think I'll leave you two here and go catch some shut-eye... It has been a hectic day."

"Not so much of a day as a night," Robin quipped halfheartedly. He sighed, then grew still for an instant. "You know... If Morgan ever pairs with her mother again, we two will need to look after each other during the battles."

Chrom grunted in agreement. It was a rare occasion for him to be paired up with Sumia, anyway, as the pegasus knights rarely served proper purpose on the ground. Their strength lay within the free movements and the mobility they had in the sky. On feet, the knights' potential would simply go unrealized.

"So...," the tactician stammered, lowering his eyes to the ground, "Well, I just wanted to make sure that there isn't any more friction between us two, because of what happened today. That would be most... unfortunate."

It was a chance to be forever done with the subject, and Chrom seized it. "I'm willing to forget that this ever happened, if you are willing to forget my part in..." He found himself unable to utter the two words that should come next. They weren't that hard to say, or were not supposed to be, anyway. Yet still...

The tactician raised his head, facing him eye to eye. His brown eyes showed only one kind of emotion, one far away from the anger and frustration he had shown moments before. "I am."

Chrom shook himself, ridding his body of rigidity that had come from sitting down for so long. "Good. That is fine. Now, if you'll excuse me, I'll-"

"Yes, yes, you go catch your rest. I'll stay to look after Morgan, and maybe, just maybe, even sleep some."

"Right." Chrom walked toward the tent door, then stopped near the hardwood table that stood between the doorway and Morgan's bed. "Try to make her drink some," he said, gesturing his fingers at a wooden jug containing water. "Healer's recommendation."

"How much does she need to drink?"

"I doubt that she can swallow much in one go, so just make sure to keep her watered," Chrom answered.

"Right. Right..."

Chrom frowned. "You know, I could send someone to take care of Morgan, if you really want to catch that sleep."

"No," the tactician answered immediately, "I think I'll stay up for some time yet, to see that Morgan won't take a turn for worse."

"You know she won't," Chrom said, moving toward the tent door, "Those staffs are rather potent."

The tactician lowered his eyes. "Regardless... Wouldn't you do the same for Lucina?"

Chrom stopped at the tent flap and slowly turned to face his friend. "...Of course I would. Then again, Sumia is already on the job, and she would chew me out if she saw me anywhere near the healers' tent."

Robin chuckled. "That is true. And it is duty of the lord to sleep, while the rest of us stay up. Consider it the one privilege that you should abuse, whenever given the chance."

"It doesn't sit well with me to know that Sumia is staying up, though," Chrom grumbled. The tactician answered him with a half-smirk that claimed he knew how Chrom was feeling.

The prince shook his head, hiding a knowing smile. Then, with one hand raising the tent flap, he nodded Robin goodbye, and ducked under the tent door into the chilling night air that awaited outside. As he took his first steps away from Lucina's tent, navigating toward his own, a gust brought him the tactician's last words, each one nothing more than a whisper in the wind.

"Sleep well."

The prince sighed, half-expecting his breath to turn into vapor. In his mind, he sent words of gratitude to the tactician's persona, dearly hoping that the oncoming days would treat them better than this one already had.