A/N: Well, like Robin, I have returned from the dead. I'm sorry this took so long, and that I haven't responded to any reviews! I've been super busy.
And we've broken 100 reviews! Wow. I'm floored. I actually spent a pretty long time writing a special chapter and it turned out to be the most self-indulgent thing I've ever written. I'm undecided on whether or not to post it.
But anyway, more Modern!Robin and Chrom! The Robin in this chapter is the same as the Robin in Chapter 9. You should probably read that chapter before this one.
Sometimes, Chrom dreams of dragons.
In his dream, he is older and stronger, standing on a cliff overlooking the remnants of a battlefield. A white cloak billows about his shoulders in the harsh wind and he feels the weight of a sword in his hand. The land below him is devastated, burnt black and littered with what look like enormous, charred bones. His shoulders sag with weariness and a cold, creeping sensation of loneliness and loss burns in his chest. And in his mind's eye, the dragon appears, white and graceful, iridescent wings unfurling as it speaks to him.
I'm sorry, my son, it says, with a voice like the chiming of distant bells.
Chrom always wakes feeling shaken and more than a little bit confused.
In the end, he attributes these dreams to nothing more than the result of too many visits to the history museum and too many stories from his father (who, being a lover of all things ancient Ylissean, has never let Chrom forget the legacy of his namesake). The dreams are strange, but in the end they're just another quirky part of who he is, just like how his older (and normally unflappable) sister is irrationally terrified of heights, and like how his younger sister has an oddly intense desire to study medicine.
He tries not to let it bother him.
Sometimes, Robin dreams of dragons.
She dreams of a giant black serpent with great feathery wings that blot out the sun. Crazed laughter echoes in her ears and her vision is clouded with red. Someone is at her side, steadying her as she sways and speaking worriedly to her. They reach towards her and she raises her hand to pull herself upright—and she stabs them, a brilliant white blade shooting through her companion's chest like a bolt of lightning.
She wakes covered in sweat and gasping, bewildered and terrified.
Some days are worse than others. On some days Robin is able to attend class at her university, bike around on her old blue bicycle, and go about her day like a normal, functioning human being. But occasionally Robin will have days where she jumps at the slightest sound and spends minutes on end staring at her right hand, fighting the irrational feeling that something is missing.
She resolves to sleep more and tries not to think about it.
When Chrom turned from the mural of the Exalt and the High Deliverer to see a silver-haired woman standing next to him, he was suddenly caught up with the strange desire to say Finally, where have you been? and It's good to see you, and I've missed you, all at once. But thankfully, Chrom had just enough social tact to realize that saying any of the above to a total stranger would make him sound like a total lunatic, so instead he said, "Ah, are you here to see this painting too?"
And Robin nodded. She felt something in her click, like she was hearing the words to an old, beloved song that she'd half-forgotten. But Robin had more than enough common sense to refrain from putting the feeling into words, so instead she said, "It's only here for a while, right?"
"What do you think happens when we die?" Robin said.
"Huh?" Chrom replied eloquently. After their impromptu meeting at the museum had ended, Chrom had turned to her and somewhat awkwardly said that he'd enjoyed talking to her and he knew that he was being weird, but he felt like they could be good friends, and was there any chance that they could meet again (platonically, of course) somewhere? And Robin, in a strange moment of apparent stupidity, had given an almost-stranger her phone number and told him that she could only do weekends and Friday because she had class.
Chrom had gone home in disbelief that it had worked and half-convinced that the events of the afternoon had been a very realistic dream. Robin had gone home wondering if she had lost her mind.
And now the two of them are seeing movies and sitting on park benches feeding ducks together.
"Why do you ask?" Chrom said, throwing a crust of bread into the water, where it was set upon by five greedy-looking mallards. He felt vaguely uneasy, but couldn't explain why.
"Because if there's a hell," Robin said, idly scratching at the back of her hand, "I'm pretty sure I'll be forced to watch the Knights of Ylisse movie over and over again for the rest of eternity."
"Oh my god," Chrom groaned, emptying his bag of crumbs into the lake. "That movie was terrible."
"Yeah, I can't believe we spent twenty dollars and an entire afternoon to go see it," Robin said. The two of them do this sometimes—one of them starts a conversation and the two of them bounce thoughts off each other until they're both so worked up they're practically yelling. "I'm pretty certain that such revealing armor is neither historically accurate or practical—remember that wyvern rider? Her entire back was bare!"
"Speaking of historical accuracy, you know what I hated?" Chrom said, wiping his hands on his pants. "That stupid subplot with the High Deliverer sacrificing themselves to kill Grima. Where was that in the history books!? And Chrom—the Exalt, I mean, not me—just stood by and let them do it! If—if they were really such good friends, I think they should have tried something different."
Robin frowned. "I disagree. Even though the plot twist did come out of nowhere," she said. "I still think it was the best option and probably inevitable."
"No way."
"Yes way." Robin tossed her last scrap of bread into the water and turned to face him. "Okay, let's go along with this weird scenario and pretend everything in that movie actually happened. Look, we don't know a lot about the High Deliverer—we don't know their name or their personality or even their gender, but what all scholars and historians agree on was that they held the lives of their friends and comrades above all else. I don't think that kind of person would see any other real option besides the sacrifice."
"But they left behind those friends and comrades," Chrom argued, curling his hands into fists. "And Grima would have been killed anyways!"
"Yeah, but only for a thousand years, or whatever the convoluted condition the screenwriters put in was," Robin said impatiently, glaring at him with intense exasperation. "Imagine, if the High Deliverer hadn't sacrificed themselves, we'd be fighting Grima now with tanks and missiles and whatever."
The argument paused as both of them fell silent for a few seconds to contemplate the image that Robin had conjured. At their feet, a duck quacked.
"I wonder who would win," Chrom said slowly. "A evil dragon spirit or an aircraft carrier."
"I think you'd need more than one aircraft carrier to kill Grima," Robin said, resting her chin on her hand. Her eyes misted over as she stared off into the distance. "Maybe…I dunno, if you distracted it by hitting it from the air…maybe you could use drones, not airplanes, or else the pilots would all be killed…"
"Are you seriously cooking up a strategy to fight a one thousand year-old, probably fictional, evil dragon with drones?" Chrom said.
"No," Robin lied.
Chrom laughed, stretching lazily, and stood up. "Why are we actually arguing over this movie? Let's go," he said, offering Robin his hand and smiling at her. Robin took it and pulled herself up.
"A nuclear bomb could work," she said as the two of them began to stroll down the sunny pathway. "Maybe."
"Remind me again," Robin said, grumpily shaking damp sand out of her shoes for the fourth time, "why I'm here."
The salty sea wind ruffled Chrom's hair as he glanced down at her. He'd kicked off his shoes a while ago and was walking barefoot through the sand. "We're friends?" he suggested, picking up a seashell and idly examining it.
"Explicate," Robin said. She poured the last granules of sand out and slipped her shoes back on.
"Liz wanted to go to the beach with her boyfriend," Chrom said, spitting the last word out with a tone so sarcastic that Robin had to bite back a laugh. "And I couldn't let my little sister go off with a boy by herself, could I? Who knows what they'd get up to. I had to come."
"And what about me?" Robin said.
Chrom hmmed thoughtfully, turning the seashell from side to side. "We're friends," he said eventually, satisfied with this answer.
Robin groaned. "Do our eternal and undying bonds of friendship mean I can drag you along to jury duty next week?"
"What—ack!" Chrom dropped the seashell. "There was something alive in there!"
Robin bent over and picked up the shell gingerly. "It's just a hermit crab, I think. So that's a yes to jury duty?"
"No thank you—I don't think that'd even be legal," Chrom said, carefully peering at the red-and-white shell in her hand. From the narrow opening, a set of small pincers emerged and the hermit crab peered back at him with beady black eyes.
"Too bad," Robin said. She set the crab down and they watched it scuttle away across the sand. "The case is hilarious. Apparently some guy broke into a bank and stole a boatload of cash. And the police didn't catch him." she snickered at the memory. "But he got caught on a security camera when he broke into a candy shop an hour later." she glanced at him.
"Pretty funny," Chrom commented, picking up a long piece of driftwood. He waved it dramatically through the air like a sword. It was a ridiculous sight and the corners of Robin's mouth curved upwards. "Still," he said, planting the stick in the sand, "I don't think jury duty and a trip to the beach are the same. Jury duty's boring. Beaches are nice."
"Beaches are okay," Robin admitted. "It's a bit cold today."
Chrom glanced curiously at her. "It's not that bad."
Robin shrugged, pulling her coat more tightly about her and tugging her hood on over her head. "I never did well with the cold. My mother used to joke that I should have been born in a desert. Hey, is that a tide pool?"
Damp sand forgotten, Robin shuffled her way toward the rocks, egged on by the thought of poking at interesting animals. Chrom followed at a more sedate pace, glancing up every once in a while to keep a suspicious eye on Liz and her companion. He trailed the stick thoughtfully in the damp sand, absently digging it into the ground. Without really thinking about it, he began to scrawl large letters in the sand.
"Chrom! Chrom! Check it out!" Robin shouted, stomping over excitedly and holding a round-shelled…thing in her hands. "Look what I caught! Isn't it weird? Hey—" she cut the thought short and frowned, staring down at the sand as Chrom finished the last letter and propped the stick over his shoulder.
"Chrom & Robin Were Here," she read. "Huh. What inspired this?"
Chrom shook his head slowly. "I have no idea," he said. "I guess I thought it'd be fun."
Robin's thoughtful frown turned into an pleased grin. "I like it," she said decisively.
"Well," Chrom said, turning towards her. "I'm glad—oh dear god what is that thing!?" he shrieked, snapping the stick in two.
Robin looked at the ridge-shelled, slug-like animal in her hand. It curled up, very slowly. "I have no idea," she said.
The battle was at a turning point, both armies in the midst of a brutal and tense brawl. The next few action would surely decide the outcome of the fight: victory, or despair. No move could afford to be wasted. Robin's brow furrowed as she stared at the battlefield. She had to think this through very, very carefully.
"You've been stuck on that level for a long time," Chrom commented, peering over her shoulder to glance down at the DS she held in her hand. "Is it that hard of a game?"
Robin groaned and slumped deeper into the couch. "No," she said, staring determinedly at the screen. She pressed a few buttons, and a tiny pixel image of a soldier flitted over to the other side of the map. "But I'm trying to make it through the game with zero deaths."
Chrom attempted to somersault gracefully over the back of the couch and land beside where Robin was sitting. Of course, Chrom being Chrom, it was more of a slide than a somersault and he ended up on the ground.
"Ten out of ten," Robin commented. "The Olympics are missing a major talent. Ah, shit!" she cursed as a wave of hostile soldiers moved closer to her own army. The war was escalating. She watched in trepidation as one of her units was surrounded by no less than four enemies.
"How's it going?" Chrom said, clambering back up onto the sofa and craning his head to see the screen. He was just in time to see a beautifully rendered animation display the untimely death of one of Robin's units. She let out a yell of frustration, yanked the cartridge out of its slot, and threw it across the room.
"Ouch," Chrom said weakly.
"Everything. Was. Going. So. Well!" Robin exploded. Carefully, Chrom removed the DS from her grasp before she decided to throw it too. "This is—this is just unrealistically hard! I can only plan for events and enemies that would realistically happen, not something as stupid as three critical hits in a row!"
Chrom cast about for an appropriate response. His brain came up with absolutely nothing, so instead he settled for: "Can I try?"
Robin paused her rant and stared at him in surprise. "Have you played this game before?" she asked.
"No," Chrom admitted. "It seems fun, though—at least, when it's not being completely ridiculous," he added hastily, remembering at the last moment Robin's foul mood. "So can I give it a shot?"
"Sure, then," Robin said after a short pause, pushing herself up and walking to the other side of the room to pick up the cartridge. "Just be warned: I'm playing on the hardest difficulty, so things are…unfair." she tossed the cartridge at him, and he caught it easily.
"How bad can it be?" he said, slipping it into the slot.
Three minutes later, Chrom slammed his thumb into the power button and shoved the DS back at Robin.
"Wow," Robin said gingerly, taking it back. "I've, erm, never seen such…unorthodox tactics before."
Chrom groaned and flopped his head back. At least the embarrassment had been over quickly.
"You, uh…" Robin fidgeted and patted him on the arm in consolation. "You want to try again?"
"Never," Chrom said vehemently. It'd seemed like fun, until he'd ended his turn and realized just how out of his depth he was. "I'll leave the tactics to you, thanks."
The knife hadn't gone in too deep—thankfully, it'd only been a smallish knife and the attacker had missed the vitally important body parts. Still, it'd hurt like crazy, and Chrom had bled all over his favorite jacket. And nearly passed out. And had to be sent to the hospital. Where he was now, staring absently out the window with his upper torso smothered in bandages, with strict instructions not to move. His back itched, but swaddled as he was in layers of gauze, he couldn't even scratch it.
Well, he reflected, at least he hadn't died.
He heard footsteps in the hallway, approaching, then stopping outside his door. He perked up hopefully—maybe Liz or Emily had bought something for him to do.
The door slammed open. Robin strode into the room like an approaching thunderstorm, a look of mixed disbelief, concern, and frustration on her pale face. She stopped dead in her tracks and stared at him incredulously, one hand still clenching the doorknob tightly.
Never mind. Chrom was almost certainly going to die.
"Do you want to know something interesting?" Robin said in a deceptively calm voice. "You didn't call or text me for three days, which is strange because normally you feel compelled to tell me every single thing that happens to you. So I called your house and your butler picked up, and after I endured a twenty-minute long interrogation session, he finally decided I wasn't some psychotic stalker and deigned to tell me that you were in the hospital because you'd been stabbed."
"Uh," Chrom said. He wondered if he would make it if he dived out the window.
"But that isn't all!" Robin said, twirling a strand of hair around her finger and leaning against the doorframe. "But I ran into Liz just now, and she told me something even more interesting. She said that you'd run off into an alleyway when you heard the sounds of a struggle and tried to punch out a mugger. Who had a knife. With your bare fists."
"Yes," Chrom protested weakly, "yes, I did, but—"
"There is no but!" Robin exploded. "It was stupid, Chrom!"
"Well, what was I supposed to have done?" Chrom replied loudly, raising himself upright in agitation. "Just stand by and let someone get mugged? Because I'd make the same decision again if it meant I could stop someone from getting hurt."
"You could have yelled for help before charging in. You could have called the police."
"That's not—" Chrom said heatedly. "Robin, that isn't—"
"Did you even stop to consider another option?" Robin snapped. "What if he'd had a gun? You literally could have been shot! You could have died, Chrom! Damn it, we've been over this already!"
Chrom paused. "We have?" he said, momentarily distracted.
Robin stopped, frowning. "Hold that thought," she muttered. "…actually, no, we haven't. Why did I think—?"
"Robin," Chrom said hastily, sensing an opening in Robin's verbal onslaught and springing to claim the advantage. "Look. If I see someone hurt or in need, then I'm going to help them. That's just who I am, and there's no changing it."
She stopped and stared at him, then gave a long sigh. "I know," she said more quietly. "…Hey. I shouldn't have yelled at you. It's your decision, and…it was a well-intentioned thing you did. Noble, some people might call it." she laughed, but it didn't reach her eyes. "Still. In the future, can you at least try to be more careful?"
"Alright, mom," Chrom joked half-heartedly. Robin smiled slightly.
"I, er, brought you something," she said after a pause, reaching into her bag. "To pass the time." she glanced up at him hopefully.
Chrom perked up noticeably. "What is it?"
Robin's smile turned into a full-fledged grin when she noticed the boyish excitement on his face. "I dunno," she said deliberately, "I could give it to you now, or I could wait…"
"Give it to me now!" Chrom said, sitting up as much as his injured shoulder would let him and staring at her pleadingly. "Come on, Robin. Please?"
"You are literally five years old," Robin said affectionately. "Here—" and she thrust a large hardcover book at him. Chrom took it gingerly and glanced at the cover. He did a double take.
"This is that book!" he sputtered. "The one we saw at the bookstore!"
"The one Liz and I had to drag you away from?" Robin said wryly. "Yeah, it's that book."
With slightly shaky hands Chrom caressed the cover. The front of the book showed a section of a breathtaking painted mural, the same mural that he and Robin had met in front of at the museum. The Exalt—Chrom's namesake—stood proudly, his white cape billowing in the wind and light glinting off the edge of the holy sword Falchion. By his side stood his loyal tactician, only remembered as the High Deliverer—pictured in a dark hood, with lightning snaking through their fingertips. The title was printed with bold letters: "AWAKENING: THE UNTOLD STORY OF YLISSE'S SHEPHERDS".
"I, uh, may have read it before I gave it to you," Robin admitted sheepishly. "It's a good book."
"I know!" Chrom said. He was already leafing through the pages in excitement. "Here, this is what I was reading when you and Liz arrived—they found some remnants of the High Deliverer's own logbook—look!" he held up the book. Robin smiled despite herself and pulled up a chair to sit beside him and peer over his shoulder.
Liz returned five minutes later to find the two of them staring at the pages and muttering about battlefield maneuvers. "Nerds," she declared affectionately.
The door opened, then shut.
"Home early?" Liz said, looking away from the television to glance up at her older brother. Chrom entered the room, hair ruffled, with a pensive expression on his face.
"Yeah," he said. He slung his bag off his shoulder and set it down.
"I thought you and Robin went fencing," said Liz.
Chrom nodded, frowning slightly. "Yeah, I didn't even know she fenced till she mentioned it. So we thought it'd be fun to spar with each other," he said. "But, uh, we stopped early." The television blared on in the background.
"Why?"
"I accidentally took a fencing jacket that was one size too small. It slipped up when I lifted my arm and she hit me in the side." he shrugged, looking slightly embarrassed. "I kinda fell over."
"You fell over!?" Liz said incredulously.
"I was surprised and tripped!" Chrom exclaimed. "Anyway, it hurt, but I was okay. Robin reacted weirdly, though."
"What'd she do?"
Chrom absently rubbed the growing bruise at his side, wincing at the soreness. "It was almost like she was scared. By the way she was apologizing, you'd think she thought that she killed me or something."
A/N: I felt like exploring the more light-hearted side of this Robin's dynamic with Chrom. It was really fun.
In case anyone is wondering, the animal Robin found is called a chiton! I found a huge one in a tide pool once and it was super weird.
