A/N: Sorry for the wait but here's a brand-new version of Robin! I'm not sure how well I characterized her, so I'd love feedback!
Thank you to everyone who reviewed! I love hearing from you guys, it really makes my day.
EDIT: Also I just realized it's been a year since I started this story! Whoo!
Chrom tapped, carefully and deliberately, on the wall of the tent. Robin was not someone who liked being surprised. Most of the Shepherds had discovered this the hard way, after a sudden intrusion into her personal space led to a panicked yell at best, or a Thunder to the face at worst. Eventually, after healing the third victim of Robin's knee-jerk reactions, Libra had carefully crafted a sign that said, in elegant lettering: "PLEASE KNOCK BEFORE ENTERING" and hung it on the entrance of Robin's tent without further comment. Robin had not mentioned the new addition to her abode, but she also had not taken it down, which likely meant that she approved.
There was no response from inside the tent. Chrom knocked again, more firmly this time.
"Ah! Yes!" Robin called from inside the tent. "Come in!"
Smiling faintly, Chrom pushed aside the tent flap and ducked inside. As usual, the inside of Robin's tent looked like a hurricane had hit it. Books and loose sheets of paper lay strewn over the desk, chairs, floor, and even the sleeping mat. Maps dangled haphazardly, strung from the poles that propped up the inside of the tent. The Levin's Sword had been propped up against a chair, its jagged tip digging into the ground. Chrom carefully picked it up and set it on the weapon rack where it belonged.
Robin was standing at her desk, staring down at a map. In the brief length of time it had taken Chrom to enter, she seemed to have already forgotten he was there. Her gaze bored into the map as she frowned in concentration, totally engrossed in her work.
Chrom walked over, stepping over the objects scattered on the floor. As he neared her desk, he coughed politely and she glanced up at him.
"It's time to eat," he said.
"Chrom! I wanted to see you!" she said excitedly, as if she hadn't heard him speak. A quick grin flitted across her face. "Here, look at this—" and she reached out an arm to drag him over to the table. He glanced down at the rumpled sheet of parchment. Robin had placed differently-colored clay figurines on various parts of terrain and scrawled notes in the margin with her scribbly handwriting.
"Look—" Robin jabbed an ink-stained finger down at the parchment. "The bandits are camped out on the edge of this forest, next to this mountain here. Their mistake! They're sandwiched between the trees and the cliffs; that makes it hard to maneuver. We smoke them out with fire and they'll be forced to retreat north—" and she pushed the group of tiny red figures across the map. "They'll flee into this valley—the locals call it Wyvern's Mouth—and we'll ambush them from the front and the back. Checkmate!" she knocked the clay soldiers over with an exuberant sweep of her hand.
Chrom hmm-ed, looking carefully at the map. "That does sound good," he said after a pause, "but it isn't guaranteed that they'll retreat toward Wyvern's Mouth. Look—" he tapped another section of the map. "They could also flee toward the west, into the plains. Surely they would realize that it'd be the better option?"
Robin frowned again, surprised frustration flashing across her face. "Ah—um, well—no, no they wouldn't. Their leader—we fought him before, remember? He thought we would—do you see?" she said, agitation leaking into her voice. She began to absently twist the fabric of her coat with one hand.
Chrom held up his hands. By now he was used to Robin's assumption that everyone possessed the ability to read the subtle tricks and details of warfare as well as she did. "Come on, Robin," he said placatingly, reaching out and prying her tense fingers loose from the folds of the fabric. "Slow down and explain."
She took a deep breath, exhaling with a sigh and impatiently brushing the wild strands of salmon-colored hair out of her eyes. "Right. The leader of the bandits," she said more slowly, pausing as she spoke to choose her words. "We fought him before and I—he's too cautious, paranoid. When he was about to rout us and we retreated, he hung back because he thought we would spring an ambush. He rarely advanced, even though his bandits outnumbered us, and attacked with projectiles instead. And when we were chasing him, he made them flee into the marsh instead of the hills, even though the hills would have been an easier retreat—he did that because he thought we were chasing him into the hills to set a trap. He chose the marsh even though it was a harder retreat, because he thought that I would think he would head for the hills. Does…that make sense?" she closed her eyes and sagged against the desk, as though the act of unraveling her thoughts was almost physically strenuous. "If he thinks we're chasing him toward the plains, he'll retreat into Wyvern's Mouth Valley. That's just how he thinks."
It took Chrom a second to process the stream of information. "You figured all of that out from one skirmish we had?" he said, impressed. "That's amazing. How did you know?"
Robin opened her eyes and reached for a quill, bending down to scrawl another note in the corner of the map. "I just do," she said heavily, in a voice without her usual energy. Now that Chrom was closer, he could see the dark shadows under her eyes and the paleness of her skin.
"When was the last time you ate something?" he said, reminded of why he'd come into the tent in the first place.
Robin vaguely and half-heartedly waved a hand. "Yesterday…evening?" she said. "I had…an apple. I think." she trailed off, staring vacantly at a spot somewhere over his shoulder.
Chrom sighed. "Robin," he said gently. "You need food and sleep like the rest of us. In that aspect, we're still similar." Although privately, he sometimes thought that needing food and sleep was one of the few things Robin had in common with the rest of the Shepherds. Even in an army that included the last taguel and an immortal dragon, at times Robin was still the strangest member of the Shepherds. The inside of her mind seemed to be a strange, cluttered place, filled with numbers, facts, and obscure strategies. When she was deep in thought her thoughts seemed to buzz around her like a swarm of flies, clouding her eyes and blocking her from the outside world.
"Robin," he said, tugging the quill out of her grasp. She blinked dumbly at her empty hand, as if she couldn't quite figure out where the quill had gone. "Food."
Robin glanced up at him, a flash of some undecipherable emotion in her eyes. It looked like she was looking through him instead of at him. Chrom, for a brief moment, entertained the idea that there were two different sides to Robin: the somewhat spontaneous but friendly Robin who liked to laugh at Virion's sly jokes, and the Robin who lived in a distant world of tactics and calculations and forgot to do things like sleep.
Thankfully, this seemed to be one of Robin's better days, because his words reached her and she stepped around the desk to join him. "Is it lunch?" she said, in a more normal-sounding voice.
"Dinner," Chrom said, steering her away from the table.
"Ah." she leaned against him.
At first, Robin had not been the most popular new recruit that Chrom had introduced.
"She is…unorthodox in her behavior," Maribelle said delicately, when he'd dropped by to ask her what she thought of their new tactician, a few weeks after Robin had became a Shepherd. When he'd pressed her further, she'd delicately raised a porcelain teacup to her mouth and changed the subject.
Sully had been more straightforward in her analysis. "She's weird as hell," she said bluntly. "I dunno what's running through her head half the time. It's a bit creepy."
But creepy or not, Robin was undoubtedly the finest tactician Chrom—or even Ylisse—had ever seen, and the rest of the Shepherds had to agree after she saved them from several close calls. Most of this was thanks to her nearly uncanny ability to tell what her opponent was thinking, whether it was during large-scale war campaigns or something as small as a sparring match.
"Oof!" Chrom grunted as Robin ducked beneath his slash and drove the hilt of her sword into his stomach. He backed up and angled his sword upwards, aiming to stab her in the back, but Robin danced away just before the blunt tip of the wooden practice sword hit her. Although she wasn't nearly as good a sword-fighter as he was, she always seemed to know exactly where he was going to strike next. He retreated slightly, eyeing her warily. For a moment he was struck by the burning intensity of her gaze and his breath caught in his throat.
Robin attacked first. She lunged forward with surprising speed, angling her blow to stab him in the side. Chrom managed to block the hit, noting that her movements were slightly slower than before. Despite her quick thinking, she just didn't have the stamina that he did. He aimed a blow at the hilt of her sword to try and disarm her, and felt encouraged when she veered aside clumsily instead of blocking the hit. He began a series of quick slashes, forcing her backwards. She had to be getting tired by now, it was just a matter of time—
But Robin was no longer there. With a sudden burst of energy, she ducked under his arm when he overreached one of his strikes. And then she was pressed up against him, the blade of her wooden sword tucked against the curve of his throat, digging meaningfully into his skin. Chrom's breath hitched in surprise and he stumbled, cursing inwardly. She'd known he would get reckless—Naga, but she was good at her job!
"Yield," Robin said. Her face was very close to his; he could feel her breath puffing against his cheek. He swallowed a groan and leaned his head back to avoid the edge of the sword.
"I yield," he said, his voice rough. Robin released him and backed away, panting slightly. "Well fought," he said, planting his sword in the dirt and leaning on it for support.
Robin smiled at him, an intense, wide grin that disappeared quickly. Sparring always seemed to clear the thoughts from her head, and she looked more relaxed than he had ever seen her.
"It's not fair. You know me too well," he joked. She brushed the flyaway strands of hair out of her eyes, uncharacteristically too tired for words, and made a face at him. He laughed in response.
"Maybe whatever took away her memory also scrambled her brains a bit."
"Don't be rude!"
"What? I'm just telling the truth."
"All right, that's enough," Chrom said warningly, half-rising from his seat. Sully, Vaike, and Stahl saw him staring reprimandingly at them and cringed, their expressions ranging from embarrassed to repentant.
"Robin is a valuable member of the Shepherds and a strategic genius," said Chrom authoritatively. "I understand that some of her tendencies may seem—" he paused, remembering when Robin had walked straight into a tree in the midst of planning a battlefield maneuver. Then he hastily continued: "—strange. But I won't allow anyone to make her feel unwelcome," he said pointedly.
Vaike scoffed and rubbed at his forehead. "Look, the Teach is just calling it like he sees it. She ain't all here." he was about to continue, but caught sight of Chrom's expression and shut his mouth quickly. He looked unapologetic.
Chrom was now in the uncomfortable position of defending his new recruit against one of his strongest soldiers and his oldest friend. He sighed, rubbing his forehead tiredly. "Vaike," he said. "I trust Robin. You're going to have to trust me on this."
Vaike stared at him, his fingers curling briefly around the hilt of his axe. "Fine," he conceded. "But the Teach still isn't convinced," he added hastily, determined to have the last word.
Three weeks later, Robin stopped Vaike from charging straight into an ambush that almost certainly would have killed him. "Alright," he said to Chrom later, "she's smart. But still a little bonkers."
When Chrom had extended his hand to Robin after he had found her lying unconscious in the grass, his first thought (after he saw her open her eyes) was how stormy her gaze was, like there was a hurricane of thoughts tussling about behind her eyes.
Then Robin had taken his hand with a firm grip and said casually, like nothing was wrong: "Oh, Chrom. I'm glad to see you again," and he'd dropped her hand in shock because he was pretty sure that he wasn't supposed to recognize a complete stranger he'd found in a random field.
It didn't help that Robin had continued to nonchalantly and stubbornly insist that she knew him, she was certain she knew him ("Is this a joke, Chrom? I don't get it, if it is"), even if she apparently remembered absolutely anything else. If Southtown hadn't exploded a few minutes later, it would have probably taken an act of Naga to stop the highly suspicious Frederick from skewering her right then and there.
Even after he'd grudgingly accepted her as a member of the Shepherds, what seemed to really drive Frederick (and a few others, truth be told) up the wall was Robin's status as a walking bundle of paradoxes.
"Robin," said Miriel one day when the Shepherds were all eating breakfast together, "I remain interested in the book you described yesterday detailing the connection between a unified theory of falling and wind magic. Could you inform me of its whereabouts?"
Robin, who had been devouring a plateful of eggs with great gusto (she tended to eat a lot, once she actually remembered to eat) looked up and swallowed. "It's in the library," she said.
Chrom coughed. The royal library was very large and it was incredibly easy to get lost amidst the near-identical shelves; he knew this from his many childhood attempts to hide from Frederick. Thankfully, most of the Shepherds were well acquainted with Robin's occasionally vague or nonsensical attempts at explanations. Miriel raised an eyebrow but said, "I would like a more detailed description of its location, please."
"Okay," said Robin. "Enter the library, take a left, walk past two bookshelves, then a left, then a right again, past one bookshelf, left, into the side room, right past two bookshelves and the window, then another right, past one bookshelf. It's in the second shelf on the right, on the end of the third row. It has a green cover and yellow lettering. The passage you're looking for is in chapter twelve, around page two-hundred-and-two."
There was a pause as the nearby Shepherds digested this. Robin reached over and stole Chrom's apple.
"Um," Sumia, another frequent visitor of the royal library, said slowly. "How did you remember all that, Robin?"
"I saw it in the library," said Robin. She picked up a knife and began to peel the apple meticulously.
"Oh," Lissa said. "Like, yesterday, you mean?"
"No, three and a half weeks ago," said Robin. She bit into the apple with a crunch.
Later in the day, Chrom happened to overhear Frederick corner Robin in a corridor. "Robin," he said calmly, "I seem to recall that this morning I was supposed to instruct you on how to best use a javelin."
Robin frowned, a distant expression flashing across her face. "Oh. Um. Yes. We were."
"I waited for you near the training grounds. You didn't come."
"I forgot," Robin said.
"I reminded you at breakfast," Frederick said shortly.
Robin looked embarrassed. "I forgot," she said again, more defensively.
Frederick sighed, and Chrom tensed, digging his fingers into the wall and wondering if he should intervene. But instead all the knight said was: "Is there a way I can help you remember?"
Surprised, Robin blinked and relaxed. The two of them began to talk about schedules and lists (if anyone was good at organizing, it was Frederick), and Chrom slipped away, exhaling in relief. All in all, it was a pretty good day.
Today wasn't one of Robin's good days. In fact, it wasn't really a good day for anyone.
"Open the door," Chrom said, pounding frustratedly on the sturdy oak door. It refused to budge. Robin refused to respond. "Robin. I need to know you're all right in there."
Still no response. He let his hand fall to his side with a sigh. The Shepherd's last excursion hadn't been nearly as successful as they'd hoped. A sudden rainstorm had devastated the fire trap that Robin had set, forcing her to revise her plans on the spot. The result had been a prolonged battle through terrain that became increasingly muddy and hard to navigate. A good chunk of the Risen horde they were fighting managed to escape, and to make matters worse, the Shepherds had suffered serious damage: Virion had been surrounded and nearly killed, Panne's leg was wounded so badly that the healers were uncertain if she would ever walk normally again, and after their hasty retreat to Ylisstol, Robin had refused all medical attention and locked herself in her room.
A frustrated groan worked its way up Chrom's throat. He hoped that Robin was just being unresponsive and that she hadn't passed out on the floor. How much of the blood that soaked her coat had been from her enemies, and how much had been from her? Suddenly seized by fear, he pounded on the door again. "Robin! Robin, answer me! Please, Robin!"
There was a long pause, then he heard her, from inside the room, reply "here," in such a defeated, tired voice that he felt his chest clench in sympathy.
"Robin," he said again, exhaling in relief. "Come on. Let me in."
Silence again. Clearly, Robin was not in the mood to see anyone. Chrom turned around, leaning his head against the door and sliding downwards until he was sitting with his back against the door.
"I just want to help," he said to the empty hallway. Robin did not respond. He sighed, leaning into the wood, wondering what to say. After a long, thoughtful pause, he spoke.
"There were other Shepherds," he said, "before you came. You never met them."
More silence in response.
"They died," Chrom continued, closing his eyes and feeling the old ache of grief return. "Cut down on the battlefield, or succumbed to wounds days later in the infirmaries. I was less experienced, and I made mistakes." he shrugged helplessly. "It wasn't always completely my fault, but…" he broke off, clutching the hem of his tunic tightly in one fist. "I still wondered. If I'd thought of a different strategy, or been more careful, then maybe they would have..." he opened his eyes and stared at the ceiling. "Emmeryn helped me through it. She talked me down when I was frightened and angry. I'd like to help you, too, if you'll let me."
He heard the faint sounds of movement behind the door, and decided to try one more time.
"Robin," he said. "It wasn't your fault."
More shuffling from inside the room, and then the sound of the door unlocking. Chrom stood up hastily and opened the door before Robin could change her mind. He pushed it open and stepped in.
As messy as all of Robin's living spaces normally were, this time even Chrom was taken aback by the state of her room. The room was dim, but he could see that maps and sheets of paper had been shredded, the scraps lying all over the floor. Chairs had been overturned, the Levin's Sword was embedded in the remnants of a desk, and Robin was standing in the middle of the mess, staring at him. The blankness he saw in her eyes terrified him and he closed the distance between them in a few quick steps to grasp her shoulders with both hands.
"Everything's going to be all right," he said gently. She was shaking slightly, shuddering as he brought one hand up to stroke her hair, and suddenly she was bursting into a stream of words.
"I can't help it—I didn't—I couldn't—I need to, Chrom—I'm the tactician, I have to—"
"No," Chrom said firmly. "You can't predict everything, and it's unrealistic to think that you'd be able to. You're not a god, Robin. It's fine that you can't do everything at once."
She let out a shaky, humorless laugh, and suddenly Chrom could see a strange light in her eyes. "Oh, but I can! I can see everything, Chrom, I can see the strengths and weaknesses of every soldier in every battle, I can see how long it would take to kill each of them, I can track their plans—their movements—all of it's laid out before me like a grid on a table, and I don't know how but if I can see so much and still lose a battle because of a raincloud—" she spat the word out angrily. "—then why am I—why didn't—what use am I?"
"Robin," Chrom said in a desperate attempt to calm her down. "Robin, what are you talking about?"
She lifted her head to stare into his eyes, with a gaze that seems to look right through him. "Chrom," she said in a flat tone, "If one of those Risen with an iron sword had hit you three times, you would have died."
A chill crept up his spine. He tried to say something, but was at a loss for words. What could he possibly say, anyways?
Robin lowered her head again, resting it against his chest. "Sully called me crazy once," she said, exhausted from her sudden burst of intensity. "I know she wouldn't now, but—" her voice broke. "I don't want to be crazy. I don't want to be different."
Chrom rested his chin on her head. He could feel her trembling slightly as he thought about what he could possibly say to save her from whatever she was going through. But there wasn't anything he could do alone, was there? He could help her, but ultimately this was something Robin had to work out for herself.
"I don't think," he said eventually, "that just because you think a bit differently from the rest of us, that it's a bad thing." Her shoulders tensed and her fingers curled into a fist around the hem of his tunic, and he continued: "And besides, it'd be uninteresting if we were all exactly the same." Chrom faltered at that. He'd never been one for eloquent speeches.
Robin tilted her head to look up at him, her hair falling into her eyes. She opened her mouth, closed it, then shook her head and laughed at something only she could hear. "Thank you," she said quietly, the words escaping her mouth with a wistful sigh.
"Any time. But we should get to the infirmary," Chrom said, breaking the silence and attempting to pry himself out of Robin's grasp. It didn't really work and she clung onto him stubbornly.
"Don't wanna," Robin muttered.
"Come on."
"Nuh."
In the end, Chrom picked Robin up, mud-covered longcoat and all, and forcibly carried her to the infirmary. She made half-complaining noises all the way there and smeared dirt all over his hair in retaliation.
Slow days were rare for the Shepherds, but it so happened that on a warm sunny afternoon in Ylisstol, all of them found themselves lounging about the training fields with very little to do. Most of them were simply sitting or even lying in the grass, but a few of them were busy; Libra was patiently watching over Panne as she struggled to walk with her newly healed leg, Nowi had devised a impromptu game of keep-away with Donnel, and Chrom was dragging Robin outside.
"Don't be so stubborn," Chrom said, half-tempted to pick her up again as she dug her heels into the ground. "Sunlight will do you some good."
"I don't like sun," Robin insisted, attempting to twist out of his grasp. He was physically strong than her, but she was pretty good at wriggling away. "I want to read," she said.
"You can do that outside, with the rest of us," said Chrom. Robin paused, briefly defeated in the face of such dexterous logic. "And anyway," he continued incredulously, "who doesn't like the sunshine?"
She made a face at him. "Fine," she said, ceasing her attempts to dart back indoors. Chrom grinned and let go of her, reasonably certain that she wouldn't try to run while he was distracted. He herded her into an especially sunny patch of grass and plopped down with a satisfied sigh. Robin sat down next to him and opened her book, frowning in the bright sunlight.
"What are you reading?" Chrom asked.
"Hm?" said Robin distractedly. "Oh. A historical record about the Hero-King Marth. This passage—" she tapped the page with an ink-stained finger. "—is about his personal guard, Kris." she looked up at him briefly. "It's fascinating. There's not much surviving record of Kris, even though she seems to have been an important person."
Chrom hmmed in acknowledgement and leaned back, basking in the warm light. "I read something once—" he began.
"I am surprised," said Robin.
"Hey! I don't spend all my time swinging swords," Chrom protested.
"That's true, you also nap."
Chrom pulled up a fistful of grass and threw it at Robin. The shreds of grass landed in her hair and she glared at him. "Anyway," he said, "When my father was the Exalt he once brought back a dusty scroll that he said was from a faraway land. The scroll was written by a woman who was a famous warrior."
"Right," said Robin, who looked like she wanted to get back to her own book.
"In the scroll, she talked about one of her closest friends, a man named Mark," said Chrom. "She said—" he paused. "She said that he was a well-loved soldier and a brilliant tactician, and that the two of them had met when she found him unconscious in a field."
Now Robin sat up, suddenly paying the utmost attention. Chrom shifted under her intense gaze and turned to stare into the distance.
"Gods, this is going to sound embarrassing, but sometimes…" he laughed quietly. "Sometimes, I feel like we're being guided along our paths by some invisible hand. Some unknown fate." he turned to look at her. Robin was staring at him with an incredulous expression. "Am I being too weird?" he asked.
There was a brief silence. Then Robin tilted her head back and burst into laughter, so suddenly and loudly that the rest of the Shepherds stopped and glanced their way. Robin kept laughing. So hard she doubled over, wheezing slightly. Chrom watched her bemusedly. Eventually she recovered enough to glance up at him, her eyes bright.
"No," she said, with a grin that was sharp-edged and brilliant. "Not at all."
A/N: I'll take "authors who impose their own issues on fictional characters" for 500 dollars please
I also missed Chrom's birthday…I'm sorry Chrom…happy birthday you stupid dork
Coming up: more Chapter 3!Robin, maybe a Harry Potter AU, and the reincarnated versions of Robin and Chrom go on a road trip.
