Chapter Text
Ten years ago, they met for the first time. A chance encounter, perhaps, but the bond that resulted from it caused Chrom to question whether or not their meeting was truly outside destiny.
Emmeryn was busy meeting with the newly-crowned king of Plegia, the man taking the throne in wake of King Gangrel’s passing. She didn’t expect Chrom to join her. He didn’t want to. So the young prince found himself outside in the courtyard, hoping to find some way to occupy himself until Fredrick came back from his parents’ house. Surprisingly, he found that he wasn’t alone.
It was a memory Chrom kept tucked away in his heart at all times: the image of a young boy with hair the color of fallen stars and eyes the color of desert sand, wandering by himself in the pale sunlight of the castle garden. He let his fingers brush against the hedges and rose bushes as he meandered through them, pausing every so often to examine each blossom he passed with his fingertips. Peculiar. For someone close in age to Chrom, he appeared to take notice of the finer details of his world.
“What are you doing?”
The boy looked up quickly – almost fearfully – at Chrom’s voice.
“You aren’t doing anything wrong,” he told Robin, walking forward to meet him beside the yellow roses. But his lips remained parted in surprise. Did he really think he was in trouble?
“…I’m sorry.” The tone of his voice was quiet, but not a whisper – Chrom still caught the Plegian accent on his tongue. It complemented his clearly foreign clothes, a set of thin black robes that were uncommon to Ylisse.
His tawny eyes shifted to look at the ground, then back up at Chrom, caught between politeness and bashfulness. “I was startled when you spoke… I thought I was alone.”
Chrom presented his hand. “That’s okay. You’re Robin, right? My older sister told me that the king was bringing his son with him – I’m Chrom, by the way.”
With a thin smile and a mellow gaze, he shook his hand. “It’s nice to meet you, Chrom,” he replied.
“You’d rather be outside than in their meeting too, hm?”
Robin opened his mouth, then closed it again. “I haven’t thought about it too much,” he explained. “My father told me I had no business in royal affairs yet, at least not like him. He always says there’s something greater in store for me than the crown.”
“That sounds… beautiful.” Chrom chuckled and sat cross-legged in the grass, motioning for Robin to join him. He did. “I guess it’s kind of like what’s between me and Emmeryn, but she doesn’t have to tell me. I probably won’t become Exalt. But I want to do something good.”
“Like what?”
“Like… I could be the commander of her army!” And he probably would, with the holy blade Falchion choosing him as a wielder. “I’m learning swordplay right now with my friend Frederick. It’s really fun!”
Robin smirked at his enthusiasm. “I feel like that suits you, somehow.”
“Really? We just met! What makes you think that?”
“I…” There was a distant look in Robin’s eyes, as if he could see beyond the sky – beyond Naga – and into the heart of the universe. “Something about it feels… familiar, somehow. Oh! I hope that doesn’t sound mystic. It’s just… déjà vu, I think.”
“Déjà vu?”
“It’s a foreign phrase. It means ‘already seen.’”
“Ohhhh, like visions of the future? Emmeryn told me that Plegia has a lot of good sorcerers.”
“I’m not a sorcerer,” Robin quipped, spreading glove-covered fingers through the soft carpet of grass beneath them. “What I’d like to be is a tactician.”
The way he proclaimed that, with a whisper of pride beneath his words, told Chrom that he’d put a lot of thought into it. “What do you want to do as a tactician?”
“The same as you as a commander. ‘Something good.’”
“Haha, you’ve got me there.”
Robin smiled in return. “A commander and a tactician… we would make an excellent team, wouldn’t we?”
“Yeah! Like friends.”
“Friends?” A blush crossed his cheeks. “That’s…”
“That’s what?”
“I’d like that. To be friends with you, Chrom.”
And at the time, Chrom laughed at how formal Robin was about proposing their friendship. But somehow, it felt natural. The way Robin relaxed through their conversation, leaning back and smiling as if he’d known him for years… they could be good friends. Comrades, even – the political lines between them didn’t matter to him at all.
So they grew closer over the years – nearly inseparable, as Emmeryn noted the most recent summer that Robin spent in Ylissitol.
Ten years later, in the May before Robin was to visit Ylisse again, Chrom reinforced her remark.
The envoy he sent to inquire about the Plegian prince’s arrival returned with a vague response: Prince Robin fell ill, and would not be making the trek eastward. So Chrom wasted no time in preparing his own journey to Plegia. Unlike his friend, he wasn’t learned in the art of diplomacy, nor patience. Just like that, he asked Frederick and Sumia to accompany him, wished his sisters well, and was off.
They arrived mere hours before nightfall a week after departure. Sumia acted as their envoy, flying two days ahead to inform King Validar that Prince Chrom would be arriving to inquire about Prince Robin’s health.
“The King is allowing us to visit Robin,” she told the knight and prince when they reached the gates of Castle Plegia.
She accompanied them as they walked to the castle itself, through a stone-paved courtyard dusted with a fine layer of sand. It ground beneath Chrom’s boots with every step, and could tell by the pained expression on Frederick’s face that he had half a mind to pull a broom out of his pocket and sweep it clean. He held back a laugh. “Will they be extending any further hospitality to us?” he asked. “I haven’t many dealings with King Validar before, only Robin.”
“Yes! He said that Prince Chrom and his retainers could stay in the castle.”
“But for how long?” the other knight asked, his eyes still scanning the floor.
“He didn’t specify…”
“For as long as needed.”
Chrom stopped walking, addressing Frederick and Sumia with a hand resting on Falchion’s hilt.
“I came to see my friend’s recovery,” he said. “If Robin is still in pain, if he is ill… I will not leave his side.”
Frederick sighed through his nose. “May I ask, milord, how you intend to heal your friend? Plegia has clerics, I’m sure. And I’m afraid Lissa and Maribelle were left in Ylisse.”
“My coming to his side isn’t about being his nurse. It’s about being his friend.” Because there was something about his bond he couldn’t explain, an odd feeling in his core that tugged him halfway across the continent when he learned of Robin’s illness.
The knight’s response was a thin, understanding smile. “Very well, then.”
Dark-robed servants greeted them when they entered the palace. While Sumia took Frederick to the lodgings the king had provided for them, Chrom asked to be led to the prince’s quarters. They whispered his name anxiously at the request to meet with him, but nonetheless let Chrom follow them through winding stone hallways and up a staircase to a chamber in the cleric’s – not the royal – wing of the castle.
Chrom was cautious in opening the door, the only sound in the vicinity being the twisting of the knob in his hand. Finally, he swung it open, revealing a plain but well-furnished room, outfitted with a cabinet for medicines, a drawer of tools, several chairs, a table, and a four-poster bed. The window on the far wall was left open, but not a breeze wafted in from the unforgiving Plegian desert. It probably helped at least a little bit with the stuffiness, he assumed. Especially for the convalescing young man sound asleep in the bed.
Robin.
He laid calmly in the bed beneath the gauzy white curtains of the bed. Only his head of feathery, light-colored hair was visible from under the sheets. White on white on white – it reminded Chrom of snow, though no such thing could reasonably exist in Plegia.
He chuckled under his breath as he pulled a chair up to the bedside, waiting to see if the prince would wake. Robin never saw snow. Summer in Ylisse was mild, and he always returned to Plegia when the leaves began to shift color. Next winter, he supposed, he would invite Robin to spend the winter holiday in Ylissitol. He was well versed in coming up with diplomatic excuses to spend the summer with Chrom, so winter shouldn’t be any different – but at the end of the day, it didn’t matter what lies Robin had to tell his father to go to Ylisse. It mattered that they were together.
He stirred slightly, delicately, in his sleep. As if in a dream.
Chrom carefully reached his hand out to brush Robin’s hair. “Taking a nap when you have company over…” he mused, a smile blooming on his lips. “What are you dreaming of?”
And Robin stirred again at Chrom’s words. This time, however, he opened his eyes.
Chrom exhaled. “Ah, Robin. Sorry to wake you. Are you well? I have to say, I was worried when the messenger told us you were ill – something just didn’t feel right. Did you know I was coming?”
He turned his neck to face Chrom, tawny eyes widening as he shook off sleep’s grasp.
“Robin…?”
“I’m sorry…” the prince mumbled. “I’m afraid I haven’t met you before.”