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“Chrom,” she’d said, lacing her fingers through his own and squinting softly at the way their silvered wedding rings caught a sunbeam, “can I ask you a favour?”
He’d do anything. “Yes. Of course.” Anything.
“If-“
Her words fell away. She sat there, for a long while, and traced the outline of his nails. They were ugly things, worn down to stubs and cut into jagged lines from the steel of weapons and the scratch of wooden carts.
“If Validar-“
She pressed his cuticles back with the flat of her thumb, one after the other, down in a line.
“If I can’t-“
They knelt under crumbling stone stairs, in a dark little space carved into a brick wall that leaked with mildew and the waxy scent of rancid oil. The sun’s light shone through chinks in the brickwork, almost idyllic: if this were any other day, any other time, any other place- but it was not any-place, any-time; they were at the Dragon’s Table, and Robin could hear the soldiers preparing for combat only feet above her head. There was almost no space she could speak with Chrom without interruption for more than a few mere seconds, and it felt improper, insulting almost, that she should only be able to speak with her husband alone under the footfalls of soldiers on the stairs: but that was war, and they both had given their lives to it.
“If I can’t- if he gains control over me- Validar, I mean…”
And Chrom understood at once what she was asking, and he took her wandering hand in his own with the kind of firm, steady grasp only a practised swordsman could have.
“Robin.”
“No, Chrom, let me finish.”
“If you’re going to tell me what I think you’re-“
“Chrom, please.”
He relented, but he did not let go of her hand.
“Chrom. If I can’t control myself, you have to- you know. Please.”
“No.”
“Chrom-“
“No.”
“Gods, Chrom. This is beyond us. Think of our friends. Think of Lucina.”
“You think that I don’t?”
Robin knew she’d spoken wrong.
“Robin, it’s not going to come to that.” His tone softened, apologetic. “It’s not.”
He began to count off Robin’s nails with his index finger. Hers were worn, too. Maybe more than his. Magic had caused the skin on her palms to flake off, drier than sand, and her fingernails were bone-white and torn at the corners.
(As they’d lie in bed he’d take her hand and run her palm over his cheek, laughing softly, calling Robin his lazy old scaly lizard, his little dragon.)
“It won’t come to that,” Chrom whispered, “because I know you’re stronger than that, Robin. I know you.”
But does he, Robin thought? Does he? For he knew her just as well as she knew herself: her entire life as she recalled it had begun when he had pulled her from the ground on the outskirts of that dusty little town, where she’d been lying in the wheat, a void, an empty shell. All of her memories had started with his confused, crooked smile: she could have been anywhere before that, done anything. She did not know. He did not know.
“I know you enough.” Chrom said, softly, as if he could read her thoughts. “We might never know what came before- I know that- but you’re the love of my life, you’re the mother of my child, and you’ve saved me, Robin: more than I can count. I know that you’re strong enough. I know you can resist him.”
Robin knew she could not win this argument. He had faith in her completely, she knew, and she had faith in him enough to believe him. That’s all they’d had, hadn’t it been? Faith from the moment he took her hand on that early sunny morning and drew her up to his face, faith in each other enough to know they’d both come home to baby Lucina when the war had driven them to leave her.
Faith had been enough to move them forwards. It had not done them wrong; it would have to be enough for one last push, one last hurrah, one last prayer. One last battle.
Robin began to cry. Chrom held her, then, and as the soldiers clanged metal-on-metal outside of their little brick fort he enveloped her completely in the familiar smell of his worn velvet cape, ran her hands through her pearl-white hair, and shook with fear.