I do not own Fire Emblem or it's characters, and gain no financial benefit from this work.

"Don't play with that."

Chrom froze, his hand inches away from the meticulously carved figure he had been about to pick up and inspect. He tilted his head at Robin, who had looked up from her hunched position over the weapon inventory and was currently pinning him down with an intense stare.

"Please, I need them to stay where they are," she continued, breaking eye contact and running her hands through snarled white hair. "I've got about a dozen different options for each strike team in my head and those base positions are the only thing stopping them from becoming a jumbled mess."

Chrom turned his eyes back to the table, starting to pick out the pattern in the figures that had before seemed randomly placed. "You have positions for everyone?" he inquired, motioning to the table; Robin nodded, getting to her feet with a speed that prompted a strained smile from Chrom. Eager to show off, even bone tired and suffering the loss of –

No time to think about that for now.

Robin stepped up to his side, her warmth chasing away the chill of the evening, and silently surveyed the setting with him. The moment they had set up a semi-permanent camp, Robin had commandeered one of the larger mess tables, pulled out every map of Valm she could find from the last fifty years and butchered them.

Two hours' feverish work had produced a sewn together scaled map of the area that covered the whole six foot long table – she had even raised parts of the map to form tiny hills and valleys, her flowing script noting key areas of defense that could prove useful to their advance. Tiny figures daubed messily with different shades of paint dotted the paper landscape, inked with symbols that Chrom only vaguely recognized.

Chrom had never seen her take a fight so seriously, and even he had to admit he was champing at the bit, waiting for the reports to come back on the readiness of their enemy. Though he had a hard time deciphering the multi-layered tactical display, made harder by Robin's own personal, possibly mystical shorthand, he knew his tactician well enough to know how her thoughts were proceeding.

"You've put Cordelia and Sumia a shade too far back from where you've accounted for the mounts," he noted gently, and Robin visibly stiffened. "If Frederick and Stahl are engaged before meeting with Libra and Vaike, your foot soldiers will be left facing at least a battalion on their own."

"From past encounters, I am certain there will be a large concentration of ranged united just beyond Frederick and Stahl's position," Robin said tartly, leaning over to lightly touch a figure. She had foregone her usual cloak, complaining of the heat, and the lamplight cast a buttery glow over her skin that Chrom found very appealing. "I've placed Ricken and Miriel there to head them off, with Sully as backup in case things get heavy for them – "

"Miriel's training diligently, but she's still not as apt with her sword as I'd like her to be," Chrom broke in, receiving a stern frown from Robin for interrupting, but nothing more. "Are you sure you want to put her so far beyond their front lines, especially with Ricken?"

"She's got the best aim in the army," Robin said flatly. "I don't – " Robin stopped and squeezed her eyes shut, inhaling deeply through her nose. Chrom felt a pang of regret coil around his heart at the effect his words had on her, and clapped a friendly hand on her shoulder, trying to ignore the smooth, warm skin under his suddenly too-sensitive fingers.

"You're especially fond of Ricken, I know you wouldn't want top put him into any more danger than necessary," he said gently, and Robin nodded, eyes still firmly closed. "Even so, if I may propose a solution?" Robin cracked open an eye, the corner of her mouth lifting ever so slightly.

"Is this going to be similar to your 'let's politely ask the enemy to pack up their war engines and go home' suggestion from yesterday?" she teased, and a rush of relief went through Chrom at her softening expression.

"In my defense, Robin, we'd spent three hours on maneuvering around one hillock and skipped dinner as a result," he answered lightly. "I'd just been hoping to wrap things up a bit quicker." Robin laughed at this, her face relaxing into a genuine, if weary smile.

"I promise, no skipping dinner this time," she said, and Chrom took this as his cue to continue.

"Take Panne out of the eastern guard and beef up your strike team," he said, and Robin's eyes instantly swiveled back to the table, lips moving silently as she sized up the possible outcomes of such a move. "I'll take her place in the guard," Chrom continued. "I'm well practiced at swinging a sword, while Panne's a hard hitter and the arrows won't even faze her at this point."

"Good point," Robin conceded. "Remember when she came back with her hide feathered with arrows - "

"And complained more about the fried beets at dinner than us having to spend a half hour cutting them out?" Chrom finished, chuckling. Robin grinned wider, and moved the tiny, carved taguel figure from it's original position to the cluster of units penetrating the enemy lines.

"Good call," she conceded agreeably. Her eyes landed on the two winged carvings that represented their primary aerial units, and her smile soured.

"I don't want to put Sumia or Cordelia any closer, Chrom," she said firmly. "Cordelia's excellent at anticipating and adjusting for ranged attacks, but Sumia has no where near her skill level. She's always coming back nursing a burn or limping from an arrow graze, and eventually her injuries will catch up and she'll catch an arrow with her stomach." Chrom flinched at her choice of words, but Robin's face only hardened further.

"The risk of placing them closer is much higher, even to shave those few minutes off their response time," she finished, but Chrom was already shaking his head.

"The chances of Libra and Vaike being overwhelmed is greater than the girls being struck down," Chrom argued, and Robin swirled to face him, her eyes darkening in annoyance,

"Virion's in the hills as overwatch in case they need to leapfrog out," she snapped, a muscle in her cheek spasming, a sure sign she knew she would regret what she next said later. "Really, Chrom, this quibbling over such a minor detail is ridiculous. I'd have thought you'd be more concerned over the wellbeing of your wife!" The last word was spat with a venom Robin didn't normally show.

The carvings flew across the room as Chrom's fist hit the table, the oil lamp wobbling dangerously. "Don't take my desire to see you do your job properly as a lack of concern for Sumia!" He still couldn't say that word.

His words seemed to echo for a moment, then suffocate quickly in the thick silence that fell over the tent. The rage inside him was shot through abruptly with grief at the raw look on Robin's face, which was quickly shuttered away behind a stony expression he'd become very familiar with recently.

"I apologize," she said quietly. "That was an uncalled for comment." She meekly brushed passed him, and for a moment Chrom was lost to a brief time when he had held Robin as his own, believing with all his being he would wake to her face each day. Most women seemed to smell floral - like lavender - or delicate, like cinnamon or vanilla. Robin smelled like woodsmoke, cloves and tea, a tough aroma that was so her. Now his senses were full of it, and he was married and they were different.

Robin bent down and began to pick up her scattered pieces, waving off Chrom as he tried to help."No it's – it's fine."

Chrom floundered, trying to find the right words, and rushed ahead with it anyway. "I know you're still hurting from Emmeryn, but I know you know that loss is a part of war. You can't account for every possibility, and you'll drive yourself mad trying."

Robin straightened up, her hands full with the representatives of her precious units, and stared off distantly. "I'm just tired of losing things," she said finally, dumping the pieces onto the table with more force than necessary, a few pieces shooting across the maps and almost clattering to the floor again.

"I suppose it would have been too much to ask, for Validar to have sent a letter mentioning that, incidentally, I could be considered of noble station," Robin said wryly, and bitterly amused smile twisting her lips. Chrom smiled weakly at her, conscientiously straightening the maps he had sent askew.

"I never knew the depths of his true evil," he offered, and was pleasantly surprised when it prompted a peal of laughter from his tactician.

"Serves us right, I suppose!" she said, grinning. They held each other's gaze for a moment longer, each searching the other's face for a spark of remembered affection. But the dinner bell broke the spell, and Chrom rubbed the back of his head sheepishly.

"I – sorry about the table," he said. Robin shrugged, beginning to reset the pieces with, he noted, Sumia and Cordelia situated slightly closer to Libra and Vaike.

"I'm only thankful you didn't shatter it, you've been overdue to break something huge," she prodded, and Chrom laughed before he could stop himself. "You go on ahead; I'm just going to quickly finish up here." Chropm nodded, and wash just about to exit the tent he heard - "Oh, wait!"

He whirled around, his heart leaping into his throat for some reason. Perhaps it was the tone of her voice, or something that had been said, or not said or –

"Could you please set aside some of the bread for me?" Robin asked, bent over the table once again, her striking figure outlined by the lamplight. "The last village we went through had a marvelous baker and Stahl has been inhaling it."

Chrom nodded numbly, but she didn't look up. "Sure." Then he was gone.

After finalizing her new troop positions, Robin spent a few minutes shuffling and reshuffling every bit of paper on her desk, arranging her elixirs by colour and almost setting her cot on fire when she got a little over-enthusiastic flipping through an Arcfire tome, sending white-hot sparks fluttering through her tent.

Finally, after making a thorough mess of her work area despite her best efforts to the contrary, Robin was willing to concede she had no other reason to avoid dinner. She suspected it was the early summer, with spring still lingering like a hopeful pony at the fence, which had sent the camp slightly…mad.

The other day, she had noticed Lon'qu trailing behind Panne as she gathered herbs, which was not an odd occurrence as Panne was well known for her healing draughts. But Lon'qu examining each shrub and flower Panne collected from, and then stuffing a sample into his pouch was not an everyday occasion.

Frederick and Maribelle appeared to be testing one another's tolerance for their personal training regimes - Maribelle up at dawn to run laps of the training ground, with Robin finding herself drilling Frederick on ballroom etiquette.

Ricken was frolicking about with Nowi, though whether that was youthful energy or energy of a different kind Robin was unable to say.

Most everyone seemed to be moving in some kind of orbit, and it wasn't just part of her job to be attentive, she just naturally was. Donnel had once taught her the meaning behind bird calls, and after that she hadn't been able to walk through a lively forest without cringing. He seemed perfectly content to enjoy the birdsong, but hearing the avian equivalent of lusty boasting and hysterical abuse wasn't something she was able to tune out.

Knowing the meaning behind the sweet twittering took a bit of the beauty and mystery out of the song.

Her open tent flap lifted in a light breeze, carrying in the scent of smoke, spitroast and a note of Lissa's delighted laughter. It flitted about the tiny space of a moment, the familiar tickle to her senses bringing an unbidden smile to her face, and the breeze ruffled the stack of loose wildflowers Ricken had hastily thrust at her today.

The scent overwhelmed her all at once, the memory blossoming in her mind with such searing clarity she fell to her knees. Like the others that had trickled back, not just the image, the scents, the sounds, the –

{The fingers running down her thighs, tender and gentle compared to the mouth nuzzled into her neck, gods - his breath hot against her skin, firm arms, hard chest and tiny, muffled gasps as he pushed up into her and now her head was back, her lips forming a name and she was –}

Robin's forehead met the cool fabric of her tent floor, her breath rasping harshly in the otherwise silent cave of her tent, her hands half clenched midair as though reaching for –

Someone.

She rolled onto her back, one arm under her head and the other draped across her stomach as she lazily studied nothing, a smile tugging at her lips.

Robin had gradually grown used to these splinters of memory, even come to look forward to them. She had always suspected she might get something back – after all, she remember how to speak, read, write, eat her dinner and a whole array of other abilities that surely would be more difficult to retain than a few average memories.

Her memories were precious to her, like the few books not on tactics she carried with her; the carved tea box Maribelle had given her as thanks; the picture Libra had drawn and gifted offhand, that she marveled at every night; like the family that had grown up around her and everyday blessed her with love and acceptance. The family who were kind enough not to mention the Plegian lilt to her voice and white hair common to that country. Who didn't see her as a potentially dangerous, foreign amnesiac, but someone they trusted with their lives.

If she didn't have that, if all she had were a few broken memories and a world that gave her no purpose or place, Robin wasn't sure how she'd cope.

She woke up from nightmares like that, sweaty and croaking for breath, images of deserted campgrounds and long stretches of barren, empty road seared into her memory.

Robin closed her eyes again and, feeling like a child sneaking a luscious chocolate at midnight, thought back to her first memory. Each time she remembered, she was careful to store each detail, smoothing them out and laying them flat for storage and only bringing them out when she absolutely couldn't take it anymore. Some part of her was madly afraid that if she dwelt on them too long they would fray at the edges and wear away, washing out under the onslaught of her inspection.

[Clattering through the door, kicking off her shoes just as the sky opened up and dropped what she thought was the ocean onto the garden, fresh bread smelling lively and somehow pillowy, a woman, white-haired with a great pink scar spidering across her face, but her smile was so open and caring Robin didn't even notice, never had, and she was taking her hands and almost, almost she could hear her voice -]

Nowi's sudden nearby bubble of laughter startled her from her daze, bolting upright and stuffing her fist into her mouth to stifle her yelp of surprise.

"Dinner dinner dinner!" Nowi shrieked, pattering by her tent as a shadowy blur. "It's delicious beef, beef for the first and last time, and this dragon is going to eat it all!"

"Nowi, no, leave a little behind for me at least!" came Ricken's panicked cry, which only prompted Nowi to squeal in delight at the prospect of a chase and take opff at top speed. Ricken's huffing heralded his arrival at her tent, little more than a darkened outline against the light thrown out by the communal fire. Robin was forced to bit down on her own fist to keep from laughing as Ricken's grumpy mumbling reached her ears – for a mage who so desperately wanted to be seen as an adult, he had some extremely childish things to say about Nowi.

Robin saw Ricken's shadow hesitate, bouncing on the balls of his feet in contemplation. She quietly got to her feet and brushed her clothes off as the young mage's shadow flitted back and forth in front of her tent. "Yes, Ricken?" His muffled squeak brought a grin to her face.

"Robin! Can I, uh, come in?" Ricken asked hesitantly, and though the boy's nose was right up against the tent flap Robin knew that it would take nothing short of a wild bear to get him to come in without her leave. 'Whoever had taught Ricken to be a gentleman,' she mused, 'needs a parade.'

"I'm just about to go to dinner, would you walk me there?" she called, snatching up her cloak and snapping back the tent flap. Ricken froze at her sudden proximity, his eyes set on her collarbone for a moment before his legs propelled him backwards as top speed.

Robin lightly caught his wrist before he staggered onto a tent peg and waited patiently until his awkward, teenage world had righted itself. He had definitely grown a few inches since they had first met, but the trade off seemed to be a reduced ability to string a sentence together. Normally she found this display endearing, but there was beef on the line. "Come on; let's get a move on before it all goes down the gullet of a dragon."

She'd had a lover, clearly. It had been brief and yes, a little confusing, but there was no mistaking it, and if she was going to be perfectly frank with herself, she'd always wondered if she had left someone behind when she had awoken in that field.

Robin linked their arms and smiled at him warmly, already committing the memory away for further analysis – for the time being, she would simply enjoy Ricken's company.

Un-beta'd again, breaking my way into the story with this chapter. Love to hear what you think, improvements to be made, so on!