My apologies for taking my sweet time getting more of this written. A number of factors have been involved to impede my progress. First, my writing style in general is less like making battle-plans and more like exploring an undiscovered country. Sometimes it takes a little while before the threads of plot that float around in my mind start letting me weave them into a tapestry. Beyond that, I've had my interest turned to other projects – I started another mutli-chaptered style fanfic (Super Smash Bros.) because I am a masochist and I've been working on editing and writing original projects. Add to that some household financial crisis, and there you go. I've only skimmed previous chapters I've done to this story, so if I am forgetting something, making any internal-continuity errors, I trust my readers more than my own brain to pick that stuff out. I think I've gotten everything in order, I hope so.

ARISE

Chapter 9: Look to These Lives You've Saved

She was in a blind panic. The deck was slick beneath her feet, cold in contrast to the air. Morgan hadn't even realized these kinds of instincts were present in such force within her. She fought very hard to get control of herself.

The sky was on fire and the waters of the sea surrounding the Ylissean ships looked like blood. The air was hot even at this distance. The young tactician' heart was pounding from the effort taken by their leaping escape. Her strong rabbit-legs sprang her from one unsafe deck to another, safe deck "like poetry" as Virion had described it. The rest of the Shepherds that lead the assault either ran for the decks or took rides from their Pegasus Knights.

The animals were not faring well in all of this. The horses were panicked, those with wings especially. Their keepers struggled with reins and halters and sweet, soft words. Morgan, herself, longed to run somewhere far away when there was nowhere to run to. The smell in the air was horrible – oil and wood burning, a choking stench. The Valmese navy lay broken and on fire in the distance as the Ylissean league was sailing away from it as swiftly as possible.

Another scent was on the air – one that Morgan doubted the others detected at this distance, but one she picked up. Her brother probably picked up on it, too. It made her feel ill. In fact, it made her stomach growl, a strange and horrible whet to her appetite and this made her feel even sicker. She hunched over the edge of her ship and let loose mostly sour water, for she had eaten little just before the battle. Roasting meat. She smelled roasting meat! She knew that some of it had to be from horses and possibly from edible livestock the Valmese were brining as provisions, but she knew the truth of where most of that aroma was coming from. The bulk of what she'd sniffed was people – soldiers cooking in their armor.

As she steadied herself, Morgan suddenly remembered the face of her first human kill – or at least, her first kill in this past-land, the first death she'd ever dealt that she was aware of. She remembered how the enemy fighter's eyes bulged in surprise as he gaped, his breath sucked free of him by her use of mid-level wind-magic. She hadn't thought much about what it meant to take a life then. She was too busy trying to protect her comrades. She didn't overthink it during other battles with human combatants, either – again, for the same reason. Right now she had time to think about it. Truly, it was done together – all of the Shepherds were in on this, but it had been her strategy.

Morgan had been studying hard before the searoad battle. Laurent had been her assistant all up until they boarded their ships. Her father's book didn't have this kind of plan detailed out, but there was a chapter upon the use of incendiary devices and one page with an illustration of a burning ship – done by someone else, the art had an imprint of balanced scales in lieu of a signature. Sending a burning ship into a harbor or against a small fleet was an age-old naval tactic. Morgan also remembered how she and her father would blow up homemade bombs out in a field, to "bust open some myths" about uses of oil and gunpowder. Father, back in her world, had a tiny, almost undetectable scar on his cheek from a bit of shrapnel from one of these outings. She had a feeling that Mother loathed these outings and had probably tried to forbid her from them – but she had no clear memories of anything Mother had done.

The strategy had come from these memories and what bits were scrawled in Father's book. She had not known what he had done during the Valmese War in her world, because while he played out games with her, he never spoke much about his actual work. Maybe he had been trying to shield her from the stuff of war – allowing the intellectual work in it to be something of an abstract for her. All she knew was that he was smart and had saved the lives of their people and there was nothing about him that she did not admire. Morgan wondered if he would have done what she had done. Probably. She really couldn't see any other way out of the situation. In fact, though her idea for a strategy surprised the other Shepherds and the Feroxi-allies, it had seemed pretty obvious to her. With the empty ships and all of the fuel oil the Plegians had given them, the solution seemed to be practically gift-wrapped.

It was them or her friends. If they had fought a conventional battle, using the decks as a level battlefield, the Ylissean forces would have been slaughtered down to the last man and woman. Morgan knew that she'd carried the day with her idea to turn half their fleet into bombs, but between the heat stifling the air and the flames and the water reflecting blood, death en masse and the smell of cooking human flesh, she could not feel proud of this. She could hear Flavia and Basilio's shouts of triumph and calls for breaking open a cask of ale, but all she could do was to keep getting sick over the side of their vessel.

"Hey, are you alright?"

Morgan composed herself and turned around. "Uh… Lord Chrom!"

"Are you alright, kid?"

Morgan sighed. "Not entirely." She looked out over the flames, becoming ever more distant. "I should be celebrating, right?"

"You don't have to if you don't want to."

"Good. Rabbit-instincts, you know. We don't like fire and noise."

Chrom stood beside her. "Soon we'll be away from all of this and all we'll see and smell is the salt-air."

"Right."

"The way the explosions went… well, we were all lucky to get away." Chrom issued a soft, nervous laugh.

"All burning… people burning," Morgan said distantly, one of her feet scraping against the ship's deck in a twitch.

"If it helps… the way everything went up? I don't think the Valmese had time to feel anything. Everything was hard and quick, just a lot of explosion."

"Horses… hapless conscripts…I always knew war was ugly."

"It is."

"I didn't know I'd have such a problem not seeing my enemies' faces."

Chrom gently rested a hand on Morgan's shoulder. "I'm sure your father would have done the same thing if he were here – the same plan. You just saved my nation."

Morgan turned to him. That smile – Chrom had a winning smile. It was one of those smiles paired with eyes that were subtly sad all the time. "Come back to the center of the deck. Look to the lives you've saved."

The young half-Taguel first caught sight of her brother and Lucina as she wandered back to the ship's center. The princess was sitting on a flat-topped chest, resting her back on barrels of fresh water. Noire and Lissa sat next to her. Yarne leaned upon Lucina, crying softly, his left arm bandaged and in a hastily-constructed sling. Lucina held him gently around the shoulder and stroked his hair and one of his ears, telling him that he was alright.

"Y-you fought well, y-you know," Noire stammered.

Morgan recalled Yarne facing down a Valmese mounted unit with a spear in his beast-form and getting a nasty slice to the forelimb with the spear right before taking the unit down. He'd been right where she'd wanted him and had preformed.

He was more frightened than hurt. He was scared, but he was alive.

Gregor limped along, Anna frantically pursing him with a healing staff. He'd taken a wound to the gut that he was shrugging off now. No would could know it at the time, but he would die from an infection settling into the still-healing remnants of it several months from now upon it being re-opened in a scramble with Risen. Aside from this unknowable eventuality, there were no fatalities among the Shepherds this day.

"Hey, there, kiddo!" Vaike said, suddenly coming up behind Morgan. "Let's get you a drink!"

Morgan smiled subtly as a mug of beer was thrust into her hands by Sully. "Aren't I a little young?" she asked.

"Nah, drink up!" Stahl encouraged.

"You're too young to be fighting a war, too, but here you are," Cordelia said sweetly. "Besides, you look like you could use it."

Morgan drank deeply and then immediately wrinkled up her nose. "Ah… eh! Can I have some sweetened tea instead?"

"Sure thing, Fluffy!" Gaius said. – Leave it to him to have a cask of tea with honey on hand.

As she watched Olivia dance on the deck and all of the Shepherds who were not wounded or tending the wounded clap and play whatever improvised instruments they had, Morgan was able to forget the destruction she had planned and they had wrought just a little bit. The air was permeated with a wonderful and vibrant feeling.

We are alive! We are alive! We are alive!

Some significant battles on the soil of Valm were over with some months later. The war was far from won and the Shepherds took to camp in a peaceful clearing of wood to break a long march. Some allies were added to their number – a resistance fighter from Chron'sin and a few more of the "future children." They had another healer now and a couple of young, eccentric swordsmen. Lucina told everyone that there were more of her companions to seek, including her younger sister – whom she was worried about.

Tharja woke up in a bleary haze in her tent. It was one of the few tents in use by a single person. No one much wanted to risk sharing a place with Tharja during a certain time that plagued the female body – at least, that had been her excuse for kicking Gaius and Noire out to find other sleeping accommodations while she'd spent last night trying her hand at a dangerous, high-level spell. She'd greased the appropriate symbols over a flat slab of wood, but since she had told no one of her doings this time, she'd only gotten small amounts of the necessary "sealing-blood" from a few of the Shepherds from scavenging used bandages from the medical tent. As for the most important material component of the spell, she was very careful only to use a few drops so as not to waste the dwindling resource. It was not anything she could procure ever again.

As Tharja sat up in her cot, she noticed something distinctly off about this morning. Maybe it was that one of her hands seemed to be acting of its own accord – and not quite like what that newcomer, Owain, described his own hand as acting at times. The hand pawed about her, exploring her hair and her face. She also had the distinct impression that there was someone else sharing space inside her skull. Yep. The spell had definitely gone in a different direction than she had intended.

"Oh… you can keep touching there all you want, Robin," she cooed when her right hand was gently cupping one of her breasts over her nightshirt. It immediately went limp. She felt a sense of very awkward apology ringing through her head.

"So sorry!" the inner voice yelped. "I… Tharja? I'm inside of you?"

"Apparently so. Like I said, you don't have to stop."

"Uh… Let's not and say we did."

"Oh, but you are – or were, when you were alive – a man of most of the usual predilections."

"Yeah…but… I shouldn't even be here. Why am I here?"

Tharja rose from her bed and brushed her hair out before a small mirror that hung on the inside of her tent. "You are here because I summoned you from the depths again, only this time I apparently did not perform the spell precisely and you've latched onto my body." She smiled wickedly. "I find it quite a favorable arrangement. It is rather… intimate."

"How do I get out? I mean, no offense… it's just… I don't like the idea of taking over someone else's body – at all. Considering what I remembered in my last moments about my supposed purpose, this is rather uncomfortable."

"You needn't worry, Robin," Tharja replied, "Just as last time, the spell is temporary. Even the best of dark mages cannot break the grip of death. Let us have fun with this while we can, hmm?"

Tharja began undressing. Robin would have looked away out of politeness if he could have, but since he was seeing the world through Tharja's eyes, it was impossible. She lavished her gaze upon herself and chuckled dark and low in her devious manner. She proceeded to get dressed for the day.

"I can sense what you're thinking," Tharja said. "You are thinking that I do have nice skin, quite silky. I sense that you have some mild regrets about not getting with me in life. I do have a nice body, don't I? It is a good way to get by in life, though I never got all I wanted. I also sense that I am lacking for you. You had a thing for that bunny-tail, didn't you?"

She felt the heat rise up in her cheeks. So, aside from the thing with the hand minutes ago, Robin did have some mild control over her physical reactions…

"That. Is. Private!" the poor ghost practically shouted in her brain.

"So I don't have an extension of my tailbone that you can pet nor is my hair as soft as Panne's… But everything else is quite in order." She examined herself in the mirror, as well as she could with how small it was. "As you can see by my clothing, I am ranked a sorceress now. I probably could not handle you … inside me…" this she said with a smirk, "if I had not achieved that level of skill. This is far from a simple channeling. Hmm… since you are with me, I think we should take a walk around the camp. It is before breakfast. We can get your bearings back to reality."

She sensed the spiritual equivalent of a shrug from her occupant.

The camp was quiet. There were only a few people up and about in the dawn's golden light. The cavaliers and the Pegasus-riders were up tending to their steeds, as was usual. Lon'qu was peeling out potatoes for the morning meal and Donnel appeared to be taking inventory on the weapons. Tharja could feel Robin smile as they walked past one of the tents.

"Chrom still has that snoring problem."

"Yes. Amazing that he doesn't wake Risen with it. I'd call him a lay-about, but he was up to all hours, just as I was. I heard him patrolling outside my tent."

"We are not in Ylisse, are we? The surroundings are unfamiliar to me."

"We are at war again, Robin. This time with Valm as well as with the undead. We are far from home."

Tharja wandered into the empty War Tent. "There were some dropped tomes in the last battle. I am looking for something specific," she said. "Besides, this place should feel familiar to you."

For Robin's sake, she sat down in the chair at the small desk. She could feel him relax. Her eyes scanned over the various letters and notes.

"This handwriting does not look like either Virion's or Chrom's," Robin said inside her brain. "Who is the tactician now? I am curious."

"It is… complicated."

"Shew! Cold! I hate dawn-patrol!" said the voice of someone young headed toward the tent.

"Frost in my fur!" a distinctly male voice whined, "is it me or does Chrom like sticking the Taguel race on the worst patrol times?"

A young woman entered through the open tent door, shaking the dew off her coat. "All I know is that Sumia or Gregor had better be making the coffee. If Kjelle tries it again, that's it, I surrender, the Risen can take me!"

She paused like a rabbit caught in a spotlight. A larger Taguel male bumped into her from behind. "Tharja, what are you doing in here?"

"Just perusing the new tomes," she laughed. "I got a little tired so I sat down."

"The only people who are supposed to be in here are Chrom, Laurent and me."

"Touchy, touchy. Your daughter does have quite a bit of fire in her, doesn't she, Robin?"

"Huh? Why are you praying to my dead father?"

Meanwhile, Yarne curiously sniffed the air like he'd caught a scent that no one else could fathom. "Daddy?"

"Y-Yarne? M-Morgan? When you last summoned me they were…they were…"

"Yes, darling," Tharja responded to the voice in her head.

"How long have I been gone?"

"Oh, not very long. These two are time-travelers. This is going to take a while to explain."

"Uh…."

"These two are grown versions of your children from an alternate reality. They came here with Chrom's brat to try to stop the rise of Grima. My own daughter is around here somewhere. She's as much of a wimp as your boy is, but apparently my other self in the future took care of that problem with a well-placed curse. The girl here has become our tactician and you should be proud of her. She's quite good."

"Who are you talking to and what's going on?" Morgan demanded, stamping a foot. "Has one of your hexes made you lose your mind again?"

"I smell Dad, Morgan," Yarne said. "I don't know how. It's not like on your coat, either."

"I am not familiar with the type of thing I'm seeing."

"Maybe I should let you ride me a little, hmmm?" Tharja suggested. "It shouldn't be much of a problem for you to take over my vocal chords. You already had some experience controlling my limbs."

"That's it. I'm getting Lord Chrom…"

"Wait."

Morgan turned around as she felt a hand upon her shoulder. It was Tharja squeezing it, but the voice that had come out of the sorceress was decidedly different from her own – a clear, masculine voice.

And a sound for sore ears.

"Wait…Morgan…."

The girl turned around, her eyes wide.

"Just what is going on here?" she whispered. She could feel her own heart-rate racing. Yarne's heart was beating like a frenzied drum solo, too. Tharja's heart was calm and steady.

"Tharja did some spell-casting last night. She seems to be partially challenging me or I am partially possessing her or something. It doesn't feel right to me, but for a little while, I guess, I am here. This is the voice of a dead man – I am Robin. Is it true that you are my child from another time?"

Morgan gasped and tried to get her bearings. Tears formed in her eyes just at hearing his voice. "F-Father…"

"Daddy!" Yarne barreled into Tharja and wrapped his arms around him.

"My host… is having difficulty breathing."

"Oh, sorry, Father, sorry!" Yarne said.

Robin responded by hugging the boy. Oh, he'd missed tactile sensation. Tharja's body, with its light clothing, created a great deal of opportunity for him to feel skin and fur against skin. It made everything real. He then hugged his daughter, slipping Tharja's arms around his former coat.

Given Morgan's shorter stature, this was a little more awkward in the way of father-daughter bonding. Her face was planted right in the marshmallow-hell that was Tharja's chest.

"Uh…." Morgan said suddenly, "Would you like to see Mother? She came in with on a ship with reinforcements as soon as she got our letters and could find care for little us back at the capital."

Robin used Tharja's face for something that was rare for the dark mage – a genuine smile. Yarne took one look at it and hid behind a stack of tomes.

As even the laziest of the Shepherds rose to greet the sunrise, everyone thought that the most exciting news in camp that day had been the deer that Noire and Gaius had brought back from the woods. Despite his talk of his animal-friends, Henry was eager – perhaps a little over-eager - to help Donnel butcher it and Gaius was proud of his daughter for bringing it down without pain in a single shot. There would be fresh meat for breakfast and lunch this day.

"Ha-ha! I'm covered in blood!" Henry shouted as he capered through the camp to tease their dancer, Olivia, who wanted no part of what was happening at the camp's edge. She sought out Vaike to protect her from the "rampaging" Plegian.

"Save it for the battlefield, will ya?" the ax-fighter grumbled.

Robin, for his part, was pleased that the Shepherds hadn't seemed to change much and that some of the ones that had been added to their number in his absence were as nutty as the original crew.

Mostly, he kept his secrets. Everyone saw Tharja wandering around the camp "spying" on everyone and that was what they were allowed to think. Chrom, however, Robin spoke to openly. He met Lucina. She and Yarne straightened out the time traveling tale as best as they could.

"I am so sorry that this happened to you," Lucina said. "It seems like your spirit cannot even rest."

"Oh, I was resting," Robin assured. "Or at least in the deepest of sleep. It is Tharja's insistence upon pulling me back every once in a while, it seems. It's touching that I am missed so much, but it is not necessary."

"Maybe it is," Lucina suggested. "If we can learn more from you, more about you in this time, perhaps we'll have a better chance of averting disaster. In my time, my Uncle Robin just vanished… lost on a mission. From what Father has told me, your spirit seems to know more about a connection to Grima than the you of my time ever let on about."

Tharja's face looked contemplative for a moment. "Pity my past only came back to me when I was dying," Robin said, and from what you have told me, it seems the worst of our fears has come to pass."

Chrom rested a hand on Tharja's shoulder. He never touched Tharja and his grip was the way in which he'd clap Robin when he was alive. Robin looked up. He'd always been short, but Tharja felt a little trimmer and smaller to him, and so it was a strange experience.

"No," Robin said, "I do not believe that Tharja would be able to reunite me with my body, and given the state you describe, it would be a nightmare. Risen are to be turned into dust. Just because one is derived from me does not make it an exception."

"Do you have any ideas upon how to defeat 'you,' then?" Chrom asked.

"Perhaps a strategy involving Maribelle's best tea and your wife's pies to set a trap," Robin suggested.

"I'll get started on it right away!" Morgan exclaimed.

"Morgan." Robin said. "That was a joke."

Lucina blinked. "Oh!" she said, as she had taken a while to break out of her puzzlement at such an odd suggestion.

He then gave everyone a serious look through Tharja's steady gaze. "The best option, if, indeed, this undead, possibly –half-Grima version of me is commanding the enemy is to study everything I ever wrote down. Think back to my past strategies – everything that worked. Try to think like me as much as you can because if that remnant of a body is using the gooey remnants of my poor brain, it's going to use MY tactics! In fact, I need you all working together to surpass me."

Morgan shook her head softly. "Father… You were the tactician's tactician! I'm trying my best to catch up to you! I am hardly there!"

Robin patted her on the shoulder. "If all goes right with the world, children are supposed to surpass their parents. I'm sure you'll one-up me. I swear; if there is a way out of the Void for me, I will look down upon you with such pride that whatever star I am given in the heavens will rival the moon in shining brightly."

"We will free you from any connection, however tenuous, you have with Grima," Lucina announced. "I swear it."

"Panne…"

As soon as Robin saw the rabbit-woman, he moved toward her and threw his arms around her.

"What is this? Tharja?" Panne hissed and pushed him away.

"Tharja is at rest, Cottontail," Robin said, "She made me the victim of a temporary spell again. I hope you don't mind a hug in this body."

Panne squeezed the small body of the dark mage tight, ignoring certain assets. Some of the men in the camp who saw this rose up a lustful cheer.

"Uh… if you need the Vaike, he will be in his bunk," one of the stricken warriors said.

Robin trailed a hand down Panne's back to give a gentle flicking pet to Panne's tail. Tharja had deduced correctly. He'd always found Panne's tail to be adorable. He caught himself toothlessly nibbling on one of her long ears a little bit when he had to remind himself that he was borrowing a chassis and there was appropriate behavior and that which was not. He'd just missed her touch so much. He suspected that Tharja wasn't much to care, but his wife probably would later. Robin just let himself be awash in Panne's warmth, her voice and her smell.

And then he felt himself fading. He separated from Panne and looked toward Morgan. "Take care of that coat," he said hoarsely. "I… I really liked it. It'll keep you warm."

And with that, he was gone. Tharja blinked.

"I'm back now," she said. "And if you need me, I'll be in my bunk."

Forward, march!

NOTES FOR THE NEW READER: If you do not follow my profile / just binged-read through this and are disappointed at the suspension-notice currently posted upon the notes, I regret to inform you that I do not know if I will be able to pick up this story again. I had plans for it, but I was already having some problems with getting the various plot-threads to come together to my liking when I suffered a sudden onset of a life-threatening condition. Almost losing my life and my ability to write at all narrowed down the stories I wanted to focus upon. For fandom works, I chose another multichaptered / in-progress piece that my brain still had strong plot-threads for even during my recovery over this one. In other words - I fear how much of this story might have been blown right out of my head during my ordeal while another work in progress (as well as my original endeavors) have "stuck with me" better. I apologize for the inconvenience to readers who enjoyed this. I still have hope that I can make this work and finish out my original ideas for it someday.