1.

[The very first time I remember you, you are blonde and don't love me back.]

She was far from attractive the first time he met her, face down in a sunbathed field, dirt and sticks scattered through unbrushed platinum hair. When she raised her pale face, blinking, bewildered, it was marked with impressions of the grass in which she lay. "There are better places to take a nap than on the ground, you know." He told her, extending a hand and a bemused smile.

Her eyes were dark, dark, a sharp contrast to the rest of her pallid body. He caught himself staring and turned his head; she looked unlike anyone he knew—Plegian, he later learned. Frederick didn't trust her. Lissa was instantly enchanted. Chrom didn't know what to think. From the instant he locked onto her coal-black irises, he was lost.

"Where am I?" She asked. He blinked at her while his knight stiffened at his side. Amnesia. She knew nothing except her name. "Robin. My name is Robin." Ignoring Frederick's dark mutterings, Chrom offered her another smile—a real one this time.

Robin knew magic and could wield a sword like a cat wields its claws, though her stamina was unremarkable. After training sessions with the Shepherds she would stand by herself and just try to breathe. Her chest heaved up and down like she'd run through three different countries in the middle of summer. She watched the way the other soldiers effortlessly fought and Chrom knew that behind those unsettling dark eyes she was sizing them up and wondering how she could possibly keep from falling further behind.

The real treasure, however, wasn't her body in all of its tall, bony, ghostly glory. The real treasure was her mind. She was an unsung genius of a tactician—a bear trap mind tempered by a soft voice and a mild manner. It unsettled Chrom sometimes how quickly she could bounce from plotting mass death to wondering about supper. Strange. She was strange.

The rest of the Shepherds knew it too. There were whispers behind tents and hushed conversations in the mess hall—did you hear what Robin has planned for the Valmese army?

Burning oil, I hear. She's going to fry them alive.

That's barbaric!

I think it's awesome! Nya ha!

Shut your damn mouths. She's saving your sorry skins, isn't she?

That's far from the point. She's unnerving.

More than unnerving. Downright scary.

No, not scary. Just…weird.

Definitely weird.

Robin either didn't know what they were saying or didn't care. Nothing changed. Little by little, friendly exchange by friendly exchange, the tactician won the Shepherds over by being herself. Slowly, the suspicion changed to respect and the rumors were silenced. Frederick stopped sleeping outside her tent door as he often did in case she got a wild hair to murder the prince during the night. That, Robin said, was a major victory.

She won Chrom over too. Somewhere between battle strategies, skirmishes, and tea at two in the morning he realized that he trusted her with his life. He forgot all his royal training under the amnesiac's tight-lipped smile and scarcely knew where he was when she wasn't by his side. There was only one solution: he must convince her to stay beside him for the rest of always, and longer if possible.

He wanted to explain to her just how much she'd invaded his life, heart, and mind, but the words would always stick to the back of his throat like Sully's hardtack. He choked on them, trying to force them up and out but his efforts were in vain. Months passed and still he couldn't tell her that she was important, that she mattered, that he loved her and all of her idiosyncrasies. He'd very nearly worked up the courage when she began wearing a ring. "Henry gave it to me," she said when he asked, her pale face clouding with pink.

Really, the whole thing made sense. The albino dark mage had been drawn to Robin immediately after joining their ranks because her wicked death traps fed his gleeful thirst for blood and mayhem. The two understood each other on a level that even Tharja couldn't compete with; Henry brought her the decaying arm of a fallen Risen and her next battle plan involved tag teams in which one soldier dismembered a foe and their partner swept in to kill the now defenseless enemy. She needed only to ask and he would spend the whole day in her tent, organizing her books.

Once she miscalculated the strength of a swordsman and failed to parry an attack, earning herself a slash across the flank. She fell to the ground and clutched her side, those dark eyes wide and darting. Her Plegian cloak hid the wound, but when she held her trembling hand in front of her even paler than normal face, it was coated with scarlet. Chrom might have impaled himself sprinting across the rocky battlefield, sword in hand, but another figure reached her first. Henry's face, the same Plegian white as Robin's, was twisted in a fury previously unseen and the unfortunate foe exploded in a maelstrom of pressure and noise.

He should have known then. Now it was too late. She and Henry were each other's and were truly perfect in their own strange, dark, alien world. Yet every time she lifted the flap to Chrom's tent and called his name, his heart stumbled at the sound of her voice and the glow of her ineffably odd self.

To be honest, it was almost a relief when she killed him. If it hadn't been for Lissa and Frederick's screams and the tears streaming down Robin's face, he might have been something close to peaceful. His sister didn't deserve to lose another sibling and Robin…her beautiful ebony eyes weren't meant to cry tears of pain and regret over something she couldn't control.

In his last moments he prayed like he hadn't since he was a child. If he were given another chance, he said silently, he would tell Robin all the things he held inside and ensure that this scene would never repeat—her pale hand clutching the handle of a sword that was embedded in his chest and strands of blonde hair sticking to the tears on her face. He would save Emmeryn and stop Lissa's sobs. He would do a lot of things if he had another chance.

Somewhere out there, Naga was listening.