Archive of Our Own ^beta

If Lucina didn’t know better, she might think she’d never left.

She’s spent perhaps a quarter of an hour in the past, and the air still smells like smoke, the sky is still a blasted wreck, and she’s still sending the dead back to their graves.

The forest fire does explain the first two, and it seems that some of the Risen swarm fell through time alongside her and her companions. It’s equally possible she was unfortunate enough to land in the middle of one of the initial outbreaks, though in another sense she was extremely lucky to arrive exactly when she had.

Otherwise, aunt Lissa might have…

Bah. She can’t waste time worrying over hypotheticals. There is a certainty she means to stop.

Such a pretty declaration, such a heroic facade she puts up, whispers something in the back of her mind. Like she did not almost shatter into a thousand tiny pieces when she saw her father’s face, like the wetness in her eyes can be blamed on the smoke.

Like how she had very nearly stayed with him then, fought the demons by his side, taken a foolish, impossible chance on a foolish, impossible dream.

Then she saw the woman in the coat, and Lucina turned and ran.

She doesn’t have time to think about that decision. She doesn’t have time to agonize endlessly whether the woman she remembers from her childhood, what brief moments they spent together between campaigns, is already plotting foulest treason. She doesn’t, that’s a problem for Future Lucina.

Right now, as the world around her burns, she has Risen to slay.

Her previous kill has only barely begun to dissolve into noxious purple smog as she moves onto the next. Without a moment of hesitation, she bats its clumsy axe swing aside and pulls back for a killing thrust. These Risen aren’t the nightmares of her own time. Without their master to guide them, they’re as good as fodder.

Without warning, it straightens up and twists around in an inhuman manner that has her own body ache in reflexive sympathy, narrowly turning a blow to its spine into a slice along the rotting meat of its side. It was an odd motion, something she hadn’t seen from any of the walking corpses in the years she’d warred against them, something slightly trickier than the single-minded brutality the Risen embodied. Not that it would save it. It was all too easy to simply turn Falchion slightly and pull it back through, nearly bisecting the undead and ending its pitiful existence.

Even as she notes the strange behavior, her eyes automatically turn towards the next target. Slightly further away than its predecessor, perhaps eight, nine paces at a run. She can already see her path, knows the motions she needs to take to cut it down like all the rest. The Risen is already dust. All that's left is the follow through.

One step. That really was quite unusual. Startlingly human, in that deeply uncanny way of theirs.

Two steps. Like it had been listening to something.

Three steps. The remaining Risen isn’t looking at her.

Four steps. That’s not right. Why isn’t it looking at her?

Five steps. No, really, what had that first one done?

Six steps. Did they both move in the same way, at the same time?

Seven steps. Something is wrong.

Lucina does not take an eighth step, halting just outside the undead’s reach.

It still doesn’t react, staring vacantly into the forest with those dull red eyes.

Risen didn’t act like this, they looked for the nearest human target and ripped it apart with whatever they had on hand. Some semblance of warrior instinct remained, enough that they could actually wield their weapons with lethal aggression, but there was no concept of strategy to be found in their motion. The most thought that went through their decaying skulls was “introduce point/edge to flesh” as quickly and violently as possible. They couldn’t plan. Couldn’t still themselves to create a false sense of security, not that Lucina would ever feel secure near any Risen not turned to smoke.

Unless it wasn’t the Risen in charge anymore. Lucina had heard, though she had never seen it herself, that they could be leashed to a caster’s will in the right circumstances. Directed, combining their fearful strength with human intelligence.

There hadn’t been any of those types of Risen in the future. The only ones who might have known how were Grima’s first victims, and the dragon itself had no need for fine strategy with claws that could tear down castles and hordes that swallowed the horizon.

But she wasn’t in the future, was she?

Something is very, very wrong. Despite the burning heat in the air, a chill goes down her spine.

Then the Risen moves again.

Lucina immediately brings Falchion into a defensive stance, but the monster lurches away from her. Towards the forest. The same direction it had been looking. Its sword drags a thin trail in the dust.

This isn’t right. Risen don’t act like this.

What the hell is going on?

She simply watches it stumble slowly into the undergrowth, silent but for the crackling flames.

The loud snap of a branch underfoot breaks her out of her fugue, and Lucina spins on her heel to find another Risen staggering into the clearing behind her. Still several paces away, and her every instinct screams to eliminate the threat without delay. She stomps the impulse down.

This Risen, too, drags its axe in the dirt behind it. Its blank crimson gaze points in her direction, not at the princess, she realizes, but through her. Between them, the last Risen she’d cut down, still clinging to existence for a few more precious seconds, pulls itself along the ground.

Both are moving in the same direction as the one she didn’t kill, all three converging on the exact same target if she were to guess. Something is very, very wrong.

The Risen desperately heaving itself towards the forest crumbles into dust, and her father bursts through the brush with Lissa, Frederick, and her.

Lucina freezes, and is suddenly extremely grateful for the thin metal mask hiding the way her expression shifts to the edge of tears.

Chrom spares barely a glance at the dissolving Risen before his eyes flip up to her. Despite the situation, a brief smile dances across his face before it’s replaced with concern.

“Hey, it’s you again! What the hell’s going on?” There isn’t a drop of accusation in his tone, despite how suspicious she knows she is. Only earnest trust in a stranger he’d met minutes ago, and Lucina wants to drown in it.

It doesn’t matter. She can’t crack here, she has a job to do. How funny it is that fate provided her with such a perfect opportunity.

“Their behavior is unusual, but ultimately irrelevant. This world teeters at the brink of a horrible calamity. What you see tonight is but a prelude,” she intones as the Shepherds listen in horror. This localized hellscape is only a shadow compared to her own time, but should be enough to spur the necessary actors into motion. She prays that will be the case.

And then the woman in the coat takes a step, and it takes every drop of courage not to splinter immediately.

don’t break

“Unusual? You know what these things are? And what they’re doing?”

“I intend to find out,” she responds brusquely.

don’t break don’t break don’t break

The tactician appears poised to continue, so Lucina cuts her off. She can’t handle any more of this right now. Not here. Not her.

“You all need to leave, now. Warn Ylisstol. I will clear out the remainder.”

Though her p—her father and the tactician obviously want to argue, Frederick provides some welcome support, reaching down to place an armored hand on Chrom’s shoulder.

“Listen to the man,” he urges, “we’re of more use to the halidom telling the Exalt what happened here than chasing monsters in the dark.”

Chrom curses under his breath, but doesn’t object. From his side, Lissa finally speaks up.

“Um, I never got to thank you, for before. So… thanks!”

Her father straightens from where he had half turned around.

“Ah, right. You saved my sister’s life. You have my thanks as well…” he trails off in an obvious invitation.

Lucina hadn’t quite expected to need her persona this soon, didn’t expect to run into him at the first possible opportunity, but she is prepared nonetheless. In some ways, she is still very much her mother’s daughter.

“You may call me Marth.”

She can see the gears turn in his head at that, see how much more he wants to say, but at length he simply nods.

“…Chrom. Good hunting, Marth.”

She offers her own nod in response, and pretends she can’t feel the tactician’s pensive gaze as she turns and walks into the forest.

The Risen is singleminded, but not particularly fast.

Lucina abandoned the one the Shepherds had chased in favor of finding the sword-wielder she spared, if only because its slight headstart would reach their destination a minute or two faster.

It’s also a prime target for some experimentation. This is as close to docile as a Risen ever gets, by her reckoning, and a priceless opportunity to better understand what she’s dealing with.

Lucina isn’t stupid, of course, which is why her first test is to see what happens when she lops off its sword arm.

Nothing. It trudges along without a hint of a reaction, and Lucina picks up a spare iron sword. Falchion is superior in every capacity, as well as unbreakable, but there’s no harm in taking it as long as it won’t slow her down. A small pouch of gold is the next item to be liberated from its long deceased owner, because it isn’t grave robbing if it tried to kill you first, and frankly, she needs it more.

She’s finally able to confirm that Risen do need functional eyes. Not quite trusting her ability to perform optic surgery on a moving target using a sword without irreparably damaging the subject, she defaults to throwing her cape over its head and watching as it walks directly into a tree. It would almost be funny if it were happening to anything other than one of the blights that ruined her entire world. Ha.

…This is stupid. Her silly little science experiments are mind-numbingly absurd, and Lucina is clinging onto them as tightly as she can because she doesn’t know what’s about to happen when she gets a second to breathe.

She did it, she did it, she made it to the past and was still almost too late, Father is alive and he was right there and she was standing right behind him and Lucina has absolutely no idea what to do about that, and—

Focus.

Focus.

Right now, what matters is the anomalous Risen behavior. She has a mission to complete, she can break down after it's over.

The Risen steps into a clearing.

The fires have mostly died down by this point, the forest is a bit too small and a bit too wet to cause serious problems, but the heat in the air was enough that Lucina had put away her mask. It wasn’t about to burn her skin, she thought, but was uncomfortable enough that she judged it an acceptable risk. Most of the people she’d want to hide her face from had gone in the opposite direction anyway.

The fires have mostly died down, but the blaze in the center of the clearing burns vibrantly through the dark. It looks deliberate, not sparked by some accident of nature but a bonfire built by the hands of gods, the surrounding earth pockmarked by holes where trees were ripped from their roots and cast onto the pile.

Lucina watches spellbound as the Risen walks unflinchingly into the flames. Its death-smoke mixes with the rising black as it fades into the night sky.

That’s what it was trying to do?

What?

She takes a few automatic steps forwards, distracted enough that she completely misses the half-shattered sword on the ground. The blade is broken about a foot from the hilt, one edge dulled to the point of uselessness.

Lucina doesn’t step on the sharp end, but it makes for poor footing nonetheless and nearly sends her sprawling to the floor. She makes a quick recovery, the only casualty her hair bindings loosened by the sudden shift in momentum to spill out over her shoulders from its carefully concealed state.

It’s a fairly quiet almost-fall, all things considered, nigh inaudible over the crackling flames.

The shape in front of the fire turns around.

She’d missed it initially, too focused on the thing that, regardless of its rot, still looked like a man marching to its own doom. The shape too is formed like a human, sitting down, but not bearing the unnatural stiffness of the undead.

It does not stand up. Those words are the wrong ones to describe the way the figure rises without grace. How its limbs seem to unfold more than anything else. How it moves like a fish hook is dug into its spine, like a puppet dancing on a lonely string.

The figure is silhouetted against the blaze, casting most of it in shadow, but despite the dark the eyes show through.

All eight of them.

Six on the hand, arranged in a sigil that does not shine through the night. It does not glow. It provides not a mote of light, yet bears an awful radiance.

Lucina knows these eyes.

So ends the human race.

Two on the head, in the normal position, and nothing else about them could be called normal. They are the same Risen red she’s seen countless times, but where the dead have a dull gleam, these burn.

Lucina has seen these eyes before.

The future is built upon the past, but your kind shall never see it.

They were twice a man’s height last time, set sixfold into a monster that haunts her every waking moment.

Your mother and father are dead, tiny one.

The shadow is wearing a long, dark coat.

And now it is your turn.

“…Lucina?”

The voice is hoarse, raspy from disuse. Lucina last heard it many years ago. Lucina last heard it a quarter hour ago.

Lucina isn’t sure she wanted to hear it ever again.

“…Mother?”

The word slips from her mouth before she has the chance to think, and the shadow moves closer. Its eyes, hateful red blazing brighter than the fire behind it, widen a fraction.

No.

No.

No.

This can’t be real, this isn’t right, Robin is dead and buried alongside her husband, and—

Lucina goes very still, and she tries very hard to remember if she has ever heard those exact three words.

‘Robin is dead.’

She could distinctly recall the moment her world first shattered, the moment she was handed a legacy she was too small to understand. Falchion settling into tiny arms. The moment loyal Frederick, face heavy with grief, had told her that her father was never coming home.

They said Chrom was dead. They told her that Chrom was dead. And of course Robin fell with him, they were two halves of a whole, together in death as they were in all things. That was how it went, wasn’t it? That was how it went.

Morgan had probably asked about her. Of course he would have, she just didn’t remember it as clearly. Her brother asked, and they were told that Robin was gone too, and that was the end of it. Was that the word? Gone. And the way the queen’s name was rarely spoken, the way portraits were moved into storage and the way she slowly faded from memory… as Lucina grew older, and began to put the pieces together, it had made an awful sort of sense.

The hesitation in the Shepherds’ eyes was because their beloved tactician had died a traitor, only that, and this thing in front of her was some waking nightmare. Some devil that had stolen its way into her mind, picked through her memories to find the perfect blade to cut through her armor, the perfect knife to slip directly into her heart.

The shadow approaches, the tips of her boots dragging along the forest floor as it silently glides towards the princess. Lucina wants to scream, to tell the demon to stay back, but the breath has left her lungs. It takes all she has to wordlessly raise Falchion against it, and though her spirit is shaking her hands are steady.

Two and a half feet of blessed steel lay between her and the monster, grown close enough that she can make out familiar features.

Just at the edge of Falchion’s reach, the thing shaped like the tactician pauses with the sword’s tip lying against her stomach, just below the ribcage.

And then she keeps moving.

A soft grunt of exertion, and the blade sinks into flesh. Lucina stands frozen stiff, but the shadow keeps moving. Her breaths are heavy as she pushes herself along inch by agonizing inch. Tears bead in the corner of those horrific red eyes, but they never once blink. The monster stares at the girl like she’s the only real thing left in the world.

Beneath the pain, past the heaving gasps, underneath the droplets slowly staining her cheeks, the demon is smiling.

She finally comes to a stop, Falchion’s bulky hilt pressing into her torso. The blade must have pierced completely through. Something dark and wet drips down the sword’s handle.

Arms clad in loose, faded-black sleeves rise up and slowly drape themselves over the girl’s shoulders, and burning eyes finally close as the thing shaped like her mother weakly pulls Lucina into an embrace.

Falchion’s pommel digs into her chest.

Lucina has never been more afraid in her entire life.

“I know…” the tactician whispers in a ragged voice, directly into her ear, “I know it’s not really her, and that this isn’t why you’re here. But… thank you. For a chance to—” which is as far as she gets before Lucina throws herself backwards out of her grasp. It isn’t difficult, and the thing that can’t be Robin does not resist as she’s pushed away. Unattached to the ground, she floats back several feet before slowing to a stop.

Her smile grows tighter.

“That’s… more like what I expected, I suppose.”

Lucina scrabbles for the spare iron sword she picked up. On some level she realizes it won’t do her any good, not if being run through by Falchion isn’t enough to stop the demon. On another, despite the irrationality, it’s a comfort to have a blade in her hand once more. Something to hold onto.

She can’t stop herself from shaking.

The monster only waits with that sad smile as Lucina struggles in vain to collect herself. What are you duels with you're dead and stay back, gods, stay back on her tongue, but she’s spared a moment longer when the last Risen shambles its way out of the brush. Lucina instinctively jumps to her side, further away from both it and the thing in the coat.

The Risen have been her sworn enemies for years. While the dragon circled high above, casting down ruin and despair as it passed, it was the endless Risen hosts that were the real danger for most of the world. Grima could not be everywhere at once, but his armies could be. Those rotting masks were the face of the enemy, and for the first time in her life, Lucina ignores it.

Robin does not.

Red eyes narrow, not reflecting the light but devouring it, and the Risen implodes. It crumples inwards, crushed by a massive invisible fist, its last death rattle drowned out by the crunch of cracking bone.

The process takes barely a second. All that remains is the wreckage of a rotted axe, a mess of iron shards and shattered wood. It’s relatively clean. Risen are considerate enough to vanish into smoke when they’re destroyed. Lucina doesn’t want to know what it would look like if that happened to a person.

Like she hadn’t just turned an undead to dust with will alone, the remaining monster in the clearing sighs.

“Repulsive creatures, aren’t they? Well, that was the last of them. You’re free now to… do what you came here to do.”

She sounds… resigned. Tired, in a way that Lucina can’t remember her mother ever showing.

Not that it is her, she mentally amends. She’s found the dead have a disturbing refusal to stay buried in her time, but this is something entirely above any Risen she’s ever seen.

Despite that less-than ironclad certainty, Lucina has to admit that the resemblance is practically perfect. Out of the arms of the enemy and in a position where the firelight illuminates rather than shadows, there’s almost nothing to distinguish between this grim apparition and the woman Lucina saw for a handful of seconds standing beside her father.

Unless, of course, one were to count the fell brand, radiating malice. The eyes that shine in ruinous red. The boots that don’t touch the ground. The dark stain slowly spreading out from the hilt of a holy sword still embedded in her torso.

Lucina mechanically notes another jagged gash in the creature’s shirt, a messy horizontal swipe a few inches below the hole the princess made. There is no blood lining that tear’s edges.

She takes a step back, carefully avoiding a half-shattered sword lying below her. A hiltless blade, to match the bladeless hilt she tripped over before. One edge is an utter ruin, and the point is malformed and bent inwards.

“You can’t be here,” she manages, gripping tightly to her stolen sword. “You’re dead.”

The smile reappears, with a horrific hint of genuine warmth. “I am, aren’t I? He finally figured out how to get rid of me. I never thought it… I never thought it would happen.”

Tears slowly roll down the woman’s face.

“And I know it doesn’t—it doesn’t actually change anything, it doesn’t fix anything, I just don’t have to watch anymore. But… that’s okay, isn’t it?”

Something isn’t right (so many things are not right). Something that looks like a dead woman, something that looks like her mother found its way to the past, something that has Grima’s eyes and can turn Risen to dust with a twitch, something that seems just as upset to see Lucina as she is to see it.

It was expecting her. It didn’t believe she was real either. It claimed that Lucina has a job to do, and it begs judgement.

The shade spreads her arms wide. The firelight reflects off Falchion’s bloody hilt.

“Well, arbiter? What say you? It’s selfish to take comfort in this, no? Or is it that I don’t deserve it, that it would be more fitting for me to stay?”

There is a sick desperation in her voice. A maddened, swirling light behind the surface crimson in her eyes. She grows ever louder with every word, almost screaming out her poison.

“Because frankly, I agree! I don’t mean to say you aren’t capable, but this is a fairly sorry attempt—”

“STOP!” Lucina shrieks, hands white around her borrowed blade. “I don’t—I don’t understand—”

“Understand?” the demon scoffs. “What is there for you to understand? This is my hell, my eternal reward, and you’re wearing the shape of my daughter to—”

And then she stops, and her arms slowly fall to her sides, and her body convulses as she is wracked by great wheezing coughs. It isn’t quite a laugh.

“Oh. Oh, I see now. I spoke too soon…” she says quietly. She raises a hand to cover her mouth, bringing hateful violet to rest under unblinking red. “You aren’t condemnation, not yet. You’re confession.”

Silence, but for the crackling flames. Lucina can almost hear the blood drip from her father’s sword.

“Well then, dearest…” the tactician murmurs. Her arms once more spread in grim invitation. Her palms face Lucina. Grima’s eyes turn away. “Ask what you will, and I will answer.”

Her face twists into something that tries hopelessly to be a smile.

Ask, Lucina.

The princess’s head spins. Ask. Like it was the simplest thing in the world, like she hadn’t been dying for and dreading this prospect for years, like the locked drawer buried deep in the back of her mind wasn’t on the verge of shattering and spilling out every damned word she could ever think to say to this woman wrapped around the most terrible truth in the world.

Lucina can‘t say anything for a moment. There’s simply too much, and as an internal war rages in her throat she hears a voice.

It takes her entirely too long to realize it’s her own.

“You died. In Plegia. Years ago.”

The answer is a slow, sad shake of the head, a face full of gentle regret.

“How I wish that were true, dearest.”

No. No, Robin died and who told you that? Why are you so certain? Who said it explicitly?

Not any Shepherd.

Lucina feels a bolt of ice shiver down her spine as the answer comes in cold clarity, echoed ad infinitum in her nightmares. Numbly, she repeats the words.

“Your mother and father are dead…”

“…tiny one.” the monster finishes softly.

The ice spreads through her body, rime creeping across her bones. She can’t feel the fire.

“…and then it was your turn. Supposed to be, but it wasn’t, it wasn’t, little light, and—” Robin stops abruptly, blinking, as whatever warmth had been building on her face is snuffed out in an instant.

“Oh. Oh, gods, I just realized I’ll never know when you actually die. At least before, I… gods…”

“…how did you know that?” It comes out as a rasping whisper.

The shadow cocks her head.

“Because I was there.”

She raises her hand, turning it outwards. Lucina can’t… she doesn’t… those eyes.

“Do you know what this means, daughter? Not what it is, I know you know that, you’re a smart girl. What it means.”

It means death. It means ruin, despair. The end of all things. Betrayal.

“It means I had a purpose, Lucina. It means that my forefathers spent centuries planning, scheming in the dark, all so that one day I would be born, and that one day their god would be reborn in me. I’m not… I was never supposed to be a person, Lucina, I was a vessel.”

Her father’s shoulder. Her own eye. Her mother’s hand.

The pieces were right there. It had been staring them in the face the entire time, and they were too blind to see.

(something followed her back the risen followed her back what the hell followed her back)

That face, and that coat, and Lucina hadn’t missed that ‘little light’ earlier, a pet name she hadn’t heard in years. Not since the woman in front of her did not die. Because it is her, it can’t be yet has to, Lucina’s mother is alive and it is the worst possible outcome.

Because it isn’t just her.

Say it, Lucina.

“It… it was you. You’re…” she swallows, the last word stuck in her throat. She doesn’t want to say it, doesn't want to speak it and make it true.

Say it, Lucina.

“You… you’re Grima.”

Please, gods, let her be wrong. Let this all be some twisted joke, let her have offered the gravest insult she can think of to her own flesh and blood, let her have torn time itself asunder for something. Let her not have failed, so soon into her mission. Let her be wrong.

Robin’s smile does not reach those haunting red eyes.

“Yes. I was. That’s the truth of me,” she says, achingly soft. The firelight flickers, dancing across her body.

And the world darkens.

The very air around the tactician burns black as she throws her arms wide. Whatever dissonant serenity that had come to her evaporates.

“Venom in the veins, Lucina! I was made to be a god! What—what higher honor could there be?!” She practically screams the words, dripping fevered scorn like blood from Falchion’s hilt.

So that’s it, Lucina quietly realizes. The answer to a question she’d grappled with for years, and a few more she’d never thought to ask. One of her greatest fears in coming back, manifested. There wasn’t… there wasn’t any complication with Chrom. Her father had been there as best as he’d been able, snatching as much time as he could between campaigns. He hadn’t abandoned her, he’d died.

Much of the same could be said for Robin as well. Perhaps a shade quieter, a touch more withdrawn, not as brightly shining in her love as her husband. It should have ended there. Her mother didn’t come back either, and it should have been a simple, unambiguous tragedy. Why couldn’t it end there? Why couldn’t the queen just die softly, why couldn’t the wound she left stop bleeding out over her family, her friends, her country?

What was Lucina supposed to do? For all that she wanted to trust the woman in the coat she’d seen standing behind Chrom, it was that very woman that taught her not to.

The answers that would make sense of it all were buried with her mother, and a part of her now wishes they had stayed buried.

Her grip on the iron sword slackens, its point falling for the first time since she’s raised it. Robin only stares expectantly after her outburst, frozen in her moment of lunatic pride.

“…so it really was all a lie, then,” Lucina says, voice hollow. “You… from the beginning, you planned to sacrifice us for power.”

Robin does not cackle. She does not simply accept it, in that eerie calm she displayed before. She chokes, eyes wide and face pale as she recoils backwards as if struck, a reaction markedly stronger than when she was actually impaled. She twitches and sputters, arms flailing uselessly as she tries to string together coherent words.

“Gah! I didn’t—that’s not—gods, I—no, Lucina, please believe me, that isn’t true. I—I, that was an awful way to say it, I should have… shouldn’t have…”

There is a desperate need in her every motion, a frenzied plea to listen.

And damn her, Lucina does.

“I didn’t—I swear I didn’t know any of this, not until it was already happening. I really did love Chrom, and you, and the Shepherds, I would never… you know that, don’t you?”

Robin looks at her like the world is ending.

“You know that… don’t you?”

Despite all the power of her unearthly presence, the burning eyes, the boots that don’t touch the ground, that damnable dark coat, Lucina has never seen her mother look so small.

It isn’t enough to clear the iron grip around her throat, not enough to dare voice the ember of hope left burning in her soul.

But it’s enough to give her a chance.

Wordlessly, not trusting herself to stop what would come out of her mouth, not knowing what she would say, she grasps her final lifeline and straightens. It’s a curious paradox. Lucina cannot meaningfully harm the body hovering in front of her, and yet she seems to hold Robin’s very soul in her hands.

Her nod isn’t rejection, but it isn’t acceptance either. Merely a willingness to continue.

Robin exhales heavily, recognizing the offered grace for what it is. Though on the verge of tears, her tone is steady.

“My mother stole me from Plegia as a child. I didn’t know anything about my heritage, just that the mark on my hand meant I should stay away from the Grimleal at all costs… I had suspicions, but nothing concrete until it was far too late. And power?” Despite the mood, Robin laughs, disbelief echoing in the night.

“Power, Lucina? I gained nothing from apotheosis. There was power to be had, fair enough, but Grima was much more interested in a puppet than a partner…” she trails off, a distant and pensive fragility in her eyes. “In a sense, you weren’t exactly wrong to say I died there. I wasn’t ever… I couldn’t do anything past that point. Just… watch, as my own body was used to burn the world. I couldn’t stop him, I couldn’t talk to anyone, I couldn’t do anything, Lucina!”

She flaps an arm up and down in demonstration, and Lucina realizes how little Robin has moved in this conversation. She mostly hovers in place or makes broad, sweeping arm motions. Even that horrific embrace lacked pressure, any sort of actual power or complexity behind it. The tactician’s fingers have barely twitched, and the princess wonders if there’s a reason her feet won’t touch the ground.

“Okay. We’ll say I believe you,” Lucina starts, and she watches as hope springs to life on her mother’s face, “but what happened then?”

For while she is willing to believe (while she wants to believe, while she desperately desires this answer) that Robin might not have had any influence or ability under Grima, the woman she’d known certainly did not have the power to ignore gravity or crush Risen to dust with a glance. Her mother would not have been merely inconvenienced by a sword stuck through her body.

Robin seems faintly confused, if anything, briefly looking down at herself.

“I’m… not entirely sure. I suppose he finally figured out a method to exorcise me. And retaining his power in death is… further punishment? A reminder that we were always one and the same?”

There was a certainty to her answers before that the tactician now lacks. A faint look of puzzlement crosses her face as she rationalizes herself away, a look that sends Lucina hurling backwards to her childhood of seeing that exact same expression Robin had made whenever she was absorbed in a problem.

This state of affairs is unstable. There are cracks in the facade, the smallest of hints that her mother doesn’t quite believe her own explanations for her new reality. The confusion over either of their states, demon or dragon. The existence of the Risen. Given a bit more time, practically any interaction with an unknown human won't fit the model. Robin isn’t the kind of woman to cling to denial past the point of reason. Something, somewhere, somewhen will cause an irreconcilable break, and the outcome will only get worse the longer it takes.

It’s a very delicate situation that Lucina must consider with extreme caution. This still has the potential to go very poorly, and there are still so many questions, but this is fine. Lucina can work with this.

“You… truly weren’t Grimleal, then…” It’s all but confirmed, but Lucina needs to hear it anyway.

Her mother’s response is a quiet, “no.”

Some of the tension ebbs from her frame. The point of her sword wavers, and finally lowers entirely. This… it’s still an incredibly disturbing revelation, but it’s an answer. One that could have been so much worse—

“Not in the beginning, at least.”

…what?

Lucina freezes.

“But you just said that…”

Robin sighs, then swallows heavily, searching for the words. Where her crimson gaze had dipped, it now brings full, burning focus on her daughter.

There’s something almost like pity in her eyes.

“It isn't as if I was an official convert or anything. It was just… an eventual alignment in philosophy. You can’t understand how much Grima hates us—I don’t think anyone could, not without being locked in his head, I don’t think I even knew what hate was until I—it’s suffocating, Lucina, how much he hates us, and he just drowns in it day after day after day… Grima is a monster. But we deserved him.”

What.

Something roils in her stomach. Not the cold crush of despair, not what she’d felt when she’d thought her mother had always been a lie. This is different. This is a spark of rage.

“What…?”

“Humanity, Lucina,” Robin says tiredly. Unaware of the building fury, she only looks on with that patronizing pity. “He didn’t deserve to win, but we deserved to be wiped out. We’re a curse. Petty, and selfish, and spiteful… we almost didn’t even need him, we do such a wonderful job of destroying ourselves on our own!”

“A curse? And here I thought I was your daughter,” Lucina spits, a touch surprised herself at the steel in her words.

Again Robin flinches, though not quite as drastically as before, and while panic shines through her backpedaling, her body is steady.

“I didn’t—of course you weren’t a curse, Luci, I didn’t mean it like that!”

But she’d still said it.

“I—that was poorly said. Not… some people are genuinely good! As good as they can be amid the muck. You’re not… you’re not a bad person, Lucina, you’re better than most of us. But you’re the exception, not the rule.”

Lucina’s challenge is immediate.

“Aunt Emmeryn.”

Robin looks faintly pained at that, but still won’t let go of that damned pity.

“Emmeryn… she was a myth, Lucina.” She held up a hand to stop the tirade she could see building. “Not in the sense that she wasn’t real, but… you didn’t know her. You knew the version told to you by grieving siblings, the idealized one, not the real, flawed human she was in life. People aren’t like that.”

No. No, she refused. She would not let this stand, not when her aunt’s death had been such a critical step towards everything falling apart.

“How could you say that? Especially when you got to—when you did know her?”

“I met the woman once, Lucina,” Robin says bluntly.

But… no, that couldn’t be right. Her parents had told her so many stories of how caring Emmeryn had been, how wise and empathetic and… and it hadn’t been her parents, had it? It had only been Father and aunt Lissa. Her mother had remained silent on the subject.

“I met her once, and she was just as human as the rest of us. She was better than most, true, but she wasn’t some… shining, perfect beacon of kindness and humility. And take it from me, because I was one of the rulers that followed her, she wasn’t perfect in that regard either.

“For every Emmeryn, there’s a Gangrel. For every Basilio, a Walhart.” she pronounces with the grim finality of a headsman’s axe.

Robin stops looking at her. Her empty eyes still point at the girl, but there is no acknowledgement, no realization left as the tactician retreats inwards, pouring out swallowed poison.

“You have… no idea… what people are capable of, dearest. Even before Grima, the signs were there, and after… he didn’t lie to me, he didn’t care enough to lie, he only showed me what we really are. The Grimleal were just the beginning. So many… so many of them were in it for hatred. They didn’t care what happened to the rest of the world as long as we would destroy their enemies. And there were people in Plegia, the rich, the powerful, that weren’t even believers. They just… they sat by and enabled the apocalypse for their own gain.” She laughs, a hollow, broken thing. “I don’t think they ever thought it would work. They thought they could just string destiny along, content to fatten themselves off suffering until we were breaking down their doorsteps. You would think, Lucina, that the end of days might inspire a little camaraderie, no? Do you know how many tried to negotiate with us, little light? How many, all over the world, thought to use us in their petty squabbles? How many believed they could spare themselves just a moment longer by offering gold, power, their neighbors, their friends, their families to us?

“It never worked,” Robin offers blankly. “And they kept trying.”

She blinks, coming back to the present. Her mother can only meet her eyes for a moment before her head dips low, staring at the ground.

“I… I’m sorry, Lucina. That the world is like this.”

That we are like this, she does not finish.

The earth feels unsteady beneath her feet. A name comes to her lips, but doesn’t yet leave them. She isn’t sure she could take what the tactician would say. She had loved him. Surely, surely she would not dare slander…

“Chrom.” Lucina whispers.

The figure shakes in silent shame, and does not look up. Equally softly, she replies.

“…he was a good man. So were his Shepherds, for the most part. They really were… and together, we spilled rivers of blood. Call it just, call it good, call it what you will, it does not make a difference to the thousands of graves we dug. Or the ones they left behind. Your father… the Shepherds… they were heroes. They were as good as they were capable of being, in this miserable world, and you know what happened to them.”

Neither break the silence for a long, long moment.

“You can’t,” Lucina starts hoarsely, then swallows. “You can’t honestly tell me that this is right. That you wanted this.”

Robin does not reply, and in the lingering emptiness between them, Lucina almost dares to believe she hadn’t heard her.

That hope is shattered with two fragile words.

“I did.”

Lucina watches as her parents leave to go to war. Violence is stirring in Valm, a monster of a man who offers all one choice: bow the head or lose it. This will be the last.

Lucina watches as her parents leave to go to war. They promised it was over, and have been made liars by a madness brewing in the desert. This will be the last.

Lucina watches as her parents never come home, as her brother shatters and her father’s legacy is left to a girl too small to wield it.

Lucina watches, and Lucina thinks, as remnants of the queen begin to fade. The Shepherds grow silent when speaking of their fallen tactician, and all too soon, there are none left to speak.

Her father’s last gift was a sword. Her mother’s last curse was a question.

Lucina watches as the ruin of the woman she once called family shudders with quiet sobs, and she asks

“Why?”

“Because I did, Lucina,” Robin spits raggedly. “I don’t get to say otherwise when that was my answer the only time it mattered. There’s no point in… I don’t get to regret it.”

She does not continue, though she does try. The pitiful, choked syllables fail to resolve into words, into any sort of justification, any sort of reason for the venom she spills.

Eventually, trembling, Robin looks up.

“When your father died… when I saw him there, on the Table floor… Grima spoke to me. He asked me. Whether I wanted to burn the world. My husband was dead, he was still warm, a-and Grima asked me if I wanted to hurt it back. This rotten, miserable world that had killed him. And I did. I did, Lucina, I wanted it in that moment, and that was the last choice I ever made. The only choice that mattered.”

“…the only choice that mattered,” Lucina repeats quietly, lead settling in her stomach.

Robin only nods. She tries, in vain, to school her face into something resembling a smile. There is nothing but a terrible, despairing acceptance in her tired eyes.

“That’s what I am, little light. That’s the truth of me… I don’t… I won’t ask you to… you deserved so much better than this.”

“…how could you say that?” the girl whispers.

The tactician blinks. Whatever response she had been expecting, whatever judgement she foresaw… it was not that. In any other circumstance, Lucina might celebrate surprising her mother so.

“How could you say that?” She drops the useless length of iron she had clung so tightly to. It had been a pointless facade in the first place. “That it was the only choice that mattered. How dare you!”

She bites down on the cold contempt in her voice. That… she didn’t mean to do that. She’s tried to stay calm through the carnival of misery that tonight has been, but her control is fraying. Snapping won’t help, it never does. Her composure must remain intact, even as angry tears begin to burn in the corners of her eyes and her pulse pounds through her veins like a hammer.

She just has to. Keep it together.

Robin winces, a full body shiver rocking her frame, but her response is a bleak chuckle.

“I just… I can’t seem to say anything right to you, can I? But… it’s… my entire life, Lucina, everything I ever did or didn’t do, it was always going to end there. It all led up to that, and… I failed. As badly as I possibly could. I destroyed the world. What else could matter, in the face of that?”

“So we didn’t matter. None of us did, is that what you’re saying? The Shepherds, aunt Lissa, Owain, Morgan and I. Father.”

“Because it didn’t!” Robin hisses. “It didn’t change anything! All the love in the world, and I did love you, none of it meant anything to him. None of it could stop us. I wasn’t… We weren’t… strong enough…”

Her mother turns away.

Lucina had thought, once upon a time, what she might say to the woman in front of her if she had the chance. Her approach had varied immensely over the years, spanning from righteous judgement at a traitor’s confession to tearful reconciliation from a horrible misunderstanding undone. This… hadn’t been a scenario she’d foreseen. Condemnation, forgiveness, or even apathy she was prepared for. Not this… freezing scorn.

The gears in her head spin, and with an icy clarity Lucina understands what she must do. There is only one question left to ask, and ways to wound without a blade. Is this how the tactician had felt, all those years ago? This empty moment where all that exists is the objective, the steps laid out perfectly ahead?

“If you loved him…”

Robin snaps to attention, and Lucina drives the knife home.

“…then why did you murder him?”

Her mother stops breathing. Red eyes go impossibly wide, and in them, for the first time, Lucina can see fear.

She says nothing, and that is answer enough.

“It was you.”

Robin’s form grows bigger—no, Lucina is getting closer, blood boiling.

“It was always you.”

The vessel makes no moves to escape.

“Murdered by his closest friend.”

The vessel does not move at all.

“I had hoped. Otherwise.”

Only silently shudders, as if she’s about to break apart.

“You said you were possessed. So I believed it was not your choice.”

Lucina’s hand whips up to take the tactician by the collar.

“And then you said his death was the catalyst for you to submit.”

Tears pour down Robin’s face as she struggles to find her voice.

“Which brings the fault. Back to you.”

Falchion’s pommel digs into her chest.

“So, I will have my answer.”

Whispers fall from trembling lips, a constant stream of I don’t, I don’t, I don’t…

“Why did you kill my father?”

“I DON’T KNOW!”

Robin screams, and the anguished cry comes with terrible force. Lucina is blown backwards half a dozen feet, carving furrows in the dirt around her boots.

The hand grasping the tactician’s collar is empty. The other is not, clutching onto the bloody hilt of her father’s sword.

She had only held onto it. The black pulse of agony and basic physics did the rest to rip it from her mother’s body.

The holy blade is stained dark with blood.

Robin shakes, wracked with great, wheezing sobs. She rakes a sleeve across her face in a futile attempt to wipe the tears away, even as ichor pours from the hole in her stomach.

“I don’t—I don’t know!” the tactician wails. “I—we were winning, we won, it was supposed to be over! A-a-and then I just—and then he just—and I couldn’t stop laughing! I don’t know! Maybe I did hate him, maybe somewhere I resented that he could still keep going, still keep believing after everything life did to him! Maybe I hated that anyone could, and he just happened to be there! Or maybe it was fate, maybe it was his natural punishment!”

Her eyes burn brighter, swirling with mania as her speech grows ever more unhinged. A hellish purple miasma starts to burn the air around her.

“He trusted me! I murdered him, and he trusted me! He deserved it! Is that what you want to hear?!”

Lucina can’t breathe.

“IS IT?!”

“I—” she starts, only to be cut off immediately.

“Because I’m poison, Lucina! That’s what you get when you drink poison, when you invite it into your home! Because I turn everything I love to ash! It would have been better if we’d never met!”

Something that’s almost a memory comes to the fore. Her father, as he always did, believed in his wife and rarely hesitated to say so. Lucina couldn’t remember what was said at that particular episode, or even how old she was. Only a compliment that she could tell didn’t land, how her mother’s smile had tightened at the genuine praise. Something hadn’t sat quite right with her young self, but she could never understand what.

Oh.

“And I mean that! He would have… someone else could have done my job. I’m clever, but not irreplaceable. I was never necessary. He would have… he would have been better off with someone else. You, and Morgan… you would have been better off as someone else’s children…”

Her feverish desperation burned out, Robin’s arms fall to her sides and her head bows. And in those awful red eyes, those that haunted her nightmares before and most certainly still will, Lucina sees a great and terrible sincerity. Something in her heart cracks.

Scrambling, she latches onto the first argument that comes to mind, even as the thought births another spike of heartbreak.

“Of course he wouldn’t. Morgan idolized you. What would he be without you?”

She, very deliberately, uses ‘would’ and not ‘would have been.’

“Morgan would be—” Robin starts sharply, then cuts herself off. She takes a deep breath, and calmly repeats, “Morgan would be better off without me. All of you would have.”

No. No, she won’t let it end like this. Another retort, but as the words form she knows immediately that they are of no use.

“But… you keep saying that… that Grima was inevitable. The world would still have ended.”

Her mother laughs, a joyless, empty sound. “In an ideal world, I never existed. In the one we got… even though it would end the same, at least it wouldn’t be from me. At least it wouldn’t have been a betrayal.”

What is she supposed to say to that? What, truly, is she supposed to say? That Robin was worth it? That even in the best possible scenario, where this ugly, messy night was never complicated, where Robin was happy, where her family was happy, was she truly supposed to look her in the eye and tell her that she would rather have her mother even if it meant the end of the world?

“We loved you,” Lucina says helplessly, for lack of anything else to say.

“You shouldn’t have,” Robin gently replies, without hesitation.

Neither speak for a long, long moment.

And eventually, Robin breaks the silence.

“I think,” she says quietly, “…that I have said what needed to be said. I think you’ve heard enough to know the truth of things. You may fulfill your purpose now.”

She won’t look Lucina in the eye.

No, no, no, no, there’s still so much she needs to know, still so much she needs to do, she hasn’t even been in the past a day and so much has already gone wrong, she needs to has to can’t break can’t break can’tcan’tcan’t—

Lucina breathes out, and Falchion falls from her hands.

Keep it together.

She can’t… she can’t break now. This is a tipping point, and she needs to think very carefully about what she will say next. Has to use the part of her that her mother granted to figure out what to do about that very woman.

Ha.

Hahaha.

She feels so terribly, terribly lightheaded.

It’s an unacceptable risk.

She’s our mother.

She’s an unstable misanthrope with the powers of a god. We cannot meaningfully control her.

Not by force, true. But there are other ways.

Via those bonds that she just thoroughly rejected?

After years spent as a prisoner in her own body as Grima’s puppet. She’s not thinking straight.

Before which she murdered her beloved husband out of spite.

Breathe in, breathe out.

…she said she didn’t know, at first.

And do we believe that?

…

It isn’t an entirely unreasonable idea, to be fair, just a very dangerous one. Her new abilities may significantly reduce the threat of Risen, and she seems much less susceptible to damage.

As well as having personal knowledge of the events yet to occur that we lack, along with a much stronger tactical mind.

…she’s still delusional, at the moment, and that vitriolic self-hatred casts her usefulness into serious doubt.

And it would be horrible to abandon her in this state, useful or not, even if she weren’t our mother.

There might not be much of her left, and we don’t even know how she’s free again. Are we prepared to do this?

No.

…Will that stop us?

Lucina had staked everything on a prayer before.

“Not yet,” the princess bites out. “Two more questions.”

The woman in the coat sighs deeply, but does not argue. It is a tired, defeated sound.

“First… Are you certain that Grima is gone?”

Robin cocks her head warily. “He wouldn’t exactly kill himself, would he?”

“Just answer the question.”

“The fact that we can have this conversation is answer enough,” she scoffs. “I am intimately familiar with what it feels like to have Grima in my head. He isn't here.”

Decisive, but not as explanatory as she’d hoped. Lucina can work with this. The second question was… it might not go so smoothly.

“Second…” She breathes deeply to steady herself. “If you could go back, if you could change things… would you?”

A hint of anger bleeds into the tactician’s voice.

“What kind of question is that? The door’s closed. It’s pointless to think about it.”

“Humor me,” Lucina replies as coolly as she can manage. “If you could make things better, would you?”

“Of course I would,” Robin tries to hiss, but there is no venom left in her. “I have spent. Years. Regretting things. Even if… even though we don’t deserve it.”

Alright, then. Lucina can work with this. She can work with this, it’s just a matter of… making her understand.

Lucina bites back the urge to laugh. It isn’t funny, it really isn’t. Robin thinks she’s some specter of judgement, not her actual daughter. And this really isn’t going to help matters, because Lucina is fairly sure that she’s about to say the worst thing she possibly could to the tactician.

Her two questions are asked. Robin watches, and waits.

Lucina steadies herself, and again prays that she might embody at least a fraction of the wisdom of the ancient Hero King she imitates.

“You are,” she speaks softly and slowly, with her mother’s full attention, “…pathetic. I understand that you have endured terrible things, but I do not understand… what you’ve become. Your philosophy, your judgement of humanity… They are wrong. You believe that you never mattered, that you only hurt those that loved you…” her breath hitches, “and you are wrong.”

It’s sickening, to watch the miasmic flares of dark magic around Robin grow darker while her eyes paradoxically shine. The way she casually accepts, how she silently begs to be torn apart makes Lucina’s skin crawl.

“You are wrong, and… and I need you to understand that.” Her voice cracks on the last handful of syllables.

So close to the end. She can see the gears turning in that brilliant, broken mind as the tactician’s expectations are denied.

“So…” she tries, injecting as much confidence as she can into her words, playing the hero and not the fragile girl on the cusp of shattering into a thousand pieces, “…you are going to come with me, and I am going to prove to you that you are wrong, and together we are going to fix things.”

Robin’s eyes narrow, and there’s a new layer of ice in her voice as Lucina understands how this body could be the Fell Dragon.

“Do not mock me, apparition. That ship has sunk. It’s over.”

“No, it isn’t,” Lucina whispers. She can see the anger building in that crimson gaze, the breath being drawn to speak, and she drops the hammer.

“Because you’re not dead.”

The reaction is immediate and violent, though it comes not from Lucina’s front but to her side. The fire casting flickering light over the clearing explodes upwards, suddenly bursting to twice, three times its original height with a blazing roar.

Just as abruptly, it goes out entirely. Not even embers are left in the bed of ash.

“I’m… Sorry. What.”

Her eyes are now the brightest thing left in the clearing, and all of that flame’s great potential, every shard of its menace now laces the tactician’s voice.

“You heard me. You’re not dead, and neither am I,” the princess manages, with bravery she does not truly feel.

“You aren’t, but Chrom is,” Robin snaps back, and the non sequitur is almost enough that Lucina misses the increasingly threatening tone.

What does Father have to do with any of… wait. There’s an easy answer, but when did she have the opportunity? When did she even arrive? Before Lucina, clearly, but it can’t have been terribly long if she was still so sure in her delusion. Especially not if she ran into another Robin.

“You saw Chrom?” she ventures.

“And Lissa, and Frederick. Also dead, as it hapens.”

Which means… with that specific triad, in this part of Ylisse, this might have been earlier today. That is… a terrifyingly thin margin. If Grima hadn’t vanished for no apparent reason, the havoc he could have wrought in an unprepared world… No use in thinking about it. Hypotheticals were a pointless worry when there were so many realities to worry about.

“…They are,” Lucina confirms cautiously. Robin is taking this worse than expected, and if anything will completely set her off, the next words will.

“But not in this timeline.”

A lethally thin black spike erupts from the earth behind the tactician. It would be nearly invisible were it not darker than the night around it.

“What.”

Well. No more running.

“Not in this timeline. We’re… we’re in the past. Before… before many things happened. Before Grima.”

More spikes.

“No.”

“I’m afraid so, Mother,” she says, feeling an odd mix of trepidation and absurdity at presenting her last hope as such. “My friends and I, with the help of Naga, traveled back to the past to prevent the Fell Dragon’s resurrection. Apparently… he attempted to follow, and somehow released you.”

A tree behind Robin is pulverized. There’s no apparent magic, no swirl of dark fire or vicious spike to perforate it. The trunk simply snaps in on itself in a dozen different places, turning the body of the tree into so much kindling.

“No. No, no, no,” she repeats, lost in an empty mantra. “No. You’re lying. Or. No. You have to be. I don’t. I don’t matter anymore. I don’t have to matter anymore.”

There is a deep terror in her eyes, and the tactician rises.

“No, no, I’m dead, it’s over, we lost and that’s it! I don’t—I don’t have to matter anymore, I can’t ruin anything anymore, and—” the dark magic swirling around her thickens, and her hands burn with black flame. Her panicked gaze flits to the hateful night in her grasp, and then down to Lucina.

For a brief moment, Lucina fears she has made a grave miscalculation.

Robin stares down from on high, gears whirling madly behind hysterical eyes, and retches.

Lucina doesn’t stop to think about the danger of the situation. She sees her mother fall and moves.

It isn’t quite a dead drop, and the landing is softer than it should be as Robin lands half over Lucina’s shoulders. She’s able to maneuver them to an almost-kneeling position as the tactician continues to dry-heave.

“If—then—real—Luci—no—” she attempts through each convulsion.

Lucina shushes her and pats her on the back in the awkward embrace they’ve found themselves in, and is profoundly grateful that Robin’s head has come to rest on her shoulder. It means the fear on her own face is hidden.

There’s a slit in the back of Robin’s coat that draws her eye, stained darker than the surrounding fabric. Falchion’s exit point. Carefully, as lightly as she can, she parts it just slightly. Another bloody hole pierces through the shirt beneath. Even further below, there is unblemished skin, and a shiver runs down her spine. The dark blots only barely visible in the moonlight are the only sign there ever was a wound.

The sounds of crying over her shoulder quieten for a moment, and after another choking sob Robin finally manages to force out intelligible words.

“If, if, if this is t-the past, th-then that means you’re actually,” she hiccups, “ac-actually her.”

“I am.”

Robin twitches, and either tries to push her away or pull her in closer. Lucina isn’t sure which.

“Oh, gods, Lucina… I said such… such awful things… I-I’m…”

She doesn’t finish the sentence.

“I’m going to stand up now. Is that alright?” the princess asks calmly. Her mother shifts against her in a way that Lucina interprets as agreement. She almost slips her arms out from around the woman, but decides against at the last second.

Robin is dragged up with little effort, and Lucina steps back. Her legs hang loose in a manner that could transition to standing well enough, but evidently she would rather hover in place.

Those burning red eyes scan up and down her daughter’s form, drinking in the sight. Her attention is almost a physical weight. The rest of the world seems to drop away.

Robin opens her mouth to speak, but decides against it. Then again. And again.

And finally, in a small voice, “I would… I would like to be alone for a moment.”

“Go ahead.”

It isn’t like Lucina can stop her.

She mumbles something that sounds faintly like a thank you and floats backwards towards the forest. It isn’t until she reaches the edge of the clearing that she turns around, and without the crimson glow of her eyes, it’s only a few seconds more before she’s nearly invisible in the dark.

It’s fine.

Lucina turns around herself. To give Robin some space.

She walks towards the other edge of the clearing. Passes Falchion on the ground. Keeps walking. Has to return and pick it up.

The sword reeks of blood.

It’s fine.

She made it to the past. This world’s Chrom is alive, this world’s Emmeryn is alive, they won’t be much longer if she doesn’t do something about it, her mother is alive, her real one, and she’s broken.

Lucina doesn’t know how to fix this.

The woman in the coat is still out there, and Lucina’s understanding of her has at once become so much better and so much worse. As twisted as her future self became under Grima’s thrall, what parts of it were already there? What sickness is already taking root in her heart?

What is she supposed to do?

She doesn’t… she isn’t qualified for this. For any of this. The apocalypse doesn’t care. She has no choice but to rise to the challenge or die trying, to spit in the eye of destiny or watch it all burn, again.

And her mother is alive.

Something in her body finally decides enough is enough, and all the faked confidence, all the steel in her spine leaves her at once. She very nearly falls over, though she manages to steady herself with a nearby tree. She didn’t realize how exhausted she was. The crisis has passed, the immediate threat dealt with, she can finally… sit down, or something, and process.

Her mother is alive. Her mother was Grima. Her mother is broken, and Lucina swore to make her understand that the world wasn’t. She doesn’t know how to fix this.

All of this on top of stopping the end of days, of course.

From deeper into the forest comes a violent snapping, that of local topography being rearranged. Drowning it out is a primal, sky-shattering scream of despair.

It’s too much.

Lucina slides down against a tree and begins to cry.