Chapter Text
Ugh… my back…
This always happens when I stay up late on my laptop in bed. It always ruins the next day, but I keep doing it anyway. We all have our vices.
Man, though, it’s especially awful today. Feels like I was sleeping in the dirt instead of my bed. I don’t even want to move. Maybe if I just stay here for a few more hours, my back will un-sore itself and then I can get up and live my life like I wasn’t some incorrigible geek who messed up her back reading manga on her computer until 3 AM instead of going to bed at a reasonable hour.
I hear some muffled voices above me. Probably just my roommate and one of her friends. I groan and flip myself over in the grass.
Wait, grass?
“We have to do something,” the higher-pitched voice says.
A notion begins to stagger its way through the early-morning haze afflicting most of my mind.
“What do you propose we do?” says a lower-pitched, Mercer-esque voice.
“I… dunno?”
There are a couple stimuli that can cause a person to go from early-morning brain fog straight to wide awake in seconds. The dorm fire alarm was one such example as I discovered last week, the sound of a cat throwing up was another, and my mother always had a very specific tone of voice that signaled to young Robin that it was, in order of importance; 11 AM, two hours past breakfast, and that if I didn’t get my ass downstairs and stop being such a nocturnal layabout then she’d start charging me rent.
One that would work especially well on me would be waking up in a field and hearing the intro cutscene of Awakening in frightening clarity. I swear to god, if this is just my roommate and her boyfriend playing a prank…
Lissa(?) says her next line (“Oh, hey there!”) as I abruptly flip myself back over, open my eyes, and try to sit up.
It takes a moment for my eyes to adjust, but it’s definitely them. Lissa in her big yellow gown on the right, and Chrom on the left in that stupid blue tunic with the sleeve torn off that I love so much.
“There are better places to take a nap than on the ground, you know,” Chrom says. “Give me your hand.”
Don’t mind if I do. I put my right hand in his, file the Fell Brand on my skin away in Problems to Address Later, and let him pull me up to my feet.
You know how in that cutscene, Chrom’s face fills almost the whole screen after he pulls you up? I always thought that it was just like that because of the limitations of the 3DS. Like, if it had been a console game and had a bigger screen, then it would have been a smaller, more reasonable fraction of the screen. Surely he doesn’t actually pull Robin like six inches from his face.
It is my genuine pleasure to inform you that no. He actually does do that. I wait about three heartbeats before I extricate myself from the big blue buffoon and take a deep breath.
Alright. I’m standing up on my own feet now, and all traces of sleepiness are gone from my mind. It’s time I ask the question. What the hell is going on?
I don’t think I died and got reincarnated here. It’s not like the life I led back on Earth was that risky or anything… You basically have to get hit by a truck for that trope to go off, and I barely ever left my dorm except for classes. There were no opportunities for that to happen, unless I just keeled over for no reason without even noticing.
Maybe it was just a dream? It wouldn’t be the first time I’d dreamed about Fire Emblem characters, but this one felt a lot more real. I could feel the dirt, smell the grass, and see even the most minute details of both mine and Chrom’s clothing that I never would have imagined just from seeing game art. If it was a dream, it was a damn good one, and I’d be pissed when I finally wake up.
“You all right?” he asks, still on script.
“Yeah. Thanks, Chrom.”
“Oh, so you know who I am?”
Hold on, wait. The way game Robin answered this was always super suspicious since she had amnesia. “Of course! Who wouldn’t recognize the prince and princess of the realm?” I say.
It occurs to me that if I’m admitting I know I’m talking to royalty, then I should probably be showing a bit of deference. I quickly try to curtsy, but all it ends up doing is making Lissa giggle at me.
“Well, I’m glad to see you back up on your feet. Tell me, what’s your name? What led you here?”
Well, my name was Robin (In real life, too!), and what ‘led me here’ was my evil alter ego attempting to mind-meld with me a couple hours ago. In the normal timeline, that resulted in Robin’s signature amnesia, but I guess here the complication from the failed memory transfer was to turn the original Robin into a useless weeb. Hard to tell which of them got the better deal.
“I’m Robin. I’m a tactician, and- Oh shit, the village!”
Frederick's brow furrows. Maybe I should have said ‘blast’ or ‘dastards’ instead.
“Okay, this is gonna sound bad, but Southtown is about to get attacked by a bunch of bandits. I swear I had nothing to do with it!”
Chrom looks like he instantly believes me, but off to his left it seemed I’ve unnerved Frederick the Wary even more than vanilla Robin.
“Milord, this is highly suspicious. This woman could very well be a Plegian spy, or even an assassin.”
“Well, if she’s an assassin, she could have done me in by now, right?” Chrom says. He was still grinning a second ago, but it's beginning to fade as the mood changes.
“I’m serious. I know this is making me look super suspicious, but I’m bringing it up anyway because if we start running now we might be able to make it there first!” I plead.
Chrom, always the man of action, nods and overrules Frederick. “She doesn’t seem like she’s lying, Frederick. Your caution is appreciated as always. We can sort out how she knows about this later, but as for right now we need to head to town as fast as possible. If she’s right, we can’t afford to waste a second.”
I sigh with relief. Frederick finally stops staring me down and turns his gaze to the horizon. I follow his, and can pick out Southtown off in the distance a few miles out. I was actually kind of worried that it was going to be a few hours’ walk away, since in the game the distances and times are all pretty vague. Frederick was the only mounted class, so we were all going to have to be running for most of the way. A shorter trip would be much better.
Chrom leads the way, pushing his way through the tall grass of the field back over to the road, where we find… two horses. One is clearly Frederick’s, but the other is an unarmored riding horse. Why are there two horses?
“Robin, with me!” Chrom says, almost making me trip as my brain freezes for a second. Just as I was about to get to ride tandem with the blueberry prince, though, Frederick snatches my dreams away from me.
“The suspicious woman will ride with me, Milord.”
Ugh. Well, I guess I can’t waste much time being disappointed about that since there’s a town to save, and all. I run over to Frederick’s big metal beast of a horse and grab his hand as he hoists me up onto the saddle in front of him.
It would have been nice to have more time to enjoy my first time riding a horse, but unfortunately we're on a tight schedule. Once Frederick has gotten me seated and Chrom and Lissa have mounted up on the other horse, the knight hops up behind me and kicks his horse into high gear, galloping off toward Southtown.
That second horse was still bothering me. I didn’t think Chrom could ride until he reclassed.
“Frederick,” I manage to say over my shoulder without accidentally biting my tongue off, “Where did Chrom’s horse come from?”
“The stables? Is this a trick question?”
“No, I just didn’t think Chrom could ride.”
“What on earth would give you that notion?”
It’s not like I can say, ‘because he starts in an infantry class,’ or anything.
“He, uh, didn’t look the type?”
Frederick lets my remark go unanswered for a few seconds as he navigates his horse around a bend in the road. I take a tighter grip on the harness to stop myself from slipping to one side.
“You’ll have to explain that preconception to me another time,” he says. “After we finish dealing with this other preconception of yours.”
Yeah, I’m not looking forward to that. If this were the game, then I’d only have one more mandatory Frederick Moment in my future, when he objects to Emmeryn about my origins really early after chapter 1, and then one or two more in the supports.
We aren’t in a support conversation right now, though, and we aren’t in a cutscene that I know the script for either. That’s pretty worrying.
A short while longer of hard riding puts us a stone’s throw or two from the Southtown gate. During our approach, I’d been watching as best I could for the telltale pillar of smoke that Lissa would normally spot at the start of the prologue, but it didn’t look like it had formed yet.
It couldn’t be too much longer, though.
“Chrom, look! The farmhouse!” Lissa calls. It takes Frederick less than a second to zero in on the house she’s pointing to, a ways off to the west of the town’s walls. They must have hit this place on their way in.
With a target acquired, Frederick’s horse responds, and as he leans forward I get a little bit squished between the neck of the horse and the knight’s full plate. Chrom and Lissa’s riding horse is no match for the raw power of a prepromoted class, falling a little bit behind us. Between how hard we’re riding now and the fact that we’re off the main road, it’s really bumpy.
“Can you fight?”
“What??”
“Can you help fight the bandits,” Frederick repeats.
Oh, no. Oh, no no no. This is a game about killing people. It was easy to forget that back when this was a game and all the dialogue kind of glossed over it. Most of the time I didn’t even have the 3D animations on, so all I saw was the little enemy sprites fading off the map when their HP hit zero.
I look down at my hand. There’s no turning off animations in the real world.
“I-I don’t think so,” I stammer. Frederick immediately pulls the horse to a stop, and offers me a hand to help me dismount.
Once I’m standing on my own two feet again, he quickly reaches into one of the saddle bags and produces a sheathed bronze sword, tossing it to me. I catch it awkwardly in my arms; it’s lighter than I expected.
“Stay clear of the fighting then, and use that to defend yourself if need be,” he says, and before I can respond, continues to gallop towards the fray.
I’m still a little stunned, standing in the grass holding the sword like a doofus. It’s difficult, grappling with the insurmountable fact that Robin’s life was a lot more violent than I really realized playing the game. There’s also a little part of me in the corner of my mind that thought it was interesting that her bronze sword came from Frederick, and wasn’t something she woke up with at the start of the game.
Wait, would I also be missing the thunder tome then? Nope, I can feel a book in one of the robe’s pockets. I discard the sword (sorry, Frederick) and fish the book out. This is definitely a better bet for defending myself. Even if I had enough of a stomach to swing that sword at somebody, I don’t think it’d be with enough force to actually hurt them that much.
Chrom and Lissa’s horse races by me as well, following Frederick towards the farmhouse. Those two don’t look afraid in the slightest. I’d expect that out of Chrom, since he’s, well, Chrom, but Lissa is just a healer. She has less HP and defense than Robin, even. And here Robin is, off cowering far away from the battlefield.
God, what do I do?
What am I here to do, anyway?
This world used to be fictional for me. This was a game with a plot and cast I’d fallen in love with. Now that I’m transported inside it personally, I don’t know what it’s supposed to be to me anymore.
I’ve already helped out a lot by warning them of the bandit attack, right? We caught them before they sacked the town square. There are probably villager NPCs that would have died otherwise that are alive because Frederick got here early.
Is this enough? Will I be able to go to sleep tonight (in the woods, after eating roast bear), if all I did was tell Frederick where to go, and then leave the rest on autobattle? Is that the best I can do?
Autobattle… No, that isn’t going to work. Not at all. Not even a little bit! I’ve seen what the Shepherds do when Robin leaves them to their own devices. I’ve got to get in there and help!
I grip my tome tightly and charge after them, as fast as my legs can carry me, and immediately trip over a furrow in the farmland and faceplant. Quickly getting back up only slightly deterred, I continue racing to the fight. If they end up cornered, Lissa can only take two hits from these guys on Hard mode, and I’m pretty sure that she wouldn’t have the luxury of just ‘retreating’ like she does in the game.
The clang of a bandit’s axe against the armor of Freddie’s horse rings through the air as I arrive. Chrom and Lissa have already dismounted, the former facing down another bandit, the myrmidon.
I look back and forth trying to spot the mages. It seems like the bandits had been split into two groups when we’d arrived, with one group raiding the farmhouse and the other over at a barn about a hundred feet away. Tactically, that’s pretty ideal, since it would be a lot harder for Freddie and Chrom to take everyone on at once.
I suppose that technically that assessment is just going off of my understanding of JRPG action economy, but I feel like it’s a safe bet it also applies somewhat to real life.
Another metallic clang rings out as Frederick takes a blow to his armor from the unmounted axe barbarian he’s fighting, but in exchange he runs the guy through with his lance. It isn’t close enough for me to see much detail, but I still feel my stomach turn, and I avert my gaze before the bandit crumples to the dirt.
Frederick’s probably fine. In the game, none of these enemies could really threaten him. It’s Chrom and Lissa I have to worry about.
Chrom seems to have handled his own myrmidon enemy while I wasn’t looking, but suddenly makes a dive to his left. Before I can realize what was going on, the ground where he was standing gets torn up by a magic gust of wind.
My brain doesn’t work fast enough. Dumbstruck by my first time witnessing magic, I frantically try to pinpoint where it came from. After a crucial few seconds, my eyes finally land on the mage who cast it, already surrounded by golden runes as he prepares to throw another.
The green mass of air catches me squarely in the chest, and sends me sprawling across the dirt. It wasn’t razor wind like I’d always imagined it, thank god; it was more of a blunt impact that took the wind out of me.
Pushing past the pain, I gasp for air and quickly crawl back up to my feet so I can evade the next one. Luckily, though, the golden circles flicker out as Frederick’s warhorse leaps practically onto him. Mage number one down.
That still leaves the thunder mage, though. He’s probably with the boss, though I can’t see anyone dressed like a mage over in the group Frederick is fighting.
Chrom turns his sights on a remaining bandit in the farmhouse group, with Lissa following. Frederick can handle the boss and the mage on his own. Definitely not worth fussing about EXP distribution right now.
I hear shouting over from Frederick’s fight, and see him finish it the same way he did the other two. The barbarian boss did stay standing after the first silver lance hit, but fell to the second.
Chrom grunts with pain as he takes a hit from the last bandit. He does a great job of pivoting around to keep himself between his sister and the enemy, and is bathed in green light from Lissa’s staff for his troubles.
The bandit can’t hold his own against the prince forever, though, and Chrom catches him in the neck with Falchion. I wince as the bandit falls to his knees clutching his throat, before toppling the rest of the way over.
A quiet falls across the field, as the sounds of shouting fade. The hoofbeats of Frederick’s warhorse against the tilled dirt are the loudest remaining sound, and even those die out as he rejoins the prince and princess.
I’m still a distance away, not having contributed anything apart from taking a wind spell to the gut. I guess if you’re being generous, you could claim that I took that spell so that Chrom or Lissa didn’t have to, but if we’re being honest then I just feel a bit silly after running in to help and then not actually doing anything.
I sigh, and look over at the farmhouse, wondering if the people who own it are… doing okay. Even though they didn’t reach the village square like they did in the game, the bandits still managed to trash this place on their way towards the town.
God, this sucks. I see Chrom and the others starting to make their way towards the house to check on it, and I’m really glad they’re doing it because I definitely don’t have the willpower to do it myself. I’ll just continue to stand here, awkwardly, waiting for this all to blow over-
The door to the farmhouse creaks open, and I suddenly remember that nobody found the thunder mage. The bandit, already ringed in golden runes, starts weaving a last-ditch attack and levels his hand at Chrom.
My body moves on its own. My left hand opens the thunder tome with practiced ease, and my right provides direction for the crackling energy pouring off its pages. I’m surrounded by golden rings of my own, and I can suddenly smell ozone. It all happens too quickly for me to even feel exhilarated.
My spell hits the bandit before he can finish casting his, and Chrom quickly closes the distance and finishes him off with Falchion.
I snap the book shut, and look down at my hands. My right still has the odd spark flickering over it, exactly like it does in the game’s Premonition cutscene.
Unlike the cutscene, both are trembling.
“Oh wow, Robin! Nice!” Lissa calls.
Not knowing what else to do, and still in shock about killing someone, I amble over to the rest of the Shepherds. Chrom steps over to me and pats me on the shoulder. I try to memorize as much as I can about the sensation, so that I can enjoy it later when I’m not as freaked out.
“Your quick thinking there saved me from that brigand’s magic. Thank you, Robin,” he says.
“Yeah! You threw that thunder really fast, too,” adds Lissa. “I didn’t know you were a mage!”
“I mean, I’ve got this magic-looking coat and everything,” I say on autopilot, still reeling.
Lissa looks me up and down. “I guess so… Oh, can you heal as well?”
I do wonder if I can do that. Until two minutes ago, I didn’t think I could use any kind of magic. Maybe I should try it sometime. Probably not now, though.
“I don’t think so… Magic is still pretty new to me,” I say.
“That’s fine, since there shouldn’t be too many injuries around right now,” Lissa says. “Speaking of which, we should go check on the farmers!”
“Right,” says Chrom, in a perfect facsimile of a voice clip that I can hear in my sleep. Awakening’s limited voice acting definitely had its charms, but it kinda started to annoy me after the fifth or sixth playthrough.
God, it is weird hearing all the characters talking in full sentences now.
Lissa, Chrom, and Frederick enter the farmhouse, the great knight taking the lead in case there were any surviving bandits. I awkwardly trail off, staying outside on my own. I still don’t want to go in there. I don’t think I could take it if there was a gruesome scene or something.
I overhear some conversation from inside, and see the warm green light of Lissa’s healing staff eek out from a window. I can’t make out most of the words, but it at least doesn’t sound like the anguished cries of anyone who had lost family. I sigh with relief.
A few moments later, the Shepherds emerge from the house, the farmer and his family still hot on their heels issuing thank-you’s. Chrom and Lissa both have huge smiles on their faces, and it makes sense. Saving people is what they both do best.
“All clear!” Lissa shouts to me as I walk back over to them, and I can’t help but smile a little as well. “Hey, Chrom! I just had an idea!”
Oh, please let this be what I hope it’s going to be.
“I’m all-ears, Lissa.”
“We should invite Robin to join the Shepherds!”
YES! I was so worried that I’d disjointed my recruitment process with the way I hadn’t helped in the fight at all, but it had just fallen onto my lap anyway. This was incredible!
“I’m inclined to agree. She got me out of a tight spot, and I can’t imagine what would have happened to Southtown if she hadn’t warned us about that attack,” Chrom said, smiling at me. “I think the Shepherds would be lucky to be joined by another capable mage.”
Lissa nods her head, excitedly. “Yeah, totally!”
Oh my god, this is such a relief. I’m going to get to stay with them. I might be stuck in this bizarre JRPG world, but at least my favorite characters like me. The past hour of my life absolutely ranks among my most stressful ever, but I can finally feel myself smile again.
“I’d love to-“
Frederick coughs. Never mind. Of course it wasn’t going to be that easy.
“Milord, this is extremely inadvisable,” he begins, already off-script from his objection in the game, and not in a good way, either. “This woman is likely affiliated in some way with the bandits we just dispatched.”
Wait, what?
Chrom turns to face Frederick, standing between us. “She fought on our side just now, just as hard as any Shepherd. Not to mention she warned us about the attack before the bandits could do any lasting harm.”
“It’s precisely that warning that makes me suspect her. How else could she have come to be aware of a planned bandit attack, if she was not in league with them?”
“Didn’t you see her zap that guy? She clearly isn’t some bandit!” said Lissa, also speaking up on my behalf. That gave me a little ray of hope, at least. Frederick was never very good at saying no to the prince and princess, so maybe…
“Which brings me to another topic. These bandits were clearly not just that. Milord, did you notice they spoke with Plegian accents?”
Oh right, that line. I’d always wondered what a Plegian accent was actually supposed to sound like. The only Plegian character that showed up in any voiced cutscenes was Validar, and the only accent he had was ‘evil’.
Follow up question: Does Robin have a Plegian accent? She ought to, since that’s where she was raised, right? Would the Robin (me, not the character) that lives in this universe speak with a Plegian accent as well, since she’d reincarnated into that body? Is the language I’m speaking actually English, or has it been cosmically translated to Ylissean?
Need to refocus. This is entirely too much to be thinking about right now, especially while Frederick is talking about how suspicious I am.
“I hadn’t noticed, but that does unfortunately make sense. Those blasted brigands…”
“Which makes our strange woman here’s association with them all the more concerning,” Frederick says. He turns to me. “I thank you for sparing Milord that lightning strike, but as his knight I cannot trust you enough to allow you to travel with us.”
My heart sank. I really had screwed it up after all.
“I, um… sorry…”
“Sorry for what? Certainly not for saving this village, right?” asks Chrom. “Frederick, I thank you for your counsel, but I’d at least like to hear her side as well before I make any judgements.”
Frederick looks at us both, disapprovingly, but nods. I guess that’s my cue to start talking.
“I’m not with the bandits,” I begin, trying to figure out how much of the truth I should spill, and what kind of alibi I can use. “I did know they were coming, though. I wanted to get to the town to help defend it, but I ran into somebody else on the road who knocked me out. That’s why you found me where you did.”
Frederick doesn’t look satisfied. “How did you know of the bandit attack before it happened?”
“I had… seen them before. I knew they were coming,” I say. Technically the truth!
“Where did you see them?”
“I’ve seen them raiding villages before. I… didn’t want it to happen again.”
I wonder if he’s going to say his ‘Somebody pay this actress’ line and ruin my day even more. I break eye contact with him and look down at the ground.
Luckily, though, I don’t have to hear him say it.
“Those words, and her actions just now, tell me all I need to know. She fought to save Ylissean lives. My heart tells me that’s enough.”
I love this man. This big blue fairytale prince without an ounce of doubt in his body. Frederick is totally right about everything right now! I’m suspicious as all get-out, and totally made myself look like I’d defected from the bandits only hours ago. If he was any other prince, he’d probably be listening to his retainer like he ought to and kicking me back into the ditch he found me in without a second thought.
But he isn’t, because he’s Chrom. He makes his every decision with his heart, and hasn’t spent even a single second of his life not being true to himself.
I feel tears in my eyes. I sniffle a tiny bit and try my best to make them go away, but it doesn’t seem like that’s gonna happen. All the stress of the past hour of my life is finally catching up to me, and then being transformed into relief as it exits my body.
“Th-thank you,” I say, unable to keep my voice completely steady.
“Oh there, there,” says Lissa, hopping over to me and clasping my shoulders. I quickly try to wipe my face with my sleeve. “Frederick! You made her cry!”
Through my teary eyes, I can see he’s still unimpressed. “Forgive me, Princess.”
It really isn’t his fault I’m crying. I just haven’t had a moment’s peace until now- no time to think about the implications of anything that was happening. I just got sucked into this giant mess, and did my best to get through it on autopilot.
“It’s okay, L-Lissa,” I say. “He’s just doing his j-job.”
Chrom chuckles audibly, and Lissa glares at Frederick, but I can’t really gauge the great knight’s reaction. I’m hoping that I can stay with them until we get to Ylisstol where Emm gives me her blessing.
“See? She doesn’t really seem like assassin material.” Chrom says. “So, Frederick. Are you convinced?”
“Only slightly, Milord.”
I wipe away my tears again, and laugh with relief. “Oh, thank god.”
Chrom pats me on the shoulder. “Please forgive Frederick the Wary, here. He can seem cold at times. Particularly when he’s about to bring down the axe.”
Another line from the game. I know I said it already earlier, but it really is nice being able to hear it fully voiced. All the FE:A fans still stuck in the real world will probably have to wait for Echoes: Twin Falchions or whatever they end up calling the Awakening remake when they get around to it in 2035.
I’ll probably never get to play that. Hm. File that under Stuff to Get Sad About Later.
“You do realize-”
Huh, we’re still on script.
“-I am still present, Milord,” Frederick finishes. Lissa laughs, and so do I, though my voice is still a little bit shaky.
“I suppose they do occasionally express something akin to gratitude,” I say, stealing one of Freddie’s lines from a few chapters from now and doing my best impression.
“Who?” asks Lissa.
Oh. Um.
Before I have to answer that awkward question, the silence is broken by an extremely uncharacteristic noise: Frederick the Wary laughing. It wasn’t a loud laugh or a particularly lengthy one, but it was a sound I don’t think I’d heard in any of the game’s scenes or even audio dramas.
“You seem to understand my station better than my charges do,” he says, half of a smile on his face. I’m half expecting to see a ‘Robin and Frederick attained support level C’ message pop up in my eye. “I do apologize for my skepticism, but it makes me glad you at least understand its necessity.”
“Right,” I say. My voice finally sounds normal, and I can smile again. “It makes me glad that you take your job of protecting the prince and princess of the realm so seriously.”
“It is a difficult job, but I have found no greater calling.”
Lissa scratched her head. “Weren’t you crying a second ago because of him? This doesn’t make any sense…”
“I don’t really get it either,” Chrom says as an aside to his sister. The captain turns back to me. “Regardless… Would you like to join the Shepherds? We roam the Halidom, warding off bandits and fighting for the people of Ylisse.”
I’m sure that there will be times in the future when I regret the decision I’m about to make, but I know in my heart that it’s the right one. Joining them is the best way for me to help, to try to use my future knowledge to save as much of this world as I can.
“Yes! More than anything!”