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Ylisse’s palace gardens are abloom with blush pink and butter yellow petals, and Robin wills herself to sponge up some of the flowers’ cheer.
You can do this, she reminds herself, just remember: compartmentalization is key. It’s a mantra she’s repeated many times, and she mentally recites it again now, as she leads Chrom past well-manicured beds of peonies—the flowers’ plump, pink heads bobbing in the breeze.
When she agreed to fake this relationship with him, Robin tried very hard to convince herself that she was making the decision with a sound mind. She knew feigning any sort of intimacy with Chrom would inevitably hurt her, but in some ways, the knowledge of the pain to come was a reassurance too; surely she wouldn’t have settled upon a solution she knew would re-open her wounds unless it really was the best option they had available.
Or…that was what she told herself, at least. Given that Chrom’s current grimace would make a funeral mask look cheery, she’s no longer sure.
He has been granite stiff since she retrieved him from his office and has hardly made a sound beyond a singular grunt in greeting. Despite his consent to the plan, it’s clear he’s getting cold feet. Which, she reiterates, is precisely why I have to approach this with enough composure for both of us.
She’s a tactician, after all; she’s used to detaching herself from her emotions for the sake of making the best possible plans. But Robin has come to regard her crush on Chrom the same way she would a cockroach; as an ugly, unwelcome invader, scuttling in the crevices of her heart—one that stubbornly eludes all her attempts to kill it.
All of which is to say, this plan is already posing some issues. And her inability to keep a cool head when Chrom offers her even the barest hint of affection is chief among them. Gods, it took Lissa all of ten minutes to sniff out that something was amiss. Robin wanted to shake herself afterwards.
It’s just so juvenile. After supporting Chrom unwaveringly through an entire war campaign, pushing aside her silly little crush should not pose such a challenge. The thought fills her with defiance: she has never shirked her duty to Chrom before, and she’s certainly not about to start now, pesky attraction to him be damned.
She finally slows their pace beside a marble fountain carved in the likeness of Naga, ensconced by a halo of bushes whose branches droop with strange fuchsia blossoms. Idly, Robin recalls that she asked Stahl about the flowers’ name once and that he told her they’re called ‘bleeding-hearts’. That they would be blooming here, now, is a little on the nose for her taste.
Pushing such thoughts from her mind, Robin huffs in a preparatory breath of pollen-smothered air and adamantly grounds herself for what must come next.
“Okay, this is the spot,” she declares.
She gestures before them to an alcove closed in by twin trellises of ivy and shielded from the afternoon’s slanting sunbeams. Chrom eyes the spindling vines with measured trepidation—as if Robin led him to a brigands’ hideout instead of an idyllic nook in the garden.
“…Remind me again how you know that Lissa will be passing by here?” he asks. After the sustained silence during their walk, Robin is relieved to find he’s still capable of speech.
“Because I got her schedule for the day from Frederick,” she explains, “and this is the only logical path for her to take on her way to lunch with Maribelle—especially when the weather is so nice.”
As if in service of her point, a balmy breeze twines between them, dragging little cotton ball clouds across the otherwise unblemished sky. Robin has no doubt that sunny-natured Lissa will take any chance she can get to gulp down the fresh spring air. Which means they best set to work.
Tugging Chrom along with her, Robin takes shelter in the trellis shade before removing her gloves and shrugging out of her tactician’s coat as nonchalantly as she can. His unblinking gaze prickles her skin—he’s watching her with a palpable blend of curiosity and alarm. Rationally, she knows he probably doesn’t mean anything by it, but from his expression, you’d think he’s witnessing some sort of unnerving occult ritual. Robin resists the impulse to re-cover her marked hand.
It’s his own fault for telling the Council he’s courting me, she thinks. Maybe this wouldn’t be so hard for him if he’d given them the name of someone he’s actually attracted to…
“Er…do you want me to move those somewhere for you? So they won’t get dirty, I mean,” Chrom asks, snapping her from her self-pity. She follows his eyes to where her discarded clothes lay on the ground, then snorts.
“No, because the point is for it to look like they were tossed aside in a hurry.” She pauses in her own adjustments to appraise him. “You should take your gloves off too. And you might want to dishevel yourself a bit.”
Chrom obeys, peeling each glove off before looking down at his outfit dubiously—it’s obvious he hasn’t the slightest idea where to begin. Despite herself, Robin laughs.
“Here, like this,” she says, stepping closer.
Clinging to her outward calm, she brings a hand up to rumple his shirt collar, fiddling with it contemplatively before undoing the top button of his shirt too. As she does, her fingertips skim over the base of his throat, and she has to consciously pack away the knowledge of how many times that tiny action in particular has featured in her fantasies.
“We should probably do something about your hair, too,” she notes. “Bend forward a bit for me?”
He does, and then inhales sharply the instant her bare fingers come in contact with his scalp. Robin bites down a laugh.
“You’re so jumpy,” she says, and…okay, maybe she is having a bit too much fun teasing him. Especially when she knows Chrom’s responses stem from being generally inexperienced with intimacy, rather than anything specific to her. Still, she can’t help but savor the sensation of his thick, soft hair plunged between her fingers. She takes her time combing it back against the grain until it’s ruffled and wild, then forces her hands to fall away before she’s tempted to linger.
Stay detached, she reminds herself again.
“There, that should do it,” she says. She steps back to survey her work as Chrom steadies himself against the ivy trellis at his back. Frankly, he looks a mess…but that’s exactly what they’re going for. And the blotchy red flush he’s sporting across his cheeks goes a long way towards selling their case.
“Do you really think all of this is necessary?” he blurts. “Or that it’s even going to work?”
Robin resists the urge to roll her eyes. “It’s a little late to be second-guessing the plan. But yes, I think it’s necessary, and I think it will work. Have a little faith in me, won’t you?”
“It’s not a matter of faith,” Chrom assures her. “It just seems…I mean, aren’t you embarrassed that Lissa will think that she saw us, y-you know…”
He’s visibly uncomfortable by the end, so Robin takes pity on him and fills in the blank herself. “Making out?”
“Y-yeah….” The red in his cheeks crawls up into his ears as well. Cute, she thinks, and then just as quickly, stop that.
“Mm, not particularly,” she answers, mostly honest. “I don’t think it’s all that embarrassing for two people who are engaged to kiss each other when they’re in private.”
“Then I envy your indifference,” he sighs. “I’m going to feel thoroughly humiliated by the time this is done.”
Ouch.
She knew he regretted agreeing to this, but 'humiliated’ is a level of disgust she never anticipated. He may as well have run her heart through with thorns. She must flinch visibly, because his eyes go wide as he registers his blunder.
“Er, not because it’s you!” he amends, but Robin has her doubts about that. Chrom blabbers on regardless, “I just mean, in general, that I wouldn’t want to be seen kissing anyone—and especially not by Lissa. She’s never going to let me live this down. B-but I don’t mind that it’s you specifically who I’m doing it with. Er, not that I’m saying I want to kiss you, I just—”
Ouch. Again.
“Chrom,” Robin interrupts, before he can make things any worse, “why don’t you just stop there?”
“Y-yes, that would probably be best,” he agrees, through gritted teeth.
He has the decency to look sheepish, at least. And perhaps she should be grateful for his slip of the tongue: nothing else could serve as quite so effective a reminder of how much he doesn’t truly wish to be here with her. She grips tight to the razor-sharp edges of that hurt, using it to re-center herself.
“Do you have the time?” she asks. Back to business.
Chrom relaxes somewhat and withdraws his pocket watch. “It’s five minutes to the hour.”
“Okay, then we should probably get in position now, to be safe. Then I’ll talk you through the rest of it.”
“Right,” he says. “Er…what position, exactly?”
With calculated calm, Robin guides him away from the ivy trellis, reversing their positions to put her own back to it instead. Since Chrom’s frame is so much larger than hers, it’s essential he’s nearest to the path—that way Lissa won’t be able to tell they aren’t actually kissing.
Still, if it’s going to look believable, they’re going to have to stand much closer together. Robin tugs on his hand, coaxing him closer, and Chrom lurches forward—the space between them disappearing as his chest presses against hers. It’s a little more than she was going for, but she can’t deny it will be good for believability, even if it’s horrible for her now racing heart.
“Okay…you’re going to have to lean down a bit and—I’m going to put one of my hands on the back of your neck,” she tells him.
Chrom does as he’s told, and as they both adjust, Robin finds herself with an alarmingly up-close view of his eyes. Her breath stutters—she has always known they were beautiful, has known it from the moment he lifted her to her feet in that field. But with their faces so near, the blue of his eyes seems to bleed all the color from the rest of her field of vision. It’s impossible to hold his gaze but she can’t bear to look away either.
“U-um…” Robin’s first attempt at speech comes out almost inaudible. She clears her throat and tries again. “Good. And if you could just rest one hand on my waist, and cup my cheek with the other…”
Chrom moves each hand, fingers hovering tentatively against her—as if afraid he could overstep even while following her exact instructions. “Like this?”
“Perfect. I’ll put my hand on your waist as well, and…” Gods, his muscle definition should not be so tangible through the fabric of his shirt, “…n-now we wait.”
“What, um—”
Chrom’s voice draws her eyes up to his again. He blinks at her in prolonged, dazed silence before he seems to remember his question. “S-sorry. What I meant to say is: what are we supposed to do when we hear Lissa coming?”
“Oh! Right,” Robin says, corralling her thoughts back towards the plan, rather than the way Chrom’s eyes look like starlight spilled on seawater. “Well, like I said last night, the goal is for it to sound and look like we’re kissing.”
“Ah…right,” he agrees, then frowns. “A-and how exactly do we make it seem like we're doing that?”
“From the angle Lissa will be approaching us, she won't be able to see our faces, so that will help. But we do need her to hear us and come over here,” Robin explains. “We should be fine if we just, you know, sort of sigh, or say each other’s name and…” she huffs out a laugh, flushing. “I mean, maybe kiss the air for the uh, the lip sounds.”
“O-okay," Chrom manages. "Sighing and saying your name and…lip sounds. I'll, er, do my best.” Robin doesn’t think he could sound any less confident if he tried.
“Sorry, I know this is strange,” she admits with another sheepish laugh. “Honestly, I’m half convinced it would be less awkward if we just forgo faking it and actually kiss, b-but…”
The words come out less light-hearted than she intended, but before she can puzzle out how to play it off, the clunk of heeled boots on the stone path interrupts the fountain thrum and the hum of bumblebees. Lissa must be coming.
Robin’s posture stiffens with the realization. She tugs Chrom closer, accidentally bumping their noses together.
“R-Robin?” he whispers. “Is she coming? Do we need t—”
Mid-word, his lower lip drags lightly against hers. Robin’s thoughts screech to a halt and Chrom’s words break off just as suddenly. Her throat runs dry. Did he just—
“I’m sorry!” Chrom stammers, and what little of Robin’s mental faculties are still functioning register that the words come out much too loud. Lissa will be upon them any second, and if he doesn’t keep his voice down, their whole plan will fail before it could even begin. “I wasn’t—”
“Shh!” Robin hisses, but she can see more words budding on his tongue and so before they spill over, she silences him the only way she can think of: by pressing her lips to his.
She kisses him hesitantly at first; she’s operating mostly on adrenaline, and it quickly morphs into panic when Chrom does nothing but gasp in response—all of him stock-still and stunned. Gods, did she take this too far? Should she pull back? She’s about to do just that when Chrom abruptly leans into the kiss—evidently pushing past his own discomfort enough to remember why they came here in the first place.
We’re really doing this, Robin thinks blearily. After a year of telling herself this was something she could never have, she’s kissing Chrom.
It’s pleasant, if a little artless—the pressure and pacing of their mouths unpracticed. She starts to convince herself she may come out of this okay. That it needn’t unspool her waking sanity and make a ruin of every fail safe she has in place to keep her feelings in check.
And then Chrom starts to come alive. His hands, always so agonizingly gentle with her, betray a glimmer of his true strength as he grips her waist. He tips her jaw back—presses her more firmly into the trellis, tattooing her shoulder blades with criss-cross imprints from the woven wood and ivy vines.
Something in Robin fissures.
She forgets herself in the kiss; in the way the muscled planes of his back tense and shift beneath her hand. Chrom’s name presses past her lips, more air than voice, and it must have been the permission he was waiting for. His lips against hers grow more insistent—the kiss at once demanding and desperate. Robin can’t tell if she’s breathing—can’t tell if she still remembers how to.
“Ahem!” she hears. A clipped clearing of the throat from somewhere off to the side.
Seven hells, that must be Lissa, Robin thinks.
But the observation comes to her from underwater; a distant murky echo that is much less important than how Chrom’s lips fit to hers, and the commanding way he’s clutching her body. How his fingers are making dimples in her skin where they press through the thin cotton of her top. How he’s kissing her like he wants to be; like he wants her, and—
“Um, hello? Can you guys not hear me?”
Lissa’s voice is a whip crack. Chrom leaps apart from her, and as their bodies separate a shred of Robin’s clarity finally returns.
“L-Lissa!” he yelps, between ragged gulps of air. “I—I didn’t know you were—”
“Yeah, clearly,” Lissa drawls. She stands with her arms crossed and hip popped—lips stretched wide in a vindicated smirk. As shaken as Robin is, the unsilenceable part of her that always thinks like a tactician rejoices: this is exactly the reaction they were aiming for.
“Sorry to interrupt,” Lissa continues, “but I figured someone had to tell you this spot is not as private as you think it is. I don’t really care what you guys do, but you could at least get a room so I don’t have to see it. Especially not right before lunch,” she says, pretending to retch at the end for emphasis.
“B-but we thought—this spot wasn’t supposed to be visible from the path…” Robin manages, not needing to feign the tremor in her voice. From the corner of her eye, she can see Chrom whirl back towards her, but she dares not look at him yet.
“It wasn’t. But I could hear you guys making out even over the fountain,” Lissa snickers. “Guess you’re not as much of a prude as I thought, Chrom. Though now that I’ve seen you guys sucking face I kinda wish you were.”
Chrom says nothing to this, staring unseeingly ahead with his finger tips hovering at his lips. Robin half wonders if the embarrassment was too much and he’s gone into shock. Fear makes a flurry of her stomach; she’d give anything to know what he’s thinking right now.
“Chrom, did you hear me?” Lissa demands.
At the sound of his name, he shakes himself from his stupor. “What? Sorry, did you say something?”
Lissa groans. “Gods, what’s the point of making fun of you if you aren’t even listening? You two are seriously gross.”
“Er…sorry?”
“Ugh, whatever,” Lissa grumbles with a tremendous eye roll. “I have lunch with Maribelle, so I’m leaving. But you two better not still be here when I get back, or I’m telling Frederick I saw you making out. And then he’ll start chaperoning all your dates.”
“You’ve made your point, Lissa. It won’t happen again,” Robin assures her warily.
Lissa looks less than convinced but stamps off anyway, leaving them with nothing to break the tense silence but the steady shush of water from the fountain. Robin steals a glance at Chrom beside her and even just that is enough to send her heart rebelling against any sense of calm she reclaimed.
She kissed him…she kissed Chrom. And he kissed her back. Could that mean—
No. There will be time to think it through later. Right now, she has to pull herself together—she has to say something. Even if her skin and lips are still awash with more sparks than a thunder tome. She hasn’t the faintest idea what’s going through his head—didn’t during that kiss and certainly doesn’t now—but as she runs rapidly through risk calculations, the only option that feels safe is falling back on the plan.
With a swift, silent prayer to any gods listening, Robin gathers her wits and places her hand against Chrom’s arm. He jolts at the touch.
“That was good work,” she says, injecting as much enthusiasm into it as she can. Chrom takes her hand as he turns towards her and Robin’s heart jumps with relief that he’s not shying away. “I really think we sold it. With any luck, Lissa will mention this to Maribelle and we’ll be in the clear with her, as well.”
Chrom’s posture goes corpse rigid. He drops her hand, feelings flitting across his features faster than she can parse them.
“I—I thought we were just going to pretend!” he blurts, visibly upset.
“T-that was the idea, yes,” Robin replies, trying to recalibrate. “But obviously it wouldn’t have been as convincing as the real thing, s-so, I mean…w-when you kissed me, I assumed that you were suggesting that we—” She breaks off when she realizes every word is making his expression darker. “Chrom? Are you alright?”
“Y-yes, I’m fine,” he says, but he won’t even look at her, and his voice shakes with the lie. “I just didn’t—I’m sorry. I’m glad everything went according to plan. But if we’ve done everything we need to here, then I see no point in lingering.”
“O-of course…” she says, the words thick in her throat. “I’m sure you’re very busy. And I wouldn’t want to take up any more of your time than necessary with this…charade.”
“Right.” Chrom turns away from her—jaw locked and shoulders stiff. “Then I guess I’ll see you around….”
“Okay," Robin agrees, but it sounds hollow. She can see him closing off more with each passing second, but she doesn’t know why. Desperately, she searches for a way to re-emphasize what brought them here. To normalize it; depersonalize it for them both. "A-although, before you go, we may want to make arrangements for the next time we intend to—”
Chrom doesn’t let her finish. He shoots off down the same path they came from, jostling flower stalks as he whips past them. Robin curses under her breath, watching until he turns a corner and vanishes.
So much for keeping my feelings on a tight leash.
Who is she kidding? She never really believed she’d be getting out of this unscathed—not when her affections for Chrom were already a near constant ache. And in the stinging aftermath of that kiss, it’s more obvious than ever that calling those feelings “a crush” is grossly underselling them.
She’s in love with him. She has been for much longer than she cares to admit. And in all likelihood, Chrom now realizes it too.
Robin shoves the heel of her hand against her watering eyes—swallows down a jagged breath. Gods, for a few heartbeats, she’d forgotten how impossible it all is. For the first time since learning Chrom was a prince, the knowledge of his title and her lack of one had lifted away. Chains turned to petals lost in the tempest of kissing him. And she could have sworn she felt her ardor mirrored in Chrom’s hands and lips; believed here, too, he was matching her. Step for step, as he always does, in everything…
But no. In the end, it was only a mirage brewed by her love-parched brain. She will never be what he needs.
And even if Chrom’s station didn’t forbid it, the look on his face afterwards was enough of a reminder not to flatter herself. No matter what deluded tricks her mind wants to play on her, reality is another thing altogether: Chrom only kissed her because he had to—because his sister was there and these roles they’re playing demanded it of them. And in her eagerness to believe it was anything else, Robin gave far too much of her own feelings away.
No wonder he was so outraged and shocked after. From the way he just fled from her, she can only assume he’s revolted.
Robin steadies herself against the trellis—dark spots shifting across her vision in kaleidoscope patterns. What if Chrom thinks she was using him? Or if he thinks that she only suggested they fake a relationship so he’d be forced to play along with her feelings? She hates herself for not recognizing earlier that there is a kernel of truth there—one she tried to paint over with shiny, virtuous words like “duty” and “commitment”. She’s grown accustomed to the pain of knowing she cannot have him, but if her selfishness costs them their friendship too, then—
But Chrom has never seen me that way, the rational part of her pipes up.
She knows him, and he would never jump to judging her so harshly without first giving her a chance to explain. He has always believed the best of her—even when she is at her most despicable and deficient. Which means she’s getting ahead of herself; she’s too close to all this hurting to see it clearly. She knows Chrom is upset about something, but there’s danger in assuming anything beyond that. And fretting herself into a frenzy over it in the palace gardens isn’t going to solve anything.
Robin turns her eyes skyward and works to steady her breathing. Composure comes slowly, but there’s an odd solace in seeing those same pale clouds overhead: a small reassurance the world is still the right-way up after all.
Once she’s marginally more numb, she retrieves her clothes from where they were abandoned. She sighs as the familiar weight of her coat settles over her shoulders—less vulnerable now that she has returned to its comforts. In his haste to leave, Chrom never bothered collecting his own gloves. She tucks them in her pocket as well, with the intention to return them whenever he decides he’s ready to see her again. On that front, she resigns herself to simply following his lead.
As she slinks back onto the garden path, Robin presses her lips together in a tight line, trying to chase away the remnants of Chrom’s kiss. After waking with amnesia, she never imagined she’d find herself wishing to forget something—especially when she spent so long dreaming of it—but it has no place with her now. She doesn’t know if Chrom will want to continue faking a relationship after this, but she needs to be prepared either way, and that means she cannot spend every moment they’re together marooned in the memory of kissing him.
Robin sighs, skimming her fingertips against the puckered petals of one of the bleeding-heart bushes as she traces her way back.
“I’m sorry, Chrom,” she murmurs, the words almost lost in the rustle of the leaves and wind. “No matter what, I won’t let myself slip up like this again.”