#i'm literally winging everything | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

wardencommanderrodimiss · 2 years

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Hey Roddy. Do you take Chrobin prompts during Nanorimo? My brain is feeling a little wingfic, so. "Everyone has wings, but they aren't always out. Chrom asks Robin to unfurl hers after Southtown, and she has six." ...It's fine if you don't want to. I just, y'know. *Waves hands* Them.

Honestly, my NaNo performance this year is absolutely atrocious and I'm using it mostly as trying to get myself to get up and write again - which is to say I would write literally anything and count it for NaNo right now. Anyway I was casually chewing on this thought for like two days before I suddenly figured out an angle to come at it from that made me really want to write it...which ironically produces a story where the single scene you have pictured cannot happen.

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Chrom has never met someone who doesn’t have wings; that doesn’t mean he’s never met someone whose wings he’s never seen. It’s polite to keep them folded out of the way so as to not bump into people in the streets or take up too much space in the barracks; it’s a fashion in Ylisstol to wear cloaks with hoods or cowls that obscure all but the largest wings into shapeless fabric. Of the Shepherds, Ricken in particular wears mages’ robes to hide the fluffy fledgling down that marks his age, and Sumia says that fabric over her wings keeps her mindful of what she’s doing with them and stops her from absentmindedly knocking them into things - most of the time, anyway.

So the stranger unconscious in the fields with no memory might be a notable oddity for all of the aforementioned reasons, the baggy hooded coat does not stand out as a peculiarity.

Her name is Robin. Like the birds.

The masked swordsman, Marth - swordswoman - whatever - has dark, glossy blue-feathered wings. She fights with them spread, like a goose flapping and screeching to drive away a threat. Like an eagle swooping low, coming in for the kill.

But when the assassins are dead and Emmeryn is safe, Chrom runs after the masked prophet to thank her, offer her anything in thanks, and he finds her with her wings folded to her back, small, like a sparrow, alone in the dark.

Taguel don’t have wings. This makes sense to Chrom, and the fact that Panne prominently displays her winglessness by not wearing any draped clothing across her back - or even much clothing at all, really - is still only one of her second or third most eye-catching traits.

Absolutely mortified as he is about walking in on Robin in the bath, and trying for both their sakes to put any sights he may have seen out of his memory forever, it takes until the next day, looking at her across a map as they discuss strategy, to realize something.

He is pretty damn sure that she didn’t have wings.

Manakete, unlike taguel, have wings in their human form. Manakete, unlike humans, have not a feather on their body; Nowi’s wings are leathery, like a bat, like a wyvern, like her dragon form.

Flying is difficult enough simply carrying the weight of one’s own body. Adding armor and weapons, even moreso. Wyverns and pegasi remain invaluable companions off and on the battlefield for such reason (even if Ylisse doesn’t have any corps of wyvern riders). A careful rider with a strong bond with their steed should only have to use their own wings to slow their fall if they are extremely unlucky.

Phila and her knights are unlucky, and the Risen archers keep firing even as they fall.

And Gangrel laughs. Gangrel stands holding a pike, upon which are impaled a pair of severed wings. Even from a distance, Chrom knows those tan speckled feathers. He’d know them even if, next to him, Lissa’s wings weren’t patterned the same.

Emm falls. And Chrom flies, forgetting the archers, forgetting everything except the need to save her, but she falls faster than he can fly and arrows fly faster than he does. He barely notices the first two tearing through his wings, but by the third, Basilio is in the air with him pulling him back to earth. Robin clings to Lissa, holding her to the ground, holding her face against her shoulder, stopping her from following and from seeing.

But Chrom gets a last glimpse of his older sister before Basilio drags him away.

In Ferox they plan; their rescue failed, but they will not fail to topple Gangrel from his throne. Chrom has the faith of his Shepherds, the might and support of the khans, and Robin’s tactical guidance. He has Emmeryn’s dream for peace.

But they do not march for Plegia yet. And when Chrom closes his eyes he has the memory of Emm’s body lying broken on the sand and stone and the bloody stumps of her dismembered wings protruding from her back.

Sleep is hard to come by.

He finds Robin still in the war room, pouring over maps and markers. “Didn’t Flavia and Basilio say that we would start determining the specifics of our strategy in the morning?” he asks, even though he suspects that in the dark and in the silence, Robin hears Lissa’s scream the way Chrom watches Emm fall.

Robin starts at the sound of his voice and she reaches immediately for her coat, draped over one of the chairs instead of her shoulders. Then she looks back up at him and when their eyes meet, Chrom thinks of the promise that she made to him, that she would stand at his side and help him be worthy of Emmeryn’s legacy. Her fist slowly unclenches from the fabric and her hand moves back to the markers on the table, but her eyes linger on Chrom’s for a little longer. “I need to have at least some idea of strategies to suggest,” she says, turning her attention back to the map.

Without her coat, when she leans across the table to grab a book from the other side, her lack of wings is obvious. Her shirt, cut low in the front and back, exposes her shoulders and some of her back; he can’t help but notice the lack of even the stubs of wings amputated, or even any scars that could indicate a complete removal.

“You can say something, if you like,” she says, paging through her book. Her words could indicate a challenge she intends to bite back on - he remembers that unfortunate conversation about whether or not she could be termed a “lady” - but now, lately, with all of this weight they carry, he doubts it.

“You probably don’t even remember, do you?” he asks.

“I don’t,” she affirms, and that is the end of their discussion of that matter.

The dust settles over the scent of sweat and sand and singed feathers. Chrom steps on a reddish-brown plume that might have fallen from Gangrel’s wings. Robin stands at the crest of a hill, looking up at the carrion birds circling over the battlefield, ready to alight upon the corpses and add their feathers to the mix. Her expression is one he’s not seen worn on her face before and it’s hard to place. Wistful?

Chrom has a lot that he wants to say to her, but the first words out of his mouth, with a flap of his still-bandaged left wing, is, “Once I’m healed, I can take you to see Ylisse from up there.”

“I think I’d like that,” she says.

Most children are born without even a bump of what will develop into their wings. They usually start to emerge at the same time as a baby’s first teeth.

Robin wonders if her daughter will inherit her condition.

She wonders if she will know by the time she comes back from war.

Validar, the new king of Plegia, looks identical to the leader of the assassins who attacked Emmeryn in Ylisstol.

The hierophant of the Grimleal looks almost identical to Robin but for her wings; three on each side, long and thin with feathers of such a rich black that they appear purple in the light.

Little lady Marth has a sword identical to Chrom’s and a Brand in her eye identical to that of baby Lucina’s. Little lady Marth is Lucina, no longer a baby, from a time yet to be, and the story belies belief but is too outrageous to possibly be false. The beautiful warrior who stands before her is Robin and Chrom’s daughter, and how could she be anyone else, when she looks so much like her father, her hair, her eyes, her wings with blue feathers darker than Chrom’s, almost black in the moonlight. Robin smooths down a few of her rumpled feathers.

“I’ve been wondering if you would have them,” Robin murmurs, “or if you would be like me. I’ve wondered if it might be hard for you.”

“You have?” Lucina asks. “I would have been okay, because you were okay, and you’re my mother.” She blinks fiercely and presses the back of her hand to her mouth. “Mother… you have no idea how much I’ve missed you.”

Without heavy weapons or armor, mages would, in theory, be better suited to flying under their own power during combat. Like a divine storm of lashing winds, raging flames, and crackling lightning from above - but archers are an even greater threat to unarmored mages than they are to armored pegasus and rider. And magic, Lucina has been informed by Laurent, takes a great deal of concentration and conscious thought; add to that the focus required to remain airborne and steady enough to properly aim a spell, and the exposed position it puts oneself in, and the disadvantages outweigh the advantages. Cynthia agreed, saying that she would only be carting a tome around in the air if her pegasus was carrying her; Morgan attempted to train himself as a “flying tactician-magician” for two days, during which he shot nearly all of their companions with lightning. He acquiesced that it was indeed incredibly hard to aim while flying.

Gods, Lucina misses them all so much. She thinks of them as she tries to comb dirt and ashes out of her wings. They took care of each other, the way she sees their parents do now; anyone who needs help preening their wings will find it. Even from Nowi or Panne. Even for Henry, who only so recently fell in with the Shepherds. Just as even Severa and Gerome relented quickly to assistance. They took care of each other.

The memory of their companionship hurts worse now that she is no longer alone.

“Do you need help, sweetheart?” Robin asks, and Lucina, contorted as she is trying to reach the base of her wings, nods.

“I wasn’t sure when you learned how to care for wings,” Lucina admits once her mother has seated herself behind her. “If it was before or after mine came in.”

Robin hums. After a few minutes she asks, “Do you know if I ever knew the reason why I don’t have wings?”

Lucina shakes her head, then says, “Not that I knew. I asked you when I was young and you just said that people are all different; some have Brands and some have wings and some don’t, just like some people are dragons and some are rabbits.”

“That sounds like I didn’t know why,” Robin says.

“Or maybe I was too young for the real answer,” Lucina says. “I was still rather young when…”

She doesn’t want to finish the thought, but she knows her mother knows how that sentence ends, regardless.

Morgan has black-feathered wings. He runs to hug Robin when he sees her, but with his arms around her shoulders he freezes for a moment before he fully leans into the embrace. Like for an instant he was confused. Like something he expected wasn’t there.

When Validar orders Robin to seize the Fire Emblem from Chrom and give it to him, she does so; her body acts against her mind as a splitting pain fills her head and sears across her back. Even after regaining control of herself, the pain persists, through their flight from the castle back to the safety of their army.

And that pain is still nothing compared to the horror of what she has done, and the thought of what else she could be ordered to do.

The sunset bleeds orange over the Plegian fields. At the outskirts of their camp, Lucina watches Robin shake off her coat to find, sprouting from between her shoulder blades, six wings.

“Mother?” Lucina asks. “Could I have a word?”

Robin turns. Her eyes are wet with pain but she pulls a smile onto her face for her daughter. “Of course.”

Her purple-black fathers are matted with blood, wet and scraggly the way a chick comes out of the egg. But even now, Lucina knows those wings. She saw them on a monster looming over her kingdom as it burned it to the ground.

It is easier to raise her sword when she sees such a plain sign of the Fell Dragon whose vessel Robin will become. She knows what she has to do.

Her resolve is still not strong enough.

The hierophant, Grima, does not set her feet upon the ground. She hangs in the air with the lazy flap of her wings; it seems as natural to her as breathing.

Robin has never left the ground under her own power.

“You refuse my gifts at every turn,” Grima says. “Grounded by your own will, when you could choose godhood. But if you won’t claim your birthright, I will take what has been laid out for you instead.”

They are the same, Robin and Grima, the tactician and the hierophant, and the wings on their backs cast the same shadows as the Fell Dragon’s do on the ground far below.

They are the same, and that is the key to the Fell Dragon’s undoing.

Robin dissolves into the air, and Grima’s bones sink into the ground.

Chrom finds her again, no longer a stranger, unconscious in the fields, with no brand on her hand and no wings on her back.

#the many paragraphs throughout this which i devote to worldbuilding is an example of how i approach some of these 'staple' fandom AUs #i can't just like. say they have wings now and go with it. i have to dissect how it would work #like re: pegasus knights and combat and everything i'm like 'well i have to pick this apart before i get back into the chrobin'#i started writing a soulmate au prompt set in my pokemon verse #the 'you see in black and white until you meet your soulmate and then you can see colors' variant #and literally the second paragraph i went on a tangent about 'regular' colorblindness #which was both in character for my first narrator and another example of the angle my brain comes in from #i HAVE to overthink it. this is just who i am as a person.

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