my mother's smile | chrom x fem!robin, ft. lucina
As it turns out, Lucina knows her mother pretty well. [mild spoilers for the tt+ story's ending]
Behind pursed lips, curved into a smile that Mother entirely fails at suppressing, exists the beginnings of her uncontrollable laughter. Her trembling shoulders give her away, as does her steadfast refusal to meet Father's resigned expression.
Mother tends to do that a lot—laugh and smile, that is—and between her and Morgan, Lucina thinks they've got enough cheeriness for all four of them. Whether it's accompanied by jokes cracked at inappropriate times or a solemnity befitting an experienced queen, rather than a twenty-something—newly coupled, not even married, and already saddled with two children—amnesiac (and oh god, she's so young—), she always finds a way.
Before coming to Askr, the memory of her mischievous grin—and the equally delightful (terrifying, some would say, and sometimes, Lucina thinks Father might be one of them) look in her eyes—had all but faded from Lucina's memory. Now, if she closes her eyes, she can count the smile lines that run in circles around Mother's lips.
Lucina finally smiles too, subconsciously and without any regard to the current situation. It is Father's exasperated voice that cuts through her reminiscing, but the contents of his plea escape her.
But then, Mother suddenly erupts into wheezing laughter, clutching her stomach as she doubles over on what is only one of the stone benches in the castle courtyard. And suddenly, Lucina understands—Father has given Mother his blessing.
"Don't get too happy now." He sighs his lover (and that title is as foreign to Lucina as the arts of the ninja once were, because she should be his wife and the mother of his children—and currently, she is only one of those things). "I'm going to think you like watching me fail."
Mother signals the start of her brief pause in laughter with a gasp. Yet, she succumbs to her urges again in mere minutes, and it's through her laughter that she chokes out:
"You do tend to look very dashing whenever that happens."
Lucina is no longer the little girl who would point out every little change on her father's face—often, when it accompanied a rosy flush, and, or so she was told by her aunt, almost always when her mother was involved. So, instead, she bites her lip, and her smile grows a little bit wider.
After all, Morgan—when he returns from a mission of his own, lamenting that neither he nor Mother could follow them to Hoshido—can always do that for her instead.
