Of Embers & Ashes, pt. 1 | Fire Emblem Awakening
Robin X Cordelia.
Rating: T
Angst, Character-focused, Hurt/Comfort
Word Count: 2,856
Cordelia has always been good at many things, including hiding her feelings and pretending that loss and hurt are a part of her armor. But what will she do when her attention and care start to be drawn to somebody she never expected?
The paragon knight that many knew by the name of Cordelia of Ylisse had always been good at holding her poise.
That was what the others admired about her, wasn’t it? That even in the worst of the Valmese war, with blood soaked into the tattered ends of her uniform and the ache in her shoulder screaming each time she drew her lance, she had never once shown the brittle cracks that had formed beneath her polished surface. Even when the wind howled across the plains after one battle to the next, dragging the smoke of ruined warships and broken promises with it, she had smiled gently—almost distantly—when she was asked if she was holding up fine.
Hold her figure straight, keep her calm, and shoulder each duty with honor and responsibility. That was how life had surely taught her to operate, Robin had once remarked.
It had been an offhand joke he had spluttered between wakefulness and fatigue. One of those days during the end of the Valmese campaign, she supposed. He had been staggering from both exhaustion and re-opened wounds, and she had insisted on walking him to his tent after the last war meeting. She wondered if it had been then she had known: that her care for the Grand Master went more beyond mere respect and mutual trust.
From then on, she started noticing: in the small cracks of routine, in the moments between missions and strategy meetings, how Robin would tap his quill against his lower lip while puzzling over tactics he had never tried before, how he would glance at far off corners of the room he was in whenever he was thinking to himself...
...And at how his voice would soften whenever he was speaking to her--as if she was made of glass and not steel, as if he could see the strain she was hiding beneath her pride and rank--before returning to the clipped tones of command.
She hated herself for noticing these things.
After all, Cordelia had told herself once, long ago, that she had no room left in her heart for this kind of care and affection... That whatever tender, foolish longing had bloomed there before--before Ylisse, before Chrom, before the sharp grief of unrequitedness had nestled like iron in her chest--it had burned out. There had been no room for another, not because of the lack of prospect, but because she had not considered herself strong enough to withstand another heartbreak.
But Robin had not asked to be noticed. He had simply stood beside her, shoulder to shoulder, quietly listening when she offered advice, laughing when she said something unintentionally dry, trusting her judgment, and saw the person 'Cordelia' when others still struggled to see past her armor.
So, she did the only thing she knew how when confronted by these feelings: she pulled back.
With every warm exchange, every shared memory of danger survived, every slow breath of nightfall where their silences had grown companionable, she had begun stepping away. She walked straighter whenever he was near; she chose her words more carefully; smiled less easily, answered curtly—politely, of course—and she watched his brow furrow in confusion every time she danced away, in something that flickered between hurt and calculation, and she did not dare say why. If love was something that could break you once, then surely it could break you again. She knew for sure that this time, she might not survive the pieces.
Still, fate was a cruel mistress.
Maybe it was irk, maybe it was concern, but Robin had asked her to stay after one evening briefing. He had not been mean, he had not used any harsh words... In his characteristically gentle way that still managed to feel more like an interview rather than an interrogation, he asked her why she had grown cold toward him.
For a while, all that Cordelia could do was to stand still. The lanterns in in the war tent had yet to wane, but they cast long shadows over his figure anyway.
“You’ve been distant,” Robin said, no accusation in it, but neither was it gentle. “I would ask if I had offended your pride anyhow, My Lady, but I think after the Valmese campaign, we Shepherds are past our titles. So I will ask simply: did I do something wrong?”
His tone was too careful, too real, and that made it worse.
Cordelia opened her mouth, but the words were tangled and knotted on her tongue. She wanted to lie, say something polite. Bluff away with something dismissive. Any kind of elegant excuse would be perfect to preserve the distance she needed to keep her heart intact.
When she tried speaking, though, all she could hear in her own silence was the edge of desperation behind his question. She saw the way he looked at her—confused, not hurt exactly but trying to understand—and suddenly everything just broke within her.
“No, I—I haven’t—” she started, but her voice gave out halfway, and she didn’t understand why the heat behind her eyes was rising, why her lungs felt like they were pushing up into her throat.
Robin stepped forward instinctively, brow drawn in alarm, his hand almost reaching toward her before hesitating. “Then why? You look at me like I’ve done something terrible, like I'm a plague you should avoid or be careful of.”
And that—that—was undid broke her.
Tears rose before she could think. Stupid, humiliating, unexpected tears that caught her off-guard even more than him, and she quickly shook her head, half-wild, breath hitching as she turned and ran. Not fast enough, not far enough. She just needed to be away.
Robin did not sit idly. He caught up with her near the armory’s side wall, where she had crouched down and pressed her palm to her eyes, trying to push the emotion--was there a name to this cocktail of confusion, sadness, desperation, and yearning?--away by force.
“I’m sorry,” he said, and it wasn’t a demand, wasn’t an accusation. It was a gentle, genuine apology, and what it did was it simply lodged another arrow in her chest. “I didn’t mean to make you upset. Cordelia, please.”
She looked up sharply, blinking through the haze of shame and whatever this...thing that she was feeling, trying to find the words to push him away again, to make this easier for both of them, but they wouldn't come. Words and logic refused her.
“I never meant to hurt... or baffle you,” she whispered finally, the words cracked and absurd. “I never did. That’s why I—” Her voice almost lost its pitch, and she could not think through: truth just came out rolling off her tongue: “That’s why I had to stop.”
Robin looked at her for a long moment, saying nothing.
The quiet stretched, but it was not the kind she could hide in anymore.
She wiped her eyes with the gloved heel of her hand, still trembling from the force of feelings she had buried too deeply. And then, in a voice that barely resembled her own—soft, like a child’s, half-lost—she whispered:
“Can I… like you?”
Her eyes were too red, her throat aching with the weight of all that she was feeling—but for once, she let it show.
A stupid, hopeful decision. Or, perhaps, just a tired one, borne of fragile yearning that clashed with the knowledge that she had nowhere else to run.
Not from herself, at least.
Robin blinked slowly. Once, then twice, as understanding dawned in his blue eyes.
Time felt as if it had slowed to a dying man's crawl in the moments that passed. Robin had stayed silent, eyes unreadable, and all Cordelia could feel was the damp grass beneath her, the smell of canvas and leather in the air. Her armor suddenly felt constricting, pressing cold against her flesh and her knees where she had curled in on herself with fists balled in the hem of her skirt.
The words she had just flung out--"Can I like you?"--was now hanging in the air like something she couldn't take back. It had been a coward's confession: not bold enough to be honest, not distant enough to protect her bleeding heart and fractured pride. At the thought, she bit her lip hard, too hard, wishing it could stop the tremble as the silence between them stretched.
I always ruin things like this.
I always do.
She remembered how her voice had cracked weakly; shame came afresh when she thought again how she must have looked like to him: with tears spilling out, like a child asking if they could be given permission to have what they wanted. Pathetic.
First, she had avoided him... Then, she had cried hot tears in front of him. And now she was sitting here, with her back partially to him, too afraid to even look at his figure. What am I doing? she thought, fingers digging into her gloved palms. Why do I always run first, and break apart second?
Robin, though, did not speak. Yet. He had not moved any closer either. Cordelia heard a rustle of his clothes, and saw from the corner of her eyes that he had settled nearby, in a distance not so close that would make her feel cornered, not so far that she would feel abandoned. When he finally spoke, his voice sounded steady, too steady for warmth or pity to color its rhythm.
"Loving someone like me is a risk," he said. "A person who woke up in a field without a name, without a past... I'm someone who might not remember anything real tomorrow. I might become a person who will simply forget everything again and disappear in the next breath."
Cordelia almost flinched at his words, not from the truth of it, but from the way Robin had seemed to accept it as if it was a fair bargain.
"Letting myself love that someone back..." Robin continued, in a softer tone now, like the words were not for her but for himself, "...that is also a risk."
For several heavy heartbeats, they just sat there, with Robin staring into the trees beyond the outcrop, and Cordelia staring at the stillness of him. Robin was sitting with his elbows on his knees, his cloak, draped on his shoulders unbuttoned, made it seem like he was on the verge of being swallowed by the darkness.
"I may not be who I seem," Robin finally said. "The possibilities of me hurting the people who have placed their trust in me, even those whom I care about, without meaning to, are always there. The possibilities of my unknown past catching up to me also exist. Those are the things that even I cannot predict."
Too big of a risk. Too much of the unknown. She understood that feeling. She may not share his lack of memories and fears, but looking back at her own journey, she could see how treading into a certain thing like loving another person--a real, breathing human--rather than an idealized image of a hero, was a scary prospect.
Robin gave out a soft scoff, craning his neck upward to the dark sky above. "And yet, when I look at people like you... people who still try... fighters who carry all this weight and choose not to complain..." He smiled, almost bitter and sad. "I find myself admiring you lot. Well, you in particular. You run away because you don't care, but because you care too much. I wish I could be as brave."
Cordelia's heart clenched, and she quickly had to look away again, afraid that if their eyes met, she would break all over again. This was, after all, not a rejection that she had expected. Somehow, despite how messy she was, how selfish, how inconsistent, he saw something in her worth naming.
This was not a carefully written poem sealed in a perfumed envelope that had become the staple of noble courtship. She had received several of those during her service. This was something more raw. Simpler. Truer.
Her chest felt tight, her ribs pressing around the mess she had tried to swallow back down since the moment she had said those words aloud. It had mixed now with something sweeter, something lighter... the knowledge and assurance that that he saw her not simply as a knight who was bound to duty, not as the paragon others praised her as, but merely as a woman who was too afraid to want something for herself.
She hugged herself and exhaled. There were still so much she could not say... but Robin was staying. So... maybe, just maybe, she didn't have to say it all at once. Not if he was willing to sit there and share this fragile, quiet thing with her.
Cordelia sat up straighter, slowly, with fingers still twisting in her skirt, with eyes that were still unable to meet his for more than a second, and said, "You talk about risks..."
Her voice had trembled low despite her effort to steady it. It earned her a glance from Robin. He waited until she could speak again, and speak again she tried.
"In my eyes... you're the one who has been walking into risks every day."
Robin's brow furrowed a little bit, perhaps not expecting this kind of reply.
"You have no past," she said. "No memories. No family or land to your name. You have nothing to fall back on. I have met people and recruits who had more than you, and they looked scared. Or bitter. Or... just lost." Cordelia swallowed hard, eyes darting to the grass beneath. "But you are not. Or if you were, you hardly let it show and choose to fight anyway. You fight for people who didn't know you, a nation that does not belong to you. And that--"
Her voice was on the brink of breaking again, but this time, she forced the words out. Let him see. Let him hear.
"That's what made me... look at you. That strength... It made me want to believe that I could also do the same. That I could also strive for something beyond my grasp. That I could... still try and feel something."
There was a silence then. Robin didn't speak. He didn't shift. He just looked at her with something in his expression that was akin to surprise, yet with a substance that was more fragile now surfacing in his blue orbs. A kind of slow, dawning realization were reflected in his eyes--the kind that had a tinge of sadness to it. Cordelia knew what it was: the unraveling of someone who was not used to being seen for the effort and ugliness beneath their perfect mask.
She did not know how to respond to that. She could not bear to look at him, and yet she had to. And when she did, she saw not the clever tactician, or the confident Grand Master who kept the army afloat, but just a man who had been trying his hardest not to break apart under invisible pressure. Quiet, unmoored, struck still by words he had not braced for.
And maybe that was what made her chest ache worse than her shame. She had been the one who had faltered and run away, but now, here in this quiet, he was the one who looked like the world had taken away the ground beneath his feet.
She wanted to reach out. She wanted to ease that sadness, to say that she could see the person of Robin beneath the tactician's cloak and mantle. She wanted to offer back something, even if it was the smallest piece of what he had freely given to her.
But her hands and limbs would not obey her command. Like a petulant youngling who had entered service just because of mere obligation, all she could do was to sit there, aching with the desire to cross the space between them.
Robin then breathed slowly. And smiled.
It was not the polite smile he wore to war meetings and briefings. It was just the kind of smile that came from something sinking in--something he might not have expected to hope for until he found it.
"Thank you," he said.
Two simple words. The sincerest two words she had ever heard from him.
And then, with quiet resolve strengthening his gaze, he extended a hand toward her. It was not a demand, but an offering, she realized.
"Can I..." he said, then hesitated just for a moment to make Cordelia's heart stutter, "hold on to your feelings as I go forward to take this risk?"
She stared at the hand for a second too long. Not because she doubted his words or his intentions... But because she had never been invited into something like this before--something uncertain, something fragile, full of the unknown, yet also full of choice.
And maybe, that was what made this real.
Cordelia's fingers were trembling when she lifted her hand in a slow, deliberate motion. When they touched his, all she could whisper back was, "I will take it. If you're with me."
