Chapter 3: The Price of Protection; Memories of Loss
The moonlight caught on Lucina's ears as her blue hair shifted, revealing their delicate pointed tips – a mark of her mixed heritage that she'd kept hidden behind her disguise. Her voice wavered as she pressed closer into her parents' embrace, Sybyrh's arms tightening protectively around her grown daughter while Chrom rested a steadying hand on her shoulder.
"I was twelve when..." Her voice cracked, and she had to start again. "When we lost Odyn."
Odyn stood perfectly still, his own pointed ears catching the subtle changes in her breathing as she fought for composure. His orange eyes, so like her own, never left her face.
"Robin was... he was like your brother," she addressed the present-day Odyn directly, finally meeting his gaze. "You loved him as family. We all did. None of us knew that Validar had marked him as Grima's vessel from birth. None of us saw the signs until it was too late."
Sybyrh's breath caught, her own orange eyes darting to her son with maternal fear, but she remained silent, letting Lucina continue.
"When Grima took him, when Robin's consciousness was being overwhelmed..." Lucina's hands clenched into fists. "You tried to reach him, to pull him back. You believed in him until the very end."
A tear slipped down her cheek as the memory overtook her. "I can still see it. The way you smiled at him, even as... even as his magic..." She choked on the words, her composure finally breaking. "You *smiled* at him, Odyn. Your last act was to try to free him from his guilt, to let him know you didn't blame him, even as Grima's power tore through you."
Odyn took an involuntary step forward, his protective instincts warring with the knowledge that this was a pain he couldn't shield her from – it had already happened, in another time, to another version of himself.
"I screamed for you," Lucina whispered, the words coming faster now, spilling out like a dam breaking. "I tried to run to you, but Father held me back. You looked at me one last time, and you said... you said..."
"'Live, little princess,'" Odyn finished softly, the words coming to him as if from a dream. "'Live, and change it all.'"
Lucina's head snapped up, her orange eyes wide as they met his. "How did you...?"
"Because it's what I would say," he answered quietly. "What any version of me would say, to protect you."
A sob broke free from Lucina's throat, and this time when she stumbled forward, it was Odyn who caught her. She crashed into his chest like a wave breaking against familiar shores, her fingers clutching at his tunic as seven years of buried grief poured out of her.
"I was just a child," she cried into his chest. "Just a child with a crush on her protector, and then you were gone, and everything fell apart, and I had to grow up so fast..."
Odyn's arms wrapped around her instinctively, one hand cradling the back of her head as the other held her steady. Over her shoulder, his eyes met Sybyrh's, seeing in his mother's gaze both understanding and a silent warning about the delicacy of this situation.
"You've carried this for so long," he murmured into her hair. "This grief, this mission, this love from another timeline..."
"I watched you die," she whispered. "I've spent seven years thinking I'd never see you again, never get to tell you..." She pulled back slightly, looking up at him with eyes that held both the child she had been and the woman she'd become. "And now you're here, but you're not *him*, and I don't know how to..."
"Shh," he soothed, brushing a tear from her cheek. "You don't have to know. Not yet. Right now, all that matters is that we have a chance to change it. All of it."
Chrom stepped forward, his voice firm with resolve. "We won't let that future come to pass, Lucina. I swear it. We'll find a way to save Robin without losing Odyn. Without losing anyone."
"We're here now," Sybyrh added, moving to embrace both Lucina and Odyn, her children from different times bound together by fate and choice. "And this time, you're not facing it alone."
As the small family stood together under the stars, Odyn held Lucina close, feeling her gradually calm in his arms. He knew things were different now – he was not the man who had died protecting her, and she was no longer the child who had watched him fall. But as she settled against him with the trustful familiarity of one who had known him in another life, he realized that perhaps some bonds truly were strong enough to echo across time itself.
The future was not yet written. And this time, they would write it together.
To be continued in Chapter 4: Confessions under the Starlight