Title: The View From the End
Fandom: Fire Emblem: Awakening
Rating: PG
Length: ~450 words
Content notes: n/a
Author notes: Lucina-centric, background Chrom/Robin
Summary: Changing the past wasn't easy.



Changing the past wouldn't be easy. Lucina knew that; had known it from the beginning. She just hadn't been prepared for what it would really mean.

Sometimes she looked around their camp, full of hope and energy, and wondered if she were dreaming. She'd imagined it could be like this (at least she thought she had, when she was younger), but it was so far from the reality she'd known that it was hard to accept it as real.

Here it was: history, happening all around her. It wasn't much like she'd imagined. Knowing only the end of the story, it had been hard to believe that the beginning could have been honestly happy.

And then she'd look over at her parents and it was worse. There they were: just outside their tent, Chrom's head bent down toward Robin's as she said something to him. He was listening, but Lucina hadn't missed that he'd bent a little more than strictly necessary if he just wanted to hear what Robin had to say. They were happy and in love and her heart twisted to see it.

It hurt, but she watched them all the time. Even trying to think of them by name, as though they were strangers instead of her parents, hadn't helped. And she wasn't the only one. All of them: these refugees from a future that hadn't yet happened, they watched their parents constantly, hungry for glimpses of the family they'd barely known. This world that was gone before they'd had a chance to know it.

It shouldn't have been so hard. She was here to protect this, to preserve it. To prevent it all from falling apart. But sometimes it felt so fragile, like a soap bubble that could pop at any time. She had to keep it together, but she didn't know how. How do you stop an attack when you don't know where it's coming from? How do you know when they changes you've made have been enough?

Maybe just by being here, she'd prevented disaster. The histories and stories of this time hadn't included her or her friends. These battles had been fought without Lucina, without Owain and Cynthia and all the rest. Without Morgan, the strange brother from yet another version of this story they were all living. Maybe their mere presence would be enough to change it all.

But Lucina was a princess who loved her country and her world. She knew she couldn't count on that. She - Lucina the young adult, not the infant her parents had left in the castle - was part of history now and she couldn't let it repeat itself – no matter the cost.