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They say in good circles that a lady ought to to stay in confinement for three days after delivering. At the very least, surely. It's for her own good to keep her off her feet and free from cares, so that she might recuperate as needs be. It's common procedure among Ylissian nobility. So there are several reasons why Robin's early leave from confinement is the subject of both conversation and a newly emerging scandal at court. (She's an occupied woman, giving birth to gossip right after birthing a princess.) There's no diplomatic issue that's pressing presently, certainly no state emergency. So why leave so early? And is she actually returning to her own bed?
It makes one wonder.
After a quick washing, the new mother's on her way. Her sister-in-law helps. Lissa glows with praise for her beautiful little niece as she escorts her sister along, a constant support in every way in the golden morning sunlight. Robin walks half on her own, half leans on Lissa. Lissa easily absorbs the extra weight and nods and talks. Robin herself is proud and high on a great happiness, and also extraordinarily weary. She has told herself she's allowed to be. After such a job done well, she can accept that that's enough done to earn some respite.
And she believes it, she allows herself to be content.
When left alone after being all tucked in and secured, she has more space than she has had in days. No husband hanging over her, no well-wishers crowding in on her. After settling in she goes for a little bit of reading—a treat, not a duty. But the book ends up on her side, and her chin rests on her chest, after she drifts through a few sentences that lead her out of the world.
It's a good sleep. Dreamless and not troubled. Free from the usual twists and turns and unnameable things she finds there. Dark, but not illimitable.
After a while she returns. There's a weight on the bed by her feet, and around her is the silence of their bedroom in the afternoon. The room's awash in gloaming, is dusty and quite lovely. It's rare for her to see this room in any shade of daylight given her normal schedule, so she takes a moment to appreciate it with deliberately closed eyes. Though the cool cross-breeze is familiar. It's familiar as what she imagines an old good friend would be, and the breeze is especially welcomed as refreshing and renewing, blissful after the stifling heat of her confinement. The closeness of that memory makes her cringe.
Chrom, smiling, appears soft in the diminishing light. Though subdued, his own happiness is radiant.
In his arms is their daughter. She is swaddled in lace-trimmed blankets up to her ruddy, lumpy face. She's sleeping.
"Both of my ladies are tired from their experience, it seems," Chrom says.
She gives a slight good-natured scowl, her gesture to indicate amusement. She enjoys his light teasing. "Hey, you try giving birth, or being born again, and see if it doesn't take a lot out of you."
"No thank you," Chrom says, laughing once, twice, before his gaze falls down to his daughter. He looks both pleased and carried away, as though delightedly overwhelmed by his good fortune.
And he looks reverent. So earnest, it makes her certain she can love him even more than before.
When she shifts to sit up, he himself moves to her. Handing Robin her daughter, he removes the tome of strategies and shifts her carefully from the pillows until she's almost completely supported against his chest. The smells of her and talcum powder are present as he leans in.
After a bit, she says, "Our daughter has your hair. And your ears."
"And eyes."
"Your looks, then. You're going to have to teach her swordplay fairly soon if she's going to beat all her suitors back."
"I will manage that for her just fine," he says, and she knows that he doesn't realise how much of himself he's given away just then. He probably thinks he's giving the impression of being calm and flexible, though he's pretty much solidified his position as protective dad for the rest of his days.
"Hah, don't worry. If she's anything like you, she'll bear herself well. She'll be tough, and firm, and noble."
He says something else, although she doesn't quite hear it. Something about weddings. Her own was not too long ago. That, and her wedding is one of the few festivities she's had in her lifetime, so it looms so very large. She dozes a moment, too much at ease to maintain her usual alertness.
Chrom pushes his face into the crook of her shoulder. Breathes right above the collar of her dressing gown. Asks, "What shall we name her?"
Robin grasps. Then she awakens, restored, and leans her head on his. "You get to pick, remember? I got to pick if it was a boy—Morgan."
"Morgan," he repeats. He pulls back and looks at the baby in her arms, sees the person. "Morgan."
"Mmm. But I don't see a Morgan here," Robin says. "So you chose. Maybe something from your family. I'd like that."
She means it, and can tell that he appreciates it. He shifts them closer. She waits.
Her own missing family history remains unmentioned. And although she's currently carried away by their present happiness too, she can't help but wonder what her parents were thinking when they named her, why Robin.
"How about Lucina? It's an L-name. It will make Lissa happy."
"And it will make this little one happy. It's a pretty name, given to her by her father."
"By her parents," Chrom lightly corrects. He draws her closer, emphasising. "Anyway, shouldn't you be getting some sleep? Lucina here seems to have the right idea."
"I—"
"You can worry about things later. Tomorrow. Preferably next Tuesday. Right now, you deserve to sleep."
"Well, I'd like to sleep with her a bit. Lucina doesn't know her mum too well yet. Her father's spent more time with her than I have so far, and I'm the one who was carrying her around for nine months! You know, Lucina, he tried to beat down the door while I was giving birth to you. He loves you so much. You're going to spoil faster than soft cheese."
She laughs and he grins. Though mortifying in a way, this sharing of stories between parents and child is a part of family life he has already envisioned several times.
"Mm. Rest now, you two. I'll be here to watch over you," he says as he shifts. He lowers so that Robin is once more lying down, and he can take Lucina from her later on.
"I love you, Chrom."
"And I, you, my love."
If he does leave, he doesn't disturb her.
...
"Just look at your little arms," Robin says to Lucina. "You'll be a Shepherd with your father in no time at all." With her free hand she scoops up half a handful of tepid bath water and rubs several suds from her daughter's left shoulder. With a second handful she washes off the baby's belly, where the last bits of umbilical cord have withered and fallen off at some point out of Robin's sight.
Her one hand supports Lucina's head and neck, while the other removes any lingering soap scum. For the fourth time, Robin has not been able to find her birthmark on Lucina. If it is a birthmark at all; though she's fairly sure that she was born with her mark and it's not a tattoo, even though she hadn't seen it ever on the skin of her own mother. The only mark she can find on her daughter is the Mark of Naga. Veiled in her left eye, but prominent if one notices it.
At first Robin was worried about potential complications to Lucina's vision because of the mark's location, but so far all's well, praise be to Naga. Praise be also for the absence of her own birthmark on Lucina's skin. She doesn't know why, but the thought of it being passed down to this child leaves her anxious. The thought plants a tension in her throat and raises an itch on her scalp. On her own body it doesn't mean anything to her. Otherwise, it would be a hateful brand.
Robin rubs her daughter's head. She strokes over tiny eyebrows and over the little nose with such exquisitely delicate nostrils.
Lucina gurgles and reaches. Her arms only make it so far up, and her gesturing isn't so reminiscent of reaching out as it is flailing. Still, this is the latest skill Lucina has shown. And it has developed right after her learning to grasp fingers placed into her hands. These, and a myriad other little things—her happy coo, her spurts of blue hair, her little flabby wrinkles at elbows and knees—have Robin more proud than she can remember being.
It's her baby's sheer amazingness that has her more emotional than she can recall, too. Though she's also affected by her breasts that refuse to quit aching. They can't be reasoned with, are worse than traitors because they're a part of her body. Robin has deferred to her husband's familial tradition of wet nursing for several good and rational reasons, but, even with a strong mind, it hurts. Particularly when she's in her daughter's company and her rebellious body strains like a trapped fox rendered desperate, frantic to do as it yearns. She wouldn't say it's her nature, but in this case bits of her biology are trying to usurp her. Swords and tomes and armies she can handle much easier. (Although that isn't quite true. The thought of the deaths she's responsible for is not something she will ever be completely over. Every soldier in the war maybe have possibly died at any time, but that doesn't mean any one had to.)
Everyone has told her, however, that this will get much get much better, much easier, very soon. Hers is a remarkable case, truly—only one of the midwives can remember a case of engorged breasts wearing this long. But as long as she doesn't give in, she'll be pretty much free from lactating the rest of her life. So just be strong.
She has cried. She has ruined chemises. She has glared at the wet nurse despite herself.
The surrogate pair of breasts belong to a girl who's shockingly demure and pretty. She was a ward in the care of a great house not too long ago, from a family of royal wet nurses merely bidding her time until called for. Despite her throes of jealousy, Robin adores the girl. Despite the girl getting to bond with Lucina in a way she had not imagined she would waste copious amounts of mental energy desiring, Robin finds the girl good company for both of them.
The girl's quick to help Robin by clearing away Lucina's "bathtub"-a porcelain creation with a curved gold-rimmed back and lavish designs on the bottom. The twelve centimetres or so of water don't splash a bit with her deft movements. In under sixty seconds Lucina's dried and swaddled and being bounced in her mother's arms.
And then Lucina begins to fidget. Her head bumps against her mother's chest, of course impatient because she's been trained to expect. Taking that away would be unfair to Lucina. Though the assault does her tender breasts agony.
With a lip pressed between her teeth, Robin hands Lucina over to the girl—Chelsa, the girl's named Chelsa.
Robin leaves.
She knows that these next few weeks will pass. It will get easier. In the meantime, there are so many things she's responsible for. Today she will be starting preliminary planning for the harvest festival.
.
Though she does spend an increasing amount of time in the nursery, Robin continues to help Chrom with state business, and even attends to some matters on her own. In a way they work in shifts. Together they free time for one another to spend with Lucina.
Lissa jokingly calls it tag-team parenting, but Robin tells her that she's onto something there. It's not far from the reality.
It's important because it goes a long way to fulfilling Chrom's mission of not becoming his father.
And it's something important for them both. They are both there to see Lucina's first roll. They are the first people she reaches out to for touch. When Robin picks her up, for the first time being asked to, she truly understands how tactile babies are. And how tactile humans are. The physical means so much.
The thought is warm and comforting, and lends itself to a good half-hour of simply cuddling with the baby, until Lucina grows fussy and cries to get some food. Mother and father leave, and later on that night Robin insists on some cuddling of their own. Though they agree that for her health not to try for another child too soon, there's a more profound passion to their once companionate love.
…
The day is particularly brisk for autumn—particularly so after such a hot summer. Several days the humidity was so great a terrible torpor overtook the land; and in the malaise, an outbreak of fever claimed lives of a good many. Lucina's bundled in coats and two scarves as she runs giddily away from her pursuing father. Robin's perched on a carved stone bench, settled as a mother hawk, going over accounts and ledgers. After making an occasional scratch with her quill she looks up to watch her family.
Smiling, she returns to the figures thinking that they will soon have to have Lucina's proper winter clothes made. Two quilted jackets and padded pairs of trousers at least, though there will probably have to be much more made. Already the girl's tall for her age.
She's also fast despite her awkward gait, but she's at that age where it's hard to tell if something she does is the beginnings of her personality or not. At times she seems absolutely like her father's side of the family: patient and well-behaved to the point that no-one had truly minded changing her nappies. Nor has Lucina she given them a fright yet: no crawling out of her crib, no escape attempts from her rooms, no attempt to eat debris found outside.
Although Lucina can be grabby with her surprisingly nimble hands, and Robin keeps insisting that Chrom ensure no-one wear swords around her. He himself puts away Falchion when with his daughter, but when visiting Plegians cite their own court courtesy, he does not force them to hang up their weapons in their daughter's presence.
(What makes it worse is the comment that new king made. He may have insisted he said, "may that I have such a grandchild," but she knows what she heard.)
Making the most of the garden, Lucina attempts to hide behind several of the cheerfully yellowing shrubs. When her father keeps finding her she tries behind trees, and when Chrom appears to genuinely loose her trail, she bursts out from behind the oak with a delighted shriek. She tackles into her father who has crouched down to catch her.
"Here I am, Father!"
He fakes being overwhelmed and the two of them fall over, her on top and both of them laughing.
Then she says, "Father, can you make Mother play? She should play too." Lucina asks. She blows a hair out of her face and buries herself into her father's embrace.
Robin, smiling to herself, pretends not to hear. She's joyed just to overhear them, and continues reading. These next figures are a bit more important than the last yet: a group of them indicate that the summer's drought may require a part of the royal grain reserves be distributed before the coming winter is out. Unless they lower taxes this year, maybe—
The thought's interrupted. Two arms haul her up and over a pair of very strong shoulders. Yelping, she wraps one arm around Chrom's neck, clutches the accounts against her chest with the other.
"Chrom!" She tries to be indignant, and it fails. "I've got state documents with me. Put me down!"
"Ah, I am sorry milady, but the princess has requested your kidnapping."
"I'll stab you with my quill!"
"Ah, she fights back!" He laughs. With a few quick movements he's relieved her of her instruments of statecraft. He steals her off to a new world, and there she suddenly is one of two princesses fleeing from a terrible old bear who wants to eat them. So Lucina tells her, but when Robin suggests that they eat the bear instead, the narrative changes.
It's a great idea—let the princesses win this time!
Chrom doesn't have a chance to protest—here he is on the ground, tackled by his wife and daughter, lain flat on his back by the weight of them.
Staying in role, he grabs them and pulls them close, growling as he kisses their heads to mimic eating them.
"Let the bear win this time!" he says. "He's old and grumpy and just wants a little bit of love."
"I'll love him," Lucina declares, and she kisses her father on the head. "Just as long as he promises not to be mean or grumpy anymore, and doesn't try to eat any princesses anymore. Or do other mean things like that."
Chrom says, with a mummer's voice theatrically deep and gravelly and forlorn, "I promise, milady."
Lucina beams at a job well done.