The first time Lucina had met her, she was passed out on the grass.

It was a strange sight to see on the first day of college, especially given Lucina had not expected to see anyone else in the college so early in the morning. It’s only 6:30, after all, and the first class isn’t until hours later, yet here’s someone snoring away in the courtyard like she’d been here all night.

Odd looking one, too. Fairly young, if not clearly having a bit of an insomnia issue with how tired she looks, yet her entire hair is patches of silver and amber, as if she had years of anxiety trapped hard enough for her own strands to fall apart. A first glance would take her to be on the poor side, with roughened up clothing that has shown years of use hidden under a scruffed up cardigan, but she can’t be homeless, because Lucina knows the administrator for this college, and he would have already been the most despicable kind of person to her by now if that were the case.

She’s resting quite peacefully, though, considering she’s on solid ground. She must be used to sleeping like this.

“Eh…?”

Oh, Lucina must have woken her up. Not that deep a sleeper, then.

The girl stretches her arms out as she sits herself up, yawning in an adorable high-pitched tone that contrasts with her large stature, before realizing that someone else is there, startling herself into shock.

“Oh!” The woman quickly looks away in embarassment. “I mean, uh, okay, I can explain, I got here too early and all the cafes weren’t open and—”

“No need to worry.” Lucina smiles, trying to calm the poor girl. “I’m surprised you can rest on the ground, though. Far better places to sleep, around here.”

“Are there?” She looks to the ground, the grass she was on leaving a slight imprint. “I-I dunno. Not exactly anything cushiony, and at least the grass smells nice, I think.”

“I suppose that’s a good point.” Lucina sits down next to her, taking in the morning dew. “It’s always quite nice to take in this early, isn’t it.”

“Yeah.” The stranger scratches the back of her head, before her eyes suddenly widen. “Wait, shit, how early is it? Did I already miss class or—”

“Settle down, the sun’s barely even out yet.” Lucina smiles again, which is apparently a surefire strategy against this girl since her shoulders quickly relax. “If you’d like, I can just call you when classes are soon.”

The girl looks slightly surprised. “You would do that?”

“Of course.”

While the girl throws open the flap to her shoulder bag, digging through to presumably get an agenda out, Lucina takes a look closer at her. Given how she must look to others, most must take her to be a threatening old lady; she’s massive in height, certainly hitting well above six feet, and the nature of her silver hair with how tired she seems to be would paint a picture that’s quite likely discriminatory in a dozen different ways. If a particularly rancid kind of person were to see her (probably also the administrator, to be honest), they’d likely treat her as some kind of predator for even being around a bunch of young people in a college.

Those points of view always seemed quite alien to them, though. When Lucina had met the woman that went on to be their best friend, everyone spoke of her as if she were an angry enigma of shallowness, but even one glance into her eyes revealed no hints of hatred nor anger, only fear. This woman feels similar, her brown irises showing no hints of negativity, so much as there is a discerning confusion for everything she’s focused on, as if she’s never quite sure if she’s doing anything correctly.

Lucina could be off on that, though. No need to act like all this psychoanalysis is accurate.

“Okay, uh, my first class is Mister…” She squints at her journal. “Eee-ther? Aye-ther?”

“Aether, you got it the first time.” Lucina stifles laughter, knowing how nobody ever gets that name right. “Looks like we’ll be heading to the same class, then.”

“You’re taking literature too!?” The girl gets a glint in her eyes for a moment, before composing herself. “I mean, um, y-yeah! That’s cool, I-I guess.”

“Isn’t it?” Lucina can’t help but giggle this time, to the stranger’s embarassment. “You seem like you’re excited for it.”

“I-I suppose I am, maybe…” She hides in her cardigan, face turning red in a way that’s kind of adorable. “Writing’s fun.”

“Oh? Is there anything you’ve written?”

“I mean, um, n-none of it’s very good or anything, just a bunch of poetry.”

“I think that sounds nice.” Lucina smiles again.

“I-it does?”

The girl keeps glancing to another notebook in her bag, her lips hesitating to say something else.

“I. Um. Okay. I’m not the best at picking up these kinds of cues, so I might be way off on my assumption here but the way you were talking about it—”

“I’d like to hear some of it.”

To Lucina’s delight, she immediately lights up.

The next few hours went quickly, as listening to amateur poetry quickly went to talking about fanfiction, which went to delving into their favorite shows, before trailing into games that the girl would shamefully admit into pouring far too much time into. She wasn’t the best with her tongue, stumbling through her words like she isn’t quite used to talking to others, but she had passion for all of it, stars lighting up in her darkened eyes every time she recalled something else to feel excited about. It was all so entrancing, her happiness so contagious, that it wasn’t until minutes before class that Lucina actually remembered to ask for her name.

Robin Grimleal. Her name befits her love for fantasy, if nothing else.

It made the first day of class feel whole, because of her. It felt nice to be able to bring a smile to her face.

Perhaps they could do that to her more often.

This was absolutely not what Lucina meant by that.

It’s been several months into college now, and more importantly, two weeks since an extremely dangerous event had occurred. A dangerous event that, among another things, involved blurting out insecurities at their crush, getting confusing upsetting thoughts resulting in them cutting their hair short in a depressed state, wearing an androgynous cosplay of their roleplaying character as a coping mechanism, going to a bar in said cosplay because Severa said that’s how they could drink some of the sadness off and then, um.

Well.

Let’s just say they got Robin to smile in a lot of different ways that night.

They were kind of banking on the hopes that she hadn’t remembered anything about it. It was hazey for them as is, and they barely drank much alcohol at all, next to Robin downing several pints in a row. Sure, Lucina would love for it to be acknowledged deep in their heart, if only to rub it in a certain someone’s face—

(and oh, how miserable he would be at the realization, they think to nobody in particular)

—but it would be best, for their simple little heart, to let it be, and hope she’d forgotten.

She remembered. Jesus Christ, she remembered, and now she is terrified to look in their direction without breaking into a blushing grin, one that gives Lucina a lot of happy feelings that they absolutely should not think on for too long in public.

Apparently, their best friend also noticed this.

Severa suddenly stops typing in the chat, and Lucina’s fairly confident they can hear a confused tapping on the table behind them where she’s sitting.

Lucina hears a phone drop to the ground with a loud thud, followed by the scraping of chairs as their best friend scrambles to pick it up.

Lucina hears a fist being slammed directly into wood. That one was definitely Severa, yes.

It’s quite surprising, how forward they are about this, given how utterly anxiety-inducing it was to realize Severa know until now, but then they could say the same about that whole time at the bar to begin with. Normally, they’re as indecisive as can be, but there’s just something about Robin, seeing her calm and docile at their slightest touch, that made them suddenly more willing than terrified.

Robin can make them do a lot of things, it seems.

…

Lucina, it is ten in the morning on a Tuesday and you are in the middle of a college cafeteria, please calm down.

Still, as fun as it is to gloat that Lucina has done something other than yearn for the first time in their life, this doesn’t seem ideal. Talking to her was genuinely very pleasant, and they haven’t been able to do that at all recently. Everything feels a bit heavier, without her excitedly discussing recent novels she’s read and games she’s played.

It’s not entirely like Robin makes them feel lewd thoughts. Just, erm, when they see her face doing that thing.

Which, currently, is every time they look at her.

Lucina hears her stand from the seat.

Severa walks towards Robin.

…

Wait.

Severa’s walking toward Robin.

And now they’re talking with each other.

Oh no.

Severa walks back, winking at them.

She disappears out of view, and now, Lucina has nothing more to do than mope there, in eternal fear of what horrifying wreckage she had just caused. Did she tell her what they said? Oh god what if she told Robin about the tasting thing, that was just a joke bit to poke fun and even if it was absolutely true she doesn’t need to know that—

And then they hear their phone vibrating. A generic notification noise they aren’t used to, as it’s rare for anyone other than Sev and their father to message them.

Oh.

Oh.

Well. This is a sudden turn of events, isn’t it.

Is this good? They aren’t entirely sure, to be honest, because this could very well go very horribly depending on what other information Severa had given. For all that Lucina should be happy that this is happening, the last time they sincerely talked about feelings with her they said some things they absolutely shouldn’t have said, and given how much they had already told Severa, it’s possible they’ll cause some trouble again.

And god, I’ve already caused so much pain for her before any of this even started.

…Still. Would be a bit rude to not respond, surely.

It’s about as nice as ever, talking with her, and that certainly helps calm their nerves on the matter; for all of her clear lack of social skills, she’s far better at making it feel natural than she ought to be. It’s always been another reason Lucina’s convinced people are just judgemental, because clearly, more people would enjoy her presence otherwise.

Well, er, maybe minus the “snakeskin and brimstone” thing. That might just be endearing to them.

Given how they can now see the woman curled up into her phone in the corner of the cafeteria, Lucina is going to keep calming her nerves and conveniently ignore the another they definitely saw in that message for a few seconds.

Lucina glances over her direction, and finds a familiar sight; trying to hide in her own cardigan, looking as if her heart is too heavy for herself. They see her eyes for just a moment, and that confusion they saw the first time is setting in on her irises once again.

Ah.

Lucina’s pretty sure they know where this is going.

This is his fault, isn’t it.

When the semester had first started, nobody actually had an opinion on Robin. She was just a strange looking girl who stayed in the corner of everywhere, and there was never much of a reason to bother her. They’re sure some people had some less-appreciable opinions on her, but it’s not as if anyone would go out of their way to make her feel terrible.

And then Inigo happened.

Lucina is not one to have kind feelings towards most men, but Inigo is something else in terms of the unkind. A disgusting little creature who can only feel confident in terms of how many women are falling for him at any given moment, he discovered Lucina having feelings for someone other than him, and he immediately went to work on trying to get every other person in school to endlessly spread rumors about the girl they liked being around. Within days, women who would pay her no mind suddenly try to sit next to her, stirring up rumors in the hope that it would get around enough to impress a boy who doesn’t remember their names.

Robin’s already living with the hostile glares of strangers from the life she must live, and now she doesn’t even get to feel safety within her own school, all because his tiny little pea-sized consciousness sees someone he can only be bothered to comprehend as a woman, and he’s enraged they don’t want to fuck him. To destroy and rip apart another human’s dignity is the price he’s willing to pay just to feel like he doesn’t have to “compete”, like that’s a thing that exists outside of the misogynist circles he crawls around.

Horrid, snively little weaselfucker. Lucina could knock him out onto the ground for every hour of the rest of his life, and it wouldn’t be enough with all the stories they’ve had to hear of his escapades.

Quite frankly, if they have to hear about him fucking some poor girl in the back halls again, they might very well just break his jaw and save the rest of this damn school in the process.

…Actually.

There’s an idea.

Lucina gets up from their chair and walks off.

Lucina leaves.

…

On the far side of the college, a ways away from any classroom that matters, and nestled between vending machines that haven’t functioned in years, there’s a little hallway. The school staff keeps telling themselves they’ll find a use for it; there’s a room in here that could technically be used as a closet, but this college has no gym, so there’s no need to put sports equipment anywhere, and the auditorium already has space for everything they’d need, so it sits empty.

It’s a hall with no purpose. A hall that absolutely nobody, at any point, would need to ever go through–and with a spot that, up until you’re in the direct center of the hallway, no one can see you in.

“So, um. What am I supposed to—”

They quickly push Robin to the wall, their arm pinning a shoulder down.

“Holy shit.” She immediately looks back with docile eyes, and it takes all of Lucina’s willpower not to take her right then and there with the face she’s making. “You… really can just do that whenever you want, huh.”

They hold her by the cheek with one hand, being able to take in her face while sober for the first time. “Only when I have a purpose.”

Robin looks away, already red with embarrassment. “Interesting way to refer to this.”

“Well, I’m not just doing this for no reason, of course.” They say, as if they aren’t currently resisting the urge to do this for no reason. “Because, quite frankly,”

Lucina brushes their fingers down her neck.

“I am getting sick and tired,”

They press a finger down at her collarbone, her squirming growing more intense.

“Of people not seeing beauty when it’s right in front of them.”

“N-no idea what you’d be referring to.”