Chapter Text
Edelgard slumps into a lecture hall chair, her backpack falling like a sack of bricks onto the carpeted lecture hall floor. She leans back into her chair, weary from climbing up the stairs and a poor night’s sleep and stares at the ceiling momentarily to collect herself. Though a few others had arrived in the hall before her, she was still among the first. The lecture hall remained silent as students flicked through their phones, which suited Edelgard just fine. Quietly, she unzips her bag and begins pulling out various things for her desk.
Edelgard always kept her pens and notebooks together, and only ever uses a specific one for certain notebooks. She pulls out one of the larger ones, her dedicated classroom notebook, and lays it flat onto the desk attached to her chair. Sifting through her bag some more, she then pulls out her collection of smaller notebooks. They came in a wide assortment of different colors, some dark with an earth tone, others brighter in shades of purple, blue, and red. Opening another smaller compartment of her bag, she pulls out two pens, one in black, and the other in blue, setting them parallel to her notebooks. She always did this, regardless of the class or mood she had.
Her eyes drift downward to her many assorted notebooks, and opens one of the smaller ones, more like a memo. She closes it just as fast as she opens it, briefly skimming through the page she had marked only yesterday to remind herself of her tasks for today. The notebook only filled her with a sense of frustration, anxiety, and dread, over her growing responsibilities as an adult that had to take care of herself. Still, she always wrote in it to keep her internal calendar in check, no matter how much it bothered her.
Setting her memo aside she reaches for another one of her notebooks, but then realizes she had taken out the wrong emote. However, her hand freezes as she recognizes the faded, red hue of this particular one. She hadn’t opened it for years, and she hesitates to open it again as her pulse quickens. Slowly her hand reaches out and takes the weathered notebook from the spine and sets it in front of her. The notebook hadn’t changed in all the years she’s had it, but it has suffered some dents due to various clutter in her bag. Mustering the courage, she begins to turn the pages.
Drawings and sketches from a decade ago appear, each of them bringing vague memories of Edelgard’s childhood. A childlike doodle here, and a few paragraphs of a long forgotten story here. Original characters, sketched out hastily before they could be forgotten, dot each page as the young Edelgard’s imagination went wild. They came in a variety of different ink colors, different characters deserving their own unique pen and shade. She had pushed many of these into the far recesses of her mind over the years due to the embarrassment she had for some of them, but still she kept turning the page, growing more and more nostalgic as she relived the early years of her creative mind. She remembered the days when she could create characters on a whim, and each character would then get their own sketch and entry inside this favorite notebook of hers.
She had forgotten that feeling, that desire to create, amidst the sea of emotions she had to wade through now. She found neither the time nor the motivation to do the things she once loved, and it bothered her more and more with each passing day. She knew that continued inactivity would only exacerbate the cycle, yet her brain wouldn’t allow her to do the things she once could with ease. She felt stagnant, and her displeasure with her own self continued.
Turning another page, she notices that the younger Edelgard had folded the very top of the underlying page. Her mind connected the dots, the crimson notebook, and the specific folded page, and her heart began to race even faster. Carefully, without tearing the old pages out, she turns, and recognizes the red ink that she had once loved. The young Edelgard had filled these pages with copiously long, winding paragraphs. The words described everything about the character, her motivations, her backstory, her relationships, and her goals. From the fact that she came from a small, upstart nation of peasantry, to the sweets she loved above all else, the young Edelgard put fierce passion and love into her work. The elder Edelgard could not comprehend the feelings that flowed through her. Was it nostalgia, or was it disdain? Was it shame, or was it pride? Was it frustration, or was it sadness? Edelgard’s hand slides across the notebook again, reaching to close it. However, as she does so, her eyes glide across the top of the page where the name of the forgotten character lies. She had longed to forget about her, but now that name would embed itself into her again. “Flame Emperor.”
She closes the notebook with force, tossing it into her bag in a manner much more forceful than she normally would. The name still etched into her memory, Edelgard calms herself down and attempts to once again push it to the far edges of her mind. The doors to the lecture hall now begin to open and close at a quicker rate as more students arrive. Most of them wore sweaters, some still wore summer tops, but one person ended up catching her eye due to the sheer ridiculousness of her attire and fashion choice.
The woman had blue hair that extends just beyond her shoulders, but it looked messy and knotted, as if she neglected to put any care. A blue bucket hat adorns her head with fish decorations on top. Her black jacket looks unremarkable but she wears it more akin to a mantle, leaving her arms bare and her sleeves flapping behind her as she walked. Her jeans seem the only sane part of her ridiculous getup, but her choice of shirt brought Edelgard to the brink. The woman wore a plain white tee, but large, bold letters spell out MILF across her chest.
Edelgard wanted to laugh, she really did, but she once again composes herself. The girl continues to walk, her silly sleeves flapping about, and ends up sitting in a seat close to Edelgard. Mentally smiling still, she decides to speak to the stranger. “Um... excuse me… you do know what your shirt means right?”
The woman grins. “Whatever do you mean?”
“Your shirt…” Edelgard says, holding back a snicker with all her motivation. “Doesn’t it say MILF?”
“Of course it does.” She replies nonchalantly, but her bright smile betrays her feigned ignorance.
“Do you not know what it means?”
“Does it not mean this?” She replies, gesturing to the bottom of the white tee. Man I Love Fishing.
Edelgard bursts out laughing, and the woman joins her. She covers her face and holds her stomach as she roars with laughter, unable to contain herself. All sense of composure and image flew out the window as she laughs with all her might, tears flowing out of her eyes.
“Oh my goodness… that’s such an amazing shirt!” Edelgard shrieks, barely breathing through one of her fits of laughter.
“Isn’t it?” The strange woman replies, also recovering from her laughter. “I think it’s really funny too.”
“Has anyone else ever asked about your shirt?”
“No, you’re the first. I’m glad you did too, you laughed so hard I was worried you would stop breathing.”
“Oh I’m fine, I’m fine, my goodness… Man I love fishing, haha!” She snickers.
“I’m glad you got such a kick out it.” She smiles, shifting over a chair so that she sat next to Edelgard.
“Do you really enjoy fishing, or did you get that shirt for the joke?”
“I do, it’s one of my favorite past times. Whenever my family gets the chance, we would go out somewhere, a lake or an ocean, and just spend the day fishing. The joke’s extra, I have a lot of shirts like these.”
“That’s really funny.” Edelgard replies, still giggling. She flounders in her mind for something to continue the conversation as the woman settles down in her new seat, taking out her own notebook and pencil. It appears as if she had jammed multiple sheets of paper into it as some sort of makeshift folder. Creases span across the length of the sheets.
Ready for lecture, the woman leans back into her chair and stretches. She reaches into one of her jacket pockets and pulls out a Nintendo 3DS, black and white with the symbol of Hyrule decorated at the bottom. Edelgard watches as the woman retreats into her handheld, her eyes narrowing as if the rest of the world no longer matters. She begins loading a game, and within a few seconds Pokemon Ultra Moon appears in blazing letters. A part of Edelgard did not want to disturb the woman and leave her to the comfort of her video game, but another part inexplicably wanted to speak to her even more.
“What are you up to in Alola?” Edelgard asks, blurting it out, unsure if it sounded rude.
The woman turns, her blue eyes staring into Edelgard in surprise as if she had spoken in a foreign language. Then, her lips part into a slight smile.
“I’m not sure, all I do is turn it on to see my Pokemon.”
“Really? Are you out of things to do?”
“Yeah, I beat the game pretty fast and then wound up doing a bunch of other things.”
“Did you get big into EV training and breeding too?”
“Oh, of course.” The woman replies, her eyes glancing back to Edelgard’s. “I have teams all set up for whenever I want to do anything competitive, but they mostly just sit there since I don’t really look for competition.”
“What about the Alolan Pokedex?”
She sheepishly smiles. “I completed that, since I have games from every generation. Want to take a look?”
Edelgard’s eyes widen. “Sure.”
The woman opens up a few menus and reaches the Rotomdex, beginning to scroll down the long list of several hundred Pokemon. Sure enough, no empty spaces—the woman had a real deal completed Alolan Pokedex.
“How long did it take you to do this?” Edelgard asks, in awe.
“I don’t know; I lose track of time pretty quickly.” The woman replies simply.
“Well either way, I think that’s really impressive. What’s your favorite Pokemon?”
“Hmm…” The blue haired woman places a finger on her chin. “That’s a really hard question.”
“Right? It’s hard to pick.”
“If I really really had to choose… I think I’d pick Gliscor.”
“Are you one of those Poison Heal Gliscors…”
The woman’s smile turns into a sly grin. “Maybe~ What about you?”
“Hmm…” Edelgard thinks for a moment, and briefly her mind goes to Cynthia. She really admired her as a teenager. “Well I really like Garchomp, but Bisharp is probably the other one I’d pick. I named my first Bisharp after my friend.”
The woman laughs. “Why did you do that?”
“Oh, because he looks a lot like Bisharp I suppose? I think you would see the resemblance if you ever meet him. His name is Hubert.”
“Sounds like someone who would look like Bisharp.”
Edelgard giggles. “Oh, class looks like it’s starting soon.”
She points to an older woman walking through the door carrying a briefcase, making her way to the podium instead of the lecture hall chairs. She had white hair tied in two tails and wore a black jacket. In her other hand she skims a book as she walks.
“We should talk again after lecture.” Edelgard suggests.
“That sounds fun.”
“By the way, what’s your name? You never mentioned it.”
The woman looks at Edelgard, as though she had asked some strange question. A few seconds pass until she responds. “Byleth.”