Chapter Text
Despite the terrible heat, Byleth’s make up had somehow managed to stay on as she waited outside of the museum for the prince. Her huge knowledge of the area had come in handy, and even intrigued the prince. She learned that he was particularly interested in his own past and his family, and who else but Byleth to tell him about that? She witnessed so much of it after all.
Not that he knew, or anyone other than her housemates. To the outside world, she was simply someone who was so fascinated by Fodlan that she made it her life’s work to discuss and inform others about it. Part of that was true. She never wanted anyone to forget what had happened her 835 years ago.
Her efforts seemed to bear fruit, even shown by the arrival of the princes’ limousine. She stood to attention, making sure to wipe her sweaty hand on her skirt in case she needed to greet anyone. She knew she was supposed to bow to the prince. In her sleep deprived state two nights ago, her boss had made sure to know all she needed to know on how to behave. It was probably for the best, since much of it had changed or she had forgotten. Not to mention that it was others that had to behave this way towards her, once upon a time.
Her prince always saw her as her equal.
The driver walks out of the car and around in order to open the door for the prince. She was sure that he was probably pampered with all the best cleaning products offered, but she had no doubt he was going to be some snotty teenager. Although Flayn did tell her she’d read about how hot he was online, despite being unable to find any pictures.
He was also 22 by now.
So okay maybe not snotty, and maybe not a teenager. However princes and kings these days hardly needed to keep in shape like they did long ago when they were the ones fighting in battles, lance clenched in their hands.
He was probably just going to look like some kind of hot rando.
He was just another face Byleth was bound to forget.
The day before…
The heat was truly becoming unbearable. Maybe in a past life Byleth had come from the most northern parts of Fodlan, thriving in the harsh winters and avoiding the warmer seasons. It was impossible to tell now, she didn’t think it would be easy finding thousand-year-old documents that she herself didn’t work to preserve, but she was sure of one thing. Moving to Derdriu was a dumb choice.
She wished she could say she regretted it, but it was still the best option. Fhirdiad was full of too many painful memories for her to stay there any longer. Garreg Mach wasn’t an option either for the same reasons, and Enbarr… well Enbarr just didn’t feel right for her. It was all one nation, but she didn’t feel quite right there, even now 800 years later she could still remember the cries of her former students as they fell dead on the battlefield.
Derdriu didn’t carry that weight. Derdriu was a place of victory, a place where they had defeated a great evil and united two great nations. Derdriu was good. Derdriu had only a few, mostly good, memories associated with it.
But the summers were terrible.
No wonder Hilda never wanted to do anything. Even Byleth didn’t want to do anything in this heat.
At least she had the comfort of her shared apartment and the air conditioner she made sure was there.
As soon as she closes the door behind her, Byleth peels off the blue jacket of her work uniform and sighs, “Hey guys, I’m home. Managed to live through one more day. Are we sure we like living here?”
“Father isn’t back yet, and we are not moving again,” Flayn insists from the couch where Byleth had to assume she had been the entire day, watching Netflix and loving her decision of taking the hottest week of the year off. Byleth envied her, “At least not for another fifty years. We’ve already moved three times in the last ten years and I would like to stay somewhere for at least one lifetime.”
Byleth rolls her eyes and slumps down on the couch next to her, “You know there’s a McDonald’s everywhere now, right? If we move away from Fodlan altogether then you’ll still probably end up down the street from a fish-o-filet.”
“It’s not that,” Flayn shakes her head, “I’m tired of establishing a new identity for myself over and over again. It’s getting real hard too, and I like the life we have here. Father at least gets to work his dream job and I am perfectly content writing down all the wrong names on people’s coffee orders.”
“Yeah, you’re right,” Byleth sighs and closes her eyes, “The museum is probably the best job I’ve had in centuries and the only other one of this scale is in Fhirdiad. Ugh, since when did you become the voice of reason?”
“Ha!” Flayn exclaims with a laugh, “I just think this place is neat. It’s only this week, By. By the end of it, you’ll be back to staying late nights at work because you don’t want to leave. You’d hate yourself for quitting your job.”
She did enjoy her job, that was true. If she had to recall past memories at all, and it seemed like her head was never gonna let her not do that, she could at least transform them into something productive. Recounting one of the greatest wars of all time to educate others was therapeutic to her. Talking about crests and beasts as if they were fairy tales allowed her to view her past objectively. If she had to remember her students, she could talk about them as great hero’s rather than the close friends she watched pass away one after the other.
However, her long hours at the museum weren’t the result of her boss giving her too much work or the museum having long opening hours. It was what truly drew her to Derdriu in the first place.
She had heard a few years ago that a precious painting had been uncovered by the royal family, but they wished for it to be displayed for the world. Seeing as the artist originated from Leicester, it made most sense to display it in their largest National History Museum. Naturally, she immediately applied there. She had never received a degree in history, figuring she didn’t need one considering she lived through most of it herself, and she was luckily enough to have been brought in for an interview.
Once she had convinced Seteth of the possibility of working as fisherman there and more importantly, no one recognising any of them in a city none of them had resided in till now, they all moved again and she started her work there, showing schoolchildren around during their trips, giving more information than necessary to tourists who had lingered on certain paintings for longer than others, and impressing her fellow tour guides and boss with her knowledge.
All for the sake of being able to tell Dimitri about her day at the end of her shift, when no one but the security guards could see her, and even they thought she was on the phone most of the time with how unobservant they were.
At first, she had almost stayed overnight, using her divine pulse when a guard had uncovered her and told her to go home. She had too much to tell him, too many happy memories to recall and share with him. He never answered her, which she was partially thankful for since it at least indicated she hadn’t gone mad yet. He always looked at her, smiled at her, just as he did the day she had commissioned the artwork from Ignatz.
She was grateful that the royal family had finally found it, centuries after she had hidden it away so that it couldn’t be destroyed. It was far too large for her to have taken out of the palace once she had faked her own illness and death. She couldn’t bear the thought of it disappearing forever.
“Earth to Byleth?” Flayn snaps her out of her thoughts, “I didn’t hear you come in last night. Let me guess, complaining about father this time?”
“Huh?” Byleth asks her. As oblivious as her adoptive sister was to certain things, she very quickly caught on why exactly Byleth spent so much time at work. Seteth found out immediately, and he was only angry that it meant that she would often forgo sleep or food in favour of speaking with her king, “Oh, actually I only really told him about my day, and nothing really happened. I stayed at work cos my boss was telling me about this whole special event we’re having. Apparently, the current prince wants to visit and asked for their best tour guide to explain his own history to him. So they picked me and had me show them around the museum in preparation.”
“You sure that’s the best idea?” Flayn asks, turning down the volume of the show she was watching before, expecting this to be a conversation she needed to be more engaged in, “Some rando’s are easy enough but aren’t you technically related to this guy? Not to mention the fact that he’ll probably realise you have a lot of similarities with that portrait hanging up in the palace. Unless you had the chance to remove it?”
“I didn’t have time,” Byleth shakes her head, “And I’m fairly certain it’s still there. Although… uh, I guess after 800 hundred years and everyone involved other than me having died long ago, can I share a secret with you?”
“I’m more surprised you have anything left to share,” Flayn smiles, “But do tell! I’m very intrigued now!”
Byleth sighs and looks down, now recounting her own past to someone who would have remembered something like this, “I never had a child of my own. After hearing that my dad was far older than he made me believe and realising that I hadn’t aged a day since awakening to Sothis’ power, I spoke with Rhea and she told me the truth, that unless something drastic happened I would never die. I didn’t want to force that onto anyone else, such as my own biological child, so I told Dima and he reluctantly agreed. He was excited to have an heir, but he didn’t want his child to have to live through the things we lived through. Of course the rest of the kingdom would be appalled to learn that Dima was going to be the last of the Blaiddyd line and he really wanted to have a child… so we agreed that someone else would have our son.”
“I see…” Flayn rubs her chin in thought, “I suppose he was lucky enough to have inherited most of His Majesty’s features. However, as I recall you treated his son as your own. Well, even though it looks nothing like it used to, you still refuse to live in Fhirdiad. Who’s to say what will happen when you meet one of His Majesty’s descendants? Actually I haven’t even been keeping up with the royal family, I wonder what they look like…” she picks up her phone where it lay next to her and immediately tried to gather as much information as she could.
Knowing it would take a while for Flayn to download the millions of pictures she was bound to find and keep on her phone to talk about with Byleth, she stands up and goes to the bathroom, choosing to run a cold bath to clean the sweat off of her. She was probably going to take another shower tomorrow morning right before she met the prince, but a cold bath sounded like a dream right now.
As she waits for the water to cool down, she hears Seteth coming back from his day at work from the other side of the locked door, and Flayn clearly ignoring him while she still searched for pictures, “Flayn, could you answer me while I talk to you?” She hears Seteth’s muffled voice.
“Nope. Doing important stuff,” Flayn replies, “Ugh this is impossible. You find articles talking about how fit the prince is you expect some people to be sharing thirst tweets on main…”
“Fit? Thirst tweets? By the Goddess what are you talking about this time? As I recall, Twitter is that place politicians disagree on?” Seteth tries to figure out what she’s saying, baffled by her speech, “I did not realise drinks were controversial these days. I quite like drinking tea to quench my thirst.”
Since waking up from her slumber and realising how behind she was on the culture at Garreg Mach, Flayn had promised herself to always stay on top of whatever was happening. It was easy enough to keep track most of the time, but with internet culture it became that much easier for Flayn to keep up with what was popular. That included sending obscure memes to Byleth at three in the morning and saying things to Seteth, who didn’t care for such things, that he could not understand.
“I’m not looking for tea right now, I’m looking for pics. Keep up, father,” Flayn groans, “Byleth is showing the prince the museum she works at and I wanted to see what he looks like, maybe he has His Majesty’s cheese string hair or he’s got cake.”
“It’s been hundreds of years,” She hears Seteth reply back, “I have studied genetics in my free time and from how I understand it, it would be quite a feat for him to look anything like the king we knew. Although if Byleth is indeed going to show the prince around, perhaps that is for the best.”
“Damn son don’t say that, she can hear you,” Flayn says and at that moment Byleth unlocks the door and pokes her head out, seeing Seteth in the kitchen as he puts away groceries.
“Hey Seteth,” she waves at him awkwardly, “Uh, don’t worry ‘bout it though. I’m sure that even if he’s a carbon copy of Dimitri I can handle myself. I might talk to his painting but I’m not crazy… uh… that sounded bad.”
“Indeed,” Seteth agrees, “Byleth if there is anyway in which I can assist you then do not hesitate to ask.”
“I’ll be fine,” Byleth reassures him, “Like you said, he’ll probably look like a complete stranger and all he’ll have in common is his last name, that I won’t be using since I have to address him as ‘Your Highness’ all the time.”
No.
What?
No.
Her mind must have been playing tricks on her.
She heard ‘Blaiddyd’ and ‘prince’ and ‘Fhridiad’ and everything way too many times in the last couple of days.
She hasn’t even been able to talk to Dimitri these last couple of days.
But even that was just a painting. A reminder that her husband had succumbed to illness and died 800 years ago, his body long turned into dust.
So then why was he looking at her and smiling from the bottom of the steps of the museum?
No, she’d read about this somewhere. It was her mind drawing similarities and making her think that was Dimitri. It was the heat, making her confused. That had to be it. There was no other possible explanation.
She prayed that he had a really high voice, a childish one. That when he spoke to her, she would have to hold back laughter because it would be so unexpected and the illusion would break, showing her some thin, short, brown haired boy instead.
As he nears, she bows in respect, “You Highness, welcome to the National History Museum of Fodlan,” She lifts her head back up with a fake smile on her face, “I have been informed that there is one particular exhibit you are interested in. Shall we begin there?”
“I appreciate it, miss Eisner, and yes if you could, I would like to see the exhibit on the War of the Three Houses. It has fascinated me since I have heard of it.”
Shit.
Shit.
Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit.
What the hell???
It wasn’t even that he spoke in the same voice, the exact one Byleth promised herself to never forget and heard telling her to sleep well every night. He spoke in the same manner too. Incredibly polite, incredibly formal… it was too close.
She struggled not to scream, or break out in tears, or laugh just like he did when the Flame Emperor’s mask came off, “I was told to remind Your Highness and Your Highness’ guard that although these all belong to the crown, we would appreciate not approaching the paintings and statues as they are priceless to us and the country. The more they are moved or otherwise touched, the higher the chance that they will be destroyed.”
She knew she couldn’t add it, but she definitely had to hold herself back from mentioning that one painting in particular. She’d stop the imposter herself if it comes down to it.
Imposter?
Hmm, maybe it was one of those?
They did use this kind of technique but… no. Byleth and Hapi made sure to eliminate all of Those Who Slither in the Dark long ago. Shamballah was nothing but toppled over columns and a new apartment complex.
“Of course, I understand,” Dimi- the prince nods and motions over to the entrance, “Shall we proceed? I would not like to stand in this heat longer than necessary, however I will require you to lead the way, miss Eisner.”
Byleth bows her head again and leads him into the empty museum, followed by his guard. Giving them a quick look, she was almost expecting to see Gilbert or Dedue or Felix or Ingrid in the mix. She almost gave a sigh of relief when none of the men resembled any of her former students and/or allies. So only one weirdness today, got it.
Now to survive the tour and not slip up.
Oh Dima, we’re really in it now.