Chapter Text
That night, Lewyn threw the holy tome Forseti across the floor of his hotel room. It bounced a few times and hit heavily against the opposite wall.
“Are you fucking happy?” he asked the spirit inside. There was some piece of Forseti, the god, tucked inside its pages, and none knew this better than Lewyn.
He stomped his foot, throwing up his hands. He was wired with an angry energy he didn’t know how to expend. It wasn’t as though he could throw the holy treasure of the Silessian royal family too many more times.
“You piece of shit-…”
He ran his hand down his face, stopping the sentence mid-thought. He was just as much a piece of shit as Forseti, as far as he could tell. He wasn’t cut out for royalty. He wasn’t cut out for leaving his stupid foray into the real world to try and do whatever it had been that made him run away in the first place. He didn’t really know what it was by now.
It was hard for him to face Azelle with these thoughts in mind. His boyfriend had always been supportive, but Lewyn didn’t know how to be vulnerable enough with him yet to tell him about Forseti, or that he was terrified of returning to Silesse, or that he still partially and selfishly wanted to abandon an entire country just so that he could be miserable on his own terms.
There was nothing he could do.
Suddenly, a rapping on the door drew his attention from his self-deprecating reverie. Lewyn swore again, this time under his breath. He nearly tripped over himself to the door, and opened it to find a middle aged man in his pajamas with a stern look of concern clear on his face, glancing behind Lewyn into the rest of his hotel room.
“Uh.” He had to have looked like shit himself, but he was lacking the awareness to respond properly. Just another fuck up to add to the list.
“Is everything alright in here?” the man asked, almost accusatory.
“Yeah,” Lewyn responded in impulse. “I just… Dropped something important on the ground.”
The stranger narrowed his eyes. “Well, keep it down. It’s late.”
“...Sure.”
Lewyn didn’t wait for him to clear the doorway before closing the door, but being rude to a rude stranger was the least of his worries right now. It was easier to flip on the TV, and turn it up just a little too loud, to drown out any complaints he could still direct at no one.
But that was another thought, wasn’t it? He couldn’t even vent without fucking it up and getting some one involved.
He closed the distance between the holy tome and himself, and kicked it once for good measure before picking it up again.
It had just been today that he’d showed it to his boyfriend, and told him that he wanted to do better. Because of Azelle, Lewyn wanted to right all those wrongs he’d committed by running away from all of his responsibilities, but now, in the presence of only himself, Lewyn was terrified by the mere thought of it.
He all but threw himself on the bed of his hotel room, Forseti striking the mattress beside him. It would take weeks for him to build up the mindset he needed to even consider facing his mother after all this time away, and then he’d still drag his feet the whole way home.
“I wish I was someone else,” he murmured contemptuously, glaring daggers at the book beside him. “I wish someone else had to deal with this.”
This wasn’t the first time he’d thought as much. Maybe it was the first time he’d said it aloud, but it was a sentiment he’d felt at least the majority of his life.
If he were someone else, he could do whatever he wanted. He could fail and pick himself up, then move on to learn and grow from the mistakes. He could run away with his boyfriend, if that was what Azelle wanted, and if it weren’t, they could easily settle down without worrying over holy blood or inheritance. Lewyn thought he would still love a career in music, but he could do anything else if that didn’t pan out. It was the freedom of choice that tantalized him. Everything that he was supposed to do just seemed so suffocating in comparison.
This wouldn’t be the first night he’d fall asleep battling his own thoughts. He was a fuck-up, definitely, but if he’d ever had a choice in the matter, maybe he wouldn’t be. It wasn’t wrong of him to want something different for himself, but he definitely wasn’t a good person.
And yet, as hard as Lewyn was on himself in his mind, he found himself falling asleep easily. He was grateful, even, that it didn’t bring any nightmares of failure and his own misgivings. He actually had a wonderful dream that night.
* * * * *
“Let me take a picture for Lex and Tailtiu!” Azelle said. He didn’t wait for a response, instead pulling himself over to Lewyn and wrapping an arm around his shoulders. Lewyn smiled, wrapping an arm around Azelle’s waist in turn, and the two of them turned their smiles to Azelle’s phone as he took a selfie from above.
He didn’t pull away from Lewyn, so Lewyn placed a chaste kiss on his cheek as Azelle typed away at his phone.
Lewyn didn’t know where they were in this dream of his, but he knew they weren’t in Silesse, and that everything was going to be okay. There was no sense of impending doom telling him that he’d have to return to his motherland to take responsibility, even though that was far from the truth. In reality, he’d promised Azelle that he’d return within the month.
He felt comfortable. He felt safe. And when the Azelle in the dream turned to grin up at Lewyn, he felt as though everything was right .
* * * * *
The dream seemed far too short for the amount Lewyn evidently slept. He woke up extremely well-rested and strangely happy, even smiling.
“Babe,” he murmured. He felt as though Azelle should be there with him, somehow, if not in his bed then in the room over, or on the hotel couch. The only response was the TV droning on some news channel from the other room.
Lewyn rubbed at his eyes, willing himself awake in spite of his body’s desire to do otherwise. He felt as though he’d been drugged, or something similar. If he so wanted, drifting back to sleep would have been simple, but he’d have to face the day sooner or later.
As he slid out of bed, he nearly tripped and stumbled on his feet. He stretched afterwards. The sleep had invaded his body and made him feel heavy and stiff. Stretching felt good. Walking to the bathroom felt good. Hunching over the sink to help wake himself up by splashing water on his face felt good.
An easy smile spread unbidden on his lips. He did feel good.
When he turned his smile on his reflection, however, the good feeling immediately abated.
The face in the mirror was not Lewyn’s face. The complexion was different, the nose was smaller. The face’s jawline wasn’t as strong. His hair was longer, and a completely different shade of green. And yet, as Lewyn raised his eyebrows in surprise, so did the reflection. As Lewyn reached a hand up to touch his face, the reflection mirrored the action. The visage wasn’t his, but it was all the same him .
And he recognized the face at once.
“No, no, no…” he muttered. The reflection’s mouth moved in perfect sync with his voice, which he realized now was different than the one he was used to.
He looked down at his hands. They were different too. They were less bony, and his fingertips weren’t covered in calluses from playing his guitar. His fingernails weren’t painted, though he’d definitely done that three days ago, and that was decidedly not enough time for them to chip to this extent. The familiar brand marking him as carrying major Forseti holy blood was on his palm. These were different hands, but he felt them all the same as he curled his fingers into the mark.
He left the bathroom. His mind was flooded with questions and concerns, yet with no clear answer nor explanation, it became nothing more than a fog of worry.
Why did he wake up looking just like the crusader Ced? Like his distant ancestor?
The ambient noise of the television once again reached his ears, and he listened, desperate for some answer or distraction. From the other room, it was difficult to hear clearly.
But his hotel room had only been one room, with one bathroom. He realized his surroundings now -- he was in some sort of small apartment, and the TV was sounding from down the tiny hallway and in the living room/kitchen combo.
Without a better decision evident, he followed the sound and squinted at the TV. It gave him the time in the corner: 1:33 PM. He’d slept far more than intended, but that could easily be written off as a result of whatever weirdness he was currently facing.
Things immediately got weirder when he saw himself on the news.
“ - but there’s a great number of things I need to focus on now,” Lewyn said, in his normal voice, to someone standing somewhere off camera. “Coming home was just the start. I’d like to begin governing as soon as possible.”
That couldn’t have been him . But it looked like him, and sounded like him… He didn’t have a lot of time to judge this lookalike before another question was asked, and this Lewyn replied cordially.
“Well there’s a question on everyone's minds, Your Highness,” an unseen woman said. “What exactly have you been doing for these past few years?”
Lewyn seemed to consider it. He had a twisted little smile on his face, and his eyes darted to focus on the camera lens; almost as though he were looking directly at Lewyn himself -- the real one, that looked more like Ced right now.
“To tell the truth: I’ve allowed myself to get wrapped up a number of inconsequential matters. Stupid things, really,” TV Lewyn replied, returning his gaze to whoever had asked. “Certainly nothing I should have been doing. I hope Silesse can forgive me for my foolishness.”
Lewyn’s stomach twisted into knots. He was angry -- he had been stupid, but he was going to fix it, and he would apologize, and…
He was someone else now. Someone else was him, wearing his skin and doing exactly what he was supposed to be doing. Whoever was on the TV answering questions was being every bit the perfect and poised little prince Lewyn had never wanted to be.
Lewyn spotted the remote control to the TV sitting on a small coffee table and lunged at it. He held it in both hands and shut off the TV. It shook, just as his hands were shaking.
So he was free. He looked like Ced, which would probably be a problem at some point, but he was someone new. He’d gotten what he’d wished for.
Past his hands, next to where he’d found the remote, he saw his cell phone and his wallet. They were placed spaced apart, at an angle that almost suggested that they’d been placed specifically for him to see. The remote clattered beside them as he all but threw it down to grab them.
The phone seemed to be completely unchanged, but his wallet was nearly stuffed to bursting with paper bills, and directly was an entirely different ID than his own. There was Ced’s face -- or rather, Lewyn’s new Ced-like appearance, next to the relevant information of his new identity.
He scowled. According to that, his legal name was Levin Lykke. Forseti was painfully uncreative.
As uncreative as Forseti had been in the crafting of Lewyn’s new appearance, he’d been exceedingly generous. It was either that or he was simply too uninterested in realizing the sheer amount of money he’d left Lewyn with, but this was one aspect of the boon he wouldn’t complain about.
Everything else, however, he could take some issue with.
He racked his mind for what to do with this as he moved back to the bathroom, now that he wasn’t so unsettled by his appearance. He could probably manage looking like Ced -- all major blood carriers resembled their ancestors greatly anyway, and all that besides, it wasn’t as though anyone really got to choose how they looked or what they were named.
But there were choices people could make…
Once he was facing the mirror again, Lewyn leaned in to fully examine himself. It was unmistakable -- his resemblance to all the paintings and portraits of Ced that lined Silesse’s capital estate was strong and undeniable. But Lewyn certainly had never kept his hair this long himself…
It took him only a moment to locate a pair of scissors. This was his body now, and not only was it his , he had no obligation to keep it a certain way or not utterly destroy it. Before, he’d be tattooing Silesse’s crown prince, and any shame that could be brought with that would be judgment passed not only on him, but his family, and even his country. Any piercing or blemish or change Lewyn could make now would only be marking himself, and there it would end.
He’d only cut his hair once before. Back then he’d done such a terrible job he’d vowed to never do it again, but a choppy, uneven hairdo now would only serve to make him look less and less like the crusader of old.
Hair slicing underneath the scissor blades felt more satisfying now than it had any right to be. His gaze shifted excitedly between his reflection and the growing pile of green hair in the sink. By the time he was completely satisfied with the amount he’d taken off, he estimated his new hairstyle wasn’t so far away from how he’d typically worn it before. It looked fine, and it seemed a good enough part of him to keep the same , that he quickly turned his focus to cleaning up the mess, charging his phone, and getting dressed.
His ears had been pierced before this. So it made sense to begin there -- and he didn’t have to stop at the conventional one hole in each ear lobe, either! He could pierce his eyebrows or nose, even. And most piercing parlors doubled as tattoo parlors…
He had a lot of money, and he had nearly the whole day to spend it however he pleased. Lewyn found himself excited at all the things he could do to himself without any real consequence. The fact that no one had seen him like this before almost made it better; they couldn’t be disappointed at how he’d changed or at any of the decisions he’d make. He’d come as he was; however tattooed or pierced he wound up. They’d only know him as Levin with four ear piercings instead of as Lewyn, the disappointing prince.
As strange as it may have been to look just like the crusader of old, he felt more in control of himself than he’d ever felt before. What a fine stroke of luck... No, what a nice bit of divine intervention!