Hello everyone! This is my first multi-chapter Hetalia fan fiction, so I hope you enjoy! I apologize in advance if I mess up foreign languages, character's personalities, and historical events.

~Emily Believes

The scenes seemed to flash by so quickly, yet he could tell exactly what was going on in them. The sensation was strange. It was as if he was half aware that he was dreaming.

First, it showed a battlefield of some sort. He was surrounded by dead military men from hundreds of years ago. One, he noted subconsciously, had a Prussian flag draped over him. How he identified the flag of a nation he'd hardly heard about, he didn't know. In front of him was a man with blonde hair that was merely inches above his shoulders. He had a smirk plastered on his face, but his eyes contradicted it, as they were filled with regret.

"I know you're not like this France!" he heard himself exclaim but… with a German accent? It felt like it took all his strength to simply speak. "Don't listen to your boss! Napoleon's a fucking nut job!"

The other man, seemingly France (why would you name your kid after a country?), gave a small sigh. The smirk was wiped from his face as he muttered the words, "Vous ne comprenez pas." The translation of the French phrase was on the tip of his tongue, but the scene changed far before he could come close to an answer.

The battlefield morphed into a small mansion. Many decorations in and outside the house were shown to have the mighty Prussian Eagle on them. He trudged inside the mansion, clearly wounded from a battle of sorts. Rather quickly, a little boy with blonde hair and blue eyes came running to his aid. He looked utterly horrified at the injuries.

"Bruder! You look horrible!" he exclaimed, quickly running off once more for bandages. He too had a German accent.

Before he could place a name to the little boy, the scene changed a final time. This time, he could tell he wasn't actually present in the scene. There was a simple cross wedged in the ground, acting as a tombstone for whoever died. Everything was bleak. The skies were full of dull, grey clouds, while the grass below was barely alive. He turned slightly to see the Frenchman from earlier accompanied by a Hispanic man near the cross. The latter seemed to be muttering a prayer of sorts in fluent Spanish.

He only had a split second to register the sorrowful yellow bird perched on the cross.

"Gilbert! Wake up! You are not going to be late for school again!" he heard his mother yell, irritated. Groggily, he sat up in his bed. He couldn't help but at least try to piece together what the hell that dream meant. Even after awaking, he could still recall the entire sequence of scenes without difficulty. Who was that French guy, and the little boy? They seemed so familiar, but he had never seen them before in his life!

Gilbert Beilschmidt was an American teenager with obvious German origins. Both of his parents could speak fluent German and wished for him to be able to do the same, thus he took German in school.

School was something Gilbert didn't particularly care for. He (somehow) managed to get a passing C- in nearly every class, with the others having a fair mixture of Ds and Fs. His parents has learned to accept that if he came home without having detention, it was a miracle.

"Gilbert! The bus will be here any minute!"

"I'm coming; I'm coming!" he yelled back. Hastily, he scrambled out of bed, throwing on the first pair of clothes he found lying on the wood floor. He shoved his backpack strap onto his shoulder while running out of his room.

He nearly fell down the stairs in his haste, but he managed to make it into the living room without his mother screeching in his ear. Just as he was about to enter the kitchen for some sort of breakfast food, he heard the bus jolt to a stop in front of his house. He jerked his head backwards and let out a small groan. Either he got to school on time with no breakfast, or he was late on a full stomach. There was no in between.

Knowing his mom would yell at him if he didn't, Gilbert ran towards the front door while bidding goodbye to those in the house. He ran on his paved driveway and jumped onto the bus just in time. Everyone glanced at him with confused looks, but he simply just brushed it off. The pigment of his skin, hair, and eyes (or lack of thereof, rather) had earned him enough stares over the years. He proceeded to make his way to the back of the bus, throwing himself down into a seat next to another boy with dark brown hair and emerald green eyes. For some reason, he couldn't help but notice how the Hispanic man from his dream looked strikingly similar to his best friend Alex.

Alex gave Gilbert the same puzzled look as everyone else did upon noticing a golden bird rested on top of his albino friend's head. "Dude, why is there a bird on your head?" Alex asked bluntly. The bus lurched forward.

Gilbert raised an eyebrow, gingerly lifting his hand to the top of his head. His eyes widened as he came into contact with feathers. He gently picked up the bird and held it in front of him. The bird was the exact same one from the end of his dream. It chirped happily, perching itself onto Gilbert's finger. "What the hell…?" he muttered.

Nothing was adding up. How on earth could this just be a coincidence? It was the exact bird from his dream. He didn't know what it meant or how the hell it happened; all he knew was that it didn't make sense.

The bird kept following Gilbert all day. He couldn't get rid of it! Teachers and other staff constantly tried to swat it outside countless times, but it always found its way back into the school. It always found its way back to Gilbert. Eventually, he had given up on trying to rid of it and continued suffering through another day at school… with the bird on his head.

He slammed his locker closed before making his way to his seventh period class: World History, the last class of the day. Then he could finally go home. He walked into the World History room, sitting boredly in his seat in the back of the class. Out of all his horrible grades throughout that year, his in this class was by far the worse. It would take some sort of miracle for him to actually pass it.

Before he knew it, the bell had rung. Gilbert was already zoning out, slouching in his chair. He didn't care in the slightest what some guys in funny hats did decades ago.

The World History teacher, Mr. Matthew Petterson, a rather energetic middle-aged man, began his lesson almost immediately after the bell had stopped ringing. He walked up to the wipe board, grabbing a marker. On the board he wrote a single date.

September 20, 1792

Turning on his heel, the man looked at the rather inattentive class. "September 20, 1792. Does anyone know what happened on that day?" he asked.

The usual few students (a.k.a. the history nerds) eagerly raised their hands, but Mr. Petterson was looking for someone new to answer his questions for once, and he noticed that Gilbert Beilschmidt had sat up in his chair.

The albino stared at the wipe board, narrowing his eyes slightly. That date. He remembered that date. He didn't know how, but he did.

The Frenchman...

It was almost as if he had lived through it before… but he was seventeen! How on earth could he have been alive in the eighteenth century?

The Prussian Flag draped over the fallen soldier.

He didn't know what was happening. How did he know what happened on that day? He didn't even know what happened last September 20th. He silently panicked.

"Don't listen to your boss! Napoleon's a fucking nut job!"

"The Battle of Valmy," he said rather quietly, because he himself was unsure how he knew the answer. Mr. Petterson raised his eyebrows. Gilbert, a disinterested failing student in his class, answered the question correctly. He also used this opportunity to avoid asking about the bird the resided atop his head.

"And do you know what the Battle of Valmy was, Mr. Beilschmidt?" Mr. Petterson asked.

Gilbert looked around hesitantly. Everyone was staring at him. He knew. He knew crystal clear. "France's first major victory in the Revolutionary Wars that came after the French Revolution." This surprised the teacher even more, as well as the other students. He gestured for him to continue, utterly surprised at the correct answers he was giving. "It was Prussian army against the French army. Prussian troops were orders by the Duke of Brunswick to try and march on Paris. French generals obviously stopped that from happening in a small town Valmy." At this point, he felt like he was just reciting his history textbook. He obviously already knew the information (somehow), and he felt like he had known it for a long time, though he knew he was learning it just as the words were coming out of his mouth. "After the battle, the National Convention actually declared the end of the monarchy in France and established the First French Republic."

Mr. Petterson tried to hide his shock, but it was extremely evident. "C-Correct, Mr. Beilschmidt. All of it. Keep that up and you may find yourself not having an F- on your report card," he stammered out.

He continued to write down the dates of the Napoleonic Wars, dates in which Gilbert seemed to remember. He had vague recollections of battlefields and many different people. The Frenchman frequently appeared, as well as a tall blonde with a pale-colored scarf, an aristocratic man with glasses and a mole to the left of his mouth, and a teenage boy in a black cloak that looked almost exactly like the little boy from his dream. It was all too confusing.

Before he knew it, the sound of the bell filled the room. School was finally over. He grabbed his books, silently thanking God for the weekends, and he was about to leave the room when…

"Mr. Beilschmidt, may I talk to you for a second?"

Letting out an inaudible groan, he turned around and walked up to Mr. Petterson's desk. He knew what was coming. "Alright, how many hours this time?" Gilbert asked instinctively, until he noticed that instead of a disapproving frown, his teacher sported a proud grin.

"I'm glad to say that this time, Gilbert, you aren't getting detention. I just wanted to tell you I'm thoroughly astounded by your performance in class today. It's as if you lived through the Napoleonic Wars!" the middle-aged man replied gleefully. Gilbert furrowed his eyebrows slightly at that last statement, because though it was a simile, it seemed to make sense. Mr. Petterson, however, didn't seem to notice this. "If you always acted like this, you wouldn't be failing. Keep this up, you may find yourself passing my class this year." He gave a farewell nod. "Have a good weekend, Gilbert."

As he walked out of the classroom, Gilbert began to wonder if that was possible, living through the Napoleonic Wars. All day he couldn't keep that weird dream out of his head; it just kept popping up, not to mention he had a new undesired friend. The bird rested happily on his head as he prepared to go home, like it had just found someone it had been searching for for years on end.

"Dude, Gil, you were spouting out answers left and right during history!" Alex said as he and Gilbert boarded the bus. They sat down in their usual seats near the back. "Are you some sort of secret history nerd or something?"

Gilbert laughed at the accusation. "Yeah, right. Trust me, I don't even know how I knew those things," he replied. The bird seemed to chirp in agreement.

Alex looked unconvinced. "So you could just randomly recite the what happened on all those dates in the Napoleonic Wars without knowing you knew them?" he asked. The bus starting its journey away from the high school.

"Well I am pretty awesome," he said jokingly. Again, the bird chirped.

Alex shook his head, simply wondering about the eventful seventh period he just had. Gil knowing and answering all of those questions correctly was definitely out of character, but he sounded so natural in giving them. They rolled off his tongue like he was telling a story.

What was going on?