If there was anything that could be said about Hoshido, it was that the concept of a royal family being in such close quarters with the normal population was working well for everyone on either side of the spectrum. The citizens didn't seem to mind that they were working right next door to where their royal family was living, and the royals seemed perfectly fine with there being commoners around them at all times. Coming from somewhere that didn't have a royal family set in stone (but did have a long-time police chief that was regarded just as highly as royalty), it was a bit of a culture shock to see the harmony that everyone lived in, but within days of arrival it was easily ignored.
Helping matters immensely was the fact that the place Cordelia had arranged for them to stay was within the boundaries of the royal palace, in the house belonging to one of the guards. For being a single man, her cousin Subaki had quite the spacious place to live in, large enough that he could accommodate four guests without asking anyone to share a bed, and even with them there he still had room to offer others to spend time at the house as well. "It's one of the perks of my position," he'd explained when he'd first brought the travelers to the house upon their arrival to Hoshido. "We all have homes much larger than we personally need, in case we find ourselves needing the extra space."
"It comes in handy every time I come to visit," Cordelia said in thanks, bowing her head at Subaki as she spoke. "You've always been quick to offer me a room and full meals, no matter what you're doing that isn't taking care of me."
"That would be what family is for, we've managed to have a relationship despite the distance so I'll do what I can do maintain it." He seemed pleasant enough, if maybe a bit too formal in Kjelle's mind, but she didn't feel right thinking anything negative about him in his own house. After the first day (which was mostly spent sleeping, given the time difference between Hoshido and Ylisse), they got to spend more time talking to Subaki, learning things about Hoshidan culture and how he'd ended up where he was.
As he'd already made clear, he was employed by the royal family to some capacity, and he did explain that he was in the guard for the youngest of the royal siblings. "When you say 'youngest', how young are you talking?" O'wain asked, eager to learn all he could about where they now were, something that was obviously being done because he had the intentions of staying there longer than he was supposed to. "Like, my age? Severa's age? Younger than that?"
Subaki looked at O'wain, sizing him up for a moment before shaking his head, gesturing with his hand that his guesses were a bit low. "She's in her mid-twenties now, I've been working with her since I turned fifteen as a tutor and became a guard when I got older. Not that anyone ever guesses her age correctly upon meeting her, Princess Sakura has the face of a young girl and the personality of one too, even if she's more mature than expected."
"All those times I've talked to Takumi about his life here in Hoshido and it never quite clicked that he wasn't the youngest of the royal siblings." Cordelia was stroking her chin in thought, listening carefully to what was being discussed. "I knew there were two princes and two princesses, but I assumed he was youngest given that he was so quick to abandon his royal position when given the chance."
"The position of younger prince, in a world where it would be unlikely he would ever take the throne, would be just as isolating as younger princess, so his decision to give up his claim to the throne for love was justified." Looking to his cousin with a small smile, Subaki continued with, "At any rate, he seems to be happy there in your part of the world, judging by his yearly pictures and frequent letters from him and his dearest. She was a joy to have visit when you brought her along oh-so long ago, Cordy, and I'm sure she's a perfect match for him."
"Please, she's come on her own volition since then, when she was in the middle of courting the prince and all." Waving her hand to show that Subaki didn't need to call back to something so far in the past, Cordelia froze when she decided that perhaps that wasn't the part of what was being said that she needed to focus on. "Takumi is very happy where he is, and I'm sure not having the pressures of being royalty weighing on him has done wonders."
Leaning over to get some whispering in while her mother continued talking, Severa said to Kjelle, "I'm sorry, but why are we supposed to care about them gossiping about that prince-y boy back home? We care about things actually here in Hoshido, right?"
"I don't know, learning this kind of stuff is pretty fun," Kjelle replied, trying to tune Severa out so she could keep listening to what was being said. "And anyway, we're probably not going to be going anywhere anytime soon, so why not learn about what they have to say about someone who used to live here?"
"You don't understand, they'll not stop talking if they're not told to. You're just enabling my mother to be the most annoying woman she can be." It was hard to believe that Severa could be right about that, but it was true; after nearly an hour of going back and forth with catching up about things, Cordelia was getting into recounting the events that had resulted in her losing part of multiple fingers, with Subaki listening like he'd never heard the story before. They were so wrapped up in what they were discussing that neither of them saw that O'wain was getting uncomfortable with it, although the two girls did.
Of course, everyone learned quickly that he was not okay with the conversation when he ended up screaming up after Cordelia brazenly name-dropped his father. "Can we not mention him, please?" he asked, sounding angry based on the deep breaths he was taking to calm himself. "I know he's an important part of that story but he also broke my mother's heart and left us so that he could go back home and be alone, I don't want to hear his name in such light conversation."
"I have heard this story a time or two, so it would be fine by me if we skipped over those details, especially if they're bothersome to one of my guests." Just like that, Subaki was ready to make things right again, and Cordelia had to backtrack what she was saying to tell the story a different way. It wasn't enough for O'wain, though, knowing that he'd also heard the story before and didn't want to sit through it even with the careful censoring, so he stood up and left the room without saying anything about where he was going,
In a moment of blind desire to make sure her friend was okay, Kjelle jumped to her feet and followed him, finding that he was walking outside the house in the middle of the day without direction. "Wait up!" she called after him, but he must not have heard her as he closed the front door behind him. She was right there in his shadow, throwing the door back open to see him sitting on the front step of the house, not doing anything but staring out into the distance. "O'wain, what do you think you're doing? You can't just leave without saying that you're going somewhere!"
"I wasn't going far, and even if I was, we're in a peaceful place. No one would dare hurt me around here, if Subaki's right and this place is as great as it sounds." His eyes hadn't moved an inch even after he'd initially heard her voice coming after him, but O'wain was definitely ready to listen to anything Kjelle had to say to him. "I can't imagine what it's like, living like this with royalty. I always thought it was weird that everyone in Ylisstol knew who my uncle was, but he's just a police guy, can you think about working for someone who's royal and having everyone know you because of that?"
"My parents were basically royalty there in our town in Ferox, if that's what you're asking me to think about," Kjelle replied, closing her eyes as she thought back to growing up outside such a small town, where her parents made up a sizable fraction of the police force, to the point that everyone knew who they were even though they weren't natives to the area. She'd always had people in school know of her because they knew her parents, even if she didn't like them in the slightest, and it had made her wish she wasn't so recognizable. "I know it's not the same as a real royal would have to deal with, but it was still a lot to go through every single day. Add in the part where most of my time was spent at the police station and it makes you wonder if the attention is why I wanted out of there."
"So maybe you wouldn't cut it as a princess then, got it." Hanging his head, O'wain seemed to lose where he was going with what he was saying, because when he resumed speaking he was on something entirely different. "I wish I didn't have to come here with Cordelia, she's a lovely woman but I think being here with her is only going to make what I'm going to do harder, because she's going to try stopping me, I know it."
Out loud, Kjelle replied with, "This was the only way this trip was going to happen, let's be thankful she loves us both enough to spend the money to bring us here." In her head, however, she was singing a different tune, wishing that she could tell her friend that it was for the best that he had that barrier between himself and disappearing from his old life, because he needed to think rationally and not escape the life he'd been living for so long. It was hypocritical for her, of all people, to want someone to keep with the life they'd been given, but at least when she'd decided to change everything about her life she had somewhere relatively nearby that she could go to make the changes. If O'wain really did stay in Hoshido, he'd be a day's worth of travel away from any family, and if anything were to happen to him it'd be entirely possible that no one would ever find out about it.
She wanted to tell him to rethink what he was planning so badly, but she didn't want to ruin his trip by being negative about anything. It was a tricky situation she found herself in, and she could only hope that something would convince him to change his mind and come home with all of them when they left. That was the only time they really talked about the decision for the next several days, even though there were instances were they'd share glances that were clearly him considering something someone had said in regards to what he was intending on doing. Nothing about Hoshido was compelling enough to get Kjelle to want to stay, even if they were living a good life within the boundaries of the royal family's home, but that might have been because no one was trying to make her stay. She'd come into the country intending on going back home, whereas O'wain had it set in his mind that this was where he was going to be staying.
Not helping matters was the fact that Subaki and Cordelia seemed happy to have long conversations about the perks of being in Hoshido whenever they were out as a group, both going back and forth about how lovely the country was and how great it was to be there. "I wished from time to time that I could stay longer, but my home and career were in Ylisse and I couldn't turn my back on what I'd built there," Cordelia said as they were walking through the city's center square, looking at the vendors that had gathered for some kind of farmers' market. "Still, getting to visit every few years has reminded me of how great this place is."
"It also reminds you of how great I am, correct?" Subaki asked, clearly baiting the answer out of his cousin. When she laughed and shrugged, he took it in stride and moved on with the conversation. "At any rate, you're always welcome to spend time here in Hoshido with me as often as you like, and bringing everyone along as you have is allowed too. They're fine people, your daughter and her friends, maybe even finer than the last bunch you brought."
"I think Lucina would have your head for insisting such a thing, and it's not like any of these three would end up courting royalty completely on accident." Waving her arms in a grand gesture towards the three she was talking about, Cordelia noticed that they all seemed to be focused on something happening on the other side of the square, causing her to stop in her tracks to get a better look at what they were watching. "Subaki, by chance, is there a royal display happening today?"
He thought for a second, before decisively replying, "Not that I'm aware of, because if I were aware of one, I'd be in it, don't you think?" His laugh caused Cordelia to laugh as well, her realizing that she'd asked a silly question to someone whose job was to guard a member of the royal family in public situations. "It could just be someone coming into the market to do some shopping, they do tend to express their freedoms whenever possible."
"I want to get a closer look," O'wain said under his breath, before grabbing at the first hand he could see out of the corner of his eye (which was Severa's, and she yanked it away when his fingers brushed against hers) and making a beeline towards where the commotion was. When she saw that he was going on his own, and that the person he'd tried to get to go with him was watching him in disgust, Kjelle took it upon herself to be his moral compass for the moment and follow him, just in case he tried to do something when watching.
There wasn't as big of a crowd as they'd thought once they joined it, as it was a measly row of people that just happened to be rather long, but easy to push their way into. It was while standing there, among native Hoshidans cheering for the presence of one of the members of their royal family, that the two of them looked at each other and took in the exact emotions the other's face was sharing. O'wain looked excited to see royalty, despite having a member of that very royal family married into his own family, while Kjelle seemed unimpressed and knew she was only there to keep him in line. They went back to watching when they heard the cheering grow louder, and it was then that O'wain saw someone he recognized, but rather than announcing that with words, he did so by stomping on Kjelle's foot as hard as he could. "Gods, could you be any rougher?" she loudly asked him, without realizing how far her voice would carry.
"I believe the correct response to that would be 'that's what she said', but it seems a she has already said that." The crowd had fallen completely silent as the voice spoke, the speaker being someone who was in the middle of the cleared area—someone with the member of royalty. In the moments after the words were said, the man who'd spoken them came closer to where Kjelle was hopping on one foot, her toes throbbing from how hard O'wain had stomped on them, and a hand was offered to her for support. "Here, it seems something is ailing you at the moment. Would you prefer assistance now while you're living, or would you rather it while you're dead?"
"Is it appropriate to speak to strangers in such a way?" That came from the woman alongside him, her trying to pull him back before he could make anyone uncomfortable with his behavior. "You could be crossing a line, or walking into a trap, and trust me, we do not need any traps being walked into here today. Do you think Hinoka would appreciate you going missing because you felt the need to crack a joke?"
"She offered herself up to it, sorry for choosing a moment of lightheartedness over the constant cover of darkness in my life." The hand was recalled, before Kjelle even noticed that it was there, and the man tilted his head as he faced her, his eyes closed in what had to be deep thought. "I think this one might be as much of a stranger as you insist, but the other one, to be honest, feels familiar to me somehow."
The woman pushed him aside, leaning in to stare at O'wain closer for a second before making a clicking sound with her tongue a few times. "Maybe if you'd open your eyes for a change you'd see that he's just some commoner, Azama," she said, turning to walk down the still-lined path the crowd had created. "If we've seen him before, it's been in situations like this. Now let's go, we're just bait for a trap at this point."
"What in Naga's name was that all about?" O'wain asked quietly to Kjelle once the two had finally passed them by. "It was like they singled us out or something, and for them to get so close to me to stare, ugh, no thanks! I live a life untouched by their kind of royalty, the only place they'd see me might be in family pictures if Takumi even sends those."
He hadn't been watching his volume either, but instead of someone who was part of the group being cheered for overhearing him, it was some of the people around them, who began loudly asking how he knew of the former prince Takumi. Since O'wain wasn't sure what kind of conditions he'd left his country on, he was happy to divulge as much as he could about the newest member of his family, and the Hoshidan people seemed happy to hear that their prince was living a peaceful life where he'd ended up. "What's all this about my brother?" another voice questioned, and O'wain turned from the stranger next to him to be staring directly into the narrowed eyes of a woman in somewhat royal regalia. "I'll have you know that speaking lies about him isn't appreciated around here."
"So then I'm good because I'm just telling everyone how he's doing, right?" O'wain flashed his goofy grin in the woman's direction as her glare narrowed further. "Look, if I were back home I could go across town and see him without any problems, I think I'm allowed to talk about how he is."
"O'wain, I think you should probably shut up," Kjelle muttered, hoping that the woman who was definitely a princess didn't hear what she was saying but that her friend did. "You're barking up the wrong tree on this one."
"Why should I shut up? I'm not…" His voice trailed off as he properly looked at the woman he was staring down, as her mouth opened to say something else, and he began to prepare himself for whatever verbal onslaught was about to come at him. Instead, all she gave was a slow chuckle, before holding out a hand for a shake. All at once, he began rambling in apology for what he'd been doing up until then: "You're Princess Hinoka, we've met before, oh gods I'm so sorry I didn't realize you were her until just now and I guess you're right to be angry that I'm here telling everyone about your brother when you might not even know, will you forgive me?"
Again she chuckled, but Hinoka didn't say a word to him; all she did was hold that hand out until he carefully took it and gave it a single shake. After he'd let go she smiled at him and walked off, following in the direction her companions had gone in before her. "I told you, you were barking up the wrong tree," Kjelle teased, nudging him in the arm as he stared slack-jawed while he watched Hinoka walk away. "I hadn't even met her before and I could tell she was a princess, how were you mouthing off to her without catching on?"
"Look, the last time I saw her was the one time I happened to be around when she was having a video call with her brother, it was awkward then and it's still awkward now." His hand was trembling from having had to touch royalty, and it was clear that O'wain needed to step away from the whole crowd and get back to who they'd been with. He was jittery as they walked, holding his arm out in front of him like he was carrying a disease on his fingers, and nothing had changed in his behavior by the time they'd found where Severa, Cordelia, and Subaki were all waiting for them.
Rather than explain where they'd gone and what they'd done, they acted like nothing out of the ordinary had happened with them in the crowd and tried to seamlessly ease back into the day's activities. Ready to assist them, just like he'd been their whole trip so far, Subaki took control of the situation and held up a file folder that seemed to have quite a few papers in it. "This is why I needed to come to the market today, if there's anything anyone else wants to do while we're here there's plenty of time for it while this gets sorted out," he explained, waving the folder just enough that anything written on it wasn't able to be read easily. "Don't worry, it's nothing important, just some notary things that need to be sorted out."
"If it's what I think it is, I'm shocked you've waited until now to handle it," Cordelia told him, smiling as she ignored trying to read the folder, unlike the three younger people. "If it isn't, then you may have to explain to me later what it is you need notarized. I was under the impression that you had your life under control."
He winked at her, before turning his back to head towards a little shop along the market's wall. "It's exactly what you think it is, I needed to get a final opinion on some things before I brought it here to be made official. We'll be addressing this at a later point though, so please, go find something to do around here to spend the time it takes to handle this." If anything, Subaki was polite in his insistence that they do something, and so it became a couple hours of milling around the shops and carts at the market, looking at what Hoshidan goods were available and trying to ignore the fact that two of them had been mouthing off towards a member of the royal family and her guards.
When he rejoined them, his folder looked exactly the same but he was holding it tighter than he had been before, and he was unwilling to talk about what it contained, going so far as to start walking off when Cordelia teasingly asked him if he'd gotten what he was aiming to get. "You know, it doesn't make sense to hide what's in it when I already know," she protested, following him and causing the three younger people to quickly fall into her shadow. "Don't tell me you're scared to address it in public."
"It isn't a feeling of being scared, Cordy, but rather one of not wanting to have the people I serve seeing what I'm condoning. I'd figure you, out of everyone, would understand my reasons for that." He clutched the file closer to himself, picking up his pace and causing everyone else to have to do the same. "We will address this when the time is right, whenever that might be!"
"How much you want to bet he's going to show us something scandalous when he opens that file?" Kjelle suggested to O'wain and Severa, both of whom had to resist laughing at the idea of him carting around something embarrassing, that being the reason he didn't want anyone to see it. Deep down, they all knew that it wasn't going to be that simple of an answer they'd be getting, but none of them could guess exactly how important the contents of that file were to all of them. Or, at least, none of them had any reason to make that guess, because it had seemed at first that Subaki was really out and about getting official paperwork notarized in front of guests, and that was something that seemed normal for him.
It wasn't addressed again that afternoon, nor did anyone bring it up after they'd gone back to his house for the evening, acting as if nothing had happened at all out in the market in regards to a mystery file. The incident with the royal who had come out to mingle amongst her people did get a quick mention as a punchline to a joke O'wain made, but whereas Kjelle knew he was being serious as he talked about coming face-to-face with a princess everyone else assumed he was just making something up for the sake of comedy. That was a bit of a traumatizing thing to think back on, being so loud and forceful that the attention of a living, breathing member of a foreign country's royal family noticed them, so Kjelle was thankful that no one thought he was being serious.
Severa did definitely bring part of it up when they were laying down for the night, asking in all seriousness, "Did you guys really see a princess or did it just look like one? Because if you really saw one and I wasn't there for it, I'm going to be mad." Thanks to how she was fixated on the less-embarrassing part of the joke, Kjelle was willing to tell her that yes, they had in fact seen one of the Hoshidan princesses there in the market, and she reacted by puffing her cheeks out in anger. "That's not fair, now I'm going to ask Subaki if he can introduce us to the princess he's guard for so I can see one too!"
"I-I don't think that's necessary," Kjelle replied, her eyes going wide as she considered the possibility of Princess Hinoka having told her sister what had happened and said sister knowing what to expect if that meeting was arranged. The possibility of everything related to that going horribly wrong was too high, given that the royal family was aware of O'wain and who he was, and if Hinoka happened to mention that he'd been there and a meeting happened…it would just bring that split-second of panic back up.
"What, are you scare to actually meet royalty?"
"Did I say that's what it was? I don't think so, I just said that I don't think it's necessary for Subaki to have to get involved with this." She was going to fight that fight as long as she had to in order to save her skin and prevent any kind of recollection as to what had really happened there in the market, but Kjelle knew that if it became too much to keep fighting the idea she'd have to give it up. There was already so much on her mind about being on the trip that adding something else didn't feel like a great use of her time.
In the end, Severa got her wish after badgering her mother's cousin the entire next day, begging him to get them into a meeting with his princess so she could say she'd met real royalty and not just someone who pretended to be royal. Sakura was a gentle princess, not as brash as her sister had been in the marketplace, but she seemed to be excited to have people who wanted to meet her in specific and so the experience went over fairly well. She invited them back to visit with her as often as they wanted to during their stay, as long as she wasn't going to be on business; Cordelia didn't seem too pleased with the offer but Severa was going to override her mother's wishes as much as she could if it meant getting to sit in a royal study and talk to someone who had a claim to a throne, no matter how distant. That was where they spent a lot of their time for the rest of their trip, which Subaki was fine with because it allowed for him to get work done while still being present in his family's time with him.
On the group's last full day in Hoshido, after spending the day in the market with Sakura and her showering them with little trinkets she thought they'd like, Subaki called all of his visitors into the living room of his house and had them all sit on the floor just to hold the file out in front of them, surprising the younger three as they'd almost forgotten about that whole incident after the things that had followed it. "I did say I would address this when the time was right, and after over a week of exploring the corners of my fair city I figured it was about time to bring this out," he said, opening the file and holding up an official document that had a crest on it unfamiliar to the young people—minus it being prominently displayed on a single sign on the office he'd disappeared into with the file in the first place. "Feast your eyes on my paperwork as a Nohrian citizen. You may make noises, but be quiet, none of the neighbors are aware I have this."
"I thought you were Hoshidan, like the rest of the family? What's up with this 'Nohrian citizen' stuff?" Severa was eyeing the paper suspiciously, almost as if she was trying to read it for herself, but the angle Subaki was holding it at made it impossible to see anything but the reflective crest on the paper. "Mother, tell me what he's talking about right now!"
"Subaki, could you be a dear and hand me mine?" Ignoring the fact that her daughter's jaw was dropping at what she'd just heard, Cordelia held out her hand and didn't drop it until Subaki had given her a piece of paper identical to his, which she smiled at once she had it. "It's beautiful, reminds me of the time we had to cross the border to grant our grandfather his last wish."
"The Nohrian guards didn't suspect us at all, the documents looked so legitimate that they didn't think to question their authenticity, even though we were back over the border five minutes later and never crossed it again." Chuckling to himself as he admired his paper some more, Subaki happened to look over it to see the three younger people all staring at him and Cordelia both with varying levels of confusion and surprise in their faces. "Ahem, I suppose this is where I explain that the booth in the market specializes in official documentation for both Hoshido and Nohr, which given the disdain the countries have for each other it's quite fortuitous that we have somewhere so close by to forge paperwork for us."
All at once, the three repeated the two key words—forge paperwork?—followed with questions that were barely audible over the others. O'wain was asking, excitedly, what the purpose of it was (and Subaki did wink when he heard the tail end of what he said), while Severa was once again targeting her mother looking for answers, and Kjelle was simply asking for someone to explain to her why this was happening. As far as she'd known when she'd agreed to have this trip be her graduation present, this was going to be a normal, slightly-educational trip to a country half a world away from the places she knew. Now she was getting into people willingly possessing forged papers to gain access to other countries, and that wasn't what she'd signed up for when she'd agreed to come on the trip.
"It isn't exactly something that someone in my position should ever have done in the first place, but as Cordy already said, we initially did it for family reasons. Our grandfather had requested to be scattered on Nohrian territory, and we did what we had to in order to make it happen." Subaki offered the folder towards Severa, but she was too busy glaring at her mother and barking for her to speak to notice, so he turned it towards O'wain, who grabbed it without hesitation. "But reasons came up for me to always need the paper handy, and so I continued updating it, much like someone else native to Nohr but living elsewhere would have to do."
"Reasons like why you did this for me, right?" O'wain asked, opening the folder to see what was on top. He screamed in excitement when he saw whatever paper was the first one in the stack, and despite wanting to be paying attention to Subaki while he spoke Kjelle couldn't help but focus on her friend instead. "It's perfect, thank you so much!"
While Subaki was accepting the thanks as if they hadn't interrupted whatever he was talking about, O'wain was throwing the folder onto the floor in front of him and holding that top piece of paper up. It was then that Kjelle was able to get a proper look at it, and after getting past the reflective symbol in the middle of the paper she noticed something strange about what was written on it. "Okay, I get that it's supposed to be a fake document, but why's his name wrong on it?"
"Can you imagine walking into a heavily-secluded country trying to use fake papers with your real name on them? One look into a database and they'll find that you're not who you say you are and have you arrested or put to death. With a fake name, you'll bypass that because if they can't find you, then you must be some Nohrian who's done nothing with your life." Even though she'd just mentioned dying as a consequence of an illegal act, Cordelia didn't seem bothered at all with what she'd said. "All of our names are faked on these papers, it's just easier that way."
"Mother, you better tell me there's one for me," Severa cut in, making grabbing motions towards the folder but being unsuccessful as Kjelle was taking it for herself, wanting to see how deep the rabbit hole went. "I know I can't stay with O'wain, but you're not staying either and you have one, so I want one too!"
Listening to her friend's demands, Kjelle looked closely at the document that was now on top of the stack in the folder and shuddered. "Fake names or not, I don't think this one would be meant for, uh, me based on how similar the name on it is to yours, Severa," she said, picking the paper up with her fingertips and carefully handing it to her friend, who nearly ripped it away from her in her eagerness to see it for herself. "I don't know, but I think you'd be more of a Selena than I would be."
"So I could go to Nohr and pretend to be this person and no one would ever catch me lying?" There was a gleam in Severa's eyes as she asked her question, but as they already were doing both adults ignored her, not wanting to address her or her interest in being included in the fake identity party. "I'll have to keep that in mind for the future, in case I ever need to get out of Ylisse for some reason."
"So Severa would be Selena if she went with us, but what does Kjelle get to be?" O'wain was still looking at his paper, but he knew that he needed to be aware of what the identity of the person he wanted as his partner-in-crime would be. He glanced at her for a moment, but she'd turned her attention away from the folder and whatever was to come next, now looking at Subaki once more. "Come on, Kay, you have to tell us!"
She shook her head, every fiber of her being telling her that playing along with this game was a bad idea. "I'm sorry, but I can't until I know what everyone else's identities are. It must be mighty difficult to mask a royal guard's identity, and miss Cordelia's a police officer so she's probably got a lot of records to hide as well. What did you do to get you both safe passage into such a strict country?"
Blinking a couple times as he mentally processed the question, Subaki turned his paper so that the words on it could be read, instead of the picture on it reflecting light. "I added a 't' to the beginning of my name, worked when I was a teenager and works even to this day."
"And I've always gone with scrambling the letters of my name to make it look unrecognizable," Cordelia said, also turning her paper so Kjelle could see that she was speaking the truth. "It's not the prettiest of names, but it's worked for me this long and would continue to work if I tried to enter Nohr again."
Seeing that their disguises were as simple as they were gave her hope that hers would be something similar, but before she could bring herself to look and give in to the fact that there was an expectation for her to use this document sitting in front of her, she gestured towards O'wain and his gleeful expression hidden behind his paper. "What about you, you seem super pleased about whatever name you got. Did they, by chance, remove the apostrophe from your name that you hate so much?"
"Subaki has done something greater than that, he's allowed for me to live out my wildest dreams with the stage name I've always desired!" If it wasn't something necessary for him to do as he pleased, O'wain most likely would have thrown that paper up towards the ceiling in his excitement. "He took my request into account when putting this together, and once I begin my quest to find my dear cousin, I will assume the identity of the fearless and mysterious Odin Dark, a former countryman of Nohr coming back to reclaim who he once was! It's, heh, something I've been thinking of as a backstory since I knew this happening was a possibility."
"Getting that name was a lot simpler than you'd expect, you overdramatic child you. I'm glad I could be of—" Subaki immediately shut up when he heard the sound of his front door opening, which put everyone into a bit of a panic, with the illegal documents out in the open. He dived for the folder that Kjelle was pushing towards him, while everyone else holding a paper was trying to give it back to who it needed to be with for safekeeping. The panic seemed to be for nothing, after a female voice called out into the house from the entryway looking for Subaki himself, and he visibly loosened up. "—oh thank everything, it's merely Hana coming to visit with everyone. You'll love her, she's…well, she's definitely going to be of use for what we're discussing."
"You haven't talked much about her recently, why has that been? She used to live with you, way back when, didn't she? Did you two have a falling-out of some kind?" Cordelia's questions went unanswered, as Subaki handed her the folder before standing up to go greet their visitor. She didn't appreciate being ignored like she had been, but now that she was holding all the papers she didn't let her feelings show too much. "While he's taking care of that, I'm sorry that I'll have to return home and spin some fabricated story about what happened to you, O'wain, but your mother would have my head if she found out I'd been partially responsible for you crossing borders illegally."
"It's all good, I'll apologize to Mom myself when I get home, but who knows if I'll need to by then, she might be over the moon when I bring Inigo back with me." Shooting her that grin that he used to show everything was fine, O'wain let his happiness falter as he glanced over at Kjelle, who was shaking her head slowly at him. "Aw, come on Kjelle, you know that this is the best way to get my family to finally realize I'm not cut from the same cloth as my father! I've got to do this, I've got the chance and I'm not giving it up!"
The corners of her mouth twitched as she resisted saying something to him about how he could prove to his family his worth in other ways. She knew that he really wanted to do this for them, bring home someone missing for so long, but at the same time she also knew that his plan was for her to be there with him. That wasn't the problem, she'd go to the ends of the world with him if it meant they'd both be safe; the problem was that she was already out of the country without her parents knowing, and she didn't want to imagine them finding out that she was considered a missing person because she'd stayed behind and given up her Ylissean life to help O'wain out. "I know what you're thinking, and you should stop being such a goody-two-shoes about this," Severa said, watching the resistance to speaking Kjelle was going through facially. "You're going to break O'wain's heart and crush his dreams into tiny pieces if you don't stay."
"I know, but why don't I get to do what I want here?" The words fell out of her mouth before she'd really thought about the implications of saying them, but hearing the gasps of shock come from everyone who'd heard her let Kjelle know that none of them had really been considering that she wouldn't go along with the plan. "I'm here without my family knowing where I am, as far as they're concerned I'm exactly where we agreed I'd be, and because they've isolated themselves so far from basically everyone we know, the only way they'll find out I'm here is if one of us tells them. And I'm expected to just leave them in the dark forever and abandon my life I've built already without them, which is something that was kinda dropped on me without warning? Yeah, uh, I think I should get an opinion on what I do with my life."
She was trying her best to keep calm, but the way everyone seemed hurt by the fact that she was being so resistant to everything was making her resilience that much harder to maintain. Cordelia saw this and after taking a couple moments to look at the young woman and take note of every aspect of her body language, she made her move. "Kjelle, I promise you that if you stay behind to assist O'wain with what he needs to do, your parents will never find out. We will get you a phone you can call them with, we'll pull strings to get the numbers situated so that they don't know you're in a foreign country, but by all means you're assuming this is going to be a long-term thing, when really it shouldn't take long at all."
"Seeing as Inigo's been missing for ten years, it could be long-term," O'wain reminded, before covering his mouth and apologizing for making such an obvious statement.
"That's correct, but if Subaki is to be believed, finding him is much easier than we've expected." At mentioning her cousin's name, Cordelia turned to look towards where she'd last seen him go, but she couldn't even hear his potential conversation with his visitor. She turned back to the younger people, softly tutting as she did, telling them, "I wouldn't be surprised if he forgot that he had some royal duty to attend to today and Hana was here to remind him of it. That would be unusual for him, but given his distractions as of late it would make some amount of sense."
Taking a look at the folder that was still in Cordelia's hands, Kjelle couldn't quite bring herself to make any comment on what she'd just heard. She was still thinking about what she was being expected to do and about how she didn't know if she wanted to or not. Her life was fine the way it was, living with her friend's family with her parents' permission and understanding that she was hours away (even though she was old enough to be completely on her own). There wasn't much of a call to go out and do crazy things where they couldn't swoop in and save her if she really needed it, but at the same time would anyone be able to save O'wain if he was by himself and something were to happen? If she were there to protect him and keep him company, the chances of anything going catastrophically wrong would be diminished to a minimal level, and if something was still to happen she'd be able to report it back to people who loved him.
Even with that idea of her protecting him in mind, she couldn't convince herself that it was in her best interest to stay in Hoshido and—actually, there was a point that she realized she needed to bring up before she could make any decision. "Is anyone going to tell me why we're dealing with fake paperwork for Nohr when we're talking about staying in Hoshido?"
"Yes, I suppose that would be necessary to know, wouldn't it?" Giving a single laugh as she opened the folder and grabbed the paper that was on the bottom of the stack, Cordelia raised it so that everyone could see it and what it said. It wasn't a citizenship document like the other ones, but rather a crudely-written letter that had an address at the top that was highlighted as being from Nohr. "I'm not familiar with anything within their country, so I don't know where this is or what it means, but Subaki let me know that this residence received this in the mail one day, and it was signed as being from Inigo himself, so the address may be where he's located."
"And that's why I knew I was going to stay behind when we came, since we were coming on the trip anyway when that showed up," O'wain added, staring at the writing and smiling when he saw the signature at the bottom. "Miss Cordelia didn't have to tell me she'd gotten that, but I confided in her that I, you know, was looking for adventure in my life as well as a way to make my mother proud, and she dropped that information on me. The rest, obviously, is history, and we're going to use this to our advantage."
"Yawn, can you say bor -ring?" Severa yawned, stretching her arms to show just how bored she claimed to be. "I think it sounds better when you say that you grilled darling Mother until she cracked and told you about that letter, makes it sound like you really forced the issue, rather than her suggesting it to you."
"N-no one asked you for your opinion!" O'wain looked at Severa, narrowing his eyes in her direction until she stopped pretending to be bored and went back to just watching what everyone else was doing with interest. When that happened, he turned to Kjelle with determination in his gaze, locking eyes with her as she braced herself for what was to come. "I really want you to do this with me, Kay. Not even want, honestly, it's more like a need at this point. I need you to stay here and go to Nohr with me so we can find Inigo and take him home for my family."
"If he's writing letters he can't be a prisoner of any kind, but at the same time, if he's free why hasn't he returned on his own?" They were making this harder than it needed to be, something that Kjelle did not appreciate in the slightest. But her question stumped them all, and even when Subaki came back with some excuse that Hana had stopped by to see what was happening but couldn't stay to chat, no one had any way of answering what she'd asked.
As she soon found out, that wasn't because there wasn't an available answer, but because those who did know knew that the truth would impact her decision more than anyone's lie could. It came the following morning, after one last hurrah of a night together on their trip, and after everyone (including O'wain, begrudgingly) had packed their belongings and they were getting ready to ride with Subaki over to the airport. Someone had remarked that they were leaving awfully early for having an afternoon flight, and at hearing those words Subaki broke into explaining that they weren't going to the airport right away, that they had one stop to make before they got there.
It was a few minutes away by foot, but driving over to the other house within the royal neighborhood meant that they had the car with them when it was really time to leave. The exterior was identical to Subaki's home, and as they all stood outside waiting to be let in not a single person had the courage to ask where they were, everyone knowing that doing so could invite Subaki to launch into some long explanation. When the door opened, a woman stood on the other side, with long brown hair kept out of her face with a simple headband. She smiled at everyone but didn't open the door more than a crack even as she spoke to them. "I knew you'd keep your word about bringing them," she said, the voice registering as the one from the visitor the day before. "I just didn't think it would be all of them."
"We're still having a bit of difficulty getting someone to agree to staying, so going along with the original plan would mean her not being present for this. Apologies for not informing you that it would be all of them, Hana, if it's an issue we can always do this another way." Bowing in respect of his friend, Subaki stood tall after a moment as he watched the woman on the other side of the door consider his words before playfully mimicking what he'd just done, flipping her hair back once she'd finished bowing. "I'm taking that as there not being a problem, so let's address why this meeting is happening, shall we?"
"Because I know where he is, isn't that what I'm supposed to say right now?" Hana's last couple of words were overshadowed by O'wain loudly yelling in surprise at what he'd heard, and she was stunned by his reaction, looking at Subaki with raised eyebrows. "Is he the one that's related to Inigo? Is that why he's acting like that?"
"This whole time my uncle and aunt and cousin haven't know where he is, and have acted like no one in the world knew, but there was someone all along?" Not even caring that he was being rude and talking over Subaki as he tried giving Hana the answer she was looking for, O'wain grabbed Kjelle by the shoulders and shook her. "Kay, Kay, did you hear her? She knows where he is! You can stay and help me with finding him and—"
She bucked him off and stopped him before he could finish his suggestion. "I heard her, O'wain, it's not like you're the only one she was talking to. I just…don't know if her word means I should stay, that's still a huge decision for me to make. Give me time."
"—time? Still? There's not exactly a lot of time left for you to decide, you know." It was clear that O'wain was getting antsy, but forcing her choice wasn't going to help matters at all, something that he was reminded by everyone else standing on their side of the door. Even with their gentle reminders that he needed to be patient, he was still reaching to grab Kjelle again, something she noticed and chose to jump off the front step to avoid. "Where are you going? You can't just leave!"
"I said I need time to think about what I'm going to do, I'm finding somewhere quiet to think, damn it!" Her response left everyone in silence for a moment, watching her as she took careful steps through a beautiful yard to find somewhere secluded to make her final decision on what had been asked of her.
There was one voice that broke through the silence, however, and as it spoke it made her stop where she stood and turn back around without hesitation. "There's a personal reason for why I'd like for him to come back to me before returning to his real home," Hana said, the door closing tighter on her for a moment. "When he left, he said he'd come back after exploring the world a bit more, because it wasn't going to be safe if I went with him. He has to come back to properly meet someone, since he left her with me when she was days old." It was at about the time that Kjelle came back to that front step that Hana properly opened the door and standing beside her, hugging a toy close to her face, was a little girl who looked like a perfect replica of old pictures they'd all seen at message parties back in Ylisse.
The whole rescue mission was no longer fueled by one young adult wanting to make his family appreciate his worth by bringing home someone who'd been missing for a decade. That was still a large part of why it was happening, but now that they all knew that there was more involved than just that, it became easier for Kjelle to decide that, despite not wanting to get involved in the whole mess, she needed to be there to support her friend through it all. The parting of those returning to Ylisse and those staying behind had many tears shed, as well as a promise made between them all that a return home would happen in the future, no matter what. It took a while to get Severa to stop clinging to her best friend even with that promise hanging over them all, as she was going from having someone always there with her to no one but her parents once more, but after they were in Subaki's car and on their way back home the time came to further discuss what was going to happen.
Inside O'wain's bag was the faked paperwork to get into Nohr, something he'd packed with him so that he had it in case this was the final decision made. After entering Hana's house and getting to meet the little girl with her (her name was Soleil and she was incredibly shy, to the point that she didn't say a word around the strangers the whole time they were there), he opened his suitcase and pulled out the file, removing two of the papers and handing the rest of them to Hana for safekeeping. "Here, Kay, I know you haven't looked at yours yet so do you want to do that now or later?" he asked, offering her the paper she'd tried so hard to resist the call of.
"I guess there's no time like the present," she replied, taking it from his hand and flipping it over to look at what kind of fake name she'd been given. Her eyebrows furrowed as she looked at it, a feeling of disgust rising within her, but she didn't say a word about how she felt because it seemed inappropriate to make that comment after the point of no return. The name that she'd been assigned wasn't the worst, and it might've been a good name for someone out in the world, but she had an attachment to her whole name as well as her nickname, and this name she was now expected to use seemed like it was a corruption of part of the name she already had.
O'wain saw her reaction and chose not to address it, instead looking immediately to Hana with a slightly-opened mouth, his words at the back of his throat ready to be spoken as soon as he knew he was ready. "So, uh, I know you're being serious about wanting him back here, but if he matters so much to you, why did he leave you two in the first place? I know I was young the last time I saw Inigo, but 'abandoning a child' doesn't sound like something he'd ever do."
"It wasn't abandoning, he'd been building his plan with Subaki and me for a long time before he acted on it, but it was all just poor timing. First it was the closure of the border for nearly a year, after the murder of Queen Mikoto, but after the border reopened we expected his return and it never came." Hana fanned herself with the folder she was holding, not because she was upset but rather because the interior of the house was warm, something the others had noticed as well. "Then the letters started, with half of a return address and a strict message to not reply to them under any circumstances. I know he wants to come back to us, he'd talked about how he was going to go to Nohr first, then take Soleil and me to Ylisse to meet his family, but if he wants to come back as badly as he claims, why hasn't he?"
She paused what she was doing to take a look between the pair of teenagers that had risen to the call of finding who she was so desperately looking for, nodding in approval after a moment of looking at them. "Even though it's very difficult given that we're Hoshidan guards and our behavior is strictly monitored, Subaki and I have managed to piece together some of Inigo's story, and once he comes back we're going to lay everything we have out for you both, so you know what you're getting into."
"Isn't it a bit late for us to be learning what we're getting into?" O'wain sounded concerned, almost as if he hadn't once thought about the possibility that he was going to be used to do something more than he was expecting. "We can't go back to Ylisse, they're already going and we're still here, but we're not going to just stick around here in Hoshido with you. I told myself I was bringing my cousin home, I'm not going back on that word."
"Don't worry, I'm not expecting you to! There's just something interesting about where his letters are coming from, and it's something you need to know before you get involved. It's the reason why we haven't taken action ourselves, if I'm being honest, because I'd love to bring him home on my own if I could." The sigh that ended Hana's statement showed how much emotional investment she had in the situation, and it was almost enough to make anyone want to help her out anyway.
However, one of the people she was talking to had her mind on other things, and the way she was delivering news wasn't doing much to faze her. Kjelle's mind was completely on her fake document in her hand, and how if she needed one to participate then anyone else doing the same would've also needed one. "Sorry to bring this up, but if we're not supposed to cross into Nohr without being a Nohrian citizen, what was O'wain's cousin doing crossing over anyway? Did he have a death wish, being Ylissean with faked papers and going on his own?"
"He was just going for a quick look at what was on the other side of the border, after we'd crossed Hoshido together and seen everything my country has to offer. Subaki had done it many times without issue, so Inigo thought he could get lucky and do the same." Beginning to fan herself again, Hana's eyes locked on Kjelle and her extreme focus on what she was holding in her hand. "You're not going to experience the same problem he did when he crossed the border, there's no way the king will be killed when he's done nothing wrong and we're in a time of relative peace."
"Getting trapped somewhere he shouldn't be with serious consequences, I think I've heard stories about that happening before this," O'wain said with a soft laugh, his eyes shifting down towards the floor. "I mean, I know I have heard stories of that before that he was there for, but it wasn't that he wasn't supposed to be where he was, it was other people that were there. Happened before I was born, but Mom's told me about it a few times."
Breaking her concentration on what she was holding to give her friend an almost disgusted look, Kjelle didn't stop herself from telling him, "Of all the things to start talking about right now, you're going to bring up some story that both of our parents have made sure we knew very well? Are you kidding me?" His response was a shrug and an apology, but the damage had already been done and her mind had shifted to thinking about her parents and how they'd told that very story to her. It wasn't exactly applicable to what they now knew had happened to Inigo, but the base of the two stories was the same: people going somewhere they shouldn't be and suffering for it by being stuck where they went. "Okay, well, if he's over the border and there's no chance of us getting trapped there as well, I guess I can suck it up and pretend to be this person I'm not to help out."
She was clearly referring to the name she'd been assigned on her paper, but when O'wain tried to sneak a glance at it she turned it away from him. "I'm so glad you're warming up to this idea, Kay, I was worried that you'd be complaining the whole time and being rude about how you wanted to go home and not be with me looking for my cousin." He was taking her rejection in stride, yet it was clear with how he continued trying to get even a peek at what her paper said he wasn't fully done with wanting to find out what name he'd be calling her. "So I guess now we wait for Subaki to get back and discuss what we're going to do from there, right?"
"Yes, he's the one who's done so much of the legwork on this, it's only polite to include him. Now while we wait for him to return, I think I'll take care of some stuff, so the two of you just make yourselves at home!" Excusing herself to go hunt down wherever her daughter had hidden in the room, Hana turned her back on the pair and left them to their own devices for however long it would take until they could continue their conversation.
The moment she wasn't in the room any longer, O'wain set his paper down before he clapped his hands together in front of his face, only to separate them and begin reaching for Kjelle's, which she tugged away from him. "This is only going to make the transition into using the new name harder, Kay," he reminded her, making another attempt at a grab that was denied like every one before it. "I mean, I'll still be calling you Kay, since that's kind of the thing I've done since we met and I tripped over your name a few dozen times, but no one else is allowed to do that. They have to use what the paper says."
"You won't still be calling me Kay, it won't make any sense if you do." A feeling of anger had built up in the back of Kjelle's mind, as she'd gotten to thinking about the name she was given without her consent. "Someone'll hear you say it and they'll ask you if you're dumb because my name is nothing close to that."
"If you just let me see it, I'd know that for myself." Once again he was trying to get the paper, and she sighed, shoving it towards him so he could taste that victory even though it was handed straight to him. Upon flipping the paper over and looking at what was printed on the side of the Nohrian crest, his lips pursed together and he found himself staring at it in silence, taking in what he was reading fully before commenting. "I see that your designated persona isn't going to be as fun as mine will be, but nothing could top Odin Dark," he said, reading the paper again to make sure he had what it said completely in order, not mixing up letters or words. "At the same time, however, I can sense that the name itself came from someone most likely mishearing what your name really is."
"I'm not using this, it's stupid and pointless and—" she paused mid-sentence when the biggest reason for why she was taking offense to the name crossed her mind, something she didn't want to tell O'wain because he was so happy with getting the opportunity to pretend to have a different name. Her name had been specially picked and given to her by her parents, it was a reminder of how much they loved her and that she belonged to them, and she had no desire to erase that from her life. "—I just don't want to use something as bad as this. I'm not going to be this person, I'm just going to keep being Kjelle."
It was a point she wasn't going to back down on, because there was nothing in the world that was going to strip her parents away from her without her permission. Yet when Subaki got back to the house alone, looking a bit teary-eyed from having sent his cousin and her daughter back to where they belonged, he came in with the full force of getting her to accept what changes she needed to make. "Starting today, you will both become the Nohrian citizens your papers say you are," he told them, before breaking into a long speech about key points to playing those roles, things they needed to know, customs they needed to start respecting, things of that nature.
Curiously, he avoided any and all mention of politics, the closest he got being when he mentioned that things were tense between the countries, but that there wasn't any active fighting. "You keep mentioning industry a lot as you're talking," O'wain pointed out, having heard many things about creation and jobs in Subaki's explanation, "but you're not really talking about why the countries don't get along. Does their king or queen just not like Hoshido or something?"
"It's quite complicated," he replied, looking to Hana for any assistance in how to approach what had been asked of him. "For starters, they do not have a monarchy of any sort, but rather an elected leader that, ahem, doesn't do his own job."
"He's a figurehead," she added for clarification, biting her lip after she'd spoken. "The head of the biggest industry complex in Nohr is really in charge, barking orders to anyone who listens. And that's important for you both to know, given that you'll be going right into the heart of that mess to find Inigo."
A moment of silence took hold there in the room, as the two who knew the dangers of what they were enabling looked at the two who were going to be participating, waiting to see their reaction. "I believe we should explain why that is," Subaki decided, after seeing that neither of them really had a reaction. He pulled out his phone and handed it to Hana, giving her a request to retrieve some video off of it while he continued talking. "In the most basic of senses, their elected leader is in fact a figurehead, but that is only because the man wielding the power is so disliked by the people that he would be removed from the position if he was given it. His son, however, is quite admired by the Nohrian people, and it is with that son that the whole problem seems to lie."
Once again he looked to the two in case they had anything of their own to say, but all he was getting was expressions that were curious about what else was going to be told to them. "Before we can really tell you about him, you need to be aware of the Garon Corporation as a whole, because they're who you'll be dealing with primarily." Closing his eyes for a moment, and lifting a hand to use to gesture with as he gave rankings, Subaki gave his quick explanation of the company in the briefest way he could. "Aside from the head of the company, a despicable old man who's preparing for replacement, there are four children, all of whom live together at what everyone knows as the Krakenburg Complex, similar to the housing district of our royalty here but much more secluded. The oldest of those children, he's about the same age as our former prince is, and the youngest is roughly Severa's age, with the other two falling somewhere in between. As is to be expected, the oldest son is the one who's going to be taking his father's place as head of the company when he retires, and is expected to run for the political office his father holds in the palm of his hand."
"Pardon the interruption, but I found the video," Hana said, turning the phone so that O'wain and Kjelle could see the screen. "This was a televised meeting between our king and their political leader, but what's most important is something in the background." She pressed for it to play and let it run for a few seconds, before pausing it and pointing towards a set of figures positioned behind the Nohrian man at the podium. "That would be their so-called prince Xander, watching a political meeting to know what will be expected of him in due time, but next to him…"
O'wain leaned in as close as he could to the screen before swallowing down hard. "That's Inigo, I know that's him. What's he doing messing around in Nohrian politics?"
"That would be his reason for not returning here to Hoshido after the border reopened, getting sucked into the close quarters at the Complex, or at least that's what we can assume has happened." Subaki took back his phone from Hana, closing the video without even looking at it for himself. "There's stories about what happens at the Complex, involving some of Garon's children and the people they invite inside with them, but it seems easy enough to infiltrate their walls and convince him to leave with you."
"Wait, how can you be so sure that he's living there with them?" Kjelle asked, not knowing if the person in the video was really Inigo or not but trusting in O'wain's reaction to it. "Maybe he's just gotten into politics for himself and that's why he was there."
"The letters have all had the Krakenburg name on them, so he's definitely living within the Complex," Hana answered immediately, knowing that she needed to shoot down the hope that this wouldn't involve the place they were warning about. "I'm willing to guess that they won't let him leave without reason, and since he can't reveal he's not from Nohr he doesn't exactly have a reason to go. We just want him home, he's had enough time there that I know they can find someone to replace him."
"We'll bring him back, I promise!" O'wain spoke with confidence, and he really wanted to mean what he was saying, but he knew he was agreeing to what could easily become an impossible task.
"If you don't succeed, we'll find it in our hearts to forgive you." Punctuating his words with a laugh, Subaki took a good, long look at the two young adults who'd agreed to do this task and smiled. "The last time I sent someone to Nohr, I did it because he wanted to see the world. Now I'm sending you both to rescue him and fix one of my rare wrongs. It fills me with a certain kind of pride to know that I've got two kids I can trust working on this."
"Remember that you're not just doing this for yourself and your family anymore, O'wain, but for me and Soleil as well." Hana's words held more power than Subaki's did, and with good reason, but hearing her talk about how something he'd wanted to do to prove himself to his family now had a second meaning to it made him wish, if even just temporarily, that it wasn't the case. Bringing Inigo back to Hoshido left them with the possibility that he wouldn't want to leave there and go back to Ylisse, even though that had been the plan from the start. Was that risk going to be worth it?
That was a question he knew he had time to think on, because it wasn't as if they were leaving for Nohr that day, or even that week. Before they could set out, they needed to make sure that Cordelia and Severa had made it back safely, and that they knew the status of any anger or sadness that they hadn't gone home with them. Cordelia's calls to Subaki about how she was having to give long, tear-filled apologies about how she couldn't convince them to get on the return flight and that they were okay wherever they were brought conflicting feelings into their hearts, but they'd come to terms with what they were doing. Not even hearing about his mother being inconsolable was enough to make O'wain regret his choice, and Kjelle hadn't had to hear a word about her parents so she wasn't too bothered.
When the morning came for them to pack their bags one last time and set off for the Nohrian border, Subaki had one final piece of the puzzle to provide them with. "Much like the rest of us, Inigo has a false name that he may still be going by when you meet him. Do not expect to hear people speak of him in a way familiar to your ears, be listening to anyone speaking of a man named Laslow." Delivering that information had been intentionally saved for right before departure, so it would be fresh in their minds, yet he did worry that they'd forget it as soon as they'd gone through with crossing the border.
The last things they said (aside from their goodbyes and promises to be safe and return as quickly as possible) were confirming the roles they had been assigned to play. O'wain was still incredibly eager to begin acting like some cryptic diplomat, and Kjelle wasn't sure how she was going to take her role but based on how she was dressed, she knew playing diplomatically wasn't going to fly. Little did she know that her job and position would be one of the first things questioned upon walking up to the border check station, Subaki having dropped them off a far distance from the crossing so that he wouldn't be caught mingling with them. "I need to see your papers," an armed guard said immediately upon them approaching the closed gates. "There's a high-profile crossing today and we're doing total identification checks. Hand them over."
This came as little surprise, as they'd already been told that the Nohrians would check their papers completely, but when the guard took them from them with more force than was necessary, it felt like he was already aware they were being deceitful. "Uh-huh, what kind of business had the two of you here in Hoshido?" the guard asked, his eyes carefully scanning the documents for any trace of them being faked. "Most specifically you, Mister Dark."
"I, er, was over here on some business things, you know how industry is always advancing and whatnot," O'wain replied, putting on a formal voice but sounding like he knew exactly nothing about what he was saying. "Had to scope out what the Hoshidan version of my company is doing, just so I know how to crush their profits in the future."
It was very clear that the guard didn't buy a word he'd just heard but he shrugged it off, flipping to the other paper. "And you, Miss Ella, what were you across the border for? Wasn't aware there were any bouts this week, I would've watched them if they were televised. You doing some practicing in that getup?"
"The tournament was a friendly one, it was by luck that the invitation got to me in Nohr but the Hoshidans putting it together were happy to have me." Kjelle was content with the faked backstory Subaki had told her that she'd be representing, but she kind of wished that she really had been taking part in some fighting ring of any sort. The last time she'd been in a match had been while she was in school, the only girl on the wrestling team that ended the season with a positive win-loss record. There was one little concern she had with how the guard had addressed her, and that was him using the last name she'd been gifted—she'd slowly psyched herself up to getting used to the first name, and hearing the last name had thrown a curveball in her direction. "I came close to winning, but a draw is better than losing when nothing's at stake."
"You must be getting soft, that's no way a Nohrian thinks." The guard handed back the papers before turning to wave towards the person controlling the gate. "At any rate, it's good to have you both returning safe and sound, far too often we lose people of our great country because they find Hoshido to be a 'better' place. Nohr is supreme in every way possible, we want to keep our citizens to ourselves."
As the gates opened, the pair shared a look amongst them, a feeling of uncertainty taking hold in both of their minds. That man was spewing propaganda at them before they'd even crossed the border; what did that mean for them once they were properly inside Nohr? If that was the standard, they weren't going to be able to pretend to be people they weren't forever, not when the guard could tell so much about who they were supposed to be just with the codes and notes on their fake citizenship documents. He escorted them over, making sure that he was back on the Hoshido side before the gates closed, locking them into Nohr for the foreseeable future.
There was a guard waiting for them on that side, a clipboard in hand and eyes not even paying attention to the fact that there were people approaching. "I take it you are Dark and Ella?" she asked, her voice rather cheerful for being some who didn't care she was talking to anyone in particular. O'wain gave her a grunt in response and she pointed a finger in the direction of what looked to be a bus station. "The shuttle to Windmere will be here shortly, we are waiting on our special passengers before its arrival."
"Ah yes, the shuttle, thank you ma'am," O'wain said, giving the guard a bow despite her not looking at him. After he and Kjelle had started walking towards the bench she'd directed them to, he leaned in closer to his friend and whispered, "I had no idea there was a shuttle, are there really enough travelers into Nohr on a normal day for there to be one? And what's with this 'high-profile' crossing and these 'special passengers'? We've been in Hoshido for how long and not heard a word about anyone from Nohr being around, they've got to be talking about someone else with fake papers."
"Well, since we're waiting for this shuttle, I guess we'll find out when they get here." It wasn't like they would recognize almost anyone from Nohr by sight, as they'd only seen a couple people that they needed to be aware of, but that was fine by Kjelle. She was already wary about the fact that they were on the list for the shuttle, although that could have easily been Subaki's doing as a favor to them, but now that they were going to be riding into the capital city with some people who may have been important, she was glad she didn't know who it was going to be. The less chance of being caught for lying about who they were, the better, and if that meant completely ignoring someone of importance and chalking it up to "not wanting to bother them", that was what she was going to do.
They found themselves sitting there for a long while, even after a large bus that had definitely seen better days pulled up in front of them. The guard with the clipboard had moved to standing by the opened door of the bus, escorting the few people who were coming to the border off before taking the position of blocking the door completely. Her eyes weren't on what she had in front of her anymore, but rather were glued to the gates, waiting for them to open for someone else entering the country. She made no small talk, not even acting like she knew there were people sitting there in the sweltering heat that could have been on the bus instead.
That changed when the gates came creaking open and she stepped aside. "Dark, Ella, you're sitting in the second-to-last row of seats, one on each side of the aisle. Failure to comply with these directions can, as you know, lead to strict consequences so choose your seats wisely." Her words were said quickly, almost as if she was trying to rush them onto the shuttle before the other guests came over the border, but with a vague threat over their heads they had no reason to linger around. The seats looked just as worn and run-down as the exterior of the bus did, and the driver didn't seem to notice that they'd come on, blasting his radio news channel at full volume for them to listen to. By the front door was a stack of pamphlets that O'wain quickly took one of before shuffling back to where they'd been told to sit.
The guard's warning made sense when they saw the condition of the seats they'd been assigned, with there being only one that was able to be sat in on each side. "Guess the consequences we'd face if we didn't listen would be not having a seat," Kjelle remarked as she sat down, O'wain on the opposite side of the aisle as directed. "Now we just sit back and relax until this thing stops, then we get to business, right?"
"Definitely," he agreed, taking a look at the cover of the pamphlet he'd snagged. "Looks like this is a map of Windmere, so we'll have something leading us where to go. Subaki and Hana said we'll be looking for the Krakenburg Complex, so maybe—"
"Don't open that map on the bus and make it super obvious we don't know where we're going!" she hissed, right as he'd begun unfolding the map. "We can do that once we're somewhere we know is safe, which isn't here."
"—you know what, you're right." He folded it back up and tucked it into the front pocket of his suitcase, which he had sitting where the seat next to him should have been. "There, it's with my proof of citizenship, so we know I won't lose it." After giving him an accepting nod and leaning into her seat to get comfortable, Kjelle glanced to her own bag, which she regretted to have brought with her in the first place. She had a strong attachment to the backpack, which she'd had since before she moved to Ylisse, but it was something that clearly belonged to a foreigner, not someone of Nohr, a fact made all the more obvious by the patch on its front courtesy of the Feroxi police force. If someone were to see that and question it, would she be able to manage to lie to them about where she got it, or would she tell them the truth?
A/N: oh shit things are starting to get real