There were a lot of phrases used to describe going on a journey—something about a single step, something about those who wander not being lost—but none of them ever accurately summed up the agonizing feeling of not being quite where one wanted to be but not having the energy to keep going. That was the dilemma that the three wayward souls from Ylisse found themselves struggling with as they began building lives in Nohr, knowing that the place they now were wasn't the place they wanted to end their adventure but also knowing that they didn't, or couldn't, keep going as they were.
Being roped into becoming retainers for a royal family had some unfortunate consequences, the largest being that their every movement was now watched by the overbearing eyes of the people they worked for. While it should have been plenty easy for weathered adventurers such as the three of them to slip out unnoticed, they weren't able to conspire to leave without being overheard by someone. Well, that wasn't the full truth, two of them were plenty able to have those conversations without being eavesdropped on, but as soon as their third member was with them all bets were off and they were frequently observed to make sure they weren't getting up to any nonsense.
Simply asking if they could leave to stretch their legs and satiate their need for exploration, especially in the aftermath of the war between Nohr and neighboring Hoshido, should not have been as challenging a prospect as it was, but there were so many aspects keeping them locked in their retainer roles that fighting against it was futile. With their side being the victors in the fighting, while sustaining some political blows of their own, they couldn't just walk out from serving the new people in power without finding a bounty on their heads. Adding in the fact that at least one of them had gotten romantically entangled with a royal that they didn't serve, and it would be too much of a headache to get out of their roles and get back to journeying across space.
But damn if there weren't nights where Laslow, sitting on a balcony at the house he'd been graciously given as part of his payment for retainer work, spent hours thinking about how he'd prefer getting to trapse back to a Ylisse unlike the one he'd known and find his calling in a place familiar yet not all the same. The stars above his head, twinkling diamonds that glistened and shimmered, reminded him of the baubles his mother wore in her dances and he could almost hear their jangling as he watched them, the reality of his situation heavy on his heart. He served the new Nohrian king, there wasn't any way he'd be able to find an opportunity to get back to a different Ylisse and see his mother again.
Where one man's journey seemed to stagnate and become lost, another man's journey had just started being pieced together, one night under the stars at a time. "If I work hard and travel far," a bright-eyed young Inigo, in a different world, told his very much alive mother in a quiet voice, "maybe I will bring you and Father all the pride I can!"
"Oh dearie," Olivia replied to him, reaching out to ruffle his gray hair that she still didn't understand the inheritance for, "you'll bring us pride no matter what you end up doing, but you don't need to travel far at all. Home's the best place for a boy like you."
That boy, donning robes meant for a dancer that jingled and chimed with his every motion, put on a pout as he looked straight into his mother's eyes. "When I get older, then," he said with a determined nod. "I'll stay here as long as you need me, Mother, but once I'm an adult I'm going on an adventure!"
He didn't know it at the time, but when he came of age and could set out on the adventure he so desperately craved, he would fall right into the same trap his alternate universe iteration had, albeit with a different pair of friends at his side when they met a being promising them glory in another world. And as fate would have it, throwing the younger Inigo, as well as that version's closest friends Cynthia and Kjelle, into post-war Nohr right at about the same time the older, wiser Laslow was beginning to find the itch to start all over for the second time in his life, meant nothing good for anyone involved.
[]
Their meeting was by chance, one group coming into the city for the first time and the other, solo man doing a scouting run for the sake of the king of Nohr. As they passed each other by, completely unaware of the fact that they were walking right by their own self in a different body, nothing particularly notable happened. There were no obvious signs that the scrawny late-teen from a peaceful world was the same as the muscular, war-weary retainer striding past him, minus the head of gray hair that they both shared. The only one to notice that coincidence was Cynthia, who'd gotten so wrapped up in the hero's journey she thought they were going on that she thought someone with the same unique hair as her friend had to be notable.
"Come on, Cyn, in a place like this? Don't be foolish," Inigo dismissed her, not even bothering to turn to look at the man for himself. "We're so far from home that finding anyone who happens to look like me just isn't going to happen."
"I still think he's going to be important on our quest," she huffed, lunging onto Kjelle's back and causing her friend to stumble forward a few steps, confused about why she'd suddenly been mounted. "It's just not normal to have something so interesting happen if it's not going to be important!"
When they did end up properly meeting weeks later, when the trio new to Nohr ended up being at the same event that the royal family and their entire entourage were in attendance for, Cynthia's vindication on her insistence about Laslow's importance made him feel like maybe it was for the best he stuck around in Nohr. It also had the opposite effect on Inigo, making him wish he'd never arrived in the country to face a version of himself that clearly didn't achieve the same goals he wanted to by being there.
"Is there a way out of this?" he asked his older self, blissfully unaware that time paradoxes usually prevented curious questions such as that. "Out of Nohr, I mean. I don't want to live a life that ends without bringing my parents pride."
Flinching at the mention of parents, and how he'd lost his own before he'd gone on his adventure with his friends, Laslow looked at the two girls the other him had come in with and shook his head. "If there's a way out, I couldn't tell you what it is, given that my duty is to stay here and serve the king. Perhaps you should do some looking of your own? A search of the borders could do you good."
"But they don't want to leave," Inigo replied with a melancholic tone, referring to the other two who were deep in conversation with a local about something he couldn't be bothered to care about. "Cynthia's been raring to have a journey since we were kids and the moment Kjelle saw some of the revered women of this area…convincing her to leave became a non-starter. If I go, I'll go on my own."
An idea flashed through Laslow's mind, and without thinking about his duties or responsibilities in that moment he grabbed Inigo's arm and dragged him out of the social gathering, out onto a patio that was completely empty. "You want to bring your parents pride, and I think that being retainer to a king is a rather lofty title, all things considered. Why don't we…"
"Switch places?" Inigo finished, almost in disbelief at what he was hearing, and when Laslow nodded his jaw began to hang. "I, I don't know about that. You're so much older than myself and I wouldn't know the first thing about the job."
"You clearly haven't heard about the Deeprealms, then." Laughing for what felt like the first time in ages with this new lease on his journey, Laslow explained the space-time rifts that were known for their strange properties regarding the flow of time, finishing his thought with, "If you merely tell everyone that you fell into one that aged you backward and you sustained slight memory loss, they'd be none the wiser to your deception and you'd be able to live out your days as me, and I can return to your home and your parents will be able to find pride in their son."
He wasn't fully sold on the matter, but Inigo didn't want to stay outside and away from his friends for too much longer than he already had been. "I mean, if this is what you want to do to get away from your life here…I suppose I can give being a royal retainer a shot."
"Then it's settled, you're me from now on and I'm you, and you can have yourself a lovely rest of your day. May our paths cross again sometime." With a sweeping gesture, Laslow was heading off into the night with a triumphant smile on his face and Inigo was left standing in his wake, unaware of what he'd just agreed to do. When he re-entered the party and found his friends, he tried explaining to them what had happened but neither seemed to be paying him any attention, and he ended up getting summoned by the king himself to be asked what had happened and why he'd suddenly de-aged many years.
While one version of himself was being integrated into the royal life he hated so much, the older Laslow was on his way out of town, certain he'd find a way home sooner rather than later. What he didn't expect was there to be no way out of Nohr, and no way to reclaim the life he'd abandoned when he switched places with the younger him, effectively damning his journey's second lease on life before it had even begun to flourish.
To accurately sum things up for Laslow, not all those who wander are lost, but he sure was in more ways than one, and his journey of two lifetimes failed to find its first step entirely.
A/N: idk I just thought this would be something fun to whip up, timeline shenanigans and all