Summary: Marianne seeks answers for a recurring dream.
In the Edmund Estate, on the verge of sleep, Marianne lulled to herself, under fine cotton covers with nigh-uncountable thread count, surrounded by wooden pillars and a canopy over her head, patterned wallpaper barely in her sight's periphery. Whether it was too cold, too warm, or just right didn't matter, just that she needed to play to appearances in the morning. And so, by the repeat of a second verse of an old lullaby, she let her eyelids shut, her mind cutting to black before a familiar image faded in...
It was a familiar sight to Marianne: a child's room, not unlike the one she grew up in at the Edmund Estate. Blues and greys were splashed around the room, joined by enough alabaster to keep the color composition light. The dream had come to her so many times that some nights her attention would wane and she would try to spot something she hadn't the last time. It was always the same scene for her: she was in another woman's place, kneeling, while an infant moved across from the carpet.
"Yes, yes, come to mama!" the woman said, watching the blue-headed child crawl their way over. Small hands frantically pawed against the floor, clothed knees barely keeping up. She brought a hand up to brush rogue hair behind an ear, grazing the braid crowning her head. When the babe reached her knees, she swooped it into her arms, blowing a smooch against the child's belly and deriving a heartful giggle. "Oh, you're so cute, so cute, you've got your papa's eyes."
As the babe relaxed in their mother's arms, the latter simply looked at their burbling face. "Yes, yes, yes, mama and papa love you so, so much," she cooed, her index finger tickling the child's nose as they laughed once again. While she spoke with such happy notes, internally, Marianne was simply observing the scene again, this time noticing the hands, the way the veins had barely pushed against beautiful pale skin.
A knock at the door pulled her out of her stupor, of both the passenger and the vessel, her head turning towards the sound as a man peeked in. The child gurgled once more, pawing its hands at the air in the visitor's direction. A deep chuckle resounded throughout the room as he entered, his dark attire and hair contrasting against the room's decorations.
"Papa's home," he answered, as the woman rose from her place. Marianne watched as the man dipped slightly, followed by the familiar press against the cheek, the sign of a simple peck. "How are you two?"
"We're fine," she said, a voice wholly unfamiliar to the sleeping woman taking a backseat in the exchange. "I miss you so much…"
"I know, I'm trying my best to come back as often as possible," he answered. Marianne noticed her vessel's shoulders tense up.
"W-well, she's getting so big now, isn't she?" she asked, trying to change the subject. Shoulders heaved the barest amount, bringing the infant in better view of the taller man.
"Yes, she is." Marianne knew this part, how he had one arm behind his back. "Before I forget, I made this for you. I had some free time away from my… Well, I think you'd love this." He brought out a pair of large fabric flowers, as white as the snow of mountain peaks. Over the years of seeing the dream again, Marianne would come to appreciate the craftsmanship displayed in the dream, the stitching precise and calculated.
"Y-you made these for me?" the woman asked, surprise permeating the question. "Oh, you shouldn't have…"
"I know I'm not home as often as either of us would like, but I'm always thinking about you…" His hands moved to the sides of her head, brushing against hair slightly, as he mounted the fabric flowers, pushing the clips under the braid, and pulling away.
"How do I look?"
"Beautiful, so very beautiful," he answered, his grey eyes meeting hers. "My sweet, sweet—"
Every time, without fail, before any names could be said, Marianne would be jolted out of her slumber, an audible gasp escaping her as she instinctively kicked her legs over the side of her bed. Trembling and breathing heavily, she grasped her hands against her head, where her braided crown would start. When the dreams began, she had thought it to be her future, her raising a child with this mystery man who wished himself to be home more often. As she grew up, as she developed further into womanhood, began the distinct disconnect, from the veins at the backs of her hands, to the woman's different voice, and so she found herself haunted by the thought of just who these people in her dreams were.
Things hadn't changed when she began her enrollment at the academy. She still had no answers; her father had been very evasive throughout the years regarding the topic, initially entertaining the idea that this was a sign of her life to come. Sometimes she'd wake up screaming, terrifying her roommate some nights and causing her to request taking a separate room to quarter in. By the time she experienced the recurring dream a fourth time at the academy, some of her classmates absently remarked the bags under her eyes from lack of sleep, or comment that she had seen a ghost that morning.
And so she decided to seek help. Rumor had it that one of the professors was personally fulfilling the notes in the advice box, telling them the path to take and resulting in favorable outcomes. Marianne, to her better judgement, had attempted to find which instructor it was, to see who she could be direct with regarding this dream matter, and so she sat in the pews, pretending to pray so as to not attract the attention of the clergy or the other students. Through a cracked eyelid, she spotted hands pulling the folded notes from the opened box. Opening her eyes further, she spotted him: Byleth, in his robes and armor, unfolding each note and reading them. He then bent over the table, mulling over and writing a response before sorting them into a pile.
To think her boyfriend was giving out advice by proxy! And yet, the answer had been so obvious! She resumed her act, palms pressed together and eyes closed, until she heard the box close and the sound of his boots out and away from the hall of the church.
Knocking at the door of his office, Marianne heard a distinct tap, the sound of him straightening his papers against the desk. Soon, footsteps sounded out, becoming louder as he came closer to the door, and then the lock clicked open. Creaking the door slightly, his face in the gap, his eyebrows raised at the sight of his girlfriend in the hall. "Oh, come in," he hurriedly said, opening it further, standing to the side to let her pass through the threshold before closing it behind them.
"I'm sorry, it's a bit of a mess," he said, rubbing the back of his head. To Marianne's eyes, though, it wasn't nearly as bad as her definition of "mess" would imply; a few books piled onto the table near the shelves, his armor heaped into the nearby leather sofa, and certainly his desk's top had seen better days in organisation, but she had to presume he was holding himself up for the other nobles on campus. "Not often you come here without letting me know beforehand, Marie."
"I… I wanted to talk," she said, approaching the opposite side of his desk as he sat down.
"Oh. I assume this is serious?" he inquired, his hands coming together, fingers tenting on his desk.
"Yes, quite serious."
A pregnant pause formed between them until Byleth spoke up. "Was it something I did?"
"Excuse me?" Marianne returned, eyes shooting wide, clearly caught off guard.
"I know I'm not exactly the ideal guy for someone of your standing," he said, his eyes waning towards a suddenly-more interesting ornamental piece on his desk as he twiddled his thumbs. "I do tend to spend a lot of my free time with other people on campus rather than just us two, and so if it's something pertaining to that, I—"
"Wait, Byleth, I—!" Marianne watched his eyes flick towards her, anticipating her response. Sucking in a breath, she brought her hands to her diaphragm, steeling her nerves. "I… I love you, you know this, but the matter I've come to speak to you about is… Well, it's about a dream, per say." She felt her lips purse after having said 'dream', discomfort bubbling deep within her, but this was the best chance she had at finally trying to put it to rest.
"I see…" Byleth rose from his seat, making his way to the bookshelves and placing the books on the nearby table back. "Sit here, I'm all ears."
Despite the long pauses in trying to push herself past mental hurdles, she was finally able to tell Byleth everything about her dreams, from the woman whose eyes she was peering through, to the child in the scene, and finally the man coming home, plus distinct little details that she had picked up on from seeing the dream over and over again. Writing down notes, he would periodically ask her to clear up certain things, like whether small objects were relevant.
"And so these white flowers…"
"They were handmade by the man, at least he said he made them," she followed, her hands in her lap, alternating how her fingers crossed. "He would reach to the sides of my, I mean, her head, and tuck them under a braid." She brought a hand up and brushed her crown braid. "Like this, I think. I've placed similar things in it, it felt the same."
"It is peculiar that they'd be flower ornaments, and fabric ones at that," he said, his hand on his chin as he pondered the details. "Do you know of the continent Valentia?"
"Valentia?" She mulled over the name before her eyes widened in sudden surprise. "Yes! My father took me there once, when I was a girl! I remember, we were in the imperial capital of Chon'sin, and we had some amazing dumplings in the market… I'm sorry, but it's been so long."
"No, no, reminiscing is good, Marie." He looked at his notes, using the back of a finger to tap down his jotted points. "There's too much here to be a coincidence," he said to himself, albeit a bit too loudly.
"I beg your pardon?"
Byleth brought his hand back up, his thumb pressing into the corner of his mouth as the second knuckle of his index finger parted his lips ever so slightly. "Your father, Lord Edmund, is not your father by blood, is he?"
"No, no, it's common knowledge that I've been adopted," she answered, her eyes looking down at the gap between the leather cushions.
"Do you know if he's been to Valentia outside of your trip?"
Marianne nodded. "He goes every few years, he says it's for the sake of our territory, and he always brings back money and goods rare in Fódlan."
Byleth wrote down more into his notepad. "And do you know if he's been there before he took you in?"
"He says the Edmund household has done this since his grandfather, I've even asked the elders in a border village and they've confirmed that it's tradition for our country."
He nodded as he took note of that detail. "Marianne, I think I have enough circumstantial evidence to try to find who exactly the people in your dreams are," he said, looking at his notes.
Marianne's shoulders tensed up. "You do?!" she all but screamed, her arms suddenly straightening.
"I'll have to reach out to a contact, they're pretty good at finding people based off of nothing, so this much should give them a good head start," he continued, putting the notepad on the table between them. "At the very least, if these people are real, then you can find your origin somewhere in Valentia."
"How long would it take?"
"Around a month, but a few weeks if the sea proves to be favorable as they travel," he answered, bringing his hand to his chin again.
"Thank you, Byleth," she said in a small voice, her hands clasped together under her collar. "I… I think I can see my dreams differently now."
And her slumber that night was calm.
When he called Marianne into his office the next month, she found it to be a mess of crates and parcels, watching him pry open wooden lids and cautiously lifting portraits, leaning them against their containers. He had began unstringing a parchment parcel when he caught wind of her presence. "Marie!" he called out to her from the far end of his office. "Find a seat, I'll be with—" He had almost dropped the package in his hands. "—With you. Just let me organize this."
Lowering herself onto the seats she had sat on the month before, she watched Byleth layer papers on top of one another, reordering them, and watched him take a hand to the large frame leaning against the opened crate until he decided to pick up two smaller frames from inside another box, placing them face-down precariously on top of the stacked papers. Bringing them to the table in front of her, he took the neighboring seat, catching his breath from having clearly scrambled with all the things present near his desk.
"Shall we begin?" he hurriedly said, pushing himself past deep breaths. She nodded, and so he leaned forward to grab a few pieces of paper from the pile. "Well, to start, I had reached out to your father sometime after I made contact with the people-hound, for lack of a better term." He watched her eyes widen, but he continued. "He actually wrote back admitting to certain things, which will help to validate what my contact found in his own investigation."
"So, father… He knew?" she asked, her eyebrows beginning to furrow in slight aggravation.
"For the record, he had been sworn to secrecy, the arrangement including the ruler of Valentia." From the corner of his eye, he saw surprise take her face. "Let's start with your father, Lord Berkut." He took the first frame, lifting it up for her to see.
"It's… It's him," she said, looking at the rough painting. The defined streaks of oil paint didn't mean much as she saw the hair, the darker colors he wore, and, most of all, his grey eyes, like the ones she'd see in the mirror in the mornings. "That's the man in my dreams."
Byleth merely nodded, handing it to her to look at it more closely. A mirthful smile graced her features as she held it to her chest, as if to hug the parent she had long sought to know. "Would you like to see your mother?"
When he brought the frame up to show her, Marianne's hands shot over her mouth, the other frame dropping into her lap. Despite the scratchy nature of the sketch, the features were well-defined, and aside from the hair cascading behind her shoulders, the smaller bangs, and the sketched outline of the flowers framing her head by her ears, it was almost a spitting resemblance between herself and the image of her mother. Moving her hands away to try to speak, she found herself unable to, her lips flapping as no words could come out.
Byleth found himself unable to contain a smile himself. "Looks just like you, huh?" He watched her nod, her eyes getting glossy as her shoulders quaked slightly, a telltale sign of a hiccup. "This is Lady Rinea, Lord Berkut's fiancé."
"Fiancé?" she asked, suddenly being broken out of her reverie. "They... They were never wed?"
"Unfortunately, no," he answered, his hands resting in his lap. "Combined with the tension in Rigel and the ensuing war, and the fact that they perished during said war…"
Despite the somber details, Marianne simply nodded. "I suppose it would've been too much to ask them to come back into my life, then."
"Y'know, this does make you a princess," Byleth remarked before his lips pursed and he made an audible gulp. "Although you won't be in line for the throne anytime soon, King Alm's legacy is… thorough, as one would put it."
Placing the picture frame from her lap onto the table, she softly sighed. "I've no intention of leaving home to rule an unfamiliar land anytime soon," she said, pulling her hands into her lap. "And I've no intention to start being called princess." A coy smile formed on her lips. "Well, maybe you can call me that."
"Anything for you, my princess," he returned, putting the assembled evidence together. "I'll pack these together and have a courier bring these up to your quarters so you can look these over in private. That large painting," he said, pointing past his shoulder to the frame still by his desk, "is from Valentia, and will be going to your home first thing in the morning. You should take a look at it before it gets sent off."
Moving back to his desk to wrap up the documents and frames, Marianne slowly made her way over, her hand resting against the corner of the large frame as she went around to view it, the sight consisting of Lady Rinea, with Lord Berkut's hand reaching across her back and resting on the far shoulder, as a child with blue hair and stone-grey eyes sat in her lap. Closing her eyes, she mentally prayed.
"Look, I said if you don't have the goods, Byleth, then don't bother showing up until you have them."
"Just accept the damn money, Su'Gai!"
"Nay, I firmly said that I would only be paid in sweets from Daska; otherwise, don't even bother."
"You already did the service, just take my damn money!"
"Sweets from Daska, or else—less you value your relationship to the girl."
Byleth was taken aback. "You're resorting to blackmail now?"
"Fie, if it means doing so to ensure I get what I want instead of a second-place prize," Su'Gai said, crossing his arms and leaning against the stone wall. While his headband served to hide his eyebrows, his mouth formed a shit-eating grin. "Don't come back here until you actually do have it, and I promise I won't get leaky."
Byleth sighed in exasperation, eyeing the opening of the alleyway. "Fine, I'll get your damn sweets from Daska, but you had better not be butting in constantly."
"I would not resort to such an underhanded tactic, I promise that much. So long as I have it before I'm put into the ground, or worse, then we're good."
"I'll… I'll go then." He made a few steps before turning back to the freelancer. "Where will I find you, again?"
Pulling out a piece of licorice allsort, particularly a layered piece, and popping it into his mouth, his eyes looked at the mercenary. "Right here."
"What happened to you?" Marianne asked out of worry, quickly catching up to the mercenary, his shoulders slightly slouched in annoyance. She had followed him on some minor errands under the pretense of seeing the town for herself, but in truth it was to get some time for themselves, particularly after Byleth himself brought it up the month before. The two had intended to simply relax, only for him to come back from a detour looking even more distressed.
"It's nothing to be concerned about," he tried to reassure her, despite his twitching eye and posture as the two walked side by side.
"We're supposed to be relaxing."
"I know, I know." He sighed, attempting to get his shoulders to loosen. "It's just I've suddenly this nagging feeling in the back of my head. Like some… blood oath."
After a few seconds of silence, Marianne scooted in front of him. "Would you like to talk about it?"
Author's Notes: There's a recurring headcanon ever since Marianne's face was seen in that she's actually Rinea's child, so that's what this chapter is.
Oh yeah, I'm going back to my old habit of blatantly referencing other Fire Emblem characters.
By the way if you rearrange Marianne, you get Ma Rinea N? Perhaps the N stands for Not canon!