Chapter Text
The scenes flashed by quicker than he should be able to process, but he still knew, still felt everything that was happening. The sensation was strange, like some sort of lucid dream.
It started on a battlefield. Smoke filled the air, clogging his lungs as he staggered around debris and dead bodies. He muttered a small prayer, begging his Creator to let him get used to the sight of corpses. God, he was surrounded by them. All of them were decked out in military uniforms from hundreds of years ago. One, he noted subconsciously, was draped in the Prussian flag. How he identified the flag of a nation he’d hardly heard about, he didn’t know.
There was another man, some feet away from him, that wasn’t yet killed. The man looked crazed, almost proud of all this loss, but as he limped towards the other survivor, it was clear the man wasn’t pleased. Hidden beneath loose strands of long, blonde hair, the man looked seconds from tears.
“I know you’re not like this, France!” he heard himself exclaim... but in French? Since when did he know French? It took all his strength to simply speak. “Don’t listen to these reactionaries! Robespierre’s a fucking nut job!”
The man, who was apparently named France (why would you name your kid after a country?), gave a shaky sigh. His smirk fell, and he muttered, also in French, “You don’t understand.”
The man’s words seem to echo, fading alongside his blurring vision. In a swirl of muted colors, the battlefield was replaced by a small but lavish mansion. The house, accented with the mighty Prussian Eagle, was secluded from others by miles of brush and trees.
He didn’t get to enjoy the house, though. Weakly, he trudged inside, trying his best to keep his blood from tarnishing the floor.
The task was in vain. As he fell against the wall, smearing red on its intricate wallpaper, he noticed a little boy running to his aid.
“Brother!" the boy exclaimed in German, “You look horrible!” He gave a defeated wheeze at that, but the boy’s face, so serious, somehow hardened even more. The boy’s eyes made him seem much older than he actually was.
The boy quickly ran off, ranting to himself about his stupid older brother and bandages.
Before he could place a name to the little boy, his surroundings morphed once more. He watched from above this time, apparently absent from the scene below.
The regal colors of the mansion, the bright stain of blood — it all dulled into grey clouds and brown grass, dreary and dead. A simple wooden cross was wedged into the withered ground. A few meters away stood the Frenchman from earlier, but he wasn’t alone. To his right was another man with tanned skin, muttering a small prayer at the makeshift grave. He couldn’t make out the words, but they were filled with grief.
It left an ache in his chest, seeing the two so somber, but he didn’t know why.
He had only a split second to register the yellow bird perched sorrowfully on the cross before...
“Gilbert! Wake up! You are not going to be late for school again!”
He groaned, shoving his pillow over his head. Maybe that would drown out his mom’s shrill voice.
He felt caught in limbo, floating somewhere between sleep and wake. That weird dream still lingered, more so than his other dreams, and he couldn’t help but selfishly try to return. Weirder yet, as time ticked on, he found he could clearly remember the dream in its entirety.
Honestly, it left him with more questions than anything. Who was that French guy, and the little boy? They seemed so familiar, but he had never seen them before in his life.
Bleh. Whatever. Dreams were weird. He’d forget all about it at school later, he was sure of it.
Gilbert Beilschmidt was your average German-American teenager. Every weekday, he would wake up, go to school, do bullshit for eight hours, and then go home — if he didn’t have detention, that is. Honestly, the weirdest thing about him was probably his stark white hair and reddish eyes, but that was all genetic nonsense. Though, with his peers dying their hair and getting contacts, he wasn’t that much of an oddball anymore.
“Gilbert! The bus will be here any minute!” his mother yelled.
Gilbert huffed, slamming his pillow down beside him. “I’m coming; I’m coming!”
The rush was routine at this point. He scrambled out of bed, haphazardly throwing on the first pair of clothes he found. He threw his backpack over his shoulder as he ran out of his room. Though he nearly fell down the stairs in his haste, Gilbert managed to make it into the living room without his mother screeching in his ear again.
Just as he was about to enter the kitchen for some sort of breakfast food, Gilbert heard the bus jolt to a stop in front of his house, because of course. He let out a dramatic groan. Either he got to school on time with no breakfast, or he was late on a full stomach. There was no in between, and his mother seemed very keen on the first option as of late.
Gilbert ran towards the front door while shouting goodbye to his mom. He was out the door before he heard her response, as usual.
Things were... less usual when he got on the bus. Typically, a few people would glance up as he entered, quickly returning to their conversations or homework or what-have-you. Today, however, everyone kept staring at him.
And, look, Gilbert was used to stares. His albinism earned him more than enough of those over the years. But it was November. His peers should have gotten the stares out of their system, so why the prolonged eye contact?
Whatever the case, the bus took off to its next stop. Gilbert proceeded towards the back of the bus, throwing himself down next to his best friend, Alex.
Only, he didn’t see Alex at first. Briefly, Gilbert thought his friend was that man at the end of his dream, praying at the sullen wooden cross. Man, he felt like he should’ve forgotten that by now. He sure had his head screwed on backwards today.
His friend certainly looked at him like he did. “Dude, why is there a bird on your head?” Alex asked.
Uh, what? “Bird?” Gilbert sputtered.
“On your head,” Alex repeated.
Gingerly, Gilbert lifted a hand to the top of his head. His eyes widened. Sure enough, feathers! The bird even gave a disgruntled tweet at being disturbed.
Well, a bird on his head would certainly explain the stares. He gently picked it up — strangely, it didn’t protest — and held it in front of him.
His stomach dropped. The bird, a bright yellow, was the exact same type of bird from his dream, the one sadly perched upon that makeshift grave. It chirped happily now, perching instead on Gilbert’s finger like that was its favorite place in the world, like it knew Gilbert.
And that thought would be strange enough on its own, if Gilbert didn’t feel like he also knew the bird.
He had to be going crazy. This dream was really messing him up. There was no way this bird was the one from his dream, and there was no way they knew each other. (God, how insane did that sound, being friends with birds? What was he, a Disney Princess?) Last time he checked, dream birds don’t randomly appear on your head in the morning. He almost wished he could brush it off as being half-asleep, or even hallucinations, but this wasn’t just in his head. Everyone else could see it, too.
This was so not awesome!
“Guess you didn’t bring this guy on purpose?” Alex asked. Slowly, he moved his finger to pet its beak, and the bird let him. At least it was a nice dream bird.
Gilbert kept the bird a decent distance from his face, in case it decided not to be nice anymore. “No,” Gilbert answered. “I didn’t.”
Nothing was adding up. How on earth could this just be a coincidence? It was the exact bird from his dream. He didn’t know how he knew — he just knew.
He resigned himself to a long bus ride dodging questions about his new avian companion.
The bird followed Gilbert all day.
He couldn’t get rid of it! Teachers, administrators, and janitors tried to swat it outside countless times, but it always found its way back into the school. It always found its way back to Gilbert — namely, back on his head. He was even called out of lunch to talk about it with the principal, who seemed convinced that Gilbert trained the bird to follow him around. (Which was ridiculous, by the way. Gilbert hated putting effort into his classes, much less extracurricular bird training.)
It didn’t attack anyone, though, and it oddly didn’t disrupt class, so everyone gave up on trying to get rid of it. This left Gilbert to suffer through another day at school, with the bird on his head, meaning he suffered through an incredibly annoying day bombarded with lots and lots of questions.
One would think by the end of the day people would understand that he didn’t actually know anything about this godforsaken bird, but no. At every passing period, before every class, it was What? Where? How? Why?
And Gilbert didn’t know! At least, he didn’t know anything that made sense. It wasn’t like he could tell people the bird was the same one from his dream without appearing as crazy as he felt.
He slammed his locker closed, pointedly ignoring another freshman obsessed with the damn bird. He instead stomped towards his seventh period class: World History, the last class of the day. After that, he could finally go home and feel crazy in private.
He walked into the history classroom, easily sliding into his back-row seat. Out of all his horrible grades, this class was by far his worst. It would take some sort of miracle for him to actually pass it, and he didn’t see that miracle happening today.
Before he knew it, the bell had rung. Gilbert’s mind was already wandering. He didn’t care what some guys in funny hats did centuries ago, especially when it was the only thing between him and his bed.
The World History teacher, Mr. Martin Petterson, began his lesson almost immediately. He grabbed a marker and wrote a single date on the white board.
September 20, 1792
Turning on his heel, he looked at the inattentive class. “September 20, 1792. Does anyone know what happened on that day?” he asked.
Those who actually did the reading eagerly raised their hands, as usual, and Mr. Petterson ignored them to scour for new bait, as usual. A beat passed, and no one else volunteered to answer, as usual.
But today was an unusual day. Just as Mr. Petterson was about to call on one of the history nerds, he noticed that Gilbert Beilschmidt had sat up in his chair.
Gilbert stared wide-eyed at the white board. That date. He remembered that date.
The Frenchman.
A strange sense of deja vu, static and uncomfortable, wormed through his veins. It was official, he decided. He’d lost his damn mind.
The Prussian Flag draped over the fallen soldier.
First his dream made birds, and now it made actual historical events — historical events from a first-person point of view, like he experienced them himself.
“Don’t listen to these reactionaries! Robespierre’s a fucking nut job!”
“The Battle of Valmy,” Gilbert blurted before he could help himself.
Honestly, he was just as surprised as everyone else. He watched as the other students slowly lowered their hands. Mr. Petterson looked at him intently.
“That is correct,” Mr. Petterson said, voice neutral with a hint of praise. “And do you know what the Battle of Valmy was, Gilbert?”
Their stares were different this time. The bird on his head was one thing — an oddity, something that anyone would stare at. But now they stared because of his actions. If people knew one thing about Gilbert Beilschmidt, it was that he knew nothing when it came to schoolwork, especially history.
But this? He knew. He knew crystal clear.
“It was France’s first major victory in the French Revolutionary War,” Gilbert said. He was starting to get a headache.
He got no reprieve, though, but Mr. Petterson merely smiled and gestured for him to continue.
“It was the Prussian army against the French army. Prussian troops were ordered by the Duke of Brunswick to try and march on Paris. French generals obviously stopped that from happening in a small town — Valmy.” He unconsciously lifted his hand to his stomach, as if a gash was supposed to be there, pouring blood onto his hands. His ears rang with the sound of soldiers crying a battle hymn. “After the battle, France officially got rid of its monarchy and set up the First French Republic.”
Mr. Petterson nodded, turning to erase the date from the white board. “All correct, Gilbert, well done! Now, as you can imagine, the Coalition was not too happy when France officially left monarchy behind...”
Gilbert swallowed, suddenly captivated by the lecture like never before. He watched diligently as Mr. Petterson continued to write down dates of the French Revolutionary Wars, dates which Gilbert seemed to remember, and not from the textbook, mind you. He remembered them personally.
His head was bombarded with scenes — fantasies, surely, hopefully — of rushing between political offices and battlefields, arguing with an aristocratic man with glasses and a mole, watching the little boy from his dream grow up and fight his own battles, gain his own scars.
Before he knew it, the bell rang once more. School was finally over. He should be more excited, he thought, given he was finally free, but the ringing just made his spinning, aching head pound harder.
He must be more out of it than he thought. He blinked, and all of a sudden, the classroom was empty.
“Gilbert, may I talk to you for a second?”
Well, almost empty. Gilbert looked up to see Mr. Petterson at his desk.
As a reflex, Gilbert asked, “Do I have detention?"
“No, Gilbert, not today, despite the bird,” Mr. Petterson said. “I just wanted to tell you I’m proud of your participation in class today. You really know your stuff about the French Revolutionary Wars! It’s almost as if you lived through them.” That proud smile return to his face, but his words made Gilbert blanch.
“I hope to see more participation like this in the future,” Mr. Petterson added, thankfully ignoring Gilbert’s turmoil, before sauntering towards his own desk with a wave. “Have a good weekend, Gilbert!”
“You too,” Gilbert replied absentmindedly, and all but ran out of the classroom. He ignored the bird digging its talons into his head, and gathered his things to go home.
A nap would fix him, he decided. Surely, that would flush this weird dream from his memory, and this will have just been the weirdest Friday of his life.