#I assume those feelings are negative because *gestures at Martellus*

[giltarvek-hours]

Okay. Okay but. In the event that this is not a canon divergence situation where Things are revealed and it changes everything (admittedly that is my absolute jam) and otherwise the rest of the Paris College Arc goes exactly the same then...

Then this is strange unusual information for the both of them but they carry on, just keeping it in mind in case it ever becomes relevant.

So then Gil will meet Agatha and at first he's just "yeah she's cool and interesting" just like canon, only then when she's revealed as the hidden Lady Heterodyne he remembers what he was told before and goes "oh". So he tries to find her and fails but this time there's an undercurrent to it of unfulfilled tragic destiny until he finds out she's alive. Overall Gil towards Agatha is basically the same but being validated by The Future might make him a little bit more.

Then Tarvek meets Agatha, and he knows that's Lucrezia's daughter and then they all find out she's the lost Lady Heterodyne. This affects him emotionally but like, crazy family gonna be crazy family, so things go the same way. Agatha gets possessed and he tries to help her but Lucrezia is going to be Lucrezia. Agatha eventually gets out and away, Tarvek nearly dies and then is taken to Mechanicsburg Hospital, all same as canon.

Agatha, of course, does not know about this message from the future, so she continues on as ever.

No, things only really get interesting when Tarvek hears that the son of Baron Wulfenbach is out there. Same "ah, sounds like a doofus, my lady, probably not worth your time" reaction but in his head he's experiencing some emotions about it. Only then he learns that Gilgamesh Wulfenbach, the Baron's son and heir to the empire, is in fact Gil, the Gil he knew. Some things about Gil's reaction to the incident in Paris click into place for him, but a lot of internal screaming is also happening. Because according to someone from the future, he becomes entangled with not only the Lady Heterodyne, lovely brilliant Agatha, but also the Young Baron, who can only be the current Baron's heir, one Gilgamesh Wulfenbach, a person with whom he has a complicated and fraught history. So like, he's feeling some emotions, maybe some despair, almost certainly tragic yearning, definitely some renewed heartbreak. But things are happening and he has a job to do and also he's dying. That all works out and strangely enough Gil actually like, cares about keeping him alive? is willing to tie their fates together temporarily in order to save him? He doesn't know what to do with that but he doesn't have to because emotions are supposed to be locked down anyway. So that's all just fine and dandy, no worries here. But then, because there's a tense political situation here with machinations all over the place going in different directions, Gil needs to know who Tarvek is so he can explain the details of this political mess and the contradicting schemes running here.

So. Gil now knows that Tarvek, his former best friend, his first betrayal, his college rival, his romantic rival, his long-term obsession, is in fact the Storm King, that person he is supposedly also going to be connected to, which Tarvek knows because he was there and wow there's a lot going on there. It explains a lot about Tarvek's reactions to things back in Paris. It also makes everything else much more confusing. But we don't have time to unpack all of that, because we are being knocked out with gas and imprisoned in Agatha's own castle by her impersonator. So much is going on and there is no time to sort any of this out but despite it all, despite it all, maybe what this means is that they'll all stay together.

Maybe, when Gil finds Tarvek running his empire in his absence and they have a talk, not about this of course, but about the past and what happened to their friendship and that neither of them actually meant to betray the other and it was fundamentally a tragic misunderstanding, well, maybe it means that the two of them will stay together, if only due to their mutual connection to Agatha. Maybe this time they'll get to keep each other.

I think it would be very funny if, during their schooling in Paris, Gil and/or Tarvek encountered an alleged Time Traveler with the stated goal of "Freeing Europa from tyranny be preventing the Young Baron Wulfenbach, the Lady Heterodyne, and the Storm King from having a threesome."

GOD.

The sheer volume of identity shenanigans being put under stress here. Tarvek previously had no inkling the baron has an heir and would assume any Heterodyne is a convincing fake. Gil is like "with Blorbo from my novels and Blorbo from Tarvek's fairy tales? ? ? ?" Both are put on the back foot by how personally invested the other appears to be in the scenario. Chaos.