Scratching the skin between your eyebrows with your torn, bloody nail, you try to fight off the dull throbbing in your skull by pressing your thumb into your forehead. Something is different; something has changed but when you try to grasp it, it runs like sand through your fingers. Once you find a moment of respite, you need to think through it thoroughly; to carefully clean and scratch off the layers of dust and grime and reveal the painting lying beneath it. You have an awful feeling that it will look a lot like a pink-petalled tree overlooking a steep cliff. “A cherry-blossom tree,” Emil had explained.

“But cherry blossoms are white,” you had said—you are saying right now as well, many years later as memories overlap with reality. “Not pink.”

“They might not be in here,” you repeat his answer. “But out there.”

You turn to the Wall, looming ominously in all directions. Slowly, your memories are coming back—memories you have forgotten even though you don’t know why. Had Emil known because of his great-grandfather? Or because you had shared your mother’s books with him? You wonder if that painting is still out there, under the ruins and debris of Emil’s house. It couldn’t have possibly survived all the years exposed to the weather and nature’s violence, but if … if …

The metal ring lies hot against your skin. You pull it up from under your shirt, inspecting the ruby orb, the way the light glides off it as though inside liquid is moving. Emil’s ring is more than just a childhood’s promise. It was very important to him, he had said so himself. Another riddle to solve later. This moment feels as though the axis of the earth is tilting ever so slightly, but the outcome will be fatal, and you are at the very centre of it.

You cram the ring back under your shirt, glad for the familiar presence of its weight against your skin. The Titan has begun to fall into itself, shrinking like a raisin. It won’t take long until only bones are left. When you make your way down to the ground, it is only to confirm that the rest of your team is dead. There is no use checking Franz—with only his upper body left, he has bled out, his organs strewn across the street. You don’t want to be the one to tell Hannah.

Turning away abruptly, you cross the street to Karl’s body. His head is split open—you think back to the day Jonathan died in the forest. Two years ago, everything had seemed so much simpler. When the villain of your story had been another person, and that person ended up being punished. Playing hero was easier when your own life wasn’t at stake.

You shake those memories off, turning away as bile rises in your throat and you take deep, forceful breaths to stave off the nausea. There is no time to do anything—the squad responsible for cleaning the bodies won’t have a chance to retrieve Karl and Franz anyway with the hole in the Wall and Titans roaming around. Which leaves the last person in your group—Daz. Even before you start searching for him, you already have a feeling about what has happened: He had been already gone before the fight had started, leaving the rest of you to fight the Titan by yourselves. He had abandoned you.

Only now you realise the reason your hands are shaking isn’t from the adrenaline or the lingering fear—you’re furious. You’re so angry at Daz and by proxy at your own previous hesitation. Maybe things would have turned differently if you had reacted faster. Maybe everyone from your squad wouldn’t be dead now. Your knees wobble from that realisation, and you brace yourself against the corner of a house, forcing heaps of air into your body and exhaling them in slow, shaking breaths.

The mission. Focus on the mission. Everything else can wait. If you make it through this.

Using your ODM gear, you move back to the district’s centre. Being on your own is a death sentence should you come across more Titans. As soon as you near the Main Square, you hear it. The screams, the heavy thuds when you skid across a roof and come to a halt near its edge.

Doors are open all up and down the rows of houses—people are darting out of them, then stopping dead when they see the street crowded with Titans.

It is impossible, unimaginable. That only five years after Shiganshina fell, it is happening again. And now there are dozens. Dozens upon dozens. Maybe hundreds, flooding the streets like a poisonous current. You feel as if you are trapped behind a glass wall, able to see everything but unable to move—watching, frozen, as a 3-metre Titan seizes a fleeing boy and lifts him bodily off the ground, sinking its serrated teeth into his shoulder.

The boy screams, but his screams are lost in the clamour that is tearing the day apart. The sound rises and rises in volume: the howling of Titans, people calling one other’s names, the sound of running feet and shattering glass.

Your name. Someone calls your name.

Hands curl around your shoulders and shake you. You raise your head slowly; Marco’s white face floats against the thunderous, grey clouds billowing behind him. You can’t remember Marco walking toward you, can’t remember seeing him on the roof at all; it is as if he’s materialised in front of you all at once, like a ghost.

“Marco.” Your voice comes out slow and uneven. “Marco, stop. I’m all right.”

You pull away from him.

“You don’t look all right. I’m sure nobody is all right at a time like this.” Marco glances at the street below and curses under his breath. “We have to get the Titans away from the evacuation roads. Where’s the rest of your squad?”

You blink. There are no Titans in view for now; it should scare you how fast they move into wherever they sense people. Someone is sitting on the front steps of the house opposite you and crying in a loud and grating series of shrieks. The boy’s half-torn body is still in the streets, and the smell of blood and death is everywhere.

“Dead.” Your voice is hollow, just like the pit in your stomach. “Except me and Daz. Frank and Karl—”

The person on the stairs is still sobbing. Shouldn’t the rear guard be here, evacuating people? Out of the corner of your eyes you see uniformed soldiers approach the crying person—Reiner and Bertholdt.

Marco swears. You blink against the burning curtain of tears and square your shoulders, ball up the knots of your emotions and push them so far down where they don’t hurt anymore.

Stepping out of Marco’s looming shadow, Annie regards you with a tightly locked expression—a door firmly sealed shut. “The Titans are moving towards the Inner Gate. Something must be holding up the evacuation,” she says.

“Let’s hope they have more luck holding them back than us.” Reiner’s joined you. His eyes pass over you, pausing on the dried blood on your uniform, the ripped fabric of your pants. Seconds later, Bertholdt is behind him. They must have told the person to hide, because now the street is deserted.

“This is way beyond our capabilities,” Bertholdt mumbles. He looks a little green and keeps throwing glances over his shoulder. “We should find the others. We’ll be stronger in numbers.”

“That might lure out more Titans if they sense a bigger group.” Reiner kneads the tense muscles in the back of his shoulders. “But I’m all for regrouping, so let’s be smart about this. We’ll look for the rest of the 104th. Stick together, got—”

Before he can finish, the watch tower’s bells ring a second time this day. For the first time, that sound doesn’t fill you with dread and fear. It means the evacuation is done, all citizens who managed to reach the Inner Gate are on the other side and safe.

“Finally. I thought things would never start looking up for us.” A weary smile passes Reiner, there and gone too quick. “Nice timing, too. I’m running out of gas.”

“They should distribute supplies down Regent Street. Let’s hurry. It smells like rain.”

Marco’s right. As you begin to navigate through narrow alleys, past crumbling buildings and the corpses of soldiers and civilians, the sky opens up and rain falls in unrelenting torrents. You wonder if that might be enough to wash away the blood on the streets, to clean the pavement from today’s horror.

Too scared to look down and identify one of your friends, you keep your eyes set on Marco’s broad back until he turns a sharp left, following Reiner’s lead up on a crimson-tiled roof where you spot familiar faces keeping watch. Half of the group is on the outlook, the rest huddling around a slumped figure.

Nothing seems odd until Marco mumbles, “Why isn’t anyone going over the Wall?”

You notice it then, too. How quiet everything is apart from the pattering rain. No sounds of ODM gear zipping through the sky.

Like a compass, your eyes rivet on Jean first, slumped into himself on the roof and for a second your heart beats in your throat in fear he might be injured. But when he snaps a response to whatever Connie just asked a second ago, he seems unhurt. “There’s nothing we can do! How the fuck are we supposed to scale the wall without gas?!”

“There’s gotta… there’s gotta be something.” You’ve never seen Connie in so much terror. “We can’t just … that means we’re gonna…”

“What’s wrong?” Reiner demands. It seems like nobody has even noticed your group’s arrival. “Where’s the supply group?”

You meet Jean’s eyes. A multitude of emotions changes his expression at once—relief, anger, and then it settles on utter despair. He buries his face in his hands, and mumbles, “Those fucking cowards … we’re gonna die because of them.”

“Were they wiped out? What happened?” Marco asks, hesitating. He’s drawn closer to Jean, and for a moment he reaches his hand forward to pull Jean up, only to withdraw it immediately as though realising he’s facing a cornered, scared animal that will immediately snap its teeth at him.

“I guess they’ve barricaded themselves inside HQ. Apparently, they lost the will to fight,” Jean explains, his voice hollow. “I can understand that feeling.”

You can’t keep quiet anymore. “But abandoning their duty to supply us? Just leaving us out here to … die.” You feel sick, thinking of Daz. He’s still nowhere in sight among the other cadets, and by now, you wouldn’t beat an eyelash if you found him torn from limb to limb in the gutter. “We’re all scared. Yet we keep fighting.”

Jean considers you for a long moment with a bland expression, his eyes blank. Slowly, he shrugs. “Not that it matters. Titans have swarmed the place. We can’t even get gas for ourselves.”

“So what?” Connie snaps, swinging his arms violently and you have a feeling he’s seconds away from trying to beat sense into Jean. Marco, who’s honed his skills on sensing whenever Jean’s about to get his ass kicked for his brutal honesty within those three years of Cadet Training, steps between them. “Hanging around here’s no different! The Titans will gather here too. We should use everything we got and finish them off right here.”

“Do you really think we have the manpower to pull that off?” Jean turns his head, regarding the rest of the gathered rookies. “Look at us. Most of the veteran members of the vanguard have been wiped out. We’re just cadets. Who can possibly take charge of a suicide mission like that?”

You follow his gaze, take in the sunken forms of the other recruits. Their defeat, their hopelessness. A girl sits curled into herself, trying to make herself as small as possible. Your heart shrinks to the size of a small, hard stone.

“It’s not like we can stand a chance against the Titans anyway,” you hear Jean continue. “If Titans got into HQ, that means the supply room’s probably got some that are three or four metres tall. There’s no way we could get anything done in there.”

There’s silence. Watching Connie’s shoulder drop, you can sense the fight leaving him. “So … it’s hopeless, huh?” he mumbles.

Jean heaves a heavy sigh, which is answer enough. When he looks up again, he stares right at Marco. A moment passes between them, one you feel as though nobody but them should be part of. “You know … if I’d known this would happen, I would’ve said something sooner.”

It takes a moment before Marco can find his voice. “Ah, Jean,” he says, mournfully, his voice soft—in just the same way he had said all those months ago in the boys’ barracks when you had walked in on them jostling like little kids. “Has anyone ever told you how bad your timing is?”

You feel like you should say something; to capture this moment with words even though words were not necessary. Something like “I knew it” or “Finally” or “I love you two so much, please don’t leave me behind.”

You turn away and join Reiner’s group on the ledge looking out towards HQ to give them the illusion of privacy. Curling your arms around yourself, you feel terribly cold. Nobody calls after you.

“What now, Reiner?” you ask. You need to focus on what’s next, on how to solve this problem. Occupying your mind with solving the problem to staff off the wicked whispers of doubt and neglect. There’s time for that later, if you have the luxury to deal with it. “You think we can fight the Titans?”

“We let them gather here and it can go either way,” he says. He has his arms crossed over his broad chest, standing tall as though no gust can blow him off his feet. Just the sight of him calms you a little—strong and dependable Reiner who always has got your back. The tight knot in your shoulders eases a little standing next to him. “But if we lose our will to fight, it doesn’t really matter, does it? We’ll die.”

“Is there even a way … to get out of this city,” Bertholdt wonders, gazing out at the wall. For being the tallest of you three, he manages to look the smallest right now.

“If we die,” you think out loud, “then what’s the point? What’s been the point of any of this? What are we dying for?”

Freedom, a voice responds in the back of your head—is it Emil’s? Or Eren’s?

Eren. You turn around. Didn’t you see a blonde shock of hair somewhere? If you remember right, Armin’s been in Eren’s squad. If Eren is here, he’ll have the right words, he’ll fire everyone up to fight and not give up.

“Where’s—” you begin.

“Where’s Eren?” another voice asks.

Mikasa’s rapid footsteps on the roof sound like gunshots as she steers towards your group. Not a scratch on her, she looks just as put together as this morning when you had all left the barracks laughing and without any worry. But you notice spare blades missing in her holster, meaning she had fought. Something about seeing her warms a dark, cold place in your chest. With Mikasa by your side, you guys are invincible.

“I haven’t seen him,” Reiner says. He jabs a thumb over his shoulder. “But Armin’s over there.”

Mikasa whirls around without a second look back. She crosses the roof with few strides, you follow hard on her heels, and when she calls Armin’s name, you don’t miss him flinching so hard as though he’s been struck by a physical blow.

His eyes are locked onto the roof under him, and he doesn’t look up when you reach him. He appears to be a different person altogether. His hunched shoulders are no novelty, but the way he’s slouching now is an unread page in a usually familiar book. This page appears ripped, crumpled. Barely hanging on to the rest as though it might fly away any second but what’s written on it compromises a good half of everything that makes Armin the person he is.

You grow cold. Very cold. Every second that passes and he doesn’t answer Mikasa, your heart keeps on beating rabbit-fast and you hold your breath to keep from making a sound. Until it stops, wedged into your throat with the speed of a hydraulic press. Just jammed in there, making you choke.

“Where are Thomas and … and Mina, Armin?” you ask next, though much quieter than Mikasa.

You don’t want to know the answer.

You already know the answer.

You want to tell Armin to keep his mouth shut; if he doesn’t say it, it won’t become reality.

You open your mouth.

Armin’s head snaps up, tears run down his face, leaving clear streaks across his dirty cheeks.

Mikasa freezes.

“We … the cadets of Squad 34—” Armin’s voice quivers. He swallows, wipes snot away with his sleeve. He bends his head; his hair falls forward, hiding his face. “Thomas Wagner, Nack Tierce, Milieus Zeremksi, Mina Carolina. Eren Jaeger. These five members fulfilled their … their duties and died valiantly on the field of battle. I—I alone … survived. Only I …”

The word “alone” comes out broken, as if he can taste the bitterness of loss on his tongue and struggles to speak around it. As though he is ashamed about this outcome; that it is him delivering the news when he should have been dead as well.

The whole world stops in its motion. You’re aware the whole roof is staring at Armin, processing the words, but your head is empty. Your chest constricts painfully.

Mina. You think of her small, pale face under her crown of dark hair, of her determination in a fight and her heartening enthusiasm whenever she throws herself into a new task or challenge. You’ve promised to visit her in Karanes. She’s promised she’d take you out with her family on the lake to fish.

Eren. Oh, Eren. His dreams. His conviction. Isn’t it poetic that he died while doing what he always wanted? Killing Titans? But nothing ever ends poetically. It ends and people turn it into poetry. All that blood—it was never once beautiful. It was just red. Gods notice red. It is their favourite colour, and so they choose to draw the world in red. Over and over again, this time with the name that was supposed to be your new home—

You begin to shake violently. “Oh God,” is all you manage, and a moment later, you scramble to the edge of the rooftop, bend over and empty your stomach in heaving spasms.

Marco lurches after you, holding your trembling shoulders before you topple off the building. His face has crumpled, shattered like a damn under too much pressure, but he holds you as you tremble, as you shatter, and mumbles, “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” his voice thick with grief; with all his heart in those words.

Behind him, you see Jean. Standing there, motionless. Eyes red-rimmed. He’s staring at Mikasa, Mikasa. You can’t imagine what she’s feeling right now—how grief must tear her apart from the inside, eating her alive. No words can mend what is broken; can bring back and fill what is lost. And perhaps it is the greater grief, after all, to be left on earth when another is gone.

“Armin,” Mikasa says. She has such a soothing voice. So calm, so collected, like an untouched, clear water’s surface. “Now isn’t the time to be emotional.”

Armin’s face goes blank with surprise, startling him momentarily out of his grief like a record skipping a beat.

Mikasa pulls him to his feet, then turns and marches towards where you and Marco still stand near the edge of the roof, clinging to each other. “Marco,” she continues. Still in his arms, you can feel him tense up. “If we eliminate the Titans swarming around HQ, we can replenish our gas supplies and get over the wall. Correct?”

“Well, yes,” he says after a moment’s hesitation. Now that you can finally get a good look at her, you feel cold all over at the blank expression on Mikasa’s face. There is no warmth in her eyes. No light. They are dead, and so must be a part of her now that Eren is gone. “But even with you, we can’t handle them all—”

“I can handle them,” she fires back, snaps. You don’t know if you’ve ever seen Mikasa snap. “I am strong. Stronger than all of you. Very strong. As such, I can annihilate the Titans here. Even if I have to do it alone. As for all of you, you’re not only unskilled, you’re also cowards . You’re a real disappointment. You can stay here and twiddle your thumbs. Twiddle your thumbs and cry and watch.”

Her outburst commands silence. Another recruit flounders. He shoots back, “You can’t do that. Even—even you can’t take them on all by yourself!”

“If I can’t, then I’ll die,” Mikasa answers, almost matter-of-factly. “It’s that simple. But—” She turns, faces the roof’s end. “If I win, I’ll live. And the only way to win is to fight.” And then, she jumps. She flies. She disappears between buildings, moving gracefully towards the beasts that haunt your every step. What do you call the animal that, finding the hunter, offers itself to be eaten? A martyr? A weakling? No, a beast gaining the rare agency to put an ending to its own fears. She leaves you cowards, and the silence that settles is like a big, gnawing chasm.

Jean is the first to break free from his paralysis. He rubs his hand over his face, with enough force to leave red imprint marks with his fingers. “You can’t seriously just pull something like that right now,” he mumbles. “Sounding like that fucking suicidal maniac … this is all your fault, Eren.”

He whirls around and draws his blades. The sudden movement startles everyone out of their shock. Raising one blade high above his head, he screams, “Hey! Since when were we taught to let our comrades fight alone?!”

Multiple heads turn his way. You feel Marco give you a last, tight squeeze before he lets go.

Jean continues screaming over to the next roof, pointing the tip of his blade at them. “Or do you guys want to end up as actual cowards?!”

From the other end of the roof, someone else—Sasha—screams, “Yeah! You think Instructor Shadis is gonna let this slide? Come on, you cowards! You weaklings! Morons!”

Something stirs among the cadets. You can’t believe it works, but they move and draw their blades and even though they still look scared shitless, they also look stubborn and spiteful. Ready to fight.

“I have to go back to my squad,” Marco says beside you. He gives your shoulder a solid pat and smiles tentatively. “I’ll see you on the other side.”

You nod and watch him move across the roof towards Reiner and the rest. When he passes Jean, they share some quiet words and briefly squeeze each other’s arms before Marco leaves.

“This is gonna be tough,” Jean says when he steps up next to you. You shudder and collect yourself, rub away the wetness from your cheeks. When Jean doesn’t defer to your loss, you know it’s only to protect you. You’ll have time to break down later. If “later” exists for you. “But you managed to kill one of them, right?” He points to your holster where a pair of blades is missing.

“Yeah —” Your voice breaks. You clear your throat. “Yeah, I got one.”

“Good.” He juts his chin forward. “I don’t trust half of these guys not to stab themselves with their blades when zipping up their boots.”

“It’s still scary,” you say. Jean turns to you. “I killed one, but I’m still scared.”

His eyes soften. “Good. Fear keeps you humble. But that doesn’t mean you’re not brave.”

“That doesn’t make sense.”

“Bravery isn’t the absence of fear. It’s being scared and still doing what you have to do despite it.” He looks out over the roofs—your Jeanie, who looks so much older than you remember after just a few hours— “Marco told me that.”

Something infinitely warm spreads in your chest. You take Jean’s hand and effortlessly win the thumb war, squeezing his thumb because you don’t give him a minute to catch up to what’s going on. “Let’s go kick some Titan ass then.”

It’s true what they say. That the best way for team building is under attack, screaming, yelling and in pain.

Out of the corner of your eyes, you notice Armin watching you with eyes so full of grief and yearning, it’s not difficult to know what’s going inside him, and you hurt all over for him and his loss.

Losing Emil all those years back, the wounds always feel fresh like a cut you keep on reopening. But losing Jean today would mean losing a limb; another part of your body. It would mean the part of your soul residing in his body shattering and you’ve already lived part of your life cleaved in half. If the rest were gone too, nothing but a hollow shell would remain.

You’ve already lost Mina and Eren today. You won’t lose anyone else.

So in that single moment, when you look at Armin, and he looks to Jean, and Jean looks to you, you realise that all three of you would lay down your life for each other. They don’t teach you that at Cadet Corps: that you will find people so important to you because of the years you’ve fought and bled together that you will kill and die for each other. Live for each other. Such is the honour and duty of a soldier.

“I’ll go after Mikasa,” Armin says. He’s dried the last tears, and now only the red, swollen skin around his eyes betrays that he has cried. “You two take care. We’ll meet up at HQ.”

“It’s Mikasa we’re talking about, she won’t need it … but still, look after her.” Jean gives Armin a hard clap on his back. “We’ll see you on the other side.”

Armin nods, then disappears down the roof.

Jean and you follow the others. It doesn’t take long until you catch up to them. They’re standing in line at the edge of a roof, looking down at Titans roaming the streets.

“Why is nobody moving?” Jean asks. “HQ’s right there.”

“How do you expect us to pass those fucking monsters?” A Cadet with deep wrinkles on his forehead and a sharp chin whirls on Jean as though he alone is at fault for the current Titan invasion. Out of instinct, you step into his path, shielding Jean, and the cadet bumps into you and startles back.

“You’ve got a functioning ODM gear, right? Then use it,” you snap back.

The cadet scowls down at you, mutters “bitch” and turns away to another group of rookies who look unsure about this whole plan. But you can’t allow yourself to hesitate now that there is at least something you can do. This plan is better than not doing anything, and the last thing you owe to the dead is at least trying to move forward.

“Not all of us will make it,” Jean says as he surveys the streets. His voice is low, as if not to let anyone else hear and spread panic. “Not today. Not tomorrow. If there even is a tomorrow.”

“Yeah, if.” You stare down at the blades in your hands and angle them left and right until they catch the sliver of sunlight peeking through grey clouds. It’s stopped raining. Maybe that’s a sign. “It’s still worth trying.”

Jean exhales audibly. He surveys the hesitating soldiers lining up on the roofs, waiting for something, and then at the Titans that have finally sensed the living nearby and look around as though scenting their fear. A myriad of emotions flash across Jean’s face. Doubt. Resolve. Back to hesitation, then fear. You can see it in his eyes, he’s concocting something, but before you can ask, he screws his eyes shut, opens his mouth and roars: “EVERYONE MOVE OUT WHILE WE STILL CAN!”

The first line of cadets jumps. Jean’s face—pale and wide-eyed—turns to you for a second, imploring you to do what you don’t know, and then he follows them and doesn’t look back. For a moment, fear that you’ve already lost him grips you tight enough to suffocate. But he is an exceptional flyer—almost as good as Mikasa. He’s excelled at every flying test.

Only until today, the dummies haven’t tried to kill you.

Rolling your head until a bone in your neck cracks and relieving some tension, you’re about to walk off the roof when you hear something like a roar in the distance. When you turn around, nothing seems out of the ordinary. There’s nothing apart from the stomping of approaching Titans. A large bird—a hawk, maybe—soars in long lazy circles over the houses, an elegant black boomerang against the silvery sky.

Do it like that, you think. The sky is the only place where you have a chance against them.

When you fall, the wire bounces you back up right before hitting the ground, sending you higher than the rooftops and opening up the sight of all hell breaking loose.

The cadets look like small flies buzzing around in search for the exit—easy pickings for the Titans to fish out of the sky. For monsters this big, some of them move awfully nimble. Only a hair’s breadth away from you, a gigantic hand arches through the sky—closing around another cadet who was following right behind you. His screams suffocate inside the giant’s palm as one squeeze is enough to crush his lungs and bones. Your stomach churns when you hear the wet crunch of snapping bones—but that’s also when you realise the danger of this altitude.

You don’t think. Smashing your fingers into the levers, you let the wires wheel out and fall. There is so much screaming around you—somewhere in there you can hear your name—but when you evade an outstretched hand and drop to the Titan’s knee-height, you find new anchor points and real the wires back in. The metal of your gas canisters scratching across the ground makes an awful noise—heat sparks behind you as the friction grates the metal surface off. You release all the leftover gas and pray momentum carries you back up into the sky and through one of the windows of the building.

With death breathing down your neck, you throw caution out and manoeuvre recklessly between the Titan’s feet, shifting left—no, right, back to left, faster and faster until you see HQ towering above you. The wires reach their end point. You take the swing at full speed, soar higher in a wide arc and curl into a ball, bracing for impact.

Glass shatters when you smash through the window, taking off your momentum. When your feet hit the ground, you stumble and try to brake the rest of the speed—and slam right into a bookshelf. Books topple off from the impact, their spiky edges punching more bruises into your skin, but you barely feel the pain. More windows break behind you, sharp shards fly like rain in a storm. You whirl around, scanning faces to see who has managed to outrun the Titans.

There’s Sasha, Reiner, Bertholdt. A few nameless faces—all with eyes spread wide from horror at the cost that they made it. They survived. When they all stand and catch their breaths, the sudden silence is deafening.

Heavy steps come up from behind you, and before you can turn, you’re nearly knocked flat as Jean wraps the entirety of his body around you.

“Dear Lord. [Name]. [Name] [Last Name].” He holds you even tighter. “Don’t you do something stupid like that ever again.”

He’s talking about that reckless evasive manoeuvre—to close to the ground, to the Titan’s feet. You can hardly imagine what it must have looked like from all the way up where he’s been. You can hardly imagine how close you’d been to be trampled to death in the first place.

So you don’t say anything, just press your face into his chest and let yourself at last be held. You put your arms around him. Everything about him is so familiar, from the lingering apple scent—the same as his mother, to the sharp angle of the collarbone that rests just under your chin. He says your name again, repeats it over and over until your hands reach up and cup his face.

“It’s fine, I’m fine. We’re fine,” you speak over Jean’s frantic prayer of your name. “Everything’s OK, Jean.” You press your foreheads together until his laboured breath slows down slightly. Behind you, you feel another set of arms wrap around the pair of you—Marco, manifesting the long-ago threatened Jean-Marco-you sandwich. You don’t mind it.

It feels safe, and good to be held so tightly, so secure after everything you’ve been through—when you close your eyes, you can almost pretend like you’re all children playing a game, reckless and young, tumbling into each other with the wild abandon of those who have never known themselves apart and have no reason to doubt that the others will always be there, holding on to them and holding them up when they can’t stand longer.

When you’ve rebuilt your reassurance that you’re fine, you let go and survey the room. Only then you realise that a lot less have managed to reach HQ than expected.

Jean suddenly sags against you, and it takes both Marco and you to hold him up. His voice is barely a whisper. “I told them to move. I gave the order. How many people died because of me?”

“A lot more would have if you had not taken the lead,” Marco replies immediately with a ferocity you’ve never heard from him. You can see his knuckles turn white where he’s holding Jean up by his elbow. “We would still be out there if it wasn’t for you, Jean.”

Jean doesn’t look as if he’s listening. His eyes flicker across the room, and then they pause, and the remaining colour drains from his skin; it’s like watching a fire flicker and go out. You follow his sight. In the far corner, below a heavy office desk, a handful of cadets are cowering and staring up at you through big, frightened eyes. The girl has blood splattered over half her face, the source a motionless body in front of them with half his head missing.

Everything clicks into picture. Why nobody had supplied you with gas. Why HQ was so awfully silent. Why nobody had come to help.

You feel Jean’s whole body twitch. Before you can catch him, he springs forward and drags one cadet out from his hiding spot by the collar. Jean’s punch lands right across his jaw, sending him back to the floor. “You abandoned us!” Jean screams, lunging forward again—or tries to, but Marco is holding him back, his arms fastened around Jean’s torso. “People are dead because of you!”

There’s more shuffling when the girl scrambles out from under the table. “The Titans overran the supply room!” she shrieks back. Tears cut a dirt path across her cheeks. She has freckles, you notice distantly. Freckles, like Mina. Suddenly the anger at being abandoned evaporates and only cold remains in its place. “There was nothing we could do, nothing!”

“It’s your job to deal with it anyway!” You’ve never seen Jean this furious. It’s justified, but pointless, you realise. It doesn’t change anything. It doesn’t bring back the dead.

“Jean—” you begin.

The wall on the left side explodes, sending boulders and debris flying. Light pours through the hole into the dark room for a moment, before it is blocked out by a huge head. The Titan grins so hard it nearly splits its face in two.

Nobody moves for a second.

Then they move all at once.

Cadets lunge for the small door at the opposite side from the hole in the wall, trampling and stumbling over knocked over books and papers. Glass crunches under their feet, the sound like bones breaking. Someone slams their elbow into your side to get you out of the way, knocking all air out of your lungs. Marco seizes your arm and pulls you out of their way before you get slammed to the ground. He’s shouting something but the overwhelming screams of those fleeing drowns whatever he’s saying. But then he turns his head, his dark eyes wide. A muscle clenches in his jaw.

Jean. He’s just standing there, frozen to the spot. Staring at the Titans. It’s like all life is draining out of him—there is no willpower to run or fight as though happiness and laughter has never existed. He’s giving up.

You move against the tide—towards him, towards the leering Titans and their hideous faces, and clasp Jean’s hand.

When the walls come tumbling down, you hold hands, just like you did all those years ago with Emil.

This time, you won’t let go, no matter what.

The Titan jerks.

Jean is holding your hand so hard you fear your bones might break.

Something moves.

For one second, the Titan’s shadow swallows you whole, and then—a fist the size of a small carriage slams into the Titan’s face, sending it flying. Light pours through the hole. In their place another Titan stands, and it roars so loudly you cover your ears. His scream fills every narrow street and bounces off the buildings like a crack opening the earth’s crust, the boom and tremor of an earthquake.

Your mind doesn’t fully comprehend what is going on. The simplest answer is the obvious: A Titan is fighting another Titan. But that is impossible. It cannot be.

It roars again, blood-churning and bone-splitting—it is magnificent, almost, for it feels as though someone took the fury of the human race and incarnated it into this desperate howl.

Anger that is cathartic.

Liberating, almost, to know that to all things housed in her silence, nature offers her violence.

A/N: "To all things housed in her silence, nature offers a violence" is a line from Hozier's "Blood Upon the Snow". I highly recommend you guys check it out!! The song fits the hidden plot of this story SO AMAZINGLY I just had to sneak it in as a homage to the Faerie King himself. I also went back and edited a few things in chapter 13 to weave the theme into the story. Idk, it's such a small, unimportant thing haha. but i really really like it and it will make more sense on the long run, I promise.

Taglist: @arisu003, @brooki, @prttyangelz, @honeylmnade, @berriesandcrem, @im-just-star-dust

Everyone’s instinct kicks in right on time and they quickly follow using their ODM gear. But one body keeps falling, falling, tumbling like a lifeless bag. In a flash, Sasha shoots past you, and saves who you recognise is an unconscious Samuel plummeting to his death. Her anchor ripping through his leg is no pretty sight, but she manages to break his fall.

“It’s the Colossal Titan!” Eren shouts a few feet above you. His blazing green eyes stand in stark contrast to his pale skin. “This is finally our chance to make him pay and end this!”

A messy, full-throated roar of memories rise. You quickly push them aside. There’s no time to break down, not here, not now, not when it could arrive at any moment—

A crack, loud like thunder. Like the earth is splitting in two, dying. Your head jerks down to the main gate of the Outer Wall and for a moment, all your horrors claw at your throat like wild animals as you wait for the Armoured Titan to march through the destroyed gate. But only boulders and debris hurl by like cannonballs and you’re weirdly amazed by how small it looks from up here.

“He’s kicked in the Gate,” you hear Connie mumble quietly. He’s manoeuvred closer; everyone has come closer to brief what to do next. Except Eren. He’s gone. An awful suspicion haunts you when you guess where to. “If we don’t stop them now, we’ll have Shiganshina all over again.”

“We have to report back to HQ!” Mina screams, her face locked in fear. “We have to find Garrison—” She falls dead silent when the watchtower’s bells go off in the distance. You’ve been drilled so often for moments like this, you know what is next: the evacuation of the citizens begins. Titans have breached the Wall.

Your gaze slides past Mina’s pinched face. The first Titan, a five-metre monster of flesh and teeth stumbles into the District, its mouth hanging open like a door hanging on broken hinges. And then another. And then another. You stare at them, throat tight, the cold sweat sensation of dread spreading slowly through your limbs. The taste of blood slowly fills your mouth, zapping your brain awake when you notice the pain in your bottom lip from how hard you are biting it. It clears the fog for a moment; it allows you to jam the emotions behind a basement door. You claw your hands into this sudden composure and drag it over your skin even though it feels all wrong and too tight.

“Get Eren back down here,” you tell Connie and Thomas. “We’ll retreat to HQ first and wait for orders.”

“B-but the Titans.” Mina points down where the first wave begins to spread out in search of people.

“Nobody should be at home at this time anyway, they’ve announced drills this morning, remember?” It’s a sobering thought, provided at the right time—you’ve always worked well under pressure. You hope your brain doesn’t stop now.

“We have to get Samuel to safety, too,” Sasha adds, casting a worried glance down to where he’s hanging upside down, passed out.

“More reason to retreat,” you insist, glad that Connie and Thomas zipped up to the top of the Wall. Right then, a group of Garrison soldiers swarms out from behind the buildings, engaging the Titans. Two aimed for you, another two continue further up, and you feel immediate relief at the sight of senior soldiers taking control of the situation.

Transporting Samuel to Headquarters at the centre of Trost is no easy task, but when you hand him to the paramedics, it’s one thing less to worry about. Good timing as well, because that is when your forced composure decides to crack like the brittle thing it is. The emotions you trapped before are clawing at the basement door, all the pictures swarming before your eyes—the Colossal Titan, the smaller Titans marching into your city, Eren vanishing into the white steam—you cackle with a shrill pitch that borders on hysteria and bend over, your hands braced on your knees, as though you can barely hold yourself upright. Your breaths come in tight, short bursts. The air won’t fit down your throat. You squeeze your eyes shut as though that stops you from engaging with reality, mumbling to yourself, “He said he’d come back. He’ll come back. He’s gotta come back. Emil—No, Eren. He said he’d come back. He’s gotta—”

The angry voice cutting across the yard is like a sunburst after a stormy cloud. The encroaching darkness dissipates with Jean’s voice, and suddenly you have no problem clawing your way out of this darkness and fear. Jean’s insistent voice is like an anchor; from childhood on you have grown to respond to it. To rise from bed when he called, to run to help him when he brawled with the other neighbourhood children.

Your body stumbles over to where he is holding someone—not just someone, Eren—by his shirt collar. You don’t even know what he’s screaming about, only that he is there; they are both there.

Jean speaks with such anger, such a tangled mixture of dread and fear and hostility that you want nothing more than to reach out and comfort him. But there is no time. Whatever he sees on your face when he notices you approaching, it immediately silences his onslaught of words—and gives Eren a chance to retaliate.

He shoves Jean against a pillar and holds him there until his struggling ceases just enough for Eren to talk. “Never forget the three years we poured our blood, sweat and tears into,” Eren hisses. “We’ve nearly died so many times over the past three years. Some people actually died … or gave up halfway. But we survived. We survived. And we’ll get through this, again. You’ll survive today, and tomorrow, you’ll head off to the Interior, right?” He shakes Jean, hard, as if to rattle all the cobbles loose that might bar the path to realising the obvious.

Jean jerks free. A muscle in his jaw clenches, as though he is chewing on his words before he speaks. Finally, he breathes, “If you kick the bucket, I will fucking kill you, Jaeger.” He shoves Eren off him, rounds the pillar catches your eye. Jean juts his chin forward—telling you to follow him. But for now, your whole attention is anchored in Eren. He answers with one of his own forceful stares that always leave your skin on fire as if he put a red-hot poker against it. As if pulled by an invisible hook, you two close the space between you.

“What he said,” you say quietly. “Try not to get yourself killed, okay?” You wonder if he notices how desperate you sound. “Or I will come after you and kick your ass.”

Eren leans over and puts his hand on your shoulder. Even through the fabric of your jacket, you feel every one of his fingers pressing into your flesh. He speaks in a low voice. “I finally get the chance to slaughter those pigs. Do you really think I’d do something stupid and just die here?”

“This isn’t dummy practice.” Your throat is dry. You feel like an animal trapped against a corner. Suddenly, everything goes blurry. “This is real.”

“It is. And that’s exactly why we can’t lose heart. We’ll show them. We’ll show them we can fight back.” He holds his head slightly lowered and looks at you with his green eyes from under thick, dark lashes. “We’ll get through this. Our story has just begun, right? It’s time we teach them a lesson, okay?”

You swallow hard as your senses return. Drop by drop, like water filling a cup, your thoughts fall back into order. “Okay.”

“Okay.” Eren releases your shoulder and raises his hand to brush his knuckles against your cheek—so lightly you think you might have imagined it. Too startled to say anything, you stand in silence as he turns and leaves, marching with straight, rigid shoulders towards Mikasa.

When you meet her eyes, you don’t know how to read her expression. Is it concern? Does she have a problem that Eren shows you this platonic affection in public when she doesn’t even get a pat on her shoulder; not even a promise that he’ll be careful and come back.

You walk backwards, barely understanding why you have to look at them for such a long time. To memorise their faces. But Mikasa is strong, and if Eren stays by her side, nothing will hurt him.

Jean is waiting at the other side of the courtyard with Connie. Some people get the shakes after an adrenaline surge. Jean gets pissed. When he helps make sure Connie’s gear and gas cylinders are in order, Jean pulls at Connie’s harness so hard as if he’s trying to mug him.

Standing right next to Jean, you want to close your eyes and lean against him, even for just a moment; you want to pretend it’s just another practice drill, that by the end of the day you will meet with everyone for dinner, and you’ll laugh because like always, Sasha and Connie stole Jean’s kills and then the boys will try and predict the next day’s weather depending on Bertholdt’s sleeping position.

Rough hands yank you back from this pipe dream, tugging at your ODM gear. Jean is checking on your equipment next, and you’re kicked back to when you two were thirteen years old and he had tugged on your clothes just like that, checking for injuries after you had given the butcher’s son a bloody nose for dunking Jean’s head into the river.

“Who’s in your squad?” he asks, his voice quiet and rough.

“Karl, Daz, and Franz.”

Jean pulls a face. His hands are restless as he double-checks your equipment. “Listen, if you see a Titan, you move your ass in the opposite direction, okay?”

“You heard Captain Weilman.” Like a well-oiled machine, you turn around, allowing Jean access to check your back. “Desertion is punished by death.”

“So you’d rather a Titan eats you?”

“I—”

He doesn’t let you finish. “I know what happens when you’re scared,” Jean says, and stops. He grabs your shoulders and spins you around, jerking his head down to glare at you. “I’ve known you all my life. If you don’t run, you freeze, and we both know what that means here. Today.”

“I can’t run from it forever,” you reply, quietly.

The breath he exhales is a quiet huff, fanning over your cheeks. His eyes are raking over your face anxiously. You can sense the tension in him, a thrum just under the skin, like the fast-beating heart of a bird. “Running means you’ll stay alive. I need you—” Jean swallows. “—alive.” He almost stumbles over the last word.

“You won’t get rid of me, don’t worry.” If you press into his side and he presses back, it’s only your business. Jean takes a reluctant step back. He catches your fingers with his and gives them a quick, hard squeeze before letting go. When he is already halfway to his squad; he turns and looks back at you. You meet his eyes for a split second. Then he is gone.

You find Karl, a guy you’ve rarely interacted with during the last three years apart from quick nods and polite smiles, and give Daz a wide berth. He’s still sickly pale and you turn away when he starts to dry-heave as though he’ll be sick all over again. Franz is fidgeting with his spare blades, but he looks up when you approach and manages a wobbly smile.

As you check that your gear is working and everything is in place for yourself, your mind is on Jean and the look you’ve shared when he left. It was the first time you’ve watched him leave, knowing you might never see him again. It is something that is hard to accept, and you aren’t sure you want it to become part of your life. To live with death as a constant companion, a cold breath down the back of your neck. But such is the life of a soldier; such will be the life of those who join the Survey Corps.

As though you have the luxury to think about it. You have a mission now: join the support squad and take the middle guard to defend Wall Rose until every citizen is behind the Wall. Stop Titans advancing further no matter the cost. Once the evacuation is done, soldiers from the rear-guard will meet you on the roofs and hand out new gas cylinders so you can all retreat on top of the Inner Wall for safety. That’s the plan.

When you head out, you try not to think about it. Just follow orders, move with your squad. All those years you’ve been talking about protecting the people, saving them so no one ever has to lose someone they love like you did. Finally, you can walk your talk, but every reasonable thought gets pushed back by sheer suffocating, overbearing emotion: you’re scared. You’re scared shitless to face the monsters of your childhood. All these years you thought you had banished them, that come time you could face them—older, different, stronger. But all this time you have deluded yourself. Still a little child, still unable to do anything. Maybe nothing ever changes.

You follow Karl towards Main Street. Captain Weilman tasked your squad to take position in the tailor’s borough, which gives you an excellent opportunity to check on the Kirschstein’s residency. Your home. You don’t allow your thoughts to spiral into what happens if you would find Ida and Felix in any status other than safe and alive. They depend on you; so many people depend on you. You force yourself to steel your fear into rage, into desperation, into resolve.

Karl lands on the roof of a copper-stone house, surveying the area through squinted eyes. “We’re taking position here,” he says. “Doesn’t look like they managed to head this far into the District yet.”

Daz stumbles a little, his foot stuck on a roof shingle. “We shouldn’t be here, we shouldn’t fucking be here, what are they thinking?” he mumbles to himself, shuddering terribly as though plagued by a done-deep cold. “We’re just canon fodder. We’re just here so they can snack on us while everybody else books it behind the Walls.”

“Daz,” Franz says. He has his blades out, and even though he’s gripping them hard enough his knuckles are white, you can see them shaking. “Shut up.”

“Don’t fucking tell me to shut up, it’s the truth!” he snaps, whirling around and whipping his blades out. Franz takes a startled step back. Too close to the roof’s edge, he barks Daz to watch out where he swings them around.

“Won’t have to worry about Titans if that maniac kills us first,” Karl mumbles, scanning the streets. He gives you a quick once-over, judges you either sane or capable enough compared to the other two, and draws closer, pointing to one end of the street.

You follow his outstretched arm. Your heart stops for a second.

Two or three bodies lie in the street already—a man, half his lower abdomen is buried under the ruins of a collapsed house. You know that corner; you’d recognise it anywhere: the seamstress’ shop behind the Kirschstein’s residency where you had worked before enlisting into the military.

“We’re too late,” you breathe. “They’ve reached the middle guard.”

“Some survivors might still be down there,” Karl offers. He does another 360, spots no Titans, and nods. “We should go and check.”

That’s all you need to hear. Using the house rows facing each other as anchor points, you zip down to the ground, hearing Karl bark to Daz and Franz to warn you two in time if they see Titans approaching.

Down on the ground, you feel like a little doll in a huge play world. Only someone has thrown a temper tantrum and kicked in houses, punched a colossal fist into stores. Broke the people as though there are nothing more than little toys.

Tentatively, you walk closer to the destroyed building, too scared to take a closer look at the man in fear it might be Felix. Something else catches your eye—red like so many things beautiful and disastrous. Who told you that red was the Gods’ favourite colour?

Her lower abdomen torn in half and lying on the other side of the road, you recognise the young woman by the colour of her blue tunic. She’d always worn it because it had made her big, round eyes stand out even more. The only moments you remember of Mirabelle, your former co-worker of the shop, are despicable and full of loathing for a person who had bullied you without any reason—and yet … seeing her like this, like a doll that’s been ripped apart, half of her intestines hanging out of her body, her vacant blue eyes staring off into the sky unblinkingly… this is a death you don’t wish on anyone. Not even someone you disliked.

“Know any of these people?” Karl asks beside you. You gather your courage. Look at the man, who is not Felix, thankfully. Look at the woman hanging out of a window, the rest of her stuck inside the collapsed building—her hair a vibrant red. Not Ida.

You exhale slowly and force the tension from your muscles. “No.”

“Then we shouldn’t hang around here too long—”

A scream echoes from the roofs—Daz’s voice. Karl and you share a short, panicked look before launching off into the sky and towards your squad members. You can hear Karl mumbling something like “He’s gonna get us killed, I swear.”

You can hardly disagree.

When you ascend over the rooftops, you see the source of Daz’s distress.

Even though it has been seven years, you recognise the Titan immediately. Black hair to its chin, big, coal-black pinpricks for eyes—nothing about it has changed. Like seven years ago when it picked up that woman and devoured her, the Titan has returned today to finish its feast. The way it stares you down, you almost get the feeling it might remember you as well. But that’s impossible. It must smell the fear radiating off you, and like a hound scenting prey, it zeroes in on you. You can taste the terror you’ve felt when you first saw a Titan. The taste is sharp and coppery on your tongue like old pennies.

Move, your mind screams, but you can’t. Your muscles have locked up; a high whine of terror fills your head. You’re trembling with the wait, the helplessness, the stillness, your thumbs pressing so hard to the buttons on your handles they go numb. Faintly, you’re aware of voices. Out of the corner of your eyes you catch movement, and then Franz moves towards the Titan.

A hand leaps at him. Franz whips his blades up and outward with an almost frightening speed; both sink into the fleshiest part of the Titan’s hand, between its fingers. The Titan hisses and strikes at him, knocking him aside the way a cat might bat aside a kitten. Franz lands on another roof, rolls and gets to his feet, but you can see from the way he’s holding his arm that he’s hurt.

That is enough for Karl. Darting forward, he lashes out at the Titan with his blades. He cuts into the Titan’s peach white skin, blood welling from two thick open folds of skin. The Titan ignores him, keeps moving towards Franz.

With his uninjured hand, Franz changes his blade. His mouth quivers as he mumbles to himself, a prayer maybe. From this distance, it looks like he’s mumbling someone’s name. A familiar name.

He raises his blade as the Titan looms up before him; he looks impossibly small in front of it, a child dwarfed by a monster. Franz starts crying as the Titan reaches for him. Karl, screaming, targets his grappling hooks at the Titan’s neck, sailing towards it but missing. Instead, his blades cut into its shoulder, sending blood in a thick spray across the air.

The Titan strikes, its trunk-thick fingers reaching down for Franz. He staggers back, but he is unharmed. Something has thrown itself between him and the Titan, a slim shadow with a gleaming blade in his hand. Karl.

The Titan whines—Karl’s blade has pierced its skin. With a snarl, it strikes again, fingers striking a vicious blow that lifts him off his feet and hurls him against the far wall of a house. He strikes it with a sickening crunch and falls to the ground—four stores down where his head hits the hard pavement, cracking open like a ripe fruit.

Franz screams Karl’s name. He doesn’t move. Lowering his blade, he starts to run along the edge of the roof towards him. The Titan, turning, catches him in a hard grip that makes Franz cough blood until its knuckles turn white and with a squeeze, his bones breaking, Franz lies limb within its grasp as the Titan closes his mouth around him, ignoring his brutal, blood-churning screams. The sound of a dying animal.

It all happens within a few minutes. Two of your teammates—one friend—dead. Just like that.

It felt like hours.

Hours where you don’t move, you don’t think, you don’t feel. You just watch the Titan bite Franz clean in half and swallow the lower part of his body. Either unsatisfied with the taste or bored with the easy game, the Titan drops the rest of Franz and turns, fixing its coal-black eyes on you. The distance between you is barely a stretch of its long arm.

Emil had been wrong, you realise. Freedom is not the ability to do as you please.

Freedom is nothing but the distance between the hunter and its prey.

The Titan closes a fist around your body, tenderly almost. As though it knows how scared you are, and that the last grace it can give you is to grant you a swift, painless death. That can’t be real. You remember how the woman seven years ago had screamed her lungs out. How Franz screamed before those razor-sharp teeth cut him in two.

The Titan cradles you in his hand, bends over your tiny doll-like body in his giant fingers. Its smile is vacant, its eyes dull like a dead fish’s. No compassion lies in those soulless orbs. No begging or praying would save you; monsters know of no mercy. They don’t know of conscience and love.

How could Emil have ever felt compassion for those beasts?

Emil. When had he shown compassion to Titans? When had he ever seen a Titan?

An image flickers before your eyes—A line of trees with thickly leaved branches breathing out cool green-scented air. There are bushes hung with glossy berries, red and purple and black, and small trees hung with oddly-shaped fruits you’ve never seen before. You exhale. “It smells like …” Springtime, you think, before the heat comes and crushes the leaves into pulp and withers the petals off the flowers. “Home,” says Emil wistfully, “to me.”—no, not this moment. After. Something happened after. Something that uprooted everything you thought you had known about Emil.

Something hot splatters onto you, the searing pain clearing the fog of memory that dulls your mind. The liquid immediately begins to evaporate. Steam rises off from the side of your face, and you realise it is the Titan’s blood from an early wound Franz or Karl had inflicted.

Blood.

A Titan’s blood.

Titans bleed.

They bleed just like you.

Men bleed and die. Therefore, it must be logical that when Titans bleed … they die.

It means you can kill them.

They are not invincible.

Only that thought matters—a truth you’ve always known, and yet it has never struck you as important as right now. They bleed, they bleed, they bleed. They hurt, they hurt, they hurt. The monsters from your childhood bleed and hurt, and therefore, you can kill them.

Through the fog of your helplessness, you can still see those cold, lifeless eyes and yellow, rotting teeth waiting for you, and all you can think is, This can’t be how it ends.

It is not what you have expected to think as you stare death in its hungry eyes. It’s not hopelessness, it’s just pure stubbornness. Not even so much a will to live as a refusal to die. Not yet, not now, not here, not when you have so much left to do. Thank Ida for the gloves she’s knitted you last Wîhe Naht. Thank Felix for the birch box he’s built for your trinkets as a graduation present. Spend a last day with Jean and Marco and the rest of your Corps before you go separate ways. Figure out the jumble of memories where Emil hides. Find Eren. Tell Eren that you can kind of, sort of, maybe imagine spending the rest of your life with him—and oh, what a thought that is. What a thought holding so much gravitas, so much everything that it is a miracle the Titan doesn’t drop you right then and there from the weight of that revelation.

“Our story has just begun, right? It’s time we teach them a lesson, okay?”

“Okay.”

In that moment that changes the trajectory of your life, you realise three fundamental truths at the exact same time.

Number one: For the first time in all your life you know you are more than what you fear.

Number two: There is a truth to remember about Emil, and because you remember you are given a second chance to be with him.

Number three: When you trace Eren’s name, it spells home.

You stop thinking.

Wedging your blades between your body and the fingers curled around you, you pull with all your strength, feeling the blades slice through flesh, cut into bone, break in the process. One edge grazes your leg, but you don’t feel anything—adrenaline pumps hot through your body, drowning fear and pain.

With its hold around you loosened, you wiggle out of the Titan’s grasp, quickly twisting your body to find a stable anchor point on another roof. You launch into the air—high, higher, so high that the world spins around you, leaving you dazed, but when your eyes land on the Titan, so much smaller from up high, your body knows what needs to be done.

As though it can’t follow what just happened, the Titan is still staring at his now empty hand. Steam rises from the clean cuts where his severed fingers remain unmoving.

As you change your blades, your hooks wedge into the soft spots in its neck. Slice through the nape, 1 meter and 10 centimetres. You’ve done it often enough during practice, you know exactly where to cut.

Soaring through the sky towards your target, you know it is finally time to rip up the flesh of your fears.

For your parents. For Karl and Franz. For Emil. For yourself.

The flesh yields to your sharp blades like butter to a warm knife. More blood spurts from the wound, running down the Titan’s back like a waterfall as a huge chunk of flesh falls and lands with a loud splat on the ground. You quickly manoeuvre up to a roof. The moment your foot lands on stable ground, your right leg buckles under the weight of your body—the gash in your skin from where your blade cut into your leg burns as though liquid fire spill from the wound.

Pushing aside the throbbing pain, you quickly turn and see the Titan fall face first onto the street, steam evaporating from his neck. It lies there, unmoving.

Dead. Just like that.

A shudder rips through you.

Ah. So that’s what it feels like.

Finally, you have become the hunter.

It immediately sobers you up. Now you wish you’d at least worn a jacket or something.

He gives you an elegant, curtsy bow, offering his broad-palmed hand on which a wooden chip rests. “Might I ask for this dance, Maienkoenigin?”

“Uhm”, you say very intelligently. Sir, yes, Sir, is what you should have said. Instead, you blurt, “Should you be out here at all?”

Erwin doesn’t appear bothered by your question—then again, you think more is needed to throw the Commander of the Survey Corps off balance than a skimpy dressed, tipsy woman just fresh out of Cadet Corps.

“Should I and my men not be allowed to join the revelries from time to time?” he asks in return.

You can feel your face ablaze with shame. “I—I’m sorry, Sir, I didn’t mean to, Sir.”

Erwin chuckles. “At ease,” he says. “I must admit, I am out here not only for pleasure. I came to have a first look at the cadets. The Survey Corps is always on the lookout for promising new recruits.” He waits patiently for you to finally settle your hand in his, and turns his head to see which song the band strikes up next. On the other side of the plaza, the two string musicians each begin playing different songs, stop, and laugh at their error. When they bow their instruments this time, there’s harmony and the crowd moves in tandem; amongst all the other faces, you spot Marco spinning Mina, and over there is Ymir forcing another tankard of beer down Christa’s throat. It makes you giggle; you want nothing more than to join you friends on the other side of the plaza and dance with Mina and Marco and kiss them both, and find Jean and tell him how much he means to you and how glad you are that he is part of your life—oh, and the Shiganshina three, the Golden Trio, there’s so much you need to tell them, especially Eren, oh Eren—

“I imagine everyone must be excited about graduation,” Erwin says, easily spinning you out of the path of a boisterous couple kicking up their legs in every direction, and successfully yanking your thoughts away from your friends and back to him. “Has anyone voiced their interest in joining the Scouts?”

Your thoughts go right back to Eren, who burns so bright it blinds you whenever he speaks about the Scouts. Mikasa will follow him, of course. There is little you imagine she wouldn’t do for him. And where Mikasa and Eren go, Armin follows. You feel as though with those three alone, the Scouts are about to obtain a whole squad.

“Some,” you say, and try hard not to flinch when Erwin places his hand at the small of your back, leading you through the crowd. He’s an experienced dancer, and you wonder if that’s a hiring requisition for superior ranks. “Though opinions are split, and not in the Scout’s favour.”

You feel Erwin’s gaze on you. Maybe you shouldn’t have said that. But then he gives a small, crooked smile, and says, “When is it ever? That doesn’t stop us from doing what we have to do.”

“What’s it like?” Your voice is so quiet, you doubt he hears your words. “The outside?”

Erwin is quiet for a moment. Even though his hands don’t stop to guide you for a moment, he feels as though his mind is far away. In the end, he settles for, “There’s still so much I don’t know,” but he speaks it in a whisper as though they are meant for him alone.

The dance goes on and on; everything spins so fast: the music, the laughter, the warmth from living people. Girls and women spin in circles, their hair—black, brown, scarlet, and metal gold—flows like banners in the wind, and amidst them, silver flashes like a shiny coin. Like the moonlight flashing between dark clouds and illuminating the endless, dark night.

You trip over your own feet, staring in that direction. The only reason you don’t fall is because Erwin catches your arm in time, steadying you. “Is everything alright?” he asks, but it seems very far away. You tear away from him and dive into the crowd in search of what you’ve seen—who you have seen, because there is no mistake that only one person wears hair woven from silver starlight.

Dizzy and disorientated, you dart through the crowd towards the fountain, shouldering people aside, using your knees and elbows as weapons. Cheers and calls follow you which you ignore—you want to be invisible to them all, to throw away the crown and run back to the meadow, run across it barefoot hand in hand with—

The band’s song haunts you; the melody, their voices—it is the only thing that you can hear while running towards him.

O let the earth a-tumble, love, And humble you withal, Keep running. It’s up to you now, Up to you now, love to

Love run, love run For all the things you’ve done Run for all the things that drum Run for all those pages thumbed

Love run, love run For all the things we wished we’d done Run from all you know that’s coming Run to show that love’s worth running to.

When you emerge from the crowd, panting and with your heart trying to break free from your chest, no one with silver hair is waiting for you on the other side. It shouldn’t surprise you, yet you only realise now how much you’ve hoped, how much you’ve depended on the possibility that somehow, by the smallest chance, Emil would appear and surprise you. It feels as though you are losing him all over again—you are an open wound that you have no idea how to close. Tears burn behind your eyes, suddenly the emotions are so overwhelming you feel like you’re drowning in them.

You need to leave. As fast, as far away as you can until you can breathe again, until it doesn’t feel as though you are missing one of your limbs.

You turn and dash towards a narrow side alley—and bump into a solid, hard back. Before you can mumble an apology, a very familiar voice brightens the dark pit in your chest.

“Hey, what’s up?” Eren asks.

You tip your head back to look up at him. Eren used to be your height when you started out in the Cadet Corps, but now he looms over you, almost a whole head taller. Something about seeing him right now takes the wind out of your sails—you’ve searched for a haven and while you haven’t arrived where you want to be, maybe you’ve arrived where you need to be.

“I—I’m okay. I’m okay now,” you respond finally, unable to look away from Eren’s face. He dips his chin a little, as if sensing there is more you’re about to say, but when nothing comes, he gives you a crooked smile and turns to disappear back into the crowd. Something about the sight of his broad shoulders retreating closes up your throat, wedges sharp needles into your mouth.

“Stay,” you say, catching his wrist, feeling his hot skin. Eren stops, turns slowly. “Don’t leave. Please.”

He looks up from your hand to your face and studies it; studies your face for the answers to the questions flickering in his eyes. They pierce through you, hook right under your skin. Usually, you’d hate to lie bare and vulnerable before someone, but it’s different with Eren. Until recently, there was only one person whose thoughts you cared to know—what they thought about you, specifically. Now, Eren has become that person.

Slowly, Eren reaches for your hand and untangles it from his shirt. Your heart drops to the bottom of your stomach, but before you can say anything or move away, he takes your hand and leads you away from the feast through narrow alleyways, hidden away from prying eyes. It’s quiet here, and deeply dark. A few couples have sought that secrecy and are together now, joined at the lips, pressed close against the walls. Another song has begun, but slower.

Eren slows only when you reach the gates leading outside Trost District. He leads you off the path to where the grass fields stretch like silver patches under the moonlight. Immediately, you notice how much easier breathing is out here in this quiet, calm place. You take off your flower crown and drop it behind a crate, and hope you will never have to wear a crown again.

You find an empty spot down by the riverbank and sink down into the grass, the earth still warm from the day’s sunlight. You’re surprised. For the loud mouth Eren is, he can be quiet when it matters. The only light source comes from a big campfire people have put up near the water. It casts Eren in a warm glow that softens the planes of his face. He looks younger—like on the day you met on the first day of training when his eyes looked big for his face. His eyelashes are still stupidly long, stupidly dark—curving like the crescent moon above your heads. Light stubble runs along his sharp jaw. You wonder how his skin would feel to the touch.

You’re certain Eren is aware of your eyes on him, but he keeps staring ahead unblinkingly, waiting for you to fill the silence. He’s putting your back against a wall like that. You don’t know how much longer you can run. From him, from yourself—always towards the past as though Time itself slows to let you play, stealing the hours and turning the night into day.

You let your hands roam over the soft grass, and feel your fingers stumble over leaves and petals.

An idea blossoms.

You pluck the flowers from the ground and begin to weave a crown.

“You know, this means affection and admiration,” you say and show Eren a purple-crowned dianthus. He blinks. “And this,” you continue, presenting a lilac aster right under his nose, “means I will remember you.” You pick up the next flower. “This is Forget-Me-Not.”

“Let me guess,” Eren says. “Don’t forget me?”

“So smart.”

He grins. This grin makes something deep inside you unfurl, like a petal opening up its secrets to the sun.

You return to your craft, fumbling with thin stems and fragile pallets that break off and tear under your touch. Eren watches you struggle for a good minute. When he speaks, the amusement in his voice is like soft wind grazing through leaves. “Need help?”

“I’m good, I’m just—” The stems unweave and slip through your fingers like seams coming unknitted. The sweet smell of crushed petals fills the night. Nothing you do makes the crown hold—and then you realise why.

You let the flowers fall into your lap and blink at them, feeling your eyes grow heavy. “He never showed me.”

Eren tilts his head towards you.

“He never taught me,” you repeat, a quiver to your voice, “how to make flower crowns.”

Eren clears his voice. “Who…?”

“Emil!” You stretch out your hand, showing off his ring, grinning. The crimson sphere flashes almost threateningly like spilt blood.

Eren is quiet for a moment, eyes fixed on your slender finger and the ring. “I’ve heard you mention him,” he finally says, turning his head away. His side profile seems suddenly like a stranger’s, sharp and uninviting. “Who is he?”

“My fiancée,” you announce proudly.

He turns his head so fast and sharp in your direction, you hear a bone crack in his neck.

“You’re engaged?” he asks, but there is a very unfamiliar, un-Eren like tone to his voice that makes you look at him.

You don’t think Eren has ever looked at you like this. As though you are a glass of water and he is dying of thirst, but unable to reach you. As though you are the only patch of cool, green grass in a never-ending stretch of parched, grey land. You have only seen yearning on Eren’s face when he talks about killing all Titans and going outside the Walls. It makes you feel as though you are an exposed nerve, tender and raw to the slightest touch. If Eren would reach out right now and put his fingers to your skin, surely you would combust.

His eyes seem to reach deep into you, hooking into the words buried deep in your chest, and yanking them out painfully.

“He’s dead,” you say quietly, your grin slowly fading. “I think … otherwise, he would be here. With me.”

Eren’s voice is barely audible. “Was it in Shiganshina?”

You nod, and nod, and keep nodding, feeling a thick lump in your throat. You bring your knees up to your chest, your hands wedged in the fabrics of your dress to keep them warm. Only when Eren puts his jacket around your shoulders, you notice your body is shaking, but the moment his warm knuckles brush your collarbones, the cold inside your body dissipates. The fabric is warm from his skin, the collar smells like him. You duck your head, trying to bury yourself inside his jacket.

“You know, not one day passes where I don’t miss him so much it feels that I might die,” you say, quietly, more to yourself than to him. “I don’t know if you’ve ever felt something like this.”

Eren holds your stare. If the silence is bait, you don’t take it. You inhale, slowly. You smell food and the riverbed: mud and spice, with the slight after-taste of human pollution. And sweetness; ripe flowers ready to harvest for bees and insects.

“My Mom,” he finally says after a long moment. He stretches out his long legs, then reconsiders and pulls his knees back up to his chest, mirroring your position. “I saw my Mom die five years ago and the first days after that were like hell.”

You nod. You know what that feels like. Glancing over at Eren, you think about taking his hand and squeezing it—to show that he is not alone in that grief, that you know his pain. But when you look at his hand, you find it already balled into a tight fist by his side.

Weirdly enough, it makes you smile. Of course Eren would not allow himself to break. Instead, he steels his grief into rage, into desperation, into resolve.

“We’ve lost … so much … we’re trapped like fucking cattle ready for slaughter.” Eren forces a deep, shuddering breath inside his lungs. You can see the veins along his arms stand out, and suddenly your mouth goes very dry. “I can’t live like this. Nobody should live like this.”

“You have big dreams, Eren.” You bump into his side, feeling his strong arms hard like walls against yours. He doesn’t budge. “Maybe you’ll set us all free one day.”

He scoffs and rolls his eyes, but you see the corners of his mouth twitch. “If we ever bring down the Walls, I’ll definitely line up to throw a dynamite or two.”

“And then? What then?” It is a strange feeling, talking about a future you know won’t exist, but there is a quiet place in your heart that tries to imagine a life with no Titans, with no boundaries. It would look like a small Haven of trees, brushes hung heavy with glossy berries, red and purple and black, and small trees hung with oddly-shaped fruits you’ve never seen before and that would be home—you take a sharp breath in. Gone is the smell of green, of living and growing things, of dirt and the roots that grow in dirt, and as you blink away the picture that’s fading behind your closed lids, slipping from your mind even though you have no idea where it has come from in the first place, you hear Eren still talking: “… and after Armin and I see the ocean, I don’t know. We’ll explore the world. Find all the places in Armin’s book he always talks about. And then … I’ll pee in every major body of water on earth?”

“Oh my God.”

“You asked.” Eren bumps back into your side and you nearly topple over. When you straighten yourself, he’s looking at you curiously. Whatever he sees must satisfy him because he turns away, smiling to himself.

“What?” you ask.

“I see you’re feeling better.”

The question surprises you enough that you need two takes to open your mouth and give a response. And then you understand, he’s been trying to cheer you up. Nothing outlandish. Still, it’s like a died-out ember in your chest rekindles a fire.

“Yeah, I am. I’m glad I found you.” You mumble the last bit, plucking the leftover flowers from your dress until you hold the branch of the forget-me-not between your fingers. “And even though we’ll go our separate ways next week, I’m glad we’re friends. It’s weird … you’re someone I don’t want to forget, Eren Jaeger.”

 You offer him the flower. His eyes, now a dark green, are nothing like the soft blue—they’re different in so many ways, but you like them. Eren takes the flowers from you, looks at it like he doesn’t know what to do with it, and settles for putting it in your hair, behind your ear.

“I won’t just disappear, you know,” he says, an exasperated tone swinging in his voice as though he’s talking to a three-year-old that’s still struggling with object permanence. “After graduation, whenever our old Corps meets, I’ll annoy the shit out of you. Don’t think you can slack off in sparring just because I’m not there to kick your ass.”

“Last time I checked, I kicked your ass.”

Eren throws up his hands. “Because Mikasa was distracting me!”

You wave his excuses away, then stave off a yawn. The feast doesn’t show any signs of stopping yet, but you know the second your head hits the pillow, you’ll be out cold. Which is exactly why you lie down in the soft grass, looking up at the vast starry sky above you.

“If you fall asleep, I’ll leave you here, you know,” you hear Eren say, your eyes already closed.

“No, you won’t,” you say, and just to be sure, you hook your fingers around one of his belt loops. Something suspicious like a snort comes from Eren, but his warm presence beside you remains until you fall asleep, dreaming of juniper berry bushes and trees greener than any you’ve known.

The land is bare of grass, of plants, of life. It is a vast, never-ending wasteland of rolling sand hills where every grain twinkles like little stars no matter which direction you turn. It is an alien, strange place that feels familiar at the same time. You’ve been here before, but something is missing. Someone.

His name lies on the tip of your tongue, but you can’t remember the feel or sound of it. Sometimes, you think you see someone standing on the horizon, but when you catch up, that person is gone like a mirage. The frustration builds, the taste filling your mouth with copper. When your eyes spy the person once more, you decide to call out: “Er—”

“You see someone more interesting than me?” asks Emil by your side.

You blink, dazzled, and when he offers you his hand, you take it. It feels the same as all those years ago, but nothing about him is the same. Or is it? You close your eyes for just a moment, and he smiles at you, his boyish face still young and round. “There’s no one more interesting than you,” you say, because that is the truth. “It’s just this place. I’ve never seen anything like this.”

Sandy hills and a never-ending starry sky stretch before you to all sides. There’s something else, something very bright and very big, but whenever you try to look at it, it disappears, and you wonder if maybe you’re just imagining it.

“You’re not supposed to be here,” says a voice that isn’t Emil’s. You find that Emil has disappeared, and you are now standing with Eren. It’s the same game: he looks different and at the same time he doesn’t. Older, but also still how you remember him.

“Where’s Emil?” you ask, turning. You see Mikasa with Armin, and Jean who is holding a sleeping Marco in his arms, brushing away ink-black curls from his forehead. Something about Marco seems strange though, as if half of his side is turning into sand.

“What are you talking about?” Eren says. “This place is for the living.” His hands are cool on yours, and you are aware of them in a way you have not been of Emil’s as he turns you away from Marco’s sight.

You narrow your eyes at him. “What do you mean?”

He leans close. You can feel his lips against your ear. They are not cool at all. “Wake up, [Name],” he whispers. “Wake up. Wake up.”

You bolt upright in bed, gasping, hair plastered to your neck with cold sweat. Your wrists are held in a hard grip; you try to pull away, then realise who is restraining you. “Eren?”

“Yeah.” He’s sitting on the edge of the bed—how have you gotten into a bed?—looking tousled and half-awake, with early-morning hair and sleepy eyes.

“Let go of me.”

“Sorry.” His fingers slip from your wrists. “You tried to hit me the second I said your name.”

“I’m a little jumpy, I guess.” You glance around. You’re in a small bedroom furnished with dark wood. By the quality of the faint light coming in through the half-open window, you guess it’s dawn, or just after. Your uniform-jacket hangs neatly folded across the back of a chair. “How did I get here? I don’t remember…”

“You fell asleep right next to me.” Eren sounds amused. “Mikasa helped me get you to bed. She also changed your clothes. Thought you’d be more comfortable here than on the cold ground.”

“Wow. I don’t remember anything.” You run your hands over your face, feeling your swollen cheeks from a long, deep slumber. Maybe you’ve had more alcohol than you’d expected. “What time is it, anyway?”

“About five.”

“In the morning?” You glare at him. “You’d better have a good reason for waking me up.”

“Why?” Eren asks, leaning back on his heels, grinning. For some reason this is the exact moment your brain notices you and Eren are sitting on the same bed, and you are very close to each other. He must have changed his clothes before waking you up—gone is the rumpled black sweatshirt and in its stead Eren is wearing a simple white military shirt. “Were you having a good dream?”

You can still feel cold sand between your toes, see stars twinkle before your eyes. You think there were certain people in your dream, people you knew, but the details are blurry. “I don’t remember.”

He stands up. “We’ve got our rifle rehearsal, remember? Shadis sent me to kick your ass out of bed. Actually, Jean offered to wake you up, but since it’s five in the morning, I figured you’d be less cranky if you had something nicer to look at than his horseface.”

“Meaning you?”

Eren’s grin grows tenfold. “What else?”

You throw a pillow after him, but Eren is already up and about, and out of the door before you can grab something else.

Just for a moment, you consider falling back into your bed and pretend the next couple of days don’t exist. Somewhere on the other side of the compound you hear Shadis’ roars, and decide to get up pretty quickly.

Twenty minutes later, everyone stands ready. Rifle in hand, half of them visibly fighting their hangover, the rehearsal goes as smoothly as planned: Sasha stumbles twice, and Samuel and Connie go down with her. For a moment, Shadis looks like he doesn’t want to say anything, but then he simply states you’d be all dead if those rifles were loaded, and proceeds to procure a bucket of water to douse them like filthy street cats.

It gives you a small break where you set out to find Jean. Compared to three years ago when around four hundred soldiers enlisted, only half of that number remains today. Many of them are foreign faces, and you doubt you’ll ever find friendship in any of them since your group has pretty much remained the same ever since the first weeks of trainee days.

On the other side of the plaza you spot Mikasa and Eren. She’s plucking at his clothes, which he is invisibly annoyed about, but it is a different type of annoyed than when he’s around Jean—it seems more long suffering while endearing at the same time, and for a moment you can’t help but just stare at them and realise for the first time that they look good together. They’ve known each other since childhood, and Mikasa is rarely apart from Eren. You wonder what that would be like, to know him in and out and say things that make him laugh, make him blush—just like Mikasa is doing right now, but then from this distance you see her mouth from something that looks like your name and you stare even harder until she must feel you staring like a physical presence and turns.

Catching Mikasa’s eyes, you grow even more convinced that they are discussing you, that Mikasa can read you like a book, can see through to your very soul, and is telling Eren all your secrets. As if you are shouting this aloud, Eren turns at that very moment and looks at you, breaking into an elated smile as he waves his rifle dramatically in the air, and you smile back, waving yours in return, and receive a clap to the back of your head from Shadis for your troubles. As you rub your head in pain, you see Eren laughing in delight, and that alone makes it all worth the trouble.

“Bam,” comes Jean’s voice from your side. When you turn, you see him lower his rifle. “I just shot you.”

Changing the rifle from your left to right shoulder, you follow him back to your positions to restart the rehearsal. “You know I’d come back and haunt your ass. And don’t point it at people, it’s rude.”

You can practically hear Jean rolling his eyes when he says, “Whatever.”

Back in your line, you follow the steps and march in tandem with everyone else. In front of you, Jean continues quietly enough for only you to hear, “We practised rifle handling for this one thing; what a waste of time. It’s not like we’ll ever use them against other people.”

“I guess they’re just making sure to cover the whole syllabus. I don’t like thinking about having to point that at someone else.”

“You sure as hell won’t have to,” Jean says, whipping around, bringing the rifle across his chest to his other shoulder. You do the exact same, staring up at the back of Reiner’s head. From the stiffness of his broad shoulders, you can see he’s very tense. Maybe he’s taking this rehearsal a little too seriously.

You only get the last bit of Jean’s sentence because he unobtrusively pokes you in the back with the end of his rifle. “From what I’ve heard about the MP, you’ll have your occasional thug but actual casualties are very rare.”

“Seven more days,” you whisper back. “Will you be okay without me? Who’s going to pull your ass out of trouble?”

“I’m pretty sure Marco’s got that covered.” Jean turns his head, probably on the lookout for the culprit in question. You go very still, but from the lack of Jean going on, you’re pretty sure Marco has still not found a good time to talk to Jean.

“You know, there’s still time to reconsider,” you say in just the moment the rehearsal reaches the stage where your fake rifles go off and make a deafening bang noise.

Jean turns his head, the ‘Huh?’ clearlywritten on his face.

You pretend you didn’t say anything. Maybe things are progressing the way they are for a reason.

From the 344 recruits who started out at the very beginning, only 218 graduated.

On the evening Shadis announces the Top Ten trainees, nobody is surprised to see the ten best lining up before your instructor. You feel immensely proud that both Jean and Marco have managed to hold their ground. But to you, standing in the back between Mina and Armin feels right.

All you care about is the celebration that’s right after that—the last evening you’ll spend with the majority of your friends before everyone heads off. Understandably so, Jean’s constant reminder to ‘not enter the boys’ barracks after’ gets more and more frustrating.

“Why?” you say through a mouth full of steamed potatoes. “Are you guys comparing dick sizes?”

Someone who listens in on the table across from you chokes on their spit.

“We want to have a guy’s night, what’s so unusual about it? You girls do … whatever you girls do. Have a pillow fight or whatever. But don’t come into our barracks, got it?”

True to the nature of your friendship, obviously you barge into the boys’ barracks after the graduation celebration is over. And what timing you have. Swinging the door wide open, you enter at the exact moment Jean declares proudly that in a life or death scenario, he’d totally be down for a threesome with you and Marco.

You freeze. Everyone in the room freezes. Marco unsuccessfully hides the bottle of booze behind his back. It tips over and he shrieks as red liquid spills across the wooden floor. Multiple boys boo at him, and you realise they’re all drunk.

Jean raises his eyes to yours, and you trade a look that feels like a dare. Somehow, you can’t really take a hold of what expression to make—it ranges from confusion to slight disgust to mild interest at how exactly the logistics of such a scenario would look.

Realising there’s only one thing you can do right here, right now, you take a step back and close the door again, willing to forget this ever happened. Three steps is all you’re able to make before the door flies open again, rough hands grab you and manhandle you back into the room.

“You better not tell anyone we got booze here, or I’m gonna dunk your head inside a latrine,” Daz hisses. He’s the opposite of intimidating at any given moment, but now, wobbling on both feet while pointing a shaky finger at you, even a newly born puppy has more bark to it.

You discreetly swipe away the cool spit he’s graciously sprayed over your cheek.

“So, that’s the reason girls are not allowed?” you say, putting on your best Ida-performance to show how disappointed you are. “You’re going to hoard all that and don’t invite us?”

Across the room, Samuel shrugs. “The more people know, the easier Shadis might catch wind of what we’re doing here.”

“Yeah, he’ll skin us alive.”

“I think,” you say, very slowly, “we should get everyone in here and have a final blast before tomorrow.” That didn’t get the reaction you’ve expected, but it is met with less resistance than before. “And we can also,” you add, wiggling your eyebrows, “maybe play some games? Make it exciting.”

Not ten minutes later, the boys’ barracks is cramped. Every open space around the low centre table has been taken by someone as they sit huddled together, shoulder pressed against shoulder. You’ve organised more tankards from the kitchen, and now you’re sipping from the sweet meed Daz has organised somehow. After asking him for the third time and him refusing to explain, you’ve given up and accepted this might remain the greatest secret of Cadet Time.

“So, what games did’ya have in mind?” Samuel asks after the initial excitement has settled down while everyone is nursing their drink. You can feel Jean’s body pressing against your side, clearly interested in what you’ll come up with.

“I got these,” you declare, and present a dozen wooden skewers you’ve helped yourself to, “so we can play the King’s Game.”

A couple “Oooh”s and “Aaah”s later, everyone who wants to participate has settled around the table. Since it was your idea, you can be Queen first, and you’re not here to hold hostages. While swirling the mead in your tankard, your first order is, “Number 3 has to give number 5 a kiss on the cheek.”

When Connie and Samuel rise at the same time, the rest giggles and whistles, but the boys don’t back down. Alcohol is always a nice confidence booster, so Connie makes a big show of smacking a wet smooch onto Samuel’s cheek, earning them a round of applause for that.

“Okay, my turn.” Connie downs the rest of his beverage, then smacks his lips. “I want number 4 to give number 1 a piggy back ride.”

Reiner stirs, showing his skewer with a number 1 carved into the wood. When Christa climbs to her feet, wobbly like a flagpole swaying in harsh wind, the room erupts with laughter.

“I can do it,” she mumbles to herself, her usual pale face a canvas of red—the culprit of it sitting right next to her and cackling like a maniac. Over the last years, Ymir has perfected the art of getting Christa drunk before anyone can notice and stop her. It’s quite funny to her until Reiner offers to give Christa a piggyback instead, and all Hell breaks loose.

Next to you, Jean scoffs. “Like animals,” he says, but when you look up at him, he has a goofy smile on his face. You can’t say how much mead he’s had until his glassy eyes drop down to you and he leans into your space, arching over you until your shoulders touch.

“I’m gonna miss you,” he mumbles, his breath soft against your cheek. You feel the pinprick of tears at the back of your eyes and blink against them. He can’t pull that shit the night before you go your separate ways.

Before you can reply, someone is tugging at your sleeve. When you turn, somehow magically a new skewer with a new number has manifested in your hand.

“Seven’s gotta sit on Nine’s lap,” Sasha whispers conspiratorially. She points at you, then across the table, where Eren is looking at you with a very weird expression. “By the King’s order.”

You whip your head around and find Reiner grinning at you. Jean’s presence immediately vanishes when he leans away, looking sickly pale all of a sudden when he stares somewhere else, his jaw held tightly shut as if he’s just bitten into glass.

This is a bad idea, without a doubt—but the other, much louder part of your brain thinks challenge accepted.

You crawl over to Eren who eyes you as though he’s just waiting for the hidden dagger to slash forward and cut him open, and throw one leg over his lap. Good balance so far. You sit more on his knees than on his thighs, which is enough for the first round of whistles and unnecessary remarks from your comrades. Eren has found a very interesting spot somewhere behind your shoulder that demands his complete, undisturbed attention.

“Kids, you gotta do it properly,” Reiner says, and with a slap to your back, he pushes you flush against Eren’s hips. You choke on your spit. Eren yelps.

Reiner grins. “Exactly like that.”

“Okay, okay, we get it.” You try to weasel some space between you and Eren’s pelvis, but the only place of leverage is his arms. It’s different from hand-to-hand-combat practice where touching bodies is inevitable and you’re too occupied thinking about ways to bring your opponent down than worry about girls and boys accidentally touching where they shouldn’t. But this is deliberate, and now that your hands cling to his arms to regain your balance, you notice the strong chord of muscles tensing under his shirt. His solid thighs easily holding your weight. You don’t doubt if his shirt would lift slightly, the sight of firm abs would greet you.

“Don’t move,” he hisses, grabbing onto your thighs to prevent you from squirming. It gets the desired effect, immediately shutting you up, freezing you on the spot. It also does something weird to your body. You want to close your legs, pretend modesty is a thing that you guys still do around here, but you don’t have to be a genius to understand friction is the last thing Eren needs, and that’s why he’s got an iron grip around your thighs.

Why are so many people cramped up in this tiny room, it’s so fucking hot in here. You still don’t meet Eren’s eyes. You’re close enough to feel him breathing, feel the heat radiating off his body. Not knowing what to do with your hands, they just fumble needlessly in front of you, your fingers curling into the hem of your shirt to do something. Someone laughs really loud at the back of the room.

Eren clears his throat quietly. “Nervous?”

Finally, your eyes meet. His seem darker than usual, a deeper green like a lush forest dancing to strong wind picking up before a storm. This close, you could count every single one of his long lashes.

“Why would I be?” You lean back slightly, but the friction is enough to make Eren tighten his grip around your thighs. You can feel his nails dig into your skin through the fabric of your trousers. “If anything, I get the feeling you’re the one who can’t keep up, Jaeger.”

Eren executes an eye roll that must give him a spectacular view of the inside of his skull. No wonder Jean can’t keep his cool. Or maybe it’s just an Eren-thing, infuriating those around him. A match to an explosive barrel.

You’ll give him one.

“Nervous?” you ask with a mean grin that furrows Eren’s eyebrows in question for a second. Then you roll your hips against his once but hard enough for him to feel the heat between your legs. His expression is priceless, absolutely dumbfounded and stupid and laughter rises in your throat—

Eren throws you off his lap, already on his legs and charging out of the cabin into the cool night. Thankfully most of the other cadets are too busy whooping at Sasha drinking loads of beer from an improvised funnel Connie and Samuel are holding up for her. Only Mikasa has paid attention, and is now rushing after Eren while you return back to Jean’s side. He nibbles on a dried cracker and barely spares you a glance.

“What’s wrong with your face?” Jean asks. He sounds impatient, and when he snaps his jaw shut on the cracker, it reminds you of a guillotine slamming down.

“What’s wrong with your face?” you snap back.

“No, I mean if you’ve got a fever or something, go to bed.”

“Just eat your damn crackers, Jean.”

You try to hide your burning face behind your arms, knees bent up to your chin—a small ball of embarrassment because who could have thought your little joke on Eren would backfire so bad. In that split of a second before he threw you off, his neck and face completely flushed an angry red, Eren looked absolutely ready to devour you. Desire is a dangerous look on him.

From across the room, you catch Reiner’s eyes. Mischief glints in them as he raises his cup in mock salute to you, presenting himself to be the true pyromaniac all along.

❀❀❀

“I’m going to escape these Walls. That’s my dream. Mankind hasn’t been wiped out yet. We deserve to be out there; we are free. We were born into this world to see it.”

When you turned, expecting to see Eren because you so clearly remember him saying those exact words at the graduation ceremony, you saw Emil sitting by your side instead. His eyes were closed, his long, pale lashes resting against his high cheekbones. You remembered how often he said that word, but you didn’t fully understand what he meant.

“What is freedom?” you asked, burrowing your bare toes into the warm soil.

Emil kept his eyes closed. He picked a flower and placed it on his lips. You’d never wished so hard in your life to be able to turn into a flower. He was lying next to you, his fingers resting interwoven on his chest. “It means to do and feel what you want without anyone holding you back or stopping you.”

“That sounds great.” You looked out at the riverbed. It seemed to sparkle more than usual today. “We could get there, one day. It doesn’t sound all that hard.”

“You think?” Emil opened his eyes and looked up at you. His eyes twinkled just like the river. “Look around. All these flowers. Who do they belong to?”

“Hm … nobody? Everyone!”

“Fair enough. Then, pick one that you really like.”

When you looked around, searching for forget-me-not, you spotted a nine-petalled, white flower stretching its small head towards you. “This one,” you said, pointing at it.

Emil made a small sound at the back of his throat. When you turned to him, he was already staring somewhere else, but he looked as though he’d swallowed something sharp. He bent over and ripped the flower out of the ground. “This,” he said, “is my flower now. Even though you really want it. What will you do now?”

“Ask you nicely to give it to me. Because I know you will.”

Emil smiled at that. “Pretend I am not someone nice. Pretend I am someone who is a bad person.”

“Not you.” Your reply came immediately. “Not ever.”

“Then, Marianne,” he continued, and like you knew he would, he put the flower behind your ear, brushing his knuckles along your cheek. “If it were Marianne who took what you wanted, what would you do?”

You pulled a face. “Leave her, I guess. She can have it. But I’d be very sad.”

“Exactly. She is free to do what she wants, and what she wants is to take this flower. And even though you want it too, only stealing it back from her would make you happy. Because you as well are free to do what you want.”

Your head spun from the possibilities. Emil squeezed your hand. “And what if…,” he continued in a voice that was utterly unfamiliar to you, “…what if what you want is to hurt others?”

“It’s wrong.”

Emil chuckled. “Says who?”

“It’s … it’s common sense,” you tried to argue, but it sounded weak and naive even to your own ears.

“Common sense dictates we do not kill, we do not steal. Did you know there are people living underground who have never seen the sky? Who are not allowed to come up here and enjoy the fresh air? Enjoy the feeling of the sun. They kill and steal to survive. Is that still wrong? To do what you need to do to survive?”

You grew very silent. Listening to Emil, he almost seemed like a different person.

“Look at these walls.” Emil looked up. The warmth in his eyes disappeared. “We want to go outside, see the world. But we can’t. Because there are Titans outside. Because there are enemies outside these Walls. It’s unfair, isn’t it?”

“But these Walls protect us,” you shot back. “Without them, Titans would come in and eat us.”

“I suppose that is true. Sometimes, I just wonder … if they as well simply do not have a choice.”

“Which means…” you said slowly, realisation dawning, “Titans … aren’t free?”

The corner of Emil’s mouth pulled up in a rueful smile. His eyes were almost sorrowful. “I suppose … if they feel anything at all.”

“You’re always on top of those things, Emil,” you marvelled, squeezing his hand back. “You’re kind and so full of sympathy for everyone and everything. See, that’s why you could never be a bad person.”

The warmth returned to his eyes, lightening them up to the colour of the early morning sky. “If you say so, then it must be true.”

Before you could forget it, feeling the soft petals of the flower tickling your cheek, you asked, “By the way, what flower is this? I always see it on you.”

And for the first time since you had known him, Emil lied to you: “I don’t know.”

❀❀❀

You have a feeling the headache pounding at the back of your head the next morning isn’t solely because of the booze escapade the night before. Your body doesn’t feel as weary and heavy as the day after May Day a week ago, this type of lethargy is a different kind. You pin it on the upcoming events later in the day, and focus on your current task organising everything for the cannon maintenance at the top of Wall Rose.

Marco has been quietly helping you with that for some time. The creases on his forehead run deeper than the canyons cutting into the earth south of Wall Rose. Everything points to the source of his concern being Jean, currently occupied checking the gas stock for the cylinders, still, you ask the million coins question: “Have you spoken to Jean yet?”

As though he’s been waiting for you to ask that, his reply comes immediately: “I’ll talk to him later. After the preparations. I asked him to wait for me in the backyard at HQ. Before we head off to Sina.” He shrugs. “Or maybe we won’t head off. I’m not sure how to tackle that exactly.”

You think of how much value Jean puts into Marco’s opinion; how he eats up Marco’s words right up like a starving man.

“I don’t think it matters how. You got this. He’ll listen if it’s you, Marco.”

Marco stays silent. He clears his throat when he notices you staring at him, and gives you a wry smile. “We’re talking about Jean here. He can be as stubborn as you.”

“I could beat him up for you. Make him listen.”

The wry smile turns into a full-blown grin. He puts a little more enthusiasm into helping you secure the crates with ropes onto the wooden platform that lifts you up to the top of the Outer Wall. You like this Marco better than the sombre one. You continue working like that for some time until everything is loaded onto the platform and you give Marco the sign to turn on the mechanism that lifts you up.

“You ever wonder,” he says suddenly, thumb resting on the button. When he looks at you, it feels a little as though he’s seeing through you. “… if what we want and what we need are different things?”

You wait for him to continue when you realise he doesn’t mean it as a rhetorical question. “I think it’s enough sometimes to settle for what we want. We might never know what we need.”

“Maybe,” sighs Marco. “But what if the moment is there all of a sudden and you have to make a decision?” He kneads the back of his neck, then shakes his head like a puppy shaking water off its fur, trying to disperse his thoughts. “I’m talking nonsense, sorry. Today is hard enough on most of us. I’ll see you later for the distribution banquet.” He doesn’t give you a chance to respond and presses the button. With a jolt, the platform rises, and you hold onto a crate, watching as Marco grows smaller and smaller. He salutes up to you by putting two fingers to his temple. You wave back, trying to swallow around the lump in your throat.

Maybe that was his try at convincing you to change your path as well. It would be great, staying together like this for the next few years until it is time to discharge. But somehow you doubt it would be that easy to convince Jean otherwise, and you’ve already made yourself acquainted with Trost’s Garrison unit and its captain, Hannes. Of course, now that you won’t see him for some time, you find a better answer for Marco’s question: That sometimes, you settle for what you can get. That you can’t have it all.

On top of the wall, Connie is the first to greet you. “We got worried you two bailed on us,” he says, immediately tackling the ropes and disentangling them from the crates. The rest of the group is already maintaining the canons and cleaning them up. Whoever was on duty to supervise you, they’re nowhere in sight.

“Sorry, we lost track of time chatting.” You help him carry the necessary instruments and tools. When Mina sees you, her face lights up and she says something to Thomas. He looks over and grins. Sasha looks over and grins, too. It feels as though they’re all in on a conspiracy and you’re the only one left out, radiating a fervent energy that is like a flame jumping from source to source.

“What’s up with everyone?” you ask Connie.

He drops a crate, ignoring the rattling inside it and dusts himself down. “They’re just excited ‘cause Sasha swiped some meat from the pantry.”

“She did?” You rivet your eyes on her until she notices your stare. Holding your hand up in an OK-sign, she grins and throws a hand up in return. Mina squeaks—and maybe that is a little too much excitement for something as simple as that, which should have given you reason to wonder. Connie sniffs indiscreetly. “Oh, and we’re all gonna join the Scouts.”

You drop your hand and stare at him. “You’re joking.”

“Nuh-uh. I guess Eren’s little speech yesterday left an impression on us all.” He shrugs, as though a decision like that is not worth the hustle. You want to take him by his shoulders and smack his head against a wall. By divine intervention or just honed survival instinct, he decides just then to join the others and leave to your crisis.

They must think you’ll join the Survey Corps as well. But this isn’t how it’s supposed to happen. You don’t just decide something like that in the spur of the moment. “What if the moment is there all of a sudden and you have to make a decision?” You wonder if Marco is in on this, and it’s all a huge conspiracy.

You take a step forward to set things right, and maybe give Mina a good shake to remind her this isn’t what you two agreed upon, this isn’t what you two wanted—

The sight is breathtaking.

It is your second time on top of the wall. Cadets are usually allowed only after their graduation because Shadis doesn’t trust you not to kill yourself by stumbling off the edge. Maybe it’s the final step for him to recognise his fledglings have grown into hunting birds capable of soaring through the skies and every year he pushes that as far away as possible.

The sight never ceases to amaze you. All along the horizon, mountains rise and fall in full splendid, covered with forests and cut through my glistening lakes and rivers. Giant, stark-white clouds rise behind them and paint the blue horizon with a severe beauty that has you shuddering with the realisation how close you are to the sky.

This is it. The sight Emil has always dreamt of, that he had longed to see for himself. The endless world; to leave the small cage and see the big world. The thought makes your heart race with wonder and excitement and fear—all after just seeing the possibility.

What if, what if, what if … what we want and what we need are different things?

“Hey, be careful.” Eren’s voice is like an anchor pulling you back to the present. You haven’t noticed him approaching, but now he’s standing close to you.

When you look at him, you blink until the sting at the back of your eyes disappears. “The wind’s really something up here, huh,” you say, rubbing your eyes dry.

Eren’s jaw works for a moment before he turns and takes the world in. “Yeah,” he mumbles. “It’s something.”

It feels like no more words are needed. He gets it.

“You have to tell me,” you mumble. “What you’ll find beyond the horizon. Okay? Whenever you leave to kick Titans’ asses, you have to come back and tell me.”

Eren turns to you. The wind tears at his hair, but he stands firmly. Nothing can throw him off. “Of course I’ll come back,” he says like it’s nothing. He doesn’t know what this promise untethers inside you. Your knees wobble. It feels as though you have peeled back every layer of your hopes and fears and dreams and laid them bare before him. The weight of your heart seems to tear you apart with the words that you wish you could say. And for a time there is timelessness; endless stillness that holds the picture that is you two standing at the edge of the world stretching across the horizon when overhead, lightning in the sky turns the world white and summons the Destroyer of Worlds.

As you stare into the eyes of the Colossal Titan, stomach roiling with panic, you can’t help but notice, distantly, how human its eyes seem.

A/N: Today’s The Amazing Devil’s song I’m shoving down your throats: Not Yet / Love Run (Reprise)

***

i think by now people know there's more to him than meets the eye. i have this pretty little snippet from a future chapter here:

Emil shows a soft smile—one you’re so familiar with but something about it this gives you a bone-deep shiver. There is something about his expression, you realize. It is mild—everything about him is calm as it always has been—but you have now the sense that the mildness hides something beneath it that belies his outward tranquillity.

and after a certain story point, we'll get to know his story as well, starting with:

I have always been a quiet child. Our caretakers from the monastery said when I was born, I did not enter the world screaming and crying as children do when they leave the warmth and safety of the womb.

i know this brings up more questions than answers haha. (and if you look up chapter 1, you'll find that "[Emil has] always been a quiet child." is a reoccurring theme.

i can tell you though that Emil cares deeply about certain things. he can't let go of them, and when he loves, his love can either burn down the world or rise it up in glory (to quote from C. Clare's TMI series).

i think his slogan would be "killing with kindness," and he's the type of friend who, when he drops by, brings flower bouquets (he picks the flowers that suit a) your personality and b) the colour scheme of your apartment/house).

he's interested in a lot of things. i actually don't think he'd have joined the Scouts growing up. i think he'd have excelled in school and enrolled in a university in Wall Sina later to study biology, pharmacy, all that neat stuff. and maybe later joined the military in some way to help the wounded/sick (and via that get outside the walls to explore the flora). i don't think he'd have become a doctor, he's more interested in nature than humans.

i don't see him as a fighter. but he isn't a pacifist either. he will throw fists though to protect those he loves.

You’re leading the old boy over the field now, towards the other handful of cadets assigned to the duty. Reiner and Marco are tinkering with the bullock cart, checking if, after the long winter, anything has broken and needs to be fixed. Annie, standing a little apart from them, gazes out at the field. She looks as though she could think of a hundred different places she’d rather be. You can get a little behind her indifference. Many consider this task as a waste of time, for every compound receives the majority of vegetables, fruits, fish and dairy from outside farms and fisheries. The annual harvest you yield around autumn is only meant for reserves and emergencies should the usual deliveries not make it on time—which hasn’t happened in the almost three years you’ve been in the military.

You don’t mind the work at all—it is a nice diversity from the tasks you usually get, and you enjoy working outside in nature, where the air is fresh and the last hint of winter still lingers in the air.

“We’re ready,” Marco says now, rising from where he was perching in front of the cart. Already, his pants are dirty where he has knelt in the soil. “All good to go.”

“You two lead the old boy, Annie and I will be right behind you.” Reiner shakes his small basket with cauliflower seeds as you put the cart before Dolly and give his nose a good rub. He flicks his ears and trots after you across the field, occasionally bumping his snoot against your arm as if saying Look, I’m doing it! What about a little treat?,and of course you scratch him under his chin until his eyes fall close for a second in sheer contentment.

“He’s very enamoured with you,” Marco says, watching you two from the side. Even though it’s still cool outside, he’s rolled up his sleeves, showing his strong arms streaked with hard cords of muscle. Recently, his harness seems to be a size too small, cutting into his body parts that were extra thick with muscle such as his arms, thighs and upper chest. Not that you’re complaining about the sight. “Are you hiding treats or something in your uniform?”

“It’s my natural charm,” you say, grinning. “I don’t have to use cheap tricks like that.”

Marco laughs at that, and you notice how he doesn’t disagree. You continue down the field in companionable silence, only making comments whenever one of you spots a falcon gliding over the fields in search of mice. It feels like the build-up to something, but what exactly, you don’t know until finally, Marco says, “Only two more months left now. Those three years passed so quickly, I can hardly believe we’re almost done with our training.”

“Why are you in such low spirits then?” you ask. “What happened to all that enthusiasm of being able to serve the king once you join the MP?”

Marco’s silence makes you look over at him. There’s something wistful about the way he looks out at the fields—his mind seems to be as far away as the rising and sinking curves of the mountains in the far south.

“It’s weird, I know,” he finally says, scratching his chin where you see a dark stubble. “I also thought this was something I’m sure of. Graduate with a good score, join the MP and work my way up into the King’s Guard. But lately…” He gives a half-hearted shrug. “I had this weird dream, you know? There was a parade and the King was there as well but something wasn’t right. There were orphans crying and people seemed distressed. In my dream, I heard rumours about the true nature of the Operation to Reclaim Wall Maria a few years ago, and when I woke up, I realised this must have been because I talked to Armin and Eren recently. Armin told me that there was a parade back then as well, after his grandfather died, to distract from the disputes on food; to have the people be lenient towards the King’s sentence. And weirdly enough, I started to wonder … do I really want to protect the King, or is there maybe something else I should be protecting.”

Marco looks at you now, and there’s something bare in his eyes that makes you turn your head away. All you manage to answer is, “Jean will be very sad if you change your mind last second, you know? You’ve become one of his closest friends and …”

“And what?” Marco inquirers—part hopeful, part reserved.

And I know there’s more, but you’re afraid of it. One afternoon on a rare hour’s break in the barracks, you went over to the boys’ to get Marco for laundry duty, who had slipped inside just a moment ago. Standing in the entryway, you found him and Jean alone. Jean was sitting with his back turned to the entry and Marco used that moment to leap upon him in a fit of enthusiasm, screeching and squawking like a child at play. Jean wrestled Marco off him and they rolled around on the floor, grabbing and jostling, laughing at nothing. When Marco had Jean in a clinch, pinned to the floor, his knees on either side of Jean’s torso, he looked down at him and smiled, his dark hair falling into his eyes.

Even from that distance, you were sure that he had looked at Jean’s lips for a moment, turning his head a little and staring at him, his body arching forward just a touch. Jean raised his knee slightly and risked a smile. They looked at each other—“Ah, Jean,” Marco said mournfully, his voice soft—and then their heads both swivelled around at the sound of creaking wood beneath your feet as you shifted your weight to make a silent retreat, positive that you had walked into a private scene not meant for anyone to see.

Marco jumped up, turning away from Jean. He looked at you, startled, unable to catch Jean’s eye. After a moment of silence, Jean, to lighten the mood, had simply asked if you had lost something, and when the moment was over, everything had returned as if nothing had happened between them.

“And nothing,” you say now. Whatever is between Jean and Marco, it is none of your business. You don’t think Jean would appreciate you poking your nose into his business—especially one that seemed a foreign territory to even himself. Ever since the incident with the wolf last winter, he’s become curt—sometimes even downright nasty whenever Eren is around or you so much as mention him. The only reason you can think of is that with graduation drawing closer, they’re both reminded how opposing their future wishes are, and suddenly nothing of what has happened before—standing together against Victor; fighting the robbers and saving Christa—seems to matter.

“Yeah, I still need to talk to him about that,” Marco says, cutting off your thoughts. “If he’ll join the Scouts.”

“The Scouts?” You almost trip over a mound of dirt, saving yourself only by flinging your arms around Dolly’s strong neck. He snorts appreciatively. “Why the Scouts?”

“You know … the way Jean is, I feel that if he joined the Survey Corps … he could save a lot of lives.”

You give that some thought, and initially, nothing about it seems wrong. Jean is an exceptional soldier, both capable in ODM and analysing the situation in battle to find the best outcome. Funny enough, Jean’s talent seems specifically the reason why Eren keeps blowing the fuse whenever they talk about their future goals—Eren can’t seem to understand why anyone would waste their talent like that. You’ve stopped bringing that up with him. It seems easier to get along with him if you two don’t try to bust each other’s heads about which Corps to join after graduation.

With the field ploughed, the seed sown, you take a little break. The sun stands high on the zenith, and the work has left you sweating. Dolly, freed from the cart, lies on the ground. His tail flicks at flies in lazy swipes, and whenever someone bends down to pet him, he closes his eyes in cosy satisfaction.

“Did I hear that right, you’re thinking about joining the Scouts, Marco?” says Reiner now. He’s perched beside Dolly, and gives his back soft claps. You have a hard time not staring at his thick thighs. “How come?”

Marco, leaning sideways against the fence enclosing the fields, shrugs with one shoulder. “Feels like I might be able to do more if I join them.”

“The Scouts will be happy with a guy like you,” Reiner continues. “You’re a great soldier, Marco.”

Marco ducks his head as if he can hide the red tinting his cheeks. “What about you guys?” he quickly asks. “You’re both at the top as well.” Reiner throws Annie a quick glance which she promptly ignores.

“It’s gonna be the MP for me.” Reiner isn’t shy about his decision, giving Marco a crooked grin. “I’m pretty sure that’s where I can do my best as a soldier.”

A snort comes from Annie’s direction, so quiet that you think you’ve imagined it were it not for Reiner turning his head in her direction. She’s looking down at Dolly’s head resting on top of Reiner’s thigh, and something in her eyes is short enough to send a shudder up your spine.

“Best as a soldier?” she scoffs. “You think anyone joining the MP has such a pretentious, noble goal in mind?”

Even though Annie and Reiner didn’t seem to get along well, or have any common history you’re aware of, sometimes she is capable of saying things that make him go silent for a moment—like right now. Maybe that was just Annie’s expertise—saying things people didn’t want to face.

“What about you?” Reiner turns to you, choosing to run from Annie’s glacier-cutting gaze. “Changed your mind yet? Your performance has dropped, but you can still make a comeback in the final exams next month.”

You look up from where you’re crouching on the ground, digging your hands through the soil. The smell calms you, and nothing is quite a testimony to a hard day at work than the dirt and grime under your nails. “Nope, still don’t care about the MP,” you chirp.

“Really? Has Eren finally convinced you to join the Scouts, then?”

“Eren?” You throw a quick glance at him. “No, why would he have anything to do with that?”

“After everything you’ve been through, I thought you two are like this,” Reiner says, crossing index and middle finger. You throw a handful of dirt at him and pretend it doesn’t please you that the others think you and Eren are that close.

It shouldn’t be a surprise.

Not after you’ve survived the wolves; not while you two gradually gravitate towards each other like moths to a flame. Certainly not when every time you practice together in hand-to-hand-combat, it is like rough, desperate fucking where no one wants to relinquish the upper hand—and dominance—to the other. There is no finesse to your fighting, unlike Annie or Mikasa, you two just rely on brutal force and a desperation to win that is downright frightening at times.

Last time, you had almost won. Almost, if you hadn’t been so blind with joy and stroking your own ego having handed Eren his ass. Then, everything happened so quickly. He hooked his feet behind your ankles and tugged, swiping your legs from under you. Not even a second on your ass, his feet locked behind the back of your knees, he turned to the right, forcing you to turn with him, and suddenly you were the one on all fours, bending over. You had tried to scramble back up, but Eren snatched one arm from under you and his other hand found the back of your neck, pushing your face into the dirt, the other pinning your arm behind your back. His hips pressed hard against your ass. Stunned, you had remained still, and you could have sworn Eren had muttered something along the lines of “Right where I want you,” but you couldn’t be sure because a moment later, Jean was already there, kicking Eren off you. You didn’t pay any attention to their squabble—you didn’t pay attention to anything happening that day because your mind kept conjuring very unnecessary images of Eren using his strength to manhandle you in a bunch of different other positions.

“I made my decision a long time ago,” you say now before your mind can venture to those fantasies again, “and I’m not going to change it. Just like Eren won’t change his mind if I tried talking him out of joining the Scouts. Besides—” You clamp your mouth shut. Three pairs of eyes stare at you, waiting for you to continue, but you can’t just tell them about the deal you’ve made with Ymir.

She approached you two months ago, on a grey, rainy day—though maybe ‘approach’ was too tame a word for how she had slithered after you like a snake sneaking after prey for days on end. It was a simple, small mission; heading out to a long-abandoned manor close to Wall Rose and checking the damage after a vicious storm had swept through it. The rain had subsided enough to venture out, and during a short break under the coverage of a tree’s canopy, you had veered off the group to refill your water bottle with fresh rain water.

The landscape was not gentle and rolling, but harsh and foreboding. Green hills dotted with grey gorse swept up into crags of dark rock. Long lines of mortarless stone walls, meant for keeping in sheep, crisscrossed the green; here and there was dotted the occasional lonely cottage. The sky seemed an endless expanse of white, brushed with the strokes of long, dark grey clouds.

You had noticed Ymir shadowing you all week prior to that conversation. Standing in dark corners, watching you with her unnerving, small eyes like little pinpricks of a dagger’s sharp tip aiming for your throat. You’d known it was only a question of when she’d corner you, and when on that day, she had risen behind you, you were already expecting her, meeting her eyes only slightly obscured by the hood drawn over her face from her cape.

“What do you want?”

Ymir had stared at you, unblinkingly. And then she’d thrown her head back, barking out a laugh that cracked like thunder. “Right to the point, then. I like how you turned out after that whole fiasco with the dogs in the woods.”

“You mean when I almost died? Yeah. Great times.”

“Oh, come on.” Ymir rolled her eyes and joined you kneeling at the ground, wiping forth her own water flask. “You survived. You grew a pair of balls most of the guys here don’t have. It wasn’t all bad.”

You gave a gruff sound of acknowledging her words—the compliment. Ymir never handed out compliments unless one was small, blonde and named Christa, and the fact in itself only proved your theory that she was after something.

Staring at you some more, Ymir’s grin didn’t cool, but it sharpened. A muscle in her jaw clenched, as though she was chewing on her words before she spoke. Finally, she said, “I need you to do something.”

“You need me,” you repeated, just to check that you didn’t mishear, “to do something for you?”

Ymir nodded, a single curt movement as one would chop up wood. Or someone’s head. You felt as if ice water had been dumped down the back of your neck, shoving you to full alertness. “And what exactly would that be?” you asked.

Ymir stood still as a statue, unblinking. You felt as though something very serious was happening right now, and allowed her to take time to find the words. Then, she finally looked up, and said, “You don’t care about the ranking. Let Christa have your spot.”

“Hmm.” You watched the rain droplets collect at the mouth of your flask where they didn’t disappear in the narrow black hole. The wind picked up, whipping your coats left and right. So many thoughts whirled inside your head until they finally settled. “You want Christa in the MP, even though you won’t be able to follow her? Why?”

“None of your business,” Ymir snapped, not even trying to bite back a sharp retort. “Just say Yes or No. I’ll figure out something else.”

“Is it because you love her?” you continued, ignoring her. “Or are you arranging everything so that she’ll help you from inside the Inner Wall later?”

Ymir didn’t respond for a while. When you didn’t think she’d answer at all, she gritted out, “I want a safe life for Christa. Don’t pretend you’ve never had anyone like that.”

You pressed your lips together. The water in your bag had started spilling. You watched the water flow over and soak into the already wet earth.

“Okay,” you said.

There was only a brief pause. “Okay?”

“Yeah.” You shrugged. “It’s like you said, I don’t care about the ranking.”

Very quietly, you heard Ymir exhale a long breath. She rose to her feet, looking like she wanted to seal the deal somehow. With a handshake or a clap to your shoulder. Maybe even pat your cheek like she had done when she’d talked to you for the first time all those years back. Ultimately, she preferred her hand intact and wouldn’t gamble with you biting it off, and stood to go back to the other cadets.

“Ymir,” you said before she left. Ymir stopped. Slowly, she turned. “What’s in for me?”

She positively flashed her teeth at you like a cornered wolf as though you have not already learned how to dance with wolves. You were not afraid of them anymore. Screwing the water flask shut, you closed the distance between you two. “You didn’t think I’d just do you a favour with nothing in return, right?”

“I was hoping you’d be that naive, yes.”

You gave her a smile. It was not a pleasant smile. “No, you’d hoped I’d let you use me. But I’m not letting my chance at having you owe me pass.”

Ymir clicked her tongue. She crossed her arms in front of her chest, and looked mildly annoyed. “What do you want?”

“I don’t know yet,” you answered truthfully. Ymir’s mild look of annoyance grew into a very physical, very palpable thing she looked like she might use and whack you with.

“You had me thinking you’re badass and smart for a second. Who’s to say you hold up your end of the deal but I’ll disappear forever?”

“I’m not worried about that,” you said, climbing after her back up the hill. “I will find you and make you hold up your end of the bargain, Ymir.”

Ymir didn’t stop to look at you. “Is that a threat?”

“No. It’s a promise.”

***

Two years away from Trost, you have almost forgotten how badly crowded the narrow streets are. Carriages roll side by side with costermongers’ carts piled high with fruit and vegetables; women shawled and carrying shallow baskets full of flowers dive madly in and out of traffic as they try to interest the occupants of various carriages in their wares; and cabs come to a full stop in the midst of traffic so that the cab drivers can scream at one another from their seats. The noise adds to the din—ice cream paddlers shouting “Hokey-pokey, coin a lump,” newspaper boys hawking the day’s latest headline, and someone somewhere playing a barrel organ.

It is a vast contrast to today’s morning exercise where you’ve practised evacuating the civilians during a Titan breach, the streets empty save for the giant wooden Titan dummies and a few citizens acting out an emergency. The instructors dubbed it a simple exercise, but everyone knew it was part of the ongoing final examination that had started a week ago and is slowly creeping towards its end.

You’re surprised how easy it is to perform badly. Ymir’s deal gives you a nice way out of carrying the responsibility to make a choice after graduation. Already, other cadets have been mumbling “what a waste it is” that you would “only” join the Garrison when so many would use your rank and buzz off inthat hside the Inner Walls. Now that you’re leaving the spot to Christa, it’s like a weight has slipped from your shoulders.

Shadis notices, of course. The first two weeks had been the beginning of your military training all over again—screaming at you until his spit ran down your face in rivers, penalty drills for slacking off, threats to send you back home where you could pick up and sell shit from the gutters for all that he cared.

You’re still here a week later, though now you wish you weren’t because slowly, you’re running out of patience to deal with Jean’s bitching.

“And why would she just barge in like she owns the place?” he repeats for what must be the third time today. “I told her I’d drop by eventually.”

“Like you dropped by the last time we were stationed near the farms and didn’t visit her?” You haul another basket stacked to the brim with flower garlands onto the cart, pushing it to the very back against the other caskets you’ve already stored. As a little girl, you never noticed how many flowers were involved in the May Day. You were way too busy stuffing your mouth with sweets and pastries, and playing at the game stalls while the adults staggered past you with heavy beer and ale filled jugs, hollering and screeching songs.

The excitement for the holiday is like a charged up buzz jumping from person to person. A day and night full of revelries and pleasantries, games and drinks and good food. A break for cadets before their graduation—and a little pick me up for the Scouts as they’re heading out for another expedition outside the Walls the week after.

You’re mostly looking forward to the food and enjoying a great time with your friends before everyone goes their own way. Who knows when you’ll see each other next time. If you see each other next time.

You shake your head, banishing these thoughts to where they don’t wear down your excitement.

“What do you mean, No?” Jean asks incredulously, which is a problem because he stops and you walk right into him, and the second basket you’re carrying bounces off his back and right into your stomach as you walk into him.

“Ooof.” You glare up at him. “Do you mind? I want to finish this work before lunch break.”

He stares at you, and realises too late, “You didn’t listen to anything I just said, did you?”

You don’t bother trying to look contrite. Jean looks like he might throw his hands up, but the basked in his hands makes that impossible unless he’d prefer a broken foot. Instead, he settles for pulling a face at you.

“I can’t believe I’m pouring my heart out to you like that and you don’t care.” He drops the casket unceremoniously into the cart so that half its contents spill, and turns around to you, thick arms crossed over his broad chest. His white shirt sticks to his skin from the hard work, outlining the strong chords of muscles running along his arms, his abdomen. He always used to be taller than you, but now after years of hard, rigorous training, he’s also broader, and he has no problem letting you know that during hand-to-hand-combat practice or whenever he wants to make a point and hands your ass to you.

“It’s hard to be on your side when all you do is bitch about having a mother who’s looking after you,” you snap. The effect is immediate. Jean takes a step back as if he has been punched and doesn’t know where the blow has come from. When he stares at you, it’s like he’s seeing you for the first time. Something inside his face shuts close.

“You don’t understand—” he begins, but immediately seals his mouth shut.

You cock your head to the side, challenging him. “Why? Because I don’t have a mom? No parents who can fuzz around and worry about me?”

Jean goes very quiet. “That’s not what I meant.”

You stare each other down like two strangers trying to determine if the person standing before you is a threat. It is as though even after these three years and everything you have been through, Jean feels more distant lately.

Before you can open your mouth, a female voice shouts from across the plaza, “You two, stop slacking off and move your asses! We’ve still got too much work to do!”

“Let’s go back,” you say, subdued.

Jean sighs and makes an after-fucking-you gesture. You move to the next row of baskets in silence. Working with your body is easier than working with your brain on how to undo the damage. But one look at Jean tells you his face is still a closed door. You have no patience for delicate lock-picking, and instead decide to kick the door in.

“I’m sorry,” you say at the same time he blurts, “I didn’t mean to be an asshole.”

You look at each other. Smile. Order has been restored.

“Ida just means well. After graduation, she won’t be seeing you anytime soon,” you say. The next basket is full of white daisies, tulips and roses. You stare at the soft-petalled mount, feeling the strange urge to shove your face right into them and inhale. Maybe you’ll get high on the sweet smelling pollen.

“I know, I know.” Jean waves his hand. “I’ll visit her. After that stupid cook off next week.”

“Why did you want to participate in the first place?”

“You think I’d let Sasha and her big mouth go around and tell everyone she’s a better cook than me?”

“Oh, woe is men and their fragile pride.”

Jean shoves you with his elbow, only hard enough to make you lose your balance.

You finish your work, the next assignment already waiting for you on the other side of the District. Your supervising officer orders you to join with the others who are already busy setting up the sets of tables and benches, and the minstrels’ stage.

You walk the same streets as three years ago on the day you signed up for the military. The District hasn’t changed at all, but you two have. You don’t miss how Jean tilts his face upwards, examining the roofs and crenellations of the buildings. Looking for anchor points for his gear. You’ve also categorised the best advance points by height. The whole world looks different since the ODM gear has become a part of you.

As you cross the plaza, Jean throws an apple at you, a leftover from Ida’s surprise visit last week. You catch it with ease, your reflexes sharpened to an arrow’s tip precision over the years. Turning it over in your hand, you barely dodge a cart transporting a row of stacked benches onto the plaza. Good service those reflexes do you. But Jean has pulled you into his side for good measure as well, staring daggers after the cart.

“Bloody Hell, it’s like suddenly they don’t know how to manoeuvre those things,” he says.

You glance at his hand still closed tightly around your upper arm.

“They’re just excited,” you say. “And a little nervous. They still haven’t found a May Queen.”

“I wonder why they don’t just pick a random chick, it’s not that big of a deal.”

“The people of Trost think differently about it.”

Jean mumbles something to himself and lets you go. “That’s why you don’t change tradition. If they’d just pick a pretty lass, we wouldn’t be under this pressure.”

“Anyone specific in mind?”

Jean looks down at you, snuffling. “Mikasa for example.”

“Wow. Okay.”

“What? Do you want to be May Queen?”

You raise your chin. “I mean, I don’t, but why do you sound like I wouldn’t be able to pull it off?”

“I mean…” Jean kneads the back of his neck. “I don’t remember the last time you wore a dress.”

“It’s not like I forgot how to move in petticoats and girdles,” you say. “I just prefer not to.”

“Come on, how hard can it be?”

“Hmph,” you say. “I’d like to see how you’d manage sitting and standing up straight in stays and petticoats for a whole night.”

“So would I,” says Marco, appearing out of nowhere with a table thrown over his shoulder as though it weighs nothing. Jean and you share a moment of silent appreciation for Marco’s arm muscles.

Jean shakes his head. Either about your comment or to clear his head from whatever images Marco’s sight conjures in his mind. “Whatever. I only really care about the food, and after that, it’s straight up inside the Inner Wall and away from this sewer of a District.”

You question that ‘straight,’ but you question even more if Marco has managed to talk with Jean about a change of heart. When you give him a sideways glance, Marco catches your eye and subtly shakes his head. Not yet, it seems.

“You know, if there’s ever a chance I’ll meet your Military Police regiment, I’ll do my best to embarrass you and tell them all those funny stories about little Jeanie how he got trapped naked in a rose bush,” you say, and drop the apple Jean has given you in a beggar-woman’s lap as you enter the wide, open marketplace.

“You wouldn’t—” Jean begins, but is interrupted by cheers erupting like a thunder storm around you. People scream, their hands thrown high in the air. You’re the definition of confusion. Marco almost drops the table and crushes a little girl darting between the adults crowding you three like ants climbing over themselves to reach food.

“May Queen!” the girl shrieks, and throws a bright flower crown with frightening precision on your head. She then points at you. “We’ve found our May Queen!”

Oh.

Oh no.

“Oh no no no no no,” you say out loud the moment someone swoops you up your feet. Nausea rolls through you—you hate hate being picked up, hate how it makes you feel like the small kid from five years ago during Shiganshina’s attack—before you start hyperventilating, you glimpse Jean in the crowd, doubled over and supporting himself against Marco, laughing at you so hard he almost topples over.

Bastard.

“No sense of modesty, not one of them,” you spit, holding your breath as Mina, Hannah and Christa try to get you into that prison of a dress made specifically for this year’s May Day celebrations. The seamstress who worked on the dress, Hilda, smiles patiently.

“Well, the people … and I mean the women, have been complaining for years that only choosing the most beautiful girl seems a little unfair. I liked that no one new this year’s criteria. I’ve heard a woman in Stohess adopted a litter of kittens, and another performed a handstand for hours and hours in Jinae. Acts of kindness make for a far better queen than her appearance, don’t you think so too, girls?”

They grunt their replies, too focused on tying the bodice on your back.

“Since we’re at it,” you wheeze, feeling as though your lungs are being crushed and all your organs squeezed into a pipeline, “how about we change the dress code as well?”

“Now, let’s not get too hasty,” Hilda says, smiling. “Or I will be out of a job.”

“But I will be out of a life.”

“Beauty is harsh,” Hilda provides unhelpfully, “but you will be the most powerful woman tonight.” And with that, she jitters away like a little excited bird to grab more silk ribbons. It’s probably the first and last time you will ever wear something so expensive.

“Last chance,” you say, turning to your friends after Mina finishes tying the last knot at the back of your corset. “Any volunteers? Christa? You would make such a better May Queen than me.”

Christa beams. “Nonsense! You look so stunning, [Name]! And I think this is exactly what you need after dropping out of the ranking.”

Gods bless her heart. You don’t know what to say should she find out you do this for her sake.

“All eyes will be on you tonight.” Mina takes your hand and twirls you around as if you are a princess and she is asking for a dance. The frilly, heavy dress brushes against your thighs and leaves a sliver of skin visible, showing exactly where—and how tight—the white tights you’re wearing end. “I can’t wait for all the festivities and drinks and music!”

“I heard the Scouts will be there as well,” Hannah chimes in. She lets her hand roam over the different fabrics Hilda has laid out before deciding which colour would suit your eyes best. “They’re off to another expedition next week, right?”

“Just a small one. I can’t imagine most of the execs joining tonight though. There’s still the final test at the end of this week, and then the official choosing of our branches.”

“It’s so weird,” Mina whispers, her grey eyes big. “We’ll graduate tomorrow.”

She’s met with silence. Between most of the cadets there is the unanimous agreement that nobody talks about the graduation; about the friends you’ll part from. You look over at Mina, oh and there it is again, the expression on her face you have recently come to see—and loathe—more often: as though her saint has forsaken her and now she is facing a brewing storm all alone.

Mina catches your eyes and gives you a sad, little smile. You have already been instructed that if you join the Garrison, you will be stationed at your home districts. You will stay here in Trost, but Mina will return to Karanes District. Even the promise that you will visit each other is only bitter-sweet knowing the first two or three years will be strictly to settle in your new unit.

“Oh, stop making those faces,” Christa says. “Tonight is a night of fun! I won’t allow you to go out frowning like that.” She grins and takes your hand, and in that brief second something flashes in her eyes that is so unlike Christa that you hesitate when she starts pulling you towards the shop’s front door. It makes her stop dead in her tracks—and there it is again, the timid look etched onto her face like a painting you’re more familiar with after all those years.

Mina must have realised Christa’s plan. She takes your other hand and kicks open the door. “Come on, we’re done taking measures. Let’s go and see the plaza.”

“I don’t think Hilda is done with the dress—” you begin, but your protest falls on deaf ears. Mina’s eyes sparkle with mischief. You have always been unable to tell her No when the Saint of Adventures holds her captive.

She pulls you outside the small tailor shop and into a narrow street where vibrant garlands of flowers hang from the roofs like exotic snakes. Already, the streets are filled with mouth-watering smells of food, the sound of laughter and joy.

Mina plucks a colourful flower wreath from a vendor’s stand. The man’s face behind the counter, just a moment ago a brewing storm, immediately clears of any wrinkles and lights up when he sees you. He bows like a knight courting a princess, greeting you with a loud, jolly “Maienkoenigin!” and with that, you are in the centre of attention.

You’re pretty sure the revelries would have started with a small speech from Trost’s mayor during Commander Pixis’ presence, but now that the people see you are out on the streets, they’ve taken it into their own hands to toast to you.

From all corners you see flower petals thrown in your direction. “Maria Maienkoenigin, wir kommen dich zu gruessen. Oh holde Freudenspenderin, sieh uns zu deinen Fuessen!” they sing the holiday’s song in honour of the May Queen and Wall Maria where the May Festival five years ago should have taken place.

Boys and girls dance around your knees, grabbing for your skirts to get your attention and accept their little flower bouquets as the crowd moves to the plaza with you in the middle. Tall poles stand at the entrances, decorated with more flowers and paper garlands snaking around them to the very top. The May pole, this year a birch tree, has already been erected in the centre where a wide square has been outlined to mark the dance floor and where later boys and girls weave the colourful ribbons around the pole.

Surrounding it are multiple, long rows of tables and on the side, right next to a wooden square where the band plays, officials have prepared a celebratory banquet fit for a queen. Your mouth waters just thinking about all the delicacies waiting to be devoured.

Were it up to you, you’d immediately charge for the food. But Mina has other plans. She pulls you towards a table—you didn’t even notice your training corps has gathered and selected one closest to the banquet.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” Mina announces. “Our May Queen!”

A round of polite applause sounds until they get a better look at you.

Connie starts howling like a wild animal.

Somewhere Ymir is screaming her case that Christa should wear that dress instead.

Jean, sitting at the very front, just stares at you—and that of all lashes uncertainty across your chest like a spiky whip. You don’t think you have ever felt self-conscious in front of him, but now you are painfully aware of the low cut of your dress, the corset hugging your body tight and pushing your tits up into full, round mounds. It feels as though one move too much and your tights will rip in two. You are very aware of how you look as you slide onto the bench next to Jean. He doesn’t scoot over to make you place, leaving your thigh pressing right against his, but turns his head away and takes a big swig from his cup as though his mouth is parched.

Compared to Eren, Jean has manners, at least. Ever since you have joined, he hasn’t stopped staring blatantly at your tits.

“Hey,” Jean snaps. Eren doesn’t blink. “Hey, Jeager!” He snaps his fingers right in front of Eren’s eyes. “Eyes up, you freak.”

Eren startles, and blinks as if he’s just woken up from a dream. He looks from you to Jean, and very intelligently says, “Huh?”

“You look very pretty,” Marco mumbles into his cup from Jean’s other side because he is the only gentleman in this rowdy round of pigs.

“I could do with a little less cleavage,” you admit. “And a little more breathing.”

“Well, it’s tradition.” Jean fumbles with his wooden spoon as if it is particularly hot to the touch. When he drops it and it falls in the non-existing space between your touching legs, he glares at it very hard as if by doing that, he might will it back into his hands. You pick it up, hold it out to him. Jean stares at you as if he sees you for the very first time.

“You don’t think there’s anything wrong with a tradition that puts women into skimpy dresses?” you ask. Jean needs a full minute before he finally takes the spoon from you. It is deliberately careful as though you are handing him a sharp tool rigged with thorns that might jump at him any second.

He makes a point looking right into your eyes. “I just think you made a lot of guys very happy today.”

“Meaning how?”

He shrugs. “We guys just talk about stuff.”

You look sideways at him. “Anything interesting?”

Jean gives you a quick once-over and says, “Oh, you have no idea.”

You can tell he wants you to ask what, so you don’t.

Once the excitement settles and the feast begins, you slowly begin to feel more comfortable. You don’t think you’ll get used to the stares and gawking, and you can’t wait to wear your comfortable uniform again where the greatest offence is someone staring at your ass. But for only one day it is nice to be revelled for your womanhood, for your beauty, and the power a woman holds for bringing forth life from her womb.

The food is more delicious than anything you had during your trainee days. You don’t remember the last time you had meat. Roasted pig, a fatty chicken broth with fresh vegetables. Familiar recipes from your childhood are served at the banquet: raviolis, tardpolane, blancmange and clarer. The mead and beer flows in rivers, served by beautiful girls who all wear a distinct flower in their hair. Children come and share their treats with you, piling hills of sweet rolls, candies and honeyed biscuits onto your table. You’re glad Sasha is already working on it.

District Mayor Singman holds his speech about work and prosperity, about the great solidarity that made this feast possible in the first place and the great harvest waiting as a reward later in the year. Commander Pixis is next, but you barely listen to his praises about the recruits showing great promise and how he can’t wait to welcome them. You’re too busy peeking over at Eren who is peeking back at you from time to time. His pupils are blown black whenever his eyes trail over the crimson ribbon holding your front together—one pull on that ribbon alone and your whole dress would come undone.

 So you don’t pay much attention when Jean and Sasha and their teams go to the front and hold their competition. Only when the familiar scent of Ida’s omelette wafts to your table, you look up and see Jean standing up on the podium, looking a little lost as he presents his culinary creation to Commander Pixis. The fact that he used his favourite meal, one of Ida’s many dishes she has perfected over the years just so her little Jeanie would go nuts with joy, unfurls something in your chest, making you feel a warmth that you know has nothing to do with the mead in your belly.

Jean wins, and thus the festival’s games begin.

Everyone who wins a small wooden chip can switch it for a free drink, a treat or a small token of affection from yours truly, the May Queen—all in accordance with your consent, of course, and you’re glad Garrison and MP soldiers on duty make sure no one oversteps your boundaries. You doubt anyone is out for quarrel and blood today, anyway. Revelries like this one are such a rarity that nobody wants to fight.

Most have been very sweet so far. Old grannies and grandpas give you their gifted tokens to hold and pat your hand, telling you their stories—about past May Days and the games and feasts and joyous times before Wall Maria’s fall.

Sometimes you stop listening because you spot a handsome young man or pretty young woman throwing starry-eyed, flirtatious gazes your way from a distance, their chips held close and dear to their chests, unsure if they can come closer. You’ve only had a few sips from the mead served at every table, but you feel so warm, so comfortable. You always smile back at them.

Others would come to chink glasses or invite you to a quick dance under the intoxicating sound of a jolly fiddle and the beautiful voices of a bard duo.

Not even an hour in, the first familiar face emerges from the crowd of strangers. Reiner grins down at you when you roll your eyes in a teasing way.

“Popular, aren’t we?” he says, flipping the chip between his fingers. His shirt is torn at the collar, dust and dirt patches adorn his cheeks and the lower part of his shirt that’s half-tugged into his breeches. Behind him, Bertholdt trails him like a shadow, looking anxious as always when he’s swallowed by a foreign crowd. It isn’t the first time you notice that he’s attractive in this non-conventional way. He doesn’t stick out even though he is so damn tall; he isn’t overly handsome but you really adore his nose and his pale green eyes. Bertholdt catches your eyes and gives you a small, sheepish smile. He looks as though he’d rather face a dozen Titans than asking someone for a quick dance.

“Why am I not surprised?” You smile, slightly leaning forward as you prop yourself up on a fence you’ve been leaning against. Reiner’s eyes immediately drop to your neckline. He mirrors your smile, and you feel all warm and tingly in your belly, the honeyed taste of mead still sweet and heavy on your tongue. “But you look like someone roughed you up real good.”

“Grappling.” He gives a lazy shrug, but you can see that he’s secretly pleased to have won. “You should see the other guy.”

“Tell me then, what affection do you seek?” you recite the quote—not for the first or last time for this night.

His only answer is a suggestive grin, and then he leans over and brushes his lips over your cheek. It sends a bolt of electricity from your face down to your legs where your knees turn to cotton. Satisfied with your reaction, he saunters away, leaving you feeling warmer than after any dance so far. It takes a minute or two until your heart stops thrumming when the next suitors already wait in line.

“Just like I predicted,” Christa beams up at you. She’s circled by Ymir and Mina, and judging from the rose-red blush on their cheeks, you aren’t the only one who’s a few drinks in. They’re wearing flower crowns as well: blood-crimson and virgin-white petals sit proudly on their heads. Except Ymir. You can hardly imagine her a queen anyway. A knight seems more likely. Christa’s virtue has always been Ymir’s biggest priority during trainee days.

Mina sways a little. It takes a moment for you to realise she’s trying to pull something out of her pocket, and when she finally manages it without losing balance, she proudly presents you a wooden chip. “I have a chip,” she declares, just to make sure you don’t miss it. She holds it under your nose as if you might still doubt her. “It was Christa though who won it,” she adds very sadly.

“Yeah, but I’m the only one who can give Christa anything,” Ymir quickly butts in, throwing her arms possessively around Christa’s small frame.

You’re about to blurt that allowing Christa entrance into the MP is already more than anything one could get around here, when Mina slaps her hands on your cheeks and smashes her mouth on yours. Her lips are very, very soft, and she tastes like sweet apple cider.

As quickly, she pulls back, a happy smile spreading on her face.

You grin back. Before joining the military, you’ve kissed one or two boys in Trost, their names already long lost and withered in a garden where you’ve pledged to take care of new flowers that have grown over the last three years. The bouvardia’s little pink heads shake in excitement today.

Mina takes your hand and weaves you surprisingly soberly through the dancing and laughing crowd, dodging expertly whoever tries to reach for you because they want to invite you for another pint or dance. She leads you to a table a little off the main plaza where couples and children dance in never-ending circles to the music, and only when you sit down, a little confused from the new surroundings, you notice the familiar faces of your squad.

Connie and Sasha, arm in arm, sway to the music, singing gibberish lyrics that could be the right ones, could be their whole new take on it. Daz and Samuel try to outdrink each other, not caring about how unkindly their bodies will repay them come tomorrow. You notice Annie, Reiner and Bertholdt are not present and wonder what they might be up to. In your half-drunken state there’s only one answer you arrive at, one that makes you giggle into your mug and almost choke on the mead.

“What are you laughing at?” Jean asks. He has Marco and Armin in tow—one distinctly blushing, the other too aware, too attentive for your liking. Clearly, Armin hasn’t touched any booze yet, and clearly, that is about to change.

The moment he sits down, on cue, a bartender from the closest counter swipes in and distributes new mugs spilling over with beer.

“Here’s your drink, stranger,” he says. “Bottoms up.”

Armin obediently starts getting up.

The bartender gently presses him back down. “The drink, lad.”

“What’s it like, being the popular one for one day?” Jean asks as he leans over the table, wearing that stupid smug smile you’d love to punch off his face. Maybe with your mouth even. The thought whips you sober; kicks up dust that’s settled in a corner for such a long time that you forgot all about the feeling it’s hiding and what it’s like to mourn her.

Answer. You still have to answer, even though you’re afraid you might choke on that dust.

“That’s a whole day more than you’ll ever get, Kirschstein,” you say, quickly locking your lips to your tankard because your mouth feels too dry.

Jean flips you off. Beside you, Marco is fiddling with something in his lap, and when you take a closer look, you see he’s pushing a wooden chip into his palm with his thumb. He catches your gaze and flushes furiously.

“Jean,” he begins, startling Jean opposite from him. Quieter, Marco continues, “Jean won it.”

You level Jean with a long, silent gaze.

“What?” Jean mumbles.

“You saying you wouldn’t wanna kiss [Name]?” Connie shouts from the other end of the table.

Suddenly, it’s deafeningly silent.

“It’d be like kissing my own cousin,” he shouts back, his voice loud enough it almost breaks. From nervousness? From disgust?

The table laughs.

You laugh.

Suddenly, the mead sloshes heavy in your stomach like acid. Maybe you’ve just drunk too much.

The jest unlocks something that’s been holding Marco back. He quickly snatches your hand and presses his lips to your knuckles before dropping it again and lifting himself from the seat. He flees into the crowd of dancers, ears crimson red, Sasha’s cries to bring her more of the sticky honey roast falling on deaf ears.

When you look over at Jean, he’s staring at you, then at Marco, as if he’s just realised something, and his pupils grow large, black. Fathomless.

You need to know what’s going on in his head, but before you can voice your question—bold by wine and pleasure, you’re ready to cross the line—a storm in the form of Eren appears right beside you, trailed by Mikasa who—do your eyes deceive you?—looks as though she’s trying not to smile. She catches Armin’s eyes, and they both share a silent glance.

Eren announces his arrival by slamming a wooden chip right in front of you as though you have insulted him and now it’s his right to demand reparations to his status.

“What am I supposed to do with this?” he demands.

You blink up at him, and it takes time before your eyes meet his as your attention gets lost on the way to his face: on his biceps, on his sharp collarbones winking at you from under his white shirt.

“What’s so hard to understand about it?” Jean snorts into his tankard. “It’s just for fun, Jaeger. Maybe you should look it up in a dictionary.”

Eren does look a little as though he’s never heard of that. You also can’t imagine him participating in a game for fun. He’d make a game of can knockdown into a question of life and death.

“You can give it to me, if you don’t want it,” Connie pipes up.

“You scared of girls, Jeager?” Jean continues, talking over whatever Connie has in mind with you. “This might be your only chance ever getting kissed by one before you head out beyond the Walls and die a horrible, pathetic death.”

“It’s stupid,” Eren says to you, as if you are the inventor of the May Queen’s tradition. “It cost me two coins to play the damn game and this is what I get?”

“No one is forcing you—” Connie tries again, sneaking his hand across the table to swipe the chip.

“Ohh, look at you, Eren, trying to pretend like you’d hate it,” you speak up now, slamming your hand over the chip and almost squishing Connie’s fingers under your palm. He jerks back, cradling his hand close to his chest. “You want to kiss me so bad, it makes you look stupid.”

Once more, laughter rises from your table. You look into the faces of your friends and relish in being the reason for their joy.

Eren doesn’t think it’s funny. Eren Jaeger is fucking determined to prove you wrong. He slaps his hands around your cheeks, holding your head in place. Every sound dies at your table.

You’re about to tell him it’s just a joke, no need to get his knickers in a twist, but he’s dead set on his mission: Giving you a concussion because he smashes his mouth against your forehead and almost knocks you both out cold.

Jean, who’s still been laughing until this point, goes dead silent, looking sickly grey.

“Hey—” he begins, but gets knocked over by an over-excited and slightly drunk Connie, splashing beer all over himself.

Eren reels back, hand pressed against his mouth, his bottom lip bleeding where his teeth have grazed it. Your head throbs and you’re pretty sure your cheeks show red lines where he’s pressed his fingers into your skin with a bruising grip.

“Oh my God, don’t you know how to kiss someone?” Connie hollers, banging his fist on the table hard enough it shakes and you hear a distinct crack. Jean starts to climb over the table, ready to administer rough justice, but his foot gets stuck at the edge and he topples off the table right to the feet of a few girls who misinterpret it and haul him up to drag him away to the dance floor. Your whole table is attacked by merry dancers, and you’re yanked away from your friends when the minstrels begin their performance and the music picks up again. The sounds swell to a roar—as do the guest’s voices when they chime in with the jolly song.

The Fishmonger’s daughter, ba ba The Fishmonger’s daughter, ba ba The Fishmonger’s daughter, ba ba The Fishmonger’s daughter, ba ba ba

A great classic to start off the night. Ring-a-ring-of-roses it goes as the guests dance in a wide circle, arm in arm, shouting in tandem. You don’t know the faces to your left and right, but their smiles are infectious. You laugh so hard your belly and cheeks hurt. The circle breaks, pairs find together like bees to flowers. Now that everyone is on their feet and in a dancing mood, the minstrels start a new song. On and on in circles it goes—left and right, from partner to partner until faces blur and become unrecognisable.

Your head feels light, as though filled with cotton. You want to stay in this moment forever—dancing, singing, laughing.

A strong hand gently settles on your underarm. You look up at strong, broad shoulders and arms the size of logs. The man has slicked his blonde hair back neatly, and when he walks through the crowd, it parts naturally as though he is a force of nature to be reckoned with—and then he turns, and you look up in the sharp, blue eyes of Survey Corps Commander Erwin Smith.

A/N: Fingers crossed I'll upload the final chapter of the first act at the end of October.

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