“We all have difficult choices to make, don’t we?” Her voice was earnest, and her eyes were firm under the descent of an approaching dusk. You plucked out the meaning of her speech. “You either do something, or you don’t. That was mine.” She waved her hands in front of her.  “But I’m not here to talk about me. I’m here to talk about you.”

Forward you went in your chair, with the zeal of curiosity at your coattails.

“Like I said, I heard how you work with your students,” The Queen went, as though she could read your mind. “But hearing is different from knowing. And I,” she gave a quirk of a smile, “want to understand.”

“What you want understand?”

“You give children power by letting them talk about their feelings. Feelings many adults don’t care to acknowledge,” she gestured to fabric pockets adorned with images of various labelled facial expressions, sewn onto a worn sheet, above the bruised cots.

You give... children power... by... talk about… their feelings. Feelings... many don't care… acknowledge.

“Orvud children may not see violence. But their family? Other adults, their friends— them? It's still here,” you replied. “Violence tears. Not just blood. But the mind.”

Historia nodded. “In such times we’re in, children need to be heard. Acceptance is a powerful tool, no matter who or what you are.”

“Right. Children may not see violence. But they feel it. And they will show it.”

The brutalities of this land, Paradis, crawled and stomped in nearly every contour and crevice under the brilliance of the sun, stars, and moon.

“Children should feel strong when they want, and weak when they need to be,” the Queen’s eyes darted to the left side corner of her person. “May I?” 

You nodded.

She pulled a stack of your self-illustrated books closer to her, its paper intertwined with twine. The Bee and The Dog, read the foremost story. If she noticed your large and rather botched writing, she made no mention of it. 

The story in her hands was completed in a little over a month’s time.

Unraveled, the pages depicted two persevering creatures working together, utilizing their physical differences to their advantage. She said nothing, but you caught the movement of her eyes across the pages as she gradually flipped through them.

“It’s to make my students strong. To help them understand. When many think they weak,” Your face crept in heat that someone of her status was perceiving your work. “Because they different minds and different bodies.”

You and your two assistants had previously gone around Orvud to look for such children, taking over a season to fill their classroom after the attack by the large, booming Titan. Some families were keen and eager to involve them in daily life, but not all; however, they, too, were still invited to join their class all the same.

“Everyone has a purpose in this world,” Historia fluttered the pages shut. “We all have something special about us, even if others can’t see it.” 

“We must learn to see it. To not fix,” you said, having parsed her words. “We must listen to children when words do not come easy. Their silence not empty. We must learn their words and silence.”

Your students did not always have the proper words or voice for their thoughts. They communicated oft through the broken items, bruises, and open doors they left behind in their wake instead.

“How do you do that?” 

“I listen. I remind children they safe in my room. Is more important than tell them about reality of outside.” You gave yourself a respite to form your words. “I never say, ‘No, don’t worry,’ or ‘No, leave memories outside door’. I say, ‘Let’s share. I want understand how you feel. How we feel. Why it’s important.’ It takes time. I must be patient, too.”

Your words may not be the most well-composed, but they were honest. 

The Queen’s lips curled into a smile, her eyes full of a warmth; a sad, lonesome kind of warmth. The warmth of a burden.

Heavy was the head that wore the crown. The theme was a common one, from which you surmised from many stories of your past life. But how heavy was her heart? 

“Yes. That’s what we need. Conviction. Purpose. It’s what I need.” 

She returned your stories to their original spot on the corner. 

Her ivory palms sprawled against the battered wood. “I’m building teams. From farmers to shoemakers, to painters to lawyers, to the masons and doctors– I seek their knowledge. Paradis, as we know it, is behind many other nations. I want to change that.”

I’m building teams. From farmers… to painters to lawyers… I seek their knowledge. Paradis… is behind… many other… nations. I want… to change that.

Many roles, one goal. A formidable proposition. “A reconstruction?” you summarized.

“No,” she smiled. She learned forward and met you halfway. “A transformation. We have the people to repurpose Paradis into something better. Stronger. And I want you to be part of the new Paradis. One that is built on a new day. And,” she said with a lighter quip, “you’d be paid well for your civil efforts.”

You gauged what you perceived to have heard. If such were the case, using skilled laborers would be a laborious and intensive process that could extend over decades. Technological advancements were, at best, surfacing. At worst, slow.

Here she was with something else: a project built on a promise, to excavate their world into something durable, one that could endure past their own lives.

“So you want compassion. My opinions of what I know. You want my voice.” You gave a wry smile. “I have the bad words, you know.”

She smiled. “Not bad. Necessary.”

“Not always so different.”

She gave an airy chuckle. “You and your bad words, then,” she continued, “would work with other educators to design progressive educational programs for Paradis. So all our children can learn to navigate life. Not just the ones who see the world. But the ones who hear and feel it, too,” Historia went; emboldened, excited, passionate, all in one, “So they may play a part in the world.”

You repeated the common words in your head.

“I must work with my students,” you replied, though your heart and mind both betrayed your desire for recognition, respect, and reverence. The irresolution was but a flimsy shield.

“You can,” Historia did not miss a second’s moment. “I wouldn’t expect you to do anything less.”

“You want to rebuild all. You want do this. I see your thoughts. But the strength for this— how? How you do it?” The idea was a beautiful one, but you knew a solid foundation could not stand firm without practical and physical methods to hoist it.

The Queen was not to be deterred. “Have you heard of Eren Jäger?” she countered.

What does he have to do with anything? The words were quick, easier to form, and easier to express. They came from a tongue native to your true home.  

You tilted your head. You mulled the question, rehashing your memories. The name sounded familiar, but familiar in such a way you wonder if you were making up conclusions of your own for the mere convenience of it.  

“Yes,” you replied after a time, certain.  “I hear. People talk from the papers. He help with Trost. He help with Orvud. With you. He is boy turn Titan, yes?” 

You were familiar with him from conversations with friends and acquaintances. Despite the occasional pastors on the square, his reputation was mostly a positive one in Orvud. He was different. He was not like the other Titans. 

Orvud was gifted to bear witness to fewer Titan sightings than other districts could otherwise say. Thankfully, Orvud was only slightly affected by Fritzian propaganda. Propaganda, that, in your opinion, were annoying pests of ideas needing to be squashed.  

Her words were as enthusiastic as her facial expressions. “The very same. Our teams— your team, too— will try to convince him to join our cause.”

Convince. 

It was a fickle word for fickle men, acted on by potentially eager persons like you. 

“What make his involvement so important?” How could you possibly convince someone to do something when you did not know them? You know of emotional regulation, sums, and barely any writing and reading beyond most of your students’ means.

What could you possibly say to persuade the boy? Or did the Titan need to be appealed?

The Queen’s words flew. “I believe he has the power to reconstruct Paradis. While we have the minds, he has the might. He can make roads. Canals. Bridges. New buildings— new schools.”

You jolted. “That means…  you no need to do all long, physical work.”

The royal held your gaze. “Because he can do it faster than we could have ever imagined or do on our own."

“Well... How he do that?” The question slipped out all the same. “We know Titans only know language: destruction. How can this Titan— he— build?”

How could one man have so much power? What power— or powers— granted him such a feat? 

“He possesses the power of a Titan, a special one of strong ability. I’ve not seen it, and neither has the military.” Her mouth set into a grim line. “But we know he has it.”

“And how you know he has special Titan?” you pressed after a minute. You attempted to make sense of the harrowing magic of this world.

Ghosts and Ouija boards? Not a problem.

But Titans? You struggled with the knowledge they were both real and corporal throughout your years.

This world— the part where a plaque of unquenchable monsters existed at least— made no sense to you at all. Not even with the many revelations published verbally and in writing—like you could read Eldian well—over the last three years. And certainly, not now. “Why he has it?” 

“Is the reason important, or its purpose?”

You sought an answer nonetheless. “So why he need convince, then? You say ‘convince’. But is not bad idea.”  

Historia's sea-blue eyes darted away for one second before they looked back at you. “He’s confined in a military jail.”

Your eyebrows shot up, the incredulity dominant. The chill of nerves coursed through your insides. “Sorry?" Seconds passed before you found your voice. "What you say?” 

The images of you giving lectures at multiple universities, writing guides and resources for children with disabilities of varying abilities and bodies, the appeal of your skill known throughout Paradis, who would know your moniker and accomplishments, all crumpled into dust and died. 

Fuck, man. Of course. If it’s too good to be true, it probably is.

This was one of the few instances when you intentionally hoped, despite your poor language skills, that you had misunderstood someone.

You hoped it was voluntary imprisonment, but the thought perished as soon as it came; no man would willingly enter a cell unless they were crazy, bold, or both.  

The Queen’s shoulders, which were once raised and poised, slumped. Her forearms sat on your desk. 

“We were in the same squad in the Survey Corps. He was— is— my comrade. I want him to help us. But… he’s not been the same.” The words no longer seemed like they were for you, but for her. An exhaustion of her soul. “He’s changed. No one can reach him. He’s angry. I understand anger. I’ve been angry.” 

“How… angry? To be in cell?” you dared, having heard her sigh. “Angry like ‘I hate myself’? Or ‘I hate’ world? Both?” A breath caught at your throat. Any affirmation would not be beneficial. 

“Soldiers are taught to obey, to follow orders. He is a safety risk to everyone, including himself.” Queen Historia stretched her lips into a downward arch. 

This man was crazy. Bold. Hated himself. Hated the world. According to the Queen.

What could go wrong?

“You know, both is deadly combination,” you offered. Air disbursed from your lips. “For him. For you. Everyone.”

Her blond brows deepened. Her blue eyes shifted toward the spirals of your written pages. “I don’t want it to be. I want to give him one final chance. To prove to everyone he’s not this, this— mindless violent monster— the military makes him out to be." Her voice was but a soft, etched whisper.

Her words carried the force of a rushing river— without hesitation and with insistence.

You wondered how long she pondered on the choice to salvage a damned man. Even in her attempt at pragmatics, the decision sounded naive to you.

“Then why?” you pressed. “What he do?”

“He followed a dream he shouldn’t have,” the monarch shook her head. “A stupid, foolish idea of one.”

“No dream is foolish, not if intent is sincere.”

Her pink lips stretched into a frown, emitting a sound. A noise of critique. “It might not be foolish, but they can lead to great pain. Those dreams,” she paused, “are the worst to have, and terrible to desire.”

You gathered her words. They were flowery and challenging to translate in full. You did your best. “What dream so terrible he must be in prison?”

“One,” she told you, voice somewhat sounding thick, “that drove him to defend his homeland from outsiders without oversight. Leaders around the world traveled to Marley–” a land you knew from whispers, the privilege of maps, and the sprinkle of the few, proud Marleyan workers present in Orvud, “– to declare war on us. What crime was ours, but existing? Persisting?”

Drove him to... defend his land.... outsiders... Leaders... around the world… traveled to Marley... declare… war on us... What crime was ours...?

War? 

War?

Your hands warmed. This plan was not to be forged during peace.

Hell no. You have already died once, huddled between sleeping children during your workday. You had not even a chance to move, frozen in the shackles of a failing body in exchange for another one. I don’t want to die again. 

“If they come for us,” she resumed, while you wrestled with a panic that was near to burst from your lips, “we need to be ready and quick. I’m Queen, I can do something, and I’ll be damned if I won’t try to protect our home— this land we’ve lived in for hundreds of years— by trying to do something for it when the opportunity exists in front of my face.” Her tone echoed in the quiet.

Your clothes shuddered against your skin as you wiped your moist hands on your lap.

This was a proactive measure, an act to fortify Paradis in the face of imminent conflict and toil. 

The panicked truths almost erupted from your lips. I thought these walls would protect me this time around. I don't want to die like this.

The lurchings in your airways constricted your voice, your air, your bearing. You cleared your throat, however unruly the harmony.

“When would they attack?” You were thankful for the ability to conjure any words at all. “When?”

You asked many questions. Your inquisitiveness was a strength and a curse, depending on the person and even for you. You knew you needed to know.

“I’m not sure. It could be weeks, it could be months,” she answered without impatience. “That’s why I’m pushing as fast as I can with this plan, based on what I know.”

You rubbed your temples in an effort to reassure yourself. “A war,” you repeated. Your body tremored, and your mouth gave way to a juddered sigh of an archive long since closed. I want to live past 27! I don’t want to die again!

“I’m not going to let them get what they want. I won’t,” she swore to you, and you almost believed her, if not for the knowledge of wars in your own time. The fear further edged inside your lungs and chest, constricting your air. “They expect me to do nothing while they get ready to attack. Paradis must stand tall and strong.” 

Breath. In and out. Breath. 

Earlier in the day, you tripped over an uneven crack on the ground. You muddied your dress, in public no less, on a street where business owners and clients alike watched as you chased after an eloping student by the name of Patrice. 

You watched, just today, as a brown-haired girl—Emma—played with the twinkling of bells, a harmonized pattern of resonance playing from inside the gardens attached to an adjacent door.

You wanted to bear witness for many more moments.

I want to live.

You shook your head sideways. You could not do this. “I —” 

But the monarch did not let you finish.

“Help me,” she croaked, eyes shimmering as she reached forward with both hands across the desk. You widened your eyes. “I can’t do this alone. Please. I can’t.”

The crown was just a girl, playing a role too large for her even larger heart.

You pursed your lips.

No matter your choice, the war would come anyway, spurring blood and ruin in its wake.

If I want to live, I must try to live. 

You wiped your hands on your clothes. You could not control the way they shook, the way your fingertips cooled at the tips as the blood rushed out of them, before you put your hands on top of hers.

I must try. 

“This will no be easy,” you warned her and yourself.

Is this what the life of a Queen was? To make big demands for the risk of little gain? To stress so much to chance?

You could have been reborn as anyone, but thank God, at least, it was not someone with authority. “I no have time to think on it, I think?”

And you did not know the man—Eren—as well as the Queen; they shared a history that you would never unravel.

Though you understood enough from the monarch that the man was exceptionally prone to anger– then and now– as Queen Historia claimed, she still held some form of high regard for him. 

Maybe he could be reasoned with.

And few concepts made sense for an outsider like yourself in a foreign land. Titans, by all rights, had no place on Earth.

You were not on Earth, because wherever you were– Paradis– they not only existed, but dominated outside of the shield of high walls.

The sovereign looked at you as though you were the downpour of heavy rain after a drought. It caught your breath. You found yourself lifted with emotion. I have to believe that, too. 

There must have been a reason you landed here. There must be. 

The people of Orvud faced an unfortunate consequence; one of circumstance, where they lived within stone protections. And yet they worked, they lived, and loved towards another day.

They were strong enough to persist in the face of outside turmoil. Enough to compel you to continue living. The people had granted you an unknown gift, despite your challenges: the strength of being.

If the people here could live amidst looming threats of monsters, then you, reborn once already, could too.

She shook her head, light tendrils framing her face, as she gave your fingers a brief compression. “I’m sorry. I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t need a response now.”

“That is…” You trailed off. Paradis had no standardized educational system. Classrooms were independently run, and while all claimed some degree of quality instruction, many were more focused on propagandizing some Fritizian shit you did not care to know rather than pedagogical teaching. The Fritizian ideology was more pronounced in the classroom than outside of it. 

Could this society truly progress? 

“It’s a lot to think about on such short notice, I know,” The girl's lips stretched in a grimace. “We may fail. But the probable reward is greater than the risk.” 

Karl Fritz’s legacy stifled teachers from sharing and promoting critical thought among the very social institutions that demanded, inherently, it to be challenged. 

Queen Historia offered not simply to challenge the structural indoctrination but to shred its grip on Paradisian society, send its ashes to the winds, and build from the soil that was left behind.

My students. As it was back home, your work was messy, physically exhausting, and frustrating. 

Most of the time, it was heartwarming, hilarious, and made you eager to face another day to make a difference in the lives of your students.

You could even teach instructors. 

You could give not the wisdom of the craft, but your knowledge of it.

You could help dissipate a preemptive conflict.

And, who could say they lived twice to achieve more feats?

How could you exist in this life, knowing you could make enough impact to change it for the better? 

“Okay,” you said, eventually. “I choose join you.” 

Historia’s mouth opened, emitting a broken, choked gasp. She looked down at your shared hold. She looked up to you. “Thank you,” she said. Her voice sounded thick. “You have no idea how grateful I am to you.”

"No need." Let it be known you were a part of something bigger than yourself— in the name of helping others, dedicated in the name of service. “What I bring?”

She gave herself a minute. “Bring anything you think can help you. You’re the expert.”

Your compassion burgeoned for her plight. “Where… where I go?”

“You will travel to Trost,” she spoke with gentleness, “so pack for your travels. It’s nearly a four-day trip.” She gave your hands one final, strong squeeze and hoisted herself up. Her thumbs massaged her round bump.

You would need to prepare your assistants in advance with lesson plans, notes, and materials, so they could lead the classroom for a time. There was much to do, and little time. Every minute was crucial, and your mind spun with plans for the approaching days.

You walked the Queen out to her carriage, making sure to open the door for her on their way out.

The sun-haired youth turned to face you. Her back faced the open entrance of the languid district. “I know it’s not easy, but... thank you.” She had a wide, grateful smile. “For wanting to make a difference with me.” 

She whispered to one of her guards, who departed on horseback, before she returned to face you in full. “My envoy is on his way to your headmaster to inform him of our agreement. You shall have no problems.”

“I will do my best for you,” you nodded. Your heart warmed for the promise of a greater purpose, a promise you buried deep within you so many years ago.

“A military escort will arrive for you before dawn tomorrow. Try to sleep well. And–” her tone, though stern, was not unkind. “Make sure you eat something.” She gave your shoulder a pat. “Prepare yourself, it’s going to be a long journey.” 

She dropped her hand, walked into the carriage, and departed with no further glances spent your way as her form shrunk inside a radiant sky of hued watercolors.

Everything with Aune Melyse always began with a comment. She was the sort of woman one could find complaint in her own complaints. 

On this day, after you sat in the kitchen of the home you shared with her, you stated that you were not going to work the next day.   

She gave a non-confrontational response— a “why”— from her lips as she worked on a potato stew, a silver ladle in her hand.

She turned towards you before you even finished explaining what occurred in your classroom. “You are doing this? For certain?” 

The older woman leaned against the kitchen countertop, her thin eyebrows furrowed; the lines of her mouth were stern and resolute. The carrots and potatoes simmered a soft smoke from behind. 

You knew the conversation would spiral downwards from here. “Yes, I told you already. I will do it. I say yes.” 

“You come to me with this,” she said. You recognized the colors of her tone, a palette of strong hues, before she made her displeasure known. 

Sure enough, Aunt Maryse’s fingers, sun-kissed with a flurry of freckles, drummed the ledge of the counter. The taps were harsh and raging.

“Ridiculous,” she began, baring teeth. ”Absolutely unbelievable. If she’s great friends with Jäger, why can’t she do it? Why does she need others to spoil their hands for her?”

“You think too much on fantasy,” you retorted after a short time. “Why you not see this as good?”

“Because! You don’t understand. How could you?”

“I understand enough. I understand my children need help.”

“No, you don’t. What do you know of lies and loss? The Queen and Mitras are all full of it. And you, you green girl, will drown in it.”

“I no go to Mitras. I go to Trost. I go to talk. And I come back.”

Your aunt barked an aching laugh. “You make it sound so easy. With your life, I suppose it is.”

There were no words that could dilute your truth to her, to anyone, to not think it as nothing more than an insane folly. “And?” you pressed, “You know Queen? Why you no introduce me her long ago?” 

Her dark eyes flickered, but you would bear your words anyway. She started it.

The older woman turned around to stir the stew with urgency before returning your way. “This government plays us on strings and thinks we can be easy puppets! This Queen is the biggest puppet of them all.”

“What you saying?”

“I say she is a false hero! She is the voice this government wants you to hear! Their mouthpiece!” she pointed the spoon with a cry. “You do not see it because you are a fool! One swept by your pride!”

She… is… false hero! She is…. government… wants you… hear! … Mouthpiece! You do not see it… because… you are a fool! … Your pride!

“How do you know? You are cynical! A cynic who critique lives of others for their choices!”

“Yes, and what of it?” she seethed. “I criticize humans because they have left me no other choice. You see this world in color, and you are blinded by it. Why must Eren Jager be persuaded? Tell me why.”

“You know why."

“You don’t even have the heart to say the words. Someone who must be persuaded, someone with great power must be forced,” she said, her beady eyes fixated on yours, “A man who must be convinced will not bow to words, much less your simple ones.”

“You don’t know. I must try.”

“Then try! With your plain words and child’s scrawl. How will you do that? Or did you not think of that before you agreed?” 

“I speak enough to be understood,” You bit back. You knew your letters. Though your sentences were transfigured across pages, she made you out to be a fool, and not the educated college graduate you knew you really were. “And I not too illiterate. People understand me.” 

The white of her lips was prominent as she pressed them together. “Does it matter? You will bleed your hands out with a smile as you speak your words and read your letters, and the Queen will stand above you and laugh while you do it.”

You stood. “You know how better Orvud could be? Easier life for many? Everything can change! Everything can be different!”

“Come back down from it, you stupid girl! You wish to live in a dream! Our life is not difficult because we labor! Our life is difficult because we are restless creatures in a small enclosure!” she spat.

“It could be better!” You knew it. You lived it. You had seen it. “To work less and make way for pleasures!”

“You and your pride, and now you tell me you seek gluttony!”

“If I do, what you say?” Your voice grew in strength. You built a life to teach the marginalized children of carpenters, craftsmen, curious soldiers, and many others. The pride swelled in your chest. I did that. Me. “Enjoying not a sin! Happiness not a sin! Living not a sin!”

Your aunt scoffed. “What do you know of necessity? While the people of Shinganshina fled, what were you doing? Stitching garments and writing in your room! And eating food that was always, always at this table!” She shook the spoon at you once more before she returned it to the pot.

"What of me? My students no have it! They no have help but me! I am one necessity! They deserve life! The help to live! The life to be!"

"How— how dare you! You twist my words!"

"Is what you saying! No? I have slow understanding, but I no stupid. I know the words well enough. You say 'we no need easy life! Who cares!'"

"You've had one all the same! Whether you wish it or not, you have enjoyed the fruits of my apple tree, my home, a home in Mitras! A home here! In Orvud! Do not tell me you know what it is like to toil!"

I have lived it! I know what it's like to have! To want for so little! 

“I not chose to born to my life!” The confession was one you could never explain. Not truly. You spewed pettiness anyway. “And you know it!” My curse is the foresight of knowledge for what this world could be.“What right you speak like this?”

“Because someone has to remind your forgetful mind! When that, that— monstrous titan rammed itself into our walls! Do you remember the smoke of stone and death? The sea of flames above us? And then, that woman soared the skies to kill it. Ha!” She cackled, the sound something ugly. “At first, I thought it amazing that a girl could brave such a storm of ruin...”

“So what changed?”

“You,” she replied. “You. I have seen you, been with you, for many moons. I have helped raise the child my brother lacked the tolerance for, alongside my own. I can not stand my brother, but for all his flaws, he placed you at my side.” 

“I am always here,” you answered, softer, your mind fleeting towards your lovely and fair cousin, gone far too quick. For all your aunt’s flaws, she was a fierce woman, born from love and faith and her own aches. She took you into her home when your parents in this world had wanted you out of theirs. “I know what you done. But I said yes for the courage, Aunt.”

“The courage of what?” 

“The courage to try.”

Your aunt shook her head. “You speak as though this is the only way. You accomplished enough despite the doubt many had in you. In Mitras. Here!” She spread a hand to her face before it returned to her side. “What am I to do with you?”

“Nothing,” you said. “But hope and dream.”

She scoffed. “What is hope good for? I have dreamt, and I have lost for it.”

Hope is good for the soul. Hope is what has kept me alive, you longed to vocalize. My spite to succeed has burned a flame bright enough for me to try. 

Instead, you said, “Then— trust me. Trust me for trying, doing.”

She shook her head. “I can not.”

“Why? Why, Aunt? Why you no believe in me?"

“Because your influence, despite your skill, is not yet reaching. Is it not enough to change your world? Why is this life not enough that you must go and seek danger?” Her timbre wavered. “And now you go, away where I can not reach.”

“I want change world. Like this. For those who can not speak, who struggle not knowing,” you answered after a minute or so. “I no think it's dangerous. But if this world not enough for them, is not enough for me.”

“You have done enough. You are doing enough.”

“Am I, with knowledge of this? How I look my students in face if I have power to do something and I did not try?”

Aunt Melyse snuffed the open flame, stretching her mouth in a frown. “The food is ready.” She returned to face you, her face scrunched in an unbridled flurry of fury.

“You are good, for all your gluttonous, prideful faults. But the politics of the capital will devour you, and I will not be there to save you from such a distance.” She stomped deep into the house until all that was left was the stillness of silence.

You looked in the direction from which she exited. “I don’t need you to,” you whispered in your native language.

You ate alone, trying and failing to erase your aunt’s words from your heart.

The knock scraped your door before the bruised hours of dawn, ripping you from a nonexistent sleep. The world outside your window was overcast in a blanket of grey as you ventured outside, a moderate mist enveloping your body. 

The military police officer situated on the side by the door was a study in monochrome himself, his body and facial features stiff as he bade you space to enter the horse-drawn carriage. After some moments, the journey began, your world moving, as the wooden cart was pulled by a lonesome but steady mare.

You looked back at your aunt’s home before the familiar abode turned into a grain, and then, at last, nothing. You knew it was unlikely for her to bid you goodbye, but your eyes watered nonetheless.

You told yourself you did not care until it became a song in your head, but that was but a fiction wrapped in a repeated beat.

She could have at least tried to see you off. She, who had taken care of you since the age of eight, could not be bothered to give you anything, not even a ghost of her presence.

You peered through the window in an effort to venture your thoughts forward. The cobblestones,  smoothed by years of overuse, were pressed underfoot by the horse’s hooves.

Despite the soft drab, the homes in the district stood high on what looked like the concrete-like substance of clay brick. The roofs were steeply pitched to scatter heavy rains. Mr. Tillion, the local carpenter and occasional donor to your classroom, informed you that the local architects designed these homes using heated limestone mixed with water to create a waterproof mortar. They were called half-timbered houses, built to endure so long as they did not encounter titans.

Interlocked wooden beams framed the homes around them, like the skeletons of ancient buildings. Or something like that; it had taken multiple occasions from Mr. Tillion for you to understand how the homes surrounding you were built. 

Orvud appeared as a historical reenactment of a more archaic Germany, preserved by the embers and ambers of the peering sun. 

You used to joke to yourself, as you aged, that you lived in a perpetual Oktoberfest, except without the fun of wearing dirndls and lederhosen. 

And without the actual German people. 

And the German language.

And pretzels.

And the imbisse.

And, of course, with more monsters. You were grateful to see but one in your lifetime. The rest were outside the walls, the only barrier protecting you and folk from certain death and destruction.

There were no telephone poles, no electrical wires, no hum of a highway. Instead, the carriage boxing you in rattled. Its wheels cried. Hooves clipped. The soft steps of people with their own personal clocks began to set up for the day.

All the houses were of varying degrees of comfort, which could not be said for other districts, according to what you learned from gossip throughout your years. Nonetheless, for a land that had relatively little compared to the bounty of your old life, its people were creative with what tools they used to live and persist. 

The people of Orvud lived a simpler life, but simple, you knew, did not mean easy.  

Their fights were among other people, and though they toiled, they toiled in a shared struggle. 

You saw the tables scattered among the streets, every so often, their chairs full with gossip, food, and drink by midday. Children would chase after each other, running through narrow passageways, up side streets, and along the main river that crossed the district. 

You let out a smile, however small.

People moved with their own agendas. More early risers opened their shutters, the crack of their frames groaning amidst the decreasing quiet.

The city was real, old, and stirring.

Sellers at the market woke up before the crack of dawn, setting up their fruits, vegetables, cheese, and artisanal goods to open their shops. People moved from one district to another, spending their mornings and evenings traveling. No matter the threat of destruction hanging above their heads, people worked and lived their lives. A flurry of people– seamstresses, shoemakers, tailors, glass blowers, potters, dyers, lawyers, secretaries, and more– all found their existence within the walls, and life flourished because of it. 

This was the city of people who worked with their hands. The city was for builders— a city born of strength and love.  

Life in Orvud was a tangible, practiced symphony that revealed that even the mundane could be extraordinary. 

As they trudged forward, more people walked to the ends of the road. Military police lingered on benches or against walls. Some talked amongst themselves, with civilians, and a few attempted to talk to passersby who rejected them in their stead.

Women and men in uniform, unlike the military pass, and you scrunched your face at the smell that trails after them. Nightsoilmen.

You placed a hand over your mouth, a shield to protect yourself from the putrid stretch that managed to find its way between your fingers. It was a surprise that the cholera— or “the plague”, as they called it here— only contaminated small pockets of the district some years ago, less than it should have.

When not scented with shit, the air was rich and crisp and full, and no longer left you, so used to breathing in pollutants, wheezing.

The blacksmiths hammered through the window-fronted shop, clanging a rhythm of lyricism. Garrison recruits, uniforms askew from the weight of their training jogged past, the exhalations of their mouths puffing in the cold air. A woman scrubbed at her window with seasoned strokes before showing her son how to do the same.

A horse ambled by with a man holding onto its reins. The man was a farmer, bringing his necessities to the center of Orvud, where the markets were most profound. 

People peered into your carriage at a distance. Some gestured with their heads or with their bodies turned in your direction. Some looked on from their window, their heads inclined your way. I’ll be back. I'll have so much to share, you promised these strangers, made familiar through their shared communal space. They knew not of you, you knew not of them; under the shared communal life, a different life, you made a vow that was much for them as it was for you, too. I’ll make you proud.

You gazed out the window and up toward the sky instead. The garrison soldiers, even concealed by the mist and angle, were doing their slow diligence.

You rolled through the heart of Orvud and its veins before finally passing through a massive, guarded archway. 

The motion of work, the steps of people, the whispers of words, and the burgeoning of life were silenced in exchange for a far-reaching expanse of open terrain you knew as outer Mitras. 

Those who went to Mitras were not there to simply live, but to opportune; to live within the city center was as necessary as breathing for many. In its outer edges, trees fluttered, green shrouds and shrubs shifted, small hills careened their cart, and rivers flowed from below the bridges they passed. The occasional groupings of houses and inns speckled your sight. 

The trip progressed, and you closed your eyes. The weariness of working multiple days’ worth of curriculum into one night drew your internalizations into nothing.

Your guard, a man with blond hair, shook your shoulders. “Hey, Lady. Wake up.” 

You opened your eyes as they fell onto a world of flickering stars. You wiped the slight drool from your mouth.

You looked through the window, noticing the inn, before your steps crunched against the natural terrain. 

Your escort spoke with two others adorned with the same unicorn-emblemed uniform before ushering you to wait inside the building.

“What happen?” you asked him, still slowed from slumber, by the inn's door.

He gave you a glance. “There’s been a change of plans. We’re not staying for the night.”

Your brows went up. “Why? Why we can no stay?”

“We’re running later than we should be,” he grimaced. “We’ll be switching some horses, and we'll have to go faster to get to Trost.”

You stopped an upcoming groan after you learned what he meant. “We so slow we do no stay tonight?”

“Lady,” he grunted, “If it were up to me, I’d be two pillows deep in my big bed after a nice pint of beer. But what about it? This Jäger guy is more important than us getting our basic needs met.” His cadence was corrosive. “Anyway— find a spot somewhere inside, I’ll bring you back when I’m done.”

You sat by the corner of the inn as three other military officers and their companions switched out different horses in exchange for coinage. 

By the time your chaperone returned to beckon you outside, your carriage was attached to a chestnut steed with a thick black mane. The tail, thick but wispy, casually swung to either side.

“Took some of the men here to get the straps right,” he grunted, “But we’ve got the right of it. Come on, let’s go.”

Even with the Queen’s advice, your endurance and tolerance for any form of transportation— car, bus, or horse— were low.

Your stomach churned. Your ass hurt in your awkward attempts to get comfortable on the wooden bench. You stopped to use nature’s restroom more times than you want to admit, to the annoyance of your guard. A gradual headache had mutated into a migraine from the incessant ruffle and clatter of your carriage. 

Your guide managed you well enough, and on the third day, he called out to you.

“Hey, Lady,” he said from the front, turning to look at you. His eyes were red-rimmed, and his under eyes were darkened with the burden of travel. “We’re approaching soon. Once I stop, get out with the rest of ‘em. Leave any stuff you don’t need behind. I’ll be here waiting, anyway.”

Your cart stopped with certainty. Your hands dashed to grip its wooden sides. The officer verbally ushered you out as people gathered at the entrance of a small but impressive castle. 

Here’s to better futures. A new world was arriving under their feet. You would conceive ideas with your mind, cement plans with your graphite-smeared hands, and finalize them with a definite heart.

You weaved through the many horses and Paradisians before you entered the military headquarters of Trost.

Sunlight streamed through high windows swept by curtains. The castle was a mix of cement and wood. 

Many in civilian clothing clustered into the entrance before military members began to separate them by last name. You huddled in the small pocket of space you found, soon sandwiched by invitees. 

You were beckoned to a large conference hall to your right. A sea of benches surrounded numerous tables, all facing a wooden dais. A flustered soldier, running from one table to the next to guide invitees, told you where and which table to sit. 

You watched the other committees gradually form. The room buzzed and echoed with an anxious, ambitious, but excitable energy under the high ceiling.

You found that there was not just one group for each skill, but multiple groups.

There was an agricultural delegation for farmers, who appeared to be agricultural laborers. There were Fritizian monastics and noblemen, blacksmiths, estate managers, cottagers and coppers, and that was only the start of it as they huddled into tables. Traders in various attire, including dresses and suits, represented their causes. Physicians, tinkering with their metallic objects and documents engaging in probable discourse. 

They were Paradis, encompassed in a sole room, deposited by the dream of a Queen. 

Of what you understood, William was an aged headmaster from Ehrmich, who, you found, talked too much about his days as a garrison member. Filip was a teacher of soldiers and the oaths that bound them to their service. Mary was a thirty-something-looking governess from Utopia, prim and proper. Boris, a schoolteacher from Trost himself, appeared to be in his early forties. He spoke of addressing the inmate, regardless of whatever his crime, as a man. 

Then, there was you, the twenty-three-year-old teacher for disabled children.

William, the self-proclaimed leader, began to organize who would talk when. You plucked words from their speech, your mind a perpetual translator. The world carried on in zeal whilst you focused.

William was bossy. Mary was impudently bold. Boris was kind. Filip was rigid.

When it was time to refer to order, you input that you wanted to go last. They looked at you oddly, except Boris.

Mary opened her mouth at your words. “I go last,” you affirmed before she could speak, looking at her and them all. Forming words was difficult. Understanding them was a challenge. Those who speak enough will show enough of who they really are. A person will reveal their nature, whether they speak a single word or give a speech.

You would rather observe how the man, Eren, engaged with the others before attempting your conversation.

Mary scowled at you as William’s pencil finalized the arrangement. You rolled the inside of a cheek to cover what would have been a proud smile.

Many minutes passed; in between, you built a conversation with Boris, who was curious about your work. The reverberations of conversation receded into a hush once the monarch entered. The military police guarded her presence.

The Queen entered the room at their front without a procession of drills, but with a stride of intention. She walked to the middle of the dais, clasping her hands in front of her. 

“Thank you all for coming,” her voice carried through the delegations. Her blue eyes swept over the mass of individuals collected for the promise of a new, brokered dawn. “Many of you have traveled far and have left your work and your families because you were asked to do so in the name of duty. Your presence today is the cultivation of all your hard work.’

The woman looked at them all, her face resolved. “The future of Paradis is being decided against our will and beneath our feet. Eren Jäger possesses a power that may be our only hope against the entire world, who seek, in this very moment, to kill us all.” A weariness swept across her face. “This power is a weapon we must use not for destruction, but for enlightenment, where our very people can prosper, thrive, and learn!’

Her chest rose once before she spoke.

“Before you begin your plans to persuade him, I need you all to know what you are all going up against. Eren has committed an unthinkable act, one we could have never imagined. Some of you may have already heard whispers, so I will tell you the truth in its stead: Eren was not just a participant in the attack on Liberio. He is the reason it happened.”

Gasps erupted, voices collided, rising in anger, stirring in shock, shouting in fear.

“Silence!” Historia’s voice boomed above them all. An impressive feat, despite her size.

The Queen took a deep breath, accentuated by another rise of her chest. “He used our trust and his Titan power to orchestrate a massacre against civilians. And I said nothing to any one of you in this room,” the words came out, heavy and weighted. “Because I knew the burden of knowing would have stopped you from trying to reach whatever is left of the man that might still be inside of him.” 

The Queen watched her consequences take form in the crowd. Many of whom began to realize they were unwillingly subjected to a horrific task.

The graphite pencil in your hand, slanted against the desk, began to bend at your grip. What have I done?

He massacred civilians. 

Men, women, children, people.

She had extended her hands to you, begged you, and asked you to hold your hands while knowing the curse of his actions. She asked you to bleed with her. Is that what she meant, in sincerity? Not to toil in joint mental effort, but to help him pierce and slice into soft skin and even harder muscle of others, dim their bright eyes, and watch the course of rubies stream from their wounds, to save our own?

She asked you to bear the weight of her knowledge. She turned and twisted it in the name of beautiful purpose. She knew.

You lied to my face anyway!

You called his dream, however unaware, sincere. The word was like ash to a dying flame. Historia had not told you what his dream exactly was, and instead threw back words of resplendor while pampering you with expressions of a sweet future.

This— the deaths— was this the dream he coveted? The one he desired? The one that drove him to defend his homeland?

You catch the eye of a woman your age, and you match her concern in equal measure. Oh god.

The reconstruction of Paradis was to be built on a pile of bones from the blameless with the help of the blamed.

The words of false patriotism curdled in your tongue.

She was just as complicit for trying to empathize with the fact that he had murdered innocents— with goals, pasts, loves, and lives. And now, she was asking those in the room to absolve him so he could be their cause.

Your pencil cracked in two.

Boris and Filip, who sat on either side of you, glanced your way, but you did not reply.

“Do not think Eren will be easily convinced when you walk through those doors and into his cell. The hardest work you will ever do in your lives today will be to try and reason with a man who is ready to burn the whole world down to ashes. He has already done it once to a city. We must appeal to whatever sense of duty he has left and his love for Paradis! We must talk to him to help us in our fight to build a better nation! Here in this room, we must choose life, not death! Believe your words are stronger than weapons. Believe understanding is stronger than fear. Use your voices,” she said, firm. “Make them loud, let him hear you, and remain firm!”

No. She pleads for an immoral god, and she knows it. Historia was asking them all to make space for the murderer, not the other way around. She fucking knows it!

The silence was more significant and telling than the noise that once filled the hall.

Some faces were set with apprehension. Few, with serious resolve. Some, with anger. Many looked terrified. 

This was no battle cry.

The monster plays Death with people’s lives, and she wants us to move past it like nothing? The girl was pleading for a fragile hope to be delivered, one that was not yet fully determined to come. For one long moment, you saw the mess hall in ruins and a relentless maw. For a few moments, the land wept red, and the heat in your chest rushed in, carving a storm; unending, unabated, and unwavering.

Historia stepped down from the front of the room, accompanied out by the uniforms.

The door opened, exposing the hardened-faced officer. All eyes had turned. You abated in anticipation, awaiting the consequences of your stupidity. Fuck. The door to the exit, where your carriage remained, was a solid wall of defiance. Fuck me, man.

“The first team will proceed to a secure wing!” he called out with his clipboard. Your eyes darted at the sound of the officer's voice. “We will call groups one at a time to make their attempt. Wait here until your team number has been called!” He turned his back, leaving behind the hard clap of his footsteps in his wake.

After a while, the door creaked open. The first delegation was called, faces like stone and mute, escorted away from your line of sight.

The conversations and ideas you once explored with a ghost, back when you were fresh-faced and bright-eyed, crumbled under the truth of splintered flesh and torn muscle.

The murmurs, like those of your committee, were charged in the room. You were silent for what seemed like ages.

The same officer returned at last, his presence doing more to suck the air from the room. His eyes scanned a list on his clipboard. “Group Eight. Follow me!” his voice carried the sentence like a whip.

Your group shared a look. If you were to fall and fail, at least you would do so together. The hairs on your arms stood up as you peeled yourself from your seat. 

It was time to descend to hell.

You breathed through your mouth and out your nose as you willed yourself to walk straighter. 

Courage.

They were Team Eight, they had five members, and it was now their job to try to reason with the devil.

The officer led you to a special room some ways from the hall before stopping to nod at two other uniformed men. They worked in tandem; well-trained soldiers were known to be practiced in the conversation of a non-verbal dialect, spurred by the pragmatics of survival.

The clipboarded man was moored, whence the duo beckoned you and your group to follow them. Their guidance led you all to a separate wing of the building. 

An unassuming door was pulled back with a grunt, only to reveal another, a widened, iron-band and cladded door. It looked like a vault, but a weary, soiled one. You supposed it was dual-sided; a door unassuming outsiders would think twice about, and a seared exit for its insiders. Once the door was fully opened, the group began to descend, stepping on old stone shaped into stairs, a path that was crooked and low. 

A chill crept on your skin from a draft that made itself more known the further you descended. 

The stairs led to another iron door, reinforced with steel plates, which they entered. The shock of the cold air was primeval and unwelcoming. Under an arched corridor, smelling of damp rot and the faint scent of unwashed bodies, you did not want to know if they were dead or worse, alive.

The walk seemed to stretch into infinity, hued by the open flames flickering under metallic sconces. The shadows danced behind the fires, reaching like monsters on the stone wall. An apathetic attempt at light in the overconsumption of enveloping, manufactured nightfall, which jeered around them all.

The echoes of their footsteps were swallowed by the depths of the stone; no one from the outside world would hear them, nor would they hear the scuttle of rats and the occasional drip of water from the thin pipes lining the upper corners of the walls. Anything could happen, and none would be the wiser for it.

There was no place for humane imprisonment, and rehabilitation was a laughable attempt at a naive cause that many believed to be worthless. 

Here, they walked the path of an oubliette, made of stone, madness, and blood.

Here, the ghosts of victims could be buried alive, descended into a hell of their own making.

There were trials and tribulations in the form of metal cages, ready to contain and eliminate its problems in the dark. Like maximum-security prisons with cameras, guards, and monitored cells. While appearances were different, its methods were ideologically the same.

Your world was just better at hiding the blood of its fallen.

They stopped before another door, wooden and adorned with a metallic, vertical handle. The simple contrast was jarring. The men’s faces were set into impassive lines as it was unlocked and opened.

The group entered. One guard remained by the door's exit.

The cells lined the walls while the open caverns were barred by thick, metal poles. Under the moving embers, none illuminated a warm body until they stopped at the very end of the room.

The one man in front of them turned towards the last cell on their left, tinkering with the keys against the metallic bars. “Hey!” He peered through the bars. “You'd better stay awake!” he accused. “You’ve got more visitors who want to see you! Don’t go and try anything funny!” As the lock to the cell loosened, he gestured them to enter, caging them all in. 

They huddled together, backs nearly pressed against the rustic bars. They looked nothing more than a clumsy semi-circle of humanity facing a demon. 

One candle was the sole source of light in the room. Its wax fell carelessly on occasion.

A cot, which looked pitiful and deserving of the man, was supported by a thin wooden frame placed against the wall. To their left, a sink, propped by a washbasin. A watermarked mirror reflected your blurry features.

The area was too small for one person, let alone five. There would be no privacy, no way for anyone to approach him with the return of his sincerity. Not truly. 

The room was impersonal, too small, and more like a scientific study than an attempt to communicate on an interpersonal level between two humans. He was a lab rat to be gazed at, observed, and seen. Not heard. They would be setting themselves up for failure. 

The monster himself was a statue, seated on a simple chair with backrails behind a circular desk. He looked thinner.. His cheekbones jutted across his tanned skin. 

He was not a massive heap of muscle, but something leaner— powerful in his own right. This was the body of a killer.

Who knew what he could do to your team, to you, if given the right opportunity to strike? His precedent was not promising. Then again, he was a mass murderer, and you were not concerned with the living conditions of a walking incarnate of evil.

Your eyes took a better look at the evil in question.

His hair was a dark and glossy curtain, only half shielding his eyes. His pants were long and reached his ankles, and he wore a roomy grey tunic with an open collar drawn together by a long tassel. His hands, placed on the table, were patched with the black of broken charcoal he was rolling between one of his thumbs and forefinger.

Even with the crowd surrounding him, there was no acknowledgment or regard for their presence. As if to say, “You are all nothing. You and your words mean nothing to me.” 

You were glad you had chosen to go last and hated your choice to suffer in the torture of waiting, for you could see how the devil behaved and reacted to everyone.

William, brave, stupid, stepped first without thought. “Eren Jäger,” he said, walking towards the nearest chair. “The future of Paradis is on your shoulders, and it’s no doubt a burden. Just think about your legacy, what you can leave behind for our–”

“—I know who I am.” His voice carried throughout the room, a growl on the edge of a weak, wavering light. His hair had only partially shielded his features, and you were able to see winks of a dull grey in his eyes. Or were they green? By the time you braved another look, he flicked his gaze at the dark stick and spread on his fingers instead. “Do you?” 

Your insides churned as you tried to find the courage you just lost.

You thought of Betha Janns, a barmaid at the tavern nearest the home you shared with your aunt, and your closest friend. You thought of the way she always stopped sweeping the entrance of the tavern to grab your wrist and giggle over scandalous happenings before sending you on your way.

You thought of Marlene Smits, your elderly neighbor and friend, with a penchant for remembering the smallest details, who always pointed her long, crooked finger your way to beckon you into the stories of her life.

You thought of Marek and his wide, honest smile and his sweet, deep laugh.

 You even thought of Aunt Melyse and her blunt words, as you would have eagerly placed yourself the target of a hundred of her scowls and judgments than one from this monster. I’m sorry, you prayed in your head for absolution from her, knowing it would not come. You were right. All of it. I shouldn’t have agreed to come. I’m a fool.

William did not make it to the chair. He turned back around, the movement ending your thoughts. His wide, blinking eyes– shocked at the inmate’s response, his insolence, or both– said enough.

Filip walked forward, his gait slower, and sat across from him. 

Again, the dark-haired being neither looked nor acknowledged him. 

Filip cleared his throat. “Eren,” he stressed. “Let’s talk about this. There must be a better way to find peace. We can surely do this by showing Marley the type of people we are. We—” 

“‘People,’” the inmate in question repeated. His eyes shifted. They were green eyes, and they locked onto the other man, hardened as the contours of his voice. The skin around his eyes grew taut as his brows furrowed. “Who decide how they view us.” He lifted his gaze. “You can't reason with ‘people’ who refuse to see you as human. Those people... that makes them monsters too, doesn’t it? Doesn’t it?” 

Filip opened his mouth, but the inmate gave him no chance to respond as he went. His voice was piercing as his eyes. “You know what those monsters outside these walls think of your peace?” 

He spit. The liquid bubbled onto the floor.

You bit a gasp.

“They care so much about our existence, they want to end it,” the killer leaned forward. “So tell me again,” he growled. There was force in his conviction. No matter how big or small, you recalled your Aunt Melyse, convictions were always a matter of slights, curated by the person who believed them in true. And slights were always a matter of the dignity of themselves. “— about this peace you speak of. Tell me.”

Filip opened his mouth to retort, but no words came out. You would have had the same reaction.

Your eyes flickered to the wet spot on the stone. Your palms began to sweat. You pressed your feet down hard on the stone as you told yourself to inhale.

Holy fuck. What a psychopathic asshole.

Filip returned to them, eyes alit with fury.

He doesn’t care about what we do, what we think, what we say. He surely would have done it again. 

You hated him. He dared insult the dead, the survivors, the scarred, by calling them monsters equal to his measure. You hated how little he thought of human life and the regard for it. You hated how he killed women and children alongside God knows how many men. You hated how you were forced to be in the presence of an apathetic killer. You never hated anyone more in your life.

The subject turned his neck to the right to study the details of the drabbish wall, a true connoisseur of stone. 

You wanted nothing more than to turn around, tell the guards to open the door, and brave the long journey home alone.

What good was it to convince someone set in their ways? What good was it to rationalize with someone who did not want to be rationalized with?

Meanwhile, Mary took Filip’s place and began to present something about Fritzian theology and pain, which was discernible here and there. Her words flowed in purposeful, rapid-fire torrent, a blur of consonants and vowels.

You deduced that Mary was attempting to speak as quickly as possible to convey as much information as possible before the man could reject her help. Or, most likely, she was trying to say as much as she could in the hope that something she said would resonate with the man. Or, she was letting the nerves run away with her.

For all her intents and probable purposes, she was not failing; she was enduring far longer than the other men. The prisoner remained in his silence, attention still on the wall. 

It seemed as though Mary might have succeeded in chiseling a mere chance to engage in helpful dialogue.

Then, you heard it. Mary did too, as she stopped talking: a sharp, annoyed exhalation of nostrils. 

“You’ve read a lot of books,” he said, the color of his voice dry in its derisiveness.

You spared a quick glance at Mary, who returned to stand by your left, clutching her items like a shield. He turned Mary into a silent and flushed fool.

She did not deserve his disvalue. None of them did. They were only trying to help.

Your heart hammered in your chest, exhaling four seconds in, four seconds out. Your turn was soon approaching, and you could do nothing but wait to be engulfed by scorn.

Boris, the schoolteacher, chose not to sit at the seat of scorn. 

You tilted your head as he braved to kneel his left leg, right in front of the brunette. 

This was… different. 

The prisoner’s feet were under the desk, but he had turned his upper body to make eye contact with the one who had bent the knee his way.

There was regard. 

But he had given Boris something no one else achieved: sincere curiosity.

“The weight of this burden you’ve now placed on yourself…” Boris shook his head, appealing to emotion. Liberio. “Why, son? Why did you feel it necessary to do it? Let me help you.” His aged eyes were plastered onto the face of the partially mobile effigy.

A pause came and went. The visitors endured the prisoner's will of time before he spoke.

“Your back would break with the weight of everything.” What came out of the convict was a tone that was gentler than you had heard thus far, and so devastating and consequently terrible. 

“I have heard my comrade, William, speak of what you can leave behind. You were the hope of Paradis. Do not let this be it.”

“My actions, my past, my legacy— all of it is mine.”

“What does it cost you to believe that?" Boris replied, the alarm of pity bleeding into his words. 

The convict looked him in the eyes and told him, subdued, “Everything.” 

He returned his gaze to the desk.

Boris had made his appeal, but it was far too weak to be further implored. 

The older man sighed a sound of resignation as he lifted himself up. "Your silence,” he said, looking at the seated brunette who fashioned himself a small shield with his hair, “will break you too." 

Boris was a far better person than you were, to offer respectful benevolence despite the man’s actions. You made out that he sought to understand the mental mechanics of a killer and reason with whatever lingering sensibilities he believed there to be. It was an optimistic decision, and even the criminal managed to hold a reciprocal conversation, however short-lived. 

You took a glance at the schoolteacher. His eyebrows were knitted together, and his mouth was turned in a deep frown. 

Their attempts had all been erased, annihilated, with nothing to show for it. Just like all the other groups. 

They had nothing left but you and your turn.

The ruminations of one-sided conversations rushed like a river in your ears. 

Logic was not a helpful safeguard. Not here, as evident in your co-workers’ failed efforts. The counsel of emotion from Boris was sound and needed; you hoped, as the stone floor iced through your thin soles, it to be infallible.

You sat, reaching for the pocket of your bag, messy fingers closing around a soft, folded square. You let your bag lean on one of the chair’s legs. You unfolded the paper, the rustle obscene in the stillness. 

The fear made you brave enough to move. And it made you stupid enough to sit across from a killer.

The drawing came from one of your students. A wobbly yellow sun was strewn across one side of the page. A colorful, boxy house with a too-big door and two small, square windows with notable rounded edges was placed on the top left and right of his home. The building was topped by a tall and wide red triangle that overstretched the boundaries of the square. Four stick figures of various dimensions stood to its right. The linear bodies were attached to oval-like forms, encompassing their facial features. All their eyes were drawn with varying circles; only one face had a nose, and only one had one eyebrow at all, but each was angled, with wide, lopsided smiles.

You told him to write his name— Victor. He responded by grabbing his black crayon and writing two shaky, curved lines and two shapes, one that looked like the letter u to you, and another u-like shape that was flipped upside down. Three c-like figures were each turned in different directions, scaling downwards towards the left of the parchment with large gaps spaced in between.

You softened the creases of the parchment on the desk and slid the paper across the desk. Your peace offering from a world of crayons to a god of annihilation, of simple hopes to a god of absolute ends.

The picture, drawn in uneven lines, pastels, and color, was no more than an appeal to innocence— to joy, for life.

“My student draw this,” you tried not to shudder. You cleared your through as a recompense for your failed attempt. “In my class,” If your mind were rational, you would have known better than to provide unneeded context. Why would it be necessary? It would be robbed by his perpetual indifference anyway. “My students don’t understand… all this. They live, and draw happy things. Candy. Family. Suns.” 

And those eyes, once fixed on some point on the table, dropped. The fidgeting of his charcoal-stained fingers ceased. 

You braced yourself for a laugh, an insult, a dismissal, a burning of his eyes, but none came.

Instead, he reached for the paper. 

The black stick fell from his fingers and onto the floor. The sound was like a bomb amidst the silence, and yet it was the silence that was more terrifying to you than any ammunition, taunt, or threat.

Tarred with the night, the killer brought the edge of the drawing closer. He studied the clumsy sun, the joyful stick figures, as though an ancient, encrypted text.

"The sun… It’s drawn too low.” 

What? 

You stared. The words were so simple, such an ordinary observation amidst all his previous statements, that the critique was out of place. Especially coming from someone you did not think ever had a normal day in their life, considering their current placement.

You had made the same perception a week earlier.

"It’ll be dark soon," he spoke to the drawing, as though it could talk back. You leaned in to hear. "This kid knows that."

What did that even mean? 

Your child drew this eight days ago in the morn, had shoved it in the underbelly of the long table, announced his finished product to you from across the room, and proceeded to burst out of your classroom and into the busy street. 

You peered at the back of the paper, recalling the image. Victor understood a sun existed, that he had a home, and perceived his place within it. But that was not what the prisoner was saying. While Victor drew lightness, he was talking about darkness. 

Where there was the sun, the convict spoke of… what? A moon, mayhaps? And a blanket of a night sky?

He said nothing to confirm your suspicions. 

“What…” You attempted to probe his incomplete answer, a laborious effort on your end to reciprocate the conversation. “... would you build? For child who draw this?” 

Was he capable of creation after knowing destruction as a close friend? Would he understand the power of joy, did he know the bubbling lilt of happiness? Or the knowledge that living, the gift of experience, was the richest price to pay for one’s existence? 

You would know most of all; you, who died, during your students’ nap time, of all moments.

His eyes remained glued on the childish, cheerful sun.

“Something the sun can reach,” he murmured. He did not speak or look at you. He spoke for himself, as though attempting to register a meaning he was seeking to understand, hold on to, but could not. 

And it was not the answer you wanted to hear.

It may have been, to the rest of their audience, that he was capable of creation. But his purpose… his purpose was not for will of want. He sought creation from an act of aggression. 

You had attempted to appeal to emotion. You were foolish to think, for one brief period of time, capable of anything beyond expectant destruction. For he was a killer, and what did he know of pain? What did he know beyond his own hatred and desire? 

What did he know of empathy when he was accused and guilty of killing innocents? How many of those screams did he heed? How many women, men, and children cried out? To implore on feeling alone, you realized, was not enough. It would never be enough.

Children, whose giggles were silenced in eternity. Nothing could justify the slaughter of the unbecoming.

The selfish creature of indifference raised his head. His gaze, with those damned fucking eyes, traveled to your hand that lay on the table. They swept past your arm, shoulder upwards, and then to your face.

Ew, you shifted in your seat. The prisoner had not blinked. And his movements were bold. He’s a fucking weirdo, too.

His eyes were dimmed by the hue of the blinking light. You knew they were green than they were grey, and they carried with him a detachment and anger you could not parse nor fathom. Maybe that was all there was about him. Mayhaps these emotions, in their full ampleness, carried him through the storm of his making, like it was all he had left.

You were not sure, in the end.

But you knew this; he held great disinterest, preferring an uncaring willingness to understand the world and therefore, understand people for who they were and could be.

He’s so fucked up. Only fucked up people land themselves in a jail cell. 

When he spoke, his words came out in a low timbre; uninviting, with the promise of finality in all things.

“You,” he began. You did not know what he would say to you. Maybe he would insult your student’s work. Or— the dread washed over you, would he rip the drawing in your face and tell you the days of darkness would soon befall the sun in Victor’s drawing? You almost doubled over. 

“You’ll come back,” he said, the inflection ensuring his words held no questions. 

Your breath caught in your throat, clamoring for release, but not even a scream could erupt now. No. No!

Surely, there must have been a mistake?

No way. You swallowed, your mouth parched. No fucking way. 

You wanted nothing more than to remain far away from him. You wanted to never think about him for the rest of your life.

I don’t want to! 

“Just you. Everyone else here… they’re all just noise.” It was like he could read your mind, each of his words hammering his indications without error. 

You… Just you. 

The prisoner was not shy to stare at your widened eyes. He was not shy to lean forward and leverage his height to look down at you with weaved fingers.

“I want you to look me right in the eyes as you tell me about this sun,” he spoke with certainty. His wide shoulders seemed to loom over your body, even from a distance. 

I want you… look me… in the eyes… tell me… about… sun.

“I want you to make me know a hope that’s not a lie.” A thick finger pointed at the handmade sun. He looked you in the eyes. “Convince me that this one simple thing can survive what’s coming.” 

I want you… make me… know… hope that’s not… lie.

You’ll… tell me about… sun.

Your body, frozen throughout his commands, finally shifted towards your committee members, all different parts shocked, awed, terrified and tense. 

Surely, you must have misunderstood, or he said something else. 

You hoped. 

You dreamt.

You tried.

Right? 

Right?

You sharpened your focus on the figure. He was not looking at you. Instead, his gaze was back on the drawing. The corners of his mouth were now set into a frown towards the image. 

It seemed the only one who was comfortable moving was the prisoner, as one dark thumb swiped a small mark near the corner of the sun before his four fingers slid the picture back across the desk to you. 

That must be an omen of bad luck, a warning to stop aweing at the light, in the midst of his self-made night.

I’m not staying here any longer. I’m done. You said nothing as you snatched the drawing from the table, folding lines onto the sheet, your chair groaning as you lurched to your feet.

Let him say nothing else to no one. Let him look at nothing else but no one.

You did not look at him again as you walked to the guard, who quickly opened the door for you and the rest of your team, who trailed after you.

If only your teammates could follow your inward advice. They could not stop looking at you. They made no attempt to hide their stunned comments once they had all left the room, but what could you say in return? “Yes, I’m so thankful he chosen me?” Or, “Yes, I glad come back to cells of monster next time, wish me luck?”

You shook your head as they began to ask you how this could have happened– but what answer could you give besides an “I don’t know?” 

They saw everything. They knew enough to know discussions of identity, politics, faith, and pain mattered none to him.

He found refuge. Not in ideas or feelings, but in concepts; in a drawing, created by the messy hand of a child.

You had no jargon or theories; only art, and a dream of a child translated onto paper. And he had chosen you for… whatever this is or was to be. 

You were the most afraid, the most reluctant, and the one who loathed him the most. And he deemed you as his sole source of understanding anyway.

You wished your foolish, sentimental gesture had been met with the same bored apathy, too. You wished he had dismissed you, too. 

Your life would have been all the better for it. That would have been clean, easy, and simple.

That would have been the end.

This world was cruel. You readjusted your warm hands onto the lapels of your bag, eyes burning with unshed tears, shoulders slumped. He’s crueler for wanting me to return. 

What of your students, to have a place in this world alongside everyone else? Of pedestrians with side streets to walk and grip a sturdy rail without falling? What of the ramps for those with wheelchairs, without having to have shit and mud thrown their way because no one could be bothered to move for them? What of the buildings— inside and out— for your students, because they too deserved a chance to live just as well as anyone else? 

Was any of this important to the Queen?

You were going to tell her you were no longer available for the project. 

You wanted no part in this farce with a man who murdered civilians and was privileged enough to receive a second chance at a redemption you knew should never have been given.

Growing up, the people gave name to the beasts. Titans. You remembered the criminal's likeness. A monster was a monster, regardless of its name or credence.  

He was a murderer who had no time for riddles and games, but had enough time to command you on a mission. In his way, he made it the most important task in the world. In demanding, like the god he may perceive himself to be, he condemned you to seeing him again.

You reached a murderer, a monster, and a god who knew exactly how long the dying light could last and how long the burgeoning night would be.