#pkpk

Mueller suspected the reason had less to do with the good of humanity, and more with Paradis’s wealth of untapped natural resources. Without the Pure Titans and Walls, there was nothing to stop the rest of the world from pouring in. Kiyomi was eager to act as a mediator between the Mid-Eastern Alliance, Marley and Paradis. Now, Paradis’s Queen was open to the possibility of trade, but not before reformation of its own borders. This had been the subject of every other meeting for several weeks, aside from the exact details of the armistice.

According to the latest report, the trial deemed that the Founder's influence had driven Jaeger into a state of psychosis, and he could not be held entirely responsible for his actions within Marley or Paradis after killing Wilhelm Tybur and his collection by Paradis's Scouting Legion. To many in Paradis, he was a renegade who swore annihilation against all who would oppose him, rather than a defender. So he was to spend his remaining years in exile. A good deal of Jaegerists demanded to be exiled as well. Unlike their namesake, there was no Titan-induced psychosis to excuse the myriad reports of destruction and savagery unleashed upon the inner circle under their reign. Their consolation was a firing squad.

Mueller was ethnically Marleyan, but had first-hand experience with Marley’s use of zeppelins within Fort Slava. He saw the surviving Eldians not as monsters but humans that had been given power beyond their understanding or ability to control on their own terms. They were not to be ostracized without first giving them a chance to prove themselves rational, as many had pledged their alligance to Marley before and died for that same cause. Now, with the death of Ymir and The Worm, so too did these Eldians lose their connection to the devil that slept within their blood. There was no immediate reason to fear retribution from the Titans or their kin. To eradicate them now would be an act of genocide.

While the world was preoccupied with rumors of Paradis' retaliation, the Titan Biological Society was quietly disbanded. The details of Warrior Unit and its invention were similarly declassified. Civilians who grew up with Warrior Programme in their formative years were exposed to the horrors behind their most prestegious and dangerous branch of the military.

Eldians and Marleyans alike would gather outside the wraught-iron gates of the HQ. They rallyed around the surviving Warriors as an example of a civilized Eldian. This sentiment was growing quickly, much to the disgust of the Mid-Eastern Alliance whose only experience with Eldians came down from the sky in zeppelins.

"God damned kids," muttered Otto, a fellow Captain who had been present when the aeroplanes were first sent during the last year of the Paradis Operation. "The internment zones and hospitals are already flooded with Eldians. And now you want to bring in their figurehead." Otto scoffed around the cigarette in his mouth. "It's madness, all of it."

To say Mueller had his work cut out for him was being charitable. At a tenuous stage such as this, Marley's success was just as much about the politicking as a show of force. The younger generation was the future, and had more energy behind them than the embittered servicemen or displaced, smaller nations that lacked Paradis's berth of natural resources to justify their existence. It was true that the Warriors had not asked to be made into monsters. They had survived despite the devil in their blood and it was only right that they eke out their remaining days as civilians.

"He's only a renegade," Muller said. "If we let Jaeger die a martyr, this will only get worse."

Otto had no argument. He flicked the butt of the waning cigarrette out of the train window without looking to see where it landed. "You'd best hope you're right."

The Azumbaito family had encouraged Marley to accept Jaeger into their settlement as an expat where Paradis would not. They argued that Jaeger's actions, in part, had brought mankind together to end the war in a twisted way. Jaeger was a traitor and renegade and war hero, depending on what was most convenient. After weeks of reasoning with Marley's top brass, they had set aside an hour for Muller to speak with Jaeger, who would be sent in by boat and kept in a holding cell. If Mueller could convince him to cooperate, Jaeger could be rehabilitated, just as the others of his kind who grew up in Marley. The only difference between them, Mueller argued, was their willingness to concede.

Jaeger had been living in a burgeoning Marleyan settlement, the remnants of what was once Fort Slava. In the cell, he was no pariah or Devil of anything. Just another prisoner of war, rebuilding the very civilization that was trampled at the behest of his enemies.

Sgt. Mueller had his own interests in agreeing to the plan. He could accept that Jaeger had his uses, but selling him as anything other than a lesser evil to humanity was going to take time. As an inheritor of Eldia's power and its curse, Jaeger wouldn't live long enough to see the outcome of his survival. He was the perfect candidate for Mueller to work with.

Jaeger, a taller man than he was in the photographs, looked at the red armband and back to Mueller's face without emotion. He was dressed in a simple button-up shirt and chinos that were cleaner than Mueller had expected. A white scar stuck out across his throat. His dark hair was cut short.

"The Progenitor didn't want to let go," said Jaeger, holding Mueller's eyes. "They had to cut me out."

An uncomfortable silence settled between them. Muller said, "You haven't been healing. Isn't that as easy as breathing for someone like you?" Jaeger didn't respond. Muller tried another approach. "I hear you left a lot of supporters behind. The Jaegerists, weren't they? In Paradis. You must have had a good reason to abandon your people."

"They cared nothing for the country. Only what they could destroy in my name." His eyes, closer to green than gray, bored through Mueller and the wall behind him. The guard shifted in place, fingering his rifle. Mueller ignored him.

"If you were to emigrate to Liberio, you'd have a pension and a tenement. Perhaps a chance to explain yourself. There are those among us who would be willing to listen, I'm sure you've seen the protests." Mueller's lip curled. Jaeger was unmoved. "Your own countrymen didn't afford you the same opportunity. The strain of spinal fluid that was introduced into your bloodstream is no determinant of your worth."

Jaeger glanced down the hall. "You must have hundreds of men like me back in Marley's hospitals. But they're out of their minds or too burnt up to speak in your stead."

Mueller paused. He made an effort to keep his face placid. This gutsy son of a bitch was exactly the man he was looking for, even if he refused to accept it himself. "It's true that I could just as soon leave and find one of them. But you're cognizant and able to reason with me. Most are not."

Jaeger levelled with him. "That's why you're here."

Mueller forced a smile. "I'd ask you to think about it, but three years isn't forever, and in that time Marley could just as well decide Eldia isn't worth preserving without Titans. If you refuse you'll go back to breaking rocks with the other POWs. If that's your wish, I won't refuse it."

Jaeger shifted from one foot to the other, his expression difficult to read. He looked at Mueller. "The block in Liberio was destroyed."

"It's been rebuilt," Mueller said. "You'll have a roof over your head. Then you can drink yourself to death in the privacy of your own apartment, if that's really what you're after."

For the first time Jaeger chuckled. "When was this decided?"

"Last month, by Marley. And a few of your sympathizers in the Azumbaito family."

A flicker of comprehension in Jaeger's eyes. Mueller saw cruel satisfaction. The prospect of reaching the very people that once considered him scum. If he could not wipe them out directly, he could get into their heads. Manipulate the minds of their progeny. Idealistic and desperate to prove themselves, who else could know better than him.

"Fine," he said. "I'll agree to live here."

Mueller was taken aback. "You've no other conditions?"

Jaeger stood up. "No, sir."

Mueller had expected more of a pushback. Evidently he was mistaken. But he kept his nerve and said, "You'll be situated here by the end of the week."

As he walked out of the cell, he didn't look back. Jaeger made no sound.

After the declaration of war, the Mid-East Alliance and other civilized nations decreed to destroy Paradis with the full might of their aeroforce and naval ships. Eren's first mistake was to entrust the rebels as anything more than a distraction. His second was to force Historia's hand as a terrorist. If not for Mikasa, he would have succeeded in eradicating all of Paradis's enemies abroad, but not on the island itself. So Paradis would be left to rebuild its forces in peace.

Not much had changed from the last time he set foot upon Marley's shores. The ampitheater was still in ruins, but he'd not gone by to see for himself. New faces took place of the ones he'd slain. A family next to him and an aging vet whose brother wound up in one of the zeppelins. They were Eldian, but none of them Warriors. Eren had yet to speak at length to one of the Warriors at length. His new life was an echo of the ten months he'd spent as Eren Krueger. Without the imperative of a war on the horizon, he was only subsisting.

He kept a relatively clean apartment. He took up journalling to retain his purpose and give himself something else to think about beyond the pit of ennui in his gut. Keeping down dates, small happenings. He got by, even as a serviceman looking for work. The Marleyan who ran the post office took to him like a second son, or else he was eager to appeal to the political wave of empathy towards Eldians. Eren had no interest in asking.

Five days a week he would sort letters in the back of the store, out of sight of customers, and attend clerical duties once the son moved further towards the countryside in pursuit of his own fortune. The father would lament about this often, but appreciated Krueger's talent with a bucket and mop. Krueger rarely said much.

Despite the influx of Eldians into Liberio, the old security measures were still in place. So, there would be no letters couched in innuendo to his compatriots back home. Nothing that would be sent outside the internment zone. Despite the ocean of difference his thoughts were consumed by the home he'd given up.

On his off-time Krueger had been visiting the newsstand. Lately he was keeping tabs on the Tybur family's whereabouts and who had inherited the Titan Biology Program. The Warrior Unit was dissolved on public record. Most of those Eldians who were injected wound up in hospital. Some were stable enough to move into the tenements. The ones too advanced to release were shipped off to parts unknown. Warriors were still discriminated against by their non-Titan Shifting Eldians and Marleyans alike. There was no reason to pretend to respect them, now the war was over. A bunch of devil-blooded freaks who lost the war in spite of their God-like power and cost Marley a fortune.

Galliard and P. Finger were to become ambassadors for Marley by next year, but there were other Eldians with serum in their bodies who never made it into the papers. Vice Captain A. Leonhardt had stepped down around the same time of the dissolution of the Warrior Unit, but he could find little mention of her afterwards. B. Hoover and R. Braun were marked down as MIA.

The same circle of Marleyan policemen in plainclothes would follow him about his daily routine, as if he were unaware or plotting another revolt.

At times the old pull of the Founder ushered him downwards into an endless oblivion. He could drink himself into a stupor, but escape was fleeting. Everything he'd fought for, watched other soldiers die for, the culmination of that falsehood lay before him in an expanse of unbroken sky. Despite his exhaustion he strained to reach out and feel the freezing air against his face. No longer fighting for the sake of his friends, safe in Paradis. 

The Hallucigenia clung to him at the nape. Hundreds of tiny legs piercing flesh. It burrowed and burrowed past his steaming flesh into his brain, connecting to him as he had once connected to the other body in miniature. Burdened with a taste of power, then wielded by an inhuman, timeless entity, he must relearn how to live as a mortal man.

When he was still recovering, the Marleyan doctors expressed a great interest in these dreams. They'd chalked it first up to shellshock, but they'd also told Eren to document as much as possible so that future generations might understand the burden of inheriting their closest approximation of God himself. Eren had thought little of it at the time. What could a Marleyan possibly understand? It was not the wielding itself but the act of being wielded by something far greater and impenetrable to understanding. He had been connected to the Founder in spite of his common blood.

There would be no epiphany or God to heal him or bring back the friends he'd lost. Pledging his life for their survival was a hell of a lot simpler when he was convinced they would outlive him. In the end they would still go on and he would give his life for humanity as he'd wanted as a boy, beneath the old chapel in Mitras.

He slept lightly. Old friends occupied his waking moments. A zoetrope of faces trapped in time, hounding him in dreams. Every night he'd wake up in a cold sweat. The pain in his knee was a new development. He couldn't fix it and throw the remains behind the butchershop like he used to. He got up and felt around in the dark for the edge of the mattress. Throwing his legs over the bedside. Testing his weight. He could walk, at least, despite the discomfort. Nothing worse that what he had endured before. He sat there until his eyes adjusted to the room, underlit by moonlight.

He walked slowly over to the desk. There was enough light by the window that he could write. In the blueish light of the moon the ink stained the page, close enough to blood.

He wrote for half an hour and sat in silence until the sun broke over the horizon. He checked his wristlet before getting ready for work. He was en route to the train station and decided to stop by the newsstand out of habit.

Today was an off day. He'd been so wrapped up he had forgotten. With little to occupy his time, perhaps his best bet was to make contact with the surviving Warriors. They were closer to his own countrymen. If he was to remain off of Paradis for the next two years, what harm could come of speaking among his own kind?

"Sir," the man said, "you're going to have to buy that if you want to read it."

Eren went home without buying anything. He walked about Liberio, considering his approach. He had a few hours to burn. He went back to the tenement with a newfound mania. The old man downstairs had bought a phonograph and was very pleased with it. He'd play music from the outside world. Eren would stand and listen. Even if he couldn't pick out all the words, the dialect was familiar.

Eren shook himself from recollection. The old woolen jacket he favored had a few holes. Nothing he couldn't mend. His upbringing in Shiganshina and time as a serviceman had taught him plenty, so he didn't stick out here aside from his foreign accent. He fixed the jacket to his satisfaction and replaced it and the sewing kit. For the hell of it he did a preliminary dust check. It wasn't yet noon, and he might sleep through the day if he chanced a nap. Exhaustion had run its course, giving him the opposite problem. He was too exhausted to let himself relax.

He read through his old notes on his father's journal. He transcribed a little more of it to the best of his recollection, then walked the length of the room and back again.

There was no grasp at freedom. Just a bigger cage full of people who would not learn from their ancestors. For the same reason Armin had nothing to say to him, and Mikasa agreed to kill him if it came down to it. No soul on Paradis could understand the brunt of what he once did, but neither did he, sitting here with bloodied knuckles and bruises and a rush of blood fading from his head. He'd convinced himself of the lie, for it was simple when he was ready to give up his life. He'd always been so simple, even as a boy.

The armistice was not his only way forward. Its true purpose eluded him still. He'd thought it all simple, back then. If he were to revert his choices and pledge himself now, it would not be for some child's idea of glory or freedom. Perhaps there'd come a day when their faces became indistiguishable. But he'd be long gone by then. He could content himself with that, just as he had before.

Asking around for names was risky, given his previous involvement. He'd kept quiet up to this point. Anyone who wanted to have business with him would've come forward by now. He had little to lose by trying, at least.

There were a number of Eldian pubs he could look into. The Warriors, despite their prestige, couldn't leave the internment zone without a waiver. It was less hassle to stick to the ghetto than deal with the paperwork, just for the chance for a Marleyan to spit in your drink. A boon for Eren, as it lowered the number of places to look.

A few days of hanging around. No one gave him trouble. A second glance was the most notoriety he'd experienced after a few attempts. He always sat in the back and watched the customers.

Today, the usual. A man with a red armband sat at the bar. Krueger was in luck. He took the seat next to him and ordered.

"I haven't seen you around before." Krueger turned. The man offered his hand. The glint of a band around his finger caught his attention. "I'm Galliard."

Krueger shook. "Tomas."

Coming from the same Galliard he'd used to crack open Tybur's shell and funnel her remains, he was unsure what to expect. "My wife should be along soon. We're waiting for a colleague to join us." Eren gauged this possibility. Could be an old friend from the war. Could be anyone. As long as he kept his emotions in check, there was no harm in playing along. "She's never been very sociable," Porco muttered. "She's been taking care of her father a lot. Lousy son of a bitch isn't even appreciative."

Krueger's hand on the counter tensed. "Your wife?"

Porco paused. "Oh, but of course you wouldn't know." He chuckled. "I'm sorry. The colleague is a mutual friend of my spouse. We served together in the same unit while the war was going on." He shrugged. "Now that the war's over, we come down every week or so and drink."

Krueger said nothing.

"Do you think you're better than me?"

"No," said Krueger. "I just don't usually come here to talk."

Porco barked out a laugh. "You're right to the point. You'd get along with Leonhardt."

"Is that her name?"

Porco froze. "I&emdash;oh, damn it, look. If you see her, you didn't hear from me."

"I won't," Krueger said.

The doors opened. Porco glanced over and his expression changed. "Thank God, she's here. With the situation outside of Liberio as it is, I wish she'd take the same train as I do."

A small, dark-haired woman took a seat next to Galliard. "Sorry I'm late." Her eyes moved from Galliard to Krueger and fixed there. Krueger watched from his peripherals as he took a drink. "There was a delay on the train. Nothing serious."

"I'm just glad you're here," Porco said, oblivious to what was happening.

"I was about toe were fighting the wrong enemy," Porco said shortly. "It's never been about Eldia or Marley. I didn't always see it that way."

Eren fell quiet.

"He's just drunk," said Pieck. "He doesn't know what he's saying."

"Leonhardt is still in Liberio?"

Porco frowned. "What business is it of yours?"

It was Pieck who said, "Don't mind him."

Krueger stopped and the silence prolonged itself past comfort. Porco's expression changed. In Paradis he might have been a renegade and in Marley he was simply a had-been. A lifetime of service had conditioned Pieck and the other Warriors to be secretive. Of course it struck him that Annie wouldn't be thrilled to learn he was alive. She would rather regrow her arm tendon by tendon than talk about her personal feelings. 

"I've seen you before," said Porco in a low, uneven voice. "You're lucky the war's over." He slapped his money on the counter and got to his feet. "Pieck."

The woman kept her seat. Porco stared at her in disbelief.

"I have no interest in causing any harm," said Krueger. "To you or anyone else." 

"Go to hell," Porco said, and left.

The woman watched him go. "I suppose that's better than you expected."

Krueger, glancing at her, said, "You're ambassadors."

Pieck shrugged. "Moreso in name. Someone has to make sure Marley and its enemies don't forget the past too quickly. The younger Warriors don't care much about politics. Porco took to it, though." Her fingers drummed idly on the table, idiosyncratic. "I suppose Reiner would've made a good diplomat if he'd lived." She kept her tone warm and easy, but her eyes trained on him were anything but. "You spoke to him before, didn't you? During the Paradis Operation."

Krueger didn't answer. 

"I didn't mean to pry," Pieck said. "I just wondered what you must think of everything, now that you're here."

"What does it matter?" It came out acerbic, without pretense. "It's been settled, even if we won't live to see how it ends."

Pieck didn't flinch. She looked at him with an expression he could not describe. Too close to pity for his liking.

"A week ago," she said, "I was supposed to be dead. Porco will have ten years. Maybe I only have a week left. Or a year, perhaps ten years. Without the constant strain of regeneration, there's a chance we might regain some of the time we'd have otherwise lost."

Krueger was staring fixedly at his drink, untouched. She set her money on the counter with a sigh and stood. He paid and followed suit.

"I suppose this must be awkward," she said, "now that we're not speaking around a gun." Krueger laughed. She gave him a wan smile he wasn't used to. "I hope we can talk about it next year."

"Yeah."

Eren watched her leave. He swallowed past a lump in his throat, then moved on himself. Rage simmered in his blood with no purpose outside its expulsion. A question brewed in her absence, interfering with the easier promise of his early death. He walked along the street, blood in his ears. Figures moved past his gait. He bumped into one and kept moving. A man's voice shouted. Krueger turned to face it.

He'd never gotten in a fight in Marley. Once or twice the thought crossed his mind. But he was crippled then. Growing back his leg just to get into a pointless fight was more expenditure when he could simply redirect his energy into fixing his eye. In this moment the capacity to survive longer than his term limit was unbearable as subsistence.

Years of training ingrained against the promise of a scrap, just to feel anything. The older urge won out. Bloody and senseless. As a boy he didn't care about winning or losing. Just hurting something else that could feel the same pain as him. The shock of healing like a normal man. This existence his father sought to deny him, pitiable and fragile, he could finally claim for his own.