[01]: Unsre grüne Au

• wc: 5.8k • warnings: mature; blood, mild gore, angst, death of family & loved ones • summary: He takes your hand, so warm around yours, and places the ring in your open palm. It’s cool against your skin. “This is how you know I’ll always come back. Because when we grow up … we’ll get married.” You stare at him as though you’ve seen a god and that god shares Emil’s name.

[02]: Dear Emil

• wc: 7.3k • warnings: introduction to PTSD and trauma, mourning the death of family & loved ones • summary: But just like one loose thread could unravel everything, the past day has completely disintegrated the foundations of this future. Now that it crumbles between your bruised, shaking fingers, do you try to rebuilt it? Or do you forge something new from the broken pieces even though that means cutting your hands bloody on the remains?

[03]: army⇒G♂

• wc: 6.1k • warnings: canon-typical violence • summary: “And what about you?” the boy says, suddenly swirling to you and you jolt in your chair. He sees you; sees you with striking, sharp eyes the colour of an empty bottle struck by sunlight. The colour of a dark, deep lake after a storm. “Didn’t you say you want to kill the Armoured Titan? You’re from Shiganshina too! You know what I’m talking about, right?” Put into the spotlight—no, on the offering table for slaughter like that, you do what you do best: you run.

[04]: τέλος

• wc: 8.5k • warnings: slight bullying, swearing • summary: Eren is like a pair of hot tongs; no one is sure where to put him or how long he would take to cool off, but if they just dropped him he might light the world on fire. “Well, I don’t know what to tell you.” You’re giving up. Let someone else put on kid gloves and mark out a careful perimeter of how safe it is to approach him. Armin volunteers, turning the crank to set Eren down again and inspect his wound, but Eren pushes him away, and you wonder how often Armin has burnt himself trying to help him.

[05]: первый снег

• wc: 10.2k • warnings: bullying, swearing • summary: The impact of his hard, toned body against yours sends you both flying. He’s got you on your back, elbow pushing into your throat. You swing with one arm, but Eren anticipates it and easily catches your wrist. You stare daggers at him. “Now this,” he says quietly, shaking your fist gently, “this is what you do. You fight back. You can only win if you fight back.” “Get off me, Jaeger.” “And don’t tuck your thumb into your fist.”

06: 飛べ

• wc: 8.4k • warnings: none • summary: You stare at Eren, unable to respond. Furious, angry Eren is easy to handle—there is no logic or reason behind anger, only hot-whipping emotion that can be easily excused and needs no further thought. But this vulnerability is so much more complex and profound, you want to look away. There is a forlorn, lost look about him, but his eyes search your face as if he might find himself there. Like you could be the answer. It’s like Eren’s forgotten Reiser’s lecture last week: You don’t give answers people want to hear. “We aren’t fairy tale heroes and knights. We can’t change the world…” Eren, you want to say. “Jaeger.” You immediately see in the shadow that falls over his eyes that you’ve lost him. “You’re only one person. What difference can you make?”

07: Apple Seed

• wc: 12.2k • warnings: canon-typical violence, explicit depiction of a dead body (none of the main characters), vomiting (not reader) • summary: You wait for Eren to let you go. He doesn’t. He looks conflicted over something—desperate even, but whatever he wants to say appears to be stuck in his throat. His tongue darts out and swipes over his lower lip, leaving it pink and glossy. You blink, dazzled. What is it that you want from me? you want to ask, but the answer frightens you.

08: 金継ぎ

• wc: 6k • warnings: PTSD, grieving a loved one's death • summary: He’s right, and as you take a look around camp, at the people you’re spending the next two years with, you fall a little in love with every single one of them: Jean, Jeanie, who is so protective of his honesty and pride, but gets even more protective when it comes to you. Mina and Marco who have turned M into your favourite letter because they both know that a gentle fire by the chimney is better at keeping one warm than burning down the whole house. Reiner and Bertholdt, two sides of the same coin: where Reiner is fierce, Bertholdt is yielding and together they are invincible. Mikasa and Armin, one shield and spear, the other a brilliant mind that will one day change the world, and together they are Eren’s right and left hand, the first his blade in hand and the other the one concealed in his sleeve. And Eren, even Eren Jaeger, who always looks at you like he knows you are so much more than all your scars and fears.

09: The Melancholy Heron Stands

• wc: 7.6k • warnings: descriptions of a wound • summary: “Yeah, yeah, we’ve had this already. You’d rather do nothing and then complain about it later.” His words drop like a cleaver. Something sharp and painful rises up the back of your throat. You swallow it down, squaring your jaw to mask your hurt. You tell yourself not to cry, not at the hands of someone like Eren who ploughs through a field towards his destination without a care for the flowers he tramples on. Who listens in on private conversations meant for the night and darkness only, and butchers at your vulnerability with his violent idealism. You change your mind. Emil would have liked them all, except for Eren.

10: The Forest of Hands and Teeth (pt.1)

• wc: 8k • warnings: DARK CONTENT! READER DISCRETION IS ADVISED. Minor character death, blood and gore, attempt at sexual assault (male —› female), implied child abuse, implied childhood sexual abuse • summary: It wasn’t common for you to doubt or question Emil. You trusted him with a ferocity that was nearly dangerous: if he’d said “Jump, I will catch you,” you’d jump and perform a pirouette mid-flight. Yet, this was different. This felt like a secret with sharp teeth and gnawing starvation for freedom. And it would wreak havoc. You didn’t know why, but you felt it. You felt it would destroy everything like the earth rumbling and splitting open, the very foundation of everything that you had known crumbling.

11: The Forest of Hands and Teeth (pt.2)

• wc: 8.2k • warnings: description of a decomposing body • summary: “If anything,” Eren says, and you can hear Armin’s quiet plea “Please stop talking, Eren,” because he knows Eren better than he himself, and if there is a chance to resolve the conflict without it blowing up, Armin will always throw himself in as canon fodder, “if anything, she got fucked up because you tried to run away. Because you tried to abandon us.” Jean goes still beside you like a statue. The glass shard nearly slips from your cold, clammy fingers and you bite your lip, tasting dried blood on your lips. “At some point,” Eren continues, “you’ll have to stop making excuses and stop running.”

12: Raised by Wolves and Voices

• wc: 8.1k • warnings: none • summary: “Wouldn’t that be something.” Jean sniffs, his breath coming out in white plums. “Erasing events from the past, making stuff never have happened. You’d have to be, like, God or something to do that.” “I don’t know. I get you’d want the unpleasant stuff gone, but it’s what makes you the person you are today, right? Even all the bad stuff, I don’t think I’d want that just taken away from me.” Especially without you knowing.

13: The Horror and the Wild

• wc: 9.6k • warnings: defence against an animal (no worries, the animal doesn’t get hurt too bad, definitely doesn’t die), injury, animal attack, self-suturing • summary: You scramble for your knife, digging through the snow until your fingers grasp the hilt. Pulling yourself up to your knees has never been this difficult, but thanks to the rigorous training Shadis has put you under after all those years, you stand on shaking knees, determined that you’ll see this through to the end. You’ll make your place in this world. You’ll fight for it, no matter who the opponent is. You’ll burn so bright you’ll blind them all—you’ll fight for yourself, and if that little, crying girl from five years ago screams for help, you’ll take her small hand and never let go, and you whisper to her “You are no longer a helpless child, you are the horror and the wild, and all the stones and kings of old will hear us screaming at the cold.”

14: The Happy Years (Upload: TBA)

• wc: ??? • warnings: none so far • summary: TBA

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Hey, what’s up?” Eren asks.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

An idea blossoms.

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

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

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

“So smart.”

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

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

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

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

Eren tilts his head towards you.

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

Eren clears his voice. “Who…?”

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

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

“My fiancée,” you announce proudly.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Oh my God.”

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

“What?” you ask.

“I see you’re feeling better.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Let go of me.”

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

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

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

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

“About five.”

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

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

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

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

“Meaning you?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Yeah, he’ll skin us alive.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Reiner grins. “Exactly like that.”

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

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

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

Eren clears his throat quietly. “Nervous?”

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

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

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

You’ll give him one.

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

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

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

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

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

“Just eat your damn crackers, Jean.”

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

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

❀❀❀

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Hm … nobody? Everyone!”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“It’s wrong.”

Emil chuckled. “Says who?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

❀❀❀

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The sight is breathtaking.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

***

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It shouldn’t be a surprise.

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

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

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

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

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

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

“What do you want?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Okay,” you said.

There was only a brief pause. “Okay?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“No. It’s a promise.”

***

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Let’s go back,” you say, subdued.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“The people of Trost think differently about it.”

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

“Anyone specific in mind?”

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

“Wow. Okay.”

“What? Do you want to be May Queen?”

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

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

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

“Come on, how hard can it be?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Oh.

Oh no.

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

Bastard.

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

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

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

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

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

“But I will be out of a life.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Connie starts howling like a wild animal.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Meaning how?”

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

You look sideways at him. “Anything interesting?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Armin obediently starts getting up.

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

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

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

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

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

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

You level Jean with a long, silent gaze.

“What?” Jean mumbles.

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

Suddenly, it’s deafeningly silent.

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

The table laughs.

You laugh.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

***

All the way, the men herd you like lambs for slaughter away from your camp to a tree where they tie you up. You stay silent, fighting off a crushing waterfall of thoughts and fears and burning tears—everything that is at once vicious and violent. It is only when they are done that your conscience arises from the murky, dark waters of slithering thoughts and ruining imaginations.

Ropes bind your hands together behind your back, biting painfully enough into your skin that all feeling slowly begins to trickle away. Shoulders pressed against shoulders, thick ropes cut into your upper arms tying you against the skin-scratching, rough bark of a tree.

You blink dazedly when after all the commotion there is suddenly nothing but silence—silence and a sharp pain in your closed palm sending shocks of tiny pinpricks up your arm. The men have left, decided that with nothing to break you free from your binds, you are just a bunch of harmless teenagers unable to either save Christa, whom they’ve taken for leverage, or get your equipment back and put up much of a fight.

The silence that mutes you is a savage beast, sharp-toothed and snarling as if it is just waiting to sink its dreadful talons into whoever manages to summon the courage to speak first.

It is no surprise that it is Eren who shows the beast his own fangs and claws sharpened by seething fury.

“We … we could have done something.” He’s sitting between Jean and Connie, too far away from you to see the emotion on his face, but from the tone in his voice, it has to be hot contempt. “If we attacked as a team, we could have shown those bastards, you fucking cowards!” His voice booms over the quiet of the forest, startling birds and squirrels from their slumber.

There’s no reply. The events replay once more behind your closed eyes, quick flashes of pictures, your skin remembering the pressure of a cold rifle barrel. You take a deep, shuddering breath, and fumble with your fingers until the sharp pain relents from your palm. You couldn’t have done anything earlier. But you are not helpless now.

With your arms shaking from the strain and the uncomfortable angle, you begin to cut at your ropes binding your wrists with the shard from the broken whiskey bottle you picked up during the quarrel earlier.

And then of course, because as long as Eren Jaeger lives, Jean Kirschstein will stand against him.

“That’s your opinion,” Jean mumbles, and then louder he continues, and you can feel from the way his shoulders turn hard as stone that the rage in him circles and collects at the centre of his lungs from where he can just spit it out. “I don’t agree. Actually, because of your crazy behaviour, everyone was at danger. [Name] almost fucking died because you acted up.” And quieter, he says, “Victor did die.”

You can hear Eren’s sharp inhale. Marco, ever the diplomat, quickly intervenes, “That wasn’t his fault. It was nobody’s fault, and you know it, Jean.” His voice is thick with an emotion you don’t know how to take apart to unravel the core. “You know it.”

“If anything,” Eren says, and you can hear Armin’s quiet plea “Please stop talking, Eren,” because he knows Eren better than he himself, and if there is a chance to resolve the conflict without it blowing up, Armin will always throw himself in as canon fodder, “if anything, she got fucked up because you tried to run away. Because you tried to abandon us.”

Jean goes still beside you like a statue. The glass shard nearly slips from your cold, clammy fingers and you bite your lip, tasting dried blood on your lips.

“At some point,” Eren continues, “you’ll have to stop making excuses and stop running.”

“Fuck you,” Jean spits, but he’s looking away, shaking slightly, and you know he’s fighting hard not to cry and it cracks something inside you open and now that it is spilling, you have nothing to mend the broken pieces and stop it from spreading.

“If you two could just shut up for a second,” you say, feeling the ropes come loose but also the glass turning slippery in your fingers from new cuts, bleeding and stinging, “maybe we can get out of here faster and make a plan.”

“What—what are you talking about?” Jean shifts, and almost drives the sharp point of the shard right into your wrist. “What are you doing?”

When the rope finally snaps, your arms jolt right into Jean and Connie sitting to your left and right. You bring your arms forward, presenting your unbound hands but also the cuts and slashes on your hands, the bloody shard glinting in the sharp, silvery moonlight. “I,” you say, and the only reason you grin is probably because you’ve lost so much blood you can’t think straight, “am getting us out of here.”

Jean sucks in a sharp breath. Connie makes a relieved sound that is close to a whimper. From the other side of the tree, Mina’s soft sobs have finally stopped and Sasha demands, “What’s happenin’? What’s she doin’?” You doubt she’s realised that she’s allowed her formal speech to slip from all the agitation.

“That’s from Victor’s bottle,” Connie realises, awe-struck. “God, that—he is saving us in a way, isn’t he?”

Lips pressed together tightly, you begin to work at the thick rope tying you all to the tree. It gives you enough reason not to think about how true Connie’s words are, and that even after everything Victor has done, he did not deserve to die such a gruesome death.

You change the shard from hand to hand whenever it hurts too much, but after five minutes, it finally becomes loose enough that a hard pull from everyone else rips the rope apart and it falls in your laps.

“Here, cut me free,” Jean urges, turning his back to you. “Let me take over.”

You don’t argue. When Jean is free, he immediately snags the shard from you, making you jolt away. He’s sickeningly pale, his eyes too big for his face. “Shit, sorry.”

Your response is weak, and he notices. “I’m fine.”

“Nothing about this is fine.” But instead of arguing, he turns away and begins to cut the ropes off Eren’s hands. It doesn’t take long until finally everyone is free, and the mirror expressions you are all wearing says the same: What now?

Mina has come around the tree and kneels before you, gently pressing a piece of fabric she has torn off her shirt against your bleeding palms. You have always noticed how tiny her hands are, how cute and slender her fingers dance whenever she’s excited and claps her hands. Now they are surprisingly strong, yet gentle, as Mina puts them under your chin and inspects your busted nose after cleaning most of the blood away as best as she could.

You can’t stand the worry edged deep into the lines of her face, the dimples around her mouth. “Am I still pretty?” you ask, the smile on your face feeling like those wonky grins children slice into pumpkins with jagged knives for All Hallow’s Eve.

Mina sighs. “Always,” she mumbles, and she doesn’t smile but her eyes do light up a little and it’s the little victories that count for you. “I don’t think it’s broken, so that’s good.”

“There goes my idea to skip cleaning the gear shack for the next couple of weeks.”

“Dude,” says Connie, and if Connie Springer of all people has to reprimand you, you know you’re balancing on a thin tightrope.

It’s Marco’s tight voice, all business-like, that puts a lid on your next light-hearted words. He’s sitting on the ground, cut ropes coiling around him like a thick snake. “What are we supposed to do now? We can’t continue this exercise, it’s over.”

No one objects. Over Mina’s shoulder, you watch Jean mumbling quiet things to Armin who has started shaking once more like aspen leaves in high wind. When he meets your eyes, he immediately looks away, his throat working.

How much do you remember? The words notch into you, cutting deeper than the shard ever could. You’ll get your answers, even if you have to retie him against something and drag them out of him.

“Are we abandoning Christa?” Eren’s voice is quiet. He stands tall and strong against the slithering darkness, but from the way his shoulders are drooping you can tell he is not fine. He looks almost forlorn, surrounded by the looming shadows of the tall trees.

“No, no, by the Walls, we aren’t abandoning anyone.” Marco rakes his hands through his black hair, staring down at the ground between his feet. “But with just us, what can we do? We should head back and ask the instructors—”

“What if we don’t make it?” Eren cuts him short. He finally turns, though his body sags in defeat, you can still see fire burning in his eyes. “I’m not just gonna stand back and retreat. I’m going to save Christa.”

Armin tries to stand but his knees buckle under his weight. Jean quickly catches him before he can fall. “Wait, Eren—”

“Wait for what?!” Eren snaps, and when Armin startles, he either doesn’t notice or ignores it. “Wait to find others who can do the shit that we can do now?! Those fucking pigs won’t hesitate to … to—” His sharp eyes find yours as if that is statement enough.

Oh, you realise suddenly. Before, when the man with the potato bag over his head wanted to have his way with you, it wasn’t Jean screaming not to lay a hand on you. It was Eren.

Now, he takes a deep, shuddering breath. “I’ll go alone, if I have to,” he says now. “Before they hurt her. Or kill her, too.”

“You stupid idiot, do you really think you can do anything on your own?” Jean scrambles to his feet, rises to meet Eren’s glare.

“Guys, please.” Mina’s voice beside you is so quiet. “We can’t afford to be at each other’s throat right now. Things are bad enough.” She seems frail, all of a sudden. Thin and transparent, like she might disappear any moment. You feel an overwhelming urge to just hold her.

The sound of protest clawing its way up your throat, already resounding from Armin to your left, is squashed by Marco’s hand resting gently yet affirming on Armin’s knee. He’s looking up at Jean, and there’s something flashing in his dark eyes you can’t read.

“If I won’t do it, no one will!” Eren screams back, and even though his voice is so loud, like that itself should be enough to drive his point across, he seems small as if he’s moments away from caving in.

“And how are you going to find her?” Jean’s voice has a veneer of calm, but beneath you could hear the vibration of some very different emotion. “All our horses were released, we got nothing on us. You think you can catch up to them on foot?”

“I can’t just stand still and do nothing.” Eren is seething with anger. His hands, balled into tight fists, shake by his side as if he’s about to take on the whole world all by himself and Heavens, what a heavy burden that is. What a lonely pursuit. It makes you want to tug him away, somewhere to a safe place where he doesn’t have to fight all the damn time.

“We won’t,” Jean says, quietly at first, and then louder, “we won’t. I’m coming with you.”

Eren opens his mouth, closes it. He looks at Jean as if he’s seeing him for the first time.

“We’ll go together,” Jean continues, “and we’ll get Christa back.”

“Christa and our gear.” Slowly, Marco climbs to his feet. Determination turns the lopsided smile of his mouth into a formidable line. There’s little hesitation when the rest follow Jean’s declaration, vow that they won’t let Eren alone.

If you’re looking closely enough, it almost seems as if Eren is about to cry.

“It’s settled then.” Jean brushes dirt off his pants. “We’ll go together, stay together. That’ll give us a better chance at surviving this.”

“And we can’t head back first? Only … only for a moment,” Mina says, making everyone turn to her.

“Why?” Jean asks. You startle a little when he leans forward and pulls you up to your feet, a hand around your arm. “We don’t have time to get back and pack up.”

Mina is quiet for a moment. “To bury Victor.”

Someone makes a very small, plaintive sound. Armin’s eyes widen when you all look at him, and he hurriedly brushes Eren’s hands away, who is trying to inspect the little scratches on his face. After he had stumbled over his own feet earlier, one of the men had yanked him up roughly.

His small hands lay balled into tight fists on his lap. “They had one horse pulling their cart … for so many people and all that equipment, I doubt they’ll make it far. Which means they’ll have to stop, maybe take stock of their yields.” Armin’s lashes flutter like the wings of an anxious butterfly. “It’s the only chance we’ll get to catch up to them.”

“No turning back now.” Eren at least has the decency to look apologetic towards Mina. Her answer is a raised chin, a confident nod. You all have to deal with this later.

“So, how are we gonna do this?” asks Connie. He’s dragging his sleeve over Sasha’s face, wiping off any remaining snot from her nose. “We might not make it even if we split up.”

“And if we keep following that path they took without really knowing where they went, we might get lost.” Jean’s face is grey and hollow, as if cut from living rock.

“How about we climb to a higher place?” offers Sasha. “When you get lost in the mountains, climb upwards. If you get lost in a forest, climb a tree. That’s what my Pops—I mean father always told me.”

“Okay. First, we find high ground, then hopefully some signs of those fuckers. And then …” Jean looks around, as if he’s just remembered you’re all stuck in the woods in the middle of the night and maybe there are more things you should be scared of. “Well, we’ll figure out how to deal with them once we find them.”

“We stick together, we take care of each other, okay?” Marco says, sharing urgent gazes with each one of you. “You see, hear, smell anything weird, the whole group has to know.”

“Yes, sir,” you chorus as one, and even though you don’t like to think about how you unload this on Marco’s shoulders, it feels good to have him still stepping into the leader’s shoes and trying to keep you all together and at least pretend everything is under control.

He turns to you and makes sure the worst of the bleeding has stopped before he uses Mina’s tattered fabric to bandage your hands. “You remember the map? There’s a rock overhang nearby that should give us a good outlook over the whole forest.”

“It’s south-east from our camp,” you say and try not to flinch when the fabric burns against your cuts. “But I … I didn’t pay attention to where exactly they led us, and where we are now.”

“It’s fine.” Marco gives your wrists a quick, encouraging squeeze. “You did enough already.”

He turns to the others, explains where you’re going, and moves to the very front to lead. You move in the quiet of the night, a small group of hunched people one could easily mistake for malformed animals. The order is nonsensical, Marco and Mina at the front, then Connie and Sasha, and once you begin the ascent of the rock formation, Eren is glued to Armin’s side and helps him whenever he stumbles or just needs to take a quick breather.

You can’t tell what exactly it is Jean’s been waiting for, but when he falls beside you, he sticks to your side like a shadow. He’s silent for a moment, but he can’t keep the words inside him for too long before he needs them out. “How are your hands?” he starts with something safe.

You spread them before you, wiggle your fingers slightly. “The bleeding’s stopped. Didn’t cut too deep, thankfully.”

They fall back to your sides, but Jean quickly reaches out and takes one in his. You see him gnawing at his bottom lip as his fingers graze the bandages, lingering for a moment at the dark copper spots where the fabric has sucked in your blood.

“I’m sorry,” he says. His thumb brushes your knuckles, and you feel thrown back to another time, inside the infirmary where he said he would protect you from exactly this.

“What for?”

Jean lowers his head. “I ran away.”

You can’t help it, laughing a little. “You didn’t make it far.”

“I mean it,” he says, and the urgency in his voice makes you both halt. “I’m the last one who would agree with anything that suicidal maniac says, but he—he was right. All I could think of was saving my own ass. Well, getting away to get help, but ultimately.” He shakes his head. “And even then, after the—” He swallows hard. “—the shot. After the shot, you tried to come for me. You still tried to help.”

You hum, open your mouth, and the memory hits you so hard it gives you whiplash.

Crossing your arms, you cock your head towards him. “Bold that you think I’m sticking around here and wait for you.”

Emil snorts but he looks almost pleased. The crown is almost done. “You’ll be here. And I’ll come back to you. I will always come back to you.”

You bite your trembling bottom lip, press the corners of your mouth further up into a smile even though it wavers and threatens to disappear. “Oh, come on,” you say, punching his arm lightly. “You know I’ll always come back for you, Jeanbo.”

Even in the darkness, you can see him flushing hard. His shoulders shake when he takes a deep breath in, deep breath out, then blinks up at the moon. You pretend you don’t see the tears at the corners of his eyes.

“Same,” he says, and his grip around your wrist is borderline painful, but you don’t pull away. You let him hold you and reaffirm to himself that you’re safe and here. “I’ll come back for you, [Name]. We’re a team, we’ve always been a team.” He points at you, then at himself. “Pot. Kettle.”

You bump into his side.

“Heya, right now is literally the worst time to flirt, you two!” Connie calls down to you, peeking over a ledge. They’re all much further ahead than you’ve expected, getting so lost in your conversation with Jean.

Jean flips him off, and you can hear Connie’s grunt as he laughs to himself. When he turns away, you spot Eren staring down at you, but you can’t read his expression from down here, and before you can call up if everything’s alright, he’s turned away and you only see his retreating back.

You ignore how your heart shrinks to the size of a walnut. This will have to wait for later, when you can find time and peace to entangle the muddle of thoughts still occupying your mind without worrying to get shot. Or worse.

Before Jean can start the excruciating climb up the rocks, you latch onto the hem of his jacket. “What did you mean with your question?” you ask. “Earlier, I mean. What … what am I supposed to remember?”

Jean throws a quick glance up to the others, and you know there’s no time and you have to hurry. But something, even if it’s crumbs, has to appease the hunger to know inside you before this black hole swallows you. If Jean knows something, he owes you that much.

“God, it’s been so long.” Jean wipes a hand over his face. He looks exhausted. “All I remember is my parents talking about it, and asking, well…” He waves a hand in your direction as if that’s supposed to make you understand. “They asked me not to mention it so it wouldn’t trigger some unpleasant memories. Apparently someone…,” Jean trails off. He braces himself. You’ve only seen him take on that posture when he’s about to swing at Eren during an argument.

“Jean.” You tug on his jacket, feeling your hands go clammy. “I need to know. Please.”

“Someone kidnapped you, when you were little,” Jean says slowly. He falters for a moment, squeezes his eyes shut, like the memory of that conversation with his parents is still too close, too painful, excruciating. “You weren’t gone too long, they had found you on the same day. Some old fart had locked you up in his house while going about his day. It was your Dad … your Dad who found you. When I asked my Mom, she only said that your Dad made sure that guy would never steal little girls from their parents again, and I thought that meant the Garrison, or Hell even the Military Police took care of him.” He focuses on you fully now, and you wish he would stop talking. Your guts clench like someone has kicked you in the stomach.

“Your father killed that man when your captor swung a knife at you two. The Military Police ruled it self-protection and closed the case from what I overheard my parents say. You had blacked out during that fight, but when you came over to visit after that, and my Mother accidentally slipped up … you acted like it had never happened.”

You stare at him, throat tight, the cold sweat sensation of dread spreading slowly through your limbs. “How old was I?”

“Ten? Or eleven, I think?”

“And what … what did that man do to me?”

Jean’s voice is frighteningly quiet. “I don’t know.”

You feel sick. “So it could have been anything.”

“Or nothing,” Jean replies fast, sharp. “Your Dad found you really fast, I know that much. Or I mean, that’s what your parents told mine.”

You stare past his shoulder at a dark spot in the sky where black clouds have hidden away the stars. “So, my Dad saved me.”

It makes sense. The room you remember, the green wallpaper with golden flowers strewn across, the weight of an imposing man behind you. You calling for your father’s help.

And yet.

And yet.

The feeling is all wrong. You have a vague remembrance of that feeling, and it was not relief at knowing your father was on the other side of that locked, heavy door. Rather, it is closer to … harrowing, horrific fear.

As if he had left you there.

You try to shake the feeling of dread away, to push all these thoughts to the far back of your mind. If you had really lived through such a traumatic experience at such a young age, maybe you had simply suppressed those memories out of shock.

Though that doesn’t explain why you still see the fall of Wall Maria vividly as if it is the very same day, every event a clear image burnt into the backside of your closed eyes.

And why … why of all things … why had Emil never said anything to you? You would have noticed his behaviour changing—he would have worried himself sick about you.

“When we’re back in Trost, I’ll have to ask Ida about it. About everything. She should have told me at … at some point.” Not anger pangs through your chest, hot and sudden like a bullet, but an urgency that is nearly as frightening. You need to know every single detail. Right now it feels as though you are grasping for sand as it slips through your fingers, using it to rebuild the very foundation of the person that you are.

“I’m sure she, and Dad, didn’t see a point in it because you didn’t remember.” Jean juts his chin up to where the others are still waiting and continues the ascent, you hard on his heels. Quieter, he says, “Why make you scared when you were better off not knowing? They thought it kinder to spare you that.”

“Because it would have been honest.” You give him a long, hard look. “Maybe not kind, truth isn’t kind. But it is the truth.”

He turns around at that. The milky-white slant of moonlight catches in his hair, his eyes. Jean gives you a nod, easy and simple, and it weighs more than any promise he could have made.

“Let’s try to make it out of these woods first, okay?” Jean says when you’re almost at the top. “And then we can think about everything that’s happened. And write Ma a letter.”

“Yeah.” Deep breath in, deep breath out—resettle the beating of your heart and remind yourself you are not alone. “Yeah, that sounds like a plan.”

He gives you one last, fleeting look, then turns to assert the situation before him: Armin is greedily finishing up the rest of water from Mina’s field bota bag, Sasha and Connie huddle together, lost in their own quiet, private conversation. Marco and Eren perch by the edge of the cliff, both facing the forest stretching out before them.

You join them right in time when Marco whips out his binoculars to survey the area ahead.

“Found anything?” Jean asks. He kneels beside Eren, eyes roaming the horizon. Eren, in the middle of them, steals a glance at you, first at your face, then at your bandaged hands. You wiggle your fingers in his direction to show you’re alright, all fingers are still working. He purses his mouth, looking as if he doesn’t really buy it. You make your point by flipping him off good-naturedly, which at least makes the corners of his mouth twitch a little. Another small victory.

“Smoke, right there.” Marco points into the distance at a thin trail of grey smoke curling into the night sky. “Armin was right,” he continues, handing Jean the binoculars. “They’re currently camping out and loading the carts. Christa seems fine.”

“For now,” Eren bites out.

“So, what are we gonna do?” Jean lowers the binoculars. “We won’t make it in time, even if we head out immediately.”

“And unlike us, they can defend themselves.” Marco looks grim. “And I don’t want anyone else ending up like Victor.”

“I … I might have an idea.” You all turn at the timid sound of Armin’s voice. He’s wiping his mouth dry quickly, and hands Mina’s flask back. He looks over at you sharply, his eyes glinting with steely determination. “But I need your help.”

Suddenly, everyone is looking at you as if you owe them something. You want to take a step back, but there’s only a cliff and a steep fall waiting behind you. Literally.

“Okay.” You pull at the loose threads coming off the bandages. “Shoot.”

“We might have to head back to camp anyway to get some of the stuff we’ll need, but I want to be sure just in case, and you’re really good at memorising maps. How many wide exits are there in this forest?”

“Wide exits?”

“Wide as in wide enough to let them pass through with multiple carriages.”

You turn, take a good, long look at the forest with its tall reaching green peaks like gnarly fingers waiting to snap at whatever dares to come too close. You recognise some landmarks from the map: two giant rock formations facing each other, a smaller one right behind them—the points of a triangle. Mountains encircle the forest, high in the east, dipping down a little and rising again towards the south.

You point a finger towards them, and say, “That’s the closest exist in this area. The other two wide enough for them to leave are in the opposite direction. I’m pretty sure the road over there divides into two routes after you clear the forest.”

“Then that’s where we’ll ambush them. Once they enter the wider exit, we don’t stand a chance, so we have to lead them back into the forest.” Armin turns to Sasha. “Can you lead us there? We’ll have to head back to camp first, get ropes and some other things. But can you bring us over there?”

Sasha takes in the area, lips puckered in concentration. She grins. It isn’t a pleasant sort of grin; too many teeth, too feral. It makes you want to kiss her.

“No problem,” she says at last. “I can get us there fast enough, even without horses.”

Armin heaves a relieved sigh, but his expression quickly turns sour at the sight of having to climb the mountain all the way down again. When Eren notices and offers to give him a piggy-back ride, Armin declines vehemently.

“Okay, so what’s your plan exactly,” Jean asks halfway down the mountain. Whenever he stumbles or trips on loose rocks, his hands shoot out to hold onto Marco to steady himself, which is cute, or onto you, which is annoying because you can’t even carry half his weight.

“We block off the route leading to the wider exit by putting a tree in their way. That’s where the ropes come into play. Three of us will stay at the road fork and detour the carts. The rest will wait ahead until they arrive. I think it’s best only two hide in trees and jump onto the carts to attack them.”

“I’ll go,” Eren immediately says.

“I’ll go, too,” Jean quickly follows up. You want to catch his eye, but he’s staring ahead stubbornly.

“How do we figure out which carriage are Christa and our ODM gear are in?” you ask. Little rocks give away under your foot, but before you can slip, Jean has a strong hand around your arm and hauls you up.

It is Marco that answers: “The ODM gear should be easy. The roads leading back into the forest will be rocky and bumpy. If we hear a rattling sound, we’ll be able to tell.”

“The leftover cans at camp,” Armin says. “We can use them to give the sign.”

Marco nods. “If the equipment is in the first carriage, I’ll pull once. If it’s the one after, then twice. If it’s both, I’ll pull three times.”

“Okay, that’s a fucking great plan,” says Jean. “But let’s hurry back, or else we’ll never catch up to them.”

With every step closer back to camp, putting foot before foot becomes more difficult, as if your limbs are heavy with lead. You don’t want to see Victor’s corpse and be reminded of what happened earlier, but as you move on, with no chance to stand still, you brace yourself for the worst.

The worst you have imagined, it turns out, is still tame compared to the actual sight. Within minutes after he’s died, blow flies have arrived and now swarm around Victor’s blown head. Even from a good few feet away, you see them scurrying around, diving into the openings of his body and the big hole at the side of his face to lay their eggs into his rotting meat.

You try to swallow around the lump in your throat, noticing the sour taste of rising bile spreading inside your mouth. Quickly, you turn away before yesterday’s meal comes back up to greet you.

The sudden movement of you turning around startles Eren, who has crept up behind you, and out of instinct, you guess, he grabs your shoulders to steady you, probably worried you were about to pass out.

“Woah, easy there.” He has to lower his head a little to get to your eye level. “You okay?”

The look on your face must be answer enough, because he winces at his question. “Right, sorry.”

His eyes drift over to Victor’s body, and as you watch him you are surprised there isn’t any strong emotion on his face. No disgust, no sorrow, like having the dead remains of a former comrade—even though he was a bad person and not very kind—is a completely normal thing.

“Uhm, Eren.”

He still isn’t looking at you. “Hm?”

“You can let me go now, I’m good.”

“Oh.” Eren’s eyes sweep over at you. His hands loosen their grip on your shoulders, but instead of falling back to his side, they slowly slide down your arms—as if they have a mind of their own, confused and a little lost without your shoulders as anchors to hold onto.

Eren blinks, gaze darting to your mouth, and then quickly away. “I think that was the first time.”

You roll your shoulders, still feeling the touch of his fingers as if they have seared their imprint through the solid fabric of your jacket right into your skin. “First time for what?”

“That you called me by my name. Not Jaeger.”

“Oh. Well. Almost dying together earns me that privilege, I think.”

He gives a little, dry chuckle. Somehow, you feel that as long as he can laugh, everything is going to be okay. Eren looks at you, slow and hard, and then smiles. His green eyes light up. “Then I have earned it as well,” he says. “[Name].”

You have never thought about your name much before, but when he says it, it is as if you are hearing it for the first time, and suddenly you are aware of how intimate calling each other by the first name is, and how much you like the sound of your name on his lips. Your breath is very short when you repeat, softly, “Eren.”

“Yes?” Amusement glitters in his eyes.

With a sort of horror you realise that you have simply said his name for the sake of saying it; you haven’t actually had a question—you just craved another taste of his name in your mouth. Hastily, you stumble over the words even though you don’t know where they might lead, “When Victor got shot, there was an owl. Wasn’t that weird?”

If he finds your sudden change of topic strange or suspicious, he doesn’t show it. “Weird how?”

“That it was there at all. I didn’t know they’d be so close to the ground when people are around.”

Eren shrugs. “Nothing weird about it. It was probably just looking for food.”

You don’t know much about owls, but that doesn’t seem right. Feel right. You rub your heavy eyelids, feeling a dull throb crawling along the back of your head. Was it all just bad timing? Fate? You don’t know what would have happened if it had been you spinning to the bottom of the Wheel of Fortune.

“We’ve decided you’ll stay with Marco and Armin to give us the signal when to attack.” Eren’s voice is suddenly close as he dips his head to you as if he’s sharing a secret. You blink up at him, ready to argue which he reads in your face as if it is an open book. “[Name], think about it. You’re hurt. Marco is right, you’ve done enough.”

It is hard to argue against this, with your palms cut open and still hurting. Still, somehow you feel like there is more you can do, should do. You move away from Victor’s body, scanning the ground for empty cans. Eren sticks to your side.

“We only get one chance at saving Christa,” he continues. “If we mess it up, she’s as good as dead. Our gear will be gone. But there’s no way we’ll mess this up. We got three cadets from the top here, we’ll save her.”

It’s sweet that he tries to comfort you, thinking your hesitation is because you’re scared of failing. You should just thank him and catch up with the rest.

Instead, you blurt, “Do you like Christa?” and immediately regret having opened your mouth.

Eren blinks as if he’s been knocked off his feet and he’s still trying to understand what has hit him. “She’s a comrade, so … yeah?” He frowns as if you’ve spoken a different language and he’s realising maybe his answer is completely wrong. “I mean, sometimes she creeps me out with all that holier than thou, being super friendly. All that benevolence has to drive her insane at some point. And it’s creepy sometimes.”

That wasn’t what you meant but you’re not too keen to explain what answer you actually want from him.

“Maybe you’re having a hard time understanding her,” you say, noticing how much easier it is to fall back into teasing banter and light-hearted jabs, “because you don’t know how to be nice.”

“I can be plenty nice if I want to.” He narrows his eyes at you, and it feels like there is more behind this; as if there is something else layered in his words but you are missing the respective key to unlock the door and get behind the meaning.

Before you can say anything else, Connie wedges himself between you two. You didn’t even notice how close you and Eren stood.

“Hate to break ya up, but we’re leaving,” he announces. Eyes half-closed, he’s wearing this expression you’ve come to associate with Conny being tired of some shit—you just never expected to get the brunt of it.

He has probably known it long before you.

Everybody has known it long before you, but you were oblivious to the signs, maybe even a little scared to pay them too much attention.

It will still take another two years until you finally find the courage to tiptoe closer to the edge, only to have Eren yank you down into the void with him.

Armin’s plan worked out splendidly, which was a surprise to no one.

After Christa’s heartfelt plea to spare the men, held at blade-edge by Mikasa and Annie who managed to find your group after Armin had used Sasha’s signal flare, Thomas and Bertholdt had rode out to inform the instructors of what had transpired and where the remaining recruits were holding the attackers captive until reinforcements arrived.

Once their headwear was off and you had a good look at the faces of your assaulters, it was easy to see them for what they were: miserable men trying to get by with any means necessary. Thieves and beggars, left of any other civil option to provide for their families.

You couldn’t say it out loud then, but there was no ounce of pity for them inside you. Everybody seemed to simply agree with Christa’s noble spirit, that killing them was wrong; that making them pay for what they did was not the solution. It didn’t sit right with you. Only one look at Eren was enough to tell you he might be the only one sharing that sentiment.

A quarter of a day was all it took for Shadis to arrive, with him the Military Police soldiers from Trost. They took the men away in police carriages, sending them to the inner Wall where they would be judged and locked away. You didn’t want to think what that would mean for their families, the very reason they got into this in the first place. Maybe there are worse things than death.

Depending on how many recruits passed away within three months after the last, obsequies were held at the end of the third month. Because Victor Hoffmann had been the only one, the instructors deemed it sufficient to simply cremate his remains and send them back to his relatives in a simple wooden box with his possessions. Shortly after that, both his friends Albert Kleinstein and Edmund Rowe left the military service. All three, gone. Just like that.

A day after, you had sent a letter to Ida and Felix, asking for every detail from that day seven years ago when you were kidnapped. It was weird, how while you were sitting down and forming the words on the paper, each ink stroke unravelled the tight knot in your stomach—all of a sudden it all had seemed not important anymore. What could you do with that information?

Seven years later, with the villain of your little story dead, and your hero as well. Would knowing change anything for you? Why did it feel as if all the threads and weaves holding you together suddenly became unknitted and the person you see in the mirror every morning appeared to slowly turn into a stranger.

At least the ring hanging on the thin golden chain always remained the same. At least there was one part of your past that remained a constant and steady point around which you rotated—a sun to your star system.

That concludes the low-risk Wasteland Excursion, one you’re sure the instructors will tell every following cadet corps in the years to come.

“Low-risk my ass,” Jean mumbles. His dirty hair falls into his eyes as he leans over his lap, fumbling with a loose screw on his turbine. The tip of his nose is red and his words come out in little puffs and dense clouds. Winter is approaching, fast and hard, and you couldn’t be happier for Ida’s care package to arrive in two weeks with hopefully a new scarf and a warm pair of gloves. Gear maintenance is all that’s left for today, then you’re allowed to hit the showers and call it a day. “Every single one of us should get a fucking medal for putting up with those thieves and catching them.”

“I can already imagine what Shadis would say to that.” You lower your voice. “Are you chipmunks going to expect us to give you a medal every time you return from a fight? Get back after you killed some real Titans and maybe I’ll give you a pat on the shoulder. Now scram.”

“That was a good impression,” Jean allows. “But he would never call us chipmunks.”

“I love chipmunks,” is all Marco contributes before he dives back refilling his gas cylinder.

“I think at least Marco and Thomas should get bonus points for holding the groups together.” You glance over at him, noticing how his hair has grown and how he always brushes it behind his ears whenever he is flustered. “You guys were great leaders.”

“I don’t know if I should have accepted the leader position, to be honest.” Marco smiles sheepishly at you. “But thanks.”

“Why not?” Jean breathes on the metal case of his housing, polishing the surface. “You did a good job. I think it fits you.”

Marco tugs his hair behind his ears. “Nah, I’m not suited to be a leader. You’re more up for that job, Jean.”

At that, Jean looks up. They share a look that seems like a dare. Eventually, Jean goes back to work. “Why’s that?” he asks.

“I don’t think you’re ready to hear it yet. But someday, I’ll tell you.”

“Am I ready to hear it?” you ask.

Marco grins and leans over, his voice very quiet and very deep in your ear. “I just really enjoy looking at him from behind.”

Oh.

He leans away, giving you a quick wink. Your little secret. You’re pretty sure your face is on fire right now.

“What did he say, tell me,” Jean demands.

You mimic sealing your mouth shut and throwing the key away. Jean kicks at your foot in a half-hearted attempt to make you talk. He points a finger accusingly in your and Marco’s direction. “You’re ganging up on me. Is this how it’s going to be from now on? Leaving me out? Dear God, don’t make me have to befriend Jaeger.”

“Eren can’t stand you,” you point out.

“Armin, then.”

“Armin’s too smart for you.”

“Keep talking and I’ll dunk your head inside a latrine.”

Marco laughs, but it quickly trickles away into a somewhat sorrowful smile. “Do you guys think we can spend all our days like this?”

“Together?” you ask.

“Mocking each other?” Jean offers.

“Yeah, together.” Marco looks at you two, and he somehow looks much younger and older at the same time. “Jean and I want to join the Military Police and you’ll go to the Garrison, but maybe we can still … you know.” He shrugs a little helplessly. “Still hang out.”

“I think [Name] and I are ready to broaden our horizons, open the gates.” Jean claps his hands, then spreads them wide as if he is a pastor ready to absolve Marco. “Let someone new in and become a trio.”

He wiggles his fingers, looking at you and Marco expectantly. Marco scoots closer, allowing Jean to leisurely throw an arm around his shoulder. Now they both look at you expectantly.

“I’m good, guys,” you say, blowing off fine iron dust from your hooks, satisfied with the result. “There are more priorities on my list, sorry.”

Jean rolls his eyes. “Like what?”

“A long, hot shower.”

Marco sighs, but he is in no hurry to untangle Jean’s arm from his shoulders. “She’s got a point.”

“You can’t run from the Jean-Marco-[Name] sandwich forever,” Jean says, pointing at you. He then turns to Marco. “And to answer your question, no. I don’t think we’ll stay together forever. We grow up, we find our own things to do. But what’s important is that we’re in each other’s hearts … or …. some shit … like that,” Jean finishes quietly at the baffled gazes you and Marco level him with. It takes only one second for his face to become the colour of the red roses on the Garrison soldier’s uniforms, and he quickly tries to hide it behind Ida’s scarf she knitted him two years ago.

“That was the most beautiful thing you’ve ever said, I think,” you say in awe. “Who are you and where is the real Jean?”

“Shut up and go take a shower.” He pushes you off your stool. “Try not to drown or whatever.”

You laugh until the muscles in your face strain, until your belly hurts. You laugh, because it is easier than finding the words that you too wish the same.

All three of you don’t make a promise on it because you know that would be too cruel.

❀❀❀

When you call to me asleep, up the sandy hills I scramble. A single thread hangs limply down, and I breathe, “Not now, not now.” I find you all unwoven, trying desperately to sew. And I know the kindest thing is to leave you alone. Yet I am selfish. I want every part of me to crash into every part of you, and I swear that is how stars are born.

When your seams have come unknitted, and you cry out to the sky, I’ve run out of my words, my song, just let me die, me die. The rockrose and the thistle will whistle as you mourn. I could try to calm you down, but I know you won’t.

All the pins inside your fretted head and your muttered “Whens” and “Hows;” all your mother’s weaves and your father’s threads, let me rob you of them now. Because I will darn you back together when you think that you’re bereft, and you’ll wail, you’ll scream, but I will never stop, because you are all that I have left.

I awake and hear you calling, and up those hills I climb. And I find you with a thimble weeping; “May I”, I ask, “may I?”

And you gently gift it to me because you have no clue how to sew.

And I know the kindest thing—I pray to both our Gods, it is the kindest thing … I know the kindest thing is to never leave you alone.

Rockrose (also cistus of the Cistaceae plant family) in the Victorian language of flowerssymbolizes imminent death.

Thistle: In Celtic countries, the associations are positive, and the flower symbolises resilience, strength, determination, protection and pride. The flower’s purple and pink colours represent royalty. In Victorian England, the thistle signified pain, aggression and intrusion.

These whole last part in cursive are the lyrics of Rockrose and Thistle by The Amazing Devil. I’ve changed a few words to make it fit, but I don’t take credit for this poetic master piece.

***

A/N: y’all, connie knows