CHAPTER ONE
Long shadows dance over the mud-choked water of the canal. The morning stirs a carefree whisper among the forests and meadows that line either side, sometimes joined by the hum of a pedestrian walking along the well-worn paths between the walls. Anyone who sets foot there can remember a time, only months before, when the plants spoke in hushed concern, and the river gurgled with tense fear—the fear that it could all be disturbed by the giant nightmares that once plagued the world. But now, for some reason, that fear has faded into that of a past dream or a story told by parents to scare naughty children. Some remember—some remember all too well. And what scares them is how their millennium-long struggle has already dwindled into oblivion. Soon, the titans will be no more than legend.
Where the Armored Titan once broke through Wall Maria, a gaping hole still remains. With the threat of bloodthirsty beasts gone, the Garrison have stopped focusing their efforts on patching it—rather, they've evened it out into a series of arches, letting the canal venture through into the world beyond. The remains of a tower blown off in the fall of Shiganshina serves as a toll booth.
The toll keeper is a potbellied man. Even though he's in the evening of the prime of his life—mid thirties, per say—the military had never been even part of consideration for him. In his logic, while it's all well and good to defend humanity, there has to be a man out there to keep the human race actually going. Not that it matters anymore, anyway. He and his wife moved to Shiganshina months before, with the halfway promise of honor that was there before the titans were exterminated.
He yawns and stretches. To both the east and west, the canal is empty as far as the eyes can see, and he might as well catch up on some much-needed sleep while the coast is clear—his wife had given birth, and now they both ha a wrinkled, annoying, and absolutely lovable and adorable parasite stealing their nights. As the sun freckles the water and makes the gently lapping waves shimmer like the surface of a sword, he lazily projects his strength on keeping his eyes open and instead soaks in the overall beauty of the place. Minutes pass, and he hears to beginning of the day's construction, a chorus of hammers and grunting Garrison.
But beyond that, he hears the sloshing of an approaching boat from the west, from the interior of the walls. "Heh?" he mumbles. "There ain't no barges down the canal, much as my eyes can see." He shrugs. "Must be them workers slackin' off and takin' a bath in downstream. Well, misters, wait 'til a barge comes along and rams you down. Ha!"
The mild sloshing takes no heed to his words, and he resigns himself to lowering his lids across his eyes and taking a nice look at his dreams—only for a moment or two, I swear. He's far gone, visions of demonic babies, snappy wives, stone arches, and ruined cities swirling through his imagination (because truthfully, there is nothing else going on with his life at the moment.
A wide canoe—possibly the scrapped bed of an old supply wagon—drifts smoothly along with the current, moving at such a leisurely pace and making so few ripples around its worn edge that one might swear it's a part of the river itself. Hastily picked wildflowers are haphazardly arranged around the wood, hiding all the unattractive cracks and making a mattress of clouds for its cargo. It slips past the toll booth, giving a hushed giggle like a child, and watches the heaving chest of the sleeping toll keeper.
Two men rest in the boat. Their backs crush the flowers that levitate them, and their chests are cooled by the golden chill of the morning sun. Dew drips on their faces from the petals that frame them. Their eyes are closed, but it's debatable due to the peace that practically wafts from them whether they're really dead or whether they're just following the toll keeper's example and catching up on much-needed sleep.
One of them sends a swift kick at his still body. His foot, though perfectly visible, disappears as it passes through his white-clothed thigh. He snorts, annoyed. "Well, isn't that useless."
The man beside him cracks a smile. "Well, if it weren't, what use would it be? We're dead. We can't go back in there, so those people aren't us."
The shorter of the two glares across to his companion, his cutting gaze reaching just about his shoulder. "You're useless, too."
His smile widens. The insult is weak and meaningless, and they both know it. "Thanks." He turns his attention to Wall Maria, growing ever larger and looming before them. "Huh. Last time I saw this portion of the wall, I was ten."
"That's…" The burgeoning witty remark dies in his mouth. "Really?"
"Yeah. I also was traumatized, angry, and crying pretty damn heavy. Oh, and emotionally unstable. Weird that that was fifteen years ago, eh?"
"No sh*t. Don't remind me. Makes me think of our age difference, which makes me realize I'm old. Very old."
The taller one slaps him, hard, in the back. He grumbles. Were he alive and given the ability to feel pain, that would probably leave a red mark through his uniform. When did his subordinate suddenly grow strong? Oh, wait a minute, it must have happened somewhere between the time of his entry to the Corps and his death. That isn't to say he still can't hand the brat his own ass on a platter.
The thought occurs to him that because they can't feel pain, he could probably hit the little shit into oblivion. But then he remembers that although half the time he has a distinct urge to strangle him, he's also irrevocably in love with him, and that certainly puts a damper on the mood.
He realizes that the man is speaking. "Well, good thing you died before the gray hair finally caught up to you, eh? Actually, I'm surprised you aren't gray. Being the best puts pressure on you."
"Maybe I am gray, and what you see is a very, very dark shade," he quips. He resists the urge to sigh happily as a calloused hand rakes gently over his head, and instead settles for saying, "If you mess up my hair permanently you'll have hell to pay."
"Sorry." The hand immediately runs his fingers the other way, smoothing it back. "But nope, that's not gray. Not a little bit. Black, through and through."
"Goddamn right it's not gray. I've worked quite literally my entire life maintaining a youthful appearance. Now would be an inconvenient time for that to change."
"In speaking of that…" he trails off. "Do you think we can dock in Shiganshina?"
"What does that have to do with anything?" he asks.
"Nothing, really. But I know you hate it when I change the topic without a word to the edgewise, so I added a few connectors in there," he says. "But really, can we?"
The humorous mood is shot through with the inevitable nostalgia. "Do you want to see your house one more time? Before, you know, we reach wherever we're going?"
"Yeah," the man admits. "I know that since we basically have eternity together to look forward to, I'll find my mom at one point. But I just want one more reminder."
"Of what?" his companion asks.
"Of being human," he replies.
For the third time or so since dying, the shorter man's composure threatens to break. It's still a difficult concept for him to accept that he doesn't have to hide his emotions anymore, but then, he's standing next to that one person. He's already seen past his walls, and he was once possibly the only soul he could cry against. Now, it's the same, technically, because they seem to be the only two wandering souls around and it seems it will stay that way unless he runs away to find someone else—a fate he'd run through hell a million times over to avoid.
A pair of no-longer-lanky-now-they're-muscular-shit-when-did-he-become-a-sex-god arms find their way around him and tug him to his chest. "Sshh," the voice belonging to the arms says.
"Sorry. I'm starting to recognize the appeal that being sarcastic and emotionless has. Without that aspect I think I would have cried enough to make a pool out of Sina."
"No, it's fine," he automatically says. "Really. Cry until you melt my shoulder, for all I care. You deserve that chance. Besides, now that you can't feel physical pain you can't get a hangover."
He pulls away from the embrace, looking up quizzically. "You can't get a hangover from crying."
"You'd be surprised how similar drinking and crying are. Both make you numb using some kind of liquid, both have you babbling incoherently, both make you fall asleep, and both make you wake up with a raging headache."
"Alright, you can get a hangover from crying. What's the point again?"
"You can cry if you want to, 'cause I'll be here."
At those words the short one snakes his own arms around the other's torso and buries his face in the soft folds of his twice-turned, well-worn shirt. They are dead, but for some reason, he is warm and his heart is beating like a perfect drum.
"Are you still crying?"
He isn't crying anymore, but he has no desire to loosen himself. After what seems an eternity of being constantly reminded by seemingly everything of the man's death, it will be a difficult thing to pry him more than the span of a household from him. And for not having the ability to be hungry or tired, he wants to use him as a pillow, because he's found in the past that the oddly heated body of a lover amounts to much more than the stuffed crap the military provides.
"Nah," he answers. "Don't let go, though. I'll kick you so that if you were alive it would hurt, if you do."
"I know this is awkward for me to repeat it," the man says. "But can we dock the boat?"
"You're useless," he repeats, but it's muffled in the shirt. "Okay," he speaks up. "I don't think we can physically tie the boat to the edge of the canal, but if you want, we can run up to the house, say goodbye, and run back to the boat before it leaves Shiganshina."
"How long will that take?"
"Not a lot of time. Enough, I suppose. The canal is a bit winding in this city."
If possible, they both crush each other even closer together. Over Maria, a huff of haughty wind glides over them, and to anyone who knows that the walls are, in fact, made of a small legion of Colossal Titans, they're quite positive that it's at least one of them laughing at the ridiculously adorable display of ridiculous idiots who are ridiculously in love, ridiculously dead, yet, at the same time, ridiculously alive. Maria draws closer. Soon, they'll pass the toll booth and the oblivious toll keeper, and they'll enter the clanging world of working Garrison members, all breaking their relieved backs to patch the town of the taller man's youth together.
"Let's do it," the one from Shiganshina says.
"You know, they were discussing renaming Shiganshina after you."
"Really? I was pretty sure the world had forgotten me. Guess not."
"Of course not. That blond experiment of puberty is commander. Your sister took my place. And they're not going to let a single person on this earth forget your name." Considering, he adds on. "Even that tall asshole you always fought with. I think he's the one to suggest the idea in the first place."
"In which case, they should rename Stohess after you."
"If Miss Inverted Angel finally cuts the crap, marries her obsessive girlfriend, and takes the throne like she was born to, I think it actually might happen."
The man falls silent, and instead of looking downstream, he looks away from the sunrise and towards the dock by the castle they'd called home for years. "Do you think they're mourning us?"
"Of course they're mourning us, shithead. That's what humans do. They mourn, mourn, and mourn, and in the process they forget to make sure they're worth mourning for."
He's hit lightly on his upper forearm. "We're mostly human too, you know."
"You know what I mean," he says in exasperation. "Besides, if we can't feel pain, we can only interact with each other, and we quite literally cannot make a difference in the world, how are we human?"
"Deep."
"Shut up."
"Especially coming from you…"
"Shut up—you know you love me."
"I know I do."
A shadow paints over them. The arches are strong: the mortar fresh, unbreakable; the red legs of the Colossal Titans hardly visible in the shadows. The toll booth is positioned uncomfortably on its side, and a fluttering snore escapes the toll keeper's lips. "Ye damn workers," he mumbles unconsciously. "Goin' ahead an' tryin' ta wake me up—nah, well, I need my shut-eye, and you folk ain't goin'a take it away's."
The city is buzzing. Though the ubiquitous presence of a small country of militarists swarms the streets, slowly but surely returning the pried-up cobblestones to their rightful places, still it's plain to the eye that citizens are returning at nearly the same rate at which they left fifteen years before.
"It's just like it was before," the man says. "Almost."
Not responding, his companion watches the wall cede around them. He grabs the tall one's arms. "Let's go," he says.
They leap out of the boat, feet slapping the water like it is dirt, and legs moving faster than the bodies laying side by side in the mattress of clouds and flowers could ever hope to. A smile flits over the face of the shorter man and stays firmly in place on the face of the taller. He can tell what he's thinking: home, home, home, I'm home. It strikes him as halfway tragic and halfway beautiful that after over half his life, he still remembers perfectly the route home.
They'd breached the basement in the end. He wasn't sure what he'd been expecting to find: a part of him admired the members of other squads that joked it was the only titan pornography that existed in the world. But it wasn't what they found.
He still regrets what was done to save humanity. He rather would have saved him.
The house is all the way built back up. It looks just like it did before, excluding the furniture of course, but it can never really be the home that the tall man knew. That floorboard next to the stairs is no longer sticking up and giving his family splinters—some of his fondest memories started with a shriek from his mother or Mikasa or a curse from his father—and his bed no longer is positioned in just a way that he can hide Armin's book when they sleep over. The kitchen no longer smells like burnt sausage—from when his father tried to cook—and sweet bread—when Armin demonstrated his heavenly skills. No longer is there a rusty doorknob to the bathroom which, no matter how many times its oiled, still screams an alarm whenever it's opened or closed. No longer is there a loose patch in the attic where, on nights when Mikasa has nightmares about her family's murder, they sneak out onto the roof, watch the stars through cloudless skies, and talk about nothing in particular until their voices hurt. His heart is threatening to worm its way back into being alive, just so he can bring that back.
But then again, without those disappearing, he wouldn't have fallen in love, now, would he?
"Are you ready to let go?" Levi asks.
Eren hesitates. Shiganshina is the home of who he once was. Now, the world of the living has been expended, and he has entered with open arms into the land of the dead. There's still a tendril of possessiveness over the town, but in this case, he'd rather it belong to those who can change it for the better. "Yeah," he says. "I am. But they'd better rename it Jaeger or I'll wring all their necks through the void."
"How are you not crying?"
"I did my share while I was alive. Now, since in all technicality, I can't drink, I don't think there are any tears left to spare."
"And that means?"
"You've got a while left before you reach my state of higher being. Though you'll never quite catch me in the height department, either."
Levi swats him on the head, fully knowing he doesn't feel a thing. "You know, sometimes I want to kill you. Again."
"Like hell you will. You know you love me."
"I know I do."