Disclaimer: I do NOT own Attack on Titan/Shingeki no Kyojin.
Warning: I would be remiss not to mention this story diverges quite a bit from canon! Age, AU, a lack of certain characters (namely many of the beloved cadets of the 104th cadet squad) and unexpected character death are all examples of this. If that is not your cup of tea, it does not offend me, but you will probably be offended by my divergence. You've been warned.
Author's Note: Okay guys, I promise this is the last time I tweak or change this story. This story follows some of the basic story line, but there is a lot that I have altered and added. Thank you to those of you who have been patiently following this story through all of its stages. Seriously, you're the best! Thank you to my beta, winged gorganzola, without you this story would never be finished, polished or coherent. I cannot express enough gratitude for all of you!
Almost Human
Chapter One: Hard Beginnings
The pool of molten white wax flowed closer to my fingers. They were twined together so tightly I was fairly certain I had fractured a knuckle or two. Biting my lip nervously, I forced them apart until they were lying numbly over the table. Still, he noticed; he saw. His glittering black eyes didn't miss much, if anything.
I swallowed a snappish remark. I hated being stared at, but I knew better than to demand anything of him. One does not simply command the king, not even me.
Sucking in a shallow breath, I fixed my eyes to his. I mirrored the impassiveness of his obsidian gaze, carefully shielding the rage and anxiety within. It was harder than usual, but after our previous conversation it couldn't be helped.
How long had we been sitting there?
Blinking, I looked toward the heavy black curtains. Drawn across the endless glass that made up the entirety of the left wall of his chambers, they too gave little away of what was really happening within. I spotted desperate sunlight clawing beneath swaths of onyx velvet and scowled.
Still daylight? Damn. No cover for the impending journey, then. Not the start of it, anyway.
"Do not fail me." His voice was like every bit of that glass breaking, slicing and tearing over those midnight curtains. I would have trembled or jolted or gasped had I not been so accustomed to it. Seeing as I was though, I simply turned my gaze back on him evenly. "Do not fail her—us. Your family. Remember what they did to you, Aria."
Ignoring the dry lump in my throat, the threatening spill of tears, and the urge to fidget uncomfortably with the hilt of my sword, I kept myself as rigid as the pillars of white marble holding up the roof. I wanted to say that I would never forget, or that I would not fail, or maybe what I had thought all along: that I would make us, both he and I, whole again; that I would piece the brokenness back together.
However, that would require wobbling and cracking and breaking, none of which the king was fond of, so pushing away from the table, I stood stiffly and headed toward glory, hell, and perhaps greatest of all: revenge.
XXX
"Are you sure about this?"
Growling, I snapped, "Dammit, I said I was, didn't I? Just do it already."
I felt the blade slice through my hair and let out a sigh. It fell soundlessly in heavy, dense heaps upon the forest floor. Broiling in the thick, shimmering waves of heat, I didn't have any more clothing I could discard without making my comrades blush—mostly out of embarrassment for me and my total lack of curves. This seemed like the best option, even if I despised cutting my hair and had craftily avoided it for more years than I cared to admit.
As if reading my mind, I watched one of Reiner's blond brows rise. The golden hairs nearly blended in with his summery tan, making it hard to discern if he was being playful or curious. Or, more likely, derogatory. "When was the last time you cut your hair?"
"Or brushed it, for that matter?" Annie snickered, and Reiner joined.
I responded with a swift elbow to her gut. She grunted and gave the remaining tangles of my dark hair a hard tug. Gnashing my teeth together wildly, I felt her dart back reflexively. The long strands of hair waiting to be cut fell back against my waist, curling around my arms and over my shoulders.
I felt ready to lurch for her throat. I'd never liked the lapdogs of my father. Perhaps it was jealousy for the respect he showed them, or just the fact that he could tolerate their presence for more than ten minutes at a time; whatever the case, I knew I harbored ill-feelings for the loyal servants of the king, and that they felt very mutually about me.
Annie and Reiner exchanged a wordless conversation with their gleaming eyes. It dug sharp, angry talons over my skin until, finally, I snapped, "If you don't stop scheming openly in front of me, I'll pluck those pretty little eyes from your skulls and send them back to my father as a message."
Reiner's brows flattened into an irate line. "The king ordered us to—"
"Babysit me," I spat. "I'm aware." Rising from my makeshift seat on an ancient oak stump, I stepped closer to the massive muscle of Reiner Braun. "Don't think I don't know about his intentions to crown one of you as his next heir."
Reiner sputtered stupidly. Annie became more stone than girl. Bertholdt, our designated lookout, and expert eavesdropper, craned his neck around incredulously.
I felt my mouth twist itself into a wicked smile. "You think I care that much? That I would stand in your way of the damned thing?"
Reiner's mouth worked silently before I interrupted, "Because I don't. I don't want the thing, I never have. You can have it. Shove it over your fat heads or up your asses for all I care, but this ridiculous scheming stops. Now."
Reiner had the grace to look down with a violent flush of color creeping over his neck at having been caught red handed, while Annie looked like she wanted nothing more than to rip my throat out. With her teeth.
I kept my eyes level with her glacier blue pair. "We're a team now, whether we like it or not—" Annie glared openly at me, but I continued. "—and that means we have to trust each other not to act like enemies in human territory.
"If we turn on each other now, we'll have no chance of taking back what is ours. All we'll have is four more dead bodies to bury back home—" The image of a mass grave filled with twisted limbs flashed before me, and I nearly choked. But, no, there was still so much to say.
"We are up against enormous odds already, let's not start stacking more obstacles in our way before we even get started. Look, we can go back to hating each other after the fighting's done, okay? But not before," I said, shaking my head. "Not before every last one of them feels our wrath—not until they pay for what they did to us."
Every line of my body blazed with righteous fury. Every breath was a ragged, burning rasp. And, for a moment, I foolishly believed that I'd done it; that I had seemed like more than just some little girl biting off more than she could chew.
I was wrong.
There was another exchange of looks, wary glances that turned impish and mocking. Three pairs of eyes beheld me with what I had seen my entire life: disbelief, amusement, and derision.
Reiner did little to disguise the contempt in his gaze, and even less to keep it from coating his voice. "Our deepest apologies—." His bow was surprisingly graceful, but a complete mockery all the same. "We will be better teammates from now on. You're our captain, after all—"
Bertholdt shot him a vexed expression of warning, his soft voice tremulous beneath my vicious snarl. "Reiner—don't—"
My hands coiled into fists at my sides and I seethed with near palpable rage. "Stop it."
Still, the blond did not heed the warning. He just plodded along with his sardonic smirk. "And where would we be if not for you? The greatest non-shifter there ever was! Why you're almost human—"
Crrraaacccckkk!
There was a sudden cry of pain. Before any of them had the chance to react, between one breath and the next, I had knocked over Reiner and landed on his chest with both hands on his throat, slamming his head against the packed earth.
"You fuc—" I began to scream, sending a flock of birds into flight, their raven wings beating against the reddened sky.
"GET HER OFF ME!" Reiner choked, interrupting my string of fluent curses.
Arms were around me in an instant, yanking me back hard. I wrenched against the restraints, but I was small and outnumbered. And suddenly, the rational, logical part of my brain was in control once again, eating away those crimson colored emotions until it was the only thing screaming: idiot! They could kill you easily as a horse swats a fly. All they need to do is shift into their titan forms and you'd be a sitting duck!
I backpedaled furiously, thinking up excuses and lies and apologies, but they were useless. They would not save me from the fearsome red of Reiner's face, or the grim line of Bertholdt's mouth, or the pulsing vein in Annie's temple.
By the time they were finished beating me to a bloody pulp, I was tucked into a crumpled knot upon the grass. They had left me to hunt for dinner, I vaguely recalled. I'm not entirely certain how long I laid there, but the sky had faded to the familiar shade of summer dusk.
Sitting up, I winced at the pain in my ribs. There would be livid bruises, perhaps a few shallow cuts, but nothing major. I'd gotten off easy, I knew that. I'd seen what those three were capable of in their sparring matches back home. Let me just tell you, not pleasant.
Lucky for me, they still believed that my father loved me. That somewhere deep, deep down he cared whether I lived or died.
But I stopped believing in fairytales long ago, and that? Well, that was the biggest fairytale of them all.
XXX
Sneaking into the nearly desolate fishing village was easy enough. The four of us fit right in with the other waifish children, each of us covered in healthy layers of dirt and grime from our trek. Most assumed we were the undesirables flushed out from the nearby wall of Shiganshina. They took pity, and we took their hospitality with hungry fingers and greedy mouths.
"If we want to survive, it's a necessary evil to break bread with these bastards," Reiner whispered into his dingy tin plate. And, so we did. Some with fake smiles, and others—me, mostly—with steely glares and stifled curses.
We lived like beggars for the better part of two weeks before the opportunity I'd anticipated appeared in the form of a mustached merchant and his burly son.
"A ride into Shiganshina, eh?" The old merchant stroked his gray mustache. I couldn't decide if it was abnormally bushy, or if his lips were unnaturally thin; either way, his mustache was all I could make out of his mouth, which moved with each word, giving him an odd, unreadable expression as he said, "What does a young lad like yer'self expect ter find in a place like that?"
Lad? Pushing a fall of my shaggy hair off my forehead, I shrugged noncommittally, letting his assumption slide, as I donned the face of a new character in my arsenal of disguises. It was easier than changing clothes; easier than breathing, even. A strange, unexplainable talent I'd discovered at a young age: the knack to be someone else. Anyone but the perfect princess I'd never had a chance at being.
"Work, mostly," I said flippantly.
Eyeing me dubiously, he handed a crate of smelly trout to his brutish shell of a son, who grunted quietly in response to the weight before depositing it carefully atop the others in the wagon.
I met the mustached man's warm gaze. His eyes were a deep mahogany, rich and strong, with cracks branching out all around them, baked into his skin from years of mustached smiles and unshaded fishing trips. I knew he would let me hitch a ride inside the walls, all I needed to do was fiddle his heart strings, and my newest persona was about the most charming, ambitious, endearing character there ever was.
"Now, lad I'm sorry but—," he said gruffly, one gnarled, arthritic hand busying itself with the forgotten haze of white hair on his mottled skull.
I wasn't going to let this chance slip through my fingers. My persona of the lowly street urchin slid over me like a second skin, until it was a struggle to remember where it ended and I began.
"Please, sir. My sister…she...well, sir she's not doing so well. She needs medicine, sir. Good medicine from the apothecaries inside the walls." I lowered my eyes, angling my chin down toward the packed dirt of the hoof-beaten road leading toward Shiganshina, making my voice wobble at just the right moment. It was a convincing performance of desperation, but I wasn't sure it was enough to sway him. I crossed my fingers clasped loosely behind my back.
The merchant's hand fell to his side. "Ah, lad," he said softly.
The hulking muscle of his son turned his squinted eyes in our direction, pity written across his honest, simple face. I fought the urge to smirk with satisfaction as the merchant sighed softly and ordered his son, Shaddock, to make a spot big enough for me to ride in.
"Shouldn't be hard," the slumped merchant added with furrowed brows, "yer right thin as a switch, lad. When's the last yeh ate a proper meal?"
My stomach grumbled loudly, and I had the good grace to blush. Honestly, there wasn't much to scrape up around this village, and very little game to hunt. I'd been living off scraps of trout and crumbs of bread, but my hatred for the vermin living around me and just beyond the looming walls was enough fuel to keep me afloat.
"Not in a while, sir," I admitted reluctantly, clutching my loose tunic and sad excuse for breasts hiding beneath. I doubted if anyone would ever guess at my actual gender with only those to go off.
The elderly merchant smiled, and the network of lines that crossed his face turned to make themselves part of that grin. "We'll just have ter fix that."
The casual kindness with which he and his son fed me—blackened bread with slabs of butter and a spoonful of real, golden honey, and smoked, seasoned trout—was nearly enough to make my chest ache, but all I needed was to recall the image of my mother's mangled corpse, and it completely chased the feeling away.
I hated these creatures, born from hell's deepest pits, and each of them had a hefty price to pay for what they'd done to my family, to my mother and father and me.
XXX
"So, where are yeh from?" Shaddock asked curiously.
The question hardly registered, never breaking my intense concentration on the sucking of my honey-soaked fingers. "The hunting village astride Bjorn."
"Why are yeh and yer sister in Fiske? That's a long ways erway."
I glanced up just in time to spot the disparaging look his father shot him from his seat. Shaddock tightened his grip on the reins, the muscles of his forearms standing out, tight as twisted rope, as he bowed his head solemnly.
"Yeh shouldn't bother the lad with so many quest—," his father, Rybar, reprimanded.
"We lost our family, our home—everything," I stammered, ducking my head as they sidled their matching mahogany eyes toward my seat between a stack of rickety crates.
A shared sigh of grief, pity and sorrow, and then the elderly merchant fell back into his tuneless, jaunty whistling that he'd been regaling us with for the last hour and a half. Shaddock warbled in his rough voice what sounded like a drinking song passed down through the generations. It unearthed memories of smoky nights spent around a dancing summer fire singing songs with my own family. Back to a time where love wasn't just a four letter word and family wasn't a crypt of limestone and moss and cobwebs.
Shuddering, I pressed the image of tangled bodies and lifeless eyes from my mind, focusing instead on slurping the last of the honey off my fingers and listening intently to the bits of conversation between Shaddock and Rybar. I could use any information on these humans' cities that I could find.
"Way I hear it, they been feedin' those fat bastards real good since these damn excursions started," Shaddock said darkly, his eyes wild around the edges, darting around quickly as if afraid someone other than Rybar, myself, or the whinnying pair of mares might hear.
Rybar cocked his head mockingly, the hint of a smile growing upon his face, as he said, "I thought yeh admired the eagles, son?"
A feverish flush of color suffused Shaddocks cheeks. "I—I never—."
"Oh, please, yeh wouldn't stop fawnin' over that one they call—what was it again?" He looked at his blushing son with expectant eyes, one knobby hand curling around his wild mustache.
"Humanity's strongest soldier." Shaddock's response was both immediate and reflexive, if the way his face winced and grew redder was any indication.
"That's right." Rybar nodded his mottled, brownish head. He appeared to be nothing more than a dirty onion yanked fresh from the ground from this angle. I stifled a smile with the back of my hand at the observation, which quickly fell in shock at his next words. "Levi Ackerman, I think's his name, right?"
"Levi…Ackerman?" I asked quietly.
Shaddock nodded his dark head, his mess of dirt-colored curls bouncing with the movement of his tree trunk neck. "Right. He's the best there is at killin' them things. A honest, true scout! The way I heard it, he's an entire brigade by hisself," Shaddock's rough, thunderous voice sped up excitedly, like a child weaving the tales of their favorite hero, "an' he is right damn fast. Faster than any man oughta be—faster than the winds they say. An' strong! He once took out twenty—no fifty—titans all by hisself! An', an' he is—."
"Handsome?" Rybar snickered teasingly, jostling his son's side with his bony elbow. "By golly, son, I'd say yer right sweet on that boy."
Indignantly shaking his head, his hands, his entire body, Shaddock nearly sent the wagon toppling on its side, and the mares snorted angrily, rearing momentarily. Rybar laughed, but helped coax the horses back down from their panic, until they were huffing and whinnying gently, hooves clomping calmly over the dirt road.
I balanced myself against the crates, righting them just as they began to rock side to side, but I was far more concerned with the morsel of information I'd just been fed. There was an Ackerman left in the world, and he was a soldier, a—what had the dim-whit called him? Oh, right—a scout. I assumed that that was a branch of mankind's military. Must be new. According to the research I'd done, there were only two branches: the garrison and the military police.
Just to be sure that my hunch was correct, I asked with the definition of nonchalance, "How does one become a scout like Ackerman, anyway?"
They looked at me in a cross between bewilderment and shock that I would ask such a question or, perhaps, that I was there at all. Shaddock was the first to recover, his ruddy face the epitome of silent scorn. "Yeh don't. Nobody could ever be as—."
"What my son means ter say is that joining the scouting legion is damn near suicide," Rybar interrupted dryly.
"They're better than the other branches of the military!" Shaddock exclaimed indignantly, ropey arms flailing.
Rybar shrugged indifferently. "I think they're all useless. What's the point of a military, huh? We've had a hundred years of peace now. Why go lookin' fer trouble?"
Shaddock was struck speechless, making several attempts at a response before settling for brooding silence. I had heard enough though, enough to know exactly which branch I'd be joining once I'd found their military academy—if they had one. Silly excuse for a civilization probably let anyone into their ranks.
Scouting legion, here I come.
XXX
It was around noon when the wagon trundled up to the gates of Shiganshina. The small contingent of garrison sentries set down their playing cards atop the keg of ale they were drunk off with huffs of irritation.
"Whaddya want, old man?" One with coarse hair the color of a harvest moon slurred as he stumbled closer to us.
I took cover behind one crate under orders of Rybar. Apparently village folk were no longer allowed inside the already suffocating city. "There aren't no more resources for any extra bodies, what with the recent baby boom in Maria, and all. That's why they been sendin' the "undesirables" to our villages. Hopin' to lessen the burden, I s'pose," Rybar had said as we came onto a new road, this one wide as a river and paved with cobblestones and leading to the stench of Shiganshina. I knew this, of course, as more than one villager had said things similar to me when I'd inquired about how best to enter the city gates and whether it cost money.
It seemed that there were more bodies leaving the city than entering it. Only the merchants were allowed in, and only for a short time. A mass exodus of emaciated bodies of men, women and children passed us with hollow eyes and starving stomachs. I might have felt pity for their broken dignity and aching feet dragging beneath them on the hard, bloodied stone, but I bore only sickly satisfaction for their pain, hoping that they felt an ounce of what my family had experienced before the end.
Rybar hopped down, surprisingly sprightly and agile for his apparent age. Straightening his crooked spine, he smiled toothily at the tottering guard, who reeked so badly of alcohol I could smell him from where I hid amidst crates of foul smelling trout. I held my nose delicately, too delicately for a young boy. Chiding myself internally, I placed my hand back at my side and held my breath, puffing out my cheeks like a squirrel with dinner in its jaws.
"I got some trout for the market today," Rybar said lightly, patting the hind of the red-brown mare, Thora. She whinnied and snapped her reddish tale over her back. Temperamental, that horse, I'd observed on our journey. "We're laggin' behind as is, so's what'cha say yeh let us through quickly today? We'll even throw in a crate of trout for free for yer lot."
The drunken guardsman pursed his mouth stupidly for a breath or two as he mulled over the offer. One of the other's looked vaguely suspicious and wholly belligerent. He would be a problem, I decided, reaching toward the dagger hidden beneath my trousers.
His broad forehead wrinkled and collapsed over folds of angry, red skin. One long finger jabbed at Rybar's chest, nearly toppling the reedy, ancient man to the cobbles. "You take us for some kinda beggars, old man?"
This sentry was lean, with sunken eyes that smoldered like half hidden coals, with a carefully trimmed beard the color of soot that sharpened the edges of his knife-like face. I palmed the blade in my hand, the hilt comforting and familiar between my steady fingers.
Shaddock stiffened in his seat, his knuckles bone-white as his grip tightened over the reins. But Rybar looked vastly amused and profoundly unconcerned. Perhaps he was crazier than I'd assumed, I mused silently. His warm eyes looked brighter, dangerous, if that were possible, as he said with a studied casualness, "I took you for clever, glorious, respectable lads. You can't imagine my disappointment to find that yer exactly what the village folk say yeh are."
The first guard staggered forward a few steps, shuffling unsteadily side to side, his pale blue eyes hazier than a puff of cloud on a summer morning. "Whatta they say?"
Rybar's small grin widened beneath his mustache until it was all I could see, just teeth and lips stretched from ear to ear. I understood why he wore a heavy mustache now, his mouth was a grotesquely terrifying sight that would send the undead scampering back to their graves. "They says yer all drunken cowards with great big paunches hanging over yer shriveled balls that triple the size of yer brains."
Rybar looked at the garrison sentries mutely for a moment, that wild grin wiped cleanly from his wrinkled face. Then he started to laugh. Great, booming, helpless laughter from the bottom of his soul.
It took a moment for the inebriated mind of the orange haired sentry to work out the insult, but the other steely eyed one was quick to strike Rybar with the blunt of his sword—a strange looking piece of steel holstered by an even stranger contraption strapped about his waist and chest. It was a dizzying tangle of leather straps and silver wires that I took as many notes of as possible before Rybar crumpled to the ground.
The sound of his body hitting the cobblestones seemed to fade before the echoes of his laughter did. At a gesture from the soot-bearded sentry, the cloudy eyed guard picked the old man up by the scruff of his neck. He dangled like a rag doll, his feet trailing on the ground. Rybar's eyes rolled back, and his head lolled forward.
Shaddock's enormous feet quickly thudded over the stone with a resonating boom that I felt in my chest, or I imagined I did, anyway. He thundered toward the harvest haired guard clutching his father like a mere pup.
"Tell your father the next time he mouths off to the garrison he'll be lucky if a black eye and concussion are all he walks away with," the bearded sentry spat, gesturing to his other hooting and chortling comrades aloft the towers gates to lift the portcullis. It rose with the sound of thunder and steel.
To his credit, Shaddock was smarter than he appeared, and kept his wide mouth firmly closed, but his mahogany gaze blazed like a tree set afire as he took his father's limp body in his arms. The sentries looked like dwarves next to his impressive height and girth. They both gulped visibly and cowered back toward the safety of their wall, which we rode through at a steady trot.
Shaddock glared menacingly and I shot them an obscene gesture from behind the tarpaulin shielding me from view. I had no love in my heart for these humans, Shaddock and Rybar included, but I had even less for the bullies of society—human or not.
Old scars crossed and recrossed my skin as a permanent reminder of what bullies were capable of in my own homeland. Most were pale and thin as cracks in winter ice, but some were red and angry, standing out against my flesh like tendrils of flame.
It would appear that that was at least one commonality we shared, humans and shifters: bullies. Especially within our military, those sworn to protect the weak. A dull rage flickered to life at the memory of atrocities I'd witnessed and been on the receiving end of back behind the shining walls of the White City. It was about as much a home to me as this place.
Looking up, I watched with muted curiosity as we came deeper into the city of Shiganshina. Low buildings gave way to taller shops and inns and homes. Trees and foliage were replaced by alleys and cart vendors. The great river of a road grew clogged and choked with hundreds of carts and pedestrians, dozens of vendors and wagons and the occasional mounted man. There was the sound of horses' hooves and people shouting, the smell of beer and sweat and garbage and carelessness. It disgusted me.
"Welcome to Shiganshina," Shaddock said above the din, cradling Rybar's onion-like head in his meaty shoulder.
Eventually the road opened out into a market. Wagons rolled on the cobbles with a sound like distant thunder. Voices bargained and fought. Somewhere in the distance a child was crying shrill and high. We rode aimlessly for a while until we found an empty corner in front of a bookshop, and then we were out of the wagon, stretching away the kinks from the road and unloading the rickety, fish laden crates.
Rybar did not wake before I left, but Shaddock sent me off with three copper pieces and a sack of smoked fish and blackened bread with a generous daub of butter and honey. It was enough to keep me fed for the next three weeks if I rationed it properly.
"He'd have done the same, I'ma sure," he said roughly, shoving one hand the size of my head through his dusty brown hair. Then, with a wistful gleam in his eye, he asked, "Are yeh sure yeh can't stay and work with us? Pa will pay yeh well fer yer work, I'ma sure."
"Thank you, Shaddock, but I need to be moving on." His face fell and my heart ached. I ignored it, and said hurriedly, "I need the money fast, and you have already shown me too much hospitality."
This character sure was a silver tongued bastard. He'd do just fine for my mission. Fine, indeed.
Shaddock smiled goodheartedly, blushing and stammering. "Well, now I wouldn't say—."
Flashing him an easy, charming smile that belonged on a mummer's stage, I insisted, "I would. I would say that you two are the best people I could have hoped to journey here with."
"It was a pleasure getting' to know a fine lad like yerself. I hope yeh find good medicine fer yer sister—?" His warm brown eyes looked puzzled for a moment as he tried to recall my name, a name I'd yet to give or form, for that matter.
Thinking quickly, I recalled the name of one of my favorite storybook characters: a misunderstood thief, pirate and, in the end, hero. "Amos, sir. If it please you."
He reached out one strong, sweaty hand to shake mine and I faltered. Swallowing a mouthful of scorn and bitterness, I placed my hand in his and shook hands with my eternal enemy: man.
XXX
I had severely underestimated the military academy of mankind.
"What's the matter, pretty boy? Too tough for you?" Commander Adalric's spittle splattered over my face. I resisted the urge to snap his neck, and settled for a resolute glare; though it may have come off less than terrifying as I was dangling upside down.
Blood pulsed deafeningly in my ears, and I struggled to lift myself upright in the holsters of my three dimensional maneuvering gear or, as I like to call it, the devil's swing set. The boy on my right had struggled for a few minutes before turning himself upright, while the girl to the left seemed completely comfortable in her rig, as if she were born for it, as if it didn't defy anything that she knew.
Fighting the frustration creeping into my voice, I said evenly, "I think my equipment is broken."
"I think you're head's broken, cadet! I checked it myself. It's fine! Now, get your ass upright, or you're running more laps tonight," my oh-so-friendly commander bellowed louder than a fog horn.
Snickering ensued and I felt my legs scream in protest at the idea of running. Again. That would be three nights in a row and a hundred laps around the barracks. My calves turned to jelly; my feet cramped agonizingly.
Sweating with the effort, I desperately thrashed and scrambled upward, but to no avail. Finally, my body said "You're done," and I felt my arms scrape the mud limply.
Stout, jowly Commander Adarlic made a disapproving sound as he shook his head. "Get him down, Lieutenant Hugo."
Hugo, a vicious looking boy of twenty with cruel looking arms and a crueler looking sneer, slithered forward. "With pleasure, sir."
There was no warning, no preparation, as my body thudded into the mud face first. Pulling myself free from the slop with small sucking sounds, I shot the lieutenant a scowl that could have curdled milk. He giggled with delight.
"Well," the commander said, "get going! You know the drill. You run til' sundown."
Taking in a long, deep breath, I nodded and pelted off unsteadily, my knees already wobbling. The only solace I found that evening was the thought of the endless, horrific ways I could kill them. Slit their throats, eviscerate them...the possibilities were endless and temporarily gratifying.
But as I staggered into the mess hall, a central log cabin filled with long wooden trestle tables and a massive cooking fire carved out of red brick, all of that momentary relief ebbed away, quickly.
"Well, well, if it isn't fish-fingers," a familiar voice said somewhere in the rows of cadets, accompanied by a harmony of titters.
The less-than clever nickname had been awarded to me due to the reek of smoked trout that had lingered around me when I'd first arrived at the academy. It hadn't really phased me before because I'd been called much, much worse in my past; but I was in a particularly foul mood that night, and my veneer of charm and kindness was wearing thin and giving way to the disdain and caustic whit of the girl lurking beneath.
"Better fish-fingers than dog-breath," I sneered.
The smirk faltered on his aristo face. "What did you—?"
"Dog-breath. That's what the girls have been calling you for days now, didn't you know?" I asked innocently. A few nervous laughs trickled across the room. "Oops, sorry. I really thought you knew."
Dedric Konig pushed away from the table, moving with all the grace of a cat. He prowled closer, until he was towering over me, his blue eyes peering down through the sharp slits of his eyes. "Listen, you deranged little midget, I don't know how they did things in that backward little village of yours, but here you speak to high born children with respect."
Part of me grimaced at the familiarity of his words, words that I heard spoken a dozen times by the lords of my own home. Words spoken and knocked back, along with several teeth, into their throat by yours truly. I longed to crack my knuckles over the pretty white teeth in Dedric's mouth, to watch the red lines of blood dribble down his perfect, strong chin like strands of crimson yarn unraveling. But I nursed my temper carefully with a sickly, sweet smile. "Of course, m' Lord. I do beg your pardon for I do not know the propriety with which you should be treated. Perhaps you'd be kind enough to demonstrate?"
The blond aristo looked perplexed, then altogether pleased. Speaking to me slowly, as if he were instructing a simpleton, he showed me how to bow. I cocked my head wondrously, and said, "Ah, I see. Shouldn't you also kiss my hand or my boot?"
He raised his downturned chin, and nodded enthusiastically. "Yes! Absolutely. You are capable of learning, after all!"
Before he realized what he was doing, he had planted a soft, delicate kiss over the knuckles of my right hand. Everyone burst into fits of laughter, catching onto the clever jest I'd pulled on the top cadet. I couldn't help the smirk that curved my mouth, nor the chuckle that wound its way up my throat.
Jolting upright, Dedric swiveled about on one heel and gaped at the roomful of cadets laughing on his behalf. I wondered distantly if he'd ever been laughed at, he seemed far too proud to have ever been dully made mockery of. He turned back to me, his smile bright, brittle, and by no means friendly, and said icier than a damned glacier, "You're not even worth payback, you filthy swine. You'll be kicked out of the academy by nothing other than your complete lack of talent. It'll be a life of field work and sleeping with sheep for you."
It was like all of the air had been sucked from the room. The giggling and whispering and scraping of forks and knives all evaporated as if by magic, and every set of eyes watched us intently, waiting for a brawl to break out. But they were sorely disappointed. The only thing they got was me turning my back with a small smile and a quiet "Thank you, Konig. That's exactly what I needed."
I walked out with more determination than seeing this world go up in flames, than fantasizing about the commander and lieutenants deaths, than avoiding running the length of the barracks again. He was right, if I didn't start doing what I do best, clawing and fighting when no one else would, then I'd never make it into the scouting legion. I was angry at the insult he had lashed across my back like a whip, but I'd been whipped before, and found that anger can keep you warm at night, and wounded pride can spur a man to do wondrous things.
XXX
"Come on, Aria," I hissed to myself. "You can do this. Dammit, you can!"
Pulling myself upward, I reached for the piece of the moon lining the sky with dim, silver light. I had been working for three hours straight on just conquering the delicate balancing act of our gear, and still it eluded me.
"Yes! Yes!—ah! No, no, no, no!"
Gravity had its way with me yet again. I smacked my head against the ground pathetically. Swinging in the barest of summer breezes, I stilled for a moment before exploding with pent up irritation, fury and distress. If I couldn't master this gear, then I really would be expelled from this academy—this human academy! I couldn't live with myself for the shame of such an inexcusable failure. And, even if I did find it in myself to forgive, my father never would…
I shuddered at the image of his eyes, like black chips of ice, afire with rage and humiliation as he stood over my body in his gargantuan titan form, reaching down to crush my bones to dust.
No. No, I would master this damnable gear and that would be the end of it. I'd stay out here until the cadets convened for morning drills if I had to.
"Amos?"
Startled, I managed to careen into one of the rigs poles somehow, nearly concussing myself. "Huh? Who's there?" I managed, rubbing the tender welt already forming over my forehead.
A tentative, girlish laugh. "Petra. Petra Ral. I'm the one you were next to today on the rigs."
"Ah," I said, recalling the pixie-faced girl that had been a natural on the devil's swing set. "Come to cheer me on with some fun insults? Did Dedric put you up to this?" I asked sourly.
"Actually, I came to practice myself," she replied.
Spinning around to glance at the strawberry-blonde, I gave her a dubious look. "Yeah, right. You're a damn natural on this thing." My body spun back around, twisting back and forth uselessly, dizzyingly. I fought the urge to groan, or vomit. Or both. "What does someone like you need to practice for?"
"Well," she started, "the same reasons you do, I'd assume."
"Right," I scoffed.
"It's true," she protested, the sound of her buckles clinking together softly as she fastened them. "I didn't get good at this overnight, either. I've been practicing every night." There was a sheepishness in her tone that made me believe her.
"Really?" I fought to pull myself upright and flipped back around clumsily, bashing my arms against the ground to keep my head from receiving any more damage. "I just assumed—."
"That I was naturally gifted?" The gentle, infuriating creak of her rig told me she was swinging back and forth in her harness. "I'm not. I was just like you. I had a lot of trouble getting the hang of it."
I grumbled jealously, "Apparently not, since I'm the only one hanging upside down."
Her giggle was delicate and airy and perfect in its genuine sweetness, like honey poured over warm bread. It sent a surge of unbidden envy down my spine. My laugh was comparable only to a dogs howling or a witch's cackling.
"Would it make you feel better if I were upside down, too?"
"…maybe…"
I heard a whoosh and shriek of surprise, mirth, and laughter. Turning my head, I saw the shadows of her pale face looking toward me. The whites of her teeth sparkled in the bits of moonlight sprinkled over us. "There. Now we're even."
Shaking my head, I frowned deeper. "No. You see, you can get yourself back up, but I can't."
There was a thoughtful silence, then: "Yes, you can."
I snorted. "Oh? Is that so? I've spent hours struggling just for shits and grins, then? How wonderful! The Commander will be so relieved!"
She shot me an indignantly playful glare, and said, "Do you want my help or not?"
The very thought of succumbing to help from anyone, especially a human, seemed worse than death. But desperate times called for desperate measures. Feebly, I attempted to rise on my own one more time, and when I tumbled back to earth, I knew the answer lying on my tongue to be the only feasible option left. "Yes, please."
XXX
The look on Commander Adarlic, Lieutenant Hugo, and the other cadet's faces the moment I finally, finally shifted upright and stayed there, was in one word: priceless.
Beaming, Petra cheered from her own rig. "Go, Amos! I knew you could do it!"
The others gaped open mouthed and stupefied. I felt an inkling of pride for my minuscule accomplishment. It was the first time I'd felt in control since I'd arrived upon the stone steps of the academy.
But I had a long way to climb to get to the top of the class, and this was only the first of many grueling steps.
XXX