Author's Note: I wanted to do a crossover and debated which fandom to do it for before settling with Wolf's Rain, because why the heck not?
Disclaimer: I do not own SnK or Wolf's Rain and I most likely never will.
"I think Tsume's gonna leave soon."
"Huh?" Hige said around an unnecessarily large bite of bread. "What makes ya say that?"
Toboe shrugged, chucking a small stone across the water. He's been practicing, Hige noted. The stone managed to skip four times before sinking. Toboe's personal best. "He got in a fight with his mom and came over late last night. He was gone when I woke up this morning and never said what had happened, but… well, you can imagine."
Hige didn't really want to, but he could. Tsume had been insufferable as of late, staring at that damn wall like it was going to fall at any time, and if Hige were to be honest with himself, he'd say that he was more than a little worried; but Toboe was already concerned enough, so Hige opted for a different approach. "Eh, don't worry about him." He said after swallowing his bite. "You know he'd never leave his mom here alone. Unless the military lets him bring his safety blanket, Tsume's not going anywhere."
"He's such an idiot." Toboe grumbled, throwing another rock. His frustration was almost palpable. "We're all gonna die someday, but can't he just sit back and wait for it to happen like the rest of us?"
"Tsume's a bastard with a death wish, in case you haven't noticed."
"Oh, I've noticed. Kinda hard not to."
Hige laughed heartily, throwing an arm around Toboe's shoulders to steady himself, because he felt a little sick. He was used to stuffing himself stupid, but ever since his mom died, his dad had sort of been leaving Hige to fend for himself. That bread was the first thing he'd eaten in… two days? Three? "You wanna go bug Kiba?"
"His dad's gonna kick us out again if we bug Kiba while he's working. Can't we wait until later?"
"Lazy ass." Hige taunted, pushing himself to his feet while Toboe fell back against the grass, huffing up at the sky as if it had personally wronged him. "If I let you, you'd stay here all day and sleep."
"What else is livestock good for?" Toboe grunted, rolling over onto his stomach and reaching for the hand Hige was offering him. Toboe had always been the runt of their group, a perfect target for bullies, but as he grew older, his cheerful innocence started to fade into something darker. Hige didn't know what had caused the change, maybe it had been when his older sister Leara died on an expedition outside the walls. "Tsume's got the wrong idea, building up muscle for the army. With little food and no exercise, I'm ensuring that no Titan will get a tasty meal out of me."
Hige grinned, brushing dead blades of grass from Toboe's shoulders. "Your scrawny ass would be the worst dinner any Titan could ever have."
When the wall was breached, they all stuck together.
Hige had to have Kiba and Tsume help him drag his drunk of a father out of their house and onto a boat – just because he was a piece of shit dad didn't mean he deserved to die – but they were all far from safe.
"You're a lunatic." Kiba snapped, jabbing Tsume in the chest while the other boy stood firm, jaw tight, fists clenched, and a pool of liquid fire in his eyes. "If you think I'm going to let you join the Survey Corps, you've got another thing coming."
"As if you could stop me." Tsume retorted, and Hige pressed close to Toboe as they watched their friends bicker, alone in a darkened alleyway of their choosing. They'd all been separated from their parents in the chaos – Hige's dad didn't really count as a guardian – and with the food shortages and overpopulation in the cities… well, things weren't looking up. None of them had eaten in days, and Toboe's cheeks were starting to look sunken. "Why do you care if I sign up anyway?"
"Because you're my friend!" Kiba looked about ready to rip his own hair out, ice blue eyes practically blazing in the dark, full of intensity. He was a baker's son, twelve and lithe, but he was still able to look like a formidable force, even faced against Tsume. "I'm not going to sit here and watch you die. Like Hell."
"Isn't survival the most important thing?" Toboe said, and even Tsume had the decency to look subdued. They'd yet to tell Toboe, but Kiba had seen the boy's mother disappear into a Titan's gullet, his father following shortly after. They were truly all the boy had now, whether Toboe himself knew it or not. "If you join the Survey Corps, you're going to die. It won't matter how strong you are."
"We're all going to die someday." Tsume replied stubbornly. "I may as well go out doing something that matters."
Kiba had fallen silent, Hige and Toboe too exhausted to put up much of a fuss, and it seemed as if all had been decided; but then Kiba sighed, reaching up to pinch the bridge of his nose. "Do you remember when we were kids, and you told me that one day, all four of us were going to explore the Outside together?"
"… Yeah. What of it?"
"If you're so determined, then the only way we'll get to do that before we die is if all of us join the Survey Corps together."
Hige's heart almost jumped out of his throat, and Tsume jolted in place, his golden eyes wide. "What? No fuckin' way! You guys wouldn't even survive training."
Hige had to agree. How could they? Tsume may have been nearly fourteen, but Hige and Kiba were twelve, and Toboe was only eleven. They were just kids, scrawny, incapable children, and it was obvious none of them had the heart for the military like Tsume did. It was suicide to follow him, but Hige couldn't say so.
Even Toboe was frowning softly, gazing at Kiba as if seriously considering his words, and when Hige noticed that, it was pretty obvious that a few years from then, they would all be joining the military.
It only lasted for a brief moment, but Hige felt an intense flash of fear.
Training was just as bad as Hige had expected and then some.
The instructor was a hard ass with no sense of humor, so it was really no surprise that Hige spent copious amounts of time cleaning the mess hall or executing training exercises after sundown, trying to catch his breath while Toboe and Kiba looked on, laughing it up because they were always smart enough to keep their mouths shut.
They all managed to survive, somehow, though on the night they were all supposed to choose their regiment, they were suddenly indecisive.
"Almost everyone who managed to make the top ten is choosing to join the Military Police." Toboe said over dinner that night, picking at his food almost sullenly. He'd grown up a lot since they were forced to abandon Shiganshina three years previously, was no longer a child Hige felt he had to watch over. "I'm starting to wonder if it's the best option."
"You wouldn't be the only one." Hige commented, shrugging apologetically when Tsume shot him a look. "Sorry. I'm not too keen to throw myself into Hell again so soon after training."
"If you think that was Hell, then maybe you should join the Military Police." Kiba said, though not unkindly. He knew better than anyone how badly Hige wanted to escape all of this, having shared a room with him for the past three years. Kiba had excelled in training, no longer a boy with a tough mind and little muscle to back it up. If anyone could survive Outside, it would be Kiba. "Or at the very least the Garrison."
"Cowards." Tsume grumbled. He hadn't forgotten how the Garrison members in Shiganshina had run around like chickens with their heads cut off when Wall Maria was breached. Even Hige was slightly disgusted in hindsight. "Wall Maintenance, my ass. They just don't want to be labeled as Military Police or have to go outside the Walls."
"They found a middle ground." Toboe said, nudging Tsume's shoulder with his own. "Don't be such a dick. Some people value their lives."
"Are you saying I don't value mine?"
"No matter what choice we make come nightfall," Kiba interjected before Tsume and Toboe could start quarreling again, "you guys have to promise to make the best decision for yourselves. It doesn't matter what one person wants. Follow your instincts. Got it?"
They all nodded before going back to their dinners, and Hige was starting to feel a little better about the situation. He didn't think they would regardless, but he didn't want his friends to label him as a coward if he chose the Garrison or Military Police, or even dropped out of the military completely. It had only been out of dumb luck that he'd placed tenth in their training group, after all. His old man was still around, still drinking himself stupid every night, and Hige felt it was somewhat his responsibility to take care of him. Or maybe that was just an excuse.
Either way, when the sun went down that night, and the commander of the Survey Corps raised his voice, calling for all those willing to join, Hige, Toboe, Kiba, and Tsume found themselves amongst the nine who actually stayed. Despite Kiba's words, none of them did what they really wanted, not even Kiba himself.
It all boiled down to those damn Wings of Freedom.
Their first mission was a complete disaster.
Hige's parents had been farmers. He grew up riding horses, and when they first passed through the gate of Wall Rose, he was completely in his element. For a brief moment, it was what they had always dreamed of. The four of them, exploring the Outside together, even if the Outside at that point only consisted of the Wall they'd been forced to abandon; but then someone fired a flare signal and things started to go wrong.
In the end, Hige had been forced to watch countless members of his division get eaten, had to listen to their screams as the Titans bore down on them with mindless grins on their faces. He only managed to make it out alive because of his horseback riding skills, and he was all too happy to urge his stallion into a full-on run when the order to retreat rang out.
They were all separated in the fighting, Hige and his friends, but he'd only remembered about them once he was back inside the safety of Wall Rose, after his own life was no longer in danger. Kiba showed up first, his swords bloodied but looking no worse for wear. "Are you hurt?" He'd asked, removing his green hood so Hige could stare into his eyes. He'd looked different, somehow.
Hige shook his head, curled up near his horse, unable to fight off the screaming in his head. "Have you seen Tsume or Toboe?"
Kiba averted his gaze.
By the time night fell, Tsume had found his way back to them, when they were collecting the bodies brought back by horse-drawn carts and hauling them into a mass of other bodies. He was talking to a member of his squad when he spotted them, Kiba holding onto a dead woman's shoulders while Hige grasped at her legs. "You guys all right?" Tsume asked once he jogged over to them.
Hige grunted as he and Kiba set the woman down amongst the pile of dead bodies. She had faired better than most, all her limbs still intact, though it looked as if she'd been trampled. There was a permanent look of rage on her disfigured face, she'd died fighting, and Kiba reached down to close her eyes when he caught Hige staring. "We're fucking peachy." Hige said, giving Tsume his most winning smile before shouldering past him, Kiba trailing quietly behind him. "How many Titans did you manage to take down before everyone started dying?"
"What's your problem?"
"Did you know Toboe's still missing?" Hige demanded, and he took silent joy in Tsume's look of horror. "Weren't you two in the same regime? Or at least close to one another?"
"Hige – " Kiba was trying to interject.
"Was he too slow? Too weak? Did you just leave him there?"
"Shut the fuck up." Tsume seethed, but his eyes were darting to and fro, scanning the area and the weathered soldiers milling about, moaning and crying. "He was right behind me, I swear – "
Hige could've slugged him, because if it weren't for Tsume none of them would have joined the military in the first place, but Kiba stepped in front of him, placing a hand on Hige's chest, pushing him back toward the cart. "We have work to do." He said calmly, and all anger left Hige's body, replaced with fear and dread, because Toboe was too young to die.
They worked well into the night, Tsume taking names of those who had died while Hige and Kiba hauled bodies to and fro. They watched as the fire was set, as the embers and ashes of those mercilessly cut down by Titans rose in the night sky. Hige forced himself to remain calm as he thought about the detached arms and legs he'd had to toss into the pile, wondered if some piece of Toboe had made it in there.
It wasn't until well after midnight that a figure came stumbling through the darkness, peering at the battered faces of his fellow soldiers before he finally located Hige, Kiba, and Tsume. "Toboe!" Hige gasped when the figure came close enough that he could make out its face. "What the hell happened to you?"
"It wasn't bad." Toboe said, lifting a hand to finger the bandage wrapped around his head, wincing a little as he did so. His other arm was in a splint, held to his chest by a white cloth wrapped around his shoulder, most likely broken. "My horse got spooked and I kinda fell off. I rode back with Tris, but the medics wouldn't let me leave until they'd looked over every inch of – "
He was cut off when Tsume walked up and roughly pulled him into an embrace, startling the younger boy so much that he couldn't even hug Tsume back. "Hey, what's the matter? You didn't really think I was dead, did you? I'm not made of glass, you know."
Tsume's shoulders were shaking, and Hige knew then that the man had finally realized his mistake.
Coincidentally, on their next mission, Tsume was the one who left and never returned.
"You think he's okay out there?" Toboe wondered out loud, crying silently into his soup while Hige and Kiba looked on. The other soldiers had the decency to not say anything, averting their eyes from the three boys as the youngest started to fall apart, no longer in a state of mind to continue thinking that Tsume was just going to show up suddenly. It had been three days, and only two members of Tsume's regime had turned up, one trapped in an eternal state of madness and the other simply a severed arm.
"If I know Tsume like I think I do," Kiba paused in his writing to respond, eyeing the characters on the paper, trying to carefully choose his words as he wrote a letter to Tsume's mother. Hige spared a glance, noticed the words served humanity well, and looked away again, staring at the wall in front of him while Toboe buried his face in his hands, soup forgotten. "Wherever he is, he's still fighting."
Two years later, Hige was dragging a screaming Toboe away as Kiba lay dying in the grass. "No!" The amber-eyed boy shrieked, kicking and scratching with everything he had, peeling skin and drawing blood on Hige's arms.
"Shut up!" Hige was sobbing with desperation and sorrow, mostly fear, because a Titan was approaching in the distance, drawn in by Toboe's screams. It was running, albeit clumsily, and Hige could see the blood on its body. It looked stupid, but it was deadly. The whole squad had abandoned them when Kiba got hurt and Toboe refused to leave him. They were on their own. "Shut up, Toboe, we can't help him!"
"Kiba! Kiba, get up!" Toboe wailed. Couldn't he see that Kiba's legs were broken? "Please, dear God, get up!"
Trying to lift a struggling sixteen-year-old onto a horse was probably the most difficult thing Hige ever did, but he managed, somehow, keeping Toboe trapped in his arms as he urged his horse into a run. He hated himself for abandoning Kiba's body, denying him even a proper burial, but what could he do?
Before he'd lost the energy to keep talking, Kiba had told him to take Toboe and leave, that it wouldn't do them any good to stay with him. "Make the best decision for you, remember?" He'd said, smiling his bloody smile as he squeezed Hige's fingers with one hand, Toboe's with the other.
"No one listened." Toboe cried, echoing Hige's thoughts. "We didn't make the best decision, Kiba, we didn't!"
"We were all stupid." Kiba said, and Hige grimaced bitterly, reminded of Tsume for the first time in months. "We wanted to go Outside."
"I don't remember why anymore." Hige admitted. He hadn't for a long time.
"Leara always talked about it." Kiba murmured, his eyes starting to glaze over. He'd looked so far away, but he was still warm in Hige's hand. "She would tell us stories when we were kids."
"Hige." Toboe whispered, looking out into the horizon. Hige looked, too.
When he noticed the Titan, Hige tore his hand from Kiba's and made a grab for Toboe.
Hige gritted his teeth and took one last look to where Kiba's body was, a Titan baring down on him. The humanoid beast ran past Kiba without stopping once, not that Hige had expected anything more.
Titans took no pleasure out of dead humans, after all.
The decision to remain in the Survey Corps had been Hige's. After being forced to abandon Kiba's body, a sort of quiet rage that he'd never felt before consumed him, and he suddenly understood how Tsume must have felt after his father was killed in action. Someone had to gain intelligence about the Titans so that one day, humanity could eradicate them from the world for good, and so people like Tsume and Kiba who'd had hopes and dreams didn't have to die a meaningless death at the hands of mindless beasts.
Toboe only stayed because he had no other option. His parents and the majority of his friends were dead. Hige was all he had left, so how could he possibly leave? There was a period when scouting missions were few and far between, and Hige managed to live through his eighteenth and nineteenth birthdays without leaving the safety of Wall Rose.
It was Toboe's eighteenth birthday when they were called upon again. The two friends readied their horses and met up with the rest of their regime as the time for departure drew closer.
"You think you're gonna ask Blue to marry you?" Toboe asked right before they left. His voice had started to deepen when he was sixteen, though Hige still started whenever Toboe spoke to him. He remembered the kid when he was six, and the thing he was most terrified of was a googly-eyed goat that Hige's parents had owned.
Hige snorted, tightening his hold on the reigns when the gate started to rise. He'd only known Blue for about a year, had met her when he went out drinking one night and Toboe had to ask for her help in getting him home, but she'd stuck around. Hige had tried to caution himself against it, but he'd managed to fall in love with her, and she him. He didn't want to think about marriage, but ever since Kiba died, Toboe had been a "live for the present" type of person. This wasn't the first time they'd talked about Hige proposing, though the timing for this specific talk was a bit odd. "No woman wants to be married to a member of the Survey Corps. Especially one without any money to leave behind."
Toboe shrugged, the look in his eyes grave as the commander gave the signal to move forward. "If you're the soldier asking, I think she'd say yes."
And when Hige finally asked Blue to marry him, she did say yes, and Hige had Toboe's Survey Corps patch with him during the ceremony, taken from the boy's cloak right before they'd burned his body.
Toboe would've been smiling throughout the entire ceremony.
Sometimes it was easier to believe that he'd never been happy at all.
Looking up at a sky stained with remnants of green smoke and not even a single cloud, Hige tried to fight off the memories. Up until then, he'd been successful, not once thinking about those precious moments in his childhood when he was actually content, spending each and every day in the presence of those who didn't believe he was just a Titan's plaything, that he actually had more worth than that.
Even his own father had never believed in him, and yet his friends always did.
Hige was tired. He was on the cusp of twenty-three, married with a baby on the way, and already felt as if he was dying – maybe it was because he really was, this time – and while part of him wanted to keep fighting, he was too exhausted to do anything about it.
Why was he the one that survived? He asked himself that question often. He didn't have much to give to humanity, wasn't exactly passionate about fighting the Titans the way Tsume had been, or intuitive and practical like Toboe, or mentally strong and determined like Kiba. Hige had wanted to live, to protect the only family he truly had in a different way, one that didn't involve a uniform, but when the wall was breached when they were kids and Tsume threatened to join the military on his own…
Well, none of them would have let that happen.
Someone screamed in the distance, though by the time Hige managed to turn his head to try and locate the sound, it had stopped. Another promising life cut short. At least by then, Hige didn't have anyone left to lose.
As black spots plagued his vision and the sound of thundering footsteps filled his ears, Hige finally allowed himself to think back to when times were simpler, before the fall of Wall Maria. He lived longer than he thought he would, saw a whole assortment of things in his short time on earth, and he had no complaints. If anything, he was in pain because he knew Blue was waiting for him back in Trost. As the wife of a soldier, she had to be prepared for anything, but to be widowed at only twenty-three…
He hoped she would find someone else, couldn't bear to think about the woman who'd helped him to move on after all his friends died having to live alone for the rest of her life. He loved her more than he'd wanted to, loved their unborn child just as much, and before he finally lost consciousness, he hoped that his son or daughter would manage to find friends like the ones he had when he was younger, friends who loved each other so desperately they would follow one another into Hell.
Hige died holding Toboe's Wings of Freedom.