"No! None of what you're doing is making any sense at all!"
Everything spins; the ground shakes with each of the huge monster's footsteps. Wind dries the tears from her face, but not before fresh ones fall, spilling from her burning eyes. The girl in front of her is looking back at her fiercely, her head the only part of her free from the monster she controls. Historia knows what she wants and she's desperate for it, pleading with her expression - stay.
The sound of horses running behind them; shouts of soldiers cutting through the cold wind, piercing her.
"I don't care about your reasons or your secrets!" Her scream is louder than them; it's deafening, overwhelming. "No matter what happens! I'm on your side!"
The girl with the dark hair and the dark eyes and the freckles. The selfish girl, unafraid of anything or anyone, unwilling to serve others unless she was indebted to them. She was now the girl with fear in her eyes - Historia sees it; sees the way the terror in her overflows, passing the boundaries she had allowed. In her gritted teeth, the way her pupils dilate, how she looks at Historia - she is afraid.
Time is blurry; scenes skip from one to the next. Suddenly Historia finds herself falling through the air; two titan shifters in battle right above her. Three years of training don't go to waste. Her reflexes are fast, and her gear effective. She hears someone scream her name, and it's agonising. Immediately she flies to the smaller titan, the girl she's known for so long, and clings to her.
She goes to scream back. Nothing comes out.
Time skips again, and Historia's shouting out to her. "From now on, let's live for ourselves! I can't explain it… but when I'm with you, I don't feel scared!"
Her voice is hoarse and her throat pleads with her to stop screaming out the words with such force - but she doesn't. "No matter where I am!"
Historia screams out, screams her name -
"Y-"
And then she's awake, sitting bolt upright again, sweat on her forehead and tears in her eyes. As the memories of the dream begin slipping from her mind she desperately tries to hold on to them, but they fall from her grasp like water through a net, sand through fingers.
Krista takes a deep breath, closes her eyes, and lies back down. Yes, the dream came again, but she's got work in the morning. Her phone is still playing the rain noises she'd put on to help her get to sleep; she listens to them intently, trying to distract herself from the flickering images of the freckled girl, whose name she tried to remember frantically. It never worked, and she lay for what felt like hours trying to pinpoint any kind of detail from her reoccurring nightmare, but it was all hazy, like a thick fog was covering everything in her mind, or like TV static, interference.
She checks her phone. Half four in the morning, and two texts from her ex girlfriend. She sighs, rolls over, and stares at the sun as it begins to rise tentatively from behind the horizon, bringing with it shades of orange and red that turn to blue once seven comes and Krista has to get up. She's used to not sleeping after nightmares, so the time passes quickly, and she finds herself getting up, walking to the bathroom, washing her face. She hardly knows she's doing any of it; she's on autopilot, every day the same - get up, work, come home, cook, TV, sleep. she's bored of it all, but, of course, there's the dreams to keep her thoughts occupied during the monotony of her everyday life - she rarely stopped trying to uncover the meaning of it. They aren't just dreams to her. They're something more, like a separate reality. Reality.
Time passes and she's listening to sound of her feet against the pavement, cars rolling by, birds tweeting from the trees. The air is fresher in the morning and she's grateful for her early shift, grateful to take in the sights of the streets before they are filled with people, overflowing, and never stopping, like currents through an electrical wire. It takes ten minutes to get from her apartment to the little coffee shop on the corner where she works. The bell chimes as she walks through the door, and immediately the smell of coffee hits her, strong. There aren't any customers in yet, so she takes her time putting on her apron, smoothing down her hair, making small talk with her coworkers.
As per usual, Krista's distracted. She cleans, she makes coffee, she cuts up cakes and puts them onto little white plates. She thinks of the dreams. How long had she even been having them? Years. Ever since she was little, a kid. They'd always plagued her. Sometimes she saw other people, and she could remember them well - a boy, angry and passionate, with a fire in his green eyes; another girl, a girl with dark hair and steely eyes and a red scarf, who had threatened to kill her; a short boy, blonde-haired, blue-eyed, and smart. But she didn't feel the same pull to them as the murky girl with freckles, the girl she always knew so well in her dreams but could never remember the name of.
Customers came and went; a pretty girl with a laptop comes in and smiles at Krista, and she vaguely wonders if she should ask the girl's name. She doesn't though; Krista isn't good at relationships. She holds some odd sense that she was waiting for someone. But a sweet and kind Disney princess kind of waiting, though. It's the kind of wait that comes with a constant ache, like a part of herself was missing. That's another thing - in her dreams, she knows that her name isn't Krista. At least, not in the most recent one. It was something else, something that felt more true to her, but as with everyone else's names, it lies just out of her reach, like the end of a rainbow.
She's in the middle of pouring a cup of coffee when the bell chimes, but she doesn't turn around. There's a customer waiting - two, now - and she's pouring the milk into it when she feels a shiver run down her spine, like nails have been raked down a chalkboard. Her feet are starting to ache and she's tired from the lack of sleep; her mind, too, is exhausted from the constant repetition of the details she can remember from her dream, and everything's going over and over and over and-
"Historia?"
Slowly, slowly, Krista looks up from the cup of coffee in her hands and stares at the wall. Historia. So… familiar. Her name. Her name from the dream… that was it. For what felt like hours she just stood there, staring.
"Historia, is that you?"
She turns on her heels, slowly. Behind the burly guy with the thick beard waiting for his drink stood a girl, tall, willowy. She's got dark brown hair tied up in a ponytail. She's got dark eyes and they're staring into Krista's. She's got a splattering of freckles on her cheeks, and the most dumbfounded expression on her face.
It all comes flooding back to her. The dreams; every tiny intricate detail of them, meticulously so, come flooding back.
"Ymir."