"This word, can you read it? Sound it out carefully, Cosette. Take your time." The little girl sat in a chair much too tall for her, her small fingers skimming over the same word over and over again, pronouncing each syllable repeatedly in her head before speaking.
"Ch… Ch… érie? Chérie!" The child cooed excitedly. "Momma, you call me that all the time." The woman chuckled and planted a soft kiss on the crown of the tiny child's head.
"Do you know what it means?" She asked. Cosette shook her head and flipped the page of the book. The room was growing chilly and, noticing, her mother wrapped her long arms around the child. The warmth of a mother was warmth that could never be recreated nor imitated by anyone other than a mother. "It means 'dear.'" The girl giggled.
"You go around calling my your 'dear?' Momma, that's odd. You'll make my brothers and sisters jealous if you do that." Cosette's smile vanished as she felt a splash of water fall on her shoulder. Her mother sniffled behind her.
"I know." Her breathing was ragged. "What an unfair mother I am. I love you so much, Cosette. Please never forget just how much I love you." Her mother got up from the chair, an uneasy feeling settled in Cosette's stomach as she chased after her mother. The door to the room shut on Cosette. The child struggled to open it back up, but when the elegant, white wood finally budged all traces of her mother were gone.
"Momma…" She stepped into the hallway and looked to either side. "Momma?" The hallways seemed to stretch on forever, but at the very end of the hallway to her right the long, icy blue train of her mother's dress trailed behind her. Cosette ran towards the woman. "Momma!" She shouted. "Momma, come back!" The hallway stretched on and on. Her little legs moved so fast she was sure she would take off into the air at any moment. "Momma!" Why wasn't the woman listening to her calls? Cosette's heart sank to her stomach. Her mother- it was her mother, no one else's, so why was she running away? The hallway got longer and longer, darker and deeper until it seemed to twist around her. She felt herself spinning and fell to the ground, no longer able to run. Her mother was getting further and further away, bile was rising in her mouth- her mother was going to leave her all alone.
"I'm so sorry, ma chérie-"
Cosette shot up from her sleep, gasping for breath. Her heart was racing, her body was quaking and wet tears were rolling down her face. It was just a nightmare- it had to have been the ninth this month. She took a shaking breath and braced herself against the nightstand next to her bed as she limped out of bed. Her whole body ached, her heart longed for her mother's heart to fill the room, but the cold quickly took over. The thin layer of sweat that covered her body was freezing. The cold at night had a way of chilling Cosette to the bone and bringing her to tears. She shakily picked up the candle that sat on her dresser in the corner of her room, struck a match and lit the wick.
She set the candle down and dropped to the floor. The wooden planks pressed against her thighs made her shiver and the idea of having her mother's warm arounds around her made her sob into her knees. It wasn't uncommon for people to lose their mother's- it wasn't uncommon at all. She knew many mothers who had been lost to disease, or starvation, or hypothermia, sometimes even to Titans. But that didn't mean it was any easier to lose someone so dear. It was never easy- not a year later, or two, or three, or ten, or twelve. It never magically became easy to wake up and forget about the person who raised you or the way their smile was just a bit crooked or the way they always kept their hair braided or the way they smelled like warm cedar wood in the dead of winter.
It wasn't the hardest thing in the world to lose someone who'd invested so much time in you; to lose someone who cared so much about you. It's almost like they're losing out more than you. Cosette sat, as she usually did when she had nightmares, on the floor and waited until her heartbeat slowed and the noises leaving her mouth dwindled until she was silent. She always found herself pressed into the corner of the room, arms around her knees and head lolling to the side due to her brain telling her body she was tired, but never quite dozing off again due to her heart telling her brain she was afraid of what new challenges her dreams would hold. Sleep can be agony for those who don't have someone to wish them sweet dreams at night. And so, she waited. She waited until the sun rose and the sound of feet rumbling across creaking wood filled the house to go back to sleep. She always made sure to keep the blinds open, because for some reason it seemed that the darkness was too frightened of the light.
"Cosette!" The girl turned, her hair blowing in her face as she did so. The woman on the porch called for her at least two times an hour with a new chore to do, but Cosette didn't mind. It kept her occupied.
"Coming!" The girl called back. She quickly brought down the clothes that were hanging on the line in the backyard- the smell of fresh linen filled her nose and brought her back to simpler times. She imagined running in a field with her siblings, falling amongst the countless flowers and coming home with grass stains and smiling faces. Cosette tossed the clothes in the woven basket she was carrying and entered the home. Mrs. Clark, her caretaker was washing the few dishes that had piled up in the sink from lunch.
"Clean the stables. They weren't cleaned properly yesterday an' I been lettin' you get away with a lot 'ere lately, you ain't gonna take advantage o' me, girl. I take ya' in, feed ya', cloth ya' and ya' can't seem to get your ass up until everyone else's dresses and ready to go." Mrs. Clark was a rude woman who ran an inn- one of the few in Trost. It was once an inn in Shiganshina, inside Wall Maria, but somehow Mrs. Clark and Cosette had managed to make it to Wall Rose alive. Mr. Clark, the older woman's husband, hadn't been so lucky. Cosette had cried for Mr. Clark's death, not only because it seemed like the polite thing to do, but also because he was the only one of the two who had vouched to keep Cosette after finding her freezing on the streets. Mrs. Clark had always been against the idea and since the move from Shiganshina to Trost, it had become more clear that Cosette needed another place to stay.
Mrs. Clark was old in her age, and was yearning to settle down on her own. After the death of her husband she wanted to find her own place and thought of Cosette only as a burden (something Cosette didn't argue with- Mrs. Clark had lived a full life and deserved her own time to make peace with the world), but it wasn't easy earning money doing odd jobs and finding a place cheap enough to live off of that money alone, but she was going to do it. Cosette sighed, smiled and set the basket of clothes down on the kitchen floor.
"I'll get right on it, Mrs. Clark. While I'm out I'll go buy some groceries for supper." Mrs. Clark waved the girl off and watched her flutter away, sighing as she did so. When the door closed softly behind her the elderly woman sat down in a chair at the kitchen table and set the basket of clothes atop the table. She knew that when Cosette went out for groceries she was also going to look for a place to stay. The gossip of the girl's whereabouts had gotten back to Mrs. Clark months ago, but she didn't make a show of it. It was nice having the girl around, but it was also time she led her own life and not one where she catered to an old, grumpy woman all day long. There was also a fear for Cosette's safety- she wasn't the smartest girl in the world, she was naive and somewhat frivolous. But her kindness was what had warmed her up to the people within each town she moved to. No task was ever too much for her, even if it took her two whole days of work. So long as the work made someone happy, Cosette never did mind.
"Ah, well if it isn't Cosette! I haven't seen you in forever! How've you been?" The man standing in front of her was an old friend of Mr. Clark's before he has passed away- a familiar and friendly face.
"I've been good, Mr. Hannes. How about yourself?" Cosette replied. The man chuckled and took a swig of something in the flask he was holding, his cheeks burning brighter than ever. He patted Cosette on the back and chuckled.
"Oh, I've been well. Captain of my very own squad now, so I'd say I'm doing pretty good myself."
"Congratulations on your promotion!" Cosette smiled and Hannes nodded in thanks.
"How is Mrs. Clark holding up?" He asked.
"She's doing well growing accustomed to all the wonderful things life offers with old age." Hannes laughed.
"She still griping at you?" Cosette chuckled quietly and repositioned the basket she carried in her hands.
"Ah, well, of course she is- but I don't mind!" Hannes smiled. There is was, her signature compliance to and with nearly everything in her life.
"You know it's okay to complain about things every now and then, right?" The girl nodded, her head hanging low. It was obvious how reluctant she was to say anything that might shed a bad light on the elderly woman she lived with.
"I know, but I just don't want to. Whenever I complain about something she does it makes me feel icky." Cosette twiddled her thumbs and Hannes laughed and gave her a farewell pat on the back.
"I understand. Be safe on your way home, Cosette. Tell Mary I said hello. And if you ever decide you wanna get out and fight just tell me and I'll put in a good word for you with the higher-ups!" Cosette laughed at the idea of her fighting 15-foot tall Titans. She barely hit five feet herself. It'd be like fighting with, well- a giant.
"You can keep your hopes up, but I won't be fighting anytime soon, Mr. Hannes!"
'It's so bright out.' Cosette thought to herself. The sun beamed down on her head, causing her white-blond hair to shine like a beacon. "Ah! I feel like my brain's being fried!" She cried out before looking around. She had a bad habit of blurting things out- she meant to keep them in her mind, but she'd learned long ago that brains didn't always work the way they should when it came to communicating with the mouth. But when people heard her whine or complain to herself it sometimes rose suspicion of just how fried her brain had actually become. Paired with the fact that she hardly wore shoes outside and didn't bother with long sleeves during the winter, her mental stability had been called into question many times by other in Trost.
"Tch, I'm not crazy," She whispered to herself, kicking a pebble beneath her foot. "I'm smart. I know what I'm doing… most of the time anyways." Villagers had also complained to Mrs. Clark that the young girl living with her had no home training and had been so nice as to supply the elderly woman with examples of how. But Cosette had been young! And she was hungry! Mrs. Clark didn't always have the money for food and- "So what if I ran off with a few apples from that fruit stand?! It wasn't like that man was gonna sell all of them… or eat all of them. Stingy people." Cosette shook the memories from her head and pressed forward. She was almost home. Not much further to walk, but it was about this time that she always stopped to watch the gate leading into Wall Rose. She was one of those lucky enough to remember fleeing into the second innermost wall when the Titans seized Wall Maria. She remembered many people who'd been lost to the Titans- eaten, crushed, split right down the middle. Cosette had been one of the few to make it into Wall Rose and one of the first as well. 'In fact, it kind of looks like that day… But I'm sure the sun is just getting to me.' "This weather is gonna kill me one of these days-"
CRACK!
It was a familiar sound- the same pulsating energy that had filled the air before. Every hair on Cosette's body stood straight up, all ability to hear was gone, her breath seemed to stop. The wind whipped her hair, shadows dancing across her vision as she watched wood and metal fly around her. "N-No way… this is a joke… right?" There they were- tall and unsightly, bounding towards the nearest warm body. "Titans?" Cosette could faintly hear someone yelling from above. 'Are they… talking to me?' She looked up slowly at what she believed was a man, but his body was swept away too quickly by what looked almost like a small tornado for his features to be made out. But his voice was clear.
"Run!"