Chapter 10: Family

They could have easily traveled to any of the other outlying districts that day, but Shiganshina was a popular and well-populated one, and of course the southern districts tended to be wealthier than those in the north. Freak shows like the one Milcah took part in were occasionally invited into the inner-lands for festivals or drunken entertainment, but it was beyond wall Rose where they made most of their living and home. They were too poor and filthy for the rich citizens living in the interior.

Milcah enjoyed her time among the traveling freaks, filled with the most eclectic group of people one could ever hope to meet within the walls. And people would flock to see the strange looking humans, and the incredible performances they put on. The strange ebony-skinned strong-man, rumored to be the last person with dark skin among humanity, the deformed and dwarves, telling stories of how they had the blood of titans in them to make them look the way they did. Contortionists and acrobats, clowns and men on stilts, it was a mixture of the rejected scum of humanity.

Living with them was hard, those who didn't earn their keep often went hungry, and it wasn't always fair, stealing from audiences and from each other was common practice and Milcah had learned to sleep with a dagger beneath her pillow. The fellow freaks and long term hands were usually fairly trustworthy, needing to band together to survive, but there were always hired hands who posed unknown dangers to those around them.

Milcah could remember one in particular who had joined up when she was thirteen. He was handsome, long blonde hair frequently pulled back in a ponytail and the other girls loved to talk about him, but the way he looked at her gave Milcah the chills. She frequently felt as if he were following her around, watching her practices too often, and turning up in places he shouldn't be. It took weeks before he had managed to get her alone, she'd had a late practice and took too long cleaning up afterwards. When his arm wrapped around her neck from behind, knife gleaming in the light, Milcah couldn't bring herself to scream.

She was frozen as he groped her breasts, licking and biting her neck. It was only when he began to pull up her skirt that Milcah snapped out of her disbelieving stupor. Biting down hard on his hand, he yelled out as she crawled away. When he caught hold of her ankle she snatched up a handful of dirt, throwing it viciously in his eyes and kicking him in the nose, snatching up the dagger he'd dropped. Milcah tried to make a run for it, hearing him come after her, quickly gaining and she knew she had to stand and fight. With a terrified scream Milcah turned to face him, and he, not expecting her to stop, ran into her, knocking them both on the ground.

His gasp of pain accompanied the blood that began to leak over her body, soaking her as he slowly died, Milcah trapped beneath his dead body. One of the dwarves had heard her scream and quickly shoved the man off of her, holding her as she shook in fear and hate at the corpse of the man who had almost raped her. One of her close friends, a skilled contortionist, wrapped her in a blanket and took her to get cleaned up. The freaks disposed of the man's body and nothing ever came of it, they took care of their own, and Milcah was one of them.

It was because of her fellow friends that she had grown her hair long, always being told how pretty it was. Oh Millie, they would coo, always offering to braid it or weave in flowers or beads before a performance. And Milcah loved to comply with their tender hands, enjoying the love of her sisters as they trained her and helped her grow. She remembered one of the old wizards teaching her how to write her name in the mud in her sixteenth year of life. A beautiful dancer who had run away from a home in the interior often read to the girls in their tent before they fell asleep, lounging on each other's laps, gossiping innocently about their lives.

This had been her home, the first place she'd really known as hers, before the freaks there was only darkness and sadness. It was with them that she had seen the stars for the first time, through a crack in the lid of one of the crates as she was smuggled out of the Underground. And with them that she was taught how to darn and sew, how to pitch a tent and make a fire, how to move her body in a way that would earn the most money from the crowd and how to make people stare with excitement and envy.

Thinking of their bodies, crushed beneath the weight of brick and board, or being consumed alive by the horror of the titans was still enough to make Milcah break into tears. She had never wanted to leave that life, she still wished she could go back to those days and lay lazily in the summer sun, unaware of the monsters just beyond the walls. But those days would never come again, and Milcah had joined the military, intent on protecting the way of life she had enjoyed, and anyone else from being killed by the titans. And she especially wanted to be like him, strong enough to save a life from them, strong enough to make a difference and to fight back.

It was in only after meeting Hange that Milcah had even begun to suspect that she could find another home. After the horrifying experience of trying to reclaim wall Maria, Milcah had seriously thought about dropping out of the Cadets. It was when she was sitting in the stables, trying to find peace and quiet, working on a basic sketch for her 3Dmg design, weeks after the failed reclamation that Hange had gotten her alone. She'd been coming around more frequently during practices and Milcah wasn't sure how to feel about that.

When Hange had dropped down next to her Milcah had jumped, dropping her papers, Hange snatching it up before Milcah could grab it. Milcah blushed red, trying to snatch it back but Hange scooted out of her reach.

"Where did you get this idea from?" Hange asked at length, looking up at her curiously.

"I, I just remembered, when I used to do aerial straps, there was a device to keep the straps from getting tangled together when I spun, and it reminded me of the 3Dmg. I'm not sure what the best solution would be, but I think it could help a lot in the field." Milcah rushed through her explanation, knowing it didn't make sense, and was surprised to find Hange smiling at her as she handed the papers back.

"Keep working on this," Hange told her, "And when you graduate, if you choose to join the Survey Corps, I want you in my squad."

"Th-thank you Captain."

"I'm a Major now," she said with a wink.

AN: I know this one's short but it's all I have in me tonight. I'm a bit behind the times, but have you guys heard the English-dub for AOT yet? I personally think they ruined Hange and I'm really skeptical about Levi, but I'm trying to give it a chance. It's so hard to get used to the original voices and characters and then switch to the dubbed version.

Anyways, I hope you're all enjoying my story, I'm hoping to have a longer more Levi-centered reward for you soon. If you review you'll get a Levi cupcake! But seriously lol, reviews really help me know what you guys like and don't like and I do try to take them into account. Sleep tight everybody, or good morning, hope to update again really soon.