A/N: Manga spoilers so don't read on if you haven't caught up!

Kind of playing with the idea of love transcending death. Somewhat influenced by Doctor Who and Stephanie Meyer's The Host. Ymir's memories begin to influence Porco's own thoughts and he finds himself experiencing things that she's been through as he discovers more and more of her memories. A lot of the things that happen to "him" are things that have happened to her. I just use him/he pronouns during the memory sequences so the audience can understand that Porco feels as if he's living these experiences.


They say the memories don't come back all at once. He hates that they ambush him at the strangest times. He can be eating or just staring off into space when a memory hits, a flashback of things that someone else experienced but the visions all appear as if he had seen them with his own eyes.

"Do they ever stop?" he asks Pieck one day.

"Aw, you can't handle it?" Pieck teases. She's resting on the couch in that strange way she has, curled up more like a cat than a person. "Poor Pokko."

Normally he'd be irritated at the annoying nickname but the memories have been plaguing him ever since he became the Jaw Titan. It's so strange, seeing these memories that should belong to someone else. "All these things I'm seeing," he says, "they're all of these things I can't remember…these things I shouldn't remember because I've never seen them before…but somehow they're my memories now."

"They are," Pieck says, sitting up. She's more serious now. She leans against the arm of the chair. She has that calm and sleepy look that she always but that glimmer in her eyes that she typically has whenever she discusses Titan affairs. "It's a natural memory transfer that happens to everyone after the Titan power is shifted to someone new. Don't worry about it so much. You'll get used to it."

"If you say so," he says reluctantly.

She looks as if she's about to laugh at his doubtful expression but a thought seems to come to her mind and she leans forward, serious once more. "You're the first of us to have acquired a Titan from the Eldians of Paradis," she murmurs. It's something that the warriors know but haven't really thought about, Porco realizes. "Is there something interesting about the things you've seen, Pokko? You know you can tell me anything."

He's about to open his mouth and share the memories that are now in his possession. They might be less of a burden to him if he can share them with someone. Maybe Pieck will be able to make more sense of them, piece all of these fractured pieces together. He absolutely wants to and he doesn't know why he didn't start sharing them the moment he woke up after consuming the Jaw Titan and he feels the words begin to spill of his mouth but a girl pops up in his mind. Her hair is like spun sunshine, her eyes blue like the sky, and a radiant smile lights up her face. His mind blanks and a vaguely familiar voice in the back of his mind says, Protect her.

"It's nothing," he mumbles, avoiding her gaze so that she won't be able to tell he's lying. "They just give me a headache sometimes."

She observes him for a while but he doesn't lift his head, fearful that if their eyes meet she'll try to dig the truth out of him. She seems to accept his answer though because she gets up, walking over to him with her crutches and reaches out to ruffle his hair. "Well, tell me if anything comes up that you want to talk about." She leaves after that, the door shutting behind her.

He's left alone in that room with his thoughts and he can't help but wonder why he listened to that voice in his head and why he feels the need to protect that girl with the golden hair.


The first memory comes right after he consumes the Jaw Titan. He thinks he's prepared for it. Pieck and the others had warned him about it before, how these visions from another person's past would soon be his. He thought it would be like observing something taking place from a distance, like a sunset, but the memories prove to be far more intense. No, he's become the person, this Eldian devil, and it's worse than he could have ever imagined.

He doesn't have very much thought about the Eldian girl when she arrived and she was held captive in all of the time he had known her. She was more like a thing to him, a shadow lurking in the corner of a room, but now he stands in her place in her last moments and he's astounded at just how human she is.

His legs shake as he stands, shackled and bound, standing before the most gruesome creature he's ever seen before. He's seen Titans before, at least from a distance, but somehow this creature is more nightmarish, a culmination of all of the horrors packed into a vaguely human body. He can't even scream in terror as the Titan approaches, crawling towards him on its limbs with a grotesque grin on its face. But that's supposed to be me, he realizes.

He struggles to break free from his chains but he's hopelessly tied up with no chance of escaping. He can only watch in horror as the Titan draws nearer, its eyes glistening with hunger as it gazes upon him. It reaches out, grabbing him in its hand, and opens its mouth to take a bite.

He wakes up in a cold sweat, still shaking like he had in his memory. He shivers as he realizes that the girl's memories will now haunt him for the rest of his life.


He's always wondered about Marcel's life on Paradis when he was sent away on that mission years ago. He had always assumed that Marcel would come back without a doubt. The thought that any of the warriors, trained since children to succeed and bring the Founding Titan, would fail was unthinkable to him. When the warriors returned that day with only three of the original shifters, his brother not one of them, his heart dropped.

He has gone through all of the reports that Reiner had given in his mind. Marcel had barely lasted a day on the island before being consumed by a mindless Titan. He was such a promising warrior. How could that happen?

It happens in a flash, he finds out later.

He can't quite remember his own time as a mindless Titan. He had only been one for such a brief period of time but this memory feels familiar to his own.

"Mindless" isn't an accurate term to describe a Titan with no shifting abilities. It's not that you do not have thoughts as a mindless Titan, Porco thinks to himself. It's that you have no real control over them and cannot act upon them, relying instead on instincts. It's like he's drowning in his mind and struggling to find one thought in there to keep him afloat but it slips away from him as soon as he reaches for it.

He sees himself breaking out of the surface of the earth like a devil crawling out of hell and reaching for the nearest thing to eat – four young children camping out in the open. He can't say why but he feels the need to consume them, devour them, in the hopes that doing so would rid him of the body he's trapped in right now. How long has he been dormant underground? He doesn't know. He doesn't care. He just wants out right now.

He reaches for the young blond boy, his eyes wide with terror. The boy's feet are rooted to the ground and just as he's about to grab him another boy shoves the blonde out of the way, taking his place in Porco's – no, it's the girl's whose memory this is – fist. Porco recognizes the boy's face. It's just as he remembers it – turned up nose, black hair, bright-eyed. It's the same face that he saw when he last saw his brother leave.

He wants to get out of this memory. He doesn't want to watch his brother die. The hands that pick up his brother aren't his, he knows this, but it feels like they might as well be. He's screaming in his head to make it stop but it's no use. He's forced to watch as he kills his own brother.


There's a girl who pops up frequently in this woman's memories. Her hair shines bright in the sunlight and she has a kind smile but it looks strained if you look closely enough. She's trying so hard to be a saint, someone she's not. Somehow he can sympathize with her although he doesn't know why. It must be this sympathy that forces him to linger around her in all of these memories, acting something like a protective shadow. It's more of an unnecessary precaution though, being her bodyguard. She's more than capable of handling herself and he has to admire her ferocity on the training grounds. While her physical strength is hardly a match for some of the other top members of the trainee squad, her ability to hover so close to the top ten is admirable.

Her name is Christa. A voice in the back of his head tells him it isn't though, not really. This is just the name she's known by at this point in these memories. He finds himself calling her name frequently, liking the way that it leaves his mouth. You're so cute, Christa. Christa's the best. Christa, marry me, okay?

If the girl is annoyed at the way he clings to her constantly she hides it well. She smiles whenever he's nearby, a smile that's almost genuine. He wants to see it more and makes a vow to stay by her side forever.


He's been told stories of the goddess Ymir, the first Titan. He doesn't find it coincidental that the shifter he consumes shares the same name. It makes sense that the Eldians of Paradis would name themselves after monsters. But this name isn't something that this girl chose. It was placed upon her like a crown and was snatched away just as quickly.

He can feel her amazement about being plucked from streets and made a goddess. He revels at the cheers from the crowds as he walks the street. He devours the food placed before him at the table. He's never eaten such savory foods before and licks every crumb from the plate as if each meal will be his last. The clothes he wears are made of rich silks and threaded with gold. Fine jewelry decorates his head, his neck, his wrists and he loves the noises they make as he moves. But this moment doesn't last.

It leaves as soon as it came. He's struck down, beaten. He's stripped of his clothes and jewels and forced to wear rags and chains in their place. Never mind his empty stomach; he thirsts for even just a swallow of water but his captors only taunt him with scraps before feeding them to the stray dogs and cats along the streets. There are times when he even longs to eat the rotten fruit that the crowds – crowds that had once chanted his name, crowds that are now screaming it angrily – throw at him. He's tried once and the soldiers guarding him beat him he woke up black and blue. Was becoming a goddess worth the fall?

He doesn't think that it can get much worse than this. He's been stripped of his title and cursed because of the person they made him be. They've jeered at him and called him a monster. That still doesn't seem to be enough for them though. They want to give him hell.

So they inject him with a serum to turn him into the monster they always said he was and force him to roam the rest of his days trapped inside the body of a devil.


He sees her smile, really smile, and he understands why Ymir feels the need to protect this beautiful, precious girl so much. No, it's more than just Ymir now. He knows he has to protect her. Historia, the girl who has been stripped of the crown that was rightfully hers, holds her in his arms and he reaches out to touch her face. His fingers brush her cheek and she smiles at him like she had smiled minutes before when she had seen him in his devil form.

"Ymir," she says. It doesn't matter that she's not saying his name. It's the name of his past life. It's almost the same as calling his own. Her voice is filled with love as she gazes at him. That's all that matters.

I'll protect her. It's too difficult to tell if this is his thought or Ymir's. Perhaps there's no difference anymore. Perhaps they're the same.


"Who's Historia?" Pieck asks one day.

He's drowsy, just waking up for a nap. He rubs his eyes sleepily, confused at why the sunlight is streaming in through the window when he had just been dreaming only moments before. "Historia?" he repeats. He wonders how Pieck is able to know that name when he's been trying to hide it from her so desperately.

She's not sitting how she usually is. She's upright, her arms folded across her chest and her legs crossed. The usual relaxed look she has is replaced with a serious one. He's noticed that she's becoming a lot more serious with him, pestering him about the memories that are slowly coming to him. There's been a distance growing between them ever since he had avoided telling her anything about Ymir's memories the first time, he thinks. "You mumbled 'Historia' in your sleep," she says quietly. "Is it a name? Whose name is it?"

The gap between them weighs heavy in his mind. He could close it if he answers honestly but he remembers the girl and her smile, her willingness to stay beside him even when his true form was shown, and he swallows the truth and offers Pieck another lie instead. "It must have been gibberish," he finally replies, turning in his bed as if he were going back to sleep again.

"You always were a weird sleeper," she says but there's no humor in her voice. She doesn't go to his bed to ruffle his hair. She just leaves.

He should feel terrible at hiding secrets from one of his oldest comrades but he lets out a sigh of a relief as soon as the door shuts behind Pieck because he knows he's kept Historia safe for now.


A/N: Not really looking to sparking a Historia/Pokko crackship or anything and personally consider this Yumikuri and slight Pokko/Pieck. (The latter is a ship right? It is now.) Thanks again for reading! School is starting soon so I won't be updating as quickly :( That latest SnK chapter was pretty wild though, right?

Word Count: 2,356