Red Snow

Ymir pulled her scarf closer around her mouth, sniffed the air, and wrinkled her nose in disgust. Knee-deep in white slush, their asshole of an instructor was making them trek through snow on such a dark night and, trudging along, while the rain was something she had no trouble dealing with, snow was one of the last things she wanted to experience more of. Glancing back at the two silhouettes only visible against the backdrop of the forest because of the lanterns attached to their packs, she scoffed. Leaning against a tree, its branches snapping clean off when her back brushed them, she waited for them to catch up.

Again.

When they arrived, her eyes went down to Dazz, who shivered where he stood. He was obviously freezing, but only bundled his blanket tighter around his body, like doing so would keep his fingers from turning blue. She sighed and crossed her arms. It was futile in this weather.

"You know, the longer we spend sitting here, the shorter it'll take us to freeze." She went from Dazz's hopeless self to the blonde haired midget who'd been insistent on them resting every few miles to try and preserve warmth and also the whole reason the other squads probably long since passed them up—all because this girl wanted to stretch her legs. Or, no, that wasn't it. Was it? "Hey, you hear me?"

"I heard you," Krista said, too busy rubbing Dazz's hands together to look up. Too busy being concerned with the guy they should've just abandoned hours ago.

"Dazz, do you think you can make it the rest of the way?"

"Y-Y-Yes!" Dazz proclaimed through chattering teeth, nodding his oddly-shaped head that reminded her of a ripe, upside down depressed pear. The lines around his cheeks stretched as he tried to give a smile through cracked lips. "D-don't worry about m-m-me!" I'll… I-I'll be… just fine!"

Ymir rolled her eyes. "What is it with men and not admitting they're in over their heads?" She bent forward, scowling at him. "If you were smart, you'd tell us to carry you. Dumbass."

"Ymir!"

"N-no, s-s-she's right!" Dazz held up the hands Krista was trying to keep circulated. "I c-can't move them a-anymore," he said with a tiny, pinched laugh.

"Well, she's wrong! You can make it the rest of the way!" Krista touched his knee gently. It was probably ice-cold. "But, if you don't feel well later on, don't be afraid to tell me!" She smiled. "OK?" When he nodded back, turning red despite his current condition, Krista glared back at her. "Are you ready, Ymir?"

She shrugged, watching her unhook Dazz's pack. "Yeah, whatever."

Krista pushed it toward her. "Then take this. It'll be easier for him."

"Yeah, yeah." Ymir hoisted it behind her back by its strings and roped them around her own, tying them down. "It won't be a problem," she said, starting forward without them again and glancing back. "But he will be."

She felt Krista's eyes boring into the back of her head as she continued on, but Dazz was irritating her too much to be quiet about it. If the idiot couldn't hack it out here, then why did he come in the first place? Before the sun peeked over the horizon, they had to reach a lodge further down the mountain and with Dazz in their company she wasn't entirely sure they would make it there alive, let alone at all. At least, without having to resort to that, wanting to say something since they were assigned their groups back at base camp; that they should've screwed the rules and went with Connie even though she wasn't overly fond of the guy after Achi hustled off with Mikasa and Reiner—just as simple-minded, but at least he was less susceptible to the harsher elements compared to this human icicle. Though, being the paragon that she was, Krista agreed to partner up with this waste of a uniform because he had nobody to rely on. He needed someone to be there for him, to help him slick by on all his courses and that was what really pissed her off. Forget not being able to take the cold. If he couldn't fend even a little bit for himself, then why the hell was he still trying to survive in a world like this?

Ymir spit her disgust into the snow.

Continuing on, the forest surrounding them was dead silent. Shadows weaved themselves between the trees, creeping ominously.

She was reminded of her time spent in that church and she bit back on the pain that those images brought with them as they came flashing back. She wasn't going to worry about them right now. There was little time to care about the ghosts of her past with the temperature dropping rapidly as it was with each boot-step she sunk into the snow. Looking up at one of the mountains barely visible through the treetops in the distance, she cursed under her breath when she turned to yell at Krista and Dazz to hurry it up only to discover they were nowhere in sight and started back.

Not far from where they last rested, Krista was trying desperately to lift an unconscious Dazz.

"Y-Ymir! Dazz is—!"

"I told you he'd be a—"

"Get out the sleeping bag from his pack!" Krista yelled, reaching a hand out as she finished a makeshift stretcher thrown together from their tent and some branches. "Faster!"

Ymir shrugged. "Whatever you say." She took it off her shoulders and threw it down at the girl's feet.

Krista quickly opened it and pulled out the sleeping bag, then tried putting Dazz into it, but he was too heavy for her. Even so, she kept at it until he was in as best as she could manage. Picking up the ends, she started forward. "OK! Let's go!"

Watching her drag the stretcher behind herself, Ymir looked down at the sunken line Krista was making in the snow with her efforts and then looked back at her own footsteps. Everytime the girl took a breath, having hauled Dazz this far despite betraying her own worsening condition, she got angrier. She was reminded of that face again—that damned necklace.

Eventually, it became too much to bear.

"Krista… give it up already. A guy like him, who couldn't even comprehend his own physical limits, is now at death's door. He shouldn't have signed up to begin with, but he wanted praise and recognition and took this harsh training anyway." She pulled her scarf down. "With a stupid approach like that, this is as far as he gets. Leave him."

She was met with silence.

"If we keep at this snail's pace, he'll die for sure anyway, and, if we keep hauling his sorry ass, then we won't last much longer either. So, there're two choices: leave Dazz and survive, or all three of us die."

Again, silence.

"Your choice?"

"... the third option," Krista huffed. "... Because the ones you offer are… wrong… Ymir…!" The girl looked her straight in the eye. "I'm going to reach the lodge and save Dazz…!"

She rolled her eyes. "It's your funeral."

"We'll make it there… I promise. S… so you can just go ahead, OK?"

Ymir grit her teeth. One of her hands curled into a fist. She saw it again. That face, warm and inviting and kind. The necklace, swaying back and forth. Beautiful and bloodstained. That same face, pitiful and loathsome and pathetic. She could see it clearly.

"Why are you still here?" Krista wheezed. "Go ahead or it'll be dangerous. So...!"

The pain subsiding, her senses clearing, Ymir gripped her lantern so tight the skin around her knuckles began to turn whiter than the snow covering their boots. Staring at the one hanging from the pole secured on Krista's pack, she didn't want to see it anymore. Not again.

"Why aren't you asking me for help? It should be glaringly obvious that between you with your childlike build and mine that it'd be a whole hell of a lot faster if I hauled him instead, right?" Ymir leaned further in to get a better look at her face under the hood. It was finally time. She'd had enough. "You said yourself that it's gonna be dangerous, didn't you? Which means you're well aware that at this rate you're gonna die too, aren't you? And dying here is precisely what you want to accomplish here, right?"

No response.

"Right? You wanna make it so that I was left to spread the legend of the self-sacrificial goddess, Krista. No, wait, that won't do, will it? Because Krista is a good girl, isn't she? So, you're probably honestly asking yourself what you can do to save this guy—without asking for my help. You really want people to think that you're a good person who'd literally die for the sake of others 'cause if people get involved with you and end up dying... that would make you a bad, bad girl, wouldn't it?"

Krista stiffened. "I ne—"

"Then it's you, isn't it? The illegitimate child of a mistress driven out of the house. A bastard's bitch."

Krista averted her eyes.

"Oh? The bull's eye, huh? It really is you."

And clenched her teeth. "How do you k—"

"Yeah, well, I happened to overhear a certain conversation, at a certain church in the innermost land when I was borrowing money to keep on living. The dangerous kind of talk that no outsider was supposed to hear. You were the heiress to a certain very important house. A direct descendant by blood, but born out of the wedlock and therefore, unacceptable."

"You—"

"They thought everything would be so much easier if you just got killed somehow, or simply, disappeared. Renounce your name and live like an ordinary person and then they would overlook your pathetic existence. And the girl they were talking about did just that. Changing her name and joining the training corps after having been driven out of the house like a mangy dog."

"I…" Krista looked up and her bright blue eyes were wide. "If you know all of this... and you joined the 104th Trainee Regiment instead of telling anyone... for what? Me? Is that it? Why would you go to such lengths...?"

She shrugged. "I wonder…"

"Have you experienced something similar in your life? And because of that you became a soldier to make sure I wouldn't make the same mistakes?"

And looked away. "Mistakes…" Her scowl grew heavier. This little shit. Kidnapping a girl like her... what kind of dumbass plan was that anyway? Even those asshole back then had come to same conclusion, because they hadn't taken her either! Using the girl as leverage, it—

"Did you... want to be friends with me?"

"Hah?"

There it was. A face that, again, reminded her of the things she didn't want to remember.

"No, that's not it... I didn't—! For one, you and me are different!" Yeah, that was it… she had the same face as... "When I got a second chance in life, I made a fresh start! But I never stooped so fucking low as to renounce my real name! If I, Ymir, reject the person I was born as, it's as good as losing in life! I keep living under my own name and this is my revenge on life! My showing them all, that my fate wasn't fucking sealed the moment I was born! And what the fuck did you do?! You completely surrendered! Do you want those bastards who treated you as a nuisance to be happy that badly, hah?! Why'd you want to kill yourself instead of them?! If you really want to, it's possible to change even your fate!"

"N-no…" Krista reeled back from her sudden intensity. "No, it's not... even now... that's not—! There's no way for the three of us to get out of this situation safely, is there?!"

"There is," Ymir answered, walking away. She reached the slope of the cliff overlooking the valley below and looked down, one hand on a tree. "See that light? The lodge is right there. We'll drop Dazz off here. If he's lucky, he'll land safely and people might discover him and help him just in time to save his shit-stain of a life. There's no other hope left for him otherwise. Exposed to the elements like this for much longer and he'll become a bagworm."

"But if we drop him off the cliff, he'll only die from—!"

"Shut up." She slammed her fist into Krista's gut. "I'll do it and you can go ahead alone!" she snapped, pulling Dazz behind her as the girl doubled over, gagging.
She couldn't believe she was going to use it, but if she wanted answers, then…

"Y… Ymir! W… w-wait!"

Jumping off the cliff with Dazz, Ymir transformed into the monster she never wanted to be again, grasped Dazz tightly between her claws and, bracing for the impact as they hit the bottom fifty feet below, made a crash loud enough to alert someone at the lodging. Then, she hastily threw him down and raced off to revert back. To go back to the girl she was.

The girl she wanted to stay.

Stretching her arms as Krista finally came up to the lodging, Ymir snorted, studying the girl's worn out features with one eye shut. "Took you long enough. I made it here awhile ago." Pretending to scratch an itch, she clutched the side of her head from the resuscitating pain that still lingered and... more memories… "I really... did a stupid thing... didn't I?" she mumbled.

"What about Dazz?!"

Ymir sighed, got up, and motioned for her to follow. She opened a door to one of the lodge buildings and inside on a bed, safe and sound, was Dazz. A medical team was monitoring his condition.

"He survived a fall, from the cliff? B-but you had no rope! With a cliff that high it would be useless anyway, but still, how did you manage to get Dazz down safely...?!"

Ymir turned with a glint in her eye. "Well... I guess... I could tell you… But first, you have to promise me something. When I reveal this secret of mine, you claim back your real name and live back under it. Understand?"

Krista nodded. "I… I got it."

Ymir ran a hand through her hair. "You better." She didn't want to have to bring up this conversation again. "Come on," she said, closing the door. "Achi's waiting for us."

Relishing their reunion, she needed something to keep her mind off everything for once.

Protect it. Keep it safe. Never let it falter from your gaze.

The snow outside had mixed in with a bout of rain that had blown through suddenly. Ymir tossed and turned, unable to sleep, woken from her sleep by the sound of dripping water that reminded her of that drainage sewer, thinking of a time before. She huddled her knees closer to her chest, trying to keep warm. The nights here were colder than she'd expected—far colder than underneath that podium.

Having stowed away in the back of a married couple's carriage, concealed inside a box barely able to house her lanky frame, she'd waited until the sun had went down to jump off, her free ride landing her in what the locals had called Yarckel where the rich thrived, living lavishly in their cobblestone homes, cozy and content with their high standards. In that alleyway, away from those lavish lifestyles, she had stared at the grate that barred entry to that drainage sewer, hearing the sounds of whole other world beneath: the Underground. Each drop of water pounded on her ears, like the cannonfire in her memories. Overbearing loud, threatening to tear her mind in two if she didn't block it out. The red flashes of pain. They still came and went. In the end, remembering her name hadn't caused them to lessen, only gradually get worse. She coughed, and blood came away on her hand. She let it run down her fingers and then wiped it on her cot. Stretching out, she gazed out the window, recalling those words.

Protect it. Keep it safe. Never let it falter from your gaze.

"Protect... it...?" she repeated in a whisper. Her eyes went down to her bloodied hand. "Protect... what...?"

Making a fist, she grimaced. Looking over, there was something there. She twitched. The angel from back then. It sat there, staring at her.

The power in a name. Names have power.

She shook her head and blinked again. The angel was gone, replaced by Krista who was sitting on a chair bundled inside her blanket.

Her grimace turned to a glower. "That gloomy feeling you're giving off is coming my way," she grumbled, laying back down and turning away. "Could you at least get back in your bed and count the nicks in the ceiling if you can't sleep?"

"Sorry..." She heard Krista as she got up and did as she was told. "I—"

Ymir caught a glimpse of her blonde hair, then quickly turned back around. "You two look alike..." she said after a moment. "You look like... her..."

"Like who...?"

"No, that isn't it..."

"Ymir…?"

"I wasn't talking to you."

A pause.

"Ymir, what's w—?"

"Just forget about it."

"But—"

"I said to just forget about it! Go to sleep already!" she whispered as loud as she dared to not wake the others in the room, especially Achi—who was always in a terrible mood whenever she woke up ever since receiving that concussion the previous year—and to shut the other girl up. She pulled her blanket closer to her body and went back to staring out the window at the rain as it distorted everything outside.

She didn't want to remember anymore. Yet…

"Enough," the woman said in a harsh and hurt voice. Flexing and moving her shoulders in a circular motion, she looked over at another woman with red hair the color of scarlet that'd been out in the sunlight too long. "She can't go any further."

Despite how much larger the woman was compared to her, the scarlet-haired woman's voice was booming. "I shall decide when enough is enough." A tilt of the head and accompanying nod. "Continue."

Reluctantly, the woman obeyed. Her eyes went back to staring straight at her.

A flash of movement.

The flashes of red.

Blood.

Blackness.

Ymir clawed at the sheets of her bed. Yet, still she… Her eyes shifted to Krista sleeping in her bed. That face, caring and kind; bloodthirsty and cruel. The necklace... The woman… Who... was she... really?

"Helos..."