AN: Sorry, guys. It's been a long time since I posted anything on this site. But the deliberate sabotage and self-destruction of Attack on Titan, so soon after GOT's abysmal ending, has roused me from my half-decade slumber to try and start typing again if nothing less than for my own peace of mind. And to prove, like many of us EH plot theorists; that we aren't insane and that Isayama was forced to retcon his ending by his publishers in Kodansha and bullying by his editor. They want to rob us of the only healthy, reciprocal relationship that was foreshadowed in the manga? I reject their wish. And I give Isayama more credit than the so called fans supporting this ending by knowing it could have been better. They accept the toxicity and butchered plot-threads as a mark of: you guessed it! Stunning subversion! They robbed us of sweet Kino where Eren was a Chad who would rumble the ENTIRE WORLD (not his flaccid, pointless 80%) for his baby momma and little girl. Instead, we were "gifted" with the miserable plot-device Incel he was mutilated into in the finale. Don't get me started on poor Historia, Ymir and even Mikasa! It's a bit too short and I think I'm more than a little rusty. Still better than that abomination we got yesterday. Let me know if you might like me to do more Attack on Titan EreHisu snippets and I might write it out into a full 90-139 super odyssey.

CHAPTER I

THE LOVERS

It had been four weeks since the medal ceremony that decorated the last nine of the Survey Corps as the Heroes of Shiganshina. Historia Reiss, the Queen of the Walls in more than just name had spent that time not only absorbing the transcripts of Grisha Jaeger's three vital journals but helped draft the key points that would be distributed freely to her citizens. It was almost too much to bear. In public and even in private among her military councillors in the star chamber she had to keep a resolute mask of confidence; to preach of how the island would unite against all their enemies and win again and again as they had against the Titans and the Warriors. This was their age after all, an age of victory as she recalled how Floch, out of all the survivors of that last terrible battle, had been doing the most to drum up new recruits to replenish the Survey Corps; his impassioned speeches inflaming the dedicated hearts of the youth, he himself grown old through travail.

Historia wondered if he, like her, behind closed doors began to let fear gnaw on her bones. Most nights in Mitras, spent in her too large four-poster-bed were restless. Eren's father had described Marley's military as best he could from a layman's perspective. How they possessed repeater rifles and revolving cylinder pistols advancing into automatics. Boats and vehicles clad in old iron hides with smooth-bore guns propelled by a chemical munition called cordite instead of black powder. Most of all: their rigid airships that could pass beyond sea and mountains to land troops or drop munitions unimpeded. It had been near thirty years since the Owl had bequeathed his mission and the Attack Titan to the sole surviving Eldian resignationist and in that time: just how much had their technology to wage war advanced?

There was a sliver of hope that perhaps their reliance on the Warrior Unit, their chattel child soldier Eldian vessels had caused their progress to stagnate as Hange had postulated at their last meeting. But even if that were so, what did that make Paradis? Only with Eren Jaeger's possession of the Attack Titan and Armin Arlelt's seizure of the Colossus did they have any foreseeable projection of force. Humanity's spear had been joined by a Titan fit only to destroy, not build or guard. A great irony considering Armin's timid and non-confrontational nature.

Guilt squirmed in her like a worm whenever she caught herself missing Erwin's stately and imposing presence. He and Captain Levi had been her rocks in the earliest days of her crowning, earnestly listening to any of her naïve views on ruling and society and helping her implement them properly. Now Levi was preparing for the 59th Expedition beyond Wall Maria and his old commander was in the grave.

But what left her with the most disquiet had been the expression on Eren's face after she'd bequeathed him his emerald bolo tie and he had given her the kiss of peace. It had been a wretched thing, her heart jumping into her mouth when she witnessed his glassy-eyed snarl of sheer, impotent fury. Her friend had looked like a trapped animal, a beast in the snare knowing his end had come. Not the proud and resolute hunter she had blushed in pleasure to at the orphanage. A man she admired and perhaps more...

Those agonising five days when she had waited for their tiny little world to end or be delivered. When she had looked to the blue-green dawn and thought of his eyes, so warm with his regard and perhaps, veneration? No, she was foolishly honest and straightforward, ordinary, not the hollow idol worthy of worship she had been in the 104th just as Eren had said. As he had said. Did he not realise how much those words meant to her? She had realised with some mortification that perhaps he had not even heard her when he had been slumped in those awful chains, blood cascading down his face in crimson tears.

Without Eren's strength and humour when they were in hiding from the Interior Police, without their myriad conversations and gentle reminisces. It would have been a stranger chained to that dread altar. Someone who she would have had little compunction about devouring to bring some light back into her father's jaded, dead eyes. Instead, she had chosen him over what she had thought then to be the whole world; the injustice of his misery and her rapidly deepening fellowship with he who would consider himself worthless... She had to save him. No, she wanted to save him - with every fibre of her being. And she did.

And yet, her reciprocal saviour had not answered any of her bi-weekly letters they had corresponded frequently with in the months before the reconquest. He was, dare she say it, devastatingly silent. An absence, a wound left behind like kind Frieda, her long-gone sister, and poor Ymir who had been so wronged and disguised her martyr's complex with callousness. He had been even busier before, mastering the Titan crystallisation powers, exhausted to the point of brain-bleeds but always eager to write to her and share their hopes and concerns together.

So when an aide had told her that Eren had made an appointment to meet with her later that day on her itinerary; she had been reservedly ecstatic. He had come back to her.

Her joy quickly died when she entered one of her guest chambers and saw the state of him. Morose and looking as if he hadn't slept for the entire month. She had known he had been billeted away from Armin and Mikasa. But he was a national hero, and yet the slayer of the God of Destruction had been allowed to deteriorate into a broken man. It seemed her blanket proclamation that Eren would no longer be inhumanely supervised after the Battle of Orvud had now worked against her. But she did not regret how she had first used her power so they could effectively thumb their noses at Nile and his MP dogsbodies. Among all her assorted charity works.

"...Eren?" she inquired somewhat tremulously. Noticing for the first time that he was idly spinning a pistol on the nearby table where he sat. Officer military-issue, she noted, with an Ice Burst Stone firing pin, walnut grip and the capacity to chamber and loose three rounds before it had to be cleaned out and maintained. The Military Police had liked to bribe black-market gangs with shipments of such weapons.

"Majesty." he greeted in a dry croak. As if he had screamed and raged and his vocal chords were torn from the effort. He tried to smile lazily at her but it only made ice go down her spine; he looked deranged, like Frieda when she had dared cross the fence to follow her, only instead of righteous rage, there was only despair.

"Eren," she repeated, "what are you planning to do with that?" though she knew before she had even voiced the inquiry.

"...I was thinking of shooting myself." he answered wearily. "In the head." he amended with such cold casualness that he might as well have been talking about swatting a fly.

Keep him talking, keep him talking, Historia commanded of herself.

"Why?"

"Because you should have eaten me that day, in the cave. Since you didn't, I have to correct that error and take everything back to zero."

You – absolute – suicidal – blockhead!

"I asked you in my letters, whether you saw something terrible during the ceremony. You did, didn't you?"

"You'll never need to know what I saw, Historia. Because my life is a sum-zero equation, in fact it's less than that. Nothing but pain and death follow me."

That's not true! she screamed inwardly.

"Armin gave me a book of myths for my seventh birthday." he reminisced fondly. "The mildew and elements had destroyed it when I searched through the ruins of my childhood home but I remember one story very clearly. The tale of a king who who was prophesied to kill his own son by a wise oracle. Instead of letting his child befall this outcome, or attempt some futile effort to divert the divination. He took his sword and fell on it, cutting the thread of fate that the Sisters of Fate had woven for him."

Historia found her voice. "And that's what you think you should do, you idiot?! We've only ever seen memories of the past, what you saw wasn't you but of another life. You misinterpreted-"

"No!" he snapped, cutting her off. "These were my father's memories and he received memories of the future, my future that caused him to take your family's lives that night. But spare Rod so that you would live."

But that would mean... Historia swayed but caught herself. And for a moment it seemed Eren would jump from the chair to aid her but instead he flinched before seizing the pistol with a shaking hand.

"I thought the Paths were beautiful but they're really a parasite's hooks digging into all our spines. I've only been able to discern some of what I saw. But regardless, I'm either a cosmic puppet-master without any humanity or a puppet on strings. Probably both in some sick, perverted, infantile, pathetic effort to delude myself that I have control. What's passed between us has been nothing more than an orchestration, a cruel joke. But I can free you, I can free all of you, even my parents might live again and not have a child as cruel and monstrous as me. If I only have the courage to sever the coil of infinity..."

It's terrible of me to do so, but I have to follow his chain of argument. I have to use this.

"And what if we all die because you were never born? What if Kenny the Ripper cut my throat when I was ten years old? What about Mikasa who would be trafficked in the Underground and Armin who might be bullied into doing what you're considering doing right now without you as his only friend? What about the children who would inherit the Titans that will flee from you?"

Eren froze, hesitated. But when she took a tentative step forward he leapt to his feet and jammed the barrel a few inches under his chin, finger joints white on the trigger with tension.

"Then that's the price I'll pay to make a choice that wasn't laid out for me by that bitch, the Founder Ymir! My life is mine! My own! That choice was my father's! His alone! My mother's blood is on Bertholdt and Reiner and Annie's hands! Theirs - forever! This is the only action that can ever truly be called my own. And if I die by my own hand – I'll die free."

Historia rose her hands, placating, trying to marshal her thoughts past the drumbeat of her heart trying to fight through her ribs.

"I-I know you believe in the will to freedom more than any of us, Eren. And because you do so, that you won't leave us. You'll strive and fight as you've always done. You, you'll be an inspiration to us, as you've always been. Because there is no freedom in death. It's the end of every path. The cessation of your existence. Don't give up, we can find another way. These memories don't define you, only your choices."

He was silent pondering, then sighed. "The memories predicate all the choices I thought I made of my own free will. That beautiful water-clock on that wall there has more reason to exist and a grander function and utility than I ever could. I never should have happened."

A reckless anger came across Historia's mind at this resurgence of self-pity. And before she knew it she had marched right up to him, his face and trigger-finger slackening in shock before she raised her hand to slap some sense into that thick head of his... Then gently tapped his raven hair with a hammer fist instead.

"Idiot. I know you. You're a big strong man until you get all blubbery like this. Give it to me, Eren. Why did you really come here? A shoulder to cry on, right? I'm very good at that or so the children tell me."

Eren, stupefied, raised his other hand to cover the weapon like one of her scolded orphans taking what didn't belong to them. She was too close, he'd let her get too close.

Coward. Usurper. Fool. Murderer. He recriminated himself.

"Please, Historia... If I don't do this we're all lost."

"We'll be lost without you. I'm not a goddess, Eren. I can't tell you that all humans are intrinsically free because we're all built upon our recollections and our experience. We all follow a different but singular path; some intersect but we're all our own beings. If those memories are truly yours then embrace it, harness it. You have the greatest will of any of us so stay here; in the present."

"Will you stay with me?" Eren said in so tremulously a whisper she only just caught it. She saw that there were tears now collecting in those steely green eyes.

Her hand closed softly on his own and after a few agonising seconds he relinquished the weapon to her, chided but relieved. In contrast to her petite stature but magnanimous presence.

"Of course I will, crybaby. I'm your ally, remember?" she said softly, setting the gun aside.

One sorrowful glance from her sapphire doe-eyes and Eren crumbled. Sobs racking his tall frame, hands clawed against his face and hair as tears streamed through and between them.

"I can't... Don't deserve... you... I'm... a failure... I'm so sorry... I'm sorry for everything..."

She embraced him without hesitation, crooning over the trembling soldier, nuzzling his bowed and shuddering head as he curled and shrunk in his anguish.

Forthright. Liberator. Valiant. Saviour. He'd seen her break upon Wall Rose after Ymir had left her for the traitors. And he had been her light in the darkness then. Holding her as she cried her heart out. The revelations in the cave had required a more brutal and uncompromising therapy. She much preferred this.

"Shh... Your life is yours, Eren. You'd never hurt your own mother."

"But... I-I did.. That day... told her... she was... a caged... bird... Last... thing... I said... to her... S-stupid... Foolish... Ungrateful."

"You love her without end. The pain you feel now is proof of that. You told me, she loved you too, unconditionally. Because you were born into this world."

"I was born to protect... not to love... born to protect the wish of a girl who became... a god. There's nothing... for me... just the mission... until death."

Historia wriggled out of the arms encircling her and grasped his face until he looked straight at her.

"That's not true. I need you... I need you very much." She announced plaintively, voice tripping at her own boldness.

Was this just them licking each other's wounds? No. There had always been something between them since the hideouts. A crackling energy like the sparks that brought forth the Power of The Titans amidst furtive looks when their eyes would meet and realise they'd been watching the other in fascination.

"You do?" He hiccuped, half miserable, half in wonderment.

"You've saved me just as much, buster! I was just more prim and proper, more lady-like about it."

He gave a watery chuckle at that, finally covering her hands with his own and smiling genuinely for the first time in this harried and stressful meeting.

"And you are important to me... More than you know. I wish I could tell you how much more, every day until we've both grown old. You'll create a grand... heh, history, for this island, for the people. They won't fade away. Maybe I just want to know that somebody knew who I was too; to set my story straight. Maybe you understand."

"I do. And I won't let you sneak away again. We have time, options, choices. You can't scare me away with this eight year life-span of yours, mister."

"...Extraordinary. Didn't I say you were amazing?"

"You could stand to say it a bit more often..." she teased.

It took them a good half-hour of their meeting to calm down and a small tumbler of brandy each to soothe their rattled nerves. Historia began to record what Eren slowly and carefully recounted of the memories he'd witnessed, how they were guiding him to a certain vision or event. How it was his own desire to reach it whatever the root cause emotion within. And that the only way to reconcile that certainty was to surpass it. To reach a sight beyond it that his memories couldn't touch. He was chained once again in the worst possible hell for a free spirit such as Eren. But he would fight and claw his way out of it to his last breath.

"Promise me, Eren. Promise no matter what comes, that you won't give in. Whatever that pointy-eared Titan shows you; you were and you are mine first."

"As I am yours. I will never abandon you." he vowed, furiously wiping his eyes clear of fresh tears to then wrap his arms around her waist and pull him to her, eliciting a cute little squeak from her. "To think I was going to spit on my mother and father's gift so badly... I'll keep moving forward. And nothing, not our enemies, nor these visions of a false future will stand in my way."

"What are you waiting for, then?" she dared, tilting her head back challengingly.

Eren grinned. A rare sight. All the more beautiful for it. Then he scooped her up and hoisted her to his eye-level. Historia laughed with abandon and delight; hands resting on and half grabbing his greatcoat's lapels.

Their first kiss was fumbling and awkward as all first exchanges are. But in that moment of primordial attunement, both Historia and Eren forgot all of their cares. Of state and war. And were the freest people in all of their own shared world.

AN: I'm too slow! Used to be able to write 15k words a day, not a meagre 3!