Forward.

And so Attack on Titan has come to a close with Chapter 139. They were aspects I loved. Aspects I was unsure of. But one thing stood out to me - my favourite character amounted to ... well I'm not really sure. A plot device? Something symbolic? It wasn't enough for me. Maybe I'm just a fool for falling love with a side character.

I've decided to say, as Levi would, fuck it. I'll just write her story myself. Maybe I could make her relevant. Maybe I could make her matter. Let's use Ymir's backstory a little more. Let's give some weight to the idea of children being lost in forests, and trees linking with titans and curses, and girls being empowered to make brave choices for themselves which maybe aren't always the right thing to do in other people's eyes. Let's make a point of women living for themselves, both with and without significant others.

Abandoned children surpassing their fathers and finding a place to belong. Roles and titles ceasing to matter, promises kept and regrets left behind.

What about Kenny and Uri's miracle? What about Christa, and the apple, and the hooded monster with the lantern? What about all the day and night symbolism? What about Ymir as a girl, and not a goddess? Did her point of view not matter at all in the end?

That once great partnership between Reiss and Ackerman ... what if we lend a little more weight to that foreshadowing, so we're not just thinking of Mikasa and the Founder. We have a Reiss and two Ackermans still alive at the end, and a world on the brink of war still.

What if Uri had seen some hope past the hell Eren created? What if Paradise exists, somewhere far after the pages of 139?

Prologue

On Choices & Fate

Is it true that we're all slaves to a predetermined fate?

Eren Jäger would probably tell you this is a fact. But I have the luxury of believing differently.

I am not a hero. I am not a good girl. My story isn't one of predestination or fate, despite how it might appear at first glance. No, my story is a story of choices. I have made many; not all with the best advised intentions, or with the good of humanity in mind. But I can honestly say, only once did I choose to be entirely selfish. That single choice - that moment - changed the course of history. It's ironic, really; one simple, selfish wish of a naive, lost girl would be the one to, in the end, finally bring peace to the turbulent world we'd lived in for so long.

Eren Jaeger lived and died so that I could experience true freedom - the freedom to carve my own path by the choices I make, rather than be tied to a fixed destiny I was born to fulfil. Was he always aware of where my choices might lead us? Where Mikasa and Levi's choices might lead us? I don't think he could be. But sometimes, I like to believe that we were the hope he sought on the other side of the hell he created.

You know Eren and Mikasa's side of this story well. I don't need to explain that this will never be a tale of heroes and villains, of right and wrong, of black and white. But I would like to show you the flip side of the coin. The side of the story where love is not the great destroyer, but instead, the catalyst for change and the bridge between nations.

This is the story of a boy and a girl that should never have been born. A story of forgotten, found and re-forged identities. The tale of the hooded monster and the goddess bearing fruit.

Humanity's strongest soldier and Paradis' lost Queen.

An Ackerman, a Reiss, and a miracle.

A man and a woman who, for just one small moment in time, chose to live for themselves and changed the course of history.

This isn't just my story. This is our story.

Historia.