we all (have a) hunger
A/N: Jumping into the woman's perspective now. It took me a while to make (and remake her) to how I wanted, and I hope she's something worth exploring.
(Originally posted on AO3, where my more... "adult" works are posted. But I don't think this violates the site's guidelines, so I'm posting it here too.)
At heart, Zeke Yeager believes he is a hedonist.
"One would think the Beast would be more animal than man."
Alternatively, primal urges and primal encounters.
At heart, the woman believes that she is meant for greater things. Her mother made her that way, raised her in a life of comfort and seclusion deep within the walls of Paradis. Her mother raised her as a noblewoman, intelligent and elegant, to hold her head high above all others, to look towards the future and not just the present. Her mother raised her with the knowledge that she will do great things, meet great people, and become even greater than anyone else.
Now, she looks at the stone-paved and barren streets of Liberio and wonders. Was this what her mother meant? Was this the "great destiny" foretold in their family, the maternal line of the God-Queen? Was this all she was meant to do, after inheriting this behemoth of a secret within Mitras' walls? That she be sent here as a gift horse, a peace offering from the supposed depths of hell?
(It is our most noble duty, her mother had said, to serve and protect the crown.)
She breathes in. The air in this city tastes of salt and brine. It is familiar. In the deep recesses of her mind, where the Ancient rest its great head, it is familiar. Its memories are still intact. Its memories are still the same. She is now the holder of centuries' worth of memory and experience, and with each step she takes, a holder from the past retraces its own.
(Liberio is a city now, and what was once a small seaside town full of fisherman folk is now a naval base devoid of all color and all life. The people here do not smile, not anymore. There are no more fish this close to the shore, instead there are ships.)
She looks at the training grounds, beaten barren and dry. She looks at the dirt and sees a vision from the past, however long ago, of green grass and wildflowers, of children running and playing, laughing, speaking a language she does not know. She looks at the high walls surrounding the compound, separating it from everything else, and sees trees she is unfamiliar with. They are tall and hardy, with straight trunks and no branches.
(They are palm trees, a voice says. The word itself is stagnant on her tongue, but she says it nonetheless; she says it with the voice of someone else.)
She wonders which of her memories will be shared with her successor, if she will ever have a successor, and how it would appear to them. Would they inherit all of it, even the mundane moments, the quiet moments by a riverside, the blushing moments between bookshelves? She's managed to control these remembrances somewhat, managed to control what and when to remember, but she's only gotten as far as her great-great-great grandmother. And it's a feat in itself, within the few months she's inherited the Ancient.
That's what her mother told her, before sticking a needle into her spine. She sounded so sure then, so sure that she would do as she's told; because she's always done as she's told, always met or exceeded expectations given to her. She is trained that way, as both a soldier and a successor. She is like a dog, obedient and subservient; a dog, who is both its own master and a servant.
(And they say Ymir Fritz always has two faces: the Maiden and the Monster, the Founder and the Usurper, the God-Queen and the Devil Herself.)
General Magath tells her she will clean the walls and floors, because whoever she was before Marley doesn't matter. He tells her she is an Eldian, and, inheritor or not, this treatment is rightful and justified. Without or without the Ancient, she will her learn her place and then she will be of use. They do not trust her, and she will have to work and earn even a crumb of it.
(They are afraid of her, aren't they?)
Still, she does as she's told. She washes, waters, scrubs, and cleans. Everything she does is everything they tell her to do. She was raised in the manors of Wall Sheena, but she grew up in the barracks and the forests of Walls Rose and Maria. She is a soldier, before she is a noble, before she is anything else. She sweeps the floors without complaints. She washes the dishes without a word. She even scrubs the sinks and the toilets without so much as a peep.
(She's done all this before, anyway.)
She does not stay in the shared quarters, but she is given a room of her own and guards that watch her every move. They do not talk to her and neither does she to them. The other Eldians pay them no mind, and she thinks this is because they're used to it too. They are devils all the same to these Marleyans, anyway. And at night, her hands are tied on opposite ends of the bed to ensure she does not transform and kill them all. The guards are there too, stationed near the door and the window to ensure she does not escape.
(They watch and wait for her, eyes boring into her body. She fears they might abuse her, mistreat her and use her, and she does not sleep willingly. But still, she succumbs to sleep because she is human–still human–and because the Ancient tells her they will do no such thing; as if it had the ability to predict the future.)
The first few days passed in silence. Her encounters with other Eldian servants were brief and short-lived. They don't want to be near her. There is disdain on their faces when she sees them, but they do nothing else. They are afraid of her and they hate her, but their fear is even greater. They are aware of the Colossal hiding inside her, and should they bear the brunt of her fury...
("Hell hath no fury like a Titan Shifter scorned, eh?")
So they give her what she asks for. They answer her questions, they tell her what they know, and she learns. It is a slow process, careful on both sides and fearful of the result should there be anything unsavory. They don't insult her and she doesn't deride them. No one speaks of her noble blood, and no one speaks about the plight of the Eldians. They are still two different people, the Eldians in Marley and the Eldians in Paradis. There are good Eldians like them, and there are devils like her. She accepts this not as a truth, but as a fact of the world.
(The Ancient tells her they are the same, no matter their birthplace or their home.)
Still, she accepts all is available to her. And in turn, she is accepted. Two weeks passed, and that is when they welcomed her at their table. She knows their names now, whatever name they have given her, but they still choose to call her as Eldian, the devil, the woman from Paradis. They refer only to her in such names, or in direct address. They do not use her name and she does not ask for it.
(The Ancient has many names and many titles, and she is yet to know them all. The Ancient has many faces but only one form, and she is yet to see it.)
At times, her hands begin to tingle and her body begins to ache. The weather in Liberio is no different from The Walls, but for some reason it is colder at night. No, she knows the reason. Liberio is colder because she is alone here, because she is the only one here. Roth was a member of her squad before the revelation, before their entire world had changed, but Roth was nowhere in sight. She is alone here in Liberio.
But she is grateful the guards do not watch her when she strips out of her work clothes and into her nightwear. She is grateful they did not take the trinket around her neck. It is the only thing she has brought from Paradis, the only thing that reminds her of her life before Marley and the Ancient, the only thing that reminds her of home.
(It is a ring, and its meaning should never be lost; the Ancient barked out a laugh the first time she pressed the band close to her heart.)
She knows this civil treatment towards her is because of Roth's position as an ambassador, the middleman between Marley and Paradis, between the Emperor and the Queen. If not for Roth's own lineage, if not for the Red Spider, she would be dead before anyone knew it. She would be eaten, like what she had done to her mother. She would be eaten and devoured, and the Ancient Colossal would be lost forever. All of Eldian history will be forgotten, and her people will suffer for all eternity.
(All they wanted was to live a life of freedom.)
If not for Roth, they wouldn't even have made it this far in their fight for freedom.
(Everything is going to plan. Each step and each movement is all according to plan.)
If not for Roth, the Marleyan government would not even offer a pig's ear to hear what their Queen wanted to say. If not for Roth, their freedom would only be possible in dreams. But if this continues, they can avoid having to fight a war, they can finally have a taste of true, unhinged freedom.
(The Ancient laughs at the thought. Nothing is ever won without a fight. Nothing is gained without something being taken. No revolution is without bloodshed. Freedom always comes at a cost.)
When the voice–or is it voices?–of the Ancient crowds her head, so much that she can't even think for herself, she asks the very simple question of:
"May I take a walk?"
(Like a dog, like a dog! To ask permission like a dog!)
It happens more at night, when she is about to finally rest, when her hands are bound apart and she has laid fully on the bed. The Ancient shows her memory after memory, tells her tale after tale, until she grows tired of its–many–voices. Sleep has eluded her too many times before, when nightmares of being caught between a Titan's jaws had haunted her, but now she would rather dream of being eaten alive than to listen to the Ancient's ramblings.
(Foolish, how foolish!)
"Just for a little while, sir."
At first, the guards were apprehensive. But in the end, they allowed it, and she was grateful they allowed her that pleasure. She roamed the grounds twice or thrice, with the guards stiffly walking beside her, ready to shoot should she show any signs of difficulty or retaliation. But the activity keeps the Ancient quiet, and she thinks its because it's being stubborn and it's bored of the same route and the same sights. It wants to get out, she can feel it, it wants to emerge and explode and destroy.
(In the end, the Ancient is still a Colossal, a harbinger of destruction, a god of ruination; and it craves it, the most basal of all desires, hungers for it like a wolf.)
And tonight is no different. Tonight, the Ancient is telling an old story, a story of a girl who ventured into the dark forest to kill the wolf that ate her grandmother. It was a story she had read before, when she was younger and filled her days reading tales of the fantastic and the whimsical, and it was a story she didn't particularly have a fondness for.
("Here, take your father's hunting knife; you know how to use it.")
She'd first heard about wolves before she saw one, in the wild, on the prowl as wild deer graze in the meadow. She'd seen its eyes then, yellowish and wide at the sight of her. Wolves are afraid of men, her father had told her, as they have been hunted down the same way Titans have done to humans.
("The wolf let out a gulp, almost a sob, when it saw what had happened to it; wolves are less brave than they seem.")
She thinks there may be wolves in Marley, in whatever dark forest there is. And perhaps then, when she finds out, she will feel a little less alienated and a little more familiar.
"Good evening, sir."
The guards beside her saluted a man leaning against the wall. She can see the faint light of a cigarette between his mouth. In the shadow of the old building, he looks a menacing figure, prowling in the dark with eyes shining like a knife. Like a wolf, perhaps, from those storybooks of her childhood.
(Sometimes the Ancient gets away with certain thoughts, with slipping images of the past to filter her own vision, so much that sometimes she doesn't not believe what she is seeing. Not at first. Sometimes not at all.)
She knows the man by his title and not much else.
"Nice evening for a stroll." He says, tipping the end of the cigarette towards the guards, "Sky's clear and the breeze is cool."
She hadn't noticed, not really. She hadn't looked at the sky as it'd been overcast lately. The moon is always hidden away. She's always taken the same route. She wouldn't have noticed anything different. The Ancient wouldn't have either. Nights within these walls are all the same. The sea is close, but not close enough. She does not hear the tide at sunset, does not hear the gulls cawing at dawn, does not even hear the chatter of the civilians past the walls.
(It is all the Ancient's doing; how it cleverly creates these illusions for her. To make her feel less alone. To incite jealousy. Or to drive her mad?)
"Have a restful evening, sir." One of the guards replies.
"Yes..." He takes a drag from the cigarette, the light flickering brightly, "And you've the Ancient with you?"
She and the guards stiffen. Was this not allowed? Does she have a curfew now? None of them turn to the man who moves from the wall.
"I've been meaning to speak with the Ancient." He says, "You may take your leave."
And it's the air of sureness that stirs something in her; whether it is fear of fury, she thinks only the Ancient would know. But the guards salute the man and bid him goodbye, walking away without so much as a glance in her direction.
(They flee because they are afraid. Of her? Or of him?)
She then turns to the man and sees the cigarette hanging in his mouth and the moonlight reflected in his spectacles. He raises his hands and shows her his palms. It is an amicable sign, she knows, that he has no ill intentions towards her. But she cannot see his eyes in the dark; she cannot be sure.
("If the benighted traveler spies those luminous, terrible sequins stitched suddenly on the black thickets, then he knows he must run, if fear has not struck him stock-still.")
"I have been meaning to speak with you." He lowers his eyes a bit.
(And how long has it been since she's heard such a request? The Ancient cackles behind the veneer of her plain expression. It hasn't been too long, it says, not at all.)
"It is late, but how may I be of service, sir?" She lifts her head a little and meets his steady gaze. She is tall, but not enough to level her eyes with him.
"Please, you've taken walks much later than this."
(Ah. He finds this humorous, does he?)
She bows her head to feign humility, "Only as late as I am allowed, sir."
"You're free to stay for a while," he gestures to the wall, "but I only wish to ask something."
But she doesn't move towards it or towards him.
"What do you wish to know?"
He smokes the last of his cigarette. The huffing sound he makes punctuates the silence between them. If he'd wanted to ask her something, why ask the guards to leave? Why not ask her directly, during the day, in the first place? Why wait for nightfall–why wait at all?
"How old is the Ancient?"
(How childish a question! He is mocking us, he is mocking us!)
And she only has one answer for him, "It is the oldest of all the Titans succeeding the Founder."
"And perhaps the wisest?" He suggested.
And it was a common duality, wasn't it? That wisdom comes with old age, or was it the other way around?
"Perhaps." She decides to agree, though she had yet to see for herself the true extent of the Ancient's memories.
"How lucky, then," he smiles, sounding elated, "that you've come to Marley."
(He will use us, abuse it, mistreat us! The Ancient bellows deep within her because it knows, it knows, it knows–)
"How lucky, indeed," she echoes, "War Chief Yeager."
He smiles even friendlier, teeth glimmering silver in the moonlight, and she does not like the look of it.
You are always in danger in the forest, where no people are.