Stars.
Promise me...
you'll see the stars...
You couldn't remember the last time you had actually taken a moment to appreciate the stars.
Amelia's voice rung eerily in your mind, a broken record, a reminder of times and memories that hadn't been awakened in what seemed like years. You could see her as clearly as if she had died yesterday. Her tiny frame and slender face, usually graced with one of her signature grins. Her long hair, so much like yours, matted with dirt and grime from the dank alleys and passageways of the Undercity where you grew up. Her brilliant, distinctive eyes. The same shade you saw when you looked at yourself in the mirror in the small hours of the morning. When you weren't sure if it was your eyes or hers that stared at you, accusatory, judging.
Your hands were folded behind your head, body stretched out flat on the grass. You stared straight up, at everything and nothing in particular. Millions, billions of tiny lights winked at you in the darkness from their perches in the heavens. You could hear the song of the crickets surrounding you, loud and quiet at the same time. The summer heat had held on from the day, but a cool breeze brushed delicately over your skin like silk.
You had never quite gotten used to experiencing such peace. You would sneak out of the dorm at night before to experience this serenity from time to time, but you realized that tonight would be your last chance to do so as a cadet, and you wanted to savor it while you could. You didn't know much of above ground Sina, but you were fairly certain that grass was not as commonly seen there as it was here in the outskirts of Wall Rose. Much of Sina was industrialized, and over a decade of living underground all of it had certainly taught you to appreciate small miracles of nature like this and given you a different outlook upon it than your fellow soldiers.
The soldiers you would be graduating with tomorrow.
After tomorrow, you would be riding into Wall Sina to join the Military Police. Fulfilling the dream that you had had for so many long years. The single end goal of three long years of sweat, blood, and even occasional tears. The realization of the promise that you had made to Amelia that day in the Capital.
Tomorrow was the day. Graduation.
Tomorrow was the culmination of all of your suffering. The day that you would move on from this miserable, tedious phase of your life and live in the splendorous shadow of the King.
And you weren't ready. Yet you had to be. There was no other choice.
No real one, anyway.
If you had not made top ten, it would have been almost easy to join the Legion. No one would really have questioned it, and your decision would have been made for you. The Garrison Regiment is relatively safe, sure, but you weren't going to settle for spending the rest of your life sitting atop the wall, sipping on your twentieth beer of the late morning. There is no dignity and no chance to evolve or make a difference there.
But now, you had two choices: the Military Police or the Scouting Legion. And the Military Police is far too good an opportunity to pass up. You did not have the strength to join the Scouts now.
In some different world, maybe you would have been brave enough. In another world, maybe you would have followed him. The two of you would have gone together, fought together, even died together. In another world, another life, you would have been free to love him without fear. In another world.
Under the shelter of the night sky, alone with your thoughts and the crickets, it was easy to imagine such a world.
You closed your eyes and let the symphony envelope you in its soothing embrace.
Eren sighed, staring out the window of the boy's dormitory from his bunk.
This next day would be his last day in this dormitory. In this headquarters. His last day with the other trainees. His friends. His brothers and sisters.
His last day with you.
His heart hurt just thinking about it. He distracted himself by looking further out the window.
Each time he saw the stars that you loved so much, he thought of you. They reminded him of you in so many ways. They each shone like a tiny bird of fire, soaring eternally into the twilight. Once everything was said and done and the sun had gone, it was their time to shine. And then, the stars proved themselves to be the most beautiful of all.
Eren knew that he would fall in love with you from the first morning he met you, on the roof of that shitty old market store three years ago. Your eyes told a thousand stories, some of sadness, some of determination, some of beauty. Your hair glimmered like strands of a precious metal, some pieces falling into your face, barely obscuring the infinity of your irises. Something about your face made his soul light up like sky tonight, graced with tiny, little flames, far off in the distance.
The stars really were beautiful tonight.
After that morning, he felt strangely compelled to be close to you. But each time he tried, you pushed him away with such force that he got whiplash. As much as he wanted to hate you, though, he could never bring himself to do it. So he kept getting closer and closer, and then one day, you just... stopped pushing. Even if you wouldn't let him see what was under that hard shell, you let him care for you. And that, for Eren, was enough.
You had always stood like a girl, a woman, who had seen the worst of the world and was not afraid of it. Eren wanted to show you all the good there was in the world, so that your shoulders would no longer ache under the weight of a past that he knew nothing of. He wanted to show you vast bodies of water, laden with highly coveted salt. He wanted to show you rivers of fiery water, fields of ice, and rocks so tall it takes days to climb them. He wanted to show you all the amazing things the world had to offer. And he was not going to stop until he did.
But tomorrow was his last day with you until then.
His eyes lit up with a fresh determination as he stared off into the night, planning the future the two of you would be able to share once he got rid of the titans, once and for all.
Eren knew he would love you from the day he met you. He might have even fallen in love with you right then. And he knew, beyond all doubt, that he would love you until the day he died, and even then, he would keep on loving you.
The next morning came and went uneventfully.
You woke up, showered, changed, and went to sit with your friends at breakfast as usual. It was different, though. Quieter. Even Sasha's normal loud chewing (or inhaling) sounds were not to be heard. In fact, the bottomless pit herself seemed to have lost her appetite.
It was the last breakfast you would all eat together as the 104th Cadet Corps.
The morning passed solemnly. You all boarded the dozens of carriages, without even a single minute of mandated conditioning, and rode into Trost center before the sun had even come up.
You shook silently next to the people who had been your only family for three years.
Never had the stars seemed colder to you than they did that morning.