Chapter Two
Grisha
Sorry for not updating last week – my computer caught fire (actually) and it was all I could do to finish my other story on time.
Warning: contains references to sexual assault and torture.
"Carla!" Grisha called. His voice echoed, and it seemed like everyone was staring at him. With emptiness. With disgust.
Frieda Reiss watched him, simmering with indignation.
I just murdered a family.
He was in hell. But Carla – she shouldn't be here. Not in hell.
Grisha sunk to the grass, just inside the gate. But he found himself so overcome he stood again, facing the edge.
"You can if you want," said a voice, a voice sounding like medicine and razors and a fallen wall all at once.
"I have to," Grisha whispered to the voice, the voice he could only assume to be the god who'd forsaken them.
Or maybe I forsook them. Who knew.
Grisha stepped outside the gate, acrid tears in his eyes.
"Hey." Someone croaked out a greeting before settling beside him.
Grisha spun his head around to see – to see Kruger sitting there, desolate and timid.
"I think you missed your sister there for the victims," he said.
"Faye?" A shiver rocked Grisha's body.
"I know how you feel." Kruger heaved a sigh. "You can't face her after you've killed innocents just like her. You'll discover can't be a hypocrite here, not even if you try, so the waiting can last for a very long time. I didn't speak to her for years."
"Time doesn't exist here."
"No, but you're still able to quantify things. Time is something we understand; eternity isn't. I rather think our God softens things until we can learn."
"They didn't on earth. We never learn," Grisha said, watching Mikasa deliver a well-deserved punch to Eren's face.
Don't let him be like me, Mikasa.
"Maybe we do. How else did I come to regret my complacency? The children I let die to facilitate a rebellion that still hasn't happened?" Kruger shook his head. "You know, if you want to punch me, you can."
"I don't want to. I don't want violence. I want…to understand. And to be understood." And forgiven. Frieda's eyes haunted him.
"Why did you save me? Why not the others?" Grisha swallowed hard.
"I didn't think I could. I still don't know." Kruger looked out. "They're alive, for now."
"As titans," Grisha growled. Dina didn't deserve this.
"But there's hope. You don't know – the Eldian warriors sent over to infiltrate the walls, the children – one of them was eaten."
"No," whimpered Grisha.
"His name was Marcel," Kruger said. Names were reverent here. "But the titan who ate him is now a human. She's no older than your son, Grisha, and she's living again."
His voice dropped to a whisper. "Her name is Ymir."
"Ymir?" Grisha's eyes widened. How ironic…
"Ymir will live again." Kruger stood. "Take what you can from that. And Grisha…I saved you to save myself." He looked over the horizon, to the world bustling on. "Because I didn't save your sister. And I was wrong."
He left Grisha, then, back by himself. Nothing Kruger had done could erase Faye's death. Could erase the humiliation of digits snipped off like carrots. Could erase Dina's pleas as men laughed about fucking royalty and he begged them to do it to him instead, and their response was to burn off his manhood first.
Nothing he had done would erase Frieda's death. Urklyn. Dirk. Abel. Florian. Their mother who watched her children squashed like spiders when in fact he was the spider.
And Zeke, Zeke, Zeke…
Balling his fists, he looked out. He saw his son – he even wore glasses like him! – pouring over history, desperately aiming to please the men who viewed him as an animal.
You want to please me, and now you never will. Grisha wept.
And the children – Annie, Bertolt, Reiner – living as refugees, crying in the night, begging for release. Pressure kept them going.
I did this to my son. And to them.
I'm so sorry.
"And now, you've done it to Eren." Faye shook her head at him.
Grisha's mouth opened, but no sound could escape.
"Are you aware that Dina ate Carla?"
Grisha froze. "No."
"Yes."
He sobbed then, sobbed as hard as he had under torture, under Faye's death.
"Zeke…I killed him. I already have."
"And Eren."
"No." Grisha wiped his eyes. "He'll find a way. He has Armin and Mikasa…"
"Speaking of." The Ackermans stepped outside the gate. "Thank you, Grisha."
Grisha stared at them. "M-me…?"
"You didn't have to take her in," said Mrs. Ackerman, squatting down to his eye level. "You know we're Marleyan."
"Of course I did." Grisha swallowed. Saving Mikasa – he'd been Kruger, trying to save himself. And also –
he'd realized he just couldn't leave a child.
Mr. Ackerman knelt by his wife, his arm wrapped around her. "Many people here are angry with you, and they should be. I'm not. Disappointed, yes, because you're better than that. But I understand, and I'm not angry anymore."
"You saved our daughter, and Mikasa is special. She can help Eren, I know it," pled Mrs. Ackerman. "Do not despair."
"One good deed." Grisha shrugged, watching hundreds of refugees marching out like cattle. "In a sea of sin."
"But … one log can keep you afloat in the sea, right?" Faye peered at him. "Right, big brother?"
Grisha smiled then as the memory of teaching Faye buoyancy bloomed in his mind. "Faye."
"Big brother." She wrapped her arms around him. "I love you."
"I love you, too. I always have," Grisha sobbed. If only he'd not blasphemed her name with vengeance. If only he'd let her love lead him from the start. If only he'd held onto that love when Wall Maria fell and everything he loved with it.
"I know." She squeezed him tight, and when he looked up he saw his parents.
"Do you forgive me, Grisha?" asked his father.
"I – I don't know." Grisha looked at the grass. What was wrong with him? "Do you forgive me?"
"Always," said his mother.
Faye and the Ackermans forced him to his feet.
"That woman you married – she's special," said his father.
"Dina?"
"No. Well, we mean yes, of course she's special, too," said his mother. "But Carla, Grisha. We've never met anyone who so clearly sees people as they are and loves them for it. She's wonderful."
"Oh." Grisha sniffled. "Yes, she is."
Beyond the gate, there she was, ruffling Marcel's dark hair and smiling. She stood by Frieda, smiling. She smiled and smiled and radiated love.
And maybe Eren could take after her. Maybe all was not lost.
"I'm going to go talk to Marcel." Faye raced forward, and Carla stood straight, watching Grisha, her husband who still needed to support of the Ackermans and his parents to stand.
Then they exchanged glances, and their hands were gone, but their love remained strong enough he fell to the dirt, disrupting the seedlings around him.
Carla watched Grisha quiver against the ground. Outrage and hope for justice, blind hatred driving his family into ruin. Torture worse than cattle, begging for a son he himself had destroyed. Grotesque salvation and finding himself whole again, but somewhere in his heart he could never be healed.
He hoped she saw not only his shame, but also the hope he'd found when she'd appeared, sassing Mister Keith and living a simple but happy life.
He hoped she saw that she'd always been his hope.
That when he'd saved her, he'd saved his hope as well, that he'd loved her and only hid the truth because he wanted to preserve his hope for just a little while longer.
And then he's snapped and defamed her memory, too. Just like Faye.
He felt her hands on his shoulders and gasped. "I – I – I –"
I'm sorry but he couldn't grasp the words. He had no right to them anymore.
She knelt before him, and her hands moved from his shoulders to his hands, tracing the fingers that'd been cut off yet saved her from the plague, to his legs and the private member that'd been burned away like garbage, yet she'd kissed countless times, the part that'd produced her son, up to his heart.
She dug her fingers in then, around his beating breast. "Grisha."
He was too sunk in shame to reply.
Carla kissed his heart and removed his glasses and then she had bent down and rested it on his lap, so that his eyes were looking directly at her. "Please look at me."
He focused on her eyes then, the color of the sea, the color of Eren's eyes.
"Thank you." Carla sat up straight, and lifted his jaw until his eyes once again aligned with hers. "I'm angry."
"But I forgive you."
"No."
"Yes." She wiped the tears from under his eyes. "Don't cast yourself outside or into hell. There's only hell if you make it, and I love you too much to let you."
"I betrayed you," he managed.
"Yes. But I won't betray you back." Carla forced a smile. "And Eren will learn."
She kissed him, and Grisha's heart rose again. Faye and Marcel giggled behind them.
Next up: Armin's Grandfather, Trost, and a lot of screaming.