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"Keen"

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Shiganshina wasn't Quinta. Well, parts of it were, because… parts of everywhere were Quinta. Wherever there were people, there were drunks and druggies and whores and rapists and killers, because people were scum and the thickest scum had to coagulate somewhere. The only difference was, in Shiganshina, Thomasin didn't live in that "somewhere". "Somewhere" was several streets over, and she could just outright ignore it if she wanted (which she did).

She no longer had access to the rooftops because her peg was narrow and it was too hard to balance without a crutch so she didn't bother. But she didn't need it because in Shiganshina, nobody bothered her. They stared, because of course they did. She was different, and only Erwin Smith was stupid enough to think being different was a good thing. But no one approached her. No one started shit, because some of them had seen her when she rode beyond the gate and came back. Some of them knew that the Scouts who came back weren't people to fuck with to their faces because if they could survive Titans, what could you do to them? Some of them saw her speaking to Dr. Yeager, who wasn't as much of a stupid piece of shit as she had initially assumed, and because they respected him, they afforded her a measure of peace. Some of them were just smart enough to know better than to fuck with the person responsible for filling out their prescriptions.

But most of them just didn't care. Because they weren't spiteful pieces of shit, and they weren't deviants, and they weren't kiddie diddlers who wanted something exotic- they were normal people who had too much going on in their lives to pay Thomasin any mind, and she… she greatly appreciated it. It made it easier, to exist. To pretend.

Mr. Reed must have read the same book Erwin did, because he used the same word to describe her- Moor- but he didn't bare his teeth at her as though he was excited to rip her skin and hair off and wear it as a suit. Mr. Reed was smart. Smart enough to know that cheap, non-guild labor was worth losing a few Marias in raw ingredients over every month. Smart enough to teach a non-apprentice a few simple tonics and poultices so that she could deal with the Garrisons because they were so drunk that a bottle of water and a few nudges of suggestion would probably clear up whatever they thought was wrong with them, so why waste actual skill on the chaff? He was smart enough to understand, and to teach some lessons of his own.

Smile when there are people around, Thomasin. It doesn't matter if you're unhappy- nobody cares, do you think I enjoy being around these drunken idiots, these hypochondriacs? The world is a stage and you must act. Just smile, because when you smile, it shuts down their simple brains and they smile back… and then they leave faster. And then you can get back to actual work…

Thomasin didn't smile naturally (she must have, a long time ago, because her mom told her that when she smiled she looked just like him, whoever had sired her) and when she tried to it hurt and the customers could see that pain in her eyes. Mr. Reed told her to practice even when she wasn't at work, to just force herself to smile until it became second nature- that was what he had done while he was in college and now, he could turn it on and off at will. It was an admirable skill, so she practiced. Whenever she was out in public, she forced herself to smile, and just like Mr. Reed had said, peoples' brains shut down and they smiled back at her. Some of them even said hello. The whispers and stares came with much less frequency and eventually, she had to work just to catch them. She made herself look normal and approachable, and the world responded to that. And every night when she came home and closed all the locks on the shitty door that she'd installed herself, the smile dropped and she collapsed because she was exhausted.

She was so tired all the time.

Shiganshina wasn't Quinta, except in the ways that it was. The apothecary wasn't anything like a tavern; it was quiet and calm, and a handful of drunk Garrisons over the course of a week wasn't anything like a constant stream of them. There were no brawls, no untoward propositions, she didn't have to scrub spilled beer and food and blood off the floors… it was clean and simple… and it felt exactly the same. She'd exchanged the physical exhaustion for a mental one (and the physical burden was still there because even though the leg was just an ugly swollen stump, her stupid brain hadn't gotten the message and kept telling her that the foot she no longer had was cramping worse than it had during basic training).

Wake up.

Work.

Eat.

Sleep.

Repeat.

The cycle was at the heart of that merciless, miserable void and she'd had one chance to escape it and now… She couldn't climb any more because even though the leg still hurt, it wasn't actually there. There were poisons at the apothecary, lots of them because anything in too high of a dose was a poison. Mr. Reed taught her that, he taught her that all the time, and he also taught her why each and every poison was a bad way to die. If you were lucky, it hurt a lot and then the pain stopped eventually.

If you were unlucky, it hurt a lot and then the pain stopped… eventually.

Every month, the big bronze bell at the top of the outer gate would ring, twice a day, once in the morning and once a few hours later. Titans were another bad way to die, but all things considered, they were slowly creeping up the viability list. She could have died out there, if Erwin hadn't been stupid… if he'd just left her… but he didn't because he thought being alive was good, because he didn't realize that existence was crushing and being crushed to death was a really bad way to die.

…maybe he was dead. Maybe he'd died, maybe it was quick because Erwin was nothing if not lucky so maybe a twenty-meter grabbed him and crushed his skull between its teeth before he even realized what was happening… or maybe a six-meter grabbed him and squeezed just hard enough to break every bone and rupture just enough organs to start it but another idiot Scout rushed in and "saved" him before it finished… She could go look. She could stand by the outer gate and look for those massive eyebrows because at least half of the Survey Corps had blonde hair and blue eyes… and if she didn't see him… if his dream didn't come true…

Thinking was pain, but when her arm was stinging and burning, she could focus on that pain instead. That pain ended, even if it took weeks and it itched so bad that she was shaking, but not so badly that she couldn't write. Thomasin had never written a letter before. She'd never had anyone to write to. She'd never had anyone to talk to, not after the thud and crack and splat.

These people would step over you if you were dying in the street.

you are undoubtedly my dearest friend

Words came easier when she didn't have to hear the sound of her own voice. Listening to Mr. Reed also helped- he was from Wall Sina, so he knew a lot more words than she did.

The world was dark and cruel, a fathomless void of misery and pain that she was kept tethered to by the chains of existence. Existing was hard. Thomasin was weak and tired, and when she cooked and cleaned and worked and laid down without sleeping, she thought about all the ways. The Wall was no longer viable- it had escaped the list and now existed as something most people might actually call a "dream"- a longing that reality told her was impossible, but oh, she could imagine it wasn't… There were other tall things; bridges, windmills… maybe if you mixed enough poison… you only had so much blood inside you, and it didn't clot underwater…

…Erwin's handwriting was really nice, exactly what she'd expect from a coddled little Wall Rose boy whose daddy was a teacher.

He'd been happy to hear from her.

These people don't care about you, about us.

If I have ever led you to believe that you are anything to me but a bosom friend, I am truly sorry for it

She had to see him off, even if he said she didn't, because nobody else cared. Because even if some people in Shiganshina were normal and too busy to show up, there was always scum, the scum who showed up just to count how many Scouts were leaving and place bets on how many would be coming back. When Thomasin called out to him, Erwin wasn't the only one who looked because humans were something of a herd species.

These people would step over you if you were dying in the street.

She'd been a Scout, if only for two missions- she'd seen the sneers, heard those snide remarks. She beat her fist against her heart- getting screamed at for three years was a good way to beat the proper posture into most anyone- and it was mostly for Erwin but the other Scouts who looked could see her, too. They were all going to die sooner or later, every last one of them (if they were lucky)… she wouldn't step over them. Even if she couldn't help, she could at least acknowledge the blood, understand the pain.

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Erwin had changed. He talked… "less". He still talked a lot, and Thomasin liked it when he talked because his voice was still getting deeper and it was pleasing to the ear, and when his stupid nonsense was filling her head, it left less space for the ways and especially for that voice that said she should at least try some of them. But sometimes, he would stop in the middle of a sentence, usually with a wince as if whatever he had thought of next physically hurt him. And then he would stop saying sentences and start asking questions. About Shiganshina. About her. And he would stare at her, without that creepy smile, but with wide blue eye fixated on her with a single-minded focus he never manged while holding a rifle. She smiled around him (because it didn't hurt and it didn't wear her out, so maybe all that practice was finally paying off), but instead of shutting his brain down, it just made him ask more questions. And she had to answer because… he had asked.

These people don't care about you, about us.

Erwin didn't talk about things he didn't care about, full stop (she would have been genuinely surprised if he actually knew the names of all twelve districts considering how little he cared about things inside the Walls). But he engaged with her, more than ever, because for some reason, he cared. And so did she.

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Food was important. It was one of the most important things in the world. Food was as intrinsically linked to life as breath was. Thomasin had been hungry before, lots of times; there were days when that godforsaken slop Beatrice (rancid whore that she was) "cooked" did nothing to quell to painful clenching of her stomach, days when it actually made it worse. She never heard her mother's stomach growl, even when the most she ate was a few spoonfuls (and even that was just to assuage Thomasin's mind, to convince her that Mommy's full, really, baby- you eat). Even after the fall, after the crack, when she couldn't swallow, when all of Thomasin's attempts to feed her just resulted in the majority of the soup spilling out of her mouth into the bloody hair and the little bit that went down catching in the throat and resulting in the most horrible choking noises until she figured out how to massage her mother's throat to stimulate swallowing just enough to make it go down. Even when she watched that already concave stomach collapse into a pit offset only by the jut of the rib cage. Hunger was a unique form of torture unlike any other, among the slowest and most insidious of killers.

The Wallist pastors spoke of the love God and the Goddesses had for them, the love they should have have for their protectors, as the purest and most selfless form of love. The pastors, much like the Military Police, were bastards with shit for brains who weren't deserving of the air they wasted taking up space. Feeding another was the purest form of love, staving that hunger off, freeing them from that suffering if only for a few more hours… You didn't give a dog on the street a heel of bread because you expected something in return.

Erwin was very much like a dog in many ways. Thomasin fed him, fed him the food that she could have stretched out for herself for several days if she portioned it correctly, wanting nothing in return other than the solace that he'd at least be full until the next day. She'd been a Scout- food was almost always some combination of bread and potatoes and parsnips and cabbage because they were cheap and filling, but riding and vertical maneuvering for hours used up so much energy that all the food you'd eaten the previous week got used up within hours. A Scout going beyond the Walls every month (it had been every other month when she'd been one, but they were making progress, apparently) was always hungry. Erwin, who was approximately the size of a young ox and lived on about four hours of sleep a day when he was lucky (being promoted came with an increase in duties that far outpaced the increase in pay) was perpetually famished, and that kind of hunger eroded manners and decency and pride and just left him gratefully thanking her in between chewing.

And she… she liked it.

A lot.

It was an entirely new feeling, and that was scary because new things were always scary and she couldn't exactly ask someone what she was feeling when it was so hard to put into words. But Thomasin liked it. Watching him eat- even eating with him sometimes because she made more money in a week sweeping and dusting and sometimes mixing medicine than her mother could earn in three- listening to him talk, sometimes even interjecting with her own thoughts and rants… It reminded her of sitting up on the tavern roof, nestled between her mom's knees, one thin arm wrapped around her in a warm embrace as the other pointed up at the stars, outlining shapes and asking what she thought they were. Those precious few moments where there was no anger or sadness, no hunger or pain or fear or worry…

Happiness.

That was definitely a part of it- it had been so, so long since she'd felt it that it didn't sit right within her soul, but if she wiped off enough of the dust of misery, that had to be what the label said. And the rest of it… it wasn't until he cut off all contact with her for a few months that she felt confident enough to piece it together.

Because Erwin was very much like a child at times, with emotions that were as big as they were simple. But a child's emotions rarely stayed the same for very long. Anger soon burned itself out, offenses were quickly forgotten… Not all the time, but often enough. But he wasn't a child, not beyond the core of his soul. He was a man grown, and growing up had a way of causing pain and anger and offense to sort of… fold in upon itself. An injury upon one's heart that did not- could not- close quickly enough could fester and grow, and even if new skin closed over it, it was entirely possible the infection could simply work its way further in, deeper into bone and once it reached blood, well, you could only amputate so much.

Thomasin hadn't know how deep the wound in his heart was because she didn't think like him. The Survey Corps meant nothing to her, the outside world meant nothing to her, so how could she possibly understand how much it hurt him to see it wasting away before his very eyes, to have the cure but be refused the opportunity to provide treatment? She couldn't understand the way his mind worked, so she defaulted to her own mindset.

Of course he didn't want anything to do with her. Why would he? Why had she been stupid enough to ever believe that she could offer anyone anything more than a few meals and a middling distraction? Why would she ever believe that he might stay? Her mother hadn't stayed, and if she couldn't be enough for the woman who'd borne and raised her, what could she possibly matter to a heretic who only saw her as a taste of what he actually wanted far, far away from the Walls? Far away from her?

The void grew wider.

The voice grew louder, and without Erwin's ceaseless nattering to drown it out, she had no choice but to listen. She had money, she had things she could sell, it would be enough to buy a rifle. Thomasin actually knew how to use them- when she was little, Ramos had made her dismantle and oil his rifle because she'd had to earn her keep, and once she got older and started working at the tavern in earnest, well, a drunk asshole itching for a fight could walk right through a warning. She didn't hit anything vital because she wasn't aiming to, and once they sobered up and were left staring in horror at the stump where their foot used to be, they realized that. It would be hard to reach the trigger with her mouth on the barrel, but she could manage it. She just had to make sure not to under load the powder—

"Thomasin? It's Erwin…"

Her heart had seized in her chest when she first heard his voice, the first time in months. She hadn't realized how much she'd missed it until that moment, until her eyes began burning and her throat tightened and she pressed the meat beneath her thumb into her mouth and bit down until the emotions stilled and the voice left. And she repeated the process when it came back

"I'm so sorry. Please… please don't hate me…"

swallowing the fresh blood in her mouth and rinsing the saliva from the eight new serrations in her skin.

(Wounds had to be kept clean- her mom taught her that.)

Erwin rambled at the door. He wrote to her. And when his newest squad mate, a bespectacled… person… pushed him into walking her home a week later, he explained and she felt her heart break for him.

"I felt like I was sleepwalking- one day, I woke up and a month had passed. I—I barely remember half of what happened in those months, and I just couldn't say anything, not even to you…"

…how had he entered into her mind and lived her life in those months?

How many times had the void encased her in a fog that took away all sense of time? Seven years between her mother's death and joining the Training Corps, and she remembered just about nothing from that time. Weeks of the Training Corps, gone. Weeks in Shiganshina, like they had never even happened. Time meant nothing when all you wanted was to close your eyes and never open them again. Thomasin could have cried, then. And for a little while, she didn't know why, except that it wasn't right; sweet, stupid, innocent Erwin should have never had to experience life the way she did. And then-

"I'm glad you're alive…"

Oh.

She understood perfectly.

"I'm glad you're alive too, Erwin. Try to keep it that way, yeah…?"

If she'd bought that rifle and put it in her mouth and pulled the trigger, no one would have noticed she stopped leaving her apartment, at least until spring rolled around again and the stench of decaying meat began leeching into the surrounding apartments. Except… there was a good chance that Erwin would have found her before that. Erwin, who only asked questions about things he was interested in, and for some reason, that included her. Erwin, who shared the Survey Corps' victories with her, no matter how small, because they made him happy and so obviously they should make her happy, too. Erwin, who spent god only knew how much of his salary buying fancy deserts from Wall Rose for her birthday because he and he alone saw her having been born as something wholly good, and feeding something was the purest and most selfless form of love…

She loved this brainless idiot, loved him enough that she vowed to never let him be the one to discover her bloated, decomposing corpse. No matter how much it hurt, no matter how loud and insistent the voice became, so long as he kept coming back into the Walls, she couldn't leave him alone. He needed someone in his corner, someone to protect him.

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The strong preyed on the weak.

The innocent needed to be protected.

Every word out of Thomasin's mouth had been a lie spun to try and calm the girl wailing hysterically beside her. The gates were destroyed, Titans were pouring in, the Survey Corps couldn't do a damn thing to stop them… and anyone not on those ferries by the time the inner gate fell was already dead. But she had to lie, she had to be kind, because no one had been kind to her when she had been that age, when she'd screamed and sobbed unto sickness for her own mother (would it have hurt even more to lose a father? A sibling? She couldn't imagine what it felt like to have family back then). The tears stopped eventually, and Thomasin's mind raced in lieu of sleeping.

The Survey Corps headquarters were on the other side of the district. It would take an hour to get there—no, longer. She couldn't leave Hannah alone, and she couldn't carry her with one arm, and she'd have to bend uncomfortably to keep her from sliding off her back… If they walked together, she would have to walk slow to allow tiny legs to keep up with her long stride. And there were so many people, more people than should have been able to fit within the district; it was a miracle the Walls weren't bursting at the seams.

Stress boiled the pot and let the scum rise to the surface. There was fighting. Stealing. Killing. No one had said it yet, but the threat had been there when she'd approached the Garrison, fear having worked quickly to sober him; if you go out there with that little girl, there's a good chance one or both of you will be raped and killed.

Thomasin knew exactly how many stomps with her heel were needed to turn some asshole's testicles into red jelly (it was probably less now- she was bigger than she had been at fifteen), but she couldn't run and if some kiddie diddler snatched Hannah away from her and took off, she wouldn't be able to follow. And that was assuming it was even worth it to take the risk in the first place. She hadn't seen the Corps return, but she'd heard the gossip (there was always gossip following the grim parade). Less than a hundred soldiers returned. She had no idea if Erwin was amongst them. It was entirely possible that she would take Hannah on the perilous journey to the Corps' base, find out that the only person who would actually be willing to help her was dead, go all the way back, and be told that they couldn't get back in and would have to sleep in the streets, in the heart of the chaos. Thomasin… didn't like risks. It was why she'd planned her death for nine years. It was what stayed her hand when the voice grew too loud, because there was always the question of What if I fuck it up? How much am I going to suffer?

Hannah wasn't her kid- she wasn't the one who spread her legs and let some asshole blow his load inside her (being married to the asshole made no difference). She had no responsibility to some random brat who just so happened to live in the apartment under hers. …no one had had any responsibility to her, when she was little. No one cared if she was hungry, or sick, or exhausted from crying herself to sleep every night…

It was cold up north. Whoever came up with the name "Utopia" for the district in the frozen, barren wasteland had a sick sense of humor. The shacks that served as their shelters were dilapidated and riddled with holes that they stuffed with rags to keep the wind out (and it was still summer- how the hell were they supposed to survive the winter?). They slept on the floor with thin blankets, and everyone huddled together with anyone they knew because body heat provided that much more warmth. Every night, Hannah would ask when her mommy and daddy and brother were going to find them, and every night Thomasin would assure her that they were on their way, they were probably just in another camp or on another ferry, and they would definitely be coming any day now.

She didn't think the girl believed her; being young wasn't the same as being stupid.

With Wall Maria now considered part of the outside world, they'd lost nearly fifty percent of their farmland and just about all of the livestock. The only places within Wall Rose that weren't already occupied by farms or villages were forests and the area around Utopia (no one would dare encroach upon the private land in Wall Sina or the Interior; that was sacred), and it needed to be cleared. The refugees were given an ultimatum; if you want to eat, then you have to work. There was no point- farmers who had actually cultivated land within Wall Maria before they were driven out tried to explain that the ground was no good. Even if they got rid of all the rocks (an impossibility) and dug out all the tree stumps (that would take years), the soil was more sand than dirt. Even if any of the land was arable (it wasn't), by the time they actually cleared it and got crops in the ground, it would be too cold for them to germinate. The Assembly didn't care. The MPs who served as their overseers didn't want to hear excuses. They had to expend labor, even if they produced nothing.

Wake up.

Work.

Eat.

Sleep.

Repeat.

Their rations were already limited to a bowl of soup and a piece of bread a day, but as the weeks turned into months, so too did the food supply begin to dwindle. The bread was the first thing to go, and little by little, every bowl of soup had less in it until it was little more than hot flavored water. Thomasin was used to such mean fare- it almost made her laugh, to think she had allowed herself to get spoiled by having hot meals twice a day like some noble lady. Hannah wasn't, though. Being hungry every night was yet another new, horrible experience, and like most nine year olds faced with new, horrible things, she cried. Loudly. Thomasin gave the girl as much of her own rations as she could, but she couldn't do as her mother had done because she was so much bigger than her mother had been, and clearing fields was more labor-intensive than wiping down tables and serving drinks, and ever since she'd lost her leg, it took more food than ever to satiate that hunger. She had to work to eat. She couldn't do what her mother did. This hungry, sobbing child wasn't her responsibility…

She'd refused to learn his name, refused to let her eyes wander to the name embroidered on the left breast pocket. Roses. The Garrison asshole was in charge of overseeing the kitchens, specifying exactly how many pieces of potato were allowed in each bowl of soup (it had dropped from four to three in the last week) as he constantly stuffed his own face. Albeit with military rations, but those rations were designed to be as dense and filling as possible, and they were. Thomasin knew what her mother had done, to make sure there was enough money that she could eat every night, to keep the MPs from sniffing around when she fucked up and drew attention to herself… how could any self-respecting mother put her own pride and modesty above the well-being of her child?

Hannah wasn't her child (she would never, ever have children), but someone had to take care of her, and Thomasin had no pride; that was something only rich people could afford. The insults and degradation moaned at her might as well have been spoken to a horse for as much as she cared, and every slap or punch or burn just made her wonder what pain felt like to people who had never sliced into their own muscles and had a druggie stitch them back together. She had an arrangement with the Garrison asshole; he used the meat-sack she existed within to get his jollies off, and she got extra rations, most of which went to Hannah.

The background noise of grunts and insults served well enough for her old pastime of thinking of the ways.

People killed themselves every day in the camps, usually hangings, but getting rope could be difficult, especially rope that was still in good enough condition to not snap under her weight (even if she was thinner than she had been in years, she was still tall and bones weren't exactly light). There was no poison to be found, which was why the rats multiplied, getting into their limited foodstuffs and contaminating it (they still had to eat it, because it was either pick the rat shit out or go hungry). The MPs carried guns, and they weren't afraid to use them, but they usually went for gut shots- the center of mass and all- and Thomasin had seen too many people lying on the cold ground, moaning and screaming for far too long before the writhing finally stopped and they were added to one of the many pits they dumped all the corpses into. All bad ways to die, and she soon found another bad way to add to the list. It had to happen eventually- what else would happen if you spread your legs and let a man keep dumping his load inside you? She wasn't going to raise some Garrison's bastard, and fortunately, the Garrison bastard felt exactly the same.

Her pay that time was a bag of slippery elm, and… never again. From beginning to end, that was the worst way to die, the excruciating pain in the beginning, the fever and chills and iron bands wrapped around her chest refusing to let her breathe but not tightening enough to kill her quickly. Hannah hadn't known what was wrong, only that something was, and she had tried to get help, but everyone- These people would step over you if you were dying in the street… or dying in the corner of a wooden shack. She'd made her peace long ago, was more than prepared for every breath she took to be her last… but they never were. The pain eased, the fever receded, and she found herself able to breathe again.

Maybe she'd missed her chance to die. Maybe she had been intended to die in that forest outside Wall Maria and when Erwin saved her, he somehow fucked up death's list and now, she would forever be passed by. It had to be something like that, some kind of sick mistake by the universe that wouldn't let her die no matter how much she wished she would. Because it was all just too much.

She was still too weak to work in the fields, but she had to work if they wanted to eat, and kneeling on the cheap, thin carpet in the Garrison's office didn't use as much energy as cutting through roots. She'd come back with three packs of rations (compassion, perhaps?)… and Hannah wasn't there. She wasn't in the shelter, she wasn't in the fields, and everyone she asked had a different story but some of the details lined up. There had been a man talking to her… and then both of them were gone.

Thomasin must have made half a dozen loops around the camp, pushing herself well past her limit in her search for any sign of the girl. It wasn't her child, it wasn't her responsibility, but… innocence had to be protected, especially from the sick freaks who got their jollies off by fucking little kids. There were so many of them, there were entire brothels in the Underground that catered to them, and so many children had lost their parents when the Wall fell, no one was looking out for them, and she'd left her alone for just a little while, not even an hour, and—and… for what? She'd done so much… she'd tried so hard… and it had all been for nothing.

Thomasin stopped working, in the fields and in the Garrison bastard's office. If you didn't work, you didn't eat, and she didn't care. There was no more hunger- there was nothing but that void growing larger, everything around it crumbling and falling in, and maybe that provided enough fuel to stave off the hunger pangs. No one bothered her, after realizing that she didn't respond to insults nor kicks; they were content to let her waste away and die in relative peace, and they would toss her in the pit with all the others once she went stiff. It wasn't what she'd wanted, but she could have been content to die like that… but the world was cruel. Everyone had to assemble to hear the royal decree, and when she'd refused to budge, the asshole MP just dragged her outside instead of shooting her like a compassionate human being.

The Survey Corps was going to be heading out into Wall Maria's territory to kill the Titans and clear a path so they could seal off the holes in the Shiganshina gates, but the Corps was short on soldiers, so by royal decree, every enlistment age person working in the camps would be sent out with them, to provide backup. Thomasin genuinely wondered if, even for a single second, anyone believed that line. Was it possible for anyone to hear those words and not immediately hear the truth beneath them? Maybe some people were just that stupid, just that naive… They certainly learned the truth quickly when they were informed that their physical capabilities didn't matter in the slightest. It didn't matter how weak and decrepit you were, it didn't even matter if you had all four limbs (that used to be a requirement to join the Scouts)- Every enlistment age person was being ferried down to Trost at the end of the week, and forced out those gates to be devoured.

Thomasin wasn't going to be devoured; she wasn't that lucky. She was going to be trampled. She was going to be run over by one of the Corps' supply carts. She was going to be torn apart limb from limb by a three-meter and then someone was going to find her bloody torso and stop the bleeding and leave her to continue living like that. If one of them just bit her head off, it would be fine, but the universe would never afford her that mercy, and she knew- she alone in the camp, possibly in the entire north, knew the agony of being devoured one limb at a time. It was that fear, those phantom pains driving red-hot pokers into the leg that was rotting in a Titan's gut, that sent her back into the office.

The Garrison bastard looked at her like she was crazy, refused to take one of the MP's gun and blow her brains out because there was too much risk of him being caught and no one was going to buy "she asked me to kill her!" as an excuse. Too much paperwork. He refused to take her name off the list; that was too much effort for some peasant who was going to die soon anyway, and besides- there was no way in hell she could pass for anything under eighteen.

(The years had been hard…)

ODM gear. He had ODM gear- every soldier was assigned a rig, even if they never used it. You never forgot how to vertically maneuver, even if you got rusty; if he could just lend her his gear, she knew how to avoid Titans, and he would get it back regardless of what happened to her. She begged, stripping away any scraps of pride or ego that might have been clinging to her soul. She would do anything, anything to avoid a death that bad (if nothing else, she could probably use the ultra-hardened blades to decapitate herself with a bit of clever physics). The Garrison bastard agreed- there was something he wanted, and finding willing partners was… difficult (he didn't like working for things, and unwilling partners proved to be too much work).

Don't ever trust these people- they'll only hurt you.

Desperation had a way of clouding one's eyes, and when you repeated the same lie in your head over and over again (especially when it was the only thing drowning out the pain), you couldn't help but believe it. They were being shipped out in the morning, so all she had to do was hide the gear… somehow… and once they were outside the Gate, she could find a tree and—

" Well, it's been fun. I hate to see you go…"

"…what about my ODM gear?"

"Civilians aren't authorized to use military equipment- you know that…"

He'd continued talking, probably glutting with laughter about how stupid she was to have fallen for his lies, but Thomasin didn't hear anything beyond the blood whistling as it rushed through the constricted veins in her skull. She could feel her chest heaving with every breath, her heart pounding, but somehow she couldn't feel her arm moving, reaching out to grab the half-empty bottle of brandy on the edge of the desk. The bastard might have tried to stop her, of maybe he hadn't realized what she was doing until that bottle collided with the side of his head. Thomasin learned at an early age that it was only the cheapest bottles that broke- the ones made with thicker glass, those held up, and you could smash the butt into a wicked little bitch's face until you knocked out all her baby teeth without it so much as cracking. She didn't have time for a second blow as the Garrison stumbled, falling backwards, and it had been twenty years, but the sound of that crack was still as clear in her memory as it had been that beautiful summer day.

She stood there, standing over him, watching him convulse as blood formed a wider pool beneath him. The door was already locked, but wedging a chair under the knob wouldn't hurt. The gear needed to be dismantled before she could use it- each piece had a serial number that would be logged, along with the name of the soldier using it. A civilian wouldn't know that, much less where every number could be located. Scraping iron bamboo was a trying task, but standard-issue repair tools were also made of the unique alloy; destroying something with itself was usually the way to go. Thomasin sat there, painstakingly scratching away every identifying mark on the gear before reassembling it, waiting for the final twitches to stop before she stripped the body of its uniform and half carried, half dragged it into the small attached bathroom. Blood was one of the ever-present stains to clean in a tavern; you didn't have to do a good job, just good enough that it wasn't immediately noticeable.

Ripping the seams off every patch took just as long, but being through was necessary- she didn't want to go announcing to the world that she had anything to do with the Garrison. There was no guilt, no remorse as she clambered out the window, her new uniform under her clothes, her gear tied to her back with the straps that still needed to be adjusted and hidden under a cloak that still looked far too conspicuous for her liking (she'd have to get rid of it as soon as possible, replace it with something less distinct). No, the only thing she felt was a simmering annoyance that was slowly thickening into anger. She'd kept her end of the bargain; he had no right to not keep his. He would have gotten his gear back eventually. She didn't even know when they found his body; probably after she had already been ushered towards the ferry with the rest of the damned. If he'd shot her like she asked, he'd still be alive.

Why did avoiding suffering have to come with so much suffering?

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"The pain and shame, and the sorrow and rage, the delight and the heartache; feelings I can't escape- tomorrow, today- no, we won't ever part ways. But if there's not anything else on the planet that can keep me smiling through all my tears, just what would it do to the feelings inside me that's carried me through all of these years…?"