Chapter 36

Seasons, and people, change.

The sun stays out longer. Days crawl by slower. Temperatures rise, birds flock to the sky, bunnies hop to their dens. Wild animals flirting the periphery of the southern division's training camp copulate in earnest. Flowers erupt out of the once-chilled, barren earth, now that the mud has turned into fertile, plush soil. The cycle is dependable, atavistic in its reverence, in its subtle grandeur. Time bends its fingers into the rivers and thaws their furrowed banks.

And the trainees march on.

The concussion fades and soon vanishes entirely. The bruises, once smarting purple, pucker their yellow lips and swallow themselves whole. I blink, and the black eye crawls back under my skin. The scuffs, restitched. The aches, assuaged.

We spar near-daily. For whatever godforsaken reason, Floch remains my partner, despite rarely speaking to me. "I'm making Heidi's absence worth it," he tells me when I ask. It would be a lie if I said I fully understand his train of thought. In any case, I need an opponent I won't feel bad about hitting, and Floch just so happens to be particularly adept at failing to restrain himself when it comes to me. It would be easier to truly test my skills if I were set against someone like Eren–who truly wouldn't waste any sleep pummeling me into the dirt–but he's off with Reiner and Annie almost every day in the training grounds, fighting off her kicks (though not very well) and shaking clumps of dirt from his hair.

Today the sky is a painting in motion, clouds tossed this way and that due to the anabatic winds. The gray plumes funnel in cyclical patterns, like the beginnings of a tornado, churning ceaselessly and failing to progress any further.

We trudge out to the wagons and board like refugees. I grab a spot next to Sasha, who cocks her head and scratches her scalp. "Hey! Early morning today, huh?" I make some noncommittal noise in the back of my mouth and plop into the seat, yawning and slouching. Sasha reaches over and picks grass out of my hair.

"I thought I got it all," I frown. I've got my hair thrown up in a cheap, hastily-done ponytail. Just something to get it out of the way and make it less apparent that the place we've been camping in the last week had no bodies of water nearby to take a shower in. "Thanks."

Sasha nods, flicking the streaks of green off the wagon. An instructor walks to the back and latches it up before hopping up into the driver's seat and coaxing the horses into motion. After going days without seeing anyone other than fellow trainees, it's nice to see someone in charge again. "I can't wait to get back and eat a full meal." I can practically see her mouth drooling as she mimes reaching for a full plate and digging in with sharp utensils. "Something hot and filling. Like roasted boar, with juicy pears and stewed vegetables and a full, crispy loaf of bread"

Across from us, Marco laughs. "I don't think we'll be eating something like that anytime soon, Sasha."

She gives an overexaggerated pout in return. "A girl can dream, y'all."

I snort.

We pass the morning rumbling in the wagons, belts pinching in all the wrong places and butts going flat after being pressed against the hard, splinter-ridden boards for hours on end. As we roll along I rest my arms on the backs of the seats, one behind Sasha and the other dangling over the edge of the wagon; perks of the last seat in the left row. The mountain girl proclaims her intent to drift back to sleep, and very nearly accomplishes it: Sasha's head lolls back to rest in the crook of my shoulder, body slanted and propped against my own. She snores lightly. The gray, ever-shifting clouds slowly give way to brighter skies, to clear-cut morning blues.

A light drizzle sets on us for about half an hour before changing its mind and trajectory. The drops on her face rouse Sasha just enough to squirm a little closer. This kind of comfortable proximity would've been peculiar to me before becoming bunkmates with Mikasa. Somehow, my affiliation with the stoic Ackerman has made many of those who deem her a friend in their eyes open up to me even further. Sasha stands out the most; I can't tell if it's her earnest friendship with Mikasa that spurns her on, or simply the way Connie and her have a knack from dropping guards like pants. Either way, she's napping on me like I'm a pillow, and I'm entirely at the mercy of her whims.

But not all of Mikasa's friends are like Sasha. Eren is less open, more reserved and selective with his hostility since my return, but that does not make him any less vindictive. And Armin…well, I have made a habit out of avoiding him. Whatever thoughts are lurking under that overgrown bowl cut of his–just when will he trim that thing–make me far more unsettled than I would like to be.

The hair on the back of my neck stands up.

Armin, in the wagon behind us, is staring directly back at me. His blue eyes are sparkling warning bells. They have the ability to fill me with such debilitating unease. It's a wariness that even the loss of my journal cannot shake. The words that I scrawled, the reasons I felt Armin dangerous enough to do so, haunt me like ghosts. As if I was possessed. As if the thing I feared more than anything was not death, was not discovery, but…him. Why him? What could Armin do to me that no one else could?

It's hard to remember the words that I wrote exactly. All I remember, all I still cling to, are echoes of phrases that bounce around hollow caves in flagrant notes. Caution yourself. Remain under the radar. Bite the neck before you bare your own.

I look away before I can worry about whether or not the avoidance looks natural.

The trainees, carted away like fresh produce, roll this way and that as the wagons lurch off the dirt roads and onto untamed terrain. We head back into the trees, the sun cresting up to the tops of the boughs like yellow chicks breaking through the calcium carbonate of the shells. I shake Sasha. "Hey. Wakeup."

She murmurs something sleepy and entirely incomprehensible. "What?"

Mindful of the jagged edge of my unkempt nails, I prod the soft flesh of her cheek to rouse her further. "I don't think we're going back to the training camp just yet."

Sasha opens their eyes and squints. "How come?"

"No idea. Now get up. My fingers are all numb." Sasha grumbles and whines as I pry her off of me, depositing her back into her spot while I shake the sensation back into my freshly-recovered limb. The murmurs spread from wagon to wagon, trainees rousing from the pits of their exhaustion to look around and speculate our destination. It's starting to dawn on me that perhaps the exercise wasn't our ability to survive a week on our own without any officer supervision, but perhaps our ability to get through whatever is about to come our way, now that we're sufficiently hungry, weary, and eager to get the fuck out of the woods. What better time to test our patience than to shove us back into the forest just when we've grown sick of its trees?

We lurch to a stop in the middle of absolutely nowhere. The trees tower here, with thick trunks and near-impossible to see around without moving. I'm eerily reminded of the way the day unfolded back when we did the obstacle course for the first time. Heads bob hesitantly, failing to drift out from the center of the groups, at best huddling in various smaller, more cohesive groups. It's a miracle that we still manage to band together like this, what with the instructors bearing their clipboards down at us at every curve and corner. Strangely enough, there's no sight of either of the head instructors here. That small detail is a comfort as much as it is a caution. If this were a large development, then wouldn't they have come here themselves to administer it? And if not, then whatever twist awaits us can't possibly be all that large.

At last, one of the instructors clears her throat. "You'll be hunting titans today. Apply what you've learned in your lectures and slice the napes to take the dummies down. Not the ply boards, not the pulleys, not the beams. The. Napes."

With no grander instructions than that, deeming her duties over and done with, the officer nods and departs, ceding the floor for the next one to speak up. "You'll head back south-southeast. The dummies will appear at random, at which times you will need to act swiftly or risk another trainee stealing your points. There are no friends today. No allies. Fend for yourselves; your points are yours and yours alone. The wagons will be waiting at the clearing farther down the line. When you see the wagons your run is done; there is no retracing your steps or doubling back. We end this field test when the dummies are all taken down, or all the trainees are at the wagons."

Clear enough. The murmurs die down. People waver. Handles are palmed, straps adjusted, blades tilted to catch and refract the light doting down from up above. I look over to find Jean grinning confidently. Connie looks like he's trying (and clearly failing) to hide a budding plot in his mind. Sasha looks raring to go, a trait I ardently envy given how much drool was seeping into the ball of my shoulder not even five minutes ago. Armin looks cautious as ever, with that far off look in his eyes that makes me wonder what kind of calculations he's trying to make, with a trace of that child-like anxiousness as he angles his body in the direction of the fake titans. Next to him, Eren seems like he's already ready to go to war. He's got this malicious, determined glint in his eye. You would think that he was about to actually kill real titans.

Mikasa and Annie are twins in their expressions. Each is resigned to the task before them. Only, when I catch Mikasa's eyes flitting to her left where Eren stands, I'm surprised to see Annie's move right, to the girl standing next to her, chatting away in her confident, self-assured manner. Hitch prattles on about how she can't wait to show Annie–and all the other southern division trainees–just what the former eastern division trainees were capable of. Marlo shakes his head and mutters something about jinxing herself. Floch rolls his eyes, but doesn't say anything to correct Hitch.

I notice Annie's smile just a split second before it vanishes.

Marco and Christa share a quick word. I'm too far away to hear, but judging by the looks of it, I think they're sharing encouragement. Ymir, naggish as ever, taunts Reiner and Bertholdt in a single breath as she beelines towards Christa. The two look like scolded puppies, stunned into silence. Their shocked, wide eyes follow her as she–I nearly start chuckling myself–cleverly smothers a smirk of her own.

And, finally, there is Mina. She slinks to stand next to me, bumping her gear with mine as she juts a hip out. "No fainting this time, okay?"

"Okay, okay."

She surveys the trainees as we line up, knees starting to bend, torsos leaning forward to leap into the trees. "Who do you think will score the most today?"

"Annie or Mikasa. Or Hitch, or Marlo." Some of the best scorers from either side. Each name has the potential to leave the rest in the dust.

Mina nods. "Mikasa for sure. She's one in a million."

"I guess we'll find out." Mina grins, starting to walk backwards away from me. "If you get in my way, I won't go easy on you!"

Elation sparks inside of me, crinkling to life. "Good. If we cross paths in the forest, we're foes."

Mina laughs. The sound rings, tintinnabulous, clear as a bell, as a wind chime. "Mortal enemies."

Resolutions set, proclamations hanging in the air, the instructors roll their wagons away and block us into smaller groups to force us not to bundle up into one massive flock right off the back. Sharp whistles crawl through the foliage at intervals, notes trilled in patterns that the instructors understand and we most definitely do not. With only two of them left within sight to keep all the 107th in line, the energy around us hones in and sharpens. Anticipation builds, until finally, they set us free.

Like wild animals released from a pen, the trainees take to the air, rushing the trees all at once. It's chaos. It's nerve-wracking, trying to remember to fly at a pace reasonable to the threshold I've worked hard to establish while refraining from getting sucked into the frenzied excitement and getting desperate to score points. And it is difficult–with trainees that're faster and stronger than I am zooming all around me, the whirrs of ODM gear drowning out all other sounds, it's impossible to think I'd score a dummy of my own this early on. What I need is not to keep up with the majority, who seem determined to rush forward for fear of lagging and being left with nothing. What I need is to fan out, to find the edges of this ordeal, to find the titan overlooked because no one branched out wide enough to trip its pulleys.

The world fades into blurs of emerald and evergreen. Sharp scents of spring lace the air, sprinkled into every quick breath I take. My eyes have grown used to the dry wave that comes with the rush of flying, but I can't help the excessive blinking that marks the start of any day's flying while I get back into the swing of things. I weave trees and keep a careful eye on my location in comparison to the nearest sounds of the 107th. Eventually, it is as if I've gone away far enough to shake off anyone close enough to slash a nape I've set my sights on. I hear distant swears and shouts as metal clangs and wood creaks. People have started to find and snatch titans, it seems. The longer the sounds drum on the more anxious I feel myself getting. I can't help it: I gambled, deeming my chances better on an off beaten route than in the thick of things. Hell, maybe I'm not even in bounds. Countless instructors hide out of sight underneath, watching the titans and waiting to activate the ones that have people within their reach, waiting to see who scores. What's more favorable: vanishing in the crowd, or going solo without success?

I can't see the wagons yet. I've no way to gauge how far I've come and how long I've yet to go. For all I know it could be another second until I'm forced to stop. Another second, or another ten minutes. If I can't even find one–

My eyes widen. There. There! I hear the whirrs of the pulleys before I actually see the titan, and on instinct, fire off a hook to my right without looking. I feel my body lurch and let it happen naturally, let it go without fighting the shift. I can see movement just beyond the next tree and feel my grip tighten, my swords move into a slashing position, raised above my head so I can angle down and cut clean across the nape and make my kill. Another second. Another heartbeat. I open my mouth to draw in a full breath, and move into my final lunge, prepared to score, and by the time the titan comes into full sight I realize my error.

I collide and yelp, smacking straight into another trainee, whose presence was smothered by the sound of the titan popping out. Our cables twist immediately, throwing us in dizzying spin after spin, of which I try and fail to stop. "Get the fuck–"

"What the hell–"

The cables smack flat against the grinning maw of the hideously rendered titan, me pressed flat on the outside, the other trainee pinned between me and the fake titan. For a second it's all I can do to get my bearings. It's a miracle neither of us got skewered: me, soaring down to strike and him cutting up sharply. Him. A guy's tenor.

"You okay?" I try to pull my arms down from above my head, but they're firmly tangled. I can't even lift my head up to see if the blades are caught up in the wires too. Just in case they aren't, I hold onto them as best as I'm able. Last thing I need is a head split in two. Or to accidentally kill someone.

"...Fine," he finally grumbles. Now that we're suspended in motion, I'm able to recognize the voice. Dread swamps me, claims me whole.

…

"Eren?"

I feel him stiffen against me. "Aliva. Of course it's you."

"The fuck is that supposed to mean?" Squirming faster doesn't help. If anything, it makes me feel stuck even more firmly. "You're the one who intruded."

He scoffs. "Like hell. And stop moving. You reek."

"Says you." It feels childish of me to point fingers and bicker about who smells worse–in all fairness, we're probably noseblind to ourselves given the fact that we've been out in the wild for a week now–but I can't help it. It's like some filter in me turns off the second Eren gets involved. Like my resistance to petulance and general idiocy goes haywire. "What were you even doing over here anyways?"

"Shut up. Just focus on getting us untangled."

I ignore him, trying for a second to test the limits of my mobility. All it does is make me more irritated by this whole thing. The best I can do is kick my legs a little bit. My upper body is practically glued into its current position, my chin rooted into place looking over his shoulder. "I can't move. You try. Can you see where we're stuck?"

"Your arm is covering one of my eyes." Contrary to his harsh tone, I feel him begrudgingly try to move around, testing the limits of the restraints against us both. He swears under his breath at length. "Both my arms are crossed over my body. I think some of your belts got hitched onto mine. Or at least the blade holders did?"

I exhale sharply, nearly sighing exasperatedly. "You're just guessing."

"That's more than you're doing."

This time, I really do groan. "Of all people–" I stop and correct myself. Taking this out on Eren won't get us out of this mess any faster. "There's an instructor watching all the dummies, right? Let's get them to untangle us."

Eren's silent for a moment, probably mulling over my suggestion. "Why haven't they yet?"

"Because we haven't asked?"

"..." Eren grumbles something under his breath, then raises his voice for a second. "Hey! A little help up here would be nice!"

"–Please," I add quickly. "A little help please."

"Push your leg against the titan," Eren murmurs. "There's movement on the ground but I can't see it clearly." I do my best, kicking up my boot and catching the tread of the top against the grain of the wood, leveraging us to tilt just slightly. "No, no, other way." I press my lips together and switch feet, Eren nagging me the entire time to make sure I get the right angle.

"Well? See anything?"

"A bunch of fucking leaves," he growls back. "I can't see over the sound of your voice in my ear."

"How does that even–"

"Oy! You there–okay, that's good, he's reaching to his pocket–"

"Maybe for a knife? To cut the pulley ropes?"

"No, wait–stop moving us, I can't see anymore," Eren snaps, cutting himself off. I scowl and we repeat the entire process of getting the angle right all over again, this time, with Eren's every word grating on my nerves until we finally line his singular viable eye up right.

"Well? Is the instructor going to help us?" I can hear Eren breathing, can smell the sweat and grime off his neck and hair, but he says nothing. I let my foot fall slack, no doubt ruining his view all over again. We thump back flat against the dummy. "Fine. Don't say anything."

Eren's head tilts back a fraction, granting my neck more mobility than before. I try tilting my chin away first, to see if I can see out towards the trees. When that doesn't work, I shift the other way, only to find my nose pressed directly against his skin. I quickly reset my chin back to where it was before. "The instructor," Eren drawls, like he's trying to figure out how to break the news without exploding. I know the blow coming before it strikes. Still, I fail to brace for the way it deflates me with confusion. "He just grabbed a pen and went back to scrawling notes."

"That's it? They just expect us to get out of this on our own, then?"

I get the vague feeling that Eren's trying to shrug. "Or wait until someone else comes here."

"I haven't heard any of those bird calls. If we're waiting for help, it'd have to be fellow trainees, wouldn't it?" I think about shouting for a second, but with our ears directly next to our mouths, it'd be pretty insensitive to–

"HEY! HELP!"

I wince and find myself shouting back at Eren almost immediately. "Seriously?!"

"Do you want to stay stuck like this or not?" His annoyance is back in full swing. I can practically see the vein sticking out in his forehead, pulsing an angry staccato. "If no one hears us, they're not going to think to come all the way out here."

"No one saw you head this way? Not Armin? Not Mikasa?"

Again he falls silent. I get the funniest tingle up my spine, something that feels like a warning or a flash of wisdom. "No."

My voice falls softer. Why, I can't say. "How come?"

"Points," he says, in that flippant way of his, the one that makes me question whether or not he really means what he tells the people around him. "Anyways–shouldn't you have someone with you? In case you collapse?"

"I've changed," I tell him firmly, and the words reassure me. "I worked hard to get better."

This time, when Eren's only reply is a faint grunt, I can tell that it's not for lack of interest. He has nothing negative to say, this time. No fault to be found in this characteristic of mine: not when he carries the same one himself.

And maybe that's why I ask him my next question. Maybe that's why I can't help but blurt out the complications of my heart, the complexities within that I have no idea how to approach and address. For better or worse my tongue has no filter, after being worked into weary surrender this last week. "If you fell for someone you shouldn't…what would you do? As in–someone whose destiny isn't your own. Someone who will betray you, or you will have to betray…what then?"

"What kind of shit question is that?" Eren asks, his tone incredulous.

"Humor me."

The tethers make some sort of unnerving twanging sound. I realize a belated second later that it's because I've unconsciously been trying to pull back again, so that I could study his face while he answers me. Whatever expression he dawns is a mystery. Even his tone, when he finally speaks, feels unreadable. "Simple. I wouldn't fall."

"Then, what about–"

"Mikasa!" Eren hollers, jolting my senses back to life. "Over here!" I can hear the sound of ODM gear in action drawing nearer, and relief sets in, heady and warmly received.

I hear the Ackerman call out to us (to Eren, really). A second later and there's a prominent scraping sound, like fabric ripping, above our heads as the nape we got into this mess over gets gouged clean off. I feel slack in my line and immediately start falling–she must've cut through the nape and my lines at the same time–and before I have any real chance to startle, I stop falling before I've really even started. The belts hooked under my ribs snag on the ones over Eren's waist, lines between us, his hastily turned blades narrowly avoiding slicing me from throat to chin. My face is eye-level with his gut. When I look up at the Yeager, he's neither scowling down at me nor looking up at Mikasa. Instead he's fixated on the blades in his hands. The way he can move them now, to cut me clean away from him, or drop him down to the ground and take me with him. He does neither.

"Are you alright?" I see Mikasa crouch down from where she stands on the titan's head. Frankly, I can't tell which of us she's addressing.

"Just got a little tangled. It was my fault, really, since I had a higher vantage point and should've spotted him sooner." The apology, directed towards Mikasa, seems to skip completely over Eren. He's still scowling at those twin blades of his.

Finally, he sheathes one.

And offers me the free hand. "Cut yourself loose," he bosses me around. It's enough to weird me out on a normal day. But with circumstances as-is, I toss one of my blades over my back with the limited mobility I've now got in my arms. When I hear it hit the forest floor, I grab Eren's hand and clasp it firmly. The other hand, still wielding, carefully guides the blade to try and saw through the rest of my cables. After some embarrassing trial and error, Eren sighs. "Nevermind," he grumbles, sheathing his other blade. "Just–give me your other hand. Let Mikasa do it."

When I look up at her again, Mikasa nods, adjusting the places she's hooked into so she can repel off the top of the fake titan and walk down its length to where we dangle. I do as Eren says and give him my other hand, trusting now in this link. At first it feels no different than when we were tangled together, but once my cords are cut, I feel the gravitational tug on my body grow distinctly steeper. I suck in a quick breath as I free fall for a split second before catching up to where Eren is holding me, now dangling in full, his hands the only thing keeping me up. With his sleeves bunched up around his elbows, it's easy to see his forearms twitch as the muscles jump to attention. He's been taking training seriously, hammering lean muscle into his once-wiry body.

"You're good," Mikasa tells me lightly.

I nod. Eren's looking at me now, shadowy green eyes boring down at me, devoid of any expression. It dawns on me that he's harder to read, now. He's a newer version of himself. The boy who held me responsible for his mother's death just doesn't look like the one holding me up right now. So then…who is he? Who is Eren Yeager changed into? I swallow and look away. "How's the drop?"

"Don't," he interjects, in a way that has me taken aback until he explains. "What if you fall on one of your swords? Don't be reckless."

He's got a point. Unfortunately, I can't help but feel that maintaining this awkward position would be equally as idiotic, when Mikasa is literally right next to us. Oh. Hello there, convenient solution. I turn to look at her. "Can you help me down, then?"

She nods, and not even two seconds later am I on the ground in one piece. "Sorry about your wires," she apologizes, and I bat her concerns away.

"Sorry for distracting you from the field test. You probably lost some points because of us."

Mikasa, at least, doesn't seem to mind. "It's alright."

Spotting my blades, I walk away to pick them up and carefully sheath them. From here on the ground, looking up at the dummy titan, I think that I can understand the way the real deal makes people freeze up. That wicked smile feels so much larger down here than it ever did when I was pressed to its wooden teeth.

"You should go help Eren," I say, and seeing him suspended there is truly a pitiable sight. It's no wonder Mikasa felt compelled to detour towards us. "If you're able to avoid damaging his gear, he might earn some points back."

She takes a half step forward, then wavers, looking back my way. "What about you?"

"I'll stick around the instructor we saw earlier. Follow him back to the wagons and all that." It's a decent enough plan. Not like I have many options available to me now that I've effectively been grounded.

"If you need help…"

"I'll shout." Mikasa takes a moment, as if assessing the validity of my promise, before nodding and recouping with Eren. I don't bother to watch her set him free. Instead, just like I said I would, I wander the area until I find the instructor that neglected to help me earlier. He says nothing; I hardly expect him to.

But he escorts me out of the forest, and after a full afternoon spent kicking myself over today's performance on the way back to camp, I find myself with a work order for new cables pressed into my hands and the sight of a retreating instructor's back.

A/N: The end of an era is nearly upon us...

I can't believe the training arc is almost ending (sobs)! It feels like we've been here forever. I totally didn't get weirdly emotional over the way the "happiest days of their lives" would be ending soon...

I got very distracted watching trashy reality tv today so sorry for the late upload! It should've been up HOURS ago lmfao. My bad.

I'll update when I can the next few weeks but I'll be across the country for a research workshop, and I forsee myself being pretty busy until that's all settled. Anyways, enjoy the little "Eren cameo" as if LFF didn't turn the whole ass main character into a random side dude HAHHAHA