These contradictory beliefs, I can't explain. And something tells me, I've always been this way.
You kept me blind to protect me.
Would it work if I tried to do the same?
# # #
It was an overcast morning. Mikasa sat on the fountain, reading the day's newspaper. The story she read wasn't on the front page. That story was about a tavern singer who'd been killed last night. The suspect was in holding.
Mikasa folded the newspaper and put it away. The trees and grass and flowers were quiet. It was like the whole world was reminiscing on faded memories. Eren moved to sit beside her.
"Sorry about Lady Velvet," he said.
The windows of the greenhouse began to drip water silently from a falling mist of rain. Occasionally small streams ran down the windows as the mist mounted on the glass.
Eren said, "To allow my heart to stay clean, what did you mean by that?"
At first Eren thought Mikasa wasn't going to answer. She took a minute. "I want you to be able to smile freely," she said.
Eren put his eyes on the scarf. He was getting closer to understanding what it was all about.
"The florist said I listen to the flowers," Eren said. "But inside this place, I can't hear them." He looked around him, at the garden. The quiet didn't break. "I want to be able to hear them. They bring me closer to an important memory."
Mikasa got up from the fountain and Eren watched her walk to the blue flowers. She sat on her knees in the grass. Eren wanted to follow and sit on his knees next to her. He did. Together, they sat on their knees and watched the flowers.
Mikasa picked a blue flower and cradled it. She turned to Eren. Everything she did seemed important. She touched the sensitive place by his ear. Signals covered his flesh, becoming receptive of her. Then her hand passed his temple, and she tucked the flower behind his ear.
"I couldn't begin to guess what's going through your mind lately. But I don't agree with Captain Levi. I think you're the true Eren. But the Eren from before is the true Eren, too. You're him, and he's you."
Eren was surprised by this. Then there was a relief he hadn't known he'd been waiting for. It was like a fresh flush of blood rising in a wound, clean and warm and good.
"I think I've been wanting to hear someone say something like that," he said. "I was really hoping someone would."
# # #
The Military Police had let Eren outside. Standing under the open sky, he felt the sun. Miles and miles from HQ, a forest surrounded him. He had no idea where he'd been brought with the sack that'd been shoved over his head, it was a strange explicit feeling: To be lost in the middle of nowhere.
The Military Police were spread out, four to five meters from Eren, circling. They pointed guns. They watched.
Eren viewed the sky. Then he opened his hands and let the sun into them.
The officers told him to call the Attack Titan, tensing their aim. Eren shut his eyes, and the sun hit his eyelids and dyed the world red.
The officers said they were serious, and they threw a knife to show how serious they were. It landed in the grass, two steps away. They ordered Eren to transform.
Eren kept his eyes shut, absorbed in his own world. He didn't want to change, so the Military Police asked if he wanted to see his insides on the outside; they would show him what it looked like if he didn't follow their orders.
"You won't kill me," Eren said, and his voice traveled the interval with a serene clarity, in the middle of nowhere.
We'll shoot you from the chest down, they said, just enough to tear you open a little.
A shell skimmed the grass. A sharp band of air blew Eren's hair off his face. He opened his eyes. The strange explicit feeling of being lost in the middle of nowhere was different now. He felt cold. Empty.
Eren approached the knife the officers had tossed at him. He picked it up. Then he trained it on his palm, holding it steady.
# # #
Chemicals guided Eren into a state of calm and formlessness. He idled on the sofa in a drowse. The doctor sat across from him like usual. There were no windows, making the room opaque. Nothing but the flickering glow of candles and lamps.
"The Military Police is growing more urgent," the doctor said. "I heard you still haven't been able to turn into your titan. Was it very painful?"
Eren gazed into a soft mist, drifting.
"Captain Levi wasn't so different from those MP officers. Their actions are the same."
Eren closed his eyes. Once he closed his eyes, he couldn't open them and stared into his dark, inner mind.
"You haven't said much the last couple times we've seen each other," said the doctor. "Have you spent more time thinking about your confusion?"
"Yes," Eren said.
"And what are your thoughts?"
"Why would I forget someone I care about?"
Eren pried his eyes open. He saw the doctor sitting and facing him. She had her legs crossed, wearing a skirt. She spoke with a placid, unquestionable wisdom. "Love inspires in us our deepest fear. You're scared of the future," she said, "because you can't bear to be alone."
Eren felt his heart move. He tried to identify what he felt.
"The memory suppressant targeted memories that put you in mental or emotional distress. The fear of experiencing that unbearable loss activated the medication's memory-editing. The memories of her were buried to protect you from a future you'd never be able to suffer."
# # #
Nile Dok arranged a conference with the superior officers of the Survey Corps. He needed to discuss the pattern of Eren's titan shifting failures. White curtains were drawn away from the window. Dust floated in the light. They sat at a long table, facing one another.
Hanji asked if Nile had read their notes about titan shifting. Nile had read the notes and knew Eren needed a purpose to change. But the military had provided a purpose, hadn't they? The future of the island depended on Eren. Was that not purpose enough?
Hanji sat with her elbows on the table and her face contained no expression. She said, "The 'future' of this island? 'A global war?' These concepts are too abstract to motivate a person like Eren."
Levi said, "You desire his complete obedience. But you have no understanding of the person who holds that power."
Nile nodded. He knew this. Then he asked what would supply the proper motivation for somebody like Eren. For what reason would any normal person launch an attack? Why would anyone in the world want to kill another human being? These were the questions he had no answer to.
"If you can't even answer that question," Levi said, "then throw away any hopes you have about controlling him."
# # #
Horse hooves chopped down on wild grass and spun the carriage's wheels on their axels. Every dip and rise in the ground jarred the coach. In the carriage, an MP guard sat next to Eren, shoulder to shoulder, and sitting across from them, Armin and Mikasa hadn't been blindfolded, staring at the guard's face. For a long time, nobody spoke, rocking back and forth with the ground, quiet and staring. Eren saw nothing through the burlap sack covering his head, but his hands remained free.
"Your childhood friends have joined us," the guard said. "You don't have to be alone this time. Aren't you happy?"
Eren didn't reply. Armin and Mikasa said nothing either, and they all rode the rest of the way, silent.
When the carriage stopped, they got out and Armin and Mikasa found themselves in the middle of a forest clearing. They followed the MP officers and stood where they were told to stand while Eren was led, with the burlap sack over his head. further into the clearing. The grass rose to his knees and undulated as he waded through it.
The sack was removed. Then he stood still to hold the world in his eyes. He'd been here before — He'd been here a few times before, in fact. Like before, the knife was shoved into his hand. Like before, the officers encircled him with their guns and told him to call out the Attack Titan.
The knife flashed and then blood fell. Eren watched each drop as it vanished. The muscle in his chest knotted, pushing more blood out the gash. After a couple minutes, the blood flowed thick and strong, and Eren looked up at Armin.
"He can't do it," Armin said. "He doesn't know how to change into his titan."
Eren pulled the knife through his skin and dampened the ground red. Eren stared at his opened forearms. He squeezed his hands into fists, driving out faster, hotter blood. Nothing happened.
Mikasa moved and headed toward him. The grass susurrated around her legs and a light wind came. Then metal clicked, and guns levelled.
Mikasa broke into a run.
The woods echoed with the clap of gunfire and then all the sound was sucked away, and their ears rang.
Eren felt no pain. He twisted his body right then left to examine himself. He was all right. He looked up at the circle of MP officers. Their guns were angled to the side, focused on an entirely different mark.
In a frozen stupor, Armin stared at his leg, blown off at the knee. Then he fell to the ground, clutching his left thigh in his fingers, and screamed.
Mikasa turned and tore toward Armin's.
Blood spouted from Armin's leg. It stopped and then spouted again, gushing faster at every push through the major artery. Armin thrashed as the pain convulsed him on a torture rack.
An officer flipped Armin over. He nestled the rifle against Armin's right leg. Lying on his back, Armin stared up at the MP, shaking in spasms, unable to get the words out. Before the MP could let off another round, he was hit to the ground and lay there, stunned cold by a hard physical blow. Mikasa caught his rifle and stepped on his chest and didn't let him up.
Around them, the other rifles swung around and Mikasa stood still under their barrels. She said, "Armin, let's take Eren back. Use the Colossal."
"I can't do anything here," Armin said. "You're too close."
"Stay down, then, and cover your head." Mikasa lifted the gun. She hardened her shoulder in a padded recoil.
Armin was drooling. His tongue fell from his mouth. He tried to shout, his tongue flapped wildly.
Then — an explosion.
Time stopped. Bands of electricity sprang down from the sky and gusts of wind flattened the grass and ripped it free of the soil. Trees snapped and lost their branches. Everybody braced against the force of the wind, squinting their eyes.
At the middle of the clearing, a yellow light surged in a crackling impulsion. A dark shadow plunged over the field. Guns lowered as the Attack Titan blackened out the sun.
Standing in the field, the Military Police craned their heads back. Their strained necks pulled their jaws. The shadow held them down, and the Attack Titan stood motionless, looming in the middle of the sky.
Mikasa sat down on her knees. She pulled Armin into her lap and held him. The fonts of blood slowed. His face and hands had turned gray. The Military Police gaped up, frozen, with their heads back stiff.
Suddenly — the ground shook, once. Then, it shook again when the Attack Titan took another deliberate, crashing step forward. Its foot rose. It thundered down.
Eren's titan made a slow march forward, with pieces of land and earth left behind that'd cbeen rushed under its feet.
"Eren's not in control," Armin said. "Everyone needs to run — now," he said.
The Military Police turned and fled through the grass, heading back to the horses and carriages. Mikasa held Armin in her lap as the Attack Titan sent birds from the trees in screeching, black waves. They watched from the ground, and they knew in the back of their minds that, soon, their time together was going to be over.
Armin's leg burned and hissed, emitting a smell of raw, new flesh. He healed slow. Mikasa hoisted him under the armpits and raised him up to a sitting position.
"Eren isn't going to stop," Armin said. "And we don't have any way to reach him."
Mikasa got to her feet.
"What do you plan to do?" Armin said.
"I'm going to talk to him," Mikasa said.
"He might not see you."
Mikasa took herself away.
"Even if he does see you," Armin said, "his original memories of you are gone."
Mikasa kept a straight course. Armin could say nothing more; there was nothing he could do, watching as Mikasa crossed into the Attack Titan's path. It walked slow and blind, trampling everything, with no purpose at all.
"Eren," Mikasa said. The ground shook and it shook her and the sky seemed to shake too, nothing able to hold it back. Mikasa remained still, pressed under the titan's blind glare. "Let's go back to our garden," she said. Her scarf fluttered behind her back. She opened her hand and extended it.
The sky stopped shaking. The Attack Titan melted to bone.
# # #
Eren's breathing was of a relaxed and quiet regularity, and a soporific weight fixed his body to the sofa.
—Close your eyes, said the doctor.
Eren closed his eyes. Then the doctor's voice led him by the hand into a deeper mind.
—Somewhere here there exists the object of your 'world.' Your world is not 'this' world.
—Now, what do you see?
—You see a garden? A flower? A scarf?
A pen scratched paper. The doctor tapped her foot four times. Five, maybe.
—Your world is not 'this' world. Your 'world' is right in front of you. No place is too dark and small as long as they stay with you.
—To protect this 'world' is your only wish.
