Under the Tree
The delicious smell of cooking meat and boiling vegetables filled the small kitchen, steam clinging to the windows and dripping onto the shallow sills below them. Mixed with the warmth of the fading day the heat was almost stifling, and Annie pushed her damp hair away from her sticky face with a scowl.
Taking a pair of metal tongs she flipped over the slabs of deer meat in the cast iron pan on the stove, relieved that they hadn't burned. Wild game was only now becoming more readily available to the public, mostly thanks to Hizuru farmers and their reintroduction of wildlife to the scarred land of Marly. She had found this buck hidden among a grove of tall trees that had somehow survived the Rumbling, carrying it all the way home with a satisfied grin. This kind of meal was a rare occasion, and her and her father would be able to use every part of it; she might even try her hand at drying and and smoking if she was feeling particularly ambitious.
Annie opened the door off the side of the kitchen, taking a deep breath of the only slightly less warm air. He father had made the trip into town a few hours ago, and she was expecting him home any minute. She knew why he had gone to the market two days in a row, and a small bubble of gratitude swelled in her chest. They should have been back days ago, but none of their sources had any information to give them; it was as if they had all dropped off the edge of the planet.
The slump in her shoulders that used to be so prevalent had returned, and a familiar sense of dread tickled at the back of her mind. A memory of her father's words before the company departed flashed in Annie's mind but she quickly shook it away.
They will be home soon, I know it.
Her father's return a few moments later was announced by the thundering of hooves on the dirt outside just as Annie was throwing the meat and vegetables onto a large platter. He entered the kitchen soon after, his hide boots thumping on the wooden floors. She turned to him, holding the tray up higher for his inspection, but froze when she saw the perturbed look on his face.
He only responded to her questioning stare with two words, but those specific two words sent the beautiful tray of food crashing to the floor between them.
"It's Armin."
Running his hand through his hair, Jean lumbered behind the group leaving the Veritas government chambers feeling sullen. For days they had been going over the events that took place on Paradis, yet they seemed no closer to understanding the ramifications those events were bound to have on their already unstable world. The news of Ymira being Eren's daughter had shaken them all to their core, especially when Mikasa reluctantly revealed that she had known for many years who Ymira's father was, but even that revelation left them feeling blind to whatever forces were really at work behind it all.
He agreed with the governments conclusion that Paradis may have more connections on the mainland that they first realized, but he was not particularly fond of the repercussions of this realization. Since the compound they had used for preparations had been exposed somehow, they had been forced to room within the parliament building under careful protection since their return. Hell, they weren't even allowed to step outside unprotected now, and these outing were almost always under the dark of night.
Some piece of the puzzle was hidden from them, that was abundantly clear. Jean surmised that whatever that piece was tied all these seemingly random incidents together, and he was beginning to fear that whatever it was had the power to change everything.
The sound of hurried footsteps and a blur of movement passed by him, and Jean watch as Arya moved quickly around the small crowd and took off at a near sprint down the hall and out of sight.
It had been a small miracle that they were able to convince her to attend these meetings at all, and when she did, they were even more hard pressed to keep her there. Jean couldn't blame her: every person on their team owed her more than could be expressed by now, and Armin's life was worth more than its weight in gold to both his friends and the Veritas government.
Picking up the pace, Jean rejoined Mikasa and Connie as they made their way to the small hospital wing within the parliament building, noting the anxious crease that had formed between Mikasa's eyes. Reaching out Jean put a hand on her shoulder in a consoling gesture.
"You okay?"
She turned her head to look at him, smiling slightly.
"Yeah, I'm okay. I just want to go see how Armin is doing."
Jean nodded. "Alright then; let's go see how our brainiac is getting on."
It didn't take long for them to make it to the medical wing, and the three of them headed for the half open door at the end of the hall that had not so long ago held Captain Levi in his own recovery. Slinking around the door quietly they entered the room, eyes trained on the bed pushed near the open bay windows. Arya was going about her tasks happily, shooting them a wide grin as she checked over the gauze-wrapped injuries on an equally enthused Armin, who regarded his dear friends sheepishly.
"How bad was it this time?"
Mikasa sighed contently, clearly savoring in the sound of his voice. He was propped up slightly in his hospital bed with an almost comical number of books and papers littering the sheets around him. Sitting on his lap was one of the texts unearthed at the Marotsara site, accompanied by a plethora of translation manuals for known languages. He was anxiously twirling a pencil between his fingers like a baton, and Jean let out a chuckle.
"Terrible as always. When are you going to stop faking it and get off your lazy ass to help us?"
Arya rolled her eyes playfully and Armin laughed in response.
"I'm sorry, I know they are asking for information we simply do not have, but I'm not sure I'd be of much help just yet."
"Are you having any luck translating?" Connie asked, settling down into a wide chair next to the bed.
Armin's brow furrowed and he glance over the book in his hands, shaking his head slightly.
"It's so close to our written word that I can almost get a grip on what it says, but the differences are so obscure that none of the languages I've cross-referenced it with have worked. All I know for sure is that it's very old, which begs to reason that the settlement we came across on the island housed a much more ancient people than we first thought."
He sucked in a sharp breath through his teeth and winced as Arya re-wrapped his shoulder, and she offered him an apologetic grimace. The room fell into a gentle hush, and Mikasa took a step forward in concern.
"Are you sure you want to do this, Armin? You should be focusing on recovering; whatever is in those books can wait."
Jean voiced his agreement to this, but Armin shook his head once more.
"I'm sure your right; even with round the clock care from one of the best doctors we've got," He shot Arya an overwhelmingly appreciated look, "I've still got quite a ways to go when it comes to healing. But I don't think this is something we can push to the sidelines anymore. Too many questions are being asked with not enough answers, and I have this terrible notion that if we leave this unchecked, by the time we figure it out it will be too late."
They regarded him with unease, and Jean wondered frightfully if he had somehow read his mind as Armin continued.
"The fact that there was another group of people living on Paradis along side us is mind-boggling, to say the least. I still think that being so far North would have given them an edge, but how did they survive all those years in open titan territory with no form of defense?"
Connie frowned, sitting up straight in his chair. "It just doesn't make sense. If they were sent there by Marly, why hadn't they been transformed into titans like everyone else?"
Armin shared a look with Arya, who cleared her throat.
"Unless Marly didn't have anything to do with it."
It took a moment to grasp what she was implying, but when they did, Jean's eyebrows shot up.
"God, do you think they might have been there on purpose?" He asked incredulously.
Armin shrugged. "It's the only thing that makes sense, given what we found. Our theory is that these people were here before the king built the walls, and before Marly started dumping Eldian's off as punishment for their "sins". My question is: even if they had existed in the mountains before the king constructed the walls, why would they have forsaken that relative safety after everything went to hell just to keep themselves from prying eyes; unless they had something to protect."
"And you think whatever they wanted to protect is in those books?"
"Or the books themselves." Armin said, nodding. "It's just another feeling, of course, but it's possible that whatever these people were trying to keep hidden might give us an insight we've never had before."
The five of them fell silent for a moment, considering this. Jean supposed that any hope of figuring out what the fuck was going on was worth investigating, even if it was a long shot. Hell, if there was even ONE of their many mysteries that could be unraveled, he would gladly take it. He turned to ask Connie to join him on a run to the commissary kitchen; they would clearly need some fuel if they planned on diving into this collectively, but was pulled up short by the quizzical look he was giving Arya.
She had opened her mouth as if to say something but no words had come out, and it seemed to Jean like she was caught in some fierce battle with herself over whether or not to speak up. Armin caught sight of her expression soon after he did, and when her reluctant eyes met his curious ones, she relented.
"Since the day you arrived for your meeting with the Council," Arya began slowly, sliding down into the chair opposite Connie and wringing her hands uncomfortably, "I've has this… this sense that I just can't seem to shake. An overpowering sensation that something is rushing towards us; like some pivotal moment left undone. The more we dig into why all of this is happening, the more certain I am that this feeling has something to do with it."
Armin's eyes were wide, staring at her with an unfathomable expression. Jean got the sense that Armin was not exactly surprised by what she had said, but rather her admission confirmed some idea that had been tumbling around in his mind.
"I've felt it to." He said, and Arya looked up in surprise. "Something was set into motion at that meeting that I still don't understand, and it has continued to build ever since. It was there when we saw that colossal, and when we found these books." He gestured down at the volume on his lap. "I even wonder if it has something to do with your connection to Levi."
Arya's cheeks flushed and she looked at the ground.
"I don't know what that is."
"Neither do I, but it's too much of a coincidence to not make note of. All of this is leading us to some unforeseeable point in time, where everything we've done in the last decade will come to a head. Honestly, I don't think it's much of a stretch to say that the outcome of the last 2000 years will ride on the choices we are about to make."
The air rang with tangible silence until Mikasa leaned forward, a shaky whisper escaping her lips.
"Does this have to do with Eren?"
He didn't answer her right away, toying with the pencil he still had clutched in his hands. When he spoke, his voice was unsteady.
"For so long the mystery of titans has plagued my mind. In the two millennia they've been on this earth, we haven't even come close to grasping their true nature, and we have no idea how a power like theirs could be part of such an ordinary world. Zeke told me that the titan organism evolved in the same way we did, but I've never been able to comprehend that. Were the Paths really just a construct that Ymir created herself, or was it something greater than that?
I don't know what part Eren had to play in all of this, but I can't help but wonder… did we really finish it back then? Okay, perhaps we managed to destroy the organism that seemed to be the origin of it all, but how can we be sure? Maybe it's just a lifelong fear that makes me feel this way, but there is one thing I'm certain of now: this isn't over, and until we find a way to make sense of it all, it won't be."
The door to their room flew open, smashing against the wall and making all of them jump. Oz's bearded face could barely be seen behind the tower of books he had haphazardly stacked in his arms, which he dumped onto a table top near the door with a huff.
"This is all I could find on the different dialects in the South, but I-"
He stopped mid step when he caught sight of his stunned audience, but then smiled warmly at them.
"Oops, sorry kiddos. Am I interrupting something important?"