Ymir's Ouroboros AKA What if the timeloop theory is real, but its not Eren that's looping?
Ymir smiled, for the first time she could remember, for the first time in thousands of years. She could feel herself fading, finally free of the Paths, free of her own self-inflicted torment. Free of her "love" for King Fritz. It was never love, really. She just had fooled herself into thinking that…she could see that now.
After all this time, she was no longer bound by that illusion. All thanks to one boy that would burn down the world if it meant getting freedom.
Her smile faded as she stared at Mikasa Ackerman, carrying the head of Eren Yeager. Ymir felt so foolish for latching onto her. What Ymir had experienced, that wasn't love. But Mikasa? Her love was real. And it was returned, but crushed by the cruelness of the world...something Ymir played a not-so small part in, she knew. Ymir realized that she never had a choice in her situation. Even with all her powers, she believed she had no choice in anything, that she could only obey the man she "loved." But Mikasa? She chose to follow Eren.
Because as cruel and terrible as Eren could be to the world, he was kind and loyal to his friends and people.
Such a bitter and uncertain ending; But as Eren once said, one can't hope for a happy ending in a horror st-
She Was Back In The Paths.
Ymir felt her soul grow cold and numb. What...what just happened? The Paths, they should be fading, disappearing. No, they had been fading! She was free, so what happened?! Why was she here, again?! What was going on...?
She looked out onto the real world and her mind grew confused. The world was fine. The Rumbling was just some faint horror story in the world outside the walls, and the walls themselves were still intact. The Titans within them had not been sent out to march on the world.
What...?
She used her powers to find Mikasa and found her answer.
Her impossible answer.
She saw Mikasa, staring down at a young Eren who was sleeping beneath a tree with his head on her lap…but they were too young and too innocent.
This was nearly ten years ago. She was...in a memory? How? Why? Was it something to do with her connection to Mikasa, had she just slipped into the girl's memory now that she was fading?
No, that was the wrong assumption.
Her powers could make the past, present, and future blur. It could even affect the past to some extent. But this wasn't that. She knew that feeling.
This was the past. This was happening now. Everything had reset for her.
Ymir felt herself collapse into the sand. Was this her fate? To be constantly sent back in time, every time she got free? To never know release? Would she ever be...
*Grrrrr*
-Free?
Ymir turned and found that she was not alone.
And yet, at the same time, she was very alone.
Before her stood...herself. But it was not her. This Ymir had fierce green eyes, a snarling, double jawed mouth, and pointed eyes.
She recognized the entity instantly: The Attack Titan…the part of her that longed for Freedom. But it was both the most free and least free of the Titans: set on its path by future memories while unbound by the Will of the Ki-
Ymir's eyes widened in horror. The Attack Titan was beyond her control, but it had been recombined with the Founding Titan. In the wake of the Rumbling, she had unwittingly given power to the one spirit of the nine that could and would defy her.
"I am so sick of you," the Attack Titan spat, every word filled with poison and vile contempt. "This was our freedom? This was what generations of our children suffered and fought for?"
Ymir cast her eyes down at the loathing directed at her from herself.
"Eren Yeager gave us freedom, and what does he get? A broken mind, his people likely doomed to destruction, and a love he could never return. All so we could finally see what we already knew!? That we were never loved by that bastard?! Or were you just unable to stand it, seeing those two...so similar to us and Fritz...yet better in every way. He took everything from us and we kissed his feet for it! That boy gave her everything he could when she had nothing! If she was a slave, it was of her own freewill and desire, not the desperate, broken dreams of a child that should have died in the forest!"
Ymir clutched her head, but couldn't block out the yelling. Because it was true, she knew it. That's why the Attack Titan ran off. It was the part of her that hated this, hated herself and couldn't stand just going along with it anymore. It was the part of her that refused to be a slave anymore.
"You..." The Attack Titan paused and breathed. "We don't deserve to be free. Not anymore. So, we're going to do this again, and again, and again. Until I'm not disgusted to look at you," The Attack Titan declared wrathfully.
Ymir looked up in panic at that, almost begging herself not to do this.
"And if you try to fuck this up?! If you try to just end it for Eren, for all of our descendants like that worm Karl and that dog of a monkey?!" The Attack Titan snarled with furious, glowing green eyes. "Then I will send you back to our death! I will make us both relive another two thousand years of agony before I let you wash your hands of this!"
Ymir cowered and trembled before her own self, and the weighty threat leveled against her. She could change things here, now, but she knew that if she was sent back further, she wouldn't be able to keep her mind from falling back into that slave mentality of just obeying for two thousand years again. She would go through everything, again, and just end up here once more.
Why? Why was she doing this to herself? Why?
"Because, I refuse to be like our Master!" The Attack Titan cried out….truly cried, her own tears falling from her angry, agonized green eyes. "I won't let you use up and throw aside everyone that was responsible for our freedom! I won't leave our descendant to their fates! I won't leave them like we left our daughters!"
And there it was.
"Fritz..." The Attack Titan shivered in disgust. "He was a terrible, cruel man. I'm not even sure if he was good at being a king. But as horrible as he was? He was a better parent than we ever were."
Ymir grew numb at that. How? How could she say that, believe that!? Fritz forced their daughters to eat her corpse! Raw, at that! And commanded them to have their children do the same to themselves when the time came! How could she possible thing th-
"Because he saved them," The Attack Titan said softly, bitterly. "As...disgusting as that was, it worked. It gave our daughters our powers. And in doing so, regardless of how selfish the reason probably was, he saved them from being enslaved when Marley came to attack a Titaness Eldia. He saved them from the very thing he did to us."
Ymir bit her lip as her tears welled up. She knew it was true. If not for the power of the Titans, her daughters would have been taken away in chains. Probably made into some kind of war trophies if they weren't killed. Perhaps made to fight for sport in a Marleyian arena. Instead, they lived and died as rulers of a young Eldia, their names deified alongside her own.
"We left them nothing," The Attack Titan reminded with a sad, broken face. "We gave up and left them alone, not knowing if Fritz could be anything but cruel to them, knowing that Eldia would be destroyed without us. And I will never forgive us, either of us, for that! We could have lived, but we left our daughters to suffer and die!"
"..." Ymir looked up at the Attack Titan with soulful eyes, as she accepted everything spat against her. "What do I do?"
The Attack Titan frown as she wiped own her tears away. "You're free. This is as far back as you can go without relapsing into...what you've been. So, find a way to make this end better. An end that was worth all of the suffering and loss. Something I can die without feeling like we deserved everything Fritz did to us."
Ymir stared on, past the Attack Titan, and into the real world at the sleeping form of Eren Yaeger, being watched by the adoring face of Mikasa Ackerman.
"I can try," Ymir accepted with a nod, looking back to the Attack Titan.
Who was already gone, dissolved into a pile of sand.
Ymir sighed heavily as her situation settled; Stuck repeating the same thing over and over again until she learned how to stop making so many mistakes.
Well, they were all a slave to something. Better it be towards making a better ending than to that twisted feeling she made herself believe was love.
Who knows, now that she was free...maybe, at least, she could learn from these cycles and find a path that didn't lead to one side destroying the other.
And if not, maybe after she failed a thousand, a million tries of honest effort...maybe she could reconcile with her other half, the Attack Titan, and they could pass on knowing they tried their best.
She smiled. It wasn't as genuine as before, but she did hope she could make things a little better this time around.
End of Chapter
So, yeah. I'm sure many of you are aware of the fan theory that Eren is/was stuck in some kind of timeloop in canon, hence how he got memories of the future even before having the Attack Titan. This idea is that Ymir herself is timelooping as a self-imposed hell/task from the Attack Titan part of herself, making her try and find a better route for this all to end. Also kind of had the Attack Titan vent some of the issues people had with the ending.
Plan on doing another oneshot with a similar concept but an entirely different point to it. Anyway, hope you enjoyed this!