A/N: For everyone that saw the note in the previous chapter about the fic being discontinued: 1, I am so sorry, and 2, it is going to continue so long as there are people that want to read it. 3

Chapter 44

The evacuation bell rings out like a startled flock of geese, honking in discorded union, and collective shoulders sink with relief in the temporary med tent. "Looks like the gates closed now," one of the soldiers remarks, easing back into their cot. "Should be coming back any minute now."

Murmurs of assent rise up in trickling clouds of preoccupied acknowledgment. I study the rows and rows of bleak faces and gray eyes. Each is clouded with pain, or with memory, or with the same frozen shock that'd rendered Armin statuesque. People aren't handling the resurgence of titans well. And why would they? A second wave would virtually decimate humanity within the walls.

I twitch with surprise. Of course it felt so obvious to me, just then. If this is all it took to wipe Eldia off the map…why didn't Marley just do it already? It would take so little effort. If they really wanted to, all they needed was to cut their losses and kill their targets. The titans they sought would turn up elsewhere. But the island would be empty. The resources would be theirs. Unlimited fuel, untapped potential. Theirs.

So…why haven't they done it? The cadet on the cot next to me groans, wayward arm flung over her perspirated brows. Instead of conquering the resources Marley covets in one decisive action, they chose instead to let a four-child squad wither away here kicking walls with their toes and pandering around with negligible results for their expended energy. If Eren didn't manifest, then what would they even do? Continue to sit around and pick of civilians one by one?

I wonder if it would be worth it to turn a blind eye to that kind of desolation. If I can ignore the Eldians being massacred, then I can ignore Eren's eventual genocide. One in the same, right?

Sharp pricks mottle their way through my body and I wince. At the way my body tenses up instinctively, I hiss, uncomfortable and irritated. A ghost of air snakes its way around the exposed skin on my ankle as the doctor chuckles. "Easy, now. You'll have to bear with the pain and stay as still as possible for me. Do you want me to warp your stitches?"

I suffuse my glare with every ounce of venom I can muster. "Go to hell, Johan."

The man who has somehow become a sort of friend to me over the years smiles faintly, the corners of his mouth chasing the threads of his mustache. "Already there, Miss Moreau."

He's right. All around us the stench of metal and metallic fluid permeates the air. Steel clashes with steel outside the haven of our meager infirmary. Chilled metal shells warble and shiver at the tonal touch of a lover long disgraced. Look at me, the drum cries, thumping its fist against the inner core of the bell, didn't you miss me at all? Only when the sound of the bell fades do I wrangle my body into stillness. Johan's needle darts back under my skin, sewing diligently, inviting nausea to the surface of my gut in drolling waves. He splashes gin over the wound, rubbing idly with a clean towel to disturb the crimson pool attempting to coagulate prematurely around his thread.

"Apologies," he says sheepishly as he sets the bottle back next to the coil of string and the motley crew of polished tools perched on his neighboring stool. "Wartime resources and all that." I shrug.

My damage was tallied and totaled in a score that we decided was bad, but not as bad as it ought to of been: a sorely fractured foot (two metatarsal bones and one tarsal), which he'd slapped into a medical binding and casted boot to keep the calcium and collagen bent in safe fashion; one gnarly puncture wound from Annie's ODM hook, strapped through the leg above the cast, which he'd taken to purging of grime and performing mild surgery and subsequent stitching on (Johan figured me lucky, seeing as it avoided both bone and artery); one almost-black eye, back from when I went cheek-first into the pavement; and finally, one scathing scratch earned on my right arm from the fight I had with Hannes.

My head lolls to the side. The patient next to me (not the one with the arm over her head, the one on the other side) is pestering Johan's coworker like mad, grilling the poor girl to find out when she thinks he'll be able to jump back into the swing of things. It's heroic, almost. Until the nurse says it'll be a few months and the man breaks down into a fit of hiccuping tears, rocking his knees in agitation. "I can't live like this!" he screeches, clawing at his cot like ripping through the fabric will solve all of his problems. I watch a stitch in the weaving pop lose and snag against his hangnail. His nails are bitten scraggly thin, dirty and chapped. "Those bastards will eat me alive if I can't escape–"

"I'm surprised you're not asking the same of me," Johan interrupts. I didn't realize my body was growing tense again just by listening to the man devolve. I close my eyes, breathe deeply through my nose, and go limp.

"Should I?"

"Take care of the foot and you'll be back up in shape anywhere from one to three months from now."

"How generous. What constitutes care?"

Johan pauses in the stitching; I hear the faint sound of scratching waft my way. I peek through my lids, watching as he scratches his neck. If we were back in the training camp I doubt I would have ever seen him do something so lackadaisical in front of a patient. Funny, how the perceived end of the world changes people. "This and that," he decides, the answer as noncommittal as the bags under his eyes. If he tilts his head back to dissolve a crick in his neck, they look blueish. When he bends forward to resume his stitching, they look purple.

I sigh. "I should switch providers."

"Mmm. Perhaps you should."

When Johan finishes up with the stitches he cuts the string off and works to tidy his station. I half expect him to shoo me out of my spot, intent on letting it go to the next poor sod who isn't yet ready to accept they've been injured, but instead he acts like I'm not even there. When his eyes drag over my features, he doesn't see me; just a wall, just a vacancy.

"You could rest. I wouldn't notice."

I smile.

When I slip out the back, the last thing I expect is to hear murmurs of advance troops stuck without enough gas to scale the walls, or of supply squadrons pinned down to their positions. It's none of my business. So instead I pluck apart my next steps, setting them to right in my mind. This part of the plot doesn't need me in the slightest.

Maybe it's selfish, to shirk the one thing keeping me going. But I can't summon enough effort to care. And what good would I be there anyways? On a good day I'm still just Aliva, chronically ill, weaker than most of my comrades despite everything I've done to catch up to them. On a bad day I'm here, standing a dozen feet outside of a shoddily construed medical waystation, one foot in a boot and one half of my gear hanging useless by my hip.

I ought to cut my losses. Call it a day. There isn't a damn thing I can do by trying to haul my ass up over that wall again to where titans and mayhem lie in wait. Truly. So why…

My feet are pointed in the direction of the carnage I just fled. There's so much I want to go back for. So many things I feel desperate, rabid even, to return to. I'd give anything for another moment. Mina, skin soft where smooth and supple against the underside of her breasts. The warmth of her body when we shared a bed, sheets shuffling as she'd roll over in her sleep. The way her nose would crinkle if touched and the way her smile could light up the moon. Her fingers scratching gently against my scalp as she braided my hair. Her voice, so soothing, suddenly haggard as she told me of her past.

It's hard to breathe around the knot swelling to life in me. The ache, the gaping hole, the sorrow and the suddenness of it all. I miss her like I miss the olives. Neither are coming back. Neither of them will grace me with their guidance anymore.

I've stolen gas canisters before I really register what I'm doing. It's harder to heave myself over the wall with only one good hook, but I manage. It's the way I had to go to even get to safety in the first place, after all. I spend a careful moment eyeing the buildings sprawled out underneath me. I'm not hasty like I was earlier. I know what I want, but I won't find it at the cost of my life. Satisfied that no titans linger nearby, I drop off the edge and began a careful shuffle from roof to roof towards the barracks. Elsewhere, I can hear the shuffling of titans and the frightened cries of soldiers still pandering for gas from the shut-in cadets. The nice thing about being one lowly person in a town full of troops is that the titans are drawn to their sheer quantity, offering me a valuable window of time in which to maneuver through the city undisturbed.

The barracks is the easier stop to be made. I walk through the empty halls, taking my time and being careful to remain quiet. Only a night ago was I wandering my way through this building, crossing paths with people whose bodies have now gone cold. My feet falter in front of a single unassuming door.

The wooden grain stays level with my eyes, unyielding. It gives nothing away. It demands nothing in return. I raise the back of my hand and rest my knuckles against the door. After the span of a heartbeat, I pull the hand back and let my fingers rap softly. First once, then twice. "It's me."

Silence.

My hand rotates at the wrist. My fingers unfurl, laying flat on the wood, palm embracing the obstacle in full. "Can I come in?"

Silence, still. Nothing but the thump of my heart and the scrape of skin on solid earthen panel as my hand slides down to the brass knob. When I twist, it comes away easily. She left it unlocked for me. It's a charming thought. Smile lines blink to life in the corners of my cheeks at the notion that she would have considered such a small detail and let it manifest in a simple responsive gesture.

The door cracks open with a squeak of the hinges. "Sorry for barging in," I laugh, then pause to squint. In my mind, the room is dark, a halo of moonlight shining down onto the cracks in the floor. In reality it's filtered with light, a kind of gentle warmth that illuminates the individual dust motes collecting between the bunks pressed to adjacent walls. "Or are you asleep already?"

I wait, breathe in silence, and exhale another small laugh.

"Good, I'm glad. I would feel bad if I'd woken you up on accident." I turn to close the door behind me. In the space of my mental mirage the world feels soft, at ease. There's a budding tranquility in the way that the scene paints itself. I step further into my delusions, finding my pack leaning by my pillow, itching almost to grab it. Nothing in there elicits my interest. The only worldly possessions I really care about are on my person. I thumb Efa's ring and turn to the other bed, shuffling to sit on its edge. "Did you finish the letter?" She did. I reach forward, carefully opening the nightstand drawer to free the sliver of parchment pinned between the lip of the drawer and the tongue of the stand. The teeth of the parchment gnaw at my thumbs, chewing their words across my hands as I unfurl the letter to read it.

Mom, Dad,

it's me, Mina. Are you doing well? I hope so. I miss and treasure you both. I hope all is well with the estate. Hopefully Lord Ernst did not dismiss you from your stations after what happened to me. It embarrasses me to say it, and only my fear of these words being carefully reviewed before reaching you keeps me from speaking on what lies in the past. Perhaps I can tell you in due time. Or maybe I'll send someone in my stead? It's quite a story. Not the one you wanted for your dear daughter, I know, but I'm sure it'll intrigue you nonetheless.

I wish I could see you. I miss you both so terribly. Did I say that already? I guess I did. Ah, drat, there's tears mottling the ink. I apologize if this is illegible. Your daughter was never all that eloquent to begin with, though. She's hardly any different now.

I joined the 107th division with hopes of gaining tenure amongst the ranks of the military police. Recently I tried my hardest to live up to my own expectations. My exam scores fell short. I'm afraid that I landed beneath the top ten in the 107th, and as such, I intend to bequeath this letter to someone who will be returning to the capital in my stead. His name is Marco. You'll know him when you see him–look for an earnest boy with freckles and ample manners, and that's him. I'll be careful to tell him this letter belongs to one Lina and Bram Carolina, on behalf of their most miserable daughter. That way he is sure to give it to you and only you.

I don't know what I'm supposed to do with myself now. I'm a cadet near-ready to enlist in one of the two divisions that remain accessible to me. But, really, I don't want to be a garrison member. I don't want to be a scout. I just want to be part of my family again. What happened with the Young Master was purely my fault and mine alone. You mustn't hate his father; Lord Ernst was gracious to grant me severance and spare me despite my insolence. How many of the other nobles in the area would do the same for a maid? I can think of none. Though I do so wish it hadn't separated me from you so abruptly. I was always my parent's child; I don't know what I am now.

I hope this doesn't make you worry. I feel the need to stress that things aren't all that bad for me. I have lovely friends. Marco–the boy who will bring you this letter–might one day become more than that…but in the meantime I'm content with things the way they are. I've finally earned myself a best friend. Aliva. She's the prettiest girl I've ever seen, in the sense that I've never met someone who shines like she does. It's like the way oil shines. It's dark and potent, unassuming, until sparks set it ablaze. If she is oil, I am water. I didn't think we'd get along all that well in the beginning, but she's everything to me now.

Oh! And there's Christa, and Ymir. They remind me of the two of you (or at least what I imagine you must have looked like back when you were courting). Everytime I see them fall farther in love it makes me a little bit more homesick than before. The four of us girls have become a merry little group. I could go on and on about the people who have made the last few years of my life a wonderful time to be alive. I'm scared to ramble, though…who knows what'll become of all of us now that we're about to step into the real world. I'm terrified that the people I've grown to love will leave me, one by one, falling victim to a fate I'm not yet ready for either. I'm petrified that by the time you read this half of the people I've mentioned in these pages will be gone. That is the life that I've subjected myself to, after all.

But, for now, I'm writing to tell you both that I think of you ceaselessly and I wish for nothing but your continued health and wellbeing. If you can find a way to write back to me, please do. I'm lonely without your correspondence.

With all the love this world can give,

Your daughter, Mina

I breathe deeply, puffing out my chest, and exhale all at once. "Oil," I read aloud. "Water."

Yet the words that I can't help but cling to is neither of those. I press my nail underneath the short phrase–most miserable daughter–until the pressure causes the paper to crinkle in the shape of a crescent moon. Miserable is a word I wouldn't often associate with Mina, and yet there it lies, a self admonition of her own sentiments. I feel heavy. Sober. How long has she carried that weight? Shouldn't I have noticed?

"Oh, Mina," I exhale. I turn my head to her pillow. There's still a faint imprint from where her head rested hours ago. "So you're keeping secrets, hm?" My tease is met with silence. My restraint falters.

The bed feels no softer than mine, but it smells so different compared to mine. Old familiar notes of Mina's soap waft my way as I wriggle into something like a comfortable position. I claim her pillow, dragging it down to my face, burying my nose in the pillowcase and wrapping my arms around the thing as if it were Mina herself. Her scent chokes me. Lemongrass. Bluebells. Spring and tinkling merriment. Fields that we laid in after training. Flowers she'd try and fail to weave into braids. Lazy afternoons and blissful dawns.

My body jerks, and I can feel that trademark tightness begin to swell as tears line up behind my eyes, ready to break free from my ducts. I shake, and shake, and shake, and titans rumble around outside on their way to eat other Minas and to break the hearts of other Alivas. For a split second I imagine dying there. Suffocating in Mina's pillow. Following wherever she's off to next, to apologize properly, for all my shortcomings in life.

Instead I get up and make up Mina's bed. I fold the covers back carefully, tucking corners with the practiced expertise of a cadet taught to make a bed and make it well. When I step back, it's as if she's just slipped out to start the day. There are no gaping holes in the wall to patch, no demonic creatures consuming our ranks, no letters left undelivered.

I take out Mina's ribbon. The blood has oxidized, turned dark and brittle. I fold the letter carefully and wrap it in the ribbon before slipping the little letter into the left cup of brassiere, tying the lose parts of the ribbon around the shoulder strap for good measure. I'll carry her with me, heart to heart. I'll deliver her letter. Not Marco–me.

Content with my findings, my eyes roam over the room carefully one last time. I'll miss it. I'll miss the calm that we carved out together. The comfort.

The door squeaks closed.

My next stop is a tad more perilous, because it's closer to the supply headquarters than the barracks are. I swing my way towards the meeting room with the broken window, once again mindful of the mindless creatures meandering around me. This time I do see a titan: but it's already preoccupied with scurrying over towards the congregated cadets stuck in the supply tower. I slip away unnoticed and duck into the building's nearest stairwell. I'm careful going up the flights, favoring my better leg to avoid fucking around with the boot and my poor fractured foot. The whole trek involves some steady gripping of the railing and more patience than I care to allocate to the task, but before long I'm scott-free. The hallways are eerily vacant in a way that reassures and unsettles me all the same. Nervous whispers against my spine speak of giant eyes and snapping canines around each corner. I'm not so naive as to think there aren't any titans lying in wait to snatch me into their stomachs…but to give into those thoughts would be debilitating.

I find the room I want and head in. Everything is as I've left it: the furniture in mild disarray, the gore of the human condition smeared and speckled across the floor and the walls. It's painfully obvious what kind of activity went down here, from the slime trail that creeps out of the bloodied pool in the corner all the way to the shattered window. I fancy a lesser thinker would take a cursory sweep of the space and determine a titan reached into the meeting room and plucked a wounded morsel straight from their chair. It hardly matters what becomes of the evidence I've got lying about, so long as nothing damning makes its way back to me. I mind the stains–the last thing I want is to imprint my boots in the marred carpet–and weave my way over to the closet, where I find Hannes's perfectly intact ODM set. It takes me more time than I like to take my gear off and swap with his. My mother may have worn his skin, but the body is well and truly that of a man's. I have to do some finagling and a lot of adjusting to get the straps righted to my size and weight distribution.

Satisfied, I scoop my gear up in my arms and exit the room. I wander, making a mental map of the building, until I've spit myself out into a side street. There's a little bakery staring right back at me. My stomach growls, but whatever making ought to have been done earlier has been all but abandoned in the wake of the Colossal Titan's resurgence. I step past the unlocked shop door and stash my old gear underneath the half-full display case for baked goods. I've half of mind to snag a muffin. And I would have, too, if I didn't catch sight of a titan thumping against to the ground just three houses or so down to the right.

My blades are hooked into the triggers and I'm out of the shop before I know it, readying to get out of the kill zone and up to an altitude where I stand a fighting chance. Only then do I realize that the titan is in the middle of dying. The life has been effectively snuffed out of it by a racing streak of dark motion and red flashes. Steel dances in the daylight as the soldier rotates in the sky, hunting down the next titan, another one who'd crept nearer to me than I realized. I find myself chasing after that person, wondering and watching, until the second titan goes down and the figure backtracks my way.

When we lock eyes, I understand.

Mikasa moves like a study in grief, all gray and shadowed and suppressed. She slices with a kind fo suicidal tenacity, oblivious to the dwindling huffs of her gas canisters and the hints of trailing cadets I've only just noticed far behind her. I can hear their alarmed shouts–Armin's, most of all–yet it doesn't look like any of it registers in her eyes. Mikasa's face is a void, Eren the pit of it all, a black hole engulfing all her light and spiraling her straight out of orbit.

She sees me and I try to remember how this part of the story goes. In a flash she descends, gas vanishing and fury surfacing all at once, and all thoughts of plot go out of my head. I've only enough time to get the fuck out of her way before she comes crashing in the street. Her top lip is pulled back so far I can see her gums. The whites of her eyes appear in ghastly contrast to the wormy red veins bulging around in her sockets.

"Eren–"

I wince. This is where she's entirely off her usual pedestal, all of her normal composure and tact all but evaporated. Not exactly a part in the story where I'm aching to offer assistance. She'll find her own fighting spirit without Eren; she can certainly find it without me.

"Armin told me about the argument," she bites out. It's only then that I realize how bad it is for me to be here. Mikasa is not Armin; I've no doubt she'd slice my stomach open and let my intestines gurgle out onto the pavement in retribution. Fear and keen alertness explode all over my back, tensing the muscles and forcing me to take a step back. Wild and wanton in her violence, this Mikasa is the last person I want to be caught dead near right now.

"It was an accident," I say carefully, hands up to placate her. The last thing I need is for Mikasa to sense hostility in me and attack. "Mina…" I choke. The fact that my own voice falters frustrates me. Mikasa, at least, stays silent for a moment. I watch her chest rise and fall in thinly contained heaves. How old is she now, seventeen? Even if Eren fails to harness the shifting power lying dormant inside his veins, he'll of had more time with Mikasa than he did in the original story before he transformed. It makes me wonder if the extra time has rendered Mikasa more restrained and sensible in her grief and anger, or if it has only made it worse.

"It wasn't his fault," she bites out pointedly, and for all the stupid things those words make me severely irritated.

"He stared into my eyes as my head was near-bitten off and decided to ignore me. How is that not his fault?"

"You don't know that. You don't know anything."

I laugh. Mikasa's leaned forward, in my face, and I want nothing more than to spit on her shoe and turn the other way. To hell with her feelings. To hell with her attachments. Eren will come back to her. Mina will never return to me. It's not the same. It will never be the same.

Then again…there's a version of the girl in front of me that'll eventually know how it feels to hold her lover's decapitated head in her arms. How different can that really be from me holding Mina's headless body?

All the flight leaves me in one sodden hush. My shoulders sink. "Look, Mikasa, for all the shit I give Eren, I would never–"

"Move!" Mikasa shoves me out of the way and tethers into the wall behind me, launching up into the air to lay waste to the small abnormal crawling grotesquely fast towards us. I spy the curtained roof of a food cart and hook into the wall above it, letting my two functional cables draw me up into the air so I can rest on my new perch. I gauge the unfurling scene with a quick assessment. Mikasa doesn't need my help, but there is another titan following the small one she's already cut down. And in the other direction–

The Ackerman lets out a startled grunt as her gas runs out. I whip my head around to watch her crash down, swearing all the way. I find myself cussing in earnest as I dart down to her, anxious for her and for the titan approaching her. It's definitely a tall bastard, three or four stories from its gangly feet to its hideous mugs. "Mikasa!" I shout, pointing.

She stands up in a daze and I watch her eyes glaze over with bleak tones of flinty gray. She stands motionless, a banshee in soldier's clothes, a girl dressing up as a giant. Her lips move in silent song. Whatever memories and men she sees are her own. I reach her side only just in time to see the tears slip down her cheeks, to see that flint grey tinge in her eyes dampen to full black hues.

I clamp my hands down over her shoulders, nearly throttling her the way I did earlier to Eren. "Mikasa, get it the fuck together!" I try to stir her back to life, but just like Armin, she's heedless of the world outside her head, oblivious to the mounting doom and the impervious resignation to follow. Either Mikasa gets her shit together right now or I play defense for the two of us and take down this titan. I've got my leg booted and stitched up; theoretically, I ought to be able to do it. So long as nothing comes out of left field to throw me off guard I'll be just fine. I growl, cursing my lot in life, and plunge my triggers into the blade backs at my hips. The thin shwick of the metal as I draw my blades orbits around us. I watch the titan's bulging eyes flinch down to stare at the source of the sound.

Mouth drawn in a grim line, I bend forward in anticipation of the initial ODM lurch I've numbed myself to.

Before I launch into motion, Mikasa clears her throat. "Aliva," she warns. I glance at her at my periphery; she shakes her head. "Let me."

I watch her get ready to take into the air and fight the urge to flick her upside the head. "Your gas. Remember?"

She pauses, then her face morphs into poignant distaste. Rather than sit back, she turns more fully towards me. "Lend me yours?"

"Here? Now? Are you crazy?"

"It'll be easier if I fight," Mikasa explains evenly, but her eyes still hold such unfocused darkness to them. I step back slightly, ears picking up the sounds of titan feet droning into the dirt from not one but two directions now. I sigh.

"There's no time. I'll deal with them. You…try to trip it up, if you can. Or stay out of the way."

Mikasa grunts, but at least this time she doesn't bicker. I'm starting to think she doesn't really have it in her to call any shots right now. Nor should she, given how poor her current judgement feels to me. Mind made up, I step forward and brandish my swords. I hear Mikasa doing the same behind me. Useless as it feels, there's still a part of me that appreciates the flimsy notion of having backup in a situation like this. Even the fact that Eren's alleged demise has deeply destroyed Mikasa's stability isn't enough to erase the reassurance of comradery in its entirety. It makes me nostalgic and bitter actually. To think that Mikasa could have been guarding my back and I hers all these years, had I grown to amiable standing with her and Eren and Armin. Instead I stand poised like an outsider looking in. A glass bottle too light to get sent back out to sea; too light to stay wedged in the sand after every lapping wave brings it in to kiss the shore.

With a cry, Mikasa prepares to charge. I fire my hooks and all becomes motion, a tube of fluidity that we tumble through in strokes of light and lashed out malevolence. I'm swinging in the air, angling towards my prey, when the world goes dark. Like the sudden onslaught of a solar eclipse, the sun vanishes beneath the grand body stretched in action. The titan we were targeting flies back with the force produced by the punch it received. Its head twists like an owl's, doing an impressively fatal imitation of a head rotating a hundred and eighty degrees. The titan loses balance and crashes farther down the street. Mikasa's hands are clapped over her ears, her posture condensing and entirely alarmed by this new development.

I, on the other hand, feel utterly lethargic now that I've confirmed for my own eyes that I did the right thing. Eren's titan looms over the both of us, shaggy hair swaying with each motion and fist still smushed into its fighting position. The thumb carefully rested against the side of his ring finger makes me thing, curiously enough, of the way my fingers no doubt look similar in fashion whenever I twist Efa's ring.

He roars. The sound claws at the buildings, the ground, the birds and the clouds and the breeze. This time I'm forced to try and protect my ears as the thundrous sound rumbles out all around me. At length it subsides, and the Attack Titan shifts just enough so that I can see its front.

All of my earlier relief fades. The thing that just killed the titan for us is no doubt the Attack Titan, and yet…it's off. Like a crystalline image, refracted at me with slight warping, an imperfect imitation. It's Eren's titan, that's for damn sure. If he'd been disolved in the stomach acids of the bearded titan, I know for damn sure the new shifter would have had a different, distinct form for their iteration of the Attack Titan.

And yet. And yet. This titan was Eren's, but instead of the face I remembered, this one seems angrier. The scowl in the Attack Titan's expression cuts deeper in through his features, leaving harsher shadows and brighter highlights all over him. But what was truly shocking wasn't the fluctuation in expressions, but rather his mouth. Eren's original titan had a mouth that curved up at the sides, characteristic of the vast majority of titan expressions.

This one, from what I can see, has its lips tugged down in a subtle, furious scowl. I gulp.

A/N: literally am posting this and passing tf OUT because I am sleepy but gah the angst is pulling at my heartstrings *sobs* ALSO 180K?!