Chapter 5
The Armored Titan slides to a stop, chunks of the wall and great funnels of dirt soaring all around it. Everyone around me is in various states of horror. My mother is clutching my arm, pressing me against her, yet it is almost like she's not even there.
The titan gleams gold and red in the fading light. Its eyes glow golden, its hair platinum blonde. I should be less scared of it than I am of the Colossal Titan, but I know which one is harder to kill at the end of the day. I know exactly who lies inside of each of those titans and I am considerably more unnerved to see this one in the flesh.
The Armored Titan does not look in our direction as it rises, slowly, to stand. I cannot take my eyes off of it. My mother is screaming something to the pier we've left behind, no doubt trying to tell my father to stay safe, to be well.
Wall Maria is not safe anymore. The titans will flood through Shiganshina, bleeding into the space between Wall Maria and Wall Rose. I know the carnage that comes next. I have officially played a part in bringing it about, after all. In failing to stop the two shifters from breaking down the gates I have given them the means to bring about slaughter on a massive scale. Everything that comes next and all the implications of what I've let happen today are my burden to carry. Marley's sins are my own.
And, slowly, gently, a year goes by.
Humanity retreats to Wall Rose. The death count rises up to ten thousand. I hear the numbers roll in daily and when a certain doctor returns to find his son, I turn a blind eye. I will regret it later, of that I am sure, but Eldia needs Eren to wield the Attack Titan. Especially if I am destined to be nothing more than a sickly, meddlesome creature in this world.
Carla's leg starts to heal. It is a slow journey–sometimes she wakes with phantom pains and cries out–but she has learned to use her crutches well.
The Eldians have lost an entire forest to building crutches and canes.
For now we are housed in an old food storehouse. The refugees–that is what I am now, I realize–are crowding the streets like vermin. No doubt carrying their diseases, too. There are too many of us. Too many ways to remind me of what comes next.
I meet Armin and his grandfather. I can't say much about either of them, but the old man seems kind. He has weathered eyes and a gentle smile. Armin is not yet what he needs to be in the future. I can't decide if the old man's death is what'll get him there faster or deter him from that maturation.
The food continues to run short. I do not notice for longer than most; it is not the change in my own disposition that alerts me to the shortage, but to the slimming of my mother's waist.
When I ask her about it, she smiles. "It looks like I'll finally fit into some new clothes," she jokes, but the sound rattles out of her like hollow coins in a barrel.
We never see my father again.
Carla and I fall ill when the refugees are sent to till the wastelands. We are attempting to harvest crops out of thin air. The labor isn't suited for either of us: me, whose body cannot seem to sustain its health, and Carla, who cannot work and balance on one leg. The long months drag on. The rations do not. I scream and shout at the troops to listen to me, to let me guide them and their farming practices. I am not the only one who attempts to get them to adjust their strategy. So many of the refugees have the lives that I once did: farmers, harvesters, ears and eyes of nature and its crop.
The soldiers do not listen. We starve, fall sick, and do not get up.
The illness that takes me is not the same that befalls Carla. Mine is the kind that leaves me hacking, gasping, like soap in the lungs. The sickness froths up like bubbles, like foam.
Carla's is more like an infection. Hers sneaks in quietly, politely, the kind that makes you wonder if it'd been there all along. There is no medication to save that which is not essential. There is no medication to be spared for homeless refugees.
I collapse in the middle of tilling the wastelands. I regain consciousness only when my face strikes the dirt. Eren gave me shit for it the first time it happened–but now he says nothing. Armin's brows crease with worry. But he will not tell the troops that watch over the refugees what is going on. Neither will Mikasa. Instead my mother shifts her body, fractures it, bends down so harshly that I swear she can't set her spine straight. She tills enough to make up for the fact that Carla and I are wasting away each time they send us out into the wastelands.
Carla Yeager dies in her sleep, with her son nestling against her.
His sobs shake the sky.
But I do not die. I wish for a moment that I did. Everything would've been easier if I had. Instead I wash my soap-lungs with water and air and I gag through the worst of it. My mother tears herself in half trying to take care of the newly orphaned Eren and the daughter who can't seem to shake her new illness. Eren hates me now, truly, but I cannot say the same about him. I am too tired and too ill to care. I do not defend myself when he sneaks up to me, two dawns after his mother died, and punches me squarely in the jaw.
"You killed her! If you never cut of her foot, she–"
He hits me again.
It is like catharsis.
It is easier to focus on my external pain than my internal pain.
And I accept his blows, because he is right. Technically. If I had never insisted on cutting Carla's leg off, then she never would've died of an infection. If I'd never been there, Hannes would have taken Eren and Mikasa out of Shiganshina. If I'd never been there…she would have died anyways. He doesn't know that, though. I'm not stupid enough to say that kind of a thing to him.
Somehow Carla's death doesn't stop me from trying to change something, anything. I stash away my rations. Save the ones that won't spoil. I carry them with me at all times, to prevent feral refugees from taking them or squalid rats from lashing their teeth over my breads. Eventually, the news hits like a tornado.
The government is drafting refugees to participate in a mission to reclaim Shiganshina.
When I present my hoarded rations to the garrison member I've deemed my safest bet, I think I've won. I've done it! Armin's grandfather does not get called to go to Shiganshina.
But the names roll down the list, and when the announcer calls for an Aliva Moreau and an Efa Moreau, my heart drops.
My mother goes rigid. The ground swirls under my feet. I can see Mikasa's alarmed expression out of the corner of my eye. Armin's looking at me with subdued sympathy. Eren won't even look at me.
The garrison member I gave my rations to is leaning against a pole. Chewing.
As the troops begin to rally the refugees, a weathered hand clamps down on my shoulder. "Stay, child."
"But–"
"Now, now," Armin's grandfather interjects, giving me a brave smile. It is not lost on me that his smile reaches both myself and Armin. "You kids are the future. We can't have you going off to fight in our stead, now can we?"
My mother kneels on the ground before me, tenderly tucking my hair behind my ear. I never told her where the bruise on my jaw came from, but I'm pretty sure she knows. Why wouldn't she? "My darling Aliva," she whispers, tears in her eyes. "You'll stay with Eren and the others. Keep each other close. I'll–I'll find you when this mission is over. Okay?"
My chest laces itself up tight and ties my heart in a knot. "Okay. I l–"
My tongue trips, stumbles, falls. Falls falls falls…short.
She hugs me. Her arms are thin, but strong. Always strong. "I love you. My sweet child. My treasure. Your father and I love you so much."
"I know."
Two hundred and forty nine thousand, nine hundred and ninety eight people accompany my mother and Armin's grandfather to Shiganshina. A little over a hundred people survive. Efa Moreau is not one of them. Neither is Grandfather Arlert.
For all of my meddling, for all of my determination to change the future, I begin to wonder if there is anything that I can change after all.
But then…something does change.
Come the following year, Eren, Mikasa, and Armin don't enlist. Nor do they join up in the next. I haven't the slightest idea why Eren doesn't declare that he's going to enlist. I have plenty of theories: perhaps his hatred is not as strong, because he got another year with his mother before she died. Perhaps because her death was silent, still, rather than splashed across his face in gore and grime. Perhaps because Armin's grandfather went willingly, taking my place in the draft, rather than by force.
Whatever the reason may be, the four of us–the three of them as thick as thieves, and me somehow still managing to float by in their periphery–grace through the change in the seasons, narrowly keeping ourselves fed enough to think straight, and end up enlisting another year after that. There is a fire beginning to kindle in Eren's eyes. A light that I remember seeing ignite early on and burn with him straight up until the final season. When he announces that he's sick and tired of the titans controlling our lives, Mikasa declares her intent to go with him, to keep him safe. And Armin…doesn't exactly stand down, either. I think it is because he does not wish to be alone.
They do not ask me to join them, but when they look my way, I nod my head. I have my own reasons for enlisting, after all. If I do not follow Eren and the others into the service, I will lose my chance to change the future. Perhaps I cannot change deaths. Perhaps I can only delay them. But maybe there are other things, greater altercations, that I can incur. One way or another, I'm about to find out.
The three of them are fifteen.
I am sixteen.
And we are about to be cadets.
"We now begin the enlistment ceremony for the 107th Trainee Corps!" The man speaking is tan, bald, and unnecessarily loud. He's got a sharp goatee and hawklike yellow eyes. "I am Keith Shadis," he booms, his voice like a low thunderhead. I tune the rest of his speech out. I'm not here to listen to him ramble on about how mangy we are, or how weak we are.
I glance around quickly at the other cadets. Everyone here has earned their spot, passed the physical exams. I am not proud of what I have done to ensure that I stand here, too. I've cheated someone out of a spot they rightfully deserved by swapping my name with theirs. Or maybe I've spared them from an untimely end, simply by making sure that I would be taking their place. I don't know yet.
What alarms me more than anything, though, is that somehow everyone else has been set back by three years. Everyone that I can see–Connie, Sasha, Jean, Marco, Historia–they're all here. This unnerves me more than I care to admit, even if it does admittedly make certain parts of my current predicament easier. I'll have plenty of time to figure out my next move so long as more of the characters are training alongside all of us.
Still, unease begins to slip into my throat like a cough I cannot shake. I keep my hands firmly behind my back, my trousers and cropped jacket shifting slightly as a faint wind rustles through the ranks of the cadets.
Keith calls out to Armin, putting him on the spot and demanding to know where he's from. I've heard this dialogue before. At least something remains the same, even if the world has shifted on a profound three-year axis. I watch him weave through the rows, forcing the ones he passes to about-face after he's grilled one of the people there.
As he approaches my row, I keep my expression entirely still. I remind myself that there is no screaming I can endure that will shock me as much as my original mother's did. No scolding that will break me. Against myself, memories resurface, and I wince them away just as swiftly.
Keith Shadis and his hawk eyes do not miss the gesture. "You there! Your name?"
"Aliva Moreau!"
Fuck. Fuck, fuck fuck. I do not want to be on his radar. I do not want him to know my name.
"Where are you from?"
"Shiganshina, sir."
He leers at me. "Of course you are. I suppose you'll be like mister Arlert, here to aid humanity's victory?"
I hesitate, and that single misstep costs me dearly.
He turns towards me fully, prowling closer, barking louder. "Oh? Or perhaps you're here for something else? Perhaps you're here to get a nice, cushy job in the interior?" From two rows behind Keith's back, I notice as Jean shifts on his feet. I immediately return my attention to the man looming over me, feeling the tips of my ears go hot.
"No, sir!"
"Then what are you here for?"
My hands clench together and my teeth gnash like knives. I look him dead in the eyes and remember how it felt to be shot by my own mother. "I'm here for a second chance."
For a second I delude myself into thinking that I am special; that I have given him an answer that will shock and impress him. But he only scoffs at me and gets in my face, his lips twisted in a cruel, cutthroat sneer. "A second chance at what–life? You won't get that here, girl. Row five, about face!"
I do as I'm told.
I slip back into my own head as he grills a few of the other prominent characters. The surrealness of seeing main characters trickled away after years of being in Eren's shadow. Now, all I can think about is the fact that somehow, somehow, I didn't make the cut. I watch as Keith ignores Mikasa and Eren entirely. He does not grill the ones who have already been hardened. He does not prod those who do not need further convincing.
Which means I am no better than Armin.
I am lacking. Somehow, knowing everything I do about how the series plays out from here–after seeing for myself that the deaths in this story are very much real–I do not have enough resolve. I am not enough.
I am angry, I think. Angry at myself for changing everything and yet changing nothing. I should've stored up rations to buy Carla some medical attention (I was sick, too, and couldn't possibly spare what I had to eat). I should've found someone else to bribe, some other way to make sure Armin's grandfather never went with the drafted refugees. I should have stayed in the forest, waited for the warriors, and–
When I look up, I almost flinch in shock. My eyes go wide. With Keith Shadis in between the rows, the ones he's already gone through facing his back and the ones he's yet to reach facing his front, half of the cadet lines are turned to face the other half. We are divided between two sides, separated by a single man's movements, the constant ebb and flow of cadets to either side fluctuating as he moves.
I have managed to catch a different man's eyes, though. He is tall. Burly, even for his age. He would be a year older than me, from what I remember. Seventeen. He's got a blond shock of hair and a strong jawline. Broad, proud chest. Hazel eyes. Or are they more like browned amber? Like honey mead. Like husky sunsets.
Reiner Braun, wielder of the Armored Titan, warrior of Marley.
Next to him is Bertholdt Hoover. Wielder of the Colossal Titan.
I tear my eyes away from Reiner, caring little what he thinks–if he thinks anything at all–of my hasty dismissal of our shared gaze, and scan the ranks. My heart thuds in my chest. There. Annie Leonhart, the Female Titan, is here too. Which means–I spot Ymir, the Jaw Titan, a little farther over.
All the other shifters are here. All the other main characters are here.
I gave Carla an extra year with her son. Her son spent an extra three as a refugee before deciding to enlist. And somehow…
Somehow the whole world shifted to meet that change.
I have messed with something I do not understand. I have started to tamper with fate, with the future, and I am damn lucky that the story is still similar enough for me to grasp what's still to come. Or maybe it's already fallen out of my hands. Maybe it's time to say fuck it and start slaughtering teens left and right.
I have to rein in a snort at the thought of my sickly body somehow managing to skewer the likes of Reiner, Bertholdt, Annie and Eren. Hell, even Armin would put up a better fight than I can at this point.
Finally, Keith spots Sasha frantically snarfing down her potato. When she's ordered to start running, I can't help the smile that creeps onto my face. It would not be the worst thing to be here, training with the characters I loved with a fervor.
Training for strength enough to kill them, if I must.
My smile eeks away like an eel slipping through mud.
The cart for the dropouts rolls out of the camp by the time we've been relocated to the cabins. I'm not in the cabin with Eren, Mikasa, and Armin, but it's just as well. I don't think I gain anything by clinging to their coattails right now. I set my pack down on my bunk and sigh. My head feels like turkey, stuffed and overcooked. We'll have time to catch our breath before dinner; I can't exactly remember what Eren spends this downtime doing, but I hardly care. I flop down on the mattress and sigh, rifling through my belongings for the only thing in my pack that really matters.
I feel the glass against my fingers and curl my hand around it, extracting the vial from my bag. For a second I just hold it, studying its dwindling contents and reaching my other hand up to hold onto my locket. I've grown so used to feeling both objects that it's hard to fathom I'll be running out of medicine soon.
Carefully, I screw the top off of the vial and pool a few drops of the liquid inside into the upturned cap. The screw top cost me a week's worth of rations, but I'm glad I made the switch. I can't trust myself to measure my intake with nothing but the original cork top and my own guesses.
My hands shake as I let the drops fall onto my tongue, eyes closed as I swallow the bitter liquid. I grimace a little and open my eyes–
Just to see that I'm being watched.
Annie Leonhart stands before me, frowning. My instincts demand that I raise my hackles to match hers, but my logic forces my eyes down instead. This isn't the kind of woman I want to piss off early on. It is easier to let her see me exactly as I am: sickly, small, useless. "Can I help you?" I ask, busying myself with screwing the cap back on so I don't have to figure out how to meet her gaze. I never felt any strong sympathies for her character, but I recognize her lethal skill. The fact that she's already approached me is enough to make me wary.
I glance up to find her studying the vial. Still not entirely trusting my eyes to portray innocence, I hold it up, tilting my head as I do.
"Are you curious about this? It's nothing special. Just medicine."
Her eyes shift with perfect disinterest. If I didn't know any better, I'd say she was bored. "I see." Rather than answer her I turn, putting the vial back into my bag. "We're bunkmates," she says finally.
"Ah."
Silence, again. I swallow awkwardly as I realize why she's still standing there. With the bunks being arranged as they are–two to each bottom and two above that–either she's sharing the bottom with me, or…
"Are you…next to me?"
"Above." Her aquiline nose drifts towards the window, hips shifting her weight.
"Ah." Whatever she wants from me, I can tell that I'm not giving it to her. Finally, she turns from the window and tosses her bag up to the top bunk before climbing up the ladder. Were I a normal cadet, I would probably be more rattled by our exchange than anything. But all I can focus on is how silent her footfalls are.
Dinner is a silent affair. Annie slinks off after I do, sitting in an entirely different corner. I take one look at the crowd surrounding Eren and immediately decide I want no part in it. I take a spot three tables down, minding my own business, listening to Eren regale the clueless cadets about the attack on Shiganshina. They hang on his every word like dead leaves in the fall, suspended but for the wrong wind to set them free. Connie and Marco are the only ones I can name from memory, with Jean at the table adjacent, listening by not actively attempting to draw near. The rest of the names have already escaped me.
The food is fine. A roll the size of my fist and a thin bowl of some kind of stew. It goes down like the medicine, not entirely unbearable, not entirely inedible. It's certainly a step up from the rations the refugees were made privy to.
I nearly choke on a piece of my role as the tall, thin figure of Bertholdt points at the seat next to me. "Is this taken?"
I shake my head no, trying to swallow around the bread. I can't see Reiner from where I've chosen to sit down, but I noticed him on my way in. Still, two of the warriors coming up to me in one day feels too weird to be a coincidence.
I glance over at where I saw Annie last, but she's already gone. So is her plate and bowl.
Bertholdt sits down. Thankfully, he says nothing else to me, but the sheer fact that I'm sitting next to the man whose titan literally smokes everyone in its near vicinity out of existence upon transformation makes me incredibly nervous. If I give him any reason to suggest that I know who he is, any reason at all, then I'm toast. Literally.
I mutter some offhand excuse about getting some outside air–I doubt he even hears me clearly–and grab my plate and bowl. I pass them off and take the last bit of bread with me, slipping out into the night air. I round the corner, spy Historia, Ymir, and Sasha pooled together, and decide to take the long way back to my cabin.
I don't fall asleep until Annie comes back. She slinks in like a cat, taking to the top of the bunk with no more sound than a whisper. I wait for my heartbeat to slow until I roll over and let myself drift off to sleep.
When I dream, I see an orchard stretched in every direction. I see myself soaring above it, cajoling with my fellow airborne brethren. I am weightless, liminal, indefinable. A creature of song and sky.
A/N:
I hope you don't mind me aging the characters up a little! I don't want to write spicy scenes between tiny children, so it was kind of a necessary adjustment. Until next time!