The first snow hits a day later.
It plummets to the ground like a dowry of faith, paid in full. One minute the worn paths are wet and slovenly; the next they are drizzled in fine, slick snow. The scale tilts, sends the temperatures tumbling and reeling. The gambler kicked to the curb, the crop culled to the root, the bears trodding off to hibernate. The world finally hushed, silent, preparing to draw a breath it's not yet ready to hold.
I have made an art out of avoidance.
It is a learned skill. It is the intrinsic ability to soften your footsteps where the floorboards squeak the most. The ability to be shadow, to be stealth, to be sundown and silk and secret. You do not teach a child to become this way. A child learns it, laps the habit straight from the source, the mother called necessity, called fear. Mother Danger, feeding the depraved child, teaching her to avoid detection from Mother Dearest.
Aliva's body does not have the skill of silence I cultivated in my past life. I wish she did. Otherwise it would be easier to traipse through the base undetected.
I do not speak to Annie. Anger makes me petulant; reluctant to bridge the gap she so callously formed by declaring medicinal war against me two days prior. My mind froths to the brim with things to say, embellishments to endow upon her during the arguments I play out in my head while I procrastinate in the showers, but the foam curdles and dries before I can manage to get the words out. Try as I might, I cannot look past the red film over my eyes to try and make Annie see reason. I cannot speak civilly to her. Not right now. Not yet. It is the insubordinate daughter within me, the girl repressed and obsessed with never relinquishing autonomy and self-authority. The girl who pulled the trigger is still very much alive inside of me; everytime I see Annie, my finger twitches.
It does me no good to be livid. So instead I languish, prance about in my own self-pity like a self-absorbed widow. My spouse is dead! Yet somehow my gown has managed to be made blacker than the coffin for the occasion. The wood, unlacquered. The lace, tailored.
So I drift around in my trainee attire, mourning the abduction of my medicine, rubbing my marked up neck, trouncing through the shoddy clumps of already-melting snow.
And were I in my old body, perhaps I could have avoided being seen by Jean. But I am not as I once was. Never again will I be.
The tall, lanky boy trods up to me. He's got a sheepish expression on, cheeks dusted by chill or by conscious awareness of the sins we slacked ourselves silly upon two nights ago. "...Hey.."
He slips into step beside me. "Where's your better half?"
Jean blinks, laughs. It's the kind that's earnest simply because it was laughter he wasn't preparing to give beforehand. "Who, Marco? He's with Connie and Sasha right now. Studying for that upcoming field test."
"Ah."
Jean stretches his neck, eliciting a pop from it. I pretend the sound doesn't irritate me. "So…where are you headed?"
I glance around. The honest answer is nowhere. This is the walk I take daily, even if I'm still irked with the woman who assigned the walks to me in the first place.
Jean must've sensed my hesitation. Instead he changes the subject, as easily–or rather, as clumsily–as shuffing hay. "About–the other night–"
I laugh. I can't help it. He turns to me, expression suddenly guarded. It's almost remarkable how fluidly his emotions ripple through his lean, limber body. "Aliva?"
"Sorry." I let my eyes drift back towards the path ahead of us, following the way it winds its way up to the cabins. "I was just surprised that you want to talk about it so directly."
Jean's face does something curious: somehow it flushes and pales at the same time. "It's just that–look, I'm not like that. I'm a–"
I raise an eyebrow. "A gentleman."
He scoffs. Crosses his arms over his chest, and his straw hair flicks thinly as his head juts sharply away. "Yeah. Is that so wrong?"
Something in me, wild and free, angry and unsupervised, prompts me to nudge him with my elbow. "Gentlemen don't let wine soil their shirts like that, Jean."
His lips pucker in indignation for a moment, flashing with that easily affronted pride that he and Eren so similarly share in the early days. "It's your fault for spilling it."
The corners of my lips begin to tug upwards, snagging like loose threads. "Is it now?"
"Yes, it is. How am I supposed to explain myself if Shadis sees the shirt?"
I shrug. "It would be your own damn fault for getting caught in the first place."
The conversation is souring, slipping away from the both of us. We are petty, immature people, unaccustomed to compromise. My heart is ice. His is rumbling earth. I would pacify him; he would disrupt me. "There's…another woman."
I laugh.
There's another woman for me, too. My lady of honeydew and hand-drawn hearts. Of hibiscus hickeys and orgasms under olive trees.
Jean's gaze inquires for more than I can give him. I glance away, and after a moment, he continues. Now we both know the real reason for his insistence on this conversation. All that we must do now is wait for it to unfold. "I came to apologize. For…I mistook you for her, I think. It was dark."
It is not fair of me. But as I am being let down gently, I realize that I am alone. I miss the warmth that used to curl against my back. The head between my thighs. The fingers in my hair. The tongue glossing saliva over the shell of my ear like a painter finalizing the masterpiece in their oeuvre. How many oceans, how many lifetimes, span between my consciousness and the chilled body of my once-lover?
I do not want to be alone. I crave understanding. And the one woman who I thought I could grow to understand…she is not here. She does not exist in Jean.
That does not stop me from being irrational, from speaking from the heart before the head. "I wasn't aware that you knew two women named Aliva."
Jean grimaces lightly, caught in the recollection of his own words. "I know what I did, but this girl, I'm crazy about her, and–"
"You kissed me after you said my name."
He swallows.
"How is that fair?"
I have said the wrong thing and we both know it. "You started it, Aliva."
"And now you end it."
Jean uncrosses his arms, all the tension and apprehension leaving him like a physical exhale. "Yeah. You're a nice girl. Really. Just…"
"I am not her."
He doesn't nod. He doesn't need to: I do it for him. The conversation lulls, our footsteps drowning out any chance of it resurging. I cannot tell if Jean pities me, or if he is too relieved by the end of this encounter to think otherwise. Every step drags up every recent word I spouted out without any restraint. I cringe and open my mouth.
"I don't like you."
Jean's head lurches on a swivel, mouth agape and eyes baffled. "H–huh?"
This time I manage to meet his eyes. "I was…aggravated. Blowing off steam. I wasn't thinking clearly."
He studies me for a second, almost as if trying to assess how much of what I said is fact and how much of it is born out of an obligation to let him go guilt-free. After a second, he scratches his jaw. "Aggravated, huh? Trouble with the other trainees?"
I let out a huffed exhale. "You could say that." I think of the last time Annie and I spoke, outside of the infirmary. "And…I don't know. I'm tired of coming up short. Of being less than what I need to be. Of depending on things outside of my control."
There's something incredibly amusing about opening up to Jean, of all people. The previous version of myself, sitting and staring at the cast through a screen, would've picked someone else to vent to. Armin, maybe. Or Marco. Maybe even Hange; they would no doubt get me back into high spirits by the end of it.
Jean kicks a boot out, scuffing it against a thin pile of snow as we pass it. "I think that's just Eren for you, though. He's hotheaded. But I'm sure he'll get over it soon." I look at Jean quizzically, and he shrugs. "Heard him say a few things. Plus…I saw him storm off from the mess yesterday."
"Oh." Not exactly who I was ranting about, but…sure. I guess that works too. I sigh. "Him and I have not been amiable for years now, though. It is not the kind of wound you heal with wishes."
The boy at my side makes a thoughtful sound in the back of his throat. It is softer, though, now that we've finally come up close enough to the cabins to be heard by other trainees passing by. I spot Ymir and Mikasa out of the corner of my eye. An unusual pairing…but everyone interacts with everyone eventually, I suppose. Out of my periphery, I notice Jean open his mouth, no doubt about to dish out another helping of sagely wisdom in order to compensate for the news he broke earlier.
But I've just noticed a taller man, leaving his cabin.
My finger twitches.
"Thanks for walking with me, Jean." I jog a half-step forward, making it clear that I've no intention to continue our chat. His brows warble in the briefest hint of confusion, but he offers me a neutral close-lipped smile.
"Yeah. See you around, Aliva."
I hurry forward without waiting to see which way Jean is going. I weave through trainees, eyes on my prize. He ambles like a palm tree, swaying in the wind, bowing to the high-hilled gusts. How very fitting of his secret shifter identity.
I grab onto his arm, vying for his attention. "Bertholdt."
The warrior's steps stutter, like he's surprised. He does an excellent job of pulling the act off. Between the three warriors, I always felt that he was the best at blending in without losing himself. Like a chameleon. Reiner blended too far; Annie, not far enough. Bertholdt struck the perfect balance. So perfect, in fact, that he spent too long in equilibrium.
"Aliva."
I let go of his sleeve carefully, as if his arm will lance out to strike me the second I release it. "I want to talk to you."
He watches me, face carefully neutral, but he does not stop walking. He is slower now though, setting an easier pace for my already exhausted body to match. If any of the other trainees were watching us, it would only look like one friend falling in tandem with another. "I can see that."
I would glare at him, if I had energy to spare. I focus on my breathing instead. After this talk, I'll be due to lay down and collect myself for a little bit. Just enough to let my body wind down after pushing for a longer walk today. Three laps, only because my thoughts were so clustered I didn't notice I'd started a third rotation around the camp's perimeter until it was just slightly too late to turn back.
I lower my voice. Soft enough to speak without eavesdroppers clutching my words out of the surrounding air, but clear enough to be said without leaning in towards the tall boy. "The other day, in lecture, you were focused on your book."
Bertholdt stays silent for a second, like someone who picked their words before they said them would. "Yes."
"Were you looking, or reading?"
His eyes drift down to look at me, without moving his head. "Reading."
A trainee I don't know passes close by us, nodding to Bertholdt as they brush in and out of eyesight. I wait until we're decently detached from others to speak again. "Reading reading?"
This time, though he doesn't glance at me, his lips droop downwards a smidge. "What do you want, Aliva?"
"Just answer the question."
"...Yes," he sighs. "Though I don't see how–"
"How'd you learn?"
"Aliva…" he mutters, enunciating the name like a cautionary phrase. I ignore the warning and press on.
"Does Annie know? Reiner?"
The next look he gives me is sharper. It is a reminder that the warriors are the ones that hold my medicine, not me. I scowl and glance down at the ground for a second. Calm. Calm, like thin waters. Like settled tide pools. I inhale and release my frustrations. I did not seek him out to argue.
"Teach me."
"...Sorry?"
"Teach me, Bertholdt. Please." I look back up, this time turning my head fully towards him. "I need to learn."
"Ask someone else." Ask an Eldian.
"No. I'm not close enough to anyone else." Only a Marleyan. Only you.
I've no doubt Bertholdt sees my subtext. He shakes his head softly, the gesture almost invisible. "How would we even find time for it?"
"I found time for Annie's exercises. I'll find time for this, too. Besides," I add, inspiration sparking like a kerosene-stained wick, "the three of you will have an easier time keeping an eye on me if I'm spending more time in my day under your supervision. Don't you agree?"
To that, at least, I know he cannot argue. But he argues himself around it instead. "An additional hour out of the day means nothing if the rest of them are outside of our purview."
I bite back the urge to grind out my next few words with irritation netted into their syllabary. "Annie guards my nights. Reiner holds the medicine I need to live the rest of my life decently. I am not obtuse enough to seriously think I can fucking pull the wool over the eyes of three–"
"I get it," he interrupts, and there is some steel in his gaze when he speaks to cut off what I narrowly avoided letting slip. I close my mouth delicately, and opt for silence while the shifter's irritation passes. We round a corner, no doubt heading for the cabin on the far end of the cluster. "You said it's medicine to live decently. What do you mean?"
I scoff. "So now you believe me?"
"I didn't say that."
My eyes roll around in their sockets. "Right." I close my lids for a second, blanketing my sight in a downy darkness. Sound replaces sight. I feel my footsteps waver, lose direction, and open my eyes again. "There is an expiration on effectiveness for the stuff. It'll suit my needs just fine until then. But beyond that…well. It's the last in the string of serums that can help me. So once it can't anymore…"
I fall silent, my own reluctance to voice what comes next surprising myself. But the greater shock comes when Bertholdt clears his throat and speaks.
"...I'll teach you."
I nod. It's about as much thanks as I can give one of the warriors right now, anyways. "When should we…?"
Bertholdt curves his steps towards the door of the cabin. "We can do a short lesson today. Let me grab my textbook."
He steps onto the porch, I in his wake, not entirely sure whether or not to follow. The second the door opens, noise spills out into the air. The voices are heated, spiked in an exchange semi-inaudible, masculine and warbling in some garbled back-and-forth. Bertholdt's expression slips into uncertainty, a staying hand suddenly tilting my way.
"Some sort of argument," he murmurs, almost at the exact same second that I hear my name thrown out from within the cabin.
Weird shivers slip down my arms. Before I can stop myself from doing it, I slip past Bertholdt and step inside. Rows of bunks greet me, wood and cloth and a dense smattering of boys gathered in the corner. I can sense the Colossal Titan's wielder on my heels for a second and I slip farther into the cabin. A moment later the presence vanishes, lifts off of my back. I see the raven-haired boy gloss over to the harvest-haired man leaning against the wall. Ahh. I turn back to the cluster before either of the warriors can find me and drag me out.
I weave through the gathered trainees, accidentally bumping into Marco. He sees me and his face does curious things the second it recognizes me. "I tried to stop him," he insists, and I frown. "Stop what?"
A bald head at my side tilts, leans in. I blink with surprise as Connie jerks his chin towards the middle of the cluster where–
Eren and Jean are going at it again, squabbling like siblings. I tilt my mouth in Connie's direction, not sure I even want to listen to hear what they're arguing about. "How did this start?" Connie shrugs, and just as he goes to speak, Jean's voice rises high enough to drown out any attempt to fill me in.
"...That's bullshit and you know it."
Eren scoffs. "So now you're an expert on the subject?"
"I"m just saying, you're being an ass for no fucking reason–"
Eren's body language tenses, rolls back with bitter laughter. "Oh I'm the asshole? You're the one that came up to me and started bitching about something that you don't know a damn about–"
Jean leans closer, looming over Eren. "Oh for fuck's sake, Eren, just get over whatever petty grudge you're holding this time–"
"She KILLED my MOM," Eren bites out, his words like venom, violent and outrageously loud.
The words are like a punch to the gut. The room loses its charge; Jean loses his momentum.
I lose my ability to breathe, but Eren is still talking, oblivious to the way the crowd has shifted. "I'm not getting over that shit. So you can just drop it, Jean."
I blink, and I am a boat adrift in an ocean. An iceberg isolated from the shore.
The crowd has created a halo of space around me–involuntarily or otherwise–and suddenly, mortifyingly, Jean's eyes are on mine. Eren catches his distraction, follows it to the source, and finds–me. Green, glowing, burning eyes. Eyes that say they regret nothing.
My throat begins to constrict. Someone, Connie–no, not Connie, it's Armin reaching around the bald kid–extends his arm across the gap to awkwardly put a hand on my shoulder. "I'm sure he didn't mean it like that…"
Carla's boy stands in front of me. I grew up with him, watching him on the screen, reading his words printed onto the pages. At what point, I wonder suddenly, does he tell Armin that he had to send Dina's titan to eat his mother in order to save his best friend? That was at the end, wasn't it, when he was at the end of his rope and almost a full decade out from the boy he'd been when he watched Carla die?
I imagine just then, that it is not Armin that receives this explanation, but a younger version of Eren. I imagine it is not the grown version of the boy before me, but me who breaks the news.
The room is hot, stuffy, nauseatingly so. The eyes plastered onto me are relentless. I cannot breathe. I cannot. I cannot. I just can't.
I shrug Armin's hand off. The gesture feels more like an involuntary spasm than an attempt at nonchalance. "No. He's right."
Meeting Eren's eyes feels like hell. It is like meeting my mother's, my own, and my lover's all at the same time. My anger, my accountability, my guilt.
"I am no better at saving mothers than I am at killing them."
I leave the cabin, alone, and there is not a single soul in there that follows me out.
My footsteps stumble out in jagged strokes, plunging through the snow-turned-sludge. I walk past all the cabins. I don't want to see Christa or Annie right now. I can't stomach it. I don't want warmth. I'm hot, boiling over. The night air does not bother me. And then I can't breathe again, I'm burning, my breath is like flaming sandpaper against the roof of my mouth. I rip my jacket off and clench it tightly in my hand. I walk faster.
The ring on my finger scalds me, a band forged of sin and shame. The night chill only serves to heat me further.
My steps surge on without rhyme or reason…until they leave me at the exact spot I was most afraid that they would. I stare up at the tree I pretended was my mother. It was here that I made the stupid, foolish decision to let Annie know I knew her secret. How many things would be different now if I hadn't? Would I have kissed Jean, or lost the medicine? Would Eren have said those things about me just now?
The second I start to question my actions I cannot stop. I think again of Carla, of my inability to pull her half of foot closer to me. She was so close to being safe. And Hannes. I saved Carla, killed the garrison member. Then Carla died despite all of my efforts. I killed Aliva's parents one after the other. And then, of course, Armin's grandfather. There is blood on my hands, in this life and the one that brought me here. I am good at killing dreams.
I am good at shooting down doves, at letting fliers fall.
My back strikes bark and skids down the trunk's surface as I succumb to the ground, resting my butt on my heels so as not to touch the wet roots. Not that it really matters. I bury my head in my trainee jacket, clenching the beige fabric tighter.
Tears do not come.
But…something else does. Or, really, someone.
I hear the footsteps approach, soft and steady. They pad with a surety I'm sure that my own lack, with a weight that grounds them. They slow as they approach, crunching firmly against the ground and finally shuffling to a stop near my left.
When I look up, the sun is setting to my side. And in front of me, leaning against a nearby tree with his arms crossed and his eyes set towards those streaks of orange in the sky, is Reiner.
"Annie said you come here sometimes."
"I didn't think she noticed."
Reiner stares at the horizon for a moment longer, enough to let our opening exchange fade away. When he glances down at me, the light casts a veil of warmth about his face, enough that I struggle to see what lurks beyond those honey mead irises of his. "Is it true? What Eren said?"
I laugh quietly. "In all the ways that matter."
Another exchange of silence. The sky tosses up slips of shimmering red, stitching them into the oranges and yellows. Scarlet slips into subtle violet. "I've killed people, too."
"I know."
One finger at a time, my hands unclench, letting my trainee jacket rest against my lap and bent knees. I turn each palm up, letting them warp as they will, into the close form they held when filled with the weight of a shotgun. Cradling air, violence, memory.
My throat clenches tightly again. "It does not get easier."
"I know."
I inhale quickly, sharply even, fighting the unexpected onslaught of…grief. I killed my mother. I shot her in the head. And she killed me, too. We will never go back to being a baby nursed against her mother's breast and an infant crawling towards her beloved caregiver and a toddler running home to show her mother the ladybugs she found in the garden. Whatever happened to her? Where is she now? Is she like me, transported and conscious of it, or…something else? Or is she nothing, dust in the cosmos, a single stitch in the aether of the universe, energy repurposed to appease the natural laws?
I bury my head back down into my trainee jacket. The tears almost come, but they don't. I can't decide if I'm grateful for it or not.
But my throat eases eventually, and only when I feel I can breathe again do I look up, just to find Reiner watching me. "What?"
He looks at my face for a second longer, then his eyes flicker down, towards my hands. "Back in the cabin, you said mothers. Plural. Were there…more?"
"My own." Reiner throws a look my way, and I choose instead to study the sky. Indigo has stained the place where the sky peaks above our heads and rotted its way down, like ink bleeding through a canvas, like felt-tipped sharpies pressed till they seep chemical-stained color into parchment. When I sigh, it is release. The hues exceed the bounds of the lines I am to color within. But today…tonight…I cannot find it within myself to care. "There is the mother that birthed me, and the mother that made me. They are not always the same person."
Reiner looks at me longer this time, when our gazes meet, except it seems as if he is looking at all of me more than at my eyes alone. He frowns softly; at what, I haven't the slightest clue. "Your mother back in Marley."
"My mother beyond this island, yes. And the one that I found here." I already know the answer, but I can't help myself. "What of your own? Does her blood stain your skin?"
"Not yet," he whispers. Then frowns again.
"Stop that. Stop frowning."
If anything, the crease between his brows only grows more prominent. "You're shivering."
I look down, surprised to see my body quivering. "Huh. I guess so." I slip my jacket back on, but Reiner's face doesn't change in the slightest. After a beat that drags on for decades, he shrugs out of his own jacket and walks it over to me.
"Mine is larger. It'll cover your waist."
Warily, I take it, too stunned by the weirdness of the gesture to think to decline it. And now that I've noticed my body's trembling, all the fire has fled from me. It is cold. I shrug into the jacket, layering the two of them, tugging at the hem to ensure that it really will cover more. Stupid cropped uniforms. As I tug the fabric around me, something like salt and liquor-stained wood rising to the nose, Reiner catches me off guard yet again by telling me in slow, steady murmurs about his family.
"I'm here for my mother. For all my family, really, but for her most of all."
"Tell me about them."
He retreats to his tree, leaning against it and crossing his arms over his broad chest, enunciating his pectoral muscles with the motion. I stare for a second–only a year older than myself, yet such different bodies…how much more could I accomplish if I was built like him? How impossible would his mission be if he was plagued by sickness like I am? "I've got a cousin. Tiny thing, but high spirited. Her parents, too. But really, it's just always been me and my mom. It was her dream to see me become a warrior."
"And inherit the Armored Titan," I murmur, and he nods. And become an honorary Marleyan.
"Yeah."
He does not mention his father; I do not ask. He does not inquire about my mothers. I tug the jacket a little closer to my body, just for aim instant, appreciating the warmth of having two layers over me. I smell something like orange on the collar, faint and spiced, hidden deep under that salt and wood scent. Then I stand up and slip the jacket off, handing it back to him. At first he doesn't take it, leaving me to hold the article of clothing out like a fool.
"Take it. It's yours."
"I can take it when we get back to the cabins."
I tilt my head up a little higher to meet his eyes better. "Your mother wouldn't like to think of you cold, would she?"
When he rewards my comment with a dry chuckle, I'm almost too stunned by the sound to notice that he's caved and taken the jacket back. "If you get sick because of me, she wouldn't like that, either."
I bristle involuntarily. The second his words leave his mouth, Reiner seems to realize the irony of what he just said. Whatever amnity was tentatively extended between us is gone, eradicated by that simple reminder of where exactly we stand with each other. I take a rigid step back from Reiner, turning to head back to the cabins. "Do you have it with you?"
He avoids my eyes. "I can't tell you." I press my lips together firmly as he continues. "But you'll get your dose tomorrow. As promised."
"You can trust me with anecdotes about your mother, but not with my own medicine?"
Reiner sighs. "We can't trust you. I can't trust you. It's a precautionary measure."
I glare. "Tell me, whose words are you regurgitating? Annie's? Bertholdt's?"
"That's not–"
I toss my hands up, turning all the way towards the path back to the cabins and officially cutting him from view. "Fine. Forget it. I'm not going to stand out here and freeze to death arguing with you. As you so kindly reminded me, it's not great for my health to be out and about unprepared in this kind of weather."
This time, when the shivers slip back into my shoulders, Reiner doesn't offer me his jacket. He doesn't offer anything at all: just his silent stare, still leaning against that tree, watching both the setting sun and the girl beneath it as I make my way back to my bunk.
AN: AHHH sorry about taking so long to update! The last few weeks have been kind of nuts. I had final exams, plus my work scheduled me for some crazy weird hours, and then on top of that, I've been working with detectives and stuff. So it's been BUSY but I wanted to get back to writing this story for all twenty of the people who read it LMFAO. So I hope you enjoy the new chapter! Little mini time skip coming up here in a second, so you've got that to look forward to. Thanks for reading/reviewing/following!