CW: This chapter contains depictions of respiratory arrest and resuscitation.

Chapter 22

At first, his words don't process. Then, like a dust storm picking up speed, the expressions on everyone's faces take flight, flurrying like leaves and ricocheting off everything around them. Realization spreads like ink, like blood seeping into satin, saturating our motley group until we are no longer a unit, no longer comrades. Competition has bestowed upon us our individualism, the one true variable we've been deprived of since enlisting. Now, we stand on pillars of non reliance, upon friendships forged with future challengers. To score well, one must score better than one's neighbor.

I glance to my right and left. I'm not the only one doing it, and Shadis seems to be feeding off our wary yet wondrous transformation, a scientist observing metamorphosis. "Let me explain how things work from here on," he narrates, stalking our lines like a predator weaving through trees. "From now on, you'll have no lectures, no quizzes until the final trainee exam. You'll have drills, field runs, mock battles, formation and firing simulations, and extensive combat training. Some of these exercises will be scored. Some won't. It's our business to know what will and won't be; your jobs are to perform to the best of your abilities. There will be two cullings of your division's numbers: each time, the lowest quarter of the scorers will be promptly dismissed. Simply surviving isn't enough. Your cumulative scores will be factored into your final trainee exam. They define whether or not you'll become cadets, and more importantly, what your rankings will be at that time. Clear?"

Horror threatens to wash away my voice, but I manage to force out a hollow, "Yes, sir!" before my obedience is called into question. The excitement and anticipation from before has dulled into something hard and resolute. We were on guard before; now we are straight up isolated. Helping someone now could mean the difference between ascending into the ranks of the cadets and being kicked out, left to rot in the underground or the wastelands or the back alleys of the titan-infested ghost towns.

For someone like myself, the shift from mental training to physical training might very well be my death note. I have a year's worth of improved strength and health under my belt, and several of work as a refugee, but the hard switch comes now. There will be no lecture days to fall back on; no breaks in which to breathe.

Will that be enough?

Shadis continues to prattle on, but I've lost interest in what he's saying. We're being freed, set to hit the course, hurtling towards it in a massive, overly eager free-for-all. There's an outrageous amount of condensed bodies trying to funnel in, lining up at the course's start, vying like writhing pythons for a spot near the front. I for one am content with the back. The sun is creeping into the sky, hitting that one particularly obnoxious point where depending on which foot you set your weight on it's either tucked behind the roofs or just barely snarling at you from above them.

I thought that, standing there with the rest of the 107th, all I would need to do would be just finish the course and get it over with. I thought that Shadis was done shaking things up and redefining the terms of our existence, but as we watch the officers take to various rooftops and vanish from sight, Shadis leaves us with one final punch to the gut:

"The first purge of your ranks happens today, once you're all finished running the course. Good luck with your scores."

Hell. This is hell.

Truth be told, I'm not really even sure why I'm still here. Why am I a trainee? Why did I enlist in the first place? But then again, where would I even go—who would I even know if I left the 107th, either by choice or by force? Every living friend, enemy, and acquaintance I have in this world exists here. They define me, mold me. With them I am nameless.

Trainees surge forward the second Shadis signals us to start. The faintly familiar whirring sounds of ODM hooks firing off all over the place floods my ears, drowning out all else. It's enough to make me overwhelmed, but I can't afford to cower, not when something as important as my status as a trainee is on the line. I catch glimpses of familiar backs surging forward, lurching into the air, rushing between the buildings. I hardly have any time to process the hair colors, the shapes of everyone's spines, before at last it is my turn to step up to the starting line.

I take aim, angling my hips, and fire my first shot.

The ground beneath me vanishes like smoke, curling away from my senses, replaced by the awkward notion that I am hurling through the air. The world around me is a condensed blur, the sky a jarring streak of blue and the buildings a jagged path of gray and brown. The breath in my lungs goes flat, puffed out of me and replaced by an invisible weight on my chest that I'm not strong enough to accommodate. Everything hurts, everything in me is unprepared, I can't breathe and I can't think and not even my center of gravity can help keep me from succumbing to the fear, the nauseating recoil and rejection of every unnatural jerk and pull, the flight preparing for the fall.

I hook hastily into a shed, bringing me closer down to the ground, stomach lurching as I do. My feet hit the ground and suddenly my lungs are great bellows, gulping air greedily, dizzying my surroundings. I'm only vaguely aware of the whirring trainees zipping past me. No one stops. No officers escape from the shadows to check on me. I just stay there hunched over, forehead pressed into the dirt and gravel, sweat dripping down my neck, past the backs of my ears, nestling into my hair. It feels like a year until I manage to push off of the ground and sit up. The sun is directly above me, blazing in all its heated glory. I'm sweating like a filthy animal, dirty and disheveled. I wipe my brow angrily and, as if the universe itself is determined to add onto my humiliation, make the briefest of eye contact with Reiner as he passes by above my head. He looks so natural up there. It's laughable, almost, how someone so bulky could stream through the sky so elegantly. It should defy all things natural. It should adhere to common sense, to rationality, to reason.

Yet there he soars, and here I stand.

The tips of my ears and the back of my neck heat up to an insufferable degree. I shoot upright and begin stomping back towards the start, still embarrassingly close to where I now stand.

"Come on, Aliva," I scold myself, kicking rocks with vicious force as I trudge. "Get your shit together. Do you want to flunk out?"

The only thing that gives me comfort is the sight of other various people jogging on the ground back towards the start. From the looks of it, though, they came from farther in the course. I alone have the shame of surrendering to the ground off the bat.

I avoid looking to see who anyone is, both returning to the start of the course and zipping through it. All I care about is getting this already atrocious day over with. I want to undo all of Mina's hard work, set my hair wild and loose and scratch my scalp to abate the itch settling in from dried sweat. I am gross, deeply irritated with my shortcomings, and so ashamed that I feel as if I could push through the course with nothing but stubborn, sheer will.

I pivot at the line, taking a deep breath in. To my own muted alarm, I can't draw it in all the way. The rational side of my mind chimes out a clear warning bell, an instinctual urge to sit back and wait until I can breathe fully.

The other part of me loses all reason and watches as Armin zips by above me, glee and unfettered surprise blazing on his face.

Fuck it. If that creepy, too-smart twink can do it, so can I.

This time I aim lower, opting for a more gradual rise over the same distance. I promise myself I'll be fine. I reassure my body of the gentle slope, of the stoutness of my equipment, of the surety of my success. I will complete the damn course. I will. I will.

I launch before I can second guess my decision. Just like before, the world blurs and my body goes rigid. I can breathe, at least, but breath comes in and out of me in shallow pumps I'm unfamiliar with experiencing. It's as if there is an invisible barrier blocking me off from the larger reserves of my lungs, forcing me to survive off of sparse reserves alone. I veer near the point of connection and pick another low hanging target, a modest house with decaying window sills and empty shadows under its roof. I hook in and the transition makes my heart hiccup, every inch of me stuttering and struggling to adjust to this way of transporting myself. My abdomen strains itself in a way that feels eerily similar to anytime I tried doing Annie's planks or sit-ups for too long, the kind of exhausted quiver that makes me unreasonably nervous for a muscle spasm or cramp.

I'm too preoccupied with the laborious strain setting in to truly pay attention to why Shadis called this an obstacle course until it's nearly too late. Practically out of nowhere, a chorus of pulleys and boards whine into motion and send a volley of people-shaped wooden figures out into my direct line of flight. I yelp in surprise, immediately regretting my prior decision to fly low to the ground. I jut my hips upward almost carelessly so, my grip around the bladeless handles and the pin triggers turning vice like in my adrenaline-fueled movements. I fire at random, only thinking that I need to go higher right now, and the way my body immediately lurches at both greater speeds and heights has tears pricking the edges of my now-dried out eyes.

And then my lungs shut down.

I gasp for air but I can't get it, the speed and the shock and the stress and the shoddy state of my constitution all combine into an impenetrable wall preventing me from clawing my way over to oxygen on the other side. My body doesn't stop accelerating. The sun screams down onto me. The vertigo is crushing me, killing me, overwhelming every sense I possess. I open my mouth to guzzle even a single shred of air and instead it hits me like a mouthful of cotton, utterly indigestible and unrelenting. Panic makes the world around me fuzzy, alarm rendering me no better aware of my surroundings than I would be blindfolded on the ground.

Obstacles appear out of nowhere. Some instinctual, half-formed part of my brain guides my fingers to launch and retract my hooks, my hips sashaying all over the place. The continuous switches only double then triple the wall of air, the vertigo, the lack of breath. I'm being crushed. I can't—I need to stop, damn it all to hell—

I say fuck it and send my next shot down by the ground, failing to judge the distance like I've been lectured to, failing to brace like I ought, just failing and falling until my feet strike the ground and I tumble, scuffing my boots and throwing my hands out to brace my fall. This time I wait for the oxygen to return, but everything is swimming around me, colors and sensations. I have no bearings, no understanding of where I am or what's happening anymore. I can't breathe. Why am I fighting so hard to breathe?

Agonized gasps seep out of my mouth, my body rocking and my muscles shaking. Claustrophobia sweeps in, the weight of the ODM gear bearing down on me, constraining me, suffocating me. In an instant I have my trainee jacket off and hurled onto the ground. I claw and scratch but I can't get the belts off. They won't come off. Why won't they come off?

A desperate whimper breaks out, pained and agitated, and I feel like I'm about to burst into tears.

Sound bursts into life behind me, and before I can really comprehend what's happening, large hands hook under the belts on my shoulders and yank me to stand fully. I stagger around, smacking face first into Reiner.

He looks at me collectively, objectively, the quick scan of a taciturn general. "What's going on?"

Something tiny and deeply repressed inside of myself eases at the sight of him, just barely. Just enough so that a thin sliver of glorious, delicious air manages to sneak past the impenetrable anti-oxygen wall.

"Why—hngh—"

My hands are fighting against the straps on their own accord again, and seeing it, Reiner takes over and deftly frees me from my restraints. Another faint huff of air.

He frowns. "That's not important. What happened? Are you taking your medicine?"

I glance away. That alone is answer enough. Perhaps I would've had enough sense to spew out a believable story, if I had enough breath with which to brew words.

Reiner groans, muttering under his breath as he lets go of me to set my gear down. "I gave it back so these kinds of things wouldn't happen—"

Pain explodes everywhere inside me, the realization that I am not breathing and this is not stopping finally setting in. A gasp of pure breathless agony rips out of me and I keen to the side, weak and weightless.

My knees drop to the ground and everything turns fuzzy. "Damnit, Aliva," Reiner curses, at my side once again. He's blurred at the edges, looking over me, just like the sun. Blonde, beautiful. I wonder why he's here. Doesn't that mean he stopped running the obstacle course? This time, at least, I wasn't at the start of the course when I collapsed. Only someone currently in it would see me.

Doesn't he realize stopping jeopardizes his chance of staying here with Bertholdt and Annie?

The world before me flickers. Instead of brown buildings, I see hazy brown tree trunks. Instead of the blonde man, I see a woman, tall and slender, hazy and void. Malevolent. Cruel. Cunning. These words flood the scene with the sun, the trees, the woman. I blink, tears streaming down the sides of my face, restraint and control over my disposition suffocating alongside me.

Help me, I cry out, but the only sound I make is a chilling rasp that chokes out of my throat. Please.

Buttons, right. Buttons on my shirt. My shirt, tight against my chest, or maybe it's the brassiere, but surely one of the two. I start scraping against the cloth, trying to pry the last bits of binding off of me, rationalizing that my lungs will fill the second I'm free. There's an overwhelming ache in my chest, like the buttons are pressed into my skin, sharp and metallic, hot and burning, like shrapnel–

I look down. Blood gurgles up from the cavity in my chest, foreign protrusions embedded in my skin and shirt. Every shift brings fresh waves of pain to the surface. The trees above me sway nervously, frenzied, like flocks of startled birds cawing for the sky.

Doves.

Doves and trees. Doves and trees and lovely, lustrous sunshine, and a girl with a bloody wound in her chest and a woman with a starved expression looming over her.

"Hey. Hey. Stay with me. Stay awake." Reiner smacks me back into reality, fingers striking my cheeks until the fog clears and I'm laying in some random village again. The second I'm back, my mission returns, the world in my periphery starting to get dark. Clothes. Get off me, stupid shrapnel buttons. Get out of me.

Reiner bats my fumbling fingers away from my collar. He hooks his hands under the front of my shirt and rips it open, sending buttons flying off to roll in the dirt like severed hands.

He glances up at me anxiously. "Better?"

The darkness encroaches. Dimly, I hear voices, some machinations of human life manifesting outside of my comprehension. Whatever summons those sounds here does not seem keen on keeping me in their presence: rather, the call I feel is one of drowsy, delicate quiet.

My eyes flutter closed. Reiner's voice comes to me in a lull, a trickling patter of gravel that falls from the darkness above me and pebbles onto my face.

…No, those are actual pebbles. Or–

When I open my eyes, it's to see a fine trickle of sand raining down over my lips. I cough and sputter, sitting up and batting the hand over my head away. Its owner doesn't fight back. The limb is cast to the side, sand going with it. I wipe my face and scowl at the perpetrator.

It's that girl again. Her hair, this time, is adorned with a thin headband. She's older than when I saw her last: more of a young adult than a child. Her disposition is almost professional, superior even. Like a queen addressing her subject.

"You again," I say, because I'm not quite sure what I'm supposed to call her. Who gives names to the creatures of one's dreams?

For a moment, all she does is study me. I sit impatiently and wait until she's done. Seemingly satisfied, she inhales. "Let's watch."

"Watch what?" I ask. Only there's no need to: the sandy place is gone, replaced by the shoddy village I remembered being in up until a moment ago. Everything is exactly as I left it, only slightly different: now, I am standing, tucked slightly in between two buildings while two forms huddle together. A small crowd has formed, just a few onlookers, all of whom are familiar. I see Mina and Christa. Sasha is running away from the group, towards the start of the obstacle course, shouting something. Naturally, from where I stand, there's no way I should be able to hear her. But I do: she's shouting out to the officers, to Shadis himself. Summoning them to Aliva's side.

Wait.

I step forward. The other woman stays where she's at, letting me draw nearer to the two forms on the ground. One is shaking the other's shoulders.

"Come on, wake up, get up Aliva!"

I know that voice. "Reiner," I whisper. But of course he does not hear me. I am watching myself in the third person, observing a scene unfolding beyond my ability to impact it. Here, I am both witness and sufferer, two halves of one whole.

Christa's voice comes out frantic. "That's not enough…"

ODM gear whirrs from the rooftop, followed by two sets of thumps. Mikasa drops down to the ground and weaves her way through the crowd, assessing the scene with a critical eye. "Is she breathing?"

Reiner shakes his head.

"Pulse?"

I'm reminded just then that she spent years with Dr. Yeager. "Handy," I murmur. Who knew? Speaking of–the woman shifts her stance slightly, and the motion makes me curious as to what drew her attention. Eren shoves his way out from behind the half-formed group of bystanders, scowling down at the mess I've become and the scene I've created.

Reiner sets my wrist down on the ground, drawing my attention back to my body. "I think she just lost it–"

"We need to start compressions," Mikasa urges, and fortunately for my abandoned body it seems like Reiner is quick on the uptake. He puts one hand over the other, laces his fingers together, places them over my sternum. I watch him bob up and down, counting under his breath with little huffed murmurs. His hair flops into his eyes.

After a moment, he stops, scooping a hand under my neck at first to adjust my head. Then he pinches my nose off, uses the other hand to tilt my chin down and open my mouth, and…hesitates.

I frown. Glance back at the woman with the headband. "Why'd he stop?"

She looks my way, holding my gaze, and then looks to Reiner. In my dream body, I shimmy even closer to him, trying to see his expression as he wavers over my lips.

"What're you doing?" Mina protests, baffled and no doubt alarmed by everything going on. Tears stain her cheeks. "Keep going!"

"I…" I watch Reiner swallow audibly. He wavers. Keeps his eyes downcast. It's almost as if he can't even look at the passed out woman he's bent over, either.

I throw my hands up, frustrated. "What the fuck, man," I gripe. "This is a dumb way to die."

"This is the extent of your abilities," headband lady interjects, like she thinks that's helpful.

I glare her way. "Not nice."

She shrugs. "Watch."

So I do. The moment feels like it drags on forever, to the point where I've started to accept my fate. Then, out of absolutely nowhere–

"For fuck's sake, Reiner, move. I'll do it."

Eren stomps over and forcibly boots Reiner out of his spot by my body, placing his hands where Reiner's once were and bending down. He presses his lips to mine, breathing life into me, and I watch, mouth open in bewilderment. There's no way that Eren fucking Yeager, Aliva Moreau's biggest hater, is attempting to resuscitate her–me–of his own volition right now?

Mikasa, hand half-extended towards Eren, looks slightly lost. "I can–"

Eren's mouth pops off of my own and he wastes no time moving his hands to resume compressions. "I've got it," he insists, that angry, determined scowl plastered to his brow as he works to finish what Reiner couldn't.

The warrior in question is looking away.

I watch Eren go through one more round of mouth to mouth before I turn back to the woman, hands on my hips. "So? Why'd you show me this?"

"To help you understand your naivete," she explains calmly, as if telling me the sky is blue or she feels melancholy today. "You are in no position to offer me a deal. Not when this is the extent of your capabilities."

"To be fair," I argue, because this whole ordeal has made me defensive, "this isn't entirely my fault."

Her expression tells me that's not the point. I sigh, gearing up to offer her a slew of random excuses–I don't even remember trying to make a deal, and you're the one that brought me to you in the first place, and don't you think it's kind of ableist of you to say that–only to lose my train of thought completely as ice slips down my spine.

The area behind Ymir is dark, vague in a way that forgotten details always are. Lurking in that void, just behind her frame, is a flash of lethal green. It looms over her head, boring a hole into my skull, terrifying in the way that nightmarish presences always are. I blink and it's gone.

Then it's right next to me. A fully formed man, a force I've never seen but somehow still recognize, a creature of fate and future. The green flashes, blinds me, makes me feel utterly and inescapably small.

"Do not interfere with me, Aliva," he seethes. "Consider this your first and last warning."

And then he's gone. So is the woman. In fact, everything is gone, the sounds and shapes and colors all vanishing in a flash, returning me to the abyss, forcing daggers into my ribs, pushing an entire valley's worth of air out from my stomach and up my esophagus until I erupt–

I gasp awake, coughing and hacking, gulping in air like a baby breathing its first. My head rings like crazy. Everything aches. My chest, my throat, my eyes. I hack and choke, vaguely aware of Mina at my side murmuring gentle words of reassurance. "Easy," she coaxes, rubbing soothing circles into my back after helping me sit up. Someone had the sense to drape my trainee jacket over me, but it falls and pools in my lap once I'm partially upright, granting everyone in front of me an ample view of my half-ripped open shirt and the brasserie beneath it.

Someone offers me water. When I squint to see who, I'm relieved to recognize that it's Sasha. I take a few tentative sips, coughing my way through most of it, and wipe my chin with the back of my hand.

"Aliva Moreau." I blink wearily and tilt my head back. Before me, rigid in his posture, stands Keith Shadis. And he does not look happy. "I expect that jacket to be surrendered to an officer once we return to camp. Your gear, too. You're lucky to leave here with your life."

He pivots and marches away.

I watch him go, wondering what he's so grumpy about.

Come to think of it, where's Eren? Reiner? I catch Eren's eyes almost immediately; the expression on his face takes me aback. It's something I've never seen conveyed in my presence, a weird sort of look that I don't understand and I can't possibly come close to reading. But Reiner is nowhere to be seen. Annie and Bertholdt aren't here, either.

Then it dawns on me:

I outright failed the obstacle course.

And Shadis made good on his promise to weed out the weak.

A/N: Okay real talk, what are the notes on these chapters even supposed to be for? Info dumping on what happens to me in the real world? Side commentary about the fandom this high maintenance fanfiction comes from? Random fun facts, sincere devotionals to my readers, or...?

Here's a little bit of each, I guess. Info dump: this chapter is a little grittier than I was originally intending for it to be because yesterday after work I stumbled upon an accident and witnessed a motorcyclist die with six EMTs surrounding him. And it made me sick to my stomach so I thought, hey, what better way to process what you saw than to turn it into another out of the blue chapter in your fanfic? That's a super normal thing to do.

Moving on, side commentary: I can't remember if headband lady (not saying her name yet on the off chance that some of you haven't put two and two together) has any actual speaking lines in the original story, but the idea of her never being able to express herself bums me out so I've decided to at least let her have SOME little snips.

Random fun fact: I like to eat hot food in warm areas. For example, sometimes when I'm sad, I bring a freshly cooked slice of pizza with me into the shower. Mmm mm mm. Yummy. Makes me feel very happy.

And last but not least, sincere devotional: this is only my second fanfiction, and although it's somehow still not as long as the first one yet, it warms my heart that there's as many people engaging with it already as there are. I drop everything to read new comments when they're posted, and seeing the kudos notifications always puts a smile on my face. I'm so deeply excited to share this story with all of you, especially as the overarching plot comes together in my notes, and the fact that people are keeping up to date with it really does make my entire world brighter. MUCH LOVE TO ALL OF YOU333333