Chapter 33

Sludge squelches underfoot as I pace the length of the training grounds. I am mad. Truly. To instigate such a fight is unthinkable for someone in my position. But, honestly, what else was I to do? I depend on my position here. Without it, I am unmoored, a blastocyst without its trophoblast.

A dull ache pangs in the back of my head. Again, these words and images that flock to my mind from somewhere beyond my recollection. My head droops; I distract myself for a brief moment, dragging the toe of my boot along the muddy, half melted line of snow. Why Shadis and Becker thought to start our sparring on this particular day, in this particular weather, is beyond me.

I reach my hands up, pulling my body and stretching it out to the fullest. I shift my arms to the sides; clasp one with the other, feeling the muscles in my shoulders fluctuate in turn. I roll them out, windmill, pivot my upper half while keeping my torso rigid in place. My mind clears with each shift. So what if I picked a fight with some guy I vaguely remember being allegedly important in the future? So what if he's perfectly healthy compared to me?

I bend in half, dusting my hands along my shins, savoring the burn lashing its forked tongue against the backs of my legs.

The world peers back at me upside down, dirt and snow sculpted into the sky, and an endless swatch of crystal blue my new ground. Thick churning columns of clouds huff along the new earth like sheep, like rumbling mounds and yawning hills. I reorient. Everything returns to its place; and after this match, so will I. I will be Aliva Moreau once again. Not the Reaper. Not the enemy of that dusty ginger boy and his faraway sibling.

Jogging lightly takes me to the edge of the training grounds, where trainees and officers alike have started to gather. I see no boards in hand–according to Mina, they've reached the stage where memorization is all that's needed to record our scores. How funny it should feel, to know that my face alone has become a marked trait to individuals I've never bothered to differentiate between. Instead all I sense is a grumbling annoyance that unlike in the eastern division, I'll never truly know what's being scored and what isn't. Not without insider knowledge and leaked information. I cluck my tongue, dissatisfied, alleviating my grievances through incoherent clicks spat out the side of my mouth. Perhaps it's not time to discard the facade of the Reaper, after all.

It's painfully apparent to me that Floch has now arrived. Anyone within earshot of us last night, or in the confidence of someone who was, is blatantly privy to the stakes of today's events. Regardless of when or how it happens, the second we square off against each other, bets will form and fly out into the camp. I take a second to scan the faces of the trainees nearby, catching more eyes than I normally do, the expectations and excitement in the air near-palpable. Looks like there's already substantial bets. That, or enough suspense to have people wondering when Floch and I will pounce for each other's throats.

The opponent in question sees me, his chin jutting out in hostility, in open challenge, before he jabs his shoulders to the left and goes to join a smattering of trainees flocking to the early day's shade. The tension between us, cordlike and invisible, frays and unwinds a fraction the second we force ignorance into our exchange if only to delay it for the time being. If Floch has no intention of drawing near me until he has to, then neither shall I. I slip into the crowd, lurking my way through the murk of my cohort until I've reestablished myself firmly on the opposite side to the ginger.

Five minutes crawl by. A ripple warbles through the crowd like a crow in a puddle, squawking about, its cries growing louder with each hop and fluttering of its inky black wings. Mina pops out between two shoulders. Her hair is done in one single braid down the back, secured with her blue hair tie. The other secures my own braid. Today, we match, thanks to her profuse insistence that she make it evident whose side she was on.

"Took you long enough to find me."

Mina's cheeks huff with air then deflate almost immediately. "You've hardly maintained your height since you left. Everyone got taller when you were gone."

I hum in agreement. How is it that the people who I always looked down on, the ones I never intended to get myself emotionally involved with, finally drew up to see me eye to eye and beyond that? The man I bedded, the one who taught me to read, the boy to whom I've earned a life debt…all of them, fronds in a storm, unyielding, heedless to the bush that once cast shade over the tips of their sapling forms.

Surprise, lazy and delayed, blinks to attention as I find Mina studying my face. "What?"

She scowls. "I can't believe you decided to pick a fight with that redhead."

"He started it." Technically, his sister did. Not like I'll ever feel petty enough to recount the insults spewed in my direction back when I first waltzed into Becker's camp.

"Still. It's…not like you. I can't help but worry."

Now, it's my turn to scrutinize her. Mina, shorter still, looks up at me with worry blatant on her features, a prominent, jagged stroke of cherry red alarm splattered onto the canvas of her skin. "I grew up, Mina. It's high time I stood my ground."

"Should I warn Eren too, then?" I glance over my shoulder. Ymir, arms crossed and hips at a slant, quirks an eyebrow up as if to say, well? As if to challenge the fullness of my claim.

She's more insightful than people give her credit for. I turn away. "It's hard to stand up to him. We've got history."

She snorts. "Oh, we all know." I feel her breath dusting the back of my ear, the part of my neck shielding my spine. "But is that an exception, or an excuse?"

My pulse jumps.

"Ymir," Mina chides. But the trainee is already shrugging off, sauntering away.

"Just saying," she says, the disinterest in her voice pronounced once more. "Not like it's any of my business."

I wave to her as she retreats, the gesture half-dismissal and half acknowledgement, and watch Ymir find her next victim to heckle–this time, it's Sasha, cheeks stuffed like a chipmunk's as she sneaks bites of some unidentified substance from within her jacket. When she appears behind Sasha in an instant, the other girl chokes back her surprise, coughing and spewing dry crumbs. She must've nabbed an extra slice of banana bread from this morning.

Mina shakes her head. "She's a handful."

"So am I," I reply, eliciting a mirthful laugh from my companion. It softens me, that easy sound, the way it's mine and mine alone to hear. I enjoy knowing that there are still people who associate with me capable of making those kinds of sounds.

She sighs, theatrically rolling her eyes to distract me from the amusement threatening to burst through her guise of dismay. "Christa is to Ymir as I am to you, apparently." I chuckle. I doubt that.

The bell rings off in the distance, harkening us to the time. Shadis and Becker approach in unison. The thickly trekked trails we've carved out of the straggling remnants of snow soon know the pad of the head instructors' boots as they trumpet their way into our midst. "At ease," Becker drones the second they've drawn up square.

The dual styles of instruction make themselves painfully evident the second Becker and Shadis attempt to start the lesson. Where Becker insists in preparing us for the day ahead with further drills and stretches, Shadis only narrows his eyes. And later, when it's his turn to take over and run us through quick basic forms and tactics, he throws us into the fray remorselessly, in a way that makes me reluctantly nostalgic for the way he launched us into the rickety old town refurbished into the obstacle course. For a minute we flounder about, gaining our bearings, sloshing through the sludge like newborn foals.

Finally, chin jutted up just an inch, Shadis grunts. "Good for now. Pair up; from now on you're learning on your own."

Duties diluted and dispersed throughout our ears, the head instructors turn us over to their subordinates and head off into the shade. We, on the other hand, match up according to our whims. I watch Eren and Reiner group up–the bulkier of the two throwing a fleeting glance over his shoulder at me. Our gazes lock; mine, lingers. Then my real opponent obscures my view of the warrior.

Floch Forester and I walk together, not close enough to be considered side by side, but not far enough that we need to raise our voices to hear each other. He's a half step in front of me constantly. My stride is wider, so that he must be ceaselessly alert to my position if only to reinstate his own. We've cultivated a crowd of onlookers, but they remain far enough out that we are isolated, alone. I point to a spot that looks far away enough. Floch doesn't say anything, but his feet tilt a few degrees.

"Nervous?"

He glares. "Hardly. I've been waiting for this."

I fall silent. We halt, three long paces from each other. I've no anger in my body. No fuel to back my punches. Floch, curiously enough, seems eerily reserved. All around us are pairs of trainees, some sparring hesitantly, others practically standing together with their heads turned in our direction. I sigh. "It's a shame things came to this."

"You're the one who mentioned a fight."

"Mm. So I am." The patch of snow underfoot, mud-mingled and half-dried, pales in comparison to the dark of our uniforms. My fingertips rub against my palms as I practice curling and uncurling my hands. "Fair fight, yeah?"

Floch puffs his chest out. "I won't stoop to your level."

I nod. "Of course."

Floch's loudmouth falters. "That includes that ring of yours, Reaper."

The band in question, nestled securely between the two knuckles of my ring finger, catches my eye when the sun kisses its golden wreath, haloing the metal like a proclamation. An announcement of its treasured existence. No part of me wants to do it. "Fine." I twist it off carefully. "Let me get someone to hold it."

He rolls his eyes. "Just drop it. Pick it up later."

"No."

I jog carefully over to Mina, who–bless her–found a spot to spar against Marco just off to the left of Floch and I. Reaching forward, I clasp her hands in my own. "Don't lose it. Please."

"What…? Oh." She looks down, recognizes what I've transferred over from her hands to mine. "I will. I mean, I won't." Her brows furrow. "I mean that I won't lose it." If I weren't so focused on forcing myself to let my mother's ring go, perhaps I would've found her little expressions amusing. Instead, all I can think about is the last time I left what was precious to me out of my reach. Smoke under the nose, singing the hairs in each nostril. Flame, warm and bright.

"Thank you."

Mina nods; Marco pumps a fist into the air in a humorous, wholesome cheer. "Good luck!"

Shaking my head, I retreat back to Floch. He doesn't grumble, surprisingly enough. I'd expected him to spew out some scithing remark about my irrational attachment to a flashy object. But he doesn't. All he has to offer is a widening of his stance, a bending of the knees. "Well?"

I aim to offer him a chance to approach first. "To first blood?"

Floch guffaws; grins. "Till tap out."

So be it.

His boot cracks, hammerlike, thwacking into the mud as he lunges forward. I act in kind, mindful of the distance between our bodies, the angling of my torso. The world around me fades into nothingness–all I know is the opponent in front of me, the footing beneath me. I'm quick to learn that neither of us seem comfortable enough with fighting to throw kicks. Floch's fist swings out like a pendulum, connecting against the arm I throw up haphazardly to protect my face. The impact ripples down from my forearm to my chest, my hips, my other arm. Tingles erupts as the impact dilutes. Adrenaline swarms my head. I say nothing. Floch says nothing. We are too busy exchanging fledgling blows, trading blocks and blasts of our knuckles as we grow familiar with the notion of physical violence.

Floch tosses a sharp jab near my gut; I bow down, curling and twisting, throwing a strangled swing of my own. This time it connects; Floch grunts, staggers a half-step back. Before I can back out to safety, he hooks a foot around my own and my backpedal catches. I go down hard, thwacking my shoulder blades against the mud. Chilled slush clumps into my ears as I thrash my head out of the way, finally clobbering my knuckles against Floch's face in a decently brutal blow. The impact stings against my fingers, until another pain explodes in my cheekbone. I choke down the gasp that gurgles up instinctively. Light specks in my field of vision before I throw my arms over my head in full. Floch's strikes come faster now, harder. They fill my ears like cotton, thickening my mouth, liquor-induced hangover and leaves dried and crushed flush against a glass. I crackle, roll, jerk a knee straight up into Floch's groin so that I can lurch out from under him.

I jab his gut, clack my fist between the hard lines of his ribs like sticks trilling between drum chords. Anywhere we can hit, we punch. We roll end over end in the filthy snow, our fight growing downright deranged, neither of us dignified enough to understand what a fight can look like without growing foul and unfiltered.

My body aches. Tears prick my eyes. My breath comes out in pained gasps.

I cough.

And blood sprays flat across Floch's face.

His eyes widen. It's enough hesitation to give me an upper hand for a heartbeat–except I can't take it. I hack again, and the blood dribbles up out of my throat, sloshes down my chin. My abdomen spasms. Floch pauses, readjusts his grip. He seizes me by the lapels, throttling me. "Tap out," he hisses. "Call it. You can't continue."

I wheeze. I can't breathe. "Sk–screw that–"

He shakes me again, harder, frowning deeper. Why hasn't he hit me? "Aliva–"

Oh.

…It's pity.

All the sudden I can't stand it, this stupid fight that he's dialed down to match my needs, to accommodate my threshold. I grunt. Muster the courage, brace for the ache. "Heidi called my mother a whore. She got what she deserved."

Floch's fist curls, face darkens, arm lurches. Hesitates. Then comes down hard against my jaw.

But he doesn't do any more than that. Floch shoves off of me, staggers away to stand, swaying and panting. "I call."

I prop up on my elbows, slipping a bit while they attempt to wrangle a decent hold in the murky ground. "What?"

"You heard me. I'm done."

Floch jerkily stoops, scooping up fresh snow and packing it in his palm before pressing it to his nose, his forehead, smearing it around before letting his hand fall limp. It wobbles back and forth, limp, fingers loose.

I go to get up, too, but it's like the world is spinning underneath me. It's ODM gear sending me through loop after loop, spiral after spiral, in air and on land at the same time. I groan. Push up to sit. Confusion flashes hot and cold in me. The urge to vomit swells and recedes like dense gray clouds, dribbling rain one minute and dry the next. "Come back," I call. "We're not done, I didn't tap–"

"I did. I'm done."

Floch doesn't look my way. I notice long-legged trainees loping their way towards us. A blue-haired girl with a chilled ring she can't fit back onto my swollen, jammed finger. "I don't understand."

Finally, he looks at me. I can't quite decipher the expression he dawns just then. It's something close to comprehension, irritation, and resolved indifference all rolled into one. "My sister didn't mean it."

That's as close to an apology as I think I'll get. What baffles me the most, though, is that when someone helps me to stand with my arm nestled over their shoulders, Floch stays to watch, accepting only a dry towel to wipe the blood off his face. "You believe me?"

"Does it matter?"

I have to squint at him to focus on my thoughts. It's harder to see this way, but the throbbing ache behind my eyes is more manageable like this. "You lost our bet on purpose."

"So did you."

The bridge of my nose crinkles. "No?"

For a moment it looks like he'll argue, like he'll fire back some explanation to make sense of his claim, but instead he just shakes out his shoulders and limps through the crowd. Officers permeate the perimeter by the time I belatedly realize I should've gone after Floch to get my answers. Mina, tapping my cheek, speaks lightly to me in calm, musical strokes. "...I don't think she heard. Here. One second." Her head tilts. Taps resume. "Aliva? Hey. Hi. The instructors say you need to keep your eyes open. Can you do that for me? We'll get you to the infirmary. But you have to stay awake until then?"

"Mm. Mhm." I nod, and regret it. The world spins in earnest with every dip of my head. "You have my ring?"

"In my pocket."

I sigh. "Thanks."

Then my eyes flutter shut.

A/N: This chapter would've been posted sooner, but I got the random urge to forage acorns and try to make acorn flour. It's a very tedious process, surprisingly. I made chocolate chip cookies with the flour and they're not the worst thing I've ever had? But they're...not normal cookies? Hard to describe. I am an abysmal cook.

I got my fencing gear this week! And I won my first match. I think this is literally going to be my new personality trait. Heheh. Okay, bye bye for now.