Letting Fliers Fall

by ochreolive

There's a song sung in the olive orchards, about birds and farmers alike. It's the song that sticks with Aliva as she's dying; the song that tells her she's not yet ready to give up on living. But there is a price to getting a second chance at survival, and there are always more people ready to collect than there are to pay.

41. Chapter 41

Chapter 41

The titan is prowling closer. Carla Yaeger is begging her child to go, begging Hannes to take the kids and run. Mikasa is next to Eren's side, a hand extended as if to reassure the protesting, shouting boy. My mother has materialized next to me and is trying to stir me into motion as well. Somewhere to our right are the sounds of the dying. I can hear the booms of titan feet thudding to the left, to the street in front of us. I can feel the stuffy air and scent the death it carries. If the wind stirs I cannot sense it. No birds fly overhead.

"Hannes," I say, in the kind of voice that makes people stop what they are doing. The kind that makes them pause if only for a second. There is madness in my mouth. Terror in my tongue.

And eagerness in my eyes.

"Cut off Carla's foot," I finish.

I point at the titan, my fingers shaking. "Either you fight that titan, or you cut her foot off and get her out of here."

"I can take the titan," Hannes growls, and almost as if to emphasize his point, he steps out of the shadow of the house just to brandish his swords and face the titan. I let him do it.

I return my focus to Carla for a moment, trying to imagine the best place to strike.

"HANNES!"

I freeze.

The world does not go silent. But the blood showers down all the same.

I do not see the moment he dies. All I see when I look up is the bent figure of Hannes, garrison member, one hand still holding onto one of his swords while the other clatters to the ground.

I watched Hannes die. Eren, Mikasa, Carla and Efa all watched Hannes die. His body went limp in the titan's mouth, a sapling stem rotted by wooden mites, flimsy, dangling in the palm. The titan folded teeth over bone in a great slurping swallow. I saw it. I lived it.

I stare at Eren. "You're fucking with me."

He's losing it, I realize. He's finally gone batshit crazy. I sigh. Better now than later, when it matters, when he'd be smack-dab in the middle of some scouting excursion. "Let's get you to bed," I say, because what the hell else am I even supposed to say?

Eren shakes his head violently. His stubborn anger flourishes in full as he shoves my hand off his shoulder. "I know what I saw–"

"No, I know what I saw. And what I saw was Hannes fucking dead." I'm a head's width away from him, snapping at Eren like it'll change any of the things we've no business dwelling on. "I don't know what you think you were just dealing with, but it's not him."

Carla's boy shakes with the same thinly-repressed emotion I saw during the fall of Shiganshina. He's caught between suffusing his gaze with venom, with agony; neither seems close to engulfing the other entirely. "It's him," he insists, and I'm not sure who he speaks to anymore. "It's him."

A wild thought strikes me just then, a wandering bolt of lightning lancing through the sky–what if…what if it really is him?

I dismiss the electric tangent as soon as it manifests in full. I've no right to hope for his salvation. Not after my words were the ones that sent him off to die. "Let's go find Armin and Mikasa. Okay?"

He meets my eyes again, pupils blown wide with determination and near-manic focus. "Right. They're still with him. I'll show you." His hand lashes out to grab my wrist. Like a snake my arm writhes, resisting his grip, struggling to wrench my limb free.

"No. I don't want to."

"You'll see–"

"No, I don't–"
Eren's grip doubles down, to the point where it actually hurts. "Why?" he barks. The tears have long since dried in his eyes. Now he sees me, but he's looking at me like I'm so much smaller, so much younger. He's looking at me like I'm the girl who uttered words enough to kill Hannes. To take his death and weaponize it. To kill Carla. To kill his humanity. "Why?"

A soldier walking nearby turns at the sound of Eren's raised voice, but leaves us alone. Only the idiot in front of me fails to notice the commotion we're causing. My wrist goes limp. "Fine. But it won't change anything. What we saw won't ever change. We can never take that back."

"You can never take it back," he corrects. I grit my teeth and stay silent. He starts tugging me down the street, single-minded focus blazing a trail past anyone and everyone we encounter.

Actually–

"You know what, Eren?" I grind my heels to a halt, forcing a stutter into his stride. "Fuck this. I'm done. I'm done dealing with your fucking piss-poor bullshit." I lash out with my free hand, pinching his chin in my fingers, nails digging into the skin to force him to look at me. I'm done. I'm done. I've had enough. "Blame me. Hate me. Curse me and spite my name if it suits you. But don't forget–at least I did something. What did you ever do back then? All you did was try to lift up a house that was never going to budge. At least I fucking did something. And, yeah, Hannes died. But Carla lived. No thanks to you."

Eren stops entirely. He's close enough to spit on my face for what I said. Close enough to curse me out in full. To reach for my neck and squeeze the life out of me. To hit me like he did, once, when his sobs scraped the sky and his mother went still. His eyes are a dulled, vicious green. His face eerily calm. Sclera bloodshot. Chest rising and falling in rapid, disjointed staccato. "You can't take those words back," he says, and my blood runs cold. "What she had–what you gave her–wasn't living. One day you'll see."

"Wh–"

"Eren!" Armin is waving from the corner where our street intersects with the next one over. He's blatantly alarmed; anyone with half a brain would be, I suppose, seeing us grabbing onto each other like two scrappy racoons, not sure yet if we want to rip each other to shreds or walk away as strangers. Eren's fingers spasm against my wrist as he twists his head to free his chin. He lets go and steps back.

Blood roars in my ears like a waterfall. I hear only the sound of my heart as my eyes track the motion of Armin's arm to his shoulder, where Mikasa stands, eyes guarded and haunted and ghostly. The scant lights still illuminating the streets this far out in the night catch in her face, reflecting against her skin and highlighting the subject of her attention all the more.

And it really is him.

His hair is longer than it was the day he died. He's grown it out into a mangy state, brushed and pulled back into a blonde ponytail near his nape. That same old garrison uniform adorns his body, his intact bones and skin. I furrow my brows. It looks like parts of his skin–just snippets of the places that creep out past his cuffs and collar–are laced in silver scars. But his completion is vibrant. Blood thrums under his flesh, warming his visage, coloring it amongst the hues of the living.

Hannes meets my eyes, and when he does, pain roars with sudden vigor against my temples.

I groan and clutch my head. The ache ebbs when our gazes sever, and arches straight back into my mind the second they meet again. "I don't understand," I say, feeling breathless and dizzy. Suddenly my clothes are too hot, my body too forlorn. It is as if I've donned an outfit I've no business wearing. I sway a little, the motion wholly unnoticed by Mikasa and Eren. Only Hannes sees. Only Armin sees. They are one in the same, observers, keen in all the ways I never remember Hannes being. It's only because the pair stand so close together that I begin to understand the extent to which the man before me fails to resemble the man I remember. He's shaved his facial hair clean, cut it down and maintained his skin so finely it appears almost as if he's never had facial follicles to begin with. There's no drunken flush to his cheeks. No snaggle to the end of his sentences. No boisterous bravado. No grin. When he smiles, it's every bit as amiable as it is reserved. A thin-lipped expression. He clasps his hands behind his back, inclines his head to me.

"Hello, Alaina," he says.

And the street engulfs me whole.

"Alaina," she whispers.

"Alaina. Come here."

"Fine. One episode, Alaina. I'll watch one episode."

"I told you that show was off-limits, Alaina. Or did you forget what I said after we watched the first episode together?"

"Alaina. Get out here and help your mother."

"Alaina. Your father wants you in the fields."

"The farmers are not your friends, Alaina. You are an extension of me. One day, you will own their labor."

"Everything in this orchard will be yours if I deem you worthy, Alaina. If and only if."

"Your father is too ill to produce another child, Alaina. Do you really want to burden him any further by failing to be the perfect heir?"

"The accident was caused by my employee's negligence, Alaina. Do not make a fuss. You and your father could have been killed in that truck. Killed by incompetence."

"Don't you dare talk back to your mother, Alaina. Go out and get a new press. At least replace the one you've damaged."

"You need to stop bringing your new 'friend' over. Alaina. Look at me. We don't have 'friends.' We have workers and business partners and spouses. Don't focus on anything else."

"The tailor is coming over on Thursday to fit you for dinner next week. You remember the man I introduced you to at the last harvest festival, yes? His son is your age. I expect you to make a good impression, Alaina."

"Alaina! Apologize to him at once. Do you think you're better than all of this? Too good for your mother's orchards, too good for his father's vineyards?"

"If I catch you sneaking out to see your friend again, Alaina, so help me God–"

"So be it, Alaina. Run as far as you like. But leave your name here–no daughter of mine will be relegated to the likes of you."

"Do you really think I meant to hit you? It was an accident. I apologized. That's more than most children get, you understand? Alaina don't you dare get smart with me about this being the second time."

"Alaina–you–you fucking skank. You fucking whore. I set you up with a good man, from a good family, and you've gone and ruined yourself with–with a fucking woman–"

When the world bent stolidly underneath me and I fell through the cracks, pain vanished from my body. Stars wove those aches into ethereal effervescence that sparked and curled like supernovas. Warm wind-swept trees scratched my name into the sky. Birds screeched their alarm as shotgun blasts peppered the air. Between the ducts in her breasts metal lodged and burrowed and nested. Between my heart and my chest metal lodged and burrowed and nested. My mother crumpled to the ground after the shot I bequeathed to her, a final gift from mother to daughter. The parting exchange between Alaina Monroy and Hannah Monroy.

Alaina Monroy. Aliva Moreau.

Hannah. Hannes.

Why hadn't I seen it? We died the same day; in that lifetime, in this one, in the next. She chased me here. I lead her. How truly obtuse I was to think that I was the only one special enough to live longer than I ought.

Memories return in floods, dousing the fog that dominated my consciousness since my memory began to slip. This place crumbles at the scenes, four walls to a stage collapsing down like cardboard props. Are my emotions real? Is this world real? Or is it a subset of the place I once lived, the life I once had? Love and loss. Grief and gore. Hatred and houses shelled out like shucked oysters. If a story in there is reality here–did I ever really exist at all? Have I existed in a spectrum across dozens of stories and timelines?

And–these people, these feelings…to whom do they truly belong? To Aliva? Alaina? To the liminal, deathless creature I've become and I've always been? I squirm my murderous shell across the filth and grit of the earth, burrowing between worlds, implanting myself upon the lives of others. I have killed and robbed and possessed and personified.

I have no personhood.

Everything hurts. My body–Aliva's body–aches all over. I can feel her struggling to breathe. Each short intake of breath presses against my lungs like barbed bellows gnashing tetanus-stained metal enamel against my ribs.

Sound washes over my ears, lapping against the cartilage, waves kissing a shell embedded in the shore. I hear shouts of alarm. I hear a low, even tone. I do not trust it. I cannot speak in return, though I try. The pressure on my chest, the density of my skull, is too much to handle. Aliva's body crashes to the ground and waits to die all over again. Twin worlds, lives, memories, and emotions echo in a whirlwind behind my eyes. The mortal cajoling catches in Aliva's ears–

–right as Alaina starts to hum. For there's a song sung in the orchards, and she knows it very well…

This word is cru-el

To the people that it loves

Angels to demons and

Sudden flightless doves

It plucks them from the sky

In-king white feathered quills

Soiling sacred ground

Reaped for mere, cheap thrills

The sun watches as the fields

Carry seeds without water

Ob-serves as they grow

Nursing cries, from each daughter

The farmers pluck the blackness

Sprouted from the trees

Ignore the bloody juices

And the bitten-back pleas

Then to the hunters go the farmers

Protecting olives with their guns

Shooting down the doves

All while bas-king in the sun

Because this world knows no love

Can give none at all

Snapping peace branches in two

And letting fliers fall

When I come to, I've already missed the beginning of the end.

The dawn of reality, of impending destiny, blooms in vigor. Fate does not come into the world quietly–it booms and howls and grieves the plot it cannot puncture and partition. Everything I know myself to be no longer exists, but no one cares. Mother Nature moves in a weathering waltz, prowling at the edges of all five senses, reminding me slowly that she won't stop her dance for anyone. Least of all, me, a too long-lived denizen of her terrain.

Chaos brews outside the window. Dust floats by in the breeze, accompanied and disturbed by the frantic whirring of dozens of ODM wires. A few others in various military garbs–cadets and garrison troops alike–lay prone, bandaged often around the head, reddened signatures staining their claim to each crown. Someone outside is screaming about humanity's impending doom. I don't even get a chance to wake up in full–the second I crack open my eyes, there's a garrison member above me gripping my shoulder. "Are you awake? Good. No time to fill you in; details coming soon. You're to report back at base for emergency designations in half an hour."

Half an hour. I blink, nodding just to shake away the man hunched over me–then reach out to grab his jacket. My voice comes out hoarse. "Where's"–I cough briefly–"Hannes. I need to–report to him."

Were it any other time, I think the man might've questioned what business a random cadet had chasing down any of the higher ups. Instead he only glances at the place where I've latched onto his jacket with open irritation and shoves me off. "Captain's in a meeting. Pass it on later."

"Yes sir." I toss up a quick salute. As the man retreats, I squirm off the cot and dart out into the open.

It's a mess. Chaos reigns everywhere I look. Civilians scurry around the barely maintained periphery of Trost's base, rushing away from the epicenter of debris and destruction. Only the memories that collided with me in the pitch of the early morning clue me into the reality of my current situation. The Colossal Titan–no, Bertholdt Hoover–has kicked his way through the wall. A lump forms in my throat and I swallow it back down. Who am I to think that anything could've changed? I wonder when they decided to be warriors once again. In my mind they're hunched over in nightly fog, candle wick singing lowly as it did when Bertholdt once tried to teach me how to read. In my imagination his is a face of indecision and hesitation. It comforts me to think, for the victims' sakes, that they warred with their choices. Even if they did not spar for long until relief and duty kissed their necks in gratitude.

What platitudes will they offer when they see me? Or are we truly strangers once again, the four of us? To me they are warriors in pen. To me they are every bit as real as my own flesh and blood.

What am I to the shifters but another way in which they've been reminded that they're lost, searching for home, finding it in faces instead?

I tighten my harness straps idly as I jog, still feeling drained from the weight of two (three?) lives settling into one body. The foot traffic on the streets is too heavy; I take to the rooftops, nearly biting my tongue from the upward lurch. The garrison's main building peeks out as the tallest in the vicinity; I hone in on it and zip through the air. There's windows peppering their way through the bricks. I've half a mind to burst straight through one. I'm no Ackerman though, and I'm certainly not stupid enough to act like one.

I hit a staggering run, boots slapping against stone and bursting into motion. I race between officers and troops up spiral stairs. In a way it reminds me of when I snuck into Shadis's office on the day of the obstacle course. Then and now, people don't bother me so long as I appear like I've got somewhere to be. I make it up a flight and a half before leaning against the wall to wheeze. As I catch my breath the frenzy remains, like a stream that continues to shoot water around my rocky form. I grant myself an extra moment's rest before launching myself back into the current.

Officers fold out of the room at the end of the hall like flower petals in spring. I weave through them, salmon upstream, surging towards the back. My left hand slips against my hip towards the blade holsters as my right pushes the door shut.

Hannes stands at the back of the room, watching the window. A lanky table spans the gap between us, lifeless save for the scattering of half-empty water glasses and chairs pushed back from the ledge. There's no lock on the door, so I prowl towards the nearest chair and drag it back to sit under the handle. Throughout all of this the garrison captain remains rigid.

"Mother."

Finally, Hannes smiles. "How strange it is to be called that word again."

I step away from the door, choosing to walk up the opposite side of the table from her. "How'd you know it was me?"

"I remember it quite clearly," she says instead, still looking out the window. She's got her arms clasped behind her back, resting just above her gear. "My daughter's thirteenth. She wanted to watch a show with me. I can recall the horror of watching those gangly creatures consume the mother rather well. You were next to me, mouth open, as we watched the soldier run away with a child under each arm."

I continue to move forward slowly, trailing my hand over the backs of the chairs until I'm almost directly across from where she stands. "That's not how I remember it."

Hannes turns to me, expression like ice. "That's the interesting thing about memory, isn't it? How different and contradictory our lives make each scene."

I scowl. "You were screaming at me to turn it off. You nearly hit me with the remote for choosing something so 'inappropriate'," I counter. "That's not exactly a detail that either of us should forget."

"I see you're still falling into your old ways." She shakes her head mock-mournfully. "I was simply parenting you. Guiding you as a mother. But to you I must have been a monster."

"Are. Are a monster."

"Mm."

Hannes tilts her head back, looking again to the window. To the storm welling just beyond the pane. "I came into this world in a lump of vomited body parts. I was half-submerged under the pile, limbs askew and grappling to hold onto something in the way that only post-mortem muscle does. I clawed my way out of the pile, lost, in the body of a man, dead one moment and viciously alive the next." She raps a knuckle against the glass. "This place was generous to me. I declared myself amnesic; the former captain gave me paid leave. I picked up the pieces. Wove myself into the story; wondered where it all went wrong. After all, my host wasn't supposed to die that day; so I wondered: what was so different? When I heard wind of a refugee named Carla, I knew. The answer was you."

"You never showed your face." I feel myself drawing out of her story, throwing skepticism down between us. Barrier-like and resolute.

"No," she agrees. "But I didn't need to. You walk like flame in an ill-tempered glass. Any half-decent mother would recognize their child's steps." I can't help but snort. My finger drifts off to rub Efa's wedding ring–and Hannes narrows her eyes, but does not look away from the buildings outside. "You mock me still."

Rage flickers into my arms, tensing the muscles until they're cord-like. "Is that the best you can say after everything that's happened? Just a backhanded comment?"

"Alaina," she warns. I know that tone. Something deeper than memories of the flesh make me recoil, just by hearing it once. My chest hurts in little pricks and the balls of my feet itch to move. "Do not forget your place. I'm still your mother."

"Not here. Not anymore. Efa is Aliva's mother. Efa is mine: not you."

Hannes chuckles. "She's not real, Alaina. No one here is."

"How do you know? Maybe the world we came from is fake. Maybe these people are more alive than we ever were."

She scoffs. "You're being ridiculous."

"No, you are. You've always been so narrow minded."

I know I've struck a nerve the second her head pivots to stare down at mine. There's a body in the room we've failed to address, a person of sunshine and honey the two of us have neglected to reminisce on. My heart aches to even broach the subject; especially now that my memories war with my lived experiences. But we can't ignore her forever.

I loved her. Alaina loved her. But Aliva? She's laid with others. Fallen, too. She's harbored emotions for a man she has no business clinging on to. And now what? Now that I am every version of myself once more, I don't know what to believe. My head? My heart? Neither know which reality their sentiments belong to anymore. Alaina does not love Reiner. Aliva does not care for my past; didn't remember it up until recently. And so, what of myself? Do I care for both?

Do I still have a right to?

"I am willing to look past your sin," she says finally, words punctuated with pursed lips of disapproval. "But only on the occasion that you repay to me what you owe."

"I owe you jacksshit."

She casts one of her motherly gazes my way; the kind that warns frigidly not to continue with my back talking. Even on Hannes's face the expression remains effective. "You disobeyed me and continued watching the show. You know what happens today, don't you? And the day after that?" She doesn't have to spell it out for me. I can see the greed in her eyes; what she wants is clear as day. "My livelihood is gone because of you. I've spent these years masquerading as this 'Hannes' man, but I crave more. More than what I had before. Look at you, Alaina; not a tactical bone in you. Every bit your father's child even now. If you were smarter, you would use your knowledge to advance yourself. Yet you're no better than the day I found you and that c–"

"So that's it, then? We're back where we started?"

Hannes drifts away from the window, stalking the perimeter of the table. "Hardly. You and I can never go back to what we were. I am willing to see you as a business partner; nothing more. Return my fortunes with interest and do whatever you please with yourself afterward."

I fight the urge to retreat as she approaches. "And if I don't?"

My mother pauses. In Hannes's body, she is taller than me, imposing in a way her normal stature never really was. I'm drawn back into those nightmares, those nights in which Hannes spoke to me. Shivers snake around my spine. "I'll make this life hell," she says simply. "You've grown greedy. Perhaps a lesson in honest modesty would do you good."

"You wouldn't–"

"Oh, but I would," she sneers. "Your friends might even thank me, when they hear of all the things you've kept from them."

"Not if I kill you first."

Hannes laughs throatily. "You're not a murderer, Alaina. Never have you been. My death was an accident; even if I placed the gun in your hand myself, you couldn't shoot in cold sobriety."

The shadows in the room percolate into a figure, ice-black and hideous. The Reaper shakes her head at me. Warning. I ignore her. "I'm not the daughter you remember."

Her eyebrow juts up. "No? I wonder what soured you. You, who would weep for hours after a slapped wrist."

"Will you do the same, when I slice your tongue and sever your fingers to keep my secrets?"

"Our secrets," she reminds me, as if my threats went in one ear and out the other. She truly doesn't see me as a threat. Not in the ways that matter. "Blood binds us and isolates us from everyone else. Your sins are mine. Mine are your own. Together we can wield the future. These people are tools, Alaina. Tools do not care when they get used. That's what they're for."

Fire burns my fingernails short. I narrow my eyes. My body tenses. Somewhere far above, the sun shines, warm and wet and wailing the murder of her once-love. "No. Blood is blood. It all leaks out the same."

I lash out, moving to clip in a blade, but she darts forward and blocks my wrist. So I twist my other one and fire–

The cable lurches out like a cannonball, grating over my arm and piercing its way straight through my jacket into hers.

It happens all in thirty seconds. Start to finish. Over and done. For a moment we just stand there, locked, her hands tight on my arm and my cable taunt in her ribs. Then the adrenaline dilutes enough for our surroundings to filter back into view. I watch the red carpet crawl down the skin of her neck, pooling in her clavicle. Her eyes wide. Weary. Bloodshot in the corners. She stands on her own strength until it collapses. When she falls, the back of her head cracks against the back of a chair and her body lumps its way onto the wooden floor.

She never apologizes. I don't think mothers ever do.

I'm not an Ackerman. I don't burst into a room with the strength of an ox and tear through my enemies. I'm a Moreau. I skirt the table's edge and grab the bloodied chair, dragging it behind me. The back legs screech against the grains. My arms are shaking from the shock, the anger, the agony. I launch the chair at the window, smacking and smashing at the glass. I pant, utterly spent, discarding the chair in a disgusted motion. I don't have the strength necessary for this. Instead, I lumber back over to Hannes's corpse. I set my foot against the jaw and yank my cable back out of her neck. Blood and chunks of tissue and esophagus come up with the barbed metal end. I flick it off as best as I can, packing away my gear. I yank all of Hannes's equipment off and stash it in the closet. The body stares up at me, watching my every motion, lifeless eyes absorbing every motion in a desperate attempt to understand the machinations of its murderer. But there are none. Only cold impulse. I'm a daughter no more. She won't understand. No doubt she's moved onto her next lifetime, waiting until I chase her there, swimming around like a crocodile, ribbed-back and raging, angry always.

I've only just stowed the corpse in the corner when the door opens.

"...Aliva?"

I freeze.

I stand up, frantically wiping my bloodied hands on the darkest part of my outfit–black pants, thank fuck–and quickly retreat back into the main curve of the meeting room. Armin stands in the doorway.

His eyes narrow. His hands hold both handles, fingers just above the triggers. "I thought I'd find you here."

---

A/N: Hi all! If you haven't already, please consider taking this survey: jfe/form/SV_0vVr7k33nZY5SpU. Explanation is available in the survey chapter of the fic. Thank you!

It's been awhile, hasn't it?
Okay, here we go: the cat distribution system gave me a cat and she is the light of my life. But I'm in between places right now so she's staying with my friend and I'm actually losing my mind now being able to see her right now. I just got back from a little Thanksgiving trip! Fun as hell and we all got very drunk and silly. I got my eyebrow pierced, I'm going to Italy in the spring and back to Mexico in like three weeks, and finals are right around the corner so I am BUSY. Ugh.
Also.
First, thanks to all of the readers that've persisted this long. When I sat down and storyboarded this story, I designed it with patient narrative structure in mind. It's not going to be short. And I know some people have been frustrated with the lack of 'things' happening because so much of it so far has focused on the places in the original story where things don't really happen. I hope the story from here feels more interesting, if that's an applicable concern. In any case, I'll see you all next time. 3