Mischa helped carve wood with her father. She was a bit on the quieter side, disinterested in the affairs of most, perturbed by customers and irritated by financial disparity. Mischa held blond locks like the epicenter of the sun: dazzling to the eyes, theoretically, if one could manage to stare long enough. That was the issue with her–always so bright, so illustrious, that as painful as it was to draw into her flame it was harder still to turn away.
Of course I fell in love.
Her father held a contract with my mother, an agreement to craft our presses. My mother was exceptionally particular about her production, and insisted on wooden instruments and wooden instruments alone. "The olives know what's pressing against their sides," she told me, back when I was young and malleable. Her nose twitched as she jutted up her chin. "That's why our product is superior. Details matter, Alaina."
I believed her for it, too, until I overheard an argument between her and my father. Apparently she'd lost out on local sales awhile back because she'd been using imported, fancy state-of-the art machinery. He'd insisted she switch over to local artisans in our valley; had been insisting ever since. When she growled at him, saying "You are the reason we're stuck with these profit margins," he'd agreed.
Of course she wanted to switch back to foreign imports after he died.
By then I'd already met Mischa, and the care with which her father handled our sales made me realize how important our business was to him. Mischa, at first, seemed as if she couldn't care less for my being there. I was the daughter of a well-to-do estate. She was the one floating by on my dime. We, as far as she was concerned, did not mix.
Of course we eventually did.
Irritated glances and clipped remarks turned to indifference turned to professionalism turned to curiosity turned to infatuation and…affection. Love. Tender, sweet, stroking the side of a cheek or tucking a stray hair out of sight to warrant physical connections.
When she kissed me, I grew constellations down my spine, shivering at the touch and the etherealness of being hers.
So maybe–maybe I should have known. Maybe, if I had been wholly what I once was (who I once was) I would have recognized it sooner.
But Alaina and Mischa we no longer were. Aliva…and Mina we had become.
Mina could have screamed. She could have turned her head, to realize, to stare down the titan as it rushed to gorge itself upon her cranium. She looked at me. She saw my hand reaching out. And just for one second, for one singular moment, had she whispered with confusion on her face, "Alaina?"
Then she was gone.
I wonder if, when Mischa got shot, I reached out for her the same way. Or was it something else–some wild, vibrant coincidence that let her see through me as only she would? I never loved Mina the way Alaina loved Mischa, not in full. Was that why we'd taken so long to see through each other? Was that why, despite it all, we were so drawn to each other?
It didn't matter. None of it did. Yet, as Annie cuts the jaw of the titan slack and severs its nape, I find myself incapable of doing anything but wonder. Why did it take Mina so long to realize? Why did she seem to act exactly like the Mina I remembered from the show, telling me of a background Mischa would have no recollection of? My throat feels like it is caving in on itself, crushed raw with emotion and an overwhelming amount of loneliness. Why remember, only then, only right when I can't do a thing about it–again?
Again. Again. Again.
Mina's headless body clumps to the ground, the protruding top of her spine angled my way. I can see the hollow tube of her esophagus, the gurgling red of the puckered arteries and blood cells, the slabs of muscle and the thin meat of fat circulating around it all. The teeth had shredded away at her collarbone on one side, taking a chunk from her shoulder as well. The bones peek out, ivory white, glistening up at me like sheets of snow reflecting merciless rays of sunlight. As the titan slumps down, defeated, steam already hissing from its body, I fall along with it. The titan's grip goes lax in the throes of its death. I have neither heart nor strength to push, until I saw it.
Curled against the ground, half blue and half red, is Mina's little blue ribbon.
I suck in a harsh breath involuntarily at the sight. Fog surrounds me. I blink and without really recalling ever moving, find myself crouched over Mina's body, carefully plucking the ribbon from the ground and holding it fast. I sway. Someone shouts. Mina is gone.
Annie's legs appears at my side. She is close. Watching, I assume. I glance up at her. She isn't looking my way at all: instead, she watches the rooftops. I survey the area around me, hardly caring for what I see. She'd killed the other titan with the overexaggerated grin. But the bearded one that is still nearby, still focused on the rooftop, shuffling like it's trying to angle its arm farther across the rows and rows of neat shillings–
I realize what Annie is looking at. Two figures blend into one, fused and fluid. Eren has his left arm thrown over Armin's shoulders, so that Armin can try to use his two legs to compensate for Eren's remaining one.
Both of them are alive. Both of them are fine (relatively). There is no Attack Titan. No shell shocked Armin. Just one very much alive, very much hungry, large titan with a gray beard. Something has messed up the timing. For some reason, Armin had more time here and now than he had in the story. Was it–no. Armin was deposited into the mouth of the titan after every single other member of the squad (sans Eren) was killed. Mina…her death was delayed because I intervened.
Hadn't Eren watched me nearly meet my fate before rushing to Armin?
He'd arrived far earlier than he was supposed to. Meaning he saved Armin before it would even become critical to save Armin.
Meaning he could've–
The world around me goes dull. Colorless.
And the anger in my gut flares white-hot.
I am in the air before I know it. I crash into Armin and Eren like a comet, wrenching them apart, pushing Armin to grapple more firmly with Eren. "Aliva!" Armin cries out, alarmed out of his dazed, dumb look, at the same time that Eren shouts, "What the fuck are you doing?"
"You fucking bastard," I seethe, tumbling with him over the rooftop until a loose shingle smacks us apart. With his left leg missing entirely and mine sorely out of commission, he can't stand so much as prop himself up, and I don't care to stand so much as I care to pounce on him. I yank my arm back and punch, nearly hitting him in the jaw. I lost the advantage of catching him off guard. He throws his hands up to deter my punch and shield himself from the worst of it. But with his leg chopped and the bleeding unstaunched, I can tell he is lagging and quickly losing ground. He is dazed and no amount of desperate fighting spirit can change the fact that for now, I am stronger.
I am stronger.
But it didn't even matter.
I hit him with a solid punch on the third try. I can hear Armin squealing distantly, sounding like he is sobbing between pleas for me to stop pummeling his best friend. That only makes me angrier. I don't care to find out why he isn't intervening–leave it to a coward to cry and do nothing else–as I suddenly got the wild urge to strangle Eren, to throttle sense into him. "You let her die–you–"
"Fuck off!" he yells, and the fact that he doesn't even seem to care when my world iscrashing down around me makes me really lose it.
"Fuck your false heroisim"–I gear up to kick him–"you're nothing but a piece of shit hypocrite"–I kick hard, his hands narrowly diluting the force from his gut over to his side instead–"who calls me a bitch for killing your mother–which I didn't even fucking do, by the way– all while you"–I grab fistfuls of his jacket and yank him up to stand, eye level with me–"let Mina fucking die without giving a single fuck about it."
"Armin was–"
I shake him. Hard. At that point I can feel my face getting hot and stuffy from the shouting but I don't even care. "Don't you even dare. Armin had plenty of time, Mina didn't. You–you–you fucking watched me as she ran over. You knew she was running over to me before I did, but you didn't even shout, you didn't warn her, you didn't stop her–" My voice breaks off as I sob, suddenly out of breath. My sight wavers as hot tears threaten to burst right out of my eyes. Yet they stay there, because I'm so terribly angry, because my hatred for his shortcomings and my failures runs so deep I can't even grant myself the release that shedding pent-up emotions in the form of tears would bring. Instead I only shake Eren harder.
And then I see it. Lumbering.
I feel calmer, then. Less angry. More resolute. "Her blood is on our hands," I tell Eren, finally speaking to him with a more level volume.
He sneers at me. "You think I don't know that?"
"Do you know what it's like to feel what she felt? The fear of being eaten alive?" His brows scrunch up, hostile all over, but I won't let him have a word in edgewise. "Tell me what it's like, later. Or don't. I don't care."
"What the fuck are you going on about–"
I feel my features go cold. All the anger, all the fury. Just…gone. Everything around me is crystal clear again. There are lines drawn into the air around us, scales that weigh the life of one against the lives of many. Mina is dead.
"Make it worth it," I tell Eren, as I smooth out my grip on his bloodied beige jacket. He doesn't get a chance to ask. Not before I push him ever-so-slightly. Eren topples over and falls back, off the roof…and right down the gullet of the bearded titan.
My features warp instantly, into shock and frozen horror. "I didn't–I just meant to push him, I didn't think we were close to the edge, or that the titan was right there…" I turn my anguished face towards my audience, somewhat dismayed and relieved to find I've put on such a front for a crowd of one. Technically two. Annie stands relatively near to Armin, watching me with eyes slightly larger than normal and an overcast aura permeating her demeanor. Armin, however…it's like he isn't even processing. He just hovers there, a shell, alive yet the farthest from living as I've ever seen him. Not even news of his grandfather had rendered him so…catatonic.
"We should cut our losses," Annie finally says. "Too many titans."
"Right." I swallow, letting the aftermath of my probably too-forced reaction melt from my face. Now I just feel numb. I've done the impulsively unthinkable. If Eren has even so much as an ounce of venom in him he'll transform soon enough. If not…
I am in no state to even think about that. Not when I can't process, can't connect with, the implications of my own actions.
"Do you have enough gas?"
I check my canisters. Mostly fine, since I've been balancing my journey out. "Enough to make it back. You?"
"No," Annie says, but I saw where she is looking. Mina's waist is still adorned with perfectly good ODM gear.
I look away while she loots.
I try to rouse Armin and fail. By the time Annie has maneuvered back up to the rooftops, I've all but given up on him. "Think you can carry him?"
Annie's face crinkles up in disgust. "I'm not his mother," she snaps, but she bends her knees and put her hands out behind her anyways. "Get him on my back." Together we push Armin around like dough until he's molded against her and she can secure him with her arms wrapped around her back. Triggers in hand, she experiments with firing and adjusting the wire trajectory. "I can't fight like this. We should go carefully."
I nod. "Maybe find some other squad we can drop him off with."
Annie grunts her agreement.
By the time we are off, my foot is utterly unfunctional. I limp across rooftops with three times the effort it took me to cross them in the first place. Every part of me aches. Fortunately, we only trek down a few rooftops before we run into familiar faces. Connie, Ymir and Christa see us and pause on our rooftop. Annie sets Armin down, and he stands up like a plank, staring off into the distance. Connie shoves his face into Armin's while shouting in an attempt to rouse him. If luck is on my side, I like to think that Armin's disposition is the reason everyone is too distracted to ask what even brought Annie, Armin, and I together when the three of us have very different squads and assignments. Ah, well.
"Aliva–your leg!" Christa's brows bend to the clouds with worry.
"It's fine. Just a bit out of sorts."
Ymir raises an eyebrow. "You're paler than Christa's ass, Aliva." Christa immediately turns to Ymir, aghast at the offending metaphor, while I try and fail to offer them a smile. Someone will have to tell them about Mina. I don't think I'm ready for it to be me.
"What orders are you working on?" I say, at the same time Armin finally snaps to attention. Slowly but surely, things are falling into place. I hear Connie ask Armin what happened. He doesn't even see Annie or me; hasn't even noticed us yet. I nudge the warrior and jerk my chin towards the base. "I'm going to get this patched up," I tell her, loud enough for Christa and Ymir to hear. "You should recoup with your group. Armin should be fine with them."
Annie, for perhaps the first time since I've known her, places her hand on my shoulder. She looks me square in the eye. "I'm sorry," she murmurs carefully, then ditches out before she can watch me fall apart at her words. I'm sorry too.
"I can't fight like this," I whisper quickly, as I turn to smile at the other girls, drowning out the sounds of my own rising sorrow with forced cheer. "Go on ahead. I'll get patched up and sent back out in no time."
"They should be ringing the bell soon," Christa says. "Stay safe."
I want to smile. I really do. "Until then."