Chapter 47

It takes days to clean up the bodies and purge Trost of the remaining titans. With the combined efforts of the survey corps and the garrison's military engineers, the napes of the gangly beasts were plucked off one by one like ears of corn. Only then were the bodies slated to be cleaned off the streets.

My injured leg lands me on cataloging duty. Reports of bodies with known identities roll in like the tide, erasing sea creatures from sight in steady drums of froth and foam. I keep an eye out for names that I know, anxious to find them and anxious not to. I don't come across the name I dread seeing. Instead I find myself scanning the faces of all the other catalogers, wondering if they'll recognize the words Mina Carolina, wondering if they'd tell me when they do.

In my past life, I would sit next to the railroad tracks. I'd wait for trains to rumble by, studying the woosh of air slipping between the wheels and around the bulk of their freight. Trains don't stop for disturbances on their tracks. If I were to lay down, plank-like and statuesque, they would not notice me until it's far too late. The horn would blair and the brakes would send sparks shifting through the sky and still the train would not stop in time. Life moves on–and if we do not move with it, we'll get left behind.

No one mentions Mina. There's too many names to stop and point out and not enough time. I'm so preoccupied scanning the m's for the friend whose death I've yet to process in full that I'm entirely unprepared when I come across a name I do recognize: Marco Bodt. Shivers race up and down the ridges of my spine. There's guilt there too, laced into the space between fat and muscle, between the lining of my stomach and the acid climbing up into my esophagus. Guilt because, try as I might, I can't find it within myself to care. Marco was a friend. Marco was someone special to Mina. But, to me, Marco was not Mina–would never be Mina. And the fact that he's dead here means there is still integrity in the plot. It means that Reiner is splitting into two halves, deep fissures cracking across his being like lines in shifting sand. It means that there is one less wrench in my way. Could I have saved him? Maybe. It's not a comfortable thought. But I can't be everywhere at once. While he was in danger of eavesdropping on conversations better left unheard, I would have been engaging with the commanders. Long term, isn't that more important for me? For everyone? How can I preserve the integrity of the larger characters if I waste my time trying to salvage every minor one?

My excuses fall flat inside of my own head. Ultimately, I didn't even try. I'd remind myself to help him when it was convenient, then forget all about him the second he disappeared from view. Mina would be ashamed of me. Whatever light, whatever compassion she saw in me, must be long gone. How could I ever claim to care about the state of this world when I still neglect to address it in full?

Night falls, and smoke rises.

I stand in a pillar of shadow, a study in grief, watching corpses burn. The acrid smell of mottled flesh chars my nostrils. When I breathe in, I see the dead in pantomimed cutlets of fabric, of blood, of curdled skin and wilting hair. When I exhale, mine becomes one of many streams of breath rising into the night sky. We watch the flames flicker in our comrade's eyes and pretend not to notice the agony within those expressions.

I imagine Mina, nested in that pile of human kindling, warm for the last time in her life.

And maybe her hand falls limp against another's. Maybe that hand belongs to Marco. I find comfort in thinking that, perhaps, as their bodies melt away like ice lingering too long into the spring, their bones will fuse at the fingertips and cool with the touch of a lover grazing their frames.

"Hey," Christa says, sliding closer to my side. There's something hollow in her voice even as she attempts to suffuse it with her usual honey. I can't find Ymir. I've grown so used to seeing them next to each other that for a moment, I just stare. Wondering where her other half is. Wondering if she's in that pile too.

"Hey."

"I…heard. About Mina."

I turn back to the fire. "Who?" Christa doesn't answer me immediately. I can't tell if she's upset with me, for holding out on her. I should've been the one to tell her and Ymir. They were the only two who could say they spent as much time with her as I did. Yet I swallowed my secrets and let them spill from the mouth of another. Did it really matter to me who told them? I rub the ring, feeling how cold the metal is in contrast to my finger. The tongue of the night sky twinkles against the gold, sparkling saliva like tears. "It should've been me."

I see Christa's shoulders stiffen, then relax. "It's okay."

"Is it?"

"Aliva."

I turn suddenly. It's hard to see Christa–her image wavers, dusting over like fogged glass. "I'm serious–is it? I was there. It's–I mean, if I hadn't–or if I'd been better at–"

"Aliva," Christa repeats, and the air hits cold against my cheeks. I touch a finger to the bags under my eyes and it comes away wet. Christa's image warps further, but for a moment, I see the way her eyes water in turn. "We can't beat each other up over this. If we start we'll never stop."

I want to disappear. I want to lay down on the ground and watch the wood turn to ash. I want to be eye level with the dead, be the dead, be anything but them and anywhere but here. I miss Mina. I miss the way I was before this damned district. Before Trost. Before Shiganshina. The plot continues to march forward–when have I ever actually impacted it? Every rip I make in the tapestry of the future gets stitched over eventually. Carla remains dead. Eren remains angry. Mina and Marco lay on the pyre in front of me, proof to my heedless eyes that there is no life in which I make a difference. My manipulations are inconsequential compared to those of Eren's, of Armin's, of Mikasa's.

"I shouldn't be here," I say, because that's easier than I'm sorry.

At that, Christa frowns. She wipes harshly at her eye. "Where else would you be?"

Everywhere. Nowhere. "Are we good people?"

"I can't answer that for you," she says, gazing back at the flames. I follow where she looks–Ymir is next to Jean, speaking to the man who gazes only at his open palm. I look away. But there's a face I recognize in every corner of the gathered circle. The warriors, with Annie glancing over at Jean and Ymir. Connie and Sasha, stoic, staring down the burning wood as if they don't even recognize what they see. The former trainees of the eastern camp: Floch and Marlo, uncomfortable at the edges. Hitch watching the blonde warrior who fails to glance her way. There's a person for every body. A name for every soul spirited out of this hell we've grown used to. At the exact opposite end of the bonfire I imagine I'd find Mikasa and Armin. I don't want to face any of them. Not after Mina. Not after what Pyxis said. Not after Marco.

The moon blinks slowly with each passing cloud. The fire before us begins to heave defeated sighs, shrinking in magnitude. The worst of the blaze is over, but still I feel singed, eaten from the inside-out by the flames and the fury each orange tendril contains. "I'm losing my sense of direction. My purpose. What am I here for, Christa? What are any of us here for? What good are we here? Anywhere?"

That all-too-familiar lump in my throat is back. I burn holes through the backs of my eyes, staring down the bonfire and daring it to blink first. But of course it's a losing battle. Of course I can only engage in fights I've no business winning.

Christa doesn't answer me. But she doesn't leave me, either. There's something unspoken that I don't quite understand; some friendship that lingers and some that we've lost. Eventually, she reaches for my hand. It's smaller than Mina's–hardened by more calluses, nails bitten brittle by a tick Christa tries and fails to hide. But it's warm. And it's steadying. The world begins to warp all over again, flames blending and twisting to interlock with the night sky as my visions drowns with emotions I'm terrified to let slip past my control. "I tried," I rasp. "She–"

Christa squeezes my hand, and I fall silent.

Three days to clean Trost of its titans. Two titans captured alive. It's a song I know very well; a repetition of my belief that perhaps there isn't a damn thing I can do to impact the plot so definitively. All my errors get rerouted. All my actions come undone, eventually, like a spool of thread tumbling to the ground. I don't see Eren. At first I wonder if he's avoiding me, until Jean lets it slip that Armin and Mikasa aren't around either. Which would explain why I didn't see them at the fire. Frankly I'm surprised that I wasn't dragged off right along with them given the fact that I suffered through the fall of Shiganshina at their side. Even the aftermath, stuck in those refugee camps, was spent in their shadow. But I guess that sort of thing doesn't matter.

I'm surprised by the way ire begins to build up in my system everytime I think of those three. Years have accumulated and left deposits of resentment, of arguments and anger that the tide can't easily remove. Instead the sediments cluster around the bed of my consciousness and compound upon themselves, stacking one rock on top of another, until suddenly the water level is rising too high for me to stand. I'm blind, weighed down at the bottom of a river, feeling the rest of the troops slip past me in fins and scales while I alone remain still.

No one bothers to ask me about Eren. No one pulls me aside in a dark room, showing me a rendition of a boy with mountain green eyes, and tells me they want to know who he is to me. There's a part of me that prefers it this way: a confirmation of a sorts that despite all of my meddling I'm still far from the center of suspicion. Another part feels that someone must have omitted my name from the list of individuals to interrogate. Why else would I be so…inconsequential?

With the bodies disposed of and Trost being put to rights, slowly, the focus of the cadets begins to drift back towards the future. Talk of which division people might go into flourishes like new roots cracking up through concrete. Anka doesn't dig me out of the crowd and drag me to Pyxis. Erwin doesn't speak to me, either. I keep my head down and my hands moving, evolving from cataloging bodies to filing away damage estimation reports as they trickle in from the cadets out assessing the brunt of the titan's impact in Trost. Spring air washes through the streets as the residue from titan vomit and other various bodily fluids from either side gets scrubbed from the pavement, street by street, brush by brush.

Word begins to slip through the ranks that the survey corps might gain another member. Someone exclusive. Someone whose identity still remains vague. The news reaches me outside of the hallway of my new room–I've been relocated, our ranks consolidated into smaller ranks. The woman I share a room with is unrecognizable. After spending my time with Mina I don't mind. Easier to sleep with one less face I know in the room. One less person who may know the ghost that claims the other half of my pillow.

Then, one day, Anka comes. "Follow me," she says. Her gaze is ice and steel, rigid with molten flecks of her will. "And say nothing. Not even a word."

My lips seal shut of their own accord. This time she does not take me to the hollow office: instead, I follow her into a courtroom reminiscent of the ones I saw on Earth. I recognize this one immediately–there're few scenes in the early stages that linger in my mind quite like the oncoming one does. Around the room are dozens of officers and high ranking officials, most of which I don't recognize and don't care to. Anka guides me towards the second row where significantly less people are crowded. Up here I've an ample view of the main floor and the side of the first floor adjacent from where I stand poised on the second. If I lean against the railing and bend down, I've got just enough of a stretch to see the unmistakable heads of Mikasa and Armin. Slowly I stand straight again and inch back from the edge. The last thing I want is for them to know that I'm here. The longer I go without confronting Armin, the better. I still haven't decided what it is that I'll say to him–if I am to say anything at all. Do I clue him in to the fact that I know what he did? Or do I let him believe he has the upper hand, running the risk of failing to act clueless enough to dissuade him from distrusting me further?

Anka stays at my side, a half-step back, silent but imminent all the same. Like a threat looming above the head. A promise weaved around my neck, serpentine, writhing like a vine against a branch. I've half a mind to question her–why me, why here, why now? Who sent me? What purpose does this serve?–but one look into her eyes forces me to abandon the impulse outright. Instead I watch the doors in the courtroom open and close, as faces familiar and foreign filter into view. The military police brigade leader. The commanders, Dot Pyxis and Erwin Smith. And–

My heart skips a beat, startled, as another creature of legend materializes into view. Next to Erwin stands a shorter man, far slighter in his build, with a darker head of hair and a harsher cut to his gaze. If Erwin's eyes are of the ocean, this man's are of the night. Of earthen coal and cooled lava. Captain Levi Ackerman–humanity's strongest soldier–reaches to straighten his ascot as he comes to a stop next to his commander.

And it doesn't stop there. Before I even realize that I've been gawking the main doors to the courtroom cleave open down their center, an apple halved by the fist. In march more of the scouts I recognize from a lifetime ago on a screen: a tall blonde with a sturdy mustache and thin goatee. Mike Zacharias. Next to him there's a man in a simple t-shirt, hands bound behind the back. Eren doesn't even bother looking up at the second floor balcony, but I lean back just in case. Still I fail to wrench my eyes off the sight of the third person to enter into the court: brown hair, glasses that catch the incoming light and reflect it in sharp winks, an aquiline nose that keeps the frames perched in place despite how frequently she moves around. Hange Zoe, another beast in the story, a creature of influence and intellect and something borderline insane. They rally Eren with a flat fist as he is escorted near-bodily into the center of the court and chained down like an animal. We, the auctioneers, the buyers brooding over the worth of humans as livestock, loom in wait until the man of the hour emerges. Someone introduces him as Commander-in-Chief Darius Zackly, the head of the three branches.

"Well," he sighs, heaving his form into the chair at the head of the court. He pushes his glasses higher up his nose. "Let's begin. You are Eren Yeager, who, as a soldier, has pledged to serve the citizens of Paradis. Correct?"

Eren's confusion and hesitance is clear to see even from all the way up here. "Yes sir…"

Zackly holds up a stack of papers, voice muffled slightly as he grunts and continues speaking. "This military tribunal, whose ultimate authority is garnered by yours truly, has escalated with the presentation of arguments for its many sides. There are those who view you as a demon, a catalyst for our land's destruction. There are those who instead regale you as a savior of our human race." Zackly scans the room, head moving like a rotator fan from one wall to the other. "Thus, I'll determine which division ought to determine which you are: the military police brigade, or the survey corps." Zackly's focus shifts towards the former. "You may speak first."

The man Zackly watches raises his voice loud enough to boom off each of the walls framing the court. "I am Chief Nile Dok, of the Military Police Brigade." I blink, scratching the back of my memory for the sentiments that stir at his name. He's Erwin's former friend, isn't he? The one with the wife and kids who doesn't quite make it long enough for the titans to turn back into people? I find myself fidgeting with Efa's band as I study him, only half-listening as he blabs on about Eren being the doom of the human race (which he kind of is). Maybe there's a way to save him. All I'd have to do is ensure he doesn't get killed after Zeke transforms the officers en-masse, right?

Something uncomfortable wedges between my shoulder blades. I shift my weight onto my bad foot for a second, pressing the boot down to the floor to shock my body to attention before putting my weight back onto my good leg. Can I really afford to make gambles about the future this far out? I need to focus on making my impact permanent rather than temporary. Until I do that, there's no point in fixating on the details far off in the future.

Unless…

Unless it didn't matter where in time I was. Unless I could be anywhere, everywhere, and nowhere all at once. All I needed was access to the Paths. To Ymir, without alerting–

"Don't. Move."

Hot breath spills down the length of my neck as a hand grips my shoulder. Everything has gone pale, thin and gray. I watch mouths move in slow motion, exchanges of evidence and argumentation that I'm no longer privy to. I clench my hands and turn around.

Eren Yeager lords over me. It's him and yet it's not: he's taller–exponentially so–with a harsher set to his features than anything I've seen to date. His eyes burrow straight through mine, tunneling all the way into my thoughts with their furious, forest-hued glare. His hair is longer. He's got a black sweatshirt thrown on over a cream white shirt. And the nastiest scowl I've ever seen.

Things fall into place one at a time like coins clinking onto a table, rolling and plinking down to the floor. I recognize this man in two different ways, in two different minds. Alaina knows him as a man not let grown into existence by time. And Aliva knows him from the day she collapsed in the obstacle course.

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

What sharp words for a man who returned anyways. "I thought you would only warn me once," I drawl, buying time to think. What does the Eren before me know that I don't? How will he weaponize that knowledge–will he? If I hold no sway over the future, then what will come to pass is exactly what I witnessed in the original plot. But if I can manipulate it on a grander scale, then…

Then, eventually, I'll be utterly blind to what's in store.

Eren studies me, malice and malignance, angry yet ambivalent, somehow. He's angrier than any version of him I've met and yet–and yet–there's something about the way he looks at me that I don't understand. Like he hates me so much it's morphed into indifference, or ignorance, or… "So this is when you begin to recognize me."

I raise an eyebrow. But Eren doesn't say more. Instead, he's studying me, looking for something I immediately decide I don't want to show–regardless of whatever it is that he's searching for. "I won't forget the face of Mina's killer," I snap back. It's petty. I can't help it.

And of course it makes Eren angrier. "I didn't. Kill. Her."

There's a blatant warning in his tone that I ignore. It feels good to let the anger inside of me leak out, poisonous, rotten and vile. At least here, in this frozen half-scene, I don't have to hide. I don't have to cower. I don't have to curb the guilt and blame and regret rising like a tide inside of me. "Ah, right. He's the one that killed her," I amend, jerking my head over my shoulder to where Eren kneels subdued before the court. "My apologies."

Eren raises a hand–I nearly flinch–only he's got me by the throat, massive hand enclosed over my windpipe so he can lean forward to hiss straight into my ear. "You and I aren't done fighting. Resist me, scorn me, curse me all you will; there is nothing you can do to me that is worse than what I will do to myself."

It finally dawns on me, that nagging feeling that sat wrong with me this entire conversation. I struggle to pull back, and surprisingly he lets me lean away just enough to catch a good look at his face. This close to him I can almost confirm my suspicions. "You're only nineteen right now," I murmur, brows clenched together before blowing apart in wide confusion. "What happens in the next year?"

Eren goes stone cold. He releases me, anger hardened and chiseled like crystal. "If I could kill you now," he spits back, "I would."

And then he's gone, and I'm facing the ledge again, and the Eren shackled to the court floor is coughing up a tooth as Captain Levi proceeds to kick the shit out of him.

I hardly pay attention to the rest of the court proceedings. I just saw Eren, a year from now, alive and well–what does it matter that he's here awaiting a verdict? The future has already been confirmed for me. And that look in his eyes…I reach forward, gripping the banister till my knuckles began to bleach themselves white. For him to look at me with that much animosity must mean that, somehow, I eventually learn to change enough to make a substantial difference. Or I lose control of all my secrets like a coin purse snatched straight from my belt.

I'm scowling so hard that I almost don't notice that when Eren gasps for ragged breath, head tilted back to escape the captain's vicious onslaught, his head lolls in my direction. He sees me–confusion, and then shocked fury–just before his head is shoved down to the ground and pinned underneath Levi's boot.

Zackary, unsurprisingly, places Eren Yeager under the scout's jurisdiction.

Anka lets me go without so much as a word and I escape down the hall, attempting to beat the crowds migrating out of the now-stuffy courtroom. I don't care to linger and hear the gossip. I don't care to make nice with Zackary or the commanders. No part of me wants to risk running into the three members of the 107th currently in the court with me: not, at least, until I've prepared my plan. I don't care what future Eren knows; until I know for sure I have no weight in shaping the future, I'll resist his ire for as long as I can.

If I could kill you now, I would.

I find myself scowling at nothing. Like hell I'll let him do that.

"Aliva." I come to a jerky halt, the one crutch I've begrudgingly allowed myself to use smacking the ground at an awkward angle. In the darkness of the hall to my left stands Annie, leaning with arms crossed against the wall. She doesn't look too happy. "We should talk," she suggests, in a way that reminds me that her and I have never just 'talked' about anything without our issues quickly escalating.

"About?" I brace myself for some reference to Hannes's corpse, or hell, even our time galavanting around to stop Mina's death.

Instead Annie looks down the hall carefully before tossing her voice down so low I have to lean in to hear her. "You owe me a favor, don't you?" she asks quietly, her tone no less intimidating than before.

I think back to our time in the 107th's training camp. I guess I do. She reads the change in my expression, calculating, before pushing off the wall.

"Time to pay up."

A/N: AHHHHHH I'M SO EXCITED FOR SOME OF THE STUFF COMMING UP IN THE FIC! It feels like we would never get to this point. looool. Much love to everyone that's still reading-you guys are my favorite people ever.