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Mike is stubborn, and it ignites something in Nanaba that she just can’t explain. She’s never been especially competitive, but his stubbornness clashes against her determination, and she knows from the start that she will eventually wear him down.
It’s not an especially romantic notion, but Nanaba’s never been much of a romantic, and there isn’t a place for romance in the Survey Corps, anyway.
Mike has feelings for her, and she intends to root them out, get them out into the open where they belong; she wants him to just admit it instead of pretending like it’s not there, like he doesn’t feel anything when she smiles at him, elbows him at the mess hall table, touches his back or arm or shoulder when she passes him in the corridor.
She’s not known for being clever, but she’s a quick study; she always has been. It only takes her a few weeks in Mike’s squad to begin to understand him. The longer she spends with him, the more she learns; he’s quiet, but he has opinions; he’s reserved, but he’s a leader. The most important thing she learns happens when she finds him writing a letter to his parents; she’s not shy about asking questions, and for the first time Mike opens up, shares with her—things about himself, about his life growing up, and she’s surprised to find herself laughing; she’s never really seen this side of him before, the side of him that makes people smile.
It’s when she’s wiping tears of mirth out of her eyes that she notices the way he’s looking at her, and she realizes he’s half in love with her already.
It makes her heart flutter pleasantly in her chest.
But he closes up again after that, spends even more time alone than usual, speaks mostly with Commander Smith and Gelgar and tries, she thinks, very hard to avoid her. She may have never let herself believe that she was the cause of it except that Lynne helpfully points it out to her one day: “Why’s Squad Leader Mike so intent on avoiding you, huh? What’d you do?”
“Nothing,” is the best reply she can give, and she gives Lynne a concerned sort of frown.
At first she’s not sure if she should let Mike avoid her, or if she should confront him for doing it. She ends up deciding on a middle ground: she acts the same as always, and the next year goes on like this, with her refusing to give in and his adamant refusal to just talk to her about his feelings. Oh, he’ll talk to her about everything else—the weather, her life growing up, work—but whenever the conversation turns a little too personal, he always, with increasing hesitancy, shuts down.
She goes out drinking with the rest of the squad, and when she returns, when she stumbles into Mike quite literally in the hall outside of her room—like he’s been waiting for her, like he’s been worrying about if she’d make it back okay on her own—she smiles at him. Smiles and smiles and eventually remembers to go into her room, though she’s struggling with the harness on her gear even as she steps over the threshold. When she asks him for help, he agrees, and bends down to unbuckle the strap across her chest. She watches him, eyes on his the whole time, a little drunk, but not so far gone she doesn’t recognize how soft they are, how he’s almost smiling as he helps her out of her gear, how he does smile when she tries to take off her own boots and nearly knocks him down.
They stare at one another then for a long time, but he looks away first, coughs, unhooks the last of her harness straps, and then wishes her goodnight before he practically flees from the room.
She falls into bed nearly giggling; he’d wanted to kiss her.
He does get better after that, though—better at not avoiding her. He talks to her more, even about himself sometimes, and he’s always watching her with this dopey sort of look on his face. If the others notice, though, none of them dare to say anything to her about it. Maybe they don’t notice. Maybe it’s only obvious to her because she knows what to look for, knows that just because his hair is hiding his eyes doesn’t mean he can’t see her through it. When she smiles at him, sometimes she can see his ears turn red.
She sees a lot of things in him over that year, but for some reason, it still comes as a shock to see fear and worry on his face when she jogs up to him after a fight’s gone wrong and a few people have died. Her left arm’s completely useless at her side, and her gear’s smashed, and she’s not quite sure how much blood she’s lost, but when she sees him visibly swallow, when she can see his eyes and he looks like he’s pushing down fear, she apologizes to him, determined, for some reason, to make it right again. She hates seeing him that way, she decides immediately—seeing him look as if he’s not in control, as if he can’t fix something.
Her apology confuses him. “It’s fine,” he says. “It’s not as if you were hurt on purpose.” But she still doesn’t like to be the cause of his worry, so while he herds her toward the medical team, she tries to apologize again.
Nanaba’s never really given many men the time of day, and after entering the Corps, after the blood of a fellow new recruit rained down slick into her long hair, matting it together into a stiff ponytail, she’d questioned ever letting anything happen between her and another person. It had hurt her enough to see one person die and she had hardly known the boy.
But she cuts off her hair (maybe a little too frantic, maybe a little too desperate to see the entire matted bloody mess go away) and it brings with it a kind of peace, a relief. Death happens, but that doesn’t mean that a person should stop caring. What happens when you stop caring for others? There’s no passion in that, no fire, no resolve or understanding or anything. It turns people into extensions of their three-dimensional maneuvering gear and little else.
She won’t stand for that. They are, above all other things, human; before they are soldiers, before they are men or women, before they are fathers or mothers or sons or daughters, they are human beings.
Nanaba watches Mike and Gelgar, and she learns how to fight better, more effectively—or at least she learns how to live. That first year in Mike’s squad goes by and they’re all still alive and she’s glad she’s let people in. Even the ones who had ended up dying. It’s—it’s worth it, at least to her.
Mike tries to close himself up, but he just can’t do it. It’s not in his nature to act that way. Mike’s too kind and too caring and he feels things too strongly to keep his emotions contained, to pretend as if none of them matter, to convince himself that nobody else will care.
These things Nanaba picks up from him over that long year. She knows he’s trying not to care too much, but it always shows in his eyes, even when his mouth is drawn in a straight line, even when he hasn’t shaved for a week; she knows he’s in love with her just by the way he looks at her when she enters the room and smiles at him.
His stubborn behavior begins to wane at the end of that first year. She’s not sure what sparks it—surely nothing she’s done. Maybe it’s because they’re both alive, and most newer recruits die early; most people don’t live very long. But this is the start of her third year in the Corps: a year in a team and a year with Mike. She’s survived two full years and maybe he lets her in because he feels more confident that she’s actually going to live, that she’s not going to just die on him one day and leave him alone.
After a particularly bad expedition, everyone retreats into themselves, but when nobody sees Mike for two days, Nanaba takes it upon herself to bring him tea. He’s bent over his desk writing slowly, penning every word with the quill like it really matters—or like he’s dragging the workload out so that he won’t have the excuse to sleep, because with sleep come dreams…and they are not always pleasant.
She stays until he takes a break with her, until he drinks the tea and talks about nothing. She leaves with a satisfied smile and comes back nearly every day after that—with tea or a funny anecdote or maybe nothing at all because she just wants to see him.
When she finds him asleep at his desk one evening, cheek against the wooden surface, one arm supporting his neck, she almost can’t help herself; she touches his hair, smoothes it away from his face, wishes she could see his eyes, and then she kisses the crown of his head. She’s not sure where along the way she fell in love with him, and the thought, when it comes to her, when she’s still close enough that his hair tickles her lips, makes her pause. It takes her a while to notice that she’s lingering, but then she leaves—makes herself go, her own face red.
Gelgar catches her down the corridor. “Why’s your face so red?”
But she doesn’t dignify him with a response. She can’t, anyway. What would she say—that she’s in love with their squad leader?
She’s been open to the idea of Mike loving her from the first moment she noticed the way he looked at her, but this is—it’s different, and she’s not sure what to make of it.
It doesn’t take her long to realize that it means she should try harder.
So she does. She tries flirting with him, but she’s not very good at it. He returns her comments with serious answers, and she’s not sure if he’s deflecting her remarks to distract her, or if he really doesn’t understand what it is she’s doing.
When they’re all out drinking together, the whole squad, Mike having offered to pay, they all return in a good mood, Mike smiling almost secretively, Lynne loud and laughing, Gelgar poking fun at her, and Henning looking harassed. Nanaba trails behind Mike all the way back. It’s not just the drinks that have her mind buzzing pleasantly; it’s the sight of him/smell of him/the way he’s almost smiling/the fact that she really wants to touch his face—so many things. Everything, maybe.
They’re walking through the mess hall, having fallen way behind the others on the way to the barracks, when she steps too close to him. He moves away, and she follows; she almost laughs because it reminds her of dancing, only clumsier—the only kind of dancing she’s probably capable of. She’d probably step all over Mike’s toes if she tried dancing with him.
Her thoughts fall away when she realizes she’s managed to corner him. She’s not sure how or why, but it’s sad that he thinks he has to move away from her like that. She’s not delusional. She knows he loves her, that he feels things for her that he won’t tell her about.
The next thing she knows she’s standing on her tiptoes, hands reaching for his face. He flinches when she touches him, like he’s afraid of what she’s going to do. She wonders if he’s afraid of her. She just wants him to look at her, to stop pretending that she’s not there. She hates that even after one too many drinks, it still hurts, and she asks him, softly, “What are you so afraid of, Mike?”
Like she thinks she’ll get an answer.
She doesn’t really expect one.
But he does look at her then, he looks at her and speaks fragments of things: broken, scattered thoughts about fear and regret and—it’s all too fast for her. She can’t follow him, not his words; she doesn’t think he can follow them either.
But she can read it in his eyes. It’s the fear that she can see there, the center of everything. It’s always in the background no matter how much he cares.
She thinks it just makes him more attractive to her in a twisted sort of way. It makes him truly human, for his heart and mind to fight one another so much—and over her, no less.
She lets her fingers explore his face for just a moment; her thumb brushes the corner of his mouth and he blushes hard, right across his nose.
It makes her smile.
So she decides she’ll share her secret with him. Maybe he needs it. Maybe it’ll help. Maybe she’s an idiot for not cornering him sooner to tell him.
“Sometimes you have to let yourself care.”
She’s surprised when he blurts out, “But caring hurts,” looking mildly horrified afterward, as if he’s just said something that makes him unforgivably weak.
She thinks it makes him strong to be able to admit that aloud. Even she’s never admitted it aloud to anyone.
She agrees with him, though, nodding her head. “But sometimes,” she says, looking into his eyes, pleased that he is meeting her gaze now, “it hurts more not to care, doesn’t it?”
He resists it for all of a second before his shoulders visibly slump; he relaxes into her hold, leans his head down just a little and lets her pull him down the rest of the way so that she can kiss him.
She’s not so drunk that she can’t kiss, but it’s been awhile, and it’s never been a talent of hers, either, so it’s a little awkward and a little sloppy, and they’re both hesitant, but when they pull apart they’re both smiling and he’s blushing hard and he looks so shy and embarrassed that she almost wants to kiss the tip of his red nose.
“See?” she asks when he meets her eyes, though just barely. “That was nice.” She can tell he’s thinking—trying to come up with something to say, something romantic probably, because that’s just the sort of thing Mike would do. At least, she thinks so. He may not feel right letting things end without some kind of sappy comment.
She saves him the trouble of having to think of something sweet—she doesn’t need such things, anyway—and bids him good night.
She’s a few paces away before he calls out for her to stop, and when she turns around, when she smiles at him and asks, “Yeah?” probably looking just as giddy as she feels, he takes her hand and tugs her back to him.
She expects maybe a hug, a kiss on the top of her head, but she’s still smiling, waiting to see what he’s up to, when he kisses her: a kiss that’s no longer than a pleasant pause in conversation, but for some reason, it makes her belly warm and fluttery, and when he chokes out a soft, “Good night,” she finds that she actually doesn’t want to leave.
But she does. She goes back to her room and falls into her bed, and curls up in all of her blankets and she falls asleep with a stupid smile on her face.
Nanaba’s not a clingy person, but it’s hard to stay away from Mike after that night. They end up becoming nearly inseparable. The girls that share the corner rooms next to hers don’t say anything when she starts to sneak out to see Mike at night, and when she runs into the occasional superior officer in the officers’ quarters, they never even act as though they notice her.
She supposes, eventually, that the progression of her relationship with Mike isn’t normal. Declarations of love come just weeks after she kisses him in the mess hall, and they sleep in the same bed for a long time before they actually get around to having sex.
She’s pretty sure the first time they have sex, the only reason Mike agrees is because it’s raining outside and so dark in his room that neither one of them can see much of anything. She teases him when he’s busy nuzzling her neck, his facial hair tickling her as he brushes kisses across her skin, because it’s not fair that he can smell well and therefore has an advantage in the dark.
She doesn’t really mind it, though—doesn’t mind the fumbling, the embarrassed snort of laughter that he gives when she aims for one part of him but grabs something else. It’s kind of fun; and if it makes him feel more secure, well, she’s more than all right with it. She can still feel him just fine; the warmth of his body over hers, the sound of his breathing, his mouth against hers to help muffle the sound of his name on her lips.
On occasion, she showers before she goes to his room, just because she knows he likes clean smells. When she gets there she never slides in beside him—she always climbs on top of him, straddles his hips and leans down to kiss his face until he wakes up and acknowledges her somehow. To her surprise, on these nights, the most he ever really does is kiss her back; what he wants to do, what he always wants to do when her hair’s still damp from a shower and her skin clean, is hold her close and look at her and smell her like it’s a treat he’s going to savor as long as possible. Like it means so much to him that she’s safe and warm and clean and smells good and not like blood that just holding her is more important to him than having sex.
She doesn’t really understand it, but it’s sweet in its own way. It’s touching. And she likes to be held; nobody’s really ever done something like that for her, before—held her because they wanted to, because it made them happy to do it.
So she snuggles up with him and lets herself enjoy the attention.
They fight, sometimes, when her determination to be right or be heard or be useful clashes with his own solid grasp of reality. They never argue for long; with the kind of life they lead, they communicate immediately and differences are discussed and problems solved as quickly as possible. Neither of them can stand the idea of wasted time.
It’s nice, what they have. They learn all kinds of things about one another: about each other’s parents, about what it was like to grow up in their hometowns, about their military training. Mike confides in her his fears: mostly of failing Erwin, of ending up some kind of cripple useful to no one, of losing her. She tells him about how much it hurts to see kids die on the battlefield; she’s not especially afraid to die, herself, because she’s ready, but the kids—oh, they’re so young and they have so much ahead of them.
Mike understands, after that, why the first expedition following the acquisition of new recruits always ends with her shutting herself in her room for days.
Nanaba’s so far gone for Mike she doesn’t even care who knows about it. Teasing from Gelgar is met with a pleasant smile. She grows used to Mike sleeping next to her, the way his mustache sometimes tickles her when they kiss, the sound of his breathing and his laughter, and she doesn’t know what she’d ever do if one day she woke up and suddenly he wasn’t there.
Five years pass this way.
They have five years of love mixed in with all of the stress and pain of being the Corps.
Sometimes Nanaba fantasizes about a perfect world where she could be with Mike forever and neither of them would have anything to worry about. If only, if only.
But it’s silly to think about it, and she’s ashamed that she’d let her mind wander like that when she’s pledged herself to a cause, to making the world safe, to protecting others; that she should ever wish for a different life… Well, it’s not shameful by itself, but it’s not like her. She’s grown soft and maybe a little silly.
She wants children but she knows she’s never going to be able to have any. It’s bad enough seeing kids in their teens die in her line of work. She can’t imagine how she might feel if something were to happen to a baby—her baby. Quitting the Corps is out of the question; she knows she’d never be able to stand waiting at home for Mike, helplessly praying for his safety.
She resigns herself to the reality of never having kids. Not unless, by some miracle, the world is freed. She blames that on her hormones. Turning thirty has done her in, she thinks. She doesn’t dare talk to Mike about it; he probably wants children, too; it’s easy to imagine him carrying around kids, talking to them, being a father.
But that’s not something they can have, so she doesn’t tease him with it, doesn’t dangle her own stupid thoughts in front of him just to make him suffer, too, though sometimes she wishes she could; sometimes she wishes that she could talk to him about it without both of them hurting.
The stress of the job aside, though, it’s a nice five years. She brings him tea nearly every day, if she’s not busy, and they never run out of things to talk about, even when it’s just gossip—like if Gelgar’s secretly interested in Lynne even though she never stops harping on him about his alcohol consumption.
They take walks and hold hands and she touches his shin with her bare foot under the table. They curl up together on the couch and read books, sometimes falling asleep on top of one another like children.
She can’t see him every night; sometimes it’s just too risky. Sometimes things are bad and she’s needed elsewhere. Sometimes she’s the one in the medical wing with a busted body—but once or twice it’s him on a cot looking pale and sick, and she hates that more than anything in the world.
She supposes, if nothing else, the nights spent apart make the ones they spend together even more special…though she would give just about anything to never have to sneak off at night to see him ever again.
When titans are spotted inside Wall Rose, her world falls apart and she crumbles with it.
It’s their worst nightmare, after all. Wall Rose breached, and it doesn’t matter where—at a gate or the wall itself; they have too many unarmed children to protect and not enough able-bodied, armed soldiers.
She’s never been so stunned in her life, so afraid. Wall Maria being breached was bad enough—but this? This is the end. People who are evacuated will end up dying, anyway—of starvation or sacrificed in another sick retaking scheme, another veiled plot to thin the population, to pare down the survivors to a manageable number.
She swallows thickly and tries to remain calm despite her words. She tries to keep her breathing even, tries not to think overmuch about any of this. But Mike knows her better than anyone, and when she starts babbling, when she can’t hold in her thoughts any longer, he just listens from beside her on the roof of their current hideout. He doesn’t say anything at first, and she thinks maybe he’ll let it pass, maybe he won’t try to make things better, because there are some things that really can’t be fixed, and this, she decides, is one of them.
They really have lost—not just the Corps, but humanity. She tries not to look at the kids as they scramble for their horses and their supplies.
If even one of them dies—even one, she’ll never be able to forgive herself.
She’s heard Mike speak passionately before, of course, usually soft murmurs against her ear trying to remind her or tell her or reassure her that he’s happy—that she makes him happy, that she matters, that he loves her and nothing will ever change it.
But this time… This time, his words are solid and certain and forceful. “As long as we keep fighting, we haven’t lost.”
She looks at him for a moment, sees the crease between his brows, wonders if he even believes it himself but knows that he’s right, that she has to believe in this, in him, in the idea that fighting is survival; there never has been any other way to survive, and they—well, they’ve been fighting all of their adult lives to survive in the Survey Corps. What’s another day, huh?
She makes herself get up, but she doesn’t smile at him. She can’t. She wants to, wants to reassure him like he’s trying to reassure her. If she doesn’t fight, she may never see him again.
She may never see him again, anyway, even if she fights tooth and nail, even if both of them give it their all.
This may be the end.
But he’s right; they have to try.
She’s ashamed that she let it get to her, that she crumbled under the combination of stress and not enough sleep over the last few days. She’ll always fight to do what’s right; she wants to apologize to Mike, wants to tell him she’s sorry for being weak, but he knows she’s sorry and he’s already forgiven her; she can see it in his eyes. He’s tired, too—and afraid.
She turns away from him and moves to jump from the roof. She wants to kiss him up here, but she can’t, not in front of the kids, not when they need to get moving.
Still, before she can step off of the roof, Mike is there, his pinky finger linking with hers for just a moment.
For some reason, it makes her want to cry. She hits the ground running, setting her jaw.
This isn’t goodbye, she reminds herself. This isn’t goodbye. It isn’t goodbye.
His finger linking with hers—that’s his way of saying he’ll see her later when they’re safe again. As soon as they’re alone he’ll lift her up and she’ll wrap her legs around his waist and he’ll kiss her absolutely senseless.
Nanaba refuses to let herself do any thinking at all after Mike splits off from the group. It hurts that he doesn’t even look her way before he goes. But then they’ve split off from one another and he’s no longer in sight and she—
She knows he’s strong. She knows it. But Levi’s Special Operations squad is dead, and they were talented, too. Mike’s strong and capable but he’s also frightfully human, especially now, now that he’s linked fingers with her.
She prays it was a promise to see her later, to muss up her hair and say something to make her laugh.
She prays that it wasn’t goodbye.
When the kids finally start to nod off in Castle Utgard…that’s when she lets herself think again. That’s when she tries to swallow the bile rising in her throat, when she tries not to say anything at all.
But when Lynne and Henning leave the room and patrol outside, Nanaba looks up from the cup in her hands and sees Gelgar—she can’t even describe the look on his face.
“Trust Mike!” he’d shouted so convincingly what seems like an eternity ago. It hasn’t even been a full day, yet.
Nanaba feels like she hasn’t slept in a week, and Gelgar’s starting to look it. His eyes are distant and contemplative and he’s just—he’s not…
“He’s dead, isn’t he,” she croaks out before she can help herself. She’s had plenty of water but her throat is still inexplicably dry.
Gelgar’s head turns so fast she can almost hear his neck crack. “Hey,” he says, and the tone is light, but it’s no longer convincing. It sounds fake and forced and Nanaba levels him with a serious expression and he mirrors it, looking down at his hands.
“He’d have caught up to us if he were alive,” Nanaba finds herself saying, babbling at poor Gelgar like she’d babbled at Mike on the roof of their hideout not even a day ago. “Don’t you think? He’d know about this place. He’d think to find us here. He’d be here if he were alive. He’d have… He’d have found us hours ago.”
She remembers his pinky finger brushing against hers.
It was goodbye, wasn’t it.
The thought makes her want to weep.
“Ah, Nana,” Gelgar says, softly.
She bites her lip hard to keep from crying. It’s—damn it, it’s not like her to be emotional, but she knows she’s right, and then Gelgar goes and calls her by the little nickname Mike sometimes uses for her when he’s feeling especially affectionate or he’s had enough drinks to feel tipsy.
“I’m sorry.” Her voice comes out raspy and weak and she hates it—hates herself. She can’t convince herself that Mike’s alive and she wonders if this makes her weak or if it makes her a realist or—or what it means. She wants him to prove her wrong, wants that more than anything, wants him to ride up to Castle Utgard right now and walk in and pretend like nothing that’s happened yet today has been a big deal.
“Naw,” Gelgar says, and reaches over to pat her hand awkwardly. He’s a good friend; Nanaba regrets not giving him more credit. “It’s all right. I… I don’t know what to think. I just know that…that Mike’s a good soldier—better than you or I. Heck, maybe better than Lynne and Henning put together!”
Nanaba snorts a little, despite the jab at her fellow soldiers.
“Look, even if—if he’s gone…”
“We have a duty, I know,” she says. “I…I know.”
The kids have to be protected. They still don’t know what’s going on with the titans—where they really came from or if they somehow missed a hole in the wall. There’s a lot to do.
But she dreads going back to Headquarters when it’s all over. She dreads spending the rest of what may remain of her life in her own bed, dreads how she’s going to want to go to Mike’s room even if he’s not there, just to wrap herself in his blankets because they’ll still probably smell like him, even after days away.
But she takes her free hand and puts it on top of Gelgar’s—tries to be reassuring. “We’ll be all right,” she tries to tell him, but that’s when Lynne’s shout of alarm comes from the roof, and Nanaba and Gelgar both jump to their feet, stunned to hear her clamoring down the stairs.
She throws everything into this fight because Mike’s words are still ringing in her ears: “As long as we keep fighting, we haven’t lost.”
And she’ll be damned if she’ll let herself lose right now—if she’ll let those titans tear all those kids to shreds. If she’ll make those children share in the fate of the others; it’s their fault the kids are unarmed to begin with, their fault if they all die; if they had trusted them, none of this would have happened; the 104th are fresh recruits, but they’re competent. The titans wouldn’t stand a chance against all of them at once.
They’d have never left the hideout, she thinks, if the kids had been geared from the get-go. Mike would—
Nanaba knows it’s the end when Henning and Lynne die. Immediately she thinks that first it was Mike and now two others from her squad: she doesn’t know how she’s going to deal with it later, when everything’s over, when it’s just her and Gelgar. But she knows they’re not going to make it, not all of them. There are too many titans. They’ve killed so many of them as a squad that Nanaba thinks Mike would be proud if he could see them now, but it doesn’t take long for both her and Gelgar to run out of gas.
And then she realizes that Gelgar is dazed and confused as well as nearly out of gas. He hit his head, he tells her, but he doesn’t look like he cares, doesn’t look like he gives a single damn except in the context of it meaning he’s going to leave her alone.
She almost wants to laugh. First Mike, and then Henning and Lynne, and now Gelgar.
She can’t be alone. She doesn’t know how to be alone anymore.
And maybe she’s a better soldier than Lynne in terms of pure combat strength, but she’s not as clever as Henning and—and both of them are gone, now. Gelgar’s much better a fighter than she is, and she knows he can’t fight anymore; he’s hardly thinking straight. She doesn’t know a lot about medical things, but she wonders how hard he hit his head. She wonders if his brain will swell and if that will kill him even if the titans don’t.
She wonders what her own life is worth compared to his, but it’s not something she can assign numbers or meaning to, not in the five seconds she has. She goes after Gelgar anyway, goes after him and there is a small part of her that thinks if she can get him to the top of the tower, someone else can borrow his gear and fight.
But she runs out of gas, and there’s a moment there, where Mike’s voice is still telling her to fight, even as a titan grabs hold of her, even as she can feel her ribs cracking, and she wants to scream at him, wants to cry out, “How can I keep fighting, Mike? How can I keep fighting like this?!”
But her voice isn’t working and then she’s staring up at the top of the tower and—
There’s little Krista up there, peering over the edge, hands grasping hard at stones and hurtling them down like she thinks it’ll do some good.
And Nanaba prays harder than she’s ever prayed in her life.
Prays that her death will buy those kids enough time that someone—that anyone—will come by to help them, that they won’t be stuck up there, trapped on top of the tower scared and afraid of what awaits them below.
Gelgar doesn’t make a sound; she thinks maybe he’s already dead from his head injury, or maybe he’s fainted and that comes as a blessed relief to her. At least he won’t be aware. She wonders how Mike met his end—if he really is dead. He must be, if she can hear his voice so clearly in her head.
A titan grabs hold of her leg, its hand so big that it spans from halfway down her thigh to halfway down her calf.
She knows what’s coming before it happens, and in her head she just hears Mike over and over and over: “Keep fighting, keep fighting, keep fighting.”
She can’t fight anymore; she has no weapons and no gas, but maybe she can fight another way. Ymir’s looking over the edge now, and Connie, and Nanaba knows that the only thing she can do right now, the only positive thing she can do, is not scream.
The kids are scared and she won’t—she refuses to contribute to it, refuses to make them more afraid, refuses to quit fighting because Mike kept fighting until the end, she’s sure of it. He’s always been a fighter, both of them have, determined to survive, to make it, and now—
Now Nanaba’s just determined not to scare the kids.
The sound of her femur cracking has Connie looking sick, but Nanaba doesn’t take her eyes off of them even as she prays someone comes soon to save them, even as she swallows the scream that’s trying to force its way out of her throat. She won’t scream won’t scream won’t scream even though it’s killing her, even though the titans are pulling her apart, even though she knows she’ll die within a couple of minutes from the blood loss alone.
She has to keep fighting keep fighting keep fighting until the end. There’s no other choice, what else can she do?
Please, Nanaba prays, seeing Krista peer over the edge of the tower again, the kids are next. Someone help them.
Krista hurls a rock, and, almost in slow-motion, it whizzes by Nanaba’s head and hits the titan behind her in the eye. It grunts in annoyance or maybe pain. Feeling dizzy now, her vision going white around the edges from the pain, Krista’s spirit almost makes Nanaba smile.
Keep fighting, she tries to say, but there’s blood in her mouth and the best she can do is just close her eyes so that the kids won’t have to see them staring up at them as she’s eaten.
As long as you keep fighting, she thinks at them, even as her vision turns white and pain explodes around her left shoulder, we haven’t lost.
As everything turns white even behind closed lids, Nanaba sees him—Mike. He’s there for her, arms crossed, smiling, hand reaching into the left breast pocket of his uniform. “You can stop fighting now,” he says, and reaches out his free hand.
She takes it and he pulls her toward him. He holds her head to his chest, hand ruffling her hair, and she feels tears spilling down her face because he is warm and solid and real.
When she pulls away, wiping the back of her hand across her eyes, Mike links his pinky finger with hers. She thinks it means hello, this time.
But then he presses something into the palm of her hand. She turns her palm up to see a little box there.
He picks her up and without thinking, she wraps her legs around his waist and leans down to press her forehead against his.
He sighs at the contact as if he’s gone an eternity without it.
“I was going to ask for forever,” he whispers.
“Well,” she says, kissing the tip of his nose and trying not to laugh-cry, “you got it.”