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He was never struck by his own exhaustion until he found time to rest. He had learned to carry it, bearing that weight, grudgingly, out of necessity. Thinking of you and your abject willingness to shoulder his burden with him. Selfishness pressured him to concede, to lighten his own load and pass it off to a disposed other, but he did not wish that on you, on anyone. He saw those around him buckling under their own weight. So he carried his. But, in moments of solitary repose, he would find himself collapsed under his own burden.
He sat high above the city, himself having snuck onto the walls past curfew. Overlooking the terrain outside of Wall Maria. The night was cloudy but the ground, clear. The moon, sliced crescent and half-enshrouded by tenebrous clouds, cast a low, even glow. The hazeless air revealed several miles of flat country, distantly and ultimately swallowed by oscillating hills which followed the curvature of the earth. The breeze numbed his exposed skin; winter neared. The leaves on the trees had long since tinged and fallen and decomposed among the detritus, and the now-disrobed branches, like sainted arms proffered towards the sky, swayed, noiseless, their prayers unheard. A silence, disrupted only by his own presence. This barren landscape was marked by an austerity, a quietly plaintive cry uttered by and for some unknown in an unworldly call and response. He realized he had never verily looked at the lay of the outside land. No one had ever been afforded the luxury of regard—landscapes were heretofore solely backdrops of violence—but things were changing, and only with hindsight could one say whether for better or for worse.
He thought of a memory. From a night like this one. You, in the light of the moon, hair glowing and itself luminescent, a fond smile on your face. Airy laughs, timid glances. Instinctively, he shook his head as if to cast it off, familiar with the dangerously seductive quality of his memories. He always worried that if he indulged himself in remembrance, even for a moment, he would render himself incapable of facing the present, for the comfort of memory was beguiling and often lured him like some Ogygian temptress. But he was so flattened, so exhausted by that incessant weight. Was he not allowed some form of respite? Annoyed, defiant, he unfocused his gaze and dissolved into this thought of you.
It commences behind the barracks. He waits, anxiously tapping his foot, hoping your rendezvous would not include Sadies as an unwelcomed third. His pedal movement shakes the unlit lamp in his hands, a quiet toll of metal on metal. Your hooded figure soon rounds the corner, eyes flashing in the dim light, easing his nerves. You walk ahead on the path, he behind you and dragged by an unseen force. Your allure, he posits, always the romantic. Still facing forward, you speak his name, a quiet utterance jettisoned into the woods ahead of you. He hums in response, liking the way your vocalization rings out, clear, in the brisk air. An innocuous invocation of his attention.
“Did I keep you waiting?” An audible smile, coy.
“Of course. I wouldn’t expect anything less.”
A quick laugh, ephemeral, your hood quivering. Your lanterns clink as you walk, the only indication of your movement, as your steps fell silent on the padded forest floor. Cresting a hill, you stop, finally turning to face him. Hands held out with a flourish.
Standing on an overlook, his eyes fall on the view before him. A valley, bathed in dark cobalt. A vast loch tenants the basinous land, flanked by a thick canopy of trees, the mass its own verdant topography. The water, mirroresque. Moonlight captured in scattered reflection. Low-hanging mist, gathered in clouds like a cottoned assembly, divine overseers looming over their aquatic terrain.
“Not bad.”
Your proud smile.
“Thanks, Eren showed it to me.”
Eren, a challenge, playful. He refuses to acquiesce, hiding annoyance, feigning indifference. He instead sits at the interstice between the dirt path and the grassy encroachment, opting to say nothing at all. You seat yourself next to him, head resting on your knees.
“I’m impressed. Someone says ‘Eren’ and you usually see red.” He notices how your head bobs as you speak, chin pushing against your kneecaps.
“So, you’re trying to be an ass, then?” A playful query, devoid of malice.
You turn your head to him, smirking, a wide, toothless smile. Shrugging, you give a noncommittal answer. He admires you; he never really gets the chance to. The way moonlight and shadow compliment your features. It’s nice.
“What’s with the look?”
His eyebrows shoot up, questioning.
“What look?”
You laugh at him—he loves the way your laugh never degrades him. It’s bubbly, effervescent.
“You look like you just fell in love, Kirstein.”
His smile drops. He’s flushed—had he always been so easy to read? Suddenly self-conscious of all the moments past in which he revealed himself and you stayed silent. Your body turns to face him.
“Such adoration,” you remark quietly. An ostensible taunt infused with a subtle sincerity.
“It’s okay, it looks nice in your eyes. Makes them shine. I like it.”
He swallows. When did you get so bold? He looks around, towards the sky, between his feet, anywhere but at you. He feels you inching towards him, a mass of warmth. Swallowing his pride, he looks you in the eyes. They’re affectionately gazing at him, questioning, asking for permission. He stays static. Nervous, excited. The setting, the cool breeze—the perfect backdrop for the memory of a first kiss, he thinks. Always the romantic.
You lean in and press your forehead to his, pausing. His head spins, drunk on potential. You whisper something, barely perceptible:
“Pretty boy.” A simple remark, lovingly stated like an assertion of fact. Dizzying. You pull away, and he falls forward, disoriented. Embarrassed by the meek sound of disappointment that leaves him. Your hand rubs at your neck, involuntary, sheepish.
“I’m not sure if I want this to be the memory of our first kiss.” Funny, he thinks, how the idea crossed both of your minds. Such a slavish focus on mnemonic posterity.
Maybe you were right, though. When he thought of this memory now, it filled him with an inexplicable exhilaration that the memory of your first kiss did not.
You had continued to talk, though his memory was hazy after this point. He remembered you mentioning joining the Scouts, to which he reacted badly: angry concern you had anticipated. You held him, hand in his hair, assuring him you were strong, you could take care of yourself: everything you knew he wanted to hear. He spoke of his mother, how he missed her. You cried together, though he could not remember why. He pressed a kiss to your cheek outside of the barracks, the early dawn gracing your complexion, warming it. In all, a memory sullied by hindsight. The last night before graduation, before Trost, before baggage began to wear the two of you down, spines curving under that weight. He still adored you, every version of you, everyone you had been and would be. Despite it all, he wished for you to one day return to that unburdened version of yourself. Maybe naively so.
“You know, the next expedition is to the coast. We’ll finally see the sea.”
He thought back to earlier today, your hand in his, ambling down a vacant side street. Excitement in your voice writ large—an expedition to a once-inconceivable, now within reach. He had glanced at you, your profile holding his gaze. The years had truly impressed on you a tangible density, a heaviness that bided in your drooped shoulders, the wrinkles of your brow, the sporadic grey in your hair. A dull, thoracic ache overcame him—you were a child, teenage, yet you carried the weight of a thousand lifetimes and had lived through a number equal. He was livid at the worldly injustice, the temporal excoriation. Stolen youth. Fairness was an antiquated concept, long foregone in exchange for a wholly inegalitarian system of cosmic justice—humans forced into meniality. Could you recoup? Get back the purloined years and people and solace that were justifiably yours?
He yearned to see your expression as you stood over that expansive azure. Soon, you would face that endless horizon, representative of new beginnings, possibilities, genesis, loosed of your burdens by some benevolent Parca. He verily hoped for your emancipation, realized through what the Scouts were to discover beyond the walls. Then, there would be time for your affaire—love, veracious, before a backdrop of utopia. It’s all he could hope for, a grail he quietly and firmly embosomed: an aspiration for your shared, future memories to be marked by self-actualized deliverance and impudent love.