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When Sasha talks to me – screaming in my ears – and asks if I can give her the leftovers of my soup, I notice that I’ve lost myself up my thoughts again.
This can’t keep happening. Wandering down the past, I mean. I keep watching the same scenes over and over, reminding me of my vacuity, my failures, the nonsense sprinkling my life like a recurrent joke. If it can lessen a bit the pain, this aching in my heart, to stop rehashing those lucid memories… I said I would give it a try.
But I just can’t get off my head Ymir’s knowing face. Neither the icing pain in my feet, caused by enormous snow surrounding us – imprisoning us. The tensed muscles down my back. My vision blurred in the dangerous setting night. Some white, frozen snowflakes falling off my blond and damp hair. The panic bouncing in my heart at the sudden realisation that I was ready. I was ready to give up this life, too meaningless, too unlogic. Without beginning, without sense nor purpose. The everlasting feeling of having been put into this world by mistake, or by pure cruelty.
But then, she spoke, her words forming steam clouds up the glacial air. As I was so obstinate in dying, the mask I acutely built up the past few years – the Christa mask – began to yield, to crumble into million pieces. I wasn’t united no more. She saw it, she jumped through it.
I’m going to save him, Ymir, is what I said. It wasn’t my first lie. Wouldn’t be the last.
Keep your bullshit for you, is what she answered.
She seemed so headstrong, unshakeable, adamant in this particular moment. Her eyes kept this nonchalant look she always wore, her freckles steady and firm in her lightly flushed cheeks. Her gaze was almost sufficient enough to stop my suicidal stubbornness, her dilated pupils – was it from fear? from anger? – almost keeping me on my feet; if it wasn’t for the inner soreness that crept on me like a spreading disease.
I didn’t stop when she said I lied. I strode and strode, each step heavier with denial. I didn’t, either, when she said I didn’t truly want to be a hero, to die a hero, but that I only wanted to die, period. I didn’t stop when she warned me, judging my choice senseless and moronic. I didn’t, and thought I never would, even if I never felt so bad turning my back to someone in my life. I screamed to her to go away. To take the short path. To save herself.
Through the wind, I heard her calling my name – this name, ridiculous name, but freeing name – and it echoed, and she stayed. Of all people, she stayed.
When she whispered – her breath tickling my skin, her hands digging into my coat almost harshly, urgently sticking me into place – that there was another way to get out of this situation, I didn’t know if she was talking about me, or the man I was trying to save from a frozen death. After a few dazzling silent seconds, I asked, with a voice trembling like a pine needle in winter: “which one?”. It lit up a subtle fire in her deep bronze irises. (This fire would surely help to heal the chilblains damaging our fingers.)
I hand my bowl to Braus sitting next to me on the wooden bench, along with a wobbly smile – it will do. I must avoid wandering down the past. I know that. Ymir keeps reminding me that.
When you’re engaged in the army, time is a queer notion. Months feel like years, days like weeks; but at the end of the day, you remember a bit too vividly horrific memories as if you just lived them, at dinner, behind the squad’s canteen door. Bloodstained uniforms. Putrid odours. Broken screams. Loud nightmares from your comrade’s bunk bed. A sister leaving you behind, a mother’s throat being slitted before your very eyes. Just like that, you’re this blond kid with eyes too blue for her family’s liking all over again. An hour, one month, five years; all indistinct. And then you wake up again, wet from sweat. A new day ahead of you; the unknown void of the next twenty-four hours terrifying you.
“Once again daydreaming, sweetheart?” asks a deep voice ahead of me.
Ymir is staring at me, possibly since a few minutes – she has this bad habit, but I can’t say I mind, really. Her dark hair falls in front of her amber eyes, merely attached in a low ponytail with the same leather hairclip she wears every other day. Must be the only one she owns. Her head is resting on her hand, her face as expressionless as ever, if not for the slightest smirk dancing on her lips. I crack a smile at the domestic sight, and I shake off the bitter thinking I’ve been doing instead of enjoying my free time. Under the flickering light of oil lamps, she truly is beautiful; her tan skin looks like a summer night, warm without touching it, the stars the freckles sparkling her shoulders and dusting her nose.
“I’ve been caught red handed,” I answer at last, discreetly brushing my nails on the back of her hand.
She intertwines her fingers with mine without any hesitation. It reminds me of how they were coordinated with those chilblains once. It feels like a shared secret.
“I hope you were planning our honeymoon, ha!” she exclaims, a playful look in her gaze as she awaits Reiner’s reaction, I can tell.
The bulky boy’s reaction doesn’t disappoint, as he furrows his eyebrows and begins scolding her about community life and privacy in the army, his cheeks the faintest tint of red. She winks at me from the other side of the messy dinner table before trying to brush off Reiner’s remarks with a laugh and a pat on the shoulder. Ymir’s new favourite pastime without any doubt, since she learned I will never return the boy’s favours. I think she might have gained confidence in playing on the boy’s nerves thanks to my reveal.
Well, it’s not rare to witness teenagers flirting among our squad, even if nobody’s really committing to anyone – especially in the Survey Corps. As the name supposes, our lives here are all about surviving. Romantic relationships cannot be the priority. Affection or sex, however; they are instinctive, comforting. Utterly human. Our leaders turn a blind eye to what their soldiers do past their service, as long as it doesn’t distract us from our missions. Our lives are distressfully hanging by a thread, anyway.
Shouts to my left makes me think Eren is up again at arm-wrestling Jean – no need to check if Mikasa is at her brother’s side or if Connie is cheering loudly for Jean’s team, I know they are. In one corner of the canteen, I can decipher Armin exchanging excitedly with the squad leaders. I sure hope he’ll be assigned more responsibilities in a few years. He might not be the strongest of our promotion, but he’s definitely the smartest.
As I contemplate my friends from my usual spot, a warmth grows in my chest. Memories of dinner and leisure time are interlocked here and are mixing up in my mind. Hysterical laughs and falsely angry screams are bubbling in my ears; stains of beer and sticky playing cards are marching under my eyelids. Shoulders to shoulders, sharing our remaining hope together.
Ymir’s detachment from everything that seems to appease the harshness and almost tangible gloomy reality. Sasha’s weirdness that brings normality into our everyday life. Eren’s fierceness that means our way out. Mikasa’s strong posture that embodies our chances. Jean’s sassiness that keeps our feet to the ground. Connie’s warm eyes and heartfelt touches that lessens, if only a bit, the pain. Armin’s intelligence and sweetness that helps us stay somehow human. Reiner’s and Bertholt’s steadiness that makes us believe in the gullible concept of stability.
They might not know who I am, truly, but nevertheless I like to think I do.
It’s true, what Ymir said once. That the present, when you really focus on it, could be soothing.
Time is a queer notion in the army, for sure.
“You’ll turn crazy if you dwell on the past, and the same goes for the future. You’re trapped here, in the present, don’t you think? It’s your choice not to see it as a trap, but as a place to heal. To regain your breath. You do just that.”
That’s what she’ll always repeat if I’m having a panic attack at any moment of night and day, “You do just that”.
“You focus on me, Christa, you breathe. Look at my eyes and breathe. Do just that.”
But I have a secret that I’ve kept from you, Ymir. Not the first, but you guessed it. You’re right, the present can be soothing and is the only way out, certainly, to remain sane. But I know something else – somewhere else, which might make you think I daydream again. But I promise this time it won’t be self-sabotage.
It’s a place neither in the present, past or future. It’s a place I cherish.
In this place, you and I are old, wrinkly women. You’d spend all your time sunbathing in the wheat field in front of our little wooden cottage, your skin turning darker with time. Sometimes you’d even spend hours stargazing in this same field, a very obstinate frown on your forehead when I’d call you to join me into bed. You’d tell me to “Shut up, you old woman”. But you’d be right. We would not regulate our lives in any way. Not in there. We’d bathe at midnight under the moonlight, and we’d sleep until the sun is at its fullest every day. I’d cook you the best bread out of the corn you’d have cut the month before during the harvest. We’d be so grateful for our full bellies and for the fresh water hydrating our tired bodies. Those bodies, tokens of an ancient and distant life we’d almost forget about; some scars standing bright on our skin, witnesses.
There’s nothing round this place. Only you and I, a forest nearby, and some squirrels. Oh, there’s also a little lake just above the hill. That’s where we bathe, when it’s not too freezing outside. No titans, but that goes without saying.
You’d love to crack the nuts I’ve gathered during my daily walk. I’d tell you everything about this little path I’d have discovered and portraying every shape of the leaves and colour of the wildflowers I’d seen, pockets full of round white stones and tiny red mushrooms. You’d say teasingly that I’d have to be careful about the fairies not to mistake me as one of them. I’d answer they won’t try ‘cause they’d be afraid of you anyway, ogre of those woods.
Nevertheless, I’d hold you tight around my chest and I’d never grow tired of sleeping next to you and feeling your beating heart under the palm of my old, wrinkly hand. Our knuckles aching with arthrosis caressing each other when laying close in bed, we’d be moved to remember how they were scattered of chilblains in times gone by and I’d kiss your lips until you’d forgive me for once believing death would be better than ending my life with you at my side. I’d promise, in a shaky breath, “No more chilblains”, and you’d know what it would mean, deep inside your core. A promise I’d always be there.
That’s why every winter, we’d still be making love. Our trust in each other won’t have limits but I’d always continue to whisper my forgiveness in the crook of your neck, your earthy musk my redemption. You’d still be afraid to let me leave the bunk as mornings would come.
Sleepiness emboldens my thoughts, and I’m watching you eat the apple you found when we came back from our training session, now, with no wrinkles on your face, but with the same intelligent, bright eyes, the same expression, I swear. A tear escapes the infinite blue of my eyes and I hope you don’t notice. I can’t believe I let myself love you that much.
But listen, listen. There’s more.
In this place, you’d call me Historia.