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It was different back when she was a kid.
A real kid, that is — not this mess of lost innocence, burnt childhood and mindless walkabout. A real kid with real dreams that didn’t rhyme with an ordinary life.
Ymir slept mellow then. Calm, when the temperature outside made a bit of shivering inevitable but didn’t stray too far into discomfort. There was a communal fire in one of the alleyways that all the street orphans shared. She’d earned her place through friendship, as she did everything before friendship became a luxury she couldn’t afford.
Some days were better than others. She’d had a brother and sister, neither of whom were biologically related to her. They were both very cuddly (but dirty), and they either warmed each other up or tangled their freezing feet together. Either way, at least they had comfort in the presence of family. Other orphans had it worse. Scars and bruises and blood and nobody to help wipe it away.
Nights weren’t always relaxed enough to allow people to drift off to sleep. Ymir could remember nights when kids came crawling back and whimpered pathetically in their sleep, or worse, woke up screaming like the devil himself had burrowed into their scraggly sheets. No one really said anything, not even if the kid woke everyone at camp. They would all awkwardly turn away and try to think of food instead. Unable, even, to burrow into themselves and wish it all away, because who had a big enough blanket to do so that they wouldn’t sell for scraps?
That time felt like a far-off dream, but it shouldn’t have. It had been half her life — half her memorable life, anyway.
At eight years of age, Ymir had become The Exalted Lady Ymir. Savior of all and bringer of peace, if you listened to the words of fanatics stationed in the slums of Marley. Having similar roots, Ymir was easily convinced. Not wanting to dispel the illusion, she accepted her fate and bled into the role like she deserved to be thought of as holy.
At ten, Ymir accepted and ate up lies like candy. She’d never had parents; she’d been born of the world. She’d never had siblings; her bloodline was that of a single pure reincarnated being. She’d never lived in the slums; she had gone through tribulations to prove her worth. She’d never been human; she was an immortal goddess. After all, wasn’t it Ymir spread out on the duvet, surrounded by silk and feathers? Wasn’t it Ymir getting sweets pressed into her hand, sweeter cajoleries whispered into her ear?
Ymir slept well then. Eating fine foods, living in fine quarters, being treated like royalty.
She found her every need catered to like it had never been before. Every day had been a trial, and it seemed then as though she’d passed.
Nights there were warm. Trapped between her bedding and the many layers of covers she requested, Ymir never wanted for anything, let alone a good night’s sleep. Who would miss her sister’s little jetpack backhugs when layers of down stretched over body and muffled her memories? Even when she almost overheated at night, she couldn’t bear to throw off the covers and remember the days when she’d had none.
It was shameful how deep she sunk into delusion. Her nights had been filled with thoughts on how to best solve the problems of her believers. She lovingly carried jewelled sceptres and golden bowls as symbols of her divinity. In the end, however, no matter what toy she had, it was no fun to play god.
~~~
When Ymir had lived in the streets and spent every night wishing for a simple roof over her head, she had never imagined it would be like this.
Prison wasn’t nice. Prison was getting leered at by Marleyan guards, gossiped over for a few moments of snickering before the topic inevitably changed to someone more interesting. Prison was trying to forget the last two years of opulence now that there was nothing underneath her but damp concrete.
At first, it had been unbelievable. She wanted to demand that they release her, put her foot down as Lady Ymir, a goddess reincarnated. But she learned quickly. By the third night, laying in her own dried blood and waste, truth forced itself onto her bare form.
She liked to think that that had been it. Ymir would reconstruct her memories around this concept, that she had stayed stoically resigned in her cell until they called for her turning. Sometimes, though — in times that would soon come — she could only turn those memories over in her mind and wish for the ability to forget.
Eldians enjoyed a certain form of torture in their cells. Marley had the means to turn them into Titans the second they were convicted, but they usually chose to wait. The torture of the unknown.
Offhanded exchanges between guards about expected lifespans, expected death rate, expected kill counts…how many fellow Eldians could they murder? Ymir and her blockmates heard them all. The crying became easier to tune out as the week went by, sure, but it never became easy.
The fourth night she laid there, shivering and clawing at her own rags, Ymir took with fever.
Her memories of it were few and far between. Occasionally she remembered the blistering cold of the cells and frostbite. More often, she would remember not wanting to remember that.
The cells were always cold. That night was colder, especially when she was wrapped up in her mind and nothing else. “You can’t do this to me.”
The guard stationed just outside her cell turned at the feeble voice, raising an eyebrow. He looked barely interested but turned as she struggled to rest on her forearms. “What?”
“You can’t do this,” she repeated, voice dry and raspy from dehydration and fever. “I…” He kept watching curiously like she was a museum exhibit, a mummy who had awoken after a thousand years. Refusing to have her actions belie her dignity, Ymir looked up with all the sharpness her dizzy mind could muster. “I am Lady Ymir, and you will release me!”
“Sure,” he said, clearly more amused than intimidated. It infuriated her, but the emotion sat useless as her body was wracked with shivers and sweat.
“I won’t have this!” she cried, her voice tinny and weak even to her own ears. The feeling of powerlessness grappled at her, and she pounded her fists on the bars, diverting every extra ounce of strength to holding back the fat tears threatening to roll down her cheeks. She might be throwing a tantrum, but she would not cry.
Ymir regretted taking the blame. She regretted her regret.
She just wanted it to end.
~~~
Ymir couldn’t remember nights as a titan.
That was good. Who would want to? Sleeping, waking, wandering, eating any hapless humans who happened to come her way. A fate worse than death, but at least she wasn’t conscious enough to suffer through it. She also knew that somewhere in those sixty years, her conscience must have slipped away into the night.
It must have been by the grace of god that she woke up that night, she thought, her lips parting to suck in a breath but coming up empty below the countless glittering stars. If this was a dream, let it never end. If this was real, let her live for herself and take control of her own destiny.
She sat upright and stood on wobbly legs, directing herself towards where large walls barely loomed over the horizon. Ymir did not sleep that night, and she didn’t need to.
~~~
Ymir slept well as a thief.
Not always well, of course. Some nights she was forced to curl up in alleyways like a diseased cat, knocking her head hard on brick if she dozed off without positioning her arm as a cushion. Surviving in Wall Sheena alone, having dried up all the mercy the world had to offer when she regained consciousness, was not easy.
“You dratted brat!” yelled a shopkeeper as she yanked a necklace off a rack and darted off just as fast. “Come back! I hate you little pricks, always roaming the street looking for a chance to steal!”
Ymir chanced a wave back and grinned, stuffing the necklace into her ill-fitting pockets. It would fetch a hefty price later. Wasn’t everything easier when she didn’t have to worry about the well-being of anyone else?
“You can’t just abandon us now,” argued the leader of the group she’d joined for just over two nights before deserting. “We fed you with our hard-earned provisions! You’re a cheat and a liar!”
She ducked his punch and quickly skittered away on nimble legs. That was what blind trust got you in the city. As scavengers, they should have known better than to treat her so kindly in the first place.
“Dirty-faced thief! Stealing from the innocent and needy, how low can you get? The walls will crush you under their justice eventually, mark my words!”
I’m counting on it, she thought, counting the donations she’d managed to stuff under her belt. Churches were easy, loopy ones like the Church of the Walls easiest. She’d be revisiting that one. The pastor rather liked her, after all.
And revisit it she did. Ymir crept back one day, twelve years old and prepared to steal a fat juicy chicken leg from the pockets of church officials. They usually used donations for their own personal gains anyway, so what little guilt she could have felt quickly evaporated.
She’d just stuffed a good amount of coins into her satchel when she heard two priests speaking and paused. Whereas she had only caught snippets of speech before — “Daughter,” “move,” “name” and “poor,” to name a few — now she was crouched underneath the altar and absorbed every word.
“Right?” one of them was saying, and she heard faint ruffling. “The circumstances are most unfortunate. I doubt she’ll last a day as a trainee.”
“A slight girl like her? You’re absolutely right.” The other laughed. “She’ll snap like a twig. Or shatter like a crystal — Krista Lenz, you know?”
The first priest chuckled, though Ymir remained unamused by such poor humor. She latched onto the information. Krista Lenz, and she’d be in the Training Corps. Ymir waited silently for the two men to leave, ignoring her aching legs, and fingered her satchel.
Surely the money was enough to get by until she could enlist in the military?
Ymir left the church, quickly calculating how much she could alternatively steal and buy until enlistment was available to match up with this Krista’s (according to the priests, two weeks from now). She curled underneath thin blankets underneath the bridge she’d bunkered down in earlier and fell asleep slowly, numbers dancing in her mind and Krista Lenz’s name on her lips.
~~~
There was nothing outwardly interesting about Krista at first. Besides an angelic appearance and saintlike disposition, she seemed exceptionally normal. Short legs, maybe, but Ymir had long ones and those weren’t what made her atypical. Blonde hair, blue eyes. A voice that could make babies laugh. Sasha was a prime example of that.
Those weren’t the only traits she noticed either. A martyr complex, the cherry on top. Maybe this Krista wasn’t as saintlike as she previously thought.
Military life suited her, even if she generally lacked discipline and only stayed to watch Krista. So she thought sleeping in the barracks was fine. Sleeping with Krista in the barracks was — also fine, and absolutely did not make her too stiff to breathe.
If only she was less pretty.
Sleeping with somebody else was strange. After the incident with Daz, Krista had apparently invited herself into Ymir’s cot, not that she was complaining. Only an idiot would complain in these circumstances, she thought, her heart being faster than it had in three years as they laid together in silence. Her body was light and warm against Ymir’s, and her cheeks warmed when she thought of the other’s noticeable muscle gain over the past few weeks. Those church officials would have to revisit their description of her as slight. Now was absolutely not the time to think about this, but once she started she couldn’t stop.
Thankfully, Krista had already fallen asleep on top of her. Ymir suffered silently for a bit, revelling in the perfect temperature they achieved together, and tried in vain to relax enough to sleep.
Would it betray her principles to want to die like this?
~~~
Those had been her thoughts the first time they slept together. The nights afterwards were even more pleasant, letting them curl up against each other under two light blankets to “conserve body heat.” Which was all they were doing, obviously. Everyone else seemed too exhausted to question it.
The choice to end their peaceful nights and reveal herself had not come easy. Some parts of her tried to argue against it, but she quickly squashed them before they could morph into regret. Ymir despised regrets — decisions, once made, must be accepted, and she refused to regret a move that supported Historia’s safety.
Still, she missed the nights they spent together. When she could wake up to sunlight easing in through small cracks in the walls, reflecting Historia’s hair and tinting it a liquid gold so bright she thought it must have been chipped off angels’ halos, the color that appeared after death. Listening to her soft breaths, watching the rise and fall of her chest, relaxed even as her elbow was jammed uncomfortably into her chest…the kind of bliss she felt was surely not meant to last. She could never help wondering if Historia felt the same way with as much intensity, if the magnitude of it constricted in her chest and bloomed in her mind the way it did in Ymir. Never had she felt that way before, that sure of her every move, not even as a cultist.
Perhaps the dullness of her life without Historia reflected in her eyes. Lying beneath the stars on the wall after her defection, the air was fraught with a chill that only got colder as the night wore on, but she felt none of it even without a blanket. Even without the otherworldly Titan blood in her, she doubted she could have felt anything but complete serenity.
The nightmares and dreams relinquished their hold on her sleep like they had never even existed. Nothing did but Ymir and the stars and that last sight of her only love.
~~~
To be back in a Marley prison had not been the plan, but the plan was over. All that was left was to be yanked up and dragged onto a dais. Chained to await her fate. Ymir almost laughed, but exhaustion weighed on every part of her body and she doubted she could make a single sound. The climax was over, the denouement approached.
As a jaw closed over her, she closed her eyes and imagined that the pain would be brief.
She would be delivered swiftly to her final sleep. Ah, what a fine rest that would be.