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There’s a boy across the street from her.
She doesn’t know him, but she feels drawn to him all the same.
There’s something familiar about him, something she can’t quite pinpoint.
She’s never seen him before in her life and yet it feels like she’s known him her whole life.
It doesn’t make sense to her.
She pauses, watching him, wondering if she should call out to him and make herself known.
In the end, she decides against it.
She doesn’t know him after all.
/
The boy’s name is Eren Yeager.
It comes to her, one day out of the blue, and she knows.
She knows with absolute certainty that this is his name.
She doesn’t know how , but the name triggers feelings in her.
Warmth.
Longing.
Pain.
She doesn’t understand it.
It brings an ache in her chest that sometimes threatens to overtake her, that brings tears to her eyes.
She doesn’t understand it.
She wants to scream.
/
Maybe she does understand it.
She has dreams sometimes, but nothing in them is clear.
The faces are blurred, the voices are unclear.
Yet she feels as though she lived them.
It feels so long ago, but if she could just reach for it.
If she could just grasp one corner of this tapestry, she could unfurl it.
But there’s also pain, a deep, eternal ache in her soul and she thinks maybe it’s best to leave it all to rest.
/
She shoots up in bed, tears streaming down her face.
It feels like her soul has been rendered to pieces and for what? She doesn’t even know the reason why.
She knows without even trying that she won’t be returning to sleep and so she swings her legs over the side of the bed and climbs out.
In the bathroom, she splashes her face with water and finds herself staring at her reflection.
Her face is pale and worn, eyes rimmed with red.
She warms some milk in the kitchen and sits for a good while. She tries to sip it- she does- but she mostly sits with her hands curled around the mug, lost in a sort of haze.
What is happening to her?
/
“Historia,” he says and there’s something broken in his voice.
Something broken in his eyes.
He looks at her the way one looks at someone you never thought you’d see again.
“That’s not my name,” she says because it isn’t, yet at the same time, she feels as though it is. “My name is Krista.”
Even as she asserts this, she feels that it is a lie without understanding in the slightest why she feels this way.
Krista is the only name she has ever known.
That is simultaneously not true.
“No, it’s not,” he says and, for the first time, she feels anger bubble underneath the surface.
How does he know who she is or isn’t?
“It is,” she insists, biting back the urge to… what?
Call him out on his bullshit?
She’s not entirely certain that it is bullshit.
That scares her, actually scares her, for reasons she can’t name and so she turns on her heel and marches away from him and tries to pretend it doesn’t feel like she’s running from a piece of herself.
Still, she hears him calling out for her.
Historia.
Historia Reiss.
“I make my own destiny.”
She tells herself that’s really what she’s doing.
That it has nothing to do with her own cowardice, her inability to face whatever mistakes she made in the past.
/
Why did I run?
The question follows her persistently over the course of the next few days.
Why did she run when there’s a part of her that only wants to be with him? Why did she run when he’s the only other person who could possibly understand what she’s going through right now?
The answer is fear.
Now that she’s finally getting closer, she’s afraid of digging deeper, afraid of what she’ll find if she does.
Because she dreams, not just of uncertain faces and voices, but of events.
And now she’s scared to learn what he did.
Scared to know what she did.
She wonders if, maybe, those questions are better left unanswered.
…does she really want to take the coward’s way out?
The thought makes her freeze.
Is that what she’s being?
A coward?
/
He doesn’t approach her the next time.
She approaches him.
Because whatever this is, whatever is happening to her, to them both, she needs to stop running.
“I wondered when you’d come,” he says simply. Like this was all just an inevitability.
Maybe it is.
How many times have they done this?
She has no way of knowing.
“I don’t know what to tell you.”
“Anything would do…” he says, “but maybe you could start with how you feel.”
He’s not exactly comfortable with this either. She’s struck by this realization.
Or maybe… maybe like he’s afraid of her rejection.
Which is weird because he never really seemed to be that… sensitive.
Then again, it isn’t like she ever gave him the chance to make himself known to her.
/
They lie side by side under the stars.
“Something about this makes sense,” she says and then, seconds later, realizes she’s spoken aloud. She can’t stop herself from pushing onward. “I feel like I’ve known you. Long ago.”
She knows that she’s rambling, that this all must sound incredibly stupid to Eren, who has known this all along.
(But she has known it, she thinks. His name, that persistent feeling of longing … All of those things were there and she had run from them.)
He doesn’t look away from the sky and he doesn’t try to belittle her for finally catching on to what he must have felt was so obvious. “So do I.”
“Do you believe in soul mates?” she asks. “Reincarnation.”
“I don’t. Didn’t,” he corrects himself. “I don’t know. You?”
“Yes,” she says, surprising herself with how little time she actually takes to think it over. “How else do you explain what’s happening to us?”
“You don’t, I guess.”
They fall into a comfortable silence afterwards.
It’s surprisingly easy to feel at peace with him.
/
“Eren?”
The question is like an anchor weighing her down.
She can’t let it drown her.
“Hmm?” He answers with little more than a sigh.
“I have dreams. About things that happened, but none of it is clear.” She pauses. “What did we do?”
She watches him, sees the exact moment he freezes.
There’s an ache in the back of her throat and she curls her arms over her chest.
What could possibly be so bad?
She finds out when he wordlessly offers her his hands and she takes them.
“We used to do this…”
“Do…?”
She feels it then. A shiver of electricity that runs the length of her arm. The fog in her mind is dispelled.
She’s not sure how long they stand there, hands locked together, but she sees.
She sees everything and when it’s over, when it’s finally over, Eren releases her hands and steps back from her.
Historia stumbles forward a step and vomits.
/
“Can I touch you?”The question is awkward at best, especially after the memories- and the sins- they both share, and he seems to know this.
He can’t quite meet her eyes.
Considering what happened the last time they touched, his apprehension makes sense.
She doesn’t care anymore.
She wants this.
She wants him.
“I don’t think it will be…” he begins, but Historia doesn’t let him finish.
“Yes,” she breathes, the answer sliding off of her tongue with ease.
Historia doesn’t wait for him to make the first move.
She grasps his hand, enfolding it in her own two hands.
A breath escapes her. She realizes that what she’s feeling is relief.
There’s no jolt. No flash of light.
No memories.
Just his touch.
He bows his head, pressing her hands to his lips.
The warmth of his breath makes her skin tingle and she inhales softly.
Something flutters in her stomach- even more so when he cups her face.
“Historia,” he whispers, holding her face tenderly between his hands. “Historia.”
“Eren,” she leans against him, drawing comfort in his presence, “are we free?”
He kisses her forehead and in a tone that’s raw with- what? disbelief? hope?- says, “I think we are.”