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The road to the college looks the same. The city looks the same, all ivory bricks and neatly-trimmed gardens. When they alighted at the train station last week, Falco felt as if he had stepped back in time. He doesn't know why any of it should have looked different. It may feel like it has been months since he was last here, but it's only been weeks. Only days, in a different world that looks the same.
But it was winter when he left, and the beginning of a new term drew all the students from the depths of the cold and grey into the open air to swing their bags and brush their long hair from their faces as they talked over coffee. He was not privy to those conversations, nor to their way of life. He was too intimidated to speak in class when he first enrolled, too afraid that their beautiful eyes would land on him, that one or two gazes would linger long enough to see through him. He thought they were all beautiful. He still does, but he was ashamed to admit it back then. They lived in their own way, with shiny locks of hair flowing down their shoulders, embroidered leather school bags on their arms, and oil paint stains on their smocks, because they were not afraid to get too close. They wore strands of pearls around their wrists where they had left a little stripe of paint on their skin as if by accident, as if to announce to the world to await them. Their names will be worth something one day.
His own hands have long been stained with charcoal. In many ways, he prefers its rough edges and unforgiving touch. But even after he scrubs his skin raw in the sink of the butcher's shop basement where he works, it always seems to stay on him. He stands out like that wherever he goes, in some small way, and all those tall beautiful students ask questions in class that he could never hope to fathom. It's understood by all that he will never be one of them.
That must be what has changed. The road to the college looks the same, even in the absence of the snow that was piled high on the pavement when he was last here. The students pass him arm-in-arm, their high-heeled boots clicking down the road as they gesticulate on their way to class, their voices precise and emphatic with every drop of a name he's never heard.
It's he who has changed. And after everything, he does not know why that surprises him.
He cannot breathe again until he squeezes out of the streetcar, tearing his scarf from the place where it gets stuck between two strangers' arms. Someone loosens it for him, and he goes treading into the daylight. Each breath after comes hurriedly as he makes his way through the crowded square. Spring has come like a lamb, and the people like lions; they flock to the city center, intact and tall among its sisters on the mainland. Children scream and play and run across the pavement. Families and strangers watch the little miracles at play. The noise is hardly better inside the museum, among school groups and visitors, but when Falco trots up the marble stairs and steps through the grand doors, he soon finds all the sounds in the world drowned out by his eyes.
He takes the long way to the upper gallery. The people meander with coats thrown over their arms, idle conversations in murmur. They do not notice Falco as he passes, sunken in the world around him, or perhaps he is the one who does not notice, for once, if people stare. The crowds disappear the further he goes, and in the quiet, he walks the museum the way it is meant to be seen.
He stops to turn his head at The Gates of Lagos, to see all the little flecks of gold within its fire. He watches grey sunlight come down on Olinnea through her skylight, shadows cascading tenderly down her marble figure. He wishes he could reach them— feel the stone and paint beneath his fingers; take them apart to study them, peel them from their frames and pedestals and lay them on the floor, bending to hand and knee with his face pressed to the tile to observe every inch.
He thinks about it sometimes. In the summer, the museum is open 'til dusk, and the concerts on the square draw the attendants' eyes away from the galleries. What he would give to cut Sunrise over the Sea of Reason from its frame and take it home in his bag like any ordinary postcard. What he would do to feel the ripple of the oil pants beneath his fingers, and to let his skin oil it beyond repair. He thinks sometimes about burning it. This whole museum, on fire.
His footsteps echo on the fine wood floor of the upper gallery when he enters. Pencils flutter and flourish as fourteen beautiful students continue their work. The professor does not notice Falco until he sets his folding chair at the back of the class.
"Mr. Grice," he says. "We did not expect to see you so soon."
In the quiet of the gallery, even his hushed voice echoes. Gazes turn over shoulders. Eyelashes flutter as glances are exchanged. Falco sets out his sketchbook and digs in his bag for a pencil.
"I'm sorry for interrupting, sir. I'll be on time for the rest of the term."
"You must not feel obligated to attend the rest of the course. After all, as you are only auditing— you would be welcome to return next term."
"Thank you, sir. But I— I'd rather continue, if that's alright."
"Have a seat then. The subject lies straight ahead."
There is little to be said of the quiet that follows. The students continue in their sketching, their pencils moving up and down the pages in their laps. Their heads raise and lower to the painting mounted before them. Some pause, their pencils held to their lips in contemplation. Every once in a while, one of them leans forward in their small folding chair, and the whole gallery seems to hold its breath as the student stares in rapture. After a moment, they come down again. Though Falco finds his breath once more, his pencil hardly moves.
The hour is gone before he knows it. The students pack up diligently, their sketchbooks tucked away carefully for later study. The professor beckons Falco to the front of the gallery.
"I was candid with you before, Mr. Grice," he says. "Let me be so again. It might surprise you to hear, but I was sorry when I received your message explaining your abrupt departure. I had hoped we would be able to find some peace in this new world of ours."
"I think peace looks different for everyone, sir."
The professor studies him, before turning back to the painting.
"Yes, of course. Tell me, Mr. Grice, have you studied much art history? What do you know about The Feast?"
He doubts the professor asked this of the other students. Perhaps he did, facilitating a deep and thoughtful discussion while Falco tardied through the museum. He knows what the students would have said if he had been here, for as beautiful as they are, they are also predictable. They are the same as all the others. They would have seen a madness of monsters in the grim red eyes of the faces at the feast. They would have seen blood around their mouths and the crack of lightning, an omen of destruction. He wonders if they would have seen the face of the man being devoured— if they would have thought him an innocent victim torn of flesh, and not a repentant sacrifice, his aging and weary face worn with lines of quiet relief at the thought of final death. The mortality of a god.
He steps closer when the professor beckons him. The painting has not aged well in the light, he sees. The blood red strokes are beginning to fade.
"This is Erad Magran, sir," he says.
The professor nods and stands back to observe the art, his hands clasped behind his back.
"One of the last works Magran finished before his death. I chose this piece today for its composition. See the complex layering of light, how it illuminates the table and reflects off the surface? It moves with the eye."
"Yes, sir."
"This work is part of a series once owned by the House of Reiss. It was lost in the Great War, like many masterpieces, and rediscovered not long ago in the collection of the noble Tybur family. They loaned it to the museum in a show of good faith. It is still here, many years later. One of the many consequences of war, I suppose. In my opinion, this is one of Magran's greatest works, and yet the curator is unable to accession it permanently into the national collection without title and provenance from the Tybur estate, which will likely never come, at least not within my lifetime. Do you know what provenance is, Mr. Grice?"
"No, sir."
"In the simplest terms, the meaning of provenance could be described as the history of ownership of a piece of art. In other words, how it has changed hands over the years. Do you understand?"
Falco meets the eyes of the man in the painting. "I do."
He meets Gabi at the fire escape as usual. His shoes latch unsteadily onto the metal ladder that she swings down to greet him, and he climbs as softly as he can. Each step on the metal sounds like a crack of thunder in the alleyway behind the boarding house. One day, she's going to make him take off his shoes and wait barefoot on the street. She leans over the railing and holds a cigarette as he approaches; her bangs are curled back in rollers. It makes him smile, that something about her is always a little different when he sees her. And yet, she is always the same.
"Could you be any louder?" Gabi asks.
The ladder slams under his feet. Falco ducks into the shoulders of his jacket on instinct, pressing back into the shadows of the building. Inside, a light flickers off, and someone laughs along with the radio. The cigarette drips with ash as Gabi turns toward him.
"You don't smoke," he says.
"I'm holding it. I should have asked you to hold the ladder too, but Yasmin's a lot quieter than you."
The window behind them pops open, the curtains fluttering with the movement. Yasmin clambers out, one hand grappling to support herself on Falco's shoulder as she shimmies onto the fire escape in her skirt and heels. She fixes her hair, takes the cigarette back from Gabi, and smokes a drag.
"Don't wait up for me, you two," she says. "And don't get caught, or we're all done for. I'm not sleeping in a hostel because you read the newspaper too loud, or whatever it is you do. I wish you would come out with us sometime. Go dancing, like normal couples. You can do the foxtrot, can't you, Falco? Or I can stay in if you want me to. I will, Gabi, I mean it."
"Goodnight," Gabi tells her, and she pulls Falco in through the window.
The walls of the boarding house whisper with laughter. The light in the crack of the door flickers as pairs of slippers pass back and forth like shadows. Down the hall, the water runs in the bath, getting colder by the minute. Falco thinks sometimes if it wouldn't be better to have a house like Gabi's, instead of the narrow room he keeps with two mainlanders in the attic over a butcher's shop. But he likes being close to the college, and houses like these come with strings attached. Gabi is as tethered to the telephone station across the street as any operator is to her switchboard. He can hear the girls through the walls, recounting the calls of the day. Their lives exist on the line. He doesn't know how Gabi stands it. He doesn't know if she will stand it much longer.
"How was class?" she asks.
"Fine," he answers.
They lie on the floor with their heads together. Her shoebox room is just big enough for them to stretch their toes from end to end. Something discordant plays from the gramophone that she and her roommate share with the other girls on the floor. They both know he should ask her to turn it off. Swing is contraband, and so is he. But one of the girls will knock if the matron comes up the stairs, and then he'll make his escape. He's done it before: jumped off the fire escape and limped home with skinned palms. Gabi used to think that was funny.
"Have you heard back yet?" he asks.
They both know he saw the letter on her nightstand, torn open and set aside just as quickly. The single slip of paper in the envelope revealed the contents faster than she could have read them. The Board of Admissions is inspired by the candidate's enthusiasm to study law at the National University. But as the candidate was made aware after her previous application, her admission to the law school is not possible, as the Eldian Program ceased acceptance with the class of 858. The candidate need not apply again.
"One day," Gabi says.
She lifts one hand, her shoulder brushing against the top of his head as she reaches for him. Her fingers brush through his hair in a loving and clumsy touch against his forehead. They lie on their backs with their eyes closed to the ceiling. The gramophone sings as lights go out across the city, and Falco stays still in the quiet, hoping that they will drift off to sleep and wake in a world that belongs to them.
"Are you free tomorrow?" she asks.
Gabi's idea of a date begins at the courthouse. But that's like the fire escape for them— familiar. He knows exactly what she means when she asks to meet downtown, and he brings his sketchbook. They end up on the same streetcar. She pushes her way through the crowd to stand next to him by the back door, where they'll do a running jump when the tram arrives at their stop. He holds onto the railing overhead, his sweater scratching at his neck. She puts her hand over his, her blouse stretched across her shoulders with her arm in the air, and he finds himself charmed and perturbed by her closeness, the glint in her eyes and the smell of her skin.
"Did you bring your glasses?" he asks.
"I don't need my glasses."
"Don't complain when you can't see their faces."
"I'll just look at your renditions. They're better anyway."
Their bags pass through the checkpoint ahead of them. Falco watches from the middle of the line, his fidgeting footsteps echoing on the marble floors of the lobby. The security officer rifles through his messenger bag without care, pulling out paper pads and pencils, wadded balls of discarded sketches, then a set of charcoals and a library book. In the end, the pencils are the only thing he does not get back, and when he asks the guard why they were confiscated, his name is written down and he's told it's a potential weapon. Besides, he's not press. What does he need a pencil for?
They slip through the crowd and down the corridor as the day's proceedings resume. The judge's gavel echoes into the stairwell as they climb to the second-floor viewing gallery, where they squeeze in with the others who no longer wear armbands. They sit at the end of the bench, their knees pressed up to the half-wall in front of them. Falco stares down. Below lies the jury box, and he finds himself meeting the eyes of one of the young men there. His gaze turns up at the rustle of Falco's sketchbook from his bag. He blinks. Then his disinterested look levels back to the motion of the courtroom.
"Counsellor, if the defense has any questions, you may proceed with cross-examination at this time."
"Yes, your Honor. Mr. Andrea Brandt, let me— Andrea. Am I saying that correctly?"
The charcoal twirls in Falco's fingers as a suited man moves to the stand. He scans the rest of the courtroom, as if he'll see a familiar face. He has often wondered if they will run into Onyankopon at one of these trials, a fleeting happy reunion in an ever-changing world. This is his work, after all, or at least he helped raise the funds for the legal representation with the Volunteers. They have not seen him since he sponsored their right-to-work claims. That was two or three years ago, before the ports to the North Sea closed. He wonders if he and Levi are still working together, if they're still in touch with Paradis. He wonders if any of them have heard the news. He wonders if they would care.
Beside him, Gabi cradles a stack of books in her lap. He watches, charcoal restless in hand, as she flips through them. Some he does not recognize, and some are library books he hopes she did not steal. She pauses over a file envelope in the middle, then finds her notebook and sets to work on her notes as the defense takes the floor.
"Mr. Brandt, let me start by asking—"
"Doctor."
"Excuse me?"
"It's Dr. Brandt, sir."
"Yes, of course, my apologies. Dr. Brandt. Could you please restate your occupation for the court?"
"I am a professor emeritus of history at Liebler College at the National University, former chair of the classical studies department, and recipient of last year's esteemed award for—"
Falco studies the man in the witness box. He turns his charcoal over again before setting it to paper. The doctor has a high brow and deep, round face that droops under his eyes. A mustache that was in fashion the year Falco was born. A heavy wool suit on his heavyset body, with no doubt he'll be sweating by the end of the day. There would be far more interesting characters to sketch in the jury, or among the audience, who sit enraptured in silence for what some are beginning to call the trial of the year. Gabi has reported listening in on multiple conversations on her phone lines. Falco has asked her if she should do that. But there's an essence to this witness that he feels compelled to capture, no matter who else is in the courtroom. The defense seems to feel the same way.
"Would you agree, Dr. Brandt, that the study of history is an invaluable asset to the children of this nation in their education?"
"I believe the objective truth of the past is key to an accurate understanding of the world."
"I see. And who decides what constitutes an 'objective truth?'"
"Are you asking me, sir, what makes the truth true? Is that not reality, sir?"
"Let me clarify, Dr. Brandt. Who writes history?"
Something white draws Falco's eye from his sketchbook. He turns his head to the top of the courtroom, the neck of his blazer crumpling inward. There lies a grand dome above their heads, painted with an intricate fresco in gold. He recognizes the imagery from his textbooks, though he cannot remember the name of the artist. His eyes weave through the branches and leaves of the ancient plaster, following their foretold trajectory to the center, where a circle of hands holds the sun up to the sky. The touch burns their palms.
The courtroom murmurs below him as he observes the faded flakes of the fresco. Does it belong to these people now, as it once did to their forefathers?
"Then how are we to say, Dr. Brandt, that my client was not teaching history after all? No one here can describe the 'objective' truth' of events that took place a thousand years ago."
"I am not an expert on the curriculum of this nation's public schools, sir, but I believe the guidelines written by the school board are clear in regards to what can be legally taught in a history classroom, and this man has defiled the study of—"
"Does the school board know some objective truth of history that the rest of us do not, Dr. Brandt?"
The white flickers, and Falco watches as a bird scrapes across the ceiling. Its wings flutter helplessly as it searches for a way out. It throbs against the skylight in the center of the dome, where the sun is said to lie overhead, shining on all the lakes of Marley as the story goes. But the day is cloudy, and the bleak glass dome is only a cage. The bird struggles and flutters away.
"As an expert in historiography, you must find these one-sided accounts alarming."
"No, sir."
"You don't think it's cause for concern to not have a single Eldian account represented in the official textbooks of this nation? And furthermore to require that children of all races learn only what is written in the textbooks, without any consideration towards cultural bias?"
"It is my professional opinion as a historian that when an evident pattern emerges, there is little point in chasing the word of those who would deny it to preserve their own vanity."
"You think Eldians are liars."
"No, sir, do not put words in my mouth. I believe the truth speaks for itself."
"And the people don't?"
"The common man's perspective is limited in the grand scale of world history. The truth must be observed from an elevated point of view in order to capture—"
"That's interesting, Dr. Brandt, because you won your esteemed award for an article in the Winter 855 edition of The Looking Glass historical journal, wherein you propagated that the Rumbling was a conspiracy on behalf of all Eldian people to take over the world. But I think, sir, if you had taken the time to ask a single Eldian for their perspective, you would have found an answer much closer to reality and been assured that Eren Yeager initiated the end of the world against the common man’s wishes."
Murmurs flood the courtroom. Falco smears the charcoal beneath his hand, blinking back up at the fresco. He remembers now. Serafin of Valle was commissioned by a royal patron to paint the sun over the waters of Marley. Once, that was a great act of defiance. She fled the country before her work was finished. Her students completed it tidily for her. They were eaten when the city fell.
"Your honor, I move to have this testimony stricken from the record. The defense's blatant hyperboles about 'the end of the world' are a disservice to the proceedings of this court and disgrace to his professional office."
"So stricken. Jury members, the evidence you just heard is not to be considered in your final deliberation. Counsellor, you may proceed with cross-examination. But make your point. Eren Yeager is not the one on trial."
Someone sputters a sob. Falco blinks down from the fresco, the stick of charcoal numb in his fingers where it has frozen over a smear across the doctor's rendition. Then he glances to his side, and he finds Gabi folded over, her hands in her face as she heaves with tears.
She is on the pavement before Falco even makes it out the courthouse doors. Still, he runs after her— bowling through a suited crowd on the front steps with apologies under his breath and dashing across the tram lines in the street. He nearly gets hit by a taxi, his charcoal-covered fingers smearing on the hood of the cab as he stumbles away from it. He follows her across the street until he finally catches up with her in the green interior of a city park. People meander about their days. The cold spring morning has drawn crowds to take in the fresh air.
Gabi stops before a bench, her back to him. But she does not sit down. Neither does he, catching his breath on his approach, only then noticing his shoes and socks are soaked from a splash in the gutter. He watches as she turns toward him, rifling through the books clutched to her chest, her hair mussed in the wind and her tear-stained face growing redder with the cold. She rips out the folder he saw before, slams it to his chest, and wheels around, another cry escaping her as if by inevitable momentum. She leans over the bench and wipes the sleeve of her blouse under her nose.
Falco turns the folder over in his hands. The charcoal smears across its face in dusty black fingerprints. The script on the pages inside is hard to decipher, but he recognizes it at once. When he looks up, Gabi has spun around to face him again, wiping the tears from her eyes as anger ignites on her face.
"He said he's sorry," she shouts. "What does he have to be sorry for?"
"I think that must have been the way he felt. Even if we can't understand— guilt looks different for everyone."
"He should be sorry for this! He could have told me this to his face, instead of jumping off a fucking roof!"
A flock of birds light from the lawn behind them. Passersby stare.
Gabi rips the folder from his hands. When she tears it open, then he sees— pages on pages fluttering in the wind. Hundreds of lines scribbled in black ink and stained with tears. Some with dates scrawled in the margins, or else, indecipherable smears. Years on years on years.
She glances at him. Tears fall quietly down her face.
"Sunday is my birthday," she says.
"I know," he answers.
"And he's not going to be there, because— what? Because he wrote me a novel about how sad his life was, and that makes it all okay? That means I should forgive him for leaving me? For dumping this on me and then dying because he couldn't handle it? What makes him think I—"
She does not finish before she crumples to the curb in tears.
He does not know what to do when Gabi cries. This whole time, he thinks, he has not seen her cry. It feels like it has been months, but it's only been weeks. Only days since the world changed as either of them knew it— since he has changed, something deep and buried inside of him feeling hot and raw as it burrows to his surface, tearing him apart from the inside. And though the spring has come, he feels like it is still winter.
There was still snow on the ground then. It would snow again not long after they had left, squeezed hastily into the last available compartment on the train home. The other passengers in the box had not shared not much of their language, and after Falco's timid attempts to explain themselves, they resigned to sitting diagonally from one another, Falco by the door, Gabi by the window. He had tried not to watch her on the long train ride, but he hadn't been able to help himself at times. She sat with her face turned to the window, the lakes and hills of the countryside passing in her eyes as the train sped towards the sea. She did not cry, even then.
He had not been able to keep himself together. He had felt all morning as if something was about to happen. There was an unease in the air when he attended college that morning, one of hundreds in the back of the classroom as the projector flipped through classical paintings. They lit up the wall in the dark auditorium. They were studying movement then, but he found himself still and silent as the professor lectured. He'd retreated home after class and secluded himself in the dusty basement where he painted, working over and over as the butcher's shop above his head thudded with business.
He had hardly noticed when footsteps padded down the cellar stairs, but then suddenly the butcher's wife was there, wiping her hands on her apron as she nodded at him for his attention. Her eyes flicked to his easel before she spoke with the few words of her native tongue that she knew he would understand.
"Telephone for you," she said. She gestured above her head. "From home."
Falco had known then.
The butcher was hard at work when he squeezed up the cellar stairs into the back room of the shop. The wife returned to the front counter. Through the small doorway, he could see the light of day spilling in as customers crowded the black and white tiled floor, their boots tracking in snow. The butcher's blade slammed down on the counter again. Falco watched the blood drip to the floor as he picked up the receiver.
"I'm sorry," Pieck had said. He didn't know then what she was apologizing for; he doesn't now know if she did either, because her voice hesitated on her next words, but not long enough. "Will you tell Gabi? I think it's better if she hears it from you."
He watched the butcher's knife hack between ribs. They would wash this shop from top to bottom before the end of the day. That was the way it was here, not like back home where meat was so rarely found that there were no traditions or regulations. Liberio had no butchers. He was still getting used to the feel of gristle between his teeth. They'd scrub these floors until the blood ran clean, but there would be more blood tomorrow. He could always smell it from the basement where he worked. Sometimes he thought about painting with it.
"I will," he had said. "Of course, I will."
He hadn't been able to help the tears that spilled down his face, or the look the butcher turned to give him over his shoulders. His gloves dripped red. His white apron, stained, and the animal before him mutilated beyond recognition. Falco hadn't been able to help but dash out the back alley and vomit into the weeds growing in the cracks of the concrete.
It had not snowed in Liberio, though if it had, Falco does not know that he would have noticed. Their train arrived in the dark, and when they stepped onto the platform, he felt the salt air and smoke immediately. Like stepping back in time, but this time, he recognized only the place where he landed. He could not see himself then, the boy he was or the man he would become. The man he wanted to become. He could see nothing but the darkness that bundled them home in the cold sea breezes and the strange, open air on the streets of the internment zone.
The walls were still there, he remembers. He sat in the parlor over those next few days and watched the comings-and-goings through the gate from the front window, his view filtered by the white curtains that sat drawn over the glass, shuttering out all sunlight. Guests, too, were shuttered out. He sat next to Gabi and watched her every time the doorbell rang. Her hair was braided back behind her head, the same way Pieck and Annie did theirs, the way they had done for her; and she sat stone-faced in the silence as plates of food were stacked one on top of each other in the kitchen. He remembers thinking what a waste it was, all the food they would never finish in the quiet of the house with its closed doors and darkened windows. He remembered the last observance he had attended, on top of a dusty red butte at the dawn of a new world. There had been no food or incense then. Not much of anything except the bodies they had left, and even then—
The candles on the parlor table burned through the night. Annie relit the incense when it finally went.
"For fuck's sakes," she had said, trying another match. "What the hell is wrong with these things?"
Falco had held out his hands.
"I can do it."
The telephone rang in the kitchen, and Pieck answered it each time, her short heels clicking across the tile. There had been nothing to do but eavesdrop in the quiet as she took a message.
"The wire didn't go through the first time," she said when she came back in. "They asked someone to go to the post office to try again. Because it's long distance—"
Falco had grabbed his jacket.
"I'll go."
The portraits and flowers on the table had been picked through again and again, the hours of the small days passing as he watched Karina rearrange her son's memories in a way that pleased her. It never seemed to; and finally, she had sat back in the same clothes she'd worn for the last three days, and stared at the memorial with a blank smile on her face. He couldn't help but feel as if she thought Reiner would walk back through the door at any minute.
"There's a photo album in his room I'd like to add," she said after a few days. "He takes that camera with him everywhere. He'll be happy to see it here."
Falco had stood. "I'll get it."
"Oh, no, Falco, I can't ask that of you."
"It's fine, Ms. Braun. I'll get it."
"Would you, please? What a dear."
"Of course. I'll take care of it."
Once, under the stars in the deserts of the Ilur Pass, he had caught Porco smoking a cigarette. Galliard. That was always the way Falco thought of him. He wasn't like the other warriors, or he would be, but he wasn't yet back then. He wasn't old like Zeke, always drilling answers into their heads. At least, he wasn't what Falco thought of as old when he was a child. That was old to him, to all of them. If things went their way, they wouldn't live much longer than that.
He wasn't like Pieck either, measured with her words and capable in everything. She was always five steps ahead of the rest of them, even when she was behind on the battlefield. And he wasn't like Reiner. Falco loved Reiner, the same way he loved Marley. The same way he loves the paintings at the museum and wants them all to burn. He thinks that's why he cried so much when Reiner died. Because it hurt less than watching him live.
Galliard had just muttered shit and kept smoking. He wasn't supposed to be out there where a sniper could see the light from over the hills and put it out with one clean shot. Falco figured that threat didn't mean much to him. Something about Galliard was different to him. He was theirs, in a way. They had taken the first assessment the same summer he inherited the Jaw, and they'd trained underfoot of him, his titan quick and nimble as they raced around him in the dust. It was like watching himself in a mirror, all the things he would be one day if he trained hard enough. He didn't know at the time how true that was.
"You shouldn't be out here," Galliard had said.
Falco had already known that, and he ducked his head sheepishly on instinct. He'd been restless again. He always was when they were close to the front. He didn't know how the others slept through the night. Udo's whistling sighs filled their tent with a gentle rhythm at night, but still Falco laid awake, shivering under his blankets. The desert froze over at night, especially when they were so close to the sea. They were so near the end of the war, and after months accompanying the troops on the front, he had yet to fire a single bullet.
He didn't want to kill. He didn't want to die either. That was what kept him up at night.
The orange flame bloomed as Galliard took a drag.
"Don't apologize," he said before Falco could. "I get it. Get some fresh air, and then go back to bed before someone sees you."
Falco had kneeled in the sand with his arms folded over his knees. He watched the desert. Somewhere over those dunes laid the sea, and the sunrise that always came with it, another dawn in a world that changed every time he opened his eyes. The flame of Galliard's cigarette had been one of many stars in the deep blue night, and as Falco watched him smoke, he couldn't help but ask, as any curious child might.
"Does that help?"
Galliard had glanced down at him.
"Does what help?"
"Smoking."
"Help with what?"
"The titan."
Galliard had looked at him then. He had not known what else to say in the silence.
"You all do it."
"Pieck doesn't smoke."
"Yes, she does. I've seen her."
"Fine, every once in a while, but—" Whatever he had been about to say, he stopped before he did. Instead, he shook his head. "I don't know. I guess maybe it does."
"What does it feel like?"
Ash from the cigarette dripped into the sand. The flame lingered between Galliard's fingers where it was clenched as the quiet of the night overtook them. Falco watched him. He understands now that Galliard answered a different question than he asked.
"It feels like flying," he had said. "Like falling."
Reiner's room was the same way.
If going home to Liberio was like stepping back into his childhood, then stepping over that threshold was like entering a space and time he had never known. He was outside of himself, a stranger in someone else's body in someone else's home. That was not the first time that had happened to him. The last time he remembered that night in the desert, he saw it through Galliard's eyes. He saw himself, a boy in the blue night. He saw what he had been all along. He had stayed awake for days after that dream, the strange and uncomfortable truth dawning in an unknown age, that these things might live on inside of him forevermore.
Falco's socks padded across the wooden floor of the sparse room. The boards creaked under his feet. He wondered if they could hear his steps in the parlor below, and if anyone was counting how long he was gone, or if they would even notice that he had left. The room felt smaller than it looked when he crossed it, and it looked the same as he imagined it always had. No dust had settled yet on the cupboards. Or else, he thought, Karina had come to brush it off as she waited for her son to come home. He ran his fingers across the surfaces— the desk, the nightstand, the windowsill— as if to touch all the fingerprints that had been there before him.
He had always thought of Reiner as a warrior first, more than he had of the others. But he used to wonder what made him become the warrior he always meant to be, and what pieces would they be collecting forever in his wake, like picking up shards of glass when something precious shatters. Some of the remnants are easy to find. Some glitter in the sunlight or crunch under a boot heel. Others can only be found barefoot in the dark, traipsing in the place where you know it will hurt. He wondered what pieces of Reiner they had yet to find. He wondered how things would have been different if Marcel had not done what he said he did. He wondered if any of them would have lived long enough to put all the pieces back together.
Falco found the camera on the shelf where Karina said it would be, and the stack of photo albums lay beneath it. They were filled with sepia frames of a life Falco hardly recognized as he flipped through. He thinks now, if he had known about the letter then, he would have taken them all for Gabi.
It made no sense to him, the stills of empty streets and reflections in the water. Ghosts imposed on top of each other, haunting the cracks in the sidewalk and the stains on the wall where Reiner saw something he could not. It made no sense, but he felt like he recognized something in the spot and blurs, even if only the spots and blurs. It was the same way he felt at night when he couldn't sleep but for all the noise in the city. He would still lie awake sometimes, and these days with no snores but those of the mainlanders he roomed with on the other side of his wall. He still faced the same dilemma, listening to the taxis and drunks and dancers on the streets below. He faced it with his paints and charcoals, drawing until the first rays of sun rose through the small basement window and the butcher's wife chastised him for working his fingernails into brittle and blisters.
He wanted to tear the last strip of film from the camera and cast it into the daylight to burn. He wanted to throw the camera from the window and watch it smash on the street below. All he did was cry.
Somehow spring had turned the corner while they were in Liberio, and if there had ever been snow on the ground, it was gone by the time they left. It would be spring when they alighted at their destination too. All the beautiful students and the birds would take to the streets arm-in-arm, bigger things on their mind. Falco would wander the museum. Gabi would get a letter in the mail. Things would be different, if not changed.
Their parents saw them off at the train station. They had been there many times before, just like that, kissing their children goodbye to send them into a strange new world. Years ago, it was war. Then— Falco was not sure then what it was they would face when the morning came. But his father hugged him tight, with two arms around his shoulders, like he hadn't done in years. And his mother sniffled into her handkerchief as she kissed him, over and over as the train came steaming to a halt down the platform.
"Be safe," she had cried.
"I will."
"Take care of yourself. Do well in your studies."
"I will."
"Falco, call us if you need anything. You can ring the neighbors— you know their number?— and we'll come running. Even if you just want to talk. We're sorry, you must know. We know that he was like a— a— like a br-brother to y-you—"
They found seats next to each other on the train back. Gabi fell asleep on his shoulder, the newspaper in her lap open to a story about a teacher facing his day in court. He watched the pale green countryside go by and remembered again, the last observance he had attended— atop a dusty red butte at the dawn of a new world. Sunrise had come after a long, sleepless night under the stars, hundreds of them lying side by side in the dirt. Some of them slept for what seemed like the first time in years. Gabi had fallen asleep, cradled in her parents' arms. The others had all passed out together, or else lay awake in the silence, something so profound they had taken for granted before. There had been no food or incense when the sun came over the mountains to bless the dead. No bodies, even. Nothing to bury.
Reiner had found him on the cliffside, or the other way around. Neither of them had slept. They had watched the sunrise together, and it was only when the rays began to peak the crest of the butte that Reiner turned to him to speak.
"He would be proud of you," he had said. "Of everything that you did."
Falco had turned his hands over in the sunlight. His skin was clean and new, the last time it would be; but he still felt the ashes of his brother there— black, like charcoal.
"You don't know what he would have felt," Falco said.
The sun rose. The millions of dead lay blessed in the same places they had died.
"No," Reiner had finally said. "I guess I don't."
Gabi rifles through the pages of the letter. They sit on the curb of the sidewalk, their shoes in the wet grass where the last snows of winter have melted. Falco watches a pigeon pick through the park.
"He wrote a lot in here," she says finally. "I should turn it into— a fucking— perverted biography or something. Make us millions so we never have to work again. People love that kind of shit."
"They do," he agrees.
Her fingers clench around the paper.
"Was it his fault?" she asks.
For once, he does not know exactly what she means. But he thinks he understands.
"I don't know," he answers.
Gabi turns to him, her hair brushing over her shoulders. Her eyes are still wet when he looks back at her, and the trails of tears on her face are frozen like dew in the springtime. She leans over, pressing their shoulders together.
"I'm sorry," she says.
"For what?"
"You didn't deserve that, Falco. You didn't deserve any of this."
He turns his face to the sky.
"Neither of us did."
The city still looks the same to him, all neat cobblestone streets and lamps lit for the short evening of spring. The people come out in masses that night, or at least what feels like masses in this day and age. He walks with the crowd on his way to the gallery, hands in the pockets of his dark blazer, the same one with mud stains on the back hem from where he sat in the grass and watched the birds. He thought about trying to scrub the stains out, asking the butcher's wife for one of their cleaner brushes and bruising his knuckles to hide the dirt. But he does not think people will even notice; or at least, he won't care if they do.
The night has just begun when he enters the gallery. It is as nondescript as him, but the radio is tuned into something soft and the curator greets each guest with a glass of sparkling wine. A young and bubbly white, she tells them exuberantly. That is a brag these days; the vintages are out of fashion now the mainland vineyards have regrown.
Falco finds his work on a side wall. Portrait of a Soldier, he reads off the label. It's the one they insisted he show. It's his worst work, or maybe only his least favorite. He's not quite sure what it is to him, but to these people, it is exactly what they want to see— the portrait of a quiet young man with his shoulder to the viewer, the profile of his stricken face drawn by something alluring in the distance. The past, or the future. He wears an amalgamation of faces that Falco has known, that he has loved, that he has been. Something about him screams Eldian, war-born, victim, and it draws the guests like flies, compelled in the tragedy of the blank space around the soldier's taciturn face. They do not know it is his bare shoulder that draws them in. The quietest act of resistance, so close to their faces that they do not even see.
He is like a pet to them, he thinks, or some other kind of fascination to stow in their curiosity cabinet. He does not always feel like he is on display, because the curator is nice enough and she lets him use the telephone for free. They've let him show his work, haven't they? That's more than he could ask for from any other gallery this close to the high street. Still, there is a part of him that turns on when he steps through these plated glass doors. Some part of him that he feels compelled to showcase, and the rest of him, he hides.
Falco stares at the portrait. Not tonight, he thinks, not ever again, and before he knows it, he has taken the charcoal from his pocket and struck the soldier across the face.
Someone in the gallery gasps. Hands fly to mouths.
"Performance art," a man whispers wisely to his unwitting date.
A pair of familiar footsteps echo on the dark wood floors of the gallery, and Falco is not surprised when he turns to find the professor approaching him, a glass of wine half-drunk in his hand. His eyes land on Falco's portrait.
"Is this one of yours, Mr. Grice?"
"It is."
"How contemporary. But I must admit, I fear your rage has marred an otherwise excellent self portrait. Your lifelike realism could be your forte, Mr. Grice, if you did not allow yourself to be influenced by the childish abstractionists in this city who claim to be artists. I'm afraid the shell shock has addled their brains and interrupted any talent they might have had. This is a self portrait, is it not?"
"There was nothing excellent about it. Nothing real at all."
"Then what was it, Mr. Grice? How would you have described it?"
He stares at the smear where the soldier's eyes used to be. Two rashes of charcoal, like wings.
"A cage."
He turns the charcoal between his fingers.
"Tell me, professor, who owns this piece? Where does provenance begin?"
The professor smiles. "Why, you are the artist, Mr. Grice. It begins with you."
"No," Falco says. "It ends with me."