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we can make do with so little, just the hint of warmth, the slanted light.
It’s now or never.
He squares his shoulder and peers up from the narrow trench, scanning the rocky terrain of the outpost. The winds blow clouds of dust along the wide, barren lands but he doesn’t blink once; he looks out for telltale signs of oncoming train in the distance. So far there’s nothing, just the glare of the orange sun high above the desert. The summer heat is sweltering and with every second that passes, a bead of sweat drips to his eyebrows.
He slinks back down against the rocky wall and exhales a heavy breath. It’s been three days with no food, no sleep, and barely any water. His bones feel like jelly and he’s so exhausted he could pass out right there and then, but he fights to stay conscious.
If he could plant the bomb inside the train and time it to when it gets into the interior of the fortified outpost, this whole mission would be over. Everyone can go home, and no other Eldian would have to die.
He has to pull this off.
“Don’t even think about it,” his very lovely companion says beside him, her voice ragged but still firm.
He turns to her disheveled form. She’s in far worse condition than he is; her white uniform is splattered with grime and dried blood, her loose fringe sticking to her face and she looks ashen from the blood loss. He’d ripped his own sleeve to press it against the bullet wound on her arm but the bleeding won’t stop. She needs medical attention, now.
“I was grazed, dummy.” Her sharp eyes cut through him like she’d read his mind. He’s not sure where she still gets the strength from when her lips have lost all color. “I’m not going to die. So don’t you even think about climbing that train.”
He tries a smirk which she promptly glares at. “You worried I’ll take all the credit and become a Warrior?”
“Stop messing around,” she chides, grunting when she tries to lift a shoulder. He pushes her down gently. “I’m not letting you—"
“It’s our only choice.”
“No, it’s not. Let’s wait for reinforcements. Zeke and Reiner will come for us. The rest of the military will handle this.”
He stares at her for one incredibly long moment. Her blue eyes are dull but they’re desperate, begging him to stay.
They both know exactly what would happen if they don’t take out the train now.
“Our reinforcements are trapped in the battle out there,” he says softly. “If… if I don’t do this, our people up there,” he points to the sky where the airship would be, “will be turned into titans by my brother and dropped off here to die. I can’t…”
He can’t witness that again. Their mission is only to destroy the Mid-East Alliance’s anti-Titan research facility; there’s no place for unnecessary deaths. They’ve lost too much already to these senseless wars.
“We don’t owe anyone anything,” Historia whispers, but he can tell that her resolve is wavering.
He feels the ground vibrate beneath him and tears his gaze away from Historia to peek over the trench again. His eyes smart for a second in the glinting sun. When his vision adjusts, he spots the old train chugging along the tracks, rusty and unassuming.
Historia’s grime-soaked palm is tight around his wrist. “Eren, be careful.”
“Hey.” He softens. “I’ll make it back to you. You know you’re stuck with me forever, right?”
She doesn’t respond with the usual affectionate eye roll and Eren feels dumb having that smirk on his face while everything goes to shit around him.
Instead, Historia pulls him down by the collar and kisses him aggressively before pushing him back, sneering like an angry (and very tiny) kitten as if the act embarrassed her.
Eren grins lazily, dazed.
“Don’t do anything stupid,” she warns.
“I won’t.”
They both hear the train getting closer and Eren presses a quick kiss to Historia’s temple before scrambling up the trench, digging his nails into sand.
“If you die, I’ll really kill you,” Historia says.
“If I die, replace me with anyone but Reiner, ‘kay? Or my ghost won’t be able to rest.”
She scoffs. “I’ll choose him to spite you.”
Eren looks down to grin at her, “I’d better come back, then.”
And with that, he starts to crawl along the ground towards the railway, pushing all of his remaining strength into his arms. As soon as he spots the iron-hot tracks he gets up to his feet and sprints to intercept the oncoming train. It moves slow and rattles violently as if it’s on its final leg. Why the enemy would ever stuff important equipment in that old thing is beyond him.
He lets the train pass him by, then he grabs the rail at the back and hauls his entire body up. The sweat on his back cools immediately in the face of brisk winds. He casts one final glance at the direction where he left Historia, and then, with one hand, slides the door open. He knows this type of train from his mandatory service at the railroad construction near Liberio: archaic, slow, mostly unguarded. He supposes the Mid-East didn’t want to draw attention this time. Still, no disguise will ever fully hide them from Marley’s intelligence unit.
He pushes into the car and leaves the door open behind him.
The back of the train is stuffed with huge, sealed boxes—no doubt containing parts of whatever anti-Titan machinery they’re building in the facility. Eren pulls back the white cloths covering the crates and immediately gets to work.
He can’t hesitate. He’d left Historia bleeding out there, and though he knows Reiner would come and rescue her no matter what, he can’t leave anything up to fate. There is so much that can go wrong in these missions.
His armband weighs heavily on his arm.
If things go awry, Marley wouldn’t care to search for mere Warrior candidates.
The thought fuels him. He only has three explosives in his harness pockets, which he plants to three separate crates. The tape rips loudly and he snips them with his teeth. When he’s done, he pulls the cover over the crates again and hurries to the end of the car. He pokes his head out of the open door and eyes the terrain. Weirdly enough, the train seems to have traversed a considerable distance despite its speed. Eren can’t see the small, rocky mounds at all, just desolate sand dunes and dry vegetation on every side.
He takes a deep breath, then jumps.
He lands on the wrong foot and tumbles all over the ground, kicking up clouds of dust as he rolls down the sloping hill. He winces when he ends up on his back; he’s sure he broke a bone or two.
The ground feels like a heated iron rod pressed against his skin. Blistering sun spots dance in the corner of his eyes. He tries to lift an arm to block the rays but there is no feeling left in his body. It seems as though the adrenaline rush drained out of him the moment he jumped off.
The trigger is in the clasp of his fingers. He waits for the train to be out of sight, but even when it’s gone he can still hear the trundling and chugging of wheels against metal. The final heave.
The research facility must be close enough. Someone—some people—will welcome the shipment inside their gates, slide that same door open and pull back those same white cloths. And he will push the button from a safe distance.
Eren lies flat on his back and blinks tiredly at the fiery skies. The sun bleeds red like the desert and he thinks about Historia. She’s strong—stronger than him. But he hopes someone would find her soon.
He falls in and out of consciousness, the built-up exhaustion finally overtaking his body. He doesn’t know how long it’s been, if the train is even in the facility already.
But he directs all of his might into his thumb, and he doesn’t remember if he’d managed to push the button. All he remembers is how everything burst into flames and fell apart, how the red bled and blurred into each other in his waning vision.
The world is on fire, he remembers thinking. I have to hurry back to Historia.
Then he blacks out.
“How could you be in a coma for four days.”
Eren’s stuffing clothes into a duffel bag, barely recovered, and Porco’s already smirking wickedly from the doorway and gloating about how the entire Eldian unit talked about the hero of Liberio passing out in the middle of a battle.
Eren is not sure he likes that title.
“I’ve just been discharged, Galliard,” he replies. “Have mercy.” He zips up his bag and slings it over his shoulder.
Porco waves around. “Pshh, relax, you have minor injuries. Besides, it was the exhaustion that did you in.”
According to Pieck, Magath decided to bring Eren and the other soldiers to the nearest hospital in the city just in case. His skin prickles with discomfort in a non-Eldian hospital, though the nurse had been more than kind to him.
“Your grandmother nearly had a heart attack when we told her,” Porco says again as they walk down the drab, stony corridors where doctors and nurses pass them by without a second glance. “She would’ve stayed here the entire time if your brother didn’t calm her down.”
“Oh, right. Where’s Zeke now?”
“He was called back to Liberio early and dragged Colt and Reiner with him.”
Eren falls quiet as an Eldian soldier wheels the opposite way, both of his legs missing and his eyes blank. A terrible sadness crosses Pieck’s features and Eren notices the way her fingers tighten around her crutch.
“How’s Historia, by the way?” he asks quietly, just to distract from that sight. “She wasn’t there to kill me when I woke up.”
“Ha! She was bandaged and already up and running the next day while you slept like a log. Your girlfriend is way out of your league, man.”
“I know,” Eren deadpans.
Pieck laughs. “Well, that’s how Hisu-chan is. She baked for the children here, you know?”
Eren can’t help but smile. “Yeah. That’s how she is.”
“Unfortunately that means you’re stuck with us for the day,” Porco beams. “Don’t worry, I heard this city’s more tolerant of Eldians than others. And Magath gave us the green light to explore before we leave for tomorrow, can you believe it. That old man has a heart after all. We’re gonna have the grandest time in this one bar I saw…”
He slings an arm around Eren’s shoulders as the three of them walk out of the hospital. The fresh daylight hurts Eren’s eyes at first, and he holds up a hand to block out the sun.
“…Or not.”
Eren squints against the brightness to see what made his friends stop in their tracks. The light slowly bleeds out, and he finds a very angry Historia standing beyond the open gate with her fists clenched to her sides.
It’s too late before Eren notices Porco and Pieck slinking out of the periphery and greeting Historia with nervous smiles before practically running away.
Those traitors.
“…Hi?” Eren holds up a tentative hand.
Historia glowers and Eren quickly drops his hand. She starts to march towards him like an oncoming storm and Eren has no time to react when she grabs his wrist and flips him over her shoulder. He lands on his back with a grunt, and there’s no time to react to that either because Historia straddles him, presses him down. He can feel the pavement against his extremely fragile bones. He wasn’t exaggerating when he said she was stronger than him.
“Ri,” he groans. “My ribs are still healing.”
Historia rolls her eyes. “Oh don’t be so dramatic. I had a bullet graze me and I can still put you down just fine.”
“That’s because you’re like, inhuman.”
“What?” Her eyes narrow.
“Nothing,” Eren grins. “I said you look like a goddess from this view.”
And she does. He’s not lying. Even in an old Warrior uniform, she looks like a painting of Venus against the clear blue sky. The sun gleams on the back of her head and showers her in golden light.
A series of tumultuous emotions flicker in her eyes in lightning-quick succession: white-hot rage, crippling worry, a dash of pain. But the one that sticks is the utter relief.
Out of impulse, Eren pulls her down to him and slots his lips against hers, adrenaline rushing back to the tips of his toes and fingers. He knows his lips must be cracked from that four-day coma but he presses onto her, tasting lemonade in the corner of her mouth. He threads his own fingers into the perfect smoothness of her hair. Even now, she still presents herself tidy and pristine; never less.
Historia is breathless when they pull apart. She’s flushed all the way to her neck and Eren grins under her, flashing teeth. It does the trick. She pushes off him in annoyance and dusts her dainty white coat as she gets up.
“A little help?” Eren says from the pavement, holding a hand out to her with that shit-eating grin still on his face. “No?” Historia ignores him and starts to walk away.
Eren scrambles to his feet and readjusts the strap of the bag on his shoulder. (He feels a crick in his neck that he might have to rearrange back into place later.)
His girlfriend barely reaches his chest but she can and will pack a punch. Between the two of them, she was always the better fighter. The stronger one.
He huffs and jogs to her side, slings an arm around hers. “You really won’t forgive me?” He makes kissy faces at her and Historia pushes his face away, irritated and mildly amused.
“You are so reckless,” she chides, but there’s no real heat to her words. “Don’t ever do that again.”
Eren mock salutes. “Yes, ma’am.”
“I’m serious, Eren. I don’t care about bringing honor to the empire and I don’t want to be a hero. I don’t want you to get hurt for some stupid cause.”
He contemplates joking about how these are treasonous words that would land them in jail or in chains. “I don’t either,” he says instead.
She sighs. “I know. But… it could be worse next time, you know? Let’s just think about ourselves.”
Eren looks at her. “Okay,” he answers, and finds that he’s relieved. Relieved that she would never ask him to be anything he isn’t and doesn’t want to be. She is, after all, his voice of reason.
Historia worries her bottom lip and looks as if she might say more. In the end, she only stands on her tiptoes and brushes a fleeting kiss in the corner of his mouth, says, “Sorry about your ribs.”
Eren laughs.
Porco was, for once, right about this place being more tolerant of Eldians. It’s a surreal feeling, taking a seat in an outdoor cafe and not being immediately cursed out. He learns from Historia that it’s because the Tyburs’ ancestral home lies somewhere in the fancier part of the city. Still, they get the usual stares. Lingering eyes in the back of his head—it’s the one feeling that will always follow Eren’s existence like a shadow. The armband is a flashing sign to anyone in the vicinity. Pieck said Honorary Marleyans aren’t treated all that well either so he can only wonder what these people might think of trainees.
But it’s too beautiful a day to ruin with his anger, so he clasps Historia’s hands in his over the table and tries a smile, which she returns in full.
Their café sits between similarly cream and pink buildings and faces the river. A couple of cars pass with their rumbling engines and sooty exhaust, but people mostly walk to and fro the cobblestone streets. It’s not hard when all the shops seem to be huddled together on the riverfront. For such a large city, it’s unusually quaint and peaceful. The air smells of baking bread and freshly cut flowers, and Eren thinks, for a second, how he would like to settle down here with Historia.
His armband tugs at him, like a reminder.
The waitress who takes their order is preppy and smiles too much. It’s like she doesn’t see the yellow armbands or the uniform; in fact she immediately deduces that Eren and Historia are a couple and beams positively. He knows there are people like that who don’t discriminate against Eldians, but he hasn’t encountered one until now. In Liberio there is so much hatred and spite even within the internment zone.
When the waitress swings back into the café, he realizes that the lump in his throat is unease. Everything here is so out of place that it doesn’t seem real; Eren can’t help but feel as if something would go wrong any minute now.
It’s a beautiful day, he thinks again. Don’t ruin it.
The waitress comes back out with a tray of croissant and steaming coffee for Historia, and an egg sandwich for Eren. It’s all they can afford anyway.
“Enjoy,” the waitress beams before being whisked away by another customer.
“Hey, Eren,” Historia calls out. “Relax. It’s okay. This is okay.”
He realizes then that he’s been frowning down at his plate. The suspicion falls from his face.
She is only half-bathed in light under the shade and her eyes are warm. “It’s alright for us to enjoy this,” she repeats.
Eren grins in spite of himself. “You always know what I’m thinking.”
“I know you.” Her shrug is nonchalant but the playful tilt to her lips tells him otherwise. “I’ve known you forever.”
He arches a brow. “You sure you don’t wanna run for the hills yet? I’m a real jackass.”
“My jackass,” she corrects. “You can’t escape me that easily, either. You see, I’m very selfish.”
Eren chuckles heartily.
“Didn’t you threaten to replace me with Reiner?”
Historia points her butter knife menacingly. “And I’ll do it if you ever do something as stupid as die.”
It’s a lighthearted joke, and Historia casually goes right back to stabbing her croissant, but Eren’s smile wavers for a split second. He picks himself back up and shrugs.
“Fine by me. Then I can be the best lover you ever had that you’d tell your grandkids about. The one that got away. I will haunt you, Historia Reiss.”
Historia looks at him from under her lashes and tilts her head, flashes a gorgeous smile, and like a twelve year old, Eren’s heart skips a beat. He has never cared about appearances, but Historia is a resonating beauty that would make anyone turn their head. It’s why the entire Eldian unit scrambles for a moment alone with her, and why Eren’s neighbors send him nasty looks when he walks by with his arm around her waist.
It seems like the right time to pull the weight from his pocket, but instead he takes a bite of his sandwich and feels the familiar pang of disappointment in his chest because, of course, all his fire is for show and courage leaves him when it comes to the things that truly matter.
He will inherit the Attack Titan in a year.
Historia, with her prowess in martial arts, was supposed to inherit the Female Titan, but there’s no telling if Annie will ever be back, so she might never become a Warrior. Everyone in Liberio looks at her with pity—the girl who won’t have a chance to become an Honorary Marleyan. But it doesn’t matter. Eren wants her to live a long life.
A wave of guilt hits him sometimes; he is torn between wanting his friend to come home and wishing Historia would never have to become a Titan.
But the answer becomes obvious pretty quickly. He would rather lay waste to this world than sacrifice Historia for the sake of Marley’s agenda. The two of them had never believed in it, were merely forced by circumstances to conform. To participate in this hellish war.
Eren stares at her while she sips her coffee unaware and not for the first time, he wishes things had been different.
They walk along the river, ignoring the curious glances of passersby. The sunset catches off the water like melted candles. Eren keeps his eyes forward and finds comfort in Historia’s steady presence beside him.
They pass a circle of children playing games with chalk on the streets; women in colorful silks and satins hurrying with their groceries; an old couple on a bench, feeding ducks, peaceful in their mundane silence.
It takes him a long time to tear his gaze away. Even as they’re no longer in his periphery, the image of them is forever burned in his mind. At night he will lay these pictures down one by one, and he will say, these are the things I will never have. It’s a slow kind of torture, he realizes, an exercise on desensitization he practices so that one day, he might look at these images and feel nothing. So he can accept his fate.
It’s always the beautiful days that he ruins with these thoughts.
“Hey.” Historia’s voice is as gentle as the trickling water. “What’s that brain of yours cooking up again?”
“Nothing.”
She elbows him lightly, playfully, and he shoots her an annoyed look that he knows is more halfhearted than he intended. “Come on now, Eren,” she urges, “You know me better than that. I know you better than that. You’ve been spacing out on me the entire day—again. It’s never nothing.”
Eren purses his lips. He looks at Historia, and she’s beautiful. Really. The sunset is good on her, gives her skin a sheen that city women seem to be born with. And it hits him again: how normal she could be. How normal they aren’t.
He looks away.
“I was just thinking about what a shitty person I am,” he says.
Historia’s smile is teasing. “We’ve established that.”
“It’s just…” Despite himself, his voice breaks, and concern replaces Historia’s smile. Another beautiful thing ruined. “I’m sorry, it’s just… I don’t know. I look at these people, and they live regular lives, have regular problems…” A regular love. “And I thought I hated them for it. For the longest time I thought I hated them. But then, every day when I’m with you, I put us in their shoes, I make their lives ours. And I realize it’s not really hatred I felt. I was jealous. And that’s not… that’s not revolutionary or anything. So many Eldians have looked at the same sight and felt the same thing. That’s why I wish—"
He feels Historia’s fingers lace through his and pull him down like an anchor. The emotion rises in his lungs and chokes him, and then it ebbs away. She squeezes his hand and her touch is solid and warm and real.
“We can pretend.” She tucks her bottom lip sadly. “Today, we can be them. Just two regular people, yeah? What would our lives be like, if we were?”
Eren closes his eyes for a minute. The image he lays out is of her open smile, lit up by the glow of the sun. Her hair and dress would billow in the wind and she’d laugh as he chases after her and engulfs her in his arms.
“I think about us in a world without all the anger, and violence, and all these senseless wars,” he says finally.
He hears a woman laugh by the river and he imagines her laughter as Historia’s. Imagines the way she tucks a strand of hair behind her ear and flushes prettily at something her lover said. Her only problem in life would be stilted conversations and date reservations.
“I imagine us walking down this path every day,” Eren goes on. “We’d pass these sickly pastel shops and sit at the fancy riverbank café until it becomes as mundane as day and night. We’ll go to university, and you would paint again. Remember when you painted the hole in the wall back in Liberio and the old man paid you a grand for it? You’d do more than just that—you’re gonna paint more beautiful places, make more money. You’d be the most beautiful girl on campus and I’d beat up the punks who thought they could seduce you. My mother’s eyes would light up at the sight of you, and she’d make you taste-test all of her new dishes and I’d pretend to be hurt because she loves you more than me now.”
He only realizes Historia is crying when she stops in her tracks and lets go of his hand to wipe her cheeks. She pointedly avoids his eyes.
“I…” she falters and furiously wipes another batch of tears away. “I just need a second.”
She stomps away like she’s very angry with herself for crying and goes to sit on one of the abandoned box crates facing the riverfront. Passersby stare at her while she sniffles and Eren feels impossibly fond. It takes him a moment to follow as he’s caught up in watching her and imagining, again, that she is a regular person, that she is another stranger and he won’t ever have to break her heart.
Eren walks up to her casually and kneels at her feet.
“Your laces are untied,” he says, fingers lacing up her boots with quiet ease. She watches him work with a hand on her mouth, hiccups wracking her body. He can feel eyes on them—curious ones and leering ones—and he feels as if they’re egging him on, wondering what he’ll do. All of a sudden, his pocket weighs like a ton of bricks.
Still knelt at her feet, Eren takes Historia’s hand in his and brings it to his lips, kissing the smooth plane of her palm.
“You know what keeps me up every night?” He plasters on a weak smile for her, and she meets his gaze with shining eyes as blue as rivers in the daylight.
Sniffle. "What?"
“The fact that I might be the most selfish guy in the world."
Historia frowns. "Eren Jaeger, if you're trying to break up with me right now, I swear to God—"
"I wish. I really, really wish I could."
"You—"
"In reality, I’ll have so little time, Historia. I’ll break your heart and leave you behind. And every time I look at you, I wish I was a better person and let you down easy. But—I want to marry you. We’ll have a normal church wedding and it wouldn’t matter if God didn’t want devils in his home. Fuck him. Fuck everyone.”
He digs in his pocket and procures a cold silver band, the same one he wears on his necklace.
His parents’ rings.
Historia’s breaths hitch.
“Eren…” she says, voice tight with repressed emotion.
“When I had to jump on that train, I realized I would always make you worry. I’ll always break your heart because I’m your stupid, reckless crybaby. But if you marry me, I promise I’ll be good. I’ll devote my entire lifespan to you and you alone. We’ll eat at your favorite hole in the wall and take afternoon walks in Liberio hand in hand. And it wouldn’t be like here, like the city, but it would be home.” He slides the ring into her finger, “I don’t know if I’ll ever be the husband you deserve. I’m probably not. But I will try. I will. If you’ll have me.”
A ray of light catches on the ring and Historia stares at it as if it can’t be real. In one abrupt motion she gets to her feet and tackles him, her lithe body so full of strength that he has to step back to catch his footing. Historia wraps her arms tight around his waist and he laughs, caught off-guard by her reaction.
“Of course I’ll have you, you idiot,” she mutters into his uniform. “I’ll marry you.”
A small crowd of onlookers claps politely and Eren feels light as air.
Despite everything, there is still a pocket of happiness that they can have. That they do have. He wouldn’t trade it for the world.
An aristocratic man in a fine suit spits at their feet. “You’re just going to create more of those devils,” he sneers as he walks away.
“Yeah, we are!” Eren shouts after him, the joy clouding his entire thought process so much that nothing could possibly ruin it. “We’re gonna create three or five more devils!”
Historia snickers and slaps his chest playfully. “Don’t get ahead of yourself now,” she whispers before planting a quick kiss on his cheek.
The two of them soon disperse with the crowd, walking away with their hands clasped in each other’s, the hazy sunset distorting their figures, forming silhouettes out of them.
They could be any regular couple on an afternoon walk. No armbands, no uniforms, no war.
Just two normal people.