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Elske feels weightless.
Her skirts are tugged every which way by the boy with hearty laughter. Each clumsy twirl of her skirt is a delicate push off the ground and she becomes ethereal in the boy’s eyes. She dances among the clouds, carelessly throwing her head back and letting music escape from deep within. It is a song of vivacity, pure and clean as a silver bell. It’s the only thing Eren can think of that night, when his mother tucks him in.
“Mom?” Eren whispers into the darkness of his room, right before Carla shuts his door. The hinges creak in protest and Eren waits patiently for the familiar weight at his side. Carla brushes a stubborn strand of hair plastered on his forehead. “Yes, love?”
Eren shuffles under his covers, stifling a yawn and making futile attempts to rub away the bleariness from his eyes. His feet ache from dancing the evening away. His heart aches even more for the innkeeper’s daughter. “I’m going to marry Elske one day.”
The tender look in Carla’s eyes as she regards her son is one Grisha can never strip from his memory as he leans across the threshold, a silent observer this time around to Eren’s nightly vow. A look which tore Grisha apart, driving anguish into his heart. Had he ever looked at Zeke like that?
Each night, Carla would place a gentle kiss onto her son’s brow, softly assuring him that she looked forward to that day just as much as he did.
Her feet are leaden as she approaches. She musters one foot in front of the other, her body heavy with fatigue and grief. She is left alone with the darkness creeping upon Liberio, a downpour that soaks her to the bone, and worst of all, her own thoughts.
Eren Yeager is dead.
Eren Yeager is dead.
Eren Yeager is dead.
Elske’s heart was being torn to shreds ravenously, leaving an unbearable pain. She stifled a sob as she tightened her grip of her world. Of what little remained of it. Her heart lurched as she sought to hide it away from the darkness creeping in— to steal it away from the cruelty of reality.
With staggered steps, Elske made her way up the porch and pounded on the splintered door.
“Reiner!”
His name stirs fear within, a bitterness she fought to hide under the rubble of Shiganshina, Trost, Liberio. Her cry is weak, drowning in the thunderstorm, yet within moments she feels the door give way under her raised fist.
“Reiner,” she breathes out, in half relief and half dread. He answered her. She was going to ruin his life.
“Elske.” He braces himself against the doorframe, eyes gaped wide at the ghost on his step. Reiner Braun is by no means a stranger to ghosts. Yet his blood runs cold the moment he breaks away from her weary face to notice the soft tufts of raven hair and the emerald eyes that watched him curiously.
“Please,” she begs in a hoarse voice, eyes brimming with tears. “He told me to trust you.”
Ignoring the torrid of emotions running their course, Reiner swallows the lump in his throat and steps to the side. He stands, detached, as the shell of a girl he once loved years and years and years ago, in another life, and her son—the spitting image of the Devil—find solace in the dying hearth.