Work Text:
Summer smells sweet in the valley. The sunlight lasts for hours after it seems it should have faded to twilight. It lingers in the grasses and leaves an imprint of gold in the green, enchanting everything it touches. Honeysuckle flowers line the edge of the woods, the trailing line of verdant grass where the forest clears and the valley sweeps in below the cliffs in rolling plains of young wheat.
Sometimes Beatrice finds her eyes drawn there— to the sweet white flowers roped in vines around the wooden fences of the training grounds, where the light spills in through the canopy of trees and the grasses dance with a sweeping breeze. There’s a fragrant sweetness there, something young and reminiscent that beckons to her. It reminds her of home. But there is a shadow too, and each time, it takes her a moment of watching the flowers before she realizes the unsettling feeling creeping up the base of her spine. It closes in like a hand around her throat, a slow and sleepy asphyxiation. Then her eyes flick past the honeysuckle, and she sees Wall Rose in the distance, like a god on the horizon.
It is endless. It reminds her of a cage, like she is watching the world from the inside and can do nothing as the darkness smothers her. Sometimes it does not seem real at all, but only something ghostly she has dreamt in her uneasy sleep, some creation of a nightmare that her own mind has connived to haunt her.
Every summery touch of sunlight sets her further on edge. For she dreams of Wall Rose often and the high noon hour they have agreed will mark its fall. There are only days left before the world will crumble again. This time, they will be on the inside.
Beatrice cannot help but think it will be their fall too.
The brush around the clearing rustles as the boys come bounding through, their boots skidding in the dirt as they mark their landings, trying not to skid off the edge of the cliff. Half the class is still steeped within the tall woods, shouts and whoops rising from the trees as they celebrate their victory; the other half scatter across the forest in dismay, sullenly undoing all the knots and buckles across their bodies. Blades and gearboxes topple to the ground.
“It’s unbelievable.” Jean’s voice is blistering as he fumbles with the straps across his chest, his boots marking a restless back-and-forth across the clearing. “It’s not fair, first of all, to have that many of the top ten on one team.”
“I’m pretty happy.” Plopped down into the grass, Connie groans as he stretches out his legs, his team bandana dripping with sweat on his forehead. He reaches for his toes, and his voice stretches with him into breathy, high-pitched syllables. “I took out four targets on my own. Shadis actually smiled at me.”
“It’s not just not fair.” Jean’s fingers wrangle with a stuck buckle. “We should’ve drawn straws again. And then there’s Yeager—”
“Okay, so it wasn’t a smile,” Connie breathes. He lets go of his stretch, flinging back with the momentum of release, and collapses in the grass with a big sigh. “But for once, he wasn’t yelling at me! I’m counting this as a win.”
“We all know he’s a cheat. What the hell is wrong with this thing?” Another grapple at the buckle before Jean’s chest gear comes tumbling down to hang from his waist. “I mean, how else did he end up in the top ten?”
Sunlight dapples through the trees where they stand at the edge of the cliff. Beatrice watches their antics from her spot on a fallen log, perched in silence as her losing team tries to make sense of their failure. Jean says they should have drawn straws again, but it was all luck in the end. Either way, these races through the forest are not the part of their grade that matters. The commandant gets bored with them every now and then, and pitting the cadets against each other is the surest way to light a fire under their asses. It’s proved true again today; an otherwise meaningless afternoon has stirred new grudges that will push them to outdo each other in training for at least a few more weeks.
If there were weeks left in their training. Summer has come in its sweet and tender glory with sunlight in the valley, and waiting around the corner is the day they have been dreaming of for years. For some, it is the promise of graduation. A life anew in a far-flung corner of the walls, fulfilling the purpose of their life’s work and training. It’s not so different for her, Beatrice supposes; but unlike her classmates, she would trade these last few days for an eternal summer if she could. This golden idyll is all about to go to hell.
Another rustling sounds from the trees above her head, and she’s brushing the dark bangs out of her eyes as she watches Rosamund swoop into the clearing. The heels of her boots dig muddy tracks into the grass when she lands, cleanly sheathing her dual blades as she does. The reaction to a member of the opposing— and winning— team is immediate and exaggerated. Jean rips the rest of his leather gear from his legs, scowling at her, while Connie rolls backwards to come upright on his knees and face her.
“Enemy,” he shouts, pointing up at her. He barely has a moment to blink before Rosamund yanks his bandana down over his eyes as she passes.
Jean glares at her. “What do you want? Come to gloat?”
“I just wanted to offer my condolences,” Rosamund answers, smiling at him. “Losing must be tough, though it’s not like I would know.”
“That was not a fair distribution of talent and you know it.”
“It’s just luck, Jean, don’t get your knickers twisted.” She unhooks her gearboxes from her belt and sends them clunking to the ground. “Rank isn’t everything, you know. I thought you would have learned that by now.
“Besides,” she continues. She makes a beeline for the edge of the clearing as she speaks, her searching gaze having made a show of finally landing on Beatrice, whose eyes she met through the trees before she had even set her feet on the ground. “If it were up to me, I would’ve rather been on this team. You guys know how to have fun.”
She perches on the leg beside Beatrice and sets about undoing all of her gear. Beatrice never quite knows if she’s trying to make a show of it, the way she deftly unbuckles the straps across her shoulders and takes her time with the meticulous unraveling of the leather harness running up and down her legs. But Roz is a show, whether or not she wants to be. She couldn’t be anything else, not when she pulls her ponytail free to let loose her long, golden hair, not when the sun happens to come through the forest as just the right angle, dappling sun spots over the freckles on her skin. Beatrice says nothing, but she knows the moment before it happens that Roz will ask her to stay after the others are gone. Their knees brush together, and then she knows. She would have stayed anyway, even if Roz hadn’t asked. Of course, she would.
Rosamund carries on, bent over with her hair spilling down her shoulders as she works on the straps of her boots. “But what’s this I hear about cheating? You can’t keep a scandal from me, you know.”
Connie wheels around in the dirt to face her. “Oh, you’re eavesdropping now too?”
“I told you, I would’ve rather been on this team.” She sucks in a breath, then spits on each toe of her boot and begins to scrub them clean. Beatrice wrinkles her nose. “You know, for the right price, I would have sabotaged my side to help you guys win. I guess you didn’t think to ask.”
Jean shoots her a look as he steps free from the pile of leather straps pooled at his feet. “Why would we have asked? And why would you have done that?”
Rosamund shrugs. “We’re out of here in a couple days. I thought it would be nice to have some fun. You guys are the fun team, aren’t you?”
Her knee bops against Beatrice again.
“Sure,” Jean says drily. The toe of his boot catches on a buckle and he trips trying to kick it away, biting his tongue. “Shit. Ow.”
Beatrice leans over, working her way down the leather straps running zig-zag across her body. She doesn’t always mean to be so methodical, but there’s some sense to be made in this madness, and moving from the top down always seems the easier to her, especially when the others are tripping over their feet and choking themselves in their rush to rip their gear away. Rosamund teases her for it— the slow way she works, taking her time as she undoes the buckles around her thighs with her head turned to the ground. She can feel Rosamund beside her still, their hips pressed together where they sit on the edge of the sunlight. She can feel the tips of Rosamund’s golden hair, falling over her shoulders and brushing against Beatrice’s arm.
She has not always worn her hair long. It suits her, Beatrice thinks; sometimes she’s not sure. Sometimes she sees the mane of sun blonde hair in the bunk they share, and she’s reminded of the streets back home. Not the ones she knew, the ones she roamed as a little girl in her cotton sack dress and torn up shoes. She thinks of the streets of the cities of Marley, where the rough cobblestones smooth out into pavement and automobiles chug around each corner, where the girls go to school in crisp blue uniforms with bobby socks over their ankles and round dimpled hats over their long, plaited locks. That is what she thinks of when she looks at Rosamund sometimes. That is the world they once longed to be part of, past the days of barbed wire fences and frayed strands in buns to stay out of their faces while they peered through the scopes of their guns. Rosamund once longed to be one of those girls. She wore her red armband with a pride the rest of them did not understand, as if it would make her something that she was not. Beatrice does not know if she’ll ever find what she’s looking for.
It suits her when it should not, that long golden hair. She never quite fit in when they lived in the interior. Housemaids wear their hair pulled back, much the same as soldiers; but even on those days off, when they could have been any other girls sneaking into the city for something they were not supposed to do, there was always something about Rosamund that stood out. Annie fits in wherever she goes in whatever shadow she can find. Beatrice ducks her head and stays close to the edge, where she will stay out of sight as long as she is quiet; and she is. Rosamund never goes unnoticed; except for the days she does not seem to notice herself.
“Speaking of being the fun team,” Connie interjects, stumbling upright from his knees. His half-undone gear remains tangled around his hips, but he doesn’t seem to mind. “Training’s over. Who’s down for a party?”
Training is not over, Beatrice thinks, not until they’re free from these grounds and the straps that bind them here. In her dread of the days to come, a shivering sliver of hope emerges that perhaps one day not too soon, she will leave these woods and never return. She will forget these cliffs and this forest and these people. She knows it will be more complicated than that. She knows that their next step will not be the end they want, but only the beginning of something they cannot imagine.
And practically, training isn’t over. Their exams may be done, all the scores finalized and the names of the top ten sent to headquarters to be marked forever in the ranks of history. But there are books to be returned, blades to be cleaned, and plans to be made. Their graduation ceremony will see them off from Trost with the rest of the units from across the southern division, and the greatest choice is still to be made. Eren is the only one among them who has pledged his loyalty to the Survey Corps, though Beatrice suspects that Mikasa and Armin will not be far behind him. The others all know where they’re going. She’ll be among them, if things do not end sooner than that. Rosamund too, and Annie, but this time, they’ll have to be apart. They’ve been in the interior before, the three of them; working together drew no curious eyes when they were young girls seeking safe work in the aftermath of the fall of Maria, but now they are older and there are hundreds of cracks in the interior for them to follow in search of what they desire. They cannot be seen together. So they will split, each taking an inner district for her own.
Beatrice had hoped somewhat fatuously for Orvud district. She’s never been there, but something within her longs for the cold winds near the north. She has imagined days off spent riding along the green lanes of the interior to Utopia, until the grasses turn to mud and the snow flies into her face, a hail wind racing against her as she disappears into the frosty pine woods on the other side of the walls. There is a whole other version of herself that she has imagined, that sometimes she thinks she could be; but she does not kid even herself into believing this could come true. There will be no days off to ride with the free winds and dream. There never are.
Orvud, anyhow, is not a target of their concern. She will enter Yarckel district in the west where the sun rises; Annie in Stohess to the east, where it sets; and Rosamund in Ehrmich, somewhere in between.
“Oh, are we having a party?” Rosamund’s body shifts against hers as she sits back on the log, her hands set behind her. “You know I’m game.”
Connie does a poor job of putting on a mean face as he crosses his arms and faces her. “Well, we haven’t decided yet where your loyalties lie. I don’t know if we should let our usurpers partake in the fun.”
Rosamund raises a hand to shield her eyes as she squints into the sun. “Please? I’d kill for a drink tonight.”
He is beaming ear to ear when Beatrice looks up. “Alright, alright, you can come, even though you’re on the other team. But you have to swear fealty at the door. Oh, Great Team Captain, shall we take pity on the victors and invite the rest? What say you?”
“Don’t invite Eren,” Jean interjects. He shakes the dust off his straps, the buckles clinking together. “He’s a cheat.”
A tingle runs up Beatrice’s spine when Rosamund suddenly leans into her shoulder and whispers into her ear, “Jealous much?”
Jean glances over his shoulder like he heard her murmur. His eyes flicker over them as Rosamund leans back and smiles obliviously into the sunlight. He turns away after a moment, grumbling to himself, but that clearly is not enough for him, because he turns back around and keeps venting.
“You know he begged me for help our first night in the corps,” he exclaims. He scratches at a spot on his leather straps. “He was all over the barracks, begging someone to teach him. We all told him, there’s no lesson in just hanging there. If you can’t do it, you leave.”
Connie sets his blades aside. “Well, someone taught him.”
“Someone helped him,” Jean mutters. His lips flatline into a pursed scowl. “I bet it was Armin.”
“Hmm. No, 99% sure it was Mikasa.”
“No way,” Jean exclaims, glancing at him. “He’s not good enough to keep up with her! He had to cheat, and no one would suspect Armin. He could slip into the equipment shed to fix gear without anyone seeing.”
“Don’t drag Armin into this,” Rosamund says, squinting at him in the sunlight. “That poor boy never did anything to you.”
Jean swivels to look at her. “Maybe you’re the one who helped him.”
She pushes her hair over her shoulder, smiling. “If only he’d asked me. I’m clearly the expert around here.”
Connie guffaws, giving Jean a violent poke in the ribs as he grins at Rosamund. “Come on, Rosie, fess up— you’re the traitor, aren’t you?”
“Ow!”
Beatrice slips the last buckle from her ankle and the rest of her gear comes with it, her hands expertly folding it into as much of an organized mess as she can make it. Her hair drips over her shoulders in dark locks, blocking the rest of them from her view as she works in silence.
“What’s it to you?” Rosamund asks, a smile present in her voice. “I didn’t know it was a crime to help your fellow man.”
Connie gasps. “Oh, how could you!”
“It’s not funny,” Jean exclaims. He grunts as his boots scuffle in the dirt, but evidently Connie dodges whatever blow he was about to land. “I worked my ass off to get into the top ten. And so did you! If I had known we could’ve just cheated—”
“Oh, piss off, since when have you cared about the rules?”
Rosamund hums. “You sound jealous, Jean.”
He huffs. “Well, I’m not.”
“You’re pretty hung up on Eren kicking your ass today,” Rosamund continues. Beatrice feels her hair shift against her shoulders as she cocks her head. “How mad will you be when you find out that Bea lets you win all the time?”
Beatrice glances up. “I do not.”
She sounds more hurt than she feels. Her voice comes out like a whimper, the protest of a child insisting she did not break the rules. But she’s not talking to them, even as Connie barks out a laugh and Jean’s indignation becomes stunned, his gaze caught off-guard as he glances between them. She’s talking to Rosamund about this stupid game she plays.
Jean's nostrils flare and he meets her eyes for one moment when she looks up, before he furrows his brow and his gaze flicks back to Rosamund. "She does not."
"How do you know?"
"She just said so!"
Rosamund shrugs.
“I just had a great idea for the party,” Connie exclaims. “Jean and Bea battle to the death.”
Jean wrangles his gear into a pile that he loops his arm through to heft over his shoulder. “Do you really want to spend our last week here coming up with schemes to get us all kicked out? I worked hard to be here, you know.”
“We all worked hard to be here, and that’s why we’re celebrating!” He straps his hands onto Jean’s shoulders and shakes him, eliciting a hiss. “We’re done! In a few days, we’ll be taking our vows in Trost, and then it’s off to the interior for us. Free as birds!”
“Get off me!”
“I don’t know that,” Rosamund says. “The military police aren’t exactly the freewheeling type.”
There are half-truths to that, like all the rumors they have heard about life in the interior. Like all the things Rosamund says. The military police certainly provide the easiest path in life once inside. New recruits get all the dirty work, but on the clean streets of places like Stohess, it only gets as dirty as a recruit is willing to make it. Most of the military police make turning a blind eye their’s life work. She could fill pages with the illicit things she has seen in the interior, all the underhand means and deals of the wall’s wealthy families, passed around the dinner table to a high-ranking officer like casual conversation with a glass of wine. There is peace within the walls, more or less; whatever they’re doing works. And whatever it is they’re doing— that will be what she must do.
Beatrice turns her head from the sunlight as the boys squabble about the party, and beside her, Rosamund wipes the dust from her boots until they shine in the light. She worries what they will find where they’re going. The things they will have to do, as if they have not already done enough. In her eyes, Tros has always been a last resort; but its approaching day well inside of her with dread, and if things go wrong— if nothing comes of it but death— she will still find herself on the road to the interior, seeking out the dark corners of the capital where the truths are buried from the eyes of the people. She worries what she will have to do to find them. She worries that it won’t bother her.
Rosamund’s elbow brushes against her knee as she leans over, rubbing a spot from the toe of her boots. Beatrice watches, her harness carefully set aside; there’s a scratch on Rosamund’s arm, bright red blood dried on her suntanned skin. Beatrice watches how the light falls over it, turning attention to her own hands to find all the little nicks and scrapes from the trees of the forest. She keeps them there, for now.
“I’ll ask Thomas to bring his fiddle,” Connie is saying across the clearing as he gathers his equipment. He bounces around, plucking up each strewn piece, while Jean circles the grass wearily, doing the same. “I should have asked him to teach me to play while we were here. I thought we had forever.”
“It felt like forever,” Jean mutters. He bends over to snatch a discarded blade from the forest floor. “Rosie, this one is yours. The one you used to hack off that branch like a lunatic. You almost killed me.”
“Toss it here.”
He starts to raise it, before frowning. “You want me to throw it at you?”
She opens her arms. “I’ve got better reflexes than you, Kirschstein.”
“That didn’t feel like three years,” Connie exclaims. “Guys, we won’t see each other again after next week!”
The blade goes sailing into Rosamund’s hands, caught blunt side to palm. Beatrice glances at it when she sets it aside. It’s been splintered to half its size, one jagged edge sticking out. Anyone else would get a scolding for being so reckless with their resources.
“We could end up in the same unit,” Jean says.
“We could not.”
“Yeah, well, we had three years. I’m ready to get outta here.”
“But this is it,” Connie exclaims. He stares at them, wide-eyed, his masses of gear tucked under his arms and slung over his shoulders. “It’s over!”
“Sounds like a good reason for a party,” Rosamund chirps.
Connie points at her with a victorious grin. “Yes, exactly! This has to the biggest shindig the valley has ever seen. I want everyone puking their guts out tomorrow morning. I want these hallowed training grounds to remember the 104th for years to come. I want Shadis to try to kill us!”
“Speak for yourself,” Jean shoots back.
Undeterred, Connie bounds towards him and drags him towards the forest’s edge. “We’ve gotta spread the word! The farmer’s son isn’t gonna bribe himself to buy us a barrel of beer, let’s get a move on!”
Silence resonates in the clearing after the rustle of their boots fades through the brush. They will be racing down the hill, tramping through the woods back to the training compound, where they’ll meet the others and toast to the end of three long years. Beatrice can imagine them, all of them, covered in scrapes and dirt and smiles, cheering to their graduation. To the rest of their lives. She doesn’t know if she would want to be there too. She know she doesn’t belong here. But she can see them in her mind if she tries, the warmth of the sunlight crowning their heads as they raise their glasses and sing.
Rosamund brings her out of the silence, her boots clumping onto the ground as she stands and crosses the clearing, stretching her arms over her head. Beatrice blinks into the falling sunlight; slowly, the valley comes back to her, the scents of summer trickling through with the wind that sweeps across the cliffside. Honeysuckle tickles at her shoulders where she sits at the edge of the wood, and she reaches for it without a second thought, like a comfort drawn to her with its white sprigs and sweet notes. She sees the cuts on her hand then, tender and dark against the scent of the flowers, and she glances up in time to see steam rising from the scratch on Rosamund's arm.
"Jean should be looking forward to the party." A twig snaps under her foot. "I don't know why you let him beat you."
There are a million things Beatrice could say to that. Not everything is a challenge, even the things that are. Some part of her wants to snap sometimes. How rich of Roz to tell her how to act around the others, especially the boys. She never says any of those things. She doesn't have to hold her tongue anymore when Rosamund speaks. Her tongue does it for her.
"I thought it might be odd if we were all in the top five," she explains.
"We are the top five." She runs a hand over the freshly healed skin on her arm. "It was close sometimes, wasn't it?"
"It might have looked strange," Beatrice says. That is more to it than that, of course. There always is. She knows Rosamund is right; they rose to the top of the class without even trying. Annie's spent the last few years slinking out of more than a few lessons and still came in third, while Roz's efforts to usurp Mikasa have done nothing but secure her in second place. Beatrice wants to believe she has never let Jean win, but perhaps if not him, then certainly some of the others. Their class has been scouted by military police recruiters since new records were set in every category in their first year. She does not mind being the one to hold herself back.
"You mean, someone's ego might have been bruised. You shouldn't care so much what other people think about you."
"I mean, it might have looked strange. We spend too much time together as it is."
She is not sure she would call them friends— she and Roz and Annie. There is an uneasy symmetry to their trio and the things they do not say. They never speak of home, of their families; but they understand that they think of them, and the things they have to lose. It is what keeps them together, no matter how fragile or silent their alliance might be.
She had thought once there would be more to this. Those were the years before they found their way to the training corps, when they worked in the halls and kitchens of noble houses in the interior. Long hours and blistered hands were familiar to them from a young age, but they were shaken by the intimacy of the house, the way little families formed in the servants' hall and the gossip of the day wound its way through the women's quarters at night like a fire when there was nothing else to ward off the chill of the dark. It was there they found the path that would frame the rest of their years. They used their subservience to learn as much as they could— every afternoon tea was a chance to eavesdrop; every wedding or dinner party, the perfect distraction to pick a lock without being spotted.
Even after all those hours of dusting ornaments and beating rugs, joining the military still seemed their best chance at uncovering something akin to the truth. Housemaids only heard so much, and ladies' maids they were not. Rosamund was the only one among them who had the demeanor required of such a trusted position; and she would not have lasted long in close quarters.
Annie did not have the charm or care to wait on wealthy daughters waxing about their vanities— which frock to wear to the ball, which gentleman to sit beside at dinner. She could not have cared less about the order in which one was supposed to use their silver spoons.
Beatrice knew. You eat from the outside in, the same way they will devour these walls.
She might have been submissive enough to serve nobility. Loyal enough, demure enough. She might have been discreet enough for even royalty. But of all things, she was simply too tall. No maid towers over her mistress. Strange, to think Beatrice would attract too much of the spotlight, when all she has ever felt is like a shadow of herself.
"It's just a number anyways," she says. Heat prickles along her hands as she lets the little wounds on her skin heal. They flush with steam and disappear in seconds. "All that matters is that we made it into the top ten."
She fears that may be a moot point now. She fears it as much as she wishes for it. All this work, all these years, and all she wants is to return home. But she wishes it did not have to happen this way. She would stay for another five years, playing the part of soldier, if it meant she did not have to see Wall Rose crumble at her feet.
"Hmm, well, it's not like there was ever a chance of that not happening. We could have done this in our sleep."
Rosamund stands with her back to Beatrice. The sunlight dapples on her golden hair, long and smooth despite the dead ends that bristle in the breeze. Then, as if feeling the light gloss over her, Rosamund's arms move quickly to pull her hair together, beginning from the top down in a long braid that slips out of its own grasp as she works. Beatrice watches her, then glances away. There's a long scratch on the leather of her left boot, she realizes with dismay. The sun glints over it, casting a difference in the smooth and torn, and she runs her finger across it, feeling the frayed end beneath her skin.
"Do you remember training?" she hears Rosamund ask.
Beatrice reaches the end of the scar and stretches her hand across it, index to thumb. "Of course."
"It wasn't anything like this, was it?"
Sometimes she wonders if Rosamund is testing her, or testing herself. Sometimes Beatrice feels like she is prying into her thoughts, inviting herself inside and stepping through the curtains to let herself into the most secret places where she knows Beatrice likes to hide. Then again, she does little to keep Rosamund from coming inside, and they both know it. They both know their training was nothing like this, no late nights laughing the bunks or afternoons off racing down to the river to splash each other in the sunlight; no hours in the library of cold evenings sharing cups of teas as they peer at each other's notes, and no teams pitted against each other for a fun day's work before their time is up. No teams. No fun.
She wonders too if this place has soiled her mind and spoiled all the things she once held dear. Liberio is a mirage in her mind these days, like a place she has only dreamed of. It cannot be true that there was nothing good there, nothing good to return to when all of this is over. She remembers sirens and fences, dogs on the streets and officers with batons; but there was honeysuckle too, sweet and white on the vines of the walls by the house where she grew up, like sugar on her tongue when she plucked the flowers between her fingers and sucked the nectar from their blooms.
Beatrice does not answer before Rosamund's boots are turned back towards her, and when she glances up, Roz is nearing the end of her bread, her fingers working deftly to tie the strands together as she stands with her concentration fixed on the ground.
"It wasn't anything like this. You were where you deserved to be. And so was I."
Beatrice watches her fingers tighten near the end of her braid. "You've earned your place here."
"And you earned yours." Slipping against her shoulder, the braid is already coming apart. She tugs a knot through at the end and holds onto it for a moment, as if to keep the entire thing in place. "You were such a natural, Bea. You always have been. I think it's a shame you don't let yourself shine here."
"It's just a rank. I don't care where I end up as long as I can do what needs to be done." Her thumbs rub at the scratch on her boots, one scar she cannot vanish away. "Anyways, you've worked at this. That's just as important as natural talent. You deserve to be where you are. You're good at everything."
"No one can be good at everything." Rosamund pushes the braid back over her shoulder, a thick strand coming loose by her face. "At least not forever."
She's right. She's not perfect. But there is a wholeness about her made up in all of her imperfections— the way her hair falls out of place, tousled by her blistered hands as the sunlight gleans on her freckled skin. Beatrice knows her shoulders are just as dappled with spots from the sun, and her keel sometimes uneven, her laugh a little too loud, her bracing smile sometimes too happy, sometimes too sad. She's lazy in the mornings, bleak and undisciplined in the dark until others' eyes are on her. She overshares when she's drunk, and other times, she gets so cold and quiet that Beatrice is left wondering for days what she has done wrong, until suddenly Rosamund teases her and all is well again. She's the best liar Beatrice has ever met, but only when she thinks she's telling the truth.
Their eyes meet.
"You've been quiet lately," Rosamund says. She starts undoing the wraps around her wrists, a beat of silence passing before she adds, "Quieter than usual."
Beatrice says nothing for a moment. Then Rosamund is beside her once more, legs stretched out as she sits on the log and pries the dirty wraps free from her hands. She flexes them, turning her wrists back and forth. Another moment passes with Beatrice's gaze fixed on the forest floor past Rosamund, her face just outside of her gaze. Then she feels a hand in her hair, a couple of fingers lifting the dark strands that brush her shoulders. The touch sends a shiver down her spine.
"I haven't been sleeping well," she murmurs.
"I know," Rosamund says. Beatrice glances to her, Roz's gaze focused on the hand that combs slowly through her dark hair. "You've been talking in your sleep."
Beatrice's gaze flicks away, Rosamund's face in her periphery. She does not meet her eyes, each of her breaths becoming cold and shallow as Rosamund's fingers drift through her hair. It makes her think of the cold north, the life she dreams of sometimes in a green cloak on the inside of the walls, a place she has never been and may never see. She worries that she has been dreaming aloud— all her doubts and fears, cast into the night for Rosamund to lie awake and hear. But a moment later, when she does not say anything, Rosamund sighs.
"Fine," she asks, resigned. "What have you been dreaming about?"
"The wall," Beatrice answers without thinking.
Rosamund's hand stills in her hair before she lets it fall.
"Oh, Bea," she mutters. "Not this again."
Beatrice wishes she had some other name. She wishes Rosamund would call her something else and not the same nickname everyone else has claimed, the name her father used to call her when she was a child plucking flowers from the walls. He would put extra honey in her tea and call her my Bea.
There is something inside of her that sounds when someone uses that name, like her brain is flipping on the lights to unveil her for everyone to see. It comes with a jolt of almost being known, being seen, and each time, in the split second after her name slips from someone's lips, she lingers in the light, feeling a current of trepidation tremble at her fingertips. There is a terror in the familiar, the real her; and there is also a longing, the sort of desperation that leaves people on their knees.
She used to know a girl not much older than her called Beatrix. With an x on the end, a saucy twist of the tongue that ensured her name would linger long after she skipped off. People called her Trixie. People called her desperate too, when the x was no longer enough to be remembered by, when she had to go and get herself knocked up and kicked out of school. People called her whore, sinner. With a name like Trixie in a place like Liberio, she was sure not to be forgotten.
There is something deep and selfish inside of Beatrice that rests assured when she thinks of that girl. Something whispers that it is better to blend in. For all the ways Beatrice would stand out if she tried, she supposes fifth place is the best she can ask for.
"I thought we had decided," Rosamund continues. "Haven't we made up our minds? It's not my fault you're having second thoughts."
"I'm not blaming you," Beatrice says. Sometimes she wonders if she should. "But we've been here so long. I don't see why we can't just go home."
"We've talked about this. We have to have something to show them."
"I think we have enough. We know these walls inside and out. We have enough information—"
"It's not enough. You know it's not enough."
"I know we haven't found the Founder," Beatrice says. She glances to Rosamund, who sits with her face cast forward, sullen, her hair picking at the ends of the braid as it falls apart. "But there was never a guarantee that we would. Don't you want to go home, Roz? They're waiting for us. My dad, your mom—"
"Don't bring my mother into this," Rosamund exclaims, standing abruptly. She tears her hand down through her hair. The plaits rip apart, and she comes away with strands of blonde hair between her fingers that she shakes off in the sunlight. Beatrice watches them fall to the ground.
There is a tender fracture there that Beatrice has never known how to approach— whether to cradle it, or to let it fall apart entirely. Rosamund gets her golden hair from her mother, and everything else she never asked for; she was always second best to Beatrice then, even when they both knew better, even when she fought with her teeth and won the Armored in the end. There was always something wrong to be found, or so her mother said: her uniform too loose, her shoulders too slouched, her tongue too sharp. Why could she not be sweeter like Beatrice, all dark hair and wide eyes? Why couldn't she be quieter, softer, and learn to tame her temper?
Her own father, for what it was worth, would not have wished any of those things for Beatrice either. Her gentle pale skin grew sickly under the lightbulbs of the military labs. Her throat strangled her voice, so she did not speak. He would have wanted her to speak up and stand tall. He told her so often, when she was a young girl coming home from school with skinned knees where she fell on the street in her escape from the older boys on their bicycles. He told her to stand up for herself until the day she was given the Colossal, and then he never said it again.
Beatice finds herself repeating. "But don't you want to go home?"
Rosamund turns suddenly. "I want to finish what we started. Don't you?"
She drops down onto the log beside Beatrice, facing the other direction, where the sheer drop of the cliff plummets just a few feet away from them. Beatrice turns to face her, their shoulders inches apart as they sit opposite each other. But Rosamund remains forward, her arms strung over her knees as she stares through the forest to the valley below.
"You're the one who started this," she says. "Don't you think we should see it through to the end?"
Beatrice's breath catches in her throat. "What if it's the end of us? I can't stop thinking about it, Roz. I'm worried."
I'm worried about you, is the thing she wants to say, the one thing she cannot speak to Rosamund. I'm worried about you.
"It's the end of the world if we don't see this through, Bea. You know what's at stake. Everything back home, everything outside of these walls. We're the ones who have to stop it."
"But Rosamund—"
She cannot bring herself to speak. She dreams of cracks in the walls, the fatal splintering of Rose as she comes crashing down to the damn the people of this land. And Beatrice cannot help but see the same way Rosamund is splintering before her very eyes.
Rosamund's shoulder is gentle when it brushes against hers; when Beatrice looks up, her gaze is fierce.
"Come on, Bea," she says. "You can't live your life waiting for things to go wrong. We have to take this chance. We have to do this to save the world, no matter what happens."
Beatrice stares back. "And you're alright with that. Taking this chance?"
"We all fall one day," Rosamund says. "I'm just waiting for my turn."