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He is a good man.
He takes the three of them into his home for a night. Instead of another church-turned-shelter, overcrowded with bug-eyed children who still haven’t processed the word orphan or what it means for them, the trio get to sleep on a blanketed floor in the presence of a fireplace. There is enough space to stretch their aching limbs—they labored for this keep, after all—but they huddle together out of habit. Bertholdt runs hot while Annie’s comparable to an icicle and Reiner, sandwiched between them, forces himself to tolerate each extreme. Bertholdt falls asleep mid-sentence, more exhausted than he let on, which leaves Reiner watching Annie’s chest rise with less time between breaths and waiting anxiously for his turn. The floorboards whine. Through the veil of his eyelashes, he observes a blurry shadow drifting to and fro each corner of the house searching for a task, mumbling to itself once it has found one, like a specter with unfinished business. He sounds as restless as Reiner feels. The hearth crackles as their host feeds it more wood, fending off a draft slipping through the gap at the front door. The hinges are busted. Reiner will ask about it first thing tomorrow and what he and Bertholdt can do to properly mend it, maybe earn them another night under this roof.
His face flushes when Bertholdt breathes on his neck, so he presses his forehead against Annie’s to steal the cold that sheds from her. He shifts again in an attempt to regulate his body temperature, careful not to rouse either of his friends in the process. He knows if he was willing to abandon them for a secluded patch of hardwood, he would fall asleep in a matter of minutes, but there is something about the way they cling to him that makes him not want to ever let go. They’re going to be too old to do this soon. They can’t stay in this tiny village forever—that’s just naive, that’s not why they came to this island—meaning prospective guardians will want to separate Annie from him and Bertholdt the further they travel inland. That’s just to be expected; the consequence of age and opposing genders. Wherever they end up, whoever decides to keep them, Reiner has already decided they go together or not at all. He's the most articulate of the bunch, or at least the most willing to try, so he worries what happens should their group fracture again. Maybe that's unfair to Bertholdt and Annie; maybe he's underestimating them. But since the gate fell, Bertholdt has cried every single day and Annie spaces out for longer and longer stretches of time. Reiner wonders where she goes, if anywhere. If it's better.
A strong smell rouses his senses. It wafts from the fireplace where the man's silhouette burns. Hunched over like a sinner, he taps a wooden spoon onto the side of a bubbling pot with a decisive thunk. Reiner rises at the sound, held back by limbs and uncertainty.
“You hungry, boy?” the man calls, voice low and pleasant.
Reiner swallows, keeping his watering mouth at bay. Even when he thinks he’s not hungry, his stomach clenches at every offer of food. His body would not allow him to succumb to starvation yet it pulses with this need. It seems devouring a god hasn’t cored the human out of him after all.
He carefully retrieves himself, untangling his leg from Bertholdt's and shrugging off Annie's hand from where it was cupped into a loose fist over his shoulder. Bertholdt doesn't flinch but Annie turns in Reiner's absence with a soft groan. Their host ladles out soup into a chipped ceramic bowl as Reiner shuffles across the cold floor, drowsy from his half-sleep. Chunks of meat swim around in a watery broth. Deer, probably. Judging by the color. The bowl warms his palms and for a while he cradles it solely for the feeling. There is another empty bowl waiting on the mantle but the man reaches for some rope instead. He tosses a frayed end into the fire after separating it with a buck knife and begins to braid the good bit of length remaining. The design reminds Reiner of the fancy breads his mother would make for Magath and the recruitment officers when she showed up at the training center without warning to pick him up, like he was a little kid and not a warrior, like there was a way to inject normalcy into what they were doing. She must have known all that bread went stale.
He forgets to blow before tipping his head back with the bowl. It's a little too hot; but once the taste of bloody meat explodes on his tongue, he can't stop.
“Easier to sleep with food in your belly, hm?” The man’s voice sounds far away.
Reiner nods enthusiastically once he needs to pause to take a breath, as though he didn’t just eat a few hours ago. Stale bread was passed out in the square and when that wasn’t enough he followed Bertholdt into the field where they picked dandelions and fireweeds to munch on. He feels Bertholdt and Annie’s presence peeking from behind him. He looks, but they’re still fast asleep.
“You’re good kids. Well behaved,” the man says suddenly, tying a loose knot. “Stay as long as you need.”
“Thank you, sir,” Reiner exhales deeply after hurrying to finish his soup. It’s been constant—worrying about where they’ll sleep, shoving Annie between him and Bertholdt when the women and children start disappearing from the camps. He sucks threads of flesh out of his teeth and tries not to think about how it was alive, just once.
The man told them his story: how he abandoned children about their age to save himself. He said it so casually, like death is a simple thing. It is a simple thing. But guilt isn't. He’s simmering in it right now, and right now Reiner sees him trying to make amends for something he's not wholly responsible for. This man sees the three of them as the vulnerable children he could not save, as though they are innocent and powerless, but that couldn't be further from the truth. Reiner could swallow up the entire town's guilty conscience and he'd still have the capacity to hold more. Every sad story shared, every sympathetic hand-out. Every time he gets away with doing what he did, that's what he's really doing—he's opening the door and making more room for the guilt.
One day it’ll eat him inside out.
“Take good care of your brother and sister. You’re all they’ve got now,” the man gently urges, looking up from the rope in his calloused hands, unraveled and as limp as a dead snake.
Reiner almost forgot. They have been telling all the adults who ask that they’re siblings. Annie said it was an unbelievable lie but it seems the adults don’t have the heart to question them, in light of the tragedy. Because who’s to say after most families have been scattered to the wind, at best?
His eyes are getting too heavy to keep open. The man seems to notice because not one minute later he stands up and puts his hand on Reiner’s shoulder, encouraging him to rejoin his sleeping siblings. The definitions are blurry.
Reiner makes up a life in that instant. These actually are his siblings and the man tending to the fire is their father. Tomorrow they will share breakfast and patch up the house and make it a home. This place will be everything they need; they couldn’t want for more.
He nods with that thought in his heart and goes back to bed. Feeling warm and full and safe. Bertholdt’s breath tickles his skin, smelling of dandelion greens. He mumbles. Annie turns and tucks her face into the curve of Reiner’s back. Reiner dozes at long last. Thinks, We’re going to be okay. Dreams of nothing.
Wakes to the feeling of a draft.
Bertholdt is up. Reiner firmly tucks a blanket into Annie’s side—stay—before dragging his feet to meet him. Bertholdt is standing in front of the opened door, body obscuring whatever it is that has caught his attention and keeps him from crossing the threshold.
Reiner reaches for Bertholdt’s shoulder and that’s when he sees it: on the hill, suspended from a tree with feet dangling several feet off the ground.
“I’ve seen this before. In my sleep,” Bertholdt whimpers, too lucid and pained to be sleepwalking.
“We should get out of here,” Annie sounds from behind. Reiner whips his head around to catch her shrugging on her jacket, wilted fireweeds dropping out of the pockets.
Reiner panics faster. No, he’s rational. Between Annie’s fight-or-flight instinct and Bertholdt’s freeze, he’s damn rational.
“No, not yet. We don’t want to be rash and move in a random direction just because you’re on edge, Annie. We’re tired, the sun's barely up. Let’s just stay and see how it plays out,” he directs pointedly. Annie’s eyes and nose are all scrunched up. Her mouth is a fine line constantly crossed, finer by the day.
Bertholdt’s shivering at his fingertips.
Reiner swallows. “This isn’t our fault.”
There’s no room for discussion. Annie scoffs, rolling onto the blanket and into the sure embrace of her jacket. Reluctantly on-board, as she usually is. Reiner tugs on Bertholdt’s shirt, pulling him back inside before he can decide to wander off.
“Shouldn’t we cut him down?” Reiner doesn’t have to see his face to know he’s crying.
“Let’s let the adults take care of it,” he soothes. “Come lie down.”
Bertholdt’s voice hitches as he tries to assert himself and fails. “I saw him die, Reiner.”
“It was a nightmare. Lie down with me and Annie. You’ll feel better.”
Annie scoffs again, quieter this time but still within earshot, as though she wants him to know what she thinks. Where do you get off lying to him? Sometimes, a lot of the time, Reiner wishes he didn’t care so much. Sometimes he wants to scream and squeeze them both until something finally gives, until someone finally says enough. Using more honeyed words, he coaxes Bertholdt back to bed where he holds him fiercely, his back to Annie’s. She’s turning over soon enough, shoving her knees behind his, chasing whatever she can get without having to beg for it. His shirt is damp and warm with Bertholdt’s tears, running out of his glazed-over fish eyes, and Reiner is reminded of how this doesn’t work. How quickly things fall apart.
When the sun comes to a head, someone’s scream alerts the whole town. They are gone before the body comes down, if it ever does.