Chapter Text
Please help me.
His father will cough again, raspy, muffled but still audible behind the thin walls where he never checks to knock, as the stars are barely visible when wisps of clouds sweep by it. There’s nothing Bertholdt can do about it, he knows, but that doesn’t make the thin linen on his bed more welcoming, pressing his limp and barely stuffed pillow harder into his ear. He’s supposed to be asleep. His father already tucked him in hours ago. Bertholdt is tired, far too tired for sleep’s wings not to sweep its feet on his welcoming mat.
After the deep night, the clock ticks steadily in the living room, passing the days in worlds of his own, where he can break out of them if ever his father call for help in the kitchen. Sometimes he grabs a cup of crayons from the web-strung attic and scribbles badly matched colors in old journals. He keeps a list of stamps for every book he’s borrowed at his quick trips to the library after his errands to buy pills, bread, soap, and other commodities. But sometimes he watches out of the stained windows, children tossing balls and running through the square, and he feels guilty when he fantasizes about a knocking on his door for another boy to ask him to play. Instead, he reads about the curling tides of the ocean pulled by the moon, young boys setting off in adventures beyond the horizon, reading about the people chaining bonds with others, ones that exist where Marley is an odd word, never heard before in their local tongue.
‘I feel lonely,” the hero declares.
Bertholdt doesn’t understand the word and searches the word in the dictionary when he returns something.
‘Solitary, without friends.’
Is his father a friend? His father is a parent, and friends are brothers and sisters that someone sows seeds into making instead of being bound by the trunks that make up the tree at birth, so his father can’t possibly fit that role. There’s a list of books the old snow-haired librarian points to when he asks one day, giving him a sad smile, books about growing up, books about feeling down, books about loneliness. Bertholdt has only seen seven winters, many of which he can’t even remember. He can’t understand many of the waxing prose of tortured artists. He finds a somewhat readable one at the end of the list that seems thin enough to read through and skips to the middle. ‘Anywhere Can Be Paradise.’
‘I want people to care about me, help me, understand me. Even if someone is there, they don’t. They can’t understand, because I don’t let them. I don’t want to tell them. I want them to walk in on me when I cry my heart out, just so I can just show them everything, instead of having to do it myself. But the door never swings open, because I told them to knock.’
Lonely? Is that what he feels?
No, not really. He’s not lonely.
Orange leaves glide along the cool wind, curling through Bertholdt’s clothes. Most of the civilians he encounters put their hands in their pockets and wade through the sea of people. Wheels clatter through the dents of the street. The thousand streetlights aren’t lit yet, maybe an hour after the orange sun retreats for the night, where his father would have walked him through a year ago. A girl with ink black hair is playing the simplest dissonant flute notes on a bench, with someone beside her, blue eyes a shade lighter than the sky directing her attention instead towards a small ginger cat pawing her shoes, lowering a hand to touch its head. Both of them are wearing white collared button-down short-sleeved shirts with olive-colored shorts.
He walks to the shop, leaving the door open. The dark-haired girl peeks inside, as the vendor, Charles, rearranging bottles of boxes of all colors of pills and syrups, looks up at him. Bertholdt puts down the bills from his pocket and the signed paper. “The usual, please.”
“That’s forty,” he says, sliding back the bills and a few coins, counting thirty in total. “You have the money?”
“… Sir, it’s always been thirty.”
“Right now, the price is high,” he says. “Pay up or not?”
Chimes clink. Bertholdt doesn’t turn around, but she can hear two pairs of feet entering.
“Nothing’s wrong here, right, Charles?” the girl with dark hair says, almost cheerful. “You didn’t charge my dad any different. In fact, you made it lower when you saw—”
She tugs at her armband. Berthold only realizes now that it’s a bright shade of yellow, along with the other girl beside her, her arms crossed.
The shopkeeper turns to the girl with light blonde hair and icy blue eyes. “Aren’t you Leonhart’s daughter?”
“Annie Leonhart,” she says.
“His leg- did you really-”
“That’s why I’m here,” she says, and opens her hand, with crumpled bills and a few coins on it.
The shopkeeper stares at Bertholdt steely, who doesn’t meet his gaze.
“Your change, Hoover,” he says lowly, and pushes the bottle of pills towards him, which he tucks in his knapsack. He also takes the shabby pouch of coins that the blond girl, Annie, holds out and exchanges it with a separate bag of medicine. The dark-haired girl smiles at him and gestures to him to go outside.
“Thank you for that,” he says, hoping his gratefulness is clear in his voice, nodding to both of them. “Annie, and…”
“Pieck,” she says. “Nice to meet you.”
Annie only nods back and adjusts her satchel, eyeing her paper bag. “I’ll be going.”
“See you tomorrow,” Pieck calls out. Then, she turns to Bertholdt. “I suppose we’ll keep meeting each other? It looks like I have a new shop to buy medicine from.”
“…I’d appreciate that.”
“I hope we can talk while we’re at it. We seem similar enough. But see you later for now, I suppose.”
After the first signs of snow fall, Pieck invites them to meet more often, not just at the barren tree that once had lit fiery leaves swaying in the wind, instead, at an alley shadowing the scorching sunlight, but lit well enough to welcome the passing folk. Pieck is never late for any time they set. She wears long-sleeved uniforms with lined coats that match her sun yellow armband. With what little he can glimpse of Annie, she uses the same whenever they meet at the shop. Bertholdt wraps his thin jacket tighter on his body, bringing his shawl closer to him, purple and olive patterned, flowers lacing at the end, too feminine for him. But it was still perfectly usable cloth, whose original owner passed away and left it in his tiny hands.
Bertholdt later invites Pieck and Annie to the small library with a thousand books. Only the former shows up, as always.
“It says here, some birds weigh less than this coin,” he spins one around in his hand, his other laying the book flat on the table.
“Really?” she leans over to see the words. “Maybe it could fly over the weighing scale?”
“I’m sure it doesn’t matter.”
“I’d like to think otherwise.”
His father eventually asks Bertholdt, why is he arriving a few minutes later than normal? He grins, happier than Bertholdt has seen him before when he says the reason.
Other questions come in with each visit. Why is the Marleyan flag threaded with a shell? How do tiny sprouting dots of green turn into bread? How does milk turn into the occasional cheese slice they manage to snag in a market sale? One day, Pieck glances at her yellow armband and Bertholdt’s white.
“Why do you have a white armband?” she asks.
“Huh? It’s about showing we’re ordinar-”
“No, not that. Why are the armbands white? Doesn’t it make the star a lot harder to see?”
Bertholdt shrugs. “The designer must’ve made a mistake.”
There’s also the old librarian, that would lend them an old wooden checkered board, with twenty-three painted disks, twelve red and eleven black, the missing disk they replaced with a coin. Pieck wins first at every game they play, but Bertholdt improves much faster, jumping between disks and taking the center with fought calculation and forced plays. Pieck and Bertholdt carry the borrowed board to the quaint medicine shop after the kind librarian lets them take it with them. But Annie never accepts both of their requests to join in, immediately heading home. Sometimes he can see new scrapes on her knees, purple marks blooming on her fists, but it’s nothing he hasn’t seen on Pieck, although Pieck seemed to have it easier.
“She declines invitations all the time,” Pieck says. “It’s not you.”
“Oh.”
“It’s hard to tell what she’s really feeling, that Annie. She cares about a lot of things. I’m sure you’re still one of them.”
“What do you mean?” Bertholdt looks at her oddly. “She’s always been ignoring me.”
Pieck shrugs. “She’d usually push away people she doesn’t like. She’s just cold to you.”
“There’s a difference?”
“For Annie, it’s a lot.”
Annie feels terrifying to approach. He tries not to think about her too much.
Pieck is one of the oddest people he’s met. She’s someone that would find a crocheted cardigan she’d like, hanging from the table of a stall after they finish their errands, and instead of buying it at the same price, she would snatch her knitting needles, buy herself some yarn, and fashion herself a similar garment, with more cables on the sleeves. Aside from his father, she’s the only person on the street that goes out of her way to greet him good afternoon. And the only girl that he’s had a proper conversation with. His mother’s patterned olive shawl is there, but he doesn’t truly remember her, only her twilight dark eyes. His father doesn’t tell stories, and Bertholdt’s given up asking.
Pieck is his friend. It feels nice to call someone that.
Bertholdt watches as tiny sprinkles of ice rain down on the rooftops, white as the freshly cleaned linen on his bed out from his window, dark, sun shining behind the snowflakes. He crossed the flimsily stapled calendar hanging from the door before he went to bed, and he stares at it for a few seconds, confused, not reaching for his pencil to cross one out again. He puts on his slippers made out of an old tattered bedsheet and steps out of his tiny room, smelling the scent of oil and eggs. Peeking out, he sees his father leaning on his rickety cane, watching the pan sizzle and pop with oil. Bertholdt’s footsteps are loud, and his father turns around to give him a toothy grin. But he turns too fast, losing his grip. Bertholdt immediately runs towards him, and grabs his shoulder before he could land on the floor with a hard thud. Bertholdt hears him curse under his breath.
“Well, that isn’t the best way to start your birthday,” he sheepishly says.
“I’ve told you, I know how to cook, dad,” Bertholdt says, lifting him up to his feet, grabbing his father’s cane for him father to weakly grasp.
“I wanted to do something special,” he says. “I tried. Shouldn’t have.”
“No, you shouldn’t,” Bertholdt repeats, and pulls out a chair. “The food’s burning too. Just leave it to me next time.”
“Right,” his father whispers. “I’m growing old. Like you, I suppose.”
“No, you’re just growing sicker.”
“…I’ll be fine.”
Bertholdt looks at him as pointedly as he can, but says nothing else. There’s no usual crumpled newspaper on their table, no ink for the crossword, but he keeps to himself the question where they are, as he gathers the utensils left lying on the counter to put them on a plate for the both of them, with Bertholdt secretly putting the larger one for his father’s. He brings it over, gathering spoons and forks, and turns to the table, seeing a small crumpled brown paper-wrapped parcel, loosely presented together with thin rope.
“Happy birthday. It’s eight years since you were first here,” his father smiles. Bertholdt stares, and then frowns slightly.
“You didn’t have to get me anything this year,” Bertholdt says.
“Put those worries on me, won’t you? I’m your father, after all.”
Bertholdt reaches towards the bow and pulls it apart, pulling each fold carefully away from the center, and then pulling out the crinkling paper to see-
“Giving Appl-” he reads, before looking up.
“You said it wasn’t in the library. And you borrowed books often.”
Bertholdt looks at the thick book at the cover, a girl in the middle laying on a golden field, rough, starry in its texture at the front, then flipping through the pages, smelling freshly printed. He takes it into his hands, a soft warmth spreading where his shawl can’t even reach.
“Thank you, dad,” he says, smiling, ignoring the unpleasant guilt bubbling, when he looks at the table lacking the newspaper, or his father’s shabby rags patched with the same torn sheet on his slippers.
His father smiles gently. “If only your mother were to see you now. Esther would’ve made the wrapping more charming, even with the same amount of paper.”
Bertholdt spends the first hours flipping through penned illustrations and small words molding bright green and warm landscapes, casting sunspots on the grass. It’s interrupted when chimes cling on the frame of the upper door, and Pieck kicks her shoes on the rug.
“Happy birthday, Bert!” she says, hiding something behind her back. Then her eyes linger a bit on the man behind the doorway to the kitchen. “You’re Mister Hoover right?” she chirps. “Nice to meet you.”
Berthold doesn’t miss the longer look of hers at his cane.
In his small room, Pieck drapes over him a large, light gray cardigan without a specific pattern, no purls, with several holes and increased stitches. He inspects it slightly and identifies a change of yarn midway through, replaced with something darker. Pieck eyes it, but Bertholdt laughs anyway.
“I don’t think I can thank you enough,” he says, and he means every bit of surprise in his voice.
“I’m lucky your birthday is in winter. At least I don’t have to give you two presents. You keep looking like you’re going to freeze,” she says. “You should thank Annie too. She chipped in.”
“Huh?” he looks up, away from his fingers tracing the wool yarn.
“She told me bright red seemed too bright.”
For the first time in a while, Bertholdt let out a chuckle, with the warmest feeling that he’s ever gotten of joy.
When the sun tugs the darkness to sweep over the sunny clouds, and stars prick itself back into the vastness, Pieck’s presence long gone from their small house, he strikes the match to light his lamp, puts his fingers on the words, and reads it slowly, savoring every word stamped on the page.
‘‘There’s the world you have to find, Paradise beyond it, where red doesn’t stain the sky, and stars no longer blink in the distance," David says, pointing towards the rippling reflection, mirage-like. "There, you’ll find what you are looking for. Save them."
Krista looks back at her home, chatters rising to the air, smoke coming from the chimney. “Won’t that mean… I won’t see my family again?”
David kneels down to meet her eyes. “You will never be able to go back. If you stay, you’ll keep your home. But will you ever forgive yourself?
She’ll miss Calico weaving between her legs and purring. She wants her warm cup of chocolate in her hands. But that’s lives she’ll save if she leaves. That’s so many other people who’ll never get the chance to name their cat or drink hot chocolate if she doesn’t. Every person is living in a different world of their own. And she who saves a life, saves the world.
Bertholdt pulls out the leftover twine to leave which page he had marked it, thinking to himself to make a proper bookmark, maybe by folding an old page of a newspaper into a rectangle, punching a hole through them and threading the leftover piece of twine through it. His eyes feel heavy, but his throat aches, and he looks at the empty cup his nightstand and picks it up. He goes outside, pours himself a glass of water, and quietly walks back to his room before he hears something.
“Esther,” his father’s voice rings out, muffled by the wooden boards. “Tell me what to do, please.”
Bertholdt should go. He has his glass, his throat could stop the desire for water, he could turn back to his room and forget. But he doesn’t. He only hears his mother’s name rarer than the blue moon coming to visit. It’s only today his father brought her presence again. His father still wears on his collar the golden circular pin she always had on her sleeve, no matter how badly it clashed with her purple and olive shawl, or that’s what Bertholdt knows.
“Please, tell our Creator, give me some more time, will you? It’s just Bertholdt’s sixth birthday, please, not yet!”
Bertholdt steps away, his stomach twisting into knots, gripping the glass so tightly that his touch would become numb if he subjects his poor fingers to a few more minutes of it.
“I don’t want to die,” his father’s voice is shaking, more than his legs supported by the rickety cane. “I don’t want to die!”
He eventually takes the scraps of pages of his father’s newspaper, and fashions two bookmarks, one for himself, one for Pieck, who grins when he pushes it for her to meet.
“Thanks! But our books aren’t that big though,” she says, twirling the thin rope sticking out of the folds, her hand on a page, as she closes the cover, with strands of it sticking out, feathering.
“You’ll need it if you pick up longer ones,” he says, then points to a layered one at the end of the shelf. “I can read books that thick nowadays.”
“I’ll try it then, Bert,” she says, leaning over the table, but accidentally moving a plain folder sticking out of her backpack, paper almost folding near the zipper of the cloth. She notices it and waves her hand.
“Lots of papers?”
“Errands,” she says. “The commander told me to deliver them to that military building here. But I thought I’d stop by here first.”
“I’m glad you did,” he says. “I wanted to talk to you about something.”
Pieck looks at him, almost owlishly, scanning him, but not in a way that made him feel threatened. More like trying to solve a crossword puzzle where the clues are right in front of her. “What for?”
He hesitates for a second. “I’m scared for my father. He’s getting sicker every day, even if… Even if he doesn’t want to show it to me.”
She nods. “He looked like it.”
Pieck is quiet as the still night without falling rain or winds lashing through the glass windows. Then she takes a deep breath. “Be a warrior candidate.”
Bertholdt looks up, frozen.
“It seems like he has enough time until you can become a warrior. If you’re lucky and get into the program, that is. That’s how I’ll be helping my dad. Annie too.”
Bertholdt shakes his head. Wouldn’t he hate that? His father still wants him to be there to receive books and coats for his nineteenth birthday. Or would he? “It’s dangerous.”
“It’s dangerous to be sick. And you’d buy him at least thirteen years.”
“He’s won’t listen to me. He would never allow it.”
Pieck tugs at her yellow armband. “Who said you had to? I got in because Marley wanted me to. My father can’t fight them.”
Pieck gets up from her chair, placing the book with twine sticking out of it in her unzipped bag, then looks back at him. “Think about that for a bit. That’s my advice.”
“Right,” Bertholdt responds quietly.
“I’ll leave you to it.” She adjusts the straps hanging from her shoulders, before going into a sprint, fast, faster than the other girls he sees racing at the square with a thousand different lights. She opens the door to step outside the plaza, light spreading across the room before the door blocks it with shadows once more. Bertholdt doesn’t think he could catch up if he tried.
Bertholdt squeezes his eyes. He doesn’t want to think about this, not right now. He reads a page.
She ventured into the outside province, colors swirling around her, sparks of fireworks splashing through the leaves of the blossoms above her-
Opening a book won’t cure your father’s illness.
and it reminds her of home, a similar straw roof protecting against the outside sunshine
That’s just a book. That world doesn’t exist.
with her friends laughing carrying over to reach her in the doorway, sounding like chimes tingling in her old house.
But your father does.
She misses home.
Even if you keep reading, the world will remain the same.
“Mama, Papa, what are you doing right now?”
He snaps the book shut, still holding the bookmark in his hand. He puts the book into his satchel but sees a flash of tan on the hollow floor. There’s a folder lying on the ground.
Bertholdt immediately snatches it from the ground, zips it into his satchel, and looks up to the doorway, and starts sorting information the same way someone would methodically separate documents from each other with late procrastinated urgent efficiency. He puts it under his arm and runs, scaring the librarian, bursting out of the door, leaving it swinging on its hinges like the end of a pendulum, scanning the nearby houses. He spots a staircase, the lookout point of the city, mostly for Marleyan guards but free for the public to access, climbs up, then grabs the railing, scanning the sea of red and orange for a building with a green-tiled roof, tall, maybe gray. Bertholdt sees a signpost, with the familiar seashell banner draped from the top among the sea of warm colors, and he runs as far as the wind can carry it, almost bumping into a hook-nosed lady limping on the sidewalk. He slows down as he sees the girl with the familiar lined coat with her dark hair messily tied behind her back, sifting through her backpack.
“Please, give me a second,” Pieck says to the man in the gray uniform, “Don’t record this yet-”
Bertholdt taps her shoulder. She spins around, shock in her eyes. Then she moves in front of him and waves to the guard. “Oh, have you met Bertholdt yet? He’s a friend.”
“Finger, where are the papers?”
“They took a while to find, sorry,” she says casually, holding out the folder. Bertholdt almost takes a step back, before looking at his previously belted satchel flying open.
“You’re right about that,” the guard responds, and turns back to examining the folder. “Now scram.”
“Right, sir,” she holds out her hand in a salute. Bertholdt thinks to copy her, but before he can bring his palm up, she pulls his arm, and walks away from the staring eyes. Pieck brings up her finger to her lips and leads him in silence for a few meters before she finally relaxes, and shakes his shoulders with her two hands, grinning.
“How did you find me?” she asks.
“Quick thinking,” Bertholdt says sheepishly. She looks remarkably impressed.
“You figured out fast. And ran fast too.”
“I’m glad I could help.”
“You’d make a good Warrior,” she says, and that feeling of joy fades away with a bolt of reality. “You’d get in if you wanted to. It’ll help your father. But do you not want to, though?”
The chimes of the door ring a month later. His father unwraps the brown paper package sitting at the front of their door, with a red wax sealed letter pinned, and beneath it, neatly stacked white button-down short-sleeved shirts, pairs of olive-colored shorts, and two yellow armbands.