Chapter Text
Marie didn’t know which ghosts she’d be facing that day.
With Paradise still struggling with the Yeagerists, and her husband having been a Commander who’d had opposed said group until the end, she didn’t feel like her homeland was a safe space for her and her kids anymore. Not without Nile.
So she paid her and her children’s way into a ship that crossed the ocean. Nile had left them with more than enough. It wasn’t easy, but it worked. As far as she knew they were presumed dead. Just more casualties of war…
The move was an adjustment to put it mildly, but Marie knew how to adapt and she knew her kids could too. It wasn’t easy at first, she was in a foreign land with three children who missed their dad and their home, but, with time, they had all adjusted to the best of their abilities. She knew her oldest resented her the most for the move, but she hoped with time he’d grow to understand why she’d done that. Until then she’d let him feel the anger and take it the best way she could.
Marie pretended they were survivors of the Rumbling in search of a new life. The best lies are those laced with some truth in them. Something Erwin had taught her. She wouldn’t dare, not yet, to let people know of her true heritage, too dangerous. That’s not to say she didn’t miss home, because she did, everyday, but time had dulled the longing to go back as she became a new person. It’s not like there was something for her to even go back to. The people she’d been the closest to were all gone now. The place she grew up in was still run by people who’d been in line with the plan that had killed her husband.
At first, Marie helped rebuild. Be that rebuilding houses, cooking, planting, whatever was needed… Many things she had to learn from scratch, given how superior the technology beyond the walls were, but she never let it show she didn’t know how to do it. If she did, people could figure out who she was. What she did do was make herself an important part of the community. So much so they wouldn’t question her nor her children. It worked. It helped that given how few people were available to do those tasks, they never turned down a helping hand.
As things settled, Marie started looking for a more permanent fixture. She wanted stability and a consistent source of income and she got that, having found work at a bar. Apparently, quite a few people still considered alcohol a primary human need. Marie couldn’t say she didn’t understand, more often than not she too wished for an escape from the tragedy of it all.
What mattered was that she was great at her job, it was far from what she’d expected to be doing with her life at her age, but she had experience, having been a waitress in her youth, and she knew she was attractive even in her early forties. Regardless, she made due and now, almost five years later, she became the owner as the last one retired to the countryside. All in all, the establishment was quite popular, as was herself, and she was making more than enough. There were even talks of elections and some claimed she should put her name on the ballot… she wasn’t so sure, too much exposure, perhaps when her kids were a little older?
What mattered was that Marie could give her family a good life with what she already had and that was all she’d ask for after everything. As for herself, she had found some measurement of happiness and peace. She liked her job and the people she'd met: friends, people who understood and supported her… In a way, they were all going through the same.
And the truth was that they weren't all bad people who wanted the Eldians dead, just people who didn’t know enough, some had never even heard of Paradise until the Rumbling. Regardless, whatever hope for peace and acceptance there once was, died the moment Eren Yeager decimated millions of lives. She couldn’t see the point of peace talks. It seemed like an unreachable goal in her eyes.
As of now, she was going with her youngest to the memorial for the ones that died during the Rumbling. It wasn’t much, just a memorial rock with the initials of the dead engraved by those left behind, yet Marie considered this to be the closest thing she would get to a place of rest for her husband. It was located in one of the few remaining forested places in Marley. It amazed her how nature seemed to always bounce back. Even if a huge portion of the world remained destroyed, this place had bloomed again. There were trees and plants of all different types, flowers blossomed, painting the path with a multitude of colors. There was a tragedy to that beauty.
The place wasn’t the closest to where she was living, so she couldn’t come as often as she’d like. Her youngest had only come a couple times before. She’ll never forget the look on his face the first time she had brought him when he pointed to the engraved ND and asked if that was dad. After that, they came back a few times and, now, nearing his eleventh birthday, here they were again.
Once they got there, she took him to the place of the memorial and before she could say anything, her son ran to where his dad’s name was engraved and placed the flowers they had brought underneath it. He didn’t remember much about Nile, Marie tried to keep him alive in her son’s memories, but even she knew that it was a losing game. Nile would only live in the stories she told. Of course, being a story is still better than being forgotten, but with time, the people depicted in the stories are replaced by the versions that better served the narrative of whoever is retelling the tale. She wasn’t innocent on that front and she was well aware of that.
Marie, on her part, took a deep breath before approaching. After all these years the place still sent a chilling down her spine even if coming here didn’t make her feel like drowning anymore, but mostly long for what she could no longer have. In a way, she also felt some sense of peace here. It was the only connection she still had to her origins, to the life she had left behind, she hadn’t figured out if that made her feel better or worse.
As she approached, she placed a red rose under Nile’s name and a lily under the other initials she had carved there: ES. Her son pointed and asked:
“ES, Erwin Smith?”
“Yes, the man you were named after.” She answered as she placed a kiss on the top of his head.
“The thirteenth commander of the Survey Corps, right?” It wasn’t just stories about Nile that she told.
Marie looked around a bit worried someone could’ve heard it, many hated her kind more than ever now; even if many of her people had opposed the rumbling, not many knew how to separate Eren’s actions from the rest of them and the support that boy had had certainly didn’t help their cause. Still, upon realizing they were alone, she answered:
“Yes, he was.” It wasn’t the time to explain why he shouldn’t say that in public; that was a talk for another time. He was too young to fully grasp what the Rumbling had been and all that had led to it, despite having some knowledge of what took place. All she wanted was for him to be a kid without the weight that fully knowing about their heritage would bring, but she knew had no right to deny him of his origins. So that conversation was going to happen sooner rather than later.
As for Erwin, she tried not to think too much about him, because whenever she did, she always wondered if things couldn’t have been different had he lived. For that to be true, a child, now a man, would have died and Erwin most likely would’ve lost whatever humanity he still had in him; he would’ve truly become the monster so many already thought he was. What scared Marie the most, however, is that she often thinks she would be willing to make that trade if it meant Nile were still alive, if it meant that 80% of the world population wasn't dead. She had heard too many stories from people who had lost their loved ones, from parents who had lost their children in the Rumbling to not make the math. And she hated herself for doing so.
She felt her son hold her hand, pulling her from her thoughts. Marie smiled softly at him and asked if he wanted some alone time to “talk” to his dad. He said yes, as he always did. If her oldest had faced Nile’s death with anger and her middle child with faked indifference, little Erwin had turned to sadness once he started having a better understanding of what it meant for his dad to be dead. She offered him comfort, but also space, as he was more of an introvert and certain things he’d prefer to do on his own, one of those things was “speaking” to his dad, even if only symbolically. Marie had never felt the urge to do so, but she would never deny her son that if that was what he needed. Being so, she gave him a kiss on the head and took a few steps back, giving him space, but not letting him out of her sight.
As Marie waited, she heard the sound of a wheelchair being pushed alongside the voices of two kids, teenagers maybe, a girl and a boy, talking about how glad they were that whoever it was they brought, had come. Marie assumed coming here wasn’t easy for a lot of people so she couldn’t judge those who stayed away.
“We’re glad you’re here! This will be good for you.” The boy said enthusiastically.
“Yes, it was about time you went out a bit.” The girl teased.
“Right.” A tired third voice replied, a voice she hadn’t heard in years yet that she would never forget.
Levi. Levi Ackerman. She didn’t know he wasn’t living in Paradise anymore and who even were those kids? Had they been in the Survey Corps? Even if Levi wasn’t a danger to her and her kids nor did she particularly resent him there was just something about the prospect of seeing him again that was putting her on edge. Her first instinct was to flee, but what good would that do? There was no way Levi wouldn’t see her. So she just called out to her son telling him to keep close to her, and waited for a reunion she didn’t expect would ever happen.