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She lied to herself again.
Ironic, considering that’s exactly the mistake she promised she’d never repeat - That, in and of itself, was a lie. They were piling up.
Ymir swore to live for herself. To spend the remainder of her life being as delightfully selfish as she pleased, and to hell with what anyone had to say about it. She told herself that she would never sacrifice her own freedom for someone else’s. Her life was hers . She wouldn’t give it away again.
Now, curled in on herself in a cold cell in the country that damned her, she waits to do just that.
There’s a clock on the wall in the dim hallway outside her cell; This, in particular, strikes her as oddly cruel. Who, in her position, would benefit from knowing exactly how much time they have until their gruesome demise? Who wouldn’t be tortured by the tick, tick, tick, each deafening click reminding them that their time is limited? She wonders if it was better the last time she was executed, when there had been no warning. She was ripped away from the only home she’d ever known and thrust into a world more full of hatred than she’d thought possible for a single species to harbor. She was too soft, she realized then. She’d really believed the enraged masses would be understanding of what they considered a crime, that they would at least spare her family, even if they punished her. She thought that maybe there would be some grace, even empathy.
She was in for a painful awakening in the form of stone splitting skin and a needle piercing her neck.
She racks her brain with what little mental energy she has left, vaguely wondering what it was all for. Why be given a second chance if only to throw it away on a whim? A stupid, thoughtless moment of thinking with her heart instead of her head, and she’d condemned herself.
A voice in her head screamed at her when she ran from her one and only chance at happiness. Turn around, it yelled. You came back from hell for this. You woke from a nightmare to be here, go back!
But she was foolish, ruled by her emotions. She kept running, ignoring the desperate call of the only true happiness she’d ever known.
◈
“Why can’t I have friends?” She asks, wincing as a comb snags on a tangle in her hair. “The girls in my stories have friends, even if they’re just animals. Everyone here is a boring grownup.”
The old woman laughs and shakes her head, setting the comb down as she begins to weave small plaits into her short hair.
“Silly girl. You don’t need other children to be your friends. You have faithful subjects who would lay down their very lives for you.”
“But that’s not fun. And I’m lonely. I miss my friends from before.”
The woman stops, and her hands are warm and rough where they caress the soft skin of Ymir’s cheek. She looks almost understanding.
“You aren’t that girl anymore, my child.” Her thumb wipes a tear Ymir didn’t realize had fallen. “Understand. The life of a goddess is a lonely one.”
◈
Someone find us . That was Bertholdt’s pathetic plea for pity. She should have scoffed at him, left him to his fate the moment she realized there was a chance at life in the walls. A life with her .
But isn’t that exactly what Ymir had wanted? To be found? For someone to finally see her, to know her for who she was? To free her from an empty existence spent surviving rather than living? She’d been lucky enough to find that, and she’d left her in the dust with nothing but a three word apology as an explanation.
Yes, she wanted to be found. To be saved. How, when presented with the opportunity, could she not do the same for someone else? That terror, that helplessness — if she could spare someone from what she went through, she would be remiss to leave them to such a dreadful fate.
Despite spending three years together shedding blood, sweat, tears, and whatever else the military sucked out of them, the two boys were practically strangers to her. She had no investment in their personal well being, no emotional attachment whatsoever. Why, then, did her chest ache when Bertholdt cursed his own existence?
I guess I relate to your struggle.
Could it really be that simple?
But then, hasn’t she always been a rather simple girl?
She joined the military for no reason other than to find someone who could relate, even slightly, to her plight. She fell in love with that someone because she was the first person to see her, understand her, and still choose to stand by her. She gave it all up because — it wounds her to admit it — she isn’t the selfish monster she tried so desperately to be. There isn’t really much more to it than that.
Maybe there’s no escaping fate. Maybe living for oneself is a myth, and each man is merely a slave to his own nature. Ymir’s nature is to love, and to lose. God forbid she hold on to anything that makes her heart beat with something other than fear.
She wonders what it says about her character that more than anything, she’s terrified of the pain. Her simple dying wish is to leave the world quickly, not bleeding and screaming the way she was the last time her life ended. For her head to go first would be a blessing.
She’s been hurt so much already. She can’t take any more.
She hates herself for crying. She swore she had no regrets, but the tears streaking her cheeks tell a different story. She holds her knees to her chest with her back against the cold wall, and she wishes she could spend her last night with at least a shred of dignity.
Wishing, she’s learned, is useless. No one has ever gotten anywhere on baseless desire alone.
◈
The pain in her throat is the most difficult to ignore. She thought it might be her feet, which were exposed and raw after her thin sandals were worn through by gravel. Perhaps her head, as it seemed to be the preferred target of the furious mob hurling stones at her. The ropes had chaffed off an entire layer of skin where they wrapped around her wrists, and the friction wouldn’t stop for even a second.
All this pain blends together into a single, constant burn. Only the unbearable tightness in her throat stands out, not due to the rough fibers around her neck, but rather by the agonizing effort to keep quiet.
She’s crying, and the mixture of tears and blood make it even more difficult to see through the hoards of people and stones, but they’re just that - tears. Not a single sound leaves her mouth.
Behind her, the people who raised her are screaming, sobbing, pleading for mercy. She wishes she had that same luxury, and thinks how much of a relief it would be to wail and cry and beg for forgiveness.
‘No’ , she commands herself as she bites her lip to the point of bleeding to avoid crying out when a rock shard slashes her cheek. ‘Not me. They can scream. I won’t.’
She does beg, eventually. Watching her people turn to monsters and knowing she’ll be next is a sort of terror that can cause even a goddess to break.
She’s silent as she falls.
◈
Never in her life has Ymir been one for self pity. It’s one of the few things she’s prided herself on — even in her most pitiful moments, she never wallowed, and she won’t start now.
Is it pity to want things to be different? Is it debasing to wish for a future other than the one she’s been given?
Pointless though it may be, she wishes.
She wishes for the obvious, of course; Historia. A life with her, the freedom to go and do whatever they pleased, whenever they pleased. She doesn’t even care if Historia would never feel the same love Ymir does. Being by her side would be enough. Seeing her wild and free, embracing who she is and all the chaos and ugliness and immeasurable beauty that comes with it.
She can only pray that Historia continues to embrace her true self, that she let the world see her and make them accept her in all her imperfect glory. She hopes Historia screams and rages at any poor bastard who tries to tame that spirit, and damns anyone who stands in her way.
She tries her best to ignore the heartbreak that comes with the knowledge that she’ll never be there to witness it.
Historia may be, as she has always been, the focus of Ymir’s foolish dreams, but there’s so much more than that. She wishes for a future. There’s so much about the world, so much about herself she has yet to discover. She’ll never forget the way she felt when she woke up under a starry sky and saw slim fingers instead of claws, ran her tongue along blunt teeth instead of fangs. Hope . Beautiful, incredible, unfamiliar hope. She wishes for that feeling of endless possibility, for the infinite potential she saw spread out before her. She doesn’t want it all to end so soon.
Her years spent on the streets, lying and thieving and scamming, weren’t for nothing. She was working for more, she wanted more. She wasn’t sure exactly what at the time, not until she heard whispers of an illegitimate child sent to die the way she had been. That was when she realized exactly how lost she was.
◈
It’s insanity.
Pure, unadulterated lunacy that no logical person would even entertain the thought of.
Sure, her current lifestyle of stealing and conning isn’t ideal, but she’s rather good at it. It’s not safe, but it’s dependable. She knows what she’s doing.
The military? She’d be so far out of her depth she might actually drown. Metaphorically, but also perhaps literally if they do any kind of underwater training. Being the figurehead of a cult didn’t give her much time to learn to swim.
Ymir likes to consider herself a reasonable person, and yet here she is, truly considering risking her life for…what, exactly? The slim chance that she could maybe, possibly find someone who can understand a fraction of the way she’s felt her entire life? A purpose beyond living to see the next sunrise?
Fuck. It’s not like she has anything else to do.
She signs up.
This girl, whoever she is, had better be worth it.
◈
She wants Historia. She wants her in the same primal, desperate way a frightened child might want their parent. She wants Historia to hold her, stroke her hair, tell her she’ll be alright the way she used to when Ymir woke from a nightmare. This time, she wouldn’t simply push her away and insist she was fine the way she did when she was stubbornly denying her feelings. She would cling to her and cry, cry, cry. She would forget her pride, tell her she loved her more than anything, and that the only time she felt safe in her wretched life was when she was near her. That all the pain, all the hellish agony she’d fought through was worth it to finally meet her. That sixty years was nothing, and that she would gladly suffer centuries of that nightmare to find her again.
Those final moments together on the battlefield were perhaps the first time Ymir saw her truly unleash the fiercely uninhibited spirit she knew had been dormant inside her all along, and if she hadn’t already been hopelessly in love, she would have fallen the second she heard Historia’s fierce battle cry as her blades sliced through a titan’s neck.
She knew it was in her, of course. From the moment they met, Ymir could see there was more behind the veil of artificial sweetness and generosity. Time went on, and that veil grew thinner as Historia gradually began to trust and open up to her. But it was always there — a sort of fear holding her back, preventing her from truly breaking her chains.
Still, one of Ymir’s few consolations is the knowledge that she was the one lucky enough to be privy to that side of her. Being a place of solace for Historia to rest her mask and simply exist brought Ymir more joy than she’d ever dream of admitting.
◈
She tries not to think about them.
Foolish though she knows it is, it’s difficult not to feel defensive when her peers speak of the titans as vile embodiments of evil and savagery. After all, isn’t that perception the reason they were forced to turn into monsters in the first place? They were seen as devils, so they became them. If it wouldn’t certainly lead to questions she couldn’t answer, she’d tell her comrades off in the most uncouth way possible.
Joining the scouts and putting her countrymen out of their misery is the least she can do. It was because of her lies they ended up in the hell they did, and if she hadn’t been given the chance to start over, she would rather have died a thousand times over. The least she can do is risk her own life to grant them the rest they deserve.
Can she, though? She imagines looking into their empty, lifeless eyes and knowing that any of them could have been the ones who taught her to read, or who tended to her when she was ill. The chances are slim, but the possibility is there nonetheless. What if she can’t go through with it? What if she hesitates at a crucial moment and ends up eaten?
Then again, maybe that would be better. At least she’d be saving someone.
“Staring into space again?” She snaps out of her catastrophizing and looks up, holding back a smile. The sunset is always beautiful, but it shines brightest when haloed around Historia’s teasing grin. “Do you even think about anything when you zone out like this, or is it just like marbles rattling around in an empty skull?”
“Ha ha,” Ymir says flatly, “Hilarious. You should be the next big comedic playwright.”
Historia’s laugh could certainly push any thoughts from her head.
She sits down next to her, and Ymir is sure Historia has no idea what it does to her heart rate when she leans her head on Ymir’s shoulder.
“I’m kind of serious,” she says, “I really would love to know what you’re thinking about, but you always insist on being Miss Mysterious. For your information, you don’t pull it off well.”
“Hah! Rich, coming from you. Even your name is a mystery.”
Historia doesn’t say anything, and Ymir wonders if she’s made a terrible mistake by bringing it up, especially as cavalierly as she did. It’s the first time they’ve broached the subject since their near death experience atop the mountain nearly two years ago, and to say it’s touchy would be an understatement. She’s frantically searching for a joke to brush it off, but Historia speaks before she can.
“…I guess we both have a lot of secrets.”
“...That we do.”
Historia sighs heavily and turns her head, her face now smushed in Ymir’s neck.
“I want to tell you mine,” her voice is quiet and muffled. “And I want to hear yours. But it isn’t time yet, is it?”
Ymir echoes her sigh and rests her head atop Historia’s.
“Nope. But it probably will be, one day. Maybe. Honestly, I’m not sure. I hope so.”
Another moment of quiet, this one feeling more contemplative than tense.
“I bet yours aren’t even that interesting,” Historia says eventually, “I don’t think you’re nearly as complicated as you look.”
“True. The most interesting thing about me is my unusually high tolerance for annoying blondes with — Ow!”
“Serves you right,” Historia huffs as Ymir rubs her shoulder where Historia punched her, “One thing you’ll never be able to hide is what a jerk you are.”
Well. She can’t argue with that.
“Guess you have a high tolerance for bullshit too.”
Historia rolls her pretty blue eyes.
“I couldn’t be your best friend if I didn’t, could I?”
◈
She’d said terrible things to Historia that last evening. Vile, awful lies that stung like venom coming out of her mouth. Telling her that the only real love Historia had ever known was all for personal gain, that her well being never crossed Ymir’s mind, when in reality it was all that consumed it. She broke both of their hearts with every word, driving the dagger in as deeply as she could and twisting it for good measure.
She expected anger. Tears. Equally poisonous words thrown her way, nowhere near as dreadful as what she deserved. Nothing Historia could say to her would hurt as much as telling her such evil lies.
So she thought.
For Historia to scream that she hated her wouldn’t have been nearly as agonizing as that bright, beautiful smile, so full of an unyielding devotion that Ymir never deserved. She thinks of how she’ll never see that smile again, and her chest hurts. What she wouldn’t give to see Historia smile at her like that, just one more time.
She hopes that gorilla bastard stays true to his word and delivers her letter. At the very least, Historia deserves to know the truth about her. She wants Historia to know the truth about her. She wants to keep one final promise.
She needs Historia to know that she loves her, even after everything.
◈
“We can run away if you want,” Historia’s conspiratorial whisper and gentle fingers carding through her hair just barely break through the haze of pain and blood loss. “If you’re scared, or if they try to do something to you, I’ll find a way to get us out. I don’t care what I have to do. Humanity can handle itself just fine without us.”
Ymir wishes she could open her eyes. She wishes she could tell her everything, and finally learn everything there was to know about this fascinating, unknowable girl who had single handedly saved her from an abyss without either of them realizing it.
She hears Historia speaking to someone else — she thinks she must have walked away, because she feels droplets on her forehead where Historia had previously been blocking the rain.
Killing them was easy when Historia was involved. She’d been so worried she wouldn’t be able to do it, but the knowledge that letting a single one live could result in Historia’s bloody demise made ripping their flesh easy.
After a while, those light fingers return and brush her hair from her forehead. She fades into blackness again, and the next time she wakes, she’s in a forest, alone once more.
◈
Ymir startles and lets out an undignified gasp of surprise when she hears the lock to her cell rattle. A man enters, holding in his arms a folded pile of pristine white fabric. His face is, as expected, entirely unsympathetic.
“It’s time. Change into this.”
The command comes with a clinical apathy, indifferent to Ymir’s terror. He stares at Ymir like she’s nothing. She wants to scream at him that she’s not nothing. She’s a person, she has - had - a life, full of hopes, dreams, pain and love. She isn’t a thing to be used and disposed of, even if that is essentially what’s happening. She musters her sharpest glare and grabs the fabric from him, hoping it wrinkles, and lets it fall open so that the ends hit the filthy ground. She doesn’t see the point in putting on such fine linens when they’ll only end up in a bloodied heap with whatever is left of her when the titan has had his fill.
“You gonna give me some privacy, or do you plan to stay for a show?”
(At the very least, impending doom hasn’t taken away her sense of humor.)
I can see right through you, you know, Historia once said, You always make jokes when you get embarrassed or scared. You don’t have to do that when you’re with me.
She was right, of course. But Historia isn’t with her now.
The man rolls his eyes and turns around, leaving Ymir to fumble with the fabric, hands shaking as she removes her filthy clothing and drapes the robes around her body. They’re too soft. It’s unsettling.
Ymir doesn’t even bother denying that she’s terrified. She tried for so long to be strong, stronger than anyone ever thought she could be. She never wanted to feel as helpless and vulnerable as she did when she was dragged through the streets, every inch of her body in so much agony she could barely walk.
However, in her final hour, she sees no point in continuing to reject the fact that she isn’t strong. She’s scared and lonely, and she thinks that maybe if someone were there to offer her a kind smile or some words of reassurance, false as they may be, she could stand taller, walk steadier.
But there’s no one.
She’ll die as she was born, and as she lived for so many years - completely alone.
She closes her eyes, and tries desperately to imagine blue eyes, gazing at her with unending adoration and devotion. Pink lips curved into a gentle smile, the only look of genuine tenderness anyone had ever thought her deserving of. Maybe, if she focuses hard enough, she’ll be able to feel soft hands caressing her face and stroking her hair. Maybe she’ll hear whispered words of encouragement and affection that will help her face death with her back straight and her chin high. Better yet, impassioned shouts ordering her to keep her goddamn head up and not let fear get the better of her.
Her shoulders sag. It doesn’t work.
At the very least, she refuses to cry, even so much as a single silent tear. She won’t face her demise as a pleading, screaming mess like she did the last time. She’s determined to die with some dignity intact.
She finishes changing and follows the man out of the cell, the space surrounding her a blur. She hears nothing but the ticking of the clock and blood rushing in her ears, even as she tries desperately to hear the fiery passion of her love’s voice instead.
Eventually, she ends up on a looming platform. If she weren’t so petrified, she’d make a comment about how she hoped the titan would be tall enough to reach it, or they’d both be in for an awkward situation.
She glances only briefly at the man who will inherit her power. How he must hate her. She killed his brother, after all. Maybe he’s looking forward to devouring her. Maybe somehow, even as a titan, he’ll remember that hatred, and make it painful.
She hopes when it’s over and done with, he sees that she’s grateful. Even if she doesn’t regret it, she never wanted to cause anyone pain.
She shuts her eyes as soon as she sees the flash. She hears thundering footfalls. Smells foul breath. Feels a gigantic hand closing around her.
In her mind, she feels a much smaller hand, delicate fingers intertwining with her own.
It slips away, and then she feels nothing at all.
◈
“Someday, we’ll be rich,” says the girl with the pigtails, “We’ll have all the food we want and sleep in big beds made of feathers and warm blankets. We’ll even have servants.”
“No way,” says the boy with the brown eyes, “You heard the shopkeeper. We’re street trash, and we’re better off dead. No one from around here gets old enough to be rich, anyway.”
“We’ll be the first,” the girl with the pigtails fires back, “Or at least I will be. You guys can stay in the slums.” She sticks her tongue out, but giggles when the boy pushes her.
“I want to find my parents,” he sighs, “I know they’re still looking for me. I just hope they can recognize me now that I’m bigger. I bet they have a pretty house in a nice part of town with a bedroom all ready for me.”
“Forget that,” says the girl with the freckles, “I want to go far away. I don’t care if I get rich or have parents or not. I just want to go wherever I want and do whatever I want, and no one will tell me I’m street trash, cause I’ll be big enough to punch them in the face.”
“You could never,” The boy rolls his brown eyes. “You won’t be big enough to punch anyone.”
“I’ll punch you, ” she fires back. She lunges at him, and the girl with the pigtails joins in while the smallest of them stands aside and giggles all the while. The rest of them start to laugh too, their roughhousing a welcome distraction from the painful emptiness in their bellies.
They stop when they hear footsteps and see the light of a lantern approaching, along with the shadows of two big men. They scurry out of the street and against the wall, and the girl with the freckles can only hope the men don’t notice them. She’s seen too many children plucked off the street by big men like that, and the stories she hears about what happens to them make her skin crawl.
They all stare at the ground when the men reach them. The taller one holds his lantern out to get a better look at them.
The girl with the freckles squints when the lantern lands on her. She dares to look up, and there’s something in the man’s eyes that tells her she should run.
He smiles at her like she’s prey.
“…This one looks promising.”