Chapter Text
Vogel Im Käfig – Hiroyuki Sawano
The inner wealth of people is
Like colourful light, shining through coloured glass
The pleasant everyday life is
Like a warm candlelight
The very wide, green earth
The rich, beautiful water
The magnificent nature still cares for its children
Hopefully we'll be able to understand it someday
We are walking to the other side of the horizon
Hopefully we'll be able to understand it someday
We are walking firmly
Every living thing dies someday
Whether we're ready to die or not
That day will surely come
Is this the angel that flew down from the dawning sky?
Is this the devil that crawled out of the crevice in the earth?
Tears, anger, pity, cruelty
Peace, chaos, faith, betrayal,
We will fight against our fate
We must not resign ourselves to our fate
With sadness and decision in our hearts
We show the will to move on
No one shall be willfully deprived of their life
Ymir Fritz has lived a short, cruel life full of pain and suffering. She knows this. And the existence she has had in the Paths since her premature death has not been much kinder.
With love and devotion she watches over her subjects, the descendants of her very own daughters Maria, Rose and Sina.
Endlessly, day in and day out, she builds the bodies of the titan shifters, crafting both their human and their titan forms out of sand with the innocent hands of a little girl making sandcastles and the gentle heart of a mother. No burden is ever too great to bear, no task too troublesome. Not when it comes to her people, just like how it was with her husband and her daughters.
She obtained her powers and survived for as long as she did for a reason, after all. She is their protector, and she will not fail them.
But even if she wants to serve them with all her heart and soul, that does not mean her mind and body do not get tired.
The Paths are beautiful with their always starry sky and bright shining lights, a place beyond time and space, a realm of endless possibility where past, present and future are happening simultaneously. But they are also a prison.
Ymir can never leave, forever shackled by her duty, a slave to her love. All she can do is watch.
And watch, she does.
Over the two thousand years of her existence there have been many people she developed a particular interest in, for one reason or another. People whose lives she has observed more closely, whose fates she has suffered more personally than those of most.
While all Eldians are the offspring from one of her daughter's lines, only some of them have kept the family name Fritz or can actually directly trace their lineage back to Ymir's beloved husband. Currently, there are only two such people left. The first is a man named Zeke Jaeger, who believes his very blood makes him a sinner and that it is his responsibility to fix how the world treats Eldians through submitting to the oppression his people are subjected to once and for all. The second is a young woman across the ocean from Zeke, Historia Reiss, who attempts to find freedom for herself and live a life she can be proud of in her own way.
Ymir's heart aches for the both of them, for she is afraid neither will succeed. The only constant in this world is misery, and no one is ever truly free. All you can do is hold your loved ones close and try to alleviate their suffering.
This was the lesson another one of Ymir's charges had to learn the hard way. The young girl had been picked up from the streets by some desperate Marleyan Eldians, was given a name far too big for her and forced to play a role she had never asked for. This Ymir was cursed just as much as her namesake, punished for things done to her without her consent, and then left to wander aimlessly for decades until she found her salvation.
Ymir Fritz had taken her sweet time building this Ymir's human body anew, and this had allowed her to marvel at the beauty of the Paths for a while. Ymir had wanted happiness for this new Ymir, it had felt almost as if it was a second chance for herself, but it was not to be. Now Ymir is forever asleep in the Paths with her.
With those three in mind, it is quite obvious that Eldians are often special to the point that the extraordinary becomes the norm, and yet there is one young man who intrigues Ymir more than anyone ever has—the one currently holding the Attack as well as the Founding Titan, despite the fact that he lacks royal blood, Zeke's younger half-brother from within the walls of Paradis.
His tenacious spirit has helped him withstand every challenge life has thrown at him, the battles he has fought have just served to sharpen all his edges enough to cut and draw blood. But it has also set him up for an impossible quest.
Eren Jaeger is a wild bird in a cage, desperately trying to break down the bars and find his freedom, only to learn that his wings were clipped anyways. She pities him just as much as she is eagerly awaiting his next move.
Most of the time when she watches Eren, it is through the eyes of the woman who holds the keys to both of their fates.
Watching an Ackerman is as easy as anyone, but predicting them is much harder. Their bloodline is immune to the titan's curse, meaning they can neither be turned nor manipulated by the Founder. This has made Ymir wary of the family as a whole, but Mikasa Ackerman is special.
A lady, a soldier, an orphan, a lover – Mikasa has a profoundness to her that Ymir admires, and a deep devotion towards her beloved that Ymir identifies with. They both would do whatever it takes to protect those they hold dear, even if they end up hurting themselves in the process. Mikasa understands the necessity of sacrifice.
Ymir feels there is a certain kinship between the two of them, a connection, even if Mikasa is mostly unaware of it.
Mostly, because she is beginning to suspect that Mikasa's flaring headaches might be caused by her spying through Mikasa's eyes, whether simply the frequentness of the actions is at fault or if maybe the Ackerman blood tries to resist her, Ymir cannot say. At any rate, she does feel guilty over it, Ymir never wants to cause pain, but she still can't bring herself to stop.
What Eren and Mikasa share reminds Ymir all too much of herself and King Fritz; a man fit to reshape the world and a woman who loves him enough to stand by him, a special woman who can serve and protect him. A love that defines and destroys.
They are death and despair, as well as the following promise of the dawn of rebirth. Different as day and night, but complementary as the sun and the moon. The truest meeting of an unstoppable force and an immovable object.
Ymir has been waiting for something, or someone, for two millennia, and perhaps they are finally ready. Her wait might just be over.
Right now, they are all watching, waiting just like her to see the final puzzle pieces settle in their places and start the end of this story.
Eren, Mikasa, and their allies are seated in the midst of their enemies in an assembly hall in Marley, breaths bated as a man begins to speak.
“Ladies and gentlemen, this new organization advocates for the Subjects of Ymir living as refugees around the globe!” His voice is powerful, ringing through the room like church bells.
“These desperate people are not responsible for the crimes of the Eldian Empire, but rather its tragic victims. The living legacy of its efforts to corrupt all the peoples of the world with Eldian blood!” He goes on, still loud and convinced of his own words, his audience captivated.
“The taint of Eldia is all but cleansed from the earth. There's only one corner where it continues to fester: the island of Paradis, where the empire's most loyal subjects fled in the wake of Marley's victory a hundred years ago.”
The previously held hope is now visibly leaving the hearts of her people, the chance for peace talks becoming frightingly small. Only one person appears unaffected, because he held no notions of a positive outcome in the first place. At this point, hope is as foreign a concept to Eren as it is to Ymir.
“It is the island devils alone who pose a true threat to humanity!” With those closing words from the speaker, the hall erupts in cheers, the people from beyond the walls apparently elated at the prospect of spilling the blood of an enemy who has left them alone and done them no harm in a century.
Some of the present Eldians look shocked, or upset, others simply angry. Mikasa, ever alert, whips around just in time to see Eren leave the room without looking back or a single word goodbye.
Ymir knows the most likely outcome for Eren now is that he will go through with the Rumbling, his innate desire for freedom has already driven him to do it in a thousand different timelines, and it will surely win out in this one as well. But there is no telling what Mikasa will do. If she makes the right choice, then Ymir might finally get to rest, but the wrong course of action could doom them all.
Eren believes that the path ahead of him is set in stone, that he has no other choice, even if only because he willed it to be so. He is a slave to his own idea of what he thinks freedom should be. Ymir knows the truth of the Paths is that there are infinite endings, but she is yet to find one that promises both freedom and happiness. So, just like how he is most likely to do the Rumbling, she is most likely to aid and abet him. Everyone is a slave to something.
Eren Jaeger, however, as of now unbeknownst to both Ymir Fritz and himself, will do his damndest to finally achieve the impossible and change the fate's design.