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—Spring 853.
Her eyes trailed the clouds begrudging the sky, adorned with a red shade echoing on the broken tiles of the Internment Zone. Beaming over the one spilled days ago, gathering shouted syllables that cut through one another until the Eldians' protests had become a cacophony beneath iron blows. So many Marleyans, Vivian noted as she, along with Reiner, whose palm warmed hers in the shadow of their steps, marched the alleys filled with eyes seeking for a culprit to live one more day. One whisper behind trembling fingers; a few nods between two friends, while the third one gazed elsewhere, toying with today's bread, unaware that his companions were plotting his end—so inconsolable the woman sharing his name would be, the wedding band at times longing to be a brighter star than those on the arms. Her own tugged like a reminder:
What would Reiner think of her, were he to discover that the very hand he held with such a peaceful heart was about to tear once more that fragile armistice between the two districts—
“I don't want to vanish.”
Before her ears caught the betrayal of her mouth, he halted to meet her lowered eyes.
“What did you say?”
His grip tightened, drawing her closer as silence found a pleasing place on her lips. The question was repeated, while the world kept existing around them, so blind to the fuel flowing beneath their soles.
“Vina?”
“…Thinking out loud,” she murmured, brushing away a strand that clung with too much ambition to her chin.
Barks echoed in the horizon, filling the deepening crease on his forehead—that she wished a sole graze of hers would ease it. A few spines tensed, to resume their hastened journey towards home; that of Reiner minded little. Neither did hers, for she knew they would grow louder.
“That's a strange thought.” His touch then climbed to her elbow, thumb circling a few patterns, to still as he kept speaking nevertheless. “What truly happens in that head of yours? I have… noticed. Don't blame the night for being too short, this time.”
“And blaming the day for being too long won't convince you either, I take it?”
A quiet smile she guessed desolate moved her face; so heavy his sigh was, the coat on his shoulders slumping and eroding along on the seams, seeking the false warmth of the sunset on the pavement. The firm brown paled into the very grey of the walls—so did his face, drowning in a concern she despised to witness when he had offered her the truest embrace, soothing the temples that had warred with too many throbbing thoughts, and the ghost of past battles.
And she too, held her heart at the edge of the cliff, every time she glanced at the roofs to find familiar shadows in-between chimneys, and thinking of the nights he ignored everything of. “The disguised ink barrels will be placed across the distribution houses and the central printing works according to the path our dear Vivian has established so brilliantly,” Zeke's fingers had tapped across the map of the Internment Zone they owned, discovering a certain mania in the tune it played on the paper. “You men will follow her lead, act at the very moment she demands you to.” They had nodded in her direction with a regard she hesitated still to place a name on—how strange it felt, to speak a word and witness it take form in the following days, and in the way her hands had planned it.
When Vivian had believed time had come to return to the cold sheets of her bed, the man and his blond curls had gestured to her to stay; “To have Reiner on site would be most beneficial. No Eldians would deny the testimony of the Man of the People—a fine way to sever the sympathy of the masses towards the Restorationists.” The cigarette he had then lit purred along, while Lubomir, leaning against the wall with his eternal sternness etched on his features, had muttered his disapproval when no one was deemed capable of catching it.
The wind blew through the alley; she raised a limb to refrain Reiner's collar from offering his neck to the bite of the early spring, and to the gazes she guessed lay upon them.
He would not be part of this, she vowed. And she would stand still when Zeke would confront her about missed opportunities and reminders of what a day would be, without the lover by her side.
“You blamed yesterday, already,” Reiner's words grazed her skin, his eyes away for a few more seconds she yet counted.
“Did I?”
“Vina. Please.”
“I would prefer to blame nothing.” She invited him through a crowd, crossing the street as a group of Marleyan public officers marched to the stairs on which the three previous Eldian companions were seated, their mouths stuttering attempts at justifying their goodness, while the world turned a blind eye, favoring the cracks of the edifices they wished were large enough to conceal their presence. “They've been advancing in the remote parts of the Zone, hunting for those… traitors the newspapers are the sole ones to mention. I believe they will patrol mine soon.”
So burning was the lie on her tongue, yet she kept speaking and speaking, for Reiner seemed to be considering whether to believe her or not. The trees in her alley remained the tallest moving shapes, the gentle shade of green that hesitated to reveal itself the only flashes drawing the eyes. No grey man and his loaded gun coated in carmine, nor any black hounds to shred the ankles of the targeted unfortunate; only her shadow to accompany her to the door—and those of the Volunteers above her, slithering by their side as they passed another checkpoint. Her head tilted to him once more,
How tragic, to deceive the person she loved most, and the one who loved her as much.
“They won't go to you,” Reiner muttered with a look around; Vivian tugged at his sleeve, while her other hand cast an order to the man behind the chimney.
“The most honest Eldian could awake behind the bars. This is how we, occupants of the Internment Zone, live as of now.”
“Mother would accept having you home for a time. We'll just have to be discreet and—”
“No,” her head shook with a too sharp motion she then regretted. “They might go for Gabi, if they find out. To strike the vulnerable, and keep the untouchable close, that's all they do. Reiner; think of her.”
The muscles of his wrist tensed against her palm, all of a sudden too warm and resisting—yet she kept her touch on him, though the quiet voice in her mind pleaded for her to cease all this duplicitous folly. To be silent and let the crowd and its dozens of feet talk, the few establishments that dared welcome customers thirty minutes before the curfew hour buzz in the air smelling of tired coffee; still, her chest thudded the loudest, heaving further at each new breath taken. One tile crumbled beneath Reiner's boot, but all he kept staring at was the red horizon that would soon brighten and roar.
“I think of you too.”
The whisper crackled on his lips. With the slowest turn, she met him anew, the wind relentless upon her cheeks until what remained of her composure shivered to the bone.
How cold she found herself, long after her arms had curled around him in the shadow of two homes.
Reiner—I am sorry.
“Keep me close,” she murmured within the folds of his coat. “So there is a tad of certainty left when tomorrow is a trail of blur.”
“They won't go to you.”
Attempts of soothing strokes were led over her back, for his hands to hold her just as close. Her hair whipped against the side of his neck, while all and everything dulled, the clouds above them thickening as they defeated the sun and its red echoes. A few more seconds, Vivian repeated herself, taking in his scent, nuzzling the collarbone that wished to never let go of her either, before her gaze moved to the roof and the awaiting shadows on top of it. Fingers rose to trace her final command in the air.
A few more seconds—
“Your hand,” Reiner mumbled, “what is it—”
She waited for the men beneath her lead to vanish in the dusk, the guns in their grips beaming for a glimpse of time—another sort of stars, until stirred the brightest night the Internment Zone had ever witnessed. Her eyes grazed the man in her embrace—that she wished he would be her sole horizon tonight.
“Dust was clinging to the fabric,” she hummed in return, while her palm stilled over his nape.
His nose pressed further against her skin as he nodded, his shoulders resting, at last. A smile tasted on her lips, though her heart remained a too-sharp stone between ribs.
They won't go to you either.