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Ymir can't help but stare, even if she's horrified and disgusted, sweat dripping down her skin and bile rising up in her throat. In front of her, the titan screams and screams, almost drowning out the Survey Corps soldier who stuck a hot iron pole into it. She shakes her head, her mouth moving but no sounds coming out. Why is the soldier screaming too? Ymir is the one that wants to scream. She covers her mouth as her stomach lurches. Around her are soldiers cheering, their expressions gleeful at the titan and its screams. Amidst all the noise, no one pays attention to her.
She watches the soldier take the pole out of the titan's chest and jams it into the titan's eye. Her stomach lurches again, stronger. She can't take it anymore. She needs to leave, now. She turns around, pushing past every soldier, pushing past the wave of bloodlust and vindication. She doesn't care where she goes, as long as she can't hear the titan screaming or the jeer of the soldiers. She doesn't know how far she goes, but finally, finally, when the screams are no longer tangible except in her own mind, she collapses, her whole body shaking.
The scene is still vivid in her mind. The soldier takes the blazing hot iron, jamming it into the titan's eye. Instinctively, Ymir raises her hand to her eye, palming it, and presses hard to the point of crushing it. It's painful, but the pressure is comforting. When she stops, her vision swims momentarily but it comes back. She makes the mistake of closing her eyes to calm herself down.
Behind her eyelids, she sees instead her own titan form, every single part of her body held down by thick nails. She can hear the roaring of a fire, and footsteps thumping loudly like thunder as they get closer. She hears the screeching of metal dragging on the ground. When she looks up, there's something incredibly bright and red. Then, darkness, before a searing brightness explodes within her mind and she feels something sticky dripping down her face.
Then it's dark again. Her body's still nailed to the floor, except there's something different. She hears the chatter of people, even though she can't make out their words. There's a large dark puddle underneath, smoke rising from it. Her hand is the only thing that's not nailed down, the nail itself strangely still impaled in the ground. Her body's a lot smaller now. She reaches out in front of her and then realizes why the nail wasn't holding it down.
It's her human hand.
Ymir empties her lunch onto the grass when she opens her eyes. She keeps doing it even long after she has nothing left. Her throat burns and it hurts, and she feels so empty but it feels so much better than how afraid and trapped she felt moments before. Anything is better than reliving that nightmare, that memory.
Death isn't what scares Ymir. After all, she's already died once. But if she's going to die anyway, then she'll be the one to decide how she's going to go. It was what she decided back then. She didn't regain her humanity to lose it so easily. But she can't help the stray thought of if she hadn't, she might have been one of the titans caught to be experimented on. It's a sickening thought, to be used in such a demeaning way. She's not going to become food for the titans, nor will she be a tool for the humans. She's not looking to go out with a bang, nor does she want to die a pointless death either. Do anything to survive, live for only herself, don't go back to that living nightmare not again --
There's footsteps behind her. Ymir turns around slowly, her body still tense even though she knows there's only one person willing to follow her. Christa holds out a canister of water slowly, as if she's unsure that's what Ymir wants. Ymir grabs it and downs it, not caring that it's splashing everywhere. Water has never tasted so good until now, even as she's choking and sputtering. It soothes the burn in her throat, in her stomach. She hands it back to Christa who puts it wordlessly on the ground. They both stare at each other, Christa's eyes filled with uncertainty.
Ymir can see it on her face, all the questions she wants to ask, but surprisingly, or unsurprisingly, Christa doesn't. Instead, she raises her hand to weakly grasp Ymir's. She only looks back behind them at where the experiment is still taking place and then back at Ymir, shaking her head quietly with a grimace as an explanation. Ymir returns her look, hates how Christa seems to understand, and grips her hand with a strength she knows should hurt. Christa returns it with equal ferocity.
She looks down at Christa, the girl who mirrors her life so closely yet diverges so wildly. Christa, who lives everyday lying to herself, who will gladly welcome death with open arms to prove her worth, who will join the Survey Corps for that same reason. And Ymir will follow her to deny Christa that death she seeks, because even if she hasn't realized it yet herself, Christa will still mean nothing to the people who have already forsaken her, even in death. Instead, Ymir will make her realize that the sheer fact that she is alive right now is already her proof of existence, just like Ymir.
When she looks at Christa, it's like she's looking at herself sometimes. And then the more she really looks at Christa, the more Ymir finds herself thinking I really don't want to die.
She pulls Christa close to her, burying her face in that golden hair. A different realization goes through her then. It makes her cling even tighter to her. She concentrates on Christa, her breathing, her smell, her shape, everything and anything she can memorize. It helps dull the sudden fear a little. Slowly, Christa brings her arms up to wrap around Ymir, rubbing her back soothingly, murmuring things that are too soft even for Ymir to hear. They're probably just nothing, and Ymir knows she would only be cruel to herself to wish for such whimsical things.
Death is not what Ymir is truly afraid of.
More than anything else, I don't want you to die.
Christa is so small, so tiny, so warm, so alive, that Ymir lets herself forget everything wrong with this giant world for just a moment.