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i came to this place. i’m angry with this lifeless purpose, but.
“...Historia?”
“Eren!” She gleefully holds up a basket of apples, as if that explains everything. Bewildered eyes blink back at her.
“What are you doing out here?” He gives her a once-over, looks around for her guards and frowns in concern when he finds no one in the vicinity. She’s endlessly endeared and amused at the same time. She kind of wants to smack him too for reacting this way. “Did something happen?” His eyes get marginally wider. “Or did you get hurt? Did someone-”
“Eren, no!” Heat climbs up her neck. “I’m just dropping by. You know.”
If she doesn’t feel out of place already, seeing Eren out of his uniform and in his usual shirt is driving it home that she absolutely shouldn’t be loitering around here. She feels severely overdressed in her military overcoat, the mark of the Armed Forces emblazoned on the sleeves and back like a massive signal to all the regime’s enemies that she’s here, without a guard, ready for the taking.
The surprise slowly melts off Eren’s features, although traces of that trademark indignant concern remain in the furrow of his brows. The door opens wider with a creak.
In that moment, as she steps into the comfort of an old friend’s home, she realizes she’s never really been here before. Nearly only a dozen people are allowed to know about the dwellings of the Founding Titan’s holder, and she—being the ruler of the Walls—is one of them. She’s never had a chance to visit. Her duties as Queen sweep her away from one place to another in mere moments; she can’t remember the last time she’s seen any of her friends outside of a formal setting. If at all. And, it’s always Eren who makes time to see her anyway. At the orphanage, or in Mitras. Never here.
Despite that, there is familiarity in the softwood scent that permeates the space. The inside is neat and airy, if a little bare. Eren stands awkwardly at the side, hand rubbing the back of his neck.
He has grown into his features well, she supposes. The ever-present grin that used to grace his lips has transformed into something neutral, at times melancholic. This Eren doesn’t quite emanate the same surefire cockiness that he used to. Maybe she likes him like this too, when his chin is dipped and he’s looking up at her through his lashes, shy and unsure.
She banishes that thought. Immediately.
He’d become much taller in the last year, more muscular, more built. She, however, has retained her cursed stature. More often than not she finds herself craning her neck to be able to look him in the eyes.
“You have a nice house,” she offers. Graceful as ever.
“It’s nothing special,” he says. “I’m not even here a lot. It’s more of a rest stop than anything.”
Historia’s lungs bubble with laughter. It comes out as a giggle, soft staccato bursts, and it is giddy. Tension deflates from her shoulders and she feels a lightheadedness—the kind that pours hot liquid courage in your gut and makes you believe you can do just about anything.
( She can’t remember the last time she’s felt like that, either .)
So she g ets up all in his face, looking to the world like a novice ballerina on her tallest tiptoes, and flashes a mischievous grin. “Aren’t you just embarrassed that the Captain has so obviously influenced your lifestyle choices?”
Eren doesn’t immediately respond. He blinks at her, and she can almost count his lashes from her position. If she leans in, just a little bit more, their noses would touch. The liquid courage simmers in her gut.
He inhales sharply, but her breathing is slower. Mouth tingling with something she cannot name, anticipation at the tip of her fingers. She feels warm, everywhere.
If her eyes dare venture lower, she will recognize the ruby of his li-
Eren is the first to break the gaze, and the weird spell vanishes almost instantly. Historia feels the barrier he builds between them, and respectfully steps back. She pushes down the surge of—annoyance?—unfathomable emotion in her chest.
“I hear the Captain’s voice even when he’s not around now,” he jokes, though noticeably quieter. “He yells at me to scrape the floor and wipe the windows and threatens to strangle me in my sleep if there’s so much as a speck of dust on them. I think I was traumatized.”
Historia’s grin dissolves into a polite smile. “Ah, that explains the lack of furniture,” she teases. “So there’s less to clean.”
“There’s no food too,” he quips. “I hope you don’t mind settling for those apples. I didn’t exactly expect the Queen to visit my humble abode. If I’d known, I would’ve prepared a feast Sasha would envy.”
She rolls her eyes at his dramatics. “Well, you shouldn’t throw around empty promises like that. I’m going to expect a feast next time.”
He steers her to a spot in the room by the window. She settles the basket on the coffee table, and jolts when he suddenly grabs her hand.
“What happened?” He examines the varying sizes of cuts on her palm. The blood has dried on them.
“I got lost,” she admits, cheeks warm. “The dirt path was surrounded by thorned bushes and I—didn’t know. Until I brushed on them, that is.” Eren shoots her a withered glare. “Hey! Why’s your house so isolated anyway? Do you know what I went through to get here? I’ll have cobwebs in my hair for days. You’re not going for the mysterious, lone wolf in the middle of the woods vibe, are you? Hange did say you were going through a phase.”
He pushes her down onto a chair and the protests die in her throat when she sees the worry on his face. He looks at her like that, often, when he thinks she doesn’t notice. She hears it too, in his voice, when he’s the only person who stands up loud in a room filled with quiet pity for her.
( Because I was concerned about Historia .)
Eren silently picks out tangles of spider silk from her hair. His fingers are careful not to undo the bun, smoothing out any hair that accidentally gets loose.
She dares not lift a finger, or say a word. The weird spell is back and there’s a burning under her skin, one that aches to hold him still and keep him there forever.
Disappointment, of course, is the only thing she’s ever known .
She finds herself tapping anxiously when he leaves, and only stills when he returns with bandages and a bottle of something she recognizes as an ointment—one of the many new things the volunteers smuggled from Marley and offered to the island.
The concern has lifted from Eren’s face, replaced by a passive softness. He kneels at her feet and takes her dainty hand in his calloused one again, cleans out the scrapes with a degree of gentleness she did not know he was capable of. She sits there wordlessly, watches him work with expert ease. The ointment burns her skin, and she winces. She tells herself this is better than rum at least. Back at the Training Corps, wounds were cleaned with it so everyone tried to avoid getting injured, for good reason. Historia would know. Her lithe form stood no chance against Instructor Shadis’ harsh training regimen. Ymir had laughed at her writhing as she poured liquid fire on her wounds, way too many times.
“So,” Eren starts, as he ties up the bandage. “Did you just come here to scold me for my lifestyle choices, Your Majesty?”
He lets go of her hand to stand and sit on the opposite end of the table.
Her fingers are cold where he left them.
“I would scold you more,” she turns her body towards him in a meek attempt to distract herself. “but Captain Levi’s haunted you enough. I... actually, the kids picked out fresh apples from the farm. We have a good harvest this year. And... Amy said she wants to thank you. For saving her rabbit’s life back then.”
She pushes the basket over to him, but he doesn’t even take a glance at it. His gaze remains fixed on her. She folds her hands on her lap and shifts in her seat, tries not to cough and break him out of his reverie.
“Tell her,” he says, soft. His eyes are beryl in the light. “She’s welcome. And she can come by anytime, if she wants.”
He finally reaches out and plucks an apple out of the woven basket, starts peeling the skin away.
They make idle talk, about his work at the railroad, about Connie and Sasha’s latest escapade with a piece of smoked ham from Niccolo’s kitchen, about Mikasa and Armin fighting about who’ll do the dishes next when they get back to their shared home in Shiganshina.
Historia relays to him the demand of the kids from the orphanage. “They want Mr. Jaeger to bring more sweets from the outsiders when he comes back.”
He rolls his eyes. “You’re spoiling the brats.”
“I do no such thing. You’re the one who keeps spoiling them.”
North of Wall Sina, a lone cabin stands among winding roads, underbrush and thorns. The place is not dilapidated, but certainly aged. Everything is arranged in place, most things pushed or hung against the wall, and the strange but pleasant mix of rain-soaked soil and pine persists in the air.
The window by the table is open to let the midday breeze in.
Sunshine pours into the room, carries the chirping of the birds with it. She wonders how many people have sat in the very same place she sits. Do you look at everyone you bandage with illicit tenderness, Eren? Do you also ask them to come back?
The boy who lives in the cabin in the woods chose to seclude himself from society, from friends, and yet she understands the hunger for company that lances through his eyes in unguarded moments.
She still thinks this place is too big for one person to call home.
“This... kind of looks like the cabin from back then, doesn’t it?”
She hadn’t meant for fondness to seep into the words. But she remembers being happy then, when he’d called her normal. A stupid and honest girl, but normal.
“Ah,” he glances up before resuming his arduous task of apple-peeling. “But it was more cramped. Or maybe that’s because you hogged the blankets and almost kicked me off the bed once or twice.”
She flushes. “That’s why I napped on the table! I was sorry!”
“Yeah, it was considerate of you. That’s also why you woke up with rashes on your arms and hunched like your back hurt the whole time.”
“How did you...” she halts. Blinks, dumbfounded. Of course he noticed that. Everyone (Jean) always says that Eren is a clueless and oblivious idiot (in Jean’s own words). But she thinks he’s the most observant person she knows. “Well,” she rubs her arm, consciously. “You’re the only one who hates me when I’m being considerate.”
“...I don’t hate you.”
“I know,” Historia looks at him funny, because she had meant it as a joke.
“No, I—I never hated Krista either.”
“Wait... really?”
Her eyes shimmer with childlike glee. She leans forward, eager, something wicked in her grin.
Eren looks bothered. “I already told you.”
“I mean... you did seem like you hated Krista. Remember when you—”
“If you bring up the dinner incident again—”
“Everyone loved it when I brought them food! You were sneaking around every night to practice with the ODM gear, I thought it’d be nice if I spared you some dinner.”
“You were sneaking around too.”
“I wasn’t! I was being careful in the dark. But you startled so bad when I tapped your shoulder that I spilled the soup all over your gear. You avoided me for a week!”
In the brief moment when she closes her eyes to laugh, she misses the way the corner of Eren’s lips quirk upward ever so slightly.
When she opens them again, she finds him staring still. “...Eren?”
“You left a portion for me and starved that night. You looked like you’d pass out at training the next morning,” he says instead. “That’s what got on my nerves.”
She sobers. “Oh.”
“Always putting others before yourself,” he continues to mutter to himself. “I thought you were the weakest of us all. I wanted you to go back home.”
“I get it, Eren, you can stop now.”
“No, you don’t get it. If you ran away, you would live.”
She doesn’t understand. The words he wants to say sit in the precipice, but he bites them down.
Historia notes how much he’s changed, since the ceremony two years ago. His hair is longer, frames his face more. He is much more reserved and sometimes, to Historia, it’s as if he’s right there, but perpetually out of reach. Sometimes, she catches him staring with an emotion akin to longing at the children in the orphanage. Sometimes, in the rare moments Armin gets to visit, he asks, “Why do you tell these stories to them? That Eren is a hero,” and she’d cock her head to the side, brows knitted in confusion. “Because he is.” And Armin would grab a heavy box from her hands, “Sometimes,” his voice is almost inaudible in the silence, as if he never meant for her to hear, “I worry about that.”
It coils in her gut—the feeling that there’s something Eren’s not telling her.
There’s a desperation to the boy who sits before her, the kind he wants to spit out, the kind he gulps down again like a lump in his throat.
And so, he turns away. “Why are you really here, Historia?”
Her name sounds like a plea on his tongue.
“Everything’s busy at the Capital,” she confesses. “I ditched my guards. I thought I might suffocate if I stayed another second there.”
Her mind wanders to the harrowing events of today. The one where she sits with Premier Zackly and the officials of the military in stuffy rooms to discuss her fate. She thinks back to antsy Garrison members hissing, “We don’t have time to think it over. What if Zeke Jaeger suddenly decides it’s not worth it and screws us over? What will searching all the way across the sea accomplish when our answer is right here?”
They’d talked like Historia wasn’t even in the room. She’d blanched, and physically restrained herself from throwing up.
Eren stares at his lap. Says, “The Scouts will find something. I... we won’t let Zeke Jaeger’s plan come to fruition. At all costs.”
Historia doubts that. “...Eren. Thank you,” she says instead. Her voice is as hollow as the skin around her eyes. “And... I’m sorry.”
Sorry that you have to do it, sorry that I’m a despicable human being.
He looks at her then. “No. No, you’re not.” He doesn’t study her face like he used to, doesn’t lean forward like a boy eager to finally crack into an enigma of a comrade. Only, a shadow of understanding passes over his features. “You’re really relieved, aren’t you?” He states, more than asks.
Something about the cadence of his voice breaks the dam that has been building up in the corner of her eyes. Maybe it’s the lack of judgment or malice in his tone, maybe it’s the fact that she already knew the moment she impulsively turned on her heels and found herself at his doorstep, that she’s made a safety net out of him.
(“ He would never let it happen, you know,” Commander Hange comments, lightly, as the rest of the military higher-ups file out the door. Historia almost jumps out of her own skin.
“What do you mean?”
She turns and finds the Commander side-eyeing her through their glasses.
“That knucklehead. Eren,” they pause. Historia feels see-through under their scrutiny. “Ah, what a weirdo, yelling around guests like that. But... one thing I know about him. He will never give up.” )
Historia scrubs her face in her hands. Tastes acid in her mouth as she spits, “I just—I don’t want to die. I don’t want anyone to bear the burden of my family’s curse.”
“I know.”
“And I don’t want to have children for the military to use as tools. I can’t—what Mother and Father did. I won’t look at my child and feel regret. I won’t use my child for any plan.”
“...I know.”
She gapes at him helplessly, and for the first time wishes he’d pass judgment on her. Wishes he’d call her unnatural and creepy again, shake her out of her madness. If you don’t, I’m going to be a selfish person forever.
He never does. Never seeks an explanation, never asks.
A flicker of emotion crosses his face but it is gone as soon as it appeared. He schools his features carefully now, a stark difference to his explosive rage and contorted expressions at the meeting with Kiyomi Azumabito.
( She had taken a stand, then. Resigned herself to fate, resigned her children and their children to the whims of the world. What use is there for her to keep fighting? Thirteen years is a long enough time to live. Comrades, strangers, loved ones... way too many of her people, dead before their time. They had trusted her predecessors, her, and those who will come after, to do what it takes to give meaning to their sacrifices.
What she was born in this world for... it was to fulfill this duty, to repay everyone who had given their hearts and their lives to protect these Walls. To safeguard the things that they had offered their souls to protect. To give the ones who were breathing, who were alive, a future that heroes never had.
Thirteen years is a long enough time.
Eren stood up, then. So abrupt, so sharp in the silence. He didn’t look at her, but even as he sent the Azumabito a hundred daggers of disgust, even as he said in rage, “I absolutely won’t accept Zeke Jaeger’s plan!” Historia couldn’t help but feel it was her that he resented.
She didn’t see him for a week after that. )
Historia sniffles involuntarily, and her lips won’t stop quivering. She furiously wipes at her eyes. It must be a pathetic sight to him. This girl, who has been given way too many chances.
Eren reaches out but stops in his tracks, his body going frigid where he sits. He wrings his hands on the table, unsure of what to do with them.
One day, she thinks, one of them will reach over the barrier that separates them.
Breeze blows through the window.
She hears the seat scraping across the wooden floor before she even realizes she’s walking over to Eren’s side. He stands to meet her halfway, and he’s practically looming over her, their difference painfully obvious when they’re standing so close to each other. She looks up at him silently, and a beat passes between them.
Her fingers itch to push away the bangs that frame his face to get a better look.
A brief flash of hesitation, and then Eren is pulling her into his chest. She breathes in the hint of pinewood and the soap he uses and exhales shakily.
Her muffled sobs are the only sound in the room.
He wraps his arms around her trembling shoulders, firmly, and she clings to the sleeve of his shirt like it’s the only thing holding her together.
They stand there for awhile, just like that.
—
Looking back, she wonders if this could’ve all been avoided if she’d stayed in her seat that day. If, perhaps, she didn’t go at all. Maybe it goes farther back than that.
During the first meeting with Kiyomi? Or... on the day of the ceremony after the battle of Shiganshina? What was the point of no return, for them? For him? Which moment sealed their fates?
She paces around the room, thinks it was all decided from the start. That they had no choice.
Deep down she knows she doesn’t have to go. She can change her mind, turn him in to the top brass. Tell them everything he told her, stop him before he brings hell over to this world. She can let him wait in the cold for an answer that will never come.
Still, she finds herself marching across the fields, hugging the shawl around her shoulders as the evening air slams against her body like a million tiny pinpricks of ice.
A cloaked figure waits just beyond the fenceline, lantern in hand. His face is waxy in the moonlight.
The fence that separates them serves as a final warning—a big, flashing sign telling them to turn in the opposite direction and walk away now.
Frieda’s ghost lurks in the shadows, a seer in the dark. She warns: There is a line that must never be crossed.
His eyes meet hers, grave. There’s a finality to it that tells her he’s long braced himself for this outcome.
“I’m sorry.”
Even as he says it, he can’t hide how relieved he looks.
Sorry that you have to do it, sorry that I’m a despicable human being.
Their fate might’ve been sealed from the very beginning, but she chose this.
“No, you’re not.”
—
Well. Eren. What would you think... about me having a child?