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Chapter Text

It’s almost laughable to Ymir. Fate would have had it that way. 

She’s on the worst ferry boat ride to her death imaginable, and here she has to listen to Bertholdt’s perpetual sniffling all the way there. He hadn’t shut up in the last three days, which is surprising for him. It's been driving her crazy, enough to make Ymir want to shut his obnoxious crying up herself. But, she tells herself it's not worth it. She's going to die soon, and she guessed by then she'd be grateful to hear anything at all.

It was just her luck that she was paired with Bertholdt to keep guard of her. Still, it's better than being below deck—trapped in a container surrounded by Marley officials. She discovered the clear, starry sky was quite beautiful in the middle of the ocean. The moon was still bright despite not being in its full stage anymore. Looks like it was true till the end that the moon and the stars had been her only companion throughout it all. 

Ymir thought of the countless innocent lives that have been taken at the hand of the boy beside her. The murders and lives ruined because of a choice made by a couple of cursed children. Just when she thought life couldn’t be more ironic, it surprises her again. Out of all those people, the Colossal titan, Bertholdt, he cried for her death. 

The lapping of waves against the boat and crashing water engulfed her ears. It's familiar, she remembered, from the last time she was here. She never got to see the ocean then. Now, everywhere she looked a desolate, vast expanse of water, and if she tried to look beyond that more water. It is just as terrifying as she imagined it'd be. 

She watched Bertholdt's back as he walked to the railing. Tear stained remnants reflecting in the moonlight against his face. He stopped crying, and she wondered if he found the ocean in front of him comforting. What went through his head when he crossed to Paradis island all those years ago?

Ymir . . . are you telling us we did all that for nothing?

Poor, quiet Bertholdt who's always looking to someone else for answers. But, the way he looked at her, the way they had all looked at her like she was their goddess. It was as if he was looking inside her, talking to him, that boy inside her who actually did have the answers. At the big tree, Bertholdt had told her that he didn't blame her for eating Galliard. But she knew they all pitied her. One last lie from the world to convince her she wasn't lower than shit.

She wondered if they had known each other before Shiganshina, before the Colossal or Jaw titan, would they have been friends? Was there any hope in this hellish world for an Eldian to desire a friend or simple companionship? Does it mean a thing that a child can be tossed into an orphanage with no one to care or love them.

She remembered the smaller children crying while she was being taken away all those years ago. Why? Did they grieve for her? No. For themselves? Ymir will never know their names—all of them nameless children like she once was—what they had accomplished in life. They were all probably dead by now. What does it matter to know? Yet, she wondered, did they live and die only knowing the cruelty of this world? Did they spend their life by the suffering she could only understand through her eight years at that orphanage? Or did they too, get picked out of the many by a stranger and experience the kindness and care of a home if only for a short moment?

When she left, did they grieve the people that never came for them? Did they too realize that life had written them into a boundless void, a cruel, inescapable fate to know nothing but the suffering of this world. Why did they cry if not for the people that never came for them—for the love they would never know.

Chapter Text

The queen's coronation went better than anyone could have imagined. Perhaps, this was due to the stunt they pulled off in Orvud District; word had spread fast of the petite girl who took down the 120 meter titan claiming to be the rightful, royal heir. People across Paradis knew about her even before Erwin had announced their victory and the soldier who landed the last blow. She even received dozens of letters, most praising her and calling her a hero, while some others said she was a conspirator. Either way, everyone to see her; it was almost everyday a new district's newspaper asked her to interview.

It was beginning to get impossible to say no at all as the press had become more and more insistent ever since her coronation. All of it seemed pretty stupid to her; she had become quite skilled at the art of staring down reporters. But Erwin instructed it was a part of her duty now as queen to let the people become familiar with my "constitution" whatever the hell that meant. It was nothing new to her. She would be whatever face they needed her to be. Right now, they admired her, even her old comrades did. The Historia they know now is nothing like her old persona, Christa. They admire the stoicism she carries herself with, and if not, the reverence her name brings. It's all she can do, after everything they watched her go through, they think she's brave.

The truth was she has been scared of everything since they moved her away from the barracks. She is queen now after all. At night, when she was alone all she could do was listen to the sounds of footsteps outside her door. She hated how empty the room felt and how small the ceilings made her feel. She knows at any moment she could walk outside her bedroom door and there would be a guard waiting, but the moment her eyes shut she's afraid the blade will already be grazing her neck. 

Maybe she was just used to having the other scouts around. During their training she had never once slept alone. She felt safe around them, even if one of them ended up being the Female Titan. It was ridiculous. She'd slept peacefully in Utgard in the middle of titans country, but now in the most secure place in all of Paradis even the walls scared her. 

Who had time to worry about stupid things like that? She'd remark to herself from time to time. As queen, she discovered, there was a limitless supply of distractions, and so the thought remained buried in the back of her mind until nightfall came inevitably.

Today was like any other day in her new life as queen: her schedule meticulously laid out for her and an endless barrage of interviews which was rarely split up by a visit from the scouts. Not long after the coronation, they had launched themselves back into the plan to take back Shiganshina. Most of her friends had already left for headquarters, which left her here in Mitras. 

Whenever she wasn't meeting with reporters or some other entitled noble she spent a lot of her time like she was now: alone in the library. She had been thinking alot about her father's last wishes for her. Now that the truth is out about the real royal bloodline a lot of people had questions about who King Reiss was. People looked to her for the answers which is kind of ridiculous. After all, she had only figured out she was royal a few days ago. But still, this was her family after all.

The power to control the Titans. It almost makes her angry. What sick God would give such an omniscient power to a pathetic, selfish being like herself? Her half-sister, Frieda, had the ability to erase her memories, and yet was powerless against the suffering of our people or the aching loneliness she'd felt as a child. It just didn't make sense to her. There must be a way. To control the Titans without becoming one, it was in her blood.

Despite all her time searching, there was virtually nothing in the library about the Reiss family she didn't already know. If anything the books she read about Titans were outdated compared to the knowledge they had now. The only significant thing she learned was in the cellar when her father told her injecting spinal fluid into her blood was enough to turn her into a titan. 

If spinal fluid was what turned people into titans surely it could do more. She would have to talk to Hange about it when they returned. 

"Turn people back with spinal fluid . . . or maybe control them . . . ?"

There's a sudden dull rapping on the wooden desk she's seated at, "Someone mentioned you might be in here."

Startled, Historia jerks her head up from the Titan book she was staring at. She's greeted with Jean's boyish face, planted with a slight smirk, as he sheepishly sets down a small vase of flowers. 

"Jean!" The queen greets him with a warm smile, "I didn't know you were coming. It's nice to see you again. Are you here alone?"

"Yes. Actually I'm just passing by. The military is holding a memorial for all the regiments. I guess it's supposed to break the tension between the scouts and military police after everything that's happened."

"Oh, I never heard about that."

"Yeah, figured I'd volunteer. Someone has to check up on you." He remarks with a quirk, "It must be lonely up here all by yourself."

"You guys worry too much." Historia points to the vase of flowers at the corner of the desk, "And these, you brought too?"

"Actually, I brought these for you."

The blond gives him a puzzled look. Her face must have turned sullen because Jean quickly begins to piece up the conversation. "All this queen stuff must be sudden for you, and things have been pretty tense lately. We've all been really surprised by how you've been handling it. Not that that's a bad thing!" He pauses, "I just thought . . ." The words fall silent as Historia stares blankly. Embarrassed, Jean's ears tint a shade darker before stammering, "I just want you to know whatever you're going through you don't have to keep it all to yourself. When we lost Marco during Trost, that's all I could think about for months. I still think about it. So, if you want to come to the ceremony you can take these for Ymir."

She'd frowned down at the vase of perfectly formed flowers. Somehow, collected in the uniform pallet of white carnations and lilies, she catches a glimpse of a single, pink periwinkle hidden in the floral. Nearby, light from a window bounces rays of the vibrant color back into the clear, vase water until it dances on the wall behind. 

Why did she never think about getting flowers for her? What would be the point of a grave for a girl no one would mourn but her because no one had known her like she did? Ymir . . . was dead? Historia felt her head buzzing. Why did Jean have to come to her like this? She thought the subtle ache in her chest was hurt enough—her contemptment to faze at the edges in another's story—but this was far worse to be split open and ripped apart at the seams all while being burned in the solid gaze of another. Historia squeezes her eyes shut and draws a calm breath to stop her quickening heartbeat, "Thank you Jean, but we don't know if Ymir is dead."

"Sorry. I know but I saw they put her name on the casualties list—"

"They shouldn't have." Historia snaps, more harshly than intended.

As she turns away he places a ginger hand on her shoulder, "I'm not saying you're wrong. It's your choice. Why don't you at least consider—"

"Seriously, Jean, what do you want from me?"

"You don't have to go through this alone—"

"Ymir's not dead!" Historia suddenly blurts, hitting Jean's hand away, face turned into a scowl, "Don't pretend. You have no idea what it's been like."

Jean's confusion quickly turns to retaliation, "I have no idea what it's like?!" He finds himself raising his voice, "You're not the only one who's lost people, you know!"

"She left me! If you're telling me she would rather die than stay with me then that was a choice she made." The pressure in her eyes grows at each word that fumbles out of her, "So, just leave it."

"I wasn't trying to make you upset." He gives a defeated look before pacing a few steps away, picking up the vase as he goes, "I'll just give these to someone else."

At that, Historia, staring with a trace of scorn at the empty space where the vase was, turns in on herself while hot, wet tears start to streak down her face. 

Chapter Text

Bertholdt and Ymir settled into a peaceful silence. Neither were interested in starting a conversation. Ymir was just glad he had stopped crying. It was dark out. After a while, the sound of the crashing waves became background noise, and soon after, lulled Ymir into a drows.  She hadn't slept peacefully in days it seemed like. The quiet slapping of water and steady rocking of the boat was almost peaceful then. Unable to hold her eyelids open anymore, she nodded off into a dreamless sleep. 

"Ymir! Wake up!" 

"Huh…Bertholdt? What is it?" The black shape of Bertholdt's lanky frame came into view. By the way he was shaking, she could tell something bad had happened. 

"Did you hear that?" His eyes darted off into the shadowy deck behind them. "I think that was Reiner."

Bertholdt suddenly stood and faced into the deck before she could protest. Still drowsy from her sleep she quickly got up to look where he'd gone, but her stomach dropped. From the empty deck where Bertholdt disappeared she heard the distant shouting of soldiers.

"Bert-" She shouted after him. No response. Could it be possible they were messing with her? Then again, Bertholdt wouldn't joke about something like this. After a short period, her curiosity got the better of her and she walked cautiously down the deck. Just then, Something metallic smacked the back of her head causing her vision to go black as her body fell to the floor. 

When she awoke, she was somewhere else entirely. Not only somewhere else, her hands were tied around her back as well. 

How long had she been out? She quickly sat up and examined her surroundings.

It was a cell and by the swaying of the room it seemed to be on a boat. There was something off though. The walls looked less beaten and the make different, maybe even bigger as well.

How could that make sense though? Surely she was still headed to Marley? They had to be close by now considering how many times she'd gone unconscious since they departed.

Bertholdt and Reiner were nowhere to be seen. The only people she could see were a pair of Marleyan soldiers sitting by a table with a deck of cards. She shuffled, as best she could with her hands tied, to her feet.

"Hey you!" She tried to shout but it came out as more of a croak than anything. When she was met with silence she spoke again, "Hey! Don't ignore me!" 

One of the soldiers gave her an idle glance before returning back to his game. 

"What's going on?" She demands, "Where are we?" 

Silence. Beyond the confines of the cabin walls she could hear the muffled creaking of the boat against water. The back of her head was starting to throb. Oh yeah, somebody hit me. After a few more unsuccessful attempts at getting the guards attention she gave up and turned around to lay on her side, staring hard at the back of the cell. She tried to remember the last thing she saw: that image of the vast ocean under the moonlight. Perhaps it would take her mind off this stupid situation she was in. But the image didn't come, instead she suddenly felt very small and the silence of the cabin washed over her ears. She became painfully aware that this was now the second time she would be shoved in this cell and the second time she dared take advantage of something that wasn't hers and paid the price. Something wet began to prickle her eyes and her head pounded. 

"Damn headache ,” She muttered, blinking away her tears.

The sound of grating metal against stone  jolted her out of her thoughts. As she spun her head over her shoulder, she came face to face with the bottom of a boot. 

"Get up, Island Devil."

Ymir scowled. That was a new one. This soldier was not the same two that were guarding her. She cursed herself. She was getting slow. She hadn't heard him come in at all. Slowly, she sat up. 

"Where am I?"

The butt of the soldier's boot flew smack into the side of her face, knocking her onto her side.

"Did I tell you to speak, Devil?!" The unnamed soldier shouted. 

Ymir tasted iron. It was hot. She was already healing it seemed. The man above her shook. Who the hell is this guy?

"I'm from Marley." She muttered.

"What was that?" He snapped.

Her gaze hardened as she rose to her feet. "I am Ymir. I'm from Marley."

The guard seemed perplexed for a moment. Then scowled. "No, you're not." 

Suddenly, one of the guards from before appeared from behind him. He quickly muttered something into his ear, pointing at her. 

His face darkened somehow even more. "Oh, so you're the traitorous bastard who stole the Jaw Titan." 

Ymir didn't want to back away, but the man started to approach her suddenly. "Get back!" She shouted. 

The man laughed, "Oh look here, you think you're hot stuff cause you have some stolen power? Well, you can't use that here." 

She felt her back hit the cell wall. He was enjoying tormenting her, and it enraged her. "I don't need a titan or arms to beat your ass," she spat.

He laughs, "Try me," the soldier throws his arm back to punch her in the face. She easily reads it, and ducks quickly out the way. The crack of knuckles against metal tells her he traded his target for the wall behind her. 

"Fucking bitch!" He shouts. A snicker slips from her mouth which only angers the man even more.

"What the hell are you two looking at?" He barks. "Grab her!" The two guards hesitate for a moment as if they want to protest before approaching Ymir.

"Leave me alone." She growled. Somehow her situation just keeps getting worse. One of the guards goes to grab her. She threw her leg out but the guard catches it and shoves her away. Unable to fight back with her hands tied up, the two men pin her down. 

As this happens, two more soldiers burst into the room. "What the hell was that?" One of them shouts. 

"This crazy bitch attacked me!" The soldier clutching his bloodied fist shouts. The two new soldiers crowd into the already cramped cell. The three of them now look down on her with expressions of pure hatred. One of them swings his leg straight into her gut. She tries to dodge, but with the guards restraining her it lands onto her rib cage making her double over, gasping for air.

The man with the bloodied fist, in her crouched state, took advantage and placed the bottom of his foot on the back of her head, slamming her face into the ground. 

Suddenly, someone grabbed hair, yanking her head up once again. It was the same man, "What a pity one of the nine was wasted on scum like you," He snarled. One after another, they went on trading kicks and punches until Ymir couldn't keep track anymore where the blood was coming from. 

***

It was bright. Too bright. She wanted to go back to sleep. Anything was better than being awake. She couldn't feel a thing, and something wet was trickling down her ear. Just as her eyes began to shut, a shadowy figure appeared above her. She couldn't make out anything about them—except for bright, yellow hair. She tried to focus, but her mind and eyes betrayed her. 

"Hic-" Her throat swelled up. The person seemed to be saying something, but she couldn't hear. Long strands of blond hair and a pair of blue eyes materialized above her, but still her vision became more clouded. It had to be. Her eyes danced and vision pixelated as she fought to make out the person.

Suddenly, the image before her morphed into one she had seen before: a person with a gentle smile and a look of relief reflected in eyes she had pictured a million times. My name is… "His…toria" Ymir choked. A large hand lifted the back of her head, and her vision faded to black once again.

Chapter Text

After their departure, at Pieck's suggestion, Zeke excused himself to rest. He closed his eyes, but did not sleep. His mind kept him awake. The island developed more than he expected, though still far behind Marley, with little assistance they could easily progress to meet Marley's slow technological advancements. It wasn't surprising how their idiotic plan to send children to capture the Founder failed with how little they know about the island. Now, Marley clutched onto its last three titans like lifelines; the fact they had let him come to Paradis for that short time was a miracle itself. No, he wouldn't be back there for a long time now.

The cabin was dark save for a small lamp and the dull light from the bud of a cigarette. The smoke from it swirled, hovering around the glow of the fluorescent lamp nearby causing curious images to dance off the walls. As they neared their destination, Zeke's thoughts strung along and compiled in a muddled, tangled mess. They would arrive soon, and he mused it was better to be unconscious than awake when they arrived. As his eyelids slowly drooped, his thoughts began to slow until his mind was silent. 

A sudden, loud rapping noise came from the cabin door, jolting him from his peaceful dosing. He furrowed his brow over his eyes in an attempt to keep the world shut out for a moment longer. Perhaps if he stayed quiet they would give up and let him sleep.

"Zeke! Open up!" A female voice called.

It was a familiar voice, "Pieck?" He muttered, squinting, half expecting the door to swing open. If it were anyone else at the door he probably would have gotten up immediately, but he was sure Pieck would not punish him for his lethargy whatever the urgency may be. He shut his eyes once more basking in the silence. For about three seconds then another series of knocking came, shocking his ears.

“It’s me. Get up. You need to hear this,” Pieck called again.

Zeke’s eyes stretched open then. Why would Pieck need him so urgently? Slowly his mind started to wake, “Hear what?”

“Open this goddamn door, Zeke,” she barked, slamming the door again for good measure.

“Alright, alright,” he grumbled. Sitting up, he pawed for his glasses. It wasn't like he could see well in the dark anyway, but tossing his hand in the dark he felt the cold metal handle of the door and pulled it open. In front of him revealed, in fact, Pieck standing in the hall with an irritated look. 

“Good morning. You stink,” taking note of the smoke wafting out of his room.

“What is it? Are we in Marley?” He replied.

“The Armor titan and Colossal titan just returned. They have a prisoner.”

His eyes widened, disregarding the sting from the smoke, “What?”

“They’re headed to Marley at this moment.”

“Who gave them authorization to return? Didn't that boat already leave?” If I had just waited a couple of hours . He charged past Pieck down the hall not waiting for an answer.

“Where are you going?” Pieck yelled after him, barely keeping up with Zeke’s large steps. 

“Turning us around.”

***

All things considered, Bertholdt was grateful. Everything had turned out okay. They were going home after four years. At least some of us. 

He sighed. Ymir had fallen asleep about an hour ago. He wanted to ask her more about why she did it, but internally he knew. He had asked for this—for someone to save him. But now that he had, he was condemning another person who had done nothing wrong. 

All the people on Paradis, Marley, they were all the same, yet they saw him as a traitor while they imprisoned and tortured Annie. He’d viewed himself that way too, as a monster, along with the people he killed. He figured out long ago that he was nothing more than the Colossal Titan, someone to be used as a weapon of war. That was his role; he couldn't escape it. Still, there was something inside him that said that wasn't true. Something that other people saw—people like Ymir.

Underneath where he sat the floorboards rocked and just over the bow of the boat a small bright yellow dot, pierced through the cloudy, dark horizon. The small rays of light slightly warmed the air around him. Enough to shelter him from the chill of the previous night, but leaving him grasping for the temporary glimpses of heat. His mind drifted off to someone left on that island. The person he wanted to be with most right now. Reiner assured him that what Armin said was probably a bluff. Annie was the better one out of all of them. She would be safe. Still, Armin’s words echoed in his mind making it so his heart weighed heavy in his chest. She should be here, and he vowed to himself to get her back.

It was then when the sound of a distant male voice coming from the back of the boat.

“Huh?” Bertholdt scrambled to his feet. The distant voice screamed again.

He strained his hearing, soaking in the sounds of splashing water and his own blood pulsing in his ears. Was it possible he was just hearing things? After a long period of silence he decided to check in anyway.

"Rein—AH" Suddenly, the boat jolted backwards sending him flying on his ass. The sound of metal grating on metal shook loudly against his eardrums and sent vibrations through the floor. 

It came again. Someone screaming. No, this time there was more than just one person.

Quickly, he went to wake Ymir. “Ymir! Wake up!” he demanded, shaking her.

Grogly, she lifted her head, “Huh…Bertholdt? What i—”

“Did you hear that? I think that was Reiner.” 

What should I do? Maybe we hit something. But then, why the screaming?  He jumped up determined to help his friend, and ran straight down the pitch black deck. What the hell happened? They're on a boat in the middle of nowhere. His shoes sprinted against the deck, the salty ocean spray piercing his face. As he rounded the corner, the shouting became louder. That's when he spotted it: another ship, and a much bigger one. They were boarding—no, not boarding—piracy.

“Reiner!” He yelled. Up ahead he spotted Reiner being overwhelmed by a cluster of men. Without thinking he sprang forward, appearing by Reiner's side. Grabbing one of the uniformed men by the shoulder, he threw him to the ground. As he did, another soldier flung past him, flipping over the railing and splashing in the water. 

"Surrender now! You are not authorized to pilot this ship!" One of the men barked. 

"We're the warriors sent to capture the founding titan," Reiner argued while dodging attacks, "we have a prisoner!"

A deafening crack reverberated throughout the ship. Bertholdt blinked as Reiner's body jolted backwards, blood welling up in his right shoulder, staining his shirt. 

Gunpowder smoke pillowed through the air stinging his eyes. He was grateful to see steam already rising from his comrades' wound. Instinctively, he moved in front of Reiner's bent over form to shield him only to come face to face with the same still smoking rifle barrel. 

"That's enough!" A voice shouts from the other boat. Heads turned toward the noise. A tall, blond haired man was peering down at them, eyes hidden behind a pair of circular lenses. 

Behind him, a hand gripped his shirt for support, "What the hell are you doing, Zeke?! We need to return to Marley! We have a prisoner!" Reiner strained.

Zeke easily jumped the distance between the bow of the boat and the railing of theirs to meet them, "Congratulations on being alive," he stated rather plainly. 

He felt Reiner begin the step forward and push against his back as a way of getting around him, but Bertholdt stood firmly. "Cut the shit," Reiner barked, "Marley thinks we're dead don't they? We need to go back now and share what we've learned!" By now he could tell the soldiers were growing impatient. Zeke the most as he mutters a brief command to one of the soldiers, mobilizing them to start scanning the ship. A group of soldiers swarmed the two of them, restraining them.

As Zeke watched the two's futile attempts at escaping, he pulled out a cigarette from his pocket, lighting it, "You can relax — "

"Are you kidding me?" Reiner shouted angrily, "You invaded our ship and shot—"

"You were disobeying orders," Zeke states, "It's been a long time, Reiner, let's catch up.”

***

The sun shone brightly through the cockpit windows. Reiner and Bertholdt explained everything to Zeke from the moment they left to when they almost escaped with the Founder. Though it was years of their life, it only took until the afternoon to explain the important parts. The whole time, Zeke didn’t ask many questions and instead stared intently, listening. After they finished talking, he paused to light a cigarette. 

“So, you think capturing the Jaw Titan after losing it is somehow going to make up for your failure.” he surmised behind a puff of smoke.

Reiner clenched his jaw. He knew he had failed, but hearing it he couldn’t find anything to say. Before he could reply Betholdt interrupted, “We didn’t capture her, she went willingly," his voice trailing off. 

Reiner glowered at Bertholdt who averted his gaze, staring at the floor. He understood wanting to be honest. But what was the point of making them look worse? "It's my fault," Reiner stated, "we should have left that place a long time ago."

“No,” Zeke drawled, jutting the bud of his cigarette at the two of them, "you two, are done running away." 

"We didn't run away," Reiner corrected, "we had a plan and we almost succeeded if it wasn't for Y—"

"Her?" He questioned, raising his brows, a chuckle in his voice, "if it wasn’t for the girl who helped you? Is that what I'm hearing?"

Reiner, growing impatient with Zeke's condensing attitude, retorted, "she was never helping us!" He barked, glancing at Bertholdt, "I don't know what Bertholdt thinks that bitch did, but all she cares about is protecting Christa, that's why she came with us. Her life, in exchange for her protection." He finished plainly, eyeing Bertholdt who simply frowned at him but didn't argue.

As Zeke listened, more smoke accumulated in the relatively small cockpit, and his figure grew more unreadable. "Well, let's see her then."

“What?” Reiner and Bertholdt said in unison.
“You heard me,” he replied before directing at the soldiers standing near the door, “go get the prisoner. If she’s willing to be captured, she can handle some questions." The few soldiers nodded curtly and exited, so only the three of them were left in the room.

“She’s not going to talk,” Reiner protested once the door had clicked behind the last soldier, “besides she won’t know anymore than we do.”

Zeke, ignoring him all together, turned toward them, his face suddenly appearing sullen, “did that Eren Jeager ever tell you his father’s name?” 

Reiner, looking puzzled at the odd question, scrunched his brows in thought before obliging, “Yeah, I think he said his name was Grisha.”

As the words left Reiner's mouth, the smoke in the room seemed to gather all at once, changing the atmosphere entirely. For a split second, the room went silent until even the sound of a burning cigarette could be heard, “We’re going back," Zeke ordered. 

Both Bertholdt and Reiner stared at him in shock, but it was Reiner who spoke up first, “Hold on,” he argued, “we’re already halfway to Marley we might as well—”

“Not true,” he stated coolly. 

“What?” Reiner's eyes widened. 

“While you were busy catching us up, I had our captain direct us toward Paradis," Zeke replied.

Reiner stood up suddenly, rushing toward the cockpit window, frantic eyes searching for any sign Zeke could be lying, however no matter where he looked the ocean was an endless blue stretched in all directions. 

“No,” Reiner muttered through his teeth, gripping uselessly at the mash of buttons and dials he was completely ignorant of.

Bertholdt, who had remained quiet until then, spoke up, “Why Zeke? Did you not just hear what we said? We barely made it out ourselves.”

With the two of them sitting down across from one another, one would assume Zeke was the taller of the two, with how Bertholdt was slouched over. In fact, even though both Reiner and Bertholdt had grown significantly since the last time Zeke had seen them, they hadn’t changed one bit, he thought. 

“You were children then with no knowledge of what you were getting into—”

It was swift. One moment the cigarette was encased lazily between two of Zeke’s fingers, the next it lay on the ground only to be crushed under Reiners boot, its aggravated red embers suffocating against the cold metal floor. Reiner’s eyes bore furiously into Zeke’s as he stood towering over him. Taking his collar into two clenched fists, Reiner shouted in his face, “Are you crazy?! We’re not going back! We lost—"

Suddenly, the door busted open and a pile of soldiers piled in.

"Zeke! Come quick! The prisoner, she's dying!" 

***

White. That was the first thing she remembered seeing. Perhaps she died—that would explain why she felt oddly at peace. 

Slowly, she moved her hands to her face, feeling a rough fabric grazing against her arms. Someone had placed a blanket on her. In fact, she seemed to be in some sort of bed. Her sides ached as she attempted briefly to sit up, before surrendering, opting only to rub her eyes, gradually restoring the colors and shadows in her vision. When she opened them, she found herself staring at a brightly lit metallic ceiling. A male voice spoke, breaking the silence, "You're awake." 

Ymir whipped her neck towards the noise, her heart shooting up her chest. A blonde bearded man sat hunched over a chair at the end of the room. He stared at her through a pair of circular glasses. It gave her the chills. 

“Who are you?” she croaked, finding it hard to speak. 

The man ignored her for a moment, as if he had not heard her, before rising and walking toward her. Ymir quickly sat up, feeling rather vulnerable. As the strange man approached Ymir jerked herself away, pressing herself against the cold wall, ignoring the creaking of her bones and protesting her muscles. The stranger sat down on the edge of the bed and Ymir could smell the pungent scent of cigarette smoke wafting from him.  

“My name is Zeke,” he said, “we’ve met before.” 

Ymir scowled at him, desperately sifting through the shadows of her memory. Maybe she had and simply forgot. But she was sure, this man seemed completely unfamiliar.

“I may look a little different then when I first appeared,” he chimed, a slight chuckle in his voice. Zeke smiled, slightly arching his lips, an expression she chose not to return.

“When?” she murmured.

“Utgard Castle.”  

Ymir’s eyes widened. “You’re the—”
“Beast titan,” he finished. 

Ymir’s heart pounded in her chest. Memories of that night rushing back. Nanaba, Gelgar, Henning, Lynne. Ripped to shreds. Pelted by stones. And her. She was prepared to die then. She should have. All because of the man sitting across the bed with her. 

“Tell me, Ymir. Who is Historia?” Zeke asked. 

Historia . That’s right. Images of the blonde flooded her mind. A gentle smile, a watery gaze. Ymir hated it. Hated that this stranger knew her name. Then, her stomach dropped. Because of me. She could have sworn. My name is . . . Unless, she hadn’t been hallucinating at all. The blonde figure she thought was Historia was him. 

Zeke watched her, noticing the fear crossing her face. “Reiner told me some interesting things,” he said, cleaning the lens of his glasses, “a girl with another name. A royal lineage.” Zeke continued to scan her, letting the words suspend in the air. Ymir remained still, though it appeared as if she was staring right through him. “It seems she only wanted to reveal herself to you,” he lamented, “Why’s that?” 

The cabin was silent. Ymir wracked her brain of any other memory of this man. Any reason as to why he would be so interested in Historia. It was clear to her that whatever his goals may be, he was only vested in himself. She was determined not to give anything away. She cursed Reiner. He promised to protect her, but here he was spouting everything he knew about Historia without a second thought. 

Zeke sighed loudly, interrupting her thoughts. “You know, Ymir is an illegal name in Marley,” he huffed, almost bored. "Frankly, you shouldn't exist. Unless Ymir isn't your real name."  

"Just by looking at you I can guess why you were banished and tormented," As Zeke spoke, his expression grew serious, his voice darker. He didn't have to say it. His eyes spoke it all. You were punished simply for the name you were given. "It takes a lot of guts, parading such a grand name. A sane person would have abandoned it by now—”

“What do you want?” Ymir interrupted.

Zeke smiled in a way that stopped at his eyes. “It's simple. I need to know how to help you.”

“I don't need—”

Suddenly the door to the small cabin bursted open, revealing a frantic Bertholdt. His eyes darted across the small room until they landed on the seated man. “ZEKE—” he barked. In a blink, he grabbed him, pulling him off the bed and to his feet.

“Enough games already! Let us go home,” Bertholdt's face scrunched up in a way that reminded her of their chase. Though he stood over Zeke, he was the one resembling a cornered animal.

“Really? Out of all the Warriors I expected this least from you,” Zeke gripped Bertholdt's fists which curled around his collar. 

It was so quick, Ymir wasn't sure if she had seen it all. Though Bertholdt had a good few inches on the blonde, Zeke, using the odd angle to his advantage, flipped the taller boy's arm and shoved it back into his chest, making him cry out in pain. 

Zeke's eyes had turned into something much colder. Bertholdt tried to pull away, but as he squirmed and jerked Zeke applied more pressure and panic grew on his face at the realization that he really might break his arm. He made a grab for Zeke's shoulder, but quickly found himself knocked to the floor.

“Would you really leave Annie behind to die on the island?” Zeke barked. As Ymir followed Zeke’s hand rise. The side of her face started to burn. She didn’t really have time to think about it. 

“Are you that much of a coward—” Zeke’s voice grated against her ears, causing an insufferable buzzing in her head. She just couldn’t stand it. Springing up from where she sat, she strained her arm forward until she caught his plunging limb.

***

“Christa, let's ditch this place,” Ymir crouched, speaking in a low voice so only the blonde could hear. “Come on. If we go now they won't notice and we'll be too far before they can catch us,” she spoke again, this time a little more urgent.

“Really Ymir, are you that much of a coward?” The shorter girl's face, which usually wore a worried expression, shifted to annoyance. Accusatory eyes reflected up at her. They darted between Ymir and over her shoulder at the lake where Nanaba and the others were resting the horses. They could be off again at any minute. If they were doing this it had to be now.  

“I'm not a coward, I just have a vested interest in not dying.” Ymir quickly grabbed the blonde by the arm and pulled her deeper into the tree line. “Let's go—”

“No Ymir!” Christa yelled, jerking her arm free, her high pitched voice stabbing her ears.

“Don't try and play a hero right now.”

“This has nothing to do with that,” Christa shouted, her face growing red. “People are relying on us. This is something I have to do.”

“You don't have to do anything actually,” Ymir grumbled. This conversation could easily last for hours if she knew her well enough. “Listen, you're not like everyone here. You're someone important. You wanna do something? How about you stay alive.”

Confusion passed briefly across the annoyed girl's face. “What? Because of my blood? Is that what you mean,” the blonde laughed as if waiting for your Ymir herself to shoot it down. “My family wants me dead. You know this. I'm nobody important,” as she spoke her face twitched and Ymir felt something burning, hot in her gut.

She hated it because it was true. She had no doubt in her mind that whatever Christa's situation may be, her existence was a curse that some people wanted more than anything to get rid of. 

Maybe Christa was just an ordinary person, and like anyone else wasn't she too born into a worthless existence brought about only by the careless mistakes of two foolish people. 

Still, for at least this moment, she had to forget all of that. Because she needed it. She needed it to not be true. Otherwise, she would never get Christa out of this hell hole. 

“No, you're important. Your family—why do you think they want you dead? Because you're a nobody that has no power? They’re scared of you, obviously.”

“Then why? Why keep me alive?”

Ymir was silent for a moment. Before shrugging, “maybe you're too special to kill.”

***

Ymir…

Wake up!

Chapter Text

Historia squinted at the blurry dark ink, barely legible words flooded into the parchment following the endless scratching of her pen. 

At the beginning of her long night she thought by opening the desk window, the moonlight might offer the slightest bit of light. But there wasn’t even a single star out tonight. A dark canopy of clouds covered the night sky. It had been unusually rainy.

Ymir loved rain.

She decided to keep the curtains closed. How many hours had it been? Glancing at the dying candle on the corner of her little desk, a tiny flame sprouted from a laughably small nub of wax. Her eyes felt like heavy plates in her head. 

She couldn’t sleep now. She'd finally gotten approved to meet with the nobles next week to discuss her orphanage, but between her stupid royal appearances and meetings there wasn’t time to put her proposal together.

Her mind raced in circles. The orphanage, her duties, the nobles’ expectations… I don’t even know what I want anymore.

She pushed the thoughts aside and focused on the paperwork in front of her, scribbling as fast as she could. The words on the page were barely coherent, but she kept writing. Maybe if she just kept writing, she’d exhaust herself enough to sleep. But no—her head throbbed. Her fingers felt stiff. The candlelight flickered, threatening to die out at any moment.

Her mind flashed back to an earlier request she had made.

“Can I have one of those military lamps?” she had asked, thinking it would help her get through these endless nights of work.

“Your highness doesn’t need one,” they had replied dismissively. “You’re fine with candlelight.”

But the pain in her temples told her they were wrong.

Frustrated, she slammed the quill onto the desk, feeling the sting of tears pricking her eyes. Her brain was numb and limbs felt heavy. She rested her cheek against the cool surface of the desk, breathing slowly to calm herself, eyelids growing heavier by the second.

Her eyes fell onto an envelope at the edge of her desk, slightly crumpled from the careless way she’d tossed it aside a week ago. It was from her grandmother. Instinctively she reached out, folding the letter in her hand, painfully aware of the contents inside.

I need to meet with you. Your grandfather is dead.

Historia’s chest tightened. An all too familiar glaze fell across her face. One that her friends knew as a ghost. One that she knew as herself. 

Truthfully, after her memories of Frieda had been uncovered, her recollection of her grandparents had become much colder. She couldn’t even remember the last time they had talked. Although her grandfather had been much kinder to her. Letting her sleep on the floor by their bed during the nights she couldn’t sleep. 

He changed the will after learning you’d been crowned. He left it all to you.

That part surprised her. She let out a bitter laugh. When she first read that she thought they might’ve had a change of heart. Maybe there was a chance. She could still have a family. 

She let the letter fall from her fingers, burying her face in the warmth of her own arms.

The farm was perched on a gentle hill, its sprawling fields rolling out like a patchwork quilt of green and gold. From the carriage window, Historia could see the swaying crops catching the afternoon light, the occasional gust of wind rippling through them like waves on the sea. The sight stirred something deep within her, a pang of nostalgia tinged with warmth.

She remembered running through those fields as a child, her bare feet brushing against the soft grass, the sun warm on her back. Back then, the farm had been her entire world. A lonely one, yes, but not entirely devoid of joy. Frieda had been there. Historia could almost hear the echoes of their laughter.

When she stepped down from the carriage and onto the worn dirt path leading to the house, she almost felt excited. The farmhouse stood at the center of the property, its wooden beams weathered and gray from years of rain and sun. The thatched roof was intact, but the shutters hung at odd angles, their paint long since chipped away. 

She took a deep breath, the scent of earth and hay filling her lungs. This was where it had all begun, for better or worse. As her boots crunched against the gravel path, she caught sight of the old oak tree near the back of the house. Its branches stretched wide and strong, just as they always had. A memory surfaced of Frieda sitting beneath it, a book in her lap, smiling up at her with that patient, understanding look that only she could give.

Historia’s lips curled into a faint smile. The warmth of those memories carried her to the front door. For a moment, she hesitated, her hand hovering over the handle. Then, with a soft exhale, she pushed it open.

As soon as she stepped inside, the warmth she felt shattered in an instant. The farmhouse, which had seemed so alive in her memories, now felt cold and hollow. The air smelled faintly of dust and damp wood. Shadows stretched across the uneven floorboards, the dim light from the small windows barely cutting through the darkness.

“Is that you, girl?” her grandmother’s voice called from deeper within the house. Historia flinched. That voice, it was like she’d forgotten it, but still her skin crawled and muscles tightened. 

She slowly walked into the living room. Two plush chairs cornered the unlit hearth. They weren’t as big as she remembered them being as a little girl. Still as her grandmother’s small frame came into view, those dusty chairs engulfed her.

“I got your letter,” Historia began, her voice smaller than intended. “I’m sorry about grandfather.” At that her grandmother’s eyes finally acknowledged her, sweeping once—twice across her small frame. Her eyes narrowed, face remaining completely fixed as if she wasn’t quite sure who she was looking at. 

Historia shifted in place instinctively. How long had it been?’She was nowhere near the same little girl that lived here all those years ago. And yet, under her grandmother’s cold gaze, she felt herself falling on old instincts. 

“I wanted to talk to you about… the farm,” Historia continued hesitantly. “It’s so isolated out here. The winters are harsher than ever, and with grandfather.” she could feel herself rambling. “I thought you might like to come live in Mitras. The inner wall has—”

Her grandmother's lips tightened into a thin line, “the inner wall?” Her voice was low and stern. “That place where you and that cursed family of yours play god while the rest of us scrape by?”

Historia flinched, “No,” she protested. “I only thought… you might want a better life. People to take care of you. I just want—”

“What? Take the farm from me? Erase every last trace of who we were before your mother ruined everything?” Her grandmother’s bony hands gripped the armrests of her chair, trembling with the effort. “The worst thing my daughter ever did was associate with your father’s cursed family. She brought shame upon us all, and you’re no different.”

“But we’re still family…” The words spilled out before Historia could stop them. She didn’t even know why she said it; maybe she wanted it to be true. Maybe she was trying to convince herself as much as her grandmother.

The reaction was instant. Her grandmother’s face hardened, the wrinkles around her mouth deepening into a scowl. “No, we’re not,” she said, her voice like ice. “Your father made sure of that.

Something hard formed in her throat. Her fingers tightened around her cloak, blinking rapidly, fighting the wetness forming there. This was a mistake.

“If the farm means that much to you,” Historia whispered out, her voice barely steady, “then it’s yours. I’ll make it official.”

Her grandmother’s eyes narrowed suspiciously. “Why?”

“Because I don’t want to fight with you,” Historia replied, her voice barely above a whisper. “You’ve already lost so much. I don’t want to take anything else from you.”

For a moment, the room was silent except for the faint creak of the chair as her grandmother shifted. Historia thought she saw something flicker across the old woman’s face—something almost like doubt—but it was gone as quickly as it came.

“Good,” her grandmother said curtly. “You should’ve done that from the start.”

Historia nodded, not trusting herself to speak. She stood, smoothing out the folds of her cloak, and turned to leave.

As she palmed the cold front door, she stopped. Her jaw unclenching and clenching again. Then she swallowed and stepped outside, ducking her face from the harsh evening breeze all the way to the carriage.

“Your highness…”

“Your highness—” She awoke to one of her maids shaking her awake. 

Historia stirred groggily, sleep still clinging to her senses. Her head throbbed and eyelids were like cement, but she forced them open. Her maid opened the window curtains, letting in the bright sunlight.

“Your Highness, it’s already late morning,” the maid said, exasperated. “You’re still at your desk… again.”

Historia wiped a hand across her face, ignoring the bit of wetness on her cheek. “I was—working,” she muttered, her voice thick.

Her maid shook her head. “You need rest, Your Highness.” The maid fretted with Historias unkempt bed, muttering to herself before disappearing into the large closet.

“You have a wedding to attend today,” the maid’s muffled voice came again.

Historia’s heart jolted, suddenly feeling awake. “I thought today was my day off?”

The maid reappeared again, laying a modest dress on her table. “Yes, so today you can attend the wedding,” she said with a stern smile, one that told her not to push her. 

“I can’t today,” Historia protested, the maid’s smile faded. Sasha’s birthday. “A friend invited me to her birthday.” 

The maid’s lips pressed into a thin line before a polite smile took its place, “A declination would be quite disrespectful to the Lords.” She makes a quick glance towards the scatterings of papers on her small desk. “Your cooperation would certainly put the nobles at ease for their new demanding queen.” Her words were painfully short.

Historia felt something bubble up in her throat. Games. She’s tired of playing games. She took a deep breath, her jaw clenching tightly. She glanced down at her proposal. She had gotten the idea for it the very day she heard about the undercity and Levi believed in her of all people.

She’d play the game. Just a little longer until she could fulfill her promise. 

“Fine then,” she said flatly, putting on a fake smile. 

The wedding took place in a grand ballroom. White pillars decorated the hall, encasing the large room that challenged even the halls in Mitras. Historia sat near the head of the table near the bride, her polite smile firmly in place as she exchanged pleasantries with the other nobles. Looking at the array of food she could just imagine Sasha’s face. Especially considering how rare meat was, yet it seemed they’d spared no expense. She suddenly understood why they had wanted her here so badly. A wedding this big and no queen to show for it? No, she wasn’t the only one looking for favors.

She glanced at the ornate clock on the wall, its hands ticking past six. Sasha’s birthday party would be starting soon. Her fingers tightened around her glass as she fought the urge to stand up and leave.

Just as she was about to excuse herself, Lady Anna approached, her wedding gown shimmering in the candlelight. The bride’s cheeks were flushed with happiness and champagne.

“Your Highness,” Anna said, her voice warm but formal. “I wanted to thank you again for attending. It means so much to me and my family.”

Historia rose from her seat, offering a gracious smile. “It was my pleasure, Lady Anna. Your wedding has been beautiful. I wish you and your husband every happiness.” Her words echoed in her own head, like they were being spoken back to herself.

Anna’s smile softened, and for a moment, she seemed almost… sorry. “Your Highness,” she began, “I know how difficult it must be for you, balancing your duties as queen with… everything else. I just wanted to say that I’ll be praying for you.”

Historia blinked, “Praying for me?”

“Yes,” Anna said, her gaze earnest. “I’ll be praying that you find a good husband. Someone who can stand by your side and share the burden of leadership. You deserve that kind of happiness.”

Historia’s smile faltered for a fraction of a second before she recovered. “That’s… very kind of you. Thank you.”

Anna nodded, seemingly satisfied, and moved on to greet her other guests. Historia stood there for a moment, feeling her face flush. A husband? When was the last time she’d even thought about a man? Was that what was expected of her now? To just get married and leave her duties to someone else. No one really had the courage to bring up that sort of thing with her. Not since… 

By seven the wedding reception had shifted into full swing. A small string quartet played in the corner while guests filled the dance floor, twirling and laughing under the new crystal chandeliers. They gave off an iridescent glow courtesy of the material recovered from Rod’s basement. 

She glanced at the clock again. It was past seven. Sasha’s party had already started.

A flurry of high pitched squeals and laughs came from the middle of the room. A large gathering of young women grouped there. The bride stood at the end of the floor holding a large bouquet of flowers. 

Historia stayed seated, her hands folded neatly in her lap, but she couldn’t escape the expectant looks from the other nobles.

“Your Highness,” one of the younger noblewomen called, her voice teasing. “Aren’t you going to join us? You never know—you might catch the bouquet!”

Historia forced a laugh, shaking her head. “Oh, no, I couldn’t possibly.”

The noblewoman pouted playfully, but Historia’s refusal only seemed to draw more attention. She could feel the weight of their stares, their curiosity and judgment pressing down on her. A queen without a husband, they were probably thinking. How strange. How sad.

Anna, however, didn’t press her. Instead, she gave Historia a small, knowing smile before turning back to the crowd. “Ready, ladies?” she called, raising the bouquet high. The room erupted in cheers as she tossed the flowers into the air.

Historia took the opportunity to slip away. She moved quietly next to the walls of the room, towards the exit. 

There was no one to stop her. Her carriage waited at the gate, the driver jerking awake when she suddenly climbed inside.

“To Sasha’s party,” she instructed. Her driver gave a curt nod before tugging the reins. 

She was grateful her coachman didn’t ask any questions. Not that she expected him to. Still, the Queen showing up to a random bar would be a surprise to anyone.  

As they rode the sky grew darker and the roads more narrow. Through the barred windows of the carriage, a few curious children caught her gaze before she quickly threw on a dark hood. 

The carriage shuddered to a half in front of a tall, hunched building. Lights flickered and music poured out of the several small, boarded windows to the bar. From the road she could faintly make out the familiar sound of Connie and Jean’s bantering. 

Historia quickly thanked the coach and hurried into the bar. Ignoring the curious stares of a few drunk pedestrians. 

The moment Historia pushed through the tavern doors, the warmth of laughter and music flooded her senses. The air was thick with the scent of ale, roasted meat, and the faint tang of sweat from dancing bodies. For a moment, she hesitated—her hood still drawn up—but then a familiar voice shrieked over the noise.

"HISTORIA!" 

Sasha barreled into her, nearly knocking her over in a bone-crushing hug. "You came! I thought you were stuck at some stuffy noble thing!"  

Historia laughed, the tension in her shoulders easing. "I was, but I couldn't miss your birthday."  

Sasha pulled back, eyes wide with excitement—until her nose twitched. She froze, sniffing the air like a bloodhound. "Wait… is that…?"  

Historia smirked and reached into the folds of her cloak, pulling out a small, carefully wrapped parcel. "Wedding food. Thought you might appreciate it more than those nobles did."  

Sasha tore into it like a starving animal, barely pausing to breathe as she devoured the slice of roast beef inside. "OH MY WALLS. YOU'RE THE BEST QUEEN EVER."  

Connie, swaying slightly from drink, slung an arm around Sasha’s shoulders. “Oh I know! The queen's taste tester. You'd be sure good at that!”

Sasha gasped. "Historia, PLEASE. Make me your official meat inspector. I’ll protect you from poison! Or—or bad seasoning!"  

Historia giggled, warmth spreading in her chest. This was what she needed—familiar faces, stupid jokes, the kind of easy camaraderie she hadn’t felt since…  

Her smile faltered for a fraction of a second before she forced it back.  

But not fast enough.  

Jean, leaning against the bar with a half-empty mug, raised an eyebrow. "You good, Your Majesty?"  

"Fine," she said quickly, smiling extra wide for good measure. 

Between the awkward silence that followed she noticed how most everyone at the bar was staring at her. Sasha and Connie quickly ushered her to where Eren, Armin, and Mikasa sat at a corner table, watching the chaos. 

"Glad you could make it," Armin said warmly. As Historia slides into the seat next to Mikasa.   

The group fell into easy conversation, but slowly a hollow pit formed in her stomach. 

At some point, Sasha dragged Connie and Jean onto the makeshift dance floor, where they promptly started a drunken rendition of an old cadet marching song. Eren and Armin followed, leaving Historia alone with Mikasa.  

Silence settled between them. Not uncomfortable, but heavy.  

"You’re quiet," Mikasa observed.  

Historia traced the rim of her untouched drink. "Long day."  

Mikasa waited, her expression still. 

"...My grandfather died," Historia said finally, the words slipping out before she could stop them.  

At that her eyes soften slightly. "I’m sorry."  

"It’s fine," Historia lied. "We weren’t close."  

But that wasn’t entirely true. He’d been kind, in his own way. The only one who actually looked her in the eye. And now he was gone, along with any hope there was for her broken family.  

She took a swig of her drink. Then another.  

The alcohol burned, but it was a good burn—one that dulled the edges of everything else.  

By the third drink, the room had started to tilt pleasantly. By the fifth, she was giggling at nothing, leaning into Mikasa’s side like she was a pillow.  

"Historia," Mikasa said carefully, "how much have you had?"  

"Enough," she slurred, resting her head on Mikasa’s shoulder. "You’re so warm."  

Mikasa stiffened but didn’t push her away. "You should slow down."  

"Nope." Historia reached for the mug in front of Mikasa, the purple liquid sloshing around. "Tonight, I’m happy."  

The words tasted bitter in her mouth.  

She should be happy. She was with her friends. She was free, tonight, from the weight of her crown. But all she could think about was how wrong it felt—how every laugh, every smile, was just a performance.  

Ymir would’ve seen right through it.  

She felt sick. The light buzz that blurred her mind turned against her, leaving the room spinning. Her stomach turned as nausea flooded her senses. She swallowed hard, pressing her sweaty forehead into Mikasa's shoulder.

"Historia?" Mikasa's voice sounded far away. "You're shaking."

She tried to form an answer, but even thinking sent her head spinning. She squeezed her eyes tight, trying to will away the dizziness. A sudden, acidic taste flooded her mouth. There was no warning. One second she was clinging to Mikasa's sleeve, the next vomit splattered across the floorboards beneath their table.

The tavern noise dimmed for a heartbeat before chaos erupted.

"Whoa! Royal puke!" Connie's drunken shout cut through the hum.

"Someone get water—"

"Move your boots, Jean!"

Through the spinning in her vision, strong arms tighten around her. Then she was weightless, lifted clean off the bench as Mikasa stood in one fluid motion. 

Mikasa carried her like she was nothing. She probably didn't even need to hold on to her at all. 

She'd always viewed her as strong. During their cadet days, Mikasa was never afraid to show who she was. It didn’t matter how many guys got jealous, or how much attention she brought. It never seemed to even faze her. 

She outshined everyone so easily like she wasn't even trying. A far cry to whatever she was. At times, she maybe felt jealous 

But that once, when the tips of her speeding blades came to halt inches from her skin, she realized she never knew Mikasa at all. Where she was hiding herself, sheltering that scared girl inside her, Mikasa was always holding back. The truth was they weren't even in the same world. She wondered if that's how Ymir felt. 

She tucked her head into the crook of her neck, squeezing her eyes shut. She wanted to sink into that darkness. Everything else made her nauseous. Mikasa smelled like nothing. It was nice, like she was being carried in a blank, empty void. 

Mikasa's body jerked as she shimmied for the door handle, opening it. The door creaked and shuttered as they passed into the room. A bedroom she guessed, when she felt herself being lowered onto a soft bed. 

There was a moment of shuffling, the sounds of doors opening and closing in between the spinning of the room. When Mikasa appeared again by her side, she was holding a glass of water. Historia accepted it, lifting her head up slowly. The cool water felt nice in the emptiness of her stomach. 

“How do you feel?”

“Better,” she mumbled. 

It was silent for a while, at least she thought so. Time was beginning to turn blurry as she drifted in and out of consciousness. 

“Try to rest,” Mikasa’s voice jolted her out of her drifting. Her eyes pried open as she caught Mikasa rising to exit the room. 

Panic lurched up into her throat, “Wait—” she blurted, her hand shooting out to catch Mikasa’s. The girl’s black eyes grew wide as she peered down at the girl. 

“Don’t leave,” Historia begged. She lightly pulled her arm towards her like a small child would. 

Mikasa hesitated, fingers twitching slightly, begging to pull away. Then she exhaled slowly, "Alright."  

Silence.  

"You’d do anything to protect Eren, right?" Historia whispered. 

The question seemed to appear from nowhere, but Historia’s eyes were distant. Lost in a different world.

"Yes," Mikasa replied.

"Even if it took you far away from him?"  

Mikasa paused, halting herself from answering with what she knew was the truth. Historia's eyes grew into puffy, wet lakes as she stared into their clasped hands. 

This wasn't about her and Eren.

“Yes,” it wasn't exactly a lie, she told herself. Maybe there was one reality where she gives up everything to save Eren. But in truth she would find a way to stay by his side, that was her one, selfish wish.

From lakes Historia’s eyes turned to rivers as tears streaked across her face and pooled onto her pillow. She wondered if she'd said the wrong thing. 

Chapter Text

Ymir

Wake up!

She gripped something soft. It was too bright.

“Sorry…” a deep, unhuman-like voice erupted from her own throat. Suddenly, her vision was flooded with bright, orange light. The warmth in her hand grew until she was sure something lay there.

There, a small girl, cupped lightly in the palm of her hand, stared up at her. Her eyes seemed impossibly soft and by just looking at them she felt trapped where she stood. It would be so easy to take up Historia in her giant hand, to encase her whole being into something so small it could be held close to her chest. So she did. And as she brought the small girl closer, her blue light grew brighter and consuming as did her expression which words could never do justice. Her body morphed into something more abstract. An essence of warmth and light.

Something sharp and long pierced her neck. It burned as some foreign substance flooded under her skin.

“Bertholdt…?”

She wasn't really sleeping. She felt as if she was in a trance right before falling asleep, but something was keeping her awake. Maybe it was the floor—her body refusing to let her rest against the cold, hard dirt. Maybe if there was a fire she might find a sliver of comfort. Instead she squinted into the everlasting dark horizon. Her only sense that she was looking to the horizon at all was a thin barely discernible line between the pitch black landscape and deep blue sky.  

Somewhere in the distance there was the rumbling of a titan roaring. Her skin buzzed with anxiety, or was it exhaustion.

She was tired of titans. Maybe they would do her the grace of sending one of those giant rocks her way. 

“Just take them off.”

“She’ll just run away.”

“Look at her…”

Her fingers dug harder into the dirt, powder caking under her nails.

A voice slurred through her head—was it memory or a vision?

“You look pathetic.” Reiner’s gruff tone, the kind of reprimand that sounded almost like a plea. He was turned half-away from her, muttering low to Bertolt. “You shouldn’t have lost to Zeke. You let him win.”

Ymir pressed her palms to her ears, as if she could grind the voices out.

Annoying. So annoying.

Why wasn’t she dead yet?

They echoed louder.

Bread, stale. Bertolt’s hand waved in her vision. Or was it? 

“Just eat, Ymir… please.”

It was hard, round. Something warm guided it to her lips. It smelled like rot. Tasted like rot. It was poison. 

She let her body go numb, the object rolling out her hand onto the ground. 

Worried eyes looked down into hers. Was it? They went away.

The hunger came back. Persistent, maddening. Her fingers stretched, curling around the hard bread. 

She bit down, expecting her teeth to break, but the crust gave way. She swallowed immediately, not wanting to taste it any longer. That turned out to be a mistake. It caught in her throat, sucking the little moisture left in her mouth. She coughed hard. The bread scraped her throat raw on the way back up. Something cool touched her lips. Water. She flinched, but her mouth opened anyway. Instinct. It slid down harsh, cutting the dryness, and before she could stop herself she was drinking again.

The fog in her head thinned just enough for shapes to come into focus.

A wagon. A few barrels. The husk of a fire ringed with ash. Three tents, small, sagging. A wall far off, gray against the horizon.

Her hands ached where the rope bit. Dirt clung in a crust to her sleeves. She didn’t move.

Just like last time. Maybe she was made to be a Marleian prisoner. How long has it been? A few hours? A few days?

She’d been asleep. That’s right. Then someone put a bag over her head. She thought maybe they were taking her to her execution. But maybe not. 

It was quiet. Quieter than normal she remembered. No Reiner’s barking. No Zeke’s gravel voice. No fighting titans. Rumbling voices. Endless boots scraping.

It was just Bertholdt. Sitting crosslegged in the grass in front of her. Staring at the skyline. In his own world like always. 

“…Why am I here?” The words scratched out of her before she decided to speak them.

Bertholdt’s head twitched up, but he didn’t look at her. He looked like he’d been waiting. Rehearsing the right lines in his head. Or maybe he was hoping she’d never ask. “Zeke has… a plan,” he said finally. The pause between each word made them feel borrowed. “We’re going back. To fight.”

Her mouth curled faintly, not quite a smile. “We…? You’re joking…”

He didn’t answer. He looked down, fingers twisting.

The silence stretched until she almost let her eyes close again. Then, barely audible, “You should run.”

Her lashes lifted. A slow blink. “…Run?”

He nodded once. “When it starts—after I transform, you should run…. I know you have regrets, but you have to keep living—“

She made a sound. Could’ve been a laugh, could’ve been a cough. She let her head fall sideways against her shoulder. “That so? You handing out advice now.” Her voice was flat, as if the words cost too much to carry tone. “If I want to sit here, that’s what I’ll do.”

His breath caught. He waited for more, but nothing came.

After a while she shifted, dirt grinding under her palm. Her eyes stayed on the dead fire. “Funny. You want me to live… but you’re the one lining up to die.” The words were barely above a murmur, thin as smoke. She didn’t look at him. “Grateful, huh. Then don’t be an idiot.”

The camp creaked. Wind moved the tent flaps. Bertholdt drew in a shaky breath like he might answer, but no words followed.

Ymir closed her eyes. The last thing she heard was him exhale, a sound caught between agreement and defeat.

Heavy arms lifted her. Her head hurt. It was hot, so hot. Legs scraped against the dirt. Like a corpse being dragged to their burial. 

Then she was weightless, dropping, dropping, then she hit the floor. Earth shaking her bones.

She was dead. She was dead and in a pit. Just like before. She remembered. Just like then. 

The dirt was so cold. It stuck to her. It stayed, always. Always stuck to her skin. 

She belonged here. 

A moan came next to her. Her eyes fluttered for a moment. A hand. Her hand? No. 

There were lots of people. Bodies? 

Dead people like her. No…

Not dead.

Ghosts.

A woman. An old woman, she guessed. She groaned next to her. Won’t stop groaning. Shut up!

Water. She needed water. 

In the beginning, she thought her titan body might make her immune to starvation. 70 years in her pure titan form without feeling a single pang of hunger. If she could…if she had the energy to transform. 

She remembered the pain when she returned. Hunger like she had never imagined. But this was different. Agonizing. Maybe it was because she was so distracted with happiness back then. With surviving. Her second chance. The pain was a second thought. In fact she even rejoiced in it at times. If it meant feeling like she was alive. Now she felt nothing but pain. And all there was to do was dwell on it. 

She couldn't think anymore. Why? Why did she care if it was poisoned? 

She crept to the small patch of moonlight in the middle of the floor. Her fingers gripped the dirt floor, its coarse powdery imprint begging her not to grab the pristine glass bottle.

I’m dying. 

Who’s going to care about me?

I’m dying.

Who’s going to care…

When we’re dying next to each other.

The pit had gone quiet except for the ragged groans of the half-dead huddled around her. Ymir’s lips cracked when she licked them, the taste of dirt and blood mixing on her tongue. Her head slumped forward, but something faint crawled into her ears—a deep, rhythmic thunder. 

At first she thought it was her own pulse, pounding against her temples from dehydration. 

The ground trembled faintly beneath her cheek.

What was that?

It was familiar she felt it. Why couldn’t she remember?

Her mind went blank.

She couldn’t remember how long she lay there. Trying to remember. Not trying at all. 

Horses.

The groans around her grew restless. Someone whimpered.

“Annoying…” Ymir muttered, pressing her hands hard against her ears, but the rumble only grew louder, closer. The soil around her vibrated as if the earth itself were recoiling.

Then—

A thunderclap tore the night apart. A blinding flash split the horizon, followed by the roar of something breaking, crumbling, burning.

The pit shook violently, sending dirt raining down. Ymir lifted her head in time to hear a sound that made every nerve in her body lock tight.

A scream.

It pierced her brain. Something guttural and raw.

Ymir’s chest seized. Her vision burned white, and her body convulsed as if pulled by invisible strings.

“No—” she croaked, her voice breaking into static. But the heat was already building, rushing through her veins. She clawed at the dirt, desperate to stop it, to hold herself in place.

Then the world exploded into light.

Her body stretched, tore, reknit. Her scream deepened into something monstrous, echoing out of the pit with the chorus of a dozen others around her. Her starving frame gave way to flesh she couldn’t control, her mind shoved into the backseat.

Her eyes rolled white as the titan took hold.

She barely caught a last flicker of thought before she was gone:

Not again. Please—

The heat clung to him, sour and choking, long burning tendons, crushed all around him. Couldn’t breathe. He stumbled, willing his titan body still. Armin and Eren buzzed around him. Slashing and spinning. He wanted to close his eyes, to shut it all out—but then he saw her.

The Jaw titan.

She appeared in a flash of yellow. An entourage of Zeke’s titans. But she stuck out of them. Not for being a shifter. For being stronger, sentient. 

She was puny, short. 

Easy meat for Levi’s blades. In what seemed like a second, his blades cut her down. In a mess of smoke and steam the Jaw titan collapsed in a pile of hacked limbs.

Something in him tore.

Funny. You want me to live… but you’re the one lining up to die. 

He wanted to cover his ears. He couldn’t.

And then Eren was on him. Armin too, darting in and out, their strikes frantic, burning. He raised his arms to block, but his body wouldn’t move the way it should. His mind was split between the heat of the fight and Ymir’s voice still gnawing at his ribs.

He could have fought harder. He didn’t.

Then he was falling, his body disappearing in a flood of steam.

Hot, white pain seared across his body. It was familiar and overwhelming. His body convulsed, vision blurring as blood poured from where his limbs should have been. 

Eren’s eyes blazed murder. Mikasa’s blade pressed against his throat. Bertholdt closed his eyes. Kill me. He didn’t say it aloud.

It was Hange who stopped them. Goggles cracked, face blackened with soot, they barked hoarsely, “No! Killing him won’t save anyone. He knows too much. He’s worth more breathing.”

The fury on Mikasa’s face didn’t ease. Her knuckles trembled white around the blade. But slowly, reluctantly, she pulled it back.

Bertholdt sank to the dirt, bound and useless, watching.

That was when he saw Armin’s body. Burned beyond recognition, charred skin still steaming. His chest barely moved. Eren dropped to his knees beside him, hands hovering, frantic.

“Armin! Stay with me—please—”

Bertholdt’s stomach lurched. The boy had been in the fire. His fire. His fault. The smell of roasted meat made him gag.

A scuffle of boots pulled his gaze up—Reiner. Dragged limp, nothing but a stump. They failed. For a flicker of a second relief surged. He wasn’t alone, but then the shadow of Zeke cut in. The Beast Titan’s gaze swept the field, cold, calculating. He reached for Reiner, pulling him away like a sack of grain.

“Wait—” Bertholdt croaked, voice breaking. His hand twitched uselessly against the ropes. But Zeke didn’t even glance at him. His mouth moved, but he couldn’t hear. In another heartbeat, Reiner was gone. He was left behind.

Left with them.

So this was it. He was going to die here.

Then Floch stumbled into the circle, dragging another body. Erwin. His chest barely moved, his uniform soaked dark. Levi was there in an instant, syringe in hand.

“Commander,” Floch gasped, “he’s still breathing—”

Bertholdt watched their faces twist in grief, fury, desperation. Levi’s pale insistence on Erwin. Mikasa’s broken cry for Armin. Connie’s voice, trembling, asking if they’d feed Ymir to save him.

Ymir.

He forced his eyes toward the shape Levi had hauled in. Her body hacked apart, regeneration sluggish, but she wasn’t gone. The circle tensed, voices snapping back and forth—but then Ymir’s cracked whisper cut through.

“…His…toria…”

Everyone froze.

Her lips moved again, broken, weak, but clear enough to catch. Historia’s name. Over and over, barely there.

The anger drained out of the air for a moment, replaced by something heavier.

And before anyone else could speak, Bertholdt’s voice tore out of him, rough and loud enough to startle even himself:

“Take me.”

All eyes snapped to him.

“Kill me instead.” His chest heaved. His throat burned. “I deserve it more.”

The silence that followed was louder than the battle had been. Eren’s jaw locked. Mikasa’s hand twitched toward her blade again. Hange’s breath caught. Even Levi’s face shifted, just barely, the line of his brow tightening.

Then Levi’s voice, sharp,“Shut up.”

-

The first thing she heard was the groan of wood. Wheels grinding. A wagon creaking under weight.

Her head thudded against something hard, rattling with each bump. Hot. Her body was burning, sweat sticking to her dirt-caked skin. She forced her eyes open.

Night sky. Lantern light swinging overhead, throwing shadows across the boards. The stars tilted and shook as the wagon lurched.

A face leaned into view.

Blonde hair. Pale in the fire-glow. For a moment her chest seized—her heart leapt so violently she almost cried out. Historia. She was sure of it. Her throat clenched, sound catching.

But then the shape sharpened. Not her.

Armin.

She barely recognized him. His face was bandaged in layers, but red flesh striped through—raw, blistered, streaks of blood like he’d run headlong through fire. His lips twitched, not quite forming a smile, but his eyes did. They bent soft at the corners, meeting hers.

She tried to move. Nothing. Her body was too light, too hot. She looked down—no arms, no legs. The stumps smoked faintly, regeneration slow and sickly. She was a torso sprawled in the wagon bed, packed among barrels and cloth.

Armin’s voice broke through, hushed, rasped. She couldn’t catch the words exactly—something like, it’s alright. We’re taking you home.

Her throat worked, but her mouth refused to open. No sound came. Her head swarmed, every thought buzzing like flies against glass. Tears threatened, but they burned instead of falling.

Historia.

Her chest ached. She tried to force the name out but nothing moved.

Then—so faint she couldn’t be sure—she thought she heard Armin again. Historia’s okay. She’s waiting for you.

Was she dreaming? Was she dead? She didn’t know. The lantern light flickered, sparkling like a giant sun in a dotted black sky. A white moon bore down at her. Like a mockery, yet familiar warmth flooded her bones. She closed her eyes, dead or alive, she was going home all the same. 

Chapter Text

The world was a throbbing, black pain. A distant, rhythmic jolting sent shocks of agony up her spine, each one a fresh reminder that she was, against all odds, still alive. The air smelled of old wood, sweat, and the sharp, metallic tang of blood—her blood.

Ymir floated in a void of hurt. Her body was a map of fresh wounds. The ghost-ache of severed limbs screamed from her shoulders and hips, a phantom pain so vivid she could still feel the cold bite of Levi’s blades. New muscle and bone knit themselves together with a low, burning itch, a grotesque parody of healing. Her legs were mostly there again, heavy and useless logs. But her hands… she tried to curl fingers that were no longer there and was met with a nauseating wave of absence, just raw, bundled nerves at the end of her wrists.

A voice cut through the pain. It was deep, gravelly, and it didn’t come from her ears. It vibrated inside her skull, a parasite nesting in the marrow of her bones.

Fight.

It was not her thought. Her thoughts were of silence, of peace, of a starry sky on a cold night. This was an intruder.

Fight for your life.

A flash behind her eyes, blinding and white. Not a memory, but a command. She saw her own titan form, not as she controlled it, but as a puppet. Jagged teeth snapping at nothing. Claws tearing into flesh that smelled familiar—of green grass and cheap soap. Scouts. Her friends.

No, she tried to scream, but her throat was sand and rust. Stop.

FIGHT.

The command was a thunderclap, a white-hot brand searing away the last of her will. Her eyes flew open.

Light. Too bright. Blurred shapes moving above her. The wooden planks of a wagon bed. The sound of a gate creaking open. A city wall. Trost.

Panic, cold and absolute, flooded her system. It wasn't her panic. It was a foreign emotion pumped into her veins. She was a passenger in her own body.

"—ease, just hold still, we're almost—"

A voice. Human. Enemy.

A sound ripped from her throat, a raw, guttural snarl that didn't sound human. She thrashed, her body convulsing against the ropes that bound her wrists behind her back. Her newly formed legs kicked out wildly, connecting with something solid. A grunt of pain.

"Whoa! She's awake!"

"Shit, hold her down!"

Hands. Everywhere. On her shoulders, her legs, pinning her to the wagon bed. The touch was fire. It was a violation. The voice in her head screamed in tandem with her.

Fight them! They are your enemy!

"Get off!" she roared, the words slurred and mangled by a dry tongue and a mind that wasn't fully her own. "Get the hell off of me!"

She bucked and twisted, her strength fueled by a terror she didn't understand. Her head felt like it was splitting open, the headache a constant, drilling pressure behind her eyes. Her vision swam, pixelating between the concerned, frightened faces of her comrades and the monstrous, distorted visages of her nightmares.

She saw Jean's face, pale and worried, and for a second, she saw the Marleyan soldier who had slammed her face into the cell floor.

She saw Armin, mouth moving, trying to say something calm, reasonable, and she saw the cold, calculating eyes of Zeke Yeager.

Fight!

"Ymir, stop! It's us!" Connie's voice, high with panic.

Lies. All lies.

She was drowning, suffocating in a consciousness that was and wasn't hers. She was a weapon, a bomb, and someone else held the trigger. And the only thing she knew, the only instinct that felt purely her own amidst the chaos, was a desperate, screaming need to get away before she hurt them. Before it made her hurt them.

***

A sharp rap on her office door broke the silence. “Your Majesty,” a guard’s voice, tense and formal, called through the wood. “The Scouts have been sighted. They’ve passed the gate.”

Historia’s quill stilled, a blot of ink spreading on the parchment like a dark, ugly cloud. She had been trying to draft a speech for the families, words meant to soothe a loss that felt too vast to articulate. She set the quill down, her hands feeling strangely numb.

Moving to the balcony, she gripped the cold stone railing. The afternoon sun was bright, glinting off the cobblestones of Trost far below. And there they were. A thin, ragged line of figures trudging through the crowded lined streets. There were no cheers. 

Her heart ached. This was the price. She turned from the balcony, her dark dress swishing around her ankles as she moved with a purpose she didn't feel. She had to be there. She had to see.

The halls of the interior were chaos. The usual quiet order was shattered by the frantic boot-steps of Military Police running in both directions, their shouts echoing off the stone walls. Through the tall, arched windows, she saw the reason: manless horses, their tack stained with blood and dirt, pulling wagons into a secured yard. The shapes in the wagons were too still, shrouded in canvas.

A strange, guilty unfamiliarity washed over her. This was a new kind of helplessness. She was used to the fight, to the grit and terror of the battlefield. She knew how to swing a blade, how to push past the fear. But this—this waiting, was a different kind of torture. She couldn’t decide which was worse.

A cold knot of dread tightened in Historia’s stomach. Her eyes scanned the grim procession, her mind racing. Who? The question was a frantic drumbeat in her chest. Her friends’ faces flashed in her mind. A wave of nausea washed over her. Please, not them. Not any of them. A group of MPs scrambled passed, carrying a body shrouded in white. Her heart tightened, panicked against her ribs. 

As she descended a grand staircase towards the main entry, the noise from the street filtered in. Peering through the heavy doors, she saw a crowd held back by a line of MPs. A field of weeping faces etched along the crowd, their cries echoing throughout the courtyard. 

“Make way! Clear the hall! Official military business!” an MP captain was barking, his voice strained as he directed his men to block a corridor leading deeper into the compound. They were sealing it off, creating a bottleneck. They weren't just managing the crowd; they were hiding something.

Historia tried to move towards the commotion, but a young MP, his face pale under his helmet, stepped in her path. “Your Majesty, you can’t go down there. It’s… it’s not secure.”

“I am the Queen. What is not secure in my own headquarters?” she asked, her voice colder than she intended. She was about to push past him when a familiar, exhausted figure emerged from the cordoned off hallway.

“Hange!” Historia called out, relief and anxiety warring in her chest.

Hange looked like they had aged a decade. Shattered glasses and a bloodied bandage wrapped around half their face. Their expression, usually alight with manic curiosity, was flat and haunted. They saw Historia and seemed to wilt further, reluctantly walking over.

“Historia,” they said, their voice a dry rasp. “You shouldn’t be down here.”

“What happened? Where is Commander Erwin?” The questions tumbled out.

Hange’s gaze dropped to the floor for a moment before meeting hers. “We succeeded. Shiganshina is ours.” They took a shaky breath. “We lost Erwin. And one hundred and ninety-nine others.”

Her eyes went wide. Two hundred. Historia opened her mouth, the prepared speech rising to her lips—

“…‘et off—!”

The shouting from the sealed hallway grew louder. A raw, furious shout, punctuated by the scuffling of boots and sharp, panicked voices.

“—just hold her still!”

“I can’t! She’s too strong!”

That voice. That ragged, broken, but unmistakable voice. It couldn’t be. It was a ghost from her nightmares, a sound she’d never expected to hear again.

Hange flinched, their eyes darting back towards the hallway. “We… we took prisoners. Bertolt Hoover and….”

Historia didn’t hear the rest. She was already moving, ducking under the arm of the distracted MP, and slipping into the dim, chaotic hallway.

The scene was a violent scuffle under the flickering torchlight. Bertolt was being hustled away, surrounded by MPs, his head bowed. But the focus was on the other.

Ymir.

She was a specter of pain and rage. Filthy, emaciated, her clothes hanging in tatters. Her hands were bound behind her back, but she was fighting like a wildcat, throwing her weight against Armin, Eren, and Connie, who struggled to contain her. Levi stood before her, his expression dark with a lethal impatience.

“Get off! Get the hell off of me!” Ymir screamed, her voice cracking.

“Ymir, stop it! It’s us!” Armin pleaded, his voice desperate.

Historia stood frozen, her hand flying to her mouth. The sight was so wrong, so horrifying it felt like a dream.

And then, Ymir saw her.

Their eyes locked. The fight drained from Ymir’s body. The fury in her eyes vanished, replaced by a stunned, disbelieving recognition. A silent, shattered question.

“Histo…?”

Then, it was erased. Bright yellow sparks strobed violently around Ymir. Her face controted in pain, eyes glazing over, consumed by a terrifying flash of white. The ropes on her wrists burned away to nothing as her hands regenerated in a grotesque instant.

Freed, the thing that wore Ymir’s face turned its blank, white gaze on Historia. It took a lurching step forward, its body beginning to steam.

Eren reacted, biting his hand, his own spark flaring to life.

But Levi was faster. In a blur of motion, the hilt of his blade cracked against Ymir’s skull in a short, sharp, violent sound.

The sparks vanished. Ymir collapsed to the stone floor, dead still.

The silence that followed was louder than the chaos.

Levi didn’t spare a glance for the body. His furious, ice-cold eyes found Historia.

“Get her out of here,” he snarled, at one of the shellshocked MPs, his voice low and venomous. “What the hell are you doing here?” He shot at her, his anger venomous. 

Before she could process it, Hange was there, a firm hand on her arm, pulling her back, away from the hallway, away from Ymir.

“Come on, Historia,” Hange said, their voice thick with pity. “There’s nothing you can do.”

But Historia couldn't look away from the dim hallway until the MPs closed the doors, shutting her out, sealing the nightmare away.

The sunlight streaming into Hange’s office felt like a facade. It was too bright, too cheerful for the grim conversation happening within. A day had passed, and the chaos had settled into a tense, uneasy quiet. Historia sat stiffly in a chair, her hands folded in her lap to hide the fact that they wanted to curl into fists.

She had spent the previous afternoon arguing and attempting to descend down the dungeon. Each time had been met with a stiff salute and an immovable “I’m sorry, Your Majesty, Commander’s orders.” The frustration was a live wire under her skin. Ymir was back, broken and feral, and she was trapped upstairs, useless.

Across the table, Hange looked exhausted, their energy replaced by a weary, hyper-focused intensity. Armin sat by Hange, his face pale and bandaged, his eyes distant. By most accounts, he looked the worst out of all nine who’d returned. He was the only one who couldn’t even fit into his uniform with the amount of bandages covered across his body. But despite that, the nurses couldn’t get him to stay in bed. Not when there were so many questions. 

“We’ve tried to question her,” Hange began, their voice raspy. They weren’t looking at Historia, but at a file on their desk. “She won’t speak. Won’t answer a thing. She just… stares at the wall. Or through it.”

Historia’s jaw tightened. “Then let me see her. Maybe I can—”

“There’s something else,” Hange interrupted, finally looking up. Their gaze was unsettlingly direct. “When we briefly captured Reiner, he gave this to me. He said it was from Ymir,” she held out a small metallic box to her.

Historia’s breath caught, she took it from Hange. From Ymir. She took it, finding it surprisingly light in her hands. With trembling fingers, she opened the lid. A few folded sheets of paper sprung out, familiar black ink scrawled across the pages. 

A strange expression passed briefly across the new commander's face. “I wasn't sure if I should… I'm sorry. I read it.”

Historia unfolded the pages. 

My dearest Historia, 

As I’m writing this, Reiner is standing by my side. He knows this is a love letter, but he’s still catching peaks. What a creep, he’s never getting a girlfriend. Still, he did promise me that he’d deliver this letter to you. He says he wants to repay me for saving them that day. 

I'm sorry for what happened then. I never imagined I would choose them over you. I'm going to die soon. But I don't regret anything. 

I didn't have a name. I didn't know who my parents were, or where they were from. My earliest memory is of being one beggar among many. But one day, a man showed up and gave me a name. 

Ever since then, people called me Ymir.

You may not think it's much of an unusual name, but all I had to do was take it, and then I was given a fine bed and fed meals. That wasn't all. Those adults who, until then, acted like I was invisible, all got on their knees and revered me. As for the man who named me, he began to dress more and more extravagantly, and as he did, he grew happier.

I felt good, too. All I had to do to make everyone delighted and happy was play the role that I had been given. That's what I believed. And that's why I kept playing the part of Ymir.

People started to call me the devil before I knew it; but still, I kept playing the part of Ymir. 

The man who had given me my name claimed that I had "tricked him." 

Still, I kept playing the part of Ymir.

I thought if that's what would save them, it would be fine. But...

There are some people in this world who have rocks thrown at them for nothing more than existing. As their symbol, I was stoned from head to toe.

It seems that in this world, it doesn't mean anything in particular that a simple chunk of flesh can scream and flail. No. It doesn't mean a thing.

That's why I think this world is so incredible. I opened my eyes again, and spread before me was freedom. From there, I began to walk and I lived the way I wanted. I have no regrets. Or so I'd like to say. But to be honest, I do have one.

You and I still aren't married.

Ymir

A hot pressure built behind Historia’s eyes. The words were Ymir’s—the dry humor, the stupid honesty, the painful, secret history she’d kept hidden for so long. They were the words of a dead person. The words of a ghost. Yet only one word repeated over and over in her mind. 

Alive.

You're alive. 

A sob threatened to claw its way out of her throat, the sting of wetness pricked her eyes. 

She swallowed, forcing the tears back. She turned away. Her chest ached, a hard, burning pit in her chest. She was the Queen. She could not break. Not here.

Ymir wasn’t dead.

She was in a cell downstairs. She had fought like a wild animal. She had looked at Historia with white, sightless eyes that felt so… wrong.

The words on the page, so full of Ymir’s resigned, bittersweet acceptance, did not match the feral, desperate creature in the hallway. This letter sounded like someone making peace. The girl downstairs was at war—with her captors, with herself. It was a walking contradiction making Historia’s head spin. The words felt less like a confession and more like possession, as if someone else had been guiding her hand, forcing a finality that Ymir had somehow cheated.

“She gave this to Reiner to give to you,” Armin said quietly, “She believed she was going to die.”

Hange leaned forward. “But she’s not dead, Historia. She’s in our dungeon, fighting like a demon and refusing to speak. So I have to ask… why is she here? And is the person in that cell even the Ymir we knew?”

The question hung in the air, heavy and poisonous. The possibility was unthinkable. A Titan power they didn’t understand? A trick? Historia’s mind recoiled from it. The girl in the hallway, for that one second, had seen her. It was Ymir. It had to be.

“She’s asked for you,” Hange continued, their tone grave. “It’s the only thing she’s said. She’ll only talk if she can see you. We’ve told her the terms: she answers our questions, and she gets to see you.”

Historia was already standing. “Then let’s go. Now.”

“Historia, wait.” Hange’s voice was sharp. “We don’t know what she is right now. She’ll be behind bars. Levi will be there. There will be guards. But I cannot guarantee your safety. Whatever that… episode was yesterday, it was powerful. If she intends to transform in an enclosed space…”

“I don’t care,” Historia said, her voice leaving a little too sudden. She exuded the Queen’s authority. An aura of unwavering confidence and determination. “If there’s a chance I can get through to her, I’m taking it. She’s…” Historia paused, her voice faltering for a split second, “…my friend.”

Hange studied her for a long moment, then sighed, a sound of pure exhaustion. They exchanged a glance with Armin, who gave a slight, worried nod.

“Alright,” Hange said, rising to their feet. “Let’s go.”

The dungeon air was thick and cold, smelling of damp stone and despair. Torchlight flickered, painting nervous shadows on the faces of the assembled group. Levi stood like a statue by the door, his eyes never leaving the cell. Hange, Armin and Jean flanked Historia, a protective, nervous presence. Eren and Mikasa stood further back, their postures tense, ready to fight at the slightest warning.

In the cell, on the edge of a narrow cot, was Ymir.

She looked like the corpse of the girl Historia knew. Her frame, once lanky and strong, was frighteningly thin, her cheeks hollow. Dark circles pooled under her eyes, which were fixed on the opposite wall, vacant and unseeing. She looked utterly drained, as if the fight from the day before had consumed the last of her reserves.

But when Historia stepped into the dim light, everything changed.

Ymir’s head snapped up. A spark of life—raw and startled—ignited in her exhausted eyes. She tried to stand, her legs trembling violently, and she almost crumpled to the floor before catching herself on the wall. She didn’t seem to feel the weakness. Her gaze was locked on Historia, wide with curious disbelief.

She stumbled forward, closing the small distance to the cold iron bars in a few shaky steps. Her hands, now fully regenerated, wrapped around the metal, her knuckles white. She reached through, a desperate, wordless plea. And then, for a fleeting second, Historia almost imagined a smile. A spark of the old Ymir flickered in front of her. Historia stepped forward, hands stretching forward. 

“No touching,” Levi’s voice cut through the silence. He moved to block Historia, his arm a firm bar in front of her. 

“Get out of my way,” Historia snapped, her queenly composure shattering. She tried to push past his arm, her focus entirely on the girl behind the bars. Levi held his ground, his gaze flicking toward Hange, then towards the lanky, emaciated girl. A silent question passed between them. After a tense moment, Hange gave a single, tight nod. Levi’s jaw tightened, but he reluctantly lowered his arm and stepped back.

Historia approached slowly, her heart hammering a frantic rhythm against her ribs. The air in the dungeon grew thick, heavy. Every eye was fixed on the space between the bars—on Historia’s small, outstretched hand and Ymir’s trembling one, hovering just inches apart. It was an invitation, a question, an answer.

Then she saw it, and she wasn’t imagining it this time. Ymir’s smile. It was a fragile, broken thing, a ghost of her old smirk that didn’t reach the torment in her eyes, but it was there. A single, defiant spark of the girl she loved in the shattered frame of a prisoner.

The moment their skin touched, the world dissolved.

The cold. Not of the dungeon, but of polished metal. A needle, long and cruel, glinting in a light she can’t see. A face swimming above her—blurred, bearded, circular lenses reflecting her own terrified eyes. Zeke. Holding her down.

But then the face shifts, melts—younger, terrified, tears tracking through the dirt on his cheeks. Bertholdt. His hand is shaking. He’s apologizing, over and over, but the words are eaten by a roaring in her ears. Which one? Which memory is real?

A blinding, searing pain in her neck. The world goes dark, stretching into an endless black. Her bones crack and elongate, her skin tears and reforms. Her mind morphs into something monstrous and chaotic. She’s screaming. Twisting. A prisoner in her own flesh.

Then, the sand.

An endless, sun-bleached nightmare. A hell of absolute nothingness. Sixty years. Seventy. There is no thought, only an endless gnawing hunger with no purpose, no end. An existence with no self. She is a vessel of pure instinct, walking, always walking, under a sun that never sets, across sand, dirt, water, snow, rock.

This is it. This is the punishment she deserved. For the lie she lived. For pretending to be a goddess, for believing, even for a moment, that she could be someone worthy of love. The universe has played its cruel joke, and she was the punchline. Life was a meaningless scream into a void that didn’t care. It would have been better to never have been born. To have been spared this. To just stop. To let the sand swallow her whole, to finally, finally crumble into nothing and be free of the walking, the hunger, the—

A voice, deep and gravelly, echoing from everywhere and nowhere, vibrating through the grains of sand themselves, a truth spoken directly into the core of her being:

“End the suffering of this world.”

The vision shattered. Historia gasped, wrenching her hand back as if burned. She stumbled backward, caught by Jean. Across from her, Ymir cried out, a sound of pure, primordial agony, and collapsed to the floor of her cell, clutching her head as if to keep the memories from spilling out. Yellow sparks flickered around her, dying and weak.

“She’s transforming!” Jean yelled, hand going to his blade.

“No, she’s not!” Eren and Historia shouted in unison. Eren’s voice was certain, his own Titan sense flaring. Historia’s was a breathless sob. “It’s… it’s a memory. It’s…pain.”

The sparks faded. Ymir was left curled on the cold stone, shaking, her breaths coming in ragged hitches.

“What was that?” Hange demanded, their scientific curiosity battling with their alarm. “What did you see?”

Historia, her voice trembling, described it. The needle. The endless wandering. The voice.

Hange’s eyes snapped to Ymir, who was still curled on the floor. “Who was the voice?”

Ymir didn’t look up. She curled into herself, hugging her knees, a low, incoherent mumble escaping her lips. “Dunno... can’t...” Her eyes, glazed and distant, darted around the stone floor as if looking right through them. Her face twitched. It was a poor, transparent lie.

CLANG. Levi’s patience vanished. In a sudden, violent motion, he slammed his fist against the iron bars. The sound was deafening in the small space, echoing like a gunshot.

“Dammit!” he snarled, his voice sharp with frustration. “We brought you what you wanted. You asked for her, you got her. Now start talking. Now. Or you’re nothing but a liability wasting our oxygen.”

Ymir flinched involuntarily at the sudden noise. Her breath shook, coming in ragged, silent gasps. She drew her knees closer to her chest, making herself as small as possible, her arms coming up to encase her head as if expecting another blow. The defiant anger that had possessed her in the hallway was gone, replaced with an aching insecurity.

Her eyes, wide and glassy with a sheen of unshed tears, flickered wildly. They shot from Levi’s furious, threatening form to Historia’s face. In Historia’s expression, she didn't find anger, but a soul crushing mix of concern and desperation. That look, somehow, was worse. The last of the resistance drained from her posture, her shoulders slumping in a wave of utter defeat. A single, weary sigh escaped her, the sound of complete and total surrender.

“It was Zeke,” she whispered, the admission pulled from her like a rotten tooth.

Hange pounced on the answer. “What was it? A memory? A dream?”

“I don’t know,” Ymir mumbled, her voice a little stronger but thick with exhaustion. “It’s all… fuzzy.” She took a shaky breath, and then the story began to tumble out, haltingly. She told them about the boat, about Bertholdt’s crying, about the sudden attack. Zeke’s arrival. She spoke of being thrown in a dark pit with others, of starvation, of the scream that echoed through her bones—tearing her body apart.

“I think… I think he injected me with something,” she finished, her voice hollow. “Zeke. Or maybe Bert. I don’t remember. It’s just… pieces.”

She fell silent again, her story told, and stared at the wall as if she could disappear into it. Historia’s heart broke at the sight. This wasn’t the Ymir she remembered. The girl who was always so sharp and full of life, reduced to a hollowed shell just trying to vanish.

Historia instinctively took a step forward, her hand reaching out again towards Ymir. It didn’t matter if there was a jail cell between them, that was nothing compared to the distance that’d kept them apart for so long. She had to bridge that terrible distance between them. To let her know she wasn’t all alone in that cell.

“Historia, don’t,” Hange warned, their voice laced with fresh anxiety. “We don’t know what will trigger another episode.”

“We need more information,” Historia snapped back, expression tight with a desperation that had nothing to do with tactics. 

“We need her more stable,” Levi countered sharply, his tone leaving no room for debate. “That’s enough for today.”

A wave of bitter disappointment washed over Historia. Her shoulders slumped slightly, and the mask of the determined queen slipped, revealing the raw hurt beneath. Her outstretched hand didn’t withdraw, but it seemed to tremble with the weight of her helplessness. Her face, bathed in the orange torchlight, was an open book of deep concern and aching tenderness. It was the face that only came out around Ymir. A look of such profound love and protectiveness that human kind spent millennia capturing.

“It’s ok,” Ymir cut through the silence, surprising even herself.

She shuffled across the cold floor, her eyes fixed on Historia’s face—a face she never thought she’d see again, looking at her with a love she never felt she deserved. It was this expression that Ymir saw over and over again from the bottom of her soul. The disappointment, the love, the unwavering concern. It cut through the fog of her tired mind and body. She looked at the offered hand, a gesture of such simple, profound faith. Then, tentatively, she placed her own trembling hand in it.

Nothing happened. No visions. No pain. No sparks.

Only warmth. A simple, human warmth that seemed to spread from the dungeon bars to the core of her heart. Tears, finally free from the pit in her chest, welled in Historia’s eyes and spilled over. She gently pulled Ymir’s hand to her face, holding it there.

“I’m sorry… Ymir…” Historia whispered, her voice thick with emotion.

Ymir's fingers twitched in surprise against Historia’s delicate skin, cheeks hot and wet from tears. “What the hell could you be sorry for?”

“For never noticing how far you would go for me.” Historia’s thumb stroked her knuckles, breath ghosting across tender skin as she spoke. “I’m glad you’re here now so I can say that to you.”

The words shattered the last of Ymir’s defenses. A sob racked her thin frame, and she bowed her head, her own tears falling onto the cold floor. “I’m sorry,” she choked out. “I’m so sorry.”

The others in the room could only stand in an awkward, silent circle, witnesses to a grief and a love too vast for the dark, cold stone walls.

Chapter Text

The worship hall was always crowded. Cultists lined up like ants to her little wooden throne. Though the girl who sat upon it didn’t quite fit it. Nor match the illusion of decadence royalty portrayed. The followers liked that about her. Maybe something about an ordinary girl, a humble girl, living as a god among them, was appealing, comforting.

Of course she could only look like an ordinary girl. She was never allowed to act like one. To speak like one. To play in the streets with the other peasant children. She was sophisticated, a goddess. 

Her world was a performance staged by the man she called Father. His smiles were for the crowd, his eyes on the collection plate. His touch, when it came, was never affection—it was a correction, a guiding hand that shoved her back onto the dais, a grip on her shoulder that left faint bruises hidden under her robe. The priests were his echoes, their gazes sweeping over her with the cold assessment of merchants maintaining a valuable, if troublesome, asset. They fed her, clothed her, and in return, she was to be empty. A vessel for their sermons, a mirror for their devotion. Any spark of her own was a flaw in the glass.

So today she smiled, talked politely as men and women approached her offering their prayers and adoration. She smiled but she imagined she was somewhere else. Anywhere else. Somewhere she could be happy. Somewhere, but she couldn’t imagine where. 

A warmth brought her from her thoughts. A steady thing that soaked through her fingers. A girl, with wavy long brown hair, stood at the front of the line, her hand clasped around Ymir’s own.

 “Lady Ymir,” the short girl smiled, “it’s nice to meet you.”

Most of the followers bowed or trembled when they spoke to her. But this girl’s brown eyes bore onto her with unflinching curiosity. 

“You may speak,” Ymir said at last, her voice calm, trained. The kind of voice she’d learned to use when her thoughts wandered too far.

“I just wanted to thank you,” the girl said. “My mother’s been sick, but ever since we came to your sermons, she’s been smiling again.”

A polite thing to say. Ymir had heard it a hundred times before. But something in the way the girl said it felt different. There was no awe, no trembling. Just honesty.

“What’s your name?” Ymir asked.

The girl’s smile widened. “Liora.”

“Miss Liora,” Ymir repeated quietly, “That’s a beautiful name.” 

“Thank you, Lady Ymir,” she said. Then, after a pause: “You can just call me Liora.”

That startled her. No one had ever told her what she could call them.

Ymir forced a small smile, careful not to let it seem too real. “Then…you may call me Ymir.”

Liora’s eyes brightened. “Really?”

Ymir’s attendants shifted uncomfortably at the edge of the dais, but Ymir ignored them. She gave a faint nod.

The girl’s hand squeezed hers one last time before letting go. “I’m glad,” she said simply, before stepping aside to make room for the next worshipper.

But Ymir didn’t hear the others. The warmth lingered, soft and strange against her palm. She hid it in her lap like a secret.

The next day, she saw Liora again. 

The hall had dispersed as Father led the cultists in a prayer song. Ymir was never allowed to join with the singing. Instead, she sat on her dais, observing quietly. A lovely decoration. 

The music echoed against the stone walls hundreds of voices woven into one.

Liora stood at the far end of the aisle, half-hidden behind a pillar. Her brown hair was undone today, falling in soft waves past her shoulders. The light caught it as she moved, each strand glowing faintly gold. When she noticed Ymir looking, she smile. A crooked toothy smile that made her cheeks rise in round, warm color.

Ymir almost smiled back before she remembered she wasn’t supposed to.

When the hymn ended, the crowd bowed low, murmuring blessings as they filed out. Liora lingered. She waited until the last of them had gone, then stepped forward slowly, as though afraid to disturb the quiet that followed the song.

“Hi,” she said softly, her voice still touched by a shy laugh.

Ymir tilted her head, sifting through the list of responses, questions. But she couldn’t remember a time someone said hello to her. 

Loria looked at her expectantly and she realized she may have taken too long to answer. She blurted the first thing that came to mind, “Hi.”

Her expression brightened, and she giggled at the awkward response, which caused heat to flood to Ymir’s ears. “Father was singing loud enough to wake the dead,” she said, teasing. “You didn’t want to join?”

“I’m not allowed,” Ymir said simply. “I’m supposed to listen.”

“That doesn’t sound very fun.”

“It isn’t meant to be,” she murmured.

Liora frowned, looking up at her. “So what is fun for you, then?”

Ymir hesitated. Fun. That was a strange word. She knew what kids her age found fun. Boys liked to chase girls around. They played games outside, or annoyed their parents. She wasn’t that though. She liked not starving, sleeping. But she couldn’t say that either. 

“I read,” she said at last. That was true. They taught her to read soon after they put her on a podium.

Father liked that about her. She learned to read quickly. She could speak the way he asked. Could repeat stories and speeches he taught her. Most importantly she listened. She was quiet. She did what she was told. Of course she figured out early on she was just a money pot. But that was fine. As long as she got a warm bed at night and food in her stomach. 

Liora’s face lit with curiosity. “What kind of books?”

“Histories. Myths. Stories about things that happened long ago.”

“Not stories about things that could happen?”

Ymir looked down at her hands, folded neatly in her lap. “No one ever brings me those.”

Liora’s lips curved into a small, knowing smile. “Then maybe I will.”

Ymir looked up, caught off guard by the softness in her voice.

Liora’s eyes were warm, deep brown, steady, kind in a way that almost hurt to look at. 

The next afternoon, she found Ymir in the study room.

The chamber was small, lined with old wooden shelves that bent beneath the weight of worn scripture. A single window cut a thin rectangle of light across the floor, dust drifting through it like faint gold. Ymir sat at the desk by the wall, head bowed over a stack of copied verses, her fingers smudged faintly with ink.

The door creaked. Ymir didn’t look up. No one entered her study unless it was to summon her.

Then a familiar voice whispered, “Busy?”

Ymir turned, startled. Liora stood in the doorway, holding a thin, red-covered book to her chest.

“What are you doing here?” Ymir stuttered. 

“I brought something,” she said.

Ymir blinked. “For me?”

Liora stepped closer, smiling as she held it out. “You said you’ve never read stories about things that could happen. So I thought I’d fix that.”

The title was faded, the gold lettering half-flaked away. The Ballad of the Rose Prince.

“It’s a love story,” Liora added quickly, as if to defend her choice. “But it’s not stupid. I promise.”

Ymir traced the edge of the cover, pretending to study it, though her eyes kept drifting to Liora’s grin. “Love stories are for children.”

“You are a child,” Liora said, teasing.

Ymir shot her a look, but there was no real bite in it. “That’s what Father says when he’s about to scold me.”

“Then I guess we think alike,” Liora said, pulling out the chair beside her. “Can I read it with you?”

Ymir hesitated. “You’ll get in trouble.”

“I’ll read quietly,” Liora said, already sitting down. “They won’t even know.”

Ymir sighed and opened the first page.

The story began simply, a lonely prince who fell in love with a flower that could speak. The sentences were clumsy, childish even, but something about them caught her. There was warmth in the words, an ache she couldn’t name. She found herself leaning closer, her eyes catching on phrases she didn’t fully understand: his heart raced, their lips met, the world fell silent around them.

Every time she paused, Liora would whisper explanations. Sometimes she laughed, sometimes she blushed. And every time she did, Ymir caught herself staring, not at the page, but at her face, at the life written across it.

They read until the light outside the window turned soft and gray. When the bell rang for evening prayer, Liora stood reluctantly.

“I’ll bring another one tomorrow,” she said.

“You don’t have to,” Ymir replied, though her tone betrayed her.

“I want to,” Liora said, smiling. “You look happier when we read.”

Ymir didn’t know what to say. Happiness wasn’t something she had ever measured before.

After that day, it became a quiet routine. Liora visited when the priests were distracted, always with a new book tucked beneath her arm. Sometimes she read aloud; sometimes Ymir did. They whispered about foolish characters and impossible romances, laughed at how dramatic everything was.

Ymir noticed the priests had stopped glancing in disapproval when Liora entered. Even Father, who once forbade her from speaking to the followers, said nothing.

She suspected why. She was calmer now. She smiled more. She listened. She did her part, and they rewarded her with silence.

A month passed before anyone tried to stop Liora from visiting.

By then, it had become routine. She came after midday prayers with a new book tucked under her arm, the smell of flour still clinging to her sleeves. The priests had learned to ignore her. Father even seemed pleased. Ymir behaved better now. She smiled on command, spoke when spoken to, didn’t stare at the ceiling during sermons. The girl had made her useful again.

This afternoon, the study smelled of rain and ink. Liora sat cross-legged on the floor beside her, the open book balanced between them.

“It’s another love story,” Liora warned.

“Of course it is,” Ymir said, feigning despair.

“You liked the last one.”

“I liked the part where someone got stabbed,” Ymir corrected.

Liora rolled her eyes and started reading. Her voice was soft, lilting, carrying a rhythm the rain outside seemed to follow. The story was about a thief and a noblewoman who ran away together. The thief was brash and poor, the kind of man who stole to eat. The noblewoman was gentle, sheltered, promised to someone else. They met by chance—he tried to rob her carriage, and instead she offered him food.

Ymir listened, pretending to read along, though her eyes kept wandering to Liora’s mouth as she spoke. Before Liora, her reading had been confined to the dry, immutable texts of history and scripture—tales of wars waged by forgotten kings, the stern dictates of absent gods, the suffocating weight of faith. They were stories of grand, impersonal forces, where people were little more than pawns. But this… this was different. This was about ordinary people. It was about the small, desperate choices that built a life, about the terrifying, illogical act of falling in love. It felt more like a confession than a story, and a secret, shameful part of her was captivated by it. It’s what kept her up at night, imagining endings to the stories Liora and her didn’t get to. 

Each chapter turned softer, more tragic. The thief called her his “little star.” The noblewoman gave up her name, her home, her family, just to stay by his side. They were hunted, of course. Lovers like that always were.

When the story reached its first kiss, Ymir broke the silence.

“Do people actually do that?”

Liora looked up, confused. “Do what?”

“Put their mouths together like that.”

Liora flushed. “It’s not— it’s a kiss, Ymir. You’ve never—?”

Ymir grinned. “No. Is it supposed to be enjoyable?”

Liora snorted before she could stop herself. “You’re impossible.”

“I’m serious,” Ymir said. “Seems messy. All that drooling. If that’s romance, I’ll pass.”

Liora swatted at her shoulder, still laughing. “You’re disgusting.”

“Maybe.” Ymir leaned closer, a smirk tugging at her mouth. “But you’re the one smiling.”

That made Liora go quiet. Her cheeks colored, and for the first time she didn’t look away. The air between them shifted—soft, uneasy, full of something neither had words for.

Ymir looked down at the page. The thief and noblewoman were kissing again, and she felt that same small ache bloom in her chest. It wasn’t sharp, just steady, a pressure that made her want to move, to say something she couldn’t.

It was always a man and a woman in these stories. Always written that way, as if no other shape for love existed. She told herself that was why her chest hurt, why she shouldn’t ask.

Liora turned another page, her shoulder brushing Ymir’s arm.

Ymir held her breath until the feeling passed.

The stolen afternoons in the study had become the axis upon which Ymir’s world turned. The musty scent of old paper and ink was no longer the smell of duty, but of freedom. In the quiet space between sermons, Liora had carved out a sanctuary, and Ymir had learned, for the first time, the shape of happiness. It was not a grand or loud thing. It was the weight of a book in her lap, the sound of a turning page, and the warmth of a shoulder pressed against her own.

Liora was the only real thing. The priests were custodians, the followers a faceless sea, but Liora was solid. She was the scent of flour on her sleeves, the crooked smile that reached her eyes, the laughter that felt like a secret shared only with Ymir. She had become Ymir’s favorite person, a quiet, constant revolution in a life of scripted devotion.

The first time Liora had hugged her, a quick, impulsive squeeze, Ymir had frozen, her entire face flooding with a heat so intense she thought she might steam. The casual affection was a language she had never been taught, and every brush of their hands, every time Liora leaned close to point at an illustration, sent a flock of frantic, unfamiliar things beating their wings inside her chest.

Sometimes, when Liora said goodbye, she would press a soft, quick kiss to Ymir’s cheek or the back of her hand. A friendly gesture, perhaps, but to Ymir, it was a brand. Those spots would tingle for hours afterward, a phantom warmth that lingered long into the cold, solitary night. In the dark of her room, she would trace the place on her skin and imagine a different life. A life where they were just two girls, where they could walk out the door and keep walking, where this closeness could become something even more profound. The stories they read were always about men and women, but the feeling they described—the desperate pull, the world falling silent—that, Ymir was sure, was what she felt.

This afternoon, the air in the study was thick with impending rain. They had finished another story, and the familiar dread of Liora’s departure began to coil in Ymir’s gut. Liora was gathering her things, her movements signaling the end of their sanctuary.

A sudden, sharp panic seized Ymir. The thought of returning to the hollow performance of her divinity, of losing this warmth, was a physical pain. The ghost of Liora’s chaste kisses on her cheek seemed to burn, a tantalizing promise of a closeness she craved but did not understand. It was an unstoppable pull, a current she could no longer fight.

Driven by a confusion of longing and sheer, desperate terror of being left alone, Ymir moved. Her body acted without the permission of her mind. She stepped into Liora’s space, her hand finding the other girl’s arm to still her. Before Liora could form a question, before Ymir could lose her nerve, she leaned in and pressed her lips to Liora’s.

It was not like the stories. It was a clumsy, desperate collision. A beat of stunned stillness.

Ymir pulled back, her own breath caught in her throat. Her heart was a wild, hopeful thing.

The expression on Liora’s face extinguished it in an instant.

It was not anger. It was not even words. It was a pure, unadulterated shock that contorted into something else—a dawning, visceral disgust. Liora’s eyes widened, her lips parted in a silent gasp. She looked at Ymir not as her friend, but as something alien, something wrong.

The warmth between them shattered, replaced by a void so cold it stole the air from the room.

Liora wrenched her arm back as if Ymir’s touch had burned her. She took a stumbling step backward, her hand flying to her own mouth. Her gaze, locked on Ymir, was a reflection of a monstrous thing Ymir had never meant to be.

Then, without a sound, without a single word of condemnation that would have been easier to bear than this silence, Liora turned and fled. The study door slammed shut, the sound final as a tomb sealing.

Ymir stood alone in the sudden, suffocating quiet. The echo of the door seemed to scream all the things Liora had not said. Wrong. Unnatural. A mistake. She could feel the disgust like a physical film on her own skin, a punishment for wanting, for reaching, for pretending she could be anything other than what she was made to be. The warmth was gone, and in its place was a cold, hollow certainty. She was alone. And she had destroyed the only thing that had ever made it bearable.

The next day, the worship hall felt like a held breath. Ymir sat on her throne, the wood hard and unyielding against her spine. Every whisper from the line of supplicants sounded like an accusation waiting to be born. Her skin felt too tight, still humming with the phantom imprint of Liora’s recoil. She kept her gaze fixed on a crack in the stone floor, a fragile anchor in a sea of faces that seemed to see right through her polished divinity.

It started as a mutter, a low current beneath the chant of prayers. Then a voice, sharp and disembodied, lashed out from the back of the crowd.

"Fraud!"

The word hit her like a physical blow. Her head snapped up, eyes frantically scanning the mass of people. For a terrifying second, she saw Liora—a flash of brown hair, the curve of a familiar cheek—but it was just a stranger, their face twisted in sudden doubt. The seed was planted. Another shout came from the opposite side, "She's a devil!" and the crowd’s faith began to curdle. The murmurs swelled, a chorus of suspicion fed by the very anonymity she had craved. She saw Liora’s disgust reflected in a dozen different eyes, heard her betrayal in every hissed rumor.

The priests moved in, a flurry of damage control, their voices strained as they herded the restless flock away. But the stain remained.

Father came for her after dark. There was no sermon, no interrogation. The rumors were confession enough. His anger was a quiet, chilling thing. The first strike was methodical, a backhand that snapped her head to the side. The next was a closed fist to her ribs, driving the air from her lungs in a silent gasp. He wasn't punishing a person; he was correcting a flawed relic, beating the defiance out of the vessel until only hollow obedience remained. She crumpled to the floor, taking each blow as her due, a penance for the sin of wanting something for herself.

When he was done, he hauled her up by her arm, his fingers biting into the fresh bruises, and threw her into her room. The lock turned with a sound that sealed her fate.

Silence.

It was a different silence now. It wasn't empty; it was full of the echo of shattered trust and the ghost of a girl's laughter. It was the sound of being truly, irrevocably alone. The warmth was gone, and the cold that replaced it was absolute.

Curled on the cold stone, the metallic taste of blood in her mouth, Ymir made a vow to the darkness. She would never pretend she was anything more than what they told her to be. She would never again make the stupid, fatal mistake of believing her own heart.

***

Ymir’s eyes snapped open.

The cell was dark. The dungeon. Not the study. The memory, vivid and sharp, had ambushed her in a dreamless sleep. Liora. She hadn’t thought of that name, of that girl’s betrayed face, in years. Why now? Why, when her life had been carved out into a new, different kind of cage, did that first, fundamental failure of her heart choose to return?

After Historia left it was quiet. Except for the rustling of guards being switched out every couple hours or so. There was nothing to do but stare at the four stone walls, who seemed to stare back at her.

Her body was restless, but she didn’t have the will to move. Instead she slept. She didn’t know how long she slept. Most nights were dreamless. Like her body was too exhausted to even dream. Most nights. 

The dungeon was cold, but the food was warm. She preferred to eat it fast to let the unfamiliar warmth settle in her body before burying herself in the small cot. She was provided a strange amount of blankets for a prisoner. She suspected it had something to do with being on the Queen’s good side. She didn’t complain. Being a prisoner of Paradis was a life of luxury compared to Marley, she learned.  

Even a doctor visited a few times, a stern woman with cold hands who examined her regenerated limbs and asked questions about her appetite and sleep. Ymir always answered in grunts. Though the doctor had a polite voice and even gave her a strained smile, the routine always felt like she was a prized animal up for auction. 

They’d given her new clothes. Rough-spun, brown, but clean. They didn’t smell of sweat, or dirt, or blood. They smelled of lavender and nothing else. She’d run the pads of her fingers over the coarse fabric for hours, mesmerized by its blankness.

Information came in fragments, from overheard conversations, echoes down the hall.

“—two months, can you believe it? Just gone—” a guard’s voice, down the hall, muffled. Two months. A lifetime. A blink.

“—funeral for the Commander tomorrow. Whole city’s in mourning.” Erwin. He had it coming, after escaping death so many times. 

“—Shiganshina secured. Wall restored. That Jaeger kid did it.” Eren. Of course.

“—the Queen’s orders. She’s to be checked twice a day.” Queen. The word was new. The first time she heard it she almost thought she was dreaming. Until it started to make sense in her mind. On some level, she’d always known it would come to this. Historia, the girl who wanted to be a nobody, crowned the ultimate somebody. It was the world’s final, cruel joke. Ymir pressed the heels of her hands into her eyes, until stars burst behind her lids. A queen. And what was she? The monster in the queen’s dungeon.

And the queen came.

Almost every day, a swirl of fine fabric and the scent of rosemary cutting through the cell's stagnant air. Historia would appear on the other side of the bars, her face a pale spotlight in the dark.

“I’m so sorry I couldn’t come yesterday,” she’d say, her voice too bright, too loud for the small space. “The meetings just wouldn’t end. You wouldn’t believe how chaotic things have been.”

Ymir would keep her back turned, her body curled toward the wall, feigning a sleep so profound not even the Queen of the Walls could disturb it. It was a lie, of course. She was never sleeping. She heard every word. 

Sometimes, in the early days, Historia would try to ask questions into that silence. “Are you hurt?” “Do you need anything?” “Will you please say something?”

The questions would hang in the air, unanswered, until they shriveled up and died. Eventually, she stopped asking. The visits became a strange, one-sided ritual. Historia would talk to Ymir’s motionless body. Talking on and on about everything. A queen confessing her sins to a prisoner who pretended to be asleep. A monster offering silent absolution to the only saint she’d ever known.

She’d listen to Historia talk about trade disputes and infrastructure and noblemen with over-inflated egos. She talked about being kidnapped, about Kenny, about her father, how they tried to get her to eat Eren. She listened to the cheerful, desperate cadence of her voice, like she was telling a tall tale. Like none of those horrible things had happened to her. In the same restless breath she’d laugh about almost being crushed from her fathers transformation, to something embarrassing a noble said the other day. Her head spun from the dissonance. Even if Ymir was talking, what could she possibly say? When there was so much? How could she even begin? 

One night, the performance shattered. Historia’s voice, usually a relentless, buzzing stream, had dwindled to a whisper. She was talking about the chapel, about the syringe, how she’d remembered her sister. The words were flat, stripped of all pretense. “I killed him,” she said, the sound swallowed by the stones. “He’s gone. Frieda’s gone. My grandparents… everyone is…” Her voice cracked. 

And then, a sound Ymir had never heard from her before. Not a sob, not a gasp. A quiet, broken crack in her breathing. The sound of a girl trying and failing to hold a world of grief inside.

That was it. Her body moved of its own accord. She pushed back the rough blanket and swung her legs over the cot. The stone floor was a shock of ice against her bare feet. She didn’t look at Historia as she crossed the small cell. She just sat across from her and slid her hand through the gap between the metal bars. Her fingers found Historia’s, which were clenched into a tight, cold fist on the other side. Historia’s breath shuddered. Her fingers uncurled, lacing with Ymir’s, holding on like she was drowning.

For a long moment, there was only the sound of her trying to steady her breathing. Then, her voice, thick and raw, barely a whisper.

“I missed you.”

The tone was sweet. Too sweet. Like hot honey dripping down Ymir's throat and burning in her lungs, making it hard to breathe. 

Ymir said nothing. There were no words for this. There was only the pressure of her grip, the solid fact of her presence. She hummed, a low, wordless sound in the back of her throat, and tightened her fingers. It was the only language she had left.

The heavy tread of boots echoed down the hall. “Your Majesty,” a guard’s voice called, impersonal and firm. “It’s time.”

Historia’s grip tightened for a fraction of a second, a desperate, silent plea. Then her fingers slipped away, the warmth leaving Ymir’s hand as quickly as it had come. “I’ll… I’ll see you tomorrow,” Historia said, her voice reassembling itself into that too-bright, queenly tone. 

Ymir didn’t watch her go. She stayed on the floor, the ghost of Historia’s touch already cooling on her skin, the echo of those three words burning in her ears.

A week later, they came for her. Not with a meal tray, but with manacles. Levi and Eren stood at the cell door, flanked by a unit of stone-faced MPs. The air shifted from stagnant to lethal.

She remembered Hange's words from the day before, a rushed, tense visit. She spoke of a trial. “It’s about impressions. The only reason you’re still breathing is because Historia is queen and the old regime is dead. You’re lucky. Don’t waste it.”

Lucky. The word was a bitter pill lodged in her throat. She was lucky to be a caged animal awaiting a committee’s verdict. She was lucky the butcher was taking a vote.

Light. It was the first thing that struck her, a brutal assault after the dungeon’s perpetual twilight. Great windows poured honeyed sunlight onto a polished floor, illuminating a scene of cold ceremony. At a long, intimidating table sat a row of men whose faces were etched with the permanent disapproval of bureaucrats who dealt in lives instead of ledgers. And there, among them, sat Historia, a spot of gold and resolve in a sea of grey. Her presence was a physical shock. Across the room, the other scouts—Armin, Mikasa, Jean—stood like grim sentinels.

At the foot of the table, like exhibits on display, stood Bertholdt and her. He was a portrait of defeat, his head bowed, shoulders slumped under the weight of his own existence. Levi and Eren flanked them. Eren’s gaze was distant, hollow, his usual fire banked to embers, his eyes carefully avoiding Bertholdt as if the sight was a physical poison.

The trial began. A portly official with a voice like grinding gravel read from a scroll, listing her crimes as if tallying inventory.

“The subject, Ymir, stands accused of the following: high treason against the Walls and the Crown. Aiding and abetting the enemy, namely the Warriors of Marley. Espionage. Kidnapping of Queen Historia, then a citizen of the Crown. And one count of murder in the first degree—the willful killing of MP Dieter Hoffmann during the aforementioned kidnapping.”

Then Historia spoke. Her voice, usually so soft in the cell, was sharp and clear, ringing with a queen’s authority. “And I would be dead if not for her. She saved my life in the forests of Orvud. She saved Cadet Springer’s life at Utgard Castle. She acted to protect her comrades, even at great personal risk.” She spoke of loyalty, of a debt owed, of a person who had made hard choices in a world that offered none.

But her words were pebbles thrown against a fortress wall. The old men listened with polite, implacable indifference. They saw a titan. A traitor. A thing.

“Her actions, while occasionally beneficial, were erratic and self-serving,” countered another official, a thin man with spectacles. “She is, by her own admission, a product of a ‘shady history.’ A seventy-year tenure as a Pure Titan does not inspire confidence in her moral character. She is, fundamentally, an unknown variable. A weapon that has already been turned against us once.”

He paused, letting the condemnation hang in the air before delivering the final, logical blow. “The power of the Jaw Titan is a strategic asset Paradis cannot afford to waste on a security risk. We have already procured a list of the most elite Military Police officers—proven, loyal soldiers who have volunteered to serve as a more stable, more useful successor. One that is not a traitor.”

A familiar numbness spread through Ymir. They were right. The part of her that was all sharp edges and cynical survival agreed. She was a curse. A blight. Everywhere she went, she brought ruin.

The audacity of it—the cold, bureaucratic presumption that the trial’s conclusion was a foregone conclusion, that Ymir was already a corpse and her power a piece of equipment to be reassigned—ignited a fury in Historia so pure it was blinding. Her hands, resting on the table, clenched into fists so tight her knuckles stood out like white marble. The air seemed to crackle around her.

“You speak of her as if she is not standing right here,” Historia’s voice cut through the room, sharp enough to draw blood. “You’re reducing her entire existence to a list of crimes! You don’t know her!”

“And you do, Your Majesty?” the portly official asked, his tone dripping with false deference.

Frustration boiled over in Historia. Her eyes flashed, and she reached into the folds of her dress. “Yes. I do.”

She pulled out a few, carefully folded sheets of paper.

Ymir’s world narrowed to that parchment. Her breath died in her lungs. It was a ghost, a stupid, sentimental ghost she’d conjured in a moment of weakness, sealed with the certainty of a death that never came. She’d handed it to Reiner as a final joke on herself, never believing he’d deliver it, already burying the memory of writing it. She had forgotten the words herself, let them fade into the same void as her seventy-year nightmare. To see them now, physical and real in Historia’s hand, was a violation that felt like having her ribs cracked open in public.

Historia’s voice, though trembling with emotion, was clear as it filled the chamber. “‘I have no regrets. Or so I’d like to say. But to be honest, I do have one.’”

A hot, sharp shame lanced through Ymir’s chest. Her fingers curled into fists, nails biting into her palms. You idiot. She wanted to vomit. She wanted to scream. This was a private deathbed confession, not a piece of evidence. It was never meant for the light of day, for the ears of these old men with their vulture eyes.

Historia’s gaze lifted from the page, locking directly onto Ymir, her voice softening yet somehow carrying further in the tense silence. “‘You and I still aren’t married.’”

The air left the room. A stifled, choke erupted from one of the scouts. Ymir felt a heat rush to her face, a furious, humiliated blush that burned worse than steam. Her throat swelled shut. The raw, childish want in those words, exposed here in this sterile hall, was a worse punishment than any execution. It was the core of her, soft and stupid and laid bare for picking apart. A frustrated, stinging pressure built behind her eyes, but she forced it back, swallowing the feeling until it was a hard, painful knot in her gut. She would not give them that. She would not cry.

Historia looked back at the officials, her chin held high, the letter clutched in her white-knuckled hand. “This is not the writing of a traitor who feels nothing. This is a person who loved. She came back for me!”

A wave of uneasy muttering broke over the room. Sasha, clapped a hand over her mouth, her eyes wide. Connie stared at the floor, his shoulders tense. Jean’s jaw was so tight it looked like it might crack. Armin looked almost as if he was a mummified corpse if it wasn’t for his wide, darting blue eyes. 

One of the officials, a man with a pinched face and a voice like scraping rust, broke the tension. He leaned forward, his eyes narrow with skepticism. “A touching sentiment, Your Majesty. If it is genuine. But one must consider the source. This… confession… was delivered by the very enemy who held her captive. It is… convenient. A calculated piece of theater no, perhaps, designed to play on your sympathies.” He let the implication hang in the air, thick and poisonous. “Can we be certain the girl even has the capacity to write such a thing? Or the sentiment?”

The muttering grew louder. A few officials nodded in grim agreement. The seed of doubt, once planted, began to sprout thorns. The love letter was being reframed as a weapon, its vulnerability twisted into a new kind of cunning.

The dichotomy was a war inside her skull. The selfish titan who killed an MP named Dieter, and the selfless, lovesick fool whose most vulnerable words were being dismissed as a Marleyan forgery. The conflict was a physical ache, the humiliation and the strange, defiant pride at seeing her own stupid heart held up for public dissection warring within her. She was being flayed alive, and the only thing stopping her from screaming was the numbness rushing in to fill the void.

Then, the head official, visibly flustered, cleared his throat. “The accused may speak in her own defense.”

All eyes fell on her. The exposure was complete. The fight was a distant, meaningless concept. She looked at Historia, at the desperate, furious hope in her eyes, and saw only the inevitable ruin she brought.

She lifted her head, her voice a dry, hollow laugh. “They’re not wrong,” she said, her eyes empty. “What’s the point of all this? If it’s for the best… just do it. Feed me to someone else.”

The silence that followed was absolute. It was the silence of a breath held, of a world tilting on its axis. Hange’s glasses slipped down their nose. Jean’s mouth hung open. Bertholdt flinched as if struck.

The only one who moved was Historia. Her composure, her queenly mask, shattered. Her eyes, wide and disbelieving, locked onto Ymir. And then, not with grief, but with a pure, unadulterated fury that promised fire. She looked like she was about to explode.

The cell door didn’t open with its usual hesitant creak. It slammed against the stone wall, the sound cracking through the silence like a gunshot.

Historia stood in the doorway, backlit by the torchlight in the hall. The Queen’s composure was gone, stripped away, leaving behind something raw and trembling. Her chest heaved with a breath she’d been holding since the trial.

“What is wrong with you?”

Her voice was low, a strained wire about to snap. Ymir, lying on her cot facing the wall, didn’t move. 

“Answer me,” Historia demanded, her voice rising, echoing in the small space. “Why did you come back? Why are you doing this? I am fighting for you! I am fighting so hard, and you’re just—you’re just throwing it all back in my face!”

The words hung in the air, met with nothing but the sound of Historia’s own ragged breathing. The silence from the cot was a void, sucking all the air and hope out of the room.

Historia’s hands clenched into fists at her sides. “I am trying to get you out of here,” she said, each word a desperate, fractured thing. “And you are setting us back. Why won’t you just fight?”

More silence. It was the final straw.

Ymir shifted uncomfortably, a strange bubbling sensation rising in her chest. Fight? Fight for what? To be a tool in this war game? After everything she’d done, all the things she tried to do—to get Historia out of this mess. She just ended up putting her in the middle of it. There was a bitter irony to it all, that almost made her smile. 

“Just let me go,” the words tumbled out, a barely concealed chuckle in her voice. 

Historia froze. “What?”

Ymir shifted on the cot, her voice a muffled, broken thing against the rough blanket. “Let me go. Maybe they’re right. I don’t know who I am. I don’t know. They did something to me. I’m a monster.”

The confession landed not with a shout, but a dull, hopeless thud. It was the most honest thing she’d said since returning, and it was a surrender.

Historia didn’t respond. A hot, traitorous tear escaped, tracing a path down her cheek. Then another. She brought a hand to her mouth, stifling a sob. She wanted to scream, to shake her, to make her understand. But the sight of her own tears, her own frustration, felt like a failure. She was the Queen, and she was crying in a dungeon, and it was only making the gulf between them wider. Her tears were just another burden for Ymir to carry.

She took a step back, then another. The fight was gone, replaced by a hollow, aching helplessness.

“So you’ll just let them kill you?” The question was a ghost of a sound, filled with more pain than any shout could ever hold.

She didn’t wait for an answer. She turned and left, the door closing with a soft, final click, a sound far worse than the slam.

Ymir didn’t hear from Historia for a week.

The silence was different this time. It wasn’t the quiet of before, filled with the potential of a visit. This was an ending. Every day, when the tray slid through the slot, Ymir expected it to be her last meal. Every footstep in the hall sounded like it was coming for her.

But nothing changed. The world, it seemed, was in no hurry to end her. Her life settled back into its numb routine: sleep, eat, stare at the wall. The boring, plodding safety of it was its own new kind of torture.

Physically, she was healing. The hollows under her eyes filled out. Her muscles, while atrophied, no longer screamed with exhaustion. But her mind was a trapped animal, pacing the same desperate circles. She started to crave a window, not for the view, but for the proof that an outside still existed. She thought of the sky, the feel of wind that wasn’t stale and still.

She thought Historia had finally given up on her. And in the deepest, most broken part of herself, Ymir believed it was for the best.

Chapter Text

The night of the trial, no one saw the Queen. They only heard her.

The sound came first as a muffled echo from the depths below, the heavy clatter of iron doors, a voice raised and cut short, then the slam that reverberated up through the stone like the aftershock of something breaking. The noise traveled through the castle’s bones, up through marble floors and narrow stairwells, until it reached even the guards in the highest halls, who pretended not to flinch. 

After that, silence.

By morning, the story had already begun to twist. The kitchen girls whispered that the Queen had fallen to her knees before the condemned. The maids said they’d found her alone in the corridor, shaking. Someone swore they’d seen her tear a letter in half.

Others claimed the letter had been written to her. That its words were so cruel, so venomous, they brought her to tears.

No one could say for certain.All they could see, when the Queen did return, were the faint, poorly veiled shadows beneath her eye, the constant bloodshot eyes that did not fade for days. 

But she smiled. She always smiled.

She attended every council session, signed every decree, visited the orphanage committee to review budgets as though nothing in the world had changed. Her posture was perfect, her words measured, her tone light. She laughed at jokes that didn’t reach her eyes. If anyone asked, she said she was fine.

And yet, the palace seemed to sense otherwise.

Meals went untouched. Her tea cooled beside unread reports. The candlelight in her study burned long into the hours before dawn. The guards outside her chamber swore they never once heard her bed creak with sleep. Some nights, they said, she paced for hours—the slow, steady rhythm of bare feet across polished stone—until it stopped suddenly, followed by silence too complete to be rest.

Still, she kept working.

Every morning, she greeted her ministers with the same gentle nod, the same practiced warmth. The servants began to lower their voices when she passed, afraid that any louder sound might shatter something delicate. The Queen was radiant as ever, but it was the radiance of glass, fragile, transparent, ready to crack at a touch.

The tension grew, invisible but suffocating. Even the birds avoided perching near the windows of her office, as if they too could feel it.

It happened one afternoon, as ordinary as any other.

The Queen had been reviewing a shipment list for the orphanage—import records, names, signatures. Her hand moved automatically across the parchment, but the letters blurred and drifted, refusing to stay still. The ink bled. Her vision tunneled.

“Your Majesty?” one of the secretaries asked quietly.

Historia blinked, her lips parting as if to answer. Then her quill slipped from her fingers, striking the desk with a small, pitiful sound.

She swayed.

For a heartbeat, no one moved. 

When she hit the floor, the papers scattered around her like feathers.

The secretary screamed.

Within moments, the corridor was chaos. Maids flooded in, their slippers skidding on the marble, voices overlapping in breathless panic. The physician was summoned, the guards sent running for cold water, blankets, anything.

By the time they carried her to her chambers, the Queen had already regained consciousness, pale and trembling, murmuring that it was nothing—that she had simply stood too fast, that she was fine. But her voice wavered, too soft, too fragile to believe.

That night, the council made a quiet decision.

If the Queen would not rest, they would find someone who could make her.

They sent her someone new. Not an official, not a maid—just a woman dressed in plain, dove-grey fabric. An advisor, she’d said. Or a friend, she’d laughed, depending on what the Queen preferred. Her name was Cassian, though the other servants called her Sister.

“You should eat something, Your Majesty,” Sister Cassian said softly as she poured tea, her movements unhurried, graceful. “Even queens are bound by the laws of the body.”

Historia sat by the window, wrapped in a shawl despite the mild air. Her eyes were swollen, her voice dull. “I’m not hungry.”

Cassian smiled faintly, as though she’d expected that. “Then don’t eat. But drink. Warm water reminds the heart it still lives.”

There was something old in the way she spoke, something rehearsed and steady, like a prayer disguised as conversation. Historia found herself listening if only because silence had begun to suffocate her.

“I heard the walls shake the day of the trial,” Cassian continued, her gaze resting on the blue horizon beyond the window. “The servants say the Queen wept for the condemned. That is a beautiful thing, to still feel sorrow for what the world has already judged.”

“It wasn’t beautiful,” Historia muttered. “It was pathetic.”

“Perhaps,” Cassian said simply. “But even tears have purpose. They cleanse what cannot be spoken.”

Historia looked up, startled by the calm in her tone. “You talk like you’ve done this before.”

Cassian tilted her head, the lamplight glinting in her grey hair. She had the kind of face that carried time gently, soft lines, clear eyes, a patience that felt older than the room itself. There was no expectation in her expression, no judgment. Only stillness.

Historia realized suddenly that she hadn’t seen stillness in weeks. Not in the servants’ frantic politeness, not in the guards’ averted eyes, not even in her own reflection. Everyone moved as if afraid of breaking her. Cassian, somehow, wasn’t. She simply was steady, grounded, a quiet tide that seemed to wait for words to reach her shore.

And maybe that was why Historia spoke.

“I don’t know what to do,” she said, her voice trembling. “There’s someone I—” She stopped, the word catching in her throat. “Someone I care about. She’s still alive, but it feels like watching someone die.”

Cassian said nothing. The name was unspoken, but both knew who this someone was. Still Cassian’s gaze did not waver, nor soften with pity, only listened, wholly and without interruption.

Historia’s fingers twisted in her skirt. “Everyone acts like it’s over. Like she’s already gone. They talk about duty and mercy and justice as if any of it makes sense. As if—” She cut herself off, shaking her head, “Do you think it’s possible to grieve the living?” Historia stumbled over her own words, as if they were being coughed out of her. Then, her voice cracked, “I feel as if my heart is breaking.”

Historia scratched out where her heart should be, eyes blinking rapidly as she averted her gaze, staring out onto the bright courtyard. It was a picturesque day, sunny skies, clear weather. But Historia had not stepped outside her room. 

“It feels like nobody wants to do anything about it—that nobody sees…her. They say I should let go. But I can’t. I don’t want to.” The last words broke on her lips. “It feels like if I stop holding on, she’ll sink into the dark and never come back up. And I can’t—”

Cassian’s eyes lowered, her gaze filled with profound understanding. Her voice was as quiet as rain on stone. “You speak like someone standing at the edge of the sea,” she said. “You cannot save what the tide has taken, only wait for it to return.”

The words landed with a terrible gentleness, as if they’d been spoken long ago and only now reached Historia.

“I don’t want to wait,” she whispered.

“No,” Cassian said, folding her hands over her rosary. “But waiting is all that love truly is. We call it faith when we survive it.”

Historia didn’t know whether the woman was comforting her or condemning her. But for the first time since the trial, she felt the ache inside her shift, not gone, but unburied. And that was enough to make her tremble.

Cassian reached across the table, her thin hand clasping Historia’s own in a gesture that felt both motherly and deliberate. “Faith,” she whispered, “is learning to release the hand before it is gone.”

Historia’s throat closed. For the first time since the trial, she let herself cry, to cry and be held. 

Cassian said nothing more. She just sat there, murmuring a prayer under her breath, her rosary beads clinking softly.

From that day on, the Queen met with her daily.

The silence had become a solid thing. A wall as thick as the one that surrounded the city. Ymir had stopped tracking the days, the hours between the scraping of the food slot. Days blurred together not knowing if the next was her death day. 

The door clanged open. Her mind automatically went to Historia. Her body braced for another painful, formal visit. One that wouldn’t be a last goodbye. 

 But the figure that shuffled in wasn't draped in fine fabrics. It was a taller, slighter, clad in the familiar green of the Scouts.

Ymir kept her back turned, feigning the deep, unresponsive sleep that usually worked. She waited for the hesitant apology, the rustle of a royal dress.

Instead, a low voice accompanied by a metallic knock on her cell followed.

“Hey. Wake up, sleepyhead.”

Connie.

She pushed herself up on her elbows, a flicker of something, not relief, not happiness, but a faint, familiar recognition, passing through her. Of all of them, he was the easiest. There were no oceans of history between them, no unpayable debts.

He stood there for a moment, awkwardly, as if he’d walked into the wrong room. He scratched the back of his head, his eyes scanning the cramped cell before landing on her.

“Springles,” she rasped. “Get lost?”

“Nah. Just thought this place could use some better looking company.” He leaned against the bars, a faint smirk on his face. “You look like crap, by the way.”

“Says yourself, baldy,” the response came instinctively. Familiar irritation bubbling up in her throat at the sight of his still shaven head. He looked almost the same as she remembered. Just slightly older, taller even. If she hated to admit it. 

He snorted. The silence that followed wasn’t the heavy, suffocating kind from Historia’s visits. It was just… silence. Eventually, it was Connie who broke it, his tone shifting, the bravado softening into something more serious.

“So,” he began, scratching his ear. “Why’d you do it? Go with them, I mean.”

The bluntness of it surprised her. It wasn’t an accusation. It was a question. She looked away, toward the wall.

“Cause I’m an idiot.”

A quick, sharp laugh escaped him. “We already knew that.”

The corner of her mouth twitched. Almost a smile.

He told her then, his voice gaining a spark of its old energy. The Scouts were leaving soon. Heading beyond the Wall. His eyes lit up with a hope so naive it was almost painful to look at.

“I wanna know what’s out there,” he said, and he sounded so young.

Ymir felt the old cynicism rise up in her throat, a bitter pill. “It’s all the same out there,” she muttered, cutting his excitement off at the knees. “Outside the wall is hell. Full of people who want to kill you. It’s hell.”

His face fell, just for a second. The light in his eyes dimmed. “That can’t be all,” he insisted, stubborn. Then, as if remembering a secret, he perked up. “Eren told me… he said there’s an ocean.”

The word landed softly in the cell. Ocean. She remembered. The vast, terrifying blue. The smell of salt. The crash of waves that sounded like the end of the world and the beginning of it, all at once. 

“Yeah,” she said, her voice quieter. “There is.”

And she told him. Not to crush his hope, but to give it a shape. She described the endless water, the way it stretched to the sky. The rough feel of sand, the white foam of waves, the taste of salt on the wind. She didn’t use pretty words; she used true ones. And Connie listened, utterly captivated, his earlier disappointment forgotten.

When she finished, the cell felt smaller. The world outside felt bigger. She looked at him, this kid who still believed in discoveries.

“So,” she said, the cynicism returning as a shield. “You here for a last visit? Before they off me?”

Connie went very still. The easy banter vanished. He looked down at his boots, then back at her, his expression unreadably serious.

“Historia won’t let that happen,” he said, with a confidence that was undercut by the slightest tremor in his voice. He swallowed. “She cares about you. A lot. If you died… I think she might just quit being queen.” He shook his head, a faint, bewildered smile on his face. “Honestly, I have no idea why. You’re kind of an asshole.”

Ymir looked away, the words hitting their mark. “She seemed to be doing just fine after I left,” she deflected, her voice flat. “She’ll be fine. She’s just stubborn.”

“That’s not true.”

The words were sharp. Final. Connie took a step closer to the bars, his usual goofiness completely gone, replaced by a startling intensity.

“You weren’t there.” His voice dropped, low and urgent. “You didn’t see her. After you left, Historia didn't leave her room for a week. She wouldn't speak to anyone—not if it wasn't about you. We had to force her to eat and even then, well…”

His voice wavered, thick with a memory he clearly hated. He looked her straight in the eye, making sure she heard every single word.

“You really worried her.”

Ymir’s mind stuttered. The image Connie painted—of a Historia broken, silent, and starving—was so at odds with the queen she knew. Of a Historia that smiled so brightly it lit the corners of her dark cell. 

A part of her wanted to ask. Maybe some selfish wonder to know what her absence had really been for Historia. But based on what Connie was describing, could she even take the truth? No. It was easier to imagine she didn’t matter at all. 

“I gotta go,” Connie broke the silence, sensing the tension emanating from Ymir. 

He turned to leave, pausing at the door, his hand on the handle. He didn’t look back.

“Don’t die, okay?”

The door shut behind him, leaving nothing but Ymir’s own thoughts filling the emptiness.

***

The summons came not with a royal decree, but with the soft rustle of dove-grey fabric. Sister Cassian appeared in the doorway of Historia’s study, her presence a quiet disturbance in the heavy air. The Queen sat amidst a fortress of untouched paperwork, her face pale in the afternoon light.

“Your Majesty,” Cassian said, her voice a low, steady stream. “Commander Hange, Captain Levi, and Armin are in the war room. They have… a guest. They request your immediate presence.”

A guest. The word was innocuous, but the slight emphasis Cassian placed on it made it ominous. Every official in the walls reported to her directly. A ‘guest’ could only be one thing: someone from outside. Historia’s blood ran cold. Ymir. This is about Ymir.

As she approached the war room, she saw a cluster of high-ranking officials filing out, their faces a mosaic of stunned contemplation. They moved in a hushed, hurried silence, barely acknowledging her, their minds clearly still locked on whatever had just transpired behind the heavy oak door. The sight tightened the knot of dread in her stomach. Important work had been done here, work from which she had been conspicuously excluded until now.

She pushed the door open and found them in the dim, map-strewn room. Hange was pacing, a live wire of nervous energy. Levi leaned against the far wall, his arms crossed, his expression a familiar mask of grim neutrality. Armin stood by the table, looking pale and intently focused. The bandages that she’d come accustomed to seeing wrapped around Armin were no longer there. Instead long patches of scarred, reddened skin stitched across his exposed skin. As if the bandages had left a permanent red ink where they had once been.

In the center of it all, seated calmly in a high-backed chair as if she owned it, was a woman Historia had never seen.

The woman was tall, willowy, with sharp features and hair cropped close to her skull. She wore strange, formal clothes, not Paradisian, not Military. She watched Historia enter with an unnerving, placid curiosity, like a scientist observing a new species.

“Your Majesty,” Hange said, their voice tight with a suppressed excitement that set Historia’s teeth on edge. “This is Yelena.”

Yelena offered a slight, mocking incline of her head. No bow. “The Queen in the flesh. A pleasure. I’ve heard much about you.”

“What is this?” Historia demanded, her voice colder than she intended. She looked at Hange, at Levi, ignoring the stranger. “What’s going on?”

“It seems our friend Zeke has been keeping secrets,” Levi stated flatly, his eyes never leaving Yelena.

“Zeke Yeager is a visionary,” Yelena corrected gently, as if explaining something simple to a child. “And his vision has always, ultimately, been for the restoration of Paradis.” She steepled her fingers. “His ‘defection’ to Marley was a long-term strategy. One that required… certain sacrifices. Certain performances.”

Armin spoke then, his voice quiet but clear. “She says that Ymir’s return was part of that strategy.”

The room tilted. Historia gripped the back of a chair. “What?”

“Zeke holds a position of unparalleled trust in Marley,” Yelena explained, her tone one of cool admiration. “As a titan of royal blood, he possesses access to powers the other eight can scarcely comprehend. He is not merely their warrior; he is their most prized asset. And with Ymir’s return, he has proven his strategic genius yet again. He delivered them a lost titan, a stunning victory. But the true masterpiece was what he did to the asset itself.”

She paused, letting the word hang in the air. “He needed an agent on the inside here. Someone whose loyalty would be unquestionable because it was… engineered. The spinal fluid he injected into her? It wasn't just a weapon. It was a key. A way to ensure she would be receptive to his will. He has convinced Marley she is his loyal spy, but her true purpose is to serve a higher one.”

Historia felt the world narrow to a single, cold point. She didn’t come back for me. The thought was an ice pick to the heart. It was all a lie. A brilliant, terrible lie.

“She’s not stable,” Historia protested, her voice shaking. She looked desperately at Hange, at Levi. “She hasn’t spoken, she hasn’t agreed to any of this! You can’t believe this! This woman could be lying!”

“The intelligence she’s provided checks out,” Hange said, though they looked troubled. “Ship schematics. Patrol routes. Things we had no way of knowing.”

“It doesn’t matter if she’s lying,” Levi cut in, his voice like steel. “What matters is that the MPs and the tribunal believe her. They see a way to turn a condemned prisoner into a strategic asset. They’re salivating over it.”

“This is her only way out, Historia,” Hange said, their voice pleading now. “The only way. They were going to feed her to someone else. Now, she’s a protected party. She’ll be under our supervision at the port. She’ll be alive.”

“Alive?” Historia’s laugh was a bitter, broken thing. “You call that alive? Being a puppet for Zeke Yeager? Having her mind violated? This is a different kind of execution!”

Yelena watched the exchange with a faint smile. “Zeke Yeager’s will is the only reason she breathes. Her usefulness is her shield. I would think you’d be grateful.”

The word usefulness was a deliberate poison. Historia felt her composure cracking, the queenly mask splintering to reveal the raw, terrified girl beneath.

Hange stepped closer, their voice dropping to a whisper only she could hear. “I know. I know what this looks like. But if you care about her best interest, truly care, you will help us convince her to comply. You will make her see this is her only chance.”

Historia looked at their faces: Hange’s desperate hope, Levi’s grim acceptance, Armin’s pained logic, and Yelena’s placid, monstrous certainty. She was the Queen, but she was surrounded by an impossible calculus. To fight was to condemn Ymir to death. To agree was to surrender her to a fate worse than it.

Her shoulders slumped. The fight drained out of her, leaving a hollow, aching void.

“Fine,” she whispered, the word tasting like ash and surrender.

Her chest ached, an empty and hollow feeling. Historia clung to the satin bed sheets; they were warm, soft. Everything that her heart wanted, and yet nothing could quiet the storm inside. The meeting played over and over in her mind like a broken record. Yelena’s smug certainty. Hange’s desperate pragmatism. The word useful echoing like a curse.

She didn’t come back for me. It was all a lie.

But worse than that was the thought of tomorrow. Of seeing Ymir. Of having to stand there and endorse this nightmare with a queen’s composure. Of watching her be taken away. Again. The relief that Ymir would live was a real, solid thing, a stone of certainty in her churning gut. But it was cold, so cold, and it was drowned out by a tidal wave of remorse.

Sister Cassian’s words from before returned to her, their gentle cadence now feeling like an accusation. “Faith is learning to release the hand before it is gone.” She had tried. For days, she had given Ymir space, had respected her silence, had trusted in that terrible, patient faith. But now, with the news of this departure hurtling toward them, that philosophy felt like an excuse. It wasn't faith. And the thought of Ymir leaving with this chasm still between them, with so much left painfully unsaid, was unbearable.

A burning, desperate need seized her—a need to fix things, to bridge the distance now, before it was too late. It didn’t matter the ungodly hour. She had to see her.

The air in the room grew thick, pressing down on her. She couldn’t breathe. Throwing the covers aside, she slipped out of bed, her bare feet silent on the cold stone floor. She didn’t think. She just walked, her mind a fatigued mess. 

She found herself at the heavy door leading down to the dungeon. She stood by the door but didn't go in. She took a big breath, letting it fill up her lungs, and squeezed her eyes shut, savoring the stretch until she felt her lungs start to tingle with strain. Of all the times she had visited Ymir, she could probably count on one hand the amount of times Ymir was actually in a good mood, let alone spoke more than a few sentences to her. She shook her head as if the thought might rattle out of her. Of course Ymir would be unhappy all those other times. After all, her presence was just another reminder of the cage she was in. Then again, it was different now. Maybe if she knew she was getting out of here. If Ymir knew she could finally be free, she’d change. Wake up. Say something. 

Her stomach dropped. Why? Why was she feeling this way? 

Leaving. Again. 

Was she that blind? Had she really expected Ymir to just stay here forever? Tears flooded the bowls of her eyes and suddenly her heart pounded too fast. Way too fast. The breath she was holding shot out of her as she gasped desperately for air. She couldn't breathe no matter how many ragged breaths she took. 

She couldn’t do it. She couldn’t go down there. What would she say? This is what you wanted, isn’t it? The lie was too bitter to speak in the dark, with no one to perform for.

The doors shuddered open, a lonesome soldier stepping out from the cold fire light. 

“S-Sasha?” Historia stuttered, hastily wiping her cheeks. “What are you doing?”

Sasha blinked, her eyes wide like she was looking at a ghost. “Um… going to bed?” She took in Historia’s disheveled state, her tear-streaked face. “What are you…?” She cut herself off. “Did you want to see Ymir?”

A flicker of understanding passed over Sasha’s sleepy face. She looked like she wanted to say more, but without another word, she stepped aside, pulling the door open just enough for Historia to slip through. Her curious, sympathetic glance followed the Queen into the gloomy dungeon. 

Historia heard the door shutter behind her, leaving them alone. As she came and stood in front of the long metal bars of the cell, she peered into the dark space, finding at first glance it appeared empty. She held her breath, searching for any signs of life among the cold, dark brick. In the back corner, hidden by a layer of shadows, she spotted it, an oddly shaped lump buried in a bundle of bedding. 

"Ymir, are you awake?" She called, knocking softly on the thick metal. “Can you come here, please?"

So she wasn't here for me. Her own thoughts echoed in her mind. 

There were still so many things she wanted to ask. So many things she wanted to talk about. And yet, all this time she’d spent talking about herself, or being angry, bitter. 

“Will you please say something, Ymir?” She whispered softly. So softly it could’ve been to herself. 

There was no movement, not even a quiver Historia could make up in her delirious eyes. 

I do have one regret, you and I still aren’t married. 

Liar.

***

When it finally came, she was already standing. There was no fight left in her. They paused outside her door. Keys jangled, the sound unnaturally loud in the silent tomb of her cell.

This was it.

Ymir didn’t move from her cot. She kept her face to the wall, her body curled in on itself. She had prepared for this, in a way. She’d emptied herself out. There was nothing left to fear, because there was nothing left at all.

The door creaked open. “On your feet,” a voice barked, devoid of any emotion.

She moved slowly, mechanically. She didn’t look at them as they bound her hands in front of her, the rough hemp of the rope biting into her wrists. 

They led her out of the dungeon, up a narrow, winding staircase. The air changed, losing its damp, earthy chill, becoming drier, smelling of old wood and polish. They weren’t leading her outside to a courtyard. This was something else. An office. A private meeting room before the final walk. To give her a chance to repent? To beg? The irony was almost funny.

A door swung open. The guards shoved her inside, not roughly, but with a firm finality.

The room was full of people.

Her eyes, adjusted to the gloom, struggled with the lamplight. She saw Hange first, standing behind a large table, their usual manic energy replaced by a tense, watchful stillness. Levi was there too, leaning against the wall by the door, his arms crossed, his gaze a physical weight. Armin stood slightly apart, his face pale, his eyes wide with an emotion she couldn’t name.

And Historia. Historia was there, seated in a chair, her hands clenched in her lap, her knuckles white. She wouldn’t look at Ymir. She stared at a fixed point on the wall, her jaw set so tight it looked like it might break.

Confusion, cold and sharp, cut through the numbness. This wasn’t the execution committee. This was… them.

Then she saw the other one.

A woman. Tall, slender, with close-cropped hair and sharp, intelligent features. She was dressed in formal clothes and stood with an unnerving calm, her hands clasped behind her back. She watched Ymir with a detached, analytical curiosity. Her presence was wrong. She didn’t belong.

Ymir’s heart, which had been still and cold, gave a single, hard thud against her ribs. What was this?

“Sit down, Ymir,” Hange said, their voice unusually gentle.

One of the guards pushed a chair toward her. She sat, her movements stiff. Her eyes darted from face to face, searching for a clue, finding only a wall of unreadable expressions. Her gaze finally landed on Historia, pleading for an answer she wouldn’t give.

The strange woman spoke first. Her voice was calm, and it filled the room with a terrifying authority.

“My name is Yelena,” she said, as if that explained everything. “I am here as a representative of Zeke Yeager’s will.”

Yelena continued, and the world as Ymir knew it ended. She spoke of visions and secret alliances. She spoke of Zeke’s grand, tragic strategy for Paradis. She explained, in chilling, clinical detail, how Ymir’s sacrifice had never been her own. It was a move in Zeke’s game. Her return was a calculated delivery of an asset. The spinal fluid wasn’t just a weapon; it was a claim. A way to ensure her compliance.

“He has convinced Marley you are his loyal spy,” Yelena finished, a faint, approving smile on her lips. “And now, you will have the opportunity to prove him right.”

The words washed over her, not as a salvation, but as a total annihilation. Her choice. Her pain. Her love for Historia. All of it was erased, rewritten as another man’s clever strategy. She was a thing. A puppet.

She looked at Historia, finally understanding her presence. She wasn’t here to say goodbye. She was here to witness the unveiling of the lie. To see what Ymir truly was.

Historia’s eyes met hers then, and in them, Ymir saw a reflection of her own devastation. And something else: a furious, helpless shame.

Hange stepped forward, their voice straining for optimism. “This is a second chance, Ymir. You’ll be under our supervision at the port. You’ll be alive.”

Alive. The word was meaningless.

Ymir looked down at her bound hands. The rope, she realized, was just for show. The real bindings were so much more permanent. She felt a sound building in her throat, not a scream, not a sob, but a hollow, empty noise that died before it could escape.

Ymir said nothing. She just stared at a crack in the stone floor, tracing its lines, trying to anchor herself to something real as the world dissolved into a nightmare of someone else’s design.

It was Historia who broke it. Her voice, when it came, was not the Queen’s. It was thin, strained, laced with a bitterness that made Ymir flinch.

“This is what you wanted, isn’t it?”

Ymir’s head snapped up. The words were a shock, a physical blow coming from her. They echoed in the room, twisting the knife Yelena had already plunged into her gut.

This is what you wanted. The memory flashed, the trial. The condemning faces. Her own voice, flat and hopeless, offering herself up. ‘If it’s for the best… just let them do it. Feed me to someone else.’

She had meant it as a surrender. An end. Historia had heard it as a wish. And now, in this sterile room, surrounded by architects of her new prison, Historia was throwing her own despair back at her, polished into a weapon.

“To get out of here,” Historia continued, her voice gaining a sharp, brittle edge. She was looking at Ymir now, her blue eyes blazing with a pain so intense it looked like anger. “To be useful.”

The word landed like a verdict. It was the most cruel thing Historia had ever said to her. It reduced every sacrifice, every moment of pain, every silent, aching thought of her to a simple, transactional value. Useful.

Ymir felt the last of her resolve crumble to dust. There was nothing left to say. No defense to mount. They had all decided who she was and what she was for.

Hange, mistaking her shattered silence for acceptance, clapped their hands together, the sound jarringly loud. “Excellent! We depart within the hour. There are clothes for you. Get changed.”

The orders were given. The meeting was over.

The clothes were laid out on a simple cot in a side room: the white breeches, the familiar brown jacket, replaced with a dark green trench coat. The clothes felt strange, foreign and too big for her. Like a relic stepping in from an era leftover. 

She changed mechanically. The fabric was coarse and stiff, smelling of soap and storage. The high collar swallowed her neck, and for a moment she could almost forget she was the tool everyone saw her as. Her hands were free now. The ropes were gone. The facade of freedom was almost more insulting than the bindings had been.

She was led outside to a waiting military carriage. The afternoon sun was blinding after weeks in the dungeon. She squinted against the light, taking in the bustling courtyard of the interior castle grounds. It was all so normal. So utterly disconnected from the surreal horror of the last hour.

The sky was comically bright. Too bright. An endless blue that stretched out, white lines cutting up the sky. 

Her hands were free. For the first time in months. But the weight of the invisible binds there still lingered. Levi stood by her side, walking her to the carriage. He didn’t speak, didn’t move to help her in. He just watched, his gaze hard and unreadable like always. He stood just a little too close, watched a little too closely. 

She moved toward the carriage steps, her body moving on autopilot. This was it. The final step into the new cage.

“Wait.”

The voice was behind her, breathless and desperate.

Historia stood there, her composure gone, completely eroded. She must have run. A few strands of blonde hair had escaped her updo, framing a face etched with raw panic. 

Before Ymir could process it, before Levi could step in with his usual sharp efficiency, a hard, barreling force plunged into her side, almost enough to send her stumbling back. Steady arms wrapping around Ymir’s torso, a face pressing hard into the rough fabric of her Scout jacket. A sharp, disapproving tsk came from Levi’s direction, a sound like the cocking of a gun.

But in a time that seemed to stretch over an instant, Ymir’s world fell into complete stillness. All that existed was the pressure of Historia’s embrace, the frantic beat of a heart hammering against her ribs, and the blinding, overwhelming sea of gold hair that filled her vision. For one impossible moment, there was no Zeke, no mission, no past or future. There was only this: the solid, steady weight of the girl who had refused to let her go, holding on as if her own life depended on it.

Historia's fingers clutched at Ymir’s jacket. “Please,” she whispered, the word muffled against her chest. “Say something. Anything.”

But Ymir had no words. Her own arms hung useless at her sides, stunned into immobility. If she moved, if she so much as breathed too deep, the spell would break. The world would crash back in.

She felt Historia’s shoulders shake with a silent sob. “I’ll send letters. As many as I can. You have to write back. Promise me you’ll write back.” Her voice was frantic, pleading.

A subtle ache formed in her heart, dragging her out of what she was sure was a waking dream. Something in her told her to move towards her, a magnetic pull. To capture the trembling girl in her arms and refuse to let go. As if her body could will the stoppage of time, the arrow of fate. 

But the moment passed, leaving only the burning string of restlessness, steady in her arms. Historia’s touch was too desperate, her tears, her voice too full of a love that she’s afraid would bubble up and spill over. 

She wrenched her arm from Historia’s grasp. The movement was too sharp, too sudden. Then she turned away, presenting her back. It was the cruelest thing she could do, and she did it perfectly.

A sharp, wet gasp came from behind her. The sound of a heart breaking, clean in two.

“I’ll come visit you,” Historia whispered, the promise sounding like a curse. “As soon as I can. I swear it.”

Silence.

Ymir heard the rustle of fabric as Historia turned and fled. Heard the quick, receding footsteps on the cobblestones.

She didn’t watch her go. She stood there, in her new clothes, feeling the weight of Levi’s gaze on her back. She took a shuddering breath, the air tasting of horses, dust, and the faint, fading trace of rosemary soap.

Then, without a word, she climbed into the carriage, and the door shut behind her.