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Chapter Text

The stairway is dimly lit, narrow, and cold. It feels not unlike Mikasa does. The cold seeps through her scarf and chases the hair on her arms. Her heart pounds in retaliation. 

It’s not just the cold, she knows. It’s the room she knows she’s about to walk into, the person standing in it. 

She sees him before he sees her. Standing at the sink, dabbing his face dry with a ragged towel. His hair, now longer than hers, twists into a knot at the base of his neck. 

Her feet halt a couple steps away from the tall metal bars that attempt to keep him in his cell. From this angle, she can’t see herself in the mirror, but she imagines she looks like she feels — like a ghost. Face pale, cheeks sunken, eyes heavy with grief. 

Eren doesn’t. His skin still radiates warmth, and the way he’s grown in the months since she’s seen him makes him seem so alive. 

The bastard laughed, Connie had said. 

She swallows down a swell of fear.

There’s no way to know at what point he notices her presence, but he addresses her before he even opens his eyes. 

“I’m sorry about Sasha,” he says, dropping the towel and his arms on the edge of the sink. His neck falls with the rest of him, shielding him from her view. 

At first, she feels fleeting relief. That he does care, that he does feel remorse.

But then the words pierce her heart in a heartbreak she’s never experienced before. She hates to doubt how much she should believe him.

Mikasa has cried out all her tears, but sadness pours from her eyes either way. “I don’t want to talk about Sasha,” she gets out, and she means it. Not with him, not right now. 

He looks at her then, and she reconciles with the fact that she was wrong earlier — his body may thrum with life but his eyes are devoid of it. 

He straightens; he towers over her now, seeming so much older it’s almost frightening. Mikasa recalls the day he’d first outgrown her growth spurt, a whole half an inch taller than her… the memory vanishes swiftly. 

Eren continues to stare with unreadable eyes. 

She doesn’t think he knows what to say to her. She doesn’t even want to know. 

Breaking their glare-off first, she huffs out a breath and leans against the wall adjacent to the prison bars. She could reach through and touch him if she tried to. 

She’s not supposed to be here right now. She and Armin are supposed to wait to try to talk to him together. To put a couple more nights of grief and emotions between them and him. But Mikasa can’t sleep, can’t eat. 

The Eren we knew always tried to keep you away from the front lines, Jean had said. But he used you. 

Her voice is even, but quiet. “What were you thinking? What did Zeke say to convince you to go along with his plan?”

Eren shakes his head. “He didn’t have to convince me. No one did.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“Then why ask?”

“Where have you been? What have you been doing for the last three months?”

“I’ve been in Marley. Living amongst the Eldians.”

So he said in his letters. Mikasa shakes her head before he’s even done talking. Her emotional bandwidth has been run ragged. She doesn’t even care about the details of it all. 

“Eren, if I could just understand why, I could help you. I could-“

“I don’t want your help,” he bites with more venom than he had when he was 15. “More importantly, I don’t need it. Not anymore.”

He slams his body against the wall on the other side of the cell. They stand shoulder to shoulder but for lines of metal bars that could keep neither of them in nor out. Both of them stare straight ahead.

“Until next time you’re in imminent danger.”

“We have the upper hand now.”

“Like that matters. You’d find a way to put yourself in harm’s way anyway. It’s like you want to die.”

He doesn’t respond to that. Mikasa turns to look at him, but he keeps staring straight ahead. “Eren.” 

The instincts that come over her feel so natural it’s painful. She wants to reach her arms out, hold him close to her, tell him that she loves him, war criminal or not. Years of practice help her push them down. 

“This is how it plays out, Mikasa,” he says gravely. “There is no peace to be made. It’s us or it’s them.”

“You don’t get to decide that.”

“No. It’s already been decided. The world is a cruel place, remember? This is the way it works. You and Armin –” He stops himself, reels in his train of thought. He looks at her then. His eyes are as cold as the rest of the room. “And the rest of you. You’re nothing more than optimistic fools.” 

“The world is cruel. That doesn’t mean you have to be.” She takes a step closer and wraps her palm around one of the iron bars. “You can’t let yourself become the monsters you hated in the first place.”

“Too late for that now, wouldn’t you say?” 

“No. I wouldn’t.”

Eren makes a clicking sound under his breath. “Yeah,” he agrees. “You’re right about that.”

Mikasa hardly knows what to make of that. 

Words from long ago reappear in her mind – “The boy needs to be saved from himself, Mikasa.”

“Your mom didn't want this for you, Eren.”

There’s not a shift in Eren’s eyes when he steps closer, turning his head down to look her right in the eyes. “Then it’s a good thing she’s not here to see it.”

If you ask me, Connie had said mere hours ago. That wasn’t Eren. 

Armin was right. She shouldn’t have come here tonight. Her emotions are all over the place as it is, and he’s clearly in no state of mind to have a fruitful conversation either. She should leave.

And then Eren says, “You should leave,” and she changes her mind. 

“I won’t.”

And that, finally, triggers a response behind his eyelids. Annoyance, disbelief, anger. “Get the hell out of here, Mikasa.”

She takes another step, her boots cuffing the iron coming out of the floor, and she curls her left hand around another bar. “No.”

With a growl of frustration he grabs a fistful of her cloak and drags her towards him, though she’s already about as close as she can get. His eyes shine and his breath fans her face as he bites, “You never know when to leave me the hell alone!” 

He shoves her away on the last word, sending her sprawling with his strength. She waits for the crack against the wall, but it doesn’t come. Instead she tumbles into hard earth, scuffing her elbows, the wind knocked out of her. 

Her fingers twine around long strands of grass, using them to help her up and — grass? 

Mikasa looks down and blinks hard. 

Grass, earth, and flowers. Nothing that should be found in an underground prison. 

She looks up and sunshine blinds her. Definitely not an underground prison. 

“What the he- Ah!” Her head pounds out of nowhere. Striking, pointed pain. 

It clears after a few seconds, and Mikasa’s vision refocuses. After it does, she spots Eren, standing a few feet away from her, blinking in puzzled disbelief. 

“Eren?” she asks hesitantly, her hurt forgotten for a second. 

When he looks at her, for a flash, he’s the boy she knows, wide-eyed and unknowing. 

“What is this? Am I – am I dreaming?” She says the last part mostly to herself, rapping on the side of her head with her wrist. Nothing happens, so she looks around – wherever they are, it’s beautiful. Lush green and solitary. The only thing besides them that stands among nature is a cabin on the edge of the forest. “Where is this?” 

Eren’s voice is as flat as ever, but his posture bends a little when he shrugs and starts walking towards the cottage. “One way to find out.”

The cottage door creaks open to a dark, abandoned room. In it is just about anything you could need to survive comfortably. A sofa, a square dining table that looks handmade, a fireplace, a kitchen counter. Everything is free of dust, yet the cabin sits with the stillness of nature, as if it’s been preserved for hundreds of years, waiting for someone. 

Mikasa lifts her left hand habitually to her scarf. She makes a circle around the room in silence; talking to Eren has lost its appeal for now. Her dreams are often vivid and senseless and have him in them. That must be what this is. Maybe she fell asleep in the drawing room, only thinking about sneaking past the guards to get to his cell.

She opens and closes drawers with uncharacteristic laze. Somewhere else in the cabin, she hears Eren doing the same. If he finds anything of importance, he doesn’t share it with her. She certainly hasn’t found anything. There are curtains and a carpet, plates and utensils, matches and towels. Curious, but ordinary. 

She searches the bedroom too, comes up equally empty-handed.

When Mikasa walks back out into the main room, Eren isn’t there and the door is swung open. She follows after him slowly, pulling the door shut behind her. Eren sits at a picnic table she’s sure wasn’t there a couple of minutes ago.  

She joins him at the opposite end of the bench, putting as much distance between them as possible. 

“I don’t think this is a dream,” he confesses after a minute.

“This has to be a dream.”

“Doesn’t feel like a dream."

“Have you ever teleported before?”

She’s stunned to realize how truly terrified she is to know his answer. Would this be something else to add to the long list of things he never told her about? Mikasa braces herself, but Eren scoffs and the fear lifts off her shoulders. 

“No.”

“Could this be a power you didn’t know about, from the War Hammer?”

”Yeah, maybe. Maybe not.” 

Scanning her surroundings, Mikasa turns around to look at the cabin again, and — “Eren, look. The cabin.”

Eren whirls around and his eyes widen as he sees what she sees. The home stands just as it had been, except now a burnt golden glow bursts through the windows and the cracks around the doorframe. 

Without speaking, they get up in unison and head straight for the cabin. This time, when Eren opens the door, they’re met with flashes of color and light. 

Despite their blaze, the lights are easy to look at. It’s surreal. “What the…” Eren’s voice trails off as he takes it all in. 

The light source seems to be the round carpet in the center of the living room, spilling multicolored sunrays in all directions.  

Mikasa looks up to see how Eren’s eyes reflect it all, different images appearing and vanishing in his pupils. Images of people she can’t make out, laughing, crying, running, screaming.

Eren steps forward. 

“Don’t touch it!” Mikasa rushes up quickly, yanking him back with his sleeve. “We don’t know what this is or where it comes from or what’ll happen if- ah!”  

Another wave of pain washes over her, making her wince. Eren tries to shake her off with little enthusiasm, too entranced in the images to care much. She grips his sleeve tighter as he takes another step. 

“It wants me to go to that one,” he says, more to himself than to her, making a beeline for one of the rays of light, and it gets bigger the closer he gets to it, dangerously, blindingly close, until she’s sure it will swallow them whole. 

Then they’re not in the cottage anymore. 

Her gasp gets caught in her throat, and she chokes on her surroundings. 

Screams pierce the air – gutwrenching, soul-pulling screams. There are titans everywhere, and there are people and horses too, getting picked up like worms from earth. Someone yells out a warning –

“The Armored!”

Or maybe it was a cry for help. 

Mikasa’s vision fully focuses just in time to watch Hannes get bitten in half.

The words, “what’s happening,” fall from her lips, but she doesn’t process nor expect an answer. She can do nothing but watch, her finger still twisted into Eren’s sleeve. Nothing makes sense. Her eyes and fist squeeze shut just in time to hear Eren laugh maniacally. 

But even as her fingernails draw blood on her skin, Mikasa stays in this nightmare, as frozen as the first time she’d lived this. 

“Eren.” She – no not, she, but the other she, the one who’s experiencing this for the first time, whispers. 

“Look at you,” Eren laughs and he sobs. “You haven’t changed one bit – not one goddamn bit. Just as useless as you’ve ever been. Nothing’s changed. Nothing’s changed, Mom. I’m sorry, Mom. I still can’t…do anything. I’m a worthless kid. Worthless.”

He’s bent over the ground, bloodied and teary-eyed, torn apart and stricken. 

“Eren.” She gets his attention this time, her voice pulling him up to a kneeling position, finding her with green, pleading eyes. “Stop. That isn’t true.” His eyes start to wander, looking around at the sea of Titans feasting on their comrades. “Hey,” she calls him again. “Thank you.”

Mikasa watches herself give her heart to Eren, and watches his eyes widen in shock and desperation, hanging onto every word. She’d thought they were going to die. Mikasa felt it then, but she sees it now, that nothing else existed in that moment. Titans swarm, too close to them, but they register nothing but each other, tears falling from their eyes, as everything they’d ever fought for crumbles. 

She notices, for the first time, the crawling Titan that stalks them, peering at them through a bush. She wants to call a warning out to herself, but her voice is still stuck in her throat. 

“My scarf,” the younger version of her says. “Thank you…for always wrapping it around me. Thank you, Eren.” 

Does the Eren standing next to her catch, this time, how she leans in, ever so slightly, just when his eyes blink and reopen with newfound purpose?

He stands with his back to her, but looks at her over his shoulder when he promises, “I’ll wrap that scarf around you again and again and again. Always, forever, for as long as you want me to.” 

Then he screams with all the rage he’s accumulated since he was a kid, and his fist collides with the titan who ate his mom.  The collision splinters the earth for a second – fractures it into rays of light, like passageways to the sky, before Eren’s scream turns even more primal. The Titan that had been stalking them lunges for her, then leaps right over, tackling the blonde Titan. 

The other titans follow; for one, two, three seconds, Eren and Mikasa stare frozen at the mob of unruly monsters, ripping into one of their own. Then Eren whirls back around in a frenzy.

“We have to get out of here."

From her peripheral, the Armored Titan screeches with rage. “Why? Why did the Coordinate have to fall to him?”

Mikasa tries to stand, but her cracked ribs push her back down. “I c-”

Eren’s already leaning down to scoop her up. “Get on, quickly.”

With his help, MIkasa climbs onto his back, fastening her arms and legs around him as he starts to run. He runs and runs, and Mikasa hardly notices the pain of her ribs as she tries to understand what on earth is happening, why the Titans have suddenly turned on each other. 

“GET AWAY FROM ME,” Eren orders as the Armored Titan barrels toward him. “You bastards, I’ll kill you all!”

Mikasa watches the Titans target Reiner next, frighteningly unified in their bloodlust. She watches as Armin approaches with a free horse, as Eren hoists her up onto it then climbs on himself. 

She remembers this ride back to Trost in bits and pieces. Much of it passed in nothing but grief. She mourned Hannes and tried to process all the fear, all the death. How close she’d been to it. How close she’d been to losing him. She’s drowning in it all over again. 

She feels a sudden movement, and suddenly remembers that Eren is here as well – this new version of him, with dead green eyes. Their eyes meet and something shifts in them. 

Then the Armored Titan’s roar falters as its body disintegrates into sand. As do the other titans, the trees, the horses. The entire scene wisps away like sand in the wind, and she and Eren are left standing in the remains. 

They stand in yet another strange place – perhaps the strangest of them yet. It is all dark and luminescent hues of blue and green. An endless night sky, sprinkled with millions upon millions of stars.Their feet rest on piles of white sand. It’s breathtakingly beautiful. 

Mikasa’s eyes follow the lines of lightning reaching across the sky; they call to a single place in the earth, forming a tree made of sinews of light. From the top it looks like an explosion of something godly. 

Eren, who seems to finally remember the grip Mikasa has on his sleeve, pulls his arm away and takes a step opposite her. He looks to the left, to the right, behind him – nothing but endless sand mounds and glittering sky. 

“Still think this is a dream?”

“No,” says Mikasa, and she starts paving a path to the giant glowing tree. 

“Where do you think you’re going?” Eren demands, surely hot on her heels. 

“To get some answers. That thing clearly has something to do with whatever’s going on.”

“You have no idea what that thing is,” he points out.

“Do you?”

Silence. 

Her shoulders drop. “Look, Eren, even if this tree wasn’t our only option, it seems pretty straightforward to me. Those branches, they look the same as the lights in the cabin earlier, and the same as the ones we saw when you punched that titan.”

“Yeah, I noticed,” Eren ticks under his breath. 

So they walk and walk and walk. They walk for ages, yet neither of them falter, purpose and determination driving them both. 

Mikasa only pauses when she hears something – a soft, purposeful whoosh. Eren, who had stayed deliberately two steps behind her the entire time, slams himself to a stop rapidly. “What are you-”

“Do you hear that?”

Whoosh, she hears it again. “There,” she points. “To my left.” She veers slightly off course, towards that slow whooshing noise, sounding every 12 seconds exactly. And then Mikasa sees it. 

Or rather, sees her. 

A young girl, perhaps eleven or twelve years old, kneels in the sand, filling it with a bucket, then promptly pouring it out, carefully watching the sand fall. Eren, of course, barrels forward. 

“Wait,” Mikasa hisses, holding an arm out to keep him back. “Do you have any idea who that is?”

“Does it matter?” he spits harshly, pushing her arm down. “We’re getting answers, aren’t we?”

Mikasa resigns and follows him, matching his pace. To her surprise, Eren doesn’t try to call for the girl – doesn’t alert her of their presence or give her enough time to run. 

But the girl doesn’t move from her spot, not even when she should surely hear them approaching. She doesn’t even look up. She just keeps doing the same thing over and over: collecting sand and releasing it. 

They walk right up to her, and still the girl pays them no attention. 

Brows furrowing, Mikasa kneels down to her level. “Excuse me,” she says kindly. The girl dips her bucket into the sand. “Um, hello? Girl!” Mikasa waves her hand in front of the girl’s line of sight, and then nearly topples backward when she turns her head to look at Mikasa directly, then at Eren. 

Gathering her wits back together, Mikasa clears her throat. “Do you know where we are?” The girl looks back at her bucket. “Can you understand us?”

And then Eren speaks up, his voice low and clear. “Is that the Coordinate?”

Sand spills from the girl’s bucket in response. 

Mikasa looks up at Eren. “The Coordinate. That’s what Reiner said, when you controlled all those titans.” 

Eren only makes a grunting sound from the back of his throat, and Mikasa has no idea if it’s because he doesn’t know any more about it, or if he does and refuses to tell her. She keeps talking despite his silence, rising to her feet. “The Coordinate – it’s not one of the War Hammer’s powers, it’s from the Founding Titan.” She means to phrase it like a question, but it comes out like a certainty. “Can you control it? Did you…were you the one who pulled us out of that…that…”

“It was a memory,” Eren says without looking at her. “We were in a memory. And yes. Now, I’m gonna get us out of here and back to reality.”

He holds his hand out without further explanation, and Mikasa puzzles at it almost comically, not understanding. 

Glancing at her for a second, then away again, he explains impatiently, “I’m pretty sure you got pulled into that memory with me by accident, ‘cause you were grabbing onto me like a maniac when I walked into it.”

Mikasa scowls. “If I remember correctly, you were the one grabbing me like a madman when we got dragged here in the first place.” She places the front of her palm onto the back of his. 

Eren closes his eyes and focuses on whatever it is he did earlier, while Mikasa watches, waiting. 

He is so familiar and so different. 

She blinks, and they’re gone from the Coordinate. Except… “Um, Eren…”

His eyes open, and harden when he realizes where they are: back at the cabin. Cursing under his breath, he shuts his eyes again and focuses, visibly harder this time. The cabin disappears, and they’re back in the endless night. He tries again, and when they reappear at the cabin, he yells out, “Dammit!” and storms off to the picnic table. It’s not unlike the times he struggled with his abilities to turn, or to harden. 

His palms fall on the picnic table, tension forming between his shoulders. With hesitation, Mikasa takes a step closer. “Eren.”

A heavy sigh escapes his body, then he turns, so his back is leaning at the table. He looks at her regrettably, with none of the care she used to detect so easily. She thinks back to the memory they just relived – how he’d looked at her while she told him of all the ways he’d saved her.

Eren used to look at her like he needed her, like she anchored him. Now he looks at her like nothing. As if she matters nothing at all. Was he affected at all by the trauma they just relived? Did it tear open barely-healed wounds? Did it remind him of all their losses, how they just kept losing people, over and over again?

“We need to get out of here,” he resigns. 

Mikasa freezes in her tracks and folds her arms uncomfortably, battling her instincts. She wants to talk to him, about so much, but she knows him, and she knows there’s only one way to get through to him right now. 

“I assume you didn’t mean to get us…here? Back at the prison.”

“No,” Eren admits, looking characteristically ashamed. The look is a comfort to Mikasa.

“And where exactly is here?”

Eren hesitates, and Mikasa pushes down feelings of hurt. “I want to get out of here, too, Eren. Right now, I don’t know why we’re here, how we got here, or how to get back. And by the looks of it, neither do you. So if you want to get out of here, we’re going to have to work together, and you’re just going to have to trust me.”

He’s silent for another moment, then he starts to talk.

“I’ve never been able to access this place before. I didn’t even really know it existed. From what I know from Zeke, he said all Eldians are connected to this Coordinate, that there’s a network of Paths keeping us all tied to it.”

“So that place, with all the sand and the lights – that was the Paths?”

“I–I think this is all the Paths. I don’t think we’ve left it.”

Mikasa’s brain hurts. “But-”

“Well, the memory was just that – we walked into one of the Paths themselves, but this is just–” The greenery of the cabin’s forest disappears into black and blue and white and green, then reappears just as quickly. “I think with the power of the Founder, I can make the Paths look however I want.”

“But where is here? What is this place?”

Eren shrugs while he looks around. “That, I don’t know. I’ve never been here before.”

Mikasa sits at the picnic table. “So, all Eldians are connected…to a Coordinate. Which is found in these Paths? Which you can access because of the Founder? And through the Paths, you can see people’s memories.” 

“Guess so,” Eren slouches his shoulders. 

“There’s one thing I still don’t get.”

“Just one?”

“How are you doing it? You only accessed the Founder's full power in that memory we saw because you touched that woman your dad was married to in Marley. But it was just you and I down there, so how…”

“Do you think…well, you’re of royal blood, aren’t you?”

Mikasa’s face sours. “No. I’m sure when they say your power is bound to royal blood, they mean Eldian blood. Besides, you’ve never accessed it with me before. Why now?”

Eren shakes his head. “Maybe I just…got stronger and unlocked the power naturally.”

“Maybe, but I doubt it,” replies Mikasa, deep in thought.

“The hell’s so hard to believe about that?” Eren asks incredulously. 

“I’m only saying, it doesn’t make sense.”

“Our race can turn into giant man-eating monsters, and some of us even get the powers to walk through memories. None of it makes sense. ”

“Guess you’re right.” 

Mikasa massages her temples with her fingers. She wishes, suddenly, longingly, for Armin. How she could use the comfort of his presence right now. She wonders, heart stricken with pain, what he must be going through right now? Have the others discovered that she and Eren have disappeared? What would they think? 

“It’s glowing again.”

Mikasa’s head jerks up, and she sees the cabin, once again bursting with light. 

She looks at Eren. “The first memory taught us, at least, where we are. Maybe the answers lie in the memories.”

Eren stands up straight as he nods. “Yeah, I think you’re right about that.”

And they head for the cabin.

Chapter Text

The path draws him in like some charged magnetic force. He feels it above his ribcage, reaches for it, and it responds with kind, so powerful it leaves him questioning if, rather, it had been the one to choose him. For a split second, Eren can process nothing but that tug in his gut and Mikasa’s palm over his hand. 

They wind up in a dark alley, lit only by the moonlight. The night is quiet with unease.

Snatching his hand back to his side, Eren shoves it in his pocket and studies his new surroundings. 

He’d been taken aback the first time this happened, stunned by their sudden removal from reality, then frozen by the memory they’d landed in. All he could have done was stand there and watch himself fail again, watch Hannes die, watch Mikasa pull him back from his darkest thoughts, and grapple with how little they’d actually known. 

As it so often does, his sadness evaporates into anger. It’s us or it’s them. Eren knows that that’s true down to his bones.

He hears the skiff of Mikasa’s shoes from behind him, and the anger in him boils. Whether or not Eren’s supposed to be here is one thing. But she should definitely not be. 

Eren needs to see his plan through – break out of the prison, meet up with Floch, find Zeke, access the powers of the founder, bring an end to all this. 

Start the Rumbling. 

He’s committed to doing it all, he is – endlessly committed to the demise of his enemy. There’s only one person in the world that could convince him to abandon it all, and he’s stuck in another plane of existence with her. 

Loud, frantic footsteps break his train of lament. His eyes snap to the entrance of the alley where a boy and girl barrel through. They run deep enough into the shadows to be swallowed whole, then push themselves against the wall, breathing deeply but quietly. 

Eren steps closer. He’s never walked through a memory like this – he can feel the gravel crunch under his feet, but no sound comes from it. He moves into the moonlight, and his eyes adjust to the brightness, but his body leaves no shadow. 

So he crunches soundlessly over to the pair pressed against the wall, murmuring harshly to each other. 

“There’s nowhere for us to go,” the girl whispers, eyes wide and glinting with purpose. “We’re trapped.” 

“Well we can’t stay here! Every royal guard and soldier in this town are after us. They want us dead, Klara. Isn’t that enough?”

“You think it’s going to be different in the outer walls? You heard the King. The Ackermans are enemies of the state. They won’t stop until they’ve found us all.”

“So what do you want us to do? Stay here and do what?” 

“And fight! This isn’t right!”

“Of course it’s not!” The boy’s voice rises almost to a shout, then quickly shushes back to a whisper as he glances over his shoulder. “But we can’t fight everyone in the walls, Klara.”

“But if we can just make them remember-”

“Ove’ here!” a third voice yells from the entrance of the alley. 

Eren, Mikasa, and the two people from the memory look up in an instant, in time to see not one, not two, but six guards rushing through the alley. 

“Great,” the boy groans. 

“Oy, you two,” the guard nods at them, firearm raised. Both Klara and the boy face their opponents, neither of them wielding weapons in their hands. “You’re under arrest, and we’ve got ya cornered. Come quietly and-”

“Under arrest for what?” demands Klara. “Do you even know what you’re arresting us for?” She folds her arms behind her back as if she’s hiding something, but Eren watches her fists curl over air. 

“The King made it very clear that you lot are to be tried for treason and crimes against the Walls, putting humanity at grave ri-”

“Spare me,” Klara pleads, almost yawning. “Kaspar, we need to get rid of them.”

Kaspar sighs, dark hair falling over his eyes. He doesn’t look too thrilled about it, but he drops into his stance anyway. “Yeah, alright.” 

They move with a speed and brilliance Eren has only seen in two people before. It’s almost as if the world itself bends to their will–shadows cling to their bodies, the earth urges them forward, the air rids itself of any resistance. 

He can’t help it; he looks over to Mikasa, who stands closer now than she did before. She looks serious, focused, yet her features laze across her face in the same way as the boy and girl in the memory.

Ackermans. 

“Let’s go closer.”

Mikasa breaks her gaze away to look at him, thought written all over face. She nods, so they go, and they end up at the mouth of the alley just as Kaspar releases one of the guards from a chokehold and slowly drapes him along the ground.

Klara fights with the same effortlessness, but less mindfully so, allowing her opponent to drop with a head-splitting crack. 

“Take their weapons and come on.”

Both of them shove knives into their waistbands before taking off down the street. They must know the land well, turning down the streets without a word or inch of hesitation. 

At least two more miles are wedged between them and that alley before they start to talk again. 

“Kaspar, mom and dad-”

“Are gone. There’s nothing we can do for them now.”

“How can you care so little about them?”

“It’s because I care so much that I’m making sure we get the hell out of Wall Sina.”

“Damn the walls!” 

“Ironically, Klara, those same walls trapping us here are keeping us safe. You realize that, right?”

“They’re keeping us alive,” Klara concedes. “But we’re not safe.” She rubs her temples with both her hands, like the statement hurt. 

Kaspar babbles on. “You can hate it all you want, but those walls are the beginning and the end of the world now.”

“It’s not fair, what happened to us,” Klara mumbles, eyes fluttering shut. She winces behind the darkness of her eyelids. “We didn’t do anything.”

“We know the truth,” Kaspar’s eyes fall to her, casting a shadow across his face. “That makes us the enemy.”

The living room of the cabin materializes around them, and Eren wastes no time putting some distance between himself and Mikasa, needing to walk anyway, to not be near her. He barrels straight out the door, desperate for fresh air that isn’t even really fresh or air because this isn’t a real place. 

His head is about to explode. This had to happen to him now? He mastered his Titan abilities years ago – hasn’t had any weird incidents or mishaps in longer than he can remember. And now, after he’s massacred a town and gotten one of his closest friends killed, he’s forced into this place. Unable to move forward. Unable to do…anything. 

He stares at the sky. One of the bluest he’s ever seen. What is this place? Why is he here?

Eren looks back toward the cabin. He half expects Mikasa to have followed him, but the door stays as wide open as he’d left it, and she’s nowhere to be seen. 

Ackermans. Immune to the Founder’s power to alter the memories of Eldians, and persecuted for it. Super soldiers, protectors by design. 

His theory on them being genetically wired to obey their host burns through the back of his brain. 

I’m pretty sure there’s no such thing, Zeke had said. 

Mikasa can never know that. In fact, he needs her to believe the opposite. His plan depends on it. But he can’t tell her here, now. Focus on getting out, he tells himself. Get out of here, then get back to work. 

With a deep breath, Eren pulls himself together and heads inside, preparing himself to talk to her, but she beats him to it – 

“Are you done throwing your temper tantrum?” She slants her eyes at him, and he glowers at her, attempting to maintain his dignity. 

She doesn’t respond to his glare. Instead she rummages around the kitchen, setting a mug on the counter. Eren watches in disbelief as she pours herself hot water from a kettle, her lips parting to blow air over the surface. 

“What are you doing?”

“I made tea."

“You made tea? Mikasa, this isn’t your house.”

“I don’t think this is anyone’s house.”

“You can’t just go around making tea wherever you find it.”

“Would you like some?”

“No.”

“Suit yourself.”

Unbelievable.

He stomps over to her, stopping at the opposite edge of the counter. Mikasa pours tea into another mug and slides it in his direction anyway. Eren glares at that too, then grunts his thanks, lifting the mug to his lips. 

The hot water heats his entire body, and the tension in it slowly dissipates. Focus on getting out. 

He clears his throat. “Those people in the memory – your ancestors, I guess. Did you recognize any of their names?”

“No,” Mikasa shakes her head. “My father told me about my grandparents, but I never knew about any other relatives. I always thought it was just us...I wonder how many really survived.” Her eyes frown at the counter, and her hands grip her mug even tighter. Is she thinking of Levi or Kenny, the blood relatives she never knew existed? Or her parents, the ones she called her family, who were hunted anyway?

“Not enough.”

She continues to stare at her tea, deep in thought. “Why did you take so long to pull us out of the memory?”

“I was hoping they’d say something more useful,” he tells her truthfully. “Give us information we didn’t already know. We learned years ago that your bloodline was hunted down because their memories couldn’t be altered.”

Mikasa’s brows crinkle together. “Maybe that memory was meant to confirm what we only believed we knew. It’s like Hange always says: any lie can be the truth if someone believes it enough.”

“Yeah, well, we don’t have time to waste wandering through memories, confirming things.”

“Why? What are you planning to do when we get back?”

So many things he could say in response to this and not a single one would bring her any comfort. 

“Gonna get an ice cream with a pretty girl.”

Mikasa’s eyes pin him so quickly it’s impressive. She searches his face, trying to uncover what he means by it, falling into hurt when she realizes he’s mocking her. Eren forces neutrality on his face.

And that is why he needs to get away from her as quickly as possible. He doesn’t need to convince Mikasa or Armin or the rest of the Scouts to understand him. He needs them to hate him. Only then will they accept what he is, what he’s become. 

They’ll try to stop him, and they deserve to do so without anything holding them back. 

The longer he stays here with Mikasa, the more impossible the facade feels. 

He’d missed her, even as he tried desperately not to. In Liberio, her absence was complete – it felt the way it did to not have a leg. 

Even now, he misses her, one counterspace and a lifetime away.

“If you don’t want to talk,” Mikasa answers calmly; she places her empty mug in the sink, then grabs his barely-touched mug, and empties the contents down the drain. “We can just move on to the next memory.”

Eren watches his tea splash and disappear. “Right.”

The cabin starts glowing, and instead of erupting from the carpet in the living room, the paths branch out from the counter, offering countless realities to choose from. 

“You can do it on command?” she asks, referring to each path of light, shimmering with color. 

“Yes,” he says, though doubt fogs his mind. Everything about this makes him uneasy. He can feel the power within him, but coming here was definitely not his choice, and he has no clue how to completely harness it. As far as he knew, none of this should even be possible without Zeke. 

He stretches his arm halfway across the counter, invites her to place his hand over his with a gesture of his chin. For now, at least, this flipping between memories, he can do. Her hand tumbles over his and shoots chills across his nerves. It takes a humiliating amount of effort not to jerk his hand away. 

Keeping himself stone still, Eren heeds all his attention to the paths, waiting to feel which would call him. And then it does in an instant. 

They stand in the middle of undeveloped territory – weathered buildings sprinkle the area, most of them missing walls or a ceiling. There are more trees than hints of civilization, but the clearing still thrums with life. The trees’ veins sprout from the earth; leaves shake in soft breeze; harmless animals sound off in the distance. And from behind Eren and Mikasa, the distinct grumble of galloping ensues. 

They whirl around in time to see four horses storm through a huddle of trees, green cloaks billowing behind them.

The horses slow down in front of one of the remaining buildings. It’s not in decent shape by any means, but it still bears all of its walls, and while part of its roof is caved, it stretches over the skeleton of a porch. 

“Is this the place?” Armin asks, looking over his shoulder at Jean, who’s already climbing off his horse. 

“Yup, this is it,” he drawls. “Area should be clear for miles.” 

“Should we…hide or something?” 

“Hide? You think we should hide?”

“Maybe? For the full element of surprise.”

Tying up her horse, Mikasa shakes her head at both of them. “There’s no use. We can’t hide from her. She’ll shoot one of us the second we move an inch.”

Both boys concede, following after Mikasa and tying their horses in place. The fourth horse, occupied by Eren, neighs as he hops off.

“How long do we wait for?” 

“Why? You got somewhere better to be?” Jean retorts, at the exact same time Armin answers –

“No more than ten minutes, I’d guess.”

Eren doesn’t say any words in response, but the grunt that comes from his throat is impatient, unpleased. Jean makes an equally irritated sound. “The hell is your problem, Jaeger?”

“Nothing. Let’s just get this over with, so we could get back to work.”

“Tell me, do you get paid to be such a buzzkill all the time?” 

“At least one of us is taking the future of this island seriously!”

“That’s enough,” Mikasa snaps, rolling her eyes then glaring them at Eren. 

She doesn’t pay much mind to him, but Jean’s eyes linger on her, as if waiting for something he knows will never come. He watches as Eren lets Mikasa tug him away, ordering him to unpack the stuff they’d brought. 

Eren follows his and Mikasa’s younger selves, seventeen by this point, as they pull a satchel from Mikasa’s horse. He looks to his left for her, only to find she’s standing at the edge of the clearing, one hand held to her chest, staring into the woods. 

He hesitates to leave the memories of them, now mumbling softly to each other while they lay the stash of stolen wine bottles and food from the kitchen out on display, and rejoins the real Mikasa. He stays a couple steps behind her, but she notices the shift in his attention and talks to him without looking back. 

“She’s coming now.”

“Yeah. I hear them.”

And he does – even if their immediate surroundings weren’t completely isolated, they would have heard Sasha and Connie coming, their whooping laughter louder than the racing horses. 

They come into view seconds later, and Sasha, hardly paying attention to where she’s going, flails her arms out to the side and hollers, “I WIN! I W–woahohmygod!”

Her horse, Chico, squeals in protest as she yanks on his reigns, just barely stopping herself from trampling over Armin and Jean, who yell and hold their arms up like they’re warding off evil spirits. 

“Jean!” Sasha shrieks. “What are you doing here? What are you all doing here? I thought-”

“Sasha!” Connie catches up, finally, face flushed. “I told you to wait up.”

“But we were racing!”

“No, we weren’t! It’s only a race if we both agree.”

Sasha frowns. “You’re just mad you lost!”

“You ruined the surprise!”

“Huh?”

She turns back around, to the four awkwardly standing teenagers. 

“Uh,” Armin grins a lopsided smile, “Happy birthday, Sasha.”

“What?” Sasha’s eyes start to widen, already filling with tears as she slides off her horse. “I thought you guys were helping with reconstruction today.”

“Nah,” Jean shrugs. “Well, technically, we are supposed to.”

Sasha inhales sharply. “Does Captain Levi know?”

All five others falter, bearing expressions that range from shameful to amused. 

“Sorta,” Mikasa offers, a small smile on her face. 

Then Sasha spots the food, and it’s game over. “Is that…is that…” She looks at each of them in turn, stopping at Eren, who stands directly above the containers of meat and potatoes. 

“Happy birthday?” he mimics Armin, then braces himself for the attack as she launches herself at him, dragging him into a life-threatening hug, right before stealing a container off the ground, pulling a piece of meat out, and chomping right down on it. 

“Hey, save some for us,” Connie protests. He lunges for the container, growling as Sasha holds it high in the air, laughing loudly with food still in her mouth. 

Eren’s breaths come in shorter spurts as he watches her – so full of life, so funny, so unapologetic. 

He knows they’ll be here for hours more – they would sit in a poorly formed circle and share food and wine, jokes and insults. And as time passes, so would their worries, for the rest of the day at least. 

He’s sure this memory, like the other ones, doesn’t have the answers he needs – he gets the feeling his emotions have been influencing the memories he pulls them into. An obstacle he needs to learn to overcome. But for now, with no one but Mikasa as a witness, he makes a decision. 

He gets closer to the 104th Cadet Corp and joins their circle, sitting down and watching him and his friends goof around on one of the most normal days of their lives. 

He drinks in all he can of Sasha, pain tightening around his tired heart every time she elbows him and guffaws. He wonders, selfishly, what had she thought of him before she died? Had he succeeded in turning her against him? Did she also resent him for dragging him into his mess? 

Truth is, Eren knows the answers to those questions: of course she did. Sasha’s only the latest name on the list of people he’s gotten killed, but her death is worse than the others, because she was special to him, and he betrayed her trust anyway.   

Eren hears sniffles coming from behind him, but he leaves Mikasa to her grief. He doesn’t deserve to mourn with her, shouldn’t get to cry when he’d known he was sacrificing their humanity when he attacked Liberio. He’d do it again, and the knowledge of that blankets him in shame and resolve. 

This is what he’s meant to do. Some part of him has always known that.

But two years ago, surrounded by his friends and blood thrumming with wine, Eren still wore a glimmer of hope – the vigor in his voice when he argues with Jean, the glint in his eyes as he rambles, the flush on skin when he brushes against Mikasa, sitting closer than strictly necessary. 

In fact his pinky rests obviously close to her own, cowardly and useless. Do it, he wants to urge his younger self. Do it. 

Too late, Sasha stretches her arm across the circle to hand Mikasa the bottle of wine, and Mikasa reaches for it, her pinky abandoning his to find company with the glass. 

Eren watches, a little mortified, as he – with no subtlety at all – follows Mikasa’s every movement with his gaze, from the moment her hand leaves the ground to the way her lips curve around the bottle. 

It’s no wonder Jean makes a disgusted sound and throws the wine cork at him. 

“Quit violating Mikasa with your eyes.”

“I’m not!” he sputters with bright red cheeks. 

But the damage has been done – Connie and Sasha and even Armin snicker at him as he tries to recover from being caught. Mikasa, at least, looks equally embarrassed, wiping at a dribble of wine falling from the corner of her mouth. 

He can’t stop the small smile that pulls at his lips. Eren wishes he had appreciated these years with them more than he did. He wishes he’d let himself laugh with them more. Wishes he had let himself hold Mikasa’s hand and gloat about it to Jean rather than sit in his own denial. 

His neck swivels around to look at her, but she’s not behind him anymore. 

Eren’s on his feet immediately, eyes doing a quick scan of the area. “Mikasa?” he calls, walking south of the direction she’d been sitting – there’s no way she’d have been able to disappear in any other direction without him noticing. 

Sure enough, he finds her a couple paces away, hidden by a dense cluster of trees on the corner of the house. She wipes tears from her face now instead of wine, but avoids his eyes all the same.

“It’s too much,” she says, her voice heavy with sadness. 

Of course it is. Sasha died only days ago. He should’ve pulled them out of this memory the second he realized which one they were in and that it served no true purpose.

“We can go. Let’s go.”

Mikasa’s face sinks deeper into her scarf, a telltale sign of her deepening sadness. Eren resists the urge to fix it, his hands itching to do something, anything. 

Then – fuck it. It’s not like he’s been doing a great job of following his plan anyway. How much can one act of familiarity really set him back? 

Before he thinks it through, his hands are in her scarf, loosening it before he wraps it again, muscle memory carrying him most of the way. He can’t afford to acknowledge the way her breathing stills or how she looks at him while he does it. 

When he’s done, his hands stay tucked in the red, and then he looks at her. 

Her eyes are all-knowing and full of sadness and they strip him bare. 

“I-”

Then the forest dissolves and screaming erupts. 

They stand on the edge of chaos. Hordes of soldiers tremble on the front lines, raising their rifles and awaiting orders. 

From somewhere in the middle, a voice bellows, “FOR ALL THAT HUMANITY HAS LOST! FOR ALL THAT WAS TAKEN! FOR EVERY BRUTAL MURDER AND HEARTLESS ATTACK. DEFEND YOUR LAND. DEFEND YOUR PEOPLE. FIRE!!!”

Hundreds of bullets sound off, followed by the telltale booming of cannons, then a fierce roar as the Armored Titan deflects all of it, getting ready to charge. 

“HOLD,” the Commander shouts again. “HOLD. AND…FIRE!”

The Armored runs through the downpour of bullets like they’re drops of rain. The line doesn’t hold this time. 

Men are reduced to blubbering messes or rageful spirits, useless either way, dead within seconds. 

“What…” Mikasa whispers, her face losing color as she takes in the sight before them. “Where is this?”

His hands, still nestled in the crux of her neck and shoulder, don’t move an inch as he turns his head, the carnage and destruction compelling him to pull her even closer. 

The answer comes to his lips before he’s even sure how he knows it. “The Great War.”