Chapter Text
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Peace and freedom are natural enemies.
The bag over my head is removed. I blindly latch onto the freezing night air like a starved dog let off its leash. It’s sharp, stings my nostrils and mouth like cold nails, sends a shooting ache up the nerves of my teeth, and pulls all my muscles into trembling stiffness—but it’s air that moves, air that I can breathe, nothing like the stagnant prison cell. Oxygen rushes to my brain before I comprehend it; the privilege to swallow those clean, deep breaths is a truly surreal high.
The moon hangs overhead. It casts a silver glow on the courtyard. Even in the black of the night, the pale snow is almost blinding. An uneven trail of sleet stretches beneath my feet, riddled in footsteps. The chains on my wrists and ankles pull painfully at my shoulders, clinking softly with each cautious step. The night is alive… There are distant rustlings, the hoot of an owl, the creak of the prison gate swaying in the breeze.
The biting winter winds cut through Paradis, carrying frozen and merciless remnants of the catastrophe. All land lies flat. Once thriving soil now lies dead beneath a thick coat of snow. An eerie calm blankets the scene, but the stillness is deceptive, for unease hangs in the air like a fog.
I am being moved from holding into a high-security cell, which requires a trip outside the city. I overheard the guards talk about it, but it was hard to hear any specifics through a stone wall. Considering the gravity of our current political state, I understand why moving me had to happen at night. Still, I had wished desperately for a whisper of sunlight every second of being locked away. Undeserving, but still, I dream.
One of the soldiers shoves the heel of his shotgun directly into my back. It sends a shockwave of pain through my body. I cough and stumble to regain balance while cold metal digs into my spine.
“Move,” he says.
I step forward, shackled and still somewhat disoriented, breath rising in small puffs as the wind cuts through my shirt. The snow crunches beneath my bare feet. I grit my teeth against the ache that shoots through every step; soon, I won’t feel anything up to my knees…
Through the veil of snow, I see a dark silhouette on the other side of the courtyard. As we approach, it takes the shape of a carriage. The soldier shoves me toward the open back door. Without any warning, I am herded inside along with him, and the door slams shut behind.
The interior of the carriage is as cold as the night itself. The soldier knocks twice on the floor, and we start moving.
I crawl to sit by the small, barred window and try to remove some of the snow that still sticks to my feet by rubbing them together. It’s so cold that I barely have any control of my movements, and my hands are locked behind my back, leaving me with no other option than enduring it until it eventually thaws away.
As we move outside inner city borders, the high walls that once protected us are replaced by an endless horizon. The current landscape, devoid of them, makes it impossible to guess what district we ride through, or what direction we’re even heading in. The indifferent sky is all that bears witness to the remnants of the calamity of my own making.
Seven months ago, we were all repatriated under Historia’s order. I think we entered Mitras through this same road… whoever remained. Back then, it wasn’t snow that concealed the devastated land. It was ashen dust, almost as fine as flour, rising in the air and polluting vision everywhere I looked. We were breathing our lungs full of countless civilizations lost, cities reduced to ruins.
My friends wanted me alive, but I knew they resented me. They spoke to me, one after another, and I had nothing to say. I couldn’t believe it either.
When we stepped onto Paradis soil, all the survivors huddled together like rats during a flood, casting wary glances in my direction. The outer markets were desolate, shops boarded up. Faces would peek out from half-closed doors, eyes filled with fear, hostility, curiosity, awe. I could hear murmurs of condemnation, calls for retribution.
While Paradis was never united, it also had never been so fractured at the core. People were still frightened from witnessing the Colossals leave their walled confines and commence the attack, recovering from the collateral damage of debris crushing buildings and lives. Some are happy to have lived. Most feel immense guilt for being alive, in the grand scope of things. Anger and grief soared at the realization that the cost of freedom was higher than they ever imagined.
Historia’s word still stood firm against the newborn military. Taken I was alive, it was within the interests of the island to safely retrieve me back to Mitras, but I knew they wanted to put me away, and they wasted no time doing it. The harbinger of their ultimate freedom in a solitary prison cell... The same people who clamored for liberation to see me as a walking, living, breathing reminder of the destruction I wrought upon the rest of the world. I don’t think I can blame them; Paradis remains, but in a state of limbo. The people of the island want me dead and alive at the same time. And in the full scope of the state our world is in, I think they almost want the same for themselves.
Now, seven months later, I still have nothing to say. I haven’t spoken to anyone since it all ended, and no one has tried to speak to me.
I steal a glance at the soldier escorting me. His face is obscured by a frost-ridden mask. There is no sympathy or interest in his eyes, only his adherence to duty. The barrel of his shotgun digs into my chest. The smell of the gun hangs under my nose. I know for a fact that he would shoot me right where I’m sitting if it didn’t mean his certain death as well. He would have to want it so bad it kills…
The wind howls outside of the carriage. I close my eyes.
There are more voices in my head than I could ever count, and they all speak at the same time, each of something different, in dialects unknown to me, talking to people I never knew.
I wish I had foreseen this outcome. It was never an option to live—I didn’t offer myself that choice.
It takes hours until we arrive at high security. Bag shoved over my head again, I am led down flights of stairs, into a cold chamber. The door slams shut behind, sealing me within four walls. I hear the mechanical clink of the locks engaging, but that is the end of it.
I am alone in the dim light. This air is stale again, void of the life I momentarily tasted during the journey. No ventilation… I look around. There is no bed, no chair—there is nothing here.
This cell is to be my home now. My purgatory, for the rest of my days, it seems.
The soldier, now outside the cell, gruffly informs, “You’re here until they decide what to do with you. If it were up to me, see, you’d be six feet underground.”
He accumulates spit. I hear the wet of it hit the door to my cell, and the soldier’s footsteps depart.
I breathe in the silence until it stings my lungs with fullness. It sounds like there’s no one else on this floor but me. Slowly, I lean backward against the wall and slide down against it to sit.
My feet and hands are still chained together. I don’t know why I assumed I would be given any freedom at all. I’ve taken years of near invincibility and regeneration for granted—the cuffs are digging raw into my wrists even when I stand still, ankles burn with every step for the same reason. I dribble some spit down on my leg to lubricate the soreness. It ends up stinging more than before.
Did I seek death to escape this? I question the purpose behind Ymir’s extension.
Days and nights have passed since I was removed from the carcass of my titan, and I couldn’t even fight it. I couldn’t move, or beg, or say anything; I was so deeply shocked that I didn’t die. That realization settled very quickly. I remember thinking, yes, any second now, any moment, it has to happen—but weeks would pass, and then months, and it began to dawn on me that I might never reach retribution. And when I finally allowed my body to grieve, submitting to the reality I was facing, Ymir showed herself to me. With a solemn stare, she told me she was free. That she chose to live—to truly experience her newfound freedom. So did she think I deserved to live as well?
I’ve been wringing my brain dry for answers. I still question the legitimacy of my continued existence. There were days I was fully convinced I am already dead—that this is the Hell I was promised, having to stay alive after everything I’ve done. The desperation to turn back time and undo the irreparable becomes a mantra of pleas in my mind, washing my sanity further and further away. And yet, within my inner tumult also lies a vast apathy. The concept of life, redemption, or even the pursuit of forgiveness becomes an inconsequential thought. Dark and foreboding, suicide, like a mother, stands by, stretching its disgusting tendrils through my body.
She speaks to me every day.
In the solitude of my cell, I am the captive audience to my torment. To the peace. To the freedom. To both of them, the natural enemies.
The sudden jangle of keys against the cell’s lock startles me. My eyes snap up and stare at the shaking handle. I don’t get visitors, and I barely get food. Suddenly, I almost get excited at the thought of being murdered; it makes my heart race at a speed it hasn’t reached in months.
Then, the door is finally pushed open. And there, in the doorway, stands Levi.
I pull my legs closer to my body, shrinking under the weight of his presence. The last person I expected to walk in. He is also the first to cross this threshold. In the seven months back on Paradis, no one has come to see me. Highly likely that they’re not allowed to, but maybe enough time has passed now…
The lock clicks behind him, and the room feels even smaller. Levi stands with his back flat against the door, right hand firmly holding the wrist of the other. The bolstered shoulders of his black coat are dusted with melting snow, as is his dark hair, retaining small drops of water onto the woolen fabric. The pale light cuts a deeper shadow into every single line on his skin, and a large, wide scar, hooking into his eye, runs down the right side of his face. He looks nothing like himself. Still, it’s a face familiar enough to me.
I sit, unmoving, as if he couldn’t see me then. I even try to breathe with my stomach to keep my shoulders from riding up. Our eyes are locked. I’m not sure if my vocal cords remember how to form words. The long solitude has rendered them completely dormant; makes me wonder if I can find a voice again.
“They are going to kill you,” Levi silently says. “Do you know that?”
I don’t flinch, don’t break the stare we’re holding. I’ve dealt with the reality of his words since the day I was born. I see the struggle in his eyes, there.
“Yes,” I say. I sound unknown and hollow. My mouth barely remembers how to move…
Levi’s expression remains the same. “And do you care?”
I take a moment before the weight of my answer slips: “It changes nothing.”
His eyes narrow. “It does. You have too much to own up for.”
I swallow to open up my throat some. “Staying alive was never an option.”
A flicker of understanding, or pity, crosses his features. “Apparently, it was.”
“Yes. Apparently,” I silently repeat.
I know he wrestles with his own internal conflict, torn between the desire to condemn and the will to preserve. I also know which part of him always trumps the other.
“Then why?” he weakly asks. He slides down into a squat, eyes never leaving mine. Desperation settles in the lines of his face. “Why?”
My gaze falters for a moment. I look down at the cold floor. The melting snow on Levi’s boots has formed a small puddle… The gravity of his sadness pulls me into the depths of my own guilt, and memories surge forward. I clench my teeth to blank them out.
“It was the only way,” I say. My voice is strained.
“You changed the course of history,” he says, “of nations, all destroyed. Do you even know how many people you killed?”
Yes.
I know.
Of course I know.
“Why…?” Levi’s voice has dropped to a fragile whisper.
I draw a shaky breath. “It was the only way. You have to believe me.”
He shakes his head. The water from melted snow flicks down on the floor. “That is an answer you can’t justify anymore.”
“I can. I had to eradicate… fear…”
“Eradicate? You replaced fear with terror.” Levi’s eyes shine in anger. “This is no one’s freedom. We are all that is left of the world now. There is nothing else. With no threat to the island, what do you think happens to a nation when there’s only one nation? You will never protect people from themselves.”
I firmly stare at him.
“Eren, you destroyed Paradis,” Levi says.
“How? You are all alive,” I reply.
“For how long? You condemned us to a death in isolation. You gave us a world stripped of any balance or diversity. An island of inbred children; was that your goal here? How long until we turn on each other? How long until there’s nothing left?”
“You don’t know what I’ve seen,” I murmur.
Levi questions it with a frown.
“The ghosts of… of the people before me, of people after—all of their lives are inside me,” I say. “I lived them. I lived every existing outcome of this, every single one. I asked the questions. I knew the answers. You have to understand that this was the only way. I would not lie to you now.”
Levi looks frustrated. “So you play God and make decisions for the entire world?”
“I didn’t want to play God,” I retort. How could I possibly convey the millennia of knowledge surging in my brain? What I say sounds too simple for what it is. “It was thrust into my hands. All I could do with that power was to ensure your survival... and protect the people I care about.”
“What’s left to protect in decay? None of us asked for this.”
The silence stretches.
“I’ve seen paths where we perish, where Marley triumphs, where Paradis falls,” I continue, almost pleading for understanding. “I couldn’t let those outcomes become your reality. There was only one flaw in all of it.”
“Only one flaw,” Levi hisses.
“Yes. I shouldn’t have made it,” I whisper. “With me alive, the division deepens, and the cycle of hatred won’t end. So to answer your question from earlier, I do care about being killed. It’s the only thing that matters anymore.”
His eyes blaze with frustration. “You’re willing to accept death as penance for what you’ve done?”
“It’s not about penance. I am a catalyst for conflict now, a symbol. If I’m gone, perhaps there’s a chance for some form of reconciliation.”
Levi covers his face with the palm of his hand and rubs his eyes using his ring finger and thumb. The missing index and middle fingers have left a wide gap, but the short stubs of those knuckles still move. I find it... off-putting.
“Your death won’t bring any peace,” he says in a tired voice, muffled against his hand. “You’ve set into motion forces that won’t be easily subdued. Easily, or at all.”
“I was the sacrifice needed for that chance at a better future,” I say as pain claws at my insides. “My survival is the flaw in that plan. My existence perpetuates the cycle. I didn’t do all of it for nothing to change!”
Levi lets his head drop back against the cell door. He closes his eyes. “Death won’t absolve you. You gave us a future marred in blood. So, no. I don’t think you get to die.” Levi slowly rises from his squat.
“No. No, wait.” I struggle to maintain composure, but the size of my guilt dizzies me. It feels like the walls of the cell close in. No arms to balance me, I walk towards Levi on my knees, the rough floor biting into my skin. “Please.” My voice breaks through every syllable. “You have to do it now.”
He looks down at me with pity and sorrow laced with disgust. “No.”
“I can’t live…!” My hands try to jerk out of the cuffs, as if they had a mind of their own. Tears sting my eyes. Grief stings my chest. “Levi, this has to end. You have to… That was the plan. It’s the only way all of this can still work out the way it was supposed to.”
My breathing is shaky and violent, and it only gets worse as the look on Levi’s face doesn’t indicate any promise of liberation.
“Years ago, I swore I would kill you myself,” he silently begins. “I was the only one who could.”
“Then... please, now is the time. You must, now, if ever,” I plead.
An odd sadness flashes in Levi’s eyes. Slowly, he drops back down into a squat, leveling the distance between us. The scars on his face are much more jagged than I imagined, and the milky white of his right eye shines almost translucent in the cell’s light.
What else did all of them lose? I haven’t seen them in so long…
“I won’t,” Levi whispers. “You lived for a reason, whatever it may be. But you don’t get to die yet. Your life might still be worth something here.”
My head drops down, chin digging into my chest, as I bite back tears of defeat.
“Have this.” He reaches his hand down the inner pocket of his coat and pulls out an indiscernible object, wrapped in a linen cloth.
“I don’t need anything,” I mumble.
“I know they’re starving you.”
“I would have to eat it off the ground, anyway.”
Levi leans to the side and inspects the chains holding my hands together. “Don’t they take the cuffs off?”
“Not anymore.”
“How do you normally eat?”
I look up at him and reiterate: “Off the ground.”
“Treating you like an animal...” He unfolds the linen to reveal a buttered, thick loaf of rye bread, and breaks it in half. My mouth waters faster than I thought; the last time I ate anything was so long ago. “Here. Eat. Just not too fast.” Levi inches the bread closer to my mouth. “And chew.”
It tastes so wonderful compared to what I’ve been eating all these months that I want to cry again. I have to hold back from taking another bite before fully chewing the first. The butter is oily and salty, melting in a perfect combination with the dense dough. He allows me to eat in silence, and mostly seems to inspect my state of being—what clothes I’m wearing, and what I look like.
“You can’t even shift anymore,” Levi silently says while feeding me the last piece. “There’s no reason to bar you of so much movement.”
“There is. If you would… Here, lift my hair.” I blow at the long strands of my hair, tonguing leftover bread from my teeth.
He carefully lifts it. His eyes flash in horror.
“Of course… You don’t regenerate either,” Levi murmurs, inspecting the sutured wound by my hairline. His tone is devoid of warmth, but not entirely of concern. “When was this?”
“Some time... I really don’t know, a while ago.”
“What did you do?”
“Slammed my head into the wall so many times that I passed out.”
He swallows so loud I can hear it. “I think it’s infected.”
I’m aware. I’ve been feeling my heart pound in my head for a couple of days now.
I look directly into his eyes. “Good. Don’t tell anyone.”
Levi lets my hair go and leans back. “That’s a miserable and slow way to die, even for someone like you. You already killed so many people, Eren. Don’t take the life of another, even if it’s your own.” He stands and straightens his coat, preparing to leave.
As he turns to open the door, I shuffle in place. “Levi.”
He pauses, back still turned.
“How are they?” I whisper.
Levi hesitates, his hand gripping the doorknob. The silence stretches out.
“Alive,” he finally answers. “Trying to rebuild. Everyone is.”
“Alright.” My breath catches at the simple confirmation I needed. “Thank you—for the food. Thank you for coming to see me.”
“I’m not doing it for you,” Levi replies. And with that, he opens the door and steps out, leaving me alone in the damp cell. The door closes behind him with a loud thud, and he locks it again, pulling at the handle to make sure I don’t find a way out.