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dorminchu · 8 days ago

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Every Day Like the Last: Chapter III

Summary:

A year has passed since the Battle of Heaven and Earth. P. Galliard and P. Finger are married. Vice Captain A. Leonhardt steps down, waiting for her ailing father to outlive her. Eren Jaeger is exiled from Paradis as a renegade to spend his days in Liberio as an expat. Without the threat of Titans or a country to divide them, what comes after the armistice?

Rating: T

Pairing: Annie/Eren, Pieck/Porco

Genre: Drama | Hurt/Comfort | Romance

Can also be read on ao3 | ffnet

Outside the lecture hall, Yvette stood by Annie. Sunlight beamed in from the windows. The hall was quiet. She tried to pick out a familiar voice through the doors but could not. As the doors opened and cadets filed out, she couldn't see his face. Yvette's brother was somewhere in central Marley.

Jaeger looked sallower. He kept his hair shorter than he had as a cadet. A thin, wispy mustache. The world held still. A silent understanding passed between them. As he turned he listed slightly on his left leg. He looked to Yvette and said, "You're Fitzer's sister."

Yvette smiled brightly. "Yes."

Leonhardt hadn't said a word. Krueger met her eyes and said, "Vice Captain Leonhardt."

"Former," she said.

The same hollow light in his eyes she'd been catching in her reflection for the last year and a half. He limped over to her and they shook.

"It's been a while," he said.

"I'll catch up with you later," Yvette called, exiting out of sight.

Krueger glanced after her.

Leonhardt exhaled through her nose.

"This is what you've been doing?"

"The pay is nothing special, but they seem eager to learn and no one has set fire to my apartment." He paused. "Before this I worked as a clerk. Kept getting into disagreements, so I was moved to a different block. What about you?"

Annie hesitated. "Military clerk. Then senior advisor."

"How do they treat you?"

"As well as I'd expect for an Honorary Marleyan." She looked over at him. "What happened to your leg?"

"Injuries sustained in combat." His voice was flat. "I can't talk at length," he said, lowering his voice. He tore a sheet of paper from a notebook and took a pen, scrawling on it. "If you want to meet, you can find me here." He offered the sheet to her. Annie took it, folding it lengthwise and then into quarters, placing it in her breast pocket. His eyes caught the trick ring. The only souveneir from her time on the island.

"I'll be seeing you," she said, and exited.

An awful quiet, tension brewing, as she and Fitzer left and headed back to the tenement. Fitzer, failing to identify the source of Annie's silence, chatted amicably with passersby at the station whilst Annie feigned interest in the local flyers. A group of pro-Marleyan sympathizers must have put them up.

She'd never ask that of her father, let alone anyone else. She was just a miserable human, not the weapon in her blood. Failure wasn't a good enough excuse for Marley. She had not anticipated a case in which Jaeger survived, not past wishful thinking. She could let Fitzer go on thinking this helped. It was easier to go along with the flow than interrupt someone's good intentions. The lie on Paradis became her own persona in Marley.

"Instructor Krueger—" Annie dropped the was holding with a crash. Blood began to trickle from the cut. "Oh, what's wrong?"

"I've got a lot of paperwork to do," said Annie in a tight voice.

Yvette walked over to her. "You're hurt!"

Annie pulled her hand away. "I'll take care of it."

Yvette seemed to falter as Annie fetched some gauze, binding her hand. "Did I misunderstand?"

Leonhardt said, "A Warrior's term of service is thirteen years. I'll be dead two years from now. It would be pointless to get his hopes up, let alone anyone else's. I'm not sure what you expected me to say to him."

Yvette stared at her. Leonhardt hesitated, on the backfoot. She'd never actually told anyone about her term date. What good was it to a Marleyan who could simply ask for another boarder once the previous one moved on? The information had been declassified months ago, but Fitzer had never talked about it directly. Now she couldn't seem to speak, her eyes welled up. This was the last response Annie had hoped for. She averted her eyes to be polite. Anything to get out of this conversation and suffocate the poisonous flutter in her chest. At last Yvette managed to speak, "Why didn't you tell me?"

"It wasn't your fault." Fitzer was the ordinary girl that Annie could never be. She deserved a nice life, not the burden of another funeral. "I shouldn't have got you involved in this."

Fitzer grasped her wrist. "Annie, if I only would have known..."

"You'd have never agreed to board with me."

Her eyes bored into Fitzer. Instead of crumbling she just looked angry. Short of holing herself away like her father and smoking herself into an early grave, a quiet expiration wasn't possible. Bravery hadn't kept her alive this long. She was a coward, not naive.

"I'm sorry," Yvette said, "if I made you feel such a way. I thought you were a private person."

"You didn't do anything wrong," Leonhardt said. "You couldn't have known."

Yvette composed herself, wiped her face. "I think," she began in a tremulous voice, "that if he's in the same situation as you, he would understand. Better than I or anyone else that isn't—in your condition."

The quiet thickened, funereal. She would never be understood. Not while she was alive to dig the hole deeper. She tore off the gauze and tied it, then put the tin back where she'd found it and made for the door.

Yvette began to panic again. "Where are you going?"

"I just need to think," Leonhardt said in a deliberate, level voice. "If anyone asks, tell them I'm not well."

That afternoon Annie sat with Pieck in the Braun's living room. Porco was up to his neck in meetings. Pieck would have been with him otherwise, but she'd been under the weather as of late. She seemed a little pale.

Pieck took her tea black, with a slice of lemon. She was getting around pretty well without the help of crutches or a chaperone. "What happened to your hand?"

"An accident." Leonhardt feigned interest in her coffee. "Readjusting."

"I'm in the same boat myself." Pieck sighed and glanced at the book next to her. "Did you know there's an ideal position for conception?" In her hands was an old medical textbook from the Western territories. It had been her mother's before.

Leonhardt levelled with her, a silent grant to continue.

Once the reports on Titan Biology Society were brought to light, Pieck said, there was plenty of room for scrutiny. An old claim concerning the viability—or detriment—of inheritance. That an Eldian could not pass along his or her powers through conception without the baby inheriting those memories. It was the old way, the Titan Society claimed, and just as unreliable as ingestion. With a thirteen year term and myriad medical complications, Warriors and civilian life already didn't mix. Not for more than a year or two, Pieck said, before the husband wound up in a psychiatric ward or hospice while the mother had a choice; to pool her remaining resources and pray some eligible bachelor would accept a widow and Eldian bastard, or enroll that child into the Warrior programme.

Of course, these reports were made up primarily of would-be Titan kamakaze candidates and earlier experiments, before the process was refined. But the anti-Titan Society delegates and progressive-minded Marleyans didn't care for technicalities. The general Titan serum was less stringently tested, and likewise an Eldian injected with the former would not have the same lifespan as a standard Warrior. There were outliers, of course. A handful of Eldian Restorationists in the 1870s who were turned into Pure Titans. Lara Tybur was made a War Chief at fourteen, retiring after three years. The cutting-edge formula she'd been injected with was far more complex and volatile than any of its kind, and the strain on her mind and body would have crippled her within five years. Thus, she and Wilhelm went into politics.

Of all the Warriors it was Pieck who was most inquisitive about the effects of man-made serum on the human body. Leonhardt said little, which was why Pieck talked to her more than anyone. If not for Galliard, she would have no one but Karina. Not that Porco ever said anything.

"'...the female should lie upon her back, with her legs straight down-or if the legs are raised they should be slightly elevated. All other positions are unnatural and unhealthy.' He writes here that the details are too disgusting, but he goes on about it for the rest of the page. If he were so embarrassed, you'd think he wouldn't even dwell upon it."

Leonhardt took a sip of coffee. Even after the war Marley was running low on luxury goods. The last time she'd had sugar, she was in devil country.

"I haven't yet experienced this pain or infection as described. I'm curious how many women he's interviewed. Or men."

"What else does it say?"

"Standing position. And from behind. And the woman pulling her knees to her chest. Well, there's nothing wrong with those, but that's all he lists. If he wanted to warn his readers, you would think he'd be more specific on what not to do—but I suppose there's always someone who will do the opposite of what they're told."

"It's meant for people starting a family."

"Yes," said Pieck, setting the book down, "There's not much written about the Titan program and its effects on human reproduction. But there are records of men who've been injected going on to have families going all the way back to the 1880s. Of course, they didn't pass down their inheritance to their children, and most were already adults by the time they volunteered." A small, enigmatic smile crossed Pieck's face. "My mother had no trouble with me and I doubt I would, once I'm healthier."

Leonhardt turned away towards the window. She took a sip of coffee that scalded. "Don't you talk to Galliard about it?"

"We've discussed it." Pieck's expression clouded for a moment. She set her cup down on the plate, though her hand trembled slightly. "I suppose you'll be seeing that instructor soon."

"Why should that matter?"

Pieck stirred her tea. "I meant to tell you that Porco and I ran into him a few weeks ago. I almost didn't recognize him."

"He's not the boy I once knew."

With a small smile that anyone else would've missed, Pieck took a careful sip. "Yes, I suppose you knew him longer."

Leonhardt moved towards the doorway. She stopped and looked back at Pieck. "Should I call someone for you?"

Pieck waved her away, uncharacteristically terse. "No, thank you."

Porco was outside in the alley, looking like he didn't know what to do with himself. He caught sight of her with a start. "Leonhardt." His eyes snapped to her hand. "What are you doing here?"

"I could ask you the same."

He sneered, but there wasn't any malice behind it. He looked as if he hadn't slept in a day or two. "She isn't well. Not that it concerns you, I suppose."

"She's my friend," Leonhardt said. "Why are you out here?"

A chink in his anger. He glanced at the apartment door. "It's a matter of..." he shook his head, jerking his head towards the apartment. As they walked inside Porco closed the door behind him and said, "She's not conceiving. The most she's been able to manage is a couple of months. Her cycles are too heavy. The doctor saw her a few days ago."

Leonhardt gauged this. "She's infertile."

"She told me he couldn't find anything wrong with her," Porco muttered, not appearing to listen, "I don't know why she's so insistent. Evidently something is very wrong and she refuses to listen."

"If either of you were infertile, could you accept it?"

Porco looked livid. "She's my wife," he hissed, "I wouldn't throw her out. It's thouse damned scientists who turned us all into-"

"Mind your tone," Karina hissed. "Or go outside, I won't have you arguing in my house." She made eye contact with Leonhardt and said, "Good to see you, dear."

Leonhardt nodded curtly.

Porco ran a hand over his face. "I don't know what to do. I don't even know why I'm telling you this. There's nothing anyone can do about it and I wish she'd accept that much."

"I'm sorry," Leonhardt said.

"Don't be." Porco looked at her. "Karina's busy enough. You're looking after your dad." He shoved his hands in the pockets of his jacket. "Have you gotten any intel out of him?"

Leonhardt stopped. "Krueger?"

Porco's jaw set. "Any idea what he's after?"

"It's difficult to say. He doesn't seem like he's planning on starting another war."

Porco forced a laugh. His eyes were gleaming with ill-disguised contempt. "Of course. If you want to dig your own grave, then go ahead. But I'm shut of it, understand?" He stalked past her and down the hall and into a room.

"What's happened?" Gabi rounded the corner from the kitchen, smelling of starch. "Oh, hullo Ms. Leonhardt." She gestured for her. "We were helping Aunt Karina prepare dinner."

No one said anything for a while.

"Do you think Miss Pieck will be all right?" Falco said, glancing at Leonhardt.

"She's got plenty of people looking after her," Gabi said. "You don't have to worry."

"Pieck hates to be pitied," Leonhardt conceded.

"Oh, that reminds me," Gabi said with a start. Falco looked as if he'd been forced to Shift again. The color drained from his face as Leonhardt turned to him. Gabi gave Falco a withering glance and said, "Grice was telling me there's a guy you've been seeing. But that's silly, I didn't think you were interested in anyone. And Galliard won't tell me who it is."

"It's not your business," Falco snapped, looking like he'd rather sink through the floor than continue the conversation.

Leonhardt gauged their expressions. After proving herself a ruthless killer for Marley this was the last conversation she'd expected to have with the cadets.

"He's an outlander," said Falco tightly, not looking at Leonhardt. "He emigrated to Liberio. Ms. Braun was telling us about it." His shoulders relaxed but he still looked as if he was going to be sick.

Gabi scowled, churlish. She planted her hands in the soapy water. "Yeah, and he's not even Marleyan."

"What did Braun tell you?"

"The Queen pardoned him," Gabi said. Her jaw set, churlishness. "But I don't believe it. Eren Jaeger was going to flatten our country. He killed twenty-eight Warrior candidates and nine of our finest politicians. And we're just supposed to forgive it because he said he's sorry?"

Falco didn't have a ready answer.

"There's no point in holding a grudge," Leonhardt said. "I might as well direct the anger at myself if I'm going to blame the other side for everything Marley has done."

Gabi shook her head as if to clear it. "Falco saw what he did. So did I. We shouldn't let him into our country just because his Queen said so. What should Marley want to do with him, anyway? He's not like the others of his kind. At least they laid down their lives alongside us, even if they came from a backwards island."

"He's Eldian," Leonhardt said in a cold voice. "As am I. As was your cousin. It was off the backs of us that Paradis's fate was secured. None of us asked to sign up for the Warrior Unit. We were selected and we'll be cast aside just the same. I doubt the Warrior Unit will still exist within your lifetime."

Gabi stared at her. "You'd accept him."

Leonhardt drilled a hole into her with her eyes. "And you'd die for your beliefs. Either you'll grow out of it, or you'll come back home in a box and break your mother's heart. It doesn't make a difference to me." Gabi tensed. An argument she couldn't win, a rejoinder to everything that had been ingrained into her since childhood. Leonhardt had already suffered enough zealous idealism for one lifetime. "You're right. I'm no patriot. I did what I had to so I could see my father. Now I'm back home, and I've made peace with the fact that he will outlive me."

Falco said, in a quiet voice, "Ms. Leonhardt, she didn't mean to imply that you were unpatriotic."

"Don't speak for me!" Gabi snapped, her voice constricting. "It's not my fault that Reiner and Bertholdt and Marcel and half of our friends in the Warrior Unit are dead."

Leonhardt moved without thinking. Gabi welled up. For all of her experience on the front lines, all she'd ever dealt with was cannon fodder. She stormed out of the room and Leonhardt didn't watch her leave.

Falco started to go after her. "Grice," she started to say through a tight throat.

His footsteps paused. "You were there during the festival. You knew enough about who he was." His voice was tense. "But you stayed quiet. Was it for our sakes or his?"

"What good would it have done to turn him in? He'd have escaped and killed more civilians. It wasn't my choice to make. Just as it wasn't yours or Gabi's. We fought the wrong enemy and we'll be paying the price as long as Paradis exists." She'd never smoked, but she found herself longing for a cigarette. "We're the enemy of his motherland."

Falco squared his shoulders. "But you knew him from before."

Leonhardt said, "You think I'm weak."

Falco hitched, all-too ready to rebuke, no, ma'am, of course I don't think that. Leonhardt sucked in a frustrated breath. Braun would've listened. Even Hoover would've known what to say. Leonhardt was here to fill the absence left in her fellow Warriors' wake. A replacement no one was happy about. Another hand-me-down, like Braun to Marcel. No one had to say it. She'd die with the legacy of a Warrior and Vice Captain. The sole survivor from that devil island. She ought to be proud.

"What else should I have done?" she snapped. "When you met Jaeger, he had already lost his mind. He's nothing like he once was." She turned on him. "He's a renegade," she said, in a tone she couldn't disguise, "and I deluded myself that he could be convinced to stand down. That he would come to his senses. I'll regret it for the rest of my life."

She hadn't meant to say a word. Grice listened where anyone else would fix a placid smile and think about what flowers to bring in a year or two. He was too good-hearted to understand, but he wasn't a fool.

Annie moved past him. She laid a hand on the doorknob but didn't turn it.

"Gabi," she said.

"I don't have anything to say to you."

A beat. The brass knob trembling in her grasp.

"Don't blame yourself. There was nothing you or I could have done."

Silence.

Leonhardt turned away, and left.

She boarded the train at dusk and arrived in Mer around evening. By the time she was at her father's cabin it was well-past sundown. Her father opened the door. She stepped through. He was right behind her as it closed.

"I'm sorry I didn't get back to you," she said.

"It's no trouble." He moved around the room with a pronounced limp. It turned her stomach to see him, greyer and frail. How could he bear to look her in the eye? He said, "I thought you stepped down as Vice Captain."

"I'll work for a while. I have a pension."

He nodded.

"Karina seems to be under the impression you're seeing someone." Leonhardt stopped mid-pace. "One of the expats from abroad, is it?"

Annie set her jaw. "She had no right to tell you."

Her father exhaled. "I won't interfere in your affairs. But if you go through with this, there's the chance you'll have to leave Liberio." He got to his feet. "Change your names. Have a family if that's what you want."

Leonhardt looked at him. "You aren't disappointed."

"I fell for an Eldian despite our blood differences. It was irrelevant to me then. Seems to me I did right enough by you." He smiled, but he just looked tired. "What's happened since we last talked?"

"Pieck," she said. "She's infertile. Or Porco is. I don't really know." She ran a hand over her face. "I don't know what to do. Reiner would." She took a deep breath. "I'm not the one they need."

"They?"

"The kids," said Annie. "And Pieck. I can't do anything for them."

"What about that Eldian you're seeing?"

"He's busy with work." She got to her feet. "I can't ask him."

"Bad blood?"

Leonhardt stopped and looked over. How much had Karina told him? Her father's expression was difficult to read. If he knew the truth, he wasn't going to reveal his feelings. Her father got to his feet, bracing himself on the table and righting himself. "It was Mueller's idea to bring him to Marley," he said. "But it's up to you to make the call."

They locked eyes. "How long have you known?"

"Since he started cropping up in the census records under the same psuedonym." Her father's mouth curled. "Pieck and Porco report back to Mueller directly. I'm just a confidant. That leaves Krueger as your outlier."

The next time she and Krueger spoke was in a small cafe. Plainclothes.

"Why not get your revenge for his sake?" He set the cup down. "Everyone that I have cut down stands to gain something," as he spoke his smile turned into something uglier, rictus, "after all, isn't that what this is about?"

"You're lucky to be alive at all."

Eren chuckled, an unpleasant sound that made her want to keep distance. "You're just as bad of a liar."

"You resent me."

"Do you resent yourself? Titans, island devils. I suppose it's all the same to a child."

"It was bullshit."

"Yes. And you were only following orders. Why should I or anyone else hold that against you?"

Leonhardt grit her teeth. "We've both done things that can't be forgiven."

"I don't need forgiveness," Krueger said. "I want to go on."

"I'm not going to let you off easy."

"There isn't much to say. When I woke up, there was a tribunal, and it was decided to let me live on the condition I'd be kept far away from Paradis. I can't say the same for the Jaegerists. The defense argued we shared a common goal at one point but never the same ideology. That I was taken advantage of, mentally, due to my Titan's inheritance." He paused, staring into the confines of his drink. "I took no pleasure in what they did."

"Tybur gave you an out."

Eren blinked, gauging the sharpness in her tone, the stiffness of her posture. "The Queen did. As did the Azumabito family."

Annie scoffed. "You might actually have a shot at your so-called free life."

She made to leave her seat, and he followed suit. "I've got to be going."

"I'll walk with you, at least."

The quiet engulfed them both. A long way from Paradis.

Krueger said, "I'm on the second floor."

She gripped the metal rail. "I've already made you walk so far."

"It's no trouble to me."

The apartment was not much larger than his old one in Liberio. As they walked up the stairs Annie clung to the metal rail.

"How did you find me?"

"One of my students said she knew a Warrior who was not engaged." Likewise she forced a small chuckle. "Sorry to say, I'm of no service to my country as a Warrior or looking to marry. Just another clerk." As she spoke his eyes lingered on her face. "But it was nice of you to invite me this afternoon."

As she unlocked the door and turned back to him, Krueger offered his hand, neither a threat nor a concession. "It was a pleasure."

His thumb stroked her wrist after they shook hands. His gaze lingered on her face too long for a stranger. She could see the old lines around his eyelids and chin. She just had to say thank you. She opened her mouth. She gripped the doorknob so tightly that her fingers ached. Like she was drowning. It was Marley again. The wounded soldier she could have placed anywhere. The last man anyone would suspect as their greatest enemy. After all this time, she couldn't bring herself to do what was necessary. There was no war left to fight. Just a silent question in his eyes.

"It's you," she breathed, unable to deny it any longer.

His mouth twisted strangely. As if he had forgotten how to smile. He blinked once, then took a breath. Annie couldn't decide whether to break his nose or kiss him. He opened the door a little wider, as if he was being subtle. "You should come in."

Over the threshold, she went for his lame leg. A simple kick to the ankle knocking him off balance. Four years of difference, she couldn't knock him on his ass as easily in an ankle-length dress. As he stumbled, Annie took the opportunity to grab him by the collar and push him against the door. She couldn't escape the notion that he was conceding and it only made her want to break his skin.

"You stupid son of a bitch," she hissed, "why can't you leave me be?"

Eren endured the recoil. He didn't flinch, his eyes boring straight into her ugly, festering insides. Deep down, she would always be the same coward who spared the enemy of humanity. No better than her fellow humans in that regard. Harsh gasps of breath hit his face, rebounding into hers.

He said, "I'm sorry."

She laughed. Ugly and menacing, too high-pitched to carry any bite. Are you sorry for declaring war on Marley after you seduced me? For sneaking into my better conscience? "Don't waste your breath," she hissed. "There's nothing you can say that will redeem you."

His gaze turned to her hands, clenched in his collar, knuckles white. "We don't have to fight."

"I don't have to forgive you so easily!" She stepped away from him. "You shouldn't even be here."

Eren said nothing. His silence was a worse infliction than anything that came out of his idealistic mouth. "It wasn't your fault," he said. "What happened to Tybur, the rest of it. You couldn't have stopped this even if you had turned me over."

What a useless goddamn platitude. "Don't speak to me like we're on the same side." Yet her traitorous heart yearned so desperately to believe him. To rip his ribs apart, to find at least some semblance of closure. She'd be hearing about her mistake for the rest of her existence. Here it was, memorialized, offering her the out she could never give herself.

"Annie," he said, pulling away from the door.

The sound of her name in his mouth hurt like a fresh bruise. If only she could crush the hesitation in her hands like a physical being. Wring its neck and be done with it. She'd already lost him once, she couldn't bear to go through that again. She crossed the space between them and punched the wall beside his head, to take the edge off. At the same time, her eyes welled with tears that refused to fall. She let her head fall against his sternum in defeat.

His hands went to her shoulders. His lips on her scalp, her hairline. The smell of the room was the same as it had been a year ago. Calluses on his fingers that hadn't been as obvious the last time they spoke. Another stolen moment that neither of them deserved. For years, she told herself as long as she didn't define their understanding, or him as a lover, she could live with herself. Deceiving him was as much for his safety as her fragile sense of honor. They would never be more than soldiers on opposite sides of an imaginary line on the globe, and maybe in another world they would've been allowed to admit it. Now there was nothing left to fight. Only the impetus of what had once been duty.

She stared up at him, seeking permission she couldn't grant herself, and their mouths met.

a/n: I had no idea that Mueller was a canonical character within AoT, but from what I've gathered he would have no relation to the T. Muller in this fic. Call it a happy accident.

The book Pieck and Annie discuss is real, but it's also a little more in-depth than the segment I was poking fun at, despite its historical/scientific disparities, so I left the name out. Though Pieck is an excellent source of dry comedy.

I didn't mean to verge so far into melodrama but there's a LOT for these guys to unpack and now they have no pesky world-ending calamity to distract them, hooray! :D

Expect a rating jump next chapter.

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