#northern sea devil

[fishyfishyfishtimes]

Daily fish fact #754

Krøyer's deep sea anglerfish!

The largest of the deep sea anglerfishes, females typically reach 77 cm (30.3 inches) but are able to grow up to 120 cm (47 inches)! Free-living males only hit 1.3 cm (0.5 inches), but upon attaching to a female and fusing onto her side, a mature male can grow in size to 16 cm (6.3 inches).

[sunday-arch]

TAGS REDONE.

.　　. 　 ˚　. SOMETIMES IT TAKES MORE COURAGE NOT TO FIGHT ⸻ makino.

.　　. 　 ˚　. DUTY VERSUS FAMILY ̗ WHAT WILL BECOME OF JUSTICE ⸻ monkey d. garp.

.　　. 　 ˚　. I AM THE MAN WHO WILL BECOME KING OF THE PIRATES ⸻ monkey d. luffy.

.　　. 　 ˚　. TAKE ME OUT TO SEA WITH YOU ! A DESIRE TO LIVE ⸻ nico robin.

.　　. 　 ˚　. PRIMADONNA GIRL ̗ ALL I EVER WANTED WAS THE WORLD ⸻ perona.

.　　. 　 ˚　. I AM FIRE ITSELF. YOU CAN'T EVEN TOUCH ME ⸻ portgas d. ace.

.　　. 　 ˚　. A MAN WHO HAS COOKED ON EVERY SEA IN THE WORLD ⸻ red leg zeff.

.　　. 　 ˚　. LOOKS LIKE IT WAS A LITTLE TOO SPICY FOR YOU ! DEVIL OF THE BLUE SEA ⸻ sanji.

.　　. 　 ˚　. THEY CALL HIM THE DARK KING ̗ THE PIRATE KING'S FIRST MATE ⸻ silvers rayleigh.

.　　. 　 ˚　. I WILL BECOME A RELIABLE DOCTOR WHO WILL CURE ANY DISEASE ⸻ tony-tony chopper.

.　　. 　 ˚　. TO BECOME A BRAVE WARRIOR OF THE SEA ⸻ usopp.

.　　. 　 ˚　. PASSION BLEEDS RED ̗ I CAN SEE THE CORE OF YOU ⸻ riku viola.

.　　. 　 ˚　. I WAS BORN WITH A SWORD IN ONE HAND AND YOUR HEAD IN THE OTHER ⸻ clover d. iselda.

.　　. 　 ˚　. LIKE A RELENTLESS BLADE IN THE DARK ⸻ kazumi haru.

.　　. 　 ˚　. PURE LUCID EVIL ̗ I'D SLEEP ALL RIGHT WITH ALL THAT ON TOP OF ME ⸻ nina liu.

.　　. 　 ˚　. AND THE SEA HAS A BELOVED WHOSE NAME ALL NIGHTMARES KNOW ⸻ otorobashi akai.

.　　. 　 ˚　. BLUE LIKE THE SKY THAT HOLDS GROTESQUE DIVINITY ⸻ quetzal d. luna.

.　　. 　 ˚　. RIDING THE NORTHERN WIND INTO TOMORROW ⸻ zephyr.

.　　. 　 ˚　. LET ME GO MAD IN MY OWN WAY. LET ME LIVE WITHOUT ABANDON ⸻ zhi hua.

[portugalisinsa]

#going into the tags hoping i'd see some book reccs but its all discourse ;w;#well i'm not gonna claim these are all highly intellectual works but here's some of my fave adult fantasies#tainted cup by robert jackson bennett#the thief by megan whalen turner#winnowing flame trilogy by jen williams#locked tomb series by tamsym muir#goblin emperor and witness for the dead by katherine addison#a natural history of dragons by marie brennan#the mountain in the sea by Ray Naylor#god killer by hannah kaner#temeraire and scholomance by naomi novik#october daye by seanan mcguire#i'm also getting into t kingfisher books :)#gods of wyrdwood by r j barker was also good#i really need to find more books by non-white authors tho

No babe it’s so cool and hot that you always insist that fantasy books written to meet a 4th graders’ comprehension skills have more complex themes and a greater sense of praxis than anything written for adults

[a11sunday]

TAG DROP ONE.

KING OF THE PIRATES. LIGHT OF THE REVOLUTION. PRIMADONNA GIRL. FIRE INCARNATE. RED LEG CHEF. DEVIL OF THE BLUE SEA. THE DARK KING. THE CURE FOR ALL. BRAVE WARRIOR. ULTRAVIOLET PASSION. FATE BENDER. THE RELENTLESS BLADE. PURE LUCID EVIL. SEA'S BELOVED. GROTESQUE DIVINITY. NORTHERN WIND. MAD QUEEN.

[herpsandbirds]

Thanks for doing the aussie animals post!! Thorny devil's are just the cutest lil things in the whole wide world. But, out of curiosity, could we get a list of your favourite snakes? Possibly a top 10? (Specific order isn't necessary)

Top 10 Snakes!!!

This is really difficult to narrow down. I truly love snakes.

I'm just gonna give you 10 favorite snakes off the top of my head...

Elephant Trunk Snake (Acrochordus javanicus), family Acrochordidae, southern Thailand

photograph by @rupertsreptiles

Black-banded Trinket Snake aka Red Bamboo Snake (Oreocryptophis porphyraceus), family Colubridae,Thailand

photograph by Thai National Parks

Fea’s Viper, Azemiops kharini, family Viperidae, from China

Venomous.

photograph by 王锦泽

Wagler’s Temple Viper (Tropidolaemus wagleri), female, family Viperidae, found in SE Asia

Venomous.

Photograph by Don Champlin

Yellow-bellied Sea Snake (Hydrophis platurus), family Elapidae, Kwa Zulu Natal, South Africa

Venomous.

photograph by Tyrone Ping

Tentacled Snake (Erpeton tentaculatum), family Homalopsidae, Thailand

Aquatic and piscivorous.

Rear-fanged, mildly venomous.

photograph by Jonathan Hagström

Kenyan Sand Boa aka Egyptian Sand Boa (Eryx colubrinus), aberrant color/pattern, family Boidae, found in northern and eastern Africa

photograph by @coldblooded_syndicate

Dragon Snake aka Javan Mud Snake (Xenodermus javanicus), family Xenodermidae, Java, Indonesia

The only member of its genus.

Semi-aquatic and semi-fossorial.

photograph by Rachel Cheong

Hairy Bush Viper, Atheris hispida, family Viperidae, from central Africa

Venomous.

photograph by Mark Kostich

Oregon Red-spotted Garter Snake (Thamnophis sirtalis concinnus), family Colubridae, Oregon, USA

photograph by Dan Loida Buama-Hyman

[hl-obsessed]

my first fic rec ever! faves from the faves: ✨ and fics i would die for: 💎✨

Have I forgotten how to love; remind me once again by Harrystylesisgod24

(M, 108k) After a serious accident, Harry suffers from a case of retrograde amnesia where he hasn't only forgotten the fact that he is a part of the world-famous band, One Direction, but his fiancé, Louis Tomlinson, as well. Despite being immensely grateful for Harry being alive, Niall, Liam, Zayn, and especially Louis, struggle with accepting that Harry might never remember the many things they experienced together; hell, even their friendship is forgotten. And Louis can't quite push away the crippling fear of Harry not remembering that he loves Louis with all he got. Not that any of that is going to stop Louis from reminding him over and over again.

There You Are by lovelarry10

(E, 82k) Harry’s entire life has fallen apart - in one night, his carefully planned future is suddenly uncertain.

Then he meets Louis.

where the tide takes you, i will follow by @pinkcords

(E, 54k) There’s no way around his departure, their inevitable fate. Harry will leave and he will return to London and when he sits in his new flat, wherever it might be, he will think of this summer and the warmth the sun brought him and the way it felt to be loved. He will compare all his future relationships to Louis and when they fall short, he will be disappointed. Harry knows this.

Or, Louis lives in Gloucester and Harry tries to find a way to stay.

waiting for the tides to meet by @nauticalleeds

(E, 60k) Louis lets out a deep breath, thinking about Harry’s soulmate. Thinking about how Harry’s soulmate is probably as beautiful as Harry, some person that Louis cannot compare to, and how the universe has chosen them to be Harry’s. Fuck the universe. “Fuck you,” he calls out to the universe. He’s aware of how crazy he sounds.

Maybe he is crazy, with how he’s falling for Harry. And fuck that, too. 

Soulmate AU. Everyone is born with heterochromia — one eye is their own eye colour, while the other is the colour of their soulmate's. It's only when they meet their soulmate for the first time that their own eyes match properly.

The Devil and the Deep Blue Sea by @kingsofeverything

(E, 109k) Louis’ life is steady and calm, moored by his marriage, and tied to his hometown, but after a chance encounter with another man, it’ll never be the same.

somewhere in between lightning by @nauticalleeds, @shiningdistraction, jassy117​

(E, 99k) A summer gone wrong (or very right) when, under Liam’s persuasion, Louis finds himself drunkenly applying for Love Island, and getting accepted. Oh, well. A summer spent on an island paradise couldn’t be all that bad, right?

Escapade by @haydolce

(M, 146k) In the grand scheme of things, finding a date for a wedding should be no problem for Louis Tomlinson. He's rich. He's handsome. He's reasonably well behaved. But when the wedding is for his lifelong best friend (and former boyfriend), and is happening in under a month, finding a date for the ceremony and accompanying festivities becomes more of an adventure than he ever could have planned for.

💎✨ Take My Breath Away by @realitybetterthanfiction

(E, 154k) Top Gun AU

love is a word, you gave it a name by @larrydoinglaundry

(E, 158k) After two decades in brutal show business, Louis Tomlinson is trying to restore his tranquility of mind in the peace of Northern Europe where the sun barely sets, Maria's bar is always open, and young Harry has an irresistible spark in his eyes.

✨ Shadow Dances by @itsmotivatingcara

(M, 101k) Louis Tomlinson has a begrudging gift, he’s able to communicate with the spirits of the dead. FBI Medium AU

Tired Tired Sea by @mediawhorefics

(M, 113k) As a B&B owner on the most remote of all the British Isles, Louis Tomlinson is used to spending the coldest half of the year in complete isolation, with his dog and the sea as sole companions. Until, one day, a mysterious stranger on a quest to rebuild himself rents a room for the winter.

For the Right Reasons by @juliusschmidt

(E, 106k) Bachelor AU

Late Night Talking by @kingsofeverything

(E, 53k) Louis Tomlinson has a new album coming out and a second world tour on the horizon. Promo season gets underway with a stop at Late Night Talking, the late night show hosted by Harry Styles, and Harry Styles just happens to be the man who blew a chance to date Louis a decade ago.

technicolor by @creamcoffeelou

(E, 81k) When the small town of Twin Lakes begins experiencing a string of serial murders, a team of detectives is called in to help. Louis is the head of the team and meets a hard-headed psychic who everyone else seems to believe is the one who will solve the case.

Louis isn't so sure.

The slow-burn, hate-to-love, crime au where Harry is a psychic, Louis is a detective, and the world is against them.

This Wicked Game by @cherrystreet

(E, 70k) An AU in which The Bachelor is gay, Louis is a contestant, Harry is the bachelor, everyone drinks a lot of champagne, the entire world gets to watch them fall in love, and no one plays by the rules

Like Water Over Fire (Like Water On Fire) by @mcssymon

(M, 119k) Prince Harry has 46 men and 13 weeks to find the husband of his dreams, Louis has a limited amount to time to live out a royal fantasy. They might just be exactly what the other needs.

Say Something by @kingsofeverything

(E, 105k) At fifty years old and recently divorced, Omega Harry Styles isn't interested in dating. When his doctor suggests a heat and rut matching service, he signs up out of necessity. It’s the only use he has for an Alpha in his life.

Twenty-eight-year-old Alpha Louis Tomlinson aims to change that.

Let Our Hearts Collide by @crinkle-eyed-boo

(M, 77k) When Harry, a lonely transit worker, saves the life of the handsome commuter he's been secretly pining for, an innocent mistake results in Liam Payne's family believing that Harry is engaged to their son. In the Paynes, Harry finds the big family he's always longed for...and a love he never saw coming.

A While You Were Sleeping AU

💎✨ Love After the End of the World by @mercurial-madhouse

(E, 162k) “Wait. Just so I’m clear in me fucking noggin,” Niall says. “An international worldwide takeover is well under way and the only thing standing between having hot showers and a second end of the world is us five fuckers?” 

***

Society shattered when all electricity suddenly cut off across the globe, plunging the world into darkness. Now, Prometheus Industries is the sole remaining supply of power, a saving grace to those who survived Lights Out. As fugitives in no-man’s land struggling to break into Prometheus HQ, death lurks around every corner for Louis and Zayn. Things get complicated when a routine recon falls apart and Louis collides with Harry and his mates Niall and Liam, survivors with their own agenda.

When staying alive is already a constant battle, the deadliest weakness is to be in love. For Harry and Louis, finding each other sits on top of the endless list of What Else Could Go Wrong.

(story sadly has been delated form ao3. link to download here)

✨ Stranger Stars by shaylea

(E, 212k) Five years ago, Africa offered a grieving Louis Tomlinson an escape from an England he couldn't tolerate. Now it's become home as he leads overland tours across the continent with his best friend and driver Zayn Malik. What's meant to be just another ordinary six-week trip from Cape Town to Nairobi turns into anything but, when future lawyer/current photographer and songwriter Harry Styles and his friends join Louis' latest set of passengers.

Gemma's Dad (Could Use A Guy Like Me) by @lululawrence

(NR, 83k) The summer before Louis and Gemma's senior year of college was supposed to be their last big hurrah before they graduate college and become Real Adults in the workforce. They had it all planned and it was going to be filled with mornings skateboarding, afternoons at the pool, and evenings hanging out with as many of the neighborhood kids they grew up with as they can.

Of course, Louis wasn't planning on getting home and learning that Gemma's dad had gotten the house in the divorce and was dealing with things by focusing on work, the house, and his newly planted garden. It becomes obvious early on that Harry is a bit lost and Gemma is worried about him. To help both of them, Louis is more than happy to help Harry find himself again.

As the summer goes on, the adventures and day to day happenings allow Harry and Louis to spend a lot more time together than either of them ever anticipated and Louis finds it more difficult to keep his growing feelings in check than he ever thought it would be. After all, there wasn't a chance that Harry would ever be interested in Louis... right?

red hands by @dystopianharry

(TNU, 133k) "I’ve never told anyone," Harry murmurs, voice so soft no one else would be able to hear, if it wasn’t just the two of them.

“But you’ve told someone,” Louis says firmly. “And that’s not gonna fucking happen around here. You don’t speak a word of it, or someone’s going to kill you, and we can’t let that happen.”

*

a dystopian au in which harry, an ex-soldier who’s escaped from his government run camp, accidentally stumbles across the biggest rebel movement in the country, and louis, one of the rebellion’s mysterious leaders who appears to hate him, seems to simultaneously have an obsession with keeping him alive. or: harry is wanted for treason, niall hasn’t changed in four years, liam is always smiling, and louis is angry. like, really angry.

another dream but always you by @nobodymoves

(M, 66k) Harry is a Dreamwalker; he has the ability to visit people in their dreams and help put them on the right path. He's assigned to Louis, who's struggling after the break-up of his band. It's an unusual assignment from the beginning; Harry has a crush on Louis, and Louis's subconscious immediately decides Harry is the love of his life. When Dreamers cast Harry as their love interest, he can usually redirect them, but Louis is insistent on being Harry's boyfriend, and despite knowing they have no future, Harry wants to keep up the charade.

Shake Me Down by @agreatperhaps12

(NR, 208k) Harry's new to college, fresh out of Catholic school and conversion therapy camp, and Louis runs the campus LGBTQIA organization.

Nameless Night by green_feelings

(E, 155k) For their 18th birthday, every person receives a letter that reads a simple date. That is the date you'll meet your soulmate.

Harry and Louis have different beliefs, live in different worlds and have different dreams, hopes and fears. Yet, they're not so different from each other when it comes to love. When their paths cross, there is no doubt they belong together. Except for that one, essential difference: they didn't receive the same date.

Or, a fic about differences that make no difference at all: Harry and Louis are soulmates. In every way possible. Featuring Niall as a role model, and Liam and Zayn as a different kind of role models.

Light, Spark and Fire (series) by green_feelings

(M, 239k) Or, Harry’s working on taking Louis’ walls down, until he builds his own up.

Jump Before We Fall by green_feelings

(E, 114k) Louis and Zayn's lives revolve around running a hotel by the sea, Harry is a student who wants a life far from home for just a little while, Niall doesn't know where life leads him and Liam thinks he has already found all purposes in his life.

✨💎 my heart is breathing for this moment in time by usedtothebeach

(E, 160k) When Louis first saw Harry at the 2010 X Factor Auditions, he thought he was watching a peculiarly special stranger. But Harry has known Louis ever since he was five years old.

Because Louis has a rare genetic disorder that causes him to Time Travel to important moments in his past and in his future - and to Harry, always to Harry. When they're put into a band together, it seems like everything Harry has been waiting and wishing for has finally come true. Except for the small fact that Louis doesn't know that Harry is in love with him- that Harry's always been in love with him. Fate, it would seem, is just getting started.

A story about growing up and growing together, and the impossible love that makes it all worthwhile.

✨ you were in my dream by @harruandlou

(E, 59k) Louis woke up after having a sexy dream about his best friend’s boyfriend’s best friend resolved to never think about it again. He hardly knew Harry, so what difference would it make? But when they are thrown together only a few days later, Louis had to admit, his subconscious might have been onto something.

Desperation Was My Sanctuary by @insightfulinsomniac

(E, 102k) As a PhD student and transplant to New York City, Louis is struggling for both money and companionship. His roommate, Zayn, introduces him to a friend who is involved in New York City's sugar bowl. Reluctantly, he signs up for a sugaring app knowing he’s probably the least conventional sugar baby on the market. If he can find a sugar daddy who will pay his bills without asking him to sacrifice his own preferences and boundaries, he might just be willing to earn a bit of extra cash by faking a relationship with a millionaire.

At the age of 35, Harry’s spent his entire adult life devoted to his career as a fashion designer. With his label, Eroda, steady and flourishing, he finally has time to settle down. When he reflects on his adult life, he realizes that he’s never been in a relationship and therefore feels behind. Shy and insecure in his inexperience, he turns to a sugaring app to manufacture a “test relationship” on his terms.

Turns out, they’re both looking for something unconventional.

A smutty, non-traditional strangers-to-lovers story about finding yourself, friendship, safety, sexual discovery, and an unexpected collision with tender, profound love.

Of Mates and Men by bananaheathen

(E, 630k) In which, Louis and Harry meet as best men for their best friends' wedding... well... sort of.

Or, the one where Harry's just moved back from New York and Louis doesn't believe in romance.

Or, I guess... the one where Zayn and Liam are getting married.

✨ Next to your Heartbeat (where I should be) by jaded25

(M, 130k) "We were meant to be but a twist of fate made it so we had to walk away"

All it takes for them to fall in love is one night. All they have to do is wait one year to see each other again.

Yet, when Louis returns after his year abroad, the boy who's got his arms wrapped around Harry isn't him. It isn't a stranger either, which should make walking away all that easier. After all, friend's don't lust after their mate's boyfriends.

Technically, doing the right thing should be easy - but when has Louis ever been known to taking the easy way out?

✨ For As Long As I Can Remember (It's Been December) by green_feelings

(E, 128k) After recovering from a severe accident that causes Harry to lose his memory of three years, he moves to London to start his life over as a star chef. Little does he know that when he falls in love with Louis at first sight, it’s not the first time they meet.

Featuring an unintentional game of hot and cold, Harry chasing memories that won’t come back, Louis burying himself in work to try and forget what he can’t forget, Liam being torn between two of his best friends, Zayn as a moral compass and Niall saving the day with good music and brutal honesty.

✨🌸🌸🌸✨

part 2 (30-50k)

[ghostselkie]

The nevermore characters if they were pinnipeds (seals and seal adjacent animals)

Look seals are my favorite animal, this post was a long time coming. The reason I expanded it to the whole clade is cause some of the cast just don't vibe with any true seals. Lenore - Ribbon seal: Cause color scheme. Also ribbon seals are one of my favorites. They just look so interesting.

Annabel - leopard seal: One, leopard seals are absolutely beautiful creatures. It's okay if you disagree; pistols at dawn and I won't be needing back up. Two, I heard some one say that leopard seals have "the eyes of an angel, and the mouth of a devil." If that doesn't describe Annabel, idk what does.

Duke - California sea lion: Immaculate vibes.

Pluto - Fur Seal: Cause fluffy boys. Their fur is giving the energy of Pluto's dysphoria jacket.

Morella - Bearded seal: Vibes mostly. Also their whiskers remind me of her freckles.

Berenice - Walrus: Cause teef.

Eulalie - Ringed seal: They are some of the cutest seals that exist. Also their range includes the northern most part of Japan.

Prospero - Mediterranean monk seal: The man is Italian. Though, interestingly enough, their range does not actually include Italy, but monk seals are endangered, so I wanted to include them.

Montresor - Elephant seal: THEY ARE ASS HOLES!!!

Ada - Harbor Seal: They are the most common type of seal, but don't tell her that.

Will - Grey seal: Vibes.

[bestiarium]

Who was Davy Jones? [Nautical folktales]

This is something completely different from my usual posts. The nautical folk character of Davy Jones isn’t really a mythological creature in the same way as Mesopotamian demons, Inuit spirits or medieval European monsters.

In fact, it turns out the exact origin of the name is hard to pin down. ‘Davy Jones’ Locker’ was nautical slang for the bottom of the ocean, a euphemism used in the context of sinking ships and drowned sailors (as in, he went to Davy Jones’ Locker). As far as I can tell, this term for a seaman’s grave predates any reference to Davy Jones as a separate, actual character. Sailors who died at sea were said to ‘be keeping watch with Davy Jones now’.

As for the name, it’s not entirely clear where it came from but there are some theories. ‘Davy’ might be directly derived from ‘devil’, and according to other authors it might have come from ‘Duppy’, a Caribbean term also meaning devil, though this seems to be less supported. ‘Jones’ most likely comes from Jonah, the Biblical character and later nautical slang for a sailor who brings bad luck to the ship he is on.

It's not impossible that Davy Jones was (based on) a real person but it's not likely.

So, who is Davy Jones and what does he look like?

The oldest physical description of Jones as a being comes from ‘The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle’, a mid-18th century fiction novel by Tobias Smollett. I normally don’t use fiction novels as sources, but we don’t have anything else here and Smollett’s description of the creature seems to have become the basis for iterations of Davy Jones in media, so we might as well. In the book, Davy Jones is said to be a horrible fiend presiding over the wicked spirits of the oceanic depths. He is a monster with blue smoke billowing from his nostrils, a tail and a horned head with large saucer-like eyes and three rows of teeth.

And this is the description Davy Jones was stuck with until 2006, when Disney released Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest, which featured the antagonist that you thought of when you saw the title of this post. This version of Davy Jones became so cemented in our collective consciousness that it’s hard to imagine him in any other shape or form. And, to be fair, it makes sense, because it was a good movie.

(Although it’s hard to beat the first one.)

Sources:

Norton, L A., 2016, Folklore, Superstitions and the Sea, The Northern Mariner/Le Marin du Nord, 26(1), p. 21-30.

Foster, J., 1969, Varieties of Sea Lore, Western Folklore, 28(4), pp. 260-266.

Archibald, M., 1998, Sixpence for the Wind: a Knot of Nautical Folklore, Dundurn, p. 45, 143 pp.

Smollett, T., 1751, The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, London, p.71, 372 pp., text cited via Greensdictofslang.

(image 1: Davy Jones on his locker. Illustrated by John Tenniel for issue 103 of ‘Punch, or the London Charivari’, 1892)

(image 2: a character from ‘The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle’ disguises himself as Davy Jones to scare others, illustration by George Cruikshank in ‘Illustrations of Fieldeing, Smollett and Goldsmith, in a series of forty-one plates’)

[mariacallous]

As war rages between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip, it is hard to envision an end to the conflict. For decades, though, a growing movement of Palestinian and Israeli women has not only envisioned a peaceful coexistence, but also demanded it.

Just three days before Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, attack, thousands of women from two peacebuilding groups gathered at Jerusalem’s Tolerance Monument for a rally and march. Israelis from Women Wage Peace carried blue flags, and Palestinians from Women of the Sun flew yellow ones.

Members of the two groups traveled to the Dead Sea—believed since ancient times to have healing qualities—and set a table. Women from both sides pulled up chairs as a symbol of a good-faith resumption of negotiations to reach a political solution.

Women Wage Peace formed in response to Operation Protective Edge, which was Israel’s 2014 invasion of Gaza in the wake of then-U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry’s failed effort to restart final status negotiations.

“We, Palestinian and Israeli mothers, are determined to stop the vicious cycle of bloodshed,” reads the preamble to their campaign, the Mother’s Call. This campaign was nine months in the making, and it involved aligning around a single agenda that demands a political solution within a limited time frame.

They set the table to show the importance of dialogue and women’s involvement in decision-making. But in the war between Israel and Hamas that has started since then, women’s voices are largely missing from negotiations and consultations.

Ensuring women’s participation isn’t about equity or fairness or a show of inclusion. It’s about winning the peace.

In 2014, Laurel Stone, then a researcher at Seton Hall University, conducted a quantitative analysis of 156 peace agreements over time. She found that when women are decision-makers—serving as negotiators and mediators—the probability of an agreement lasting at least two years increased by 20 percent. The probability of the agreement holding for 15 years increased by 35 percent.

Many studies show that women tend to be more collaborative, more focused on social issues over military issues, and less likely to attack those who hold differing views. With women at the table, the potential for risk-taking behavior and attacks on perceived enemies may be lower. In diverse teams, decisions are more likely to be based on facts than assumptions.

While men are more likely to be fighters in war, the work of holding families and communities together more often falls to women, and according to some studies, it’s women who more frequently stand up for a return to negotiations, civilian protection, and an end to violence.

“We learned from the cases of Northern Ireland and Liberia,” Yael Braudo-Bahat, the co-director of Women Wage Peace, told Foreign Policy. Women’s active participation greatly strengthened these peace and recovery processes.

Ahead of the formal talks that led to the Belfast Agreement in Northern Ireland, Catholic and Protestant women’s groups formed the Northern Ireland Women’s Coalition and gained two seats at a table of 20 in formal negotiations. As one of the few groups that moved beyond the sectarian divide, its members were seen as honest brokers. They represented civil society concerns and helped ensure that the agreement included commitments for social healing and integration.

Because the brutality of war falls disproportionately on women—they frequently are the first to go hungry, serve as the de facto caretakers, and become the victims of increased gender based violence—they are often committed to finding a path to peace even when male leaders won’t compromise.

During the Second Liberian Civil War, women played a heroic role by successfully pressuring male decision-makers to negotiate. The documentary Pray the Devil Back to Hell, directed by Gini Reticker and produced by Abigail Disney, popularized the incredible story of how women convinced the warring parties to attend peace talks in Accra, Ghana.

“We were the ones watching our children die of hunger … we were the easiest targets of rape and sexual abuse,” said Nobel Prize laureate Leymah Gbowee, the founder of the Women for Liberia Mass Action for Peace grassroots movement, which played a major role in pushing then-President Charles Taylor to sign a peace agreement in 2003. This common suffering among women formed the basis for unity across political and religious divides.

In Israel and Gaza, women will need to play an important role in the implementation of any new accord between Israel and Palestine, Braudo-Bahat said. Her organization’s partnership with its Palestinian counterpart, Women of the Sun, has remained steadfast, even after learning that her co-founder, Vivian Silver, 74, was murdered by Hamas on Oct. 7.

“We continue our plans—we work together, and we don’t hide it,” she said. “It might be dangerous to the Women of the Sun, but they are so courageous.”

Although many Palestinians want peace, for others, “peace is normalization,” a member of Women of the Sun wrote to Foreign Policy via WhatsApp, choosing to go by the initials M.H. to preserve her anonymity and safety. Some Palestinians think that “it’s something shameful to be dealing with Israel,” she added, because it could imply that the Israelis’ treatment of, and policies toward, Palestinians are tolerable.

“I believe we should actively engage and collaborate, even if some label it as normalization,” M.H. said. “I am committed to working toward a better future for us.”

International law is on the side of these women. United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325, adopted unanimously more than 23 years ago, urges all member states to increase the participation of women in peace and security efforts, and highlights women’s essential role in preventing war, protecting civilians, and negotiating lasting peace.

Despite Israel’s deteriorating track record with regard to women’s rights and roles as decision-makers, women are involved in the war as politicians, members of the military and civilians. Women in politics have made important advances for gender equity, although among the 32 cabinet ministers sworn in a year ago, only five were women. One of those women ministers was dismissed amid the recent closure of the Ministry for the Advancement of Women.

The reality for women in Gaza is far more challenging when it comes to holding leadership positions. Women generally do not participate in public political activities or hold public office, although Hamas appointed 23-year old Isra al-Modallal as its first female spokesperson in November. She told the Guardian newspaper that she is not a member of Hamas or any political party.

At the start of the conflict, Hamas had just one woman, Jamila al-Shanti, 68, serving as part of the organization’s 15-member political bureau. Al-Shanti, who was also a founder of Hamas’s women’s movement, died in an Israeli airstrike on Oct. 19.

“You can hear amazing rhetoric and lip service, even from the Palestinian leadership,” Dr. Dalal Iriqat, an assistant professor at the Arab American University in the West Bank, told Foreign Policy. “But when it comes to practice, I always find a scarcity of women in decision-making.”

Women’s organizations in the Palestinian territories and in Israel have a rich history of political engagement, however. Palestinian women created social structures such as health clinics and orphanages for displaced Palestinians following the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. Following the Six-Day War in 1967, with traditional political structures in tatters and both Gaza and the West Bank under Israeli occupation, women of every social class stepped up.

It was through the networks they formed that a new cadre of women activists emerged as a force in December 1987, when Palestinian frustration with Israeli rule broke out in a popular uprising that became known as the First Intifada, or “shaking off.” Underlying this largely nonviolent Palestinian struggle was a collective social, economic, and political mobilization led by women.

Palestinian political leadership acknowledged women’s centrality in the Intifada, which paved the way for negotiations with Israel when it included three women—Suad Amiry, Zahiria Kamal, and Hanan Ashrawi—as part of the delegation that participated in the Middle East peace talks that culminated with the Madrid Conference in October 1991.

Ultimately, though, exiled Palestinian Liberation Organization leaders shunted the Madrid framework to begin secret negotiations with Israel that resulted in the security-focused Oslo Accords and the establishment of the Palestinian Authority. Under their leadership, Israeli occupation, and the failures of the Oslo Accords, democratic ideals and women’s rights eroded.

Israel and the United States have discussed a potential role for the Palestinian Authority in Gaza after the military operation. The Palestinian Authority has three women ministers, including its minister for women’s affairs, though women still struggle for equal opportunities and freedom from violence.

“Women usually refrain from being [an] activist in politics,” said an activist in the West Bank who withheld her name for security reasons. “Women are frightened to be involved in political activities, because they will be put in jail or be subjected to any kind of violence.” And the conditions are much worse for women when funding is restricted, as well as under Hamas, she said.

Serena Awad, a Gazan nonprofit worker who is now living in Rafah, told Foreign Policy that Gazan women are directing and managing many aspects of the humanitarian response. These women work for the United Nations as well as in health, cultural, child protection, human rights, sports, and legal organizations.

“I have lived through six aggressions, and every time, I wait for my turn to die,” said 24-year-old Awad. “What I want the world to know is that women in Gaza are like any other women—we study, go to work, have our own family, but we suffer.”

Israeli and Palestinian women working as peacebuilders say they need more international support. Women’s organizations are notoriously underfunded in the best of times, with only 0.4 percent of global gender-related funding going directly to women’s rights organizations, according to calculations by the Association for Women’s Rights in Development.

During crises, women’s rights often take a back seat. Women of the Sun’s 2024 budget is approximately $100,000, and Women Wage Peace’s budget is approximately $1 million, according to the organizations’ representatives.

Women’s groups are more likely to be effective during negotiations and during the implementation of recovery programs when they have access to external funding. During the peace process between Sudan and South Sudan, for example, South Sudanese women were highly mobilized as delegates, but some had to pause their involvement so they could go back to earning money.

In addition to funding, democratic countries have a role to play by insisting on women’s participation in negotiations, said M.H. of the Women of the Sun. She and other peacebuilders say that the United States and the United Nations should be more active in promoting women as counterparts, negotiators, and experts.

“By will, things can happen,” M.H. told Foreign Policy “And if the US says it [that women should be involved in negotiations], it can happen.”.

Talks convened by Qatar, the United States, and Egypt to end the conflict between Hamas and Israel are underway. These countries and other regional players—including Jordan, Israel, and the Palestinian Authority, have previously created national action plans that recognize the unique impact of war on women and their crucial role in promoting peace, culminating in 107 countries worldwide forming national action plans to empower women.

Still, news coverage reveals little or no evidence of efforts by these countries to promote women’s participation in the Israel-Hamas conflict.

The U.S. State Department is “working to ensure the expertise of women from civil society and in government is incorporated in any process related to the current conflict in Gaza,” wrote a spokesperson in an email.

If the political will for participation exists, both Israelis and Palestinians have a robust list of women advocates from which to draw for official and nonofficial negotiations and discussions. A diverse list of 12 Israeli and Palestinian women who are qualified to participate in negotiations was provided by the 1325 Project run by members of  Women Lawyers for Social Justice—known in Israel as Itach Ma’aki—to the U.S. Embassy and other embassies and international bodies.

“At least one person will be engaging in Track 2 and 3 efforts, and she was approached through us by an international body,” said 1325 project co-director Netta Loevy, referring to nonofficial negotiations and consultations.

Braudo-Bahat, meanwhile, urged policymakers to involve women in discussions now—not after violence ends. “The day after the war is yesterday … we need to start now,” she said.

Back in Gaza, the water tastes like poison; it’s freezing, and Awad, the 24-year-old nonprofit worker, keeps losing weight. She asked almost a dozen Gazan women leaders what they think should happen to resolve the war and to ensure that women participate in negotiations.

No one could give her an answer. They were busy responding to humanitarian needs, and telecommunication and internet services were out.

“Nothing has changed, but what can we do about it? All we can do is waiting and praying for this to end,” Awad wrote to Foreign Policy through WhatsApp, which only works for her about once every four days.

Iriqat, the Arab American University professor, has one wish: “That someone considers that if women are in charge, and involved, a more strategic agreement could hold.”

[doumekiss]

My Personal Favorites of 2024

(as always considering only new to me stuff, and not necessarily things that were released in 2024)

2023 - 2022 - 2021

Books (Fiction) :

1 - The Brothers Karamazov

2 - Tress of The Emerald Sea

3 - The Queen's Thief Series

4 - The Travelling Cat Chronicles

5 - The Remains of The Day

6 - Project Hail Mary

7 - The Saint of Steel Series

8 - The Idiot

9 - Barrayar

10 - Crooked House

11 - The Martian

12 - Wise Child

13 - Crime and Punishment

14 - Poor Things

15 - The Midwife's Apprentice

Books (Non-Fiction)

1 - Secondhand Time : The Last of The Soviets

2 - Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds & Shape Our Futures

3 - Welcome to The OC : The Oral History

4 - Why We Get Sick : The New Science of Darwinian Medicine

5 - Say Nothing: A True Story of of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland

6 - The Ancestor's Tale

7 - Every Man For Himself and God Against All

8 - SPQR : A History of Ancient Rome

9 - Thinking in Pictures : My Life With Autism

10 - Outlaw Marriages: The Hidden Histories of Fifteen Extraordinary Same-Sex Couples

11 - Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly

12 - The Art Thief: A True Story of Love, Crime, and a Dangerous Obsession

13 - Extinctions: How Life Survives, Adapts and Evolves

14 - Unruly: A History of England's Kings and Queens

15 - The Woman in Me

Comic Books/Mangas/Manhwas

1 - The Apothecary Diaries

2 - Shadows House

3 - Sherbet Above The Sea of Fog

4 - The Sleeping Dead

5 - Kieta Hatsukoi

6 - Smoking Behind The Supermarket With You

7 - Garlic & The Vampire/ Garlic & The Witch

8 - The Greatest Estate Developer

9 - Goodbye. Eri

10 - Erio and The Electric Doll

11 - Pumpikinheads

12 - Black Paradox

13 - Call

14 - The Depth of the Sky

15 - The Prince and The Dressmaker

Movies

1 - Becket

2 - The Remains of The Day

3 - The Night of The Hunter

4 - Dicks: The Musical

5 - Encounters at The End of The World

6 - 12 Angry Men

7 - Creep

8 - Creep 2

9 - Shiva Baby

10 - The Ghost and Mrs Muir

11 - Challengers

12 - Sarah, Plain and Tall

13 - Late Night With The Devil

14 - Anatomy of a Fall

15 - Next Goal Wins

TV Shows (Live-action)

1 - Interview With The Vampire

2 - Fallout

3 - 911

4- Ghost (US)

5 - We Are Ladyparts

6 - Abbott Elementary

7 - Game Changer

8 - Deadboy Detectives

9 - Ordeal By Innocence

10 - Extraordinary

11 - The Boys

12 - Servant

13 - The Creep Tapes

14 - Guy Montgomery's Guy Mont Spelling Bee

15 - St. Denis Medical

TV Shows (Animation)

1 - Dungeon Meshi

2 - The Apothecary Diaries

3 - Sousou no Frieren

4 - Moral Orel

5 - Shadows House

6 - Handa-Kun

7 - Dandadan

8 - Ranma 1/2

9 - Smiling Friends

10 - Jibaku Shonen Hanako-Kun

11 - Paranoia Agent

12 - Link Click

13 - Inside Job

14 - Monster

15 - Home Movies

[dorminchu]

Entwirren an den Nähten — Chapter Two

Perhaps this story should've been called Eren Jaeger and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day.

Thanks to @vaegtersang for beta-ing!

ao3. | ffnet.

X.

Since the retaking of Shiganshina, there is nothing tangible left to fight. The soldiers that gave their lives rest in shallow graves. A brittle peace fills the gaps in-between deployment and rest.

Yet the Scouting Regiment is free to explore the island. Paradis, beyond its Walls, is naught but a cemetery. Encampments and stables reclaimed by nature. There's never any sign of life, of bodies rotting in their beds or under the floorboards. The livestock died decades ago or have since moved on.

Toward the southern coast, an edifice towers over the horizon. According to Commander Hanji, it's built from the same material as the Walls. Their previous expedition confirmed its twin on the northern coast. Eren stops his horse, engulfed in the relic's shadow. Craning his neck, he can barely see the top of it. A hard-packed mound of dirt reaches midway and slopes gently down to where they are. There's no blood to stain the grass. No sweet smell of rot. The bones, Hanji suspects, will have already weathered beyond the point of recognisability.

Mikasa's horse stops beside him. The side of Eren's neck prickles. He tightens his grip on the reins.

Armin is in charge of a second squadron, leading the way up top. Mikasa and Eren ready their gear and follow suit. They'll have to use ODM gear to reach the top, but there's a lift that brings them down on the other side. At the base of the Wall, a worn path descends unto a quay. At sea-level the wind does not rip across their faces, but there's a chill in the air.

Armin stares out across the horizon. "They came here on boats," he says after a beat. "Bertholdt, and Reiner and Annie." He glances at Eren who continues to gaze over the horizon. "They probably left the same way."

"Do you think they'll come back?" Mikasa hedges.

Armin tucks his hands into his armpits. "It seems unlikely at this stage."

They both look to Eren.

Zeke is somewhere out there. His father's first mistake. Radicalised and sympathetic to the plight of his long-lost brother. Betrayed as a boy, swept into the cycle of a system who promised him a new life, not in spite of his Eldian blood but because of it. Afraid to renounce his inheritance because without it he is nothing but scum under Marleyan boots. A child who became the outlet for his father's self-flagellation. Zeke lacks the same awareness of his trappings. Perhaps it's become so natural for him to grovel it is no longer shameful. He'll be so glad to hear his half-brother is alive, survived his upbringing in Paradis, that he will not once suspect he is just another proxy.

Just as Armin and Mikasa and the rest refuse to see what is right in front of them until it's too late. Eren has no such luxury. He is the conduit enacting Fritz's will, as his father before Eren Kruger and their forebears. But there's only so much he can speak aloud, before his comrades exchange their helpless looks and he recedes into himself. Time and time again, he finds himself stricken by the limitation of words where memories ebb and flow without pause.

"They were looking for me before," Eren says. "They'll have to come back."

Next morning, the Marleyan ship cuts through the water towards Paradis. There have been a dozen sightings off the southern quay, but this is the first time one of them has attempted to make direct contact. More likely, Hanji says, it's because Zeke has returned to whatever country is sending these naval vessels in the first place.

A flash of illumination briefly outlines the shape of the shoreline. Eren's Titan towers over the naval ship. The devil in his blood has a purpose as the one who was made before.

Soldiers pour from the sides to be dashed apart on the rocks below. The rest cling to the sides of the boat and continue to scream.

Second explosion sends a rippling shock through the water. Must be Armin.

Bodies trampled like ants. The naval forces of Marley are defenceless against a wall of Colossi. The military sends aircrafts over Paradis to blast away the helpless civilians. A war of attrition that is quickly settled once Eren reaches the mainland.

Tiny speckles scattering across the deck of the ship below. The Marleyan captain is shouting for a ceasefire when the bayonet runs through his chest. His look of horror freezes on his face. He's thrown overboard with a splash. The soldier responsible turns and barks, "Stand down!"

At the top of the Wall's dock, Eren and Armin sequester themselves against each other. As Mikasa wipes the blood from Armin's face, he stirs and mutters a thank you. Where Eren has had a year's worth of transformations to become acclimatised, Armin is still getting used to the come-down. The hemic strands cling to his face and leave angry patches, a bloodier contrast to Eren's faded scars.

The enemy POWs are reluctant to accept food or water. Two soldiers are being interrogated. The tall blonde-haired soldier with black eyes and a muscular, lithe build is explaining to Captain Levi that in her home country, they've found a new way to make Titans—only she calls them Pure Titans—using an Eldian's spinal fluid. It tastes a lot like blood, and smells like saltwater, but if you pour a little into a batch of wine it's hard to tell the difference once you're drunk. As soon as it's in the body of the unsuspecting Eldians, all it takes is someone with royal blood to induce a mass-transformation.

The word goes that Marley has been experimenting with "timed" transformations. They've done test-runs, dropping them out of aircrafts. When the Captain asks how Yelena knows this, she says, "Cos' my friend here was the one pulling the lever."

She motions to her colleague, Onyankopon. "It's not like we had much choice," he says quietly. "It was either grovel at the military's feet, or be a good foot soldier. They don't just let anyone in the zeppelins."

"Why not send aircrafts?"

"They're stuck in the middle of a war with other countries," Yelena chimes in. "They sent a group of their Titan Shifters here six years ago, to break in, but they had to come back home. The mission was a failure. So now we've been sent here instead to investigate the situation in Paradis."

"We have someone on the inside, back on Marley," Onyankopon says. "That's how we knew where to go and what to look for."

"He's a Titan Shifter." Yelena's dark eyes take on a shine. "He's like God."

"Zeke Jaeger?"

Yelena tilts her head in his direction, all traces of impassioned zeal gone. "How would you know that name?"

Hanji shoots Eren a look of warning. They're not in the boardroom this time. There is nothing to protect. If they're going to work together, they need a commonality outside of basic diplomacy. "He's my half-brother."

Yelena stares at him. "Are you fucking with me, kid?"

"No, I'm not."

She scoffs. She's still looking at him. "Prove it."

"My father, Grisha Jaeger and his mother Dina Fritz. He'd be twenty six, ten years older than I am."

"So, you're done a little reading."

Eren stands up. "He commands an intelligent Titan, covered in fur. He can turn humans into Titans and command them. He said he'd come back for me one day." Eren glances at Onyankopon and the other soldiers. "Did he send you?"

Yelena stares at him. "Either you're the best liar I've ever seen or you are his brother."

On the lift, it's a tense descent to solid ground. "What the hell was that?" the Captain asks him.

"She knows where Zeke is. If I can convince her I'm on her side, we'll have a better idea of—"

"Jaeger," the Captain says sharply, "she's not your fucking confidant. She's a zealot willing to do whatever she deems necessary for her cause. All you've proven is that you'll barter our intelligence to gain her favour. She's not going to give us jack shit if you play your hand so easily."

Eren stiffens.

"There will be time to corroborate our information with theirs," the Commander says tartly. "Don't give them everything we have."

Mikasa's grip tightens on his forearm. Eren bites his tongue. No matter how many years pass, they'll always be at the same impasse. A year ago, he would've argued. There's no sense in it now. He can visualise the outcome in his head without a Reiss's touch.

XI.

Kneeling atop the Wall, the sun-lit field spans out below them. The cord bites into his wrists where he strains fruitlessly. He cannot clench his fists, what with the gauze around his knuckles. The skin has since begun to itch, caked with dried blood. Packed earth around the bottom of the Wall ensures he won't die from the fall itself.

Zeke must be with his grandfather by now. God knows what he's been told about his devil-sympathising mother and father. The same easy lie that stopped working when Faye never came home. Unlike Grisha, Zeke's desire for acceptance borders on obsequiousness. Zeke has a clean record. Zeke is a dutiful patriot through his father's pointless need to atone. He's a standout grandson but it won't bring Faye back. It won't redeem anything. He has become worse than his own father. A misguided attempt to protect his progeny that was only a tool for his own flagellation. Tears prick at his eyes, unshed.

In the chapel, his father would have always injected himself and killed the Reiss family for Eren's sake. Whether he calls out to his son or to his benefactor, there is no difference. Just as he would have always eaten Kruger and failed to save his sister. Just as Eren would have always transformed to save Armin.

Sgt. Gross kicks the man opposite over the edge. He falls and begins to scream before he implodes into a three metre Pure Titan. Beside him, Dina shudders and grits her jaw.

She is kneeling in the same place he'd stood with Armin and Mikasa a few mornings ago. He's so close that he could reach out and touch her trembling shoulder, but the memory would not change. He steps through moments in the lives along the chain of inheritance because they have already happened.

As Sgt. Kruger comes up to her, he holds the syringe to her nape. She finally turns and looks at him. Tears track down her cheeks but she's still as beautiful as the day they met.

"No matter what happens to me," she says, "no matter what I become, Grisha, I'll find you."

The boot connects with her back, and she's falling forwards. The Titan is begotten before it hits the ground. Sgt. Gross takes the moment to light a cigarette.

His chest tightens.

He is laying on his stomach across the canopy bed. A pair of svelte hands pause on his naked back then move away. "Sit up, please."

Even when she commands him, she's gentler. As if it will make up for everything. A lapse in her control, the fleeting relief of being held down and wielded. When he meets her gaze, there's tension in her face, the soft curve of her jaw. A private battle is waged as she averts her eyes.

"I'm going to be married soon." Eren goes still. Historia's face is difficult to read, but her tone is stilted as she moves away from him, towards the draped window. "The Commander-in-Chief assumed you would object to my position as inheritor. It was his wish to shut you out of this matter completely." She's looking right through him. "Given that we were unable to capture your half-brother, this is our only recourse to accessing the Founding Titan's power."

Eren stands up. "What I said in that meeting, I meant every word. I never wanted you involved in this." He grits his teeth and looks away, at his clenched fists. "You should have told me. I could have stopped this. I would have—"

"You'd agree to sire an heir?"

Eren bites his tongue. He'd have tried his best to talk her out of it. Even now his mind shouts that there must be a different way. If this Founding Titan within his blood is so powerful, what's to say it cannot move the very foundation of Paradis with her hands to his back? Why endanger Historia for a fruitless scheme?

"Historia," he says, "I'm going to win this war. You won't have to go through with this. I'll wipe our enemies off the map if that's what it takes."

"Don't throw your life away for me." She glowers at him, but her voice is uneven. "Think about what you are proposing. I could never command you to declare a war in my name."

Creeping dismay pulls at his gut where resentment falters. He finds himself drawn to her and takes her hand. She tenses, but doesn't push him away.

"It won't come to it." He runs his thumb over her knuckles. In all the glimpses of a possible future there is one concurrent certainty. She will never believe this while he is alive, but there's no point in dissuading her now. "I promise you."

"Talk is cheap."

He's seen past the fascia that was Krista Lenz, and she's peered into his own mind where he lacks the capacity for self-reflection. It would be effortless to wound each other. As long as they're sharing the blame, there is no impunity. In this moment, she's not a queen and he's not the harbinger of Paradis's destruction. He kisses her knuckles, the inside of her wrist, and her breathing changes.

"Is this what you want?"

Her mouth thins. "My duty as Queen has very little to do with what you or I want, Eren." She chews on her words before raising her eyes to him, vulnerable and true. "But I'd rather the child be yours than someone else's."

His old man didn't have any trouble. Dina, the Titan that ate his mother, wasn't injected when she had Zeke. One way or another, inheritors of Ymir's power always seem to end up devouring their own progeny. His chest tightens with the thought of her dissected, chained underground, awaiting her consumption. Sentiment twists into a churlish envy.

To spare himself further implications, or any reminder of his father's first wife, Eren lays her down and kisses her cheek as she takes a breath. Mouthing along the smooth skin of her throat. Historia tastes a little like salt, incense. Bitter in the back of his throat if he lingers too long. He runs his palms under her skirts until she intones, "You should undress."

He gets to his feet and does so, watching the progression of her fingers upon buttons and lace of her underclothes. He focuses on the warmth radiating from her. He'd assumed the stress of what he must do would make this difficult, but it's not the case.

Historia, no longer a controller but an equal, gestures to the stays along the back of the chemise and mutters, "Help me out of this, would you?"

When at last he runs a hand along her naked waist she settles back against the pillows with a slow exhale as he kisses a slow trail down from throat to breasts and below.

She's reaching up to bury her fingers in the pillow behind her. He's already hard and so he slowly presses into her. Bracing himself for a flash of memory or interruption, but there's nothing. Just Historia, trembling beneath him as he reaches over to support the small of her back.

He pulls back about halfway and thrusts. Her jaw sets, sucking in air through her teeth. Her eyes are glossier than they were a moment ago. He notes the slow heave of her breast, her fingers buried in the pillow as if resisting the temptation to touch his cheek. Uneven breaths rebound against each other's faces.

"Keep going," she implores, and so he does.

Their sweat cools and dries, sapping the room of an illusive warmth. Historia grants him use of her bathroom.

With his hand on the plain brass knob, Eren turns back to glance at her. She's sitting up, knees to her chest. There's something vacant and disquieted in her expression he cannot place and doesn't try to.

The room is smaller than her bedchamber, but no less ornate for royalty. White marble walls and a sink, an iron tub. He turns on the water, steaming. The sound of the water from the open faucet echoes off the walls until he turns it off. Submerges himself, scrubbing. He'll heal. In the tub with the water up to his chest, his skin pink and stinging. Breathing hard despite the lack of exertion. Pain is just a reminder that he is alive. He is not a monster. Not the enemy of humanity.

Whenever Historia lays her hands upon him, there is a glimpse of the path forward. It is always the same outcome, and each time he expects her to remark upon it. To recoil from his body as though burnt, tears welling in her eyes and unable to speak for the sheer inexorable horror, but she never does. He must accept the possibility that there are some fragments that he can see, while she cannot.

There's always someone else ahead of him, or above. From an icon to a repository of past lives, he's never been much good without a conduit to channel his will. Always putting his trust into the hands of another. Whether they live or die, the culpability falls back on his shoulders. It never gets easier as much as numbing.

A child by the suicidal bastard of the 104th Training Corps and the forgotten bastard of the Reiss family. Maybe that's why she fed into his frailties. Heir of Ymir, his mind supplies, and his teeth grit. Such is the burden they share, the old pull of blood.

Every glimpse into the Founder's past lives has come under her guiding hand. Eren has never interpreted her role as receiver—trapped in the same dilemma as her father; birthing children to devour their parents and uphold Karl Fritz's armistice. His childhood paradigm of black-and-white solutions has been touched by epiphany, but at the heart he remains an idealist.

He gets dressed without looking at himself in the mirror.

Historia's hair is down. She's seated at her dresser, working her fingers through it in slow, languorous strokes where the brush will not suffice. It's grown past her nape, the regulation for ODM gear, to the middle of her back. Such rules do not apply to a queen. Eren has never considered this side of her. All the girls he can name are soldiers.

"You should focus on your duties with the Scouting Regiment, for the time being."

"Is that what you've told the Commander?"

In the reflection, her eyes harden. A counterpoint to her tone, soft and practised from all her years playing the role of a docile farm girl to spare her family's pride. "When I have need of you, I will call for you."

XII.

Captain Levi is standing on the other side of the door. Usually the task of escorting him falls to one of the junior officers, interchangeable from one to the next. The Captain does not speak until they're in the carriage travelling en route to Trost. "Hanji's told me there won't be any meetings for a while." Eren says nothing, staring out the window. Nobles go about their lives in double-breasted suits. Children and women in day-dresses. The streets are clean. There are no corpses to be collected by the Garrison. When it rains, the gutters do not overflow with hemic fluid and feces. "We've put a lot of faith in this experiment, Jaeger. Do you think that's wise?"

Eren glances up. "This is the best chance we've got at understanding what the enemy is up to."

"It's been a week," the Captain says, "so what, exactly, is the problem now?"

Eren stares at a mother and child, hand-in-hand. "It's not always clear. Only flashes of what is going to happen."

Levi scoffs. "So what, you're impotent?"

Eren flinches, "It's not—"

"I don't give a shit about the technical details," the Captain says. "These sessions are a courtesy the Queen has agreed to, in the interest of gathering intelligence. It's your job to make sure you aren't being pushed beyond your limits. You're not a goddam martyr."

Eren sits, allowing his emotions to simmer rather than burst out. He used to be so childish. Quick to flare up. That was only months ago, but it feels like the span of a lifetime. There's no longer a point in hot-blooded, circular arguments that convince nobody of anything. Silence fills the space between them. Midday light streams through the curtains, the Captain looks unsure. To excise Eren from the shell of his Titan is one matter. There is no cutting him loose from his own synapses, no calling him back from the endless void of inheritance dredged up by noble blood.

At HQ he Shifts and practises his hardening techniques against the Thunder Spears. He manages to keep half of his jaw intact, and deflects a direct blow to the Titan's nape, but it's difficult to react. The body is smoking and riddled with holes. He's barely standing by the time Hanji calls quits ten minutes earlier than usual. He's still conscious once he exits the Titan, so he's pulled into Hanji's office for a debrief.

She does not comment on his sub-par performance. "How are your sleep cycles?"

"Can't sleep well."

"The Queen was insistent you be given a rest period in regard to these memory sessions. With respect to her wishes, and your health, I complied." Hanji stands up on the other side of the desk and walks over to him, scrutinizing. He keeps his shoulders straight. "These memories are liable to put psychological stress on you. If it's affecting you to this degre, I think it would be best for you to abstain until further notice."

His guts coil and twist. He swallows a mouthful of saliva. "Commander, I'm fine, really."

Her expression sets. Neither accusatory nor overtly concerned. He's never considered Commander Hanji as one for easy conversation. She's often focused on her work. It's a lot easier to confess to a neutral party than to a childhood friend. She's not as difficult to read as Commander Erwin. "I have to prioritise your well-being. So you'll be working with the other Scouts as usual until I receive word from the Queen."

She walks back over to the desk and takes out a small journal. "That's not the only reason I wanted to speak with you. You haven't had any new memories for a while, is that correct?"

"Yes, ma'am." Eren glances at what she's writing but can't make out her messy scrawl. "They're not usually distinct, so I haven't noticed if anything repeats. The only ones I can differentiate are my father's and Eren Kruger's."

"Perhaps you're thinking too hard about the task at hand?" she muses. "You've had situations in the past when you couldn't transform, for example. It could be similar to that." Eren shrugs. It's worth believing even if he can't convince himself. Hanji taps the pen against the table. "When you remember something from a past life, does it happen unconsciously? Or do you have to concentrate on a certain thought or feeling?"

"No, it's usually immediate."

"Does it happen only when Historia?"

He hesitates. "The mission in Ragako. When Bertholdt and Reiner were trying to get away and the Titans got to them. One of those Titans was the same one who killed my mother. Mikasa and I got separated from the other Scouts in the confusion, and—" he runs a hand over his face "—Mr. Hannes died trying to buy us a few more minutes. It was going to kill me and Mikasa next, and so—I don't know, I punched it. I wanted to tear it apart. There was this flash when we—when my fist connected. All of the Titans stopped moving, even Ymir and Bertholdt and Reiner. I knew somehow without looking at them. But I wanted to tear it apart, and the Pure Titans all went after her." He folds his hands. "She—was trying to find my dad."

Hanji looks at him closely. "She?"

Eren flinches and looks away. "She was—I saw her, in my father's memories," he whispers. "She was his first wife. She got—sent to Heaven because she was colluding with an Eldian Restorationist. Marley found out." He gesticulates to the desk. "It's in the journals."

Hanji nods. "Dina Fritz. Where was she when she was sent to Heaven?"

"Over by that dock to the south of the island. We were just there a few days ago."

"Could you describe that memory to me?"

He tells her about Eren Kruger and his father, sitting on the edge of Paradis's southern dock. After Sgt. Gross stopped screaming, the Titan who used to be one of Grisha's old friends stared up at them, chewing morosely.

Pure Titans usually have some recollection of what they have lost. Inside every Pure Titan, every Aberrant, there is an Eldian trying to get back home. It's as if their individual wills are all connected at a source that no man can touch or identify with a naked eye.

Commander Hanji brings up a few examples to corroborate. Around the time Ragako was lost, a solitary Titan was found collapsed on top of Connie Springer's childhood home. Springer would swear up and down that it spoke. Dina Fritz went searching for her husband in Shiganshina and found the progeny instead. Eren can pinpoint several of the Titans in Trost to respective Eldian Restorationists who were sent to heaven twenty five years ago. But all of them have since been cut down.

Hanji looks at him with a shine to her working eye. "Who would have guessed you'd ascertain such a vital piece of intel from these memories?"

Should he be truthful? How to explain that, during Historia's coronation, when he kissed the back of her hand, he saw a vision of the Walls crumbling to dust. Thousands of Colossi breaching the shores of a country hitherto unknown. The image of himself, buried in hemic tissue, grooved scarring along his jaws and spine, deep enough to score the bones. Afterwards, when he touched his face and found only unbroken skin and a cold clench in his breast, he couldn't convince himself it was only a dream.

Eren says, "I don't seem to have much control over which memory arises."

She pauses to scribble in her notebook. "Three months ago, we had no idea there was a world beyond Wall Maria. If it wasn't for your father's transcriptions, and your confirmation by his memories, we would be no closer than we were five years ago. You've given us a lot more to go on than you realise."

Before he's dismissed, Commander Hanji hands him a journal. Eren hesitates to take it, and she says, "It's all right. I have a few spares. In the event a different memory comes to you, it would be prudent to document them as it happens."

He gets to his feet. "Thank you, Commander."

XIII.

The seasons change. Marleyan ships begin flooding into their harbours. In a year, in two, they will assimilate as civilians under the guise of diplomacy but their customs, their foods and dialects, will always remain foreign.

There's talk among the military brass of sending over Paradis's best for the sake of diplomacy. The better to keep the peace as well as corroborate Eren's memories. The Commander-in-Chief has granted Hanji's request, at any rate.

Some of the expats talk of peace, like Onyankopon. They think in the short-term. They'll only learn to live alongside each other in tolerance. Orphans flood the poorhouses, thanks to Historia's push for reform. The underground is going to be hospitable by 858. The Military Police has its hands full.

A redevelopment scheme is of little use to Eren. But for now, thanks to Historia, the men running Mitras have no choice but to adopt a more transparent policy. The press is free to reveal the truth about the nature of Pure Titans and the thousand-year war without censorship.

"Only because they're allowed to," Floch Forster says with a scoff. "You think they're really free? Civil unrest is all but inevitable. All it takes is one disaster. Then war breaks out. The Marleyans and their dissenters get shoved into the underground or rounded up by the military police and executed. It would be another mass-culling, just like the operation to "retake" Wall Maria."

Floch is from the 105th Training Corps division. He's eager for reform as much as retribution for Paradis, and has latched onto the Scouting Regiment as a means of achieving this goal. There's an arrogant streak beneath his sense of duty that turns Eren's stomach. Nobody from the 104th is keen to speak to him.

Armin says, "It's been corrupt for decades. Changing the direction of a regime doesn't happen overnight."

"Unless your military has got an army of guys like you," Yelena motions towards Eren, "this island is pretty S.O.L."

Eren and Armin exchange a glance. Yelena scoffs. "Would either of you be soft on a Titan?" she asks. "Would you let it live because it's not hurting anyone in captivity?"

Eren grits his jaw. Her slow-dawning smile is answer enough.

That evening, through the bars, the sky turns blood-red in the light of the setting sun. Sleep evades them, so Armin visits his cell and reads Eldian novels to him. This week, it's The Turn of the Screw. Eren lays his head on his shoulder and follows the rhythm of Armin's voice without really listening.

To receive the Progenitor is to resign oneself as an interloper. Illusions of choice and culpability are for those who do not endure the gift of omnipotence. Even if one could avoid their fate, the Progenitor would simply imbue itself into a different host upon the previous one's expiration. It has no lungs, cannot drown or be destroyed. It drifts along the abyss of its creation, like something unfinished. A single life or millions extinguished can only prolong the inevitable.

"When I put my hands on your back, what comes naturally to you?"

At the desk in his cell, there's a message on the paper for him:

874 - Another batch of prisoners sent to Heaven. Contact in the Marleyan military expressed concern that too many Marleyans are wont to begin rounding up their Eldian neighbours.

The handwriting is nothing like his own scrawl. It's too precise.

"Armin?"

Armin stirs in the dark. Eren must have gotten up, careful not to disturb him. Now he's sitting here. There's no point he can recall in between the moment before this and the present.

"Armin," he hisses, turning as Armin's wide eyes find his in the dark, "I need to show you something."

They look over it together by the lamp, Armin jotting half-a-page's worth of observations in his personal notebook. "Perhaps it's simply a consequence of your brain attempting to rationalise an influx of stimulus from your subconscious." Eren stares at him. "In other words, it is possible your emotions and memories are mixing with the memories of the past and creating false ones." He shrugs. "I would definitely bring this to the Commander's attention. I imagine Historia can give you an idea as well."

Eren rolls his shoulders. "Yeah. Maybe."

XIV.

The Queen has decreed a railway system be implemented to ensure faster travel between the Walls. Eren spends myriad afternoons hammering nails into earth along with the other Scouts. In the evenings they ride back. None of the other Scouts ask what he has been up to, but they're careful not to exclude him.

There was a simplicity to the lie imbued into them as children, eking out their days as the last remnants of humanity. Child soldiers in the eyes of their superiors, assuming roles they could only comprehend in terms of duty. Despite the Attack Titan's strength, his unflinching tenacity, he cannot swallow the world itself whole. He'd rather die than subject the ones dear to him to his own ruination. Their faces are all he has left.

Without the conduit of a guiding hand, the silence roars in his ears like blood. It is no longer a comforting lull. He has tasted death and decay. He pieces together some semblance of identity among the whole, clings to purity. An easier time, when his only concern was killing as many Titans as possible, when he would've asked Annie to marry him. Sure, they'd have to wait a couple of years. But it was possible then, shiny and idealistic as the rest of his unfounded dreams.

The old lie is the better part of him, the one that attends training with the other soldiers and speaks when addressed, while the truth lies squirming at the bottom of his gut like an overgrown maggot he cannot burn away or starve.

His demeanor wears on his allies.

"Don't you care what happens to you, anymore? What about Mikasa, or me, or anyone else you care about?"

"You don't have to change the subject. I've heard it all before."

"The Queen won't live forever," Jean presses.

"You think I don't know that?" He's had enough of all of them for one day. "I've got four years left. There's no point in thinking beyond that, unless another Titan eats one of us, which is close to impossible."

"I don't know what else to do," Armin says abruptly, and then he keeps talking. "I don't know if there's anything I can do to reach you. Mikasa's worried sick, she can't stand to see you like this. The Captain thought it'd be best if you were given a little space, after what happened."

Eren scowls."The Queen isn't going to ask for me again. We're wasting time with this documentation and this goddam railroad when we should be over there, finding out as much as we can about Marley."

"We've got allies," Jean cuts in. "Hizuru and those Anti-Marleyan soldiers. We agree on that front, surely." Eren looks at him. "If you feel so strongly about this, why don't you volunteer to be part of the negotiations?"

"Marley is run by scum that think we're less than human. The rest of the world contents itself with that lie, and Marley's people are too busy self-flagellating to think twice." His teeth bare. "They're a defective strain that should've been eradicated back when Karl Fritz was alive. There needn't have been a war to begin with."

Jean doesn't flinch but he's gone pale in the light of the setting sun. A shadow passes over Armin's face. He won't look at Eren directly. Connie and Sasha flinch when he turns his head, but he's not looking at them.

"They've made up their minds," he says. "If we don't strike first, they will not stop until we are all eradicated."

"But you don't know that," Sasha cuts in tentatively. "Not for sure. How could you?"

Eren leans back against the cart. He cannot rebel against the very concept of his own mortality. It is a moment set in stone, long before he ever possessed the means to conceptualise it. He cannot find fault in his father, who looked away from the truth the same as Kruger, each man after his own selfish approximation of the same goal. Its resolution is never outright stated.

If he cedes, it'll be all for nothing. No one in this cart, in all of Paradis, deserves to share in his fate. It's his and his alone.

XV.

That evening, Mikasa comes along and he lays his head in her lap like he's a kid again. Commander Hanji has been in a flurry of meetings alongside Historia, contending with Marleyan diplomats, but promises she will get back to him about Armin's notes and how they compare to his father's journal. The Captain probably told her enough was enough.

There are certain truths in life you take for granted until you reroute into your deceased stepmother and your father, torn apart under your own jaws. Some things never meant to be discovered, but once they are unearthed there's no burying them again. Zeke must've been born out of wedlock. His parents were already in love, so it was serendipitous.

"How are you sure they were already in love?" Mikasa asks.

"He's smiling in the photographs. I don't remember him doing that with mum."

She tries to smile but she just looks tired. "You'd know better than I would."

Lately he's been too weary to record. The next best thing is to recuperate. But his mind races, with glimpses from the past or a future that might be. It's intangible at times, leaving only the impression upon waking.

It's not something he can talk to Mikasa about. She has enough on her plate without him confirming all of her unspoken worries. In a sense, there's no harm in letting her dote on him a little. It used to get on his nerves, having to keep up with her when he ought to be the one looking after her. But it's the only sense of peace he can give her. He stifles down his own insecurities, cursing his previous self for being so bullheaded.

While Armin is assuming the role of Hanji's second in-command in a diplomatic sense, it's not as if Eren can confide in him either. More often, when Eren looks at his childhood friend, he sees flashes of another persona. Tics, mannerisms. Every time Annie's name comes up, Armin gets a little flustered. Eren has never heard him talk much about Annie before, outside of her Titan's abilities and the question of how she obtained Marco's gear. Armin has never expressed a serious interest in girls to begin with.

He's tried to bring it up to Mikasa before, but she doesn't have much to say. Probably she just doesn't know what to say, least of all about the soldiers who turned traitors.

As far as Mikasa seems to think, Annie is just the girl in the rock. They knew her in Academy, but she joined the Military Police. Then she was revealed to be the Female Titan, and we failed to capture her. Reiner and Zeke must have thought she wasn't worth saving.

As long as they're alive, he cannot rest. Whatever lies in their hometown, be it Marley or elsewhere, Eren has to see it with his own eyes. His half-brother's promise, however vague, is something he can hold onto. Same as the key, the basement. There is always a new goal to strive towards.

Eren hasn't let himself think about the dungeon in Stohess since she was first moved down there. Between Bertholdt and Reiner's betrayal, Historia's father, the civil war going on in the interior, there has been little time to worry about a single defector in the greater scheme of things. She never seemed that close to anyone, despite Bertholdt's outburst on her behalf. The look in his eyes, when Armin spun that lie, the way his whole body flinched as if it were him being vivisected instead, is a shadow of the same one Eren catches now and again. A stranger's persona in his best friend's body.

Perhaps this is a fitting punishment, to never be rid of her, Bertholdt and Reiner by proxy.

She is still in the crystal, as far as he's been told. Armin visits.

In dreams she worms her way into his head as a simulacrum. His faded recollection—an impression of warmth, no callouses on her palms. The bruises on her shins that healed too quickly. The patchwork of bruises from the ODM harness, gone in a day. With an understanding of her true nature, there's commonality.

There is a distant memory of broken noses that did not steam away. Knees that scraped and scabbed over. A busted lip, the taste of iron that did not burn in the back of his throat when swallowed.

In the void of his dreams there's no key against his breast. A starless expanse before him. They've sparred so often he's checking for bruises when he wakes.

A ghost, at least, cannot betray him. They're rotting away together, mind and body. What he would give just to hear her speak. It is enough to hold her, to tell her things he's never told anyone. That he cannot bear the thought of outlasting his companions. He languishes that his destiny is to be reborn in the body of another child. Hers, then, is stagnation. A fate worse than rebirth and consumption. He laments his lack of power, despite his part in Paradis's accomplishments.

XVI.

Sitting in the mess hall next morning, shoulder to shoulder with Armin. The mess of potato-and-meat akin to viscera. He closes his eyes against the flash of imagery but his mind refuses to settle. He can taste the copper-and-salt. He's taken a chunk out of his forearm before to see if that would help, but he just vomited it back up. He isn't hungry now.

The barrel of the Mauser C96 juts against his forehead. She will pull the trigger if he doesn't call her bluff. Even in that case, he'll be able to transform.

He pushes into it until he's standing over her, looks into her eyes. There's no fear. Just the same callous certainty he adheres for all of his enemies.

"How's Annie?" he asks. His voice comes from a dead throat.

"She's where she always is." Well, it's not as if she's going anywhere. Armin frowns. "You've not asked me in a while. I just..."

Assumed you didn't care much. That it was too painful to look your old mentor in the eye and see the enemy. Figured you'd take it as well as you did Reiner and Bertholdt's betrayal, now that the sheen of sentiment has worn down into impartiality. Mentor or friend, she's the same as the rest when you really get down to it.

With hindsight, there is only his faded recollection of clues—the lack of callouses on her palms. The bruises on her shins that healed too quickly. The patchwork of bruises from the ODM harness, gone in a day. An understanding of her true nature leaves room for commonality. What Eren would give just to hear her speak again. He cannot bear the thought that he might outlast his companions, that his fate is to be reborn in the body of another child. He's no doubt that she would understand. There is a distant memory of broken noses that did not steam away. Knees that scraped and scabbed over. A busted lip, the taste of iron that did not burn in the back of his throat when swallowed.

"It's all right," Eren says. "I know it's important to you."

"We've tried to reach her before. The crystal is impenetrable with our current weapons."

Eren flexes his hand. "I've gained more abilities since then. So have you. What better time is there than now?"

"She's not used to a lot of people visiting."

Eren bristles. "Armin, she's asleep. It's not as if she can actually hear you."

Armin pauses, frowning. "Enough time has passed that we can paint her as a victim of circumstance. Just following orders, like Reiner and Bertholdt." His mouth thins. "There's no telling what she'll do if we could get her out. As far as I'm concerned, there's no harm in leaving Annie where she is. As a Titan, you can already do much of what she can. You've learnt from her. The only advantage in disturbing her now is as a bartering chip with Marley."

"Marley won't leave its own Warriors behind," Eren says quietly. "They'll reinherit the Female Titan even if they have to dash the crystal to pieces." His hands curl into his palms. "If Ymir were here, she could break it with her Titan. But she's gone too."

Armin draws back, a furrow in his brow. "I don't understand what you're getting at."

His childhood friend. Or the enemy, flustered. Like upturning a rock and exposing the crawling, festering insects that scatter in the light.

"You never even mentioned her before," Eren says. "You never visited her, before you ate Bertholdt. Now you can't stay away from her."

Armin's jaw sets, but he says nothing.

"You're compromised," Eren insists.

Armin scoffs. "Listen to yourself. I wasn't the one who begged Commander Erwin to reconsider before our operation to capture the Female Titan. You couldn't transform. You hesitated, and it cost us a source of intel. You flew into a blind rage against Bertholdt and Reiner and got yourself captured until we managed to catch up with you. If anyone here is compromised—"

"—I was a kid then," Eren snaps, "but then I had to grow up like anyone else."

XVII.

Behind closed eyes, he's being carried. The smell of his father's jacket imbues his senses into a temporary relief. Perhaps he is only dreaming. This moment will go on until he has to open his eyes, and he'll be back with Mikasa and Armin again. It's selfish, to stay in this moment and cling to what he once had. His father promised they'd visit the basement.

He's already lost his home and his mother. He cannot go through that again. He will not allow it.

"Dad," he says, his voice congested with sleep.

His father's breathing changes. He grips Eren tight enough that it's uncomfortable and he opens his eyes.

"Where's Armin?" he mumbles.

"He's safe," his father says. "Mikasa is with him."

The sky is clear above the trees, what little he can make out. The moon shines ivory through tiny holes in the sky. A chill seeps beneath his clothes, incurring gooseflesh. The smell of soil and foliage. Are they still in Wall Maria?

"Mom's dead."

His father stops. Lowers him to the ground. "Hannes told me what happened." His expression is difficult to read, like when he's about to tell a patient he's done his best but there's nothing that can be done. "I was with a patient," he says. "I only learnt what had happened after the Wall fell. I took a boat afterwards and caught up to you."

His father isn't making any sense. The harbor was closed off after Wall Maria was breached.

The chapel. Bodies crushed like insects across glossy crystal. Grisha on his knees, begging for repentance that will not come. The taste of blood and salt.

Grisha's hand reaching, clasping the boy's arm. Wars are not won through wishing, but making the choices that no one else can. One day, if Eren lives long enough to discover the basement, he'll come to appreciate his father's sacrifice.

The key. The boy stares avidly at it, desperate to assign a purpose to his father's mania.

"If you want to save them — Armin, Mikasa and the others — you must master this power."

Grisha is younger, nursing his bloodied, mangled palms.

"Make a home there," says Krueger. "Love someone within the Walls."

Needle presses into his arm with a gentle sting. The boy tries to pull away but his father won't let him go. His eyes gleaming as he smiles, a rictus grin. His voice trembles and it's difficult to tell if he's on the verge of laughing or crying. "One day, you'll be able to rid the world of this curse."

No.

Get away.

Get away from me.

The boy is begging for help but his father says nothing. He clutches his forearm. Blood drips down the puncture. Crumpling to his knees with a high scream. His skin on fire. The skeleton explodes around his body, called up from his will alone.

When the transformation is complete, the titan regards its maker with something close to accusation before it reaches down crushing the life from his body.

Two streams of consciousness run parallel. One is severed.

A glint among the brush. The boy reaches for it, staring at the pair of cracked, singed spectacles.

There's a gap in his memory, like a book missing half its pages.

His skin, beneath his clothes, feels sticky. It isn't sweat. His heart pounds so fast it starts to hurt and he can't move his fingers well, almost dropping the spectacles. He folds them up into his fist and shoves them into his chino pocket. Taste of copper on his tongue. The air is blessedly cool. He feels raw all over like the world's worst sunburn.

His cheeks are wet. When he touches them, there are grooves hewn into his skin like rivulets. Steam rolling from the decaying skeleton behind him. His arms and legs, singed pink with heat. Humans don't make steam so it must be from whatever that animal is. Was.

When he swallows, his stomach heaves. He doubles over on the grass which bites into his palms and retches. It looks like spit but it's pink.

He's so tired. He curls up on the ground and starts to shiver.

In the barracks he jerks awake, tears stinging his eyes. The key burns against his breast when he gropes for it. Armin snores lightly above him. Eren focuses on the sound itself. The crickets beyond the window. Moonlight bleeding through the clouds. His throat constricts. He turns on his side, away from the window and screws his eyes shut.

XVIII.

A week before they're due to leave for Marley, Hanji pulls them aside.

Annie's crystal has been compromised. The soldiers on post insist that it just gave way. Like a rotting piece of fruit or a chrysalis, she melted out of her self-made prison. Semi-conscious and unresponsive, they've been carefully monitoring over the last forty-eight hours. She's lucid and able to understand when spoken to, but weak.

With any luck, they'll be able to exonerate her and bring her along to Marley without a hitch. It'll take nothing short of a miracle. Ever since Erwin's death, it's been pretty straightforward to convince Darius Zachary to concede.

Eren says, "Where is she being held?"

Cell door scrapes against stone. Ringing silence. Eren steps through, carrying a tray. Bread and soup and a glass of water.

"I don't know what you think this will accomplish." Her voice is hoarse, eerily familiar after all this time like he's stepped right into a waking dream. Her clothes are damp and cling to her frame. She's been taken out of the crystal a few days ago. "If I were in your place, I'd have done what was necessary a long time ago."

"Don't be stupid," Eren says tersely. "I'm not here to kill you."

"You're the one with all the power," she says vaguely. "I might as well go along with whatever you say."

Eren can't find the energy to remain angry with her. Exasperated, but not angry. She's just cornered and frightened and saying whatever she can to lower his guard. His only power rests in their shared condition. Two child soldiers, forced into someone else's battle. He's here to offer her an out.

"Maybe that's how you feel now. I want to understand why you did everything."

"I didn't have a choice."

"You didn't," Eren says. "That was before. We've come a long way while you were imprisoned."

"Armin came to visit me sometimes. He'd read to me. The guards would make fun of him, because they thought I was sleeping and couldn't hear." Her shoulders hunch. "Maybe it was just Bertholdt talking."

Eren stiffens. "He told you—?"

"He broke down and told me whatever Armin had to do. Or Bertholdt had to. Armin was never interested in me like that before." She looks at him implicitly. "Was this your idea of exacting revenge? Do you want to make me feel as terrible as you did?"

She isn't making sense. "Why would I—Annie, I don't want revenge."

Her laughter is a strange bark of a thing, harsh and high. "If I go back home, they'll just have someone else inherit my powers." A twist plays on her mouth. "Reiner used to forget himself. He was meant to be our leader." Her teeth bare. "I'm just a scapegoat."

"So you'd rather die as a pawn? Just another vessel for Ymir?"

"You don't get the final say in what happens to me."

She doesn't seem to understand. "I can keep you safe. They won't touch you. No one will hurt you."

All at once, her expression falters. When he comes near the bars she shrinks against the wall. Her eyes scan the space on either side of him. With her arms bound, she can't transform short of biting her tongue.

"I never hated you," he says. "I couldn't."

Broken pine. Failure hums in his blood, in each laboured breath. The enemy looks through one unblemished eye, and when he raises his shattered fist, there's the same question he'll avoid for years within his own reflection.

The next blow might crush its face in but it won't resurrect Petra. Or Oluo. Or Gunther or Eld. There is nothing to do but avenge them.

A name is forming in his mind, but all that comes out of his mouth is blood that isn't his. It's stained down his shirt and jacket and the Captain will be less than pleased that it's not going to evaporate.

HIgh-pitched keening rebounds off the walls. He has heard it before. The last thread separating him from his fate is begotten and destroyed in a single breath.

Something crumples to the floor. Eren catches a glimpse of the tattered jacket. The insignia on the shoulder. He attempts to back away but instead stumbles over the sticky dungeon floor and kicks aside broken glass. Catching himself against the nearest wall, he turns and looks again as if anything will change.

Eren throws up.

XIX.

It takes two soldiers to restrain Armin from entering the cell. Mikasa detaches from what is in front of her. She's no stranger to death, nor taking a human life to spare her comrades. The MP elites in the interior, the degenerate who molested Armin, the would-be trafficker to save herself and Eren. For the good of humanity, there are times that a man needs to be cut down.

Armin has been inconsolable since he found Eren, and all anyone can do is wait for him to accept the truth. Eren never visited the crystalline tomb. Eren defended Annie once, to spare his own vitriol. His feelings have been holding him back from duty. It's not an enviable position to find oneself in. Mikasa doubts she'd be any better if it was her holding the blade to Eren's nape.

But Annie is—was—still the enemy of humanity. The traitor that was in over her head and sacrificed everything to keep quiet. She'd been given a choice and rebuked it for the sake of whatever pride or power she fooled herself into having. Whether she expected to die or not, it hardly matters. When Mikasa cut her down from Wall Sina, eye-to-eye with the enemy, she was never able to figure out if it was fear in the Titan's eyes or just surprise.

Eren is the one who spoke of her so highly. Her fighting techniques. Her conflict. Her nature as a frustrating enigma he would never be able to grasp and gave up trying. To Armin, Annie may as well have been just a name in a ledger until Shiganshina. Mikasa is no fool. This change in both of them has been sitting in the back of her mind, but there's never been a time to bring it up despite Eren's grievances. His feelings for the enemy got in the way before. If not for Mikasa's intervention, Annie would have escaped.

Since Trost he has never struck out at her or anyone else. He would never lay a hand on anyone he deemed an ally. It stands to reason he's decided Annie must be an enemy. As much as it might pain him to accept, the boon of humanity's persistence is greater than one traitor. Just as his impassioned vitriol for Reiner and Bertholdt has cooled into resignation, there's no more room to hesitate. His disgust for Marley has transposed into a viable target.

Mikasa runs this over in her head, but can't make it stick. Armin's horrified scream is fresh in her mind. So is the smell of blood and bodily waste and Eren vomiting over himself. He's been catatonic ever since they shoved him in a holding cell at gunpoint.

"He's beyond reason," the Captain says, pacing a path along the floorboards in Hanji's office. Looking to the Commander, he adds, "There's only one way this can end."

"I'll do it," Arlert supplies.

The Captain and Commander both look over at him as if they've misheard. "That's out of the question," the Captain says. "We already have one Titan out of his mind. We don't need another."

"It's undeniable that his Titan's abilities have surpassed Annie's," Hanji says in a slow and uneasy tone. "And likewise we've learnt more thanks to his memory inheritance. She was given numerous opportunities to share whatever information she might have possessed, and she remained uncooperative. It's going to be a much easier sell during the tribunal that Eren agreed to eat her under those conditions. That it was a difficult choice but ultimately undertaken for the sake of—"

"Commander," Arlert says in a shaking voice, "there weren't any guards. You sent him in to see her—did you guess what would happen?" Hanji says nothing. Arlert's expression twists as he looks at the Captain with barely contained disgust. "You let Annie die."

Hanji holds his gaze. "I swore that I would do what was necessary as the Commander of the Scouting Regiment. Annie lived and died as an enemy to humanity."

"Do you hear yourself?" Arlert cries. "All you can talk about is how to spin this to the top brass!"

"Arlert," the Captain says curtly, "that's enough." There's been a nagging question in the back of his mind, ever since escorting Jaeger back from the Queen.

Because Jaeger hasn't been keeping up his diary, Hanji's been poring over his notes in her spare time. She and Levi both agree that keeping Jaeger busy to occupy his mind is better than letting him ponder. The Queen's influence has unlocked a phenomenon that might as well be madness. It's spiraled, and it is grisly, but not out of control. Arlert must understand that much. It was his idea to bring the notebooks to Hanji in the first place. It was also his suggestion to Levi that Eren might be losing track of himself, much like the blackouts during the stress of repetitive Titan experiments. That it would be prudent to monitor him from here on out.

The Arlert that pulled Jaeger from the Titan's shell in Trost and talked his way into convincing Leonhardt to assist is a far cry from the one that balks under the possibility that she is expendable. He's not as stalwart as Jaeger and not stupid enough to argue directly, but there's a seething glint to his eyes that the Captain hasn't ever placed before.

Ever since the retaking of Shiganshina, the bond between Arlert and Jaeger has fractured. Initially it was simple to chalk up to maturity. The pair of them have been forced to reconcile their worldview in the face of such a monumental lie. It's only natural their idealistic natures have sent them in different directions, and Ackermann would try her best to keep them from shattering completely. But neither she nor the Captain is equipped to deal with whatever fucked up phenomenon is unfolding before their eyes.

Arlert is dismissed. Silence falls over the room. Levi halts.

"I never expected him to kill her," Hanji mutters, as if he is not there at all. "Certainly not like this. He's always been adamant that she be protected."

"If Leonhardt were to be exonerated, she'd not be free." Levi squares his shoulders. "We'd just as quickly use her as an inheritor than sacrifice Jaeger or Arlert." He pauses. "Like a mother who poisons her child before his father comes home and hacks them both to pieces. If you could spare someone a worse death, you wouldn't hesitate."

Hanji recoils.

Levi finds his attention drawn to the notebook. Used to be Moblit's but, as Hanji told him once, there's no sense in the waste of blank paper when more pressing matters are at hand.

"He's lost control before. Who knows if he'll drift into another memory and try to take a chunk out of someone else?" He looks at her as though expecting a reproach but Hanji readjusts her glasses with a weary sigh. "I'll handle it. Arlert's compromised, and Ackermann is too close to both of them to remain objective."

"No. We'll take him to court," says Hanji coldly.

"Because it's what Erwin would've done?"

"Eren has had these episodes before," Hanji says, "and it didn't drive him mad. We've sentenced our own soldiers to death, we've lied to the people. There are few lines left to cross. Sticking to any semblance of protocol is the difference between preserving humanity and abandoning it, even if we must discard our own. What's another dead enemy in the face of attaining that knowledge which will protect Paradis?" As soon as she is done speaking comprehension washes over her face. She seems to shrink slightly into her chair, removing her glasses and passing a hand over her face. "It was all so much more straightforward," she says, "when they were only mindless Titans."

Levi nods. He turns away so that she may find her composure. "I'll speak with the Queen."

XX.

Later as she sits in the carriage with Captain Levi, Mikasa's throat tightens with the memory. Her reservations towards Annie do not preclude a lack of sympathy. What Eren chose to do defies her understanding.

Nothing he's been saying makes any sense, as of late. He's receding deeper into himself and no matter what she says or does it only seems to upset him. But there is a certain tone that he gets, sometimes when she cuts him from the Titan with hemic tissue clinging to his face, or from a waking nightmare, and the only way to help him is to lead him out gently. She can't shock him with the truth just yet. She might not get him back.

Armin is not much better. The eyes in his head don't belong to the boy she grew up with for five years. They're closer to the eyes within the hands of the Armoured Titan, imploring his enemies to understand the indefensible as Mikasa cut her way through.

She's so far apart from the both of them now. Or maybe the nature of every Subject of Ymir is to cast aside their humanity in pursuit of some greater, lofty ideal. It's never sat right with her from the start and now, she's borderline convinced that acceptance will mean losing them permanently.

The Captain must be thinking about it as well. He's close enough to get a few words out of Eren, more than she can manage. She used to resent him more often, back when they didn't understand one another. She never figured someday it would be the inverse.

Historia is already waiting for them.

"Something's happened to Eren," Mikasa says. "I believe it was after he stopped seeing you. I don't know the cause. But I'm sure that this change in him is connected to his actions." She closes her fists and opens them again. The Captain's eyes drill into the side of her neck. She swallows dryly. "Is there any record of a Titan Shifter becoming influenced by someone he or she had eaten?"

The Queen seems to freeze in place. "My half-sister," she says, so quietly Mikasa almost doesn't hear. "Before the massacre, Frieda was the original inheritor. And sometimes, she would… it was like she was speaking through someone else. As a child, my father told me it was mercury poisoning but she didn't have any dental implants of the sort. I always wondered why he'd lie about it. And—her eyes would change colour. He told me too that it was only a trick of the light."

Mikasa strides over to the desk. "Why did you keep this to yourself?"

"I did not anticipate what Eren would do," Historia responds coolly. "The question you should be asking is why Armin hasn't followed suit?"

"Evidently you suspect something has been done to him," the Captain says. "Can it be undone?"

Historia draws herself up to her full height. Despite Mikasa towering over her, she doesn't seem in the least bit intimidated. "He's safer in a cell than he is in my presence."

The Captain scoffs. "So he'll be a prisoner of his own mind? That's no loss."

Historia's mouth thins. "Would it be merciful, to have put him in front of a firing squad and be done with it?" She inclines her head. "I imagine Armin would have to become the sole inheritor. And that's too vast of a burden for any one person."

"But not too much for Eren?"

Historia shakes her head. "It is the inevitable fate of each inheritor who takes on the Founding Titan's will. My father wrote about it while he was still alive." She winces. "I… I've read through plenty of what he had to say about Karl Fritz. And if you read it too, you'll see that what I'm doing for Eren is a courtesy. If you don't want to believe it, then I can't force you to. But I've passed along everything I know to the Commander and Captain in the meantime." She inclines her head. "If I would have known what would happen, I would never have agreed to let him near her, Mikasa."

Mikasa turns around. Her gut instinct tells her that she can't hear another word of this but she's not going to walk out on the Queen. She turns in spite of herself, to where Historia is silhouetted by the midday sun. "How long has the Founder's power been passed down?"

"Since before I was born," Historia says with a twist to her mouth. "They wouldn't have entrusted that power to a bastard. But it hardly matters. Even if Eren was lucid, he wouldn't be able to utilise the Founder's true power outside of a momentary flash. It would have to be a Reiss."

The prospect of Eren's death looms all the way back to HQ. Another inevitability, only there's no time to grasp it while they are alive. Mikasa refuses to sit by and accept this as a certainty. There must be another way to save Eren. His reasons for acting are not beyond explanation. If the Queen is right, if there's a chance Eren has trapped himself within the confines of his inheritance, it's Mikasa's job to draw him out. Not only for the good of humanity. It was the last thing she ever promised Aunt Karla and she'll be damned if she allows Eren to slip away for the sake of upholding some meaningless treaty.

Mikasa is the first who's agreed to watch over him, because Armin won't listen to reason and the rest of the Scouts can't bear to look at him.

He says nothing. He's just sitting on the bed. Annie was the enemy, but Mikasa cannot take any pleasure in the circumstances of her death or what it's wrought.

She couldn't regenerate, Commander Hanji surmises, because she'd spent so much time healing her wounds. Trapped in the crystal her body atrophied. When she was kept shackled in a cell, much like Sawney and Bean, she grew weaker. The prospect of Eren sensing that weakness, using it to his advantage, is a point Hanji brings up and no one acknowledges, save for the Captain.

The boy nearly-a-man who was pulled out of Annie's cell and the boy she's put so much faith in are disparate.

Floch is the only other one who volunteered. Mikasa has no strong feelings towards him. Eren and he never seemed to get along, but that was before Eren ripped out the enemy's carotid artery with his teeth and nails.

"It's me, Eren."

Her voice wavers. She grits her teeth.

No response. Her pulse throbs in her head.

"Eren?"

He raises his head. He doesn't acknowledge her. There's life behind the eyes, but something missing. That aspect of Eren Jaeger does not exist. "She's safe," says Eren quietly. "I made sure of it."

Mikasa takes an unsteady breath. He doesn't flinch. His shoulders hunch.

"I was running out of time," he whispers. He's rocking uneasily back and forth on the bed. "I didn't have a choice."

Her throat tightens. She shoves down her weakness. If he'll talk to her, she has a chance at getting through to the Commander. "What are you talking about?"

Eren runs his hands through his hair. His entire body rigid. Their eyes lock.

She steps back, struck by the illogical notion that he's going to tear the bars off and rip out her throat.

His breath snags. He's staring down at himself. He starts to tremble.

"I had to do it," his voice cracks, jumps an octave. He screams, "They'd kill her if I didn't do it, don't any of you understand," but there's a wretched desperation in his voice and all she really sees is the ten year old crumpling on the cobblestones, powerless to save his mother.

Marrying Karla is an easy decision. She keeps a clean house and she's pleasant company, treating him no differently outside of the bar than inside it. She keeps a steady rapport with colleagues in Shiganshina's corner market. The man who found him, Keith Shadis, is busy in the Scouting Regiment.

When the wave of tuberculosis strikes Shiganshina, Karla is understanding of his absences. Many quiet dinners where she'll excuse herself and go to bed. Despite her exhaustion, she.

The influx of patients necessitates he'll be working overnight. Hospitals in Wall Maria are notorious for being understaffed and underfunded. Civilians live on top of each other in narrow streets. Here, he is only a doctor. Staff alongside him are amicable but indifferent towards their circumstances. The situation in Maria has always been slanted in favor of the inner Walls. If the Titans were to get in, there would be less mouths to feed and less posturing for the middle class in Rose.

The girl's hair clings to her face. Waterlogged and pale and speckled with bruises.

Of course, he has to work.

That night, when he got home she was quiet as usual. She's talking about her day. With. He nods.

"Are you even listening?" Her golden eyes bright and shimmering. "All the women will talk about now are the robberies between Trost and Yarvil. If not that, it's this damned illness. Each time you go away, I wonder if it will be the last time."

"I didn't—" realise you were so deeply affected "—consider how you felt. I'm sorry."

Karla emits a sound between a laugh and a shudder. His cue to do something. He stands and walks slowly around the table to touch her forearm. She turns her head into his breast.

She says she's sorry. That she's only worried for him. She wraps her arms around his waist but he never leans into her touch. A child will not salvage this marriage, nor make up for his lengthy absences.

He's always so warm, she whispers. Like a furnace.

After Dina, he cannot bring himself to care for another person so deeply and intrinsically. Karla is her antithesis; headstrong and optimistic. Karla need only be aware of his role.

Now that he is well-established, he says, he feels as though he is in a better position to provide for them, as a family.

It's their duty to eke out an existence within these walls, this house. Something to look back on and be proud of. Not for humanity's sake, but for their own. Life should go on inside Paradis, no matter how many Titans were on the other side.

He stroked her hair, watching her sleep. He told her, some half-true variation of the story that ate at him every day. That his sister was found by Military Police. That his parents would marry her off to some wealthy businessman, if not the officer who raped her and fed her to his dogs.

Dina would flinch away from him. So blinded with his desperation to mould his child into the perfect double-agent, he never saw her as anything more than a means to an end.

Without the burden of zealotry, Karla only absorbs what she is told. She listens until his words dissipate into pinched silence. He was only a boy, she says. Overpowered by an officer, it was not his fault. He shouldn't carry that guilt for the rest of his life.

A memory seeps into his mind's eye outside of his control. Her hair is longer, kept in a bun. Her features, not allowed to grow into a sallow beauty. She's wearing the old uniform from her hometown, the one he's only ever seen in flashes. Her armband is yellow where his father's was grey—Eren Kruger's a hemic red. The name Liberio forms on his tongue.

When he opens his eyes he can taste the copper-and-salt.

In the cell, there's nothing to stop him from hitting the wall, something tangible that cannot be harmed. His wrist judders against the unyielding stone; sharp, violent pain that pierces the skin. His knuckles come away bloody, hissing with steam. The flesh and sinew knitting back together, the bone aligns itself.

Pain brings him to his knees, his vision flashing. He retches but nothing comes up. The cell door scrapes against stone.

He clutches his broken hand, flinching at her voice, the rising pitch of distress. Mikasa only sees a wound that needs fixing. She's strong enough to lead her own division, but she cannot protect him from his own mind. She crouches down next to him, doesn't touch, hovering close enough to feel her breath wavering on his cheek.

"Eren," she says in a small voice, "I don't know—what I'm supposed to do to help you. The Commander." Her voice shatters. If he were to reach out through the bars and touch her she'd be shaking with sobs. "I don't know what to do anymore."

They are on the opposite end of a long tunnel, and he's still clutching his hand and looking up at the blinding light of day, too late to warn her of what's coming.

XXI.

The sky is blood-red in the light of the setting sun. Mikasa is over in Mitras, fighting for the two of them. Even without knowing when or how the end will come to be, it remains inevitable.

Arms drawn over his knees, his body covered by a thin layer of sweat.

The door to his cell unlocks. A tall woman enters, brandishing a lantern. "Floch told me what happened."

Eren looks sharply to the boy behind her. Floch is simple-minded but not without his uses. Eager to get into Eren's good graces. If his comrades won't listen, if the Captain and Commander are busy with all of this planning towards an uncertain future, maybe the only way to move forward is a change of approach.

"The Captain seems to believe you have already surpassed Annie in respect to her Titan's ability. There was nothing to gain from your actions."

"Don't—" he seethes, because she's done enough, she's done more than enough, peeling apart his mind in ways he would rather not admit to anyone "—don't talk about her like that."

Yelena hesitates. "I don't know what you expect me to tell you. A formal apology on the Queen's behalf is hardly going to fix this." She sets the lantern down. "That's not why I'm here. There are routes to the mainland even from Paradis. The only way you'll be able to access the Founder's powers is to find your brother. And we just so happen to be in contact with him."

"I'm listening," Eren says, not taking his eyes off of Floch, who has not moved away from the door since Yelena began talking.

She glances back with a tsk and says, "Lock the door, Forster. He's not going to rip your throat out."

Eren's attention turns back to her as she has a seat at the table.

"Let's go over the plan."

XXII.

Footsteps creak across the open space. The flutter of breath against his unshaven jaw. A clammy hand cups the nape of his neck, nails crusted with blood that isn't hers. His eyes trace the serrated shape hewn into her jugular, and his breath sticks in his throat.

"What did you want me to do?" His voice croaks with disuse. "They were going to kill you. I couldn't let that happen."

Annie doesn't say anything, but then again she never does.

Three years ago it would've been difficult to imagine her as small or frail when he's seen her disarm Reiner. He's been on the receiving end of her blows and kicks long enough to hold his own. At nineteen, when he stands up, the top of her head barely reaches his sternum.

He reaches out to touch her face. Empty air.

In the belly of the cargo ship Eren wakes up. His muscles cramp. He's slumped against the boxes at an awkward angle.

His left eye prickles. Once he gets to the mainland, he'll have to fix it.

XXIII.

"As a child bride," Zeke says, "Ymir Fritz was kept as breeding stock for a king whom did not care for her beyond her inherent worth to him. The day she was bound to The Progenitor completely, she became more than a subject of Ymir."

Cigarette smoke wafts upon the riverbank.

"I must admit, I underestimated how far you would go to satiate your urge for destruction."

Eren says nothing.

"Subjects of Ymir must have the opportunity to inherit the Founder's genetic information. There is a living candidate in Historia Reiss, and her child. If one of these were to be injected—"

"That won't happen."

Zeke pauses in the middle of taking a drag. "You're not a Reiss. Nor a Fritz. So even if you were to eat the candidate, you wouldn't be able to use the Founder's power. Only a subject of royal blood will work."

"An Eldian's connection to the Paths cannot be severed with his or her death," Eren says. "So in that sense, it wouldn't matter who inherits the Progenitor outside of its intended use. It can never truly die, only delay the circumstances of its resurrection into the body of another Eldian."

Zeke's lip curls. "You've thought this through."

A month from now Reiner will fall to his knees sobbing quietly at his feet in the cellar of the tenement. The boy Eren has yet to meet stares from the wall, captive to his own execution. Eren says nothing for a moment, Wilhem Tybur speaking over them. When he leans forward to place his hand on Reiner's shoulder, the other man shrinks from the contact like he's been burnt.

"Look at me, Reiner."

The gash in his palm oozes against Reiner's unshaven cheek, the nape of his neck. He does not get up from the floor but begins to shake.

"I see you," Eren whispers. "I'm the same as you."

"Of course," Eren says, reaching for the crutch. "I won't get another chance like this. Why take it for granted?"

— FINIS —

[north-blue-hearts]

Heart of Gold

CisFem Reader x Trafalgar Law

CW: ptsd, trauma, depictions/implications of suicide and suicidal ideation, language, violence, blood, canonical character death, mature themes and events 18+

@mfreedomstuff

Chapter 19: Figuring it Out

The experiments had been a success.

You’d stepped onto the sandy beach ahead of Law, watching anxiously as he made his way down to the gangplank and then to the island. He was good at hiding his emotions, maybe not as practiced as you, but close enough. You were worried for a moment that he wasn’t faring well, but with continued reassurances and time spent on the island you were less worried.

Over the course of several weeks the two of you had traded more parts than just your hearts.

It had been a little macabre, but deeply intimate. Law’s devil fruit made it possible. You held his lungs in your hands, watching them fill and empty with air. Despite the differences between the two of you, the size of the organs themselves weren’t too different. When Law removed your lungs you couldn’t help but gasp.

It felt like it should be impossible to breathe with your lungs in your hands. Outside the confines of the Ope-ope no mi, it would have been, but you set his in your chest, as he set yours in his.

Still the island accepted you.

Liver.

Stomach.

Still the island accepted you both.

You’d even returned all organs back to the other, trying to disembark onto the island, but it was the same as before. You couldn’t make it halfway to land before the panic was settling in your bones and making everything difficult.

What you knew for certain was simple enough. So long as one of your organs wasn’t in your body, you could step on dry land. If someone was in possession of your organ they could also step on dry land. You could even carry your heart in your hand and step off the ship without any ill effects.

While the parameters were clear, the reasons made no logical sense to either one of you. Law’s theory about your body being a set, and that set being the “issue” made sense enough. It seemed to be the case, but it still didn’t explain why.

Four months into it all, and the results had repeated themselves on half a dozen islands. No exceptions. The only scraps of land you could set foot on with your own heart in your chest were sand bars or a place like Sabaody. A false island, or one without a magnetic field.

It seemed that maybe that magnetism was the key.

“The good news, I know someone who can help.” Law explains, letting the book just rest on his face as he leaned back in the chair. You’d been tearing through a library in the northern seas for the last two weeks when you’d mentioned magnetism as a possible key.

“Someone you do not like,” you say pointedly, and Law just sighs.

He sets the book aside and pinches the bridge of his nose. “I have to deal with him, I don’t have to like it.”

“Is this,” you pause running through the list of names in Law’s alliance. “Hmm… it can’t be Luffy, you explained his devil fruit in detail. I still haven’t heard of a rubber-man fruit,” you mumble. “It must be Eustass Kid then? The captain of the other crew.”

“Yes.”

“You must respect him.”

Law gives you an incredulous look, but you don’t do more than smile. “When you really don’t like someone, you have much to say on the matter. But your begrudging respect is often punctuated with a laconic nature.”

“I talk about Luffy.” He points out and you nod.

You grin. “Are you saying, Captain, by your own admission, that you like Luffy?”

Law starts and then stops, growling in frustration for a second before narrowing his eyes. “It’s… difficult to dislike him.”

You smile, setting the book down you were reading and lean closer to Law. “He reminds me of a story.”

“Another ancient tale?”

You nod. “I’ve told you about the ones surrounding my situation. Some tales saw it as a gift, others a curse.” Law nods, and you continue. “Do you remember the one where it was a gift from a god?”

Law tilts his head. “I think so. Something about the god seeing that jewels and other things delighted the people so they bestowed a gift on their mortal friend. According to the story the first person who was gifted with the ability could almost manifest things on demand.”

“And so the god bestowed upon their friend all the signs of their friendship. Gold that sparkled like the sun itself, and diamonds that glittered in the warm light.” You repeat the words of the story. “There’s something in there about how soft these things were, more taffy than stone, but that might just be some sort of idiom lost to time.”

“And you’re bringing it all up now, because?”

You shrug. “When you talk about Luffy, it makes me think about that story.”

“He’s not a god.”

“You’ve said yourself he seems to work miracles.”

“He’s - it’s a kind of insanity.” Law insists and you laugh. “What?”

“Just something I remember from my youth. I can’t remember who said it, but the words are still with me.” You purse your lips a bit and compose yourself before grinning. “How insane the logic of gods must be, to mere mortals.”

“Ugh. It sounds like something he’d say.” He groans.

“I’ll… meet him someday, won’t I?”

Law quirks an eyebrow at you. “Luffy?”

You shake your head. “The other. You said your alliance was going to deal with him, among other things.”

“Ah. Yeah. You don’t have to.” He assures you. “Even with the alliance, I won’t force anyone on my crew to face him. There’s… a longer history in there for some of them. Penguin almost lost an arm because of him.”

“I… I think I want to.” You assert after a moment. “Morbid curiosity, perhaps.”

“You saw the old wanted poster.”

“Mm, yeah, I meant… if his voice is the same.” The soft huff of air and the slight pull of your lips gave away how silly the idea seemed to you, but you shared it all the same. “People being born with uncannily similar features is expected. Life is diverse and variable, but not infinitely so, at least not in the ways that humans can perceive. So someone looking similar, even several someone’s, especially with centuries between, isn’t all that much of a stretch.”

You rub your arms, suddenly chilled at the memory of a voice you hadn’t heard in a very long time. “But to hear that voice again.” You look at Law with an apologetic expression on your face. “It’s scary in its own way, but I don’t feel like I could rest easily until I knew.”

“It’ll be okay.” Law says reassuringly. “I wouldn’t have formed this alliance if I thought otherwise.”

“A doctor, a miracle worker, and a mechanical engineer enter into an alliance,” you say, with a smile. “Oh, I suppose it was suppose to be walked into a bar.”

Law nearly snorts a laugh. “No, it was fine the way you said it the first time. You’ve been on the crew for long enough to pick up on their bad sense of humor.”

“So it seems.”

“Have you thought more on the other thing?”

“Your offer?” You question and he nods.

“I don’t want you to feel pressured. It’s okay if you decide not to.” Golden eyes regard you carefully.

A month ago Law had suggested you move into his room. Your belongings were few, and there was room in his quarters for you both. You’d been practically living in there as it was anyway, hours and hours of research. You’d certainly become close, but aside from a kiss here and there, you hadn’t done much since the fireworks.

There’d been too much to do, and all the researching and experiment had held both of your focuses.

Things were settling down, and you’d asked Law for time to consider his offer. In truth you just wanted to have your own space until you’d managed to sort out at least the parameters of what was going on, if not the key to solving it all.

Solving the mystery of your body’s reaction to islands, and beyond that how to reverse your own immortality, was going to take years. With all that you’d sorted out to this point that much was clear.

It made practical sense.

It made emotional sense too. The feelings themselves were there, they hadn’t diminished. If anything you felt yourself longing in a painful way at times. You’d even confided in Ikkaku, and your concern had been such she hadn’t even teased you - at least not while she was helping you talk through it. As she had said, you were sunk, there was no going back now.

“I accept.” You say after a moment, watching relief wash over Law. “It’s objectively the wisest move, and, well, honestly…” You can feel your face heating up as he comes over to your chair. In lieu of looking up at him you hold out your hand, shivering a little at the tender touch of his fingers curling against your palm.

The sweet shiver slips down your arm and you can’t stop the huff of a contented sigh escaping from you. You can feel the smile on Law’s lips as he presses a warm kiss against the top of your hand. He leans over the chair and you can feel your body warming up just from the proximity.

“Honestly?” He prompts, and you internally chide yourself for being so easily flustered. It’s become harder and harder to maintain your composure around him. There was no release of tension in that first sweet kiss, things only got worse.

Or better, honestly. But worse in the sense that you couldn’t just stuff down the feeling and the strange need. The desire to be near him, the way your gaze lingered on his lips, the warmth in your skin as your body demanded more.

“Honestly it seems… I am greedy.” You say the words clearly, even if your eyes refuse to turn toward him.

He doesn’t tease you too terribly, the warmth of his lips against your skin as he kisses the crown of your head. “Greedy for me?” He prompts, finger under your chin, turning you easily toward him. You’re facing him, eyes shifted down, well aware of the hooded gaze waiting for you to look up.

“I’m…  being teased.” You pout as he urges your chin up, bringing your gaze up to his, one way or another.

“A little.” He admits and your eyes shift up at the words. His gaze sinks into your first, but you can see the light coloring of blush dusting against his skin. It’s subtle, but reassuring in its own way. “But I am greedy for you.”

He leans down, your gaze shifting from his eyes to his lips, watching them form the shape of sweet words that slipped so softly between them. “So be as greedy for me as you want.”

[calabria-mediterranea]

Civita, Calabria, Italy

Civita is hilltown town in Calabria in the heart of the Pollino National park, in Southern Italy's Calabria.

In Civita, Calabria, the history centers on an Albanian community fleeing from the Turks. While a precise arrival date is not known, the first Albanian explorers most likely came to the area in the 1470s. The “new” arrivals brought their language and culture with them, settling throughout the Pollino Mountains.

In keeping with Civita’s history, the local religion and village architecture reflect Arbëreshe culture. Just off the main piazza stands the Italian-Albanian Mother Church dedicated to Santa Maria Assunta. Its parishioners follow the Byzantine rite as part of the Eparchy of Lungro, an Italo-Albanian diocese in Calabria, subject to the Holy See. The Baroque structure features many elements of the Byzantine church, such as the beautiful iconostasis in walnut and olivewood, numerous icons and frescos.

Civita maintains its original layout, with neighborhoods of old two-story stone houses with large fireplaces situated along narrow lanes. Interestingly, the facades of several homes resemble faces, with a long chimney for the nose and windows for eyes.

The chimney stacks are another characteristic of the village, each unique design giving that personal touch to the habitation.

This village of fewer than 1,000 also boasts the dramatic natural setting of northern Calabria’s Pollino Mountains, part of Italy’s largest national park. One of Civita’s highlights is the Gole del Raganello, a deep canyon carved by the Raganello River, which flows to the Ionian Sea. From Civita’s enviable position of 450 meters (1,480 feet), views of the expansive river valley extend all the way to the sea!

From the oldtown, you can hike down the side of the canyon or take a jeep to the Ponte del Diavolo. This Devil’s Bridge has the familiar tale of having been constructed by the devil in exchange for the life of the first soul who crosses it. Being cleverer than the diavolo himself, the local landowner who made the pact with the devil tricked him by sending a sheep, instead of a person, over the new structure.

Photos by Un Trolley per Due and Calabria: The Other Italy

Follow us on Instagram, @calabria_mediterranea

[statecryptids]

OZARK HOWLER- ARKANSAS

The Ozarks are a range of low mountains found primarily in Northern Arkansas and southern Missouri with portions extending into Oklahoma and Kansas.   Their origins lie in the late Paleozoic when sand, silt, coral, and shells built up as layers of sludge on the bottom of a sea that covered  what would eventually become the American South. Over time these sediments hardened into rock- sand became sandstone, silt became slate, and the shells and coral became limestone- and the movement of tectonic plates pushed them upwards into a low dome-like plateau.  Over the next 485 million years rivers and rain gradually eroded the soft rocks into canyons, cliffs, and caves that have provided habitat for bears, bobcats, otters and other Southern wildlife along with more unusual creatures like blind cave fish, collared lizards and endangered grey bats. And perhaps a cryptid or two.

According to legend, the people of the Ozarks have been haunted for decades by the unearthly screams of a beast dubbed the Black Howler.  Those who have caught a glimpse of the monster describe it as a dark-furred cat nearly the size of a bear. Other reports claim it has glowing red eyes and demonic horns sprouting from its head.

Explanations for the beast range from a normal, though unknown, species of large cat to something more supernatural. A few people have even compared the beast to English and Welsh legends of black dogs, cŵn annwn, hellhounds, and other supernatural beasts that bring misfortune to those who see them.

More skeptical people have speculated that the Howler is simply a misidentified cougar. Though these big cats are believed to be extinct in this region, it’s possible that a small population has survived. Or perhaps a few lone individuals have wandered in from other areas. This theory is bolstered by photos from trail cams showing creatures that strongly resemble these animals, and by similar cases of “phantom big cats” occurring in areas of the US where they are not normally found.

Though some claim that legends of the Howler go back generations, cryptozoologist Loren Coleman has found that the first reports of the beast originated from posts on online forums in the late 1990s. His investigations indicate that the “folklore” about the beast was a deliberate hoax to mock the widespread reports of chupacabras and bigfoots that were becoming increasingly widespread at the time thanks to the advent of the internet. Hoax it may be, but the Howler has since become a popular piece of Ozark folklore and sightings are still regularly reported.

 The Howler is especially significant as one of the first urban legend monsters to be created online, laying the groundwork for later, more famous internet creatures like Slenderman, The Rake, Momo, and Trevor Henderson’s Siren Head.

RESOURCES

[candlelightisland]

URL Song Tag Game <3

Thank you for the tag, @bubblysimming! I love these!

C - Candles, Daughter

A - All My Love, Noah Kahan

N - Nebraska, Bruce Springsteen

D - Devil I Know, Suki Waterhouse

L - Lilac Wine, Jeff Buckley

E - Everlong, Foo Fighters

L - Limelight, Rush

I - Illicit Affairs, Taylor Swift

G - Good Grief, Hayley Williams

H - Hallelujah, Leonard Cohen (Jeff Buckley version)

T - Tenerife Sea, Ed Sheeran

I - If We Were Vampires, Jason Isbell

S - Simple As This, Jake Bugg

L - Like A River Runs, Bleachers

A - Appointments, Julien Baker

N - Northern Attitude, Noah Kahan

D - Dreams, Fleetwood Mac

[harmlessdevil]

There was a "one like one oc introduction" thingy at bluesky. I got three likes which was a perfect amount to show some characters from a comic project that is started (the Devils comic will also be done, i will never give up on it or just toss it away).

Aaron a person who dont tolerate "I dont know" answers from adults. In this comic his profession is called mind guardian (like a psychologist but not). Worked in childrens hospital. Later left that job to help his wife to build tavern and to take care of their son. He got a job offer from military but is hesitant about it.

Bonus info that was not included at Bluesky. Aaron got his ear cutted by his parent who belieleved a mole that was on that ear was a sign of infection (it was not). The other scars were from a child who was scared. That experience wasnt the reason why Aaron left the job. He had to move to another town so the tavern can be build.

Lexi. Glothes are colored so I notice the different pieces. Tomboy woman who works in military and wants Aaron to join. A classic person who make stuff happen and things done. Rumor is that she killed a seacreature. But truth is she captured it in a bottle.

Bonus info that was not included at Bluesky. Lexi is from a island that is part of northern folk who forship that sea creature. So of course Lexi find that rumor problematic and it paints a picture of her as a traitor.

Matias. He is kinda in between life choises. A smith or to be somebody who could make decisions that cause less lives. Matias is younger than Aaron and had a crush on him. However they are friends and rumors of something deeper doesnt bother them. It just fuels their "I cheated on you" jokes.

Bonus info that was not included at Bluesky. The town were Aaron moves with his family is where Matias was born. And it was Matias who told Aaron that there is a town that would be perfect for a tavern. Town is situated crossroads and "between borders" so there would not be lack of traffic.

I actually have posted a scetch of this dude here. Maybe it was before year 2015.