#they don’t deserve the inter peninsula hate

[peninsulaisms]

these dirt roads are empty, the ones we paved ourselves

[almostfancywombat]

Gossamer-Thin Meridian

It’s January, but the sign outside the airport reads 103. In the pallor of dusk,

expansive windows allow a grand view of the ocean,

of the dingy piss-yellow sky reflecting off its face.

On the frothy coasts of Achiet, waves boil and bubble,

shifting ships

stray sideways

 like bath toys.

weeping saltwater tears onto the pier.

The sky is setting, spilling pink and orange carnage. I think of that Italian place

near the hospital. The meatballs there are violently red.

I stand at the curb and raise my hand to the sky.

Lovebugs swarm my arm.

I wait until a rickety old vehicle chugs along to lower it, shedding them.

Fingers curling around the leather handle, I load my luggage into the backseat.

‘Where to?’ comes the cabbie’s gruff voice.

Break is over, so I know

where I must be heading but not why. ‘Scriabin.’

A sympathetic,

pathetic glance passes through the rearview mirror.

Message transmitted. Received.

He slinks into position and dives into the streets.

I throw my head over the back of the leather seats.

Sunlight stains my eyes. His voice scrapes against my eardrums.

Haven’t I already left home?

Questions, criticisms; hearing it from a stranger stings less than family. There isn’t a hint of inter-personality.

I get it.

It’s difficult to cope when your child is throwing 14k a year at a useless degree.

But to a cabbie, this grand travesty is conversation. He doesn’t care. The government gets paid and so does the military, so nobody does.

We, at the Scriabin College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, are revered by none. A tiny, satellite campus that hugs the shoreline.

         r           e           v         

g           Pluto       o         around larger state institutions.

        n       i       v   l

No one who ends up here deserves better.

Mediocre students go where the money is.

When a college digs into its pockets, students ought to drop to their knees and beg. When I applied, I was almost denied, but I begged.

Iasked questions no one could answer. Where am I going where have I been?

They didn’t know, so I was referred to an admissions counselor,

who referred the registrar. The registrar referred a professor.

I went to his office and waited half an hour, only for a frazzled TA to rush in.

Speaking like shoes racing over marbles, he said the professor had been dead

for thirteen days. No one knew he was dead,

died on a research trip in the Andes.

I almost had career counseling with that dead guy.

Maybe it would’ve been a helpful discussion so I’d know

how not to wind up like him.

Because I’m a follower.

I hate Achiet, I have the grand desire to get away,

to leave more permanently than winter from the peninsula.

Scriabin is not optimal for anything,

yet it only exists in dramatic contrasts.

Everyone has to take cars everywhere but parking passes and insurance are too expensive to buy. Carbon monoxide poisoning and pollution are at all-time highs yet only the people who walk die. Drivers drive drunk.

Everyone is either fresh-blooded and shrieking war calls

or thirteen years into their first semester. Some are both and neither.

Some homeless guys set up a camp in the steam tunnels beneath the school.

Nobody cares besides the kids who drive past them in BMWs.

The rest, we’re nobody.

We don’t care;

they piss less and do substantially fewer drugs than the BMW Bros

Less disruptive, too, so there’s no need to wage war

against anything. Nothing ever contests this artificial peace.

I hop out on an identical slice of the shore.

Below sea level, Scriabin sits upon mossy sands.

Today is the first day after the winter holiday.

Classes are in session yet it seems that the campus is mine. Save for my rusted pick-up truck with flaky blue paint on the sides, the parking lot is  e   m   p   t   y.

I walk the stretch of asphalt, suitcase huffing behind.

Its wheels squeak and groan with every long stride.

My trek to the dorms is solitary. The path opens with three walkways.

Each is lined with palm trees and withered plants.

There’s a welcome arch to get past, then the Student Center, an ugly modern building that was built in the ‘70s.

The pond is the only saving grace, then the space pours into swatches of overgrown grass and haphazardly placed buildings. There are several, just enough to house the meager thousand-student population.

On the piece of the beach owned by the school, there’s the I-Station, reserved for rich international students and visiting professors.

For the common student, accommodations are far less accommodating. Lined with creepers and cracks, the dorms look like reed-mouthed flytraps.

One blocky, bulky, red-chalky unit near the duck pond pulses with a faint green light. Occupying every window, the light ebbs through the windows like waves.

Accompanying the strange drone, like a piano to its violin is a gentle, stringed percussion, there is a plucking noise.

The sound of something straining and tearing resounds.

Then a final piercing screech rings out, and it begins its macabre song all over again. I don’t realize the buzzard ditty has me glued to the spot until I feel flies crawling around my ears.

The building is nothing strange.

It must be one of those Fine Arts or Engineering Department freaks—

majoring in performance arts, learning to embody the chaos or to become its proponent.

These people eat bowls of treble clefs and bolts,

let manuscripts and soundbeams

wind through their ventricles and hearts.

Music is pretty and so are designs, but who does that?

Devote their life to the intangible?

The only worse masochists are the Pre-Meds.

At least they have realistic aspirations;

anyone can become a great doctor, but not anyone can

become Tan or Paganini or Bilbao.

Most creative-thinkers won’t even become footnotes in their respective field.

Perhaps, they’ll be chronicled in separate books, referenced in larger works,

but a life in academia is one of parasitism.

Weird dorms aside, there is a culture of dormancy at Scriabin.

There isn’t much of a nightlife when most of the town depends on tourists.

The city:

has the air of a retirement village if the residents were pumped full of steroids.

is where old people come to boil and the tourists come to fry.

is where everyone is in bed before the bingo hall closes.

If you’re quiet when you pass by an alley,

you’ll hear someone puking.

With my suitcase dragging behind,

I file into the Common Hall.

This place is poorly and unfashionably designed.

The rugs are repurposed from an arcade that closed during Arcade Heyday.

The general architecture looks like it was stolen from a retro-futurism concept board.

Before I brave a hike up several sets of stairs, I stop by the mailroom. It looks like a wall of honeycombs.

The room next to mine is empty while its mailbox is filled.

As usual, I find their letters encroaching on my box. They swamp the room.

No one else is here, but if they were, they wouldn’t mind, so I don’t.

College is conformity;

going against the mold means life doesn’t get any better.

Often, I think that boy must miss his mom.

A bunch of teal envelopes and coupons to fast food chains are in his hoard.

I snag one of each from atop the pile.

If he’s gone, he doesn’t need food or heartfelt notes.

A million posters loiter on the bulletin board.

It chronicles the past better than a Joseon historian or casual Mormon.

Every day, a notice is added for yesterday.

I just missed a free screening of some avant-garde French film. The poster doesn’t feature the ubiquitous Floating Head arrangement.

No, this is a Quirky Film;

its design is compiled with geometric shapes and other elements of Bauhaus.

Besides it is another flier. With an unsightly font,

it shares how the resident kook of an author held another publishing party 

for a record turnout of seventeen.

Authors—who needs them? I’ve never read a book that stuck with me.

I stare at the signboard. Yesterdays upon yesterdays. Days lost to time.

This building’s elevator doesn’t work anymore. I miss my elevator buddy.

I drag my suitcase up several tedious flights of stairs,

then have to do it all over again one more time because I climb too high.

Recalling numbers is impossible.

Each hall:

is the same expanse of ugly carpet and beige walls

is a Soviet shoebox of an apartment, but not even those damn Commies faced as much radiation.

These dorms have issues.

Totally unfit for residency.

There was even mercury poisoning at some point.

When you shower and when you drink from the tap,

the water never doesn’t taste like lead.

A blur flies past me down the stairs.

Someone without breath, someone faceless. The darkness on their face must be their eye bags. The blur mutters about tourists with immense disdain.

Miserable students are all alike;

each student is unhappy in their own way.

No one likes having them around, but those pricing-us-out vagrants are why we have minimum wage jobs that help put us through college with hefty loans.

For now, I work at a local store.

My roommate interns in Information Systems somewhere.

Or so I hear. I don’t know what that is or who my roommate is. Maybe I saw a glimpse during orientation. Maybe not. I don’t recall anyone else being there.

I venture down an identical hall.

I stop before a door that is only distinguishable from the others because I draw on the little whiteboard hanging outside.

Halting, I erase the weeks-old doodle with my sleeve and replace it. A grotesque face with a ghastly expression, giraffe-like neck, and spindly body replace the old.

Cap between my teeth,

I slide the marker in, skimming my lip.

I attach it to the board and kick the door open.

Decisively,

unpacking is tomorrow’s chore.

I toss the suitcase inside, retrieve my bag

then trudge back down the stairs and head back to the first floor.

When I emerge, it takes a while, but I keep blinking and blinking,

then they’re all there. People, loads of them;

in the building

worming across the grass

slinking across and hissing like snakes before they slither over sand into sea.

There isn’t Greek Life or anything interesting, but Scriabin

has the Quad Gods, who perch by the welcome gates like unsightly gargoyles.

They’re all athletic in some way.

One does track. One does CrossFit.

The third does semi-competitive figure skating.

I wonder where he finds the time to skate and where he first found a rink.

They’re all fairly attractive.

They are all spindly and look like they don’t have waists.

With excessive handsomeness and vanity,

one of them ought to be the god of something,

but there’s a bunch of fanatic old people here.

Deities shouldn’t be spoken of so casually.

To most, the only god that exists is the only one you won’t ever see.

I don’t know if anyone has ever seen these guys away from their spot,

so in a way, one of them might be a god.

They’re always perching by the entrance gates, covered in dust like they haven’t and won’t move for years and years and years.

Now that I look, I realize I don’t even know their names.

I know them, but how?

Do they even go to school here? Who knows? Who cares?

Outliers significantly affect statistical values;

they’re why Scriabin has such a terrible reputation with sexual assault cases—

among students, they shoulder the blame.

If you don’t look, they won’t pounce.

With better things to do, I keep my head down.

Staring at them won’t go to the lecture that will explain the homework that will help me prepare for the test that will ensure I get a good grade at College-ing so I’ll have a job that will pay for a little picket fence in the suburbs someday.

The Faculty of Psychology is halfway across campus, right in front of the duck pond. Its glass facade reflects against the disturbed water. Jets keep it churning so the fish occupying it won’t die. Benches line the perimeter.

Perfect for my kind of student;

besides Architecture, Psyche students are most prone to tears;

being aware of your emotions, the sentience of grass,

believing that people should be skinned with life-long labels,

that not confining them to a box

means a life condemned to misery does mess with the nerves.

Brain Science is more neurosis than neurology

a neurologist can recite physiology and stimuli, but a psychiatrist is a mystic.

I enter the building. It’s like an anthill in there,

people lugging heavy bags around, rushing upstairs, across every hall.

They all look like they’re running, but no one goes anywhere.

Instead, they circle and circle. They’re all moving so fast, almost like a time-lapse.

I keep my head down and ascend to the second floor.

The elevator here works but I don’t even go near it

because it’s cursed and you need a buddy if you want to use it.

When I reach the lecture hall,

I find that it’s empty.

Peeking inside, I check the schedule. Displeased with the results, I check it again.

I already took Psych 101 last semester. Maybe I failed.

Damn American higher education. It wants to drain everybody of everything.

If anyone had told me it would be so difficult to stay in college,

I wouldn’t have got in.

Maybe if not, I’d be learning how to weld,

or embalm bodies somewhere in the Midwest,

or I’d be a goat farmer in Uzbekistan.

Maybe my class is supposed to be in the library today.

It’s Monday. Those are Independent Study Days. 

Hear:

when the professor doesn’t feel like coming to class, so we all trudge to the library to make the most of the day while we’re still inspired.

Every day feels like Monday, but I never feel like going to the library.

Too many geeks and nerds typing

click-clack on computers instead of writing notes.

Too many annoying people with millions of highlighters and washi tape.

Too many revolutionary ideas to steal.

I concentrate on child psychology because their minds are difficult to understand

and I don’t want to understand anyone who might be like me.

As a minor, I take Spanish.

Still don’t speak a word of it.

I listen to videos that are meant to teach me Arabic but it’s useless in America

unless you want to go somewhere and work in intelligence

or read the best, most soul-searing poetry.

Before leaving, I step inside.

The lecture hall rises in a spiral; slats of windows line the ceiling,

Stale-aired and tasting of salt.

I look at the chalkboard,

AstroTurf Green marred by white.

I run my fingers against it.

Chalk peels away and disintegrates in lukewarm hands.

When my stained fingers rise to meet the board again,

I discover a message I hadn’t seen before.

“HOW DO YOU FLOAT?” in thick, large letters.

As if swiped away by an unseen hand, they smear.

A carving on the board becomes clear, but I’m busy viewing the torrent threatening to consume the words.

Swirling around it are mutterings and psych-ward doodles,

the kind of things you might draw on a stall in a public bathroom.

At the center is a figure composed of haphazard lines.

Outlines, something lacking shape.

With a dull hum, the projector flickers to life.

Faint outlines appear on the board in puffs of chalk smoke. Nails screech across the surface. Watery hands rake along it, desperate to find purchase.

The hurricane abates. The figure stills, staring ahead.

Before it solidifies, I drop my bag onto the floor and scamper out of the building.

a/n: i hope i can go far, far away for college. i need distance. i need to be able to focus on myself.

[haliyam]

interim (ii)

zeke x reader/oc

summary: You return to Liberio not long after the Warriors arrive home from their failed mission in Paradis and discover that things have changed. (Or they will, and maybe a little more with Zeke than you expect.) [Season 4 and manga spoilers ahead]

AO3 link | Ch 1 | Ch 3

Hi again! I forgot to note in the first chapter that Reader here is 19 years old, while Zeke is 25. (Clearly, before the developments of this story, there was nothing but friendship there.) For the other Warriors, I put Pieck at 19 as well, while Porco is Reiner's age (around 17/18 that year). Marcel would have been the same age as Pieck and Reader in my headcanon. If you're not comfortable with the age difference, I understand.

Also, about university here so you don't get confused this chapter - I lifted the medical school system for Marley from Germany's current system where after a competitive state exam post-high school, students are able to head straight for medical school for a 6-year track followed by specialization.

Reminder that the Reader/OC, default name Lucy, is a cis-female Eldian character with a set background, but please feel free to set the substitution for the Reader to your chosen First Name using the InteractiveFics browser extension if you’re reading through the browser! So that would be: Lucy = Your or your character's First Name. Because reader will have a set background, you'll have a set surname as well.

Chapter 2

You don’t even get a moment to breathe. General List launches into a speech about the nerve of other so-called nations almost as soon as you sit down. Apparently, those in the Mid East peninsula have grown considerably bold over the last few months, with several navy ships withdrawing from the port of Ichakar and transferring, presumably, to Qali - which gives them a better angle from which to attack the mainland if they so wish it. They’ve also fortified their borders—ground troops distributed across the land close to Marley’s newly acquired cities—which is of course the sovereign right of those nations, but it’s blasphemy to the regime’s unending ambition.

You wish they had given you a brief with all this information before the meeting, the kind you have seen Willy and father poring over in their office in the past, but you get the feeling that the general is unloading information on you with the intent to overwhelm. 

“On the diplomatic front,” he continues with a hint of mockery, because of course he thinks of such things as futile, “they have been making demands. Asking that we keep to our waters when it is they who have encroached upon ours! The audacity—the delineation clearly states—” He continues to ramble until he is red in the face, but your neutral expression must slip into a wide-eyed look at some point, because he regains his composure with a visible wrinkle of his nose. “This arrogance can only mean one thing.”

He stares at you, and you realize he is expecting you to answer. You feel all eyes at the table on you, the Commander’s especially, and clear your throat. “...Weapons research, Sir?”

“Weapons development, Miss Tybur,” he corrects you. “Advanced and more prolific than we may have considered.”

He pauses, and you can’t help but speak. You can tell Magath knows it because he sits up straighter somehow, and in a moment of rebellion, you refuse to recognize the caution in his posture. “With all due respect, Sir, the… armaments race among the other nations is no secret, and on Eldian labor, no less.”

A fist slamming on the desk causes everyone around it to jump in their seats. “It’s what Eldians deserve!” the general next to List says, so naturally that he might have been born saying it. You blink, the heat of embarrassment and indignation crawling up your neck, but it’s only with List’s raised hand that the man remembers that the white band on your left arm is only for show. He glances away. “Present company excluded, of course.”

With the exception of his hand, List continues as though neither of you ever interrupted him. “And now, to the point. We need further information on the status of this little race. That is where you come in, Miss Tybur. You will use your family’s connections to enter the peninsula with our people - the peninsula and beyond, as the exact lay of their operations lies beyond our ken - and retrieve this information.”

It’s one thing to predict a general’s words and another to be confronted with them. You suppose you were still hoping he wouldn’t say it. “General List, are you saying you want a Tybur to be a spy?”

List glances over at Magath. “They were trained for interrogation, weren’t they?” Your old instructor is barely able to nod before the general recalls to you, “Ah, yes, I read the file. You withstood all but the final test. A failure then, but rather more a fluke, in my opinion. An irreplicable circumstance.”

You don’t say anything. You would rather not remember that night. Or that particular moment.

He takes your silence for agreement. “And so I answer, why not? You became a Warrior candidate - unprecedented initiative and involvement by the Tybur family. Why should this be any different?”

“Because—” Because becoming a Warrior isn’t a choice a child makes of their own free will, not really, but a Tybur doesn’t question the decisions of the former head of the family, of father, before all these strangers. No matter that they were loyal to him. You purse your lips. “Sir, I just don’t believe I’m the right person for this.”

“Your file did say you were always hasty, Miss Tybur,” List says, and you both glance at Magath at that. He doesn’t nod, only meets your gazes. He seems as trapped in this as you are, which makes your resentment for him ebb only slightly. “But you should know better now.”

Now you’re getting irritated. The temper that was your closest companion in your early childhood, and then your early adolescence seizes your fist under the table as List continues. “How goes Foundation operations?”

The Tybur Family Foundation. Set up by Walter Tybur when he first became head of the family and operated by the eponymous Tyburs - most often chaired by the spouse of whoever leads it. Your mother first, once, when she cared to, and now Mila. It provides healthcare and educational opportunities for ‘peoples once oppressed by the Eldian Empire,’ as part of continuing reparations for sins the Tybur family did not commit. Or so they say. Many of its employees now are Eldian, part of Willy’s initiative to improve Eldian relations… but in reality it does little when the Foundation is only a grantmaking organization.

“Well enough, Sir.”

“Is that so? From what I hear, the Foundation is unable to set up even offices in several countries in spite of the family’s stellar international relations.”

“And,” you add carefully, “if they ever catch wind of my close involvement with the regime even after all this time, that will not improve.”

“Clearly, Miss Tybur.” His level gaze shifts to patronizing in all the ways you hate. “But say you become more independent. Distance yourself from the military that leads our fine motherland… Say,” he smiles, “that you make overtures of dissatisfaction with Marley’s cruel expansionist policies and express the utmost sympathy for other nations. Perhaps then they will permit you to expand your operations within their borders.”

Your jaw almost drops at the very suggestion. You’ve always thought, since Willy became Lord Tybur, that only the Tyburs have the power to change the direction of Marley. For obvious reasons, not so obvious to the rest of the world, but also for the heritage you represent. If the Tybur family can be good Eldians, why can they not be only one of many good Eldians? Why not introduce the concept that any Eldian can be good, as any other race of people? 

“You…” You rein in your reaction even as your imagination sets off in the direction List has set it—and far more. Especially the part where the Tybur family spreads the good name of Eldians throughout the world. No more ‘special’ treatment, no more interment zones…

No more Warriors.

Maybe. If Marley gets what it wants. 

You would allow that? was your question. But the answer, you understand suddenly, is that they would allow perhaps the chance of it, in exchange for Marley’s continued expansion using Eldian bodies on the front lines. A slim chance of sparing Eldian lives for the certainty of losing them. You feel lightheaded just considering it. You want to help, but you are the last person who should hold so many lives in her hands.

Your eyes refocus on General List. A pleased smile brims beneath his well-trimmed beard, like he’s already read your mind. But he can’t know—you’ve shared your thoughts with no one but Willy and Lara, who have been as dismissive as they have been receptive. In other words, as though you’re still the child father sent away thirteen years ago they expect will eventually forget all her questions.

“Does Lord Tybur know about this, Sir?” You eye the intelligence officer not far from List. 

List clears his throat. “Not as yet. Lord Tybur might be more receptive to such a scheme were his sister to present it to him herself. We are aware that Lady Tybur chairs the Foundation. Her movements are conservative, but she may agree to a more generous, active Foundation on your word.”

Scheme. That’s what it is, but that isn’t what really catches your attention. Willy and Mila, listening to you? You want to burst into laughter, tell them that they have severely misunderstood the dynamics of the Tybur family. But that intelligence officer is here, which makes you think List is lying.

“Why not ask Lady Tybur to head the operation?”

“Lord Tybur would never allow us to risk his wife,” List laughs. The implication of his words is hardly lost on you, but the general tempers his mockery with a compliment. “And we believe a new, younger face for the Foundation - perhaps one our enemies believe to be foolishly idealistic - will better suit it.”

Foolishly idealistic. Like the sort of person who would agree to this plan. Your face doesn’t fall, but your eyes do - toward the table, the way the fingers of each general drum against the wood. Magath’s hands clasp each other, firm as ever. When you look up to List again, you frown. 

“Sir, you know that I’ve returned to Liberio to enter the university’s medical program.”

“Yes, yes, we were quite impressed when we learned of your state exam results, Miss Tybur,” List waves, impatient. He’s been relaxed back against his chair, but now that his certainty is dwindling, he leans forward on the table. “But think. Look at the bigger picture. As a physician you may help a man in need one after the other - years and  years down the line. Six years at the shortest, and if you mean to be a specialist, how much longer? But with the Foundation’s resources, and with our backing at that, you will aid hundreds, thousands - and the motherland most importantly. Within the year. Half, if we move quickly.”

You bite your lip. You want it and you don’t. The Tyburs must do something, or else we are nothing were your exact words to Willy before. But the idea of retaking your name when you have only just arrived here nauseates you, and assisting the expansion, the destruction, under the guise of aid more so. 

“I… would like time to give this some thought, Sir.”

A sigh seems to echo around the room, but it’s only all the men with you and their exasperation. Only Magath is expressionless as List visibly bites his tongue. He gives the commander a glare for good measure, as though it’s his fault you did not agree at once. “Very well,” he says. “But know that prolonging this will only bring harm to the motherland.”

You only nod. Much as you would like to have it, you have no intention of getting the last word here. You avert your gaze from the Commander when you permit the men to leave the room ahead of you.

It seems like the start of a rather miserable day - you’re practically scheduled to overthink all this some time this week, if not this afternoon - when, once the steady march of power has cleared from the hallway, Pieck meets you as you step out of the conference room.

“Boo.”

Your hand flies over your chest, but it’s a chuckle that comes out of you. “You’re a sight for sore eyes.”

“So I’ve been told.” She peeks into the room behind you right as you close the doors. “The brass did not look pleased.”

You wince. “I gave them no reason to be. I hate to get the Commander in trouble, but...” You trail off. You both know you can’t say much more.

It’s Pieck’s turn to raise an eyebrow.

“...Sorry.”

“That’s all right,” she shrugs. “I came here for lunch, not information.”

You doubt she knows the extent of the Tyburs’ relationship with the regime, but you can always trust Pieck to know not to pry. “You know, I remember now why you’re my favorite Warrior.”

“Oh?” Pieck grins. “Not the Boy Wonder?”

“Boy Wonder,” you repeat, the way the two of you always have when that name comes up - with a snicker and definitely with no one else around. You’ll never understand how the brass can say it with such straight faces. “So how about that meal?”

She pinches at the skin of your elbow through your sleeve. “Changing the subject doesn’t work on me, you know.”

You sigh. “Can we please eat first? I’m miserable enough without an empty stomach.”

“I guess some things don’t change.”

“Hey!” You half-scoff, half-laugh. With a wink, Pieck slips her arm around yours, and you start down the hallway in companionable silence. 

Or you would, if you didn’t know that you owe her a little more than that. Reaching over to rest your free hand over the arm linked with yours, you look at her. “I’m sorry, Pieck. I really am.”

Pieck waits a moment, and then meets your gaze. She searches yours for the lie, but she already knows it won’t be there. You always were too candid for your own good. With a squeeze at your hand, she nods. “I know. Tell me all about it after that meal. Your treat, right?”

You blink, and then laugh with shaking relief. “Of course.”

--

You and Pieck fall back into the easy rapport you’ve shared since you became friends more than a decade ago. Contrary to her words, she doesn’t press you for answers as you decide on where to eat in the zone. For old times’ sake, you agree on the sandwich place two blocks from the Yeagers’, and you end up sharing a meal in your bedroom. 

Sitting on your bed together, legs dangling over one edge as you nip at your food, you finally work up the courage to speak through your guilt and explain yourself and the past five years—or most of it. And of course Pieck is understanding, which makes you feel even more pathetic. True to form, she picks that up as well and gracefully changes the subject.

You’re the one who brings it back to what still hangs in the air over you when you’ve finished eating. Nothing personal—but though Marcel was the only one with whom you were ever close friends with, Reiner, Bertholdt, and Annie were your teammates too. You’d suffered your superiors together during training, and you’d been there for each of their first transformations. For all the experiments too; even their first assault mission. 

“What happened?”

Propped up on one elbow, Pieck is lying on her side, legs tucked under her skirt as you set aside your trash. She accepts the glass you hand her from the table, eyes distant. “Zeke hasn’t told you?”

“Zeke won’t look at me unless he absolutely has to. You know how he is.”

Pieck groans. She knows. “He was so irritating after you stopped writing.”

You click your teeth in a wince. “Really?” 

“Imagine, Lucy—after you all left, I was stuck with him and Porco. The abandonment issues didn’t just double, they were exponential. Multiply that with the ego and the sarcasm? The Commander was my favorite person those days.”

You laugh in spite of yourself. “I am so sorry, Pieck.”

“You should be,” she grumbles, but the remark is softened with a grin. When you grimace, she braces herself with a deep breath.

She tells you everything, or most of it: that the people of Paradis were shocked to find others alive outside of the walls, what Reiner and Bertholdt and Annie went through the past so many years, how the latter were captured—and exactly what happened to Marcel. She saves that one for last, and though you are infinitely more curious about the world behind the coward king’s walls, you reach for her hand again.

“I’m sorry, Pieck.”

She shakes her head. “You don’t have to make apologies all day, you know.”

“Don’t I?” you grin, embarrassed, teeth gritted even when your feigned mirth starts to droop. The dreamy way she speaks throws others off, but you know Pieck. She’s always been the most pragmatic of the Warriors and so she must feel silly, thinking about what could have been, had Marcel returned. Would a childhood crush have become something more between them if things were different? He had promised his family, and her specifically, that he would come home after saving the world. The thought, the regret for a chance not even yours gone, has a weight settling in your throat too.

You clear it and huff. “Well, it’s a great loss. I think everyone was a little in love with Marcel.”

Pieck glances at you.

“...Except Annie,” you add.

The sudden exemption makes Pieck choke with laughter, with tears not far behind. “Except Annie. Of course.”

You giggle, and both of you pretend not to see each other wiping your own eyes. “You know. Annie was always the toughest among us.” You pause. “Is. She is.” When Pieck’s laughter gives way to somber agreement, you ask, “What about Reiner? What has he said? I know what he’s said, but… two weeks of  debriefing… it sounds like a little much.”

“He was there for years,” Pieck shakes her head. “He grew up there, Lucy. He’s… completely different now. Kind of like you.” 

“I think that’s giving me a little too much credit.” You haven’t done anything remotely in the way of serving the motherland; not that you begrudge the others that the way you once did. “All I’ve done is see things and get upset. Until I can get my degree, and then until I can get the War Hammer, there’s nothing I can do.”

That’s a lie. There is apparently the Foundation—but the idea of directly assisting the regime in its efforts is something you cannot consider as you are.

“If you do become a doctor, will they let you have the War Hammer?”

You bite your lip. If only for Lara, you’re still bitter about that. “What was it all for otherwise? Though… I guess if I had inherited it then, there’s no way I’d ever be able to come back and see you all except under specific circumstances. Much less be permitted to study.”

Pieck only sighs, reaching for your hand. “Well, I’m glad you didn’t. And when I think about it… a part of me is glad Marcel didn’t have to see all of what Marley has done. What we had to do in Paradis—and I only saw a speck.”

You know what the others did, but Zeke and Pieck’s involvement apart from retrieving your old comrades is still vague. 

You squeeze her hand reassuringly, but you can’t help it. “What did you have to do?”

 “What we’ve always had to,” she answers with a faint smile. Your friends always had tells when they would rather not say more, and this is unmistakably hers. Given your earlier explanation, you understand why. She intertwines your fingers with gratitude at your silence. 

“So,” you start after a while, “how about some dessert before I walk you back to HQ?”

“Sure. I might as well treat myself a little before we have to head out to the mountains again.” At your questioning gaze, she says, “Training with the Panzer Unit. That’s what all the paperwork was for.”

“Gross.”

She chuckles. “That’s exactly what Zeke says.”

Your face falls at the mention of him. Relieved as you are with your progress with Pieck, Zeke is an entirely different ball game. You hate that that’s the phrase you even thought of.

“You know what?” Pieck sits up smacks her hands on her lap. “I’ll treat you, too.”

You perk up. “Really?”

“For a price.”

“...What’s that?”

“Talk to Zeke already. If I come back after a month to your gloomy faces still, I’m going to go crazy.”

“It’s only been a day,” you mutter. “And I’ve tried to apologize to him.”

Pieck gives you a knowing look. 

“I did,” you insist helplessly, but you both know that’s probably a lie. In Pieck’s case. You know it is absolutely false: when Zeke came upstairs after dish duty, quietly closing the door to his room, you stepped out of yours and stood outside in the hallway, your hand raised to knock on his door. You just couldn’t do it. You can take Porco’s jabs any day, but last night, the thought of Zeke and his silence, or worse, his caustic cheer, sent you scurrying back to your room.

You sigh. “Fine.”

Amused, Pieck gets to her feet for the opportunity to loom akimbo over you. “Good. And if you start to lose heart, try to remember that six-year old who used to glare at Magath like she had nothing to lose. That girl had guts.”

“You mean the half-dead one who wasn’t allowed dinner and got a Warrior class’s worth of cleanup duty alone, whom you specifically told to get over herself if she didn’t want to actually die a few months into training?”

“Exactly. What is Zeke going to do? Tell you to go to your room without dinner?”

Maybe. You sigh. “Sometimes I don’t like it when you’re right.”

Pieck grins. “And when Zeke gets over himself—maybe he’ll tell you about his brother.”

Your shock would be better illustrated in this moment were you sipping a drink you could spit in her face. “His what?”

“Shh. I don’t think he’s told the Yeagers. I think… he only told Magath because I was there when he discovered it. Still,” she says when your eyes remain wide and expectant, “it’s not my place to say. So talk to him.”

--

Medicine is one of the few fields for which Eldians are permitted to pursue higher education. It’s only logical—there are only a few non-Eldians who care to treat pig-blooded devils, and the efforts of those who do are wasted on said filth. And so the regime allows the admission of more Eldians than often permitted under quotas for other majors, even if the number does remain small regardless.

After parting ways with Pieck, you find yourself standing in line in some administrative building in the University of Liberio in the midday heat of summer. The line stretches outside because this is the queue for Eldian students wishing to confirm their intention to enroll over a month from now. That’s all—you need only submit a form and pay a fee, and the line for non-Eldians students has long finished—but of course the line has barely moved for your kind.

You’re clutching your envelope and your permit to your chest, which you quickly realize is a terrible idea. Sweat is starting to trickle down the nape of your neck, and you start to fan yourself with the envelope. Talking to the other applicants in line is prohibited - you must be spaced far from one another so as not to make noise and distract students who actually deserve to be here.

It’s ridiculous. You can’t even leave the line because saving spots is prohibited. Something about being fair.

The frustration crawls up your neck in the form of prickling heat, and you feel a headache coming. You fan yourself more vigorously, trying to calm down. It takes a minute, but the background buzz eventually starts to soothe you, and you begin to accept that you can simply return to the Yeagers’ and change as soon as this is over. The glares your line receives from passing students and the guards watching you, ensuring none of you causes a ruckus (as if any Eldian would dare), fade under the memory of your childhood. You withstood it before, with Magath and the other drill instructors screaming in your face. You can ignore a few nasty looks.

With that as a frame of reference, the line is even almost... peaceful. The heat is dry, not humid, there’s no mud, no blisters in your feet, no rucksack weighing you down, and no rifle either. 

Only the sudden rustle of paper as it slips from your thumb interrupts that peace. 

“No!” you gasp, watching your permit flutter closer to a guard with his back turned. 

Just then a hand swoops in to save it - its owner bent forward, dark hair falling over his face until he rights himself, permit in hand, and glances around. You sigh in relief when you spot the band around his arm and wave him over. 

He jogs over to you, hand already extended with the permit. “Confirming your slot for the medical school?” he asks, brushing away the bangs that fall over his face. He’s got the slightest stubble around his jaw, which he brushes his fingers over when he notices you looking.

You meet his gaze when  you notice you’re looking. “Yeah,” you say, clearing your throat. He smiles at once, as if he can tell you’re embarrassed, but he only casts a glance at the line behind and ahead of you. “It was a lot worse during my time. They had us looping around the gate.”

“Ugh, really?”

He nods, but swallows down his grimace to lick his lips. “I’ve… never seen you around the zone before.”

You blink. Smile a little as you glance around the line. “You know everyone in the zone?”

He opens his mouth to respond with a sheepish grin that makes his eyes twinkle when movement behind him catches your peripheral vision. One of the guards watching the line has noticed him and is stomping his way over. Noticing your alarm, he sticks out a hand. “I’m Kellan, by the way.”

“Lucy. It’s nice to meet you.”

“Lucy,” he repeats, and you’re barely able to shake his hand when the guard yanks him back. 

“Damn pig’s blood—!”

“I’m going, sir. Sorry,” says Kellan, ending the apology with his eyes on you even as he winces from the shorter man’s grip. When he’s eventually released, he ducks away and walks off. He glances over his shoulder to wave, but another guard keeps him moving with a shove.

The shorter one glares at you when he’s gone, and though you remember Pieck’s words, you know this isn’t the time or the place.

“Sorry,” you mutter, eyes to the ground as you turn ahead. Once he’s assured of your submission, he leaves too.

The line takes longer than you expect, but you survive the sweltering heat and submit your form just before the offices close. You hurry back to the zone afterward, dropping by the Galliard bakery to call on Mr. and Mrs. Galliard and offer your condolences. They are shocked but overjoyed to see you, and insist that you take your old favorites when they discover that you’ll be dropping in on Mr. Finger afterward.

You don’t stay long, though Mr. Finger is pleased about your choice of future employment. You feel even guiltier at the unspoken regret in his smile, and beg him not to mention it when he tries to thank you for the support the Tybur family has sent the Fingers over the years—the one thing you think Willy has ever done right.

You return to the Yeagers before dark, early enough to help Mrs. Yeager start with dinner. Dr. Yeager is apologetic as always, but you’re able to change the subject by serving the blueberry pie from the Galliards for a mid-meal dessert of sorts, and the dinner table relaxes soon after. Zeke is absent - he still hasn’t come home from work - so you make sure to leave some for him. This time, Mrs. Yeager allows you to take over cleanup, and the couple retires to their bedroom once the conversation fades into a comfortable silence.

You hope to meet Zeke right as he arrives, corner him into talking to you somehow unless he decides to miss dinner himself, but after half an hour of sitting at the dinner table, cleaning anything you might have missed in the kitchen and the dining room, and rearranging anything out of place in the living room, it starts to look like he won’t be coming anytime soon. 

That’s fine, you tell yourself. You feel slimy from being out in the sun all afternoon anyway, and you treat yourself to a relaxing bath. Zeke is still away when you return to your room, and the calming warmth of your evening has you yawning. You have no choice but to change into your pajamas. 

In truth, you’re a little relieved. Not that you’re particularly answerable to Pieck anyway, at least not until she finishes training with the Panzer Unit, but it won’t be your fault that you and Zeke weren’t able to talk tonight. But just to feel as though you’ve tried your very best, you keep yourself up by starting to write to Lara—and then regret your principle when you hear heavy footsteps outside and a soft click of the door across yours.

The word you’re writing skitters off to the edge of the paper in your surprise. Your heartbeat invades the tense silence of your room, but you manage to take a deep breath, folding your unfinished letter and slipping it under the paperweight on your desk. 

Your door is your next obstacle.

Overlapping images of how Zeke will surely reject you race through your mind alongside the words you wish you could say, and you’re able to keep up with about... none of them. You thought that the words would come to you, and maybe they will, but the moment is about to come and you can’t think of a single word to say. 

If you have time to worry, you have time to just get over there and do it, you tell yourself. You shake your head, regretting your own harshness, but also nod as you hastily gulp down the glass of water on your bedside table. Those words in mind, you move, switching one door for another. No longer standing nose-to-panel with your bedroom door, you’re doing it with Zeke’s in the hallway instead. 

Hand raised to knock, you eye the light peeking out from the gap beneath the door.  Knock. Just knock. The worst he can do is turn you away, and you’ll probably want to wriggle under the dirt and cry, but you’ll at least have tried. You owe it to him to try, like you did with Pieck, and you know you’re braver than this. Or you were, once upon a time.

If you’re still the same girl from years ago, you don’t get to find out just yet.

You hear his footsteps coming from the bathroom too late. No, it’s the heat of another and the familiar scent of his soap which alert you to his presence.

That and his voice, still too deep for the older boy you remember. “Aren’t you a little too old to still be knocking on my door at night?”

“Zeke,” you say, trying to pull your heart down from your throat before you turn and meet his flat expression. He’s in pajamas himself, his hair damp. You must not have heard him head for the bathroom you share down the hall. “Hi.”

That’s more than your mind could summon a while ago, but you still want to smack yourself.

His chest rises and falls as he takes a deep breath. His jaw shifts even as his pale eyes stare down at you in the dim light, as if deciding what to do with you... and then he sighs. He’s too tired to be glib tonight. “Can I help you, Lucy?”

Your lips purse with trepidation, but you stand your ground. “Can we talk?”

He pushes his glasses further up the bridge of his nose. Looking down at you is clearly work. “I’m listening.”

You hesitate, trying not to make another face. It seems to come naturally with Zeke around, but you resist the urge, and instead tilt your head to the side. There is no light coming from the master bedroom down the length of the hallway. When you glance back up at Zeke, you give him a pointed look.

Zeke sighs again, and then… decides to just brush past you to grab his doorknob.

Your stomach twists with both disappointment and pique. “Zeke,” you whisper furiously, barely just stomping your foot.

He whips his head to face you, halfway inside already. “What?” he whispers back, like you’re nagging him. Then he rolls his eyes, swinging his door wide open and backing into it to give you room. 

“Get in.”

--

Sorry for the dearth of Zeke moments this chapter, but the next one will mooostly feature him and yes we'll finally find out why Zeke is upset. I used to write very long chapters with fics, but that really exhausted me so I'm trying to write shorter now to keep myself from burning out. But I'm enjoying writing in 2nd person! I never used to do it because it was frowned upon long ago, and possibly still is now? But idc anymore it's fun to try.

Thank you for reading!