COMRADES • Eren Jaeger

CHAPTER 30: Melancholic

AFTER THE MEETINGS WITH HIZURU, you spent the rest of the fall dreading the seasons to come. Before you knew it, the air was frozen lace on your skin, delicate and cold, like winter waves on sallow sand. The sky was washed with grey light illuminating the drabness of the atmosphere. Things remain the same with the seasons — they come and go regularly, always certain of their time as all natural things do. Winter follows spring, while spring follows summer and so on. They were always assured of their standing in the world.

But not you. Nothing was promised to you.

You tried to push the distressing thoughts away: Zeke's plan, the threat of war looming over Paradis, the hourglass of Eren's lifespan running out. While the rest of the Survey Corps seemed to be coping with these drastic suggestions with fair elegance, you could not claim the same for yourself. You stressed, you worried, and you couldn't relax as long as your enemies were out there planning your demise.

They don't understand. They don't know Marley like I do.

"You missed a spot of snow," Daphne told you as she paused in her shoveling to gaze at you, clad in your dark green winter coat as a breeze of cold wind rushed past. "Hey, Lieutenant, are you listening to me?"

You stared at her for a moment and then at the training ground area at your cold white slush pile. "I'm listening."

"No, you're not," she grumbled, turning back to continue shoveling snow out of the track. "You've been blindly staring into space."

"Maybe my shoulders are aching and inflamed after having to shovel snow for three evenings straight," you retorted.

Luckily Daphne did not argue, but instead joined you in your mindless complaining as the two of you scooped shovel after shovelful, and tossed it over into the already snow-covered yard of the barracks.

"Right," she said after a few moments. "We're much higher up the ranks, they should be making the cadets do all this dirty work."

"Better snow than fire," you sighed, remembering the nightmare you had a few months ago. Daphne tensed but nodded. She had been among the ash in those flames too.

"It's a shame we can't train in the snow," you added. "All there is to do are chores."

"Well, next year we'll have more idiots to dump all this work on."

"Next year?"

"The 108th Cadet Corps are graduating next year," she explained. A sly smirk made its way across her face. "We'll get an influx of your fans."

"I don't have fans," you scoffed. "Don't tell me there are children out there dumb enough to join the Survey Corps because they look up to someone in the ranks."

"Children like you?" she asked, raising an eyebrow. Your cheeks warmed. "Well, no one is like you, after all. You had family in here, it only made sense that you'd join them as well. Same way I did with Nick when he joined the Survey Corps."

"Yeah," you said, and the two of you continued working in silence after that. You shared a faint kinship with Daphne, perhaps even a bond especially since you were each other's last living squadmate after the Battle of Shiganshina. No one would ever understand the battle like you two did. If you put it officially, you would somewhat consider each other friends.

"I mean, it wouldn't hurt to have more of them in the Survey Corps," she stated, grunting as she lifted one particularly heavy weight of snow in her shovel before tossing it away. "We need the manpower soon, but it'll be a pain to have to teach all these soldiers how to use the Military Police's special maneuvering gear along with the Marleyan technology."