Once In A While

Chapter 3: The Survey Corps

 My memories of the ride to the Survey Corps barracks are foggy, due possibly to the fact that I was lost in my thoughts during its course.

My thoughts raced back to my family. A small family of four, living in a remote area in the woods. It was my older brother, Henry, who would accompany me in any mischief I would pull; and it was my mother, who would always scold us. My father was, in comparison to her, a very distant person. Now that I'm miles away from my hometown, I've come to terms with the fact that I was scared of him.

Father was always in the shadows; he was always busy with hunting, or repairing things around the house. And when time for dinner came, he sat down at the table and wouldn't talk to us, only reprimanding us for not eating, or being lazy and not helping mother around the house. In my mind, he was almost like a God; untouchable, unapproachable, and he never made mistakes, or that was what he wanted us to believe.

Henry was four years older than me, and by the time I was 10, he had gone off to join the training corps. He dreamed of becoming a member of the Military Police Brigade, in order to secure a safer place for us to live, but also contribute to the safety of citizens in general.

What he didn't know, was that he would be there when Wall Maria fell; and that he would end up on the missing cadets list.

Two years after that, I myself left home to join the corps, despite my mother telling me not to do so; for once, I dared oppose to my father's orders to stay home, and ever since then I only looked ahead.

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The horses came to a full stop once we had reached our destination. Surrounded by a few trees, there stood the barracks; It was a rather old looking building, a castle of some sort, if that was a noun that could be used to describe it.

Some members of the survey corps showed us to the stables, where we left our horses. I secured mine and then turned to face Jean, who seemed to be looking at something else- what I still wonder.

I stood next to him, almost like a child following his mother around during a social gathering- it was at times like this particular one, when I wondered if he was bothered by my actions.

"Are you ok? You seemed pretty out of it on the way here." He told me once he noticed me.

"Yeah..Just thinking about stuff. Wait, is that-"

"Eren!" Said Mikasa, and immediately run towards said boy.

People kept greeting the boy, who also happened to be a titan shifter, and though I myself wanted to go up to him and say hi, I couldn't bring myself to.

The rivalry between Jean and Eren was known to everybody from the 104th Corps- it started on day one, and had been going strong ever since. Being friends with Jean meant I had to put up with nasty remarks about Eren, and even though he never did something directly to me, we didn't talk that much, but I still considered him my fellow subordinate.

After a few moments, I heard Eren say:

"So that means that Jean, Marco, Annie and (Y/n) joined the military police, right?"

He then turned around, only to see me and Jean.

"Wait a second...you joined too?" He asked us, taken aback from our presence.

"Marco's dead." Jean said monotonously.

"He what? That can't be true..you're fooling around, aren't you?" Eren snapped back, disbelief lacing the tone of his voice.

"It's true..I wish I could tell you he died heroically..Truth is, we don't even know how he went out... He died alone and there was no one to see it happen." I found the courage to give a brief summary of the events, trying to sound strong, though it was obvious that I was still heartbroken.

"Marco's dead..." Eren muttered, he was clearly at a loss of words.

Before anyone of us managed to say something to lighten up the mood, some fellow Survey Corps soldiers asked us rookies to gather around so that we could get our new uniforms.

"Alright, listen up! We will be training vigorously, because in two months from now, we will be going on an expedition! So you, new recruits, need to make your best effort to make sure we don't end up with a high casualty number this time!"

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