UNMARKED GRAVES, armin arlert

3. new beginnings are old endings

Content Warnings: Description of Menstruation. I do not know how to write Ymir and Christa and Reiner and Bertholdt, so I apologise in advance.

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CONSCIOUSNESS CLAWED YOU AWAKE like a starving dog when the lacuna between your thighs was moist and sticky. To the blood-black dust of the cabin, you roused from your lint-layered bed and sat, too lethargic to do anything else. Then a tired understanding emerged: Ah, I'm bleeding. The understanding sat before you, near-mocking and glistening with static sardonicism that licked all the beeswax left in you, everything sweet, everything that was still bona fide and set it to inferno. You were bleeding, and it was pitch dark, and the sky was hollow, punctured with history. You gained the momentum to wade through this stifling heat, stumbling into the sooty abyss as you ripped your sheets off as if it were your own skin.

Frigid feet and red red red dripping down your arms like Hail Mary, you exited the cabin for the communal bathrooms. It was night. Just that-a blackened, inkwell night, because here was no clock to tell what it should be. The air was sterile and the pound in your skull dulled into the catatonic absence of sound. The moon that resembled a pond of milk than a floating rock in space shone upon the glaring velvet your hands, but in no way was it royalty, but a rite of girlhood. But it was a girlhood you would widow because starting from morning, you would disassemble your body for humanity and no longer would it be yours; merely just a component for the homogeneous whole.

You huddled into the girls' communal bathroom bathed in a deep blue light. Desperate for purity, you grappled on the nearest sink and tossed your bundled drapes in. Delayed exhaustion eclipsed your body as you doubled over, shoveling the life back into your lungs with each inhale-please breathe, please breathe. You clung to the sink's rim like it was your final bone as you stared at your stained hands in misery, at the clotted crimson that looked like you had just eaten strawberries. You erratically slammed the tap on. Water streamed in with clarity. Your mind attempted to adjust to this oasis, recovering from the motion sickness of thoughts and your tender limbs.

Menstrual cycles were tricky, you see, and you forecasted this arrival but not as soon as now. But you've always walked life on a silver wire of bad luck so this shouldn't be new, but you're tired to the marrow and you haven't even properly started the first day of training.

You closed the faucet after clogging the sink, watching the sink collect like a pool of cherry wine. It catches you off-guard, however, when the empty atmosphere suddenly gains clutter: another presence.

"Are you-are you okay?" An overly ripe voice sounded.

You blinked, then blinked again because when you look there was a short, blond girl standing at the entrance of the communal bathroom dressed in rags that looked like a nightgown. Blood continued to wane from intensity as the water whirled before you. You permitted the tightening knot on your face to fabricate a frown. "No, not really," you answered swiftly.

Your profession, however, paled in any significant impact once the girl's attention landed on the scarlet that scattered your clothes and sheets and the obnoxious pale red bathing the sink. Trouble trampled all over her complexion with worried lips that emitted a falsetto "oh!" as she rushed beside you before you have any chance to flick her away.

"Goodness! What happened!" she exclaimed.

"Keep it down," you sibilated. "I just got my menstrual cycle, it's fine." It was not fine.

"Let me help you," she insisted behind her shocked stilled hands. Worry wavers her words.

You furrowed your brows to discern her face, to see if you had seen her before. "Wait-" bewilderment stained your speech"-who even are you?"