N.B : If you'd like to get early access to the next chapters of Universal hope (Chapter 21-30) why not consider supporting me at Patreon.com/Weeb Fanthom. Your donations will be very much appreciated. On my Patreon, supporters get the complete, uninterrupted chapters in full.
Refugee camp…
Elsewhere, the morning sun that bathed the refugee camp in Trost was a pale, anemic thing, devoid of the golden brilliance it cast over Wall Sina. It highlighted the dust motes dancing in the Yeager shack and the deep, weary lines on Carla's face as she watched her son. Eren moved with a brittle tension, picking up a wooden bucket with a little too much force, his movements looked sharp and defensive. The silence from the previous night had congealed into a thick, uncomfortable presence in the small single room.
Mikasa stood by the window, her back to him, ostensibly looking out at the camp's slow, painful awakening. But her entire being was focused on the boy behind her, tracking his every flinch, every quiet, frustrated sigh. The scarlet scarf around her neck felt like a chain, connecting her to a version of Eren that seemed to be receding further every day.
"I'm going to get water," Eren announced, his voice sounded rough, as if the words were stones he had to push out of his throat.
"I'll come with you," Mikasa said immediately, turning. It wasn't an offer though. It was a statement.
A flash of something—annoyance? panic?—crossed Eren's face before it was schooled back into blankness. "I can do it myself. You should stay with Mom."
"Your mother is perfectly capable," Carla interjected softly, her hands stilling over the shirt she was mending. Her gaze was gentle but unwavering as it landed on Eren. "Let Mikasa go with you, Eren."
The unspoken command hung in the air:
Talk to her.
Eren's jaw tightened, but he gave a short, sharp nod, shoving the door open and stepping out into the cool morning air without waiting for her. Mikasa followed, her steps silent and sure, like a shadow he couldn't seem to shake.
The walk to the communal water pump was made in a silence that was louder than any argument. Eren's shoulders were hunched, his knuckles white where he gripped the bucket's handle tighter. He could feel her presence behind him, a constant, painful reminder of everything he was trying to atone for and everything he was afraid of becoming.
Finally, at the pump, as he worked the handle with more vigor than necessary, the tension snapped.
"Why are you doing this?" the brunette gritted out, the bucket filling with a loud splash. "Why are you always following me? Don't you get it? I need to do this myself!"
The words were meant to push her away, to rebuild the wall he'd been meticulously constructing for weeks. But instead of the hurt silence or cold retort he expected, Mikasa's response was quiet, simple, and it cut right through him.
"I'm not following you, Eren," she said, her voice low. "I'm walking beside you. There's a difference."
He stopped pumping as his breath came in ragged pants. The water overflowed the bucket, soaking his boots. He couldn't look at her. "You shouldn't," he whispered, the fight draining out of him, leaving only a hollowed-out exhaustion. "You shouldn't want to be beside me."
"Why?"
The question hung between them, simple and devastating.
"Because I'm dangerous!" The confession was torn from him, a raw, broken thing. He finally turned to face her, and the raw anguish in his green eyes made her breath catch. All the anger was just a mask for the terror underneath. "Don't you see, Mikasa? This device-The Omnitrix… it's not just a power. It's a curse. My anger, my fear… it breaks things. It let him nearly control me. It let him out. And when I try to fix it, I just… I just make it worse. I hurt people. I hurt… you."
He gestured vaguely at her wrist, the memory of his possessed self pinning her down flashing between them, a ghost in the morning light.
"I'm not keeping my distance because I'm angry at you," he continued, his voice dropping to a pained whisper. "I'm keeping my distance because I'm scared. I'm scared that if I get too close, if I let my guard down for one second, something inside me will snap again and I'll… I'll hurt you worse. Or Armin…Or Mom."
He looked down at his hands, the hands that had wielded alien powers and caused so much pain and destruction. "And what I had to do to stop him… it just proved it."
Mikasa took a slow step closer. "What did you do, Eren?"
He let out a shuddering breath, the truth he'd been carrying like a hot coal finally too heavy to bear alone. His eyes were wide, haunted, fixed on a point in the middle distance, seeing not the camp, but a ring of fire and a pair of glowing violet eyes.
"He…was in Armin," Eren whispered, the words tasting like ash. "Zs'Skayr. At the end. He hid inside him. He was using him as a shield, because he knew… he knew I wouldn't…" He swallowed hard, his throat working. "I had to get him out. I was Inferno. And I… I held Armin. I held him down. And I channeled all the fire, all the heat, all the purifying sunlight I had absorbed… and I sent it through him. I burned Zs'Skayr out from the inside."
Tears he'd been refusing to shed for weeks finally welled in his eyes, spilling over. "I swear I could hear Armin screaming, Mikasa. It was his voice, but it was the ghost's pain. I had to hurt my best friend to save him. I cooked an ancient, cosmic horror using Armin's body as an oven. What kind of person does that? What kind of monster am I?"
Eren was spiraling, his shoulders shaking, fully expecting her to recoil, to finally see him for the unnatural, dangerous thing he was.
Instead, Mikasa closed the final distance between them. She didn't flinch. She didn't look at him with horror or pity.
She reached out and wrapped her arms around him, pulling him into a firm, unyielding embrace.
Eren stiffened, the contact a shock to his system. He was braced for a blow, not an anchor.
"Stop," she whispered into his shoulder, her voice fierce and soft all at once. "Just stop."
He stood rigid for a moment longer before the fight truly left him. His body went limp, and he buried his face in the familiar wool of her scarf, his own hands coming up to clutch at the back of her shirt as silent, shuddering sobs finally wracked his frame. All the guilt, the fear, the immense, crushing weight of the last five weeks, poured out of him.
Mikasa held him tighter, her own eyes stinging. She didn't tell him it was okay. It wasn't. But she could finally say what she'd needed to for so long.
"You are not a monster, Eren Yeager," she said with a clear and steady voice, a rock against his storm. "You are the boy who saved me. You are the one who fights for everyone, even when it breaks you. You saved Armin. You did what you had to do. There is nothing to forgive."
The two kids stood like that for a long time, by the overflowing water pump, as the camp slowly stirred around them. The wall Eren had built, brick by painful brick, crumbled into dust between them, leaving only the raw, vulnerable truth.
When he finally pulled back, wiping his face with a rough, embarrassed sleeve, his eyes were red-rimmed but clearer than they had been in weeks. The constant, gnawing tension between them had evaporated, replaced by a weary, shared understanding.
"We should…" Eren began, his voice hoarse. "We should go see Armin. It's been… a while."
Mikasa nodded, a small, genuine smile touching her lips for the first time in what felt like forever. "Yes. We should."
A sense of normalcy, fragile but real, began to seep back in. Eren looked down at the full bucket and the puddle around their feet. A faint, wry smirk, a ghost of his old self, appeared. "We should probably… finish getting the water first. And… maybe do something about the laundry Mom was talking about."
It was a mundane chore, a simple, earthly task. But after confessing to cosmic horrors and facing his deepest fears, hauling water and scrubbing clothes felt like the most grounding, necessary thing in the world. It was a first, small step forward, not as a weapon or a savior, but as a boy, walking back towards his friends, with his family beside him.
__________________
In the tent where the warriors of Marley resided, the tension was thick enough to choke on. It smelled of unwashed bodies, dust, and the sharp, metallic tang of barely-suppressed panic. Five weeks of forced inaction, of pretending to be traumatized (As if they aren't traumatized too LOL) refugees while carrying the weight of a failed mission, had worn their nerves to raw, exposed wires.
And Reiner was currently setting them on fire.
He paced the cramped space, a caged tiger wearing a boy's skin. Each heavy footfall on the packed earth was a drumbeat of escalating dread. His broad shoulders were rigid with tension, his hands clenching and unclenching at his sides.
"He's here," Reiner muttered, the words a low, disbelieving growl. "He's just… here. Walking around. Free."
The brawny blonde stopped, whirling to face Bertholdt, who was hunched on a low cot, his long limbs folded awkwardly as if trying to make himself smaller. "Bert, you should have seen it That… that thing from Shiganshina! The one made of crystal! Obsidian! It nearly caved my armor in! And it's that kid. That scrawny, brown-haired brat, Eren Yeager."
Bertholdt flinched, his eyes wide and fearful. "It… It is true, Reiner. But are we sure… I mean, it's impossible…"
"We're sure." Reiner snapped, his voice cracking like a whip. He gestured violently towards Annie, who sat on her own cot, sharpening one of her daggers from her pouch with a stone, her movements slow and deliberate, a picture of cold calm that seemed to infuriate him further.
"She wasn't lying. That device on his wrist. You've seen him try to hide it with that bandage. Pathetic. We know what we're looking for."
He resumed his pacing, his mind racing down a path of catastrophic possibilities. "This changes everything. He's not just a Titan. He's something else. Something Marley has no record of. We need to capture him. Now. Or better yet, we report this directly to the War Chief. Let Zeke handle this. This is beyond us."
The stone in Annie's hand stilled. She didn't look up. "That is the worst thing we could possibly do."
Her voice was flat, devoid of emotion, and it grated on Reiner's fraying sanity. "Worst? Annie, he's a weapon! A weapon Paradis shouldn't have! Capturing him is the mission!"
"Is it?" Finally, she lifted her ice-blue eyes, and they were chips of frozen steel. "Think, Reiner. Really think. You want to hand that device over to Marleyan scientists? The same people who turned us into weapons? Look at what one of the creatures inside it did when it got loose. That 'ghost demon,' as you called it, nearly wiped out this entire district. It turned people, Reiner. It turned us. Do you really want to give Marley the key to a vault full of things like that? What if they open the wrong one? What if something worse than IT gets out because some general got curious?"
The memory was a fresh wound for all of them. The feeling of cold, alien will overwriting their own, the violation of being puppets in their own bodies. Bertholdt shuddered, pulling his knees tighter to his chest.
Reiner's face flushed with anger and frustration. "So what? We just let him run around? He's a threat!"
"He's a contained threat!" Annie shot back, her composure finally cracking a fraction. "A confused, emotional child who barely understands the power he has. A known variable is better than an unknown one. Marley poking at that device could unleash an apocalypse that makes the Titans look like a minor nuisance."
Reiner stopped his pacing directly in front of her, looming over her seated form. The air crackled with hostility. "A known variable? How would you know that, Annie? How do you know so much about him?"
The question hung in the air, heavy and accusatory. The only sound was Bertholdt's shallow breathing.
Annie's gaze didn't waver. "I've been gathering intelligence. Unlike you two, who've been sitting here wallowing."
"Gathering intelligence?" Reiner's voice was dangerously quiet. "By getting into a fight with him in this wasteland? By letting him live? You said he 'overpowered' you. Which one of his forms was it, Annie? The crystal one? The ghost one? Or one of the other ones we haven't even seen yet? How many does he have? Just WHAT sort of Titan is he?!"
The dam broke. The secret she'd been holding onto, the one that had kept her awake at night, tumbled out, spurred by his aggression. "He's not just a Titan!" she snapped, standing up to meet his glare, the dagger forgotten in her hand. "Or maybe he is! Did you ever think of that? His arm. After the ghost was defeated. I saw it. It was torn off, and it… it grew back. Right in front of me. It wasn't the device. It was too slow, too… organic. It was just like ours."
The revelation landed in the tent like a bomb.
Bertholdt's head snapped up. "Hold on. A… a Shifter? He's a Shifter too?"
Reiner stared, his mind reeling, trying to process this new, impossible layer. A boy with a device that could turn him into multiple, powerful monsters, who was also a Titan Shifter. The strategic implications were terrifying. The personal implications were worse.
"Which one?" Reiner breathed, his voice trembling with a mixture of fury and horror. "The Founding Titan? The Attack Titan lost for over a century? Which one is he, Annie? Did you bother to find out before you decided to play spy?!"
"I don't know!" she yelled back, shoving him away from her. "But if he is the Founder, or has any connection to the Royal Family, charging in there is a suicide mission! He could rewrite all our memories, turn us into mindless slaves before we even transform! Or maybe he's something else entirely! The point is, we don't know! And your solution is to grab him and hope for the best?!"
"So what's your brilliant plan, then?!" Reiner roared, his fists clenched. "Wait? Wait for him to master his powers? Wait for him to become an unstoppable god that even the War Chief can't handle? We have a duty, Annie! To Marley! To our families! Do you want to stay among these devils any longer than we have to?!"
Annie's face was a mask of cold, bitter contempt. "Our duty? Our duty got Marcel killed. Our duty lost us the Jaw Titan. And you want to go back to Marley now? To tell them what? That we failed to find the Founder, but we found a kid who can turn into possibly a dozen different monsters and might also be a Titan Shifter? They'll think we've lost our minds! They'll think we're making up fairy tales to explain our failure, to keep our powers! They'll strip our Titans and feed us to the next warrior candidates in line without a second thought!"
The brutal truth of her words hit Reiner like a physical blow. He staggered back a step, the fight draining out of him, replaced by a cold, clammy dread. She was right. They were in an impossible position.
Seeing his hesitation, Annie pressed her advantage, her voice dropping to a low, intense whisper. "We get more information. We play it safe. We focus on the original mission. There has to be something in these walls about the Founding Titan, something we can use. We find that. And we watch him. We learn."
Reiner's eyes were haunted. The falsified refugee, the Warrior, warred with the terrified boy. "And if he is the Founder?"
"Then we find his weakness," Annie said, her gaze flicking to the tent flap, towards the camp side far where Eren Yeager possibly lived. "Everyone has one. You said it yourself, I 'know' him. So I'll get to know him better. I'll find a crack. A lever. And when the time is right, when we have a plan that doesn't end with us dead or worse, we strike. Not before."
A new, desperate idea sparked in Reiner's desperate mind. "Or… or we don't risk a fight with him at all. We kick a hole in Wall Rose. Let the Titans pour in. Maybe one of them gets lucky. Eats him. Gets his power. Then we just have to subdue a mindless Titan and take the person inside. It's cleaner."
Annie stared at him, a profound and weary disgust in her eyes. The suggestion was so callous, so brutally Marleyan, that for a moment, she couldn't speak. He was talking about massacring thousands, maybe tens of thousands of people, just to avoid a direct confrontation.
"That's your solution?" she finally said, her voice dripping with scorn. "Unleash hell on everyone because you're scared of one boy?"
"It's a tactical option!" Reiner insisted, but the conviction was gone, replaced by a hollow defensiveness. "Besides they are devils, why should we be concerned."
"It is not about the island dwellers; it's about the strategy. This particular plan, is madness." Annie stated, turning her back on him, the conversation clearly over. "We watch. We wait. We learn. That is the only path that doesn't end in our complete and utter destruction."
She sat back on her cot, picking up the dagger and stone again. The rhythmic scrape… scrape… scrape filled the tense silence, a sound as sharp and cutting as the unresolved conflict between them.
Reiner stood frozen, his grand plans collapsing into ash. Bertholdt looked between them, paralyzed by indecision. And Annie, her face a cold mask, was left alone with her own treacherous thoughts. Was she arguing for caution for the sake of the mission? Or was she, against all reason and training…trying to protect the chaotic, terrifying, and strangely vulnerable boy who held the power of monsters in the palm of his hand?
She didn't know. And that uncertainty was the most terrifying thing of all.
Chapter 21-30 are already available on Patreon.com/Weeb Fanthom.