Chapter Text
Chapter One
The Root of It
It had taken three hours for it to finally sink in when you first got here, and even now, it still felt like a surreality. It might always feel that way, until something changes. Now, when your tongue is so swollen in your mouth that you cannot feel the ache in your bones from poor sleep over the yowling hunger in your belly, any euphoria or excitement at being in a world where you seemingly knew all the rules had died quickly when you realise there is no way back, and for all intents and purposes, you’re stuck in a quasi-1800s hellscape with no support network, no money, and nobody you care about. To top it off, the realisation that this, is in fact, one of the most terrifying and unforgiving worlds to be trapped in was enough to make you dry heave when your - debatable - mortality came up. The disdainful mutters of people ignoring your plight, curled up against the side of a ramshackle building, holding your stomach in pain - another one - they’d say, lips curved in an expression of distaste - a Shiganshina leftover.
That told you, that you were somewhere in the year 846 probably - if you had to guess, it was after the fall of Wall Maria, and the nation’s attempt at thinning the population in a doom-driven attempt at reclaiming said wall in order to alleviate the famine. All you had was the knowledge in your head and the clothes on your back, so it’s little wonder you’re close to death in a short period of time.
“Leave her alone, Hamburg, she’s homeless.”
Even in your hunger-induced disorientation, you manage to tense up when you hear some male voices near you, talking about you.
“Hey, hey girlie - yeah you, I’m talking to you,” you flinch, feeling the tip of a shoe poking crudely into your arching side. You slowly jerk your head up from your knees, looking at two, tall, shadowy men through a messy curtain of dark hair, which was starting to thicken and matt with grime over time.
The figure that prodded you lets out a disproving cluck from back of his throat, shaking his head at you.
“You hungry?” there’s a sort of predatory undercurrent in his tone, and despite how tired you are, and how loudly your stomach growls its answer in response, you can still feel your danger sense going into overdrive.
You want to utter no sir, but your tongue is so swollen that it’s hit the roof of your mouth, and you can’t even expend the effort to talk, a low rumble leaving your closed lips instead, whilst you shake your head negatively.
“Oh, come now, I doubt that. I’ve walked past you every day this week,” he snickers “ - are you sure I can’t tempt you? We don’t live too far from here, you know---”
“Hamburg, come on, she’s not interested---”
You feel your stomach churn with pain and now the addition of fear when the shadow of both men falls over your body and obscures the setting sun from your vision, until a loud, booming voice breaks over you and the two figures, who snap their attention to behind their shoulders.
“HAMBURG! I thought I told you to go straight home ya layabout! Warner, be quick about it would ya? I need the trash taking out!” the voice is utterly all-encompassing and drowns out every sound in the immediate vicinity.
The men pull back at the sound of the authoritarian shout, and a large, striding figure comes into view, essentially carolling the other two away until you no longer see or hear any of them. There’s still a cold knot of dread in your stomach though, because the people of this world did not appear at all kind, and your feeble requests for food and information had been going ignored for days now. Truth be told, you did not expect anything positive to come from this, and the man sounded scary, to be honest.
“Was that one bothering you lass?” he’s gruff, and speaks with a slight hoarse crackle at the end of his words. When you don’t immediately reply, the man advances closer, and then slowly squats to his knees, with a pained sort of click in his joints as he does so.
“Oohf!” he grunts, wincing a bit “ - Hells below, my knees aren’t as good as they used to be. You okay?” he’s got wrinkles that line his forehead, indicating his age, with the faint shadow of shaved, red stubble that lines his chin, and long sideburns. He has small, brown eyes and a somewhat crooked nose, but he seems to be smoothing his features into what he hoped was a less intimidating demeanour.
You’re still struggling to talk, but your weak grip squeezes the material of the ratty green jumper that you were wearing, your stomach making a loud noise that answers for you. It’s now that you see the man shaking his head, peering at your sunken eyes with a somewhat annoyed sound.
“Tch, the state of you,” you’re too hungry to be embarrassed, but tilt your head away from him with a sense of defeat. “I have a tavern not too far from here, can you walk?” - he adds.
You make a confused sound, still distrusting but shrug helplessly in response - as you honestly doubted your ability to walk at that point anyway.
“Oh for the love of-- right, come on you miserable wretch, lets have ya,” he tuts, and you let out an alarmed, but somewhat defeated cry when you feel yourself being hoisted onto your aching legs, the weakness in your arms and calves showing in your unsteady gait. Without asking, the man pulls your arm around his side and hoists the entirety of your bodyweight himself once he rises to his full height.
“This is hardly the place to die, is it?” he mutters, his words being the last thing you register in your anxiety and fear, until a rusty, wooden sign you cannot read comes into view, and you’re led into a tavern simply called Warmaidens.
To your relief, it seems as though you may have stumbled into the one kind soul in this forsaken, utterly doomed and miserable place. The man who had unceremoniously scooped you up and dragged you into his business was an older gentleman by the name of Luther Braun, he’s a man with thinning auburn hair that looked brown in the dim light and a gentle shade of red whenever it was hit with candlelight. He runs this little tavern himself, and it’s in a somewhat rural - more of an outskirt area really, in the Hermina region, not too far from a more developed town of Falkshein. It’s an area that regularly gets ridden through by various caravans for suppliers and those involved in the Horsefair, which is the travel network that backbones trade from wall to wall and funds most of the mare breeders.
“It’s not much, but get as much of it down as you can, you look like one hard wind will knock you down,” Luther snaps, shoving a large, brown clay bowl of watery seeming broth which is an ambiguous beige colour but gives off a warm scent. In truth, you don’t even register there’s a spoon on the table, and tip the entire contents down your throat, your eyes almost rolling back with delight as it hits your swollen tongue and fills the empty, crunching knot of pain in the base of your gut.
It tastes vaguely of potato - you realise, and a hint of salt as you swill it down. You’ve no doubt it’s mostly water, but you cannot complain of the tastelessness, and see what you recognise as a few scraps of potato skins at the bottom. You’re not sure if it’s decorum to eat that too, but you’re too hungry to pass it up, and scoop it into your mouth and chew as heartily as you can, finally using the spoon on the table and the trembles of hunger-induced weakness finally subside a little.
“Good lass, now get this down you,” he drops a cheap, frothy beer next to your empty bowl, and despite not being much of a beer drinker, you gladly chug it down, still wary that this kindness comes with an unseen price tag.
Apparently, it doesn’t. The man is, despite appearances, a good sort of soul - he turns a small profit and usually serves day labourers, but has been rebranding to try and get more soldiers into his bar, knowing they have a little more coin to spare. Hamburg is one of his regular patrons and a bit of a troublesome sort, and so Luther cuts him off at a certain point and has his grandson, Warner, walk him home. He asks you a few questions - and it’s now you quickly try to summon up the knowledge you at least think you have to try and not look so suspicious.
Your accent is different, your clothes seemed like they might have been nice once, and you don’t have anything to your name.
“My mother passed away in childbirth,” an easy lie that forces you to think about the people you miss, but you quickly disregard it. You'd spent weeks crying and trying to get back, now was not the time to let those feelings of loss and confusion take you over, right now, you needed to survive.
“And my father didn’t return from the mission to take back Maria, I’ve been trying to get by in his absence but I am not doing very well,” you hope that’s enough, and it’s this that causes Luther to sigh, shaking his head with a small, distant look. It felt like a horrible sort of lie to tell, but you figured with so much of the population being culled, it wouldn't be possible to account for every name and every loss of life, at least this way, you hope your documentation and past falling into the abyss is more easily explained, and it seems to work, because Luther's expression slowly changes to something more forgiving.
“There’s a lot of you with stories like that, so many lost folk since the failure to reclaim the wall,” he mutters, cleaning a glass out as he stands behind the bar with a small rag. When you clear the beer as well, the man smiles contently, inviting you to stay there to keep out of the cold.
You look at him warily, clenching the ratty jumper against your torso protectively - because you know he knows that you don’t have any way to pay for that, and you didn’t think you could quite live with the possibility of having to do anything sexual to try and get by. You’d do it if you had to - but you didn’t want to, and as though reading your fearful look for what it is, the man visibly softens.
You can see he’s mulling something over, before nodding resolutely to himself and walking over to you, arms folded over his broad, barrelled chest.
“That’s fine if ya can’t pay - I need an extra hand around here anyway now that Warner’s going off back to college. My every coin goes to that boys tuition, and I’m gonna need the help,” he half complained about what few profit he makes immediately leaving, and in truth, he barely breaks even, and struggles to get in any stock of physical food and can only get exports of low quality beer and cheap, dry gin to keep his business sustained. Even with a good portion of the population culled, there is still quite a bit of recovery left to do in the wake of the famine, because the loss of Wall Maria also meant the loss of agriculture, because a lot of farmland was now thoroughly claimed by titans.
“Are you - are you serious?” a hopeful warble in your tone.
“If I can trust you not to rob me blind, yes,” he says, bluntly - hands settling at his hips. He looks you over crudely once more, and sighs again. “This is a bad town for a pretty face, so you’d best say yes, ‘cause there’s a lot meaner out there than Hamburg and frankly I’m gettin’ too old for this shit,” he says, shaking his head at you.
Well, when he puts it like that, there’s not much of a choice, is there?
“T - thank you, I um, I don’t know what to say - but you won’t regret this Mister Braun,” its been so long since anyone has been kind to you, that you quickly jump on it and pray that it is legitimate, because your only other option is that you die in this wasteland.
“See to it I don’t - now come on, you’re smellin’ up the joint and you look like you need some sleep. I’ll show you where everything is and we’ll talk more later alright?” the man, despite knowing the tremendous kindness he’s doing, asks for very little, and simply herds you from place to place. You’re in such a state that he still supports your weight as you walk around the closed tavern. The truth is, you’re still incredibly weak from how difficult it was to try and get any food, and while that meal went along way, you suspected if you ate more, you’d be sick.
He’s still a complete stranger, but he operates with a sense of familiarity that you couldn’t quite understand - when it becomes apparent he’s not got any suspicious intentions, at least, on the surface, you try to relax when he shoves you into a small wood-floor bathroom. Your internal alarm bells would be ringing after being shoved into a confined, vulnerable space, but he has a very no-nonsense sort of approach, practically throwing you onto a small wooden chair as he begins running some hot water. Hot water! Now that was enough to jerk you out of your frail fugue state when steam begins rising out of the small tub.
It’s still somewhat jarring and almost unpleasant how brashly he moves, and when you quietly remind him you have no clothes to change into, he makes an annoyed grunt and comes back with some oversized men’s clothes. It took all of a week before you’re properly settled, and it seems you’ve struck lucky, as the man has a root cellar, and unlike many people trying to get by after the famine, actually had a decent supply of food. It was still pretty meagre - signs of the nation still recovering, but he had bags, and bags of peas - as they’re easy to grow and trade, a very small stock of potatoes, and a generous amount of salt, so at least you wouldn’t go hungry.
“The tough thing is, getting soldiers in here. Y’know, they’re always riding through along with the rest of the Horsefair but I need them to spend their damn money,” Luther says to you, one night when you’re having dinner in the late evening with him and his grandson, Warner.
“The food could be better,” Warner mumbles, but you just shake your head - they’re lucky there’s food at all.
Any grandiose plans about trying to get somewhere in this world had been put off considerably in favour of just trying to survive, but now that you were somewhere a little more comfortable, a chilling realisation hits. These people - these nice people, were just as important as you, just as whole, and just as in danger, and you had knowledge of the horrors that were to come, how ever could you sleep at night if you were just going to let that happen? The truth is, every time Warner had your back, and Luther taking care of the business - showing you how to change the barrels and manage the regulars, you became more sick with the knowledge of what was going to come.
“Get me in the kitchens more, you throw too much salt on everything,” you poke Warner with the side of your spoon “-and we need to get some more oil in and get frying. I keep telling you, it’s the way of the future,” you introduced the concept of a fried potato, and that had been enough to rock the entire tavern for two weeks.
Most days were like this, with you and Warner rotating shifts until he left for Einrich College again, and you trying to amass enough resources to figure out some sort of plan. You had to move extremely carefully, your story could easily unravel and reveal a suspicious, non-existent past, or worse - you could be seen as an enemy, with such predictive knowledge. Hell, this place was so reminiscent of the 1800s in a lot of ways that you had to wonder if they burned witches - the last thing you needed was that kind of negative attention. You had a nice little life here but it was ultimately a bubble of safety you couldn’t allow to take over your thoughts. It would be easier not to rock the boat, but there’s too much danger here, and too many people at risk for you to abide it.
‘I need money,’ - you realised grimly, because Warner’s clothes were ill-fitting at best and Luther couldn’t afford to pay you in anything more than room and board. In the run up to Warner leaving for Einrich College's new educational term, you also had to have his responsibilities passed onto you, which included going out to barter or hunting. A few times, you'd nearly thrown up when he took you to the nearest forest and successfully managed to take down a small rabbit, which were few and far between due to desperate overhunting during the food shortages, but very quickly you had to adjust to the fact you couldn't afford to be a princess about it, or whine about how much you missed pre-packaged meat, and so with fewer complaints, you took on Warner's hunting gear, and then asked Luther about how you might actually be able to earn some coin, because you were going to need clothes that fit, whatever passed for feminine supplies, and something to get by with before you could start thinking about any larger plans.
“I’ve a friend in the Horsefair - names Franklin, he could do with a hand in the stables. It won’t be much coin but you can get some clothes and supplies. He’s a bit of a miser though - might wanna sweet talk him a bit,” Luther explains, and tosses you a spare key to the root cellar which has a hidden side entrance behind the tavern - which is a sign of implicit trust. “-and tell ‘im I sent ya,” he adds.
And so, much of your days would be filled with hard manual labour, either at Warmaidens, or working for Franklin, who’d have you mucking out stables with disgusting regularity, and loaned you out some horse riding gear that he'd take payment for out of your wages little by little until it was yours exclusively. It wouldn’t be unusual to have you stumbling into the tavern during the late evening, in dirty boots and sweaty jodhpurs, greeting all of your regulars through the main entryway rather than the staff door. Even Hamburg was a little nicer to you - but you suspected that had something to do with Luther threatening to pull his spine out through his throat if he so much as thought about giving you a hard time.
It’s after three or so weeks you learn that Luther used to be a member of the Garrison, and that he specifically wanted to shed the reputation that Warmaidens had gained as a shady establishment, catering to vagabonds and ruffians. You had an idea to offer discounts or drinks offers for serving members of the three regiments, getting Warner to put up a chalk sign out front, which would work as a natural deterrent to the shadier clientèle who would want to avoid the presence of any kind of law enforcement. Luther was a bit reluctant at first, nervous about potentially selling at-cost, but very quickly, the plan appeared to be working.
Slowly, more members of the Garrison, and the occasional MP, would make appearances in Warmaidens.
On one such day, you burst through the front door, jodhpurs covered in sweat and tracking in dirt, you hear Luther shouting from across the bar.
“Side entrance woman! How many times have I told you not to come in smelling of horse shit?” he hollers, while you wave it off casually - you’d mop it up yourself anyway.
“Because it smells so nice in here normally, right?” you shoot back, earning a few smothered chuckles from the nearby tables.
“Yeah yeah, whatever, just hose off and help out will ya?” Luther seems to actually be a little rushed off of his feet, which is surprising, until you register the abundance of green, military issue cloaks draped over various chairs, a mixture of rose emblems and what you swear are a few wings of freedom.
“I just spent eight hours cleaning up after Frankie and hunting! What did your last slave die of?” it’s all good-natured, even if you are incredibly tired. “Where’s Warner?” you huff, waving at one of the men you vaguely recognised as someone that was a Garrison soldier that always ordered the split pea soup and a dry gin every third day of the week without fail.
“Studying, now get that off and get moving, I’m stuck behind the bar!” Luther says, mid-pour of several drinks attesting to that fact.
You roll your eyes, and make your way across the bar, sporting horse riding gear, a long rifle on your back and a long string of meat over your left shoulder. Thankfully, back in - well - before you got here, you were a good shooter recreationally, a skill you didn’t think would ever come into serious use before now. Clay pigeons were also very different to actually hunting game, but with food prices being astronomically high, especially for bulk purchase - and not everyone wanted to trade for peas, you’d become something of a legend for going out into the surrounding woodland and coming back with a string of dead birds hanging from a rope by the neck. It was a little grim the first few times, but it turns out whatever these - well - things were, tasted excellent and gamey, and hard enough to catch that there was an abundance. The independence to go out and get a feel for the land was very much valued, but quickly you came to realise that however Luther got a hold of his buckshots and rifles were perhaps not the most legal to own once you were out of the army, when some were clearly military-issue only. The gun at the top of the bar, discreetly out of view, was a traditional pump-action shotgun from a bygone era, with a military issue weapon rifle under the bar itself that used to be issued to MPs and Garrison very sparingly back in the day,
This would become a problem in a few days, because eventually you’d need to hunt more, and that would mean finding out whoever Luther dealt with for his arms deals, because you'd taken to using the latter as a more effective hunting rifle, though none of the patrons seemed to particularly notice - or care if they did - as it's clear you're hunting game with it, and the area is far enough from the cities that flagrant civilian ownership of firearms wasn't exactly strange.
“Fucking hell, right through the front door? People are eating Birdy! You're covered in blood, you look a horror show!” Luther exclaimed, noticing the string of dead birds with an annoyed look. Warner had imparted proper hunting habits on you, even through your pallid expression and visible balking, and swallowing vomit back into your throat, he'd caught you how to cut from breast to backside, squeeze out blood and viscera, and then pack birds with dry grass to soak up any other fluid, seal the cavity and keep bugs out whilst they dried on your belt. Field dressing nearly made you pass out the first few times, but you had to force yourself to remember how not too long ago you'd nearly died of starvation, and that you'd have probably eaten a pigeon raw if you could have grabbed one, and so grudgingly got through the process. It had to be done, so none of the meat would actually get lost by the time the body cooled down, apparently plucking or skinning the feathers off took off a lot of meat with it if it isn't done while the body was still warm - Warner had painstakingly taught you all of the rules and methods he'd found had worked, and forced you to repeat back how the rules changed during cold weather. It was brutal work, and often you'd come back covered in sizeable flecks of animal blood from the process, which most patrons had gotten used to.
“Yeah, and they’ll be eating quality game in a second, where d’you think it comes from? The meat fairy?” - you bite out, with no real malice - but some audible exasperation. Luther had taken to calling you birdy, as he found you quite flighty at times, often jumping at an chance he gave you to get out of the tavern and further your understanding of the area, and of all the hunts you seemed to go on, you were always able to bring back birds over anything land bound. He wasn't complaining per se - that meant days where Warner would usually come back with nothing were less and less, because you were a much better shot at flying targets than he ever was, though he finds stalking land prey a lot more natural, when together? Well, the pair of you just worked - and soldiers began pouring more into the bar when it became apparent you sold meaty meals as well as the standard fare of weak vegetable broths and soups.
"Heya Birdy!" someone calls - you vaguely recognise it was someone called Kieran, a member of the Garrison who always went out of his way to say hello to you specifically, as he greatly enjoyed the fact you were willing to listen to him talk about anything and everything. Indeed, your position at least made talking to soldiers easier, granted, you didn't recognise any of them as people of name or note in your understanding of what was supposed to happen, but so far you're uncertain of just how much of it would even abide by what you knew was a certainty at least in your reality. So, you were taking everything cautiously, and slowly, for now.
"Evening Kier! Give us a minute will you? I need to string up these unfortunates to dry and get changed, apparently I'm stinky and look scary," you say with an exaggerated sort of pout. "But I for one think I look great, blood aside these riding breeches put the ass in fan-tass-tic," you turn to give a good side profile view, thigh facing Kieran's as you give the closest buttock a playful smack, earning a smatter of awkward blushes from some of the newer patrons who weren't quite, well, used to you, but in a world as utterly bleak and devoid of entertainment as this, you found humour wherever you could, even if it meant coming across as vulgar to these stuffy quasi-1800s civilians.
That, and it wasn't far off the banter you'd have back when you'd worked in a bar to supplement your income during university, all in all, working at Warmaidens actually felt natural, and keeping hold of that was important to you.
That, and it's really not your fault whoever invented jodhpurs discovered something that induced an admirable thickness.
"Agreed, your rump is quite fantastic," Kieran agreed sagely, a cheeky smile etched onto his face "-always brightens my day anyway," - earning a snort from you.
"What's it like to live without shame?" Luther snaps, though absent of any malice in his tone, there's more of a sarcastic bent to his tone, witnessing the exchange with most of the bar patrons with a vaguely amused expression on his face - and showing that the pair of you do, in fact, get on quite well, and that the discourse was entirely playful, you maturely follow up his words by promptly sticking your tongue out at him, earning an eyeroll from the old man.
"Liberating! You should try it!" you grin, and make some more idle chatter before disappearing off to get changed and hang the birds. There's a lot of random trivia and knowledge just from your old life that you found greatly improved the circumstances around you, which was one way to get through the day without internet or otherwise drowning your thoughts in the overall hopelessness of the situation. The skills you had gained from moving out and not wanting to eat microwaveable meals for the entirety of your time in university had given you some decent skills in the kitchen, and so very quickly, the meagre supplies began getting stretched as much as possible. The kitchen is now a slew of homemade mechanisms, cutting costs by manually pressing vegetable and plant oils, animal bones are carefully boiled and pressed for every last morsel of flavour so Warmaidens can feed the less well off patrons with something that at least tastes meaty and hopefully imparts some direly needed nutritional value from marrow.
You were trying to grab satisfaction and distraction where you could, and both men were somewhat clumsy and rather basic in the kitchen since the loss of Luther's wife, Greta, so the apparent woman's touch was going a long way to restoring a warmth that Warmaidens - formerly the Nag's Head - had felt was lost over time. Dishes were no longer overdone with salt to make up for a lack of flavour, and you're quickly able to justify trading off supplies in the root cellar for thyme, coriander, parsley and whatever few herbs you found were actually grown here. Unfortunately, with Luther serving drinks, it's just you in the kitchen, so you're quick to shed your dirty boots and shirt in favour of one of Warner's white polos, pulled taught around your chest and shoulders from how much more slight and narrow the man is.
That, and your battered slip-ons were a sign you really, really needed to get Frankie to pay you more - and wonder narrowly how people seriously managed to survive long term like this - because if not for Luther, your modern-world-coddled-ass would have died without anybody knowing, or caring. Of that, you have no doubts.
It's a hellishly busy evening, like most of your evenings now, but you're thankful that the hard labour distracts you from the aching thoughts of not being able to get back, and missing your creature comforts. It sort of reminded you of camping, except without the jovial presence of your friends from university. It's now, though, that you're extremely thankful for the skills you gained outside of pampered modernity, as you were trying not to look useless to the people kindly giving you a room and food. There's a large boiling pot of split pea soup which the place was becoming known for - and a separate boiling pot creating meaty bone broth and vegetable stock. The slivers of potato left are fried in a light sheen of plant oil and every time the door swings open with Luther checking and collecting orders, it wafts out into the main bar, coating the tavern in a homely, warming, delicious air.
"Okay lovers!" you come out, back foot keeping the door open behind you as you're leaned forward in an awkward pose, holding the door open for Luther who has armfuls of food and has taken a moment to help serve tables now the bar had calmed down. "I'm taking last orders now! It's just me cooking so kitchens closing an hour early tonight!" you sucked in another breath and shouted a little louder so the rest of the patrons in the back hear, placing all the meals on your tray to those that had ordered the split pea soup, winking a little at Kieran and his group of friends who were now - well - staring at your ass, though more in a morbidly curious way than much in the way of general perversion. You've a habit of referring to people the way you do back in your own hometown, where the term my lover is quite casual, or my duck, and whilst it may have seemed odd at first, the odd twang of your accent made most assume you're from some small unknown hamlet where such a thing is perfectly accepted, so nobody questions it, and most smile benignly - some with a light flush in their cheeks.
"LAST CALL FOR FOOD ORDERS!" you holler, louder now - breezing past different tables, nodding in acknowledgement to various members of the Garrison who raise a drink as you pass by in acknowledgement, some of them smiling, others giving you empty glasses that you stack on the now empty food tray to bus back to the kitchens.
Being that your literacy is... well, non-existent, and the strange not-quite-kana the Eldians use is utterly beyond you, you're having to memorise everything from scratch and potter from place to place, until you walk over to the crackling fireplace where there are two, rather tall figures with their hoods drawn up, clearly trying to reduce their visibility a bit, but trying to relax. Upon getting closer, you see the Wings of Freedom emblazoned on the back of their cloaks, and smile gingerly, picking up their empty glasses and asking if there's anything they wanted. They probably grabbed their drinks at the bar - and being squirrelled away over here, probably hadn't had a whip round from you, and thus may have been left out while you were going from customer to customer, saying your helloes and bantering in passing.
"Alright my lovers, anyone wanting a refill or food? Menus over there," thumbing over your back to a chalk board hung up visibly near the bar. You keep your jaunty tone, and freeze a little bit - like a deer caught in a trap when they turn their heads. It took all of one short, quick moment for it to sink in who they were.
Hoo, boys. This was not the first impression I wanted to leave on the Survey Corps.
"Another beer for me, whatever he wants, and I'll take a plate of whatever you'd recommend, please," your breath catches in your throat - the hair, the inscrutable expression, bangs, moustache, beard, twitching nose and easy confidence was that of Miche Zacharias, one of the section commanders for what you vaguely remember as a large amount of soldiers, and one of the commander's most trusted men who predates even the acceptance of Levi Ackermann into the fold.
It's now that you regret how windswept you must look, self-consciously brushing a lock of hair back behind your ear and stacking the empty glasses just to fill the sudden awkwardness you felt with something else.
"Make that two plates and a gin please, we've let time slip us by," the other presence - a man also, responds, but the voice is confidently strong, naturally authoritative, but impeccably polite. It's the kind of voice that, if loud enough, easily grabs the attention of every person in the room with little effort. The man turns his head, and all you can see are bright, distracting, sapphire-blue eyes, thick, vaguely familiar eyebrows drawn into a natural sort of frown, though his expression was a casual one - nonplussed - but noticing the way your eyes light up in recognition. You cannot smother it, either - these are perhaps some of the most recognisable men in the forces.
And they're the only ones you'd recognised from your knowledge of the universe.
you'regoingtobekilledbyatitan
you'regoingtobebetrayed
you'regoingtodie
Your mind is completely stopping short of coherent thought, everything a hot, slushing mesh of thoughts slamming into one another that you cannot let fall out of your mouth. It sets in once more now that, the mortality of these people - these real people - is something you can effect, because they're there, and sitting across from you - standing dumbly on the spot.
"Uh... glass or bottle?" you warble out, trying to jerk out of your thoughts.
People are going to die.
Where is Eren Yeager? Right now? At this point in time?
We're going to be besieged by titans.
"Bottle, miss," Miche replies, raising an eyebrow at you while you nod - trying not to look as gormless as you feel - your mind is reeling. You need the dates, you're desperately trying to piece together the timeline, and do - well, shit, you don't know what to do, but the people who could effect any sort of change were in front of you, right here, right now.
"Okay commanders," you reply, trying not to sound utterly hazy as you scarper back into the kitchens, carrying the glasses with you and moving meticulously over the different large cooking pots. Luther takes out the last portioned out orders of split pea and potato soups out, freeing you up to focus on the last orders of meat from those willing to splurge out a bit. You give away instantly that you had, in fact, recognised the men - and are deep in thought as you begin using more prepared bird from a hunt the day previous to begin slicing the body and separating the legs, head and neck to toss into the pile of bones and cooked skin that you would have simmer overnight for the meat and vegetable stew.
Why are they here?
"Uh, Luther - quick question, the guys on table eleven - d'you know roughly when they got in? How long have they been there?" you ask out of curiosity, the odd question does raise a brow when the man blusters his way in, with empty plates and soup bowls with a shrug.
"Ah, couple of hours I think, with most of the Survey Corps rush, they had a training exercise I think, it's why there's so many, why?" Luther asks, whilst you shrug, cheeks colouring when the realisation sets in that they had been present for your loud, enthusiastic, blood and bird-guts covered exchange across the bar, and the uh - well, butt related banter you had made no secret of in an effort to draw laughs and good humour from the nearby tables.
Yeah. That's not the impression to leave on Erwin Smith and Miche Zacharias, is it?
"No reason," you smile tightly, and turn back to the hob, ignoring how Luther raises a brow at you as you begin meticulously pulling the gamey meat apart with two forks, but knowing better than to question it, lets you work diligently - helping by stopping vegetables from burning as you doused some small potato chunks in some herbs and began concentrating on the deep bowl of woodcock. It's a gamey bird, but not unpleasantly so, and filled most people who had it with an intense satisfaction that they were sampling something that was likely for a much higher income bracket, as the effect was achieved with very little of said bird - and you were a master of making a little go very far. You had the experience of a poor student to draw upon for that.
In a half hour you're finished, and are skilfully balancing both meals as Luther holds the door open. You make your way over to the table, and set it down between the two men, who halt their conversation to acknowledge your presence as you smile nervously at them both, ignoring the light sweat of your palms.
You catch the commander's eye, and feel your lungs constrict as you talk - because all you can think about, is Trost - and everything you know is going to occur.
"There we go, two meat specials and those drinks you ordered," you smile, tightly, observing the appreciative glance Miche gives as he looks down at the bowl. Both men are handed a large plate stacked with neatly sautéed and fried herby vegetables, with a smaller, but sizeably deep bowl atop it, filled with a warm, steamy broth of gravy-brown meat stock that had neatly diced cuts of fried potato swimming in it, a light spray of coriander, and shredded, pulled bird meat that comes to the surface with every swirl of the spoon inside - showing that there is, in fact, actual meat in it.
Considering the fact the nation was still coming out of more austere times, it was a little impressive.
You pop the cap to Miche's beer with the hunting knife you'd still had equipped to your person, and pour Erwin's gin, leaving the bottle and quickly counting out change as Miche attempts to pay, and gesture vaguely to the discount sign - as though you cannot read it, you're intimately familiar with the contents, having sat down with Luther and Warner to set it up.
"Army discount, and I'm just going ahead and apply the Expedition Discount, that's just for Survey Corps, but we don't get enough of you drinking here to use it much so," you shrug, trailing off, grinning - even though your insides felt like they were on fire.
Chill. If you start doom-mongering you'll just look crazy, and if it comes true, that might get me poked and prodded under suspicion at the very least.
Just, make a good impression, and think about it later. I can confirm, at least, that the characters I know about actually do exist here, now we just need to see if the future plays out the way I know it to. To that end, is it even possible for me to change the outcome, assuming it's destined to happen that way?
Maybe. I mean, it's not like I'm supposed to be here, right?
"Expedition discount?" Erwin addresses you with a raised brow, and you resist the urge to seem visibly flustered - since this had been your idea, Garrison members are easy enough to access but implementation of an expedition discount was what you brought to the table to make use of the scouts when they'd pass through on their way to the specific exit point they use for venturing beyond the walls currently.
"Well," you scratch the back of your neck sheepishly, pitching this to Luther was a lot easier than justifying it to actual members of the corps, so you did your best not to sound patronising, because the known fact is this - that the scouts are the most underfunded, high risk, low reward branch of the military, and such a discount would actually encourage soldiers to spend some coin there.
"We take care of all members of the forces here, bossman used to serve in the Garrison y'know - had some friends in the scouts in his day too. The way we see it is this, you guys ride through here a lot for your training runs and your expeditions, and more than every branch, do the most high risk, low reward stuff - and - without you, well, no one would have any hope of ever getting back all we've lost," the culling is a touchy subject, but you speak as freely as you can, because if the corps didn't exist - well, everybody would except every loss ceded to titans as not only an inevitability, but something that was permanent. "There's less of it now, after the... well, you know. The losses trying to get back Wall Maria, but if we didn't have you, we'd have to accept every time we lose to titans that, that's all we've got," you smile weakly at their unreadable expressions, but see Miche visibly softening his expression towards you. It's now you realise you forgot to take your apron off, and are nervously kneading the hem of it, now painfully aware of the food splashes on it as you'd been cooking and butchering. Embarrassing.
"And no one wants that, and we know how hard you're all fighting and sacrificing for us, for very little reward. So...If we can get you out of the cold, and keep you warm and fed, well, it isn't much, but it's the least you deserve. So, after you guys go out beyond the walls, everything is half off for about two or so weeks, more if we can afford to do it. Same for Survey Corps families, we try to take care of them if they come in and need help if there's any," you pause, faltering, trying to find an elegant way to put it but just grimace a little, looking a bit sheepish again "-injuries, or um, loss. We want you guys to feel like family, and family takes care of each other so...." you tilt your head a bit with a little watery smile and hand Miche half of his money back.
"Please let us take care of you and call us if you need anything!" you bow your head and prepare to make a swift exit.
It's now that Erwin's expression slowly mirrors Miche's, he glances at the man and nods his thanks, a very small, very seldom-seen sort of smile etching onto his face, barely perceptible really, but it's enough to get you feeling a little frazzled - as everything you know about him, and it's quite a bit - assuming history is as you understand it, you know just a bit too much about the man's past to feel particularly honest in how you're treating him, but that seedy undercurrent feeling of spiritual dishonesty was prevalent pretty much since you got here, and realised you'd be lying, or tweaking the truth a lot just to pass by without suspicion here.
"That's very sweet of you, Miss....? We appreciate it," his words, whilst generically placating, were delivered with a real sort of warmth, you think, because the man is effortlessly charming in how he talks - and retains the abilities of a skilled orator, knowing certainly when to turn it on and off, it seems.
You consider giving him your name - but - in truth, it felt more and more natural to shed it since you got here, after all, if you go back home, would they forget you? Or would your real name be blended into the history of a place you didn't belong? It just complicated things, you found.
"My friends call me Birdy," you grin, because it's familiar, and it's warm - and you hope your smile is carrying all the way up to your eyes because in truth, you're in part relieved by their presence because it is, at the very least, familiar - and is one of the first familiar things you'd encountered since coming to this accursed place.
Erwin opens his mouth to say something, but you jump out of your skin - embarrassingly - with a surprised squeak when you hear yourself being called with a thundering, bellowing force.
"BIRDY! LITTLE HELP IN THE KITCHEN PLEASE!" it's unmistakably Luther, and you look over your shoulder to see a wisp of burning food smoke oozing from the top of the kitchen door and swear, loudly, and rather more vulgar than you meant to - especially in front of these two men.
"Shit! Sorry Sirs!" you blather whilst you turn your heel and peel away from the table, yelling as you do, ignoring the bursts of chuckles and playful laughter at the antics of you and the owner, which had become a source of entertainment for most patrons since you'd started working there.
"DAMMIT, OLD MAN! WHAT DID I SAY ABOUT TOUCHING MY KITCHEN SETUP?"
Miche cracks a more noticeable grin once you disappear out of sight, eyebrows shooting up after nursing his first spoonful of the meat dish - not one for being too casual with most, but Erwin is considered a friend, and vice versa - and he's certain the looks they exchanged with one another were on the same wavelength.
This is delicious, and I can't say I've ever had such a warm reception for being a member of the Survey Corps in my entire military career, Miche mused.
"She's cute," he declares, getting a passive look from Commander Erwin, who takes a serving of his own, and is pleasantly surprised by just how very good it is, and feels almost bad for not having to pay full price for what is - honestly - better than some of the lavish meals he'd been rarely afforded by nobles up in the capital.
"Quite," he agrees, not getting into it too much but surprising Miche with his easy acquiesce to his observation, but unsurprisingly, is quick to move on "-now, lets run through the recruitment drive dossier one more time."
He almost wants to tell Erwin to stop, and be human for a minute - but thinks the better of it, though the pair seem to make a silent choice - that this would, in fact, be a regular rendezvous point - it only made sense, after all, the staff were extremely accommodating, they seek to specifically take care of perhaps the least respected regiment out of the three, and are located strategically in terms of it being a waypoint on the horse caravans way to the expedition exit beyond the walls.
All you can think about, however - as you quickly stop Luther from destroying the kitchen with his well-meaning behaviour - is what you could possibly say to the commander before he goes.
You must somehow keep a dialogue with the man until you could figure out how to warn him or do something to mitigate the impending horror.
Any reason would do.