"I heard Mikasa and Annie are friends now."
Jean's words brought out the protective side in Eren.
"Being a friend of Annie means being in trouble.", he grumbled, tossing the stick in his hands over to Armin. Jean caught it for the blond, since he was too wrapped up in reading the book on his lap to notice his surroundings.
"And being a friend of yours doesn't?", Jean contradicted with a frown on his horseface.
"Shut up. How do you even know about it?"
"I saw them together when I got something from the market 'few days ago."
Eren gave him a vacuous hum as an answer.
"Hey, Eren! Jean!", a cheery voice greeted them. Coming along the way with those sparky freckles and glowing in the sunlight like a saint Marco ran up to them, Ymir and Connie in tow.
Ymir only ever scowled at them, not caring what other people might think about her mean face while Connie grinned with his hands behind his neck and winked at them.
"Waiting for me, I see.", the bald boy shouted and clapped their hands together. Eren gave the smaller one a playful swat on the head.
"Yeah, you wish, baldy."
"Where's Mikasa? Not with you for once?"
Eren let go of the boy, leaning back on the barrel he was sitting on, bathing in the sunrays dancing across his tanned face. Behind him there was the supporting wall of Armin's house.
After their talk with their mother last night Eren had decided that he definitely needed a distraction from all the shit going on.
Talking to his friends and laughing about the same shit as ever was just what he was looking for.
"She's at home, helping mom with something."
"Someone has to after all. You male pieces of useless shit are not much of a help anyway.", Ymir said with the same eyeroll as ever. Her words might sound mean but there was a good core in that rotten soul of his friend.
"Talk for yourself, Ymir.", Connie retorted with a smirk. "Isn't your stepfather alone right now? Doing some manly work you could easily help him with?"
"Sitting around, drunken to unconsciousness and hitting on his own stepdaughter." Ymir laughed humorlessly, pushing Eren away so she could sit next to him on the sunbathed barrel. "Yeah, fucking manly indeed."
"Didn't know he was still like that.", Eren murmured apologetically and nudged her with his elbow in a friendly way of silent support. Ymir simply shrugged her shoulders.
"Beats me. Marco, any luck in seducing that harvest boy yet?"
Marco laughed sheepishly at her direct question. Eren noted Jean's strangely red face and how he looked away from the freckled boy, sorrow in his eyes.
"Ymir, you know that it's impossible to be with someone from the same gender in Eldia."
The girl shrugged and put one foot on the barrel, slinging an arm around the fabric covering it.
"Just be clever about it."
"Ymir, stop encouraging him to do something like that. You know the risk of having a relationship like that." Reiner showed up from behind Armin's house. Berthold, a neighbor of Eren, followed his best friend and smiled gently at the group.
"You don't get to tell him something like that. You're as straight as an arrow."
"And that coming from the girl who fucked that female soldier a year ago. Didn't she tell you she would come back for you, Ymir?"
The girl snorted, tossing her dark hair on her back and tying it together with a dark ribbon.
"Fuck you too, Reiner. Still too much of a bitch to tell Berthold about your feelings?"
"Actually..." The shy boy, as tall as a tree in Eren's eyes, averted his eyes with a reddish shimmer on his cheeks. He leaned against Reiner who moved an arm around the taller boy as if it was the most natural thing to do.
Ymir laughed out loud, startling Eren and Jean, who were both just beside her.
"No way! You really confessed, you dick!"
"Congratulations?", Eren said with an asking note, not sure what to say. It wasn't important to him which gender his friends liked. For all he cared they could marry their own self and it would still be the same for him.
He was happy for them, he was. But seeing them together he knew they would get problems if they were discovered by the soldiers who rarely ever visited this small part of Shiganshina. Poor and full of even more poverty they tried to find ways not to walk through the roads of their hometown.
"Eren, what about you? Any hot chick you like here?", Ymir asked him next, just as he could have predicted.
"Not all of us have the time to think about fucking the next thing on two legs."
Ymir shrugged, inspecting her dirty fingers.
"You guys heard what the old ones say?", Jean asked the group. Reiner and Berthold settled down next to Marco, who sat in the dirt, watching Connie and Ymir bickering around.
"About the coming war?" As soon as the word had been said, the same depressed look appeared on their faces, smiles vanishing at once and darkness bloomed in their eyes. They all remembered the last war. The impact it had had on Shiganshina.
On their homes. On their families.
There was a reason for Ymir's transfer to her stepfather – more like adoptive father. Her real parents hadn't survived the last attack.
Ymir's survival was called a miracle among those who knew about her past.
Eren watched the fearful reaction of every single one of them, fueling his hate on King Grisha and the destruction his decisions left them in.
Armin clasped his book, his knuckles white and his lips one small line.
"Maybe it won't reach us.", he whispered despite all logic. Not a single one of them answered him. "Maybe this time we will be spared of losing those dear to us."
"Stop dreaming, Armin.", Eren snarled, his anger not uncharacteristically for him. But still, he hated seeing his friend wince at the venom in his words. "That bastard doesn't care about what he destroys. Who he kills with his every order."
"Stop talking like that, Eren!", Jean said sternly, looking around as if they were being watched. "You never know who is listening."
Eren jumped from the barrel, his hands clenched and his eyes directed at the sky.
"I don't care who listens to my words. They are true."
"True words are dangerous.", Armin said and stood up, a sad smile on his face. "I know how hard losing everything to an useless war is. But we don't have the power to change things."
You don't. I had. Once. Many years ago when I was too young to understand what was happening around me.
"I heard he's sending the Crown Prince with his troops. They will invade Marley soon."
Marco's uncle was a soldier in Marley's army. Having once fallen in love with a girl in Marley he had moved there and lived with his wife and his two daughters. A war between Marley and Eldia wouldn't mean horror and death for only Eldia.
"The Crown Prince. Pah!", Reiner exclaimed. "I heard he's just a useless bag of brains."
"Would you care to repeat that? I think you weren't loud enough.", Ymir snarled and shot him a warning look.
"Eren!" It was Mikasa who called out for him, disturbing their little group.
"What is it, Mikasa?"
"Mom told me to come fetch you. We still need firewood."
He nodded and went over to her, grabbing the axe she gave him.
"Man, I'm glad we've done this already.", Connie sighed with a relieved smile on his face. "Wouldn't want to be in that forest with those soldiers roaming about."
"Soldiers?", Eren repeated and even Mikasa didn't seem to have known about that.
"Why should they be in our forest?", she asked, putting her axe over the shoulder. Connie shrugged, playing around with some grass under his feet.
"How would I know? My dad often has to go there to get some water for us and mom goes fishing every day. She has to pass the forest on her way, so she always knows if someone's in there."
"Since when are they here?", Eren asked frowning. Hate burned in his gut but he knew better than to unleash it on those undeserving of it.
"A few days probably."
"We should tell mom. Risking getting seen by them...", Mikasa wanted to propose but Eren interrupted her speech: "We don't have to be afraid of them. We are doing nothing wrong. And if we don't get the firewood today – who knows if it rains in the next days. We wouldn't have any fire for days. You remember the last time that was the case, don't you?"
She sighed but nodded in understanding.
"Good luck, guys.", Marco called after them.
"Don't get caught, asshat!", Jean shouted when they departed from them.
And so they went on, while the sun stood high above them.
They didn't know what was yet to happen.