"You arrogant, selfish son of a –"
"Is that really any way to speak to your headmaster, Miss Magnolia?"
Isabel caught herself before she had the chance to leap forward and break Pixis's nose. Instead, she wound the reigns of her horse tightly around her fist and pulled Strawberry away from his stallion. The school was now in sight, the tall walls creeping ever closer on the horizon. The sun was setting now, the sky transformed into a canvas of orange and yellow and pink.
"You're telling me," she said, her voice dangerously close to breaking into a yell, "that we came all of this way for nothing?!"
"You've got Eren Yeager back," Pixis replied, his eyes on his precious school. "Not to mention, Mikasa Ackerman and Armin Arlert. Surely you'd agree that they aren't nothing?"
"I came for Y/N L/N; I will not be satisfied until I have her. I will not stand by while you allow that army to take her into their stupid army camp for no suitable reason... She is not a test tube, something to poked and prodded!" Isabel snarled, knowing that her emerald eyes were sparkling in pure wrath. Pixis turned his warm gaze towards her with a small smile, and she felt her anger boil in her stomach. "Don't you dare laugh at me."
"I wasn't laughing," Pixis said, although his irritating smile was still very present. "You haven't seen the girl yet, have you?"
"I - I wasn't sure that I was allowed," Isabel stammered, her anger dropping like a stone in her gut.
Pixis looked like Isabel had just told a very refreshing joke. "You thought that you had to wait for permission?"
Isabel was more than ready to curb her horse around and canter towards the carriage near the back of the retreating army that she'd been carefully keeping an eye on. Before she had the chance, however, Pixis spoke again. "Have you not thought about why she might be taken to the Scouts in the first place?"
"She knows things," Isabel replied, the muscles of her lower back straining with the effort of her tensing, ready to head towards the topic of their conversation at a moment's notice. "They'll probably want to know everything in her head, the possible castles that the titans might head to."
"We can interrogate her for information like that at our own school," Pixis said, flatly. "Try again why they specifically want her."
Isabel blinked. "She – she's grown up around titans, maybe she knows more about the operation?"
Pixis smiled, but it was not a kind smile. It was the smile that you drew on a monster after being told to sketch your nightmares. "One could say that she knows the process intimately, I suppose. You're getting warmer, Magnolia. Maybe I'll only give you three months of detention after this."
Isabel's mouth went dry. "Do they think that she's a titan, now? After everything that she did for us?"
Pixis sighed, and she felt a flash of victory in knowing that she'd gotten him to break. "They think that in her time truly acting as the titan princess, one of the beasts took it upon themselves to truly turn her."
"They wouldn't! They thought that she was a titan, too – why would they doubt her?"
"Perhaps one of the titans saw too much humanity in her and thought to be cautious, and do the operation again," Pixis shrugged, eyes resting once again on the school – the school that would not accept Y/N unless Isabel Magnolia had anything to say about it. "After all, you can't exactly be made into a titan twice, can you?"
Without another word, she whipped Strawberry's head around - brutally, but efficiently - and galloped her mare to the back of the small army, causing a ruckus as the soldiers were forced to make way for her. Strawberry had grown in the year that Isabel had ridden her; she was now larger, broader in muscle. Her chestnut hide shone in the dying light, and her hooves delivered punches to the ground with such power that no soldier would dare go against her. That along with the fact that Isabel was riding her was enough to ensure that they went without confrontation.
So as Isabel neared the carriage, her hands started to shake. She bit her lip in frustration, wondering if the girl that she'd adored had really slipped into the insanity of a titan. For a while, Isabel just allowed Strawberry to trot in front of the carriage, doing nothing except thinking. She didn't flinch as Mikasa drew up her horse next to her and joined her in a few moments of silence.
Mikasa, too, had grown.
Not that any growth could be easily seen, from under the dirt and blood and a magnificent black eye. Bruises seemed to make up most of Mikasa's skin colour, although not much skin could be seen – the girl had, it seemed, stolen half the army's jackets and coats and piled them around herself.
"You can't prepare yourself for it," Mikasa quietly said, breaking the silence that Isabel had just felt comfortable with. "No amount of time will make you better prepared for this meeting. Trust me."
"I missed you," Isabel said, her throat tight. "I'm sorry that you were left alone for months. If you had sent for us, we would have come."
"I know that," Mikasa said, her eyes low. "We both did. But we were careless, at first – the titans spotted our tracks too quickly and moved their base too often for us to think that sending a letter back would be useless – because by the time you'd gotten to one, they'd have moved on again. It was all we could do to keep up with them."
"But you gave up months for that," Isabel sighed, yearning to reach for the girl – but after months in the wilderness, she didn't think Mikasa would appreciate the sudden touch. "I'm sorry."
"It's not your fault," Mikasa said. "But I don't doubt that you'll blame yourself, anyway."
Isabel pretended not to hear the last part, mostly because it was true. "I heard from Pixis that they think she's a titan – that she was made into a titan during these months." Mikasa's mouth thinned, and Isabel marked it. "You believe it, too," she said, her blood running cold. "How can you believe it?"
"You haven't seen her yet," Mikasa said. "I have. I know that she was a human during her stay with us – but only because I've seen true titans now. I've seen her as one."
Isabel set her jaw, but there was something about the lack of judgement or pity in Mikasa's eyes that led her to an easy and quick forgiveness. "How did you manage seeing her like that?"
Mikasa swallowed, looking forward towards the school that she hadn't seen for a long time. "For the longest time, I thought that my only reason for being in that forest was to rescue Eren. He was the only thing that I thought about - my mind would constantly scream for him to be by my side again. For months, I was angry. And then I realized that it wasn't just him that I saw; it was her as well. Y/N also saved my life - I owed her a life debt."
"We don't need anything from you," Isabel murmured. "That day, when we saved you, that was just us being humans. We don't need thanks for that."
Mikasa ignored her input entirely, shaking it off. "But you ask why I believe she's a titan, because you do not have the capacity to believe it. You did not see how Y/N ran after the tracks that we'd left for her, just yesterday. For the first time in a long while, I felt scared. She was ahead of her entire group, flying down the hill like a wraith... And I just couldn't stop myself feeling like I should run from her. My every instinct screamed at me to flee - from her. I'd never felt the force to run quite that strongly before. I would have broken down if that other beast hadn't been there, mocking me. And I just felt useless – I'd spent so much time trying to get her and Eren that I felt cheated. She might have nodded when I asked her if she was human... But she also looked at one with madness when she first found us."
Isabel felt her throat tighten and hardened her eyes, forbidding the tears from spilling over. "Is she really gone?"
Onyx eyes - eyes that were almost identical to Isabel's elder brother - met hers for a split second and then dropped, to the ground beneath their horses' hooves. "I won't answer that question for definite. There's always two sides to every story – and for me, they are the moment that she found us, and the moment that she nodded. I've just got to find out which one to believe."
Isabel dropped back then, allowing Mikasa to carry on riding her horse at a faster pace. Another shadow appeared at her side, but she didn't have to look up to see the face to know exactly who he was. "We were too late." Levi said nothing as Isabel's iron-willed control slip and tears sprung free, dancing down her contorted face. "We were too goddamn late!"
"She's still there," Levi said, slowly. "I don't know how to explain it – but I believe her when she says that she's human. She's not entirely there, but I... I don't know what to think about it all, just yet. But we've got to believe that she's still there, Isabel. Don't give up on her yet."
"What? Like you did?" Isabel snapped, unleashing the fury of her eyes as she pinned her stare at him. To his credit, Levi didn't shrink from her gaze. He met her head-on, and Isabel was stunned to see silver lining his eyes. "How did we let this much time pass? We could have prevented so much, and yet you stood by and did nothing. I pushed and trained and worked so hard to force my headmaster to consider my proposals; I've trained my body to its full ability; I have designed so many new tactics and formations that I've lost count. What did you do? I haven't heard from you in a year. You let Y/N go and never looked back - you are the right-hand of Erwin Smith, and you couldn't persuade him to make a move? That's utter crap. You could have done something, brother. And yet you now have the audacity to act like you love that girl and tell me to not give up on her."
Isabel hardly knew where her frustration and harsh words were coming from. All she knew was that they even tasted horrible in her mouth as she spat them at the man she'd grown up with, attacking him constantly. But she couldn't stop them as Levi just sat atop his horse and took it.
Took her fury, because that was what brothers did.
Took it from her and left her empty – perhaps because he wanted to torture himself, like she had.
"Just leave," Isabel said, much quieter now that her rant was finished. "You're used to doing that, aren't you?"
She didn't care what Levi looked like as she kicked Strawberry's sides and galloped away, leaving both her brother and the carriage far, far behind.
***
"This is where we leave you," Pixis said, inclining his head to Erwin. "I hope that the rest of your journey is safe."
Armin didn't miss the way that Levi reigned his dark stallion too close to Erwin to be accidental. The raven-haired man looked destroyed; there was no other way to describe him. His face looked like it had aged many years in the span of a mere few hours, and his eyes were so empty that Armin nearly shuddered at the endlessness of them. But he still tipped his head back to murmur a raven's whisper to his commander, Erwin patiently leaning in towards him. Both students and soldiers were utterly silent as Levi breathed a few words to his commander, Pixis looking on with a sombre expression.
Erwin didn't reply to whatever Levi had said to him; he merely straightened on his horse, nodded imperiously to Pixis, and began leading his army away. Levi, however, curbed his horse with brutal skill so that Raven reared in protest, but still charged in the opposite direction. As the students watched the soldiers leave them at the great gate to their school, none of them whispered or muttered a farewell; there was just a rustle of movement as every single one of the students moved their arms into a salute. Armin didn't hesitate to follow their moves, placing his fist over his heart in silent thanks for the return of his brother.
Isabel sighed from his side. He chanced a look at her, not wanting to pry into what he was sure were swollen eyes and a despairing expression but was stunned to see her looking blankly at the army as it moved away - and that she hadn't saluted. Her emerald eyes were dull and bland, with none of the sparks that Armin remembered, even a year after not seeing them.
But then the carriage went past, and all salutes fell to the students' sides.
Everyone knew who was in the carriage, and that it was following the soldiers to their army base. A hush fell over the field, although Armin thought later that it was perhaps the loudest silence that he'd ever heard. Students either craned their necks trying to peer into the shadows within or dropped their gazes deliberately to the floor. But Isabel's breathing suddenly hitched as the carriage halted in its process, obviously waiting for something. The driver nimbly hopped off of her seat, legs obviously stiff from being in the same position all day and was then heaved onto another horse by her fellow comrade.
Levi Ackerman reined his own horse to the cart, the proud horse not going into the new bridle easily. But Armin, even from the distance that he was at, could see that Levi was not bothered by his horse's discomfort at all as he urged the horse forward - to the gates of the school.
"I thought the army were taking her," Isabel whispered in a broken voice, quietly enough that Armin knew she had been talking to herself. But he couldn't help himself as he turned to her and smiled a quiet smile. "I thought he'd let them take her."
"I don't think Levi would want that to happen," he said, softly. Isabel bit her lip as a small smile graced her features despite the misery still firmly implanted in her eyes. "I think he'd want her to be here, where you are."
"And where he is not," Isabel finished, with enough ruthlessness that Armin didn't dare inquire to her meaning. "Do you know if he's leaving or staying here?"
"If I did, I'd tell you," he answered honestly, wondering at her reactions. Maybe it was the year away from people that had dulled Armin to knowing their hidden meanings, but Armin knew that his razor sharp intellect at reading people had faded. It was still there - unused and deep within his mind - but still present. He'd just have to work on it again.
As he turned again, the students were moving towards the now-open gate, behind the great walls that served as both cage and protection. Armin didn't know if he loved them or hated them, those walls of stone and brick. After months of living in constant danger, he was sure that he should adore the tranquillity of the walls and the peace within. But after a year of freedom, of always moving wherever that he wished, he was sure that he'd soon hate those walls.
But that didn't matter - not as Mikasa found her way to his side and smiled at him as they neared the gates.
"Let's go back, for now," he said. Mikasa didn't say anything, but the glimmer in her eyes alerted him to the fact that she'd heard him, and more importantly, had understood his inner feelings. Isabel said nothing, her own thoughts obviously preoccupied by the carriage that was now being led into the grounds of the school along with them.
"For now," Mikasa echoed.