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The first thing Hannes became aware of was the smell. Warm yeast, woodsmoke, and the faint metallic bite of the rifle oil he never quite managed to scrub off his hands.
It was the smell of home, of the cramped two-room flat above the bakery on the corner of Miller's Lane, deep inside Trost District, Wall Rose. The bakery belonged to old Frau Keller, who had lost two sons to the Titans and now paid her rent in bread and silence. Hannes paid his in occasional repairs and by never asking why she baked at four in the morning.
He opened one eye as grey dawn light leaked through the warped shutters, painting pale stripes across the single bed he was supposed to be sleeping in alone. Instead, three small bodies were tangled together like a litter of exhausted puppies.
Eren was in the middle, on his back, mouth slightly open, one arm flung subconsciously over Mikasa's waist. A tiny, shameful trail of drool had escaped the corner of his mouth, tracing a path down to his chin. Mikasa had curled into him, face hidden against his shoulder, black hair spilling everywhere like ink. Armin was on the outside, knees drawn up, one hand still clutching the strap of the little satchel he'd refused to let go of even in sleep. A book peeked out from the flap, half-read.
They looked impossibly young.
Hannes sat up slowly, joints popping. His head throbbed gently (cheap Garrison brandy and no sleep would do that), but the ache felt distant, muffled by something warmer.
Memory returned not with a jolt, but with a slow, sinking weight, like a stone settling in the mud of his gut.
Last night…
The moon had been a sliver of bone in a sky choked with camp-smoke. He'd been on his unofficial, liquid-sponsored perimeter check, a flask in his pocket and a deep-seated exhaustion in his heart that no amount of drink could ever fully drown. The garrison had seen shadows moving where shadows shouldn't be. Not looters; too small, too…purposeful. He'd almost called out, almost challenged them, until the faint firelight from a distant shack had caught Eren Yeager's face.
The boy hadn't looked like a child. In that stark, flickering light, his features had been carved from the same grim granite as the veterans who'd seen the fall of Maria. There was a terrifying absence of childhood in his eyes, replaced by a burden Hannes couldn't even name. Mikasa, a silent wraith at his side, was a drawn blade sheathed in girl's clothing. Armin had looked pale, his brilliant mind clearly whirring with catastrophic calculations.
And they'd told him about a monster. Not a Titan. Something that had scaled Wall Sina, phased through solid matter, and vanished into the territory of Wall Rose. Eren had tapped his bandaged wrist with a finality that brooked no argument. I'm the only one.
Hannes had looked into those old, young eyes and seen Grisha's unyielding focus and Carla's fiery heart fused into something new and terrifying. He remembered the rest in pieces.
The horse's steady rhythm under them as they left the refugee camp behind.
The wind cold enough to burn the lungs.
Eren's thin arms locked around his waist like iron bands, Mikasa's chin digging into his shoulder blade, Armin wedged between them clutching that satchel like it held the secrets of the walls.
After some while had tried to talk, at first.
"So… any idea where this demon dog actually is?"
Silence.
Just the creak of leather and the thud of hooves.
He'd glanced back. Three small heads nodding against his back, already half-gone.
"Hey, sleepyheads," he'd muttered, fond and exasperated. "You drag me out in the middle of the night and fall asleep five minutes down the road?"
No answer. Just the soft, trusting weight of them.
He'd ridden the rest of the way grinning like an idiot into the dark, one hand on the reins, the other steadying the pile of children who had decided the fate of the world couldn't wait until morning.
Now, in the quiet room, he watched the slow rise and fall of their breathing and felt something crack open in his chest (something that had been soldered shut since Shiganshina). They were just… kids. The sheer normalcy of it; the drool, the tangled hair, the soft, synchronized breathing; clashed violently with the reason they were here, in his home, on the run.
A profound, aching sadness washed over him, followed by a surge of protective fury so fierce it startled him. 'What the hell is prompting you?' he thought.
'Had that incident stolen your nights and filled them with ghosts and demons? You should be worrying about scraped knees and stolen apples, not chasing rumors of a monster across half the territory.'
He eased himself off the mattress, careful not to jostle them, and padded barefoot to the tiny stove. The motions were automatic: fill the kettle from the jug, set yesterday's bread to warm on the hot plate, crack four eggs into the battered pan. The sizzle filled the room like gentle rain. He found a small, precious knob of salt and the last wrinkled apple from his cupboard, chopping it roughly. It wasn't much, but it was hot and it was food.
By the time the kettle began to whistle, the light had turned golden, painting the dust motes in the air.
Hannes turned the heat low and went back to the bed. He crouched, resting his forearms on his knees, and studied them a moment longer. Then he reached out and shook Eren's shoulder, gentle but firm.
"Oi. Rise and shine, hero."
Eren came awake with a startled jerk, eyes wide. He smacked his lips, grimaced, and his tongue came out to swipe at the drool on his chin. He wiped it away with the heel of his hand and flushed crimson when he realized Hannes had seen.
"Wh—where—oh crap, we fell asleep?!" He scrambled upright, nearly elbowing Mikasa in the face. "How long—? We have to go, the—it could be anywhere in Rose, people could be—!"
Mikasa stirred at the commotion, instantly alert, her eyes taking in the room in a heartbeat. Her hand went automatically to where her knife usually rested. Armin made a small confused noise, smacked his lips, and pushed his glasses straight, blinking. "Nngh… the… the trail's gone cold…"
"Atatatatata!" Hannes' voice cut through the panic. He lifted both hands, palms out. "Slow down, all three of you. The world hasn't ended in the last two hours."
Eren stood panting in the middle of the small room, his hair sticking up in wild tufts. He looked from Hannes's calm face to the stove, to his friends. The frantic energy bled out of him, leaving behind a hollowed-out embarrassment. "We don't have time for…"
"You have time for this," Hannes interrupted, his tone leaving no room for debate. He pointed at the tiny table wedged between the bed and the wall.
"You're no good to anyone, monster-finding or otherwise, if you're running on empty and half-asleep. Your brains are fuzzy, your reactions are slow. That's how you get dead."
Eren opened his mouth to argue, but his stomach betrayed him with a loud, mortifying growl. Mikasa had a neutral expression on her face but her head seemed to sink lower to the scarf, while Armin just looked guilty.
Hannes snorted. "That's what I thought. Sit."
The kids exchanged glances, but the smell of eggs, warm bread, and faint apple was a language older than duty. They obeyed.
Hannes served them in chipped garrison mess tins: two eggs each, thick slices of warm rye bread, a few pieces of softened apple stirred in, weak tea with a spoonful of honey he'd been saving for a month.
They fell on it like wolves.
Hannes leaned against the stove, cradling his own tin, watching them. "You know," he said quietly, "when I was your age, the scariest thing I knew was my old man's belt. And Titans were just bad stories from history books." He took a bite, chewing slowly. "You shouldn't know the things you know. You shouldn't have to do the things you're about to do."
Eren looked down into his tin, his spoon stilling. "Someone has to."
"I know," Hannes sighed, the weight of years in the sound. "I know that better than most, Eren. That's why I'm here." He met Eren's gaze. "But 'anywhere in Rose' is a big, big place. Charging out with no direction is a great way to get lost."
Armin swallowed a mouthful of egg. "Our initial plan was to head to any garrison outpost in Trost. If there were any official alerts or mobilized troops, that's where the activity would be. We could gather intelligence."
Eren nodded. "Right! We follow the military's trail!"
Hannes raised an eyebrow. "Bold. Also a good way to get arrested or shot." He took a sip of tea. "But… it's not a terrible idea. I'm stationed in the northern Trost garrison…but I've pulled duty at the south gate, the western side, not so much. I know the layout. I know which sergeants are lazy. We can get close, watch, listen. Maybe we'll hear something before you three decide to reveal your brilliant, secret plan to the entire Paradis military."
He pushed off the stove. "Now. Finish up. We'll clean these, and then we're taking a very careful walk. We'll skirt the main roads, keep to the back alleys. The southern outpost is a hub. If there's noise about a 'demon dog,' that's where the noise will start."
As the kids finished eating, a semblance of order returning with the warm food, Hannes watched them. Outside, the morning was brightening over Trost. Somewhere in the vast, unknown expanse of Wall Rose, a creature of pain and alien science was prowling. And these three children, one wiping egg yolk from his chin, were planning to walk into the heart of military authority to find it.
___________________
Carla became aware of was the silence first thing when she woke up.
It was a heavy, thick silence woven from the absence of small, familiar sounds. The absence of Eren's restless shifting on his pallet. The absence of Mikasa's soft, rhythmic breathing as she lay awake before dawn, guarding the room with her eyes. It was the silence of a house whose heart had stopped beating. She hadn't meant to sleep so deeply. The emotional exhaustion of the confrontation, of laying down the law only to see the flicker of rebellion still burning in her son's eyes, had dragged her into a dark, dreamless pit. Now, as consciousness returned, it brought with it a cold, creeping dread.
"Eren?" she called out, her voice raspy with sleep. It was a mother's automatic check-in, expecting a grunt, a sigh, the sound of him rolling over.
…Nothing.
The dread solidified into a fist of ice in her chest.
"Mikasa?" Her voice was sharper now, laced with a tremor she couldn't suppress. Only the indifferent hum of the early morning camp answered her.
"No," she whispered to the empty air. "No, no, no…"
A frantic energy, born of pure panic, surged through her. She threw off the thin blanket, her movements jerky and uncoordinated. Her legs, useless and numb, tangled in the fabric. She didn't care. She used her arms, hauling her upper body towards the edge of the mattress where her wheelchair sat. It was a maneuver she had practiced to a tired, graceful efficiency over the past months. But now, fueled by terror, it was a clumsy, desperate scramble.
Her hand missed the armrest. The weight of her torso tipped her too far. With a choked cry, she tumbled from the mattress, landing hard on the packed dirt floor with a thud that drove the air from her lungs. Dust puffed up around her, stinging her eyes. The impact jarred her spine, sending a sharp, familiar pain radiating through her hips. She lay there for a moment, winded, humiliation and terror warring within her. The proud, capable woman who had run a household and raised a fierce son was reduced to a heap on the floor of a shack, choking on dust and dread.
Get up. Get up, Carla. You have to see.
Gritting her teeth, tears of frustration and fear blurring her vision, she pushed herself up onto her elbows. She dragged her body across the short, agonizing distance to the wheelchair. Every inch felt like a mile. She grasped the cold metal of the wheel, her knuckles white, and using every ounce of strength in her upper body, she hauled herself up and into the seat. She slumped forward, breathing hard, sweat beading on her forehead despite the morning chill.
The shack was small. There was nowhere to hide.
Her eyes, wide and desperate, scanned every shadowy corner.
Eren's pallet was empty, the blanket tossed aside in a hurry. Mikasa's sleeping mat was neatly rolled, a silent testament to her departure.
…They were gone.
A low, wounded sound escaped Carla's throat, a whimper of pure maternal anguish. Her hands trembled as she gripped the wheels of the chair, propelling herself in a frantic, disjointed circle. Maybe they were just outside. Maybe they'd gone for water early. Maybe—maybe—
Her gaze swept over the small, rickety table. And there it was.
A scrap of paper, rough and salvaged, propped incongruously against the chipped clay cup she used every morning. A cup Eren had fetched water for just yesterday.
The world narrowed to that square of off-white in the grey dawn light.
Her wheelchair bumped against the table leg as she lunged for it, her fingers fumbling, clumsy with panic. She snatched the paper, holding it so close her breath fogged the surface. The handwriting was Eren's. Each word was a stab.
Mom,
I'm sorry. I have to. I can't let people die when I can do something. I'll be careful. I promise. I love you.
-Eren
The paper didn't fall from her fingers. It might as well have been welded to her skin. She stared at it, reading the lines over and over, as if the meaning might change, as if a different message would emerge from the desperate pencil strokes.
I'm sorry.
I have to.
I can't let people die.
I love you.
Each phrase was a hammer blow. The apology that offered no comfort. The declaration of duty that felt like a betrayal. The childish promise of care that was laughable in the face of what he was chasing. The final, devastating 'I love you' that felt like a goodbye.
A dry, heaving sob shook her frame. No tears came at first. It was too vast, too profound for simple crying. It was a seismic cracking open of her soul. The carefully constructed dam of rules and conditions and fierce, protective love she had built around him last night; it had been vaporized by a few scribbled words. He had listened to her ultimatum, nodded in that tense way he had, and then he had waited for her to sleep. He had looked at her sleeping face and chosen to leave.
He had chosen…the monster over his mother.
The thought was a white-hot brand of pain. It wasn't true, not really; she knew the nobility that drove him, the ghost of Grisha that lived in his stubborn heart; but in this raw, gutted moment, that's what it felt like. Abandonment.
"Why?" The word was a ragged whisper torn from the depths of her. It wasn't a question for the empty room. It was a plea to the uncaring universe, to Grisha's absent spirit, to the cursed device on her son's wrist.
"Why him? Why does it have to be him?"
The memory of his face last night flashed before her eyes. Not the angry, defiant mask, but the raw, vulnerable truth that had surfaced just before he retreated. The look of a boy who saw drowning people and knew he was the only one on the shore with a rope. That look.
She had seen it on Grisha's face a thousand times, when a patient was failing, when a puzzle of sickness refused to be solved. A look of terrifying, all-consuming responsibility.
She had known, even as she laid down the law, that it was a futile gesture. A mother's desperate attempt to hold back the tide with a broom. When Eren Yeager got that look in his eyes, walls fell. Titans died. And mothers were left in silent shacks with notes that shattered their world.
A single, hot tear finally broke free, tracing a path through the dust on her cheek. Then another. They fell silently onto the note in her hands, causing the pencil marks to blur and run. She didn't try to stop them. The devastation was complete, a quiet, total collapse.
She sat there for a long time, wheelchair anchored in the center of the room, clutching the sodden note. The morning grew brighter outside, the sounds of the camp awakening; a child crying, a pot clanging, a man coughing; seeped through the walls. Life went on. A life that her son had just run headlong into danger to protect.
He was ten years old. He had a power he barely understood, a target on his back from forces she couldn't comprehend, and a heart too big and too brave for his own good. And he was out there, somewhere in the vast, dangerous territory of Wall Rose, with only Mikasa's blades and Armin's mind to protect him. And Mr Arlet? This was his fault, isn't it? Had those words he spoke drive her children to go into the unknown? The thought sparked a flicker of rage amid the despair.
Slowly, stiffly, she folded the ruined note with utmost care, as if it were a sacred relic. She pressed it to her chest, over her heart, as if she could somehow press the words back into her son, will him back through the sheer force of her need.
She had failed. She had failed to keep him safe. She had failed to make him understand that the world's problems were not his to solve. All her love had not been enough to build a wall high enough to contain her son.
The shack wasn't just empty. It was a tomb for her peace. And she was alone in it.
Meanwhile, in the slightly larger, more secluded shack on the other side of the camp, dawn found Grandpa Arlet already awake. He hadn't really slept that much. The silence from the other section of the room was louder than any snore. It was a knowing, grim silence he'd felt in his bones since midnight.
He sat at his small worktable, a disassembled clockwork mechanism before him; a harmless, human pretense. His hands, steady as stone, moved with automatic precision, cleaning a tiny gear with a soft cloth. But his eyes weren't on the clock. They were fixed on the far wall, seeing nothing of the rough-hewn wood, seeing instead the infinite, cold tapestry of stars and the horrors that moved between them.
A Vulpimancer. Most definitely tampered with. On Paradis.
The logic was a trap snapping shut. If it was here, it meant a breach. If there was a breach, the careful, desperate isolation of this world was over. And his brilliant, fragile grandson was connected by friendship and fate to the one boy who most likely a beacon for such anomalies.
His gaze drifted, against his will, to the corner where Armin slept. The bedroll was empty, neatly straightened; Armin's habit, even in flight. But on the small crate he used as a bedside stand, something was out of place. A book was stacked not quite right. A strategic mind, even in a hurry, leaves intentional signs.
With a sigh that seemed to carry the dust of dead worlds, Grandpa Arlet pushed back from the table. The chair legs scraped like a gunshot in the quiet. He walked over, his old bones protesting the night's tension. He lifted the top book, a dry treatise on Paradisian soil composition. Underneath, not hidden so much as placed, was a folded scrap of paper.
He didn't need to open it. The very existence of the note, left for him to find, was the message. He unfolded it anyway, the paper crisp in the morning chill.
Grandpa,
We've gone with Eren. The threat is real and moving. We'll find a way to track it. We'll be cautious. Tell Mrs. Yeager… tell her we'll bring him home.
-Armin
No apologies. Just facts, a plan, and a promise they had no way of keeping. The boy's intelligence was a curse; he saw the logical necessity even through the fear, and it broke the old man's heart.
A profound, weary sigh finally escaped him, fogging the air. It was the sound of a guardian realizing the walls have already been scaled.
He stood there for a long moment, the note in one hand, staring at the empty bedroll. The urge to move, to act, was a physical pressure in his chest. He could saddle a horse. He had skills they couldn't imagine; he could track a neutrino ripple in solar wind, for Wall's sake. He could find them.
But find them and do what?
Drag a resolute Eren Yeager back by the ear? Stand as a human shield against a creature that could phase through matter? Reveal the full, terrifying extent of his own nature and his arsenal in the middle of Wall Rose, inviting the attention of every secret-keeping faction on this doomed island?
He looked down at his hands; the hands of a healer, a tinkerer, a grandfather. Then he clenched them slowly, feeling the old, powerful musculature hidden under papery skin, remembering the grip of weapons that had shattered asteroid belts.
They are children.
They have the Omnitrix.
…They have each other.
The three facts warred within him. The first screamed for intervention. The second was a wild card of unimaginable power and peril. The third… the third was perhaps the most powerful force in any universe. He had seen them together. Mikasa's unyielding guard. Armin's brilliant, guiding light. Eren's raw, catalytic fury. They were a unit. A fragile but magnificent and terrifying unit.
If he stormed after them, he would be another variable. An adult to defy, a secret to keep, a liability they might feel compelled to protect. He could inadvertently make things worse, scatter their focus, or lead a worse threat right to them. Zs'skayr was already eough to teach him that.
His eyes moved to a particular floorboard near the stove. Beneath it lay pasts he had sworn to bury. A soldier's tools. A Wrecker's duty.
He took a step towards it. Stopped.
He was not their cavalry. Not yet.
His role was different now. He was the keeper of secrets they weren't ready for. The anchor to a normalcy they could never reclaim. And, if the worst happened, he was the last line of defense; not for them out there in the field, but for everything here, should the storm they were chasing somehow turn and follow them home.
The agony of it was exquisite. To have the power to intervene and to choose, deliberately, to stand down. It was the hardest command he'd ever given himself. He carefully refolded Armin's note and placed it in his inner pocket, over his heart. Then he returned to his worktable. Not to the clockwork. He had to clear his head a bit.
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