Chapter 75: The Price of Rest
Peace, it turned out, lasted exactly eleven days.
Eren was in the middle of physical therapy for his shoulder — Hannes overseeing with far more sadistic glee than the injury strictly warranted — when the alarm bells started, different this time from the ones that had once signaled Titans breaching the wall. Sharper. Faster. A pattern he didn’t recognize.
"Aerial assault," Armin said, sprinting into the therapy tent with his gear already half-strapped on. "Not Titans. Ships. Marleyan airships, coming in low over the eastern approach."
"Airships." Eren was moving before the pain in his shoulder registered, pulling gear over the bandages despite Hannes’s immediate, furious protest. "They found us. They tracked the boat back."
"Or they tracked her," Mikasa said grimly, already at the tent flap, blade in hand. "Ymir. They’re not here for territory. They’re here to reclaim what they lost."
The assault that followed bore no resemblance to anything Eren had trained for. No Titans lumbering through breached walls — instead, soldiers rappelling from low-flying airships directly into the garrison compound, precise and coordinated, cutting through perimeter defense with brutal, professional efficiency.
"They’re heading for the medical tents!" someone screamed, and Eren’s blood went cold.
Ymir.
He ran, shoulder screaming with every stride, gear firing to close the distance faster than his legs alone could manage, and arrived at the medical tent’s entrance just as three Marleyan soldiers breached the canvas wall, weapons already raised toward the cot where Ymir crouched, terrified and exposed.
Eren didn’t think. He moved, blade catching the first soldier’s strike and turning it aside, momentum carrying him into a brutal, close-quarters exchange that owed everything to a year and a half of stacked reflex draws and nothing to careful strategy.
"Get behind me!" he shouted at Ymir, driving the second soldier back with a strike that opened a gash along the man’s forearm.
The third soldier raised his weapon toward Eren’s exposed back, finger already tightening on the trigger — and Mikasa arrived like something out of a nightmare built specifically for Marley’s soldiers, blade taking the man’s weapon arm before the shot could fire, her expression carrying none of her usual careful control, only fierce, absolute fury.
"Don’t," she said, voice low and lethal, "ever point a weapon at him while I’m still breathing."
The soldier, disarmed and bleeding, made the wise choice to flee, and Eren turned to find Mikasa already moving to the second combatant, her blade work brutal and economical in a way that made even Eren’s stomach turn slightly, despite two years of watching her fight.
"Ymir, stay down!" Armin’s voice, arriving with two Survey Corps soldiers in tow, immediately positioning themselves as a defensive wall around the terrified girl.
The battle raged through the compound for the better part of an hour, Marleyan soldiers pressing hard toward the medical tents before Survey Corps reinforcements finally, brutally repelled the assault, airships retreating skyward as their ground forces broke and scattered under coordinated counterattack.
By the time the alarm finally quieted, Eren stood amid the wreckage of the medical tent, breathing hard, shoulder wound reopened and bleeding fresh through his bandages, watching Mikasa methodically check every corner of the compound for remaining threats with a thoroughness that bordered on obsessive.
"They’re gone," he said finally, catching her arm gently. "Mikasa. They’re gone."
She turned to him, and for a moment the fierce, battle-honed focus in her expression cracked entirely, revealing raw, devastating fear underneath.
"They almost got you," she said, voice shaking. "I turned around for one second and there were three soldiers with weapons aimed at your back, and I—" Her voice broke entirely. "I can’t keep almost losing you, Eren. Every single fight, every single mission, I keep coming that close to actually losing you, and I don’t know how much more of that I can survive."
He pulled her close despite his aching shoulder, holding her while the accumulated terror of the past hour — the past two years, really — finally, fully broke through her careful composure.
"I’m here," he murmured into her hair. "I’m still here, because you keep showing up exactly when it matters most. That’s not luck, Mikasa. That’s you, choosing every single time to fight for both of us."
"It shouldn’t have to be this hard." Her voice was muffled against his shoulder, raw and honest in a way she rarely allowed herself to be. "I love you so much it terrifies me some days, how much losing you would actually cost me. I don’t know how to hold that fear and keep fighting at the same time."
"You don’t have to hold it alone." He pulled back just enough to look at her properly, cupping her face gently despite his trembling hands. "Whatever this war demands, whatever fear it keeps asking us to carry — we hold it together. That’s the only way either of us survives this with anything left of ourselves intact."
She kissed him then, desperate and fierce, the kind of kiss that spoke of terror and love and two years of choosing each other despite every reason the war had given them to break apart instead.
That night, once the wounded had been tended and the compound’s defenses reinforced against further assault, Eren found Mikasa on a quiet stretch of wall overlooking the recovering garrison, the stars stretching vast and indifferent above them.
"Ymir’s safe," he said, settling beside her. "Under heavy guard now. Erwin’s already discussing relocating her somewhere more secure."
"Good." Mikasa’s voice carried lingering exhaustion, though some of her earlier fear had settled into quieter, steadier resolve. "I keep thinking about what I said earlier. About not knowing how much more I can survive, watching you constantly risk everything."
"Do you regret it? Any of it?"
"No." The answer came immediate, unshaken. "I regret that the war demands this much of us. I don’t regret a single choice that’s brought us here, together, still fighting for something worth protecting." She turned to look at him, moonlight catching the fierce, unwavering love in her expression. "I think I finally understand something, watching those soldiers point weapons at you today. I don’t just love you despite the danger, Eren. I love you enough that I’ll keep choosing to stand in that danger beside you, for as long as we both manage to survive it."
He reached for her hand, lacing their fingers together with the same steady certainty that had anchored them through boars and Titans and impossible missions into enemy territory.
"Then let’s keep choosing that," he said quietly. "Together. However many more fights this war demands, however many more times we come close to losing each other — I want to keep choosing you, every single time, for as long as we’re both still breathing to make that choice."
She kissed him again, slower this time, full of quiet promise beneath the vast, star-scattered sky, and for a little while, the war’s constant demands faded into something more bearable — two people, battered but unbroken, holding onto each other against everything still waiting on the horizon.
Whatever Marley sent next, whatever cost the coming fight for Ymir’s safety and Annie’s eventual awakening ultimately demanded, Eren understood, with fierce and steady clarity, that he intended to face every single moment of it exactly the way he’d learned to face this entire impossible war.
With Mikasa’s hand fierce in his, and a love strong enough to weather even the war’s cruelest demands.