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Whoosh whoosh
The lazy noise of a coin flipping through the air softly rung through the empty apartment. Round and round, round and round it went, stuck in a vacuum of time and space; the laws of earthly physics didn’t apply to the small metal object as it kept spinning without ever making its way down.
Whoosh whoosh
Round and round, round and round.
2022.02.22, 18:13; Latitude: 22.17226, Longitude: 101.85955
The note stared up at me from my dinner table, the elegant black font a stark contrast to the sterile white of the paper it was printed on. I sighed as I picked up the slightly crumpled piece of paper. Here I had been hoping for a couple of days of peace; but it appeared that was not going to be in the cards this week. Nothing out of the ordinary there then.
I decided to make a cup of tea, and as I was waiting for the kettle to boil, I entered the coordinates into the search bar on the phone I kept especially for occasions like this; when the notes with the vaguest of instructions appeared out of thin air and would inevitably throw a wrench into any plans I might have had.
I cursed as the result page revealed the coordinates to be in the middle of fucking nowhere, Laos. This job better come with some damn good compensation. Flights were expensive these days!
Didn’t these people care about the rising cost of living? It wasn’t like there was anyone I could declare my travel expenses to; I had to pay for it all out of pocket, so these assholes better compensate me well for the lengths I went to for them.
The sound of the kettle clicking off startled me, the noise disproportionately loud in the silence of my empty apartment. With a last heavy sigh, I started mentally preparing a list of items I would need to bring with me on this impromptu trip. I would need to cancel my appointment with my hairdresser for the next morning.
As if to drive a point home, right in that moment, a stray strand of long dark hair escaped the messy bun I had scraped it into and obscured my gaze. I brushed it back irritably, but it flopped right back down, happily blocking my vision once more. Hair ties, I would definitely need to bring some hair ties.
From the corner of my eye, I spotted a dark figure partially blended into the shadows of the living room. I paid it no mind as I traipsed through the space, gathering random knick-knacks that I would either need to put away or bring to Laos with me. After repeating this same process throughout the next several rooms, I could no longer ignore the being lurking in my peripheral.
“What do you want?” I snapped irritably, as I finally acknowledged the black clad figure lounging casually against the vanity in my bathroom, where I was trying to assemble my toiletry kit.
“Just checking to make sure you’re not shirking on your responsibilities”, the figure replied, its hands raised in a mockery of placation, an infuriating smirk adorning his face. I rolled my eyes and clicked my tongue in annoyance. “Don’t pull that crap with me. You and I both know I always do as I’m told. Tell me why you’re really here.”
“Well”, the figure drawled, annoying smirk firmly stuck in place. “I seem to remember this one time when we were-”
He didn’t get to finish his sentence as a spray of icy water hit him right in the face.
“Did- did you just fucking spray water at me?” The man spluttered, a stray water droplet comically clinging to the tip of his nose. “The absolute disrespect! I am an ancient being of power and de-”
He was once again cut off as I turned the shower head back on and sent another icy stream his way.
“Are you done?” I asked with a raised eyebrow as I looked at the drenched figure before me in boredom.
“Eren!” The man thundered. He was drenched head to toe, the water making his stupidly expensive clothes cling to his skin and turning the already dark material even darker. Water was dripping from his brown hair into his eyes and starter to form a small puddle at the bottom of his feet. He looked like a drowned rat; a very angry, very lethal drowned rat. As he started advancing towards me, he was stopped in his tracks by a final stream of water hitting him square in the face. “Would you fucking stop that!? I am not a cat!”
“Could’ve fooled me”, I snorted. “You’re pompous, you’re arrogant. You only show your face if you want either attention or food, and when you’re angry, you hiss and scratch. Sounds like a cat to me.”
He glowered at me for a few more seconds, his eyes warily shifting between mine and the shower head I was still lazily pointing in his general direction, my other hand ready on the knob to drench him further the second he so much as toed the line. Finally, he sighed in defeat and backed off, resuming his slouch against my vanity, his drenched form dripping water all over my bathroom floor highly diminishing the air of nonchalance he was clearly trying to exude. The image he painted was only slightly hilarious.
“Father told me to make sure you’re following protocol for this one”, Zeke eventually sighed reluctantly, finally answering my earlier question as to why he showed up in my apartment uninvited.
I frowned in confusion. “Why?” I asked. A feeling of apprehension made its presence known in the pit of my stomach. Something wasn’t quite right here.
“Did you flip the coin?” Zeke asked me instead of answering, clearly deflecting.
My frown deepened even further. “Of course I flipped the coin. Why wouldn’t I have?”
“Good”, Zeke said, still not answering my question and unwilling to look me in the eye, no matter how much I tried to catch his gaze.
“What’s so special about this guy? What did he do?”
Zeke merely shook his head, something akin to pity glimmering in his pale eyes. “You’ll find out”, was all he said before vanishing in a cloud of shadows.
“Hey, Zeke!” I yelled into the empty bathroom even though I knew it was useless and I was basically screaming into the void. “Zeke! Get back here, you bastard.”
Whoosh whoosh
Northern Laos in February, I found out, was surprisingly really fucking cold. I pulled my leather jacket tighter around myself as I stomped my way up yet another cold, damp and very green hill. I had landed at the tiniest regional airport I had ever been to early in the morning, and after driving even further into the middle of nowhere for two and a half hours, I was finally nearing my destination.
Why the poor sod whose note I had gotten had ended up here of all places, was a mystery to me. Yes, we had a need for discretion and to be away from the general masses in this line of business, but this was honestly taking it to the extreme.
After climbing yet another hill and rounding a crop of trees, I found myself emerging from the forest into a clearing. I spotted my brother already lurking in the background as per usual, undetectable to the human eye as his dark form blended seamlessly into the shadows of the thick canopy. He gave me a small nod of acknowledgment, which I ignored as my eye was trained on the lone man standing in the middle of the clearing, his head whipping back and forth, up and down in bewilderment, clearly at a complete loss as to how he got to where he was.
Something about the man’s profile seemed awfully familiar to me, and as he spun around at the sound of my footsteps, it quickly became clear why. My breath escaped me like a punch to the stomach would as a pair of clear grey eyes met my own green ones. The look of confusion mixed with surprise and a hint of irritation.
“Eren! What the fuck is going on? How did I get here? How did you get here?”
The scream that tore out of me could not quite be described as human and startled a couple of nearby birds, who escaped the trees under the accompaniment of loud quaking noises of protest. “No!” I yelled again, now turning my attention to my brother hiding in the treeline, who only met my panicked eyes with a pitying look of his own. “Not him, anyone but him!”
I knew I was pleading, and I knew it was to no avail, but in my desperation I had to try. The look Zeke gave me as he remained silent tore another scream from my body as I fell to my knees, my breath coming in irregular heaves and a sheen of tears blurring my vision.
A pair of firm but gentle hands grabbed me by the shoulders and forced me to turn my attention to the person now crouching in front of me.
“Eren!” the panicked eyes of my boyfriend sent another wave of sobs through me. “Eren, what’s going on? Who were you yelling at?”
I didn’t know what to say as I brought a trembling hand up to Levi’s cheek, my thumb caressing the smooth skin of his cheek until it caught on the slight scratch of stubble lower down towards his jawline.
“I’m sorry”, was the only thing I eventually managed to choke out.
Comprehension slowly settled over Levi’s features and he abruptly tore himself away from me, stumbling as he scrambled out of my reach in shock. His reaction and the fear I could see twisting his handsome features was the last drop for me as I broke down, sobs wrecking my body as I looked at the love of my life for what might very well be the last time.
“How-” Levi’s voice broke and he cleared his throat before trying again. “How long do we have?”
“Sunset”, I whispered, voice hoarse from crying.
Levi crawled closer to me, not caring about the dirt and the dust as he wiped the tears from my face, leaving brown smears in their place. He placed a gentle kiss against first my right cheek, then the left and eventually, pressed a tender kiss to my lips. Then, he wrapped his arms around me and crushed me to his chest, holding on for dear life. I wasn’t sure if the wetness I felt against my neck were from his tears, or my own.
“There’s still a chance”, I gasped out. “There’s a coin flipping. At sunset it will fall. If it’s tails, the person on the note gets spared. It’s not over yet, it’s not.”
Levi pulled away from me gently and looked at me in resignation. “And how often does it land on tails?” he asked. My silence only served to confirm the inevitable truth. The coin never lands on tails.
Whoosh whoosh
“It’s gorgeous, isn’t it?”
I looked at the man sitting next to me. His profile was silhouetted by the last rays of sunlight casting half his face in shadows.
“Beautiful”, I confirmed, willing my voice not to crack. I wasn’t referring to the setting sun however. The sunset hadn’t been beautiful to me in over a millennium.
I could still remember the last time a sunset had been a sign of anything but darkness and misery. It was one of my clearest memories, that first night I took a life.
I had only been nine years old at the time, not even a teenager. He had been one of our guards, someone I had known since I was a babe. He had seen me grow up, witnessed my first steps, been present when the first word I uttered was ‘carrot’ of all things. In short, he was one of the people who had seen me navigate the first years of my life as if he were one of my parents, and now I was expected to rob his actual parents of their only son.
I had read his file, he was the first and only child of a very average, non-assuming family. Dad was a shop owner, mom mostly took care of the household, and when things got tight, she went to the market and sold turnips grown from their garden. Over all, the family was very regular. They weren’t drowning in cash, but they didn’t have debtors breathing down their necks at every turn either. Their son, Hannes, if I remembered his name correctly, didn’t get into my family’s dirty business because his family was at their wit’s end, as so many others who worked for us were. No, Jacob just wanted to provide his parents with a comfortable retirement where they didn’t have to worry about every penny they spent.
And now, he was about to meet his end at the hands of a nine year old dancing monkey, his fate determined by the flip of a coin, all for the offense of caring for that boy as if he were his own son. His devotion had greatly offended the king, and with that, his fate had been sealed.
“Did you know it was me?” Levi’s question broke me out of my reverie and brought me back to the present. “When you got the note”, he clarified, chancing a look at me out of the corner of his eye before training his eyes firmly back on the setting sun slowly descending behind the mountain tops. Time was nearly up. “Did you know it was me when you got the note?”
I vehemently shook my head. “No, there’s never any names. Just a time and a place.”
Levi closed his eyes for a second as he took in a calming breath. “That’s- well, not good, exactly, but it does make it a little better, I suppose.” He finally turned his attention to me as he reached out to lace our fingers together. “I wish we would’ve had more time”, he sighed wistfully.
As the last rays of the sun cast our figures in a golden hue, I yanked Levi close to press a last desperate kiss to his lips. “I love you”, I gasped as we pulled apart. I could feel a tell-tale tingling coming from the inner pocket of my jacket. It was time.
“I love you, too”, Levi repeated as he tucked the stubborn strand of hair that had once again escaped the half bun I’d pulled it into, behind my ear. “It’s okay, it’s not your fault”, he whispered as tears that he desperately tried to swallow back started welling up in his beautiful silver eyes.
With trembling hands I took the ornate silver dagger out of the inside pocket of my leather jacket, stealing myself as I flipped it around to glimpse at the most recent name that would be elegantly carved into the blade, only to stop short when I saw what it said.
Eren Grisha Jaeger
Words escaped me as my hand holding the dagger started to compulsively move to position itself above my own heart. There was nothing I could do as the blade started to sink its way into my chest at an excruciating pace, burning like nothing I had felt before with every centimeter it sunk lower, until finally, it pierced my heart.
“I’m sorry, little brother”, I heard Zeke’s voice whisper on the wind. “You knew the consequences of loving a human.”
My lover’s terrified eyes and golden frame being lit up by the very last rays of the setting sun were the last thing I saw before my vision slowly faded to black.
Whoosh whoosh… thud.
Somewhere far away, on the 25th floor of an empty apartment in the middle of a bustling city, a coin finally landed on the hardwood floor with a dull thud.
Heads.