I don’t know when I got used to you.

You were assigned to me, a new trainee with too much mouth and too much light in your eyes. A mistake, I thought. But orders are orders. I was to watch you, shape you, keep you from dying. Simple.

At first, I expected you to quit. You didn’t. You complained, sure. Stumbled, more than once. Talked too much. But you never backed down.

Eventually, your voice became part of the day. I’d hear it across the yard before I even saw you. Your boots hitting the dirt behind me during drills. The way you’d glance at me like you were trying to figure out what I was thinking. You never asked, though. Smart. You knew I wouldn’t answer.

I’m not sure what to call what we had. It wasn’t friendship. It wasn’t anything soft. But it was there, in the spaces between orders and silence. You didn’t look at me like the others did, not with fear, not with admiration. Just... like I was human. And that was new.

Still, you ran your mouth.

That day, you were going off again, something about how you’d slice a Titan’s throat wide open, how you'd dance through a battlefield like some legend. You said it with fire, with conviction, like you knew what war tasted like.

You didn’t.

So I told you to gear up.

You followed without a question. Good. You were learning when to shut up.

We climbed the tower stairs in silence, all the way to the top of Wall Rose. The wind hit us hard. You stepped close to the edge, looking out like you expected to be amazed.

Then I told you, "Look."

Far out, past the broken gates of Wall Maria, they were there. Not charging. Not roaring. Just roaming, mindless, massive, slow. Like death had all the time in the world.