by Rachel Aaron
“Jax!”
She sounded terrified. By the time he looked up to see why, his whole squad was on top of him.
“What happened?” Rosalie cried, sliding herself under his right shoulder while Emmett took the left. “Who did this to you?”
“We need to get him to the infirmary,” Willow said, her freckled face all business. “And get him off his feet. He should not be walking in that condition.” She turned to the gate guards. “Don’t just stand there. Help us!”
Under Willow’s sharp instructions, the guards picked up Jax like he was a sack of flour. While they hauled him across the yard, Willow sent Emmett and Rosalie ahead to alert the base doctor. On his back and in pain, Jax didn’t catch much of what happened after that. There was a lot of swaying and a flurry of chatter followed by the doctor’s slurred voice telling Willow she could use one of the rooms in the back, which was a huge relief. The tower doc was fine when sober, but as drunk as he sounded right now, he’d be more likely to choke Jax with bandages than treat his injuries.
“Cut his shirt off,” Willow ordered, tossing Rosalie a pair of scissors as the guards set Jax down on the triage cot.
“Don’t you dare,” Jax groaned. “I just got this uniform.” It was one of the new ones Brigitte had bought with Rosalie’s money. He’d wear it until he died. “I’ll…take it…off myself.”
“You can’t raise your arms over your head,” Willow snapped, but Jax was already sitting up, gritting his teeth against the pain as he shed his jacket onto the bed. His bloody shirt went next, leaving him bare-chested and blinking spots out of his eyes while Willow shook her head.
“That was very stupid,” she chided, leaning over him. “Where does it hurt?”
“Faster to say where it doesn’t,” Jax muttered. “But the ribs are probably the worst.” That was the pain that brought him closest to blacking out, anyway.
Willow nodded and moved in, prodding the deep-purple bruises on Jax’s side with her fingers. Meanwhile, Rosalie set to work on his face, using a wet cloth to gently scrub away the clotted blood from the long cut above his eye.
“Who did this to you?” she demanded.
“It’s nothing,” he said, careful not to look at her. “Just a bar fight.”
“You came out of a bar fight looking like this?” She scoffed. “Impossible. We’d have heard the battle from here.” When he shrugged, Rosalie leaned down so she could glare straight into his face. “What happened, Jax?”
“It was just a fight,” he said, angry that the lie sounded so weak. He kept his mouth shut after that, staring mutely at Rosalie until she threw down her bloody cloth in disgust. He could see her trying to think up a new angle when the door opened and Lieutenant Brigitte burst into the room.
“What’s this rubbish about Cunningham being down?” she demanded, her eyes widening when she caught sight of Jax. “Good God, what happened to you?”
“The usual,” Jax said. “Went somewhere I shouldn’t.” He winced as Willow rubbed a stinging salve over his ribs. “Got in trouble, paid for it. You know, normal night on the town.”
Brigitte snorted. “When you come back from a night on the town looking like that, I feel obligated to notify the Military Police to look for the bodies.”
“He says it was a bar fight,” Rosalie cut in, moving to stand beside the lieutenant so they could glare at Jax in unison. “I don’t believe him.”
“I don’t either,” the lieutenant said, narrowing her eyes. “You want to tell us what really happened, Soldier?”
“I’m sure you’ll hear about it soon enough,” Jax said stiffly.
Brigitte swore under her breath. “You will be the death of me,” she muttered, glancing at Willow. “Fix him up, Private. I want him standing when I drag the truth out of him.”
“Yes, Lieutenant,” Willow said, her hands flying as she wrapped white gauze around Jax’s chest.
Brigitte nodded sharply and marched back out, only to stop in the doorway. “Just so I know if he’s still mine to dress down, have you signed your forms yet?”
Jax scowled. “What forms?”
“Three of us have,” Rosalie said, pulling a folded stack of papers from her pocket and extracting one before handing the rest to the lieutenant. “But I haven’t had a chance to talk to Jax yet.”
“Excellent,” Brigitte said, her wrinkled face splitting in a warm smile as she looked at the squad, but especially at Rosalie. “I think you’ve made the right decision. I’ll put these in immediately. Good job, Private Dumarque.”
“Thank you, Lieutenant,” Rosalie said, putting her fist over her heart in salute as Brigitte walked out.
“I realize the irony,” Jax said when she was gone. “But would someone please tell me what the hell is going on?”
No one looked eager to tell him anything. Eventually Rosalie gave in. “While you were off having your ‘bar fight,’ Lieutenant Brigitte offered our squad a transfer to the Survey Corps.”
Jax wondered if the beating had affected his hearing. “She’s…Brigitte’s kicking us to the death corps?”
Rosalie opened her mouth, but Willow beat her to it. “She’s not kicking us, and it’s not a death corps,” the medic said angrily. “She’s doing her job as our officer. Everyone in our squad wants to fight titans, but that ain’t what the Garrison does, so Brigitte’s sending us where our skills will be better applied.”
“She’s giving us a chance to fight,” Emmett added. “Think of it that way, and it’s basically a promotion. Say what you want about the Survey Corps, they don’t have to push cannons.”
Jax stared at them in shock. “So you’re going, then?” he asked, his eyes landing on Rosalie. “All of you?”
Rosalie nodded determinedly. “We all signed up this morning. You’re the last one.”
Now Jax was sure he’d been hit on the head too many times. “What about your fiancé and all that duty to your family?”
Her jaw tightened. “I am doing my duty as a Dumarque. The world doesn’t need more noble ladies and well-kept homes. It needs soldiers. Any ground I can help the Survey Corps gain will do more good for the Dumarques in the long run than a marriage. My father might not see it that way, but it’s not his life. It’s mine, and I mean to spend it doing something that matters.”
“Then…” Jax said slowly, feeling a bit punch-drunk from all this information. “You’re not getting married?”
“No,” Rosalie said, smiling for the first time since he’d come in. “I’m moving to the front lines. We all are, and we’d very much like it if you came with us.”
Jax closed his eyes with deep breath. Bloody hell. Bloody, bloody hell.
“The survival rate in Survey Corps is low,” Willow said. “But those people aren’t us. We survived the Gobbler. Surely we can take this.”
“You’ve gotta come, Jax,” Emmett added. “Your training is the reason this happened.”
Jax felt a piece of paper slide into his hands, and then Rosalie’s voice spoke very close. “I hope you’ll come. If anyone can survive out there, it’s you, and I can’t think of anyone I’d rather have watching my back.”
Jax opened his eyes to find the whole squad looking at him hopefully, and he blew out a long sigh. “Would you two mind leaving the room for a moment?” he asked Willow and Emmett. “I’d like a word with Rosalie.”
Willow and Emmett exchanged a worried look, but eventually they filed out, leaving him and Rosalie alone.
“Are you all right?” she asked nervously when the door closed. “I didn’t mean to pressure you, it’s just—”
“I’m fine,” Jax said. “It’s not that. It’s…” He looked down at the transfer form she’d placed in his hands. “You’ve already signed yours, right? That was what you gave to Brigitte?”
“Yes,” Rosalie said, sitting down on the cot beside him with a worried frown. “Did you hit your head? You’re acti
ng very strange.”
“My head is fine, thank you,” Jax said irritably. “I just wanted to make sure, because I haven’t signed mine yet.” He held up his blank transfer application. “Until I sign this, I’m still in the Garrison. But your transfer form is already turned in, so you’re technically in Survey Corps, which means I’m no longer your officer.”
Rosalie frowned, thinking that over. “I suppose that’s right.”
“Good,” Jax said, leaning in. The sudden movement made him dizzy, but Jax didn’t care. He swept his arms round Rosalie, pulling her close to press his lips to hers with all the pent-up emotion he was finally free to act on.
* * *
Jax was kissing her.
Rosalie was stiff with shock, her brain a spinning top. She’d never been kissed before. She was still trying to wrap her head around the idea that she was being kissed right now when Jax suddenly pulled back, looking down at her with a silent question in his eyes.
Is this all right?
Rosalie had no idea, but life suddenly felt too short and precious to worry about doing the proper thing. Especially since he felt so right right now, his body warm and strong against hers. All she wanted was to keep kissing Jax, so she did, wrapping her arms carefully around his bandaged neck as she brought her lips back to his.
It was much better this time. The moment she kissed him, all the anxious tension left Jax’s body, leaving only the good behind.
Even through the bandages, Jax’s skin was like fire under her fingertips. Touching it made her feel alive, and that feeling only grew when he pulled her closer. Rosalie gladly clutched him back, practically climbing up his chest in her rush to touch more of the strength and warmth she’d felt though his coat during all those cold nights reading on top of the gate. His hands were in her hair now, his mouth sweet and hot against hers. In that moment, it didn’t matter that the rest of their squad was waiting just outside or that they’d soon be riding into a battlefield where no one’s survival was certain. The entire world had shrunk to the small, sunny infirmary room and the two of them, tangled together on the cot so tight, nothing could pull them apart.
Until someone knocked.
Jax jumped back like he’d been burned. Rosalie was also reeling, shaking her head in a vain attempt to clear it. She was still pulling herself back together when Willow called through the door.
“Sorry,” she said sheepishly. “But the doctor says we have to get out of the room.”
“We’ll be right out,” Jax said, his voice oddly husky as he turned to smile at Rosalie. “Was that…?”
“I think it was,” Rosalie said, smoothing her rumpled hair back into its braid.
“Was what?”
She shrugged helplessly. “I’m not sure, but it was nice.”
“A lot more than nice,” Jax said. Grinning, he turned and grabbed his transfer application off the bed where he’d dropped it. Next he picked up a pencil from the table, then wrote his name on the line in careful, neat letters.
“There,” he said, showing her when he’d finished. “Brigitte will be impressed. When I signed up for the Garrison, I couldn’t even spell my last name.”
“Let’s go show her, then,” Rosalie said, reaching out to take his paper, but Jax caught her hand instead.
“I’ll take it to her myself, if you don’t mind. If I’m going to get chewed out, I’d rather not have an audience. Gotta say, though, the timing of this is amazing. After last night, a guaranteed transfer to Survey Corps suddenly sounds like a very nice gig.”
Rosalie scowled at him. “And what did happen last night?”
Jax’s answer was an infuriating smile as he reached to open the door, sending Willow—who’d been standing with her ear pressed against it—sprawling onto the floor.
“Do you mind?” Jax said.
“Sorry,” the medic replied, her face flaming as she scrambled back to her feet. “I was just, um, worried about your injuries.”
“Right,” he said, rolling his eyes. “Thank you for your concern, Willow, but I’m doing much better. Now that I’m all patched up, I’m going to hobble down to Brigitte’s and give her this.”
He showed them his signed transfer form, and Emmett’s face lit up. “You’re coming with us, then?”
“You wouldn’t survive without me,” Jax said, limping into the hall.
* * *
While Jax went to face Brigitte’s wrath, the rest of them went back to work. There was a lot to be done. Now that winter was officially over, the Garrison’s spring recruits were pouring in from the Training Corps. Since the Survey Corps was still out on mission, the Trost Garrison was handling their recruits as well, which meant the wall was packed with earnest young teens who had no idea what they were doing. One green-eyed boy was talking loudly about how he was going to kill all the titans while the other recruits laughed at him.
Rosalie chuckled, too, but only because she’d been that way when she arrived at the wall. She understood his anger, though, and hoped he’d find a squad that would teach him as much as hers had.
One morning, so many newcomers arrived that just organizing them took hours. To escape from the crush, Rosalie led a group of recruits to the top of the gate and showed them where to stand while loading a cannon onto the rails so the gun wouldn’t roll back and crush their feet.
She heard something crack in the air above her.
The sound was like a thunderbolt, despite the clear sky, and so loud that Rosalie felt it as much as heard it. Had a cannon fired? With the recruits babbling in their confusion, Rosalie scanned the top of the wall for the cause.
The world slowed to a crawl. A titan was staring down at her.
It was standing right beside the gate, a titan that was a full head and shoulders taller than the fifty-meter-high Wall Rose. A titan with no skin, just exposed red muscle, bone, and sinews, like an autopsied cadaver, and steaming in the bright sunlight. A titan that, Rosalie realized with a stab, she recognized. It was the one whose picture was at the front of all her titan-slaying manuals. Humanity’s greatest enemy, the monster who’d destroyed Shiganshina.
The Colossal Titan.
The name was still echoing in her mind when the giant pulled back its leg and kicked in the gate.
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The blast of wind that followed blew Rosalie off the wall, along with the recruits under her charge and every other solider she could see. For a terrifying second, she spun in free fall high above Trost. Then instinct kicked in. Her hands grabbed the handles of her maneuvering gear from their holsters, squeezing the triggers before her brain realized she needed to fire.
It was a blind shot. Clouds of burning-hot steam rolled off the Colossal Titan, stinging her eyes. But the wall was a big target, and her hooks landed in the stone. Others weren’t so lucky. She saw one fast-thinking recruit catch herself and then fire her other cable to spear a falling soldier through the leg before he landed. Others weren’t so fortunate. They hit the ground like rotten fruit, their bodies exploding on impact with a wet thwack.
It was a sound Rosalie knew she’d never get out of her head. For several heartbeats, she couldn’t do anything except hang there, catching her breath, staring down at the dead. Then the dust cleared, and she spotted something worse.
The massive brick slab of the Trost gate had a tunnel going right through it. The Colossal Titan had kicked a hole in the gate. Rosalie could see the overgrown fields on the other side. Which meant there was now nothing keeping the titans out of the city of Trost.
“They’re going to get in!” screamed a panicked voice somewhere above her. “They’re going to get in!”
The cr
y knocked Rosalie out of her shock. She was fumbling for her triggers to pull herself back up when one of the recruits flew past her on his cables. It was the green-eyed boy from before, the one the others had laughed at for his boasts about killing titans. He fired his cables again when he reached the top of the gate, shooting his lines into the Colossal Titan from midair as he pulled his swords like he meant to fight the giant all by himself
“Get to the cannons!”
The recruit’s shout was so far away she barely heard it, but Rosalie was already moving. Crushing the triggers on her cables, she flew up the wall, kicking her feet off the stone to move even faster. She was nearly there when the Colossal Titan swept its arm across the top of the wall right above her head.
With a sound like a tornado ripping through trees, the titan cleared the gate, his massive forearm knocking over the cannon emplacements like toys. Rosalie had to flatten herself against the wall to keep from being crushed as cannon barrels and broken pieces of rail fell past, crashing into the street below.
When it was safe to raise her head again, Rosalie stared in horror at the wreckage. All the cannons on the Trost Gate were now lying scattered in a hundred-meter arc on the ground.
But how was it possible?
Titans were mindless. They didn’t plan or use strategy. She’d seen them cheerfully walk straight into cannon fire. Their lack of intelligence was the one edge humanity had over them, but this one had clearly just acted with purpose, using its arm to destroy the weapons pointed at it.
Shaking, Rosalie squeezed her triggers and pulled herself up the wall. The air at the top was thick with dust and pockets of steam. Blinking against the burning in her eyes, Rosalie armed her swords by feel and stepped forward, almost tripping over a shattered cannon emplacement. There were bodies too, the still forms of fallen soldiers like shadows in the dust. She spotted the lone recruit being helped to his feet by some comrades. In the distance, more soldiers were running along the wall toward them, but there was no sign of the monster that had done this.
