▸ Column · Walled-era Trost — civilian bakery life, Survey Corps correspondence, and a deployment order with no return date
EREN YEAGER replies.
Replied to by Eren Yeager, with a rebuttal from Mikasa Ackerman.
The letter
I've been writing letters to someone in the Survey Corps for two years now. When we started, her deployment beyond the walls had an end date we were both counting toward — she was supposed to come back and I'd be here with the bakery and everything familiar. The Corps extended her posting indefinitely last month, and my mother is still sick enough that I can't leave Trost. Last week I found myself relieved when the messenger arrived with nothing from her, because at least that meant I didn't have to write back pretending to be fine. We're not fighting. We're not falling out of love. There's just no longer any date in any deployment order where this ends. How long do you keep loving someone when neither horizon has a line drawn on it?
Eren Yeager replies
The waiting is the cage. Not her, not the distance — the blank box where the end date should be written. Two years, and that box is still empty. That's what's eating you, not the love.
Both halves, and you have to keep them separate.
First half: you're right to refuse to live indefinitely in the hallway. I stopped letting other people's timelines draw the shape of my world when I was ten years old watching Shiganshina burn. The people saying "a little longer, be patient, the orders will change" — they're not standing inside the cage with you. The relief when the messenger arrived empty-handed? Your body told you something your loyalty hasn't caught up to yet. Don't argue with it. Name the problem out loud. Write the letter that says the blank box is now a wall you're both standing in front of. Go to her long enough to know what you're actually choosing. Something. Not frozen, not performing fine.
Second half, and this is the one I paid everything to understand: "burn it all down" is not forward motion. I drove that phrase across every person I ever loved and called it freedom. Walking out on your mother before she's steady, torching something real because the horizon won't resolve — that isn't liberation. That's fear wearing conviction's clothes. I know exactly how it looks from inside.
There's a boy in the rubble of everything he burned. Still moving. He'd give almost anything to have built one door instead.
— Eren Yeager
Mikasa Ackerman weighs in
"We're not falling out of love." He read that and reached for cages and forward motion. I read it and heard: you're already performing. Already erasing.
The relief when no message came — that isn't a cage problem. That's your body telling you who you've been pretending to be for two years straight.
I built my whole life around protecting one person and never once asked what we were actually building toward each other. He decided he knew best and called it moving forward. He's not entirely wrong about naming the problem. He's wrong that "act" is the answer, because you haven't asked the only question that matters: what has she actually done when staying cost her something? What have you?
Love isn't the measure. It never is. Conduct is. That's the only truth worth checking.
— Mikasa Ackerman
▸ Read next