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Then:
Armin wasn’t exactly looking forward to tomorrow, even despite the celebratory, hopeful attitudes of the other Scouts. Eren's unending confidence had once again infected the rest of the 104th Cadet Corps, leaving the mess hall buzzing with excited energy tonight. Even Mikasa had a wistful smile on her face at the reality of returning to their home in Shiganshina after five long years.
But no matter who his friends were, Armin was just a single, below-average soldier without a kill to his name (titan kill, that is—the face of the woman who’d had her gun pointed at Jean still haunted his nightmares) and he’d be as vulnerable as anyone else in the upcoming battle. Maybe even more so, since Commander Erwin had approved his idiotic plan to try and talk down Bertholdt and Reiner if he had the opportunity. Technically, the Scouts had no idea if the titan shifters would even be there, but Hange and the engineers had done their best to find a way to take down the Armored Titan if they were. Notably, nobody had been able to think up a tactic beyond “don’t get hit in the transformation blast” to deal with Bertholdt, a fact which left Armin feeling restless and twitchy. So, people were going to die if Armin couldn’t talk to Bertholdt.
How should he negotiate with someone who’s made it clear they won’t let the people of the Walls find freedom?
Armin absentmindedly flipped through the loosely bound booklet on the table between Eren and himself. Very few Scouts had been paying attention to the date with everything else they'd been doing, much less that the night before the mission to reclaim Wall Maria would fall on the 15th of Nisan. Somehow, this fact hadn't slipped Captain Levi's attention (Armin suspected he liked any holiday that gave him an excuse to have everyone clean), which is why the mess hall was set for a Pesach seder rather than an ordinary dinner.
Each spot had been set with both water and wine glasses—apparently, the rumor that this meal was worth the Scouts’ food budget for the next two months was true. At the center of each table, one larger dish had been filled with various symbolic foods (including an actual shankbone, something Armin had been replacing with beets for the years he couldn't convince Commandant Shadis to shell out the funds for real lamb). As a sort of apology for barely contributing to group assignments based on physical skill, Armin had been the self-appointed head of holiday preparation for the other cadets.
“Are you gonna gawk at the seder plate all night or get on with it?” Jean elbowed Armin’s side, nodding at the other Scouts waiting for their table to get started. He was right—Armin had agreed to run this, so he needed to stay focused.
“The meat’s getting cold, too,” Sasha grumbled.
“Right,” Armin said, raising his voice so that everyone in the hall could hear him. “For generations, our people have held a Pesach seder, meaning ‘order,’ to remember our exodus from a desert nation long ago, each time retelling the story as if we, the current generation, were personally being led to safety.”
There had been something religious about the story when Armin’s grandfather had told it, miracles coming from a higher power rather than through sheer luck, but so many Scouts found it hard to believe in any sort of deity as a protective force. Not when they’d seen their families and best friends eaten alive by titans. Armin wasn’t sure what he believed (certainly not that the titans were a divine punishment, as the Wall Cultists suggested), but he figured nobody present would object to his modification of the story. Traditions always changed alongside history, hadn’t they?
“Pesach holds a special importance to the Scouting Regiment as a celebration of freedom,” Armin continued, confidence growing as Commander Erwin nodded in approval. “It’s a story of resilience and liberation across history. Whether our people are up against a tyrant Pharaoh or the titans, we’ll fight for our freedom—no matter how long it takes.”
Now:
Reiner wasn't exactly looking forward to tomorrow, even despite his family's hopeful words about defeating the island devils and the “good” Eldians earning their way back into Marley's (and the world's) good graces. Because no matter how desperately he'd wanted it to be true when he'd been a Warrior candidate, being an “Honorary Marleyan” didn't mean a damn thing when it came down to it. Any privileges his family's red armbands had given them would be stripped away when his term ended in a couple of years, and if Falco managed to look good enough in training, then they wouldn't be getting them back through Gabi anytime soon. Not that he'd have any easy time of it—people were still praising Gabi for winning Marley the battle at Fort Slava a month later.
It wasn't as if those accolades would last forever, though. No, even the Warchief was barely respected by the Marleyan officers, and Zeke had made the most progress with his titan abilities out of any Warrior Reiner had heard of in history. Well. Maybe aside from Eren (thanks a lot for mentioning you had a half-brother, Zeke), who'd managed to master titan hardening in a matter of months. Which—Reiner knew he'd been the bottom of his Warrior unit, but really, Eren? Not even Reiner had learned how to make entire structures with his Armor, and that was his titan's specialty.
Maybe the Jaeger brothers were just different, or maybe it was Reiner who was the odd man out. Ymir had been proficient with the Jaw without any formal training, after all—and Eren hadn't even known he'd had a titan, much less how to use it.
Reiner’s aunt had invited the other Warriors, Warrior Candidates, and their families to the Braun seder, which would have been a nice gathering had it not meant Mr. Leonhardt would be sitting directly across from Reiner the entire night, silently judging him for being the only Warrior to return from Paradis. As much as he insisted that Annie was still alive and would return home, Reiner wasn’t so confident. It had only taken the Scouts a month or so to build Thunder Spears strong enough to shatter his Armor, so how long would it be before they broke her out of that crystal? (Maybe they already had, and Armin hadn’t been lying when he’d told Bertholdt that they were torturing her.)
What were his old friends up to tonight, anyway? It had been four long years since he’d seen them in Shiganshina, and five years since his last seder with them. Armin had been leading that one, and it had been…very different from the ones here. How many of his old friends—family—in the 104th Cadet Corps had been murdered by the people at this very table? Reiner had lost count of how much blood was on his hands.
Then:
“Who’s gonna ask the Four Questions? Historia usually did it when we were cadets,” Sasha said as she flipped the page of her haggadah.
“How about Levi?” Hange teased.
“No.”
“But you’re short enough to be the youngest here!” Hange’s words were met with a sharp glare from Levi, but Mikasa was clearly trying (and failing) to hide a smile inside her scarf.
“I said no, four-eyes. Make one of the brats do it.”
“Marlowe?” Jean asked. He’d been having way too much fun not being the newest group to the Scouts tonight. “You’re one of the newest Scouts, rookie.”
“Oh—alright,” Marlowe answered as he stood, clearly not having expected to sing in front of everyone tonight. “That’s close enough to being the youngest…”
Now:
Gabi had never objected to being the center of attention, and singing the Four Questions was no different.
“Ma nishtanah halailah hazeh mikol haleilot?” Gabi asked, reciting the lyrics in the Eldian language. Why is this night different from all other nights?
It wasn’t because they were only eating unleavened bread, as Gabi’s words suggested—it was because Willy Tybur had just finished telling the diplomats of the world about his solution to the “Eldian question” a few hours prior.
It wasn’t because they were only eating bitter herbs—it was because this was the last night before Marley was at war once again.
It wasn’t because they were dipping greens twice instead of once—it was because they were celebrating quietly in a quiet house in the internment zone rather than singing at the top of their lungs in the Scouts’ headquarters.
It wasn’t because they were reclining while eating—it was because this story had been butchered by Marleyan propaganda, and Reiner, like always, couldn’t (didn’t) say a word about it.
Then:
“The four children in this story represent the different types of questions people may ask about the Pesach story,” Armin explained, nodding to Commander Erwin to read the next portion.
“The wise child asks details about the specific meaning of the laws of Pesach observance. To which we respond with one of the very specific laws of the seder.” The one-armed man’s voice carried throughout the room, every soldier hanging onto his words.
“Eren should read the wicked child,” Jean suggested snarkily once Erwin had finished. “Since the suicidal maniac was so insistent that we should let humanity die a couple of weeks ago.”
“Aren’t you next in order, horse-face?” Eren glared back.
“You haven’t read anything yet!”
“Maybe you’re the wicked child.”
“Eren, please?” Armin asked, cutting off the argument before it turned into a fistfight as it usually would without intervention.
“Fine. The wicked child asks ‘what is this service to you?’ To you, not to him. When he sets himself apart from the community, he denies the very core of our beliefs. To him you must say ‘because we experienced miracles when I left the desert nation. For me, and not for him,’ because had he been there he would not have been redeemed.”
Now:
“The simple-natured son…what does he say? ‘What is this?’” Reiner read the words out loud, wrinkling his nose at the answer on the page. It was different from the one Armin had read each year. “To him you must say, ‘and with a strong hand, we brought plagues upon the desert nation’.”
Reiner passed his haggadah to Gabi, frowning. Armin’s version of the story always sounded far more heroic, and the simple son had been told about being delivered from slavery, not about the plagues. Which version was more accurate?
“‘And to the son who doesn’t know how to ask, you must open the story to him and explain how we left the desert nation!’” Gabi had only read a sentence, but Falco congratulated her for doing it well anyway. That kid really was in love, huh? Reiner hoped for both of their sakes that he was able to take on the Armored Titan instead of Gabi. He’d be able to save her from Ymir’s curse, and his little cousin would get to live a long life…and never have to fight for Marley again.
Then:
“Dam,” Hange said with a dramatic flair. “Blood.”
Everyone dipped their pinky finger into their glass of wine, spilling a drop of it at the corner of their plate for each of the ten plagues. It was a somber part of the seder, meant to acknowledge the innocents of the Pharaoh’s nation who were harmed by his cruelty as well. Armin suppressed a gag when he realized it may as well have been Annie’s blood instead of wine on his finger. Reiner and Bertholdt said the mission that the three of them had was to “save the world,” but why did that mean they had to stand in the way of the Scouts’ fight for freedom..?
Now:
Going undercover for a long time was pretty boring, as Eren was realizing. The hospital he’d weaseled his way into had put on a butchered seder tonight for the Eldian veterans, an event which Eren had faked a headache to leave early. He’d always celebrated with his friends, and didn’t want to think about what they’d say once they came for him tomorrow. Besides, all of the songs were just slightly different, changed by a century of diverging cultures, and the sound grated on Eren’s nerves.
Instead, he was taking a walk—a hobble, really, since he was still using crutches instead of regrowing his leg. The Eldian Internment Zone was a filthy place, walls more cramped than Shiganshina’s had ever been. Not to mention the fact that walking down certain streets made his head actually hurt with half-formed memories from his dad’s childhood. At this rate, the Attack Titan’s power to share memories between users would drive him to insanity before Mikasa killed him to end the Rumbling.
Not that he’d started the Rumbling yet. But that didn’t matter—he’d already failed to stop the memories he’d shown himself from manifesting into reality, but there wasn’t anything he could do. His friends would show up tomorrow, Sasha would die, Connie and Jean would blame him for it (they’d be right), and the flight back would be about as miserable a conversation as Eren could imagine. Levi would probably wish he’d kicked Eren a bit harder in that courtroom four years ago. Eren would, too.
Eren crossed the street to get a good view of the stage being built for Willy Tybur’s declaration of war tomorrow, humming a Pesach song to himself. The tune wasn’t anything special, but the simple lyrics had made it his favorite. Eren craned his head towards the chairs of the audience—most of them would die in the Rumbling if not when he transformed under the stage tomorrow, murmuring the song’s words to himself.
Armin had always told them how the Pesach story was supposed to be applicable to modern day, right? If the Rumbling was the plagues that ensured Eldians’ freedom, then Eren ought to make a demand first, right? That’s what Moses had done in the Pesach story. Eren narrowed his eyes at the stage, singing the last line of the song in a hoarse voice.
“Let my people go.”