Carla Yeager — named after her grandmother, over Eren’s mild protest that it would confuse dinner conversations for the rest of their lives — turned four the same week the first real cracks in the treaty finally showed.
"It’s not the Aeldrin or Marley," Erwin said, older now, gray threading through his hair, still commanding the reformed Corps council with the same unshakeable steadiness. "It’s us. Our own provisional government. There’s a faction pushing to reopen the walls’ old military structure — full remilitarization, treaty be damned, using the excuse that peace has made us soft against threats we can’t yet see."
Eren, thirty-one now, listened with the particular weariness of a man who’d hoped some fights stayed finished once won. "Politicians looking for power. That’s not new."
"No. But this one has real support. Enough that the treaty’s next review vote, in three months, might actually fail." Erwin’s gaze was steady. "I need you there. Not to fight. To speak. People still listen when Eren Yeager tells them peace is worth protecting."
[New mission detected: "The Second Signing" — Objective: Prevent treaty collapse at review vote. Combat resolution unavailable. Political influence tracking initiated.]
Eren stared at the notification with something between resignation and grim familiarity. "Again."
"Some fights don’t end," Mikasa said quietly from the doorway, Carla asleep against her shoulder. "They just change shape. We knew that, choosing this life."
The three months that followed demanded something harder than any battle — town halls, careful arguments, old grief weaponized by people who’d never fought the war but had inherited its fear anyway.
"They’re not wrong to be afraid," Armin said, now formally overseeing the treaty’s educational provisions, exhausted from months of counter-lobbying. "The Anchorless entity. Marley’s old hardliners. The world genuinely isn’t as safe as peace makes it feel. The dangerous part is people concluding safety only comes from returning to war footing."
"Then we don’t argue against fear," Ymir said, now nineteen, steady and sharp in ways the frightened girl from the camp could never have imagined becoming. "We argue for what actually worked. I’m not dead, Annie’s not a weapon anymore, an ancient hungry thing is bound instead of devouring a coastline. None of that happened through remilitarization. It happened because people chose connection over control."
[Trust Established — General public sentiment: 52% pro-treaty, 41% pro-remilitarization, 7% undecided. Vote requires 55% to hold.]
"Three percent," Mikasa said, reading the projection. "We need three percent more people to believe peace, not just survival."
Eren gave the speech himself, at the final town hall before the vote, Carla in the front row with Mikasa, small hands clapping before she understood any of the words being spoken.
"I spent my childhood believing the wall’s fall was inevitable," he said, voice carrying across the packed hall. "I spent years afterward believing the only way to protect the people I loved was through strength, preparation, being ready to fight anything that came for us." He paused, finding Mikasa’s eyes in the crowd. "I was wrong. Not about the danger — the danger was real, every bit of it. I was wrong about what actually saved us, in the end. It wasn’t force. It was people choosing to understand each other instead of simply preparing to destroy whatever they feared."
He looked out at the crowd — faces still uncertain, still afraid, still carrying two thousand years of inherited hatred that didn’t dissolve simply because a treaty had been signed.
"I’m not asking you to stop being afraid. I’m asking you to choose what you do with that fear. My daughter is four years old. She’s never seen a Titan. She’s never known a countdown ticking toward catastrophe. I want her to grow up in a world that keeps choosing peace, imperfect and difficult as it is, rather than one that decides fear is easier to live with than trust."
[Public sentiment shift detected: +4% pro-treaty. New projection: 56% support.]
The vote, three days later, passed by a margin narrow enough to feel fragile, but real enough to hold.
[Mission "The Second Signing" — COMPLETE. Treaty preserved. Reward: None assigned. Note: Some victories don’t need one.]
That evening, Eren found Mikasa in their garden, Carla finally asleep, the pale flowers blooming steady despite another hard winter behind them.
"We keep having to fight for it," he said, settling beside her. "I thought peace meant the fighting stopped."
"Maybe peace was never a destination," Mikasa said, leaning into him. "Maybe it’s just a choice we keep making, generation after generation, the same way that flower keeps choosing to bloom every spring no matter how harsh the winter got."
He looked at the flowers, old and familiar, the same hardy blooms he’d once watched at a farm outside Shiganshina with Armin and a shy, careful girl who’d handed him one without quite meeting his eyes.
"I like that better than a destination," he admitted. "It means we get to keep choosing it. Every year. However many more votes, however many more town halls it takes."
[System status: Dormant.]
"It’s still there," Mikasa said, noticing him check. "After everything. Still watching."
"Maybe that’s fine now," Eren said. "It’s not manipulating anymore. It’s just... present. The way an old friend is present, even when you don’t need anything from them."
She kissed him softly, the garden settling into evening quiet around them, their daughter sleeping safe inside a house built on ground that no longer trembled beneath the weight of countdown clocks or ancient hungers.
Somewhere beyond the walls, the wider world continued its slow, imperfect work of learning to live without fear as its only language.
And in a small garden at the edge of Shiganshina, two people who’d once carried the weight of the world’s ending now simply, quietly, tended what they’d chosen to grow instead.
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