Attack on Titan Fanfiction – The Stowaway: Chapter 18

Warning: PG-13. Contains depictions of violence.

The Saddest Day

Ten months ago

“Once you’re hooked, you’re hooked for life, is what they say,” the girl turned her head away from Mikasa, looked out the small barred window high up on the wall. She went on, “Quite ironic, don’t you think, Colonel?”

Mikasa didn’t know what to say, had no words of reassurance to offer. The girl, Edith Bauer, had told her what it was like to be who she was. To shake herself out of the lethargy of being a hooker she took heroin, but to fund her drug habit she had to take in more jobs as a hooker, the very thing that made her take drugs in the first place. It was a cycle she couldn’t get out of. 

“I craved the drug so much I was willing to kill for it,” she told her frankly. 

It was a week after Jean and Mikasa had the big talk about adoption. Mikasa had just put Philip to bed when Jean came by and the two stood at the door watching the little boy sleep. He looked so small and peaceful, lying curled up on his side, with the blanket covering half his face.

“Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” Jean said in a low voice, putting an arm around his wife’s shoulders.

She looked up at him and smiled, wrapping her arms around his waist and leaning her head on his chest. “I’ve dreamed of it for so long, to take an orphan child into my home and make them my family. Just like the Jaegers did for me.”

Inside their bedroom they talked well into the night about legally adopting Philip. It wasn’t going to be easy given his storied past. But they agreed it was something they both felt was the right thing to do, something they both wanted. The timing was right, too. 

Three years into their marriage, Mikasa finally began to accept that she couldn’t have a child biologically. Now that the war with Marley was over, she struggled with war trauma. But for some reason, she felt having this child under her roof who needed her help and protection was actually helping her recover. 

“I want to do it,” she told Jean.

“Then let’s do it,” he replied. They looked at each other and smiled. At last, a child for them, sent from heaven. Or via the battleship HMS Dot Pixys II, to be more precise.

The following day they spoke with Philip, who was over the moon. It was Mikasa who said she’d tell his aunt Edith Bauer about their joint decision. She was bound for sea duty down south, deploying from the military base off the Port of Shiganshina. A visit to the women’s prison hospital was duly slotted.

So here she sat, at the bedside of this girl whose life was, like Philip’s, a compendium of sorrow. 

“Philip’s mum was named Ingrid, after the famous theatre actress. She’s actually my half-sister. Mum had four daughters from three different men. Yeah, she’s a slut, and made sure her daughters were no different from her,” Edith began her story.

Ingrid was the eldest, and Edith was second to the last. She didn’t actually know who her father was. Their mother ran a brothel and at the same time was the mistress of a drug lord whom Edith refused to name. 

“Mum’s dead. Who cares what she fucked?” she said. 

Her mother died of a venereal disease when Edith was fourteen. As for Ingrid, she never liked her. Their mother practiced a divide-and-conquer parenting style with her daughters, encouraging them to constantly find fault with one another. The fiercer the sibling rivalry, the harder the children worked to please the parent. She gave them minimal nurturance, and if they did things to win her approval then they got a morsel or two of affection. 

Ingrid, the eldest and most conventionally attractive, grew up to be some kind of narcissistic bully like their mother.

“She was Mum’s favorite. Mum made sure her four brats didn’t get along by making us fight for her attention. She doled it out sparingly, like cookie crumbs, the biggest one reserved for Ingrid. Could hardly remember one nice thing about either of them. Ingrid was very pretty, but she was a total bitch. She picked on me when I was little,” Edith looked back without fondness or nostalgia. 

“She got in trouble when she was seventeen, falling for this man, Gerhard, from a rival gang. I mean a rival to the mobster that owned mum’s brothel. Mum threw her out, and they never reconciled,” the girl explained. “Ingrid was pregnant with Philip and Gerhard married her right before he was born.”

Things went downhill from there, Mikasa learned. Gerhard was a bright, driven young man looking to climb up the ladder of hoodlum success. He was in good favor with the head of the mob he belonged to. But after a couple of drug deals gone bust and business ventures gone wrong, he quickly fell into disfavor.

“He went from favored son to incommunicado. Ingrid was disappointed and pissed because she thought she gave up her family to be with a man full of promise and potential, only to find he was all talk and no substance.”

Gerhard Becker was a handsome, dark-haired, olive-skinned, swashbuckling fellow, Edith recalled. He was a smooth talker, the son of a low-ranking mobster. Full of ambition and wanting to get farther than his mob muscle father ever had, he charmed the socks off the young blonde beauty. But the all-you-need-is-love adage turned out to be bollocks.

“T’was as if he’d been bit by Lady Bad Luck. The only thing he had going for him was his looks. Every venture he tried out went up in smoke. He started drinking heavily, and running drugs like a common thug,” Edith recalled. 

Gerhard’s failure as a businessman led to a spiralling alcohol consumption that made him extremely volatile. He’d go home and the slightest thing might trigger his rage, leaving his wife and son in a constant state of heightened alert in his presence.

“Their marriage broke down. Ingrid could no longer stand living with him, or be a mother to his spawn; she left when Philip was still a toddler, going up north to her father’s hometown. But she quickly got involved with the gangs there and died in the crossfire a year later.”

They always fought about Philip, Edith told Mikasa. The child grew up looking exactly like his mother: all pale blond hair and light blue eyes. He looked nothing like Gerhard. 

“They’d get into these terrible fights, with Gerhard accusing her of being a slut who slept with some towheaded sonofabitch while they were going steady. Ingrid would yell right back at him, that Philip was definitely his son because she’d been too young and stupid to fuck someone else, someone more worthy of her. Their fights could be heard throughout the neighborhood. They were pretty violent with one another. And with Philip.” 

“Was Gerhard the father?” Mikasa asked inadvertently, despite believing it didn’t really matter.

“Pretty sure he was,” Edith replied. “Ingrid used to brag about having this handsome beau. She was really into Gerhard then, really enamored by him. One time, when they’d first begun dating, I caught them going at it in a back alley. Both squealing their heads off, like a pair of noisy jackrabbits. Come to think of it, in the early days they’d be fucking each other’s brains out anywhere and everywhere. You should’ve seen the look on Mum’s face when she found out!”

Sitting up on the bed, she leaned toward Mikasa. “I ratted on her,” she confessed in a conspiratorial whisper. The colonel could only stare.

Suddenly the girl convulsed in a fit of hysterical laughter. “Mum grabbed Ingrid by the hair and dragged her across the room. She threw her against the wall and started hitting her arms and legs, screaming at her, ‘Shagging a boy from a rival gang, how dare you?’ Ingrid fought back and they had this wrestling match. Really pretty funny, ‘cause they took pains avoiding each other’s faces. That’s when I knew I was in the company of good whores.”

The hysterical laughter got worse. “A good whore would never hit a fellow whore in the face, you see,” she explained to Mikasa between gasps. “Because sluts like us, our face is our fortune…” 

The girl laughed and laughed, tears streaming down her face.

When she finally quieted down she made another confession. “Was actually kinda envious of Ingrid, because Gerhard was indeed a good-looking guy…before the boozing ruined him.”

It was Philip who had to take the brunt of it all. Neither one of his parents could stand the sight of him, Edith recalled. As their marriage deteriorated, they took out their frustrations on their unwanted offspring. Gerhard despised the child because he looked nothing like him and reminded him of the bitch wife he had grown to hate, and Ingrid despised the child because he was the son of Gerhard, the good-for-nothing husband she had grown to hate.

“When Ingrid left, I hadn’t lost all humanity as to let the kid starve to death. But I didn’t want to—couldn’t be—a mother to anyone. Least of all to the spawn of two people I’ve no respect for and never liked.”

At that time Edith was placed in the caretaker role of her dying mother. The drug lord her mother was mistress to and who also owned the brothel was assassinated in a gang war. Her mother lost the brothel and they fell into poverty. To earn a living, Edith became a drug mule running county lines. But one day, when she was fifteen, Gerhard made an offer she couldn’t refuse. A businessman who hired him to do some dirty job every now and then spotted her in a tavern. 

“Turns out he was a dirty old man who had a thing for buxom young redheads with freckles and green eyes,” Edith reminisced, laughing contemptuously. 

She became the businessman’s mistress, with Gerhard demanding a broker’s fee and ending up becoming her pimp. It was a well-paying job, until she accidentally got pregnant.

“The man’s wife found out about me and the unborn baby. She demanded I get an abortion, and forced her pushover fucktard of a husband to offer money for me to do it. His wife had two kids of her own, one from my client and one from a previous marriage. Apparently the cunt was threatened by the possibility of my kid demanding a share of his or her inheritance when all grown up. Fucking bitch!”

“Do you want to keep the baby?” Mikasa asked.

The girl rolled her eyes, “Ugh, absolutely not! Don’t want the baby, never did. But that shrew of a wife made me so furious. I mean, who the fuck is she to demand I get rid of it? She’s got no bloody right! It’s my fucking life!” 

She sighed heavily, before making an admission. “At first I was thinking of having an abortion, but after that vile witch demanded I have one, I said to myself, why the fuck should I cave in to her ultimatum? Now I want to give birth to the baby, just to piss on her shitty face.”

She went on to explain how it was the abortion ultimatum that caused the fatal fight she had with Gerhard. He told her he knew she didn’t want the baby and was being stubborn out of misplaced pride. He said it was obvious she was keeping the pregnancy simply to spite the businessman’s wife. He insisted that Edith take the generous money on offer, of which he’ll have his share, of course, and just do as his client’s wife demanded. It was Edith’s refusal to acquiesce that led to their violent altercation.

“It’s not just about saying fuck you to my client and his nasty wife. I’ve a couple of friends that got abortions and turned out fine. But one of the girls in my neighborhood—her name was Ursula—she was my age when she had an abortion and she fucking bled to death on the quack doctor’s table,” she shuddered, recalling the event. “I mean, I don’t want to fucking die that way, you know…”

Mikasa listened to the woebegone story and wanted to weep. How ironic life was! Those who wanted babies couldn’t have them, and those that didn’t want them got pregnant by accident. What a cruel, mocking, indifferent world.

“Do you plan to raise the baby?” she asked the girl softly. Edith was only sixteen, a drug addict to boot. How could she ever manage?

Again, the exasperated teenage eye roll. “You kidding me, Colonel? I can’t even take care of myself. How the fuck am I supposed to raise a kid? Was thinking of leaving the baby at the orphanage. Heard there are childless couples that go there to adopt one.” 

It must have been the stricken look on her visitor’s face, but Edith had a change of tone and asked gently, “Do you have any kids, ma’am?”

The woman people called the Angel of the North shook her head. “My husband and I have been trying, but none so far…”

“What was it like, your childhood?” the girl asked all of a sudden.

Mikasa told her of an idyllic childhood in a remote village at the outskirts of Shiganshina. Her parents were dirt poor but doted on their only child. She had many happy memories of growing up with them. 

“Did they wallop you? I mean, hit you whenever?”

“No,” Mikasa replied honestly, “no, they didn’t. I got scolded sometimes, but neither of them hit me.”

“So they exist then, parents that could raise a kid without smacking them.”

Mikasa nodded. 

“And your husband?”

“Jean’s father and two older brothers died in a carriage accident when he was still a toddler. His mum raised him by herself. She spoiled him silly, adored him completely. We visit her in Trost during the holidays, and every once in a while she comes to the capital to see us. She’s fussy sometimes, but kind and well-meaning. Plus, she’s a great cook.” 

Mikasa wanted the girl to know that whatever her mother-in-law’s shortcomings were, she’d most likely make a far better grandmother than Philip’s had ever been.

“Philip’s been thumped up so many times,” she informed Mikasa, “by his own parents. I remember Ingrid hitting him when he was just a baby, when he wouldn’t stop crying and she couldn’t figure out a way to make him. Gerhard too, he’d slap him whenever. Eventually, Philip just stopped crying. He still cried, but without any sound. He just got whacked all the time I think he found a way to have his spirit leave his body while his parents were taking it out on him.”

What a terrible past. Mikasa wanted to cry for all the pain the helpless child had to endure.

“I hit him with my slipper, too,” Edith admitted candidly. She was just thirteen, she told Mikasa, when Ingrid abandoned the toddler, who was only three. 

The girl didn’t know what to do with her nephew. His grandmother, who was still alive then, refused to acknowledge him as her grandchild. All Edith could do was save a portion of her own meals or pilfer food from the pantry to hand over to the child. She’d bathe him when he reeked so bad she could smell his stench from a mile away. 

Each time she saw Gerhard they had a screaming match about what to do with Philip.

“Philip kind of raised himself, basically. Sometimes Gerhard left food money when he was sober enough to remember there was a kid in his house. I’d take the money and buy him bread and clothes. But I had to work for a living myself. I couldn’t look after a little kid. Didn’t want to, either,” she told Mikasa, bluntly. 

Mikasa clasped her hands together, focusing on her thumbnails to keep from crying. No wonder Philip ate like a wild animal: no one bothered to teach him table manners, or take care of his basic needs for that matter. He had skin rashes like she’d never seen. She and Jean took him to a doctor and even he was shocked at the degree of neglect the child had experienced. Two of the fingers on his left hand had been broken and set so badly he’ll have to suffer the disfigurement for the rest of his life. Edith herself had only been a young girl at the time.

“Philip just annoyed me sometimes,” the girl confessed. “He’d look up at me with those big blue eyes of his, begging for a bit of tenderness or affection. I couldn’t give it to him. He reminded me of myself as a kid, when I’d be going around in circles trying to please my impossible mum who played favorites…I was like this dog who gets kicked constantly by its owner but still keeps on coming back with its tail between its legs. Philip brought back unwanted memories of my unhappy childhood. So I hit him with my slipper. I wanted to tell him, I’m not your mum, don’t expect me to love you or take care of you…”

Mikasa fought back the tears, thinking, it’s the cycle of violence. The abused become the abuser, and on and on it goes, ad infinitum. But here was this girl, sick and injured and pregnant, confessing to a manslaughter charge. What happened, really?

“Philip says he was the one that threw the knife, but you’re taking the blame to protect him,” Mikasa informed her.

“Lying little brat!” the girl spat. “Philip couldn’t hurt a fly! He’s just trying to be heroic. Tell him to stop being so fucking ridiculous. Dumbass kid. Of course ‘twas I who threw the knife!” She glared at Mikasa for emphasis. 

“I see,” Mikasa acknowledged. Despite everything this girl has been through, she’s still trying to do the right thing.

“I’m glad you’re adopting Philip,” Edith said, changing the topic. “Haven’t met your husband, but you both sound like kindly folk. I know the kid can have a better future, just by you taking him out of that hellhole of a neighborhood.”

“When my parents died, a good family took me in,” Mikasa told the girl. “It made a huge difference in my life. I’d like to pay it forward now that I’m able to take care of a child. My husband and I adore Philip. I can promise you he’ll have the best future we’re capable of giving.”

The girl nodded, looking content. Her next words made Mikasa’s heart soar.

“Won’t you adopt my baby, too? I mean, he or she is Philip’s cousin. Well, half-cousin. Maybe it’ll be good if they grew up in the same nice family…”

“We’d love that,” Mikasa replied, eyes brimming with tears of joy. “Jean and I would be so honored.”

A few days later they used their authority and influence to have the girl transferred to the military hospital in the capital. She feared for her life, Edith told Mikasa. When the businessman’s vindictive wife heard of her refusal to get rid of the baby, rumor had it she hired a mobster to carve out with a hacksaw the unborn child from its mother’s womb.

Edith Bauer didn’t mention that she’d been involved in a recent gang war that saw three mobsters and a cop dead, and that there was a price on her head by the rival gang. But no matter. The girl was in trouble and she was Philip’s aunt. They wanted to help, especially since she had promised them her baby.

But a month and a half later, Mikasa came home crying. She sat Philip on her lap and told him the terrible news. Edith Bauer prematurely gave birth in the hospital. She died at childbirth. The baby was stillborn. 

“Was it a girl or boy?” Philip wanted to know.

The tears were in free fall. “She would have been your little sister,” Mikasa replied, hugging him to her chest, laying her tear-stained face atop his small head.

The two held each other, weeping together, grieving for what might have been. When Jean came home that night he found mother and son dozing on the easy chair in the family room, faces red and puffy from the torrent of anguished tears.

---

“The doctor gave many possible reasons for the failed birth,” Philip told Prince Eren. “Aunt Edith had been addicted to heroin, she’d been very careless with her health, and so on.” 

The prince gazed at him. “But you know it’s not just that…”

“It’s not just that,” Philip confirmed. “When my father and aunt fought that cursed night, before he grabbed the fire iron he kicked her real hard in the belly. She fell crashing to the floor, screaming in pain. And then he grabbed the fire iron and started swinging it. That’s when I threw the knife.”

“You were very brave,” Prince Eren said.

But Philip shook his head. 

“Honestly didn’t want to kill my birth dad, I swear to the gods. Never meant to. Didn’t want to kill anyone. Really just wanted him to put the fire iron down. My aim was bad. T’was was an accident, Len, believe me. I felt sorry about what I did and regretted it ever since. But when my new mum came home crying from the hospital and told me the bad news, all I could think of was…”

The prince quietly laid a comforting hand on the other boy’s shoulder.

“T’was his kick that did the baby in,” Philip said with conviction. He himself had been on the receiving end of the man’s boot many times, and knew just how much it hurt. For a pregnant girl it must have been worse. Mikasa was devastated and heartbroken, he told the prince. But all he could feel was a deep-seated anger. 

And then he turned his face to Prince Eren and told him something he had never told anyone, before or since. His clear blue eyes turned opaque, hard and unforgiving. 

“I should’ve killed him earlier, Len. I should’ve fucking killed my asshole of a birth dad long before he had the chance to kick Aunt Edith in the belly.”

Prince Eren put an arm around his shoulder. “Shh, shh. You’re not a murderer, Philip.”

Closing his eyes in concentration, the prince went on, “There’s something else…a dark blob…the color of dried blood, and shaped like a…what is it?” The prince shuddered, feeling the other child’s incredible pain. The shape of it was quite obvious. But he wanted to hear it from his friend.

Biting his lower lip to keep from weeping, the other boy shook his lowered head.

“Tell me. I want to help you,” Prince Eren said, insistently.

In a whisper, Philip replied, “I’ve nightmares sometimes. The dark blob is Aunt Edith’s baby. It’s saying to me, why did you let me die, why didn’t you protect me…” A sob ripped through his chest. 

They were sitting on the steps of a gazebo along the Carp Pond, part of the palace’s southern gardens. His small shoulders shook as he laid his head on his friend’s shoulder.

“Shh, shh…,” Prince Eren whispered back, keeping his arm around the other boy. He let him cry for a while and then, in a whisper, “Philip, you know that I know things, don’t you?”

The blond boy, sniffling, nodded.

“Will you believe me when I tell you it wasn’t your fault? That you did the best you could? That you couldn’t have known your father would attack the unborn baby? You didn’t even know your aunt was pregnant.”

Philip stared at him wordlessly. The prince had that look on his face again, that peculiar look carrying the wisdom of a thousand years. It made even grownups slack-jawed when the prince spoke with that expression on his face.

“None of it was your fault, you know,” Prince Eren continued. “Others would have froze on the spot. But you did what you could. It didn’t work. Yet you tried.”

“I failed, though. Feel terrible about it. Don’t know what to do…”

“Uncle Levi told me about paying it forward.”

“What’s that mean?”

“You couldn’t protect your aunt’s baby. It’s in the past now, and there’s nothing you can do. You can cry and scream and pray, but it won’t bring the baby back to life. What you can do is protect another baby. In the future.”

Philip turned the idea over in his mind. It made sense. “That’s what I’ll do,” he said, resolve in his voice, “in the future.” He looked at the prince. “Thanks, Len.”

Years later, when Philip came of age, he realised that his memory of his aunt was an idealised version of who she really was. She had been his very reluctant guardian, and barely showed him familial affection or tenderness. But he thought well of her because, after his biological mother abandoned him, she was the only one among his relatives who seemed to care whether he was dead or alive. When push came to shove, it was Edith Bauer’s calm, calculated reaction to the accident that steered him to his destiny.

It was thanks to her that he made it to the Port of Shiganshina. It was he himself that ultimately chose the ship that would lead to his life-altering meeting with Jean Kirschtein. But it was his aunt who pointed him in the right direction. For that, Philip would forever be grateful.

As for the baby in the future whom Philip would pledge his life to protect, that is a whole other story.

Thank you so much for reading! Please consider sharing a thought or two in the comment section below. Your comments give me life and are a real source of encouragement. xoxo, hana

Next – Chapter 19: Joy of Baking

Back – Chapter 17: Prince Eren