A Devoted Heart (Attack on Titan // LeviHan) - Part 2

The 14th Commander of the Survey Corps

This sheet went on... this pile. This one... on... this? No. It didn't. Where was the pile for government relations again??!

"Shit," Zoë exclaimed with a flash of irritation and shoved the pile of documents in front of her so hard it slid off the table, the pages scattering all over the floor with a gentle rustle as if to mock her.

"Bullocks," she swore.

She went down on her knees to collect the documents back into a "needs to be sorted" pile. Her damaged eye shot spikes of pain into her brain. The struggle to adjust to a one-eyed life was real; her neck was painfully tense from turning her face this way and that to make up for the loss of vision in her left eye. And her ears... the constant buzzing was becoming a real nuisance.

For hours she had been in the Commander's office at the Trost headquarters, trying to get a grip on her new duties as a Survey Corps Commander. She missed Moblit like crazy. By the Walls, it gutted her to recall his face the moment he had pushed her down that well to save her from the Colossal Titan's heat wave... the knowledge that he was about to die in his eyes... joined by the deep satisfaction to see her saved. Had she told him enough times how much she valued him? Had he understood how grateful she was? How easy it was to take people for granted. And then suddenly, they were gone and...

... emptiness. Pain that sat deep in your chest. The feeling of being strangled by grief in your throat. It was so damn hard to get up in the morning.

She had received at least one hundred applications for a new assistant already though she had advertised in the newspaper only three days ago. Maybe a mistake: a mere civilian was probably not suitable to assist her in the long run. She should just have asked someone suitable. Like...

There is nobody.

Nine including her had returned. 199 had perished. Their flesh was devoured by roaming Titans by now. Their regurgitated bones would be picked clean by scavenger birds and then bleached in the summer sun - just like the bones of their horses. Memorial stones needed to be erected for their fallen comrades as soon as they were able to get to Shiganshina again, Zoë knew.

Nine Survey Corps members. Two veterans, seven recruits. Celebrated heroes. Retaking Wall Maria was one of the biggest successes in the history of the military branches... but was it really? The knowledge they had recovered from the basement in Shiganshina was a blow to the gut.

She had read Grisha's notes many times since coming back - Zackly had been happy enough to leave the books in her care. She knew the words by heart by now. The path. Subjects of Ymir connected through the Coordinate, all of them capable of transforming into Titans. Humanity had not perished like they had been made to believe.... there were lands out there where many other people lived in luxury, with wondrous things such as photographs.

Since making everything public like Queen Historia had insisted, a huge number of men and women had signed up for the military. Yet, it would take years to train them. And... train them for what? To kill other humans? As the 14th Commander of the Survey Corps, she had to ready her soldiers for a new kind of fight she was sure could not be won. If only their sole enemies were Titans whom they knew how to handle... Had they not always believed they were fighting for survival, for freedom, for a better future? Now they knew they were considered to be a race of demons by the civilized world out there.

The only thing keeping outsiders from invading them was the threat of millions of gigantic Titans inside the walls that could be released by the Founding Titan at the first sign of aggression. Zoë shuddered at the thought. Grisha had claimed that the Eldians of old had used the power of the Titans without mercy to subjugate the world. Until something had happened a hundred years ago, compelling the Eldian King to move his people to this island and lock them behind Walls, wiping their memories in order to make them compliant and complacent.