Creedence: An Attack on Titan FanFic

Chapter 43: Choices

Erwin and Ruth awoke the next morning, still a tangle of naked limbs from their love making the night before. She lay on her right side, snuggled up in the curve of his left shoulder with her hand resting on his bare chest as he lay on his back. Her leg was wrapped over his and his cheek rested against the crown of her chocolate curls which were a tangled mess laying out in a disarray over his shoulder and on the pillow they shared.

The first light of day shone through the cracks in the faded white curtains covering windows, the golden glow breaking through the crimson blush of dawn and highlighting the couple who were already radiating from within. The sunlight just provided a visible representation to their equal and shared glow.

For Ruth, she had never known such bliss. She had taken a young man as her lover when the two had been awestruck clueless teenagers. It had eventually become pleasurable, after the two learned the ways in which to please one another. But in the end it was a fleeting romance. She had dreams rooted in a real future helping others while he was content coasting through life in the interior living off of his noble family's money.

For Erwin, he had known sexual satisfaction during his youthful affair with Marie. Erwin and Marie had an off and on again fling throughout their late teenage years and into their early twenties until he had chosen to be a Scout over being with her when she had given him the ultimatum.

So the two of them weren't virgins and were not strangers to the pleasures of intimacy. Yet what they experienced together that night, neither had ever known in the arms of anyone else before.

It was rapturous, euphoria that extended beyond the touch of their bodies, down to the depths of their very souls. Their souls intertwined as their bodies connected, both lost in the throes of pleasure as they came together as one.

For something they both realized afterwards as they lay snuggled together and began losing the fight against the pull of sleep, was that they were undoubtedly one. Erwin knew that no matter what the future may hold, he could never be without her again. He knew he was no longer falling, for he had already fallen. He was madly in love with this woman and it had all happened so fast, too fast, but had happened nonetheless.

So when they awoke still huddled together, he made the decision then in that moment, he would ask her to marry him once they returned from the operation to retake Wall Maria. If he survived, and if she would say yes, he would devote himself to her entirely. But he had something to do first, something to prove and he knew that he could never truly give up on his lifelong goal. But perhaps then, once he had the answers, he may be able to hand the role of commander down to Hange.

He would talk to Historia about perhaps retiring to an administrative role like Ruth had mentioned. Hange could be commander with Moblit still as her trusted second and of course Levi at her side same as he had been at Erwin's. Erwin would walk away from the Scouts for Ruth, but only after he achieved his goal.

As they sat up and began getting dressed for the day, Ruth found herself in a battle between her happiness and her renewed worries.

She knew now she would be beyond devastated if she were to lose Erwin and that was a very real possibility in the near future with the mission for Maria. Try as she might to force those thoughts from her mind, they kept managing to barge their way back to the forefront. She felt a physical icy grip around her heart as her mind forced her to picture herself sitting by his headstone, not even having a body to bury or burn, only a bloody patch handed to her by Levi.

She audibly gasped at the thought and Erwin was at her side in an instant.

''What's wrong?'' He asked her, wrapping his arm around her and pulling her suddenly trembling body flush against his chest. She wrapped her arms around him and buried her face in the cloth of his white button up, trying to find her voice and failing miserably.