Another Story: After Autumn (Attack on Titan AU)

The Man in Her Dreams

The stench of blood was pungent in the air.

It was a rite of passage. One couldn't call themselves a soldier until they go through their first expedition, and return. Unfortunately, her friends couldn't pass the rite.

It was a hard fact to believe that even after all those years spent in training, nothing could ever truly prepare her for the horrors that lie beyond the walls.

Gurgling screams rippled from all around, steam curling to veil and hinder visibility. Dead weeds crunched beneath boots with each step, and all she could feel at that moment was the sheer fear and panic that ran amok her entire body as she stumbled over the corpses of her friends, their limbs scattered in a gruesome painting in the middle of a forest, surrounded with towering trees.

A name left her lips, breathlessly, as she waded through the steam from titan carcasses, desperately looking for him. It was a name she could not clearly hear with her own ears, despite her constantly yelling it with her entire lungs—all she could tell was that her voice shook with every shout, trembling, cracking, as if she was losing her sanity from the massacre she just witnessed and holding on to that dear name was what kept her sane. In a way, it was.

Then, a firm grip latched on to her arm and whirled her around, and she came face-to-face with someone.

Blond hair, striking icy-blue eyes that held genuine concern—he felt foreign, and yet.. familiar.

He pulled her into a tight embrace, as she sobbed in his hold.

And strangely, in a manner that only the heavens could reveal, she found solace in his arms.

The scene shifted, but the same picturesque blue sky, green skyline of nature, blood-stenched air and screams of soldiers remained—the only difference was that the screams were not filled with terror, but bravery and determination as the same blond, older and more mature, led an entire army against a horde of colossal monsters.

"ADVANCE!"

His order to charge echoed across the battlefield, invigorating every soldier as they tore through the grass with their horses.

And then in the blink of an eye, she watched with horror-stricken eyes as he shoved her off her horse, protecting her as death leaped in the form a monster, and getting ripped from his horse as a result of his sacrifice.

Again, she called out his name in panic—a name that she still could not hear. It was as if his name was deliberately being blurred out, muffled, garbled, drowned by water in some cruel attempt to prevent her from ever identifying him.

She could not have his name—but some still voice at the back of her head was telling her, repeatedly, she knew him. She knew of the sense of comfort and security his presence gave to her otherwise bleak world, she knew that there was something between them, and most of all, she knew that this man was important to her, just as she was to him.

Another scene. It was another charge, led by the same blond man, the last charge he would ever get to lead, and it was the last time she saw him before death.

"My soldiers rage—!"

Isanna finally jolted awake from what felt like a dream of an entire lifetime.

She squeezed her eyes shut, hand shooting up to press firmly against her temple as her head throbbed in pain.

A dream.