Memoirs of the Lost Loser

Giving Up and Giving Way

Red skies had always meant doom.

The winds gather and bend to blend with those scarlet, ill-fated skies. Levi crouches beside you in feathers buckled with ropes. You run your hands over it— whoa... it is feather! Just what's going on?! Why are you riding on top of a big ass chicken in a rope? Connie and Levi, along with the rest's cooped in this chicken and even Pieck is here, and she's so pretty!

But that kid, that kid beside you... looks like... Gabi.

What is an honorary Marleyan— Sasha's murderer, doing beside you? Maybe you should push her out and be done with it. It's not like she's gonna die for real since this is a dream.

Levi's hand reaches to cover the back of yours. His cold, shaking grip tightens to assure you that everything will be fine. Safe is the last thing to feel in a situation where one wrong move and you're flattened down and charred stuck on those giants' feet. Those titan toes are almost circular; pushed short as close to the base of their foot like an elephant's. Little are their resemblance to human feet besides the exposed fibrous muscles which allow them to move. Now that you're thinking about it, they're designed that way because they aren't primarily made for walking; they were made for pressing and stomping as flat as their weight allowed them.

The wind overcomes the noise, its gusts are enough to knock you over by sheer force. The parts of your body that resisted made the wind deafening, like it was singing and howling songs of sorrows in your ears. Below sounds like hundreds of drums beaten simultaneously but with no rhythm. Are those trains? Gongs? No, you had to listen again— those are footsteps! Those are the sound of stomping, ton-weighed footsteps of those titans! They reverberate and leave a traumatizing echo in your head. You feel like when this is finally over, you're one of those people who will cower below a table when you hear a simple knocking sound.

And then flashbacks will play in your head as your psyche will try to save you from your own.

Weeping and muddled incoherent prayers plagued the low ground as multitudes were cornered, waiting for their deaths.

Wait... is this what you think it is?

This... hell unleashed in the world?

You have to remind yourself that this is a dream, or you might lose all sanity you've been struggling to keep.

You unclutch a hand from the rope, intently observing it. Dirty. Dirty, but surprisingly okay. Your knuckles hurt but aren't as exhausted when bent. Aside from that, it isn't as painful as you remembered them to be. There are remnants of past battles like this unfamiliar concave-shaped scars in your palm, and these ugly fingernails from the torture, but they're painless. Even the titan bite in your arm runs almost unnoticeable albeit a huge, faintly discolored scar. The remnants of your wounds from Trost seemed to have healed a long time ago.

Is this a premonition of sorts? Because the details of your wounds are misgiving.

The chicken starts to descend, as the wind changes directions of how it blew. The air is hotter in low ground and it smells faintly of salt water and bitter acetone; the kind when cats are run over and their organs pop in the middle of the street.

The ground shakes in an unfollowable beat, and it becomes more violent the closer Paradis' army of mindless titans get. You widen the scope of your focus, the steam seems to hide the details of their magnificent form, the titans in the horizon slowly approach.

And in the center of them all, is the lanky, inhuman form of Eren's founding titan.

Levi's pull is harsh, your vision briefly turned to a timelapse photo of a bolting something before it falls into his panicking features. He shakily cups your face, his hand with less fingers combs your hair. You flinch realizing how cold you are when his already cold hands are warm to your cheek. You've come to a point where you're not certain if the shallow, shaky breathing was yours or from Levi's partially opened mouth. There is this inkling that this time when both of you are together is running out, and this is his way of saying goodbye.