The day Wall Maria fell to the Titans, soldier Arden Keiser selfishly chose to save herself. She disobeyed direct orders and abandoned her role within the Garrison Regiment, taking the life of another as she did so. She made an attempt to escape fro...
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Time thought it amusing how hopeful humanity could be.
Humanity genuinely believed that a brighter day awaited them. They were naive enough to believe that through determination and perseverance, through countless drops of blood, sweat, and tears—freedom would come.
But that had never been the case.
Humanity could work all they wished to. They could produce as many soldiers as they'd like, and next kill as many man-eating beasts as they can, but ultimately, every life lost in the process would be lost in vain.
The truth of their world is simple; Time is in control. Time has its cold fingers wrapped around their destinies. It grips onto everything it can. It is Time who chooses to drive humanity into pits of despair, and it is they who relish in their grim misery.
Humankind foolishly believes it is they who carve their own path. They think that through countless drops of blood, one day, their people will live peacefully. They will feel the sunlight on their skin. They will dance through open fields and laugh as blades of grass whisper at their feet. They will taste freedom in the air and will never again have to see blood stain the soil.
That dream of theirs—that wish to live without fear—it's only a dream. No matter how many expeditions their soldiers endure, no matter how many lives are sacrificed, humanity will never win their war.
Time commands the past, the present, and the future. Every event, catastrophic or sweet, is a result of Time's craving for despair. Time revels in the show humanity puts on when facing death. In this sense, not only is humanity imprisoned by the Titans beyond their walls, by the nation beyond the ocean, but humanity has simultaneously been trapped by Time to act as entertainment.
They live like livestock and cry as a bird trapped beneath the surface.
Humanity has made many fruitless attempts to escape the hell that is their lives. Their countless expeditions and their many pointless military brigades have resulted in the deaths of far more men than they'd like to admit. The countless dead, the soldiers who died pointlessly on the battlefield... But yet, their commanders and captains appear blind to how pointless those losses were.
The military has always implied that any life lost on the battlefield would serve towards a greater purpose, towards an eventual victory for mankind. Of course, humanity is wrong to believe that any life lost is one that would amount towards any sort of victory, because as Time dictates, victory will never arrive for humanity.
In that sense, humanity has been doomed ever since the beginning of Time, just as history has been doomed to repeat itself ever since then.
Time has always known the path humanity would have to take, or of where their destinies would lead them. Time was fond of its previous creations, of the events to have happened in the past, and so Time always found itself weaving past events into mankind's future, forcing history to repeat itself.
When a former criminal is forced to join the military, another criminal is fated to fight for the same branch only a year later.
When a woman is placed on trial for her crimes against humanity, a young boy receives the same fate five years later.
When Wall Maria falls, when countless lives are lost to humanity's enemy, it all happens again five years later.
Of course, not every repetition is the exact same. Some victories are failures in disguise, which Time repeated often. It adored giving humanity high spirits, for when it came time for despair to return, the tragedy was far greater. Humanity's hopes and dreams, once lively and bright, would be crushed in an instant.
How adorable was it that humanity had hope? That they believed they would live peacefully one day?
Time reveled knowing that it was in control, knowing how easy it was to tear humanity apart. Time dreamed of the day to truly destroy humankind. In fact, Time had been planning for many centuries now, and that day would soon arrive for those living within the walls.
From the far distance, Time watched as another sun rose. The people went about their days, knowing no better than to follow their routines and hope for a brighter future.
Mankind truly is naive.
It was always Time who was working against them. It was Time that held their existence in the palm of its hand. It was Time forcing history to repeat itself, causing death to reoccur, and causing children to be reborn. It was Time who had been putting humanity in agony with every second that passed by. Try as mankind might, their futures cannot be altered from the massacre that it was destined to be.
And following over one-hundred years of peace within humanity's walls, following one-hundred years of searching for brighter futures... Time decided on that very morning that it was time to weave despair into their destinies once more.
It was time to begin Time's true attack on mankind.
The Fall of Wall Maria.
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PART I - TIME
"Time is free, but it's priceless. You can't own it, but you can use it. You can't keep it, but you can spend it. Once you've lost it you can never get it back." Harvey Mackay
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-A/N- 893 words
i combine spellings from both the manga and the anime. for example, i prefer the spelling of mike to miche, but i prefer ackerman to ackermann, or hange to hanji.
