𝙃𝙚𝙧 𝙁𝙤𝙧𝙜𝙤𝙩𝙩𝙚𝙣 𝙋𝙖𝙨𝙩 || Eren Jaeger

𝒏𝒊𝒈𝒉𝒕𝒎𝒂𝒓𝒆

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ON THE OTHER side of the wall, Levi feels his blood run cold. Every bone in his body is submerged in ice and he can't move, because all he can stare at is the massive nuclear cloud rising into the sky from inner Shiganshina. The steam is aggressive, snuffing out the light. He's seen a good many titan explosions in his lifetime, but none have rocked his core like this one.

The Colossal Titan... he's able to think after a minute of blankness. There's no doubt about it— only the colossal can announce its presence this catastrophically. Levi swears his stomach has knotted itself up— he tries to push down the nausea. There's no time for meltdowns. That he is well aware of. But still...

The odds of the squads having survived that are not in the Survey Corps favor.

And Johanna... if she buckled to her duty and followed orders how Levi specifically told her to do, then that means...

Levi's legs struggle to support him. He drops on all fours on the roof of the house he's been using as his post. As his body paralyzes with dread, as his mind slips away from sanity by the second, his eyes are ironically stuck staring at the shingles, and for a moment he finds himself admiring the architecture.

But no. He snaps back to reality. Or is it a nightmare? It might as well be. Because if Johanna is dead back there, then this is a nightmare he can never wake up from.

But deep inside he knows he's kidding himself. His life has been a nightmare since day 1 when he was brought into this world. It's always been a long slumber, a gray limbo of suffering. Meeting June... becoming a father... those were the only two things that made it feel like waking up. With them, his eyes were open to a better reality. Life was actually worth living.

When June died... Levi knew. He knew he was on the way to being thrust back into that nightmare, and he landed crashing into it when he had to give up the last thing he had; Johanna. Life had pushed him back to square one. Everything after that was a bleak lull. Just a shell of the man he used to be.

But then... as if by mercy of the universe, Johanna found her way back to him and restored him. He had a second chance to escape the nightmare again. To breathe, to feel alive, to actually recognize himself not as an automatic killing machine, but as a person.

Have I lost her... again? He wonders. It is only his consciousness now— his body, the world in motion around him— he's detached from all of it. She wanted to help me. If I had let her do what she wanted.... Did I just send my daughter to her own death?

So life has stolen what he cherishes for a second time... How is that fair? How can life give you back your heart just to rip it away from your hands and bury it?

Levi hears voices, but not words. The sounds are underwater. He isn't sure if they are in his head, or if it's the soldiers a couple yards behind screaming and crying.

Levi snaps out of it and he notices there are now wet dots on the shingles, most of them dried. It looks like tears, but he doesn't recall crying. He might've, though.

A faint whistling— the sound of impact before it happens— makes him look up. Hundreds of rocks the sizes of meteors are flying through the air towards the houses. His breath hitches in his chest and he shields himself somewhat with his blades, but when the rocks bullet through the vicinity and he is left unharmed it is pure luck. He looks around to see the houses further destroyed and blood staining the alleys where soldiers once stood. The recruits in the far back wail louder now, scaring the horses into a panic.

The Beast Titan claws into the earth to get a handful of more rocks. If Levi squints and tilts his head, it almost looks like he's smiling proudly.

Levi made a promise to kill this freak of nature. He's going to need the killing machine side of him now if he wants to come out of this and see for himself whether Johanna is alive or not. If that means reverting back to that murderous shell of a person just for the moment, then so be it.

I'm going to slaughter this thing, he thinks and grits his teeth, if it's the last thing I do.

꒰ 🥀 ꒱

I look around the inside of the titan's stomach. It's musty and dank. The inside of my mouth tastes metallic— most likely from having swallowed blood...

Parts of people float around me. Heads, and legs, and shoulders with severed arms. Except...

I look closer. The gasp never leaves my mouth, it stays petrified in my lungs. They are all Eren's...

A head bobs slowly over and I see it about to turn over so that it faces me. No... I try to close my eyes but it doesn't happen. My eyes are peeled against my will, forced to watch. I'm about to burst with the speed my heart is racing. I don't want to. I don't want to. I don't want to.

The head rotates. Eren's contorted face is stiff, mouth pulled open into its dying scream, the whites of his eyeballs peeking through the half shut eyelids.

My own scream wakes me up. I sit up and look around. I'm in a sterile room, on a hard metal table.

Hanji is standing by a sink with her back to me. She appears to be lining up some medical instruments.

"Hanji... what happened?" I ask.

"What happened?" She repeats. Her voice is as sterile as the shiny white floor. When she turns around she is holding a scalpel. "You forgot, is what happened."

"What do you mean? What did I—" something surges up my throat. I cough it up in pints. Looking down at the splatters on the floor, I see it is blood. "There's something wrong with me..."

"Something's very wrong with you." Hanji approaches me slowly now. "How could you just forget?"

Liters of blood pour out of my mouth. "I don't—" I choke. I try to catch it with my hands but it gets all over me. "I don't know what—"

Suddenly she's right next to me and I'm fighting her off. She's got her forearm in my neck trying to push me down and I'm holding her other arm back as she tries to cut open my stomach.

"Hanji! What are you doing?" I shout, trying to keep myself sitting.

"YOU SELFISH, STUPID BITCH!" Hanji's voice isn't her own. It is Eren's. "YOU FORGOT! YOU EVIL LITTLE GIRL!"

"Get off! Stop it!" I say but my voice is a choked gargle. More blood.

"YOU IGNORED IT! YOU IGNORED IT!"

A pair of hands come out from behind and push my shoulders down. I slam hard against the metal bed, unable to fight back. It is my father holding me down, his face rabid.

I writhe around as Hanji pulls up my hospital gown. The blood in my throat chokes me. The scalpel digs into my stomach and—

I wake up in a cold sweat.

꒰ End of Chapter 15 ꒱