A Soldier's Silence

Warnings- Language, dark thoughts, idk 5 year olds beware etc.

For once the world is quiet... No titans barreling through walls, no aching screams of denial as someone's world collapses when that familiar face is so still and cold.

In a world where you have to watch your comrades and friends choke on their own blood as their bodies are devoured by disgusting monsters on a daily basis, the unusual silence is off putting in more than one way...

There aren't any distractions to keep you from remembering the nightmares that keep you awake at night, the nightmares where you have to re-watch everyone you love and care about die as you flail helplessly. I hate this silence that fills the air and suffocates me.

My nails dig into the pale skin of my arms and I will it to break, to burn and ache while blood blooms and wets my skin. I've always been helpless… How many times have I watched my comrades and friends die as they're devoured by titans?! How many times have I sat on my ass as it happened?! What good am I as a soldier if I'm always being protected?! Squeezing my eyes shut I refuse to let the hot tears pooling there fall.

I don't deserve the right to cry. To wallow in self-pity when so many others have died for my sake. But no matter how many times I tell myself this and no matter how hard I dig my nails into my bruised skin the tears still find a way to slip through cracks and holes and streak down my face.

I am weak.

I am weak.

I am weak.

I'm an insult to those who have died fighting to live because I live wishing to die. I am not cut out for this life.

I am a coward. I am afraid, I am always afraid. I don't know how everyone else lives with this smothering, vile fear. But then again, they don't really live with it do they… Everyone self-destructs eventually. Everyone has their own sick, unhealthy way of projecting this fear.

But I can't take it. The feeling of watching someone die stays with you forever, something that can never be healed or forgotten, and it makes me sick to my core. This gut wrenching anger and sadness that I can't do anything about, it gnaws at my insides and floods my veins like poison.

It is not in my nature to yell and scream and get viciously angry, but when the world is quiet like it is now and I feel so fucking helpless I really want to get up and just let some of it out. Punch a wall and break my fist, shake someone by their shoulders until they're bruised and try to make them understand, do something just so I've done something!

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH! AAAH! HUUU, HUUH HUUUUUH FUUCK!

Instead I just sit here, hot tears leaving tracks on my cheeks, screaming at the world but not uttering a sound.

I am weak, I am a coward, and I am so very afraid, but no matter how many times I lose hope and yearn for death, I won't leave. Not yet, not until I'm gasping for breath and can't move a fucking toe, not until I've lost my legs and arms, and I've exhausted every option am I allowed to die.

It's not that I'm living for my friends, no matter how much they care about me, if it came down to it I know they would leave me to die, that's just how this world is.

But behind all of my selfishness and fear, I still want to live. Even when I've offered to sacrifice myself the desperate urge to live grips my heart and burns. Because when you strip a person down all they really have left is the raw instinct to live, to do everything in your power to keep breathing to see another day.

I want to see this shitty life through, and to take as many of the damn titans with me. So I'll fight in whatever way I can, even if I'm just a weak coward, because I want to live.

And I don't give a shit how contradicting that is because in the end humans are really just selfish creatures looking to extend their expiration date.

So this is kind of a drabble that I did in the hopes of trying to vent some frustration. In my opinion the narrator is Armin. But you guys may see someone else so feel free to interpret it as whoever, this is actually my first (posted) aot fanfic even if it is just a drabble so I'd love it if you would leave a review on what you thought of it.:)