Why
On the day they set out to retake Shiganshina, the sky is the bluest Erwin Smith has ever seen it.
The air on top of the wall is crisp and smells faintly of smoke. As he stands on the edge facing outward, the wind so rough it can blow away unprepared men – he's heard their screams like sharpening knives – Erwin wonders how many times he's seen this view and wonders if this will be the last.
The roar behind them is new. He's heard cheers directed at election victories and Military Police executions and distributions of surplus goods, but cheers sound different when directed at you. Raw. Energetic. Everlasting. Doubtlessly it's narcissism that propels him to wave back, and hasn't he long ago abandoned trying to win the support of the people? The near-sightedness of the old advisors are only rivaled by the near-sightedness of the citizens. A coup does not make the populace more prescient, more intelligent, more willing to sacrifice safety for freedom. Whether they're against him or with him, Erwin will always do what needs to be done.
But as he gazes down at their smiles and basks in their cheers, he secretly thinks it's about damn time.
He first realizes he is going to die when he loses his arm.
No, it is before that – he first realizes he is going to die when he sees his first Titan, a ten-meter class with jaws the size of windows, so close he smells the putrid vomit of half-eaten humans.
No, it is before that, too. Erwin Smith first realizes he is going to die when he sees his father's body lowered into its grave.
The day is warm. The priest's speech drags on. Only a few people show; a teacher does not rank high on the social ladder, especially one rumored to have died for heresy. There is the neighbor next door. The baker his father visited twice a week. A few brave alumni. A surprising number of Military Police are present, and amidst the prayers and suspicions and sympathetic looks, Erwin realizes he will die.
A man can live with only an arm. A man can live with the fear of Titans haunting his days. A man can even live four days without water and a full three weeks without food, his father tells him, pointing to the textbook. Now why do you think that is?
A man is sustained not by victuals but his mind. He drinks not water but knowledge. The refuge of thought that says there is greater meaning to life than constant shortages and constant fear, that there exists a history that isn't full of contradictions, one single answer to every question you have posed and will ever pose. What is death? The priest says it is one part of a greater journey. The baker calls it a tragedy. The Military Police deems it an unfortunate accident.
A child should cry at his father's funeral. A child should feel lost, miserable, afraid, shocked.
Erwin does not cry.
He does not feel lost, miserable, afraid, or shocked.
As his father's coffin vanishes beneath the earth, Erwin Smith, twelve years old, realizes that he will die, and he realizes what killed his father will also kill him.
In all his life, Erwin has lost only three times: a game of chess to his father as a child; a written exam to Niles during training; and an arm-wrestling contest to Levi.
The fourth time Erwin Smith loses, a hundred soldiers lose with him.
As he gives the recruits orders for the final operation, he marvels at how neatly they have been outplayed, how he has been outplayed – so expertly that he never even realized it until his soldiers exploded into messy chunks around him. He hates to admit it, but the Titans have a strategic mastermind on their side, whether it's Reiner or Bertholt or the Beast Titan or someone else entirely.
Goddesses, he wants to know. Even now he wants to turn around and ride his horse as fast as it will carry him to the Yeager basement. What secret history lies covered up by the royal family? Is there a world beyond the walls? Who created the Titans? How does –
You will die, he thinks as he says the last words he will ever say. Our fight gives meaning to those soldiers' lives. And you, and you, and so will I. That is the sole way we can rebel against this cruel world. Soldiers are so easy to trick, and he is a first-rate con man. We will die here and trust the meaning of our lives to the next generation. You will die in pain and in terror and in regret, and with your dying breaths curse the man who led you down this road. My soldiers, rage! My soldiers, scream! My soldiers, fight!
As Erwin charges down the prairie with a hundred dead men riding beside, he marvels that he believes every word he said.
It's strange what a delirious mind dreams of on the battlefield.
He is no stranger to delirium. He's heard soldiers cry for their mothers, their wives, their children, and once he has heard someone cry for a bottle of '86 Dalmore. But those cries, he suspects, are merely the tip of what lies beneath, a single spoken word that belies the chaos of thought, emotion, and memory that course through the brain in its final moments. He knows this because he is experiencing it.
It is true that your life flashes before your eyes when you die, but it is not so much a movie as a jumble of snapshots, some so short it ends just as you begin, some so long you wonder if it will ever end. Vaguely, Erwin is aware of his guts spilling out, of the slimy sensation as his fingers try to hold on. He sees the earliest memory from his childhood: riding beside his father on a bumpy cart. He sees Marie and Niles standing at the altar. He sees the peculiar shade of crimson that results when blood meets dirt. He sees Levi cutting down Titans like wheat, and it is the most beautiful thing he has ever seen. He sees the locket of his mother, he sees Keith Shadis ordering entire squadrons to their deaths, he sees himself ordering entire squadrons to their deaths, and he prays that it will end.
And it does end. The very last memory Erwin Smith sees as he lies clutching his guts on the rooftop where Floch has deposited him, as the heat from the defeated Colossus Titan ripples with the wind, as several feet away Levi and Eren argue about who to give the Titan serum – but of course he does not know all this, he has never known anything in his existence. As he lies dying, Erwin Smith dreams of this:
Summer. A classroom. His father lectures a group of uninterested students with the same enthusiasm he always gives, the same fervor. The question has already been asked; it can never be taken back, and even if Erwin can he won't. A horse-cart rumbles down the road. The classroom smells of hay; school will soon be suspended so students can help their parents harvest the crops. Erwin taps his pencil against his notebook. His friend is whispering something to him, some silly joke not nearly as important as that word, so small and unassuming, spoken countless times every day that now for the first time reverberates inside his skull.
Why?
Why?
Why?