A Note from the Author: Welcome, everyone, to Part II of The Burning Titan!
Hopefully you're not new to this but if you are, I heartily recommend reading Part I in order to have any idea what's going on. :) Also, you should probably be aware that this is AU from both manga and anime, and may contain manga spoilers!
With the obvious exception of the Burning Titan concept and my original characters, I own nothing! All else of Shingeki no Kyojin / Attack on Titan belongs to Hajime Isayama.
And last but not least - please review! It means a lot - don't just love me and leave me. ;) I'm grateful to hear anything you have to say. Enjoy!
Chapter 1: The House of Heaven
Marco had managed to get all the way to the Carello ranch in his Titan form, having toned down the flames covering his body to practically nothing. Now that they stood in the overgrown courtyard, he crouched and laid the unconscious Mercedes in the grass before shivering violently and letting his body dissolve into ash. He heaved himself backward out of the dry, chalky nape of his carcass' neck and took deep gulps of air, getting his bearings. He kept his eyes shut and covered his nose and mouth with a hand as his remains crumbled around him and clouded the air. Although it was something he'd never get used to, it was easier now than it used to be and for that reason, was easy to set aside in light of his more immediate concern.
He relocated her. The bangle on her right wrist glinted briefly like a firefly, beckoning him. "'Cee," he gasped and stepped over to her. It felt like he hadn't spoken in years.
Though it had pained him to do so, while he was a Titan he had taken the liberty of pulling the harpoon all the way through and out of her leg, and cauterized the wound to stop the bleeding. No doubt she had passed out from the pain, and the burns and bullet wound she'd sustained would still need attention. Despite his exhaustion Marco picked her up yet again and trudged toward the front door of the ranch.
"Hang on, I've got you," he said, like he'd wanted to say that moment he'd saved her back at the gate. She hung limply in his arms.
He looked up at the two-story, modest yet well-constructed building, taking in its stucco walls and tiled roof, its miraculously-intact windows. It was larger than he'd expected for a building out in the middle of a forest beyond the safety of the Walls; it had likely housed more than just Mercedes' parents and grandparents. It'd been locked up and vacant for – what was it that he had been told? – nearly sixteen years. Despite this, it sat against the gray early-morning sky and light of the low spring moon like the refuge Marco had hoped it would be. It truly seemed to be the House of Heaven.
"You're home, 'Cee," he whispered. "I've brought you home."
With difficulty Marco readjusted his grip and tried the door, but found it locked. He backed up a couple of steps and kicked it in instead. Though his body begged him to collapse in the entry foyer, he forced himself to step carefully over the threshold, holding Mercedes close, into her childhood home and push the door shut with his shoulder behind him. Several years' worth of dust assaulted him, even managing to drown out the perpetual ashy smell of his clothes.
As he walked forward, his eyes adjusting somewhat to the darkness, his bare feet were greeted by a rug that warmed the tile. From what he could tell, a little ways in on the right was a set of stairs to the upper floor; another wide doorway to his left told of a living area; he suspected the doorway straight ahead was to the kitchen. It was hard to make out any other details.
I need to lay you down, he thought, and took the stairs cautiously. They creaked, and he could feel the layers of dust powdering his soles as he ascended. Another hall immediately spread to his left and right at the top, and another was in front of him, which he took. Two doors either side, and the one at the end held a bathroom; he backed out of it and tried one of the other doors, and sighed in relief to find it was a bedroom silvered by the moonlight coming in through the two wide windows immediately in front of him.
The double bed in the middle of the room, in front of the windows, was made, pristine as if it'd been left mere days ago other than years. Another, smaller window was to his right, next to which was a cobwebbed rocking chair and a half-full bookcase, while on his left was a dresser and mirror against the wall. A chest sat at the foot of the bed and as he passed it, even through the dust he could see the floral carvings and the scripted initials 'A. U.'. He remembered his mother owning a similar, though less grand chest – finally putting two and two together after so many years and at the oddest of times, he realized it was a bridal chest.
Moving to the left side of the bed, he temporarily placed Mercedes on the floor, propping her against his legs, as he tore back the dusty blanket and the cleaner sheets underneath and flipped the pillow. This done, he laid Mercedes down in it and swatted away larger clumps of dust that had been flumed into the air. He glanced at the nightstand and saw a dry vase with dead flowers, a simple bead necklace buried under the fallen flower petals; the other on the opposite side had an open book laid face-down, a mug with a spoon handle sticking out of it.
Was this…her parents' room? Marco wondered. It looks like they were expecting to come back.
He took off Mercedes' torn-up knee-high boots so that she would be more comfortable and dropped them in front of the dresser. As he took off her gear harness for the same reason, his eyes passed over her, assessing her injuries: the harpoon had entered the top of her right thigh and exited at a lower point at the back, and what remained of her pants leg was mottled with drying blood and singed black where he'd placed his finger to burn the wound into a blistering, blossoming rose; her arms had streaks of lesser burns that overlapped into dark singe marks and holes on her tank top, likely from the jail cell door, while the left one had taken a bullet halfway up to her shoulder; a nasty-looking inch, nearly two inch graze clipped her upper right jaw, headed for her eye.
The rest of her was riddled with cuts, scratches, grazes and emerging bruises, tearing her clothes where they couldn't find bare skin. He'd be surprised if she also hadn't escaped with a broken bone or a dislocation after being dragged through the street like she had been. He reached out to trail his fingers over the older, star-like scar painting the right side of her neck and collarbone – it was nearly the size of his hand. Bits of debris were caught in her blood-encrusted hair.
Marco frowned deeply and his eyes watered; he felt her wounds – the old and the new – as if they were on his own body. Pain overcame him and made him lean over her, passing a hand over her sticky forehead. "Oh 'Cee, I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry," he whispered. He hadn't been able to hear much during his rampage on the gate, but he'd heard enough. "You didn't deserve any of that. I'm sorry for everything they did – I know what you meant, now, when you said they'd frame you – I'm sorry you were right. But it's okay now, we're away from all of that, from all of them. I'm going to take care of you." A tear dripped from his cheek to hers and he smudged it away.
Like a drunkard he stumbled out of the room and turned left, into the bathroom. He swatted away cobwebs from the porcelain and eventually located towels and washrags, but the plumbing was no longer functional. He kicked at the pedestal of the sink and left.
Although he intended to pass the room completely on his way to locate water, he stopped outside it. Part of him still couldn't believe she was lying there. It felt too risky to go downstairs, to leave her again. He stepped back through the doorway, the exhaustion creeping back up on him again and turning everything hazier than it already was, like he was in a dream. Maybe he should have a small rest, he reflected, particularly if he had to pry a bullet out of her arm or potentially reset any bones.
Marco walked to the other side of the bed and it took the rest of his strength to lower himself gently rather than collapse on it beside her. He reached for her nearest hand and held it, feeling the grit coating her palm. Though it was obscured by the smell of ash and dust he could still make out the faint scent of plums in her hair. As the quiet and the sleep settled on him like a heavy quilt, he turned on his side to look at the profile of her face – down her flat forehead and the short slope of the bridge of her slightly turned-up nose, the precise notch of her full lips…
If everything had been different, would this have been like our room? he wondered. Would I have been carrying her over the threshold as my... Would she have had a chest, too? He knew he was being indulgent, but he couldn't help it. Dreams like this had sustained him for the past couple of years, made everything he'd gone through and done tolerable. He knew they'd likely preyed on them in order to get him to do what they wanted – he, like her, had been used – but now here was a chance to start over and surely it was worth taking?
Images of his flaming hands, the melting gates, the trampled homes and corpses came back to him. His stomach clenched and he gritted his teeth. It hurt. All of it hurt. He looked up at the beamed ceiling.
He'd never wanted this; he'd tried to make the best of it. He'd only intended to do only what he needed to do in order to be allowed to retrieve and protect Jean and Mercedes, and that had resulted in only managing to find her and inflict twice the damage. It was catastrophic and it ate away at what little remained, he guessed, of his soul, and would forever. He'd been stunned by the ferocity with which he'd pursued Mercedes, the way he'd abandoned all reason, barely caring about the streets that'd once been home or the people that had once been his – how he'd gladly opened humanity's last doors to hell and insodoing not only shed blood himself, but promised only more to come. All in her name. What would she, or what would Jean, think of him now?
Furthermore, he wasn't sure what would happen now that he had accomplished most of his objective. Would they make him go back and finish the job? Marco was still worried about Jean – would they still keep their promise and allow him to keep Jean from harm? Or had the opportunity gone? The thought of leaving his best friend to die in the oncoming massacre was almost too much to bear. It had torn him apart to have to leave when he did, but – he told himself – if he hadn't, then even he and Mercedes wouldn't have stood a chance. He had to believe that Jean would survive until they were able to make a return.
Marco turned his face to look at her; the sight of her gave him rest but it wasn't quite enough. When her eyes opened again, what would their expression be? That mix of despair and fear he'd seen in the pantry, the jail? Or gratefulness, forgiveness and love? He wasn't sure he could live with himself if it ended up being the former. He'd relied on that one hope – that no matter what happened, at the end she would forgive him, and that they would have each other.
Marco squeezed her hand tighter, for strength. He turned his head into the pillow, and with a slow, deliberate, shaking exhale forced away the tension in his muscles. Tears escaped, and sleep rapidly took their place.
In her dream, Mercedes was back in the Sina library and in particular, the special research room where she had been sent by Zackly. Only this time the room was barren and dark save for the curtainless windows that allowed light from the blazing inferno outside to stream in, coating the floors and walls with their own dreams of fire. She stood immobile in the space, dressed in a long-sleeved, full length dress that she couldn't determine the color of, with her hair uncomfortably piled up on the top of her head. She had blood on her hands and it dripped from them continuously until she wasn't altogether sure that it wasn't hers.
It took an enormous amount of effort to get her bare feet to move. Mercedes took one laborious step after another until she reached one of the windows; the glass was hot under her hand. Outside the flames were everywhere, so tall and rich that she could barely distinguish the crumbling lines of the buildings.
I did this, she thought. I may as well have been the Burning Titan, not Marco. I've ruined everything.
She heard Commander-in-Chief Zackly's voice laughing at her. The windows burst and she stumbled back from the flying glass, protecting her face with her arms. Though she was sure she was struck, she didn't feel any cuts.
Some invisible force plucked her from the ground and she hovered in midair in the center of the room, watching as the floor became covered in the mutilated corpses of those she knew, like a veil was being drawn back from them. Mercedes saw her fellow members of the Western Division of the 104th, her reluctant friends from the Southern Division, members of the Scouting Legion, Marco, the Jaguar Squad, Jean, Julia…practically torn to shreds or contorted in unnatural ways, blood everywhere.
The exception was the girl, Krista – Historia. She sat atop the pile of corpses, a dirty fur-trimmed royal cape around her tiny shoulders and a rusted crown askew on her head. Her eyes were open and unseeing, and Mercedes couldn't rightly tell if she was alive or dead, or whether she pitied her or despised her, as if the carnage was somehow her fault as much as her own.
Worst of all, Mercedes couldn't scream, couldn't cry, couldn't move. Nothing was allowed her. She saw streaks of black – gear lines, thicker cables, smaller threads – shoot out at her from every possible angle and felt them impale her. She traced them as they flowed through the air with a mind of their own, as if they weighed nothing more than ribbons, and their ends fell in Historia's hands, her face still expressionless and her eyes closing. Every twitch and pull controlled every single one of Mercedes' muscles until she hung there helpless, a puppet in the hall of the dead and its queen.
Mercedes gasped as she awoke. Her vision took a moment to focus and by the second deep breath, her body was ignited with pain. The ceiling – a dull blue from darkness and moonlight – loomed above her in an oddly familiar way. She was in a bed, she realized, and turned her head slowly right. There was a nightstand – her mother's nightstand – and slightly beyond it, her parents' dresser.
The pain gave her spots in her vision, and her leg in particular ached with a burning fury that nearly drowned out the other injuries. She felt herself trying to slip back inside herself – or was it outside of herself? – though she tried to hold on a little longer and figure out how she could possibly be here.
I…I was born in this bed, she recalled. Was she still dreaming? She turned her head to the left, abruptly recognizing that there was a hand in her own.
Marco lay next to her, asleep, his mouth parted in his exhaustion. Upon seeing him, her teeth clenched as she remembered everything that had transpired at headquarters, on the road, at the gate. A new wave of a different kind of pain swelled within her, meeting the pain of her body and crashing together and squeezing until there was nothing of her left. She fell back into the blackness.
