This fic was 'born' after reading an amazing list of fics, when I began to wonder, 'What happened to those people in the other 'Titan-bait Districts' on the outside of Wall Maria? What if there were people there that weren't able to make it to Wall Rose in time?' That, combined with the prompt idea for and the fic itself - 'The Monsters are on the Inside' - ended in this story here.

List of recommended fics(in order of influence on this story): 'The Monsters are on the Inside,' 'Laugh all You Want', 'That Freckled Boy I used to Know,' and a few good quality OC Self Insert stories like 'Witness', 'Messed Rebirth', and 'Bloody Silhouettes.' And 'Attack of the Otaku,' because it made me laugh and want to write something.

I just gleaned ideas from key fundamentals in these stories, there should be no copying... I would hope not because otherwise I'm not aware of it. 0.o

I have included Hanji, Eren and Levi in the character list, however they will not be making an appearance for some time. There will probably be no pairings.

Disclaimer: I don't own Shingeki no Kyojin.

Mentions of corpses in this chapter! Nothing graphic, but if anyone is reminded of anything traumatic while reading, I apologise. Although, if you do find something sensitive in this, you probably shouldn't be reading SnK in the first place...?

~ Live To Regret This ~

Darkness. Warmth. No, not warmth. Hotter than that. A type of suffocating heat.

'? What…? …Where am I?'

Disorientation. Sensations washing over me in jumbled flashes, as opposed to a coherent sensory input. Something abrasive scratching against my skin, stabs of light, various wafts of smell. A groan tears through the relative silence, breaking in a manner characteristic of an unused voice.

I try to move. My body, do I even have one anymore? This heat, it engulfs me completely, searing through my entire being, or what is left of it. Struggling avails nothing.

Panic.

Wading through murky half-thoughts, I fight to the surface. Fighting to maintain this tenuous hold on reason I have unexpectedly gained. Why? Why do I feel this urgent need to attain sanity? Finally, the truth of my own situation dawns on me.

'… Ah. I woke up, huh?'

Understanding, resignation. I can name these things I feel. I get it now, the heat, why I can't move. But, that still doesn't answer why.

I try to open my eyes; my body doesn't react to the command. How long has it been since I slept this time? Can I even control my own self anymore?

Hours might have passed, possibly days, as I fought to control my body. It was difficult; I felt rather like a demon trying to possess another being. Gradually, my body stopped moving of its own volition and fell to my authority, which was relieving, to say the least.

Now fully aware of myself, I began to recall snippets of memories that had been reaching my consciousness in infrequent bursts for easily a period of months before I roused.

'Why am I awake? I didn't want to deal with this pain anymore…'

My vocal chords were raspy and stiff from dis-use; I could barely form a single word, unlike before… It was tedious, but to strengthen my own control, I spent many days and weeks re-teaching myself the basics of speech and written language. Well, what I could remember anyway, although that was a surprisingly large amount in itself. When I wasn't attempting to write, attempting being the key word, I walked.

I wasn't sure where I was going; yet I knew I had been heading in this direction for a long time now. My path varied; sometimes I headed towards the rising sun, and other times my path drifted in towards another direction I remembered to be north.

'What is there that I could be seeking?'

I knew I was following something, yet my human senses were unable to decipher the strange magnetic attraction I felt. Despite that, whenever the tug waxed stronger, my non-existent heart clenched in nostalgia and a mess of emotions threatened to choke me.

'Maa, this is too much trouble for what it's worth.'

Despite the difficulties I had to endure for the supremacy of my spirit, the outside world made up for it in full. The landscape around me was beautiful as I walked, untempered by strange phantom images of cities and behemoth factories pouring pollution into the wholesome sky that my mind kept projecting around me. I hadn't been able to help but stare in wonder for the first few days at the purity of this world. There really was no other word for it.

Grass crackling beneath oversized feet, the sun beating down on bare skin, the cool night breeze lifting tangled tresses of hair. The animals, the flowers, the trees, the streams and lakes; this whole world was painfully beautiful. It was almost enough to make me feel human again. Almost.

Only one thing in this world was imperfect. I didn't always come across them initially, but they became more frequent as I walked further. Those misshapen, grotesque beasts. 'Them'. And I as well.

I do not hate 'them', however; it is not their fault they are this way. These residual feelings of disgust and revolt towards 'them' must have lingered on from an earlier life. After all, these monsters do not intrude upon the world around them in any manner, keeping to themselves for the most part.

Every so often, I do come across one with more sentience than the others. However, I am usually forced to kill these 'deviants' - the word leaps unbidden to mind. They are the ones that are partially alerted to the fact I am, contrary to appearances, not like the rest of 'them'. It's a shame, really. They could have had the potential to wake up also. Well, if they hadn't come across me, that is.

I should imagine the person I was long ago would be appalled by such loose thoughts; but then again, probably not. I despise hypocrisy in every form, this much, I remember, has always rung true. I have always been aware of my every flaw and shortcoming; deliberately choosing to dig up my inner dark nature for closer examination, where other humans would be hurriedly burying, concreting, or sealing up their own demons, and then blindfolding themselves to their existence.

Pathetic. As if pretending they're not there will make them disappear. We are not children.

My thin lips pull up slightly at the corners as much as the taut skin would allow, a rhythmic rumble slipping through my teeth. My own cynicism has often been a source of personal amusement to myself, particularly the reaction of others to such a mindset. My amusement died upon realizing that I had let myself become caught in the past.

'Still, it's not like I'm a pessimist. I merely have one of the most level-headed and open-minded mindsets I've ever come across, in any of my lives.'

I hummed as I walked, various tunes rising from my memories to the front of my mind. I guess I must have listened to and sung them enough to recite them in my sleep at some time. Although, if I resonated with them half as deeply then as I did now, I could appreciate this.

My faulty vocal cords botched the words no end, but attempting to sing had been slowly making a difference to my speaking skills. It wasn't much, but being able to speak, regardless of how halting and slurred, warmed me inside.

'This must be happiness, maybe hope. Then again, perhaps it's contentment… Ah, it's been too long. Emotions are difficult.'

~Break~

I wasn't sure how long I had been conscious and wandering for now; but the earth had quickly passed from cool to snow, and then to fresh and new, followed too quickly by sweltering heat, and after a long time, back to the coolness I finally remembered to be 'autumn'. I figured it had to have been at least a year, since the seasons seemed to have cycled through, but it wasn't like I was in a hurry to get anywhere.

'Glad summer's gone, finally.' I had really disliked the high levels of humidity, and the ferocity of the sun. Compiled with my normally scalding temperature, I had been dying of heat. 'I was running out of caves to shelter in.'

Winter hadn't been of any particular hassle for me, as the snow had melted right off my heated skin; but summer on the other hand, had bothered and irritated me no end. I had, therefore, wasted a lot of the season hiding from the sun in large caves in the middle of the day, any that would fit my ridiculously large form, and I spent the time scratching out letters and words into the walls and ground. The lay of the land, much like the seasons, had changed greatly during my travels. I had to admit my deep gratitude for the caves.

There wasn't anything particular about that day; it had been autumn for over a month now, probably two. The wind tossed leaves around with fervour, swirling them through the air in beautiful chaos, and I was still revelling in the glorious cool following the heat of summer. The chill in the air heralded winter's arrival.

I had eventually noticed that the mysterious tug had, indeed, grown infinitely stronger as I had travelled, and my wanderings were mostly headed north to northeast by this stage. A strange feeling gripped me now, causing my blood to race and my head to spin, while also sinking hooks into my gut. Excitement, I finally recalled. With a touch of nerves on the side.

It was as I was rousing from a night's rest that I first saw it. I had cursed the solar-like capabilities of this body of mine ten thousand times over through the months, and was in the process of doing so again when something caught my eye. I raised my head blearily to look at whatever it was; even though we monsters are very lightweight, the lack of sun makes us intolerably sluggish in the morning.

'Titans,' I corrected myself. I wasn't sure from where the word had come, but one day it had risen from the murky swamp of my old memories, and I knew it was the name for our kind. I couldn't be bothered differentiating between them and myself anymore.

I stared blankly for a few moments, trying to place a name to what I was seeing; which was difficult, as I wasn't even sure what I was looking at from this distance. It was a line. A thick blurry smudge of grey stretched out in a line across the landscape in the far distance.

'… What the hell?' I elegantly expressed my confusion.

Perhaps it was an abyss, with a raised edge currently throwing a shadow? No, that wasn't right, the sun was still rising in the east while the line was north of me, stretching across from east to west. The sun would have to be rising from the north to create the right type of shadow for that. Also, ravines were rarely that long.

Could it be a mountain range? That also wasn't likely; mountains were of differing heights and never formed such a solid barrier like what that thing obviously was.

'… It must be something raised off of the ground, because it's certainly not a shadow at anytime of day. If I didn't know any better I'd almost think it was… a wall…'

I let out a sharp cry of realisation, indistinct images racing through my mind. It was a wall! I didn't understand why I was certain of this, but there was no doubt in my mind whatsoever.

When I thought of walls, many sensations washed over me. Constricting. Shelter. Penning. Politics. Community. Conspiracies. Safe. Danger. I figured I knew where most of the positive thoughts came from, but I was stumped at the negative labels. Yet I also intuitively knew they were accurate to the point of precise. My intuition had yet to be wrong.

'Well, I guess that's where I'm headed then.'

Call me stupid for walking headfirst into something I'd already perceived as a danger, but when I'd sat down and deliberated my future earlier, I had come to the realisation that I don't have anything better to do.

The wall was further away then I previously estimated, and it took many days just to reach it. As I approached, I found myself disconcerted by the amount of titans I came across who were heading in the same direction I was. They usually steered clear of me for whatever reason; to see them so fascinated by the wall was disturbing, to say the least.

Well, I should correct myself; it wasn't the wall they were interested in per se, rather, the humans that dwelled on the other side. I knew this now. The tugging feeling in my gut finally made sense. It was some kind of human-tracking instinct. The thought made me sick; I clearly had all the inbuilt functions needed to hunt and eat people.

As I flowed with the small group, I realised there was something wrong, very wrong, with the wall. The picture that flashed behind my eyes in an afterimage showed a flawless monument stretching off into the distance as far as the eye could see. This wall was wrong. How could this…? There was no way…

There was a hole in the wall. Well, considering the size of the wall, the hole itself wasn't that large; but that didn't seem to inconvenience the group of titans that kept flowing through into the land on the other side.

Shock. Disbelief. Horror. Sadness. I wasn't sure why I felt these things, but I was aware of something that confused me further. I had known this would happen; deep down, this wall I hadn't been aware of until recently, I knew it would be breached. And I also knew that this was something that should never have happened. I lamented humanity's loss.

'Which is pretty ironic, considering that to humans, there's absolutely no difference between me and the next man-eating monster.'

There was no point in wallowing though; I had already been left behind by the grotesque pack that had swarmed around me. Seeing no point to dally further, I too headed towards the wall.

'The breach is days, possibly even a week or two old, at most. No survivors.'

I sighed deeply, hissing out a puff of vapour between clenched teeth. With my 'Titan-Sense,' I could easily tell that there were no humans left alive here. The bloodstains I had found were all dried and brown, showing age. I was too late to save anyone.

'Well, it couldn't be helped, but that doesn't mean I have to like how it turned out.' I sighed again and rested my head back against Wall Maria, looking out on the Shiganshina district. That was one advantage of getting myself in the practice of reading and writing again; I was able to find out names of things.

I had spent many hours of the day gathering up the partial corpses that littered the area, gently laying them out on the ground in lines away from where I sat. I'd made sure to position them so as to be as far out of the sun as possible; waiting for it to cool down before continuing the grisly task.

'They stink like the dead… That's terrible; I should never make a joke like that again.' I snorted, lips tilting up in amusement, before returning to a more somber demeanour.

'Well, someone has to do this for them. They deserve honor and respect; that much, at least, I can give them. It helps that I have such big hands, the collecting didn't take that long.'

I rose and returned to the lines. Their numbers were definitely in the hundreds, possibly thousands; those people that lay stretched out before me. However, this was not yet my destination; I made my way to a large field not far from them. Choosing a spot as good as any, I began to dig.

'If there was ever a time I would be thankful for my claws, this is definitely it.' It was difficult work, digging a deep enough hole for all of the dead to fit in; there was a lot of them, after all. Finally satisfied with its depth, I started another, slightly smaller, hole next to it.

I wasn't sure how long I was digging, but there was no longer any amount of warmth to speak of in the air by now. There had also been no other sightings of titans since I started, the only ones I had seen were the ones entering the wall from a distance, and those that had walked near me. They had passed straight through the district and through the hole in Wall Maria's gate.

It didn't take very long to fill the large pit; I was simply loading my hands with those I had already found and carrying them over. I tried my best to be gentle with the bodies; it's very difficult when you're a good 14 meters tall with bodily proportions to match.

I felt an uncharacteristic sadness whenever I picked up the body of a child. They were even smaller and more fragile than the grown humans; fortunately, there weren't as many among their number as compared to the adults.

I gently set the last handful down and stood quietly at the edge of the mass grave, eyes closed and head lowered for a short length of time, before pulling the dirt over those within. I felt instinctively that such an action was respectful, no doubt gleaned from another life; I ruminated on this as I carefully packed the dirt down.

Standing slowly, I made my way back to what was left of the grotesque lines. I had realized, as I had been gathering the dead, that there were both soldiers and civilians in their number. It had been a long time since I had truly lived, let alone been human, but I felt that it was proper to bury the soldiers separately.

I noticed that they were wearing a strange sort of device and had an unusual harness wrapped around their whole body. As I inspected the contraptions closer, I discovered many to be damaged beyond repair, but amongst them were those that were in relatively good condition, all things considered. They usually belonged to those soldiers that had been beheaded with a bite, or killed through a second-hand reaction in response to a titan.

Almost every fabric part of the harnesses was damaged in one place or another, but it was much easier to find the metallic and more intricate parts in working order. I decided that the rope harness would be easier to replace than the gear, and proceeded to carefully slice through some of the harness lines in order to remove them from the bodies. I attempted removing the irreparable sets first, testing to find the least number of ropes to slice through in order for the apparatus to come away from the body.

I set aside those in better condition, and continued to remove all of the bad ones; these soldiers had died in duty, they had every right to rest in peace, this gear could only serve as a poor reminder of their past as their spirits went to rest.

I could tell that the sun was setting; the sky was darkening, and the air now felt cool, even slightly cold, to the touch. I quickly buried the soldiers and stood in silence for them also, standing longer as I apologised for my kind. At a loss of what to do with the dud gear, I stacked it in an orderly manner on their grave.

"Sleep…well." My voice rasped harshly, but for these dead, this was the last word of comfort they would ever hear.

My joints were beginning to stiffen slightly; it was time to settle down for the evening. I picked up the good gear and a few large slabs, made of a material I didn't recognise, that I had retrieved earlier from the town. I bent down and crawled through to the inner side of Wall Maria myself, sighing when I felt some fading rays of light touch my skin on the other side.

'The district blotted out more light than I thought.'

I made myself comfortable on the ground, humming as the sun continued to sink below the horizon, using the last of the light to see as I scratched at the slabs with my claws.

The next morning, I forced myself into alertness as soon as was physically possible; I had a long way to travel, wherever I chose to head. Titans didn't really 'sleep' as such; well, I couldn't exactly speak for the others, but for me, I went into a kind of meditative state where I was unable to move my body much more than an inch, left alone with my thoughts until sunrise. Floating in limbo, if you will.

'With such a glaring weakness, I guess it's no surprise I'm worried about venturing further inland. These humans aren't entirely helpless; only an idiot would think such a thing.'

I had seen plenty of unusual smears and residues on the ground, usually near corpses of soldiers; it was easy to put two and two together. The residue even smelt like titan. Simply said, humans were aware of our weakness, and had created a weapon very capable of slicing into us and removing that vital part. I had discovered that unusual broken metal strips lying around on the ground were, in fact, the remains of fairly lethal blades.

'When in the right hands, of course.'

I quickly ducked back into Shiganshina, returning once more to the burial pits. I studied the two slabs I held briefly, before stabbing them into the ground in front of the upturned earth, one before each grave. Satisfied, I left the district for what was, hopefully, the last time.

Outside, in the sunlight, I inhaled deeply, breathing the refreshing air into my lungs. Although I arguably didn't need to breathe, that doesn't mean I don't like to. It was more of an unconscious function really, a pleasant memento left from my time as a human.

It hissed back out between my teeth in a fashion similar to a train releasing steam. I lifted my head to the northeast, sniffing the air lightly.

I had no idea what the hell I was doing. If I had any semblance of survival instincts, I should be leaving this place, right? And yet…

I don't know what it was, but seeing all those stilled, unmoving bodies struck something inside of me. Humans are supposed to have a lively spark in their eyes, to be innocent and tainted, deceitful yet loving, to feel and show the full emotional spectrum. That was how I remembered them. And yet, seeing those previously lively faces stilled forever in expressions of horror, fear, and hopelessness…

'Ah, apparently I'm still an idiot. What could I, as a titan, do to possibly help this situation? It's a lost cause.'

And yet… I still put one foot in front of the other, following my previous course. After all, it's not like I have anything better to do. I just better live to regret this...

A/N: This is my first fanfic; I apologise if the chapter length is too long for some, you just have to get used to it. I just really needed to get my titan OC's basic background and point of view out of the way first up. This fic will alternate between points of view, and will be introducing OCs soon, and canon characters later on.

- Maa: A Japanese expression relatively equivalent to saying 'Well/Well then' at the beginning of a sentence

In case anybody is confused:

- 'This' is a character's direct thoughts

- "This" is normal speech

- "This" is titan speech (she, the titan OC is female, speaks once in this chapter)

- A line break indicates a small time jump or a change of pace.

- ~Break~ will only be placed where there is a significant time skip or major change of pace

Enjoy! Please fav or alert this if you like it, and please post a review! I work faster with feedback; and I would really like to know what people think of this so far~