Author's Note: I know that I haven't finished my most recent fanfic for Persona 4, but I'm posting this just so that I can start getting it out there since I've been talking to a lot of people who wanted to read it. Anyway, this is a story full of sci-fi and drama and ruminations on humanity and so forth... My usual fare. It's on a sort of alternate continuity from the main timeline of SnK, and I'm trying to keep as many manga spoilers out as possible, but some might creep in anyway. Anyway, enjoy 'The Walls are Walking', my first Shingeki no Kyojin fanfic!
Attack on Titan belongs, of course, to Hajime Isayama.
Sometimes I have dreams of flying. The center of the propulsive force is cinched around my waist, and it changes direction so abruptly that my legs have been numbed to nothingness, and every so often gravity grabs me back down again, but still, I feel like I'm as airborne as any bird or bat or bug. Utter, complete control in all three dimensions… or at least in theory, anyway. I'm clumsy, but I'm learning. I can hear someone grouching behind me to pick up the pace as branches whizz by my cheek, but when I turn and a pair of hands catch my wrists for a joint maneuver, it's the best feeling in the world. We're a team.
We're still a team when our swords get tangled up in the swing and miss the target. We're even still a team when we end up rolling together, sprawled out on the forest floor, with the instructor bawling at us to get off our asses and try again, to get it right, or we'll be scrubbing toilets all evening. We're a team because as I force my aching knees under me to lift my body and its heavy gear up, my partner slings my arm over his shoulder, helping me stand. And in the next pass, we perform the formation perfectly. The cleaved-off slice of wood goes flying into the underbrush. We land, our arms still linked, and he claps me on the back, saying in his loud, blunt, brash way, "That's the first time I've gotten this right with anyone! Marco, I swear you're my lucky charm."
And then I wake up.
Before I open my eyes, I always hear the beeping of the monitoring machines at my bedside, reminding me of where I am. More often than not, my bandages are itchy. Nurse Karla changes them while I'm asleep, and the new ones take time getting used to. At first, they're crisp and dry, but the steam from the biochemical reactions roiling underneath in my wounds usually moisturizes them quickly.
"You're a very lucky young man," the doctors keep telling me, and they're right. I'm one of the first successful human trials of Titan Industries' rapid regrowth technology, the Regenerative Human Induction Matrix. So I make sure to smile to everyone, especially Doctor Jaeger, every time I have a visitor, to show how grateful I am, and how proud to be on the vanguard of research and medicine. My itchy bandages are a badge of my service to humanity. Someday, anyone will be able to grow back a whole half of their body, the same way I did. I'm honored to be a test subject here, and not just because it means I have a second chance at life. I'm here to give other people that chance too.
Someone is knocking at my door, and I say, "Come in!" in as cheerful a tone as my scratchy throat can muster. A large chunk of it is steamy new tissue, after all. Hannah, the intern who looks after me, enters with a little baggie full of fluids to hook up to my IV stand. "Lunch?" I say. It was meant to be a joke, but the young redhead doesn't smile. She has a stunned, almost catatonic expression.
Hannah had mentioned before that she volunteered at this hospital because her boyfriend was one of the patients in the RHIM labs. Like me, he lost a whole section of his body – in his case, the lower half. So I think I know what's bothering her. "How is Franz doing?" I croak.
"You're very lucky, Marco," Hannah tells me. Her words are high-pitched as if panicked, but her tone is blank, emotionless. "Has anyone ever told you that?"
I want other people to heal like I did, but it doesn't always work out that way. Hopes are high in this wing, but success rates are low.
"Hannah… I'm… so sorry." I reach out a shaky, bandaged arm in an attempt to console her. All I can hope is that she doesn't resent me for living while others die. "I thought his prognosis was good!"
She jerkily shakes her head. "They had to cancel the experiment… Something went wrong with the…" Then she clamps a palm over her mouth and a few tears trickle down her cheeks and over the back of her hand.
I watch her change the sac on my IV, with my most sympathetic eyes. Or, eye, rather.
"I just need to tell you that… I'm not going to be sticking around at the hospital much longer," Hannah adds. "So you'll be getting a new intern to take care of you after I leave. I'm sorry, Marco."
I don't blame her. Trauma latches onto location, sets of sensory details. It's the reason why, even though I can't remember my accident, certain things always trigger fear in me. The smell of rain on cobblestones. Earthquakes, or any other kind of vibration in the ground. It makes me wonder just what happened to me. No one here seems to know the details.
I motion her to come closer. She doesn't hear me the first time, and I have to repeat myself. "Why always an intern?" I manage to wheeze. It confuses me why an experimental procedure with such lucrative potential would be left so often to nurses and volunteers.
Hannah shrugs. "Maybe because we're expendable," she says. I'm pleased to see her making an attempt to joke, even if it comes out sounding dead serious. And I'm curious about what went wrong with Franz's treatment, that they would pull the plug on him so fast, but I don't get the chance to ask because she moves for the door, and my voice is spent for the day.
I wonder what my new caretaker will be like.
In time, the bandages are soaked with hot mist. I lift my arm up, checking to see if the lump of flesh at the end has developed more of a five-fingered form under its wrappings. Nothing so far, but I try to look on the bright side, which is the only side I can see out of, incidentally. There's a patch over my right socket. Underneath it, a new eye is forming. That's the miracle of RHIM – the Titan procedure, as it's commonly called. What's even more impressive is that all the energy for the reactions comes from sunlight, or, specifically, UV rays. That's right – the same things that cause sunburns and skin cancer can be used to regrow organs. Amazing, isn't it?
Every day, I'm sedated and wheeled into a special sterile room, wearing a lead blanket over my uninjured parts, and then all the bandages come off. Four hours of exposure under a high-powered black light. That's all my body needs for another day's worth of regrowth.
I don't get much sleep otherwise, so it's under the black light that I usually have my flying dreams.
Jean Kirschtein had his swords up and his trigger fingers were just itching to send out the 3DMG cables to the nearest tree. Not towards the Titan that was currently stomping through the forest underneath their tree, mind you. No, that was certainly not the direction than Jean was yearning for. The suicidal idiot right next to him, however…
"Why are we just sitting here?" Eren Jaeger demanded, his face a rictus of constipated rage. "The Aberrant that nearly killed Astrid is right below us! If we don't kill it, our inaction could cost us a life!"
Or spare one. "Remind me who's in charge here," said Jean, under his breath.
Technically, no one was, but among the newer recruits of the Recon Corps, there was an unspoken hierarchy. Whoever had the most Titan kills was the de facto leader. Eren had an enormous count from his rampages as a Titan, of course, but Jean refused to acknowledge that fact. After all, stomping around punching things that were at the moment far weaker than you didn't take much skill. And with the wounded Astrid at none, and Eren at just one (as a human), Jean was pretty much the boss.
"I can see its neck! It would be an easy kill from this angle!" The boy lifted a hand to his mouth, ready to bite down. "If we don't want to take risks, I could just turn into a Titan and rip it apart!"
"Who's. In. Charge here?" Jean repeated, savoring the words.
"I am," said a voice from above.
Jean gulped. Of course, it had to be this guy, come to rain on his parade. The one whose self-proclaimed job was to never let Eren out of his sight. And apparently he was making good on this promise.
Captain Levi came whirling down like a buzz saw. Below them, the naked body turned sharply, the blank eyes lifting to see death raining from above. The Aberrant might have been faster than most Titans, but it had never met Levi before.
Most Titans that met Captain Levi only met him once.
The twin blades easily sliced through the Titan's neck and hewed off a large notch of flesh. It had always unnerved Jean how the Titans rarely made a sound when they were killed. You would expect a scream or a wail, as from any slain beast, but Titans seemed disconnected from their bodies. They just fell, like a gentle, welcoming sleep had hit them, and then they slowly decayed into smoke.
Levi swung himself back up and slid to an easy halt on the branch that the tiny squad was huddling on. He gave them all low-lidded stares before pointing through the forest with one of his blades. "I could have sworn," he told them, "that the rear right flank was that way."
"W-we got separated from the group!" squeaked Astrid. "And it's all my fault! That Titan smacked me into a tree and the other two stopped to help and…" She clapped a fist over her heart. "I am a complete failure as a soldier, sir! Please punish me as you see fit!"
I didn't stop because I was being selfless, Jean thought. I stopped because I'm a selfish bastard who can't handle a little sacrifice from other people, because it brings up too many bad memories. So I did it for my own good.
"Do you know what a failure as a soldier looks like, Leeds?" Levi sheathed his swords and stood over the injured young woman. "Dead." He leaned down and looked Astrid Leeds in the eye. "Are you dead yet?"
"N-no sir!" shouted Astrid, struggling to stand.
Levi nodded and turned to Eren. "We'll have a fresh horse ready for you when you reach the formation. Kirschtein will carry Leeds back to the supply wagons in the center squadron. That's where we're putting the injured soldiers, where it's most heavily guarded."
"But…" Eren looked shocked. "How did you find us all the way out here, Captain?"
"I used my nose," said Levi cryptically. He took a running leap off the branch and began to speed off through the canopy.
Jean hefted the wounded girl onto his back, scowling. "Come on," he said. "We'd better catch up or else we're Titan food."
"Are you sure you can take her to the supply wagons all by yourself?" asked Eren, pausing with his fingers on the cable triggers. "It's a heavy load."
"Screw you," Jean muttered, and flung himself, with Astrid clinging to his shoulders, into space.
This second scouting mission into the wilds enclosed by the forsaken Wall Maria had not gone as badly as the one in which Annie, in Titan form, had attacked the squad and torn their formation to pieces, but they were still getting hammered by Titans from all sides. They were a smaller group, more suited for stealth, but there was always the fear of the other two Titan Shifters exploding out of the trees and smashing them to pieces. The only thing that kept them going was the hope of reaching Eren's hometown, Zhiganshina.
The whole purpose of the mission was for Eren to reach his basement, and discover what secrets his father had left for him there about the Titans and the power to transform into one. Which was why it looked so bad when Eren had been separated from the main contingent, along with Jean and this Astrid girl, who did not seem to have the emotional stamina to be in the Recon Corps in the first place.
Jean couldn't bring himself to resent the injured girl on his back, however, for endangering the mission. It was the Titans' fault, as always.
They were making good time flying through the trees, even with the extra load that Jean's 3DMG had to bear. Jean was one of the most skilled of the new recruits with his gear, second only to Mikasa, even if his fighting ability was only average.
"Jean!" Astrid pounded on his back weakly, trying to get his attention. "I think I saw a black flare behind us, to the right! There's an Aberrant that way!"
"Good thing we're headed away from it, then!" Jean shot back, managing to get a decent slingshot effect from a pair of thick giants. The trees in this forest were tall as buildings, perfect for the maneuver gear.
"But that means we're already ahead of the rear flank! If the supply wagons are going through the center of the woods, then we've missed them already! We're going the wrong way!"
"Don't be stupid," said Jean. "Commander Erwin wouldn't bring the wagons through the forest. They've got to be off to the east, where the rest of the formation is. Only the rear flank was going through the woods, remember? To increase our chances of escape if the Shifters showed up?"
Astrid pointed down. "Well, if the supply wagons aren't going through the woods," she yelled, "then how come there are so many Titans heading that way?"
Jean felt his blood freeze as he looked below himself, midflight. Pink bodies were ponderously stomping underneath them, like a herd of giant grinning sheep. How did they mass so quickly? They were like dumb animals, so how did they so often end up in seemingly organized groups? Was it true that Erwin had changed his tactics, and the Titans were just being drawn towards the larger, slower squad as usual, or did they somehow know where Eren was supposed to be?
"An Aberrant!" screamed Astrid. "Look out!"
Jean changed direction so fast he felt the whiplash in his bones. A giant hand was swinging out of the trees, aiming directly for the two soldiers. Jean felt its skin ruffle by his hair as he dodged around it, his heart pounding like it was about to burst with terror. And then the full Titan came into view. It was an especially ugly one, even more malformed than usual, with a mop of dingy brown hair and a head seemingly on a permanent tilt backwards, perpetually gazing at the sky and blindly stumbling forward in this bent-back position, its arms outstretched. Which was frustrating, because it meant that its weak spot was folded away in the fat flesh. There was no way that Jean could have taken down this one.
He felt a wrenching jolt around his waist and his body seized up as it swung out of control. The Titan had caught one of his cables. Jean heard a shriek and the pressure on his back lifted as he was yanked upwards. He twisted his head, flinging out an arm to try and catch Astrid, but he was too slow. As the injured blonde fell, a stream of sparkling tears traced her wake, shaken loose from her cheeks by her terrified writhing.
"Astrid!" Jean screamed, but there was no hope for her. He turned away, his features contorted with misery, praying that Astrid would break her neck when she hit the forest floor. A clean, sudden death was better than being in agony as the Titans maimed you and tore you apart.
Every time Jean saw another soldier cut down, he was reminded of Marco. He hoped in every irrational way that his friend had died quickly, without much pain or fear.
But he couldn't spend too long grieving right now, because the Titan still had a hold on his left cable, and Jean was swinging around in a wide arc, thinking to himself that if he didn't get free of this grip somehow, he was going to be eaten alive. He would be dangled over the hideous, up-turned face like a candy apple and dropped into its maw… Would it be better or worse to be chewed before being swallowed? Eren had mentioned – and he would know, wouldn't he? – that being swallowed whole meant you boiled alive inside its belly, but Jean didn't want the crunching of his splintered bones to be the last thing he heard.
And then, as the Titan's face drew nearer, Jean had a frightening idea. It would cripple him if he did break free, but it would mean he would break free, wouldn't it?
He raised his right hand, the razor-sharp steel sword glinting in the light, and then slashed down at the cable with a yell. The first strike drew sparks, but the line did not break. The second strike left a dent in the braiding, and with the third and fourth slash, the line snapped, and Jean was hurtling away from the Titan, flung by centripetal force.
Now with only one cable functional, Jean struggled to cast it out as he flew backwards. The first few time he shot it out, it grabbed at empty air, and when it finally hooked itself on a branch, it yanked Jean upside-down, sending him tumbling at an odd angle towards the ground. He crashed through the canopy and landed on a patch of moss with a pained grunt, rolling out his momentum as the cable retracted itself.
There was the taste of blood on his lips; he thought he might have bitten his tongue as he fell. His legs ached, his lower pelvic region hurt like crazy, and all the breath had been knocked out of his lungs. Wheezing on his back, Jean tried to lever his upper body off the ground. One of those damn branches had cracked him on the head, too, and the ringing in his ears was making him nauseously dizzy when he tried to move.
But he had to move, he thought in a panic. Otherwise he'd be an easy target for…
The ground was shaking.
A slow, heavy tread was approaching, rumbling the earth, and Jean couldn't even sit up, let alone run. Dammit! He didn't want to die like this! Inside, he was sobbing with fear, but still he struggled backwards towards the tree line, one pained inch at a time.
Marco… he thought helplessly. I hope to God there's room in Heaven for a beastly coward like me, because… I need to get the chance to see you again.
A shadow fell over the clearing. Jean could barely see through the haze of red mist in his vision, but he discerned a figure, tall as the trees around them, and there was a crunch as it knelt on the leaves.
Jean kept staring at it, frozen, expecting any moment to die. It was massive, at least the size of the largest Titans that he'd seen on this mission. And it wasn't one of the awful, deformed, bulging ones, with their wide grins and huge blank eyes, but it was perhaps worse to see something looking so human devouring its smaller kin.
This Titan had dark hair and its skin was oddly missing in places, in large patches over its shoulders and legs, and in tiny rows over its soulful flesh-rimmed eyes and along its cheeks.
Its behavior, too, was astonishing. It didn't seem to have noticed Jean yet, and instead of lumbering about as the normal Titans usually did, it lay down on the mossy ground with a colossal thump and then, soaking in the sunshine like a happy cat, it stretched and yawned. Its massive limbs crunched against the trees around the edges of the clearing.
Was this freak Aberrant Titan going to take a nap in the middle of the forest? Jean didn't dare sit up, for fear of his clanking gear alerting the Titan to his presence. He lay as still as possible, trying to keep his breathing in check. There was still a mad chance that he could pull through this. Keep it together, Kirschtein. You're too cool to die today.
He shut his eyes, trying to envision his deliverance from this nightmare. Perhaps Eren and Levi would realize that he was in trouble? Yeah, like he wanted that death-seeking creep to be the one to rescue him. Eren might have been humanity's greatest asset at the moment, but he was still a total prick who didn't deserve half the attention he got. At least Levi had earned his respect by actually being good at what he did.
Either way, someone was bound to come here, right? The road was just nearby, and so a couple of scouts with the gear would be flying along and they'd swoop down and rescue Jean before that Aberrant got up from its snooze…
Yeah, who was he kidding? There was no way anyone was going to find him. His only hope would be to shed his gear and sneak away from the Aberrant before it noticed it wasn't alone, and that there was a tasty snack lying on the ground next to it.
Jean reached down to unclip his harness and opened his eyes. And then he had to bite his tongue again to keep from screaming.
The Aberrant Titan was kneeling next to him, looming over him, its face shrouded in shadow. It had moved with incredible stealth; there had been no indication that it was getting up, no hints that it was moving. Jean dug his fingers into the moss, petrified, as the face leaned closer towards him.
Blood was trickling out of the corners of Jean's mouth. Why do Titans show such fascination with their prey? he thought. Why do they linger before devouring us? It's like they enjoy our pain! For the first time, he thought he could understand why Eren hated Titans so zealously. If Jean was the type to harbor mad, suicidal rage, he'd be right on board with the idea.
The Titan reached a massive hand down, pinched the front of Jean's shirt between its thumb and forefinger, and then slowly lifted the frozen soldier up, inspecting him curiously. As the Titan tipped its head up and the ground rushed away from Jean's dangling feet, a huge face came into view, illuminated by the dappled forest light.
Jean stared. And stared. That's not possible, he thought. I'm hallucinating. I'm hallucinating that it looks like him, because I think I'm about to die.
The Aberrant tipped its head to one side, considering the human in its grasp.
"Hey!" Jean yelled, desperate and hoarse. "What the hell are you looking at?"
But the Aberrant Titan showed no sign of understanding. Its eyes were blank and doe-like like that of all the other Titans, and it was faintly grinning the way that so many Titans were, but Jean felt his heart skip a beat as he stared at that goofy smile, those freckled cheeks.
It can't be…
The Titan dropped him.
Unable to reorient himself, Jean landed hard on his behind, and spat out blood. He scrambled to his feet, adrenaline spurring him on, unable to process what was happening before his eyes. The Titan was turning away, still dreamily smiling and swaying, and then it trudged off into the forest.
The shocked young soldier was still standing there, mouth open in amazement, when two scouts from the rear right flank swooped down from the trees and rescued him.
Design for Titan!Marco inspired by drawings from: scoutology . tumblr . com (Black-Sis on deviantArt)