AUTHOR'S NOTE: Holy shit... I was looking through the prompts for the '1000 Fanfiction Challenge', and came across 'Autumn'. A seemingly innocent prompt about the seemingly innocent time of the year where we transition from summer to winter. The leaves change color, the air gets a bit crisp and the teenage girls show us that, yes, they do in fact own clothing that covers their ass cheeks.

But holy crap, I wasn't expecting my brain to spit out... this. Well, hope you... enjoy?

In the Autumn, I got down on one knee and proposed to her. Her eyes, which were the same color as the leaves that littered the ground around us, shone bright with tears. Happy tears, and she said yes.

The following Autumn, we wed underneath the same tree I proposed to her under. Her hair was adorned with a crown of colorful leaves and the bouquet she carried held every color of the rainbow. She was the most beautiful woman I'd ever laid eyes on, and to this day I still think the same. She absolutely glowed as she walked down the makeshift isle, her heels crunching lightly on the few honey-colored leaves that had littered it since the ceremony began. And the way she smiled at me… God, I'd wished I could see that smile every day for the rest of my life.

It was spring when she told me we'd be having a child. I thought, at that moment, that my life could never get any better. Sure, I hated most kids. They were obnoxious brats and made a mess everywhere they went. But this would be my brat. My little obnoxious mess-maker. And the woman giving me this brat was the one I held dearest and loved more than anyone else in the world. I would cherish them both until the day I died.

In the fall, she gave birth to a healthy little girl. And it was perfect. She looked just like her mother, amber-colored eyes and hair that glowed like sunlight. We named her Aki, which I'd read in a book one time was a name meaning 'autumn' in some lost language known as Japanese. That same month, my wife grew ill, leaving me to care for Aki on my own. The doctors couldn't really say what was wrong with her, but she never really recovered.

The following year, in the fall, she died silently in her sleep.

It was just before Aki's first birthday. And I remember, instead of having a little party with the people we'd come to call friends over the years, we were attending a funeral. And instead of having people come to me and the little girl who squirmed in my lap and giving their congrats on her becoming a year old, they were coming with their condolences. It got to the point where I couldn't take it anymore, and I handed Aki to Erwin so I could go off on my own for a bit.

We'd buried her under that same damn tree. The one where I'd proposed to her. The one where we'd wed. It was now her final resting spot. The thing taunted me with its leaves that were the same exact shade as her hair was… before it had lost its luster and shine during her illness. Before it had started to fall out just before her death.

And then it truly hit me…

She was gone. She was really gone from this world. I would never see her again. All I had left to remember her by were memories, the greatest and most painful of which took place underneath this fucking tree. I'd suffer those memories every time I came to visit her from now on… and when I looked at our daughter, I don't know if I'd be able to stop myself from breaking down in sobs.

"Petra… why did you leave us…?"

Erwin Smith held his hand to his forehead to shield his eyes from the rain as he glanced at the old tree, now barren of all its leaves. It was a tree no one liked to go around anymore, which left the two little grave markers sitting underneath it to be neglected and left to corrode away in the weather.

The Autumn after his wife had passed away, Levi had hung himself from a branch of that tree. Erwin had been the one to find him the morning after, already cold and stiff from rigor mortis. Clutched in the dead man's hand had been a letter addressed to Erwin, telling him to take care of his daughter, Aki.

Erwin looked down at the little girl holding his hand in a vice-like grip. She stared solemnly up at the tree, as if she knew everything that had occurred underneath it, though she was only two when he'd been left to take care of her. She was now almost six and the doctors had declared her a mute, as she'd not said a single word since her father's passing.

He shivered slightly from the rain, and decided it was about time they head home. A recipe for a nice pot of soup already stirring itself in his mind, he urged Aki along and they walked the rest of the way home in silence through the Autumn storm.

AUTHOR'S NOTE: ...I'm so sorry. Please don't kill me.