#1. blink
It's quick, but not quick enough for it to fly past him like the air his body slices in two.
There's a sickening crunch as Petra's insides paint a mural on the base of a tree that could have easily been anywhere else in the world, an acorn that could have sprouted a few extra yards away instead of smack in the middle of her path, and if it had, perhaps Petra would still be alive. Perhaps a few extra seconds to swallow her panic and jolt to her senses would have been enough.
But fate works like this, in sick predestination. Auruo swears the female type is smiling when it peels its foot away. Pale skin and pieces of fabric stick to its heel - bits of golden hair and scalp sticking to the hollows of its toes. Auruo feels like he's fallen down a flight of stairs; like someone's broken a wood slat over his head. He hears Eren behind him, making the sound he feels in his chest every time his eyes graze the mangled corpse below. A terrible, rending sound, the sound a body makes as its heart is torn clean out. Christ, it stings. It was painlessly quick, he knows. It was over before she could blink her tears away. The thought should give him comfort.
Instead, he feels now all the pain she didn't, and god, how he hates her for it.
How dare she. How dare she die now, die first, and leave him here alone.
Auruo isn't afraid of death. He's known he would die since day one. He's meant to die, meant to play his part as a pawn of the inner wall civilization. He'd fight in their stead, stain his hands black and red and clean up the messes they pretended didn't exist. Once he reached his capacity, he would die horribly, crushed, ripped apart, or eaten, and his family would receive news of their son's "honourable" death, perhaps his body, if it was still recognizable. His mother would cash a cheque from the capital with enough money to feed the family for a month, and his few possessions would arrive in the mail, arranged neatly beside a clean uniform sent to bury him in.
It's romantic of him, he knows, but Auruo almost enjoys the thought of dying. Not now, not here, but as a result of some heroic act; perhaps bleeding to death after sacrificing himself for the lives of his squad, dying warm in Petra's arms with her tears warm on his icing skin. He wouldn't live to see her marry someone else, wouldn't live to humiliate himself by drunkenly spilling his feelings as he'd almost done a dozen times. He would die so they could live on in his memory. Erd would live to see his child grow up. Gunter would keep his father company through the final years of failing health. Petra… Petra would be happy. And Levi – Levi would slay the titans, get the girl, and live happily ever after.
But it was gone now. Erd was skewered, Gunter dangled from a hangman's noose, Petra was mincemeat, and Levi wasn't in time to save the day. The thought is a slow burn in the pit of his stomach; a lump that shudders when he swallows it down. His chest's core feels mangled; the same kind of pulpy mess Petra's body makes, caked against the tree roots, drying in the sun.
Auruo has always been prepared to die, but never last.