Prologue:
...This was not how it was suppose to end for her...
A flicker of movement was all it took and the fifteen meter Titan caught them in its sights. There was a moments warning, Isabel twisted with her maneuver gear and shoved Edmund as hard as she could out of the way before the Titan's hand lanced downward slamming into the side of a building. The numbing force of the wind caused her to lose all control as she and her partner slammed headlong onto the roof of a house before flipping up and over the top, rolling down the other side. Instinctively, her limbs went limp as she rolled with the momentum off the roof and crashed onto the jagged ground of the avenue.
For a handful of seconds Isabel knew nothing of reality; badly winded, her head had struck the ground sending black and yellow spots across her swaying vision. Isabel raised a hand to her forehead and felt out the tender and deep gash that had opened up across her brow, now sticky and slicked with blood before tentatively touching her scraped chin; wiping blood from her mouth where her teeth had sliced open her inner lip, had she not been wearing her leather joint guards she probably would have broke something.
Before she was ready, before her vision had cleared, she caught a glimpse of a crumpled figure splayed out on the ground with their arms and legs in awkward angles and at that instant Isabel's heart sank.
"Ed." Isabel's adrenaline rose as the man she thought she had saved lay unmoving a few feet away. Shaking the wits back into her head Isabel stumbled mutely toward her comrade's side. "Ed..."
All the world was ablaze before Isabel's eyes as hot specks of ash and soot bit into her skin thrown down upon her like a vicious burning rain. The screams of those trapped within the clutches of them rose, along with the number of Titans that seemed intent on pervading every square inch of land. Yet for Isabel there was nothing but the immediacy of her own horror...
"Edmund...?" Her whisper hung in the coiling air unheeded as she dropped heavily to her knees next to him.
The protection of cover was no longer available to them yet the danger unbeknownst or uncaring to her had untimely ceased to exist. Gently, she lifted his head into her arm only to feel something very wrong and broken about his neck and his head lulled against her shoulder unnaturally. "…nonononono…"
"Isabel!" Turning, she saw Dean land right next to her, "I saw what happened and I came as soon as I could..." Dean's voice trailed off as soon as he spotted the pair, his dark brown German eyes grief stricken as he looked over Edmund, he turned to her asking what he already knew- what they all knew- "Is...he...?"
Isabel could only nod somberly.
Dean lowered his head mumbling a silent prayer Isabel could not hear before he turned back to her eyeing her injuries, "Are you alright?" Tentatively he reached up lightly pressing his thumb atop her bloodied brow, a faint chuckle was heard in his voice, "That'll be a really cool scar when it heals..."
Isabel didn't seem to share his humor as she lowered her head her voice barely above a whisper, "It's all my fault..."
"No!" Dean barked, his expression fierce almost angry as he spoke, "Don't you dare think that, Isabel! Don't you dare let that thought cross your mind!"
Snapping her head up to look at him, her light blue eyes burned with unshed anger tears, "But it is, Dean! He-"
"Stop it, that isn't true-!"
The next thing they became painfully aware of was the synchronized 'stomp-stomp' of feet, thundering loudly off the cobble street that led up to their location. Isabel slowly twisted her head around and, like something out of a horror story; The titans were heading straight for them, they were short; that was the first thing to come to mind – not that much over five meters– and very gangly, their limbs seemed to hang off of them and they were essentially skin and bones. A murderous glare was shown on the fifteen meter titan that lead the shorter ones and Isabel's heart hammered in her chest on the realization it was…
…A Shifter.
"C'mon!" She heard Dean order, "We have to go!"
Staring down at Edmund who's head rested atop her lap, the tips of her fingers gently stroked his long golden locks as she whispered, "Forgive me, Ed." Lifting her eyes to meet Dean's Isabel gently placed Edmund down before turning and pressing the button to release her grapple hooks but found the mechanism was unresponsive.
"What is it? What's wrong?" Dean asked noticing her delay.
Pressing the button again and again with no response from the contraption, Isabel cried, "It's jammed!"
"Jammed?!" Dean exclaimed as he knelt down inspecting the device around her waist.
"It must've happened when I fell..." She thought out loud.
"This stupid piece of-" Dean mumbled a curse in his language before undoing her belt and the three dimensional maneuver gear fell with a loud clank.
"What do you-!"
"C'mon!" He cried again, turning around kneeling down with his arms held back motioning, "Get on."
"W-What?!" He wasn't serious was he?! Was that even safe to do? Even if Dean was ranked the highest in usage of the three dimensional maneuver gear, that didn't mean it was a good idea to use the device with a hitchhiker in the back seat! "You-You got to be joking-!"
"Shut up and get on, Isabel!" Dean roared over her, his frustration rising along with the growing danger of exposure making the man all the more angry. Even though they both knew that Ed's device could still be functional, Dean didn't want to risk taking the time to strip the gear off of Ed and taking more time in putting it all back on Isabel. Too many buckles and belts and so little time...
"Al-Alright!" She exclaimed as she took a tentative step towards him, "Hang on I...-"
Suddenly, an ear splitting, monstrous keening howl tore through the maze like wynds and alley and Isabel slammed her hands over her ears and shut her eyes intending to block out the vocal attack but felt herself collapse under the deafening noise of the shifter's roar.
Then, if that was not enough, Isabel watched mute stricken as the Titan began to charge, its red gaze set itself upon them...
"I-Isabel..." And then, it happened...
Blinking, Dean saw disaster advancing in slow motion. He saw the Titan charging them, and he knew they only had minutes. He hadn't come all this way to rescue her from mortal peril only to fail at the last hurdle, after all. He surged forward, gaze fixed directly to Isabel. The man sprang to life, moving like the wind in open defiance. Dean was a man born with gifts and he proved that now.
Isabel suddenly felt her body being lifted into his arms as he clutched her closely and protectively to his chest shooting his grapple hooks and sailing off into the grey skies, narrowly missing the fingers of the shifter's meaty hands.
The pair soared up into the air awkwardly, twisting around and around in a corkscrew as they gained altitude so fast Isabel felt sure they should break apart into tiny fragments due to the sheer pressure. They thundered downward, still impossibly angle, still going so fast the pressure made it difficult for Isabel to draw breath and they were still spinning. The expanse of the city spread out before them. They were headed straight for it.
Dean released another grapple hook as soon as the houses of the city were in his range and he hauled his body forward zipping underneath the Titan's legs and dodging it's stomping feet and sweeps of it's hands.
Isabel dug her nails into the arms of Dean and did not close her eyes as she watched the Titan's hand rush forward and the blood pounding in her ears hurt excruciatingly because of the changing air pressure. At the very last moment Dean flipped his body around once more and shot forwards.
"Hold on!" He shouted over the wind, twisting his body counter clockwise shooting another grapple hook and using the gas in the cylinders for an extra boost of speed to avoid another titan's reach.
Isabel made sure to hold onto Dean like a life line as they flew through the air, spinning, twisting, and somersaulting in the a brilliant display of acrobatics. If they weren't already in a life or death situation, Isabel would have been admiring her friend's skills, not many people can use the three dimensional maneuver gear while another person was clinging onto them-she knew she couldn't! But then...
"Ah!" Isabel felt the violent jerk knock them out of the sky sending the pair barreling back down towards the ground! The massive force of a titan's hand had clipped Dean knocking the wind out of him. "Dean?!" she could feel his arms loosen and she knew he was currently passing out, then suddenly...
...He dropped her.
Smacking down hard onto the titles of a roof beneath her, she felt the bloody sting of the jagged pieces stabbing into her. Isabel used her nails to claw onto anything to stop her from rolling before slamming into the side of a chimney. She laid there for what felt like an eternity, the world was spinning and the darkness was clawing at the edge of her awareness surging closer little by little. The thunder in her ears was the sound of her own heartbeat, loud and dangerously laboured. The lightning behind her eyelids was the clash and rumble of her dying brain pulped and battered inside her poor shattered skull.
Isabel had never expected to know old age but really this was not the end she had envisioned...
Heavy lidded eyes squinted to see through her foggy vision, spotting Dean who laid on his side half a foot away. "Damn it...that was such a stupid idea..." She heard his muffle, blood heavy on his tongue, thick and clotting.
Dean rolled onto his back, one arm flopping uselessly across his stomach, while his other arm and hand fell outward and away from his body. Reaching out to her as if he could breach the distance between them with his voice and will alone. A pair of bright coral rings, could barely be glimpsed upon his two twisted and useless fingers, slicked in crimson blood.
Their eyes met for one painful moment, and she stretched out one twitching hand towards him before falling back in pain; shuddering and jolting like a landed fish on the filthy broken and bloodied roof.
"De..." Cringing, reaching, hoping, praying that somehow, someway this wasn't their end- this wasn't his end, "Don't..." She couldn't find her voice and her eyes became hazy as tears poured down the bridge of her nose as she lay on her side feeling death's cold and hollow embrace.
Isabel could barely hear Dean exhale her name upon his last breath as the powerful man before her, cracked a small smile, "I'm s-sorry...Is..." The lights of life began to wink out behind his lids before the old warrior closed them and he was gone.
...This was not how it was suppose to end for her...
In a cool dark place between alive and dead, awake and dreams she curled in on herself and death too, had finally embraced her.