These characters are under copyright by Hajime Isayama and/or Kodansha Comics or others. This is a work of fanfiction, for no monetary gain.
A/N: CAUTION:
The chapter below contains loss of bladder and bowel control, plus blood, gore, violence and death.
Chapter 36 – Till Death Do Us Part
"Eren, are you alright?" Mikasa demanded frantically, laying him down on the roof. The Aberrant had come out of nowhere, leaping over the roof while Krista was distracted warning them about another Titan approaching them from three blocks away in the other direction. If Eren hadn't screamed her name and slammed into her, knocking her away, she'd be the one lying legless and motionless on the rooftop now.
Levi appeared beside them, looking pale and shaky. "I heard… I thought… " Levi stuttered, his frantic, haunted eyes roaming everywhere over her for injury, before looking down at Eren. "Shit, brat, you're a mess," he accused, even as he knelt and felt for the pulse in Eren's throat. "Still alive," he confirmed aloud, as if needing to hear the words.
Ymir joined them on the rooftop, Marcel slung over her left shoulder. "Fuck. I got that one and Krista got another, but we've got six more immediate incoming and nearly two dozen not far behind. Protect Marcel. I'll draw them off, give them something bigger and tastier to hunt," Ymir claimed, as she set him down beside Eren and then dove off the roof in a flash of yellow-green light.
Mikasa gasped as Ymir transformed into a Titan midair. Ymir's Titan form was nothing like Annie's: hers had skin over well-defined muscle, but no visible breasts, with long gangly limbs ending in viciously clawed fingers and toes. Her face was truly hideous, with a high forehead, straggly strands of greasy looking hair, and rows of razor sharp teeth that didn't look remotely human. And then she screamed, a ululating screech of sound that brought Mikasa to her knees, covering her ears, expecting to feel her hands coated in blood from ruptured eardrums. Even the Titans seemed stunned by her scream. And in that split second that they froze, Ymir Titan attacked, and mercifully, the scream stopped.
There was none of the vicious but beautiful strength, power and grace of Annie's attacks. Ymir shredded and tore huge bloody chucks out of the backs of the Titan's necks with her fangs, her clawed hands, and even her taloned feet. She was the center of a steaming whirlwind of gory destruction, leaving a swath of carnage in the Titan's ranks, driving them to a frenzy, as they fought to reach her, as if embracing their own doom.
"It's a good thing she's on our side, for the time being," Levi said, admiration in his voice. "Protect these two. Some of them aren't following her." Then Levi was gone, joined by Krista, of all people, as they began attacking the stragglers, even as the rest of the Squad poured out of the basement to aid them.
"Mikasa!" Eren yelled, making Mikasa jump, as he struggled to sit, the jagged, bloody ruins of his thighs already fleshing out, as his legs regrew, gaining in mass and volume as she watched.
"I'm fine. You saved me," Mikasa assured him.
But then there was another of those inhuman screaming wails, even more shrill, louder and longer than before, and Mikasa doubled over, covering her ears, her face burning in humiliation as her bladder suddenly released, and a stream of urine ran down her legs.
"What's wrong?" Eren demanded, grabbing her.
"That sound!" Mikasa yelled, knowing he'd never be able to hear her over it, vaguely wondering why he wasn't covering his own ears. How can he bear it?
Marcel sat up too, swaying, and then he lurched to his feet, stumbling unsteadily on the shingles of the roof.
"Stay down! You have to stay safe!" Mikasa demanded, barely able to force herself to stand, as if somehow the eerie scream all but paralyzed her. But she was certain that if anything happened to Marcel now, the shifters would kill them all and smash Wall Rose and Wall Sina to rubble in revenge. She couldn't believe Marcel and Eren weren't covering their ears; it felt like that scream would drive her mad, that it would cripple her mind as well as her body.
"Help… her…" Marcel pleaded, terrified eyes on Ymir Titan, rasping in a voice gravelly with disuse that she somehow, miraculously heard over Ymir's horrific cry.
Mikasa cursed. Ymir Titan was being overwhelmed, dozens of Titans surrounding and attacking her, devouring her alive, even as the Corps all too slowly cut her attackers down one by one.
"ERWIN!" Levi's panicked, anguished scream was nearly as loud and shrill as Ymir Titan's as he aborted his current attack and lunged for the falling Commander, whose severed grappling lines were flapping wildly as he plummeted towards the ground.
Mikasa dove off the roof, a surge of adrenaline coursing through her, the scream, Marcel and even Eren momentarily forgotten, desperate to save Erwin for Levi, even though she knew with sick certainty that neither she nor Levi was close enough to save him.
0 0 0
Hange screamed in denial and outrage, slamming her gas valve fully open, as she saw the Titan lunge for her falling Commander teeth first, memory of their disastrous last mission vivid in her mind, of the hand lashing out and Erwin slamming into the ground. This time she had to be in time!
She rocketed forward and felt a tremendous surge of victory, of relief, as she knocked Erwin safely out of the path of the Titan's teeth, setting him safely down on a nearby roof, even as her own flight was brought to an abrupt halt as she felt an odd tug on her legs, and she slammed onto another roof with a jarring thud, only a few meters from him.
Hange looked down, afraid one of her grapple lines might somehow have tangled in the shingles and wrapped around her, and blinked owlishly in incomprehension and confusion when she saw only a bloody pool beneath her, where her legs should have been. She reached out a disbelieving hand, touching the gory, spurting, jagged stump of her right thigh, and then lifted her hand, staring at her warm, wet, red palm, trying to process what had happened.
"ZOE!"
She turned towards the voice. "Levi? There's something wrong with my le… you're not Levi," she finished, staring into the two, bright, dinner plate sized eyes glaring at her, above a double row of startlingly white teeth. And then there was darkness, and wetness, and silence as she slid downwards, landing with a loud splash.
Suddenly there was pain, screaming agony, yanking her forcefully back to full awareness too late. Hange began dogpaddling desperately with her hands, realizing she was boiling alive in the superheated stomach acid of a Titan, that she'd been swallowed, that she'd been bitten almost in half, that… "Holy shit. I'm dying."
No. I can't be. I have to save myself. Cut myself out somehow. Even as she thought that, and desperately tried to plan what to do, her mouth filled with the burning fluid, as the heat and blood loss and shock took their toll, and she slipped beneath the surface.
I can't die. They need me. I have to help them. Erwin. Levi.
But she could feel her trachea and lungs filling with the steaming liquid as she convulsively inhaled.
Levi. I… have… to…
0 0 0
"NOOOOO! ZOEEEEE! YOU MOTHERFUCKER! YOU FILTHY DISGUSTING BASTARD! GIVE HER BACK!"
Mikasa watched in horror and terror as Levi raced screaming after the Titan that had just eaten Hange, completely oblivious to his surroundings.
She rocketed off after him, intent on ensuring he didn't follow Hange, that he not become another casualty. "Levi! Stop! She's gone!" But her cries fell on deaf ears.
"Eren! Armin! Anyone! Help me protect Levi!" Mikasa yelled desperately, as five Titans converged on their distraught and irrational Captain as he dove towards his prey with a single-minded intensity that was about to get him killed.
"NOOOOO!" she screamed as a gigantic hand caught and yanked one of Levi's grapple lines, and he was jerked towards a waiting mouth like a fish on a line.
But Levi met the face with slicing blades, slashing the monstrous creature's eyes, blinding it. Cutting his own cable to free himself, he swung around its head and sliced it viciously in the neck, and then leapt clear, just before the second and third Titan reached him.
Mikasa downed the fourth Titan and then to her relief saw Eren, sans maneuver gear but back on his newly reformed bare feet, cut out the back of the neck of the fifth one, that had made the mistake of coming too close to the roof Eren was standing on, as Levi fought the second and third simultaneously, felling one after the other.
Panting and gasping for breath, uncharacteristically winded because of his still tender lungs, Levi spun around and started screaming obscenities, looking frantically for his prey, but not finding it. There was no sign of the Titan that had killed Hange, the one he'd been chasing.
Mikasa's heart clenched as she saw the tears streaming down Levi's face, and she started to head for him, jerking back instinctively when a giant shadow darted out at her, but not quite quickly enough, as the previously hidden Aberrant lunged between the buildings.
Her scream of agony when its teeth closed on her left shoulder dragging her down to the street was drowned out by Eren's beloved voice screaming her name, as he slashed its neck, moments too late, even as she jabbed the biting Titan desperately in its face with her right sword.
Instead of letting go of her shoulder, it yanked its face away, ripping her left arm off with it, its final act of carnage as Eren felled it.
Grimly Mikasa dropped her remaining sword and closed her shaking right hand over the empty, bloody socket of her left shoulder, knowing that there was no way to apply a tourniquet to a wound like that, that she'd bleed to death in minutes, that it was hopeless, but still refusing to die without trying.
"MIKASA! Oh God! Armin! Help me! She's…AAAH!" Eren's panicked scream turned into a roar of pain as the Titan neither of them had seen appear behind him bit him, and then changed into a roar of animalistic rage, as he transformed into a Titan in its mouth before it could complete the bite, ripping the monster's head apart with his metamorphosis.
"Eren," Mikasa whispered, as her blood cascaded down her side, pooling on the cobblestones beneath her as she staggered towards him, as Eren's Titan form tore his would be murderer apart.
Yeager Titan flung the body away from him and then spun around and fell to his knees at her side.
Mikasa reached out her remaining bloody, shaking hand and caressed Eren's enormous right cheek, as his huge face hovered over her. "Love you," she whispered almost soundlessly, as her hand fell down and away, leaving a bloody stripe.
Her eyes swam with tears as Eren opened his mouth. For a warm moment she thought he was actually going to speak, even as a Titan, to tell her he loved her one last time, as she struggled to stay conscious, to breathe, to live for him. But as his mouth descended over and around her, there was only silence, and darkness, and wet warmth.
She felt herself falling, as she plummeted into far greater wetness, a lake, a boiling inferno, and she tried to process what was happening, as soothing liquid heat enveloped her.
Eren? He… ate me?
Shock made it hard to think, until a single pure thought cut through the fog, pain and fear, and she smiled contentedly, at peace. Now I'll be a part of him, with him forever.
Then there was nothingness.
0 0 0
"EREN NOOOO!" Armin screamed in horror, stumbling towards Yeager Titan in disbelief, tears streaming down his face. Oh God. He ate her. Eren ate Mikasa.
The second shift was too soon after the first, and unplanned. Eren had lost his mind completely, and not just tried to crush them this time. He'd eaten her.
Yeager Titan spun around and looked down at him, his glowing green eyes focused on Armin and then he lunged for him.
Armin screamed in terror as Eren's hand closed around him, and he heard multiple people shouting his name, and Eren's, and Mikasa's. He expected to be squeezed, crushed, or popped into Eren's mouth to join Mikasa, even as he heard the sound of collapsing buildings and chaos all around him.
He fought to see what was happening to the others and to his horror saw the Armored Titan was attacking only two blocks away, a huge swarm of Titans converging around him, eager to help him destroy them.
"Eren, let me go! Help them! We have to save them from Reiner! It's the Armored!" he screamed, struggling wildly, but his arms were pinned to his sides, and he couldn't grab his swords.
To his horror, Eren began to run, at full speed, not towards the others, but away from them, towards the Inner Gate. He rammed into the larger Titans that tried to block his path and leapt over the smaller ones, instead of fighting them, when before, as a Titan filled with hatred for his fellow Titans, he'd always attacked them.
Armin struggled futilely, crying and begging and pleading with Eren to let him go, even as he numbly realized to his humiliation that somewhere along the line he had lost control of both his bladder and bowels.
Dead. Mikasa is dead, like Hange, dead and eaten, only worse, because Eren is the one who… "WHY? WHY DID YOU EAT HER?" he screamed in anguish, his voice momentarily drowning out Ymir Titan's increasingly distant wailing scream and the horrific sounds of his friends dying. "How could you? She loved you, we both did, and…"
He sobbed uncontrollably, inconsolably. His sister was dead, eaten by his brother. Hange was right. Eren finally lost his humanity. She… oh God. Hange is dead. Mikasa is dead. Is Jean…?
"Eren, stop! Jean, Sasha, our friends. We have to help them! We…"
He fell silent. It was too late.
Dead. They're all dead.
And soon he would be too.
A/N: Hange speaking to Levi about Erwin, O "He was so… inspirational. He had a plan, you could see it, hear it, every word he spoke so carefully measured, every look, every movement… And when he saw that I understood… he took me into his confidence, under his wing… it was the first time anyone had ever wanted me. The first time I was valued. You've seen it, Levi: those amazing eyes. I'd go to hell and back again, kill for him, die for him.
Hange speaking to Levi, Outmaneuvered, Chapter 58 – Past and Future Treason: "Not everyone believes in reincarnation, but I like to think it's real… life is way too short, for too many people. And even when it's not, when it's over, it's just over. The world ends, with every person who dies, you know – no one will ever view the world in quite the same way you do. Yet it still goes on, there's that eternal aspect too. So souls, if there are souls, should get to come back to earth, to do everything they didn't do the first time, or do things again that they really love…"