Creation began on 05-16-21
Creation ended on 05-20-21
Attack on Titan
Rise, Sasha, Rise: Awakening
A/N: Spontaneous revival. Suppose that when people get shot, they don't die immediately, but they enter a state that mirrors death, and they revive later, their vitals slowing down to keep them from dying. If such was possible, it'd be a miracle for a few.
Sasha Blouse, an Eldian woman that loved meat as much as she loved life, found herself standing in a vast, sandy terrain bathed under a dark sky with beautiful lights.
"What are you doing here?" She heard someone say to her, and saw a stranger that looked like an older version of Bertolt, with that same look of nervousness on his face. "You shouldn't be here! You need to go back! Now!"
"What?" She asked him, seeing him approach her. "What are you…"
"Go back now! Wake up!" He yelled at her. "Wake up!"
GASP! Sasha gasped for air, no longer wherever it was that she had ended up, finding herself back in the airship.
"Don't come back here!" That man's voice warned her. "Don't come back!"
"Sasha!" Connie cried. "You're back!"
What happened? She wondered as she calmed down. Where was I?
-x-
In the sandy terrain under the night sky, the stranger sat on the ground, sketching a face in the sand, reminiscent to the girl he saw moments ago.
"Don't ever come back here," he uttered to the face in the sand. "Don't ever come back here."
-x-
Five minutes. That's how long they told Sasha it was before she revived. Five…long…agonizing minutes, caught between life and death. She was dead for five minutes…and then she came back to life.
"You wanna talk about it?" Armin had asked her.
"No," she answered him. "I mean…I think I saw Bertolt wherever I was."
"Bertolt?"
"Or someone that looked like him; he was older, dirtier, but he had that same look of nervousness on his face. Except there was something else about him that was different. He looked afraid of me. Maybe not me directly, but my being wherever he was."
"Did he say anything to you?"
"He told me…that I wasn't supposed to be there. He told me to go back…and never return."
"If that was Bertolt…I'm grateful to him," Armin told her.
"Grateful?" Sasha questioned. "Why?"
"Too many people died tonight. Too many people that didn't have to."
Sasha sighed and nodded in understanding that painful truth. She had been shot by someone that was angry at them because of what had been done to their home and the people that lived there, trying to even the score. And personally, she didn't blame the girl that shot her; they had something like this coming to them. It might've been a near-death experience for her, but she still died for a few minutes.
"How long until we return to Paradis?" She asked Armin.
"Five hours, maybe less," he answered. "You still need to see a doctor; the bullet you were shot with is still in you."
"I'm not worried about having a bullet in my chest. It's not the end of my life, but it's the end of my involvement."
"What? What are you talking about, Sasha?"
"When we get back to Paradis…I'm done. I'm leaving the Survey Corps."
To be continued…
A/N: I may have let this potential story take a life of its own by wanting to do something different. What could've been had Sasha manage to survive getting killed by Gabi, and what might've been had Sasha made a conscientious decision to walk away after the attack on Liberio. I hope to get a bit of traction before the next chapter. Maybe a few questions about who that guy was that she saw and where she was when she died for a while. I want to hear from all of you out there that eventually read this.