Author's Note: I'm so excited to start writing this, born from the MANGA SPOILERS additional finale chapters of AoT! :) I hope to keep to the general tone and themes of the series, even as I take it into a whole new era and world. 3 I hope anyone else reading it likes it too, even if you didn't like the ending!
End of AN!
Thousands of years ago...
In an ancient tribe, a pen of pigs is let loose on the world - and a girl is sent free into it thereafter.
She runs through the woods, around trees and over bush, as sharp arrows fly around her - and pierce into her flesh.
She stumbles, she races onward, desperate for freedom and safety...for escape from this cruel world...
She finds a tree to hide in, and falls into a dark abyss.
Water breaks her fall, and she sinks into it all.
A light, a glow, motion...
And a feeling in her back, like the thinnest, sharpest of blades...soon to be joined by dozens more, up and down the length of her spinal cord.
Electricity courses through her body, erupting all over her form and rippling across the waters, and the giant tree collapses as the girl rises to tower over the entire forest.
A creature of newfound, unfathomable strength and power. Immortal, invincible - a goddess.
But a goddess bound by her own imperfect, human mind and self persistent within the giantess form.
A goddess who continues to live life as a slave.
A slave who wishes for freedom.
This wish would be carried by her for the next two thousand years to come.
Two hundred years ago...
A massive wall is broken through, by a skinless giant of rippling muscle.
A boy realizes the truth of this cruel world.
He fights for his friends, he fights for rage and vengeance.
Battles and revelations, on and on.
Betrayal, loss, terror and violence in all its forms.
Until he comes to realize the full scope of the world, and its history...and its future.
His future. The future of his friends.
Past, present, future, has all become jumbled together in his mind.
He can make no sense of it, and he is a slave to it. Has always been, from the second he kissed that girl's hand.
The conclusion is inevitable, and it comes for them all - for him - whether he wants it or not.
Desperate, helpless to change it.
But with the faintest hope that the end result will see his friends live long, happy lives, in peace and quiet. Spared from the world beyond that hates them for what they were born as.
And for a time, this was the truth of things.
The boy may have died at a young age of nineteen, but his friends DID go on to live their best lives.
They found happiness, love, peace - families.
They bore another generation, and then another...
Before the peace broke once again.
A place of grassy fields turned towering buildings and great machines...was reduced to rubble and ashes, as jet black birds soared overhead to rain fire upon all that was achieved.
Ruins and smoke were what remained - and remained so for decades still.
But though the world of Paradise may have been destroyed, people still remained inside the lands that used to be.
Fleeting, struggling survivors. A people on verge of extinction, crying out against it.
Amidst these cries, one voice seeks out the comfort of the past, of memories and feelings long gone...
Current year - Paradise Island - Ruins of New Shiganshina
Lydia Schnabel, age ten, wandered through the broken buildings overrun with vines and vegetation, her supplies strapped to her back, her walking stick in hand, and her rifle slung over a shoulder. Ammo pouches over her chest, from shoulder down to hip.
She was close, closer and closer to it.
The giant tree in the forest, on the hill away from the ruins of the city.
Her faithful companion, a dog named Mira, followed after Lydia without hesitation. Aware and alert for threats, dangers lingering in this old place.
Even after a hundred years, sometimes people still liked to come here from the continents - to find or take things, or...to search for people.
For the ones who had survived it.
For their families. Their kids.
Like Lydia.
She stood before the giant tree, staring it up and down until her neck hurt.
She gazed at the great opening in its base - a gaping darkness that called to her.
This was the one, the place great grandmother Mikasa used to always come to - had used to always bring grandma, and grandma had used to bring Lydia's mother too. A tradition, she had always told Lydia. And a way to remember the past, to keep history alive.
The highs and the lows, the worst and the best of those times before.
The right choices, and the mistakes.
The terrifying, and the wonderful.
This tree itself was a living memorial to it all - every moment, every emotion, every person involved. And the most important people...
At least, great grandmother had felt that way.
Lydia knew, at the very least, that it was a special tree.
No normal tree could grow this large, so quickly. No even in the generations since great grandmother's time.
Did it have to do with that old war? The person who was buried beside it? The great and terrible, ancient and mysterious power that person had once wielded?
The Power of Titans?
Lydia only knew she wanted to...feel something here again. Remember things again.
Keep that tradition alive.
For the very mom she had lost, a year ago now.
The reason, and the purpose.
So she set off, letting her feet carry her forward, on up that hill.
To the base of the giant tree, to that darkness opened wide before her.
She stood at the entrance now, gazing into it so intently. There was a noise inside, like wind, or...and a feeling raced over Lydia's flesh...
She closed her eyes, tilting back her head.
Mira gave a little whine beside her.
Lydia ignored it, focusing on her memories, focusing on her dreams, focusing on...what that sound was, inside the tree.
It was almost like...
Her eyes opened.
"Water?" she breathed.
Water was scarce - good water, anyway. The largest lakes were so far away.
If this tree had water in it, though...
She could sleep here, get some of that water, maybe - boil it. She had brought enough supplies to make this trip in the first place, and she had even brought a little extra. Just in case.
You always had to plan for "just in case."
Lydia took another step forward, almost unconscious.
And then another, and another.
Into that darkness, until it swallowed her up.
She wouldn't have even cared if there were spiders in here, she felt (and she was terrified of spiders!).
The noise was louder now, and far below her.
She took out her flashlight and took careful steps forward, coming to a ledge of damp dirt and rock.
The tree was hollow! A huge drop, straight down. She couldn't even see a bottom!
But...there was water in here, for sure.
But so far down?
An underwater cave system, connecting with the tree?
Lydia had brought rope, but she wasn't sure it would be nearly enough to get down there.
She sighed and turned away, making to leave.
And her foot slipped on the wet dirt, a rock gave way under the sole of her shoe, and her cane slid from her grasp as she fell backwards.
Mira was barking frantically, as Lydia fell into the endless abyss, falling and falling...until she hit hard, face-first.
The water broke her fall, feeling like concrete!
Her face burst with agony as bone shifted and cracked, and stabbed back up into her own skull. Her arm under her was jammed back against her stomach and her elbow exploded, bone exposed and snapped in two!
She desperately thrashed with her legs and her one good arm, fighting for breathe, for surface as she sank - trying to reach the side, the edge, she had to find something to grab, something to hold onto! But it was so much more difficult with her gear on, and she only had one arm that she couldn't use to take it off! She was going to die, to drown down here, lost forever, oh god! She was only ten, she wanted to live, she wanted to survive this - to make it back up to Mira, to the surface of the world, to the trees and the ruins!
Lydia didn't want to die down here, not like this!
She wanted to live, to live long enough to have a family of her own, like her mom had had her, and her grandmother, and great grandmother! She wanted to have kids, give birth, she wanted to raise them and love them, even in this destroyed world, she wanted that for herself too! She had to live to see it!
Something suddenly touched her foot, and a light pulsed, lighting up the waters in an eerie blue and pink and purple mixture.
Lydia twisted and stared down through the water, opening her eyes against that light.
She wished she hadn't!
There was a creature in the water, a long snake-like thing with many tendrils, looking like- like a living spinal cord!
The creature surged up Lydia's body, winding around her legs, as if trapping her, as if trying to drag her down to drown for sure!
It wound up her waist, and then began crawling up her back, those tendrils dancing across her backpack. It squirmed and thrashed, she felt something sharp and hot slice down her backside - her supplies were cut loose, drifting away and sinking! Her long sleeve top was ruined, torn out the back, and the creature's tendrils were touching her raw flesh and causing more searing pain as it pressed itself to her form...
And then pain like nothing Lydia had ever felt crashed through her body, as every single one of those tendrils converged and surged straight through her spine, in-between the vertebrae.
Every single nerve in her body exploded, every cell coursing with electricity, her body convulsing, as she screamed into the watery depths with frothing bubbles.
Yellow lightning danced across her body, enveloping her, casting off onto the walls of the tree interior in brilliance and beauty...
And then it all burst, and Lydia was rising.
Shooting up through the tree, bursting through it as it was shattered in two, the top half careening sideways to cover the smaller trees and shake the whole forest for miles.
As Lydia's world changed from darkness to sudden light, the light enveloped her, and then the world itself changed.
She blinked as silence and calm surrounded her.
Lydia wasn't in the woods anymore, or the water.
She was in...the desert?
It was nighttime, not daytime.
And before her was a tree - but not the same tree.
Everything was the same, but opposite, but...
What was going on?
Where was she?
What had happened?
Lydia pushed herself up and stared at the sky with wonder.
It was a beautiful swirl of colors - an aurora borealis.
And that tree...it was glowing, the same colors as the creature from the water.
This tree had only a single branch on it.
Why was it-
"A new face..." came a dead, quiet voice.
"Huh?!" Lydia turned on a heel, finding herself face to face with a man. She hadn't even heard him approach in this sand!
Lydia took a step back, staring up at him. The man looked young enough - around twenty, maybe - and he had dark hair in a ponytail and eyes a bright green. The color, anyway; the man himself looked...there wasn't much life there.
"Who- who are you, where am I, what just-"
Lydia stared down at herself, only just realizing that she had pushed herself up with both her arms! She moved them about, she felt one with the other. It was fine, not broken at all. And her face felt fine too. No broken cranium, no shard of bone stabbing right to her own brain, bleeding down over her eyes. And her back...
Her back, that thing!
She reached back, scraping and pressing, trying to look over her own shoulder.
It was gone.
She breathed relief, lowering her arms.
"It isn't gone..."
"Huh?" Lydia stared at the man.
"It can never vanish from this world," the man spoke on, in those dead, quiet tones. "It was the source of all life, and so, as long as life exists...it, too, will keep existing. It can be made to disappear, for a time - but it will always come back."
"R-right..." Lydia said, stepping back even further. She glanced around again. "Where am I? What happened? I was just...why am I not hurt anymore?"
The man's green eyes bore into her, and the faintest of smiles tugged at his lips. The first sign of life. "You know the answer, Lydia. Fables and legends..."
"I- what? You're talking about the- the...Power of the Titans?" Lydia breathed. She looked at her own hands. "That's impossible, it's gone, it was destroyed - by great grandmother and-"
"Eren Yeager."
"You know the stories, too!" Lydia said, nodding with satisfaction. "Then you know it's not possible. Seriously."
The man smiled again, just a little. A spark in those eyes. "'Seriously...?'" He put his hands in his pockets, tilting his head back to gaze up at the tree. "However much the world changes, people will stay the same." He rolled his neck and glanced at her, sidelong. "Thank you, Lydia, for giving me a look at the world again. It's been a while."
"What do you mean? And- and hey, how do you even know my name?!" Lydia burst out, the thought hitting her with a jolt. Like that lightning from before. "Who are you, anyway?"
The man's smile pulled into a full, broad grin. A little chuckle emerged, singular and light. "Eren Yeager."
Lydia gasped. "No way, you- you can't be! He died over a hundred years ago!"
"And I once knew a girl who died two thousand years ago," Eren countered, sounding amused now. Fully, really amused. He returned his gaze to the tree, shrugging his shoulders with a sigh. "Tell me something, Lydia: why did you come to this place? How did you find yourself here?"
"You don't just already know that?" Lydia retorted.
"I want to hear it from you."
"I was just...trying to hold onto memories," Lydia whispered, falling to her butt in the sand. She drew her legs up and put her non-broken arms around them. Rested her chin on her knees.
The man - Eren - he sat down beside her, one knee up, arm rested on it. The other stretched out toward the tree. He turned to look at her, braced on an arm casually. His expression...it was soft, now. Sympathetic. "Of your mother," he said, almost gently.
"Y-yeah..." Lydia choked. "A hundred years ago, this other nation called Marley...they hated us for our history, for just being who we were born as - Eldians - and they rained hell on our cities. They killed millions of us, destroyed our homes and lives. And even after, they kept searching for us across Paradise, rooting us out and rounding us up. Killing us all even more. They wanted it to be down to the last one. But it's gotten a lot harder since then, over the years. Except...last year, my family got really unlucky, and they found the settlement where my mom and I were living. It was us and a few dozen others. They killed most everyone, burned the place down, took who lived. My mom helped me get away, but I...I don't know what happened to her after that. I don't know if she lived, or-"
She cut herself off with a cry, pressing her lips to her knees to contain a sob.
"I c-came here because we always used to come here, to remember the w-world - history, and- you know...mistakes and- a-and f-family too...great grandmother was buried here with..."
"Me."
Lydia glanced at the man through blurry vision. "A-are you really him?"
"I am."
"T-then I'm s-sitting here chatting it up with a mass murderer! A g-genocidal maniac, a scumbag of the Earth!" Lydia cried, shaking her head furiously and scooting away.
Eren stayed where he was, simply watching her. He looked amused again. "Is that how the world remembers me now? How history sees me? Well, I can't blame them. I would have thought Mikasa would've passed on a bit more flattering of a view of me to her own children, though...ah well."
Lydia hesitated. "What was she like - great grandmother? I never got to meet her. She was dead even when my mom was little."
Eren considered her. "She was one of the strongest, most courageous people I ever knew. Whatever life she got to live, after that day...she earned every second of it. And I'm glad she got to have it. Her, and...all those guys. Because she never should have had to be so strong. Her whole life...it should have only been like...after. That was all I wanted for any of them..." he finished, almost muttering to himself now, rather than talking to Lydia.
A silence that might have lasted a moment, or an eternity fell between the pair.
Until Eren broke it again. "The power of the titans - there used to be rules, limits and mysteries and problems abound." Eren gestured to the tree. "But that was all predicated on Ymir's will and life. Her mind that shaped the legacy of her power, and her blood. You've started it all again, by coming into contact with me - and with that creature. Who can say what the rules are now, or if there will even be any? Your mind and will...will be what shapes all of that this time."
"So I...I really do have the power of the titans in me?" Lydia questioned.
"Yes. It exists in this world again, because of you - and because of me. Together, we've recreated it, revived it. The question is, Lydia: what do you want to use it for?"
"Nothing even close to what you did with it!" Lydia said furiously, instantly.
"What, then?" Eren didn't seem offended in the least by her words. He seemed...weary, accepting. And even, maybe, for a brief moment, ashamed or embarrassed.
"I- well..." Lydia stopped. Started again. "I could go find my mom. Figure out what happened to her. If she's alive, I can save her."
"And then what?" Eren persisted. "Get revenge on Marley for bombing your cities out of existence? For committing to decades of hunting down the remnants of your people on the island?"
"N-no! I'm not a psychopath like you!" Lydia refuted, disgusted and enraged.
"Good." Eren's one word reply reached her ears, firm and true. He lowered his head, bringing a hand to his face to cover it. "If the world had had more people like you, and like Armin, rather than people like me...maybe things could have all turned out different. Maybe I never would've become...such a half-assed piece of shit."
Lydia chose not to comment, feeling confused that the man had actually agreed with her! "I just- I mean- I could just...make sure everyone around the island is safe? Bring everyone together. Protect them from the people who keep coming here with their militaries, to hunt us down and take from our ruins. That's not bad, is it?"
"So you want to protect people..." Eren nodded. "No, that isn't a bad goal to have. Not a bad dream. But how far will that ideal carry you?"
"I...I don't know?"
"How long are you willing to protect your people for? To what extent - what end? What if there's never an end?"
"However long it takes!" Lydia exclaimed. "And- and if it's not me, I can have someone else do it after I'm dead! My kids, when I have them!"
"Others in your stead, even after you're gone...that's right. If you want to divide the power between them..." Eren spoke softly, musing. "It was done before - that was how we had the nine, you know. I'd imagine you could do it again."
"How?"
"Pray that things work differently now, in that regard," Eren replied, with a little laugh.
"How? How do I make more-"
"Titan Shifters."
"That."
"Well...I don't know, right now. But I could find out for you." Eren casually held out a hand, his green gaze intensifying to terrifying levels. His eyes seemed to almost be glowing. "Let's see what someone might want to show us..."
Lydia eyed his hand, then she slowly crept across the sand, and put her hand in his.
Electricity formed around their hands, and images and sounds flooded Lydia's brain.
Titans! From books of legends, paintings and old Marley images, taken and disseminated by photographers and newspapers of the era...
Thanks and jeeps, racing across a field pelted by intense rain under storm clouds...
"CAROLINE!"
Lydia was running toward that line of vehicles, toward the girl laying on her side in the field between...
She reached out her hand, and the turret on the back of a jeep opened fire, tearing at her and shredding apart her arm!
Lydia fell back, screaming and crying, gasping. She rolled over, she-
Lydia had crawled beside Caroline, staring down at her. She looked at her own arm, to the bone sticking out. The bone of white marred by scarlet, which was crackling with electricity...
Lydia tore it out with a shriek, and she stabbed the sharp piece of bone down into Caroline's face. Lightning burst the instant it struck Caroline, exploding outward and casting Lydia back across the field.
Smoke billowed out, and in Caroline's place a titan rose up. The pouring rain hissed from the sudden heat.
A titan with a sparking shard of bone still in its forehead, that now looked several times bigger - it had changed size in proportion with the titan. The piece of bone glowed brightly, and then it sank into the titan's skull and disappeared. The wound healed over immediately, smoke hissing out from it.
The Titan was slender, feminine, with long hair, a thin frame. Too close to a human for comfort. The titan looked hardly three meters tall. It had long, curved claws for fingernails, and a mouth of razor sharp teeth...
It turned its head to gaze at the line of vehicles.
Then, it opened its mouth wide, jaw unhinged, and screamed!
Lydia felt her insides squirming, bursting- agony-
She tried to move, move forward, keep going, but she couldn't. Her muscles were trembling, screaming, her bones were threatening to shake apart...
Lydia was near a lakeside, one she was familiar with.
There was a boy in her arms. She had carried him here?
The same girl from before stood near her, anxiously watching on.
Lydia put the boy into the waters, then glanced down at her arm.
Healed, normal. Not like the other vision.
Lydia changed that.
She held her rifle to her own arm and pulled the trigger, blasting it apart with a scream.
She reached down to the ground to pick up a shard of bone, hardly a centimeter, that was sparking on the ground...
She drew out a knife and sliced across the boy's arm, and then she shoved that piece of her own bone into his arm. Into the wound.
He was badly injured, so out of it he didn't react.
"I'm sorry I can't change you too, Yosefin, but there are already eight out there..." Lydia was saying to him, begging forgiveness. Her throat was blocked. "This will have to do until we can find one of them..."
The boy's arm glowed brightly, lightning burst out of the wound, and the waters imploded as a titan rose up out of it.
A different titan from the girl's. This titan was funny-looking, weirdly proportioned.
Caroline took a step back.
Lydia stepped forward, clenching her fist. "GO!" she yelled up at the titan. "Go into the woods, go hide away until- we can come back! Don't eat anyone, don't do anything!"
The titan stared down at her, then turned around and lumbered off into the trees...
Lydia gasped, falling back in the sand, wide eyed.
Her hand still tingled, sparking with lightning.
Eren eyed her silently, a satisfied look on his face. "So, some of the powers are still intact - and will express themselves even in the new. Good to know. But most of what that was...was different from anything known before. The same base - formed by the creature - but influenced by the host..."
"I have to...to mutilate my own body to- give powers to others?" Lydia trembled, staring down at her left arm. The one she'd ruined in those visions. Twice, purposefully!
"It will heal back every time," Eren offered, genuinely trying to comfort her. "You could cut it off and it would grow back."
"Like a lizard?"
"Yeah. Like a lizard." Another little smile, this one tinged with some nostalgia. As if Eren was recalling an ancient memory.
Lydia jumped to her feet, stalking away from the man. She stopped, turning to look at the mysterious tree. "I want to get out of here. I want to- I have to check on Mira, I have to find my mom, I have to..."
"Oh...of course." Eren had risen, too. He strode toward her, slowly, and raised a hand. He gazed into her eyes, and set that hand on her shoulder.
Lightning shot through Lydia's body, and she suddenly opened her eyes to find herself back in the forest again.
Except, her perspective of it was entirely different from what she'd been expecting.
Lydia was not back inside the tree, but was staring out over the entire forest from above.