It was a stupid, pointless thing that we did. Everyone knew, deep down somewhere, that it was wrong, that it wasn't helping anything. But human habits die hard. And so, every year, despite the never waning attacks that the Titans launched against us, despite the number mercilessly eaten daily, despite how often the Titans managed to breach our walls and rampage freely before the soldiers managed to repair the wall or gate and kill the trapped ones off, we made our pathetic sacrifice. I was never sure where the mentality behind it came from. 'Maybe if we willingly feed them once a year, they'll lose their appetite.' It's laughable, really. If anything, we're drawing more of them towards our walls by dangling a human off of them. But a large enough percentage of the population supports the practise, and so it continues.
I should mention that I'm particularly bitter in regards to this subject. My best friend was chosen as the sacrifice when I was fifteen. They try to pick small people, ones that have less chance of survival anyway. At the time, Eren was pretty scrawny. It was easy to see that, given a few more years to mature and train his body, he could have been quite strong. But he wasn't given that opportunity. He had been spotted by one of the ceremony deacons, and suggested as the sacrifice. He was skinny, and lanky, only recently having hit puberty and still growing into his body.

We fought, harder than we ever had before. We screamed and clawed, and Eren tried his best to utilize some hand to hand combat he had been taught by a friendly soldier. But we were easily overpowered by the older and stronger soldiers. This was what they were trained for, after all, of course they bested three children. Even Mikasa, the strongest of the three of us, could not pry Eren from their hands as they dragged him off. We followed behind them, begging them to let him go, to take someone else, anyone else. Eren thrashed in their arms, howled, bit, scratched, kicked, anything he could to try and escape or prove his strength in hopes that they would choose someone else. I wondered at the time how I had been overlooked. I was even smaller than Eren. But I guess I was too small, not worth their time, or the Titans'. They ignored us, simply readjusting their holds on Eren when he managed to get an arm free. They stopped in front of a door, and we hoped beyond hope that they would release Eren, but they instead entered and slammed the door in our faces, locking it with a loud click. I later learned that this door led down to a holding cell, where Eren was kept until the day of the ceremony.

I consider myself at least a little lucky. Mikasa was tasked with informing Eren's parents of his being chosen. At least I got to mourn quietly to myself, not having to watch someone else's grief as well. The next time I saw his mother, so utterly broken, was enough to send me into a fit. How Mikasa was able to act so strong in the face of it all is beyond me. But, when I came to the door of the holding cell the next day, as I made a habit of every day after Eren was taken from us, I could see scratch marks in the wood. If I looked close enough, I could even see blood streaked into the rivets. I never asked Mikasa about it, her broken and raw nails enough to confirm my suspicions.

There was nothing for us to do but wait. There was no such thing as a petition to free the sacrifice, no trial to prove that he didn't deserve this fate. On the last day, the day before the sacrifice, he was allowed visitors. I waited until the afternoon, wanting to give his parents some time alone with him. Though he was my closest friend, he was their son, and they had a right to take up the majority of his last moments. When I finally slouched in, I was surprised by how calm everything was. His parents sat together on a bench, pressed as close to the cell as was possible. Though they had obviously been crying, they were now silent and still, a morose air the only thing left. Mikasa sat on the floor, her hip flush with the bars, her face seemingly expressionless, her lips hidden behind the red scarf Eren had gifted to her years ago.

Eren lifted his head at the sound of my entrance, and even offered me a small smile, one that had me on my knees in an instant, bawling my eyes out. It was so fake, so painful, so different from the bright grin that usually lit up his face when he saw me. He was scared, absolutely terrified, and I knew it, he knew it, everyone knew it. My reaction elicited another bought of crying from his parents, Mikasa beckoning me over and pulling me against her, holding me as I wept into her shirt. Eren reached a hand through the bars, taking my hand, the only comfort he could offer me from his position, cuffed to the wall by a single shackle. But through all of my tears, Eren never broke, keeping his face and stance strong, trying to show me that he was still him, despite everything. He wanted me to know that he was strong, that he would always be strong. And I believed it, believed him. There was no one stronger than Eren, I had always thought so.

I eventually calmed enough to talk to him. We all took turns, saying something, bringing up a happy memory that centered around Eren, laughing halfheartedly in an attempt to make his last hours good ones. When our time with him was drawing to a close, Mikasa and I said goodbye, both of us agreeing that his parents deserved to be the last ones he saw. But it took a lot for me to let go of his hand, to so much as stand as I whimpered out goodbyes and promises. We went outside, Mikasa drawing me to her yet again as I failed to contain my tears, ugly sobs wracking through my frame. She eventually pulled me to my feet, walking me home and handing me off to my grandfather.

The next morning, I was among the first people that shuffled into the square. Everyone knew it was today, even though it was never announced. Mikasa and Eren's parents came only a few minutes after me, Mikasa taking my hand as we trailed behind Mr. and Mrs. Jaeger. The crowd was not allowed very close to the wall, but we got as close as we could, holding our stances for hours as bodies collected behind us. Then they brought Eren, walked him right down the center of the crowd. This was all part of the ritual. People shouted encouragements to him, some reaching out to squeeze his shoulder or clap him on the back. It was twisted, sick enough that my stomach churned, bile rising in my throat. I swallowed it down though, not wanting to look away from Eren as he walked for the last time.

As he neared, people shuffled aside for Mr. and Mrs. Jaeger, Mikasa and I close behind. The soldiers allowed Eren a pause when he reached them, giving him time to embrace his parents, Mikasa, me, and then his parents again. Then the soldiers urged him on with a shove. He reached his hand behind him, his cheeks wet with tears. It was the first time I'd seen him cry since being taken. He managed to keep a strong facade when the soldiers were carrying him away, the entire time I visited, even while he walked through the crowd.

But now the strong, fiery boy I had grown up with, that I knew so well, was utterly broken in front of me. Every spark that had ever flashed through his sparkling emerald eyes was gone, his irises dulled and muted now, though still stark against his paling face. It was dawning on him, he was finally realising that he could not escape. I couldn't even imagine how weak he felt, reduced to a mere child, his dreams stolen out from under him. His fingers seemed frail, delicate as they reached blindly for something, anything, to hold onto. My own tears sprung forth, my hand finding his and squeezing until he was wrenched away from me, dragged to the wall and bound harshly in thick wires he'd never be able to break through.
My fingers ached from holding so tightly onto Eren's, from being forced apart, but it was nothing when compared to the ache in my stuttering heart. The cords looked painful, no real care taken with fastening them. I could already see where they would bite into his skin when they lowered him, where his bones would be broken when a Titan got their fingers or teeth on him and tried to yank him down.
His frame was shaking, and I could tell that one the soldiers was holding him up, for his knees had long lost the strength to support him. Someone important, maybe a governor or a religious figure from the inner walls got up and shouted a speech to us, reminding us of the importance of the annual sacrifice, congratulating Eren as if he was fortunate, as if he had won a lottery drawing. It made my tears turn to those of hate and disgust as opposed to my previous tears of sorrow. It was sick, revolting.
When he finished talking, we all knew it was time, the soldiers taking Eren to the top of the wall. He thrashed a bit in discomfort, seeing as he was suspended between two of them, and part of the cording came undone so that he slipped a bit, his face turned towards the crowd. The tears still fell; he had clearly given up, had resigned himself to the fate that awaited him on the other side of the wall that was supposed to be protecting him. The was no more hope, no more drive. He was released at the top, his body slumping against the cold concrete while the soldiers fastened the cords to anchors installed for that exact purpose. By then, we could already hear the sounds of gathering Titans, the guttural, wet sounds they produced with their throats. I shuddered, imagining what Eren must be seeing, what he must be thinking.
And then they lowered him, slowly, his dark chocolate brown locks, greasy and matted against his head from days without washing the last I ever saw of him. I wanted to cry, to demand they bring him back, to inform everyone of his importance, of his dreams, his aspirations. I wanted to prove how much he deserved to live, how wrong they were for what they were doing. I wanted them to know just what they had done, how precious the life they were snuffing was to me, to the world. But the silence was too heavy, too commanding. I was unable to produce so much as a sound, rendered mute. We all waited, waited for any indication as to what was happening, for it was all on the other side of the wall, far from out visual field. It came quickly, the snapping of jaws and a terrified scream that was easily recognizable as Eren. I held my breath, wondering if I had just heard my friend's dying scream, but one of the men on the wall shouted, informing us of what was happening on the other side.
A seven metre had tried, and failed, to reach Eren. We heard a thud and another cry, and were told that another seven had made an attempt. It was unlikely that a seven would be able to reach him though. The sacrifices were dangled pretty high, as the larger the Titan that got them, the better our year was supposed to be. Morbid, I thought to myself, too scared to say it aloud. After the seven, a five tried, its attempt even more fruitless. We passed nearly an hour in this fashion, Eren's cries the only think letting us know that he was still alive, barely clinging onto life, and only fighting death by instinct. And then we heard it, almost unnoticeable at first, but growing more intrusive by the second. The ground was shaking as the heavy footsteps fell, and one of the soldiers gasped in surprise.

We all waited, wanting to know what was going on. Finally they got their wits about them, and one shouted down to us. It was a big one, at least fourteen metres, maybe fifteen. And, to everyone's surprise, it was apparently female in form. It was then silent as we waited, wondering what it would sound like when it ate Eren. But all I heard was the snapping of cords, and then the same footsteps, retreating. The soldiers waited about a minute, then turned to us.
It was done. Eren was gone from us forever, our annual sacrifice complete. The crowd buzzed with muted excitement. A fifteen metre was the biggest class, which meant we had a good year ahead of us, or so the feeble citizens wanted to believe. I couldn't handle it; Such a gruesome crime against our morals, against humanity, followed by cheer and smiles? I gagged, unable to swallow down the bile this time. Mikasa rested a hand on my back as I vomited on the ground. It wasn't comforting. She herself was too far gone to really offer me any comfort. But it showed me that she was still here, that she hadn't been eaten by a Titan like Eren had, that she wasn't partaking in the relief and quiet celebration.

Mikasa and I lingered in the square, even longer than Mr and Mrs. Jaeger. I'm sure Mikasa would have gone with them, if she thought I'd manage on my own. But I wouldn't. I couldn't even force myself to stand up. She had to practically drag me to my house yet again, leaving me to my grandfather. He was unable to console me as I wept, sobbing so violently that I was sick, several times. He instead allowed me to cry until I no longer had any tears left to cry, or vomit left to purge. My body was exhausted, but I didn't fall asleep that night, too disturbed by the visions I was subjecting myself to. I imagined Eren, dangling, unable to even defend himself or run away. I imagined him trying to flinch away from the smaller titans that were jumping in a bid to tear him down from the wall. I imagined the terror on his face as the Female Titan approached, as she yanked him hard enough to rip the cords, shoved him into her mouth, biting him into pieces or maybe swallowing him whole, letting him swim in her stomach with the other humans she had recently devoured, likely in differing states of decay, until he died of shock, starvation, suffocation, or any number of things. In fact, I was unable to sleep for four days, and then I finally lost to my weakened body and fell unconscious. I couldn't be stirred for an entire day.

We all tried our best to get on with life after that. The topic was avoided in conversation, and everything of Eren's was locked away. Mikasa still wore his scarf though, and I kept the books he had managed to steal for me. I had always spent a lot of time reading, but after Eren, I became even more withdrawn, rarely leaving home in favor of losing myself in the fantasy world of one of my fairy tales, and always taking one of my books with me when I did. I still saw Mikasa regularly, but we had never been as close as Eren and I. I'm sure she felt the same way. But it was a mutual loss we had suffered, and so we made sure to check on each other occasionally, sometimes talking it out when the pain became too much for us to handle alone. As if required to by proxy, she looked after me in Eren's stead, fending off the bullies that still dared to mess with me. They grew few after Eren though, as most knew that he had been my closest and pretty much only friend, and they pitied my immensely. Still, there were a few heartless ones that persisted, some even using his sacrifice to taunt me. Mikasa made sure those ones went home with at least one broken bone each. But not only did she defend me, she was always ready to hold me should I need to cry, and I was always ready to listen to what she had to say. It was the best I could offer her, but it was plenty according to her. Mr. and Mrs. Jaeger refused to talk about Eren, and so she relied on me to converse about the good and bad times had with him.

I wondered how she had gotten so much stronger than me. I knew that she'd loved Eren, as more than a friend or a brother, and it was amazing how well she had taken his death. Granted, I wasn't with her all the time. Well, not much at all, actually. What she did when away from me... I had no way of knowing. I didn't really want to know. She could be frightening, if I thought about it, and so I didn't.

And eventually, with time to heal us, life fell into some semblance of normalcy. Eren was gone, and his absence lingered, almost more prominent than his presence had been, but I lived with it, getting by day by day. Mikasa did the same, pushing through, forcing herself to get up every morning. Mrs. Jaeger, however, did not. We lost her a few months after Eren's sacrifice. We never found a body, but we can all guess what happened. A couple of soldiers reported seeing a figure slinking around the gate as they were shutting it for the night, too small to be a Titan that had breached the wall. But they were too spooked to check it out, and too cowardly to bring it up until news of Carla's disappearance made it onto the billboard in the town square.

No one said it outright, but there was an unspoken acceptance of what had happened. Grisha disappeared a couple of weeks after Carla, though it seemed less likely that he had met the same fate, as no one had seen any trace of him, and he took several belongings with him. Mikasa came to stay with my Grandfather and I, settling into half of my room quietly. She didn't speak to me much, and I didn't bother trying to start conversation either. We simply slept and woke, as we did every day, trying to find distraction as we lived each day. I would read endlessly, sometimes staring out of the window and writing my own stories inside of my head, ones where Eren wasn't sacrificed, and Mrs. Jaeger didn't leave the protection of the walls in a frenzied bid to meet the same fate as her son, and Mr. Jaeger didn't disappear, and Mikasa still spoke, and I still smiled. I wove tales of oceans, unseen before, but breathtaking in my imaginings, witnessed hand in hand with my lost friend. Mikasa sat quietly, or went for day-long walks, returning late at night and very sweaty. I didn't ask, and she never told.

Ironically, the year of Eren Jaeger's sacrifice was one of the bloodiest in our history. We lost more of the population than usual, the Titans managing to break through our walls a total of eight times in twelve months. The avidly religious blamed it on the gender of the Titan, claiming that the female had muddied their sacred practise. But nobody really cared, not when there were Titans running amok in the town, picking people up and eating them with leisure. When Mikasa and I ran for the shelters, hand in hand, it was halfhearted, not nearly as fast as we could run if we were really trying to escape, because we weren't really trying to escape, not anymore.

A/N: I'm sure you saw this coming, but I thought I should mention that this is my first time writing for this fandom. I'd appreciate it if all of you lovely readers could refrain from totally destroying me for my feeble attempt. It's going to take me a while to figure out these characters, as I've never written them before. But I'll get the hang of it, sooner or later, if you'll just let me feel everyone out.
Anyway, this idea wouldn't let me rest until I wrote it. It just seemed like such a good one to me, but now that I have this bit written, I feel pretty terrible. Like, what am I doing, making their lives even worse than they already are? I guess that's what I'm here for though, making everyone miserable, one fanfic at a time. This is a pretty drastic step outside of my normal niche though. I'm not sure if anyone reading this is aware, but I'm known for my SuFin stories. (From Hetalia.) So, basically, I went from one of the fluffiest, domesticy couples on earth, to this monstrosity. But I knew this would happen as soon as I watched the first episode.

Alright, just to make some things clear before anyone gets in too deep: This story is going to EreMin-centric. That's not to say that I don't like EreRi, but I definitely like EreMin more. There's a lot more relationship there, less 'oooh, possible BDSM, tasty.' It's a lot of little things, like Armin holding his hand that one time, and [POSSIBLE SPOILER, if you haven't watched much of the anime] always being the one that gets through to him, even when he's in titan form. Not even Mikasa could do that. I think that says a lot. Plus, hand holding in this show is like the equivalent of fourth base. I mean really, does anyone actually believe any of these guys (or gals) is getting any serious action? Pffft.

Okei, I'd also like to note that there are going to be a few things mentioned that will spoil it for you if you aren't caught up with the anime. So long as you have seen all of the anime episodes, nothing should come as too much of a shock. But don't come crying to me a few chapters down the road if you didn't know about certain things, for I warned you ahead of time.
There are going to be some side pairings, I'm sure, but I don't know exactly they are going to be just yet. It's all going to depend on what happens, and what would make sense. But I'll just go ahead and list any that MIGHT appear. Jean/Marco, Ymir/Krista, Reiner/Bertholdt. If these do appear, it will likely be very subtly. First off, they are not the main characters of my story, and not every relationship has to be sexual. But I do support Jean and Marco, pretty hardcore. It's a problem I have. Anywho...

I'd also like to mention that I'm one of those authors that has a hectic update schedule. I'm going to apologize in advance for that. I try to get stuff done as quickly as possible, but you know how life can be. Be patient, I beg.

If anyone is still on board, then I hope to see you in chapter two, which should be longer. This was just to introduce you to a slightly altered universe, and set the plot in motion. For those of you who are serious fans, you might be able to pick out where the anime crosses over with my story. I'm doing that on purpose, and you get some points if you can find them! These points are non-redeemable, and absolutely worthless, but fun to collect nonetheless.
Please, let me know how I'm doing, as this is a whole new world for me. I need to know if my little idea is worth pursuing! Regardless, thank you for reading, and I hope you enjoyed it! Er, that might not be the best word... I hope you were moved emotionally in a positively negative way? Yeah, okei, there is no good way to say it, so I'll just say thank you, and I hope you found it interesting.

KuroRiya
九六りや