Creation began on 10-22-20

Creation ended on 11-04-20

Neon Genesis Evangelion

Hope from the Sky: And a time for despair…

A/N: Grausam's fate decided.

The world around him was like a fractured, faceted picture, showing him multiples of people and things. Every sound was like a whisper so low that he might as well have been deaf to them, and his limbs frozen in time like the rest of his body. It was only his mind that continued to function, reminding him that he was still alive. But for Grausam Zanki, this fate was unbefitting of one such as himself. He needed to get free, to get his revenge against Kaede Sogen, to be rid of her like he had to be rid of everyone else that held him back.

I'll get out of here, girl, he thought as he tried to regenerate his legs. I'll get out! I'll find you! I'll rip your spine out of your back and shatter it against the pavement!

But try as he might, he couldn't get his legs to regenerate so long as he was trapped in this strange formation that his step-granddaughter placed him in. It was though he was buried underwater again, except he was unable to move anything, even if it was just his mouth. It was madness from his perception; unable to talk, move, anything…and he was ready to snap on anyone that wasn't Kaede Sogen.

-x-

"…So, I take it that NERV or whoever was responsible for the backup against the enemy Jaeger Titans came and picked up the two girls you were keeping watch over?" Shinji was asked by Mikasa as he sat on the deck of the carrier beside the Eva.

"Yeah, some members of the JSSDF came by an hour ago and picked them up," he answered her; all he did to help get Asuka and Rei off of Paradis was use his Eva's enhanced AT-Field to propel Units-00 and 02 off the ground and sent them up to these planes that were large enough to carry an Eva. "I contacted Misato and let her know that everyone on the island was grateful for their aid."

"You don't seem all that happy, though."

"It seemed like they both had something they wanted to tell me, but never got around to saying it. I could've questioned it, but I chose not to."

"Not too curious as to what they were probably refraining from talking about?"

"No. I guess I'm just used to being here that anything related to my life back in Tokyo-3 isn't all that much of interest to me. I still think about, though, just…not what we were doing most of the time before I ended up here. If anything else changes for the better, we'd probably be able to setup peace between the two worlds."

"You mean different from your father had attempted once with that heartless ultimatum he forced on us?"

"Yeah. But we don't have to worry about anyone like that trying to threaten the island again; my father, these SEELE people, they're all gone now. All that's left of them…are just Grausam and bitter memories."

"And Eren?"

"He's just an ordinary person now, incapable of harming anyone."

"He was let go from the Survey Corps not too long ago. He took it pretty hard."

"But…he still has the rest of his life to pursue other interests, right?"

"He does, but…he has never been one to plan ahead."

Shinji sighed and sympathized with never planning ahead; people that didn't do that often found themselves without a future to build upon. But they had a future now because of the selfless actions of those around them. Even he hadn't much of a future with the way things were back in Tokyo-3 on account of the Angels and the way NERV was ran by his father. Of course, now that his old man was reduced to a memory, and he was here in a world that had seasons and wasn't flooded with half-sunken coastal areas, all he had was time to think about what he was going to do after the Eva was no longer necessary to protect the people.

"Tell me," Mikasa asked him, "if you were told to by our superiors…would you have killed Eren? Would you have?"

Shinji looked at her and answered, "Not unless there was no other choice…and there's always another choice. Murder isn't an option. Not always, not when it's against another human that just has issues that he can't resolve properly."

"Forever merciful."

"Believe me, when I try to be merciful, it's up to the person that's being offered the mercy to either accept it or reject it. The people that don't want mercy…are the ones that are just too much in a hurry to see the end."

"That sounds like some song lyrics I listened to recently. Suicidal imbecile… What's your rush now, everyone will have his day to die…"

"Heh-heh. So, Eren is the suicidal imbecile, is he? The only one in a rush to die? Too long ago, I was that way, too, but for different reasons."

"Why is that?"

"Back then, my life was going nowhere…and the only route I had open for me when I met that man…was just to serve as another lackey to face monsters the world knew nothing about. But now…I'm in no rush to die, thank you very much…because I have a life here that I want to protect from being ruined by someone that has an axe to grind against me."

"Again, your girlfriend is someone I am thankful to for making it so that Eren lives."

"Yeah. I'm thankful for Kaede, too."

-x-

They had time on their side. This was something Erwin Smith and Dot Pixis understood perfectly well after discovering the change in some of what they knew recently. So long as Ms. Sogen still held the Titan power and possessed no agenda to impede the people's progress after escaping their confined life behind the Walls, they knew she wasn't an enemy to anyone except her step-grandfather, who was only the enemy because he chose to be. And with the understanding that Dr. Grisha Yeager was alive again and that meant his little sister was also alive on the island, but stuck in Titan form, buried underground somewhere in a forest, that meant they had to look for her, eventually and restore her to humanity and explain what had happened and why.

But first, Kaede needed to deal with Grausam…permanently. Once he was dealt with, they could return to their problems with Marley and resolve them with the goal to bring about peace between the two nations left on the planet. It might've been a small concern for them once more, but it was one that needed to be treated seriously. The matter with Marley could be dealt with later on once all other matters were over.

Kaede, walking down a dungeon pathway, entered a chamber where Grausam was kept, unable to break free from his diamond shell. She looked at his face and sighed at how vulnerable he looked with his legs ruined; part of his original reason for wanting to escape from Paradis was because he wanted to regain his lost leg, except now he lost both legs and was prevented from regenerating. In a way, she almost pitied him. Almost, but not really, not like she pitied many of his victims when he chose to murder.

"How has he been, gentlemen?" She asked two Garrison members that were sitting nearby at a table, playing cards.

"Quiet and immobile, Ms. Sogen," one of them explained. "He's like a popsicle. He can't move or speak."

She smiled and nodded her head in the positive.

"I'm here to deal with him permanently now," she told them as her Dark Titan emerged from her back. "You may want to take a step back."

"You heard the young lady, gentlemen," the Dark Titan uttered to them. "It's for your own protection against him."

They got the message and dropped their cards, leaving the chamber.

This time, I can't have you buried, Kaede thought as she sat down in a chair and extended her Titan flesh to cover the floor and Grausam's crystal shell. I can't risk you getting loose again because someone careless or power-hungry chooses to find you and releases you, either by accident or on purpose. But we learn from our mistakes and build upon them. This…is the way it will be for you.

What are you doing, Kaede?! Grausam wondered as he recognized the power of his enemy unleashed through his obscured vision. What is this?! What are you up to?!

-x-

"…Hmm?" Historia went, looking away from the garden in the hospital she and Ymir were in.

"Is something wrong?" Ymir asked her.

"No," she answered her. "Kaede is dealing with Grausam now. She's carrying out his penance to ensure that he can't escape again."

-x-

This wasn't the place they had met up in the last time before he returned to Paradis. No, it was just a vast, misty street under a dark, starless sky. There was no signs of any buildings or trees, not even a streetlight of sign posts. It was as though they were in a variation of what Grausam once knew of as a vast, white space, devoid of matter and desire.

Kaede, standing a good distance away from Grausam, looked at him with contempt.

"Whether out there or in here," he told her, standing on his feet, "I'll kill you, Kaede! I'll kill you! You can't stop me!"

Kaede then approached him.

"You think you can stop me?" She questioned. "You have no idea what I'm capable of, do you?"

She raised her arms up and touched his head.

FLASH! All around him, as if phasing through him like bullets, various men and women, all previous Titan Shifters, looking and yelling at him for all his crimes and inhumanity against the world, inflicting grievous pain on his mind.

"Aaaaahhh!" He yelled, tilting his head back, unable to move away from the girl.

She then let go of him and grabbed his shirt's collar, tugging him down to meet her gaze.

"Welcome to my little corner of Hell, Grausam," she told him, and then kicked him in the crotch. "You're in my house now, old man!"

She then kicked him in his head with her boots, drawing blood.

"Stop!" Grausam begged her, but she grabbed him by his neck and head-butted him on his nose, forcing it to gush out even more blood. "Please, Kaede! Stop!"

But she wasn't giving him any mercy. Not after all that he did to the people that suffered from his lack of humanity and lust for power. He was an unfeeling and irredeemable man that couldn't be forgiven for any of his crimes. Murder, experimentation, attempted murder, questionable judgment and behavior, not to mention that he just really made her fear for her family and friends so long as he was around, so she had to be relentless towards him.

Wham! She threw him across the misty pavement…and surprised him with her inhuman strength by picking him up and raising him up into the air.

No way is she this strong, he thought as he looked down at her. "What are you?"

"I'm just a young lady that you violated before you left your past behind," she told him, "and the last person you will ever see for the rest of your miserable life."

Grausam bared his bloody teeth to Kaede and gave a twisted smile.

"Even if you were to get rid of me," he told her, "you will never be rid of me. You can't escape the fact that you are what you are because of me. I'll always be part of your life."

Kaede inhaled and exhaled a sigh and then lowered Grausam to meet her gaze closer.

"Be that as it may," she told him, "I'll let you in on something that you can take with you where you're going. You crossed a very sensitive line when you used me as your first test subject for your Jaeger Titan Serum, but all you did was awaken a power within me that will serve the people long after I'm gone. The blood of Ymir Fritz, the first Titan Shifter and leader of the nation of Eldia…flows in my veins. The power of the Titans…was my birthright that you caused me to gain possession of as I grew into my position as the Dark Titan. One of my friends is the Queen of Paradis…while I'm the Queen of the Titans, figuratively and literally."

Grausam chuckled and retorted, "That's the biggest falsehood I've ever heard in my life! You related to a royal family that was weakened severely over the generations? Ha! Ha-ha! You have a twisted sense of humor in you!"

Kaede's look didn't waver in any way in front of him; if she had been trained to keep a straight face, she was trained well. But he kept looking at her, waiting for her to admit her falsehood claim, to waver, to laugh like a maniac.

"Why would I lie about something I learned about while away from Paradis?" She questioned. "Why would I lie about my relation to Ymir Fritz, who addressed me as such along with Historia and another relation where we were? If I were to say that I'm pregnant with my boyfriend's child, that would be a lie…and you'd know that by my lack of effort in trying to sound convincing. You think I'm lying about how I'm related to the same woman as Historia Reiss? I'll let you explore my memories so you can see for yourself."

The world around them shifted to show Kaede's past on Gigante Island. Here, Grausam saw people that were either stranded there a long time ago or were locals with mixed blood, some Eldian and some Marleyan, and the craziest part was that they were not in conflict with one another. No, there was no feud, no petty mishaps, not even a mere threat to some guy's sister. And then, he saw how the girl was being told about why her hair was gray, something he found odd about her ever since he saw her in the past.

An ancestor used the Founding Titan to turn their hair gray, and made it a dominant trait for their bloodline? He realized, watching as this branch of people from the Fritz family thinned out through the generations down to the most recent descendant: Kaede Sogen. No way. There was a belief that people descended from Ymir Fritz could access the full power of the Titans, but I never believed that anyone would ever risk their very lives in the process of obtaining power with a price to be paid for it. Power without an expiration date is true power! Power with an expiration date is a curse!

And then, he saw her encounter with both her dead father and the soul of Ymir Fritz, who was released from her confinement in this strange place they were in.

"And you think this revelation makes you so special?" He questioned her. "I could care less about who your ancestors are."

"I know you do," she responded. "You're so wretched and soulless, I know exactly where you need to be."

Then…she released him from her grip, but he didn't fall to the ground. Instead, he rose up, several meters above her, covered in plant-based matter.

"Hey! What is this?!" He demanded from her, trying to break free.

"Titania's Abyss was a physical prison for your body," she went, "but so long as anybody with the means to do, there's no guarantee that you'll be undiscovered if you're sent back there. So this time, I'm imprisoning you here, in a small section of the vastness of the Eldian Paths. You're immortal in a sense, so this is a life sentence; who would want to live forever in a place like this, anyway? Time is irrelevant here, years can go by while out there, maybe just a few moments could go by."

"You really think you can hold me here?! I'll get out! I'll get out and I'll find you! Do you hear me, girl?! I'll find you!"

"Oh, I'm sure you will…but then again, maybe you won't. You see, you did sever your connection to the paths, so in a slight sense, you severed your only connection to others. You still have your Akuma Titan, but even that won't help you escape from here. A connection to the paths is no different from a compass needed to find one's way home. No path, no compass, meaning you're effectively lost here. I'll always know you're here, though. So…yeah, I'll never be rid of you so long as I live, but I can live with that. I will live with knowing that. I shouldn't complain much. I have Shinji, along with my family, the memories and love of my father in my heart, the people of Paradis Island, and my Dark Titan."

Her Dark Titan manifested beside her on the right and expressed, "You can say that again."

Grausam yelled at them, but a vine wrapped around his mouth.

"Hmmm! Mmm!" He went, unable to voice his fury.

"This is despair reserved for the heartless, Grausam," Kaede told him as the tree began to reach the height of her Dark Titan after it was revealed that the power of the Colossal Titan enabled it to achieve one-hundred meters. "You brought this outcome upon yourself."

"MMM!" He continued to grunt, but the vines and trunk of the tree had enveloped him completely, leaving no trace of his existence.

Kaede was now standing before a large, dark tree without a single leaf, looking decayed and unhealthy, an ugly mockery of Titanus Yggdrasilus or a lowly perversion of the great tree.

"He's trapped deep within, Kaede," the Dark Titan revealed to her. "He's not getting out. Even if he manages to find a way to escape the tree, you cut him off from returning to the physical world. Back there, his body is most likely a pile of pulp. The mind and spirit severed from the body. That…is as close to dead as he'll ever be."

"Thank you, Dark Titan," she told her, and then hugged her. "We'll always know he's here…but so long as he's trapped here…we're free."

"Yes…we are free."

The two vanished in front of the tree, no longer needing to be there.

-x-

Kaede opened her eyes…and saw a puddle of pulp with the ruins of Grausam's clothes soaked in it.

People of Paradis Island, she used her power to reach out to everyone connected to the Eldian Paths, this is Kaede Sogen of the Dark Titan. Grausam Zanki, the holder of the Akuma Titan, has been dealt with severely. He has been imprisoned within the Eldian Paths, sealed away for all time. He will never harm any of you ever again. I repeat, Grausam Zanki has been sealed away within the paths, cut off from everyone.

Getting up, she turned to leave the dungeon and return to her place in the world she lived in.

Are you okay, Kaede? She heard Shinji say to her.

I'm okay, Shinji, she answered him.

-x-

He had lost any sense of time while inside this grotesque tree. Was it a minute or was it a day? All he knew was that he had to escape, to find the girl and get his revenge upon her.

"Oh, you'll do no such thing to her," he heard a male voice in the darkness with him.

"Who's there?" Grausam demanded. "Show yourself!"

A small light shined in the dark space…and Grausam was face-to-face with a young man with gray hair…and a cold expression directed towards him. Beside him was a little girl, covered in rags and with a vacant expression.

Grausam recognized them from Kaede's memories. These were her father, Hagen Sogen…and Ymir Fritz prior to her rise to glory and enlightenment.

"How?" He questioned. "How is this possible?"

"Some questions are better off unanswered," Hagen told him.

"This…is just an added sense of retribution to you," said Ymir Fritz as she raised up two pales full of sand. "These…represent the weight of your crimes against others…and the weight of your blood-soaked hands and irredeemable soul."

Grausam felt his hands move of their own accord, reaching out to receive the pales.

"Hey! What is this?!" He demanded, and Ymir placed the pales into his possession.

"Just in case you were getting any ideas on how to escape, Grausam," Hagen stated, "these will prevent you from moving far. Do you know how much the average human body weighs upon death? Multiply that by the number of people you've either harmed or killed. And multiply that amount by the number of people still alive in the world you were just cut off from."

Grausam fell to whatever ground they were standing on inside this forsaken realm.

"You really think these buckets will keep me here?!" He yelled at them.

"Try and let go of them," Ymir Fritz told him.

"Oh, you watch me!" He responded, rising back up to his feet, but then fell back to the ground, his hands still holding onto the handles of the pales. "Hey! I can't let go of these!"

"We know," Hagen informed him. "As Ymir Fritz has explained, they represent the weight of your crimes and the blood on your hands. When you add the lives of everyone alive, the weight becomes greater than what you can imagine. There is an old paradox theory about what happens when an unstoppable force meets with an immovable object. You're the unstoppable force due to the fact that you can move…and the pales are the immovable objects because you can't move them. Trapped by my daughter in a prison you can't escape from…and chained to weights that you can't break from. Now, you are truly a prisoner here."

"Aaaurgh! Gaaurgh!" Grausam yelled, trying to lunge at the two, but his arms were stuck to the buckets, keeping him bound where he was, a short distance between them. "Aaaurgh!"

"Even with the strength of your Titan," Ymir Fritz told him, "you will never remove your arms from these pales. You must bear the weight of your sins for all time, Grausam Zanki. You must bear this weight for all time."

Hagen then lowered his head to meet Grausam's gaze.

"There's another old saying, Grausam," he told him. "I spoke of it to Sig. There is an arrogance in those that unknowingly create their own worst enemy. You touched my daughter to enable yourself to escape from Paradis, and, in the process, you created an adversary that would undo you in every way. Just as those that fight monsters must make certain that they themselves don't become monsters, those that know of the monsters that exist must bear the responsibility of what monsters they may have had a role in creating. You made it so that the Dark Titan exists, and therefore created a monster you couldn't unmake. You enabled Kaede to defeat you, and you gave her the means to do so. Forget being two sides of the same coin; you don't compare to anyone, whether they're good or bad. Those with benevolent intentions will always rise up while those with ambitions of domination, destruction or basic greed will always be beneath the foundations of one's path to a better tomorrow. You're at the bottom of the food chain because you overestimated your own abilities and underestimated the adaptability of your enemies."

Before could Grausam could retort, the two were gone…and he was back in the darkness once again. Except now, he was stuck holding two buckets that he couldn't free his hands from.

"Aaaaaahh!" He yelled, stuck where he was, but nobody heard him.

And nobody really cared.

-x-

The sun was starting to set, but Kaede still had one other thing to before calling it a day, standing in front of a forest of the tall trees. She had used the Eldian Paths once more to locate a person that was definitely among the living now because of her actions: Faye Yeager, forced to hide underground as a Titan after escaping the attempted murder by the Marleyan man that despised Eldians so much that he found amusement in their suffering.

Come to me, please, she told the Titan, and from within the forest, a small rumbling occurred.

A handful of members from the Survey Corps came prepared to help the girl should she require it. After their previous encounters with Titans being returned to human form, they had to expect anything, from injuries relating to dehydration, starvation…or just plain nudity due to being in Titan form for a long time.

"Ten-meter Titan, dead ahead!" A man called out as a Titan emerged from the darkness within the forest.

It was exactly as Kaede had envisioned the girl to be when she saw her in the past memory of Grisha Yeager, albeit now in an emaciated state. The Survey Corps kept their distance from the Titan as it approached Kaede.

"Stop," she uttered, and it obeyed. "Return to who you were."

The Titan started evaporating as it fell to its knees. In two minutes, most of the behemoth was gone, leaving a little girl in its place, nude, dehydrated and confused.

Kaede approached her and wrapped her in a blanket.

"W…where…am I?" She asked her as she was handed a bottle of water, quenching her thirst.

"This is Paradis, Ms. Yeager," Kaede explained. "A lot has changed in the past few months."

Faye looked at her as her vision returned, and felt the strangest sense of déjà vu come over her.

"I…I saw you before," she expressed as Kaede carried her over to the Survey Corps members. "You were there that day when that man was about to hurt me with his dogs. You told me to turn into a Titan and escape, that you would come back for me."

Kaede nodded in the positive.

"How long was I gone?" Faye asked.

"Too long," she stated; over twenty years…and the girl hadn't aged a day since her parents and brother last saw her.

"Is my brother still waiting for me?"

"Yes. Yes, he is."

In a way, it was still the truth; Grisha was alive on Paradis after Kaede delved into his own past and altered his present, so he was, in a sense, still waiting for his sister along with their parents, despite the years that passed by them. Even if they were older, her parents and Grisha would have to be moved to tears by the mere return of one of their own.

"Tell me, Ms. Sogen," went Levi to her as the girl was taken away, "does it ever frighten you, the things you can do?"

She turned to face him and responded, "Only when I didn't understand anything. Why?"

"Are you confident that Grausam Zanki can't escape from where you locked him up?" He wanted to know; if the girl could answer him honestly, he'd be convinced that she knew what she was doing, even if what she was doing was defying all sense of logic and reason in the interests of making the people's lives better.

"I am," she answered. "Before he even escaped five years ago, he intentionally severed his connection to the Founding Titan, and therefore severed his connection to everyone else. He's trapped there unless I go back to free him, and I won't free him. He's a horrible person and deserves to be locked up where nobody can ever find him. He'll still be alive, but no matter how many years go by, he'll never return to harm anyone. I…I dealt him a fate that is far worse than dying. If he's locked up, he has no freedom, and a monster of a man without a sense of freedom…is a man without a future of his making."

"Okay," he accepted. "That's all I needed to hear."

They walked away from the forest after that.

"You have no idea how much I thought about taking that man's egotistical head off just to see if he could recover from that."

Kaede chuckled as she covered her mouth.

To be continued…

A/N: If the first prison becomes compromised, you got to make sure the next one won't be, and that's what Kaede did. Now, Grausam can't escape, and nobody in the whole world will be able to find him. I bet some of you were expecting her to do that, but not in such an unexpected way, or even for Grausam to have surprise visitors that made sure he couldn't escape, no matter how hard he tried. Until the next chapter.