4.

/you can't blame them for wanting to survive/

I clambered out of the rubble, head spinning and ears ringing. The little wooden cottage had lost its structural integrity, and the opening to the damned basement was sealed shut with a large fallen, wooden pillar. My eyes searched for Carla, but she had been caught on the other side of the house.

Her face was scrunched up in pain and she was pushing and pulling at the concrete slab in front of her, trying to haul herself out from under the collapsed beams. Her body bore the brunt of the hit from the stray piece of rock which had crushed their home.

I stripped off my knitted cream coloured jacket and I pressed my hands on her stomach, my face mere millimetres from hers, trying to get into the correct position to apply pressure and staunch her bleeding. We heard screams ricocheting off the walls of the town, bone chilling scream after bone chilling scream.

"The titans are coming!" A man screamed as he hurtled past the Yeager's home.

I knew that. I knew that.

I was trying to stay calm, but I could feel myself hyperventilating and my hands were shaking so badly and there were tears running down my face because the air smelt sickeningly of metallic human blood but also because I was going to lose her and oh god, history was going to repeat itself. Carla told me to calm down. Carla told me to get help. Carla told me that she would be fine, as long as I was fine.

I'm physically nine, but I'm mentally thirty and I knew that leaving my patient alone was a very, very bad idea. But I gave in eventually, because Carla was fumbling, somehow successfully staunching her own bleeding and said that I was too young.

I told her to hold on because I was going to get someone (who wasn't as cowardly as Hannes) to help.

My parents.

I stumbled into my home to find it empty. Cursing under my breath, I ran out into the street, only to find it deserted and stained with death. A little girl's chest had been pierced through by flying debris, and she was wailing, but she was as good as dead, I turned my head and kept running. A man with his back in the dirt road and blood dribbling down my chin grasped at my legs whilst I ran, but I kicked away his frantic grasps because Carla. The soles of my shoes were painted red with blood by the time I ran head-first into a Garrison soldier. Time was not on my side.

"There's a woman," I was yelling at him, "You need to help her, she's only three streets away!"

Angry, frustrated tears ran down my face. The same fear I held in my eyes were so very clearly reflected in his eyes. He slung me over his shoulder and ran towards the boats without a single word.

"Hey! Put me DOWN! " I was kicking and screaming at him, biting him even, but he didn't stop running and running, manoeuvring gear clanking uselessly by his side. I felt so pitifully like Eren in that moment. Only when we had arrived at the departure wharfs did he let me down and take off again into the burning city.

I'm sorry, he seemed to say.

The crowd was suffocating. Some had passed away in the chaos, humans killing humans, crushed by the stampede, dead in minutes by asphyxiation. They lay underneath our feet, their still-warm bodies. I made it onto the boat eventually, weaving through arms and legs until I caught sight of Eren at the front of the crowd.

How did he get there so quickly?

His eyes were wide, and green and haunted. He noticed me staring and turned to throw my bloodied jacket into my chest, and looked me squarely in the eyes. His eyes were no longer wide, green and haunted. His eyebrows were furrowed, his eyes showed no light and they were shadowed with anger.

"Thanks for abandoning my mother." He said.

I know what it must have looked like.

I stood speechless, holding my jacket soaked in Carla's sticky blood – the only thing left of her apart from my memories, suddenly self-conscious of my stupid pink costume as he took Mikasa's sleeve and walked past me. I wanted to turn around and scream at him, and tell him that I only wanted to help, and I was trying to change the future – but I didn't, because I couldn't do either of those things without giving myself away.

My nails dug into my palm as I walked onto the boat.

"Lily!"

I turned at the sound of my name.

"Lily! Is that blood on your face?!" Mother brushed at the dried blood flakes on my face. "Thank God you're alive! I was so worried." I noticed the tear tracks on Mother's cheeks. Beside her, Father looked terrified. That look did not sit comfortably on him.

"I knew you'd make it." Father said as his pinched and wrinkled face visible relaxed, as he smoothed out my pink dress.

"Carla is gone." I choked out, lowering my head. Mother held me close, breathing shallow as she took in her new reality. There was an ear-splitting creak of wood, and the boat tore away from the shore. There was an immediate uproar. We watched on as families and civilians arrived in crowds from the other side of Shiganshina, out of breath and puffing.

"Please, please take my baby!"

The Garrison soldiers pressed back against the immense force of the crowd, keeping them away from the edge of the wharf. "Stand back! It's not safe!" They cried.

"The land we're standing on isn't safe!" A man screamed in retaliation.

"I just got here! I'm injured!" A woman screamed, I noticed that she only had a bloody stump of a left leg remaining. "Let me on the boat!"

I closed my eyes momentarily and turned into the protective embrace of Mother and Father, unwillingly to watch the carnage any longer. I heard a splosh of water; someone had jumped. There's another scream and two distinct thumps against the side of the boat, as civilians fought past the guards and threw themselves against the side of the boat. Then there's a heavy weight of a person who had grasped the wooden railings and made it onto the boat.

The screams died down as we sailed away from Shiganshina. We couldn't tear our eyes away from the smoke billowing from the remains of our town, burning away our homes, our lives, our memories. There was minimal chatter on board the boat aside from the quiet murmurs of prayers and the occasional shriek of despair.

The atmosphere was tense and pregnant with fear. It pulled taught and snapped as we watched with wide eyes, hands clapped over our mouths as the gate in Wall Maria shattered into splinters; destroyed by the force of the Armoured Titan. We watched helplessly as our safe place was pillaged, we watched as humanity was driven into the corners of our own land.

The next two years were hard.

There had always been a food shortage within humanity. Now, as survivors of the fall of Wall Maria, this was both a good thing and a bad thing. Where there was a lack of food, there was an abundance of empty barns, which made for good sleeping areas, especially when there were too many refugees to take in. We were squeezed like sardines up against each other, shivering in the cool winter breeze as we wrapped ourselves in whatever bloodied garments we had left on our being.

But ultimately, food was still scarce. The priority was given to the women, children and elderly, and they were given small portions of bread to survive on, whilst the men fought over the remaining produce – often none.

"…will just make the food shortage worse!" A soldier said.

A resounding thump echoed throughout the small town square where food rations were being handed out as Eren kicked the soldier's shin. Hundreds of pairs of eyes zeroed onto the scene, and we watched with bated breath as Eren argued and fought with the soldiers. This seemed familiar. I stood behind Mother, also watching.

"What the hell are you doing, you brat?!" He threw a punch at Eren.

"You don't know what you're talking about! You haven't seen it with your own eyes!" Eren's green eyes were blazing with anger, but softened by his tears. "How the titans eat people!"

Armin jumped in front of the soldier, and diffused the situation before the soldier could punch Eren again.

"You would've been dead without us." The soldier retorted. And that was the end of that.

Mother turned to Father and broke her palm sized loaf in half. "Sweetheart, eat something," she said. "Please."

"You need to eat; I'll be fine without a few days of food." He smiled wearily back at Mother. There was a blaring horn, and Father headed off with all the other hungry men to hack away at the frozen winter soil. Somewhere in the depths of his heart, he knew that nothing would grow, but he went back every single day.

The truth was, Mother was a beautiful woman. She had gently doe eyes, and despite her pregnancy, still maintained a curvaceous and desirable figure. In other words, she would have made a lot of money as a prostitute, but Father didn't allow it. It violated everything he believed in. He stayed true to his moral compass, and I admired that about him immensely.

Unfortunately for me, I didn't adhere much to my own moral compass, and for the first time in my life, I stole. Father had come down with a cold two weeks in, and he was weak from starvation. Some of the men were going to sleep hungry one night, and not waking up the next morning. Garrison soldiers now routinely knocked on the giant doors of our barns to collect dead bodies every morning. They become sick from malnutrition and cold weather and starved to death.

I could start to feel my ribs through my clothes, and my shadowed eye bags only got darker.

But I didn't sleep to alleviate my exhaustion. Instead, I snuck around the city under the moonlight and starlight on an empty stomach that no longer had the strength to growl, stealing a loose stack of tea leaves here, another half-eaten pink lady apple there, leaves of parsley left carelessly on kitchen counters. I returned with my goods in the morning, hidden in my pockets, and ready to sneak into my family's bread and food. I picked locks, scaled small buildings, tore at nutritious plants.

On my third consecutive night of thieving, I caught sight of a shift in darkness; someone snooping under the staircase of an apartment that I was about steal from.

The shadow stopped moving when my eyes sought out the movement.

We stared at each other, enveloped in shadows, seeing nothing but the fearful glint in each other's irises – illuminated by the eerie moonlight. After a few minutes of tense stillness, we realised that we meant each other no harm and slunk off, back into the night.

The next day, Mother was out hacking at the cold, frozen ground as Father lay burning up in the warehouse shed. He was running a dangerously high fever, elevated by cold weather and lack of warm clothing. I heated a mug of cold water over a communal fire and dropped a few precious tea leaves and thin apple slices into it. I fed it to Father - who was nothing less than delirious- when Mother wasn't around – so she wouldn't ask too many questions.

It was a miracle that he had gotten better so quickly. He said that an angel had come to save him, but I wasn't too sure whether that was my shadow conjured up in some hallucination, or if he had actually been on the brink of death. I wasn't sure which option I preferred.

Stealing became an unfortunate habit that I picked up, and kept around.

I stole whenever I could, just barely surviving, trying to curb my piercing hunger for just one moment. The moral weight of guilt weighed far less than the fear of being one of those bodies that just didn't wake up in the morning. The cities within Wall Maria ran rampant with crime. It didn't alert authorities until months later, but small signs – the double padlock, the chain locks, the accusatory stare when someone stood a little too close to you, signified the bigger problems at hand.

Eventually, Garrison soldiers were told to stand on guard, lining the previously empty streets - but the people were hungry, and so, thieves continued to pickpocket, civilians continued to murder each other over the smallest injustices. Life within Wall Rose was just as bloody, if not more than, the last days of Shiganshina.

The government finally declared an attempt to retake Wall Maria. Anyone over the age of 18 would be forced to enlist, and anyone found evading the initiative would be publicly murdered. It was bloodshed on the streets as a handful of traumatised survivors screamed and cried about having to face the titans again.

"You didn't come face to face with death." They cried out in protest.

"You didn't see the way they ripped humans apart." They trembled as tears slid down their starved faces.

Despite this, morale remained high as the refugees were equipped with shoddy steel equipment and given blunted steel knives. Many of them were first time horse riders, but were expected to go into battle the very next day. The government amped up the numbers of soldiers even further by giving residing civilians a monetary subsidy.

But we all knew that money couldn't harvest crops from frozen ground.

"I heard about the government initiative," I said, pulling Mother and Father into a bone crushing hug.

"Ah, you did, didn't you?" Father pulled away and rolled up his sleeves. "Well, someone's got to teach those big, ugly goofs a lesson. And I'm going to crush them all, just you watch, Lily." He grinned his reassuring toothy smile.

Over the past few months, Father had gotten paler. His previously bronze skin looked flaky and withered and for a farmer, it wasn't very fitting for it made him look ill and weak. It was him who suffered the most after leaving Shiganshina. He confided his worries to Mother in hushed whispers before they slept – he wasn't being a responsible father, his family was going to sleep hungry every night, and he hadn't a penny to spare after leaving all their possessions behind. Mother, without fail, wiped away his tears and pulled him close to her chest and told him he was the most amazing father I could have ever had.

And every night, without fail, I listened to their conversations with a heavy heart.

Mother laughed shyly at his bravado and patted my head. "He's getting ahead of himself, but he was moving young calves to the nursery yesterday by hand, you know."

"Just you watch, just, you, watch." His aged eyes crinkled into a light smile.

"I love you guys." I said, despite myself, tightening my grip on Mother's arm. "Please stay safe, please." My voice died down to a whisper.

"She's really growing up isn't she?" Father ruffled my brown locks, and stepped back to admire me.

"We love you too, Lily. We always will. For ever" Mother squeezed me tightly, tears welling up in her eyes. "And ever and ever." She turned away before I could see them fall.

"We'll see you soon, yeah?" Father turned place his straw hat back on his head, and wrapped his arm around Mother's waist.

I watched them walk off the pebbled path, towards the growing crowd of refugees and the shed of equipment, my eyes following their backs until they were so intermingled within the crowd I could no longer tell who was who.

That was the last I ever saw of them.

A/N: ch4 is up! out of curiousity does anyone listen to attack on titan music when they are writing or doing homework HAHA cos I do! listen to Attack on Titan - eye water; if you are up to it! this song in particular really portrays the mood in this chapter. as always, please leave a review to let me know what i can improve on & fav and follow! until next time and wishing you all a very happy new year!