NEED TO STUDY CALC
NEED TO STUDY
Disclaimer: uh uh I have a stomachache WAIT I mean SnK is not mine
NOTE: kudos to Xeno the Hedgehog for actually PREDICTING WHAT I WAS GOING TO WRITE NEXT. How crazy is that? :D
I had written half of this, and then I got this message, and my eyes bulged out so far I was afraid they'd pop out and fly away lol.
Three Warriors
xxx. regret .xxx
The air is a thick, noxious veil of titan blood and torn flesh. She narrowly avoids death by the hands of a hungry giant, one that ducks around the evaporating carcass the others were currently sinking their foul teeth into. While the trees provide good cover and her bumbling pursuer cannot catch up with her acceleration, there is no hesitation in her departure.
She cannot spare even a hello for her two "friends", for such a move would be the end of them all.
But it certainly isn't pleasant, shooting through the forest of giant trees; the moans of ghosts howl at her back, and she passes bodies that she had smashed into the unforgiving oak trunks with her own hands. There is nothing celebratory about the smashed soldier sent to death by her shoulder, nor is there anything to feel accomplished of upon seeing a man she had tossed over her shoulder, maneuvering wires reeling him in like a sickeningly bloody toy.
She doesn't want to remember these things, this nightmare that happened just prior. The thought of a spear in her eye and a titan chewing on her leg flashes through her consciousness every now and then, and she forces the bile back down her throat and tells herself it was not terrifying.
She refuses to acknowledge her fear.
But she does, however, feel regret.
Simple, true regret.
The man's voice startles her into action; the ability to react in the following split-second has been the key to her survival thus far.
She draws her blades so quickly that he hardly has time to open his mouth again before she has sliced through his neck like she would a titan, and he hangs limply from a tree. A grisly human ornament, strung from a branch.
This time, the blood doesn't disappear from her blades, and the metallic tang of nausea pushes her stomach into her mouth.
But if only he hadn't called out, she wouldn't have so many more regrets.
She hadn't wanted to knock Armin off his horse.
She hadn't wanted to take that man by his gear and throw him around and around like a lasso.
She hadn't wanted to run over that girl, and she hadn't wanted to kick her squad leader into the gates of hell.
She didn't.
She doesn't.
She won't.
But she will.
Fatigued but holding firm to her last bit of stamina, she nicks her thumb with her pointed ring, and waits for the overwhelming sensation of being engulfed to come. Eventually, she loses control of her real body — struggling within the layers of tendons and ligaments was a fruitless effort — and instead she feels hardened, bony limbs made of pure muscle and impossibility.
She begins to wonder what they feel, what this one feels when she heavily smashes him to the ground, what this woman feels when she is brutally crushed into a tree — through her long, deft titan fingers, she is horrified to find that she can feel the gruesome crack of the woman's neck — and if the last one to follow loved her, because the look on his face wrenches at her heart.
But her heart is trapped inside a cold case of stone, in her titan body, and there is no escaping it.
She imagines herself, thrown to her death and blown to pieces; she imagines herself, half-eaten like Marco, chewed up like Mina.
And then she imagines the faces of Reiner and Bertholdt, and the dungeon of ice around her soul shivers. A creak and a whine, like old creaky gates, and in that moment of weakness, she is unaware of her surroundings.
Until the vengeful scream pierces the air and suddenly there is a hateful titan next to her, swinging wildly with his uncontrolled fists, screeching hysterically because he has gone completely and utterly mad.
She doesn't know if she would apologize to Eren, because she hasn't even apologized to herself.
She turns her head away from him when he screams, because the cry is so full of agony and sorrow and confusion and torment that she doesn't want them to seep into her. Nonetheless, this isn't the place to be defeated, and she instinctively tears herself free from his ungainly grasp.
Her fists are raised.
His titan eyes reflect something between astonishment and horror, recognition and disbelief.
She strikes his head off with one blow.
For some reason, she has a feeling she won't make it out of the forest with Eren. She feels this notion dwelling on her chest as she runs, elbowing branches out of her way and frequently having to dodge Mikasa's desperate assaults. Her titan body doesn't breathe; she is suffocating inside, the heat scorching her skin and her titan flesh tugging at her limbs.
She has Eren in her jaws, but she knows she won't reach the edge of the forest in time. A feeble fight, is what she considers her following effort.
But, she concludes, if there's anything to show she has a heart, it is that she'll let this man have some sort of closure.
She falls.
Eren is gone, in the arms of humanity's strongest.
She sits, bewitched by the miraculously cold steam that is rising from her sliced arms and legs. At least, to her, it is so hot that it stings like ice, like a feverish chill she cannot get rid of.
She feels the cold seep down her cheek, her titan cheek — a tear.
And she regrets, and regrets, and regrets because she is a murderer. She's no better than the titan that ate Berik, and certainly no different from some lunatic in the city who slashes the throats of sleeping people at night. She has killed and taken and destroyed. The world is dark, and the black mass of hatred that bubbles from her life tucks itself around her shoulders, a pair of uncomfortable hands of comfort.
She has failed.
She will wake up tomorrow morning, only to pretend like nothing happened, but she'll know what Reiner and Bertholdt are thinking. What she is thinking.
Will we ever go home?
And this, this was her fault.
She recalls each and every face as she sends them to their graves, their crimson tombs seeping with tears and terror, among the trees and the earth and the sky.
She regrets.
Annie weeps.
/chapter
Annie is fun to write
but I must study
and I feel awful
so goodbye for now :D