When Antonia opened her eyes again, the clouds above were moving at a fast pace, as if there was a heavy wind pushing them forward. But if there was, she could not hear it blowing against anything in her proximity. The picture did not match the sound. And she could not feel any kind of breeze against her skin. She could not really feel or hear anything. At most, she felt like was floating.
The idea unsettled her.
She had no idea where she was.
This unsettled her even further.
And then, suddenly, it was like someone had poured a bucket of cold water over her and the washed the disorientation away.
First, she felt an almost overwhelming amount of pain and the hard-wooden planks below her back.
She was not floating; she was lying on her back in one of the godforsaken carts.
Then, she heard low voices, but she could not really discern who was talking to whom, much less about what. She slowly moved her head to look around herself.
She flinched as Hange's face popped up far too closely above hers.
"Toni!"
"Hey." It was hard to produce words. Her throat was dry, and her mind felt dizzy. But if Hange was irked by the seconds that passed before Antonia managed to get the syllable across her lips, she masked it very well.
Her comrade's brown eyes seemed wide with concern.
"How are you feeling?"
Antonia really did not know how to reply. She had no idea how she felt and it would have been easier to tell Hange which parts of her body did not hurt than to describe to her where she suspected to be injured.
"How did I get here?" She asked instead, her voice far too raspy.
"Your horse found us. I recognized it right away when it came out of the forest, you see, because of the white spot on its left ear, and I told everyone that you must have switched to ODM gear and send your horse to us, so that we would send backup."
The words were pouring out of Hange's mouth at a remarkable speed and Antonia noticed that she had to muster up a lot of willpower to concentrate on them. But despite her efforts, Hange's interpretation did not make much sense to her.
"But the commander said that I was delusional and that you had been eaten and I, er, got into a lively discussion with him, and, I might have said some things to him that were uncalled for while doing so…"
Antonia felt a rush of affection for her. Opposing the commander must have required guts – and she knew that Hange lionised Shadis. Yet, she had gone out of her way for her team and prioritized their survival above everything else. And while doing so, she must have displayed enough rhetoric skill to convince him to send for their squad.
But instead of retrieving three people, they only found her.
"Anyway, Levi went back to look for you."
Hange's words did not make much sense to her.
"What? Alone?"
"Er, yes, the commander did not really approve of that, but…"
A part of her brain absorbed the information that Levi had probably disobeyed his superior in order to help them, but she just did not have the mental capacity to think about that now.
By now, she had registered that only Hange and her occupied this cart. However, there must be others. She could hear the sounds of hooves around them, faintly accompanied by that of what must have been wheels.
"Did he… find Ben as well?"
It was a painful thing to ask, but she just needed to eradicate the spark of hope that still remained inside of her chest, she just needed to make sure that she had really failed.
The tears that formed in Hange's eyes confirmed what she already knew. Quickly, she averted her eyes and looked towards the grey sky.
"No, he just brought you back."
She felt like she should have apologized to Hange for not bringing anyone back. And like she should have asked more questions about what exactly had happened to the others while she was absent, about who exactly had said what when Liam had reached them, about whether Levi said anything about having seen Ben's body, about whether or not he killed the abnormal titan.
But Antonia could not remember the last time she felt this drained and tired.
"I see. I'm going to sleep for a bit"
It was rare that she fell asleep as soon as she closed her eyes, but this time, the universe blessed her with this supernatural power. She did not even hear Hange's reply.
The way back seemed to be endless. Then again, she could not really say how much of it she spent awake.
It might just have been a very long dream with a few fragments that felt like they really took place, but then again these could have been old memories, recycled by her subconscious. Or maybe it was the other way around and she simply dozed off for brief periods of time. Be that as it may, she could not really recall much of it.
But there was one image that she would remember from their way back.
In one waking moment, she was faced with the stunning beauty of hundreds of stars that shone down on them brightly.
She remembered that she had loved to sneak out at night to look at the stars as a kid. This had been one of the few occurrences where she displayed perfect patience and sat quietly for hours. Her mother had told her about the different formations you could see in the night sky. She faintly remembered the way her laundry had smelled back when she was still living with them, but she could not say what components the smell consisted of.
The next time she woke up, she could feel rays of sunlight touch her face. It was dawn and the pale sky over their heads slowly turned to blue.
She had heard a bell in her dreams.
The sight above her got obstructed by the hapless grey of the entrance gate. Finally, they were back inside the safe confinement of the walls.
Shiganshina, she thought.
She tried to block out the voices of the gapers that always seemed to gather among the main streets, regardless the time of the day, to greet the survey corps with their disapproval.
And yet, she could not overhear them.
"Look, there's not even twenty of them left."
"Seems like our taxes got eaten."
"Isn't it weird how everyone in Shadis's squad always dies. How does he live with this?"
Not even twenty.
Antonia considered getting up, just enough so that she would be able to take a look around, to see the devastating reality of how their numbers have shrunk with her own eyes.
But she could not muster up the strength – neither to prop herself up on her aching arms, nor to look at the accusing faces of the citizens who were either grieving their lost family members or their valuable tax money.
She took a deep breath and felt a sharp pain in her ribs. She dreaded the idea, but she felt like she would have to spend some time in the infirmary.
She closed her eyes again, hoping that she would be able to sleep at least until they got to Trost, or better even still when they arrived so that she would not witness the same scenario all over again. For now, she felt like she could sleep forever. She would have thanked the universe if she had been able to.
This time, it was screaming that woke her.
"Wall Maria has fallen! Shiganshina has been run over by titans!"
And for the first time for what must have been hours, she felt very much awake.
Yet the hysteria did not really get to her as much as she thought it should. Maybe, she was still under shock.
She wondered where precisely they were at. She had no idea for how long she had been out this time. She saw houses to her left and right, but they did not really look familiar. She assumed that they were passing through Trost district, which would mean that Shiganshina was a long way behind them.
When she moved her head to look for Hange, the brunette was nowhere to be seen. Antonia was completely alone.
She briefly wondered if the remains of the survey corps had already jumped to action and left her behind, seeing that she was too useless to provide any help.
On a second thought, Hange had been injured as well. Antonia wondered whether she would be reckless enough to fight with a broken arm.
When she decided that she really needed to get up, however painful that might turn out to become, Hange hopped back onto the cart.
"Toni, Wall Maria – "
"I heard. But how?" She did not care that she was being rude.
Hange did not seem to care either, she just gave her a quick nod.
"We don't have enough information yet, but Erwin is the new commander, he and everyone who is still able to fight will turn back to Shiganshina district. I hope they'll get there soon enough"
Antonia was confused. She briefly wondered if Shadis had died, but then she remembered the harsh words of their welcoming committee.
"Shadis stepped back." Hange clarified and for once, her face hardened, and she looked as if she had just smelled something nasty.
Apparently, Hange's infatuation with Keith Shadis had found a sudden end. But that was not only none of Antonia's business, but also did not seem important at the moment.
"What do we do now?" Antonia asked.
"What do you mean? We're heading towards the infirmary, of course."
The expression on the brunette's face was both bitter and serious.
Antonia remained silent for a bit. Hange was right, there wasn't anything else that they could do in their current condition.
"Do you know what happened to my horse?" She felt ashamed for not having asked about Liam earlier and at the same time, she felt embarrassed for asking about him at all.
"It's pulling one of the other carts." Hange offered her a warm smile.
"Alright, thank you." Antonia felt some of the tension leave her body and sank her head back down onto the wooden surface below her again.
Then, she tried to block out the panicked-stricken voices of the citizens around her and to find comfort in the slight rocking of the cart that Hange navigated through the streets. She tried not to picture hoards of titans eating people in the streets of Shiganshina.
Today turned out to be one of the worst days of her life and she could not help but wonder whether it would also be her last. Whether it would mark the end of humanity.
She wondered where exactly the Wall had broken down. If the titans had been able to get both into Shiganshina district and beyond Maria, it must have fallen where the edges of the district met with the main part of the wall. Which was also where the wall was thickest and should have been more than stable.
Antonia could not really imagine that the walls which had kept humanity safe for so long would now simply fall apart. Maybe there had been an accident with a lot of gunpowder. She would have liked to believe that because he alternative meant that an abnormal must have breached it.
If there was a future for any of them, she wondered if she would get to say thank you to Levi.
Author's Note: I just noticed that I had completely forgotten to mention that, since chapter 8, we're in the year 845. Oops.