A/N: I will be out of town all next week without access to internet, so instead of leaving you all hanging for a week, please enjoy this chapter a few days early! Thank you all for the favs, comments, and follows! I appreciate you all!
Chapter 22
Three Years Later
"Gunther!" Eren cries out wildly at the fallen soldier who hangs lifelessly by his wires.
"Go kid! Come on!" Oruo snatches Eren up by the back of the neck, feeling panic set in. "Keep moving!" he calls out as he launches Eren into the tree line, forcing him to use his ODM gear.
"We…We're just leaving him?" Eren cries out in horror, looking back at the suspended body. Willow flies in front of his vision, obscuring the path to Gunther. Eren releases a gasp at the hooded figure so close to him.
"Who is that?" Petra grunts with disbelief and panic in her tone.
"Keep 'em away from Eren!" Eld calls out, leading the charge.
"Damn it!" Oruo growls in frustration, "Eld, what're we doing, huh?" he asks his Squad Lead for guidance.
"There isn't time to get the horses!" he calls out to them, "Make for HQ at full speed!" he commands them, pressing on his gas and flinging him into the tree line at a wild speed.
She smiles to herself, following behind him at the same speed. She breaks from them, cutting into the trees as they gather wild speculations about her. "Is that the Female Titan, or does she have an accomplice?" Oruo asks with gritted teeth.
Petra looks over at the hooded figure that flies from them. "Damn!" Petra releases, turning towards the hooded figure that moves away from them, "whoever it is, they're going to pay!" she cries out into the trees loud enough for her to hear, "even if it's the last thing I do!"
Willow smiles to herself, knowing fair well that it will be the last thing Petra does. She pulls back on her gas and lands on a nearby tree branch. She stands there for a moment, allowing them to think that she is gone and they are safe.
Only for a moment.
She takes in a deep breath, remembering the day the Levi Squad abandoned her and Hal in the woods at the fists of the Armored Titan. She tells herself that if they were brave enough to fight, they would have killed the Armored Titan and Hal would still be alive. She feels her body temperature rise and she wants nothing more than to splatter their bodies on the trees, staining them red with their blood.
Willow pulls her hand to her lips, opening her mouth and biting down with intensive force. A thunderous clap of yellow lightning lights up the sky and Willow's Female Titan takes over her body. Wind whistles around them as her mass grounds the trees around her.
"Move it!" she hears Eld command as she presses forward, running at them now with forceful speed. She is not toying with them now; she is ready to kill.
"I'll kill you! I swear I will!" Eren shouts, turning towards her with his hand moving to his mouth. She smiles to herself, readying for the fight. She has trained endless days and nights with Reiner's Armored Titan and she knows that if she can best him, she can take on Eren's pathetic Titan.
"No! Don't!" Eld calls out before the boy can assume Titan form. "We got this! The three of us can handle her!" he looks back at him, "You get back to base! Go, now!"
Willow charges at them, pressing her body fast towards them. Eld thinks they can handle her? She will show him that he is sorely mistaken.
"I can fight her too!" Eren tells him with frantic worry.
"Just go!" Eld commands him. "This is our best course of action! We cannot afford to put you at risk!"
"Have you learned nothing?" Oruo joins in, "After all this, you still doubt our skills?"
"Is that true, Eren?" Petra cries out, "I thought you had faith in us—that you trusted us!"
Eren looks conflicted and Willow watches him carefully to see what choice he will make. Will he abandon them as they abandoned her? Will he leave them, knowing they do not have the strength to take her on, but he does? Will he allow the death of his Squad to save his own life, as they allowed her death to save theirs?
Eren closes his eyes and lowers his hand. He turns from them and propels himself onward, and towards their death. "I have faith in the Levi Squad!" he cries out wildly and Willow smiles outwardly.
Wrong choice.
With that, Levi Squad turns back to face their death. Willow wracks her mind for a moment on if she will tease them, savoring their slow deaths, or if she will give them the courtesy of a quick demise. She figures she will savor this. It was these people who abandoned her. These people who snickered behind her back when they weren't showering her with fake niceties. She will kill them all and she will enjoy every moment of it.
Eld charges in first, pushing towards her with a battle cry as he lifts his swords over his head. She reaches out to him, but he is quick to redirect his tanks, and push his gas to fling him away from her, obscuring him behind a layer of smoke. Petra and Oruo use this cover to latch onto her cheeks, quickly propelling themselves to her face and cutting out her eyes.
The Female Titan grunts, placing her hands on her nape and backing herself up to a tree. They learned a few things since she's been gone from the spotlight. She is almost proud of them. She knows what their next move will be. They will do as she and Hal did to the Armored Titan, they will attack her arms, bringing them down so they can make their attack on her nape.
She has the advantage on her side; they will figure that she will take a while to regenerate her eyes and, in those moments, she will be defenseless to them. But what they won't know is that she can half the time if she focuses her attention on one eye; for she only needs one to see. With half the time to cut her arms, she will regain the upper hand on them and decorate the forest with their blood.
As she predicted, they begin slicing at her arms, using the same formation she and Hal once used together. They are uniform as she and Hal were, and the memory only brings more hatred in her heart. Had they brought this kind of fight that fateful day, things could have been so much different.
They are so focused on cutting her arms, that they do not notice the Titan steam lifting from only one eye, cutting their time to chop her limbs in half. She smiles at this overlook, allowing them a moment of victory to swell in their hearts before she crushes it from them.
She thinks about a conversation she once had with Reiner on the fact. She asked him once why he allowed them to believe that his arms were down when she and Hal were cutting at him, when they clearly were not.
"You guys got sloppy," she remembers him answering. "After you thought my arms were down, you believed that you won and stopped cutting them. Once you stopped, I was able to make my attack. You didn't see it coming."
It was true, they had not seen it coming, and if they continued to chop until his arms were clean off, Ben would have still been alive. Maybe they all would have. She lowers her arms, knowing full well that she still has control over them. They will prematurely celebrate, but she will have the upper hand on them, as the Armored once did to her.
"They're down!" Oruo calls and she fully has control of her eye now.
"Now go for the neck!" Eld cries out as he launches himself at her. She can hear his war cry, approaching her from the left.
"Take out the muscle supporting her head!" Oruo calls out as he prepares to be the second wave.
"Let's chop our way to the nape!" Petra snarls.
They propel towards the Female Titan and she takes in a deep breath. There is no heading back from this; she is not teasing them anymore. Now is the time, and she cannot turn away once the decision is made.
A part of her almost wants to turn back and leave… allow them to live and forgive them for abandoning her. It was not their choice; they were blindly following their Captain's orders. But no. She will not allow their history to fog her decision on this. They made their choice to leave her. They made their choice to allow all those people to die while the Female Titan chased their tails. They are the most skilled soldiers the Scouts have, and they were nowhere to assist. They are no better than Commander Erwin and Captain Levi. Those lives were steppingstones to their cause, and their lives are steppingstones to hers.
"Say goodbye to your nape—" she opens her eye and in a quick motion, she snatches Eld in her mouth, chomping down on him and showering her cheeks and lips with his blood. She spits out his body as Petra's wild cry shrieks against the walls of the forest.
She looks down at the girl who cries frantically, flailing wildly with her ODM gear as she desperately evades the Female Titan. "How?" she cries out trying to make sense of the scene. "She can see again? That's impossible! It hasn't even been thirty seconds!" the Female Titan lifts her face and looks at her, allowing the girl to see her one healed eye. "Only one eye!" she cries out wildly, "She channeled her energy into one eye to grow it back quicker? How can she do that?"
She lifts herself to her feet, charging at the hysterical girl to get this over with. "Petra!" Oruo calls out to her flying above them. "Pull yourself together!" he commands her, but his words fall on deaf ears as Petra flies wildly and frantically from her, allowing the Female Titan to easily gain footing on her as the girl panics to evade her.
The Female Titan charges at her as Oruo passionately wails Petra's name, seeing the Titan's leg lift. The Female Titan brings her leg down on the girl, crushing her into the tree and painting it with her red blood, hearing her screams echo in her skull as she quickly silences them.
A flash of memories penetrates Willow's mind, seeing her wide infectious smile as Petra looked up at Willow, telling her that blue shirt perfectly matched her eyes. She can hear her laughter as she touched her lips to hide her infectious smile that often warmed Willow's heart.
Eren's cry is heard and Willow looks down at the girl, feeling the sting of guilt building in her throat. She feels Oruo's grapples attach onto her nape and for a moment, she thinks she will let him do it.
She looks down at the carnage below her, seeing Petra's dead eyes looking up at her as her chin rests on the tree, recognizing the same dead look in Derrek's eyes. Willow remembers his dead eyes staring at her in the moment that he took his own life in front of her. That day and those eyes never stopped haunting the blonde girl. She knows these eyes will never stop haunting her either, and if she allows Oruo to make his move, maybe then she will bring an end to those terrible images.
Oruo comes zipping towards her and she closes her eyes. She cannot stop now. They left me, she reminds herself. After everything they may have done to make her feel welcome, it's all overshadowed in the end by the fact that they left her there to die when she was still breathing.
She hardens her nape as Oruo swings for it, shattering his blades at the last moment. "What the hell… my blades weren't able to—"
She hits him before the realization can stick, bringing her leg up and kicking him into the tree with vicious force to ensure that he does not survive the attack. She holds back a tear as she remembers his large smile that reached his eyes, remembering his daily promise to marry her one day. She lowers her head, as if to lower it for a moment of silence to them.
Their words were sometimes nasty towards her, but they were still her friends. They welcomed her to their table, and they infected her with their laughter and smiles. Their lighthearted banter kept her sane most days, and some nights she even found herself considering Oruo's proposal. But none of it mattered now. She made her decision as they made theirs. She could not turn back now.
She releases a tear for them, missing them as a wave of sorrow crashes into her and sinking her in regret as she is dragged down to the depths of somewhere so deep, that she can't make it back up for air.
I'm sorry.
"I'm going to kill you!" she hears as yellow lightning crackles next to her. She takes in a deep breath, admiring this kid for what she punished them for. He came back for them. That's all she ever wanted from them, and he came back for them. It's a shame she will have to kill someone with such an honorable trait.
She looks up to see the Titan approaching her with wild hate in his stride as his roar can be heard through the woods. She smiles to herself, knowing that Levi and Erwin are bound to hear such a distressful call and come to his aid. Or at least, she hopes they do so they can watch her devour him.
Eren charges at her wildly and she lifts herself to her feet, dodging his attack and kicking him in the chest. He falls back, but quickly recovers as he charges at her once more. She lifts her leg to his chest and pushes him away, but he presses her forward, making her lose balance and back into a tree. Her brows press together and she looks at him with a hard-pressed glare.
Steam lifts from her arms that have yet to heal fully for her to use. He pants as he begins punching at her, with every hit expertly dodged by her. His Titan is much faster than the Armored, but still not as agile as hers. Still though, he is a different opponent than Reiner, and will be more difficult to take down than she initially intended.
She turns from him to give herself some space from him and allow her arms to fully heal, but he comes charging at her, headbutting into a tree as she dodges his attack. Eren continues to hit her with wildly timed punches that she dodges as he presses her back. She falls to the ground and he quickly lays atop her, straddling her as he looks down at her with furious hate.
The Female Titan moves her head as he brings his fist down shattering his hand and forearm with the sheer power he brought into his hit. She looks up at him with wide shocked eyes. He is hurting and she wonders if he regrets leaving them and not turning when he first attempted to do so in the woods when she chased them.
He finally gets it. He finally understands her reasoning. If he turned when he was supposed to, all those lives would have been saved. All those Scouts would have been alive. If he stayed and fought, no one would be dead. Just like her team. If Levi chose to stay and fight—to protect his team—they would have all survived and none of this would have happened.
He hits near her head again, overcome with grief and Willow can tell that he blames himself for their deaths and regrets not acting when he should have. She watches him wrack his mind at the moments that he failed his squad mates and his fellow Scouts.
He growls in her face and she looks away from him, but he does not make another move on her and she takes this moment of grief-stricken pause to focus on regenerating her arms fully so she can take him down and be done with this.
He lifts his head up, ready to pound her into the ground when she finally gets full control of her arms. She opens both her eyes and takes his forearm into her hand, grabbing him viciously as she wraps her legs around his waist. She twists him in her grip and he pushes against her, causing her to kick him out of his grip on her and fling him into a tree. She looks back at him as he charges at her, and she barely avoids an uppercut to her face.
She tucks her arms in and rolls away from him and he pushes an attack again. He continues to charge at her and punch her with wild attacks that she cannot keep up with. Her eyes widen as she backs away from him, blocking her face from being hit by his brutal hits. She underestimated him, and his attacks are becoming overwhelming. He is vicious and he is angry with her and this is giving him an advantage over her. She needs to retake the playing field. She is the one in control. She should be the one that is angry. She will not allow him to take this from her.
She turns to him, hardening the skin of her fist and punches Eren in the jaw. She looks him in the eyes when he turns towards her, grinding his teeth up her hardened forearm and hitting her with an uppercut that sends her flying and smashing into a tree.
She looks up at him and he begins charging at her. She jumps from his war path as he drives his knee into the trunk of the tree. She walks away from him, considering fleeing the fight and calling it, but her pride gets to her and she knows she needs to end this.
Willow sighs as she turns to him. She looks into his eyes and he can see the end. She lifts her hands above her face, and with one quick motion, she roundhouse kicks him with all the strength she has, decapitating him at the jaw.
The Female Titan looks down at him as he falls to his knees. She is not proud of herself for hurting him like this. He did everything for his squad that she wished they did for her. He stayed and fought. But it was not her decision to make. A deal is a deal, and if Zeke wanted this kid, she has no choice in the matter.
The Female Titan kneels down next to him, taking his Titan body in her hands and looking onto the steaming hole she decapitated him at. She opens her mouth as wide as she can, her skin tearing as she chomps down on the back of his nape, pulling the skin and revealing the boy entangled in the Titan's tendons.
"Eren! No!" she hears someone shriek as she bites down and encloses Eren in her mouth. She places him on her tongue and wipes her mouth with her hand. She will leave him here and transport him to Zeke who will devour him and take on his Titan's powers. She turns from the scene and begins running towards the rendezvous point where Zeke is to wait for her.
It doesn't matter to her what he does to the young boy. She got what she wanted. She got her revenge, and now she will finish her end of the deal and give him the boy.
"Give him back!" Willow hears someone call out and she looks behind her to see a black-haired girl in a red scarf charging at her. She covers her nape as the girl cries out, "Did you hear me! Give him back!"
The Scout lifts her blades over her head and swings at Willow's cheek. Willow grunts as she makes the shot, pulling back a bit.
This must be Mikasa, Willow thinks to herself as she remembers Bertolt and Reiner warning her before the mission of a talented soldier who will blindly lay down her life if Eren's is at risk.
Mikasa begins wildly cutting at the Female Titan with quick and mad precision. She is too fast for the Titan to swat at her, and she honestly does not want to. This is not her fight and Willow will not unnecessarily kill her.
Just as she spared Reiner's friends in the field, Mikasa has no stake in this fight, and her death would just be a waste. If she is going to fight for the man she loves, even after she believes him dead, Willow cannot fault her for such loyalty, so she keeps her hands down and her attacks at bay.
This is not your fight.
But the girl does not do the same, and she slices Titan's legs, getting her on her knees. The Female Titan hardens her hand quickly as the girl makes an attack on her nape. Her blades break and she lands on a nearby tree branch.
"My blades didn't even break the skin!" Mikasa calls out. Willow looks onto her, seeing a strong and powerful look in her eyes. "He's still alive. He's still alive! And I'm coming for him! Just hang on, Eren!" she tells herself and Willow is shocked by her drive to save the boy she loves.
She thinks about Hal, and how she ran into the fight with the Armored Titan, knowing all too well that she was going to die with him if she engaged, but feeling the stinging need to fight back. Willow decides she cannot strike this Scout down. She is too similar to her, and she can't drive herself to kill her for doing what she wished the others did for her.
"I know you're in there," Mikasa calls out to Eren. "And after I kill her, I'll carve out her insides, and pull you out again." Willow swallows hard, knowing the girl will not give in until she is dead.
She wonders if this was the same resolve that Reiner came to when he was the Armored Titan. He didn't want to kill Willow, but she didn't really give him a choice in the matter. In that moment, she had given into her resolve and came to the conclusion that she would kill the Armored or be killed by him. She made her choice, and so did Mikasa.
Willow smashes her hand into the tree, splintering the trunk with her mighty hit. To her relief, the girl dodges in time, and lives to see another moment. Willow admires her will and does not want to be the death of her. She moves away from the girl and begins running off, growing the distance between her and Eren's blind lover.
Mikasa propels herself towards the Female Titan in a desperate attempt to reach her and get Eren back. Levi approaches the manic Scout as she wildly flies on her ODM gear to reach the running Titan.
Levi and Mikasa propel themselves quickly following behind the fleeing Female Titan. Levi watches her as she runs from them with gritted teeth, seeing the monster that took his entire squad from him. He feels a rage building inside him, but he needs to maintain his composure. This is not over yet and he needs to get Mikasa out of the woods safely. If he can do that, then it is not entirely a loss and he was able to bring someone back.
"Maintain current distance," Captain Levi commands Mikasa as they follow behind the tails of the Female Titan and Eren. "She's slowed down a bit. That fight wore her out, too," he observes, watching her weakened run. He turns to Mikasa who watches her with a furious hate in her eyes. "It looked like she may have bitten the entire nape off," Levi releases hesitant to Mikasa's reaction. "It's unlikely Eren survived."
Mikasa looks from him and with intent in her eyes as she watches the fleeing Titan. "He's still alive in there," she says firmly. "This Titan is different; it acts with purpose. If she wanted Eren dead, she could have simply crushed him," she shakes her head of the image, "No, she needs him for something. But she also needs her hands to fight, so she's been holding him on her tongue."
"It is possible she just wanted to savor her quarry," Levi knows Mikasa is right in her assessment, but prepares the girl for the worst outcome, nonetheless. "In which case it's likely he's already been swallowed. If so, he's dead," he tells her sternly.
"He's alive!" she presses, shutting down his words.
Levi glances over at her, having seen that defiant glare before so many times in Willow's eyes. "Someone's Optimistic."
"If you had just done your damn job and protected him like you were supposed to, we wouldn't be having this conversation!"
Levi turns to her, recognizing the hate in her eyes. "Oh, I see now," he releases, "the childhood friend, right? Suddenly it's all making sense," he says seeing the blind love in her eyes that will get her killed.
Her vision is so clouded with the need to save Eren because she is in love with him, that she is not thinking correctly. It was the same feeling Hal felt when he stupidly laid down his life for Willow, instead of pushing her to retreat in the first place. He understood the motion to a point, the Armored was gearing to attack them, and Malik's death bought Levi's Squad time to retreat; a window of opportunity that Levi, Hal and Willow missed because of their damn pride.
Hal couldn't think of a better plan than to lay down his life to give her the window of retreat, but instead, their emotions got the better of themselves, and it was the same thing that led Willow to blindly seek vengeance against the Armored when it killed Hal. He will not let Mikasa lay down her life because her vision is obscured with petty emotions.
"For the sake of argument, let's narrow our goals; first, we forget about taking her down."
"No way," she presses, "she's killed too many of our people for that. She's dead!" she says dictating her actions on emotions.
"She's got defenses that neither of us have been trained to deal with," he tries reasoning with her. "I am telling you it's a lost cause. Instead, we will act on your assumption that Eren is alive and focus only on freeing him before she exits the forest." Levi pulls out his sword, "I'll handle all the cutting," he says hiding the satisfaction this will bring him. "You find a way to distract her."
"Right," she releases accepting his plan.
Mikasa approaches her from below and the Female Titan looks down at her. She groans internally at this girl's dedication. She does not want to kill her, but she has clearly given her no choice.
Willow feels a sensation take over her spine and she looks behind her to see Captain Levi approaching her.
It's about damn time you showed.
She smiles to herself, seeing the pain in his eyes and the fight he holds back. Levi prepares his swords in his grip, flinging them in his wrists to point outward. Willow continues to run, waiting for his moment to strike so she can make hers. She feels her senses burst and she quickly turns around, sending her fist with wild speed at him.
He dodges her fist and expertly cuts his way as he twists up her arm. He kicks off of her bicep and launches himself in her face, digging his blades into her eyes with one hit, slicing them deeply to make sure she will be down healing for a while. He kicks off of her face and pulls his blades to his side. He launches at her before she can realize what is happening and he begins slicing up her body with an unmatchable speed that is too quick to process.
Fuck.
Levi gets her panicking, and she falls backwards, launching her back against a tree as her hand covers her nape and she sits down. He is so quick that she can't even react and harden her skin because his next moves are unpredictable. Her body goes hot, and she feels another wave crash over her as she drowns in Levi's attacks. Her arms fall down, and her nape is exposed. She begins to feel her heart race and wonders if he will cut her out and look onto her face, or if he will slice her nape and be done with her.
She hears a war cry coming from Mikasa and she figures she is going for her nape. The Female Titan calls upon whatever remaining strength she can muster to harden the skin around her nape and lift up her hand to smack down the girl. But her attack his countered when Levi comes jumping in, kicking down her hand.
An audible crack is heard from Levi's ankle and Willow hears him groan in pain. He turns towards her and cuts her face with a vicious swing, causing her jaw to fling open, and Eren's body exposed to them.
Levi flings himself into her mouth and grabs Eren, grappling away from her quickly and onto a nearby branch. "Got em!" he calls out to Mikasa. "He's alright," he tells the worried girl. "Disgusting," he mentions looking at the cocoon of Titan drool he is incased in, "but alright." He groans at his pained ankle, "what did I tell you about trying to take her down?" he scolds her. "Now come on! We've got Eren, that means our work here is done. Don't screw this up by making it personal, you understand?" he asks her. "We all get that you love him but try not to act rashly," he presses, pushing away from the tree branch and heading out of the woods.
Willow stays there for a moment, trying to come to terms with what just happened.
He saved him.
Levi went back for Eren and he saved him, risking his own life by entering her mouth to save him. She tries to wrack her mind at why he would save Eren, but he never came back to save her. She was still breathing when the Armored struck her. She watched with hopeless eyes as he turned away from her, allowing her death to bide him time to escape. Why was she never good enough for him to return? Willow begins crying at the idea as tears fall from her cheeks.
Why was I never enough?
Levi turns around to look once more back at the Titan when he is struck by the sight of her. She is crying. Sitting on the forest floor in a cloud of steam, the Female Titan is crying.
A/N: This was another scene when I was watching the show where I was convinced the Female Titan was someone from Levi's past when he turned around and saw her crying. It was a really powerful moment, and writing it here, I wanted to show just how much Willow was broken by their retreat. I hope you liked this chapter and let me know what you think in the comments!