Creation began on 08-05-23
Creation ended on 08-05-23
Attack on Titan
Attack on Titan: The Gifts of a Second Chance
A/N: What would any of you do if you had the power of a second chance?
Oh, there were many, many times where he would approach a man who was dead set in his ways on how to do something about something that he felt had no other way of being resolved. But this time was different; with time, and he was a man with nothing but time, serving a sentence with no end, brings change, and he learned from his many mistakes and experiences in dealing with people that were set in their beliefs to allow for any measure of hope for the hopeless. So, instead of approaching him, knowing what the outcome was likely to be each time he tried to offer a different path for him to take, he made a choice to be more direct towards other people who could or would have no difficulty with changing their mistakes. This time, he chose to make moves that were in direct conflict with their own goals.
"How do you feel…Ymir?" He asks the naked woman with freckles as she awoke from her slumber that felt like a long time, seeing him looking down at her, holding a pair of clothes.
"How do you know my name?" She responds, confused.
"I know about you to know that you can do more with your life than you were exploited to do by people that were looking for someone to give them hope during times of crisis. You don't remember right now, and it's not even your fault, but you were a Titan for over sixty years until you ate a young man with the power of the Jaw Titan, one of the Nine Titans of Ymir Fritz, your ancestral mother…and I want to help you become more than some false idol or deity."
He then handed her the clothes to put on.
"Why?" She wants to know.
"Because I have seen too much death and destruction to last an unnecessary number of lifetimes and the people responsible are either too set in their own beliefs to believe in redemption or don't want it," he answers. "Do you believe in redemption from the darkness? Do you believe that people can change their ways if given the opportunity to show such? Do you believe in second chances to turn your life around?"
Standing up in front of the stranger, Ymir responds, "I want to believe."
"Then you've taken the first step to convince me that you're the person the world needs to be its savior over those that think their ways are the only way. Come with me."
She follows him as he turns to walk away.
"My name is Brother Correction," he tells her his identity, "and I am seen as both savior and tormentor, friend and foe, light and darkness, depending upon the people I meet and the situation they're in. To the fallen, the victimized and the forgotten about, I offer hope and renewal, and to the unjustifiable, the victimizers and unforgivable of hearts, I deal in penance and defeat from which they have to earn their redemption from the darkness they embrace."
"God and devil?"
"No, but close enough. Close enough. Nobody's a devil, no matter what people think or say about others. You can only be a monster when you do things that you know are wrong…and you do them, anyway because you choose to. And those with power beyond imagination that want to do great things for others can be viewed as heroes, guardians or demigods of sort, but only when their intentions are noble."
"And are there monsters among people today?"
"Today, tomorrow, yesterday, years ago and years from now. So long as people have ambitions or desires that they know will hurt others in unforgiving ways, they will be the monsters that others will fear or despise, and I will need your help to prevent one such monster from rising up and destroying the world."
"What can I do to help?"
"We're going to see this man whose first real crime was letting his sister out of his sight. He has a power that will help you get further to being the hero you need to be, but it has to be cleansed of its current imperfections and bestowed a new ability that will aid you in what you must do."
-x-
Grisha Yeager made it to Reiss family chapel, but before he could travel down to face the current holder of the Founding Titan, he was blocked by two individuals he had never met before. The young man on his left was of a dark-skinned ethnicity and the young woman on his right, while having a similar skin tone, her face had freckles, and both were dressed in simple clothing, but the man seemed to sport these gauntlets on his arms that were silver and rusted.
"Grisha Yeager," the man utters, "turn back and we can talk about this."
"I can't," Grisha replies. "Please, I have to do this."
"Except you don't have to. Really, you don't. It's what he wants you do, but you can refuse him."
"If I don't, then my family will die!"
"And do you believe that he willingly shows you everything that transpires? He doesn't see everything…and he doesn't show everything."
"What are you…"
"The Attack Titan is flawed because of the people that misuse its power! While it may stand for freedom, the freedom it stands for simply doesn't exist! Freedom is just an illusion that it chooses to believe in because it rejects the order and stability that needs to be established for everyone! It's because of that illusion that everyone it tries to rally against any sense of order, of authority, suffers more than those that suffer as nothing more than casualties! If you listen to him, if you do his bidding, believing his limited information at face value, then you become another casualty of his actions, off his desires. I'm asking you… No, I'm begging you…to turn away. If he showed you something terrible that was going to happen, you could've altered it by going after the cause instead of leaving your family to their fate. Can you really trust anything your son shows you because of the type of person he is?"
The freckle-faced woman looks to the dark-skinned man, confused.
"But the family that controls the Founder," Grisha tries to explain, "they won't do anything with it. We need it to stop the world from destroying this island, from wiping out the Eldian race."
"If something like that were going to happen, how come he didn't show you that fate you're trying to prevent?" He asks him. "If that fate was already decided, then how come he didn't show you long before it transpired? If you had seen this years beforehand, if he had shown you even ten years ago what could transpire, you could've taken steps to prevent it from ever happening at all. Why do you think he only shows you bits and pieces?"
"I…I…"
"He can't show you everything…because he doesn't want to show you everything. He doesn't know what's going to happen yet…so you shouldn't allow your son to make you do such an unforgiving act on people that have done you no wrong. Walk away from this…and I will give you something your heart longs for more than anything else in your life. You don't even have to give up your life to achieve it."
"There's nothing you can give him that he wants more than this," they all heard a man's voice behind Grisha, and saw a young man with a cold face.
"Is that him?" The woman asks. "Is he the one you're trying to stop?"
"Yeah, that's his son," the dark man answers. "Ymir, meet Eren Yeager of the future, the holder of the Attack, Founding and War Hammer Titans. A stubborn and brutal of a man whose desire to be free is the curse of others that will go down a road to Hell."
"You don't know what you're saying."
"Oh, I don't (the dark man gestures profanely with his right hand up to his head, extending his middle finger as he tilts his head)?"
The cold man, Eren Yeager, merely frowns as he turns to his father.
"Your future is dependent upon your father carrying out the vile act you want him to commit against the Reiss family," the dark man expresses, "but if he can't do so, then your future becomes nonexistent. No family massacre, no Founding Titan. No Founding Titan, no Rumbling. You don't get what you want if your father doesn't do as you say. And I do know what he wants more than anything else in his life. More so than freedom."
"You don't."
"Then tell me something: If I offered Dr. Grisha Yeager a second chance to go back in time to save his sister's life, would he accept that gift of his own volition? Could he live with himself if he knew he had a chance to right his first wrong?"
Grisha gasps at the possibility being offered.
"Really?" He asks the dark man. "Can you do that?"
"I can," he answers him. "All I ask is that you give up the one thing that will condemn you if you go down this dark path."
"The Attack Titan?"
"Yes. You give it to Ymir…and she'll make greater use of it with her Jaw Titan."
"You can't possibly be serious about this!" Eren yells. "You do realize that she would have to eat him to obtain the Attack Titan, don't you?! That means he dies!"
"Now, whoever said anything about eating anyone? Nobody has to eat anyone. That's just the dark decision of those that misused the power of the Titans in the past. There are other ways to transfer the power."
"And we don't have time for them!"
"You mean, you don't have time. You don't exist yet. You're still just a little boy with an attitude because he wants to be free from life behind some walls."
"Father, take the Founder from the current holder. Do your duty that must be done at all costs, even if it means your death and long after!"
But Grisha looked at the man that offered him a change of fate…and wanted to know more.
"Can I truly save Faye's life?" He asks him.
"If it's what you want, Dr. Yeager, and I know it's what you want. It's what you've always wanted above all else: A second chance to do the right thing, to see her again. I can and will offer you that second chance. All I ask…is that you walk away from this."
Grisha turns to face his son from the future, then back to the dark man and freckled woman…and made his choice.
"I'm sorry, Eren," he apologized to his son's future self, "but when I became a doctor, I took an oath to do no harm, and I am not going to murder anyone for the sake of freedom when there has to be another way."
"There is no other way! There is only this way! You turn away, everyone will die!"
"Then everyone will die…but not because of me…and not because of you."
Grisha walks away, vacating the chapel, leaving his son to fume over his father's choice.
"Come back here!" He yells at Grisha, but his father had walked out the doors. "Father!"
The dark man and freckled woman also step out, leaving him alone.
"You'd condemn us all for a selfish belief!" He called out to the dark man, who turned back to face him.
"If it's from the future you're a part of," he replies, "it can't happen because you don't exist yet…and now you won't exist, so your future doesn't exist. At least not in the way that you want. As sorry as I am for your future, Eren Yeager, you're not the hero this world needs. That title belongs to someone else I must have faith in for different reasons."
Eren looked at the woman and recognized her from somewhere in his past.
"Ymir?" He utters.
"This time," Ymir responds, "I will protect Historia myself. Even if you protected her at the cost of millions of lives across the planet, it was a pain that still plagued her because you chose to sacrifice those lives and she couldn't stop you from doing what you did. I will not entrust her to you a second time. You're constantly angry at the world, and your anger will poison everyone else, so you have to be stopped."
Eren tried to approach her, but he fell to the ground. He raised his left hand up…and could barely see it in front of him.
"What?" He questions.
"When a different choice is made, what was once part of a future becomes nothing more than a possibility," the dark man states. "Your future depended upon your father killing the Reiss family for the Founding Titan. Your father walked away from making that choice, so your future is being erased, returned to the well of possibilities that could've been. As a direct result, Eren Yeager, you no longer exist as you do in the future because it is unwritten. The ink is no longer dry because it hasn't been used to write anything yet. The future can't be set in stone because the stone no longer exists. Your future…your father's future…even your mother's future…has not been written yet alongside everyone else's. Go back to the abyss of the nothingness you came out of and wait for the day your new future is written, different from the one you wanted."
Eren wanted to scream at him, to howl in his face, but his body was disappearing from existence as his timeline vanished from the present. His face, contorted with rage over this sense of defeat, and he swore he wouldn't forget about this man that offered his father a different choice over the one he wanted him to make.
-x-
A handshake. That was all that was required to transfer the Attack Titan over to Ymir in this act of defiance towards Grisha's younger son from the future, erasing the remnants of the future he came from to ensure would happen. And with the Attack Titan no longer in his possession, his life was free from the curse of Ymir; he no longer had thirteen years to live, restored of the human condition that depended upon his choices on how he lived. When Ymir received the Attack Titan, she saw everything that had once been possible, everyone that once possessed the power…but now Brother Correction was able to change it to suit her needs. He took away its power to receive visions from the future…and gave it the power to return free will to those that lost theirs being turned into Titans.
This was the new, true power of the Attack Titan, the power to return freedom of choice, of chance, to those that were deprived of their right to make their own choices. Either through a scream or physical contact, Ymir could now prevent disasters from escalating. And now, because of this cleansing of the Titan, all Brother Correction needed to do was honor his promise to Grisha and return him to the past to save his sister. However, he also needed to make sure that everything he did wouldn't damage the majority of his future; he still had hope for Eren Yeager, just not as a soldier, meaning that Grisha's second chance had to be more than what he originally promised him.
"When I take you back to that day," he instructed Grisha, "your slate is clean to remake your fate, but I must insist that you make different mistakes from the ones you made the first time around. Save Faye, keep your firstborn son from becoming a soldier, don't encourage the Eldian Restorationist Movement, and if you get caught by Marley, make sure that it all falls on you so that if it comes down to it, I can make sure that your family in Liberio will be spared."
"You mean…I alone take the fall?" Grisha asks him, making sure he understood right.
"Yes. If it comes down to that, only you should fall upon your own sword. But everything else you do, including saving Faye, is up to you to do. Save her. Save Mikasa's parents…and her unborn sibling. Save them when you reach Paradis. I will be there to make sure you come out of this in one piece."
Grisha nodded that he would do all of this. He had to make sure he did all of this. It was a second chance to make up for his faults, and it all started with saving Faye.
"Thank you," he praised Brother Correction, who offered him his right hand.
"You can thank me by saving Faye," he tells him, and then looks at Ymir. "You know what you need to do now, Ymir. It's up to you now. You can do it. Be their hero. Be her hero. She still needs you…and they need you."
"Yes," she responds, and then they were gone. "I will protect them. I have to protect them."
-x-
Grisha was back inside Liberio, back in the guise of his younger self, and beside him was his sister, Faye, alive and well. He couldn't believe it. It felt like a dream, except he could feel everything transpiring around as he did once before. This wasn't a dream. This was his second chance to change his life around.
"Faye, wait!" He went, putting his second chance to good use now. "We can't go yet."
"Huh?" Faye responded. "Why not?"
"I just remembered that we don't have a permit to leave yet. We need to get one. Two, actually."
"Aw!"
Grisha had no intention of squandering this opportunity to rewrite as much of his future as he possibly could. He made a lot of bad choices that he wished he could take back, and now he could take them back.
Thank you, Brother Correction, he thought as he reached for Faye's left hand and took her back home with him. Maybe this can be the best day of my life in a different way. It's already starting to feel like the best day of my life now.
-x-
The Colossal Titan breached the wall surrounding Shiganshina District, causing untold damage to the surrounding buildings as the people tried to get away. As the Armored Titan prepared to enter the breach once the other Titans got through, something happened. Something that seemed impossible for any of them to comprehend, but it happened. A shriek, not unlike that of a Titan, could be heard from the top of a section of Wall Maria, and the Colossal Titan saw another Titan standing atop it, looking at it. It shrieked again…and caused many of the Titans that had already entered Shiganshina through the breach to cease their advancements and turn their heads this way and that.
From atop a different section of Wall Maria, Brother Correction could see the new Titan embodied by Ymir, standing fifteen meters in height, resembling a grown-up version of the Jaw Titan she possessed, only muscular and with larger arms that reached past the knees. And then, he saw the Titans that got in turn around and advance towards the Colossal Titan! They had been restored of their free will and were made aware of what was happening, choosing to defy the mindless hunger for flesh and defend the people that didn't know anything about what was happening and why. He watched as the Colossal Titan, despite its size and steam emitting abilities, fall beside Wall Maria as a dozen or so lesser Titans, able to think and act for themselves, attacked and brought it to its back to capture the young man inside of it. And he then saw the Armored Titan get tackled to the ground by a lesser Titan that, for just a second, had a smiling grin, but then became just another face of a man that had been turned into a mindless monster years ago.
Smash! It bashed its face in, destroying its own hand in the process, but it didn't care.
He saved Dina from becoming a Titan, he thought, realizing why the Titan he saw changed from what it initially was into something else. I wonder what else he changed?
He looked down at Shiganshina at the people trying to get away in case of something going wrong, and saw Grisha pulling his second wife from the wreckage of their house.
Then, Ymir ran across the wall and slid down its external end to where the Colossal and Armored Titans fell, seeing the evaporating forms of the two and seeing two smaller Titans holding three people in their hands.
"You three…have to answer for this," she utters to them, surprising them with her ability to speak as a Titan.
What would you do with the power of a second chance?
A/N: I'll stop here for now and wait a while before picking up again. With fate being changed, a lot can be in store for this now that Ymir is the primary character. I won't kill Eren off in this, but he will not be the focus. A lot of unknowns are possible when we make choices to defy what is and replace them with what can be, like Ymir possessing the Attack Titan and learning ahead of time what could've been over what has been. Initially, I had Brother Correction talking to Historia before he went into the past, but then it just changed into him finding Ymir shortly after she returned to human form and giving her the chance to become the hero. What do you think?