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"Front"
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Loving Erwin Smith was a unique torment unto itself, unlike any other kind of suffering Thomasin had ever endured. And it was true torment, not torture, for there was a key distinction. Torture was pain simply for the sake of pain, a desire to make someone hurt until they broke- mind and body, whichever came first just added a fun surprise. The suffering did not stop- could not stop, for then, it would become torment. Because with torment, the pain did stop. It would recede, sometimes to the point where you forgot there was any pain to begin with. Relief would flood your body, your soul would swell with hope that finally it was over, finally you could live a normal life… and once more, the pain would come rushing back, crushing you, destroying you, but never enough to kill, never enough to break you completely… because there would always be hope that one day, things would change.
Thomasin understood the agonizing curse of hope, but found herself powerless to stop it, just as a lifelong alcoholic might know the blood they keep vomiting comes from the gin they drink every day, yet the pain of living without the bottle is too great for the blood to not be a price worth paying.
Erwin somehow got promoted to the Survey Corps' commander. He should have been promoted years ago, if skill and merit actually had any impact on the military's ranks, but as it didn't, the question of how someone as egomaniacal as Keith Shadis would willingly hand the reins of his (crumbling) empire over to his arch nemesis was one for the ages. Being the head of the Survey Corps meant he had even less free time than he'd had as a Section Commander; those monthly visits became little more than a beautiful, but quickly dulling memory, flowers pressed between the pages of a book, time long since having stolen their color and scent.
He'd asked her to re-enlist with the Corps, to remain at the Trost base as an on-site medic.
He'd asked her to stay in Trost, holding her breath every time that big bronze bell rang for the second time, waiting for the coin some wicked god flipped to land and let her know if he was going to walk through the door under his own power or be carried in, a pile of twitching, macerated meat on a stretcher. There was always a chance that he would die; seeing his fresh corpse with no warning would break her mind and body.
The Garrison hospital in Calaneth was a nightmare. Ten to twelve hour shifts with barely a broken up hour not spent on her feet (foot- the new prosthetic was leagues better, but it still caused pressure sores on her stump when she wore it for too long). Constant labor; running medicine, assisting doctors, changing sheets, scrubbing floors and bedpans alike. The smell had nearly killed her in those early days, but as time progressed, she noticed the collective stench of blood and piss and shit and sour sweat, mixed with vomit and pus and rotting flesh, less and less with every passing day until it got to the point that she barely even noticed the smell of diarrhea as she changed the sheets out from a sickly soldier. Thomasin saw their bodies mangled by the explosives used on the Wall, and imagined Erwin's hand blossoming into a meat flower if one of those flare guns went off the wrong way. She saw them waste away from infections, and envisioned that giant ox's body collapsing in on itself until you could barely see his shadow. The Garrison soldiers existed, to her, as living textbook illustrations showing her every single way the human body was designed to fail.
It would have been less painful in the long run to simply cut off contact with Erwin, to stop reading his letters, to stop writing back… It would have made it easier to just give in, to listen to that final suggestion.
…that voice was getting stronger. Not louder, never more than a whisper, something verging on intangible at times, but always there. From the moment she woke up wishing she hadn't, through feeding her new baby chicks, through every moment of her shift when she wasn't actively doing something that required one hundred percent of her attention. The sound of the bones in her fingers snapping in half hadn't even been enough to overpower it. She would never get on top of the Walls again, but the towers the ferry cables ran through were tall, and over water. People drowned all the time, and if you were in a deep enough sleep, you probably wouldn't even wake up, right?
Erwin caught her in the middle of one of those moments of contemplation once, and somehow, his dumb, handsome voice cut through the noise of her own incessant thoughts and the sight of his stupid, adorable smile managed to coax a smile from her that didn't feel even slightly forced.
She was his emergency contact; when he died in the field
(and it was going to happen any day now)
they would contact her and ask if she wanted his remains
(if there had been enough of him to bring back)
or present her with a stained, faded green cloak and a small box of ash of which maybe a few flecks actually belonged to him and the rest was all the other soldiers they tossed on the pyre.
If they fished her body out of the river, once it got caught on the iron sluice gates that had been sealed, they would contact Erwin (if she hadn't decomposed to the point of losing all recognition).
(If anyone actually cared to identify her remains.)
He would be upset. He wouldn't understand. It would hurt him, and… she couldn't hurt him. How could anyone hurt such an innocent, lovable man? No, she would have to die after him, to spare him that pain, at least. And once she got the knock and saw some random Scout standing there with a cloak and a tiny box, the torment would stop because only pain would exist from that point onward.
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It was… incredibly difficult to figure out what Erwin was plotting sometimes. He had a low cunning behind that perfectly coiffed hair and those stunning cheekbones that would have served him well in the seediest tavern in the Underground, but he saved that trickery for dealing with politics. When he wasn't doing something for the Survey Corps specifically, he was just kind of… dumb… and obvious… and that always threw Thomasin for a loop, because there was no way a man that smart, that collected, would just show his hand without having something going on behind it. Right? Sitting across from him and watching him pretend to be calm and aloof through the most painfully unsubtle "hypothetical" as the flush slowly crept up from his cheeks past those massive eyebrows felt like a fever dream. It was entirely possible she was hallucinating- stacking three twelve-hour shifts of stacking bodies in the morgue had to be fucking with her mental state. And yet…
"What do you think about getting married?"
"What, like, in general, or… to you specifically?"
"Either. Both…"
They weren't children, not awkward, uncertain teenagers stumbling blindly over the concept of relationships. Erwin had been engaged, once, barely on the cusp on manhood. She'd sneered and spat vitriol at him and he chose his father's theories over the woman he loved (that had nothing to do with her). They'd spoken of marriage before, in an actual hypothetical sense, and he'd admitted that the only thing that would truly make him happy was vindicating his father. He'd looked her in the eye and, knowingly or not, told her that she would never be enough to make him happy. And Thomasin accepted that, because she loved him- because Erwin was enough to make her happy, just by existing
(she was going to break when he died)
and being friends and friends only meant that she had no right to expect anything more from him than what he offered
(he offered her a reason to make plans for the future. To push through the pain. To smile.)
And yet…
"I would… I would hope that, one day… I could marry someone who I've grown so close to over the years that everything would stay the same…"
Loving Erwin Smith was the pure, concentrated essence of torment, because there were times when the pain stopped. When he got flustered trying to steer their conversation towards a marriage proposal. When he proposed a date that obviously wasn't really a date. When he shocked her tears away by talking about raising chickens and followed that non-sequitur by pressing his lips against hers in the most chaste, little-boy kiss she'd ever borne witness to. He suffused her soul with hope that yes, he did love her too, she wasn't deluding herself; there was one person in all the world who loved her and cared and would stay because she was enough to make him stay… and without fail, the reality would come rushing back in.
"So I'd still only see you a few times a year? Or I'd uproot my life- again- and move back out to Trost to increase that to maybe a few times a month? Or would you give up being a Scout and get a normal job so you can have a normal life and be this 'wonderful husband' you're convinced you are deep down? Would you give up being a 'great commander' to be a 'wonderful husband'…?"
He would rather die chasing the ghosts of long-dead humans outside the Walls than live within them with her. He would rather die than live with her (just like her mother). Because even if he loved her, there was only one person in all the world who Erwin truly cherished with the entirety of his soul, and that man had been dead for nearly twenty five years. And even with all that, even knowing that she would forever come in second place to the memory of a corpse, Thomasin didn't turn him away after the expedition that brought them through Calaneth.
Erwin would never love her the way she loved him- he was simply incapable of it, and that was okay (she had to be okay with it; there was literally no other option). He was hurting and she would do anything to make his pain stop; there were no cuts, no burns, no broken bones that could hurt her as much as the soul-deep sorrow in his eyes. He claimed to want sex, and she would have gladly let him use every hole she had to offer, but even in the dark, she knew him well enough to hear that those great, shuddering breaths were absent any desire, any sexual hunger.
Thomasin had never heard Erwin cry before that night. He'd heard her cry- lots of times, but… never the other way around.
The sound of him wailing, howling like an animal caught in its death throes, coalesced into the same blend of fear and dread that the sound of her mother's body breaking upon the pavement had birthed. It made her physically ill. She wanted to vomit, every cell in her body was suffused with an overwhelming nausea, and she had to ignore all of it, keeping her voice low and even as she cradled and rocked and soothed him. How often did he weep like this? After every mission? How did he soothe himself, because pain this overwhelming needed treatment. She would never know. Thomasin did not sleep that night, ears keenly focused on the deep, even rhythm of Erwin's breath as he slept soundly while her memory played a concerto of strained, wet gasps sucked in through a partially crushed windpipe.
When the sun rose and she wiped the tears and drool and snot from his face, she took a moment to scan as much of his naked sprawl as was visible to her with the same clinical detachment she reserved for checking a patient for bedsores. There were scars, but… they were chaotic. An assortment of random nicks and abrasions of varying sizes and shapes and directions, scattered about his body with no rhyme or reason. The only thing that was self-inflicted was the thick line on his left palm, because grabbing the edge of an ultra-hardened steel blade that was about to decapitate him was the kind of brainless, delusional arrogance you could only readily expect from Erwin Smith. His pain had not yet reached such a crescendo that tearing apart his own body was the only way to drown it out. And Thomasin vowed to do anything and everything to ensure that it never reached that point.
"Erwin?"
"Hmm?"
"…marry me…"
Anything, for what did her worthless, insignificant feelings matter when weighed against Erwin's continued existence? It didn't matter if nothing ever changed. It didn't matter if the cycle of torment never ended. She was okay with that.
(She was.)
(She had to be- she didn't deserve his friendship, much less whatever love he deigned to give her…)
Thomasin told herself that until it echoed in her head like her mother's lessons. And yet, in spite of her being smart enough to know the truth, to understand and accept it, that most maligned disease known as "hope" still managed to infect her.
"One day, you'll be a wonderful husband. That's what I'm looking forward to now…"
"I have faith in you. Just don't die before that day…"
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She'd made a mistake, and Thomasin blatantly refused to acknowledge it as such in sheer spite of all the evidence the universe was throwing at her face. For a few, glorious hours, it felt serendipitous, everything seemingly going right and falling into place, luring her into a false sense of security, coaxing her into letting her guard down and believing that just this one time, she'd done the right thing. Why else would she have run into Erwin in Stohess, immediately after some hoity-toity asshole who clearly remembered a thing or two his grandparents had told him about "mutts" ran into her? She was already heading to the Chancellery, he had enough money on him to file a marriage certificate; there was no reason not to get married right then and there.
(Running into Colonel Gerald Aleister should have been the first red flare. He knew, the second he laid eyes on her, and she knew he knew because Thomasin had only seen that exact blend of disgust, loathing and fear a few other times in her life- in her youth- and they were always the people her mom had been the most terrified of. The people who were absolutely, one hundred percent guaranteed to murder her if she ever went to a secondary location with them. Aleister called her "exotic" and the only thing stopping Thomasin from projectile vomiting onto him was the knowledge that Erwin would do something stupid when the monster shot her in the head then and there and would get himself killed, too.)
She even made the utterly insane decision to follow him back to the temporary base within Wall Rose he was stationed at rather than being a responsible adult who desperately needed to keep her job, because being so deeply, openly in love with someone who
(cared that she was alive)
loved her back was the most deliciously intoxicating feeling Thomasin had ever experienced. It felt so much like a dream… that should have been another warning sign, because dreams- especially the ones that weren't nightmares- never lasted very long. The temporary base was a castle, and honest to goddamned palace, and Erwin brushed it off because he was a deeply, deeply ridiculous man sometimes.
…they'd never talked about children, because why would they? Friends didn't pester one another about starting a family, especially when they knew those friends had absolutely zero romantic prospects. When she told him not to dump his load inside her the first time, she assumed he would understand that that was going to be permanent rule. No looking at or touching her arms, no ejaculating anywhere near her uterus.
"…Sometimes, I imagine what our hypothetical children might look like, what it would feel like to… hold a child that was born of our love… it's not a terrible thought…"
That nausea that permeated every fiber of her being came back with a vengeance. …how? How could he ever, ever think like that while still dreaming about the world outside the Walls? Thomasin tried to ignore it, tried to forget he'd ever said anything so delusional. She could take care of things when she got back home- it was easier to bleed one's self clean before anything took root than uproot it. But whatever higher power was laughing at her wanted her to understand the full brunt of her mistake, and that was why the news of Titans in Stohess and Titans just east of Yarkle came in within hours of each other. There were dozens dead, hundreds injured in Stohess, and there weren't enough doctors and nurses to deal with them, not when two hospitals had been destroyed in the attack. There was no time to take care of things immediately, but she would deal with matters when she went off duty.
"Off duty" never came, as, nearing the end of a twelve hour shift, the news came instead that the commander of the Survey Corps was requesting her presence.
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Erwin was dying. He had to be- only a corpse could be so pale and cold, even one that was still breathing. The surgeon was a good one, brought in from Mitras, and with a device she had read about in a medical journal a few months ago but had never seen. The surgeon couldn't use it until Thomasin had gotten there because they still didn't know why some blood took and some didn't, and there was a chance (a very high chance) that the blood wouldn't take and Erwin would die, so they needed permission from his emergency contact (she was his wife; there hadn't been time to update his file, yet…).
He could very well die, but he was already dying, and Thomasin offered up bother her arms; she could bleed herself, just give her a blade. Levi (who wasn't even in uniform because he was injured from the last mission and had been exactly as unhelpful as she had during this one) shoved her to the side, arguing that the blood from Humanity's Strongest Soldier was obviously superior and he wasn't the one who had been working and traveling for almost twenty hours straight. As she watched Levi's blood flow down the tubing and into Erwin's veins, Thomasin had to keep her hands pressed as tight over her mouth as possible, because if she let a single sound escape, she was going to start screaming and probably wouldn't stop until her lungs just gave out.
She'd made a mistake- she let herself have hope, she let herself fall into the delusion that existence could ever be anything more than misery and suffering, and now the pain was going to destroy her.
She agreed to be his emergency contact, and they asked her what she wanted to do with his (as of now, still living) body.
She married him because she didn't want to see him hurt after an expedition ever again, and once he succumbed to his injuries, or the shock, or an infection or the blood not taking, he was never going to hurt again.
She loved him, knowing she would never be enough to make him happy, and not even a full day later, he was running back out to jump into a Titan's mouth because some nebulous concept of The Truth was the only thing he truly loved.
Erwin woke up three days later, sicker than a dog but decidedly alive, and Thomasin wondered if he'd missed his one chance to die just as she had, or if this was just another lull in the torment. It wasn't a very long lull, lasting just until he was firmly off his deathbed. Having all four limbs was a requirement for service in the Survey Corps, but Erwin was perfectly happy to rewrite rules like that when it suited him. Even if he could ever vertically maneuver again, he would never be able to kill a Titan with one blade. If he hadn't missed his chance, he was going to die the moment he ran afoul of a Titan, and he didn't care one whit…
"Why don't you want to have my children? Why are you so disgusted by the idea of starting a family with me? Do you think I'd be as bad a father as I am a husband…?"
The only thing Thomasin knew for certain was that, for the first time since she'd known Erwin, his voice wasn't drowning out the voice. If anything, it was making it louder, feeding it. Levi had given her a knife. It was duller than an ODM blade, but sharp enough to cut through skin. Blood didn't clot underwater. Cleanup would be so much easier on the shower tiles (Levi would appreciate that). Most of the blood would go down the drain. Erwin…
…Erwin had just lost his oldest friends, his best soldiers, Mike (who was simultaneously his brother and more his wife than Thomasin herself was). He'd just lost a limb and didn't know how to deal with being so weak and powerless. He'd just experienced the first pains last night, and… that was the second time she'd seen him cry. She hated him. She despised him. …she loved him too much to give him another death certificate to deal with…
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Thomasin hadn't gone to school, despite living in a district. Schools required books and supplies, and there had barely been enough money for rent and one meal a day. She didn't learn all the fancy kinds of words Erwin had (it was easy to hear him talk and think he hailed from Wall Sina if you didn't catch that hint of an east side accent that got stronger the closer to Wall Maria you got). Her vocabulary expanded as a direct result of where she lived and worked. Spending fifteen years in a tavern in the Sprawl was a good way of learning every insult and curse and slur the Walls had to offer (Levi actually managed to teach her two new slurs that might have been localized to the Underground). Joining the military taught her that "ease" and "rest" were in no way similar, and that actual ease was not permitted until "fall out". But it was living in Shiganshina and working for Mr. Reed that taught her the most new words, words she didn't think applied to anything but work until they did.
It would be unfair to call Erwin the catalyst for everything. He hadn't started anything, not a single reaction that followed the attack in Trost was due to his presence. But everything that followed that was his doing, his supersaturating an already volatile solution. The attack in Stohess that killed dozens (the death toll was still climbing as they found more bodies) and injured hundreds was one of his plans. Every day, more MPs were surveilling the Survey Corps base in Trost (and Levi and Hange weren't there, they were off somewhere in Wall Rose, and all of Erwin's friends and best soldiers were dead…), real MPs, the bastards that worked in the Interior…
The government killed Erwin's father; they tortured and executed him for his heretical delusions, the same heretical delusions he'd taught his son instead of teaching him how to keep his mouth shut (or where babies came from). Thomasin's mother always taught her to be afraid of anyone who called her "exotic", and that bastard Aleister had looked her dead in the eye as he said it, an unveiled threat, and they knew she was connected to Erwin- a wife, an easy target… and instead of keeping his head down and his mouth shut, he was constantly pushing, applying more solute to something that was already at a boil. She'd gone back to Calaneth when it happened (escorted by Hange, because even they could tell that things were getting out of control), so she had no idea what the final crystallizing agent had been, but she knew as sure as she knew that the sun rose in the west that it had been Erwin's fault.
The only saving grace was that it happened at night, late enough that everyone was either asleep or, more likely, getting drunk before they were tossed out for closing. When she heard the knock, she'd immediately disregarded it; Erwin was the only person she'd open her door for, especially at night, but that muffled voice announcing "Interior MPs" had been as much a threat as that sneer of "exotic…" Her mother taught her to do what they said and keep her head down, keep her voice down, don't make eye contact- don't do anything to make them mad.
(She was married to the man who unleashed Titans in Stohess; that was a pretty good cause for being mad.)
(She didn't even know where Erwin was.)
There were three of them, all men, middle-aged and out of shape… did the people living in Mitras even know there had been a famine, that there was still a food shortage? Mr. Reed taught her to smile, and so Thomasin put on her best act because the friendlier and more normal she was, the faster people stopped thinking, the faster they stopped asking questions and accepted her as one of their own… but the closer you got to the Interior, the less likely that was to work; she had seen them staring even in Stohess and Ehrmich (how many of them called her a "Moor" like Erwin had? How many of them used a different word, one of those slurs from the Underground?). These MPs weren't like that dumbass Nile- these were the bastards who worked directly for the Assembly, and they had questions regarding Erwin.
She had to keep the smile on her face, she had to keep her breathing steady even as her stomach flipped and churned and she wished she had never woken up that morning. She wasn't stupid and naive like Erwin; she didn't have delusions that the government would allow things it clearly didn't want people to know about to continue existing. The MPs that questioned him as a child had still possessed a shred of conscience, and they'd let him live, and Erwin had spent his entire life begging them to rectify that mistake… and now, they were. He was in custody, on charges of violating the Charters of Humanity (that was stupid- there was a treason charge staring them in the face; he'd unleashed Titans in Stohess!). They were looking for a few soldiers who had flown the coop, and wanted to know if she had any information regarding his most recent schemes. She would have laughed in their faces if she hadn't kept glancing at the guns on their backs (double-barrels; that would definitely help with hunting… and killing animals, too).
He. Unleashed. Titans. In. Stohess.
If they'd escaped, they would have run directly east and gone straight through Calaneth, crushing every building and every person in their way, and given that the Garrison hospital was on the main street, there was a good chance she would have been one of those dusty red smears.
(Why hadn't those stupid fucking monsters charged through Calaneth…? Why hadn't that been the day she was in Stohess?)
(Why was every fucking day a new problem!?)
Her smile never faltered. No, Erwin didn't talk to her about Scout stuff; she was a civilian, after all. Why had she been living at their base for the better part of a month? …because she was a nurse, a nurse who was contracted by the military but legally distinct from the military, and because her husband had suffered a severe injury. And that was the last time she'd seen the Lieutenant or the Section Commander- she'd heard that they were running drills with their squads, but that was the extent of what she knew.
They didn't believe her, because it wasn't their job to believe her. They had more questions, but they were going to bring her in, to the Chancellery, and her mother had warned her that if she ever went to a secondary location with an MP, the only way she would leave it was as a corpse.
(it wouldn't be a good death; Titans were better than MPs.)
There were three of them and one of her, and they could overpower her if they got a chance, but that would require her giving them a chance. …this was all Erwin's fault. If he'd just retired when he lost his arm, they wouldn't have seen him as a threat anymore. They could have just lived in peace. They could have been happy; she could have made him happy if he'd just given her a chance but he never would.
He left her in Shiganshina, he left her in the potential path of Titans, he drew the ire of the crown onto them and then threw her to the wolves, leaving her all alone—
These people would step over you if you were dying in the street.
Levi had been afraid of her from the second meeting onward. Because crazy people couldn't be predicted, and because people with no survival instincts didn't care if they died, just so long as they took you down with them.
Thomasin had fully expected them to shoot her the moment she moved, for them to value their own safety above causing harm and blow her brains out from point blank range. When she heard the crack, she instantly assumed she was dead and somehow hadn't realized it, but the only MP that had moved was the one who fell down, his head bent at too sharp of an angle. Her old prosthetic had snapped in half during the Culling- this one had an iron core.
Interior MPs were slow, their reflexes practically non-existent. Back in Quinta, an MP would have their rifle loaded and shouldered seconds after the first punch had been thrown in an altercation; the desperate and forsaken tended to lack survival instincts. These guns were preloaded- they wore no powder at their hips- and despite the double barrels, the triggers were designed the same as any flintlock.
Another swing of that iron-cored tripod snapped a fibula in half (she couldn't tell if it was a clean or incomplete fracture from her current angle) and the resulting pain loosened the second MP's grip enough that she could snatch his gun away. Eighteen years. A lifetime, but she still remembered how to shoulder a rifle faster than these leeches. You put your finger on the trigger, and aimed the barrel at whatever you wanted to die. Erwin had always had trouble with that part.
(What were they going to do with him? What were they doing with him now?)
(They were supposed to have gone out for dinner when he came back to Trost…)
She didn't have any trouble, and her ears continued ringing even as the red mist settled and the body collapsed. There was probably another round in the other barrel, but she didn't know how to fire it and the remaining MP was staring at the red pulp where his partner's head had once been so it didn't matter. The barrel was still hot- she could feel it singing her hands, they were going to be swollen and blistered, but she didn't care because the stock was heavier than even a double barrel and that was the part that hurt the most when it made contact. One swing hadn't been enough to break this one's neck, his head remained intact, but she was six again, holding a beer bottle and smashing it into that little bitch Della Gauss's face over and over and over and over again.
"Why can't you people just leave me alone?! All you had to do was leave me the fuck alone! You just had to turn around and leave! I didn't do anything wrong; why am I being punished for doing the right thing?!"
When the exertion finally caught up with her and her arms felt like raw dough, there was little difference between the skull the barrel took care of and the one the stock took care of. Blood was soaking into her floorboards, dripping down her door along with chunks of skull and hair… Her head was spinning, her legs giving out, but she only had one knee and the next thing she knew, she was on the floor, staring at the bodies of three dead MPs. The remnants of a mostly-forgotten conversation floated to the top of her memory as all her other thoughts collapsed in on themselves, the void expanding ever outward…
"You'd fight MPs for me…?" She scoffed.
"I was partially eaten by a Titan; you think I'm afraid of the Military Police? I hold no respect for that branch, or anyone in it. Besides, I know you'd help me do something illegal if I needed you to."
"How illegal are we talking?"
"Murder?" He paused, thinking for a moment.
"I don't think I can do the killing itself for you, but if you can dismember a body you've killed, I suppose I can sneak it in with our supply crates and dump it on an expedition. No one would question extra body parts beyond the Walls. The real problem would be the smell, but yeast might cover that up--"
"Damn, Smith; I was joking! It's a little concerning that you have a plan for disposing of corpses already laid out…"
…it was a joke… it was supposed to have been a joke. She hadn't fought MPs for him, not solely for his sake, but she was fighting them because of him, they were only here fucking with her because of him, because she loved him, because she'd married him, and she would never stop paying the price for that, apparently. It was supposed to be okay- she was supposed to be okay with paying any price because no one else thought being "different" was wholly good. No one else would ever love an empty shell filled with lies, pretending to be a person. Her mommy hadn't loved her enough to stay, so why would anyone else!?
…he'd promised, years ago, before Wall Maria fell… he promised that he wouldn't leave her behind… he promised that he would help her…
These people don't care about you, about us…
She dropped everything to help him, the moment he needed it, because she loved him and that's what love was, wasn't it? You did everything- you gave EVERYTHING- to help… So why wasn't anyone helping her?
Thomasin didn't even realize she'd been crying until she started sobbing too hard to breathe properly. There was blood soaking into her skirt and she was all alone again. …there were still two guns that had never fired a single round… Under the chin was a bad idea because you could live without a face (not for very long, but any amount of time without a face was long enough), but the center of mass for the brain was right at the back of the mouth, just aim up slightly…
They already caught Erwin, they were probably doing to him whatever they had done to his father and it was no one's fault but his because he was stupid, a delusional, heretical idiot (so what did that make her for falling in love with him?). He was dead or dying… he had to be, because Erwin was lucky, but everyone's luck ran out eventually. He was never going to turn up on her doorstep again, she was never going to hear that distinct Tap. Tap. Tap. again… it was time for the torment to become torture, and she had one chance to save herself from it because no one else ever would…
One chance…
…news from the Interior took a while to reach the districts of Wall Rose, but not nearly as much time as it had taken them to reach Shiganshina. She worked for the military- anything that sent out enough ripples would reach the Garrison, too… If they had him in custody, it must have happened recently. They didn't know where Levi and Hange were, where their squads were, and that horrible Titan boy was on Levi's squad… he'd set that monster loose on Stohess to keep his dream of finding The Truth alive… dozens dead on his orders… Levi would never just sit back and let him die. If anyone would tear down the seat of the royal family's power just so he could go outside the Walls and get eaten by a Titan, it was Erwin.
It wasn't torture, because in spite of her best efforts to cut it from her soul like the malignant growth it was, the hope still swelled. There was a chance- there was a chance he would come to Calaneth, covered in dust and rubble and probably still in chains, and find three bodies without faces decomposing on the floor. It shouldn't have mattered to her- he left her alone, so clearly he didn't care, right? …but she cared. She cared so much, and she wished she didn't. It never stopped hurting, seeing someone you loved die before you and leave you behind…
As she sniffled hard, the beginning whiffs of carrion stench already starting to mix with the stench of urine and loosened bowels, she pushed herself to her feet, leaning heavily against the table. It was guilt as much as love. Erwin had blood on his hands even if he'd never even seen the light leave one of his victim's eyes, but in Thomasin's mind, in her heart, she still saw that beaming cadet with the summer sky in his eyes, glowing with a joy she could never quite seem to reach.
(The MP whose neck she broke had the cleanest uniform, so she began removing it. The bodies needed to be moved before they went stiff.)
She loved him; he was so much more important than her worthless, insignificant self. He would never, ever protect her, but she had to protect him. Especially from herself.
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"Tell me how- how I can love the world I left behind? Will I have to keep on rolling on until the end of time? No, I think I might as well write you a simple song: all the feelings that people have long ignored will now live on…"
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A/N- That was… dark, and yet still not as dark as it had been in my head. I guess I sanitize things without even realizing it. Maybe I'm reluctant to see accusations of being "edgy" from people who only know sanitized depictions of mental health problems from pop culture. And if you're wondering what those lyrics at the end of each chapter were, they were the english lyrics for Wowaka's "Unknown Mother Goose" by Rachie. It's one of two amazing Rachie covers that I think suits Thomasin perfectly.
I know it might feel like that last section was out of the blue if you're just reading this story with no background on Reasons, but in that fic, the whole "mutilated bodies of three Interior MPs found in Thomasin's house" is something of a noodle incident that is only a noodle incident because the story exclusively follows Erwin (who is being tortured by the government at that time). I always wanted to write what happened then, because that was a really big important event… that the MC didn't even know happened (like pretty much everything that happens in this fic).