Creation began on 06-03-24

Creation ended on 06-19-24

Attack on Titan

The Dark Titan: Protecting what's left from You

"…Hold on, hold on," went Historia as she was informed of what happened the night before, "what do you mean, the Dark Titan attacked you?"

"We went back to that shantytown where the defectors dwell," the female Yeagerist clarifies. "We were going to dig up the Sogen girl's grave for her spine, but before we made our move, the Titan appeared and attacked us. It was the Sogen girl! She told us to leave that place alone!"

"You went back there after I gave specific instructions to leave that place alone?"

"We need the Dark Titan to defend Paradis against future attacks. It's going to waste by being buried with a disgraceful traitor that's not even using it."

"There's only one thing wrong with your claim that it was the Dark Titan that attacked you," a Paradis official states. "How could it be the Sogen girl that attacked you if she's dead? And secondly, according to what we did know about the Titans before they disappeared, no two Titans look the same or possess the same degree of powers, making it unlikely that anyone inherited the Dark Titan after the girl died. And thirdly, she was a unique case; her Titan wasn't one of the Nine Titans, meaning it couldn't be inherited or transferred to a new holder, even if she was killed. Unless she lied to everyone about what she was capable of doing with it."

"No," Historia claims. "Kaede Sogen may have had her disagreements with us in the past, but not once did she ever lie about anything she knew of. She always told the truth as far as she herself understood it."

"But that was before she abandoned Paradis," the female Yeagerist iterates. "Who's to say that she didn't decide to change her ways after the Rumbling?"

Historia's memory of the last time she saw Kaede alive, still fresh in her mind after learning that her grief drove her to bury herself alive, made her suspect that, while unlikely that it was so, someone like Kaede Sogen could change a little after leaving from a place that had changed so drastically after an event as horrible as the Rumbling…and the loss of the people she knew and loved by the Yeagerists. But even Carla seemed adamant that the girl died shortly after she and those other people that lost loved ones decided to leave; there hadn't been a single indication that the queen was lied to by a former subject.

"Who chooses death when it means losing the ones you love the most?!" A man had asked Historia once upon seeing her, demanding to know why she allowed that day to happen the way it did.

"My daughters are dead because of you!" A woman reminds her.

"Their blood is on your hands," Kaede had told her before she left Paradis, unable or unwilling to stay any further after her friends and parents were killed. "Their blood is on your hands."

"While everyone is entitled to their own measure of opinions regarding trust and admiration," Levi once told her the day he officially resigned from the military, "it's only until realization hits them in the face and they see people for who they really are. Maybe the concept of heroes and villains is true, that some can die and be remembered as heroes…or they live just long enough to be seen as villains…and you start to lose whatever trust and admiration you received over time. Maybe it's the same with Ms. Sogen; she tried to see some of us as heroes…only to see us become no better than the villains…and she lost her faith. If someone had killed my mother because she wouldn't support a change or something else that was pointless from the start, I'd lose my faith, too. Even if it were the lesser of two evils, you can't justify what Eren did as a whole, knowing some people will not forgive and forget."

"Forgive and forget would indicate that whatever wrongs committed in the past are acknowledged, atoned or forgotten about," Carla had told her. "But not everyone is afforded that luxury, Your Highness. I don't care what anyone thinks of that boy. The mere fact that he tried to have me killed twice means that he was a monster…and I wash my hands of him for his sins that he committed of his own doing."

"…I saw the Dark Titan walking away from Paradis as the sun rose," the female Yeagerist claims, "and it disappeared from sight."

"It went underwater?" Historia asks her.

"No, it just disappeared, like it wasn't even there. It didn't go under the water. It just…it vanished from sight, like a…like a ghost or illusion."

-x-

It was among the strangest phenomena they had ever seen in their years of living in their shantytown, because it was just a town comprised of ruined structures that they slapped together and tried to call their home because they had nowhere else to go…and would never return to Paradis Island. On the outer limits of the town, several of the small houses had been replaced with versions that were similar to the small shrine, well made, detailed in every aspect and looking like they were brand new and everything. But what bothered the people present was that none of them were capable of making these structures, not with their limited resources and knowledge of building structures. No, these structures had to have been made by someone that knew what they were doing and put in the time to get them done right.

"Who would do this?" Carla asks, feeling the side of the house with her left hand. "Who would want to do this?"

"Maybe the same person that made the shrine," a little boy suggests.

A door to one of the new buildings opened up…and one of the town's residents stepped out to see the phenomenon of where they were.

"Who did this?" She asks them.

"That's what we're trying to understand," Carla tells her.

"Do you think it was her? Kaede Sogen?"

-x-

It was too ridiculous to believe, but so were many other things that Historia could no longer fathom in any rational sense. The Yeagerists' claim that Kaede Sogen attacked them at night, the Dark Titan disappearing at sunrise. None of it made any sense to her. If Kaede was dead, that meant her Titan was dead, as well. But if the only reason the Yeagerists were attacked was because they went back to that town the people that used to live on Paradis dwell in, with the aim of trying to claim the Dark Titan, knowing full well that they were not welcome there at all, then it was the Yeagerists' fault for going back there.

"But there was no other choice," one of the Yeagerists told her after informing them about Kaede's choice to abandon Paradis after learning that her loved ones had been killed. "They represented the old system that doesn't work, anymore. It was necessary for them to be sacrificed for the greater good. Surely, someone like Sogen had to understand that it was inevitable."

"Kaede Sogen was never a soldier in any capacity to the military," Historia explained to them, "and she was never an asset to anyone's cause. You want to know why she abandoned the island to whatever fate it was left with? Honestly, she possessed a power that she never wanted to begin with, that was given to her by a terrible person that had tried to escape from here over fifteen years ago, and she tried to hide it in the beginning because…she wasn't all that different from any of us. Kaede had hopes like we do…and fears like we do. But people like Eren Yeager and I…saw things differently from how she saw them. She chose to see hope…rather than reality. And…simply because we knew she would never consider the use of the Rumbling, knowing that it meant the deaths of many people that had nothing to do with us…we chose not to confide in her. We chose not to let her know what we were going to do…and when we had her parents and friends killed…we pushed her away from the place she could no longer see as her home. You can only push someone so far…before they break…and it's too late to take any of it back. She only supported my reign in the beginning because she asked me to do one thing for her if I became the queen. She made me swear I'd do…just before she told me what it was that she wanted from me. I wished she had asked me for something material like money, but that was wishful thinking."

"She asked you to keep her family and friends safe, didn't she?" A different Yeagerist asked her.

"She didn't want money or land. She wanted only to protect the ones she loved more than anything else she knew."

While some of the Yeagerists believed that she shouldn't have promised the Sogen girl anything of the sort, Historia thought differently due to something else that had happened before the two parted ways without any further discussion. Before the victory against Zeke Yeager, Eren's elder brother, the Warriors of Marley had tried to take Ymir from her after it was learned that she possessed the power of the Jaw Titan, and Kaede had gone through Hell just to make sure that Ymir was kept away from the enemy, and had to kill Zeke in the process in order to return Ymir, something that actually went against Kaede's conscience in every sense because she hated killing. Even if she had displayed some impressive abilities with her Dark Titan, Kaede, unlike most young people, demonstrated more restraint that made her more like the adults that tried to resolve disputes through talking and other non-violent methods, which probably set her apart from others of her generation, and Historia had failed to take into consideration that someone of such a nature could be more reasonable and optimistic than most who saw only violence as the solution that worked out in the end of a situation. But in the aftermath of the Rumbling, Ymir had requested time away from Historia, and that time turned into more than a decade for them.

Historia had often wondered if Ymir had been confused with her willingness to go through with things that she had no conscience to say that she was against what she understood was wrong. Personally, she didn't blame Ymir for keeping her distance; her feelings toward the former Jaw Titan had been put off for a long time.

"I don't know what you did to her, Historia," Ymir had said to her before she left, "but you should try to reconcile with her before there comes a time where you can't. People that can't forgive one another are people that won't be able to forgive themselves for not trying to."

Is that why you left me, Ymir? Historia wonders as she sits on the porch of her farmhouse. Because I hurt Kaede by letting Eren get away with his actions and she couldn't forgive me for failing her?

In a sense, she lost the trust of Kaede…and she lost Ymir, who would've been dead and gone forever were it not for Kaede killing Zeke and bringing her back to her.

Meanwhile, several other Yeagerists, not the least bit put off by the order to leave the shantytown alone because Historia decreed that it was off limits to them, as the people there wanted nothing from them, were planning to go back there because they still wanted the Dark Titan's power for their own purposes of protecting the island against future threats.

"To ensure reprisals don't occur," a male Yeagerist says, "we need every advantage we can get, and this includes the Dark Titan."

-x-

She was just a visiting face, not really a resident, but because she hadn't returned to Paradis since she left the day she learned that the love of her life had allowed those people to die, she hadn't been anything other than a transient guest. But they didn't try to force her to leave; they had no jurisdiction in any sense, as they were all defectors and looking for a place to call their own that was as far from Paradis as possible. Her extended time away from Historia was now entering its thirteenth year, and there wasn't a day where she wasn't thankful for being alive after losing the power of the Jaw Titan, one of the few good things to come out of all that badness from long ago.

"…Tell me something, Ymir," went Carla to the freckle-faced woman in front of her, "have you noticed anything unusual happening at night?"

Moving a chess piece from the board, Ymir responds, "Besides the glimpses of her ghost in the shadows, I haven't noticed anything suspicious ever since I showed up here."

"Lately, every morning, much more of the village has been replaced with buildings and structures that look like someone spent a lot of time and resources on making, and the strangest thing is that nobody has seen anyone doing anything."

"Yeah, I've noticed that. You think it's her ghost that has been doing it all? You mentioned that her father and stepfather were among the best builders on Paradis?"

"Hagan Sogen and Sig Zanki-Sogen? Those two were perhaps the only positive male influences in her life, and she was always interested in her father's work. It didn't matter if it was something as big as setting the foundation or as insignificant as replacing a piece of the floorboard or a window. If it is Kaede's ghost, I'd just want to know why…and say that the people here appreciate it."

"Yeah. Did you see those trees that were on the paths? I didn't know she had a green thumb."

"Kaede mentioned that her mother was the one with the green thumb, but she dabbled from time to time."

Carla then claimed another chess piece from Ymir.

"Tell me, though," she asks, "will you ever go back to her?"

"As much as I want to…I don't know if I should," Ymir responds. "I love her, but…I think his influence is still present…and even if I'm there, I can't do anything about that."

Carla looks up at a shadowed corner…and sees her watching them with a sad smile. She gets up and walks over to the corner, but the girl was girl…and all she found was a word etched on the wall of the building that had yet to be replaced with something else: Tonight.

"What's wrong?" Ymir asks her.

Carla points to the word and says that it wasn't there a moment ago.

-x-

"…I heard that you were approached by the Yeagerists again," went Armin as he addressed the woman who was in a delicate state. "What was that about?"

"They wanted me to join them," she tells Armin, "but I told them the same thing I told them years ago: I'm retired and married. I want nothing to do with them and I have a family to take care of. If they don't stop trying to poach me, I told Niccolo that we would leave the island."

"You'd really leave, Sasha?"

"If I felt my family was being treated like a resource by those Yeagerists, because ever since the Survey Corps was dissolved and the Yeagerists were founded, this place has not been the same."

"You know, you could have been an ambassador after the Rumbling ended."

"I'm all for peace and coexistence, but I wanted to raise a family with Niccolo. And what's the point of peace talks when you're trying to talk with people that would rather talk with other people not from Paradis? And what's this I'm hearing about some Yeagerists getting crippled?"

"I have no idea what you're talking about. What is this, your third?"

"Fourth (Sasha pats her small bump). Niccolo and I had twins four years ago."

Armin was reminded that several of the Yeagerists had once tried to get him to support the new military…and he refused to do such a thing. Even if it was for the sake of protecting Paradis, he would not be a party to the group that took the symbol of the Survey Corps and perverted it with firearms. He wanted nothing to do with Eren's personal legacy. But he didn't know what the pregnant Sasha was talking about with the Yeagerists being crippled. If he wanted to know, he would have to ask about it.

"Are you sure you don't know about the Yeagerists?" Sasha asks him.

"No," he tells her. "What were they crippled by?"

"From what my husband told me three days ago, some Yeagerists went to a town established by those that left Paradis because they were after something they have there. Claim they were attacked by Kaede Sogen."

"But…that's not possible, Sasha."

"Why not?"

"Because Kaede died years ago. Shortly after the Rumbling, in fact. She was probably less than twenty-two years old when she took her own life."

"Wait a minute, she committed suicide?"

"From what Historia found out, Kaede probably had nothing else to live for because everyone she ever knew and loved was dead, meaning she had nothing and no one to keep her around. Personally, I don't blame her for choosing to do so."

Sasha caresses her baby bump and sighs.

"I don't blame her, either. Kaede was not a violent person at heart. She put the people she loved most above herself. It didn't matter who they were or what they did. They were everything to her. My heart goes out to all of them, including the little girl, Charlotte."

Armin reflected on the friends of Kaede, all girls who grew up with Kaede in Shiganshina when it still stood…and could sympathize with Kaede's disgust towards the people that killed them, since it wasn't some enemy that hated her for simply existing. It was people that were convinced that she would support their cause once her so-called distractions or whatever they thought of the people she cared about were removed, only to realize the hard truth that she didn't wish to continue with a system that was no longer working for her and run by people willing to kill the people she loved.

"Where did Paradis go wrong, Armin?" Sasha asks.

"I don't know how to answer that question, Sasha," he responds.

-x-

As the sun went down, the town was a little livelier, and Carla and Ymir were sitting across from the small shrine dedicated to Kaede, wondering whether or not something would happen in front of them.

"Do you really believe that she'll show up?" Ymir asks Carla.

"Don't you?" Carla replies.

"I barely knew her, but she chose to save me from Marley because of Historia. She didn't know me at all…but she put her life at risk…just to make sure I got back to Historia."

"I think if she had to do that day over again, she'd make the same decision over again."

"But why? I'm not even with Historia now."

"Does there really have to be a reason, anymore?"

"There's always a reason," they hear a voice that they hadn't heard in over a decade. "There is always a reason behind any act committed."

Carla looks at some shadows from the tree and sees a person stepping out into the limited light.

"Am I dreaming this?" She asks, recalling the day the Dark Titan buried itself in the ground after digging the deep hole in the ground. "You died, didn't you? You took your own life. You dug your own grave. How are you alive?"

It was a young woman with gray hair, dressed in a brown dress with a black bodice and leather boots, the last outfit Carla had seen her in the last time she ever saw her alive. In fact, the woman looked exactly as she did the last time that she saw her alive. This was Kaede Sogen. Not even Ymir could believe this, as it was like an illusion. But then she noticed something off with her.

"I'm not alive," Kaede reveals, and Carla could see that her body was almost see-through; unless you were looking directly at her, and she were in a well-lit position, her body, clothing and all, was not all there. "I haven't been alive since the day I crossed the line and committed my last sin. But fate, it seems, was not done with me, even when I was done with living."

"So…you're…you're really…a ghost?" Ymir asks her.

Kaede steps out of the shadows and into the moonlight, revealing that she was more see-through than she had been earlier. She then points with her right thumb up behind her, and they could see the eighteen-meter Dark Titan that she took with her to the afterlife, seeing that it was almost just as see-through as she was.

"It's really painful, what I did to myself," she tells them, "but the pain I would have brought upon others out of grief was a bitterness that I wouldn't wish on anyone, even those that actually deserve it. Ahh… My mother used to tell me that when someone dies, a crow would carry their soul to the land of the dead. I thought I'd just end up in Hell because of my choice to end things. But then a stranger came to me…and told me that they didn't want me to go down that road. It turns out that there's more to death than what people actually know…and can only imagine."

Carla could sympathize with Kaede, but it still didn't explain one thing: Was Kaede the one doing these buildings for the town, replacing the makeshift homes with better-looking ones and gentrifying the place when nobody was looking?

"What exactly happened after your final breath, Kaede Sogen?" She asks the girl.

To be continued…

A/N: Some people have to go through their entire lives trying to escape a darkness that looms over them, and just when they think they have finally stepped out into the light, they find themselves lost within another darkness. For some, the journey out of the darkness can be about redemption, not from something others did, but from something they themselves did that was to keep from doing something they felt was more wrong.