Creation began on 06-19-24
Creation ended on 06-22-24
Attack on Titan
The Dark Titan: Atoning for My Sins, not Yours
A/N: The reason for the why.
Atonement for Suicide
Kaede Sogen was considered by some to be a sweet-natured girl back when she lived on Paradis in the Shiganshina District of the Walls. Not just a mysterious beauty due to her gray hair she inherited from her father, but any parent's dream come true in a child, even to those that hadn't had any children yet. However, that didn't change the mild belief that, due to Eren Yeager's unruly behavior and annoyance towards any kind of authority, Kaede would often be viewed as the boy's counterpart, like they were two sides of the same coin when they were as opposite of one another as water and blood or air and soil. But it wouldn't be the discovery of her being a Titan Shifter like no other in existence that would stain her life. It would be the cruel revelation that, before the start of the Rumbling that took the lives of over half the global population to eliminate any measure of reprisal against Paradis, the girl would lose the lives of all the people she held dearest to her heart.
Her mother, her stepfather, her friends, all dead because of these young men and women that decided they were undeserving of a future in a free world. These Yeagerists all thought that, just because she was seen as an ally to Historia and the royal family, Kaede would be on their side, but the cold reality was that Kaede, after her falling out with Historia, abandoned the island and the people left on it, as it was no longer home. How could she see the island she lived on for almost twenty years as her home…when the people she loved, the people she had been willing to sacrifice her life, her very power, to protect from harm…were killed by some other people she could never see as anything but murderers?
"Your son and Queen Historia's Yeagerists killed everyone I loved," Kaede told Carla prior to leaving Paradis with over a hundred people that couldn't continue living there after having the deaths of their loved ones treated so cruelly by the people that supported the Yeagerists. "I can't even bury them because they were burned to nothingness! If this is the Paradis people were fighting for, then they can have it all for themselves! I want no part of it. Any of it!"
But even after leaving Paradis, she still carried the heartache that followed her. The heartache, the grief…and the guilt and shame she felt because she had been a factor in what that island had done…and failed to make a change to the world she had wanted to be a part of in a positive light. Even if she still possessed her Dark Titan power, it would be a great curse because of what the Rumbling did, and like any other curse, she had a responsibility to keep it and her simmering anger towards her former home, her former allies and former friends from turning her into the worst of things known to the world: A monster without a soul.
Is it even a sin to want your suffering to end if you have nobody left to live for? She had once wondered in her Titan body, shifting through tons of soil and stones, digging a hole that was big enough to bury her eighteen-meter self. If it is a sin, then may I be forgiven…for I have no further reason nor desire to live, anymore.
And so, she buried herself, Titan and all, under all that dirt and darkness…and waited. For what felt like an eternity, she waited, for the end, for the last breath to leave her body, for the last thought to run through her mind as the last beat of her heart was felt and forgotten about. She wanted her anger at Historia and Eren to leave her, to forget those two ever existed, to forget that she ever existed, to feel nothing, to be nothing. Even as she felt her Titan flesh evaporate as her human body returned to her, she fought back against whatever will there was to survive in favor of accepting the would-be end. The will to survive was not hers and it would never give her back the peace that had been ripped from her soul, piece by painful piece.
"Best friends forever, Kaede!" She remembers Kylie saying to her and the other girls with them.
"I have always considered the eight of us to be the best of the beauties of Shiganshina District," the voice of Delilah had once claimed. "Because we are each of us…exceptionally beautiful in our own way."
"Kaede Sogen," Julietta from the day they met after five years apart, tells Kaede, introducing her to her daughter of four years, "meet Charlotte, my daughter."
"I don't care what other people think, Kaede," her mother told her once. "You're a good person because of how you treat others. You don't hold threats against them or intentionally harm them. You'd rather talk out the situation than resort to conflict."
"Kaede…Kaede…Kaede…" She hears multiple voices saying her name as she imagined herself laying on the ground in the darkness.
"Don't die," she hears Charlotte say to her. "Don't die."
Except they all died, just not of their own volition, and it broke her to know who was responsible, who she blamed for their deaths. She didn't want to live if they were no longer around. Was she afraid of death? No, dying was simply another threshold that needed to be crossed, just once all that could've been experienced in life was over and done with. But she had nothing left to experience that was able to be enjoyed in her life, and so she chose to end it.
"Open your eyes, Kaede Sogen," she hears a male voice say to her. "This isn't how you're supposed to end right now. Open your eyes."
Kaede opened her eyes…and saw a man standing in front of her, looking down at her. He was dark-skinned, his eyes just as dark as the night, dressed in dark clothing consisting of a shirt and pants, but something about him was unusual. She wasn't sure what it was, but it left her feeling drawn in by him.
"I'm glad you understand that suicide is a sin," he tells her, "and I can understand your reasoning for choosing to commit it, preferring to spare others the pain of your anger at losing the ones you love…but there's something you need to know about what has become of you and the world you left behind. It's true that when someone dies, a crow will carry their soul to the land of the dead, but there are times when something so bad happens, and it has to be really bad, like what you felt before you took your life out of grief, that a terrible sadness is carried with the soul, preventing it from resting in its eternal slumber that promises peace. This isn't the case with you, Ms. Sogen. There are no crows that carry the soul of a suicide, but there is a terrible sadness inside your soul…and it will not let you rest."
Kaede suspects that this man is the one that people spoke of in their beliefs of someone that claims the souls of the wicked, and her own was probably wicked enough for him to come to her.
"You'd be wrong," she hears him say. "I'm not the Devil. I'm a devil…and a saint. I'm a tormentor to some…and a savior to others. Suicide is a sin, yes, but you did it to spare others the pain of your anger, your rage, but the sadness within your soul weighs down on you. Your parents, your friends, they can't bear to see you go to Hell over something like this. So, here I stand before you, Kaede Sogen, to ask you this question: Are you willing to atone for your sin? Are you willing to make a deal for salvation?"
"Do I even deserve any?" She asks him. "I failed them. I trusted the wrong people, and they took the people I loved from me and the world…all for the sake of freedom. It was not worth any of it. None of it was worth any of it."
"You trusted the people you thought you could trust, and they took advantage of your trust. That guilt is on them for deceiving you. And to answer your question on whether you deserve salvation or not…is that they, your parents, your friends, the little girl that idolized you…and still does…all believe you do. I wouldn't be here otherwise were it not for them."
"Charlotte? Even in death, they still believe in me?"
"You're the only one they chose to believe in. Historia Reiss might've been of noble and royal blood and Eren Yeager up and usurped the power of the Attack and Founding Titans from their respective holders, but in the end, you were the only person they believed in being capable of greatness. Even in death, you were the one they believed in and still choose to believe in."
"I miss them. It hurts when they're gone."
"It always does. But you still have a chance to see them all again…if you can atone for your sin."
"How?"
"In the absence of light, let the darkness become your savior."
"What does that mean?"
"Within the darkness, there is light. Within the confides of your sin, there is hope for redemption. Your power as the Dark Titan continues to exist within you, and unlike those that exploited the Nine Titans for wrongful purposes, your exploitation of the power you were granted was used for beneficial purposes. Rather than use it to destroy, you preferred to use it to create. You focused on the benefits of creation rather than the consequences of destruction. What do you suppose that a Titan that can only be used for destruction benefits those of Paradis that no longer possess any Titans? What do you suppose the remnants of the world can reclaim a little of if a Titan that has no ties to one people were to suddenly…build structures for them to live in so that they don't suffer from the cold of winter? Or…a Titan that turns wastelands back into gardens so that they have food? I'm asking you to do what you once did for Paradis…on a near-global scale."
"A near-global scale? What does that mean?"
"Everyone except for those allied with Paradis…and Paradis itself. Everything that you do with your Dark Titan, you do for those that have suffered because of the Rumbling, that have lost their homes, their families, the things people take for granted that nobody from Paradis, not even the current queen, can ever return."
"And if Paradis and its allies were to take offense to such things being done?"
"Should they hassle the people that abandoned the island or even endanger them simply for embracing their right to reject them, then you have the authority to defend the people by any means necessary for you, including crossing the line if need be. But that'll be up to you, whenever and however you choose. There is only one catch, one limitation."
"Which is?"
"As a disembodied person, you can walk the Earth until you have atoned for your suicide…or until the end of time, but your power and ability to affect the world…will be limited to the darkness of the night and in shadows."
"Meaning…anything I can do… Everything that I can do…is only at night…while everyone's asleep. That means that nobody will ever know that I'm there."
"Night is often when the monsters come out to do whatever. But for you, the night will be like day. Are you willing to accept such restrictions and limitations, Kaede Sogen?"
Kaede thought about it. Really hard, she thought about it. If she did this, she would have a chance to be with her parents and friends at a later time. Not a great chance, but only a chance, to do good with her Titan power, to make up for some of the wrongs committed through the use of the Titans. To learn that they still believed in her, even after she did something so terrible to shame herself, she wanted to see them all again.
"When…can I begin?" She asks the man, who reaches out with his left hand.
"Right now," he says, "if that is your choice."
She accepts his hand…and their pact, their covenant…was formed.
-x-
Present
Carla and Ymir were stunned to learn of this. The only reason Kaede Sogen was here right now…was to atone for her suicide by using her Dark Titan to do benevolence and protect their home from anyone affiliated with Paradis. Once she had done all that she needed to do, her soul would be redeemed, and she could move on from the purgatorial state that she was condemned to because of the way she died.
"Did it hurt?" Ymir finds herself asking Kaede's disembodied soul. "Dying, I mean?"
"It's really all a matter of perspective, Ymir," Kaede says. "But to answer your question…I found it hard to call it quits. My body fighting to live…but my will was set on dying. But now you have me curious about something. Why are you here? Why aren't you with…her?"
Both women could see that Kaede was still upset with Historia, even in death. She would probably never say her name again.
"After finding out what she did," Ymir explains, "I found myself finding it difficult to see her the same way afterwards…so I decided we needed space."
"It's almost funny, the way people say they need either time or space or both. You've been alive for over thirteen years now, and that's a miracle right there. Will you ever return to her?"
"Honestly? I'm…not sure if she's even waiting for me. She's probably married with a family of her own."
"Is that what you believe?"
"Your leaving was a…a factor in why I left."
"Even if you were to go back to her…I don't have any hard feelings toward you. I don't regret doing what I did to make sure the both of you were reunited."
"But if she's like him, even using his words, can I really be with her?"
Kaede didn't know the answer to that question. She probably didn't even want to know the answer if it was not something she wanted to hear.
"I'm sorry you lost everyone you held dear to yourself."
"Yeah. Me, too."
"So," went Carla to Kaede, getting her attention, "what will you do?"
Looking up at the dark sky, the dead girl sighs and responds, "Do the things that Paradis can't or won't do for the world it has wronged through the Rumbling. It doesn't even matter if they hated us for something we didn't know about or even ask for to begin with. What they did with those Titans only shows that that little piece of rock in the water is no longer the peaceful place it used to be for us…and my Dark Titan is the only Titan left in the world that is capable of creation without destruction. Those that possessed the power to create used their power to destroy. I'll be the opposite of such an exploitation of power. Everything that I'll do will not just be to atone for my soul, but to show the remains of the world that there is a Titan that is not a weapon for any military or group. And since I'm already dead, I have an eternity to redeem myself to those waiting for me."
Carla, feeling sympathetic towards Kaede's plight, slowly brings up her left hand in front of the girl, hoping that she could at least shake her hand.
"I wish you the best of luck on your road to redemption," she tells her.
Kaede reaches out to her hand and shakes it, surprising Carla with how delicate her touch was for a ghost. And it has been so long since she left experienced something as human as shaking hands with another person.
"Thank you for caring," she says to them.
-x-
Several days had passed since the night the group of Yeagerists were allegedly attacked by the Dark Titan, and Paradis had been hearing strange stories about how the people of places destroyed by the Rumbling would wake up to the next day to find some buildings and streets had been setup that look like they took days to make…or how at night, some people would claim to see a Titan moving in the shadows, its location being where the new structures would be found. This made Historia curious about the authenticity of these claims. Because there were no more Titans in the world, it seemed unlikely that there would be one wandering around, but she was then reminded of Kaede Sogen's Dark Titan. If these claims were true, why would the Titan be seen or reported doing such things, reminded of the methods used by Kaede?
"A Titan was seen sculpting the grounds with its hands…"
"It left a garden patch where nothing could grow because the soil was parched…"
"…These people had nothing after the Rumbling, and this Titan appears at night and leaves them a new house?"
"…If this Titan was once on Paradis, why is it no longer there?"
"…It's strange, how a Titan is still around…and it doesn't try to hurt anyone…"
Historia has heard or read the reports from other parts of the world devastated by the Rumbling. Or rather, those parts of the world that wanted nothing to do with Paradis or Hizuru. But it left her puzzled by such behavior in a Titan.
Is this some sort of ploy for sympathy? She wonders.
At first, she thought of sending the ambassadors to where the town of the Dark Tree resides, but she decided not to due to her falling out of favor with the people that defected from Paradis. Also, she had her doubts that Armin and the others would be welcomed by the people or even be able to learn anything about how the Dark Titan was capable of being around if Kaede was dead. How was Paradis to understand where they stood with the Dark Titan if there was no conversation between them? How was the world going to move forward when it felt like there were some people that could not move on from what befell them?
"Your Highness," one of the men in charge with keeping Historia informed about things came into her room and spoke. "I'm afraid that former Survey Corps Captain Levi Ackerman has passed away."
Historia was feeling the tinges of loss, and Levi was someone that lost his faith in why any of them bothered doing anything after losing his comrades, most of his limbs and returning back to an island he no longer saw the same way, which is probably why he stayed away from her on all matters relating to Paradis, adhering to his forced retirement after the Rumbling ended. At least nine times, she wrote to him, just trying to talk to him…and not once did he ever write back, not even to tell her to stop. The only other thing she had heard about him was that his only wish after he died was just for his remains to be buried elsewhere, far from Paradis.
Historia likely suspected that he still harbored bad feelings about what had been done…and what could've been but wasn't.
-x-
Sitting at the former ruins that she turned into a beach after spending the night gathering the rubble and removing the footprints of former Wall Titans, Kaede's Dark Titan watched as the sun rose from the horizon and shined across her small work. She could hear gasps from nearby, clearly people that saw her Titan body just watching the waves as they passed through her intangible legs.
"Did…did you clean up this beach?" She hears a man say to her, and her Titan turns to face some people that were keeping their distance from her.
She nods her head.
"Are you…from that island? Paradis?"
"I…don't represent Paradis," her Titan utters. "I haven't represented Paradis for a long time. It used to be home…until it wasn't, anymore."
"Who…who are you?"
"I'm…I'm nobody. Just another lost soul in a ruined world."
"Why did you clean the beach?"
"To atone for my mistakes."
"Your…mistakes?"
"Not everyone was for the Rumbling…and not everyone was viewed as some kind of enemy. Another day, another step towards an absolution that may never come for me."
And then, the Dark Titan vanished from sight, leaving no trace of having ever been there.
To be continued…
A/N: The first time I made my OC here have to do good in order to receive a pass for a sin she committed against herself due to grief. Those of you that may think I'm being cruel to have Levi die, it's a necessity, as he serves no other purpose and is of no use in any situation regarding the primary character that is deceased. What's more, how do you expect anyone to even consider facing a ghost? You can't really expect to fight a ghost. Until the next chapter, see ya!