Creation began on 08-29-24
Creation ended on 09-06-24
Attack on Titan
The Dark Titan: Pleading for Life
It was a surprise to see that Jean was heading to Historia's home in Mitras, but a downer for Armin to learn from the queen that she hadn't been receiving any visitors in the last few days since the world broadcast featuring Kaede's ghost and the revelation that she had zero intention of keeping the people of the restored nations from wanting revenge against Paradis for the Rumbling, leaving the desire entirely up to them. But when Armin asked if she had seen or heard from Ymir, based on a gossip that the Yeagerists had apprehended a woman with freckles on her face, the queen replied that she hadn't heard anything from Ymir or seen her since she left years ago. It was a surprise that anyone fitting her description would even bother to come to Paradis after the radio broadcast.
"If Ymir did come back," Jean states upon learning of this turn of events, "she'd likely be here only to see you, Historia."
"And you think the Yeagerists apprehended her before she could come here?" She asks Armin.
"If she arrived the day before, she would've come to Mitras because it is where you live," Armin responds. "It's the last place she would come because she made her choice to leave."
"She left because she was worried that I was enabling the Yeagerists too much."
"With all due respect, Historia," went Jean, "you haven't reigned in the Yeagerists since their foundation over ten years ago. Most people are afraid of them and some of them want nothing to do with them. They act more like bullies than actual soldiers. And after the broadcast, most are worried that…"
"Worried about what?" Historia wants to know.
"Most people here are worried that the Yeagerists are going to do something completely reckless because of what Kaede Sogen said about how she feels toward Paradis, and I don't blame them for being worried. She spoke her mind and expressed her opinions that this island, while the place where she was born, stopped being the place she once knew as home after losing the people she loved. Even Connie's family knew that this island isn't feeling all that it used to be and left to find a new home where it does feel like it used to be. Even I don't recognize it, anymore. Nothing is the same. Nothing has been the same ever since… Is this really what you want, Historia? Are you really content with the way things are here?"
Historia sighs and responds that it is just the way things are because of Eren, and they have to accept them.
"If Ymir is here, and she's been locked away by the Yeagerists," Armin states, "and you've not seen her, and she still carries a torch for you…will you not attempt to see her. Or are you…just like him when Kaede decided to leave?"
Historia felt like he was disrespecting her. Some people had made excuses to avoid her after the broadcast because of what Kaede had said about her sounding just like Eren when they last saw each other. It was hurtful, being compared to him when she wasn't like him at all.
"I keep telling people I didn't know the Yeagerists were going to kill her parents or friends," she tells them, bitter about it all over again. "I swear to God, I didn't know. He never told me. And Kaede, she… She didn't want to hear 'sorry'. There was nothing I could say to her to ease her pain. I just accepted that whatever was going to happen was inevitable because once he made his choices, there was no stopping him."
"That's bullshit," Jean expresses. "Anyone with the will to stand up for themselves and refuse someone can do so. Anyone that disagrees with someone else about something can and often does state why they disagree with them. And just because he's dead, it doesn't mean his influence has faded away. Even when he's dead, he continues to make others do what he wants them to do. But he won't control me any further. I'm done with all of this. You decide how to you're going to do things. I'm done. I'm leaving. I gotta go. I gotta… I gotta live my life with integrity. I gotta do the things I want to do and be free to live however I choose to live. I'm not going to be someone else's puppet just because they thought they knew best. And Marley got their lands rebuilt, so I might as well go live there. See ya. Wouldn't wanna be ya."
Jean walks away then, adamant on making his own choices on how to live his life without any other person deciding them against his will.
"I don't blame him for choosing to walk away," Armin says. "Nothing is the same as it used to be. Sometimes, I wonder if this is nothing more than a dream we're trying to wake up from."
"Sometimes, I wonder if Kaede simply went and cursed everyone after she left," Historia expresses. "Maybe she made a deal with a devil that understood her pain and she wanted to make sure that others suffer for a while."
"You don't believe that. Even if it were so, why would she do any of what she's done if she only wanted to make others suffer? Ever since we met her, we learned that she was never one for violence or military life. Most often considered her to be the complete opposite of Eren because they were only able to do one thing, which was agree to disagree, something some of us understand more than others. Do you even remember how Kaede disagreed with Eren when it came to how you should live?"
Historia couldn't forget that day. It was among the only few times Eren and Kaede did agree on the same subject…but for different reasons, except Kaede's reasoning was more emotional and considerate while Eren's was… She wasn't sure how to describe Eren's reasoning.
"You want someone who's the last of her family because of someone else's irrational behavior and intolerance towards restraint to revitalize the royal bloodline," Kaede had once said to their allies from Hizuru and Zeke Yeager, "but that's immoral to even ask of her. Having children in the future should be a choice between the person that desires such and their intended life partner, not some obligation. If you make it an obligation, you end up destroying lives before they even begin, and if that happens, you risk people feeling like they only exist to become fodder for other people, which is wrong. It's just as cruel and inhumane to force people to have children if they're at risk or don't want to have any to begin with. You force someone to do that, how are you any different from the people you want to stop from hurting other people? How are any of us any different from them?"
It was the only other time Historia was grateful to Kaede for standing up for her, not just because she respected her relationship with Ymir. It was only because of Kaede's support of her autonomy that she didn't have any children…even when others within the government were starting to insist that she do so once Zeke's time holding the Beast Titan was up. If she were being honest with herself, she did want children in the future…but only with Ymir. Maybe she missed her chance because of the Rumbling and the years of separation between them.
"Even if she's not so much a friend as she is a support," her sister Frieda had told her before Eren decided to kill her for the Founding Titan, "Ms. Sogen demonstrates genuine concern and respect for those around her that desire something other than a world without violence and death. Out of everyone in your life, she might be the only one that sees hope in a way different from those of other people. The way her friends all stand by her side of their own volition, respecting her decisions, even if they don't fully agree with them because of different views, it shows that Ms. Sogen has a perception of life that isn't entirely lost to the world. She tries to keep an open mind and come up with suggestions that may be the lesser of two evils rather than the greater of two evils…and suggestions that she's willing to put the effort into making possible."
Sometimes, just sometimes, Historia had to wonder if she, simply because of the Founding Titan being in her possession at the time before Eren took it, had seen Kaede's future when nobody else could or would. And Frieda did see it, she wonders if she saw her return as a ghost and using her Dark Titan to mend the broken lands that Eren left behind with the Rumbling.
"I remember everything Kaede said and did," she tells Armin. "She's the only reason I didn't have any children. And she was right. About everything. There was always another way. Maybe a harder way, but she was willing to put in the work if nobody else was. She chose hope, not power or violence. Maybe if I had sided with her, the Rumbling wouldn't have happened. Maybe none of this would've happened if I had sided with her over Eren. I'm no ruler. I'm just a figurehead…and I don't want to be."
"So, what will you do?"
-x-
All Kaede enjoys from the sight of recreation, of rebuilding, of regeneration, is the glorious awe of the beauty in what exists, and that was what this lake she made represented. It was a scene of serenity, of beauty, a place where one could let go of their problems and enjoy the tranquility of where they were. Unfortunately, such a luxury didn't fully exist for her. Not as a ghost that walked the land of the living. As she sat against the shore of the lake at night, her feet in the water, she just watches as the water simply glistens in the moonlight; she could touch certain things and people, but as of this moment, she couldn't even feel the water around her legs. It reminds her of her limitations as an earthbound spirit.
"They talk about you in the silence of the night," she hears a female voice, and slowly turns her head to see who was present, "that you're an angel that walks in the darkness, leaving gifts that people can share across the land."
It was a woman with blond hair and blue eyes, dressed in trousers, a shirt, and a coat. But Kaede got the impression that she had met this woman from somewhere before.
"I suppose that you don't recognize me," the woman says to her. "It has been over a decade, after all, and people change over time."
"Who…are you?" Kaede questions her.
"Annie Leonhart."
Kaede's eyes widen in shock to her identity. This was Annie Leonhart, the last person to hold possession of the Female Titan, and the only woman Kaede had faced when she found her power to communicate through her Dark Titan after getting struck in the throat. It was as though the encounter between their Titans had occurred only the day before.
"It's been almost twenty years since that day," Kaede tells her, "and yet, you stand before me…as though it were only yesterday. How has life been treating you?"
"My father passed away two weeks ago," Annie reveals. "Although he died peacefully, in his sleep, no less, it hurts when he's gone. I mean, he wasn't actually my father, but…he was all I had in my life. Is it alright to ask you a personal question?"
"You can try, but I can't promise I'll answer. But to express my opinion on what you said about Mr. Leonhart, you're wrong; he was your father. Even if there was a blood relation between you two, he was family."
"Thank you. My question is… How long does it take?"
It was the way she asked that made Kaede reflect upon her own experience.
"As long as it can," she answers cryptically. "It affects everyone differently. However long, it's always bitter and brief. How brief is up to the affected."
Annie tilts her head to the right and utters, "It still hurts…even when you're dead?"
Kaede sighs and responds, "All the time."
"That's rough."
"It always is."
Annie then notices the Dark Titan in the distance in the lake, just as see-through as Kaede is. It was so confusing, seeing the young woman that could become the only other Titan that was larger than the Beast Titan…and the Dark Titan itself…a good distance from each other.
"I don't understand how this is possible," she expresses in disbelief; she never believed that anyone could operate separately from their Titan, no matter how experienced they were.
"I'm dead," Kaede states. "Not every rule applies to me."
"I've noticed that around Marley. You have made things that people don't have the means to make themselves, cleared the streets of debris, restored the greenery lost. I even heard that you turned a few deserts into cities, something that takes years, decades, to accomplish…and you did it all under half a year's time. You've practically made history. You've become history. You erased all trace of the Rumbling. All that most people talk about now…is you. It's incredible, really. People love you."
"Not everyone does…but it's nice to know that some appreciate you for what you do."
Annie notices how the water near the girl's feet didn't appear to actually soak them like they did the legs of the living. From what she had learned from Reiner, Kaede's ghost didn't change in any way in terms of her appearance; she wore the same clothes, kept her hair the same length and style, and was see-through all the time.
"How long will your purgatory be, Ms. Sogen?" She asks Kaede.
"Until I've redeemed my soul for my suicide," she answers. "The path to redemption must be paved with honorable intentions. Atonement can't be obtained by those that have done nothing to deserve it. It has to be earned, deserved, by those that want to be forgiven for their transgressions. Transgressions must be atoned for by the ones that deliberately commit them. If they do nothing to atone of their own volition, if they do nothing to deserve absolution, they will remain as they are, condemned without hope, to suffer in agony for all time."
"That's a terrible fate to be dealt."
"I can only hope that will the time comes, I will have done all that I can to have made up for my sin. My parents, my friends, I miss them. Their absence hurts me more than the fear of burning in Hell if I fail to be absolved of my past wrongdoing."
-x-
"We don't know anything about a woman with freckles on their face, Your Highness," a Yeagerist had told Historia at their HQ. "Most of our soldiers are still mending from their defeat by the Dark Titan, so we haven't been able to do patrols like we normally would, and thirteen of them have failed to report in."
If thirteen Yeagerists had failed to report in like they're supposed to, then it was likely that they had something to do with Ymir's disappearance after arriving the other day. What's more is that Armin had verified the sources that said the woman matching Ymir's description had arrived by boat, the only person to actually come to Paradis rather than leave it. This implied that Ymir had been captured by the missing Yeagerists and was being held captive somewhere.
"What do we do now?" Historia asks Armin as they sat at a table outside a park in Trost.
"If Ymir's being held captive by some rogue Yeagerists, they could be hiding her anywhere," he tells her. "We wouldn't be able to find her without assistance from others. And with Levi dead, most of the people we knew over the years either dead or gone, we're on our own here."
Historia looks away from Armin, not wanting to accept defeat until she had seen Ymir's face and know for herself what, if anything, they could have together. And then, just looking for a sliver of hope, she sees a radio on a windowsill across the street from them.
"Tell me, Armin," she says to Armin, "if I were to broadcast a plea to Kaede, would she at least hear me? Would she consider thinking about offering her assistance?"
"I honestly don't know if we can expect to get help from her. We all heard her when she was on the radio. She's not the same person she was before the Rumbling. She severed her ties with us and left with the intent of never returning. What makes you think she would help?"
"Admitting to some truths and owning up to personal responsibilities."
"You really think that's going to work with her ghost?"
"I just hope she'll hear from me if I do."
-x-
It seems that life within the night had finally found the previous sense of stability and flavor that Kaede had been familiar with as she walks down the street, seeing people either walking around, chatting, being civil, enjoying the nightlife. It almost makes her feel like she herself was alive like they were.
"…Attention, people beyond Paradis Island," she hears a voice she hasn't heard since she left Paradis over a decade ago, "this is an emergency broadcast. My name is Historia Reiss, and I am the queen of Paradis. I…I am hoping that my voice is being heard as I confess to my truths. And to…well, to someone that I need to speak to, if they're willing to. More than ten years ago, before the Rumbling had been implemented by Eren Yeager, he murdered my half-sister, Frieda Reiss, to take the Founding Titan from her, after murdering Keith Shadis for the Attack Titan, and his reason for committing these murders was because he felt what he needed to do was necessary. However, I did start to suspect that his motives were mostly to spite people that he couldn't make listen to him…and I had the Survey Corps keep watch over him because we couldn't afford to risk Marley, who was an enemy at the time, from taking the Founder from Paradis. I regret not having him executed, regardless of whether or not he claimed to be on the side of the people when all he wanted was freedom, something he would never have, no matter what he did. Among the people he wanted to spite with his actions…was Kaede Sogen, because no matter what he said or did, he couldn't do anything to make other people see her as a monster when it was he that was the monster, that he chose to be a monster, nothing more…and nothing less. And despite his animosity towards Kaede Sogen and all affiliated with her, Ms. Sogen was the better of the both of them due to never holding a grudge against people or looking to get revenge for some slight, whether it was real or imagined. Even after he told me what he was going to do, I didn't stop him. I was supposed to be the queen…and I didn't stop him from committing the atrocities he chose to enact because he felt he had no other choice. I am a terrible queen if I can't even keep my own subjects in line…and I admit to it…because it's the truth. This is also the truth: I never wanted to be queen to begin with. I never wanted to reign over Paradis. I hate being a ruler. I hate being responsible for more than I can handle. And I hate that the Yeagerists exist."
Kaede listens and finds herself unable to walk away from the radio revealing this revelation.
"Historia Reiss," she hears a man say as he stands up to touch the radio. "What a load of garbage. She's not worth the agony we want to forget."
She sees his hand reach for the tube to change the station.
"Don't touch it!" She yells at him, and he reacts in panic as he turns to face her, as did everyone else present, seeing her as though she was something else at the moment. "Don't touch it, please. I want to hear more."
"But I have no right to pass judgement upon anyone when I am far for perfect myself," Historia continues her rambling. "A few days ago, it was brought to my attention that someone I knew…someone that I didn't know still carried a torch for me…had returned to Paradis after almost ten years of absence…and now she's missing. I have reason to believe that some of the Yeagerists, bitter over their inability to possess the Dark Titan, which never belonged to any of them to begin with, captured Ymir before she could pay me a visit…and are hiding her somewhere on Paradis."
Kaede lowers her head in disgust over this. It was a possibility that the Yeagerists were a bunch of young people that were willing to do anything to get what they were after, even if the actions they took were morally wrong and unforgivable. But she didn't want to believe that they were willing to capture someone that walked away from the military and had no strategic value of any sort to them; Ymir was, for all intents and purposes, just a civilian that used to be a figurehead of a small cult of people that were looking for someone to believe in, a former Titan Shifter, and someone whose heart yearns for the love of another.
"I have no right to even request your aid," Historia continues, "but Kaede, if you are anywhere within the reach of my voice, I beg of you, please…help me find Ymir. Please."
Kaede turns away, leaving the people to be by herself. Of all the people she turned away from, choosing to never have anything to do with again because of different views, Historia Reiss, the young woman that she made a conscious decision not to vent her anger against because it wouldn't bring back the people that were killed…goes and begs her for help in finding Ymir. She wasn't sure if Historia was just desperate to save a girl that was old enough to be her great-grandmother…or just foolish to beg for help from a dead girl with a town full of people that she just wanted to be left alone by any that were interested in getting revenge against Paradis.
"Well, Kaede," she hears Carla say to her, seeing her and her daughter down the street; they clearly heard the same broadcast as she had. "What are you going to do?"
"I walked away from Paradis with the aim of never going back there," she replies, "but then she springs this up and has to do the one thing I didn't expect her to do at all, even when I was alive: Beg. She goes and begs me for help, and over the radio, no less. Who exactly does she think I am to her? What exactly does she think I am to her?"
"If not for her," Kaede hears Sasha's voice as she turns around and sees the young mother cradling her sleeping son in her arms, his head over her right shoulder, "then at least for Ymir. She only went back to see if she still has a place in her heart, right? And you said it yourself; you don't really care about her, anymore, but you still supported their relationship before Ymir distanced herself from her. If not for Historia, then try for Ymir."
Kaede sighs heavily and nods her head. As much as she wanted to pretend to herself that Historia was asking for help from some other girl named Kaede, she couldn't forsake Ymir. If she forsook Ymir, it'd be on her conscience because she chose to look the other way…and she didn't want to weigh down her damned soul with more weight than she already had on it because of her suicide,
"For Ymir," she tells them.
-x-
"That was heavy," Armin tells Historia as they walk down the streets of Mitras. "There will be repercussions from what you said back there."
"Let there be repercussions, then," Historia says as she looks at him. "I don't care what the people think of me now. I just want… I just want Ymir to be all right and in one piece."
"That would be something we have in common, Your Highness," they both stop and see a young woman stepping out of the shadows of a corner of a back alley, and see that it's Kaede's ghost, and right behind her was the head of her Dark Titan.
They couldn't believe that she was here, see-through and everything, like something impossible to comprehend, even with proof.
"Just so that we're clear," she tells them, "I'm here for Ymir, if she's truly missing because of those has-beens, and I'm getting very tired of having to deal with your problems."
They were surprised to understand that she had heard the radio broadcast and was responding.
"We're perfectly clear," Historia responds, accepting Kaede's perception of the situation, and is mystified to see that, exactly as the rumors had stated, the gray-haired woman is see-through. "You're really a ghost."
"Earthbound and everything in between the emotions of compassionate and annoyance, and I must stress that annoyance is a new emotion for me because of the people that constantly think that they know best when they know next to nothing at all, even when they're told."
Armin was under the impression that Kaede, even as a disembodied soul, was slightly out of touch with some people due no longer having the ones closest to her around, indicating that, when it came to the people left on Paradis, she viewed them the same as she viewed Historia and Eren; she saw them as little children trying to prove themselves all grown up when they were barely mature enough to understand that their actions carried repercussions for other people around them. And if so, they were figuratively up a creek without paddles with this young lady that was, undoubtedly, still suffering, even after she died.
"We don't know where Ymir is being held," he tells her, getting her attention. "Do you know if…if she's…"
"Dead?" Kaede cuts him off kindly, and he nods in the positive. "No. Just pray that these people don't get the idea to kill her. That would be on my conscience if it happened. Do these Yeagerists use the same bases as the previous military branches that used to reside on this island? Or do they use entirely new locations?"
"They've been using the previous buildings the Military Police and Garrisons used for years now," Historia reveals. "Most of the construction workers refused to offer their services to the Yeagerists after… Well, they just didn't have much of a reason to keep rebuilding and quit."
There was no way that this woman could hide the likelihood that some of the people that worked on the buildings on this island refused to have anything to do with the Yeagerists after the Walls were taken down, which likely resulted in the unnecessary deaths of friends and loved ones, with the subsequent aftermath being a loss of favor and the will to see the devastation as anything but unnecessary and walked away out of spite. There were at least seventeen people that left with Kaede back then that used to work in construction and they lost friends, brothers, sisters, husbands and wives, unwilling to stay so long as the Yeagerists considered their deaths to be necessary sacrifices to their great empire.
"If you have a map of these buildings," Kaede tells them, "I'll be able to get in and look for her if she's being held there."
"I know a lady that holds onto the blueprints of old buildings," Armin informs them. "She used to work for the Survey Corps, among the last ones alive. The Yeagerists tried to recruit her, but she rejected their offer because she lost her faith, the same as most others, so she took a job as a custodian. She's…"
"Petra Ral," Kaede cuts him off, surprising him. "I heard about her once on the radio. She carried a torch for Levi Ackerman. It broke her heart to see him reduced to being less than a man and unable to be with her."
Historia was once again reminded that the people she once worked with lost more than they had expected to lose because of Eren. So many other possibilities undone because of a series of choices that had been made by one person that took power and used it to carry out an act of violence so unforgivable that Paradis was still struggling just to pay off a fraction of that aggravating debt. So many relationships shattered, undone, forsaken or whatever in favor of something else.
"Some people used to believe that whenever someone dies," Kaede continues, "a crow would carry their soul to the land of the dead. But sometimes, when something so bad happens, a terrible sadness is carried with it, and the soul can't rest. A soul with a terrible sadness in it, a result of some act of misfortune committed in life prior to death, is incapable of rest, of the eternal peace that is promised to those that follow the path of the peaceful and loving. That's just another facet of what it means to be damned, to live in the in between, in purgatory, burdened by the weight of one's own sadness, waiting for a chance to atone."
"How do you endure such sadness?" Armin asks her, leading her and Historia down the street.
"To exist in purgatory until God-knows-when? I can't really say that I don't have a choice in the matter. I mean, there is a choice, purgatory towards redemption or damnation for my own sin, but it's never always the same for everyone. You either have or find the strength to endure…or you simply don't and take whatever it is that you deserve in the end, for better or for worse."
"And…you want absolution from your suicide?" Historia questions.
"Only God can give absolution for any sin committed, so long as the soul in question truly wants it, truly deserves it…but I want absolution from someone other than God. God may hold the final judgment upon me, but it's the forgiveness of the people I lost, the people I still hold dearest to me…that I want just as much. But if I can't earn their forgiveness, if I don't deserve their forgiveness, then my soul is truly forsaken, lost to the abyss like so many others."
"Why is their forgiveness more important to you than God's?" Armin wants to know.
"Because I failed them," she answers him. "My mother, my stepfather, Mimi, Julietta, Kylie…Charlotte…all of them. I failed them."
Historia stops walking…and Kaede simply passes through her as she continues to walk behind Armin as he leads the way.
"But you didn't," she says, and Kaede turns around to face her. "You didn't fail them. You never failed them. It was me."
Even if Historia admitted to something like this or Kaede acknowledged such, it didn't change anything about what happened before and after the Rumbling.
"I really hate being the queen," she tells Kaede.
"Even as a figurehead," the gray-haired girl responds, "it's the worst job to have."
"The worst."
-x-
"…Aaaaurgh!" Ymir groans as the male Yeagerist pulls off another one of her fingernails, her punishment for refusing to tell them whatever it was she might know about Kaede. "Gaaugh!"
"That's four fingers, and still no knowledge of how to face the Dark Titan and take possession of it," the guy tells her as he drops her nail to the floor. "Do we really need to keep going like this?"
Ymir looks up at him and frowns her contempt towards him and his comrades.
"You know something," he responds in enlightenment, "I think you'd let us rip off all of your fingernails and toenails, and you still wouldn't rat out that gray-haired bitch that abandoned us."
"I'm only…here for one thing," she says in response to his threat. "I have nothing for any of you. If it's war you want, then it's war you shall receive. Just know that I'll be rooting for the ones that get rid of you."
"That's why you're a traitor, as well," went one of the female Yeagerists to her.
"I can't be a traitor if I was never on your side."
The female Yeagerist took the pliers from her comrade's possession and used it to rip off another fingernail from Ymir's left hand.
"Aaaaaurgh!" Ymir wails as blood seeps out from her fingers.
-x-
Shatter! The porcelain cup broke as Petra Ral, a former member of the Survey Corps who stayed behind on Paradis to try and keep order after the Walls fell, dropped it upon the sight of Kaede Sogen's ghost with Armin and Historia.
"The dead really do walk upon the Earth," she says.
"It's not entirely true if it's just one person?" Kaede responds, bowing her head to the older woman. "May we trouble you with some assistance? Please?"
Petra looks at Kaede, then at Armin and Historia.
"Only because you asked so nicely," she replies and turns to open the door to a room full of archived documents and blueprints. "What do you need?"
To be continued…
A/N: Is there any of you out there that is seeing where this is going yet? Historia is forced to come out with her own mistakes and ask for help from the one person she feels can do what others can't do, and Kaede is in conflict over helping Historia and letting Ymir suffer unnecessary pain at the hands of some people that are just as bad as the people that were trouble before the Rumbling. And Petra? Pretty much everyone seems to pair her with Levi, one way or another, so when he died in this, she was reduced to being alone like every other single lady.