Creation began on 09-06-24
Creation ended on 09-20-24
Attack on Titan
The Dark Titan: One-Sided Vendetta
"Uh, Ms. Sogen," went Petra as she was holding up a cup of tea, "something to drink?"
Kaede respectfully declines, stating, "It's okay. I don't need to eat or drink, anymore."
This bothers Armin and Historia, who were going over the blueprints of the older buildings being used by the Yeagerists. It was just another reminder that Kaede, due to being a disembodied soul, didn't suffer from the limitations that came with being alive like they all do.
"I am sorry," Petra apologizes.
"Don't be," Kaede tells her. "I did this to myself."
"Not because you wanted to, though."
Kaede simply looks over one of the old buildings that had been used by the Garrisons when they were around.
"What in these blueprints are you looking for?" Petra questions the three.
"Dark places," Kaede answers her. "Rooms with shadows here or there, where one can be hidden in darkness. Someone once informed me that I would need to stick to the shadows."
"I heard of the miracles you did at night across the world. You're a blessing, Ms. Sogen. Even when you were alive, you were like this…this graceful angel that walked among us."
"Not everyone sees me that way."
"The ones that choose not to see you as an angel or a type of saint," they hear Armin say, "are usually the ones that believe only in demons and devils. You would think a devil would know a devil if they actually saw one another."
"Except not every angel comes from the heavens…and not every devil walks out of Hell."
"Whether you're an angel from the underworld…or a devil from paradise…I still believe in you, Kaede Sogen," Petra tells her, and Kaede smiles.
"Thank you," she praises, and then taps her left finger on one section of the blueprints that she's looking at. "How long until sunup?"
"Just under an hour, why?" Armin answers and asks her.
"Daytime isn't entirely good for me."
-x-
Ymir must've screamed her last scream because she ceased doing so after the last fingernail she had left to remove, her pinky nail, was pried off by the Yeagerists that captured her. Even when they started removing her toenails, she did not scream. Either she possessed a threshold for intense pain…or her ability to feel anything from relief to agony simply overloaded, the Yeagerists were uncertain, only that she was now just numb to their basic torture methods. But Ymir simply held onto the thought of seeing Historia again before anything else happened to her, trying to grin and bear this agony for as long as possible.
"We may have a problem," she hears one of the male Yeagerist say to the others present.
"What are you talking about?" A female Yeagerist questions.
"The queen made a broadcast over the radio several hours ago, making claims about what happened in the past and how she resents being the queen and our military's existence."
"What?! No way! She'd never disapprove of the Yeagerists!"
"She disapproved of the Yeagerists. It gets worse."
"Worse than being disapproved of?"
"She made claims of Eren Yeager usurping the power of the Titans from her sister and some other guy that had them because he wanted them and killed them to get control…and she reached out to the Sogen girl for help in finding this bitch that came back to see her."
A Yeagerist grabs Ymir by her hair and raises her head up to force her to look him in the eye."
"What the Hell kind of hold do you have on the queen?" He questions her, but she does not answer him. "Speak!"
Ymir could have said anything in that moment, but there is nothing she can say to these people. There was nothing she wanted to say to them, except for them to do one thing that they didn't even know how to do. And as for the pain she is feeling at this moment, she was in excruciating pain to the point where she fails to keep herself in check.
"Ah, damn," the Yeagerist groans as he lets go of her head to back away from her.
"If she reached out to the ghost of the Dark Titan," the female Yeagerist states, "then she'll likely come to Paradis to find this traitor. What, then?"
"There aren't enough of us to deal with a Titan like this one, and the majority of us that tried to take it away from that town of traitors are still in recovery because she broke their limbs, and their rehab is taking longer than we expected."
In the months that followed since their failure to acquire the Dark Titan, before learning that it was forever out of their reach because there was no body, and therefore no spine or spinal fluid, to salvage, each Yeagerist that went up against the Dark Titan was crippled extensively that they forced to recover over time, one limb at a time. This left their manpower less than anticipated against the threat of reprisal, and because of the radio broadcast Kaede's ghost participated in, Paradis was in no condition to defend itself from anyone anywhere that decided they wanted to eliminate the people living there if the gray-haired ghost girl declared to have no allegiance left to the island.
"Stay with her," Ymir hears a Yeagerist say. "If anyone comes looking for her, slice open her throat and watch her bleed out."
Sadly, Ymir didn't react to such an order being made regarding her life. She was still wracked by the pain of having her fingernails ripped off by them to care much for whatever they were saying. But she did hear them say something about Historia making claims to hate being the queen and the establishment of the Yeagerists.
-x-
Kaede's claim that daylight wasn't entirely good with her was no lie when Historia, Armin and Petra were able to witness what happens to her disembodied soul whenever exposed to sunlight. It wasn't that she could react to some sort of discomfort…but that whatever part of her exposed to light simply disappeared, as though she were being erased from existence. As she takes shelter in a secluded corner, away from a window that allows for sunlight to slip inside the room, Petra quickly closes the window and pulls the curtains, allowing for the darkness in the room to cover a larger portion of it.
"Are you…going to be alright, Ms. Sogen?" Petra asks Kaede as the disembodied girl slowly steps out of the corner, her body's right side unscathed like before the exposure.
"It's nothing I haven't dealt with before," Kaede tells her. "Partial exposure just causes the exposed parts of me to disappear from sight until I'm in a shadowed place. Full exposure just…displaces me until nightfall. It's happened twice, and I lose track of time. I guess it's like falling asleep for a while, but you don't remember ever doing so…and that feeling of restlessness doesn't go away."
"But wait," went Armin, "if it's only in the sunlight, and you can move through the shadows…couldn't you move underground where sunlight can't reach?"
"Trust me, I've done so. It's just easier to move through pre-existing tunnels than just sinking into the ground. It's like wading through mud, only slower."
"Does it hurt when it happens?" Historia feels the need to ask her.
"No. The last discomfort I ever felt when when I buried myself alive. The last physical discomfort. Emotionally, though, everything I feel…for better or worse…is all up here (Kaede points to the left side of her head)."
"Truly an unearthly beauty, you are, Kaede Sogen," Petra says. "I could never understand why you were single for so long."
"I never met the one that was just for me, Ms. Ral. Everyone eventually meets someone else that is meant to be for them to spend the rest of their lives with. Sometimes, that person isn't from the same place as you. Sometimes, maybe not even from the same point in time. But they're out there, either waiting for you to find them or they're looking for you. I just never met mine. I'm a patient person by nature, never in a rush to do everything quickly."
"Slow and steady promises the best of results."
"Exactly."
Petra then leads the three down a trapdoor in her home and reveals a passageway behind a fake wall with a barrel in front of it.
"It leads into the sewage system," she tells Kaede. "No sunlight except for the manhole covers that allow for rain and wastewater to seep down."
"Many thanks," the ghost girl replies and goes down through the passageway, finding herself within the sewage system underground.
It was a wonder to discover that the people here still had remnants of the old crystals of hardened Titan flesh to illuminate the tunnels instead of relying of electricity and lightbulbs everyone else everywhere else relied upon. But then again, everyone everywhere else didn't have the power of the Titans to rely on, so alternative methods were employed. And she was fortunate she was able to rebuild towns, cities and more than once every other night rebuild what she learned were dams used by other civilizations to generate power, which she found to be quite the marvel of other parts of the world that the Rumbling took away, that she used her Dark Titan to restore as best as she could.
Paradis has no geographical layout to support a hydroelectric dam, she thinks as she walks down a walkway beside a canal of wastewater. It seems like Paradis, despite no longer having any walls or Titans around…still treats its own people cheaply since the establishment of the Yeagerists. Just looking at it from a distance, I can see things going south after Eren Yeager stole the Founding and Attack Titans from their previous holders that saw things differently from the way he saw things…and they didn't correct themselves, even with his death. Some of the buildings are in disrepair… Inadequate supply chains and mediocre management of agricultural facilities… Limited medical care and supplies. This island had a future of promise before Eren put an end to things here. And while I could help resolve this all…I know I shouldn't. Those that follow the Yeagerist establishment cannot be trusted with the gifts returned to the world. Those that suffer here…must suffer because of their choice to put their lives in the hands of people that follow the way of the end-bringer.
Kaede stops walking as she sees someone in front of her…and sighs as she recognizes them with bitterness. It was only a matter of time before she met someone other than Ymir Fritz that had nothing but disgust towards her and was as dead as herself. She just wishes that it was someone other than Eren Yeager, trying to pass himself off as a defenseless boy of old. Beside him on his left was Ymir Fritz, and Kaede simply walks past them.
"You," she hears Eren's voice, its maturity betraying his child-like appearance, but she continues to walk away. "You ruined everything."
Then, in front of her again, the two were present, looking at her, and she just walks past them again, ignoring their presence.
"There was no other choice!" Eren yells at her. "It had to be done! I had to save Paradis!"
She turns a corner and sees them again, but simply pays them no mind and walks past them.
"What would you have done?!" He demands to hear from her, and she stops, holding her head up at the ceiling of the sewer, as if pondering whether or not to answer him.
And then…she just resumes walking, having made her choice not to answer him. There was no point in doing so, as it wouldn't change anything. Nothing in the world as it is…and nothing between them. Nothing.
"Answer me!" Eren yells at her, appearing in front of her four more times as she walks by on the walkway, ignoring him. "Come on! What would you have done?! Tell me, you gray-haired bitch! You know you want to!"
But Kaede, as much as she could've told him what she would've done, refrains from doing so, choosing to simply keep her would-be intentions, her possibilities, her benevolence, to herself. After all, dead people tend to tell no tales unless they chose to speak to the living, and these three were as dead as the memories of people they know and lost. And as she continues to walk away, Eren watches as she continues to walk her path of penance, seeing the quasi-shapeless form of the Dark Titan close behind her, at the ready in case she needed its power.
"Just admit it!" He recalls once yelling at his mother one time about Kaede and her actions, the good and the bad, and how they affected the people around them. "You wish you had a daughter like her instead of me!"
It was the first and only time he recalls Carla had slapped him in his face.
"What a hateful person you are!" She had called him.
"You're the only person that wants to give Ms. Sogen a hard time, Eren," went Jean to him one time. "Just leave her alone. She wants nothing to do with you, for better or worse. Nothing."
"If it's between you and Sogen, Eren Yeager, and I had to choose one of you," Sasha had told him upon learning that he killed Frieda and Keith for their Titans, upset with his actions and what drove him to do it, "I'm with Sogen every step of the way."
"Not everyone seeks to control or destroy, Eren Yeager," Erwin Smith had tried to inform him, "just as not everyone wants to be free. Not like you do…and you will never be free, even when this is over. Not like this. Not like this."
Even in death, even in damnation, he blames Kaede Sogen for her restraint, her refusal to dedicate her heart to fighting for a future the way he believed the people of Paradis needed to, and he hated her for turning everyone against him. Even when everyone turned against him of their own choosing because of what he did in life before he died. He pushed them all away, he tried to have his mother killed more than once, and he had the people Kaede loved more than anything killed…simply because he hated her life in its entirety. Above all, he hated the girl that everyone else adored.
"Eren," went Mikasa at one point prior to him making his decision to take the power of the Titans for himself, "Ms. Sogen could care less about whatever it is you think of her. She's not some monster out to destroy the world we live in or an enemy trying to get rid of you. She's just a girl trying to move on with her. Why can't you let her move on and do the same for yourself?"
There was a word for people like Eren Yeager that target a singular individual out of a whole legion of people, with absolutely no restraint or compassion towards the fact that the targeted individual was not even trying to make trouble for others: Obsessive. He had been obsessed with trying to make others see the girl the same way he saw her…as a monster and a threat to their lives. But he failed to do so in any major sense, since most people saw the girl as a saint due to her unwillingness to harm any of them and because she had people willing to vouch for her harmlessness against them. And because she was believed to be the special one, capable of more than anyone else, including himself, it only made him hate her all the more.
"You're a bad man," he recalls that little girl that idolized Kaede telling him once because he tried to have her dealt with. "You're bad."
Even though he knows he's directly responsible for Kaede's personal misfortune of losing the people she loved, Eren could not see past his obsessive dislike towards her. And Kaede, despite feeling some desire to get back at Eren, even some desire to come at Ymir Fritz, knows that doing so wouldn't make her own suffering hurt any less.
"People like that, Kaede," she recalls her stepfather saying to her regarding Eren's dislike of her, "are often jealous of you for unnecessary reasons or excuses."
"Why would someone like him need to feel jealous towards me?"
"Why, indeed."
"If he feels that way, it's his own fault. I have nothing to be jealous about."
Stopping in the tunnel, she turns back to see if the two were still around, and sighs upon seeing that they were still nearby.
I have nothing to be jealous about, she thinks as she resumes walking down the path, followed by the shadows of her Titan.
-x-
"…And with the extensive rebuilding of ships across the repaired nations," a woman's voice utters on the radio across the streets of Trost, "will any plans be made to go to Paradis in the future?"
"Unfortunately, no," a man's voice replies. "The new world leaders have made it a point, shortly after the broadcast with Ms. Sogen, a former resident of Paradis who defected over ten years ago, prior to her suicide, that Paradis, despite having resources of substantial value, has nothing to offer the people, and will be ignored. Whatever is left on that island is of no use to the people, no matter how invaluable it could be. And after that broadcast made by the queen reaching out to Ms. Sogen, it's anyone's guess as to whether or not she will answer to her."
"Miss Reiss reaching out to a former associate to obtain help in finding this Ymir person the queen knows? Do you believe this to be genuine?"
"It doesn't really matter whether or not I believe this to be true. What actually matters is what other people believe…and whether or not Ms. Sogen's ghost will answer her plea. The final decision still stands. Paradis Island and its allies are to be ignored. If they fear the rest of the world wanting revenge against them, then leave them to fear some sort of retribution that may never come. As far as the rest of the world is concerned, Paradis an atoll floating in the ocean with no connection to anyone. No business ventures, no trade routes, no peace treaties, nothing to do with Paradis or its affiliates at all."
While some people could have felt some measure of ease at hearing this, it made the Yeagerists upset to know that the rest of the world had shunned their homeland…and made no mention of what would become of the other people that defected from the island. Instead of needing to protect their people against the people of the world, they would be shunned and ignored, and the defectors and traitors would just be left to enjoy their cheap peace and quiet as a part of the world that rejected them!
"The village associated with the Eldians that defected from Paradis, now officially known as the town of Kaede Sogen, after the young lady that was revealed to be the Dark Titan," the man on the radio continues, "should also be left alone, as they're just people that chose to leave the island after losing friends or loved ones killed before or by the Rumbling and did not support the Yeagerist military establishment. And with all due respect, nobody really recognizes these people as being a true military."
This was going to make people around Paradis question what they were even doing if the rest of the world restored by the Dark Titan was not even going to bother with them in any way. With absolutely no threat of reprisal, they were just wasting their time preparing for another war that would never come to their doorstep. And with no measures of peace with any other nations beside Hizuru, there was no real chance of coexistence.
"Won't these actions have a backlash of sorts with Paradis and Hizuru?" The woman asks the man on the radio.
"What sort of backlash?" The man questions. "It was a unanimous decision. Even if the instigator of the Rumbling was killed by them, not everyone wants anything to do with Paradis, including the people that abandoned Paradis shortly after the Rumbling. They can keep their resources and their business ventures with Hizuru. Everyone else will be content with having nothing to do with either."
"It just feels sort of rushed, and one such backlash would be that Paradis will try to pursue retaliation against the Dark Titan."
"If they want to pursue a vendetta against the ghost of a young woman that they were responsible for driving away to begin with, that is their choice to do so, but nobody elsewhere is going to take sides in their feud."
With that, the broadcast ended, and people across Paradis were at an impasse of sorts. With no threat of reprisal from the rest of the world, they were no longer at risk of being attacked because nobody wanted anything to do with them. But this also means that their coexistence now stems from the fact that they were cut off from the rest of the world like before, with the sole exception of Hizuru, which has also been rejected by the world. While most of it had been rebuilt by Kaede Sogen, the emotional wounds that still persisted after the Rumbling had yet to heal, and those that were left in charge were making the choice to reject Paradis as a whole. But in the end, was this not what Paradis wanted, to be left alone?
"If Paradis as a whole wishes to be left alone in the world," some of the people old enough to remember the claim made by Kaede in the past, "why not just tell the people of the world that we won't do anything to hurt them if they do nothing to hurt us? It becomes a deterrent; nobody does anything because everyone is afraid of the outcome if they do. These people won't invade those people, those people won't kill these people. The last thing anyone needs in more blood on their hands and a guilty conscience if they crossed a line."
It was just another reminder of the fact that, when Ms. Sogen was on Paradis, she didn't truly speak for any of them, but would want to know if any of them spoke for any of them themselves. None of them could truly speak for the rest unless they had permission to do so, and it felt like the man on the radio had only spoken for the people that wanted nothing to do with Paradis, not Paradis' people, who had nobody to speak for them with the same mindset. All save, perhaps, for a girl that was dead and no longer representing their interests. This was just the hand they have been dealt with by those trying to make sense of things.
"That walking dead bitch," a female Yeagerist says, bitter towards the revelation that the world had rejected Paradis once more, except with absolutely no intention of making any plays against them. "This is all her fault. She made us look bad and made our enemies look sympathetic. Who the Hell does she think she is?"
-x-
Ymir was not having a good day right now. She couldn't feel anything in her limbs and she felt like she had lost more than half the blood in her veins. What she would say for something as simple as a doctor right now…and a bed to lay her head down on. And what she would do to see Historia…even if it was only for one more time.
"Aah!" She hears a scream, and the Yeagerist watching her leaves her alone to investigate.
"What the Hell are you… Aaah!" The Yeagerist screams, and Ymir wonders if she should be worried by whatever it was that is currently outside.
Maybe I'm already dead, she wonders, her vision blurry. Historia…I just wanted to see you one last time. I just wanted to know…if I had a place in your heart still.
The door to the room she was in opened and Ymir is unsure of what to expect. But she can't fight back against what she perceives to be her fate, her final moment among the living as she counts the seconds she has left.
"Are…are you…the one sent to relieve me of…my life?" She asks weakly to the blurry figure as they approach her.
"No," she hears them say to her, but she was so out of it that she couldn't tell if they were a man or woman. "Oh, damn…what did they do to you?"
She feels the ropes around her loosen and she nearly falls over. But someone catches her and holds her up.
"Come on, Ymir, don't you die on me," she hears them say, helping her to walk. "I made a promise to someone that you two would meet again. I can't break it now."
"Who…are you?"
"I'm nobody. Just an outcast yet to be forgotten about."
If only her eyes weren't so weak from the blood loss, Ymir would've seen who this person was and thank them.
To be continued…
A/N: It's a depressing feeling, to feel like your end is near, but someone comes to pull you away to safety…and you have more to live for. I think the recollections of past moments that were thought of between Kaede and Eren were a bit more intense here because neither has anything to say to the other and one doesn't have the soul to admit they were in the wrong and the other can't forgive what horrors were committed to the lives lost. Personally, the moment between Eren and his mother was inspired by a scene from the anime of Please Save My Earth; things like that tend to stick when trying to put emotions into actions, both verbal and physical. How many of you are hoping that Ymir will meet Historia and reconcile?