Creation began on 07-11-24
Creation ended on 10-08-24
Attack on Titan
The Dark Titan: Waking to the New Day
A/N: Now that the previous story has concluded, we can resume with this one.
Feeling like a haze was fading away from her, Kaede opened her eyes and looked around herself, a little disoriented and confused by her surroundings. As her vision corrected itself, finds she's inside a small room, laying in a bed that wasn't her own, and covered in a medical gown.
"Please, wake up, Kaede," she hears her mother say in her sleep, beside her on her right. "Please, wake up."
Kaede reaches out and shakes her mother, stirring her from slumber.
"Mother?" She asks her. "I'm awake now."
Christine Sogen, feeling like she was waking up from a nightmare of the cruelest sort, widens her eyes as they start to tear up, and she jumps up out of her chair to embrace her daughter.
"Aah!" She gasps, hugging her tightly. "You're awake! Thank God!"
Kaede had known her mother to be very expressive when it comes to her relationships with other people, but this was the most unusual moment for her to be experiencing right now. But as she was awake, she was remembering what she had experienced prior to finding herself in this moment. But she needed to confirm a few things before she could tell any of them anything.
"Oh!" She hears a startled gasp, followed by a shattering pitcher of water on the floor, and sees Julietta by a doorway, tears in her eyes.
-x-
"…An update from the hospital came," Historia informs Frieda out in the garden as she and Ymir came by to keep her updated. "Kaede has finally awakened from her coma."
Frieda turns to face her sister and smiles.
"I'm relieved," she tells Historia. "Does she…remember anything?"
"The doctors are checking her now," Ymir states. "I doubt she's forgotten anything about what happened. It's whether or not she'll have retained her physical abilities that remains in question."
"One step at a time," Historia says.
-x-
Thirty days. A month's worth of time spent asleep. That was how long Kaede was in a coma, and she knew who was responsible for this. But she needed to recover her physical strength before the doctors declared her of sound mind and body.
"Thirty days?" She recalls herself asking as she goes through the rehabilitation program. I was unconscious for more than a month…because Eren Yeager assaulted me? But it felt longer than that because of the other lifetime I was in.
Of course, she told everyone, including her parents and friends, about what she had experienced and that it wasn't so much a dream as it was a different life where the worst had happened…and nothing was the same. Whether or not they believed her or not was up to discussion, but so far…they hadn't exactly disbelieved her. And as for her rehabilitation, she could still move her limbs, they just needed to be exercised to regain strength.
"So…in this other lifetime," she hears Mimi say to her on the opposite end of the support beams needed to help people walk, raising her head to look at her friend, "the end of the world…really happened…and that boy had us murdered?"
Kaede sighs as she nods that it was exactly how it happened. Whether it was just a dream…or an alternate future, Kaede disliked the fact that it was Ymir Fritz that tried to keep her asleep, making her believe that she was dead, and just after Eren Yeager had bashed her brains in. It wasn't something that knowing about would lift people's spirits up, but knowing kept them each informed about what could happen if something else happened.
"But you really rebuilt the places that had been devastated? I mean, you used your Titan power…to rebuild buildings…gardens…bridges?" Mimi asks her.
"That's right," she answers her.
Mimi then comes over to her left and offers her a hand.
"I knew you possessed an unbreakable spirit," Mimi tells her. "You won't let people come between you and your sense of righteousness, alive or dead."
Kaede accepts her right hand and is able to walk the rest of the way to the other end of the support beams.
"I kept hearing your voices," she tells Mimi. "You were all telling me to wake up. At first, I wasn't sure what it meant or what I was even hearing."
"That was your mother and Charlotte's idea; they both believed that as long as you kept hearing people that you know, waiting for you to recover, it would help you recover. I wasn't sure if you would even hear anything or if any of our voices got through to you."
Standing up as best she could on her legs, Kaede replies, "You all got through to me, Mimi. Believe me. You all got through. Thanks."
-x-
Only because it concerned them as far as they understood it, Armin, Jean, Connie, Sasha, Mikasa, Levi and just about every other individual that was affiliated in some way with either Eren or Kaede, had been informed of the alternate lifetime the latter girl had been in while in her coma, learning of the extremity of the former boy's actions.
"Even though it was Ymir Fritz that tried to keep her from waking up," went Jean, "I still can't believe that Eren would go that far if he ever possessed the power of the Titans, in one life or another. It's insane, really."
As they were out in the hospital garden, they had ample privacy to discuss things.
"He unleashed the Rumbling upon the world…and tried to kill my family and other people he felt needed to be killed," Connie utters, disgusted with Eren's behavior. "How cruel can he get when he decides things like that?"
"Ambassadors of peace?" Armin questions. "Only we failed because nobody was interested in peace talks with Paradis after the Rumbling? Even after Ms. Sogen rebuilt most of the world, nobody wanted anything to do with Paradis, preferring to ignore it outright. And worse was that he didn't tell any of us until after he was killed, and by that time, more than half the world's population was killed. That's unforgivable, even for him."
"I get that he hates Ms. Sogen," says Sasha, "but to go that far? I'm sorry, but he deserves to be locked away for the rest of his life. If something like this could happen in the future, and he was the one responsible, I'd sooner see him dealt with harshly than simply exiled."
Mikasa finds herself unable to say anything in defense about Eren's actions, no matter what she thinks of them or anyone's reaction to them. Just learning of this means one thing above all else that she could understand: Eren's hatred of Kaede…knew no bounds. If he hates her this much, he would try to hurt her in any way that he could, directly or indirectly. There was no denying this revelation in any sense.
"It's irrelevant at this point," Erwin states to them. "Eren Yeager's already in prison with no chance of getting out. He brought this upon himself by attacking her and threatening those children if they told on him after he used them to lure her into a trap. His fate is the same as this half-brother of his, and there's no changing that."
"But Ms. Sogen," went Connie, still grateful that Kaede's service to both the Garrison and the Survey Corps had ensured the protection of his family from the Titans and even Zeke Yeager when he possessed the Beast Titan, "can she still help us once she has recovered her strength?"
"I don't think an attack by Eren's going to stop her from helping to protect the people," Armin declares his opinion.
-x-
"Aaaurgh!" Kaede groans as she feels her spine cracking in places she didn't think she had until today. "Oooh! Ohpf! Hmm… Oh, yeah. Thank you, Amanda."
"You've been bedridden for a month, so your bones are stiff," Amanda expresses as she lets go of her arms so that she's facedown on the floor. "Your back has gotten the worst of it."
Another part of her rehabilitation was getting her soreness worked out.
"Tell me, did I miss anything while I was in a coma?" Kaede asks Rachel, who was nearby in the room pouring a cup of tea for Kaede.
"Uh…just one or two things," Rachel tells her, slightly bothered by her question.
"It's nothing bad, right?" Kaede wants to know.
"Just a few different trips to Shiganshina District to prepare for rebuilding it."
Kaede feels down by learning this.
"It's nothing serious," Amanda says to her, bending her down forward to get circulation flowing through to her arms and legs. "For the most part, there were no Titans in between here and Shiganshina…with one exception."
"Just one?"
"There was one Titan, but it never really attacked anyone. All it really did was walk around. The people that saw it all said the same thing about how it stood out: It had a creepy smile."
"Miss Reiss, Frieda, tried to resolve the matter with this Titan, but it didn't listen to her, and she has the Founding Titan. Either something is wrong with her control over all other Titans, or this particular Titan simply has an issue we're not seeing."
Kaede, now having her arms pulled as she was getting the kinks out of her back, wonders why a Titan wouldn't be subjected to the control authority of the Founding Titan when the power of the Founder was in a class by itself. And a memory comes back to her from years ago when Shiganshina was attacked by the Colossal Titan. She remembers a Titan like the one described with a smile, trying to kill Carla Yeager…and she, as the Dark Titan, stops it and smashes its head to pulp, ripping its arms off…and then proceeding to smash up the Yeager house after Carla was saved. This, combined with another realization from the time she was in her coma, made her eyes widen in revelation.
"I didn't kill her," she utters, getting her friends' attention.
"What?" Amanda asks her.
"It's gotta be her," she says. "I smashed up her head, ripped off her arms, but I didn't go for her neck, so she recovered and went on."
"Wait, you know who this Titan is?" Rachel questions.
"Yeah…and I reckon that Mr. Shadis knows who she is, too."
-x-
"…Yeah, I know which Titan you're referring to," Shadis replies as he's in the presence of the teens and Survey Corps leaders, answering their question about the Titan that has been walking around. "It's Dina Fritz-Yeager."
"Dina Fritz-Yeager?" Erwin questions. "Is this person related to Eren Yeager?"
"No, but she's related to Zeke Yeager. She's his mother. Turns that over thirteen years ago, when Grisha arrived on Paradis, their son turned on them and handed them over to Marleyan security forces, and they were brought over with several other people in this small group to be turned into Titans. Dina Fritz-Yeager…is also a member of the royal family."
"And they turned her into a Titan?" Kaede questions in disbelief over this revelation. "They didn't know who she really was?"
"If they had, they would've done worse than what they did do to her."
"Worse than turn you into a Titan?" Jean asks.
"The Founding Titan can only work for members of the royal family, individuals whose blood is the purest. Any member of the royal family in possession of any of the Nine Titans is basically more powerful than a common Subject of Ymir. But if Marley wanted to control the Founding Titan before it was revealed that it was compromised due to Karl Fritz's ideology…"
"They would need as many Subjects of Ymir with royal blood as possible," Erwin and Kaede realize and conclude, both disturbed and disgusted by this revelation.
"Meaning, if they did know about her…they'd force her to have children till she was dead," Connie utters. "That is just messed up."
"And Zeke Yeager just let these people turn his mother into a monster that has no control over her actions?" Sasha questions. "They probably didn't know that he has royal blood, either."
"Makes me wonder just what else these people are clueless about?" Armin wonders.
"Understanding the degree of how far people can often go to keep secrets," Kaede states with a sigh, "it's likely that Marley has no idea what is currently happening here. And they have, what, four of the Nine Titans left in their possession? We have the Attack, Colossal, Jaw, Beast and Founding Titans? That leaves them with the Female, Armored, Cart and this…War Hammer Titan? It's not so much the quantity as it is the quality of the powers that be."
"What the heck does that mean?" Julietta asks her.
"It means we could have as many Titans with intelligence on our side as we wanted, but if the other side has Titans of a different quality, then numbers would be irrelevant."
"Well, that's where I have to say that, while you're right about the potential quality over quantity, you're not entirely right about the quantity and quality on our end."
Kaede looks at her friend like she knows something that she's not considering.
"Technically, we have allies in possession of the Attack, Beast, Jaw and Founding Titans. We have a prisoner in possession of the Colossal Titan, so we don't really have access to that Titan power that damaged the Walls. But we have one other ally that Marley has yet to meet with and has no understanding of because they're not like anyone else we know of."
"What other ally?" Kaede questions.
"She means you, Ms. Sogen," Jean reveals to her. "You and your Dark Titan. Unlike the other Titans, you're an enigma."
"Excuse me?"
"We don't know all of what you're capable of, but you may demonstrate only the positive aspects of what a person in possession of the power of the Titans can exhibit. Put quite simply, you have most of, if not all, the strengths of a Titans…and none of the weaknesses. But among your best qualities is your restraint; you don't act impulsively, you don't let your emotions make you do things half-assed…and nearly everyone likes you. I mean, Hell, even I like you, and I don't even know you that much. Plus, your biggest fan right now is probably your friend's little girl. It's hard to imagine anyone else with the power you have right now."
Then, Kaede's face lights up with inspiration.
"And then, there's that thing where you light up with an epiphany," went Armin. "What did you just realize?"
"Dina Fritz-Yeager," she utters, "it was mentioned that while I was in my coma, all she's done is walk around between Trost and Shiganshina, right? And Ms. Frieda tried to turn her back into a human with her power?"
"That's right," Shadis explains, "but nothing worked."
"Did she try to restrain her and make physical contact?"
They all look at her like she just asked the best and worst question ever.
"Uh…" Connie goes.
"We didn't try making physical contact between the Titan and Ms. Reiss," Levi reveals to Kaede.
"I'll help restrain her so you can give physical contact a try," she tells them.
"You're not fully recovered yet," Erwin reminds her.
"No, but I've rested long enough. There's just one thing I want to do first."
-x-
Clank-clank-clank! Eren hears a clanging sound on the bars of his prison cell, and he wakes up from his slumber, turning over on his cot to see the guard present.
"What?" He asks.
"You got a visitor," the guard tells him before walking away.
"Probably Mikasa again," he suspects; every now and then, he would be visited by Mikasa, as his mother refused to come see him after learning that he had attempted to kill Kaede Sogen.
"You wish," he hears a female voice that he hasn't heard since he was incarcerated for his crimes. "Everyone tried to talk me out of coming here, but I wasn't going to be dissuaded because someone like you made a terrible choice to try and end my life story."
He sees her standing behind the bars, wearing a newer version of her casual dress, her gray hair the same length as it had been before he attacked her, and her face, her eyes, staring subtle daggers at him.
"You," he frowns as he sits up. "What the Hell are you?"
"I…am only several things right now," Kaede says to him, and leans back against the wall behind herself, "which I will share with you, Eren Yeager. First up, I am awake, in recovery from the coma your attempt on my life put me in. Second, I am here to let you know that I will not live my life in fear of people like you that dare to try and end me. Thirdly, you didn't change much of anything with your arrogance and anger towards me, just delaying some important progress in rebuilding Shiganshina. And lastly…just to remind you of your crimes, which I'm not the only victim of here. Harassment, inciting violence, kidnapping, endangering the welfare of tender-aged children, attempted murder, depraved indifference, obstruction. Three strikes, Eren Yeager, and your life as a member of society is in the trash bin. Now, the only freedom you have left…is in deciding how you wish to spend the rest of your life. Behind these bars…or execution."
Eren's eyes widen in shock. There was no way the people in charge of his prison sentence would consider the death penalty against you.
"You're lying," he says to her. "They can't kill me."
"When have I ever lied to you?" Kaede asks him. "The Military Police have reviewed your records, and they've concluded that, being you're a public nuisance whose own mother is now stigmatized by your actions, you practically qualify for the death penalty. So go ahead, Eren Yeager. Make your choice. Gamble. Throw a tantrum. Yell out loud at how you feel about the unfairness of your predicament. It's your life, quirks and all. I'm not going to waste mine on someone that hates me to the point of trying to kill me. See you around."
She stands off the wall and turns to leave.
Eren rushes over to the bars grabs them.
"You should've died that day, you freak!" He yells at her retreating form. "You should've died! You're nothing more than a monster! Do you hear me?! You're a monster! You're soulless! What makes you so damn better than me?! What makes you better?!"
But Kaede was gone, leaving him to fume over what he has been informed by her.
"Aaaaauurgh!" He yells as he returns to his cot.
-x-
The door to the detention cells opens up…and Kaede steps out from behind it, greeted by her parents, her friends, the members of the Survey Corps she has worked with…and Shadis.
"How do you feel?" Mimi asks her.
"Honestly," she responds, "I thought I was going to be terrified when I saw him. But after seeing him down there…I actually feel sorry for him."
"You feel sorry for him?" Kylie questions, confused. "But why?"
"Not because he tried to kill me," Kaede clarifies, "but because he chose to. He could've walked away. In fact, all he had to do was walk away and ignore his bitterness towards me. Instead, he chose to act on his feelings of hate towards me. The fate he's been dealt…is of his own making. He has only himself to blame for his own mistakes that he has to answer for. That is why I feel sorry for him. Because he focused so much on something that he didn't want to let go of. Something I can let go of…because I am not a bitter person that resents other people, regardless of who they are or what their feelings are."
"But Eren," went Armin to her, "he knows that the MPs have considered the death penalty for him, doesn't he?"
"I told him, and I told him why, as well. He thought I was lying, though."
"I'm guessing that he hasn't realized yet that has to choose between the two fates he's been given," Julietta says. "Kaede…just tell me one thing. Did he at least try to reach out to you through the bars?"
"Never even tried to."
"You…are tougher than I realize."
-x-
"…So…you've been making do with Ymir's help?" Kaede asks Historia as they and a handful of other people were clinging onto Ymir's Jaw Titan's back, holding onto its hair.
"She got better during the time you were asleep," Historia states. "Couldn't really make her any bigger than eight meters, though."
The Jaw Titan Ymir possessed had grown to eight meters, was muscular and had these arms and legs that appeared to be covered in gloves and boots of hardened flesh, and had a face that was more human and less monstrous than it had been prior to being modified during the time period Kaede was comatose. As they were traveling to Shiganshina, they were on the lookout for the Smiling Titan, the Titan identity of Dina Fritz-Yeager.
"Are you really sure you want to do this, Kaede?" Frieda asks.
"Nobody deserves to live in a nightmare that they can't wake up from," Kaede answers her. "Earlier when I decided to put my power to use to protect Trost, I just killed Titans, unaware that they were just people trapped in a nightmare with no awakening. Now that we know better, I can do something different about her. I can help release her from her nightmare."
"A nightmare… That's what I kept thinking about that night I kept expecting Dr. Yeager to show up and kill me and my family for the Founder…until your existence changed everything, that I was inside a nightmare I couldn't wake up from. What is this life like for you?"
"A living example of how each and every day is as quirky and unpredictable as the day before it. I see people everywhere that embrace who they are, who are proud to be who they are, and make me feel at ease that there's people like that who can admit to themselves that the world is beautiful…even when it isn't."
"And being in a coma for a month didn't change your mindset?"
Kaede looks at everyone else present on the Jaw Titan's back before looking back at Frieda.
"The only thing that changed…is knowing how far one's dislike of other people can drive them to do things that hurt others," she says in response to Frieda's question to her.
"There she is," went Jean, pointing over to the west at a lone Titan that was just walking their way. "God, her grin is creepy."
Kaede looks over at the Titan, at the cursed state of Dina…and feels sympathetic towards her plight that she was dealt by her own son. It reminded her of the similarities in the situation between Eren and his own mother, how his unrelenting attitude towards her had driven a wedge between them that only got worse in a short period of time. And even if there was no hope of reconciliation between the two, Kaede had to hope that there was at least some chance of reconciliation between Zeke and his mother.
"Even so," she says, "she probably has nothing to say about anything if she can't even say anything about anything."
-x-
"…The only freedom you have left is in deciding how you want to spend the rest of your life," Kaede's words reverberate in Eren's consciousness. "Behind these bars…or execution."
As it turns out, the girl hadn't lied to him in the slightest; an MP officer came by later that afternoon and informed him that because of his past actions, he only had two choices for his fate: Life in prison or the death sentence, and if he didn't choose, the MPs would choose for him. Normally, something of this sort would be left to the relatives of the prosecuted, but Eren's mother refused to deal with her son's fate that was his to decide.
"We mentioned this to your mother, but she has refused to deal with you," the MP told him as he paced in his cell.
That bitch, he thinks as he stops pacing and sits down on his cot. She's enjoying this all! She probably wants to witness my execution if they decide to kill me.
But because this was only his opinion of the girl's intentions, he wasn't sure what Kaede was after from him. If she was even after him at all, as everyone else had told him that the girl wanted nothing to do with him, and therefore wanted nothing from him.
"If I had any say, kid," he hears a man down the hall in another cell; sometime after Eren had been incarcerated, another man had been brought in for attempted rape, "I'd choose life behind these bars. It's a shitty deal, but at least you'd die from natural causes instead of facing the firing squad. I hear that's a harsh way to go. First, they shoot you in the legs, then the waist, and then the head, making sure to go for the eyes."
Eren ignores this man, as he was probably lying about how those sentenced to death were dealt.
"In complete honesty, Eren," Mikasa had once told him during one of her earlier visits to him, "this is your fault. You brought this upon yourself. Everyone told you to leave Ms. Sogen alone, and you attacked her with the intent to kill her. What's in the past should stay in the past, but you kept bringing it up with your dislike of her. If anyone were to question either of you, they would likely choose to see Ms. Sogen as the victim…and yourself as the victimizer…and you made her a victim to begin with. You harassed her that day over five years ago, provoked her into conflict, and when you wouldn't leave her alone, she brought you back to your mother and apologized for destroying the house. Why is it so hard for you to simply leave her alone?"
"If she recovers," Shadis had once told him, "then she still has a chance of achieving the things she wants to have in her future, Eren, which don't revolve around you. She wants the same things that other people want in life: Family, friends, stability, things that you don't seem to appreciate in the slightest. Are you that much hateful towards to her to want to crush her hopes and dreams? Are you that spiteful?"
-x-
Blast! One of the things that never seemed to change was that whenever a Titan Shifter, someone that was in possession of a Titan capable of being controlled by one's will alone, changed, it was the explosion of heat generated by them doing so after experiencing a cut that drew blood, and Kaede, despite being an exception to this on account of there being only nine specific Titans with ties to Ymir Fritz, was no different due to her own unique circumstances.
A month in a coma had left several people worried that, after a while of being rehabilitated, Kaede would be just a regular girl with no Titan power, whatsoever, but she was proving them wrong after she cut her right wrist and was replaced by her eighteen-meter Titan form that hadn't been seen in such a short time…but was greatly missed. The dark skin and hair, the petite and shapely form, the way the long hair covered its exposed flesh like a dress of sorts. It looked over at the Smiling Titan that slowly approached it…and the young girl inside it, if she could only make an expression with her actual face, felt only pity towards the woman that existed in a condemned state in the body of a giant that had no free will. Taking a step forward, the revived Dark Titan prepares to engage the Smiling Titan.
"I worry that we're rushing her," Julietta states to Frieda.
"Same here," Frieda replies. "The first sign of a falter, a decrease in her abilities, we stop everything, and she takes a leave of absence to recover further."
They watch as the Dark Titan reaches out with its left hand and grabs the Smiling Titan's head to slam it down onto the ground. Then, they saw as its hair strands wrap around the limbs before slicing them off.
"That's our cue to act," Frieda expresses, and Ymir takes them over to the fallen Titan that had been dismembered to prevent further violence. "Here goes hope."
"Uhhhhh…" The Smiling Titan groans, its face half buried in the ground.
"Ohhh," the Dark Titan sighs. "Rusty."
Frieda places her left hand upon the Titan's head.
"Return to who you once were, Dina Fritz-Yeager," she says.
To be continued…
A/N: It's a normal aspect of someone that has been incapacitated for such a long time to be out of sorts in what they do, and Kaede Sogen is no exception to this rule, as she's had to relearn several things after waking up from a coma caused by major head trauma. I also needed to have her confront Eren so she wouldn't be ruled by a fear of him after his unprovoked attack on her; those that can't confront their assailant are ruled by their fear of them. Until the next chapter.