The day Wall Maria fell to the Titans, Garrison soldier Arden Keiser selfishly chose to save herself. She made an attempt to escape from Shiganshina, to never face a Titan again, though she was ultimately captured and brought to trial.
Both her crim...
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Time thought it amusing how hopeful humanity could be.
Humanity genuinely believed that a brighter day awaited them. They were naive enough to believe that through determination and perseverance—through countless drops of blood, sweat, and tears—freedom would come.
But that had never been the case.
Humanity could work all they wished to. They could produce as many soldiers as they would like, and kill as many man-eating beasts as they could, but ultimately, every life lost in the process would be in vain.
The truth of their world was simple; Time was in control. Time wrapped its cold fingers around everyone below. It suffocated their hopes and took control of their destinies. It was Time who drove humanity into pits of despair, and it was Time who laughed and relished in the people's misery.
How could it not laugh? Because somehow, humanity foolishly believed they carved their own paths, and that all of the self-inflicted pain and the needless bloodshed would one day be worthwhile. They believed they would one day live peacefully. They would feel the sunlight on their skin, dance through open fields, and laugh as the blades of grass whispered at their feet. Humanity would never again have to see death seep into the soil. No more fields of red. No more indiscernible bodies hidden amongst rising steam. Instead, a cool wind would come, and with it the taste of freedom.
That dream of theirs—that wish to live without fear—it was only a dream. No matter how many battles their soldiers endured, no matter how many lives were sacrificed, humanity would never win their wars. Time had done so purposefully.
Time commanded the past, the present, and the future. Every moment in life—catastrophic or sweet—was a result of Time's endless craving of despair. In this sense, not only was humanity imprisoned by the Titans beyond their walls, by the nation beyond the ocean, but humanity had simultaneously been trapped by Time to act as entertainment.
They lived as livestock. They cried like birds trapped beneath the surface.
Humanity had made many attempts to escape the ruin that is their lives, to dig tunnels beneath their fences and crawl out of hell, but their attempts had always been fruitless. Those expeditions always resulted in more deaths than victories; but yet, their leadership always turned the other way.
The brass had always claimed that the lives lost on the battlefield would serve towards a greater purpose. All the pain would be worthwhile for mankind's eventual victory. Of course, Time laughed each time they said such things. No number of deaths—meaningless or not—would amount towards any sort of victory, because as Time dictated, humanity's victory would never come. Humanity did not control their destinies or their fates. Time controlled all—the past, the present, and the future. Time decided what moments would come. It had always been this way.
In that sense, humanity had been doomed ever since the beginning of Time, just as history had been doomed to repeat itself.
Time had always known the path humanity would have to take, or of where their destinies would lead them. Time was fond of its previous creations, of the events to have happened in the past, and so Time always found itself weaving past events into mankind's future, forcing history to repeat itself.
When a former criminal is forced to join the military, another criminal is fated to fight for the same branch only a year later.
When a woman is placed on trial for her crimes against humanity, a young boy receives the same fate five years later.
When Wall Maria is attacked, when countless lives are lost to an island's unknown enemy, it all happens again five years later.
How adorable was it that humanity had hope? That they believed they would live peacefully one day? Time smiled wickedly at its thoughts. It continued to revel in humanity's naivety, in how easy it would be to tear them apart.
Oh, how Time dreamed of the day to truly destroy humankind. In fact, Time had been planning that moment for many centuries now, and that day would soon arrive for those still living within the walls.
From the far distance, Time watched as another sun rose. It smirked as the people went about their days, knowing no better than to follow their routines and hope for a brighter future.
It was then—following over one-hundred years of peace within humanity's walls, following one-hundred years of searching for brighter futures—that Time decided that the massacre would begin.
A bell sounded. Time began its true attack on mankind.
The Fall of Wall Maria.
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PART I - TIME
"Time is free, but it's priceless. You can't own it, but you can use it. You can't keep it, but you can spend it. Once you've lost it you can never get it back." Harvey Mackay
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-A/N- 785 words
i combine spellings from both the manga and the anime. for example, i prefer the spelling of mike to miche, but i prefer ackerman to ackermann, or hange to hanji. i also use they/them pronouns for hange.
updates every sunday/monday-ish. + i am always editing and revisiting old chapters. this story began in 2020 and is still being written
this story is also posted on ao3. my username is pilot_ii
