WALL ROSE, 850
TROST DISTRICT
BREATHE.
She couldn't.
"Hey, Hey — stay with me!"
It was a voice, murky and mottled and far away. It pushed at her, shook her, but Evelyn couldn't notice. Not above the pain.
It was an all-consuming fire which ran across her body, darting from her spinal cord to the cavity in her chest and back. It whizzed like tornadoes pin-pricking along her skin, hot and fierce and sharp. She might have cried out, if blood hadn't been broiling in her throat.
"Evelyn!"
A dimmed, baby-blue eye pried open to a flash of yellow and a button nose; Armin's face was flushed with panic and his eyes glassy with tears. He clutched at her shoulders, begging, crying.
"Evelyn, come on! Say something!" He begged harder, cried louder. "Wake up!"
It was only when Evelyn's whitened hand came to rest on his arm did he relent, shakily retracting his arms and embracing her. They were perched on a roof now, the bloody alleyway and the vicious titan only a dream.
Evelyn gave a weak yelp as Armin hugged her, and he recoiled, blanching at her once clean uniform now dampened with red.
"You — You're hurt."
You don't say, Evelyn might have said. But she only fisted his brown cadet corps jacket in her hands, wordlessly communicating how right he was.
"Oh, no," Armin all but whimpered, letting the small of her back rest against his arm. The blood dribbling from her chin glittered in the emerging sunlight after the storm. He gingerly wiped it away, smearing red across his thumb and sleeve. "This is bad."
"What's going on over here?"
Mikasa and Connie jogged over, hopping over chimneys and shingles to reach Armin and Evelyn, the latter of which descended into a bloody coughing fit.
"Damn," Connie began. "That looks bad. But I know there's first aid at HQ. We've got to get her there quickly."
"W-Wait," Armin called as Connie pivoted and readied himself to sling on ODM gear, "Mikasa's out of gas. Evelyn is, too."
"What?" He turned to Mikasa. "We need you! We can't do this operation without you!"
"Here," Armin said, taking off his jacket and propping it under Evelyn's head as a makeshift pillow. He eased his arms out of her hold and drew out his gas canisters. "You need gas more than I do. I've got some to spare. You'll just have to carry Evelyn and I."
"Armin — !"
"Just," Armin proceeded, ignoring Mikasa. He gave her a hard look before glancing back to Evelyn. "Use this canister more sparingly. All our lives are riding on you."
Mikasa looked guilty, but she nodded. "I'll carry Evelyn."
Armin and Connie looked at her. Mikasa glared at them. "I owe it to her."
Mikasa scooped Evelyn's lithe, broken form into her arms, knees thrown over one arm and head cradled to her chest. She'd be damned if she allowed Eren's sacrifice amount to nothing.
She turned back to Armin and Connie, casting them a forlorn expression. "Let's go."
Connie seized Armin and they made for the ledge. But another carnal roar broke out from the abnormal titan, ringing into their ears and shaking the roof's shingles.
"No!" Armin yanked himself from Connie. They stopped, exasperated. "Wait! I have an idea."
"What is it, then?"
Armin glanced at them all, from Mikasa to Evelyn to Connie and the abnormal titan. He fixed them with a new determination. "You two are the only ones who could pull this off, so it's your choice," he began, extending a finger towards the abnormal titan, who continued to blow apart many others. "This may sound crazy, but I think he might be useful."
"What? You mean — the titan?"
"He only attacks his own kind. He seems to have no interest in us," Armin persisted. "What if, somehow, we could steer him to HQ and let him loose on the other titans? Look, we know he's taken out at least one already. We could use him as a weapon!"
"You've got to be kidding," Connie thundered. "How the hell do you think we're supposed to steer that thing?"
"Well," Armin turned to look at the titan as it unleashed another roar. "something's telling me he's acting on instinct. I'm almost sure if you take down the pair he's tangling with now, he'll go look for others. That'd lead him straight to HQ. We're not steering him so much as luring him. I think it'll work; I really do."
"Think? You're asking us to risk our necks on a stupid gut feeling?" Connie's voice edged into hysterics.
"If I'm right about this," Armin countered, "we could put down the siege on headquarters in one fell swoop!
Connie stared. Mikasa nodded.
"It's worth a shot."
"Huh? Seriously?"
"It's better to take a gamble on Armin's gut feeling than wait around to be slaughtered. If there's a decent shot, why not take it?"
"So, basically, we're going to recruit a titan?"
"Yes. Exactly."
Connie froze. Then he smiled. "We'll look like morons if we screw this up."
Armin glowed. "Yeah. But if we don't, look how many lives we'll stand to save —"
"Guys," Mikasa split the conversation. "if we're going to do this, we need to do it fast. Evelyn's not doing so well."
Armin's joy soured. He silently chided himself. "Yes, of course."
With that, Mikasa took a running leap off the roof, Connie yanking Armin behind her.
"HELP! WE NEED A MEDIC!"
By some stroke of wild luck, Armin was right. They had burst into HQ in a shower of glass and triumph, hope rekindled and burning. But Mikasa's front side ran red with Evelyn's' blood.
They had stumbled onto one of the upper floors now, amongst a few dozen other cadets who managed to survive until that point. Armin cried out, struggling to hold up a half-conscious Evelyn behind him.
"Please! Anyone — she's dying!"
"Hey," a large, calloused hand came upon Armin's quaking shoulder. Reiner guided him to a corner of the room. "Calm it down. I found a few rolls of gauze and a needle and thread when we explored the place. We'll fix her up."
Armin's face broke into a watery smile; the tears building up in his eyes traced his cheeks. "Thank you! Thank you so much!"
Reiner shook his head. "What would you be without us? We're comrades, aren't we?"
"Right!"
Reiner gently took her from his arms and propped her against the wall, using Armin's jacket as a pillow again. Her breaths ran fast and shallow.
Armin's heart thwacked in his chest. He couldn't bear it if Evelyn died; he couldn't loose two friends in the same day. He wouldn't be able to handle it. He'd come to cherish her in the past few years, to see her as this little sister he had to protect, even if he wasn't very good at it. It would rip him apart if she never did get to see the sea, as they both dreamed about.
"Shit."
Armin startled. "What is it?"
Reiner had lifted Evelyn's shirt and was peering at her ribcage. Sweat beaded his brow and his hand trembled. "It's a compound fracture. Her ribs broke and they didn't pierce her lung, thank God, but they've broken out of the skin. If we don't stitch her up fast, she'll die of blood loss."
Armin's hand clapped over his mouth and he dared to follow Reiner's gaze. He wish he hadn't.
Blood caked her entire torso, gathering in the crease of her naval and crusting on her clothes. The skin around an inch below her bra was pulsing and red with irritation around a gaping wound with bits of white poking through it.
The world seemed a little farther away than it did before and his stomach knotted in his gut. And to think — he had delayed her coming here with his stupid plan. They probably would have gotten to HQ faster if he hadn't stopped Mikasa and Connie. This was his fault, wasn't it? What if he had scooped her out of that alley quicker? Would she have not broken her ribs in the first place? What if —
"Arlert, snap out of it," Reiner said, clicking his fingers in Armin's face. "Overthinking things isn't going to help. Bring me that box over there."
Reiner made quick work of it; he managed to get the bone back under her skin and attempted to place the two parts together, all the while Evelyn yelled and cried. It pained Armin to watch, this wonderful girl who tried so hard to fight back suffering through all that. Reiner quickly stitched the skin together and cleaned as much blood as he could before tightly wrapping her torso with gauze, tearing strips of her shirt and binding the gauze to her over it.
When he finished, she had passed out with a tear-streaked face.
"ARE YOU SURE YOU'RE ALRIGHT?"
The air was stagnant. Evelyn carefully drew breath, a shock of pain coursing through her. "Yeah. I'll be fine."
Armin's mouth opened again, brows creased in worry, but Evelyn cut him off.
"Really. Thank you for your help. I'd be dead if it weren't for you and Reiner."
It was obvious Eren's death still weighed heavy on her heart. It's not like it didn't have weight on Armin's, but Evelyn had been quite known for letting feelings get to her head throughout the cadet corps.
The smile she managed was a wobbly one, and it fell the moment her eyes left his own. She gazed onward towards Trost, a stonish glint in her eye. The soldiers, fresh from fueling back up at HQ, zipped by them in bullet-like streaks.
It was odd, Armin thought; the very way she carried herself had changed in but a few hours of hell.
"What's Mikasa doing?" Evelyn's airy voice split the fleeting silence. Armin scoured the threshold for her.
"Mikasa?" He called, spotting a head of ebony hair frozen atop a roof. He gestured for Evelyn to follow him, but she was one step ahead. He followed her to Mikasa's side, via ODM gear. "What are you doing? We have to leave, now!"
But Evelyn was frozen, too.
"Look down there." The whisper left Mikasa shakily.
Armin inhaled sharply.
A group of titans had surrounded the 'abnormal' and were eating it, gnashing its flesh between their teeth. The morbid sight stirred something in his stomach.
"Cannibalism?" Armin said. Evelyn's head dipped in a nod. "Can he not regenerate like the others?"
"This may sound stupid," Mikasa began, "but I was hoping he could be the key for us. That he'd help mankind break the cycle. Turn the tide long enough to give us just a little ray of hope."
She stared on, looking physically deflated.
"She's right," A voice cut in. Reiner stepped forward, Annie and Bertholt, ever the caring friends, right behind him. "He's too valuable to just let die. There's too much we can learn from him. I think it's perfectly clear our priority should be to ward the scavengers off him. He's no good to us picked apart."
Jean approached him, disbelief in his expression. "Are you out of your mind? We've got a path out of this nightmare and you wanna stay?"
"Think about it." Annie's said, sharp, blue eyes fixed on Jean. Her voice rang monotonously on the rooftop. "Having an Abnormal as an ally would be an incredible advantage, right? I cannon's got nothing on a Titan who likes to rip apart his own kind."
"You — do you hear yourself? He's not like a new friend!"
"Guys," Evelyn said, nudging Armin. She eyed an upcoming titan. Its footsteps thundered the ground. "That's the titan that killed Thomas, right?"
"Oh, no —"
And in a moment's breath, the Abnormal Titan wrenched itself from the scavenger Titans with a scream. One rattling foot after the other, it caught up with the approaching titan and, with a ferocious roar, sank its exposed teeth into its neck.
It all happened very quickly. The Abnormal used the now rendered lifeless titan as a club of sorts, knocking a nearby titan into a building, smashing another with its feet. The Abnormal screamed again, a sound that curdled Evelyn's blood. Its ribs, exposed through torn skin and sinew, glittered in the sun.
"Holy —"
"What was that you were saying?" Jean breathed, his eyes saucers, entranced.
And then the creature fell to its knees, and with a mighty howl, fell face-first into Trost's bloodstained ground.
"— 'Cause It think it's a moot point now." Jean continued, breaking way from the small gaggle of cadets now gathered on the rooftop. "Alright, enough of this! Let's leave while we can!"
"— We're lucky the ugly bastard didn't get bored," He said to himself. "We'd have been next on the menu."
No one had moved. He turned back around, exasperated.
"Look, a Titan's a Titan —"
But the Abnormal's neck had split open. A figure slowly drew itself from the torn muscle.
Mikasa realized it before Evelyn did. She gasped, a frightened noise, and darted from the rooftop at once. When the steam cleared and the figure's face emerged, Evelyn's knees buckled.
Eren.
By the time Mikasa had brought him to the rooftop, Evelyn was in tears. Sobs shook her body at seeing her friend again; her hands shook when she saw his arm, new and whole, laying at his side.
Mikasa held onto him in a vice-like grip, head buried into his chest. The boy himself was fully unconscious. Slowly, uneasily, as though it might crumble beneath her touch, Evelyn felt his hand. Picked it up. Let the fingers lace with her own.
His fingers were warm. They pulsed with blood. With life.
How?
How in God's name are you alive?
I watched you die. I watched you give up your life for me.
Remember, Eren? You told me to go see the sea for you.
Evelyn's head found its way to his warm shoulder, her eyes wetting the green fabric of his torn shirt. This boy, this wonderful boy had given up his life for her and now he was here, he was here, he was here.
Eren's alive, Eren's alive, Eren's alive.
All three of them were crying now. Armin's soft wailing came from behind her, Mikasa's tears sounded in her ear, and her own writhed and boiled in her soul. For the first time in her life, something ripped away from her had been returned.
For the first time in her life, Evelyn Ravenger thanked Death with every fiber of her being.
NOTE.
no, i'm not dead. so sorry for not updating lmao.
from now on, expect a chapter to be uploaded
every week. that's a promise, especially with summer here.