"I have no clue what we're going to do with you."
You smiled at the floor, Pixis's words music to your ears. "That's fine - no one ever does. I'd normally suggest believing me, but no one has done that in a while." Your wrists and ankles still had chains on them, but you'd been dragged to a cell within the school where no one dared to go. No one had objected as you had been blindfolded and led quietly down steps and paths that you remembered very clearly – even without seeing them.
The sand paths.
You remembered them – the way that the sand crunched under your feet.
Every student had fallen silent; not one single voice whispered to their friend, nor one laugh erupted as they found themselves safe again. You'd only known that they'd been there from the ragged breathing that they couldn't hide, thinking that the measly sound would be lost the wind.
But once the blindfold had robbed you of your sight, your ears only became sharper as you found you depended on sound.
And now you'd been thrown into one of the cells in the damned dungeons that had always, no matter how far you'd run from them, followed you.
In dreams, in thoughts.
It wasn't that you could see your surroundings, especially with the blindfold.
It was more that you could feel the prison's coldness stabbing at your skin like needles, over and over. It was more that you could smell the blood and the moss, the rust.
It was more that you doubted your muscles would ever forget just how they failed to tense and perform.
You wrinkled your nose, mostly for Pixis's benefit. You could almost taste blood from the heavy coppery smell hanging in the air. "I don't like this place," you said, your voice unnervingly quiet. "Something bad happened to me here, as I'm sure you're aware. Can't you find nicer lodgings?"
You sensed the way that Pixis looked at you – with a tight face, eyes glaring. You imagined him leaning against the mossy wall opposite your cell. "You don't get to make requests, miss L/N."
"You have to appreciate the fact that it's a shock," you said. "Going from royalty and being treated as such to suddenly being put into the dungeons."
"It's pure luck that you're even here instead of following Erwin to his base," Pixis said, and you frowned as the voice became vaguely disembodied – he was moving around. "For some reason, Levi Ackerman seems to think you may be human."
"Oh?" The little word changed everything, but you didn't want to give Pixis the chance to see just how much his sentence had floored you. "And I thought he was insisting that I was a titan."
"He asked you if you were a titan," Pixis corrected. "There is a difference."
"The fact that he had to ask is an insult," you insisted, noting how your voice was trying to put a snarl behind your words and strangling it. "I gave up everything to save you all, and yet you treat me like dirt."
"All true," Pixis agreed cheerfully, and you cursed the fact that you were bound and couldn't strangle him. "But did you give up your humanity? The scar on the back of your neck seems very fresh, after all."
"Of course I had to act like I was a titan and had forfeited my humanity – are you a fool?"
"This may come as a shock to your system, miss L/N, but sass and attitude will not get you very far in this situation."
"I am in a situation where everybody wants to either kill me or prod me with a needle. I thought sass was necessary."
Pixis hummed. "Pray tell – what happened here that makes you so unhappy?"
You stiffened and closed your eyes – making no change to the state of your sight, but the movement was comforting, nonetheless. It wasn't hard to think about it. "Feeling sadistic today, Headmaster? Did you seriously expect me to humour you?" There were a few beats until you realized that if you seriously kept the attitude and gave Pixis none of the answers, he'd leave.
He'd leave you alone in the dark.
You decided to humour him. "I remember darkness and blood; I remember smelling it, feeling it, seeing it everywhere. Darkness and blood, together, were here." You jolted for a second, pulling at your chains as you adjust the leggings that you were wearing, drawing them up over your knees. You didn't have to see them to know what lay on your skin there. The scars decorating the S/C skin there were peppery, marking exactly where you had fallen and skidded. You could feel Pixis watching as you brushed your fingertips over the scars, feeling the difference in texture, the dust of a memory beginning to stir...
But you shut it down so fast, a reflex reaction, that you almost gasped in surprise. You clawed the memory away from Pixis with claws of iron and thorns, protecting it from the one with eyes of a drunkard. Not yours to see, you silently snarled at him, not yours, not yours.
"I remember pain and terror," you diverted from the story, your eyes turned inward at the entity holding your memories. "And then I remember flashing silver and onyx eyes. The rest of the story, I passed out. I cannot remember."
"And there is no other reason for your lack of memory?" Pixis asked.
"Becoming a titan wouldn't affect the memory," you scoffed. "Becoming a titan is becoming a different version of yourself. If I were a titan, I would be without the feeling of love and rationality. I would have destroyed the walls of sanity. A titan is the shadows of your unconscious mind given flesh and muscle. They'd still be one and the same as the human form, but instead of love and compassion there is only hate and insanity. A titan's thoughts are a mess; there is a thirst for blood and a wish for freedom; some beast told me that it was a song of rage and hatred in their blood."
"Awfully specific," Pixis commented.
"Don't try and catch me in your traps," you said. "If I were a titan, I'd readily agree that I was mad. My thoughts would be madness given a physical thing, and it would drive you insane."
"Are you sure that you're not there already?" Pixis asked, and you would have thought, initially, that it was a teasing question. But his voice was a knife, and it would readily stab you if you let the sass slip even a little. "You seem pretty insane."
"It doesn't matter that my thoughts are rivers of constant changes, clashing and dancing and merging and drowning. It just matters that I can swim."
"And what happens when you get tired of swimming?" Pixis turned on his heel, let out a sigh that communicated his extreme tiredness, and stalked away. You stayed perfectly still as you listened to his echoing footsteps fade into nothingness. Then there was no sound except your own breathing.
Pixis's presence had reduced to nothing but a flickering shadow, but you weren't about to wait for those shadows to catch up to you. You ducked your head so that your shoulder could slowly budge the blindfold away from its smothering embrace on your eyes, until you could bite the material and yank it away. Soon, it was bunched around your neck, and you had sight again. You stretched your limbs as far as you could with the restraints and assessed the different patches of floor surrounding you. After selecting the least dirty stone that you could, you sat precariously on your heels as you breathed steadily.
Breathing was essential when danger was nearby.
"He's going to kill me, somehow," you mused to yourself, your own voice comforting in the dead silence of the dungeon. "He thinks I'm mad, and he knows madness better than anyone. I'm dangerous, and he knows that he can't keep me down here forever. That'd be a waste of time, and of me."
Naturally, talking to yourself would indeed be the first hint towards madness – but you needed the sound of your voice to kill that incessant silence.
You mused about what, exactly, to do. You had the vague memory of a plan – a plan that you'd spent months building, in the titan's keep. Here was a golden opportunity to take it, to take those shreds of a plan and make them powerful.
The girl who'd given herself up on the battlefield – Pride incarnate – she was dead. Pride might have stayed in this dungeon and patiently waited for Pixis or Levi to get her out, fearful of the consequences of breaking out.
You were not that girl any longer.
Had killed her yourself.
You clenched your fist and seethed, stopping your babbling thoughts before they got any more poetic or dangerous. It was this dungeon – dark, forgotten places would always be a weakness that you hid within yourself, a little voice of fear in the back of your mind that you wouldn't let become powerful. But it would still be there, that fear. Pride wouldn't have let that fear become any bigger – would have rather died than let any fear become bigger than herself. She would perhaps stay in this dungeon just to stubbornly prove to herself and others that she could – that she was afraid of the dungeon no longer.
You, on the other hand, were frantically sinking into a panic that had you musing on the differences between the girl you had been and the girl that you were. You had to get out.
The corridor outside your cell was dark; the meagre candles that decorated the otherwise sparse walls were flickering weakly, and you doubted that the guards would care about refuelling the wax. You had to make do with what time you had left. You turned your attention to your chains – the heavy weight around your limbs that you very much hated.
Stepping through your chains a couple of times neatly, you had the links twisted together in such a way that soon they were protesting. You gritted your teeth as you pulled on your wrists in the same direction, the weak chains twisting in protest as you exerted your strength. Any moment now, they'd brea-
The chain made a satisfying creak as just one link broke. The warped bit of rusted metal dug into your arms, but you found that you didn't particularly care as the restraints soon went slack and fell to the floor. Your hands were free - bruised, dirty and bloody - but still free. You repeated the process with the chain at your ankles, hopping neatly out of them once you had heard it break, and then stamped on the metal for good measure.
Grabbing one of the broken links, you stood on it and leveraged it so that it was as straight as you could get it. Weaving your arms through the bars of your cell, you used the cold iron to poke around the lock, hoping that you could get it just right -
"And what, pray tell, do you think that you're doing?"
"I personally thought it was obvious, to be honest," you answered, withdrawing your attempts and gripping the bit of iron tightly. You cocked your head and grinned a snake's smile in response to the tigress's grin that Isabel Magnolia was giving you, just a few meters away. She was shaking like a leaf caught in the wind, as though she'd ran an impossible distance. You hadn't heard her approach - how stealthy must her footsteps have been? "I thought I'd attempt baking meringues."
"A wide variety of ingredients you have down here," Isabel agreed, nodding towards the moss and grime decorating the wall beside her. She smiled so widely that her bottom lip had split, even as tears appeared along her green eyes.
"Well, you know what they say," you whispered, no longer able to control the happiness as it welled up in your throat and made your voice sound scratchy and dry. "When in doubt, bake a meringue."
"Oh my god," Isabel sobbed, tears spilling over even as she snorted, "you're insufferable."
"But I'm here," you croaked, joining her in her sobs. You didn't dare reach for her through the bars, not entirely trusting her knowledge of your titan-human situation. "Surely that counts for something?"
"Oh, god, yes." Her voice was lovely, even when it rose and dropped with her sobs and heaving breaths. "It counts for everything."
Her hand reached for yours through your bars, and you sobbed harder as her warm hand gripped yours tight. Her hand was a tether, steadfast and immortal. You felt the callouses beneath your fingertips as you gently traced patterns with your fingers, even as they turned numb from her iron grip. She'd been training - so hard and for so long, if the age of the rough parts on her hands were anything to go by.
You both sunk to the ground, sobbing your hearts out, neither of you letting go of the other's hand. You didn't know how long you both sat there, in the dark and dingy dungeon cell, crying as though both of your hearts would break. But then you decided that you really didn't care.
Time didn't matter.
Isabel was here, and so were you.
You were together.
Time really didn't matter.
*
"I'm not the titan," you said, your voice breaking the silence that had long since settled across both you and Isabel. Your voice was horrible - dry, scratchy, hoarse - but you were just thankful that it hadn't broken back into the snarls and hisses that it was used to. "In case you feel that you have to kill me or anything."
"I've fought the urge to kill you for a long while now, Y/N. Giving in now would mean all that hard work of coping with you would go to utter waste."
Isabel leaned back, eyeing you warily. "I think you've got it wrong," you winked, brushing the dust and grease away from your skirts, "I was the one who mostly wanted to kill you. You got me up at ungodly times in the morning, I recall."
"Semantics," Isabel shrugged, and sniggered at the feigned look of outrage that you gave her. "First things first - you're not staying in this dungeon." You raised an eyebrow as Isabel eyed the grimy walls in disgust. As she glanced to the broken chains around you, you blinked sheepishly at her uncanny knack of reading your thoughts and swung open the cell door – you'd felt the lock click open the moment that Isabel had interrupted. Isabel merely looked at the open door and roared with laughter. "I can't believe that they thought that they could hold the great Y/N L/N in here. It's not even top security - oh how your pride must sting."
You didn't let yourself react to the words other than another wolfish grin, given mindlessly so that Isabel wouldn't think too much of it. It was just a mere word – "pride". Was there truly any pride to be had anymore? What good was swaggering around the halls when you knew that every single person around you would be doubting your humanity? Would be questioning whether you had a monster hidden in your veins? What good was sneering at other's when they failed if, when it really mattered, you had failed in the very spectacular of ways?
It was no good. You were worthless; you were weak.
And perhaps the fact that you wanted to get out of the dungeon proved it.
"I - I missed you." Isabel said into the darkness, leading you through the matrix of corridors. "Every day. There was barely an hour that passed when I didn't think about you or what I was going to do to get you back."
"How long was I there?" You asked.
You'd lost count of the days, of the weeks. You knew it had been months – longer, perhaps – but the exact number evaded you. The hours had bled into each other and had merged into a mess. Isabel didn't hesitate to answer. "Five months, two weeks and four days."
"I need you to understand," you blankly began, your breathing easing as Isabel opened a door that led to a staircase. Stairs upwards meant out of the dungeon. "I need you to understand that I am deliriously happy to see you right this moment, and I'm glad that you're alright." Isabel paused on the stair before continuing, not daring to look back. "I need you to understand that I need time to sort out my emotions about all of you."
"What's there to sort out?" Isabel was immediate on her voice becoming more kind, more helpful.
It only made what you were about to say sound crueller.
"The truth is, I'm furious at you," you said, the chaos in your mind quietened for a mere moment. "You left me to those things for five months? Without trying to get me back? Every day, I prayed for rescue. Of course, you weren't meant to. You were meant to stay here, safe and happy. But I needed one of you to come for me – and you didn't. You did what you were supposed to, and for that, I know I shouldn't be angry at you for. But I feel pretty damn abandoned. And so, I think it's best for me to say that I didn't."
"You didn't what?" Isabel lightly said - too casual, too high-pitched to be anything but a calculated move. She didn't want you to know how much your statement had jarred her; she was trying to keep the feeling of dread from her bones, wanting nothing more than for you to concede to her silent wish of having this confrontation later.
So you took a deep breath. "Miss you. I didn't miss you."
Isabel stopped walking a bit ahead of you. If you focused, you could almost hear how her breaths shifted - how she took a little gasp, as though her heart had snapped, and then how she let out a puff of air that mimicked a sob. But when Isabel spoke, you almost weren't prepared for her voice - the blunt, cool and cutting edge that danced from her lips.
"Are we really going to do this now, Pride?"
"Don't you call me that name," you snarled. For the first time, you were truly glad of your ordeal spent at the titan castle. Your throat had gotten so used to that animalistic snarl that the sound of it was truly spectacular - almost a low purr, a promise of violence - but so guttural that it couldn't belong to anyone else other than a monster.
Isabel slightly looked over her shoulder - but it was enough so that you could see the ice that was in her eyes. It shocked you - Isabel had always been fire, pure passion that cackled with power, the fury that she danced with every day. But the pure evil that was in her eyes right now... That was enough to stop even your heart, broken and shattered as it was.
"What would you like me to call you?"
Despite your very gut telling you to stop - that this was Isabel, your dearest friend, the one that you loved most - you shoved down all traces of being a human and adopted the titan within you. For the activities that this body was used to. You flexed your fingers into a claw-like fashion and grinned, licking the sharp canines so that they shone in the dim light; you cocked your head so that your E/C eyes shimmered with power and lust and hatred.
"Tell me," you purred in a violence-lathered voice, "what would you call the monster underneath your bed?"
Isabel's eyes widened in hatred - a look that once upon a time, you would have wept upon seeing - and she paused. You braced yourself; the pause was not because she was confused, or because she was figuring out what to say. No, it was worse than that. Isabel paused because she had the power to be cruel - and she was debating whether or not to spit the words that would surely haunt you when all of this was over and you were dead.
But you craved to feel something beneath all of the numbness. You needed to hear those words - you needed them to break you so much that you tipped back your head and smiled at Isabel in that little irritating smile, the smile that promised a challenge and a snarky underestimation. It had pissed off more than half the male titans in the mansion - and you knew that maybe, just maybe, it would push her off the edge.
It did.
"Princess."
Silence. Load, roaring silence.
"I call her Princess."
"Careful," you croon, passing her in the corridor and stepping lightly up the steps to the door, hoping to hell she didn't notice how suddenly, your eyes were very damp. You'd bared your soul – you'd told her your emotions, the fact that you were well aware some of it was needless and that you'd needed time to sort through it all. But here she was, so alike flame that your own blood shifted into fire itself. "This princess can bite."
"I'll bet."
Those two words were enough to send ice spearing through your blood again, cleaving through the deafening silence in your head. You couldn't stop yourself as you hissed, "what did you just say to me?"
"I see that ring on your finger," Isabel spat. "I know that you're married to that filth. What's the betting of you being pregnant to another little beast, I wonder? How could you let yourself be bound to a titan, Princess? How dare you let yourself be taken like that?"
"You're furious," you said to her wonderingly, your voice lovely, calm, serene. "You're utterly full of rage and hatred - not because you let me be taken. Not because I was trapped and had to become a monster for five months, forced to do despicable things in my name in order to merely stay alive after saving your lives. You're not even furious that you did nothing at all in these past months to get me back, to rescue me!"
There it was. You knew that you'd be able to feel something in the unending numb - and here it was. That boiling wrath that you needed, that you breathed, in order to give yourself a motive.
"No, Isabel," you said, your hand reaching the door handle. "You're mad because you think that I'm married to another being other than your brother - Levi." You spared her one more glance as you wrenched the door open and kept your face blank as you dealt the final blow.
"God, you're pathetic."
*
"It's strange, isn't it?"
You didn't open your eyes to the voice - you knew exactly whose it was.
It was late - night had long since fallen, and the darkness was pleasant enough. It was a cloudless night - allowing the half-moon to grace the sky with its shining presence and allow it to see the dance of the stars around it. You had the perfect view, of course - because after you'd shut the door to the dungeon and crept out the library, you'd instantly known that the secret garden on the roof of the school was where you'd just needed to be.
And so you'd lightly made your way to the roof, thinking idly about your clothes - how the dress, just two days ago, had been pretty enough that you'd thought it a perfect contrast to your mother's. It was still fine enough - and heavy enough that it kept the chill of the night away. You'd curled into the bench, not wanting a blanket or anything foreign to touch you and had tried to sleep.
Until now.
Until him.
You didn't reply to him - not using your voice. Instead, you opened your eyes and dully looked at him with the question shimmering in the E/C irises instead. Levi looked well enough - he'd changed into a new shirt, but had left the top few buttons undone, revealing a smooth chest beneath. His hair was the same as it always had been - the black undercut dipping endearingly into his onyx eyes just enough to look tousled.
"I think it's strange, at least," Levi said quietly, but not weakly. He carefully made his very deliberate way towards you, every movement slow and controlled - and although you felt a flicker of ire at the way he treated you like an animal, you could understand it. And worse still, you appreciated the slow and predictable way he moved. You liked the fact that this, this right here, you could understand.
"That strange feeling when you're about to cry, and yet you really don't want to - I hate it." Levi had reached you, and he settled himself next to you - a healthy distance away, you noted. Not because he was scared of you; no, Levi likely thought that he could probably take you down without a single problem. Levi stayed away because he didn't want to scare you with touch, with his scent, with the sound of his voice being so near.
"It's the way that your throat closes up and dries almost instantly... Or maybe the way that you can feel the tears in your eyes. Tears are so heavy when they rest in your eyes - have you noticed? Your eyes will burn, not because of the tears themselves, but because you don't want to blink. If you blink, the tears overflow and you lose."
"It is a strange thing," you agreed, and immediately regretted it - your voice had become so croaky that it guttered up your indeed-dry throat. "But did you really come here to talk about tears and the way that I'm about to cry?"
"It's my garden," Levi pointed out. You laughed - damn you, you laughed - and shuddered as you felt the sound tumble out of you. Your skirts danced in the light air of the night, and you gazed at the stars. "You're right, though... I didn't come here to talk about tears."
"No one ever talks about the tears," you said, softly. "No one wants to talk about tears - because if you talk about tears, then that means that you have to talk about the reasons behind them. And no one wants to hear all of your problems, because they have their own."
You both fell silent after that, watching the flowers move in the light breeze, and the way that the lights from the dorms flickered off and on as students moved to go to bed, blissfully unaware or ignorant of the war going on in the world around them. You envied them and that empty ignorance - you really did.
"So if you're not here to talk about tears," you whispered, "what are you here for, Levi Ackerman?"
His eyes flickered to meet yours, and you were struck by the stars reflected in his eyes. Somehow, mirrored in his black irises, the stars looked so much more impressive.
"I am here so that once your tears start appearing, you know that you're not alone."
You spent your first night back in the company of humans a little strangely.
It was spent under a lovely night sky, with the stars and moon watching, wrapped in ripped clothes that had once been a vibrant colour that signified royalty. It was spent curled into a mossy bench, with scents of all kinds of flowers wafting through the air.
It was spent sobbing your little, broken human heart out, with the onyx eyes of a human looking on.
~My children, I am sorry for the delay - I've been working 6pm till 6am, so when I wasn't working, I was sleeping. I am a wreck, my skin is not clear and my crops aren't watered. But I finally got a day off so have a chapter (>^.^)> <3