Chapter Text
You know the moment your eyes lock onto hers, a desperation unlike anything you’ve felt before clawing up your throat as you reach out to the too young, too scared, too fresh-faced cadet too far from your fingertips. You can see it in the shake of her hands, the quiver of her lip, the wet stain between her legs, she isn’t going to help you. She takes one step back, hovering somewhere between the weight of her boots like she hasn’t already decided which direction she’s going to go in, before a terrifying resolve settles on her face and she sprints away from your prone form partially trapped beneath the corpse of your horse.
Not so long ago, you remember advocating for this particular cadet to join your squad despite her lack of experience. Number One in her graduating class but still choosing to join the Scouts and skills with the ODM gear that rivaled many of their veteran soldiers. You wanted her close during the expedition, wanted to make sure she lived because you had no doubt she could be valuable to the cause with the right mentorship.
You have doubts now.
You can’t even remember her name.
And what does that even matter when you’re being crushed under the dead weight of your horse, rain flooding what remains of your vision, pain the likes of which you could have never imagined sparking from your right leg up into the delicate curve of your spine.
No one had expected rain so far into the expedition, let alone monsoon calibers of the icy cold hazard. Perhaps you should have given the approach of winter, but nearly two days on horseback with no clouds in sight had led you all into a false sense of security. The goal of the expedition had been simple: ride out as far as feasibly possible, establish a new base within wall Maria, stock it with the supplies you brought along for future expeditions, and return with minimal casualties. Erwin’s evasion strategy was practically fool proof given the right circumstances.
Thickets of rain and hail, not to mention a wave of unnoticed abnormals, were not the right circumstances funnily enough.
You’re lucky no titans have spotted you struggling to wiggle out from where your right leg is stuck between the unforgiving ground and your even more unforgiving horse. They’re too busy chasing after your remaining comrades, now so far you could only distinguish them by the cloud of blue smoke in the distance. Blue, Retreat. But you can’t, trapped as you are with your stubborn bull of a horse. She’d always been an ornery beast, nipping at your fingers and hair, playing tricks when you’d try to saddle her properly. You’d lovingly named her Bully within minutes of your assignment to her. You miss her already.
“I’m sorry girl, I - fuck that hurts,” you wince, salty tears mixing with the rainwater on your cheeks. “Fuck, shit sorry girl - my leg, you have to let me go Bully…you - shit SHIT! Okay okay okay, deep breaths, deep fucking breaths.” Your chest rattles in a way you think it shouldn’t every time you breath. You brace your hands against her flank and push. “Just a little more, just - fuck - just a little more girl. You gotta let me go, please please, they’re leaving - I have to, shit ow! Walls, you snuck way too many sugar cubes Bully. Ah, shit shit dammit, just let me - !”
Your body flails in the mud, agony pulsing like a heartbeat from your now free leg, arms limp and spent at your sides. You contemplate, for just a moment, stopping there because the next step is looking at your leg, assessing the damage, and you’re far too scared to see how screwed you are.
But you don’t want to die, not here, not like this. Not when you have someone waiting for you. Levi doesn’t deserve to lose anyone else. Walls, Levi. You wish he was here, barking orders at you to get up, get up, get the fuck up, FUCKING GET -
With a gasp of wet air and a cry lodged in your throat, you sit up. The right side of your ribcage shifts unnaturally, but you ignore that in favor of the main problem. Seeing the white of your bone through a tear in your pants has you choking back a sob.
“This is fine, this is - fuck, okay not fine, not fine.” You breathe through your teeth, your mouth worryingly sticky and metallic. “Don’t - don’t think about it, just take stock. Figure out what to do next.”
Next, right, what’s next? Obviously, the most pressing injury is your splintered femur, the sharp point piercing through the meat and muscle of your thigh. You’re fairly certain your knee is dislocated and the awkward bend of your ankle isn’t very promising, nor is the warmth pooling in your boot that definitely isn’t rain. Okay, so the next step has to be removing your boot and cutting away the fabric of your pants.
It takes longer than you like because ODM gear belts are the absolute worst, but you can’t cut them away because you actually fucking need them if you want any chance of surviving. It hurts so much you wonder if you’ve reached new decibels of pain that no one’s ever felt. But you get them off eventually, after a few more muttered curses. Bile threatens to rise in your throat at the discoloration of your leg once you slice away the fabric. You’re pretty sure, had you made it to the medics, they would just decide to cut off the leg altogether; but, you can’t afford the blood loss even if you could summon the strength for the task.
You prep one of your remaining two short halves of a broken blade, wrapping them in the scraps of fabric from your pants. With no sticks readily available in your reach, this would have to work as a splint for now. You hope they don’t cut up what’s left of your thigh with the fabric as a cushion. Removing the belt from your waist, you place the leather between your teeth.
Popping the bone back into place is far harder than you thought it would be. Quickly lining up your tailored splint, you pull the belt from your mouth and stabilize your femur as tightly as you can without losing feeling in your leg - although you wouldn’t mind some kind of numbness to soften this whole experience. You wonder briefly at what point you’ll cross the threshold into shock.
A deep breath that’s really more of a resigned sigh pulls you back to the task at hand and you remove your cloak from your shoulders to tear the fabric into strips. Your knee is definitely dislocated, and your ankle is at the very least severely sprained if not broken. Realigning and wrapping them is far easier than taking care of your thigh, but you still curse your way through tying the final knots.
The last bit to take care of has you gritting you teeth in frustration. You don’t have any supplies for stitches, but you can’t just let your blood flow freely from the gash in your calf. You’re not sure if a rock somehow made its way into your boot and sliced you open or if Bully’s weight had caused your muscles to pop and split the skin of your calf, but either way your priority is now closing the gash that stretches just below the back of your knee down to your Achilles tendon.
Your fingers scratch at your scalp, tangling into your hair while you try to suppress your panic. And then you have a thought.
Levi swore up and down when he showed you the matching rings he had made that it wasn’t a proposal. “A promise,” he’d said. “A promise to each other, that we’ll do everything we can to survive this war.” He’d taken the slightly larger of the two, the one meant for his hand, and threaded it onto a long silver chain to hang around your neck. “And when it’s all over, well you know…” and he’d trailed off with a rare blush and a shrug like it wasn’t the most romantic gesture he could have made.
You feel that chain now, cold under the collar of your shirt. Sniffling, you unclasp the chain from around your neck and hold it close to your heart. “Thank you, my love,” you whisper, pulling the ring from the chain. “And I’m so very sorry.”
For the time being, you put the ring on your thumb because it’s just snug enough you don’t have to worry about it falling off. You hold the end of the chain in one hand and your knife in the other.
It’s bloody and messy and the chain isn’t even silver anymore by the time you’re done, but the gash is closed and you think you have the chill of the rain to thank for the numbness settling into your body. You wrap the remaining scraps of your cloak around your calf.
You know at this point it’s too late to follow. Even if you could run, there’s no chance you would catch up either before they’re all already safe behind Wall Rose again, or a Titan snatches you up for a midnight snack.
“I have a promise to keep,” you say with a gentle kiss to the silver on your thumb.
There’s a small forest about a kilometer north from your position. With great effort and no small amount of curses, you reattach all of the ODM gear belts to your legs, both grateful and entirely in pain from the pressure they put on your wounds and bruised bare skin. There’s no way your boot will fit over the swell of your ankle let alone all of the extra bindings so you decide to leave it behind. You’re fairly certain your ribs are bruised, not broken, so you try not to worry about them as you struggle up into a standing position. A wave of vertigo washes over you, but you steady yourself and push through the nauseating dizziness.
Leaning heavily on your blade as a sort of cane, you spare one last look at Bully’s body, swallowing the sadness in your throat, and slowly start to stumble your way towards the forest.
You think that cadet’s name may have started with an O.
You find what’s left of your squad midway between your dead horse and the forest.
Daryl Lepton was still relatively new to your squad, this being your third expedition together. He’d been kind and so very shy. He talked about his younger sister all the time, a little girl with a passion for baking. He always shared the treats she sent to him. Daryl’s head is completely turned around, one of his legs and a chunk of his torso missing.
Benjamin Cross was your second, the member of your squad that had been around the longest and you trusted with your life. He trusted you with his own. He was a quiet man, but always made you laugh at the most inappropriate times. Half of Benny’s skull is missing, his arms bent all wrong. His chest is caved in and pooling with rainwater.
You’d known Hailey Mitchell since your training days in the Cadet Corps, but she’d joined your squad only a year ago. She thrived on teasing you about your relationship with Levi and trying to dig up all the juicy details you refused to share, respecting your privacy while also pushing any buttons she could reach. Everything below Hailey’s sternum is gone, and her eyes are wide with lingering terror.
You take their cloaks for the warmth. You take their patches for their memory. And you take as many intact blades and tanks of gas as you can carry for your survival.
You keep moving towards the forest, tears leaving tracks in the blood on your cheeks.
The rain turns to snow just as you reach the line of massive trees you’d been looking for. Using the ODM gear with your mangled leg is a special kind of agony you don’t wish on anyone, but you manage to scramble your way to a high enough branch that you shouldn’t have to worry about any titans grabbing you in your sleep - if you sleep at all - while still having the cover of the upper canopy of leaves from the weather.
You wrap yourself in the cloaks of your fallen comrades. Two snug across your torso and head, the third wound around your damaged right leg stretched out in front of you. The bark is icy against your back, and your breath puffs out in front of you in clouds of white.
With the appearance of snow, you know you’re beyond screwed. Expeditions are dangerous in the snow. Winter is the Scouting Regiment’s slowest season, which is one reason it used to be one of your favorites. The others were distinctly Levi related, of course - like warm cups of tea and the occasional hot chocolate if you can convince Levi to indulge his sweet tooth, holding hands while you each read your respective books in front of the roaring fireplace, nights pressed skin to skin under a mountain of blankets…
Okay, stop, it physically hurts you to think about that right now. Because it’s winter, and winter means snow, and snow means at least two months before the next expedition.
Fuck.
You lose your battle with consciousness sometime between the first feelings of thirst settling in your throat and the sound of thunderous footsteps in the distance.
Thirst and hunger become major issues three days later. So are the two titans at the base of your tree that have been staring up at you for the last twelve hours or so.
There’s a thick blanket of snow on the ground. Cold has set deep in your aching bones, and the only thing that keeps you from completely panicking is the fact that you’re still shivering.
“Look at you two down there,” you spit, stomach clenching painfully. “You as hungry as I am?” You shake your head, blinking passed the dizzy spell the action causes. “No, cause you don’t actually need to eat anything, you fucking parasites!” The two titans just shuffle around, excited by your movement.
You’ve been trying to move your leg as often as possible to keep the blood flowing and hopefully limit any lasting damage from the injuries. It hurts like a bitch, but you can more or less bend your knee without dissolving into tears which is a big literal and figurative step in the right direction. You’d pat yourself on the back if your whole body didn’t feel like one giant bruise.
“Okay, priority number one is getting rid of Dumb Fuck and Dumber Fuck down there. Priority two, water.” Because you refuse to die of dehydration when the ground is literally covered in frozen water. You’re spine screams at you as you rise, the tree you’ve called home the last few days not nearly as plush as your bed at home. You ready your blades, making sure the extra tanks of gas you took are safe on their perch.
Dumb Fuck is the taller of the two, about seven meters if you had to guess, with bulbous eyes, strangely short arms, and a tuft of wiry gray hair. Dumber Fuck is only around four meters, skinny for a titan, and with a smile as wide as it’s face is long. It makes more sense to go for the bigger problem first, right?
Wrong, apparently. As you’re about to slice through the nape of Dumb Fuck, the littler bastard actually fucking jumps to swat at you like a pesky fly. It misses, of course, because even injured you’re still one of the fastest soldiers in the military. You were trained by Humanity’s Strongest after all. Plus, titans are slower in the cold, which is definitely a bonus. But having to swerve like that jostles your leg and spine in a particularly unpleasant way that has you toppling towards one of the snow piles.
And you remember why snow is so dangerous. Not just the cold or the wet. Titans practically hibernate under there, and you’ve just poked the bear.
Dumbest Fuck joins the ranks, all fat and round in the middle, limbs long and gangly - too thin for a torso so large. At least eleven meters, if it bothers to stand, which you aren’t sure if it will. Its eyes are sunken, peeking out from behind a curtain of greasy black hair. Its gaze is locked onto you, but no other part of it moves. You quickly decide the other two are more important because they’re actually trying to eat you.
It’s a fucking process to take down the two titans because you’re tired and cold and thirsty and in pain and nothing has gone your way and any second that big one could decide to join the party and -
Oh, you’re screaming. That’s probably not good, that could attract more titans, so you bite your tongue hard enough to draw blood. You’re still screaming, you think, but the sound is mostly muffled by your teeth and lips. You stand between the smoldering remains of Dumb Fuck and Dumber Fuck, screaming into your gums because you need the release about as much as you need to stay quiet.
The big one still hasn’t moved. Prone on its back, oversized head tuned towards you.
You take a moment to bask in the warmth of the steam from the titan corpses before turning to your quiet companion. It’s still watching you, but it doesn’t even twitch as you take a step closer. And another. And another, until you’re close enough to poke it’s hand with your blade. Which you do.
Not a flinch or a tick or a blink. You poke it harder. Nothing. You stab its palm. It starts steaming, but doesn’t move. You’re starting to get an idea, and it just might be the most repulsive thing you can think of.
But you’re so cold. And it’s only going to get colder.
“This may be the best worst idea in history. Hange would be losing their shit right about now.” You cut off its hands first, and then sever the muscles in its shoulders. It still doesn’t move, even when you carefully creep up to its face and cut away its jaw. Just watching you with its sunken eyes. You shrug at it, unable to discern what, if anything, it’s trying to tell you in its gaze.
“Nothing personal,” you say as you stab into its protruding gut and slice a sizeable hole. Titan blood steams in a puddle around you, but there doesn’t seem to be any kind of stomach acid that could eat away through your clothes or skin. “Gotta stay warm, right?” You grimace, already regretting the brilliance of this idea, but your eyes lock on the silver band around your thumb, and resolve hardens in your chest.
You might be the first person ever to willingly subject yourself to a titan’s stomach.
Steam billows around you as you widen the gash you made. It’s stiflingly hot, which you decide is better than the deathly cold you’ve suffered through the last few days. The feeling is so relieving in fact, you don’t even notice at first the red splotches forming on your hands, your skin burning away as it comes in direct contact with the muscle beneath the titan skin. Not until the pleasant sting of heat turns into a white-hot flash of pain that has you stumbling back into the snow. Pressing the burns into the frost only creates a new pain that has you hissing through your teeth.
“Fuck fuck fuck! Okay, alright, new approach.” You sacrifice two long strips of one of the cloaks, Benny’s you think, and wrap each of your hands like oven mitts. “Note to self: Try to avoid skin contact with your new furnace.”
You situate yourself in a small nook you carved in the titan’s gut, wondering what’s become of your life in only a few days, and you allow yourself to hope for just a moment that you might make it through the next two months alive.
You scoop up a pile of snow nearby not drenched in titan blood and finally, finally, quench that gnawing ache in your throat.
A few hours later, as the sun is beginning to rise, you remember you’re hungry. Or rather, your stomach cramps so violently, you realize you’re starving.
And you have no idea what the fuck to do about it.
Any plants you could eat have either withered away from the cold or are buried under so much snow you wouldn’t even know how to start looking. Any animals you could kill are already dead, hibernating in places you can’t find, or migrated somewhere warmer.
You’re pretty sure titan isn’t edible, and even if it was - which isn’t something you particularly want to test - the thought alone somehow triggers your gag reflex despite not having had anything in your stomach for days.
But then you remember something awful.
“I’m going for a walk,” you tell your furnace, your back itching from the prickly sensation of its stare. “If you heal up, I don’t know, please don’t wait around to eat me or something.” You wave halfheartedly and start hobbling south.
You stare down at Bully, now five days dead. Surrounded by snow, but luckily not completely buried. Luckily for you anyway. No visible rot, no bad smell or spoiled looking skin, no maggots or flies or disease that you could discern. Her body is preserved in the ice from the storm.
“You’ve always taken such good care of me, Bully,” you whisper, resting your bandaged palm against her mane. “I’m so sorry, my precious girl.”
With blurry vision, you start cutting.
When you get back to your little makeshift campsite, you first recut all of the mobility points on your titan that still hasn’t moved. Better safe than sorry, though it is regenerating rather slowly; you make a mental note to ask Hange if the cold could affect something like that next time you see them.
You go about making a fire from bark trimmings, a pile of twigs you pulled from branches, two rocks to light the spark, and some loose thread for kindling. You need to cook the meat before it spoils. You’ll go back for the rest of it tomorrow.
“Looks like we’re stuck with each other,” you mumble, fumbling through starting the fire with cloth-wrapped hands and the two slippery rocks. “Giving you a name won’t be the worst thing I’ve done today. How ‘bout it? Any thoughts?”
Glancing over your shoulder, you meet the titan’s unwavering gaze and wait for a response you know will never come, even if it had use of its jaw. You remember a kid from your childhood. Similarly gangly, all elbows and knees. He had a stutter. He used to make fun of you for being scared of bugs.
“I’m gonna call you Preston,” you decide. “Any objections, speak now or forever hold your peace.”
Preston doesn’t say a word.
The rocks spark, the fire catches.
You think about what Levi is doing right about now, his ring cold against your thumb. He must think you’re dead, they all probably do.
You wonder what that cadet told them after abandoning you to die.