On memory and meaning (Levi x Reader)

Chapter 2

When you were sent on board the ship to Paradis, you found it impossible to gauge the amount of time that you had spent in that interrogation room. It felt like a lifetime and looked like a lifetime as the youthful glow in your eyes had extinguished completely. 

People who were once proud movement leaders now looked as lifeless as dolls, soulless and purposeless, they were simply a brittle husk of those they once held. 

You didn't dare look at your parents. The guilt and shame would send you projectile vomiting over the side of the ship until you coughed up the last bits of your entrails. 

Unlike them, you had all ten of your fingers and thumbs, but at what price? 

It robbed you of every last part of your sanity and had you struggling for breath at the slightest thought of blood and bolt cutters.

Some men tried to throw themselves off the side of the ship in a futile attempt to escape, or else to die. 

The Marleyan officers only pulled them back, laughing and stomping repeatedly on their backs until they had no energy left to squirm. 

At the border, you were pulled to kneel at the edge of a large wall, staring ominously at a vast desert, the heat quickly burning you to your veins.

"This is where you'll serve your life sentence. As a pure titan, that is." A man with a deep voice and hollow cheeks spoke out grimly. 

Grice was then walked to kneel at the edge of the wall, and Kay shortly followed, somehow managing with whatever will of the Gods to throw you a comforting smile.

"Why in the world did Zeke betray us? He's your son!" Grice called out to Grisha. "I was an idiot to entrust everything in you!" He wailed, before being kicked off the edge by the moustached officer.

"You're free to go." The officer snarls and then turns to face you. "You remember our deal from before, eh?' He gleams while cutting you free from your ropes. 

He hands you a bag of canned food and bread, musing over being able to toy with your life as the other officers mock that it is a waste of food. 

She won't even last ten metres! 

I say five!

Some of them shout, raising bets over how far they think you will be able to run. 

"If you're lucky, you might make it to the wall!" The man chuckles before kicking you solidly in the back, sending you into the endless abyss of the desert to follow after Grice. 

You lose your bearings as you land, earning you a mouth full of sand, but you quickly recover yourself, standing up and shielding your eyes from being buffeted by grains of sand carried by the wind. 

You grit your teeth and dig the balls of your feet in the sand. 

Once again, you end up running, your speed hindered by your bare feet slipping and sliding in the burning sand, unable to get a solid grip.

You hear the Marleyan officers orchestrate a sadistic cackle, clearly enjoying the classic entertainment of watching Eldian low lives struggle to live. 

You fume. 

You never did anything. It was your parents. The traitors, the devils. If only you had gotten to reporting them before Zeke. It would be him, not you who was sent to Paradis. 

You wished you could swing at him with his baseball bat, but then again, he was smart, he was a step ahead of you. He had saved Marley and you were jealous.