Yesterday's Enemy [AoT]

MEMOIRS OF HAVAS [17]

[ONE YEAR AFTER HAVAS IS BREACHED]

'Necessity has come to excuse a thousand unspeakable actions. We stretch our limits further and further into what one human can do to another. But I ask you, where, if at all, do we draw the line?'

-An extract from a book written by a Havasian philosopher.

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MEMOIRS OF HAVAS

17

Somewhere in North-Western Titan Country

It had been a year since that day.

After scrounging what they could from the burning remains of Ingreed, Warren, Schmidt, and the group of survivors fled into Titan Country. With limited supplies and a great deal of effort, they managed to make it across the salt flats to the wide-open country.

There, they might forage the means to survive.

They couldn't go back. The home they knew was now long gone. All that was left was forward.

After the first month of barely scraping by on wild berries and the occasional bit of game, the group encountered a supply shack. The building was packed full of all of the luxuries they had been deprived of this past month. Meat. Bottled water. Weapons.

They had set upon the supplies like a pack of rabid dogs, half-starved and desperate. Once, Warren and one of the pluckier other survivors had brawled over a bit of meat.

Schmidt had stepped in and introduced rules for rationing. He was ever the voice of reason in these mad times.

After that, they'd been able to support themselves far better with their newfound stockpile of food, water, and ammunition. They could now fend off the titans and began venturing out into the wilderness more and more each day.

The thirteen of them had become a proper unit of hunter-gatherers— such a far cry from the lives they might have lived before the attack.

Still, they all dreaded the day they might encounter the titans that had destroyed their home, and most were plagued with nightmares.

Warren was no longer the man he used to be. With the Council's fall, he was now just a man like any other. He quickly fell in with the other survivors, mostly just boys, soldiers, barely out of training.

Though Schmidt was strict and taciturn most of the time, Warren knew that none of them would have survived this long without him.

Though far older than the rest of them, Schmidt was always the first to head out hunting, always the first to load his gun and raise it to a titan's nape. He might fake indifference, but it was true that he cared deeply for their ragtag group of survivors.

The last Havasians— the last remnants of that bygone, golden age.

None of them knew if anyone else had made it out. Grimold had been decimated near-instantly, but Warren kept up hope that somehow the people of O'Haen, including Lorelai, had been able to flee into the Walls. Schmidt said it was a fool's delusion. He was probably right.

They survived almost easily. Most of Warren's time was spent lying on the grass outside their little shack, staring up at the clouds. Oddly enough, he'd never experienced peace like this.

Most of his life had been spent clawing at far-off dreams, always working, always giving some world-changing speech. He'd concerned himself with wars and politics, never once stopping for a moment to consider what might happen if he just... stopped.