❝The world is merciless, and it's also very beautiful.❞
For years she'd suffered, under the bitter rain as it washed away the blood, under the scorching sun as it charred her wounds - for nature had fallen prey to the destructive march of the Allie...
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❝ we wage wars we can't win, against people we can't fight. ❞
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She were drenched in blood — some hers, some not — when her legs buckled under the pressure of keeping her body upright. She fell face down on the ground, graceless, and the jagged earth tore at her skin, scratching her cheeks and bruising her nose, as dust settled over her demented body. The landscape was barren, with bodies littered around on the sandy surface, and the feeble sounds of groans mixed with the cawing of crows. The amber sand was painted red with blood, and the stench of charred corpses overpowered her senses.
Black lightning crackled around her body as she made a futile attempt to heal herself, only for the effort to backfire as fire filled her lungs and her vision blurred. The lightning faded around her body as she spat out a mouthful of blood following a horrible fit of ragged coughing.
She were tired. So damn tired.
Her green cloak fluttered in the dry wind. The Wings of Liberty — the identifying symbol of the Survey Corps — on her uniform was torn to shreds. Her ODM gear hissed in the heat and poked at her broken ribs as she tried to regain some sensation in her limbs.
The war had torn her to shreds.
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Paradis Islands was reborn from the ruins of war.
Following the end of the Great Eldian War, which had left behind an economically ruined Eastern Alliance and the war-scarred nations of Marley and Paradis, diplomats from these disrupted nations met at the Liberio conference of December, to discuss post-war reforms and territorial agreements in the new world order.
Peace at last was achieved from the consensus amongst these diplomats, as they chose the path of friendship and harmony to ensure the growth and development of the countries. A close association, a intergovernmental union of multiple national republics, would safeguard and establish the universal principles of peace and order.
But for the next many decades, Paradis was ravaged to pieces as the Middle Eastern Region waged war on Marley and Paradis for the sins of their ancestors, and the world witnessed one of the most horrific wars in the history of mankind, with the Eastern Alliance calling upon weapons and strategies that terrorized the newly formed nations of Marley and Paradis for years to come.
And the rest of the world remained a spectator on the side.
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A soft groan reached her ears, snapping her back to her senses.. Her eyes drifted to her left, craning her neck ever so slightly as she recognized the voice. The minimal movement sent jolts of excruciating pain through her body but she persevered. Her eyes scanned the semi-arid landscape littered with corpses and soon-to-be corpses of Marleyan and Paradis soldiers, before her eyes found the familiar emerald ones.
Eren’s legs were bent at an awkward angle, his face covered in dried blood and soot, and steam was emanating from his body, suggesting a recent transformation using his Titan Quirk. He was struggling to keep his eyes open and his face contorted in a grimace of pain when he tried to raise his head. Beside him, she could make out the bloodied forms of Mikasa and Armin. Mikasa's face was covered in black scratch-like marks, a side effect of overusing her Quirk. ome distance away, she could see Pieck and Jean lying on the ground, the former's Cart Titan skin lying a few feet away, mutilated and burned to crisp.
According to the frenzied rumours she'd heard being whispered in the military lines, the Utgard Castle had been destroyed by an enemy's Quirk, injuring — or killing, as she the logical side of her brain argued — nearly everyone in the castle who had been managing the Anti-Quirk Radiation Cannons.
Connie and Sasha had been the ones coordinating things at the Castle, along with Commander Hange.
Her eyes fluttered close as the effort to prop herself up proved to be too much for her.
She collapsed back on the ground as the afternoon sun shone brilliantly in her eyes. Her lungs were burning and every breath she took was more painful than the last. She'd been stabbed in the thigh by an enemy's Quirk and the blood loss from that and an injury on her head proved to be beyond her Quirk's healing capacity. She could hear Eren calling out her name but the buzzing in her head soon drowned out his voice.
She remember reading somewhere that just before people died, the last thing that flashed in their minds was an image of their loved one. Sometimes life graced us with enough time to remember our whole ancestral tree; sometimes all we had was enough seconds to recall the face of that particular someone who changed our life for the better.
As haze settled over her mind, her fingers subconsciously curling themselves around the lapel of her jacket, she remembered those dull grey eyes that would peer at her with concern after a particularly hard battle against the enemy troops, or the discreet but firm head pats when she would cross the raven-haired man in the hallways.
They called him "Humanity's Strongest Alive" for his mastery over his 4 Quirks and his uncanny reflexes in battle, and spoke in awe and fear of his ruthless training sessions; but no one but her saw the tender side of him, the one who would nurse her cuts and bruises with uncharacteristic softness, the one who would without fail prepare her a cup of tea ever morning.
Destined for a fate worse than death, her last thoughts were of the man who rescued she, and who treated she like his own child, like his own daughter.
And then the sky exploded.
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no one:
me: makes marley and paradis allies because i wanna see the badass partnership between pieck and mikasa.
