Allies and Enemies (AoT Reader Insert)

Chapter 12: To You, Who I Left Behind

Mina,

     From the day I met you, you'd always been such a kind soul.

I imagine that you were always that way. I imagine that you were always a bright and straightforward girl, albeit a bit blunt and naive. I imagine that you never had to hide your fears behind practiced smiles and that the words of others were nothing more than leaves drifting in the wind.

You lived your life with pride in your eyes and your heart on your sleeve. You'd do anything to keep those around you happy, yet you were never happy yourself.

Despite your father's wavering loyalties and your mother's inability to bear another child, you desperately wanted a sibling. You had begged and pleaded with them to give you someone else, but they had always insisted that your friends were more than enough.

Your mother and father were too caught up in their own lives to notice that you were lonely.

They mistook your silence for childish contempt, when really you were drowning.

They left you alone among their empty truths and broken promises.

Ever the optimist, you devised a plan. From your silence sprung determination; a constant pleading and begging that could break through even the most stubborn of peoples' facades.

Your pure and unbreakable dedication put a lens of kindness overtop of your father's slowly fading eyes, and lit a fire of hope under your mother's frosted over heart.

I believe it was due to your actions that your father took pity on me in the midst of chaos and let me into the heart of his home, and it was your actions that your mother took a liking to me and opened her heart enough to love a child born of someone else's flesh and bone.

And you, a child who had wanted nothing more than to escape your loneliness, finally did.

Even when we were just children, I thought the warmth and kindness you showed was startling.

You, someone untainted by the cruel mistress known as reality, and me, a child thrown straight into the frey of chaos, were united by forces beyond my control.

Some may call it fate.

Others may chalk it up to luck.

But I believe our meeting was nothing short of your hard work and determination.

As a child who'd never had a stable source of love, I feared that the love you gave me might one day run out, just as it had been for every other person in my life. Despite my lack of memories, my feelings of loneliness remained and I became scared to love you back.

But you, ever the optimist, never wavered in the love that you displayed.

You gave me a kind of love I'd never felt before, and for that I will forever be grateful.

But along with my gratitude, I also feel regret.

I've written countless amounts of lines and letters depicting the way your life impacted mine, and how mine unfairly impacted yours.

You taught me how to love after I'd long forgotten how; you showed me how to care after I'd devoted myself to the life of a second class citizen; you followed me and my reckless dream to change the world despite your own knees shaking and feeling your bottomless confidence start to waiver.

And I, ever so selfishly, took your love for granted.

During the years we trained, the bond you'd worked so hard to create began to fade before your very eyes.

I became obsessed with the fractured pieces of my life left behind by my father, and I chased them without a second thought. I didn't even spare a moment to think about you and the ways I left your feelings unattended, nor did I realise I was leaving you lonely.

Despite how you had shared your deepest secrets and fears with me, I never did the same.

The moments we shared were overshadowed by the memories I chased. The words that reached you weren't the words I should have spoken, and I left you all alone. You watched as I created new bonds to replace your own, mistaking your silence for contempt.

I left you with nothing but half truths and fragile promises to cling to, and cling to them you did.

You clung to them because there was nothing else to hold onto.

In all of the sheets I've written, I can only think about how my selfish actions forced you to hide your truths behind poorly practiced smiles, and how the things I said meant more than I could have ever imagined. I can only ever think about the empty truths I told, and the broken promises I left behind.

In a cruel sense of irony, it's me who now clings to the promises we had made and the secrets we once had shared.

I know it must be selfish of me to say this, but I miss you.

I miss the way you used to smile at me. I miss the way your hair would be tousled despite your best attempts to tame it, and I miss the mornings you would wake up before me. Now each morning I wake up, I can only think about how you can never wake up again.

It's only without you that I realize that the love you gave was nothing but genuine care. A kind of care I'd seldom felt before, and a kind of care I can never again receive from you.

Recently I've been waking up to thoughts of you and the others I had to leave behind.

Sometimes I wake up to the people I betrayed. Other times I wake up to people whose faces look familiar, yet their names are forign against my tongue.

It's a strange sense of deja vu.

No matter whose memories I see, the faces that find me are always the ones who cared for me so much more than I ever could have known. They're the people who found it in themselves to show people like me unconditional love, even to their dying breaths.

Oftentimes I wonder how you ever managed to put up with me. Something in the way Emanon looks up to me reminds me of how you used to look at me with such awe filled eyes.

Emanon is able to love freely, just as you had, and I hate that I will have to leave her behind.

But perhaps it's better this way. After all, if I had never been a part of your life, you might not have died in battle. You might have been able to find love in the form of a significant other. Someone who could live alongside you for the entirety of your life and return your love unconditionally, unlike me.

You were the best thing I ever had, and I left you behind.

And now you lay alone, burned and scattered among my empty truths and broken promises.

Never Forgotten, (Y/n) (L/n)