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【𝐅𝐈𝐅𝐓𝐘 𝐒𝐄𝐕𝐄𝐍】
*.·:·.✧ ✦ ✧.·:·.*
SHIGANSHINA HAD BECOME A GHOST TOWN. Himari could see the translucent apparitions of families walking together through the streets, children laughing, adults chattering, the garrison drinking. It was as though all the memories she had of her hometown were being displayed right before her, stuck in a neverending time loop of days she knew she could never get back.
She walked silently by herself through the streets, the handles of her ODM gear tucked away neatly at her sides. Mikasa had given her a pair of her own blades, as Himari had run out, but she didn't feel the need to pull them out, knowing that the only enemies that existed were the ones lingering in her mind.
Himari knew that she should have been looking for survivors - anyone who may have gotten lucky and somehow lived through Bertholdt's final transformation - but she couldn't stop herself from breaking away from the group and heading down the streets she used to walk.
She passed by the marketplace; what once had been lively and full of colourful banners, fruits, flowers and trinkets being sold by lively shopowners, had become a desolate jungle of weather-beaten debris and bright, luscious green nature that had taken root in the human abandoned and bloomed forth.
Himari reached out a hand as she passed by a stall covered in faded cloths, which she knew had once been bright and beautiful, and couldn't stop the faint smile from tugging at her lips when the ghost of her younger self rushed past her. Himari looked up, watching the memory pull itself up onto the roof of the nearby pub before it turned around, face hidden by a bandana, and raised both of its middle fingers to the nonexistent garrison standing below. A gust of wind brushed by, taking the image of a younger Himari with it, leaving her alone once more.
With a sigh, she pulled her cloak tighter around her neck before she continued walking again, her footsteps echoing through the abandoned wasteland she had once called home. Her body moved as though she were being controlled, moving her legs closer and closer down the pathway that took her towards the furthest corner of Shiganshina, away from the inner gate. Even through all the greenery that had sprouted, Himari could see windows that had been cracked long before the titans had shown up, and old, beaten houses that had looked like that longer than she had been alive.
Slowly but surely, Himari's steps came to a stop as she stood outside an achingly familiar house, half-crushed under small boulders the size of tables. She inhaled shakily as she crouched down in front of her old house, running her fingers over the flowers that had bloomed in the old planter just beside her front door. Unable to take care of them herself, Himari remembered the way her sister's old flowers had died when she'd left to join the military, leaving behind wilted disasters in the soil.
Now, it was full of life once more, teeming with bright purple flowers that swayed gently in the warm, morning breeze. She kneeled down beside the planter and leaned over, inhaling the smell of the flowers softly.
