Do you have to go?

Chapter 16 FINAL

I opened my eyes, my hands in fists on the cool ground, my body aching but not the post-labor ache, it felt as if I had just ended a long footrace.  My mind raced as I gathered the scene around me. I was in a large puff of smoke and titan steam. The air thick and sulfuric but I could hardly focus on my burning lungs when I realized my son was no longer in my arms.

Where is my baby? I lift my head as a large shadow came over me, but as quickly as it had appeared, it was gone with a loud crash. It was the flying titan, crashing into the ground about a hundred yards away.

"My baby, where is my baby?!?" I scream, my voice raw from breathing in the hot steam. "Where is he?" My ears rang and everyone around me shouted and cried. Did I hear him, Eren, correctly? Did he remove the power of the Titans? Where is Porco? Is he here? Is my baby okay? Can babies even turn into titans? Is he hurt? Oh no-

"WHAAAAAAAA!" the cries, infant cries, cut through the noise.

I crawl toward them as I was unable to stand. Each movement hurt my whole being but I needed my baby. "That bastard" "He told us to live long," I hear the islanders around me. I'm getting closer, closer...

There he was in his makeshift swaddle. But he was okay. Tears burned my eyes as I continued crawling toward my baby. My knees surely bleeding from dragging them on the ground but I didn't care. I scooped him up in my arms and as his sobs stopped, I burst into tears. My baby, our baby, he's okay.

I wiped my face with my sleeve as I looked down at my baby, his eyes part open, hazel like his father's.

Porco...where is he? I sat upright and scanned my eyes around for the first time soaking in what was going on around me. I saw a body emerge from the flying titan. A boy...the boy. The one I saw with Porco when he returned from the Mideast, Grice. He sprinted away before I could call his name. His small body vanished into the steam.

The steam was settling around me as I forced myself up, baby in one arm. My legs were wobbly but I have to look for Porco.

I wipe the tears out of my eyes once again and start calling for him "Porco! Porco! Por-"

My heart stops, and my brain felt fuzzy. Is it? Oh, my-it's him!

"Porco!" any shakiness in my legs disappears as I start running clumsily toward him. He stands there, smiling, tears in his eyes. He wears a green trench coat hanging open off his shoulder. His eyes fall to his son in my arm and then up to my own. A genuine look of love in his eyes that I have never seen from him before. True love, not the love of power, not love of rank or love of praise, true, raw, paternal love. He looks peaceful. Finally, he will meet his son, hold him, and kiss him. Hold me, kiss me.

"Porco, thank goodness you're safe," I shout, I was just a few yards away from him now. But why isn't he walking toward me? He stands still, slightly hunched forward. Half of his face is covered in blood.

"Porco?" a warm breeze danced around my ankles and rose to disrupt the steam, stirring it around. It starts to climb around Porco. He straightened and I saw his lips moving into a crooked smile, I saw tears running down his cheeks, mixing with the blood and forming red streaks that cascaded from his eyes to his lips. He put most of his weight onto his left leg.

"This world is cruel but I still love you," he says. His voice is calm, and restful as the cloud consumes him.

"Porco, I love you too," I say choking on tears and breathlessness from running. I was there I could reach into the steam to touch him, finally.

The steam cleared and where Porco stood was nothing. "Porco? Porco! Where did you go? Por-PIECK!" She was lying prostrate on the ground a little further from where Porco stood.