Blue and White - Levi Fanfiction

Ch. 22 - Our Rise, and Their Fall

Year 845:

Riding through the gate after an expedition was never easy.

Alright, let me be specific. For the most part, physically, it was very easy. No matter how exhausted I was, how forlorn, how lost in grief or fear or whatever else, Strider was a good horse, with even strides and a desire to please, and so he always did as told. So, when instructed to follow along with the rest of the herd, he did as such, without complaint and without question. Really, if I were to be absolutely transparent, I wasn't doing much.

It was the emotional toll that made it difficult.

We, the soldiers, were always quiet. There was never anything to talk about. Each expedition resulted in the loss of soldiers, that was a simple fact of the matter. To that end, what was there to talk about? The weather? Definitely not. If we were expected to think about the results of the mission and what it would mean for the regiment and our future, that wasn't up to us. Our superior officers would debrief us as they always did once we returned to the base, and the day after an expedition would mean the return of training.

It would be business as usual... only without some of our friends, some of our comrades.

Levi and I were still in the Vanguard. We remained the front line for the Survey Corps, leading the way for the rest of the regiment to follow. But for this expedition, Commander Shadis had decided to try something different, a formation of his own design that was tighter that would hopefully allow for more co-dependence between the squads.

A tighter formation would also ideally allow for assistance to be received quicker if necessary. In theory, it would work just fine, especially for an operation such as this one. We'd been in a forest far beyond the walls, one that so many months ago, Levi and I had ridden ahead and secured, at least for a time.

Seeing its tactical potential, Shadis wanted us to completely capture and secure it. For this expedition, Shadis had ordered us to join up with the Special Operations Squad, headed still by Moses. In this way, it should have been easy to secure the forest. Levi and I had done it on our own, we could have done it again, right? Especially when backed by the rest of the regiment?

Only, it had not worked that way. Not at all.

That might seem strange, so let me explain why it hadn't worked out for us. The answer, like so many things, was simple. And in this instance, well, it was simply because everything had gone wrong. Weather was something we could never control, and today was no exception. The rain had rolled in quickly and without warning, as it seemed to accustomed to doing when we left the safety of the walls.

Winter had come and gone with the arrival of the new year, and the snow had long melted. Summer was soon approaching now, and though expeditions had been going well, today had been worse than the others. So much worse. And all because of that damned rain. Always the damned rain.

The Titans had arrived in swarms, and though Levi and I had done what we could to take care of them, we had gotten overwhelmed quickly by the sheer number of beasts that had arrived all at once, and how they broke through the ranks from all sides. In short, there was nothing more to be done. It was a damned miracle we had even gotten out alive.

Actually... It was a damned miracle that those of us that had escaped with our lives had gotten even the chance to. Levi and I had survived, as had people we grew to care for: Erwin, Mike, Hange, and several others. The same could not be said for quite a few of the men and women we fought with in the Vanguard when it had been one full unit, and nearly the entire rest of the regiment.

This expedition had been devastating for us, and at the end of it... only twenty of us had survived.

Twenty soldiers. No more, and no less. We lost so much, and in only the span of a day or so. It was, simply put, a disaster. Besides so many other losses amidst the general ranks, nearly the entire elite unit had been lost and among the many soldiers lost, Moses, our old superior, was one of them.