However Long The Night

TEN: The day we all die

The first signal flare had been fired. Rosario watched the red smoke rise above the tree line ahead. Their orders had been to avoid titans at all costs, not to engage with them. She followed Jean as they moved around the area in unison with Petra Ral and Mikasa Ackerman. Somewhere deeper in the formation, away from the danger of the border of it, Armin was jotting this down. He'd been one of the four tasked with logging the events of the mission for the sake of figuring out the best route.

"It's just one!" Kirschtein said, urging Rosario to move with him. 

Silence ensued again, yet the air felt like it would pop any moment. With every minute that passed after the first signal, Rosario could feel the tension between the three. The sudden alertness as it all began to kick in. Titans are near, thus the mission has truly begun. 

The sea. That was Armin's dream. Safety was Kirschtein's. What was Ackerman's? What was Petra Ral's? How did they fit into this legion of pipe dreamers and idealists and believers that a world where the weak beat the strong is possible? Why should she care, she wasn't part of it?

She doesn't. She hardly cared for anything at all.

Rosario kept Orion in line with Kirschtein's horse, gritting her teeth at the discomfort from the gear. It dug deeper and deeper into her ribs with every gallop of the horse. Pain kept her grounded, it kept her focused. She could very well die today. They all could. They all might. The reality of it angered her. She despised having been roped into this circus. Reclaiming the wall, their land—it was all a joke. Yet she was forced to participate. As if she didn't have enough to worry about. As if she didn't have a hard enough time trying to reclaim her identity.

And she'd get out of it somehow, unscathed, because that's what her family was supposed to do. What they failed to accomplish. She'd do it, because unlike them, she truly had no conscience and no storage for feelings and regrets and everything that took away her family for her. All she has is the image of her past home and the face of her mother the last time Rosario saw her, when she'd promised to come back.

The thoughts drummed in her mind, against her skull, penetrating her bones until the same rushes of adrenaline shot through her veins. Boom. Boom. Boom. Boom. Boom—

Rosario pulled Orion's reins hard enough to make the beats screech to a halt. Her hairs stood, her skin prickled, her senses heightened so even the faintest of changes in the atmosphere were registered in her brain. She listened, closely, as hard as her more-than-perfect hearing allowed. 

The drumming hadn't been in her ears. The sound itself was faint, distant and soft enough for her to be unable to locate. But it was there. It reverberated in her bones and swirled through her blood, alerting her mind that something threatening loomed near.

Ahead, Kirschtein noticed the absence of his partner and halted immediately. He turned his horse and searched, finding her stock still with a face full of concentration. 

"What's wrong?" Kirschtein trotted over to her side, his horse restless to keep moving, already acquainted with the protocols of a mission. "We can't stop. Why are you stopping?"

The wind was mild and there were no birds ahead. She'd long distinguished the echoes of the regiment and the sound that shook her mind. It continued, rhythmless but stronger, closer. Rosario didn't spare Kirschtein a glance. "Listen."

He looked behind him, at the empty field of untended grass. "Rosie, we have to keep going."

"Listen!"

Kirschtein cursed. They were too far from the group. The formation would suffer if they weren't there to keep up. "I don't hear anything!"

Another sound mixed with the bunch, a gallop that grew stronger with every second. That, Kirschtein heard. From farther ahead, Mikasa Ackerman raced toward them. "What are you two doing? You'll hold up the—"