Hammerblow

Chapter 1

(Crossposted from AO3 and FFN, author's notes are copied verbatim. Fic has three chapters, I'll probably post one a day. Enjoy.)

I always worry about OOC the first few times I write for a new fandom. Does any change in Eren's character go against the canon trajectory of his life, what with the time crap? IDK. I like Lara too much to care about the exact abilities of the Attack Titan.

I imagine this Eren more like Paul Atreides: given a vision of the future he does not want but one he might have to begrudgingly take.

Anyway, having posted an overlong one-shot about a rare pair, I shall melt back into the shadows, only reappearing after long eons.

My wip title for this was Crush which is a bit macabre but eh whatever

Eren Yeager saw a future both terrible and beautiful. It would finally give Paradis peace. No more breaches in the walls, no more kids robbed of their parents. The price was just the whole world, every person and creature beyond Paradis. They would be crushed or seared or would trample themselves in their panic. Suckling babes to the old, all dead. There would be no one left to hate Eldians.

Maybe the thought of those Eldians in camps was what stayed his hand. It was easier to sympathize with them, to imagine himself in their place– hemmed in by fences, not walls– than it was to imagine himself as a 'normal' human. They would mourn their parents when they were killed; although they'd have mere moments to do it, if at all. Thousands or millions of little Erens out there, little Mikasas and Armins and...

The thought of coexistence was sweet as honey, but the whole world, even destiny, seemed aligned against the possibility. The Rumbling could probably be held over the world's heads indefinitely, but the Eldian exiles scattered around the world might perish should more conventional Titans become obsolete. Maybe they'd be integrated by the nations, but even considering the Rumbling required a pessimist, and he doubted things would end up that smoothly.

(Occasionally, he considered crazy ideas. What if he used the power of the Founding Titan to give all the Subjects wings and compel them to fly to Paradis? That discounted the logistical nightmare, not to mention the people just getting shot out of the sky. Worms, snakes, perhaps even creatures that burrowed... whatever option he took, it would make refugees out of them all, again.)

It was like lines. Maybe, maybe, if you executed things just perfectly, the Subjects of Ymir and the rest of the world wouldn't collide. Lines in parallel... but the slightest discrepancy, the most infinitesimal fraction of a degree this way or that, and there would be apocalyptic collision.

The Rumbling was the perfect backup, the most extreme solution, perhaps the only one that would truly work, and they only had so much time to do it. If worst came to worse, he could obliterate most of the civilized world in a fortnight; it was brutally simple, the problem was mainly Zeke's lifespan. As long as they worked around it, they had time.

There was a certain, fatal gravity to the Rumbling, but for a few years, he could try to walk that tightrope. The humans outside the walls were so vastly disappointing. Hateful. Spiteful. They'd raise their innocent kids into spiteful adults, adults who would want the children of Paradis dead.

But Eren had always yearned for freedom. Couldn't he try to liberate himself from the destiny that stood before him? The innocents deserved his best try before he crushed them all.

Willy Tybur could feel it, the twilight of an era. The Marley Mid-East War had shown the war that Titans– and therefore Eldians– were operating on limited time. There was a very real risk that advanced technology would make the Eldians of the world unnecessary. They had sway in Marley, but even then he knew that the rigors of time could see the family destroyed.