Alone In A Crowd

(Prologue) Cracks

It was dark.

I couldn't figure out if wherever I was was pitch black or if I had my eyes closed. 

I couldn't feel anything, my body numb to my surroundings. I tried to take a breath but found I couldn't. Panicked shooting through my system quicker than a lightning strike, shoving my brain into overload, thinking too loud just to cancel out the silence in my ears.

No.        Stop.         Remember.

That's right.

What happened? What do I remember? I remember Levi. Waking up next to him, smiling at his rumpled and sleepy figure. 

I remember Mikasa, calm and quiet and smirking at something I said. 

I remember Armin. Rushing in with a look of horror, screaming something about MP's and running.

Oh...

I remember the running, but I also remember being caught. Am I dead? Is....Levi?

No, nonono.

Think harder!

We were caught, we were surrounded and Mikasa was yelling at me, in fact everyone was yelling at me. What did they say? Why did I hate it so much?

Levi grabbed me, shaking me so hard my neck hurt and growled something. I shook my head. Then.....no, he didn't...... he wouldn't.... Then Levi hugged me, jabbed me in the neck and twisted.

My mind flooded with anger. 

How could he? 

I had shared that information with him in confidence and he used it against me! It does answer a few questions though.

I'm inside a crystal.

But what about.....does that mean.....

No

[crack]

By the walls, please, NO!

[crack]

Levi

[CRASH]

I breathed in deeply for the first time in centuries, rage boiling to the surface as I emerged from my cocoon as a titan. The archeologists bracing themselves as their dig site exploded into muscle and bone, coated with thick flesh.

They didn't stand a chance and soon the rage consumed them all, leaving no voices to tell the tale of the giant green-eyed monster.

When I came to in a pool of blood I didn't cry, I didn't scream or drown in grief. All I could do was sit, staring at my surroundings only vaguely reminiscent of a time before, the landscape crushed and shifted, molded into the unrecognizable plane of that horrible morning when I realized that I was alone.

Though alone then, I believed I wouldn't always be. I would find them.

I rose and walked, beginning a new life in the foreign world. 

Always moving. 

Always looking.

Always waiting.