Soldiers in a Broken World

Adriane Matthews - Childhood

From the time I was born, it was as if I was unwanted by the world. Just minutes after I came into the world, my father asked the doctor to kill me! I would later come to learn that it was because I was crying 'too much'. The doctor, Doctor Yeager, refused and even offered my mother a safe place to live. After all, my father was just as cruel to her. She only smiled and refused. "He may be a monster, but I will always have my Adriane." She was the only one who cared.

We lived in Shiganshina behind Wall Maria in the 'slums'. It wasn't much but it was home for twelve years. And for those twelve years, we were beaten, starved and broken. My father blamed US for HIS failures and said we held him back. "Just more food to waste! I should just kill him and be done with it!" He would often say as I got just scrapes of his leftovers.

He would barley allow me to leave the house. So often over the years I would look outside our window and look at the Wall and wonder if I could one day see over it, to see freedom. But first I would have to become a solider.

"YOU? A solider?" My father would laugh and then beat me down. "A wimp like you could never make it. Even if you did, you would piss yourself when you see a Titan!"

But my mother would hold me and smile. "You can do whatever you set your mind to dear. If you want to, all you have to do is spread your wings and fly."

Then my world was changed.

My father had apparently found a younger woman whom he married and left me and my mother alone. This broke my mother more than anything. One day she kneeled in front of me and kissed my forehead. "Don't be like your father. Be kind and thoughtful." She looked like she was crying, and her voice was shaky. I didn't know what she was talking about, but she didn't give me a chance to ask as she walked away.

I was looking for her to ask her what she meant when she landed right in front of me onto the stone walkway leading out of the gate. She had jumped off of the fifty-meter Wall and ended her own life.

I had no one then because I didn't want to go with my father. He soon began to send goons and thugs to try to force me to live with him behind Wall Sina, but I ran from them for years. I didn't want to know what hell he had waiting for me.

Living from the scrapes left by others, staying warm by luck and learned to fight back. I wasn't good at anything but staying alive. I would often watch the other kids have fun. Like Eren Yeager, Mikasa Ackerman and Armin Arlert. They were an odd group, but they were the closest of friends.

I wished I had friends like that. Often I would think that I should just go to them, Eren and Mikasa knew me after all, but the thought that they would reject me...so I stayed away.

And then on that fateful day, in 845, everyone's life changed when a new, sixty-meter Titan appeared and kicked in the Gate. The debris missed me, but Titans began to walk in and eat whoever they could grab. I got lucky enough that I was fast enough to get through the inner gate before it was closed, but another new Titan smashed through that one too. I didn't bother to wait for the boat, I just ran to Wall Rose, or I tried to... I didn't get far before I fell from exhaustion, my body burned from over working my muscles. I was sure that I was going to die there but I still woke up.

Life...went on.

-

The shelter was full of people including Adriane Matthews, a young boy with dark hair and blue eyes. Many were children whose parents chose them to live on and were lost to the Titans or got separated. His clothes were in near ruins, so he was given a new set. He found an open mat and sat down to wait for the next thing and hoped that his father wouldn't try to get him now when things was in chaos.