The sky is falling as your eyes swim within your head and you feel yourself falling, although your body is stationary, slumped against the side of a building now littering the ground with broken glass from a shattered window. The splinters and chunks of glass have etched their ways into your skin, but the faint burning does not stir you; you are merely a floating mind, unphysical, in a solid and physical world. Coherent thoughts are beyond you right now, but you feel a faraway shaking of your head lolling and your shoulders being violently jerked. Is it happening again? Wait; what happened the first time? And just like that, with the dawning remembrance of what is happening, you jolt awake, again a solid, physical mind in a body of touchable matter. "Oh, thank God!" Mikasa shouts, as your eyes open, staring up at her.
Mikasa helps you to your feet, which are unsteady and full of falters. Your head throbs and your body feels like you've just been clobbered in every single bone by an oddly powerful bat. Your mind is slowly catching up to you, however, and snippets of memory flash to you depicting the muscular, lipless, towering titan that had just saved your life, but also almost killed you. Was I seriously so delirious that I thought that could have been Eren? This now hits you: the Eren-less world that feels so much darker and colder than the one that used to be filled with such shimmering hues and happy colors. The world was always hell, but with him, you managed to forget that for a while. At the end of the day, though, you were facing it now, and far sooner than you would have liked, but much later than you needed to.
"(Y/N)?" Mikasa asked as she half-supported your weight along the ladder of a small house that lead to the roof. "Mmhmm," you responded, trying to concentrate on not vomiting all over her; you soon quit your effort however; it wasn't like you had anything left to vomit anyway. "We've gotta get out of here," Mikasa said, heaving you up the last rung of the ladder. Sensing the new height, you slumped against the turrets of the roof and struggled to remove your omni-dimensional gear. It was crushed, smoldering, and clenching around parts of your waist and torso that made it morbidly uncomfortable and difficult to breathe in. Mikasa, with her immense strength that you always admired, gently undid the remaining buckles and loops and tossed the smashed equipment over the roof, allowing it to crash to the ground into even smaller, more broken pieces.
"Wasn't that titan..." Mikasa faltered for her words as she sat in front of you against another turret, "I don't know- like- weird?" Mikasa's eyebrows were scrunched in concentration, and for almost a second, you considered telling her what you had thought when you first saw that titan right before blacking out. Deciding better, you chose to keep your woeful and grievance-filled thoughts to yourself- no matter how close you became, you always felt that you had to prove something to Mikasa, even though she expected nothing from you. It always made you feel bad.
"Yeah," you responded distantly, rubbing your head and straining your mind to remember the titan's details. "I've never seen a titan use combat techniques before," Mikasa said, her voice ripe with confusion and discovery. "What?" you asked. "That titan used combat techniques?" Mikasa looked at you from across the space between and nodded. "You must have already fallen unconscious, but that was what threw us so hard. That titan clobbered the other one with his fist, almost like he was landing a punch." Your eyes widened; there was no possible way that a titan could know and comprehend combative methods and techniques. "Then," Mikasa began again, "that titan struck the other one directly in the nape with his foot repeatedly, which means-" you interrupted her.
"He knew where the weak spot was."
You and Mikasa sat in silence for what felt like several minutes until she heaved herself off of the ground and began messing with her gear. "Shit," she said, after examining her gas canister, "I don't even have enough to get us off this roof." This didn't bother you as you had nowhere else that you immediately planned to be. No matter what Mikasa said as she rambled about the idiocy of the inventors of the gear's gas canisters and how long it would take to get back to headquarters on foot, you couldn't shake your mind from that one, strange titan. Before you even knew you were saying it, you asked, "Do you think that that titan has something to do with Eren?" Mikasa was quiet, and you were almost sure that she would outright laugh at you, but she wasn't like that; she wasn't as lighthearted or emotionally inappropriate like Annie. Where is Annie? In all of this, how have I not seen her once? You were shaken from your thoughts as Mikasa answered, "I thought so too." "Really?" you asked, sitting up straighter against the turret. "Yes," she said calmly, "but I also think that our grief is allowing us to be too optimistic about the impossible." Even though you knew it all along, you couldn't help but feel put out by the affirmation that he was gone forever.
YOU ARE READING
The Turquoise Cure (Eren X Reader)
FanfictionYou were present at the fall of Wall Maria, becoming orphaned and seemingly cast away from all aspects of hope. As if to add on to the trauma of losing all you'd ever known, you faced life-threatening and body-awakening circumstances awaiting entran...
