The Fight for Mankind

Power Resides in the Blood

EREN

"RIAN!!" Aurora's horrified scream filled the air and twisting back from my position across Mikasa's horse I began to wail around my gag as my eyes fell on Aurora and Rian, both mere meters behind us with their arms outstretched to each other in a parting gestures of love and desperation as a dark shadow engulfed them.

No... please... not for me... not for me...

"NO!!" Mikasa cried as she tried to turn her horse around, but it was too late, and feeling my heart shatter into a million tiny pieces, I screamed as a Titan landed where the shadow had fallen sending up a force of earth and wind that flung us from our horse and crashing to the ground. 

NO!

Rolling to a stop on the hard-unyielding earth, I lay motionless, staring up at the sky unable to believe what I had just witnessed, that I had just seen the two people who had been a constant in my life from the moment I open my eyes into this cold, crushed beneath a Titan as if they meant nothing at all. No, it wasn't right, it couldn't be, I refused to believe it, I mean, how could they? They were the strongest of us all, they were always there, always fighting for me. They weren't dead, they weren't...

Then why does it feel like I can't breathe....

"EREN! MIKASA!" Armin's voice called out in the distance, but I still couldn't find it within myself to move, not with this crushing feel weighing down on my chest. This was all my fault, if I hadn't have been so weak, I could have stopped myself from being kidnapped, but I was too focused on my visions of Aurora dying to see the more immediate danger, too focus on trying to prevent what could have happened to stop what did happen and now she was gone.

I failed her... I failed them both...

Pained whimpers broke through my agony and recognising the voice they belonged to, I made myself roll onto my stomach, and despite my arms being bound, I forced myself across the grass towards Mikasa where she was crawling on all fours, tears dripping from her face as she cried out for what we both had lost.

She had never looked so broken, not even after her parents were killed and watching as she struggled to crawl those last few meters towards me, my heart fluttered in my chest because even now, after losing everything, she was still fighting, still pushing forward because what else was there left for her to do but to keep on going.

Why isn't she giving up? Hasn't she had enough?

A strange feeling began to morph in with the pain, a feeling I had felt a handful of times before, like when I had learned I had tried to kill Mikasa in my Titan form; when I had seen her again after joining the scouts, when I had opened my eyes after the battle in Stohess and she was sat sleeping by my bed with her scarf in hand, when she had flung herself at Reiner and Bertolt to save me and when I had seen her sailing above me after she had cut Reiner's leg. Yeah, I had felt it all those times too, I just I didn't have a name for it, all I knew was that when I felt it my heart beat differently and my vision would focus in on her, that I wanted... I wanted.

It was a far cry from the usual feelings I usually held, mostly I had always been jealous of how strong Mikasa was, and yet that jealously had never extended to Auro- to them, I had thought it was because of how overprotective she could be but now watching her struggle to reach me, amongst all this chaos and death, I realised it wasn't because she was overprotective, no, it was because I wasn't strong enough to protect her.

I don't understand... why?  Why is that causing me to feel like this?

"Eren..." Mikasa whimpered as she closed the gap between us and reaching down to my face, she pulled the gag free, allowing me to speak but I had no words to say as I stared into her red-rimmed eyes, none at all.