The Turquoise Cure (Eren X Reader)

Chapter 25: Just a Village Girl

    You remained on the back of Petra's horse for the entirety of the day, with each of its massive strides racking your body with fresh waves of pain. As the sun began to rise for a new day, the walls had finally worked their way into your field of vision. A searing of relief fled through your body, but guilt surged along with it. By now, Annie could have destroyed everything. She could have Eren, she could have left the interior in shambles, she could have done anything...

    As you reached the base of the wall, you struggled to dismount from the horse. You, however, had bigger worries than a clean dismount. As you stared up at the height of the immense walls, you realized that you had no way to get up them. No gas, next to no strength, and no way back up. 

    "HELP!!!" you shouted to the tops of the walls, praying that anyone was on wall duty and might hear you. After more failed attempts of screaming, you were feeling dizzy and thoroughly fatigued. Your head was swimming, and your legs were slipping from under you, not to mention the limp and useless broken arm hanging from your left side. "Dammit!" you shouted, dropping to your knees on the dirt. You hadn't eaten or drank in days, you were so exhausted that all you wanted was a moment of sleep, but you couldn't give up. If there was an off chance that Annie had yet to get away, you had to make sure that you caught her. 

    Gaining your resolution, you gave Petra's horse a pat on the snout. "There's only one way in," you said, starting to limp away. After a solid 30 minutes of walking around the perimeter of the wall, you found it: the waterway that cut right through the walls and all the way through to the inside. 

    You cringed as you slipped off your leather boots that were cutting into the circulation of your swollen feet. You dropped them off along the river bank, abandoned your gear beside them, and dipped one toe into the cool water. The thought of your filthy body contaminating the walls' only source water made you cringe, but then again, if Annie got her wish and destroyed the walls and everyone in them, it wouldn't really matter if the water was clean or not. 

    The chilly water sent pins and needles up your pine, but you jumped in none the less. Ducking your head under, you felt a wave of nervousness overtake you. You had never necessarily learned how to swim, but you didn't think that it could be that hard. You took some practice strokes through the small stretch of water than you now resided in, which were very difficult, helped none the more by your burning left arm. Raising it with each stroke was immensely painful and made you bite the insides of your cheeks in grit and pain, but thinking about getting back to Eren, getting back to the Corps.- it gave you resolution. Looking at the solid mass of wall in front of you, you hoped that you could hold your breath for long enough to get to the other side. If you couldn't every step you had taken from the Titan Forest to here would have been in vain. Swelling your chest with oxygen, you disappeared beneath the clear water and began to swim underneath the wall. 

    You could see no light under the wall. Nothing but the dark grey shadows of the wall above you could be seen as they ricocheted down and consumed all the light you could view. Once, you tried to come up for air, but you met nothing but a painful bump top of your head. Lungs squeezing and burning, you felt your dizziness worsen. Finally, at long last, you saw a sparkle of light, a sparkle that turned into a corridor, which turned into an abyss of light. Ready to retch with pain, you emerged from the cold water, your lungs meeting fresh air and your eyes spotting the bright sunlight that filtered through the village of an outlying wall town, although you weren't sure which one. 

    You pulled yourself up onto the banks of the river, your uniform soaked to the core, your arm in more pain than ever, and your feet completely bare. I can only imagine what an idiot I must look like right now. 

    After retreating into the streets of the town, you scoured the roads for any sign of a Survey Corps., Garrison, or Military Police officer, desperate to ask of Eren's whereabouts, if anything had happened that seemed strange, and to warn them of Annie. Finally, you ran into an officer from the Garrison.