Watch [uguuuu did someone say feels?! ahah hi! :'D]
Watch: My character will watch your character die.
Everything was catastrophic and nothing made sense and all around, the only thing that Historia could see was death. Death in a less severe sense, death in the sense of fallen houses and the ruins of the bricks and material that had made up those houses, made up the places that living people had likely lived out their lives in. And there was death in the most literal definition, bits of flesh and blood and skin clinging to wherever they had landed. Very little was recognizable as any sort of body part; most that were dead had been taken into the mouth of the terrorizing monsters that were waging a war that seemed more and more one-sided as the soldiers trudged on. But some of her comrades – some had seen different deaths. Some had been stepped on and those – those remains were a gruesome sight, hardly distinguishable as anything that had once even slightly resembled a human and it was awful and she was stuck here and all around her there was only death.
There was meant to be hope, there was always meant to be hope whether it was hidden under a multitude of layers or strewn out in plain sight for any and all to claim as theirs. Eren was their hope now, with his newly discovered ability and this mission to use said ability to seal the wall. Here was the hope: Eren was the hope.
Yet for all that Historia forced optimism on herself, because to be anything but would suggest that she was something other than a good person, there was an uncertainty latching onto her chest and saying, “This isn’t going to work. How can it? It’s unfathomable. All that we’re going to accomplish with this is more deaths and more deaths and more deaths—“
The ground quivered and then shook with a gusto that she had felt more than once today; a Titan was coming, and it was advancing quickly – perhaps it was an abnormal? Gripping onto her gear just to have something to grip onto and feel and know that she was still alive, she retreated into shadows created by ruins and ran at the quickest pace she could manage with factors such as the gear she was lugging acting against her. Have to live have to live have to live have to fight—
Her breath caught in her throat and panic began to build up within her as she almost turned at a corner only to see that there was a Titan right there and if she went on the way she planned, this would not end well.
She moved to take a step back and then that was when she saw it; when a very familiar boy was taken into the grip of the Titan’s oversized hands and lifted up in a way that seemed to be very slow and no, no, no she knew what was coming and she needed to stop it but how, how, how-
He was struggling and it was the most awful thing she had ever seen because she’d seen the results but she hadn’t seen them happen and now he was dying and it was Marco and she knew Marco and they trained together and he was kind and good and they had rarely ever conversed but he didn’t deserve this, if there was anyone that just didn’t deserve this it was him, who was so loyal and good – and the thought that continued to echo throughout her mind, over and over, was why doesn’t he have his gear?
The beast had Marco inches from their mouth and it was like he was scrutinizing him, even though that was unfathomable, and then – then that was when the inevitable happened and the beast didn’t have the decency to just take him, to take him in full and let it be done with, no, he tore down onto him without mercy and it wasn’t even all of him, and it was painful, it had to be painful, and she wasn’t close enough to hear any screams and even if she had been, she somehow didn’t think that she’d be able to process any sounds because the sight alone was enough to engulf everything.
Then the strangest thing happened and the Titan stopped and for a moment everything was still and then it just dropped the boy, and Marco fell like a limp sack of flesh, like all of the other remnants of flesh that were sporadically strewn across the scene of the battle and he was gone, how could he not be? He was gone and he was dead and their numbers were dwindling and there was no hope and he was dead.