Work Text:
An arid wind blasts down the mountains and through the valley, causing the corrugated roofs to pull on their frames and for the scraps of industrial fabric to flap open. Allowing for beams of afternoon sunlight to pierce through the otherwise dimly-lit space.
The light flickers over what little had been scavenged, all sorted and in various states of (dis)repair. Pots and pans, most achingly clean, a bed, and a single jerrycan of clean water fill out the rest of the cramped space.
It isn't much.
But it is enough and much better than many others who have come to shelter in the traveler's long shadow.
Waking from the breeze, you glance about your few p0ssesions. Gladly enough you realize nothing is missing, this time. Though you still need that voltage meter back from the old man down the street. If it can be called that much.
You live in the city. The only city left standing after.
After what? You don't know. Those you ask also do not know, and those that do aren't inclined to answer you. No matter how much you ask.
But in the end the how and why doesn't matter as much as the when. You are here now. All the places you stayed at before pale in comparison to this shack made of emergency shelter walls and a corrugated roof, despite not even having a door to your name.
You don't like remembering the before. It was dark, and you were always moving. So tired you could barely walk, but to stand still- to rest, meant death. More often than not, at least. You haven't really felt the urge to confirm what your fellow refugees warned you for.
The dead, half-eaten bodies in the streets did that more than enough.
Here, there are no lights in the dark, watching you hungrily while another stands guard. Or well, maybe there are- you realize- but day by day, you see a wall arise between you and them, and those who keep the watch are dressed in armor and keep an unflinching vigil.
You pass them every day when you go out to gather what scrap you can. Beyond the walls, while you still can. They grow higher every day.
Soon they will grow so tall the sun won't warm you until mid-day. Keeping away the hungry eyes and the creeping, lingering dark.
This morning is no different, you climb the wall to where the titans work. You notice how none of the other scavengers look at them and hurry along.
Yet you find yourself gazing at those who build the walls, and those who stand guard beside them. Guns tightly held to their breast, their gazes tracking the horizon.
You wonder if they too have the nightmares you have. Of countless eyes in the dark.
When the sun sets your back and hands ache of a day of work. You have fixed wiring, welded steel, and trudged last night's battlefield- and yet barely made enough to buy food and water rations.
Still, your stomach no longer aches, for now. And your wounds are dressed. It is a better life than you have ever had.
The elder calls you and the others together, you like hearing her talk while you work by what little light the fire offers.
She tells you that night, of the men on the wall.
'Titans'
The word reminds you of a story someone once told you, before the long journey. A child's fable? Or was it a myth of some kind? You couldn't remember, it wasn't important.
'Guardian's' is what the woman calls them. Men like us, but not. Men who rise up after they die. Unnatural abominations. She warns you to stay away.
"Do not look at them. Do not speak to them. Lest their curse be shared with you"
You wonder what that means when you make your way back to your cot. The men staring at the horizon, with their guns at their breast. Ever unwavering.
You remember your arrival, it feels so long ago now. The monsters in the dark that have hunted you for so long struck when you and the few who survived with you reached the city, about a year ago.
The journey from your old home had been long and started off with so many.
But now only a handful of those were left, and somehow you were among them. You barely knew how to shoot a gun.
It was the man guarding the wall who had rushed forward and driven the monsters off. With sparks and fire whirling around you, surrounded by the sounds of gunfire you ran and ran until you could run no more.
And then you found yourself looking back- and see one of them. A titan with his armor covered in a stain of purple. Standing between you and it and driving the darkness away.
What curse?
You figure the next morning as you see those same colors on another, his eyes on the horizon- he stands like a statue.
While traversing the meager pickings of yesterday's combat, you and another decide to share the carcass of a shank with a fiery score that burned through its left-most antigrav unit. He tells you he saw the fight. How the guardians tore through the enemy, the Fallen with horrifying ease and joy.
They care not for us, scavengers.
They will shoot us just as easily.
People, you learn, fear the Guardians. Fear the titans that keep the walls.
Many, if not all, you realize have never stepped foot outside of it.
Many have never seen what it is like to live without these walls. Without another watching the horizon so you can sleep.
The pickings are slim. The Fallen haven't attacked in over a week now.
All you find are flowers in a field of rotting corpses.
Countless, countless flowers.
Your fingers ache. Instead of digging for parts buried beneath, you pick a flower.
A purple flower.
On your way back, that same titan as before yet again stands on the walls. Rifle close to his breast and his eyes on the horizon.
You step off the beaten path.
He doesn't see you immediately. Only after a moment of standing there, with a flower in your outstretched hand, does his gaze release the horizon and land on you.
"Thank you." You say as you feel you have his attention despite his helmet having no 'eyes' to speak of.
"For keeping us safe." You add.
He accepts the flower from you with a fluid and gentle motion.
"That is my duty." A metallic voice speaks through a helmet filter, near stripping it of all inflection. "But I am grateful, thank you, little one." With a deft motion, he places the flower through a gap where his armor plates meet before fixing his gaze back on the horizon.
The next day you find more scrap to take home. But you also pick another flower. This time, he sees you sooner. You offer it to him with a smile, despite the stares that burn in your back. He notices them too but takes the flower from you instead.
It becomes a habit. Even if he doesn't always say something, or when it is another taking over his watch. You notice the fondness in how they seem to pick you out of the crowd, and how they tuck the flowers you bring them in small spots on their armor.
You also notice how the other scavengers slowly distance themselves from you. You've had to live on your own for a long time now, so you do not mind. The officials that buy your fixed projects or your sorted scrap pay you enough to eat and drink. You will be alright without them.
Day in, day out
The wall keeps growing higher.
And the Fallen attack more desperately.
The titan with purple paint on his armor doesn't come back. The other who replaces his watch tells you he has gone to fight the Fallen. You give him his flowers instead, and he teaches you a prayer to the light in turn.
You learn the titan with purple paint on his armor has a name.
"He is called the Saint."
Your talks are brief, but his replacement tells you he told him you still brought him flowers every day. And that he had a question for you;
"Why?"
Then you do not hear anything for weeks. Not even his replacement, an Exo named Sever knows. Until he one-day flags you down in your morning trek across the wall.
"He died, it was a pretty nasty one too. But he is alright now, he just needs to rest."
The words leave you confused and worried more than you thought you'd be. You remember the elder's words. 'Men who rise up after they die'
So he died and then got better. You do not understand. You don't think you can ever understand. You ask his replacement to tell him to get better soon. He laughs in reply before vowing he would.
The next day you make your daily trek across the wall. Soon, you won't be able to anymore. Soon, the wall will be done. And you will have to find new sources of scrap or other work elsewhere.
Having gathered what you could you crouch down to pluck another flower.
You have brought the guardians on the wall one every day since you started.
You take it with you, back to the city when you hear a cry, when you feel your ears burn and your heart speeds up before a bolt of energy streaks past you and guts the man you've shared a shank's carcass with. He falls to the ground with a cry.
You run. With your heart hammering in your ears you run for the wall. Where men in shining armor sound the alarm and charge forward.
As you flee, others faster than you pass you by and push you back. Your grip on the shoddy wooden fencing fails and you fall. You land in the mud and the dirt as men and women trample you to flee.
Then four eyes look down on you and before you even have time to become afraid a hot bolt of metal is shot through your abdomen,... and you feel nothing.
The monster looks up- only to be bisected by a shot through the stomach and then punched backward by a fist covered in crackling energy.
Your vision fails you halfway through. All you hear is your name. He had asked you for it not too long ago- you suddenly remember giving it to him in absurd clarity while your heart slows down.
You try to talk, to answer as someone calls you. But your body won't cooperate. Instead, all the sounds smells and the distantly overwhelming pain seem to grow further and further away-
"The Fallen attacked so suddenly. There was only so much we could do. The casualties could not be avoided. Scavengers who scrounge the battlefields for parts and metal. With the wall being almost complete they were like fish in a barrel. We saved most of them.
The final casualty report ended on 55"
"....No."
"She was holding a flower."
"I am sorry, Saint."
————————————————————————————————————
"For being the wall between us and the monsters outside. "
- a scavenger's answer, found scribbled down and tied around a purple flower, a day after the Fallen attack.