Lauren Jones - Wall Maria: Shiganshina District
She had no words for Gabriel's trauma, he didn't want to relive it and talking about whatever he had witnessed was too fresh to discuss. Everyone around them wore the same expression: gaunt and in a state of shock. There was some rage, some terror but it was all underwritten by the sheer pain of losing everything they had ever known in minutes in the most brutal and horrifying way possible, the mind and body too strained to properly process what they had been through. She was sure that she looked the same, her mind concocting ways for Ma to still be alive, still fighting out there somewhere. Or even having escaped. Those wounds though, that she had seen before her Ma turned away, were definitely enough to push the living past their limit and into death.
They sat in silence, Lauren feeling too exhausted to see to anyone other patients just yet, and unable to think of anything to say to Gabriel, when cries around them alerted to something new. The boat was shuddering as it moved but that was cause for sighs of relief, not cries of fear and disbelief. She turned and saw the source of their despair, an Armoured Titan ploughing towards Wall Maria at a terrifying pace no other Titan had been known to travel at. Without slowing it crashed through the half closed gate, destroying it and scattering its failed guards.
"How...?" She could only stare, thinking of all the sacrifices that had been made for them to get just this far, all undone by that one Titan's act. Now the Titans would get through and hunt through the massive lands that were defenceless to their advance, slaughtering thousands upon thousands of humans who wouldn't even know what was happening and how until they were already at death's door.
She emerged from her reverie as Gabriel pushed her gently out of the way and forced himself to stand, holding his young charge like his one and only lifeline to reality. He was staring towards the Armoured Titan and the destruction all around it but was soon brought back to reality by the crying of the small life he held in his arms, tears beginning to fall down his face as something changed with him. Lauren had to dig her nail into her palm to force herself not to let her own floodgates open, using the pain to distract herself and move her into action.
Standing she firmly guided the much larger boy back to the rough bed that he had been laying on previously and had him lie down.
"You're going to stay here and rest. Pa says I need to do what I can so I'm going to do that. What you can do is rest and get better. You'll be no use later on if you have to lose that foot." She hesitated before hugging him quickly, unsure what kind of emotional gesture she should be giving at that moment, before turning away and doing as she said she would: tending to the other wounded.
It was gruelling work, some injuries far beyond her capabilities and many of the people she got to were already dead, unnoticed with no friends or relatives left to check on them. She came across a boy not much older than herself who had only just died, his parents still holding his hand and talking to him. Their eyes were empty and they glared up at her when she approached, as if they knew her presence would shatter their delusion and they wanted to bask in it for at least a little while longer. With the world falling apart around them, Lauren saw no reason to deny them that small moment of peace. She turned to her next patient, soaked in other people's blood and vomit, feeling more exhausted than she ever had before but knowing that lives literally depended on her continuing. She wanted to stop, to let someone else take over so that she could turn away from the misery in front of her but there was no one else. It was her duty, as Ma would have said.
Finally, she returned back to her Pa, finding him awake with a slightly clearer look in his eyes although he still looked worryingly pale. He looked over her appearance and almost seemed to nod in approval, in recognition of her completing the task he had set her. She checked his wound under his instruction, carefully changing bandages before finding him a drink of water before he fell back asleep.
"Law, do you know what your Ma would want you to do?" He asked, not looking up at her but instead focusing on the wineskin she had found as if it were the most interesting thing he had ever seen. She hesitated before nodding.
"I have to fight." She said simply and he nodded without saying anything. Taking another sip he passed the skin to another nearby passenger before leaning back and closing his eyes, soon falling asleep. With nothing else she needed to do, Lauren set off to find Mora, to find where her friend was, and to see if there was something she could do for her. There were some injuries she knew not how to fix but she felt that just being nearby would be the first step in fixing this one.
