Before I Leave You

the worst kind of monsters

You stand leaning against the black metal railing of your home's rooftop, alone, a lit cigarette in between your fingers. Above you, the sky bleeds a crimson red and orange as day gives way into night. You look out over the smog-infested city, to the bustling streets below.

Children are scurrying back home as shops begin to close for the day. Men and women of all ages cross through the unpaved roads as they return back from work, sidestepping out of the way every once in a while to let a random member of the aristocracy drive on by in their rumbling automobiles.

Before your father came into power, the Founding Sector had been nothing more than a rundown, underdeveloped, pathetic excuse of a city. The ones in power were the only ones who ever knew what it was like to live comfortably. Slaves to their greed, they fed off the weak like ravenous vultures, all the while the people of the Founding Sector grew ever the more weak and powerless.

Your father—forced to grow up under such a corrupt and broken system — learned from a very early age how the world worked.

And the world belonged to the strong.

You were either the one in control or the one being controlled.

It was for this reason your father, a mere young working class man with nothing to his name save his wit and desire to succeed, refused to submit to the unfavorable hand he had been dealt with.

You draw your cigarette to your lips and exhale, your sharp eyes easily locating your father's legally owned businesses and properties across the city like landmarks. You think of the illicit activities taking place from within most of them and your eyes narrow.

You will not deny there are days when you are sick with guilt. Sick with death. When your mind aches for solace and peace even though every drop of blood you've ever spilled screams you do not deserve it. But then you gaze out into the powerful city your cunningly ambitious father has managed to rule over through violence and fear and intimidation, and you're reminded of why the line between right and wrong does not exist for people like you.

You never asked for this life.

Neither did your father, or Levi, or Mikasa, or any of them. But the world has never apologized for forcing you all to walk down this dark and weary road, so why should you?

The strong devoured the weak.

That was the twisted reality. So your father found a way for this rigged bureaucracy to serve him instead. If that meant crime was to continue running rampant across all Sectors of Paradis, than so be it. At least he would be the one in control now.

And you...

You were to make sure it stayed that way.

Eventually, the streets below begin to clear out and the clanging of construction and manufacturing companies begins to die down as street lamps and late business signs flicker to life across the Founding Sector.

Meaningful footsteps sound behind you moments later. You don't need to turn around to know they belong to Mikasa.

"The appointment you requested with the journalist has been scheduled for eight o'clock tomorrow morning," she informs you, coming to stand beside you to look out over the city.

You flick the burnt ashes from your cigarette with a tap of your ring finger, letting the wind catch them in its midst, before taking another smoke. "You sent the invitation under my father's name as I instructed?"

Mikasa nods. "Will he need to be taken care of?"

The corner of your lip curls. "Not yet."

Based off what you wrote in your invitation, Marlo Freudenberg, a journalist for Paradis Times, thinks he is meeting with your father tomorrow morning in his office, Ymir & Co., for a brief one-on-one interview, which is why he responded so quickly. Your father is not one to entertain the prying questions of many journalists, after all.