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The shattering of stones split his ears. Interspersed with the uncanny moans of the titans, it was a cacophony of the worse kind, promising only a gruesome demise. As surely as the sun continued to rise beyond the horizon, he could feel the slouching footsteps of his death approach. In his last moments, Connie felt no sense of inner peace. The tower shook mightily, causing him to fall over the battlements. Staring into the titan’s waiting maw, the sheer terror that lay coiled in his stomach came forth and struck.
He woke up in a silent scream. Sweat clung to his peach fuzz hair like morning dewdrops, sliding down his back and soaking through his undershirt. He blinked away the images, willing his eyes to adjust to the familiarity and banality of the barracks.
It was not the first time Connie had woken up from a nightmare, and like many veteran members of the Survey Corps, he had developed his own set of coping strategies. Jean was his bunkmate, and even through the pounding in his ears, he could pick out the heavy snores coming from the upper bunk. Post-nightmare was the only time Connie was ever grateful for his friend’s snoring: he could use the steady rhythm to moderate his breathing and calm down the jackrabbit pace of his heart.
The past few months, Connie and most of the remainder of the 104th had been assigned to building out Paradis’ first rail line. Lacking in the danger and turmoil that was the Survey Corp’s normal fare, the task was nevertheless more physically exhausting than most anything he had encountered since his old cadet days. After a long day on the tracks, the fatigue in his bones settled over him like a lead blanket, keeping the bad dreams away as even his subconscious rested for the next day’s hard labour. Connie had even entertained the notion that his nightmares were gone. He should have known better.
In a way, it’s a bit odd that that night at Utgard Castle is the most prominent feature of his bad dreams. It doesn’t compare to the newness of the terror he felt during the Battle of Trost. Neither does it compare to the slaughter that was his first expedition or the recapture of Wall Maria, the raw horror that was Rod Reiss’ titan form, or his heartbreak when he had returned home to Ragako village. Maybe it was the sense of powerlessness as he’d stood in the tower without ODM gear. Perhaps it was the slow sense of approaching doom as the night wore on.
In his years of cyclic nightmares and post-nightmare sleeplessness, Connie had fixed on what he thought was the worst thing about that night. He’d shouldered the sheer intensity of that night at Utgard Castle with eight other people, and all had, in their own ways, left him.
After the disastrous run-in the 57th expedition had had with the female titan, it had been easy for him to forget how capable the Survey Corps was against non-shifter titans. He had been reminded that night in an unforgettable way. Nanaba, Gelgar, Lynne and Henning swung down to attack again and again in perfect sync, only the blur of their blades twinkling in the night. Steam rose around the tower circumference as their kill count grew higher and higher.
Alas, as skilled as you might be at dodging a titan’s swat, none can escape a bombard of rocks as thick as a hailstorm. As their comrades laid Lynne and Henning’s bodies out on the tower roof, he had felt through his grief and shock how unfair the whole thing was. Lynne and Henning had survived countless dozens of titans. To be killed by a stupid rock, of all things? It felt so pointless that he wanted to scream and shake and break the tower apart stone by stone. Unfortunately, the night wasn’t over. Connie would learn that there were worse fates than a quick death.
Try as he might - and he never tries - Connie only has a vague recollection of Nanaba and Gelgar’s ends. He remembers the screaming of course, piercing even through the tumult. He remembers Nanaba calling out for her father, and Gelgar for alcohol. He remembers thinking that a projectile rock, in all its coldness, is preferable to the animal hunger of titans. No matter your kindness, intelligence or strength of character, all is stripped away by the raw horror of being pulled apart into titans’ jaws. The titans would not spare Nanaba her cool head, nor Gelgar his irreverent humour. Connie hated how, even aside from the death they inflict, the titans kill the precious little dignity a person might keep for their last moments. In the end, one of the bravest, most collected people he had ever known cried out for her dad to save her.
Afterwards, he had known in his heart of hearts that he would die. If it weren’t for Ymir, he probably would’ve. In the 104th, Connie had known her as sassy and laid-back, ready to fire off suggestive double-entendres to anyone in the vicinity but Historia in particular. This was in sharp contrast to the titan creature she transformed into, attacking viciously in an almost primal way, ferocious in her goal to protect those that were precious to her. She had shielded them from the titans and the tower’s collapse, only to end up grievously injured. In the tumultuous events of the next day, he never had the chance to process all that she was and all she had done. Then she had chosen to leave, and in the frustration of that moment, his last words to her were to call her titan form ugly. Years later Connie wonders, if given the chance to see Ymir again, whether he’d cuss her out or thank her first. He knows it’s never to be. Historia had shown them Ymir’s last letter, and he knows the girl with the freckles is gone.
If Utgard castle had changed his perception of everyone else, it had only strengthened how he had viewed Reiner and Bertholdt. As befitting the perpetually second and third-ranked cadets - and really, there was no shame placing behind Mikasa - they had stayed calm as things devolved. Reiner had sprung into action to save Connie from an ambushing titan, barely flinching as he manhandled it out the window with Bertholdt and Ymir’s help. The two had saved his life.
After the Survey corps had arrived to rescue the cadets at Utgard, in a moment of hazy post-traumatic frivolity, Connie had thought about how great of a war story this would make. It was incredible that they survived. With their luck and Reiner and Bertholdt’s capableness, surely they would live to be old men, remembering Utgard as an especially crazy moment of their military careers. He and Reiner would trade boasts, embellishing their respective roles in the affair, while Bertholdt would sit there smiling and nodding but saying little. When they calmed down, they would remember Lynne, Henning, Nanaba and Gelgar, bearing the weight of their sacrifices between them.
He had read the intelligence briefings about the outside world and Marley, but they did little to temper the warmth of the camaraderie he had felt for the two, nor the pain of betrayal. He knew that, somewhere across the sea, Reiner was a weapon, wielded by an enemy country against all of Paradis. That didn’t stop Connie from feeling that Reiner had to answer to him personally for betraying his trust. The moments of genuine brotherhood, his gut telling him that it wasn’t just acting on the Marleyan’s part, served as a whetstone for Connie’s bitterness towards the man.
Surprisingly, most of his anger towards Bertholdt had disappeared with the warrior’s death. At the time, Connie had been so relieved Armin would survive that he had barely thought about his death at all. Looking back, the man had confirmed in his last moments that their friendship had been genuine: struggling limbless as the Titan Armin moved to devour him, Bertholdt had cried out relieved when he saw his cadet buddies from the 104th, believing for a split second they would save him.
Historia, of course, had not really left. Leagues away in Mitras though, and with all the duties of queen, it was hardly as if the two of them could have long therapeutic discussions about what had happened. What’s more, Connie had experienced most of that night with Krista Lenz, and Krista was gone. Nightfall had seen the caring saint of the 104th ripping off part of her skirt to use as a bandage, while sunrise saw an uninhibited girl screaming at Ymir to smash everything to pieces goddammit and lead them all straight to hell. Historia, independent and assertive, bearing the crosses of Ymir and her father's deaths and the burdens of being queen, was almost a different person entirely. It was not for a monarch to fixate on the tragedy of one night, when she had orphans to rescue and her subjects to shield from the implacable hatred of the world outside Paradis.
In any case, Connie suspected that night meant something a bit different to Historia. It was Ymir’s love letter to her, as surely as the piece of paper Reiner had delivered to them, and that was something Connie would never be able to share.
As Connie’s heartbeat slowed, he relaxed into the stillness of the barracks. In the other bunk in his room slept Armin and Eren, whose soft breaths were as distinct to him at this point as Jean’s snores. Mikasa and Sasha were probably asleep in the room down the hall, the seven bowls of stew Sasha wolfed down at dinner inevitably having sent her into a food coma. They were his best friends and his family - even as Eren had grown more distant lately - who he had shared almost ever wild experience since their cadet days. His time at Utgard, however, was one that Connie bore alone.