Within the walls

29

Jean's pov

They had been interrogating Nyx for about three days now, she was apparently being very cooperative which gave hope that maybe she could rejoin us. Due to how docile she was being I was finally permitted to go and see her with Commander Erwin.

When I saw her in the jail cell I was a little surprised. She was dressed in a shirt and skirt that definitely weren't hers, her hair was in the usual messy braid and she was sat patiently waiting on her bed. Unlike the usual impatient, smiley, excitable Nyx that I knew she was calm and collected.

"Nyx, I told you we'd talk about what you were doing later." I said as I approached the bars.

She turned to me and smiled brightly.

"I didn't doubt it." She replied. "More questions commander? If you don't have what you need then you may be asking the wrong ones."

"Possibly." Erwin said. "Today is Jean's turn."

"Thank you. Its a comfort to me in this rather uncomfortable situation." Nyx said. "So, what do you want to talk about?"

"Bertholdt said that you were a desperate little kid that had been dragged into this mess, I wanna know what he meant. I don't care how long the story is, don't cut it down." I said. "I want to know how good your reason is."

Nyx sighed but nodded.

"I was five years old when I got forced into this. I was an experiment. They wanted to see how military training would affect younger children and I was easily accessible to them. I was the youngest soldier they trained because they realised how much damage it actually did from watching how I handled things. I've always been small and emotionally challenged but the military training made it worse. Constant injuries, overexertion and bad nutrition stunted my growth and made me weaker. The lack of human interaction and childhood trauma left me with emotional problems." Nyx began to explain. "I grew up as a slave, the military was a better option. If I succeeded I'd earn my freedom, if I failed at least I tried. I became a titan when I was about eight years old, it was around that time my dad started falling ill. Seeing as he's a slave too noone cared and he was left to suffer without help. I was told that if I did this they'd help him, give him the medication he needs to stay alive. That was five years ago now, I have no idea if he's okay, I could have done all of this for nothing."

Hearing all of that made me feel bad for her, Im sure there was more to her life that she wasn't telling me. I couldn't imagine being a slave or joining the military when I was practically a baby. She was trying to make life better for her and her family. Even so she's responsible for thousands of deaths.

"What about Reiner and the others? What was their reason for this?" I asked.

"We all grew up as Slaves or in abject poverty, we all had it rough. We were all promised better lives. Reiner was promised a life with his dad, Bertholdt was in the same position as me, his dad fell ill and he was promised medication for him. I don't know what Annie was offered, she's not very talkative but I do know that she desperately wants to see her father again." Nyx said. "I get that our misfortune is no excuse for the mass murder we've committed but as children that seemed like a fair trade."

"No, I get it. You had a terrible life and you believed that by doing this things would get better. You were just a kid, you didn't know what you were actually doing." I said.

"Is there anything else you want to ask?" Nyx asked.

"What did you actually do? What role did you play in the fall of wall Maria?" I asked.

"My titan form isn't the most useful thing in the world so I really just came up with the plans and gave the orders. We used it to sneak in and try and gain a reaction. We were hoping Eren and Yimir would have shown themselves to protect the people and then we could take them and leave. Unfortunately it didn't turn out that way. A lot more people died than I had planned for, I didn't expect for things to get that bad." Nyx explained.

"There's one more thing I want to ask you about, what did you mean when you said you couldn't stop them from killing me anymore?" I asked.

"Just because I turned out to have been a traitor doesn't mean I didn't care about the people here. I told the others not to kill anyone unless it was absolutely necessary, we weren't sent here to take people's lives. I quickly realised that it wasn't possible to avoid people dying, kicking in the gates, transforming and chasing down the scouts, a lot of people were going to die. So I made a new rule, noone was allowed to kill a member of the 104th, especially not you. If you got hurt or died and it was one of their faults I was gonna make their lives miserable. I would have sold them out. They knew I wasn't joking, they were aware of how attached to you I was and they had seen my reactions to other things they had done." Nyx explained.

I knew enough now to know how I felt about her. She was still my best friend. I stepped forwards and reached my arms through the bars.

"I forgive you." I said.

Nyx smiled up at me, tears welling in her eyes.

"Thank you." Nyx said before hurrying forwards to hug me through the bars.