The Injury Conundrum

The Trost Incident Pt.1

In all fairness, Eren had been having a pretty great day.

He'd finally 'graduated'-although he technically still wouldn't be an official soldier until the graduation ceremony-and in the top five no less!

He'd been somewhat blindsided by Annie's sudden decision to switch over to the military police, as it had been something they'd talked about quite a bit beforehand and after a bit of convincing had agreed that their powers would both be most useful and the least noticeable outside of the walls on large expeditions. Yet the day before graduation she'd come to him, claiming that the more she thought about it, the more she believed that it would simply be better if Eren went on expeditions while she stayed inside the walls.

She claimed that if something like the fall of Wall Maria happened again-and walls was that an awful thought-then it would be better to have their resources split. One shifter protecting the outside and one protecting the inside.

Personally, Eren thought that this was slight bullshit, as if they teamed up to effectively protect the outside of the walls the inside wouldn't even need protecting, but after a fairly long argument he'd conceded, as he realized that there was no way to convince her.

To him, it was the coward's way out.

He'd never thought of Annie as particularly cowardly before, hell he still didn't, but he could always tell that as much as she acted like she didn't care, at the end of the day she wanted to please people. She wanted them to be happy and proud of her.

Now this was hidden behind many, many layers of apathy, and it wasn't as if she was afraid of disappointing a person to get her own personal goals, but he could certainly see it in the way she'd ask people if she did a good job instructing them. How she'd spend far too much time investigating a topic that the commander would even somewhat praise her on. How she'd pick a fight with Mikasa over any comment that even implied that her training was ineffective.

It wasn't easy to see, but it was there.

So when Annie came to him, cool and collected on the outside but with a couple nervous ticks, telling him that she was no longer going to join the Survey Corps along with her explanation, the dots connected themselves.

'She probably doesn't trust herself enough.' He thought as he lay awake in his bunk, the day before graduation. 'She doesn't trust herself to be on the front line, to have all those people dependent on her.' and Eren really couldn't find it in himself to blame her that much.

But That didn't mean that he was at all happy with the decision.

Over the year or so that they had been training together she had become something more than a simple ally in the world of titan shifting, she'd become a genuine friend. Someone that he'd have no problem with telling his doubts and worries to, and due to the nature of them, probably the only person.

So suffice to say, he'd miss her quite a bit, but any lingering emotions he had about the whole issue were swallowed up by the pure joy he felt because he was going to finally join the Survey Corps !

Ever since the night of graduation he'd been somewhat lightheaded at the thought because, really, this was his childhood dream! This was what he'd been planning for years, and through all of the people who said he shouldn't do it, that he couldn't do it, he'd continued to work and work and finally he was here.

Standing atop the walls along with the members of the garrison to get a feel for what a job in that division would be like, and he'd by lying if standing up here didn't give him a new respect for the members of the garrison.

As he continued to help clear out a cannon, he peered over the side a bit, seeing all of the mindless titans scrape their blunt fingernails against the wall, and suddenly got a bit of vertigo.