EREN
The quiet sips from a cup of tea were the only thing breaking the silence in the private mess hall as I sat staring vacantly at the stone wall with no one but Captain Levi for company while we waited upon Commander Erwin. It was a strange feeling, the emptiness I felt, I still hadn't gotten used to not being followed by a member of the Levi squad and at times I would catch myself looking for them only to remember that they weren't coming back.
I should have saved them.
Guilt was eating away at me. Guilt for not acting sooner, guilt for letting all those men and women die, guilt for Aurora being hurt and most of all guilt for Captain Levi losing his entire squad because I made the wrong call and now it seemed that I would pay for my poor decisions by a hushed up execution in the capital.
Nothing I don't deserve.
No sooner had we returned to HQ the summons from the capital had arrived demanding that I be handed over to the MPs, of course, that hadn't gone down well as Mikasa, Armin, Rian and an injured Aurora had begun to argue against it when Erwin had barked out orders for them to stow it and sent a very pissed off Aurora to the infirmary with Captain Levi as her chaperone.
Not that she went willingly.
"If you allow this then all this death will be for nothing!" Aurora had shouted, eyes blazing with fury as the Captain had grabbed her arm and dragged her away, "I won't stand by and let them take him! Do you hear me! I won't do it!"
Always ready to defend me, even when I am not worthy.
"What's the hold-up, Erwin is never late." Captain Levi muttered, drawing me from my thoughts, "They should be here. At this rate the damn MPs will show up, that will be our luck."
Grasping his cup from by the rim, the Captain lifted the porcelain to his lips and drank deeply before placing the cup on the table and raising one eyebrow.
"You know who can say, maybe they are all taking a shit." Captain Levi drawled, his eyes fixed on the door waiting "Duty calls right."
Err...
"You are sure in a talkative mood today." I laughed nervously, he never talks this much, well not to me anyway.
"So, what if I am. Doesn't mean I was talking to you." Captain Levi quipped before suddenly wincing and grasping his thigh in pain. Guilt washed over me anew as I watched his grimace knowing that it was my fault he got injured in the first place, just like what happened to Aurora was my fault too.
And Eld, and Gunther, and Petra and Oluo...
"It's my fault, sir, I made the choice. If I had thought it through, then none of this would have happened. We wouldn't have..." I broke off, unable to say the words as I hung my head in shame.
"You made a judgement call." Captain Levi sighed, but I couldn't bring myself to look at him in the eyes.
Yeah, the wrong one.
"Look nobody expects you to be clairvoyant-" Captain Levi broke off as the door burst open and I jumped to my feet as Commander Erwin and Section Commander Hange entered the room.
"Sorry to keep you waiting." Commander Erwin apologised as he approached the table and rolled a large map of an outlier district with big, bold letters at the top across the flat surface.
Stohess?
"Sir?" I asked confused only to do a double-take when Rian, Armin, Jean, Mikasa and Aurora entered the room.
"What the... why are you all here?" I stammered as Aurora moved around the table to place her hand on Captain Levi's shoulder briefly before taking a seat just like all the others did.
Why are they here but no one else is? what is going on?
"We believe we have uncovered the female Titan's true identity. She won't slip away this time." Commander Erwin declared.
What!?
"The day after tomorrow we will be passing through Stohess district on route to the capital, that's when we will strike. It will be our first and only chance to do so, once we have set foot in the interior, the government will assume custody over Eren and the scout's authority to continue operations will be limited. Thus unless we wish to concede defeat, we must flush out the enemy now so here's what we do." Commander Erwin continued as my heart began to race, "While in Stohess, we will use Eren as bait, luring the target into this underground passage. The deeper, the better, get her well beneath street level. That far down she should be easily immobilised even in Titan form. If she transforms before reaching the tunnel, then at that point she will be your responsibility Eren."
What?! What if I fail like last time?! What if I'm not strong enough?! How many more will die?!
"If she does transform, we can lead her here, it's a choke point, and we can place more traps to contain her." Rian pointed out on the map before turning his gaze to me, "Provided Eren can flush her to this position."
He knows I'm weak...
"If not, then we can." Aurora added as she leaned forward and splayed her hands on the table, "Mikasa, Rian and I can herd her like sheepdogs by cutting off her exits, and when the time is right, I will cut her leg muscles and immobilise her for Hange to play to with."
Is she crazy?! The last time she moved against the Female Titan, she almost died!
"It means we will have to be there when she transforms to push her the way we need her to go and we will also need the other scouts to be diversions, so she doesn't catch on to what we are doing." Aurora continued as she turned her head towards the Commander with a single thick eyebrow arched and a dark smirk on her face, "That is if you just want to contain her, I'm still on board for killing her"
A broad sinister grin spread across Hange's face as she rested her arm on Aurora's shoulder and peered down at the map on the table as a slight feeling of dread spread down my spine looking at the two women as they plotted war.
"Look at you thinking ahead." Hange praised, and Aurora turned slightly to look at her with a look of pure wrath.
"Yeah well I'm done fucking around, the bitch has this coming." Aurora snarled making me flinch at the venom in her voice and a scoff of amusement sounded from the end of the table and looking to the source I saw the same grim smile on Captain Levi's face as he looked at Aurora.
They are all out for blood...
Confusion racked my brain as I struggled to understand how we got to this plan in the first place because last time I checked we had our asses kicked and had returned with our tails between our legs without a single lead to go on, so what the hell had changed?
"How do we know she will be in Stohess?" I asked, "And what are the chances that she will bolt before we get there?"
"Low" Commander Erwin replied, "She won't risk going AWOL."
Oh god.
"Wait you mean she's...." I trailed off as the impact of his words set in. She was one of us, she was a soldier.
"Armin identified her. She's an MP, likely responsible for the deaths of Hange's test subjects and a fellow trainee in the 104th cadet corps." Commander Erwin explained, and my mind reeled at the shocking revelation as I looked to Armin for answers.
"You can't be serious!" I cried out in utter betrayal, "I trained with her?"
"I'm sorry, but yes." Commander Erwin lamented, his eyes steadily holding mine "She is one of us."
Please don't be anyone I know...
"No, it can't be," I muttered in disbelief as my heart clenched, did one of our own really do this?
"Her name is Annie Leonhart." Commander Erwin condemned.
ARMIN
"You think its Annie?" Eren asked in wide-eyed disbelief before his face suddenly filled with anger, "Where is your evidence? Tell me!"
I had asked myself that same question over and over again after coming to the realisation that the Female Titan was Annie, a fact which did not sit well with me. I hadn't wanted it to be her, I had tried to argue against myself only to find my resolve strengthened with each appraisal of the information we knew. In the end, the answer was clear. It was Annie.
"Obviously the female Titan knew what you looked like before she attacked, plus she reacted to my use of your suicidal maniac nickname. Something only our classmates would know but the biggest reason I suspect her is I have strong reason to believe she's the one that killed Sawney and Bean." I explained as calmly and clearly as I could, but one look at Eren and I knew he wasn't going to truly accept this until he saw it with his own two eyes.
"You're kinda going out on a limb there..." Eren shook his head in refusal.
"Killing two titans at once requires a precision ODM strike, it only makes sense the killer will have used the gear they are most familiar with." I continued on despite his protest because he needed to hear this, whether he believed it or not.
"But there was that whole equipment inspection." Eren countered, "Annie's totally checked out."
And there lies the betrayal.
"Except the gear she presented, it wasn't hers, it was Marco's." I testified, catching Jean's darkening expression out the corner of my eye at the implication of Annie's involvement in our friend's death.
"What are you saying? What's Marco got to do with all of this?" Eren demanded an answer that I could not give him.
"It's unclear," I mumbled, unwillingly to delve down that rabbit hole at this current moment but knowing that one day we would have to.
"Maybe you need to get your eyes checked!" Eren shouted as he slammed his hand down on the table and glared daggers at me and I felt my stomach sink because It hadn't been too long ago that he had said he trusted my judgement, that I always chose well no matter how ugly things got.
Guess he's changed his mind.
"I know what I saw." I defended, hurt more than I was showing.
"Okay, we get it." Captain Levi snapped putting an end to our argument, "Do you have anything else on her, anything like concrete evidence perchance?"
"Nothing sir." I sighed, knowing I had nothing else to give, after all, what we had was circumstantial at best, but I knew in my gut I was right, even though I wanted to be so wrong.
"There is the fact that she looks like the female Titan, that's something isn't it." Mikasa offered offhandedly, and Eren let out a snarl of frustration as he turned on her.
She isn't wrong.
"What the hell is wrong with you?!" Eren seethed, not sold on that bit of evidence, "What kind of evidence is that?"
"So basically, we are going after her without proof." Captain Levi surmised as he looked around the table for any disagreement, of course, he found it with Eren.
"You're kidding me right this is insane, what if it's not her, what if she's not the monster you all say she is?" Eren ranted as he shot peeved looks at everyone around the table.
He is going to fight us on this all the way.
"If it's not her, she will be cleared. End of story." Mikasa monotoned and Aurora nodded in agreement though she was watching Eren with veiled eyes.
What is she thinking?
"No one wants to condemn her least of all me, but either we make a move on circumstantial evidence, or we sit back and let the central government condemn you." I declared. In all his protests and accusations, he hasn't once thought about the danger he is in if we don't find the Female Titan soon, so focused on saving Annie he was failing to see the path being laid out before him.
And make no mistake, the central government will kill him.
"And if we lose you, we lose everything," Rian stated with a sombre look upon his angular face, speaking for the first time since he entered the room and though usually, his words held weight with Eren, it seemed today they had the opposite effect.
"I thought you and Aurora could feel Titans! You've both met Annie, and neither of you suspected anything!" Eren accused as he shot glares at Aurora and Rian, and for the first time since coming into this room, I found myself doubting. Why hadn't they felt a Titan shifter?
"I believe that may be your fault Eren." Commander Erwin interjected, and all eyes shot to him in confusion.
What has that got to do with Eren?
"What?" Eren sputtered dumbfounded as he cast his eyes between my cousins and the Commander though it was clear to see Aurora and Rian were none the wiser to what the Commander meant.
"Aurora and Rian grew up with you, had no reason to fear you." Commander Erwin theorised, "I suspect that over time, their bodies adapted to the feeling of a Titan shifter being near and as such their abilities don't respond to a Titan shifter in their human form. A desensitisation of sorts, and a massive drawback for us in this current situation. It makes identifying Annie on that alone out of the question."
That made perfect sense, after all their ability was based purely on an instinctual fear, not unlike that of when prey senses a predator, not that Aurora and Rian were prey, far from it but it wasn't dissimilar. Growing up with Eren would have been like acclimation on the ODM gear, feel it working enough times then the fear simply goes away. That being said, Commander Erwin was right, this aspect of their ability was a huge drawback for us, had they been able to sense a titan shifter in human form we could have avoided so much bloodshed.
And avoided what is to come.
"I can't believe this" Eren exasperating in disbelief as he once again looked at all of us with disgust.
"Eren, this is the only way." Rian attempted to reason with him, but Eren only shook his head in anger.
He's not listening.
"Do you even hear yourselves you're talking about Annie?" Eren stressed as if we had all lost our minds, and maybe we had, but that didn't change the truth.
"Eren don't stand there and tell me this conversation doesn't ring any bells." Mikasa needled, her eyes dark and dangerous "You fought hand to hand against the female titan, was there anything about her techniques that seemed familiar?"
"I don't-"
"Guilty, innocent it doesn't matter, none of it does because right now in our walls Titan spies are actively contributing to the genocide of our people!" Aurora slammed her hand against the table and fixed her burning eyes on Eren, "They breached Wall Maria, destroyed our home and slaughtered our people by the thousands, and you're sitting there with the power to change all of it and your crying about what needs to be done? I wish I could give you a better way, but this is the hand our enemies left us with. They hide among us wearing the faces of allies all the while plotting our downfall and if we don't flush them out now then that's it, the walls fall, we lose everything, and there won't be a fucking thing we can do about it! We don't have time to play fair, and we sure as hell don't have the manpower to push them back again if Wall Rose is breached, not after Maria, not after Trost and not after what that bitch did to us, so we are going ahead with this, with or without you because we don't have a choice!"
Silence fell as Aurora's words hung in the air and judging by the look on Eren's face as he stared at her, he too was feeling the weight of her charged words. Not for the first time, I found myself marvelling at the sway Aurora held over others without ever herself realising, but one look at the Commander told me he knew. He knew and was counting on it.
"So, what is it going to be Eren, are you with us or not?" Rian demanded as he broke the heavy silence, not just for himself but for everyone in the room and all eyes turned to Eren.
"I'm with you."