A/N: Originally posted 5/12/2014. Another creative writing assignment I had to do for my English class, though this one is a bit older. There is so much about this I would change (for instance, I wanted to originally have it be a lot... gorier than it ended up being), but alas, I am too lazy to change it now. To clarify before confusion sets in, Dr. Jaeger in this is GRISHA. Not Eren.
The sound of chains clanging against cement echoed throughout the cell as Reiner sat down. The chains seemed to weigh heavily on him, even with his brawny build, and one might even think the chains were beginning to become psychologically taxing as well. However, this was not the case- he didn't feel a single shred of remorse.
Reiner leaned back and closed his eyes, images racing past. The war-ravaged land. An enemy aircraft. Whispered words into an earbud. An endless siege of bombing. A hundred corpses amidst a defiled building. These were what made up the weight on his shoulders. Yet, even remembering the gory details, he regretted nothing.
The sound of a metal door creaking open finally triggered him to open his eyes, allowing him to see a tall, black-haired man be pushed into the stall next to him. "Bertholdt," Reiner grunted once the warden retreated, "Is that you?"
"Yeah."
Reiner sighed in relief, "I wasn't sure if they'd be splitting us up or not."
The man called Bertholdt shifted uneasily in his cell, rustling the chains that were clasped around his ankles, "I don't think Annie is going to be with us in here, though. They probably put her with the other women."
This was something Reiner had already assumed, but he understood that Annie was a capable woman and would be fine on her own. All that mattered was that he at least had Bertholdt with him. After all, he was one of the people who had helped him with their plan, along with Annie.
Reiner closed his eyes again, taking everything that had happened in. The judge's words still rang in his ears, as if the man was standing right before him.
"Life in prison." A punishment said to be the cruelest fate you could place upon someone. Even the death penalty would have been more humane- a quick death, rather than a long, drawn-out sentence. For a man of 25 it would feel like an eternity. Reiner knew, however, that this punishment fit his crime very well. Committing treason against one's country during a war-time period was supposedly the most heinous crime one could commit- and Reiner, Bertholdt, and Annie were all guilty of doing so. Each had led an attack on their own squad, initiating the launch of bombs from enemy aircraft, resulting in hundreds of casualties.
The three kept very close throughout the resulting trial and above all, they shared one thing in common: none of them felt a morsel of shame for their actions.
The prison the three had been placed in was not a "normal" correctional facility. It was an extremely high-security building, tailored to house the most horrendous criminals and was aimed at "fixing them", using whatever means needed. Because most of the prisoners were never expected to leave, the public would not hear of anything that happened inside. This meant endless hours of torture for some prisoners, as an excuse to "get them to see their wrongs".
It was painstakingly obvious that Reiner, Annie, and Bertholdt were going to be incredibly hard to break. Reiner was a hard-headed burly man, clearly the type who would not easily give in once his mind was set. He maintained a relatively steady head, though it was obvious that, if triggered, he was a nightmare to deal with. Annie, though small in stature, had the mentality of a lion and seemed to be absent of compassion. Constantly maintaining the same expression, she was incredibly hard to read, which often led people to misjudge her true emotions. Bertholdt was tall but obviously a very nervous person. He seemed to be the type who couldn't hurt a fly, yet he was in prison for the same crime that Reiner and Annie had committed. This unnerved many of the psychiatrists he spoke to, seeing as he looked to be constantly on the verge of a nervous breakdown, nevertheless, he refused to allow the barriers guarding his mind crumble.
The three spent their time in a close-knit group, refraining from speaking to the other prisoners. Even though they did not always speak when together, it was clear they gained comfort just from being around each other. Otherwise, their days were the same as any normal prisoner.
About a month into his imprisonment, after hours of time spent with a psychiatrist, Reiner was finally subjected to "repairs". A guard took him from his cell and marched him off to the examination room, where a woman was waiting in a swivel chair.
"You are Reiner Braun, correct?" the woman adjusted her glasses as she eyed him curiously. When Reiner nodded, she proceeded to inspect his body, feeling the lean contours. "You are very well-built," she nodded, stepping away, "We will have to use a less traditional method."
The smile she wore was unnerving as she handed him a pill, which he promptly swallowed. The technology that had been developed in recent years allowed the pill to start acting in mere minutes, the illusions rapidly intruding his mind. Before Reiner realized, he was back in the demolished building, surrounded by mountains of corpses. He started to see red as something thick distorted his vision. Wiping the blood out of his eyes, he raised his hand to see patches of flesh peeling off, revealing rotting, putrid tissue. He backed up in shock, only to stumble on a corpse of one of the fallen. Maggots began to eat away the skin on his arms until they were ridden with small holes and quickly began dispersing to other parts of his body. A few crawled up along his neck, taking bites along the way, and started eating away his face. The last thing Reiner saw before everything went black was a blur of a maggot eating chunk after chunk of his eye.
When Reiner opened his eyes, he was back in the examination room with Dr. Zoe, his body drenched in sweat.
"W-what was that?!" he looked up fearfully at her.
Dr. Zoe smirked, "Just your own remorse, eating away at you from the inside out."
A guard came in and escorted Reiner back to his cell, still shaken from what he had seen.
Meanwhile, in another room in the prison, Bertholdt was enduring a different kind of torture. A particularly sadistic doctor by the name of Dr. Jaeger was in charge of Bertholdt's "recovery", but unlike Dr. Zoe, he enjoyed physically inflicting the pain himself. Bertholdt's screams rang down the hallway as Dr. Jaeger held a burning iron to his skin. The feeling of the scorching metal searing into his flesh drowned out all other thoughts, including those of his crime. When the iron wasn't enough, Dr. Jaeger set down the rod and plucked a pair of tweezers off the operating table, pinching one of Bertholdt's toenails and slowly pulling it back, revealing the raw flesh hidden below. Bertholdt howled in pain as each toenail was slowly removed, Dr. Jaeger stalling to make the pain last longer. The doctor smirked and released Bertholdt, forcing him to walk back to his cell on his swollen feet. Once Bertholdt finally made it back, he collapsed onto his bed, aching in pain.
Annie's experience was a lot different from Reiner and Bertholdt's. She was about half the size of Bertholdt and could obviously not handle as much physically as he could. Due to this setback, the doctors at the prison were forced to come up with a different method of torture. Instead of using direct pain or hallucinations, the doctors decided that starvation would be the best route with her. Thrown into a lightless room in a far corner of the prison, Annie was deprived of food for nearly a week, with only a single bread crumb given to her every day. She refused to allow the doctors to believe they were the victors, remaining quiet and calm, though her insides felt like they were being mutilated. When the week was up, Annie returned to her cell, looking incredibly frail.
The torture continued for months, each time something different so that the three were unable to become accustomed to any specific pain. Their mental barriers stayed intact, not allowing the pain to convince them otherwise.
However, about a year and countless trials of pain later, Dr. Zoe devised a way to truly shatter their inner walls and expose the guilt that lay beneath. She had the guards bring Reiner and Bertholdt to her examination room, where she cuffed Reiner to a seat. Meanwhile, Dr. Jaeger laid Bertholdt onto a bed and strapped wires to his feet, tongue, and hands. Reiner watched as Dr. Zoe sent electric shocks through Bertholdt's body that caused him to shake violently.
Reiner began to desperately attempt to remove his shackles in an effort to save his friend from the pain, but it was useless. "LET HIM GO!" his booming voice rang out through the halls, but the doctors merely laughed. "I SAID, LET HIM GO! PUT ME IN THERE INSTEAD!" Reiner continued to yell, though his efforts were futile.
Finally the two doctors ceased the shocks and removed the wires, allowing Reiner to cease his cries. He was breathing heavily, throat hoarse, as he slumped forward. Dr. Zoe giggled and released the two back to their cells.
The walk back through the hallways seemed abnormally long for Reiner. His thoughts were hazy, but more than anything, he felt weak. A headache pounding at his consciousness, he stumbled into his cell and crumbled to the bed, closing his eyes.
The emptiness was quickly swapped with the images of carcasses he had grown accustomed to seeing, but something was different this time. A woman's voice called from somewhere in the distance, gradually drawing closer.
"Have you seen my son..?" a sickly elderly woman waddled closer, looking at the remains of the fallen. "I cannot find my son…" she sounded lost and lonely. Finally she walked up to a corpse and rolled its head to look at its face and smiled forlornly at it, "My brave, brave boy…" She removed a scorched cross out of his breast pocket and held it up to her heart, whispering something quietly, before tottering up to Reiner. "Excuse me, sir," she looked him directly in the eyes, "Do you know what happened here?"
Reiner paled at her question and averted his eyes, "Yes, ma'am, I do."
The old woman smiled, "Did my son die valiantly?"
At that moment, Reiner's whole world stopped. What was he supposed to tell this woman? 'Your son died because I decided to turn against my people'?
He swallowed, a lump forming in the back of his throat, "Of course, ma'am. He died serving his country- an honorable death."
Reiner's words seemed to please the elderly woman, as she simply nodded and shuffled away.
As the woman became a moving spot in the distance, Reiner opened his eyes with a start. The old woman touched him, forcing him to realize exactly how much damage he, Bertholdt, and Annie caused. The weight came crashing down on him like a piano from the 40th floor of a building.
He rolled over, attempting to block out every emotion that was breaking through his defenses, but it was no use. The screams of agony echoed in his ears, and he imagined hearing Bertholdt scream that way. He saw the debris fall from the crumbling building and pictured Annie as the one who was crushed under the weight. A bomb went off before his eyes and he saw Bertholdt take the impact. Everything that had happened to these soldiers, their families and friends- it was all his fault. Families torn apart- and for what reason? He could not even recall why they had betrayed their fellow soldiers. Was it for money? Was it for power? Was it for revenge? Was any of that honestly worth the cost of hundreds of lives?
"No," Reiner whispered to himself, "It wasn't worth it."
As the guilt created knots in his gut, Reiner slammed his fist against the concrete wall. He was empty, easily manipulated and turned into a puppet. The worst part was that he did not care. What happened to him, at the time, had not been a concern of his. It probably would have never been a concern of his if someone had not put Bertholdt or Annie in danger in front of him.
Suddenly it hit him why the doctors had pulled this side out of him. It wasn't to make him a better person- Dr. Zoe and Dr. Jaeger could care less if he was a good person or not. They wanted him to suffer, to see exactly what he did wrong and have to live with it for the rest of his life in prison. That was what all of the torture was for- to bring out the compassionate side that actually cared. To make him suffer, as he deserved to.
And it worked.
Reiner flipped over onto his back, "Bertl, are you awake?"
A quiet grunt sounded from the cell next to him. Bertholdt was awake, but just barely.
Reiner sighed, "Are you able to listen to me or are you going to fall asleep?"
"I'm listening," Bertholdt said quietly.
"Alright, well… Listen carefully," Reiner took a deep breath, "I've come to realize that I have made a mistake and a rather large mistake at that. We made an enormous mistake."
"Do you mean our crime or becoming friends?" Bertholdt sounded incredibly worried.
Reiner shot back his reply, "The crime of course!"
Bertholdt laughed slightly, "Okay, okay. I'm glad to hear that."
"Glad to hear what…? That I don't regret our friendship or that I do regret our crime?"
It took Bertholdt a minute before he replied, "Both, I guess."
"So you have come to regret our decision to kill all those people as well?"
"Yeah," Bertholdt's reply barely came out a whisper.
"I never realized…" Reiner looked at the wall again, "I never realized the magnitude of what we actually did. I simply saw it as a job. We were offered the opportunity and took it, without realizing exactly what we would be doing or where it would land us. I didn't care, as long as I was with you and Annie. This place has changed me, though. I know what it is like to have the both of you at my side, but now I also know the feeling of what it would be like to watch you taken away from me. And I cannot bear to think of it. After everything we went through, for one of you to just be gone one day. I saw what it would have been like to lose you and Annie in the bombing. And it really got to me."
Bertholdt sighed, "When I was laying on that bed and you were watching me as I was being shocked, I pictured what it would be like to swap places. For it to be you who was being shocked and I having to watch it happen. Just the thought was unbearable for me. There is nothing I would not do for the two of you, but above all, there is nothing I would not give to take back the one incredibly stupid decision we made. But we did make that decision, and now we have to live with it."
Reiner shifted uncomfortably, "We will have to admit to finally understanding. If we do so, we may be able to get them to stop torturing us."
"At the very least it should tone it down a bit," Bertholdt sighed.
When the guards came to bring the two of them to Dr. Zoe a little while later, Reiner had a full speech prepared. They entered the room and Reiner stood before the woman and began, "On behalf of Bertholdt, Annie, and I-"
"So Mr. Braun," a stout man with a thick accent continued gruffly, "Do you and your two friends accept our proposal?"
Reiner looked up, as if deep in thought, "I am sorry, sir, but I do not think we can accept it."
The man nodded, "Anything I could do to get your to change your answer?"
Reiner shook his head sternly, "I am afraid it is too much of a risk, and after a long discussion, it just is something we simply cannot do."
"Well that's too bad," the man sighed, "The three of you would have been perfect for the job."
"Oh, I know," Reiner nodded. "Sorry this was unable to work out sir."
The man grabbed his bags and handed them off to the flight attendant, boarding his flight. He waved solemnly at Reiner, who walked back toward the waiting area, where Bertholdt and Annie were waiting.
"So, did we get the job?" Bertholdt questioned.
"Nah," Reiner patted him on the shoulder, "It wasn't all that it was cracked up to be."
Annie looked at him, confused, "But you seemed to be so interested in doing the job before you walked over to him. What changed your mind in that short of a time?"
Reiner shrugged, "I thought about it for a while and realized that there were probably way more consequences than positive outcomes. Why risk our lives for a little bit of money when we could be stuck in prison for the rest of our lives."
"But it was a lot of money, Reiner."
"I would rather be able to actually live for the next 60 or so years of my life, not cooped up in some nasty prison. Have you heard of what they do to people in those places?" Reiner looked at the other two seriously, "You didn't completely want to go, did you? You're okay with me choosing not to make the deal, right?"
The other two shrugged and Annie grunted, "If you really have that bad of a feeling about it, then I am fine with not going. I would rather find better jobs here than have you so paranoid you screw something up."
Reiner playfully shoved her and smiled to himself as they exited the airport. Annie was still as grumpy as always and Bertholdt was his usual jumpy self. All he wanted were for things to stay the way they were and, not taking that job offer, he was pretty sure they would not have to worry about that problem for a long time.
A/N 2: I apologize for the cliche ending.