Visions of the past
Engraved to the bone
We bury our dead
Until they find you out
There's nowhere to go

- Koda
Mikis

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MALEVOLENCE

Chapter 2: Putting Out the Fire with Gasoline

("No dreams, only rage and body pyres." – Jean Kirschtein, in regards to the inquires of recent nightmares induced by stress, anger, and regret)

"You're lying to me!"

The tears are streaming down her face. He's grasping her shoulders to keep her pinned against the wall as he screams over her, the years of pent up grievance and scorn and animosity exploding through his every vein. She is that innocent girl again – the trainee that was ruthless by nature but propitious in her heart, toxic with her words but kind with her lips – but he will not let her win him over, not again, not after all the nightmares she's tormented him with and the people she's killed.

(Butchered Petra and Erd and Auruo and Gunter like swine to the slaughterhouse).

"Please," she pleads as she tries to shrink back, disappear into the wall, and fade from his life once more. A mysterious entity that exists outside of his reality. He can touch her but he cannot feel her. "I don't know what you're talking about!"

"STOP LYING TO ME! That's all you've ever done is lied to me!"

"What are you – I don't"—she suffocates on a sob that claws through her closing throat—"I don't, don't – I don't know what you want!"

"I want the truth, Annie, I want…" He chokes on an acute inhale of breath, and his exhale comes shakily. "I just want the truth… I need to know."

"Know what?" she whispers, with her toxic words that slither through kind lips and eyes that wither him cruelly, like spearing decalescent icicles through his chest again, and again, and again, and again for every soldier he's failed to save because of her.

"You know what I want…"

"I don't… remember what you want. I don't remember. I don't remember!" She grasps either side of her throbbing skull and gradually sinks to the floor – and he lets her fall, just like before – as her words become hysterical. Repetitive. "I don't remember… I don't remember…"

Honest.

"I don't remember…"

Her forgotten thoughts become the truth.

"I don't remember…"

And all the broken pieces of himself that he's scraped together just to keep the tendrils of his sanity alive – they crumble to nothingness alongside her memories.

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The next morning comes too quickly, Mikasa thinks, but she doesn't dare bother to say anything about it to break the terse silence already situated amongst every present body in the room. She fiddles with the tails of her scarf instead, waiting peevishly for someone to speak up before her, and realizes that the cause of their awkward tension is the fault of the blonde Titan Shifter sitting just out of earshot of Levi's gathered squad.

"That's absolute bullshit."

And there it is. Of course Jean would be the person to get the first word in.

Six pairs of eyes watch Annie from the other side of the infirmary ward as Hange tends to the girl's physical testing, asking her about movements in her limbs and quizzing her on common place ideals, such as color matching, identifying shapes, and labeling objects around the room. As soon as the remark passes through Jean's lips, however, the intent stares fall right on him. Eren doesn't bother to pay the other soldier any mind, instead opting for keeping his attention on the Warrior seated on the padded slab. She glances at him briefly, waves slightly, and he politely returns the gesture, even though looking at her irks a familiar bitterness in his chest.

"You're telling me this bitch forgot who she is?" Jean drones on, crossing his arms over his chest as he leans back against the wall. "You really expect me to believe that?"

"There's no telling just how much she can't remember," Armin responds, "but as far as I can tell, she isn't making this up. She can easily turn into a Titan and escape over Wall Rose, into Maria territory, yet she hasn't."

"Maybe she can't recall how," Sasha voices after lightly wrapping her arms around waist.

Connie scoffs in disbelief. "Or maybe she's waiting for the perfect opportunity to flee, like when we're all nice and comfortable around her again."

"Comfortable?" Jean echoes indignantly. "Last time we were comfortable with anyone Annie killed twenty-nine people, and we lost over fifty men reclaiming Eren from our psychopathic pals Reiner and Bertholdt. If we're lucky she won't kill us while we're sleeping tonight. I vote we ship her ass off to the inner wall, let the Military Police execute her, and we'll package her head to Historia in a little box with a fucking bow."

"I'm afraid I am inclined to agree," Armin affirms without hesitation.

Eren leans his shoulder into the rigid surface of the granite wall to keep himself grounded. His stomach churns at the thought of attending a public execution, flinches at the imaginary sound of the guillotine slicing through the thick vertebrae of Annie's neck with relative ease. A deafening crunch. "Let's give her the benefit of the doubt," he tells them after a beat of stillness. "We don't have to trust her, but she's also our only real lead towards the Titan in the Wall."

"The only lead we need is that key around your neck," Jean barks back, jabbing his finger against Eren's sternum where he hits the crest.

Eren back-hands his wrist. "It's a key to the basement, dumbshit, what could my father possibly have hidden down there that's any relevance to the Titans in the Walls?"

Jean grunts under his breath. "We don't know. That's why we even went on that stupid expedition in the first place. And how did that end? Oh yes, that's right, with her"—he gestures to Annie who glances back at them quizzically—"slaughtering thirty percent of the troops, the incapacitation of our Captain, and Armin bled from his face for a straight half-hour!"

"Keep your voice down," Armin stresses, gently grasping Jean's forearm. "Look, she hasn't been awake in Heaven knows how long"—

"Twenty-nine months and fourteen days." They all give Eren a sideways glance and he quickly presses his lips together, opting out of informing them the only reason he knew this was because he's punched her crystal each day equal to the number of days since she cocooned. ("When are you going to stop hurting yourself like this?" He almost laughs bitterly at the empathy in Mikasa's voice.)

His arms ache in pseudo-pain as he remembers, between all the events and the countless times the void has consumed him, the way his bones would shatter like a human's but heal like a monster's, just to be broken again and again until he was too tired of existing between the conscious world and the unforgiving darkness. Eren stares down at his hands and flexes them, curling his digits into tight fists so he can observe the way his mended bones press against the cage of his flesh. I hit her crystal that night with eight-hundred and thirty-four punches.

He gazes at her longingly. Is that how long it took to get through to you, Annie?

Armin clears his throat. "Alright, it's been twenty-nine months and fourteen days. Amnesia comes as no honest surprise, but what's truly bewildering is how little she actually remembers. The rate at which she recollects her memories could be slow, might take months or even years… that renders her and all her previously valuable information useless to us."

"So in the end, the Military Police is our only option…" Connie scratches the back of his neck as the uncomfortable conclusion sets in. "Sorry but, I'm siding with Eren on this one. She's our best lead."

"Connie," Jean says gruffly, "this might be difficult for you, but think about this logically. She could remember anything at any time, and if she remembers how to shift, who knows how many people she'll kill."

Something grim, defensive and almost malicious broils behind Connie's glare as he gestures accusingly at the opposing soldier. "I know I'm not the sharpest tool in the shed, Jean, but at least I'm not a selfish asshole like you! We all know this isn't about anyone but Marco."

"Shut up!" Jean snaps when the comment hits him right where it hurts. "Don't you dare bring Marco into this!"

"Come on, guys!" Armin stresses. "Don't do this now!"

"Why?" Connie shoots between them, but his attention remains fixed on Jean, "because I'm right?! You don't give a rat's ass for anyone's life but your own! You have some personal vendetta against her because she possibly killed Marco, and all the horseshit you're spewing from the gaping hole in your face can't mask the fact you're a self-righteous prick who only cares about himself. You joined the Scouting Legion for you, yourself and your glory. So why don't you take your logic and throw it to the wind with the rest of Marco's ashes!"

"Connie!" Sasha exclaims, but the boy doesn't pay her any mind.

"I'll break your fucking neck!" Jean seethes, stepping towards him rapidly until they're within arm's length.

Connie narrows his eyes into daggers. "Bring it."

Levi is studying his team from his seat in the ward's desk chair, which he had pulled up beside the examination table, as Sasha steps between the two and breaks them up with a firm demand, pushing Jean back towards Armin and Connie towards Eren. Divided. And Mikasa looks at her Captain as if to say, 'See?'

Several minutes of utter quiet and the group's silent fuming later, Hange approaches them from the other end of the room. "Good news is she's physically fine. Unfortunately, she has some severe amnesia. She can't remember anything before waking up from the crystal, not where she came from nor where she is now, and the events from last night are very blurry to her."

"What now?" Sasha asks. "She wasn't lyin'. But that just leaves us back where we started, and with someone who can't control her Titan form."

"Whatever," Jean says decidedly over an exasperated sigh, storming quickly towards the door. "Do what you will; I don't want any part of it. I have some damn horses to feed."

"Wouldn't want your family to starve!" Connie snaps at him as he leaves.

Glimpsing briskly between the boys until the former is out of sight, Sasha casts her gaze onto Mikasa who returns with an equally troubled expression, and then passes back to Eren as he abandons them in favor of Annie still sitting quietly across the infirmary. The tension thickens in wake of the abrupt silence. "I'll get 'im," she declares finally, breaking into an immediate jog for the door.

"Why are you defending Annie?" Armin questions Connie, a scrutinizing gaze fixated on him almost injudiciously.

"I'm not saying I'm thrilled with her," he amends in return, "but she's still a person, Armin. I could be like Jean and blame her for the shit I'm not even sure she's connected to, but there is no force in all of Wall Rose capable of bringing me to hate her, especially not when we both know she hasn't always been a monster. Right now there is a confused girl whose life is being dictated by us, and she doesn't understand why. It makes me sick to think you and Jean are so willing to send her to the chopping block."

"She's dangerous."

"She's a human being."

"Forgetting you massacred a bunch of people doesn't excuse you from doing it."

"What makes you think she had a choice?"

Armin doesn't bother to respond to that, not when he reflects on what Eren mentioned to them before. 'She accused me of killing her mother, of lying to her and making her do something very, very horrible.'

Eren exchanges his look between them and Mikasa, but his sister passes her gaze to the floor as if telling him that she has no input on the topic, and Connie stands defensively three steps away from Armin, directly at his side. He doesn't bother to diffuse their tension and instead turns on the ball of his foot to face the other end of the ward. He approaches Annie, perching himself onto the chair Hange had previously occupied.

He isn't surprised when she flinches away from him. "I won't hurt you," he says reassuringly. "I'm sorry about yelling at you last night. I just had to be sure you weren't fucking with me."

Fucking with him – she had to be, because there was no way she could just forget, not when they needed her – when he needed her, needed her truth. But, shit, he shouldn't have grabbed her like that, shouldn't have been so cruel even as she broke and cried beneath him. I made the infamous Annie Leonhardt cry. A pang of guilt stabs into his gut like the jagged blade of a dagger, then acutely twists, and cuts deeper. What a cruel thing indeed.

"It was still a little much," she concedes, drawing up her sweater hood. Regardless of just how much she could actually remember about her life, she is still Annie – (friend, enemy, traitor, monster, murderer) – and Eren recognizes that she's feeling insecure.

"I'm sorry."

"Okay."

He really did fuck up. "Alright, I'll just skip straight to it then… What can you tell me?"

"About what?"

"What's the first thing you remember? Anything at all, no matter what it is."

She presses her lips into a thin line and crosses her hands on her lap. Several moments of pondering later she finally answers. "My name is Annie L-… Leo…hear… Annie Leonhardt. I remember now. Annie Leonhardt."

"Good."

"I'm…sixteen years old."

"Yes."

"…That's all I know."

Eren furrows his brow. "You mean… literally? All you can recall is your name and age? How about where you are, where you're from, your training? How about your birthday? Favorite color?"

She glances at the floor. "Too many questions…"

"Sorry."

Levi crosses one leg over the other. "You sure have a way with women."

Eren lets that comment slide, especially since he isn't wrong (he ill-humoredly imagines Annie affirming that statement with one of her own retellings of the past, but that's just stupid of him). "Regardless," he drones, raking his slender fingers through the tangles in his adumbral bangs, "at least tell me how much you remember about the Titans."

"A…what?"

"For the love of fucking Sina…"

"I told you she's a blank slate," Hange informs him with her typical matter-of-fact suave as she rounds around him and presses her palms to the boy's shoulders. "Alright, I need to finish my exam! All men must clear the room!"

"I don't think it's a good idea to leave you alone with her."

"What am I doing to do," she muses as she impels him towards the exit, "experiment on her? Take all of her minor organs and sell them on the black market?"

"Knowing you? Yes – WHOA!"

Eren stumbles out the room into the force of her shove. A moment later Connie follows suit, but he's worse with his balance and he ends up slamming shoulder-first into the opposing wall. Levi and Mikasa show themselves out before either of them became her next victim, and finally, Hange pushes Armin out into the group, gives them a predatory grin, and hurls the door shut.

They stand in a collective reticence for several moments in the awkward aftermath. "Fuck it," Eren mumbles, sauntering off down the hall, "I'm taking a walk to… clear my head, or something. Whatever."

"On the bright side," Armin chirps, giving the remaining members of his team a sideways glance, "at least Annie can grow back whatever Hange takes."

He doesn't expect anyone to laugh, but it still unnerves him when they don't.

"Just, uh," he chuckles nervously, "just kidding…"

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"Jean! Jean, wait up! Let's just talk about this!"

Sasha follows Jean like a shadow despite his rapid pace as he powerwalks across the castle's courtyard, traversing the limestone platform towards the stables with a storm in his wake. "What's there to talk about?" he snaps over his shoulder before he slams open the shed door. In the stables several horses rear their heads at the abrupt shift in atmosphere and the several new recruits have to catch them by their reigns to keep them calm.

"Jean-!"

"Quit following me! I don't want to hear it!"

Sasha watches him gather several bales of hay by their binds and tow them from the tower to the floor boards. "I know you're upset about Annie," she continues undeterred, "we all are. But you can't allow your feelin's to be justified by the hunch that she had anythin' at all to do with Marco."

"What makes you think this is about Marco?"

"'Cause you flipped out over 'im."

"Yeah, well, I wasn't in the wrong! Connie never should have brought it up!"

"And you shouldn't've insulted his intelligence. Sure, what Connie said was messed up, I'll agree with that. Marco was your best friend, but…" She glances down at the scattered straw crunched beneath her boots, brittle stalks crippled agonizingly in the presence of her weight. Snapped in half beneath a force they cannot fight again. She thinks there's a metaphor for her team in there somewhere. "…I get the impression that maybe he was somethin' else to you."

"What does it matter, Sasha? Mikasa was something to me, Marco was something to me, the Scouting Legion was something to me – what Connie said was messed up but it was right. There's not much I have left to care about in this world and all I have to look forward to every morning is an over-glorified death on the battlefield of a war we aren't winning. We will never win. I know this but… I still joined the Legion both for Marco's memory and so I wouldn't be forgotten. To help Humanity? More like help myself."

"That's… that's not true…"

"Eren's right about me, you know; I'm a disgrace, not a soldier."

"Jean!" Sasha exclaims, grasping his forearms. "Don't you ever think about yourself that way! What you're doin' is the greatest sacrifice anyone could ask for, and you're better than the rest of our class who all defected to the Garrison in pure fear of the real enemy! And you did it for Marco, for Eren, for a better future for yourself; that's not selfish! That doesn't make you a disgrace! It's a choice and it makes you human."

"But what if I made the wrong choice, Sasha?!" he snaps, and an almost immediate silence consumes them in a veil of painful truth. His amber gaze diverts to the floor in shame. "I think about it more often these days – how I'm afraid that I enlisted in the wrong branch, how I'm just as afraid of Titans as the next soldier, how I might be too afraid to act when my team needs me the most, how I don't trust myself enough anymore to know if I'll run the other way like a coward…"

"Fear is a human quality, that doesn't make you a coward…"

Jean ponders that for a brief moment. "Hmph. Then I guess that means Eren has always been a monster, huh?"

"That's not funny."

"It's not a joke."

Sasha's eyes flicker briefly to something over his shoulder. The shadowed visage of the mysterious figure obscures her ability to pick up on any major details of who it might have been, but she hopes it is just a wandering soldier and not an eavesdropping Eren. "Don't blame 'im for your own misfortunes, this isn't his fault."

"Then whose is it, Sasha?!" Jean barks, breaking from her hold and slamming the underside of his foot against the nearest post. "Who's the one keeping us from going on our stupid expeditions into Maria when we're humanity's last hope?! Who's the one we swore to protect when he treats our sacrifices like we were born to be ants crushed beneath boots?! Who's the one who got Erwin Smith killed?!"

"None of that matters!"

"It does when he acts more like one of those things than a real human being!"

"Jean-"

"I swore my life to a selfish asshole who's going to throw it away like everything else we've worked for!"

"Jean."

"I'm not going to end up like Erwin and die for the wrong goddamn cause!"

Something feral surges through Sasha's body like liquid fire. "ENOUGH!" She exclaims, and just like that Jean's jaw slams closed. She draws back with a barely audible grunt of what might be disgust. "Don't tarnish Erwin's name like that. It's not right."

The following moment of quiet settles uncomfortably between them.

Sasha presses her hands to her waist. "Look, I know you. Remember the leadership you demonstrated in Trost? It may not have been flawless but it was the best we had and you did it. You lead us. You saved us. You could have abandoned us but you didn't. Trust me on this… you'll pull through when we need you most. You're far from selfish. And when it all comes down to it, you made the right choice."

Jean scatters his anger with a furtive sigh. "Okay, I'm sorry…"

"You damn well better be. And don't doubt that Eren is capable of all the same things, 'cause he always comes through for us and he asks for nothin' in return."

A meager smile ebbs across Jean's lips. "I get it, I get it, you don't need to nag me to death. I'll try to put a little more faith in him, in this team as a whole, and in myself from now on. It's what Marco would want." He gratefully clasps the arch of her shoulder. "Thanks, Sash…"

"I do my best. Here, hand me that bale, I'll help you feed the horses."

Unbeknownst to them, the shadow figure from before is pressed back against the right barn door that they had left ajar, arms lightly crossed and one fist playing with the gilt basement key.

The duo of soldiers emerges from the inner sanctum, and Sasha notices the figure several paces later, swinging around to face him with a start. "Uh, E-Eren! Hi!"

Jean pauses after her, but when he meets Eren's impassive stare, his clutch on the ropes tightens. Eren has never looked at them so stolidly before now – it's unnerving, to say the least, to watch as their friend's trust in them wane away like smoldering embers, a once jubilant passion like the burning mouth of a cigarette being crushed out against a cobblestone railing.

He pushes off the wooden division. "A monster."

Jean winces. Says nothing.

"Not human," Eren continues apathetically, voice too steady, too level, too calm. "Erwin's death is my fault. I'm incompetent. I don't value anyone's life but my own."

Sasha glimpses at the silent soldier beside her before passing Eren an empathetic glance (or maybe, if he were to rip her chest open and inspect the very fabric of her muscles and the networks of her veins, he'll notice that she's always, always pitied him. Pitied him long before they were recruited to the legion. Pitied him long before Trost ever happened). "Oh, Eren… he didn't mean it."

"Of course he meant it. Everyone else does, so what makes him any different?"

The shifter turns acutely on the ball of his foot and takes off in the other direction, back for the castle. Sasha bites on the plush of her calloused lower lip until she punctures her flesh. A taste of copper explodes across her tongue. She wonders about how Eren bites himself to turn – shedding blood to transform into a monster, offering up his humanity to become what humanity hates most so he can save humanity.

And then she realizes, perhaps too late, he hasn't transformed in two years and denied Hange her tests on his Titan form. So why, why, are they still calling him monster? Because he hasn't been protecting them? Because the monster is always right beneath the surface of his skin, and all he needs to do to awaken it… is break through his human flesh?

Or is it…because there's something they missed? She missed? Something that has been right in front of her very eyes. Something that is probably not even in his control, like his mentality or his emotions.

Something –

"Oh my God," she whispers, dropping the bale of hay to the dirt as revolt hits her with the force of a landslide. "I gotta go! Sorry Jean!"

"Sasha!" he exclaims, but the hunter is already disappearing down the path in Eren's wake, leaving Jean with a sudden gorge of unease in his chest.

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A/N: I can't believe this story is receiving such positive feedback, you guys are the greatest! If you liked this chapter for any reason or every reason, please take the time to leave me a review!

Recommend it to everyone you know and watch them break into a thousand pieces! It's also great for reading aloud to the whole family!

1: Sasha's dialect with the accent is heavily inspired by my own because there wasn't too much to work with in the manga, so I coupled the slang with the common traits of hunters and farmers. It's supposed to show she's not afraid of being herself, nor is she embarrassed by her origins, so she no longer talks as politely as before. Hope it doesn't annoy you guys, sorry.

Alright, Eure out~