When I grow up I want to be rational.
Year 849.
Eld quickly turned to Elizabeth who had stolen a piece of stew straight from his fork, before he could even know it.
All seated around a table surrounded by greenery and tranquility, the team had gathered to celebrate the success, restricted to the fact that they were all still together, of the last expedition outside the Walls.
Hange seemed particularly excited, the idea of capturing live titans thrilled her and she still struggled to believe it.
It was nice to see them all together like that, for Levi. Elizabeth had been able to give them harmony and make them live not only as soldiers but as a little family. They all loved each other, including Oluo who was so tough, but it was evident how fond they were of each other. Sure, he still irritated him imitating him but at least he wasn't directing that attitude to Elizabeth so he could rest easy.
The blonde burst out laughing as Eld grabbed her on his shoulder, spinning her around a bit with everyone's amused laughter.
Gunther stood up, stopping Eld and helping Elizabeth get back down, shocked that she wasn't feeling the slightest discomfort.
"You're not normal!"
Elizabeth looked at him for a moment, reaching for her glass to drink and moisturize her throat dry from too much laughter.
"And are you only realizing it now?"
Everyone burst out laughing again, even the Captain gave them a half smile with a heart full of joy.
"It happened here, didn't it?" Elizabeth asked leaning against a log and hoping it wasn't that log.
Levi didn't even need to ask what she meant, he could see it in her eyes. All the pain she felt for the death of their old team, that weight that has plagued both of them since it had happened and which always had a thought. The desire to be able to share their joys with them, even their marriage, was strong in their chest but unfortunately they could only hope that, wherever they were at that moment, they had at least found peace.
"Yes. I arrived late."
"The only regret I have is not telling them." Elizabeth murmured in a low voice, so that only Levi could hear her. She was bothered by Zeke's gaze, he kept studying them and listening to every single conversation they had, especially if they approached to talk to each other about something that wasn't about him. A whole month to control that idiot and obviously they hadn't been able to be together even for a moment. The lack felt terribly, even a hug was terribly desired, but they were on a mission and could not be distracted.
"Vice Captain!" Varis called her, bringing her a message that had just come for her. The blonde reached for the paper with the official recall order from Zackly, who wanted to speak to her urgently.
"What do he want?" Elizabeth wondered, turning to Levi for a moment.
"Maybe he wants to talk about that jerk over there."
"Hey, I heard you." Zeke exclaimed, noticing how Levi had raised his voice a little on purpose, this time to be heard by him. It was boring to be there, at least he could insult him as he preferred.
"Okay. Let's see what the boss want."
Zeke turned, kept under control, and in need of peeing so that Levi would take the opportunity to give a quick kiss on Elizabeth's lips.
"Be careful." he murmured looking at her for a moment, so beautiful, so close and yet so far away.
"I'm always careful, Captain." she smiled, quickly grabbing her cloak and putting it on over her black uniform with her own gear. Another reason why she hated Zeke's gaze on her. That uniform was beautiful but also very tight and, if on the one hand she liked how it hugged Levi's body, she hated how her own body stood out so that her shapes were clearly visible.
She immediately set off, where Zackly was waiting for her to speak. In town, things weren't going very well, and upon her arrival, Elizabeth could see it with her own eyes.
Crowds and screams of people inciting an uprising against the army, in the name of a boy whose face they barely knew. Eren had exaggerated and had been arrested for a reason, but certain things Hange couldn't tell them and Elizabeth couldn't even imagine the weight she was carrying all by herself. If it weren't for Zeke's presence she would have been much closer to her than she was, but she had been pushed away from her and she didn't know how to help her.
When she walked into Zackly's office she found him sitting with a newspaper in front of him.
"Sir."
"Glad to see you arrived right away." he murmured still standing in his position.
"I did it as fast as possible."
"Read this."
Zackly handed her the newspaper, letting her read the headline that stood out over the other words.
"Military clings to power by wrongfully deteining Eren Jeager." she read, then turned the page and here's another one. "Distrust in the military soars higher."
"Nobody believes in the army anymore and we can't justify Eren's arrest in their eyes."
"They see it as the only hope of salvation." he examined Elizabeth calmly.
"Yet we arrested him. You three did it yourself because you realized something was wrong."
"He pushed the whole world to wage war on us. But people wouldn't listen, would they?" Elizabeth murmured crossing her arms over her chest.
"The document is already in the Queen's hands, so it's official." Zackly announced gravely. He knew he was practically forcing her but, in his eyes, it was the only way forward. He trusted her.
"I understand. I have no possibility of objection, do I?" Elizabeth asked, breathing deeply. Pixis agreed with him but not with his way of doing it, he had tried to convince her and to show her the positive sides of that choice but she did not consider them of note.
"I'm afraid not, I'm sorry."
Before she could say anything else, someone knocked on the door and three guys from the Survey Corps walked in with a strange chair in their hands, which Zackly asked to leave there before they left the office.
"What is it about?" the blonde asked, carefully examining the chair. She understood what it was but she wanted confirmation, she wanted it not to be true. Her blood began to boil in her veins at that thought.
"Nothing in particular." he replied, then looking up at her and deciding to be honest. He trusted in her abilities and found her to be a noteworthy and trustworthy person. "You care about Eren, don't you?"
"Sir. If that's what I think it is, and I know it is, are you really going to do such a thing?"
Elizabeth's voice grew higher, completely at odds with that insane scene. She had tortured a person herself and was not proud of it, but torturing Eren would get them nowhere.
"Eren doesn't want to answer anyone and we discovered Yelena's double game."
Elizabeth raised an eyebrow with a little sarcastic laugh.
"Why doesn't that surprise me?" she asked sarcastically. "That doesn't change the fact that torturing Eren won't give you any answers. It will only make the people rebel even more if they find out."
"They won't find out."
"You are aware of the fact that you want to torture a boy capable of transforming himself into a titan by inflicting a wound, right?" Elizabeth asked again, leaning her hands against the desk. Zackly was adamant about the choice but she was adamant about her objections. She was walking on a minefield and she knew it, one wrong word and she would be kicked out of the army, but somehow the man trusted her and she could take advantage of it to try and make him think.
Zackly was at his last resort, he didn't know how to act anymore. But he also saw the concern in those two-tone eyes, and it was admirable.
"Let me try to talk to him."
"He also rebelled against Hange, do you think you can do better?" Zackly asked, focusing his gaze on her, attentive to her every move. That determination he saw in her eyes was why he called her, she had a brilliant mind and could keep a cool head.
"I can try."
"Did Commander Erwin ever mention anything like this to you?" he asked, taking the weight off his chest once and for all.
"Aabout what?"
"He has always seen very long on this thing. He has dragged you into crazy and death-filled plans for these discoveries so something he suspected. And he trusted you blindly or he would never have given you certain tasks."
Elizabeth stopped. Erwin had said something vague to her but nothing that hadn't already been made known to anyone. She, then, remembered a sentence.
"What do you see Eren? Who do you think the enemy is?"
Erwin had understood everything from the beginning, he had not believed in the extinction of humanity even for a moment of his life but he could not go against what the government itself, in a sense, taught people. He had said that careful thing that she too felt it and that she understood, but still too inexperienced to imagine such an epilogue.
"No sir."
A second knock on the door interrupted them, but this time it was Armin and Mikasa who asked to be able to speak to Eren. They too were denied the same thing and the Vice Captain was very sorry. Maybe they could really get Eren to talk, he trusted them. But Zackly did not want to hear reason and waited for the two boys to leave before resuming talking to Elizabeth.
"With all due respect sir, but what you's doing is madness. You won't achieve anything by torturing him and I know it because I saw the pain in his eyes. That boy is almost no longer feeling emotion."
"How can you say such a thing? How can that look tell you something if it's so expressionless?" Zackly asked curiously but increasingly convinced that he had made the right choice about her.
"Because for a while I had it too." Elizabeth admitted. The third knock made her realize that this conversation was over for her, and as he let the knocker come in, she took her leave, unable to hold on beyond her. A cramp in her stomach made her nauseous again, wanting to vomit but her stomach was empty. She had already thrown up what she ate on the trip and there was nothing left in it, but that feeling still wasn't going away; adding to her nervousness, it was inevitable for her to feel that way again.
As she walked out the door she found Mikasa and Armin standing in the hallway, with the first one going in her direction probably to listen.
"Tell me you weren't doing what I think you were about to do." she admonished them seriously. But the gaze of both of them was enough response. "Do you have any idea of the trouble you would be in if you were caught?"
"I would have been careful." Mikasa replied, but before Elizabeth could catch her again a loud explosion behind her pushed all three to fall to the ground, a little pushed by the force of the explosion and a little by Elizabeth's reflexes who took the two to the ground with her to protect them.
Elizabeth coughed lightly, trying not to breathe the dust that had risen around her, while another cramp took her breath away. Her nausea began to make her head spin and she was forced to accept Mikasa's help to get back on her feet.
"Are you fine?" she asked checking with her eyes that they were both okay. Having made sure that they had come out unscathed, she could look around, in the midst of all that dust and debris.
Zackly's office had just exploded before their eyes as the corpse of what was now the former General was thrown in front of the gate, where a crowd of people rejoiced. They were offering their hearts but they were giving it to the wrong actions.
And Elizabeth felt again that terrible feeling she had every time something bad was about to happen.
"General Zackly owned a 'special' chair. We believe a bomb was placed on it. He and three soldiers were lost. The culprit and their goal is unknown."
The first thing to do was to reunite with the other superiors, taking Armin and Mikasa with them. Elizabeth was happy to see Hange again, barely smiling at her when she found her in front of her, but the situation was tragic and there was no time to worry about each other. Except for Hange who, just before Nile walked in with two other superiors, made sure she wasn't hurt and she didn't felt sick.
"The volunteers were on house arrest and this one was with me all day." exclaimed Hange, pointing to Onyankopon behind her.
"Who else can be responsible for it?"
"That chair..." Armin murmured, preceding Elizabeth by a few seconds, who avoided speaking out of her nausea. That impact seemed to have upset her even more, and if it had calmed down before, now it had gotten worse, making her want to throw out of her stomach what, however, she didn't have inside it. "The General said some recruits brought it to his room."
"I can confirm, when they brought that chair I was in his office." she added the Vice Captain to help the young man.
"To the Recruits of which Corps?" Nile asked, but Armin looked down slightly, sorry he couldn't be more helpful. Except, however, Elizabeth was there and she knew.
"He didn't specify it."
"They were from the Survey Corps."
Everyone present was shocked, but the first to compose himself was Nile who, as Commander, had to keep his nerve in any situation. He paused for a moment to look at Elizabeth, who had changed so much over the years since he first confronted her, he was proud of her and her accomplishments. And also of the last reached, but it was not the time to let go of his feelings.
"Speaking of Scouts, I hear some of them leaked the info about Eren."
"It's an emergency!" a soldier ran in, alarming everyone. "Eren Jeager has escaped from his cell!"
"Mobilize everyone and find him!"
Everyone began to carry out their task quickly, while Mikasa and Armin remained paralyzed in their place. Elizabeth looked at them for a moment, fully understanding their feelings. She hadn't seen Eren since they returned from Liberio and she could never have imagined that all this would happen. She couldn't believe that this was the same guy she had trusted so much in the beginning.
"What is happening?" Mikasa murmured with a blank and lost gaze in front of her. She was devastated.
"We have lost our little titan."
"Floch Forster and some 100 soldiers and guardsvanished from the prison. They've thought to have defected time with Eren's escape. I'm sure they're behind the General's murder, too. They need a name. Let's call these anti-military insurgents 'Jeagerists' and the goal of the Jeagerists is what, Hange?" asked, after his little introduction, Nile, still and standing in front of the Scouting Legion team. The missing boys had been called back and Elizabeth was happy to see them again after a full month but, once again, the situation imposed a certain decorum and she could not enjoy the reconciliation. She was happy, however, to see that they were fine, even though they couldn't say the same about her because she was particularly pale in the face and was trying to breathe deeply.
"They're hoping to bring Zeke and Eren together. They'll reform the military with Eren on top. Murdering the General shows their resolve. It's obvious what provoked them: the military schemed to take the Founder from Eren, all without telling us."
"We knew what would happen if we had." Nile murmured, then turning his gaze to Elizabeth for a moment. It wasn't hard to understand what she was thinking, he remembered that look well and was ready to shoot.
"It doesn't change the fact that, knowing that, we could have handled the situation and prevented this slaughter."
"You in particular Elizabeth? You can barely stand up and, until a few hours ago you were with Captain Levi guarding Zeke. How did you plan to act from there?" Roeg asked sarcastically, making Elizabeth more annoyed who, mostly because of the malaise that had hit her since she drank, and then threw up, that wine could take nothing and was always at her attention.
"It acts from two sides. And Commander Hange arrested Eren for a reason. If we agreed with his actions, do you think we would have done it? Think before you open your mouth."
"In any case, many of the Jeagerists are from the Scouts. How will you take responsibilities Hange?" Nile asked, going back twith the conversation to prevent the Vice Captain from completely losing control over her nerves and doing something that would then be forced to arrest her.
"I will accept any punishment but resigning now would be an irresponsible thing to do. Besides we don't know how many Jeagerists are still in hiding."
"Indeed. there might eve be a suicide bomber standing in front of me." Roeg added again, and Elizabeth snorted visibly, rolling her eyes and ready to answer again, but she was stopped by Hange's hand on her arm.
"Roeg, don't be ridiculous."
"Can you be trusted? Until we know, we can't let you Scouts roam as you please!"
Pixis entered at that moment, with his Garrison Corps squad in tow, serious and also quite irritated by that constant bickering in front of Mrs. Azumabito.
"Hange who knows where Zeke is being held?"
"Levi and the thirty soldiers with him. Also three soldiers who deliver supplies. Lastly there are Vice Captain Elizabeth and me."
"Have those three brought here here." Pixis ordered, then passing to the Commander of the Gendarmerie. "Nile, is the Queen's residence safe?"
"Only a few know the location but I'll check it out."
"Eren will attempt to contact Zeke and Queen Historia. Protecting those two s an absolute must!"
Armin stated that, in that moment of crisis, they needed his guidance and Elizabeth, with her gaze, begged him to accept, to help her. He returned her gaze for a moment, studying her carefully and dwelling on her slightly shaking hands and decided to help her. After all, he cared about her and it was evident how much she wasn't ready yet, but she also knew that she would take the responsibilities that her role imposed.
Although with regret Pixis decided to surrender to Eren, offering the Jeagerists the location of Zeke as long as they could watch over the activation of the Rumbling. To avoid a bloodbath they were all forced to turn a blind eye to Zackly's death.
"Get moving soldiers!"
"Elizabeth , you go back to Levi. "Hange murmured in a low voice, approaching the blonde.
"But Hange ..."
"You'll be safer with him." Hange insisted, preventing her from finishing her sentence.
"And should I left you alone in the middle of this slaughter?"
"Yes, I'll be fine. We need you alive." echoed the Commander, determined more than ever to send her back together with the three soldiers in charge of communications to the forest. "You have to go on living."
"Hange..."
"Elizabeth. Please."
Elizabeth froze, Hange's gaze darkening slightly, almost pleading to listen to her. It would have been enough to order her as Commander but she had decided to take that path and she was deeply impressed. There was something she wasn't telling her but she didn't want to go against her.
"I think the Commander is right." Pixis broke in after talking to Kiyomi, looking at her as if she were his daughter. And she gave in.
"Okay, I'm leaving now."
"So now it's official." Pixis added, smiling encouragingly to give her strength, what, for the first time since she joined, she needed. She, who always gave support to everyone, this time needed it.
"Yeah. Thank you Commander, for what you's doing."
"No need. I agree with Hange, we need you alive. Especially now."
"It's called a 'gas weapon'. The gas contains some of my spinal fluid. Breathing just a slight amount makes subjects of Ymir freeze up, they can't control their bodies and lose consciousness. On my command, I send the Power of the Titan to coordinate via Paths. That's why the people of that village obeyed my orders." Zeke said, sitting on the log in front of Levi, now alone.
"It's not 'that village'. It's Ragako, don't forget the name of the village you slaughtered, you bearded shit." Levi retorted, irritated. Elizabeth wasn't coming back yet and he was beginning to worry. If Zackly had asked for her it only meant that something serious had happened and she, with everything that was happening, could be in danger.
"Well, I didn't want to do it but if I hadn't and they found out I was sided with Eldia I couldn't brought hope to this island. You know, I told you all this when I landed on the island, why do you keep asking?"
"You don't have a shred of guilt in you and it shows. You may or may not want to save Eldia but those lives meant nothing to you." Levi answered, looking at him with hatred. That man was able to break through his nerves, not even his usual coldness could do anything against him. As long as Elizabeth was next to him it was easier to hold back, also considering that for the past two weeks she was the one who took the shot with ease.
"You can't have been popular with the ladies, you think you know eveyone's feeling."
"I do know. And I was popular enough." Levi answered, barely turning his gaze. When he lived in the underground it had happened he was approached by some woman but he had always considered sex something dirty. Even masturbating was disgusting in his eyes, and if he did, it was just to get rid of that tension that was being created. His mother was a prostitute and he knew very well what that meant. He had promised himself that he would never do such a thing. Until Elizabeth showed up and screwed up all his beliefs about it.
"Oh really?" Zeke asked surprised. Levi raised an eyebrow; Was that man really so stupid that he didn't understand? Everyone had understood this even before it became a public thing...
"I'm married, you bearded shit. Why do you have those fucking glasses if you don't even see with them?"
"Mh? Damn it's true, I didn't notice the wedding ring on your finger. And I bet Elizabeth is the lucky one." Zeke exclaimed smiling. When he went to sleep they approached themselves, a couple of times he had caught them talking with faces so close that it would take very little to kiss, but he was so focused on his thoughts that he had not even noticed the little ring that led to their fingers.
"Yes."
"Anyway, when will Eren and I begin the test?"
"It's not up to me. We're waiting for HQ."
"They might think they have time to spare but they don't."
"I', with you there." Levi replied with resentment. To stop that conversation was the voice of a soldier who exclaimed something capable of making his heart beat strongly in his chest.
"Captain Levi! The Vice Captain is back!"