Alright it's been a few days, but heres the next chapter of Awakening, through Reiners view this time. Bit of a time skip, but we will meet a few of the newer characters we've seen from the Marley Arc in the next update. After one or two more chapters from this PoV, we will switch back to Eren, Annie and the others. I will have timeskip in a few parts, but I will let you all know when it happens and how far or back they are from where the manga is now. As usual drop a review. Let us begin.

Inheritor

Reiner did it, he actually survived the consequences of failing the mission to Paradise. Ymir played a large factor in his sentence, along with his sworn loyalty that Marley recognized he had from then to even now. With that, he was glad to be returning home, but did ask to be present at the transfer of the Jaws Titans power. It would take place in a few days, so he was allowed a few visits with the "prisoner" as she was referred to. He approached the brig and the guard outside the hallway leading to the cells.

Since it was underground, even shifter prisoners were not seen as much of a threat away from the sun and in such small cells. It was no bigger than an average room and completely bare, save for the bed attached to the wall and the sink in the left corner. Reiner wasn't too surprised at this, after all Marley took no risks when it came to one of the 9 rebelling and trying to escape. Plus if what he heard about Eren before his trial, it was a concept that seemed to work best.

He came to stop in front of the bars, looking at the freckled girl inside who seemed asleep. In a few days she would be eaten, her power transferred back to one of Marley's warriors, justice for her crime. "But is it justice to punish someone who never committed a crime, much less knowingly? If that's the case you should've been executed at the age of 12 Reiner, after all that's when you received your armor. And you did it with full intention. Tread carefully on who you judge.." Soldier mused in his mind, but warrior didn't return the words with a reply.

He called out to her, not very loud but loud enough to be heard. If she was asleep, then he would let her be. After all, like she bitterly told him on the boat "Oh I'll have plenty of time to sleep once I get back to your "hometown" now won't I? Besides I think I've slept long enough." The girl had known what would happen to her if she came, and yet she chose it still. 'Why?' he thought, and he heard soldier and warrior ask the same thing quietly to themselves, not arguing for once.

"Ymir? Are you awake?" No response, and he begins to turn and leave when her voice stops him. "Aw coming to say goodbye to little old me? I'm touched Reiner. Some lucky girl you'll meet will appreciate that kind of personality...or should I say: personalities." She sits up on her bed to look at him, and for once it isn't really contempt, but more dark humor. She's not making fun of him, but she's trying to get a point across. He smirks and goes to retort when he stops, as he takes in her face.

He's never seen such a defeated looking face, so empty with such dead looking eyes. He thought he saw despair on Eren's face when he thought he was dead during the Shinganshina battle, but this...this was true hopelessness. Her face still had a small smirk, but it didn't reach her eyes. She looked resigned to her fate, and knowing he brought her to it began to creep up on his mind. He shook his head to clear it, and came to talk with the girl like he intended.

"So..how are you?" He asks, unsure what to say in this situation. The way he says it apparently amuses Ymir, as a smile begins to tug it's way onto her face. She starts to chuckle low, before it starts to turn into full blown insane laughter. Tears actually come from her eyes as he watches, and he gets a momentary chill of fear run down his spine. Even the sarcastic laughter he always heard her give sounds broken, lost to a void that the girl must've felt. She finally stops and wipes her face a little, but a few tears come down from her face.

"Oh I'm just peachy big brother Braun. Only a few more days till I'm free from this curse they call life. I guess I'm just...waiting for it to come. But enough about me, how are we doing Reiner? Have you finally decided what to do with yourself? What you can live with, or who to live for? Because I know you don't have that much time left, just like me. So what's it gonna be?"

Reiner looks at her, and once again feels that tingle of fear. He's not afraid of her, but he's afraid of what she's said. She knows he's conflicted...and somehow she also seems to know he's fighting for someone else. That someone else was his mother, Katrina and his little cousin Gabi, who recently began to show interest in joining the warrior program. If he didn't have them, the soldier inside him might've turned long ago, and the warrior would never have resurfaced in his mind.

He just wished that things were different, all because he didn't really know who he was anymore. He was two people in one, and he had to chose who to become. 'Warrior or soldier? Who am I?' He decides to answer Ymir with the best way he can describe it, but stares hard at the ground.

"I'm...I'm alive. That's what I am. I don't know who I am anymore, and I don't think I ever did, not really. I'm just doing what I have to to live on. That's the best I can word it." He looks up to see her giving him a warm smile, and he gives her a confused face in return. He's never seen this given to him from her before, and it's almost surreal to see it.

"So I guess you finally get it, you see the point I'm trying to make. You understand why I went with you now, don't you?" She asks him and he shake shis head, more confused than ever. She shakes her head and rolls her eyes at his ignorance, and he sees now the familiar face she always had back in the cadet days. She huffs and gives him a look that he takes as important words.

"Listen closely. Deep advice time from dear Ymir." Soldier crooned in his ear, and warrior gave a noise that signalled resignation. He gave her his full attention as she looks at him with another look that showed pity and brokenness for him.

Reiner, I can say this only so many ways before it gets tiresome. You need to be who you are, but to do that you need to decide. Be the Warrior for Marley and suffer till you die for a cause you know is a lie. Or be the soldier you know you enjoyed being and fight for what matters to You, when the time comes. I'm not gonna be here to help you decide what to do, but at least I can know that I tried to save someone else who lived a lie all their lives because it's all they knew."

He looks at her, and asks a question he's been itching to ask since she came with them when she knew she could've been free. "Ymir..why did you come with us, even after you saw Eren use the coordinate? You could've stayed with Historia and the rest, and told them the truth about the outside world. I know what you said to me and Bert about being a goddess, but it still doesn't make sense to me."

She gives a sad smile, and chuckles a little as she likes back on her bed, as if to look at the stars. She reaches her hand up to grab the pearly lights like she had done atop Wall Maria. But the only thing she sees before her is the dull brick of the underground cell, no freedom this time, nothing to look and run towards. "You saw what I wrote in my letter, my past right? What I was before I went into that nightmare?"

He nodded as he recalled the tale of how she was given a name too big for her, a name that all Marleyeans hated and forced Eldians to associate with Devil. Ymir Fritz, the first Titan shifter, the girl he was raised to believe made a pact with the Devil for a power he possessed a ninth of. The woman who made the world as it was today before her death, the death that waited him soon enough.

The girl before him unknowingly became a symbol, an icon to be worshipped..and hated. She continued "Like I wrote, I went along with the lie to save others, to matter to them. And when it backfired on me, when I was sentenced to Paradise, I thought it was a punishment for lying to myself into thinking I mattered to anyone. But than you came, and I was free, free to make the right choices now that I had a second chance. Eventually I met Historiaand saw myself in her. I tried to save her, by telling her to stop trying to please others for lies.

I wanted her to be herself, to be real, to be what I wasn't for so long. And finally she did, she took back her name, she confessed to me after I showed my secret to you 4. And I guess I wanted you to do the same, because I saw you were like me in that regard as well. You believed a lie all your life, only to find out the lie you lived there was in fact the only truth you've actually known. It's hard I know, but I guess I just wanted to be the good person again, even with all the shitty things I've said and done.

She saw that side of me and still fought for me, and I'm sure that if she were to find out about yours, that she would stick up for you in some way as well. I just wanted to be the good person that Historia saw me as, even when she knew I wasn't. And it felt nice..to do that for you and Bertoldt. I know you two had no choice but to go on what you might have not believed, but what your realities were. So before I drag this on much longer just please, please be who you are no matter what.

Don't let your sins or your situation stop you from running towards your future, your freedom. Just promise me that you'll decide Reiner, even when I finally go. Promise you'll do the right thing when the time comes."

He looks at her and feels ashamed at himself for doing this. He reaches out to her and she raises an eyebrow at his hand, before walking her way over. She touches his hand and he tells her low "Ymir..I promise, to Historia, to them...I'll do the right thing. It may not be right now, but it will happen. That's the best I can promise you. Again I'm sorry for this."

She gives him a sad smile while looking at the ground, and it reminds him of Annie the one time he ever saw the girl smile. It had been for Eren after dinner, and he overheard her offering to teach him how to fight properly. If she could show emotion for someone, he could promise Ymir this.

She looks up and gives another sad smile, and walks to her bed. "Guess thats all I can ask. Thank you Reiner."

He nodded, and bid her goodbye.