Reiner watched the sky darken to purples and blues with increasing anxiety. His stomach felt as though it dropped down below the horizon with the sun itself. Annie would be waiting for them behind the woodshed soon, and she hadn't looked pleased at the prospect when she'd stopped him after equipment maintenance.
"Tonight. Don't get sidetracked," she'd hissed in his ear. The implication being that he would get sidetracked with Krista. He wished he could do that instead of slipping back into his warrior persona. Being a soldier in her presence was becoming much more enjoyable. The thought of how he'd dismissed her after maintenance ate at the corners of his mind. He couldn't risk speaking to her so soon after Annie's warning, but he hoped it hadn't bothered her. It had certainly bothered him.
They never had long to discuss their plans and preparations here. The training was designed to schedule out each increment of time in the cadet's day so that they were molded effectively. They had taken to meeting during chores or during times designated for changing or grooming. The last two months or so had granted him a reprieve from their scheming, and a break from his double life, as the snows had been too deep for Annie to travel. His Soldiers uniform had settled comfortably across his shoulders during the break, and he found that he didn't entirely like taking it off. It was a better fit than his Warriors clothes, always too tight and too big at the same time. Too ill fitting. The Soldier role, however, fit him like a glove.
As the horizon swallowed the last streaks of gold, Reiner pushed himself off the cabin stairs and made his way casually towards the wood shed. Deep pockets hid his white knuckled fists as he strode for nonchalance.
They were already waiting for him, in deep conversation with each other. They made a pretty picture, Bertolt almost bent double to whisper fervently to her, stars beginning to peak out over head. The couple even froze and fell silent when he approached, both staring at him in wariness. All that was missing was their hands clasped. But this wasn't an interrupted romantic rendezvous. This was a covert military debriefing. His stomach flipped over on itself.
"Look who finally decided to join us," Annie drawled, and Bertolt straightened quickly, a hint of blush staining his cheeks. Maybe it had been more romantic than he thought?
"I told you I'd be here, didn't I?" Reiner replied defensively. Inwardly, he winced at how childish he sounded, but he closed the gap between them anyways, closing in the triangle and crossing his arms.
"I'm glad you came Reiner," Bertolt smiled cautiously, and he felt a sharp twinge of guilt. Bertolt trusted him, and while he knew he hadn't betrayed that trust outright, Reiner knew he hadn't been the friend he'd deserved.
"Thanks Bertolt," he smiled back, and let his gaze flick down. "Alright Annie, what's up?"
Half lidded eyes blinked slowly in his direction. "What's...up?"
"Yeah. What did you find out?" Reiner fought the urge to tap his foot impatiently. The air was chilling around them as night descended. Annie observed him in silence for a few agonizing moments before answering.
"I couldn't make it far last night. The snows haven't cleared enough for wall access yet." A small shrug ghosted across her frame, spiking Reiner's already mounting frustration.
"Then why are we even here?" he snapped.
"Why? Have somewhere better to be?" Annie asked dryly, and blinked at him again, long and slow. Silence stretched, a gaping maw between them that Reiner struggled to find a method of closing. Bertolt did it for him.
"I'm sure Reiner wants to be here, Annie," he said softly, cutting her a quick look. "Please continue."
She stared at Bertolt, and Reiner wondered for a moment if she would refuse to speak on sheer principal before she began again.
"I made it to the village to the west."
"Dauper?" Bertolt clarified, and Reiner could see the location on the map in his mind. He had memorized the layout of the walls and villages as soon as they'd arrived- they all had. Training had cemented the knowledge to the point that he couldn't help the images from flooding his mind as they spoke. There was only one problem.
"Yeah, I think so."
Now he didn't just see places and names. He saw faces.
"Sasha is from Dauper," he commented absently. He couldn't stop seeing the faces of the people he'd met plastered over unassuming dots. Dots could be conquered and catalogued. Faces were more difficult. The other two were staring at him, one with unsurprised annoyance, and the other with confusion. "What?"
"How do you know that?" Bertolt asked, brow crinkling as he tried to puzzle it out.
"I heard her talking to Krista one time," he deflected, and mentally throttled himself for bringing her up. Keeping her required more discretion than he had just shown. "Just keep going ok?"
His comment didn't go unnoticed, but Annie chose to ignore it to continue with the debriefing.
"No one had anything interesting to talk about other than the usual. The King passed some new tax law no one is happy about."
Bertolt nodded, deep in thought. "Unsurprising. There's still too many mouths to feed in here. They must be looking for a way to keep up their supply of titan fodder."
"Come on, Bertolt," Reiner hedged, and shifted his weight on his feet. Regardless of the truth of his words, it made him...uneasy to hear them said so casually. Even if he had repeated that same rhetoric scarcely weeks before. They continued on as though he hadn't spoken.
"I'm going to scout Hermina next week. The snows should be clear by then. It's another pocket city like the one we smashed the first time," Annie continued, ignorant to the stab of guilt that ripped through him at the reminder. A dull ache started at the base of his skull.
Bertolt hummed in consideration. "Could be useful. What do you think Reiner?"
Two sets of eyes swiveled in his direction. He felt his face heat under their scrutiny. And he made a choice.
"Do you-" he began and cleared his throat. Even to his ears, he sounded scratchy and unsure. "...do you think smashing another wall will actually draw out the Attack Titan?"
They stared at him again, and as the tension drew and snapped, the Warrior part of his mind knew he had made a mistake. Screamed at him to reconsider, to say something. Anything. The Soldier watched on silently.
"Are you doubting your own plan?" Annie finally asked, her monotone dripping with disdain.
"I'm just saying," he replied hastily. What was he even doing? "It didn't work the first time, and it's been four years so far."
"So what? Our time here was a waste?" she snapped, and Reiner could feel the monotone deserting her. Harsh tones began to creep in, a sure sign of her fury. "Marcel's death was a waste?"
His resolve shrunk in the face of her raw emotion. "No, I didn't say that," he corrected in an attempt to backtrack.
"You might as well have," she sneered. "You told us to trust you, and we did. You got us into this mess."
"I still think we can draw the Attack Titan out," he assured her, hands up in supplication as he struggled to put words to his feelings. "I just...don't think more people have to die."
"Excuse me?" Annie began, but Bertolt placed a gentle hand on her shoulder. Tagging in.
"Look, the death bothers me too. But this is our purpose," he reminded him, eyes pleading. "We were honored when we were given this mission. Marley chose us."
"Not him," she barked. Bertolt winced and looked away. Reiner sucked in a breath as his heart stuttered to a stop.
"What?"
"Marley didn't choose you. Marley didn't want you," she hissed venomously. "You're a second string nobody desperate for a cause."
The dull ache in his skull stretched wider with every word she spoke.
"My blood runs red for Marley," Reiner whispered in retaliation, drawing a sharp scoff from Annie.
"I'm sure it does. But it runs hot for her."
"Who?" he asked. He knew who. He could feel the blood draining from his face. The headache throbbed. His ignorance was drawing an almost animated fury from his teammate.
"Oh, now he's going to play dumb." Annie shot Bertolt a look as she gestured. "The girl you've been mooning after and compromising yourself for. Krista Lenz."
"Shut up," he murmured, his voice trampled by her continued onslaught. The ache curled like fingers, grasping at his face.
"You've put us all at risk with your little obsession."
"Shut up." The urge to rub the palms of his hands into his eyes, burrowing them into his skull was almost too strong to ignore.
"If she finds out who you are, she will turn you in without any remorse." Her eyes narrowed, blue eyes flashing ice.
"Annie-" Bertolt cut in, but she barreled over him in her escalation, scenting blood in the water.
"It would be the patriotic thing of her to do surely. You're nothing-"
"I said-" Reiner began. The pain ratcheted up. It was all he could do to stay standing.
"-but a traitor."
"SHUT UP!"
His voice echoed in the frigid air, as she finally fell silent. Annie let her energy drop off again, face falling slack and arms crossing again as her wall resurfaced. Bertolt eyed him warily, as though he'd never quite seen him before. His pain retreated in the lengthening silence but continued to throb, asserting its presence with the steady beat of his heart.
"What'd I tell you, Bertolt?" she asked, he tone bordering on bored. As though she hadn't just goaded him into erupting in the night. "He's compromised."
His blood ran cold. "No."
"Our mission is at stake here," she reminded them.
"I'm not compromised," Reiner insisted, but he could feel his credibility splitting beneath his feet. He couldn't even try for a tone that bespoke of the absurdity of her accusation- he just sounded desperate.
"Which one of us will have to eat him?" She looked to Bertolt for the answer, but he was still frozen in place, staring at Reiner in mute shock.
"Hey!" That tone was better. At least this time his tone held some indignation. Indignant didn't sound guilty.
"Reiner please…" Bertolt sounded exhausted, anxious. Sad.
"What? I'm not! I haven't told her anything suspicious," he insisted, hands spread in supplication. "I've kept up appearances."
"A little too well," Annie snarked and he scowled back at her, irritation spiking.
"How is that a crime? I'm making sure we don't get caught!" The Soldier reminded him that that wasn't all he was doing. He was falling, head first. He was drowning in her. But that same voice begged him- deny it.
"By sleeping with the enemy? Real helpful!" she snorted and Bertolt blinked rapidly, pulling himself from his shocked stupor and rounding on Reiner.
"Have you slept with her?"
"No! Of course not!" Reiner assured him. At least that wasn't a lie.
"But you want to," Annie asserted, and Reiner held his tongue. That wasn't a lie either, but they could never know that. It would be the end of them both.
"You can't have her Reiner." Reiner felt his fists clench as Bertolt spoke. He resisted the irrational urge to bare his bare his teeth in defiance.
"To even think it is to risk everything we stand for." As though he didn't already know that. The Warrior grappled with it. The Soldier flaunted it.
"I don't want her!" he insisted, lying through his teeth. The pain flared white hot in his mind, distorting his denial with pain and confusion. "I want to complete our mission and GO HOME!"
"Prove it then."
Reiner's mind stuttered to a halt as Annie's challenge leveled him. She couldn't mean...
"W-What?"
"Prove it. Cut her out." She said it casually, as though it wasn't asking him to remove the one thing that allowed him to live as this other person; that made his soldier's role tangible.
"Don't you think that's a little extreme?" Bertolt hedged, but Annie held her hand, silencing him with a glance.
"So is a traitor's execution," she reminded them and stalked towards Reiner, feet crunching in the frigid earth, her stare freezing him in his spot. "What do you think? Do they still draw and quarter in this hell hole? Or will they just throw us over the wall?"
Reiner's mind spun on its wheels, searching wildly for traction. His chance to maintain his budding relationship was slipping like sand through his fingers, and no amount of grasping could contain it. His chance to have this pure, simple thing- the only thing he'd wanted for himself since before he signed up for the Warrior unit as a boy- drifted away on the cold winter wind. He reached out anyways.
"I can't cut her out. That will look suspicious."
He could tell it didn't work before he'd finished his sentence.
"I saw her face after equipment maintenance this morning. She already thinks something is wrong. It shouldn't be hard to use that for distance."
Her drawn expression flitted into his mind before despair pushed it back out. "But that…"
"And she has that friend who always hangs off her and shoots you dirty looks. She'll pick up the slack," Annie assured him.
Acidic jealousy tinged his vision, twisting his insides. "Ymir-"
"Oh so you know your rival's name too?"
The ache throbbed again. "She-"
"Reiner...do you have feelings for her?"
Pleading eyes met his, and in that moment he knew he looked as desperate as Bertolt. How could he answer that? How could he admit to the depth of his illicit feelings?
"No I-" he began but Annie cut him off.
"Don't lie to us."
"Reiner, we're your family." Guilt and pain coupled as they ripped viscerally through his torso. Bertolt was correct after all. They were the closest thing he had to family within these Walls. "Please. Do you have feelings for her?"
"I…" Truth or lie? And whose to tell? Soldier? Warrior? "I don't know."
The expression that stole over Bertolt's face was sympathetic, but firm.
"Then it's too close to risk. I'm sorry. But she could compromise our mission and ruin our life's work. You have to let her go."
Reiner expected the world to crumple at the edges when all hope was extinguished, but in reality, it was just silence. Deafening, hollow silence that seeped into his soul and colored his thoughts in dark, opaque hues, shrouding the future in despair. The pit forming in his gut rooted him in place.
"Understood." The words tasted like ash in his mouth. But Bertolt and Annie didn't notice, and they both nodded as though they'd checked on a box on their to-do list. Reaffirm Reiner's loyalty? Check.
Ruin Reiner's existence as a Soldier? Check.
"Then we'll meet back here same time next week?" Bertolt asked. The words sounded far away. Annie nodded.
"I should be finished with the Hermina scope by then."
"Good. Come on, Reiner. Let's grab some dinner."
And then, as though nothing had changed at all, Bertolt pulled him along from behind the shed towards the mess hall. He sat with him as they ate, Reiner choking down every bite, eyes glued to his food to avoid the gaze of anyone unintended. Any people for whom he might harbor feelings. After all, he was a Warrior. He had a job to do. A mission to complete.
Orders to follow.
I'm so evil, I'm sorry!
There wasn't any of our angel baby Krista in this one, but I really wanted to highlight the tension forming in their little trio. I hope you aren't too disapointed!
My updates may grow a bit more sporadic as I am beginning a new job, but I will keep at it! I love this story, and I have no intentions of abandoning it- it may just be a little less scheduled!
