Day 4: Lies & Honesty
"I pledge my allegiance to the Marley nation. I will offer my life to serve the empire; I will destroy the devils of Paradis and never allow any subjects of Ymir to stand above their rightful place."
Those were the words all warrior cadets had to say every day.
A pledge that had always been the same ever since the warrior program began, and would always be the same until it ended. Constant and ever present. It even hung on the wall of every classroom, every gym.
Some of the cadets come to believe those words after repeating them for long enough, while others believe them even before hearing them for the first time. Like Reiner, for example. He always used to be so earnest in his loyalty to Marley and hatred for the inhabitants of the Paradis Island. As if he didn't realize he was one of those "devils" he was pledging to destroy.
It had always made Annie sick to listen to him. The pledge itself made her sick.
"I pledge my allegiance to the Marley nation. I will offer my life to serve the empire; I will destroy the devils of Paradis and never allow any subjects of Ymir to stand above their rightful place."
Again and again and again, lying through her teeth without batting an eyelash. It seemed so normal, yet it still made her sick. It made her sick back then and it did so even more now, years later.
It's been nine years since she last uttered those words – ever since the Paradis Island Operation started – yet she still would be able to say them perfectly if she wanted to. And that in itself made her sick, too.
The lie was ingrained so deep in her that she sometimes really did believe she was just a weapon to be used, replaced after outliving its use, and hated in the meantime. Hated even by her own self.
But that was just it. She wasn't a thing; she was person. Just a normal, weak person, who'd rather go with the flow and spout lies everyday of her life than stand up for what she believed and knew to be true.
"I pledge my allegiance to the Marley nation. I will offer my life to serve the empire; I will destroy the devils of Paradis and never allow any subjects of Ymir to stand above their rightful place."
Every word was bullshit. She had never had any duty or debt towards Marley and no reason to pledge herself to them. Nothing she had ever done in her life was for the sake of the damn country. She had never cared about any supposed devils anywhere and neither had she cared about Ymir. She just wanted to survive as best as she could. So she rattled off her pledge, never intending to keep it.
But now...
Now she was walking down the streets of her hometown for the first time in nine years, wearing a new uniform, and a new "brand". Black instead of brown, wings instead of a star.
Offering her heart instead of pledging allegiance.
And after twenty long, miserable years full of lies, while pressing her fist to her chest at Commander Hanji's final orders, Annie could finally say there was honesty in her salute.