IMPORANT A/N: I literally almost didn't post this chapter because I started crying as I wrote it because it wasn't going where I wanted it to and I was so sorry for everything I did but whatever... this is the last chapter of the Trost arc. I also threw in some development for Reiner and Bertholdt, and Eren's thoughts because we haven't heard from him in a while~
Not so important A/N: Follow me on tumblr if you want to see some updates I'll be posting during the progress of the next chapter (link is on my page). And thank you for so many reviews and favs last chapter! Every review made my day ^_^ even if I did ruin yours... Let me know what you thought of this chapter!
Also Important: I'm so, so, so sorry.
Inside the Red Zone
Ain't nobody got time for waiting for an update to this Eren x Annie story by: Euregatto
Eren Jaeger has always been sure of the things he's wanted most in life – he's sure he wants to join the Scouting Legion, he's sure he wants to avenge his mother, he's sure he's hopelessly and madly in love with Annie Leonhardt. He is not sure, however, of how relationships are supposed to work, but he's damn well positive that as much as he does not know about the concept of being with someone until the day he died, his feelings for Annie are as genuine as the blood beating through his heart.
"I thought she loved me…"
The words slide by his lips before he can stop himself and Armin pauses his stride behind Commander Pixis, bringing his arm up to Eren's shoulder. "Hey, it's okay, she was just a little upset."
"She broke my nose, Armin."
"And it healed. You know if she was really upset with you she would have done worse than that. I'm sure she'll come back to you when she's cleared her head." Armin turns his gaze to the passage walls as they ascend along the spiral stair case. "She thought you were dead. I know exactly how that felt. She just handled it a little more… logically."
"How was that logical?!"
Armin purses his lips and glances in the other direction, avoiding the question entirely. Ignoring him, Eren clutches the necklace residing beneath his shirt as it clinks against his key and passes his gaze up to Mikasa who is two steps ahead, one directly behind Pixis. I can't even begin to imagine how they felt… at least they didn't punch me out, too.
"Eren Jaeger," Pixis remarks.
He releases the gem instantly and curls his fingers into tight fists of defiance. "Yes sir?"
"Are you aware why I stepped in to save you and your friends?"
Eren opens his mouth to respond when Armin interjects, "Because Eren is on humanity's side, sir. If he really wanted to harm humanity he wouldn't have saved all the trainees back at the supply headquarters in Trost, nor would he have restrained during the encounter on the plateau."
Pixis hums in his throat, elder voice thrumming with the hoarseness of frequent drinking and screaming commands in his youth. He has seen things worse than Trost, from a time before he transferred from the Legion and moved up in the Garrison ranks. "So then let me ask… Will you save humanity and risk becoming a monster to save Trost and avenge the deaths of so many good men? Will you be the milestone that ensures humanity's first victory?"
Eren presses his lips into a thin line. He can feel Armin's quizzical gaze on him but doesn't bother to look over and return the glimpse. "Yes sir," he answers finally.
"Good. That's all I need to hear."
He isn't sure about what awaits him on the other side of the wall, but he is sure that he wants to win Annie back, and if he has to go through the hell of Trost to do so, so be it.
She's weaving expertly between branches at break-neck speed and over the howling of the wind in her ears she can distinguish the shouts of the trainees around her. "Connie's it!" Reiner calls out from somewhere nearby. Sure enough, only seven seconds later she spots the boy moving expertly through the branches and she resorts to dropping down before he noticed her in return. She draws to a stop against a trunk, heels pressed flat against the bark, ears and eyes training for the slightest movements around her.
"Uh…Annie?"
She glances up. "Marco?"
Marco is swinging upside down from the branch overhead, his gear lines woven through the thick twigs and tangled around his legs. He scratches the back of his head bashfully. "Heh, this is a little embarrassing, isn't it?"
"I'll get you down," she voices, shooting the arrowhead of her line into the face of the trunk higher up. "Hang on."
"Wait!"
"What?"
"How do I know you aren't it?"
The question catches her off guard, but then again, she also didn't expect to be partaking in this stupid game in the first place. "If I really wanted to tag you, I would have done so already, and still let you down."
"You promise that when you let me down… you won't tag me?"
"Of course. I'm not even it."
"Then I trust you," Marco admits. "Please get me out of this before someone else comes along…like Reiner. And don't tell anyone about this, I don't want to be the laughing stock of the trainees again."
Annie nods an affirmative and scales up to dislodge his hook, wherever it would be.
.
.
.
Annie shouldn't be in such a state of shock, but she's watching Pixis give this winded speech about Eren being humanity's greatest hope and making up some absolute bullshit about him being a government project – holy crap these assholes are actually buying it – and she's shaking from all the fury in her damn chest because that foolish trainee is exposing shifters as a fact, no longer as vague rumor amongst the Wallists nor a myth passed down in old books.
She's furious with him, with herself, with Bertholdt for being so careless –
"What does Marco know, Bertholdt? What did you tell him? What did he see?!"
"I'm sorry Reiner, I wasn't paying attention! He saw me heal when a Titan bit off my arm. This jacket isn't even mine. I took it from a corpse… and I just – I didn't know what to do! I made him promise not to say anything!"
"Promises mean nothing, Bertholdt! You know what needs to be done!"
"I can hardly believe we should kill him on those grounds."
"He asked if I was a Titan."
"And what did you say?"
"I didn't have to. I just made him promise."
"…Reiner?"
"Looks like we have no choice then. Kill Marco."
"But it's Marco…"
"I know. That's what makes this all the more difficult."
- and with Reiner for passing the kill order on to her. Sorry, not a kill order, a "your-sword-Marco's-throat" command; a kill order would be an easy task, like taking out Dazz or Shadis, not someone she actually likes, and Annie is five-hundred percent done with having to do everything herself, regardless if Marco trusted her or not.
Actually, that's the essence of the problem. Marco trusts her.
It wasn't something that had happened over night, either – it was an established, defined, and developed friendship beginning when Eren had talked – coerced – her into playing that stupid game of tag.
"I trust you," he had said.
"I trust you," he had said.
"I trust you," he had said.
"I trust you enough that killing me will probably raze any emotion you have left in that empty soul of yours to the ground," is what he should have said. Dammit Marco Bodt.
This sure as hell isn't going to be as easy as she had hoped.
Annie follows the rim of the wall to where Reiner and Bertholdt are waiting with the rest of the shouting group of mixed trainees and Garrison soldiers. They linger in the back, Bertholdt's gaze set on Marco only several yards away at the other end of the cluster, and Reiner's eyes scanning their surroundings, absorbing it all in. Annie knows they're apprehensive about the plan they put into play. She can't exactly say she isn't.
"Annie!"
The blonde glances over as Hannah approaches her, the previous skip in her step all but gone as the events of the day tax her energy and her body alike. "Hannah," Annie greets tonelessly, "how are you?"
"Heard what happened to you and Eren."
"Word travels fast," Annie hisses bitterly and jots down a mental note to make Jean Titan bait.
"Yeah… sorry your boyfriend turned out to be a giant cannibalistic freak of nature…" She toes some loosened stone with her boot. "And sorry you two had to break it off, even if you did break his nose."
Annie presses her lips into a thin line. "Uh… thanks, I guess."
Somewhere in the distance the flare goes up, trailed by green smoke. "We're going!" A Garrison exclaims, immediately shooting out over the wall with an expulsion of gas.
"Let's go," Reiner remarks to them and he follows the soldiers, Bertholdt, Annie and Hannah in his wake.
They throw themselves from the wall, soaring thirty meters to the city burning beneath the afternoon sky, riding the currents down into the havoc raging below. Titans are already moving towards the gate and Annie descends on the first one with adrenaline fueling her body, slicing into the peak of its spine. Hannah screams rabidly as she downs the other that's too close to a third, utilizing her slender form alone to dance around it as it snaps and grabs for her. Her gear reels her around it just as Reiner nails his landing on its back, blades shredding through its tender muscle with relative ease.
Several Aberrants launch up, snapping two Garrisons out of the air.
The other one snaps up Hannah by her leg, tossing her ragdoll body to the side with enough force that her knee splits apart where the teeth clamped down. And Annie doesn't think she just acts, propelling from the air towards her friend in the monster's grasp. "Hannah!" She exclaims, blood-stained blades reflecting like fire in the sun. I can make it I can make it I can make it –
Hannah's shrill screaming – "ANNIE! NO! HELP ME!" – is immediately cut short by the fourth Titan slamming its jaws closed on the flailing left side of her torso.
Annie swerves under the fourth to dodge them, Hannah's blood splattering across her figuring like paint, and shoots her lines into the face of the wall, drawing to a stop against the concrete surface. Her eyes are blown wide open as the other girl's organs drop into the city and her fluids scatters like raindrops on the shingles of the roofs.
"Fuck," Annie utters in disbelief, swiping the warmth from her face with the back of her jacket sleeve.
No. She is a monster. She can't let Hannah's death affect her. She can't let that nor her trust in Marco stop her from killing him. Hannah was nothing to you. Franz was nothing to you. Mina was nothing to you. Eren was nothing to you.
But they were something to you.
A mistake. And you cannot afford to make any more mistakes.
Most of the groups are already moving through the city, taking down Titans or being taken down by Titans, and Annie has to push what just happened clear out of her mind in order to move from her spot on the wall. She lands on the nearest roof, Bertholdt sliding to a stop on the building next to her. "Dammit!" He seethes, shaking blood from his hands as it dissolves harmlessly against his exposed skin. "There's too many of them here, Annie! We'll have to either draw them out or let the cannons on top of the wall handle it!"
"Let them handle it!" Annie decides quickly, searching around for Marco or Reiner.
Something ignites fires in the back of her mind, a primal instinct, an urge, a fear, that boils it's way up from the pit of her stomach into the cavity of her chest, constricts every nerve ending in her body until her brain is kicking into overdrive. She snaps her gaze around just as the shadowed figure looming behind her rears its hand back and lurches it forward again. She was caught off guard.
She doesn't have enough time to turn.
"Annie!"
There is an instant explosion of debris as its fist connects with the roof. At first Annie wonders if she's dead – if the silence engulfing her is the first darkness you see before the light – but then she realizes she's being held bridal style in a set of muscular arms, and that her surroundings are now brimming with noise: crackling fire and exploding canons. "That was close," the voice of the arms remarks snidely.
She glances over at the colossal hole the Titan is stuck in, which is only a few meters away, and then turns her eyes up. "Reiner?"
"Who else could possibly make you the damsel in distress in a situation like this?"
The Titan's closest arm swings down and impacts the roof where they are, but Reiner's a split second faster – he shoots them over to the next building and sets Annie down. Bertholdt glides into view just as the Titan moves to stand, slicing cleanly through its neck with a passive grunt and reflexively arcing into the air. He just barely avoids a swipe from another Aberrant. "There are a lot of those tricky bastards today," Reiner utters humorlessly.
"We're going to have to fight our way through!" Bertholdt calls, darting towards them. He slices through the Titan's neck and lands several steps away from them.
Annie casts her gaze around the city, counting off the dwindling number of Titans and even fewer numbers of soldiers. And there, moving over a rooftop only several streets away, is Marco. "I'm going ahead," she remarks quickly and breaks into a sprint, "cover me!" She clears the roof in a matter of seconds and vaults onto the next one, steady gaze trained on the other boy as he slices down a Titan and zip lines up onto a bell tower.
Her gear lines impact the roof behind him. She rockets up to meet him, landing gracefully on her knees on the edge of the platform, boots barely keeping their traction on the slick shingles.
"Annie!" Marco exclaims. "Hey, are you alright?"
She rises her feet. "Yes."
"I'm glad," he says breathlessly, moving for the edge of the plateau. "I got separated from my team luring away a group of those Titans. We need to go towards the hole in the wall when we can get a chance." He peers out over the distance. "But it's so crazy with all these Titans…"
Annie purses her lips. Hannah, Mina, Eren, Franz… they all mean nothing to you. Nothing can mean anything to you. You can't afford to make any more mistakes – she steps forward, glare hardening over with an inhumane emptiness bordering a psychopathic desire – you've lost too much already.
She doesn't know what compels her then, but the next thing she realizes she's sliced her sword upwards along his torso, shredding through his belts and forcing his gears to drop to the roof. "Annie!" He snaps in bewilderment, jumping back out of her reach. "What the hell was that for?!"
"I'm sorry Marco," she says grimly, "but you know too much." She lunges forward, nailing him with a spin-kick that sends him sailing over the drop of the roof. His fingers reflexively curl around the edge of the platform and he flails his legs against the wall, struggling to get enough traction and pull himself back up. Annie wordlessly drives her sword into his left hand, wedging the blade through his flesh and into the material of the roof and stomps on his opposing hand with a hollowed chorus of cracks.
Marco screams but does not give. He refuses. "I-Is this about Bertholdt?" He asks through grit teeth. "I already promised I wouldn't say anything! Annie, please let me up, I promise I won't say a single word to anyone!"
"You know too much to take that risk."
"I promise!" He screams, "I promise I promise I promise oh God please don't do this!" He squirms uselessly beneath her but his bones crunch against the soles of her boots and he can feel his grasp ebbing. "I said I promise! Don't you trust me?!"
"I've earned your trust Marco," she answers blatantly, fingers gradually furling around the sword's hilt. "But if I recall correctly, never have you once done anything to earn mine."
"Annie-!"
"Forgive me."
"ANNIE! NO!"
She releases his hand and tears her cutlass from the other. His clasp on the roof comes loose as the pain overwhelms the adrenaline and he drops like a sandbag to the street below – an Aberrant, previously watching them interact, catapults into the air and slams its jaws closed on the screaming trainee, slicing cleanly through his torso. Annie's merciless stare studies the limp other half impacting the road with a deafening thump, and she can only think about how she didn't kill Marco be the good chance of that lingering creature, yet still his blood is on her hands, all over her sword and mixed with Hannah's somewhere in between.
And she doesn't feel a goddamn thing.
The city has been burning for three days since Eren sealed the hole in the wall, since Hannah was torn in two right in front of her last friend's eyes, since Annie knocked Marco into the maw of a Titan, since she saved Jean to atone for the sin of his best friend's death… because no matter how much chaos crumbles the city to the ground at her feet, Annie cannot find herself among the rubble. She lost her own reflection in the smoldering embers, her existence in the engulfing flames.
Ash suffocates the air and the stench of decay and charred pine pollutes Annie's lungs as she surveys the wreckage for bodies just as the soldiers had been ordered to (adding salt to the open wound, to find the remains of the friends that had been shredded in the jaws of a ravaging Titan horde), keenly aware of Bertholdt several yards ahead of her and Reiner somewhere behind her.
She curses Bertholdt for spending the first day searching for Marco's divided corpse, moving it against a wall and folding its arm over its chest and leaving it to get discovered by Jean himself. It makes her feel some pang of guilt – familiar human emotions from when Eren had sparked something within her she should not have grown so comfortable with.
She had, admittedly, believed Marco when he promised not to tell anyone… but the thrill of the hunt has always driven her further than the authority of a command or her empathy for her fellow trainees. Her raw instinct to save her own ass consumed every ounce of compassion she had felt for Marco since that day in the forest. And damn it all to hell that she feels so fucking exposed in the aftermath in the cataclysm she helped give birth to.
The old, original her would have never been so emotional and weak. She needs to be like that again. Fucking Eren and Mina and Franz and Hannah –
Bertholdt's shout draws Reiner and Annie to look at him as he trips back on the ground, scooting away in panic along the cobblestone walkway. "Bertholdt!" Reiner exclaims and they rush to their friend's side. "Bertholdt! What is it?!"
Annie starts forward to investigate but Bertholdt catches her sleeve first. "No!" He pleads, sickly pale beneath his handkerchief mask, "nonono, Annie, please don't!"
She passively slaps his hand away and continues on undeterred. "Don't be a baby, what could possibly be so"—there is a corpse lying limp at her feet—"bad…"
The feminine body is headless from where a Titan had bitten into the base of the neck, and it's sprawled out a mingled, broken heap of shattered bones from impacting the ground. But Annie recognizes that figure anyway – every slender curve, that too familiar jagged scar on the right hand from an accident with the 3DMG – and she reflexively covers her mouth with her arm to muffle her startled cry.
"Annie!" Reiner remarks, grasping her shoulders. "Annie, what's wrong?"
And suddenly every emotion she's kept bottled up in the cavern of her chest erupts outwards, exploding into lava in her throat and filling the brim of her nerves with anxiety and remorse, forcing her brain to lapse into a state of bewildered trauma.
"What have we done, Reiner?" She whispers into her sleeve. The pain is evident in her voice as her memories reel around in her mind: Hannah's scream as the Aberrant snaps her right in half, the betrayal in Marco's gaze and the desperation in his pleas, the bright smile the corpse at her feet used to give her when it was still a recognizable person… when it was still a living, breathing girl.
Reiner's jaw tightens.
"Look at all we've done. To Franz, Hannah, Marco"—she gestures to the body—"Mina…"
"There can only be us now," Bertholdt mutters to himself, digging his nails into the dirt beneath him. "Reiner, we've given up so much… I didn't think – how could we have let all this happen? How could we have let this hurt so fucking much?" He weaves his fingers into his hair and buries his face in his knees. "Where did we go wrong?"
Reiner's breathing is shaky. "We knew this was going to happen…"
"I'm so sorry Mina," Annie utters under her breath, corkscrewing her eyes shut to imagine a time when life still coursed through her best friend's veins. "I'm so sorry…"
Bertholdt buries his head into his bruised hands. "Reiner, what have we done?!"
"We knew this was going to happen!" Reiner's breathless cry reverberates off the enclosed walls and startles the two opposing shifters who immediately fall silent. "We… we knew this was going to happen… and still we let ourselves get so close to them, allowed them to so easily trick us into this delusion of being the humans we know we aren't, that we will never be and never were." He rakes his fingers through his matted hair and exhales a husky sigh.
Her bombshell emotions deplete as she forces them down with a dry swallow. Bertholdt sobs quietly, shamelessly, into his own body, seeking comfort only in the embrace of his own arms. And Reiner, the strongest emotionally of them all, who had avoided being too close with anyone but Eren and the both of them, who had soothed her and kept Bertholdt from driving a sword into his own neck, dropped to his knees and screamed his mercurial rage and denial into the pavement.
Because he remembers the camp fires and the laughter and the music and the sunlight on his face and the smiles in all their eyes as they swung through the forest together, existed as normal people with normal names training to be normal soldiers for what time it lasted. They knew they were living a lie.
And it is only now they see the truth.
Annie can tell the chaos in his mind is taxing his body in more ways than one, the ways the havoc of her life has been gradually eating her into a welcome insanity. They truly believed that they were murderers, nothing more than the tools of war the populace – or rather, the system of the hierarchy in these forsaken Walls – had made them out to be. "We have to detach ourselves," she voices quietly, a barely comprehensive whisper above the crackling of flames in the wind. "Just like before. Just as you said Bertholdt... there can only be us now."
She has feelings for Eren that still boil within her, but pushing him away was the best choice she could have made, even if she had acted out on the blinding fury exploding through her veins… but now that she really, thoroughly ponders the events, it had made her almost human again.
She loved it almost as much as she hated it, because she knew from the very beginning their charade would only end in absolute sorrow and desolation, yet something within him irked her towards him, encouraged her to break all vows to her father and her warrior name without a single regard for anyone caught in the crossfire – Annie Leonhardt had been one step away from giving up everything for her false dream of feeling, living, breathing, being human again.
If she had ever been one at all.
Bertholdt finds out from a lingering Scouting Legion soldier about the captive Titans, and at Reiner's suggestion, Annie slaughters them and disappears over the cage wall before the Scouts can spot her. She swaps her gear for Marco's and goes undetected during the inspection, but the piqued intrigue in Armin's eyes as he observes her gear unnerves her to the bitter end, and by the equally anxious gaze she sends and receives from Reiner and Bertholdt, they've noticed it long before her.
She prays Armin won't say anything to them about it. She's hurt Eren enough as it is.