This chapter I finished it in record time! For those who are just waiting for Sina's first encounter with a Titan, it'll be coming pretty soon, since I'm planning on doing a time skip after a few more chapters (not too many though), so just hang in there. I'm open to criticism, good or bad doesn't matter.

Disclaimer: I do not own Attack on Titan nor any of it's characters except for my own such as: Sina, Erik, Aki, and Dillan.

Chapter 9

The sun had just woken from its deep slumber and was now setting up in the sky. Birds flew by in flocks, chasing, following one another. Their white feathers glistening in the morning light, but as soon as they came, they disappeared past the great wall. As I walked, I stumbled through the crowd, my slippered feet being unable to keep up with the ones in front of me. I held tightly against the hand that rarely took my own. I watched as mothers' and children passed by, their eyes burned holes into my skin, and I felt exposed, scared. The market place was so filled with people that I had to focus on looking forward or else I would get yanked back into place.

Mother kept a firm hold on my small white one, afraid someone would come at me and take me away. On her face was a smile I've never seen before. It was wide, filled with yellow teeth, and pride, but pride of what. Of having a daughter like me, or of being able to showcase me as an object of jealousy towards others. It didn't really matter, because at the end of the day I'd go home, back to the basement and get locked up in the old house with nothing to do and nothing to say.

A man called out to us from one of the tiny merchant tents. There was raw meat hanging from the ceilings and dead, eye bulging fish laying on the table. He smiled at us, but it didn't reach his eyes. He offered one pound of meat for a strange amount of money. I didn't understand the number the man had just said, but by the look of my mother's face she didn't like it. Placing one hand on a clean spot on the table she leaned forward, and smiled. The man came over and lend an ear to my mother's lips. She whispered, he smiled, she bit his earlobe, he chuckled and nodded. Withdrawing herself from the fish infested table she told the merchant she come back to strike a deal with him. The man agreed and said, "I'll be closing before ten," and this time his smile gave a new spark to his eyes, one that I didn't understand.

We walked some more, stopped by a few more merchants. Mother barely bought anything, but she seemed to be quiet friendly with the all merchants. She showed a different type of kindness and sweetness towards the men. Her smile was wider, her movements slower and more...provoking. I didn't understand how to interpret this new side of my mother, or how to respond to her as she held my hand, smiled towards me, and asked questions as if she cared about my opinion. But I knew she was a fake. No matter how kind, how innocent she pretended to be, that cynical look in her eyes, that sick false laugh could never fool anyone. They all knew, everyone knew, but no one ever did anything. It doesn't concern me, they must of thought, and as they watched me be dragged across the market, all they did was look, and yet turn a blind eye.

I got feed up for once. I couldn't stand the way mother spoke to those men, in ways I didn't comprehend, and even though I didn't grasp their conversations, I felt sick. I slipped away from mother, left unnoticed as she focused on the man with flour sacks siting on the counter, and I ran. I ran as far as my tiny ten year old feet could take me. Pushing and shoving away from the crowd I ran straight into a concrete gate. My lungs were bursting with the need of air, and my sides burning, and then... the gate opened.

The wall slowly began to move, and at first I thought it was just the dizziness playing tricks to my vision, but then I heard the neighing of horses, and the gulping of their legs tiredly stepping onto the dirt floor. The grumbling of men, and the sound of squeaky wheels became louder and louder as a gap between the ground and the gate grew. I stood there, dumbfounded, not knowing what to do and then finally the gates were ten times higher up then my size. In a matter of seconds the gates discontinued their movements. The face of a man, greeted me. He was young and yet his face was weathered down, deep dark circles marked his brown eyes. The light inside those chocolate like orbs was dim, and scarce. He held a few scars on his left cheek, and a newly made one on his forehead. The blood dripped down, pass the middle of his eyes towards the tip of his nose. Unlike the rest of his men he only had one bloody bandage placed over his fresh wound. Others riding horses and wagons held injured arms, legs, and some were even missing one of each or both.

The crowd of people behind me begin to disperse and clear a path for this small group of grim looking men to pass by, but I didn't move. I stood in my place, staring at these men's pathetic faces. The one facing me, looked down, stared and tried to smile, but horrible failed. He tried to usher me to the side, telling me to move so they could cross, but I refused. In fact I didn't want to leave. The man tried to move around me, but I simply followed him. He sighed, frustrated. "What do you want?" He asked.

"I want to go with you." I didn't understand who these wounded men were, or why I wanted to stay longer with them, but I felt attracted towards them. Being isolated, seeing the same sights, the same eyes and fake smiles of everyone has become too boring. These men held real emotion, they didn't try and hide anything because their disappointment was evident on their faces.

The young man's eyes watered, but he refused the tears to spill over. Instead he bit into the raw flesh of his lower lip, shook his head and walled on. I tried to follow again, but by that time my mother had already found me. She screamed my name and pulled me away. "Sina! Get away from them! What were you thinking, running away from me like that!" My mother's voice hollered in rage and I knew I be in trouble tonight, but as I stared at the men leave my line of sight I couldn't help but stretch out my hand towards them.

Later that day mother left me home alone. She opened the door to the basement, and placed down the ladder for me to climb down. She then pulled it out and before she locked the door and left she said, "I'll be back, I just need to run some more errands." Two months later, much to mother's reluctance she announced she was pregnant. Not until years later did I understand that my sister most likely wasn't even completely blood-related to me, and once I understood that, my love for her grew even greater. And for the first time in my life I thanked god, thanked him for giving my little sister such a blessing.

My little sister was everything I wasn't, but I didn't hate her, I admired her. Her hair was light brown instead of black, her eyes were caramel, and she was rather short, but either way she was beautiful. I took care of her, and because Jane didn't fit my mothers standards as a doll, she ignored her for most of the time. We shared the basement, and just having her there made the pitch black room so much brighter. I no longer felt alone. I took my mother's attention and anger for her, thinking that its better if its me then my Jane. Father, treated Jane as he treated me, never showing kindness, but never showing cruelty either, just indifference.

Last thing I see is myself now, sixteen years old, holding hands with Jane as we sang a nursery rhyme. She laughed as I tried to sing and ended up mess up the lyrics. She then would stop me by placing a small gentle finger on my lips and hushing me. She start softly singing and I would focus on the words trying to remember them. Her voice was so smooth for someone so young. It would touch my cheek and feel like silk. The melody would engulf me, and take me away. Every time we finish singing a song, she would smile up at me, and ask if we could sing again.

…

These old memories came to me in a dream, and it was a pleasant one because it contained my favorite person in the world, Jane. That same day I encountered Erik during the morning training. I was worn out from having to wake up two hours earlier and having my punishment executed. He, along with the other sponsors walked by our field chatting and some were even smoking. The women would look up from their fans to stare as the boys stretched and ran about. Some even approached Aki, they would smile kindly at him and ask questions about the way we were treated and of what we we're being taught. Aki, being his shy self would scratch the back of his neck sheepishly and smile. He started talking about the training regiment and all the exercises we've done so far, but the women grew bored. They tried to ask about his personal life, asking how old he was and if he had a girlfriend or not. At these type of questions Aki would blush madly and glance at my direction. I stare back and he would whip his head right back towards the women.

Erik on the other hand wouldn't stop staring at me. I ignored him for the most part. I had made it clear last night that I didn't want anything to do with him, so he should of by now gotten that across his mind.

We trained for another hour or so until we were sent to the showers. My body was ridged and sore. As the cool liquid touched my burning skin I felt it ease my aching muscles. Once I washed my body and changed rather quickly. I left with a group of girls at the same time. Standing outside the girls' showers was Erik. He made gestures towards me to come, but I pretended no to see.

I met up with Aki on our way there and as we chatted, I allowed Aki to do most of the talking as always, but then that's when it hit me. The realization that I hadn't finished cleaning the classroom, and that when I was to enter that cabin I meet a very displeased professor. I started to fidget.

"Hey, Sina are you listening?" Aki tilted his head towards me.

"Aki, I forgot to clean the classroom yesterday."

"What?"

"What am I going to do?" I felt slight panic race into my body and I stared into Aki's face waiting for an answer.

"Sina, the classroom is already clean."

I stared at Aki, "What are you talking about?"

"Yesterday, when I went back to the classroom it was already cleaned. That's why I went looking for you. I bumped into Captain Levi and he told me you weren't at the dinning hall so I looked for you at the dorms."

"Levi?"

"Yeah. Does this have anything to do with what happened yesterday?" Aki's eyes stared back at me. A tense silence wrapped around us I felt uneasy. I still needed to tell Aki everything, but it didn't feel like the time for it was here yet.

"Oi! You two going in or what!" One of our comrades called to us from the the door of the two story cabin. He held one of the double doors open and waited for us to walk up the steps. As we both did He grinned widely at Aki, and slung an arm around his shoulders. "Seems like you two are getting pretty cozy." Aki turned red in record time and stupidly stammered out words that didn't make any sense. He shook his head vigorously trying to deny what the other lad was implying. I payed no attention to his comment and walked on inside. As I entered I was taken back by the sight in front of me. The chalk board was clear, the floor was even washed, and the windows shined in the light.

The teacher walked up to me looking content. "You did a pretty good job here, maybe I should make you clean classroom as punishment again."

I shook my head, "No thanks," and took my sit along with everyone else.

Towards the end of class we were given the opportunity to start on our assignment before lunch. I sat next to Aki as he read out loud the words and I followed with my finger on the page. I would then repeat the same passage, occasionally having to stop and sound out the words. I've been here for about a week or so and I was making progress in my studies already, but I was finding it hard writing down the words. I would spell 'cat' with a 'k' and Titan with the 'a' first then the 'i'...(Tatin). Dillan, along with his group of friends made their way towards us. He grabbed hold of the text book we were using and pretended to start reading out loud in a very stupid slow way, mimicking me.

"Hey! Give that back!" Aki was no out of his chair and trying to snatch away the book.

"Awe, am I interrupting the love birds study session." He laughed and so did his friends.

Aki's face turned red, but I didn't know if it was because of embarrassment or anger. "Just leave us alone!" Much to my surprise Aki was able to grab the book right out of Dillan's hands.

"Looks like you didn't get enough last time. Telling us what to do, do you really think you can take us on." This was getting dangerous.

I stood up to try and stop their argument, but before I could Aki, raised his hand folded into a fist and swung at Dillan, who at the moment was not prepared. The fist hit him square in the nose, just like mine did last time. The force of the hit sent him stumbling slighting backwards, but he regained his composure quickly. With an injured face, Dillian swung back at Aki, using all of his weight, but Aki had acted fast and dodged it. Without his fist having met a solid object Dillan lost his footing and came crashing down, and it just so happened that I was standing right behind Aki, and in Dillan's crash zone.

The other recruits gasped as Dillan fell on top of me, knocking down a few desks. Aki looked shocked and so did I. Just then the door to the building was pushed open, and in came the teacher who had just left a few moments ago. "What's going on in here?" His eyes traveled the room until they stopped at the sight of my body laying down on the ground, and Dillan's on top of me.

No one spoke. No one knew what to say, but the longer the silence grew the more difficult it was going to get in explaining all of this. So without thinking I spoke, "Dillan's sexually harassing me." Again no one spoke, especially Dillan who's face was in shock. The teacher marched up towards us, yanked Dillan by the hair on his scalp and dragged him away. Once the double doors reopened and shut again laughter erupted form the room.

After class Aki kept his head down in shame constantly apologizing. "Sina I'm so sorry! I almost got you in trouble!"

I shook my head, "It's fine Aki. I'm glad you tried to defend us back there." Aki smiled at me, and looked shyly at the ground, secretly pleased at himself for having hit Dillan in the face.

The afternoon air was now cool, but it was starting to get rowdy. A few puffs of dirt raised up in the air around our feet as we walked towards the Dinning Hall. I watched as the clouds started to get blown away from the wind. The blue sky was bright, and yet it seemed so lonely with no birds, and barely any clouds to accompany it. The desert like terrain of the camp made the surroundings look isolated and abandoned. Only the scarce sounds of the laughter and chatting of the recruits near by, eating their loaf of bread gave off a hint of life.

Comfortably in the silence I walked along side Aki, he held this smile as our feet carried us to the Dinning Hall. A couple of feet away from the cabin's door we heard the sound of feet rapidly crunching down onto the cracked floor. In instinct we both turned to find a solider running towards us. He held a piece of paper firmly gripped by his hand, Once he reached us, he hurriedly panted out a few symbols in his exhaustion of running, "Commander...Erwin," he took a deep breath, "has ordered you to..," another pause, "to go discuss an important matter with him." The man took a dew more breathers before straightening himself out. He handed me the piece of paper and left in a hurry once again.

I looked towards Aki, who was now staring at me. "You and the commander seem to know each other very well. Are you two friends?" There was a strange tone to Aki's voice. He was suspecting me.

"The commander and I are not really friends, more like acquaintances, but he did help me when I lost everything." A faint image of my sister flashed before my eyes, and I felt my mood sour.

Aki must of seen the light in my eyes fade because he gave me an apologetic smile. "I'm sorry, I shouldn't be questioning you like this. You should go before it gets late. I'll make sure to keep you some thing to eat."

At times like these, Aki was so understanding it made me feel as if I was using him. "Thanks Aki." I gave him the smallest indication of a smile before I turned and ran towards the main five cabins.

I was greeted in front of Levi's cabin by none other, but Levi himself. "You're late."

"I came as fast as I could." He just nodded and held the door open for me to enter. Inside I was greeted by the sight of Erwin sitting in the living room with a cup of tea as always. He ushered me to sit in the chair across the table from him. I did, and as I sat down I heard the door shut and the heavy footsteps of Levi as he now stood by Erwin's side.

"Sina," Erwin began, "You've done an excellent job thus far. Your determination has brought you to this point, but the question is if you can still continue down this path." He paused to study me as he spoke. "It's come to my attention that your fiancé, Erik Welton, has returned." The sound of his name caused my shoulders to tense. "His sudden return I'm guess is now disturbing your decisions. So I like to ask you one question before continuing... Sina do you want to go on with our proposal of you joining the Survey Corps?"

Without hesitating I answered, "Yes."

Erwin's facial features tightened, "Then you are responsible for this issue of your ex-fiancé. He is an important sponsor to our military resources, and I expect you, as a future member to understand how crucial it is for us to not lose him."

I already knew this. Levi had made it clear that I wasn't suppose to harm him, but now I needed to take care of him. How was I suppose to control him. I didn't like him, in fact I could kill him, but that wouldn't do me any good. Hopefully Erik caught onto the fact that I didn't want him.

"Do you understand Sina?" Erwin's voice was strict, commanding, and I knew this was my first trial, my first test to demonstrate what I was capable of, and in what I wasn't.

"Understood commander." Erwin nodded and with one of his gloved hands he took the handle of the tea cup a drank. He dismissed me and told Levi to escort me towards the exit. It really wasn't necessary since the door was right there, only a few feet away from me, but I guess it was just Erwin being Erwin. Levi nodded and without any questioning he opened the door for me. I stepped out and turned to look at the pair of icy blue eyes staring back. We didn't say anything, but there was some sort of message that went through us at that moment. Mine said that I wasn't going to fail, no matter what, and his was just an amused look, as if telling me he couldn't wait to see what else I was planning on doing. Levi knew what I did outside his cabin to Erik, he had turned off the lights on purpose, that much I knew, but why did he allow it, that is still the question that remains unanswered.

As I left Levi's cabin I found Erik standing in front of one of the sponsor cabins. He stood there, his jaw locked shut, and a look of disbelief filled with rage. His hands were folded in fits, with the knuckled turning white. He stared, burning holes onto my skin, and I knew my problems with Erik weren't even closed to ending.