Bertholdt, after giving both his and Reiner's opinion in a voice that surprisingly didn't stutter, dropped his gaze to his newly shoe-clad feet. He admired Annie, he really did, maybe more than anybody else he had ever known, but he was still terrified of her. Maybe the confidence he had worked up was to do with her presence, he couldn't be sure. Still, he was legitimately worried.

After a few seconds, his eyes were drawn to her again, still waiting for some sort of reaction from her. She was looking at Reiner, with whom she was having a not-very-intense staring match, giving him nothing more than a tired, unamused look.

"Fine. My story isn't nice, but I can't blame you for wanting to know more of it."

"Yes, well, we were being chased by the MPs, so maybe you could care to elaborate a little more. I didn't leave my home to be immediately locked up for helping a murderer."

She glared at him again, likewise without much conviction. She sat down heavily on her suitcase, sighing for what seemed like the hundredth time that morning.

"Go on, officers, ask me whatever. I won't hold back."

Bertholdt backed up nervously, but Reiner kept his determined attitude.

"Ok, you killed someone. Who, where, why?"

"It was an accident, I swear. Well, sort of. Anyway, he died after I left the place; I'm pretty certain he was still alive when I walked through the door."

"Elaborate."

"There's sometimes trades that take place between pimps. Despite the human trade ban, there still is some of that stuff going on. We sometimes get a say in the matter, but sometimes we don't. My case was the latter."

"So?"

"He wanted to stop me from leaving. I smashed his head into a brick wall."

Reiner let out a shuddering sigh, shoulders sagging and eyes closing as he took it in. There was nothing but silence for a few seconds, before Bertholdt decided to speak up, the tension getting to him.

"But… what now? If the MPs managed to find this place, they… they probably know that you're not alone."

"Anyway, we're stuck together until you can lead us out of here," Reiner tagged on, sweeping his flashlight around the place, catching the glint of water and a few rat's eyes. "We're not leaving the same way we came, and I don't know about you Bertl, but I don't think I'll be able to get out of these sewers without a guide."

He nodded in agreement, turning back to Annie. She shrugged, getting up from where she sat and flipping the suitcase onto its side. "I guess that's it then. Now give me a bit of privacy, I don't think it's the right time for me to get ill."

Both the boys walked towards a bend in the corridor, Reiner snatching up his bag as he did. The broken strap dangled as he held it under his arm like a bag of flour, useless until repaired, Bertholdt reflected.

"Uhm… Reiner?" he asked, twisting his hands a little.

The blond stopped and looked at him, grunting for him to continue.

"I could… maybe… I can repair your bag for you. To thank you. For the clothes."

"If you can, I would appreciate it. It's leather, mind you, not easy to stitch…" he said, unconvinced, but handing the straps to Bertholdt anyway, keeping his grip on the heavy item. They were out of Annie's line of sight, and had not walked any further down the tunnel so as not to get lost. When Reiner had shone his torch down the long passage they had emerged into, the light had not even been able to reach the other end, whilst the ceiling seemed lower and walls closer than in the space where the ladder they had come down was installed. Bertholdt felt a little bit of claustrophobia creeping up on him, but ultimately ignored it in favour of the task at hand.

Quickly, he knotted the two loose ends together, the operation not even taking a few seconds to complete. He tugged on it for good measure, and found it to have the required tightening effect.

"This should work, for a while at least. Uh, it might wear thin after some time, but…"

"It's perfect! Where did you learn how to do these weird knots?" Reiner interrupted again, pulling the strap over his head and putting the bag back in its previous position by his side. It fell a little higher than before, but that was to be expected with the strap's shortening.

"Uh… A fr-friend," Bertholdt said awkwardly, scratching the back of his head. He looked up, and saw that Reiner was staring at him intensely. He dropped the gaze quickly when his eyes were met, but strangely enough, no tension arose from the exchange.

Reiner breathed in deeply, grimacing when he realised his mistake when he found himself stuck with a lungful of sewer air, and Bertholdt couldn't hold back a chuckle at his slightly green face and disgusted expression. Finally, the blond let the air out in a huff, looking intently at Bertholdt again, holding his gaze this time.

"You know…" he started, before stopping and fiddling with the strap of his bag, marvelling hand running over the complicated knot. "I think there's something about all this. Can you feel it too? The… how can I word this? Atmosphere? Relationship…"

"Yes," the taller boy replied. "Yes, it's like… I've never been like this before around other people. I'm not stuttering. Not as much, anyway. Not with you, not with Annie."

"I don't think I really want us to part ways when we get out of this mess, you know."

"Me neither. I trust you both."

"I trust you, too. It's crazy; I've only known you for a few hours, but I trust you. You've been through so much shit, and you survived, and I admire you for that."

There was a short silence, before Bertholdt replied.

"Thank you. I appreciate that, and I-I think the feeling is reciprocate. I..."

"I think we should get a move on," came a voice from behind them, and they both spun around, caching sight of Annie in a too-large shirt, a pair of high military boots, but nothing covering her bare legs.

"Annie, what in..."

"But first," she interrupted, holding up the white trousers she held in her hand for them to see. "We'd better find a way to make these look less like stolen military gear."

In the end, they had decided on leaving the more blatant pieces of equipment in the suitcase, and otherwise modifying the rest to look closer to normal civil wear. Annie cursed quite colourfully for a while after rooting further through the garments she had been given, only finding old military gear, some of which was closer to the boy's sizes rather than her own. The only explanation that she could come up with was that she used to be some kind of relief woman for soldiers back before she moved to the city, and that she had brought back these "souvenirs" of the men she had known back then.

Still, that wasn't the problem right now. As the same Eastern woman who had told her the weird womb saying before would have reflected, the ants knew how to get through this kind of situation better than men did: in stead of finding someone to blame the problem on, they concentrated on solving it in the most efficient way possible instead. That girl really had some wisdom in her, she thought, puzzling over the fine embroidered logo of the Wings of Freedom on one of the pieces of clothing.

"Well, it'll be a bit of a shame ruining such fine fabric, but I guess we can rub some dirt into these," said Bertholdt, snapping her out of her musings of the past. That was another thing ants probably didn't do, dwell on the past for stupid amounts of time.

That's because they don't have a brain, snapped the part of herself that automatically always corrected the other half of her conscience. They don't have to regret things that they can't remember.

She smiled to herself, proud of her own frame of mind. She looked down to Bertholdt, squatting next to the open suitcase. He was holding up a very recognisable pair of white trousers and was silently looking at her in questioning. The fact that he managed to keep her gaze without dropping his own was surprising, to say the least, but she accepted it nevertheless.

"Go ahead. There are so many in there anyway, and I prefer that than being looked at weirdly if we walk around in broad daylight with these kind of targets . Oh, and that other pair, on the right? You can keep those. If I were to wear them, the legs will probably still drag on the floor even if I pulled them up to my armpits."

There was a scoff from a little further off, probably Reiner at the absurd imagery that she had managed to convey in those few words. She decided to ignore it. He will pay for that later.

"Th-Thank you."

Ah, the stutter. She had wondered where that one had gone.

"No worries, you'll need a spare pair at some point anyway. Just leave them in the suitcase for now if you're not going to put them on straight away: I'll be In charge of it, I'm the one that asked for the swap with Isabel anyway."

The underlying meaning of this was of course the fact that she didn't want Bertholdt to strain himself after having been through so much, even if it meant that she had to carry a relatively heavy suitcase around by herself without break.

Fortunately, he didn't argue, instead hastily getting to work on the trousers. He used drier waste rather than the water to get the glowing piece of fabric to the right level of filthiness, so that Annie would be able to wear it immediately instead of having to have her wait for them to dry.

"You'll ha-have to be careful, and take a shower and dye these properly as soon as you can. Clothing infected with sewage waste isn't the most hygienic thing to wear, but you'll have to deal with it until we find something else."

"It'll do for now, you're right. I suggest that we get a move on: we've got the MPs on our tails, and it's only a matter of time before they find us, even if they don't find the concealed panel in the floor. Sewers are a very popular escape route, so they'll probably come down here just in case."

Immediately, Bertholdt closed the case and zipped it up, while Reiner gathered the boots Annie had taken off in order to put the trousers on. She did so, the boys looking away while she quickly pulled them over her legs, making Reiner turn around and give her the boots by poking him harshly to get his attention.

"Oi, that'll bruise! Why did you do that?" he complained, rubbing the sore spot on his upper arm that had been affected by the pitiless index.

"Nothing."

Reiner looked at her unbelievingly, opening his mouth, ready to reply, before thinking better of it and shutting it instead. He looked off towards the end of the sewer he and Bertholdt had gone down earlier, gazing towards the bend in thought.

"If the MPs were to come from a side, which one would it be?"

"Probably not that way," Annie replied, catching on to his train of thought. "They would go for the closest entry that they know of, and it's some way North of here. That tunnel leads South, towards the edges of the city, where there are less people. They'll probably think that we would want to lose ourselves in a mass of people rather than make ourselves more visible in a more open area."

Bertholdt got up, pulling the suitcase along with him before handing it off to Annie, joining their group stare into nothingness, into the future, perhaps.

"Do you think… we should maybe leave the town altogether?"

"Yes. Get on the first train out, and travel to another part of the Kingdom. It's too dangerous here."

"We'll leave together then. None of us have any attachment to this place anyway."

And with that, they made their way down the tunnel, the one that maybe will bring their freedom.

The Military has, for as long as a Holy King or Queen has been on the throne, worn similar uniforms. The green cape is the one attribute that marks the difference between the Men at Arms' uniform and the ones of the other Corps, supposedly dyed that one colour when in the ages of old, they were required to blend in with the trees when chasing enemy troops in the forests, a responsibility that would never befall the Military nor the Border Police.

The light brown jackets were known to be shortened around the time of the invention of the 3D manoeuvre gear, when several incidents of the long fabric getting caught in the gears were reported, and a consequent number of soldiers killed due to the malfunction. High boots were also introduced, so that soldiers landing and falling to their knees would not bruise them beyond use and tear their delicate cream trousers.

This last important part of the required outfit has been around for as long as the Military itself, and their use has long been debated, sometimes to the point of nearly succeeding in banning the colour. Indeed, it seems to be contradictory to the camouflage effect that the capes would have, and the fabric which is used to make them is expensive and difficult to take care of. A few consistent theories as to their existence have been reported, from being an indicator of an individual soldier's obedience (indeed, they are required to be immaculate at all times), to a symbol of the purity of the Royals they serve. But by far, the most amusing of all is the idea that they are a test of courage to the ones that wear them. Numerous stories of high ranking officers checking the breeches of their privates after a first mission for signs of bowel failure has been circulating for years amongst the Army, and has even to this day never proven to be true or false.

-A Study in the Traditional Garments of the People of the Walls, Peaure

Added a little Reibert fluff here to give the tag a purpose, I suppose. Hope you enjoyed it, anyway.

And yes, this chapter is dedicated to our not-so-April's-Fool celebration of season 2! At last! We've been waiting so long for it, and the first episode is definitely up to scratch (even though the opening is… weird, I guess?). Anyways, I'm not spoiling it any further for you, just get a hold of it as soon as possible.