One month later.
Looking around, Antonia could confidently say that the predominant sentiment towards their unusual prisoner was scepticism. Although she suspected that some of it was also aimed at her squad leader.
The titan was not overly big, but they all knew that this did not mean it was not dangerous. Even if it was barely 4 meters tall, it still posed and immeasurable threat they would have to guard day and night.
Hange, however, was doting over it.
And Antonia mused that this did not reassure any of their comrades who thought that the whole operation had been an elaborate act of madness.
They had been lucky to find this special specimen, as Hange called it, so close to the wall.
They had been lucky that it was not an abnormal.
They had been lucky that it was, in fact, rather slow.
They had been lucky that the special operation's squad was able to immobilize it.
And they had been lucky that the net they had thrown over it had proven to be strong enough to restrain it.
Whenever Hange looked at the titan, her eyes shone like it was the best thing she had ever seen. This worried Antonia immensely since she was not entirely sure anymore if Hange understood that this feeling was not reciprocated.
After Moblit and her had watched their squad leader interact with the titan for less than thirty minutes, they had come to the silent agreement that they would take turns supervising Hange.
Because unlike Hange, neither of them fully trusted the rope that had been wound around the titan's limbs or the lances that impaled its hands, wrists, and its lower legs and forced it into an uncomfortable looking sitting position.
Their squad leader, however, kept getting unsettlingly close to the titan.
Antonia had felt sick to the stomach when Hange had greeted the titan by touching its hand, but she had restrained herself from intervening, thinking that her squad leader simply wanted to ascertain its skin temperature.
But she had quickly figured out that she had been mistaken.
Filled with horror Moblit and her had watched as Hange continued to approach her captive, examining it closely from all side, and petting it like someone would pet a dog or a cat.
After watching the spectacle for two hours, Antonia was a nervous wreck. And a side glance assured her that Moblit was equally emotionally exhausted.
And that had one been day one.
On day two, Antonia remembered all too vividly, Hange had attempted to touch the monster's nose, causing both her and Moblit to jump into action and to pull her out of the titan's reach.
"What are you doing?" Genuine confusion had painted their squad leader's face.
"Hange. Whatever you do, please don't get too close to it. Especially not to its face."
"Aw, you guys don't have to worry about me! It's fine, he won't hurt me"
The chuckle that escaped the brunette's lips had sounded slightly insane to Antonia.
"Right, friend?" As soon as Hange had turned around, she seemed to have forgotten about their existence.
Even if the monster had answered affirmatively, it would have not reassured them. Antonia looked into its big brown eyes that were sat on Hange as she once again approached the monster.
The colour if its eyes reminded her of walnuts. When she had gotten closer to the titan, she had been able to make out the darker spots around its irises.
She thanked the universe that the titan's eyes were not blue.
Apparently, the excitement was enough to fuel Hange's energy levels to an extent where she barely slept. Moblit had woken Antonia at 4 A.M. this morning, the despair evident in his voice, telling her that he could no longer stay on his feet and that Hange was planning to baptise the monster.
The sleep deprivation must have gotten to her squad leader's head.
When Antonia arrived at the scenery, she was relieved to find Hange sitting cross-legged on the ground in a reasonable distance to the titan.
She noticed that the six soldiers that were ordered to guard the titan (and Hange) overnight had dozed off by now, one of them resting their head on a comrade's shoulder and snoring quietly into their ear.
One she got closer, she quickly assessed that Hange looked worn down in more than one regard. Her hair was in dire need of a brush and there were dark circles under her eyes. In addition, she looked stirred up.
"You should get some sleep, Hange," Antonia carefully suggested.
Her squad leader simply ignored her comment.
"He won't talk." Hange's voice sounded husky.
"Well," Antonia hesitated, unsure how to reply tactfully, "except for the one you saw in the woods, none of them ever did." And we can't even be a hundred percent sure about that, she thought. Maybe Ilse Langer's mind had played tricks on her shortly before her death.
"I know that," her squad leader replied crankily.
"Sorry," she mumbled, "what will you do now?"
"I have to test Marvin's pain response," Hange replied in a flat voice.
Marvin.
Apparently, she had missed the baptism.
"Oh, I see."
Antonia felt an uneasy feeling rising in her stomach. One, she could not pin down immediately.
Suddenly, it occurred to her that the idea of torturing a titan gnawed at her. Sure, they killed them, but that, however, was an act of self-defence, ideally quickly conducted through slicing through their neck. Antonia was not even sure if titans could really scream. Most were eerily silent, which was exactly what made them so dangerous. Some grunted and growled in a way that no animal she knew did.
Contrary to Hange, she could positively say that she felt in no way attached to this titan. The idea of testing its pain tolerance must be a hundred times worse for Hange than for her.
"I'm sorry, Hange. Maybe we could get someone else to -" she began.
"No, that little fella knows me. It has to be me. I'm just going to let him rest a little longer," Hange interrupted her.
While Antonia could not claim to relate to whatever Hange might be feeling about the thing in front of them, she knew it was right to accept her superior's sentiment.
She looked into the monster's depthless eyes that were unblinkingly fixed on them. To her, it looked neither tired, nor awake. She wondered if Hange saw something else in them.
"Alright. We'll let him rest."
Waiting until sunrise had been a wise decision, Antonia thought dryly.
She was sure that Hange's experiment would have woken up the whole compound. Merely ten minutes after her squad leader had begun with her field research, a crowd had assembled around them.
By now, her whole squad, with Moblit having been the first to run towards the source of the blood-curdling screams, was standing beside her, taking in the scene in front of them with a mixture of bewilderment and concern. Antonia briefly noticed that Moblit's hair was untypically tousled.
Apparently, the titan's pain response was very much existent. But while the titan had shown that it was capable of groaning in pain, especially upon having a torch pushed into its eyes, it was Hange's screams that shook everyone present to the bone.
Antonia was not sure which aspect of the scene in front of her she found the most unbearable. The idea that she felt pity for a titan seemed ridiculously wrong to her.
Seeing Hange suffer performing the task that she had committed herself to must be what affected her, she assured herself. The smell of the titan's burnt flesh, however, did not make it any better.
It was simply hard to watch. Whenever her squad leader approached the titan with another battle cry, Antonia squeezed her eyes shut. It cost her a lot of resolve to not cover her ears.
"Should we… stop her?" Abel's voice was dripping with insecurity.
"I think if we did, she would only resume later," Antonia muttered, "it's impossible to stop her once she got her mind set on something."
"Maybe one of us should do it – I mean, she is getting a bit too emotional about this, right?" Nifa asked carefully.
"I asked her. She wants to do it herself," Antonia murmured, deciding that it would not be a good idea to disclose to them that their squad leader felt an emotional connection to her test subject.
"But she is so reckless. What if the titan breaks lose?" Moblit's tired voice almost trembled.
"Half of the compound is here by now. We'll kill it." Keiji stated, seemingly unfazed by the agonizing screams originating from their squad leader.
Antonia wished she shared his confidence and nerves.
"What the hell is going on here?"
A familiar presence that had appeared to her left made the hairs on her neck stand up, but at the same time she noticed that some of the tension she had felt left her body. If they were truly unlucky and the titan broke loose, he would kill it.
She noticed from the corner of her eye that the rest of her squad stood taller in an attempt to look more professional than sleep-deprived in the presence of a superior.
"Hange is… conducting an experiment, captain." Nifa explained.
"What kind of experiment is this noisy?"
Antonia held her breath as she watched Hange run towards the titan, a spear pointed towards the creature's collarbone, and made sure to look away before her superior made contact with the titan's body. Yet, she could not help flinching as Hange's scream became one octave higher and mingled with the test subject's hollow bawl.
She inwardly cursed her lack of self-restraint when she felt Levi's eyes on her and immediately made an effort to put a blank expression on her face.
"Hange wants to analyse its pain response," she said in a flat voice, "so far, the titan seems unfazed by heat – although it doesn't like getting its eyeballs burnt out."
"No shit," he replied drily.
As she turned her head to look at him, she registered that he had wrinkled his nose in disgust as he took in the spectacle in front of them.
"Don't tell me you're feeling bad for that thing?" he muttered lowly under his breath.
"Of course not," Antonia replied without hesitation, "I feel bad for Hange."
Levi nodded slowly and then focused his attention back on her squad leader and the titan.
Antonia turned her head towards Moblit.
"You should try to get some rest, if you can, that is," she suggested.
She watched her blond comrade throw a glance towards the short man next to her and she mused that he, too, concluded, that, if push came to shove, Levi would take care of things.
"Alright, wake me up when you need to take turns."
She noticed how Levi looked after him with a frown that remained on his face when he turned to address her.
"You're taking turns to watch this shitshow?"
She offered him a thin smile.
"We are taking turns to watch Hange. So she doesn't get herself killed," she explained more patiently than she felt.
"I see."
She briefly looked at his face, quickly taking in the light grey of eyes and his thin, furrowed eyebrows. Antonia could not allow her gaze to linger, somehow certain that he would notice if it did. That he would see right through her and that he would not be amused.
She met his eyes for a second or two, like a normal person, she hoped, and then focused on her squad leader and Marvin, again.
For a second, she felt tempted to tell Levi that Hange had given the titan a name, just to see his reaction, but she quickly dismissed that idea. It wasn't relevant.
It took Hange hours to conclude today's tests. Or rather, it took Hange hours to finally collapse from the exhaustion of her experiment.
The crowd that had assembled soon began to thin out, leaving Hange's squad, Levi and the half dozen soldiers on guard duty alone to witness Hange's endeavours.
"Fucking finally," Levi grumbled next to her once Hange's body finally began to sway "someone get this four-eyed maniac out of here"
Antonia couldn't have agreed more. She rushed towards Hange, with Nifa right behind her, an caught her before she fell to the ground.
Bringing Hange to bed proved to be a rather challenging endeavour.
Lifting their snoring squad leader had not been a problem at all for them. Both Antonia and Nifa were stronger than they looked and far too proud to accept the help offered by Abel and Keiji.
Navigating through Hange's messy room without knocking anything over, however, proved far more difficult.
Hange's floor was covered in things that, in Antonia's opinion, did not belong in a bedroom. At least not in this quantity.
Books, scrolls, clothes (some dirty, some clean), two magnifying glasses, a regular pair of glasses, a kettle and a chipped cup, a microscope, three dozen of pieces of crumbled up paper, a very dried out slice of bread that crunched under Nifa's foot, a neglected hairbrush that had carelessly been tossed into a corner…
As Antonia took in the variety of things, she wondered if Hange had always been this untidy or if it was a side effect of her promotion. In the training corps, leaving any room in a comparable condition to this one would have been sanctioned with a day of running laps. In the survey corps, only very few squad leaders ever set foot into their soldiers' rooms. Maybe it had been a slow process, Antonia mused. Be that as it may, her fingers itched to tidy up her superior's room.
Next to her, she could hear Nifa sigh.
"Do you think she would notice if we just got rid of the garbage and maybe brought her clothes to the laundry?"
Apparently, she wasn't the only one indulging in the phantasy of tackling this mess. If only it hadn't been so out of line to do so.
Antonia felt the corners of her mouth turn up.
"Maybe we can just sneak that old slice of bread out of here. We could always say that it got stuck under your boot if the topic comes up," she suggested quietly.
"Heh. Can you hold her alone for a second?" Antonia wrapped her arm around Hange's waist and slightly bend to the left to better adjust to the additional weight, as Nifa lifted their superior's arm from her shoulder and began to carefully pick up the clothes that Hange had tossed on her unmade bed.
After they, more or less gently, lifted Hange up on her mattress, Antonia picked up the dried-up toast and gently closed the door behind them.
Once she tossed that damn thing into the bin, she would get some well-deserved rest.
Antonia felt like she had only closed her eyes for a second when she felt a presence far too close to her face and warm breath tickling her skin. The adrenaline boost washed all sleepiness she had felt away.
Immediately, her eyes shot open and took in the person towering over her, their hand hovering above her shoulder, intent on shaking her awake.
"Hange." She greeted dryly. "Why?"
Her superior blinked innocently. "Oh, you're already awake. My bad, I didn't mean to startle you. I wanted to ask you if you would like to assist me. Someone has to take notes and make sketches of today's experiments."
Antonia threw a glance towards the window. It looked like it was late afternoon. She narrowed her eyes, trying to calculate how much time had passed.
"You only slept for a couple of hours, right?" she sighed. "Can't the experiments wait until tomorrow? I think it might be good to take a break and rest –"
Hange did not wait for her to finish her sentence.
"No, they can't wait. It's far too important."
Antonia felt tired and frustrated. She was certain that torturing the titan further would not lead to any new insights, much less enable it to talk. In addition, the lack of sleep was starting to get to her. She was cranky. The realization extinguished her wish to argue.
Simultaneously, Hange seemed to have had a change of heart. She had started chewing on her chapped lower lip.
"I'm sorry for waking you up, Toni. I know that I have put you and Moblit through a lot lately, and I don't want to be ungrateful. You should get some rest, I'll be fine on my own."
"No no, of course, I'll come with you. Give me a minute to freshen up and find my notebook. Maybe you should get something to eat in the meantime."
Hange's face went from surprise to sheer delight.
"Really? Thank you, Toni."
"Don't mention it."
As soon as Hange had left the room, Antonia quickly went to the washroom to brush her teeth and change her shirt. She brushed her hair with a wet comb and splashed some water into her face, ignoring the greyish undertone of her skin, and hoping that it would somehow make her feel more awake than she looked.
Once she felt she had exhausted her options to get close to that goal, she put on her gear, retrieved a notebook and a pencil out of her nightstands' drawer and hurried herself to the kitchen, hoping to find Hange there. And maybe some leftovers from lunch.
She could hear her squad leader before she could see them. Not too far from the entrance to the kitchen stood Hange, with her back to her, gesticulating widely with two pretzel rolls she held in her hands, subconsciously scattering breadcrumbs on the hallway.
In front of her, Levi was eyeing the mess that she was making.
He nodded when he saw Antonia approach.
"You will do it? Awesome! Thank you, Levi!"
Levi's eyes moved back to the person in front of him.
"The answer is no."
"Huh? But you just nodded affirmatively."
"I didn't."
Antonia came to a halt next to her. "Hey Hange, hey Levi."
"Oh, Toni, right on time, here-" she shoved one of the pretzel rolls into her hand. When Antonia noticed Levi's glare on her late breakfast, she made sure to hold her notebook below it to gather the crumbs. Despite her grumbling stomach, she decided she would only start eating once she was outside.
She smiled warmly at her squad leader. "Thanks, Hange."
In return, she just waved her now freed hand.
"I was just talking to Levi about how we could find out more about the titan's anatomy and asked him to help us with dissecting him"
Antonia grimaced at the plan.
"I thought you wanted to make him," she corrected herself once she felt Levi's scrutinizing gaze on her, "it talk?"
Hange looked at her with one raised brow. "He can't talk, Toni", she explained to her as if she was being slow.
Antonia closed her eyes and took a deep breath.
"I want to find out why he can't talk while there are titans who can. That's why we need to assess the details of his anatomy. Then, we can compare Marvin to other specimen."
Levi furrowed his brows. "Marvin?"
Antonia nodded inconspicuously when Hange showed no inclination to answer his question.
"Ideally, I want to acquire visual data of the brain, eyes, tongue, larynx, vocal cords, lungs, organs, … "
Levi raised up a hand to stop her "Hold up, four eyes. How do you imagine this to work? Did you forget about the smoke that comes out of their wounds?"
"I said 'ideally'. Eventually, we will figure out a way to solve the problem with the smoke. Today, I want to pluck out his eye without severing the nerve that should connect it to the brain."
"That's a shit idea."
Antonia wholeheartedly agreed. "It's far too dangerous to get this close to a titan's face, Hange."
"It'll be fine once we enhance Marvin's restraints and immobilize him further. I was thinking that maybe we'll have him lie down on his back so we can access his face better."
"And can't access its neck? Still a shit idea."
Hange shrugged. "Suit yourself. With or without your help, I'm sure today's experiments are going to be a success." She turned around an began walking further down the hallway. "Are you coming, Toni?", she shouted over her shoulder.
Antonia shot a helpless glance towards Levi before hurrying to catch up with Hange.
"Unbelievable." She heard him mutter behind her.
A few seconds later, he was walking next to her, his pace matching hers. She wanted to give him a grateful smile, but Levi did not meet her eyes. Instead, he was starring daggers at Hange's back.
When they got closer to Marvin, Levi stopped to address one of the soldiers tasked with guarding the titan.
"Go fetch Erwin. Tell him his ass is needed down here right now."
Good idea. In her peripheral vision, Antonia saw the soldier rush away. The only person Hange listened to when it came to titans, was Erwin. If she managed to stall her friend for a few minutes, the likelihood of a safely conducted experiment should increase drastically.
She grabbed Hange's arm to casually prevent her from getting closer to Marvin who had already laid eyes on the two people approaching him.
"Let's eat before we start," she suggested. Hange looked at the bread roll in her hand as if it had slipped her mind that it was there.
"That's a good idea, especially since we'll be needing both our hands."
She nodded and forced herself to take a bite of her meal, glad that the baked good was still rather soft. In different circumstances, she would have enjoyed the food.
"Oh, Levi, I had a feeling you would come around!" Hange grinned as the black-haired man walked towards her.
His face showed no inclination that he had heard her.
"Alrighty, you got your notebook, Toni?" Antonia swallowed the last bit of her food and nodded "Let's go say 'Hi' then!". She waved her arms as the walked straight towards the titan.
Antonia did not want to say "Hi" to Marvin, Regardless, she made sure to follow her squad leader and kept her eyes on the titan who had already fixed his wide-eyed gaze upon her squad leader.
As Antonia caught up with her, Marvin shot her short glance before continuing to stare at Hange. That was weird.
"Hange."
"Hm?" the brunette hummed absentmindedly.
"Can you take a few steps back, please?"
"Oh Toni, I haven't gotten that close, you really don't need to worry that much."
"I may have noticed something."
Instantly, Hange turned around, excitement sparkling in her wide eyes. "What is it?"
"Just… go to the right, please, and watch his eyes."
Much to her surprise, Hange immediately obeyed. Despite Hange moving further away from him, the titan's gaze remained transfixed on her.
"Can you walk around a bit, please?"
As Hange moved, Marvin followed her every movement.
When Antonia walked further towards the titan, his eyes only flickered towards her for a second before returning to Hange who was further away.
"He's… still looking at me" Hange said slowly as her cheeks began to blush.
"I think he remembers you." Antonia said flatly.
She wondered how vividly Marvin remembered the experiments her squad leader had conducted a few hours ago. She wondered if he was feeling vengeful. Or scared. She quickly shook her head to dismiss the thought.
Instead, she focused on Hange, trying to assess her squad leader's reaction to her theory.
Her superior was staring at the titan with slightly parted lips and dreamy eyes.
"He… recognizes me?" she slowly replied.
"Yeah. I think so."
A new surge of energy suddenly seemed to take possession of the woman.
"That's wonderful news, Toni!" she shrieked.
Antonia was not so sure about that. If she was completely honest, the news creeped her out.
"If he remembers me, that must mean he can learn things. Like, he must be able to remember other people, maybe he can learn our names and we can teach him to communicate with us. Maybe he can learn to use sign language…"
With light steps, Hange skipped towards the titan and pointed to herself.
"I'm Hange, Marvin. Haan-gee. Hange. And you…" she pointed at the titan's chubby face "are Marvin. Marrr-vin. Alright, buddy?"
Antonia felt like was caught up in a weird dream.
She looked over her shoulder, meeting Levi's eyes whose brows were more furrowed than they had been when he had watched Hange make a mess in the hallway earlier, indicating that he found the scene in front of them equally bewildering.
When he caught her eyes, he slowly walked closer towards her.
"This…", Hange pointed towards Antonia and returned her attention to the titan in front of them who followed her squad leader's gesture, "is Toni. Tooo-nii. Yes?"
With a sigh, Antonia waved her hand and took a few steps to the left, creating more distance between Hange and herself. Marvin's focus, however, remained on Hange.
"Now, look at Toni again, Marvin. Not at me. At Toni. Who's Toni?"
Antonia breathed a sigh of relief when Marvin did not look at her.
"Fucking ridiculous", Levi muttered next to her.
"I guess he's more of a visual learner", Antonia muttered dryly, hoping that her voice sounded normal.
When Levi snorted, she felt the corners of her mouth twitch upwards for a second, almost forgetting the bizarre situation they were in.
"Come on, Marvin, look at Toni. Toooo-niii."
"Hange, I don't think he can process that."
"Maybe all that ruckus from earlier made it deaf, four eyes."
"I don't think Marvin's deaf… Am I right, buddy? Let me check…"
And suddenly, within the blink of an eye, Hange shot the grapple hooks of her gear into the titan's shoulder, eager to climb onto his upper arm to inspect its ear – and right into the proximity of its jaws.
"Han-!" The air got knocked out of her lungs when Levi shoved her to the side and became a blur.
Time seemed to slow down as Hange landed on Marvin's arm and the titan turned its head towards her, opening its mouth and – Levi sliced its neck.
Erwin arrived just in time to watch the titan's remains turn into smoke and one of his squad leaders into a sobbing mess.