A/N: Sorry for the delay on this chapter, but I have a few more written out after this and hope to get them out sooner! Thank you all for sticking through this story with me and I hope you all enjoy! Please leave a comment about what you think as it really inspires me to continue writing!

Part 6: The Female Titan

Chapter 44

Willow sits at the edge of a bed in the infirmary, face buried in her hands with the sound of Reiner's whimpering filling the room. He's been unconscious for four days and a part of her doesn't even want him to come to, as she's too ashamed with herself for not fighting back.

After all that work, she had nothing to show for it; she killed less than a dozen soldiers, and more importantly she failed to take down the airship to save Gabi and Falco from the Scouts.

"Where the fuck were you?" she hears the low growl enter the room as Galliard stomps towards her. He snatches her by the collar of her clothes, lifting her from her seat and shaking her in his grip. "Where the fuck were you when we were all dying out there!" he roars in her face as micro droplets of spit hit her.

"Pock, let her go!" Pieck says lightly as she limps behind him.

"Are you kidding me?" he glances back at the raven-haired woman. "She's working with them! She was in their uniform and she didn't turn!"

Willow glances down the bridge of her nose at the man who still holds her by the collar. She wonders if he is just angry with her for not acting, or if he is truly stupid enough to believe that those oversized clothes and her lack of turning was enough to label her a traitor.

Galliard was unconscious when she jumped out of the airship as the Female Titan and tore him and Reiner out of their Titan bodies, but he couldn't be that stupid to think that after everything she has done for this shitty place, that she is still one of the Scouts.

"There's no use talking like that," Pieck approaches him in a soothing tone, placing her hands on his tense shoulders. "If we start turning against one another, then there's no point in fighting.

He scoffs at Pieck's words, shrugging her hands off of him and pushing Willow out of his grip and back onto the bed. "You were just as useless as him back there," he tells her, looking down on her as she sits on the bed while Reiner sleeps only inches away. "While we fought… while we bled for Marley, you two were uselessly sitting there with your tails between your legs!"

"Not quite, Galliard," the deep voice of Magath enters the room.

"Officer Magath," Porco straightens himself into a salute.

"General now," he informs him of his rise in rank with no pleasure in his tone. The dark-haired man glances down at Willow who looks up at him with tired eyes. "Willow used the cover of their uniforms to deplete their explosive spears and kill their foot soldiers. If it weren't for her, the casualties could have far outreached what we've seen."

"If she turned into the Female, we could have taken them all out and none of us would have been injured!" Porco argues with a lifting tone.

"The Female Titan is not as safeguarded from their attacks to the nape as the Armored or Jaws are. Given Eren Jaeger's desire to devour all the Titan's, we could have lost the Female to him as well. I believe she reacted in the best fashion given the circumstances."

Porco rolls his eyes and scoffs at the man's assessment of her response. "For now," Magath continues, "Our priority is to strategize a way to get the Founder back from these devils before he can awaken the Rumbling."

Before any of them can respond to the man, Reiner begins stirring in his bed. All eyes turn to the blonde as he lifts himself from his bed. He takes hold of his pounding head, trying to hold the pieces together as he groans in pain.

Reiner glances around the room when he is struck by the sight of everyone around him. He notices the look on their faces and recognizes it all too well. They are tired, defeated, and at a loss. He clears his throat as he looks at them collectively, and asks the first thing that comes to his mind.

"Where are Falco and Gabi?"

Willow turns her head from him, unable to look him in the eyes as he searches for an answer from her. Porco scoffs at his question, glancing down at the curly-haired blonde and expecting her to tell him that she failed to retrieve them.

"They're gone," Porco answers when Willow's unable to tell him the truth.

"Gone?" the blonde asks as he sits in his bed.

Porco glances at Willow, waiting for her to explain to him how she managed to lose them when she was in the airship.

She lets out a wavering sigh, lifting her blue eyes to his golden orbs as they try to read one another. "We should probably speak somewhere privately," she croaks out stiffly and Reiner simply nods his head in response.

He lifts himself from the bed as the tension in the room grows thicker. Willow can feel the hate seeping off of Porco for what she allowed to happen on the airship, but there was nothing she could have done while up there. Despite being completely torn by the image of Levi in front of her, with Jean's gun pointed at her there was no way she would have been able to escape the ship with the kids, and allowing herself to be captured with them wouldn't do them much good either.

Reiner tugs his button-down shirt on and follows her out of the room. No one in the room seems to mind that they need a moment alone, and they walk out without any complains from the rest of them.

Willow leads the way while the tall blonde hangs closely behind her. She looks onto the destruction of the city that's left in the wake of the Scout's attack. Piles of debris tower over the toppled buildings, mounds of bodies are gathered to be dumbed in mass graves, and clouds of smoke cover the city as fires burn the excess trash that's been left behind. The image that returns to her makes Willow wonder if she'll ever escape these destructive sights that've been chasing her since her home was destroyed.

Reiner watches as Willow walks the streets of their destroyed city, seeing her tense shoulders and downturned eyes as she takes in the sight of devastation and decay. He hates that she's been exposed to this once more, wishing that he was strong enough to stop this from happening.

Willow leads Reiner to the port where they are met with the image of the eviscerated harbor from the Colossal's transformation. Pieces of demolished ships peak through the surface of the water that laps against their destruction. The shops and merchant stands that lined the waterfront have been leveled into a pile of torn up debris. Bodies are still buried under the destruction and have yet to be removed and transported to the mass graves.

She continues past the devastation of the city and heads towards the shoreline where nothing but the sound of soft waves crashing against the wreckage of their naval forces is heard. He keeps his eyes off of the obliteration around them and into her soft eyes as they look out into the setting sun on the water. He thinks about the last time they were in this position. He remembers how times were simpler then and how happy they made one another that night. And he can't hold back the realization that they can never go back to that again.

"We need to get them back," he tells her finally as his eyes fixate on the water, as if he's trying to find the island in the horizon that's harboring them.

Willow does not respond to the blonde as she keeps her eyes on the same location that his eyes search for in the horizon. They're actions have led to far too many people dying on that island and they will not allow Gabi and Falco to join that mass of bodies.

"We need to formulate a plan," he tells her sternly, as his eyes tear from the horizon, but her eyes never once waver from the sunset. "They are going to expect that we make our move. We won't have the advantage of surprise on our side like they did."

Willow does not respond to him and he continues. "Zeke is with them," he says with a tensing of his jaw. "He's working with Eren against us," he says with a shake of the head as this is by far the worst-case scenario that they can be in.

Willow recognized the dead look in Eren's eyes when she saw him on the airship. It was the same look she held after killing the Levi Squad before leveling the streets of Stohess. Revenge was not as sweet for him as he initially thought, so now he's reacting rashly as he desperately searches for anything to give him the release of his built-up hate. But she knows that he won't find it, because she never found it either. It was forgiving Erwin that finally made her realize that their deaths would never give her that release, and now she carries it and battles with it daily.

"What's their plan?" Reiner asks her as he sees her eyes glaze over, indicating that her mind is elsewhere.

Willow thinks back at the memories of the Female Titan that were divulged to her. She plays back the situation over and over in her head as Zeke frantically fumbled to dispose of Laylah for not agreeing with his plan.

"He wants to use the Founding Titan's power over the Eldians to make them incapable of breeding and continuing their race," she finally says and Reiner gasps at this, taking a step back with shock. "It's his way of ensuring the Marleyans are unable to use another Eldian as a tool for destruction again."

"Shit," Reiner releases with a shaky breath. "Eren can't be on board with this," he tells her sternly.

"I think he's being pretty fucking compliant," she says in wake of the destruction around them.

"So, we go and get them back," Reiner encourages with a firm nod. "We use what's left of the Marleyan forces and we get them back," he states. "Of course they're going to know we're coming but—"

"You really think Marley is going to give a shit about two Eldian warriors?" Willow hisses as her head finally cranes over to Reiner, showing him the bloodshot in her wild eyes. "They are disposable to them. They'll just find some new kids to train up and kill prematurely."

Reiner is taken back by the sight of her and how tired she appears before him. She's angry, but her shoulders are sunken in, her eyes are turned downwards and there's a puffiness around her cheeks. She's exhausted. After all these years, she's finally finished with fighting.

"We have to," he tells her sternly. "They're going to kill them. We have to go back for them!"

"Who's to say they didn't toss them out of the airship while they were travelling over the Sea?" she tells him harshly as her head cranks back to the view of the fiery sky reflecting off of the water. "Marley isn't going to waste their manpower on two filthy Eldians."

"They're warriors!" Reiner corrects her with a clenching of his jaw. "They will not allow this attack on Marleyan soil to go unpunished."

"There aren't enough Eldians to fight against the Scouts. Especially now that Eren has the War Hammer and lain waste to our military in one single attack. They are not going to send their own men to die for the lives of two Eldian children; Warriors or not," she deadpans back to him.

"So, what then? We just fucking let them die on that island?" he raises his voice to her, trying to gain some sort of response out of her. He hates her like this. He hates when she's closed off and apathetic to something that clearly bothers her.

His chest heats and tightens at her lack of response. "We are honorary Marleyans!" he yells at her now. "We can convince the brass to give us the manpower to strategize an attack against that island to show the other powers at play that they cannot attack us like this. This is our duty for our country!"

"Our Duty?" Willow finally snaps her head back to Reiner with a scoff as strands of curly blonde hair flow in the soft wind. Her eyes are now widened with a fierce and feral hatred lacing them. "For four years you and I fought side by side in the name of Marley. We dedicated our lives in proving that we were loyal to them. We tore our bodies down and risked our lives all for the sake of being welcomed in their good graces, and what do we return with? A red band on our arms and expectations to continue the fight!"

"They aren't going to fucking listen to us, Reiner," she hisses at him. "When you stood in that council room addressing your concerns with attacking Paradis, they laughed at you and they scoffed at you. They do not respect you, Reiner. They never will! Five years isolated on the island, four years of endless battles, and you are still nothing but a devil with a red cloth on his arm. Honorary Marleyan my ass."

"Willow," he begins in an increasingly threatening tone seeing her words growing with treachery and attempting to stop her, should anyone be listening.

"No, Reiner," she shakes her head. "I don't give a shit if they can hear me. Fuck Marley!" she spits venomously.

Reiner's eyes lift and widen with shock. He stands there, frozen at her blunt duplicity. "Fuck Marley?" he scoffs at her. "Really? After everything?" he returns with an exhausted tone.

"Everything?" she shakes her head at how he could possibly be defending them in this moment. "They are just as bad, if not worse than Erwin was with his sick savior complex. Don't you get it, Reiner? You are not human to them!" she raises her voice at him as her fists tighten at her sides and her nails dig into her palms.

"You think that silly little band on your arm makes you an honorary Marleyan?" she rhetorically asks him with a patronizing tone to her voice. "No! It singles you out! It shows them what you are to them. Garbage!" she yells at him with wild eyes as they frantically search his for understanding.

"You are nothing but useful trash they can manipulate into thinking that you're rising to their ranks by giving you a piece of cloth to wear," she says with a shake of her head. "When really it just acts as a symbol of what you are to them. You are nothing more than a weapon so they can elevate themselves to unreachable heights. If we were truly a race of devils, they would have eradicated us all, not train us up into weapons of mass destruction and heard us into compliance! So yeah… fuck Marley!" she turns from him, chest heaving in fury as she watches the waves crash against the sunken ships whose bows peak from the water's surface.

"So, what are you going to do now? Huh?" Reiner returns with an equally exasperated tone. "You think you can just go back on that island and beg for forgiveness? You think you can bring in tactical knowledge as a bargaining chip and all will be forgotten?" he steps towards her, encroaching on her space and towering over her to show her just how large he is compared to her and how small she really is.

"Do you honestly think that Levi is going to take you back with open arms after what you did to his Squad?" he sneers at her with a lowered and threatening tone of voice as his breath brushes against her ear and assaults her senses with him. She lifts her shoulder to her ear, trying to show him how uncomfortable she is with him this close to her.

"You are just as fucked as I am!" he yells at her. "We don't have any other choice! So, you either stand with Marley and comply, or we can give Annie back her Titan," he spits out with venom, knowing and wanting to hurt her.

"You're so fucking indoctrinated, it's sickening," she says as she presses her hand firmly on his chest and pushes him out of the boundaries of her personal bubble. She glares up into his golden eyes that stare at her, reading the feral look in his eyes as neither are willing to step down from their stance. "Go ahead and choke on the shit they shovel into your mouth, Reiner. But don't try and tell me it's appetizing," she says as she shakes her head and begins walking away from him.

"Why did you come back, Willow?" he calls out to her and she turns around to look at him. "Why did you pull me and Porco from the rubble of the attack, when you could have left with Levi and never came back?" he asks and she tenses at his question, knowing where he's going with this.

"I'll tell you why," he says with a firm nod, knowing he's right with the tightening of her body. "It's because you have nowhere else to go. You can't go to Paradis because of the atrocities you committed there, and you can't go to any of the enemy states of Marley for the same atrocities you committed in the name of Marley. You came back because you knew this is where you belong. Whether you like that or not, you are trapped here, and it was your own actions that led to that imprisonment. You don't have a choice, Willow, and you know it," he returns to her.

She looks at him, eyes heavily lidded and empty. "I have a choice," she throws back at him with a defeated tone. "Call upon Annie, because I'm fucking exhausted," she turns from him.

"No!" Reiner snaps, snatching her wrist and pulling her towards him with a painful force that almost dislocates her shoulder. "I'm not letting you fucking throw it all away because you're tired. We're all fucking tired!" he seethes.

"We are going to fight!" he yells at her. "We fight against them and get those kids back. Because they are children, and they don't deserve to die!" he tells her with wild passion that hasn't ignited in his eyes since his initial mission to Paradis. He grabs her face with both hands, holding her gaze and reading her stare behind the building tears in her eyes. "And then I'm going to live out the rest of my term with you, happy with some fucking peace of mind, because I love you, and I'm not going to watch you throw that away because you're fucking tired!"

He pulls her head to his chest, burying her face in his shirt as he presses his lips to her ear so that only she can hear, should someone be listening. "I don't fucking like it either," he admits, divulging in so many words that he's not as compliant as he's giving off. "Yeah, it's all bullshit. But I'm not losing you because of it. You matter to me when everything else is meaningless in this world. Don't give up on me," he begs her and she can hear the desolate whine in his voice.

She looks up at him, watery eyes blurring her vision of his powerful gaze. "Okay," her voice shakes as the tears push through the barricade of her eyelashes and fall down her hot cheeks. "Okay," she shakily breathes as he buries her face in his chest. Both of them fearing what awaits for them on the horizon beyond the sea.