Chapter 49
I get marched with reckless abandon. It's nice to have the bag over my head, I ultimately decide, because there's an air of mystery and isolation for me and for everyone who bothers to look my way. They see a woman with a bag over her head, being escorted in nothing but underwear and a brasserie, but they don't see her face. Word will spread soon, I'm sure. But it won't spread for now. It gives me time to think about who I am, what I'm to do, without the distraction of passing people I recognize.
I'm almost entirely sure that this is Armin's fault. Why else would he have looked like that? Pyxis had even warned me, and despite that, I was dumb enough to help Annie with her midnight mission…
I wonder if they got her too.
Then again, the officer said I was under arrest for murder and treason. They have to have a decent amount of information in order to apprehend me. Don't they? That, or a voice high up enough to make doing this kind of thing worth it. Which means they either unearthed the gear we hid, Annie ratted me out, or something else I'm not even considering.
My bare feet snag over jagged stones and chilled floor slabs. The temperature drops like crazy, a sudden hiss of chilled air that makes me shiver as best as I can against the steely grips of my captors. I hear a thick door creak and bang against a wall. A sharp push from behind and I'm staggering forward into the blind oblivion beyond me, nearly falling before those damned soldiers hook arms beneath my armpits and jerk me up. They drag me to a chair and force me down to sit. I feel every individual grain from the rickety seat, rigid and no doubt unfinished, splinters snagging against the backs of my thighs as I try to shift and immediately regret moving at all.
They secure my hands behind me, and my ankles to the chair legs, and then leave. I listen to the angry thudding feet patter down the hall and out of earshot.
Frankly it doesn't look that good for me. I'm freezing, tied down to a chair in who knows where, with a bag over my head and a pronounced enough lack of attire to make slipping out of here and blending in impossible without snagging something to put on first. Panic shoots up into me for a quick second as I think of everything I have on my person right now–and everything I do not.
Efa's ring.
Mina's note.
They're in my room still, on my dresser. What if they ransack the place for evidence? Will they rip up my friend's precious last words, pilfer my mother's final belonging for cheap cigarettes and a third of some overpriced whiskey? I almost feel like crying. I've done so little. Crawled so far. If I am to answer for all that I've done, I wish it wouldn't be here. Not now. Not this.
Today was supposed to be the Recruit Solicitation Ceremony. If I'm stuck down here, does that mean the officers don't care whether or not I pick a division? That would be bad. Very bad.
Then again–technically, Eren doesn't choose the scouts. I just watched his trial. He's placed under their control, to keep him in line, because whether or not the military likes it, he is necessary for the future of Paradis. For survival. That means there is a threshold of use–a line between too useful to let die, and useless enough to refrain from letting live. If it comes down to it, will I have to sell my use in order to stay alive? To get out of this place?
If I could kill you now I would. Eren's words. A year in the future and he cannot kill me. That has to mean something, doesn't it? There has to be more that I am capable of. More still that I need to do.
How ironic, to find solace in him.
I don't know how long I stay down there. Alonen undisturbed, seconds click by like thin drums of my staggering pulse. It's quiet. Perhaps a rat or two, but the scuttling falls at such a muffled angle through the burlap sack that I can't honestly tell. I spend my time thinking. Examining all possible avenues of escape. Figuring out what is already known about me, about my deeds. What is still undiscovered. I think and think and think.
The interrogator who approached my cell first removed the sack. Like all the others that have paid me a visit to keep me fed, he pulls out a tin cup of stale water and a solid butt of bread. I drink, chew, swallow. He glanced at the bucket in the corner–curled back his upper lip and left the waste pail where it was. Which was fine by me. I didn't need it. He sat back, examining me, saying nothing for a time undisclosed. Then: "Name?"
"Aliva Moreau."
"Age."
"Nineteen. Or twenty. What day is it?"
The man pointedly ignored that. "What year?"
"The hundred and seventh."
"Regiment?"
"Don't have one." I fight the urge to add a quick jab about being pulled out of bed well before I could pick where I wanted to go. I shift marginally in the chair; the stench of my own body strikes me then, acrid where it rises into my nostrils. Not a single shower. I am loath to imagine what will become of my hair down the line: matted, mangled, eventually chopped. At least I'm still enough to let my foot heal. At least the injury helps me mark the passage of time. How long did Johan say it would need if I don't strain it? A month?
The interrogator grunts. He's taking notes, I belatedly realize. I wonder what he writes. "Where are you from?"
"Shiganshina."
"Parents?"
"Efa Moreau. Betham Moreau."
"Occupations."
"Housewife. Merchant."
"Alive, dead?"
My finger felt bare. I wriggled a little bit, moving to rub a thumb over the place where my mother's ring always sat. I felt listless, unmoored, without its weight. "My mother is deceased. Not sure about my father."
"When did she pass."
"The draft mission."
Scribbles. "And the father?"
"Like I said. Not sure. Him and his new wife packed up and vanished."
"When?"
On and on. Finally, once I'm sure he knows every petty detail about my life, the instructor stands up. He approaches me, studying me carefully. Then slams his boot down hard against my bare foot. I suck in a sharp breath, nearly shouting from the surprise of it all, the hissing pain, but before I can he's gripping my chin and jerking my head up. "What's your name?"
I gasp. He gives my foot another stomp, my brows knit with pained confusion. "Aliva. Aliva Moreau."
Water. Bread.
"Aliva Moreau."
Water. Cold, wet, slimy oats.
Water. Water. Water. I am choking. The chair is held backwards, front two legs suspended in air. My body kicks spasmastically. I can do nothing. The bag over my head clings wetly to my face. I sputter, sucking in a desperate gasp for air and drawing in liquid instead. The chair gets smacked back on the floor suddenly, sack ripped off, and the man is in my face again. He sneers. "Aliva," I gurgle, and he grins.
"Did you kill Hannes?"
I freeze. The water, the confusion, the pain, the isolation, the borderline insanity, the twin realities, the duality of my secrets; all of it becomes a damn in my head. Too many things to keep straight. Too many things to keep hidden. "Who?" I blink, lost, and I know that's not the right answer. He slaps the sack back over my head and the chair keels backward into the basin.
"Aliva. It's Aliva, it's Aliva, it's Aliva, I've always been Aliva–"
"DID YOU KILL HANNES?"
"NO, please, NO, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to–"
"HOW DID YOU KILL HIM?"
"I didn't! Please, he was eaten, I've only killed my mother, please, you have to understand, she was going to kill me, I don't love her, she's the reason I'm here, she's the one, she–"
The metal door creaks open.
"Got the records back," the interrogator says. He sounds equally cheerful and equally disgusted. "Your mother was on the draft records. Drafted, showed up. Body was confirmed." I hear him draw near. I tense. I can't help it. The other's aren't here, so I can't be tilted back to the basin, but I'm scared all the same. My head is going to explode soon. I can feel it. I'm hiding too much. I'm saying too much. I don't even remember talking about my mother the other day. Which mother? Which daughter? Which mother? Which daughter? Which mother? Which daughter? Which mother? Which daughter?
Which mother? Which daughter? Which mother? Which daughter?
Which mother? Which daughter? Which mother? Which daughter?
Which mother? Which daughter? Which mother? Which daughter?
Which mother? Which daughter? Which mother? Which daughter?
"The doctor says we have to back off a little," the man says. The sack gets jerked off my head in one swift motion. I blink, staggering into the light, finding the man before me, studying his features. "You didn't kill your mother, Aliva Moreau."
I sob.
I did. But I don't think it matters anymore.
The door stays closed for awhile. I don't see the sack again. Or the basin. Or the other soldiers and the interrogator. My foot begins to itch in its boot. The undergarments I wear, thick with sweat long-dried, disfigured and sharply disheveled, have threads coming lose. I'm tired. Sore. Gutted.
I know the person that takes the interrogator's place. They don't seem particularly eager to be there. Or at least they did, until they saw me, then it was if all the light went out of her eyes. For awhile they just read the file. Hemmed and hawwed. Chewed on her pen, scribbled notes in between the notes. The first time they came into the cell, I was determined to stay on guard. The second I was wary, expectant. Confused when they still said nothing.
By the third I almost wanted to shout at them to break the silence.
By the fourth, I didn't need to. "I'm Hange Zoe, of the Scout Regiment."
A/N:
Oh, yeah. I'm back. Did ya miss me?
It won't take me too long to get reoriented with the plot. I pretty much had everything planned out for the rest of the series. Prepare for pain. prepare for drama. Prepare...
to Let Fliers Fall.