bertall | Iɴʙᴏx ✉ Vɪᴄᴛᴏʀʏ Rᴏᴀᴅ

[ Yes, in theory. But she reads what he writes, and she frowns, in part because it's not exactly community, and "rescuing" her means she also faces the consequences of failing. Which might not be a death sentence, depending. Sooner or later it always was.

It's what he doesn't say that pulls at her attention. It's a simple omission, but from someone who managed to keep his mind intact where Reiner had not, it isn't simple. ]

But not you.

[ Which is to point out what he said: it's not a condemnation. I think Reiner and the others could rescue you. ]

No.

_{[It's a simple admission and he hates how casual it comes across.]}

I'll try to fill you in as best as I can. A few days after the expedition, Reiner, myself and a few others were sent to one of the smaller bases near Wall Rose under the guise of civilians. They ordered us out after titans were spotted and we all thought Rose was broken.

_{[But neither he nor Reiner had a hand in that possible scenario - how could they?]}

We split off to check on the nearby villages until night and we ended up having to take shelter in these old ruins called Utgard. Connie's village was gone except for a titan sitting in his house, but it couldn't move. We ended up seeing someone from the top of the tower though, but I'm not sure if he even noticed us up there. Granted we didn't have a good chance to see if he even looked back because titans started showing up around us.

It was Zeke, Annie.

Edited 2018-09-21 04:35 (UTC)

[ After titans were spotted and we all thought Rose was broken. [...] except for a titan sitting in his house. No breach, but Zeke, he never needed that. Only the injections of his spinal fluid and his call.

Zeke. Captain of the Warriors, there now? It'd been the three of them for years, when it should have been four, but the three of them nonetheless. Years of scraping for information and pulling it out of everywhere she could find it and then enrolling in the army after vetoing other ideas, training all over again except in different regulation clothes. One military or another, and everyone full of the same bullshit. She'd never ended up believing otherwise.

Why was Zeke there? Were the rest there too? It made no sense for him to have come over unless things had changed back home so significantly, and that was... before the confrontation within Wall Sina. He'd been moving when they'd been learning who the coordinate was, but he couldn't have known himself, could he, so why then? Why now?

She wants to believe that meant they were that close to getting to go home. Her shoulders hunch in, and she stares at the No that marks Bertolt as dead, and knows that wasn't quite true. Written like this, it must be easier to admit. Written like this, it's almost easier to ask. ]

Why was Zeke there?

[ No fanaticism from her, no rejoicing. Zeke wasn't good news in her opinion, even if he was their leader, and perhaps because he was. He was too important to leave home for the same shores they were on, wasn't he? Was the world so peaceful in that moment, or was razing paradise suddenly that necessary, that the long game they'd been sent in on couldn't play out to its end?

(Yet she failed, and it sounds like the story she has yet to be told contains more failures, perhaps even ones that weren't theirs to own.) ]

Bertolt, do they know how to pass on a warrior to another carrier? None of this blessings or chosen one bullshit, do they know?

[ Had he died cleanly? Or had he died like they were all fated to die from the moment they were injected, crushed in the jaws of the titan who would inherit their abilities in a sick cycle they were heroic for being part of?

She's an insensitive asshole, and she knows it, and she's sick to her stomach and clutching the gear so tight that her pokemon companion is looking at her in open concern. ]

To retake the coordinate. We figured out what it was after Utgard. Reiner tried to get Eren to come back with us and we were forced to act. We tried to take him by force and we probably would've made it, but|

They said you were being tortured like I said, and I lost my temper.

_{[Is he still upset with himself over it? A little, but it's a natural response to hearing that sort of thing about a friend from a former one.

Bertolt brings his hand up to his mouth and lightly bites at the joint of his index finger, his brows tight. He tries to distract himself from the way the hand holding the gear trembles, from the way his heart feels like it's going to jackhammer out of his chest and the way his stomach twists into an impossible knot.

It wasn't a heroic death by a country mile, and Bertolt had no one else but himself to blame for it. He was careless and let the power of a god go straight to his head.]}

I don't know how they did. I'm not sure if I want to know.

_{[His own memories of that moment were fuzzy, save for the part he was fully conscious for. His body kept fighting and every so often he'd come to just long enough to hear them arguing among themselves, but that was it. He'd swear he even heard Zeke's voice at one point expressing... Regret? Maybe? It wasn't something he had a chance to think about.]}

Nobody here knows how it happened. Not entirely. They don't know who I really am, but I couldn't keep silent about|
You know.

_{[It's hard to stay quiet about being dead, especially when it comes to questions about what happened in their world.]}

[ They'd run away from Marcel dying. It hadn't sat well for any of them, but while Reiner ran first, Annie and Bertolt had still followed. It was the first time she'd wanted to turn in and give up and leave. Not the last, but certainly the first time she'd said any of it out loud, before they'd reached the first of the walls of sleeping giants.

Being taunted by the capture of a comrade getting under his skin doesn't actually surprise her. Nor can she say, how stupid! Because what record does she have to go by? No, she's been as stupid in her own ways, and it's a courtesy she could afford him not to say it without being honest herself. (And she assumes, doesn't she, that's why, without knowing the full story; catches herself at it and tells herself not to make those leaps in logic. Backs up, reads what he said again, and closes her eyes.)

He hasn't said how he died. Only that they almost made it with Eren, so... ]

Who told you I was being tortured?

[ Someone who had to have seemed like they would know. Someone from the operation to capture her? There were a number of those from the Scouting Corps who'd been involved. Eren was presumably incapacitated enough for them to have carried off, so it wasn't him, but that left more than a few. Mikasa seemed unlikely as well. She took action, and words followed. When it came to Eren, she simply moved. ]

I'm sorry.

[ It's inadequate and also true. Sorry, because yes, they were all going to die, all had a time limit on their lives, but his had been cut even shorter, and for what? For anything? For the same bullshit lies that kept them fighting against their own people, for the pride of a country that used them as fodder in their grasping, greedy wars? Where does one people's monstrousity end, and another's begin?

They're all monsters, really. Some were just made more visible than others. It's frustrating, and it makes her angry, and it makes her sad. With no one there to see except the Absol who has no choice, she can turn and viciously kick a fallen tree, feeling the ache of it travel up her leg, and pretend for a moment the tears stinging her eyes are from that unworthy pain rather than the simplistic cruelty of reality back home. ]

I'm sorry.

_{[Mikasa was a terrifying force to be reckoned with - both her and Levi, as Zeke had found out the hard way. Maybe if Levi hadn't arrived when he did, they wouldn't have stolen the Colossal Titan from Bertolt.

Maybe.

There's no point in thinking about it now.]}

Armin did. We were trying to run with titans on top of us. I left myself open and Erwin swept in and cut Eren free when I snapped, all while Reiner was trying to protect me in his titan. We couldn't get him back because, well... We found out that he had the coordinate on top of everything else.

_{[Bertolt isn't sure if they'll get it back at this rate - Marley was down two warriors, and with the older Warriors approaching the end of their term it was going to be risky. He's sure they've got successors lined up already, but Bertolt never thought to ask, nor did he think it appropriate to ask the last time he saw Reiner in this world. There was too much that had gone unsaid the first time, and the second? He wanted to be selfish and enjoy what little peace he could have with Reiner while he could.]}

I should be the one apologizing though, Annie. It's|

I didn't stick to the plan we made with Zeke he found us after we escaped the first time.

_{[But if he had stuck to it, then Reiner may have been the one who died instead. That wasn't something he could allow to happen, especially by his own hand. If he had shifted above the city, then he would've been blown away with the rest of it.]}

[ She pours over this, feeling shock go through her system. Not at Armin being the one, but at the confirmation that Eren, of all people Eren, had the coordinate. As a jest, yes, maybe, maybe she'd wondered, because of how impossible it seemed for him to have been what he was in the first place, but...

What the hell?! ]

Ah, of course it was Armin. Who else would it be to know you well enough to guess what you'd react to, and in what way.

[ She's long past beginning to suspect that's where Armin's knack for thinking comes in, guessing at assumptions and taking leaps in logic to try and weaken opponents with words... or get his way with them, at least. Looks like he's two for two, between her and Bertolt. Two vastly different ways of manipulating two different people, and she can't say how much of what he said was truth.

What he told Bertolt was a bald faced lie. It might have been... probably was the same with her. Oh, beyond what she knew he lied about, but the whole idea of being a good person, for anything, that too. It hurt, like taking away some small part of herself she'd had a choice to give and devaluing it back to the base nothing she was.

She pushes that away. No point lingering on it, anyway, and she'd deal with Armin in whatever way necessary for keeping him at bay tomorrow. ]

But Eren, the coordinate? When the hell did that happen? How the hell did that happen?

As for the rest, why did you deviate?

[ There's a why, of course. Blanket apologies are worthless, meaningless. Admit to why you did it, she would have screamed at eleven, twelve. Is it ironic that her temper was worse when she was younger, that it had mellowed somewhat as she aged? Years later, she might hold off on the screaming for only a swift kick instead.

See. Mellowed. ]

Edited 2018-09-22 01:56 (UTC)

He tried to get me with it a second time, too.

_{[Not that Bertolt could fault him for trying. It doesn't make it any less terrifying though.]}

I don't know how it happened, or when. We didn't have a chance to think about it.

As to why I did it, Reiner was in trouble. I was supposed to wait for his signal from Shiganshina, and then I was supposed to detonate above the city. We got the signal and Zeke threw me in - I was in a barrel for this - but I saw him as I was flying over and he wasn't in a good place.

He wasn't moving, and when I broke out to check on him, I thought he was dead. They used something on him and he was hanging out of the nape of his titan with half of his head missing. I don't know what it was.

_{[He died because he tried to save Reiner's life, but part of him can rest knowing that he succeeded in that endeavor at the very least.]}

I was able to transform after I made sure he was okay, but it didn't have the same effect.

Armin can be a frightening person.

[ She's not asking. It's her opinion, and so she's telling. All three of those friends, Armin and Eren and Mikasa, can be frightening people. Just like how all three Titan Shifters can be frightening people in their own right.

She reads the rest, closing her eyes and leaning back against the tree behind her. It's always a matter of which sacrifices people are willing to make. Marcel to save Reiner once; Bertolt to save him later. The circumstances aren't the same, but she has to wonder what that's done to Reiner, who has never been good at keeping all of himself on track, or all of himself even collected enough to be of one mind. ]

You couldn't blow everything away, and so they had a chance to find a work around.

[ It was a mistake, and it was his to make. She won't make a judgment on that, anymore than she could really make one on Marcel for taking steps to push Reiner out of the way. It was what came after that became the bigger issue. ]

Yeah.

_{[He rubs at his cheek after a few moments, and his hand instinctively goes to the nape of his neck and rests there. That memory was going to be fresh in his mind for some time.]}

He let himself get burnt alive from my titan, too. He hooked himself to my face and he ended up falling to the rooftops below - I don't know how, but he survived.

_{[They've all survived worse, but they weren't exactly normal.]}

Almost everyone else that was in town was blown away.

[ ... Annie shudders, all too able to imagine how horrifying that is from both sides. Burning alive was apparently Armin's entire self sacrificial plan. He survived, temporarily, and was going to...

... was going to...

She's both weirdly angry and sanely terrified. People that devoted to a cause continue to piss her off even when she's admiring of what they can manage in single-minded focus, but that's exactly what gets them killed.

And she can't doubt that for Bertolt and Armin alike, part of it was in wanting to make sure their friends survived. "Almost everyone else that was in town was blown away." That wasn't everyone, and if there's at least two people damn hard to kill, it'd be Eren and Mikasa, and if there's anyone Armin is always fighting to make sure survives, it's Eren.

Is this a guy thing. Are all of them idiots.

... The whole world is filled with idiots, and she can't tell if that makes her want to laugh without hope, or cry because it's something she can't change, because what follows is: ]

Was it him?

[ If he didn't die before... and Bertolt did, but not... she doesn't know who else was out there, surviving, but...

But oh, she can still hope, in some part of her, that she's wrong. ]

_{[The answer doesn't come right away.

Was it him.

There couldn't have been anyone else - they all looked so hopeful before he had died, and as much as Bertolt wishes he could blot the memory from his mind, he knows without a doubt that his face will be there for as long as he lives.

A gaunt face, no nose, gaping mouth, black eyes, blond...

The sharp ache of his ribs bruising (maybe even cracking) from that too-hot grip and the smell of decay with each breath the titan took while Bertolt begged for help... The blinding pressure to his head as he cried two names and nothing--

Bertolt swallows the lump growing in his throat and he bites back the want to call for Jean. He furiously blinks back tears as he takes several slow, deep breaths and focuses his attention on the kitchen before he pushes himself up from the booth, picks up his gear, and heads into the section of the train car sectioned off for his and Jean's sleeping arrangements. After some hesitation, he sits on the edge of Jean's bed and stares at his Pokegear, his thumbs hovering over the keypad.

It couldn't have been anyone else. Through the hazy memories he has, he recalls Armin and Erwin's names being tossed around but they wouldn't have been crying over Erwin's revival. Not like that. Eren and Mikasa wouldn't have had those expressions on their faces if it had been Erwin.

It's almost fifteen minutes later when Bertolt finally replies.]}

Yes.

_{[There's no one else he could talk to about this either - perhaps Ford, eventually, but he couldn't tell him everything. He was vague with Jean and frankly that's the way he wanted to keep it lest he tarnish the bond he has with the other man and have his heart broken a third time. It's selfish, but Bertolt wants to keep the life he's built here.

At the same time, Annie deserves to know what happened. Who else could understand? Reiner wasn't here, though at the very least he fully understands why he couldn't tell Bertolt what had happened.]}

Edited 2018-09-22 08:33 (UTC)

[ She lets her gear sit in her lap, staring down at the screen and feeling sick. She doesn't gag, nothing so dramatic, but her stomach roils and Lute makes small, distressed sounds, butting against her shoulder with his head. He had to walk around to her other side to manage it: with his one outsized horn, he couldn't from where he was originally settled.

She doesn't realise she's crying until the anger and frustration spills over into tears, and as abruptly, her chest feels hollow. Mad at a world that's lied their entire lives, mad at the nations and politics that keep it so. Mad because she's never done a damn thing except follow orders in the end, and tired, exhausted, and quiet in the wake of that flash of anger. It's stupid. Giving up again now doesn't help. She wasn't anywhere to help anyone. She couldn't even help herself; couldn't even keep her promise to her father, the only thing she'd cared about in the entirety of the shitty world they all breathed the same air in.

Bertolt hadn't deserved to die. None of the people they've killed have deserved to die. Not the nation they first were unleashed on; not those of their own they were directed at next. Years of living on an island and knowing just as surely as she'd known before she ever got there that it'd be a farce, and it was.

They were always going to die. But did it need to be so soon? And did Armin, well, Armin didn't make that choice, either, did he, but he got to inherit the same curse alongside his best friend, Eren. Maybe all these things are meant to be in the end, but she doubts it. Fate is a word to paint life's events as something meaningful.

Screw that. In short bursts, she takes the time to peck out words and sends them, one batch at a time. An ongoing story with a version of the events she just lived with, as far as her memory goes. By now it could have been years ago. By now, it could have been just yesterday. It takes her a long time, and she can just hope he doesn't interrupt, because if he does, she'll never finish what she already doesn't know how to say. ]

When they brought Eren to Stohess District, all of the Military Police were asked to be part of the official observing escort. After all, there'd been the Female Titan, and she'd been interested in taking Eren alive. Before that, there were still the mysteries of the Armoured Titan and the Colossal Titan. Not so hard to wonder if three different intelligent Titans might be related, and knowing what Eren was capable of, to surmise that those three could be within the population.

When Armin approached me in Stohess, I already had my suspicions. I trained Eren, yes, but that wasn't something Mikasa thanked me for, and not anything Armin had a say in. Having him come to me to ask for help escorting Eren through the city with him and Mikasa was blatantly suspicious. Everything he offered as logic fell short, and I turned his request down several times over.

But I still ended up going along with them. Knowing it was a trap, and that anything designed with what we do in mind, that it was very possible they'd be trying to get me somewhere where I couldn't shift.

It's stupid, isn't it? The things we realise matter, even when we know better. There was nothing Armin could say that would logically convince me to leave my post. Talking to him as it was pushed what I should have been doing as a solider, let alone as a warrior.

It was when his pleas got more desperate. I was walking away when I asked him if he thought I was that good a person, to grant such a ridiculous request. He said he didn't believe in good people, or bad people, not the way I was asking. That he thinks it's a matter of what's convenient to someone at the time, that what defines someone as good or bad is different in any one moment. So he said, if I helped them, then to him, right then, I would be a good person.

I knew it was a trap, Bertolt. I wondered if I'd be able to either have another chance at Eren, since they had to bait me with him, if their suspicions were true. And I did try, when I couldn't follow them down into the underground walkways. But the reason I was there at all, and the reason I failed, is just as stupid as everything you or Reiner ever did in calling them friends.

I didn't manage to take Eren again, and I didn't outfight him, not when he was fighting with the Scouting Corps as his backup. There were too many variables, and my limits wouldn't see me through it.

I tried to scale the wall. I knew if I managed it, I could run fast enough to get out of range before they could get horses around to that region. I almost made it, too, but Mikasa caught up and cut through my hands, and I fell. It's strange, because I remember the sky beyond her more than I remember her face. It was beautiful. And I knew there was shit that I could do to keep the promise I made my father if I died there. So I crystalised. I cried, and I crystalised myself, because it was the only thing left I could do to not give them what they wanted, and my only chance at staying alive.

I wasn't defending anyone. I was as selfish as I've always been, and I'm alive because of that, until someone ensures I'm not. But I'm not living.

I don't know how to say this, but the shitty way you died was for the sake of saving someone you cared about. I don't know what Reiner's done with it, but if you hadn't acted, he would have died instead. It's a shitty trade off, and that's one more Warrior they have in their hands, and maybe that will change everything, or maybe we'll all be as screwed as we've always been. You acted on what mattered to you.

That's braver than I've ever been.

[ She's not telling a full truth. She's acted where it didn't benefit their cause before, saving Connie, letting Armin and Jean live in the first place, but... those were different calculated risks. For what he faced, it was something else, and in that situation, she doesn't think she could have done what he did. It's stupid, yes, but she can save that for speaking out loud where he doesn't have to hear it. Not right now, at least. She's not quite that heartless, in the end, and she's not their captain. She doesn't have to sound like Zeke. She doesn't have to believe in their mission, though that always would have been easier. ]

And stupider than I've ever wanted to be.

_{[While he waits, Bertolt snags the corner of a blanket crumpled against the pillow on the bed, tugs it over his shoulders, and after a minute or so of hesitation and thought, he pulls his legs up onto the bed and lets gravity drag him to his side. It's good to lie down (even with the potential embarrassment if Jean finds him like this), and it gives him a chance to quietly add Annie's name into his contact list.

Just in case.

His thoughts are interrupted from both his Comfey floating in from the main area to awkwardly settle on the side of his head and from the Pokegear vibrating in his hands, causing him to jump and earn a concerned trill from the Comfey. It's fine-- He's fine, but she still releases a gentle scent of flowers to reassure her trainer that she was there.]}

...Thanks, MJ.

_{[It vaguely smells of roses and it makes his nose wrinkle when mixed with the smell of cologne off of Jean's blanket, but it's not terrible. Just weird. It gives him a chance to focus on the message Annie sent, even though it makes his heart drop further and further with each sentence he reads.

Especially when he reaches the end.]}

The way I see it, you were the bravest out of all of us. Are the bravest.

_{[Because she's still alive--]}

You always put the mission first and I always admired that, even when Reiner and I got distracted. I wanted to be focused like you, but I also wanted to have.. All of what we had there. People didn't judge us because of what we were because they were just like us, only they don't know it. No one yelled at us or looked at us like we were lower than dirt, and they cared. I've never been a social person, but it truly was enjoyable.

I was selfish, and I think the worst part of it is knowing I'd do it again if it meant saving him.

But|

_{[His brows furrow and Bertolt keeps reading the last two sentences over and over. If he wasn't already close to breaking down, this would've done it. Come on, Bertolt. Deep breaths, in and out. Breathe, and it'll be okay.]}

It does mean a lot to hear that from you. I mean it. I think I needed to hear something like that.

[ Good. Not for the rest, because she doesn't agree. She wasn't focused on the mission, she was focused on getting home, and the mission was simply what allowed her to do that and live long enough to return to her father. Isolating herself to focus was a survival mechanism, and she didn't succeed as well as it seemed.

She knew what he meant, how it was different when the things people looked down on you for were relics of a past, and when they were for what you'd actually done. Being what they were by an accident of birth, being signed up by their parents so their families, big or small, had a chance to be considered almost human? All a bitter, humourless joke. ]

I just wanted to go home.

[ It won't matter, in the end. Here, she can just be grateful that anything she typed out helped him a little. What else can she say? "You died, that sucks." They both know it. It would be like telling Marco it's a shitty thing, being caught seeing what couldn't be afforded, and having to die on a decision he didn't make. It's a shitty thing.

So many shitty things. ]

Even I say things worth listening to sometimes. But enough about what can't be changed. Do you enjoy your life here?

We all did. I wanted to see my dad again and see him get better since he was always getting sick.

_{[And that in itself had been part of Bertolt's motivation for being so willing to become a Warrior to begin with - if they were honorary Marleyans, then his father would've had access to the best medical care that the nation had to offer.

Now, Bertolt has no idea how he is. He had made Reiner promise to look after him in his stead, but...

Tearing his thoughts away from his father, Bertolt's gaze crawls over her words. That's... Okay, good. A subject change. That's good. It'll keep his mind from wandering to what had happened, and hopefully keep it in a good place.]}

You always do, honestly. But I do, yeah. It's|

It's comfortable, and I feel safe here. I disappeared and came back with the memories of everything I told you, but I've been staying with Jean - he picked me up when I woke up stranded on these islands in the middle of the ocean, and we've been working in his shop ever since. You're probably not going to believe it either, but I even won part of a contest with one of my Pokemon not that long ago.

[ It's so nice they all had reasons to want to join. Annie didn't. It's just what her father did, said she was born for, trained her for outside of and on top of the military training they all had. Child soldiers.

And the perks that only her father would see in use. ]

You wouldn't know that with how infrequently anyone listens to me.

I have no idea what pokemon contests are like, so why wouldn't I? It's weird here. But if it's like that for you, then keep it close. Be as selfish as you can for as long as you can.

Jean's being a halfway decent human being now? Look at him all grown up.

I know. I'm sorry, for what it's worth.

_{[He was stupid, and Bertolt still was when it came to certain things.]}

It's sort of how you'd imagine other contests. Performing in front of people, all that stuff. But uh

He's been good, Annie. Really good.
We've been sharing tents and rooms more or less since I got here. It's almost like how things were back in the barracks, only it's... better? I've had to cope without Reiner, but with Jean it's been easier. I can more or less be myself around him and it's nice. Really, really nice.

[ ... Okay, this is reminding her of half the conversations she heard going around in the barracks, in every city, in basically all human civilization, and it's such a tonal turn around and... weird relief that she won't even taunt herself for drowning in what amounts to gossip.

Processing time is helpful, and... no, she doesn't really get this, but she knows she also has a longstanding irritable friction with Jean whenever he opened his mouth, and she knows time as with all things changes people.

It's more Bertolt she ends up shaking her head over, patting Lute's head absently as he sighs and shifts to lay his massive, horned face in her lap. ]

Does Jean feel the same way, or did you just let me into your one-sided romantic affection knowledge circle? I haven't gained any sudden skills in this arena, Bertolt, so I'm hoping this won't devolve into asking for advice beyond the obvious.

[ Starting with you're dancing around disaster and ending with but unfortunately, I understand. Hearts are fickle enough creatures, and none of them really hated anyone in the 104th. Circumstances had simply dictated that those were some of the lives they ended up taking; known faces amoung so many others.

Just... be... careful there, Bertolt. ]

_{[Her words don't fully register for a few moments, but when they do he makes a low, agonized sound deep in the back of his throat that gets a concerned trill from his Comfey. Is that-- No, he's fine, but boy are his ears turning pink. That poor little Comfey hasn't seen that before.

Is he getting sick? Better send out another wave of some nice flower smells!]}

Not you too.
It's not like that|
Someone already|
it's not

_{[Annie, no.]}

Oh my god does it really sound like that?

[ Bertolt, yes??? She breathes out in a sigh, not so concerned about it really, Lute benefiting from her one handed typing with a contented rumbling of his own. It's kind of nice. Not a purr, but it reminds her of one. ]

It does. It's not my business either way, but the way you were talking about him, that's not generally how people talk about their friends. If I were making educated guesses about you, that Jean was an interest point would be one of them.

I don't have any idea what Jean thinks, or what "someone already" means when you wrote it, or who else has already commented on this. It's just what things read like from here.

[ Which is literally coming from someone who just showed up, but who has known him for years, even in the more divorced capacity of their time in the Walls versus the constant training of their childhood.

Also, it's slightly more fun to bluntly exclaim at Bertolt over what a mess his emotions are over things intrinsically linked to life over the devastation of having died, and living with that memory in a final, consuming way. ]

Edited 2018-09-23 07:15 (UTC)

I've talked about Reiner like that!

_{[Except given his track record, there was something there with him too. There was definitely something there during those strange, funky weekends when the other man showed up in this world.

That's... certainly not helping his case, especially given the rumors that may have even floated around behind their backs.]}

There's nothing going on! It's just|
We're just friends!
There's no way that he'd|

We're just|

oh my god there's nothing going on i swear

[ ... ]

This is supposed to be normal, isn't it? People agonising over love lives. Didn't we leave this behind at fourteen?

[ Annie says this while showing Lute the gear. Lute has no opinion, so he huffs a breath and closes his eyes, and Annie rolls hers in turn. Okay, so at fourteen she was discussing her lack of seduction skills as a detriment to potentially getting a man involved with the royal family to marry her, but that was neither here nor there. That was espionage in a long game. ]

And you never caught feelings for Reiner, of course.

[ Spare her. For all Bertolt was also randomly supportive of some of her more offhand remarks (thanks for the power of your belief, Bertolt? she guesses? you're the only one who thinks she could seduce anyone???), he and Reiner had their own back and forth she'd been aware of and... unconcerned with. ]

Ask. Don't claim you know what's inside his head or heart so well that "there's no way he'd" is a logical assessment instead of an irrational one. You know what else surprised everyone? Jean joining the Scouting Corps. If he really would never, get your heart broken so you can work on patching it up again. Don't waste your time on maybes and assumptions and what if's.

I|

_{[She's got him there. He does still have feelings for Reiner but there's no point in dwelling on them, is there? There's no guarantee that he'll see him again. Bertolt worries at his lower lip for a few moments and he nearly pouts at the gear, but he shakes his head (and jostles MJ nestled in his hair at the same time) to clear that thought.}

He originally wanted to join the Military Police, remember?

_{[That had changed after Trost, but Bertolt chooses to not dwell on that by shifting it back to the rest of it.]}

But it's not that easy. I've had it broken twice already, once by Reiner and another by a girl I met here and I'm not too keen on going back to Blackthorn yet. It's too quiet up there, and I don't want things to get

weird.

_{[Weirder than hiding in Jean's bed with one of his blankets wrapped around him like it'll protect him? Quite possibly.]}

I'm not even sure what's going on myself. People just assume it's|
Like that.
I don't know what it is.

_{[The woes of being child soldiers - they never had a chance to figure out how feelings and emotions really worked, so now that Bertolt actually has that chance? They've all kicked into overdrive and left him fumbling through it all on his own.]}

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