The 5th Ackermann

83- Tense Rapprochement

Written: 9/3/21

Published: 9/8/21

"In the end, you're smarter than I thought, Hitch." Annie told.

"Shut up!" The said female retorted. "There's no reason for me to refuse if you want to leave the city. More than anything, I'll be freed from my duty of having to look at your face in the basement!"

"I'm relieved..." Annie spoke. "I'm relieved I won't have to hear you rambling about boys any longer."

"Huh?!" Hitch exclaimed. "Why do you... No way..." She looked at her previous roommate with shock. "You... You were conscious all this time? For over four years?"

"For four years..." Annie muttered. "it was like I was having some faint dream. You, Armin, and Captain Y/n's voice was all I could hear in the distance." Captain Y/n... When was it that you started looking at me like that? Not like a friend, Y/n? I thought we were best friends. I was mistaken. You and I... We were always close friends no matter what, weren't we? No matter what others thought of me and my intentions... You always came back and told me... You had faith in me. "When I didn't hear your voices, I would always be stuck within the same darkness." Hitch glanced at her. "That's why... I got the best of what's going on outside thanks to you guys babbling. Then I was suddenly thrown outside. I heard Eren's voice. Destroying the world... Did he say that for real?"

Hitch mounted the horse, helping Annie up. The stoic girl's strength was not what it used to be it seemed. The colossal titans surrounded them as it had been that way for quite awhile.

"Would you mind answering now?" Hitch questioned. "When you look at the corpses of the people you trampled over for your grand goal. How does that make you feel?"

"Ah, yeah..." The blond agreed. "Since you asked me that so many times, I thought about it. About what had never crossed my mind. Killing people was something to be praised for. We were taught that after crossing the frontiers, killing soldiers and civilians was indiscriminately fine. For the sake of our mission, to atone for the sins of Eldians to save the world, each and every action was justified."

"I heard about your circumstances from Armin and somehow even a little from Captain Y/n." Hitch responded. "Basically, we were trying to prevent this. So the dead bodies under the rubble were more or less sacrifices, is that what you were trying to say?"

(Long info ahead)

"No..." Annie denied. "I didn't care about things like saving the world." Hitch voiced her confusion. "I didn't care about anything. I was abandoned by my parents almost as soon as I was born. 'The mother's adulterous lover was an Eldian'. That's what was established with my blood test. The one who adopted and raised me inside the interment camp was a man with Eldian blood who came from abroad. I heard he was placed inside the interment camp for a reason similar to mine. His goal was to train me into becoming a warrior of Marley so that he could live a wealthy life. Before I even got old enough to understand what was going on around me, the man drilled the hand-to-hand combat techniques from his homeland into me. In the man's eyes, my only value resided in whether or not I could become a warrior. Time passed, I became as strong as the man wanted. And I got back at him for all the punishment I had endured up to that point. I left him in such a state that he'd never be able to walk straight again, but that man was rejoicing. 'Now you can kill the enemy even if you have no weapons,' he said..."

"Eh? What kind of story did you just start rambling about?" Hitch asked. "Give me a break. I can't listen to some tiring backstory... I had to effectively restrain up a special pure titan. A certain captain would have cried if I hadn't..." Hitch huffed.