Crumbling Walls | Erwin Smith x Reader 18+

Chapter 1

Count...

The dark surface of your tea stares back at you as you sit at the table in the big dining hall. Tapping your index finger against your cheek while propping yourself against your palm. Sleep still heavies your eyelids and a silent yawn slips out of your throat. It's, again, one of those early mornings. Where you're being dragged out of bed at the crack of dawn to do your routine warm ups and training.

It's been like this for three years now. And every year, where you think things will get better, easier, they don't. If anything, they get worse. Harder. Rougher. The training hours seem to stretch for too long by each passing day. Two hours in the morning, then routine work at the barracks— depends on what you get assigned to, then two hours of training in the evening. Then dinner at the main hall, along your captains and your comrades.

Sometimes you lose your sense of reality, lose your grip on things, and you start to forget why on earth are you even here! With each drop of sweat, blood, and tear you ask yourself, why? For whom? For those ungrateful cowards living inside these walls? Or that pig of a king, sitting inside the safe and comfort of three walls, having people throw their lives in vain just to defend him?

But then you take a deep breath, and you remember. Remember why you're here, what brought you into this force. That deep aching grip around your heart.

Vengeance... That's what got you here.

Absentmindedly, as a reaction to these thoughts, your eyes blink and your hazy stare moves up. In the direction of the end of the hall, where that long wooden table was at. And precisely, at the figure sitting down at the far right, holding his cup of coffee in his hand, his head dipped down, brows furrowed, and too focused on the papers in his hand. You instantly start glaring.

"Have you seen those poor things?" You hear a murmur, then a body slumping down on the chair next to you. Then the chair in front of you makes a scrape over the floor and another body sits. You blink again, and break away your eyes from that far table, to your own. And see Connie next to you, reaching for a slice of bread from the center. Sasha is opposite.

"They look like they're about to shit themselves." Connie snorts, "but boy, they're in for a ride with Captain Shadis!" His hand reaches for the butter next, and he starts buttering the slice. Sasha was already munching on hers.

"Mhm..." Sasha nods.

"Why are they still recruiting kids?" You blurt, your eyes switching between them, "I get we were signed when we were kids because of the need back then, but why again? We haven't even finished our training yet!"

Connie shrugs, his lips curling in confusion.

"Maybe as a reinforcement?" Sasha says, and you shake your head slowly in response. It doesn't make sense. A part of you feels proud of those little kids. Because you get it, that want to prove something. That desire to protect. Yet another part feels sorry, heartbroken even. Because you know what's coming for them, having been there yourself. Being treated as nothing but a weapon, or a shield, to protect this pathetic so-called humanity. Training to death, to literally walk into your own death. To serve those higher ranks, who couldn't even bother to take one step into mud and blood alongside you.

Heartless...

Your eyes shoot again towards that table, realizing it'd probably been his decision to allow kids to sign again. Because that's all he cares about, new recruits to train and replace the ones he loses each and every pointless expedition he makes outside of the wall.

You glance once again to the right, and he's gone. Not much of a surprise there. He never stays too long, because for him, business and duty always come first.