𝙻𝚘𝚟𝚎𝚛, 𝙷𝚞𝚗𝚝𝚎𝚛, 𝙵𝚛𝚒𝚎𝚗𝚍 𝚊𝚗𝚍 𝙴𝚗𝚎𝚖𝚢 |𝙰𝚘𝚝 𝚏𝚊𝚗𝚏𝚒𝚌

Chapter 21 - Decision

Bertholdt was panicking. After Eren's true power was revealed, everything had moved so quickly. He barely had time to sort out his own thoughts let alone bring them up with Reiner or Annie. And the one moment he'd been able to get concerns off his chest had cost them everything. He could still hear Marco's screams, see his anguished expression when he closed his eyes. These days Bertholdt's dreams were haunted by Marco and the kind-faced man from the mountains, both their bodies swinging in the breeze.

Every day since the breach had been torrential turmoil. The surviving soldiers of the Battle for Trost had been forced to clean up the streets to make it habitable once more. They spent most hours of long summer days picking up bodies, or remnants thereof, off the ground and carting them out of the city. Bertholdt avoided the street where we knew a familiar corpse lay, walking past it without even a glance. He also avoided his fellow Warriors, paranoid about who might be around to hear them.

Eventually, after speaking barely a word to each other they arranged to meet in the dead of night. Bertholdt would've worried about waking up, but he was too anxious to sleep anyway. As soon as he saw them he knew they were all thinking the same thing. What next? They'd been waiting years for even a scrap of information on the location of the coordinate and now that they had him dead to rights they didn't know how to proceed.

Annie's plan was to go on as normal, they didn't know whether Eren had the coordinate. Bertholdt disagreed. He thought it was foolish to allow Eren continue unsupervised. Regardless of what Titan he possessed, they needed to bring him back with him. Reiner stayed quiet and sat with his head in his hands.

"Reiner?" Bertholdt called out to him.

He exchanged a glance with Annie, both concerned with Reiner's mental state.

"Reiner, what do we do?"

"Shh," he replied, massaging his temples with one hand, "I'm thinking."

"Our first course of action should be to take out the two titans they managed to capture," Annie said, "I'm guessing I'll have to do that."

"No," Bertholdt said, "I should be the one to do it."

Annie opened her mouth as if to argue with him before Reiner sighed and looked up at them, resting his chin on his fists.

"Annie will join the MPs," he said, "and the two of us will follow Eren to the Survey Corps."

"Reiner," Bertholdt began, cautiously, "do you really think splitting up the group is the best option?"

"Yes. I do. When the opportunity to take Eren presents itself, one of us will need to transform. If we just disappear right when a Titan attacks, it will be too obvious who's behind it. Especially now that they know about shifting. So, Annie will join the MPs and ambush them while we stay undercover."

"Why me?" Annie frowned.

"Your titan is agile and quick. We need to get Eren and get out without any fuss. The more destruction we cause the more reason they'll have to come after us."

"Then what?"

"Then we leave."

"We came here for the coordinate," Annie argued.

"I know, Annie. I also know, we haven't found anything on it."

"We can't go back without it."

"So now you want to stay?" Reiner raised his voice, "before we even got into these goddamn walls you wanted to turn back. Before we enlisted in the Cadets Corps, before we graduated. Now we're in the endgame, you suddenly want to stay for what we came for."