A Little Bit Human (Erwin x OC)

71: Night of the End

Lillian wasn't sure how she got here. Sure, she had ran through all the events in the past couple days though her head countless of times, but something still didn't add up. She swore the last time she had seen Eren he was still bright eyed and smiling, but now he and his choices had forced her to sit with her enemies. People who have tried to kill her and the ones she cared about.

Hange was calm, cutting up potatoes for her stew. Lillian sat next to her, helping her. She had to do something to keep herself occupied. But at the same time, it was dangerous to have this knife in her hand. Not when Annie was so close to her.

"Thank you for helping me, Lil." Hange said.

"Of course." Lillian gritted out. She began to chop more violently. 

"Lily," Erwin was suddenly next to her, pulling the knife from her hand. "Hange, do you think you can take it from here?"

Hange let out a sigh. "There was only one person who offered to help me, and now you're taking her away." Her eyes didn't leave the stew, but she could feel everyone's cold gaze. "So we're just going to glare at each other all night, huh?"

"Heh. We've gone from trading blows, to breaking bread, huh? Outside of curiosity, what made you change your minds?" Magath's eyes narrowed at the four Scouts that stood in front of him. Jean, Mikasa, Connie, and Armin all glared down at him. "If you let Eren Yeager succeed, you'll be getting far more than you ever could have hoped for. You island devils will have the world to yourselves. We were the ones trying to save it. We would have been able to keep Eren and Zeke from coming into contact if you hadn't stepped in at the last second and helped them. Even your commander was helping us."

"I'm only repeating what I already told you, General, but nobody here wants to be an accessory to genocide. That's why we're all hiding out in the woods eating stew instead of celebrating in town. Lillian here has five children waiting for her at home, but instead she's here to help."

"So you finally figured out who the good guys are, huh?"

Lillian opened her mouth to argue, but Jean took the words out of her mouth. "Are you kidding me? You seriously think you're in the right? You're crazy. You people spent years trying to murder us all, and we're the bad guys cause we didn't roll over and die? Screw that! We learned to fight like hell because the only other option we had was to let your titans eat us all alive! We found a way to survive, and now you're gonna call us devils for it?"

Magath took a swig of wine. "That's right. You're exactly what we always thought you were. We let you fester for too long on Paradis. The world's about to pay for that mistake. You finally won your freedom, and we can all see what you're doing with it. What'd I miss?"

"Plenty. Not a word about your shock troops destroying Eren's home and making him watch his mother get eaten alive! That's what started this! If you wanna know why this is happening, go look in a mirror!"

Lillian looked over at Erwin, trying to gauge his reaction. She was surprised that he hadn't spoken up yet. His face was as stoic as it always was. He, just like Lillian was watching this play out, waiting for an opportunity to talk.

"Right. Everything was fine till your buddy lost his mom. I guess all those centuries of Marley's people getting ground under Eldia's heel don't count for anything in your mind."

"Now you're gonna play the victim over something that happened 2,000 years ago?"

"It's like talking to a child. It started 2,000 years ago. Compared to the sum of the carnage and misery brought by Eldia, your island's suffering is a joke."

"Why does this matter?" Lillian finally spoke up. "None of us can change what happened 2,000 years ago. And none of us choose to be born where we were. If things had turned out just a little differently then you might have also been born on this island with us devils."