Honey and Sky | Jean Kirstein x OC

6 | Rejection

The next few days were dedicated to the rebuilding of Trost. They removed debris, raised partitions, moved boulders, everything to try to get the town back to normal as quickly as possible. One of those days they were allowed to return to the Training Corps headquarters to get their belongings, and they settled in Trost until they'd have to leave for the military branch's headquarters they were to choose at the end of the week. Lena breathed a sigh of relief, as she thought she'd have to say goodbye to her only 'heirlooms'.

They also took the opportunity to take a bath, a real one, the first in days. Lena scrubbed herself hard until her skin was red, and did the same with her scalp after dunking her head under the water. She didn't want to have a millimeter of skin unwashed, she didn't want a single speck of Trost on her body.

Being at the Training Corps headquarters, in the barracks, in the bathrooms, in all the places where she'd lived with her comrades for the last three years, she noticed the enormous weight of their absence. She became aware of the handful of people who remained, of the silence that flooded the formerly bustling and lively place. Those days were silent in general, the cadets engaged in their physical tasks so that they didn't have to think about what they had experienced, and what might happen to humanity in the near future. At the same time, their brains were working tirelessly to try to make a decision on the path they would take: the Garrison, the Survey Corps, or the Military Police. Lena barely exchanged a word with anyone.

A week after the attack, the day arrived for them to make a choice. In the morning, however, they were called by the Survey Corps to take a statement, for something very disturbing had happened. Someone had killed two titans that the Scouts had managed to capture at Trost, and they were checking all the ODM gears in case someone had used it without permission.

Lena was behind Armin, Connie and Annie in the room, and overheard them talking softly. Armin maintained that the perpetrator had made a move against the humans, as those titans were to be subjects of experiment. They had captured them to try to understand them better and discover some way to defeat them, but they'd been killed before making any important discoveries.

Lena felt that Armin was right. Armin wasn't usually wrong, anyway. Whoever had finished off those creatures, whether out of fear or revenge, had ended up doing the titans a favor.

A few hours later, in the evening, the time had come. They led the cadets to a courtyard with a stage where Commander Erwin Smith would be waiting for them. Lena walked with her eyes glued to the ground, her mind racing a hundred miles a minute. She didn't need to look at her fellow cadets to know that the same thoughts were going through their heads.

What do we do...?

A shiver ran through her body as she remembered the huge bodies that swarmed the city, the deaths she'd witnessed, the horror that had been forever etched on her retinas. Was there any way to escape it? She remembered her talk with Sasha a few nights ago. Any attempt to escape the titans was temporary. It was like putting gauze on an infected wound. The problem would still be there, and sooner or later they'd have to deal with it. No matter what branch of the military, no matter whether you were a soldier or a civilian, a farmer or a merchant, rich or poor, old or young. If the titans breached the walls, they were all doomed.

She thought of Eren and his titan. She hadn't seen him fight with her own eyes, but her comrades who had said he single-handedly finished off at least twenty titans in a short while. That was barbaric, unprecedented. It was a weapon. Humans finally had something that could really stand up to the titans. It was a ray of hope.

Lena looked up as they were entering the arena where Erwin Smith would give them his speech. She saw him from afar, standing on the stage, towering in front of them. Was she really considering it? Was she considering joining him? The Scouts? It was one thing not to want to run away from trouble, but it was quite another to walk straight into the lion's den. Or rather, the titans' mouths. Was she crazy? She looked at the others. Their faces reflected the same dilemma as hers, their eyes reproducing the gruesome images they'd had to see.