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[sweeptheleg]

leonhart.annie@cdc.org
(04) UNREAD MESSAGES

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[sweeptheleg]

[ Eren? Making no sense? Well, it's not entirely new. ]

what

[counterattacked]

[That's rude, Annie's meta.]

in Stohess. when we tried to pull you out. you did something.

[Encased herself in something that looks very much like the crystal armor she grew after shifting. Locked herself away before they could capture her or question her. And he'd heard it before, but the real gravity of it hadn't sunk in until he'd seen it. Seen her. Frozen several inches under glass.]

what was it?

[sweeptheleg]

» if your higher ups put you on interrogation duty, you suck at it.

» what did it look like from your view?

[counterattacked]

[Come on, Annie. This isn't really about collecting intel, not right now.

So, honestly:]

crystal.

[Impenetrable. Safe, maybe. But impossible to tell if she's even alive in there.]

you weren't moving.

[sweeptheleg]

yeah. better in a coffin than in some dungeon with humanity's finest tearing me to pieces.

what'd they do with me anyway

[counterattacked]

[No answer to her question. (Not yet.) Considering he'd remembered nothing of his stay with the CDC while he was home, there's probably little strategic reason to be cagy about it. And it's nothing she couldn't guess, really, from the precautions they'd taken with Eren after Trost. Underground, somewhere enclosed. In case she escaped. Instead, persistent—]

is that what it is?

[A coffin? In hindsight, the fact that she's been hiding from him here makes a little more sense. Apparently it wasn't the first time. But is she hiding in that crystal, or is she dead? In some ways it's still running away. There's still a big damn difference.]

[sweeptheleg]

[ She doesn't really see why a distinction would matter for her status. She is completely neutralized back there, all the more reason to perform well for the CDC. They'd pulled her out somehow, and slowly managed to earn her tentative loyalty in ways her faction back home couldn't.

And though she thinks it might be pointless, not damaging to her to share the tidbit regarding the crystal she'd wrapped herself in, she's maddeningly evasive.]

i never wanted to die, but you weren't going to give me options.

lucky me, i get to live here instead.

[counterattacked]

[He grinds his teeth a little, knocks his head back against the hull of his rover in frustration where he's sitting. It matters. She's out of his reach back there either way, but he's never been one to give up easy. One is a bit more impossible to surmount than the other. (Even if she's here now—)]

I don't want that.

[Even after everything, he doesn't particularly want her dead, or suffering. Even now, here. He wanted to stop her, and he wanted to understand her. He didn't want to be in a position where he'd have to kill her. She put them there just as much as he did.

(And he could have killed her, then. Maybe he would have, if things had gone differently. He'd even wanted to, once. Desperately. In the forest, before he knew who it was he was facing. And that's terrible, but it's also true, and he knows it. He should just wholly hate her, it would be easier on both of them, but he can't.)]

FROM: jaeger.eren@cdc.org

is that why you're here?

[To be alive. Free, for a given value of it. When they recruit you, they ask you a question. And often they make you an offer, dangle a reward in front of your nose. Many, like Eren, are tricked into this with a half-truth. Or a flat out lie. Some people are more aware of what they're getting into.

So what did they say to Annie?]

[sweeptheleg]

[ Annie remembers her recruitment well, in part because it had been so damn surreal. Sometimes, she thinks she might be one of the very few that understood to some degree just what she was getting into.

She knows, at least, she's in the rarest group, though she's not sure how large it is. She is one of the absolute few that want to be here. She knows this just as truly as she recognizes that such people had to be the most loathsome.

And it's funny how even with that fact out there that this was the one place that, while being herself openly and as honestly as she's able, she is still considered somehow a member of humanity. ]

they gave me a job to do. i needed one.

they gave me a place. i don't have anywhere else i can be.

[ She can't even say 'home' anymore. Here, Armada gives her a chance and what she makes of it is entirely her own doing. For the first time in her life, she can make those decisions. It's the one reason that she didn't force herself to push past her selfish wants and end the Survey Corps as the opportunity arose. That mission was gone now, supplanted by her new tentative loyalties that existed only so far as a young woman trained to be a deep cover mole, saboteur, and murderer could develop them. ]