In a world where Bertholdt is alive and well, Reiner still struggles to cope with the pain he harbours deep within. Does he have the strength to come to terms with his fears when the only safe place he believes he has is next to the man who he has l...
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The sour-lemon-face of the guard couldn't get any worse under the poor incandescent lighting under the night outside the building as he struggled to get a clearer look at the visitor's face, squinting hard while his head swayed a rhythmic up-and-down the unidentified night-tripper's height. The furrowing of his brows that exhibited frustration quickly resumed to that of fear, and in a trice he jostled the door open and shot him an open palm salute, responding with a shaky, nerve-wracked voice.
"I apologise for the rudeness, Deputy Chief Braun," The nightguard displayed to the blonde an extremely animated politeness; much to his detestment. As if the military hundrum of the Marleyan superiors throughout that day hadn't been draining enough, now a fellow Eldian had been throwing him the Marleyan honoraries his senses had long developed a bitter taste of. However gravely he wanted to ask the man to abstain from doing that ever again to him, his mouth didn't have the energy to move any further for the night, allowing only a regret-tainted sigh that still did remotely alarm the poor guy who was likely new at the post, the visitor would imagine. "Please, come in," the designated sentry requested of him, and the apparent superior put a step forward toward to follow before the piece of clothing hanging by the guard's arm caught his eye; or rather the fact that it sat a little crooked on him. The brassard with the white genre of the 'cursed' insignia - an identity of their Eldian racial roots, he soon noticed, wasn't just sitting crooked, but torn on the edge. Any other Marleyan superior noticing that would certainly lead to his quite unnecessary debasement.
When he put a hand on his arm to adjust it, the Eldian guard comically stumbled back in fear as if petrified that he had defiled a God.
"D-Deputy Braun...?"
"Your armband's ripped on the side," tugging at the fabric, the man he had just addressed as Braun whispered to him. "Get a new one before General Magath sees you with this," he said before trudging away into the premises of the establishment that housed the special unit of the Marleyan army - the Warriors.
In contrast to that of the Marleyan soldiers, the dingy corridors of the residence of Eldian units were sad and bleak; not that it wasn't expected in the first place. While the former was known to have the state-of-the-art facilities all for the best comfort of the soldiers to keep them at the top of their form, the latter met the bare necessities just more than enough, to put it in the nicest way possible. Although the foundational amenities were not lacking, the lack of their consistency was one that chose to represent otherwise. Power and water supply being the main inconsistencies, the Eldian army residents had once expressed their dissatisfaction, trying to be as sober and docile as possible during their request to the higher-ups for a fix, but when they had been met with a downgrade instead, their mouths had sewn shut despite the fact that the living conditions of the Eldian quarters had gone down from meagre to struggling. Nobody really spoke of it, as the visitor who was walking past the hallways distantly remembered, but it was a taciturn fact amongst all, Eldian or not, that it was the deliberate Marleyan attempt at letting the 'lowly' know of their undeservedness. Mercifully, it was temporary as the Marleyan army known for its excellence on the battlefield without the fully-functioning Eldian soldiers undoubtedly was handicapped.
