Dangerous Territory

What Levi Knew

Magath watched with a sadistic sense of amusement as the young first lieutenant in front of him looked like his whole world was crumbling around him.

"You never knew your father was a Jew? Interesting," he muttered. Magath picked up his pen and began to write this reaction down in his report.

Eren screamed in rage, "You're lying!"

Magath remained focused on his notes. "I have no reason to lie, nor to tell you all of this, other than those amusing faces of horror you're making. One would think, since you love Jews so much, you'd be happy to find out you're also one."

Eren gritted his teeth as he trembled. If he had to be honest, he had always felt a slight superiority due to his race. He knew that was all just Nazi propaganda, but it was so deeply ingrained, it was hard not to feel like a badge of honor had just been stripped from him, a part of his identity that meant more than the Knight's Cross, his uniform, or anything else they had taken away so far.

What even was he, if not an Aryan?

He was nothing!

A faggot.

A Jew.

Weak. Flawed. Subhuman.

He shook his head as he trembled. No! He didn't believe any of that anymore! Yet the words swirled in his head, drilled in so deeply after a lifetime of Nazi posters, radio broadcasts, school lessons, books, magazines, newspapers, and even playing cards about Aryan superiority, that it was now hard to ignore the foul words society had used against the Jewish people.

What he was—or at least what he had believed himself to be—was all a lie.

He was not superior in any way.

At the doorway, Koslow gave a sneering laugh. "Stupid Jew didn't even know he had rat's blood in his veins."

One cold look from Magath made the Gestapo assistant close his mouth. "I also needed to see just how much you might have been in on your father's and brother's plans for Germany."

"Screw them both!" he yelled. His father had lied. Not only had he never told Eren he had a brother, but he had allowed him to feel proud as an Aryan. It was all a lie! "I know nothing of any plans."

"I believe you. As for how I know all this, the Gestapo has been piecing together information on your father for years. We had hoped to use it as blackmail against Lord Zeke to give Hitler a mole within the British Parliament, but sadly, all the damning things like being a Jew and his father having a second family in Germany, Lord Zeke already knew. That leaves one possible weakness of his that we can exploit: you. If he is truly this desperate to keep you safe, then keeping you alive may give Germany the leverage we've been needing."

Kitz jolted at that. "Keep him alive? He's a faggot and a Jew. He deserves—"

Magath's eyes turned sharply at the captain and barked out, "Are you going to tell the High Command what they should and should not do? Who are you to make such a decision, Herr Hauptmann?" he said, spitting Kitz's title like it was the lowest rank in the military.

Kitz gritted his teeth to hold back from saying anything more.

Eren stared ahead blankly. He understood what this meant. He would be a hostage, a political pawn, imprisoned, but at least he would not be executed right away.

Magath gazed intensely at Eren. "Are you really okay with being used against your own brother?"

Eren sneered in disgust. "We share the same traitorous father, that's all. If I can be useful to the Führer in defeating the British, then my life has a purpose."