Humanity's Hope || Levi Ackerman

THE TRIAL

"Mama, please stop.

PLEASE!

MAMA!"

Eren watched as Marta thrashed wildly and whimpered next to him in the bed before he grabbed her shoulders and tried to gently shake her awake. He knew she had bad nightmares, Mikasa had sometimes mentioned them because it annoyed yet worried the girls in her bunk. He sometimes wondered what happened to Marta in her past life for her to be so shook to the core by her memories at night.

"Was I screaming again?" Marta asked groggily, throat dry from the tears that had escaped her teal eyes as she dreamt.

"It's okay, you're okay," Eren reassured the girl with a hand clasped to her shoulder in comfort, both of them ignoring the slight rattle of chains, or not noticing it at all.

"I'm sorry..." Marta held her head in her hands ashamedly but was interrupted by the sound of a light cough coming from outside the bars. 'Bars, is this a cell?' She thought into herself.

"Any questions?" A man with a deep voice, blue eyes, blonde hair and bushy eyebrows said as he sat, arms folded, in a chair across from the cell which held the two Titan Shifters. Beside him was a considerably short man, who somehow still managed to be taller than Marta, he stood with a scowl on his face as his eyes glanced off to the side, seemingly uninterested in the two before him.

Marta knew who these two were from Eren's ramblings, Commander Erwin, the head of the Scout Regiment's Task Force and Captain Levi of the Special Operations squad. Marta and Eren both thought the same thing at the same time. 'What are they doing here?'

Eren was the first one to speak, as usual. "I, uh... Where... where are we?"

"I think it's obvious. Let's just call it a dungeon." Erwin stated, "you two are currently in custody of the Military Police. We were granted permission to see you only just now."

Marta finally let her head drop in her hands, "we're totally screwed, Eren."

Eren sweatdropped as he realised the same thing, then the Commander held up a key and his eyes lit up in recognition. "Where'd you get that?"

"Off of you. Don't worry, you'll get it back. Let's talk home. Specifically the good doctor's basement back in Shiganshina." Marta was beginning to realise her and Eren had a lot more in common than originally thought, despite the turning into a Titan fiasco, for her father too had been a doctor. Her imagination was beginning to run wild, conspiracies of a league of evil doctor's turning their unsuspecting children into Titans as a science experiment.

But before she could go any further, Erwin spoke again. "Pretty big secret in there, right? About the Titans?"

"Yeah, I think so. That's what dad said, anyway."

"It must suck having your dad and your memory M.I.A at the same time." Levi butted in and Marta was suddenly thinking about how she wished both of those things were missing for her at the same time as her memories plagued her. "Unless, of course, that's just a cover story."

"Enough." Erwin looked back at the short man with a scowl, "we've been over this already. We know he has no reason to lie, both of them don't seem to anyway." He added, looking at Marta for the first time in a while. "And that's all we know. How about you shed a little light on things for me by telling me your intentions?"

Eren looked taken aback, "my what? What do you mean?"

"Here's the lay of the land, my friend. If we want to pay your dad's cellar a visit, we have to venture back into Shiganshina. Sealing the breach there as we did in Trost would be the smart way to go about it, don't you think? Naturally we'll need both of your special powers. Any way you slice it, a Titan's deciding our fate. It's been conjectured that both the Colossal and Armoured Titan are more or less the same as you.