[♖] The guilt had been overwhelming. It plagued his dreams. It clawed at his ribs and the walls of his skull. He couldn’t sleep. All he could think about was Eren’s eyes,hating Reiner as they stared… searing… All he could think about was the families he demolished. The lives he rent asunder. Food tasted like dust to him. Even Bertholdt’s consoling hands brought no peace…
And so, Reiner left the warrior behind. It had been a soldier that walked, as if hypnotized, away from Wall Maria, where Bertholdt and Ymir were sleeping atop the monolith. It had been a soldier that trekked across miles of titan-infested wasteland to reach the Survey Corps base. It had been a soldier who stared at his friends with tears in his eyes – friends who returned his pleading gaze with abhorrence – and simply fell to his knees in surrender.
There was hot breath in his ear.
“We’re going to annihilate you,” Hanji had whispered to him in a maniacally eager voice. “Slowly.”
Goldenrod eyes lifted. They stared ahead vacuously. And Reiner uttered the only reply he could muster:
“…and I’ll deserve every second of it.”
They wrapped him in chains. They bound and gagged him. He put up no struggle. They kept him several floors underground, where the sunlight could not nourish him. And he waited, in silence. Until, finally… he came. The Commander. The officer who had given such a rousing recruitment speech that Reiner had almost forgotten himself, almost forgotten his ultimate mission… almost lost himself within Commander Smith’s moving words. But this was the same man who had dangled Eren’s basement in front of Reiner and Bertholdt, the tantalizing bait that provoked their last-minute switch from Military Police to Survey Corps. It changed everything.He changed everything. The Commander was smart. He wasn’t someone to mess with.
A glint of neutral, bitter admiration flashed in Reiner’s golden eyes.
“Yes,” came his solemn reply. “I am.”
Erwin didn't know what he had expected. More of a fight, perhaps. A prisoner of war. A coerced confession. Erwin had sacrificed many soldiers and much of himself to reach this point, but he had been sure on the day he had first laid eyes on the Colossal and Armored titans, that defeating them would have proven vastly more difficult.
Reiner had infiltrated once, surely he would have no trouble infiltrating again. At this point, Erwin was seen as both a threat to the central government and the enemy titans. Why would they not feed false information to cause the Survey Corps commander to mislead him, to push him towards a detrimental decision with guiding misinformation. After all, if he had learned one thing from titans and the shifters that controlled them, it was that they were willing to sacrifice anything for their cause. Including themselves.
"You understand that I'm hesitant to believe anything you say. You can, however, prove your loyalties by informing us how to break the Female Titan's crystal. If what you tell us works, I'll consider hearing what you have to say about your motivations in destroying Wall Maria, infiltrating the military, and how we can contain and capture the Colossal Titan. Do you understand?"