angst (Cause I feed off of characters’ pain now), fluff and an a bit of implied forbidden love
Warnings: mentions of death, execution and a tiny bit of blood, a tiny bit of manipulation (nothing too detailed)
credits go to @aot-humanitysfaith for sparking the first bit of inspiration for this fic
this should have been posted ages ago but I’ll blame exams and the huge writer’s block I had for this, but anyways my birthday is in a couple of days so I’m planning to post an Eren fic as a treat, enjoy :))
Erwin Smith is a devil. The commander of the scouts, the man who lost his humanity somewhere along the line. If you’re looking for someone who can send hundreds of soldiers to their death willingly just to achieve his goals, then Erwin Smith is the one you’re looking for.
He is a criminal, he keeps on breaking the law over and over to the point where he and all of his scouts have to be arrested and executed immediately, eradicated like unwanted rodents.
These are facts that you’ll be told by almost everyone you ask, whether citizens, military police or nobles.
Your family falls under the third category, nobles, the people who know best about everything that runs within the walls. Everything the nobles say is automatically believed without question, Erwin Smith is a danger to the lives of all humans within the walls.
But is he really dangerous to humans inside the walls, or is he only a danger to the nobles?
A few years back, you never would have asked that question, you would have believed everything your family and the rest of the nobles claimed just like the rest of the blinded citizens.
All it took for your vision to change was meeting Erwin Smith in person. Not Erwin Smith the commander. You met Erwin Smith the human. The Erwin Smith who carries the weight of every death that took place when his plans were carried out, the one who carries the weight of a painful past that fills his heart with regret… and hope.
You understood Erwin Smith the human, you saw his pain, his hope, his dreams… you saw everything that made him Erwin Smith, the commander, the leader, the devil, the heartless man that everyone else saw… and you fell in love with him.
The same way he fell in love with you, the real you, not the one that your noble status forces you to show in public.
That’s why you are here now, a cold look hardening your face as you took sure steps down to the dungeons, claiming that you were sent by your father to question Erwin Smith, the criminal who will be executed publicly soon.
This wasn’t strange behavior, you have been sent to question various criminals before. Your father just had to fill your heart with hatred towards a specific prisoner and send you off to them.
You have always been intelligent, both mentally and emotionally, and once you were left with a prisoner you knew how to deal your cards just right to have them give you every piece of information you needed. But your smarts didn’t come close to your father’s manipulation of your mind.
Maybe it was because part of you always trusted your father, always refused to believe he’d try to lie to you. But you know better, now. You have always been the secret weapon of the aristocrats and the military police, but after learning the truth, you are no longer a weapon, unless it’s for the sake of your love.
The echo of your footsteps is silenced as you reach his cell, motioning for the guard to let you in and leave.
“Are you sure you can be left alone with him?” The hesitant question of the guard was only answered by a curt nod from you.
‘If you only knew’ would have been a truthful reply, but truthfulness isn’t something you can use now, not with anyone who can be considered an enemy to Erwin, an enemy to you.
The guard obliged without question, unlocking the cell and letting you take slow steps inside before locking in again and walking away.
Erwin didn’t make a single move, he remained seated on the ground, his eyes rooted to the same spot by your feet. He didn’t move a muscle, not when the guard’s footsteps were silenced, not when you moved closer to him kneeling to the ground to be level with his seated form.
Not until your soft hands reached out to his rough cheeks did his eyes move from the filthy ground to meet your gentle eyes, the cold expression on your face now replaced with a pained look.
The sight in front of you was enough to break your heart to millions of pieces. It was the first time you managed to see Erwin after he lost his right arm. His face was all messed up after the beating he got from the military police; one of his eyes black and swollen, his lower lip busted, blood, sweat and dirt covered his face.
Your gentle eyes filled with silent tears made Erwin wish his single hand was free from the shackles so he could wipe away your tears before they reached your cheeks.
It has always been this way, the commander of the scouts and the respectable daughter of nobles. His hands have always been tied when it came to you, and your heart always broke for him.
“You shouldn’t be here,” Erwin spoke in a voice too gentle, too strong to belong to the broken sight in front of you “It’s risky.”
Your heart couldn’t break any more, but it did. This isn’t the state he should be in. This man, the one man who knew pain and terror more than the toughest of the soldiers guarding his cell. He shouldn’t be here, held captive by the cowards who only ever thought of themselves.
“I don’t care” Your voice came out in a weak whisper as if you were the one tied down and beat up.
The first of tears run down your cheeks. You have to get him out of this, you have to help him, he never deserved any of this.
You started talking again, your voice breaking a little more with every word “Erwin, I can get you out of here, I can help you escape, we can—”
“I’m not going to escape.”
The silence that followed his curt reply was one out of shock. how did he not want to escape? Didn’t he face enough already? Didn’t he want some peace at last?
It’s true that if he escapes with you now he will spend the rest of his life running away from the interior military police, but you’ll be together, you’ll make it work.
“If I run away now it’ll all be in vain, the lives we lost. The soldiers of the survey corps, my soldiers, will all be executed,” he paused studying your eyes silently before speaking up again “I have a plan.”
“A sure plan or another gamble of yours?”
Your question was only met with a weak smile confirming your fears. He isn’t sure of the outcome, for all he knows these could be his final moments with you.
“Erwin… I can’t lose you,” your hands moved over his bloodied cheeks caressing them lightly “I don’t care about anything or anyone else, but I can’t lose you.”
Erwin was a man who faced too much, he thought nothing could affect him after all he’d been through. Your words, your tears, your hands caressing his cheeks, and the look on your face all proved him wrong. He was affected by you, always have been.
His heart broke for you as if you were the one a few steps away from death’s doors. He wanted to hold you in his arms more than anything. He wanted to tell you that it’ll all be alright, to wipe away the tears wetting your beautiful face.
Your love was one of the rare things that weakened Erwin, but it also was what gave him strength the most. He didn’t know if his gamble will pay off, but he knew that if it didn’t, if he was to die soon he would go knowing that at least you didn’t see him the same way everyone else did. You saw him as a person deserving of love, not as a devil.
Even if Erwin didn’t live long enough to achieve the dream he lived for, he at least lived long enough to spend a few moments with you, to see your love.
With this thought and the new courage that filled Erwin’s heart, he opened his mouth again, this time to whisper his plans to you. He informed you of his gamble, entrusting you with his secret, warning you of how their success would mean the end for the fake king and most of the aristocrats associated with him. Including your family.
To say you were shocked would be an understatement. For you, his gamble meant that you would have to lose something either way; your family, or him. Helping him escape was still an option. But would you be the devil this time? If you preferred to have him escape knowing that this meant the end to every soldier in the survey corps?
You were stuck in a tough position, you could save both Erwin and your family knowing that the blood of the scouts will be spilt, or you could choose to accept the loss of either your family or your love.
Maybe it was Erwin’s influence on you, but as the guard returned to let you out of the cell and you walked away in silence, the old cold look back on your face, you started to formulate a plan to make your own gamble.
You stood among the gathering crowds, a hood covering your head. Erwin won his gamble, the fake king is exposed along with the nobles associated with him. The scouts’ name is cleared and things are set on the right path again. Erwin won, but so did you.
Your gamble was dangerous, it endangered your life as well as Erwin’s. You had to find a way to save both Erwin and your family without being responsible for the end of the survey corps. Your only solution was to convince your family to lay low and leave the king and his order handle everything on their own.
You had to forget about your wealth, your land, your home, and maybe even your name. You were ready to lose all of that, the trick was convincing the rest of your family to do the same.
It was a near-impossible mission, It was a war between your mental and emotional intelligence and the manipulating talents of your father. It took a lot of effort but you had learned how gambles are made from Erwin Smith, the biggest gambler you knew.
If you failed to convince your family to at least lay low for the time being, you would have to lose something.
There was always the possibility that your father would be able to read along the lines and understand what the scouts planned, and in that case, the decision to execute Erwin would have been taken immediately, even without the unrealistic hearing they gave him. You would have been the reason everyone is wrongfully executed, and you would have been executed with them for your ‘treason’.
But you made it, you managed to outsmart your father, to trick him into believing that laying low and detaching from the king and the order is the best decision to make.
And now here you stood among the crowds, looking up at Erwin as his eyes moved over the crowd, hoping to find yours.
You made your father accept the new rule of the military, of course, he started to understand your connection to the survey corps. But now the military is the new king, even if just temporarily. Now your social status won’t stop you from being with the scouts’ commander.
You can finally live as yourself, no longer a weapon of the interior military police, only the daughter of one of the aristocratic families that knew that it’s better to go with the flow.
As these thoughts filled your head, you felt a weight being lifted off your shoulders. You finally reached up to remove the hood covering your head, a smile adorning your face as Erwin’s eyes finally settled on yours.
