Chapter Eleven, THEN "Cracks"
To the rest of the scouts, they were just two high-ranking cadets who worked well together, a dependable pair who shared a quiet, gravity-bound understanding. But out in the courtyard or under the dim oil lamps of the mess hall, the truth spilled out in the margins.
It was in the way Reiner’s eyes instinctively tracked her when she entered a room, a subtle shift in his posture that relaxed only when she was within arm's reach. It was in the way she would sit just a fraction too close to him at the long wooden benches, her shoulder brushing his in a way that looked accidental to an outsider, but felt like a lifeline to them both.
Then there were the physical markers, the ones they couldn't always scrub away before dawn. The faint, purple bruise just beneath her collarbone that she kept meticulously buttoned away from the world. The erratic rhythm of their disappearances from the barracks after hours, slipping away separately and returning just before the morning whistle, eyes heavy and skin still smelling of woodsmoke and the distinct, shared heat of each other's bodies.
People were starting to notice. You couldn't hide that kind of gravitational pull forever, not in a regiment where everyone lived on top of one another.
"If you two lean into each other any harder, you're going to fuse into one giant soldier," Ymir drawled one evening, leaning back on her stool with a sharp, knowing smirk. She was watching them over the rim of her soup bowl, her eyes gleaming with predatory amusement. "Seriously, Reiner. If you're going to guard her like a prize mare, at least buy her a drink first. Or at least find a room with thicker walls."
Reiner’s easy, golden-boy smile slid into place instantly, smooth as polished armor. "Just making sure our best fighters don't get lazy, Ymir."
"Right. Fighters," Ymir scoffed, but Christa gently nudged her arm, offering a soft, apologetic smile that effectively ended the interrogation.
Connie and Sasha didn't care enough to look past the surface, but Jean’s eyes would linger on them sometimes, a quiet, calculating squint. Across the table, Bertholdt sat in his usual, quiet shadow, his eyes fixed firmly on his food. He didn't laugh at Ymir’s joke. Instead, a tense, heavy stillness settled over his tall frame. When he finally looked up, his gaze didn't go to Reiner; it landed directly on her. There was no warmth in his expression, only a cold, disapproving distance that felt less like jealousy and more like a warning.
Bertholdt had been acting like that for weeks. Whenever she was near, he withdrew into a sharp, quiet shell, his silence holding a bizarre weight, as if her very presence was a dangerous distraction they couldn't afford, an obstacle he was trying to calculate his way around.
But the real threat wasn't the teasing or Bertholdt's icy distance. It was the sudden, violent shifts in the world around them.
Then came the Female Titan, and with her, the first real fractures in the foundation.
During the chaos of the forest and the frantic reorganizations that followed, Reiner began to change. It wasn't a loud, dramatic unraveling; it happened in tiny, microscopic increments that she only caught because she spent so much time studying the terrain of his face.
He was wrong in small ways, details she catalogue in the back of her mind and immediately dismissed because the alternative was unthinkable.
There was a terrifying blankness behind his eyes at odd moments, a sudden, dead-eyed stare that would take over his face when he thought no one was looking. He would gaze out at the trees not with the hyper-vigilance of a Scout, but with the hollow look of someone who had already left his body behind.
Once, when a horse threw its shoe behind the stables and the loud, metallic crack echoed through the courtyard, Reiner didn't just startle. He flinched violently, dropping the bucket he was holding, his hands flying to his sides as if reaching for blades that weren't there. His chest heaved, a cold sweat breaking out on his forehead in a reaction that completely mismatched a simple, everyday noise.
The other cadets passed it off as battle fatigue. They had all seen hell in Trost, after all. Everyone was allowed a few frayed nerves.
But later that night, the unspoken arrangement between them drew her out of her bunk. It was a routine they had perfected in the dark, moving by memory and muffled breaths to the small, isolated storage room at the edge of the barracks. There were no words exchanged when she slipped through the door, only the immediate, desperate heat of his hands finding her waist, pulling her against him before the door even clicked shut. It was fast, almost aggressive in its necessity, a silent agreement to use each other's skin to block out the horrors of the afternoon.
Now, hours later, the frantic adrenaline had faded into a heavy, suffocating quiet.
They lay together on a makeshift pallet of wool blankets, the air between them still thick and warm. Her head rested against the broad center of his chest, listening to the slow, steady rhythm of his heartbeat. His arm was wrapped tightly around her shoulders, his thumb mindlessly tracing circles into her bare skin, anchoring her against him. To anyone else, it looked like absolute devotion. To her, it felt like the only safe place left in the world.
"When this is all over," she murmured into the dark, her voice barely a breath against his skin. "If we actually make it out of here alive... where do you think we'll go?"
Reiner let out a low, quiet chuckle, though the sound was a little too dry to be genuine. He forced his hand to start moving again, smoothing down her hair with his fingers. "You're getting ahead of yourself," he said, his voice sliding back into that steady, dependable cadence he used for the squads. "We still have the next expedition to survive before we start picking out real estate."
"I'm serious," she said, shifting slightly to look up at the silhouette of his jaw in the moonlight. "We won't be in the field forever. Eventually, if there's an end to this... what about your old home?"
A tiny, barely noticeable pause hung in the air. Reiner stared up at the wooden rafters, his easy smile remaining fixed on his face, though his eyes looked incredibly tired. "My home is pretty far from here. Past anything you've ever seen. It's beautiful, really. But it's a long way back."
"Then we'll go there," she whispered, reaching up to touch his cheek.
This time, Reiner didn't look away or pull back. He leaned into her palm, closing his eyes for a brief, heavy second as if soaking in the warmth of her skin. When he opened them, the golden-boy armor was firmly back in place, masking whatever panic had just flickered underneath. He caught her hand, pressing a soft kiss to her knuckles before holding it against his chest.
"Let's just focus on getting through tomorrow first," he murmured, his voice gentle as he pulled her closer, burying his face in her hair. "We do our duty, we survive the next clash, and then we can talk about the rest. Don't worry about the long run. Just stay close to me."
The absolute sincerity in his voice left her breathless. She wanted so badly to peel back the layer of lies he wore like clothing, to demand to know what home he was talking about, why it felt so impossibly distant. But she was too afraid of what she might find underneath. She needed him to be the strong one. She needed him to be her anchor.
So, she buried her face in his chest, ignoring the cold sweat on his skin, and let the silence swallow them again. She believed his strength, because the alternative meant admitting they were already doomed.
