[More than Mikasa's sure statement, more than the story of the expedition and the capture in Stohess that the others had told, more than the familiar face of the titan at the drop, Annie's cracking composure rattles the foundations of his fragile and flawed denial. He grinds his teeth against it, but he's stubborn, not stupid. He can fit the pieces together, even if his gut doesn't want to accept them]

I don't know. I don't understand. I want to.

[Earnest, though he's rarely anything but. And that's the most frustrating thing about all this. That he's not even supposed to be surprised, that he's supposed to have made sense of this and dealt with it and moved past it. It's not that easy. (They're not sure why some of them remember more than others. It's easiest to blame it on the CDC. But it's not like inconvenient memory loss hasn't happened to him before.) He's strung tight, has been from the start of this. Frustrated. There's a burgeoning and bitter taste like hurt (betrayal) building up at the back of his tongue the longer this goes on.]

So stop screwing around and tell me what I forgot, Annie. [They told him, she has to have known they told him. But he doesn't remember, he didn't live it, and that makes a big damn difference. And he advances, takes another step forward or two to close the distance, as if out of habit. (In a way it is. They've faced off a thousand times before, haven't they?) If she really is a titan, if she really did attack the expedition—] Tell me why you did it.