A.N.: I wrote this last night and...I'm quite surprised by it. Coming of age AU from Annie's perspective. This is scattered with metaphors and figurative language. Takes a bit of thought, I think.
Disclaimer: I do not own Shingeki no Kyojin.
Annie was never particularly interested in being accepted or liked, has always been more content with silently moving through life than being surrounded by other people. Whether she was alone for the rest of her days or not was of no particular consequence to her. As long as she could look back and know she was walking on the same path she always has been, she was perfectly satisfied where she was.
That wasn't to say she was never pestered about it, however. She spent the better half of her childhood being ostracized by her own peers, at the worst of times tormented and at the best simply ignored. Elementary school was one big blur of gum-hardened hair and mud-smeared shirts, finding her backpack in trash bins and the word freak scrawled hideously onto her desk in grape-scented marker.
To this day, she knows exactly who wrote it—only one person in her class has ever owned scented markers, she knows this for a fact—but would never lower herself enough to confront them.
Annie was much more content keeping her dignity than reducing herself to a whiny brat who couldn't take being bullied by children.
Sooner or later, they would learn to move on. Getting no response was a lot more boring than they had ever expected, and Annie was a master at keeping her upper lip stiffened and her eyes straight forward.
Annie was better than any of them.
~~...~~X~~...~~
She was eleven when he first approached her, his hands twisting a poor little flower and his face stained a deep pink. She might've seen him once or twice around her neighborhood, playing with that blond boy across the street, but had never paid him much thought. He was the same height as her, lithe in frame, with warm brown skin and dark hair and olive green eyes.
Summer was ripe around them and the streets were finally empty as most kids their age had been lugged off for vacation—somewhere exciting and invigorating, no doubt; like the beach or the fair or someplace tropical like the islands down south—and it seemed as if they were the only ones still left to wander their small town's parks and old sidewalks. Truth be told, there never was much to do where they grew up. It only made sense everyone was always so eager to leave.
How he just happened to end up stuck at home like her, she'd never know. But on her way home from the bookstore, she ran into him. Or, rather, he found her most intentionally.
Annie's quick mind figured he'd been working up the nerve to speak to her for a while now, and concluded he had at last found the courage to approach her. She was certain he hadn't the slightest what came after that.
He'd gotten lucky that day, as she had decided to be generous enough to help him in the right direction.
Annie might've only seen him once or twice before, and, by definition, she hadn't the slightest resentment toward him. His best friend was a different matter; she could count on her fingers how many times she's had to knock his head around to get her point across, and that only showed how patient she'd been until then. When she looked at this boy, she had the strangest sense of empathy for him.
The timorous expression on his face might've been a part of it, but Annie would never admit to anything.
She reached over slowly, opening her hand out to him. He stuttered, face burning red, and attempted to meet her stony gaze. "Those are for me, aren't they?" she asked, tone even and almost kind. He nodded quickly, squeezing his eyes shut—a shame, really, they were a nice color—but only clutched the flowers closer to him. "Well? Let's have them."
He handed them over carefully, hands trembling, and Annie was immediately aware how beautiful they were. Yellow tulips, their petals bright and smooth; never mind how wrinkled and warped his hands had made the stems and their leaves.
They smelled like summer.
The sun was setting by now, and she held her newly purchased books against her chest with one arm and pressed the tulips close to her cheek with her other hand, peering over at him as he walked her home. His eyes shone in the orange cast and she was certain no paint she in the world could possibly capture their hue right then. He spoke very little and she, even less so, but there was nothing at all uncomfortable about their silence and Annie couldn't help but think that, perhaps, she didn't mind this so much.
Perhaps she could even appreciate it.
At her doorstep, he mumbled, "I...like you..." His face was this shade of red she could almost say matched scarlet and he avoided her eyes at all costs—a shame, really, she was starting to like them.
"I know," she replied, and turned toward the little garden kept under the living room window and plucked a single white bloom from the cluster, a small violet with ruffled petals and sharp-edged leaves, and held it out for him to take.
He had the sort of smile that could illuminate an entire town by itself, even if it was shy and timid.
Annie figured she kind of liked it.
~~...~~X~~...~~
Middle school was a little harder.
Her body was changing in ways she couldn't even begin to understand and with only her father at home to fall back on, there were no real explanations for the way she was feeling or thinking.
Annie was more than a little ashamed to confess that she was just a tiny bit terrified.
The girls in her class might've scoffed at the blemishes on her pallid face and her stringy wheat hair. They might've giggled at the way she cradled her sensitive chest with her wrists and the way she tugged her uniform skirt down her legs to hide them from stares, the tiny cuts from failed attempts to shave and the knobby jut of her ankles or knees or the sharp curve of her hips. They might've mocked her for the way she hurried to dress before and after PE and they might've taunted her for being too ugly.
And Annie might've been close to tears a couple times, but she would never lower herself down to their level.
Not ever.
When she told him, they were both sitting on her back porch passing a can of apricot juice between them and nibbling around the edges of graham crackers kids their age might've called childish, and he looked at her for a long time—his eyes nearly as green as the grass swaying softly inches beneath their feet and every bit as gentle as their caress against her toes—and he said, "But you're beautiful."
The blemishes on her porcelain cheeks are stars waiting to be connected in the sky, and her golden hair was the sun that bleach them out of view. Her body is the prelude to something perfect and whole and entirely her and so what if she had skinny legs, they reminded him of flower stems anyway, matchbox sticks ready to snap a fire, the branches of a baby tree waiting to stretch up high enough to touch the clouds.
To him, she was still a bud half opened toward blooming.
If no one else saw it, that was their loss.
Annie might've smiled a little, coating her face with creams in front of the bathroom mirror and repeating his words back to herself over and over until she could almost believe them.
Annie would not let them break her down anymore.
She was better than any of them.
~~...~~X~~...~~
She was thirteen when the first girl in her class announced to a group of friends, "He kissed me," in a voice that spoke volumes of her self-complacency. Annie sat near the back of the room and these girls always decided to gossip near her no matter how inconvenient it was to them.
She assumed it was because they thought it made her uncomfortable.
Another girl jeered, "I had my first kiss months ago." And Annie watched her flip a section of caramel curls over her shoulder and cock a fist on her hip.
Suddenly, these girls were attacking the first in that passive aggressive way all girls seemed to do, and Annie was somewhat sorry for the girl. But not enough to actually speak up. Never enough for that.
"It's not her fault she's so inexperienced," another girl insisted.
"These things come naturally. Some people just...have it a little late."
"I mean, my boyfriend and I hit third base by the second week, but...it's okay to wait. I guess."
"Look," a calmer girl said, crossing her arms. "As long as she has her first kiss before the end of high school, she's fine."
The girls giggled scandalously, as if something intelligent had just been said.
"Right, could you imagine graduating without even having a kiss?"
Annie felt all of them look at her at the same time.
She simply turned a page in her book, never betraying her own emotions.
She was a master at keeping up her masks.
~~...~~X~~...~~
His hand was warm around hers, steady as he helped her balance on the stone benches while they walked to the bookstore together. Summer was the safest time to be out, everyone was away to have fun and they only had each other to entertain.
She pulled on light-colored tank tops and faded shorts and worn out sneakers and pinned up her hair into intricate buns that passed for sloppy. He wore sleeveless shirts and loose pants and tapered sandals and tucked his hair behind his ears; he promised he'd get a haircut as soon as he could, but Annie sometimes thought she liked him with long hair.
He was a little taller than her now, and could reach the upper shelves better than she could. He often pulled thicker volumes out for her without her even asking for them and she almost thinks he's beginning to learn her silence the same way one would learn spoken language.
Sometimes, she thinks he's even smarter than she is.
When she wasn't paying attention, he gets to playing with the ends of her hair, twirling strands about his finger and humming some song she didn't recognize. He wreathed small blooms behind her ear and mumbled something about how summer looks best on her no matter which way you look at it.
They would be attending the same high school that year, and they spent the whole summer mourning the childhood they could've had and anticipating the next life offered.
She slid a dandelion behind his ear and decided summer looked best on him, too.
~~...~~X~~...~~
Her skin was clean and clear and she couldn't possibly explain how many strenuous hours she'd spent molding herself into something vaguely beautiful. She combed her yellow hair into buns she was almost certain she could do in her own sleep and rubbed unscented lotions into her legs until they were softer than the petals of a rose. She folded and creased the ugly edges of herself back until they were replaced by something a little more—more pretty, more girlish, more something, anything other than what she used to be.
Every day, he tells her she is perfect. It didn't take any perfumes or lip gloss or lotions for him to see it.
Annie might've thought she was the luckiest girl in the world, knowing someone who's seen her at her absolute worse can still look at her and call her lovely, but she would never admit to anything.
She didn't flaunt a single thing on their first day of high school, or the day after that, or the one after that one. She held his hand the way she always had since she was thirteen and afraid of stares and growth and giggles had behind her back. She held her chin high and did not waver even as she felt eyes boring into her from all sides.
His hand was big and warm around hers and she wasn't afraid of a single thing in the world.
She didn't respond when those same girls that had once ridiculed her asked her, in tones of well-meaning curiosity and fallacious smiles, who, exactly, that tall handsome boy with the pretty eyes was. Their wide eyes all quickly narrowed as she stood from her seat and swept away from them easily.
They would get bored sooner or later. They always have.
Annie would always be better than any of them.
~~...~~X~~...~~
He had grown a few inches taller and Annie now had to tilt her head back a little to look him in the eye. Her forehead could rest easily on his shoulder if she stood up straight and she often wondered if it was a topic of humor between him and his best friend.
When asked, he simply smiled and said, "Of course not, Annie. I would never laugh at you."
Lying back on the grass under the sky often had her realizing how much smaller she was than the rest of the world, and whenever she couldn't catch her breath beneath the epiphany of the fact, he took her hand and hummed that song she did not recognize. It quickly became a point of reference for them, something to turn back to when things weren't quite in their proper place.
Things often shifted out of place no matter what they did, but it helped to think that they still had control anyway.
Winter came gradually and he let her steal his jackets and never questioned it when she didn't return them right away—or ever—and only smiled that small smile when she showed up at his house wearing all of them at the same time, a scowl on her pretty face and her lips pulled down a frown.
He's told her more than once that she makes him happy.
She can't imagine why. But Annie is aware she must be the luckiest girl in the world.
There's snot around her bright red nose and her lips are chapped and her breath reeks of hot chocolate soured on her tongue and she can't even move her arms she's wearing so many layers for heat, and here he is, eyes gentle and warm and fingers curled tight around hers, telling her she's still so beautiful to him.
Something must've went horribly wrong somewhere in her path.
Either that, or whatever deity who dared call itself her god suddenly decided it liked her.
~~...~~X~~...~~
She was fifteen when her father told her she looked just like her mother.
She spent the rest of the month searching for features she knew she wouldn't recognize anyway and came to realize that her father didn't have her blue eyes or yellow hair or white skin. She sat herself down in the middle of her room and searched within herself for a missing part to tell her what she already knew she didn't know.
When he found her, she was coiled up on the floor with a blank expression on her face.
He held her until she mumbled, "I don't want to be anyone else."
His olive green eyes seemed to understand what she meant, even if she didn't say it, and Annie was again aware of how much he simply just seemed to know these sorts of things. He'd learned to read her the way a person reads a regular book, and her printed surface is as easy for him to comprehend as his own name. "You're just you, Annie. No one else."
She came to realize that this ran both ways for him, like an intersection of a busy street—him standing in the center, neither looking left nor right. Just him, solid and real. And she, everything at all that mattered to him.
She hid her face in his chest and pretended the strong beat of his heart was a clock ticking down to her demise.
When nothing happened, she figured now would be a good time to fall in love with him.
~~...~~X~~...~~
She was sixteen when she noticed, upon glancing back, that the path she had been walking on had been trampled and twisted and tumbled over—and she didn't care all that much anymore.
She was still her and whole and real and nothing at all had changed her.
It was almost summer again and next year will be their last year. When asked, he'd say he wants to be a surgeon. When asked, she'd say she wants to be a lawyer. No one in the world questions them and they move along their way, hands clasped secretively between them and whispers passed between them silently.
In truth, he has a pension for the arts. She often finds paint stuck to his long fingers and pastel powder along his palms and elbows; he helps her pin his drawings up on her wall and smiles when she nods proudly up at them.
In truth, she wants to learn the ocean. She wants to immerse herself in its depths and discover massive clusters of jellyfish and tiny ones of shrimp. He sketches them out for her sometimes and she feels as if it could almost happen.
But when asked, they would always say what is expected of them to say.
"And what if you never see each other again?" they might ask.
They'll look at each other and say, "Then we never see each other again."
They know it's their own little secret and they'll live in a tiny house on a tiny hill in a quiet place with quiet neighbors and spend the rest of their days tangling flowers into each others hair and knowing no one else will ever steal this from them because it was theirs and whole and real.
And Annie thinks perhaps she wouldn't be happy anywhere else but with him.
~~...~~X~~...~~
"Have you kissed him yet?" the girls would often ask, looming over her imposingly. Their manicured nails would spread over her desk and their candy perfume would cloud too thickly around her head, the jingle-jangle of their necklaces or bracelets or earrings interrupting her very thoughts.
She would simply turn the page of her book silently and fall deeper into her own mind.
Once or twice, she might've caught them clucking their tongue in irritation or huffing in frustration.
She often saw them peering over at them as they ate lunch together, passing cans of juice between them and nibbling around the corners of graham crackers kids their age call childish, but Annie is excellent at ignoring others and she turns her attention entirely to him or their homework or their books or the way his hands are so much bigger than hers now.
He took long strides now when they walked, now over a foot taller than her, and she sometimes had to run to keep up. She might've heard people snickering behind them, but he smiled at her like nothing else in the world mattered and Annie decided she didn't very much care what they thought.
"Have you kissed him yet?"
No, but she felt as if it was something worth waiting for. She felt it was something that should come naturally. She felt it was something that deserved her patience.
They were both people of few words, and most days a simple shrug or a nod or a furrowing of the brow went a long way in terms of communication. He had learned her language the same way any other person does a spoken one, and Annie thought perhaps he was a better person than her.
They didn't need to prove to anyone how they felt, because they both already knew. And as long as they both knew, it didn't matter all that much if anyone else did.
He looked at her like she was the only thing worth waiting for and that was all she needed, really.
"Have you kissed him yet?"
One or two girls in her class were already pregnant, and she had spent hours counting the fine black hairs on his arm just the other day—entirely content in the silence slipping between them and the way his fingers couldn't fit completely between her smaller ones.
Their sneers still bleed into the backs of her eyelids, but she won't let it get to her.
Annie was better than any of them.
~~...~~X~~...~~
She was seventeen when he kissed her for the first time.
There wasn't anything life-changing or earth-shattering about it, but Annie swore there was no one else in the world she would rather share it with.
Some people describe it with exploding fireworks or electric zaps or hot fire, but it felt more like sunset hues and the soft caress of summer on her skin and his green, green eyes, and his fingers wrapping up into her hair—it felt like something had gone invariably right in her life and he just happened to be it.
His lips were warmer than she'd expected and they melded around hers, pliable and soft, and his fingers were sticky with sweat as they curled around her shoulders gently. He lifted her up onto the nearest bench and leaned his head down until the space between them was only silence and gloss slicked over their mouths. She was still too short and she couldn't quite focus on the moment—her teenage mind was far too preoccupied with her own imperfections, but Annie knew one day she wouldn't be and nothing else in the world would matter but him—and her small hands couldn't capture all the beauty of his face, and yet, for some reason, he still fit against her so perfectly.
She spent the rest of the day exploring with her mouth, across his forehead and cheeks and jaw, those lines she hadn't thought to think about.
Annie somehow knew she didn't need any spark or flame or firework to know they were meant to be here.
Annie had never been particularly interested in being normal or ordinary, had always been more content with tangling herself up with life than melting into the walls. Whether anyone was there beside her or not was of no consequence to her. As long as she could look back and know she was still her and whole and real, she was perfectly happy where she was.
It was only pure luck—or a string from the fabric of fate, a shard in the crystal of destiny, a petal picked from the flower of hope—that she ever met him at all.
She never took many chances, but she'll admit that he was the best choice she ever made.
~~...~~X~~...~~
Annie will not get married for a long time, but that's just as well.
He holds her hand like one would a delicate flower and he smiles at her like she's the only thing worth waiting for and Annie—Annie is willing to wait forever and ever as long as she still had him.
But she just wants to take it day by day, because if life has taught her anything it was that things are so much sweeter when you wait.
She half-expects them to break apart—life has a funny way of doing that to people, she knows—but he's always there to whisper how lovely she is and press a tiny flower into her golden hair, a kiss to her porcelain cheek, and a promise into her palm.
"I love you," he mumbles, this gentle smile curving his gloss-smeared lips, kisses still fresh on their minds.
"I know," she replies, plucking a white violet from their garden in offering.
Her masks and tears lie buried somewhere on that path that stretches so convoluted and warped behind her, and she never spares a thought to all the sneers or taunts or grape-scented markers littering it.
Annie is better than any of them.
And if she forgets, Bertholdt is always right there to remind her—green eyes every hue impossible to capture and warm hand wrapped around hers.
~~...~~X~~...~~
A.N.: Happy stories, heck yeah.
What do you guys think? Let me know, review please!
I have no idea where this came from, but I hope you guys liked it.