Check my profile for updates on current projects. In the meantime, this oneshot exists because Annie is beautifully tragic.

Annie wakes with a start.

For a horrible moment, she doesn't remember where she is.

(For an even more horrible moment, she feels small and vulnerable and scared. Annie doesn't scare.)

A few seconds after she manages to slow her breathing, she hears a polite cough from the other side of the room. Oh, no. Hitch was awake all this time? The thought clicks on and off like a light as she's reminded of her own habit of talking in her sleep, and almost has to physically restrain her panic over what she might have given away.

"Are you okay?" asks her roommate, who apparently can't keep quiet for too long or her head would explode.

Her answer is careful, clipped. "I'm fine. It was just a stupid nightmare."

Hitch sits up and looks at her. It was the first time Annie has seen a sincere expression on her face, and that expression is worry. "Was it about Trost?"

She feels a sudden heat flare in her chest and the back of her throat, and then she's almost surprised because she's ANGRY, because how dare this girl have to audacity to pity her, to WORRY –

"I don't remember," she forces out. Though vague, there is some truth to it. All she has left of the dream are the tear tracks on her face, which she immediately tries to hide.

"I'm sorry, but… who's Mina?"

Startled, Annie allows herself to be pulled back into memories, ones that hurt. She shoves them down, berating herself for thinking again of the girl with pigtails and kind eyes who practically kept her sane for their two years of basic training.

"My friend. She died." She looks at Hitch askance. "Who's names did I drop?"

The other girl lays back down. "You apologized to her at first. And you cussed a fair bit at somebody named Reiner, and then you were asking a boy called Eren if he hated you. But you went back to Mina in the end."

Annie forces herself not to choke up because she is a warrior and she is not weak. "Hitch?"

"Yeah?"

"Please," she says flatly. "Forget what I say. But if anything else comes out, tell me, if you would."

A tired sigh, but not one devoid of sympathy. "I'll try." With that, she rolled over and faced the wall.

For some reason, Annie can't get angry at her pity again. In fact, what she wants the most is to go back to sleep.

Almost as much as she needs Mina to know how sorry she is, and Eren not to hate her if and when he finds out.

As for Reiner, he and Bertholdt can go to hell.