A/N: Well I was just going to upload this in Tumblr, but it wouldn't let me for some odd reason and I got fed up. So, here you go a short one-shot to pass some time and hopefully allow me some peace to finish up my other stories. There are several mistakes and massive flaws in here, so read at your own risk, I can't be bothered to fix everything 'cause it's just too much for me.
"Annie..." he murmured as he approached the dimly lit room.
There, in a cell on her knees with her hands, bloody, blistered and bruised cuffed up and raised, was the Female Titan. She was panting softly, quietly with subtle quakes shuddering through her frail body.
Her eyes were clenched shut. Her lips were shivering and giving way to small hiccups and shaky sighs.
"How are you today?" Armin quietly asked as he calmly came up to the cold bars blocking her from him.
As he expected, she doesn't answer him with words, only with more sighs and gasps.
The keys in his hands clink an ominous tune as he looks for her key. "I'll be tending to your wounds this time." He finds it, an old rusted one that may need to be replaced. "Is that okay with you?" he asks as he looks at her with sorrow heavy in his blue eyes.
Again, she doesn't answer. He enters anyway with his hands holding an old basin of clean water; his eyes never leaving her broken up form.
The bars creak and groan as he pushes open the cell door; ominous and hollow. Her wardrobe is in tatters, her legs are bare and her feet are covered with dried blood and several cuts. He knows she'll need to be cleaned up with a new change of clothes. Sweat drips from her face along with quiet tears and it pains him that he can say nothing to ease her of her torment.
He's tried, on several occasions, but nothing reaches her. The anger and the hate, the sorrow and the guilt; all of it is eating away at her soul that there doesn't seem to be anything he can do to stop it.
"Annie." he calls again, and once more she doesn't acknowledge him. He sighs heavily before carefully kneeling in front of her. "Please, show me your face." he whispers gently, a damp rag ready to clean up the dirt and blood clinging to her.
When she feels him try and coax her to look at him, she grunts out a defiant sound, tugging her chains and jerking her head away from him.
Armin blinks at her, confused. "Annie?" he asks in that same quiet tone. "What's wrong?"
She's been a hard one to tend to, as the previous guards have said, but she'd been relatively tame with him throughout his time as her ward. Never has she caused him any sort of trouble aside from when he'd asked her questions. She'd always been compliant, allowed him to clean and even bathe her when it was necessary as well as feed her when it was time. So, he had to wonder what it was that had made her withdrawn to him when he wasn't here to interrogate her.
"Annie?"
Placing the rag back into the water, he gently placed a hand to her jaw. A gentle touch trying to coax her to look at him. "What's happened?"
She allowed his fingers to tempt her too look, but at the last moment before the light could bare even a portion of skin, she tore herself away. The chains rattled, the cuffs dug into irritated, bloodied wrists and her body shuddered with unimaginable pain. Her knees bumped into the pan, disturbing the water and making a bit spill over the rim.
"Annie, please." he sighed "I need to care for your injuries."
"W-why...? Why?" she questioned, her voice unsteady and trembling.
"Annie?"
Slowly, she faced forward and carefully lifted her head. Her blonde hair draped over her eyes and past her jaw in messy strands, dirtied with dust, mud, and even specks of blood. When at last she could be seen with the dim lights, Armin had to fight a gasp.
Her eyes were dull and hollow, her cheekbones becoming prominent from lack of nutrition, but none of that was what disturbed the boy. It was the stark contrast between color and texture on her face that he was horrified at. The skin around her eyes were bare of skin. They were red, raw and streaked with tears of blood and salt water. Torn flesh could be seen on the stretching skin of her cheeks, with dried blood caked heavily on the gaps. At one side of her mouth, a line was torn from the corner, carved further to an unnatural smile.
Bruises littered in blotches over her once fair skin. There was so much red, in different hues, bright and dark and dripping in small puddles of her cell.
"W-why?" she muttered again though he suspected she had no idea what she was questioning.
"Annie." he took hold of her jaw firmly, trying to make her look at him. "Annie, look at me." he commanded and for a moment her distant look became focused onto his.
"Tell me what's wrong, what happened during training?" he asked as gently as he could.
She didn't respond. Instead, she tugged at her restraints lightly, but Armin could almost hear the sickening sound of flesh being chafed and blistered from the friction. She swayed a little before stopping to murmur quietly to herself.
"Annie, please." he begged, before trying to resume his task. "What's happened to you?"
Her glazed eyes fell on him again as soon as she felt the cool, rough texture of the cloth gently dab at her head where old blood streamed down onto bare flesh. She didn't even wince when he barely brushed over the exposed muscle above her eye, but he did.
"Talk to me. Please, Annie!" he whispered again, not wanting to raise his voice and alert any who may be passing by the door. "Where did you get these wounds?"
Slowly, he cleaned them as best he could, but nothing came of the girl. She muttered and whimpered and more tears would be shed occasionally. They stung her, burned her healing wounds and forced them to open more and more.
The half smile carved at the side of her face had been trying to heal for a while. Armin could see just a faint hint of steam wisp from the ripped skin, but it was at an incredibly slow pace. Not at all like Eren when he would even so much as get a small cut from the chores he's done. They lingered, scabbed over with blood and bled when they would stretch and move with her motions. Her lips quivered, chapped and bloody as though she had been biting at them without a care.
She made soundless motions as though she were trying to speak, but something was stopping her. He waited patiently, dabbing at her wounds slowly and carefully.
"W-why..." she whispered, her voice hoarse from her lack of talking. "Why did you f-free... me...?" she gasped as she opened her mouth wider in a feeble attempt to ease the pain the tear radiated from her split flesh.
Her mind was a whirlwind of confusion and pain.
Armin swallowed soundlessly as he patiently waited for her to continue.
"I-I was- I was supposed to..." she coughed a little, short and painful. "Home... I was supposed to go home..."
Metal rattled, breaths fanned out in small puffs and Armin just continued to clean off the blood and apply just a bit of medicine.
He didn't understand what she was saying, but it was more than they all got since she was freed from the crystal.
Her eyes suddenly narrowed at him and when he wasn't suspecting it, she opened up her mouth and latched it onto his unsuspecting hand cleaning at her jaw. She bit down hard, her teeth piercing through his skin until his blood pooled in her mouth.
A small yelp escaped him as he pulled away from her, the rag falling to the ground. She held onto him for a moment longer until she let go, spitting out the metallic liquid with a fierce snarl. She fought with the cuffs and let out sounds of tired grunts and shallow pants like a rabid dog wanting to tear into the prey set before it. Armin merely held onto his shaking hand, using the spare rag to try and stop its bleeding. He was a breath from questioning her actions until he saw how she looked at him.
Her eyes were still crying streams of tears and her teeth, painted crimson, clenched together as she fruitless tugged at her wrists and twisted her body. Bones popped out of place, but she did not stop her useless struggle. Cries of pitiful despair left her, pulled hoarse out of her tired lungs as she continued to glower down at him.
"Why didn't I die?" she asked him, her voice raising with each passing second. "Why did you stop them! Why, why did you save me?" Her shouting increased as she fought harder. Steam erupted from her pores, clicking her bones back in place and erasing the continuous damage the cuffs delivered to her raw hands and joints. They were stronger now as she progressively became more alive, working fast to repair her damaged body parts.
Armin hissed at the pain he felt, but bit down at his lip to listen to her. To hear whatever it was she had to say, anything just to hear her speak and respond to him.
"Why am I here? Why are you..." she trailed off as a loud sob left her. "Whe-where am I?" Salt burned at her anew, fresh and hot. Her face became slick with sweat and the intense heat she felt only continued to boil hotter within her small frame.
Everything was unbearably hot. She couldn't catch her breath. Her lungs burned, her body ached, her bones groaned with each movement, each moment she spent alive and conscious of her surroundings.
"Why..." she seemed to beg when she realized she would not be able to reach him with her hands restrained and her strength diminished. "Why, why?" Another loud, pained sob left her, more drops of water fell from her swollen eyes. Her flesh continued to recede, her blood continued to spill, but she never felt more alive than now.
And she hated it.
That sweet, tranquil darkness was gone. The warmth of what little hope she held was gone, instead she was boiling, burning from the inside and it was killing her, whatever there was that remained of her at least. The stone felt cold to the touch on her bare knees, the bruises she felt throbbed with such a dull pain. The blood seemed no different than her tears, aching and endless, but never stopping. Over and over, she'd be fixed up; good as new. Even with little to no food or water, she was still alive and she hated every second of it.
"Where am I...? Whose blood is this?" she murmured quietly as she closed her eyes shut, no longer able to bear looking at the young man in front of her. "Who is it this time...?"
The pain was simply too much, her failure was too heavy and the lives she took were crying out their woes in her ears. Loud sickening screams, the quiet gasps and chokes for those who hadn't the chance to cry out; one by one they were snuffed out of existence. Gone like mere candles succumbing to the gust of the cold-hearted wind. It was all too much, she had been pulled out of the stretching silence too fast, too soon.
And it was tearing her apart. The power, the commands, the screams of the dead, all of it. She didn't know who she was anymore, didn't know what it was she was supposed to fulfill. Her purpose and her value, it all meant nothing to this poor prisoner of humanity.
"Annie."
She gasped at the sudden feel of someone else's hand on her face, but dared not move from her place.
Her skin was clammy, her teeth were clacking together and there was even more blood to clean from her. She was shaking so bad, so brokenly that he had to wonder what had happened to the strong warrior that had effortlessly tossed aside her obstacles. He sighed softly to himself, his hand having been wrapped tight with the spare rag to continue conversing with her. However fruitless it may be.
"Annie," he called once more, quietly, softly. It surprised even him considering she just nearly bit off a portion of his hand. "Look at me, Annie."
Small sounds of shivering escaped her. The chains quivered, everything about her now looked pitiful. Her strength only existed in a form of a giant, her value worth just as much. Now though, she succumbed to whatever bastard came in to add more cuts and bruises, endured words repulsion and was treated no different than an animal.
"W-who...? M-my..."
Her body may heal, but her mind would deteriorate under this less than stable environment.
"Look, Annie."
His fingers tightened just a fraction against her, but it didn't stop her from flinching. With his other hand, he gently caressed the side of her face, the side without the carved smile. She shuddered at the strange feeling, her eyes still screwed shut with her tears flowing painfully past them.
"Please, Annie."
She clenched her fists and began fighting against his gentle hold, unable to comprehend this gentleness he was showing her. A growl left her, she tossed her head away from him in an effort to escape, but he only held onto her shoulders, stopping her from causing herself further damage. He whispered to her, begging her softly and she couldn't take it.
"Shut up!" she seethed with such venom. Her voice rising with the ghost of her former self.
Her eyes snapped open with a murderous glare that stared right back at him. Her mouth contorted into a snarl and she once again fought the shackles she was left in.
"I'm not the nice person you thought I was! I'm not strong, I'm not a warrior, I'm not anything! Go away, leave me... L-leave me alone..." her voice lowered, a whimper broke though. "L-leave... leave..." A hiccup disrupted her. A sob choked her. She wanted him to leave her, she wanted her humanity gone and have the monster rise up with its head held high. If she can't have the feeble peace of being encased in glass, then she would abandon whatever was left of her own self to be free of this world known as hell.
"I-I..."
His hands were at her face again, wiping away the endless drops slowly, carefully, as if he still cared for her. Her chest constricted painfully with each cry, each breath she took to maintain her useless life.
A faint pressure gently touched her sweaty forehead, but she no longer cared. She cried silently.
"I'm not... I-"
"I know." he whispered as he carefully pulled her head to his chest. She leaned on him, her body heavy with exhaustion and regret. A muffled sound came from her, but he only encouraged her to let go. It wasn't information the others wanted or needed, it wasn't small talk or idle chatter. For months she had been quiet, saying next to nothing. Only grunts of pain or sounds of fatigue, simple yes and no's and that was it.
This was the most anyone has heard from her and it was nothing useful, but it meant a whole lot more for the blonde male.
It meant that she was still human, down to the last cell of her physical existence.
"I know you've done bad things. Horrible things." his injured hand, through still bleeding, gently stroked through her disheveled hair. He felt her fight him a little, but it was half-hearted and meaningless. "You've killed so many of us." He'd never seen or felt her become so small before, but now that she was in his arms, he couldn't believe her state of condition.
Her sobs became quieter, but he checked that off to exhaustion. Her body was becoming slack, but he felt she was still awake, aware of him.
"But you're still Annie and I can still see the good in you." his voice was so quiet, but she heard him, clear as day.
She didn't bother answering him, she didn't bother with more cries, but she did fight again, against the teeth of metal. Armin, feeling safe that she meant no harm against either herself or him, finally allowed her a moment of freedom.
It was against the rules and maybe punishable by death since this was the Female Titan he was setting free, but he wasn't worried. Her wrists were a bright and irritated pink, riddled with blood dried in splotches over faint lines of torn flesh. But it didn't seem to matter to her as she used her free arms to cling to him as she quietly let go of her pent up sorrow, her regrets, her anger, her failure as a soldier her cause needed.
Her fingers held tight to his uniform, pulling him closer. Her head was buried into his neck as she cried and cried until the tears would finally stop as did her wounds dripping with scarlet. The salt from her eyes still burned and her face was flushed, but it wasn't as painful now.
When she had finally finished crying, he felt her quiet down. Her sniffling eventually ceased and it wasn't long until she succumbed to sleep. Her body gradually became lax and the breath he felt on his bare neck became even and slow. Still, he continued to hold her, allowing her to rest in this small moment of reprieve from the shackles and punishment.
Free from the worries, free of pain, she was granted at last with a sleep free of nightmares. Instead her head became filled with dreams of peaceful silence, no static, no screams, no deaths. She became aware of nothing, no sounds, no voices. It was almost when she was back in that crystal, aware of absolutely nothing, could feel nothing. Not the blade piercing through her back or the muffled cry of the boy who couldn't stand seeing her become the way she was; tortured, mutilated, crying; suffering.
No, she wouldn't feel how tight Armin was holding her nor would she ever hear his silent cries as he held her close to him. She was back in the pleasant abyss where peace was eternal.