A/N: This story goes back and forth in time between chapters. How AruAni came to be.
"Left."
Cold, damp, dark. He slid along the walls, feeling the ridges of the cool, rough stone blocks scrape the palms of his hands. His breathing was slow, shallow, his steps cautious- silence was a necessity. This method was painfully time consuming, and he felt a knot build in his stomach. However, this was much safer than simply rushing in. He calculated in his mind the directions he took as he made his way through the damp catacombs, where were frustratingly dark; he couldn't even make out his hand on the wall to his side. Coming to a fork in the path, he had to reflect on yesterday evening. When he was brought down here, he had questioned what he had done and consciously committed the turns and straights they had taken to reach their destination to memory. As always, he had felt the need to calculate and consider, fearing he would need to reference this information later. He had been right.
Although it was cool, his bangs clung to his brow from the building humidity like leather to skin, as he descended ever deeper into this dark maze. He would need to reverse his steps to find a way out, and at a quicker pace than the way he came in. He wouldn't have long before someone would come to check on her. She was under near-constant watch, and he had only been able to affirm from Hange's utterances that he could rest assured that he wouldn't be found out at this hour- not that she had told him so that he could do this. She had no idea what he was doing and he couldn't be discovered. What would that bring upon him? Likely charges of treason or something of the sort. He had been the one to turn her in, and it had pained him so much to do so. He thought back to her pained, offended eyes; like those of a wounded animal, almost as though she feared her own lover.
"When did you start looking at me with those eyes?"
The look on her face paired with that utterance ran through his mind again, and he shook it off, clearing his head. He had to be cautious about this; he couldn't allow himself to be blinded by emotions. Even so, had he done the right thing? He scooted further along the damp walls, his hood shielding his eyes, until he reached his destination; a musty, humid room dimly lit by oil-light, which refracted gently off the cool, pale blue stone that lay strung up in the middle. He approached it, picking a lamp from the floor in the corner and carrying it over to her. He held it up to her crystal-like confines, shooting refractions of light over the stone walls as he ran his fingers over the glass entrapping her perfectly smooth surface. His gaze softened as her restful face came in to focus and he felt his face grow hot, his lower, blonde lash lid brimming with a liquid that burned his eyes, and salted his tongue. He stroked over the contours of her porcelain: ethereal- his beauty trapped in glass. It pained him so to consider what he had reduced her to. She had so feared for her life that she'd trapped herself like this, and he knew not if he would ever get the opportunity to hear her voice, so cold- yet overbearing with emotion, again. If he would ever get the chance to apologise for his betrayal, to hold her against him or tell her he love-
"An-nie." A crack to his voice as he heaved.
He leaned against her crystal cage, the glass cold against his sticky brow. Blonde lashes shut tightly over azure eyes, small refracted drops of water breaking through the confines of his lids, hitting the floor below in splattered splashes. He struggled to call her- the real Annie- to his memory.
