"Are you awake?" asks Erwin Smith, the 13th Commander of the Survey Corps.
… Yes. Annie is awake and still breathing. She is alive, but she wouldn't call this living. She has long ago exhausted the energy stores she spent a decade building. All the glycogen stored in skeletal muscle and her liver, and most of the adipose underneath her skin. She feels like a living corpse, left to gradually decompose in this dungeon. Soon, her flesh will slowly decay, and then is only a matter of time until she becomes so gaunt that she will become an exposed skeleton. She listens to the sound of the commander, how wood groans underneath his weight, and the rustling of leather against stone wall. How strange is it that the commander is visiting her without his usual company, but the quiet is different from snide taunts and excitable chatter. Not that it matters too much to Annie, not after all that they've put her through. It's clear to her that now her captors are only going through motions, letting time pass. It's an exercise to break her in every way, to force a hand that she no longer has, and make her divulge secrets that don't belong to her alone. She straightens herself, using the wall behind her in lieu of arms she no longer has.
Her movement confirms it to him. "You are awake. That's good. I wasn't expecting you to be, Leonhardt," he says, the surname she has chosen for herself foreign and thick on his tongue and lips. She can easily imagine how grim the handsome commander's face must look right now, speaking to this girl who easily murdered strangers who didn't matter and couldn't do the same for former comrades who shouldn't matter. "Annie," he tries instead, softer, and it's worse.
She jerks forward, iron constraints clanking. The ill feeling spreads from her stomach up to her esophagus, and she gasps, her lungs shuddering as she dry heaves. Her skin prickles and Annie forces herself to breathe slowly, deeply, and to stop shaking. It's a strong reaction for something that seems so slight, but her name is not for people like him to use. Not anymore, not now, and never again. Through oily, stringy blond hair, she glares up at the commander and even in darkness, she can make out his tepid expression. It's the face that people make when they want to look sympathetic without feeling any sympathy at all. It's infuriating. She vocalizes her displeasure by making a low hiss, a warm stream of air through gritted teeth.
"You shouldn't make that face. It isn't polite," the commander says, and she feels like she is six years old once again, being scolded by her father for improper form. The wryness of his voice deposits irritation, thick underneath her skin. "After all, my scouts have worked hard to make you comfortable here. Have you been enjoying humanity's hospitality?"
Your underlings haven't been working that hard at it, Annie thinks. The sharp bone they left almost intact and attached to her and crisp, foul-smelling burn wounds where bone meets flesh are not very comfortable at all. It isn't a courtesy to use dull blades to hack at limbs nor torch fire haphazardly to cauterize wounds. Your human hospitality and our titan hospitality are not very different in that case. Neither of them are particularly enjoyable, not when they're hungry for you.
"Do you have nothing to say?" Erwin Smith asks. He leans forward and rests his left elbow on his knee, his cheek onto his palm. Annie stays silent and stares impassively, first at his brow, down his neck, across broad shoulders until her gaze rests at the right arm of his jacket. She thinks about how if she were him and had access to sunlight, she would restore her arms without a second thought. How unfortunate for him. If he still had a right arm, he could have rested his wrist in the curve of interlaced fingers. He would look more dignified and regal that way, rather than the current standoffish, distant boredom that pervades his features. After a minute of uncomfortable silence between them, the commander inhales deeply and lets out a heavy sigh. "… Not a word, even after five years behind the walls."
Annie wonders if he thinks he is being witty or that this is funny. It really isn't, even for someone with a morbid sense of humour like her. She wants to run her tongue against her teeth, feel the curve and point of her canines, but her mouth is empty. His soldiers have taken away her ability to speak, along with her dexterity. There is no use for her motor skills when there is no tendon and ligament to manipulate, no point in trying for anything that isn't precise and perfect in execution. So Annie keeps silent.
And really, what would she say to him? He asks her as if she owes him anything at all, after being humiliated by the hands of his pawns. She looks back at his face, at what she thinks are dark circles around his eyes and wonders if she put them there. Not that she really cares. She's so tired from and of their interrogations. Fuck you, thinks Annie hazily, and fuck everything that has lead to this moment.
There is a sudden loud knock, and then the room floods with light as Zoe Hange waltzes in, her research assistant scurrying in after her. Two other soldiers join them. The torchlight hits Annie's skin, and her relief is immediate. It is a poor substitute for sunlight, but after weeks in near darkness, any light is welcome. Her body begins emitting titan vapour, painful in a different way, but she embraces it. She exhales out soft wisps of steam.
"Oh, she's awake!" Hange exclaims, as if it is a marvel that Annie Leonhardt is ever in any state other than slumber. "And vapour!"
Erwin turns his head, a slight motion, and shifts his onerous and meticulous gaze to Hange. "She's been awake for some time now."
"Has she?" Hange doesn't look up from her set of keys as she sifts through them, searching for the right one. It's the fifth key. She inserts it into the padlock and with a satisfying click, it opens. "That's not ideal. I wasn't expecting her to be."
"Does it change anything?"
"No." Hange's smile is wide and eager, bright and voracious, "not a thing." Her gaze holds a similar quality, sharp with her keenness for new information. The excitement exuding from her is almost as tangible as the faint vapour escaping through Annie's gritted teeth. It's a one-sided enthusiasm that's too tiring for a person like herself, thinks Annie. How could someone be so excited while doing something so fruitless? She feels Annie's cheek, her palm flat against clammy skin. "Hmm, warmer than usual. Is the fire analogous to sunlight for you?"
Annie doesn't answer, not with words nor with a shake of her head. The skin around Annie's hips feel tight, but it is worth it for her lingual septum and the beginnings of a tongue. There is much more gravity in a chosen silence than the forced silence of the past week and a half. She stares behind Hange, at her research assistant who is carrying a large, folded sheet of tarp and rope. He looks calmer today than usual, his facial expression almost neutral. When Hange pulls down at her lips to reveal pink gums and white teeth and tries to pry open her mouth, Annie bites.
Hange first hisses, and then it turns into loud laughter that drowns out the apprehensive, grousing chorus of "team leader, be careful!" behind her. "That's disappointing," she sighs, flicking and flexing her fingers. Her zeal loses some of its vigorousness. With her other hand, Hange touches blond hair and pulls it aside to reveals Annie's right eye. She tucks it behind her ear, still tender despite Annie regenerating it three weeks ago, and tugs sharply at the hair. "I was hoping to see what you decided to prioritize regenerating before your arms. Is it your tongue?"
She waits with baited breath for an answer that doesn't come. Annie doesn't owe her anything, either. She meets Hange's inquisitive stare with distaste and apathy. She has no reason to abide by any of their requests, not when there is nothing for her to gain from it. It is poor form to let an enemy take an advantage, and knowledge is a precious commodity that Annie will not relinquish to them willingly.
"Oh well." Hange lets out another disappointed sigh. "That's not why we're here, anyway! We have something else on today's agenda."
And what would that include exactly? Annie wonders wearily, her eyes watching as soldiers unfold tarp. It looks to be the same type of material that they used to cover the two titan specimens that Annie had disposed of months ago. They make her to stand without undoing her restraints, forcing her into an unnatural lean. She shifts as much of her weight as she can onto her legs to keep balance. Although they tremble, her legs did not atrophy too much, a small mercy that Annie is thankful for. It takes two soldiers to arrange the bottom edge of the tarp around her ankles, and another to wrap rope around to keep it in place. Annie watches as the commander stands up, how elegantly his legs rise and straighten. He removes something from his left breast pocket, a long string of leather. She spots a glint of metal, and immediately she knows what it is that is on the leather cord. He strides by Hange's apprehensive assistant, and then he is in front of her, with Hange watching curiously from his righthand side.
"Your ring," Erwin says simply. He pulls the leather cord over her head and unfurls his fingers, opening up his hand. Warm silver touches the ridge of her left eyebrow. His fingers comb through her hair and his palm strokes her scalp from the top of her head to the back of her skull. The intimacy of his touch makes her nausea return, the toxic feeling washing over her skin like lake water. Her facial muscles twitch, and it grows more difficult to keep a neutral, apathetic exposition. Annie presses her lips thin and wills herself to gaze up at Erwin Smith with her most insolent front. She reminds herself that she does not owe him anything, certainly not gratitude for giving her back something that should have never been taken away from her in the first place. The necklace falls into place. Her ring, now twice gifted, feels heavier around her neck than it did ten years ago when her father had first bestowed it to her.
When he lets go, Annie lets go of the air growing still and stale in her lungs. She forces out the full volume, hacks and coughs, and she wills herself to not let it become retching. That was much worse than him saying her name, she thinks. To look and recognize the scheming lying so superficially underneath sun-touched skin and a handsome, stoic face. To look at his mouth and see words, conceptualized and wholly formed, but held back on the tongue that he has been privileged enough to keep. She thinks about all the things that a man in his position must have omitted when it was imperative to speak, and all the times that he's rallied others into believing idealistic shit that they would have never contemplated otherwise. Even in this poor circumstance where brutes have sheared her legs to force her to kneel and submit, vulnerable and almost powerless, he still…
Annie feels so angry and disgusted that her ring, her memento from home and the instrument her father entrusted her with, now lies uselessly in the valley between her breasts, as futile as a key to a caved-in basement hundreds of kilometers away. The two scouts begin working again, continuing in their endeavor to wrap her in tarp and fasten it to her with rope. She keeps her eye on the commander, filtering out Hange's adrenalized prattling. It doesn't matter to her that Erwin Smith looks just as tired as she feels, that the dark circles around his eyes match the ones she's had for years. To be honest, Annie wasn't sure what does matter now at this point, aside from breathing and staying alive until she was reunited with her ring. It reminds her of the promise that her father had imposed on her, the one concrete thing that she knows should spur her onwards.
It occurs to her that the way they're preparing her for transportation is the way that one would prepare a corpse when they close the tarp over her head, sealing her in darkness. Her steam emission slowly dwindles, leaving behind condensation on the inside of the sheet, it and half her tongue being the only proof that light had touched her skin at all after weeks without. In the nothingness, in finite space, and in dispersing titan vapour, Annie's consciousness ebbs and she suffocates.
She doesn't know for how long she slept for, but when Annie awakens for the second time that day, she finds herself still in darkness, but in a place where she can hear loud gusts on the other side of her tarp. It's not a dungeon. Immediately, she begins thinking about if an escape is possible. She's not underground if there's wind, maybe near a window at least, she thinks. Outside is better. Her arms are still restrained, but the sharpness of jagged bone could pierce the fabric if she put enough force into it. She writhes, and she feels two hands press down and hold her in place.
How aggravating, Annie thinks.
From somewhere nearby from her left, Hange hollers, "Keep Leonhardt steady."
They are definitely outside. Is it daytime? Excitement flushes over her and her chest aches as her heartbeat accelerates, enthused by this rare opportunity. She bows her head, trying to make out any speck of light to draw in. Even if it is an overcast day, sunlight would be the component that would tip things in her favour. However, the blackness is all encompassing and unbroken.
"This is a shitty time to care about methodology," grumbles Levi, right by her. The possibility of a clean escape diminishes. But not to zero, Annie reminds herself. If an opening arises, she could make the best of it. Her legs are still functional. And if given enough time that she needs, at most five minutes, of sunlight exposure, she could synthesize musculature, increase her surface area by synthesizing more flesh, wear her titan armour. She sharpens her awareness with optimism.
Close to Levi, right behind her, Erwin says, "Adhering to procedure is important."
"That's funny, coming from you," Levi deadpans. Annie balances her weight on the balls of her feet, allows herself to lean back and considers the points where hands push. There are five sets; a pair on each side of her waist and thighs, and one near the small of her back. She looks down by her feet, spreads them as far apart as she could against her constraints, and sees dim light. Hopeful desperation fills Annie's throat, hot and stifling. She deliberates. Maybe she could…
The pair of hands at her back nudges her back into upright position, and Levi hisses, "shitty wretch, stand straight."
"Alright, everybody!" corrals Hange. "Are you in place?"
Annie discerns the rope binding the tarp around her ankles and above her head being undone. Only one pair of hands remains on her person, pressing firmly against her shoulder blades. Annie hears the whirling of the three dimensional manuever gear, and the glimmer of optimism and excitement she had undergoes a conformational change, reconstructing itself into heavy foreboding. At the same time that she hears a sound grenade go off, Annie hears the crinkling sound of tarp ripping away from her body and she feels hot sunlight on her skin for the first time in two months.
She feels herself falling. It is just as terrifying the second time as it was the first, amplified by her surprise. A kick, she thinks frantically, any kind of sharp pain that isn't this dull ache that permeates her body. These few moments in sun must be enough for a partial transformation, for something, anything that can delay her impending demise. She bites the inside of her cheek, wears her teeth into flesh, and tastes iron. There is a shine of silver metal, her father's ring that her captors were so kind to place on a necklace for her, useless unless slipped onto a finger on hands she no longer has. A fifteen-meter class titan catches her in its hand. Three other titans swarm around it, all grasping for her. She can't photosynthesize quickly enough to manifest anything that would tip things in her favour, not instantly, not after being starved out. She has no time.
I am going to die, thinks Annie as the last of her ill-placed hope bleeds out of her.
She sobs because it does not require enunciation, any finesse, a careful placement of tongue. She lets herself finally weep for herself, let fear encompass her completely. Her throat hurts from disuse and it feels raw. It reminds her that she is still alive in these last moments, because even if she's a living corpse, that exhaustion is not the same thing as dead. After failing so completely, she had imagined herself dying far away from home at the hands of humanity, but never this. She never imagined herself dying this way, in the maw of a titan.
"It should have been worse," says Levi. His lips fashion themselves into an ugly scowl as he gazes down at the crowd of titans clamouring by Wall Rose. It is unsatisfying. "After all the fucking shit she pulled, she going to die the same kind of death that any of our scouts can expect."
"She died furthering humanity," says Hange sunnily. "I think that's punishing enough."
One gruesome death does not even come close to compensating for the four macabre deaths. Levi may not be able to kill her four times, but she could die four times worse a death than his subordinates did with the one life she does have. A hundred thousand times worse for all the soldiers that died and the people left behind to grieve their untimely demise. "Don't give me that bullshit, shitty glasses," he snarls.
She hums, waits for Levi's exasperation to dissipate, but not too long. Time is of the essence. "Do you see which one of titans is eating her?"
"Mm."
"Do you think you can kill the titans swarming it? I want to bring that titan in. For experimentation."
Levi moves into action, marked not by words but by the whizzing of wire and hissing of gas.
Up on top of Wall Rose, also wrapped in tarp, Reiner closes his eyes and wishes that his hands weren't bound, that there was a stray glint of sunlight he could siphon. He doesn't know if Bertolt is here too, auditory witness to Annie's demise. If his hands were free, he could cover Bertolt's ears so he doesn't have to listen to Annie's agony, the crunch of bones and titans' teeth, do something, anything. If he had sunlight, he could gather up the energy and will to transform, to make up to Annie for failing her, and take her and Bertolt far, far away from this wretched place. He wears his carpal bones against iron, but it remains firmly in place. He waits for lightning bright enough to illuminate the little visible ground that tarp doesn't cover, the telltale deafening thunder of Annie's transformation, but there is only her screaming.
It's too familiar, thinks Reiner, paralyzed by the same fear as back then when he forced to listen to the sound of Ymir gnawing on flesh and bone and Berik sobbing. Annie is farther away, dozens of meters below, not a mere three feet in front of him but the distance doesn't make her crying anymore bearable.
Annie screams for twenty-nine more seconds, louder than the groans of slain titans, before she becomes silent, the same way that Berik's wails reduced to quiet five years ago.