A/N: Almost didn't produce this in time. Whew.

Don't forget to leave a review and make my day~


Day 2/8

Keepsake


"Knew I'd find you here."

In the archway of the entrance to the supply room Eren's silhouette takes form. Behind him the trainees are bustling about, passing from one point to another in the background, and if Annie strains to hear, she can pick up on the panic settling comfortably amongst them. She's at a table loading gas tanks into her gear, snapping the pins into place and setting her triggers, so she doesn't bother to glance up to meet his verdant gaze.

"Here?" she muses, threading the gear into her belt clips.

"Y'know, where everyone else isn't."

She fumbles trying to clip on the gear's stabilizer to her belt's back most loop. "Well, I won't be here for long. There's a massacre waiting for us outside that Wall." The clip misses her loop again. "Son of a bitch, I hate these things."

He steps up to her, moving around the table to stand behind her. He coaxes her hands away and slides the stabilizer into place, tightening her straps with several firm tugs, and locking the canisters into place. His fingertips ghost against the curves of her hips, his torrid breath fans across the back of her pallid neck when he leans too close. "A massacre," he echoes, "for us, or for them?"

"Give me the realistic answer."

"Them."

"Eren," she stresses, leaning back against him so he can wind his arms around her shoulders and her waist, "we're expendables. Most of us aren't even ready for this, and if we're lucky, maybe half of our top ten will live through the night. Whether you want to accept it or not, we're all going to die." She reaches up to grasp his forearm, clutching the cuff of his jacket. "You know that."

He brushes her bangs from her face, tucking them behind her ear, pressing his lips to her golden locks. His fingers are gliding down the arch of her cheek, along her jawline, under her chin so she's tilting her head up to look at him. Her gaze is unusually soft, and for once it does not remind him of the winter frost, but instead of the summer sky. "I don't want to lose any one else, especially someone I care about."

"Should have thought about that before you joined the corps."

"That's why I joined."

She turns to face him, allowing her slender fingers to grasp the back of his neck, and she guides him down to meet her. He melds against her perfectly, one hand on her cheek, the other her hip, pressing his tongue through her parted lips as she grants him entry. He's hot and timid and alive, not for long but just for now, and that's more than enough for her.

A moment later she breaks off, her mouth swelled from the kiss – she's watching him with a whisper of a smirk in her normally stoic expression. "What was that?" he asks, dumbfounded.

"A keepsake. Something to remember me by."

He grits his teeth, his grasp on her tightening almost possessively. "Annie, you're not going to-!"

"You don't know that." She laughs gently, hollowed and void of any humor, almost sarcastic. "Because if you did, there'd be nothing to fight for."