..

..

..

..

"How ya holding up?"

She's sitting on the edge of her bed searching through the weeks of mail she's been neglecting to look at, slitting open the edges of her payment packages with just her nails, the sliced open skin of her fingers sealing closed a moment later. Her roommate's question draws her attention briefly and her sky lit orbs spear the opposing soldier with a calculated gaze. "I'm fine," she answers several moments later, dropping her handful of coins into the breast pocket of her jacket. They clink together with a metallic chime.

Hitch is sitting on the stone ledge just outside the window, both arms over the sill and her legs swinging freely in the air. "Just figured I'd ask," she drones, absently playing with the flowers she placed in the vase just yesterday, careful not to tip it over.

Annie tosses aside a letter from Keith Shadis – a standard bestowal of congratulations she knows the other trainees (the ones who survived Trost anyway) have already received as well. 'Congrats, you managed to avoid any serious harm during the fallout in Trost and even though everyone you know is probably dead, you graduated!' is the essence of the paper's contents.

Whoop-di-fucking-doo.

Her fingers glide across a parchment envelope that is blank on the front. Completely blank. That's weird, she thinks as she slides her thumb along the ridges, it's not the standard type, and with no name… means someone put this right into my mailbox. And then she flips it over to check the seal –

"You have got to be shitting me," she hisses.

— which is branded closed with the Leonhardt family emblem. Her fingers clutch her forearm where the synonymous brand is burned into the underside of her wrist, the eroded scars numb to her touch and razed with the fires of her memories. After a beat to get herself in check, she tears the top open in an almost perfect strip and unceremoniously slides the tri-folded letter out of the packet. It is blank except for the scrawl of familiar handwriting at the dead center of the piece.

Verborgen, 10:00

Her eyes snap over to the clock on the wall. 9:40. She smashes the paper into a ball in her fists and dashes out the door, slamming it shut behind her with such force Hitch nearly falls off the window sill. "Annie!" She exclaims, but her roommate is long gone and the crumpled letter is left abandoned on the floor.

..

..

..

..

Verborgen is the name of a section of Stohess that is regarded as the town square, the busiest section of the district and most well renowned for the refined imported goods and underground sex trade that her superiors choose to turn a blind eye to in exchange for a couple night's worth of free entertainment, smack dab halfway point between it's gate into Wall Rose and the gate into Wall Sina, only a twenty minute walk from the Police Station. Annie moves swiftly into the streets with her instincts guiding towards the only place still active this time at night.

The bar doors are propped open to let the summer breeze filter through the room, but as she crosses through the threshold the thick stench of alcohol and lemon hits her gag reflex like a sucker punch. She swallows the building bile in her throat and curses the intensity of the summer heat, trekking across the room towards the bar where three men are sitting spaced out along the counter, one hunched over his drink, one sobbing over his lost love or something into the crook of his arm, and the other singing some folk song as he gurgles on his own spit. Absolutely pathetic, she thinks bitterly to herself.

She slides into the seat beside the man hunched over his glass. His blond hair is slicked back, once bright eyes now clouded over with the years of desolation that have been brought upon him. The lines of his age are carved into his face like he was made of clay, every curve dipping into his placid expression, lips pressed into a thin line.

"Why are you here?" she asks as monotone as possible.

"I took a shortcut from the village," he answers with equal seriousness, tossing back his head and downing the rest of the liquid in his glass. Judging by his bloodshot eyes he might be on his fourth or fifth round. "Mm… It took a few days, but I just came to see how you were doing."

"What does it matter?"

"The mission is what matters," he deadpans. "Which is why I'm wondering, what in all seven levels of hell is this?" He snaps up her hand and nearly shoves it into her own face, his menacing glare locked on the ring on her finger.

"I'm nineteen," she shoots back. "I can do whatever the hell I want!"

"And just who the hell is he?"

"Since when have you cared?" She rears her arm back out of his grasp with relative ease, almost like he was never very intent on reprimanding her more than he was just declaring his statement.

He doesn't seem fazed by her jeer, which irks her down to her core. He always, always, always pisses her off, whether in person or when he's not even in her life. "I always cared about you," he mutters after seven seconds of clocked silence, his rough hands combing through his hair, platinum blond in place of its once radiant color as the years clamp down on him. "You know I'm on your side. And I really wish they had chosen anyone else to do this… but you, Reiner, Berik and Bertholdt are the only ones who can safely shift without the Titan consuming you. Please find the coordinate, and please come back to me."

She compels herself forward, pressing her chin to his shoulder and wrapping her arms around his waist. In return he flexes an arm around her shoulders. "Berik was eaten by a stray Titan on the way to the Wall," she whispers tonelessly.

"And what became of the one who obtained his shift?"

"She's in the Scouting Legion living as a normal person," she answers, pulling away from him, turning towards the door. "Reiner and I could smell it, but Bertholdt should not know of his brother's demise and risk exposing us all in a fit of rage, so Reiner has been keeping him away from her for as long as possible. They have not once come close enough for him to know."

He inclines his head as an affirmative nod. "That's very smart of you."

"She is stationed with the coordinate, Reiner's good friend"—she thumbs at the ring—"my lover."

He scrunches his nose as the thought. "You've been sleeping with him?"

"I'm a woman now Daddy, not a little girl. I'm allowed to sleep with whomever I want."

Her father takes a moment to ponder that rebuttal, his reaction time slowed by the alcohol coursing through his system. "Hey… you called me Daddy again. You know when you were still a child and we would take breaks from training I would-"

"I should go back to my station," she interjects quickly. She decidedly pats him on the shoulder. "And you're drunk. Go hunker down somewhere for a while and return home."

He nods absently as the alcohol poisons his system. She knows his regeneration abilities are far more advanced than hers, and he would sober up in another hour or so. Gradually he slumps over the counter again, gesturing to the bartender for another round. "I won't be around again for a while with everything that's going on back home… just remember I love you and I'll always be on your side."

He cranes his head around to look at her but she's already gone, her shadow ebbed into the blackness of the night, never to be heard from again for what he figured could accumulate to another ten years. Oh shit. His little girl is a woman now... and he wasn't there to watch her grow up.

It's no wonder she hates him.

..

..

..

..

"How about you shut the fuck up and let me finish."

When she gets back she expects Hitch to be fast asleep, snoring gently into her pillow, but when she wasn't there Annie had taken the liberty of venturing off to find her. Hitch is outside their superior's office three halls down, pressed up against the wall by a Senior Office she can vaguely recall from her initiation, a stuck up man named Uwe Miles. He has his hands bunched up in her shirt, one knee between her legs and his nose dangerously close to hers.

"I have your files you lying slut," he continues and she turns her gaze elsewhere, biting her lower lip to steel her nerves. "If you want to keep your spot in the MP I suggest you remember the feculence you displayed back in the 103rd and get inside my fucking office."

Hitch splays her palms back against the frigid wall, her breath trembling, body quaking as she struggles for air. Her mind races for an excuse – something so she can get out of this. Fuck, she thought those days were behind her: when she whored herself off to some of her superiors so they could grade her higher on her exams and she could successfully graduate at number nine in their class, when she barely deserved number fifteen. She didn't count on her history following her this far out.

"Can't I do something else?" She offers briskly, still locked firmly against the wall. "Like, uh… your work or something?"

"I've already made up my mind." He weaves his fingers into her saffron hair and snaps her head back with a forceful tug, and with the other hand he flips out the standard issue knife on his belt. She winces but bites her tongue. "You will do as I say when I say it, and not a soul will hear of this or so help me I will carve you up and no one will ever want you again." He presses the slick blade against the plane of her cheek, his obsidian orbs piercing deep through her emerald veils. "Do you understand me?"

He doesn't notice Annie's rapidly approaching presence until her fist has connected with his face, sending him stumbling back several steps. "What the fu-?!"

She slams into him with a full body tackle and he hits the floor, the back of his skull connecting against the marble surface with a sickening crack. Driven by a blinding fury that has long since overridden her natural sense of self-control, she pries the cutlass from his loosened grasp and thrusts the blade through his palm, slamming her knees down into his upper arms when he makes a move to reach for it, and driving her right fist straight into his nose. Thick cartilage crunches beneath her knuckles and drowns out the intense cries emitting from his throat.

I will carve you up myself – I will make you look like the monster you truly are!

She rears her left arm back and rams it down into his face, fracturing something in her wrist and his eye socket. There's some ancient vehemence deep within her chest surging outwards with every hit, every solid strike, a blinding passion that has been bottled up with a tight lid since she was first a child, an exploding, all-consuming rage like a dragon's hellfire storming through every fiber of her being.

He is a monster that does not deserve to live, just like Reiner and Bertholdt and me

Her punches paint black and blue across the expanse of his skin, knocking a handful of his teeth down his throat and splattering blood across his disfigured form. Hitch's screams fall muted to her ears, just a chorus of obtuse ringing that spears through the precipice of her mind.

Someone hooks their arms under hers and tows her to the floor. The assailant is twice her size, easily overpowering her as he rams her down against the tile, digging one knee into her stomach and both his hands clamping around her wrists, pinning them beside her head. The curtain of dark hair distorts the light above her. Annie, she thinks he's trying to say, his tone nothing more than a ring to her deaf ears, drowned in the rage.

Annie!

"Get off of me!" She seethes, tempted to throw him right to the side with just her legs.

"Annie!" Marlowe tries again, "listen to me, goddammit! What the fuck are you doing?!"

"He threatened Hitch," she replies bitterly, aware now of her roommate only two steps away and Boris and Dennis attempting to help the battered officer sit up. "I gave that bastard a taste of his own medicine."

Marlowe glances from her to the soldier and back again, gaze widened with shock. "Are you fucking serious? That's not how you go about-!"

"Marlowe!" Hitch interrupts, her trembling hands finding his shoulder. "Please leave her alone, she was just trying to protect me!"

His jaw visibly tightens as he digests her statement, casting his glare to the unconscious senior officer, and finally staring impassively down at the blonde still beneath him. "Fine," he spits, releasing her and ascending to his feet, "it's not my place to reprimand you anyway… but…" He frowns at Miles as his head lolls against Dennis's shoulder and a stray tooth drops off his tongue. "You took it a bit far, don't you think?"

Annie doesn't respond. Hitch offers out her hand to help the girl up –

"You can't sleep our whole day off," Mina chirps, offering out her hand to help her up. "Come with me to get lunch!"

Her pupils dilate as the memory sets in. Why would I think about her now? And just as she did back then, she reluctantly allows herself to accept the gesture and is helped to her feet. She isn't anything like Mina.

"We'll take him to the infirmary," Boris voices as he and Dennis support the man between them. Miles is still out cold, head lolling limply side to side. "You two should get some rest. The higher ups are gonna have a field day tomorrow with this."

"Aren't you worried you'll be kicked out?" Dennis asks, gazing at her wearily.

She doesn't say anything in return.

..

..

..

..

Hitch sleeps next to Annie on the lower bunk, a switcheroo from the last time when Annie's body had rejected the child. Her head is against the other girl's back, and she sobs herself to sleep beneath the seat, haunted by the things she's done and sins she so freely committed without a single regard for her future consequences. "I'm sorry I'm a bad person," she mutters in her dreams.

"You're not a bad person," Annie whispers, toying with her ring as the gems reflect the moonlight and her wrists burn as they heal the best they can. "And I know, because I'm not a good one."

..

..

..

..

A/N: moved down here. Thank you for all your wonderful reviews last chapter! You guys are the best~ Also, Annie's father knows how to go from the village to the walls and back (but as stated has some issues to deal with so he doesn't get to see her and has to rely on her coming back). How? to be revealed. Why? I will also reveal that later. AND LOTS OF EREANNIE NEXT CHAPTER WHEEE~!