IMPORANT A/N: Go check out my new Eren/Annie story, Malevolence!
Not so important A/N: Follow me on tumblr for random reasons, at this point, ahaha. And thank you for so many reviews last chapter! I cut out a chunk of this one so I could get in an update, but the next one will be longer.
Let me know what you thought of this chapter too!
Inside the Red Zone
This was an Eren x Annie story, at least by: Euregatto
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104th Regimen Training Grounds, 1 Year Ago – Second Day of Summer
About twenty trainees die every year from carelessness with their 3DMG, another ten from the gear exam that requires the instructors to go around slicing through wires to test the trainee's adaptability to one-lined flying and limited steering ability, and upwards of fifty of them will be severely injured from natural (albeit unfortunate) gear malfunction – like Annie Leonhardt, who knows her inner axels are jammed with faulty wiring when she hits the return levers and instead of slowing down, she's clocking at over sixty miles an hour.
It's almost impossible to see the rush of trees around her, or the tree that suddenly drives up to meet her.
"Shit!" She stresses over the roaring wind, pulling back on her gear, but she's too fast and with only a split second's worth of thought left, she braces for impact. She crashes through the thick branches, hefty limbs smacking cruelly against her petite frame with the force of lightning strikes, and then – then she collides with the rigid trunk of pine. The acute stabs of pain barely register as her bones fracture like shards of frail glass in the cavern of her chest. A fragment of rib spears into her lung.
She chokes. She suffocates.
She falls.
The ground is spiraling up to meet her with the creeping fingers of unconsciousness. From this height, she'll break her neck; she'll twist a limb and shatter a hole in her skull and then she'll die. She'll receive a sweet release from this horrible lie she's been living since she called the Titans into Wall Maria.
"Annie!"
She barely apprehends the familiarity of the voice. Mina? Maybe. Through her blurry gaze she catches sight of several figures rocketing in her direction, too far out of range to ever hope catching her before she consigned to oblivion, but recognizable all the same. It's Bertholdt and Reiner and Mina, fools, streamlining at break-neck speeds. Yelling. She can see the desperation and the terror.
The turf rushes up. It's too late.
That's when Eren slides along the slick mats of grass so she impacts him instead of the ground. She doesn't have enough consciousness to acknowledge his scream before their heavy gears catch on the dirt and they tumble into a roll, belts snapping free so their outer paraphernalia is thrown away from them in the fray. They slam to a stop against a trunk nearly ten yards later, a blow that would have killed both of them if they had been normal human beings.
The darkness scatters from Annie's vision. She groans in her throat, working up to her knees, but her head is spinning and her chest heaves with searing pain, like liquid fire spanning through the network of her battered veins. She feels her broken ribs amending themselves. The tissue instinctively pads up the gap in her punctured lung, and the blood lurches up into her mouth, forcibly expelling itself through her sputtering lips.
Suddenly, she can breathe again.
The splatters of garnet fluid are evaporating into minute pillars of steam. She panics, swiping at the mist in fain attempt to get it to stop – they'll know – but it's already disappearing between her fingers, fading beneath the presence of her palm, the additional extract on her lips fizzing into the air.
"A-Annie…"
"Eren!" She exclaims and moves for him too quickly, crying out when the misplaced bone shards shred through her inner muscle. "Shit, shit – are you okay? Eren, are you…?"
He's at the base of the trunk several feet from where she rolled away. He strains against the acute stabs of pain in his chest from his own broken bones, and when she finally combs him once over, she notices that his middle finger is bent at an interesting angle. "I'm fine," he mutters, reaching out to her with his good hand. He draws her forward by the arm of her jacket, keeping her upright on her knees. "Come here."
"Don't worry about"—she's tugged down against him, arms on either side of his torso, her head to his sternum. She hears something shift out of place—"Eren, please, don't worry about me, I'm okay."
"Shut up," he says half-heartedly, grasping the tresses of her golden hair that have come undone. "You can't… shit, you can't lie to me. I'm just… so glad I got to you."
His words sink in like the weight of a careening cannon ball. And she can't stop the tears that erupt, that traverse her smudged cheeks and soak into his tattered shirt. She has never broken like this before. But everything hurts. Her chest hurts, her legs hurt, her head hurts, her heart hurts. It's so overwhelming and it engulfs her in guilt and fatigue like an internal infection. "I'm sorry," she whispers, "I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry, Eren…"
He wraps his other arm around the small of her back and keeps her close, even though her weight is threatening to fracture his unstable ribs. "Annie, ssh…"
"I'm so sorry…"
As she loses consciousness, she becomes aware of the figures dropping from the canopy to meet them, but their voices are so far away now. Drifting. Fading. She doesn't realize they are lifting her up, moving her gently, the pain is going and there is a voice calling her into the sweet void of sleep.
"I'm so, so sorry…"
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The resounding knocks startle him awake. This room's bed is larger than the one in his cell, so he can roll over and instead of falling off, he succumbs to the luxurious feel of arm room. The second set of knocks compel him to get up and he shuffles over to the door, detangling the end of his hair with his fingers in hopes of taming it, and he doesn't bother putting his shirt back on.
When he opens the division, he's surprised to see Annie in the threshold, her arms wrapped around her too small frame. She's in her shorts and midriff, and from what he can tell, with nothing underneath. "Annie?" he mutters, rubbing his left eye wearily.
"I'm sorry too," she replies wistfully. He turns his dark peridot orbs to her; she's looking at him solemnly, the sadness tucked away behind her eyes, some kind of empathy he's never seen before. It's almost unnerving. "I didn't mean anything I said back in Trost. I was angry, hurt – I thought I had lost the last thing I had left to care about. You really do bring out the worst in me. And you're not…" She touches the back of hand, gradually curling her fingers around his. "You're not a Titan, you're a human. You're the best damn person I know. I shouldn't have done what I did. I don't deserve it, only Sina knows how I don't deserve it… but, forgive me, please?"
He presses his lips into a thin line. "You broke my heart."
"You broke mine."
"Is that a kind of relationship we can salvage, Ann?"
She swallows the rocks in her throat, the anguish tucked behind the film of her eyes daring to meet the strange calmness in his. "I never meant to hurt you Eren, I never even meant to get close enough to touch you"—she exhales a wavering breath—"or to be your friend…"
"So then why? Why did you-?"
"I fell in love with you."
There is a veil of silence that settles uncomfortably between them.
Annie's hand glides up to grasp the side of her forearm, giving her something to clench and distract her insistent desire to leave him, for good, for her own selfish reasons. But isn't that what this is whole relationship is? Doesn't this make her selfish? "I fell in love with you… It wasn't suddenly nor all at once, but it was steady and progressive, and it was real – from that spark I felt the first time we sparred, to the moment you saved me in the forest, to that first kiss."
"But that's just it."
She furrows her brow. "Eren, I-"
"How am I supposed to hold a girl: like she's the epitome of the stars in my sky"—his hands draw forward to grasp her waist—"or like she's a stick of lit dynamite? How am I supposed to kiss a girl, if there's sweetness in her voice but poison in her words? How am I supposed to love a girl, when looking at her feels like she's breathing life into my lungs…and punching a hole through my chest?"
And suddenly she understands. Suddenly, she can think.
"The same way you shift," she whispers, her voice husky, too raw with the real her, the real Annie, not something her father had trained her to say. Her nails bite into his shoulders. "Endure the pain as it comes, and let the wounds burn shut."
After a moment he pulls her in by her hips and she doesn't try to stop him, shutting the door with the thick of his heel, cupping her cheek in the familiar curve of his palm. He guides her up to meet his lips, pressing his body to hers and she fits against him so perfectly, he'll never get over her, the sight of her, the feel of her, the sound of her voice and the taste and scent of lemons on her sweet skin.
He kisses her neck and can feel her pulse, slamming into his lips as he sucks the venom from her stream, capturing her the way he had before. It ignites fire within the gorge of her chest, familiar warmth that does not burn her as it erupts through her veins and flares out into her fingers, her legs, her chest, her brain. Everywhere it hits the weaker she becomes beneath him, surrendering to the shame of being so selfish and the joy of having him in her arms again, of having something for the first time in her life that she can call hers.
And if he finds out the truth, which he will - she knows that much for sure, then fuck it, she can deal with it then. But this, this is now, the present lapse between what's done and what she will have to do, when neither of those horrors truly matter.
When he draws back he slides her arms up and pulls the shirt swiftly over her head, discarding it somewhere on the floor, leaving her bare in the dancing rays of pallid moonlight, her skin reflecting almost crystal. "I'll always forgive you," he says wistfully.
"Promise me."
"I promise."
He coaxes her over to his bed and guides her down so she's sprawled out beneath him, head reclined on his pillow, fingers clutching his misplaced sheets. He pulls off her boots for her, pressing his lips to her inner thighs, and moves back up. His blazing lips trace wisps of patterns over the centerfold of her body, tender kisses spanning over every edge of her bones and that sensitive spot below her naval; he draws to a rest above her waistline.
His movements cease, on his elbows with his hands on the junction of her thighs, nails digging harmlessly into her hipbones. He pushes against her nerves and earns a small moan. It's been so long since he's heard that sound.
"I've missed you," he mutters dejectedly against her flesh.
"I've missed you too," she ushers, running her nails gently through his scalp.
He pulls himself back up so he's above her once more, their eyes level so he can drown in the river they used to sit beside and she can see the mists in the forests they used to swing through. "Does this mean we're-?"
"Yes." She allows a smile to settle on her lips. So beautiful. "Just don't get eaten again."
He laughs and pulls her into another kiss.
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104th Regimen Training Grounds, 1 Year Prior – Second Day of Summer
The night has descended across the training grounds and its surrounding forests, towing in its wake desolate stars, the shadowed visage of the new moon, and a chorus of chirping insects. The trainees have gathered in the mess hall for dinner as per usual, but in the dawn of what occurred mere hours prior, not many of them are in the mood to strike up conversations. Annie does not see Eren, and figures that he's still recovering in the infirmary ward, which she was discharged from only forty minutes back.
Even Reiner is unnervingly quiet. He picks absently at his food, earning odd glances from Bertholdt every few minutes. Franz and Hannah exchange looks with each other that they pass onto Annie, hoping she'll give them a word of recognition and reassure them that she's alright now, but Mina wags her head at them and they opt out of pressuring the blonde into speaking.
When the silence becomes overwhelming, however, Annie swings her legs over the bench and excuses herself from her table. She treks outside, but immediately she finds herself nearly bumping into Eren as he ascends the porch steps.
They stand in a tense lapse of time that might have taken hours or even years for all they knew. But it is only a handful of seconds before Annie finds a surge of animosity broiling forth into the cavern of her renewed torso. "Why did you save me?!" she practically screams, shoving him in the chest so he rams back against the post with a pained yelp. "Just who the hell do you think you are?!"
"What does it matter?" he shoots back. "What was I supposed to do, watch you fall to your death?"
"Yes!" She sucker-punches him right in the gut but it's not backed by the strength she usually floors him with, and he absorbs the shock with a passive grunt. "Why am I worth so much to you that you sacrificed yourself!? You could have died!"
He barks a harsh laugh. "But I didn't! So what's the big-goddamn-deal?"
"You got hurt because of me! You should have just let me die like every other unlucky bastard before!"
"You're being ridiculous!"
"I'm not worth it, Eren!"
"Yes you are!" He snaps back, balling his fists in her sweater (the best he can with that ridiculous splint on his finger) and drawing her close so he can lean his face near hers, line up their gazes.
She can see it – the exploding, primal passion and the surge of animalistic determination, all folded snugly beneath the erinite fires of his eyes. Her gaze widens involuntarily, awed by his stupidity, her mind incapable of comprehending how someone can ever, ever, truly care for her and ask for nothing in return like this, the way he does.
"To me," he echoes with his voice ebbing into a heated whisper, "to me, yes… you are."
And then she becomes aware of what's around her – the doors are still wide open from her grand exit and the entirety of the mess hall has just heard them. Fuck, if they didn't have the wrong idea by now, Mina would certainly spread hers around. Annie briskly slaps his hands down, backing away from him with abrupt steps, as if grazed by fire. "Don't you ever touch me," she seethes, firmly adjusting her top, "I hate you, Eren."
"You're lying."
She shudders at the unusual complexity in his tone as it sets her stomach ablaze. "I'm not worth it…"
"You will always be, even if it's only ever to me."
And though he may never know it, she cherishes those words in a way no one will ever understand.