I just realized I posted this awhile ago on another site but not here o_o And with the new chapter, it reminded me of this a little lol.
Annie's body is tight and upright, keeping a soldier's stance with her shoulders back, arms straight and unmoving at her sides as her ankles stay tight together. It's a greeting to her father at the crack of dawn, to wait in the bitter cold or sweltering heat within the open space between the trees, the place where her body grows stronger. The eight-year old girl blinks rapidly when she catches a splayed blob of purple swaying at the bottom of her vision. She brings down her chin to peer at the dirt floor and studies a lone violet dancing with the wind near the tip of her bare, dirt-crusted toes.
Flowers don't survive here—the stems often winding up flattened and petals splattered about the grounds as her daily routine winds and kicks its way through the dirt maze of padded dummies. She almost wants to squish the single flower, put it out of its misery and stop it from being alone, but Annie can't summon the will for her feet to follow through.
She doesn't hear her father approaching, is alerted of so when the wooden tip of his cane bumps against the bottom of her chin, lifting up her face up with it until Annie sees the looming figure of her parent towering over her.
"Warriors must always look fierce and confident." Her father teaches her in a booming voice. " Always. Meekness is never allowed to break their stature, especially before a commanding officer."
Tension coils in Annie's muscles, the originator of her bright, clear depths drilling narrowed, stern holes into her. Her lower lip wants to wobble a whimper loose, implicating a plea for mercy, though doing so would ensure she would be punished ten times harder.
Emptiness and discipline keeps her face apathetic as Annie acknowledges him with a simple, "Understood."
The cane at her chin falls away from her. "We will take a different route on training today." Her father instructs, turning his back to her. "You will keep a warrior's presence until I come back. Commitment to your duty will ensure you be successful. If you don't..."
Annie inwardly trembles; he doesn't need to continue and her father knows so as he vanishes from sight.
Fear of consequence locks Annie's body so tight, her blood clots into stone, keeping her body straight as an arrow and arms unwavering at her sides. The frigid wind blows harder, ruffling the leaves of trees close by and threatening to blow harder. Annie spreads out her toes further into the dirt, digging down deeper roots.
Morning transitions into night and father does not retrieve her. Drops of sunlight soon beam through the green canopy of trees —one falling down on her like a spotlight—but the warmth is absent on her skin. Father's command and cold of the night has trapped her in an unmoving stasis and the hours pass gruelingly slow. Shifting temperatures from the sun sleeping and moon rising quiver Annie's body, a growling noise rumbles in her belly, and her muscled legs tremble from the fatigue of standing firmly for so long, but she does not budge.
Almost two days pass and exhaustion shivers Annie's eyelids, turns her throat dry and her Adam's apple bobs from her swallow to wetten her sandpaper mouth. Rain falls, the cold grows worse, but still, the determined girl doesn't budge. The freezing night flips back to the pleasant warmth of a day—emerging upon day three—and the shift throws Annie's body for a loop. Hungers stabs at her stomach, the shivering of her body slowly breaking through her firm stance until finally, her head and body are washed over with light-headedness. Tired legs buck, her back curls backward, and when Annie's face tilts up, what looks like black, razor-edged teeth bleeds across the blue sky.
In the center of a Venus fly trap-like mouth closing around the blue sky, a black-haired girl hovers in mid-air, staring down at Annie with a baleful look. The girl's lips are moving, but Annie is too far away to make out what she says. Then Annie's vision grows blurrier, gravity ruthlessly yanks her down by the hips, and the blackened jaws teething the sky snaps her world shut.
When Annie opens her eyes, a sea of liquid charcoal welcomes her. Grey lines rippling above her is the only color aside from the all-encompassing black and Annie feels oddly buoyant here— weightless and absent-minded like in relaxing moments when she floated in her bath. Cold doesn't sting her skin anymore, neither does she have hunger pangs, but it doesn't take Annie long to see that she doesn't feel anything else.
A hollowness infects her insides and Annie's ice irises shake frightfully. This place is vacant of emotion or touch—of anything feeling that makes you a person— and Annie's lungs spasm with near suffocation from it. Habits from the surface keep her body stiff and straight and Annie wonders if this is what it feels like to be buried alive—unable to escape and unable to breathe in maddening darkness.
A spot above Annie in the syrupy-black sea bubbles, popcorning into angry storm clouds and when one grey ripple in the distant sea dares to dance brightly in protest, a wave of darkness crashes over it, trying to gulp it away.
A raindrop falls and pressure plops onto Annie's chest, making her breath catch. She grits her teeth then freezes; the bearded man who hanged himself after his village's destruction—in Annie's mind, her first true kill— stares back at her with glossy, lifeless eyes. Another droplet falls and the pressure atop her chest multiplies, the half-bitten head of Mina's body lying limp and bleeding on the first.
A scream claws at the back of Annie's throat but her jaw is wired shut. The sprinkling rain becomes a downpour and with every collapse of a new body upon her—Thomas, the Survey Corps members she crunched and kicked, civilians and children— Annie's chest feels more concave, her ribs sure to cave in as sins and inner resentment snows her in. The bright light fighting in the distance is the only relief Annie gets from the crushing pressure, distracting the darkness enough for her to suck in a breath before more corpses drop.
Scenes of her life flow along the once calm black sea now turned into river rapids, twisting around her like a vortex for the whole, dark world to see: civilians scream hoarsely as Titans roam free in Shingansina; red bodies of devout theists lie squashed beneath her Titan form; Eren and Armin visibly panicked and sweating as they're desperate to prove her betrayal wrong, and when the last body falls upon the tower of the deceased, Marco's head lolls to the side, his starry-eyed face reduced to a decayed half-eaten corpse with receding gums.
Annie's scream is muffled by her glued lips. She's never wished for the feeling back— any feeling. A punch to the face or the festering burn from anger would be welcome if she could just get out this smothering hollowness.
The obsidian clouds and rapids above are struggling, bombs of white versus black exploding within them in a rolling boil fashion. A bright hole in the center of the clouds glints and Annie's heart thumps when for a moment, a warm spring wind creeps over her body. It's as soothing as a breeze and takes Annie back to pleasant moments of when her father tousled her hair, of when she was complimented by a young boy for the first time in her life.
Annie hears her name called out in the distance, and it acts as the final bombshell against the jet-black world. A burst of light explodes, peeling away the bleak sky like paper scorched by fire, and the ghost of pulleys on her phantom maneuver gear hoists Annie up, bodies falling at her sides, blinding-white fire eating away the black further and further and further.
Annie gasps sharply, arching her back so intensely, the crown of her head lays flat on the floor. She wheezes for air, drops onto her side in a body-shaking thud and breaks into a coughing fit that feels like glass spearing her lungs with each shake of her shoulders.
The pain eases after deep inhales but Annie's vision is spotty, only able to see from a side-glance a blurry blob idling over her. Annie hears a cracked, worried sound, a warm hand following after, rubbing into the middle of her back, like it would help ease the knifing pain. A series of clenching and opening her dewy-lashed eyes clears up the floaters and waves distorting Annie's sight.
Armin is stooped over her on bent knees, his face creased with concern only a foot from hers. Annie's ears become hot underneath her untied hair, adjusted grey-blue taking in how his longer hair is cut above his ears with shorter bangs curtaining his forehead. He's more mature now—taller and body noticeably more filled out under his trench coat— and when the whites of her eyes enlarge from recognizing him, the soldier's blue gems twinkle brightly.
"Armin." She acknowledges in a hushed, dazed voice.
He laughs breathlessly, the ends of his eyes budding with tears. Annie's heart jumps out her ribcage when a cheek splitting smile graces Armin's face before slingshotting her into his chest, securing her in his arms as he lifts them both up and falls back on his heels. A linen-soft hand shakes as he holds the back of her head into his neck, softly fisting tendrils of platinum yellow between his fingers.
"I thought I lost you." Armin whispers in a wobbly voice. Armin's thick swallow grazes Annie's temple while her head rests beneath his chin. "Your heart stopped when you came out"
Within Armin's hold, Annie's light blue torches roam around the room. Head-sized to pebble-sized bits of her crystal are littered around them like an untouched tomb racked by centuries of repeated earthquakes. Her chest stings from the familiar sensation of broken ribs though the pain is quickly countered by internal smoke ghosting over it. He must have performed CPR on her.
Her alabaster cheeks flush from Armin's careful hand resting on her middle back, bringing her closer to his chest. "I'm so glad you're back, Annie." Armin whispers, absolute happiness dripping off every word. "You're finally back."
Annie is quiet. This cell where her crystal was kept is clammy and the air is crisp but her cheek resting against Armin only feels the pleasant burn of sunlight. His hunched body holding her is a shield against the cold trying to breach into them, allowing warmth to spread over her body like spilled water over a table, and Annie's calmer breathing sucks in Armin's new scent, a musk that's flowery and light, a smell which erases more of Annie's painful reality.
Happiness is warm like the tear sliding down her cheek, hitching her breathing. Tears wetten Armin's throat and when his grip loosens from worry, slides his chin down her temple to look down at her, Annie stuffs her face further into Armin's neck, the arms she lassoes around the young man twice as fierce compared to his. She balls the fabric over his shoulders into tight fists.
"I've got you, Annie." Armin consoles dreamily into the top of her head, like he's whispered those words as a passionate prayer every night. He softly nuzzles her hair. "I've got you."
A broken noise tumbles from Annie's lips. To escape from her personal, unfeeling hell and be dropped into Armin's arms is more than she could have asked. She acknowledges him by letting her masterful facade built over the years fall just for him and weeps into his neck, hanging on to him for dear life.
And for the first time in her life, Annie cries out of pure, unbridled happiness, not regret.