A/N: Apologies for the unprompted hiatus. TRIGGER WARNING on one of the big 4 for the first half of this chapter.

We'll Always Have Paradis
Chapter 10

Annie woke up in a dark empty void. No matter how far she tried to look, she could only see blackness before her. She tried to call out, but no sound could be heard. When she tried to touch her face, she could not feel her limbs. In fact, she could not move any parts of her body—if she still had one. Panic struck her. Did she die? Was this purgatory or limbo?

Racking her brain, the last thing she remembered was a sedan smashing through the passenger side window of the stolen squad car after her narrow escape from the semi-truck. Perhaps she did succumb to her injuries. This blank abyss was better than burning in the bowels of hell she guessed.

Little did she realize that it would have been a better fate than what was to come.

Annie then detected two voices at a close distance as she slowly cleared from her mind fog. One of the voices was one that she now came to detest, the other felt familiar but not one she could exactly pinpoint presently.

"Of all the guys in the regiment, why are you having me do this?"

The voice of Levi responded curtly, "I could find someone else, but I thought you would be the least disappointing."

"I have a girlfriend!" The other voice retorted.

"I thought she dumped you." Levi was relentless.

"We're on a break!" The other man with a low but youthful voice screeched. Clearly upset by Levi's assumption.

"I'd say good riddance. There's something off about her."

"If you had gotten to know her, you'll know she's a saint with the face of an angel."

"Honestly, I don't give a rat's ass about your love life. I just need you to do one task."

Judging from the long silence, the other man seemed to be pondering. After what felt like the longest minute, Levi spoke, "You know, if you don't do this, all the research that we have put on her will go to waste. Three and a half years straight to the trash. I know she's treacherous garbage, but she could be useful if our intel is correct."

There was another pregnant pause.

"Are you saying that they will be pulling the plug on her?" the other asked quietly.

"Yes."

Those words reverberated against Annie's skull. They must be referring to her. So, she didn't die from the accident. Three and a half years? Was she in a coma for so long? Does she still have all of her body intact? She had so many questions including the one about her current location and the reason for these two men to be discussing her situation.

The man with the undistinguishable voice cried in frustration, "Is there nothing else you can try? This seems a little… problematic."

"Of course, we have tried everything before this." Levi sounded more agitated by the second. "They are testing some new technology that is supposed to emphasize her sensory input to trigger a reaction. I have implemented every method of torture approved by the regiment and this braindead bitch has not even twitched a fucking finger."

The other man hesitated. "So, this method… was approved by the government?"

Levi scoffed, "God no. But who's going to find out?"

If Annie could shiver, she would. Levi's chilly tone shifted the temperature of the room down several degrees. There was something sinister at play here. She did not want to find out what he had planned, but her brain refused to shut off.

"If nothing comes from this, they will pull the plug on her and that would be it. If she wakes up, then we become the heroes that saved her life and maybe this country." Hearing no reply, Levi continued, "Might I remind you that she is a dirty spy with no rights here, not that innocent girl from your school. We need the information in her wretched brain, not your unwarranted pity for a traitor."

"This is the last resort then? To save her and our citizens?"

There was no sound, so Annie assumed that Levi nodded in response.

There was more stillness followed by a long sigh before the man spoke up again. "How do you expect me to… when you are staring at me like that?"

"You better use some protection."

Annie heard steps walk away from her and another set approaching her, then she heard the tearing of what seems like a small plastic packet, then a zipper, and what sounds like someone spitting onto a surface. Then she felt clammy hands pushed up the fabric from her thighs, a sensation she did not know she possessed. Those clammy hands pried opened her legs, lifting them to her side. Distracted by all of the new feelings outside her blank void, she was not prepared for what followed.

"Uhf!"

That grunt was her only warning.

Her mind screamed when she felt a hard rod impale her from between her legs, stretching the tiny cavity. The pain was not something she had experienced before. Something was punctured that hurt her from within. All she wanted was to be able to control her body so that she could make this stop, but she couldn't, and time froze in hot agony. Suddenly, as if on command, the rod halted and removed itself from inside her. Then it wedged in again, but this time it slipped in more fluidly as if aided by some kind of lube to lessen the dry friction. But the pain remained from the forceful intrusion in a smarting throb.

"Fuck. She's really tight."

Annie finally realized what was happening when the motion repeated for several more times as the man quickened his grunting with his weight pushing down on her.

"I know you're on a break, but aren't you enjoying yourself a bit too much?"

"I forgot that human emotions are foreign to you. Maybe you would be less angry if you got laid."

"Tsk. Just hurry up."

The offender rose a little higher and the drilling sped up even more along with the grunting that no longer sounded human. Annie involuntarily rocked against the bed as the lower half of her body is lifted by the claws gouging into the outside of her thighs. Her ribs creaked and her spine curved to its limits when her body folded. A searing pain spread around her neck and shoulders as her lungs compressed, hindering her from reaching a full breath. She was so sick from all of the shaking and contorting while another unfamiliar feeling stirred within her. Yet still, she could not react. Not even scream. And that scared her the most.

Finally, everything stopped with one final push as a contained heat spilled within her. The invader detached himself from her with a stretch of a rubber. Her limp body fell unceremoniously down with a thud. She splayed back onto the cushioned surface, physically unmoving.

"Fuck, Levi. You didn't tell me she's a virgin." The man sounded more distress on that discovery than on the act that he just committed.

"Does that matter? It's not like she gets to enjoy it either way." Levi answered coldly.

"That's really harsh, even for you."

"She killed Gunther, Eld, Oluo and Petra. Because of her identity, they couldn't get the proper honor they deserved at their service. Think about it. Who should you really sympathize with?" Levi took a deep breath at the end as if he was trying to stifle his sadness. Annie had a hard time imagining Levi with any emotions outside of stoic anger.

"You can't be soft to a villain." He mumbled as if it was not meant to be heard.

Sometimes her memory lapsed into a nightmare at this part and Levi also partakes in the attack.

A door swung open, and a third man joined the fray.

"What are you two doing in here?" The soft voice of Armin Arlelt asked as he rushed to her bedside. A latex hand gingerly prodded her inner thighs. "What did you do to her?" Armin questioned in horror as he touched the sticky fluids.

"Sorry—"

"We were just experimenting." Levi reacted as if she was a grade school science project on plant growth and he decided to prune all the leaves from one of the variables.

"I got a signal that there was some brain activity from my patient. I just can't believe I would find you here, doing something so low."

An alarm wailed on one of the monitors next to her. With an instantaneous tug to her lid, Armin shone a blinding beam of light into the center of her eye. "Get the nurse! She's waking up!"

"Does that mean that it worked?" The unidentified voice of her attacker cried with hypocritical enthusiasm.

The last thing Annie heard was Armin shouting, "Get the nurse and leave!"

Then everything faded away again.

Reiner woke up early in the dark morning to the small woman tossing and turning next him in bed. He was also having issues with sleep, but from all the scratching and biting Annie did to him earlier. She seemed a bit more aggressive than usual. She screamed so loudly; he was positive that his downstairs neighbors heard everything—not that they would care. Reiner wasn't sure if his hearing had recovered from that yet.

Incoherent noise escaped from Annie's lips as her brows knitted together. He watched on helplessly, worried about her troubled appearance. Suddenly her eyes shot wide open, giving him a jump scare.

"Bad dream?"

Annie stared at him for a bit, still disoriented from her nightmare. Without saying a word, she rolled out of bed. Tossing on a T-shirt and some lounge pants, she sauntered to the bathroom. Reiner expected Annie to return to bed after he heard the water to the sink cut off, instead the backdoor squeaked. Quickly, he got up and threw on some bottoms and a shirt. Grabbing his coat, he ran out to check on her. Sure enough, Annie was perched on the fire escape with a thin jacket on and a cigarette in her mouth.

"What are you doing out here? You should go to bed." He attempted to persuade her.

"Can't sleep," she croaked. Small bags hung below her eyes. She looked and sounded miserable. It was then that Reiner realized how little sleep Annie gets. They sleep around the same time, but she always gets up before him. He suspected that she gets up every morning to watch the sunrise before going out for her jog.

"Do you get up to watch the sunrise every morning? I'm starting to feel kinda jealous at your dedication," He joked.

She huddled with her knees pressed to her chest. One of her hands was tucked into her sleeve, while the other shook as it held the cigarette. Annie looked over at Reiner as she took a puff. The cloud of smoke mixed with her cold breath as she exhaled.

"Did you notice that the sunrise here looks the same as Liberio?" She spoke quietly, looking downwards as she thought about home.

Reiner observed her in silence. It dawned on him that she was probably homesick and miserable. Even back during their school days, she and Bertholdt would constantly whine about abandoning their mission and returning home. Neither of them was as strong willed as he was, he told himself at the time. In his quest for glory at the behest of his mother, he sacrificed his closest comrades and their wishes. Perhaps he was no better than the two.

"I don't know why you want to go back home so badly." Reiner tried not to sound angry whenever he talked about Liberio—which he never talked about—but his voice picked up in the wind. "They were prejudiced and treated us inhumanly because of what runs through our veins. Why would you even call that place home when you have spent more than half your life here?"

Annie was surprised by Reiner's reaction. He used to be the one with his head stuck in the Kool-Aid, constantly rambling off about being a Warrior and making his country proud. His words rung in her head. Why should she go back to a place that segregated their citizens due to biology? She oftentimes questioned herself on that. Is Trost and any subsequent Paradis Island city any worse than what Marley had offered? For one thing, she was a prisoner in Paradis and although Liberio was a far cry from absolute freedom, it was far away from Levi.

Reiner with his fiery eyes implored her for an answer.

"I promised my father I would go back." Her voice cracked but she blamed the wind.

Growing up, her father had always been very cold towards her and opted to raise her with tough love. He taught her how to fight at a young age and then enrolled her into a government program to infiltrate Paradis Island while she was still a child. She never bought into the bullshit about blood superiority, but she desperately wanted her father's approval. She finally received his affection when she was selected to be shipped out with a trio of boys. When her father cried on to her little shoulders and asked her to return home, she felt a burden burrowing inside of her that she could not shake even after all these years.

"You know, when we lost track of you, everyone presumed you were dead." Reiner hissed in a sharp whisper, green flashed across his eyes. "Your father was compensated handsomely by the government." He watched Annie's veneer falter and she dropped her cigarette. "He probably doesn't want you back now."

Her brows knitted tightly as she clenched her jaw, only shooting him one angry glance. She stepped on the burning stick, rubbing it through the grated floor with her house slippers. Turning away from him and the building, she placed her forehead on the cold railing.

Reiner couldn't tell what was going on with Annie from his angle, but she was visibly shaking, either from the cold or from rage. Hesitantly, he stepped through the threshold to cautiously approach her, sliding in a sitting position on to the step next to her. His fingers hovered above her shoulders before he finally grabbed hold of her, pulling her away from the metal railing.

He was expecting to get decked in the face with punches, instead he found silent tears streaming down Annie's face. She bit down on her scrunched lips, preventing any noise from escaping. It was a split second before she shielded her eyes with her hands. Guilt stabbed him in the chest as he remembered how home used to be a sore topic for her. He didn't know what possessed him to say those words to her, but he knew he had overstepped their boundary.

"Sorry, I didn't…"

She elbowed him but otherwise put little resistance when he pulled her into his big, sturdy arms. Her teeth could no longer restrain her trembling lips. Soon, like a breaking of a dam, her silent tears evolved into feral sobs as she buried her face into his chest. Her small shoulders shook violently. The more she tried to suppress her tears, the more her chest ached and burned, drowning her in her own emotions.

Perhaps the lack of sleep plagued with the constant memories of Levi's plethora of tortures finally imploded from the corner of her mind, but exhaustion and self-pity possessed her entirety, and she couldn't stop crying into the fleshy wall that was Reiner. The body of her instigator felt so warm and soothing like a security blanket in the freezing cold of a late autumn morning. She tried to convince herself that she would have done the same if it were anyone else, so she sank further into him and in turn, he engulfed her wholly into his form.

The last few months had been really difficult, with the nightmares in her sleep transitioning to the nightmares when she woke. For a while, there was no difference between dreams and reality. Caught in an ouroboros at the event horizon, she stumbled about with wobbly legs in the new and foreign world of her post-comatose life. She wanted to return to the safety of home, even if it was only a concept she created in her head to cope, she just needed something to keep her going before she breaks. Her father wanted her back. He had to. She refused to think otherwise.

Reiner tucked her head under his stubbly chin while he rubbed circles on her back and planted chaste kisses from her forehead to her temple.

"Let it out, Annie. Those last couple of years must have been really hard for you." He whispered in her ear with a gentle tone different from his taunting voice from before. "I'm here. You can use me if you want."

His bright eyes softened drastically when they locked with her weeping ones. Maybe it was the light refraction from her tears, but those beautiful, warm eyes suddenly felt so intimate and comforting to her, as if Reiner understood her plight without a spoken word. For a second, she allowed herself to believe that everything would turn out fine.

Under the blanket of the lightened predawn sky, the two of them nestled on the steps for several long, agonizing minutes before Annie was able to quell her sobs into hiccups.

After Annie calmed, Reiner swept her up with his arms secured on her back and under her knees. She did little to protest as he kicked open the backdoor and walked straight to the bedroom, shrugging off their jackets on the way.

He dove into bed with her still in his arms. She turned her back towards him as she curled into a fetal position. He pulled her into him, spooning her tightly. She was too tired to resist him. The two drifted off to sleep for a few more hours.

A/N: I am really sorry for the sudden unplanned hiatus. I was going to announce a break in the summer after posting this chapter, but I was so burnt out at work and my motivation for writing went out the window. Literally had the editing notes for this one in my inbox, but I couldn't do anything. I felt really guilty about that.

When I wrote this chapter, it actually surprised me at the direction it took. In my outline, I only had "Annie and Reiner watch the sunrise together and talk about home." Did not except him to make her cry. I was literally calling my friends and telling them "OMG. I can't believe what this one character did in my fic!" They think I'm insane. The nightmare scene was supposed to take place later, but it slotted in so well with the beginning of this chapter. Honesty, I love this chapter because of how organic it was, and I am afraid that other chapters won't live up to this one. But this is a long fic, so who knows.

Thank you for your continual support for this fic! I am aiming to post the next chapter next month.