Aruani Week, Day 3
Prompt : Ghost
Rating : M (mature themes)
He lifts his eyes from the book on his lap, having been interrupted by the screeching sound of old car tires coming to a halt. Ah, company! He thinks, looking out the window with interest, it's been quite a while with just him and his books for company.
Armin strains his eyes from the window of his cozy little attic, peering at the tempo that just pulled into the driveway. He hopes for a large family this time, preferably with a bunch of kids that he can play with after their mother tucks them into bed every night. He could tell them stories, he thinks excitedly, because after spending a hundred and two years in the same town, road and house, he's accumulated a lot of tales to tell.
But when he sees a young man, with only a tiny blonde girl in tow enter the house, he is slightly disappointed. This is a huge house, and definitely far too big for just two people, so he decides to wait out the rest of the day in the attic to see if anyone else arrives.
He remains engrossed in his copy of the Universe Explained, grateful to the previous residents for having left it behind, till a quiet voice cuts in on his musings about outer space.
"What are you doing in our house?"
A peculiar choice for a question, he thinks, it wasn't a "who are you?" or a startled shriek, but an ostensibly calm enquiry as to what he could possibly be doing in what she seemed to think was actually her house.
"It's not your house, little girl," he informs her, matter-of-factly, "It's my house. This has been my home for over a century."
She looks unfazed, arranging all the boxes her father had told her to take up to the attic, and he wonders how she can look so blank when he's as good as declared to her that she was standing in front of a man who should have been dead by now. Which he is, to be honest, but the time for technicality will come later.
"Does that mean you'll be living here too?" She asks and he thinks it's kind of rude to make it sound like he was the one imposing on their family home.
"Well like I've already mentioned, this is my house," he retorts, not wanting to mention that he's not really living, per se, he's just… you know, staying here. He's usually never this hostile with the kids, but there's something about this one that just makes him want to go back to his book and not be disturbed ever again.
"Do what you like," she says with a shrug as she turns around to leave. "But I'm not a little girl."
He looks at her curiously, because she certainly does look like one, tiny little thing that she is. "Oh?" he asks, politely, "How old are you then?"
"Thirteen," she says shooting him a glare before she walks out, and it's only when he sees the harshness in the blue of her eyes that he winces, almost feeling the despair that they held; the pain of someone far beyond her years.
It's strange, he ponders, the older kids could never actually see him, it was always the babies and the littler ones, the ones who had barely made it to school yet. And here was a teenage girl talking to him like he was as solid as the walls that had confined him for so many years.
Did she even realize what he was?
Despite their strange exchange, he wants to know more about her, so he goes down to the hall that night. He's never done this before; going down and snooping in on family time has never been one of his secret pleasures. In his eighty-five years of ghosthood, he's been careful to stay away from the adults especially in front of the children, because he knows that it will cause a stressful situation. But this girl is older and more aware, if she hadn't brought her father up to the attic to show him that there's a 'man' already living there, then surely she must have caught on by now.
The scene in the kitchen is pretty domestic, he thinks, watching them do the dishes together, he cleans and she dries, having placed a stool on the floor so that she is high enough to place the plates back in their rightful place. He chuckles softly because for her all her haughty declarations that she is in fact, thirteen years old, no one would ever think so. She was remarkably tiny for someone of that age.
Her father watches her patiently as she dries off the last plate and smiles at her, walking upto her and hugging her from behind, placing a kiss on her cheek. Now if he were a normal person, he would have thought the scene to be cute, but he isn't, he's a ghost and he can smell the fear that pours out of her when father touches her. It's a pungent, consuming smell and it spreads through his non-existence reminding him of his own fear, from eighty five years ago.
"Let's watch a movie, Annie," her father tells her gesturing for her to join him on the couch after she's done. She nods at him, breathing only after he's at least four feet away from her. She pours a glass of hot milk for herself and hops off the stool, pausing when she sees Armin standing at the kitchen entrance.
She doesn't look even remotely startled to see him there, she just purses her lips in annoyance, like it was too much of a bother to run into him again. "What's your name?" she asks, careful to keep her voice low, not wanting her father to hear.
"Armin," he says slowly, surprised that she's asking this question now, calmly as if they were just making acquaintances, when he is still trying to wrap his head around what he had just seen.
She nods slightly, and walks out to the living room where her father is flicking channels, trying to decide what to watch.
After a moment's indecision, he follows after her, sensing the nervousness that she's trying so hard to disguise, slightly worried for some reason. She sits on the far end of the couch away from her father, putting her knees up.
"Annie," her father says, his tone chastising, like he's about to reprimand her for eating too much chocolate, "come now, sit on my lap." He smiles at her, a smile that's supposed to be soothing but Armin can feel the opposite reaction in her, her blood running cold as he continued, "You know how much Papa likes to be close to you."
Armin is confused when she sees her get up and go to him, when he knows, when he can feel how much she doesn't want to, how much she's dreading it.
They finally decide on an old, romantic comedy, one that he can recognize from his younger years.
Annie doesn't seem to care, her shoulders stiff with palpable tension, lips bitten so hard that little beads of blood have begun to form at the cracks. He wants to go there and ask her what's wrong and why she is this afraid of her father, but she isn't a baby for her to communicate with him in incomprehensible gurgles.
Things don't make sense to him till a few moments later, when he sees her fidgeting in his lap, the scent of her desperation heavy in the air. "Always so restless, Annie," her father whispers in her ear, holding her tightly against him, hands roaming under her nightdress.
In all his long, interminable years in this house, Armin has never seen anything that has made him feel so sick to his stomach.
Her father is unrelenting, fingers easing down her panties, and Armin can feel Annie's attempts to resist fade as her resignation comes with a quiet sob, a single tear trickling down her porcelain cheek.
Armin is bilious, unable to watch the horror unfolding in front him and he walks over to them, his heart breaking when he sees Annie's face, her eyes squeezed shut in fear. He notices the glass of hot milk shaking in hands and he gets an idea.
He leans over, pushing the glass out of her hand, the heated liquid falling all over her father, the glass falling to the floor and shattering into pieces in an audible crash.
Her father yelps in shock, his arms stinging from the heat and pushes her off of him, uncaring that there's broken glass on the floor. "You stupid girl!" he growls, cutting his feet on the glass, when he walks towards her. Livid, he slaps her hard across her cheek.
Trembling, she gets up, nicking her own feet on the glass as well, running up the stairs, leaving a trail of bloody foot prints behind. She doesn't breathe till she is behind the safety of her room door, knowing that her father is too angry tonight to come after her. She can worry about tomorrow later, but for now, she is okay.
She lifts her eyes to the bed and sees Armin already setting there, his blonde eyebrows, furrowed together in concern. She should've known he'd get here before she did. She shuffles into the bathroom to wash off the blood from her foot and he doesn't say or ask anything, for which she is thankful.
When she comes back into the room, he's rolled the covers back, and moved off the bed, making space for her to sleep. "Come on," he says, his blue eyes clear and calming even after the debacle that just took place. "I'll tuck you in."
She gets into bed and he watches her trying to sleep, turning to the other side. She tries and tries, shutting her eyes, trying to empty her mind but it's no use, she can't keep the tears inside anymore.
"Armin," she says softly, big fat drops rolling down her cheeks, "Thank you."
He moves closer, his heart splintering at the vulnerability in her voice and she takes his hand, clutching onto it, as the tears empty out of her. He strokes her ash blonde hair with his other hand, trying to calm her and himself, because for the first time in a long while, he is furious.
What kind of a savage does this to a little girl?
"I'm sorry," he murmurs, running a finger over the red imprint of her father's hand. "I got you hurt."
She shakes her head, her sobs having quieted down. "I'd rather get hit by him than… you know…" she trails off, not wanting to give a name to her father's wretched violation.
"Go to sleep, Annie," he says softly, feeling her breathing start to even out. I'll protect you, he wants to say, but she's already asleep, holding on to his fingers and the warm feeling of being safe, with all her heart.
..
"Hey, Armin," she asks one night when he's lying down next to her, reading 'The Notebook' over her shoulder. "Hmm," he responds, too engrossed in the whirlwind romance of Allie and Noah to react properly.
It's been a couple of weeks since the incident with her father and she had found that Casper the Friendly Ghost had nothing on Armin Arlert. He was helpful, funny and they had a lot of similar interests.
She shuts the book abruptly, giggling when he complains about being left mid-sentence during a very passionate monologue. "How old were you when you died?"
"Seventeen," he replies, amused at how blasé she can be about such matters. "Technically, I'm a teenager too, you know."
"Eighty five years ago," she says, slowly, doing the math. "Is that why you have such a tacky hairstyle?" she teases, ruffling his hair.
"Hey, my hair looks good," he says indignantly, prying her hands away from it, "and it feels pretty good too, judging from how you keep finding excuses to touch it."
He grins, spotting the embarrassed blush on her cheeks. Well looks he wasn't completely wrong.
..
Sleep swirls around her sooner these days, Armin thinks, watching her doze with her story book sprawled out in front of her.
No sooner does he think that than her room door is thrown open, startling her awake.
"Papa," she exclaims, recognizing the large figure in her doorway. "I thought you were coming back late tonight, so I-", she starts to apologize for not leaving any dinner for him, when she notices the look in his eyes, glazed and predatory. She freezes. No, not again.
"Don't worry sweetheart," he drawls, "I'm not really in the mood for food right now anyway." In less than two strides flat, he is leaning over her, and she can smell the whiskey on his breath.
Armin wonders why he even gives her father the benefit of doubt; A few good months can't change a man.
"Did your Mama teach you to dress like this for bed?" he says with a sneer. He yanks on her button down nightdress so hard, it snaps. "Such a fucking tease."
She tries to push away his grimy hands, but she could have saved her effort, really. Her weak protests only served to excite him further, causing him to grip both her hands above her head in restraint.
He places the bottle of alcohol he was holding on her bedside drawer and leans in to kiss her. But before he makes contact, he feels a sharp tug of his hair, so painful that his neck snaps backward. "Whaa?" he mumbles, wondering if the alcohol has now started to induce hallucinations. He isn't given much time to wonder though, because the alcohol bottle crashes onto his feet, as if it had been dropped from a much larger height, causing the heavy glass to break on his feet.
He doubles over in pain, certain that one of his veins has been split, because he's never seen so much blood. He looks over at Annie, curses flying from his mouth, but even he knows that both her hands have been in his grip this entire time.
"Stay away from her."
It is nothing more than a hollow whisper that breezes past his ear, but he's sure the open gash at his neck wasn't there two minutes ago. He looks at Annie, who now has a faint smile playing at her lips and trepidation hits him like never before.
He runs out of the room, pupils blown in fear, tripping over his own feet.
It isn't till the door closes that Armin realizes he's been shaking this entire time. "I'm sorry," he whispers, falling to his knees, "I just, I… couldn't take it anymore." Annie crawls over to him and holds his face in her hands, and it's weird she thinks, that she's the one comforting him right now.
"I've never done anything so… violent," he confesses, as she strokes the hair she's pretty sure she's in love with, and she can completely imagine it, Armin is too gentle, too kind, to ever hurt anyone.
"Stop apologizing," she says, hugging him tightly, because he has nothing to be sorry about. He has become the sole manifestation of warmth, safety and trust in her life.
"You saved me."
..
He's finally lived up to the stigma of being a ghost he decides, recounting the number of times he's had to frighten the overgrown sleaze away from his own daughter. Therefore, next month when Halloween comes around he wouldn't have to get intimidated by the more 'realistic' appearances of the make believe ghosts.
Speaking of Halloween, he wonders whether Annie has started preparing her outfit. Maybe he could help.
When he asks her about it, she just laughs him off. "Maybe I could be a ghost," she says mockingly, "that way we can match."
"Oh shut up, Annie. What are your friends going to dress up as?"
The time limit for this conversation has expired, she thinks, wearily, because she's never been a huge fan of the trick-or-treat tradition anyway. "I haven't asked anyone."
"Do you even have any friends?" he asks, trying his best not to sound offensive.
To her credit, Annie doesn't really care. "I have you," she says, and that's all there is to be said on the matter.
He smiles, feeling happier than he should, because having no friends apart from a 102 year old ghost is definitely not a healthy practice.
This is fine for now, he thinks, but how long is she going to feel this way? Someday he's going to have to let go. And oddly enough, the thought twists in his heart, feeling far more unpleasant than it should.
..
"Since when do people come to visit you?" Armin jokes, watching her get up to answer the door. She sticks her tongue out at him. It's not like he was a social butterfly either.
"Um, hi," says a boy, tall and ostensibly tongue-tied, "My name's Bertholdt. I, uh, live across the street and you probably don't know me, but we're in the same class and well, um." He pauses, looking flushed, because Annie's looking at him and her stares can be pretty intimidating.
"Oh, hey," she says lamely, forgetting that there is such a thing as social etiquette. "Come in."
She offers him a glass of water and he takes it, and Armin really, really wants to make a joke about how he's come to propose judging by how much he's sweating.
"Reiner's having a party," he says suddenly, deciding that he should get to the point sometime today. "A Halloween party. The whole class is going and we were wondering if you wanted to come as well."
An awkward silence ensues. This is why I don't mingle, she thinks, there's just too much pressure of conversation.
He clears his throat uncomfortably. " I, uh, actually I was wondering if you wanted to come with me."
Armin's eyes pop open. Okay, he didn't think this would happen so soon. But he should've known. Fifteen is a precious age after all.
He catches Annie looking at him through the corner of his eye. "Yes," he says, giving her a thumbs up and reassuring her that this is normal, and that it's about time she gets out of the damn house, with nothing more than a smile. To be honest, he admires the boy's guts.
"Yes," she says, echoing his voice. Her mind is kind of numb from processing the whole party+boy+date equation.
The boy, Bert, as he says he likes to be called, looks beyond relieved. He gives her an ear-splitting grin and says goodbye, probably rushing off to tell his mates that he just got the girl.
Teens, Armin thinks, as though he's actually beyond it all, they haven't really changed much throughout the course of the century.
"For someone who has no friends, you agreed pretty easily," he says, eyebrows raised.
"You were the one who said I should go."
She pauses for a moment, taking it all in. "So this is what it's like to be 'Asked Out'," she tries out the term, the common colloquialism sounding foreign in her mouth. All of a sudden, she freezes, unpleasant thoughts flooding her mind.
"What's wrong, Annie?"
"I, I didn't think," she says, feeling nauseous all of a sudden. "Papa," she whispers, eyes glowing with a fear he hasn't seen in a year almost, and he understands.
Things were better now but Annie lives in constant fear of him flying off the handle. He's all she has left, but that doesn't mean she trusts him. Not after everything he's done to her.
"If he says anything, I'll handle it," he says, his voice taciturn, knowing the kind of mental trauma that she has gone through to be worrying so much about something as small as a date.
..
Halloween's here and Annie's standing in front of him, dressed as a fairy, with the wings, wand and fairy dust sprinkled on her cheeks.
His 17 year old heart can't help but feel a little jealous. He practically lives with her, but he has never gotten to see her with her hair left open, the beautiful blonde waves spilling out onto her shoulders.
"Okay," she says, taking a deep breath. "How do I look?"
"Amazing." He wishes his voice didn't sound as breathless as it did, but he can't help it. Annie was a very pretty girl and he's always acknowledged it but today… Today, she really was something else.
She gives him a little wave and a smile, and before he can process the fluttering feeling inside of him, she was out the door.
She comes home earlier than expected and although he's pleasantly surprised, he can't help but wonder why.
"Was it not fun or something?"
"It was great," she says, changing out of her clothes and sometimes just sometimes Armin wishes she would warn him before taking her top off because he may be a ghost, but he is still a male ghost.
"You should have come Armin," she says, gesturing for him to get on the bed with her. "All those people dressed as ghosts," she chuckles, "They have no idea what ghosts even look like!"
"Well I'm not most ghosts." His tone is light, as she put her head on his shoulder, wishing he weren't so aware of her proximity these days.
"True," she concurs," you are pretty good looking." There's a silence between them after her last comment and even though she's conscious all of a sudden, she doesn't move away from the warmth of his chest.
"Armin."
"Yeah?"
His eyes are so beautiful and calm, that she wonders why such a wonderful person would be condemned to roam this uneasy world for so long.
"I'm fifteen," she whispers, "and I've never been kissed."
"By a boy, I mean," she adds with a grimace, not wanting to count her father's indiscretions. He has learnt to stay away and so she is learning to forgive.
"Bertholdt didn't try anything?" he asked, wishing desperately for a negative answer.
She shakes her head, it doesn't really matter whether he tried or not. She takes a deep breath.
"I want you to kiss me, Armin."
"But I…" he trails off, unsure. "I'm not even re"- she cuts him off, because she knows what he's going to say. And that isn't an excuse.
"Do you want to kiss me?"
There, she has just about thrown the very concept of self-preservation on the line, by propositioning her very own live-in ghost.
He nods, shyly, and she just smiles because all his years of being dead hasn't made him even a little less adorable. She leans forward and kisses him, wondering why he keeps telling her that he isn't real because she can taste him, feel him and breathe him, and it's incredible.
"Armin," she says, voice breathless with emotion, "you're real to me."
A/N : Oh GOD, I was this close to giving this a sad ending.
Talk to me about giving them their happily-ever-after please.