Remembering that fateful day: 9/11.
Disclaimer: not mine not mine not mine snk is not mine
Three Warriors
xxx. illusion .xxx
The day that Annie breaks is the day that frightens him the most. It's half past noon when she comes up to him, wordlessly grabbing his arm. Startled, he freezes up and simply watches her, eyes fixated on her thin, long fingers wrapped around his worn sleeve. Offhandedly, he begins to debate whether or not he should get a new sweater, another navy one like this because he likes it, because the one he's wearing now has threads falling every which way, and if he just so happens to catch himself on a devious tree branch, the whole thing might unravel to shreds.
But now isn't the time, Bertholdt reminds himself, because he cannot fathom why in the world Annie has grabbed his arm.
Fortunately for Bertholdt, the petite blonde lets go and walks away as if nothing happens.
But he knows, and she knows.
Something did.
It's past curfew when Bertholdt finds her again — a mistake, really, because how would he know that taking the shortcut through the hole in the fence that he can't fit through would lead him straight to the strangling copse of trees where lo and behold, Annie is curled up? — and her next few words scares his very heart from his chest.
"Bertholdt, I need your help."
Hardly a whisper, but he hears it all the same. He kneels.
"A-Annie?"
"Run away," she murmurs. "Run away from here with me."
"Annie, you're making no sense. Have you talked to Reine—"
But she's gripping his arm again, but her nails bite into exposed skin and she is seething rage and utter despair both at the same time. Her shoulders curl in fisted rage, but her head drops like someone who has lost everything.
"Get up, Annie, we'll get in trouble," Bertholdt begs, because that's just his tone and he's desperately afraid that Shadis will make them do much more than just run till they drop if they're discovered out after curfew. "Anni—"
"Bertholdt. I can't."
Annie, you don't say I can't.
Bertholdt looks down at his hands, a frown settling upon his features.
"Are you listening? If you don't come with, I'll take Reiner with me."
Annie, you can't just run away.
"I'll take Reiner, and we'll leave you here. Alone. We'll go home without you." The look on Annie's face terrifies him, because there is such conviction in her set jaw and piercing blue eyes that he's shaken to the core.
N-no, Annie, don't leave me!
"Are you even listening, Bertholdt? Do you ever listen?" There's an annoyed frown, and it's the kind he's seen for years and years but he can't move and he can't reply, because all the words coming from his mouth float into the air, translated into the language of silence and fear.
"It's your choice."
He's floating so high, so high, above the walls and above the world.
But he's heavy as lead, and he knows how it feels to fall forever.
"We're leaving without you."
And he's pounding at the wall, the clear glass wall of a substance he does not recognize, because he can only see Reiner and Annie walking away, their backs to him, leaving him, abandoning him.
He sees Annie draw blood from her thumb, and she scoops up Reiner with a graceful ease, and they're running home.
Without him.
He is frozen in time, frozen in space, frozen in his own blood and sweat and tears.
He is frozen because he can't do anything without Reiner.
He is frozen because he knows, most of all, that it's just the opposite of what they're saying. They haven't left Bertholdt behind.
It is Bertholdt who has left Annie behind.
She screams, and he cries.
I'll come back for you.
I'll kill you all!
I didn't want to leave you, Annie. We're going home together, I promise. That's why…please don't leave, not now.
"It's past curfew, Bertholdt. If you won't go, I'm not waiting. I'm not holding my breath for you." She stands, but her face is streaked with frantic tears. Her shoulders shake as she picks her way through the shrubbery, the soles of her boots cracking the fallen branches. Each snap is a tremendous crash in his ears, and he watches her go, he watches….
A hand claps on his shoulder, and the last thing he remembers is Annie sparing him a sad, sad glance over her shoulder, mouthing words that he can't hear, or can't remember hearing.
The hand drags him into the dark.
He awoke with a start, his brow damp with sweat, his breath harried and short. His heart thundered within his chest, but he stared blankly at the ceiling without comprehending a thing. A weak beam of not-light wandered through the crack in the curtains; it was early, and no one was up yet.
He grasped the side of his bunk, leaning over to check on the snoring soul comfortably rolled up beneath him. A shuddering breath of relief racked his entire being upon seeing that Reiner remained in his bunk, curled up in his usual position with the pillow smothering half his face.
Deeming it useless to attempt another goose chase with the spirits of sleep, Bertholdt clambered down effortlessly from the high mattress, simply swinging down and landing softly on the cabin floorboards. He was hardly surprised to find Marco already up, sitting by a window and writing in a personal journal — no, he was writing his monthly letters to home — and smiling amiably when he passed. It was no surprise that Thomas was up; his farmer's hours woke him up at the crack of dawn upon the call of an imaginary rooster.
Similarly, Bertholdt ran a friendly hello to Sasha, who had the habit of staking out a post on the boy's side of the lodgings, perched upon a strong branch halfway up a tree. She cast an analytic glance at the horizon, and told him it would be a rainy day. Bertholdt learned from experience to trust Sasha's forecasting rather than go off of what the boys gleaned from his bizarre sleeping positions.
He was not surprised when, at the break of true dawn, a strong patter of rain began to fall.
He was stunned, however, when he found Annie sitting on one of the fences, staring off into the distance.
In that moment, he could not recall if last night had been a dream or not. A dream, it must be, he decided, because Annie wouldn't cry. She was the true warrior out of the three, and her heart had turned to stone every since they left her father.
"Annie," he began, a surge of flutters coursing through his veins because his mouth worked and his vocal chords sounded and he could move.
But she doesn't answer. Simply hopping off the top rail, she walked alongside the fence before breaking away, joining the groggy masses of trainees slogging through the accumulating mud.
He thought, grimly, of what she had told him in his dream. The little rivulets of rainwater eroded tiny paths around his shoes. He wondered if by trying hard enough, he, too, could chip away at her closed heart until the ice fell through and he could embrace her truly, to jostle her from her inert coma in which the capacity to love laid in the hands of a greedy witch of fate and circumstance.
But instead, he was met with a hearty laugh and a clap on his shoulder, because here came Reiner and company. Here came the overly enthusiastic Connie, the willful Eren, the ever condescending Jean and his thin-lipped smirk. Here came little Christa, an angel soaked by the rain, and here came Mina, a bundle of smiles that simply couldn't contain itself with sheer willpower alone. And Marco, Dazz, Millius. Ymir, Mikasa, Hannah.
But he just wanted to sob because, no matter how many approached them, everyone was not Annie, and Annie was not anyone.
She looks at him one last time, and he realizes that he does hear her words:
"I love you."
But, he realized, with a choked laugh and a self-pitying sob, it was only a dream.
And to think that his dream could hold truth was simply living an illusion.
Within the illusions laid the truth, and within the truth were the lies.
However, Bertholdt's pain was so real, so tangible, that he knew without a doubt that he lived in the cruel, harsh plane of reality.
It's a dream because she will never love him, and he knows it through and through.
He didn't need hopes or dreams, illusions or fears.
Because reality alone was enough to break him.
/chapter
*insert massive BertlAnnie feels here*
(wanted to try a dream scene)