Annie Leonhardt, the stoic embodiment of mirthless cynicism and quasi-martial application, had something of severe importance to say.
Keyword: had.
"... Mina," Annie bit her bottom lip in regret, allowing herself the expression in the cover of darkness. Wisps of her fringe swung into her vision and she hissed out a sharp huff to blow it away, only taking more down when it swung back again. Not too eager to bother with it, she propped herself up from her niche in a four poster bed and found that, for some reason or another, she wasn't back in her room but in Mina's, curled up in a nest of sorts. Her eyes swept across the cozy room she was rather unaquanited with and spied her little sister fumbling in the drawers.
Now it wouldn't be true to say Mina was in the dark, elbows deep in a chest of her own unmentionables, not completely. Her slight frame, somewhat outlined in the meager twilight, could be seen rifling spiritedy through the top shelf of a dresser.
Mina felt piercing blue eyes on her temple. "Oh Annie, do you feel better? You're in my room. I thought it would be okay." She giggled nervously. "You were so tired you kind of just went limp there for a bit... I was actually really scared." She whispered the last part to herself. Her spirits picked up promptly with, "oh, here it is," as Mina found what she was looking for after all. A short struggle against an accumulated pile-up of tops rendered her first with a sleeve, then a cropped torso, and finally an entire jacket.
She held up a brown denim jacket, buttonless, faded, and hardly coming up to her midriff, with a sort of nostalgic appraisal that begged the question of sentimental attachment. "I nearly forgot about this."
"You kept that thing," Annie muttered thoughtlessly.
If Mina heard she wouldn't say so. "Right before you went away with dad again, you gave it to me so I would stop crying." Annie said nothing. "Every night you were there and not with us, I'd kick back my blankets and cover myself with this instead." Either the low lights made her soft eyes glint like metal or there was genuine tears at the corners of them. "Sometimes I thought you wouldn't come back at all and you left me high and dry with a plain old jacket. It made me all sorts of frustrated but I swore I'd keep it no matter what." She traced the worn left side with the welling goodness that would only ever be Mina Carolina Leonhardt. "It felt like so long ago."
"A - A - An - n - nie!" Loud and pathetic whining, high in pitch and pitifully vexing to the ears of many passers-by, resounded in the hollow space of the boarding pad. "An - nn - nie, why is dad - dy ma - making you leave me an - and mommy! He already took - took - Reiner! I hate him! I hate him!" A diminuative six year old wailed incessantly, ignoring the shushing pleas of her deathly pale mother and weeping for the retreating form of an eight year old in uniform. "Pease don't go, Annie! I love you!"
"Ah-" she put up a bootless struggle against the cold hand pinning her there. "-nnie!" Deep down she knew she didn't have a choice in anything. "No!" She couldn't keep her sister from leaving. "Annie, at least look at me!" She couldn't go with her. "Let go! Annie, wait!" It seemed like anything she felt for was out of reach, above her head and indifferent to her well meaning advances but she wouldn't accept that. "Annie I love you. Does no one love me?"
The woman recognized as their mother, as she looked much like the dressed up little blonde and the baby she gripped for, felt a prick of pain in her bosom that unearthed her absent heart. She had said nothing, instead letting her littlest speak what she bit her tongue from saying and steeled her heart from feeling. The heavy hand holding back her youngest daughter peeled off and curled to her side, cradling a pain like twisted metal in her stomach. She couldn't bear much more. Mina only knew this because her mother described it to her later, elsewhere. After Annie had long been gone.
Her daughter was freed. No sooner did she realize this, the small girl was already running forward and she couldn't get there fast enough. Part of her felt like the liberty to come a little bit farther wouldn't end with coming further but she couldn't turn away now. Annie was all but gone.
Moving away from their theatrics walked Annie and she couldn't be bothered for hell (or better anything but hell as she would soon come to know) when a bob of brown tresses rammed into her side. Her sister dug her ruddy face into her uniform's jacket sleeve, clutching on with a childlike vise."Ghu, Mi," the blonde warned from above where Mina stuckfast to.
"No!" She cried wetly. "Where's our brother? Huh? What about Reiner? What about you? I don't know what to do if you went too!" Annie turned her gaze to the private passenger train that came to collect her and the shadowed man inside, presumably her escort, with a grand look of contempt that was easily returned with ironically much greater gusto.
"Come on." he half-barked with a cigarette lit between his lips. Annie wasn't moved.
As if it had taken that long to come to one's senses, their mother resumed that parental obligation Annie was counting on. Mina was promptly pulled away with her face red and shimmering with scattered tears that Annie looked away from. The man in the boxcar trailed his eyes down to Mina then flicked them back to Annie knowingly with halfhearted humor in his scornful smirk. Annie frowned past it all.
"Say goodbye one last time honey," their mother managed to say.
""Make it snappy," added that man.
""You say good bye," the toddle retorted bitterly, her weeping less lively but still forthcoming. She did not let go of Annie altogether, rather she held on tightly to what was still in reach. Annie had one foot in the door, and whipped around.
Mina stiffened. She must have gotten Annie incensed, but instead of twisting her away like Mina anticipated, Annie pulled out of her jacket and set it over Mina's tiny frame. Red, puffy eyes met with undescribable blue ones."I'm so sorry." She boarded the train.
.
.
.
The ride home found no conversation for either mother or daughter, much less bonding. Mina napped off her exhauation, huddled with her new keepsake. Her mother drove in silence, preoccupied with a burden. She let the loud closing of her door rouse the brunette miniature when they finally came to their little house. Mina woke with a start only to rush out the car after her mother, not wanting to be left behind in the closing dusk. Once inside, she caught the back of her mother's legs retreating into her room. Before the child could scurry after her, it was decided by the deliberate locking of the door that her mother wanted to be alone. She went into her room. Annie's uniform jacket kept Mina company for the nights of the next four years.
"Mina?"
"Huh," the girl in question slowly came out of it, blinking away the third person memory. "S - Sorry about that," she giggled lightly, trying to brush away the static mood. "You know how I am, especially in the mornings!" A trace of a grin bore tiny dimples into her profile and she tugged on an ebony lock of loose hair, a habit characteristic of her when straightening the pigtails she usually wore that hair in. "My head gets all wonky and I space out sometimes."
The blonde assumed an unimpressed face. "Hm," she hummed almost thoughtfully before sharing her conclusion, "You're an idiot."
Mina winced despite herself. Of course she knew Annie wasn't the sentimental type, much less a reminiscent romantic, but it still hurt when her big sister mocked her sincerity. It even got straight up aggravating sometimes. "Gosh, don't you think that's a little unfair?" Mina deadpanned.
"Hm," Anie swung her legs over the bed. That and one anticipated glower from the blonde made Mina turn in her tracks.
Mina may or may not have raised the jacket to hide behind in an improvised surrender. "A - Anyway I thought you should wear this for, um, morale! It sure helped me and, well," she peeked from one side, "it wouldn't hurt." Then that bit of peeking turned into a bug-eyed exclamation, "Annie!" And lowered her defenses, ie the raised peace offering and the jaw with which she keeps her words.
With rounded movements Annie crossed her arms over the bottom of her soiled nightshirt and peeled it above her torso. The hem traced up the defineable muscles of her smooth stomach and hugged the underside of her breasts lingeringly before overcoming them, exposing two mounds of pale flesh in the waning darkness. One final stretch pulled the dirty garment over her head to leave it twisted in her arms. Before a gawking Mina could so much as stammer an incoherent line Annie threw her discarded top into Mina's face and snatched the jacket she had previously offered, donning it in the brunette's blindness.
The offending garment took its sweet time rolling off of Mina's stupefied face. Her patience with it quickly waned and she tore it off herself, feeling shunned and ashamed that she reacted that way with something so base as the semi-nude body of her sometimes impetuous sister. Oh who would she be kidding? That was really weird! But leave it to Annie to - "Annie?" Mina turned in a circle, trying to figure out where she was but the dark room was void of Mina's short older sister.
"Mina," a monotone addressed her from the bathroom and a thick yellow light switched on. Said girl whipped around in her heels and caught sight of the other standing just inside of the bathroom door on Annie's side. "Get out of the dark and follow." Annie promptly left the bathroom and switched to the light source of her room.
Mina internally sucker punched herself for not turning on the lights and instead standing before her sister in the dark like a weirdo when it suddenly clicked to her that Annie just gave her the closest thing to an invitation into her room she'd ever heard of and it would be wrong to waste such a rare admission.
Needless to say the second daughter followed the first faithfully.
Cuz this is filler! Filler Night!
Next Chapter. Is the obvious reveal. -KasPer