Reiner Braun, a man who would first bite his tongue between gritted teeth before accepting or denying the Leonhardt name, wants to keep his family out of the family business.
It's not his fault Annie was already compromised.
Months ago when old mind racking and nightmarish impressions plagued his sleep, he burst into consciousness in a feverish coldsweat, finding himself ever haunted by cracked reflections. God, at least he didn't scream that time. Yes, thank that omnipotent nonentity that his family is blind and deaf to the damage done by every bump in the head they can't imagine or have ever seen him endure. That small consolation cracked into a mosaic of doubt because, just then, the sound of a voice drifted up from the static silence, electrifying the dead air around him.
"Put th' world in place b'fore it pu's you in..." Reiner went rigid. That dismal voice came from beside him.
He whipped his head in its direction, looking into an abysmal black and wondering if anyone there was doing the same with - "...yours." The six-foot-one varsity athlete bit down a scream and tumbled backwards in a tangled heap of bedsheets, making a small earthquake in the apartment. "Bam!"
Reiner's face flashed with insecure humiliation before souring into steaming irritation. He had some idea of who it could be and he wouldn't let that person get away with it.
"Nuh g'nna play soldier." What the hell? It sounded much clearer on the floor, coming from the other side of the bottom of his bed. The blonde man untangled himself from the clutches of his sheets and swung a burly arm over the surface of his night stand, pawing for the familiar bare metal of his phone. Its light source failed to reveal any suspicious squatter lying prone beneath his bed and only drew a harsh glow across a few articles he'd rather never saw the public light of day.
With the finesse of a well oiled machine, he sprung from the end of his bed and swept his phone's light across his room, but found no one. No one could have left through the closed door or hide anywhere else without letting him hear the creaking. Whoever was fucking with him must have planted a pre-recorded message as a prank they'd deeply regret or disappeared into thin air. Was he going crazy?
"Woosh," a sound slipped from a yet dark place.
Reiner wasn't a big teddy bear with muscles like his littlest sister liked to think - well, when it comes down to certain people... - he was a smart and reliable guy who could keep a reassuring level head for others and figure things out for himself. The young man rounded his bed and let his bare feet feel around for a cold metal grate that he surmised as the source of that voice. "Treat... worl like your enmy," Annie's unconscious thoughts slurred out of her lips and flowed between their air vents.
He smirked. Who could have guessed that that bite sized scrapper of a sister-in-arms of his talked in her sleep? He wondered if he ever did that. "Father'll always be on my side." Of course, his smile twitched into embittered irony, Daddy's girl wasn't spared from that fate either. There was comfort in the fact that he wasn't alone, someone else understood what he went through.
He resigned back to his bed at last.
"Jus' wanna be considered... human, too." Reiner couldn't agree more.
He knew Annie had her own art of coping down to an automatic science, that being professional apathy and blowing off steam with impromptu training behind mom's back, but Reiner couldn't help notice how Annie got sloppy.
Lately she's been so passively lethargic that even Mina could engage her without Annie's usual hostile bullshit. She snuck off with less discretion and answered back with little effort to her already transparent lies. He guessed Annie didn't need to put that much work in hiding it anymore, they've fulfilled their purpose after all, but he'd be damned if she told either mom or Mina just what that entailed.
He noticed the unconscious chatter that somewhat comforted him while he slept had changed to clipped snippets of something he could understand deeply bothered her, even if he couldn't pick out just what she was saying. During the next few days Annie withdrew into herself further.
Some nights ago the sound of powerful vomiting seeped into his dreams, it alarmed him more to hear it when he woke up. Was that Annie? Was she sick? And with what?
Two nights followed with the same thing. Reiner guessed their dark days still ate her up, apparently, and she was trying anything to purge it out of her system. If that's the case then he won't interfere if it doesn't drag too long, but whatever psychological good that might do her would never outweight the toll it left on her body. Reiner should know. He used to leave himself wide open to pain.
On the fourth night he awoke to a violently contained guttural heave before uneven footfalls made a desperate run to clear an erupting throat. She's vomitting again.
Any thought of sleep evaporated from his mind. Her forceful effort, the evident suffering, nearly snapped his heartstrings. But he didn't move. His legs froze up and his back stuck to the mattress. He couldn't even bring himself to turn his head to the door, to do anything for her but lay there in blind witness.
"She needs help," he thought abjectly, "I ought to help her, somehow." His shitty indecisiveness reminded him of a broken record, repeatedly spitting up sound suggestions he couldn't possibly follow up with. Reiner did not have the courage in him to fail her again. Yet when he thought about all the times he chose to leave it to her, the consequences popped and hissed to the forefront and he lacked the strength to push them back. They broke across the panels of the walls and ceilings and played like a looping reel, loud and vivid and demanding.
Reiner might as well interfere just to distract himself from the triggering effect. The blonde moved to stand when he noticed two important details. The vomiting had stopped and the sound of two pairs of muffled steps reoccupied Annie's den.
He often forgot Mina and Annie shared that bathroom.
Ugh, sorry. I actually planned to make this muuuuuch longer but the rest of the chapter just wouldn't sinc right the way I wanted it to so I had to split it. I've been battling with it but it's as stubborn as I am. When I wrap it up and polish it to my satisfaction I'll post it. Mark me I refuse to let a scroll of text kick my ass. I shall be victorious!
Till then I bid you adieu my lovely audience. Jnun)/
-KasPer