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The first thing she notices about him his loudness. It’s not the volume or the belligerence, although that is what most people attribute to him. No, with him it’s what he says and how he says it. He says things that no one wants to hear and no one wants to say. His aggressive fearlessness shatters the self-protective walls of these playacting soldiers. It jostles people in the wrong way. It’s a constant reminder of the collective short-run prioritization they silently abide by. They laugh him off, ridicule his ideals, and yet he keeps going on.
Initially, Annie has to agree with the general perception. He’s too unrefined. She finds it admirable that he uses his trauma as fuel and not as an excuse to shrink into the backdrop. But he knows nothing.
He reminds her of her father, in a way. And she knows to avoid boys who remind her of her father.
But still, there’s no doubt in her mind that he’s a special person. And so she watches him, always vaguely amused.
However, she is decidedly unamused when Reiner decides that it’s a good day to test her. She’s even less amused when he is present. Annie swears that part of Reiner enjoys deploying codespeak around unassuming others, although she knows he would never trivialize the mission over something so juvenile. She throws both of the boys to the ground-- Reiner just a bit harder than the other-- and is about to stalk away when the zealous mass of limbs she had dispatched a few moments prior manages to reorient himself and open his mouth.
And one way or another, she ends up spilling the entirety of her thoughts on their fucked up societal structure to him. She knows she shouldn’t, but she has to admit there’s something empowering about watching his continually angry and flustered outlook get increasingly intense, and then finally watching the bubble burst when she says her final lines and stalks off. She enjoys the shock on his face a bit too much.
It’s not until dinner that day that things get truly interesting.
His form is truly atrocious. It’s sloppy and his limbs are everywhere every motion is overly gratuitous. But it’s unmistakably her technique, her father’s technique, and the sound of Jean hitting the floor almost fills her with a strange sense of pride. It’s the first time that Eren has ever impressed her. The first time she feels a sense of kinship with this boy, this raging phenomena of optimism and energy. For the first time, she really understands-- this boy is special.
It occurs to her that both of the only extensive relationships she has had with another person come in the form of mentorships. Annie was first the student, and now she was the teacher. And she was fairly certain that she was awful at it, but Eren just kept coming, and if it was a beating he wanted, she would certainly indulge him. It did nothing to dim his enthusiasm, although he was at least beginning to learn to avoid pain.
“So I know you pointed this out months ago, literally months, but it still bothers me how it doesn’t bother anyone else that we’re training to fight titans so we don’t have to fight titans--”
Everyone else tunes him out, or laughs. The act has gotten old, although she knows for Eren it’s not an act, it’s simply him, but she understands that everyone has, in a way, accepted the existence of this storm in their midst. Even his closest friends appear to be a bit chagrined by it-- Mikasa doesn’t seem to even react, and Armin is usually too timid to speak up anyway.
They may not listen, but she always will.
Annie wonders how it got to this point, as she censures his awful footwork and kicks him in the shin again, to where she has somehow become his conduit for everything. But she can’t stop. Eren is a veritable well of optimism and energy. A hundred people could shoot him down and he wouldn’t falter. People of his kind are far too precious in this world, she thinks. For a moment, she sees herself, training this boy as her father trained her, and wonders, what am I doing?
For another thing that is as sure as Eren’s tenacity is the truth that they are enemies, as true as they come. But even then, even if she is the enemy, Eren is too precious to let go. She cannot let him drift away. She will refine him, and teach him control. And in return, she will always remember, remember the fire in his eyes and his soul, soaked into his very bones. The same essence of will that her father once had and passed onto her, and the very same thing she too had thought was lost forever. And somehow, she had found it, again, inside these walls.
Annie startles herself out of her reverie when her kick connects a bit more solidly than she had intended into Eren’s cheek, and he fell to the ground with a predictably undignified yelp.
She realizes that it is a very perverse teacher-student relationship they have, even if Eren is unawares. She teaches Eren for his benefit, yes, but also for hers, not out of service but out of this desperate need to see his specialness in this joke of a world. She may have lost what bravery and idealism she had, and the world has all but stamped it out within the walls, but as long as one person, as long as Eren continues, she feels a mild peace, a sublime sense of accomplishment, and it feels as if she’s filled a great personal need. I must cultivate his strength, let it flourish and burn brightly, she thinks. My techniques won’t help you kill titans, and they won’t help you score higher. But if you remember anything remember this, remember how I taught you control, how I taught you to look around and ask questions. But it pales in comparison to what you told me, how you reminded me that there was still something left in this world. Because what you’ll keep from me pales in comparison to what I’ll keep from you. Because I simply directed you, and kept you from straying, but you showed me that there were still people who would fight for what they believed in, even against the masses. You make me remember, and you make me realize, that the world will always need people like you. And even when you’re on the ground, beaten down by words or fists, I will pull you up and carry you through, and I will--
Again, an interjection of pain from Eren disrupts her thoughts. She actually manages an apology this time, because even she thinks it’s a little unfair of her to mess up the bandage on his face when she’s the one that broke it in the first place.
Not in a hundred years would Annie have ever imagined that everything she taught Eren would actually ever matter, in a grand sense. She acted like it did, but she was simultaneously a realist, and while with every snarky statement that she knew would stoke the fires of Eren’s idealism, she was aware that he was just one boy, and that there was nothing that he could do, realistically. She never thought that it would ever come to this.
He is screaming and his punches are sloppy and his limbs are everywhere and it takes her back to that first time he tries to copy her techniques. Where is the control, Eren? I taught you better than this--
Guttural roars are still escaping his mouth, and his punches are smoothing out but are still nothing close to the precision she expects. She throws out a jab that detaches his jaw from his face, and he punches her in the stomach hard enough to launch her in an arc, sending her crashing into a tree. She hears him coming-- Eren, where is your stealth-- and she dodges with pure timing.
Annie pulls herself up against a tree. Eren, this isn’t the way I taught you, she thinks. Don’t let this be the last I see of you. I don’t want my keepsake to become something of the past--
She pulls her arms up to her face, and kicks.