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1.
For an unapologetic deserter, Ymir is very reluctant to part ways with her uniform.
The argument is tedious, one they’ve had every day they’ve spent in each other’s company, but Annie dutifully protests anyway. Here, they have nothing, even these dull routines are a precious commodity.
“You’re making us obvious,” she complains.
“We’re already obvious,” Ymir rebuts.
It’s true; able-bodied, fighting age young women roaming the countryside alone in the middle of a war is about as obvious as it gets.
“You should take it off,” Annie insists.
Ymir, a few paces ahead of her stops walking, “I bet you say that to all of the girls.”
Annie grimaces, her step falters, briefly, and she curses herself for the slip. “You’re going to get us killed.”
Ymir tilts her head over her shoulder, managing to look, somehow, smug and bored at once. “Flatterer,” she accuses.
Annie bustles past her, thrusting her shoulder into the crook of Ymir’s elbow hard enough to make the taller girl stumble.
“Quit fooling around,” she chides, her eyes flicking to the sky. It’s the same flat, angry gray of metal canons, smeared with great swaths of swollen purple clouds.
The fury of the brewing storm will be terrible indeed. There is nothing left to do but try to find safety.
2.
She dreams of her failure every night.
“Dreaming” doesn’t feel significant enough, the term lacks enough weight. What she experiences each night is too vivid to truly be a dream, too real. Every detail exactly as it had been that day; from the plushness of the carpet beneath her boots, to the faint sound of chirping birds and shouted drills from the courtyard, to the slickness of the handle of the knife, sweat from her palm and blood from the General’s wound undermining her grip.
She relives this failure every night. She wakes from the dreams not sharply and suddenly, but slowly, the way sap trickles sluggishly down tree bark, eyelids heavy with dread.
Not dreams, no. Torments.
She’s haunted in her waking hours, as well.
She’s not sure what’s worse, the reality of her failure or its widespread misinterpretation.
Her goal had never been to assassinate the general, she had been placed in the military with much more ambitious goals; espionage, sabotage, infiltration.
The long game.
But she had been an officer for only two years before things got out of control. She had been too ambitious, too confident, too careless and there had been too many bodies. In the end, as the noose was cinching around her neck, she made a desperate grab for something to bring back to bring back to her village, some kind of redemption.
And the general found her in his office and she buried her blade in his belly and she fled, empty handed.
Her one duty, her one honor, her one purpose - to fight for her people, to be the virus that destroyed the wretched body of their oppressors from the inside out - and she had failed.
3.
Annie had nearly killed Ymir the first time she met her.
It had been nine days after she killed the general and fled the capital. No one had witnessed her crime or seen her leave, she was sure of it, but she knew it wouldn’t take much work to piece together the crime scene. The recent suspicions cast on her, the general’s death coinciding with her sudden disappearance - it was embarrassingly obvious. Such a dull-witted, simple crime she couldn’t help but feel disgusted with herself.
Annie had done a number of terrible things. Treason, betrayal, thievery and murder - none of which stirred anything within her breast but an admittedly vain sense of personal and professional accomplishment - because each of these crimes had been exacted with tact, grace, and skill.
But the incident with the general had been sloppy, panicked, and disgustingly pedestrian.
And it had exposed her, dealing a critical blow to the rebel army - she had been a painstakingly cultivated asset, and without her, their infiltration of the government was that much weaker.
She had been so consumed by these thoughts that she didn’t notice the figure in the military uniform sneaking up on her until it was far too late to flee.
She had been able to stifle her surprise at least, continuing to appear oblivious and lost in thought as the figure crept closer. Tall. A woman, most likely, by the gait, wearing the brown and white of a loyalist dog with the deep green cloak of a scout.
As soon as the figure was in striking distance, Annie set herself upon them, freeing her knife from the strap on her boot and tackling her assailant in a single fluid motion.
A woman, definitely. She was taller than Annie, heavier, and not without training and for a brief, uncertain moment Annie didn’t know how the fight would end.
It ended (almost) with her blade against Ymir’s vulnerable throat.
It ended (finally) with Annie’s total defiance of all of her training, all of her logic by accepting Ymir’s offer to travel together.
4.
The Scouting division is a fairly elite force, Annie knows. They’re few in number, their fatality rate the highest of all the military branches. The war being waged is fought first along the edges of civilization, Scouts leading the way as they slipped past frontlines and borders, trying to infiltrate enemy territory to deliver quick, devastating blows to key areas before retreating. Guerilla warfare. The small size of their fighting force, no matter how skilled, left them vulnerable to attack. Not to mention the inherent disadvantage of fighting in foreign territory - and then the elements.
The land itself is the secret opponent of both sides in this war. It is merciless, and brutal, and worst of all - patient. The wilderness is waging a war of attrition and its victory is a fact; permanent and inevitable and obvious as the sky above your head, or the ground beneath your feet.
It’s never felt more inevitable than now, on the cusp of winter.
They’re in the foothills of the northern mountain range now, still trying to keep away from villages and towns. It’s becoming more difficult as the season sets in. Food is scarcer now. Already, Ymir has floated the idea of venturing nearer to one of the sparsely scattered settlements in the area to see what they could trade (or steal).
It is a plan Annie resolutely refuses - it would be the end of them.
For a former Scout, Ymir is a terrible hunter.
Annie allows herself to wonder, some nights when she dares to wonder at all, if this is why Ymir left the army. Perhaps she was a failure, not merely a coward or a criminal. Perhaps she simply could not endure the hard life of a Scout and she fled, fearing her own inevitable death.
The third day, when Ymir returns from a hunt empty handed, with not a single arrow missing from her quiver, Annie, fed up, levels all of these charges and worse at Ymir.
Ymir tips over her satchel, spilling out the nettles and mushrooms and wilted edible greens she had gathered. “I’m not suited for it.”
Annie can’t understand.
Ymir navigates the forest with a kind of deft grace that seems entirely at odds with the awkward lankiness of her frame. She creeps through the underbrush silently, with ease. It can’t be that she’s spooking game prematurely.
Perhaps she’s just a lousy shot.
Still, it doesn’t explain the way Ymir turns away as Annie strips the rabbit she’s brought back from her hunt. It doesn’t explain Ymir’s carefully neutral face as she adds the cleaned and dressed meat to her stew of morels and conifer.
“Squeamish?” Annie prods. There is blood beneath her nails. She still feels vicious.
Ymir’s look across the fire is hard to read, especially with her face obscured by flickering shadows. “I was a soldier,” Ymir reminds her. “You weren’t.”
“No,” Annie agrees. She brings her fingers to her mouth. “I’m a warrior.”
She tastes the blood.
5.
They find an abandoned cabin on the third day of snowfall. The snow has blocked the door, Ymir clambers onto a snowdrift, breaks the glass of the largest window she finds with a length of the firewood they’ve been collecting.
The cabin is abandoned, and any fear Annie has of its inhabitants returning is waylaid by the scattered, upturned furniture and the blood on the floor.
She stands in the the center of the darkened main room and watches her breath leave her body in hoary puffs of white.
Ymir sets the fire. Annie wanders through the cabin, collecting whatever they can burn or use for warmth. A moth-bitten blanket they can huddle beneath, a journal whose pages they can feed to the flames.
She returns to Ymir with what she’s found, grateful to see the fire going and that Ymir has managed to block the broken window with some wood and a length of cord.
Still half frozen and numb from the cold, they make their bed before the fire with the clothing and blankets Annie has found. Her fingertips are numb, almost blue, her teeth clack painfully together with every fierce shiver.
They strip, in wordless agreement. It is a functional nakedness, Annie understands. It doesn’t feel particularly intimate.
And yet, when Ymir fits the front of her body tightly against Annie’s back, reaching around to seize Annie’s numb fingertips in her own warmer palms, she feels very small. She feels fragile.
They sleep like the dead.
6.
They make a home there, in that abandoned place.
It is foolish.
Every moment spent still and complacent in a single place is a weakness neither of them can afford; but the winter is so cold, and the wild so harsh - and their fire so warm, and Ymir so pliant - and one night of shelter becomes one week, becomes one month, becomes a full season.
And on the first day of spring, snow drifts melting beneath an unrelenting solar assault, Annie watches Ymir stride up the hill toward their cabin, the pack slung across her back dipping low with whatever she had traded for in town.
Whatever peace they’ve found here is lost, she knows. The fact rests on the tip of her tongue, as bitter as the dandelions Ymir will scrounge for their dinners. The winter is passed and their presence is known and someone, Rebel, Loyalist, whoever will come for them soon.
She rises to her toes as Ymir leans in, fisting her hands in Ymir’s shirt for leverage, and accepts the kiss she’s given.
It’s familiar and comfortable, like an old coat; it makes her heart pound and her breath short, like a splash of ice cold water; it makes her dizzy and giddy, like a night of too much vine.
She pulls away from Ymir, leads her into the home they will soon have to abandon.
They strip, in wordless agreement. It is an intimate nakedness, though no less functional than that first time months ago. Annie pushes Ymir onto her back, plunders her mouth for another taste of the blackberries that stain her lips and fingers.
Yes, Annie knows, they will have to leave this place behind.
But they will go together.
That’s enough.