Archive of Our Own ^beta

It is a terrible thing to be unwanted.

Want can be many things. A name. A smile. A clap on a shoulder. Delighted laughter. A bowl of soup dusted with the last of the breadcrumbs. The warmth of a blanket covering you in sleep. A smell. A greeting.

It can be concern.

“... no, father, I’m fine,” Pieck’s voice comes light and free. The tent this morning is every type of unpleasant, oppressive in its heat and stale with the smell of sweat. For better or worse, they knew now that Fort Salta was no place to be at any time of the year. If not for the fact that they were stuck here for the time being, it could’ve passed for a vacation, albeit a poorly chosen one. But fixed to the flap of the tent is a scrap of paper marked with the days of the month and year, reminding them of the passage of time every night when the date would become crossed off by some diligent inhabitant.

“... show me your leg dear, don’t make me fuss now,” Mr. Finger has a tired voice, suggestive of prolonged illness and weakness. Still, it is unmistakably loving, and Annie watches the father and daughter duo from a corner of the tent, knees drawn to her chest.

There is a wound below Pieck’s knee. Only a small and slight gash, hardly an inch deep, sustained last night during the tail end of her tasks of lugging boxes and crates from one station to another. She’d hardly noticed, only becoming aware when her white trousers had stained with a drop of blood and a young girl—a refugee from the former internment zone—had hurried forward with a strip of cotton, mistaking the blood for something else. Annie helped her wash the wound before the two turned in for the night. 

The thing with wounds now, however, was that they no longer healed with just a hiss of steam.

Which was why Pieck had woken up a few hours ago, grimacing from the unfamiliar sensation of continued pain and explained to Reiner that she might have to sit the day’s tasks out. 

Mr. Finger crouches by Pieck’s side and carefully rolls back the cuff of her trousers, exposing the gash on the bony part of her foreleg. It’s unsurprisingly raw and red—the survey corps uniform trousers were meant to be a tight fit after all—and his eyebrows crease with concern. He says something to her which Pieck laughs off with a dismissive wave. He then reaches for a ball of cotton, wetting it with a vial containing a tincture of iodine, and dabs it along the length of the gash with so much care that one could easily be convinced that Pieck’s leg was a delicate construction of glass. 

Annie watches the two, quietly, huddled into herself.

Her own father is nowhere to be seen, and his bed, two blankets away from her during the nights, is made and put away in the corner. Even with his limp he must be somewhere outside in the sweltering heat, contributing to the rebuilding efforts. He hadn’t been there when she woke up. She hadn’t spotted him anywhere in the vicinity. He has no idea she’s feeling too out of sorts to clear the debris today. 

Annie sighs into her knees.

Then again, that’s how things had always been. 

“Is there something more comfortable you can wear?” Mr. Finger’s asking Pieck. “A skirt, perhaps? These pants are too constricting.”

“And where am I going to find a skirt now, father?” Pieck looks bemused and pats him on the arm. “It’s alright. Now that you’ve put something on it, it’ll heal quickly. Don’t worry.”

There is no question that Pieck is loved, intensely. 

There is also no question that Mr. Finger wants his daughter, in all the ways a father can want his daughter to be happy, healthy and safe. 

“I’m just worried about you, dear,” He says, and covers her hand with his own.   

Annie pushes off the floor and stands, slipping through the flap of the tent to the outside. The glaring sun immediately focuses its ire on her face and she heats up like a hot-plate on a stove, head to toe. 

It is a terrible thing to be unwanted.

And want can be many things. A name. A smile. A clap on a shoulder. Delighted laughter. A bowl of soup dusted with the last of the breadcrumbs. The warmth of a blanket covering you in sleep. A smell. A greeting.

Want can also be a touch.

And Annie can’t remember ever knowing what it felt like to be touched. 

At breakfast, however, Annie finds herself in somewhat of a mess. 

The mess-hall is a makeshift tent, put together out of every spare scrap of tarpaulin and cloth they could find from the Fort’s supplies. Though its structural integrity remains doubtful with how the wooden poles sway dangerously with each gust of arid wind, it’s the only place on the entire Fort where spirits lighten enough for some laughter. Bland stew, it was found, was still capable of warming a hungry and tired soul. 

Except, this morning, it’s not really the bland stew that’s heating Annie’s skin. Seated with the others, spoon in her mouth, it’s too late by the time she catches herself staring at Armin’s lips. 

Because he’s staring back at her, bewildered and a little red in the face.

“Oi, Annie!” Connie’s loud voice grates at her ears and she drops her gaze immediately, wincing. “If you aren’t eating that potato, can I have it?”

“Come on, Connie,” Jean mutters under his breath, sounding pissed. “Cut that out.”

“Cut what out? If you haven’t noticed, Jean, we’re not exactly having a buffet,” Connie points the sharp end of his spoon at their plates and bowls. “Potatoes everywhere. And I’m starving.”

Jean aims a disgruntled huff in her direction that draws her attention. “You should eat up,” He says. “We can’t do without your help in getting the railway fixed and it’ll put us in a real pinch if you collapse from tiredness. Besides—” He throws a quick sideways glance at Armin whose eyes are resolutely fixed on the dregs of his stew. “You’ll make some of us worry about you.”

Just as an intrigued silence falls over their corner of the rickety breakfast table, the overwhelming din of the rest of the mess hall threatens to deafen her. 

Or maybe that’s just the pounding rush of blood in her eardrums; she doesn’t know which. 

Because in the immediate aftermath of the Rumbling, Annie’s thoughts, emotions and feelings are a mess.

As the day wears on and she transfers rocks, broken metal and indiscernible debris from one end of the Fort to another, Annie keeps turning Jean’s words at breakfast over and over in her head. 

Worry. 

Oh she's capable of causing worry, she knows. In the past, of course, and not for the warmest of reasons. While in the crystal, she often found herself wondering how much worry she’d caused Reiner and Bertholdt after her cover was blown. Did they agonise over her? Did they suffer? Did they have to change their plans because of her?

Did they ever come to see her?

Wishful thinking. It never suited someone like her, who was built to have only a certain set of emotions running on steel rails. Yet, now, after the nightmarish end of it all, she somehow can’t seem to put herself above yearning for things she’s unable to make much sense of. 

What does make perfect sense to her, is that she’s not a girl who deserves whimsical fancies of the heart like warm-blooded concern. 

Putting down a box of spare equipment with a loud thud, Annie pants, sweat dripping from her temples. 

Why then, did Armin’s face at breakfast, tilted away from her eyes, look so warm at that moment? 

“Need some help?” The most annoying voice on this rumbled earth offers, and she looks up tiredly at the shadow looming over her.

“No,” She tells Reiner flatly, looking off into the distance. “I’m good.”

“You don’t seem good,” He continues much to her irritation, dragging an empty wooden crate close to provide the two of them a seat under the boulder temporarily sheltering them from the harsh sun. “You look exhausted, more like.”

“Which one of us doesn’t?” She retorts dryly, squinting her eyes. The Fort at this time is not a sight for sore eyes. All red dust in a constant flow of being kicked up by boots and rolling wheels. The heat makes the air above the ground simmer; under the midday sun, it isn’t too wrong to say that they’re being cooked on a much too large frying pan. 

“Sit, Annie.”

Her throat is too parched to argue—when did she last have a drink?—so she heeds, plopping down on an edge with a heavy sigh. It isn’t until her shoulders are sagging with so much weight that she realises how tired her legs are. 

Reiner isn’t much better off than her, she notes, glancing at him. There are bags under his eyes, and his unshaven face resembles a lunatic asylum inmate. He acts the part too; at night, sometimes, they listen to the cries and pleas he makes in his sleep. 

On other nights, they listen to someone else’s. 

Because there, at the East end of the Fort, are the still smoking remnants of the army of colossals Eren had brought with him. Thousands of them including his own spidery form — it would take days until they all evaporated to nothingness. A shame, really, Annie thinks, because for all his selfish moronic compulsions, Eren wouldn’t even leave behind any evidence of the monstrous creature he became.

But they are still alive. 

She, is still alive. 

And—her heart skips a beat, spotting a figure in the distance —he, is still alive. 

“I don’t think I told you this, but,” Reiner swivels his body to face her. “Thanks for coming back.”

“Hm.”

She’s distracted. Far away in the torrid haze is Armin, walking in step with a Marleyan military officer, rolls of paper tucked under his arm. Going by the articulate gestures of his hands, he seems to be engrossed in explanation as the two of them come to a stop at a temporary outpost. The papers settle on the table—maps, possibly—and Armin leans forward, hands on the edges, poring over the contents. 

He’s so different from what she remembers. 

Reiner continues, oblivious to her quickening heartbeat. “If you hadn’t, we’d have died there for certain.”

“Yeah.”

Sometime in those four years she spent caught in an insomniac’s nightmares, Armin had grown taller. Those legs, Annie observes, are much longer now. Those shoulders, her eyes climb up, are sharper and wider. That neck is a thing of beauty that taunts her of late; she finds her eyes gravitating to the curve of his nape more than necessary during mealtimes.  

“You and the kids saved our lives, Annie.”

“Sure.”

Annie severely regrets missing the chance to watch him grow up. It’s a thought that occupies her mind before she turns in for the night, all the several glimpses of Armin she had throughout the day flashing before her eyes – that even if she was forced to sleep for another four years with her eyes closed, she’d beg for an opportunity to go back in time to watch him transform from a young boy into the young man he is now. 

“... What are you looking at?”

She snaps out of her daze. 

“Nothing,” Annie mutters, averting her gaze. The last thing she needs is for Reiner to figure out the object of her interests and turn it into a public broadcast on this godforsaken red rock of a place. 

“Hmm….” Reiner hums thoughtfully, drumming his fingers on his knees. The collars of his shirt are soaked through with sweat. In spite of the heat and the lack of proper sleep, he looks pleasant—happy, even—with a smile tugging at the corners of his lips.

“What are you smiling at?” She questions, alarmed. “Are you finally going senile?”

He chuckles at that, shaking his head. “It’s just… I’m glad the five of you made it out alive.”

“Only five? You wish you’d died instead, then?”

He turns away, a little contrite. “I—well—”

“I wish it too,” She stands, sighing tiredly. “Would’ve saved me the effort of having to see your depressing face everyday.”

A wry smile curls his mouth as he squints into the distance and Annie follows his gaze. Armin is stepping out of the outpost, making his way back across the construction site in the direction he came from. His gait is slow but sure.  

“Do you think we succeeded?” Reiner asks after a beat of silence. 

“What?”

“The mission we were given,” His light eyes, slightly moist, find hers. “Do you think we fulfilled it?”

Annie huffs, wiping her sweaty hands on her buttocks and bending to pick up her box. “I don’t know, Reiner, it changed slightly, if you didn’t notice.” 

He exhales, sounding a bit defeated. “I just find myself thinking… we were sent to Paradis to do something bad—”

Bad doesn’t quite cut it, she thinks, hoisting the box to her hip with a grunt. 

“—but we’ve… done something good, haven’t we?” 

The soft plea in his tone doesn’t go unnoticed. In all the time she’s known him, Reiner’s asked her for a lot, the majority of them consisting of things she never wanted to do. But he’s never asked her for something like this – something as gentle and delicate as reassurance. 

She’s not the right person to give out any, though.

“You should ask someone else,” She replies with a jerk of her chin vaguely in the direction where Armin was seen walking minutes ago. “Not me.”

Leaving Reiner sitting there, Annie stalks off, now more exhausted than ever. The sweat lining her brows makes it hard to see where she’s going but she doesn’t stop. Stopping had never done her any good. It was always either go left or go right, even if one was the wrong way, leading her to a prison. 

The same as how she handled things such as emotions and feelings. She either dealt with them or never did, and more often than not it was the latter. 

Something she can no longer put off dealing with, however, is the stinging pain in her back. 

“Oh dear,” Pieck repeats for the millionth time now, inspecting the angry, red bumps scattered across Annie’s upper back. It’s evening and the air is cooler, although not very much under her clothes hanging heavy with damp perspiration. “I don’t think ointment will help with this, you know.”

“Then what will?” Annie snaps, immediately regretting it. She’s in a bad mood, tired and hungry, and the heat rashes only make everything more unbearable. The only reason she’s bare skinned and sitting on her bedding is because the tent was empty when she returned, and the silence and privacy had pressed her to confide in Pieck. “Sorry.”

Pieck doesn’t appear to mind as she reaches forward to thumb the fabric of Annie’s hoodie lying crumpled on the ground. “This is too thick for this weather. How are you not melting wearing this?”

Annie rolls her eyes. Well, she is. Just that it’s not much of anybody’s business. 

“Maybe we can find you a shirt?” Pieck suggests. “Something lighter that won’t make you so hot…”

“And where am I going to find a shirt now?” Annie scoffs, throwing Pieck’s words from this morning back at her. “I’ll be fine. I thought some tincture would patch it up, but if not…” Shrugging, she slips her hoodie back on.

“Hmm,” Pieck’s dark, sleepy eyes study her thoughtfully. “Tell you what,” She brightens. “Go take a bath. It’ll help your skin cool down. And it’s a nice way to unwind before bed.”

“A bath,” Annie deadpans. 

“Yes, a bath.”

Just thinking about climbing that seemingly never ending dirt path makes her want to groan. 

“No thanks,” She sighs, smoothing out the paper-thin sheets under her. “Might as well go to sleep right now.”

“Not if you want more rashes,” Pieck cocks her head, nudging her in the ribs. “Doesn’t a bath sound nice? It’s not like we go up for one everyday. I think that’ll help you more than anything we have here,” She gestures at the dozen or so vials of medicine strewn around them. “Go cool down.”

Defeated and in pain, Annie goes to cool down.

Fort Salta has a bath. Two, to be exact. 

Only, instead of being a room with four walls and a running water source, the bath in question is nothing but two large empty barrels located in the open air, behind the Fort’s main control station, up on the mesa.

Under the dark sky, Annie stares at the summit from the bottom and feels the last bits of energy in her body drain. Ordinarily, the control station would be accessed via train; the tracks laid along the spiralling paths carved into the sides of the mesa would carry people and equipment from ground to the very top in fifteen minutes. But now, with the tracks damaged, the control station is only accessible by foot. 

With a pained sigh, Annie begins her climb. Her boots kick up dust and send little stones plummeting down over the open edges. Every step takes her further away from the tents until they are small flickering specks of light dotting the ground far below her. During nighttime, Fort Salta is less unfriendly. The darkness makes up for all the bleak sights they cannot see by holding out a canopy of twinkling stars overhead. It helps them forget, if only for a little bit, that this place they are trapped in is only one of a handful left standing in the world.

“Nice way to unwind before bed, my ass,” She grumbles, huffing and panting by the time she reaches the top. Perhaps she should’ve taken Jean’s advice and scarfed down some more of those tasteless potatoes. 

The barrels—or as Pieck liked to call them, ‘the bathtubs’—are isolated and quiet tonight. Either the people craving a dip in clean water have already come and gone or the mesa hasn’t seen any visitors at all, there’s no telling which is the case when footprints are easily blown away by the wind this high up. 

She’s just about to peer into one when a noise from behind startles her. 

“Ah. Annie,” He says.

It might as well be her first human interaction, the way her throat tightens up. 

“Hi.” She manages. 

Armin smiles, that soft, kind smile, as he emerges from the control station, wiping his hands on a square of cloth. The white of his shirt, even if stained in many places, is bright, and it only occurs to Annie then…

How dark the night is.    

“Did you—” He clears his throat, noticing her proximity to the barrels. “Come up for a bath?”

She nods slowly, uncertain of what to do with her hands. They feel unusually large and heavy. “Yeah. And you? What are you doing up here, all alone?”

He chuckles a bit nervously. “I—well, I generally like coming up here after the people are gone. It’s… nice,” He shrugs, glancing around. “Quiet and nice. Though, tonight I was hoping to have a bath as well.”

“Right,” She mumbles. 

The two of them stand there in awkward silence as the wind blows past every now and then, ruffling their hair and clothes. 

There is an elephant in the room neither has discussed. 

The conversation on the boat to Odiha has only given rise to more questions, answering none.  

Out of the corner of her eye, Annie eyes him and the way he stares at his shoes with an alarming level of fascination. Since the end of the battle, they haven’t really talked. Not that there was ever a moment alone, but also not that she’d have known what to do if there had been. All the work kept them on their toes, the heat – in their tents, and she can count on her fingers the number of words she’s exchanged with him in a week. 

Good morning Annie; your father’s asking for you, Annie; I heard Pieck hurt her leg, Annie; thanks, Annie; are you okay, Annie?

Not an inkling more of what they’d spoken of on the damned boat back then, and despite her best attempts, Annie’s throat itches to form the words: Please, when are you going to say more? 

A strong gust of wind rattles the flimsy window panes of the control station and Armin straightens, squaring his shoulders. 

“Well, you should take that bath,” He says decisively. “I’ll leave you to it.”

Annie blinks. “You were here first. You should go ahead.”

“No, no, it’s fine,” He’s already turning away, shaking his head as though convincing himself of something. “I can have mine after, it’s really no trouble. Ah, but—” He pauses by the tall water reservoir tank to give her an earnest nod. “I’ll pump the water for you before I go. Make it easier.”

Bothered but not quite sure what to say, she watches him check the long pipes feeding into the barrels—attachments they’d constructed to make these baths in the first place—before working the large lever clockwise to release the flow of water. It’s hard work, she should be helping him instead of just standing there, but her feet don’t move an inch. It’s too much effort to tear her eyes away from him, focused on his job. Sleeves rolled to his elbows, bangs damp with sweat, Armin is nothing short of a sight to behold. 

“Tell me when I should stop!” He calls, pulling Annie out of her daze. “We don’t want it to overflow.”

“Uh—” She glances at the barrel closest to her steadily filling up with fresh, cool water. “A minute more, then stop.”

The pipe carrying water is forked in two where it joins each barrel. For efficiency, Jean had said, so that both barrels would fill up simultaneously, enabling more people to take their baths in one go, saving on time and the frequency of cranking the water lever every time. 

So when Annie sees no sign of any water brimming up to the second barrel, she frowns, walking closer to inspect it. 

“There’s a leak,” She announces, kneeling. 

“What?”

“A leak.”

The lever quickly turns back with a squeak and Armin hurries forward, looking concerned.

“There’s a hole here,” She points at the bottom where water gushes out, pooling under and around the barrel. “I don’t remember seeing it before, so it must be recent.”

He kneels next to her, running his fingers along the edges of the serrated opening. “Looks like the wood here was weak. The pressure probably punched it through.”

They watch until all the water empties out. A pathetic sight. That’s three people’s worth of bathwater, gone. The Rumbling hadn’t destroyed the Fort’s water reserves, but even so, it is a finite supply. It wouldn’t last the refugees longer than three more weeks. 

Armin sighs, rising to his feet and she follows.

“Well, nothing to be done about it now. We’ll try to see if we can find a sealant to patch it up tomorrow morning,” He runs a hand through his hair. “You should carry on. I’ll be in the control station, but—um—” He coughs, averting his gaze. “Don’t feel like you should hurry. Take your time, Annie.”

Even if the leak hadn’t been there, he’d have done the same. Armin would’ve left her to herself and occupied the other bath barrel long after she’d gone. Something about propriety and privacy and him being a gentleman, the way he always was. 

Ordinarily, she’d appreciate the solitude, but now somehow, her heart’s not into the idea. 

“Join me,” Annie calls at his retreating back before she can think.

Armin stops in his tracks and turns, shocked eyes wide on her. 

“Join me,” She repeats, voice faltering. “You’re sweating too, and—” Sweeping her eyes over his lean form, she brings them up to meet his eyes. “It can’t be pleasant to feel like that. It’ll be a more… efficient use of water if we both…”

It’s not like she has to look at his sweat soaked shirt or the sheen of perspiration on his face, anyway. She can feel it on her own back, tingling and prickling to no end.

Or perhaps that has nothing to do with the heat and everything to do with the prospect of stripping in front of the one boy she’s having a hard time looking away from. 

Ten minutes later, she hears a zipper squealing on its way down. 

“Can I turn yet?” Annie asks, cool water bubbling around her mouth as she does. 

“No!” Comes Armin’s horrified cry. “I’m—I’m not even—”

She can’t help but hide a smile. 

There had been a small argument on who should get into the water first. To nobody’s surprise she’d given up in less than a breath, agreeing to strip and step in first while he kept his back turned. All things considered—most importantly, her hammering heartbeat—it had still taken her under two minutes to shuck all of her clothes to the ground and haul herself over the wooden edge and into the water. 

Now, it’s her turn to look away as Armin strips. Hot skin rapidly cooling in the abundant, clean water, she listens to the sound of clothes rustling and falling that’s been filling the air for ages now, making her wonder if such a simple looking combination of a shirt and trousers was this difficult to get out of. As the noises continue, Annie trains her eyes on the world in front of her. 

Below the edges of the mesa lies what’s visible of the Fort in this pitch-black darkness. Faint dots of light coming from the array of tents, a few campfires still burning bright in the open, smoke from the east still rising in the distance, and beyond that – nothing. 

Not even a single light in the horizon. The maps had told them of an island situated northwest and inhabited by a small number of people, but where there should have been some sign of life coming from there—light or smoke or the beacon of a small boat—now, there’s nothing.

No sign of the island at all. 

The only brightness comes from the multitude of stars painting a river in the night sky above. 

The surface of the water around her shoulders breaks into ripples from the force of someone stepping into the barrel. 

“You can turn now,” His soft voice says. 

And Annie turns. 

As soon as she does, however, it becomes painfully clear that she’d forgotten to factor in several small things into her calculations before inviting him in. 

Such as the width of the barrel. Only a metre in diameter and then some. With Pieck, it had never felt so narrow, but now, Annie fears that if she so much as moves a finger, she’ll touch his bare skin. 

Then there’s the water itself. Cool and refreshing it was when she first sank in, marvelling at the way it seemed to breathe new life into her skin. Now, it’s suddenly tepid as though lit by a fire beneath and only growing hotter with each passing second.

Finally, there’s him.   

All the time she’d spent staring at him from a distance pales in comparison to this moment, when he’s so close she can hardly breathe. The features she cannot study, like his longer legs and the wider slopes of his shoulders, both invisible to her now below the water, give way to the most dramatic difference she’d seen after breaking free of the crystal — his face.

As he determinedly keeps his eyes down, faint redness spreading over his cheeks, Annie takes her time admiring this new face she barely recognizes. 

This is not the boy she’d spent her early adolescence with. Once soft cheeks, though still soft, are defined by a sharp jawline that she never remembers seeing, likely thanks to the long locks of his hair back then. With much of that hair gone now, there’s a beautiful shape to his face; a set to his chin; a gentleness in the slants of his eyebrows, and the endearing redness on the tip of his nose. 

In fact, if not for the same brightness in those blue eyes and the softness of the voice she’d grown to become familiar with during those long four years, Annie thinks she may not have put a name to his face at all. 

“Y—you’re uh—staring.”

Annie blinks, coming back to her senses like she’s been slapped. 

“S—Sorry,” She mutters, blushing hard. 

And so is Armin, for that matter. It turns out she’s not the only one feeling conscious of the proximity and her stark nakedness. Within touchable distance of each other, there is only skin hidden by water. His bare shoulders, her chest, and the vulnerable lower halves of their bodies lost in the darkness — he’s blushing in all the shades of red that exist.  

The heavy pause between them is suffocating, so she tries, in what best way she can think of, to begin a conversation. 

“So… how are you?”

He nods slowly. “I’ve been alright. And you?” 

“I’m… okay,” She mumbles.

“You look pale though, Annie.”

“Huh?”

Whether accidentally or not, he finally looks at her, causing her heart to skip a beat. “I mean… I wish you’d eat more of your meals,” Nervously, he scratches at his neck. “I know the food isn’t very good, the potatoes in store are quite old, but we have to survive in this place and if you—if you fall sick, then…”

He trails off even as she wishes he’d keep talking about more of his wishes if they concern her. 

“I’ll try.”

That puts a smile on his face. “I’ll be glad.”

She holds his gaze, a hundred questions whirling around in her chest. Why? Why will you be glad? When are you going to talk about Odiha? Will you ever talk about the Odiha?  

Her thoughts are broken when he suddenly chuckles. 

“This is kind of like being in a boat, isn’t it?” He says, getting comfortable against the walls of the barrel.  

Annie frowns. “What?”

“Yeah,” He laughs, tilting his head back to gaze at the stars. “A boat under a moonlit sky.”

She shoots him the most quizzical look she can muster. “There’s no moon tonight. And a boat where you’re neck deep in the water? Must be sinking, then.”

Sheepish embarrassment replaces his smile when he lowers his head. “A—ah, well… I don’t know, I just—”

Annie sighs, regretting it immediately. Maybe she’d always be condemned to have a cruel choice of words, but she doesn’t have to do that to him. He’s always been a dreamer, and it reassures her to see that after everything Eren did, there’s still a portion of his childlike wonder remaining intact.   

“No, I get it. You always see something beautiful in everything. It’s probably a good way to be.” She shrugs. 

Armin chews his lip in thought. “... Don’t you?”

“Don’t I what?”

“See beautiful things?”

The heels of her feet press down hard on the bottom of the barrel. “No. I thought you’d figured that out already, Armin. I’m not like you.”

The quietness that ensues is only filled by the soft noises of the water rippling around them at the smallest movements. 

“Sorry if I upset you,” Annie finally says. 

“No,” He smiles. “It’s just, you know… I was wondering if… I was the only one seeing something beautiful right now,” His eyes flick to the space between him and her. 

Her voice catches. “What?”

Armin’s eyes grow serious. “Right now. This. You and me,” He draws in a quiet breath. “I thought the same thing on the boat to Odiha too, but… I think, this right now is… something beautiful too, Annie.”

It comes crashing back in full force — the conversation they still haven’t had. 

I did it because I wanted to see you, Annie. 

What? You seriously don’t get it? Even after Hitch teased me so much?

No, I don’t get it. 

Sit down. 

I did it because I wanted to see you, Annie. 

Because I wanted to see you. 

When will he say those words again? When will he hold her hand again? When will he say more? When will he—

“Do you really not feel it?” Armin asks her quietly, and she finds herself unable to look away from the deep blue of his irises. 

“I—I’m not sure.” She whispers. What is she supposed to feel? The wild thumping of her heart? The oxygen rushing out of her lungs? The fluttering in her insides? What?

He maintains his gaze on her even when a gust of cold wind sweeps past, kissing their skins, and a hundred million goosebumps erupt across her exposed shoulders. 

“I don’t think you’re all that bitter, Annie. I’ve seen you being sweet. Plenty of times.”

But Annie’s no longer listening very much, highly distracted by the briefest glimpse of his chest as he shifts in place. Her eyes grow hot as they steadily climb up his neck, glistening with water. Little rivulets run down the slopes of his shoulders.

“... you care a lot for people, and you worry for them…”

The last time she’d touched him, he was a small boy of fourteen. Yanking him up to his feet by the collars of his uniform shirt, she’d prevented him from falling flat on his face on the training grounds. Back then, he was lean and wiry, only still beginning to tone up. There hadn’t been much to feel under her fingers then though the memory still remains vivid and sharp in her head. 

Now, if she touches his neck, what will it feel like?

“... you also came back for us, and…”

Higher up, past the adam’s apple moving in his throat, past the contours of his jaws and past his chin, her eyes settle on his lips. 

They look every kind of soft and sweet, curling into enticing shapes as he speaks.  

“... you see beautiful things too, I think, maybe they’re a bit different to you, but—”

“I want to kiss you,” Annie blurts. 

A stunned silence follows.

Armin stares at her, lost for words and blinking slowly, crimson blooming on his cheeks. As for her, realisation is sluggish, but once she comes out of her stupor, her face begins to flame like it’s been set on fire. 

“I—”

“Annie.” He whispers.

“No—I mean—”

“Annie…”

Frantic, she turns her head away to the right, searching the recesses of her mind for a convincing explanation that won’t have him digging to find the real reason behind her madness. And there, in the hazy and distant horizon, she spots rising smoke left over from the Rumbling. 

There’s nothing that can sober up a person faster than the reminder of what they just came out of, mere days ago. 

“What are we even doing?” She whispers, shoulders sagging. 

The horizon is dark and lifeless and will be that way for a long, long time. Over the jagged cliffs of the Fort lie corpses caught on the rocks, constantly battered by the waves. There is no Marley. There is also no Liberio, once her home. There are people dead whose names she never knew nor ever had any space in her heart for, but dead nevertheless because of her choices, and those of a few others. 

In the nighttime, it is easy to forget, if only for a little bit, that this place they are trapped in is only one of a handful left standing in the world.

And Armin deserves more than her and all the ugliness in her heart. 

These thoughts are enough.

Enough to steel the blood in her veins for an old, familiar friend: rejection. 

“Forget what I said,” Annie says, her eyes cast down and voice low. “I’m blabbering because I’m sleepy. I should head back.” 

Armin flinches—she can sense the hurt blanching his face. Still, he’s much too perceptive for his own good. 

“I… I don’t think you were blabbering.”

She purses her mouth. “I was. It was a mistake. I didn’t mean it.”

“Annie—”

“I’m going to get out, now,” She finishes with a finality in her tone. “Can you look away?”

If he could, he’d have argued, but the rejection meted out to him is too harsh, and he obeys. Without a word, slowly, he turns, and once his back is to her, Annie hauls herself out. 

Heavy tears pool in her eyes as she dabs off the water dripping from her body and pulls on all the same old clothes. So much for unwinding before bed as Pieck had promised; she might as well get to her bed and die in it. Of all the things she’s done in her godawful life, she regrets the instances where she had to hurt Armin the most. 

He’s too kind, too sweet, and too gentle for her. 

Stepping into her shoes, shivering from the bath and the wind in her hair, Annie steals a glance at him. Still turned away, hunched over slightly, the tips of Armin’s ears burn a bright red. 

His first kiss—if still his first—should be with someone who doesn’t have a cold, hard soul.   

That, Annie thinks, hurrying down the mesa, is a kindness she can do to him. 

She avoids Armin for the days that follow. 

There’s little to do on Fort Salta in times of stress except to throw one’s heart and soul into the rebuilding efforts. Up with the sunrise, Annie’s the first in the mess hall, swallowing her breakfast before anybody else comes. The sweat on her forehead continues to get in her way and the heat rashes are only marginally better, but she does her best to focus on work, work and nothing but work. It keeps any and all thoughts at bay, especially those relating to Armin. When the sun sets, she retreats to the tent, throwing the blankets over her head to avoid Pieck’s curious glances. 

She gives neither Jean nor Reiner any chance to ask her why she’s being so distant and aloof, so much so that by the end of three days spent this way, she almost begins to forget anything had happened up on that mesa at all. 

But for all that hard work put into avoiding people, by the end of the third day everything goes to shit. 

“There she is!” Connie exclaims from the entrance to the mess hall, his eyes gleaming at her lone place on the corner table. Annie stiffens, spoon stuck in her mouth. She’d been extra careful to slip in for supper a few minutes early so as not to bump into the others, but even so, they’d managed to sniff her out. “Caught you!” He beams into her face as the others file in.

“Seriously, what’s up with you?” Jean frowns, pulling out a chair across her. “It’s been days since we’ve seen you at breakfast, lunch or dinner.” 

“Back to your old routine of avoiding everyone?” Reiner tries to joke, but his grin quickly fades when she shoots him a glare. “Never mind…”

“Maybe she’s just sick of you lot,” Pieck quips, returning to the table with her bowl of stew. “Leave her alone if she doesn’t want to look at your boring faces.”

Connie’s jaw goes slack. “Really, Annie? You think we’re all ugly?”

Annie silently groans, longing for the peace and quiet of the minutes before they’d arrived so noisily.

“Really, Annie?” He presses his cheek flat on the table, peering up into her face.

Annoyed and embarrassed, she hums noncommittally. “Mhmm.”

“Stop bothering her, Connie,” A soft voice chuckles. It’s Armin, taking his seat on the far end. The way he doesn’t look at her nor sits anywhere close to her is so telling, and Annie recoils with hurt. 

But then, of course. She’d walked away from him on that mesa, after all. 

Maybe that’s the end of that rope. It’s what she’d intended to happen, after all. 

She should be happy, but she isn’t.

“Still, she can’t do this to us!” Connie protests with mock-indignance. “Not to you, especially, Armin. You look great now.”

Reiner laughs. “It’s true that I couldn’t recognize him at first.”

“Alright please stop,” Armin says, a wince evident in his tone. Perhaps he got this a lot after he cut his hair. Perhaps he was the centre of attraction in the Survey Corps. Annie pokes at her potato, feeling dejected. He’d always been popular with the girls, perhaps—

“But I have to know,” Connie plucks the spoon from her fingers, forcing her to look up. “What do you think of Armin?”

“Oh come on, Connie, I said stop—”

“Nope!” He jumps up, palms rising for silence. “Listen, I’ve been watching these two for nearly a decade, and I have to know if any of that trouble was worth it.” Setting his hands on his hips, he stares Annie down. “So?”

The hush that falls over the table is exciting for everyone else but problematic for her. Expectant eyes turn her way, waiting, listening, hoping for an answer that will validate their suppressed smiles. 

In all honesty, it comes as a shock to her. Annie couldn’t possibly have known she’d been so obvious in her treatment of Armin all those years ago. 

Oh fuck, what now?

“You have ten seconds,” Connie announces dramatically, pretending to glance at an imaginary pocket-watch. “Ten.”

What can she say that will get them off her back and this topic for the rest of eternity?

“Eight…”

Panic builds up in her system. Being cornered is never a good feeling.

“Five…”

What is she supposed to say, anyway? 

“Three…”

“Annie,” Armin calls her name. “You don’t have to say anything.”

It’s no longer in her control – she makes the mistake of looking at him, at his face, at the sweet concern in his eyes, then down to his lips. 

And if the invisible gasp escaping through and the nervous bob of his throat is anything to go by, she’s just given herself away.

He knows.  

Heat floods her face and she stands, her bowl clattering to the floor before she makes a run for it. The others call her name, asking her to wait, but she doesn’t listen. Through the rows and rows of tables and their occupants, out of the mess hall and into the cool night air kissing her skin.

Her refuge is a boulder close to the edges of the southwest cliffside and she comes to a stop there, breathing hard. It would seem that the loss of her Titan powers has also stripped her of a lot of energy – her muscles ache with a dull soreness.

It's quiet here. Just her, some ten feet or so to a dangerous drop, and the sea. 

Her luck has always been bad, getting her caught in a trap or stuck between a rock and a hard place, but Annie can't imagine finding it easier to spill her secrets than to carry out a bloody mission.

Her secrets, which are confusing even to her.

And her luck is still bad. Behind her, there is the unmistakable sound of heavy shoes approaching. 

“Ah,” A soft voice breathes heavily. “Thank god I found you.”

The last person she wants to see is him. 

“Go back,” Annie's voice is gruff. “I'm fine.”

“No, you're not fine, I can tell,” Armin insists, coming closer. “Just—if we fall, we’ll die, you know.”

The hand that touches her shoulder is lighter than the hand that had tugged at her wrist on the boat, but bleeding through the thickness of her hoodie is a warmth like never before. It’s enough to demand that her blood starts boiling immediately, but not from adrenaline; with desire instead. 

And all he’s done is touch her, and not even her skin. 

“Annie,” His voice is quiet as he coaxes her to turn around and face him. She obliges, letting him walk her backward, away from the edges of the cliff. Her body is no more hers – it is whatever it needs to become so he’ll touch her more. Hold her more. Closer, until there’s only a whisper of space between them. “I think… maybe we should talk.”

A finger touches her chin, then, to tilt her head back so he can look into her eyes.

And what an effect it has. Her spine tingles and shivers when blue lays upon blue, searching, studying, unravelling. Her thoughts and feelings and emotions are no longer secret, she’s certain, not with the way he’s looking at her. It’s frustrating, and moisture stings her eyes. Everything always comes so easy to him. What is to her a mountain to move, it is to him a small hill, and it frustrates her beyond measure. 

“I want to kiss you,” Annie whispers, almost pleading. Pathetic, really, but her attention is on his lips again.

A blush takes over his face at the same time a bashful smile spreads across his mouth. “I… I figured. I was honestly beginning to think you weren’t serious after all—that night in the bath, because you]ve been avoiding me since then,” A relieved sigh slumps his shoulders. “But you… you’ve been staring at me for a while and… again, just now, in the mess hall and I—I knew I wasn’t wrong.”

Annie covers her face, mortified. What’s the point of being secretive and stealthy if she’s no good at it?

Armin steps closer, until her feet are between his. His body heat radiates toward her, slipping and curling under the folds of her clothes until every inch of her skin is like a livewire, sparking violently. Never has she let anyone this much into her space, and the centre drops right out of her stomach when he takes her wrists, tugging them away from her face. 

“I guess we can talk after, then,” His breath ghosts over her eyebrows. 

It doesn’t sound too bad: the promise of a conversation.

The wind tickling the smooth ends of his bangs is cold, but the air between their lips is not. The curiosity to find out how he feels under her fingers is overwhelming, and Annie reaches to touch him back.

Unsure, nervous hands fist the sides of his shirt before sliding up, snail-paced, over his chest. There’s an erratic heartbeat there under the skin of her palms, matching her own drumbeat. Armin sighs, shaky and soft, when her hands travel over his shoulders, lacing together at the back of his neck.

Indeed, the wiry and thin boy from her past is gone. His limbs are long and firm to her fingertips, making her shiver with anticipation.

All that, and Armin still has more composure than her. His eyes, dark and blue, finally drop to her lips. 

Want, Annie understands, can be many things. 

A slow blink. A hot breath, fanning her cheek. Hands, warm and big, pressing into the sides of her waist. The promise of a postponed conversation. The certainty of a grip. The lift of her heels off the ground. Eyelashes fluttering closed. A scent. An arrested heartbeat.

It can be the seconds right before a kiss.

“S—slow,” Annie breathes. 

And he agrees, leaning in. 

“Slow.”