' are you still awake. ' it looks like it might rain, Paradis weather truly is random; the campfire won't last if it does rain. [war is coming] & you are thinking about the rain. ' annie? ' you poke, a frown resting; she is ignoring you. you scoot over closer. ' your father still talked about you a lot. ' a whisper, it taste so bitter / too hopeful. *pieck.
The atmosphere was oppressive, heavy with the promise of precipitation and violence. Just as horror lay behind, so too it lay ahead. There might be relief in slumber, respite in temporary oblivion, if only sleep would take her. As it was, Annie lay awake behind closed eyelids, the heavens above them similarly veiled, all starlight extinguished by a shroud of rainclouds, black as pitch.
Silence was the only answer to Pieck’s question.
Shut away inside herself, Annie continued to feign sleep. A poor charade, but one she was determined to uphold. At least until Pieck’s voice drifted through the darkness once more, soft and persistent, carrying with it something entirely unexpected; mention of her father. Like a blunt, hooked finger digging in an open wound, or an age-old chain biting into bruised flesh, something deep in the hollow of Annie’s chest fractured and demanded to be felt. Memories of creaking bones, split knuckles and a soul-crushing embrace played out behind her eyes even as they opened, staring unseeingly into the murk of a starless sky.
The temptation - her need to know more - was too great to be refused.
“Is that so?” Slowly, she rolled onto her side and found her companion waiting, undeterred, closer than anticipated. The heat that radiated from their campfire was meagre, pitiful flames failing to dispense with the chill that gnawed at Annie’s stiff, aching fingers. Yet there was light enough to catch and spark in Pieck’s soulful eyes, enough even to ignite strands of her raven hair, painting them with the smouldering colours of combustion. It was a beautiful, terrible thing to look at a face so familiar, to be reminded of home, and of simpler days.
“What did he say?” Annie hated that she asked the question, hated the hunger that pressed itself into her quiet voice, hated that the words cut her mouth like glass, hated how desperate she was to be known, to be remembered, to matter.
