EreAnnie Week 2025 — Day 06
Triple drabble for the prompt: paths connection. This one's more gen/platonic but I liked the idea of it enough to tune up and share!
She found him waiting, the white sand turned blueish in the Coordinate's glow. Leonhardt's will to end this conflict faltered at the sight of her enemy, unscarred and innocent. He couldn't be older than ten. He took a step back as if anticipating his own displacement. "Oh. I thought you were someone else."
Her throat constricted. The boy picked at a loose thread on his sleeve. His fingernails crusted with dried blood.
"What happened to your hand?"
The boy pulled a fist, frowning. "Dunno."
Leonhardt crouched down. She tore a strip from her tattered, dirty sleeve and wrapped it around his palm, cradling his hand like a dead animal. She stood up before she had to look into his eyes. "You shouldn't let it bleed."
The linen was loose and the boy tied it properly. "Are you waiting for someone, too?"
Leonhardt bit her tongue. The boy sensed his blunder but not the cause.
"Sorry." He offered his bandaged hand. "I'm Eren."
Leonhardt shoved her hands into the pockets of her hoodie. She didn't need a weapon.
At the horizon the first ray of sunlight cast over the sand, closer to blood than daybreak.
"Is it someone important?"
"Why do you want to know?"
She scoffed and began walking along the dune's edge, the boy tagging along. "I didn't ask to be followed, Jaeger."
Pinpricks in her mouth, kneeling in the white sand. The boy not yet a corpse crouched down, eye-to-eye.
A scream clawed its way towards her throat. Leonhardt wrapped her arms around him in a futile gesture. "I shouldn't have taught you to fight," she whispered. "I'm sorry."
The boy slipped from her weakened grasp and left her applogizing to the dead.
