The cobblestone streets were lined with ghosts. Families fractured, their fragments now haunted a district that was not home. An insurmountable sea of the displaced and the lost, with backs bent, heads bowed, eyes hollowed. Survivors. Hosting the refugees was an unenviable, logistical nightmare. Already food ran short, hunger gnawing deep and indiscriminately in every gut, and soon the narrow, crooked back alleys would be rank with human filth. This was all their doing. Four children were nestled at the heart of very human suffering.
Despite the weight of atrocity, Annie had slept soundly, succumbing to exhaustion and finding relief in her slumber. Like a litter of kittens, the Warriors crowded a bedroll in the refugee camp, escaping the disaster of their creation. It had been alien, strangely comforting, to drowse sandwiched between the warm bodies of her comrades. They were a world away from home, on the far side of the sea, but they were together. That had to count for something, even if they did quickly break apart once dawn arrived in a crimson blaze, painting the sky shades of blood and ink.
Morning light was pale, cold, when Annie stepped out of the repurposed dance hall - no music now, just the muffled sound of sobbing - and sank into another swell of endlessly weary, horror-struck faces. Small, nimble, easily overlooked, she squeezed and elbowed her way through the masses queuing for rations, pressing between the crowded bodies until she found him. Marcel.
“You couldn’t have held your tongue for a little while longer?” Annie peered at him sternly, curiously, through loose strands of blonde hair. She looked tired - was tired - despite her long, deep sleep and despite having had his help in bearing them all to their miserable destination. They mightn’t have directly penetrated the Wall, but they were just as culpable as Bertholdt and Reiner, their hands equally painted with blood.
Responsibility weighed on them differently, however. Marcel was their leader. Highly intelligent, he was the natural choice to spearhead their operation, but apparently he wasn’t clever enough to know when to keep his goddamn mouth shut. Reiner had not been the same since that night, since that conversation. Something in him had cracked, and all his bluster and blind confidence had seeped out. It wasn’t her business, and she was hardly one to defend Reiner’s feelings, but the start of their mission - their infiltration - seemed the worst possible moment to reveal ugly truths. Annie sniffed, and shoved her hands deep into her pockets. There was no anger in her countenance, no disappointment. What Marcel had done was understandable, noble, albeit brutal. He might have manipulated the military, he might have sacrificed Reiner, but it was all to save his brother. Being granted a Titan wasn’t a gift and it certainly wasn’t an honour.
“Bertholdt is with him.” That gentle, all-seeing boy, one drawn to the quiet, and the suffering. While Marcel surely didn’t need her help carrying a few scraps of stale bread, there was no comfort that Annie could conceivably offer, and she wanted to make herself useful. More selfishly, she also desired to escape the oppressive weight of the hall, to breathe air that hadn’t already lived in someone else’s lungs. “What a fucking mess…” Whether she meant the ill-timed revelation, or the sorry state of the world around them, even Annie wasn’t sure.
