Nest & Wings (Annie Leonhardt x Male Reader)

Chapter 03: Purpose in Life

The next morning,

You wake up to the unintelligible chatter of a crowd. Your entire body was screaming in pain and you were starving as you had found nothing to eat the previous day. You were worried about grandpa as he gets sick quickly if he doesn't eat for more than a few days.

You fight through the pain and bring yourself to your feet. You look around and realize that you weren't in your room. Your back hurt from sleeping on the floor— not that your bed was all that comfy to begin with. You quickly scan your immediate surrounding and it looked like a warehouse of sorts.

As you head outside to get a better look at where you were, you notice how the streets looked different. They seemed to be made of cobblestone, whereas the ones you knew were always made of dirt and gravel. The buildings around were much taller as well.

Estranged and confused, you run around looking for grandpa when you crash into a Garrison Soldier. He glares at you and says, "Watch where you're going, you piece of shit!"

"Umm... sorry, I'm lost. What is this place?" you ask him, having no clue as to where in the walls you were.

He looks at you as if you were oblivious and answers, "Huh? You hit your head or something? You're in Trost!"

As the soldier walks away, you think to yourself, "But Trost is in Wall Rose, how did I even get here?"

Usually it was impossible for anyone from Wall Maria to just get into Wall Rose. There were all kinds of complicated procedures to prevent illegal immigration. The fact that so many people from Wall Maria were there could only mean that something big must've happened, something in Shiganshina...

Your head starts aching as you slowly start to recall what happened yesterday. You fall down to your knees in the middle of the road and tears began pouring out of your eyes as you realize Grandpa's dead and Shiganshina was lost to the titans. You were all alone... in a strange city... surrounded by strange people.

You head back to the warehouse and join the rest of the refugees for breakfast. As you waited in line, you overhear some people in front of you complaining how it was hardly a meal. They weren't necessarily wrong as all they served were just scraps of dirty bread. But then again, that's all you've had for the past six years.

While your body slowly recovered its strength after the meal, your mind was still in pieces; struggling to grasp firmly onto reality. Everything happened so fast that you barely had any time to process what really went down. From the Colossal Titan's appearance to fading out on the ferry, it must've been thirty minutes at most. Yet during that insignificant amount of time, your entire life had changed beyond recognition.

Later that day, you hear how it wasn't just Shiganshina. Soon after you had faded out, another titan that the people are referring to as the Armored Titan had broken through the inner gate and the entirety of Wall Maria was lost to the titans.

As the titans invaded their land, the people of Wall Maria were given refuge in the outer districts of Wall Rose and the number of refugees was no small quantity. To put into perspective, the government had blown through several months worth of rations in one day to feed them.

Taking all that into consideration, the soldier's aggression from earlier started to make sense as the way they see it, a bunch of refugees show up overnight and start eating their food when there was already a shortage.

Nevertheless, you cope with everything life threw at you as always and make it through the harsh conditions of communal living in Trost. Along with the rest of the refugees, you spend the next year cultivating barely fertile land to boost food production as the government was unable to support the large number of mouths to feed with what they had.