1 Year After Joining the Cadets
It had been a year and I had improved I had grown a lot both physically and in skill, I was 5'8 my new self palling in comparison to when I had joined. Even Annie was impressed with how much I'd learnt. And in that time I had gotten a lot closer with her almost being what I would call friends although I don't know if she thinks of it that way.
"I taught you all I know Y/N. You don't have to train with me anymore." She said slumping against a tree covered in sweat from our last sparring session.
"Why would I wanna stop training with you anyways." Smiling and chuckling at the idea.
"I just assumed you did it because you wanted to get stronger so." She moved her bangs out her face and stood up.
"It started out like that, but now I can't imagine myself training with anybody else." I said bumping her shoulder with my elbow. "Besides none of the losers here could keep up with me anyways."
"Thank you." She said with the closest thing I've seen to a smile on her face since I've got here. 'She should smile more often.'
"Um, your welcome." I said looking away slightly and feeling knots in my stomach.
"I can't wait for odm training." I told her trying to get distract myself from whatever I was feeling.
"Last time I used them it felt so nice, so free."
"When did you use odm gear before." She asked seeming somewhat intrigued.
A smile came over my face as I got excited, but memories of Shiganshina quickly flooded in. "It wasn't really the best of circumstances."
"What do you mean?" She tilted her head in confusion
"It was 2 years ago, almost 3 now." Her eyes widened as she seemed to see what I was getting at. "I woke up in Shiganshina the day the walls were broke and using a dead soldiers odm gear I escaped onto one of the rescue boats." She looked down almost dejected and like she was sorry.
"What is it?" I asked her.
"Nothing, just that would be a nightmare." She paused looking like she was thinking of something to say. "Hey Y/N."
"Yeah?"
"What would you do to the people who broke down the walls?"
"If I got the opportunity I would just ask them why. I honestly find it hard to believe that someone could do something that horrible without a somewhat decent reason." She seemed to return to her normal self after that and I felt relieved.
"Even after everything they did, wouldn't you wanna kill them or torture them?"
"No, torture in my opinion is meaningless, all it's used for is to satisfy some ones revenge."
"Do you not want revenge?" She looked genuinely curious.
"Not really, I just want to find out what happened to me before the walls broke."
"What do you mean by that?"
"Right I never told you, well I don't exactly remember any of my live before Shiganshina. So I want to go back there and figure out who I was, what life I lived, who my parents were. And I feel getting back to Shiganshina is the only way I can do that." I said started to feel a little sad. "But every time I try to remember anything about it all I see is the one memory of my parents being eaten through the eyes of a titan." Her eyes widened and I felt the memory play in my head getting lost in my thoughts.
"Y/N?" She said sounding worried.
"I-I'm sorry." I Looked up at her and snapped out of my head. 'Come on Y/N what's wrong with you.' She stood up in front of me and pulled me up off the ground.
"Don't apologize for that. I hope you know I'll always be here for you if you ever need someone to talk to."
"Thank you Annie." A genuine smile coming onto my face and we continued to talk for the next hour or so forgetting our sparring completely. Then the bell rang out.
"I guess it's time to go, that went faster than I thought it would." I laughed while standing up. 'Damn well that was something.' I thought remembering what she said.
"Yeah It did. See ya later Y/N." She said also standing up.
"Bye Annie!" I said running off, feeling good I joined the group of cadets while Shadis started his usual rant and we begun training. Except today was different half way through training he called all of us back and took us to the mess hall.
"Today Is the day we begin odm training! All of you snowflakes will learn the real way to use this gear today!"
"Sir yes sir!" The cadets responded.
"Each of you maggots have a piece of equipment with your name on it find yours and put it on. Immediately I ran past Reiner and Bertholdt finding mine and almost threw it on. After everyone had put their odm gear on Shadis announced the 2nd phase.
"This odm gear is now yours to clean and take care off, use it wisely! But before I let you off we'll now be starting basic training with odm gear so after today we'll be doing harder faster training sessions in order to fit space for odm training."
"Sir yes sir!"
"Now get out of my sight and get familiar with your gear!" As everyone dispersed I went on my own to immediately try it out. I first went slow anchoring gassing and then stopping putting in a new anchor and repeating, but as I got more familiar I started going faster and faster.
"Oh my god. This is better than I remember." I thought while soaring through tree after tree. Losing track of time I found it starting to get dark and my gear suddenly ran out of gas making me fly out of the tree and crashing into the ground. Landing in the wrong position I heard a loud crack ring out and felt something snap followed by searing pain making me scream out.
"Oh fuck!" I yelped as I felt the bone grinding against itself. I looked down towards the source of the pain and saw that my foot was broke, the joint in my ankle had snapped. Ripping part of my shirt off and using thick branches I found on the ground I made a splint and started to hobble back towards camp. 'Shit, shit, shit, the instructor is going to chew me out for this.' And even though my foot hurt like hell I continued walking.
Annie POV:
'I wonder where Y/N is. He didn't show up to afternoon roll call and it's getting late. I'm gonna wait out here for him to make sure he's fine.' As the minutes and soon hours passed, no sign of him came and I decided to find him myself. trying to remember where Y/N was last I remembered something. 'Wait, the last time I saw him he was using his odm gear and heading into the forest. He better not have gotten stuck out there.'
"Y/N you stupid idiot." I said to myself as I ran into the forest with a torch. As I ran through the tree I wondered why I'm even doing this.
'Why am I even out here, why does it matter to me what happens to him. He's just a stupid idiot.' And even though I thought that I pictured his face in my mind. All the times we'd train together and the smile on his face when he talked together. Then I remember all the times I see him outside of training during the drills or at lunch when he's alone, he seems so unhappy, disinterested and bored. His eyes are always lidded and anyone who speaks to him usually ends up getting a blank stare or a short answer.
'He's the only person who actually ever seemed to care about me. Who got to know me.' 'I don't understand why. Why does he care about someone like me?'
"Annie!" I heard someone yell in the distance. Immediately recognizing it his voice I snap out of my thoughts and run towards him.
"Thank god." I said in a low voice so he couldn't hear me. Slightly tearing up. 'Pull yourself together Annie.' Wiping my face before he could see I draped his arm over my shoulder and started helping him back to camp, seeing his broken foot covered in blood and bone jutting out the side.
"What happened to you?" I asked.
"Oh not much, just ran out of gas and almost dying falling out of a tree." He said trying to lighten the mood.
"You're so scatter brained sometimes." I said rolling my eyes.
"Well I can't be that bad since your coming to help me." A smirk creeping onto his face.
"Someone has gotta be here to clean up after you, or else you'd be helpless." I said back snarkily.
"I'm not helpless!" To which I proceeded to put pressure on his foot. "Fine, point taken!" He yelped.
"That's what I thought." I said, about an hour more or so of walking we made it back to camp and it was still the dead of night.
"Th-Thank you Annie." He said shyly almost scared to admit it.
"Just, be more careful next time, ok Y/N?"
"Promise." He said before checking into the Infirmary. As I was walking I heard Shadis yelling at Y/N for his idiocy and chuckled.
"And you told me you'd prove yourself a worth soldier! With the way you acted today I should've sent you home 6 months ago!" Shadis barking being the last thing I heard before going into the girls dorms and falling asleep comfortably on my bed.