There were moments where Annie doubted all that she'd done.
She, of all things, knew without a doubt that her Princess was every inch a monster – and perhaps that fact shouldn't have thrilled her as much as it did. She could still feel the stickiness of the blood, the glow of the stars on the knife she'd used, the silence that had stretched for hours afterwards.
But even though Annie Leonhardt had every bit of proof that was ever going to exist, she still marvelled at her own ability to doubt.
It was striking at her attention more times today than usual – boring into her eyes that she was reading too much into things. Her pulse whispered it again and again – not right. Y/N L/N was not right.
Annie watched as her Princess sneered, gripping her daggers more tightly. The amber handles gleamed in the dying light, the black and white stones winking at both girls as if to mock them – to mock the thoughts that had Belua pulling faces in a wordless conversation with herself.
"Princess?" Annie murmured, trying hard not to break the silence that Belua had found comfortable – but needing to tug her back.
"Shut up, Annie." Annie supposed that she deserved the snarl, the Princess obviously more than a little peeved at the thought of Annie catching her wrapped up in herself and her thoughts. "They're close. You can almost hear them."
Blowing out a breath and watching it turn to mist, Annie didn't bother with a nod of affirmation. "How close?"
The Princess grinned in such a way that it sent a shiver down Annie's spine, and her E/C fastened on something a few meters away. Following her line of thought, Annie joined her in surveying the footprint that pointed down the hill that they were both on. They'd been tracking the group for a while now – and it seemed that they were about to catch up fairly quickly. Just down the hill, Annie could see a little cluster of people wearing black cloaks as they formed themselves into a circle, most likely discussing where they were going to attack. Belua blew out a breath - her court was waiting for her.
"Very close."
With that, Belua started running down the hill with her own cloak flying behind her like a shadow of its own. Annie, by her own wits or simply the months of knowing the girl, had expected the sudden take off – her own footsteps were light and soundless as she followed Belua down, the band of titans inching closer and closer as they both rushed to meet them. Annie palmed her axe, knowing that Belua's daggers were still in her palms as she leaped those final few meters, the hunting party only just turning in surprise as suddenly, a wraith leapt into their midst.
Annie made quick work of grabbing one of the younger titans – the weaker stature, the more faded black of the cloak signalling that they were of lower rank. She didn't have anything to prove – not like the Princess, who had to prove that she was worthy with every blink.
She'd wrapped an arm around one of them in the space of a few seconds, pressing the black-jewelled dagger tightly to his throat. His gasp of anger was silenced even further as she brutally kicked the back of his right knee so that he fell into the snow. Annie watched in rapture as Belua's other arm whipped out and threw the other dagger so that its blade went straight through another titan's collar and pinned them to the tree behind them, slicing a thin cut along their throat as it landed.
Annie didn't blame the hunting party as they scuttled away from them, only leaving three standing undaunted and proud in front of Belua. Annie groaned nonetheless, letting go of the titan she'd grabbed onto and lightly stepped to Belua's side. "When you said that you'd teach them a lesson, I thought you meant verbally."
Belua ran her tongue over the edges of her teeth, her eyes looking down at the thing whose head she gripped in her arms – missing the simmering look of wanting that Orion practically projected at her movement. Annie, however, did not – a bolt of jealousy coursed its way through her, as damning as a curse. She couldn't do anything about it – not as Belua grinned fiercely at him as he stepped forward, drawing the Princess' attention back to him. "Alright, Princess. You've made your point."
He drew his hood back to reveal those attractive features arranged into a lovely expression of irritation. His dark brown curls had grown longer throughout the months that Annie had spent with him, so much so that he had now tied it back into a little ponytail so that the rugged locks would not bother him. His face was leaned and tanned, and his lips were slightly crooked as he grinned at Belua. Annie had to wonder at Belua's oblivious nature; did the Princess simply not see the simmering lust that seethed in her mate's eyes, or did she just want to punish him for it by ignoring him?
"The lesson didn't take as long as I thought it would; I had to resort to other measures," Belua pouted, before dumping the titan in her arms so that he wheezed on the ground alongside the one Annie had dropped earlier. The Princess idly cleaned a dagger on her cloak as she sauntered over to Orion and stuck her tongue out at him.
"The fact you thought it would take a shorter amount of time is faintly worrying," Reiner said, his tone placating. It was now Annie's turn to roll her eyes at the tall, blond haired titan as he stepped closer to Orion – a useless display of allegiance. Annie raised her eyebrows pointedly at Belua, stepping just behind Reiner and monitoring his every move. Although Annie had spent the entirety of her life with Reiner and Bertoldt, she didn't have the capacity to trust anyone when it came to Belua – especially when they had demonstrated that their personal allegiance was towards Orion in the stead of their true Princess.
Belua dismissed Annie with a slight glance of utter disdain as she sweetly met the gaze of Reiner. "I thought that I may have had to start beheading your little minions before Orion would have let me join this hunt," the Princess said, then meeting Orion's brown eyes with a glare. "But I think that it won't have to come to that..." The rest of the titans within the party all began vigorously nodding, and Annie couldn't help smiling at their will to live. "You're going to let us hunt. You've been lost for a while now."
"Disorientated is not the same thing as lost," Reiner grumbled as he began following Belua's arrogant stride in the opposite direction to which they'd been headed. Annie grinned at him as snow crunched beneath her boots and the cool air chilled her slightly damp forehead. This was freedom. This was Annie's world, following her leader wherever she so desired.
"I assume that you don't want me to tell the Queen about this," Orion softly said, each one of his lengthy steps matching two of Belua's – and Annie watched as the Princess's mouth began to tighten in irritation.
"Unless you want to wake up without eyeballs, yes," she stated. "I couldn't stand to be trapped in that manor house for a second longer."
"Princesses do not just join hunting parties," Orion gritted his teeth in annoyance. "They're meant to be working on more pressing things - like what dress to wear, and which human to eat for dinner –"
He didn't manage to finish his sentence before another titan had scrambled up to hand Belua the other dagger that she'd thrown earlier. She pinched the blade and eyed the silver wink of the metal, before looking slowly over at Orion. "Finish that sentence and I finish you."
"Is that a threat or a promise?"
Annie winced at the barked laugh that erupted from Belua's lips at the coy reply – and she promptly elbowed Reiner pointedly in the stomach as soon as she spotted him shooting a grin to Bertoldt.
Orion, despite his witty comment, didn't look away from the daggers that Belua sheathed smoothly at her hips. "And it goes without saying that it would be especially cruel – to murder me with the very knives that you won from my own mother."
Belua laughed quietly – and whilst it did nothing to Orion's perfect mask, Annie saw how Bertoldt stiffened and shot a wary glance to Reiner at the sound. "You forget that I am cruelty, and suffering, and death."
"And arrogant," Orion added, earning a barked laugh from Reiner and a low hiss from Annie. He waved an insolent hand behind him at the latter as he continued. "Kill me, and you'd face all sorts of consequences."
Belua tutted. "Careful - I might think that those words were a threat. We wouldn't want that, now, would we?"
Annie overtook the Princess as the pair fell back, bickering. She led the party to a clearing at the side of the hill – always keeping half of her mind behind her, where the two exchanged variously creative threats. With a well-practised eye, she scanned the area and grinned as she spotted the still-hot embers of a fire that had been hastily put out. Both Orion and Belua quietened and watched as she spat at it, and the sizzle of the liquid as it hit the red heat of the logs broke the satisfied silence of those who were following.
Turning to the direction of broken twigs, Annie glanced over to the branches that practically screamed where the human had fled to.
"Let's fetch a human, shall we?" Belua crooned softly, patting Annie on the shoulder as she passed her to take the lead. Annie didn't mind; indeed, when she could already feel the excitement of the beasts at her back become electric, she found that she did not mind at all.
Her doubts pushed to the back of her mind, Annie Leonhardt followed the beast that she loved, preparing to kill.
***
Isabel Magnolia looked again at the body that lay in the broom's closet on the second floor of the school. The teacher had lasted longer than most; he had been on his fourth week. But now his face was grey and blank, death stilling all of his features. Isabel avoided breathing through her nose, the putrid smell of dampness almost making her gag.
Her teammates were arguing over various causes of death in hushed voices, knowing that any moment, another team could come around the corner and claim their findings. Christa and Ymir had taken their posts at the edge of the corridor, watching for any such people. The petite blond girl couldn't often stand to see the body of the teachers that the murderers left behind, and Ymir was more than happy to keep her company as Christa took over the role of the watcher.
Ordinarily, the two didn't fall in with the main team too often – Christa very often couldn't bear the sight of bodies anyway. It was no small wonder that she refused to attend classes taught by the criminal teachers – and had managed to charm her way around Pixis's rules. No one was quite sure how, exactly, she'd gotten the headteacher to agree – although Jean had once bet Marco his entire dessert that Ymir had been dragged in at some point and used to threaten him.
Of course, it hadn't helped that Connie had promptly stolen the dessert from Jean anyway.
Connie was knelt right beside the body of the male, currently holding up the man's hand and was using it to wave enthusiastically at Isabel. Had it been another night, Isabel might have had to fight off laughter – but as it was, she was not in the mood. He caught onto her glower, and Isabel watched as he dropped the limp hand – but not before using it to flip the middle finger at Jean. The raucous boy, unlike Isabel, did laugh.
Sasha, surprisingly, seemed to be the only one actually attempting some sort of work. In the past couple of months, she'd spent a lot of her time with Christa learning all that she could about the girl's specialty – plants, herbs and poisons. Whilst Isabel harboured a sneaking, amusing suspicion that her friend had only learnt about the topic purely to know about which plants were entirely safe to eat in the grounds, she couldn't deny that it had been helpful.
Just not particularly in this case – Christa had taken one smell of the air and had proclaimed that plants had entirely no part to play in this death and vacated the immediate area, looking a peculiar shade of green. Sasha had stubbornly insisted on inspecting him for poison, though.
To no one's surprise, Jean and Marco were doing nothing except standing at Isabel's side in stony silence, occasionally murmuring to each other. Isabel liked to believe that they knew how hard she was thinking and knew that if they wanted to stay alive then they'd stay out of her way.
In reality, she was half certain that Jean was now falling asleep on Marco's shoulder without a single care in the world.
"I've ruled out ingestion of poison," Sasha announced, a flush on her cheeks informing Isabel that the girl was earnest.
"Sasha, we've already ruled out plants and ingestion anyway," Marco said, moving his body so that Jean didn't drool on him.
Isabel nodded in agreement, looking at her old teacher's shoes. "He was drowned, obviously."
"Obviously?" Sasha pouted, crossing her arms – and would have made a cute picture, had she not have been kneeled next to a dead teacher.
"The smell, the bloating of his joints, the fact that his hair was obviously towel-dried –"
Sasha threw up her hands and stuck her tongue out. "Alright! Don't add to the list of my incompetence!"
Isabel helped the girl to stand, and then started a slow circle around the body, continuing her observations. "The student got rid of his wet clothes and dressed him in clean ones from the laundry - those trousers do not fit, so they don't belong to him. That was probably a diversion; they didn't take into account that his lips are blue, or that the smell of water is on him. That means they've got to be young - not really experienced."
"We're looking for a first year then, since we only really covered drowning in our first term of our second year," summarized Marco. "And a boy, at that."
"Why a boy?" Isabel asked curtly, and then felt abashed at Marco's raised eyebrow. She couldn't help it - she just wasn't as good as this game as the original Pride had been.
Marco's brow creased. "If they dressed the teacher in clothing for men, they clearly got the laundry from the boy's dormitory. Girls aren't allowed in the boy's dorm."
Connie snorted. "That doesn't stop them from going in there, though." He high fived Sasha, who face-palmed with her other hand. No one brought up the fact that their crew had often broken into the oppositely gendered rooms so that they could have sleepovers.
"I don't think we even know where your laundry is stored, though," Isabel speculated. "You really think a first-year girl would be happy about not only breaking the rules, but sneaking around in the boy's laundry drawers?"
"Not to mention that there are female Class C teachers," Ymir distantly added from the doorway. "A girl would have probably murdered one of them for the ease."
Isabel nodded, bringing her hand sharply upwards and knocking Jean upside the head. Amidst his spluttering after being awoken so sharply, she leaned around Marco to see Connie. "I don't suppose you know of any first-year boys who like boating and swimming, do you? Most first years would attempt murder using a technique they were at least able in."
"There was a boy who got told off by our dorm master for coming back with wet clothes," Connie shrugged, not quite seeing how Isabel and Sasha suddenly traded a narrow-eyed glance. "I'm guessing that he's the obvious choice."
Sasha sighed as she leaned close to Connie. "If that kid is actually who did this, then he was a fool."
"Do you relate?"
Isabel was already turning away from the pair, handing the phone over to Marco so that he could make the call – not quite missing the sound of Sasha punching Connie in the arm, though. "The weapon was the lake, then, I guess."
"Sounds stupid," Sasha agreed, but the two girls stood to one side as Connie and Marco walked a little way off to make the call. Isabel smiled at her team as she now also fought the battle of keeping her eyes open. Jean sniggered as she yawned widely, ruffling her hair. The horseshoe charm that hung from his bracelet lightly danced against her forehead, and she brushed him off abruptly as she started walking back to the main body of the school. She could feel her teammate's confusion at her unwillingness to be her normal, happier self, but she knew well enough that they were aware of the reason behind it.
"I know why you're upset," Christa said, following her. Isabel didn't quite bother to look around – she knew well enough that if the small girl was following, that meant Ymir and Sasha would probably be bidding goodnight to the boys.
Isabel took a breath. "It's just – she could have guessed all of that within ten seconds, you know?"
"Probably."
"And it's stupid, to miss her most during these games. I miss her all of the time, of course – but these games are where I feel it the most."
Isabel didn't look around for Christa, didn't dare read what was written in those eyes. The girl hadn't been there in those moments when Y/N had given herself up – had been safely at school, wondering why the second and third years had suddenly been called out of the school to aid the scouts. Isabel wondered, sometimes, if it was alright to hate the beautiful girl for it – if it was alright to harbour such jealousy over that single day. Christa hadn't seen the titans in action; hadn't seen the way that some of her seniors had rode horses onto that battlefield and hadn't come back.
"Do you ever think about a bigger plan?" In response, Isabel's body stopped without her telling it to. Christa, however, kept walking – she was now ahead, the faint moonlight gleaming on her hair. "Y/N had a bigger plan, all along. All you have, right now, is a plan that you don't know how to execute and goals you don't know how to achieve. And I think you're only now realizing that, and that's why you're so scared that she isn't here."
"What –"
"Don't tell me that you know what you're doing, Iz. You're just here, playing a game that's easy to fall into, playing into a schedule that's easy to follow. You wander around with dead eyes, thinking about something you've lost, and saying you're going to get it back – but you don't use the time you have right now in order to make that happen."
Isabel swallowed the bile that rose in response to the small girl's words. "And I suppose you have a bigger plan?"
"To make sure that no one has to hurt any more than they have to."
Isabel laughed, and she'd never heard a sound so hollow. Christa heaved open the door to the girl's dormitories, halls barely full of students rushing around to find the body. Most of them had probably assumed that it was outside; there were more places to hide it outside, with the wide area that Survey Corps owned. "You're hurting, Iz, and I want to help you – I really do. But I can't – not when you're doing nothing to help yourself, you know?"
It was common knowledge that anyone who bore the full weight of Christa Lenz's blue eyes entirely on the recipient's would make anyone lose the ability to talk properly for a few minutes after – and Isabel truly understood it now, as she watched that small creature slip inside and climb up the staircase, a sad smile on her face. Ymir lightly brushed past Isabel, widening her steps until she caught up with Christa as they both reached the corridor and disappeared from sight. Isabel felt Sasha at her back – but before either girl could muster talking, Isabel dashed off.
She finally reached her bedroom and swung it closed behind her before locking it securely, simultaneously hoping that Sasha would or would not knock. Telling herself that she was being silly, Isabel merely tested the lock - just to make sure. She had never been one to not learn from other people's mistakes.
She dumped herself into her chair, swivelling it around to her desk – the bell ringing sharply to alert everyone that the game, for tonight, was over. She unfastened the cloak from her shoulders and unbuckled the rapiers from her sides, before brushing her hair loose from its ponytails.
Isabel had never given much thought to Christa Lenz – only that Y/N had recognised the girl's worth, long ago, and had undisputedly accepted her as a friend. The rest of them had been a mixture of amused and annoyed – the boys had been pleased that they had an excuse to see the prettiness of Christa, whilst the girls questioned whether dealing with the constant mood of Ymir was worth it.
Now, she supposed, it had become clear to her that perhaps Y/N just had a talent for connecting with the right people.
Isabel felt herself slipping away into her thoughts, the slow warmth of her room soothing her enough that she slumped into the chair fully, her eyes level with the desk.
The desk.
Isabel Magnolia was not a tidy person, and so the sight of the messy and wild desk was of no shock to her. The numerous sketches and pictures of her friends were tacked up on the walls, and a few – only a dangerous few – notes from her classes had been half-heartedly copied and attempted to be learnt.
But nevertheless, the sight of an envelope sitting on the top of the pile of pencil shavings that she'd left there would be enough to jar anybody. Letters that came to those at Assassination Academy were rare – unless you counted the letters delivered every Friday to inform you of whether you were going to be a murderer, and Isabel did not in the least count those.
Most attending were orphans, herself included. So, whilst some received letters from the office from their parents, wondering about whether their children were even alive, Isabel had not been among those.
Isabel had seen her desk upon leaving – there had been no envelope. And an envelope with a stamp on the right side as big as a coin, she was hardly going to miss.
Tiredness forgotten in the wake of her thundering veins, Isabel grabbed the letter and practically flung herself towards the window – where a pool of moonlight was waiting. Her eyes devoured the sight of her name written on it with a displeased hand – just her name. No address.
Her excitement dimmed – it was not from her. Isabel knew the way that she wrote – the handwriting for the 'I' of her name wasn't right. But she looked at the green ink that made up the stamp on the side, and her gaze widened.
The red-haired girl looked down at her wrist, where a bird still swung from her bracelet, and then back at the stamp.
It was an exact copy of the sparrow.