fic: one kind of alive

[alectorine]

There’s no blood this time, but Eren’s finger approximates a small plum, the kind she’d glimpsed piled up on the Sina marketplace carts, in both size and colour. Annie eyes it, sighs, and shifts her weight so that she’s pinning his legs to the ground in the most uncomfortable way possible.

 

“Ow, okay–fuck–that was a pretty good swing, though, don’t you think? Hey–let me up, let’s go again, I might get it this time–”

 

She doesn’t move. “What are you supposed to do with your wrist when you throw a punch, Eren?”

 

“Tilt it down!”

 

“And why is that, Eren?”

 

“So my knuckles bear the impact and not the flats of my fingers!”

 

“And if your fingers bear the brunt of the impact, they break.” She scrubs her eyes with the back of a hand, digs the heel of her palm into her forehead. “We’re done here, you’re clearly–incapacitated–”

 

“I’m not incapacitated!” he yells, clutching his hand as though hiding the injury from her gaze would cause it to vanish from existence. The movement triggers a fresh torrent of ennui; Annie supposes that it’s practically a conditioned response to anything Eren does by now. “I can still–”

 

“Are you serious? I don’t want to look at your disgusting rubbery finger, I have a–delicate constitution, I might faint, shouldn’t you be more considerate of your poor fragile mentor.”

 

“But what if I break my finger in battle? What am I gonna do?”

 

He has a point, though she won’t tell him that. In a real fight, of course, he’d have to press on regardless. She should teach him how to bracket his fingers against each other for support. Harm minimisation, damage control. In the Sina marketplace someone had upended one of the grocer’s carts as Annie was passing by on her way back to the refugee camps, cabbages and turnips spilling everywhere. Amidst the furore, she watched as a girl slipped a handful of tiny, sour plums into her pocket, no sentimentality to the action. Annie had paused at the edge of the fray, then turned away. Kept moving forward.

 

She motions at his hand, and Eren obediently places it into her grasp for her inspection. Underneath her, he’s still taut with energy, saturated with blunt exhilaration. If she worked a fingernail beneath his skin she could detonate him. She swipes a thumb across his wrist, deliberate. His pulse a rapid, insistent hum against her touch. “Get up, then,” she says. “I’m going to show you how to manage your finger and still throw a decent punch. Eren, are you listening?”