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Annie hated art. It just so happened that she was rather good at it.
High school was full of a lot of things that Annie hated, but she figured it was better than being at home. Her father had warned her not to choose any electives that required her to stay after school. Training was more important, he’d said. Her form would suffer if she put her focus into anything else. That was his reasoning, and it had pissed her off enough to drive her into the arms of her school’s advanced art class.
Her teacher, Mr. Zacharias, had been hesitant when she’d joined his class three months into her third year of high school seemingly on a whim, but after she turned in her first piece for the class, a detailed portrait of a bride beneath a tree, he’d been quick to ask her to join the school’s club. She’d agreed, though she wasn’t sure why. Annie had no real interest in art, or the idea of being in any sort of club.
There was a certain rhythm to it, she had to admit. The school was quiet after classes ended and the remaining student body split to the far corners of the school. Most of Annie’s club members preferred to gossip with their sketchbooks outside in the courtyard, which left the classroom empty for her to work in peace most days. She had a feeling they gathered outside because the football team walked through there to reach the locker rooms after practice, but it would be a waste of her energy to confirm that theory.
She dipped her brush down into the cloudy cup of water at her side. The red bloomed out across the surface, before fading away into the dominant grayish-blue color that the water had turned in the past half-hour. Dark merlot blotted the rag beside her cup as the brush dried and added another stain to what was once white cloth. The similarities between blood and paint occurred to her at that moment. She brought the brush up to her lips to twirl it back into a point between her lips, and the taste reminded her that paint and blood were different things after all.
The composition of her canvas was bolder than one would think after looking at the cup. Fibrous strands of deep red and creamy pink warmed the muted slate-blue sky that served as the background. Like most of her pieces, it depicted the human form. A few of her clubmates worked with the same subject, but Annie’s take on the human form was distinct. Her women lacked narrow frames or curves, with wide bright smiles that communicated expectation instead of joy. Her men were more broad, devoid of all the parts she’d rather not see, and boasted the same unnatural grins as their counterparts.
This piece was different, or at least, she wanted it to be. Muscles and tendons were brought to life by her paint as they stretched onto an unnatural frame that sat too broad or too lanky depending on whether she looked at the torso or the arms. Clouds rolled by and clung to the giant like steam as he stood paused in time. The subject of the piece wasn’t really supposed to be male or female, but Annie had gradually started referring to him as a he once the painting neared completion. It fit the theme she hoped to achieve, drawing on the ideals of humanity to reflect them back and point out all their flaws.
Her giant was a better visual for her message than she’d first thought. His strength was not skin deep, there was nothing more to him beyond it in the eyes of an oblivious audience, so she’d exposed his muscular system for the world to see. He towered over whatever place existed below the edge of her canvas, alone and distant from the lives below. For every physical charm, there was a hollow dread tied to him. Annie thought of real talents the same way. For every muscle the school quarterback had, he was missing a brain cell. The popular girl walked to school alone, and the floaters traded old friends for social status. Anyone who might have something could lose it easily when faced with the rest of their shitty reality.
The classroom door squeaked open behind her back. Her brush froze on the canvas as her ears tuned into the shuffling of footsteps. The obnoxious, but familiar, jingle of keys rang in her ears and she continued her stroke with a hidden smile.
“Hey,” Jean Kirstein, the president of their art club, greeted her as he dropped his backpack onto the table beside her easel, “Didn’t think you’d be here today.”
“Why’s that?” She wiped her face clear of emotion as she turned to side-eye her classmate.
“It’s a Friday. Aren’t you usually out of town for competitions?” He made as much noise as possible as he tossed his decorated keychain into his bag and pulled out a tin of oil pastels.
“Usually.” She echoed in a dull tone.
She did, in fact, have a competition over the weekend. Whether or not she let her father drag her to it, remained to be seen. For now, she was content to forget about everything else in her life as she worked on the canvas before her.
For what it was worth, Jean was better company than most of their fellow club members. His brash, annoying, personality was more muted without the influence of his usual friend group. He was almost enjoyable when one of them in particular, Eren, if she remembered his name right, was absent from class. She knew the jingling of his keys was intentional, something meant to piss other people off and lure in idiot girls who might need free rides around the city. He’d tried to pick her up with a similar angle when she first joined their club, and she was pretty positive he still had a bruise on his shin as a reward for his efforts.
Still, once his sketchbook was open, the peaceful silence returned. She didn’t mind the endless scratching of his pastels, and he didn’t complain about her putting paint brushes between her lips. It made for a peaceful afternoon, tucked away in their vaguely too-warm classroom.
Like every peaceful moment in her life, it ended too soon.
The titters of their club members floated up through an open window from the courtyard below their classroom. Annie knew the reason before she even heard the brutish swapping of lewd jokes that followed the lilted laughter.
“Football team’s done for the day.” Jean announced with a yawn, head in his hand.
“Yay.” Sarcasm dripped off of her lips and onto the floor with a flick of paint.
“Not into jocks?” He kept his bored tone, but she knew he was trying to tease her.
“Not the kind down there.”
“Hm, think that makes you the only girl on campus that isn’t into Braun. Excluding the obvious.”
The image of their school's most notable slacker popped into Annie’s mind, and she curled her lips despite herself. Ymir left a bad taste in her mouth. They’d never gotten along, and they never would until the girl stopped shooting her smug looks in the hallway. It was like they were sharing some sort of inside joke that Annie didn’t understand, and it frustrated her to no end.
The endless cycle of banal flirtation continued to slither its way up into their safe haven. Annie hoped they’d take their boorish mating rituals elsewhere. If their club members were desperate enough to hit on them, she’d rather puke than have to hear it.
The noise did fade, after another fifteen minutes of secondhand repulsion, but it was too late. Her concentration was shattered. Frustrated, Annie gave up on trying to correct her most recent mistake and put down her brush.
She leaned back to take in her unfinished piece, head tilted to sway her bangs out from her in front of her eyes. She could see where she needed to add more detail, but she didn’t trust herself not to ruin the whole thing with her sour mood. Instead, she turned to glance sidelong at Jean’s own work.
The subject was a landscape, like so many of his other works. Tall trees with sun-kissed leaves rose up, warped with subtle perspective as if a person were standing amidst the forest. Oil pastels were the perfect medium, distinct from his usual monochrome compositions. He was talented, she could admit that much.
Jean hadn’t noticed her staring, focused solely now on his work. She watched in silence as he added more detail to the shadows in the background. Deep forest green turned into the foreboding inky black of realistic shadow as he pressed down onto the paper. She thought she saw a flash of a hand through the illustrated trees, but shook it off with another sweep over his paper. There was no subject beyond the giant trees, no grasping hands in the shadows.
It was funny how the eyes played tricks on them, even in their artwork. Deceit had rooted itself into every aspect of humanity, it seemed. Color theory was just one of the many names for a lie.
Her faux-philosophical musings were cut short by sharp, honey-brown, eyes as they snapped up to her own. She hummed a noncommittal noise and turned back to her canvas, knowing how sensitive her club president could be about people seeing his artwork.
Funny, she couldn’t remember when he’d started to work on his pieces so openly around her.
A nerve pinched in her neck, and she straightened her posture to stretch it slowly. She’d been having more of those lately. Maybe she could use going to the doctor as an excuse to get out of her next competition.
“Where are the eyes?”
“What?” She kept a hand on her neck as she rubbed circles into her skin.
“Your painting, you’ve barely got the shadows for the sockets down.” Leave it to the club president to get nit picky about her portrait work.
“I haven’t added them yet.”
“And what’s with that nose?”
“You’re one to talk, horse-face.”
“Not you too! I swear that bastard’s got everyone calling me that…” Jean whined but returned to his own piece without saying more.
Annie shrugged him off and picked her brush back up. Despite trying to ignore Kirstien like she usually did, his words lingered in her head. She reached for the tubes of paint on the table and pulled them closer. Most were rolled like toothpaste or had their caps sealed by dry paint. The eyes were going to be an important part of the piece, she needed to find the balance between human and in-human.
Jean looked back up from his sketchbook and cocked his head to the side to stare at her piece. “I know I was giving you a hard time, but it does kind of look familiar…”
“Someone else in class is painting skinless giants?” She asked dryly and picked up a tube of cerulean blue before placing it back down, dissatisfied.
“No, no.” He waved an idle hand before tilting his head further and snapping his fingers. “I got it! He looks like Hoover!”
“Don’t let him hear you say that.”
“No seriously, I’m not trying to be an ass. It’s got his nose and that stick-in-the-mud frown.”
“Be careful now, compliment him too much more and Mikasa will be wishing you a happy honeymoon.”
“Haha, you’re so funny when we’re alone. You sure you’re not going to fall for me with all this sweet talk?”
“You wanna find out how paint water tastes?” She picked up her cup and swirled it threateningly.
Jean offered her a nervous grimace before leaning over the table. Instinctively, she leaned away from him as he neared her stool. He looked down at her paints, before poking one with an index finger.
“How about that one? It matches his eyes.” He’d chosen a small tube of palace green.
“Is this the part where you ask me to make a toast at your wedding?”
“It’s not weird to know his eye color! That’s what happens when you talk to someone!”
Annie uncapped it and added a sample amount to her palette. She hated to admit it, but the color would go well with the rest of the composition. She added soft off-white paint onto her palette as well and swiveled to face her accidental skinless recreation of a guy she barely knew.
“It’s not a bad thing you know, that it looks like him.” Jean lost the teasing tone in his voice. “Your painting just has that same reserved energy, like it's just going with the flow even when it doesn’t want to.”
She hummed out a response, but Jean never had the chance to hear it. A boom resonated out from the hallway, loud enough to make her club president clamp his hands over his ears. Her paints bounced off of the table and rolled away across the linoleum floor with a scattered amount of oil pastels and forgotten sketching pencils.
“What the fuck!” Jean shouted directly into her ear before he had the sense to lower his voice. “The hell was that?”
Annie was on her feet, brush and palette forgotten in her hands as she whipped around to face the classroom door. Shouts followed the noise, but they were muted by the walls. Still, she knew the noise had come from downstairs.
She burst out of the classroom and took her school's stairs two at a time to reach the first floor. Jean was hot on her heels, still muttering swears as they searched for the cause of the noise.
They found the source of the booming sound at the base of the stairwell, and Annie dug in the heels of her boots to stop herself from stepping in it. Soda flooded the hallway as it leaked from busted cans and an overturned vending machine. Jean barreled into her back and hit the floor, too distracted to realize why she had stopped so suddenly.
“Ugh, what the hell?!” He groaned as soda soaked into his pants, but Annie barely registered his complaints.
The football team was standing about in the hall with a notable portion of their school’s baseball team. Some were rightly skittish at the noise they’d made, but most were too busy swearing or laughing at one another to care about the flood of artificial sweeteners. A whole herd of morons, in Annie’s opinion, caught in the act.
Her lidded gaze sharpened as a particular pair of eyes looked up at their arrival. A golden gaze full of arrogance, and a smile she’d love to let meet the toe of her boot, greeted her. Reiner Braun, their school’s star quarterback and certified asshole, was front and center.
“Yo, Leonhart.” He offered her a smile, but his eyes narrowed nonetheless.
Annie didn’t bother to respond. The lump in her throat wouldn't let her even if she decided to say something. Instead, she did the smart thing and swallowed the boiling anger back down to simmer in her chest. Her fingers shook as she guided them into the pocket of her hoodie, her stance instinctively closed-off.
Jean stood up behind her, and she rounded on him with more aggression than he deserved.
“Just morons.” The words jutted out past her pressed lips.
She looked past him to stare at the green wall of lockers beside the stairs. She refused to look back at Braun. The idea of giving him any acknowledgement, any satisfaction, shook her to the bone with hatred.
Unfortunately, her club president was less keen to simply turn his back on the scene before them.
“Hey! Which one of you dumbasses knocked that over?” Jean jabbed a finger towards the battered vending machine.
“Does it matter?” Reiner replied with an easy smile, his gaze sliding past Jean, “Yo, Annie. Do you think it matters who knocked it over?”
No. Would have been her answer. Except she wasn’t going to respond at all. The whole situation was stupid and she’d die on the spot if this was the sort of event that forced her to talk to them.
Jean, in all his idiocy, saved her from having to respond. For once, she was grateful for his loud mouth.
“Of course it matters! Whoever did it owes me money for ruining my fucking pants! So speak up and pay up!”
“Oh? What’s the Art Club's little president gonna do ‘bout it?” A goon sneered and stepped forward.
Annie turned just enough to watch the jock approach, her hands poised to slip back out from her hoodie with a pencil clenched between her fingers. The dumbass seemed unconcerned as he strode closer, before being stopped by a hand on his shoulder.
“Let’s not fight,” The captain of the baseball team, Bodt, stepped forward calmly, “Jean, I’ll pay for it. For now, let’s all find some paper towels or a mop and clean this up.”
“Thanks, Marco.”
Annie had heard enough from Jean to know that Marco’s calm words would be enough to stamp out the brewing fight. She watched the jocks for a moment longer before relaxing her posture into a disinterested slouch as they all scrambled to find mops and paper towels. If there was one thing their school took seriously, it was cleaning. None of them wanted to get on the janitor's bad side, especially when the man could appear out of thin air.
“Care to lend a hand?” Reiner approached her, his own hands notably empty of any cleaning supplies.
She just glared at him. If he felt any of the hatred rolling off of her, he was very good at playing stupid.
“We can’t help. Our club room’s a mess thanks to you.” Jean was back at her side, his brief conversation with Marco finished.
Annie couldn’t decide if she wanted to hug him, or kick his ass. Jean was like her guardian angel, a very annoying guardian angel, swooping in between her and Reiner to deflect the conversation away from her.
Their classroom was far from the ‘total mess’ Jean had made it out to be. Aside from tubes of paint, stray pencils, and Jean’s oil pastels, the room was still intact. Annie stuffed the paints and brushes back onto the crowded supply shelf at the back of the room, before forcing her dry canvas into a worn leather bag.
Jean, as if sensing her residual frustrations, fiddled with his keys at the club room door as she prowled back through the tables.
“You, uh, need a ride?” He asked once she had reached the door with her bag’s straps strangled in her grip.
Annie glanced up at him as he held open the classroom door. Her eyes must have still held onto some of the sharpness she’d reserved for Reiner, as Jean took a half step back.
“I’m not trying anything! Trust me,” Jean made the motion to raise a placating hand, before his sketchbook dipped towards the floor and forced him to catch it in a one-armed struggle, “I’ve learned my lesson with that. Honestly. I just… well, I wouldn’t want to walk home everyday.”
He finished his thought somewhat lamely as Annie walked out into the empty hallway. She said nothing for a moment, too busy straining her ears to hear if anyone was still downstairs, before she finally replied as her sneakers found the top of the stairs.
“Yeah, sure.” She shrugged, not offering him a second glance as they descended, “Thanks.”
Warm afternoon sunlight bled through the double wide entry at the end of the hallway. Beyond it, the courtyard had been cleared of their idle club members. Some of whom she didn’t doubt had convinced some poor single-minded boys into driving them home with batted eyelashes and twirled hair.
The irony of her judgment almost escaped her, but not quite. Her situation was different, she insisted to herself, Jean was just another convenient way to escape the harbingers of her past. He was just a buffer.
Nothing but a buffer.
A sweet summer wind chased their languid figures across the school campus as Jean located his compact Volkswagen beetle in the parking lot. The obnoxious yellow of the body was carefully clean, as though a single speck of dirt could harm its driver’s attempts to be perceived as cool. Not that the vehicle itself was doing him any favors.
Jean unlocked the doors with a click of his keys, before sidestepping around the narrow nose of the car to open the passenger side door. Annie raised her brow, but slid into the cramped interior all the same. Her bag was forced between her feet as he closed her door. A moment later, when he ducked into the driver’s side and slammed the door closed, she felt her mouth open on impulse.
“Well now, aren’t you a gentleman.”
“Oh shut it,” He rolled his eyes, turning over his key as the engine started with a small whine, “Some of us have manners you know.”
“I don’t need them,” Annie looked away and out her window as they pulled away from the bleak grey and green face of their school, “Gentlemen are always keen to dote on a lady. Don’t you know?”
Her club president snorted in response, offering her an unimpressed look.
“Some lady you are, I’ve seen you fold people like origami.”
“Daz doesn’t count as people.”
“Well, I can’t argue with that.”
Thin white clouds rolled overhead, breaking up the sunlight into strips as it warmed the asphalt and concrete that cut through tall brick buildings and rich green parks. Trost was beautiful, in a quaint and secluded way. Annie still wasn’t used to it, in all honesty.
Her father had picked them up and moved without warning three years ago. It had been time for a fresh start, he’d said, a chance for new beginnings. No more broken promises. No more crying in her room alone. No more screaming about how she wished mom was still there. All of those promises, he’d made with her suitcase halfway in the trunk. She’d had no time for goodbyes, not that anyone she’d known in junior high would have noticed her absence. Not like any of them would have missed her.
At least, that’s what she’d convinced herself back then.
“Hey, so,” Jean side-eyed her as they rolled to a stop in town square, “Can I ask what Reiner’s problem is with you? I swear, anytime you’re around it's like he decides to be worse than usual.”
Annie watched a gaggle of elementary children run through the crosswalk, their smiles louder than their voices. The sight made her brows knit together. It teased the twinge of a migraine behind her temples. It hooked an aching pull into her chest.
“Who knows.” She muttered, all too aware of the doubting look he gave her.
The crossing guard waved them through not a moment too soon. Jean was forced to abandon his attempts to stare straight through her as traffic moved and urged his small car down the road.
“Fine,” He said after a moment, almost too softly for her to notice, “You don’t have to say.”
Annie turned her focus back out the window on her side, her head nearly resting against the glass as she unfocused her eyes and let the world blur together into splotches of green, blue, white, and red. The colors brought the world down to a simplified form, like paint on a pallet waiting to be smeared into a reflection of reality. Simple things were better to her, easier to digest. There was less confusion, less doubt on what to do next, less heartache when her expression was misinterpreted into something she had never meant.
The drive to her house went well past the heart of town. Out past the neat and orderly neighborhoods of picket fence yards and neat little lives. Her father had bought into one of Trost’s older neighborhoods, the kind where trees had grown old enough to lift the foundations and shroud neighbor’s from one another’s sight. The whole area was secluded even from itself, a perfect maze of isolation and unfilled potholes.
“Christ.” Jean hissed as his car bounced back up from an unexpected dip in the road, “That better not scratch.”
“Mhm.” Annie hummed back absently, but moved her head away from the window.
“Which one’s yours?” He asked finally, slowing down to peer at the faded street signs.
“Next road off to the left.” She said, moving to grab her bag from the floorboard, “But here is fine. I can walk.”
“Fuck that, I can pull up front.”
“Reiner lives across from me.” She told him, unsure of why she thought it would change anything.
Vaguely, she felt a little bit of appreciation lessen the hollow heat of the sun as her classmate set his face into a stubborn frown. He turned onto her street and slowed long enough to turn his head in her direction.
“Is that his problem? Some school boy crush that he thinks gives him the right to pick and choose who you walk around with?” His voice was serious, devoid of the usual drawl he added when he bickered with Eren.
“No,” Annie looked away to glance at her house down the street, “It's not that at all.”
“Are you going to tell me why you’re so resistant to the idea of him then? Come on, it's not like I can’t tell when you’re uncomfortable.”
His persistence made her shoulders square, but she didn’t move for the door. Instead, she stared down at the bag between her sneakers.
“We were friends once, when I lived somewhere else. I moved away, thought it didn’t matter, but I guess I was wrong.” Her mouth betrayed her once more as honesty rattled off her lips, “I wasn’t a good kid. I fought a lot. Hurt the people around me, kids that I thought had it better than I did. Really, we were all in fucked up places. So when I had the chance, I left without a second glance, never even apologized to everyone I left behind. I’m sure they all still hate me for it. We were supposed to all escape together, after all.”
Her words were left to hang in silence. She kept her eyes on her shoes. They were so much nicer than what she used to wear, before her father’s job had taken off and her fights had started to offer cash prize pools. Part of her thought they didn’t fit her, that they were just another layer to the lies she lived in like a second skin. She wasn’t worthy of nice things, of pretty things, her whole childhood had made it clear they were always supposed to be beyond her.
Suddenly, a hand found her shoulder. Warm and firm as it snapped her attention away from the paint-splattered toes of her shoes. Jean had parked his car halfway down her street, she realized now that she’d never offered him her exact address, and he had turned to offer her his complete attention.
“Annie, there’s nothing wrong with leaving the past behind you.” Jean kept his hand where it was when she made no move to pull away, “Trust me when I say, I understand. Maybe… maybe my life hasn’t been as rough as yours, but I left who I was before behind when I started at this school too. Believe it or not, I wasn’t always this cool, or handsome, or smart, or…”
“Humble?” She offered, unable to hide the amusement in her tone.
“Exactly!” He grinned, moving his hand to shoot a finger gun at her, “My point is, no one stays the same forever. We’re just not built to. We all change, you clearly have, and if Reiner can’t accept that then he doesn’t deserve to get to know the new you. Right?”
“Right.” She echoed, her shoulder still warmed from his touch.
Her hand curled around the door handle as she pushed herself to get out before things got too insufferably positive. Her lips pushed against their usual solid line as she got out onto the uneven curb and hauled her bag up onto her shoulder. Just as she moved to close the door, she paused long enough to find Jean’s eyes on her. His gaze was persistent, still attempting to stare through her, but she didn’t shrink from it now.
“Jean… thanks for the ride.”
“Of course,” He offered her an uneven smile, as if he were treading an uncertain line, “I guess I’ll see you when you get back from your competition?”
“Actually,” She slid her hands up the strap of her bag, “I was thinking I’d stay to work on my piece, if Mr. Zacharias leaves the club room open this weekend.”
She could see a surprised look flicker in Jean’s eyes. It was unusual for her to put anything above fighting after all. Recently, however, there seemed to be something worthwhile in letting her thoughts air out from the cramped confines of her mind.
“Right then,” His grin was almost infectious as he leaned back against the steering wheel, “Let me know if you need a ride then, Annie.”
“I will.” She told him, surprised to find that she meant it.
As she stepped back from the curb and turned her head enough to watch the bumper of his car disappear around a corner, the clouds blew from overhead to let the afternoon sky shine its full brilliant blue. As though her lonely giant had stepped out from her painting to make his way somewhere far from her.