I’ll be home in a little while

[warrioreidlos]

Their make-shift guard tower creaks faintly underneath Reiner as he repositions his weight, staring out over the desolate street leading up to the compound. They've tried to clear it out as much as possible, but there is some debris that simply cannot be moved; the wreck of some high exec's midlife crisis stands rusting to the side, testament to all the former decadence of the world. At least there are no bodies. They are always careful to burn those. Nobody needs to smell the rot constantly, after all.

A small movement catches his sight, and Reiner tightens his grip on his gun, immediately coming to attention. Watch shifts tend to be boring with nothing but long stretches of quiet staring out over the wall, but when they get bad, they tend to get bad really quick. It wouldn't be the first time they had a horde of dead show up underneath their wall, forcing them to work hour after hour to dispatch them all.

Another small movement tells him it was no figment of his imagination and he brings his gun at the ready. Soon he can see it clearly, a small figure coming down the desolate street, heading towards their walls. Breathing out slowly, he raises the gun so he can line up his sights, waiting. Nothing but a headshot will do, after all, and there is not sense wasting ammo on a-- No. No.

With a quick motion he jerks his gun down again, eyes wide. That-- That is no zombie. Those movements are too precise to belong to someone without brain function. Trying to keep calm, he fumbles for the binoculars so he can get a better look. Even if it might not be a zombie, that doesn't mean it is safe. It could be a lone survivor, someone looking to trade or someone looking for a place to stay. But it could just as easily be someone half-starved and half-mad, driven so crazy by the world that they are as dangerous, sometimes even more so, as a common walker.

A closer look at the stranger tells them they are well dressed for the situation, armed too but who isn't during these times. No limping. Not the look of someone driven half mad. A trader then. Or someone trying to find a place to stay. It wouldn't be the first time they had taken people in. They could always use a hand or two around here. Raising his binocular slightly, he takes another look, and then he is dropping them, nearly tripping over his own two feet as he hurries down the tower. There is only one person with that profile, only one person who could hack zombie infested terrain on her own for weeks and come out looking like she just took a stroll in the park.

Not bothering to signal anything to anyone else, forgetting completely about the fact that she could carry the infection in her blood, hell, forgetting about the fact that really they never got along too well, Reiner tosses open the gate, pelting down street to meet her halfway so he can toss his arms around her, sweeping Annie up in a bone-crushing hug, tangling his fingers with her grimy hair, practically mashing her face into his shoulder.

Sure, he had projected nothing but confidence towards Bertolt whenever the subject of her would come up in those weeks they had been separated, nothing could hurt Annie, she could hack this, but that had been for a lack of wanting to even consider the alternative, and now, thank fucking god, he doesn't have to.

Comments

[sweeptheleg]

To say that Annie had seen some shit in her lifetime was an understatement. But her time in the desert, both as a marine and a private contractor had nothing on the way the world collapsed, crumbling under their feet. That threat--call them walkers, ghouls, zombies-- the enemy that they faced had changed the game unimaginably.

Annie adapted.

Annie had always adapted. She's already scouted out this compound location well before she had been spotted. It had seemed like a worthwhile raid target at first, protected more against the flesh eating threat than the one that was just looking to get by. The human element was as big a danger sometimes, she'd have been, but then she had also recognized him up in his makeshift guard tower. Reiner Braun was two hundred plus pounds of muscle and determination. He'd been a part of the security detachment her contract had her consulting for.

He carried a lot of the same sins she did.

She'd thought they'd died out there, the night they'd been separated. She imagines they'd thought the same-- or maybe not they, she catches herself thinking. She hasn't seen Bertolt.

What she didn't expect was for him to do everything. Drop his guard, rush out there, and she barely knows how to react when strong, surprisingly comforting and wrap around her. She goes rigid, unresponsive, locking up because--

"What the hell, Braun-" she hisses. They're outside. Dammit, they're vulnerable here. Hell, he couldn't know she wasn't infected, slowly, but inevitably losing it to that threat. He didn't know if she had gone half feral on them, like the people that just couldn't hack it in this world and snapped entirely. He didn't know anything, so why the fuck what he crushing her to his chest.

She doesn't know why she's shaking, trembling in his hold.

[warrioreidlos]

Of course it is still they. If Bertolt wouldn't be here, neither would Reiner be. They had been together for too long to separate over petty things, and should Bertolt have died, either by human hands or those of the dead, Reiner certainly wouldn't be alive. No matter how physically impressive he might be, mentally he's fraying too badly underneath everything that has happened, everything he has and has not done.

They are not quite as vulnerable out here as Annie imagines. They sweep the surrounding ground pretty regularly when they go out on a raid. In addition to that, the surrounding streets have some traps and barricades, curtsey of Armin's brain, that seem to stem the flow of zombies to one focal point, the one focal point he had been keeping an eye out on.

He doesn't even notice how rigid she goes in his arms, too distracted, half babbling. "Annie, fuck. Where have you-- Wait until Bertl sees this. Oh god, he's gonna freak. He's been worrying about you." One sentence comes tumbling out after the other, as if he isn't finishing one thought before voicing the next, caught between squeezing her and trying to pull her to the compound, and glancing over his shoulder, as if he is trying to spot Bertolt.