Her phone rings. It's Eren's ringtone—Paralyzer by Finger Eleven—and so Annie answers immediately; he usually doesn't call this early (he would have barely gotten off his patrol by now), but Eren has always had issues with predictability.

"Eren?" she asks, leaning against the kitchen counter.

A pause.

"Hey, Annie. Where are you?" His voice is a little harsher than normal; there's a rawness to it that only comes out when he's angry.

"At home," she says. "What's up with you?"

Another pause. When he speaks again, he's much more collected.

"Sorry. Jean was more of a dick than normal today; I didn't mean to take it out on you. Are you doing anything tonight?"

"Not really," she shrugs, even though he can't see it. "Why? And what'd he do?"

"Would you like to come over?"

She frowns. "Isn't Mikasa there?"

"No, not tonight. She's with Levi. Jean caught them making out on Levi's desk when he went in to deliver a case file. He wouldn't shut up about it all day; the idiot's practically inconsolable."

Annie laughs. "Are you serious?"

"I wish I wasn't," he says; he seems to laugh almost despite himself, cutting it off instantly. "So? You coming over?"

"Got nothing better to do." Her smile bleeds into her voice. "I'll see you soon."

She hangs up.

About half an hour later, Annie arrives at the front door of Eren's apartment block. His flat might be less than ten minutes away from hers, but even though she rarely acknowledges it, Annie is still a woman, and she's not going to visit her boyfriend looking like she just got home from work. She presses the buzzer for Unit Five, and a few seconds later the door clicks unlocked; opening and shutting it behind her, she moves through the short hallway leading to the stairs, climbing the first flight. Reaching Eren's door, she makes to turn the doorknob and, finding it unlocked, pushes the wooden frame forward.

She's only taken one step into the flat when her whole world shatters. Because Eren is sitting on the couch, facing her, madness in his eyes and a gun levelled at her chest. The pistol is sleek, built to kill and kill well. A vague part of her mind thinks it resembles her.

"Lock the door." His voice is harsh and cruel, and it punches through her like a bullet.

"Eren..." The name slips out before she can control herself.

"Lock. The. DOOR."

And so she does, slowly and carefully. Eren gestures with the gun toward the loveseat opposite the couch, and Annie obeys the unspoken demand and sits down. In many ways, she's glad; her whole body is shaking, and she's not sure how much longer she could keep her feet. She might have been expecting this moment ever since they kissed for the second time, but that doesn't make it hurt any less.

"I talked to Armin today," and of course it was Armin, he of the kind eyes and quicksilver mind—the nicest and most dangerous man you're ever likely to meet—who found her out, "and you know what he said, Annie? He said you were a member of the Titans. He said you were one of their moles in the police force. He said you were a traitor."

"And you believed him? Just like that?" Annie's not sure what's worse: the fact she bothered to ask, or the fact there's a part of her that hopes against hope that the answer is no.

"No. Fuck you. You don't get to ask questions like that, Annie. If that's even your fucking name."

Even though his voice wavers, the gun never does.

"Operation Shiganshina, Operation Trost, Marco, Franz, Mina... how could you? How could you do that to us? To me? I fucking loved you, and all the while you've been working for the fucking bastards who killed my mother."

Annie refuses to believe the heat in the corners of her eyes is a prelude to tears, because she is a Leonhardt and it will take more than a breaking heart to break her. She's always been good at lying to herself. It's the first time Eren's ever admitted out loud that he loves her, and even though she's never needed the confirmation, to receive it like this...

She looks up, because Eren deserves to see her face—because she might be breaking but she will not bow—and it's then she sees it in his eyes. Hope. It's hidden behind a maelstrom of rage and pain, behind a cracked, broken-glass-and-bleeding mirror of his usual intensity, but it's there. Even though Armin probably spent an hour convincing him of her guilt, there's a part of Eren that doesn't want to believe. He's always seen the 'good' in her, even when she knows it doesn't exist.

And Annie knows she could use this. She could lie, could twist the truth and take advantage of every aspect of Eren that makes him Eren, because he loves the way he hates: with all-consuming passion. Like wildfire.

But she won't. Annie's sick of living a lie—a sickness like poison, churning in her gut every time he looks at her with softness in his eyes—and if there's a part of her that can't bear to see him in pain, well, maybe that's making itself known, too.

Instead, she is silent beneath the fury of his gaze; the lonely beach in those final few moments before the tsunami hits. She's not quite crying, but something in her thinks she should be.

"Answer me!" Eren snarls, his voice—raw, desperate agony—hooking into her like a claw and raking her apart from the inside. "For fuck's sake, Annie, I just want to know why!"

"I'm sorry, Eren," Annie says, the words leaking from her mouth like blood. "I never meant to hurt you."

They're platitudes, and useless ones at that, but she's not lying. She just doesn't know what else to say.

Silence falls.

"Yeah, and I'll bet you never meant for me to find out either." There is no fire in his tone, any more. Only ash.

When Annie next speaks—seconds, minutes, or hours later, she's not really sure—her voice is smooth, like ice on the surface of a lake. Even she's not sure how deep the fault-lines go. "What are you going to do with me?"

"I should arrest you." There is no hesitation. "No. I should kill you. Prison would be too kind after what you've done."

Then he lowers the gun, slumping backward the way men do when their throats are cut. Annie's mind has always been a little morbid.

"But I won't. I can't. I don't want to. I love you even when it hurts. Even when I'd give anything to just look at you and feel nothing. Good job, Annie. Did you do it for the irony? Some drunken game between you and your Titan buddies? 'I dare you to make one of them love you!'. Well, congra—"

"Fuck you, Eren."

Eren's expression is almost comical. While he's always been a fan of profanity—he swears like a fire spitting sparks—Annie rarely, if ever, curses out loud. She's usually far too much in control for that.

"You know what my father told me, just before I left for the Academy? 'Treat the whole world as your enemy.' If I'd been doing my job, I never would have come anywhere near you. I was never supposed to get close to anybody. You're not a joke, Eren. We're not a joke."

"Well it sure fucking feels like it," he says, but his voice is missing an edge, no longer as sharply vicious as lightning.

"Have you ever known me for my sense of humour?" The conversation is almost banal; but, then again, it's not the words that matter. They never really have, when it comes to the two of them.

Eren barks a laugh, harsh like a gunshot, before running a hand through his hair. "What the fuck are we doing, Annie? You're everything I've hate, yet here we are."

"I never know what I'm doing when it comes to you," she says, and maybe she's starting to sound like she belongs in some shitty romance novel, but clichés only become clichés because they're true.

He smiles; it's not quite bitter, in the way manslaughter is not quite murder. "Where do we go from here?"

"Where even is here?"

"I wish I fucking knew."

It is in that moment that she understands what she must do. Annie stands up, all raw grace and provocative arrogance; though his eyes track her, he makes no move toward his gun. "Fight me."

"What?" Eren jerks to his feet, probably before he realises he's even moving.

"You know you want to," she says, voice curling into a taunt. It's stupid and reckless and so very Eren of her, but he's always dealt with—always understood—his problems through violence, and Annie can't think of anything else. "Come on. Attack me. I'm just a fragile little girl; don't you want to see how easily the traitor breaks?"

"Annie." He growls her name like it's something dark and dangerous. "Cut this shit out."

"Make me."

He lunges toward her, and her whole world narrows to the lines of his body. One punch, two, three; Eren's abandoned technique and style and finesse—everything he ever learned from her—for simply swinging. It's childishly simple to slide between them and take out his legs with a sweeping kick; he falls, and she falls with him, pinning him to the ground with her legs around his waist and an elbow on his throat. She's left his arms free, but for a moment they just sit there in silence, gazes locked. Then Eren's eyes narrow and her world twists; Annie slams into the carpet on her back, so hard the impact drives the breath from her body.

Eren looms over her, hair falling over his eyes, locking her body to the floor with every inch of his own. Time stretches out like she's trapped on the edge of a black hole, until something shifts, and before she can react Eren's mouth is covering her own. The kiss is hard and biting; Eren's almost consuming her, but she plunges into it regardless, fighting him for control even as she tastes the blood on her lips. There aren't many things that make Annie feel alive. This is one of them.

Her clothes are not so much slipped off as torn from her body - though, of course, she gives as good as she gets. Eren is normally a considerate lover; this time, he sinks into her without a word of warning, and her first, sharp gasp isn't entirely from pleasure. The sex is angry, rough, and desperate, but Annie doesn't particularly care. This wasn't about her.

They lie there in silence, after, and she wishes she knew what was going on inside his head. Then, he lifts it, and stares into her eyes as if they conceal all the mysteries of the multiverse. Perhaps they do.

When Eren kisses her the second time, he's as close to gentle as he ever gets.

Eventually—in snatches, and not always with words—they talk for hours. He's the first person to ever learn of her childhood. It's almost cathartic, like scouring her soul with acid. Annie's no fool; Eren hasn't forgiven her, and he certainly doesn't trust her. He just knows what she once denied for so many years. The two of them are a natural disaster; terrifying, devastating, as inevitable as death and all the more beautiful for it.

Theirs is a love like Icarus - it might all end in tears and screaming, but oh, the flight.

When they fall asleep—in Eren's bed—neither of them are particularly sure of where they will be in morning's light.

The apartment's phone rings, waking Annie from her slumber; Eren is seemingly still asleep next to her, and so she rolls blearily out of bed, taking a shirt out of his closet and tossing it on. She pads across the floor, and, when she reaches the phone—the one connected to the buzzer—she picks it up it; upon hearing the voice, she presses the necessary button to grant entry and hangs up.

Maybe a minute later, there's a knock at the door; she walks over and pulls it open.

"Hello, Armin."

"Annie," he returns, apparently unsurprised. She steps back wordlessly and allows him entry, his eyes no doubt noticing the gun resting on the couch alongside the clothes strewn all across the floor. Annie walks over to the couch and sits down, almost crossing her legs before remembering she's only wearing a shirt. Armin takes the loveseat, and waits in silence. He's always been good at that; there's a kindness about Armin, something that draws everyone to him like a priest in their confessional. Even Annie has been tempted, at times.

Now, she gives in.

"What do you want?" She's not sure if Armin notices the not-quite-defeat in her tone; there are precious few who would know her well enough to pick it. One of them is asleep in the next room.

"What do you want?"

"For you to stop playing games," Annie snaps; she's still tired, still reeling from night before, and her voice is harsh and jagged like a broken blade. "We both know why you're here."

Armin nods. "You're a good person, Annie. Eren wouldn't love you if you weren't. And you're in a unique situation - you're the first mole we've ever found. That leaves certain... options available to you. Options I'm sure you've probably considered."

"How many others know?" She's never been one for making friends, but there are a few of Eren's whose company she can tolerate.

"Eren was the first person I told once I was sure."

She's just about to speak when her skin shivers, and she just knows Eren watching her. He's never been subtle, and especially not when it comes to her - even in public, even before they were ever together, his eyes would slide over her body, kissing her in every way he couldn't. In every place he couldn't. It's been a long time since Annie was able to convince herself that she didn't enjoy it.

But he doesn't move closer. The silence stretches out, and, if she was feeling dramatic, she'd say it felt like the world was stretching with it - her fate poised between contradictions, and her soul unsure whether the right move was to fight, or to fall.

Eventually, she makes a decision.

"What do you want me to do?"

Annie pretends she can't feel Eren's smile.

It is with this, my friends, that I bring you an apology. What you read here was not, originally, a one-shot. Instead, it was the ending of a much longer fic - of which I have written 6,200 words. Unfortunately, as much as I want to, I cannot finish that fic. I've already written all the interesting scenes for it (the ending scene you read here was what I wrote first), and, though I have tried for months, the other, less-dramatic-but-equally-necessary scenes just will not form.

I may end up posting those other scenes, too, under different titles (the whole story itself was meant to be named Icarus, not just this scene). It depends on whether or not I judge them to actually make sense as stand-alone pieces. We shall see.

Regardless, I am sorry - I wish it did not have to be this way.

On a lighter note, thanks for reading - here's hoping you liked it!