crimson canvas

Characters: Annie Leonhardt, Armin Arlert

Summary: The colours she chooses tell a story.

Reincarnation AU

Black paint splashes onto the canvas and the blond girl frowns. It is too dark, too depressing – even to her who she is dubbed the Black Queen by many of her peers. She does not know why she feels dread whenever she sees the black-haired girl with the red scarf or the brunette with the grin that tells a tale of boldness and inner freedom, a freedom that is so foreign for her.

She sees how the boy with the bright green eyes, the eyes that shine with determination paints his canvas. He draws and in the same time, he tells stories – stories of the fight for freedom, stories about how some things just cannot be surrendered. And she wonders why her own pictures never tell such stories. She watches how the freckled boy paints bright pictures, pictures that embody hope and optimism – and she sees him, leaning against a wall of a house in some town she has never been too with half of his body missing.

She feels sick, then. And she focuses on using brighter colours, the same colours the petite blonde next to her uses because if she has to tell a story, she can always lie and if necessary, she will lie. Her life is dark and sad and unhappy but no one forces her to tell about this. She is feeling okay, after all.

Those memories were maybe the memories of a past life, of a life she wants to forget, to erase with all her might and where it is impossible – she wants to paint all over it until she forgets how to remember. It works for her. If someone asks her whether she does remember anything, she says that no, she has long forgotten about everything, that it has slipped her mind.

It is a lie, though.

She does remember. She does remember how she has killed the girl with the auburn hair. She does remember being threatened by the lunatic who was now the president of the students' council and she wonders whether they have forgotten her. She does not think so. That life may not have been the one previous to the current one and she remembers that she has seen their faces elsewhere before.

She wonders why no one hates her, why they all seem to accept her as who she is and when they have stopped to see her as who she has been – in another lifetime.

The boy who has tried to trick her – and who has nearly succeeded sits next to her, sometimes. He, too, carries a burden she knows nothing about and she does not ask. They listen to the Pastor – how ironic given that he is still the same, even after so many lifetimes where they have all loathed him – and the old man rambles on and on about how they are supposed to love their enemies.

She wonders how the man means it whether she is supposed to hug the young man, whether she is supposed to seduce him. She sure as hell will never open up to him because even in this life, his eyes simply see too much and he might try to give her the absolution for her previous sins – sins she knows she could never wash off her hands, no matter how hard she tries to redeem herself.

Yet, it is the scarfed girl – in this life and all the others, too – who manages to break through her crystal hard shell. "You take too much pleasure in suffering and hating yourself," she says and she is right.

It is true. The one once known as Annie Leonhardt does not run from her demons because she is her own demon. The memories of her own deaths do not affect her as much as they affect everyone else because she feels like she is truly guilty. And while there is no one chasing her, she chases herself, forces herself to remember and with the eternal replay of memories of death, horror and destruction comes the endless suffering.

She uses more white that day, white to contrast the black. And a tiny dash of scarlet, red for the scarf the girl always wears.

Around her, everyone dreams. There is he, the one who has always held onto his dreams, even amidst the greatest terror. She envies him. He is always content with himself and she feels like she has a disadvantage because she simply cannot love herself that way.

Some call her the Ice Queen as opposed to the Black Queen and she does not know why.

There are others than her who deserve the title more because while she has a heart of ice, even now, she is the furthest from a queen. She has never wanted to be a queen, has never wanted to be a warrior either. If she tries to remember the only dream she has ever had, it would be the dream to be accepted and loved, not to be shunned and disliked by everyone.

On those days, days when she is called Queen somewhere, her pictures lack colour and are only black and white and grey.

There are other days, days when the blond one, the one she has called Armin in one life and Vincent in another, talks to her about the sea and all the other beautiful things he has seen. She is not sure whether he remembers her as Annie or as someone else – and if given the right to choose, she would like him to remember her as Cécile because this has been a life she has always been proud of because she has been truly innocent, then.

But she does not think that he cares either way.

She may not know the sin he has burdened onto himself but she knows that he has sinned as well, if not in a life where they have known each other, then in another one. Not that she has any right to judge because her own sin still weighs heavy on her shoulders.

He also talks about beautiful things, like the starry sky she loves to paint because it is dark and yet beautiful. He sometimes says that it reminds him of her and she can only reply that it is his reflection at times as well. They are both right, she remembers when she paints another canvas in blue and gray before she adds small golden highlights – just as golden as his hair.

He rather paints summer days for a reason she cannot perceive but sometimes, when he looks up from his canvas, she catches him looking and his sapphire eyes gleam knowingly, just like he could truly see the darkness inside of her.

He says nice things to her, sometimes, when they are all alone in the atelier and she helps him to add the shadows the clouds throw onto his meadows and hills. "Shadows are my specialty," she tries to joke but they both cannot really laugh about it. His eyes are nearly sympathetic but then, there is something else, a riddle she cannot solve.

Autumn turns into winter and the pictures of black, white, gray and red slowly gain more colours. She leaves her comfort zone when she paints a picture entirely in blue and green and a warm shade of brown, a path amidst a forest. She does not understand why her palette gains colours she has never been able to see – or why the quality of her pictures goes up. She only knows that the one everyone has once called Potato Girl is suddenly her friend which feels awkward because they got absolutely nothing in common but the fact that they both like art class.

And yet, she finds herself helping with a mural for the cafeteria.

The blond one is still there, walking and working next to her. She wonders why, why he has not left her yet. He has stayed for a very, very long time after all and she is used to being left after a short span of time.

She starts to understand what the scarfed girl has meant with her outburst. They are all fighting for something she has taken for granted so long but sanity is a precious good after one too many reincarnations and no one can afford to drag their inner demons from one life into the next one and even the one after that. She has never listened before but this time, it is so glaringly obvious that the stoic one is right. She listens now.

She slowly learns to trust not only herself but also others. She cannot love herself and she cannot remember ever having been able to and so she cannot love others either, weird as it seems. And within her love for the art – the only thing that will never be able to betray her, she discovers something a tragic and depressing truth.

As long as she cannot love herself, she will not be able to realise that someone loves her. Her love for the few things she loves is genuine, she knows that even though she does not know why. She loves the smell of fresh paint just as she loves the scent of wild flowers.

Furiously, she keeps painting pictures that reflect her in some way but all she ends of producing are pictures that remind her of him. She curses about this. She cannot seriously reflect him where she is supposed to draw a reflection of herself after all. He is no help either, going on and on about the genuine 'despair' he feels radiating from her latest picture even though it is a start that her despair is indeed showing, that she manages to communicate her emotions somehow.

But she has meant to portray her passion, her love for the one thing she has always been good at – besides being a traitor.

He has to the gall to tell her that maybe, she is trying to hard to make up for past mistakes. She glares and tells him to leave her alone. He stands his ground.

She grabs the red paint and throws it at the picture.

And as the crimson drops to the ground like blood, she feels strangely relieved.

"What's that?" the teacher asks, having not noticed the heated exchange before.

She looks away. "Freedom," she says softly. "This is freedom."