Fire here~

A/N: This oneshot is the product of listening to AoT ost while trying to write something in Creative Writing Class...Critique welcome!

Fairy Tail Ending readers: Ice is still very, very busy, probably more so than before! FTE is currently in hibernation mode until Ice finds time, but don't worry, she hasn't forgotten about it. As for updates, I would probably predict an update coming up during one of the long breaks...but I wouldn't count on it.

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She sees him talking animatedly to his friends, eyes wide and happy, arms gesticulating wildly as he tries to convey something. She eyes his figure critically, noting the lean shape of his form and arms. He's handsome, she supposes. Fit and able. He isn't bulky, like some of those body builders, but neither is he a stick. Some would consider him ideal.

She thinks that they're stupid, because Eren is anything but ideal. He's stubborn and completely lacking in common sense. But he's earnest. Disgustingly earnest, she tells herself, idiotic in the way that he continuously bares his soul to the world, demanding a change in the unchangeable system. He's pigheaded that way, and that's what makes his stupid resolve so infallible. He has a fiery energy to him, a wild spark that lends him a rebellious air.

She tells herself that this means nothing to her.

She watches him break free of his little group of friends, and jog over to her. She knows her face is unreadable, as usual. But her icy aura and no nonsense clothing does not stop him from coming over and greeting her with a slight blush and a "Hey, Annie."

She doesn't even hear his words. She can only see his green eyes and the transparent hope behind them.

"What are you doing here? I thought you were at track," he says, laughingly, as he continues: "finally decided to ditch practice?"

"Maybe."

"And you chose to come to the cafeteria? I thought you hated noisy places."

I do. But I wanted to see you.

"You should go back to your friends," she says instead, closing her eyes briefly.

"Huh?"

"You should go back. I mean it," she says again, before turning away, the most honest words she's ever said to him flying out of her mouth and hitting him in the face. She doesn't look back. She already knows what his expression is, slack-jawed and eyes wide with that furrow in his eyebrows that appears when he's stuck on a particular confusing trig problem -

"Wait, what's going on? Are you okay? Did I do something? What - "

"Eren. Just...just stop. I'm not like you guys." She heads back towards the gym, knowing that Coach Levi will make her run ten more laps for being so late, and for the first time, she welcomes it. She feels the stares of strangers, and she ignores them.

"Annie! Wait!"

She knows he won't catch up, because by now, his friends have noticed, and they'll stop him from chasing after her. She knows, because his friends have never approved of her, with her immaculate grades and stoic demeanor and blunt words.

They're right not to trust her.

She's not who Eren thinks she is.

"ANNIE! Damn it, Annie, turn around and face me!"

She has to try very, very hard to stop herself from running away. Because that's all she's been doing this whole time, running away. He's just never realized what she was trying to say this whole time. She continues to walk, keeping her steps steady and muted, ruthlessly trying to extinguish the vestigial connection he has to her.

She knows he still doesn't understand. She knows because she looks back, just before she disappears into the gym door, and her eyes meet his.

They are the color of the pine forest after the rain. A whole forest, a whole world, tucked under the green of his eyes. They are confused and dark, almost pleading, the ephemeral glow to them clearer than ever as he asks, "Why?"

Because I think I like you, too.

Because this could never work out.

She doesn't answer.