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Armin has always been small for his age, but Shiganshina has never felt particularly big, either.
No matter where he is, he doesn’t have to do much to find the rise of Wall Maria. It’s there, in the distance, when he opens his curtains to let the sunlight in each morning. Outside, he need only take a few steps to the right or a couple to the left and tilt his head just so to catch sight of weathered stone, the outline of a cannon atop it. He made a game of it one summer: he walked around the district, trying to find a standpoint from where he couldn’t see Wall Maria. He would take a few steps, look in all directions until he sighted it, then move on and look around again. It’s why he was first called a heretic; a group of older boys cornered him to ask what he was doing. It’s also how he first met Eren.
Heretic sticks, but so does Eren.
Afterward, he takes to walking with his head down. Preferably with his nose in one of his grandfather’s books. It’s easier to ignore the people who stare at him that way, especially if he doesn’t have his friend there to glare right back at them and pick fights with the older boys who seem to hound Armin wherever he goes.
When Eren takes him along to collect firewood beyond the district’s inner gate, he learns he can lie beneath the trees and look up to see only snatches of bright blue sky between their leaves. The light that makes it through the canopy makes his eyes sting if he stares too long. He likes it best there anyway.
— . . . —
“This is Armin,” says Eren. “He’s my best friend.” He nods at Armin, then says, “This is Mikasa. She’s my sister.”
Armin hesitates at how easily Eren says sister, but he recovers quickly. He offers her a smile, extends his hand. “It’s nice to meet you,” he says, hoping he sounds friendly, encouraging.
The girl—Mikasa—stares at Armin’s outstretched hand for a long moment before she takes it. “Likewise,” she says quietly, her words muffled by the scarf someone wound around her neck and up to her nose.
Then she meets his eyes.
He heard a little about what had happened. Dr. Jaeger stepped out onto the porch when Armin finally mustered up the courage to visit. Truth be told, Armin had been worried the reason Eren hadn’t gone out of his way to find him like he always did was whoever his father took him to meet made a better friend than Armin did, and Eren didn’t want to bother with a weakling like him anymore. Hearing Eren needed time to recover was its own kind of relief, but it left him feeling even guiltier than before. So he nodded dumbly while the doctor assured him that, no, their injuries weren’t at all serious, but the situation had been, and he and Eren’s mother felt it would be best if Eren and Mikasa took a little more time to adjust, as a family.
Just a few minutes ago, when Eren and the girl Armin could only assume was Mikasa found him sitting by the river, he’d had to clamp down on the stupid urge to hug Eren, to check him over for injuries himself. He’d barely looked at her—let alone met her gaze—until now.
Her face is devoid of emotion. Armin feels his breath catch in his throat, and something in Mikasa’s eyes shifts in response. It’s so subtle he very nearly doesn’t pick up on it, but he realizes. She’s studying him.
Eren claps his hand on Armin’s shoulder, and the moment passes.
“She’s quiet,” Eren says, and Armin turns away from Mikasa to look at him. “And pretty weird to boot, but—”
“Eren!” Armin says sharply, looking between him and Mikasa.
“What?” He sounds genuinely confused.
But Mikasa doesn’t seem bothered at all. She gently extracts her fingers from Armin’s hand, ignoring his stuttered apologies on both his and Eren’s behalf, and stands perfectly still. She makes it look easy, as if she were carved out of marble. He is so involved in watching her, wondering about her, that it takes him a moment to process that she’s watching him again too. He looks away quickly, feeling the tips of his ears go hot with embarrassment.
“Eren,” Mikasa says, “your mother asked us to buy vegetables from the market for dinner.”
“Oh, yeah.” Eren sighs. “Wanna come with us, Armin?”
He feels Eren’s eyes on him, warm and expectant. Mikasa is looking at him too, and Armin chances a glance at her, he finds that she does not look opposed to the idea. There is something in their faces that settles him. Armin feels himself pull back from the doubt he’s been wrestling with for days.
So he nods. “S-sure.”
Then Eren grins, slings an arm around Armin’s shoulders, and Mikasa falls into step easily beside them.
— . . . —
They part after leaving the produce stand, but not before Eren manages to extract a promise to come over for dinner out of him. “It was our parents’ idea,” he tells him, and shrugs. “You could even sleep over, if you want.”
Armin does end up sleeping over. He and Eren share a bundle of blankets on the floor to let Mikasa have the mattress, but she ends up perching herself on the edge of their impromptu bedding anyway once Armin pulls out his grandfather’s book. They read by candlelight, passing the book between them so they all can get a good look at the pictures.
After the house has gone dark and quiet, Armin finds himself staring at the discolorations that mottle Eren’s throat. They seem an even deeper maroon by the pale moonlight that trickles through the curtains. Eren opens his eyes, watches Armin watch him.
Finally, Armin whispers, “Does it still hurt?”
Eren shakes his head. The sheets ruffle softly with his movement.
His hand is reaching out, tentatively, before he even knows what he’s doing. Eren doesn’t jerk away or resist, but Armin stops halfway all the same. His hand rests between them, a few inches from Eren’s neck.
“Are you okay?” he tries.
Eren’s eyes are very dark in the shadows, full of an outrage Armin has only caught glimpses of before. “I had to do it,” he says. “I wouldn’t have been able to live with myself if they’d taken her.” His voice is thick with surety. “Besides, I’ll have to face worse than those animals when I’m in the Scouting Legion.”
Armin does not point out that he didn’t answer the question, or that no one has told him the details about what happened, so he doesn’t know what the it Eren had to do is. He just nods.
A cool breeze blows in through the open window. He shivers. Wordlessly, Eren reaches out to pull at some of the blankets until he’s tucked them under Armin’s chin. He closes his eyes again after that.
Armin listens. To the deep rhythm of Eren’s breathing, to the whisper of the curtains against the windowsill. He inhales the scent of Eren’s warmth—a faint tang of sweat and a note of something like wood as its fed to the fire. He listens for Mikasa too, but she breathes so quietly he can’t quite make it out.
Eventually, he falls into a restless sleep, the image of Eren with his eyes swollen shut and his skin pale as death haunting him throughout the night.
— . . . —
It’s difficult at first, but Armin learns to read Mikasa: the firm lines of her posture and set of her mouth, the linger of her stare and the warmth she keeps under her ever-present scarf. He learns of her private pain through the depth of the loyalty she shows to those who have pulled her from it. Some of the other children look at her and see a girl devoid of feeling, but Armin finds it in the bite of her disapproval at Eren’s mention of the Scouting Legion, the way her eyes go even colder when she chases the boys who Eren’s been picking fights with on his behalf since they met. With them, it’s hard not to feel extraneous.
The first time Armin understands, they are racing to Wall Maria’s inner gate. Eren is in the lead. He turns to look over his shoulder, yells something Armin can’t make out over the swell of the midday crowds, the frantic pounding of his own heart. He can’t keep up. He never has, even when his ankle doesn’t throb sharply with each step he takes.
He has to stop. Brace himself with his hands on his knees as he gasps for breath. Curse his ankle for still aching a week after he fell and twisted it. When he looks up, Eren is out of sight.
Mikasa, however, isn’t.
She stands only a few feet away from him, not even breathing hard. Her lips are turned downward at the corners. A frown, Armin realizes. But that doesn’t explain why the tips of her eyebrows are just the slightest bit raised.
“I-I’m fine...” he manages to get out. She doesn’t look convinced, so he insists, “I am.”
Mikasa nods curtly. “Of course,” she says, and cranes her neck so that she’s looking at the sweep of garrison headquarters’ spires instead of his crumpled form. But she doesn’t leave until Armin rights himself and takes a step forward, catching his breath be damned. He grits his teeth against the pain in his thighs as he limps toward the gate. Mikasa keeps the same pace.
“What took you two so long?” Eren calls when they finally make it to the tree. “I’ve been waiting for—”
Armin stops, opens his mouth to offer the explanation he'd prepared, but Mikasa walks past him and up to Eren. She grabs his shirt roughly with one hand, pulls so that he stumbles toward her, then subverts his momentum to toss him to the ground. He yelps, spluttering as he tries to regain his bearings. “What the hell, Mikasa?”
Her back is turned to Armin, but he knows her eyes have narrowed from the way Eren’s own narrow right back. “You were inconsiderate,” is all she says, and when Eren sucks in a breath to argue, she does something that makes him look at Armin instead.
It only takes a couple of seconds for the anger in his eyes to die away after that, though he still grumbles as he gets to his feet, refusing help when Mikasa offers it by silently extending her hand. “Sorry, Armin,” he says once he’s standing, his gaze downcast. “I wasn’t thinking.”
Armin can only nod, dumbfounded at how Eren and Mikasa just go on acting normally from there, as if she hadn’t just tossed him to prove a point. Mikasa sits closer to him that day, and once Armin manages to communicate to Eren that, no, he isn’t mad at him, Eren settles in close on his other side too.
They spend the rest of the afternoon watching the clouds drift overhead, and Armin understands. That Mikasa watches him too. That he still has a place here, with Eren, with Mikasa—with them. There is that edge of inadequacy too, of course. Knowing that he drags Eren into more trouble than any friend should, that he keeps Mikasa from keeping up with her brother’s pace. It will settle in his chest. A dull ache that persists long after his ankle heals.
That will come later, though. For now he is content to lie there between them and soak in the easy warmth of their presence.
— . . . —
You said survival is the most important thing.
It’s true. Both he and Mikasa have told Eren as much since that day, but all Armin can think about is how alone he is. How his mother and father were sent to slaughter. It’s the ruthless calculus of war, and Armin doesn’t want to be its victim anymore. He has watched Eren emulate the soldiers’ salute—his small fist clasped to his chest, right over his heart—and Armin believes there’s dignity in it. Choosing to fight; living and dying by that decision. When he dies, he wants it to be of his own volition and not something forced upon him. His choice. No one else’s.
And there’s a part of him that cannot imagine life without them. The night the campaign to retake Wall Maria was launched, Mikasa and Eren had stayed up with him through the night as he cried. He sobbed for his parents, and they held him as they always did. Each and every night after that, the three of them slept huddled together beneath their blankets. Countless others in the refugee camp died of exposure that winter. Armin knows he would have joined the corpses fed into the unused sections of the field if they hadn’t made it to the ark in time. You weak sack of shit, Eren had spat at him once. It had been out of grief, but Armin has always known. Eren is right. The thought of being left behind is more unbearable than continuing in the same way he always has. He loathes himself for it.
The words are out of his mouth before he can stop them, and when Mikasa looks into Eren’s eyes and promises, I will be there to ensure your safety, Armin hates himself all the more for wanting to believe she’s promising him too.
— . . . —
But they separate them, after Trost. Lance Corporal Levi and his men take Eren away with irons clamped on his hands and feet, even though he’s still unconscious, and Armin has to keep Mikasa from disobeying orders and following them. She is dangerously close to insubordination, afterwards. Armin does the talking whenever he can, and holds Mikasa’s hand whenever they ask her something directly. Her answers to the impromptu tribunal are curt and inflectionless, but Armin knows her. He hears the barely restrained tension in her voice, can see it in the way she grits her teeth at how the weight of the accusation—the titan—remains unspoken but no less heard when their superiors refer to Private Jaeger. He tightens his hold on her hand whenever they do, and is not sure if it’s more for her benefit or his own.
It takes two days to answer all their questions, and another for a decision to be rendered on Eren’s fate. They’re given leave to return to the barracks afterward, but when they make it there they are empty.
Mikasa paces. Her eyes are distant, unfocused. She reaches the far wall. Pivots on her heel. Walks across the room again. She is all tightly controlled frustration, and Armin sits on the edge of what had been Eren’s bunk, watching her.
“I’m sure he’s okay,” Armin says. His voice sounds more confident than he feels, and relief draws his words out quicker. The floorboards creak beneath her footfalls, each groan of the old wood a punctuation. “They wouldn’t harm him. Not so soon. Someone with his abilities is—it’s unprecedented. It isn’t in their best interests to execute him, not when they can learn something about the titans from him.”
She stops. Looks down. Her arms are at her sides. She has balled her hands into fists.
“The Scouting Legion realizes how much of an asset he is. Lance Corporal Levi’s methods were extreme, but he was arguing in Eren’s favor back there. He’s their best hope of making some actual progress beyond the walls. They won’t give their advantage up—”
“He was ours first,” she interjects.
The words die in his throat. Mikasa’s eyes are on his now, and her gaze is earnest, intense. It pins him down. Armin can feel his rationalizations peel back under the weight of it. The distance he’d been doing his best to maintain from the situation falls away all at once.
He is the first to look away. “Y-yes,” he agrees. He hesitates, then says, “Ours.”
Mikasa nods, satisfied, before resuming her pacing. Armin tucks his knees in under his chin and stays quiet until she’s finished.
— . . . —
When he sleeps, Armin dreams of certainty. His mother’s embrace and how his father would chuckle, reach down to ruffle his hair. The stool his grandfather kept at his bedside and the rough timbre of his voice as he read him to sleep. How he could count the old man’s breaths until he fell asleep, knowing he was still there to watch over him.
The shade of their tree, the tickle of grass against his bare feet. The warmth of Eren’s breath on his neck when he would lean close to get a better look at the old illustrations of the outside world. Mikasa’s presence in his peripheral vision, quiet but constant.
But he always wakes to the cold of the barracks, afterward, and he knows certainty is a fairy tale he would be better off forgetting. Because Armin learned doubt long before he watched Annie pass Marco’s 3D maneuver gear as her own.
The world they live in is hell, and it always has been. The best humans can do is try all they can to keep the worst of the demons out.
So now, when Eren throws himself into the fray and Mikasa follows, Armin does his best to plot their trajectories. Doubt is one of the few things he’s good at. He does it often. He doubts if Eren’s titan power is strong enough to match the Female Titan, if Mikasa will be quick enough if it isn’t.
It is not his place to approach the commander with a plan. He’s only fifteen. A private, and an untested rookie at that. He knows. But he’s also realized, since Trost, that there is a place for him with Eren and Mikasa. That they trust him enough to let him argue for their lives with the terrified, armed soldiers who had them cornered. He knows Eren, knows Mikasa, and they, in turn, know him.
The Military Police can’t have him, and neither can the king. Not like they did his parents. So Armin takes the gamble, because in the end, he knows he is the only one qualified for it.
— . . . —
This is what will remain vivid in Armin’s memory:
How the bags under Annie’s eyes are a dark, lurid purple against the pallor of skin. The way her whole body goes taut, for the briefest of moments, when he says, For me, you will turn into a bad person, and he’s afraid she’s figured him out. But instead she looks down, and her voice is hoarse when she agrees. The ring catches the sunlight as she slips it on. He remembers wondering if, were he to reach out, her skin would be hot to the touch.
How, when he lays out the evidence against her, she never denies anything. He remembers wanting her to, wanting to be wrong. When Eren raises his voice to yell at her, his voice echoes through the tunnels behind them, and Armin will quickly go over everything again—Marco’s gear, Squad Leader Hanji’s dead specimens, the Female Titan’s face—and weigh it against three years.
But the doubt does not come. He knows. Mikasa knows. Annie knows too. Eren is the only one who won’t let himself, who begs her to follow them underground until Mikasa levels her accusation, and then Annie smiles.
He will remember how her teeth seem to glint when she bares them, and how helpless she looks, gagged and bound, right before the explosion.
His memories are more fragmentary after that: the sharp stench of blood overwhelming the musty smell of the tunnel; the sound of the Female Titan’s footsteps, and how the walls quaked along with them; Eren reaching out, pulling him and Mikasa in close; the desperation in Eren’s eyes and how Mikasa’s expression shuttered, the fear disappearing behind a mask of cold determination; deciding that he would give up his life, if it bought Eren and Mikasa enough time to make it out alive.
In the aftermath, there are only waves of heat and dissipating steam. It’s worst near the crystal, a few meters away from where the ribcage Eren left behind is still sizzling in the open air. He slides out from the titan flesh horrifyingly easy this time, the tendons and ligaments giving way like putty before anyone thinks to retrieve him. Eren hits the ground with a muted thud.
Armin is the first at his side. He falls into a crouch and hoists him up, his arms snaking around Eren’s chest, the crooks of his elbows underneath Eren’s armpits as he drags him away from the dense heat. Eren is burning so hot it’s like he’s holding a furnace. Armin feels his fingertips go raw, the skin on the insides of his wrists peel back. He grits his teeth, but doesn’t let go. He keeps moving until the air is cool. Then he stops, holds Eren even tighter, and presses his temple to the back of Eren’s head, too desperate with concern to care about the burns worsening.
And he will remember, perhaps most of all, how his guilt at having failed is overcome by a crushing sense of futility when he looks up at the hole in the wall and sees the titan within it. There are orders that go unheard, and it’s only when Mikasa crouches beside him and grabs his hand that he snaps out of it.
“Armin,” she says. She waits until he faces her, until he can give her his attention. “We need to get Eren someplace safe.”
He remembers himself and nods, shakier than he’d like, before letting Mikasa carry most of Eren’s weight and guide them to the wagon.
— . . . —
Two hours later, Eren wakes up. The network of striations along his cheeks and brow have long since faded by then, but the dark smudges under his eyes persist. He is pale against the sheets. His hairline and collarbone are damp with sweat, his body belatedly responding to the fever. Sporadic shivers wrack his body as he blinks at the ceiling, then at Armin.
“Armin,” Eren murmurs, his voice thick. He swallows, his legs shifting beneath the sheets as he tries to push himself up. Mikasa is out of her chair in a flash. She slides one hand to the small of his back and reaches for the glass of water on the nightstand with the other. Eren’s head turns toward her in a sluggish movement. “Mikasa.”
Her response is to gently press the rim of the glass to his lips. “Drink,” she says.
He does. Armin watches Eren’s throat bob with each swallow. Water wells over the corners of his chapped lips to dribble onto his chin.
“Are you hungry?” Mikasa asks once he turns his head away from the glass.
Eren turns to look at Armin instead of responding. “What happened?” he croaks. “Did we.... What happened to...?”
“She’s in custody,” Armin replies. It isn’t a lie. “You and the commander are out of danger.” He’s too tired to make himself sound convincing. He may even have forgotten how.
But Eren nods, relaxing back into Mikasa’s hold.
“Eren,” she says, “you should eat.”
“Yeah.” He yawns. “I am pretty hungry, come to think of it...”
Mikasa looks at Armin. He pushes off where he’d been leaning against the wall. The door opens at his knock, the guard posted there looking at him questioningly. “Could you put in a request for some food from the kitchens?” he says.
The guard nods, and Armin thanks him, quietly, before closing the door again. When he turns around, Eren is lying back down and Mikasa is back in her chair, watching him. Armin takes his place against the wall.
His head hurts. A sharp throb in his temples, above the bridge of his nose. He thinks he should close his eyes. Rest a little. He very nearly does, but the memory of what he’d seen in the wall gives him pause. Ironic, he thinks. They’d been fighting for a century to keep the titans out when they were inside all along. This is the first time all three of them have been together, just them, since Trost. But it very well could be their last, if the colossal-class titans in the walls decide it's time to wake up.
There is another knock. It snaps him out of his thoughts, and he stumbles toward the door. The guard stands there, a steaming bowl of soup in his hands. Armin blinks at it, wondering if he’d lost track of time or the kitchens were just particularly quick today.
“Only fluids for now,” the guard informs him. “Squad Leader Hanji’s orders.”
“Thank you.”
The bowl is hot in his hands. His blisters sting against the ceramic. He carries it over to Eren’s bedside anyway, too numb to everything to really care.
Mikasa takes the bowl with a look Armin ignores, then she wakes Eren, who groans unintelligibly. “Food,” she says, and helps Eren sit up.
It’s a testament to how exhausted Eren is that he lets Mikasa spoon-feed him without complaint. He sips at the thin broth quietly at first, but with renewed vigor after he seems to realize how hungry he actually is.
Armin watches them, and thinks of Annie. It must have been hard, sleeping off her own fevers alone. Then he remembers the soldiers who died because of her, because of him, and he feels his sympathy harden like her crystal in the sunlight. They had both done what they had to.
The soup seems to restore some of Eren’s energy, because he starts complaining halfway through. “I’m not a baby, Mikasa.” But he says it without any real bite to his voice, and the most he does is grumble a little each time she brings a spoonful to his lips. Mikasa, of course, ignores him, and Armin thinks Eren would only let her do this for him. That if anyone else were in the room with them, he would refuse their help.
He does insist on being propped up against the headboard with the pillow instead of being set back down though. He’s mostly quiet after that. Pensive. His eyes are wide and unfocused for a while before he looks up.
“Armin,” Eren says. “Why’re you standing?”
It takes him a moment to understand the question. He blinks at Eren once he has, then gestures at the room. “There isn’t any space to sit down.”
“Don’t be stupid.” He lifts an arm a little, lets it fall back against the mattress. “There’s plenty here.”
That catches him off guard. He looks at Eren for a long moment before turning to Mikasa, who stares back at him patiently. Eren lifts his arm again. He trembles with the effort, but he keeps it up this time. His meaning is clear, and Armin hesitantly makes his way over, toes off his shoes, climbs up onto the bed, and tucks himself into the corner between the footrest and Eren’s feet. The bedsprings squeak under his weight. But Eren keeps his arm up, and Armin eventually gives in. Eren’s skin is fever-warm to the touch, and he flinches a little despite himself at the sting of his blisters.
Eren delicately adjusts his grip on Armin’s hand, turning it to get a better look. “What happened?” he asks.
Armin shifts closer. He can feel the plane of Eren’s foot against his ankle. “Titan flesh is extremely hot,” he says lamely.
A moment passes in silence. Then, “It’s my fault.”
“Eren—”
“I almost got you guys killed. Because I doubted what you and Mikasa were saying about Annie. Because I...” He swallows. “You almost died.”
“Eren,” Mikasa says.
“I don’t want you to have to do that again,” he says. He tightens his hold on Armin’s hand. “Plans like that. I...” Eren braces himself, tries to sit up. “Damn it.”
Armin moves without thinking about it first, pushing himself closer to Eren and grabbing his elbow, his legs on either side of Eren’s knees. Mikasa is there too. Her arm brackets Eren’s shoulders.
“You shouldn’t do that,” Armin says, sharper than he intended. “You’re still weak from the transformation...”
“And you shouldn’t use yourself as a distraction!” Eren snaps back. “You aren’t... Neither of you are...” He trails off.
Armin deflates. The room falls into place around them all at once. How very cramped it is; how very close they are. The sound of each other’s breathing, that heady, familiar scent of Eren's—the tang of sweat, the heat. Mikasa’s cleaner scent is there too, underlying Eren’s. Armin closes his eyes, overwhelmed.
Then Mikasa says, “Neither are you, Eren,” and she shifts, the bed springs creaking as she settles her weight onto the mattress. Eren’s breath hitches, and when Armin opens his eyes, Eren is closer to him, his head bowed, and Mikasa’s lips have settled on the juncture between Eren’s neck and shoulder.
Armin watches them in something like rapt fascination. The way Eren’s eyes flutter shut and his chest heaves, even though Mikasa’s lips aren’t moving. Even though it’s just a touch. How Mikasa’s hair falls over her eyes and onto Eren’s neck.
Eren’s eyes crack open, and he slowly leans forward so that his forehead rests against Armin’s. His breath is hot against Armin’s face, smells faintly of chicken and vegetables and how Eren always has right after he wakes up. Eren’s eyes are still open, and all Armin can think about is how his knees feel like they’re about to give way.
Mikasa’s hand finds his at the crease of Eren’s elbow, careful not to touch any of his blisters. The press of her fingers is gentle but firm, and Armin presses his thumb to the inside of her wrist, feels the brand of her clan. It is cool against the burn there. He sighs in relief.
Eren pulls back, a question underneath the glassy sheen in his eyes, and Armin looks at Mikasa. Her eyes are warm, unguarded, and Armin isn’t sure why he ever doubted they would be. This—them—feels natural. Like an outgrowth of something he may have seen coming a long time ago, if he thought himself worthy of it.
Ours, Mikasa had told him.
Armin thinks of Eren’s arms around Mikasa, around him, in the darkness of the tunnel. Pulling them in close to hold, to protect. How he’s done it before, when they were pinned down and a cannon was aimed at them. When Eren lunged into a titan’s mouth to pull him out.
Each other’s, is what he thinks to himself now.
He closes his eyes, and lets Eren touch his lips to his. It’s dry. Just a touch of pressure. But Armin feels himself shiver with it, lean in for more. Eren’s hand is trembling when it comes up to cup Armin’s cheek. He traces his thumb along the skin there, and Armin shivers again, grasps Mikasa’s hand tighter.
Eren makes a noise in the back of his throat, his hand falling away from Armin’s face to loop around his waist. Then he pulls, and Armin goes with it, moving along with Eren to settle in his lap. Closer to him, closer to Mikasa, and—
All at once, Eren’s body seizes up. Spams between them. Mikasa’s hand leaves Armin’s to grasp Eren’s shoulder before he can process what’s happening, but he pushes himself off Eren and onto the mattress, his eyes wide.
Eren is breathing hard. His body trembles, and the shadows under his eyes look even darker. “F-fuck,” he croaks.
Mikasa gets off the bed without letting go of Eren. Then she eases him back onto the mattress, her expression blank with concern.
“What h-happened?” Armin manages to get out.
“He overexerted himself too soon after his transformation,” Mikasa replies. “Or perhaps we had a hand in that.” And it may just be Armin’s imagination, but he thinks he can detect a trace of amusement in her voice.
There is nothing of the sort in Eren’s. “I’m fine—”
“You need rest,” Mikasa interrupts firmly.
And Armin can’t help it—he starts laughing.
“This isn’t funny, Armin!” Eren all but growls.
“S-sorry,” he tries, still snorting. His cheeks hurt. He wonders briefly how long it's been since he's laughed like that, but does not dwell on it. “You’re right, but so is Mikasa. You can barely keep your eyes open.”
It sounds like he’s about to protest again, but Mikasa quiets him with a sharp look. “Armin told you that you shouldn’t try to do too much after your transformation.” The firm line of her lips smooths over. “And I told you that we feel the same way you do. I won’t let you push your limits when there’s no reason for it.”
“But—”
Armin reaches over, puts his hand on top of Eren’s. “We’ll be here,” he says.
Eren draws in a deep breath and deflates with its exhale, settling back against the pillow. “Okay,” he mumbles. He turns his other hand so that it rests palm up, and Mikasa lays her fingers there.
They keep their hands in Eren's until he falls asleep.
— . . . —
And there is no certainty for them—not really. Armin knows that better than most. But beyond these walls there lies a world undiscovered, and an ocean that laps constantly at its shores. He may never see it—maybe no human ever will again—but until that is decided, he has this: Eren and Mikasa by his side, holding him up as he does for them. For now, and for as long as he has them, everything is alright.