Chapter Text
This is a crush, he reminds himself. It’s just a crush. Plenty of people get them before they meet their soulmates. It’s normal for teenagers to feel these things. But it isn’t real. Even if Jean somehow feels something back, it’s not real. It can’t be real. This is going to end badly for one of them, and he should know by now that it’s going to be him.
The Survey Corps starts a revolution, because it’s the only way they can get anything done, the only option left to them. Because the foundation of the world they were raised in is built upon lies, and the only way to get to truth is to be the ones in charge of lying. Armin is unsurprised. It is a feeling, he decides, that he’s getting used to.
That turns out to be arrogance talking, of course. Commander Erwin’s next plan, well… takes him aback, to say the least.
The entire squad agrees that probably the best people to assess Jean and Armin’s disguises would be the people they’re disguised as, so after Armin has tugged on one of Sasha’s skirts and blouses (Historia’s had been too short.), he glumly heads to the girls’ room to be assessed. Moved by an uncharacteristic bout of pity, Captain Levi’d ordered the rest of the squad to run training exercises in the forest, so the cabin is empty. That, or he just hadn’t wanted to put up with Eren and Jean yelling at each other. Armin can’t blame him either; their bickering voices are loud enough that he can hear them even with the room door closed.
Historia looks up as he enters. She’s more serious than even Mikasa, these days, but her eyes flicker briefly with amusement at the sight of him.
“I know we look similar, Armin, but you move just like any other boy in that skirt,” she says. “It’s a little strange.”
“You’re telling me,” Armin says sourly. “I don’t know how I’m going to fool anyone in this.”
“By staying still?” she offers, and Armin shrugs.
“We’ll see, I suppose,” he says. Historia nods.
“Is there anything else I should do to look more like you?” he asks.
She hesitates then, looking him over for a long moment, her eyes going suddenly distant.
“Actually,” she says quietly. “There is something that might be important.”
“What is it?” Armin asks when she trails off.
She hesitates for a second more, then holds out her right arm towards him, pushing up her sleeve as she does so.
“Oh,” Armin says, understanding. Then he takes a good look at Historia’s arm and starts. “Wait- what?”
“It isn’t normal, I know.” Historia shrugs, no real emotion on her face.
Armin stares. “Sorry— could I look closer?”
She just nods, so Armin steps closer and moves to her side so that he’s looking at her name the right side up. Her name… it isn’t in any language Armin can read. The letters look more like symbols than anything, and Armin mind flashes back to the characters Mikasa had shown him once. She’d told him her mother’s people had used them as writing. These aren’t really similar in appearance, but he thinks this language might use characters instead of letters, too.
“Do you know who—?” Armin asks, too caught up in his own curiosity to realize it might have been an intrusive question until it was halfway out of his mouth. “Uh— I mean—”
“Ymir and I spoke a little, while Eren and Reiner were fighting.” Historia’s mouth twists to the side in a sort of bleak grimace. “She told me she’d always known my name, but she’d waited a long time to hear me say it. I suppose that settles that, doesn’t it?”
Armin can’t think of a thing to say to that, but Historia honestly doesn’t look all that interested anyway. “I suppose it does.”
“I just thought you should try to mimic it somehow,” she says. “The people who killed my mother seemed interested in it. So did my father. Anyone hired to kidnap me might know me by the name on my wrist.”
“That makes sense,” Armin agrees. He bites his lip. “I, uh— don’t have one.”
Historia looks at him, and he shrugs. “You ought to know. It’s only fair, isn’t it?”
She smiles at him then, and he thinks that for the first time in all the time he’s known her, it might be genuine. “I guess it is.”
Armin nods.
“You might still meet again, you know,” he says then, apropos of nothing and surprising even himself. Historia blinks at him, blue eyes just a little vacant, like they always are these days. “I mean, Eren told me you could feel it when your soulmate was hurt or gone, so.” He swallows. “As long as she’s still alive…”
“There are a lot of terrible things that can happen to you while you’re still alive, Armin.” Historia says bleakly.
“Of course.” Armin wouldn’t know how to deny that even if he wanted to. “But she’s alive. That means there’s hope. Even if terrible things are happening to her. There’s hope. She could still come back. She could come back to you, and you could help her, and she could live.”
Historia’s eyes flicker. “Maybe… I… maybe.”
“Maybe’s better than nothing.” Armin says simply. Historia huffs out a laugh.
“I guess so,” she says.
The black grease paint rubs away under the man’s touch, and he makes a humming noise of satisfaction that Armin can’t bear to think about.
“I knew it,” the man says with a satisfaction Armin doesn’t want to think too hard about. “You don’t belong to anyone, do you?”
Armin can feel bile rising in his throat. He swallows thickly, but the man’s hands are on him now and he can’t think of anything else to do but endure. To do anything else would put the mission at risk, and he cannot endanger Eren.
He would scream, if he was allowed, but he’s not.
Armin lets out a shaky breath, tightening his grip on his gun.
The memory keeps coming back to him, intruding on his thoughts at the most inconvenient moments. It’s always jarring, as though he is drifting on his back in calm waters, and this moment swims up from underneath him and drags him under. Just that sudden— one minute, completely normal, the next, choking on water and clawing for air.
Armin just wants it to go away.
A hand touches his arm out of nowhere. Armin starts, jerks away.
“Whoa!” Jean pulls away, holding his hands up apologetically. “Sorry.”
He relaxes a little. “It’s not a problem, Jean.”
“I just came to tell you; our shift is done. Sasha and Connie are taking over.”
“Oh,” Armin says, turning back to the front door. They haven’t had time to set up lookout posts around the house the Reeves family has provided them as a hideout, and so Armin is sitting up in a nearby tree. Sasha had picked out the best ones, through a complex combination of strategic awareness, visibility, and this-tree-just-feels-right-Armin-don’t-ask-so-many-questions. Their friends are indeed heading their way. “I… wasn’t paying attention.”
Jean’s brow knits. “Not like you, Armin.”
It’s barely criticism, if that, but Armin swallows hard, digging his nails into his palms nervously. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t worry about it.” Jean waves him off, then gestures towards the house. “Come on. Let’s get out of the cold.”
Jean’s been kind to him, since the mission, Armin thinks as he climbs down from his post. Protective, even. Armin usually dislikes thinking of himself as weak, but he can’t deny that what happened to him has rattled him in a way he’s unused to. Perhaps that’s why he doesn’t resent Jean’s protectiveness the same way he did Mikasa and Eren’s.
Or maybe it’s just that he’s never felt the need to prove himself to Jean. Strength has never been a consideration with the two of them; Jean and Armin just keep up with one another.
No one else has commented overly much on the incident, which is unsurprising. The Survey Corps doesn’t usually have time for overprotecting its members, but their situation has been even more desperate than usual as of late. That’s part of why it seems ridiculous to be upset for so long about what amounts to a few gropes and repulsive comments, and so Armin fidgets with his clothes for a second and steels himself for a conversation he’s not sure he wants to have.
“We should talk,” he tells Jean.
Jean freezes, and for the first time it occurs to Armin that he might not really be ready for this conversation either.
“Let’s go to our room,” he continues, mostly because it feels like too late to turn back.
Jean swallows hard. “Okay,” he agrees, more subdued that usual.
They head inside and into the small room the boys are sharing. No one else is inside, Connie being on watch and Eren probably having been swept off to some important discussion. The main order of business is putting Historia on the throne, but Hange’s mentioned wanting him to help track down more information on the First Interior Squad and the people they had killed, on the off chance one of them had helpful information. It probably involves research. In any case, it’s a job that would probably be easier if they weren’t all revolutionaries, so it’s a secondary goal for now.
Once they’re there Armin busies himself taking off his cloak, deliberately not meeting Jean’s eyes. He draws it out on purpose, trying to put off the conversation, but in truth he barely needs to try. His fingers are numb and stiff with cold and keep slipping off the clasp, unable to get a grip.
After a long moment of fumbling, Jean reaches over and does it for him, warm hands brushing against the hollow of Armin’s throat. Armin jerks away on instinct, struggling not to blush.
Jean looks stricken.
“Jean,” Armin says. “No, I— it’s not—”
Then he cuts himself off, because if he tells Jean that, he will have to explain the actual problem, which just involves another topic he wants to avoid. He turns away instead, sitting down on the nearest bed and begins compulsively rubbing the inside of his blank wrist against his pants, gathering his thoughts.
“Nothing really happened to me,” he says finally, shakily. “He grabbed me, but… nothing really happened. I’m all right.”
Jean hesitates, then sits down next to him.
“Maybe,” he agrees. “But I don’t know. It scared me, so. It makes sense if you’re scared.”
“It scared you?” Armin frowns at him.
Jean snorts. “Fuck yes.” He runs a hand through his hair—longer than it used to be, some distant part of Armin notes—and frowns at Armin. “No one should hurt you. Especially not like that.”
“Well,” Armin says. “Obviously.”
He might have a few issues with his self-esteem, but he’s not quite that bad off. It makes him feel a little better though, to hear it said by someone else.
Jean nudges him. “You going to be okay?”
“Yes,” Armin says, and is surprised to find he means it. “I will be.”
“Good,” Jean replies, and so are they, Armin realizes. They don’t have to say anything else.
He usually only feels this silent weight of communication with two other people. It’s more than a little frightening to know he is capable of it with Jean, too.
He isn’t surprised, when he kills someone for the first time. He’s a lot of things- guilty, scared, disgusted with himself— but not surprised.
It had been bound to happen sooner or later, he thinks fatalistically. It would happen to Connie, and Sasha, and Jean too, before they saw the end of this war. No matter how any of them fought it.
He keeps replaying that moment over and over in his head. It’s odd, because most of the time it is as though Armin’s mind cannot stop working, even when he wants it to. But that moment, when he’d heard that woman overpower Jean, all thought had fled. The world had narrowed itself down to absolutes. It had almost been beautiful, in a way. Shoot the soldier. Save Jean.
Is it that simple, in the end? He’d wanted Jean alive more than he’d wanted his hands clean?
Maybe it is. Armin has plenty of remorse for what he did, but no regret. And some cold, clear part of him thinks that he would do it again.
What he’s known of strategy he’s learnt from his tutors. What he’s known of ruthlessness he’s learnt from watching his leaders. But what he’s known of love he’s learnt from Eren Jaeger and Mikasa Ackerman. He might feel terrible about the choice he’s made, but he is unsurprised that he made it.
If his hands get bloody for the people he loves, that is a small price to pay, really.
Well, at least it would be, if the person he… cares about, in this instance was talking to him. Jean’s not angry at him, he thinks. But he’s been avoiding Armin, sidling out of rooms with sideways glances that don’t suit his forthright nature in the slightest.
He wonders if he’s given himself away somehow, if Jean knows how he feels and is uncomfortable about it, but he doesn’t think so. It could have been any of his comrades in danger; he would have acted the same. That it was Jean just adds another layer of urgency and relief to the whole experience. If Jean hasn’t realized anything from the hapless way in which Armin stares at him, he won’t now.
If it was even a few weeks ago, Armin wouldn’t think of just tracking Jean down and demanding an explanation, but the two of them have been through enough together now that he realizes that this is actually the best possible option. So, this is exactly what he does.
“You shot someone for me,” is all Jean will say, when Armin confronts him in the stables. He still sounds a little stunned about it.
“…I know?” Armin replies, confused, after a few seconds pass and Jean looks disinclined to add anything else.
“You…” Jean lets out a breath, then runs a weary hand down his face. “Armin. You had to shoot someone for me.”
Armin can’t think of anything to say to that that he hasn’t already, so he waits instead. Jean can’t seem to look him in the face, gaze skittering from some point past Armin’s shoulder, to Armin’s face and back again as he shifts uncomfortably on his feet. The horses shift uneasily in their stalls, almost as if they can sense the tension.
“I want to apologize,” Jean says finally, like he’d come upon a revelation.
It’s not at all what Armin’s expecting. “You want to what?”
“To apologize,” Jean replies, glumly. “I guess that’s normal when it comes to me and you.” He scrubs a hand over his face, pained. “I keep fucking up with you.”
Armin just stares at him blankly. “I don’t understand.”
“You wouldn’t have had to shoot someone if I’d just done it in the first place.” Jean stuffs his hands in his pockets. “I apologized to Captain Levi back there, for endangering the mission, and the squad. But I should’ve apologized to you first. You saved me, and Armin— you got hurt for it.”
“I don’t— I’m not angry at you,” Armin frowns up at Jean in concern. “I couldn’t be angry at you for not wanting to kill someone.” He almost laughs at the idea, a little. “Especially not now. I don’t think I want to do that ever again.”
He probably will, but he’s trying not to think about that part.
“You’ve had enough terrible shit happen to you,” Jean says miserably. “I guess I’m just sorry this one was my fault.”
“It wasn’t,” Armin tells him. “You know that.”
“Enough,” Jean says. “Enough that you deserve an apology. It won’t happen again.”
“Thank you,” Armin says, after a long pause. “Nobody—I mean— thank you. Most people wouldn’t think of apologizing for this.” It makes him feel grateful that Jean even tried.
“You’re my friend,” Jean says simply. “And Armin— thank you. That’s the third time you’ve saved my life.”
“Anytime,” Armin blurts out, and wants to slap himself. Jean just makes a face though, clapping him on the back.
“I hope not,” he announces. “No offense, Armin.”
“None taken,” Armin assures him. To be frank, if Jean is never in danger again, Armin will die happy.
Jean kills someone next, and though it’s barely an afterthought to everything else that happens that night, Armin finds him retching outside the stables after they’ve all been ordered to bed. It gives him an odd sense of déjà vu.
He hasn’t had a lot of experience comforting anyone, so he’s a little unsure what to do. He ends up stroking a hand over Jean’s back, making soothing noises because he has a distant memory of his mother doing the same when he was sick. It’s probably unhelpful, but he gives it to Jean anyway.
“I’m sorry,” Jean gasps out, over and over again, in tears. “I’m sorry.”
“Shh,” Armin says, and knots his hand in Jean’s cloak, holding him steady. He’s not surprised now either. It’s Jean. He always follows through once he’s made up his mind.
They end up staying out there for what feels like an hour. At some point Jean stops throwing up and just clings to Armin, until they’re both holding each other up. It’s a terrible moment, in a night full of terrible moments. But Jean’s alive, and so is everyone else, and Armin cannot find it in himself to complain.
Historia’s coronation is glorious, at least by the standards of a poor child from the outer districts of Wall Maria. Armin overhears some people— rich merchants and whatnot— complaining about how plain and rushed it all is, but he thinks they’re crazy.
It’s feels like its been years since the Survey Corps had anything to celebrate at all, and though Armin is a little out of place with glamourous merchants and whichever nobles were left after the coup, Historia had made it a point to invite average citizens as well. The result is that the palace is overflowing with more people than Armin’s seen since the fall of Wall Maria, though obviously this is a far happier occasion.
In any case, he is decidedly enjoying watching his friends loosen up for the night, although he appears to have inadvertently become separated from them in the crowd. Armin peers around at the people milling about uncertainly, trying to remember where he’d last seen his friends. Sasha’d disappeared ages ago as soon as she’d spotted the food, and Connie with her. Eren’d slipped out of the room too, tired of the curious stares of the people in the hall. Mikasa, surprisingly, hadn’t followed him, but was standing a little way away from Historia, who was easily visible at the front of the room and had been mobbed the entire night by what looked like half of Wall Sina. Armin figures she could use the protection, and there is, after all, no one better at it than Mikasa.
“Armin!” he hears and turns to find Jean waving at him. He sighs in relief and begins carefully navigating his way through the crush of people. It causes him no small difficulty, but he manages. At least, right up until the end, when someone shoves him square in the back just as he reaches Jean.
Armin lets out an undignified squawk as he is thrown forward into Jean’s chest. He makes another undignified noise when he figures out where he’s ended up, but thankfully Jean is not paying attention.
“Oi!” He scowls over Armin’s head, ostensibly at whoever had pushed him. Despite the annoyance in his voice, his hands are gentle as they steady him. “Watch it, asshole!”
Thankfully, he doesn’t get a response. With all the important people in the hall, they’ve been ordered to be on their best behavior, and Armin cannot imagine how their superiors would react if Jean had managed to start a fight right in the middle of the room.
Well, actually he suspects they would mostly find it amusing, but Armin figures this isn’t the place to see how far their indulgence stretches.
“You okay, Armin?” Jean looks down at him, still frowning. His hands linger against Armin’s arms. Armin straightens up, clearing his throat, and Jean yanks his hands back as though Armin has shouted at him.
“Yes,” Armin assures him. “Yes, I— don’t worry.”
“You’d think these idiots could afford manners,” grouses Jean, unmollified. Armin grabs his arm.
“Don’t start a fight!”
Jean rolls his eyes. “Who do I look like, Jaeger?” Armin makes a reproving noise and he sighs. “Yeah, yeah, I know.”
“We should move somewhere less crowded,” Armin suggests, searching the room. It’s a difficult process; he has to stand on the tip of his toes just to see over the tops of people’s heads. “Um…”
“Over there,” Jean says, barely having to try. Armin resists the urge to kick his ankle as Jean takes his hand and leads him through the throng. Then he realizes that they’re holding hands, and promptly becomes distracted by the way their fingers look intertwined. Both their palms are rough with calluses from years of work, but Jean’s hand is intensely warm against his. It’s somehow comfortable.
Armin is so absorbed that he misses Jean stopping and runs into him all over again, although his nose goes slamming into Jean’s back this time, and Armin ends up steadying him as he yelps and stumbles in surprise.
“You’re not having a good night, are you?” Jean asks, grinning down at him.
Armin opens his mouth, and then closes it. “No,” he decides finally, cheeks burning. “I’m not.”
“Might get better with a dance,” Jean suggests.
He blinks. “What?”
Jean jabs a thumb over his shoulder, impatient and amused. “Did you miss where we were?”
Armin peers in the direction he’s pointing. Oh. Oh. Jean’s led them to the only place in the room with elbow room: the dance floor.
“I didn’t actually know what it was at first, but then I figured you wanted to be away from people less than you cared about people watching you,” Jean says. “Was I wrong?”
Armin looks away, trying desperately not to be uncomfortable. “You weren’t.” It’s not that he minds, exactly, only…
Jean throws him an assessing glance.
“You don’t know how to dance,” he surmises, as accurate as always. Armin hunches his shoulders, unreasonably defensive. He doesn’t know why; Jean’s certainly not being judgmental.
“You do?” he demands.
“Sure,” Jean says. “My mother’s a romantic.”
Armin thinks back to Jean watching Mikasa with a dreamy expression on his face during their training days and ducks his head to hide a smirk. Jean’s mother might not be the only romantic in the family.
“C’mere,” Jean says abruptly, holding out his right hand and wriggling his fingers in a beckoning motion.
“What?” Armin blinks at him, completely thrown.
“Come here,” Jean rolls his eyes, hand still outstretched. “I’ll teach you to dance.”
Armin just stares at him some more.
“Uh,” he says intelligently.
When he fails to move, Jean raises an eyebrow.
“Don’t leave me hanging, Armin.”
“I’m not!” Armin hastily reaches out and grabs his hand, more because it looks awkward there hanging in midair than out of any desire to dance.
He follows after Jean, stepping where he steps, eyes on his feet, face flushing and head ducking lower and lower. At least until Jean leans forward and says, voice rich with amusement—
“You’re not doing that badly, you know.”
“Easy for you to say,” he hisses back.
“No, seriously— look around. We’re in a corner, and we aren’t important. No one’s looking at us.”
Armin looks and, well— he’s right. Nobody is looking at them. The entire throne room is focused primarily on Krista— Historia— and they couldn’t care less about two random cadets. Armin takes a moment to pity their new queen, then shelves it aside. She doesn’t want it anyway; this is the path she’s chosen.
“You okay?” Jean asks, watching him with an unnervingly warm expression on his face.
“Yes?” Armin offers, reluctantly.
Jean shakes his head. “I’ll get us out of here. Don’t worry, I have a plan.”
“What-” Armin begins, but Jean is already dancing them towards a nearby alcove, steering them through other couples as though it’s as easy as breathing. Armin narrows his eyes at him suspiciously.
“You’re awfully good at this for someone who was forced into it.”
“I said my mother was a romantic; I never said anything about being forced,” Jean says. He’s not grinning the way he does when he’s joking, and so Armin turns soft eyes onto him, unable to help himself. “Or about being bad at this. You can start breathing again, you know.”
Armin blinks, looking around him. The alcove has wall-length windows that look out at the northern part of the city. Away from the grandeur and the crowd, he can see how bleak autumn has left it. The trees are stripped bare of their leaves, their skeletons looming over the empty streets. It’s a relief. “I guess I can. Thanks, Jean. It was a good plan.”
“I learned from the best,” Jean returns pointedly, and he flushes, blindsided by the compliment.
“Well,” he says. “At least you’re a credit to my name.”
Jean hums, and they are close enough that Armin can feel it rumble through him. Their closeness makes him flush with warmth. It feels like liquid gold is flooding Armin’s veins, lighting him up. All the blood is rushing to his head, making him dizzy.
He’s never wanted so much in his life, and it’s terrifying.
He doesn’t know what his expression is like, but he knows he can’t bear for Jean to see it, and so Armin buries his face into the other boy’s shoulder. He feels Jean’s breath catch, and he shuts his eyes, waiting to be gently pushed away.
Instead, Jean tugs him a little closer, until they’re embracing more than they are dancing. Jean’s arms move to wrap around him, and Armin settles into him with a soft sigh.
It’s the safest he’s felt in a long time. That doesn’t really help with the terror, but at least it feels distant, for now.
He cannot say how long he stands there, breathing in the clean scent of Jean’s uniform, but it feels simultaneously like an age and a second, all at once.
A raucous burst of laughter from somewhere in the ballroom makes them start and pull away a little. Armin flushes, looking down at his feet and casting about for something to say. Instead he ends up staring like an idiot.
Jean’s hair is a little longer now, long enough that he has to keep brushing it off his forehead. Armin’s fingers itch to do the same, but at the same time he’s developing an unnerving affection for the way Jean’s hair falls into his face when he laughs. In any case, the ridiculous pounding in his chest is getting excessive, and Armin just wants it to go away.
Somehow it feels like none of that matters when he meets Jean’s eyes. Jean looks at him with so much fondness it terrifies him.
“Why did you want to learn to dance?” he blurts, desperate for a subject.
Jean shrugs. “That’s just what you do, isn’t it?”
He blinks in confusion. “What do you mean?”
“Try and figure out what would be romantic.” Jean waves a dismissive hand. “I mean, not what you did, because you didn’t have a name, but.” He grimaces. “Sorry, that was a shitty way to put it, wasn’t it? I just thought maybe Clara would like it.”
“No,” Armin replies automatically. “No, it’s fine.”
One winter, Armin’s bullies had gotten it into their heads to divebomb him from the rooftops with bottles of freezing water, in moves which in retrospect Armin thinks were really quite nimble. At the time though, all he’d felt was cold shock, and on its heels, hot shame.
It’s pretty much the same feeling, hearing Jean say his soulmate’s name.
“Oh,” Armin says. “You learned this for her.”
He doesn’t know why he feels so humiliated. He’s always known Jean had one. That he’d wanted to meet her, had been excited at the prospect. Perhaps, during the chaos and blood and pain of the last few weeks he’d just— wanted to forget.
“Well, yeah, I guess,” Jean starts, and then breaks off, frowning. “Or… maybe…”
“That’s nice.” Armin says, because he doesn’t know what else to do. Jean’s not paying attention anyway, seemingly distracted all of a sudden.
“Jean?” Armin blinks up at him. The song they’d been dancing to is ending, but they’re still swaying gently in time to a nonexistent beat. Jean starts.
“Sorry,” he says hastily, pulling them to an abrupt stop. “Just thinking.”
“About your name.” Armin nods. “Do you know, I think the Beaumonts are here? They survived the revolution; I know that much. We could go look for them if you want. You could dance with her.”
It feels like it costs him something, to say that. But Jean deserves to get what he wants.
Jean just stares at him for a second. Then he sighs, shaking his head and tugging Armin into his arms again.
“Why don’t we dance another dance? You and me?”
“Okay?” Armin says, confused. He stares up into Jean’s face, trying to understand, but for once the other boy is unreadable. The strains of another tune are drifting in from the main room, now. It’s an upbeat melody, but the orchestra is far enough away that the music sounds distant somehow, lonely.
“You really have no idea, huh?” Jean says inexplicably, eyes on Armin’s face.
“What?” Armin blinks at him, even more confused at the non-sequitur.
“Yeah,” Jean nods, amused in a wry sort of way. “That’s what I thought.”
He doesn’t explain any further, but he does pull Armin nearer into the circle of his arms, and Armin ends up closing his eyes against Jean’s warmth and closeness, all questions fleeing his mind for a time.
The day after the coronation he goes to find Hange in the shiny new compound their new government has constructed for her research.
“Can you point me to all the studies we have on soulmate bonds?” he asks. Hange blinks.
“Got to admit, that seems a little off-topic, Armin.”
“I have an idea,” is all Armin will say, and after realizing no further explanation is forthcoming, Hange shrugs and gives him all the leads she has.
Here is the thing about Armin that no one else seems to understand: He isn’t a good person.
This is knowledge he’s always had. He’s never needed anyone to point it out to him, not even as a child. It doesn’t matter that he hasn’t, by most definitions, done anything particularly bad yet. He knows who he is. He knows what he’s capable of, when pushed. He knows he doesn’t have to be pushed hard.
All the same, it sometimes strikes him that this is not knowledge most other people have access to. Particularly now, while he lays out his plan in front of Commander Erwin and his strategists and sees everyone in the room look at him with something approaching unease, save Hange, whose eyes are impossibly intense, and the commander himself, who keeps his gaze as steady as any Mikasa’s ever produced.
“I don’t know if it’ll work,” he admits. “There are a lot of variables we have to consider, and it’s a risky plan.”
“Risky?” one of the strategists sputters. “Risky? Arlert, you have no idea if this plan of yours will even—”
“Wait,” Erwin says quietly, and everyone in the room freezes. The Commander looks at him, his gaze still unnervingly even.
“I can’t promise anything,” he says, voice harsh. “It’s just a theory, and it’s based on Eren’s responses. But if I’m right it’ll work.”
“If you’re right?” Hange asks.
“I know I am,” he admits.
“We should take it into account at the very least,” Erwin says to the room.
There is a pause. Armin watches everyone in the room calculate and wishes he didn’t understand. He wonders what Jean would say, what Jean will say when he hears what his plan is.
“We don’t have anything better,” one of them points out, and in the end, that is the consensus. It’s hardly comforting, but Armin’s been in the Survey Corps a whole five months now. He’s used to it.