Chapter Text
Before Jean leaves, he steals away to the room where they’re holding Marco, thankful for the cracked door and the soft lantern light to lead him there. He eases in through the door, and as soon as his eyes finally fall on his friend, he feels the tension in his chest easing. Marco is asleep, or at least dozing, and there are fresh bandages wrapped around his wounds alongside a metal stand with a catheter of blood connected to his arm. He’s still pale and ghostly looking, but he no longer looks as if he’ll be passing away within seconds.
Jean sits down on the edge of his bed gently, trying not to rouse him, but Marco’s eye flutters open anyways. It looks about, wide and startled, before it falls on Jean, and Marco’s body relaxes. Jean tries to give him a smile, but he knows it doesn’t work when Marco’s expression twists with concern.
“The commander wants me to go back,” he confesses quietly. “I’m supposed to tell everyone you’re dead, and keep the three of them from guessing that you’re still alive. It’s part of the commander’s plan.”
Marco’s brow furrows, and he reaches his hand about to take Jean’s. There’s a sort of fear in his eyes. “Be careful.”
Jean nods, squeezing his hand and just… sitting for a few minutes. He doesn’t speak, and neither does Marco. He just warms Marco’s cold fingers and tries to box up the fear and anger in his heart, tries to piece it together into something manageable. It doesn’t work, and he lets out a sigh.
“I’m scared, to be honest,” he admits. He brings their hands up to his mouth, eyes staring off somewhere around Marco’s bed sheets. “And angry. I don’t know what I’ll do when I see them.”
It’s a long moment before Marco does speak again, quiet and a bit labored. “Me too.”
Jean lets out a humorless huff of a laugh. It’s certainly not reassuring, but he remembers what Marco told him so long ago—that he was a good leader not because he was fearless, but because he was fearful and honest about it. It makes sense; he’d probably hate any guy who tried to senselessly reassure him like that jackass Eren, and in some way, it does help to know that he’s not alone in what he’s feeling. Nobody’s telling him that he’s being ridiculous, or to suck it up, or to push it aside and follow orders.
Just two simple words. Me too. If nobody else understands what he’s feeling, then Marco does, and that’s good enough for him.
He switches to a new topic, a new insecurity, a new conflict. “...I don’t know if I’m going to go into the Military Police anymore.”
Marco’s eyes widen, and he says only one word, “Jean!” but there’s so much meaning behind it. Why? Why now? You always knew what you wanted, what are you doing?
“I don’t know.” He looks away, frowning. “I just… I know if I went into the Military Police, I could get enough money to- I don’t know, it’s what I’ve always wanted. I could support you, too, get you into a good hospital with good treatment. But…”
He trails off, unsure. Marco squeezes Jean’s hand until he looks up, and then shakes his head slowly, where Jean can see it. His breathing is labored with his injured lungs, but he speaks anyway. “Don’t do it for me.”
Do it for yourself.
Jean laughs again, and it’s a tortured sort of thing. His mind has changed so many times in just a few days, and he doesn’t know what to think anymore. His heart is pulling him in a different direction, and he doesn’t know what to do with it.
“It’s crazy, isn’t it? If I choose for myself, then I won’t be going into the MPs,” he says, shrinking in on himself with a wry smile. “I want to join the Scouts now and it’s- it’s fucking insane. I’m going to die out there, but I can’t just… I can’t kick back in the MPs knowing what I know now. I think I’d just go insane.”
When he finally gathers the courage to look up again, Marco is looking at him as well, an overwhelming sort of pride and fondness in his eyes. He looks like he’s been waiting years for Jean to say that, like he knew it was coming all along.
“Don’t look at me like that,” Jean murmurs, chuckling humorlessly. “I’m not… I don’t think this is what you think it is.”
Marco shakes his head, smile widening. “You’re... a good person.”
“You’re being ridiculous,” Jean tells him, fighting down a responding smile.
His chest feels warmer than before, and the thought of seeing Reiner and Bertholdt no longer feels so suffocating. It’s like being on the receiving end of Marco’s smile is akin to sitting in the sun on a cold day; he’s reluctant to leave, but all the happier for it having happened at all. He squeezes Marco’s hand, thanking whatever power that exists that his friend had been allowed to live, before standing from the bed. He releases Marco’s hand, but still ruffles his hair a bit, treasuring the last chance to see him before Jean will be thrown back into everything that waits outside the room’s door.
“I’ll be back soon,” he promises.
Marco nods, that pride still in his eyes. Jean caves and smiles, looking away quickly and stepping out the door. He closes it behind him, but leaves it open just a crack, just like before he’d come in. The hallway is still dark, as are the streets when he finally steps out of the outpost. The cool night air calms the heat in his cheeks, but cuts through his sleeves pretty quickly without his jacket to protect him. He reaches his hands up to rub at his arms, trying to keep himself warm as he makes his way back to the barracks.
Like the trickling of sand through an hourglass, he feels the warmth from Marco gradually slipping away, replaced instead by the ice cold feeling of dread and nervousness. He’s overthinking it now, he knows—as long as he puts on a good act, then everyone will be safe. Sure, the attention will be on him for a bit, but if he makes it through these first few days, he’ll be fine. He just has to play the grieving friend, and he can do that. He can make that happen.
Tears have never really been his thing; he doesn’t like crying in front of others, and he knows that if he goes in wailing like some kind of idiot, they’ll see right through him. Instead, he pulls up the memory of all the bodies he’d helped carry into carts and tents, and finds the grief and numb horror easily. It’s not fake, either; the thought of all the bodies, all the families, all the death notices…
He strays away from the thought that no one would be dead at all, if not for the Colossal and Armored titan.
It’s a long walk to get back to the barracks, but he finds himself appreciating it more and more as the minutes pass. It gives him time to clear his head, to piece his act together alongside his story. As the barracks come into view, much later, he has his lie together; he found Marco alive, initially, and tried to get him help, but he passed away in the medic tents due to his injuries.
The barracks’ night watch lets him in, and he sneaks into the building, armed and ready with his story. He finds the room containing the boys of the disbanded 104th, and takes a deep breath as he opens the door.
“Jean!”
The first to greet him is Christa, who throws her arms around his waist and squeezes him tight. The next person he sees is a vaguely irritated Ymir, and then the rest of the girls and boys of the 104th. He’s not surprised to see them all gathered in here—as he reaches a hand down to pat Christa’s shoulder, he figures that they must have all snuck in here between night watch shifts. Their superiors would be having aneurysms if they saw the boys and girls together so late at night.
“Are you okay?” Christa asks, looking up at him with big blue eyes as she pulls back. There’s real concern there, grief and worry.
“She heard they stuck you on clean up duty,” Ymir explains, leaning back on the bed she’s perched on. Connie, who was clearly the owner of the bed she’d stolen, sits next to it on the floor, looking equally concerned.
“It’s not fair,” Christa says, low and incensed. She releases Jean, and her hands instead ball into fists. “We’re just cadets, you shouldn’t have to see all of that.”
“Christa, let it go,” Ymir calls. “Guy doesn’t look like he wants to talk about it.”
Christa does so reluctantly, only leaving his side when he gives her a reassuring smile. She returns to Ymir, and Jean steps away from the door, stepping towards the bed where Armin scoots aside to make space for him. The smaller boy presses his shoulder up against Jean’s when he sits down, and Jean gets the feeling that it’s just as much for his comfort as it is for Armin’s own. Eren is still miles away in a cell, after all. Mikasa, sitting by the headboard on the same bed, looks no less aggrieved than when he’d seen her earlier.
The rest of the cadets are scattered about the room, and he avoids looking at where Reiner and Bertholdt sit together on the same bed. Annie stands by herself by the wall.
“I kind of wish they hadn’t,” Jean confesses, when the silence starts to stretch expectantly. None of them want to ask, but he can tell they want to know what he saw, what he knows. He can’t be mad; he’d probably be the same, in their position. “It… it’s hell out there. There are hundreds of bodies to identify, and hundreds more than we can’t.” He pulls his knees up to his chest, and the thought of it genuinely takes his breath away. “I’ve never seen so many bodies.”
“Really makes you angry, doesn’t it?” Connie asks, and though he’s obviously trying to be sensitive for Jean’s sake, his eyes are wide with anger and grief. “That those sons of bitches get to walk out, safe and healthy, and so many of us died.”
“Franz and Hannah,” Sasha murmurs, eyes red. “Mina, and Thomas, and Nac… it’s not fair. It’s not fair at all.”
“Kind of makes you understand Eren, huh?” Armin asks.
“Not that much,” Reiner murmurs, to the muted amusement of the room.
Jean feels his heart skip a beat. There’s a slow sort of roiling that starts in his chest—the cool, cold lake of grief and sadness starts to move, starts to kick up, starts to bleed red. It’s like the twisting of the clouds just before a storm hits, and his voice falls like hail and ice. “I do.”
The room seems to sober at that. He can feel eyes turning his direction, mixed expressions of shock and confusion.
“I know, right? A guy like that, and me, on the same wavelength?” he laughs, utterly humorless and cold. “I never really understood it when he talked about watching his mom getting eaten, not more than a surface level sympathy, I guess. I get it, now.”
“Jean,” Armin asks, tense and nervous. There’s a vague sort of confusion in his eyes. “What are you talking about?”
His vision falls to the floor. “Marco’s dead.”
The cadets go so silent that you could have heard a pin drop.
He sees Christa’s hand raise to her mouth. Sasha recoils visibly, and Connie’s mouth falls open. Even Mikasa’s expression twists, eyes wide. Jean doesn’t look at Annie, or Bertholdt, or Reiner. He doesn’t know what he’ll do if he does.
“What… what are you talking about?” Christa whispers, horrified. “He- it’s not true.”
Something inside of Jean snaps, and leaves an ugly, gnarled mess of frayed threads in its place. “It isn’t, is it? Whose blood do you think this is, Christa?”
He stands, abruptly, startling Armin and the cadets around him. He motions to his shirt, still dyed red with Marco’s blood. Peeling Marco off with the water had smeared it across his shirt, staining it irreparably. It’s easy to bring up the anger, the grief; Marco could have slipped through his fingers if he were even a few hours later than he had been. It was only by a stroke of luck that he found Marco alive, despite the attempt on his life by people who were supposed to be their friends, their comrades .
“I found him, you know,” he says, voice low. “I found him half eaten. He was still alive. A titan had eaten right through his torso, tore half his head off, and he was still alive. Can you imagine that?”
“Jean.” Armin’s hand grabs his shoulder, and he shrugs it off angrily.
“They had to fucking peel him off of me when I carried him to the medic tent,” Jean hisses. Christa doesn’t deserve it, and he knows he’s out of line even before Ymir’s expression darkens, but he can’t take it out on Annie, or Bertholdt, or Reiner. All he can do is spit words dripping in poison, praying that they’ll hear and magically drop dead. “I had to have my best friend scraped off of me when he died, Christa!”
This time, it’s Mikasa who grabs his shoulder, and she’s much stronger than Armin. He finds himself abruptly shoved down to the bed, and there’s a warning in her dark eyes, despite the empathy he sees there. But the anger is still making his hands tremble, his breath quick, and he can’t let it go.
“So yeah, Connie,” he says, quiet and venomous “You’re right. He’s dead, and the monster that killed him gets to go free.”
And it enrages him. It makes him want to scream, and yell, and cry, and howl, because the monsters are going free. After everything the three of them have done, the thousands of lives lost, they get to sit here in this cozy room and play best friends with everyone else. Despite the way they crippled Marco forever, the way they killed thousands, and traumatized thousands more, they get to go free.
As the room falls into silence, it’s all that he can think about: the world, and how unfair it all is.
“...every last one,” Connie murmurs, breaking the silence. His words are familiar; they’ve heard Eren say the same ones dozens of times before.
“Every last one,” Jean echoes. Not for the reason they think, but for the three traitors who stand in the corner of the room. For the audacity they have to look guilty, where they think no one can see them.
They’ve bought his lie, he’s given them his promise, and that’s good enough for tonight. It isn’t, not really, but too much rides on his acting bit to risk this now.
No matter how much he wants to.
The next morning, when Jean has had time to compose himself and force himself back into neutrality, he apologizes to Christa. She smiles and forgives him easily, giving him an apology of her own for pushing him. There’s no love lost between them, and so they part ways until the ceremony later that night.
There is a point where Armin and Mikasa get pulled aside, and he knows then that Erwin and Levi must be questioning them before the trial that’s supposed to take place later that afternoon. Jean passes the time with Sasha, though he certainly hadn’t planned on it—the girl simply had nothing better to do, like him, and made for decent company when she was being sensitive to his mood. She’s working with a few strips of leather to repair various tears in the other cadet’s jackets since supplies and restrocks are running low, and when she catches him watching her work, she offers to teach him leatherworking.
A few hours pass as she shows him the basics, and she gives him a strip or two to mess around with while she follows Connie out to pick up chores around the barracks. He sits for a bit, wondering what to do with them and the tools that Sasha had loaned him, and after a few minutes, an idea comes to him. He has to use his own face as a base, hoping it’s around the same size as Marco’s, but he knows what he’s making now.
The eye patch slowly starts to come into shape. He has to stitch two pieces together to get it where he wants it, and it looks a little rough, but it’s simple enough that it doesn’t look too bad. He borrows some sewing needles from the supply room and a bit of fabric to cushion the inside of the eyepatch, and in just a few minutes longer, he has something that feels a little less like needles dragging across his skin. It feels relatively comfortable, and he knows he won’t be able to give it to Marco for some time—the wounds will take time to heal—but he tucks it into his new jacket pocket anyways, the one right against his heart.
It makes him feel a little bit better, less like he’s leaving Marco behind and more like he’s just biding his time to see his friend again.
There’s a sort of gentleness in the rest of the 104th when they all sit together for dinner, and Jean’s grateful for it. He doesn’t want to give any more details about Marco’s near brush with death; not only to keep the secret going, but also because it became harder to contain himself whenever he thought about it. They talk about mundane things instead, about their upcoming assignments after the ceremony, and when Jean quietly states that he’ll be joining the Survey Corps, there’s a beat of silence before they, thankfully, move on.
He feels a hand on his shoulder just as he goes to stand to take his plates to the dish drop, and he looks up to see Reiner standing behind him. The other boy’s expression is heavy with sympathy and gentleness, and for a second, Jean’s vision goes so red that his nails bend and break where he grips his plate. Where does this guy get the fucking gall?
“...say anything before he died?”
It takes a second for Jean to register what Reiner is asking, and when he does, he’s so stunned by the audacity of Reiner’s question that he damn near drops the act right there. “...what?”
“Did he say anything before he died?” Reiner asks again, a sad, wry sort of smile on face. “Y’know, cool last words or anything? He seemed like the type to have a speech ready.”
“Yeah, Reiner,” Jean says, numbly. On some level, the conversation feels goddamn unreal. Is this really happening? “I’m sure he would have, if he could speak around the missing half of his face.”
The other boy recoils, eyes widening. “Look, Jean, I didn’t mean-”
“Reiner, seriously?” Connie cuts in from Jean’s side. He looks the same strange mix of angry and surprised that Jean feels, and there’s a tone of bewilderment in his voice. “C’mon, man, you’ve got to be kidding.”
Before any of them can say anything more, there’s a shifting from further down the table. Bertholdt stands, and he gives a resigned sigh as he comes up to grab Reiner’s shoulder. “C’mon, let’s go.”
Bertholdt is tugging Reiner away, despite his protests, and the worst part of it all is that it looks like he’s trying to apologize. Jean can’t help but stare at him, utterly stunned—Reiner wants to apologize? The idea that the other boy thinks that an apology would be worth anything not only surprises Jean even more, but it also makes him utterly enraged.
Jean watches Reiner and Bertholdt leave the cafeteria, and after a few minutes, he sees Annie join them as well. It almost makes him laugh then; how could he never have noticed Annie trailing behind them, or vice versa? It’s so obvious now that he knows where to look. He realizes then that they must have always been in league. They must have been working together for years, plotting and planning how to ruin the lives of everyone within the walls.
It’s all he can do to hate. It’s all he can do to utterly loathe them. He can’t act on it now, but he swears that one day, he will. Titan shifters or not, they’ll reach the same fate that every titan reaches; death by a soldier’s hand, and he swears then that his blades will be the ones to carve through their necks.
The thoughts drag him down for the rest of the day, and no matter what he does, he can’t seem to shake them. As the time comes for the ceremony, he reluctantly finds himself understanding Eren a bit more. With vengeance so close and yet so far out of his reach, it’s hard to drop his own irritation; even so, the thought of turning out like that creep makes him try harder to drop the attitude, and by the time they’re heading out to choose their regiment, he’s able to strike up a cordial conversation with Connie long enough to thank the other teen for stepping in at the dinner table.
The ceremony is certainly eerie in its set up, and Jean thinks to himself that the Survey Corps really isn’t doing itself any favors by indirectly hazing the potential recruits from the get-go. The arena is dark save for the roaring bonfires to either side of the stage, and Erwin stands alone atop it, looking damn near as intimidating as the creeping shadows on the ground. If he wasn’t still able to remember the commander’s kind grip on his shoulder, he might’ve been having second thoughts.
When they line up before the stage, he isn’t surprised to see that Eren isn’t among them. Mikasa and Armin are, however, and they look calm enough that he feels safe assuming that Eren is in the clear. It reassures him in a way that he hadn’t been expecting; if Eren were to be a traitor as well, Jean isn’t sure what he’d do.
The ceremony passes in a bit of a blur. He’s sure it would be more impactful if he weren’t already resigned and dedicated to his fate. There’s no point in beating around the bush for him; despite his previous dreams and the quiet gasps of the other cadets when they realize he’s abandoning said dreams, he knows he can’t leave Marco behind. No, the only way back to Marco, to get revenge, to fix everything, is to go with the scouts.
Of the top ten, Annie is the only one not to join the Survey Corps.
He’s only surprised to see her go because of Reiner and Bertholdt’s presence among the new Survey Corps recruits, instead of with her. Though Bertholdt looks conflicted, both he and Reiner step forward so that they’re all in one row, looking up at Erwin with varying expressions of resignation, determination, and fear. He’s glad to see them there, in a way. Annie may have slipped out of his grasp, but he’ll still have a chance with Reiner and Bertholdt. He can still do this.
The salute they put on for Erwin solidifies their fate, and that’s that. They have one last night left in the barracks before they’ll all be sent out to their new posts; they trudge back in thoughtful silence, trying to process and accept the fates that they’ve chosen for themselves. He can vaguely hear Ymir and Christa arguing in hushed tones, and he doesn’t realize that their voices cover up the sounds of footsteps until a hand lands on his arm.
It’s Armin, and his eyes are oddly sharp when he looks up at Jean. “Hey.”
“Hey,” Jean greets back, a little surprised. It isn’t like Armin to come and deliberately seek him out—and for some reason, the look in the smaller teen’s eyes makes his hair rise. “What is it?”
“Can I talk to you?” Armin asks. There’s not a shred of hesitation in his eyes, not like there usually is. “Sometime tonight? Before we’re shipped out, ideally. I don’t know if we’ll be assigned together, but I have a question to ask you.”
“Sure, I guess,” Jean says, a bit awkwardly. What does he want with me? “What is it, uh, what is it about?”
Armin blinks. He looks away, then, in the vague direction of the rest of the 104th in front of them.
“It’s about… well, I guess it’s about Marco.”
For a brief moment, Jean panics and his mind goes blank. It’s really only the thought of what Captain Levi will do to him if he fucks this up that forces him to speak. “Seriously, Armin? If I didn’t want to talk about him with Reiner, what makes you think you’re any different?”
Instead of looking cowed or embarrassed by the reprimand, Armin raises an eyebrow. Jean watches as he casts a cursory glance around the formation, but seeing as they’re near the back, he only gives Mikasa a brief look before grabbing Jean’s arm. He drags them both off of the main street and into an alleyway, and now Jean really is being reminded of Levi. There’s even a tower of boxes that Armin hides them behind, squeezing in so close that Jean can feel his goddamn breaths in the dank alley.
“We’re alone now,” Armin murmurs, pinning him with that same sharp stare. “So you can cut the bullshit.”
“Who the hell taught you to talk like that?” Jean blurts out, completely unthinking. Armin’s unimpressed look only makes his cheeks flush a bit, and he crosses his arms defensively. “Look, man, I don’t know what you’re expecting me to say here.”
“Then don’t say anything,” the other teen replies swiftly. “Just listen.” He continues on before Jean can interrupt him. “I know something is going on. You’ve been acting weirdly ever since you told us that Marco died.”
“What, you think I was lying?” Jean demands. He can’t fuck this up. He can’t fuck this up.
Armin looks at him strangely, as if coming to some sort of decision before he speaks again. “No, I don’t think you were lying. About the gore bit, at least, but about him dying? I don’t think you were telling the truth there. Not all of it, at least.”
Jean’s not fast enough to keep up with Armin’s head-spinningly fast intellect, and he knows it. The best he can do is try to buy time until he can think of what to say, or get back to Erwin to figure out what the hell he should be doing. “And what, exactly, makes you think that?”
“It’s simple; you haven’t been like yourself. You were talking big from day one about how you wanted to go into the MPs, and now suddenly you’re joining the scouts? Something happened to make you change your mind, and it had to have involved Reiner somehow, because you’ve been giving him and Bertholdt death eyes ever since you got back,” Armin says, coming to conclusions so quickly that Jean can barely follow. “I don’t know if they’re connected, really, but I know they’re both weird.”
“What does this have to do with Marco?” Jean asks weakly. He’s trying to find some sort of hole in Armin’s logic, but there just isn’t one, not one that he can see.
“I checked the register of collected bodies at the pyre.” Armin’s voice falls with the finality of death bells. “Which you never attended, by the way. Imagine my surprise when I saw that Marco wasn’t included amongst everyone else.”
Jean’s heart skips a beat—he’s found a hole. Not a good one, but one that exists. “He donated his body to the Survey Corps in his last moments.”
“So he was alive when you found him!” Armin’s eyes widen, and Jean knows then that the hole he seized was actually something more like a trap. “You told Reiner- well, no, not those words exactly, but you told him that Marco never got any last words, so which is it?”
“Maybe those words were for private ears!” he snaps. It’s fake, of course, but he channels his panic into anger and sees Armin finally recoil at his words. “Ever considered that?”
The other teen hesitates for a minute, and something in his expression softens. “If that’s true, then I’m wrong, and I’m sorry. But something tells me that there’s more to this than what you’re telling me. Sure, Marco may be dead for real, but it doesn’t explain everything with you and Reiner and Bertholdt, and why you’re joining the-”
“I’m joining the scouts because the fucker that killed Marco is still out there,” Jean says, voice tight. “And I’ll be damned if I let the son of a bitch live another day. I won’t let his death be for nothing.”
He won’t let them walk away from Marco, and the thousands of others they killed without making them pay for it. The motivation that he gives Armin is a lie, but the emotion behind it is sincere.
“What comes after that?” Armin asks quietly. “Say you get your revenge. What comes then?”
Jean prickles with the anger of someone who hasn’t thought that far, and doesn’t intend to. “I don’t know, smartass. I have time to figure it out.”
The other teen gives a long-suffering sigh and, finally, goes quiet. He has run out of conspiracies to say and questions to ask, and now he just stares at Jean, something sad and something frustrated in his eyes. It’s so damn sincere that Jean looks away, annoyed. He managed to pull off the impossible and dodged Armin’s suspicion, but that knowing look of his is going to ruin the whole act. Jean wants the whole interrogation to be done and over with so he can sleep, and try to make sense of the world he’s about to be joining.
It’s energy from his rage that keeps him moving forward, and he doesn’t know what he’ll do if Armin questions it enough to pull it apart. This is all he has, and he’s not going to wait for it to fall to pieces in his hands.
“I’m going back to the barracks,” he mutters. Armin says nothing, but dutifully follows behind Jean as he leaves the alley, shoving his hands into his pockets and trudging down the street. It’s dark out once more, and it reminds him eerily of just the night before. The night air is chilling, only furthering his irritation.
“Listen, Jean,” Armin starts up again, and he resists the urge to snap at the other boy to drop it already. “I know you’re still lying about something, and that’s fine. I won’t pry. If it’s someone like you, then it must be important. Just… don’t forget you still have comrades, alright? You still have people worth living for.”
Jean scoffs. Armin’s comparing him to Eren, now? Maybe it had been a mistake to admit that he understood Eren’s motivations, back then. “Don’t go lumping me in with that suicidal maniac. We’re not the same.”
“You’re more alike than you think,” Armin chuckles, sounding a bit amused. He still has that tone like he knows something that Jean doesn’t, and it annoys him.
“No, we’re not,” he asserts, as the barracks come into view. “He’s an empty-headed idiot. I know I’m no knight in shining armor, but he and I are in two different classes, alright?”
“Sure, sure.”
It’s not an agreement. Jean knows this, and decides to ignore Armin for the rest of the walk back. The other teen is too damn smart for his own good; he’s lucky that he managed to play it off this time, but he really needs to be more careful in the future. There are people who will have much more of a vested interest in knowing what he knows, and no kind nature holding them back like Armin’s does. He’s got to be smart.