Chapter Text
The breeze was whispering again, a sibilant sound that drifted across the plain and gently ruffled the freshly trampled grass. It was nice, complimenting the sun's heat with splashes of cool air. If he looked closely enough, Armin could tell apart little bits and pieces of pollen as they spun along the current, catching the occasional glare of light.
Every time he flicked the nib across the page, his pen reflected the same light back at him. Not strong enough to blind him but a little annoying. Usually, he'd retreat under the shade of a tree but there were no trees out here and they were on the move anyway. He considered using one of his older pens but decided against it. He liked this pen. Once he'd cleaned it up in the river it had turned out to be quite beautiful really. A deep blue mingled with black encased the shell of it, topped off by a smattering of white that reminded him of the glinting ocean waves they'd seen some time ago. If he hadn't taken it apart and looked at the components himself, he would have thought it to be made of some kind of gemstone. But it was so thin and didn't hold the same strength and quality that precious stones did. Another type of strange material he only ever encountered on the Outside.
"What are you writing now, Armin?"
Startled, he looked up from his pen to see that Marco had woken up from his little nap on the cart. He didn't know how he could do that, sleep with the wild terrain underneath jostling him but, then again, Connie had said something similar about Armin's writing.
"Well, this book used to be a diary – I can't read what the first entries say but... it has the layout of one so I thought I might continue it." He had three books now, all very different. One leather bound and aged, another a deep red that was made from Outside Materials and the paperback diary in his hands. The first was for research, the second a logbook and the diary was, well, just an account of their experiences starting from a week ago.
"Oh, I like that, maybe you could publish it when we get back," Marco replied with a gentle smile. He was so very optimistic, painfully so. Not that Armin wasn't – he had plenty of optimism. Just about different things, like discovering new lands and proving that what his old book had said was true. It was founded in logic as well as dreams, they'd located the ocean and they'd plotted it on the map. He'd even bottled some of the water and the strangest thing had happened to one of the bottles when he hadn't fastened the lid on properly. The water had evaporated and salt has been left behind. Salt!
Armin just smiled a little, or maybe it was a grimace. Arguing against Marco just made you feel like a bad person who had kicked a puppy, because that was what Marco was like with his smiling face and kind eyes. Although Marco wasn't as helpless as a puppy, wiping that cheery smile off his face was just an awful thing to do. Only Jean could do that and not feel awful. Maybe that had to do with the way that Marco seemed to forgive Jean more easily and how Jean would generally come around to Marco's viewpoint eventually.
A particularly large rock ran under the front left wheel and the whole cart jumped and veered in the opposite direction. Armin yelped and held his diary close with one hand and gripped his bag with the other while Marco threw himself over the supplies. They stayed like that until the ropes tugging the cart pulled taught again and corrected course.
"One of the smaller crates fell," Marco informed him as he stood up with a sense of balance that could only come from training with the military. Armin couldn't see his face because of the sunlight but he could take a good guess and say that he looked concerned. He watched as Marco tugged sharply on both ropes three times before Armin turned to his left and flagged down the nearest jockey on their flank.
One of the newbies they'd picked up at the same place Armin had found his new pen and diary happened to be the closest. He watched as she gave him a confused look before noticing the slowing of the cart and passed on the message to the next jockey and then the next. Just as the cart came to a stuttering stop, he saw the more spread out members of the group start to ride over. A few split off to the other cart.
Tipping his sun hat, Armin shielded his eyes as he watched the progress of the riders, but he didn't need to for too long. A looming shadow fell over him and the cart in its entirety as well as a fair distance beyond that too. Blinking a couple times, he looked up.
"Hey, Eren! Sorry about that, one of the crates got knocked off."
The shadow belonged to the figure of a great hulking titan, around fifteen metres (while no one had the equipment to test how accurate that estimation was, Armin trusted the former scouts' assessments) with hair that fell to obscure his face as he looked down. However, those glowing green eyes of his were never truly hidden.
Eren made a noise that Armin was pretty sure was Titan Grunt for "no problem" and shifted his shoulders a little. Those noises of his had been jarring at first, literally inciting instinctual fear within him, but now they were sort of funny with the way Eren couldn't seem to pick between high or low pitch and thus gave them both a shot at once. The newbie didn't think the same if the way she was subtly crouching behind the cart was any indication.
A small figure, dwarfed by Eren's size, slipped down from the titan's shoulder and onto his waiting palm to be deposited onto the ground just a metre from Armin. As she stepped into the light, the figure was revealed to be a girl with strikingly dark hair that contrasted with the red scarf she wrapped around her neck. Mikasa Ackerman, a piece of what little remained of Armin's life Before.
"What happened to the cart?" She asked in a voice that may have seemed monotonous upon first hearing but Armin had learnt the nuances to Mikasa's speech and knew otherwise. She wasn't angry, which was good. Not that Newbie could tell, who had all but become one with the cart's wooden half walling at this point. Newbie really hadn't adjusted that well.
After a quick explanation, Mikasa, Marco and a few others who weren't feeling too lazy got together to search for the missing crate, leaving Armin, Newbie and a guarding Titan by themselves.
"How, how long have you travelled with that... that thing?" Newbie spoke up, straightening a little and peering over the edge of the cart to look Armin in the eyes. She still wore her scout uniform with the exception of the shirt which she must've traded out with Bernard because he'd seen him wear it before. Not something he'd normally notice, but that shirt was pretty distinctive since it was half white and half brown, split down the middle. Bernard swore he found it like that when Sasha had asked if he'd sewn two shirts together.
"He's called Eren and its been around five years, I didn't think to start counting straight away." He found out he'd missed Mikasa's birthday when they encountered their first two humans, miraculous stragglers of the first futile mission to take back Wall Maria. Neither were still with them.
"He-he never tried to eat you?" She asked and Eren, who had since turned his back to watch out for enemies, turned his head and made a rather annoyed grunt. His exposed teeth caught the sunlight just so and sent Newbie cowering behind the cart once again. Armin sighed.
"You're afraid of that big oaf?" A mocking voice sounded. Armin turned to look and saw Jean sporting a cocky grin, crate in hand with a smiling Marco trailing behind him. Presumably, Mikasa had already left before he had the chance to hit on her because he was in too high spirits for a rejection to have happened.
With a dismissive wave of a hand, Eren grunted in annoyance again, this time letting a little steam from his mouth. Armin could already feel a headache coming on, Newbie was only going to get increasingly scared if Jean aggravated the Titan in front of her. He'd staved off for the entire week upon Mikasa's request but it seemed he'd reached his limit.
Jean spoke again, Eren grunted and swiped his arms, Jean interpreted the guttural responses as insults – which, to be honest, was probably a fair assessment – Eren stomped his foot, Newbie fainted and so on. Great Gods, Armin would be complaining at length about this in the newly acquired diary. A good page or two at least.
"There's a settlement up ahead," Connie bounded over on horseback from the right flank. "It looks a lot more like the stuff I'm used to back home, I think we're getting closer to Wall Maria."
Wall Maria. It's been a while since Armin and Mikasa last saw the towering structure and with good reason.
"Eren?" Armin asked, craning his neck to face those iridescent green eyes. Much to his ire, the titan made a noncommittal noise and turned back to his guarding duty. Chewing on his lip, Armin turned back to what was slowly developing into a crowd as more of their group lumbered over from their various stations.
"We'll settle there for the night, I'll discuss with Mikasa where to go from here," he declared after a little deliberation and the group promptly dispersed, returning to their assigned positions. Even Newbie got up from where she'd been slumped on the ground and scurried away from Eren's shadow. So when Jean didn't move and stayed by Marco's side, Armin was a little confused. Even Eren had moved on a little, prepping to get the carts moving again.
"You really don't want to go back, do you?" Jean said with a serious expression that was at complete odds with the mocking look from just moments before. This wasn't the first time they'd had this conversation but now Marco was involved. With a crease to his brow, Marco looked between Armin and Jean expectantly.
"...There's a lot of reasons why," Armin said in lieu of actually answering, fiddling with the cover of the diary. Reasons which were tightly woven with secrets he and Mikasa had sworn not to speak of.
"Yeah, reasons you never tell us – you know I've been starting to think that you just want to keep exploring, writing in that little book of yours."
The fiddling became a stiff grip as Armin scowled.
"... We've got to go back at some point Armin, I had a life in those walls," Marco interjected and a little bit of sorrow seeped into his voice, intermingled with his personal brand of determination. This wasn't looking good.
But then the cart shifted with a small jolt as the ropes became taut again. Mikasa must have returned to Eren's shoulder. On cue, Thomas called out for Jean to get back to his position.
"We need to get moving," Armin stated, a final urge for Jean to leave. Casting one last glare in his direction, Jean took off. Shortly after, Marco followed after he gave Armin the excuse of checking the other cart's stock.
With a bit of jostling and a few jolts, they were moving once again.
Blue hues slowly melted into yellows and oranges as the sun began to set, colouring his diary's cream pages in matching tones. Finding a comfortable spot between two crates, Armin settled down and got back to his writing, trying to ignore the dread pooling in his stomach.
A lone glowing lamp swung where a chandelier should have been, moving in tune with the soft vibrations that reverberated through the house. Outside, Eren had dragged an uprooted tree across the ground in a rough circle around the small cluster of broken-down houses to define the boundary of what he saw as the difference between safe and unsafe territory. Now he had settled down to rest against the main building, his even breathing carrying through the structure as little tremors.
Beneath the wavering light of the flickering candle, the group had pushed together all the salvageable furniture into the centre of the front room to form a round table of sorts. If it were day time, they'd venture out to the other house they'd seen but it was dark and it looked like a Titan's foot had smashed through most of it anyway.
An incomplete map was spread out across the table along with various bits and pieces of documentation both relevant and irrelevant to the discussion at hand: the next steps forward. Not everyone was present for the decision making, Sasha was on the roof scouting for game (although she had already expressed how she doubted there would be any out here), Newbie had taken to the basement and most had found various places to sleep.
But Mikasa, Aaron, Jean, Marco and Armin were all in the front room debating the next steps.
"This conversation isn't getting anywhere, I'm off to bed." Make that Mikasa, Jean, Marco and Armin because Aaron was now retreating upstairs. He should have left earlier, the best spots for sleeping in would be gone by now. A small chorus of 'G'night's followed him as he walked away.
There were a few moments where no one spoke before a distant bird call broke the silence. Jean took that as a cue to resume the conversation as though it had never ended. "You're just thinking about yourself," he accused from where he was sat at the opposite end of the table, crossing his arms. Bold, considering Mikasa was present. But then again, the statement seemed to be directed at Armin alone.
"I'm not just thinking about myself!" Armin near shouted, briefly forgetting the sleeping people scattered around the building. With a measured breath, he began again. "I'm not just thinking about myself, I'm thinking about Mikasa, and Eren-"
"Eren, you're thinking about the priorities of a titan," Jean interjected.
"He's not just a titan!" Armin protested, his voice rising an octave embarrassingly.
"Oh?"
Oh, indeed. Maybe he shouldn't have said that. "He... He's a friend and he helps us."
Before Jean could rise up to say something, Marco took the opportunity to speak. "I know Eren isn't like other titans... but he's still one of them at the end of the day, we should be focusing more on what the humans want, what we want."
Armin took a second to feel the still even vibrations through his fingertips on the tabletop and thanked whatever God was out there that Eren wasn't conscious to listen to what Marco had just said. While Eren didn't sleep per se, he went into a lull of inactivity at night akin to sleep and Armin was willing to bet that he wasn't completely lucid during those hours.
He just knew that a statement like that would tear him up inside.
"Eren is the only reason you're alive," Mikasa spoke for the first time in a while, eyes cold and tone just as chilly. Not the usual plain voice. Jean visibly flinched. She was stood a little to the left behind Armin, his shadow casting a rather fearsome darkness onto her features. If he had to name the quickest method to anger Mikasa, it would be insulting Eren. The usual fun Jean made was fine, Eren wasn't really hurt by it. But this was different.
"Eren is heading towards Wall Maria," Marco countered, unperturbed by Mikasa's intense focus. To say Armin was shocked would be an understatement.
Mikasa said "You don't know that," at the same time Armin said, "We can't take Eren to the wall."
"Why not?"
"They would kill him!" Armin was careful not to specify who 'they' was, letting Marco and Jean come to their own conclusions. As expected, they assumed he was referring to the Survey Corps.
"We could explain it to them, imagine the power the military would have if a titan was on their side!" Marco exclaimed with a gleam to his eyes. "He could stand guard at the breach in the Trost District, or kill the titans around the wall!" He was so positive, even after all of this time spent living in the Outside.
"They wouldn't give him a chance!" Armin argued, voice frustratingly high. He was grasping for straws but it was imperative that he both convince them to agree while also avoiding divulging their secrets. He looked back to Mikasa and she shook her head.
"So what! He's just a titan – we, the humans want to go home! You might want to go exploring, writing books and riding a stupid titan but we don't want to! It's selfish!" Jean practically exploded. After he finished, breathing heavily, annoyed shouts came from both the room next door and the floor above. "We'll talk more about this in the morning," he followed up in a frustrated stage whisper, dragging Marco down to the basement with him.
With a wooden thump, the basement door slammed shut and Mikasa and Armin were left in the front room with only the gentle swaying light of the lamp for company.
Wordlessly, they began gathering up the notations. But before Mikasa could roll up the map, he placed a finger on a blank space on the left side. She paused in her tidying, waiting for him to explain.
"I'm fairly certain that's the boundary of Wall Maria," he began. "We never went in a straight line away from the wall even at the beginning, otherwise we would never have picked up the people we have,
"The ex-soldiers make sense, the survey corps job is to go into the Outside, granted they don't often go past Wall Maria but Newbie was running, well, flying I suppose, for her life, Bernard was lost and quite a few horses went rogue, not to mention the rest of the cases."
Mikasa nodded. "Marco was flung and Jean followed."
"Well, I think there was more to that story but that's beside the point, we had to be close for all of these pickups to happen and we're close now because we picked up Newbie and..." He rummaged in his bag for the red logbook and brought up the page he'd named 'recruits' in a fit of irony. Once in hand, he began marking out crosses on the map, all vaguely clustered nearby and around the blank spot he had pointed out. "This is where I've estimated their locations when Eren sniffed them out."
The markings formed a semi-circle around the blank spot, occasionally crossed by rivers, previous settlements and various geographical features. Nowhere near any of the interesting places though, like the mountain or the ocean. But that just aided his theory further. "We've been headed in this direction for a month now."
"Eren doesn't want to go back, does he?" Mikasa asked, something vulnerable and maybe a little angry filtering into her words.
"... and face all of the danger that comes with that? It would be a very Eren thing to do."
In the small two bedroomed wooden house, illuminated by only the weak flickerings of a small flame, framed by long grassy plains that went on for as far as the eye could see, guarded by a fifteen-metre giant, Armin felt small. With the knowledge that there were trees which heights spanned seemingly forever, mountains that disappeared into the clouds and vast oceans filled with more salt than a merchant could ever hope to sell, Armin felt infinitesimal.
Mikasa blew out the lamp.
"You mean we're actually going home!" Sasha squealed, jumping up and down, creating enough noise to wake up Connie who was laid in a gathering of dusty rugs by her feet. The fact that she'd already equipped her bow and quiver didn't help with all the clattering it was making.
Faced with the unbridled excitement that various members of their ragtag group were exhibiting with the prospect of returning in mind, Armin was starting to feel a little guilty for going against Marco and Jean. But one look at Mikasa's face was enough for him to wipe those feelings away.
They didn't know what they knew.
"Eren's been headed that way for a month or so now and he's not listening to us when we ask him to change direction."
"Well, he is a Titan," Connie murmured, still sleep-addled. Armin saw the transition of peaceful morning drowsiness to the dawning realisation of what they were talking about all play out on his face in an almost comical fashion. "Wait, we're going home?!"
"Yes!" Sasha exclaimed, bodily hefting Connie up off the ground. "Pack your things!" She began a frenzied run around the house, picking up various belongings she'd somehow managed to scatter all throughout the building during their one night stay. Connie quickly joined her and they chattered excitedly about topics like hunting opportunities, farms and general home life.
Armin left, so he didn't witness the second, more sobering realization Connie came to as he thought about his home life and what might be left of it in his absence.
Having packed up all of the documentation, Armin headed outside where he saw the majority of the group beginning to get ready to leave. There was a handy thing with most of them being ex-survey corps members, they were military efficient. Even Newbie was fine once she was given an objective.
Mikasa was having a more or less one-way conversation with Eren, just as she had been when he'd left to inform every one who was still sleeping of their decision to return. Or Eren's decision to return, as that was what it really was and hence why Mikasa was still talking to him. Eren was proving to be as stubborn as ever.
The titan in question kept making dismissive grunts and shaking his head, crossing his arms in a way that could be described as petulant but Armin wasn't that harsh. He trusted Eren to have a reason for wanting to return but he couldn't exactly communicate it to the rest of them.
"...and you know it!" Mikasa's voice was raised but all she got in return was a huff of steam. Moving to stand beside her, Armin relayed the news.
"We'll be ready to travel soon,” he said, no happier about it than she was.
"I'm still upset with you," Mikasa declared and Armin had to remind himself that it was Eren she was speaking to, not him. She could get quite single-minded like that when it came to Eren but Armin was sure she had heard him. Despite her anger, she climbed onto Eren's offered hand and took her usual spot on his shoulder.
Today, Aaron was joining him and Marco in the cart, already sat down and comfortable. As Armin approached, he caught the gist of their conversation.
"... Hope there's some tall trees or something I can grapple onto, been saving this gas for some time, thought I'd brush up on my skills since we're so close now," Aaron was saying. He was indeed geared up in his 3dmg and survey corps attire.
"Yeah, well, I was planning on joining the MP before this all happened so I suppose I should brush up on my skills as well," Marco replied as Armin hefted himself into the cart to join them.
"Hey Armin," Aaron greeted, his usual cheeky smile in place. He always looked that way, like he was up to something. But that appearance was incredibly deceptive. Aaron hadn't done anything to make Armin distrustful of him during his whole stay with them. "We were just talking about the return, reckon it'll give my old commander a right shocker when he sees my ugly mug!"
Armin smiled, he supposed their story was going to be a bit of a hit with the press too. Kids who survived out in the Outside for five years... or was it six? Either way, the idea of a cooperative Titan alone was unbelievable. Which was exactly why they would try to hide Eren from the public when they got too close. He wasn't sure of the logistics of that yet but... they'd work it out. Find a way to keep their group's mouths shut too.
"What are you going to do when we get back, Armin?" Marco tentatively asked. An olive branch.
"Leave again." It was that simple. They were doing this for whatever purpose Eren had in mind and then they'd be off, alleviated of the burden of knowing these people had been torn from their families when they possessed the ability to reunite them. He'd spent five years in the Outside and he didn't have a home to return to – this was Home.
"But Armin!" Both of them appeared to be positively scandalised at the thought. "Your notes! Your research! It would be invaluable to the researchers!" Marco said.
"Not to mention the survey corps – they're supposed to be out here!" Aaron added.
Armin couldn't argue against that, but what he could argue was that: "I have no way of telling what they would use Eren for, his safety matters to me."
The two looked at him as though it was absurd to worry about the safety of the titan. Well, he supposed in most cases it was.
But they didn't know what he knew.