Archive of Our Own

     “There has hardly been anyone particularly keen to cut out a lizard’s tongue, but one must learn to adapt to uncomfortable situations.”

     Shriveled and gaunt in the flickering light of the floating candlesticks, the corpse of a lizard rested atop the wooden desk between an array of glass vials and handcrafted blades. Though it was lifeless against the table, the scales of its jade-like skin seemed to glimmer with spirit in the light of the cluttered room. Armin pulled his gaze from the creature to focus on anything but the way his father pushed its carcass towards him. He focused on the myriad of books along the dark, towering shelves and the ceramic stoneware which held his father’s delicate trinkets, such as a chipped eyeglass that had not been broken at all until Armin dropped it following a notably horrid demonstration of divination. Armin hummed as he thought of the night that he used the eyeglass to read a long note about tonics in a book he borrowed from his fathers’ bedroom.

     A hollow murmur brought Armin’s attention back to the withered reptile. It was at that moment that he noticed the way its protruding bones threatened to burst through the vile sheath of skin warping around the joints.

     Armin cleared his throat as his father’s eyebrow raised beneath his dark, stringy fringe.

     “Sorry,” he whispered. He straightened his spine as his father planted his hands on the edge of the desk.

     “Your mind is wandering again.” Levi tilted his head as Armin gripped the cloth of his own trousers. Armin’s knuckles whitened as he was certain that the longer he stared at the lizard in front of him, the more likely it would be that its eyelid would pop open and a glossy eye would glower at him as he sliced its tongue from its body. Levi nudged his chin towards the lizard. “I found it in this condition, if that is what’s concerning you.”

     “No,” Armin blurted as he rushed his hands to gesture in front of him. “This is fine, Papa. I am fine. Exceptional, even. Truly. I… I am only curious about how this pertains to our practice.”

     Although it felt as though his bones could have burst from the sheer slew of thoughts which occupied him, Armin offered a sheepish smile, knowing full well why his father had insisted on abandoning their initial plan of studying sacred summoning circles and shoved limp lizard remains in front of him. He knew the precise incident that spurred this lesson, for it occurred the last time Armin observed his father on an assignment. Phantom images of sullen, flaky skin and disjointed limbs flooded his mind, and he could not escape the way images of empty eye sockets seemed to taunt him from the intangible realm of his memory.

     No, he realized with a frown, it is not the lizard itself that is bothering me—

     “It is important to craft opportunities that go beyond your limitations,” Levi said after a few moments. The trim of his darksome overcoat billowed around his knees as he strode to the furthest crooked bookshelf. Its high collar was sharp and prominent against the paleness of his neck. He ghosted the tip of his index finger along an array of worn spines before pulling a book from its home on the shelf and walking back over to the desk. “I can not have you cut the tongue—or any other part of the body, for that matter—from a raised human subject for the purpose of mere practice. We never inflict unsolicited harm on those who are summoned. We mostly deal in apparitions, as you know, but dealing with bodily entities can come with complications. I must prepare you for them. Your father found the lizard in the corner of his study, you know, just beside his potted water hemlocks. This is not like last time. I promise.”

     Last time, Armin mused with a deflated hum. The notion did nothing to stifle the burgeoning bitterness in his throat. His qualms would have certainly flourished from the same seed of uncertainty had this lizard been found in any fashion similar to the shrew Levi had presented him the last time there was an impromptu deviation from their plans. Armin had only returned to their cottage after sketching wildflowers in the drizzling rain that evening to find Erwin questioning his husband as to where the shrew that had been scurrying around the tea closet had run off to. The young witch had not thought much about the shrew until, a few lessons later, Levi found its body at the paws of his own feline familiar, opting to utilize it as a lesson in spirit-raising.

     Armin found a fresh sheet of frayed parchment splayed atop the desk, smoothing down the curled edges before sketching the dismal body of the lizard. The vane of his feather quill trembled in his hand as the lizard seemed to haunt him from the peripherals of his vision. He could not help the impressions of broken, twisted fingers festering in his mind, and he almost forgot to breathe. What, if anything, could he have done to rid the pain from the source of these decayed hands? Beads of murky ink dripped from the tip of his quill and pearled along the parchment as he tried to calm his quivering hand. Levi left him to his sketch for a few moments and flicked between a handful of pages in his book. The sinuous script adorning the spine and cover of the book was too faded and covered in dust for Armin to discern its title.

     He brushed the tips of his fingers against the stalk of a floating candlestick—one of many under Levi’s enchantment—that had drifted too close to his temple. Armin watched as it fluttered at the ghost of his touch before wafting towards the rickety ceiling.

     “Well done,” Levi said as he peered at Armin’s sketch, and Armin placed his quill back in its little bottle of ink. The crisp echoes of Levi’s tall boots as he made his way towards the handmade blades was enough to make Armin feel as though a swarm of insects were crawling their way up the back of his neck. “What is the primary rule of guidance in dealing with the subjects of our practice?”

     “Treat all with respect and dignity.” The words felt more intrinsic on Armin’s tongue than most customary greetings.

     “Precisely.” Levi gestured towards the lizard with a brief nod. “This is not a tricky thing, but it can be unnerving. Watch my movements.”

     Armin brought his quill back between his fingers. He scrawled notes and twisty arrows along the parchment to record every iota of information Levi told him about the lizard’s anatomy and how it could prepare him for future encounters with bodily-raised subjects. He felt as though the imaginary insects crawling on his skin threatened to worm their way into his mouth and writhe down his throat.

     After a few moments, every word that Levi muttered fell on his ears as though Armin was underwater. His instructions were muffled and disorienting. Armin could not focus on anything but the searing ache in his chest as his breaths became ragged and sharp. He could not rid himself of the icy memory of bony fingers that felt as though they had been broken at every knuckle wrapping around his wrist with the strength of nothing he had ever felt before, nor could he think of anything but the way he was certain his wrist could have snapped under the overwhelming pressure. The sensation squirmed along his skin until it became so much that Armin was sure it was gouging its way into the very marrow of his bones.

     A sudden tap at the window of their study had Armin breathless, nearly falling off his wooden stool.

     He ignored the gruff groan that escaped his father as Armin turned in his stool to face the window, lips parting at the sight of the familiar crow peering through the jagged glass. Inky feathers looked sleek and glossy in the faded glow of the setting sun, and Armin could see how his dark beak seemed to reflect the dim sunlight through the windowpane. The crow tilted his head as Armin watched him, puffing his feathers and stretching his wings before hopping closer to the pane of glass. Armin brought his hand to his mouth to hide the way his lips curled into a subtle smile at the sight. The crow pushed forward again, pecking the glass with another harsh clink. With every jab at the window, the bird would wait for Armin to look at him before tilting his head and ruffling his feathers once again.

     After a moment, the study was filled no longer with Levi’s muddled instructions regarding the lizard, but rather the crow’s shrill taps against the glass. Armin dug the toes of his leathery boots into the cold ground of the study, dropping his hand to fumble with the fabric of his trousers again before turning to his father, who pinched the bridge of his nose with a sharp exhale.

     “May I let him in?”

     “No.”

     A loud thud interrupted the incessant pecking, and Armin watched as the crow nudged his head into the glass. The feathers tapering off at the tip of the crow’s tail ruffled as the bird walked along the windowsill, expertly moving his talons to avoid tripping along the overgrowth of twisting ivy and verdant vines.

     Armin gnawed at his bottom lip. “Should he not be in here with me?”

     “He can wait for you out there.” Levi drew a long breath and pulled his lips into a thin line. “You are not conjuring anything today, nor are you drawing on any of your craft.”

     “He will not distract me this time, Papa,” Armin whispered. The wooden desk creaked as Armin leaned his elbows along the edge, his quill still clutched in one hand. He tilted his head at his father and crinkled his nose when strands of light hair fell across his face. “I talked with him about it.”

     Levi crossed his arms and turned to face the window. Waxen fingers gripped the dark fabric of his overcoat as he raised his chin towards the bird and glanced between Armin’s wide eyes and the crow’s puffed chest. He must have taken too long to make his decision, however, for the dark bird moved his gaze from Armin to suddenly glower at the older witch, offering a terse peck at the glass. Levi looked at Armin with one of his eyebrows raised, and Armin felt himself deflate at his father’s shaking head.

     Levi brought his attention back to the face of the desk, and he nudged the lizard towards Armin with a gentle touch once again. His eyebrows seemed to push closer together above sullen eyes with every perpetual noise made by the dark bird. Armin bounced his heel against the leg of the wooden stool, clutching the quill tighter in his grasp when Levi shoved the blades towards him, which were no longer than the distance between his wrist and the tip of his forefinger.

     Armin pursed his lips when he noticed his father’s jaw clench with every erratic tap against the glass. The harsh clinks, though shallow and quick, resonated deep within Armin’s chest, rippling through his mind like a leaf gracing the surface of a pond. A piercing tap nearly made Levi nick Armin’s skin with one of the handmade blades as he handed it to him. Levi threw his palms facedown on the face of the desk, staring Armin with dark eyes.

     “If he does not stop pecking at my window, I will pluck him of every measly feather until he has the appearance of something that belongs in a stew.”

     Armin tilted his head to watch the glossy bird nuzzle the plumage of his chest with his beak. He fluttered his fingers and curled his wrist, imploring the crow to relax as Armin acknowledged him with a stern gaze. He set down his quill once again to cradle his wrist. He rubbed the skin there with the pads of his fingers, trying to rid himself of the frigid feeling that had yet to melt from his body. When the crow shook his tail feathers once more and settled to rest over his own feet, Armin gave him a gentle nod before turning back to the lizard, his stomach dense as though he swallowed a basket of stones.

     As soon as Armin reached a quivering hand towards one of the scalpels, the deafening screeches of shattered glass pierced his ears like that of a banshee.

     Shards of the windowpane littered the floor in heaps. Armin all but shrieked as he rushed from the stool, nearly stumbling headfirst into one of the floating candles as he scoured the windowsill for his crow. He winced at the splitting crunch of glass beneath his leathery boot and pulled his hands inside his flared sleeves.

     He found himself breathless as strikingly grand wings carried his familiar through the new hole in the timber walls of the study. The crow flew silently into the room before swooping down to land on Armin’s shoulder, mindedly keeping his talons from digging sharp holes into Armin’s skin. He nestled the curve of his beak along Armin’s cheek and nudged the crown of his head into his hair. Armin brought a hand to stroke the underside of his neck, shaking his head as the bird preened under his caress.

     Armin avoided his father’s gaze as he bent down to pick up some of the larger fragments of glass. The crow, however, puffed his chest and shook his tailfeathers once again, turning on Armin’s shoulder to face the older witch. He could hear Levi click his tongue and mutter harshly to himself under his breath.  

     “I will find the broom,” Armin whispered, voice coarse. He stood as the crow cawed in protest and nudged his head against his jaw.

     Levi held up a pale hand with a sigh. “He is going to clean this time.”

     “He is my responsibility—”

     “Besides hunting for rats,” Levi interrupted lowly, “the only thing he accomplishes consistently is breaking your focus in our lessons. I can count on both my hands the number of windows he has broken since you started accompanying me on assignments this year.”

     Levi leaned his hip against the edge of the desk, folding his arms across his chest. Armin’s eyes flicked to the lizard’s body before he wrapped his arms around his torso. The crow played with flyaway strands of Armin’s hair and poked at them with his beak, gentle and curious.

     “It’s alright, Papa… really,” Armin said, squeezing his torso and digging his fingernails into his skin. “I do not think I was prepared to cut out a tongue today, anyway. Please do not blame Eren for my own shortcomings.”

     It did not go unnoticed to Armin the way his father’s lips furled into a sunken frown, heavy-set lines deepening around the corners, and he felt his chest shatter like the very glass crackling beneath his own boots. Levi scooped up the lizard and placed its body in the wooden trinket box that housed the blades. He carried the box close to his body as he silently tidied the face of the desk, shuffling Armin’s parchment together and placing the glass vials back on the wooden shelves.

     “Just ensure he is the one sweeping this time,” he said, eyes trained on the desk.

     Armin felt as though his feet could have burrowed into the ground of the study and kept him there forever. He shook his head as he wracked his mind for something, anything, to say to his father, breath stuck in the back of his throat and tongue caught between words before he bit his lip. With a nudge from the bird’s beak against his jaw, Armin stepped away from the glass with eyes trained on his boots.

     The evening air was dewy on his skin as Armin stepped outside. His spine trembled with the chill that settled over his body, and he hummed as the crow waddled closer to his neck. Unlike Erwin’s study, Levi’s had been located in a small shack outside their humble cottage. Erwin had forced the two to move their lessons outdoors after far too many divination demonstrations had brewed an unsettling aura within the house. Armin avoided every creaky floorboard he knew of on the staircase, slipping by Erwin’s study when he noticed that the door had been left wide open.

     “What was all that for?” Armin whispered in a hiss towards his companion once they arrived at his bedroom. He craned his neck to catch the crow’s gaze, but the dark bird kept his face buried in Armin’s hair. He sighed and reached a hand to stroke at his feathers before gesturing towards the wooden room partition by his dresser. “You have clothes there from last time.”

     The crow peeled himself away from the witch’s touch, flying behind the partition faster than Armin could inhale his next breath. Armin fumbled with a little box on his nightstand as he kept his eyes anywhere but the partition, as the fibrous material between the wooden skeleton showed the shadowy figure of anything behind it as the golden sunlight filtered through Armin’s window. The partition was threaded with floral stitches and had been a gift from Mikasa, who had given it to him when Armin babbled to her after the first time his crow transformed bare in his bedroom.

      Armin poked through the contents of the little box with his index finger as he chewed his bottom lip. Tiny sounds of metal rings and jewel-encrusted ear cuffs clinking together made Armin smile, though it was not enough to distract him from the boisterous thud that sounded from behind the room divider. It happened each time the crow disappeared behind the partition as he got used to the use of his longer legs, yet the thought of its potential severity was always the first one on Armin’s mind. He dug to the bottom of the box to pull out a golden key strung on a long thread, and he gripped it tightly before standing from his bed. He started keeping the key, which Levi said had been strung around the crow’s neck from the moment he saw him, safe in the box once his fathers began sending the bird on more intense errands.

     “That,” a familiar voice said, “was a v-valiant rescue.”

     With a roll of his eyes and an incredulous smile, Armin turned to the partition with the collection of silvery rings and ear cuffs cradled in the palm of his hand.

     Armin, as he always had been at the sight of his friend, was breathless as Eren sauntered out from behind the partition. One hand tugged at the faded olive shirt that hung loosely around his limbs, while the other threaded through his thick hair before massaging his jowls. He chewed his lips between sharp teeth—Eren, not too hard, Armin remembered saying to him once, you are going to split them—and grinned dashingly at the witch.

     “Need I remind you that repairing the windows is no costless endeavor?” Armin asked.

     Eren puffed his cheeks and pursed his lips as he implemented the exercises Armin taught him to get his lips used to speaking after spending a while as a bird.

     “You look like you want nothing more than to stab your eye out with your f-feather quill each time I have to sit outside.”

     The rings in his palm jingled as he handed them to Eren, who had walked so close to him that Armin could feel the heat of his body against his skin. He should come to expect it, really, the way Eren always got so close to him that the witch inhaled the scent of the forest with each breath. Armin watched the setting sunlight contour the sharp features of Eren’s face and held his breath as his fingers brushed Armin’s palm when he took the pretty rings and delicate ear cuffs. Armin tilted his head and watched the way the rings slid along his fingers, focusing on a band encrusted with a little green jewel.

     “His tolerance for you shrinks the more you do this.” Armin brought his gaze to Eren’s eyes, which were unfocused and staring beyond Armin’s head as he placed the golden cuff around the shell of his ear. He threw the key around his neck with a hum before he slid it under his shirt.

     Once finished adorning himself with his favorite rings that he had slowly corralled from Armin’s collection, he stretched his arms behind his back and tugged his wrist to pull at his shoulder blades. His shirt, Armin noticed, was tight along the breadth of his shoulders as he stretched this way.

     “I think there is little he can do about it now,” Eren quipped, grin still wide on his lips. “He has always been short with me. Can’t help it. I knocked a v-vial of water in your lap when we were young, and he still has yet to forgive me.”

     Armin gaped at him. “Perhaps because he thought it was the vial of toxin!”

     “Perhaps,” he mimicked with a laugh, “he should not have had toxin anywhere near a child to begin with! Besides, I believe he is only bitter because he found out I am not centuries old like the rest of the familiars in every book he has ever read.”

     Eren brought a hand to swipe his fringe away from his forehead, and Armin admired the way the rings caught the dim light of the candles in his room. The sun had fully set by now.

     “Father says you could hardly fly at the time,” Armin said, his voice soft. “There was nobody to teach you how.”

     The two had been close enough that Armin could hear the guttural rasp of a hum catch in Eren’s throat. He clicked his tongue before stepping away from Armin, spreading his arms as though they were his wings. Eren threw his head back and chuckled, and Armin felt warmth ripple in his stomach at the sight.

     “Look at us now,” he said. “We both got stronger, and now I can stay like this longer than the moon stays in the sky.”

     Eren crinkled his nose when the tips of dark strands fell in front of his eyes. He ruffled his hair once more, a laugh bubbling from his lips as he stared at his human limbs.

     “You are getting better at transforming on your own,” Armin said.

     It was a truth forged from years of trials and practice. When Armin was small and his lessons had not yet begun, he had found a large book between a collection of tincture bottles on Erwin’s nightstand that detailed the shifting potential of witches’ companions. The book had been so big that he needed to carry it against his chest with both arms. He brought it to his bedroom and slid under the patchy blankets, his crow perched on his shoulder, and lit a tiny candle to read by. Armin had learned of sundry skin-turning abilities at the disposal of familiars and learned of their different physical forms. He read stories of familiars that told their witches they were as old as the sun itself.

     Armin read the pages aloud to Eren, a routine that had taken habit after Armin began sharing the brilliant stories he found in his books to soothe him. Eren always nestled his head in Armin’s hair as he read and peered over his shoulder at the parchment pages, to which Armin never complained. Even after the young witch turned eighteen, Erwin had commended him for the way he surely contributed to the growth of Eren’s vocabulary and understanding of the world, for it was through Armin that Eren had learned the ways of being human.

     After hearing Armin speak of transformations, Eren took every sliver of an opportunity to pry the book open with his beak until Armin eventually agreed to help Eren attempt his first transformation. He had kept it hidden from his fathers; after overhearing them quietly murmur over tea in the kitchen one night to discuss the fact that Eren had never transformed on his own into another form, Armin kept any idea regarding his crow’s skin-turning confined to his own mind. Armin had pushed it off as much as he could, petrified that Eren would turn into a cockroach or a toad and that he would not be able to change back without the help of his fathers. The persistent pecking of Eren’s beak against the book was impossible to ignore, however, and Armin had agreed after Eren nearly pecked a hole through a handful of pages.

     One day, when Erwin had been out bringing troves of tonic elixirs to the village and Levi had been perfecting a flotation enchantment in his study, Armin plopped on his bed with his crow across from him. It had happened almost in the blink of an eye, though it was something forever engrained into Armin’s memory; when thick wings grew into limbs and inky feathers retracted beneath olive skin at the completion of Armin’s cryptic spell, it had been the first time Armin was met with the gaze of forest eyes and dark hair. They boy had been doe-eyed, though his eyes could not match the gargantuan, toothy grin spread across his lips. It had not lasted long, however, before they boy fell backwards off the edge of the bed with a strangled yelp, and when Armin scrambled across to peer over the edge, Eren had transformed back into a crow.

     Armin had thought about the encounter with furrowed eyebrows each time he read the book over again. The boy did not look as though his age could rival that of the largest star in the sky, though Armin was certain that his smile could very well have been a drop of sunlight itself.

     “I am not alone,” Eren said, and Armin was sure that, had he not been able to see Eren, he would have known he was grinning by the lilt in his voice. He walked towards Armin, once again so achingly close that Armin could feel the warmth of his breath against his skin. “I have you. We have each other.”

     Armin’s vision was clouded with lively greens and brown hair once again, and he felt as though Eren very well could have been woven from spools of fervor and golden thread.

     “We do,” Armin whispered, lips parted. Eren grinned and straightened his shoulders with pride.

     “And that,” he said before clasping his hands together, “is why Levi cannot keep us apart, frustrated as he may be.”

     With his bottom lip caught between his teeth, Armin searched Eren’s eyes and tilted his head. He nudged Eren’s foot with the tip of his boot.

     “I think it is important that Papa trusts you. Trusts you like I do. And that begins with, perhaps… listening to him when it comes to these things with the window. I want him to let you be there when we move on to larger lessons, and I want him to feel comfortable having you present during assignments. I have not even raised a strong spirit on my own, and I know I am hardly on the cusp of outgrowing my apprenticeship, but I want you with me as I learn, Eren, and I want him to let you be.”

     The witch felt a harsh sting rush down to the very bottom of his stomach when Eren tilted his head to the side. He took another step closer to Armin, who inhaled sharply at the gentle brush of their knuckles together.

     “You look so miserable when you’re in there,” he said with his eyebrows furrowed. His voice had been so soft that Armin could no longer feel the heat of his breath against his skin. “Especially after… everything.”

     Chilling prickles of blistering dread crept along his skin once more, budding at the base of his neck and sprouting like thorns, though it is subdued as he found himself grounded in the cadence of their shared breaths.

     Armin dried the sweat of his palms on his trousers. “It is my decision to continue my studies in this branch of magic.”

     “Only it’s not,” Eren said with a frown. “It isn’t what you want.”

     Eren pressed his lips together and gripped the trim of his threadbare shirt.

     “I can’t tell him, Eren, I can’t… it would break his heart.”

     “I think you have done that already when you told him you did not want to cut out the lizard tongue.”

     Armin managed a gentle puff of a laugh before he brought his arms back around his torso. He dug his fingers into his waist and tugged at the fabric of his cloak, avoiding Eren’s eyes as he stared at the ground.

     “He will think I am nothing but fragile for wanting to change.”

     “No,” Eren replied, voice strong. “He wouldn’t.”

     “He’ll think I’m weak.”

     “Armin—”

     “I can barely even handle cutting out a lizard tongue without thinking about the way that spirit latched on to me, Eren. I am helpless, and he already thinks as such. I know what I am, and so does he.”

     Eren grasped Armin’s shoulders and bent his head down to catch Armin’s weary gaze.

     “I do not think any of that is true, not for a moment,” he said. “Wanting to be more involved in healing magic does not make you weak-willed. Besides, you do not want to quit spirit-raising for good. You will not crush Levi. He will understand, especially if you tell him what all of this has been doing to you.”

     “I don’t know if I can,” he murmured. He chewed his lip until he felt the sharp taste of iron on his tongue.

     Armin thought of the way Levi seemed to deflate in the study when he had told him he was not ready to cut out the lizard tongue, and he let out a shaky breath. Eren dropped his hands from Armin’s shoulders.  

     “You are as good with words as anyone, even your father—the taller one, I mean. Erwin. You get in your own head, Min, and that is the only thing keeping you from doing what you want to do.”

     “I can’t help it,” he whispered as he shook his head and kept his gaze to the ground. “I can’t fix it. I can’t do anything.”

     Eren was silent for a moment, watching Armin with knitted eyebrows and parted lips. Through the fallen strands of flaxen hair in front of his eyes, Armin could see, from the edge of his sight, the way Eren’s hand trembled where it rested by his hip. Armin was about to look up and ask what he was thinking about, but Eren’s hand reached forward to pull Armin into his chest. Armin stumbled over his feet from Eren’s strength, nearly crashing into his chest as though they were reuniting after an insufferable distance apart. He gasped and felt his chest heave with deep breaths, suddenly surrounded by the warmth seeping through Eren’s thin clothes and the scent of pine. He was surrounded by everything entirely Eren. He closed his eyes as Eren dug his nose into Armin’s hair.

     “Perhaps not overnight,” Eren mumbled, “but I know you are stronger than you think you are.”

     “Eren,” Armin said, voice muffled in Eren’s shirt. His voice stammered as he thought of anything to say that could express even a speck of the warmth in his chest.

     “Remember when Levi wanted to forbid me from ever coming inside the cottage again because I kept eating all the teacakes? You did not let that happen. And when he kept threatening to give me away to those village merchants for free because I kept sitting on his head? You knew he was not serious—I did not, but all is well now—and you still told him that it bothered you.” Eren tightened his grip around Armin’s shaking shoulders. “When Levi did not want me to come on your first observation assignment, you stood your ground and told him that you felt it was wrong.”

     “Those are different,” Armin said with a strained voice. He shook his head where it was cradled against Eren’s shoulder.

     “I know they are.” Eren brought his lips closer to Armin’s ear. “They are different because you stood your ground for me. I appreciate it more than I can tell you, you know that I do. But this is your life, Min. Your future is not set in stone. It is not… fixed. Not fixed like the stars. You can be anything you want to be, even if your mind tries to tell you something else sometimes.”

     Eren’s voice was a ghost of a whisper in his hear. He certainly would have felt Eren’s lips on the curve of his ear had his hair not curtained the side of his head. Armin brought his hands to wrap around Eren’s torso, gripping the fabric of his shirt and letting out a shaky breath against his shoulder.

     “I can try,” Armin whispered after a few moments, burying his nose into Eren’s shirt.

     The two stayed that way for a while; even with Armin’s shuddering shoulders and uncertain hands, Eren held him close and coaxed him back outside. He held the broom in his left and gripped Armin’s hand with his right, and they slipped beyond the open door of Erwin’s study once again. Though Armin had thought he would have had to speak to Levi in their study while Eren swept the remains of his mischief, the flickering light of a candle in the peripherals of his vision caught his attention, and he realized that his father had been pulling up a bucket of water from the water well. Eren whispered delicate things in Armin’s ear as the witch found himself rooted to the ground.

     “It will be okay,” he said, squeezing Armin’s hand. “This is your future. He’ll understand, I promise.”

     Eren only departed after Armin squeezed his hand in return with a soft nod. Armin watched him smile before Eren headed into the study and ran a hand through his hair. He could hear the scrapes of the glass shards in the distance as Eren began to sweep.

     His nails dug stinging crescents into his palms as he trudged his way over to the well. With tight lips and pinched eyebrows, Armin inhaled the musk of moist dirt and dewy grass as the chirps of distant crickets guided him towards Levi’s shadowy figure. The flame of the candle painted the highs if his face in warm light, leaving the depths of his cheeks and under-eyes in the shadows. Levi had noticed him when Armin was close enough that he could seemingly hear the rasp of his boots against the dirt.

     Levi did not turn to face him, opting to train his focus on twisting the lever of the well.

     “Sit,” he said. His voice, low and gravely as it was, was enough to pull Armin’s lips into a frown.

     He sat on the fallen log near the well and pulled the trim of his cloak to the side, not wanting it to get ridden with remnants of damp moss. Armin wrung his hands and squeezed his fingers, pressing his nails into his cuticles to distract himself from the feeling of sweating and shivering simultaneously.

     “I wanted to speak with you about today,” Armin whispered, the end of his words punctuated with a cough to clear his throat.

     Levi finally turned to face him. It was impossible, Armin thought, to ignore the way his lips curled downward, the lines in his face deep and heavy as he stared at him with sunken eyes. He continued to turn the lever as he stared at Armin, who was nearly distracted by the creaky groans of the old wood.

     “Alright. I am listening.”

     Armin’s eyes flickered to their outdoor study. He chewed his bottom lip as he saw Eren’s head bob across the hole in the wall where the window once had been.

     He tried to gulp down the dryness in his throat. “I—Eren, well… he’s sorry for breaking the window.”

     “I find that difficult to believe.” Levi sighed and stopped turning the lever. He held his hand there for a moment, digging the nail of his thumb into the wood before pulling away and sitting next to Armin on the fallen tree trunk. He placed his elbows on his knees and hunched his shoulders, gazing at Armin with soft eyes. “That is not why you’re here.”

     Armin thought of the way the sickly visions of their last assignment plagued his mind as though he were cursed with the burden of the sight. Levi had almost refused to bring him along at the time, knowing that they were to bodily raise a known volatile subject, yet Armin had insisted anyway. It had been fine, really, until the flaking, rotting corpse reached for Armin’s wrist, wrapping broken and disjointed fingers around his arm like a snake coiling around its meal. Armin’s body had gone frigid as the body of the man pulled him along with agonizing groans flooding from his mouth. Levi could not free Armin from the grasp, no matter what frantic spell or incantation he recited to ward off the corpse. Armin could feel the man’s icy fingers break skin and claw at his arm as though he wanted to dig his way down to Armin’s bones. He had been moments away from the raised subject wrapping his other hand around the front of his throat before Levi was forced to saw through the man’s own wrist, slicing his hand expertly to free Armin from the grip. The separated hand had fallen limp from his arm, thumping against the grass louder than the screaming pounds of Armin’s heart.

    Even in the moments of vivid reenactments in his mind about that moment, Armin could not help but wonder if the man could feel the pain in his limbs once he was raised. The entire purpose of the assignment was to raise the man so Levi could attempt to determine who had gotten in a deadly brawl with him in the village tavern, as the man had been found with most of his limbs crushed and shattered. He had been alive for days after the incident, though he perished following the lack of proper treatment.

     “It is about the last assignment,” Armin said after the silence grew too long between them. “Not entirely, no, but I have been thinking of this for some time.”

     Levi sighed again, tightening his lips. “I knew that scared you. I should have paid closer attention.”

     “No, it’s… it’s not that.” Armin straightened his back as his hands shook in front of him. When Levi’s eyebrows raised as he watched Armin gesture wildly in front of him, Armin took a deep breath, one that rattled in his chest like his body had been empty. “Yes. It did scare me. It terrified me, Papa, and it still does, but not entirely because of what happened. These situations happen in your practice, and I knew that coming to observe you in your recent assignment was a risk, but I had to come. I needed to see it with my own eyes. I have read pages upon pages of everything relating to spirit-raising and… darker magic, but the books do not capture how these things can make us react when we are in these situations ourselves.”

     “Our practice may be darker magic,” Levi said, leaning towards Armin, “but we are not practitioners of evil. This branch of magic is certainly dark, but we are not.”

     “I know, and I have never thought of you or anything we do as malevolent,” Armin said, pulling his arms back around himself. “I would never think that of you, not when I know that everything you do is for other people… me, Father, the people in the village… even Eren.”

     Levi hummed and clicked his tongue before shifting his weight on the log.

     “You can tell me what’s really on your mind, Armin.”

     Armin turned to fully face his father. He brought his legs up on the log and pulled them up to his chest, wrapping his arms around his knees.

     “I have been feeling uneasy about our practice—”

     “I see.”

     “Please, Papa, I have more to say,” Armin said before he rested his chin on his knees. He took a deep breath. “I think it’s starting to… I do not know how to describe it. It is as though it consumes me. Not only in my dreams, but even when we are doing lessons in the study. I am overwhelmed by thinking, just… what if we could help these people before we even have to raise them?”

     Levi’s eyebrows knitted together. “I do not understand.”

     “On the last assignment,” Armin began, “I can not help but wonder what would have happened if that man’s wounds had been treated. If he had been treated properly, as he should have been, then perhaps… perhaps he would not have been in so much pain when we raised him. Perhaps we would not have had to raise him in the first place, and he would still be alive.”

     The tension around his father’s eyes seemed to melt away at the realization.

     “You want to learn healing magic.”

     Armin dug his fingernails into the skin around his knees.

     “I think I want to learn both,” Armin said. “I want to learn your magic and Father’s. I think I can… help a lot more people.”

     There was silence between them for moments longer than Armin would have liked. Armin could see the way the shadows flicking across his face did enough to highlight the way Levi’s jaw clenched as he turned his gaze from Armin, who suddenly felt as though the sound of the crickets was overbearing on his ears.

     “When we found you in the basket on our front step,” Levi said, looking at his hands, “we had no idea if you would grow to become a witch. We… I, rather—I did not know if this kind of magic was good for you. Erwin told me it was best to let you choose. I did not understand how learning my practice would help you, and I wanted to keep you away from it. I would rather let you choose your branch of magic than force one upon you, but… you never really chose this. I almost pushed you towards it. When the older kids picked on you and called you horrible names, I heard everything you said to Eren when you thought I could not hear you—when you were under your blankets or when you locked yourself in the wash-closet.”

     Armin turned his head to glance at the study. “I said a lot of things.”

     “You were hurt, and you were angry.” Levi made jabbing motions with his fingers. “Even when Eren pecked at their heads and chased them away, it wasn’t enough. Above all, though, you wanted to understand, and it was when I heard that for the first time that I saw myself in you, so I pushed you closer to the path of this magic. I did not exactly choose this kind of magic for myself, but I learned to adapt my practice into my own morals; I aim to understand the subjects I raise and speak to, and I grew from raising apparitions and speaking to subjects selfishly to doing it for something better. I want you to do anything you want to do, whether or not that involves learning from me.”

     “I do not want to stop learning from you,” Armin said with a soft voice. “I want to learn both. I believe that I can somehow, with both teachings of magic, do good things.” His lips curled into a sheepish smile. “I want to craft opportunities that go beyond my limitations.”

     It was an unusual sight to see the smile that crept on Levi’s lips. Armin did not see it often; it mostly bloomed when Levi thought he was alone with Erwin or when Armin finally accomplished a task that he had been fretting over for far too long.

     “Then that is what we shall do,” Levi said. Armin grinned and unfolded his legs from his chest.

     “Really? You mean that?”

     “Of course.” Levi patted the space atop the log next to his hip before he stood. “Your father is up late with a new essence recipe again, but I will talk with him tonight. He will be ecstatic, you know. He always felt you would have loved to spend more time in his greenhouse.”

     Armin finally stood to follow suit. He ran a finger over the grey stones at the rim of the well, bouncing on his heels as he brushed the back of his trousers and cloak off of any bark residue.

     “Thank you, Papa.” Armin made grandiose gestures with his hands as he searched for the right words. “I’ll go find Eren and let him know. He should be finished sweeping by now.”

     Levi’s hand hovered over the lever of the well before he grabbed Armin’s elbow with care.

     “Wait.”

     Armin’s heart sunk in his chest like a satchel of stones. The gaze from behind Levi’s dark fringe had the dryness returning to his throat as if it had never left at all.

     “I know what you are going to say,” Armin whispered as Levi turned to look at the hole in the wall of the study. “You and I have talked about this many times before, Papa.”

     “It is not just the window.”

     “I know. I do, I just….”

     Another sigh from his father had Armin wondering if the air was nearly chill enough to capture the visibility of their breaths.

     “Eren is many things,” Levi said. He let go of Armin’s elbow and brought his hand inside the billowing opening to his overcoat sleeve. “A pain in my ass is one of them if I am to be honest. A traditional familiar, though, is not one of those things. Not in the way you might think he is.”

     “Must we speak of this again?” Armin choked with a shake of his head. The gentle wisps of flyaway hairs fluttered across his eyes and he shivered. “Eren is aware he is not the same as what we may read about in the books. He knows that’s why you forbid me from bringing him to the market when he is human, or why you refuse to let him accompany Mikasa and I to deliver Father’s plants in the village.”

     “I do not know what he is,” Levi muttered with a tight voice. He refused to look away from Armin’s gaze, eyes focused and voice measured. “I didn’t know he was not a traditional familiar when he was sitting in the little basket we found you in. He was a flightless bird, and he should not have been, but we did not understand until we saw him transform into a child for the first time all those years ago that he was not a familiar spirit. He has aged as you have.”

     “He may not be a traditional familiar, but I care for him. I want him here with me. We have that connection, even if that connection is not a magical bond. Our connection was made ourselves. It was not forged by magic.” Armin’s voice was tight as though it were wound on a spinning wheel.

     The crush of the dirt beneath Levi’s boot was the only thing Armin could focus his attention on. His father tilted his head, dark fringe falling to the side and exposing the pallid wash of his complexion.

     “Eren helps you, and that is what is important to me. He carries the role of a familiar, even though he is not really one himself, and he is welcome here.” Levi lowered his voice to a mellow whisper. “We must search the books again for any indication of where he might have come from. Read them aloud to him once more, and perhaps they will encourage his mind to recall any memories.”

     Armin felt the familiar bitterness creep along the back of his throat.

     “If Eren was young when I was, how could he possibly remember anything from before you found us together? We are roughly the same age, and you found us when I barely had the strength to hold up my own head. He was just as young as I was. He does not remember anything, I guarantee it.” Armin squeezed his hands together and thought of the way his hands warmed when Eren held them in his own. “He would tell me if that were not true.”

     Thick silence settled between them once again as Levi nodded with a rough hum. He turned to fully face the well, though Armin could see his neck craning to glance at their study. Shuddering creaks sounded in the chilly night air as Levi began to crank the wooden lever once more.

     “You better go fetch him from the study before he collapses from exhaustion.” Levi glanced at Armin over his shoulder. “I will talk to your father when we go to bed. I suggest you sleep long tonight to prepare for your new training. We can work on the lizard tongue when you feel the time is right for you to do so.”

     “Thank you,” Armin whispered with a smile. He could not contain the way his hands shook from the adrenaline rushing in spurts throughout his body at the thought of a dual apprenticeship under his fathers.

     “Armin?” Levi called as the young witch began to head towards the study.

     Armin turned on his heels, cloak billowing around his thighs. “Yes?”

     “If he so much as touches the pane of another window, I will personally banish him to sleep outside for the rest of eternity.”

     Armin had found Eren playing with the bristles of the broom in the study. Eren watched Armin with inquiring eyes as he stood from his seat on the ground, nearly erupting into a shout when Armin gave him a vigorous nod to affirm the silent question between them. The sharp glass, which had been swept in a neat pile under the windowsill, became a complete afterthought as Eren threw his arms around Armin’s middle and spun the giggling witch as though he were the weight of a feather.

     As the two made their way back to Armin’s bedroom, Armin frowned as he noticed the way Eren cradled one of his own hands inside the other, rubbing the skin with a grimace.

     “What’s wrong?”        

     “What?” Eren glanced at him with a dazed look before looking down at his hand. “Oh—nothing, really. I tried making some of the larger pieces of glass into a tower when I was done since I saw you two were still talking. I tried to catch one of the pieces when the tower fell.”

     Armin reached for Eren’s wrist and nudged at his fingers to inspect the skin of his palm, humming when he saw how a thin gash etched into the delicate skin of Eren’s hand.

     “Come on,” Armin said in a gentle voice. He pulled Eren into his bedroom with delicate fingers around his wrist. “I still have some of the calendula salve I made in Father’s greenhouse after I scraped my knee at the riverbank.”

     Eren sat on the edge of Armin’s bed as the witch combed through his drawers for the vial of salve that he knew how to make by heart. A childhood in the scraggy woods outside the village was bound to result in a wealth of scrapes, and Erwin had taught Armin how to infuse all parts of the calendula plant into the trusted salve when his son had come home in tears one too many times.

     He found the vial with an accomplished hum. Armin pulled Eren’s hand into his lap when he settled at the foot of his bed, toeing off his boots so he could cross his legs atop his blankets. Eren’s fingers were pliable as Armin spread them, and Armin invested every fiber and muscle into keeping his own hand steady as warmth bloomed where their skin touched.

     Although his gaze was trained entirely on the way he dotted the area around the cut with the cream, Eren’s eyes were bright in his peripheral vision as he watched him with wide eyes. They did not need to say anything; the silence was comfortable between them, and Armin learned long ago that the shared rhythm of their breaths did almost as much to calm either of them as the whisperings of gentle words.

     “I’m sorry for, well… earlier,” Armin said as he spread the grainy salve along Eren’s palm. “You were right. I was completely stuck in my own mind. I’m sorry.”

     “You do not ever have to be sorry.” Eren nudged Armin’s shoulder with his own, sending him into an outburst of breathy laughs. Armin shook his head and pulled Eren’s hand closer to his body.

     “I am grateful for everything you said,” he whispered. He trained his eyes back on Eren’s hand as he finished applying the salve. “Can you believe we’re finally going to start learning about healing magic?”

     “It might not be as exciting as spirit-raising or anything, but we can try. Though, I must admit, I might ask Levi for more errands if I must help you brew tonics all day,” he joked with a bright smile.

     “You might have to,” Armin replied with a chuckle. Eren ran a hand over his face and groaned, though Armin knew it was void of malice. “Trust me, it’s exciting! Just imagine! Did you know that Father can ferment elixirs to cure headaches in little under the time it takes for tea to steep? It tastes mostly of valerian root, though, so you might not like it. I do not care much for it, but it helps.”  

     “I trust you,” Eren whispered with a smile. It had been so soft that Armin nearly missed it.

     After he corked the vial and placed it on his nightstand, Armin brought Eren’s hand to his chest and murmured the healing incantation paired with the salve. He brushed his fingers along his friend’s rings before the two flopped onto their backs on his bed. Armin gushed about the potential for brewing tonics and elixirs as they stared at the star chart drawn with chalk and chipped paint on the ceiling above Armin’s bed, and Eren listened with rapt ears and an endless grin. Their limbs knocked together whenever either of them reached to point at the star chat or reposition their bodies as they kept growing numb from remaining in one position for too long. Eventually, the two turned on their sides to face each other, resting their heads on folded arms. Armin’s bedroom was filled with hushed whispers and vibrant laughs as they talked about anything and everything that came to their minds.

     The two spoke and held each other’s gaze until Eren felt his limbs go heavy. He smiled with the light of a hundred floating candles as he whispered farewell, Armin’s name soft on his tongue as he stroked Armin’s hand with the back of his fingers. Within moments, the only warmth from the other half of Armin’s bed came from the blankets under where Eren had been resting, and Armin shivered at the hollow emptiness.

     The familiar grace of feathers caressing his skin kept Armin from succumbing to the weight of his eyelids. He reached a hand to stroke the neck of the crow, tilting his head as Eren nuzzled his jaw with his beak.

     “We will figure this out, Eren,” he whispered. “We always do.”

     With his crow nestled in the space between his neck and the curve of his shoulder, Armin fell asleep with the morning sun draping through the window and coloring his skin in gold.