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He told her about the ocean. A body of water so vast you could stand on one side of it and see nothing but blue all the way to the horizon. He told her about windswept deserts and deep gorges and mountains so high you couldn’t see their peaks. He told her about his dreams, his theories. Without realizing, he told her his secrets. Or perhaps it was the reverse—that things became secret after he told them to her. Simple worries, whispered into the dim space between them, swirling with the dust as they passed through the unsteady light of the torches, became more than idle chatter, somehow. Now there was a thin haze of softly spoken musings hanging in the still underground air, surrounding her.
At first she thought he was trying to draw her out. Enticing her with larger-than-life descriptions of a fantasy world that he was convinced existed beyond the walls. But as the words became softer, more personal, she began to wonder if he thought she could hear him at all.
Time passed oddly, like a dream sometimes, but it had to have been months and yet he was still returning to this place. It was a constant for him, somewhere he found peace of mind, a place to slide the puzzle pieces around in his mind until he reached something that resembled a solution. He didn’t think she was ever coming out, she realized. Her crystal was a gravestone, the marker of a loved one long gone, a sounding board for his turmoil.
He told her about the ongoing battle between humanity and the titans. He told her about their discoveries—the serums, the first king. When he told her about Eren learning to create crystalline matter, he paused uncharacteristically, as if suddenly remembering that once, she had been someone. She had been a major player in this war, and now she sat gathering dust, a pawn captured early in a game that had since become far more complicated. If in this moment he also remembered what side she’d been on, he gave no indication, but hefted a short sigh and simply said, “Like you,” and continued onto something else. But it was longer than usual before he came again.
When he did come, he sounded different. It was a subtle difference, perhaps imperceptible to most. But she’d been listening to him for a long time now, and she could hear it. His voice wavered, his words cracked straight down the middle in places. He spoke in shorter, more pensive phrases, groups of only three or four words punctuated by long breaks and slow, careful breaths.
Before, he had never seemed to be speaking directly to her; any questions he’d presented had always been rhetorical and rarely followed by enough space for anyone to answer anyway. But now, he stopped pacing and collapsed to his knees before her, disturbed dust rising into the air around him. “Maybe there are good people out there,” he said.
He said he understood now, and that he had judged her too harshly before. That he’d been through a lot, done something he couldn’t afford to regret. “To someone out there, I’m the bad guy,” he said, as if it were dawning on him for the first time.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
Eventually the time between his visits stretched further and further. The torches dimmed and flickered across the crystal, projecting grotesque figures onto the floor and walls. There was no night or day down here. No weeks, no months. Time pooled and eddied in the air with the dust. He told her about the titans in the walls, and the secrets they’d learned from the remaining members of the Wallist cult.
He told her about the beast titan, about Reiner and Bertholt—their bodies had been transported all the way from Shiganshina by order of the new Queen.
Eventually he stopped coming altogether, and the torches whispered out.
The lights were harsh compared to the dim corridor, and Armin cast his arm across his face to try and give his eyes half a chance to adjust as he hurried through the door behind the Commander. “You’re sure this will work?” he asked, trying not to sound too optimistic.
“I’m certain!” she replied enthusiastically. “I’ve run numerous trials. By using a drill bit made from the same crystalline substance as Annie’s cocoon, we should be able to penetrate it.”
“It’s just going to break open, right?”
Hange paused and lifted her goggles to the top of her head. “Armin,” she said carefully. “It’s important to manage your expectations here. She’s been in that crystal for months, showing no sign that she is still alive. At this point the prevalent theory is that even titan shifters do require oxygen while in human form.”
Armin broke eye contact. “I know,” he said, but his voice betrayed him.
“And if she is alive, she’ll be detained and interrogated for the foreseeable future,” came the Captain’s grim reminder from the other side of the lab.
It was Mikasa that stepped forward and put a gentle hand on his shoulder. “We don’t know what’s going to happen. Don’t give up yet.”
Armin looked at her. “I thought you hated her.”
Mikasa closed her eyes and nodded solemnly. “I hated a lot of people. That was a long time ago. I know you cared about her. They said you were sitting in the room when they came to get her.”
A small nod was the only response he trusted himself to provide.
“Alrighty then let’s get started, shall we?” Hange said, a little too brightly for the mood in the room.
The drill met the crystal with a terrible noise, but before long a long crack appeared in the translucent prison, running top to bottom. Then the inside became clouded as the crystal fractured along several lines, and eventually large chunks began to hit the floor as the rock surrendered to Hange’s drill. She hooted triumphantly.
Armin and Mikasa removed the remaining crystal shards as Hange checked over Annie. As she placed two fingers on her wrist she met Armin’s weary gaze and could only offer a slow shake of her head and a sympathetic half-smile that didn’t reach her eyes.
He stayed in the lab all night, waiting for the moment when she would gasp awake. He entertained the idea of helping her escape, of running off together so she wouldn’t have to be detained and interrogated. He realized how little he knew of her, and how much she must know of him. He decided she must be alive then, because of all that she knew. All that he’d told her. How could someone with so much information just fade away like that? Surely it wasn’t possible. And as the night stretched on his eyelids grew heavy and his thinking less coherent, and still she showed no sign of life.
They came for her body in the morning, waking Armin with the commotion. He followed them to the burial site where they put her near Reiner and Bertholt. He stayed behind as they returned to the lab to clean up the crystal shards that were still all over the place. Hange stayed with him for a while, not saying anything. Perhaps she didn’t know what to say. He appreciated the gesture but was glad when she finally made her way. He sat on the grass at the foot of her grave and stared at the fresh dirt. As the sun slipped toward the horizon, he began to talk.
He told her about his grandfather, and the way he’d tip his hat over his eyes to nap in the afternoon. He told her about an old book he used to have. He told her about the ocean.