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He was meant to live. From the beginning that was something Eren had always known. Years of his life had been spent making sure that he had the skills needed to do so; that if the time came when his name was called he would be able to stand victorious. He’d had mentors, people who had taught him everything from how to swim fast like the sharks that hunted off the coast of their home to how to make a flame in the dampest of conditions. He’d learned how to fight, how to hold his breath, how to hunt and kill and eat what others might turn their nose at.
To put it simply, he learned how to survive.
Eighteen years of toiling for the capital, of listening as name after name was called and person after person--no, child after child--was slaughtered, and Eren was ready when they called his own. Being treated like an animal, whipped into submission and forced into a helplessness that would cost him everything should he try to fight back had elicited a lot of anger in Eren after all, anger that would only help him in the games. With few friends and little family other than a mother who cried into his shoulder and a father who reminded him how to kill, leaving wasn’t hard. He would miss the sea, would miss the taste of salt in the air and the way the waves could lull him to sleep, but he would not miss his life of slavery. Eren was never one to bow down, never one to roll over and show his belly, and the life he’d been born into was not one he’d grown fond of.
So to the Capital he’d went, tearless and if not ready to win, than to die instead. The girl at his side was a small, blonde thing with brown eyes and a cruelty in her smile. Her name was Hitch and Eren had no doubt that she would be someone he would have to kill--and that he would do so if it came down to it. They didn’t talk, other than to make it clear that there would be no camaraderie between them, something their mentor, Erwin, was adamant on disapproving of. Eren hadn’t seen the big deal. After all, the blonde himself had gone solo in his own games and had won. His disapproval was hypocritical and Eren had told him so; Erwin had backed off after that.
The glorified death parade they were submitted too upon arrival was a joke, and Eren made no effort to hide the fury in his eyes. The interviews though… Those he had to hold himself back in. He had to smile and charm the audience, to make them like him and his dark skin and exotic eyes. The more they liked him, the higher his chance of survival after all, and Eren knew how to play people.
He’d been born into it after all.
The scores given to him by the judges in the following days were high, as was to be expected. During the hours of training he stuck to himself, avoiding most everyone. The only person he let even vaguely near was a small blonde boy, who seemed too timid to even throw a knife let alone kill someone. His eyes were like the sea, Eren found, his own green iris’ catching the other boy’s every now. They were a brilliant blue, clear and liquid as if he could dive straight into them. His name was Armin, Eren discovered through Erwin. A member of District 9. He was unlikely to survive.
Eren made no move to dissuade him from coming closer.
In the days leading up to the the games, Armin gravitated closer to his corner, though he never spoke. On the final evening he was within five feet, kneeling on the floor by a pile of plants as Eren hitched a spear over his shoulder and lashed out at the simulation of a person running towards him. The harsh sound of the wood and metal cutting through the air didn’t even seem to bother the small blonde, his body remaining calm and still despite the fact that he had seemed so skittish at the beginning. It took Eren hours to realize that perhaps the blonde felt safe, or even comfort in his presence, something that was almost laughable to the brunette. Surely he wasn’t that stupid? Eren was one of the main threats out of the group, his scores putting him among the top 5. If anything, Armin should be avoiding him at all costs, distancing himself and staying away from those that would pick him off easily.
But then again, Eren found himself thinking, Armin hadn’t seemed stupid. There had been intelligence in those eyes as he had watched not only Eren, but the others as well. Perhaps he had been merely using the excuse of having Eren close to take in the competition and narrow down who needed to be avoided and who could be taken down.
He fell asleep to the thought that it would be a shame to kill Armin, and awoke to the Games.
No one had warned Eren about the arena. No one had told him how disorienting it was to step into a tube and emerge into a completely different world.
He wasn’t ready; and yet the countdown told him he had to be.
Blinking against the blinding rays of the sun, Eren tasted the sea. It was perhaps, the only thing that helped him from panicking, and he wasted little time in cupping a hand over his eyes to search his surroundings. He wasn’t sure that he liked what he saw.
Water licked at the small platform he resided on, gentle waves flicking up over the metal to wet his feet a deep blue that could mean many things. A island sat some hundred feet in front of him, small and full of supplies, the other tributes a ring of death around its outside. Behind him, there was no trace of anything but water, and Eren had to shake the doubt that started to creep in. There was land out there, he just had to swim to it. There was no way they’d end things this fast, no way they’d let them all battle it out in one go.
Turning his back to the island, Eren focused on the long stretch of water before him. He didn’t need to risk his life for the supplies there. He would find land and collect what he needed long before the others had made it. He was an excellent swimmer after all, and this was the best arena he could have asked for.
The count lowered to three.
He wondered if Armin would go for the island.
Two.
He hoped that the blonde had a quick death.
One.
Eren jumped.
It took seven nights filled with thirteen canons for Armin to find him, or, to put it more accurately, for Armin to run into him. Frowning, Eren was quick to send him to the ground, a thick branch tipped with a rock sharpened to kill at his throat before the blonde could do more than scream. It was more instinct than anything else, and Eren blinked down at wide blue eyes in surprise before the sharp snap of branches brought his eyes back up to the direction he’d come from.
“You brought friends,” Eren realized, voice feather soft as he reached down to close a hand around the makeshift blade at his hip. Armin stayed silent, staring up at him in a mix of terror and hope. The moment the large male chasing after him emerged from the trees, Eren had the knife in his throat, a single, hard toss ending the other male’s life in the few moments it took for him to bleed out.
Stepping off of the blonde now that he was sure he was unarmed and meant no harm, Eren stepped over to the corpse, yanking the knife free and wiping what he could of the blood off onto the bark of the trees.
“You’re not going to kill me?”
Armin’s voice, Eren found, was just as he’d expected it to be. Soft and quiet with a undertone of steel. Eren felt a small smile tug at his mouth. “No.”
“Why?”
Because I’d like to see you live as long as possible, despite the fact that I will probably be the one to kill you. “You’re not attacking me.”
Armin frowned, watching him as he sheathed the blade once more. “What if I’m planning to?”
“Then I’ll kill you then,” Eren answered simply, stalking past. “Now move. A shuttle’s going to come for him and I don’t want to be near when it does.”
“You’re not even a little afraid of me?” Armin pressed, sometime later when they had traveled an adequate distance from the kill site.
Eren was still wondering why he was following him.
“No.”
“Isn’t that a little stupid?”
“Isn’t following other tributes around a little stupid?” Eren countered.
“You’re the first one who hasn’t tried to kill me,” Armin admitted, his voice quivering with the terror he’d probably felt since the beginning. Eren tried not to feel sympathetic.
“That means nothing,” Eren told him, hand tightening on the spear at his side. His voice was low and hoarse from disuse, and he had to remind himself that it’d only been seven days. “if it comes down to it, if it’s between me or you, I’ll kill you. You shouldn’t follow me around.”
The blonde was silent, the sound of his footsteps stilling until all Eren could hear was his own heartbeat. He was sure that that was the last he’d seen of Armin until finally a voice spoke up, before he could disappear into the jungle. “I’m going to die anyways,” he said. “I might as well enjoy the company of others while I still can.”
Eren’s heart panged, rib cage seeming to tighten around his chest at the words. They were all just kids, and yet… What kind of world made a kid utter words like those, without even a single hint of denial?
Eren clenched his teeth, though he made no more protests as the sound of Armin following after him began to fill his ears once more.
It got cold at night. With the heat that pervaded the jungle throughout the day, the dampness that came with it quickly turned to chill when paired with the pale face of the moon. It made Eren glad that Armin was there. Together they could curl into one another and share body heat where as alone Eren would have had to curl up among the roots of the trees alone and shiver himself asleep. It wasn’t a pleasant situation and the blonde’s warmth was more than welcome.
Pressed up against a tree with Armin in his arms and their legs entangled, it was perhaps, one of the most intimate situations Eren had ever been in. Of course, in the Games they were in, it was anything but romantic; in fact, one couldn’t even call it pleasant. They were cold and wet and in the struggle of life or death they didn’t exactly have much time for bathing. All in all it should have been something Eren abhorred doing, and of which he would like to never do again, and yet, he found comfort in it. He’d never been one to get close to people other than his family. He hadn’t even really had friends back home, and yet… Having Armin close, being able to suffer through this hell together, it made Eren think that maybe he should remedy that. The more time he spent with Armin, the more he realized that they could be fast friends if given the opportunity, as opposed to survival buddies. And the more he realized just how attached he was getting, the more Eren realized that it would hurt that much more when Armin died, either by his hand or another.
It was not a pleasant feeling.
“You’re good at this,” Armin told him, when there was seven of them left.
Eren didn’t bother looking up at him, eyes focused on the water lapping at his calves. His spear rested in the dark water, caught in both hands and slowly following the path of a large fish swimming lazily towards the bait floating before him. “At what exactly?”
“Surviving.”
His spear shot out, pinning the fish to the bottom of the ocean in one go. It squirmed frantically under his grip until he lifted it up out of the water and flung it onto the springy moss of the ledge Armin was sitting on. The blonde made sure it didn’t fall back into the water, taking a knife to its skin once it was dead.
“Is that a compliment?” Eren pondered, going back to searching the water for more.
“In a game like this it should be,” Armin answered, flicking blood into the water.
“But?” Eren asked, sure that there was one in there.
“But,” the blonde started, voice soft as if it would prevent the cameras from hearing, or the people from seeing. “you shouldn’t have to be. In a normal world, you wouldn’t have to know how to kill other people. You wouldn’t have to celebrate a massacre.”
“Do normal worlds even exist?” He wondered, eyes zeroing in on another fish.
Armin smiled faintly, blood staining his hands. “For the right people, they do.”
There are five of them when Armin kills for Eren. He’d been recovering from a grazing shark bite, the wound having nearly nicked the artery in his leg when a girl with flames for hair had darted past, a knife in her hands ready to imbed itself into his flesh. Armin, who’d been tending to the fire, had looked up, a poker stick in hand, and had charged. The wood blazing from the flames, she had screamed when the tip had touched her, staggering away from Eren and tripping over a fallen rock. The knife was thrown at the blonde in a desperate attempt to get the burning branch out of her face, and Armin had smacked her hard on the head before dropping to his knees to grab it.
The events following were a little blurry for Eren, who was still recovering from blood loss, but he was more than aware of the horror in Armin’s eyes when he finally stopped stabbing long enough to notice that the girl was dead.
Pushing himself up using his spear, Eren limped over to the blonde, tugging him up and away from the corpse. “Come on,” he told him, catching Armin’s hand in his own as he began leading him towards the ocean. He tugged more insistently when Armin merely stared. “Come on, Armin.”
Seeming to snap out of it, or at least, enough to walk, Armin stumbled after him, eyes wide and tearful. He was like a puppet, jerked around by stings that only Eren could pull and the other male hated it. Armin didn’t deserve this, shouldn’t have to kill people. It would break him.
“Eren,” the blonde whispered, when the dull rush of the ocean came to meet them. “Eren, I…”
“I know,” Eren reassured, bending down with a wince as he began to clean the blood from Armin’s hands.
It took several more minutes for the blonde to finally start crying, the first heart wrenching sobs piercing through the false calm of the waves. Eren closed his eyes, pulling Armin to his chest to muffle the sounds, a hand on his spear as the other curled around the other male’s waist. He didn’t keep them shut for long, knowing that there was a chance that another tribute could be close by. He should have urged Armin to keep it together until they were in a safer place, should have forced him up and away from the ocean’s edge, but he couldn’t. He owed the blonde this much for not being able to protect him. For forcing him to bloody his hands.
The least Eren could do was hold him.
They are three when he and Armin kiss. It is a kiss of goodbye, and it is wet with salt. Armin is smart, so Eren is sure that he knows what’s going to happen the following morning, but it does little to help still Eren’s heartache. He burns, knowing that he has lived life like a dog, chained and kicked and made to do what its owner--the Capital--pleases. The fact that Armin, sweet, innocent, smart Armin will live a life of luxury, is a small salve to that burn. He feels triumph over the fact that the one everyone thought would die, who wouldn’t stand a chance, is going to win, and he smiles into the blonde’s neck in the moments following a sob, because Armin made this hell a little less so, and winning him the Games is the least Eren can do.
He never had much of anything to return to anyways.
They are two when the canon pierces through Armin’s ears and breaks through his sobs. It silences him for a moment, his body shaking with the effort as he stares unseeingly at the spot Eren had laid in hours before. It’s cold now, when Armin touches it, and he pleads silently for his ears to go deaf. He doesn’t want to hear the canon, doesn’t want to know that Eren--
They are one when Armin screams his grief and fury to the world, a victor that no one had expected and yet one that Eren had made sure would win.
The ocean almost sounds sad.