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“Armin, why don’t you ever run?”
It was a thought Eren had countless times, often to his own frustration. Armin’s stubbornness far exceeded the limits of his frail body, pushing himself to the point of exhaustion.
Eren had fought so hard for Armin to be given the titan serum, for his best friend to be given a second chance at life after his heroic sacrifice. He didn’t think of the consequences of having him inherit the Colossal.
The world saw Eren as a monster, the Attack titan lying in wait like a dangerous predator, constantly trying to claw its way to the surface. An inhuman abomination fueled by rage, condemned as a threat by all who witnessed it.
And now he just made Armin into a monster in his own right.
Damn it.
The sky crackled with lightning, the air filling with smoke and an indescribable heat. Even for Armin’s third transformation of the day, the Colossal’s power could still overwhelm a city.
One transformation. That was supposed to be the daily limit, according to Bertholdt’s memories and Hange’s tests. Yet the Scouts still pushed him much further than that. Everyday they would ride out into this open field on the outskirts of Paradis, abandon Armin in the center, and let his titan loose to wreak its destruction. Once, twice, until Armin was spent, and he never complained or ran from it.
The titan’s body materialized from the lightning strike, muscle connecting, dancing around itself, and building the shape of the towering monstrosity. It stared out into the distance, doing nothing. Even from here, Eren could swear it had a sad look in its eyes, a far cry from the enraged expression Bertholdt’s titan wore. The Scouts watched with bated breaths from their horses, Hange leaning in as far as her body physically allowed.
“What is he doing?” Jean asked.
Connie pulled his horse next to him. “Did we lose him?”
Mikasa inhaled, her voice cracking with concern. “We shouldn’t have gone that third time.”
“Relax,” Levi replied. “As long as the titan’s still standing, he’s still in there. He hasn’t passed out yet.”
They waited, and waited. The titan’s eyes shifted slightly, but it stayed in place as if bolted there for several minutes. No movement of its massive body, no sound, and nothing to signal a cry for help from its wielder.
Eren couldn’t breathe, he couldn’t focus on anything else. He needed something, anything, to show that Armin was still conscious. That they hadn’t gone too far.
Then, the titan’s legs gave out underneath it. It fell forwards, slamming face first into the field and shaking the ground beneath them. The horses were startled, the Scouts commanding them to charge forward to the lifeless pile of muscle.
“Go! Now! Faster!” Eren yelled anxiously.
“I’m going as fast as I can!” Sasha cried.
The hotness was overwhelming, like walking straight into a burning building. Eren, Jean, and Mikasa hooked their ODM gear onto the titan, swinging upwards and landing directly onto the nape. Mikasa sliced through with her blades, and Eren and Jean reached in to yank Armin’s small body out. He was limp, the titan’s connective tissue still attached to his face. Eren cut through it quickly and extracted him completely from the nape. Armin’s breaths were short and choppy as if he had been held underwater, and some of his flesh had burned off in patches. Mikasa screamed, and Eren began to hyperventilate.
“He’ll regenerate, it’s fine!” He said, trying to convince himself as much as everyone else.
It was fine. Of course it was. Armin was a shifter now, and any wound always closed within hours as if it had never happened at all.
Still, everytime he pushed himself to the point of collapse, everytime his breath was stolen from him, everytime the Colossal’s cruel fire turned on its master, Eren couldn’t help but feel responsible. His stomach twisted with guilt, and he brought his hand up to his mouth to cough. His chest felt tight and his throat dry. It was like something was stuck inside of it.
When he pulled his hand away, it was splattered with blood.
“Good job Armin!” Hange yelled excitedly. “A whole three minutes! That’s great for your third transformation! Maybe tomorrow we go for four, huh!?”
“Hange, that’s enough.” Jean said sternly.
“I’m calling it a day,” Levi added. He grabbed the top of Hange’s head to stare at her eye-to-eye. “I didn’t bring Armin back just for you to kill him too with your shitty experiments.”
Hange raised her hands in defeat. “All right, all right, we’ll call it there. Eren, bring Armin to the infirmary if you will, please. I’ll take a look at him. He’ll be okay, don’t worry!”
Eren’s feet dangled in the air above a destroyed city.
Civilians — innocents caught in the horrors of war — struggled to breathe underneath the rubble, fire and smoke claiming all that was left.
Scouts soared on their ODM gear, slashing the throats of those who looked like enemy soldiers.
Eren grasped onto the bottom of an airship, the door just within reach, waiting for someone to pull him inside.
When a helpful hand eventually came, it was from someone he knew could only be Armin, the light stolen from his eyes as titan scars marked their territory on his face.
Eren jolted awake, his reality coming back into focus. He was alert, ready to strike at any enemy at any moment, but all was quiet.
Armin’s breathing had stabilized after a few hours. He took deep, full breaths in his sleep, his body emitting a light steam. Eren knew it was due to the blond’s burnt skin mending underneath the bandages, and judging from how faint it was, the process must have almost been complete. A cool washcloth had been placed on his forehead. The titan marks that had etched themselves under his eyes were disappearing as well. He was starting to look more like himself again, much to Eren’s relief. The brunet took deep breaths of his own to calm himself, his mind repeating reminders that everything was okay, and his best friend was alive. He was in a chair in the infirmary at Armin’s bedside, the sunset spilling through the window. All was safe…at least for now.
Armin looked so innocent while he was sleeping. A far cry from the monster that lived inside of him, and the pragmatic tactician Eren knew he could be. Eren brushed his index finger against Armin’s cheek, taking careful note of how soft his skin was. The titan scars created small dips in his face that made his finger go up and down as he moved over them. For a moment, as Eren caressed his skin, everything felt right. For a moment, the world was peaceful.
Still, sometimes he swore his best friend was a bigger idiot than he was.
“Armin, why don’t you ever run?” he whispered.
His throat tickled, and he felt a tightness in his lungs again, as if he were suffocating. He pulled his hand away to cover his mouth, choking and trying to expel whatever damned thing was making him feel this way. Was he getting sick? Was this some new thing inflicted by the Attack titan, angry at its host for some unknown reason? It felt like small knives were poking his organs. Shit. This felt worse than some of the experiments Hange put him through when he was first training his titan powers.
There was light brushing against his hand that felt like feathers. Small, yellow leaves covered in blood painted his palm with his own fluids. Eren’s eyebrow raised in confusion. What the hell?
Are these flower petals?
He felt a pull inside his chest, and brushed it off. The titan was regenerating his injuries; one of the advantages of this power. At least that was solved, but he’d have to talk to Hange about the petals. What kind of weird sickness was this?
Armin began to stir in his sleep, groaning and his eyes clenching as he turned his head.
“Bertholdt…”
What was he dreaming about, Eren wondered. Was he receiving visions of Bertholdt’s memories? Seeing for himself the view from inside of the Colossal, amidst war, rather than just training in a field? The pit dropped in his stomach again. Another thing that was his fault. Another thing Armin wouldn’t be dealing with if only —
“How is he doing?”
Hange’s boots thudded softly against the wood floor as she approached Eren from behind, holding a fresh washcloth. Armin fussed again, making noises that sounded like pained whines.
“Commander! Uh, mostly okay,” Eren replied. “This just started.”
Hange delicately pulled the washcloth from the blond’s head and replaced it. She touched two fingers to his cheek, holding it in position, and peered down at the titan scars. “I’ll keep monitoring him. His titan is quite the adversary, but he’s taking it well. Better than most would, I imagine.”
Another cough. More poking like tens of tiny needles, and more pulling inside Eren’s chest. Thankfully, no petals this time, just a small tinge of pain. “Ow. Fuck.”
“You okay, my dear?”
“I coughed these up earlier,” he said, holding his palm out to show her the small collection of petals. “I don’t know what they are but it hurts like hell.”
Hange took a moment to analyze them, her finger to her chin in thought. After a few seconds, she moved to take the petals from him, holding one up to the light. “They look like flower petals. I think I’ve seen something like this before, but I need to do a bit of research. Let me see if I can find you something for that cough in the meantime.”
“Take care of Armin first, please,” Eren begged, pleading at her with his eyes. “I’m fine, I promise. I can wait.”
The commander waved her hand dismissively. “Don’t worry your pretty little mutineer head. I’m a professional, I can treat both of you at once. Let me just put these in my lab where they won’t get lost or tampered with.” She started towards the door, making sure to handle the petals delicately. “Let Armin rest and go check in with Levi. He was saying he needed you for something, as long as you’re sure you’re okay for a while?”
“Uh, y-yeah! I got it!”
“Wonderful! See you in a few minutes!”
She slammed the door shut, and Eren got up from his seat to follow her closely behind.
When he had his back turned, he felt a light pull. Armin had reached over to grab the bottom of his shirt. His eyes fluttered open and closed, his voice cracking weakly. He looked like a beaten animal.
“Don’t leave me, please.”
Eren grasped his hand gently, releasing his shirt. He laced his fingers between Armin’s and squeezed protectively. His heart ached just a little, and for a moment he felt whole. “The Captain needs me, buddy. I’ll be back soon, and I have Hange making sure you’re taken care of.”
Armin whined pathetically. “Fine. Just don’t forget about me, okay? I need to…ow…talk to you about how you do it. How you manage your power.”
Eren wasn’t sure if he should laugh or scoff at him in pure annoyance. “You’re the worst, you know that? Thinking about training when you should be sleeping. Forget about that, we’ll talk about it later. Now go back to sleep before I knock you out myself.”
He was drawn to Armin in a way he couldn’t explain, as if he were tied to a thread being pulled towards him. A way that made him want to keep him for himself forever, safe from all harm and away from anyone who may threaten his peace. Although he was notoriously one of the least physically gifted in the military, some days Eren could swear his spirit matched his own. It could scare even some of the more experienced soldiers, and he admired it more than his best friend would ever know. Perhaps that was why they worked so well together, and why they had been inseparable for years, in spite of all of their differences.
It’s nothing, Eren concluded. This is just how it must feel to know someone who compliments you so perfectly.
Armin sighed in defeat. “Right. Sorry.”
“I’ll come back for you.”
Armin withdrew his arm and settled back into the bed. Eren left him alone, a single yellow petal on the floor nearby.
“Hana…what now?”
“Hanahaki disease.” Hange ran her finger across the open book laying on her desk in her office. Eren was seated in front of her, leaning into it as far as he could, his face practically glued to the page. “It’s a nasty little infliction that makes you cough up flowers like these lovely gentlemen here.” She held up the petals Eren had expelled earlier, the blood now cleaned from them. “And it’s caused by — this is my favorite part…” She giggled deviously, as if she were about to reveal the final piece of a crazy master plan. “...Unrequited love.”
Eren’s cheeks went hot. “Wait, what!?”
Hange propped her elbows on her desk and clasped her hands together, eyeing him through her glasses. “Can you perhaps identify the object of your affections, Eren, the one who’s the cause of this terrible disease? I don’t suppose it could be someone you just saw earlier today, hmm?”
Eren threw his hands up, his feet stomping the floor in protest. “No, there isn’t anyone! I don’t know what this is about! Are you sure you’ve got the right book, maybe there’s something else it could be? You’ve said before that a few illnesses can share symptoms, right?”
“Oh no, my darling, this is the only one of its kind, I’m afraid,” the commander replied smugly. “Yellow chrysanthemums, in case you were curious.”
“So what now? What do we do about — ” Eren let out a few deep coughs. He clutched his burning chest with one hand, the other squeezing his thigh in an attempt to anchor himself. A small amount of blood splattered onto the floor, and yellow petals fluttered onto the wood. “Shit. Sorry.”
The gravity of the situation consumed the room, and Hange passed Eren a cloth. Her tone grew increasingly serious as she explained: “Here’s the important part: It is treatable, but without treatment it’s fatal. You’ll grow vines inside your body until you’re coughing up full blooms and bleeding in places no doctor can reach. We need to deal with this quickly.”
Eren waved his hand and shook his head. “It’s fine, my titan will heal it. It has so far. I just wanna stop coughing up these stupid petals.”
“The titan will only help for so long. At a certain point, the chrysanthemums will cause damage faster than you can regenerate.”
“Oh come on!”
Hange shrugged. “Sometimes love hurts, sometimes it turns you into a human garden of repressed feelings. Not to worry though, you have a couple options!” She turned a page in the book. “The first is to identify your beloved and confess your feelings. If they’re returned then you’re instantly cured, everyone’s happy and you get a bonus prize of a body to hold on a cold night. I’ll even give you a candlelit dinner to celebrate.”
Eren stared at the floor uneasily, his mind flashing images before his eyes.
Armin sitting at a table across from him.
Armin lunging at him, his face twisted with rage and his hand balled into a fist — one he had to know wasn’t going to accomplish anything.
Glass shattering as his back hit a wine shelf.
His face swollen and bleeding as Mikasa cradled his beaten body.
“Not gonna happen,” Eren shook his head, his arms crossed in front of him. “What’s the other one?”
“Well…” The commander stared at him intensely through her glasses again. “There’s a surgery. It doesn’t look difficult, give me a few hours to review the notes and I’m sure I could pull it off without a problem. Buuuut if we go through with it, you’ll lose all of your memories of that person, and you won’t remember who they are, what they mean to you or even their name.”
“I don’t even know who they are now! What am I supposed to do!?”
“It’s one or the other, Jaeger. You don’t need to decide today, but don’t take too long now.” Hange held her index finger to the sky, moving it back and forth like a pendulum. “Tick tock.”
Eren could feel the ground shaking underneath him. The world moved up and down in his vision as he approached Armin’s Colossal. He was at eye level somehow, able to see the pain in the titan’s blue eyes clearly. The sorrow, and the determination it turned into shortly after. Armin moved towards him slowly, closing the distance.
“You really do enjoy making life hell, don’t you…”
“...Eren?”
Eren jerked awake, his senses alert for a moment before he came down from that high. Armin had climbed up the ladder to his bunk, a look of concern painted across his features. It had been a few days since his last transformation, and his strength was returning. The light and life were coming back into his eyes. It had taken a lot of convincing and bargains involving Eren’s own titan, but eventually Hange agreed to let him recover, sparing him from her experiments for a while.
“Sorry,” he whispered. “I didn’t mean to wake you, I’ll go back to bed.”
“No, no, it’s fine. It was nothing, just lost in my own head.” Eren replied hastily. The thought of them being separated while these visions of Armin kept playing in his mind made him uneasy, like he had to cherish every second. “Come up with me here for a bit.”
Armin did as he asked, crawling up the ladder and onto the bed next to him. They laid side-by-side, and Eren nuzzled his face into the blond’s neck. His long hair tickled his face, and he took in his scent.
“I’m sorry,” Eren said.
Armin paused, as if searching his mind for what he was talking about. “For what?”
“It’s my fault you’re going through this. I’m the one who told Levi to turn you into the Colossal.”
Armin moved his gaze away, his eyes glued to the ceiling. “It’s fine. I just…don’t want to disappoint everyone.”
“Hange said you were taking it well, and you really are. The Colossal isn’t made for as many transformations as she’s making you do. The fact that you’re not only alive but you keep pushing is nothing short of amazing. You make me proud, and I think Erwin would be too.”
Eren heard Armin’s breath hitch in his throat, and he made a noise that sounded like he was in pain.
“Let’s change the subject,” Armin replied. “Are you okay? You seem sick lately, were you able to talk to the Commander about that in between…the rest of this?”
“Oh, yeah, she said it was…”
And it’s caused by — this is my favorite part. Unrequited love.
“...Still something she had to look into. It’s a rare condition and needs a lot of research.” Eren laughed nervously.
Armin leaned his head into him in return, the two of them molded together perfectly. “Oh. I’m sorry. I hope you’ll be okay. Maybe I can try to find a book in the library that covers this?”
“No!” Eren jumped, startling him, then realized his grave mistake. “I mean, it’s fine. It’s whatever. My titan’s been taking care of most of it, and you’re my main concern anyway.”
“I really shouldn’t be, you know.”
“Shut up. You’re stronger than you give yourself credit for. I’m not leaving you behind, not after everything.”
“It’s hard to remember sometimes,” Armin admitted.
“I know but…” Eren moved his head to look him in the eyes directly. He held onto his gaze tighter than he could remember ever holding onto anything. If there was a way to put a lock on it, he’d do it in a second. “Just remember that all of us are still alive because of you. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise, especially not someone with hair a bird could lay eggs in. Seriously, who the hell told him that was a good idea?”
Armin stifled a laugh, and Eren let out a louder one to encourage him — one to make him let go. In the middle of it, his throat closed up and it felt harder to breathe. The petals fluttered within his trachea. He tried desperately to suppress the damn things from exposing his condition. Armin would not know the truth, and he sure as hell would not see those petals. Not for anything.
Eren swallowed them back along with a tiny bit of liquid, a substance he could only assume had to have been blood. There was a scratch in his throat.
“Sorry,” he choked.
Armin looked at him worriedly. Behind his blue eyes, the cogs of his mind were clearly turning, searching for anything he could offer in response — perhaps even recalling his past books to figure a diagnosis. Eren buried his head deep within the crook of his neck again. His hand reached up to delicately run his fingers through Armin’s long hair. It was soft and golden.
Just like the petals.
“Your hair’s getting a little long,” Eren remarked. “You should cut it sometime.”
Armin took a few strands between his fingers. He turned his hand, analyzing their length, and considered his words carefully. “Maybe I should.”
The blond smiled at him. His eyes sparkled as Eren swallowed back another petal.