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"…She was cast out of the Nine for her crimes against Eldia. While some shrines to the Female Titan still exist today, she stands separated from her old allies, and her temples slowly decay from abandonment."
Armin scowled at the book in his hands and slammed it shut, dust permeating the air.
She was cast out of the Nine for her crimes against Eldia. He couldn't escape that same line appearing again and again. It was like every book he picked up had copied off of one another, never willing to detail the Female Titan's account. Never acknowledging her role in the conquering of ancient Marley and forging of the land they live off of. The land that allows these people to write their myths and pass on their beliefs in the first place. Without her, these pages would be telling much different stories.
And for what? Crimes that, as the myths told, were committed for the purpose of her wielder reuniting with her family? Had it been so bad that she wanted to return home instead of engage in war, destruction and bloodshed — a fate that had not been hers to decide? All of the Nine were told to have committed horrible atrocities, and killed countless people at the orders of superiors who only saw the wielders as weapons. A means to an end. And yet the Female Titan had been cast out while the Eight enjoyed generations of worship. Not that Armin was one to compare crimes, but it just wasn't logical from any perspective.
The Female was nearly erased, treated as a warning to the modern world, without even being granted the decency of her wielder's name being passed down. Every other wielder was acknowledged by name except for her. It had been driving Armin crazy for months. What did he have to rely on for knowledge if even the books that were meant to keep her memory alive were slowly killing her? She deserved to be known, and even if he couldn't make the world honor her sacrifices, he could at least attempt to revive the one thing about her that couldn't be rewritten; the one thing that couldn't be twisted to paint her as a villain.
The hard cover of the book clapped against the table as it fell to its side. Throughout the rest of the library, furniture scraped against the floor, paper thumped together, and whispers filled the air. Someone would cough occasionally. The beeps of the librarian scanning bar codes at the front desk cut through the otherwise peaceful atmosphere. Armin heard these sounds every day — he had learned to tune them out — but something about today was making them a lot more annoying than usual.
He pinched the bridge of his nose in frustration. Why was he so hyper-fixated on this? It wasn't as if the Female Titan would reward him for his efforts. He was spending time chasing nonexistent ghosts when he could be doing literally anything else. Speaking of which…
Armin's phone buzzed on the table, and he turned it over to read the notification. A message from Jean lit up in a small bubble with a picture of him beside Armin, arm slung around the blond and nearly making him fall over. They had taken it at last year's town fair while Eren raged in the background about losing a water gun game.
Are you almost here? Eren's being annoying.
Armin's fingers tapped on his screen. I'm at the library, I'll be leaving soon. Sorry. Tell Eren I said so.
Jean's response came less than a minute later, accompanied by a faint chime from the phone. You're not there doing Female Titan stuff are you? I told you to let it go.
Armin flipped his phone face down onto the table and left him unanswered.
His own sighs disrupted the silence he had created around himself. His eyes shifted in the direction of another book sitting to his right, Outcast's Logs by Agatha Altmann. That book had actually provided an interesting lead — a picture of a letter believed to have been written by the Female Titan's wielder to the Armored Titan's, signed simply with "A." It wasn't much, but it was valuable information many of the other books lacked.
Armin strode to the back of the library and returned the useless book to the shelf while clutching Outcast's Logs. He swept his hand along the cover to remove some of the dust clinging to it, before walking up to the front desk.
Shiganshina was built around the Temple of the Nine, or as the townsfolk called it "The Temple of the Eight." The building was constructed to be a place of worship, and as time went on, the Female Titan's place in the temple was stolen from her. Her statue and altar, both originally built next to the others, were moved out as her reputation suffered. Scars were left on the floor where she once stood with her comrades. The Founding Titan was positioned in the center of the main room, initially supported by two lines of four titans on either side of her. With the Female missing, one of those lines had a gaping hole. Sometimes, visitors to the town would raise eyebrows and ask questions, and longtime residents would simply shush them.
While difficult to find any information on, it was said that throughout history, the Female Titan still had followers — people who truly cared for her story and worked to keep her memory alive. Armin theorized that these figures were the reason the Female still appeared in books at all. One group of which built the Temple of the Exile in the far corner of Shiganshina, where her statue and altar now reside. It was a mostly well-kept secret settled behind apartment buildings. Every so often, vandals were known to wreak havoc in the temple, but they would mysteriously only terrorize her once before never returning. It was another mystery Armin was eager to solve someday, after he accomplished his main goal of uncovering her wielder's name.
Even if she was no longer accepted in the Temple of the Nine, at least she was able to be worshiped somewhere. Somewhere she was sheltered from nature instead of rotting away in the forest outside the town.
Under the cover of night, Armin pushed open the doors of the Temple of the Exile, the stone familiar to him after so many visits. Metal latches stuck out into the air. He wondered if anyone had ever considered a lock to secure the doors and protect the temple from vandalism. Maybe he would have to take matters into his own hands sometime in the near future.
The temple was built in the shape of a circle, separated into four rooms, with the entryway positioned in front of the Female Titan's altar. A carefully crafted marble table supported by a raised section of the floor. The body was meticulously carved with ancient characters for beauty, intelligence, and resilience, along with a word that the Female Titan's followers repurposed in her honor to mean unyielding strength — "crystallization." A tapestry with the Female's image hung above it. The temple's interior showed its forgotten state, with the walls beginning to crumble and the ceiling support barely holding itself together. Some of the weaving in the tapestry was frayed, and much of the building was coated in a veil of dust, though, less than one would expect for a place known to be abandoned. Broken, cracked tiles covered the floor. A pillar that had fallen some time ago lay on its side. Dark droplets stained the tiles near it, soaked too far into them to be wiped away now.
Armin noticed that the floor looked unusually tidy today, like it had recently been swept and debris had been picked up. Still, some gravel and tile crunched under his feet as he walked to the right into the next room. The side sections of the temple were occupied with pillars holding up the structure. Each of them had a series of words engraved into them; a conversation believed to have taken place between the Female Titan's wielder and her mysterious lover. A lover that the old rumors suspected of killing the Colossal titan wielder. Despite his questionable nature, his words had been embraced by the Female's followers throughout the centuries. They had been shared and used to comfort one another when faced with persecution or when their goddess was dishonored.
You did it because you're good, and good people are willing to talk to their enemies.
'Good' is just what people call people who help them.
Armin passed the pillars and entered the very back room of the temple, facing the forest outside of Shiganshina.
There she stood.
A towering sculpture depicting the Female Titan staring down at her visitor, intimidating and unbreakable. This was the statue that had been removed from the Temple of the Nine so long ago. Short hair fell in front of her face, concealing one of her eyes, while the exposed one pierced anyone who looked into her face — a beautiful face, for something considered a monstrosity. The titan herself no doubt resembled the wielder who acted as her puppeteer. The wielder whose face and identity had been lost to time.
Rusted coins and wilted flowers were scattered along the pedestal that supported her. Tiny crystals dotted the surface among them, in honor of the "crystallization" term adopted by her followers. On the edge of the pedestal, a small stack of books sat out of the way. They admittedly appeared out of place, like they had been left there by some careless fool instead of given as an offering to the Female Titan.
In a way, they had.
Armin bowed his head to the Female as he entered the room. It wasn't as if anyone was there to punish him for not doing so, but he figured it was proper behavior around one considered a goddess — even if it was just a stone portrayal of her. He carefully opened Outcast's Logs and took one final look at the letter; at the words thought to be written by her wielder. Armin's eyes drooped as he read it over for about the eighth time that day. She was a sad person, and had lost all will to fight by the time the final battle came which ultimately forged Eldia. She had been tired of fighting and wanted to live what she believed to be her last hours in peace. Armin couldn't blame her — he just hoped that Reiner, the wielder of the Armored Titan who the letter was written to, and her mysterious lover were a worthy support system. In spite of her own desires, she had fought anyway, and the victory against Marley would not have been possible without her.
He shut the book and delicately placed it on top of the pile on the pedestal, lightly pushing the stack in the direction of the statue. He gazed up at the eye peeking through her bangs. Her stare was fiery, but had the soullessness of…well, hollow stone.
Armin slowly reached towards the statue to touch his fingertips above the titan's ankle. She felt rough, with some of her body chipped and cracked. It was a strong statue despite its age, and, oddly, looked lighter than he remembered. Had she been cleaned while he was away? He noticed that she looked like she had only been treated from the chest down, as if that was as much as her caretaker could reach with a ladder. Between this and the floor looking swept, someone had definitely been here.
"What are you doing?"
Armin jumped, shaken by the sudden realization that someone was here. That he hadn't been alone like he thought. He raised his hands in surrender and twirled his body to look at potentially the last person he would ever see.
He was met with a small woman, light blond hair hanging in front of her face. Her blue eyes pierced through him, and he noticed that she had a facial structure which was striking for a few reasons.
For one, she looked a lot like the Female Titan. Armin tried to brush that little detail off. He assumed he had to be going crazy after too many long hours in the library and too many trips to the Temple of the Exile. Still, it couldn't help but gnaw in the back of his mind as he waited for her to make her next move.
She was stunning actually. Someone who could easily make any man fall to his feet — in worship or in a desperate plead for his own life, whichever she wanted. Her stare alone could make knees buckle.
He took note of the rusted lock hanging from her left hand. He deduced based on its size and weathered appearance that it was for the latches on the front doors. Her right hand gripped a baseball bat sitting atop her shoulder.
Armin was certain that he had just identified the reason why vandals never returned to the temple after one visit. A part of him wondered if this was also his last time in the Female Titan's company.
"Uh, nothing!" He stuttered. "I wasn't doing anything, I promise! I come here a lot! I'm uh…" He pondered the truth of his next words. "I'm a follower of the Female Titan."
If he was honest, he had never considered himself one of her followers in the months since he started researching her. But he supposed that it wasn't entirely inaccurate. He was at the Temple of the Exile almost as much as he was at the library nowadays.
The woman tilted her head and raised her eyebrow in intrigue. She said nothing, baiting a confession of wrongdoing he hadn't committed. Armin continued to keep his hands where she could see them. He had a talent for reading people quite easily, but she was keeping her cards terrifyingly close to her chest in a way he had never seen before in his life. Those eyes that could make a man beg with one stare were being used against him — and she herself knew exactly what they were capable of.
He did notice that she was withdrawn in a way that led him to believe she preferred to stay back rather than strike. The bat was also resting on her shoulder — instead of in the air rushing towards his head. He theorized that she was prepared for self-defense and protection rather than eager to cause harm for her own amusement.
He supposed he could at least take comfort in that, even if the rest of her was a mystery he sincerely wanted to look deeper into.
"I believe you," she finally replied after what felt like an eternity. She lifted the bat from her shoulder and lowered it so the top touched the ground. "You don't look like a vandal to me, but I still want to know what you're doing here. Make it quick, I don't have time to waste on people who have no business being in my mistress' presence."
"Like I said, I come here a lot." Armin turned his head to look back at the face of the statue. He allowed himself to rotate towards the Female Titan completely. Her wrathful expression had an odd comforting feeling to it, like her rage wasn't directed at the two in front of her, but at something else entirely.
Something about the woman was off to him as well. She had the aura of a killer, and yet…he had a feeling that turning his back to her wasn't the death sentence many would believe it to be.
"I've been reading a lot about her in the past few months, and I think both mythology and mankind misunderstand her." The fact that Armin hadn't felt the bat connect with him empowered him to keep talking, though he steeled himself for impact. "I know I can't make everyone honor her sacrifices, but I want to find her name and make it so she's acknowledged in the same way the other wielders are. If mythology can't respect her story, she's at least owed respect to her name."
The sound of boots on the tile echoed through the room as his companion joined him at his side, gravel scraping under her feet. She tapped the top of the bat against the floor.
"What makes you think she wants her name to be known?" she asked after a tense pause. "Maybe it was erased for a reason. Not because everyone else decided it for her, but because she wanted it."
Armin's head shook in disbelief. The thought hardly made sense to him. "Why wouldn't she want the world to know her name? To honor her name is to honor the good she did for Eldia. Why would she scorn her followers by not granting them the knowledge of who they trust their loyalty to?"
Her eye sparkled deviously like she had just caught him in a lie, or foiled some master plan of his. "Starting over is easier if no one knows your name. The old texts say she wanted peace at the time of that last battle, right? I wouldn't put it past her to create the life she wanted afterwards, when she was no longer bound by duty."
Armin was struck silent. He didn't know what to say to that. He supposed she wasn't wrong, but for that to be true would make him question everything he had ever known about the Female Titan. Had centuries of the world's contempt been her own making all along? He wanted to doubt it, but he couldn't lie that he was fascinated by the possibility. He had a renewed drive to go back through the texts and apply this new theory.
Whoever this woman in the temple with him was, she was captivating.
"You know," she continued, "Even though she distances herself from her followers by not giving them her name, she's known to look upon them very favorably. Better than the other wielders look upon theirs actually. We just don't give people that information because only those who are truly loyal to her deserve her blessings."
"I can't argue with that," Armin admitted. He shut his eyes for a moment, contemplating the Female's strange ways, then opened them back up as his attention turned to the woman. "I assume you're the caretaker to the shrine?"
"I am. I make sure she looks presentable for her adoring crowd," came her proud reply. She swung the bat back and forth across the floor like a pendulum, then pointed it in his direction while still keeping it close to the tile. "I assume you're the weirdo who keeps leaving books on her pedestal?"
"Hey." Armin's eyes narrowed. "I put them there because they have valuable information about her, okay? Almost every book I read is the same, so I like to save the ones that show her respect, and keep them here so that they can be somewhere they're safe."
"An abandoned temple targeted by vandals isn't exactly 'safe', you know."
Armin threw up his arms in a flustered huff. "I was going to find someplace to hide them eventually. I doubt that vandals would have any interest in these anyway. They wouldn't understand that these are anything but the same old books you can find in almost any library in town."
The woman's eyes moved up as she considered his words, casting judgment on him based on them. His hands fell back to his sides. She eventually nodded her head in agreement. "True. I'm glad to see that someone cares about preserving her legacy. I'll try to help find a better place for these." Her expression softened, and her tone sweetened like it had been injected with honey. "Thanks for these. Seriously. It means a lot to the few followers she has. I'm sure she would appreciate it, too."
"So why are you here?" Armin asked, his voice laced with curiosity she could tell was sincere. "Why do you choose to put so much work into the shrine? I assume no one's compensating you for it or telling you to do it?"
"You're right. It's actually a funny story, kind of." Her gaze met the Female's exposed eye. She told her story in a whispering tone, as if she didn't want anyone else to hear, or was embarrassed by it. "One night I was walking in town and got attacked by a man on the street. I ran here, to the temple, and hid right there." She pointed to the right side of the pedestal, in the corner where it connected with the wall. "My attacker followed me, but that pillar on the floor by the entryway fell on top of him and crushed him. It just fell for no reason at all, right where it needed to. The police showed up minutes later and took him away. I never believed in gods or those old myths, but that day, she was there for me when no one else was."
Armin's jaw dropped. Suddenly her carrying a baseball bat made a lot more sense, and he kicked himself for not making the connection sooner. "I'm so sorry that happened, that's awful! It doesn't still affect you, I hope?"
She turned to face him and shrugged. "A little, but thankfully I've never had anything like that happen again. I took it upon myself to protect her the same way she protected me that day, and I grew stronger because of it." She hit the tip of the bat against the floor again.
"Has it…changed the way you think of the myths? Whether you believe the titans are truly watching over us?"
Her eyes fell to the floor, then back up at the statue. She hadn't wanted to meet the Female's eye again, but something about her was pulling her to do so, like it was out of the caretaker's control. The titan's enraged expression almost made her feel like she would strike her down if she gave an unfavorable answer. "I don't know. I don't trust anyone other than myself, especially not when I need something, but I still haven't figured out how to explain that pillar falling when it did." Her voice noticeably softened. "I've had some good things happen to me in the past few years since I started taking care of the shrine, so I figure it can't hurt to at least give her the respect no one else does."
Armin was silent for a moment, latching on to one detail of her response in particular. "You know, it's not a bad thing to trust others. I'm glad you escaped once, but I wouldn't want you to go through that again. Having people around you can count on is more reliable than divine intervention." He choked upon finishing his sentence and raised his hands at the statue. He shook as if he had just offended a real person, rather than a very large, well-sculpted rock. "Although you do incredible work, ma'am! We just don't want to bother you, we're sure you're very busy!"
The woman stiffled a laugh. She considered his words, and she'd be lying if she said that his concern didn't tug at her heartstrings just a little. He already cared about her well-being when just a few minutes ago she had threatened him with a baseball bat.
What a strange man.
She swung the lock in her hand by the shackle. "As much as I'm enjoying this conversation, it's getting late, and I lock the doors around this time because this is when the vandals are most likely to show up. I wouldn't want you to get caught up in that. That…" She cocked her head towards the Female, "…And our friend here needs her beauty sleep."
Armin jumped back slightly. He got the feeling he had overstayed his welcome. "Right. Sorry. Um…" He scratched the back of his head nervously, before pointing his thumb in the direction of the temple doors. "Do you want to close up and then maybe we can go into town together? I'd love to buy you a drink, or maybe dinner? I want to know more about you."
She smirked at him, clearly interested. "I don't drink, but dinner would be nice. Did you have a preference?"
"Anything you want," Armin replied. He pulled his phone from his pocket. "Oh, I have friends waiting for me, though. Let me just tell them that I won't be showing up tonight."
Her face had a hint of uneasiness, and her tone a small shake of doubt. "Are you sure? We can always do it another time. You actually don't have to do this at all, you know. We can go our separate ways and never talk about this again. I'm sure I'm not the kind of person you want to be involved with anyway."
"No, no. I want to. Really. I'm with them all the time, they won't miss me. This is more important." He looked up from tapping his fingers on his phone to beam at her earnestly. A faint shade of pink rushed to his cheeks. "And not just because of the Female Titan either. There's something about you that…I can't place it, but you're absolutely alluring."
His words shocked her, her cheeks beginning to flush in return. She hadn't expected that answer at all, but she certainly didn't dislike it.
"I'm Armin, by the way."
Her shoulders relaxed. Her expression went from surprise to uncertainty, and finally to fondness. She gave a satisfied hum, and the lock clicked against the tile as she laid it down on the floor. She held out her hand in a silent request for him to hand over his phone. His eyes shifted from her to the device, before he placed it into her awaiting palm.
Her index finger tapped against the screen for a few seconds before she handed it back to him. Armin immediately examined her work.
In front of his eyes was a name and phone number she had added to his contact list.
Annie Leonhart
Annie picked up the lock from near her feet. The metal scraped the floor as it dragged against it for a moment. "Shall we go?"
Armin's eyes were still glued to his screen. "Uh, yeah…" He forced himself to tear away from it, shoving it back into his pocket. "Walk beside me, please."
They made their way into the next room, and through where the altar stood before exiting the temple. The stone doors thudded shut. The statue of the Female Titan was left in almost total darkness, moonlight spilling through a window on the wall across from her.
She would never say it out loud, but Annie got the subtle feeling that from that day on, "divine intervention" would be more than just a broken pillar.