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The news comes to him during cleanup. Eren hates picking his way around the corpses of other soldiers, but it's everyone's duty to look for anyone familiar. All he finds are frightened faces he's never met, or maybe seen in passing. He wishes more people died with their eyes closed.
"Well, so far we've suffered a loss of eight percent fewer men than usual," Hanji's saying, walking alongside Eren with a clipboard and three sticks of graphite protruding from her hair. She's tapping a fourth against her cheek thoughtfully. "And with this being Armin's first time giving strategic command, that's an amazing start... Yeah... I think even Levi will be happy." She winks. "But don't repeat that."
"Eight percent, huh," Eren says, a little dazed. That doesn't seem like a lot. It doesn't seem like enough. Still— "I guess I should go congratulate him. He'll be able to help out a lot more, right?" And maybe not hanging around the front lines. That would be a relief.
Hanji's steps stutter, though, and then she stops fully, looking awkward. Her expression is a bad omen. "Actually," she says, "Right. Uh, why don't we go see him?"
"Yeah." Eren feels like he's swallowed ice. It's weird, and he shouldn't be anxious, because there's no reason to think something would have happened to Armin. Not Armin. He clenches his fists and unclenches them and realizes his palms are sweating. "Hey, Hanji? What—"
"Let's go see him," she says quickly, and swerves in a different direction. Eren opens his mouth, but shuts it and then follows her.
The building she takes him to was a pub just yesterday. There are long wooden tables inside with moaning men and women spread across them. Eren claps his hand over his mouth, his nose - not because it reeks of blood, but because he's suddenly very afraid that he'll smell Armin's. "Hanji?" he asks her, muffled and tight, and impatient this time. She doesn't say anything back, walking briskly through the aisles between the tables, though occasionally she'll slow to peer at a soldier, maybe touch an arm. Camaraderie. It makes Eren feel worse. Is he going to have to touch Armin like that soon, ginger and as a fleeting comfort? "Shit," he breathes.
At the back of the pub, the roof is gone. The worst of the splintered beams have been pried away, deemed hazardous and removed in order to keep them from falling on anybody. Tarps have been stretched over the hole to keep the weather out. Armin is flat on his back on a countertop with red in his hair. Someone has given him their jacket for a pillow; someone else has torn strips from something beige and wrapped them around much of his face. His left hand twitches once, like a dog in its sleep, but otherwise, he's still. This is real life, huh? Eren thinks, strangely devoid of oxygen. My body hurts.
When he feels reality again, someone's hitting him in the face. There's a familiar boot at his teeth, too. "Bringing him here this early was an absolutely piss poor idea," Levi says, ostensibly to the grimacing Hanji, and slams Eren against the wall. "Listen here, you shitty brat." This is directed at Eren, who splutters. "The next move you make had better be to clench up, because my boot is going straight up your ass if you don't calm down immediately."
Calm down? Eren thinks, and has the vague realization that his throat feels very raw. His knuckles are steaming, too. Did he just hit something? "Armin," he says. His voice sounds like dust. Levi frowns more deeply. "What happened to Armin?"
"I'm sorry," Levi says firmly, and Eren feels all of the blood in his face leave at once. "He fell into trouble while his plan was being enacted."
"You're scaring him!" chides Hanji, grimacing even more. "He isn't dead, Eren, he just—"
"What happened to him?" Eren's voice is riding on a note of hysteria, and a far away part of him thinks, I sound really scared. When's the last time I sounded like this? His throat feels disconnected from the rest of his body. His lungs, too.
Levi lets go of Eren's jacket, flicking his fingers in agitation, but stays close enough that he can beat Eren again if Eren takes the news too badly. Eren realizes that's what it is, too. They're expecting me to lose it.
"Head trauma," Hanji says finally, shifting her weight from foot to foot. "It might be a while, you know, before he wakes up - I mean, he's not really out of the woods yet... Eren, I'm really sorry. I - Eren?"
Levi ends up having to hit him some more.
--
When Eren can't be by Armin's bed, Mikasa stays. When they're both called away, Sasha offers to carry on the vigil instead. It takes a few minutes for Eren to agree to it, but he comes back to find her humming a song to Armin while she reclines in the chair. Eren hopes he can hear it, and that he likes it.
Mikasa and Eren sleep in shifts, carry out their duties in shifts, and hold Armin up to sponge him off and brush his hair. "I had a bad cold," Mikasa explains quietly, "when I was a little girl. All I did was lay in bed for days. When I got up, my hair was matted in the back, and it was hard to brush." So they make sure he doesn't tangle and they wash his face each night. Eren watches Armin's cheeks grow thinner, and Mikasa watches the shadows under Eren's eyes grow darker. Losing Armin, she thinks, might mean losing both of them. She feeds Eren, and dribbles water into Armin's mouth. "You must be having a good dream," she murmurs to him, during an evening where it's just her and the slow rise and fall of his chest. "I know it's not as good out here, but you have to wake up." She smoothes his hair back from his brow. "You have to wake up, Armin."
He does wake up, days and days later, at around four o'clock in the morning. Mikasa has finished a four hour shift in the night watch, and Eren's already been relieved, sent staggering and mumbling to his bunk. This is getting to be too much. Mikasa's chiding herself for thinking so and funneling some water into Armin's mouth when he makes a face. His eyebrows furrow. Mikasa stands up so quickly that her chair screeches over the wood floor, and fumbles with the water skin. Water pools at Armin's collarbone and he groans, splutters a little, reanimating. Mikasa grasps one of his hands in both of hers and squeezes. "Armin?" she asks, earnest, leaning over him. "Armin?"
"Mikasa," Armin says - wheezes - and Mikasa presses one of her hands to her mouth.
"Armin. I'm right here. I have your hand. Can you feel me? Do you have any pain?"
He opens his eyes. They feel sticky. They flutter, too, like they're trying to find the strength to stay open, and he squints a bit, then blinks a few times to become reaccustomed to the feeling. His only answer, at first, is to practice breathing slowly and deeply and methodically. He lays there clutching her hand with as much pressure as he can muster, which is very little. He blinks, turns his head so that he's facing her, and then blinks again. "Mikasa?" he says finally, croaky. "Did I hurt my head?"
"You— " That's such a helpless question, and she notices that he's shaking, but he asks it with such resolve and there's no way to get around answering. "Yes. You hurt your head, Armin. Does it hurt right now?"
"No," he says, and turns his face toward the ceiling again. "But I can't see anything."
Her grip falters in her surprise, and his hand drops away. She grabs for it again. "What?"
"If I hit my head, it - it might be retinal detachment... That would explain it..." His face is smoothed over, like water with only the faintest of ripples, but Mikasa sees that he has started to cry, and his tears are sluggish down the arc of his cheeks. "Mikasa, can you get me a doctor, please?"
She gets a doctor, and she gets Eren.
--
Most everyone has heard by the next afternoon. They already knew about Jaeger's childhood friend, dead to the world but still breathing, the one whose condition made Eren especially snappish and tired. That Titan kid is going to go crazy, some of them have said. Others have replied, I think he already is.
"He woke up," someone says, and then to someone else, and before too long they're all buzzing softly about it, hornet-voiced and curious. Did you hear he's crippled now? Did you hear he can't see? What's the military going to do with him now?
Eren wants to know that, too. He flees to Armin's bedside.
When he gets there, Mikasa's already sitting in the chair. Armin's sitting up in bed, and they're holding hands. He's talking to her, seeming tired but with lively expressions, and he doesn't notice that Eren enters. Eren catches, "They said it's for me to decide, but Commander Erwin—" But Mikasa spots Eren in the doorway, and squeezes Armin's hand, before pulling hers away. Armin shuts up.
"Eren," Mikasa says, and stands up. "Did you just come from dinner?"
"Uh, yeah," Eren says, and Mikasa narrows her eyes, because that means he didn't. She looks like she's got something to say—Eren doesn't doubt that she does—but her mouth makes a line and she glances down at Armin.
"Good." She leaves the bedside, and Armin turns his face to follow her with his false line of sight. "I'll go eat, then. I'll be back later."
"All right," Armin says, sounding almost content. He turns his head again, to face where he thinks Eren's standing. It makes Eren flinch, because he's a couple of feet off.
Mikasa leaves them alone, and it feels awful. Looking at Armin is awful— that's a pretty guilty feeling, but it's like Armin's face has changed completely, even though it's exactly the same. He looks, to Eren, like someone completely different. Armin, after all, wouldn't be cooped up in bed and blind. Eren doesn't have any blind friends. He tries to swallow his nausea, but his shaky hands clatter the chair when he pulls it toward himself to sit. He takes a deep breath.
"So they're discharging you, huh?"
"What?" Armin cocks his head, and his hair sweeps away from his face. It's such a natural gesture that Eren feels even sicker. There's nothing natural about this situation. "No."
Eren's jaw goes hard. "No? What, they're seriously not letting you go?" Erwin. He talked Armin into something, right? He thinks this is worth it, right? Eren sure doesn't. What could be worth such a pair of blue eyes? "After all that? You've got to be kidding me. I've had enough, you've been through enough—"
Armin draws his shoulders up, a little bit cowed. He can still imagine Eren's angry face, but not being able to see it makes him unsure of himself. "It's not that, it's just, I chose not to leave." He gropes for one of Eren's hands, and Eren bites his bottom lip hard and grabs Armin's fingers. It's probably too tight, but Armin doesn't say ow. He says, "I'm not fit for battle anymore, but I... I mean, I never really was in the first place. I've never been able to do that. So if you think about it, losing my sight isn't really—"
"Don't you dare say it doesn't matter!" Eren practically shouts, and his anger resonates off the walls. Armin blinks. Even that makes Eren feel sick; his eyes are so expressive even when he can't use them. He sucks in a breath, trying to get the air to his head, trying to cool. "Don't... It matters. It matters a lot. It's important."
"I can still help," Armin says thinly. His fingers are trembly against Eren's. "I can still think. All I need to do is think." He closes his eyes and exhales, slow and tentative. "Commander Erwin said I can still have a position here. I'm not dead, Eren. Don't act like I'm dead." It's the first time Eren feels like he's been hit by Armin. His cheeks sting.
"Of course you're not dead," Eren says. "You wouldn't do that."
"No, I wouldn't."
Mikasa comes back with food for the both of them, ducking her head and knowing. She's worried, and it shows in the way her knuckles are white as she holds onto Armin's spoon. Eren grinds his teeth. Don't you doubt him, he wants to tell her, though he's guilty of it himself. He swallows his bread and his pride.
--
Armin's glad to feel the sun again, but when he tilts his face up toward the sky, he expects to see the moon. There's just nothing, of course, no pinprick stars or sign of night or day. The sun is wholly feeling now.
On his first day back out, Eren leads him by the elbow. It makes Eren feel a little bit better; Armin can tell that much. When he says, "Keep to your left," or, "C'mere, this way," he still sounds tight, but relieved, too, like he's doing the right thing. He feels responsible, Armin thinks — not for the blindness, but just for Armin. He holds on to Armin's sleeves to try and keep him in one piece. It's the one time he lets go, turning to answer a question, that Armin smacks into someone.
"Watch where you're going," Jean snaps, and then goes a bit pale when he twists halfway and sees that it's Armin reeling back from him. "Oh, crap, crap. I, uh—"
Eren's fury is tangible; Armin can feel the heat off of him. He reaches for Eren's shoulder, and instead touches his chest. "It's okay," he says to Jean. "I think it's going to happen a lot."
Jean can't even laugh nervously. He swallows, and Eren's bright stare is terrible, but Armin's face is worse. He really does seem like it's okay. "Hey," he says, and shifts his weight on his feet. "You..." His mouth is dry, and he thinks of the agony of so many mothers: Was my son useful to humanity? What would Armin's mother think? More than anything — and here is Jean's resolve — Armin should feel pride. "You saved a lot of people," he says. Eren starts to uncoil, a little like a spring.
"Yeah," Armin says, and smiles to Jean's left. "Let's do it again next time, too."