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It’s been this way for as long as any one of them can remember.
Eren is a fighter, rash and desperate for anything and everything that resembles independence. He was that way before, too, way back when he used to rebel in his awkward, childish way against his mother, the garrison’s slackness, the old and rusty ideals of a tiny world at peace and his own unremarkable limitations. He’s always been tied too closely to vain goals – and he was nothing special, himself, at least not to begin with – so maybe it really is due to little more than dumb luck that he’s survived all this time.
Dumb luck and Mikasa. Armin. Her swords and agility and his speech and strategy and the great lengths they’d both go to to protect a brother.
When the going gets bad – more bodies than moving humans, titans like a floodgate’s broken and screams all kind of hysterical – they all forge ahead, alone and unrelenting. It’s their collective duty, a thing sworn to, but more significant than that is the mutual promise and understanding shared by just the three of them.
They fight alone – no exceptions – because they must, but there’s always a part of all of them – Eren included – that worries desperately for the other two.
Some times are different. Mikasa hates that obligation, after all, and it’s only when they both see Eren at a distance – hear the unmistakable cry of his titan form, first, and the obvious edge to it that reads rage single-minded vengeance grief and desperation – that they both seek permission to go to him.
Grudgingly and with order falling apart besides, that permission is granted.
The voice – the one they’re following, then, the inhuman one, all danger-fraught and grating and mindless – can’t convey real thought or depth of emotion, but the ring of it’s enough for Armin, for Mikasa. Maybe even for a few others in the 104th training corps.
(How many of those guys are still alive, even now as more are dying bloody with wide eyes and grasping hands?)
They listen as they maneuver through the city, a desperate race and the metallic whine of their gear threading them through the needle-eyes of buildings and chimneys and titans. A new note appears, mingles with the original and then explodes forth with huge volume. It sounds like fear, surprise, but it’s the least comprehensible thing they’ve heard yet because it’s not like Eren. It’s like self-doubt and thinking about dying at someone else’s hands. Like giving up, almost, but not quite.
Trouble.
They find him already brought horizontal, on his stomach with his head turned to watch as he struggles. He looks as outraged now as ever – his eyes, mostly, like the face of the titan he wears is perpetually frozen in a truly baleful glare. He looks like that, but he’s not fighting the way he should be. His limbs are moving only minimally – like he’s not even pretending anymore.
He’s being torn at, too, huge grasping fingers and teeth and feet and the titans’ eyes the way they always are – the emotion everyone probably imagines, the kind-of thought and usually a hint of looking-down, gloating almost – and Eren’s not moving at all now but the nape of his neck is still untouched.
For the moment – safe.
Mikasa reacts first, reckless herself and Armin hanging back to recover from the initial wave of shock. It’s not much of a break, but it’s long enough for Mikasa to reach the first wave of enormous bodies on her own – and she’s dodging arms swung clumsily in her general direction, the quick snap of teeth and Eren sort of snarls when he sees that.
He looks at Armin. There’s no expression there, but Armin understands because Eren would assume that someone’d understand him just like that. It’s as simple as focusing on the blonde’s face.
Help her.
Were he capable of speaking now, he definitely wouldn’t ask for that. He’d want them to run, for sure. It’s obvious, but Armin’s not about to oblige him there.
His knees feel weak and he’s maybe gonna throw up, but he follows Mikasa’s lead, anyway.
~*~
They manage to get Eren out of there somehow – just Eren’s human body, of course, minus the ends of a few limbs and plenty of blood – and they do it without dying.
That, all other things aside, is an accomplishment.
He’s feverish, cheeks rubbed raw maybe by the haphazard fusion of his fifteen-year-old body with a fifteen-meter class titan – and then, maybe by tears. He’s in no shape to talk – probably lost control, let the thing take over and rampaged and lost – but he does manage to get out that they’re dead.
They being the ones who were with him, the ones who’ve always been around – the soft flicker of candlelight and the torch of hope and laughter and teasing. The ones with and alongside whom they’ve always fought, argued, made decisions out of desperation and survived.
“I let it happen,” Eren gasps. His eyes aren’t focusing on anything, though, and they’re sure – maybe desperate to believe – that he’s dreaming until he uses what’s left of his right arm to point.
It’s never been a game of who should die, who shouldn’t, and who never will, but Armin finds himself wishing for some kind of alternative, anyway, and he’d give anything not to recognize the faces. The shapes of their bodies, their identifying features and everything that ever made them recognizable as something of an extended family.
He can’t believe it so he starts to ask how, but Eren’s way too far gone for that. He just keeps muttering to himself, promising revenge and swearing never to ever forgive this. He doesn’t seem to have realized that he’s missing numerous parts of his own body, and he doesn’t appear to care that he’s out of the necessary strength besides. He’s too busy being mindlessly desperate to get away from the reality by ending it all on his own.
“Kill –” he tries again, and this time Mikasa digs the ball of her foot into the roof upon which they’re precariously awaiting help or something, anything and – loudly enough that Armin cringes, too, loudly enough that maybe it’ll attract more titans yet –
– slaps him.
“Eren,” she warns, red light red scarf and her eyes all ablaze with determination and concern for his safety. It’s dangerously close to compromised – or maybe it’s already that. Yes – okay, yes. It is. It is, but he’s alive. That’s the final safety that must be protected at all costs.
Don’t, she means, and Armin underscores that with tears and – “You can’t, Eren – it’s too late, okay, so stay put!”
Eren blinks slowly – once, twice, coming-to snapshots of his situation as it actually is. His eyes widen with every reopening, rational thought coming back until he groans and nods stiffly.
“Sorry,” he hisses, and the rise and fall of his breathing quickens noticeably. “Armin.”
Armin answers with a nod. He means for it to be loud enough by itself to make his voice unnecessary, and that’s just because he’s not sure that he can talk well right now. He’s still crying, but in a place like this and under constant threat of death, the grief’s not what matters.
“How much do you have left?”
Armin jiggles the tanks at his sides, noting the loud sloshing of what little liquid’s still there to fill a quarter or less of their entire capacity. “Not much,” he admits, “but we can make it work somehow.”
“Mikasa?”
“Enough,” she states, gaze wandering down to make a mental note of the red that’s staining Eren’s cheek and what remains of three limbs. The blood’s not flowing quite so fast anymore, the wounds closing up and something like a new layer of skin or bone growing back in a few places.
Be that as it may, though, it’s still likely to be a while before he’s fully capable of getting around on his own.
“I’ll carry you.”
“No, you won’t,” he argues, brow creasing and yet still he doesn’t so much as try sitting up. He moves a bit, though, testing his limbs and apparently reaching the same conclusion as the other two at precisely the same moment – “I wouldn’t even be able to hold on to you like this.”
“Then we’ll –”
“Don’t wait,” Eren interrupts, eyes widening not out of surprise but because of pure, pig-headed stubbornness. His eyebrows are drawn down so that he almost looks angry – but, of course, anger’s not it, not really. He’s just trying to be a hero, a martyr and then the miracle-worker who might manage to do something amazing and impossible like coming back from this hell all on his own.
“It could take hours for you to go back to normal,” Mikasa snarls, hands already coming up to work at her jacket – cutting off long strips, the makeshift rope that she probably means to use to hold Eren to her. “Without us here, you’ll die.”
“I’ll fight!”
Armin shakes his head. He could argue, too – and he’d really like to, if only because he and Eren both know exactly how ridiculous he’s being – but there’s no point as long as he can be this completely certain that his friend won’t listen to a word he has to say. He settles for the same thing Mikasa’s decided on – not a great plan, but with so few people and no fuel to waste on finding more, there’s little space for deliberation.
It’s just gonna have to work.
Eren doesn’t stop arguing, but he knows – must know, like it or not – just as well as they do that it’s the only option that gives all three of them half a chance. The most he does to physically resist them from that moment on is squirm around, and then he doesn’t pour even half of what little strength he’s still got into that effort.
With or without any hugely outspoken resistance, though, they barely manage to set him up so that he’s not bound to fall off the moment they take off running – on Mikasa’s back, of course, with his chin resting on her shoulder and an irritated flush mingling with the cuts, bruises, and blood splatter. He’s always been the type to look for a third option, but alone he’d never be able to aim for or achieve it.
This, the third option – they all live – and the danger inherent in that, the fourth option – they all die.
They could wind up like – like –
Armin shivers, banishes the thought and the long passage of bittersweet memory from his mind – concepts and ideas, the present and the past and yes it’s because he must focus on the here and now but he won’t ever stop feeling it the way Eren does, the way everyone feels the weight of the dead and the extra responsibility left by them to the few that have to keep up the fight.
The fear, too, and the doubt that there’s any point – that it’s even remotely possible anymore.
“We owe it to them,” Mikasa murmurs, and it’s only then that the other two realize they’ve been sitting there motionless, silent – all thinking the same thing, thinking trust and loss and family. Even Mikasa – because she may look the same outwardly, but the way she keeps glancing around, extra-alert to potential danger and obviously focused on protecting the other two above herself, above anything and everything else – yeah, she does that. She drowns out the thrum of despair and hopelessness with effort. She protects what she has left with everything she’s got to give. It’s an unhealthy obsession, maybe, because she matters to them in the same way that Eren and Armin matter to her.
Anyone could potentially die lost in the throes of this war, but that doesn’t make it an option.
Armin takes a breath, then, stands and grits his teeth hard before shouting – not at Eren or Mikasa, but at the expanse of houses and blood-soaked streets and smoke, the world of death that’s been taking and taking from them from the start, the colossal titan’s foot when it broke down the wall and everything that came after.
He screams that they’re going to live, that it can’t break them after everything they’ve gone through and they’ll never – never – give up or let go.
This is another defeat for humanity. It’s more loss, greater every time and nothing gained in compensation, but –
– they’ll never leave it at that, never stop fighting and supporting each other and they’ll always be united behind this cause.
It's always been that way.