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“And then we’ll meet on the wall?”
“Yes. Around dawn. We’ll give you some time, and then it’ll happen.”
“Everyone is prepared in case anything goes wrong?”
“Of course. But we’ve done this a couple of times now, and there won’t be any mistakes.”
Armin nods, the motion sending his hair swinging over his eyes. Strange to think that, as everything else has slowly failed, consumed by the fire within him, his hair has continued to grow. If he were going to live much longer, he’d need to go get it cut. Not that it really matters that it’s getting in his eyes; he’s been half-blind for months now, his vision fading in and out. It’s better than usual today, the edges of the world sharp and defined for once, and he squints through his glasses at the man sitting beside his bed. “And you’ve found a new host? A good one?”
Jean sighs, but he doesn’t sound exasperated when he answers. “You know we did. I’ve met h…” Armin holds up a hand, and Jean backtracks, changing his word choice, “I’ve met the host a few times now. They’ll be a good caretaker. You’d like them.”
“I doubt that.” Armin closes his eyes and leans back against his pillows, suddenly tired. “I don’t like very many people anymore.”
“You’d like this one.” A moment later, Armin feels Jean’s hand, rough and calloused with years of work, years of sacrifice, take his, and while he’s seen Jean crush the bones in titan’s faces with his fists before, his hand is remarkably gentle as he cradles Armin’s. “Those bastards in the MPs kept trying to push for a child.”
“What!” Armin struggles to sit up, only relenting when he feels Jean’s hand on his chest, slowly but firmly pushing him back down. “You didn’t!”
“Of course I didn’t let them.” Jean makes a disgusted scoffing noise that Armin knows well, and he relaxes again. “That’s not what we do. We don’t send children to do the job of adults.”
Armin nods, knowing what Jean is referring to, and searches for Jean’s hand again. Jean takes it, and Armin squeezes it with the little strength he has left. “No, the host is young, but not a child. They… they have one of the wasting sicknesses. The one in the lungs. They’d be dead in a few weeks, if they didn’t… if they weren’t the next host.”
“That’s… that’s a good choice.” Armin can feel good about that, at least. His death won’t be wasted; he’ll be dying so that someone else can snatch a few more years from the void. “Did the MPs approve?”
“No.” Jean sounds amused, and Armin feels him brush the hair off his forehead before carefully putting a cool, damp cloth across it. It won’t help the fever raging through him, but he appreciates it all the same. “They kept insisting that the next host be a child, but a letter to the Queen took care of that quickly enough.”
Armin smiles, and feels cool water from the cloth drip down his cheeks. “I imagine it did.” Historia has grown into her role, has become a fine, just monarch, but the plight of children has always been a touchy subject, and Armin doesn’t envy the MPs who incurred her wrath. “Is she going to be there tomorrow?”
Jean pauses. “Do you want her to be?”
Armin considers it a moment before shaking his head. “No. She supports us, but she hasn’t been one of us in a long time.”
“Started with Survey Corps, going to end with Survey Corps, huh?”
“Yes. It’s only right.” It might be callow, Armin knows, to not want Historia there, but he’s past the point of caring what others might think of him. “This is… this is going to be the fourth one you’ve seen, hasn’t it?” He asks the question as though he doesn’t already know the answer.
“Yes.” Jean squeezes his hand again, and his voice sounds thoughtful and far away. “It doesn’t get any easier.”
“No.” Armin thinks back, remembering the second and third times a new host needed to be found. Eren had fought so hard, right up until the end, but even he couldn’t stop the titan’s powers from burning him away. He’d been hollow-eyed and skeletal when he’d finally relented, hardly able to walk on his own, but he’d stood on his own two feet and faced down the mindless hunger of the new host, staring it right in the face until the very end. Armin knows he won’t be that brave, that he won’t rage against the fading light the way Eren did. No, he prefers to go quietly, privately, with only a few members of the Survey Corps there to witness it. He prefers to go with as much dignity as he can muster, and he quietly prays that he won’t embarrass himself by screaming at the end.
“And… and you’ll stay with me?” Armin hates the naked need in his voice, but he can’t help it. The titan inside him has stripped everything away, left him as naked and exposed as its form, towering and steaming and skinless, and he’s glad that Jean is the only one here to see him beg.
“Of course.” Armin feels Jean’s hand on the side of his face, and Jean’s voice is so soft and tender that it almost breaks his heart. “I’ll stay with you for as long as I can.”
“And you’ll watch? When it’s time?”
“I will. You won’t be alone.”
“Thank you.” It’s what Armin fears the most; he’s no longer afraid of death, or the oblivion that comes with it, but he fears that final moment of life, before the titan’s jaws close around him and crush him away, that moment he knows he needs to face on his own, without Jean or anyone by his side. “We… we both thank you.”
Jean is quiet for a moment after that, his thumb brushing against Armin’s cheekbone. “He’s still there?”
“He’s always there.” Only Jean knows about this, about Armin’s unintended passenger, and Armin sighs, his breath shuddering in his throat. “He sleeps, sometimes, but he never goes away. Not entirely.”
“Does he… does he know what’s happening?”
“Not exactly.” It had happened slowly, so slowly no one had noticed it at first. Everyone had been too busy dealing with Zeke, with the army outside their walls, to notice the changes in Armin. It had been Eren who had noticed first, commenting on how Armin wasn’t lying still when he slept anymore, but they’d brushed it off at nightmares. Then Armin had realized he was sweating through his clothing faster than before; that he was tripping over nothing when the world suddenly shifted around him and it felt like he wasn’t at the right height level; that he was eating foods he’d never liked before, and with a greater appetite than he’d ever had in the past, like his body had suddenly grown and needed more nutrients than before.
It had been Jean who had figured it out, when they’d been together, curled around each other and sweating and intimate, so close they were breathing each other’s breath, and Armin had closed his eyes and, without realizing what he was saying, called Jean Reiner.
“He… he doesn’t know things. Not really. It’s like he’s dreaming.” Armin can feel tears start to well up behind his eyes, and he turns his head away from Jean, ashamed. “He’s been dreaming for a long time.”
“Armin.” The bed creaks as Jean leans in, and Armin feels the brush of his lips, thin and known and deeply loved, on his cheek. “It’s okay. You don’t have to talk about it.”
“I want to. I have to.” Armin swallows, and turns his face back towards Jean. The cloth slides off his forehead and lands on the floor with a wet, sullen plop. “Where are we going to go when it’s done?”
Jean takes his time in answering, and Armin uses the time to study his face, knowing that it might be the last time he’s able to. The years have been kinder to Jean than they’ve been to Armin, but he still wears the evidence of his time in the Survey Corps. He has a scar through one eyebrow that trails down onto his cheek, from a snapped wire that sprang back and hit him, and he has lines around his mouth and at the corners of his eyes that make him look older than his twenty-eight years. He’s already starting to go grey at his temples, and wears his hair much shorter now, the shaggy undercut of his teenaged years nothing but a memory. His eyes are the same though, sharp and quick and bright amber, and Armin will miss them. Gods, he’ll miss Jean so, so much.
“This didn’t happen with any of the other hosts,” Jean says quietly, carefully. “And we watched for it. We never saw any of Eren in the second one, or any of Annie in the third. Whatever happened with you seems like a unique occurrence.”
“That sounds about right.” Armin tries to smile. “It would be Bertolt who would be too afraid to move on by himself.”
“Maybe you can help him this time.” Jean smiles back, and Armin chooses to ignore the sadness in his eyes, dulling their golden glint. “Maybe he won’t be afraid if you’re there with him.”
Armin nods, and whatever ghost lurks in his memories turns over, glowing warm for a moment. “You remind him of Reiner.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment.”
“He means it as one.”
~*~
Jean stays with Armin during the night, and Armin will be grateful for that with all the time he has left. He knows the reason the MPs were pushing so hard to make the transfer to the next host: he carries the largest, most threatening titan inside him, and no one wants to risk its transfer to someone unknown. But he won’t die during the night. Not while Jean is there with him, propped awkwardly up on the pillows and letting Armin sleep in the circle of his arms.
Armin wakes before Jean does, the fever of the titan almost consuming him, but he ignores it and tilts his head to look at Jean. His vision is fading again, perhaps for the last time, and he squints, straining his eyes to see Jean’s beloved face, to trace the razor-sharp lines of it, to hold it close and dear in his heart. When his vision starts to blur out, Armin almost weeps—it’s too soon, gods, it’s too soon, he isn’t ready for this yet—and his eyes fall on Jean’s hair. Jean’s hair is a bright spot in the dim firelight, almost golden with the flames glinting off it, and the ghost moves again, more active than he’s been in months, and Armin’s vision steadies for a moment. A name whispers through his mind—Reiner—and he swallows.
“Thank you, Bertolt.”
Jean grunts and cracks his eyes open, woken up by Armin’s whisper. “Huh?”
“Wake up, Jean.” Armin lays his hand flat on Jean’s chest, over the comforting thrum of his heartbeat. “It’s time.”
~*~
It’s still dark when they reach the walls, although dawn is slowly starting to thread its way into the sky, the stars fading away and hiding their faces. Armin squints but can’t see the ocean, can’t see much past Jean’s arm around his shoulders. He can hear it, though: the relentless, timeless crash of the waves, murmuring their secrets to the shore, and the cry of seabirds, disturbed by their early morning visitors. He breathes deep, as deep as he can without coughing, and tastes the salty air on his lips.
“Do you want to go down there?” Jean asks him, and Armin nods, glad that Jean anticipated his request without him having to say it. They take the stairs down to the beach, Armin clinging to Jean with every step, and his legs are shaking and weak when they finally reach the bottom.
“I don’t… I can’t walk on the sand, Jean.” Armin bows his head, ashamed of his weakness. It’s an old, familiar ache rising in the back of his throat, the knowledge that his body can’t do what others find so easy.
“Don’t worry about it.” Jean lifts Armin’s arm around his shoulders and gets a hand behind Armin’s knees. “On three, ready? One… two… three.”
Jean lifts him as easily as he’d lift a child, and Armin tucks his head in against his shoulder as Jean carries him across the sand. One of the other Survey Corps members—Armin can’t remember his name, he stopped learning names a long time ago—asks Jean a question, unsure if this is allowed, and Jean snaps at him, telling him to stand down.
Jean wears the Commander’s cloak well, Armin thinks, and tightens his arms around his neck.
~*~
They sit together on the sand as the sun rises, as its brilliance dazzles Armin’s eyes and fills his head with bright, shining light. His eyes swim with the sparkling of light on the water, a thousand diamonds spread out before him, and he leans heavily against Jean’s side. He thinks, in that moment, that the ocean had looked like stars, and the stars had looked like the ocean, and it’s all connected, and he’s deeply, deeply grateful to have been a part of it. For all its cruelties, the world can be incredibly, heartbreakingly beautiful.
“Don’t cry,” Jean says, his voice threatening to shatter apart. “Oh shit, I’m sorry, Armin, I’m so sorry it has to be this way…”
Armin realizes that Jean thinks he’s crying because he’s afraid, or because he’s sad, and he shakes his head, turning to smile up at Jean. His vision is all but gone now, and all he can see is a blurry outline of Jean’s—of Reiner’s—head, but it’s enough. It’s enough to take him to the end. “It’s okay.” He reaches up to touch Jean’s face, and Jean catches his hand and brings it to his lips, kissing the back of Armin’s knuckles. “I was just… I got to see the ocean. I got to be a part of something greater than myself.” He bows his head forward, bumping his forehead against Jean’s. “I got to love you.”
“Goddammit, Armin, you asshole.” Jean is crying now, but he’s laughing too, and that’s the best Armin can hope for. “How dare you spring this romantic shit on me now?”
“Sorry.”
Jean laughs again, but it turns into a sob midway through, and his hand finds its way to the back of Armin’s neck, cups around it protectively, and the world swims before Armin’s eyes, the past blending with the present, his memories blending with another’s, and Armin cries then too.
They all cry.
~*~
Jean is true to his word, and stays as long as he can. But he can’t stop the inevitable, and when Armin’s heart starts hitching in his chest, beating out of control and out of sync, Armin knows it’s time.
“Goodbye, Jean,” he says, and tastes Jean’s tears on his lips as he kisses him for the last time. “Be well. Be happy again.”
“I’ll do my best.” He stands up, leaving Armin sitting on the sand, and pauses, looking out over the water. Then he stoops, and whispers in Armin’s ear, “I love you, you little piece of shit. Remember that, okay? Remember that I love you.”
“I love you too, Jean. And I will.”
Jean leaves then, his footsteps staggering on the sand, and Armin doesn’t look over his shoulder to watch him go. It would be useless; he lost his vision a few minutes ago, and he doesn’t think it will be coming back again.
He hears movement behind him, someone shuffling up at his back. It’s the new host, who will have been taught how to do the injection, who is alone with him on the beach now, who is all that stands between Armin and oblivion. Despite his vow to be brave, Armin’s breath catches in his throat, and he wraps the blanket Jean left with him around his shoulders. It’s the blanket they’d slept under last night, and it smells comfortingly of Jean. Armin lifts an end of it near his face and breathes in, drawing the scent of Jean down into his hitching lungs, and it’s enough. It’s enough to see him through.
“Thank you,” someone says behind him—a soft voice, young—and Armin nods, once, before closing his eyes and facing the timeless sea.
~*~
The last words he has time to think are a pair of names.
Jean. Reiner.
~*~
She wakes up in a bed, warm and cozy, and draws a deep breath for the first time in months.