Chapter Text
The sky was grey.
Not the kind of grey before it rained, not the grey that was followed by a colorful charade.
It was a different kind of grey.
A grey dusted with an angry red, an ominous orange smoothing the dusty clouds above. Sparks crackling between their folds, adding a mesmerizing feat into the cauldron.
But Armin didn’t see it.
His eyes were fixated on the vast, stretching, horizon; an endless, far off stripe, where the sky met a flat earth, obliterated of life.
He dragged one foot in front of the other, his knees trembling with every step, and his hands slumped, useless against his body.
The world was dizzy around him, his vision askew, swaying with every step he took. Lines and shapes were crashing and blurring before focusing again, and it incited a queasy ball in his stomach, and suddenly he tasted bile in his mouth, mixed with an iron-flavored taste.
He wished it would rain.
Maybe the rain would sooth the burning fire lit in his legs, a fire that rose to his abdomen, and then abruptly faded from his waist and up, a stinging pain taking over, reaching his lungs, a needle poking right over his heart with every failed attempt to inhale, leaving him with shallow breaths and an aching throat.
It exacerbated with every passing moment.
But he didn’t stop moving.
He couldn’t stop himself.
The stinging in his throat aggravated, he could hear his own respiratory breathing, pathetic, wheezing whistles.
His body protested, screamed and begged him to stop, that it was over, all was gone and all was lost. His body pleaded with him to lay down, and count his last breaths until life departed his body.
But a nagging, baffling motivation gnawed at him, pushing him forward, giving a million unrealistic reasons why he shouldn’t stop, making him choke each time air penetrated his lungs, keeping his legs on the move.
He feared that if he stopped for a second, he would never get up again.
I want to see her one more time, please, just one more time…
Armin didn’t know where he was going, and he couldn’t figure out where he was. Time collided with place in an intangible lump of confusion, his sight muddled and the sky blended with the earth, and he was walking through a grey world.
A world with no features.
An ancient world that was new to him.
Drip drip
Red dots emerged in his sight, spreading across his vision, and something warm trickled down his face. He wished it was rain, but rain wasn’t supposed to be warm, rain wasn’t supposed to be red .
But it was, in fact, a red rain, maybe the sky cried bloody tears and the thunder raged with roaring, blinding orange spears, maybe the world outraged and stomped its feet as it embraced the end of itself.
Falling
Piece by piece
Armin staggered, his body swayed.
It was quiet, unfairly quiet.
Nngh
Counterintuitive tranquility for a world that was on the verge of collapsing.
Nnngghh
Silence.
Armin fell on his knees.
aaahhh
Was that his own voice?
Or was he imagining sounds?
Ngh…
Armin tried to clear the fog away from his mind, to concentrate on these small sounds that he was almost certain wasn’t his own; his lips were sealed.
Someone else is here.
Armin smeared away the thick, rose-red moisture from his eyes, he raised both of his hands behind his ears, shaping them like a plate to collect all the sound he could. He attempted to calm down his heart, but he was scared and shivering but maybe he won’t die alone.
He fell on his knees, closed his eyes, directing all the stamina he had left to his hearing, trying to spot whoever made these noises.
That someone who breached the serenity with pathetic, hopeful moans, and for a fleeting moment, Armin wondered if these moans were of pain or sorrow.
Then he found them.
In the distance, a hump on the desaturated ground, twisting and rolling on itself.
Stamina rushed through Armin’s veins, and for a second, he was hopeful.
He was hopeful that someone else survived, that even through disastrous human-made earthquakes, fire rain, and steamy wind, someone still had life circulating in their blood.
Or at least, he won’t die alone.
He tried to get on his feet, but his knees betrayed him, and he plummeted on his chest. The air was knocked out of his lungs, and his vision went dark for a second. His chest inflatable painfully with air, before he rolled on the ground, pushed himself up on his elbows, his lungs ignited fire and he exhaled flames.
He looked at the horizon, just to make sure that someone was still there, that his mind didn’t feel so pathetic for him that it created this illusion.
The comforting illusion of another human being.
He took a deep breath, and after steading himself, he stood on his feet. The world swayed and he almost fell again, but he stabilized his footing, and limped again, dragging each step with all the power he had.
He was getting closer and closer, and the moaning got louder.
Then he saw a petite figure, and a mat of blonde hair fanned on the black-dusted dirt.
Annie…?
The figure turned around, and he couldn’t diverge a foot from a hand because the figure was agonizingly curled on itself, quivering.
Annie Annie Annie…
He found himself mouthing Annie’s name, no sound came out, he tried to swallow, but the dryness of his mouth only scratched his throat.
“A…nnie…” He tried to say, he barely recognized his own voice, “Ann…ie…” he kept on walking, until he was a foot away from her, then he dropped to his knees.
“Annie…” he called, bending down. All of her face was scrunched, scratches covered every inch of it, a spot on her hair was matted with red, dimming the golden spark from her hair. Armin looked down at her body, then immediately averted his eyes back to her face.
He didn’t want to look any more at her wounds, he didn’t want to know what limbs she lost, he didn’t want to evaluate her wounds.
He didn't want to know how much time she had left.
He whispered her name one more time and brushed the hair off her face, cupping her cheeks.
Annie’s eyelids fluttered open and shut multiple times, before she looked at him through half lidded lashes.
She saw the sun.
A blonde boy with shiny ocean eyes, and he was grinning, that kind of grin when someone is so happy, and she could swear golden sparkles danced around him.
She blinked.
And he was gone.
In his place was a man… a man she never saw before, or maybe he was familiar…
“Ar…min…?” she asked.
“Annie,” he nodded his head, and she liked the way he said her name.
“Armin…” She called his name one more time, and he sat beside her, hovering over her, and she wanted to touch him, to feel him, to make sure he really was there, that her mind wasn’t making her last moments more agonizing with feigning delusions.
“My wounds are too deep,” Annie said, lifting her head up.
“It’s fine, you’ll make it,” Armin retorted, his voice cracked.
He was lying.
“I’m not gonna make it.”
“You will, we will.”
“I’m not regenerating,” She pivoted, his hope made her queasy.
“Nor am I…” he admitted, his head tilted down until it rested on his chest. That was when she was sure that he lost hope long ago, that this man in front of her was already one foot into the afterlife, and that she was following him too.
What happened? She had no idea. What will happen? She tried to shake her head; she doesn’t want to think about that.
“Eren…” Armin muttered, “the rumbling… Mikasa…” He shook his head.
“All I wanted… was to go back to my father…”
“I’m sorry I failed you…”
He failed me? Annie wondered, what is he talking about?
“Do you think… he made it?” she knew the answer already.
“Yes,” Armin answered promptly, and for some reason, she believed him.
Yeah, her father was alive, he surely was alive, and he will keep on living, he must.
“Can you… take a message for my father?”
“No, you will tell it to him yourself.”
“Armin…"
“No,” he scooted closer to her, looking her in the eyes, his eyebrows hugging in the middle, and his breath was ragged.
His eyes fluttered around her face, and Annie thought he was going to say something to her, that he changed his mind and would take her message to her father.
But Armin didn’t.
Instead, he leaned forward until his forehead touched hers.
Annie was met with blue, blue so vibrant it made her shiver, as if she walked into the ocean, but it was comforting, and she could live with that feeling forever.
But he closed his eyes and said, “We’re gonna make it out of here, me and you, and we’ll find your father.”
Annie meekly nodded, her bangs brushing against his, and she wished she could run her finger through his hair, she had always wanted to do that.
She felt his breath on her face. Something about being under him made her warm, not because his body was on fire, but because of the incomprehensible warmth that ran through her veins, making her safe, cared for, and loved.
He leaned more onto her.
Annie was cold, so cold, her whole body trembled, but her forehead was on fire. He caressed her cheeks, touched her hair, and kissed her.
She didn’t kiss back until later, when she met his kisses with her own mild ones, and Armin tasted iron and salt. His idling fingers caressed her wet cheeks and he didn’t know if these were her tears or his own, but then he sobbed into her mouth, and she pressed her lips harder into his.
Soon, weeps were leaving both of them, and they couldn’t hold it in any longer, they were crying into each other, Armin leaving trails of kisses on Annie’s face.
On her eyebrows, on her eyelids, on the side of her mouth, on her cheeks, and she did the same, she wished she could wrap her arms around him, she wished she could feel him closer, and then he claimed her lips once again.
He was soft, his lips like a feather and his hands light like a cloud, Annie thought, and for a second, the pain seemed to depart her body, and a foreign, light sensation swathed over her.
She could no longer feel the ragged ground underneath her, the small pebbles no longer poked at her back, and everything was so soft and warm. For a fleeting second, Annie thought she was in her bed, she wished she was in her bed.
Armin pulled back, and Annie smiled.
That smile suited her so much, her eyes were so soft, and her hair scattered around her face, and if it wasn’t for the smeared red on her face, he would’ve thought she was on a balcony by the beach.
A place where he always wanted to take her to.
He kissed that smile one more time, before his arms gave out and he flopped on the ground next to her.
“I’ve always wanted to take you to the ocean,” he said, dropping beside her, barely propping himself up on one elbow. She looked up at him. “I’ve always wanted to do that,” he repeated, caressing her cheek.
The skin on his fingers calloused, and he barely sensed anything at all, leaving a trace of scratches in their path on her cheeks. But she didn’t mind it. She could no longer feel her face anyway.
A shuddery sigh escaped her lips, she closed her eyes, took a deep breath in, opened them. Armin noticed Annie trying to lift up her hand, he got closer to her, held her hand, and put it on his cheek.
“I heard you,” she muttered. Her eyelids fluttered, fighting to stay open, “I heard you,” she muttered again, her voice a whisper lost in the wind.
Armin closed his eyes, focused on the hand on his cheek. His throat tightened, and his eyes scorched behind his eyelids. His chest tightened.
He tried to say something, but if he opened his mouth, he knew words wouldn’t be easy to fathom.
But really, why would he even care? He was living his last breaths, and only moments ago he was grateful that he wouldn't die alone. Why would he care?
And so he parted his lips, only for an airy sob to leave him, shaking his whole body, and another, and another.
Annie witnessed him crumbling by her side, her own sobs suffocated her lungs, but she couldn’t let them out. She merely watched, trying to speak, but instead crying more and more. His tears ran down her hands, she saw them, but couldn’t feel them. Her body numb.
He calmed down his breathing, and tried to talk once again, “We could’ve talked,” but Annie started shaking her head, ”we could’ve talked Annie,” he muttered again, "if only you broke out of your crystal..."
He would've talked his squad into taking her in, making her one with them. He would've apologized, kissed her cheek and asked her to start anew. He would've taken her in, in his arms, told her that all was fine, that they'd go through it all together.
“No, no, no, no…” she repeated, over and over again, shaking her head, “I heard you talking,” she repeated, and Armin didn’t understand, he couldn’t decipher her words. Until he looked into her eyes, and she muttered again, “I heard you talking.”
It dawned him, everything she meant, the code deciphering in front of his eyes, letters clearer, simpler.
She tried to cover up her guilt, that she listened to him while she was in the crystal, that she didn’t let all these four years of her life go to waste. He didn’t talk to a heap of see-through rocks, he talked to a lively caged girl.
She heard him begging her to talk, to say anything.
But he didn’t mean to make her guilty, if anything, the reason why she crystallized herself was because of him .
And so he kissed the inside of her palm, apologizing in another kiss on her knuckles.
Her eyelids drooped lower on her eyes, and a stone dropped in his stomach.
There was no escape.
He leaned closer to her, resting his forehead against her own.
He smiled, he realized that he saw the ocean long ago, when he first looked into her eyes. She held the ocean and the sky in them, colliding and harmonizing to the waves.
If only he knew, he would’ve held the ocean in his hands, never letting it go.
“In another life,” he whispers, but she didn’t smile, and he knew it was close.
He closed his eyes, and he decided that the last thing he wanted to think of were her eyes.
“In another life,” he said again, more to himself. He still held her hand against his cheek, “in another life, Annie, in another life.”
The hand against his cheek softened, getting heavier, and he held onto it. Tears escaped his closed eyelids, and he called her name, once, twice, but no response.
She got there faster than him.
“In another life,” he said again, and he knew he was only talking to himself.
He slumped next to her, intertwining their fingers, making sure their grip was as solid as steel.
He kept his eyes closed, as he slowly lost senses of his body,
In another life, Annie, in another life.
Was the last thing on his mind.
~~~
“He’s lost his mind,” he heard them say.
“He’s mad,”
“What does he think he’s doing?”
But he threw all of it behind his back as he took a step after a step on the black-sand ground. A gas mask with intangible tubes hugged his face, he barely breathed in it, but one huff of the intoxicated air might be the end of him. So, Mr. Leonhart took small inhales as he limped forward, fighting against the fire in his thighs.
“There’s no way his daughter is alive,” he heard one of the party with him say. He gritted his teeth, clenched his fists, and walked forward.
The horizon flattened in a mere line, a grey sky meeting with a black earth. Not a simple form of life made itself present, nor a human.
One of the men with him stroded to him, putting a hand on his shoulder, “Mr. Leonhart, she’s most likely dead-”
“Annie!” He called, shaking off the man’s hand, his feet almost tripping on itself as he leapt forward, shaking his head, calling her name again and again.
His own voice echoed back to his ears. Others with him fell into a deafening silence, listening to a father crying out for his only daughter.
Until he saw a figure on the ground.
He walked, his injured leg barely keeping up with him, inching closer and closer.
His feet froze when he recognized blonde hair.
It was her.
The black dust covered her pale skin, her head crowned with a brown smears, as well as her clothes.
He fell to his knees beside her, and even though it was written on her face that life departed her body, he still checked for a pulse.
All he got was silence.
He didn’t cry. Maybe he was too stoned to react, or he simply didn’t believe it.
He watched.
In silence.
The party with him stepped away, leaving him alone. No words or hugs would comfort him.
He noticed her hand holding another. Tracing it with his eyes, until they landed on another figure beside her, a man with an almost identical blond hair.
He looked back at their hands, intertwined.
She didn’t die alone.
He told himself, trying to ease the guilt of his chest.
She didn’t die alone.
He took off the gas mask, looked up to the sky, warm tears cascading down his cheeks.