Chapter Text
"Eren! Mikasa!" A small voice yelled, running over to them with a delighted smile planted on his face. They stopped walking when they heard Armin calling their names frantically. Eren nearly being trampled by the blonde, whom never quite got his footing when reaching them."S-sorry!" He exclaimed, the smile never leaving.
"What is it, Armin?" Eren asked with equal enthusiasm, making Armin more hyped up.
"Look, look!" Armin yelled with glee. "It's a book explaining the world beyond the wall, you guys!"
Armin and his wandering brain. Life outside the walls wasn't rainbows and unicorns, it was rainstorms and anything but unicorns, those are extinct. Now all that remains is evil, evil creatures like wendigo's, goblins (those little bastards) and, most fearsome among the people of Trost, werewolves. The goblins, however, annoy Eren personally.
"Armin," Mikasa said, her voice stern, making Armin peer up at her with less happy eyes. "keep it down about that, you're not even supposed to be harboring those kind of books." Mikasa told him.
Mikasa and Armin using big words like those made Eren feel exceptionally dimwitted, but Eren agreed nonetheless. "Yeah, Armin, you could go to jail."
Armin perked up in fear. "Jail?"
"Jail." Eren confirmed, nodding once.
"But I wanna show you guys!" Armin yelled, disappointed. Eren looked over at Mikasa, whom looked as bored as ever. Eren looked back at Armin and shrugged. No one had to know.
"Lets go somewhere with less people." Eren whispered, hoping Armin would follow along as well, Eren also felt like eyes were on him. On all three of them, on the three kids gaping over the book. Eren looked around, but no pairs of eyes were watching them.
Armin's smile returned. "Okay..." He whispered, trying to be sly like Eren. Eren and Armin were both holding the book by now and they looked up at each other, their grins wide, and nodded once before taking off to their roof.
As they ran a few feet, Eren noticed how empty he was on one side, Mikasa was not running with them.
Mikasa was always with Eren.
Eren stopped abruptly, grabbing Armin's hand to make him stop. Armin yelped as he flew back onto his back, Eren chuckled at him. Eren looked behind him at Mikasa as Armin dusted off his clothes.
"Eren!" Armin whined. "I just washed these!"
"Sorry, Armin!" Eren said, chuckling still. "But Mikasa wasn't following-Mikasa!" Eren asked, running to her, Armin in tow. "Aren't you coming with?"
Mikasa shook her head, her black hair swinging slightly, this made the two boys frown.
"But-" Eren began, but was cut off.
"Eren," Mikasa said. "Make sure you're home before dark."
Eren nodded, about to complain, but Mikasa ran back to the direction of their home.
Eren felt a tug on his sleeve and he looked down at Armin, his mouth stretching into a smile, making Armin's do the same.
They fell into step, walking towards their roof, again, before they started sprinting. They reached the abandoned house that every other person was too afraid to be a resident in, because they thought it was haunted by the family that recently lived there, dying from an illness. Not uncommon.
Eren and Armin just laughed as they climbed on the roof the first day and every day since, their roof. Any 'ghost' that said otherwise could just move on with their non-existent life.
"See?" Armin said as they went through the book. Eren saw creatures, or animals, as Armin corrected him, that didn't have any magical powers, except maybe breathing underwater. But not every creature beyond the wall could breathe underwater, that was only fish, and animals like fish. "But this!" Armin said, slamming his small palms on the book under him. "This is what I wanted to show you!"
Eren looked down at it after Armin withdrawn his hands from the two pages. It was a drawing, or a painting, of blue. Blue was all Eren noticed at first, but then the blue met a light brown color, Eren assumed it was water meeting ground, because the color was the same color as parts of the ground in Trost.
Eren stared at it longer, trying to decipher what the hell it was. Who was he kidding? "What is it?"
"It's the ocean, Eren!" Armin said, looking about ready to hug the book. Before this page, Eren learned that that is where the fish lived, and sirens.
"The ocean?"
"Big water!" Armin yipped. "Awfully big water, that's strange to us! It's salty, like when you lick your skin, so you can't drink it... Or you'll die!" Armin said with a dramatic flare. "It's so beautiful, Eren, look!"
Eren was looking, and it was beautiful. But that was on the outside, Eren learned the things it held, some things it held. Man-eating beasts that was called a shark, but Eren called it a swimming sharptooth. "How big is it?" Eren asked.
"Bigger than the village we live in itself, Eren, way bigger." Armin exclaimed, his arms spreading out, as if to show Eren.
Eren looked up into Armins blue eyes as Armin looked up into Eren's blue/green ones, both reflecting wonder.
"I want to see it someday, Eren," Armin whispered, looking back down at the page, as if seeing it for the first time.
"I do, too, Armin." Eren agreed, looking back down as well.
"Can we, then?" Armin asked, getting on all fours and leaning over the book towards Eren.
"Armin," Eren said, exasperated. "We're thirteen, we're too young!" Eren said, raising his voice to get the point across. Armin was saying this? Armin was the smart one, Armin wasn't the one that made the rash decisions, he was the strategist... He was the one that stopped Eren from making the impulsive decisions, not the other way around.
So, where in the hell was Armin's mind?
"I know..." Armin said with his head down. "Grandpa..." Eren had an idea of where this was going. "Grandpa told me his circle of life is coming to an end."
Eren sat up and pulled Armin into a hug, Armin hugged him back and cried into his neck. Eren could feel Armin's (what should be hot tears, but chilled already by the time they touched Eren's neck) fall down onto his shirt, or down his back.
"I-I don't know what to do." Armin sobbed.
Eren hugged him tighter. "Armin, you should be with him," Eren said. "how much longer do you think he has?"
He felt Armin's shoulders rise in a shrug, then the sobs hit him harder.
Maybe that was the wrong thing to ask.
"I'm sorry-"
"No," Armin said, breaking their hug and wiping his eyes with a small fist. "it's okay, you're right, though."
First time in... ever that he was right?
"I should be with him." Armin confirmed.
Eren nodded and stood up, he bent down and closed Armin's book, then handed it to him. "I'll walk you home." Eren said, helping Armin up to his feet.
Armin's eyes went a little wide. "Eren, it's almost dark... What if-"
Eren cut him off before he could finish. "Armin," Eren scoffed, because he was a badass. "Nothing's gonna happen, come on, I don't want you running into those meatheads, anyway." Eren would always remember when they first became friends. Armin, being shoved up against the wall by three teenagers whose balls still haven't dropped. Eren put up a fight as best he could, but he didn't come out on top, not until Mikasa arrived.
Armin tentatively nodded and he and Eren set off to Armin's small shack. Eren felt a slight trickle start from his feet, then shoot up his legs as he jumped off the roof. It wasn't a tickling feeling, more like ouch.
They made their way to Armin's. Eren looked up when the surroundings became familiar, he knew Armin's home was just ahead.
Armin's home was smaller than Eren's, for the reason of two people living there-
Scratch that.
One person living there, as of now.
Armin immediately cried out when he saw his grandfathers body. It was by the window, clearly it fell out of the chair he was sitting in. Eren assumed Armin's grandfather knew when his time came and looked out at the trees and the wall as his life left him.
Armin didn't seem to accept that, however.
Armin ran in, faster than Eren could comprehend, and got to his knees when he reached his grandfather's body, shaking him like he was trying to wake him up.
Eren just stood there, thinking how sad it looked. Seeing how passionate Armin was, and all to be replaced with the feeling of loss. The feeling of being lost.
Armin finally stopped shaking his deceased guardian and looked into his closed eyes with wide, scared, blue ones.
Scared and lost, a feeling no one wants to feel. A feeling Eren has not experienced, at least not together, those two emotions never tangling together to make him feel what Armin was feeling.
Eren could help. He would help.
"Armin," Eren said, making Armin look up. Eren had to hide his gasp of discouragement when Armin looked up at him with those eyes. Eren swallowed back in his courage to help his friend. "you're staying at my house now, okay?" Eren said, walking to Armin, holding out his hand. "We'll tell my mom what happened, she, Mikasa and I will take care of you."
Armin clutched his grandfathers hand. "W-What about him?" Armin asked, looking back at his grandfather.
Well, we can't take him with us.
"What are we going to do-to do with him?" Armin gasped, wiping his eyes.
Oh.
"You'll just sleep, sleep when we get home and we'll come back tomorrow to bury him."
Armin looked back up at Eren, his lower lip wobbling. "I didn't get to say goodbye... N-Not really." Armin said, between his hiccuping cries. "I said goodbye when I left, but that-that doesn't count."
Eren, despite his badass qualities, was starting to feel frightened because the circle of light almost reached the ground and the stars were already appearing. But he needed to be more sympathetic to his best friend and his best friend's situation, whatever higher being up there knows Armin would be if Eren was in this situation. So, he knelt down, putting both knees onto the ground and brought Armin into the second hug that evening. It was a rather awkward hug at that, because, Armin's shoulder was in Eren's chest and to make it more awkward and painful, Armin's elbow and forearm were against his crotch, making Eren shimmy to one side, so Armin was tilting on his inner thigh.
"Say goodbye now, Armin," Eren said, standing up. "I'll be outside of the house, just right out there if you need me, okay? Take as long as you need." Armin looked up hesitantly as if he didn't want to spoil the position he was in (which consisted of Armin's head nuzzled into Eren's neck), but he nodded.
Eren walked away as quietly as he could and shut the door behind him when he reached outside. The fire was burning inside Armin's home, and Eren had become so used to the warmth, that he shivered when he stepped foot outside.
Eren didn't want to over-hear anything Armin said to his grandfather, or else Eren felt as if he'd cry himself.
He needed to be strong, for Armin.
It was dark now, the little shining fires up in the sky replacing the larger one that his mother told him gave us life. Armin's grandfather told Armin the same.
But how are we living when it disappears into the ground?
Armin had been inside for a while, and Eren didn't know if he should check on him, or not. He felt like he shouldn't, that he should just stay. What if he went in and Armin was still saying his goodbye's and felt rushed, so he ended it on the spot, Armin was modest in that way.
But what if he was crying uncontrollably and needed someone to coax him through it?
Eren decided he could convince Armin to stay if he felt he was being rushed, just as he turned to walk in...
Armin walked out, putting his blonde hair behind his ears, not looking at Eren.
"Armin?" Eren asked, his voice squeaking like those large, harmless-looking, fish did. What was it called? Dolphin? The point was, he wanted this whole 'becoming a man' shit to end.
"Y-Yeah?" Armin asked, his voice breaking, but not because he was becoming a man, because he began crying again.
Eren looked at him and grabbed his hand. "Want a piggyback ride?"
Armin looked up at him, and Eren's world got a little lighter, even though it was pitch black outside, the only light source being the moon, Armin smiled.
"S-Sure." Armin said and Eren prepared himself for the weight as Armin jumped up onto him.
Eren carried him all the way home, even running at points when they heard a noise in the distance.
"Eren!" Armin yelled, clutching to him. To his neck. "I'm scared!" Armin yelped as they heard another crash and Eren ran faster.
"Maybe if you stopped choking me while I run, this would go faster!" Eren said, his voice squeaking, again.
"Maybe if you'd put me down so I could just run on my own-"
"You're in no condition to run, I know you," Eren said. "You'd trip over your own feet."
"I think you're talking about your-ah!" Armin screeched when they heard another noise.
Eren stopped.
Eren's whole world stopped.
There, standing before them, was a wolf. An over grown, larger than the biggest horse, wolf. It was black, and it was panting. Eren could see the drool sliding off its tongue and hitting the ground, not all at once. It's teeth were yellow at the root, then white for the rest of the tooth. That's what terrified Eren the most.
Those teeth could split him and Armin in half with one bite.
Armin.
"A-Armin..." Eren warned. "D-don't move, o-okay?"
Armin, fucking of all things, fidgeted on Eren's back.
This didn't make the dog in front of them very happy. Both Eren and Armin screamed when the wolf sent a growl at them. They both cried out as the wolf jumped to them, as if ready to attack. Eren couldn't look at the beasts body any longer, not without losing his mind.
But, something, maybe the badass inside him, looked up, not just at the wolf, but in it's black as night eyes.
A-and the wolf, the wolf, it just skittered away like some cat.
Eren looked behind him, wondering if maybe there was something scarier behind them, because that seemed more probable than the wolf scurrying away because of Eren.
Nothing, not a thing behind him.
Armin jumped off of Eren and both stared at each other in amazement.
"What happened?" Armin asked.
"I-I'm not sure," Eren said, stopping when he heard distant screams, man and woman. "Can you trust your own legs?"
"Can you?" Armin shot back, ah, sometimes Eren forgets Armin can be snarky.
Eren grabbed Armin's hand and they ran back home.