Hi, everyone! Before the chapter starts I just wanted to give a big thanks for reading this far! And everyone who's reviewed the story… thank you, thank you, thank you! I apologize for the long hiatus, I've had a lot of personal issues I've been dealing with, but I wanted to get this chapter out to you guys, even though it's shorter than the others. Thank you again, and enjoy!

The rhythm of my footsteps crossing flatlands to your door have been silenced forever more

The distance is quite simply much too far for me to row

It seems farther than ever before

Oh no

I need you so much closer

So come on, come on

Transatlanticism, Death Cab For Cutie

"What?" Armin said eyes wide with shock. Mikasa? The quiet , protective, fierce women he'd grown up with? The person who'd been so asexual her entire life was now… with a teacher? If anybody else had told him that he'd laugh at the mere thought of it. "That… can't be."

Armin closed his eyes and took a long, deep breath and held it. Three seconds. Seven seconds. Ten seconds. And finally exhaled.

"We have to confront her." He told his best friend.

"I know." Eren said depressingly. His elbows on his knees and his head in his hands. "It's so… wrong."

"Not to mention illegal."

Eren lifted his head out of his hands and looked at Armin. "How are you supposed to bring up this sort of shit with someone?"

"You just... do, I suppose."

"Well, when?"

"Now. She can't continue doing this." Armin said standing up. Eren groaned and put his head back in his hands.

Armin unlocked the phone in his hand, ready to pull up Mikasa's number, but what he saw instead was the last message he received and remembered he had somewhere else to be. Somebody else to try and save today.

"Actually… Sorry Eren, but I already promised Annie we'd hang out and it's really important that I see her."

"Then I guess it's up to me." Eren stood up quickly and grabbed his board. Without looking back he said, almost bitterly, "I'll tell you how it goes." and left.

Armin stared at the door for another minute before grabbing his keys and leaving as well.

As he drove, a million things ran through his mind. He was so distracted he almost ran a stop sign. He thought he'd had a plan before, but now that he was on his way to see her he didn't know what he was going to say. Texting her before hand had been the easy part. They didn't even have to say much, no planning where to meet up, just 'the usual spot' and it was done. In the end he gave up trying to figure out what he was going to do and decided to wing it. Something that'd been happening a lot recently. He parked and got out of the car. As he walked he saw her sitting on a bench in the drizzly weather. She was in her white sweatshirt with the hood pulled up. Bits of blonde hair was sticking to her face from the rain.

His mind is still blank. He got to the bench; he's now standing in front of her and when she looks up, she smiles. That's when he feels it. The overwhelming urge to protect her, and finally, he knows what to say. He lowers to his knees and holds her hands in his. By now her smile has faded. She looks around like a cornered animal.

"Armin… what are you doing?" She says in a confused tone.

Here goes nothing.

He takes a deep breath and looks into her eyes. Blue meeting blue.

"I know we haven't known each other long… but, If someone was hurting you…" He starts carefully. "would you tell me?"

Armin watched as the color drained from her face. She understands now. But it takes only a second of realization for her confused look to transform into one of composer. All her walls were up now; she was in defensive mode.

"Yeah, of course." She tells him without batting an eye.

His eyes slipped from hers and down to their held hands. Slowly, he moves one hand over her right sleeve. With a gentle push he lifts it up, revealing the remnants of faded bruises. He guides his fingers across her wrist, tracing every mark. Armin glances up to see her reaction but her eyes are closed and she's breathing slowly. In this second of isolation he lets himself look over her features. Long eyelashes, red lips, rosy cheeks from the cold, and freckles that had almost completely disappeared, splattered across her nose. Her bangs were covering her right eye, but this time, looked almost purposely placed. Armin uses his other hand to lightly place his fingertips over her forehead and with a tiny sweep, starts to direct it behind her ear. But Annie opens her eyes and pushes his hand away, the hair falling back into place.

"Stop." Her voice cracks with defeat, and her eyes are tearing up.

"Is it from last night?"

Her eyebrows scrunch together with bewilderment. "You saw?"

He takes a deep breath and nods. "But, I can help yo-"

"No." She says with such resent he can't help but flinch. She jerks her hands away and stands up, leaving him to look up at her from his knees. "You don't understand."

And with that she walks away.

Armin's shocked at how fast things went downhill. But his compassion to help her turned to annoyance and he quickly stood up from where he was.

"Hey!" He called after her, but she doesn't slow down. He runs over to her and in no time clears the distance between them. "Annie." He says, walking beside her. "Annie, stop!" He grabs her shoulders and makes her face him. He's out of breath and she's struggling to get free but he continues.

"I don't understand. Fine. But you better make me, because what I saw… it scared the shit out of me." He feels the familiar prick in his eyes as tears well up. "I can't stand to see you get hurt."

Tears are streaming down her face now, but she's still pushing him away. With every push he gets closer and closer until finally he wraps his arms all the way around her. He buries his head into her neck and squeezes her tightly. He feels her body wrack and shake against his as she tries to fight her tears, until she finally takes a deep breath and releases one long, painful cry. Armin rubs her back as that sob is followed by another one. And another. And another. He brings them to a sitting position and holds her protectively. Rocking back and forth, rubbing her back, she lets all barriers down.

The rain stops.

It was an hour before they got up from their spot on the damp ground. In that time, it took Annie only five minutes to stop crying. But neither of them moved as she told Armin her story. How her father was diagnosed with a rare sickness when she was younger, slowly turning his mindset into that of a child and the lifespan of only fifty, how her mother had killed herself, dumping all responsibilities on to her daughter and leaving her father completely terrified that Annie would abandon him too. She tells him that it's not his fault for the way he acts.

"Why don't you put him in a home? Somewhere that people could take care of him?"

Her eyes travel downward. "We don't have the money."

"Won't health insurance cover any costs because of his disease?"

"We don't have health insurance. It was becoming too costly and we couldn't afford to pay every month."

Armin rubs the bridge on his nose. "Shit…"

"Plus… then it would be like I really... was abandoning him. It would break his heart."

"Well…" Armin gently moves her bangs out of her face and behind her ear. Her cheeks turned pink and suddenly her fingers were more interesting. "there's gotta be something we can do." He continues as he looks over the mark above her cheekbone. Caressing the damaged skin with his thumb.

It's not bad, but definitely bruised.

Then Armin realized what he was doing and, after turning the color of a cherry, removes his hand. They were both silent. After a minute Annie looks up.

"What happened your parents?"

The familiar weight on his chest returned; the one that made it oh so hard to breath. Now it was Armin's turn to mess with his fingers.

"They, uh, died. Two years ago." Armin said as he concentrated on getting some dirt out of his nail.

Annie didn't say anything. She just looked at him, waiting for him to continue.

"They were both successful scientists and had been working on a side project together. They worked their asses off for months without getting any kind of improvement… until one day, my parents came home happier than I'd seen them since they began their project. I guess they had that big breakthrough they'd been waiting for all those months. My mom and dad made dinner together like they used to and we spent the night just… being a family. The next day I went to school, everything was great. Until I got home, and my grandfather was sitting by the phone… just sitting. I walked through the door and he didn't even look at me. God, I will never forget the look on his face. His eyes lost that glint that he always had… like he had something up his sleeve... He was just the shell of my grandfather. And it scared me, so I shook him and tried to get him to talk to me. He wouldn't do anything but sit there looking into space. It wasn't until I said I was going to call mom and dad that he snapped out of it. He put his hands on my cheeks and said… sohn, deine Eltern sind gegangen... Son, your parents are gone."

Armin took a shaky breath as he picked at his nails.

"Turns out that my parents had burned in a fire at the facility they worked at. Nobody knows how the fire started. The government blamed a freak accident, but a few scientists that my parents had worked with called bullshit and tried to find out what happened. But even they gave up eventually and moved away. Who knows…"

Neither one said anything. Armin continued looking at his fingers, trying to distract himself from crying.

"From that point on I was an orphan. That was the strangest part. Being able to say that I, me, Armin... was an orphan. These past two years I was so alone… But I'm just happy that Eren and Mikasa stayed with me and well now yo-" Armin was working on one specific nail when Annie's fingers intertwined with his.

"You have me too." Armin looked up at Annie, who gave him a small smile. It was at that time that Armin realized how close they were. He couldn't help but look at her lips then quickly looked up at her eyes. His heart sped up when he realized she was doing the same thing. They were slowly leaning in. Closer. Closer. So close now.

*Ring-ring* *Ring-ring*

Armin and Annie jumped back from the startling sound of Armin's phone. Armin frantically searched for his phone in his jean pockets. When he got it out he clumsily switched it right side up to answer it.

"Hello?" He said, cheeks flushed.

"Hey, Armin."

"Heeey…" Armin didn't recognize the voice. He realized he didn't look to see who was calling in his frenzied state. He removed his phone from his ear and saw that it was Marco Bott. "Marco?"

"You busy?"

Armin looked at the other blonde sitting next to him. She was sitting cross legged now, sullenly picking at the grass. He smiled to himself. "Yeah, sorry… why what's up?"

"Just looking for someone to hang out with."

"Is Jean busy too?"

"Yeah… he's, uh... busy, yeah." Marco said. If Armin hadn't been distracted by Annie throwing grass at him he would of caught his melancholy tone. "Are you going to the camping trip, too?" Marco said trying to change the subject.

Armin chuckled sarcastically. "Yeah, invited by none other than Historia herself. Only for my car. But yeah, seems like I will be."

He studies Annie more in depth, she gives him a quizzical look. "I'll see you there?" He says, not removing his gaze from hers.

"Yeah, sure will." Marco sighs. "See you soon."

"Bye, Marco!"

Armin hangs up the phone and slips it into his sweatshirt.

"So will you go?"

"Uh, sure? Can I know what I'm going to?"

He smiles.

"It's a camping trip with some friends. It would make my life so much better if you went along."

"Oh… I- I don't know…" Annie fidgets with the strings on her sweatshirt. "My dad probably wouldn't let me."

"Is there any way?"

Annie thought for a minute. "How many days?"

"Just one night."

"I… can try."

Armin smiled in return. "Great! Uh… one other thing."

"Hm?"

"My parents memorial is tomorrow. Would you want to go?"

She inhaled and exhaled and gave him a small smile.

"Of course."

I hope it won't be another half a year(!?) until the next update! I know Annie was a bit OOC in this one, different from her usual off-putting self, but it will all add up in the future if I ever stop procrastinating and write. Thank you again! Have a wonderful day!