warnings for: major character death, fairly graphic violence, trauma, non-linear narrative, alcohol abuse, sex, asphyxiation, and a fair dash of canon divergence. pairings are: armin/eren, levi/eren, and some fairly in-the-background but still pretty major levi/irvin. title and end line from: country feedback by r.e.m.

feedback/wordless screams always welcome at yeagerparty over at tumblr!

these clothes don't fit us right

"The first time I saw you I was twelve," Eren says, his tongue loose and bitter with vine.

Levi stirs against his side – he feels the sigh ripple through his chest. "Oh, fuck, please don't tell me that," he says.

Eren is half in the present and half in the past, yesterday's child, back when his mother died again and again in his dreams every night instead of only some because now he's too tired, his body too weary from criss-crossed bruises that no amount of fading will stop him from feeling. He's small and scared and starving, the first time he lays eyes on Mankind's Greatest Hope, and all he can think is-

"You didn't look like a hero," Eren murmurs, and he's aware of the first rays of dawn seeping through the window.

"'Hero'," echoes Levi, and then he rolls over, bracing his hands on either side of Eren's head as he perches above him. He's dark under the eyes, so dark, and Eren knows it's because he's seen too much, that to be able to kill you have to be able to witness death.

It's wrong - Eren knows it. They both do. He bites harder, fucks harder, speaks harder than Armin – Eren doesn't love him, not like he used to, when he had nothing but Mikasa and Armin and dreams of being him to sustain him. He thinks that that's okay, though, because he thinks that maybe Levi's forgotten how to love. Maybe he never learned how.

"I fucking hate that word," Levi says, and he kisses him, hard.

Eren doesn't hate the word – he's just stopped believing in it.

Armin's better at reading than he is. Eren likes to listen, the sound of his voice so sure as the words flow from page to air, to Eren's mind, where the pictures and colours happen. When Armin stays over he asks him to read, always, like it's a rule. Sometimes he's worried Mikasa will be angry with them, her bed just across the room from Eren's, but she listens, too, with her knees drawn up to her chest as she sits with them on Eren's bed, or lying on her back in her own, eyes trained on the dark wood of the ceiling above them as shadows dance and play skipping games in the candlelight. Eren knows she's imagining, too.

"All the soldiers looked exactly alike except one," Armin reads, his voice high and sweet like cresting summer, with a strength Eren only hears when he's reading, "He looked a little different as he had been cast last of all. The tin was short, so he had only one leg. But there he stood, as steady on one leg as any of the other soldiers on their two-"

"Why does it have a double-yew in it?" Eren interrupts, pointing at the offending word with a short finger. He's sitting shoulder-to-shoulder with Armin, following along as Armin reads from the open book on his lap. It smells like dust and curling damp – a good smell.

Armin blinks his wide blue eyes – Eren feels a little bad for jerking him out of his reverie. "Sometimes," he says, "Things don't make sense, I guess."

Eren nods like he understands. Armin smiles at him and keeps reading. Eren listens, seeing the tin soldier in his mind, stiff and lonely; the ballerina, fair and long-legged (she looks like his mother in his mind, he thinks, sleep starting to crowd the corner of his eyes, like his mother but her hair is golden). He feels a chill as Armin's voice shapes the goblin in his mind's eye, dark and lurking, and if he really thinks he can picture it, there in the shadowy ether beneath his bed, golden eyes shining as it waits for them to let their guard down.

His eyelids grow heavy, and he blinks against the weight, resting his head on Armin's shoulder. Armin only pauses for a little bit this time, before continuing the story. He rests his head against Eren's, and Eren smiles, feeling warm even without a blanket, like he's curled up, chin-to-knees, in front of the fireplace, even if the blanket beneath them is scratchy, irritating his skin like it always does.

"Then the door blew open. A puff of wind struck the dancer. She flew like a sylph, straight into the fire-"

"What's a sylph?"

"EREN!" Mikasa explodes from across the room, bolting upright. Eren flinches despite the distance.

The next thing he knows a pillow is hitting him square in the face, but it's worth it for the surprised laugh, high and clear as a bell, it gets from Armin.

"Drunk out of his fucking mind," says a grim voice.

Eren barely pays it any heed – Eren can barely move, head fuzzy and limbs like they're trapped in molasses.

"Come on," says the voice, "We have to move him."

"Nnn," he protests, as he's shifted out of place against his will.

"Eren, please," says another voice, and it is a plea, desperate and breathy – a woman. His mother, he thinks.

When he finally opens his eyes they're sticky and gummed together with sleep and salt – he can see Mikasa above him, bleary like he's looking at her through fog. He thinks there might be tears in her eyes.

He thinks Mikasa's been crying a lot, lately, though he can't think why.

He doesn't know why Levi indulges him the first time, doesn't even remember what they were talking, arguing, yelling about. Eren was yelling – Levi never does, there's a different kind of harshness to his voice and Eren hates it, hates him, hates the way that calling him 'Sir' tastes like bile and dust and the threads of his childhood unravelling. Eren snaps, Levi knows it, Eren knows it, everyone knows it, it's just what he does, seething and raging under the surface like the firewater in those mountains from Armin's books until he boils over. Sometimes he explodes. Sometimes he hurts people.

He throws a punch. Levi is quick like a whip and catches it. The room goes silent around him, a theatre of tension.

"Think," he says, steady, like it's a fucking command, "I know it's hard, but try."

"Fuck you," Eren spits back, and he feels Levi sigh through his nose in the split second before Eren goes in for his ribs.

He ends up flat on his ass on the floor with a split lip and broken nose before Mikasa can even vault over the table and get to him. He can feel every gaze in the room on him, cruel and unflinching, as he pulls himself to his knees – a loud jeer, the tremor of nervous laughter. Mikasa's arms encircle his chest from behind. Eren does the only thing he can do.

It's a little victory, the way his eyebrows rise, just slightly, when the blood and saliva hits Levi in the face. He stares down at Eren (not by much, even when he's been knocked down, he thinks with a surge of satisfaction, because he has that over Levi, he'll always have that over Levi), before turning and stalking from the room, leaving his dinner uneaten.

"Scared of a little blood, huh?" Eren calls after him, knowing that it's just his bruised ego talking, knowing that Levi's won already.

Jean calls him a dumbass with this galling sense of pity. Eren asks him, spitting a little with anger, if he'd like to go, as well. Mikasa elbows his ribs so hard Eren knows there'll be a harsh purple bruise –later she glowers at him in that overly maternal manner that Eren absolutely hates because more often than not he knows he's in the wrong. She sits cross-legged, stoic, shoulders squared, a few feet away from he and Armin as the smaller boy dabs at his lip with a damp red cloth.

The night is quiet around them, crickets humming their forever-song. The murmur of conversation trickles through the mess hall door.

Eren squirms. It's too quiet, and Armin's touch is too soft.

"This isn't necessary," he grumbles, Armin patiently taking him by the chin and angling his head up. He can feel his nose starting to swell – his head pounds. He lets Armin have his way, though - Armin likes doing this, Armin's good at doing this, at making the rage and the hurt melt away. Armin helps him forget.

"I wouldn't talk about doing unnecessary things, if I were you," Armin replies, but there's no bite in it, just worry, he worries, Mikasa worries, they all fucking worry too much.

"It'll regenerate soon," he insists.

"Some of it will," Armin agrees, raising a hand to touch Eren's shattered nose. He flinches away – the ache sears him, deep-set. Armin's eyes widen, just a little – Eren can read the apology in them, and it hurts him because it's so immediate, so earnest. He takes Armin's hand in his own instead, watching the way the other boy's shoulders rise with a sharp breath, watching the brief flicker of his eyes, the way they trail down to Eren's bleeding lips for just a moment. "What about your pride?" he says after a moment, looking amused at his tease even as Eren stiffens.

"He should probably stay away from Corporal if that's a concern," Mikasa's voice comes smoothly from over Eren's shoulder, "Not that I'm sure it is."

"He started it," Eren says, and he loves the guilty little smile of amusement that flickers to life on Armin's face.

"He also finished it," says Mikasa, her expression unchanged.

"He won't next time," Eren says.

Her boots clunk against the wood of the deck as she gets to her feet. "Try not to make a next time," she says, "I would hate to have to step in."

She goes inside, red scarf licking out behind her as she does. Armin sighs.

"I made her promise not to hurt him," he says, "I had to hold her back."

"Should've let her," Eren says. Levi doesn't fear Mikasa enough, not like he should, not when there's nothing between them but years and legends, whispered in reverence on the streets. None of them count, not where it matters, beyond the wall, between two people.

"Don't," Armin says, prodding his chest with a finger on his free hand. Eren pulls him in and kisses him, loving the soft noise that he pulls from Armin's throat.

He pulls back a moment, lets his forehead rest against Eren's. "You taste like blood," he says, and Eren can hear his wrinkled nose in his voice.

"Sorry," Eren says, and he means it – not just for the blood. Armin just gives a slight shake of his head, his sigh familiar, admonishing, and relieved – that Eren's alright, that he's alive.

Mikasa shields, Armin helps him forget when she can't – this is all that Eren needs.

Eren is twelve, and Lance Corporal Levi is smaller than he has any right to be. He'll be in Armin's books someday, Eren thinks, as the Survey Corps march past them, boots and horseshoes grinding against the dirt, he'll be in the books when humanity wins the war – shouldn't he be taller? Broader? Less sour?

He places a hand on Mikasa's shoulder, hoisting himself up for a second so he can catch a better glimpse over the crowd. Mikasa is serene, setting her shoulders. Eren half-considers climbing up on them, but Mikasa is still half a head shorter than him, and Eren has his pride, small and skinny and displaced as he is.

He watches him pass on his horse, Armin, who's a whole head shorter than the both of them, straining up on the tips of his toes beside him. A small grunt of frustration slips past his lips, mostly swallowed by the murmur of the crowd around them, but Eren hears it.

Later Eren thinks that Armin didn't miss much – just a scowling man in a green hood. He only lets the thought linger for a moment before banishing it – Levi's a hero, his hero, and pictures in books don't have to look like real life, anyway.

When Armin comes to him after the trial, thin and pale in his white linen shirt and jeans, after midnight when the stars Eren hasn't seen in days scatter the sky, Eren couldn't be happier, like he's got the sun itself trapped in his chest.

He's blinking himself awake still, because there isn't much else to do down here apart from sleep, with hulking headstones of guards that are just as silent as the grave. Armin is a pale spectre in the near darkness, crossing to the bed Eren's shackled into by the light of a single torch, flickering and dancing, warping the tall shadow Armin casts. He's dark under the eyes, almost bruised – Eren knows sleep hasn't come easy to him, tonight.

"You're… better?" He bends forward so that his head is level with Eren's, eyes all at once wide and fascinated.

Eren shrugs, feeling a flicker of heat in his face as their noses almost brush. He's used to being close to Armin, and Mikasa, for that matter, barriers of personal space eroded by time, but this distance is pushing it, and Eren's found himself missing them both with a desperation that sears him. There's an urge to move forward and meet him – there's an urge to pull away. In the end he just says, "Who knew being able to turn into a Titan would be good for something?"

"Several things, I'd say," Armin says, straightening up.

"I'm surprised they let you in," Eren says, his voice a soft murmur so all the guards will be able to hear is his voice and not the shapes it's making.

"Only because they think I'm a joke," Armin responds, his tones just as hushed as Eren's. He sits with a primness on the edge of the bed – the stiff mattress creaks as it dips, enormous in the silence.

He looks tired, thin, stretched, even more so than when he had come with Mikasa earlier, when his wounds had still been oozing from Levi's beating. He'd been almost completely silent then, small hand in Eren's as Mikasa had held him, fierce and wolven in the anger and primal relief he could feel in her quickened pulse, the slight tremble of her shoulders. Eren had held her back, head tucked against her shoulder, feeling like a child.

When she'd pulled away, blood had seeped, red and stark, into her shirt. No one had said anything – no one had had to. They knew. She'd bitten her lip, but Eren could see her anger, feel it, the too-harsh pull of her teeth, the blaze in her eyes, the way her fingertips dug in so hard they might've left bruises if she hadn't caught herself.

"You aren't," Eren says, feeling the first prickle of protectiveness in his heart, "You aren't a joke. You saved my life. Mikasa's, too."

"How many times have you saved mine?" Armin says, lowering his gaze to the sheets below him.

"It's not a competition," Eren says, his voice taking on a soft growl even in its whisper-secrecy.

He watches as Armin's teeth worry his lower lip. The skin is dry and cracked, like he's been doing that a lot of late. "I felt like a joke," he says, "Today. They had that rifle pointed at you and all I could do was sit there and watch, like- like back on the roof, Eren, when you- when I- I thought-" He breaks off, taking an abrupt, aching swallow.

Eren doesn't want this, doesn't want to watch Armin hurt and think about things that could've been, so he reaches out with a soft clink, closes his hand around Armin's slim wrist.

"Armin," he says, "Don't. I'm here. I'm alive." He almost says that he isn't going anywhere, but Eren is wary, a wariness that's seeped into the marrow of his bones after years of near misses and scrabbling desperately for scraps of survival, of making promises he can't keep.

And Armin, who's stronger than he knows, just nods and swallows, his throat bobbing as he scrapes a shaky inhale. Eren knows how it feels – he remembers agony, thrumming deep in his veins, the way its toll almost broke him, the most overwhelmed he'd ever been, breathing and tasting and smelling pain – until a voice, high and ragged, had screamed, and he'd blinked blood-bleary eyes on the knife's edge of closing forever when he'd realised it was Armin. He'd felt his sanity split at the seams, and he'd become feral with fear, the agony replaced by white noise, by the reach – the last thing he remembers, Armin screaming but safe, fingertips straining for him, Eren reaching back-

Eren knows fear. Eren knows what it is to reach for someone to find them gone.

"I'm here," he says again, because he is, and for now, that's enough.

"I'm scared you won't be," Armin says - Eren has to strain to hear him, even in the silence.

"I'm scared of losing you, too." Armin's head whips up, his eyes wide and round, almost panicked. They hadn't been the words Eren had meant to say, but he realises with a dimness that he wouldn't take them back even if he could. He tries for a smile but he's certain it ends in a grimace, shrugging his shoulders – smiling doesn't come easy to him anymore.

Armin's gaze shifts down to Eren's hand around his wrist, just for a second. Then he shifts, moving forward to circle his arms around Eren's shoulders. Eren pulls him close, flickering a glance at the bars of his cell. The guards aren't looking even if they're watching, so he buries his face against Armin's neck, breathing in the smell of soap and anxious sleepless sweat.

Silence reigns. Eren can feel the nervous tremble in Armin's arms, the harried pulse in his throat. When Armin pulls away he's so close Eren could count his eyelashes if he really wanted, count the veins of darker blue in his irises, even in the dim light.

"I…" he says, his voice a brief whisper, but then there's the tiniest shake of his head.

"What?" Eren presses.

Armin tilts his head and closes his eyes, and Eren freezes when their lips touch, feather soft and fleeting, like it could've been an accident. He can feel blood surging through his veins, blood and other things, dust and the sands of time, maybe – his heart pounds.

"That," Armin says, resting his forehead against Eren's, "I suppose."

"Oh," Eren says, and he has to choke it out because he can barely breathe, "That."

"Sorry," Armin says, "I'm-"

Even if Eren's eyes are wide open, Armin's are squeezed shut, nose wrinkled like he's afraid of retribution. They fly open when Eren reaches a shaky hand to tilt his chin up with a soft clink of his chain.

"Eren-" he says around a sharp breath.

"Stop thinking," Eren tells him, even if his hands are shaking with nerves, because if Armin thinks then Eren will think and he'll lose this, and one more thing he needs will slip through his fingers like water. Needing this (Armin, he thinks, he needs Armin, and Armin has a name) isn't easy like needing to kill Titans is, and the urge to let the moment slip by him almost swallows him whole – he could let go of Armin's chin, he could scramble for an apology, he could call it a mistake, he could-

He doesn't. He kisses Armin instead, and it's a clumsy thing, all clicking teeth and saliva, clutching fingers and Armin whimpering (just once, and Eren swallows it) and Eren's never needed anything so bad. Pulling away burns, but the moment isn't their own – not entirely. He holds onto Armin, fingers stroking at the nape of his neck as he makes sure they weren't caught.

"How long?" Armin asks, his voice a murmur full of something like wonder.

"I don't know," Eren almost says, but he's already well past taking the easy way out, so he swallows the words down and instead says, "Forever."

Armin is silent for a moment – Eren closes his eyes against the easy back-and-forth of fingertips against his back.

"Yeah," he says, finally, "Me, too."

Eren's thinking about kissing him again (because he can do that, now, and the thought fills him with this shaky wonder that makes his breath catch in his chest and the tips of his ears redden), but he can hear voices, rough and brusque, echoing off the stone walls of the hallway, can feel Armin freeze in his arms. Footsteps, voices – changeover. Eren shrinks back just as Armin does, readjusting himself so that it looks like he's been sitting with his legs dangling over the side of the bed all along. They know how to be quick – they have to.

A guard peers through the bars an instant later, heralded by the soft metallic clink of keys. Eren recognises him as one of the Stationary Guard, and he bites down on a groan – they like him less than the Survey Corp. The feeling is mutual.

"Alright, Yeager," he says, "Wrap it up."

But Armin's eyes are shining in spite of the harsh words, cheeks stained red – Eren can see it, even in the dim lights, even as he gets up from the bed and bids him good night with a hesitant wave that Eren raises his hand to return. He barely remembers what happiness feels like when it isn't stained by vengeance or triumph (balancing at last during his gear training, standing in line with Mikasa when he made the top ten) but he thinks this is probably it. When his guard asks him what he's smiling about, he just shakes his head and doesn't stop.

It lasts until the door of his cell slams shut, 'til there's the rusted noise of the key turning in the lock. Eren is alone, without the feel of Armin pressed against him.

He buries his face in his hands.

The world is dark, but Armin's mouth is full of stars, and Eren is scared to death of what he might have just promised.

The second time, Hanji and Mikasa separate them when Levi's got Eren's hair clutched in his fist (he can feel the tear of hair ripped out at the root), knee digging into the soft spot between his shoulder blades, and Eren is certain, even in his drunkenness, that he's about to lose several teeth when his face meets the ground, hard.

Before that, though, before Mikasa wrestles Levi off him (he thinks he can hear her yelling, distantly), before Hanji makes him sit up and spit so he doesn't choke on the thick blood sliding down his throat, he manages to get his hands around Levi's neck.

Levi stops.

It's almost insignificant, barely more than a second, but Eren is close enough to see it, close enough to falter when Levi's eyes widen just a little and his limbs lock up.

"What-" Eren means to ask, but then a fist smashes into the side of his face, forcing the taste of blood into his mouth, and he's feral again, biting and scratching and going for the throat. He might've forgotten about it, in the aftermath, as Hanji cleans the split at his hairline with antiseptic that burns and a grim expression on her face, but that split second is seared into his mind, Levi's wide-eyes, the hitch of his breath – vulnerability. It's possible. Eren hadn't known. He hadn't known, and this changes everything.

"You ever think about drinking less?" Hanji asks him, snapping out of it, and he can read two things in her expression – that she's worried for him, and that his breath smells of sour whisky.

They deserved better.

One of his hands is in Armin's and the other is in Mikasa's – he can feel tears streaming down his face and trickling down his neck, fire is raging, burning, consuming before them, and they deserved better. Mikasa squeezes his hand when he says as much, and all it does is make him feel guilt, dark and parasitic, for not standing at attention for them. He can't – he's close to breaking, supports in a storm, and if he lets go he'll shatter, and he'll be dust and bone, formless in the wind.

"You couldn't have done anything," she says. He doesn't say anything – his voice is too choked with the weight of grief and the sting of tears, and he doesn't want to give Mikasa a chance to make sense, to take him by the hand and absolve him of guilt, of feeling responsible for the burning bodies before them. She's as good at playing protector as Armin is at soothing him, and sometimes he hates it – sometimes he needs to blame himself. Sometimes he needs to hurt.

It's the least he can do.

"Farewell, farewell, O warrior brave," Armin murmurs next to him, music in his voice despite its softness, "Nobody can from Death thee save."

Something stirs in Eren – long stretches of night and the damp shimmering air of high summer. "What's that from?" he asks. The heat of the flames licks into the air – Eren can feel it on his face, the way his eyes dry out. They burn when he blinks tears back into them.

Armin shakes his head. "Nothing," he says.

They aren't alone, surrounded by what remains of the Corps, each of them silent. It wasn't that they hadn't known, because Irvin's never been anything but brutal in his honesty about their dismal chances of survival. It's that they hadn't been prepared. Eren doesn't know how to prepare for half of his comrades being there in the morning and gone by the evening, nothing but a pile of broken limbs and oozing wounds were humans once were, nothing but ash rising in the roar of the fire, scattering in the night.

Eren doesn't think any of them were prepared – Mikasa eyes are dark and distant, Armin's clinging onto Eren's hand like it's the one thing standing between him and death. Eren had caught Jean's face, ashen, forlorn, and he'd let himself think about how maybe Jean's not quite over Marco yet if it wouldn't remind Eren that he hasn't gotten a chance to mourn Marco himself, that letting himself remember Marco and let him go is just one more need he doesn't have time for. What he does let himself do is feel thankful, even if it's weak against the howling bells of grief and despair, that their trainee squad remained intact.

Others aren't so lucky, and Eren hates that this is what passes for luck.

Hanji hasn't said a word since they returned, since she'd peeled a bloodied sheet back and seen Petra's shattered body. Eren wishes he hadn't been in the room to see the way she'd gone stark white and tears had sprung to life behind her glasses, the way she'd gone to each of them in their turn. She was forcing herself, Eren realised – forcing herself to look at the mess the Titans had made of her comrades, her friends.

She's standing ahead of them, still with stiff shoulders, tall and dappled in shadows and firelight, next to Irvin and Levi. Levi is leaning, weight off his injured leg, into Irvin's side, who has an arm wrapped around his waist, like Levi might collapse if he doesn't hold him up. It's true because of the injury, Eren thinks, but the gesture looks too familiar, too natural, for this to be the first time.

Eren blinks tears away, lowering his gaze when Levi turns his head to press it into Irvin's side with an all too familiar hitch of his shoulders – he feels like he's intruding, like he's not supposed to be seeing this. It feels wrong.

"Someone said he stays until morning," Armin says, as one of Eren's tears hits the ground, soaking into the dirt, "Every time." Eren doesn't need to ask which 'he' Armin is talking about.

Their number shrinks, as it will in the future, as night passes them by, as all other nights have. By the time the first aching ray of dawn shatters the sky, delirious pink seeping into weary orange, it's Hanji and Irvin and Levi, Eren and the only two things that are keeping him standing. It takes until the sun is fully risen, shimmering in the sky overhead, blazing down upon the smouldering remnants of charred wood and the bones that used to be people Eren cared about, for them to move. Eren watches through tired eyes as Irvin places a hand on Levi's shoulder, turns to murmur words that Eren can't hear. Levi is still for a moment. Hanji watches them in profile.

Levi shrugs, and it's a tired thing. Eren would call it defeated had it been anyone else.

He bows his head as they pass him, listening to boots grinding against the dirt, and he remembers.

Sometimes he explodes. Sometimes he hurts people.

He throws a punch – it's wobbly, a misfire. Eren can barely see straight. Levi is quick like a whip and catches it.

The room goes silent around them, a theatre of tension.

"Think," he says, steady, like it's a fucking command, "I know it's hard, but try."

"Fuck you," Eren spits back, and he feels Levi sigh through his nose in the split second before Eren goes in for his ribs.

He ends up flat on his ass on the floor with a split lip and broken nose before Mikasa can even vault over the table and get to him. He can feel every gaze in the room on him, cruel and unflinching, as he pulls himself to his knees – a loud jeer, the tremor of nervous laughter. Mikasa's arms encircle his chest from behind. Eren does the only thing he can do.

"Stop it," says a voice, with the slightest tremor of rage, of sadness, "You know why he's like this," and Levi does, stilling.

Eren doesn't.

It's a little victory, the way his eyebrows rise, just slightly, when the blood and saliva hits Levi in the face. He stares down at Eren (not by much, even when he's been knocked down, he thinks with a surge of satisfaction, because he has that over Levi, he'll always have that over Levi), before turning and stalking from the room, leaving his dinner uneaten.

"Scared of a little blood, huh?"

"Eren," Mikasa hisses, breath brushing against his ear, and then he's being hauled to his feet. Mikasa is savage in her movements, Eren's arm aching with the wrench as she pulls him towards the door – he can feel eyes on him in the silence, the fucking silence-

Cold night air hits his face, making the dripping blood chill against his skin. Mikasa leads him to the edge of the deck, pushing down on his shoulders, forcing him to sit.

"Spit," she says, her tone a command, and he does, saliva-thick blood hitting the dirt below his feet. He can imagine it seeping in, but his head is spinning too much for him to look down.

"Drink," she says, a water skin being thrust in his face.

"Think 'm gonna be sick," he manages, and then he is, everywhere, doubling over as the taste of bile wells in his mouth.

There's a soft hand on his back, pressing, kneading – Armin, he thinks, sun in his chest. There's dampness brushing against his lips, the taste of blood and sick fading.

"Armin," he sighs, "You don't have to…"

The hand stops. Eren opens his eyes.

"Armin?" he asks, confusion funnelling into his swimming head.

But Mikasa just stares at him.

"This isn't working."

It's enough to make Eren raise his head. They've been sitting in silence in Levi's office for…

Eren doesn't remember. How long they've been sitting here, how he got here. Memory is like a sliver of tin melting in a fireplace for him, fleeting, dripping in undefined rivulets of bright silver and curling ash.

"What isn't working?" he says, working hard to keep the slur out of his voice. He swallows down the other questions.

Levi snorts. "Your drinking, for one thing." He's facing the window. Eren can't see if his expression is mocking or something else. He thinks he'd probably take mocking over anything else. Then, quieter, "The fighting."

Eren remembers that, even if he doesn't have bruises to show for it like Levi does. What he can't remember, try as he might, is why.

"Your sister told me she'd kill me if I let it happen again," Levi continues, and he'd sound almost bored if he weren't speaking so rapidly, "That I'm doing a terrible job of being Commander. I suppose she's right."

Something in Eren's brain grinds like a stuck gear, rusting. His chest tightens, his heart thumps, and he doesn't know why.

"She's right," Levi says again, and it's almost like Eren isn't even in the room, like he's speaking to himself, aloud, musing, "Even if you aren't fit for duty. I've been handling it improperly."

Something creaks, and Eren thinks that he can't tell if it's in the room or in his mind.

"Not fit for duty?" Eren repeats, and that's when Levi turns, and Eren is struck by how dark his eyes are, a lurking darkness, shadows of despair. He swallows the apprehension and says, "You're fucking with me. We have a mission in a few days. I'm fine for duty."

Levi watches him, for a moment, and it isn't like Hanji, with her rapid-fire observations bursting like rockets in air, or even like Armin, eyes flickering to and fro, glittering, as he reads a book. It's silent and forever and-

Sad, Eren thinks, something chewing at the corner of his mind, but that can't be right.

"It's true, then," he says, "You make yourself forget. I've never seen you do it."

"Forget what?" Eren asks, a frustrated breath escaping him.

"I almost envy you," Levi tells him, stone-faced. He moves to his desk, opening a drawer with the grating slide of wood-on-wood. He comes up with a bottle of whisky and two shot glasses.

"What's that for?" Eren asks, watching him pour. He doesn't understand any of this – the alcohol, what Levi's saying, the way he's looking at him. He's tipsy and tired and all he wants to do is sleep-

"I'm pulling a Hanji," Levi replies, slipping the cork back into the bottle with a wet pop.

"You're what?" Eren asks.

"Armin didn't survive the mission, Eren."

Levi's eyes are burning into his. Eren blinks to disrupt it, even if only for a moment.

Time stops. The world grows grey, and maybe, Eren thinks, a laugh bubbling up within him, the stars flicker out – he can see them through the window past Levi's head only he can't anymore because they're gone-

What mission? he tries to say, but the words fizzle at the back of his throat, tasting of salt.

Something wet is trickling down his cheeks. Blood, he thinks, and somewhere a gear grinds, a machine comes to a sputtering halt-

And Levi says, his voice hushed, "So that's what happens."

He feels hands and blood and hands everywhere and there's blood warm and slick between his fingers spattered up to his elbows tastes it on his lips. Someone is screaming, he thinks distantly, screaming through big racking sobs like Eren had made when he'd broken his arm when he was seven-

"Get him off," someone says, it's muffled and rushing like he's underwater, "Someone make him stop fucking screaming-"

Eren feels himself get wrenched backwards, and he blinks, confused, at the bloody mess of mashed flesh in front of him, red on white and red on gold-

"Eren-"

It's almost like a human. He laughs, faintly, hands pressed against his temples and cheeks. They're cold against his flushed skin – he can feel his pulse thrumming in his wrists.

He sees an eye, only one, summer-sky blue, wide-open in the night, and in it he sees a second set of stars identical to the ones above them, a thousand glimmering fairy lights flickering on a dull blue background-

"Eren, stay here."

His fingers tense. Skin tears, he thinks, maybe. He pulls.

"Stay with me-"

Sticky-sweet something, tickle-trickling down his face-

Mikasa's fingers dig like iron daggers into his shoulders, her own racking with heaving sobs.

Mikasa, he wants to say, but the words won't come, Why are you crying?

"I can't lose you, too," she says, her voice shivering, pleading, begging-

And Eren wants to hold her but his arms won't work.

He thinks, maybe, he isn't in his body anymore.

-And Eren doesn't know why but he's swallowed by the feeling, desperation dark and thrashing, that he needs his father to be here with him, setting the break in his arm and putting a hand on his head as he hides his face from the world.

It's silly, though, a silly childish thing, he thinks, and maybe he's smiling and maybe he's grimacing – he's not a child and his arm isn't broken and his father is probably dead-

Beyond the wall like the rest of them

-and he knows he isn't crying, he just doesn't know what's dripping down his face.

Or why there are strands of gold that shine in the firelight like a spangle, clutched in his hands when Mikasa pries them open. He thinks she might be speaking, speaking to him, but his ears are roaring like he's drowning, placid in the deep.

He thinks his palms are bleeding.

He licks his lips. He tastes blood.

He lurches – his throat burns from the hacking sobs that rip through his chest – he's been jerked from a nightmare, he knows it, no one's dead, because they can't be, he's in his father's arms – he can feel the day-old stubble scratching at his cheek, the strong arms enveloping him, almost pinning him in place-

He can almost feel the scratch of the woollen blanket he hated hates so much beneath him. His eyes burn with tears and he shudders and struggles to speak. "You came back," he whispers, voice weak like tissue paper, burning gossamer.

"What?"

And the truth that Eren knew washes over him and he feels himself bend- a thin reed, the strain and crack of fibres snapping and he's brittle like he's been brittle for so long and god he wishes he would just break - that his father was never so small, that his father never had whipcord muscles that shift like this, that his mouth tastes like whisky and the frank saltiness of tears-

-That his best friend died out beyond the wall. That they brought him back with his limbs shattered and his head caved in, his lips blue. That he'd looked into the remaining eye of the two he'd stared into for so many nights and knew it would never stare back again. That they'd had to pull him off, tearing him away, his hands clawing at Armin's clothes, snatching at his golden hair. Raking at his own face, raking through his own face-

"No," he whimpers, but he knows the answer is yes, that it will always be yes, that Armin, his Armin, who read to him 'til the sun rose on nights he was too slow, to weary to chase down sleep, who held him when reading wasn't enough, whose mouth was full of stars and promises and tomorrow is a handful of ash, scattered throughout the world he never got to see, and that the stars will never shine for him again.

Levi vocalises it for him – "Yes," he says, his voice barely above a whisper, and Eren is too weak, his hands shaking too much, to retaliate, so he just sags against Levi where he sits on the older man's desk, boneless and defeated, lets the hold grow tighter, "But you're here. You're alive, Eren."

Eren wants to say that he knows, that he doesn't need reminding, that he hadn't forgotten, but it would be a lie, he knows, because he had forgotten, that he wasn't so much living as passing from bottle to bed, rage and tears and emptiness, that he's all but given up.

"I let him die," he says, the word burning as it leaves his lips.

"No," Levi says, reaching behind Eren, "You didn't. You know you didn't. You were nowhere near him." Eren wants to scream. He hands Eren one of the crystal glasses of whisky. "Drink."

Shame hits Eren when there's a lurch in his veins, a lurch of want, a desire to drink and keep going until the world stops around him. "I don't want it," he says, a lie.

"It wasn't a suggestion," Levi says, and that's that, really – Eren knocks it back with a gentle shudder as it burns a trail down his throat to his belly, feeling Levi do the same above him.

"I won't fight you again," Levi says, his voice a little scratchy from the burn of alcohol, but toneless, empty, somehow, one of the hollowed-out husks of a house that once held a family within Wall Maria, "Do you understand?"

Eren's fingers curl and uncurl, useless, frustrated. "I… I needed to destroy," he says, voice thick with tears.

"You've been doing an excellent job of destroying yourself," Levi says, his voice quiet, "Sadly for you, you're valuable, and I can't let you finish the job. Not yet."

There's something about the way he says those words, not yet, that makes Eren's breath catch. "Not yet?" he asks.

"You can cope with whatever self-abuse you want - you can drink yourself to fucking death, for all I care," Levi says, "Once this is over. But until then, I forbid you from self-destructing. Neither of us has that luxury. If you come to me looking for a fight again, I will chain you up in a dungeon until you come to your fucking senses. Too many fucking people have died for you to go to shit – one death isn't worth more than the rest of them."

"Oh, fuck you," Eren hisses, anger flaring to life in his belly like a struck match, shoving Levi away from him, "Is that what you thought when Petra died?

Levi raises a hand, his face contorts, the most emotion Eren's seen him give since that day at the pyres – Eren knows it's a reflex just as much as he knows he wants Levi to give him a reason. He watches as Levi forces his face blank, and his hand back down, and disappointment curls in his gut.

"I didn't give up," is all Levi says, "And neither will you."

Eren swallows, deep and hard, as his rage goes out – he feels weak, defenceless without it – he thinks of Armin because he can't think of anything else, and tears spring to his eyes. He swipes at them with the back of his hand, savage.

"I don't- I don't want this," he chokes out, lowering his head to hide his face, his tears.

Levi says, "I know."

Eren says, "What do you know?"

"Irvin didn't come back," he says, and Eren thinks, his mind in a haze, that Levi's voice is trembling, or maybe it's just his shoulders, "He isn't ever coming back."

Eren stops, goes cold, and he knows, somehow, that it's the first time Levi is saying those words, tasting the weight of wasted years and regret and broken promises on his tongue – he knows that Levi is crying without even having to see his face. He raises his head, anyway – Levi's eyes are shot through with red, glistening in the dim candlelight.

"That's what I know," says Levi, and he smirks, then, bitter and gnarled and ugly. There are no tears streaming down his face, not yet, not like Eren, and Levi does not bow his head, nor does he turn his face away.

"He was the one who was supposed to survive," he says, and he sounds almost bitter, not sad or guilty but bitter, "We were going to win and he was going to survive and he was going to get his medals and get married and have, fuck, I don't know kids and shit and live his life and I-"

And Eren's reaching out to grasp Levi's trembling hands with his own without even realising it.

"I was a symbol," Levi says, his voice the scrape of a knife sharpening against stone, "I was hope."

A hero, Eren thinks, over the dark roar in his mind, and it's like a puzzle piece clicking into place.

"You're alive," he says, and it hurts to speak but he does, anyway.

"Yes," says Levi.

"We both are," says Eren.

Levi's staring at him. Eren can tell his throat is straining under the weight of words he feels but can't summon. A tear breaks loose, rolling down his cheek. He swallows.

This is wrong. Eren knows it's wrong.

He leans forward, knowing it's wrong, fingers tightening around Levi's. He stops, inches away. Levi's eyes are blown wide, almost like they're panicked. A shivering breath escapes his lips as he parts them, only slightly, playing across Eren's face.

"Fuck hope," Eren says, and he means it, and his voice doesn't even sound like his own, twisted and dark, iron on a fire, but Levi tilts his head and kisses him, then, and it's not so much throwing water on the fire as it is kerosene.

It's a piece of the puzzle but it doesn't slide into place. It's smashed and warped and forced, and the puzzle's never going to be complete, not with this misshapen misfit of a piece that shouldn't exist.

Not that it matters, Eren thinks. They've already lost the pieces they need.

They don't fit together – Levi is sharper and harder than Armin, and their teeth click against each other so hard it's painful, Levi's fingers digging bruises that will fade by morning into his shoulders. When Eren's hands find Levi's throat, there's a pause, stretching for what seems like hours in the dark night. Eren wets his lips, knowing that his cheeks are flushed red, that his eyes are wild, Levi's eyes flickering as he looks up at him-

I could hurt you, he thinks, brain muddled with lust and heat and despair and whisky, I could tear you apart – you can't let yourself fall apart, you don't have the luxury of being so weak, but I can make you. Give you what you need.

And he thinks he's just said it aloud, maybe, because Levi's chest rises with a sharp inhale and he just says, "Yes."

Eren tightens his grip and doesn't so much kiss him as bite him, savage him, teeth tearing, drawing blood, and it's ugly, they're both so ugly, and Levi's nails draw screaming stinging trails of blood and open flesh down his back when he comes with an arch of his back and a hoarse noise, but ugly isn't so bad, Eren thinks, and real life doesn't look like pictures in books, anyway.

It isn't sex so much as clawing back something he thought he'd lost, the first time, something he finds again when he pushes against Armin and feels him push back – they move, together, and it's like zipping through the air in his gear, the same lurch in his belly, the same roar in his ears, but it's easier, comes to Eren more naturally.

Not that it isn't awkward – Armin only has some idea of what to do from books and Eren knows even less. He finds himself freezing at one point, caught between apprehension and arousal from the sight of Armin naked before him, cheeks pink and eyes bright, small but not skinny, not anymore, like he once was – age and training have shaped him into lean muscles and faint silvery-white lines of scars, criss-crossed channels of bruises in the shape of his harness, stark against his pale skin. Eren follows them with his eyes, transfixed – his own skin eats his away before they can actually form, and the contrast fascinates him. He wants to follow them with his fingertips, trace them with his tongue, and-

"You're beautiful," Eren breathes, before he can stop himself.

And even though Eren's the one who's not good with words, Armin stammers for a moment, eyes wide, before he goes silent, and then they're kissing, messy and open-mouthed, and Armin sighs when Eren traces the purple stripe of bruise on his hip with a finger.

Laughter hits him, afterwards, pulling out even as he tries to catch his breath, slipping down to lie boneless against Armin, and the laughter would be loud if it weren't muffled against Armin's soft hair. He feels Armin grinning against his neck, shallow pants making his chest rise and fall.

Armin pulls away to rest his head on the pillow next to Eren's, catching a sliver of sunbeam in the late afternoon light. His hair gleams, spangle-like even as it sticks to his forehead with sweat- his eyes are still dark even ringed by brilliant blue, his face still flushed from sex, and Eren is in a state of fuzzy wonder.

They are tin soldiers, steadfast and gleaming bright in the somnolent afternoon sun, and time hasn't slowed for them but suspended, and this is his now just as it is his forever, and Eren knows he can love.

Tomorrow, twenty-three of them will die.

Eren slips out of Levi's bed with the dawn, leaving without a word even as he feels his Corporal- Commander, now, he thinks, and the word grates- stir behind him. The sun is rising, and this isn't their time.

He finds Mikasa exercising out in the yard, knows by the half-second slowness of her steps, her loose shoulders, that she's had just as little sleep as he has. She is alone and beautiful, dappled in the hazy pink light of sunrise as her scarf licks out behind her like a trail of elegant cursive, fluid and feline, precise, danger even in her weariness, practicing her death-dance, motions cutting through the skeletal thinness of the early morning fog.

He calls her name, and it shivers, a split note, in the cold mist of early dawn. She pauses, not a freeze but a graceful end form, like she'd planned it, practiced it. There's a second of distant wariness, etched on her face, and then she comes to him, like always. She reaches out to take his hand, like always. An instant later he's buried his face against her neck, her scarf, his scarf, their scarf, the threads of their past, and she does freeze, now, the smallest gasp wisping from her throat.

"I'm sorry," he says, his voice a desperate, wavering murmur, and he is, "I'm sorry I gave up. I'm sorry I failed you. I'm sorry you had to mourn both of us."

And then she takes a shuddering, gasping sob, fingers clutching where Levi's had clutched hours ago, and he's sobbing, too, all barking harshness and desperate racks, and they're clinging to one another, pressed together to hide a wound that will never scab over, never scar, never heal, and they're sliding down to smear the knees of their uniforms with dirt and mud, because Eren's forgotten how to stand and Mikasa's been standing for too long.

"Don't leave me," she's begging him, and then, "You're back," and she can barely speak with the thickness of salt and tears in her throat, "Please please please don't leave me," and Eren's whispering, "I won't I won't I'm sorry-"

They kneel there as the sun shatters the sky, tin soldiers, brittle and bent, but not broken, not yet.

Levi finds him one afternoon, poring over a book of fairy tales that is heavy with age and dust and memories. He snorts, and Eren starts – he hadn't even heard him come in.

"The fuck is that shit?" he asks. He says nothing of the fact that Eren is in his office. Neither of them ever do.

Armin liked them. Armin read them to me, once, he almost says, but this isn't their arrangement, the game that Levi and he play, so he just shrugs and says, "Kid stuff." It isn't a lie.

He traces the sketch of the ballerina with a fingertip, her hair golden and cheeks flushed, delicate, her spangle glittering in some imagined firelight, as Levi says, "Bit late for that, don't you think?"

"I guess so," says Eren.

He knows there's no use in protesting, that it's the truth – that Eren's traded fairy stories for blades and blood, for whisky and bruises in the shape of ten perfect fingertips around Levi's throat.

Later he traces one of the bruises, dark and purple, bleeding beneath the skin and flourishing, with the same finger he'd traced the picture of the ballerina with.

"This doesn't bother you?" he says.

"Cravat," Levi mumbles into the pillow.

"Oh," says Eren, knowing as well as Levi does that the bruises go higher than that, that they draw whispers and stares.

Levi doesn't speak again for a while. Eren settles into the silence – it isn't comfortable, but it's theirs, and he's had to weather too many silences alone lately for him to really have a problem with that.

"The last thing I ever said to him was that all that sitting behind a desk was making him fat and slow," Levi says, like he's reading from a book, like it's practiced, familiar. Like it's a thought he has often, every hour, every minute, like it tastes of boredom and rote learning.

But Levi's shoulders are tense and coiled, and Eren doesn't know what to say.

"I promised him we'd see the ocean one day," is what he settles on, "Together." He swallows, deep, almost involuntary.

Levi doesn't look at him, doesn't even react.

"And then I was too wasted to go to his funeral."

Levi looks up, then, and eyes are black as the starless sky.

"Me too," he says, at last.

He doesn't push Eren's hand away when it closes around his.

They are tin soldiers, and they aren't dead yet, but they are melting, silvery in the fire, and Eren doesn't know if they're even soldiers anymore, molten liquid with no shape or reason, but maybe there's no point in being a soldier or a hero, anyway, if you can't protect the people you love.

Eren is up to his elbows in blood that's fading, wisping away in trails of vapour in the sunlight, harsh pants tearing themselves from his lungs, his veins coursing sweet with bloodlust. He flips out of the way of a Titan's hand, mammoth and too slow, shooting a hook into its shoulder and launching himself into the air above it – he hangs, suspended, for a bare instant, eyes fluttering closed – then he drops with a lurch of his gut, gritting his teeth as his blades tear through flesh, stuttering as they gorge through cartilage and bone. He aims his hook at the roof in front of him, boots clattering against the tile as the Titan goes down behind him, dead.

He breathes.

There's a lull – Eren has learned not to get used to it, but that doesn't mean he can't appreciate it.

They'd reached the outskirts of Wall Maria two days ago, with forty per cent losses, but Eren hasn't had to bury anyone close to him, not yet, not with where they are in the formation. He had stood with Mikasa, ahead of the rest of the group, staring up at the broken wall they had grown up within.

They're so close he can taste it, even if it isn't a taste he likes, even if it tastes like death.

"He should be here," he had said to Mikasa.

He hadn't realised he'd been clutching the key around his neck until her hand had come up to prise his fingers open – they'd intertwined with his, then, warm, soft, strong.

"Don't look back," she'd told him, and when he'd looked at her face was steely, lips set into a thin line, but her eyes had betrayed her, too glazed, too glossy, "Not yet."

So Eren hadn't. He'd swallowed down the dust and dreams and slipped into Levi's sleeping bag past dark, and let the older man bring them both off with his hand because it's cold out past the wall, and Eren needs something to keep his eyes trained forward, on the future instead of the past.

That had been two days ago. Eren has killed six Titans since this morning, and he aches even as his blood sings with the heat of battle. Mikasa's doubled him, as he'd expected – she hovers around him, and Eren wishes she wouldn't, because every moment she's watching him she isn't watching herself. She lands next to him, her breathing heavy.

"Eren," she says, "Are you-?"

"COMMANDER!" he hears, a scream loud enough to pierce the distance and blood rushing in his ears, LEVI!"

He sees Levi land with grace on the roof a few feet away from them, and then a blur zips into view, red and green solidifying into Hanji, sweat-streaked and spattered in blood.

"Look!" she cries, and she's grinning a terrible grin, all ecstasy and fear.

Levi turns, his shoulders tense. He pales, mouth dropping open, and Eren's heart skips a beat.

"What the fuck is that?" he asks, and later Eren will wonder how he managed to sound so calm.

He looks. He almost wishes he hadn't – he wishes he'd had the choice.

He remembers seeing creatures like it in Armin's books, though never so large, never so terrifying. Its body is covered in hair, thick and dark, Eren can see it even so far away, its limbs far too long for its body. Apes, he thinks, placing the name, so like humans, so like them.

Mikasa takes his hand.

"It speaks, Levi," Hanji whispers, like it's a prayer, a votive offering before some awful vengeful god, "It's… it's commanding the others."

"That right?" Levi says, and something in his voice almost makes Eren tear his eyes away from the Titan in the distance, "Commanding them?"

Eren hears a whipping whir, the sound of boots thudding against the tiles beside him.

"Are you fucking seeing this?" Jean gasps, "What is that scary-looking motherfucker?"

"Hanji," Levi says, his voice matter-of-fact, "Got any spares?" His own blades have gotten short enough to be desperate – if Eren's killed six he doesn't even want to guess at how many Levi has.

"Yeah, sure," she says, a hand going to her gear to draw a fresh blade out, I've got a few, but if you're out you really need to get back to the supply-"

"Just the one set will do," Levi interrupts her.

"One? Don't be stupid," she says, arching a thin eyebrow at him, "Not if we're going to get rid of this lot."

"You're not going to," Levi says, holding a hand out for the blade, "You're going on ahead. You'll need the spares."

She pauses, hand freezing on her gear as she raises her head to look at him.

"Levi?" she asks.

"You need to protect Eren," he replies. He's still holding his hand out for the blade.

Her eyes flicker. "That's your job," she says, her voice quiet, now.

"And now it's yours," he says, his tone almost conversational. He curls his fingers at her as if calling her over to him. "Blades, Hanji."

She stares at him, mute, eyes glittering. She lowers her hand to her sides. It's a deliberate gesture.

"No," she says, defiant, squaring her shoulders, "You can't order me to do this."

"Of course I can," he says, looking almost bored, but Eren knows well enough by now that it's a mask, "But I won't."

Eren's breath catches as Hanji's blinks, rapid, as if she's trying to fight back tears. "What's your plan?" she asks.

"Get the others," Levi says, "Braus, Springer, the rest of the squad, only you, the rest stay here. Go. Hoods up. Thirty miles, give or take, to Shinganshina. Stick to the trees, it'll take you a day, two at most-"

"I mean for you!" Hanji snaps, her voice faltering just a little, "What are you going to do?"

Levi looks at her, for a long moment, and Eren thinks his mask flickers, maybe.

"They took my Commander," he says, perfect calm, eye of a storm that's been raging for years, "So I'll take theirs."

Hanji stares at him, taking a sharp inhale through her nose. She shakes her head, lightly, as if in thought, mouth working, expression grim, almost sullen.

Then she nods, once, and Eren swallows.

In one swift, fluid motion, she draws two blades out of her gear like she's pulling an arrow out of a wound, quick, brutal, to minimise the pain. She holds them out to Levi. He reaches a hand out, opening his mouth to speak.

She jerks them back at the last second.

Levi's eyes flash. "Hanji-" he says, through gritted teeth.

"One thing," she says, and he stops, cocking his head slightly, waiting, impatience written across his face. Her eyes take on a peculiar sheen, and though her face his calm, the shaky breath she takes betrays her.

"Don't fuck it up," is what she says, in the end.

Levi's eyes widen, just for an instant. Then a smirk is playing at the corner of his mouth, and he says, "Same goes for you."

She offers the blades to him. He takes them.

"See you at the finish line," she says, her voice firm, certain, and Eren knows what she means. She smiles, then, even as a tear rolls down her face, and says, "Commander."

He snorts. "Fuck off," he says, and then, "Go." He turns his gaze to the rest of them in turn, from Mikasa to Eren to Jean. "All of you." He turns to go as Hanji and Jean take off.

"Wait," Eren says, darting forward.

And to his surprise, Levi does, pausing to throw a glance over his shoulder, and Eren finds that he has nothing to say, even if he wants to, even if Levi is looking at him like he might want him to.

A moment passes, hanging in the air between them.

"Eren," says Levi, at last, the one to break the silence because life isn't a book, "Don't look back."

And Eren just wets his lips and says, "Yeah."

He does, though, because Eren's weakness is that he can't stop looking back, that he never could. So he looks back, over mist and vapour and rooftops - while he still can, he looks back, and what he sees makes his heart leap into his throat.

Levi is smiling.

Their barrack is deserted when they get back – it's breakfast, and the night has been long and aching for them all. Eren doesn't want to eat – he isn't sure if he'll ever want to eat. Then Armin says they should get some rest, that they haven't slept, that Eren looks so tired, and Eren isn't sure if he'll ever want to sleep again, either.

At his silence, Armin reaches a hand out to slide through his hair. "Eren?" he says, his voice soft.

"They protected me," Eren says, numb, "They died protecting me."

"They died fighting for tomorrow," Armin murmurs to him, fingers stroking through his hair.

"No tomorrow for them, is there?" Eren says, his voice harsh, bitter, and later he'll feel terrible at the way Armin flinches, just a little.

"No," says Armin, biting his lip as if in thought, "And one day, there won't be for us, either. But while there is… well, we have to fight, don't we?"

Eren glances up at him.

"I have so much to fight for," says Armin, his voice gentle, and though his eyes are red with the stain of tears he is smiling, soft, perfect.

Eren takes a dry sob, chest aching, and buries his face in Armin's neck. He smells of smoke and ash and bones-now-dust. Armin's arms circle him, fluid, instinctive, and Eren's too tired, too wrecked to cry anymore, so he just lets Armin hold him up, leaning his full weight into him as they sink onto Eren's bunk.

"I-" and he wants to say it, he does, but he's never been much good with words, and these ones scare him, "Armin, I-"

"I know," Armin whispers, "I know, Eren."

And Eren promises himself he'll say it, one day.

They are two miles from Shiganshina, and Mikasa is stiff beside him. He thinks he can hear Sasha crying.

The key is cold, bitter against his skin.

They are two miles from Shiganshina, and they are outnumbered two-to-one by Titans, shambling towards them, the ground rattling as if it's on the verge of splitting open, swallowing them whole.

Eren does the only thing he can do.

He turns to Mikasa. "For Armin," he says.

She is serene, grace itself, as she draws her swords. "For Armin," she agrees.

"Tomorrow," Armin breathes into his mouth, a reminder, all heat and hope.

He keeps his eyes open when Eren pushes inside him, alive and blue and forever like the oceans they'll see one day – his fingers scrabble at Eren's shoulder blades, leaving red halfmoons and angry streaks.

Eren's never loved anything more in his life.

"Tomorrow," he says back, pressing his lips to Armin's sweat-soaked forehead.

it's crazy what you could've had