His dreams had been so erratic lately, an endless meshing of blackness and gritty, static shapes that whizzed past his eyes. His breath was gone, lost in his subconscious as he felt sweat make his skin tacky, and the familiar phantom hotness that erupted against his insides and made them twist and bleed and turn his muscles to pulp.

Across his eyes danced shapes that had grown faded over the years. Once they had been clear, vibrant and saturated with life. He could not remember that time.

A roundish, shaggy circle hovered above his eyes, colored light tan with patches of pretty black hair. It shouted at him, a distorted mouth unhinging and gaping at his eyes.

That was Eren, wasn't it? The last of him that Armin ever saw before it all went black and silent.

He watched as Eren's lips bounced open and closed, two pinkish lines against sun-weathered cheeks.

The voice that whispered through his brain held no recognition any longer. The words were botched, decayed from a faulty memory that had only just started to rust with age, but they were Eren's. His voice could not have been sharper.

What was he yelling? Armin couldn't tell. Words had stagnated from disuse, all jumbled up in a head so preoccupied in keeping the depression out and the sanity in.

There was something on his cheek, something warm and real and rubbing at his skin, grazing the bottom of his chin with the pad of a thumb. It moved back and forth up the hollow of his jawline, with the tip of a ragged nail scratching lightly at his skin.

Eren's face was gone.

The hands at his face stroked and glided to his hair, resting at his brow and petting his bangs away.

Armin knew that they were Eren's hands; they always were. They always woke him up and took him away from the nightmares of deadly fevers and ghostly senses.

He felt the cold moss and clay underneath him, slick and wet with dew, but soft. He had not slept in a bed for the longest time now, though he did not know why or where he even was. That kind of thing no longer mattered to him.

Lips pressed and lingered at his, cracked and shredded and tasting of sour iron from the caked blood that had built up on them. Those were Eren's, too.

It was all the same, every morning when Armin had to 'wake up' . It was the routine that kept him sane. It kept his head clear and made the surprises minimal.

Eren's cheek pressed at his, and warm breath trickled into his ear, fluctuating, rising and falling. Armin could smell him, a scent staled by molding clothes stained with soil and rainwater, but still Eren.

The breath against his ear kept rising and falling. Eren was saying something. He always did, every morning when Armin had to 'wake up'.

But Armin couldn't hear him. He had not heard anything in the longest time, not a peep of sound.

The black sheet over his eyes only made it all the worse.

Eren's face and hands pulled away, and Armin sucked in a harsh breath. His chest pounded. He hated that, too, that needy dependency that had only grown ever stronger over the years.

And then, like clockwork, the hands were back and weaving through his hair, pressing gently at his scalp

The ground was vibrating. It must have been from people and horses, all walking about and eager to get on, but to where?

Armin didn't know.

No one could really tell him anything these days.