A/N: Agh, i'm so sorry about how long it took this chapter to come out... I kind of had to struggle through some writer's block for a little bit, but let's just hope it's all good now.
I hope you like this chapter, and thanks for all the support!

There's an albatross around your neck,

All the things you've said and the things you've done.

Can you carry it with no regrets?

Can you stand the person you've become?

-Weight of Living Part 1 (Albatross), Bastille

Armin didn't wake up until it was well past noon. His grandfather almost always woke him up before eleven, whether it was the weekend or the middle of summer, but that day he let him sleep.

It was almost one in the afternoon by the time he rolled out of bed. He had laid around for about an hour, content to watch the dust float around his room, illuminated by the sunlight streaming through his window, and just thinking about nothing. He ignored the images of bonfires and bloodied corpses that rose to his mind, and made a point of not looking at the scribbled drawings scattered across the floor of his room.

He just watched the dust.

There was only so long someone could stare at a bunch of floating dust particles, however, and Armin couldn't lie in bed all day, no matter how much he wanted to.

So, quietly, he slipped out from beneath the covers and, grabbing a pair of jeans and a t-shirt from his dresser, crept through the hallway and into the bathroom. He knew he couldn't avoid talking to his grandfather for long, but he couldn't stand the smell of smoke that seemed to cling to every inch of him, from his hair to his clothes to his skin.

He didn't bother to wait for the water to heat up before getting in, letting the chill run over every part of him. He drenched his hair and scrubbed at his skin, wrinkling his nose at the still-present smell of burnt wood—he just wanted it gone.

After he had rubbed soap into every part of his body, he stood under the stream of water, now so hot that steam clouded around him. He could hear dishes clinking around downstairs; probably his grandfather emptying the dishwasher. He almost certainly knew that Armin was awake now, and the blond boy couldn't hide in the shower for the entire afternoon, so he turned the water off and stepped out, quickly getting dressed.

He let his hair drip, barely even running a towel over it before opening the bathroom door and making his way downstairs, where his grandfather was buttering bread for a sandwich. He looked up when he heard Armin, smiling at him.

"I've been waiting for you to get up," he said. "You had a late night, so I let you sleep."

Armin nodded, sitting down on one of the stools set up at the island in the middle of their kitchen. He didn't mention that, as far as his grandfather knew, he'd gone to sleep when he got home, around 11pm—not late for him at all. But he knew why he had actually let him sleep in, so he didn't say anything.

"You took a shower," his grandfather observed, and he nodded.

They sat in awkward silence for a few moments, both of them knowing that they were about to have a pretty heavy conversation, but neither of them wanting to initiate it—Armin because he just didn't want to have it, and his grandfather because he didn't know how to start it.

"Um, so, Armin," his grandfather said, coughing slightly and staring into the warm mug of coffee sitting between his hands. "Mikasa and Eren told me about what happened at the party."

"Okay," Armin said, nodding. Neither of them were really looking at each other, and he glanced around the kitchen, his eyes flitting from the cupboards to the cup sitting by the sink to the knife block beside the toaster.

"They also told me about the nightmares you've been having," his grandfather continued, finally lifting his gaze from his mug and looking at Armin.

The blond boy didn't say anything; he just stared at his hands, picking at his nails.

"Armin, why didn't you tell me?" his grandfather asked. His voice was worried, and Armin suddenly felt guilty.

"I'm sorry…" he muttered, gripping at the edge of the counter in front of him. "Did… Did they tell you what the nightmares are about?"

His grandfather shook his head. "No, they didn't," he said. "But, if you want to, will you tell me?"

Armin bit his lip, glancing up at his grandfather. The older man's face was etched with concern, his forehead creased and his brown eyes heavy and sad. He didn't know how he would tell him what the nightmares were about; he didn't think he wanted him to realize they were about something so… horrifying.

"It's not really anything," Armin lied, shrugging. "Just… generic nightmares."

There was a pause. "Are… Are your parents in them?" his grandfather asked, his voice hesitant.

"No… not really," Armin said, and that was the truth—he hadn't ever seen his parents in the nightmares, and didn't know if they were alive or dead in that "world". Looking back down at his hands, he added, "Honestly, they're not that bad."

His grandfather sighed. "Armin, from the way Mikasa and Eren described it, it sounds like you had some sort of panic attack last night," he said. "Was it from the nightmares, or something else?"

Armin took in a deep breath. "I… Yeah, it was because of the nightmares," he admitted. There was no point lying about it, he figured.

"If you're having panic attacks over them, then I think that they're a lot worse than you're telling me," his grandfather said, joining his hands together in front of him. "Do you have them every night?"

"Most nights," Armin said quietly. More often than not he didn't remember the nightmares when he woke up—just fragments of conversations and pieces of scenery and faces—but he always knew what they were about, and that never changed.

His grandfather nodded. "Armin, you don't have to do anything you don't want to," he started, quickly glancing between his hands and his grandson. "But if the nightmares are as bad as they seem to be, I honestly think you should see someone about them."

Armin froze. "Like… Like a therapist?" he asked.

"Something like that," his grandfather answered. "I know you probably don't want to, but you could at least try and see if it helps—"

"I-I'll do it," Armin's voice trembled as he spoke, cutting the older man off. He wasn't sure what made him say that—the last thing he wanted to do was sit in some random office talking about his nightmares and feelings. But maybe he had found hope in his grandfather's words; hope that getting help would actually change something, and stop the nightmares, or at least explain them. And he had grabbed onto that hope, and had decided to take his chances with it.

His grandfather seemed surprised by his answer, though he looked at least slightly pleased with it. "I… alright," he said, nodding. "I'll call the mental health centre in town later today. I'm sure we'll be able to set up an appointment for you."

"Okay," Armin said, before sliding off the stool and walking back upstairs. Flopping down on his bed, he let out a loud sigh and buried his face in his hands. He lied like that for at least half an hour, not moving until he started to doze off. Pulling himself up into a sitting position, he grabbed the book that was resting on his nightstand and opened it up to the marked page, where he had last left off, and read for the rest of the day.

By the next day, his grandfather had scheduled a meeting for Armin with one of the local mental health clinic's top psychiatrists, set for the following week. Eren and Mikasa didn't react to the news with much surprise when he told them, and he figured it had to do with the fact that they were the ones who had first talked to his grandfather about the nightmares.

"I'm sure it will help," Mikasa assured him, and he nodded. They were, at the moment, sitting on the Ackerman family's back porch, under the shade of their gazebo and eating slices of watermelon.

"Do you know which psychiatrist you're going to see?" Eren asked, tossing a rind into the bowl resting in the middle of the table.

Armin nodded. "I'm pretty sure her name's… Ral. Yeah, Dr. Ral."

"Oh, I know her," Eren said. "She was born in Germany. My dad met her when she came to work at his hospital once; she's been over to our house for dinner before."

"What's she like?" Armin asked, picking at the black seeds in a slice of watermelon.

"She's really nice," Eren said. "Very… psychiatrist-y."

Mikasa raised an eyebrow at him. "What's that even supposed to mean?" she asked, and Eren shrugged.

"Just that it's pretty easy to see why she's a psychiatrist," he said. "She seems like she'd be good at it."

Mikasa just shook her head at him, rolling her eyes. "Psychiatrist-y… God."

Eren raised his hands, heaving a loud sigh. "English is my second language, come on!" he cried, and the statement was so ridiculous that Armin had to laugh; Mikasa looked like she wanted to, but held back.

"You moved here when you were one," Mikasa said, giving him an incredulous look. "You pretty much learned English the same way Sasha and I did. So don't pull that shit."

Eren stuck his tongue out at her, and she shook her head again, almost like an annoyed mother.

Two days before his appointment was scheduled, Armin sat on his bed, scrolling through Facebook on his laptop. He was waiting for his grandfather to get back from the grocery store so he could take the car to the library and get some new books; he had already read all the ones he took out just over a week ago. Now he was just passing time, and had boredly opened Facebook, seeing as he had nothing else to do.

Sighing, he scrolled past status update after status update of how fun the people he was friends with were having. There were dozens of pictures of vacations in foreign places and visits with family; Armin almost wished he and his grandfather had gone to England for the summer—then maybe none of this would have happened. But they were planning to go during Christmas, and they had gone in July last year, so he was forced to spend two months in this little town.

Then Jean's name showed up on his screen, and he paused. Not because of Jean—he'd seen plenty of posts and updates from him, mostly about how excited he was for his soon-to-be-arriving exchange to Belgium and how his preparations were going. It was the name beside his that made him stop.

Jean Kirschtein is now friends with Marco Bodt

There were two profile pictures accompanying the post; one was Jean's—a shot someone had taken at his party of him sporting an oversized pair of sunglasses—and one was Marco Bodt's—a professionally-taken shot of a boy with dark hair and a face full of freckles.

The same face he'd seen at the party, telling him that all his friends were dead.

Taking in a sharp breath, Armin quickly moved his mouse to Marco's name and clicked. A profile popped up, with the same picture beside the boy's name and a photo of a sprawling beach scene covering the top half of the screen. Choosing the tab labeled photos, the beach was replaced by a page of thumbnails, all of pictures featuring Marco.

Slowly, Armin started to scroll through the photos. He could only get to about the sixth or seventh one, however, before a terrible sense of uneasiness and nausea washed over him. Taking in a shaky breath, he quickly closed out of the tab; Marco's smiling face disappeared, and Armin found himself staring at his desktop background.

Marco looked exactly like he did in the pictures as he had on the night of Jean's party, when he'd suddenly appeared in front of him. Armin wasn't even really sure what had happened that night—he hadn't fallen asleep, so it wasn't a nightmare. It was almost like some sort of hallucination.

"God, I really am going crazy…" he muttered to himself, running his hands over his face. He sat like that for several seconds, before leaning back and letting out a deep sigh. Glancing around his room, he looked for something to distract himself, his eyes landing on his sketchbook, perched on his nightstand. He got up and grabbed it, sitting on the edge of his bed and flipping it open to a random page.

It was a group of sketches, mostly of Mikasa and Eren. In one, Mikasa held a dark red scarf up to her face, her eyes closed in a blissful expression. In another, Eren looked down at his hands, which were covered in blood and bite-marks. The rest were just simple drawings—expression practice, uniform references, a set of swords and some 3DMG.

The following page was covered in a half-coloured picture of Jean and Sasha, standing on the branch of a giant pine tree. Their dark green cloaks blended in with the tree's foliage, and Jean was looking off into the distance, at something far away, while Sasha stared at the ground beneath them. Both had worried expressions on their faces, and Sasha leaned heavily against the tree's trunk, gripping at her swords.

He quickly flipped the page, and found Marco's face looking back up at him. Armin had drawn him with a calm expression, like he was completely at peace, a small smile gracing his lips.

On the next page he was dead. The smile was gone from his face, replaced by a gruesome grimace. Half his face was gone, and jagged bones stuck out from his chest. Armin let out a sort of strangled cry, and turned the page so hard and so quickly he almost ripped it out.

But instead of finding a simple group of sketches or a blank page, he found Sasha's body, spread out on a grassy, blood-soaked hillside. Both her legs were gone, and her hands were clinging weakly to the red grass beside her. She didn't seem to be in pain, however, nor did she seem to register the giant shadow looming over her.

Armin threw the book across his room.

He wanted to scream. He wanted to rip his hair out and tear every drawing he'd ever made to pieces. He hated himself for drawing those awful things—how could he do that? Why couldn't everything just stop?

But it didn't—it couldn't—stop. He didn't think it ever would. All he could see and all he could think of was how Eren had found Sasha's body, and how he'd just wordlessly carried her back to where everyone had gathered.

He could only think about how Connie had cried and how Jean had stood off to the side, completely expressionless.

And he just remembered a sort of numbness. Like he wanted to feel, and he wanted to cry, but he couldn't. His nerves were dead, and all that ran through his mind was, God, not another one.

Then they'd burned her, as they burned all the bodies that made it back, and her bones charred and turned to ash, and everything that she was in that life, in that time, in that world… stopped existing.

Armin suddenly let out a choked sob, and he realized he was crying. His chest was tight and there was such a terrible pain all over; he could hardly bare it. Without even really thinking about it, he got up and wandered out of his room, towards the stairs, practically tripping down them. His grandfather wasn't home yet, and he found himself shuffling to the front door. Tears were still streaming down his face, but he didn't think of what anyone in the neighbourhood might think of him, stumbling around outside like a wailing drunk. At that moment, he didn't really care.

He wasn't sure where he was going when he pushed the door open and walked out onto the front porch, but he wasn't particularly surprised when he ended up in front of Eren's house. His hand shook as he reached out and pressed the doorbell, hoping to god that it was Eren who answered the door.

It was. He took one look at Armin and grabbed hold of his arm, dragging him inside.

"Oh my god, Armin," he said, looking the boy up and down, as if searching for wounds. "Are you okay? What the hell happened?"

"Marco Bodt." That was all Armin said, sniffing slightly and rubbing at his eyes and cheeks with the backs of his hands.

Eren raised an eyebrow at him. "Who?" he asked, before shaking his head. "No, wait, never mind. I'll ask later. Let's just… let's just sort you out for now, okay?"

Armin nodded, and Eren gently pulled him upstairs to the bathroom. He let the water run for a little while, until it turned warm, before wetting a cloth and pressing it against Armin's face.

"Eren, I… I can do it by myself…" Armin muttered, trying to grab that cloth from the other boy's hand.

"No, it's, uh, it's fine," Eren said, pushing Armin's hand down. "I-I got it."

He continued to press the cloth into his face, occasionally wiping at it softly, until Armin's breathing relaxed and he stopped shaking. When he was finally calmed down, Eren drew his hands away, sitting on the edge of the tub.

"So, what happened?" he asked, and Armin let out a loud sigh, running his hands over his now-damp face.

"Jean… he friended someone on Facebook named Marco Bodt," he started, staring at the bath mat beneath his feet. "And… That's the name of someone from my nightmares. He looked just like the person from that... that world too. Like the person in my dream had suddenly come to life. I kind of… freaked, and tried to take my mind off it by looking through my sketchbook." He paused, and neither of them said anything; he avoided looking at Eren's face, though he saw him shift slightly from the corner of his eye.

"And then, when I was looking through my sketchbook," he continued. "I found a picture of Marco… And he was dead. He was like… bitten in half, or something. Then I turned the page and… and it was Sasha… and oh my god, Eren, she was dead. Her… her legs were gone, a-and she was covered in blood… And I drew that, Eren. I drew my friend dead and mutilated. Oh god…"

He was crying again, hanging his head and burying his face in his hands. He barely even noticed the light weight that draped itself around his shoulders, until Eren was pulling him towards him, one hand moving to Armin's back and the other to his head. He didn't say anything—he just stood there with him, gently rubbing circles into the space between Armin's shoulder blades.

"I'm a terrible person…" the blond said quietly, his voice muffled by the fabric of Eren's shirt.

Eren shook his head. "No, you're not," he murmured. "You're not a terrible person."

"You don't understand, Eren," Armin choked, gripping tightly to the other boy's shoulders. He barely even registered how close he was to Eren, or how his fingers felt as they dragged themselves across his back—he was too distraught and scared, and all he really felt was the warmth of Eren's arms.

"What don't I understand?" Eren asked.

Armin sniffed, burying his face even deeper into Eren's shoulder. "This is going to sound so crazy…" he muttered.

"I'll believe you," Eren said, pulling back slightly. Giving Armin an encouraging smile, he wiped at the tears staining his cheeks, before gently pulling him out of the bathroom and towards his bedroom. They sat down on his bed, with Armin curled up against the pillows, his chin resting heavily on his knees.

"I'll believe anything you say," Eren assured him. He reached out a hand, and was about to place it on top of Armin's, before he seemed to doubt himself and pulled it back, stuffing it into the pocket of his hoodie.

Armin nodded, picking absently at the lint clinging to the old blanket covering Eren's bed. He remembered how happy the brunet had been when he got it, proudly telling everyone that his grandmother had made it just for him. That had been over ten years ago, and now the blanket was just a thin, ratty scrap of falling-apart cotton. But Armin had never seen Eren's bed without it; not since before he got it.

Sighing, he rolled a piece of the light blue lint between his fingers. Eren was looking at him expectantly, his knee bouncing energetically. It was something of a nervous tick of his; he hardly ever noticed when he started doing it. Armin had grown so used to it he barely noticed, either.

"Well, um… You know, at the party last week…" Armin started, his gaze flicking from Eren to everything else in the room, never staying on one thing for too long. "I… I saw Marco."

Eren raised an eyebrow at him. "You mean the guy you said was from your nightmares?" he asked. "Well, that's not too weird, is it? Mikasa, Sasha, and I are in your nightmares, aren't we?"

Armin shook his head. "It's not like that," he said. "I didn't… actually see him. Not… physically. It was almost like… like some sort of daydream, but more realistic. It happened while we were sitting in front of the bonfire. And it just, it turned into a funeral pyre, and there were so many people standing around it, dressed in military uniforms. They all looked so sad, Eren… And Marco was in front of me and he told me that they were all dead. All of them…" He paused, taking in a deep breath and running his hands over his face and into his hair. Eren was quiet, watching him with concern and worry etched all over his face.

"And I walked, and looked at them," Armin continued, squeezing his eyes shut. He could still see the stricken looks they carried, like they were reliving every single nightmare they'd ever had. "When I looked at them I remembered their names. I knew them, Eren. I knew them all, and so did you, and so did Mikasa. There was Ymir, and Connie, and Bertholdt… But they were all dead. Oh, god… Sasha was there sobbing, and I went back to Marco a-and he told me how she died." He took in a sharp breath, shaking his head vigorously as if it might get rid of the memories. "H-He said… that she lost both her legs, and… and that you found her." He stopped. Staring down at his hands, he tightly curled them into fists by his feet, letting out a deep sigh.

"Is that all?" Eren asked quietly. His eyes were focused on Armin, darting from his face to his hands to his arms.

Armin shrugged. "I… I just kind of freaked out when I saw that Jean was friends with someone named Marco Bodt," he said, still staring at his hands, trying to avoid looking at Eren. "I don't really get it… I mean I've never met him before or anything. He was just someone from my dreams. I drew him dead, with half his face torn off! And now he suddenly appears, and he's real? With everyone else in my dreams, I knew them before. And I didn't with this guy. What about all the others I dream about? Are they real people, too? Am I having nightmares about real peopleI don't know dying?"

His voice was rising into a slight panic, and a frantic look kept flashing across his face. Eren seemed to realize, as he reached out a hand, placing it gently on top of one of Armin's knees.

"I'm going to get Mikasa," he said. "Ok? Just… wait here until I get back. She's way better at this than I am, 'cause I'm kind of freaking out now, too. I'll be quick."

With that, he got up and hurried out the door; Armin could hear his footsteps as he bounded down the hallway and down the stairs, then out the door. Leaning towards the window, he peeked out and saw the brown-haired boy jogging across the street to Mikasa's house, nothing on his feet but a pair of old socks.

Sighing, Armin fell back onto the bed, closing his eyes and grabbing one of Eren's pillows, pressing it into his face.

A/N: This story can also be found at my Tumblr: tagged/libbyisactuallywriting

And on : s/9770639/1/Dead-Hearts