Icarus & I

Chapter 21

It Falls Apart

Though the day before had held blue skies, the morning of Day 20 brought air so thick I could practically taste it, along with a slew of clouds that made it difficult to tell when the sun had risen.

I woke at around 5 A.M. that morning, and, rather than reading or writing in my journal, I sat in silence and observed my sleeping friends, the sky as it turned from an inky black to a stagnant, blinding grey.

When Mikasa woke, she took the task of awakening and loading up Eren, who seemed much less than pleased, even if it meant returning to the safety of the car. He asked to switch off with me, so that I was in the back seat again.

"Armin, could you move?"

Something about his voice was off. No, nearly everything about him was off. He still had his hilarious bedhead, and his face was still his face, and his eyes were still his eyes, but everything about him seemed so, so much older than the night before, as though he had aged twenty years as I'd slept. My stomach turned, unsettled.

"Sure," I said, heading to the back.

We drove, entering a small town here, another one there. We freshened up in restrooms and grabbed breakfast. Rain began to trickle down on the van, then pound, then trickle again as we drove. The whole time, no one said a word. After managing to get a look at Mikasa's face, I realized that something had changed. Overnight, over the past week, over the past year, it didn't matter, because it was all too apparent, now.

And it wasn't like I had feared; I didn't feel like a stranger. I felt like I was in a dead-silent van with the two most important people in my life, and like something we were standing on was about to crack, break, and finally, cave in.

I daren't even touch my diary, scared that the moment I made a move, we would all begin to fall.

Instead, I pushed my earphones in, tentatively, played my favorite songs to try and wash away the unfounded anxiety that was growing in my stomach, crawling up my throat and into my eyes. I tried to sleep, to sleep it off, but it wouldn't let me. I stared out the window, at the road. Long, bumpy, gray. Impossible to see as it flew below us. I tried to console myself in that fact, but it only fed my nerves.

I think, somehow, I did manage to doze off without realizing it, because suddenly, I was opening my eyes, it was pouring out, and Mikasa was pulling over in the middle of nowhere.

"What's going on?" I asked quietly. No answer. The van stopped, and she got out, into the rain, and kept walking until I could hardly see her. I watched her figure descend, until she was seated in muddy grass, and curl in on itself. She began to shake.

I unbuckled myself, suddenly seized with fear as my only safeguard was removed, and moved forward to look at Eren. He was staring straight at Mikasa, but he made no move to leave the van.

"Eren," I said, my voice low and catching in my throat, "what is going on."

He didn't turn to me, but he finally spoke.

"Armin," he said, "Mikasa's late."

"Late?"

"And positive."

"Positive?"

He took a deep breath.

"She's pregnant. Armin."

Pregnant.

I tried to conjure up some sort of conclusion, some sort of meaning, to the word in the context of Mikasa and Eren and me and our future, but it felt abstract to me. What did that mean? Was it a bad thing? Was it good? What did it mean for us as individuals? Me? Eren? Mikasa? For us as a unit? Me, Eren, Mikasa?

I had been waiting, waiting in terrified anticipation for the floor to give way under me, but it seemed, instead, that Mikasa had been the first to fall through, and it had happened so quickly and without warning that I wasn't even sure it had happened.

Maybe I was mistaken, in my initial interpretation, and everything was actually just fine. This was good news. My best friends were starting a life together, and….

Eren looked at me, his face horrifically devoid of any emotion whatsoever.

It was then that I knew that Mikasa was, indeed, falling. And it seemed that Eren, and then I, were about to meet the same fate.

"We should go to her," I said. "You should go to her."

"We've talked about it," he informed me. "I knew. I've known for about a day, now."

"What are you guys going to-"

"We," he breathed, "have no idea."

I scrambled, grasping at straws in my head to make this whole thing okay. It felt like it should have been so easy, but it just wasn't. I found nothing.

Still, I stammered, "No, it's all going to be fine. You guys can figure this out. We've always figured things like this out-"

"I don't think you get it," he said, his voice slowly beginning to rise, "She. Is not. Ready."

"No mother is ever-"

"I am not ready."

He'd become loud. My breaths began to shake. My words began to blur together, in unsteady ramblings.

"Eren, I'm telling you, it'll all work-"

"Look at me," he said. I did. Really. "I was kicked off of the basketball team for pulverizing our captain. And why?"

"That has nothing to do with-"

"Because of a stupid prank," he snapped. He was almost yelling, now. "Because he had tricked my dumb ass into thinking that I had failed a test that didn't even exist."

"Eren," I tried to reason, "that doesn't mean anyth-"

"I am an idiot!" he yelled. His eyes had grown sharp, attacking. "A violent, angry, stupid motherfucker!" His entire face began to crumple. "I thought it would be okay when she told me," he said, his words, his hands, his features wavering without control, "We thought it would be okay, but look at me. Look at me!"

I did. Really.

"I can't be a dad." He shook his head fervently, turning his eyes to the dashboard. "I can't take care of a kid. I can't love it like it needs to be loved, I can't take care of Mikasa, there's something wrong with me, I can't even take care of you-"

"Of course you can!" Tears began to threaten. "Eren, without you, I don't know what I would-"

He shook his head again, still not facing me. He began to laugh, but the sound was without control. It was as though he was losing every ounce of grip he'd ever once held on himself, on his actions.

"You really don't remember," he said. "What you did. What I did."

"This….this stupid 'big thing' you keep talking about? Eren, that's- that's bullshit! Whatever it is, it has-"

"Armin," he said, running a hand through his hair, "Three years ago, a week after your Grandpa died-"

"I'm going to Mikasa."

I started to leave.

He opened his door as I opened mine, beginning to shout again.

"A week after your Grandpa died, you-"

"I'm going to Mikasa."

I left the car, he met me outside the van, in the downpour, towered over me, took me by the shoulders, his fingers digging into my neck painfully-

"You sent me a note through email, you thought I wouldn't read it because I'm slow to answer, but I had been waiting for you after I'd seen you the day before, waiting for you to call again, to text again, something, anything-"

The floor beneath me began to crack.

"-and I get an email that nearly makes me fucking shit myself, I run to your house, your empty fucking house-"

"No," I objected.

"- I run to your room, and your door is locked, and I call out your name, and you don't answer me, you don't fucking answer me-"

"That didn't-"

"- so I get a chair, bust open your door, and I see you with a rope, with a fucking noose, on a stool-"

"-I didn't-"

"- and you freeze and I freeze and then I ask no questions, I just fucking push you down and start beating the shit out of you."

And I remembered.

"My best friend, who was about to fucking hang himself-"

And I remembered.

"-and I beat you to a pulp, screaming like a fucking maniac, and you started crying and begging me to stop, but I didn't stop until you were out. I didn't fucking stop until I thought I had killed you. And then I broke down and I couldn't stop crying, Armin," and his voice had turned to less than an exhale, and he said, "And your parents saw nothing. They were gone, and-"

"No, they weren't."

"Your parents left you to your own devices-"

"No, they didn't. They DIDN'T-"

"They let me beat you-"

"THEY DIDN'T-"

"Where were they?!"

I stopped.

Eren stared at his trembling hands.

"What examples do we have? What am I going to do, if this kid, my kid, cries for help, and he hurts me? Am I going to kill him?"

"How dare you even mention my parents," I said, and things had turned blurry, "They didn't kill me-"

"They almost did!"

"They didn't, I almost killed myself, you could've killed me-"

Eren grew silent.

"-don't bring my parents into your issues and your threat as one."

Eren was silent.

Things turned clear, shockingly clear, painfully, unbearably clear.

"Leave," he said.

Too clear.

"Leave."

Too, too clear, I started to fall and he stood above me-

He shoved me into the asphalt, running with murky water.

"Leave, or I will kill you."

Rain pelted me offensively. I was practically inhaling it, practically drowning already, and my lungs burned and my eyes burned and I was shaking so, so terribly, and everything was irrevocably, blindingly, suffocatingly clear, and

His eyes were an ice-cold, churning, wild riptide.

He was going to kill me.

I rose and bolted, ran until I couldn't breathe, and then I ran some more, and more, and more, and spots swam in my vision, and I was drowning in the pelting rain, and the sun was nowhere, nowhere in sight, and I could've died but I kept running, running like someone was biting at my heels, like I would certainly, clearly die if I stopped, so I didn't stop, I didn't stop, I didn't stop, I didn't stop, I didn't stop, I didn't stop, I didn't stop, nothing was clear, my vision blurred, my vision blurred, I didn't stop,

I fell in the mud, in the middle of nowhere, I didn't stop, I was drowning, I didn't stop, blood rushed in my ears, I didn't stop, and I couldn't feel my legs, and I saw buildings, white, blurry, faded, and I crawled, and I could breathe in the water again, and I bolted again, until I fell behind a splintering white wall and my heart would burst out of my chest, but nothing would kill me, for I had died, I had run so fast, I had died, I had run straight into my watery grave, like Icarus, like Icarus, like Icarus, there was my sun and he was too close, too close, too close, far too close, I had seen every sunspot, every flame, everything that could, would, should kill me, everything that did, and my wings melted and Grandpa was gone and I fell, I fell, I fell, I had hit the sea, and I was drowning, slowly, and I had already died.

I had already died.

Rain was lighter now, but I was on my back and eternally drowning.

I watched Armin Arlert II burst into tears, and I felt none of it but the water pouring over me in current after current after current filling my lungs as I inhaled, exhaled, inhaled, exhaled, eternally drowning, and already dead.

Hi. I'm Armin, and it's over.

What's the point?

The point of what.

It's over.

AN: It's over, and something new will take its place.

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