And the Blood Kept Running

by thesketchytepe

The massacre survivors discover another body in the Jaeger barn and are thrown into another series of nightmares as they help Detective Ackerman and Hanji catch the killer. Dr Smith is quickly losing grasp of his patients at his rehab center and seeks for help from the most unlikely places. All must face what is haunting them the most: ghost of the past or their own mental turmoil.

3. House of Horrors (Jean POV)

**WARNING: Mentions to suicide, self-harm, and various mental illnesses are discussed in this chapter. Please read with caution. Written by: blueTshirts**

The warmth from the fire threatens to melt the bottoms of my shoes and burn my toes, but I don't care. I continue to sit in the creaky lawnchair with my feet propped on the stone ring around the fire pit. My body temperature runs like a refrigerator rather than a furnace, so the heat helps the life continue to roll through my body as the chilly night drifts closer to morning.

I stare at the flames as they lick up into the air like flicking cats tails. Glowing embers breathe and writhe amongst the blue fire inside the pit. Floating flecks of ash drift into the air and dissipate into the darkness of the woods. The crackling and popping of the charred wood becomes a metronome to the symphony that is the forest nightlife. I breathe in the smoke that drifts my way with a breeze and appreciate the warmth it brings to my cold nose.

Marco chokes beside me.

I glance over at him with a soft smile watching him bat at the smoke that's threatening his sensus. "Buhuh, my eyes," he wheezes looking at me with a wrinkled look on his face.

I roll my eyes. "The more you whine the more it'll come for you."

He pulls the collar of his sweatshirt over his nose and shrinks further into his chair as if he can hide from the smoke. "Mercy," he croaks from his turtle shell. As the smoke continues to smother Marco he shifts and turns towards me in his chair making him look like a little kid. He lifts a sweater paw to shield the side of his face. He squints at me. "You're a witch, can't you tell the fire to, like, not blow on me?"

I grin. "Mother nature is much more powerful than me."

Marco mopes. "What's the point of being a witch if you can't control fire?"

I stick out my bottom lip feign sympathy. "Oh? Am I supposed to suddenly be able to control fire because someone has smoke in their eyes? Huh?"

Marco glares at me. Then makes a show of standing abruptly, picking up his chair, walking to the other side of the fire pit, and collapsing back into his seat with a pout.

"Genius," I say watching his pout soften into a soft smile. I stare at Marco as he leans his head in his hand and returns the stare with his eyes drifting into sleepiness.

I watch as Marco's dark eyes glistening with the reflection of the fire blink slower and slower until he's having a hard time keeping his eyes open for more than thirty seconds. I glance up at the sky. It's littered with faint speckles of lights beyond the shadows of the trees. I take a deep breath and smile to myself.

"Are you wishing?"

I look at Marco, he's giving me those tired, lovey-dovey eyes that make me fidgety. "Hm?"

Marco glances up at the sky and back at me. "Shooting star. What would you wish for?"

I sigh and think, looking back up at the sky. "Dunno," I mumble wondering if the world is spinning faster than usual beyond the atmosphere or if it's just the smoke messing with my vision. "What about you?"

I look at Marco as he lets his tired eyes wander as his mind does the same. A small smile plays at his lips as the glow from the fire colors him in gold and orange. A warmth blooms inside my chest, like my own little campfire in my heart. I don't tell Marco that I think I'd wish to spend the rest of my life with him.

Marco hums contently. "I think I..."

Marco's eyes lose focus as he stares into the flames. I scrunch my eyebrows with a confused smile as I watch him completely blank out as his gaze glosses over and the wondrous look on his face fades away.

After an oddly long moment I mutter, "Dude."

Marco doesn't snap out of haze. The flickering and flapping of sloppy flames casts shifting shadows over his darkening face. His eyes droop as if he's being hypnotized by a swinging pendulum. The muscles in his face relax and his jaw slowly sags as he stares open-mouthed at the fire.

My gut clenches at the dark expression on my bubbly boyfriend's face. I lean to try and catch his gaze. "Babe? You okay?"

Marco stares at the fire for a moment longer. Then blinks. He closes his mouth, collects himself, and stands in a loose, unbalanced jerk. He doesn't seem to even be aware that I'm sitting right in front of him. He continues his dead stare at the fire. His hands hang at his sides and his bangs shift in front of his eyes.

The longer he stands there, the more anxious I get. He's staring at the fire like an alcoholic at an empty glass amongst an empty bar. That's what it is: he looks empty.

"Marco?" I ask again my voice tense with caution. "What's wrong, baby?"

As I go to stand and pull my boyfriend away from the fire, his gaze snaps up to me. It almost makes me flinch.

His eyes are dull and dark, half-lidded and devoid of any wondrous curiosity or glistening positivity. His golden brown eyes have faded to black making him look like a lifeless doll. My limbs go rigid as he stares at me.

"Babe-"

Marco's mouth doesn't move when he speaks, but I hear his voice. And among his voice are screams and wails and gunshots.

"You're the best thing that ever happened to me, Jean Kirstein."

As my brain explodes with the horrific cries of my dead friends, Marco steps forward placing his body into the firepit between us and clothes immediately ignite in the clawing flames. He burns as he stares at me unmoving and unaware of the fire that's consuming the both of us.

The fire around him glows in a violent red as his skin dissolves. I look at him as the burning inside my body ripples with blue flames as it melts away my mind. I'm crippled with fear as I stand unmoving and watch Marco die. When my mind finally forms a thought to save Marco, my hand reaches into the red flames only to be grabbed with a flaming hand.

I stop breathing when I snap my gaze back to Marco's black eyes only to find that they've been replaced with a bright, glowing shade of green. Marco leans forward as the fire continues to burn his clothes, hair, and skin. He leans until his face is inches from mine. The heat seers layers of skin off my cheeks and I choke on the hot smoke that rolls into my nose and mouth.

Marco lets me writhe in pain for a moment before a smile stretches across his face. And that's when I realize that it's not Marco anymore.

Eren.

He laughs, smoke rolling from between his black teeth as his breath smells like rot and decay. He pulls on my wrist until half of my body is burning along with his. But I can't bring myself to scream.

Blood starts to blister and bubble from behind one of his eyes until the entire side of his face is dripping and slick with burning body fluids.

Through the death amongst his lips and the demise in his eyes, Eren asks, "Was it worth knowing me, Jean?"

The next moment, I'm no longer in the woods, there's no fire, there's no Eren, there's no Marco. I feel the familiar sting of screams in my throat and pounding aches of nightmares in my head. I thrash away from the hands that I still feel holding my wrists, knowing it can't be Eren, but fearing that it might be.

"Jean! Stop!"

I finally recognize the figure that's holding my wrists and an overwhelming mix of relief and agony forces me to stop resisting. I heave in wet breaths as I stare back at Levi as he tries to get me to calm down. It only takes a moment for my violent defense to crumble into helpless sobbing.

I relax back onto the bed that I don't remember falling asleep in and stare up at the blank white ceiling and cry. Levi, who's still holding my wrists unsure if I'm going to go into another destructive fit, waits for a moment before releasing my hands.

The image of Marco's empty expression twisting into the face of the evil himself burns new scars into my brain, giving me another reason for my insomnia. The worst part is that the nightmare wasn't too different from the usual ones. I dream of Marco dying over and over again, the next one just as painful as the last, and never seeming to end. But this time, I felt that same warmth in my heart, the campfire on a cool autumn night, as I had a normal, good moment with my boyfriend. Only to wake up and remember that Marco is long dead.

The rippling effects of grief and loss clench harsh pains in my chest and I roll away from Levi's iron grip to curl into a ball and cry. This time Levi lets me go and give me a moment to mourn once again.

I choke on hiccuping sobs until I lose the energy to continue crying. It's not worth the effort to try and compose myself any earlier, I've learned to just let it happen whenever it comes, hopefully that makes it easier later in the day.

My breath slows into hitched sighs and it doesn't take much longer until I'm staring blankly at the wall I'm facing. I blink at the pale shade of blue the wall is painted, I scrunch my eyebrows together as a sickly realization comes to me.

I roll back over on the small bed. A bed firm and unwelcoming, it's a tough sponge material that isn't meant to be an actual bed, but I've spent many nights in it. I scrub a hand down my sloppy face and notice Levi sitting in a chair at the far wall near the foot of the bed. He's scrolling on his phone with one hand and nursing a coffee with the other.

I look around the room and the nauseous feeling only continues. I know where I am, and it's one of literally the last places I want to be.

Erwin's House for Fucked Up Young Adults.

There's no windows so I don't know if it's still the evening or if it's aged to morning by now. Levi drinking coffee does nothing to help tell the time, the man is addicted to the shit like I am. Plus, I don't remember falling asleep at all. The last thing I remember was riding in the car with Levi and driving away from the estate.

I swallow. Everything hurts.

"Where's Annie?" I croak through the tears in my abused throat.

Levi glances up at me for a moment, assesses, and then looks back down at his phone. "The apartment probably."

"You don't know?"

"I'm your babysitter, not hers," he says to the phone. I blow a frustrated sigh and look at the ceiling. After a long silent moment that I take contemplating on how I'm going to beat up Levi so I can break out of this place, Levi asks, "What'd you dream about?"

I exhale, closing my eyes for a moment. "Nothing," I say sitting up and blinking away the dizziness that spins my scrambled brains. "Can we leave? This place gives me the creeps."

Levi looks up at me, putting his phone down. I have the urge to grab it and smash it on the floor. "I'm keeping you here until further notice."

I stare at him for a moment. He looks like shit. I wonder what I look like. "What?"

"You need to be on watch and I can't stay with you twenty-four seven, so Erwin and Petra are on rounds with me."

"I'm not a fucking puppy, Levi," I say through clenched teeth. My temples throb with the tension but I'm used to the familiar pain.

He looks at me blankly, working his jaw for a moment before he shrugs. "It's either here or the hospital, your choice."

"Are you fucking kidding?" I ask without any fight to my tone. I've been awake for two minutes and I'm already exhausted.

Levi blinks once. "Does it look like I'm kidding?"

"You can't just send me to the hospital," I say well aware of the fact that he can do that and I would be stuck on a full-time watch for the next 72 hours in a bleach house surrounded by grumpy and uncaring hospital folk.

"Look at you," he says with a jerk of his chin. "I could send you to the hospital and they'd keep you for a year."

I wrinkle my face into a scowl and look over my body. Bandages. Everywhere. They coil up my arms and under my shirt. My fingers wander to the fat square gauze pad that's taped to the side of my neck and then to the couple of butterfly bandages near my eyes.

I sigh, dropping my hands into my lap noticing each of my fingertips are securely wrapped in fabric tape. Not because they're wounded, but because they're the weapons.

"Fuck," I say to myself, my head throbbing at the stress that grows in my psyche.

"Yeah," Levi says. "Now decide."

I shake my head feeling more defeated the longer I stare at my arms. "Fuck you."

"That's what I thought," Levi says as he stands. He runs a hand through his hair and drags his feet toward the door. "Don't do anything stupid for five minutes, I'm getting Erwin."

I sit in silence as Levi leaves staring longer at my arms as my mind steadily declines with the memories I'm trying to put together from the past few hours. Still, I don't know what time it is, I'm not sure if that matters, but it could help.

I glance around the room; the unsettling realization of what's doomed to be my near future. My face twists up with disgust as I re-familiarize myself with the nurse's office at Erwin's Little House of Crazies. The pale blue paint and the white counter space and the neatness of the small room makes my brain itch with irritation. Everything is neat, and it always is; it makes me want to tear it all apart.

I close my eyes at the headache that brews within my skull. I rub my fingers at my temple and wince when my hand brushes against an unbandaged wound on the side of my head. I drop my hand back into my lap and groan.

Fuck.

I stare at my hands. The patchwork of tape and bandages. I look like I took a swan dive into a snake pit. Maybe I did.

The longer I stare at my hands my mind begins to wander, my thinking immediately drifts to the fuzzy events that led me to this room. I remember seeing the barn, the body. I remember fighting with Annie and talking to Levi. I remember Marco.

A dreadful feeling starts climbing from my gut, into my chest, and begins to tense the muscles in my throat. My breathing starts to shake like my hands. The memories play on their own like a movie I'm being forced to watch.

I blink around the flickering images of the nurse's office and the Jaeger woods. My hands switch from being wrapped in bandages to resting in my lap in bloody, twitching claws that tear at my skin. The silence around me starts to grow louder with the sound of Annie screaming for me to shut up and Marco telling me that it's going to be okay.

I groan bending forward to put my face between my knees and my hands securely around my head. I try to breathe around the feeling that my throat is collapsing. I'm either going to puke or pass out. I'd prefer to pass out so I don't have to fucking deal with this but it would keep me at the house longer if Erwin thinks I'm passing out from panic attacks.

The shaking of my body becomes more and more uncontrollable as I begin to sweat and nearly collapse onto the floor. I curse under my breath when the same streamline of horrors come to the forefront of my mind. Now the usual images of dead bodies over the cabin floor are accompanied with Armin laying dead in a deserted barn.

Fuck. No. It's not Armin. Armin's alive. Armin's alive. Armin's alive.

I try to focus on the car ride I had with Levi. He tried talking to me. The amount of times he had to tell me that my friend wasn't the corpse we found in the abandoned barn made him sound like a broken record. And still, I couldn't shake the unbelievable guilt that I could've saved someone that shouldn't have died in that horrible place, whether it was Armin or not. Levi tried to tell me the same coping mechanisms Erwin has taught me over the past couple years in dealing with self destructive thoughts that could lead me into a panic attack. It didn't work. Instead he would instinctively check every thirty seconds to see if my hands would start acting up again like my own little robot torture devices.

My brain eventually fogged into a dissociative state as it tried to start repressing everything I'd just seen. But my brain's so fucked up at this point that I can't even use shock to my advantage. Then, I freaked out again when my eyes flicked to the rearview mirror seeing Marco looking back at me with concern in his eyes and my name on his lips.

I think that was the defining factor that had Levi taking me to the crazy house.

I squeeze my eyes shut as tears threaten to spill over my cheeks again. I let out a shaky breath with a curse. "God fucking dammit, Marco."

"I'm here, Jean. It'll be okay."

Knowing the voice immediately, I sit up so fast that I nearly crack my head open on the wall behind me. Sitting next to me on the bed is Marco looking just as he did in the car.

"Fuck!" I shout as I scramble backwards on the bed until I'm pressed up against the corner. I stare wide-eyed at Marco (who's looking as real as my own body I might add) as my lungs burn with hyperventilation. "Wha-what what are you doing here?"

Marco looks just as scared as me. His round eyes are full of worry and panic. He sits on the edge of the bed with his hands tight around the rim of the sponge mattress. He opens his mouth and gapes at me as he tries to think of something to say, his eyes flicking back from me to different points of the room.

"I don't-"

"You're like, you're...huh," I sputter as I heave around my words. I stare at Marco like I haven't seen him in two years, even though I have. I don't know how to describe it, but he looks different. I could recognize that Marco was never actually there. He's a part of my brain that's playing him into my daily life like a broken projector. And yeah, I liked it, I talked to him knowing he's dead and knowing it's unhealthy.

But now. Now he looks real enough that I could touch him. Like he's actually here. Right now. With me in this room. As if I've been having this horrible nightmare for the past two years and maybe Marco did actually survive.

"You're here," I say through gritted teeth as my hands pull on the tapes around my fingers as I squeeze them into tight fists. "You're here, you're, like, really here. How are you here?"

Marco gapes for a moment longer and starts shaking his head. "I don't know, I don't really know where I am."

"What?" I ask almost like a helpless plea. "What do you mean? What are you doing?" My voice picks up the same frantic tone that I feel pressing myself deeper into the corner. I oddly wish that Annie was here with me.

Marco wraps his arms around his torso and seems like a little kid surrounded at a loud football game. He looks scared.

"I don't know, Jean. I don't know, what's going on?" Marco's voice cracks as he chokes up in tears. The crack chips another piece of my heart. My instinct is to reach out to him. But I know I can't.

I look at him in horror as my heart breaks and I no longer know what he's going to say next. "You're dead, Marco."

He looks at me, his wide, terrified eyes looking lost among his misplaced body. We look at each other, the two of us just as confused and scared as the other, wondering why any of this is happening.

"Jean," he says, his voice so small and so fragile that it rips a sob from my chest. "I know."

"Please go," I whine, tears collecting under my chin. "Please, I love you but you're scaring me, so please go."

Marco shakes his head completely lost and dumbfounded. "I can't-"

The door slams open to an exhausted but driven looking Levi and a large unperturbed Erwin behind him. Levi's eyes scan the room quickly like he always does, assessing the area before he gets into action. My eyes flick between Levi and Marco waiting for Levi to notice my boyfriend sitting right in front of him. But his eyes never catch.

I groan around a throat full of thick saliva. My hands claw into fists in my hair. I keep my eyes on Marco as Levi starts yelling at me. I ignore him.

Marco. I have been seeing him for two years in this weird secondhand way that my brain has scrounged him into. My brain made him speak - I made him speak. I always knew that he was dead. At first I thought that maybe he was a ghost following me around but that was quickly shooed away by the gruesome reality that my brain was only trying to protect me from more pain.

I got used to him. I was comfortable with his figure in odd corners and in mirrors. It felt like he was watching over me, ready to pick me up when I needed him. But he was mine. He didn't seem to have a mind of his own, only what my mind could supplement for him, only what I could come up with in my Marco covered memory. He was only a by-product of me at that point. He never interacted with other people, he barely did much around me even when I didn't care about letting the hallucination run its course.

I thought I was in control.

But now, I watch him as he flinches back at Levi's dramatic entrance and his shouting. His scared, puppy dog eyes look even more helpless as the men storm into the room, ignore him, and solely focus on me. He is just as terrified as me, but no one will give him attention.

He looks like he's right here, right now, alive and desperate for help, but no one can see him but me.

What is happening to me?

"Jean, talk to me. Describe what you're seeing," Erwin's calm and collected voice acts like a soothing string quartet as the Titanic is sinking. I notice that Levi has been shut up.

All I can do is wheeze and stare at Marco, my brain moving like gelatin through a meat grinder. Everything is mush and nothing makes sense.

Before, I would've lied and told Erwin that I'm seeing nothing, that everything is fine, that he can leave me alone. But this fear of how realistic this hallucination is makes me feel like I've really gone off my rocker now.

So I spill.

"M-Marco," I say as if they didn't know who I was seeing already. Marco hears his name and looks back at me. The fear on his face reminds me of the day I lost him. "He's here."

Marco's eyes shift between Erwin and I as he listens, each word hurts him worse than the last.

"Describe him to me, center yourself and tell me about him. Normalize your visuals so we can continue to move along," Erwin says as he's sat in a stool near the bed. I've heard him say this routine a million times. It's annoying and I hate it, but I'm a little too desperate to care right now.

I swallow still in my huddled position in the corner. "He's scared," I start, my voice weak and timid. "He's looking at me, he's crying." More tears slip from my eyes as I describe Marco, especially when I can tell that he can hear me - that he's listening.

"What is he wearing?" Erwin asks.

A ball of concrete weighs heavy in my gut as I look over Marco. Usually he's dressed in plain clothing. Maybe one of his sweaters or nerd t-shirts. Sometimes when I'm on a jog he'll be in workout clothes. It depends on the day. But I feel like vomiting over myself when I recognize the flannel and jeans he's wearing. Not just any flannel. The specific shirt he wore on the day he was killed. A yellow flannel plaid with orange and brown stripes, and light wash jeans with holes in the knees. But it looks like before we were running in the woods trying to save our friends' lives and getting torn apart by murderous traps.

I tell Erwin this.

Erwin goes on to ask me how Marco is sitting, what does his skin look like, how is his hair styled, anything that would describe the way he looks. I know this is supposed to ground me, to keep me from panicking, but it only settles the pain deeper.

As I describe Marco he continues to cry, he looks so confused and guilty as if he's done something wrong. I'm still reeling on how he seems to have such a mind of his own. This is so unusual.

As the pain starts to throb in a numb pressure in my head and I can no longer cry with how exhausted I've become, I ask Erwin, before he can throw another question at me, "Is it possible for him to see you guys?"

I don't bother to tear my eyes away from the huddled figure Marco's become. The more I talked about him the more he caved in on himself and now he's sat leaning on his knees with his hands in his face like he's just as overwhelmed with the situation as I am.

I imagine Erwin makes a subtle thinking face like he does when I say something stupid. His eyebrows always give him away. "Can he see us?" Erwin asks.

I nod as Marco lifts his head to look at me, his eyes are red and puffy. I feel sick. "I can hear them too," Marco says with a hoarse voice.

I swallow, and take a quick glance at Erwin. "He says he can hear you guys too."

Erwin pauses for a moment. "He told you that?"

I squint my eyes at him. "Yeah?"

As Erwin keeps his thoughts a secret and sits in silence for a moment, Marco and I both look to him expectantly. Although he says nothing, merely looking down at his journal with a pinched look on his face.

"What?" I ask, unsure of why he's weird all of the sudden.

Levi from the corner of the room where he has his arms crossed and has been watching the whole time says, "Hallucinations don't usually visually and auditorily co-exist. It's either one or the other."

Marco looks between Levi and I. "But…" he says as his hand drifts to grab anxiously at the collar of his shirt. "I'm not a hallucination."

I notice the subtle annoyance that flickers over Erwin's eyes. It's always weird to see these two interact with each other. Usually I see Levi and Hanji at odds with each other in contradicting colorful chaos and impudent coldness. It's funny how Levi seems to be the troublemaker between Erwin and him.

"But he talks to me at the cemetery," I say trying to explain away how my hallucination most definitely can't be getting worse. "And-and he was talking once we got to the estate before we found-" My throat clamps up before I can mention the newest dead body I've had the dismay of witnessing.

Erwin's eyebrows knit together, his intense eyes watching me like he's trying to see through a one-way mirror. "Yes," he says tapping his pen lightly on his notes. "Marco 'talked' to you at the cemetery." Erwin adds a dismissive quoting hand gesture to only add on a layer of shame to my embarrassment. "But you made him talk. You essentially played him as your imaginary friend so you could tell him the things you would've wanted to tell him. You know that."

I nervously glance at Marco next to me. The embarrassment settles deeper when I can tell Marco's trying to read me just as Erwin is, looking for answers in my fucked up head. The shame boils under my skin until I'm unable to look at either of them, wishing I was knocked out with drugs.

"But you said he spoke to you before you saw the body? Was he talking to you while you were still on the crime scene?" Erwin asks. My heartbeat starts to pick up. I feel like I'm being held under a microscope. I decide to stare holes into my knees and remain silent. I'm done talking about this and embarrassing myself.

"He was," Levi decides to answer for me. "While we were on the phone and when Hanji and I showed up. Annie confirmed it as well."

I release a held breath between my lips and press my fingertips over my eyes. It makes my headache feel a little better.

"What did he say when you arrived? Anything particular or important?" Erwin asks.

I hear Marco murmur something under his breath. Instead of answering my real-life psychiatrists question, I'm more interested in what the hallucination of my dead boyfriend has to say.

"What?" I ask him. Marco's deep in thought as he stares at the ground with his eyes narrow and his lips moving slightly as he talks to himself. It reminds me of how intense he would get when he was cooking; reading a recipe over and over again, repeating the instructions to himself as he took great lengths to create an immaculate dish. He would hate that I literally only consume coffee and Chipotle anymore. "Marco," I say again trying to get his attention.

He looks up at me with a cautious glance at Erwin as he explains, "The girl that was there. The…" he pauses as an uncomfortable look crosses his face. His words must taste bitter. "The girl that died. I could hear her crying."

"Crying? What do you mean?"

"Jean," Erwin says trying to stop me from drifting further into this disformed reality I like to live in. But I ignore him.

"I don't know. I could hear her as if she was just standing in the woods. I didn't know she was dead though, I just thought maybe she was hurt. That's why I told you guys to go to the barn," Marco says his eyes drifting from side to side as he recalls his story.

My chest aches with a new feeling as I listen to him. I've felt the longing and grief and loss and pain that came with his death. But now as I look at him and listen to him as if he's right here in front of me, an odd feeling of the same loss mixes with a loneliness that's accompanied by completeness, it overwhelms me all over again.

It takes me a moment before I tear my eyes from Marco's face and blearly look at Erwin in my exhausted state. I sigh and tell Erwin what Marco said, but Levi seems more interested.

"You said Marco told you to go to the barn?" Levi asks with a suspicious squint.

"Yeah? So?"

"So you guys didn't just happen to walk up on the body?" Levi clarifies, his suspicious glance turning a little more demanding.

I look from Marco to Levi. "No, it was the first place we went."

Levi stares at me, his face shrinking until it's a pinched expression that makes me feel like I did something wrong. I look to Erwin for support, but he's merely looking at me like I'm a snake in the zoo's replitilion exhibit.

"I…" Marco says, still thinking to himself. "I think she killed herself."

I look back at Levi hoping that the information is my ticket to getting out of this possibly bad position with him. "Marco says she committed suicide."

Levi stares at me for a moment longer, before slowly closing his eyes and bringing a hand to squeeze at his temples. Fuck, I don't think that was the right thing to say.

I hear Erwin sigh like his coffee is unexpectedly cold, and then he raises a hand at me. "Alright, let's end this here."

My heart skips and leaps into a jog, moving faster as my anxiety kicks up again. "What? What do you mean? What's wrong?"

Levi makes a similar sigh and pulls his phone out for his back pocket. "I'm making a call to your lawyer."

"My lawyer? What? Why?" I say nearly leaping off the bed and chasing after Levi as he exits the room. Erwin stops me with his large presence.

"You're being recorded, as you know, we don't want you to say anything else that could be incriminating without a lawyer around," Erwin explains.

My jaw drops. "Incriminating?" I nearly yell at him. "What the fuck are you talking about? You think I had something to do with this?"

Erwin's lips press into a tight line as I continue to go against his wishes for me to kindly shut the fuck up. "No one's saying that, Jean. We just want you to be safe, alright? We're on your side. We're just trying to take care of you."

I slap my hands over my face and groan, debating if I should scream into my palms. It wouldn't be the first time Erwin's witnessed me pulling into anger hyperdrive when I'm overwhelmed and confused.

"Motherfucker motherfucker motherfucker," I curse into my hands, then look up at Erwin. "I didn't-"

Erwin fakes coughs loudly to keep me from finishing my sentence. He then gives me a leveling glare. "Don't say anything regrettable. Just be patient, and we'll figure this out. Got it?"

I feel like I'm holding my breath against my need to sputter my innocence to Erwin. But he's right, and I've already been through this before and I don't want to get myself into this shit again. So instead of putting up a fight, I simply nod.

"Good," Erwin says, "Now I'm going to make some calls. Do you want to go to your room or-"

"No, no," I say immediately as I shake my head. "I'm not going anywhere near those crazy motherfuckers."

Erwin considers refuting for a moment but relents. "Alright, fine, I'll have Petra coming in to check on you regularly. Just hang out for a bit while we figure things out."

I sigh to myself as I feel tears climbing up my throat, but give a shaky "okay," to Erwin so he can leave. And once again I'm alone in this little room with my dead boyfriend who I still haven't decided makes me feel better or worse.

I lay back down on the bed and face the wall. Marco doesn't say anything despite the overwhelming sense of confusion and anxiety I'm getting from him. And I don't say anything despite my need for comfort and control. The two of us maintain a heavy silence for what feels like hours. We let ourselves spin webs of questions, concerns, and inevitable fears so that the other can easily knock the sticky strings away with a soft smile and hopeful words.

At least that's what I'm wishing for.

I end up falling asleep at one point, and I only wake up when I hear the creak of the door opening. My eyes shoot open as a ping of anxiety bounces in my sternum. I groan a bit thinking that there's no reason to be anxious, there's nothing to worry about, Erwin and Levi are looking out for me - nothing is going to happen here.

But it's only because it's this house. With everything that's happened here, I can't help but to sleep lightly and remain in survival mode. It's not safe here no matter how many locks Erwin puts on the doors or pads on the walls. Physical matters can't contain crazy.

Still. I'm being stupid. Sure, I haven't even bothered to start to worry about the fact that Armin is literally a floor away from me. I hope he is, or do I? I thought he was dead. But the fact that he could still be alive seems just as concerning to me.

I take a deep breath and peek over my shoulder. I nearly scream like a child when I see someone standing with their back to me facing the door.

I smack a hand over my face. "Marco," I whine, letting my heartbeat slow back to normal. Marco turns to me with a painful apologetic look on his face. "Dude, you fucking scared me, fuck you doin'?"

"Sorry," Marco says with a little smile. He points at the door in front of him with a wince, "Someone's trying to get in."

I blink at him, still sleepy. "Huh?"

Then, the door, the only door, jerks open as if someone was pressing harshly on the other side. A girl flops inside nearly falling flat on her face. My eyes bulge at the figure on the floor as she begins to giggle to herself. Her long, stringy, dark hair hangs over her face as she cranes her neck to look up at me. Her droopy eyes meet mine as a smile curls her lips.

"Pieck," I mutter as my voice unintentionally cracks.

"Hey, Horse Face." My eyes flick up from Pieck's wriggling body on the floor as she tries to stand to the figure that's standing behind her in the doorway. I clench my jaw as I sit up and cling to the edge of the bed. "I was wondering when you'd be back."

Floch. Absolute freak that tends to skip around on what vibe he wants to give off. Often he's a dazed mouth-breather because he's so jacked up on depressants to counteract his mania. If he's not a walking pharmacy closet, he's a twitchy ball of fire. Almost literally, the guy's a pyromaniac that likes to experiment.

I stare at him, his face twisted into a cocky smile and his auburn hair horribly flopped on the top of his head. He doesn't seem blubbery and loose to me. That means he's dangerous.

"I was just here yesterday," I mutter as I try to build a false confidence to get the pair to back off. "And don't fucking call me Horse Face."

Floch laughs as Pieck gets to her feet and stands on a slant like she might fall again at any moment. "Aw, don't get angry with me. I'm just trying to be friendly." Floch lifts his fingers to his teeth and drops his hand to reveal a little wooden match between his lips. His ugly brown eyes glint with filth like a muddy garden destroyed after the rain. "I wanted to see you before they drag you to prison for the rest of your life."

Marco backs away from the door and to my side. He must notice the sickly sense of danger radiating from the two.

"What are you talking about?" I spit at the pyro.

He smiles, the match twitches between his teeth. "It's hard to miss you when you're brought in covered in blood and blabbing about dead bodies. And then when we overheard your little social worker saying that he thinks your dead boyfriend may be telling you to kill people, how could we not be interested?"

As much as I want to tell Floch he's wrong, I can't. I wouldn't be surprised if Levi thinks that I've completely fallen off and thinks Marco is the Devil to my Son of Sam. It's logical, I get it. But it's not true. And everything is going to work itself out. I hope.

In the meantime I have to make sure that these crazies know that I'm not someone to mess with anymore.

"Fuck off," I say through gritted teeth. "This is bullshit and I'm not playing nice anymore." The time that I'd spent in this house was for Erwin to observe me and determine if I could live on my own. And as much as I despised it, I decided that I should probably lay low and be nice to people to get out of here rather than throw the well-deserved punches at all the crazy shitheads that messed with me. Granted, this was only after a few months when I literally punched anyone and anything that annoyed me. I learned quickly, okay?

Anyways, Floch deserved the brunt of my violent tendencies.

Rather than backing away like a sane individual, Floch's smile widens as he steps further into the small room. "Neither am I."

"Jean," Marco warns as I stand with my hands fisted at my sides. "Something's wrong with him, don't."

"You wanna die, freak?" I say as a thrill of adreniline shoots to my head and blankets my fear with idiotic energy.

Floch plucks the match from his teeth and licks his lip, leaning his chin back as if offering himself up for an uppercut. He blinks at me through his small eyes and I can almost swear that a glimmer of green swirls in his irises. "You'll die first. I'll make sure of it."

I'm caught off guard by what I think I saw, enough so for someone to grab Floch's shoulder from behind and spit, "Knock it off."

Floch scoffs at the interruption. "Oh c'mon," he laughs, "I only want to know how he did it." He looks at me with a nasty grin. "Did it feel good, Horse Face? Was it really your dead boyfriend that told you to do it or was it the guy that killed him?"

Marlowe and his serious face and terrible bowl hair cut yanks on Floch giving him a firm warning as the crazy kid stumbles a step away from me. Marlowe only spares me a glance as he continues to pull the Flaming Ginger out of the room.

Marlowe's not a bad guy, he's got serious OCD problems and that's the only reason he's here, but I feel like he shouldn't have to deal with people like Floch or even me. He's trying to get out as soon as he can just like I was. And usually his good deeds are for another tick on Erwin's good side.

Nevertheless, he's not a nice guy. He doesn't like me, which I can understand. Also, he doesn't like anyone, not really. Except one other guy that seems to cling to his side at all times.

Thomas. A blonde kid that used to be a sports star at his school until his sister killed their parents and then herself while he was away. He got depressed, became an addict to a string of drugs that he was in rehab for before he came here. And when he tried to hang himself he ended up breaking a ceiling fan in his house and he got such a bad concussion that he doesn't really speak much or remember much anymore.

I only know this about Thomas because Marlowe told me when he was pissed at me for being a "dramatic brat" and wanted me to feel guilty and see that other people had worse problems than me.

Yeah, they're a great pair of guys.

And of course. Thomas is at Marlowe's side trying to gently ease Pieck away from the situation. Thomas meets my eyes and he's the only one that gives me a fraction of an honest smile.

"Watch your back, Horse Face!" Floch yells from the hall as Marlowe continues to drag him away, probably directly to Erwin's office to shake proof in his face that he should be allowed his freedom.

Thomas sighs as he takes Pieck's hand in his and walks slowly out of the room after Marlowe, pulling the girl along as if she's a cat on a leash. I watch Pieck as she stumbles on her toes behind Thomas. I can't help but to watch her like she's a renaissance doll sitting on the front porch of a burning home. She may seem harmless but her overall nature is horribly unsettling.

I don't know much about Pieck. I don't think anyone does. She's in a weird state of mind like she's skipping along clouds but also those clouds are really piles of human remains. She's most likely completely out of her mind and detached from reality more so than any of us. She could be extremely dangerous or hopelessly vulnerable - probably both.

Whatever it is, she gives me the creeps. And just like Thomas and Marlowe seem to come in a pair, so do Floch and Peick. Not that Floch and Peick have a friendly relationship between them (or more so in Thomas and Marlowe's case, the two seem more than just friendly) but their relationship is more like a lion and snake making an alliance to escape the zoo. The two both have abilities that complete their little criminal duo. None of it is settling for me.

Once the crazies are gone, I let out a breath and slump back against the bed, feeling the adrenaline easing away as anxiety replaces it. My hands shake and my head pounds. The familiar result of coming down from a high.

Marco shuffles in his place, his eyes flicking between me and the open door. "Do you know them?"

I shake my head. "Only their crazy parts."

Marco doesn't say anything as he worries at his fingers. A crease in between his eyebrows forms as his face twists with a mix of confusion and fear. My eyes linger on his expression, I haven't seen him like this in years. My chest aches.

His teeth worry at his bottom lip as his eyes start to shift while he thinks. I recognize it as his calculating face. It's like when we're at a party and Sasha's thowing up in the bathroom after singing "Don't Stop Believing" for the fourth time during kareoke, Connie's high as a kite and sitting in the kitchen pantry floor swallowing Taki's, I'm in some form of cross faded, horny as fuck and trying to grope him in public, Eren's threatening to start a duel with anyone in Wii Sports, Reiner is crying about how he has no passion in life, and Berthold is flat out missing. It's the face that everything seems slightly out of control and he doesn't know how to wrangle it all in. He's formulating a plan on how many Uber's to order, what rooms he should lock people away to, and how soon the two of us can get some privacy. Marco usually ended up being the ranger of the crew on the crazy nights. We were way too lucky to have him.

But now an extra layer of fear darkens his features. He already seemed so uncomfortable before the crazies came around and now he looks even worse. "Are you okay?" I ask forgetting that Marco is not real.

I see him swallow. "Uh, that guy, the red haired guy. He gave me bad vibes." He tears his eyes away from the open door as if he is waiting for Floch to burst back inside with flames spewing from his mouth. Marco's pretty brown eyes lock on mine. "This house gives me bad vibes."

"Do you know where we are?" I ask him specifically, remembering all the times that Marco had been with me while I was living here. Even yesterday, Marco was at my side when I visited Armin. When I completely blew my cover in front of Erwin.

Marco shakes his head. "I don't think so?"

"Do you know any of these people? Even the doctors, the big blond guy, the short grumpy guy?"

Marco shakes his head again. I blink at him. This just keeps getting more and more strange.

"Well, uh, this is my psychiatrist's place. Not, like, his house. But it's almost like a rehab center for crazy people. He gets a bunch of kids that he thinks are worth salvaging and helps give them the skills to live on their own with their...problems."

"Your psychiatrist?" Marco asks the itching concern in his features softens to a soft worry. "You have a psychiatrist?"

"Yeah, that's the blonde guy. The short guy is my, like, social worker. But not really because I'm twenty-two and all, he's more like a mentor-therapist-bossman for me."

Marco's beautiful brown eyes that I've spent hours drawing over and over and over again in the times that I wish I could've spent with him, look at me like I'm an empty canoe drifting helplessly down a slow stream. "You're twenty-two," he repeats. "And you have a psychiatrist and a social worker."

He continues to try and calculate the logic, the physics, of what I've told him. He seems so lost.

"You've known this," I tell him.

"I have?" He asks as his hand rubs at the back of his head hoping that he can open some kind of unlocked memories that might be stored there.

I shrug. "Kind of, I've kept you updated on my life for the past two years. I talk to you every day at the cemetery."

"The cemetery," he repeats, once again, his brain still lagging and struggling to form connections.

I know I said it earlier but I feel the need to remind him. "You know you're dead, right? You died two years ago. Mikasa shot you."

This doesn't seem to shock him, thankfully. He only nods vaguely at the floor. "I-I know. I just-I don't really remember anything in between. Only, like, pictures, blurry stuff. But everything has been clear since yesterday."

"Yesterday? Like at the estate?"

"Yeah, I just, it felt like waking up. Like I've been dreaming all this time. I remember vaguely the first days after I died. I stayed with you, and then I just, kinda, started drifting into a dreaming state until yesterday."

"What does that mean?" I ask, almost scared of what he might tell me. I don't think I can maintain any kind of composure if what he's insinuating could be true.

"I don't know, really, it's all foggy," Marco mumbles. He looks at me, his eyes drifting over my bandages and back to my face. "That girl yesterday, the one we found? She told me something."

"Wait, you talked to her?"

He nods. "Yeah, except I don't think she really knew I was there. She was really just talking to herself. She kept talking about a harvest or something."

"A harvest? Of what?"

"I don't know, she seemed completely out of it. But it was like she was proud of herself, she said she was a bad seed that needed to be harvested. She kept talking about someone and how they were going to bring peace. I-I don't really know more about it, it was mostly gibberish."

I sit there squinting at him. Here is Marco looking as real as my own damn body telling me he knows he's dead and that he only became lucid twenty-four hours ago to the sound of a dead girl recanting her death. What the fuck am I supposed to say to that? What the fuck am I supposed to do - period?

"Fuck, dude."

"Yeah," he sighs, "But you were saying that you thought Armin was dead? You said it was your fault too. Why?"

My stomach lurches, so much so that I lean forward a bit and grip the edge of the bed preparing for puke to dribble out of my mouth. I close my eyes and have a hard time getting the image of Armin laying dead in that horrible barn with our last encounter on his mind.

"Uh, Armin's…" I sigh, looking back at Marco. It helps ease the sickly feeling. "Armin's here, he's been here ever since he was released from the hospital. And, well, I visited him yesterday for the anniversary and all, and he told me to kill myself so I told him to kill himself and then I ran out of the house thinking he was going to kill me because I thought Eren was using his body like a puppet and torturing me from beyond the grave."

Marco's eyes glaze over as he's looking at me. Almost as if he's so incredibly stunned by the change my life has gone through that he has to stop for a moment to process it.

I start to feel awkward and keep talking. "But, uh, yeah I just thought he might've taken it hard. I felt guilty."

Marco's glazed eyes float toward the open door as he stares at the void, saying nothing.

I look between him and the door. Nothing's happening. I know this is a shit show of a place but I don't know what's got him so worried. "You okay, man?"

He shakes his head like he's jerking out of his daze. Weird. "Yeah, sorry, this place just gives me the heebie jeebies."

I nod. But then I start to look at the door too. An idea comes to me.

Armin's here. Or he should be. At least that's what everyone is saying but I'm so paranoid that I have a hard time trusting literally anyone. I swore I saw Armin yesterday and I just can't get the image out of my head. I just need to know for sure if he's alright. I can't be responsible for another death of someone I love.

I stand from the bed, taking a deep breath and looking at Marco. He raises an eyebrow at me.

"I would tell you to stay low but I don't think anyone can see you," I say with a broken smile.

He nods. "Yeah it's friggin' weird, man."

I frown again, still weirded out by Marco's state. "Never bothered you before," I mutter to myself. Marco goes to ask me what I said but I jump back in before he can. "Anyways, just follow me. I'm going to Armin's room to see if he's okay."

"Is it like a treacherous journey or something? This just seems like a normal sized house," Marco asks peeking around the corner of the open doorway.

I point at the deadbolt lock that's accessible from the outside - not the inside. "See that? House is full of them. Most of the time Erwin doesn't have to lock people inside their rooms but it's not unheard of. And that girl? The weird one with the long hair that was laughing and all? Her name's Pieck, she's known for picking locks. Pretty sure she's like an established criminal or something - anyway. Erwin locked me in here because he doesn't want me roaming the house. I also may or may not have a history of breaking out when I'm at my worst. They're trying to decide what to do with me right now. They can't have me going around and starting fights just yet."

I step towards the door and listen for any beckoning footsteps down the hall. At this rate, if Petra, Levi or Erwin haven't stomped inside yet with the yelling and the invasion of the crazies, that means they're not watching the cameras and they're not paying attention. Either that or something more important is on their plates right now. I wonder for a moment how the call with my lawyer went. I don't want to think about it.

"The people here, the patients, they're not safe. Not most of them anyway. Plus, if they see me sneaking around, Erwin rewards snitches so I'll be beat with the word of psychology once he finds out. Not to mention what Levi will do when he hears that I'm already back on Erwin's special list."

For a fleeting moment, I wonder if it's really worth seeing Armin. Even if he is still alive, I'm sure he's still angry at me and I'm the last person he wants to see. But still, I just have this itch that I need to see him with my own eyes. I have a hard time trusting those who will lie to me just for the sake of my mental state.

"The red-headed kid? That's Floch, he doesn't like me. He's tried to light me on fire multiple times and I've tried to smash his head in the refrigerator and waterboard him. The tall grumpy looking kid is Marlowe, he doesn't like me either, I got pissed at him once and trashed his room so that he would have a panic attack. And I once kicked Pieck in the face when she tried to crawl into my bed one night."

"At this rate, I don't know what you're afraid of, you sound like the most dangerous one here," Marco says with more of a pained admittance rather than a disappointed sigh. I look back at him and he's giving me those eyes that look like they're trying to apologize for everything. He keeps getting surprised at things that I thought he knew. It's strange.

I shake my head and turn back to the doorway. I can see soft light at the end of the hall where the kitchen is. It looks like the sun is setting. Sure, Marco may think that I'm the one who causes trouble and picks fights and begs for chaos, but my reputation is nothing compared to Armin's. Once a kind kid that only wanted what was best for everyone has developed a greater violence that even I can't compete with. It's almost like he has a whole other personality that's responsible for nearly killing me and several other patients in the house.

My gut swirls with the last image of Armin I have alive and able-bodied. Him lunging at me with a wild look in his eyes, manic yelling, and a grin that only belongs on a murderer.

"We've all changed, Marco. None of us are who we used to be, including Armin," I say in a whisper as I determine that the coast is clear and take a step into the hallway. Erwin's office is only two doors down but I don't think he's in there.

"What happened to Armin?" Marco asks in a whisper as he trails closely behind me. God, I can almost feel his body at this point.

I swallow as I tip-toe down the hall to the kitchen, poke my head around the corner toward the front entryway and see that there are still no bodies lurking nearby. I sigh when I glance at the stairs leading to the bedrooms. An anxious ache yanks at my gut.

"You'll see," I mumble, tip-toeing again to the stairs. The stairs are wooden and the house is old. The whole place creaks like it's a groaning elderly woman when she tries to pick up something off the ground. Thankfully, I've snuck around this house a thousand times. I can navigate this place with my eyes closed and not so much as a wheeze of a floorboard will be heard.

Marco, despite the living human sight he has become, makes no noise as he follows me. I keep wanting to warn him about where to step and what to avoid but I don't have to. He's still very much a figment of my imagination. He looks around the house as we walk, I can tell just at the way he's starting to breathe that he's uncomfortable. And when Marco's uncomfortable, he talks.

"How long were you here? A-and why?" He asks still in a whisper as we reach the top of the stairs.

I hold out a finger to him as I check the nearest bedrooms for bodies. One of the doors is closed, Thomas and Marlowe's room, they're probably going to bed. Although, Pieck's room is empty. It makes me question where everyone even is.

I take careful steps on my bare feet past the occupied room to another set of rooms with both of their doors open. Floch's room: empty. And of course, another room that doesn't have anyone living in it: also empty.

I wonder where those fucking crazies are.

"I was here for almost a year," I say quietly. "Everyone thought I was going to commit a spree killing and then kill myself whenever I had a chance to be on my own."

"W-what?" Marco blurts way too loudly if he were real. I still freeze for a moment hoping no one heard it. Silence fills the air. I glance back at Marco, and his face is in painful shock like he's just been shot in the gut.

I nearly choke when a rush of the image of his body collapsing on the ground after a sharp bang filled the cabin air. I squeeze my eyes shut and breathe through the flashes, hoping no one can hear me struggling in the hallway.

I let out an exhale as the pictures fizzle away and back to Marco's worried face. I raise my eyebrows at him. "They were wrong," I say as quietly as I can with my breathing struggle. "I was only going to New Orleans to try and learn voodoo."

Marco's face doesn't change. He looks at me miserably, reaching out and wrapping his hand around my shoulder as a way to apologize. I gasp when my skin is met with an icy sensation that's so cold that it feels like it's burning. I stumble away from Marco, gaping at him and clutching my shoulder like I've just been stabbed. He touched me. How could he touch me? He's not real. He hasn't touched me in years.

He looks just as surprised as me with his hand held out in front of him like he's just discovered that he water bends.

"What did you just do?" I ask forgetting that I'm supposed to be quiet as fuck.

"Did you feel that?" he asks, looking between his hand and I.

"Dude-"

"Jean?" someone calls from downstairs. It's Petra. Her voice is soft and kind through the silence. Only she would still be nice to me when I'm doing something stupid. Instead of being smart and giving up on my mission, I fumble further down the hall with Marco following me to the last bedroom door. Armin's.

I reach the door and knock softly on the wood. I have no idea what I'm doing. The door is locked from the outside. Of fucking course it is. Even if Armin did want to see me he wouldn't be able to open the door. I knock my head against the door realizing that I'm the biggest idiot on the planet.

"Fuck. Shit. Fuck. Armin?" I ask the door in a whisper, continuing to be an idiot.

"Jean?" Petra's voice calls again. Closer. Marco looks down the hall.

"Shit shit shit," I curse quietly as I grab the doorknob and twist knowing it's not going to work. I'm only going to be caught red-handed breaking a million rules. But then, the door opens.

I almost freeze. I don't know what's more terrifying. Do they trust Armin enough now that they leave his door unlocked? Or is it unlocked without them knowing?

My moment of hesitation ends with me letting myself in and shutting the door quietly behind me hoping to the heavens that Petra doesn't find me literally hiding in the most dangerous person's room.

With the door closed and Marco at my side, I press my ear to the wood and listen for footsteps. Nothing. Maybe she went to look for me somewhere else. Thank god. I breathe a sigh of relief, turning to Marco with a smile. But Marco's not smiling. Pressed up against the door like I am, Marco face's the bedroom, his eyes wide, filled with trembling fear. Why is he so scared all the sudden?

I turn to look inside the room. It's just as it was yesterday. The light in the room is barely enough to make out the minimal furniture. It's even harder to see Armin.

"What's wr-" I start to ask Marco but he's already shaking his head. Looking like a little kid being forced onto a roller coaster.

"I don't want to be here, something's wrong, something's really wrong," he says with his voice quiet and shaking. He's pressed so far against the door that it looks like he may try to be going through it.

I try to ask him what's wrong again, but I'm cut off with a familiar sound that sends me to curl in on myself just like Marco.

Within the darkness, an unmistakable sound of laughing cuts through the air.

It starts off slow and low, like he's coughing through the laughter. Then his voice rises into a giggle like he knows something we don't and we're absolutely fucked for it.

The confusing need to run but also stay makes me think I'm spiraling down a water slide, out of control and having no idea what I'm supposed to do. Marco's right. Every alarm in my body is flashing red and screaming for me to bolt it out of the room and act like I never heard anything. But Petra's looking for me. I'm about to be in trouble and I don't want to deal with the repercussions. And still, I haven't seen Armin yet.

I swallow around the fear, and blink into the room trying to catch sight of Armin's body that should be sprawled on his bed. But he's not. And I can't seem to find him.

It takes me a few self encouraging breaths to speak into the laughter filled darkness. "Armin?"

The laughing stops, and silence takes its place. It feels even more uninviting than the laughter.

I go to call Armin's name again, to ask him if he's okay, but I swear I feel a breath puff into the side of my head. And then in a deep, gravelly voice, an amused, bodiless entity says right in my ear, "Armin's dead."