Luckily or unluckily for you, I'm planning to upload a fair number of chapters right now just so I can get the story rolling. I feel like it's a little too slow to do in small chunks all the time; thus why it was originally supposed to be a one-shot. *sigh*

When he was twenty-six, he talked to her.

After months of torturing her, experimenting on her, and interrogating her, the Military Police had just about run out of patience. If the Survey Corps couldn't get something out of Annie soon, they'd lobby to have her transferred into the custody of the Military Police for execution, and considering how uncooperative she'd been, Commander-in-Chief Zackley just might allow it—which was why he was here. Armin sighed and squared his shoulders before starting down the long staircase that led to the dark underground prison room.

He supposed on some level he recognized why his superiors wanted him to try his hand at convincing Annie to let go of her secrets, but he didn't understand precisely why they thought his bond with her as trainees was applicable considering that that had been more than ten years ago.

The squad leader flicked back his long-ish ponytail with a sigh—yet another reminder of how different he was from the boy Annie knew. In addition to a different hairstyle, he was taller, more muscular, his face more angular, his frame sturdier, his voice deeper—the list of disparities between his fifteen-year-old self and the present day went on and on. With the exception of them having shared memories and experiences, he really didn't see any way for Annie to relate to the present-day Armin Arlert. His eyes sharpened when they caught sight of the outer door to her holding chamber. Those things being said, he wasn't about to just let her up and die on his watch without trying to do something about it.

Annie didn't even turn to look at him when he walked in. She just lay lifelessly on her cot, staring at the wall.

"Annie."

She stirred enough to look over her shoulder and after a long moment, sat up and met his gaze with her own bored one. "You here to make me spill all my secrets, too?"

"That is the final objective, yes, but I don't have any ideas about how to go about it, so I thought maybe we could just talk for now."

She snorted derisively, but "just talk" was exactly what they did. Hour after hour, day after day, for a little over a week, they talked. In general, the conversations were halting, mostly one-sided (with the exception of some well-placed barbs and biting comments), and unbelievably awkward, but they were conversations nonetheless. It was actually weirdly enjoyable to reacquaint himself with Annie in this way, and as the time ticked by, talking with Annie felt less and less like a chore and more and more like it had back when they were in training (provided that one was supposed to interrogate the other at some point during said training).

But this was the last day he could afford to dedicate to spending like this, so one way or another something was going to have to give. "Why did you come with me back then? You knew it was a trap."

"Your objective was the same as mine: to keep the Coordinate alive. Why wouldn't I cooperate?" Her eyes got an ironic slant as she threw his own words back at him. "I thought pretending to go along with your plan rather than outright opposition would prevent suspicion and buy my escape more time."

A short puff of air escaped from his nose as he suppressed a chuckle. Touché. Entombing herself hadn't dulled her wit any.

"Don't tell me you were hoping it was because I wanted you to consider me a good person for as long as possible."

His smile dropped. "That's ridiculous."

She made a non-committal sound. "It's not entirely untrue…. I went with you because you said your plan would ensure Eren's survival, but I played along for as long as I did because I wanted to see what you were up to." Her smile was mocking. "You didn't disappoint. How like you to try and convince me to defect. You should've just jumped me after luring me into that alley. I didn't put on that ring until after talking to you."

"I noticed that, but I never imagined it would have a hidden blade." His smile was bitter and self-deprecating. "You're right, though. So many lives could've been spared if I'd been willing to trust the evidence. You wouldn't have been able to escape for ten years, and maybe we'd be further along in the war against the titans than we are now, preventing even more unnecessary loss of life. I was naïve and stupid then. I couldn't throw away my humanity in order to capture you, and many paid the price." His voiced deadened in self-loathing. "I just wanted so badly for it not to be true. For three years, we trained, studied, ate, and fought together. We survived Trost together, graduated together. Despite the evidence, I couldn't believe that you were my enemy, that you were a titan." He looked into her hooded eyes with a serious gaze of his own. "I believed in you then even knowing you would confirm my suspicions. And…I still believe in you now. I know you have reasons for why you did what you did; you wouldn't just kill those people without what you consider to be a good reason. Good reason or not, it doesn't excuse what you did, but if you cooperate with us now, you can atone and give meaning to the deaths of those who died to capture you. I know you didn't want to kill them, so prove you're not the monster so many believe you to be. Fight for humanity. Help us."

They fell silent. As the stillness crept on, Armin watched her quietly. She didn't show any signs of softening. He sighed, regret floating on the sound. Apparently she still chose death. He should have expected as much; what could he do in a week that countless others had been unable to accomplish in over a year? His eyes went pensive. If this was the last time he'd ever see her, was there anything else he wanted to say? Tears rose when he realized there was. "I never thanked you, did I?"

Her face didn't move, but he could almost see her puckering her eyebrows on the inside in confusion.

He chuckled softly and leaned back, his eyes faraway. "Back before we knew the Rogue Titan was Eren, or even about the existence of shifters, you were the one who said it was possible we could turn that titan into an ally and use its strength to fight back. You were the one who suggested that titans could be the saviors of humanity as opposed to its bane. When Eren asked me to argue for using him to aid humanity in its war against the titans, your words helped me believe that there were normal people who'd look past their terror and the risk of Eren's titan nature and see the strategic value of having a titan fight for our side. Eren and Mikasa gave me the confidence to argue for our lives, but you gave me hope that my words wouldn't fall on deaf ears." His smile was genuine and filled with overwhelming gratitude. "Because of you, I was able to save my best friends. So, thank you, Annie. Thank you so much."

She blinked slowly at him, obviously caught off-guard.

He laughed a little, a harsh, mirthless sound. "Considering that you worked to break through that wall in Trost, you probably aren't very happy to hear it now, but thank you nonetheless." His voice was ironic. "Back then, I was so impressed with you. Despite having just faced the terror of being eaten by titans not minutes before, you were levelheaded enough to think of something as outrageous as a titan being an ally. Using the titan while it was convenient for our immediate purposes, that I could fathom, but thinking of it as a being we could work and communicate with and thus worthy of saving? It wasn't something I'd think of in a million lifetimes, so I was completely in awe of you."

"Considering you were the best in in strategy and tactics out of all the trainee classes in the history of the military academy, that's quite a compliment." At some point, she'd looked away from him, hiding her face behind her fall of hair.

"You were in the top four," he replied, "and number three in the classroom. If you'd been better at working with other people, you would've easily beaten Reiner and Bertolt, possibly been Mikasa's equal."

"You're awfully free with compliments today. I'm guessing that means I won't have to see your face anymore?"

"You'd be correct."

"I expected at least another week."

He responded brusquely to her mocking tone. "Sorry, but I don't have that kind of time."

"Of course," she shifted her feet onto the cot, "you're part of the leadership structure now."

He sighed and stood; he felt sad and angry at the same time. But what more could he do? He'd done his best and said what he'd wanted to. There wasn't anything more to be done. "Good bye, Annie." He strode toward the door. Just as he was about to close it behind him, she spoke.

"Armin…."

He paused and looked back. She was lying flat on the cot, her face turned away from him.

There was a long silence before her voice resumed, the sound quiet and fragile around the edges. "I know it doesn't mean anything…but…thank you for believing in me…and all the rest."

He stood watching her for a short while before shaking his head with a wry smile and locking the cell door. A week later, Annie finally agreed to tell them what she knew and fight for humanity.