I'm laughin' and a-clownin'
Just to keep from cryin'
I keep on tryin' to hide the fact I've
Got a worried mind
"They say war'll be certain now," Armin overhears. Two men sit in the diner booth behind them, debating global politics with a great deal more flippancy than is appropriate in a country on the verge of an awful bloody struggle. "They found a bunch of non-Eldians forming a militia down south, d'you hear? They're from all over, all of 'em funded by the Marleyan government, weapons, logistics. A goddamn guerilla army in the making, Ymir help us." On a huge, ugly television the owner of the diner's miraculously jerry-rigged to the wall, President Pixis sweeps his hand through the air and his voice through a speech from behind a black void of a podium. Rasps something. His trademark gravelly voice and the sound quality work together to muddle his words, make it all meaningless. Kind of like that black void the President stands behind. He's getting ready to feed a lot of people into it, no matter what he says about giving Marley one last chance to recall its sleeper cells and send its armies back home. Armin may not remember the last war, President Zachary's war, but it left its marks on him all the same. Just like the rest of the world.
Mikasa's eyes meet his with a wondering unawareness to them, bringing him back. She chews her brittle bacon faster than necessary to mouth Gorilla?, pretends to pound her hands against her chest, and cocks her head, questioning. He shakes his own. There isn't anything wrong with her curiosity, persay, but even after three days here in Smith's Landing, two days longer than he'd meant to be here, Armin can't seem to break the chains of his fatigue, and his patience suffers for it. It doesn't help that he can't sleep, regardless of how lethargically they mozy about this little spit of a town.
"Just eat." He pinches the bridge of his nose, smiling wanly at her. "It's early. We can talk about it later, if you want."
"C'mon now, Hannes," the other man blurts. "We cracked nuclear ten years ago. Folks say we're workin' on hydrogen now. Marleyans doin' the same. Even Owasi on the other side of the ocean's got it figured, and y'know how them people are. When it really comes down to it, fightin'll be done with missiles and it'll be over in ten minutes. Like when we fought with titans in the old days. Ain't nobody want that, least of all the suits in Mitras, or in Lago. Ymir'll sort 'em out. She always does." They keep going for a while, their argument heating up until the waitress barks at them to 'quit it with the doom and gloom or get the hell out'. Glass trembles in its frame as they slam the diner door shut and maraud out into snowy air.
"Excuse me, dear," Armin calls to her after a few minutes. Pixis' speech is even harder to listen to in near silence. It feels insulting, and yet . . . he can't shake the understanding that, yes, by any and all rights, he should be marching into that shadow to his doom as well. Should be proud to do it, beaming at the prospect of dying for his country. Should be. "Would you mind changing the channel? Wouldn't hurt to help people start their days off with something besides the shadow of trouble. Any chance you guys get Channel 8 out here?" The waitress nods glumly, looking like there's nothing she'd rather start her day off with than talk of war and destruction. Between refilling a clotted cup of black coffee on Armin's end and actually cracking a smirk when Mikasa asks in ramshackle Eldian for a hot chocolate, she fulfills his request. In a static flash-freeze, the President is devoured and in his place stands a grainy recreation of a velvet-draped studio packed with people in awe of the suited Ivy-Leaguers situated behind podiums. "Welcome back, folks, to this week's Paths to Victory, it's good to have you back with us today. I'm Zeke Ksaver, your host, but look to my left if you want our most important returnees! This week's forward thinker with forward momentum is here, give it up for Anka Rheinberger! Oh, but hot on our question queen's tail is–"
Much better. It'd been a strange sensation to watch the clock strike 6:30 these past few days and have no television dial to tune in to his shows. Zeke Ksaver's signal-crunched voice fills the diner, and if Armin squints hard enough, the morning and moment almost feel normal. Decent. Undisturbed.
"She mocks me?" asks Mikasa, after she's finished off her eggs and only has her hot chocolate, grin-delivered, to suck on. From the open end of her side of the booth, he can see her fingers threading through the hem of her floral. She actually looks pretty dashing in it; purple roses speckle her body with hints of gold sewn in a more ragged thread. "Your 'dear'."
"It's an expression, Mikasa. An honorific." When he sees her mouth the word's syllables, he hastily adds– "A greeting you give someone to be kind to them. And I promise she wasn't mocking you."
"She smiles."
"Lots of people smile."
"Not yours. Not to me."
And he can see it in her eyes, the truth of that. Someone used to a lash that comes from nowhere, that falls with no provocation and for no offense. After enough knives in the back, a person with any small semblance of awareness would probably put their back against the wall and hiss at anyone that comes by. Is it any wonder she's done just that?
He puts his hand on hers. You could feel the shiver dancing under her skin, even though she's trying her best to clamp it down. Whether the cold or the implied insult to her is the culprit remains a mystery.
"If she is, we'll leave," he promises. "There're plenty of hole-in-the-wall places for us to go to, even in a town this small." And then, with a sweep of his thumb over her chilled knuckles– "We're not going to suffer people being cruel to you anymore. Not . . . not as long as I'm here. Mikasa, if there are people around that make you uncomfortable, if I make you uncomfortable, you need to be direct with it. Tell me, understand?"
Her eyes meet the swirling brown in her cup, and they eat the rest of their breakfast in silence.
Towards the end, the coffee starts to wake Armin up, jolting his mind with unpleasant scenario after unpleasant scenario, and when Paths to Victory's episode ends with Anka Rheinberger still in the lead and Zeke Ksaver finishes the broadcast with Ymir Save the State of Paradis, he decides it's time to finish up. Thanking the waitress and leaving her a tip high enough that it might even turn her frown upside down, Armin and Mikasa head out onto the slushy sidewalk, hand-in-hand.
Stupid. They're running on fumes here. He hadn't been able to empty his bank account completely before they left, it would've looked suspicious. And damnit, it's dangerous to be holding hands. They haven't gotten their story straight yet, and if they weren't going to be found out, whatever fiction they agreed upon had to be airtight and had to have a blank canvas to attach to. Leave what you find, his Boy Scout leader had said.
The thought doesn't loosen his grip as they trudge through snow and wet asphalt back to Smith's Lodging. It's not a long walk, but it's one he savors. Good company and all that.
"Armin." His name echoes between the railing of the staircase and its overhead canopy. "What is 'draft'? Occurs to me . . . I come all this way and know not."
"Well, it's . . . think of it as the worst lottery in the world," he chuckles, unsure of where the humor comes from when the notion of it was so dark in him not an hour ago. "When the government needs soldiers and they can't find anyone who will fight voluntarily, they start forcing civilians into the armed forces. There are examinations and numbers you receive, and they determine what Regiment you're going into before they decide if you're someone they want. They were . . . I was going to be put in the Scouts, and then when they pulled it . . . here we are, I suppose." Mikasa's face darkens at that.
"Hizuri hate Scouts." Being first into the breach against a country that had half of your technological killing power could really make the locals dislike you, or so Armin had heard. Hizuru had been a fierce combatant in Zachary's war, but that'd only taken them so far. She looks confused suddenly, rubbing her worry-thinned chin. "But . . . Freedom, Paradis loves. Fights for freedom. Force people to fight? That is wrong."
"Sometimes it just has to be done."
"You run, still. Why?"
"I don't want to die. Not when it would be for something I don't believe in."
"And you believe . . .?"
"I . . . don't know. I guess I believe in you."
She blushes. Prettily. Dangerously.
Clamminess slicks his palm and loosens their grip a little bit. Dangerously.
They spend most of the day packing things up, stowing away loose clothes and trinkets into the coupe's backseat and trunk. Mikasa frets over the safety of her life-light (rightfully) until he takes two of the softest sweater vests he has and wraps the delicate, pokey glass up until only its vaguest outline could be discerned through the heavy threads. The bags they purchased from the town's smaller convenience store are a great help here; they have to stuff them down hard to make them fit properly, but with a little bit of elbow grease all of Mikasa's crochet and sewing supplies fit in one of them (nevermind that it's fit to bursting, don't think about that). Armin's kitchen knives go under a layered matt of shirts; each of them had cost a pretty penny, and if it came down to it, he'd figured he could sell them to keep he and Mikasa afloat while they tried to find work. If there's work to find wherever they end up. If her insane husband doesn't appear in the middle of the night and kill them with those very same knives. Her toiletries and his are stowed away in their own bag with plenty of room to spare, enough for her to stuff a carefully-folded bundle of papers that she refuses to answer his questions about.
In the now empty room, afternoon in full swing, they pour over the map Mikasa brought with her. She insists it depicts the whole of Paradis' continental size and it takes a fair amount of explaining to make her understand that it's only their local District, and about a hundred miles in all directions of the neighboring ones. Smith's Landing isn't on this one, but the capital is, and riding the highway's bright red line about two inches above it, Ragako's name stands printed in bold black.
"Another day of driving and we should be there," he says. "My gas is low, so that'll be the first thing we get before we get back on the road. I know we aren't taking much with us in terms of food for the trip, so if we find anywhere on the way there, we can stop and grab a bite."
"And after?"
"We'll keep going until we get there. Ragako isn't as big as the capital, but there's more people and work and infrastructure there. Plenty of room to disappear."
"I talk wrong. After we arrive. We do what, in Rakago?"
"Ragako."
"Ragago."
"Ra-ga-ko."
"Ra-ga-ko."
"There you go. We'll get you a dictionary." Her eyes don't soften. The gleam in them isn't angry or exasperated, but it is unyielding. She smells his weakness, his uncertainty, the gaping void where his plan for every one of their afters should be. And she's pressing any kind of answer she can out of him.
"I am wanting for knowing," she reiterates. "For keeping me from wondering. Hard to control the mind. The guilt." Eager for any kind of escape, Armin latches onto it, kissing his teeth and gripping Mikasa's hand again.
"Why? What's eating at you?" he replies. The overhead lamp, despite its flickering, plays jagged patterns over the shiniest parts of her hair. Her gaze is stone, granite pillars pounding into his chest and straight through him, and in an instant, she looks like she's on the edge of tears. Striking Armin like a punch is the urge to reach for her and pull her into his arms until she's let her grief run its course. It doesn't cross his mind how unseemly that might be, most of all to be doing it to someone else's wife. Not anymore than it did when their hands met, and his heart felt candied. In their rush to flee, it had escaped him just how young she was. Has her twentieth birthday come yet? He's twenty-seven. One more reason to banish any thoughts of mattering to her, one more warning sign that he promptly ignores.
Mikasa just looks so . . . vulnerable.
He's all she has. Her literal lifeline. He just cannot abuse that.
"Speak to me that this means . . . matters," and he can tell her heart is hurting because there's no lighting-up in her eyes like there usually is when she self-corrects her Eldian. "This cannot mean nothing. I . . . fear. All that is haved by you . . . I ruin. " His hand shifts and cages itself in hers, finger-to-finger, with a squeeze that is hopefully hard enough to pressurize her tender heart into one a bit sturdier. Armin could use someone's fist clenched around his spirit himself, now that he thinks of it. She doesn't recoil, only returning the needy, desperate hold with one twice as strong.
"We're going to be alright, do you hear me? You and I are going to be just fine. I know I can't tell you how. I know I can't tell you how long it will take. But we will, because we deserve it. Because you deserve it. Someone who ruins things wouldn't, and Mikasa, you are not that person. You're someone very young in a place you don't know and you had no one. I decided to intrude on your life. If there's anything I have that's ruined, I did it myself." At that, the corner of her eyes narrow, tainting the stony, wide-irised bore she's had him fixed with, relaxing it if only slightly. The most joy she'll allow herself right now.
"'Had'?"
Just to meet their happiness quota, he picks up Mikasa's slack, smiling big.
"Well, you have me now, don't you?"
Lodging's lobby is warm, and despite a tall man coming in, cutting her off right before she would've been at the desk, and letting in a frosty gust from outside that cut through her floral like a knife through butter, the heat is something to be thankful for. Hizuru's mountainous regions had some cold winds now and then, being so high up, but snowfall had been so rare that she couldn't remember the last time the sky caked Akono Province's peaks white. The weather here is nothing short of insane; how the Eldians managed to survive, much less make it look homely and inviting, is a quandry a monk back home might wrestle with for a decade. She throws it back and forth in her head, testing it, and before Mikasa knows it, the desk looms before her, Erwin Smith's vaguely pleased half-smile beckoning her forward.
"Hello there, little lady," the huge man says, face stubbornly refusing her efforts to read it. What is it they call that here in Paradis? A poker-face? "This here's Smith's Lodging, oldest temporary bed service here in the Landing. As a matter of fact, my own grandfather built it, and founded our town here. We're rough, but we'll take care of anything you need. How can I help you this afternoon?" Rough and old are definitely right, if the wear on the wooden desk or the shoddy key slots behind Erwin's back are anything to go by.
"You treat us well," she replies, inclining her head. "Have your key." Said item is deposited without ceremony onto the desktop.
"Of course, Mrs. . ."
"Miyumi."
"I mean your last name, ma'am. Just so we can close out you and your husband's stay with us."
"Husband?"
"The gentleman with the longer blonde hair, ma'am."
"Y-yes, understood. Miyumi Ackerman. . . . Albrecht is my husband." She hopes that the name doesn't sound laughable in her definitely-not-Eldian accent. Gesturing without really knowing where to, she points in Armin's approximate direction, where the row of sandwiched rooms intersection with the employee quarters and, likely, Erwin Smith's living space. She feels halfway-devoured by his shadow while he fills out a yellowed piece of paper, and sticks it into a comparatively pristine manila folder that vanishes behind the desk somewhere.
"Thank you for that, Mrs. Ackerman," he says warmly. "I'll tell you and your husband what; I've seen you two around town the last few days, and you've both been keeping out of trouble, it seems. What with the state of the world right now, it's arguable that I've got an obligation to feed some good into it like you two have." He leans down so as to be closer to eye-level with her. Between his height and the desk he's been cramped behind, Erwin Smith has to bend nearly in half to reach her, but he doesn't appear to be uncomfortable at all. Not even his voice strains. "If you and Mr. Ackerman happen to be in Smith's Landing again, come see us. We might be able to knock a bit off of your bill. Will you let him know for me?"
"I will."
Erwin nods politely and takes her key, and that's the last time she sees him. Some of the snow-slurry gets in her shoes and chills them, and the wind is still bitterly knifing, but as she marches down to the coupe by the curb, she can't seem to keep the grin off of her face.
"Back to the diner," she directs, once she's back in the car and the heater's giving her some relief.
Armin raises an eyebrow her way. "Why?" he asks.
"I am still thirsty," declares Mikasa, ready to feed the world some good.