It happened again.

Crumpled in on himself crying against a wall, he's trembling to the rhythm of his rapid breathing and of his arteries drumming through his head.

He was sure that it'd been the last time, and yet here he sits.

Pathetic.

"Hey."

It's whispered from above, to his side, and he expects the worst. But when he looks up, from behind the corner of the building he sits against, a person's face sticks out from behind the bricks just far enough to stare at him with a single eye.

A child. Like him.

"Why don't you ever fight back?"

He sniffs, and stares. Engaged in conversation, he finds the strength to ground himself.

"That's why they treat you like that," the boy continues. "Do you want to be on the losing side forever?"

"I…"

He swallows, looking off to his side.

"I didn't lose."

"What?"

He pulls his legs closer to his body.

"Because I didn't run away."

The boy is silent, but his expression changes. He was looking down on him, but now, something is different.

"You… What's your name?" the boy asks.

"Armin," he answers.

"Armin…"

Without another word, the boy turns around and vanishes into the alleyway again. Armin doesn't need to think to rise to his feet and peek behind the corner. At the end of it, before a turn, the boy stands, waiting for him to see before taking off again.

He's no longer shivering. In fact, he's no longer crying at all. All that is left is curiosity, and for some reason, Armin decides that he wants to follow that boy, wherever he may be going.

So he runs after him without looking back.


One shot.

That's all it takes to rob another human being of their life.

She clatters down into the cart, face barely that of a person anymore as she's painted with gore and red streaks the wooden planks of the cart.

He's a murderer now.

There's no going back on it, and he feels like running, but he does not. He refuses to run away.

Jean is safe. That's all he can think of right now. Jean is safe, and Eren is once again worlds away from him and Mikasa as they snatch him off of their cart and drag him into the shadows.

For once, he would like for Eren to stay with him.


He kills.

Again, and again, and again does he assist the others in mowing through one person after the other as they refuse to relent. Blades, explosives, cave-ins, it doesn't matter how — they all fall because they could not stand aside and understand that this never had to happen.

This is his life now. There has to be an escape from this horrific cycle of death and violence.


"We will have to kill them."

The suddenness of Eren's words pulls Armin out of his thoughts, placing his spoon back into his plate.

"Huh?"

"Reiner and Bertholdt. We will have to kill them."

Armin stares at Eren wide before he swallows down his bite of dinner.

Eren means it. He's prepared to take them down. That can't possibly be the only way, can it?

"We can still talk to them."

"When we defeated Annie. Do you remember that? You talked to me when I was down. I didn't want to fight her and you convinced me that it was the only way to win. Did you think we could still talk to her back then?"

"N… No, I didn't."

"How are they different?"

"I…"

Armin bites his lip.

"They're traitors, Armin," Eren reminds him. "They are the reason why this world has turned into hell. Why we can't go explore the outside world as we please. Why we don't have freedom. Remember what they have done to us."

They have hurt them. More than anyone else in Armin's life ever could have. But Bertholdt also, at one point, had been a friend. One Armin would've trusted with his life, if he had to, only for him to have desired to threaten it all along.

He can't accept this kind of reality. There has to be a better way out of this dark pit.

But how is he ever going to ensure that he can live a peaceful life with Eren and the rest if they refuse to listen?


Bertholdt is with him again.

He doesn't say anything and instead just sits there, waiting for Armin to join him. Beckoning him in silence.

Armin caves. Finds that he can move his body, stands, and sits down next to him; and it's only then that he notices that Bertholdt has in his lap a book.

They have read before, together. Long before anything had happened. Sitting side-by-side as they quietly consumed whichever material their young minds found themselves drawn to. Maybe they both yearn for that nostalgia for times long bygone. Maybe, like this, they can mend their broken bonds.

Wordlessly, he holds it up for Armin to take.

"Is this a Marleyan story?"

No answer comes. When Armin opens the book, the jumbled letters strike him as archaic, angular and simplistic compared to the complex characters of the script they use in Paradis' writings.

He points at the text printed onto the pages. "Is this Marleyan?" he asks, and when he looks up beside him, Bertholdt is with him again.

He doesn't say anything and instead just sits there, waiting for Armin to join him. Beckoning him in silence.

Armin caves. Finds that he can move his body, stands, and sits down next to him; and it's only then that he notices that Bertholdt has in his lap a book.

They have read before, together. Long before anything had happened. Sitting side-by-side as they quietly consumed whichever material their young minds found themselves drawn to. Maybe they both yearn for that nostalgia for times long bygone. Maybe, like this, they can mend their broken bonds.

Wordlessly, he holds it up for Armin to take.

"Is this a Marleyan story?"

No answer comes. When Armin opens the book, he finds that inside is not a story, but poetry. Words woven into elegant metaphors and visuals that prickle his young mind. Landmasses, plants, animals, natural processes. The world he was denied.

Like his book.

He points at a text printed onto the pages. "Is this Marley?" he asks, and when he looks up beside him, Bertholdt is gone.


It feels like an eternity before he sees Eren again, and this time, he is alive as he rushes at Armin and tackles him with a tight hug.

"Where have you been?" he shouts, and Armin finds his heart constrict with guilt.

"I've been busy. I've been reading a lot with Bertholdt."

Eren doesn't yell anything back. In fact, he has frozen in his hug, and when he disconnects, his face is twisted into a foul grimace before he storms off again.


Armin doesn't run into Eren again for a long time.

He spends a lot more time with Bertholdt in the following weeks. Despite being Paradis' prisoner now, he is allowed plenty of visitors, and Armin makes ample use of the right.

Yet their conversations never lead anywhere concrete. Just when he thinks that they will reach an agreement or connect one heart with another, all amiability seems to evaporate before him and they are back to square one.

He remains grateful for the opportunity and tries again and again. He continues to bring books in the hopes of finding common ground in their old hobby.


He first sees Eren again during dinner, but before he can reach him, he has already stormed off and Armin fails to find him again.

He desperately wants to understand why he is so mad, why he wants to deny Armin the right to learn more about the enemy by doing what he has always done.

Did he never approve of Armin's desire for open communication? Is that it?

Or is his hatred of Bertholdt so intense that he cannot accept Armin's affinity for him?

If only Armin didn't have to choose. It would be so much better.


"Are you really lost?"

They sit huddled together in a corner, far away from the prying eyes of the others, and Eren grasps both sides of his face as he forces eye contact.

"You can't tell me I have lost you, Armin. Anyone but you. You're much too smart."

Armin swallows. He can barely hold back the tears, but Eren looks furious with him and the pressure on his head is killing him.

"Tell me it's not true. Please, just… Tell me you can tell the difference."

He can only shake his head.

"Don't you know what has happened?"

Another shake of his head. He doesn't know anymore. He doesn't know anything.

"You do. You do know. You know exactly what happened."

He trembles.

"You ate him."

"No!"

He grabs the front of Eren's shirt, vision too blurry to make out Eren's expression, as he's held back from knocking Eren over.

"I just saw him! We've been reading together! How could I– when would I have had the time and the means!?"

"Armin! Steady!" The pressure on Eren's hands increases as he wrestles Armin into his hold. "You need to accept reality! You can't keep letting your guilt drag you back into the delusion that he's still there! He's not. He's dead. You killed him. He's never coming back to read with you again, and we need you to come back to us now. Please, just… wake up from this nightmare and join us again. I miss you."

Armin doesn't feel like protesting anymore. He buckles over, devolving into a fit of aimless sobbing and whining that makes him feel like a young child. Eren's iron grip turns into a supportive hug, hands rubbing over his back as he offers his shoulder to cry on.

"You knew that we had to kill them, Armin," Eren coos. "You knew…"

He knew.

He knew.


The shadows have caught on.

Shapeless and all-consuming, they have discovered immense pleasure in spitting out the inanimate body of his victim at the most unsuspecting moments, and Armin can no longer deny that that is what that heap of flesh represents. Blackened with the tar it leaks, often headless and without limbs, as Eren described in great detail, as it lies dead still just in the corner of his vision.

It shudders, sometimes. One day, it grows a set of sinewy arms that it uses to pull itself forward over the dirty floor in aimless circles that show Armin no interest. But he knows it will come.

Eren isn't around often enough anymore. He can't let anyone know that he is seeing these horrific visions, lest they change their mind about how comfortable they feel with the Colossal Titan in his hands. Eren is the only one he can trust, and the government keeps them separated from each other. It's just not fair.

When one of those stringy hands suddenly grabs his, Armin pulls loose and collapses deeper into his corner, lost on where else he can hide. Where those claws slid over his skin, it is charred black and burns as it did the day he was given a second life.

"I'm sorry… I'm so sorry…" he whispers to himself, over and over, but his placating words of regret don't save him from the creeping rot that ascends his arm and seeks to sate its ravenous hunger with the rest of his body.

For the first time in his life, he prays for this nightmare to end as he desperately tries to scratch the itch out of his wrists.


No one can know. Not even Eren. He was tolerant at first, but as of late, even he has been wordlessly expressing his disappointment about Armin's deteriorating grasp on his subconscious.

He can feel it in his bones. The little meat he built up through years of hard work is slimming down and he can't sleep in fear of what he may encounter in his dreams. He wears long sleeves all the time to keep warm.

"You've been restless."

His guest is a pile on the floor, but he is whole, as has been happening more often as of late.

He's given this meeting place a name in his head, so that he can separate it from what matters.

The other world.

Not the other reality.

He can't give this place that whichever remnant of Bertholdt pulls him into every so often any credence. Armin's memories, or at least twisted versions of what approximates his memories, he theorises. He refuses to let himself slip and fall and be lost in his mind forever. If this were a part of reality and he were truly haunted, then that carries with it a whole slew of inconsistencies that immediately disproves that hypothesis. It's a coping mechanism he cannot suppress and cannot ignore.

He grimaces at the pointless observation.

"Of course I have."

The other Bertholdt is polite today, speaking to him in full sentences. It's been a while since he last attacked Armin or appeared to him in the shape of a horror. More and more does he feel like he can keep this under control while Eren is away for his audience with the government, but he can't let his guard down. The other Bertholdt is merely waiting for an opening, the same way Armin and Eren have done to him the day they robbed him of his life.

"You haven't been eating well either."

Another pointless observation. The other Bertholdt's tone does not betray it, but Armin understands the spite that goes behind his words.

"Where am I supposed to find my energy? Everything I eat… It's like ash. Everything is rotten once it enters my mouth, no matter how fresh it is when I hold it in my hand."

He looks down, eyes hooded from fatigue.

"That is because of you, isn't it?"

The pile on the floor looks up at him with burdensome pity.

"Is there a reason that you think it's my doing?"

"You want me to get a taste of what I've done to you. I can't imagine any other reason."

A silence reigns between them. It is no kind thing to say, but the only way forward is to confront what happened head-on, no tiptoeing around the issue.

"Do you think that this is some sort of punishment?" the other Bertholdt asks.

Armin nods.

"Can you tell me why you think I would do something like that to you?"

Armin lets out a long sigh through his nose but doesn't answer. More than anything, he wants to get back into his own head and forget about what happened here. There's nothing to be explored here. Nothing he can learn.

"You're not ready to open up to me today?"

Closing his eyes, Armin breathes in deep and holds.

He doesn't want to say it. It's better if the full extent of this situation is buried far and deep. The others can't know he has been going through these bouts of hunger and madness, he can't prove to them that they revived a madman and that this is the mistake that Erwin ended up dying for.

"I'm…" he starts, but falters when the slightest release of air makes him empty his lungs entirely and gasp for air. "I'm sorry. I'm… so sorry. I wish we didn't have to kill you."

As always, it ends there. He is robbed of his catharsis as he feels his mind get dragged back into the real world, like none of this ever took place.


"Why do you bring me here?" he one day asks when he notices that he is surprisingly lucid during his dream, too distracted by his thoughts to read the book of the day that lies open in front of him on his desk. "What's the point?"

"To help you," the other Bertholdt's gentle voice answers.

Unlikely. None of this has done anything to lighten the burdens he carries.

Armin looks down at his book again. A short tale about a man's journey toward forgiveness as he struggles with his pride. Nothing to do with Armin at all.

"How does this help me?"

The other Bertholdt folds his hands and leans his chin against them. "I know that you are easily bored, so I'm giving you what I can find. I wish there were more I could do, but you know why you are here. Until I understand, this is all I can do to help."

"Then tell me. What have I done to deserve this? Can you tell me to my face?" Armin challenges.

A sigh. The other Bertholdt looks distressed, but he repositions himself to sit more steadily.

"Do you remember the woman you shot?"

He remembers the intense taste of vomit afterwards better than the actual kill.

"Yes."

"Can you tell me why you did it?"

"Because it was either her or us. She was going to kill Jean. I couldn't let her. I had no choice. Don't you know what that is like more than anyone else?"

The other Bertholdt doesn't seem convinced of his answer. He looks at Armin, his inquisitive eyes fishing for more, but it's all there is to say about it.

"Do you remember what you and Eren have done to Annie?"

Sharp crystal shards, protecting its weary host in a layer of hardened transparency they so sorely missed when she still had a chance. He doesn't know if they sting more to Annie, or to Bertholdt.

"Yes." Again.

"Why did you do that?"

"The same reason," Armin confesses. "She killed so many good scouts. If we didn't go after her, then we reasoned we'd never find out why that happened. And she would have killed us if we hadn't tried to capture her first. She was too dangerous. We didn't want to do it, but she gave us no other choice. Just like the others. Just like you."

The other Bertholdt sits still. His eyes pity Armin, and deep beneath, he can detect anger over what has transpired, whether that be the battle against the Female Titan or the real Bertholdt's own death. This is personal. The other Bertholdt is not acting out of rationale, but out of a need for closure and vengeance, whichever he can get his hands on first.

"She's alive," Armin tries to offer at least that amount of closure, hoping it'd be enough to send this Bertholdt back to his grave, but his face only twists in mild disgust.

"That doesn't absolve you, nor does it change what you have done."

The defiance awakens something in Armin that immediately sweeps all of his resolve to be polite and play the other Bertholdt's games today off the table. He glares up at him with cold eyes.

"You are the last person on this planet who gets a say in what absolves me, murderer."

He doesn't know where it comes from. It doesn't even sound like himself. It sounds like how Armin has heard Eren talk to Bertholdt in his memories.

The other Bertholdt remains unimpressed as he looks for any sign Armin falters, but he does not. Then, finally, he looks down and closes Armin's book for him.

"I think we're done here for the day."

When Armin snaps out of it, it's with a rare bout of anger that has him pounding on the walls until he can no longer feel his fingers and the room is filled with the sound of his hand steaming away the injury he inflicted upon it.


"Are you ready to try again?"

The voice rings in his head and deepens his already existing headache as he takes on the form of a ball of light when his eyes have long adapted to the dark.

It feels like it's been a while since the other Bertholdt has last disturbed him. His mind has been blank as he navigated life these past few weeks, and he has come to a jarring discovery: he feels worse when the other Bertholdt isn't there. Less focused. Uneasy. Pained, even.

He's not someone Armin wants to grow dependent on, but what choice does he have?

So he nods, listless after spending another week eating the bare minimum.

The other Bertholdt is in a forgiving mood, because he smiles and kneels before him. He grabs Armin's hand and it hurts for him to turn it the way he does. He recoils, but the other Bertholdt doesn't let him. His grasp is gentle, in a way, and it doesn't wither his flesh this time. Like any other person's hand.

"You've healed up nicely," he says as he pulls Armin's sleeve back. "But you've been scratching yourself again."

Armin looks down at his arm. It's covered with bandages, pulled askew and leaking blood here and there. It certainly wasn't like that before he got pulled into the other world. Apparently, his healing isn't as powerful here as it is in reality.

"Please, Armin. You can't continue doing this. What if they got infected? What if you got sick?"

"This is from the first time," Armin's hoarse voice explains, but he doesn't convince the other Bertholdt, who looks at him once again with one of those pitying stares.

"They're from recently. The blood hasn't even turned brown yet. Can you stand?"

He tries but his body protests. He feels like he just sat down for a whole night and his legs ache when he puts his weight on them. With pressure on his ankles, he can feel that the skin is equally itchy as that of his wrists.

Has he been scratching himself in his sleep after all? He doesn't remember doing it consciously, but now that he thinks about it, he remembers an intense itch that he couldn't get rid of in any way. He must have scratched himself through the skin following the inability to wake up from the annoyance.

"Come on," the other Bertholdt beckons, letting go of Armin's wrist before he stands and offers a hand. "Let's get you out of here. We'll clean those lesions."


"I shouldn't have taken this from you."

A confession. An acknowledgement of guilt, even.

He holds up the book that Armin was reading before the abrupt interruption that led to the other Bertholdt's long-term disappearance.

"That's why you got mad and broke your wrist on the wall, isn't it?"

Armin stares at the book. So he knows about that outburst. He can see what happens in the real world.

"No. Not because of that."

The other Bertholdt places down the book and slides it Armin's way.

"Is it because of our conversation?"

"Yes…" Armin weakly answers. In hindsight, he feels so stupid for it, but he has only rarely been as angry as he was when the other Bertholdt tried to paint Armin as a worse person than himself over one battle.

"I see. I'm sorry that it had to be this way. We will stash the topic until you feel ready to talk about it."

It doesn't serve Armin, but it's better than being forced to continue now. So he nods.

"You know, Armin. I have been thinking about what I said last time," the other Bertholdt continues. "You approach me with the question to go outside, and then the opposite happens. How else are you supposed to pass the time in solitary when all you have is your own body?"

Armin ignores the other Bertholdt's words and waits until he gets to the point.

"It's time for a change of scenery. Why don't you come outside with me this afternoon, Armin?"

The outside?

Together with Bertholdt? The other Bertholdt?

He looks excited to take him there, spoil it all for him when he has other plans.

He's been in the other world for quite some time now. Usually, it comes in fragments, but now, the other Bertholdt appears and disappears at random moments that overlap with reality and the continuous segments where Armin is pulled into his world last longer. He's losing his grip. If this goes on, maybe he won't wake up again at all.

What he needs right now is support. More than anything does he need support and success in his endeavours.

"I can't."

"Why not?"

"I promised I would see it with Eren. I won't go without him."

"You will see him again soon," the other Bertholdt promises. "But you need to be your own man. Stand on your own, find your peace without him there to tell you how to do it. I promise you that it will be better than staying inside all day long."

Armin's nose crinkles.

"No," he remains steadfast. "I can't do this without him. I'd rather stay where you always meet me."

The other Bertholdt nods.

"I won't force you to do something you don't want to do. Will you come with me if you can talk to Eren?"

"… Yes," Armin gives in. "We can traverse my memories once I have obtained them. But before then… I don't want to get ahead of myself and live in speculation. I want to be ready when it comes."

"I understand," the other Bertholdt softly says. "In that case, I have something for you."

In his hands, he has a box. He lets Armin open it, and inside, he finds thick strips of a brown, papery material together with a bundle of charcoal sticks.

"To pass the time while you're here."

"What should I do with this?" Armin asks.

"Anything. Draw, write, compose, fold, craft. Whichever way you feel like expressing yourself."

Armin looks down at the paper. It has been a while since he last did this, but he decides that giving it a try can't hurt.


"Look at them," Eren hisses. "Going about their business as if they're one of us. As if they have anything to lose here."

Armin follows the line of his sight and his eyes land on where Reiner, Bertholdt, and Annie sit together.

The three of them together in combination with Eren and Armin standing together makes this a memory of the Battle for Trost.

Bertholdt notices that they are both staring at him, Eren glaring and Armin only looking on with regretful pity as he looks upon the ghost of his former comrade from when he was still alive. His eyes linger on Armin before he goes back to the conversation with his fellow traitors.

"They won't get away with it this time. We'll get them. Think of all the horrific ways in which we'll get our revenge someday."

Crystallised, bloodied, blown up, eaten alive, beaten and severed, slashed to bits, sent home as a sole survivor, forced to forever haunt the memories of an unwilling successor as something not quite dead, not quite alive.

They have no way of knowing just how bleak their future looks. Maybe if they did, they would've fled and saved themselves and the world would've been better now.

Eren catches him staring and grabs him by the cheek, pulling on his head hard so that he's now looking straight at him.

"Don't forget who the enemy is," Eren warns. "Don't forget what they have done to us."

How he wishes he could succumb to the sympathy that Eren's paranoia projects upon him.


No words could do it proper justice.

No poem written by a revered wordsmith, no drawing by even the greatest artist alive, no spoken account by those who have lived it, not even his vivid fantasy could ever prepare him for the pristine beauty that is the ocean. Blue as the sky, vibrant and bright as he can taste the salt in the air. Reflecting the sun in sharp shafts like a lake would, but much larger. Surrounded by beaches of pale white sand so large he bets no human could dig it all away in their lifetime.

Now that he finally gets to see it with Eren by his side, he does not regret refusing to let the other Bertholdt lure him into a speculative fantasy. Nothing he told him could ever describe accurately how gorgeous it is.

He laughs. Eren does not laugh back. He hasn't been himself ever since that large period of time when Armin hasn't seen him, and Armin cannot voice his worry. This must be what the others thought about him when he was losing sight of what's real and what's a delusion.

Eren points at the horizon and asks Armin something that shakes him to his core.

The sea's shine doesn't glimmer as brightly as it did before.


The sand is cool between his toes as he stands looking at the horizon. It looks quite different now than it did during the summer. Darker, with a lower sun that gives the ocean a more orange hue. He never knew that ducks fancied the ocean as they lay bobbing on its waters.

He sticks his hands deep into his pockets. His wrists itch terribly, but he won't be able to reach them through his coat.

Sighing out a puff of hot breath, he looks up to his left, where the other Bertholdt stands studying him.

"So… What do you think?" Armin asks.

"I see this every day. That doesn't make it any less gorgeous."

Armin hums and looks ahead of himself again. He wonders which part of his memories this Bertholdt frequents most. If he inhabits the wonder that Armin felt when he first laid eyes on it, or if he finds pleasure in replaying that moment when Armin first doubted whether he and Eren were really on the same page.

He steps forward, but a hand on his elbow stops him.

"Let's stay by the garden," the other Bertholdt advises. Armin has figured out pretty swiftly that's what he calls the beach. He doesn't correct him. It must be a Marleyan term. "You could fall in and get sick."

Armin nods and is let go of again.

"Would be nice to put my ankles in cold water. It must be good this time of the year."

"Heh. Careful, before you know it, you're knee-deep. It's treacherously difficult to get out of."

Armin looks up at him, a smug smile on his face. "You've fallen in before?"

"Luckily not. But it's something I can see happen. These temperatures are colder than they feel. It's especially apparent in the water."

And he wants to feel it, but he decides to respect the other Bertholdt's request to stay.

They stand by each other's side for a while, simply enjoying the low sun over the ocean in an increasingly more common moment of calm harmony with each other. Waves lap at the shore, washing away the footprints that made it imperfect as the tide rises. Armin narrows his eyes at the sight, a lump forming in his throat.

They're washed away so easily.

He looks behind him, to where the sand turns to grass that the other Bertholdt prefers to stand in as he curiously observes Armin's next move, and spots a solid stick without any branches. He steps out of the sand to pick it up, then returns and stares out at the ocean.

The other Bertholdt usually prefers to take him inside when the sun starts to set, but he has no haste in taking him back today, so Armin waits until the sun hangs low and the moon's outline stands orange in the sky before he looks to see if he has been abandoned yet.

Those all-too-familiar gentle eyes look back at him, still studying him with as much inquisitive fervour as ever. Would Armin be this observant, mostly passive entity if he got to haunt another?

He supposes he'll have all the time in the world to find out when it's his turn to be passed on.

"Can I let you in on something?"

"Of course."

Armin settles down on his knees facing him, the cool sand like dry water brushing against his shins.

"Will you hear me out instead of casting judgement?"

"I don't judge, Armin. You know you can tell me anything."

Armin nods, his lips pulled tight against his teeth while his eyes remain pinned on the edge of the beach, stick in both hands, like they've been trained to do with rifles — before he lets go of one side and places the end a little removed from the grassy border.

"So much has been going on lately," he begins, tapping the end of the stick into the sand a few times before dragging it toward himself. "So much has changed. Everyone has changed. And yet I've never felt more like I'm standing on the sidelines and watching while everyone else actually does things."

He stops right before his knee and stares at the stick's wake. Then, he lifts it again, brings it back to where he started, a little closer to his knees than the other, and starts another trail to its right.

"We finally have allies. The volunteers are importing materials to help us upgrade our infrastructure, and we've never stood a better chance as we do now."

He stops again near his knee. The third time he lifts the stick, he hesitates, and finally, he decides to start halfway toward his knees instead of at the edge of the grass.

"The titans are gone. Soon, we will have the space to safely test out my first transformation. It's all going so well. Some things even directly involve me, and yet…"

He stops at his knee again, then looks up at the other Bertholdt, whose eyes go from carefully watching the lines Armin's drawing to his face.

Armin drops the stick by his side, staring down at the three mismatched trails.

"What legacy will I leave behind?" he asks with a weak voice.

His hand finds its way towards his knees, where his fingers brush the sand before he starts to sway his hand from side to side, encroaching on the lines and brushing their shape out of existence more and more with each wave, until the shortest is completely gone.

"I took your life. No one seems to care. They even find it a good thing, but I just…"

Letting out a bitter sigh, he grabs a handful of sand and squeezes it.

"I think things would be better if they hadn't brought me back at the cost of your life. I'd be dead, yes, but… is that such a bad thing? Don't you deserve a life too?"

He looks up at the other Bertholdt again. Despite promising not to judge, he carries that look of pity Armin knows so well by now on his face.

"When they found you, they wanted to give you the chair," the other Bertholdt answers. "They didn't. That's because there were people out there, myself included, who think that you can still live a fulfilling life regardless of everything that has happened. There are people who want you to live. There are people here who want to help you. Isn't it at least worth a shot?"

"What kind of life would it be, though?" Armin retorts. "Nothing will change that I am the reason why Erwin is dead. That I'm supposed to step up and make that worth something, yet I just stand and watch as life passes me by."

His fingers press the sand against his palm one by one before he lets go of it altogether and it goes back to the front, where he wipes away the second line.

"Eren doesn't have so long left, and…"

He wipes away the final line, leaving in front of him a patch of sand as undisturbed as it was before he drew in it.

"While I may have more time, it will run out decades before everyone else's. And I'm afraid that with how things are currently going, the waves will wash away my existence and the others will move on like I never existed. I… I can't be the hero that people make me out to be. And I'm so terrified of being forgotten, eventually."

It's stupid, saying it out loud like that. Bertholdt definitely understands his urgency, no matter the place he appears in, no matter if he's real or just a figment of Armin's imagination mixed in with some mysterious titan power's side effects, yet he feels so utterly alone in his suffering.

Two cracks sound in front of him. The other Bertholdt has gotten down to squat, one knee lower than the other as he rests his weight on his ankles, and he places a hand in the sand.

"I can't tell you not to fear such a thing, Armin. It's no uncommon fear," he tells Armin with a voice so calm that Armin almost wants to believe him. "But your assessment… Is that how things go? Is that your rationale speaking, or your insecurities?"

His finger goes for the sand, where he draws lines, just like Armin did, but this time, they are far more numerous and all have differing start and end points.

"Dying is a fact of life. I don't know what you have been through, who you remember, but you regularly talk about other people who impacted your life. Just as you still think about them and honour their memory, so will others when you're gone. And I wouldn't be so certain that you'll go early. You're a healthy young man. Your time spent here is not the rest of your life. This is just a tough time you have to get through. I give you good odds to live a long, happy life."

"Yes, but… The curse."

"The curse?"

"I know you're aware of it, Bertholdt," Armin wearily sighs. "I have a little over eleven years left before I die. There's no known cure."

And once again, he gets that look of pity.

"Is that a reason to just give up?"

Armin looks back at the other Bertholdt wide-eyed. Maybe that pity isn't pity, but kindness, as he smiles down on him with understanding. Like he means what he says. Like he really wants to help Armin live what he has left to his best.

His reasoning doesn't make sense, but he has seen it happen before. He has seen Bertholdt fade out of his former friends' consciousness like he never even existed in the first place. Like he wasn't their friend. Like he didn't have his own hopes and dreams and feelings, the ones Armin has gotten access to morsel by morsel, that have been reduced to nothingness.

"I…"

He tightens his fist over the textile of his pants.

"Lately, I don't know what to think anymore."

"You don't need to have it all figured out right now. That's why I want you to let me help you. Haven't you gone through enough?"

It's genuine. The look on the other Bertholdt's face looks honest. As caring as his words imply.

"Maybe…"

"You need to let me in if you want me to help you, Armin. You have to want it."

Everything they told him he can't do. Everything he promised himself he would avoid.

He just breathes in and out the maritime air. The other Bertholdt wants him to believe things that aren't real and doesn't accept Armin's explanations. But staying at his standstill is no option either.

The other Bertholdt waits so patiently for his answer. Armin feels bad for making him wait.

"I just… I need to think."

"Let's go inside. It's getting late." The other Bertholdt sticks out a hand and Armin lets him help him to his feet again. "Tomorrow, I'll give you something that I think might help."