Armin no longer is the man he was before Trost's wall was breached.
To not be fine was a liability, so he was. He functioned as he should have: sharper than ever and on high alert for whatever may be coming his way, no matter how well the threat had hidden itself. He no longer was a kid; he no longer could afford to put all of his overthinking into flights of fancy and meaningless observations about the world.
He's had a few moments of weakness following the events of losing his best friend, but those don't have to define him. He has grown since.
Behind his back, he knows that they called it a miracle that he survived his first expedition into Wall Maria. "Why him?" they would say in all but words. "Why not one of my beloved comrades instead?" It's an anthem that has echoed behind him countless times after. But his high alert is also why they uncovered the Female Titan's true identity. Why they had an inkling that Reiner and Bertholdt may be linked to her.
Why they failed to capture Annie. Why Reiner and Bertholdt managed to vanish with Ymir on their side. Why they didn't learn a thing about their assailants and they were left empty-handed; the side forced into violence due to their overwhelming lack of information.
They'd been too loud. Suddenly, they were enemies of the state, persecuted wherever they went and forced into hiding until they could fight tooth and nail to spill the blood needed to install a new, better government.
And then, far sooner than any of them preferred, they were back in Shiganshina and one decision out of his hands permanently altered the course of Armin's life, so that yet again, the "Why him?" murmured behind him wherever he went.
In all that mess, could anyone fault him for losing sight of when his bleeds came?
He can't ask Eren about this. He doesn't have this problem.
The only other shifter he knows who has experience with this is Annie, and it doesn't look like she'll budge in that crystal of hers anytime soon, as much as everyone would love for her to come forward with answers. She won't help them after what they have done to her. He can't just ask Mikasa if she ever saw her have any bleeds; he can't even begin to think of all the reasons why that would come across as weird.
Without information, there's no knowing if titan shifters simply lose the ability to bleed, maybe even their fertility altogether.
If that's the case, it would come twice as a saving grace. He can only hope, but he doesn't fare well hoping when so many factors float through his head. The hypothesis shatters when he remembers that Grisha had Eren after he inherited the Attack Titan.
He stares intensely into the glass of the vials and they stare back at him tenfold. Hange hasn't noticed his distress yet, off somewhere in the research quarters doing their own thing. He'll need to temper his reaction if he doesn't want to be questioned.
After all, there's nothing to worry about.
It's nothing more than a speck of blood in the night. There have been plenty of nights since when he was forced to sleep in civilian clothes or even in his military garb to allow the group a quick escape should they be discovered. Some days, there was barely any time for bathroom breaks before they had to move on. There is a good chance that he simply missed it in the hectic chaos of the past months, and he notices that he can only now finally breathe again.
If not, then he can find solace and anchor himself to the fact that his body quite literally exploded into a titan and anything he should've carried within would have disintegrated in the white-hot flames that contorted his flesh out of shape. Why would his revival include that of another living being separate from himself?
And yet…
They say that he came out of his pure titan wearing pants.
That fact worries him more than it should.
He's likely fine, but he doesn't like living within unknowns. At worst, he'll need to wait a month before he gets his definitive answer.
How he wishes he could speed his body up and not slow it down, for once.
When he goes to bed, it's with a white cloth pressed between his legs underneath his underwear. For in case he gets a particularly light bleed and it sneaks past the bunched-up textile of his pyjamas. There's no room for error.
He doesn't sleep that well the first nights, spooked by the fact that he has to take special measures to begin with.
Day after day, he finds that cloth as white as it was the evening before. He's hyper-aware of even the lightest pain in his belly and the random waves of nausea that he's experienced since he was a child and how often he has to use the bathroom, and when he goes down to the research quarters, he grows increasingly unsettled by his reminder of what he's waiting for.
"I have a suggestion," Hange says near the end of their second week of testing together, drawn away for once from the pile of paperwork that they one day started bringing to the research quarters to spend the time.
"Yes?"
"At this rate, it's unlikely that I will catch the moment you first heal. I have collected enough blood to last me a while. Why don't we let our paths diverge for now and you go out with the others? Casual activity might knock something loose."
How is casual activity going to knock loose a bleed is the question his first instinct asks, but Hange doesn't know about this matter. They don't even know that he can bleed. He hasn't been the most focused he's ever been this week.
His back and neck hurt and so many cuts have piled on that they had to switch to his left forearm a few days ago. He could use some fresh air and the space to stretch his legs. Cramming all of his training into the evening isn't going to cut it if he wants to attain a physique that could handle the Colossal Titan.
"You can make your own incisions," Hange adds, "but you gotta promise me that you will drop everything and come running after me the second even a line of steam come out of those wounds. Deal?"
"That sounds perfect," Armin says with a cautious smile. "Please don't let me waste your time."
A week has passed since Armin first started tracking his nights again and he's starting to feel the lack of confirmation that he's fine. He still has three fourths of his total time left, it doesn't have to mean anything, but he needs something to hold onto.
When the group of new elites leaves after lunch, Armin holds Mikasa back and asks her to come to his room with him.
"I'm sorry. It's for the sake of privacy," he explains after they have shut the door behind them, and she immediately understands.
"Is something wrong?" she asks, and Armin delays in nodding.
"I was just curious… When was the last time you had your bleed?"
Mikasa has to think about it for a moment before she answers.
"Two weeks ago."
"And was it ordinary? Like always?"
"Like always."
Like always.
Armin could've been alone, but he lucked out on having a female companion to grow up around after all adult presence faded out of their lives.
Like him, she is different. Mikasa is the only person he knows who has a bleed that lasts for longer than a night.
When they were living on the streets and it first started, she'd been distressed to bleed for three days in a row. None of the women they stayed with could explain to her why she got more than a couple of droplets. She refused to be seen by a doctor about it, thinking their limited resources were better spent on food and clothes to get through the winter than to solve a medical mystery that didn't threaten her life.
It's her eastern blood, Armin always figured. Now that he knows about the Founder's ability to modify the Eldian body, he wonders if long bleeds are the standard in the other peoples and if an earlier Founder shortened Eldians' for the sake of convenience. Mikasa once asked if Armin's bleeds hurt too, and he had been so stupid as to make her feel even more isolated by answering no and disincentivising her from asking more questions.
"Armin, is something wrong?"
Armin looks up at Mikasa when she pulls him out of his thoughts, and she carries a look on her face that's usually reserved for when her eyes fall upon those many cuts that mark his forearms.
He averts his eyes.
"Armin…?"
He needs to breathe in deep if he doesn't want to bawl.
What is he supposed to say? If anything happened, Mikasa can't know. If this is just an oddity about shifter bodies, though, then eventually, she will figure out that he was lying if he tells her now that he had a heavier or a more frequent bleed.
He needs to take a gambit and hope that he's in the clear.
"It's just… I've been a little irregular ever since… you know," Armin says as softly as he can.
Mikasa knows. He can see it in her body language when he glances her way.
"I wanted to know in case maybe we're synced and I have some reference for when to expect it next."
"Have you gotten nothing at all?"
Armin shakes his head.
"Since we went back to Shiganshina?"
A nod. It's one of the rare instances where they acknowledge there was a return to Shiganshina. Armin never quite fully knows how to approach Mikasa for apparently fighting for him and giving up at the same time, but making him inherit a weapon through such grim means nonetheless. He hopes it stays that way.
Mikasa thinks for a little while.
"Do you think that people who can turn into titans lose the ability?" she asks. "There is the curse. Maybe that's not the only thing that changed about your body."
She avoids the question he doesn't want to answer. For once, he's glad that Mikasa sometimes pretends that he's more innocent than he really is, and he can breathe his sigh of relief that he doesn't need to breach a topic he's wholly unprepared to discuss.
"Maybe. I considered it too, but I just… Mikasa, do you know if Annie ever…?"
Mikasa is the one to avert her eyes this time.
"I'm sorry. I don't."
He sighs through his nose. He isn't any closer to finding his answer.
"I'm sorry. This is making you uncomfortable, isn't it?" Mikasa says.
Armin looks up at Mikasa again, surprised this time.
"Huh?"
"This topic. We can stop talking about it."
Armin shakes his head. He realises that his cheeks are hot from trying to suppress his emotions.
"I was the one who brought it up. Please don't feel bad about it."
Mikasa nods and gives him a kind yet delayed smile, one which he returns.
"Mikasa… I know you know this, but please don't tell Hange about this. If I really need help, I'll go looking for it myself. I promise."
"I never would," Mikasa assures him. He believes her.
Twenty cuts have been scratched within his flesh unhealed when he sneaks a book about pregnancy and childbirth into his bedroom. Under no circumstances can anyone see, but Armin is good at hiding things. No one will know.
It's just for the sake of curiosity, anyway. As a backup.
If he's carrying, he manages to calculate, he should be in his third to fifth month right now, or his 15th to 23rd week of second trimester. The numbering system is a bit unusual, counting the last bleed before conception as the first week.
July. Days before they went on their first mission beyond the walls. That's when he can remember he last had his bleed.
Through the fog this war has cast over his brain, the details have been coming back. A single encounter aside, he was always careful and knew how to avert the risks. His last time was before that last bleed. It wouldn't be like him to be unsafe about matters as delicate as this, and for the one time he was, he learns that conception is pretty difficult in the first place even when everything is timed right and both partners are willing. One instance of risky sex is unlikely to be effective.
Moreover, the book makes it clear that this is around the time when it starts to become visible. Armin's arms and legs have thickened in the past months and he has gotten in better shape ever since he inherited his titan, yet his stomach is just as flat as it has always been. Not like the minimal bump the book says should start poking through his belly if he's at the earlier side of his estimate, nor the bigger bump he should be showing if he were at the later side. He would feel a lump that should be a couple, maybe a dozen centimetres in length by now.
He decides that the other things that the book mentions are coincidences. He's never been a stranger to nausea and sickness, and he hasn't paid attention to his body enough during the supposed critical periods to notice if he was in any pain. If he doesn't remember, then it likely never happened. His body is what it has always been.
A couple of overlooked bleeds have set him on edge. The one he had after his last relevant sexual contact pretty much confirms it.
Although there still has been no sign of any bleed, he goes to bed with tentative peace of mind that evening.
The first three cuts he's gotten stand pink in his skin, nearly done healing through the natural avenue. The rest of his right arm stands in varying stages of repair. It's his left he's worried about; three of the scratches ache significantly more and the surrounding skin is redder than he's used to. This amount of scratches is starting to take its toll on his health.
"What was it like for you?" he asks on the afternoon of the 25th scratch.
Eren shrugs. "It just happened." Armin can tell that he didn't think the question through.
"You healed a tooth that the Captain knocked out of your mouth without thinking about it, right? That was the first time you did it without entering your titan?"
"Yeah."
"Did you feel it?"
"No."
Less than helpful.
"It's a gut feeling," Eren adds when he senses Armin isn't quite satisfied with his answers. "I had my titan for five years by the time we discovered it. That's a five year head start on learning how to heal."
"You're right," Armin answers. He runs a hand over the sorest part of his wounds, scratching at the scab of yesterday's cut when he knows he shouldn't. "I don't have that time, though."
"You'll get it. You have to."
Somehow, despite the supportive contents of his reassurance, the tone lacks emotion. Armin isn't sure how much Eren means it, but he's right: he has no choice but to get it right, they need him to. This is the burden he now carries: to prove that he deserves the life he was given. The same burden his predecessor did, but he crosses out the thought.
It won't help him. It's better not to think about his regrets of the past when he can't change anything about it.
He's putting the scratches on his left arm closer together than those on his right. No one thought it would take this long and it's evident in how far the cuts in his right arm are spaced apart. At their initial pace, they expected that twenty attempts would be good enough.
His right arm carries ten, his left nineteen. He has run out of space on the back of his forearms and the scratch in the back of his hand hurts more than he cares to admit. The front of his forearm comes too close to important nerves and veins and he can't take such a risk.
So that leaves him with the task of deciding where his new incision spot will be.
Thighs are a tough location to bandage and would mean he'll have to take off his pants should he finally heal and Hange will stare at his legs. He hates showing his legs, even when he stuffs his underwear with a sock. Someone might always notice the inorganic shape without the textile of his pants to even it out.
His back is an equally bad idea. He'd rather not appear shirtless. His pecs don't work for the same reason.
With a sigh, he tries to run his new cut alongside one of the untouched parts of his lower arms, but the existing cuts span so broad that the new cuts are pushed into a zone that hurts quite a bit.
That leaves him with his calves. Frankly, the most terrifying low pain zone he has on his body.
He wonders if eventually, when his healing finally activates, even the wounds that have started to scar into a pink line will vanish, or if he will have reminders of these tests for the rest of his thirteen years. Maybe it would be better if he places them where no one will see, but the thought of being seen when he's asked to show his progress sends him into a fit of panic.
So just lie.
Say that he went for his thighs and make a new cut on his forearm to heal once he nails it. What do they know? How could they ever tell?
That'll have to do. The thought exercise is a welcome way to distract from the fact that he only has a little more than a week left before he might have to face a terrifying possibility. The security of his last known bleed is starting to wane and he needs reinforcement.
A week is a long time. There's no knowing the future.