The stars shine bright in the black sky tonight.
A cool nocturnal breeze picks up, whipping the nearby trees into a loud rustle he so loves to listen to from inside the cabin. But inside is much too hot, and here, he can cool his skin and breathe. It's not like he will be able to sleep.
The night casts peace and quiet over the slumbering camp and the world forgets he's there. He always favoured the full moon. Tonight, it frames the camp in a blue glow that complements everything; every speck he is so familiar with dotted against the dark sky, every planet and constellation he can name, even the tail of the mysterious Great White painted across an ebon canvas.
What sort of sky do they look upon across the ocean tonight? Do they see the same stars he does, or is it different over there? Do they see the same constellations?
He knows. Doesn't he?
It's been so long. He isn't surprised that he can't quite remember, not even that it escapes him that it may even already be morning in Marley.
Clouds have obscured his thoughts since the afternoon. He sat through dinner without thinking much of it, secluded himself with a book (no one would come looking for him anyway), and went to bed hoping that he'd feel better after a night's rest.
But he fails to rest. He knows what's coming. He knows that it's his duty to face a monster he hasn't met in years.
His breath is hot and wet against his lips. What happened today…
Did he pick the right choice?
What choice? Were it up to him, he wouldn't have done it. It was out of his hands the moment it started.
That's an excuse. He knew what could happen and did it anyway. That makes him the one responsible for any outcome.
Coward.
It doesn't matter. In just a few months from now, this will all just be a bad memory. He's good at suppressing these things. When he is passed on to the next candidate, this will be no more than one of the many shameful secrets he'll take to the grave until the day it is remembered.
He opens his eyes and sees light.
His smile is unquenchable when he trails after Mikasa on the day when his arms show thirty-one scratches and his thigh six. He makes himself lessen the grin with pain in his cheeks and strain in the corners of his lips as he pulls on her sleeve and asks her to step aside for a moment.
"You'll never guess what I woke up to this morning," he says, excitement in his voice.
"Did you finally…"
"I bled," Armin finishes the sentence. "Well, you know. Not just from the cuts. I'm fine. Looks like I just skipped out on a month. Maybe it was the stress of everything happening or my body reacting weirdly to coming back. But I'm healthy. I won't need to talk to anyone, isn't that amazing?"
He's rambling, but Mikasa doesn't mind because she returns his genuine smile in that soft way she reciprocates everything.
"That's a relief. I was scared you'd gotten ill."
"No reason to worry," Armin laughs, then points his thumb behind him. "See you at breakfast?"
Mikasa answers with a nod and their paths diverge.
Armin makes his way to the men's lavatory. Mikasa was already late for breakfast; he knows no one is around at this hour and he will be left in peace. The smile that adorns his face collapses once he stands in front of the door and lets himself in.
He finds himself a stall and sits down atop the toilet's wooden lid. Scalpel in hand, he pulls his pyjama bottoms down to his ankles and lays eyes upon the six unhealed cuts on his right thigh. Two are infected, the others seem fine. He places the blade against his skin and pulls an identical line underneath the last one, then places the rag he brought along against it to stop the bleeding.
He cleans the blade of the scalpel and places it back into its protective satchel before he places it down on the floor and closes his eyes.
No point in delaying. He'll have to do it at some point. He pulls down his underwear and takes out tonight's cloth.
White.
The sigh he lets out is shaky and underlined by the sound of his voice. He drops the cloth and buries his face in his hands, elbows leaning on his spread knees to avoid putting his weight on the inflamed scratches.
Tomorrow is the day he's done an entire month of tracking. Taking variation into account, that gives him another week before he truly knows, but he's grown tired of inching the ultimate deadline back by the day in the hopes that it'll finally come. It won't. He has noticed how his body has changed over the past weeks and it's definitive.
He's pregnant.
In a swift movement, he turns around just in time to lift the lid and retch into the toilet's basin before he chokes on the spittle and slime his body is expunging and he falls into a burning coughing fit. If anyone were to pass by, they'd hear him, but it's not uncommon for him to be heard breaking down somewhere in the Survey Corps' quarters. It would be weirder if he were always fine after inheriting the Colossal Titan.
The thought twists his stomach again for another bout in which he spews the only thing his empty stomach has into the toilet, biting into his oesophagus.
This isn't right. Nothing about this feels right, and he wants to sink his fingers beneath his skin and rip aside his muscles and tear out his organs until all that remains of him are his bones and he can be at peace. Tears stream down his face and every time he thinks he's done, his stomach once again starts to push until not even the burning goo is left to be sent back and he dry-heaves.
When all the strength has left his body, he hangs wheezing and groaning against the stone ridge of the toilet, too languid to get up.
What's the point, anyway?
He's not supposed to be pregnant. Men can't be. None of his male friends can be.
He can say whatever he wants; introduce himself as Armin Arlert, a 15 year old lad; tell Eren and Mikasa that he knows who he is and to ask them to please believe him; hold in his stomach and wear an extra undershirt and speak in a voice that's slightly deeper than the one he naturally possesses and keep secrets from his friends—but when push comes to shove, he can't get rid of the part of himself that he so contests.
He's not like them, and he never will be, and a pressure pushes under his lungs, one characteristic of a raw type of anger that he only feels when the world is being unfair. He wants to scream until his voice is entirely gone but knows that within the city, he won't have the opportunity without having to explain himself.
Aware of how he never fixed it, he haphazardly pulls up his underwear and pyjama bottoms and wraps his arms around his torso. Now more than anything, he wants to hide himself.
It's an invasion. Something that shouldn't be there; something that isn't even welcome, but that still made itself at home within him without a care for what he wants.
That doesn't make it right. That doesn't make him right.
So direly does he want to sink into the floor and let the building's foundation crush him to bits to reclaim him for the earth, but he knows that such mercy does not exist for him.
He goes straight back to his room when he finds a bout of strength to rise to his feet.
Enough dramatics. No more throwing up or wheezing when he thinks about what's happening to him. He has wiped his face clean and is ready to seize his day.
If it's something that has burrowed itself within his body, then he can, as follows from that, expunge it again. It's not all over just yet.
He has got this.
Supposedly, he's in his third to fifth month.
It takes everything he's got out of him, but he eventually bites down on his lip hard while he presses his hands into the skin of his belly and feels. His stomach is empty and he knows where the mass in his intestines is supposed to be around now.
The book made it clear that he should be able to feel something behind his bowel, so he presses down and tries to make sense of the various shapes that poke against his palms and fingertips. When he presses towards the area of his pubic bone and searches thoroughly, it's there. Small and soft and definitely possibly just his intestine or his bladder, but he feels so tired of running for excuses and covers his forehead with a hand to try to hold back the migraine it brings forth.
At least Mikasa thinks he's fine. No one knows yet. If he can barely feel it, then they will barely see it. He can start to overeat and tell them that his new shifter body puts on weight more easily.
He has options. He's not done yet.
Why is he sulking? Nothing has changed, and yet he feels so hopelessly not himself. He can go on living his blissful delusion that he's something he isn't when his body is done debunking him. Isn't that the way he's always gotten by?
He's painfully aware of his chest and his pelvis as he lies in bed and breathes to calm his mind despite feeling nothing special there. He always counted himself lucky when his puberty kept him small. It comes at the cost of being a shorter, much thinner man who could easily be mistaken for his sex, but he can't imagine how bad it would've been if he needed more to flatten himself with than just an extra undershirt or if his bones had betrayed him.
Right now, though? He feels thick and huge and heavy. Swollen, his brain tells him, even though absolutely nothing happened, and it makes him physically cringe and squeeze his eyes closed.
If he lets this drag on any longer, he will know what the word swollen truly means.
His distress will most definitely be visible if he shows up at lunch, but inconspicuousness is his greatest ally. Tell them he fell asleep again; not like anyone came looking for him anyway. So long as people don't know, he will have at least several more weeks, if not months to figure this out and solve it without the humiliation of being suspected and without anyone having to speculate about the details of how and why he's gotten himself pregnant.
Put himself in the shoes of the people who have done this before. There must have been others who were unable to carry to term.
It's a world so far away from Armin's. The book he perused holds no tips for terminating, conforming with the Paradis law that claims that termination is akin to infanticide.
Even before the thought that it's a life he's taking away has fully formed within his head, he has already dismissed the thought.
It's not. Really, it's not.
If it were, he couldn't consider it as such. He doubts that it feels. He doubts that, should such a thing exist, it has a soul. If it's not confiscated in the name of scientific research, then it will face a lifetime devoid of love and care when its father has no time nor desire to look after it. Should they find out whose child that is, it faces a fate worse than death, and Armin with it.
It doesn't matter what it is or what he thinks it is. This isn't about the foetus, it's about himself. There will be enough people after him who are more than willing to offer a loving and caring home. He only spares it misery.
As for what connections he will sever–
He pulls down his shirt and props his torso up on his elbows, looking out in front of him as his eyes briefly black out at the spike in pulse.
He never was welcome in the first place. Armin doesn't care if he destroys every last trace that exists of him. This isn't about him. This is about Armin. This is about what he does with the life he was afforded.
He collapses back into his pillow and traces the vague outlines of what he will do next that float through the dark vortex of his perturbations.