This is part 1 of 2.
Many a fic has been written about the day (if it ever comes) when Annie's crystal is broken. Most of it, in my opinion, ends up being a little OOC. As much as I love Annie x Armin, it's a little silly for them to be making out just minutes after the last piece of crystal has hit the floor. With this story, I wanted to try and explore a darker, more plausible take on what might happen if the Scouting Legion ever did manage to extract Annie Leonhart from her crystal. It's certain that they'd want to interrogate her, and it's equally certain that her ultimate fate probably wouldn't be too rosy. In addition, now that Annie is not only free of her prison but also free of any need to pretend to be somebody else, I was curious what changes, if any, might happen to her character. I also had a feeling that she'd have to come to terms with a lot of guilt and trauma from her actions.
Then, I threw in Armin. Not just because he's my favorite character, or because this is my favorite pairing, but because he's not only likely to be there if this scenario ever comes to pass, and because his relationship with Annie, in my opinion, will heavily influence what, if anything, she chooses to reveal or do.
I also hope this will illustrate to a degree why putting these two characters together is so dear to many fans. They both have a lot to learn from one another and a lot to gain from any relationship, and given the canonical past as well as the likely future, it really does seem that they're a good match.
Fair warning, this will get a little rough, and if this story does what I hope it will do, there will be MAD feelings by the end. Don't worry, though—I've left in a bit of hope and healing at the end too, so this is hardly a tragedy in any real sense.
II.
The fateful ring skittered across the floor of the dungeon, hurriedly wrenched from Annie's finger by one of the Survey Corps soldiers as his three comrades held her in place, forcing a thick strip of cloth between her teeth. A fifth soldier was rising back to her feet, cursing as she massaged the spot on her temple where Annie's defiant kick had landed.
The underground chamber echoed with their curses, grunts, and the rattling of their 3DMG gear as they wrestled with their captive.
Armin watched from the entrance of the room, flanked on either side by Hanji and Commander Erwin. Levi, fully equipped and dressed for combat, stood a few steps in front of the three of them. His stance remained casually slouched, but the tension in his neck and facial muscles indicated that he was poised for immediate action.
The crystal had been reduced to a fine pile of blue-white sand. An industrial magnet, of all things, borrowed from a wrought-iron plant, had finally done the trick, disintegrating a small fragment of crystal that Eren had generated for experimental purposes. When brought near Annie's gem-like prison, the glasslike surface had instantly turned opaque before falling apart in a shower of grains and small chunks. In less than a minute, the cascade of falling crystal had fallen away, exposing the small girl wearing a military police uniform. The scouts conducting the operation had pounced on her before she'd even been completely free of the gemstone, and they'd made sure to fully reduce the crystal to dust out of the concern that Annie might be able to somehow manipulate it.
Annie's eyes had remained tightly closed even as she struggled with her captors. It looked almost as though she was refusing to wake, fighting bitterly to regain the unconscious, deathlike sleep that they had dragged her from. With the blue filter of the crystal now gone, her complexion appeared dull and weakened. Her clothes and hair were somehow wet—moisture from her titan body, Armin guessed, trapped with Annie inside the crystal.
Armin shivered. The dungeon was cold, despite the torches burning on the walls. He imagined that a normal human, trapped in the non-insulating crystal, would have died long ago from such an environment. Assuming, of course, that the need to breathe, eat, and drink were nonfactors. They had discussed the possibility that they would recover a lifeless corpse from Annie's crystal, but it appeared that the titan-shifter's vitality, combined with her strange comatose state, had kept her alive.
Quite alive, from the look of the degree of resistance she was putting up. Armin could hear Hanji scribbling notes.
"Hold her arms out to both sides."
The five soldiers clustered around Annie looked up at the corporal before complying. Just at that moment, the girl opened her eyes for the first time.
Blue. Icy blue, like the flowering glory-of-the-snow that bloomed when the snows melted. Armin had almost forgotten.
Levi was walking slowly forward as the Survey Corps scouts forcibly extended Annie's arms. The prisoner's eyes saw him and filled immediately with fear.
"Annie Leonhart." Levi's voice was even, professional.
Annie stiffened as humanity's strongest soldier stepped within arms reach. She did not meet his eyes. Her gaze flickered around the room. Recognizing Armin, she blinked and immediately looked away, frowning.
A pang that felt like guilt traveled through Armin's body like a wave.
Levi exhaled. His hand suddenly darted out, fingers closing around Annie's chin in a death grip, forcing her head upwards. Annie struggled, doggedly avoiding the soldier's gaze, her eyes wide in terror. At Armin's side, Commander Erwin straightened as though suddenly concerned. After a moment however, Levi released Annie's jaw just as abruptly and took a step backwards, tilting his head to one side. "Do you remember me?"
Levi didn't seem perturbed by the lack of a response. When he spoke again, Armin shuddered violently and involuntarily at the brutal edge to his words.
"I keep my promises." Levi snarled. "Stand clear!"
Moving faster than Armin would have believed possible, so fast that he wondered if he was imagining things, Levi yanked his blades from their sheaths and amputated Annie's arms just below her elbows.
Annie screamed.
The room erupted. The soldiers who had been holding her had stumbled backwards, releasing their grip in their shock and surprise, leaving her to crumple, unsupported, to her knees. Armin reeled as though punched, and a cry of horror escaped from his throat, echoed by Hanji's similar gasp from his right shoulder. Even Levi seemed momentarily frozen, as though astonished at his own audacity.
Commander Erwin's reaction, however, was overwhelming in its fury.
"LEVI!"
Louder than any battle order Armin had ever heard given, louder even than his resounding cry to advance on the day a titan's teeth dragged him from the saddle, louder still than any cry of pain Armin had ever heard, Erwin bellowed his subordinate's name with a resounding, titanic rage that blasted the entire room with the force of high explosive. Even Annie flinched where she lay crying, curled on the stone floor, blood pooling around her, thick steam rising from her ruined limbs.
Erwin took two steps forward, his face a mask of anger. "That's enough."
Levi had been positioning himself to strike at Annie's ankles. He did not outwardly acknowledge Commander Erwin, but he flicked the thumb triggers on his maneuver gear, his face expressionless as a stone. His two bloody blades clattered to the floor, and humanity's strongest soldier spun and marched out of the room, fingers still gripped tightly around his bladeless hilts.
The room was silent and motionless apart from Annie's wailing. The floor where she kneeled was crimson, and the white knees of her police uniform pants were rapidly turning red-brown as they absorbed the pooling blood. She was holding her crippled limbs close against her, rocking back and forth in anguish. Her cries, muffled and strangled by the loop of cloth between her teeth, were no less heartrending.
Armin realized that he had unconsciously taken several steps forward into the room. Behind him and to his right, Hanji stood frozen, mouth open, her notebook lying open on the floor where she'd dropped it. The soldier who'd thrown Annie's ring aside looked dazed as he wiped a splash of her blood from his face before turning to look at Erwin for instructions.
Armin had expected Commander Erwin's voice to carry a hint of tenderness when he spoke next, but his voice was firm and unyielding. "Carry her to the cell and have Dominika search her. Kurt, find a medic and see to it that her wounds are treated immediately."
Annie's eyes were shut tightly, her face wet with tears as she was carried past Armin and out of the door. Armin felt as though something inside him was being sliced to shreds as he listened to her sobs diminish down the corridor.
One of the soldiers bent to retrieve Levi's discarded blades, placing them gingerly on the desk in the corner of the dungeon. At the same time, Hanji stepped forward, hesitated briefly, and stooped to retrieve the severed hands lying upon the dungeon floor, placing them into separate burlap specimen bags. Lost in thought, Commander Erwin was walking towards the center of the room where the pile of crystal dust lay, mixing with Annie's blood where it touched the pool at one edge.
Armin stood alone, cold to his core despite the torch blazing on the wall behind him. He felt as though he'd aged five years in a single minute.
OOOOO
Erwin had set up a temporary office in the headquarters of the Stationary Guard, which sat nestled alongside the inner wall in Stohess. He stood behind a desk piled high with maps, stacks of documents, envelopes of various sizes emblazoned with the Survey Corps seal, and a messy jumble of stationary. Levi, Hanji, and Armin were standing across from him—Hanji squinting at the street below through the office's only window, Levi leaning casually against the far wall. At that moment, Armin was staring up at the wall from his position near the door.
He'd just noticed the brass plate that had been placed just above the doorframe. It read:
Room Dedicated to the Memory of Ian Dietrich
Captain of the Stationary Guard and Proud Son of Stohess
Killed During the Recapture of Trost in the year 850
The image of a tall, grim-faced officer sprang to his mind. Armin knew by now that most people caught in a titan's death grip screamed, begged, soiled themselves, or froze in terror in their final moments. Ian Dietrich had been one of the rare soldiers who had remained brave right up until the very end even as a titan's jaws closed around his neck. Looking up at the memorial plaque, Armin felt glad that the man's sacrifice had been honored.
Hanji's voice brought Armin's attention immediately back to the matter at hand. "Well, what now, Erwin?"
Commander Erwin's expression was impassive. With a small sigh of vexation, he put down the pen he was holding awkwardly in his left hand and demanded, "Levi, explain yourself."
Levi ran a hand against the wall and examined his fingertips as he replied, "I've always maintained that pain is a highly effective teacher. Her ability to regenerate is her loss and our gain this time. She needed a lesson that further resistance would be futile."
"I see."
Armin could tell from the look in Erwin's eyes that the older man wasn't satisfied with Levi's explanation in the slightest.
"You will of course refrain from giving any further such lessons in the future without orders," he admonished Levi. "The situation is already fragile enough as it is."
"Levi," Hanji added, "I remind you that what convinced Pastor Nick to divulge what he did was compassion and guilt, not the threat of force."
"I disagree." Levi replied, crossing his arms and sinking further into his slouch. "Nick was a hardened individual, bound by oath and rite and conditioned by a lifetime of secrecy to take his secrets to the grave. Annie Leonhart is strong, if Armin's description is accurate, but I do not see her as such a person."
"That hardly suggests that the rough approach is superior to any alternative," Hanji retorted. She turned back to the window. Suddenly, her face brightened, though Armin noticed that her eyes remained grim. "Oh look—that poor boy tripped over his shoelaces and fell into a puddle…" she chuckled softly.
Levi shrugged. "I have some experience with the two methods—enough to have faith in the value of both."
"I'm sure, but just because both methods work doesn't mean we should start by harming her."
Commander Erwin chose that moment to swear under his breath, and his three subordinates turned to him, surprised.
"What is it, Erwin?" both of them asked simultaneously.
"Nothing, nothing," the commander assured them with a shake of his head. He smiled. "I keep trying to use my lost right arm, that's all." He looked squarely at Armin. "What I meant was to ask you, Armin, about how you felt we should proceed with Annie Leonhart's interrogation."
Armin felt Levi and Hanji's eyes turn to him expectantly. Armin plunged into his thoughts, searching his memories, his knowledge, for anything that might be useful to determine how to proceed further.
As soon as Hanji and Eren had discovered the secret to breaking the mysterious crystal shell that human-piloted titans could form, Armin, Levi, Eren, Mikasa, and Hanji had been immediately dispatched to Stohess on Commander Erwin's urgent orders. Eren, Mikasa, and Levi, the latter largely recovered from his ankle injury, were assigned to provide security in the event of Annie's escape or transformation. Hanji was to apply the technique to Annie's crystal, conduct the interrogation alongside Erwin and Armin, and record any important scientific findings. Erwin's focus, of course, was on information of strategic value.
Armin had been chosen for his insight and perceptiveness. More importantly, however, Armin was there because Erwin believed he personally understood Annie best.
The room darkened as clouds passed by overhead in the sky outside. Several seconds had passed since Erwin had asked for Armin's opinion, and the young soldier paced several steps along the wall as he mulled over the question. His mind worked furiously to arrive at a strategy that would persuade Annie to part with whatever knowledge she held. At the same time, a part of Armin was still shaken and very much distracted by what had happened a few hours earlier in the dungeon.
He'd lied at the time about Annie's torture in order to elicit a reaction from Bertholt, but he'd never seriously contemplated the possibility that his bluff would become reality in the event that they ever managed to extricate Annie from her crystal. He winced as the recollection of Levi's swords flashing in the torchlight came to mind yet again, and forcefully pushed the image from his thoughts. Armin privately wondered if Bertholt would kill him and the others without hesitation the next time they met. Their friendship had been the price they'd paid to rescue Eren—the necessary sacrifice, one of many sacrifices made on that day.
At that moment, Armin settled upon a course of action. He cleared his throat, heart pounding, straightening as he turned to face his superiors.
"I believe…" he began, "I believe that I can not only get the information we need from Annie… but also persuade her to become our military ally."
Hanji stared.
Levi raised an eyebrow. "You're serious."
Erwin frowned slightly, but he seemed to be considering Armin's proposal.
"I am," Armin replied. "You'll have to just trust me, but I really do think that it's a possibility. The most important thing is that we have to convince her to trust us, but if we can do that, I believe that even if she proves unwilling to fight for us, she will at least share what she knows."
Outwardly, Armin might have appeared confident to the others, but his mind was in utter turmoil. The plan he had in mind was almost absurdly simple, but it would require a certain degree of personal courage on his own part.
Erwin's expression remained set in his frown. "You know I can't guarantee anything politically. I can barely ensure that our own soldiers won't butcher her in her cell as it is."
Armin nodded.
"How will you do this?" Hanji asked, "She's incredibly dangerous. If you manipulate or deceive her, she won't hesitate to turn on us, and you risk handing her a second chance to accomplish her original mission."
Suddenly, they heard footsteps in the hallway outside. Levi motioned for immediate silence, and they stood there quietly for several seconds as they listened to the sound of boots and voices grow and pass right outside the door. Armin caught a fragment of some gossip involving recent revelations about some soldier's mistress. The four members of the Survey Corps relaxed as the passing soldiers outside continued down the corridor, their laughter receding in the distance.
"Having her fight alongside us would be extremely difficult and risky, and it's a farfetched idea," Armin admitted in a quiet voice. "Even so, I believe it could be possible in theory."
"Are you planning to leverage her cooperation with guilt?" Levi said. "Is that it?"
"No, not exactly."
"Good." Levi glanced up at the ceiling. "That wouldn't be smart. Were you romantically involved with her?"
"No!" Armin exclaimed, his heart rate accelerating further.
"Excellent. Using that would have been even more idiotic."
"What exactly do you plan to do then, Armin?" Hanji asked. She left the window and paced over to the side of Erwin's desk.
"It's difficult to explain," he said. He took a deep breath and, adding as much of an air of confidence as he could to his voice, he continued, "I'm going to ask you all to trust me. All I plan to do is to speak with Annie alone and without guards. I can't guarantee that this will work, particularly after what happened this morning, and I can't even promise that I'll be able to return with important new information after this one conversation, but I'm reasonably sure that I do have a chance to persuade her to tell us what she knows."
Suddenly, Armin felt as though he were reliving the last time they had all gathered to devise a plan regarding Annie Leonhart. He envisioned the candlelit table in the meeting hall of the Survey Corps headquarters, surrounded by serious faces that had listened intently as he outlined each and every piece of evidence that pointed towards her secret identity as the female titan.
What are you going to do if it turns out it isn't her?
Then I'll feel sorry for Annie.
As it turned out, he had felt sorry for her anyway.
"At the very least, what I'm planning to do won't hurt any of your efforts to… gain information… and I promise that I won't reveal anything of military importance—aside from the fact that we've uncovered Riener and Bertholt's true identities, that is. With your permission, I believe that disclosing that knowledge would actually make her more willing to reveal what she knows," he finished. He was glad that his voice had not betrayed the sudden lump that had risen in his throat at the mention of his two former friends.
He looked to his superior officers. Levi shrugged again. Hanji sighed. Without saying a word, both squad leaders turned to their commander. Armin saw that speech was unnecessary between these three veteran soldiers. Erwin was now aware of their opinion of Armin's proposal, and they wordlessly awaited his final decision.
Commander Erwin placed his left arm against the desk and leaned forward. "Very well, Armin. You have permission to reveal our knowledge of the true identities of Riener Braun, Bertholt Hoover, and the soldier Ymir, as well as our last knowledge of their whereabouts, should you deem it necessary. You have our trust in your judgment. I'll inform her guards and let them know to expect you."
That was it, then.
It was strange, Armin reflected. From the perspective of time alone, just a month and a half had passed since he and Annie had spoken last in the city streets of Stohess. Before that day, they'd last seen one another on the night of the branch selection ceremony for the 104th Trainee Corps. In that span of time, seemingly everything had changed—he'd gone from seeing her as an honest if distant friend, a capable fellow soldier, a strong fighter that he looked up to, to viewing her as a terrifying, unpredictable enemy.
He supposed that it wasn't so different this time. What was she now to him?
Or, was he the one that had changed?