Post-Chapter 59, after the scene in the stables. Prompt from melonpanparade. Jearmin + "Don't Trust Me."
"Do you regret what you did?"
Armin had been asking himself that question the entire day, but this was the first time that he had heard it from someone else's lips. Jean and him were alone now, or as alone as they could be in a single-room barn. Mikasa was no longer there to comfort him, nor was Levi there to fix the conversation when his mouth betrayed his concerns. Now it was just him and Jean, and the mess of thoughts he called his mind.
'You're a horrible person' and 'you had no other choice' jumped back and forth, as if competing how many times they could be said before he went insane. In the end the only comforting thing he had to tell himself was that Jean was alive.
But that woman isn't.
Armin felt his stomach swirl again.
He looked over at his comrade, who sat on the other side of the stall where they had taken to hiding out for the last hour. The fire had been put out hours ago, leaving the only source of light to be the cracks between the boards in the roof where the moonlight shone through just enough to make out shapes.
So while Armin could barely see Jean, he knew he was there, and he let that knowledge comfort himself
He had saved Jean. That was what mattered. There was no switching sides in the middle of a battle, not when the enemy has a gun pointed at a person you care about. He just had to keep telling himself that. It didn't matter if she was a good person or not, he would never find out.
Perhaps she had family, or friends who cared about her. Maybe she had a lover, even children. He might have destroyed more than just one life today. But he didn't know. He would never know. There was only one thing that he did know right now: that Jean couldn't hear any of this.
"No."
He tried his best to make his voice firm, but he could feel his whole body shaking again and it was impossible that the word hadn't been affected.
He took a deep breath in through his nose, letting the foul smell of the horses and uncleaned stalls comfort him. He let it steal his thoughts away. If the smell was this strong, then that meant that Levi must be sleeping. He'd killed people too, and he was able to fall asleep. Levi was a good person, even if he was rough around the edges. Armin didn't hate him, so he shouldn't hate himself.
He tried not to let the fact that he didn't believe in good people bother him.
"Armin..." Jean started, letting the name drift off before continuing. It gave the boy time to bring himself back to reality. "If you were in my situation, would you have done it?"
The boy bit his lip. The only way he had come to terms with what he had done had been by telling himself that Jean's life was in danger, and even then he still hadn't accepted it. Jean's life had value to him, more than his own. Killing to protect himself was selfish.
If it had been his own life in danger, just what would he have done?
No, he already knew the answer...
When his teammates had died in front of him in Trost he had just let himself be picked up...
When the female titan had stood before him he'd let her reach down at him to grab his hood...
When the woman had pointed her gun at him he had just flinched...
And then there were the times with Jean, where both their lives had been in danger.
When Annie was about to grab Jean by the wire, and he had screamed till he thought his throat was going to bleed as much as his head...
When he had dragged Jean's limp body back from a titan, with only a single blade extended to protect them, even though he knew it was pointless...
When he had shot the woman after she had pointed her gun at Jean...
All of those were his answer.
If it had been just his life in danger, then he wouldn't have... He would have never been able to... There was no way he could have...
"Yes." He choked the word out.
Armin couldn't see Jean's eyes in the dimness of the stable, but he felt them. They must be staring through him, boring through the lie.
Armin heard the deep breath that came out of Jean's mouth; thought he felt it on his shoulder even though they weren't even that close.
"But what if she didn't shoot. What if she wasn't going-"
"No." This time there was no waver in his voice.
He didn't have Levi to back him up right now, to fix the conversation for him, to assure his own mind as well as Jean's. But he knew what he had to say. He had to make Jean believe that what he did was right, so he could protect his own life when the time came.
"She made a mistake. She got scared, and she froze. It's what humans do. Fear takes a hold of us and we freeze, but then we do what we have to do to survive. She would have shot you." Maybe not.
A deep breath.
"We couldn't trust her. She was our enemy, we couldn't trust her." She might have been our ally.
"We divide the world into black and white, and we kill those that aren't on our side. We've been betrayed multiple times by people who called themselves our allies." Maybe we're the traitors.
No response, only an exhale of breath.
Armin did the same.
"You're right," Jean finally said, "You and Levi are both right. We couldn't trust any of them. The only people we can trust are ourselves."
"Right." No we can't.
"I know I said it before, but I won't mess up next time. I know what to do now. I trust that what you did was right."
Armin heard the shuffling of feet, indicating the end of this conversation, and when Jean stood up he could just make his face out for a moment from the stripes of moonlight that came through the rooftop. It was a face of forced determination, or at least that's what Armin saw.
He left, likely to go find a stall of his own to sleep in; somewhere away from the person who had saved his life and scarred his humanity.
'I trust what you did was right.'
Armin leant his head back up against the wall, looking up to see the faint bit of sky that crept through the wood.
"Don't trust me..."
I wanted to write something serious for this chapter for a long while, but never got around to it when it first came out. I wanted to show Armin and Jean speaking to each other, where Armin is strong around Jean for his own safety. Because he knows if he falters around him then Jean will doubt his actions and might not shoot next time even if he is in danger again.
Armin just wants to carry the burden on his own, as usual.