Histories and Annals

by aradian nights

Armin is given the orders to attempt to decipher an old journal that could shed light onto an unknown past, his missing parents, and an enigmatic connection to Historia Reiss. Manga Spoilers.

3. Frater

Histories and Annals

Frater

Armin avoided giving up the journals, and continued to translate them on his own. Hange was growing busier and busier with only a few days left until Eren's scheduled experimentation day, so they didn't exactly care all that much. Levi did not breech the topic of the journal, nor did anything about how he perceived Armin change. It wasn't all that surprising, but Armin had to admit it was interesting that Levi chose not to react.

The journal seemed to be rapidly speeding up in terms of time. The woman, who could only be Historia's mother, had moved back home in order to have her baby. She'd invited the man to come along, and Armin was hopeless in trying to understand the woman. He didn't think he wanted to. After all, she'd been undeniably cruel to Historia, and Armin had to wonder why the man trusted her.

Unless, of course, the man didn't. Armin was seeing shades of wariness in the man's writing, but it was clear that the man had been caught inside the woman's thrall. Armin pitied him. And worst of all, the woman seemed to almost… reciprocate his very clear feelings for her.

This is weird, Armin thought. He sat back in his chair, glancing around the empty study. He debated on whether or not telling Historia about it all was a good or bad idea. On one hand, he had a journal of a man who had fallen in love with her mother. On the other hand, the journal could be seen as rather creepy from her standpoint, and Armin wouldn't blame her for being uncomfortable with it. Hell, he was getting a little uncomfortable with it. Wasn't he supposed to be looking for some information on the Titans? And yet, here he was, decoding some poor man's unrequited love for Historia Reiss's hopelessly sad, sorry excuse for a mother.

There was a knock at the door. Armin stretched his arms above his head, wincing at the ache in his back. The sun had set, and another day had gone by of Armin pouring over the journals. He really needed to get his life back in order.

The door opened without Armin's response, and Eren strolled in. "Hey," Eren said, squinting through the dimness of the room. Armin knew it was rather dark, and the light from his lantern barely glistened against the glassy black surface of the windows. "I haven't seen you since this morning."

"Oh," Armin said, blinking up at Eren wildly. "Sorry. I've been busy."

"Yeah…" Eren wandered over to the desk looking rather like a heavy silhouette, his body a massive shadow as it neared. The light spilt across his features, making his green eyes glow faintly, gold glinting in a ring around his pupils. "You haven't gotten much sleep."

Armin looked down at his papers. It was rather alarming that Eren was worried about him. "I think I'm fine," Armin said. "I mean, we've all gone way longer without sleep."

Eren shrugged. "I guess," he said. "But you probably should still… like, come out to eat, and stuff…" Eren's body rocked back and forth in place, and his lips twisted awkwardly. "Shit. Okay, what's going on?"

Armin looked up at Eren, stunned for a moment. "What do you mean?" Armin blurted.

"This!" Eren waved his hands over the desk full of scraps and journals. "Whatever this is, I dunno! You haven't said a thing about it, but I feel like you and Hange, and Captain Levi, you're all in on this huge fucking secret, and you usually tell me this stuff…"

"I-it's not a secret," Armin gasped. "Not really."

Eren huffed, and folded his arms across his chest. "Well it definitely is to the Captain," he grumbled, glaring at the window with a good amount of glumness. "When I asked him, he told me to go clean the fucking washroom."

Armin knew, of course, that Levi was merely avoiding the possibility of someone else finding out. The man couldn't be blamed for that. "It's honestly not even that interesting," Armin said. Eren gave a sharp, derisive snort. "I'm serious!"

"Yeah, okay," Eren said, rolling his eyes. "Never ever in your entire life have you ever not found something interesting, so bull fucking shit."

Armin sighed, and he looked up at Eren with a frown. "Just because I find something interesting," he said, "doesn't mean you will."

"Okay, but…" Eren stretched out his hands his fingers grasping at air. "What is it?"

"Just a journal of a guy who might've been involved in the Wall Cult," Armin said.

"Okay…" Eren's eyes narrowed, and he planted a hand on the desk and scowled. "That's definitely not all."

"It's definitely not," Armin agreed. "But I don't know what else to say. It's not interesting, it's not…" It's got nothing to do with Titans, Armin thought. So what the hell am I doing? "Oh, I don't know…"

"Yeah you do," Eren said. "You're just not telling."

"It's probably a waste of time," Armin admitted, rising slowly to his feet. He rubbed the back of his neck, grimacing at the pain. "But I can't stop."

"Can't stop, or won't stop?"

Armin stood there for a moment, his body freezing mid-stretch. He glanced at Eren with widening eyes. "What?" he asked in a careful, stunned voice.

Eren wasn't even looking at him. He had his arms folded, his chin tucking in as he looked at the desk. "Well, if it's really a waste of time," Eren said, "then you could stop whenever, 'cause you're not the only one working on it, right? I mean, what exactly were your orders?"

The truth was, Armin wasn't exactly sure he'd been given orders. He tried to remember what Hange had said to him when they had dragged him into the room, but he couldn't. It was all a blur of words and symbols and codes bouncing inside his brain. Had he been given orders at all? Or was he just doing this to sate his hopeless curiosity? Was he deciphering the journals for humanity's sake, or his own?

Armin was certain that this had not been Eren's intentional question. Eren had simply been inquiring if Armin needed to keep at it, or if he was just too stubborn to quit. He hadn't been concerned with Armin's state of mind, because by Eren's account Armin was perfectly stable. Not that Eren had much room to judge if not.

"I don't know," Armin said quietly. He bowed his head, his pale blond hair tickling his cheeks. "I guess… I should go eat now, huh?"

"That'd be a good idea," Eren said. He was eying the desk suspiciously, as if the papers were about to come alive and attack him. Armin pushed in his chair and started towards the doorway. "By the way, what did happen last night?"

Armin paused. He turned his head back to Eren, blinking at him confusedly. "Huh?"

"Between you and Captain Levi," Eren said, watching him with furrowed eyebrows. "Like, were you just workin' on this shit, or…?"

"Oh." Armin wished Eren would just drop it. "Yeah, pretty much. He hasn't gotten a chance to really look at it since we started translating, so he wanted to."

"Why was he even up that late, though?" Eren asked, frowning. "What…?"

"Eren," Armin said carefully. "If I knew how Captain Levi's mind worked, I would tell you. But I'm just as clueless as you are. He was already in the room when I went in there."

Eren seemed to catch onto how his questions were going nowhere. He glanced at the desk again, and his eyebrows rose in surprise. "Hey, is that the ocean?"

Armin sighed. "Yes," Armin said, smiling slightly. "It's part of the code."

"Huh." Eren peered at the desk, and then he shrugged, turning back to Armin. "Cool. What's it mean?"

Armin smiled wider. "Uh, basically?" Armin shrugged. "It represents the unattainable."

"That's a pretty broad spectrum, though, isn't it?" Eren asked, frowning.

"Yeah." Armin didn't know how to say that the ocean represented Historia's mother, who, to the author, was completely unattainable. So he decided to say nothing. It was just so much easier, he realized, than explaining the entire thing. And he would explain it, that wasn't even a question. It was simply that Armin didn't have the entire story straight. How could he explain anything without knowing all the facts?

Armin decided to leave then without another word. As he expected, Eren followed hesitantly, and they walked slowly though the hallway. There was light streaming into the hall from the cluster of candles resting on the table of the dining room. Jean, Connie, Sasha, Mikasa, and Historia were sitting there, and Armin could hear Sasha and Jean quipping at each other.

"Hey," Eren called, marching up beside Mikasa, and pulling out a chair. "Deal me in."

"Seriously, Eren?" Jean sighed, his eyes rolling. "Your poker-face is the worst."

"What?" Eren's expression twisted with vague disdain. "No it ain't, shut up."

"Yeah, Jean," Connie said. "Eren's poker face isn't much worse than any of ours."

"Except Mikasa's," Sasha piped up, her brown eyes flashing to Mikasa's face. The dark haired girl was sitting placidly, looking ahead of her with a rather bored expression.

"Okay, well," Connie sighed, "given."

"What are you betting?" Armin asked curiously.

"Extra chores we're willing to do," Sasha said. Armin's eyes traveled to the center of the table, were shreds of paper sat in a small pile. He could read the writing of some in the shimmer of candlelight, and it only confirmed what Sasha had said.

Armin wasn't particularly interested in playing a card game, so he smiled and excused himself. He felt Historia's eyes follow him as he entered the kitchen, and paused to consider what he was going to eat. Tomorrow, he thought, rubbing his face tiredly, I should really just eat with everyone else. It would be the smart thing to do, surely. But Armin was so enrapt in his own mind, he often forgot that there was a world around him. He appreciated that no one seemed to want to pull him out of this, but at the same time he felt that maybe someone needed to.

"Armin?"

He whirled around, startled by the sound of Historia's tiny voice. She was standing in the doorway, hugging her arms and frowning up at him. It was rather dark in the kitchen, with nothing but a small lamp near the door leading outside to illuminate the tiny room. Historia appeared looking rather impish in the fractured light, her features shadowy and obscured by the blanket of night. Her eyes were visible beneath the hazy outline of her hair, burning brightly with unparalleled worry.

It had been awhile since Armin had seen anything more than a spark in Historia's eyes. So he smiled at her gently.

"Hey," he said. "Is something wrong?"

Historia shook her head quickly. "No," she said, still shaking her head furiously. "No, I… I was about to ask you that…"

"Oh," he said. He felt a little embarrassed. "No, I'm fine. Why?"

Historia's lips pressed together thinly, as though she had something to say but she couldn't quite spit it out. She shrugged, and glanced away from his face. "Eren told me to make sure you ate something," she said quietly.

Armin swallowed a groan, and he shook his head. "Does he think I came in here to avoid eating?" Armin gave a little scoff, and Historia shrugged.

"Well you haven't been eating much lately…" Historia said slowly. She didn't raise her eyes to him, and instead focused on the lantern. "Or sleeping…"

"I know, I know," Armin sighed. "It's getting to be a real problem. But this isn't really anything new. I'm always like this when I start a new project."

"I think it's different now, Armin," Historia said. She sounded very hesitant to speak, as though she wasn't sure if she wanted to say what her words were conveying. "You need your strength…"

Armin found himself nodding in agreement, though he wasn't sure he'd be able to change his habits. He probably should try, though. Because Historia was right, and what he was doing could easily backfire on him at a later date. Maybe it was best if he just let the journal go for a little while. Who's to say I'll be able to in a little while, a small voice in his head whispered. That made him feel compelled to rush back to the study to decipher some more.

"So," Armin said, hoping to change the subject from his terrible eating and sleeping habits, "you're not playing?"

"I'm no good at it."

"Neither am I," Armin admitted. He thought about it for a moment, and he shrugged. "Or at least, I never used to be. Who knows?"

Historia's gaze shifted back to his face, and she eyed him for a few moments. She tucked a piece of hair behind her ear, and moved carefully past Armin. He watched her walk to the corner of the kitchen, her body blending in with the shadows. Armin heard her rummaging, and he knew exactly what she retrieved before she turned back to him, offering out an orange.

Armin smiled, and he took it. "You wanna split it?" he asked her.

She looked at him, and he was stunned at how her eyes seemed to narrow in something that could almost be anger. "No," she said, her voice its usual quiet, placid tone. "I ate already."

"Oh." Armin rolled the orange in his hands, feeling a little awkward. So he decided to turn away from the tiny girl, and head toward the door. He paused when he heard her uncertain shuffling, and he turned to look at her. "I'm going to sit on the porch," he said. "You're welcome to join."

She watched him, a quiet little shadow in the vacant kitchen. Armin shrugged, and he opened the door, exiting the kitchen without a word. The night was a little chillier than most, but he enjoyed the breeze. It drifted through his hair, kissing his cheeks and tickling his ears. He stepped slowly toward the steps, planting his feet carefully and uncertainly. He sat down, and then he closed his eyes. He could hear a symphony of crickets bellowing all around him.

As he began to peel his orange, the door opened and closed very softly behind him. He didn't look up as a tiny pair of boots appeared beside his own. Historia sat down without making a sound, and she stared out into the vast expanse of land around them. The forest was visible from where they sat. Armin tore at the skin of the orange, and when he was finished Historia offered him the bag of ground peppercorn. He looked down at her, stunned.

She shrugged. "You forgot it," she said.

"Thanks," Armin said, taking the bag from her dainty fingers. He ended up setting it between them so he could pry open the orange to get all the wedges equally sprinkled with pepper.

He offered her a wedge of the orange, and she stared at him for a long time before giving in. She took the peppered orange slice, waiting for Armin to take the first bite. They sat like this for a few minutes, quietly staring out into the darkness around them, and not a word uttered between them.

"I've been thinking," Historia said distantly. "About the iceberg."

Armin straightened up, unable to contain his interest. "Oh?" he asked, his eyes widening at the girl. "Yeah?"

"Yeah," Historia said, nodding. "I've been thinking about the books I've read about them, and there used to be this expression…"

"Expression," Armin repeated. "Really?"

She nodded again, and she opened her mouth. Then she closed it, and he could tell she was having trouble articulating herself. "Um…" She looked around suddenly, and then jumped to her feet. "Oh!" Armin had to muffle a yelp as Historia jumped over the rail of the porch, disappearing behind the wooden beam. What is she doing? Armin wondered wildly.

Historia reappeared very fast, holding a long twig in her tiny fist. She looked rather pleased with herself.

"Um, Historia…" Armin said hesitantly. "That's a stick…"

"Yes," Historia said. For a moment Armin was afraid she might whack him with it. Instead, she knelt down on the step below Armin, just where the stair met the earth. "Can you grab that lantern from inside?"

Armin stared at her for a moment, and he quickly obliged, scooping up the bag of pepper and his orange peel to deposit as he went. When he returned with the lantern, Historia was doodling in the dirt. Armin had to smile, and he was reminded of doing something similar with Eren when he'd been younger. "What are you drawing?" Armin asked.

Historia leaned back, and she pushed her hair away from her face. Armin held out the lantern, angling it so it spilt light across the dry patch of dirt at the foot of the steps. The faint yellow light filled in the contours of a crude little drawing of what Armin imagined was an iceberg.

"See," Historia said carefully, "what I was thinking about was this expression that people used to say, way back when." Historia tapped the stick idly against the wooden step, and Armin listened to the gentle thunk-thunk-thunk, a drum that could coincide with a heartbeat. "The tip of the iceberg. As in… you know…" She pointed to the peak of her little iceberg, which was nothing but a little bulb in comparison to the monstrous squiggly mass beneath a vaguely waving line. "The surface."

"Right…" Armin said, trying to catch her thought process. "So… this is all the water, right?" Armin gestured to the wavy line separating the tiny peak from the rest of the iceberg. Historia nodded. "And… that would mean that, if we were ever to actually see an iceberg…"

"Theoretically," Historia piped up. Armin glanced at her face. She's enjoying this, Armin thought. He was happy at this revelation.

"Right, theoretically, if we were ever to actually see an iceberg, we'd just get this bit here—" Armin lowered himself down a step, and leaned over, pointing at the dirt where Historia had dug out the very tip of the ice mountain. "Everything else though, all of this ice beneath the surface, it's not immediately visible. That's what you're saying?"

"Yes!" Historia nodded eagerly. "Exactly. That's exactly what it means." She pointed at the same spot Armin was pointing to "What is visible to the naked eye is so misleading that if a person doesn't look a little deeper, they'll miss the entirety of it."

Armin stared at her for a moment. "Oh," he said. "Whoa. You… just put this into perspective for me." Armin had suspected the iceberg represented Levi, but now the pieces fell into place. It made sense.

Historia shrugged, and she leaned back, resting her stick across her knees. "Well, like I said," she said quietly. "I've been thinking about it."

Armin smiled at her. "Thanks," he said in an equally quiet voice. She rested her chin in her palms, staring ahead into the deepening darkness of nightfall, and she said nothing. "You know a lot about this…"

"I read a lot about it," she said.

Armin sighed, and looked down at his hands, which were now folded in his lap. "I wish I could get my hands on some of those books," he admitted. "It sounds like yours went into a lot more detail than mine did."

"I'm not sure…" Historia tilted her head up toward the sky. "I guess so, maybe? I never… really noticed."

"What other books did you read?" Armin asked, feeling a little desperate for more information. Historia glanced at him, her pale face shadowy in the glow of the lamp. She looked almost wary of him.

"Well…" She sighed, her eyes moving up at the sky again. They roved it for a moment, rapidly moving as if she was memorizing the map of it. "I read a book or two on astrology."

"Oh yeah?" Armin knew a bit about astrology, or at least enough to be able to read the stars to navigate. He'd never been able to get a hold of anything extensive about it, though.

Historia nodded, her neck craned as she searched the sky. And then she began to speak. Very quietly, and very suddenly, her words became ceaseless, and they were certain and precise, rolling from her tongue with an uninhibited strength. Armin listened to her with a mixture of awe and astonishment as she began to rattle off constellation names that he had never heard of. Minutes ticked by, and he became engrossed in everything she said, despite her uncertainties and various backtracking. Armin twisted his head upward to get a better look at the sky, and ended up flopping onto his back somewhere near where Historia had drawn her iceberg.

Historia had paused at that. "Am I boring you?" she asked.

"No," Armin said, his head resting in a pillow of grass. "Not at all. I just wanted to get a better look."

Historia seemed to consider this for a moment, and she peered up at the sky. "You'll get all dirty," she said.

"I haven't changed my clothes in three days," Armin reminded her.

Historia seemed to take that fairly. She bit her lip, and studied the sky for a moment before carefully pushing herself off the step. The grass crunched beneath her boots, and the wind slithered through the thin, short blades, tickling Armin's cheeks and ruffling his hair. He heard Historia sit down, but he did not see her. He realized, twisted his head about, that she was behind him. Her hair was nearly brushing the top of his head, as she lay opposite him.

"What was I saying?" Historia asked.

"Ursa Major," Armin said, scanning the vast expanse of velvet sky for the stars that Historia had pointed out to him.

"Oh," she said. "Right. You know the Plough, right?"

"The what?" He could no longer see her face, so he could not study it to try and understand what she had meant.

"The Plough," Historia repeated. He saw her arm shoot into the air, her index finger extended as she pointed vaguely to the heavens. "In the Ursa Major, the string of stars that make that hooked sort of look?"

"The…" Armin blinked rapidly. "The Big Dipper?"

"What?"

Armin wondered if it had been her books that had taught her that name, or if they had just grown up in two entirely different worlds. He'd never thought about it, but he supposed that growing up in Shiganshina alongside Eren had given him the opposite sort of upbringing Historia had had. Yes, Armin had been reclusive, and yes, he had been bullied, but he had been free to run about the city as he pleased. His grandfather had always allowed him that liberty. Historia had been shut inside her own little world, never allowed to explore or learn things through experience.

"That's what I've always called it," Armin said slowly. "The Big Dipper. It looks a bit like a ladle, don't you think?"

Armin listened to the grass rustling as Historia twisted to look at the sky from a different angle. "Oh," she said. "Yes. I see it. The book I read called it, um… steelpannetje? And, also… grob— grober… oh, I don't know how to pronounce it… großer wagen…?"

"What?" Armin almost laughed. He bent his head back, his eyes widening with unbridled curiosity. "What does that mean?"

"Saucepan," Historia said thoughtlessly. "And, um, great cart…? I think. That's what the footnotes said."

"What languages are those?" Armin asked.

"I don't know," she murmured. "Old ones."

"The book must have said something about them…"

"I don't remember every little detail," Historia said. She sounded almost bristly, as though she was irritated at how much he was prying. Armin felt a little guilty for that. "I… I just… my memory is selective, I guess… I remember what I found interesting."

Armin could not blame her for that. Historia wasn't him— of course she couldn't remember everything. It was unfair of him to expect her to. He was getting overexcited, it seemed, at the new information he was gaining from Historia's extensive reading as a child. For a moment, Armin found himself envious of her position. If we could have switched places, Armin thought vainly, then I could have had all those books and no one to tease me about them so long as I stayed away from the fence. And you'd have an entire city, Historia, to explore and play in without any shame of your birth. But then, Armin would not have Eren and Mikasa. He wouldn't have had his grandpa, or the little love he was truly granted as a child. He would have had books, but what was their worth, anyway, without someone to share those treasured words with?

"Can't you find Polaris from looking at it?" Armin asked, deciding to change the subject.

"I think so." He watched her arm extend skyward again, her fingertips splaying above them. They curled inward, leaving only her index finger to point to the lower right hand corner of the Big Dipper. "That star there, it's called Merak."

"And that one is Dubhe," Armin said, recalling the lessons they'd been given in navigation when training. "So Polaris is…"

"There!" Historia pointed, and Armin spotted the star through its position to the Big Dipper. "North."

"That's where your home is, right?" Armin asked.

Historia was silent. Armin shifted uncomfortably, his eyes darting uncertainly. Had he upset her? The silence was excruciatingly uncomfortable, and nothing filled it but the vicious screeching of crickets, and the trembling of the wind as it made rapid contact with the earth. Historia was the type of person who he just… couldn't read. He was overwhelmed by the urge to learn more about her, to be the friend she needed in order to keep going, to convince her of the world's worth even if Ymir wasn't here to share it with her.

Armin understood her sense of loss. He truly did. Because, not too long ago, he had thought he'd lost Eren forever. He knew exactly how terrible it was, the hollow that swallowed up the heart when someone close was ripped away. There was no accounting for Ymir's life, and so Historia was likely worried, and that was not without warrant.

"No," Historia said. "I wouldn't call it home."

"Oh." Armin stared at the sky, tracing the path of the Big Dipper to the North Star, which was held inside the Little Dipper. "Well, where you lived when you were little, then."

Historia was silent for a few moments. "Yeah," she said quietly. "North."

"So, essentially," Armin said, "we could follow Polaris there if we wanted to."

Again, Historia was quiet. She seemed to mull over his words. "Essentially…" she said. "Yes. But… who actually would want to?"

"Oh… I don't know," Armin said with a sigh. "I'm just… thinking out loud, I guess." He didn't know how to tell her what he was really thinking about. The journal, and the mystery man who had fallen in love with Historia's mother. How did he explain a thing like that?

"I… noticed." Historia's voice was wispy and thin, as though she didn't quite know how to control her worry. "Are you sure you're okay, Armin?"

"Absolutely."

They laid there, their backs to the earth, and their eyes to the stars. Inside their eyes, the massive expanse of darkness reflected, shimmering inside the pairs of blue like twin pools. The stars dug into their eyes, and glimmered inside their minds, burning intensely, unfaltering and universal, fluttering madly in defiance of the great cosmic scale.

"You know," Historia whispered, "I read that the stars that we see… all of them, with all that light and life in them? They're all dead by the time that light reaches us."

Armin thought over this, deciding to turn her words over in his mind rather than reply immediately with his questions. There was something very surreal about the thought that the patterns of light he was observing were already gone from existence. It was a tribute to how fleeting life was.

"I guess in this world," Armin said, "not even the stars can last."

There was a faint rustling of boots against grass, a sound that broke the night air with a delicate precision, and Armin bolted upright. In a shroud of darkness, Levi's small silhouette was just visible in the gleam of the lamp that rested on the porch. He had a rifle resting on his shoulder, and Armin realized that he must have taken watch, as opposed to the others who were inside playing poker.

"What the fuck are you two doing?"

Armin stared at the man, who had not so much as made eye contact with him since that morning, and he swallowed uncomfortably. Historia sat up behind him, and they exchanged a frantic look. "Um…" Armin said. "We were just stargazing?"

"Yeah, I can see that," Levi said. His slow, quiet voice was viciously cold. "Get off the ground. You're going to get lice."

Armin quickly jumped to his feet, Historia close behind him, dusting off her skirt and glancing between Armin and Levi with heavily lidded eyes. "You have grass in your hair, Armin," she said quietly.

"Huh?" Armin's fingers flew to his head, running through his disheveled blond hair and plucking blades of grass from the thin strands. He glanced at her, and saw that there was grass tucked between the hair gathered in her ponytail. "Um, you do too…"

She frowned a little, and touched her hair hesitantly. She pulled it out of the ponytail and shook it out, ruffling it carelessly. When she was done, she looked back up at him with large eyes, and her hair fell around her face in a flurry of untidy yellow spikes, knotting about her ears and twisting across her shoulders.

"Better?" she asked.

He couldn't help but laugh. "Now it's just a mess," he admitted sheepishly.

"Historia," Levi said. "How good of a shot are you?"

The girl's eyes flew wide. "U-uh—" She straightened up, and calmed herself with a deep breath. "Fair enough."

"Here." Levi shoved the rifle into the tiny girl's chest, and she grasped it carefully. "Take over my watch for a few minutes."

"Yes, sir," she said quietly. She glanced up at Armin, and he noticed how her eyes had become a little duller as she moved forward until she disappeared around the house.

Armin found himself slumping as he faced Levi. "She shouldn't be…" Armin trailed off at the look on Levi's face. "Is there something…" Armin stiffened uncomfortably at the man's stare. "Is there something wrong, Captain?"

"Have you told that girl anything?" Levi asked. He sounded almost impatient.

"No," Armin blurted, "of course not, why would I—?"

"I mean," Levi snapped, his eyes narrowing with such vehemence that Armin had to step back, "did you tell her that the journal is about her mother?"

Armin pressed his lips together, and he flushed as he glanced away. "No," Armin said quietly. "I was too scared to."

"That's bullshit." Levi shoved his hands in his pocket, and turned his face away from Armin. "What are you scared of? She probably won't beat you up for it."

"No, I…" Armin frowned. He didn't doubt that Historia could beat him up if she wanted to. She was clearly far stronger than him, and he didn't have a lot of height on her to have the upper hand if she did hit him. "I don't think Historia would do that. Maybe if I really, really deserved it, but…"

"So what is it, then?" Levi glanced at Armin, and his eyes were completely shadowed in the darkness. "It doesn't matter much if she knows or not."

"I know," Armin sighed. "But I just… I don't know. There's something… bothering me about it all. I don't know…"

"Yeah, well," Levi said, turning his head up toward the bare, glinting sky. "At least the piece of shit who wrote it didn't know you."

Armin smiled wanly. "Fair enough," he said. "I'm… sorry about that."

Levi looked at him, and Armin decided from that chilly glare that he would never apologize to Captain Levi ever again, on pain of receiving that look again.

---

"Hey," Armin said, never looking up from the desk. Hange had come in to check on him, asking if he wanted to switch places and take a break. Armin had declined. "Hange, have you ever read Historiae?"

"History what?" Hange wandered over to him, watching him curiously with glinting brown eyes. "Never heard of it."

"Historiae," Armin said, glancing at his scrap paper. He'd written down the word a few times before underlining the ae ending, and writing a footnote detailing his conclusion. The language was the same as the one used to name the Ursa Major. Armin knew that ursa was an old word for bear. Ursae was, of course, the plural of ursa. So, the word historiae could only be the plural of the noun historia. "Histories. By a man called Tacitus."

"Yeah," Hange said, whistling lowly. "Never heard of it, for sure. What about it, then?"

Armin had gathered a few things about Historiae. For one thing, it was old. Old enough that the man could barely read the book, language had changed so much in the time between its publication and fifteen years ago. What the man had gathered, though, is that it was about a very great empire that had ruled far before the Walls had been built. Apparently the empire had been massive, and at its head was an emperor. The book itself detailed various emperors and their rules. The man listed a few, and Armin wrote down the names, but was rather clueless as to who they were. Names like Galba, Otho, Vitellius, Vespasian, Trajan, and Nerva were mentioned. Armin wondered if it was, perhaps, a work of fiction.

"Historia was named after it," Armin said, raising his eyes to meet Hange's. Historia had been born on the fifteenth of January. It had been snowing outside. The man had been as specific as he possibly could have been with Historia Reiss, disguising her under the symbol of snow-like ashes. Armin thought that was a rather grim way to look at the birth of a child. "The man named her that."

"The man named her?" Hange pushed up their glasses, and peered over Armin's shoulder. "That's amazing."

"How is it amazing?" Armin asked.

Hange straightened up, and glanced down at him pensively. "Well," Hange said, cupping their chin. "The fact that Historia's mother trusted the man enough to name her daughter says a lot about their relationship, don't you think?"

"Historia's mom didn't care about her, though," Armin said quietly. "So what if she just didn't care enough to name her?"

"You're the scholar here, Armin," Hange said, smiling down at him. "Is that really what you think?"

Armin didn't know. It's what he wanted to think. It would be easier than admitting that there was more to Historia Reiss's mother than he had initially perceived. It could be, perhaps, that Armin didn't want to see the woman as a person. He saw her as an idea, an unattainable dream, and that's all she could be. A cruel, senseless dream.

"I think that it's a very sad story," Armin said. He chewed thoughtfully on the end of his pen. History, Armin thought. And ashes. Like corrupted snowflakes, falling from the sky. That was how the book on the outside world had described it. And that, to the man, was Historia. A baby girl, with nothing sinful about her. What a horrible man, Armin decided.

As Armin was translating, he became a little uneasy. The more the man's narration went on, the more Historia's mother seemed to reciprocate his feelings for her. Little conversations were exchanged, reassurances and soft spoken small talk. The man detailed the image of the woman's smile in words, speaking volumes of how much it meant to him. Historia had just been born, and Armin wasn't sure if he understood what was happening here. He couldn't comprehend either mindset. She had just had a baby, so it didn't make sense to Armin that she'd pursue another relationship so soon after.

He was wrong.

"Hange!" Armin snapped the journal closed, and he jumped to his feet. Hange was sitting in the chair in the corner, doing their own paperwork. They looked up at Armin curiously from behind their glasses. "I-I…"

"What?" Hange slowly lowered the paperwork to the floor, and stood up. They made the distance to Armin in three quick strides, and their brown eyes grew very wide. "What's wrong? What happened?"

"Um…" Armin flushed, and rubbed his eyes with the back of his hand. He was embarrassed at his reaction, and embarrassed that he had even stumbled across any of it. "Well… the… the man, and…"

"Yeah…?" Hange studied his face, searching it wildly. "Come on! Spit it out!"

"They… um…" Armin squeezed his eyes shut. Oh, how did he even say it? He grabbed Hange by the arm and steered them toward the chair. Hange plopped down, glancing up at Armin. "Read for yourself."

Hange chuckled, and rolled their eyes. "Well, okay," they said. "If you insist."

Five minutes later, Hange flung their head back and laughed. Armin was still flushing in the corner, looking down from embarrassment. "Please don't laugh at me," he mumbled.

"No, no," Hange gasped, twisting to face him. "I'm not laughing at you. I'm laughing at how absurd this is!"

Armin couldn't help but understand. "It is a little ridiculous…" he murmured. He rubbed his bright red cheek, and sighed. "How am I supposed to tell Historia about this…"

"Maybe leave this part out," Hange said, winking. "I mean, I don't know about Historia, but I'd be a little uncomfortable hearing about who my mother, uh… courted, aside from my father."

"Courted," Armin repeated. "Good word."

"Well I didn't wanna use the word "fucked", so…" Hange said with a lopsided smirk.

Armin chewed on his tongue, and nodded slowly. "Right. Yeah." He thought about when he had found out about Levi's past, and was thankful that the man had not gone into any detail. This was entirely too uncomfortable for Armin to handle.

"They should teach a little more sex ed at training, now that I think about it," Hange hummed, closing the journal and rising to their feet.

"I don't need sex ed, Hange," Armin said calmly, looking at them sharply. "I was just surprised."

"I'm just sayin'," Hange laughed, waving their hands and shrugging. "Could use a little more."

Armin had to take a few moments to recollect himself. There was something very, very unsettling about all of this, and he couldn't explain why. He had to suppose that this was the man's big secret, which was admittedly a disappointment. Nothing about the Titans at all, Armin thought glumly, sitting back down in the chair. I guess I've really just been wasting my time here. He rolled the pen around the desk thoughtfully, wondering why he couldn't just quit the process and focus on something actually important. Maybe he was too curious for his own good. No, that was it, he was definitely too curious for his own good.

In the end he ended up going back to deciphering, and he didn't regret it. The man wrote about Historia in a way that made Armin reconsider his previous notion of how the man felt about the girl. There was an excess of details of how the man doted on the baby Historia, going through great lengths to ensure the child's comfort, and reading to her to keep her from crying, and taking her whenever Historia's mother needed rest (which, according the journal, was often, because of the woman's feeble health). And then the man decided that he needed to go back to the capital to sort out his financial situation.

As in, the man needed to figure out what his job actually was.

Armin wasn't even remotely surprised, and he was actually kind of relieved. It meant that the man might actually go back to researching the Walls and the outside world, which was what he and Hange needed to get from this journal. And Armin still needed to figure out the man's name. How was he supposed to do that, anyways?

The man ended up leaving all his books on the outside world with Historia and her mother, writing that he planned to return to them. Armin wanted to know how the hell the man thought any of this would turn out okay for him. He found himself admiring his optimism, though. At least he really cared about Historia and her mom, Armin thought, watching the girl carefully one night at dinner. So… what happened to him, then? Armin had a gut feeling that they would not be finding the man. It was rather sad, when he thought about it. The man really, really wanted to be there for Historia and her mother.

"Hey," he said to her, as he took the stack of dirty dishes she'd brought into the kitchen for him to clean. "Have you have heard of, um… Historiae by Tacitus?"

"Historiae?" Historia stood for a moment, her dull blue eyes rolling upward as her mouth parted thoughtfully. "I… think so, yes?"

He stood for a moment, his sleeves rolled up, and bubbles congealing in his hands, and he got a little too excited, and his hands flew before him, his fingers splaying fast as he began to speak. He cut himself off with a gasp as she flinched. A cloud of bubbles had bounced from Armin's hands and attached itself to her nose. "Oh," Armin uttered weakly as the girl's eyes crossed in order to see the suds sticking to her skin. He bowed his head, and reached for a rag. "Uh, oops. Sorry, lemme—"

Armin cried out in alarm as Historia took a handful of suds from the sink, and slapped them palm first onto the crown of Armin's head. His mouth dropped open in mute horror as bubbles trickled wetly down his forehead, dampening his hair.

"W-why'd you do that?" he yelped, his voice squeaky as he touched the top of his head. But, as his hands were also rather sudsy, he only made his situation worse by applying more bubbles to his already soapy hair. "Historia!"

She looked at him, wide eyed and alarmed. "I-I—" she gasped, taking a step back and flushing. "I thought it would be funny!"

"Well, it wasn't really—!" Armin choked, and squeezed his eyes shut as the bubbles seeped against his eyelids. "Okay, ow. Ow, ow, ow, ow, ow…."

"Did it get in your eyes?" Historia cried, her voice growing just as squeaky and horrified as Armin's. "I'm sorry, I didn't—!"

"Towel," Armin gasped, his eyes squeezed shut. "P-please…?"

"Yeah." Armin felt the vaguely damp towel press against his eyes, and he took it gratefully. "I'm so sorry, I didn't think…"

"It's fine," he mumbled, resting his back against the sink and rubbing his face with the towel. He heard a rush of shuffling feet, but he didn't dare open his eyes. They were burning too much to even entertain the thought.

"What happened?" Eren's voice drifted into the kitchen, sounding confused and vaguely defensive.

"Soap," Armin said, his voice a little strained as he pressed the towel to his eyes, not looking up.

"Did you stick your who head in the sink, Armin?" Jean asked, sounding on the verge of laughter.

"No," Historia said, her voice quiet. "I did it to him."

Armin opened his mouth to object that she had meant it playfully, but Levi's voice cracked like a whip through the room, and Armin's lips smacked shut. "What the hell are all of you doing in there?"

"Historia blinded Armin!" Jean called back.

"No she didn't!" Armin cried.

"I'll finish washing the dishes," Historia said slowly.

"No," Armin said, shaking his head. He felt bubbles graze his cheeks. "I can—"

"I said I'll do them," Historia said. Armin stood for a moment, listening to the clacking of dishes and the running of water, and Armin pressed the rag to his eyes and frowned. "I'm really sorry about getting soap in your eyes."

"I think I'll be okay," Armin said, pulling the rag away and prying his eyes open. They were still faintly burning, and his vision was blurry. He tossed the rag onto his head, and wiped away the residual suds, ruffling his hair and frowning at the floor. "Are you sure you—?"

"Yes," Historia said. She was a blurry outline of blonde hair and tiny shoulders. "I'm absolutely sure."

"Okay…" Armin moved forward awkwardly, hoping to hide how blind he truly felt. He reached forward subconsciously upon spotting the fuzzy brown silhouette that could only be Eren, and grasping his arm for a moment, blinking rapidly. Eren took Armin's arm in response, and Armin thought he could see Eren's lips pulling taut into a frown.

"Lemme help you walk—"

"No," Armin said, straightening up. "I can see now." This was true. Armin's vision was returning rapidly, though his eyes still stung quite a bit, and there was heavy unfocused tinge to the world around him. He ducked between Jean and Levi, bowing his head and throwing a glance back Historia. She was leaning over the sink, her own head bowed, and her shoulders tensed.

Armin wandered back to the study, resting his head against his hand. His hair felt sticky, soapy and slick to the point where it was beginning to harden in patches around his scalp. He sighed, running his fingers through it in hopes of remedying the discomfort. He plopped down at the desk, and flipped open both journals, setting to work on translating.

His eyes were straining to read despite his vision more or less returning to him. In the dim lamplight, Armin's eyes ached and itched, and he wrote rapidly, thoughtlessly, containing all his emotions for the sake of productivity. He wrote down the man's encounters with Levi, omitting the small, inconsequential mentions of prostitution that Armin did not find relevant to the narrative. Levi was given a book by the man on the outside world, the only one the man had brought with him. This book, the man wrote, is the first one I came across, and thus I revolved my memoir around it. I expect, if Levi is clever enough, he might be able to read this. I've been writing for a while, and I've learnt a lot of things. A lot, admittedly, from Levi himself. I think his little self-defense lesson might end up saving my life one day.

Armin thought it was interesting that Levi had taught the man a little about how to defend himself. And Armin sort of wished he could catch onto something like that. But it was a silly desire, and he brushed over it quickly. He was absolutely certain the man was beginning to allude to a secret, a find within the Wall Cult, but he simply would not write it down. He called it an atrocity. And then, he lamented that he was in trouble.

He returned to Historia's home village with a heavy heart. At the very least, Armin translated, I can say goodbye to them. Armin was stunned to learn that the man had been gone for a year between when he left Historia's mother and returned to her. That was a gap, for sure, and Armin now had to do the math. Fourteen years ago, he thought rapidly. 841? Which would mean that Historia would be a year old by this point in time.

Something occurred to Armin. He wasn't entirely certain about it, because he wasn't exactly an expert on the probability of it all, and it made him rather uncomfortable anyway. He sat back for a moment, drumming his pen against the desk. This was all getting very, very weird, and he didn't know what to do. More questions had erupted! How was that even possible? Why was the man in trouble, and what had he discovered? Why hadn't he written any of it down?

"You're so stupid," Armin murmured, frowning at the journal. "You were so, so smart, but such a damn fool."

And so, upon reading what transpired next, Armin felt the urge to throw the journal across the room and exclaim, "What did you expect to happen?!"

The man had been received rather coldly by Historia's mother who, according to the man, had been holding a tiny blond child bundled in a red blanket. Armin wrote this all out with wide eyes, and a furrowed brow, trying to sort out how any of this made sense. He supposed that it was completely plausible, since Historia had only been a year old at the time, and could not have known what was going on. But still.

I think it's best to note that I had an inkling upon looking at the child that it wasn't Historia, wrote the man. The baby was much too small, and clearly infantile. But it was a beautiful baby nonetheless, and I don't think I'll ever forget the intelligence in this child's eyes when it looked up at me. I knew it had to be mine, which confused and overwhelmed me, because I am certainly not in any state to be a father to a child at this present time, and also because I never meant for anything of this sort to happen. To reinforce this revelation, another blonde child came teetering into the room upon stubby legs, a sweet looking little girl with a bob of flaxen hair who could only be Historia. She looked at me with wonder, and I realized with a heavy heart that she, of course, did not recognize me.

Armin chewed on his pen. His eyes were stinging terribly, and he had to blink a few times, realizing that they were rather dry, and the lantern's light was burning rather low, and his heart was thudding in his chest because he needed to tell Historia about this, and it couldn't wait, could it? Because she had a sibling out there somewhere. This man, whoever he was, dead or alive, had to be to key to some enormous secret. And by extension, so was his child. Where'd you go? Armin wondered, throwing a glance at the door. He was growing anxious, and concerned about whether or not he was translating any of this right.

Apologizing did nothing, the man had written. She just looked at me with that same vacant, chilly gaze that I had always found enigmatic, but now I find it sad. I was endlessly sad for her, and for these children that she bore. She told me that she wasn't angry with me, which I find difficult to believe, but rather she's simply relieved that I came back. And then she told me, allowing me the delight of holding my son, that he had been born on the third of November. "I gave him a Sina name, since you weren't here to name him after one of your damned books. I didn't think about etymology, or anything that you obsessed over with Historia," she told me. Historia stood quietly at the door, eying me with the same lethal intelligence that I had seen in my son's eyes. I thought perhaps her awe had turned to distrust upon spotting her brother in my arms. "So I named him Arm—

The ballpoint of Armin's pen dug into the paper, creating a pooling, inky blot. He wondered if maybe his vision was still failing him. He looked at his hand, pen clutched between white knuckles, and he watched his hands tremble profusely out of shock. He felt as though his stomach had twisted it a thousand knots, and instead of delicately attempting to unravel them, the universe had taken a hatchet and buried it in his abdomen.

He shoved the journal away in a panicked, furious sort of way that suggested his confusion was melting into absolute fear. He glanced between the original journal, the old memoir of a man that Armin had never known, and a spare piece of paper, and he carefully ran through the code again in his mind, his breath catching inside his throat as he put the pen to paper and deciphered the sentence again. So I named him Armin. Armin stared at his name, and wrote it again. He wrote the sentence again, referencing back to the journal and then writing it again for good measure, and then he flipped through the papers on the desk, his eyes moving rapidly as he dug through scraps and ciphers, pulling out a reference sheet he had created with Hange days and days ago, staring at it and flattening it out against the desk and pressing his hand to his lips.

He wrote it again and again and again, his pen scratching against the paper furiously, and his name glowed back at him in thickly scrawled black ink. There was no rationalizing it. There was no explaining it. There was nothing that Armin could say to make it seem plausible, or possible, and he was amazed and terrified, because this couldn't be right! He'd messed up. He'd done it wrong. He was tired, his vision was faulty, he'd done it wrong, he'd fucked up, he'd done something wrong!

He threw down his pen and flew to his feet, his chair skidding back and his palms smashing into the desk. "What the hell?" he cried. His scream echoed softly, ringing in the deafening silence. He couldn't think clearly. His heart was thudding heavily in his throat, and there were tears in his eyes, and he didn't know why. He was trying to deny it. He wanted to deny it. But… it was his name. His birthday. It wasn't possible, but here was his proof.

Armin took a deep breath, and then backed away from the desk. He watched the desk apprehensively, and then looked around the room. He was alone. Utterly alone, in the dark, and certainly everyone else was asleep. He stumbled on the leg of his chair, so he kicked it away angrily, wincing in pain as it connected with his shin and collapsed on its side. It made a mighty crash, and Armin stared at it, tears welling in his eyes. He took a few startled, drunken steps backwards until his back hit the wall. He squeezed his eyes shut and slid downwards until his knees touched his chest, and he buried his face in them as he hugged them tightly. Why? he thought numbly. How? Did grandpa know? Did he lie about… about the outside world, and my parents, and everything…?

Armin was, admittedly, in the midst of a small identity crisis.

The door flew open, but he didn't look up. He wondered if he was shaking, and he wondered if he was crying, but he was too confused to care. He was thinking of what Levi had told him about when he had looked for the man that last time. A father and child from Wall Maria, Armin thought, nausea crashing over him in a wave. Isn't that a little weird? He almost laughed. He was so, so overwhelmed that if he did laugh, he couldn't say for sure he wouldn't puke as well.

"Armin?" Hange called. Their voice was very distant, far off as though they were speaking through a glass barrier. "What the…?"

He heard the sound of a lantern swinging, and he realized it was likely too dark for them to see where he was. "Whoa!" Hange gasped. "There you are…"

"Armin…?" Eren's voice drifted into the room, and Armin jolted, his entire body reacting at the familiar sound. Footsteps fell heavily, and he wanted to shout at them all to go away, to leave him alone to try and figure things out, because that was all he could do, it was all he was good for, and he needed to figure things out for the sake of his sanity. "Holy shit! What happened, Armin, are you—?"

"What's going on?" another voice yawned. Armin vaguely recognized it as Sasha.

"Did Armin finally pass out from exhaustion?" Connie added. Armin hugged his knees tighter and frowned. "Is he okay? Jean, move, I can't see over your—"

"Armin?" Hange was very close now. He could feel the lantern's warmth as it glowed against his skin. He didn't dare look up. He didn't know if he was crying. He didn't know if he was shaking. All he knew was that it was very possible he had been lied to from a very young age. And that meant that his father was… what? What had happened to him? "Hey, c'mon, chin up. Why don't you tell me what happened?"

"What's wrong with lemon head?" Levi's voice snapped sharply. Armin curled tighter into himself. "Did you fuckin' break him, Hange?"

"Wha—?" Hange gasped, sounding offended. "Hey, I've been offering him breaks for days! He just won't let up!" Their voice switched to a sweet, almost affectionate tone. "That's a pretty admirable work ethic, if not a little dangerous, but I guess we all have our—"

"Have you checked to see if he's okay, you awful bastard?"

"Well, hold on!" Hange huffed. "Yeesh. Oi, Armin?" Armin listened to the muffled snapping of fingers near his ear. "Did you find something? C'mon, don't leave me hanging…"

"I said find out if he's okay," Levi said in a low, dangerous tone, "not find out why he's cowering in the fuckin' corner. Check your priorities, Hange."

"Hey, Armin…?" Eren sounded closer now. "What's wrong with him? Guys…?"

"It could be," Levi said, "that he got so fed up with that bullshit journal, that he completely lost his mind."

"Levi!" Hange cried. "It's completely illogical to assume that he's lost his mind at this point! We'd have to test more than just his ability to respond—"

"Armin's not crazy!" Eren cried. "Why would you even—?"

Armin felt a hand on his, and he resisted the urge to flinch. He recognized the callused touch, the familiarity of slender fingers comfortingly brushing his own. He could feel Mikasa's stare. He didn't want to look at her. He didn't know what to do. It was difficult to think, and but her touch was a warm reassurance, and he sighed. Mikasa seemed to hear him, because her fingers moved from his hand to his head.

"Armin?" she whispered, her voice firmly punching a crack in the barrier between Armin and the world around him. "Look at me."

A new voice entered the room, soft and delicate and beseeching. And it shattered the barrier in Armin's mind like a canon shell.

"What's happened?" Historia asked.

Armin's head shot up. His vision was bleary, and there was lantern light burning inside his eyes, but he felt his lips trembling, tears flooding onto his cheeks. He lurched to his feet, feeling crazed and frightened and utterly uncertain. But there was one thing he knew for sure. He couldn't let Historia know anything until he had himself put together.

"Get out," Armin said, his eyes flashing dangerously around the room. "All of you. Get out."

"Armin?" Eren looked offended, his eyes wide as Mikasa returned to his side, grasping him by the arm. Hange and Levi did not move, but rather studied Armin as though he was a curious insect that had suddenly grown wings. "What the hell…?"

"Nothing," Armin said, wiping at his cheeks with his sleeve. "I'm f-fine, okay? Just— just go. Everyone needs to go." He paused, and glanced at Hange and Levi. "Except for you two."

"Oh, good!" Hange laughed, ruffling their hair. "Because we weren't going anywhere."

"Yeah," Levi agreed dully, never looking at Armin. "Okay, everyone get your scrawny asses out."

"But—!" Eren cried as Mikasa yanked him toward the door. "Damn it— Armin, what the hell happened?"

"I…" Armin's felt his face distort in absolute regret. "I don't know… I'm sorry, Eren, I really have no idea, I just… I'm okay, really…"

"You need to eat more!" Eren cried as he was dragged through the door. From the hall he shouted, "And go the fuck to sleep!"

The rest of the squad stood awkwardly in the doorway, before they began to shuffle out as well, throwing worried glances back at Armin. Historia caught his eye, and he stared at her face, at the way her eyes were shaped, and the roundness of her cheeks, and the pallid hue of her skin. They watched each other, and then she turned away, as though it was nothing, because to her it was nothing, and she exited the room without a thought.

Armin was crying again when he slammed the door shut and whirled around, pressing his back to it. He rested his head against it, and he ran his fingers through his hair, smiling tremulously at nothing.

"I don't know," Armin said, his voice throaty and weak. "I just… I thought I knew, and I was right, but then I… I didn't know, and I don't…"

"Armin," Hange said gently. "Calm down. Why don't you start from the beginning?"

Armin looked at her, his fingers knotted in his hair and his eyes wide, and he nodded mutely. He took a deep, shuddering breath, but Levi stopped him with his hand. He walked toward the door without making a sound, and he jerked his chin at Armin to move from the door. Armin obliged, and Levi yanked open the door and snarled, "I will beat the shit out of the next person I find out here, is that clear?"

There was a chorus of, "Yessir!", and the sound of feet scurrying down the hall. Levi slammed the door shut, and turned to face Armin. His dark eyes were narrowed. "Okay," he said. "Talk."

Armin wasn't sure if he could. He felt a little ashamed, and wondered if he had overreacted. Maybe this wasn't that big of a deal. Maybe… oh, who was he kidding? "Um…" He rubbed at his damp eyes with his sleeve. "I… I was deciphering, and I realized that… that I'm…" Armin shrunk under Levi's scrutiny. "Squad Leader Hange, can you just… just read it, please, I don't think I can say it…"

Hange watched him for a moment, before shrugging and walking over to the desk. "Y'know," they said, "you made an awful lot of noise."

"I was… angry," Armin said quietly, bowing his head. "Confused. I still am."

Hange picked up the journal, glancing at the desk. They peered closer at the papers resting on top of it, and Armin saw their eyebrows furrow. "Why's your name on this like, twenty times?"

"Because," Armin said, his mouth dry, "that's how many times I tried to decode a different name."

Hange and Levi stood for a few moments, their eyes moving to Armin's face. "Huh?" Hange asked.

"Just…" Armin shook his head. "Just read it."

Hange shrugged, and flipped the chair back over in order to sit down as they read. "Hm, hm, hmmm… Oh, Levi, you taught him self-defense?"

"What?" Levi looked at them sharply. "Excuse me?"

"C'mon," Hange said, frowning. "Don't you remember anything?"

"Hange," Levi said, folding his arms across his chest. "Focus."

"Fine, fine…" Hange rubbed their eyes tiredly beneath their glasses, and then they yawned, flipping a page. "Am I close to the part, or…?"

"You'll know," Armin said. He'd pressed his back to the door again, and was steadily slipping downwards, trying to gather his thoughts. What did he tell Historia? What did he tell anyone? Who would believe him? What if he was wrong? What was he supposed to do in this sort of situation?

"Hey." Armin looked up at Levi, who had slapped his cheek gingerly. The man was standing over him as he sat on the floor, looking rather grumpy and uncomfortable. "You look yellow. Like, your face. It looks like piss. You gonna vomit?"

"No…" Armin shook his head furiously. "I don't think so…"

"Okay…" Levi looked away toward the ceiling. "Well, let me know. If you feel like you're gonna."

"Okay…"

Armin sat for a little while thinking over his predicament. This… changed a lot. Everything he had previously thought about the man who had written the journal was now warped. There was so much that Armin didn't understand, and there was so much he wished he could change. He wanted to know what the man— his father— had been thinking when he had done all those incredibly stupid things. Armin felt conflicted because he, of course, had never thought of his father as the type of person he couldn't admire. To Armin, his father had been adventurous, and had wanted to see the world beyond the Walls. But the man in the journals wasn't someone Armin admired. That man was just… just a man.

Perhaps Armin had never considered his parents to be anything more than a story made up by his grandfather. And perhaps that was why this was all so devastating.

Hange bolted upright, their eyes widening a little at the journal as they read along. Armin watched without much emotion, but rather rolled a bit of hair between his fingers, thinking about Historia's face when the bubbles had landed on her nose. He'd cared about her so much, Armin thought. But it didn't matter. We both still grew up alone. Armin had to remind himself that he'd had his grandfather and Eren, while Historia hadn't had anyone.

"Oh," Hange uttered breathlessly. They raised their head, their large brown eyes meeting Armin's watery blue ones. "Oh…"

"Oh?" Levi scowled. "What the hell does that mean?"

"It…" Hange licked their lips, and looked back down at the journal. "Are you… Armin, are you absolutely sure that this is—?"

"No," Armin said reluctantly. He pulled his knees to his chest, and embraced them sadly. "Or at least, I don't want it to be. But I don't know… how it can't be, I mean…"

"Someone tell me what the fuck is going on," Levi demanded.

Hange was sitting, looking rather stunned, and Armin couldn't say he could blame them. He felt that same astonishment, but now it had dulled to a drumming ache in his chest as though someone had torn his heart from his chest and now he was left with an empty cavity that bled for warmth and affection and love, for the kind of memories that only a parent could give.

"Armin is…" Hange stared at Armin, their eyes inquisitive, as though they were not sure he wanted them to go on. He could only nod slowly. "According to the journal, Historia's mother had a second child. She named him Armin."

Levi stood quietly. His eyes flashed to Armin's face, dangerous and vaguely bemused. "And you're suggesting," Levi said, "that this Armin is you?"

"It's my birthday," Armin said weakly. "It… I can't explain it, but I think… there's something about Historia that's been bothering me for a while, but I could never… never actually place what it was. But I think I know now." Armin took a deep breath, and he pushed himself shakily to his feet, raising himself above Levi. "We're a lot alike. Not just in our appearances, which are… scarily similar, now that I think about it— but our personalities too, the way she talks, and she… she fumbles over her words when she doesn't know if it's her place to speak, but when she really gets really excited about something she'll talk about it without even thinking about how much information she's memorized, and— and we both like pepper on our oranges which is really weird, but we both grew up eating oranges like that, and she memorized the names of things in multiple dead languages!" Armin was grinning now, his fingers flying through his hair as he gave a shaky, hysterical laugh. "She figured out the meaning behind the iceberg before I did— she even gave me its proper name!"

He saw Hange smile, but he could tell they both remained unconvinced. He couldn't blame them. He was having trouble believing it too. But he knew it was right. He knew it because he could feel it, and his mind was working again, and it was telling him the truth. This was the truth. Historia was his sister. I have a sister, Armin thought, feeling a little giddy.

"Levi," Armin said, looking at the man suddenly. "Remember when you told me about when you went to go look for the man?"

"You did what?" Hange asked sharply, their eyebrows flying high.

Levi ignored them. "Yes…" he said slowly, his eyes narrowing. "Why?"

"You said," Armin said desperately, "that when you went to the inn the man usually stayed at, the lady at the desk said the only person who had stayed there was…?"

Levi stared at him, his blue eyes glinting as though Armin's words had hit him. His brow furrowed slightly. "A father and child from Wall Maria," Levi responded, turning to face Hange. "How the hell is this possible?"

"Don't look at me!" Hange cried. "I'm more clueless than you are!"

"Will you quit your screeching?" Levi hissed. "At least until we figure out how to fucking deal with this."

"What do you mean?" Hange asked. "Deal with it? What's there to deal with?"

"Historia, for one," Levi said. Levi eyed Armin for a moment, and frowned. "If you were Reiss's son too, that'd make this information a hell of a lot more useful."

"I'm not," Armin said weakly. "Sorry…"

"Hey," Hange said, their eyes glittering behind their glasses. "What if Reiss knew about you, though?"

"What?" Armin asked. "What would that matter? I still wouldn't be his son."

"Yeah!" Hange nodded eagerly. "That's what I mean! What if he knew his mistress had a kid with a different man?"

Levi gave a soft scoff. "That'd piss him off," Levi said. His beady blue eyes moved to Armin's face with an almost sadistic curiosity. "What'd you say happened to your parents, Armin?"

Armin swallowed thickly, and he thought about the story he'd been told, the one he'd always believed and always clung to. Was this really any worse than his parents going outside the Walls and being eaten? Maybe this was a better fate. After all, Armin had experience with the paralyzing terror of being eaten. If he had to choose a way to die, it wouldn't be in the maw of a Titan.

"My grandfather always told me," Armin said, "that they'd gone outside the Walls."

"And you believed that," Levi stated. Armin wanted to reply affirmatively, but he could sense the solidity in Levi's voice, the strength inside the chilly monotone that allowed Armin to realize that Levi didn't want him to answer. "You were a gullible little fool."

"I always knew my parents wanted to see the outside world," Armin said, staring up at Levi with a somber expression. "I had that book, and I always wanted to… to be like them, and to see the world someday like it was in those pages. I never thought that my grandpa would lie about something like that."

"Why did he lie?" Hange wondered aloud, glancing up at the ceiling. Armin shook his head, and opened his mouth to speak, but Hange cut him off. "Oh, no, I don't expect you to know. I'm just trying to figure it out. What could be worse than knowing your parents got eaten?"

The three of them were silent for a few minutes. Armin listened to the sound of a moth's wings beating against the window, and the faint crying of crickets in the foliage outside. He closed his eyes, and thought about his grandfather's face. He realized with a sickening tremor of his heart, that he could not recall the man's features all that well. It was like a translucent veil had fluttered over his grandfather's smiling face, and his eyes and mouth and nose were mere outlines against a shimmering memory.

"Maybe 'cause it's easy to believe the worst of things," Levi said suddenly. Armin looked up at the man, who was staring up at the ceiling as well. "If you had to tell a kid a lie about what happened to his parents, tell him the worst thing that you can think of, because it's easier to believe and simple to grasp. I mean, I think it's bullshit, honestly. If it was really me, I would tell the kid the truth, but… it's possible your father's death was that kind of shady crime that no one's got any business in knowin' unless they wanna end up the same way."

"Oh," Hange said, their eyes glittering suddenly at Levi. "Oh, that might be it! In the journal, the man, he was very scared of something that had happened— the stingy bastard didn't actually write down the details, unfortunately, but it's not outside the realm of possibility that he'd get wrapped up in something he wasn't supposed to."

"He was constantly skulking around the Underground and sticking his nose in Reiss's business," Levi said, his lips pressing together thinly. "He was asking to be shot in the face."

Armin was trying to recollect his grandfather's face. The crickets served as a trigger, and Armin could smell the night air, the Shiganshina air that tasted faintly acrid— of sweat, and tobacco, and smoke billowing from an old man's pipe. And beneath him, the coarse wooden floorboards turned to concrete stone, and his body shrunk feebly, holding its defensive position of knees-to-chest and chin-to-knees, as though it would protect him from the uncertainty of the world around him. That world was an unclear haze, an illustration without form or control, merely lines dribbling down a paper, ink filling a page in haphazard attempts to create a coherent picture.

This vague memory floated in his mind, bobbing like a plank of wood down a river. If Armin so much as budged his arm, he was certain he would feel the warmth of his grandfather's body beside him. He was sure that he was on the stone step, sitting with him on a heavy summer night in Shiganshina. He was sure that he could smell the pipe as his grandfather puffed smoke pensively, raising his eyes to the stars as he told Armin that sometimes loving someone requires you to remove yourself from their life's equation. In a world of variables, he said, a person's life can only consist of so many numbers until it's finally solved. So by loving someone, it's best to know that you will inevitably be subtracted from them in order for them to reach their ultimate fulfillment. The thing is, I can't solve your equation for you. I'm only a variable. And someday I'll be removed from your equation, and you'll be removed from mine, and maybe then I'll have some solace and be granted my own answer. But being subtracted doesn't erase a person's existence. That love is still there. You can never remove it. It's just a part of the solution.

The words billowed loftily in the air, tinged with smoke and coiling delicately inside Armin's memory. If his life was an equation, how did he account for the addition of the variable that was Historia Reiss? What sort of convoluted existence did he lead, then, with all of these constantly changing variables? The more Armin thought about it, the more his life seemed to be nothing but a series of variables entangling with and then recoiling from him.

In the tumultuous sea of memories, Armin found himself immersed in a bleary recollection of a man in a kitchen with a finger to his lips. Armin shuddered, and he hugged his knees tighter to his chest. He felt sick again, and he felt tears prickling his eyes. Whatever had happened to his father, it couldn't be good.

"Armin?"

His reverie of memories was shattered by Hange's voice. He looked up, and saw them kneeling before him, smiling weakly. He realized he felt like he was going to be sick. Genuinely, he felt the sensation of nausea as it kicked him in the stomach, and his fingernails dug senselessly at the wooden floor beneath him as he clamped his hands over his mouth and squeezed his eyes shut. There were tears trickling against his nose, dribbling precariously against his fingertips.

"Hey," Hange said gently. Armin didn't want to look at them. His head was beginning to hurt. He needed to calm down. He needed the memories to stop resurfacing. He needed to breathe. "C'mon, Armin, look at me. Deep breaths, kay?"

Armin nodded mutely, and pulled his trembling hand from his mouth. He took a gulp of air, and exhaled shakily. Hange smiled, and nodded eagerly, reaching out with their callused fingers and wiping at his tears carefully. Armin was frozen, staring at them with wild eyes, and they winked.

"Cheer up," Hange chirped. "We've dealt with way weirder things than this, haven't we?"

Armin nodded. There was a lump in his throat. He wiped at his eyes with the sleeve of his shirt. "Y-yeah," he whispered. "Yeah. We have. I don't know why I'm so upset, I just…"

"It's okay to be upset!" Hange said, placing their hands on Armin's shoulders and squeezing them. "But you need to choose right now. Do you want to keep going with this and see it to the end? Or do you want to stop now, and forget this ever happened?"

Armin stared at them. His hands fell between his knees, and he gaped at the squad leader. "I can do that?" he whispered. "Just… quit? Like it's nothing?"

"If you're reacting like this," Levi said, studying Armin with narrowed eyes, "then I'm not going to encourage you to look into the stupid piece of shit anymore. It's caused more harm than good."

"No, you're wrong," Armin said, staring at Levi with glistening eyes. "I'm glad I found out. I just… I'm tired. I think I should go to bed."

"That's a good idea," Hange said, rising to their feet. "We all should."

"I'm going to finish deciphering the journal," Armin murmured, running his fingers through his hair. "And then… well, I don't know. I need to sort out some things out."

Hange and Levi said nothing. They only watched Armin, and for a moment, with their vacant stares, he had to wonder if either of them really cared for him at all. He left the room feeling so sick he could scream, and it was the kind of sickness that wouldn't go away even if he puked. It was the kind of sickness that came with a hollow chest where his heart should have been, the kind of sickness that started slow and then bloomed with the force of an explosion, sending scattered shell shrapnel to bury itself in his lungs.

Armin stumbled into the room he shared with Eren, Jean, and Connie, and he wandered past them as they jumped to their feet upon seeing him. He kicked off his shoes and all but fell onto his bed, burying his face in his pillow and thinking to himself, My mother is Historia's mother, and if my father hadn't taken me to Shiganshina, I'd have grown up with Historia, and she wouldn't have been alone.

"Armin?" Eren's voice reached toward him, breaking through his thoughts. Armin rolled onto his side to look up at Eren. He was leaning against the upper bunk of their bunk beds, watching Armin with worry glowing in his eyes. "Are you gonna tell me what happened?"

"No," Armin said sitting up and pulling his pillow into his lap.

"Why?" Eren looked so hurt, Armin wanted to shout out everything about the journal and start crying again. "Is it something bad? Are you sick?"

Armin almost laughed. He managed a smile, and wiped at his sticky, red rimmed eyes. "No," he said with a little laugh. "No, I'm fine. It's nothing really important. I think I just need to get more sleep…"

"Well, yeah," Eren snorted. "I could tell you that."

Jean and Connie were watching from the other side of the room, and Armin smiled at them weakly. "It's fine," Armin said. "Seriously, this has nothing to do with anything, it's… it's so silly, I don't even…" He sighed and tossed his pillow back down. "Yeah, forget it. Just forget the whole thing, please…"

"You're not a Titan too, are you?" Connie asked in a voice so deadpan, Armin almost took him seriously. But Armin saw a familiar glint in the boy's eyes that assured him that Connie was joking. "I don't think I'd be able to handle that one, guys. I think I'd go crazy."

"Agreed," Jean said with a smirk. "Though I'd bet you'd have a lot better control of yours than Eren does with his."

"Hey!" Eren cried. "You try doing jack shit inside a giant, living, burning sack of flesh attached to your nerves!"

"Are you agreeing that your performance as a Titan is far less than satisfactory?" Jean asked, his eyebrows rising.

"Are you kidding?"

"Aw, shuddap, Jean," Connie mumbled, flopping onto his bunk. "Don't be an ass. It looks pretty painful."

Jean said nothing, but he did look at Connie, and his expression seemed remorseful. Armin took that opportunity to roll over so his back was facing Eren. He drifted to sleep so fast, no one had time to ask him any more questions.

---

Armin avoided Historia's eye. He avoided speaking in general, and went straight to the study after breakfast the next morning. He opened up the journals, feeling empty as he put a pen to paper and began to decipher whatever his father had done next. In truth, Armin wanted to scream. He didn't understand who these people who were likely his parents were. He wanted to cry.

Of course, there was no time for that. He'd mourned whatever lost potential his parents were the previous night. He was done with crying, and he was done with caring. Whoever his parents had been, they were gone now. And the journal was all that he had of them. The simple fact of it chilled him to the bone, but it convinced him that he needed to focus. He needed to understand why he was in the situation he was in now.

"Hey," Hange said later in the day, resting a teacup on the desk. They seemed rather tentative to approach Armin. "How's it going?"

"It's going," Armin said, never looking up from the journals. His hand was moving, cramping, from writing every word he could milk from the journal. Armin was a little dizzied at the description his father had given of his mother feeding both baby Historia and baby Armin oranges with pepper sprinkled on top. "I don't think that's good for them," his father had pointed out. The woman had merely looked at him vacantly, and fed baby Armin another slice.

"Need any help?"

"No."

Hange watched him with a vague smile, their eyebrows knitting together as Armin looked up at them. "They're all worried, you know," Hange whispered, bending closer to him.

"They'll get over it," Armin sighed, rubbing his eyelid with an ink-stained palm. He bit his lip, and leaned back in his seat. "Is… is Historia okay?"

"She's fine." Hange studied Armin curiously. "Maybe you should talk to her yourself. She seems awful worried."

"I'll talk to her," Armin promised, closing his eyes. "I just need to finish this. I need to have at least a little bit of closure before I tell anyone."

"You can tell me," Hange said, their eyes brightening. "I mean, you can tell me how you're feeling about all of this. I'm not really the best person to spill your guts to, in all honesty, but I'm a far better alternative to Levi."

Armin paused, and when he looked up at them, he couldn't help smiling as well. "Are you sure?" he asked. "I don't want to start crying again."

"I don't mind," Hange said. "Tears are so naturally human, it's only healthy to have a good cry every now and then. C'mon, hit me. Do you feel like all this has changed anything for you?"

Armin had to sit and think that one over. "Yeah," Armin said softly. "Yeah, I think it has. I'm just… overwhelmed with all this information, because all I can think of is what could have been. And it's really, really hard to just… remember things, because the context of my entire life has changed."

"But has it really?" Hange asked. Armin stared at her quizzically. "Well, think about it. Your life's exactly the same as it was this time yesterday. Your memories haven't changed. The past hasn't changed. It's always been like this, hasn't it? You just haven't been aware until now."

Armin blinked rapidly. "Oh," he said. "I hadn't thought of it like that."

Hange beamed. "Well, now you can!" They clapped their hands together excitedly. "Now, what else are you feeling? Sad? Angry?"

"Yes," Armin answered.

"Well, which one?"

"Both!" Armin dropped his pen and shook his head furiously. "My father talked about me and Historia like we were human disasters. He said that his life was like Pompeii, and if Historia was the ashes that fell from the sky, then I was Mt. Vesuvius's volcanic eruption."

Hange stood for a moment, their brown eyes widening slightly as they smiled confusedly. "What?" they asked. "Pompeii? Mt. Vesuvius?"

"It's…" Armin ran his fingers through his hair, and shook his head again. "In my book, Pompeii was mentioned. A mountain blew up there thousands and thousands of years ago and buried the citizens under ash and fire. I think Tacitus wrote about it, because the man... my father, he wrote stuff about Tacitus getting eye-witness accounts of the volcano exploding."

"Oh." Hange straightened up in awe. "That's incredible!"

"What?"

"A mountain!" Hange's eyes glittered. "Blowing up! Could you imagine weaponizing that?"

"How do you weaponize nature?" Armin asked, frowning.

"Well, we take advantage of its naturally destructive capabilities," Hange said with a bright smile. "Do you think Titans could survive extreme heat?"

"They are extreme heat, aren't they?"

"Well, I mean more extreme heat," Hange said, waving offhandedly as they looked away with rapid curiosity. "Heat so hot it sloughs the skin off the Titan's bones!"

"Wouldn't it just regrow?" Armin asked.

"I don't know," Hange said. "Oh! What about extreme cold? What if we froze a titan?"

"That sounds terrifying," Armin admitted. "Is that possible?"

"I don't know that either," Hange said. "I'm just throwing things out there. Oh, what were you saying? About the exploding mountain?"

"Well apparently," Armin said bitterly, "I'm it."

Hange smiled in sympathy. "It's not a bad thing to be compared to, though," Hange offered.

"I was only a few months old," Armin said. "I don't think I can take it as a compliment."

"Just keep an open mind," Hange said. Armin frowned down at his hands. "And also, we'll be doing the experiments in a few days. Just a heads up."

"I'll be done by tonight," Armin said, picking up his pen and pulling his tea closer to him. "Don't worry."

Hange nodded, and watched him for a few moments longer before exiting the room. Armin was left to the last of the journal, which was terrifying and exhilarating to him. The man— his father, Armin reminded himself— had offered Historia's mother— his mother— a chance to leave the ranch she lived on. Armin played with this thought. He imagined a childhood where he had two parents and a sister. He imagined a life that could never have been.

"Did I ever say I wanted a new life?" asked Armin's mother. There was something about these words that hurt Armin. Because this was her response to having a life with him. This was his mother's perspective. She hadn't wanted to be his mother. She hadn't wanted anything to do with him.

And in response, Armin's father had apologized in shock. And then, with the furious revelation that his mother was glad to be rid of Armin, the man offered to take Historia as well. Armin knew the outcome, and yet he begged and pleaded with the universe to allow his elder sister just a little love, and let her have really been his sister.

Armin was bitterly disappointed when his mother declined. Maybe she loved Historia more, Armin thought. He felt a pang of jealousy. It was an awful feeling, knowing fully well that he had no right to envy, and yet here he was almost painfully aching to know what life might have been like if their places had been switched, and Armin had grown up on that small northern ranch while Historia witnessed the destruction of Shiganshina.

"It's cruel, you know," said Armin's father to his mother. "Separating them is the worst thing to do."

And yet, they did it. Armin's father didn't think to leave Armin with his mother. Armin wondered what that would have been like as well. He was a little relieved when he recalled that Eren would not be such a huge factor in Armin's life if his father had not taken him from his mother at such a young age. I didn't even know her, Armin thought glumly. I doubt she'd want to know me even if I did.

According to the journal, Armin had wailed upon departure. And Historia had begun to wail too. Armin tried to imagine having that sort of connection to the tiny blonde girl, but he was saddened to find that he couldn't empathize. And with a heaviness in his heart, he closed the journals. Levi had stolen it in the midst of his father's writing. He had written about the difficulties of traveling with a baby, and the uncertainty of being a father.

Armin laid his head down on the desk, shadows filling the room. There were no explanations. There was no closure.

There was only the rapid addition of new variables to his equation.

---

Armin rolled an orange between his palms, a sack of pepper dangling from his wrist and two journals weighing heavily in his pocket as he stood outside the girls' door. Levi and Hange had gotten rid of the others for the afternoon, and that meant that it was now or never. He stood nervously, his fingernails burrowing into the outer skin of the orange. No, nervous didn't begin to cut it. Armin was feeling intense anxiety at the thought of revealing it all to Historia, but it couldn't be helped. He couldn't not tell her, no matter how tantalizing the idea was. It would eat him alive, and gnaw at the empty space in his chest until blood began to seep from every orifice of his scrawny body.

He knocked on the door fast. The sound was terrifying, an echo of his thundering heartbeat, and he took a deep breath to remind himself to stay calm. It couldn't be that bad. And whatever the result of this was, he would live through it. So he smiled when the tiny blonde girl opened the door, and looked up at him confusedly. The way her hair fell disheveled across her shoulders, Armin could tell she had been sleeping.

"Armin?" Historia asked groggily, her eyes darting to the orange in his hands. She frowned. "Is… is something wrong?"

"No," Armin said, eyes darting away from Historia's face in order to avoid noting the similarity of it to his own. "Well… not… entirely." He took a deep breath, and looked back at her with a furrowed brow. "Can I come in?"

She studied him for a moments, before nodding, opening the door a little wider to allow him to pass through. He did, and stood for a moment with his eyes closed, trying to remember exactly how he'd planned to break this news to Historia. Planning for this sort of situation was difficult.

"Are you okay, Armin?" Historia asked tentatively. When he opened his eyes, she was tilting her head at him.

He smiled at her, and shook his head. "I don't know," he admitted. He glanced at the bunk beds, and he wandered over to the only one that wasn't made, assuming that it was Historia's. He sat down, and he began to peel the orange carefully, watching with a sad gaze as his fingers shook. Historia wandered before him, standing over him so her shadow enveloped him.

"Maybe we should get a doctor…" Historia said slowly.

"I'm not sick," Armin said, staring at the orange peels he was tearing from the fruit. He set them in his lap, and continued to dig his nails under the skin of the orange and rip. "I'm just… trying to figure things out."

"Well," Historia said, blinking down at him, "you're very good at that, aren't you?"

"Sure," Armin said with a sharp laugh. "Yeah, I'm great at figuring things out. And once I do, then what? It's easy to get information, Historia, but it's hard to know how to use it."

"I'm… I'm sorry?" Historia took a step back in surprise. "Should I get Eren? Or… or the Squad Leader and Captain?"

"I'm not going to freak out like I did a few days ago," Armin said, resting the last of the orange peels in his lap. He looked up at her, and smiled. "I promise."

She frowned, and then nodded slowly. "Okay…" She looked out the window, and then down at him suddenly. "Are we the only ones in the house?"

"Captain Levi is on the porch," Armin said. "He knows I'm in here."

She looked suddenly very apprehensive. And then she spotted the journals sticking out of Armin's pocket. "Is this about those?" she asked, her finger extending toward Armin's side. She eyes were narrowed, and her brow was furrowed. "You said I didn't have anything to do with it."

"Not at first," Armin said quietly. He bowed his head. "I'm sorry. I was going to tell you earlier, but the more I read, the more I had no idea how to actually explain it to you."

"Well," Historia said with wide eyes, "you could let me read it!"

"You definitely can," Armin said. "If you want to. But first, I need to tell you something."

Historia stood quietly, her eyes searching her face. She looked down at the orange in his hand, and the closed her eyes. "Should I sit down?" she asked softly.

"Yeah…" He split the orange in half as she cautiously sat down on the bed beside him, her hands folding in her lap. He offered her half the orange, and she took it gratefully, the corners of her lips turning upward as they both took a pinch of pepper and sprinkled it across their respective halves.

"Is it about my father?" Historia asked, nibbling at an orange slice.

"Um," Armin said, mirroring her, "actually, no."

She stared at him confusedly, and swallowed. "Wait," she said, turning to look at him. "What?"

"It's about your mother," Armin said carefully. Her eyes widened quite a bit, and she leaned away from Armin with her mouth parting slightly in a gape. "And the man who wrote this journal."

"The Wall Cultist…?"

"He's not a Wall Cultist," Armin sighed, pulling at another orange slice. He began to suck on it to give himself time to gather his thoughts. Historia stayed quiet, and Armin listened to the quiet sound of chewing. "He was… strange. I don't know. He didn't end up talking about his work very much, and that's kind of screwed us over a little, because I think he found something really important." I think he died for it, Armin wanted to say.

"How did he know my mother?" Historia asked slowly. She peered up at Armin with dull eyes, as if she didn't truly care.

"He met her at your father's house," Armin said, staring at the dark freckles of pepper dotting the ridges of his orange slice. "She was sick, so he helped her. She was pregnant with you at the time."

"Oh," Historia said. Her expression didn't change from the dull, disinterested look she had upon asking about her mother. "That's a little… strange to think about."

"It gets weirder," Armin said. He took a deep breath, and twisted his body to face Historia, his eyes growing wide and fearful. "Listen, I'm going to tell you something really, really strange and kind of amazing and scary, but also incredibly unbelievable, so I need you to keep an open mind for me and just… just listen, and let me explain, and try to believe me because I really think it's true."

Historia's eyes had flown wide, and Armin could see himself inside the glittering blue depths of them. I met a woman with eyes like the ocean, Armin recalled. Those are Historia's eyes. And mine too. "O-okay," Historia said uncertainly. "I'll believe you."

"Wait," Armin said, jerking back for a startled moment. "What? You'll believe anything I say?"

"Yes…?" Historia blinked at him, and her eyebrows furrowed. "Armin, the person I care about the most in the whole world turned out to be a Titan, and I don't love her any less for that. I think I can handle whatever you have to say."

"But you'll believe me?" Armin asked, his empty hands feeling sticky from the orange he had just eaten. "No matter what I say?"

"You're never wrong," Historia said carefully, frowning at her last orange slice. "I think I trust anything that you say is true."

Armin felt a rush of warm affection for Historia, whose faith in him reminded him of Eren and Mikasa's trust in his judgment. And he was amazed by it. "Thank you," Armin said, blinking wildly. "It… it means a lot that you trust me."

Historia smiled weakly, and chewed on the outer skin of her final slice of peppered orange. Armin bowed his head for a few moments to try and gather his words. He had a little more confidence now that she had told him that she trusted him, and he was a little dizzy with the constant thought that he was sitting beside his sister. It was like he'd stepped into a dream.

"The man in the journal," Armin started very slowly, "fell in love with your mother." Armin watched Historia's face, but she merely stared at him with furrowing eyebrows, and continued to chew on the edge of her orange. "He helped her a lot when she was pregnant with you. He wrote a lot down. She even brought him to your ranch when she went home to have you." Armin's face was growing warm as Historia watched him attentively, her brow continuing to furrow. "When you were born, he was the one who named you. After Historiae by Tacitus."

"Oh," Historia said, her shoulders squaring in alarm. "I… I had the book, but I never thought…"

"He cared about you," Armin told her, searching her face and smiling. "I mean, I think it took him a little while to warm up to the idea of you, but he really did care about you. He read stories to you, and played with you, and took care of you when your mother wasn't up to it…"

Historia swallowed her orange slice, and tilted chin toward the ceiling. "Sounds about right," she said softly. She shook her head, and closed her eyes. "I don't remember any man in the house like that when I was younger."

"You were only a few months old," Armin said. "So you wouldn't."

"I guess that makes sense." She looked up at Armin, and he saw the corner of her lip twitch. "I'm assuming that… isn't all you wanted to tell me?"

"You assumed right." Armin laughed nervously, and he pulled the translation journal out of his pocket. He held it up to her. "This is the notebook we used to decipher the man's writing. It's what I've been working on for over a week."

"Do you want me to read it… or…?" Historia eyed the journal uncertainly.

"You can if you want," Armin said. "You have every right to."

"I guess…"

Armin flipped open the journal, and began to thumb through the pages slowly. "I can't explain your mother's relationship with this man," Armin said quietly. "I wish I could, I wish I— I wish I knew more about what happened, because it'd be easier to think clearly about it. I don't know if she cared about him, truly, I really don't, and it's scary. But whatever happened between them…" Armin continued to flip carefully through the pages, sweat breaking out across the back of his neck from anxiety. "He left for about a year. When he came back, there were two children on your ranch."

He paused to allow this information to sink in. Historia did not move, nor did her eyes leave Armin's face, nor did her expression change. She simply sat in silence, as thought the information had not fully hit her.

"What?" she asked flatly.

"She had another child," Armin said, his voice strained. "With the man who wrote this… this stupid fucking journal…"

"My mother," Historia said softly. Armin looked at her face, and saw there truly was no change in it. She simply stared at Armin.

"Yes," Armin said. He took a deep breath, and he closed his eyes. "He was born on November third."

"840?"

"Yeah."

Historia sat for a moment, and she eyed the journal with a passive expression. For a moment, as Armin observed her expression, her pale hair falling into her eyes, he thought she looked a bit like Annie. They were both very quiet, and Armin waited. He wondered how much Historia really knew about him. How much she truly cared.

"Armin," she said quietly, "isn't that your birthday?"

Armin opened his mouth to reply affirmatively, but his voice caught in his throat. He snapped his mouth shut in terror of how his voice would sound, and he wondered if he'd begin to cry again out of helpless confusion. So instead of replying, Armin thrust the journal in her hands, and he pointed to the page in which he had scribbled out his own name until the ink bled through to the next page. The spot was marked with a furious black blot.

Historia bowed her head, her hair framing her pale cheeks as she read the page rapidly. Armin didn't realize he was holding his breath until she sat back with her body growing rigid. She stared ahead of her for a moment, her eyes unfocused and dull, and she handed the journal back to Armin.

"Oh," she said.

Armin felt his heart return to him with the force of a Titan's fist. It stuttered viciously in his chest. Hammering at his ribs and screaming in his ears, thudding heavily and horribly, hissing at him to scream and cry and shake Historia until she emoted what she was really feeling.

"Oh," Armin repeated in a wane, strangled voice. "Um… yeah…"

Historia folded her hands in her lap. Armin closed the journal with wide eyes, feeling dazed and sickened. His chest hurt, as though he'd gone running for too long and now his heart was thundering, and there was a sensation of stones pressing upon his chest, weighing him down and threatening to cave in his ribcage. He couldn't look at Historia's face anymore.

"Well…" Historia was just as careful as Armin to avoid looking anywhere but forward. "That is… something."

"Yeah…" He squeezed his eyes shut, and he could feel his fingers trembling. "You believe me?"

"I told you I would," Historia said. Her voice was oddly level, and soft, and so amazingly dull that Armin wanted to flop back against the bed and stare at the bunk above them for hours and hours and hours. "But… I… don't know. What does it matter?"

"What?" Armin asked, looking down at her in surprise.

Historia matched his gaze with her vacantly passive one. "What does it matter?" she repeated. "It's not like it changes anything."

"Oh." Armin swallowed hard, and he nodded furiously. "Yeah, I know, I just… you… needed to know."

"Yeah…" Historia averted her gaze. "I guess so. Thank you."

"Um," Armin muttered, gathering up the orange peels hurriedly, and rising to his feet. "Yeah. No problem."

He stood for a moment, and he couldn't will himself to look down at her, even though he could feel her dull gaze on his back. He felt… so nauseatingly empty so very suddenly, and it made his eyes prickle viciously from unadulterated numbness that prickled through his body and stung the shreds of the heart that had blown open against his lungs.

"Bye, then," Armin murmured.

"Bye…" Historia said quietly.

Armin moved swiftly from the room, and closed the door almost frantically, his back slamming against the door as he made some rapid attempt to catch his breath, catch his rattled mind, catch his battered heart as it floated in pieces around the empty cavity of his chest.

Just another variable, Armin thought numbly, pushing off from the door and walking with his head held high down the hallway. Or maybe she was never a variable at all.

Armin rubbed his eyes furiously for a moment or so, before he accepted that he could be a variable in Historia Reiss's equation without her being one in his.

---

I actually refrained from posting this chapter earlier for a few reasons. One, it's hella long. Two, I stopped writing the final chapter (the next chapter) so I could work on a birthday present for a friend. I mean, I'm literally so close that I CAN TASTE THE ENDING OF THIS FIC. Chapter 54 actually helped me figure out a way to end this while still keeping it moderately canon. But sadly, I've got to focus on a different fic because it's way more of a project. Hopefully I'll finish it (and Joyeux Noel, another fic that I stopped writing in the middle of the last chapter, even though I'M SO FUCKING CLOSE) really soon.

If anyone who is actually reading (BLESS YOU) is wondering why this is so long, it's because I split the chapters unevenly by accident. There was no way I could put any of this chapter into the final chapter, because the final chapter is in Historia's point of view. Surprise!

THANK YOU TO ANYONE WHO ACTUALLY READ THIS, AND DOUBLE THANK YOU TO ANYONE WHO REVIEWED, IT MEANS SO MUCH BECAUSE WHEN I STARTED WRITING THIS FIC I WAS SO UPSET BECAUSE I KNEW NO ONE WOULD READ IT, BUT I DECIDED TO PULL IT THROUGH ANYWAY. doin it for the art, son