Who We Are Today

by LivianLynx

The battle for Shiganshina was won and the Survey Corps secured custody of the Colossal Titan. No one believed that they'd achieve peace with Marley's war machine by talking to the one enemy who could answer them but refused. No one but a single scout who'd believed in negotiation since the very beginning. (Canon divergent rewrite of AoT, Bertholdt survives Shiganshina)

18. Liar

His fingers were whitened numb against the wood of his crutches as he returned to his room through empty hallways and darkened stairwells on an unsteady leg. Only when he had closed the door and placed his crutches against his chair did his lips curl into a smile and he let out a tentative giggle. Then came a swallowed hum, and finally, he broke out into laughter that eventually devolved into grinning silence.

Armin hadn't lost the one thing that made him useful after all.

He'd gone and done the impossible. He'd gotten Hange to reverse their decision. He could visit Bertholdt again—and bitter as it was that his ankle had needlessly taken the brunt of a failed plan, his improbable success made everything that he'd suffered through worth the pain.

There was a chance this would be taken from him again, but today, he was safe.

His lips tingled as he lay awake looking at the moon, unable to fall asleep. A buzz followed him around the week as he took on the roles of various aggressors and mediators while teaching the recruits conflict resolution classes they'd come up with in preparation for contact with the new world—a task which earned him quite a few amused smiles and laughs from his fellow elites who came to view and "support" him.

Not even the scorching sun could evaporate his adamant vindication.

It made no sense for anxiety to creep up on Armin in a situation like this. Old habits die hard and no progress ever went unpunished. With such a victory, odds that he'd fall in the mineshaft and break another three bones were high.

When he approached the Military Police at their usual supply point early the next Sunday morning, he expected them to draw their weapons at him and send him packing. Instead, they let him travel with them without question, without the need to show them the letter Hange had penned him. Not even the deep mine police stopped him.

The Bertholdt he'd encounter should be an easier one. Mellowed out by the gentle embrace of the melactin that had taken a hold of him. Today should prove to be calm.

He was allowed a victory this one time.

---

Armin found Bertholdt lying on his side, most of his body off his sleeping mat and spine so bent that his forehead almost touched his thighs. Evidently, he was asleep, eyes closed and mouth ajar as his even breathing was much too slow to supply a waking person with enough air. Absent of that piercing stare that examined Armin's every action under the suspicion that his next might harm him.

A childish smile slipped past Armin's defences and he had to cover his mouth with a hand to make it vanish again. Even with most of his limbs cut off, his body tied into a safety harness, and a sleeping bag to keep him contained, Bertholdt still committed to his sleeping poses.

"Bertholdt," Armin gently called out from the gate, so as to give him the space he needed to wake up without feeling watched.

Bertholdt stirred. His breathing halted before it assumed the quick and blocky pace Armin was more accustomed to. Bertholdt's eyes shot wide open when he stretched his neck, but when he saw Armin, his shoulders dropped again.

"Hey. Hi," Armin greeted with a small wave, finally feeling released from the gate.

Bertholdt didn't respond, watching him with darkened eyes.

"I'm back," Armin stated the obvious. He stuck out his airborne foot, which temporarily caught Bertholdt's focus. "I, um… This should've been off by now. Things haven't gone so well for me. Again."

Like it was as simple as surrendering to injury. The battles Armin had fought to be in the mines again. The things Bertholdt couldn't possibly guess had happened since the last time they'd seen each other. Bertholdt did not need planted inside his head the idea that Armin might not always remain free to visit. So Armin chose to keep it close to his heart, maybe to be revealed in a few years, when Bertholdt neared the end of his life. When he could appreciate the gesture for what it truly was and not for what it might mean for his future.

Armin smiled warmly at Bertholdt in a show of companionship, but he couldn't coax a reaction out of him. Cheek pressed into the dirt as his sleeping bag's hood had twisted behind him, he kept a watchful eye on Armin, who decided that the anxiety of standing still was getting too much and ventured deeper into the mineshaft.

"I have great news. I managed to take along a feast with me. Food that will last you for weeks even if you eat at a normal pace. There's nothing that anyone can do about it, so I might as well give you the best there is. You probably want to dig in as fast as you can, right?"

Those wide eyes averted Armin's at the end of his sentence. This wasn't the answer he was looking for.

"Or does it go into the crate?"

Bertholdt's glassy focus remained reserved for the wall. Armin almost would designate his eyes' movements a shiver if he didn't know better about eye muscles.

"That's alright, too…" Armin said, the ecstasy of his victory chipping away with each subsequent lack of communication.

Was Bertholdt high?

If he was abusing the melactin he'd received, then he had taken Armin's prolonged departure badly. Of course Armin would have to extend a consolatory gesture to make things right again, notwithstanding that he'd already fought tooth and nail to take proper care of Bertholdt.

Could Armin really blame him? Desperate people usually drank and gambled. Bertholdt had neither at his disposal to drown his sorrows with. He'd get better now that Armin was back.

He set aside his crutches and pulled his lantern's rope over his head, placing it down next to the crate. His ankle had painfully swollen over the past few days and kneeling took him a few winces before he settled on sitting down instead to refill his supplies.

"Ah, and," he said as he placed various packages of food he'd prepared for the occasion into the dusty crate, "I know that there was nothing in particular that you wanted me to take along with me, but I have gone looking anyway. Are you a fan of spiced salami? It is quite expensive, but I found a good supplier who offered it at a fair price."

Bertholdt cleared his throat, barely audibly, and Armin heard him shuffle around, but nothing beyond that. Either he was high or the decreased food supply had done a number on him.

Last time he'd been starved, he hadn't been this quiet. He'd possessed the energy to repeat his question of whether Armin was a murderer and finally complete his point. Something was wrong this time around.

Armin stumbled upon another discovery as he finished up his supplying: the bottle of melactin was full. Bertholdt wasn't using any medicine at all. He was still in as much pain as he'd always been: crushed, skin split by the leather that bound him, plagued by the headaches of a fractured skull.

It took everything out of Armin not to let out his unease in the form of a hum. He could either wrestle the reason why out of an already uncooperative Bertholdt's hand, or he could accept that this was yet another gift that he wouldn't accept.

In a way, this solved Armin's final problem: how to sneak enough melactin to keep Bertholdt pain-free.

When he closed the crate and got up again, he simply sat down, bent far over his lap as his elbows rested on his knees. Bertholdt had crawled back to his side of the mineshaft, sat upright in his usual spot with his hand bitten loose of its bandage yet still unable to look Armin in the eye as he wiped the dirt off his cheek.

Folding his hands over his lap, Armin bit the inside of his lower lip a few times before he decided to bite the bullet.

"Bertholdt, you're not answering me…"

The concern in his voice was effective. Bertholdt's expression went from dismissive to culpable, but no answer came when Armin gave him the space to respond to the allegation.

"Why aren't you talking?" Armin pressed.

Did he have something to confess?

What more could there be beyond his actions as the Colossal Titan? Crimes he'd committed that went overlooked because the gravity of his others far overshadowed these? Something he'd done in Armin's absence? Something about their friendship, perhaps?

"Bertholdt… Please."

An uneasy hum escaped Bertholdt, barely there as he turned his head farther away, his eyes remaining pinned on the wall just beside Armin. Armin gave him the space to breathe, to think, to anticipate. They had years left. There was time to resolve this.

"I just…" Bertholdt whispered, and Armin leaned closer to hear.

Bertholdt had his hand in his neck.

"I think that it's time…"

The rest of his words were mumbled too quietly.

"I'm sorry," Armin answered, "I didn't understand that."

"You…" Bertholdt tried again, having changed his mind about the way he wanted to say this.

"What is it time for?" Armin urged, and then added, "I won't be mad at you for speaking what's on your mind," when Bertholdt shook his head and held on to his stubborn refusal to be clear.

Armin could form an idea of what this was about in the back of his head, but it was so perfect, so impossible that he refused to even entertain it in case the nerves overtook him and he scared Bertholdt back into his shell.

Bertholdt let go, groaning and laying his head back against the wall, looking up at the dark ceiling of the mineshaft with his bloodied lips parted.

"You need to stop visiting me."

"I need to stop visiting you?" Armin calmly repeated those words without truly registering what they meant.

"I know what you're doing."

This time, Bertholdt was steadfast. His eyes finally burned holes into Armin, and it was Armin's turn to remain silent, body and face blank to allow his brain to fully allocate itself towards processing that information.

Not I think it's time to help you.

Not you have convinced me.

But leave.

The severity of that accusation needed the time to slowly trickle into Armin's mind and let itself be properly understood, and as it did, it tracked in shock and awe along with it.

Bertholdt no longer wanted Armin to be around him. He'd rather give up light, food, water, and company than to spend more time with him. But he'd said crude things before; this could be nothing more than his way of acting out in order to let his real issue be known to Armin, and maybe that was what kept Armin anchored.

With the tension that flooded his nerves, staying calm and thinking every answer through would be tough.

"What happened?" he cooed. "You know you can tell me when something has happened."

Bertholdt's glare widened, lips parting. "Don't play stupid and don't be so cryptic with me. Please, just… stop."

Cryptic? Bertholdt was the one who was being cryptic. Armin didn't know anything, how was he supposed to act right?

If he had to guess, then Bertholdt had gotten tired of Armin's continued gaps between his visits and decided to make it known in his own stubborn way of regressing unless he got on his knees and begged Bertholdt to be reasonable. Armin could groan and cuss at the lack of sympathy, but he realised that Bertholdt couldn't have possibly imagined the things Armin had done to ensure that he could keep his visitation rights. The broken ankle, his escape into the woods, risking everything by confronting Hange the way he had and almost losing his gambit.

To bring those things up now would be too obvious even to Bertholdt. Look at what I have done for you—you can't afford to kick me out after that, was how that would come across.

Even if it was how Armin felt.

"How can I show you that I care? How can I help you here?" Armin tried.

"By listening to what I'm asking you and leaving."

"That is not an option. If nothing else, you need food."

"Food you're only giving me if I am loyal enough to you? When I've been good?"

Bertholdt's dark eyes peered directly into Armin's soul and he had to swallow to keep it together. He'd alluded to the food being brought in to buy him before, and while true in the past, it so clearly no longer was. Armin had made it evident that he was there to take care of Bertholdt and only Bertholdt, hadn't he?

Had he?

"If you're mad that I was gone, I'm sorry that I failed you so tremendously. But every time I couldn't be here, it was for a reason. Either I was sick or injured and couldn't send anyone to come in my place, or the rest were out to try to contact another nation and I–"

"Coun-try," Bertholdt interrupted, stressing each syllable with great exaggeration of his mouth. "Do you know that word? You've heard me say it. Why don't you just say country? You don't have to use the word nation in every other sentence, I feel like I'm going mad!"

A sudden turn of topic into the absurd.

"That's what you're upset about?" Armin indignantly retorted, his resolve to stay calm wavering at the sheer senselessness of that argument.

"No. No, there is so much more that grates my nerves, but this? Did you not know those are synonyms?"

No. No, Armin did not. Grisha didn't include an extended dictionary with his notes explaining every single outside word and had an affinity for the word nation. Even if he knew, why would it matter?

Bertholdt was seeking any form of control in his powerless situation, even if it meant policing Armin's vocabulary. He couldn't lose his cool for that.

"Okay. Alright, then, if I call them countries from now on, all is fine?"

Bertholdt huffed. "Do you even listen when I speak?" he called out.

"Of course I do!" Armin pleaded. "I always listen to you, but I don't see why you're angry with me, Bertholdt… You have to give me the chance to adapt to what you need and listen to your grievances, I can't read your mind."

Bertholdt glared, his nose crinkled under his grimace. Armin had to act with awareness. Steer this away from turning into a passionate debate and proving to Bertholdt that he really was better off gone. Swallow his pride, act in favour of Bertholdt's wellbeing, even if he didn't always know what was best for himself.

"Is that it? You are mad that I did not visit you every week on a consistent schedule?" Armin asked with as much sympathy in his voice as he could inject into it.

Once again, no answer as Bertholdt's eyes narrowed.

"I've negotiated better terms. I can come visit you, even if it doesn't yield any results for the Survey Corps' efforts, so long as I tend to my duties within the regiment. I'll be able to visit every Sunday, possibly even on Saturdays and for full weeks during less busy periods."

"'Negotiated'?" Bertholdt asked, indignance under his voice. "You had to beg them to let you come here? Do they think that little of you?"

Bertholdt's words were meant to bite into Armin, the tone of his voice made that abundantly clear. Before Armin could get a word in, Bertholdt continued his rant.

"My sense of time may be off down here, but I'm not stupid. I've noticed how infrequently you visit. If they truly valued your time, they would have let you come here more often than just once a week. They would have stationed you here day and night until you got me to agree with your offer, no other duties. Why are you still trying? Clearly, your Commander doesn't believe in you. I've seen Jean, and not even he does. No one does. Just give up."

So that was what this was about—but why now? Why bring that up after Armin was done trying to change his mind?

Bertholdt wanted to regain control by scrapping all variables, and Armin was just another wildly unpredictable factor. Highly unlike Bertholdt, whose jabs at Armin rarely transcended the passive-aggressive but which now struck with precision only intimate knowledge of him could achieve.

A personality change like the one he had seen in Shiganshina. And if they were similar, then this situation might turn dangerous soon.

"If Hange didn't believe in me, they wouldn't have sent me back," Armin simply retorted.

"Out of pity."

"What?"

"You're doing terribly, aren't you?" Bertholdt answered, this time less accusatory. "With the foot. And the burns. And not getting to see the ocean. You wouldn't come down here and tell me that I'm all you've got left if you were doing fine. So that devil let you come back out of pity for how bad you got. Because if you still believe that you stand a chance at changing my mind… and turning me good… then you still have a chance at getting better. But there is no good in me, so what hope do you have left?"

Armin couldn't answer.

"What… What is that about permission and negotiation?" Bertholdt went on, now desperate for an answer. "Are you telling me that all along, you couldn't get me out of this cave if I decided to help you? That you were dangling a promise you couldn't even keep in front of me? Don't think I've forgotten your promise to make them give me better food. Your choice that you didn't do it, but how am I ever supposed to believe that you can get me out of here if you couldn't even follow through on that?"

"No… No, Bertholdt, I…"

Had he really not told? Ever?

No. He hadn't. Because he had been too much of a coward to speak his defeat into reality directly to Bertholdt, Armin remembered with a shock, and had chosen to let Bertholdt know through kind gestures and broken rules that he didn't even know Armin was breaking to help him. Armin believed Bertholdt would understand.

If all this time, he thought Armin was still on his mission, then none of his reactions were out of the ordinary, and Armin laughed as the nature of this complex misunderstanding dawned on him and he realised that it could all be fixed with clarity.

Yet when he looked at Bertholdt, his apprehensive expression had turned to one of wide-eyed fear.

"Why are you laughing…?" he cautiously asked under strained breath, and Armin's smile faded.

This wasn't fear. This was terror.

"It's… Well, it's just–"

"You don't know anything, do you?" Bertholdt hissed through gritted teeth. "Do you even know why I refused to talk to you? Why I didn't tell those devils anything when they were torturing me? Did you ever figure it out, Armin?"

He was begging for understanding using the full swing of his arm, and relief washed over Armin knowing that he could finally offer it.

"Because you believed in something. You knew what was right and you refused to waver, even when your psyche started to deteriorate under the horrible things they did to you. Because you're a good person who does good things, Bertholdt. You're wrong when you say there isn't."

And at that, Bertholdt laughed. It didn't stop at a few amused breaths; this was flat-out laughter that crescendoed from his shaking torso and that wracked the tears from his eyes as it turned to sobs.

"No!" he yelled through the strain of his burden, leaving Armin nailed to his crate. "Of course not, of course you wouldn't have figured out something so simple, so stupid that it's almost unbelievable."

Armin stiffened.

"Then why did–"

"Because I banged my head!" Bertholdt barked, lips curled up like he'd just delivered a great punchline but his trembling face scrunched. "And then it got banged on the table for me, and then I did it myself to lose consciousness, and guess what? At that point I was too concussed to realise I was concussed and heal it away!"

He knocked himself atop the head, hard. The sound of Bertholdt's skull crashing into the wall behind him and the sight of specks of blood on his collar all came back to Armin, now fitted crystal clear within the picture Bertholdt just painted.

"Do you know what that was like!? To be too brain-damaged to understand the questions I was asked, or to understand how I was supposed to get the pain to stop, or even to understand why I was on that table in the first place? Could you ever even think far enough outside the box to imagine that I had to go through all of that not because I cared about Marley or the people I would kill or even self-preservation, but simply because I banged my head!?"

He yelled that last part so loud, so desperately, that Armin feared one of the policemen might get suspicious and come check on them. Bertholdt was panting as deep as his harness allowed him to, his whole body shaking and twitching from shedding such a tremendous weight.

And for once, Armin couldn't say or do anything. Because the hell that Bertholdt described, the sheer helplessness of being tortured because his head was split and it was misinterpreted as arrogant, prideful resistance–

There was nothing to be said about it. It was beyond anything Armin could imagine.

"After that…" Bertholdt somehow managed to continue, the previous passion all but drained out of his voice, making way for monotonous defeat when Armin couldn't respond. "After that, it was too late. When it finally healed the natural way, the damage had already been done. And if I caved after that, then what would all that pain have been for? What would the point have been? I might as well just have told Jean that I wanted to cooperate instead of thinking I stood a chance when you had years to figure me out… It was better to just accept that I was done for and that they'd leave me alone."

He huffed out another disbelieving laugh but there was no force behind it.

"It's stupid. So unbelievably stupid…" he whispered.

He laid his hand over his pale, sweaty face and closed his eyes, hunched over what remained of his legs as he breathed the shallow breaths the harness allowed him to, spent. Armin was rendered looking on in pitying horror over the fact that Bertholdt had evidently been doomed from the very start.

One would give up for less after going through such an ordeal.

"Is your head healed now?" were the only words he could find that felt appropriate given the revelation. He couldn't be mad at Bertholdt for calling him shallow. He wanted to be seen and Armin failed to; he had every right to yell about that.

"Who knows."

"Can you try to heal?"

"Why? It takes the edge off."

In other words, he could've been concussed all this time, afflicted by a condition that took away his ability to understand. Every past encounter suddenly fit a lot more into the Bertholdt Armin had always known when he added this small, almost insignificant detail.

So long as Bertholdt thought that the concussion helped him, he'd keep giving himself one. It was surprising that he was so lucid today to speak the full lengths he had spoken.

How many times had Armin tried to talk to Bertholdt after he'd banged his head and refused to heal to lose consciousness? How many of his bad moods could be explained by lingering brain damage?

How could Armin have misunderstood Bertholdt so for all these months?

"Bertholdt, I… I truly did not know that. No one ever said anything about it, not even you. Why didn't you ever tell me?"

"Because you'd just use it against me," Bertholdt growled.

Armin might have, but not anymore.

"I would have helped you."

"That's not true. Everything you've ever learned about me, you've used against me. How am I supposed to believe you when you tell me you want to help me?"

Bertholdt's earlier I know what you're doing came back to mind. It hurt coming face to face with his own past, with the underhanded strategies and the foul games he'd played just to win from Bertholdt.

"Let me explain something. I realised there is something I didn't tell you. I thought I did, but it has become clear to me that I didn't."

"No. Go away and leave me alone," Bertholdt stubbornly resumed his stance.

"Even if I were to leave, this is important for you to hear."

Bertholdt didn't look pleased with it, the way his half-lidded eyes pinned Armin's down, but he did not resist any further.

"I've given up, Bertholdt," Armin openly admitted. "I mean that. My mission, my whole reason for coming here, stopped being why I came here. It has been defunct since the first time I came here with my broken ankle. I don't want you to cooperate with us anymore, it does not matter anymore—and that is why I got banned from coming here. But I have fought to gain permission to come visit again. Because my new purpose is to take care of you and make your life bearable."

Bertholdt's hostile focus made way for vulnerable cognizance throughout Armin's explanation. How he wished that his signals had been clearer.

"It's all I could do anymore," Armin continued, "and I understand how hard it is to believe me, but that is my new mission. To make you feel less alone. I have no more expectations of you. Your life as it is is awful and I cannot help you out, but I can help you make it easier."

All tension had drained from Bertholdt's face, now replaced by a blank stare into the wall behind Armin.

"Why only tell me now?" he asked in a small voice after a long period of consideration.

"I thought I already did."

Now, Bertholdt looked offended. He scowled, looking Armin straight in the eyes.

"No… Many things you can tell me, but don't think you can sell to me that something like this could escape your mind. Not with your memory."

He knew. Breathing in deep, Armin understood that there was no more saving this situation by feigning ignorance.

"No. Not with my memory, no," he admitted. "But when we agreed to start with a blank slate… I thought that you understood my intentions. I see now how I misjudged. But there is no more need for hostility. I am here as your friend and just your friend, nothing else."

Bertholdt breathed for a few moments. "As my friend?"

"With a blank slate and the best intentions in mind."

Bertholdt peeled his arm from around his torso and used it to push himself upright, laying his upper body against the wall—and Armin expected another bang, but he just lay against it, staring blankly at the cavern ceiling.

"Then why am I still here?" he whispered.

"Then…?" Armin echoed.

Shaking his head, Bertholdt continued in a monotonous voice.

"I've done everything they told me to do. I've worked myself to the bone and inherited a titan. I've come to Paradis and searched for the Founder. I've kept all of their secrets close to my heart. My duty is over. I've done everything the world has asked of me. None of what has happened after that was in the contract. So why is it, then?"

He licked his torn lips and his voice cracked under his next words.

"Why am I not allowed to die?"

Reflective eyes pinned on Armin, looking for an honest answer that he didn't believe he could find anymore.

"Because I… I can't."

"Are you here as my friend, Armin? Or are you just here as a warden who makes sure that I don't go so insane from being alone that I end up killing myself and robbing Paradis of the Colossal Titan? Which one are you, Armin?"

Desperation underlined his voice and Armin's breathing quickened under the accusatory nature of the questions.

"I'm your friend."

"Then kill me!" Bertholdt yelled.

"I can't," Armin repeated his plea, blindsided by the morbidity of the topic that he should have seen coming.

"Of course you can! It's easy, just stab me and I'm gone! Or– Or put something in the food you give me and no one will know! Everyone thinks I'm dead anyway, we might as well make reality match the rumours! If they knew I'm alive, they'd all want me to die anyway. It's only right that I met my end at last, it's so long overdue…"

"You know it's not that easy. You would regenerate and needlessly suffer, and then we would both come under scrutiny."

"That's not true," Bertholdt whined.

"What?"

Bertholdt gritted his teeth.

"I lied about that. Okay, Armin? I lied," he spat. "I sometimes do that, you're not the only one."

"But… you weren't conscious. You came back from the dead multiple times, everyone saw. It's impossible to lie about."

"I don't know why it happened, but stabbing me when I was transforming must've triggered some titan power that brought me back, I don't know! But it's no longer active. The Colossal Titan holder isn't harder to kill than any other intelligent titan. So that doesn't leave you with any excuse not to do it, right?"

He looked and sounded miserable. To put Armin in such a tough spot, to ask him to do something so drastic. He'd be lying if he said it didn't wring his chest.

"Right…?" Bertholdt repeated.

Armin bit his lip and Bertholdt huffed in disbelief when he didn't answer.

"So you're just waiting until you can feed me to someone the moment you get your hands on some serum when you don't even know how it's made? To watch me grow weaker over the years until I've finally rotten away to the curse?"

He averted his eyes again.

"That doesn't sound like something that a friend would allow to happen to me…"

Fanning Armin's guilt was an effective strategy. It made Armin feel lowly for even trying to do anything if he could end up going so wrong.

"If… If I could change any of this, I already would have," he finally confessed after a laden silence that saw Bertholdt return to emptily glaring at the floor. "I mean it, Bertholdt. If there were any way for me to do it, if there were a window of opportunity, I would help you fulfil that wish, if that's truly what you want. But there isn't. I'm powerless and I can't make this type of decision, you know that."

Bertholdt softly shook his head. "You're lying."

"Bertholdt…"

"You're lying," Bertholdt repeated more certainly, looking up at Armin. This time, a cold fire burned within his eyes. "You've been lying since the beginning. How am I supposed to believe you're ever being honest with me when the Armin I see is the most blanched, sugarcoated version you could possibly present to me?" His voice sounded so offended, so dirty and wronged and on the brink of unhinging.

Armin straightened his back, eyes wide in surprise.

"What?" he softly asked, scooching forward on the crate to the edge of his seat.

"Everything you tell me is fake. Every word you say feels like you practised it in the mirror, like you're reciting it to me without knowing what you're actually saying. Have you ever told me anything that was genuine?"

"Of course–"

"Every time you come down here, you're so… nice to me," Bertholdt interrupted, balling his fist into his shirt at the emphasis. "Like I'm here for no good reason. You've barely gotten angry at me, you've never talked to me about what I've done with even a shred of judgement, if you talk about it at all, and you've never judged me. Not the way you should. You don't resent me for what I've done? You don't have any grievances?"

"I…"

He was angry Armin was being too nice? In what world did that make sense?

Armin shut his mouth, looking down on Bertholdt as he was lost on what to say.

"You're just telling me what I want to hear to get a better grip on me, aren't you? Armin?"

That last word was spoken in such a way that it begged him to tell the truth. Bertholdt twisted his head as he asked it, looking up at Armin under a heavy tilt as he leaned in.

"So that you can manipulate me more easily when you threaten to take it all away again?"

"That is not true!" Armin defended himself. "After everything that happened, I understand why you'd think that, but doesn't my clarification of my motives change anything? I don't want you to help us anymore! I just want you to do what you think is best, why won't you believe me? Are you so afraid of being helped?"

"I never forced you to consider me anything more than a traitorous enemy," Bertholdt spat back. "You don't get to be mad when I don't trust it. Either treat me like the scum I am or like a friend, don't do both. If you want to call yourself a friend, then you're a lousy one. Is it so bad that if you say you're here as a friend, you respect my request to stop visiting? Is it so strange that if you call yourself a friend, I expect you to care?"

Armin stood up from his crate on a single unsteady leg, throwing his arms wide.

"But I do! Bertholdt, I don't just visit you here every week on a whim, I really do care about you! How cruel would it be to stop helping you now?"

He pulled a hand to his chest, placing it flat on his collarbones as he limped closer, disregarding his broken ankle.

"It would be a nightmare! I can't do that to you. I'm sorry that I cannot help you in the way you deserve to be helped, but I have myself to think of as well. And to kill you when you can't even fight back, I… I don't think I'd close an eye at night again."

Armin looked down even steeper on Bertholdt from his higher vantage point. Bertholdt's eyes slowly fell closed, his one arm grabbing his blanket and hugging closer around his torso as he let his face sink. Armin watched closely for any shocking movements, but this wasn't an emotional outburst. This was a retreat. Bertholdt was done talking.

He balled his fists, turning around to limp the few paces he'd strafed from the crate, but he stopped when he reached it.

"Bertholdt…"

Why was Bertholdt the only one allowed to be angry and to have such severe mood swings during which he flung all his baggage at Armin when Armin never did the same?

Something white-hot seethed in his stomach, something he hadn't felt in months. Not aimed at him, not this strongly and this violently. He was brought back to a conversation with Hitch, all the way back in February—one about open communication, one about half truths, one about giving and taking.

As things were, Bertholdt didn't trust him at all, and it was because he'd been lying about what he'd felt and how he wanted to act. Had Hitch been right? Had Armin dug his own grave by being careful?

He was furious. At Bertholdt, at himself, at Hange, at Historia, at everyone who had stood in opposition to his plans in the past year. He wanted to talk back just as venomously, give him no benefit of the doubt at all. And he almost gave in to that desire, stopping himself just in time from spitting the most hurtful thing he could think of. This was not why he was here, but to take care of Bertholdt.

But that wouldn't happen, with the way things looked.

Have it your way, then.

Inhaling deeply before sighing out again and relaxing his hands, Armin looked over his shoulder.

"Do you really want me to be more honest?" he asked, turning the rest of his body halfway Bertholdt's way. "I can be honest. I can tell you the things I wasn't telling you because you'd sleep better at night if you didn't hear them from me. The things that make me fake."

Bertholdt did not respond, but he certainly reacted. He stiffened when Armin said that, his breathing more controlled. Body language Armin had learned to identify: regret. He didn't want this.

He was getting it anyway.

"I do have my grievances with you, Bertholdt. I do my best to conceal it, but you are not the only one of us who has been damaged."

Armin tried to keep his voice neutral, but he knew that he'd only come out as aggressive. To hell with how he sounded, it wasn't going to dull the message. He balled his fists once more, turning his body entirely.

"I fully understand your situation. You lost whatever chance you had at a good life when the adults of Marley made you enlist in the military, and once again when we captured you, but I lost my chance to you. Yet every week, I spend hours bringing food, water, clean clothes, pastime, and company to the person who took so much from me, and I don't even know if you feel sorry for what you did to us beyond the lukewarm apology you once made because Jean told you to. You wear out my body and my mind, far more than just the day I spend travelling here and talking to you. Do you know that? Have you ever thought of that?"

Bertholdt's shoulders jolted ever so slightly as they tensed. He had to be aware that something terrible was coming.

He wasn't wrong.

"And maybe I told you I forgave you then, but that wasn't entirely true. I removed my grievances from the equation because it was the right thing to do. Because I wanted to build a connection, and if I only thought about myself, that wouldn't work. There is a reason why I never do."

His inhale made the shiver of his bones audible.

"But none of my intentions change what you have done to us. That you have invaded my home town, turned it into an open graveyard we then had to wrestle out of your hands again. My last remaining family is gone, and he wouldn't have been had you not kicked the Wall. And then you killed in Trost, and again on Wall Rose, and again, and again—and do you know how many people we loved we have lost to your actions? You murdered them!"

Limping closer, Armin had to do everything to keep himself from yelling.

"Maybe it looks like it's easy to forget because I'm good at what I do, but I am using my days to talk to a mass murderer who wanted my people dead and who took away my family. But it's not easy at all. It's delicate. It's emotionally taxing. People think I am the monster for helping you, but that never stopped me!"

Just talking about it so freely after he couldn't open up to anyone throttled him.

He was strong. He was brave. He was kind enough to talk to anyone, no matter what they had done. Even Annie. Even Bertholdt. Why would such a small detail matter?

But it did. It absolutely did.

"And it's not just people and places you've destroyed," he continued. "It's comfort. Peace of mind. Sleep. I feel tense underground all the time, I panic over innocuous things, I can't think the way I used to. I can't even read anymore without feeling like it's treason because you chose to become a part of it as well and now decided that you don't want to finish it anymore when you're given a second chance. Do you think your betrayal just meant that you three weren't there anymore?"

He raised his arms in the air, voice now breaking as tears finally trickled over his cheeks. Bertholdt still kept his face buried in the blanket to avoid the confrontation he'd so claimed to covet minutes ago. Rich.

"Are my remaining friends going to try to kill me in my sleep next? Will we have to see yet another person we've grown to love and trust turn out to be someone else than we thought? I don't know, and neither do they. We all struggle with trust issues now, and we can barely bring them up around each other because it'll just sow paranoia. Eren has been distant. Sasha has gone quiet. Jean became mean and Connie is broken over it. We may never recover."

He had to blink a few times to keep his vision from going blurry. The itch his outburst had set off like white-hot needles across his skin made him want to stop and scratch all over, but he instead turned that energy into words.

"As if that weren't enough, you twisted my body into a shape I barely recognise anymore. You took so many years of blood, sweat, and tears in the military away from me, and I still have night terrors about everything that happened. I probably will until the day I die!"

The heat of the moment and the limping all concentrated excruciating pain into his ankle as he dragged himself across the mineshaft. His left leg was getting tired from carrying his weight, but he couldn't switch sides.

"Do you know what I have done to ensure I could keep visiting you?" Armin asked, resolute that this was the right path despite his earlier apprehension. "I purposely broke my ankle a second time, and it hurt because I gave you all my pain medication beforehand. I may never properly walk again once this heals, if it doesn't kill me. And it didn't even work! I had to undermine Hange's authority in such a way that it could've gotten me decommissioned if I hadn't been extremely lucky, but I was. And I was happy, because I'd earned my right to keep visiting you. And now you want me to leave!?"

Letting in and out a few shaky breaths, Armin collected his thoughts. He closed his eyes for a few moments, hot tears being driven out by his eyelids from the combination of his throbbing ankle and his triggered brain, then let his shoulders relax as his eyes drifted to the ceiling.

"I've been fighting myself for so long now about visiting you. I've hated myself for continuing to do it, for getting myself locked into feeling responsible for showing up every week. For all the pain you've caused me with so little thanks for trying to help you out, even getting accused of doing this with something horrific in mind. And I decided that I was fine with visiting you. That nothing I felt mattered so long as I could help you. I even started liking coming down here. It felt like an escape from the chaos up on the surface, and I thought that we could become genuine friends again."

He paused for a moment, then softened his voice as much as he could while still being audible, locking eyes with Bertholdt's aversive display.

"Yet you ask me to leave when things get tough?"

He brought up a hand to his temple in disbelief.

"Bertholdt, how could you say something like that? How could you understand how cruel the world is and still choose to contribute to it? How could you hurt both me and yourself so awfully?" he begged, his other hand turned up, but once again, he didn't receive an answer and his posture slumped against the stubborn display in front of him.

"They tell me I am supposed to hate you. For the longest time, I've been conflicted about what I truly think about you. And the truth is… I don't know. I don't know whether or not I hate you."

The only way to deliver this next bit was calmly. Matter-of-fact, nothing subjective or emotional about it. He gritted his teeth, then let his jaw relax as his mouth fell open.

"But if I'm honest, if I truly speak from the heart… I think I do. And I think I always will, to some degree."

Bertholdt finally emerged and returned eye contact, and for the first time in a long while, he looked like he was caught off-guard, surveying just how serious Armin looked as he said that.

Armin didn't want to be hateful. Of course he didn't. He was rational. He prided himself in setting aside his emotions to do what he needed to. But to call all of his struggles of the past year, every time he'd lost his cool in private, every harsh emotion he'd felt about Bertholdt, every sleepless night and every nightmare that sapped his energy, anything other than the outcome of anger would be plain wrong.

Armin was fallible. Armin was capable of hatred. It was yet another one of his greatest failures, but today, he needed someone to hear him.

He closed his eyes not to have to look at Bertholdt's shock, holding his breath for a moment before inhaling again.

"But… then I think about what it must be like for you," he admitted, opening his eyes and looking straight at Bertholdt, who had curled up at the direct callout. "The people you have lost. The odds that were stacked against you from birth by heartless tyrants. The hopeless perspective you are chained to… No, that we have chained you to. The parts of your body that were torn off by vengeful hands, that you will likely never regrow again. The sleepless nights you never tell me about, but which I know you have. I've known you long enough. I can see how tired you are."

Bertholdt stared at him intensely, mouth ever so slightly agape. The light glistened off of his wide eyes just a little more brilliantly.

"You have to hit your head against a wall to avoid your waking nightmare, yet that is exactly what you are to millions of people. Some kind of horror, if not the worst person alive. Not at all where you'd imagined you'd be in life at seventeen. Isn't that right?"

No answer to such a rhetorical question.

Armin looked down at the floor.

"Nothing you did to hurt me and my loved ones, you wanted to do—I know that, I've told you I know that. You had no choice. Yet they still dragged you down here to torture every last bit of sanity out of you, because they also thought they had no choice. But that doesn't make it right. You've been neglected with no hope in sight, and now you look forward exclusively to the day it ends. When I do that reality check, I…"

He brought a hand up to his face, covering part of his forehead and eye.

"I can't help but feel ashamed of myself. That we've failed you so horribly."

Letting go, he let his hand slowly drop down, dragging it over his face and neck until it landed splayed loosely over his heart.

"Who benefits from me hating you and making sure you know? What does that really accomplish? You've paid such a terrible price for something you didn't want to do and you're still suffering, and it makes me hate myself for spending my time on something as petty and as pointless as hating you…"

Armin dropped his hand back to his side. Looking back up at Bertholdt, his mouth thinned into a line. His throat bobbed as he swallowed. Armin waited in case he responded, but he remained dumbstruck into silence.

He limped closer once more—the closest he'd ever gotten to Bertholdt without a physical barrier between them.

"Maybe I do feel abandoned, but I have realised that I am not. I couldn't imagine what it would be like had my friends not been there to have my back, so why would you have to suffer alone? Why should I leave? Why can't you have one ally who is there for you—who is a lousy friend and who may or may not hate you but probably does, but who also doesn't want to hate you because you've suffered enough, and who's at odds with himself over what he feels and why, and who brings you supplies and tries to put you at ease because he cares—he truly does?"

Armin had to suck in his breath after that ramble fully depleted his lungs.

Their breathing was equally as jagged, though unlike Bertholdt, Armin wasn't holding back his tears, letting them stream as he stood looking into Bertholdt's bewildered eyes. Bertholdt's guilt-ridden eyes. Pained eyes that said that he'd gotten more than he bargained for, that he wanted to go back to the time before his only positive connection down in his final resting place had been soured by the knowledge that hatred was such a mixed issue.

And immediately, Armin regretted speaking from the heart and saying things that surprised even himself because of how shockingly honest they were. Things he'd only admit to himself late at night when his headaches were keeping him up.

Why did he feel the same emotions as he did that day upon Wall Rose, as he did up on that church roof begging to be heard?

He limped back towards his crate but stopped halfway, deciding he did not want to retreat on this note. As subtle as he could, he carried out a few breathing exercises to banish that waning anger that had just helped him throw out one hell of an accusation.

"I'm sorry," he said over his shoulder.

Bertholdt's face twisted at the unexpected compassion. His eye contact was delayed and Armin turned his way again.

"I'm sorry for the things we have put you through. For the things I have done to you. I'm sorry that I have caused you so much hurt and that I didn't see it for so long. So much pain could have been prevented if I had. But you did deserve better than that. Better than… than me."

Staring up, Bertholdt's expression was hard to read. His bottom lip stood tense but it was neither in anger nor sorrow. The wet layer over his eyes was a remnant from before and the upward quirk of his eyebrows could mean anything.

"You finally are honest to me only to turn around and apologise…?"

What was so wrong with that?

"Yes," Armin replied with certainty. "I meant everything I said about the hatred. But I also meant it when I apologised. I want to be your friend, blank slate or not, whatever makes things easier for you. Enough people are concerned with your past. Let me be here in your present."

Bertholdt's unreadable expression decayed into something uneasy. Armin's words had affected him.

Perhaps Armin had just destroyed everything he'd worked on. There would be no instant results; he'd need the time to see how Bertholdt processed this information. Time Armin had but that was starting to look dreadful.

Bertholdt glanced over at the cell gate, letting silence fall between them. So unusual, after the many months of progress, to be locked in an uncomfortable lack of exchange. Like it was in the beginning. Like nothing was established, like Armin was an imposing intruder upon the one place where Bertholdt could rest.

It was the fact that he had nothing to say but call Armin out for apologising that had Armin worried.

Armin's leg was getting tired, so he made one final limp to his crate, where it felt like he'd been standing for years when he finally collapsed on top and sat again.

Silence reigned between them where neither looked at one another, neither really knew how to go on after this. Did Bertholdt still want Armin to stop visiting, or was it something else he desired of him?

No, everything he'd said prior was voided. Armin had just changed the status quo, everything about the relationship they shared, by being so brutally honest that he may have just lost Bertholdt's trust altogether.

But who cared about trust. He'd made clear that he'd keep visiting even if Bertholdt were to attack him every single time. He'd decided that nothing he felt mattered when he'd left Ehrmich's library towers through the stairwell and not over its ledge. His feelings were already sorted out long ago. As much as this may change things for Bertholdt, for Armin, it would always stay the same: take care of Bertholdt, and then, maybe, if he found his lust for life again, choose to keep going.

The conversation buzzed in his mind, taking all sorts of dark and hopeful avenues. Staying silent wasn't going to help either of them keep going. Armin didn't have to wait; maybe he could start at the ground level and build up from there.

"Hey, Bertholdt?" he said.

Bertholdt opened his eyes, looking up at Armin with weary attention.

"Do you really want me to stop visiting?"

Bertholdt shook his head. "You won't."

"But do you want me to?"

"… No. I don't want that," Bertholdt admitted. He buried his mouth behind his blanket in retreat. "I'm just so tired, Armin."

Tiredness that spoke of so much more than he'd resolved. Armin had fought for his right to stay and won this battle, but nothing Bertholdt had argued was any less true just because Armin could stay.

"I know," Armin replied. Compassionately, he hoped, but none of his words would help Bertholdt right now.

He was still doomed to wait out a gruelling few years until he'd be fed to a pure titan or succumb to his curse, likely while under sharp scrutiny from Hange for the pursuit of scientific knowledge. When the day was over, Armin would go back to the surface and live his life and Bertholdt would still be rotting beneath the earth because the Survey Corps could not tread in Erwin's footsteps and take a chance on him.

Because they didn't want to hear that Bertholdt's head had been shattered literally, not just metaphorically. Because they didn't understand that a sound body would produce a sound mind. Even if he wouldn't cooperate, at least they could greatly reduce the cost of detainment. The Survey Corps was popular now, but it may not always remain that way. Funds may not always be so widely available.

But none of that hoping and thinking ever solved the biggest issue at hand.

Bertholdt yearned to die.

He'd yell at Armin and beg him to do it to show he was a real friend. It shouldn't have shaken Armin as much as it did; they were similar on many fronts, and this was another one of them. One didn't have to know him or see him to understand that these were the types of conditions that were worse than death. If Bertholdt got to die, then so did his secrets and his suffering.

And yet, it had come across as a shock to Armin to hear him say it so openly, so desperately. He'd known, but it would've been easier if it hadn't been that way. Seeing Bertholdt meant seeing all of him; even the part that rejected Armin.

But he was right. Armin's chest tightened. He was right. Things weren't improving just because Armin was bringing company and books with him.

What could Armin do? He was just as powerless as Bertholdt was for as long as the military didn't cooperate, didn't understand that maybe, getting on the good side of the boy who housed a weapon inside his body was better than giving him every reason to hate the island. Of course they wouldn't achieve anything when both parties were so stubborn, but Paradis certainly did not try to nurture an environment in which Bertholdt could safely surrender.

Bertholdt was operating on self-preservation, not hatred. There was a good reason he didn't beg Armin to set him free and instead pleaded that he'd put an end to the nightmare. If only government officials would see that. If only they would believe Armin.

No. Armin couldn't accept that. He refused to let it be like that.

"What if I…" Armin started but didn't finish.

Bertholdt weakly tilted his head to look at Armin, expecting a continuation

Armin swallowed. This was rash, beyond rash. He hadn't given it the hours, days of thought that it needed, but there had to be something he could do, something that would show Bertholdt that he'd meant every word he had said.

"What if there were a way to get you to the surface?"

"How?"

"We have never tried just taking you there. You still have my wheelchair, I can roll you out."

Bertholdt's expression didn't change. He slumped back slightly against his wall, breathing out a laugh the way he would at Armin's lame jokes.

"We'll both be dead before we've reached the first turn. Even if we got out, there would be nowhere to run. Not with your… Your leg."

"That is why I do not intend to break you out of here," Armin clarified. "Out of everything you told me I am, I must admit that I am a good speaker. I have lied a lot for you, even about things I have never told you about. I can find a way to do this without any bloodshed. We can do this, because you're right—you can't just stay here and rot."

He knew Hange's schedule. He knew how they wrote permissions and he knew how to talk his way into making it seem like they had approved this. He had been in their office enough to find what he needed, and despite his chicken scratch handwriting, he trusted that he could forge Hange's and 'borrow' the Survey Corps' wax seal. And once he was out, they might just commit.

He could do this. No one else was as fit for this task as Armin was, and the sheer excitement that he finally decided that he would go to these extremes to help Bertholdt made Armin's heart glow and his legs–

"No."

"… No?" Armin almost swallowed the word.

Bertholdt sighed uneasily. "If you do that, you will meet the hangman's noose. You shouldn't risk your life for me. If they don't kill me, they will do things far worse than they have done here."

"We don't know that," Armin defended. "Hange wouldn't act so rashly. They would blame me, not you. Anywhere is better than here."

"What would happen up there, then?" Bertholdt asked. "Say they don't kill us. What about me? If I don't inform you, then it will be just the same. This cavern is the safest place I can be in, Armin, don't force me to leave…"

Bertholdt's statement left Armin staring at him.

The mine was where he felt safe. He didn't want to go to the surface.

"Do you think that you will have to fight again once you're up there?"

"What makes you think I haven't been fighting all this time I've been here?"

Armin blinked a few times, unable to answer.

"You… You do know that this is my way of continuing to fight, right?" Bertholdt asked, head tilted. "That I am keeping Marley's secrets even if they starve me? That by agreeing to your plan, I would give up and retreat after everything I've endured? You do understand that, right, Armin…?"

Nodding weakly, Armin knew that Bertholdt could see straight through him. He laid himself against the wall again, hooded eyes aimed at the darkness that lay between the gate's wooden planks.

If he only stayed in the mine because his head had been split open, then was it true that he was still fighting?

No, that was the wrong line of thought. He did it because his pain had to mean something.

There was a lot that Armin didn't know about Bertholdt. He craved to understand him, to look inside his brain and dissect every thought, every idea, everything that made him the Bertholdt who preferred to stay inside this mine—but Bertholdt would never open up to him. They would never be so close for Armin to listen to his unfiltered thoughts and feelings. The few people who would were so far away from there. Armin was practically useless to him; no wonder Bertholdt would see him as so disposable.

Armin didn't need Bertholdt to tell him everything to understand one thing: he would rather stay in this mine and slowly wither away than to ever set foot on the surface again.

"So just let me stay here," Bertholdt powerlessly pleaded. "I… I do like it when you come here. It takes the edge off, and it's the only time I'm not considering all the ways in which…"

He didn't finish that thought. Armin didn't need him to.

And he couldn't help but to, bitterly, think back on how he'd wanted to approach things. Two strategies. Get Bertholdt attached to him so that he may cave out of friendship. If that didn't work, make it so that when the time came for Armin to give him an ultimatum, Bertholdt would be unable to continue living without the support Armin had made him dependent on.

But if neither worked, then it would be fair to conclude that Bertholdt had outlived his usefulness as a source of information and Armin indeed was better off spending his time elsewhere.

He had to clamp his fingers over his mouth not to retch over having once from the bottom of his heart believed that this was a proper way to deal with his enemies. Like all Bertholdt was, was the information he had to offer. Like Armin was better than Hange, not the same.

Armin had been successful: Bertholdt now indeed was dependent on him. And that meant that every day Armin didn't spend with him was hellish.

His plan had worked. Gods, had it worked.

Was that the humanity Armin had been prepared to sacrifice? The decency in his dealings with others? To see them as tools, not people? Was that the person Armin would have become had Bertholdt chosen to help him?

As if there weren't enough reasons to hate himself.

As the one who had gotten Bertholdt hooked on this dependency, Armin had a debt that he could not sufficiently repay. Not if the Survey Corps' activity increased over the next few years and Armin's visits would grow sparser.

Looking at things from a purely logical viewpoint, Bertholdt probably was better off dead.

Armin's rationale rejected the realisation as nonsensical, burning through his insides like bitter bile.

He'd dealt with death before. Heaps upon heaps of corpses, of people closer and more distant to him, even his own—and all of those had been killed by the person he now couldn't even imagine dying, not even to end his suffering.

What would they think if they knew that he was considering how he could offer a way out, giving Bertholdt the means to avoid living out the rest of his sentence? What did it say about Armin that he made the choice to let a mass murderer get away with it? To lighten his pain and protect him from abuse was one thing, but to give him a way out—what did it mean for the legacy of those who were owed justice?

He eyed that monster begotten horror. Beneath all the grime that matted his hair he'd long given up on brushing, greased his skin from months of minimal hygiene, and speckled his face in dirt despite Armin's best efforts to bring him clean towels; behind those dark, vacant eyes that had been staring down the same bleak scenery for a year—what was left of the boy he'd gotten to know over the years?

Reality sat in front of him. That boy was dead and Paradis had killed him. Whatever was left of him, Armin was dragging behind.

Armin was a murderer too, and yet he'd been given mercy and freedom. What did it say about his own victims that he walked free? Was it an affront to them that he was given absolution for taking so many lives?

No matter what the answer, they deserved equity. To treat them so differently despite being so similar felt wrong. They were murderers, but they were still human.

But a murderer wasn't all he was. On the other side, Bertholdt represented hope. Hope to mend their political relations with Marley and the other warriors, hope to safeguard their island, hope to crawl out of this dark pit he found himself in, hope that Armin might find a reason to live. Hope that not all was lost, and that maybe, if they all were a little kinder to each other, they could extinguish the hatred that had marred the world for two thousand years.

Hope that had been maimed and trashed, now left begging to be killed just so that the nightmare would end.

And Armin realised that he did not want Bertholdt to die.

He'd on multiple occasions considered it to be merciful. Jean would say they were even now: Bertholdt had breached Wall Rose, and it had led Armin to seek to plunge a blade into his neck to escape being eaten. Now, Armin had been part of the group that captured and shattered Bertholdt, and he yearned to die before they could feed him to someone else.

Had Mikasa not refused to leave him behind, then Armin would have died that day in Trost. Bertholdt shouldn't have to lay in wait hoping to end it with no one to save him.

But how could Armin possibly save him?

He was indeed just a pig in a pen to Paradis waiting to be slaughtered or to expire, even if Armin wanted things to be different for him. So long as he couldn't be given a dignified treatment, Armin was only prolonging his suffering for his own benefit.

He swallowed hard. Maybe, no matter how much his gut told him otherwise, it was time to finally be the friend Bertholdt needed.

Armin grabbed his bag, then opened it to take out the bundle he'd been taking along with him in a hidden section of his backpack awaiting the day Bertholdt would allow him near enough to use it. Unwrapping it from the cloth he kept it in, he looked down upon the piece: two parts, one a sharp blade that could cut through any organic matter at the slightest slip of hand, the other a wooden guard the blade rested in. Meant for thick stubble and matted hair.

Folding it open with a click caught Bertholdt's attention. Armin looked deep into the blade, almost recognising his blue-lit reflection in the metal. He ran his finger over the tip. Sharp, even at its rounded corner.

"Do you know what I am holding?" He looked up under his question, closing the device again.

Bertholdt nodded, eyes wide and the colour drained from his face.

Armin locked eyes with his phantom again. With his thumb and forefinger over the blade, he opened and closed the tool repeatedly, not sure how to continue. He wanted to be less direct, more subtle, leave it to Bertholdt to decipher what he was saying and make the choice. But he couldn't do that. He needed to be explicit. He needed to be there as a friend, not as a generic ally who may or may not have his best interest in mind when it came to difficult choices like this.

"Would you trust me if I approached you with it?"

Bertholdt shook his head.

"Because you still think I'd use it to hurt you instead of taking your hurt away?"

Bertholdt's eyes flicked from side to side a few times, subtly so, as he reasoned.

"I can't know how I'll react." His anxiety was audible.

"It's not a good idea either way. If they found out…"

The way Bertholdt looked at him, there were things on his mind he didn't want to express. Not after what had just gone down, not now that he felt so bad about the way he'd spoken about Armin's constructive gestures. But it was there.

If they find out, you're fucked, and you'd never go that far for me.

Armin breathed in slowly, fully, until his lungs could burst and he had to breathe out again.

It was true. He wouldn't. He couldn't, for reasons that were far bigger than himself, but also, if he were honest with himself, for reasons he couldn't hide behind. Self-preservation. Failure. Fear of consequences. Attachment. Guilt.

Gambits like these were reserved for humanity.

Bertholdt's humanity, as Armin's argument had won him the day once, and he knew then where the path ahead of him led. Now shouldn't be any different.

Eyes pinned on the razor, he opened and closed it again and again as he sought the courage to find his next words. That fatigue that had been a constant since his first visit, that desperation for a way out, the offence that Armin couldn't kill him—they all made Armin consider if there was something, anything at all he could do.

And there was.

One tiny option that would change everything.

"… What if I left it behind?"

He spoke those words so small, so noncommittally that Bertholdt might just believe that it was the earth that had so hypothetically whispered such kindness to him. Maybe that's what Armin wanted: to gauge Bertholdt's reaction before he made any concrete plans so that he could still back out and pretend to be a friend even when he was being lousy at it.

Bertholdt's eyes lingered on some vague point on the ground before they looked up at Armin again, confusion legible on his features. Then, as it dawned on him what Armin meant, his eyes widened slightly, like a beautiful but ultimately unattainable scene played out in front of him, and it was the first time Armin had seen his flecked eyes sparkle in a long time. It broke Armin out in cold sweat.

"You can't do that," Bertholdt righteously pointed out after a long silence, eyelids narrowed down to their usual tired squint again, the dream bygone.

"I can't leave behind a razor, but I can kill you with it?"

Bertholdt didn't respond for what seemed like an eternity, eventually closing his eyes. Armin observed him closely, noting how his breathing quickened and how he inhaled sharply to speak several times, then chose silence at the last second.

Armin was imposing a cruel choice upon him. But maybe, that was exactly what its draw was. Hadn't Armin been in a similar position twice now? He very much understood what it felt like. Anything better than being left behind. Not like this, not without having any say in how it would go. It was better to get to choose than to let a coin toss decide.

"It's funny," Bertholdt rasped humourlessly. "You won't kill me, but you'll give me what I need to do it myself. Like you're less culpable if it's not you who wields the blade."

So he did express it, after all.

Bertholdt was actually smiling. A weary smile that told Armin, with heavy heart, that he was not only considering the offer, he was enjoying the thought as a far-away fantasy, a goal that just wasn't realistic, with the same deluded joy as how a child would think about stumbling across a fortune and becoming rich, how trainees would dream of making it into the Military Police, how Armin once believed a world lay out there that would fulfil him.

Armin's heart froze in his chest, pumping ice through his veins as it dawned on him.

What if today was the last time they ever saw each other?

Why did the thought make Armin nauseous? At the end of the day, he would indeed practically murder Bertholdt himself if he gave him the means. Mercy kill or not, he'd carry the knowledge that he did this to his grave as a dirty secret he would never have the guts nor the luxury to tell anyone about. There was no way to spin this as anything other than him misusing Bertholdt's trust to coerce him into committing suicide to enact revenge. Bertholdt wouldn't be there to tell anyone it was his wish, his idea, and with his consent. If not that, he was letting his personal feelings get in the way of Paradis' wellbeing. He was committing treason, robbing the island of one of its only future weapons.

"And what sanctions do I face when I walk into your trap and say yes?"

Armin breathed in deep, straightening his back and resting the razor on his leg.

"You asked me once if I would accept my punishment if it were decided that the murders I have committed were to be prosecuted."

"You didn't answer," Bertholdt flatly mumbled.

"No, I didn't. But I've decided that I wouldn't," Armin admitted. "Not because I don't deserve it, but because I find it pointless to confine a human being to a prison cell for the rest of their life or cut it short. It's cruel. We were made to see the world, not to be deprived of it. How could anyone decide to take away that freedom?"

"But… those who died. We took that freedom away from them and robbed their loved ones. We can't be treated like people anymore because our actions are so different from those who haven't murdered anyone. That doesn't feel very just, that feels like we're looking out only for our own good."

"I know. There are things we can never take back and that have fundamentally changed who we are, I agree with you on that matter. There are better ways for someone to serve justice. By giving back to the world. By making it so that despite all their actions, they can still leave it behind a better place than they have found it. By letting them make amends. Who benefits from locking them up?"

Ever since Armin's outburst, Bertholdt's responses had been far milder, if he had them at all. But at that, he could only look at the floor with worn disgust, deep thought behind his eyes.

"Then–"

"Then why are you here?"

Bertholdt's eyes widened at the interruption, now more caught off guard than annoyed. He nodded.

Armin sighed, closing his eyes for a moment before regaining contact.

"Because the world is cruel and unfair, led by people who are driven by the desire for revenge and equality without equity. You shouldn't be here. I don't want you to be here. Even if you're not there to talk to us, taking you to the surface is still infinitely better than this. Locking you up until you die is pointless. Weren't you also made to see the world? Aren't you just as human as everybody else is?"

Bertholdt's eyebrows quirked up and his eyes narrowed. Through his parted lips, he gritted his teeth, looking down at Armin's boots with a raspy exhale.

"It's been so long since I've felt that way," he whispered.

"I know," Armin said, his response beyond inadequate. "And it's such a horrific thing, to see you robbed of something so pivotal to life that you don't even feel like you deserve it anymore. But regardless of what you've done, that's what you are. Human."

No response came. Bertholdt looked on with a forlorn look on his face, eyes once again glassy as he sank back against his wall as far as he could.

How long had it been since anyone had even allowed him to feel human in such an explicit way? On Paradis, it would've been impossible after what he'd done. Back home, he'd been told his kind was something lesser long before he was made into a monster.

Had he ever even believed himself human?

"What are you getting at?"

Swallowing hard, Armin clicked the blade closed again.

"What I'm trying to say is that I don't want you to be imprisoned, but the world has made it impossible for me to get you out. Not… Not alive. Not unless you do something that I cannot ask you to do."

He tightened his fists over the razor.

"But if I do give you a way to die and they find out, then I will lose my freedom. Probably for the rest of my life. I don't want to live for fifty years in a prison cell knowing I have betrayed my friends and my nation's trust, if I am not executed for my crimes. That is why I cannot wield the blade myself."

Armin looked up at Bertholdt, who had his eyes locked on his intensely, an almost childlike vulnerability contorting his face.

"However, if you do end up doing it yourself," he had to swallow down a knot in his throat, "then I can't escape the fact that you died because I gave you the opportunity. I'll never wash my hands of your blood. I'll never be absolved from the fact that I let the Colossal Titan go, even less that I let Bertholdt Hoover go. I will carry it to my grave."

He felt slimy for making this whole speech about why he shouldn't face more than the emotional consequences after Bertholdt already had, but he wasn't lying. He couldn't lie about this. Not now.

"I know it's pathetic and cowardly, but this is the only freedom I can give you. The freedom to choose to die on your own terms."

Bertholdt blinked quickly a few times, and finally, a singular tear he failed to suppress rolled over his left cheek. Armin didn't know where he found the strength within himself to stay strong this time around.

"So I'm begging you," he continued, voice shaky, "if I leave this only piece of freedom I can offer you behind, let me keep mine intact as well, knowing that I will feel guilt over it until my last breath. I don't want anything else. I don't need you to be grateful for doing the bare minimum of visiting you, I don't even need you to hold me in high regard for giving you the blade. I ask for nothing in return except one thing, and that is that when you use this razor to achieve your freedom, you do it in a way in which I can keep mine."

It felt too surreal, the way Bertholdt nodded at him so shakily, barely able to keep himself still anymore. It no longer was a hypothetical; these were the final hours he'd spend with Bertholdt before he'd leave him all alone in this dark hellhole to kill himself when no one could feasibly suspect Armin.

What a rotten, disgusting world they'd been cast into.

"Why are you doing this?" Bertholdt whispered through the silent tears that rolled over his cheeks, failing to make eye contact. Armin's fingers clung deep into the textile of his pants.

"Because you deserve mercy once in your lifetime. No one else will give it to you. Why can't I?"

"But…" Bertholdt mumbled. He hid his face inside the opening of his blanket, stuffing away his tiny voice. "But I've hurt you so much."

"You have. And it doesn't matter. Not anymore."

The way Bertholdt breathed in was shaky, as deep as he could with that harness strapped around his chest.

Where would his body end up?

No. Armin pressed his arms against his torso, now cold. He wasn't remotely ready to think about that.

Bertholdt looked up at him with vulnerable eyes, like he was awaiting a verdict. Armin was dragging this moment out. He took the blade in hand and stood. Under close scrutiny and one shuffle at a time, he limped closer and closer, until he reached the centre of the mineshaft and Bertholdt sat pinned against his wall when it looked like Armin might cross from his world into Bertholdt's.

Armin stopped. He'd been to the other side before, but never this naked. Never this calmly. Never with intentions so selfless, so murderous.

Carefully, he stuck out his right leg behind him, then bent through his left until his hands could reach the floor and he comfortably got to his knees. Shuffle by shuffle, he crawled closer, until his knees almost touched Bertholdt's sleeping bag and he decided that was as far as he could get, sitting back on one calf as the other lay behind.

Stiffened and tall, Bertholdt had pressed himself against the wall behind him and was getting by with short costal breaths. Like Armin might slash him with that closed blade any time.

So Armin sat back and let him acclimatise.

This close and cast in the bright blue light of the lantern behind him, Bertholdt's features were clearer than ever. His eyes sat embedded deep within his skull, dry and red-veined and afraid, with those pale specks over his grey-green irises and his dilated pupils illuminated in the light. Where his tears had rolled down, they'd smudged a way into the soil that thinly covered his face but made every pore stand out as a black dot. His facial hair was lengthening, unkempt and left to grow as it pleased into what started to resemble a full beard. From so close, Armin could perfectly see just how taut Bertholdt's skin hung around his skull, his cheekbones and even the position of his jaw sharply outlined in black and blue. His hair had grown past his neck, one thick mat.

From this close, he smelled of death. If one found him, they'd assume he hadn't been taken care of once during his stay.

Now more than ever, Armin craved contact. To lay his hand on Bertholdt's shoulder, to brush aside his hair and let him know it would all be fine. He would never get it, not with Bertholdt's history—but he direly craved to feel again the person he hadn't felt in over a year when he deserved the loving touch of someone who cared about him one last time.

But it wasn't going to happen. Bertholdt had become too afraid, too cautious to let another person in again. So Armin waited. And when Bertholdt's shoulders finally lowered and his breathing slowed down, he lifted that razor out of his lap and extended it Bertholdt's way.

A peace offering.

Those darkened eyes peered into the metal as sweat beaded on his greasy skin, but he did not move. His lips parted to speak before they closed again, a shiver keeping his head from staying still.

"How am I supposed to choose?" he weakly asked.

Armin had no idea how to answer that question, so he didn't. Bertholdt's wide eyes stared at the blade, apprehensive to act.

Like that, he sat there for minutes, maybe hours, until his leg throbbed and his arm ached from holding it up into the air for so long, but he refused to waver over a muscle cramp. Armin would keep it up for as long as he needed.

Licking his lips, Bertholdt averted his eyes. His voice was shaky, but he finally spoke again, eyes narrowed as he couldn't face this head-on.

"I don't… want…"

Armin needed a moment to process what he meant.

Very few people did. Not the beggar who had to steal to get by, not the soldier who had to fight for his people, not the king who had lived a rich life. A lesser man would have told him that neither did the people of Shiganshina and Trost, but Armin refused. Nothing he did could make this decision any lighter.

"I know," he offered. "I know, and that's fine."

Bertholdt pressed his lips together hard, clearing his throat in a futile effort to draw out the slime that coated his trachea.

"What would you do?"

"I would take it," Armin admitted. "If this were the bleak situation I was trapped in, I would take it."

There was a vague hint of tension in Bertholdt's face that suggested he didn't believe him, but it just as soon smoothed out again, too tired to keep up.

"What will happen to me after… afterwards?"

Armin had to swallow gravel. He didn't want to think about it, but he'd have to steel himself soon if he wanted to offer Bertholdt a dignified way out.

"If you do it between Saturday and Sunday, I will be in time to come here and move you before anyone else can. I refuse to let you stay down here forever. No one will suspect I came here to retrieve you. I won't let anyone lay a finger on you, so you don't have to worry about ending up in Hange's possession. And after that…"

He swallowed again, wringing his free hand over his lap.

"I will unlock your harness and rinse the dirt off you. I will brush and trim your hair and shave your beard. I will dress you in the finest clothes you have—maybe that sweater that you got for your birthday, the grey one with the white buttons, and those black pants—and I will bury you somewhere no one who has no business with you will stumble upon. Maybe somewhere by the ocean, or in a forest, or…"

He had to clear his throat and breathe in deep to put enough pressure on his chest to keep it together.

"What I'm saying is… No one will harm you again. No one will know where you are buried and come disturb you. No one but those of us who visit you with respect in our hearts. And if I ever meet the people who love you again, then I will guide them there. They will find you, I promise that."

That sounded nice. Dignified. Like Armin had been successful at his task. Like he could give Bertholdt the kindness he deserved.

Bertholdt nodded, eyes uncertainly pinned somewhere behind Armin despite yearning for contact now more than ever. He bit the inside of his lower lip, rubbing his hand over his deltoid.

"I meant… What will happen to me?"

To him?

Armin paled. The hand holding up the razor lowered slightly. This wasn't his domain at all. He had theoretical knowledge, but nothing beyond that, and he needed a moment of sheepish staring during which Bertholdt certainly figured out that he was going to bluff to find his words.

"Are you spiritual?"

Bertholdt softly shook his head, yet followed up with, "I don't know."

"Would you prefer last rites? Because… Well, I am not," Armin said, "but I have basic knowledge of how they are performed in some religions. If it puts you at ease?"

Feebly, Bertholdt exhaled through his nose, like it was some crude jab.

"What god would have me?"

Defeated resignation. Armin's mind went back to an old nearby saying.

God won't find us down here.

If such a thing were to exist, would Bertholdt's soul be trapped in these mines, where nothing could recover it? Was he afraid of that?

Armin did not want Bertholdt's final moments of humane contact to be dominated by such grim questions, so he didn't ask. He might be right; with his kill count, no god might be reasonable enough to understand his circumstances and offer him respite.

It would be better if there were no God. Armin hoped there wasn't.

"I don't think there is a God, if I am honest," Armin admitted. "He'd have raised a hand by now, don't you think? But if a simple mortal like me can see your circumstances, why wouldn't he?"

Bertholdt looked up with weary eyes. Then, a sad smile tugged at his lips, surprising Armin.

"They used to call me a god," Bertholdt monotonously reminisced, breathing out a soft laugh. "I don't know why it matters. It doesn't. But I can't stop thinking about it. Maybe if I hadn't been…"

In a few shivering exhales, his laugh turned into a grimace and he sat back against the wall, sliding his hand over his face as he closed his eyes.

"They were afraid of what I could do. I never liked what it meant to be a god if that was what they thought of me. But the day we ran, Ymir… She told me something that I thought about for months, even as I sat here waiting until…"

Bertholdt was speaking lightly, his head far away from then and there. Armin had never dared ask about what happened between their flight and their next encounter. Yet another story never told. And when Bertholdt didn't complete his account, it would stay that way.

He sat there for a long time, extending his shallow breaths as far as he could, before he opened one eye again and looked down upon Armin. Upon the blade.

And for both of them, in that moment, it clicked.

Like he would be harmed for failing being tested, Bertholdt's hand gingerly lifted off his face, then travelled through the dead void until it hovered by the blade in Armin's hand, long digits twitching and unsteady. Four fingers approached, flaky and gnarly, split nails gnawed to the blackened skin that remained covered in old wounds, and never before had Armin seen the crudely-healed veiny skin that had grown over that missing index finger so clearly.

One fingertip tentatively made contact with the blade. A second followed, and a third, and finally a fourth—and with each digit that slid around the mechanism, the weight of Bertholdt's shaky arm pulled more on the metal, like they were connected as one, one mere jolt removed from one another as he sensed his body heat radiate off his skin. And Armin so badly wanted to slide his finger up, to make his fingertip brush against Bertholdt's, but he sat there just as frozen as Bertholdt.

Speckled grey-green eyes darted upwards, beckoning for permission. Fingers underneath and thumb on top, Armin loosened his grip and tested the weight.

It wasn't his decision. He didn't let go, not until Bertholdt was ready. And when he was, when the warmed wooden casing lifted off Armin's skin and it left his fingers woefully cold as Bertholdt retracted his hand and took the blade back to his side, staring at it like he didn't understand what he was holding—Armin knew he was looking at a dead man.

Bertholdt clicked it open, fingers too weak to do it in one swift motion, and blankly watched his own reflection, scowling. Armin did not move back. If Bertholdt chose to kill him, then so be it. There was nothing left for him after he left these mines.

A deep inhale and a sigh. Bertholdt closed the blade again, eyes on the dirt beside Armin.

Armin hooked his nails into the back of his hand as it lay over his lap, inviting Bertholdt to look back up, but he didn't.

"Have you decided?"

A weak nod, a gesture which Armin returned.

"Saturday night?"

"Saturday night, yeah…"

Once again, Armin nodded.

"Then I…"

He cleared his throat.

"Seeing as this is the last time I'm here… If there is anything you want to do, then tell me. I don't care what it is, anything. Play games, read a book, talk about whatever you want off your chest before you go; anything you want, and I will do it."

Shaking his head, Bertholdt lay the blade down on his sleeping mat, trapped underneath his fingers.

"I just want you to stay."

The sentiment was bitter bile in Armin's gullet. A statement he'd so yearned to hear, yet it was futile. He meant something to Bertholdt; he brought him comfort and he was desired—yet it would never be enough to save him.

What happened after was for when he was out of the mines. All that mattered anymore was that they sat there, quietly, so close to one another that they could feel each other breathe, in a silence as tense as it was comfortable.

He wished that he had Tale of Dawn with him. That they could connect for one final moment through a story that had always brought Bertholdt joy before they parted for good. That Armin wouldn't have to take its ending to his grave alone. That he would know.

Could he travel back home and return with the book?

Would Bertholdt allow him to read it to him?

Armin didn't have it in him to ask.

So they sat in silence with sunken hearts and sullen resolve for what was to come. For so long that when the day extended past noon, Armin was unsure what to do. He'd rarely visit this long. If this were the outcome of a long pattern, perhaps he could make a case, but he had to look out for himself.

He'd need to abandon Bertholdt to spare himself.

The indignation wriggled in his gut like maggots. Yet when he straightened his spine, his next words came surprisingly easily.

"I think it's time," Armin quietly spoke.

Bertholdt looked up at him, a tinge of panic in his flecked eyes begging for Armin to change his mind.

"If I stay much longer, they may notice when they connect the dots next week… I don't want to go, but I have no choice," Armin further placated despite being met with no resistance.

Bertholdt sighed through his nose, nodding.

Permission.

Armin didn't feel right about standing just yet. He placed a hand on his neck.

"You still have the melactin. Maybe… Maybe if you fill up the entire barrel and inject yourself… and you then discard all evidence in the hole they dug in the back… Well, you won't feel it as much when you do it. Just slice deep enough. Start…"

Armin's fingers slid from his neck over his sternocleidomastoid, beyond his carotid artery, and he turned his head to show off the action.

"Start here. Feel for your pulse and then go slightly beyond, at about this height."

He tapped his finger on his neck.

"Push the blade in slightly, and once you break skin, just… go fast. One swift cut across the trachea and both arteries. That way, it will be over fast, and you will be so numbed you might not even feel it or realise what is happening anymore. I don't believe there will be pain."

"You can't be going already."

The first thing Bertholdt had said in hours.

And gods, did Armin want to. But he understood that the more he held on, the harder it would be to let go. He shook his head.

"I can't stay forever."

"Just a little longer, then…" Bertholdt protested.

"There will always be just a little longer. We have to let go at some point."

Bertholdt's acceptance was empty, Armin was unsure if that was because he was fine with this fate, or because he had learned that resistance was futile.

It didn't matter. There was an opening for Armin to flee like the coward he was. So he stood with little reaction from Bertholdt and limped back to his side, clammy hands landing on his backpack, if only for the texture to keep his mind engaged with where he was and not where he didn't want to be.

Where he was, was a tomb. He would pack his things and leave behind a god to die within, and then, for him, life would go on and he would eventually be forced to eat and drink again and be pulled along instead of being allowed to process what had happened, the way it had been his whole life and the way it would be for the rest of his life.

He was stalling in another world.

It was time to go.

He bent down to take his crutches from the floor and find his stability on his weary leg. When he turned, he found Bertholdt staring deep into the metal of the blade.

And he wanted to apologise, but there was no point to it. So instead, he made his way towards that shoddy wooden gate they hadn't locked for months and halted by the threshold, using it as his support.

"For what it's worth, Bertholdt…" he said, turning Bertholdt's way again and pulling on the shaky corners of his lips to smile. "I liked being your friend. Maybe, if there is more to life than just this one, we will get the chance to read together in a world that is less cruel."

His fingers lightly tapped the gate's support beam.

"I… I like to think that we will meet again."

"Maybe," Bertholdt replied.

"So… See you on the other side?"

Bertholdt's eyes made contact with Armin's one final time, taking in as much of his friend as the galaxies between them allowed.

"See you there."

Armin nodded. From the wooden gate's beam, his hand migrated down to grab his mobility aid. His fingers were whitened numb against the wood of his crutches as he crossed that familiar threshold and didn't pull the gate closed behind him.