Between dawn and the storm that prowled on the horizon, it was so terribly cold and dark outside.

As Armin pressed past the crowd of journalists and curious onlookers that had gathered around the Survey Corps headquarters, he crutched at a tempo that could only be called running. Before he'd made it to the stables, he'd already shaken off any inquisitive party that may try to shake him down for dirt. He was out of Trost before Jean could have possibly caught wind of Armin's escape.

Bitter winds whipped up his hair and dried his tears, leaving in their wake a frigid layer he hadn't felt in months. Much like the pitch-black clouds above, treading fresh air after simmering in the oppressive heat for so long made him spill.

What lay out there, in those fields where an old dried-up mine had been repurposed to house one of the Survey Corps' deepest secrets? What would he unearth after nearly a year of slumbering beneath the earth? What else would he have to bear?

A thundercrack above his head made him speed up his horse as his chest squeezed over his heart.

None of it made sense and there would be no answers until he got there, and that was perhaps the cruellest part.

Grabbing the newspaper he'd pinned under his seat, through the unrelenting gusts that crinkled and ripped paper and the thick prickling layer on his eyes, he read the article, and again, and again, seeking for anything to anchor himself to—but the public knew nothing. All rumours blown out of proportion based on word of mouth that had obviously been diluted between the leaker and the article. But as he read–

…Bertholdt Hoover, the Colossal Titan…

…one of four intelligent titans that Marley sent to exterminate all life within the Walls…

…reportedly killed in combat by the Survey Corps in Shiganshina…

…conclusive confirmation that he is indeed alive…

…current location is thus far unknown, but…

…that we demand answers at once…

…who is to blame?

–the dread in his gut boiled hotter with each rock of the cart and he felt as trapped out in the thundering open country of Wall Rose as he did smothered in bed staring at the ceiling. Nothing he did, nothing he thought of, would make the oncoming hour of travel pass any quicker.

The clouds stalked him.

The sun must have climbed to the horizon behind that dark shroud by now, yet the sky did not turn any brighter. But as he made his way across those endless plains and came upon a hill, no shadows could make him mistake it. Once across, he'd get a view of Tourze, and as his eyes searched the sky for any signs of smoke amid the clouds, his oesophagus instinctively narrowed.

One final push to make his horse gallop faster, until he made it up to the top of that hill and he cast his eyes upon the faraway small nine-house town that had become his second home.

Intact.

No flames, no crater, nothing. Just the once-abandoned mine town shrouded in darkness, at first sight as peaceful as it had been on every past visit.

But looks, Armin knew better than anyone, could very well deceive.

As he sped up his cart, he breathed in deep, then deeper, then shallower and shallower until he was galloping down the hill and gasping for air and he had to stop himself. Slow his cart and slow his breathing. If he arrived red in the face with mortal fear in his eyes, any survivor would know their culprit.

Thunder softly rumbled in the distance and he felt a pinprick of cold on his skin, the raindrop barely large enough to be perceived.

He brought his horse to a trot. Closing his eyes and holding his breath, he tightly gripped the reins before he relaxed everything and let go.

He was ready.

Lights burned in and by some of the houses, flickering as he brought his cart closer. The darkness hung over Tourze like smoke, robbing it of its details. Grey-brown walls, thatched roofs, flattened dirt paths, withered bushes, dead trees damaged by the intense sun.

A figure.

Breathe in steadily. Abdominal, not costal.

Eyes pinned on that lonesome figure, he noticed that they had stopped moving once they caught wind of him.

And breathe out again.

He could face this. Whatever would happen, would happen.

His fingers clamped down on his reins so tightly that all blood drained from them. As he rode into the outskirts of Tourze and he squinted, the details didn't turn out the way he expected.

Light hair.

He exhaled hard before putting all focus on fixating his diaphragm. As he approached and got confirmation that this was indeed not what he expected, he halted his down and was approached.

"Well, well, well, Armin. On your own today?"

"In weather like this, I prefer to enjoy the scenery by myself," Armin said, mimicking that slight mockery of a tone.

"Lucky you didn't get thundered down," Karel answered. "The supply team's on hold until that thunderstorm has passed. You should do the same and stay put here. Need me to stable your horse while you're underground?"

"Right… Thanks."

Armin scooted aside and offered his reins to Karel when he climbed into the driver's seat. Within the minute, he stood by that dark hole in the ground that led to a steep drop, intense pressure over his crutches, newspaper pinned between his fingers and the wood—and he wasn't quite sure what had just happened. What had made that interaction so casual.

All the more reason to be cautious.

Breathing in deep through his nose, he smelled the yellowed grass by the mouth of the mines, the impending storm that lay in wait, even the rust from the old structure—but not gunpowder and flesh. Not what he had smelled in Shiganshina.

Gods, it was true, then, wasn't it?

He covered his eyes, then squeezed his fingers until white darted behind his eyelids. At the very least, his release would come soon.

The lift was there for him. He crutched inside and let it carry him deep underneath the earth until the grey dot above was indistinguishable from the black walls. Utter silence reigned between him and Cecilia as she accompanied him into the mines, an echo in each and every step. Once, he'd walked there carrying lanterns for Hange, barely fit enough to make such a long walk on brittle legs and lift his weakened arms for so long. Once, he'd believed there lay hope at the end of that tunnel. Once, he'd chosen to remain blind to the world he should've known was real. Once, he'd thrown out his humanity in these passages and lost all semblance of himself along the way.

Like poison seeping between the cracks, leaking its way into the water supply and dispensing a crawling decay to all who drank from his words.

And now, the final thing he'd find on this path was the truth.

He stood in the police's common room, abandoned by Cecilia as Svea and Travis bored holes into his skull but otherwise remained silent. A test to see what he'd do when he wasn't supposed to know a thing.

He returned the courtesy, raising his eyebrows in feigned surprise as he crutched through and into that final shaft. No lantern. He'd skulked through these narrowing halls often enough to know exactly where to place his foot, where to plant his crutches, where he would find that rise in the mine floor that had thrown him to the ground on two separate occasions, how the shaft snaked and winded around to reach that final dead end. Like the back of his hand.

As he neared that makeshift cell devoid of any light, he sped up. Breathing quickly approaching that of a post-run. Pulse hammering in his ears, his neck, his brain, thundering through this vacant mineshaft. Pace clacking and thudding against the hardened passageways, until his crutch tapped against wood.

Gate.

He smelled, searched for any trace of decay, anything he hadn't smelled in these mines before, but found none.

No argument to stand still.

No argument to leave.

Nothing.

He lifted a shaky hand and ran it along the wood, then curled his fingers around the plank and pulled, opening the gate with a grinding screech until it stood against the wall and all that lay before him was a silent void.

Breathe.

He reached behind. Opened the flap of his backpack. Stuck his hand inside to find metal. Pulled, so that there was light—first on the ceiling, then, as it rose, descending over his being like a halo, until the only thing that obscured the path ahead anymore was his own silhouette.

Breathe.

Raising his lantern and illuminating the mine, his eyes locked with a pile of man wrapped in the textile of a childhood blanket and the leather of a workman's sleeping bag, slouched against a dusty wall, pale and white and colourless—and grey locked back.

For a moment, all he could do was breathe his shivering breaths and not succumb to his choking pulse. Every part of him begged him to run, to just get out of there and preserve himself, to leave this mess behind and breathe in the rain up above and pretend he never saw a thing.

But he was not the type of person to run.

Swallowing hard as his daze dripped down his back and his head spun, he bent forward and placed his lantern on the floor, then got back to his full height and crutched over to his crate. More quietly than he ever had, he sat down on it, leaving his crutches draped over his shins as his weak hands kept their grip on them, and he looked up.

His mouth was dry. Words did not seem to want to form, but he couldn't hold back that burning question at the tip of his tongue.

"… Why are you still alive?"

Small and childish. There was nothing left inside Armin. No more force he could put behind his voice, no more fortitude to his words.

Yet when he asked that, the vacant stare he received turned wide and terrorised.

"Why did you say it like that?" Bertholdt hoarsely asked, somehow even smaller and more childish than Armin.

"Because…" Armin started but didn't finish.

He observed the small spider by the tip of his boot as it dawned on him what the current situation was like. Bertholdt's hand lay on its back by his side, bandaged, and lightly twitched. Stalled out for him, like proof.

Like a trap.

There was nothing Armin could do anymore now that he was close, so he shook his head and let his blurred eyes fall on Bertholdt.

"… Are you going to kill me, Bertholdt?"

They stared each other down in breathless silence.

Nothing, reluctantly holding onto his shock—but then, a weak shake of Bertholdt's head. Not a convincing one, not by a long shot, but it helped Armin give himself a place. Maybe when he did, it would be sudden. Painless.

"Then why…?" Armin reiterated. "I mean, how is it…?"

Bertholdt sighed through his nose, his gaze turning equally aversive as Armin's. His thumb shuffled around inside his bandage.

"There was something I had to know," he said. "I couldn't go before I got my answer."

What, then? Armin was smart enough not to ask. He gave up on holding his crutches halfway into the air and let them clatter to the ground. Neither reacted to the sudden loud noise.

He looked down at that newspaper still trapped in his hand. The headline he'd read over and over. The inadvertent truth printed on its pages and the bad omen that it spelled for their island.

A new feeling impacted his chest, like ashes fluttering out of a bonfire after a battle lost.

"I think I get it," Armin muttered. "But I don't want it to be true, Bertholdt. I don't want what I think to be what you think."

He looked up. Just how much of this was improvisational and how much came from deep within, he didn't know. He was much too tired from staying awake all night, but he had no choice but to push forward.

"You waited to ask me this question. I answer and leave. Go back home, back to being so sick while waiting for the day to come that I can barely function. And then…"

He'd spent so much time with his head between the other options that this one snuck up on him and laid its icy hands around his throat. Just now did the whole journey to and through the mine finally start to sink in, the emotions layered so thick on his heart that they themselves formed an impenetrable shield to what was happening outside of him.

And now that those were finally settling, Armin realised how much this stung. How badly he wanted to go back to bed and just–

Fuck, just wail.

Breathe. He'd stopped, just breathe. Even if it came out as a swallow.

"And then, when I come back, you will once again still be alive. With another question. Maybe a request this time, or a story you need to tell. And I answer again and go home again and worry about you again. And we repeat this, leaving me wondering if the next week is when I find your corpse here, whether you have lied about what you'd use the razor for, and I cannot tell when this will happen. The same thing I did to you."

Bertholdt looked up at Armin with pity in his eyes. Armin bit his lip.

"Like this, you can punish me for abandoning you."

No answer. Bertholdt sat petrified against the wall. Armin moved a languid hand off his lap and lay it on the crate, clamping it over the wood more than he fidgeted with it.

"It is fine, you know," he continued, allowing a small smile to tug at his lips and he breathed out a bittersweet laugh. "After everything that happened, it doesn't compare to how much I've made you suffer. I deserve to get a taste of what you've felt."

He ran a finger up and down the crate. A sharp pain stung him. A splinter. Not the worst thing to have ever happened to him.

"Either that, or you awaited my arrival to kill me now," Armin said with another laugh under his breath.

Nothing funny about it, but for some reason, he felt like laughing. Not those half-hearted breaths he called laughs, but to cackle so hard he screamed, like they had injected him to the brim with melactin.

What a predicament he found himself in. One would laugh for less.

When Bertholdt moved, however, the humour of the situation escaped him as his red-rimmed eyes glared up at Armin and sapped his amusement. That passive hand he'd laid out on display twitched, then moved, and Armin felt as powerless as he'd ever had as Bertholdt lifted to his mouth and sank his teeth into the filthy textile. As his bandages fell, his hand lowered into his blanket, then surfaced again with an unfamiliar bundle in a familiar elongated shape, all without losing sight of Armin even once.

The message was clear. Armin simply went limp, and as his eyes hooded under the realisation that there was so much he would not get the time to process, he accepted that it would be better if he didn't know whether it was an explosion or a more traditional slice that would kill him.

So he closed his eyes and anticipated for Bertholdt to do what he had lured Armin into his lair for.

Thud.

Against his boot.

Seconds, maybe minutes after he'd made peace with his fate.

Armin couldn't resist cracking open one eye. By his foot lay the white bundle, unopened. As the other eye followed and his gaze drifted ahead, it fell upon that hand loosely draped in Bertholdt's lap, its index finger still unhealed.

Looking down again, he hesitated before he risked to bend down and pick up the bundle. Unfolding the textile, he found that it indeed contained his shaving razor, clean and unused. He looked back at Bertholdt with confusion.

Though upset still twisted Bertholdt's complexion as it did before, he yielded and averted his eyes when Armin's stare lingered.

"Would you come sit with me again?" he asked. "It was… nice to have someone so close last time. That doesn't happen to me anymore."

Let down his guard and then lure in a defenceless Armin. The way Armin had tried to do to Bertholdt, once in Shiganshina, and again in these mines. Something Armin had failed at.

"I gave you my only weapon," Bertholdt pleaded when Armin didn't move. "What else do I need to do to prove to you that I am honest?"

Somehow, Bertholdt managed to say that in a way that avoided confrontation, yet Armin felt more called out than he ever had before. There was no point in being so preemptive and following his survival instincts to believe he sat in a wolf's den awaiting teeth. Even incapable of transformation, Bertholdt was an enduring danger.

Armin placed aside his razor, stood, and, after consideration, limped forward. Bertholdt's head tilted back as he followed Armin until he stood in front of him, an anticipating tingle in his kneecaps, and got down, laying his newspaper on the floor next to him. It was surreal, to suspect his life might end here but not know when the blow would come. After he'd started trusting Bertholdt, maybe, or mid-sentence, when his mind was figuring out words and strategies and his guard was down.

"Do you trust me?" Bertholdt broke through Armin's worry.

Armin nodded.

"I wouldn't be here if I didn't."

Bertholdt bowed his head and chewed on his lower lip. Then, he mirrored Armin's nod and speckled eyes met clear irises.

"Can I tell you a story, then?"

"Of course. Always."

Anything to leave as few stories untold.

A repeat nod followed by silence. Armin acted with patience befitting a man who had delved deep into a cavernous tomb for the past seven months.

"When we first came here," Bertholdt started, "it was after receiving a detailed education about all the things that would be different. We were told about the language you should've spoken and the accents you should've had. What technology had been invented and what probably hadn't. How we would determine which animals and plants existed on Paradis and which we could not talk about. It was extensive. We knew everything there was to know about the island of devils from the moment we set foot on here, and when we did, we learned that we knew nothing at all."

He licked his cracked lips.

"One thing changed in a way that never ended up making sense to me."

Armin slightly leaned in against his instincts' better judgement. "What was that?"

"That we would be children again."

"Children…" Armin repeated. "'Again'? You were eleven when you first came here, weren't you?"

Bertholdt nodded.

"Were you not… children in Marley?"

A shake of his head.

"By Marley's standard, as Eldians, at our age, we were something not quite considered to be children. It's not so much that we were considered adults, either. Such terms are reserved for those who aren't tainted by the blood of Ymir. Eldians are divided into two age groups: those of us who can't take care of ourselves, and those of us who can."

Carefully, Armin asked, "What is the cutoff point?"

"Ten."

"Ten… So you'd been considered the equivalent of an adult for about a year by the time you came here?"

"That's right."

"God, Bertholdt… How could the age be that low? Don't they understand just how young that is?"

"Why would they make it any older than that?" Bertholdt nonchalantly asked, but then reconsidered when Armin's expression reflected worry. "Well, from their point of view… They had to pick an age. The soldiers who reached the age of ten always looked so much more mature and capable when I was young. Nothing like us little things. It's the age at which an Eldian can be given an order and be expected to reliably carry it out without backup. If I had to guess, then that is why they made it that age. Younger children simply allow for too much error."

"That's why they sent you out all alone at such a young age. They considered you self-sufficient enough to function as an adult soldier. They never considered that you were not capable of carrying out such a complex mission."

"Yeah."

Armin wanted to push. It was a bad idea, but gods, did he need to see this story through. He needed to divert Bertholdt's mind away from the obvious.

"But that can't be all," he said. "I think there is more to it than self-sufficiency. Don't you?"

"Like…?"

"Bertholdt. When we met, you were thirteen, and you understood why people our age joined the Paradis military. Can't you figure out why Marley wants children to be fully sufficient on their own?"

"Well, of course," Bertholdt whispered, looking away just a tad flustered at Armin calling him out so directly.

"Then tell me. I know you know."

Bertholdt pressed on his jaws hard, then released.

"Old enough to be reliable, young enough to be easy to control with fear and naive promises without the risk of them getting ideas."

"How long have you known that?"

"Long enough," came Bertholdt's cryptic answer.

Armin figured it must've been soon after the very first wall breach, at the latest when he joined the military and already had such accurate assessments about others' motives. A horrific truth to live with for so many years, to know that this was the only reason he had broken the wall and ended up in these mines.

"So…" Bertholdt continued, "when we blended in with the chaos, we suddenly went from full-grown men and women to children that people were prepared to make sacrifices for. I never quite adapted to the change. It would be like someone treating you like a toddler."

"I couldn't imagine how shocking it must've been."

Bertholdt weakly nodded at the acknowledgement.

"But then, I grew into adulthood a second time, this time on Paradis. And just like in Marley, it left me so… cold. Twice now have we gone through the process of reaching adulthood, and yet… I don't think any of us truly felt like we were ready for it. Not the first time when we didn't know anything about the world, not the second time when we did. It was like some sort of urgency overtook us."

He stared out in front of himself in utter silence, dumbstruck by his own rhetoric. Was he going somewhere with this, or did he want someone to know, to hear what he had lived through when he did not believe he had that right?

Armin heard him. For as long as he lived, there would be someone who'd listened and remembered.

"What I meant to say is that things are so different on Paradis," Bertholdt continued. "Do you ever wonder why you can only join the military when you are twelve years old, and not at five? Why you are an adult at fifteen while we were at ten? Why you can only get married as an adult while we were encouraged to marry at twelve?"

"Twelve? Not ten, like the age of self-sufficiency?"

"Twelve. Can you figure out why?"

The reason dawned on Armin, carving a pit into his stomach.

"The age at which most humans are fertile…"

A soft nod, barely there.

"We were born to breed. And to fight. And that's it. Our grand purpose in this world."

Never, not once in those seven months during which he had observed Bertholdt in every state imaginable, had he sounded so lethargic, so resigned to what he said. His anger over Armin saying that he had a cosmic purpose made sense if this was how he saw himself.

Armin should've known. He should've been capable of understanding how Bertholdt had felt all these years on his enemies' island.

How lonesome it must have been.

The fight had left Armin to tell Bertholdt otherwise. He knew. No mere words could break through a message that had for years been his only reality. Not when Paradis perpetuated said message and made his final purpose in this world to be a vessel for a weapon and a pincushion for answers while they pretended to be pacifists. Not when it was Armin's words.

But there had once been someone whose words had reached Bertholdt and managed to make him think of himself as more than livestock.

Words recorded into nine volumes, gripping Bertholdt since the day Armin had haphazardly run into him and sealed their fates for good. Words that may not have been fully based in reality, but that had their proper effect on the both of them nonetheless. Words that had constructed a character which Bertholdt avoided for a reason.

One who had fallen to mortal sin but still carried love and hope within his heart. One who had brought the world to ruin but sought to do what he could to help its heroes fix it again. One who had orphaned an innocent soul but decided that he would spend the rest of his days keeping him safe.

The Knight.

The Devil.

The Ardor.

Good, evil, and in-between. All one and the same, inseparable.

Like Bertholdt.

And for a moment, Armin found hope again that there was something he could use to reach Bertholdt, to tell him that anyone could still attain their redemption if he just read the ending and understood where the Ardor's journey would lead him—before he lost his footing on his delusions and his spirit came crashing back to earth.

No children's story could fix this. He fidgeted with the seam of his pants. Nothing could fix this.

And that brought them back to square one.

"There was something I wanted to ask you."

To reality.

"The question you stayed alive to ask?"

Bertholdt hummed affirmatively. Armin nodded and Bertholdt wrapped his arm around his waist.

"What will Paradis do to find the Colossal Titan?" he asked. "When I die. How will you search for the new Colossal Titan holder?"

"Well, titans go to newborn babies, not foetuses when they are conceived in the womb. Right?"

"Yeah."

"In that case, we will scan population registers and examine all babies born around the time of your death."

"And then what?" Bertholdt asked. "Will you take them? How will you figure out which one of them has it, if any? Will you harm them?"

"No, of course not."

"Then what will you do?"

"How does Marley conduct this search?" Armin asked, knowing well that this method wouldn't be viable.

Bertholdt ground his teeth together.

"Because Annie and I didn't return to Marley… I presume that they confiscated all babies that were born around the time when they suspected we died. They probably inflicted lethal wounds to induce healing as a test. It's the only way to make an infant heal, and they don't have the time to wait until they are older and can try to heal on command."

So much death that flowed forth from their failure. Another burden Armin hadn't known about.

Bertholdt looked up at Armin under hooded eyes, eyebrows knitted.

"What lengths will you go to if it means you get to hold the cards, Armin?"

"Not these. Never these," Armin advocated, more force behind his voice. "We would never harm innocent children to find a titan. We can't be the same as Marley. We know better than to follow in the footsteps of our enemy!"

Bertholdt merely breathed, slouched over and leaning his elbow on his thigh. The silence between them was an uneasy one, broken when Bertholdt sighed through his nose. Armin couldn't determine if it was a breath or a laugh.

"I didn't tell you that story on a whim. You're lucky that you have reproductive rights and your childhood is protected, but Marley didn't just do to the Eldians what it did for fun. They did it to have an efficient system in which they ensured that the next deceased titan may be born within its own population. You will do it too. Maybe not today, but eventually."

"Do you really think that, Bertholdt?" Armin asked. "Do you really think we are capable of such violence against children? Do you think that I'll let something like that happen? I couldn't live with myself if we were the cause of that…"

"Why do you act shocked?" Bertholdt hummed. "Marley once was an oppressed people. Not at all that long ago. Thousands of years of genocide, and it took them less than a century to come up with its warrior system and drive the Eldians into their walls. How long will it take Paradis to turn around? You'll need those titans to live. You need a good system, or you will waste years with just Eren there to defend you. He won't be enough."

Armin's nails tightened into his sleeves, but Bertholdt didn't offer him the chance to retort.

"And if you can't even change the rules to get me more food, you won't be able to fight any other decision Paradis makes."

Not an accusation. Not with the way Bertholdt said that. But he had a point. Armin couldn't change a thing if he tried. Paradis wouldn't become the new Marley, but it just might, and that was terrifying. He had seen the government's cruelty firsthand.

"I'm sorry that I have to be this direct," Bertholdt said in earnest, "but this is too important to let personal feelings play a role. Your government is not your friend. It will hurt its own people if that's what they think they have to do to win. And if you become the new government, then you will be the one who'll hurt them. Paradis will eventually need a strategy. Sooner or later, depending on my actions. I need to understand what you will do when the time comes."

"So you stayed alive because you were concerned with what would happen to us if you died?"

A nod.

"Someone had to…"

And he trailed off. No more but an expression like he'd confessed to something awful again.

Armin sighed uneasily through his nose. It was a tough matter, one he didn't have an answer for. He could discuss it with the others, but that would make it abundantly clear that when Bertholdt died, he'd had a hand in it.

"My second question is what you will do with the Colossal Titan," Bertholdt moved on before Armin got a chance to think things through. "Say you secure it and you have the serum and the guts to feed its holder to someone. Who's getting it?"

"We don't know. We'd have to decide when the moment comes," Armin honestly answered. If anyone knew, they hadn't told him. "What kind of person do you think would be the best match?"

Bertholdt thought it through. Then, he looked at Armin.

"You."

"Me?" Armin repeated. "Wouldn't I be the worst possible candidate?"

"Why?"

"Well… What are the traits that make for a good Colossal Titan?"

Bertholdt's silence spoke volumes about his bluff. Someone like Armin would indeed be one of the worst candidates. Better off on the sidelines rather than the front, just strong enough not to fall off his horse and break a bone, and with a mild case of vertigo on top.

In Bertholdt's vision of fear and distrust of Paradis' actions, this would be a great waste of the Colossal Titan.

So what was the opposite of Armin?

Someone who was at ease standing front and centre. Someone who had proven to be powerful at all times. Someone with a strong head on his shoulders. Someone who wouldn't lose his head no matter what happened.

Someone like Eren, who couldn't inherit the Colossal Titan, or someone like Jean, who shouldn't. Someone like Erwin, who was out of the picture.

Wouldn't it be nice if it could be himself, though? To be freed of his scars and get a place at the negotiation table to steer Paradis away from repeating Marley's sins? He'd have leverage. He'd be of importance. He could achieve what he was meant to and his existence would have meant something. Erwin wouldn't have died for nothing.

And he'd have to live with Bertholdt's memories.

No. He could never do that. It would be too painful, too intrusive, to get to see the other side of the story from such an intimate point of view. Bertholdt had been clear about proximity determining the intensity of a shifter's bond with their predecessor, and that was the greatest argument against him. It was better to give it to someone distant from Bertholdt and bury those memories.

Like smothering the signs of Bertholdt's existence out of this world. Would Armin be fine with that?

"You'll have no choice but to use it for war," Bertholdt insisted.

"We'd use it to have a chokehold on Marley, that's all. An explosion might rain down on them at any time at any location, and only we know that it won't. Wouldn't that be enough to scare them off and make them consider our peace offer that is by all metrics generous?"

"The threat of the Rumbling wasn't enough to keep them from attacking Paradis."

That was true, but they couldn't talk to Paradis when they did that. The Survey Corps might just find a way to reach out to Marley. Make the threat tangible.

"So if you had to," Bertholdt continued, "would the Survey Corps use the Colossal Titan for harm?"

No, Armin wanted to say, but it wouldn't be earnest. He knew very well that if it meant the survival of Paradis, then he'd be prepared to reject that part of his humanity and support the use of a titan to kill their enemy. Last resort only, but what were the odds they'd be driven to such lengths?

"Yes. But only if we had no other choice. Just having it on our side is more than enough."

A weak nod.

"Then I have one final question for you."

Already?

But he wasn't ready to let go again.

"What is it you come down here for?" Bertholdt calmly asked. "Why do you travel here and come to these caverns to come see me when there is nothing to gain for you? There needs to be a reason."

Armin bit the inside of his lip.

"A lot has happened, but I did tell you before."

"Then tell me again. I want to hear."

"I wanted to offer you a dignified incarceration, even if your environment made that impossible. I wanted to make you feel better. I wanted to be a kind face when there were none in these mines."

"Is that true?"

Bertholdt tilted his head, peering at Armin from under a sharp angle.

"Or is this another ploy?"

"I sit here in front of you with no weapons, no defences. If you wanted to kill me or use me as a hostage, you could have. I was going to let my own salvation perish because I did not want you to suffer. What else do I need to do to prove to you that I am honest?"

Bertholdt understood. Like a frigid hand over a fire, Bertholdt still wasn't prepared to grasp that truth and trust in Armin. Maybe he still hoped Armin could offer him another reality. Still, he nodded.

"I'm asking you this because…"

He balled his fist in front of his neck, his eyes coming to a squint.

"… because you are more obsessed with me than Hange ever was, and it terrifies me."

Armin blinked. Bertholdt's expression betrayed nothing about his intentions, so when Armin had nothing to say, he reluctantly continued.

"Most… No, all people I know would have given up. There's nothing here for you, not after you've learned that I can't help you. So why did you keep coming back?"

An honest question. One that Armin had laid awake over for many months, admonishing himself for doing this to himself when there was no benefit. But he knew very well why.

"Because you were my friend."

"You've had many friends," Bertholdt retorted with all but force. "Would you have done the same for them?"

"No. Not for most," Armin admitted.

"Then why did you do it for me?"

"Because I don't believe that we have to be enemies."

Bertholdt's shoulders slumped as his eyebrows knitted and he looked at Armin with vacant sorrow. Yearning for that distant dream Armin waved in front of him, beaming through his thick resignation but never getting to shine unobscured.

Perhaps Armin had just shattered all hope that he could pass away in peace and leave the world for what it was by confirming that his very death would be the cause of suffering on Paradis. Coming to visit had only been cruel. Either he'd choose to die regardless or he would live on in turmoil.

"Armin. Do you… trust me?" Bertholdt asked a second time, his features contorted this time around. This wasn't about them sitting so near, but something far bigger.

"Yes."

Neither submission nor fatigue, but a thought-out choice.

Grinding his jaws, Bertholdt nodded. His eyes darted from point to point, nervous about something beyond Armin's perception, until he let out a deep sigh and all movement stopped.

"So I can sit here and wait until the Colossal Titan is taken out of my hands and it all would've been for nothing, or I could die and doom not just one child, but every child that lives on this island. Is that right? Are those my options?"

Armin swallowed the desperation behind those words.

"It looks like that is how it is, yes."

Bertholdt's eyes narrowed as he nodded.

"Then it wouldn't exactly be right for me to die."

Like a man who still had others in mind. Because that was who Bertholdt was thinking about. Those who had yet to be born on Paradis. The Marleyans who might one day be obliterated. Maybe even the people whom Eren might trample if he had the Colossal Titan on his side.

Bertholdt could be anything—stubborn, quiet, insightful, spiteful, pained—but it seemed that he was unable to truly be as selfish as he wanted to be.

"That is something you have to decide."

A small breathy huff, like a laugh. One corner of Bertholdt's mouth pulled into a pained smile.

"Like putting bread in a starving man's mouth and telling him not to chew. It's not a choice. Not really."

"Then… You've made up your mind?"

A nod.

"Yeah."

Never before had he looked so resigned to his fate, and Armin could only watch on. Wait. See where this was going, whether that little nagging voice in the back of his head that he wanted to squash out of existence was right that he had misplaced his trust. Let that same apathy he'd felt the past week weave itself into his exhausted mind and lull him into emptiness.

Armin had already told him it was fine. It was fine to seek comfort over Paradis' health. It was fine to potentially doom those children if it saved one doomed man. Maybe Armin could find a new life's purpose in ensuring nothing Bertholdt feared would come to pass, but he'd be long gone and unable to see that things turned out alright.

His attention shifted to that newspaper beside him in the dirt. He already had it in his hands before he thought about what he could do, closely followed by Bertholdt. From that COLOSSAL TITAN LIVES to the living boy that sat in front of him. The inadvertent truth the press used for cheap sensationalism.

"This morning, something was in the news. I don't know if you've heard about it."

Bertholdt shook his head.

Unfolding the crooked newspaper, Armin handed it to him.

"Can you read this?"

Bertholdt accepted the bundle and squinted as he held it very close, but with such an extravagant headline, it was hard to miss even with the stardust in his eyes. His mouth pulled taut and like Armin had, he repeatedly took in the headline.

"What did you…?" he mumbled.

"Hange let your name slip in front of a recruit, and she probably extrapolated and passed it on until it left the Survey Corps. They just assumed it to be true. If it turned out to be false, they still sold a lot of papers thanks to that headline, so it might all just be a stunt. No one knows about this place or whether we really have you. But I thought you should know. Most people think you are alive."

"Then that makes me a martyr after all," Bertholdt quietly said, vision unfocused.

"A martyr?"

Bertholdt's eyes snapped to Armin's, vulnerable.

"I… was told that to the world, I died in Shiganshina. No one would know what happened to me down here. Your Commander told me not to try to become a martyr because no one would record it anywhere, so I should just give up my information… Looks like I may be one after all. If they can figure out that I live, then they can figure out what happened to me."

Was that a comfort or another kick in the face?

And the bitter irony that Hange had been the very person to have his torture documented down to every word he'd said. It would be unethical to prevent these details from being recorded in the annals of history.

"But," Bertholdt continued, putting aside the newspaper, "this changes very little. I already made up my mind."

That was what Armin thought. It was a last pass. A final gambit, as weak as its maker.

Armin's back prickled as his eyes drifted downwards, to his woefully empty hands, scarred until the day his time came. Marks left behind by Bertholdt that would persist until long after his death. His palms had largely remained spared in the steam, but the occasional ridge spiralled across his finger to the front.

Why had he never noticed this small detail after months of staring his itchy hands down?

"Armin, I need you to listen to me," Bertholdt calmly said.

Armin's eyes shot from his open palms to Bertholdt, his mouth agape at the sudden change in Bertholdt's tone.

"A lot is happening up above right now," Bertholdt said. "Paradis is changing, and that means that so will the rest of the world. And it's all happening while I'm sitting here underground, blind to everything except the little information I am fed, because that's the fate I chose. Even if I wanted to, there is nothing I can do."

"That's–"

"Why am I letting it happen like that?" Bertholdt spoke over Armin's protest, his hand upturned in the air as he eyed it in his mounting frustration. "Why this fate? They just get to speculate about me without ever hearing my side of the story? I don't get to know what's happening up there at all? All that's left for me is to passively wait out my two options and be content with that? Am I content with that?"

A snap to his hand, cold and unexpected.

Armin jolted; his heart pounded through his chest as Bertholdt's scarred fingers lay over Armin's leathery wrist and held him in a tight grip, but in the unexpectedness of the contact, it did not occur to him to recoil and run. That large hand, once warm and comforting and kind, had turned hardened and taut, each bump and wound slicing through Armin's sleeve like a needle, and that once sun-kissed skin had turned rigid and blue. Like deep winter, sapping all heat from Armin's soft skin.

Like floating in a lake amid the heat; unexpectedly kind as his weary bones rested in the palms of the universe and for once did not need to carry their own weight. Armin's fingers gently curled around Bertholdt's bony wrist until his fingertips touched his bruises.

"I don't want it decided for me anymore," Bertholdt said. "I want to make a choice, for once. I want to be an active participant in my own life. Someone has to do this."

The gravity of the situation finally hit Armin and gritting his teeth, he disconnected his fingers and yanked his hand back, but for a man so emaciated, Bertholdt exerted a surprising amount of strength on Armin's hand while simultaneously not harming him in his grip.

He was trapped.

With desperation painted all over his face, he looked up at Bertholdt, searching those speckled eyes for intent. Expressive eyes as a window to the soul; not predatory nor lifeless, but profound, like the midnight sky they hadn't faced for so long, with a million stars dotting washed-out greys and greens, shining their coppery blue hue down on him. And inside that endless blanket of universes, where he in months past had only seen clouds, there burned clarity unlike any Armin had ever seen. Honesty. Integrity.

Purpose.

"I'm not sure about anything anymore. Not about you or what could be up there, or what might lie on my life's path. The view is terrifying from where I'm standing, but like you once said, maybe the universe brought me back for a reason after all. Some grand purpose in the world different from fighting. I think that it's time for me to take my leap of faith and see where I might land."

Sparks.

A thunderstrike.

Catastrophe.

Death.

Any moment, Armin expected to see the signs of an impending tragedy—yet as much as he anticipated decimation from up close with terror in his heart, he could only stare back like a man under a spell as Bertholdt embodied determination.

"Armin… I want to help Paradis."