With a strained grunt Reiner and Connie went sprawling onto the floor of the airship, narrowly missing the burst of gunfire that tinged and crashed around the open hull door. Drenched in sweat, Reiner peaked out towards the rooftops and began laying down cover fire for Mikasa and Jean who were blasting over the rows of houses below, illuminated by one of this aircraft's large spotlights. Even from this distance he could see the exertion painted all over Jean's face as he not only catapulted himself over the shingled roofs, but also a limp and unresponsive Armin that was haphazardly strapped to his back. Pure terror rippled through Reiner's heart; a fear that threatened to overwhelm him as he shot wildly towards the mass of Jaegerist soldiers baring down on them.
For a moment it looked like the added weight would be too much to allow Jean to close the distance, a thought that Mikasa seemed to share. Just as Jean bent his knees to jump, she rushed towards him and grabbed tightly onto his harness, using the added propulsion of her ODM to thrust them both high into the air and within reach of the ship. Their cables were just long enough to make contact with the steel beams along the bottom edge of the hull, tearing the trio from the buildings and sending them whirring towards Reiner and Connie's outstretched hands.
The hastily outfitted artillery guns aboard the aircraft fired ceaselessly at the oncoming army as Jean and Mikasa were dragged inside, gasping for air. They were both splattered with gore and dirt, though as the team hastily untied the straps binding Armin to Jean, Mikasa choked out a sob at the sheer amount of blood that had soaked into Jean's clothing.
Gabi, Falco and Pieck came bolting in the room, and Falco's cry of concern dying in his throat as they all stared helplessly at Armin's unmoving, prone body.
"Where is Arya?!" Connie had rushed to Mikasa, shaking her stiff shoulders and yelling desperately into her stunned and tear-stricken face. Her mouth moved wordlessly in reply, eyes glued to the now crimson shirt that Armin wore. A panic attack so severe it nearly overwhelmed him ruptured in Connie's throat and he gripped his hair manically, his breath reaching the point of hyperventilation.
He couldn't look; he couldn't see a decade full of friendship lying dead on the floor of another fucking airship, not again. It would surely kill him this time: a one-way ticket out the plane doors without a parachute. But Arya… He ran to the open hatch once more, scouring the last remaining structures on the edge of the city that were passing below them. Jean came up behind him to do the same, his eyes damp with moisture.
"I lost track of them after the canon fire." He muttered; all the emotion drained from his cracking voice. "If they ended up on the ground…there's nothing we can do."
It was too much to bear; too much loss all at once for any of them to say a word over the roar of the engines and the blast of weapons. Slowly, Pieck knelt beside Armin and began to gently remove his harness, fumbling over the buttons of his shirt once his gear had been removed. Historia appeared then from the hallway leading to the bridge and nearly collided with Reiner, trembling from head to foot and eyes bulged from their sockets.
"We must go back! We need to get my daughter, I can't leave without her!" Her shrill cries ricocheted around the cabin, but her pleas went unanswered. Taking Reiner's dirty shirt in her hands, Historia pulled with all her might. "TAKE ME BACK!"
Reiner let out a shuttering breath. "I'm sorry, Historia. There was no way we could have gotten to Ymira, the Council had taken her before we could-"
"I said TAKE ME BACK!" Historia was nearly in a frenzy now, hair whipping around as she searched for someone to meet her gaze. When no one would, she released Reiner from her hold and made as if to grab his gear from him, until her wild eyes finally caught sight of Armin. You could almost see the gears in her head come to a screeching halt as she looked between him and the others, realizing how many of them were missing. As if this realization had been the final straw atop her sanity, she collapsed onto the floor with such grief-stricken look that it was almost as if every ounce of life had been torn away from her.
The silence that followed was louder than any weapon, and the air was palpable with the pain they all shared over such a staggering amount of loss. Their attempted rescue had caused them to lose five of their own, and no matter how they tried to look at it, it was plain to see how little they had gained compared to all that they had lost. Yet even as they hung their heads in a fog of sorrow surrounded by gunfire, every person standing within the cabin heard the small gasp that came from Pieck.
"His heart is still beating."
They turned to her slowly, as if the words she said hadn't made sense. She was bent over Armin, head pressed tightly against his ragged chest and her eyes alight with wonder. In the blink of an eye she had her jacket off, pushing it against his blood-soaked chest and gesturing frantically for someone to take her place.
"We need to start pumping oxygen into his lungs or he won't make it!"
Within seconds the entire room was a flurry of movement: Jean yelling for the whatever first aid they had on the ship and Mikasa replacing Pieck in pressing her tattered cloak over the entry wounds. Unable to start chest compressions due to his injuries, Pieck pinched Armin's nostrils closed and started blowing air into his deflated lungs at timed intervals.
Falco and Reiner reentered the room carrying a crate of medical supplies, tearing into them in a desperate search for something to stop the bleeding. Connie hovered around the edges of the group, still averting his eyes from Armin's shredded torso. This scene was still horribly familiar to him: racing against the clock to somehow save the life of someone already so far gone. None of them had the proper medical training to pull him from the brink of death. He would die as Sasha had, a mile above the ground over enemy territory by a shot to the chest.
A sudden pause in the ship's artillery fire caused him to jump, and Connie met the anxious looks of his comrades as he ran once more to the open hull door, peering back towards the buildings that were almost out of their reach. His knees nearly buckled from the profound flood of relief that pulsed through his veins like a drug, his head swimming with excitement.
"It's them! They made it!"
Arya and Levi were flying, moving at a speed that was almost inhuman as the raced towards the retreating airship, fighting their way to the grey space between the sanctuary of the plane and the raging enemy forces.
After a quick look to confirm the accuracy of Connie's claim, Gabi rushed to a small back box hung along the wall near the hallway and picked up a small receiver. The intercom speaker above their head crackled, and Gabi's voice blared out across the length of the ship.
"Levi and Arya are alive; we need to slow down!"
This was an absolute necessity. Despite the incredible speed at which the two of them were moving, their hope of making it aboard would be out of their reach within minutes.
Gabi repeated herself but was cut off when the ship gave a tremendous lurch and their speed lowered dramatically. The aerial guns started up again now that the pair below had put enough distance between themselves and the soldiers behind them, deafening the people aboard. Once Connie had managed to steady himself, he bolted out the doors and along the narrow gangway that ran parallel down the side of the airship, using his cables to anchor himself to the supports.
Attached to the end of the walkway was a long rope ladder, which Connie rolled out and sent unfurling into the sky between them. As soon as a means of reaching the aircraft became visible, Levi and Arya both rocketed from the roof of the tallest structure available to them. Hand in hand the flew into the air, aiming their one shot towards the now fully extended ladder that billowed out behind the ship like a banner in the wind.
With a satisfying clang Levi's cable wrapped itself around one of the lowest rungs and the two of them were yanked into the sky, the last of their gas focused solely on their retraction. As they were being pulled towards him, Connie worked furiously on the crank system that would hoist the ladder back to its place on the gangway, sweat pouring from face in torrents. Just when he felt as though the ladder must have tripled in length, the crank slammed to a stop into the locking mechanisms.
Throwing himself onto his belly, Connie slid to the edge of the supports and reached a hand into the abyss below. A strong grip wrapped around his wrist, and with a hard tug he managed to pull them high enough to grab onto the scaffolding, the both of them clamoring over the edge in a flurry of movement. They were covered in blood, dirty and damp and struggling to breathe, but they were alive and somehow unscathed. Arya was looking at him with wide eyes, a smile creeping across her face as she threw herself at him, mirroring the ferocity of his embrace. Tears welled in Connie eyes as he gripped her tight, relishing in the feeling of his friend's beating heart against his shoulder. Lifting he head he peered at Levi, who regarded him with a slight grin.
"Well, Springer." He said in a horse croak. "I dare say we are even now."
Every muscle in her body shook with exhaustion as Arya took an unsteady step into the cabin behind Connie, and the nausea seemed to lessen once she was more or less on solid ground and the dizzying height was behind her. Although her mind acknowledged that they had made it, there was no room left in her heart for celebrating. The loss of Armin had broken something in her; the memory of his vacant expression playing over and over in her head like the world's most horrifying nightmare.
A dark cloud of sadness swirled around Arya to the point of affecting her vision, and she didn't see Mikasa until she was right on top of her. Their bodies collided, Mikasa tearing at her arms and dragging her farther into the room, screaming something she couldn't quite make out. Through the numbness of her brain Arya could feel Levi tense beside her, but before she could turn to look at him, the words Mikasa was yelling at her finally registered.
"Armin's alive! You need to help him! Please!"
Mikasa nearly shoved her in the direction of the group, all of whom were gathered around someone laying on the floor. The room was quite as Arya stared down for a long moment, gazing endlessly into Armin's pale face. Suddenly the wall of pain she had built around herself crumbling away and blinding hope took its place, neurons firing at lightning speed as she gave a gurgling gasp.
He's alive!
As quickly as her friends had moved when they discovered Armin's weak pulse, Arya was on her knees next to him, gathering her messy hair into a tight bun on the top of her head.
"Jean, bring me all the sterile water aboard this ship, immediately. Pieck, don't stop; I need to find the internal damage and stay the bleeding before I can get a handle on the entrance wounds. Connie!"
Running across the room he knelt beside her, his previous afflictions melted away by the intensity and confidence Arya projected around the cabin.
"Go grab any light source you can find; I need it as bright as possible in here."
The two men took off at once, Pieck resuming her position near Armin's head as Arya rushed to gather the necessary tools from the medical crate beside her. Thin rubber gloves snapped around her wrists as an anxious uncertainty boiled under her skin. Could she keep him alive all the way back to Veritas? Had lack of oxygen already destroyed his brain function, taking away his brilliant mind?
She went to work the moment Jean and Connie returned, hands steady and her mind focused, but Arya couldn't shake off the terror that had wrapped itself around her throat. If she made even one wrong decision and they lost him again, she didn't know if she could survive it this time.
Arya heard someone sit down behind her as she worked, a reassuring palm pressing down on her back. The fear tangled around her windpipe eased, and she reveled in the warm static that bounced from Levi's fingertips and throughout her body. They were both exhausted, all the energy they had tapped into spent, but combining the little that was left fueled her just enough to keep her emotions in check.
He remained this way for a long time, always within reach as the airship rose high into the air over Paradis, leaving behind the smoking remains of Mitras and drifting off towards safer harbors. Arya worked ceaselessly, and by the time the first rosy hues of sunrise began to reach above the horizon and she had done all she could do, sleep finally overtook her. Curling up on the hard steel floor she buried her face against the skin of Armin's shoulder, vaguely aware of someone draping a blanket over her as she drifted off to the hopeful sound of of his gently breathing.