Standing motionless amid the flurry of moving caravans and the chatter of military personnel, Jamie Bowen was smiling.

This expression was not like one finding amusement in a joke their companion had told, or the enjoyment found at the bottom of a glass after a long day. It was the kind of smile that would cause a mother to pull her child in close if they so happened upon him, perhaps even garnering some fretful looks and worrisome whispers.

If you were to draw a comparison to that of a crazed animal, foaming at the mouth with its teeth bared towards its cornered prey, you may have found similarities between that and the look on Jamie's sallow face as he stared down at the metal disk clutched in his hands.

A manic giggle bubbled out from his cracked lips as he watched the small red light centered in the object blink slowly back at him. Had he been the man he was before the raid on Mitras, he might have been amazed by the possibility of something like this existing; marveling at how far the world had come outside the confines of the Walls, even if it was built by foreigners.

But as he was now, a man whose mind more closely resembled loose tatters that bent and snapped behind his bulging eyes, that sort of pondering held no interest to him. All he cared to understand was that this machine would offer him the justice that begged to be satisfied by every cell in his body; the kind of retribution that clawed holes in his damaged psyche until blood dripped onto the floor from his clenched fists.

Jamie could not even see the very ground he stood on through the tight lens of hate that throbbed behind his temples. Foreign and exotic trees rustling in the dry, acrid wind went unnoticed; the cry of strange birds floating on warm updrafts no more than a far-off whisper. When his eyes were not on the object in his hands, they were trained like a marksman's sights to the South, staring through flora, earth, and even stone, his mind flying over the land to the place where her guts would spill.

He could feel her out there; every breath she took was a crime against him, every beat of her heart mocking him. That she should still walk the earth while those she had killed lay scorched in pine boxes beneath her feet was an affront to the universe itself. Yet it wouldn't been long now until that devil was cleansed from the world by his own hand; betrayed – as he had been – by someone she considered dear. This thought was Jamie's salvation, the truth behind his wicked smile. There was no future for him that didn't contain bathing in in a pool of Arya Halbrand's blood.

From Jamie's hand, the small metallic disk began to hum.

——-

Swatting away the mass of black flies that were swirling around his head, Jean called the company to a halt on the narrow footpath they were traversing, one that bordered the edge of a still and serene lake. The humidity was almost stifling as they watered the horses and themselves, stretching out their tired limbs and trying in vain to keep their buzzing pests away.

"This is pointless, Armin!" Connie said through labored breath, sliding down the trunk of a nearby tree and into a heap on the ground. "If we keep this up, we're just going to get more turned around than we already are. We've probably passed it already and are halfway to Hizuru by now!"

Slinking down to the edge of the cart, Armin assessed his companions fretfully.

Five days had passed since the first unsettling night they had spent on the river's end, though now each passing hour they rode in the unclaimed lands felt so similar to the last that it was becoming hard to tell the days apart. It didn't matter which path they travelled down; the scenery never seemed to change. Every tree and rock felt familiar, like they were stuck going in endless circles underneath the canopy of thick leaves and misty air.

Even with their expedition map constantly open next to their seemingly functional compass, the feeling that they had stepped into a never-ending labyrinth was pressing down around them, accompanied by the building anxiety that came from the word that dug like a tick at the back of their minds: lost.

They were all beyond exhausted, and even those who weren't as vocal as Connie was about their situation had the same look of pained worry that he was wearing. No one wanted to end up stuck out here with no idea which way to go, covered in dirt and grime and being eaten alive by bugs. These were the easy concerns to address; though, there was another worry present that had gone mostly unsaid but could clearly be felt by everyone. A kind of whisper that lingered in the air around them, a tickling the edge of their consciousness that told them that they weren't alone.

Their shaky plan was crumpling down around them, this much was obvious, but what was the next step from here? What were they supposed to do now? They couldn't go back to Veritas with their tails between their legs and nothing to show for it, not with the importance of what lay ahead; not to mention the backlash they would face from their unceremonious leave of the capital. Yet if they pressed on in this fashion, the towering trees of the unclaimed lands may very well be the last thing any of them ever saw; what an anticlimactic end to the Heroes of Humanity.

"I hate to say it, by Springer is right." Levi said, readjusting his brace and stretching out his bad knee against a collapsed tree to Armin's right. "It won't do us any good to continue this way, unless your plan includes becoming a snack for wildlife. We don't know where we are, and we barely know where we are trying to go. We need to regroup."

"Sure, it definitely seems pretty bleak right now, but at least this lake is a change of scenery." Pieck said hopefully, though even her normally unshakable positivity seemed halfhearted now. "The books said something about a lake, right?"

"Maybe, but it's not like there's going to be a sign saying "Children of Light temple this way, come on in.'" Reiner muttered from the back of the second cart, his heavy brow creased with frustration.

Annie snorted. "So, we should just turn around and go back home empty-handed?"

"Better to pull out now and reassess than end up stuck in this god-forsaken forest for the rest of our lives!"

As the team bickered angrily around him, Armin's focus had shifted. True, what they planned to do next was crucial to both their mission and survival; this was an irrefutable fact. He should be using every ounce of his brainpower towards finding a way out of this mess, but that worry had become secondary to another fear, casting the rest of his concerns into the wind.

It took Armin a few moments to find her, standing still as stone between the trees that reached out to touch the lapping waters of the lake. Only a small portion of her face was visible to him, her sights reaching out across the expanse of water and beyond, as if she was seeing through the visage before her and deep into the earth itself. He knew that if he was to call out to her, pulling Arya's attention towards him to see the look in her eyes, that he would feel afraid.

It had begun the moment they stepped across the border between the Southern-most reaches of Marly and the unclaimed lands. It was slow at first: an introspective seriousness creeping into her expression, her voice taking on a soft and melancholy tone. The deeper they went the quieter she became, until the words disappeared altogether. What Armin first believed to be the effects of nervousness and physical exertion had become something else entirely. Her breath remained steady and even no matter how long they traveled, and he could find no trace of worry anywhere on her strangely vacant face.

The air around her felt charged in a way, as thought she was a lightning rod gathering static before a storm. Arya had become a ghost walking among them, silent and shimmering in the dappled light, a conduit for the life force of the world.

The depth of this change hadn't been fully realized – by him or by anyone else – until the rains had come the day before last. It had started as a light drizzle, barely a single drop reaching down to the forest floor from the canopy above, but before long it was coming down in torrents as if the heavens had turned into an ocean that was now falling to the earth. They had pitched lean-tos and tarps across the two wagons and along the tree line as quickly as they could, but within minutes they were all soaked to the bone and shivering despite the warmth, unable to see more than a few feet in front of their faces.

When Armin thought back, this sudden downpour couldn't have lasted more than ten minutes, though it felt significantly longer to him as a memory. Arya had been redressing his injuries when it happened - which were closer to healed than he had ever expected possible in such a short time – and he couldn't help but think she had known it was coming.

She had the tarp thrown over their end of the wagon before the first drops had even made themselves known, which in turn meant that compared to the others they remained practically dry during the whole ordeal. Armin was vaguely aware that there were others on the wagon, huddled together under their own coverings near the open end, but with fat raindrops pelting every surface they could reach at max volume, they might as well have been the last two people on earth.

Why had that concept made him feel so nervous? There had been many times since their meeting that he had been alone with Arya, none of which came close to being uncomfortable in any capacity. Those had been good days. Hours spent pouring over old maps and written documents, where even the most serious of topics could be broken with a gentle laugh, or if he was especially lucky, one of their secret smiles. The kind that said "we are more", an idea that was vague and hard to grab, tangible only by the fact that it was true.

And yet in that brief time, pressed close underneath the wrath of mother nature, Armin could feel a quickening in his heart that was hard to identify.

How much he wanted to say that it was only because of their closeness; the warmth of her skin pushed against his exposed arm, or the scent of her damp hair when she shifted it over her shoulder and down her back. But it was neither this nor their isolation that was making him anxious.

Arya wouldn't look at him.

It wasn't in a purposefully harmful way in that she was ignoring him; more like her mind was so far away that she didn't know he was there at all.

He had opened his mouth more than once to speak, but the words had caught in his throat. He would talk to her about anything in the world, say anything she wanted him to say, just to see her come back to herself, if only for a singular moment. Who was this person sitting next to him? This was not the woman he knew, with her witty remarks left unspoken and her fiery spirit extinguished like smoke in the rain. Where was she right now that took her so far away from them? From him?

"Arya…"

It was the only word his was able to manage before she finally turned her sights to him, and the rest of what he wanted to say to her was halted by a thrill of fear that tore through his heart.

They were her eyes looking back at him, and yet they were not. It was like the back of her warm, brown irises had fallen away, opening into an endless pool that swirled between the here and now and somewhere time could not touch. There was confusion mingled in her expression; a vast knowing without understanding. Arya was still in there somewhere, he realized, playing around the edges of her mind, buried beneath the weight of some unimaginable truth that words alone couldn't describe. To Armin, she looked like the most frightened person in the world.

Tears had prickled sharply at the corners of his eyes, dragging forth a relentless wave of helplessness so profound that it hung around him like wet fabric. This one look told him that wherever she was now he could not follow, left as a spectator to sit and watch as his friend fought the coming darkness alone.

It was then that Arya had raised a remarkably steady hand to his face, cradling his cheek softly against the warmth of her palm. She slid her thumb across his face, capturing the moisture that spilled out the edge of his lashes and wiped it away. It was a touch filled with all the words she couldn't say, sweet and sad all at once. They watched each other for a long time this way, unmoving under the pressure of the rain surrounding them, allowing them this moment of silent communication.

It was when Armin finally lifted his own hand, placing it overtop of hers on his cheek, that the downpour finally stopped. Gone as quickly as it had arrived, leaving behind only puddles and the fragrant aroma of the forest. It wasn't until several years later that he understood that the rain had been a gift from her to him; a sliver of time that belonged to only them before the future played out the way it did, the way only a future like theirs could.

Dragging himself from that memory felt like rising up from the bottom of well, uncertain if he would ever reach the glimmering surface above -if he wanted to at all-, but eventually Armin found himself back in the present, reality solidifying in his mind as he let out a whistling sigh. In this return to himself he saw that Levi was looking at him with an expression that Armin could only describe as sameness. Just as they shared in their worry back at the complex during Arya's training – had it really only been two months? - he knew that they shared this feeling as well, and had from the moment she had put on her ODM harness and strode out onto the the field. What was going to happen to her now?

The bickering around him was beginning to escalate to an argument now, born from nerves and exhaustion, to which Armin had to raise his voice over with an air of deep exasperation.

"Okay, that's enough! I know you're all frustrated, but I can't think with all this fucking yelling!"

Whether it was the tone of his voice or his uncharacteristic swearing that shut them up he neither knew nor cared, but the company around him finally lapsed into a tense and slightly embarrassed silence. Rubbing his hand roughly against the back of his neck, he looked upwards at the dancing branches near the top of the canopy, as if he hoped to find the answer written on the face of the leaves. He just need a couple hours of planning, of picking this situation apart until he could put it together in a way that made sense.

It was a moment before he spoke again, allowing himself another sigh, this one more of a relent than anything else.

"What we need first, I think, is some rest. Let's set up camp and get a good 24 hours of rest in us before we do anything else. If after that time we still haven't come up with a solution to for how we proceed… well, if that happens, I think we have little choice but to head back, at least until we have a better idea of where to go. Agreed?"

The thought of turning back after coming this far would felt to him like jumping off a moving train, unsure if you'd ever be able to climb aboard again, but there was nothing to be done. His mind rejected this concept in its entirety, but it was not only himself he had to worry about. They would do this together or not at all.

Mumbles of agreement echoed around the clearing, leading the way for the clattering of gear and relieved huffs of weary travelers Connie and Jean were speaking to him now, but about what Armin wasn't sure. Desperation as thick as syrup was dripping down his throat and his ears were humming like the wings of a small bird. Is this how it would end? Everything they had worked for snuffed out by losing their way in the woods?

"Why?"

The voice posing this simple question was barely loud enough to hear over the noise of conversation and clanging of equipment, yet it seemed to have moved around the commotion to find its way to his ears. The rest of the Scouts continued on, as if the sound had simply bypassed them altogether. For a moment all he could do was turn his head every which way, looking for the source. It wasn't until he caught sight of Levi, taking an almost unconscious step towards the edge of the lake with an audible intake of breath, that Armin realized Arya was speaking to him.

"What?" He asked dully, a shiver of hopefulness rushing through his chest, accompanied by the fear he knew he would feel when he saw her eyes, though lessened slightly.

It was like a small light had come on behind her face, a crack in the opaque shell that had formed around her. One of her eyebrows were cocked up in the quizzical way it did when he said something that she didn't understand, along with the slightest of lift to the corner of her mouth. Her eyes were still the same, filled to the brim with knowing so intense that it was like looking straight into the sun, but there was a shifting taking place inside that space; the distinct sense of a decision being made.

The others had fallen quiet, glancing between himself and Arya like they had almost forgot she was there, just another permanent fixture in the timeless stretch of trees. She was looking at all of them now, taking in their faces like she was seeing them for the first time in many years. And it was the same for each of them, a sudden awareness of a friend who had inexplicably been away.

"Arry?"

She turned to Connie, an all too familiar smile coming to rest on her lips: an apology. Like she was apologizing for her absence and also for something more. She must have felt the question he was about to ask; the same one already poised on the tip of Armin's tongue. Turning back to his searching eyes, she gave an almost imperceptible shrug.

"Why would we go back when we are already here?"