a/n: About three years late to write about the rumbling scene, but here I go!
Elsewhere, Marley lay burning. The mass of the damned, screams and klaxon sirens indistinguishable.
Within his arms, Eren clung. The tracts running down his cheeks bled onto Armin's jacket. He smelled like grime and hemic fluid and childhood memories once discarded.
"I'm sorry," he whispered, "I shouldn't have. I didn't mean what I said before. Any of it."
"I know."
His hand lay flat between his shoulders. A tremor gripped Eren like a flinch.
Armin, the icon of humanity that Eren could never be, would have renounced it all to die by his side. Eren had never stopped to reconsider.