{Before we begin, please don't read anything below if you are triggered by displays of/the topic of depression.  I want all you lovelies happy, and I know how hard that can be sometimes, so please please please, don't read ahead if this might upset you.  ♥}

[ for :: Always4HarryPotter ] 

Once upon a time, you would've been happy like this. Happy in a quiet room. Enjoying the seconds of silence and breathing in the vast muteness that surrounded you, thankful for just a moment of placid serenity, basking in the beauty that was everything calm and quiet. A smile would have been on your face, and you would have been truly glad. It would finally feel like you could have some rest; some time to forget about the world and unwind. Ever since you'd joined the Survey Corps, there hadn't been a single moment of this cherished noiselessness. Of course, that was to be expected - it was, after all, a military branch, and one that encounter titans quite frequently at that. You hadn't signed up expecting it to be easy. But you could not say with all sincerity that you had concluded it would be this hard.

Here was not once upon a time. Here was in the mess hall, sitting alone, too hungry not to eat yet too sickened by that prospect to force yourself to do so.

Here, the world was completely positively mute.

Everything that could have made so much of a noise was silent. No shouting was heard from outside, like on a typical day, be it from a recruit or high-ranking officer. Nobody was complaining about the bad food or the ungodly hour of the morning that members of the Corps were required to wake up at. Nobody was doing - well, anything.

You would've idolized it on any other day.

But not on that day.

For the silence that day was not a silence of natural human occurrence. Nobody had just decided that they'd be quiet the entire day, and nor had anyone instructed them all to not make a sound. Nobody had taken a moment to consider that other people might crave the lull like sustenance. And under any of those circumstances you would've found yourself sitting near your friends, wolfing down food, and feeling at ease.

But this was not a circumstance of humanity's decisions.

Today the female Titan had been captured.

Annie.

Now the quiescence was unbearable. You longed for someone to say something, do something, anything, really, just to remind everyone that the world, albeit fractured and cruel, was still there, still waiting for its inhabitants to meld it back together. Maybe it was something less than that. You would've been happy if someone - anyone - was by your side. At least to reassure you that the world was still there; broken, but still there.

And so you had waited. The first few minutes were relatively numb - you were still recovering from the shock of the mission and sheer number of total casualties. The next few were more pained. You'd attempted to find Eren, only to remember that he was busy discussing the details of the mission's aftermath with the Commander. Then you'd searched for Mikasa, but she, of course, had left alongside Eren, promising you that they'd both return soon enough.

They had lied.

In a desperate state you had combed the rest of the grounds from floor to ceiling, nook to cranny, building to outdoors for Armin. If there was anyone at all that could've offered you the comfort, it would have been him. His words were always kind, and he was always helpful, regardless of whatever may have been going on around him. He hadn't left with Mikasa and Eren; that much you knew. Yet he wasn't in the cafeteria. In fact, it seemed like he wasn't anywhere on the premises at all.

So there you were. At an empty table that, yesterday, would've been packed with your friends. But now half of them were dead and gone and the others were off somewhere or another. And so you were left in the envelope of gut-wrenching, heart-tugging, stomach-turning silence.

One way or another your legs had managed to grow a mind of their own. You found yourself dumping your tray and leaving, unannounced, through the back door, the chill in the air infecting your body like the plague. Maybe in retrospect you would've looked at this moment with reserved pride: the cold and the quiet lead you straight to the nearest building, where you entered, tied your cloak tighter around your freezing frame, and slumped to the floor. Your head found the unpolished wooden tiling and soon enough you were curled up just meters behind the doorway, alone in a sea of silence.

Maybe this was what you needed - to close your eyes and let it all go. Embrace the awful laconism for what it was, and sleep. Escape the world for a few minutes, or hours, if it went well enough, and wake up the next day. Perhaps then things would've returned to some semblance of their earlier form. Yes, you thought, I'd like that.

And you were about to enter that wonderful world of dreamland when your eyes snagged on a sign that you hadn't noticed before, and then it was not just your body but your heart that iced over to a stop.

I am in the boy's dorms.

Nothing was going right today. If someone found you in here? You would be kicked out quicker than Levi could assassinate a titan, and that was saying something. It would've been the end of the line. But you couldn't very well up and leave, could you? The door led directly out into the main pavilion - if nobody noticed you indoors, someone was bound to notice you leaving.

You banged your head against the floor with a growing pressure against the back of your eyes.

It did not take you long to realize that lying there wouldn't do anyone much good, and with that sinking revelation, you clambered to your feet, completely and absolutely done with the day. Surely there must be a back way out - there was one in the girls' dorms, after all. So you headed down the barren hallway, footfalls growing heavier with every step, until you found yourself dead in your tracks.

Whereas all the other rooms were open, signaling that their inhabitants were off at dinner, a single door was shut. At first you presumed that someone had just taken a precaution against robbery - the lights were off, after all, so you had no logical reason to suspect anyone was inside. Yet as you inched closer, you were sure you could make someone out against the blackness from what little light was emitted into the room by the candles lit outside. And this wasn't just anyone - no, you knew that shape, the blonde hair and small form that was hunched on the small bed nearest the window. It then occurred to you that you had just found someone you'd been looking long and hard for.

"Armin?" You called out, relieved to see someone familiar. He wouldn't tell on you; he'd probably just help you get back to your room...but maybe that wasn't exactly what you wanted right then. You wished for nothing more than to be at his side.

Perhaps this desire was not reciprocated, because no answer was heard.

Still, you inhaled sharply, then stated as a warning: "I'm coming in."

You gave him ten seconds to respond. He didn't, and so you, being the person that you were, gave him another twenty. And when he didn't respond after that, you felt another burst of something you'd been trying to get rid of all day long: fear.

This wasn't like him. He always promised to sit with you, and he always had, as long as he'd been on the grounds and not off with the higher-ups. He would always make sure you were alright before heading off to bed. And he'd always answer you when you spoke. No, something was very, very wrong.

You opened the door, holding back your appeasement that it was unlocked as you took a few steps inside, closed it behind you, and saw the pitiful silhouette of a boy hugging his knees to his chest and burying his face in his hands. "Armin?" you tried again, more cautiously this time. He was tugging at his hair and you could hear his ragged breathing from halfway across the room. Screw caution. You ran to his side. "Armin, what is going on?"

You almost missed his words. He always spoke softly, yes, but never to this magnitude. "If I'd realized it - if I'd done it sooner..."

Biting your lip, you pulled yourself up on his bed, grabbing hold of one of his hands. "What are you talking about?" Your voice was much lower now, filled with much more concern.

He choked out a single word; a single name, and then pulled away from you as though your very touch was burning his flesh. "Annie."

And this was when everything seemed to fall into place.

It was also when you felt your heart - whatever small, tattered piece of it remained within the beaten and butchered chasm of your chest - shatter.

You'd known that he had been the first to find out about Annie's true existence, and that it had affected him deeply, but this? Never in a million years would you have predicted him to be blaming himself because of it. Perhaps that was simply because you couldn't fathom it yourself. This boy - this beautiful, brilliant boy - had carried the weight of the world on his shoulders and had still managed to arrive at the correct conclusion.

And yet, somehow, whatever he was feeling now was more than the weight of the world. It was the weight of the universe - the weight of existence and regret and anger and sadness and everything in between. He had done the single most amazing thing you had ever witnessed and yet somehow it was eating away at him like termites against fragile homes.

"There's no way you could have known," you continued softly, the sensation of tension deep within your head growing by the minute. He didn't deserve this - nobody deserved this. He should have felt joy at what he had been able to do; not disappointment at what he hadn't. Everything he 'hadn't' had been things nobody could have done. If you could just get him to see it that way....

Presently he transformed into a being that you had never witnessed before. His hands ran through his hair, nails scraping against his skin, putting his head down and shouting, "Maybe if I hadn't been such an idiot!"

That soul-eating silence brushed against you once again, and you could feel the dams about to break, but you held them back with unforeseen strength because you did not have a right to cry here; not now, when Armin needed you to be you: calm and happy and someone he could go to, anytime, anywhere. He needed a voice of reason when his own fell mute. You found yourself grasping both of his arms, tugging gently on them as though attempting to move him closer to you. Your head managed to find an angle just beneath his where you could look up and see nothing but the gentle blue pools of his eyes. "Armin," you murmured, "you're the smartest person I know." Your throat constricted round itself. "Please don't-"

"But I wasn't smart enough."

This time it was not the speechlessness that surrounded you, but you that surrounded the speechlessness.

He continued without a hitch. "All of those deaths...from all of those missions...it's because I didn't want to believe it." After a dilapidated breath, he maintained his sentences, "I had my suspicions. But I never wanted them to be true. I couldn't - couldn't make myself believe that it was her. But if I - if I hadn't been so afraid, then everyone dead would still be here."

Your own voice growing strained, you cut in, "No, Armin, please -"

"- They died because I was a coward! All of their deaths, every single one, are on my hands, [yn]! Why can't you see that?" he cried, throwing his head back just enough so the dim luminescence from outdoors caught on the liquid reflectors of his first tears. "I'm the reason Eren always gets hurt. I'm the reason Mikasa always has her heart broken by the fear for his safety. I'm the reason for Squad Levi dying like they did. I'm the reason that nobody trusts anyone anymore. It's all because of me!"

As the premier tears of your own eyes crested your cheeks, your whispered, "But I trust you, Armin."

His sobs grew louder and faster now, as if time was their nourishment and pain their guardian. "I'm the reason for every awful thing that's happened! I can't save my friends, I can't save my family, I can't save -"

In the split second after his last word, you did the only thing you could. It didn't matter what it was. You couldn't stand to hear him say things like this. You couldn't bear to sit there and watch him destroy himself from the inside out. You couldn't take seeing him so crushed, so dismantled by his own kindred spirit that nothing of his former self lingered within him. You couldn't stand to see witness this beautiful, brilliant boy break in your presence. And so you launched yourself at him, arms extended, and landed softly with your arms around his back, your head on his collarbone, your lashes skimming his skin.

"But you saved me, Armin."

You felt his form, taut and strained against your soft grip, begin to shake. He had fallen into the same state of reservation that you'd experienced your whole day through.

"You gave me hope for the future. Something to fight for." Your physical lamentations increased in speed, flowing down your face more steadily now. Voice rigid, you continued, "So don't you dare say that this is all your fault. Don't you dare say that you're an idiot, or a coward. Don't you dare blame yourself." You clutched him closer to you than ever before, holding him like he was the only thing keeping you alive, terrified to let go and see what may await you on the other side. "You are the smartest - and the bravest person that I will ever know." And the dread within you swelled and reached its bursting point. You were no longer holding back. The waterworks had malfunctioned and your tears were now coming down fast and hard, rain on a day after a month of drought, blurring your vision and your mind and your heart. You didn't know how to help him. You didn't know what you could say or what you could do to alleviate his pain; but in that moment his agony was yours, too, and it felt as though you were being flattened by the atmosphere itself. Don't, Armin. Please please please don't.

A gasp of air escaped your lungs as you felt your tight embrace reversed. Armin's hands were entwined with your arms and he pulled you in, his head resting atop yours, a final tear falling from his eye and trickling off his face and onto your hand, which lay gently against his heart.

You hardly noticed it against the tears of your own. "S-so don't — don't say..."

"...I'm sorry," he whispered, the heat from his breath warming your cold composition, "you - you shouldn't have to be caught up in all of this. These are my problems, n-not yours...and I'm sorry."

You only held him closer. "Then make your problems mine." The words were delicate, but the intent behind them was strong. "You don't have to be alone in this."

His inhalation caught in his throat.

"I'd give anything to see you smile - smile like you did when we first met." The sentence was razors against your lips and yet again cutting through your mind. Back when I first knew I loved you.

The two of you sat, no longer alone but not quite together, in the haze of a nighttime darkness, surrounded by four walls that separated the rest of the world from your little space, engulfed in the same stillness of it all.

It was not for a few moments that Armin spoke again. And this time it was not a self-deprecating statement. It was a one-word question. "[Y/n]?"

You discreetly released him from your clutches. The unadulterated dismay coursing through your veins only grew, quicker in movement and larger in number. So panicked that he would explode again. So fearful that he would keep destroying himself until he was nothing more than a shell. Your hands were shaking and your heart aching like it never had before, the pain of waiting for him to say something, anything, overwhelming your body and threatening to swallow you whole.

The tears were suddenly wiped from your eyes with tender hands. And, as you opened your eyes slowly, cautiously, you were met with the most beautiful sight you had ever seen.

He was smiling.

It was weak and worried and subtle but you didn't care because it was real, it was genuine, and your Armin was smiling his smile.

Without restraint you flung yourself back onto him, simpering back, tackling him down to the bed and draping your arms around his neck, lightly easing herself once more into his velvety grasp. This was real, and this was now, and this was what you needed, what he needed, what a dying world needed.

"Don't - don't feel...like you have to," he began, progressively sounding more like himself by the second, "but...do you want to lie here a bit? Just so we can have - a little rest."

You placed your head against his arm, overjoyed to have him back, because he was what you needed, and you were what he needed, and right now you knew that after today you both needed more rest than the world could offer. "Of course," you murmured.

And there the two of you lay, intertwined in the darkness, clinging to one another at the dire day's end, each of you assuaging the others' woe as the night continued. The silence now was no longer unbearable, it was welcomed. He had been right - your bones thirsted for an interlude. You found yourself heading off to sleep far faster than you ever had before, and you knew full and well that you owed it to Armin's company; his return. It was not before you fully drifted off that his last words of the night travelled across your ears.

"Thank you, [y/n]. For - for being here."

You slept in peace that night. And he did, too.

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Status: Unedited (My deepest regrets for any typos or grammatical issues I may have; I will re-read later and fix them. c: )

This was requested by the wonderfully talented Always4HarryPotter !   Please check out their books, all of them are amazing and I highly recommend them! :)

I sincerely hope you enjoyed this, and ahh I'm so sorry for the wait ;^;

With love,
   - Petri  ♥