In Between The Ends

Chapter Forty Three

"No. No no no..." Jean mumbled under his breath; a taut fist wrapped around a clump of his hair. "That's not possible."

Historia jumped from her chair and hurried over to Connie, patting his shoulder lightly as he puked into a trashcan near the door, although her face was nearly as green as his. The rest of Armin's people were still rooted to the spot, wrestling with the panic that had engulfed them all in a matter of seconds.

Mikasa, whose complexion had lost all its color, crumpled onto the floor next to Armin in a heap.

"Eren... the Rumbling... everything we had to go through, and all the people we lost..."

Levi's teeth were clenched together, and his words came out as a hiss as his palms came down hard on the table in anger. "Everything we have ever done, and every sacrifice our people have made along the way has been for nothing if another one of those god damn creatures exist."

Arya, who had collapsed into the seat next to him, reached out and placed her hand over his in an almost absent-minded way. A gesture that at any other point in time would have raised more than a few eyebrows, but in this one it almost seemed a necessity: a lifeline to keep them from spiraling into a void of darkness that they were all teetering on the edge of. Levi flipped his hand over and intertwined their fingers fiercely; a gentle hum of energy rolling off the pair and enveloping the room in a sense of frantic calm that stayed their decent into madness, if only for a moment.

Concerned chatter had erupted from the members of the Veritas military, who didn't seem to take notice of the strange interaction going on at the other end of the room, and President Wohl was floundering under the heft of this grand reveal, letting out a tiny laugh two octaves higher than his regular one.

"My dear Armin, this simply cannot be the truth! It is a well-known fact that in the last moments of Eren Jaeger's life he banished the titans and their powers from the face of the earth; something you and your whole team were there to witness! Titans don't exist anymore, so your conclusion must be false."

"I did say you would come to regret your choice of words, sir." Armin replied as he hoisted Mikasa from the ground and ushered her back into her chair. "And I'm afraid it's more complicated than that. I doubt even Eren understood the true nature behind titan power, all-seeing as he was."

The members of Armin's team had gathered around the table again, unknowingly feeding off the subtle electricity that was issuing from Levi and Arya, allowing it to center themselves once more, albeit uneasily. Returning to their seats, Jean clapped his hands together tightly and fixed Armin with a determined glare.

"Okay brainiac, you better start explaining this, because right now it's looking a lot like two thousand years of a fucking moot point."

His words were hurried, and it was silently agreed upon that any kind of discussion or rationalization to this insanity was preferable to the alternative option: letting their fear tear them apart until they had no other choice but to take a long walk off a short pier.

"Right." He said, going back to his stack of documents for reference. "Well, what really got me considering the possibility of another source to the titan's power was the colossal we found outside Cardend. Trust me when I say that I also believed that titans were gone, but the existence of that colossal contradicted everything we thought we knew. If Eren destroyed all the titans, why was that specific one still there? The only explanation I could come up with at the time was because it was underground, but that didn't make sense either."

"If Eren's influence hadn't been able to penetrate the ground, I'd still be stuck inside a block of crystal in the Jaegerist's basement." Annie mused, breaking the silence she had been maintaining from the start of the meeting. "So, what are your theories?"