Wings : Attack on Titan x Reader Scenarios / Imagines ▼

[The Moments After :: Armin]

A daytime galaxy of translucent stars bled into the opaqueness of the blue skies, melding and swirling into one singular, nebulous form of gray clouds, hanging low above the earth, so close that if you were to reach up you could touch them. So close that with them, the force of the world and all its inhabitants were left to settle solely on your shoulders. The melancholy ashes of the planet's hearth had been hung tightly around your neck. They were rivaled in intensity only by the multitudinous seas of sorrow. At present, even the light of the sun, a ceaseless suggestion of the better days that seemed so surely promised to come, was cast into shade by the depth of domestic darknesses.

The boat would hit a hindrance in its otherwise smooth riverside course every now and then. With even the slightest tremor you were sent reeling, mind suddenly overloaded with sounds and colors, disjointed bodies and screams and images that were left to dry, permanently etched, in the concrete of your brain; a state of hyperesthesia so intense that every wave was a wail and every bump was another break in the walls, another breaching left to the mercy of the inexorable beasts beyond their safety.

Somehow you'd managed to stop your tears. Temporarily, at least - long enough to let your only faithful companion to reunite with his friends, and you to gather your thoughts. Of course, your thoughts were composed primarily of either no this isn't real you'll wake up it isn't real or oh I saw it oh it happened why can't I forget it why can't I go back and change it please please please please "Please." The words slipped out from your mouth, so soft against the roaring winds and far-off gunshots that you weren't fully aware you'd spoken them aloud at all, not until you found your lips parted into an open frown.

Your eyes had never once left the sides of the ship on the entirety of the ride. Whatever pain you had felt earlier had now manifested itself in a vessel of numbness, a state of stupor and shock so strong that the phases of sensitivity and insensitivity traded one another out quicker than the blink of an eye. Some part of you kept expecting you to see someone you knew. A parent, a friend, a familiar face - someone, anyone, just another human that you'd seen once before in your life. Their presence would be a silent reminder that your life wasn't entirely destroyed.

Destroyed. Another 'please' escaped your body.

"[Y/n]...?" A timidly inquisitive voice sounded from your side, causing you to jolt up within your own skin, only to find that somewhere along the lines Armin had returned from his reconciliation and chosen to sit next to you. "It's just me."

You were stuck halfway between covering your face with your shirt and turning to face him properly, and in the end you wound up in a compromise. Would an apology work there? No, that would only lead to more questioning...questions you couldn't take, not with a throat as tight as yours, not with a mind as mangled.

Luckily, he offered another statement before you'd needed to make yet another choice. "I wanted to - I'm really..." he stumbled over himself, still searching for the right words as seriously as you were before finally specifying, "...I'm sorry."

"Me too." Once more the words opted for an itinerary of their own, causing yet another incorrigible outbreak. You folded your arms against the wooden railing of the safety fence around the deck, resting your face in your hands and curling your feet up next to you on the thin oaken bench supporting your small form. The repeat of the phrase was muddled by the mass of cloth and flesh against your mouth. "I'm sorry too."

Armin's gaze shifted downwards in the corner of your eyes. He replicated your pose, only instead pulled his legs up against his chest, chin on his knees. The specks of stray seafoam caught bright and white against the innocent baby blue of his irises. His voice was now lower, as if talking to nobody in particular, except perhaps to himself. "We made it out."